A Drop of History 125

Prostitution (2)
When brothels were next door to churches

When Christianity prevailed in the Roman world, a solution to the widespread phenomenon of prostitution had to be found. Theoretically, its prohibition and condemnation were absolute. Besides, the fact that many pagan temples doubled up as brothels was one of the main arguments of the Christian theologians against older religions. But is it possible to eradicate prostitution from human society? Probably not.

Consequently, church officials decided to condemn the sin, but practically to look the other way. “We cast prostitution away from us,” they said, “in the margins of society, and whoever cares can repent afterwards.” Even special convents were created for prostitutes who wanted to get back on the straight and narrow. But despite the condemnation of sin and the glorification of virginity, there have been church fathers who, in moments of candour, were forced to admit the social utility of love for sale. Saint Anthony said: “Ban prostitution, and then immorality will sweep away everything.” Thomas Aquinas was more refined: “Prostitution in a city is like the cesspool in a palace. If the cesspool is removed, the palace will be choked by filth and stench.”

The most inventive of all was, later, King Louis XIII of France. In order to be on the good side of both the church and his lascivious subjects, he imposed the following incredible law: “All brothels must be situated at a distance of no more than 300 metres from a church, so those who leave the brothel can easily reach a church for purification.” I suppose that, when he drafted this hypocritical piece of legislation, all his political and ecclesiastical advisors exclaimed, “A brilliant idea, Majesty.” The Louises in general had a tradition of such brilliant ideas. Louis IX forbade his crusaders who marched on the Holy Land from taking prostitutes with them, because that was a grave sin, but he allowed them to consort with Arab prostitutes, because they were not Christian and therefore not subject to the prohibition.

The first municipal brothels appeared in the 13th century, especially in cities that were trade centres, where merchant caravans often passed through. Against the fear of wealthy strangers seducing local men’s wives, the communities themselves opened brothels, securing both their peace of mind and some extra income for the community coffers. In Florence and Venice, on the other hand, between 1360 and 1400, there were dozens of state-run brothels with a very specific mission. As diseases, especially the Black Death, had decimated the local population, the city authorities decided to offer prostitutes to young men, for a very low price, so they would get to know and enjoy sex and subsequently resort to marriage, which was a necessary step for the population to increase. It was a kind of state-subsidised prostitution.

In addition, it was common practice in the Middle Ages (tacitly condoned by the church) to encourage young men to go to brothels, preferring them to contra naturam practices like sodomy and masturbation. The Roman Catholic Church has officially admitted several times that it considers relations with common women a lesser sin than reviled homosexuality. The Middle Ages, as well, were the heyday of fair prostitutes, women who went from one local fair to another in wagons, in which they offered their services to the people gathered there.

Finally, there were the infamous camp followers, who were the worst of their kind. They followed the kings’ and nobles’ mercenary troops on their wars and raids and were responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other epidemics. The lowest of the low, they were ragged, filthy, and utterly ruthless. They looted the areas that the troops had raided, and they encouraged the mercenaries to rape and kill the women of the cities they took: camp followers hated decent women for their good luck to have homes and families.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 100

The State of God
A groundbreaking experiment in Latin America

The first Jesuits set foot on the Americas in 1572, with instructions from their order to bring the faith of God to the worlds that Columbus had discovered eighty years earlier. The situation they faced was indescribable in every way possible. Vast expanses of land had been given by the Spanish crown to nobles who had come from Europe, while the local population of natives had become slaves wholesale. The natives were not considered humans and the brutality of the Spanish towards them was proverbial. The population shrank at an alarming rate: In 1519 there were 11 million Indians in Mexico; in 1540 they were reduced to 6.5 million; in 1565, to 4.2 million; in 1650, to 1.5 million. A literal slaughter.

That was the situation the Jesuits found. Now one will ask, since the Jesuits are documented as the worst of all papists, why should they mind? That is an error. A grave historical error. If the term “Jesuit” today means a crafty, shifty, guileful, hypocritical intrigant, that is because, in the course of history, the arguments that prevailed were those of the calumniators of the amazing order found by Ignatius de Loyola. Naturally, it was an order created to aid the efforts of the Counter-Reformation to suppress Protestantism in favour of the Catholic faith and the Vatican, but it did so using methods consistent with faith in God. Unlike the Dominicans and Franciscans, the Jesuits were never involved with the Inquisition.

The three Jesuit vows were poverty, chastity and obedience, and their principal modus operandi was founding and managing schools, aware that education – and not intrigue or religious suppression – would form the basis for their views to eventually prevail. The suppression of the order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773 automatically meant the closing of 1800 colleges with 15,000 Jesuit teachers, all over Europe. One can imagine how many hundreds of thousands of students those colleges taught. Obviously, not all Jesuits were saints; after all, they had become involved in the power machine of the Vatican. Still, the average membership was much better than that of other orders, that were spared historical condemnation.

One of the most characteristic examples of the beneficial influence of the Jesuits was the famous State of God, which they founded in a vast area of what is modern Paraguay. They ventured into the rainforests, where the Indians had fled to escape the slavers, and, armed only with their musical instruments, which enthralled the natives, they started founding incredible self-governing communities [reductions], in an effort to create the ideal state of God.

Each reduction had a church, school, conservatory (the Jesuits were very fond of music), orchards, vineyards, vegetable gardens, grain fields, patches of sugar cane, tea and cotton, pastures with cattle, sheep and horses, foundries for metal constructions, lime kilns, mills and warehouses. Each member of the community had all the food they wanted, wore whatever they wanted, and all goods were communal, “God’s things”. There was no money, no guards, no capital punishment. Only the traditional native polygamy was forbidden, and the consumption of alcohol, which the slavers were trying to peddle in order to push them towards degeneration.

The State of God survived for six generations; over 1.5 million natives lived there, under the Jesuits’ guidance. It is referred to as one of the most wonderful and idyllic periods of Latin American history, as its 700 schools produced, after the first generation, a great number of illustrious teachers and artists. Works of art (painting and sculpture) from the reductions adorn the museums of modern Paraguay, while the theatre was so developed that it is classified as a special page in the world history of folk drama.

The reductions held out for 150 years, surrounded by great landowners who coveted more land and slaver gangs who were always looking for more of their distasteful merchandise. The system collapsed only after the Vatican intrigues and the religious and political clashes in Europe led to the suppression of the Jesuit Order. Spanish troops stormed in and the Jesuits who were heads of the communities were arrested and imprisoned. The Spanish king divided the land among nobles and instantly transformed the natives into slaves. Those had grown up in a system of freedom and justice, so the new brutal reality decimated them. The noble landowners took the flourishing communities and applied to them the well-known brutal methods that prevailed in the rest of Latin America. A census carried out in the colonies twenty-one years later, in 1794, showed that the local population was reduced by 75%.

Still, Pope Clement XIV, who had been trapped into suppressing the Jesuit Order, tried to revoke his initial decision, but never managed it. On his deathbed he lamented, “I cut off my own right hand.”

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 97

God’s precious gems
The divine properties of the jewels worn by popes

All through the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic churches and monasteries all over Europe, helmed by the Vatican, which was the centre of all political and religious power in the continent, were teeming with life and all kinds of activity. Aside from religious rituals, those churches had developed such financial activity that their safeboxes overflowed with gold. They owned vast expanses of land, animal husbandry was in their hands, while trade, usury, and deals in manuscripts, indulgences and items of handicraft all flourished.

All those activities, which went on for over ten centuries, did not exactly conform to the fundamental teachings of Christianity. But who cared then for those teachings, and who dared raise a voice of criticism in public? The Inquisition was ever-vigilant. Holding securely both the melon and the knife, the heads of the church preferred to adapt Christianity to the whims and comfort of each pope and cardinal, instead of following the Nazarene’s clear instructions of modesty, restraint and love. The obscene amounts of treasure that the Vatican and the monasteries piled up have been the subject of countless historical papers.

Popes, cardinals, bishops and abbots, apart from gold, were avid collectors of gems and ornaments, which they displayed at every opportunity. However, as the contrast with the ragtag and starving flock of the church was quite obvious and provocative, church theorists spent centuries fabricating theories to justify such incredible wealth using theological and so-called Christian criteria. Thus they created theories according to which each gem decorating a ring or crozier represented some divine property or other, and as a result, those gems were sanctified.

According to Roman Catholic theorists, amethyst was the mirror of humility, chalcedony symbolised piety, jasper stood for faith, sardonyx referred to divine martyrdom, sapphire was linked to hope and contemplation, beryl represented knowledge and forbearance. According to Pope Innocent III, the ruby represented serenity and patience, while garnet symbolised love. Another clergyman, Bruno, who was canonised by the Roman Catholics, had formulated an entire treatise on the identification of precious stones and minerals with the dwellers of the heavens.

So, according to Saint Bruno’s treatise, which is considered a virtual oracle by Roman Catholics, aquamarine symbolised theological wisdom through the clarity of its brilliance, pewter meant joy, sardonyx corresponded to the Seraphim, topaz to the Cherubim, jasper to the Thrones, chrysolite to the Powers, onyx to the Virtues, beryl to the Dominions, ruby to the Archangels and emerald to the Angels. Also, quartz crystal symbolised purity of soul and body, amber was for chastity, lodestone for the Virgin, hyacinth for compassion.

With all this, the Roman Catholic church had consolidated a theory according to which her representatives, the more jewels and precious stones they wore, the closer to God, the saints and their properties they came. The ring with the bright gem worn on the right index finger was a symbol of the cardinals’ and abbots’ power, and those who approached them did not kiss the hand but the ring. Those arbitrary symbolisms allowed clergymen to hoard more and more expensive ornaments, set with the biggest and rarest precious stones, because that brought them closer to God.

Isn’t it wonderful how they had settled things, during those dark times when starvation was one of the commonest ways to die? The only thing missing from that scene of hypocrisy and sin was the figure of the Nazarene, bursting in, whip in hand, and crying out, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.”

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved