We all know that one scene from many adventure movies. The charismatic explorer, wizened wizard, or inquisitive secret agent – often, but not always, accompanied by a variety of plucky sidekicks and love interests – visits an archive to further their quest. And almost without exception, though seldom without great effort, they do find the log of a person from the (distant) past – preferably a family member or ancestor of one of the available main characters – which tells them exactly what they needed to know.¹ Such plot devices may be necessary to help a film move along and they regularly serve relevant themes of ancestry, cooperation, and responsibility. But if we want to understand the past through actual archives, we often learn as much from what the documents and objects therein do not tell us as from what do tell. And the same, rather uncinematically approach will help us today to get to know more about the Italian city of Florence during the European Renaissance.

The main example we are going to discuss concerns a group of people whose daily lives are often conspicuously absent from the documents most people first think about when hearing the term ‘archive’ – female sex workers. Archives, as a general rule, are regularly less informative on the lived experiences of women. In order to acquire information on these kinds of topics, we often have to read our archival material against the grain and with an eye for what has been left out.² But thanks to many such efforts by driven scholars and other enthusiastic researchers, there are currently methods with which we can try and circumvent such silences and recover some of the trials and tribulations of the sex workers who resided in Renaissance Florence.

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What Disregarded Rules Can Tell Us

Many regulations of the sex trade in pre- and early modern societies were famously ineffectual. But, as Nicholas Terpstra tells us in his excellent article “Sex and the Sacred: Negotiating Spatial and Sensory Boundaries in Renaissance Florence”, such rules do tell us something about the views and disposition of the regulators themselves.³ Moreover, even though traditional archives do not tell us much about the daily lives of those involved with the sex trade, studying such rules can allow us a glimpse into some of the everyday occurrences encountered by these persons.

Renaissance Florence is a good example, as our information on the legal and administrative situation in the city is rather extensive. We see that, in the twelfth century, administrators first tried to keep the sex trade entirely outside of the city walls. But as the centuries marched on, the regulators ceded more and more (literal!) ground to the so-called oldest profession. Though the societal position of these women may have worsened in other aspects.⁴ Be that as it may, it becomes clear that instead of geographical boundaries, the relevant rules during the beginning of the sixteenth century primarily aimed at the senses. Most of the remaining prohibitions regarding the sex trade were focused on safeguarding persons like monks and nuns from seeing those involved or hearing about it. A practice which is in line with other statutes that tried to provide a delineated peace and quiet to these groups.⁵ This seemingly losing battle by the regulators, informs us that sex work was never really confined to the strictly allocated spaces in the official rules. But we may also observe that the stigma remained. And this stigma could also be used to oppress other persons and professions.

Lessons about Oppressions

Let us first briefly talk about the societal position of women in Renaissance Florence.⁶ What is interesting, is that not only the lives of women who were involved – be it forced or somewhat more voluntarily – with sex work could be closely policed by the authorities and through other societal structures. Many young women were given over to the church to become nuns, for instance, because of the prohibitively high cost of dowries and a desire by patriarchs to keep the family fortune intact for the next generation. (As far as they had not ended up in a nunnery, that is!) And in the period we discuss today, Florence increasingly became divided in zones which also hindered these nuns in their freedom of movement.⁷

The signifiers of the ignoble treatment of sex workers could also be used to add to the oppression of other human beings. To name but one example, during the sixteenth century century those who practiced the aforementioned oldest profession were forced to wear bright yellow signs. An attire which was also forced on Florence’s Jewish population. This was in addition to being forced to live in the vicinity of the quarters allotted to the women who were adjacent to sex work.⁸ Through such rules, the authorities of this Renaissance Italian city tried to associate Jewish persons, among the other restrictions and prejudices they were subjected to, with the sex trade in the public eye.⁹ And here we are again reminded that bigotry begets bigotry, that various forms of discrimination are regularly connected, and that the battle against injustice does concern us all. If not for our universally shared humanity, then for the fact that even those who now think themselves safe from oppression may be stigmatized in the future.¹⁰

Conclusion: Other Unlikely Sources

The regulations we discussed today are, of course, not the only way in which we can try to know more about groups of people or professions that are less visible in the documents that we traditional associate with archival research. To continue our example of sex work in the European Renaissance, certain seemingly unrelated texts about courtiers and their food choices proved surprisingly informative about prevalent views on the sex trade.¹¹ As such, research is seldom in vain. Because we can always find more facts about the world of the past in the most unlikely of places.

It is therefore also useful to keep studying sources which have already been discussed by others. Because a fresh look, a different angle, or a new methodology, might teach us more than we previously thought could be known from them. So even for a professional researcher on a subject, I say with total impartiality, it may be fruitful to continue reading a popularizing blog like Bildungblocks!

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References

1. For these and more examples, as well as the depiction of archives in popular culture more generally, see: Karen Buckley, “‘The Truth is in the Red Files’: An Overview of Archives in Popular Culture”, Archivaria 2008, 33 (66), p. 95-123.
2. See in general: Anne J. Gilliland, “Foreword”, in: David Thomas, Simon Fowler & Valerie Johnson (eds.), The Silence of the Archive (London: Facet Publishing, 2017), p. xvi-xvii. Specifically for women, see: Simon Fowler, “Inappropriate Expectations”, in: David Thomas, Simon Fowler & Valerie Johnson (eds.), The Silence of the Archive (London: Facet Publishing, 2017), p. 46; Kabria Baumgartner, “Searching for Sarah: Black Girlhood, Education, and the Archive”, History of Education Quarterly 2020, 60 (1), p. 76.
3. Nicholas Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred: Negotiating Spatial and Sensory Boundaries in Renaissance Florence”, Radical Historical Review 2015, 41 (121), p. 72.
4. Michela Turno, “Sex for Sale in Florence”, in: Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss & Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.), Selling Sex in the City: A Global History of Sex Work, 1600s-2000s (Leiden: Brill 2017), p. 87.
5. Peter Howard, “Entrepreneurial Ne’er-Do- Wells: Sin and Fear in Renaissance Florence,” Memorie Domenicane 1994, 73 (25), p. 245-258; Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred”, p. 81.
6. Joanne M. Ferraro, “The Manufacture and Movement of Goods”, in: John J. Martin (ed.), The Renaissance World (Abbingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 94; Caroline Castiglione, “Mothers and Children”, in: John J. Martin (ed.), The Renaissance World (Abbingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 382.
7. Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred”, p. 72.
8. Nicholas S. Davidson, “Religious Minorities”, in: John J. Martin (ed.), The Renaissance World (Abbingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 563; Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred”, p. 80.
9. For some of these other restrictions and prejudices, see: Davidson, “Religious Minorities”, p. 558-559.
10. Robert Sternberg & Karin Sternberg, The Nature of Hate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007), p. 29.
11. Douglas Biow, “Food: Pietro Aretino and the Art of Conspicuous Consumption”, in: John J. Martin (ed.), The Renaissance World (Abbingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 506.