A JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC WRITING VOLUME 8

justified prostitution, which the Church vehemently disagreed
with but ultimately adapted to it because of public belief in the
theory.
The general attitude of the early church towards sex was
mixed. Almost every member, if not all of the early church
believed that prostitution was a sin and an abomination in the
eyes of God. Christian leaders like Augustine of Hippo and
Saint Jerome promoted the opinion that sexual intercourse
should be between couples united in marriage only. Augustine
condemned prostitution and considered the creation of
offspring to be “the only good excuse for such intercourse.” 6
Saint Jerome supported marriage and sexual intercourse
between partners for pleasure. He worried, however, about
the plight of fragile widows who might turn to prostitution
for money after their husbands died. He reasoned that it was
more “tolerable that a woman should marry again than that she
should be a prostitute, and better that she should have a second
husband than several paramours. The first alternative brings
relief in a miserable plight, but the second involves a sin and its
punishment.” 7 Given that the opinions of the early medieval
Christian fathers became the backbone of later medieval
thought, a great contradiction began to form, one where
marriage was necessary for intercourse to occur at all. And
because of this, a natural conflict was born from the progressive
assimilation of humour theory among common towns people,
many of whom did not have wives or husbands to satisfy sexual
desires.
Medieval canonists who were challenged by conflicts of
morality accepted prostitution as a necessary evil in maintaining
social order in growing urban centers. Common everyday
people of a medieval English town did not share the same
affixation to the rules of moral order laid out by the Church
because “the laity did not always agree with the church’s
definition of sexual morality.” 8 Due to thriving economic
opportunity in English towns, migrants flooded into population
centers, creating a necessity for whores to fulfill the needs
of those people unfortunate enough to remain spouseless.
Furthermore, rising male populations, and the fear that those
men were seeking to rid themselves of their growing seminal
humour, would have caused most growing towns to accept
the incursion of prostitution. 9 Dr. Ruth Karras and Dr.
6 Philip Schaff, Saint Augustine: The Writings Against the Manichaeans and
Against the Donatists, 18.65, “A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,” Internet on-line, available from
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf104.i.html [25 September 2009]
7 Philip Schaff, Saint Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome, Letter
CXXIII, To Ageruchia, 231.4, “A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,” Internet on-line, available from
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf104.i.html [25 September 2009]
8 Norman Tanner, Sethina Watson. “Least of the Laity: The Minimum
Requirements of a Medieval Christian.” Journal of Medieval History, 32
(2006): 412.
9 Population numbers fluctuated because of famine and the plague. Using
London as an indicator of population figures in English urban centers,
the Museum of London states, “in 1066 London’s population was about
44 - HOHONU Volume 8 2010
James Brundage agree that both Church authorities and civic
officials understood the contradictory need for prostitutes in
maintaining a good and chaste society. According to Brundage:
Medieval society recognized prostitution as a necessary
evil. Sinful men, theologians held would corrupt respectable
women—even their own wives—or turn to sodomy if they did
not have the prostitute as a sexual outlet: ‘remove the prostitute
and you will destroy everything with lust’…Prostitution
may be treated as a moral category…Or prostitution may be
treated primarily as a legal category, a type of trade which has
implications for public order and policy. 10
Thus, it is a paradox that the medieval whore was not only
part of maintaining social control in English urban centers, but
that they were absolutely necessary in doing so. English streets
crowded by wandering males with a belly of ale, and a mind
full of lust, was not an alternative that most towns were willing
to accept—no matter what the church decreed that towns
should do, prostitutes were need to satisfy this segment of the
population.
Public acceptance of the humours created a dilemma
for church authorities because prostitution fell under civic
authority. The church essentially had to contend with civic
authorities in various towns and decide whether they would
conform to religious standards of prosecution or not. 11 Even if
it was the expectation that every man and woman understand
the religiously moral teachings of the church, Dr. Norman
Tanner and Dr. Sethina Wilson argue:
The distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge
could mean that Christians were bound to a surprisingly
minimal understanding of their religion. Innocent IV argued
that intelligent laypeople might seek to learn more, but there
was no sin if they did not since it was sufficient for them to
devote themselves to good works. 12
Often villages and towns only fined whores for practicing
their trade in town boundaries because to remove prostitution
completely might be disastrous. The brothel was the “societal
safety valve” 13 in many English towns, serving a wide variety of
clientele: peasants, aristocrats, and religious leaders—although
10,000. By 1300 it expanded to over 80,000, but after famines and the
Black Death it fell again to about 40,000. People moved to London
from all over England to find work and better lives for their families.
The wealthiest people lived in mansions, usually along the Strand close
to Westminster.” Museum of London. “What was life like in medieval
London?” [Who lived there?]. http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/
English/Learning/Learningonline/features/viking/viking_4.htm [24
October 2009].
10 Brundage, “Prostitution in the Medieval Cannon Law,” 826.
11 Ruth M. Karras, “The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval
England,” Signs, Vol. 14, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 404.
12 Norman Tanner, Sethina Watson, “Least of the Laity: The Minimum
Requirements of a Medieval Christian,” 400.
13 “Despite their recognition that prostitution was a necessary feature of
society, the municipalities of continental Europe still paid lip service to
the Church’s ideals of sexual purity.” Karras, “The Regulation of Brothels
in Later Medieval England,” 401.