Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome (review)

The place on which Storey's book on prostitution in the early modern era focuses is stratification. As the capital of Catholic Christianity, Rome held political, religious, and symbolical importance. The city's dynamic population created a unique opportunity for women: Its male-to-female ratio of at least 150 to 100 presented a gender "imbalance" that "encouraged" prostitution (60).

Using multidisciplinary theory and approaches, including archival work (involving, for example, the randomly selected wills of 124 prostitutes), literary analysis, art, music, gender history, economics, and the study of material culture, Storey argues that post-Tridentine attempts by popes to control prostitution met little success. Before the Reformation, Rome had been famous for its prostitutes. Making the obligatory trip to Rome, Martin Luther, while still a monk and prior to his conversion, remarked with distaste about Rome's sexual mores (a point not mentioned by the author), knowing that "the district of ill fame was frequented by ecclesiastics."¹

To control behavior and, coincidentally, strengthen "patriarchal control over women" by devising "ways in which men could reassert their dominance and power" (5, 52–53), both texts and popes sought dramatic reform. The rhetoric of the Catholic Reformation suggests that, as a result of heroic effort, "prostitutes had been largely banished from Rome" (93). But as was often the case with attempts at Catholic reform, those charged with cleaning up the mess were among those who most benefited from the status quo. As the Venetian ambassador noted, expelling prostitutes could cost the city 20,000 ducats annually. Papal attempts at a political solution ran up against the opposition of the Popolo Romano, dominated by Roman aristocrats. In addition, prostitution provided an outlet for male sexuality and was thought to reduce male–male sex. Thus, Tridentine attempts to stop prostitution—whether aimed at poor streetwalkers or at courtesans—failed.

Demonstrating how a young woman could earn money for a dowry through prostitution and later be (sequentially) a wife and a nun, Storey depicts the fluidity of female categories. She offers fascinating insight into the ways in which prostitutes, often with the support of their clients, thwarted outside attempts to control their lives. They conspired with their wealthy lovers to evade the prohibition against riding in carriages; when one prostitute was arrested and brought to the Roman governor, her powerful lover forced the governor to apologize in writing. If regulations prohibited their throwing parties, courtesans bribed the police and had parties anyway. Scholars who study the marginalized in early modern Europe will not be surprised at the assertion that prostitution played a role in "the family economy of many Romans" or that it was part of a financial strategy for poor non-Roman women, who faced "extreme economic vulnerability" in the city (139, 127).

Some accused women, admitting that they charged a fee for sex with men, denied that they were prostitutes, claiming that they were "free" persons exercising their own free will—an interesting use of spiritual rhetoric (227). Storey argues persuasively that successful prostitution typically depended on a regular client ("amico fermo," 165). Her work on material culture as well as on the investment opportunities open to these women is important, but her assertion that prostitutes were "fashion leaders" is not as convincing (194).

Storey discusses relationships among women involved in prostitution but is unable to find much evidence for the roles of fathers or husbands. Her use of anecdotes is unavoidable in this type of work. The narratives in her chapter on "Becoming a Prostitute" will capture any reader, though not without a frisson of prurient voyeurism: Storey describes men prostituting underage girls or their own wives, stabbings, jealousy, mental illness, perjury, official corruption, claims of rape vs. consent, an allegedly duped father (it turns out he was in on the caper), parental complicity, and murder. Since the author does not often provide the original text, accepting translations of testimony about "me and my old man" requires trust (153).

The last chapter's discussion of...