566 guido ruggiero
and often celebrated at the very heart of Venice to something to be hid-
den away and eliminated from the morally pure virgin that for many the
Serenissima should be.
still, this ideal that males should desert prostitution and the world of
illicit sex when they married and became fully adult returns our discus-
sion to that long period of gioventù that distinguishes the development
of renaissance males from that of modern males. for across the renais-
sance, ideally the world of illicit sex was the special provenance of male
youths. from this perspective, prostitutes provided a crucial service. Most
significantly perhaps when young men were making that transition in
their late teens from being passive sexually to being active, prostitutes
were available to aid in the transition. as professionals, they could safely
teach young males their new active roles and could do so without creat-
ing the kind of problems that pregnant servants or the lost virginity of
young women of marriageable age might create. Moreover, given the care-
ful protection of young women and the powerful honor issues involved in
sex with married women, readily available prostitution was also seen as
limiting more troubling crimes such as adultery and rape. of course, all
of this was once again an ideal, with fornication, rape, and adultery being
regularly reported in the Venetian criminal documents and young men
having the troubling distinction of being the most responsible for such
crimes.48 Thus, in the Venetian renaissance vision of things, prostitution
had an important and largely positive role to play in the development of
youth into men and in maintaining the sexual order and honor of society.
once again we find here the illicit world intertwining with, and in a way
even serving, the licit order of society.
it may be that for younger males in the more passive years of their early
to mid-teens prostitution also was seen as providing a preferred venue for
sexual activities. With such youths, prostitutes could take a more active
role, perhaps like that which angela took with young Giulio. unfortu-
nately, there is little record of such relationships beyond hints in literature
and the ongoing series of laws that attempt to protect young males from
being duped by prostitutes and taken advantage of economically. yet the
feminine passivity of such youths opens up another significant aspect of
the world of illicit sex that may have contributed to a positive attitude
towards younger males frequenting prostitutes—the fear that the sexual
48 for this see the extensive discussion of these crimes in, ruggiero, The Boundaries
of Eros.