A Life of Ill Repute: Public Prostitution in the Middle Ages

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 dupl...