The Business of Prostitution in Early Renaissance Venice

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10423946
AutoresPaula C Clarke, Paula Clarke (McGill University, autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Volume68
Fascículo2
Páginas419-464
Data de publicação2015-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoRenaissance Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0034-4338 • E-ISSN: 1935-0236
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/682434
OpenAlexW2312252776
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas13
Referências citadas31

Between 1360 and 1460 the Venetian government established a system of legalized prostitution under the supervision of government officials and confined, in theory, to a limited area of the city. The authorities also attempted to concentrate the management of licit brothels in the hands of women, who thereby emerged as the effective entrepreneurs of the sex trade. This article describes the organization of Venetian prostitution in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and the relations among government officials, brothel-keepers, and prostitutes. It illustrates the mechanisms of debt and credit used in the sex trade, which often kept the prostitutes subservient to the brothel-keepers and to their other creditors. An effort is made to assess the degree to which sex workers might become integrated into local society and to suggest the general trends in Venetian policy toward prostitution into the sixteenth century

Art history · Business · Creditor · Debt · Economic history · Fifteenth · Government (linguistics · Political science · The Renaissance · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Finance · History · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Medieval Literature and History · Public Administration