Woman under socialism. Bebel August

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still further promoted through the continuous intercourse kept up with Italy and Rome.

      Rome was not merely the capital of Christendom, as the residence of the Papacy. True to its antecedents during the heathen days of the Empire, Rome had become the new Babel, the European High School of immorality; and the Papal court was its principal seat. With its downfall, the Roman Empire had bequeathed all its vices to Christian Europe. These vices were particularly nursed in Italy, whence, materially aided by the intercourse of the priesthood with Rome, they crowded into Germany. The uncommonly large number of priests, to a great extent vigorous men, whose sexual wants were intensified by a lazy and luxurious life, and who, through compulsory celibacy, were left to illegitimate or unnatural means of gratification, carried immorality into all circles of society. This priesthood became a sort of pest-like danger to the morals of the female sex in the towns and villages. Monasteries and nunneries – and their number was legion – were not infrequently distinguishable from public houses only in that the life led in them was more unbridled and lascivious, and in that numerous crimes, especially infanticide, could be more easily concealed, seeing that in the cloisters only they exercised the administration of justice who led in the wrong-doing. Often did peasants seek to safeguard wife and daughter from priestly seduction by accepting none as a spiritual shepherd who did not bind himself to keep a concubine; – a circumstance that led a Bishop of Constance to impose a "concubine tax" upon the priests of his diocese. Such a condition of things explains the historically attested fact, that during the Middle Ages – pictured to us by silly romanticists as so pious and moral – not less than 1500 strolling women turned up in 1414, at the Council of Constance.

      But these conditions came in by no means with the decline of the Middle Ages. They began early, and gave continuous occasion for complaints and decrees. In 802 Charles the Great issued one of these, which ran this wise: "The cloisters of nuns shall be strictly watched; the nuns may not roam about; they shall be kept with great diligence; neither shall they live in strife and quarrel with one another; they shall in no wise be disobedient to their Superiors or Abbesses, or cross the will of these. Wherever they are placed under the rules of a cloister they are to observe them throughout. Not whoring, not drunkenness, not covetousness shall they be the ministrants of, but in all ways lead just and sober lives. Neither shall any man enter their cloisters, except to attend mass, and he shall immediately depart." A regulation of the year 869 provided: "If priests keep several women, or shed the blood of Christians or heathens, or break the canonical law, they shall be deprived of their priesthood, because they are worse than laymen." The fact that the possession of several women was forbidden in those days only to the priests, indicates that marriage with several wives was no rare occurrence in the ninth century. In fact, there were no laws forbidding it.

      Aye, and even later, at the time of the Minnesaenger, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the possession of several wives was considered in order.42

      The position of woman was aggravated still more by the circumstance that, along with all the impediments which gradually made marriage and settlement harder, their number materially exceeded that of the men. As special reasons herefor are to be considered the numerous wars and feuds, together with the perilousness of commercial voyages of those days. Furthermore, mortality among men was higher, as the result of habitual excesses and drunkenness. The predisposition to sickness and death that flowed from such habits of life, manifested itself strongly in the numerous pest-like diseases that raged during the Middle Ages. In the interval between 1326 to 1400, there were thirty-two; from 1400 to 1500, forty-one; and from 1500 to 1600, thirty years of pestilence.43

      Swarms of women roamed along the highways as jugglers, singers and players in the company of strolling students and clericals; they flooded the fairs and markets; they were to be found wherever large crowds gathered, or festivals were celebrated. In the regiments of foot-soldiers they constituted separate divisions, with their own sergeants. There, and quite in keeping with the guild character of the age, they were assigned to different duties, according to looks and age; and, under severe penalties, were not allowed to prostitute themselves to any man outside of their own branch. In the camps, they had to fetch hay, straw and wood; fill up trenches and ponds; and attend to the cleaning of the place along with the baggage lads. In sieges, they had to fill up the ditches with brushwood, lumber and faggots in order to help the storming of the place. They assisted in placing the field pieces in position; and when these stuck in the bottomless roads, they had to give a hand in pulling them out again.44

      In order to counteract somewhat the misery of this crowd of helpless women, so-called "Bettinen houses" were instituted in many cities, and placed under municipal supervision. Sheltered in these establishments, the women were held to the observance of a decent life. But neither these establishments, nor the numerous nunneries, were able to receive all that applied for succor.

      The difficulties in the way of marriage; the tours undertaken by Princes, and by temporal and spiritual magnates, who with their retinues of knights and bondmen, visited the cities; even the male youth of the cities themselves, the married men not excluded, who, buoyant with life and unaffected by scruples, sought change in pleasures; – all this produced as early as in the Middle Ages the demand for prostitution. As every trade was in those days organized and regulated, and could not exist without a guild, it so was with prostitution also. In all large cities there were "houses of women" – municipal, prince or Church regalities – the net profits of which flowed into the corresponding treasuries. The women in these houses had a "head-mistress," elected by themselves, who was to keep discipline and order, and whose special duty it was to diligently watch that non-guild competitors, the "interlopers," did not injure the legitimate trade. When caught, these were condignly punished. The inmates of one of these houses for women, located in Nuerenberg, complained with the Magistrate, that "other inn-keepers also kept women, who walked the streets at night, and took in married and other men, and that these plied (the trade) to such an extent, and so much more brazenly, than they did themselves in the municipal (guild) girls-house, that it was a pity and a shame to see such things happen in this worthy city."45 These "houses for women" enjoyed special protection; disturbances of the peace in their neighborhood were fined twice as heavily. The female guild members also had the right to take their place in the processions and festivals, at which, as is known, the guilds always assisted. Not infrequently were they also drawn in as guests at the tables of Princes and Municipal Councilmen. The "houses of women" were considered serviceable for the "protection of marriage and of the honor of the maidens," – the identical reasoning with which State brothels were justified in Athens, and even to-day prostitution is excused. All the same, there were not wanting violent persecutions of the filles de joie, proceeding from the identical male circles who supported them with their custom and their money. The Emperor Charlemagne decreed that prostitutes shall be dragged naked to the market place and there whipped; and yet, he himself, "the Most Christian King and Emperor," had not less than six wives at a time; and neither were his daughters, who followed their father's example, by any means paragons of virtue. They prepared for him in the course of their lives many an unpleasant hour, and brought him home several illegitimate children. Alkuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne, warned his pupils against "the crowned doves, who flew at night over the palatinate," and he meant thereby the daughters of the Emperor.

      The identical communities, that officially organized the brothel system, that took it under their protection, and that granted all manner of privileges to the "priestesses of Venus," had the hardest and most cruel punishment in reserve for the poor and forsaken Magdalen. The female infanticide, who, driven by desperation, killed the fruit of her womb, was, as a rule, sentenced to suffer the most cruel death penalty; nobody bothered about the unconscionable seducer himself. Perchance he even sat on the Judge's bench, which decreed the sentence of death upon the poor victim. The same happens to-day.46 Likewise was adultery by the wife punished most severely; she was certain of the pillory, at least; but over the adultery of the husband the mantle of Christian charity was thrown.

      In

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