Abstract
In a suburb of Montpellier on the road to the sea, one finds a community of prostitutes who rented rooms and owned houses in several streets in the neighborhood of Campus Polverel. Many of them were immigrants to Montpellier. They were connected to urban officials, auctioneers, who owned houses in Campus Polverel as well and rented them rooms. These women supported each other, bought chests and clothing from each other and the auctioneers, and seemingly made a living. This is a marginal community that was legitimate in Montpellier, where prostitution was regulated but tolerated in the later Middle Ages. The last chapter suggests a link between elite women like Agnes and these same prostitutes.
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- 1.
For example, the diverse collection of studies in Living Dangerously. On the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Anna Grotans (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) and my co-authored article with Kevin Mummey, “Whose City Is This? Hucksters, Domestic Servants, Wet Nurses, Prostitutes, and Slaves in Late Medieval Western Mediterranean Urban Society,” History Compass 9/12 (2011): 910–922.
See also the classic study of Bronislaw Geremek, Les marginaux parisiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: Flammarion, 1976), and Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval. Paris. Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002).
- 2.
See my article, “Prostitution in Medieval Montpellier: The Ladies of Campus Polverel,” Medieval Prosopography 18 (1997): 209–228. On southern French prostitution, Leah Lydia Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society. The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) remains the standard work.
- 3.
There has been significant scholarship on prostitution. See, for example, Vern L. Bullough, The History of Prostitution (New York, 1964); James A. Brundage, “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law,” in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. Judith M. Bennett et al. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 79-99, reprinted from Signs 1 (1976); Ruth Mazo Karras, “The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England,” in Sisters and Workers, 100-134, reprinted from Signs 14 (1989), and Common Women. Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Jacques Rossiaud, “Prostitution, jeunesse et société au XVe siècle,” Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 31(1976): 289–325, and Medieval Prostitution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), and R. C. Trexler, “La prostitution florentine au XVe siècle: patronages et clientèles,” Annales: É.S.C. 36 (1981): 983–1015. See the recent article of David Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond: Milic of Kromeriz and the Topography of Prostitution in Fourteenth-Century Prague,” Speculum 79 (2004): 407–442, and the recent overview by Kevin Mummey, “Prostitution: The Moral Economy of Medieval Prostitution,” in Ruth Evans (ed.), A Cultural History of Sexuality, Vol. II, A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2010): 165–180, as well as the clear treatment by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, “Prostitutes,” in Margaret Schaus, ed. Women and Gender in Medieval Europe. An Encyclopedia (New York, London: Routledge, 2006), 675–678.
- 4.
Jacques Rossiaud. Medieval Prostitution, 78, 82. See also Karras, “The Regulation of Brothels,” 126.
- 5.
See Beverly Balos and Mary Louise Fellows, “A Matter of Prostitution: Becoming Respectable,” New York University Law Review 74 (1990): 1220–1303.
- 6.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 220, stated, “As it would be impossible to examine all documents thoroughly in order to extract the few references to prostitution, a selection must be made of the documents having the greatest concentration of information (and the information of the greatest interest); others must be consulted by following up a reference indicated elsewhere. For example, almost all the notarial documents cited in this book have been found by following up references in the descriptive inventories or other published works. It would be folly to try to go through all medieval Languedocian notarial registers seeking the occasional mention of prostitution!” I view my study of prostitutes as a footnote to Otis’s work, and I am grateful to her for reading my initial paper and for the insights drawn from her institutional study of Languedocian prostitution that assisted me in identifying Campus Polverel and its female inhabitants.
- 7.
There are scattered earlier references in the Montpellier evidence to potential prostitutes. For example, in A. M. Montpellier, BB 2, J. Grimaudi, f. 143r, one finds in 1302 the acquittal of Raynaude de Lyon, whose foreignness is suggested in her place-name surname, of having had sexual relations with several Jews and having incited other Christian women to do the same. Raynaude was likely a prostitute.
- 8.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 51–62.
- 9.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 35, 45, 55–61. According to Otis, brothel farming was a feature of institutionalized late medieval prostitution in the south of France.
- 10.
This is the oldest document authorizing a red-light district in Languedoc, according to Otis. It is found in A. M. Montpellier, Grand Chartrier, Louvet no. 146 and was edited by Alexandre Germain, “Statuts inédits des Repenties du couvent de Saint-Gilles de Montpellier,” Mémoires de la société archéologique de Montpellier 5 (1860–69): 124–126. My thanks are due to Jacqueline Caille for assistance in pinpointing Villanova within the Commune Clôture.
- 11.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 25–26.
- 12.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 197, note 2.
- 13.
On prostitution and urban space, compare Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond: Milic of Kromeriz and the Topography of Prostitution in Fourteenth-Century Prague.”
- 14.
For twelfth-century examples, see Liber Instrumentorum Memorialium,Guilhems 467, act CCLXXXIX, and p. 478, act CCXCVIII. For the fourteenth century, see examples in A. D. Hérault, II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al., f. 93v: 15 October 1343 and f. 94r: 15 October 1343; A. M. Montpellier, BB 2, J. Grimaudi, f. 5r: 9 May 1301. <Emphasis Type="Italic">Campus was also commonly used in agricultural contracts in Montpellier to mean field or open space.
- 15.
See Jacques Fabre de Morlhon, Le Montpellier des Guilhem et des rois d’Aragon (Albi: Ateliers Professionnels de l’Orphelinat Saint-Jean, 1967), 62.
- 16.
A. M. Montpellier, BB 3, J. Laurentii, f. 115: 20 March 1343 (n. s.).
- 17.
On the history of relations between France and Majorca concerning Montpellier, see Thomas, “Montpellier entre la France et l’Aragon.” See also Lecoy de la Marche, Les relations politiques de la France avec le royaume de Majorque.
- 18.
The classic study of Montpellier topography remains that of Guiraud, “Recherches topographiques.”
- 19.
See Fabre and Lochard, Montpellier: la ville médiévale.
- 20.
See Geremek, Les marginaux, 97–102, for a discussion of the geographic location of sites of prostitution in Paris.
- 21.
A. M. Montpellier, Commune Clôture, EE 25 and EE 26.
- 22.
See “Prostitution in Medieval Montpellier.”
- 23.
Compare Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond: Milic of Kromeriz and the Topography of Prostitution in Fourteenth-Century Prague.”
- 24.
See Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 54; Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 30; and Geremek, Les Marginaux, 243.
- 25.
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 30; Trexler, “La prostitution à Florence,” 991. See also Karras, “The Regulation of Brothels,” 125, on the involvement of the bishop of Winchester.
- 26.
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 4.
- 27.
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 60.
- 28.
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 30.
- 29.
See “Women in Business.” It should be noted, however, that Otis states in an article, “Municipal Wet Nurses,” 84, that the mere absence of a husband’s or late husband’s name does not automatically signify that the woman in question was single. Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, passim, had difficulty in identifying women’s marital status in all cases.
- 30.
Compare Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ,” 122.
- 31.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, 1333, f. 44v: 29 May1333: Bonela; f. 45r: 29 May1333: Bonelhe; f. 62v: 28 August1333: Bonela. Thus, in the two acts on 29 May1333, the notary was inconsistent in his spelling of Bonafossia’s surname. He called her Bonafos as well.
- 32.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval. Society, 16–17, on the term meretrix.
- 33.
See, for example, my article, “The Adolescent Apprentice/Worker.” The pistorix (baker) designation was an exception. As Brundage commented in “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law,” 95, prostitution was an economic occupation, sometimes even a civic corporation.
- 34.
See Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 34, on noms de guerre of prostitutes.
- 35.
See the list of the names of the women of Campus Polverel in Appendix 2. I would like to express my thanks to my colleague F.R.P. Akehurst for his assistance in matters of medieval philology. As an example of possible connotations, one can speculate on the name Bonafossia Bonela. For Bonafossia, the troubador word is bonafo, which might be construed as “grants her favors”; fos is perhaps a past subjunctive with a conditional sense. Hence, the name might mean “She’d be good.” Fossa means ditch or marker, lending itself to possible anatomical reference. Bonela could refer to bonila, meaning good quality. Boyleta may be a form of bogleta, meaning little curl or little sack. Katerina Sobeyrana had a surname meaning sovereign or elder, with the Provençal form of Soubeyran used by Marcel Pagnol in his novels. Marquesia Coline had a surname that could refer to rigole or channel from the term colin. Claramonda la Franseza of Toren Torena may be from Tours en Touraine. Bienda Grezane may be “the Greek woman.” La Gantieyra could refer to a glovemaker. Dena Romiena may be a foreigner, wanderer, or pilgrim. Guillelma Merlessa may have a last name relating to merle or thrush, with a pejorative sense of “nasty customer.” Other surnames clearly refer to geographic origin.
- 36.
See the summary of the Lopez-Emery debate in Benjamin Kedar, “Toponymic Surnames as Evidence of Origin: Some Medieval Views,” Viator 4 (1973): 123–129, and “Population Attraction and Mobility.”
- 37.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 63–64.
- 38.
See “Prostitution in Medieval Montpellier.”
- 39.
See “Land, Houses and Real Estate Investment,” for a general treatment of property transactions in Montpellier. See Business, Banking and Finance, Appendix 2, “Monetary Problems,” for a discussion of coinage.
- 40.
See Chap. 7.
- 41.
For Johannes de Saureto’s eminent domain, see also A. M. Montpellier, BB 3, J. Laurentii, f. 115r, and A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 103v.
- 42.
For mention of Guillelmus Boysonni A. M. Montpellier, Commune Clôture, EE 25.
- 43.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 51r. The careers of the two auctioneers involved in this study, Bernardus Mathas and Matheus Imberti, can be traced back as early as 1327 in the notarial evidence. Bernardus Mathas appeared in registers of 1327–1328, 1333, 1336, 1342, and 1343–1343. He was mentioned purchasing a house in 1327 and in the purchase of two houses in 1333, as noted above.
- 44.
A. D. Hérault, II 95/370, J. Holanie, f. 97r.
- 45.
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 31. See Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ,” 112, for brothel ownership.
- 46.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al., f. 94v.
- 47.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al., 131v, two rentals.
- 48.
Additional activities of the auctioneers can be documented. Matheus Imberti appeared in 1327 in an accounting and amicable composition in regard to a debt of his and in 1333 as a witness to a debt for grain. See A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 6r, and II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 23v. In one act of 1328, Imberti and another auctioneer loaned money to Bernardus Mathas, only to have the act invalidated without explanation by the notary. See II E 95/368, J. Holanie, 132v. Imberti appeared in the 1336 register to purchase a considerable quantity of red mullet fish. See II E 95/370, J. Holanie, f. 64v. The purchase was for 20 saumatae circulorum de Bessio. An alternative reading for circulus, according to Niermeyer, is a crown, implying jewelry, which would be consistent with an auction and with a mobile population of prostitutes. However, the saumata is a measure of quantity, and Bessan is a town on the Hérault River, west of Montpellier and not far from the Mediterranean; hence, the possible interpretation of mullet fish. Bernardus Mathas and his wife also bought fish in 1336. See II E 95/370, J. Holanie, f. 41v.
- 49.
Auctioneers were active in the financial, legal, and commercial arena in Montpellier. They were municipal officials, often mentioned alongside business brokers in municipal statutes in Languedoc. For general background on auctioneers and brokers, see The Art of the Deal, Chap. 3. In 1309, the consuls of Narbonne surrendered to the seneschal of Carcassonne a document that described auctioneers along with brokerage, the policing of streets and paths, and the supervision of the urban trades. See Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, 150. Gouron, 194, drew analogies between the roles of auctioneers and brokers in Languedoc, arguing that they were municipal officials rather than tradesmen.
The involvement of auctioneers in the forced sales of debt execution proceedings may have provided them with certain possibilities for the acquisition of personal property—movables such as chests and clothes, maybe a bargain in fish—as well as real property, in town and in the country. However, the town consuls supervised auctions, and the auctioneers swore an oath to the consuls, as did most of the occupations in Montpellier. See Le Petit Thalamus de Montpellier, ed. F. Pégat, E. Thomas and Desmazes (Montpellier, 1840), 291–292: “Aquest sagramen fan li encantador.” The auctioneers’ oath regulated the days of the week when they could auction and the authorized auction sites; it imposed restrictions against selling new merchandise, established the fees per auction according to the value of the merchandise, and stated clearly that the profits were to go to the buyers and sellers. No part of the items auctioned was to be retained by the auctioneers or those attached to them. Thus, any suspicion that auctioneers could have profited from their involvement in foreclosure of debts and forced auction of goods and real property hurtles against the oath prohibitions. From the Montpellier notarial documents, it is clear that the primary occupational identification of these auctioneers was just that, as auctioneers, even in obviously private and personal transactions such as those with the single women mentioned above. At least as these acts read, there is no hint of officialdom at work, but rather of individual lending, real property, and sale transactions. However, one must ask whether the auctioneers were not exercising some informal supervisory role, given the prevalence of public officials’ involvement in prostitution. See Brundage, “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law,” 95.
- 50.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 148r and II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al., f. 42r.
- 51.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/ 372, J. Holanie et al., f. 42r.
- 52.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 25r, f. 57v, and f. 102v.
- 53.
See the note on money and Appendix 2, “Monetary Problems,” in The Art of the Deal.
- 54.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 80; Geremek, Les marginaux, 246; J. Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 8, 65, for example. For information on Montpellier sumptuary law, see also “Medieval Silks in Montpellier.” On sumptuary laws in general, see Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market. Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
- 55.
See Chap. 4.
- 56.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 55v; f. 84r; f. 93r.
- 57.
A. D Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 93r. Also worth noting was the act preceding the second purchase by Johaneta de Tholosa, in which another glassmaker, Johannes de Salellis of Valence, and a mirror merchant of Montpellier, Johannes de Lodevsia, took a loan from a tailor of Montpellier.
- 58.
Because she was a widow, Alasassia de Aquaviva has not been included in Appendix 2 of this look, though she may belong there among the possible prostitutes. Another widow, Esmeniardis, widow of Petrus de Carnassio, son of a late wood merchant, also sold a house to another moneyer in Campus Polverel in 1328. She, too, may deserve inclusion among the community of prostitutes. See A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 103v: 13 January 1328. On the Montpellier mint, see Marc Bompaire, L’Atelier monétaire royale de Montpellier et la circulation monétaire en Bas-Languedoc jusqu’au milieu du XVe siècle (Thesis: Ecole des Chartes, 1980). The transfer of the French mint from Sommières to Montpellier took place in 1340, though moneyers were in the area before that date.
- 59.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 89–90. Otis quoted a 1282 charter of Philip III, confirming arrangements of 1222 and adding further in regard to adultery and procuring: “If anyone commits lenocinium in his own house, the house shall be ceded to us in feudal commission; if indeed it be a rental house, the perpetrator shall be obliged to pay us 20 l.” Otis noted the transformation of procuring from a capital offense in 1222 to an offense against morals in 1282. For more on the French kings’ attitudes, see Otis, 35–36.
- 60.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 90.
- 61.
Philip IV did not maintain the strictness of his father and grandfather. As Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 36, stated: “The French crown issued no directives on prostitution for almost a century after the ordinance of Philip III, until the reign of Charles V (1364–80), when a vigorous new policy on prostitution was adopted.”
It is interesting to note that the term prosenetas, meaning go-between or negotiator, from a Greek root, was applied to sworn brokers, corraterios juratos (A. M. Montpellier, BB 2, J. Grimaudi, f. 67v: 26 February 1302), in a request to sell houses to satisfy testamentary bequests. Given the close association between brokers and their mutual roles as intermediaries, the role of procurer, the modern French proxénète, would not have represented a great departure for the auctioneers. However, I found no association of this term with the Montpellier auctioneers specifically, but the act of renting property to prostitutes constituted procuring according to thirteenth-century legislation.
- 62.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 100.
- 63.
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, 10. Compare Avignon with an unusually large number of prostitutes in Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ,” 111.
- 64.
See my discussion of town population figures in “Population Attraction and Mobility,” 257–258.
- 65.
For a calculation of notarial survival rates, see my French thesis, “Montpellier de 1250 à 1350: Centre commercial et financier,” (Thèse d’état, Université de Montpellier I, 1977), Introduction.
- 66.
For a comparative context on prostitution in the western Mediterranean world, see “Whose City Is This?,” which deals with lower-status and marginal women.
- 67.
For a discussion of prostitution in western Mediterranean cities, see “Whose City Is This?”
- 68.
For a study of Third World prostitution, see Luise White, The Comforts of Home. Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990).
- 69.
See Chap. 9.
- 70.
Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 64–65, noted that prostitution was profitable work and that prostitutes were not always poor.
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Reyerson, K.L. (2016). A Community of Prostitutes in Campus Polverel. In: Women's Networks in Medieval France. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_8
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