ere repeated again and again in various
parts of Europe, and invariably with the same fruitless or worse than
fruitless results. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, punished with death
those who promoted prostitution, and Recared, a Catholic king of the same
people in the sixth century, prohibited prostitution altogether and
ordered that a prostitute, when found, should receive three hundred
strokes of the whip and be driven out of the city. Charlemagne, as well as
Genserich in Carthage, and later Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, made
severe laws against prostitution which were all of no effect, for even if
they seemed to be effective for the time the reaction was all the greater
afterwards.[144]

It is in France that the most persistent efforts have been made to combat
prostitution. Most notable of all were the efforts of the King and Saint,
Louis IX. In 1254 St. Louis ordained that prostitutes should be driven out
altogether and deprived of all their money and goods, even to their
mantles and gowns. In 1256 he repeated this ordinance and in 1269, before
setting out for the Crusades, he ordered the destruction of all places of
prostitution. The repetition of those decrees shows how ineffectual they
were. They even made matters worse, for prostitutes were forced to mingle
with the general population and their influence was thus extended. St.
Louis was unable to put down prostitution even in his own camp in the
East, and it existed outside his own tent. His legislation, however, was
frequently imitated by subsequent rulers of France, even to the middle of
the seventeenth century, always with the same ineffectual and worse
results. In 1560 an edict of Charles IX abolished brothels, but the number
of prostitutes was thereby increased rather than diminished, while many
new kinds of brothels appeared in unsuspected shapes and were more
dangerous than the more recognized brothels which had been
suppressed.[145] In spite of all such legislation, or because of it, there
has been no country in which prostitution has played a more conspicuous
part.[146]

At Mantua, so great was the repulsion aroused by prostitutes that they
were compelled to buy in the markets any fruit or bread that had been
soiled by the mere touch of their hands. It was so also in Avignon in
1243. In Catalonia they could not sit at the same table as a lady or a
knight or kiss any honorable person.[147] Even in Venice, the paradise of
prostitution, numerous and