Vol. 28: “Against Her Will and Crying Out”: Poverty and Human Trafficking in Late-Medieval Europe

33 pages, paperback
14,8 x 21,0, 2024

During the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the status of prostitution evolved from being seen as a trade or a profession, however marginalized, into a source of malignant temptation; the prostitute ceased to be a sex worker who sought to alleviate her economic insecurity through commercial sex, and became a vain, selfish woman who desired wealth and opulence, and who led upstanding married men astray and thus threatened their souls and the moral and civic orders of a reformed society. Sex workers became the literal embodiment of the decadence and corruption that threatened to engulf the world as epitomized by the richly attired Whore of Babylon astride the seven-headed Beast. Yet, the study of late-medieval human trafficking makes clear that vanity, selfishness, and spiritual malignance had little to do with prostitution and the commercial sex industry. Instead, the commercial sex industry thrived upon poverty, limited employment opportunities for women, and attitudes of male entitlement, all of which led to vulnerability, and thus to victimization, as women and girls struggled to alleviate their economic duress.
     

The Author

Christopher Paolella earned his Doctorate at the University of Missouri in 2019 under the direction of Dr. Lois Huneycutt. He is the author of several works, including, “‘For She Is Not Work’: A Noblewoman’s Experience of Human Trafficking in the Viking Age” in Portraits of Medieval Europe, 800–1400, edited by Christian Raffensberger and Erin Thomas Dailey (New York: Routledge, 2024) and Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe: Slavery, Sexual Exploitation, and Prostitution (Amsterdam University Press, 2020). He has presented his research at major national and international conferences such as the Third Global Meeting: Slavery Past, Present, and Future at Indiana University Europe Gateway in Berlin, Germany in 2018; and the 52nd Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI at Western Michigan University in 2017. He now teaches history at Perimeter College at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.