World Brothel

Basically, every era is immoral, and often immorality is nothing more than a higher, freer, and more complex form of morality. However, in the case of the Middle Ages, it can be said that they thoroughly surpassed the normal and lawful limits of immorality, which probably belong to humanity's constant foundations. Symptoms of a moral spasm appeared, a perfect anaesthesia to all moral perception.

The freedom of sexual intercourse is most characteristic of the bathhouses, which could be found everywhere, even in villages. These were nothing more than meeting places for lovers and institutions for forming acquaintances. Men and women bathed completely naked, at most covering their groins with a small apron, and they usually spent the whole day there: either in the same tub in pairs, or in large pools surrounded by balconies for spectators, though there were separate areas as well. These places were visited not only by prostitutes and carefree women, but by everyone. A looser life unfolded in these bathhouses, where, in addition to patients, all kinds of adventurers, hedonistic men, and love-hungry women flocked together.

It is often heard that abortion was common in higher circles. "Women's houses" were more numerous than ever: every small town had several. The authorities had measures forbidding girls without breasts to be admitted. From all appearances, it was a common practice to bring children to brothels. Also characteristic was the prohibition against allowing twelve- and fourteen-year-old boys to enter the women's houses as guests. Married women also frequented them. The so-called "coquettes" had certain social authority as well. At the public receptions of princes, they appeared as a group, just as organized as any other profession. They especially complained about the filthy competition of the convents, because, in the usual terminology of the time, nuns and prostitutes were almost identical concepts. In a Frankish convent, a papal investigation revealed that almost every nun was pregnant. Male monasteries were also places of orgies, and homosexuality was widespread among both male and female members of the clergy.

A noteworthy custom was the "trial nights." This consisted of the girl allowing her lover all tenderness without giving herself to him. In this way, both parties could judge the partner's capabilities, and this interaction did not always lead to marriage. In fact, the girl was just as often the one to withdraw as the man. This custom was common in the highest circles everywhere. Moreover, the married man would often honor his guest by lying his wife next to him, "in faith and trust." On the other hand, married men often had public lovers, and they raised illegitimate children alongside their legitimate ones.

The explanation for all of this was that in sexual matters, even the greatest impartiality reigned. Indecent and crude songs were quite common at public dances, and the official forms of courtesy were kisses and embraces. If a suitor wanted to show his admiration for a lady he had just met, he simply reached into her bosom. Men and women undressed in front of each other in the most unbiased way, every time: in Paris, King Louis XI was shown pastoral plays by the city's most beautiful girls, naked. There is no reason for us to hypocritically be scandalized by these conditions: at the time, what happened openly and unabashedly was simply the same as what later occurred secretly and disguised, but the fact that public opinion sanctioned it was a sign of the shamelessness of the people of that time.

Egon Friedell "Az újkori kultúra története I." Holnap Kiadó, Budapest, 1989