Читать книгу Woman and Socialism - August Bebel - Страница 16

The cities which had begun to flourish with the eleventh century, favored the increase of population in their own interest by facilitating residence and marriage. They became places of refuge to the rural population seeking to escape unbearable oppression, and to fugitive serfs. But at a later day these conditions changed again. As soon as the cities had obtained power, and a class of mechanics in comfortable circumstances had come into existence, a feeling of hostility manifested itself against new-comers who tried to settle down as mechanics, since they were regarded as undesirable competitors. Barriers were erected against the new-comers; heavy taxes were levied upon them if they would obtain the right of residence and become qualified as master-workmen. Trades were limited to a certain number of master-workmen and their journeymen, thereby forcing thousands into a condition of servitude, celibacy and vagabondage. When during the sixteenth century the cities began to decline,—owing to conditions that will be discussed later on,—it was quite in keeping with the narrow views of the time that residence and the right to independently practice a trade were made still more difficult. The tyranny of the feudal lords constantly increased, until many of their subjects preferred to abandon their miserable lives for the freer life of beggar, tramp or robber, the latter being favored by the large forests and the poor condition of the highways, or, making the most of the numerous warfares of the time, they became mercenary soldiers, selling their services wherever the pay was highest and the booty most promising. Male and female rabble flooded the country, becoming a public nuisance. The church helped to increase the general depravity. The forced celibacy of the clergy alone led to sexual debauchery, and this was still heightened by the constant association with Italy and Rome.

Rome was not only the capital of Christianity, being the residence of the popes, it was also, true to its traditions under the heathen emperors, a new Babel, the European high-school of immorality, and the papal court was its most distinguished center. The Roman empire at its dissolution had left to Christian Europe all its vices. These were cultivated in Rome and from there penetrated into Germany, favored by association of the clergy with Rome. The numerous clergy, consisting to a great extent of men whose sexual desires were increased to the utmost by a lazy and luxurious life, and whom enforced celibacy drove to illegitimate or unnatural satisfaction of their desires, transmitted this immorality to all strata of society. The clergy became a pestilential danger to the virtue of women in cities and villages. Monasteries and nunneries,—and there were countless numbers of them,—frequently differed from public brothels only inasmuch as life within them was still more licentious and dissolute. Crimes, especially infanticide, were frequently committed there with impunity, because only those were permitted to pass judgment who were more often than not connected with the crimes. Sometimes peasants tried to protect their wives and daughters from being seduced by clergymen, by refusing to accept as pastor any one who would not consent to keeping a concubine. This circumstance led a bishop of Constance to impose a concubine tax upon the clergy of his diocese. Such conditions explain the historically authenticated fact, that during the mediæval age described by one writer of romance as a pious and virtuous age, for instance in 1414, at the council of Constance, no less than 1500 prostitutes were present.

But these conditions by no means made their appearance only at the decline of the middle age. They appeared at an early date and gave cause for constant complaints and ordinances. Thus Charlemagne issued an ordinance in the year 802, in which it says: “the nunneries shall be closely guarded. The nuns shall not roam about but shall be carefully watched, neither shall they live in discord and quarrels with one another, and under no circumstances shall they disobey their mothers superior. Where they have monastic rules they shall absolutely abide by them. They shall not be given to covetousness, drunkenness and prostitution, but shall lead a just and temperate life. Neither shall any man enter their convent except to attend mass, and then he shall immediately depart again.” Another ordinance of the year 869 declared: “if priests keep several wives or shed the blood of Christians or heathens, or break the canonical law, they shall be divested of their priesthood because they are worse than the laity.” The fact that in those days the priests were forbidden to have several wives, shows that in the ninth century polygamy was not rare. Indeed there were no laws forbidding it. Even later, at the time of the minnesingers, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was not considered objectionable to have several wives. In a poem by Albrecht of Johansdorf in the collection “Love-songs’ Springtime,” we find the following stanza:[33]

Particularly detrimental to the moral condition of the age were the crusades, that kept tens of thousands of men away from their homes for years, and led them to become acquainted with customs in the Eastern Roman empire that had until then been unknown in Western Europe. The position of women became especially unfavorable, not only as a result of the many hindrances to marriage and permanent residence, but also because their numbers by far exceeded the male population. The chief cause of this was the numerous wars and the fact that commercial traveling in those days was a dangerous undertaking. Moreover the death rate among men was higher than among women, as a result of their intemperate living, which was especially manifested during the plague that frequently ravaged the population in the middle age. Thus there were 32 plague years in the period from 1326 to 1400; 41 from 1400 to 1500, and 30 from 1500 to 1600.[34]

Hosts of women roamed about on the highways as musicians, dancers, magicians, in the company of wandering scholastics and priests, and flooded the markets and fairs. They formed special divisions in the troops of foot-soldiers where they were organized in guilds according to the spirit of the age, and were assigned to the different ranks according to age and beauty. By severe penalty they were forbidden to yield to any man outside of the prescribed circle. In the camp they had to help the baggage-carriers to gather in hay, straw and wood, to fill up holes and ditches and to clean the camp. During sieges it was their task to fill up the ditches with brushwood, branches and tufts of grass to facilitate the attack; they helped to place the guns in position and to drag them along when they became stuck in the muddy roads.[35] To give some relief to these numerous helpless women, so called beguinages, that were maintained by the municipality, were erected in many cities from the middle of the thirteenth century on. Here the women were given homes and were encouraged to lead decent lives. But neither their institutions nor the nunneries could shelter all those who sought help and protection.

The hindrances to marriage, the journeys of noblemen and other worldly and spiritual lords who came into the cities with their hosts of knights and attendants, the young men within the cities and, last but not least, the married men who were not troubled much by moral scruples but believed that variety was the spice of life,—all these created a demand for prostitutes in the medieval towns. As every trade in those days was organized into guilds and submitted to definite regulations, so also was prostitution. In all the larger cities brothels were maintained that were municipal, state or church property and whose profits went to fill these respective treasuries. The women in these houses had a senior-mistress elected by themselves, whose duty it was to maintain order and who was especially charged with the task of seeing to it that no competitors outside of the guild harmed the legitimate trade. If such competitors were caught, they had to pay a legal fine. Thus the inhabitants of a brothel in Nuremberg complained to the magistrate about the competition of women who were not members of their guild: “that other keepers also maintain women who go upon the streets at night and harbour married men and others, and who ply their trade in a much coarser way, and that such were a disgrace and should not be permitted in this praiseworthy town.”[36] The brothels enjoyed special protection; breach of the peace in their vicinity was punished more severely than elsewhere. This female guild was also entitled to appear at festivals and in processions in which it was customary for all the guilds to participate. They were even sometimes invited as guests to princely and official banquets. The brothels were considered desirable “for the protection of married women and the honor of virgins.” This was the same argument which was resorted to in order to justify the maintenance of brothels by the state in Athens. Nevertheless barbarous persecutions of the prostitutes were met with, that came from the same men whose demand and whose money maintained the prostitutes. Thus Charlemagne decreed that a prostitute should be brought nude upon the market place and be flogged there. He himself, the “most Christian” king and emperor had no less than six wives simultaneously. His daughters, evidently following their father’s example, were not models of virtue either. Their mode of life gave him many unpleasant hours, and they brought several illegitimate children into his house. Alkuin, a friend and advisor to Charlemagne, warned his pupils of “the crowned doves who fly thru the Palatinate at night,” meaning the emperor’s daughters.

The same communities that officially organized and protected the brothels and granted all sorts of privileges to the prostitutes inflicted the hardest and most cruel punishments upon a poor forsaken girl who had gone wrong. The infanticide who, driven to despair, had killed her own offspring was subjected to cruel death, while no one bothered about the unscrupulous seducer. Perhaps he sat among the judges who pronounced the death sentence on the unfortunate victim. The same is possible still.[37] Adultery of wives was also severely punished; to be put in the pillory was the least she might expect. But adultery of husbands was concealed by the cloak of Christian forbearance.

In Wuerzburg it was customary for the brothel-keeper to take an oath before the magistrate, pledging faith and allegiance to the city and that he would diligently enlist women. Similar oaths were taken in Nuremberg, Ulm, Leipsic, Cologne, Frankfort, and others. In Ulm the brothels were abolished in 1537; but in 1551, the guilds moved to reinstate them “to avoid a worse state of affairs.” When strangers of note visited a city, prostitutes were placed at their disposal at the city’s expense. When King Ladislaus entered Vienna in 1452, the magistrate sent a committee of public prostitutes to meet him, clad in transparant gauze that disclosed their beautiful shapes. Emperor Charles V, upon entering Antwerp, was also received by a committee of nude girls, a historic scene that Hans Makart depicted in a large painting which is now on exhibition in the museum at Hamburg. Such occurrences created no scandal in those days.

[33]

Would he not be fickle

Who would choose to have a second wife

Beside his virtuous one? Speak, Sir, would you?—

Let it to men be granted but to women not!

[34] Dr. Charles Buecher: “The Woman Question in Mediæval Times.”

[35] Dr. Charles Buecher: “The Woman Question in Medieval Times.”

[36] Joh. Scherr, History of the German Woman, 4th ed. Leipsic, 1879.

[37] Leon Richter in “La femme libre” reports a case where a servant girl was convicted of infanticide by the father of her child, a pious lawyer, who was a member of the court. After the girl’s conviction it became known that the lawyer himself was the murderer and that she was innocent.