alty for infanticide
also was death, either by decapitation or by drowning; sometimes a
snake, a cat, or a dog was put into the sack with the victim to render
her punishment more terrible. Shrews and evil-tongued women were
sometimes punished by being placed backward on asses and driven through
the streets in disgrace.

Even the pleasures considered legitimate during the late Middle Ages and
the beginning of the modern era, were decidedly equivocal or immoral.
Public bathing which was so general that even in the country every
well-arranged house had its own bathroom, might be considered rather a
redeeming feature of the unclean life recorded. But excesses soon make
it doubtful whether public baths should not be regarded as baudy houses
of the worst kind. The city of Basle in the thirteenth century had not
fewer than fifteen bathhouses. As in ancient Rome, the bathhouses were
public places of amusement somewhat like the clubs of to-day. There men
were shaved and had their toilette perfected and the ladies had their
hair dressed. Massage was in fashion. Amusements of all kinds, gambling,
drinking, flirting, and love intrigues made public bathing a rather
costly pastime. At most places there was common bathing of men and
women. The most famous water resorts were the Wildbad in the Black
Forest, Baden in the Breisgau, and Baden in Aargau. There is gathered
all the wealth of the surrounding country. Princes and knights, highborn
ladies, rich merchants, prelates, and abbesses bathed, jested, and led a
gay life.

We have an intensely interesting account from the pen of the scholarly
Francis Poggio of Florence (1380-1459) of the bathing customs of Baden.
He had accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, and had
then gone to Baden to cure the "chiragra" from which he suffered. From a
Latin letter written to his friend Niccolo Niccoli, in the summer of
1417, and translated by Gustav Freytag, in his famous Pictures from
German Life, we glean the following facts:

"Baden itself affords for the mind little or no diversion; but has in
all other respects such extraordinary charm that Venus seems to have
come from Cyprus, for whatever the world contains of beauty has
assembled here, and so much do they uphold the customs of this goddess,
so fully do you find again her manners and dissoluteness, that, though
they may not have read the speech of Heliogabalus, they appear to be
perfectly instructed by Nature herself....