History of prostitution in France
The history of prostitution in France has similarities with the history of prostitution in other countries in Europe, namely a succession of periods of tolerance and repression, but with certain distinct features such as a relatively long period of tolerance of brothels.
Middle Ages
Early Medieval Period
After the period of Roman rule, the Visigoth monarch Theodoric I (ruled 418–451) persecuted pimps, violence was often used against them the maximum penalty being death. His grandson Alaric II promulgated the Breviary of Alaric in 506, one of its provisions was the prohibition of prostitution. A public flogging was the proscribed penalty. Under this code both pimps and prostitutes were included. Clovis I introduced the code to Frankish Gaul.
Charlemagne (768-814 AD) further attempted to suppress prostitution, declaring flogging (300 lashes) as a punishment in his capitularies. This was primarily aimed at the common man, since harems and concubines were common amongst the ruling classes. Some idea of the seriousness with which the state regarded the offense is provided by the fact that 300 lashes was the severest sentence prescribed by the Code Alaric (Breviary of Alaric). Offenders also had their hair cut off, and in the case of recidivism, could be sold as slaves. There is no evidence that any of this was effective.
General tolerance
In the Middle Ages, the authorities, whether the municipalities, lords or kings, organised or supervised prostitution within institutions. Buildings run by the bourgeois or the church, (particularly abbesses in the 14th and 15th centuries) paid a lease to the authorities. These public brothels were indicated by a red lantern lit by the keeper of the house during opening hours.
In general, prostitutes were not marginalised but integrated into a society where they have a role to play. In the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, the prostitutes were accomplices of other women and helped them to avenge the so-called seducers. The cathedral of Chartres has a stained glass window of the Parable of the Prodigal Son which was given by prostitutes, in the same way that other windows were given by other trade guilds.
The regulations of this time were often municipal, and limited to supervising the activity:
- Freedom of activity in certain streets or neighborhoods;
- Restrictions on the freedoms of prostitutes (travel, associates);
- Compulsory clothing to distinguish prostitutes from other women (girdles);
- Days and hours of opening the houses (10 am to 6 pm or 8 pm in Paris; Monday to Saturday, closing during Sunday Mass and Holy Week).
- Alongside this legal public prostitution, are private institutions (hotels, taverns and fr:bordelages) and prostitutes who worked on the street or went from hotel to hotel.
- Under Philippe-Auguste an irregular militia, the Ribauds, was instituted around 1189, to whom the policing of the public girls was entrusted in Paris. Its leader, the "King of Ribald" ruled over the prostitution in Paris. The Ribauds were abolished by Philip IV (1285-1314) due to their licentiousness.
Occasional repression
This general tolerance has exceptions, Louis IX, after returning from the Seventh Crusade, sought to make the kingdom conform with religious views of morality and initially tried to prohibit prostitution. By a Royal Decree of December 1254, he pronounced the expulsion of all "women of evil life" from the kingdom and confiscation of their belongings. It also outlined punishment for prostitutes and pimps. The prostitutes went into hiding and the king was pressured to restore the previous situation. Faced with the impossibility of applying this decree, a second ordinance of 1256 was introduced. Although still railing against women who were "free with their bodies and other common harlots", he acknowledged the pragmatic desirability of housing them away from respectable streets and religious establishments, and so obliged them to reside outside of the borders of the city walls. These measures did nothing to reduce prostitution and the number of prostitutes continued to rise.
In 1269, Louis IX, who was preparing to embark on the Eighth Crusade, again sought to root out evil from the realm. Once again, the clandestine activities of the prostitutes and the disorder created made the king revoke the order. His resolve to do away with prostitution was affirmed in a letter of 1269 to the regents in which he refers to the need to extirpate the evil, root and branch. The punishment for infraction was an 8 sous fine and risking imprisonment in the Châtelet (see below). He designated nine streets in which prostitution would be allowed in Paris, three of them being in the sarcastically named Beaubourg quartier (Beautiful Neighbourhood) (Rue de la Huchette, Rue Froimon, Rue du Renard-Saint-Merri, Rue Taille pain, Rue Brisemiches, Rue Champ-Fleury, Rue Trace-putain, Rue Gratte-cul, and the Rue Tire-Putain) (see below)
Today, this area corresponds to the 1st-4th arrondissements clustered on the Rive Droite (right bank) of the Seine (see map). These streets, associated with prostitution, had very evocative if indelicate names including the Rue du Poil-au-con (or hair of the con, from the Latin cunnus meaning female genitalia, hence Street of the Pubic Hair, or Poil du pubis), later altered to the Rue du Pélican, in the 1st arrondissement, near the first Porte Saint-Honoré, and the Rue Tire-Vit (Pull-Cock, i.e. penis, later the Rue Tire-Boudin, Pull-Sausage) now Rue Marie-Stuart, in the 2nd arrondissement, near the first Porte Saint-Denis. It is said that Tire-Boudin was a euphemism invented for Mary Queen of Scots when she asked after its name, and the street is now named after her. The nearby Rue Gratte-Cul (Scratch-bottom) is now the Rue Dussoubs, and the Rue Pute-y-Musse (Whore hides there) the Rue du Petit-Musc by corruption. The "rue Trousse-Nonnain" (fuck nun), later became Trace-Putain, Tasse-Nonnain, and Transnonain; then in 1851 it was amalgamated into the Rue Beaubourg. The Rue Baille-Hoë (Give Joy) is now Rue Taillepain in the 4th arondissement near the Porte Saint-Merri.
In 1358, the Grand Conseil of John II (1350-1364) echoing the "necessary evil" doctrine of Saints Augustine (354-430 AD) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) declared that "les pécheresses sont absolument nécessaires à la Terre" (Sinners are an absolute necessity for the country). Prostitution remained confined to designated areas, as indicated in this decree in the reign of Charles V (1364-1380), by Hugh Aubriot, Provost of Paris in 1367, outlining the areas outside of which prostitutes would be punished 'according to the ordinance of Saint Louis';
- Que toutes les femmes prostituées, tenant bordel en la ville de Paris, allassent demeurer et tenir leurs bordels en places et lieux publics à ce ordonnés et accoutumés, selon l'ordonnance de Saint Louis. C'est à savoir : à L'Abreuvoir de Mascon (à l'angle du pont Saint-Michel et de la rue de la Huchette), en La Boucherie (voisine de la rue de la Huchette), rue Froidmentel, près du clos Brunel (à l'est du Collège de France aboutissant au carrefour du Puits-Certain), en Glatigny (rue nommée Val d'Amour dans la Cité), en la Court-Robert de Pris (rue du Renard-Saint-Merri), en Baille-Hoë (près de l'église Saint-Merri et communiquant avec la rue Taille-Pain et à la rue Brise-Miche), en Tyron (rue entre la rue Saint-Antoine et du roi de Sicile), en la rue Chapon (aboutissant rue du Temple) et en Champ-Flory (rue Champ-Fleury, près du Louvre). Si les femmes publiques, d'écris ensuite cette ordonnance, se permettent d'habiter des rues ou quartiers autres que ceux ci-dessus désignés, elles seront emprisonnées au Châtelet puis bannies de Paris. Et les sergents, pour salaire, prendront sur leurs biens huit sous parisis…
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