PROSTITUTION
. Prostitution was not an important social phenomenon in France until the urban revival
of the high Middle Ages, when the use of the term meretrix publica allowed the clear
distinction of the professional prostitute from the privately “loose” woman, and when
towns began to regulate the profession. In the south of France, prostitutes were generally
banned from the centers of towns in the 12th and early 13th centuries but by the late 13th
and 14th centuries official red-light districts were protected by the public authorities and
sometimes guaranteed as zones where no arrests for adultery could be made. These
districts were generally reduced to one house, often owned by the municipality or by the
great bourgeois, and sometimes protected by seigneurial or royal safeguard, in the late
14th and 15th centuries. At the same time, repression of competition (procuring and
freelance prostitution) was intensified, as was that of concubinage and adultery. These
houses were finally closed under Protestant influence in the 16th century.
The prostitute enjoyed full legal capacity in the late Middle Ages and was protected
under rape laws. She had to observe regulations concerning dress and behavior and
toward the end of the Middle Ages was virtually cloistered in the official brothel under
the direction of the person who “farmed” the brothel (paid a fixed sum to the owner
yearly in exchange for rights to all profits). In the bigger towns, religious communities of
repentant women, founded by clerics and bourgeois, welcomed retired or penitent
prostitutes.
Leah L.Otis-Cour
Otis, Leah. Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Rossiaud, J. La prostitution médiévale. Paris: Flammari, 1998.
PROSULA
. A new text added to a preexisting melody, often to a melismatic portion of a chant (i.e.,
to those places where a single vowel sound is prolonged for many notes) or sometimes to
an entire chant. Prosulae are found chiefly for Proper and Ordinary chants that contain
significant melismas: Alleluias, Offertories (usually for melismas of final verses), Kyries,
Glorias (in particular at the “Regnum”), and some Great Responsories. Prosulae were
written by the Franks in the 9th-11th 1th centuries, with important repertories existing in
southern France. The prosulae from the area around Limoges edited by Odelman are
extreme in that they are texts for entire Alleluia melodies; more typically, prosulae are
short texts, interposed only for a single melisma within a longer chant. The literary
quality of these texts is often high.
Margot Fassler
The Encyclopedia 1441