A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [36]
Another five centuries would pass before young women would be so open in their pursuit of sex. In Wittenberg Luther complained that “the race of girls is getting bold, and run after the fellows into their rooms and chambers and wherever they can and offer them their free love.” Later he fumed that young women had become “immodest, shameless. … The young people of today are utterly dissolute and disorderly. … The women and girls of Wittenberg have begun to go bare before and behind, and there is no one to punish or correct them.” If the lover of a soon-to-be unwed mother decided he was not ready for marriage, her cause was not necessarily lost; often an attractive girl with a fatherless child and a long record of indiscretions could find a respectable peasant willing to take her to the altar.
In this lusty age the most a parent could extract from a daughter was her promise not to yield until the banns had been read. Once a couple was engaged, they slept together with society’s approval. If a peasant girl was not pregnant, there were only two practical deterrents to her acceptance of a marriage proposal. It was her desire either to enter a convent or, at the far end of the spectrum, to join the world’s oldest profession. Harlotry not only paid well; it was frequently prestigious. Because prostitutes had to expose their entire bodies, they were the cleanest people in Europe. The competition was fierce, but it always had been, and once established, these women became what were now being called courtesans (from the Italian courtigiane), or female courtiers. Moves to suppress them were rare and unpopular; Luther lost many followers when, though affirming the normality of sexual desire, he proclaimed that the sale of sex was wrong and persuaded several German cities to outlaw it.
GREAT RENAISSANCE ARTISTS flourished while lesser talents actually starved in garrets; but the highly profitable production of erotica, including salacious illustrations, kept many men well fed. Their work was available at every fair and in all large cities, sold by postmen, strolling musicians, and street hawkers. The dissolute Pietro Aretino’s Sonetti lussuriosi (Lewd Sonnets) was as popular in Augsburg and Paris—and, when Clement VII became pope, in the Vatican—as in the poet’s own Venice. After Aretino’s expulsion from Rome he was thought to have explored the outer limits of propriety. Then François Rabelais, a priest, published his Gargantua epic, using gutter language which shocked Aretino but outsold the Sonetti. As happens from time to time, permissiveness was eclipsing faith. Some pornographic books were used as howto sex manuals. And sometimes a community would treat the most wanton behavior as normal. Witch-hunting being a popular sport of the age, from time to time suspicious nocturnal gatherings would be reported to the authorities. In each case, chronicles of the time attest—with obvious relief—those assembled had been engaging in an even more popular pastime. Their meetings, according to a historian of the period, were “excuses for promiscuous sexual relations, and for initiating young people in the arts of debauchery.”
Sex among the nobility was complicated by more intricate property transactions. Looking to future generations and plotting bluer bloodlines, patricians usually arranged betrothals for their sons and daughters shortly after their seventh birthdays. There were instances in which this was done when they were as young as three. These alliances could later be annulled, provided they had not been consummated, but unless strong steps were taken, consummation naturally began shortly after the parties reached puberty, opportunity and temptation being, as always,