In fifteenth-century France, public prostitution was condoned by all sectors of society. Clerics and municipal officials not only tolerated prostitution, but were often its principal beneficiaries, owning and frequenting brothels quite openly. The explanation of this remarkable state of affairs is just one aspect of Jacques Rossiaud's vivid reconstruction of a part of medieval society that has previously received little attention. Drawing upon extensive research in medieval archives, the author shows that most fifteenth-century Frenchwomen could expect a life of constant subjugation to male desire. Rape, for instance, was common and considered only a minor crime. He then considers whether public prostitution might paradoxically have been seen by the secular and religious authorities as a means of social control, and of preserving marital stability: the virtue of wives and daughters was best protected by the existence of public brothels, where sexual urges could be satisfied without adultery or rape. Jacques Rossiaud also describes the social background of the prostitutes, brothel-keepers, pimps, and their clientele, providing a vivid overview of the context in which medieval prostitution existed. Medieval Prostitution will be of interest to medieval historians, as well as to students of the history of the family and sexuality.

"Prostitution in Medieval Society, a monograph about Languedoc between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, is also much more than that: it is a compelling narrative about the social construction of sexuality." – Catharine R. Stimpson

Prostitution played an important part in structuring gender relations in medieval Germany. Prostitutes were often viewed as an example of the extreme female sinfulness which all women risked falling into, yet their social role was also seen as vital to the unmarried men for whom they provided a sexual outlet. Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany is the first full-length study of medieval prostitution to focus primarily on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes themselves. Based on three legal case studies from the late medieval Empire, Prostitutes and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany examines constructions of subjectivity between 1400 and 1500. This period saw the rapid rise of tolerated prostitution across much of western Europe and the emergence of the public brothel as a central institution in the regulation of social order, followed by its equally rapid suppression from the early 1500s. By analysing how individuals interacted with cultural discourses surrounding the body, sexuality, and sin, the book explores how the concepts which defined prostitution in the Middle Ages shaped individual lives, and how individuals were able - or not - to exert agency, both within the circumstances of their own lives, and in response to official attempts to regulate sexual behaviour.

"Common women" in medieval England were prostitutes, whose distinguishing feature was not that they took money for sex but that they belonged to all men in common. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England tells the stories of these women's lives: their entrance into the trade because of poor job and marriage prospects or because of seduction or rape; their experiences as street-walkers, brothel workers or the medieval equivalent of call girls; their customers, from poor apprentices to priests to wealthy foreign merchants; and their relations with those among whom they lived. Through a sensitive use of a wide variety of imaginative and didactic texts, Ruth Karras shows that while prostitutes as individuals were marginalized within medieval culture, prostitution as an institution was central to the medieval understanding of what it meant to be a woman. This important work will be of interest to scholars and students of history, women's studies, and the history of sexuality.

Prostitution is known as the oldest profession in the history of humanity. While historians have already given due consideration to the profession’s social and cultural meanings across time periods, little has been written about literary representations of prostitution. Prostitution in Medieval and Early Modern Literature analyses the work of writers from an array of social positions, including courtly poets and even religious writers, dealing with the topic during the medieval and early modern periods. Its study shows that prostitutes and brothel owners were present on the literary stage far more often than we might have assumed. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach and incorporating relevant sources from across the entire European continent dating from the early Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, it examines the phenomenon of prostitution in a variety of contexts and highlights the extent to which the institution mattered for both the higher and the lower classes.

Prostitution is often called the oldest profession in the world. Even in the Middle Ages, people believed that there would always be women willing to use their bodies for profit. But who were these women who offered themselves up to men? In A Life of Ill Repute Maria Serena Mazzi traces and reconstructs prostitution in the early fourteenth century, describing how in medieval European society women - often extremely poor and overwhelmed by debt, or victims either of predatory men full of duplicitous intentions or simply of rape - were traded as commodities. Prostitutes, according to Mazzi, were despised and condemned but considered necessary in an ambiguous and contradictory society that tolerated their sexual exploitation to safeguard the virtue of honest women and counter the vice of homosexuality, while allowing men to vent their own impulses. The theory of the lesser evil - encouraged by both the church and the state - is the grounds on which prostitution flourished in medieval Europe. In the Middle Ages prostitution was censured and considered disgraceful, but at the same time it was deemed inevitable and even necessary. A Life of Ill Repute uncovers the hypocrisy and speciousness of ecclesiastical, political, and social arguments for the justification of the existence of public prostitution.

What did commercialized sex really amount to in the ancient and medieval Eastern Mediterranean? This groundbreaking book challenges many stereotypical views about the historical practice of prostitution. Based on twenty years' research, and organized by region, it charts the history of sex for sale in those chief centres of the late antique and medieval East, whether in Arabia, Egypt, Syria or Anatolia. Ranging extensively from 300 CE to 1500 (or from the reign of Theodosius to the early Ottoman period), Gary Leiser meticulously examines the available sources and argues for a reappraisal of the so-called oldest profession. He suggests that it was never prohibited; that there was remarkable continuity between Christian and Muslim rule; and that prostitution was institutionalized as a 'service industry' at various times. Indicating that sex work in the East had its own distinctive character and meanings (for example, that it was taxed from the time of Caligula onwards and that prostitutes were expected to retain tax receipts), the book brings continually fresh insights to a controversial subject.