Sexual Violence

The dynamics of the early modern household are also vital when it comes to considering histories of sexual violence and infanticide. These two types of violence overwhelmingly affected women, both as victims and as perpetrators.

As with family violence, in analysing sexual violence we must bear in mind the problems entailed in employing modern definitions and the need to be sensitive to the often very different contemporary understandings. Studies of past sexual violence have been forced, of necessity, to interrogate archival absences and silences more perhaps than studies of other types of historical violence.^{^[489]} Under most European law codes rape was a serious crime; in some jurisdictions it was a capital offence punishable by death. Yet prosecutions were uncommon and convictions rates were low. Most historians, drawing on modern analogies, assume that rape was far more frequent than court records would appear to indicate. So they have focused on the silences evident in the archive and how such silences should be explained and interpreted.

Broadly speaking, there were basic semantic and legal similarities between different regions of Europe when it came to understandings of rape. Rape was generally defined as forceful penile penetration of the vagina, in the absence of a woman's consent, by a man who was not the woman's lawful husband. But, beyond these broad outlines, there were significant regional and national variations in attitudes to sexual violence and in the legal and social remedies available to female victims - and victims were always female as male rape was not recognised.^{^[490]} The social class, age, marital status and reputation of the victim were highly important in determining the legal significance of the crime and in shaping communal understandings. The rape of an unmarried, wealthy, under-age virgin or of a pious religious woman was usually considered particularly heinous and was most likely to result in a successful prosecution.

The rape of a married woman by her husband was not recognised as a crime at all, but the rape of a respectable married woman by a stranger was certainly unlawful. Class and reputation were key determining variables, for allegations of rape made by unmarried non-elite, working women were less likely to be believed.

Different legal systems handled rape differently. Since it was a sexual crime, as well as a physical assault, it could come under the jurisdiction of church courts or of local or higher civil courts. Under early modern English, Florentine and French law, the maximum penalty for rape was death by hanging.^{^[491]} Scholars of rape within English common law jurisdictions have argued that the severity of the penalty resulted in judges and juries being reluctant to convict men, and it was this reluctance that contributed to the low prosecution and even lower conviction rates.^{^[492]} In fifteenth-century Venice, conversely, the penalties varied considerably, ranging from relatively short prison terms for the rape of an adult woman to more drastic punishments usually reserved for child rapists.^{^[493]} German courts during the seventeenth century punished rapists with banishment, fines or the pillory. Punishments also differed within the Dutch Republic: Rotterdam opted for whipping, branding or banishment, whereas Amsterdam executed rapists by hanging or beheading, while their accomplices were whipped.^{^[494]}

Whichever court system dealt with an allegation of rape, there was broad, although not universal, agreement that in order to prove rape a woman had to demonstrate that sexual intercourse had occurred as a result of violence and that it was not in the least consensual. As Garthine Walker has argued with regards to England, if courts decided that a case had more to do with sex than violence, then it could not be classed as rape.^{^[495]} Because in most instances there were no witnesses to sexual assaults, proof of lack of consent and the use of violence rested largely upon the woman's behaviour immediately after the alleged attack and the physical marks left upon her body.

Early modern courts took it for granted that a healthy adult woman could fight off a man, if she really wanted to; therefore, she needed to provide evidence that, despite her best efforts, she had been physically overpowered, perhaps because her attacker was armed. Proof of this might include witnesses who had heard her screams or who had encountered her in a distressed and disordered state immediately after the attack. In most jurisdictions proof of lack of consent also required evidence of physical injury, like cuts or bruises. Other physical signs, like torn clothes or dishevelled hair, could also be taken as indicators of a lack of consent. On the other hand, though, silence during the alleged assault or a delay in reporting it straight away or the absence of physical signs could be construed as evidence of consent.

In Württemberg in 1646 it was decreed that, due to the fact that some women were alleging rape well after the event in order to explain illicit pregnancies, a rape had to be reported within a month of its occurring or otherwise the allegation would be disregarded.^{^[496]} In fact, in early modern Europe, if a woman discovered she was pregnant as a result of rape, her accusation of rape was not likely to be credited. Medical and legal opinion of the time were in agreement that conception could only result if a woman consented to sexual intercourse.^{^[497]} Therefore, if a pregnancy occurred, a woman had little chance of having a man convicted of rape. Women whose pregnancies became known were then often liable to prosecution themselves for crimes such as fornication or adultery. In Tübingen in 1590, for example, lawyers decided that because a young pregnant girl, Margaretha Müller, had not cried out nor told her mother that her father was having sex with her, she must have ‘indulged in it'. Accordingly, she was convicted of incest and adultery and executed by drowning.⁴²

Focusing narrowly on the relatively few rape cases that reached the courts, and the fewer still that succeeded, may well obscure other ways in which early modern rape victims could seek justice.

Whereas rape required a high burden of proof, prosecutions for assault or civil actions for compensation were easier to prove. If either action succeeded, then a woman was likely to be vindicated in the eyes of her community and able to resume her place without serious damage to her reputation.⁴³ The outcome of a rape prosecution in many parts of Europe was often not a conviction, because a marriage would be arranged instead: a marriage with either the rapist or another man given a dowry by the rapist. Such an outcome might appear abhorrent to modern sensibilities, but the intention was to acknowledge the hurt done to the victim's body and reputation, while at the same time guaranteeing her a continuing and productive role as a wife within the community.

An additional complicating factor with regard to rape is the question of the semantic and legal meanings attached to the word ‘abduction'. The Latin term raptus, which gives us the modern word ‘rape', literally means ‘carried away', so it could apply also to abduction. In early modern France, for instance, the crime of rapt involved abduction and clandestine marriage, not necessarily a violent sexual assault.^{^[498]} When, however, the woman taken was a young heiress, then abduction intended to coerce marriage was generally assumed to entail rape. By raping his captive, the abductor made it very difficult for the woman and her family to reject him as a husband, for it was unlikely that in such circumstances another more suitable husband would be found. But the French experience shows that abduction could generate considerable violence, destabilising elite families. An heiress named Claude de Sallenove was first abducted but rescued in 1643; six years later her brother was killed in a duel fought with a second abductor; while, a year after this, her uncle was killed while trying to thwart a third abduction attempt.^{^[499]}

Towards the end of the early modern period, however, there is considerable evidence that some at least of these supposed abductions were in fact being manufactured by young couples as a ploy to force reluctant families to accept their children's preferred marriage partners.

Also, during the course of the eighteenth century in Naples and other parts of Italy, convictions for rape became even more difficult to obtain because the authorities feared that women were using accusations of rape to force wealthy men into marriage.^{^[500]}

Sexual assaults on girls under the age of consent were more likely to lead to convictions. In Venice in 1461 the rape and near fatal assault of a 9-year-old resulted in the perpetrator being blinded, banished and forced to pay a substantial sum towards the victim's dowry.^{^[501]} Even though the rape of a child usually attracted severe penalties, the status of the girl and her family, her age and how she behaved were still crucial matters for the courts in determining whether a rape had occurred or not. However, rapes committed on children of noble or elite families by men from a lower social class were always seen by the courts as worse crimes than similar assaults on workingclass or peasant children. In fact, in most instances the latter rarely came to the attention of the authorities as allegations made by such children were seldom believed.

Thus far we have been examining rape in times of peace, but early modern Europe was repeatedly ravaged by war, particularly by brutal religious wars during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and then by dynastic struggles thereafter. Rape by soldiers was almost universally condemned under military conventions and codes, yet it undoubtedly occurred to a very considerable extent, even if it was grossly under-reported.^{^[502]} Eyewitnesses to the destruction of towns and cities by armies consistently reported that women were sexually assaulted in the wake of sieges and battles, and also when armies plundered villages or farms. In 1631, for example, during the sacking of the city of Magdeburg, some monks described watching helplessly while a group of Catholic soldiers gang raped a 12-year- old girl until she died of her injuries.^{^[503]} ^{^[504]} Likewise, during the Irish rebellion of 1641, many witnesses reported seeing or hearing about numerous rapes committed on women and girls.50

Much of the evidence for rape in war comes not from court records but from descriptions of conflicts contained in pamphlets and contemporary histories.

This is hardly surprising given that in war zones the civil justice system usually broke down. We need, though, to be careful in our handling of accusations of rape during war. It is necessary to understand the circumstances in which mass rape was alleged to have occurred and what meanings were attached to this phenomenon. Accounts of rape were often used in propagandist literature in an effort to encourage men to resist a common enemy. During the early seventeenth-century wars between the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic an extensive literature was published by Dutch writers emphasising the monstrous and cruel behaviour of marauding Spanish troops. In particular, the Catholic Spaniards were accused of seeking to destroy God-fearing Dutch Protestant families by the systematic rape of their wives and daughters. While there can hardly be any doubt that untold numbers of rapes occurred during these wars, we must be alert to the fact that rape narratives served important political purposes, especially in terms of encouraging in men a sense of shared moral outrage and a patriotic determination to resist an enemy bent upon violating their women.^{^[505]}

It was not only in the immediate aftermath of hard-fought battles and sieges that large numbers of women were raped. Early modern European armies largely lived off the land and soldiers were normally billeted in civilian homes, with their officers sometimes making little if any effort to control them. This could easily lead to violence between soldiers and male householders and their servants, as well as to the rape of the women of the household. Repeated wars saw soldiers traversing foreign territories singly or in groups, and there were many reports of rapes committed by such itinerants.^{^[506]} But sometimes it was alleged that women had actually been seduced by promises of marriage and only when the men had departed did they allege rape. Certainly soldiers like these, not anchored in established households and communities, could readily avoid punishment for illicit sex by simply moving on, leaving behind the women to deal with the inevitably unpleasant consequences, regardless of whether sex was consensual or not.

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Source: Antony Robert, Carroll Stuart, Pennock Caroline D. (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 3: AD 1500-AD 1800. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 710 p.. 2020

Sexual Violence

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