To browse Academia. This paper explores the historical context and societal dynamics of prostitution in Avignon during the late Middle Ages, particularly during the papacy's relocation to the city. It examines the regulatory frameworks, such as communal statutes, that governed the lives of prostitutes, the socioeconomic factors leading to the prevalence of the profession, and the implicit stigma associated with it.
English Abstract Gendered Penance and Monastic Sexual Misconduct While the requirement of celibacy was important for both monks and nuns β it is the former which traditionally received more notice from ecclesiastical authorities. Indeed, while fornication of any sort was condemned by the medieval Church, fornication with a nun was classified as one of the maiora crimina which incurred the highest ecclesiastical legal condemnation.
However, while legislative sources emphasize the culpability of the sexual partners of nuns, they tell us very little about the degree of guilt attributed to the nuns themselves, and the punishment assigned to them. Similarly, although the physical chastity of monks was de-emphasized in comparison to nuns in monastic writings of the later Middle Ages, it was still expected of them.
In this essay, I will demonstrate that although ecclesiastical discourse treated fornication seriously β particularly fornication with a nun, ultimately, the consequences of sexual misconduct were not particularly severe for either sex. Moreover, despite the greater weight legislative sources place on female chastity, the types of penance allocated to religious men and women were remarkable similar.
However, despite being accused less, nuns were far more likely to be convicted of sexual misconduct and be allocated penance as a result. This discrepancy seems to be the result of a greater difficulty for women to clear themselves by compurgation which could be negated by affirmative evidence such as pregnancy. The assumptions the tribunal produced of sexually active women often relied on and mirrored the ideas their male peers held of them as public objects rather than full persons.
