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violent. People could be and were literally destroyed by love and sexual
desire. suggestively, love magic was also strongly phallic in its symbolism
and much less focused on women’s bodies than might be expected, espe-
cially as, in most cases, the magic itself in Venice appears to have been
done by women following largely oral traditions passed down via women’s
networks. When occasionally female body parts or fluids played a role, it
was often more associated with reproduction than with parts of the body
that might be seen as erotic. in fact, female breasts, legs, and bottoms play
virtually no sexual role in this magic. it seems almost as if its practitioners
had internalized the vision that a woman’s role in sex was at its deepest
level for reproduction, even when the immediate goal of such magic was
love, sex, and pleasure. finally, once again this magic, although usually
involving women in an active role seeking to secure their sexual desires,
still emphasized the passive/feminine active/masculine vision of sex that
dominated more widely the understanding of sexual relations between
men and women. in sum, love magic in many ways reinforced the tradi-
tional male dominant, phallic-oriented vision of sex, even as paradoxically
it was practiced by women often seeking to break free from that vision.
returning to prostitution, while clearly a wide range of men sought the
services of prostitutes in renaissance Venice, including a sizable foreign
community of sailors and merchants, as well as a growing number of visi-
tors seeking out its illicit world, local males of all social classes were prob-
ably their most important clients. But during the renaissance it appears
that a more negative vision was growing up about certain relationships
with prostitutes. first, of course, upper-class men theoretically were to
avoid lower-class and common prostitutes, for they were just that, lower
class and common. a hardening of social stratification made such down-
class sexual contact less acceptable. certainly such an ideal was regularly
ignored, but nonetheless it grew stronger with time and fit into reforming
ideals aimed at creating a more moral society and preaching campaigns
that pressed similar goals. at the same time and growing in part out of
similar initiatives that stressed that adult men should be able to control
their passions and in doing so focus on family and social responsibilities
rather than pursuing their passions with prostitutes, we find in Venice a
growing vision that men, when they reached their late twenties and early
thirties, should abandon the world of illicit sex. of course, once again
there is a plethora of information that demonstrates this was more an
ideal than a reality, but nonetheless it was an ideal that would slowly
transform prostitution from a positive if sinful aspect of life practiced