1877] The inmates, like the public executioners, were
required to wear a distinctive dress. Frequenters did not need to
practice secrecy. The houses were free to persons of rank, and were
especially prepared by the city when it had to entertain great persons.
Women who were natives of the city were not admitted. This is the only
feature which is not entirely cynical and shameless.[1878] In 1501 a
rich citizen of Frankfurt am Main bequeathed to the city a sum of money
with which to build a large house into which all the great number of
harlots could be collected,[1879] for the number increased greatly. They
appeared at all great concourses of men, and were sent out to the Hansa
stations.[1880] In fact, the people of the time accepted certain social
phenomena as "natural" and inevitable, and they made their arrangements
accordingly, uninterfered with by "moral sense." In Wickliffe's time the
bishop of Winchester obtained a handsome rent from the stews of
Southwark.[1881] Probably he and his contemporaries thought no harm.
Never until the nineteenth century was it in the mores of any society to
feel that the sacrifice of the mortal welfare of one human being to the
happiness of another was a thing which civil institutions could not
tolerate. It could not enter into the minds of men of the fifteenth
century that harlots, serfs, and other miserable classes had personal
rights which were outraged by the customs and institutions of that time.

+583. The end of the lupanars.+ All the authorities agree that the thing
which put an end to the city lupanars was syphilis.[1882] It was not due
to any moral or religious revolt, although there had been individuals
who had criticised the institution of harlots, and some pious persons
had founded convents, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, for
repentant harlots. Protestants and Catholics tried, to some extent, to
throw the blame of the lupanars on each other. Luther urged the
abolition of them in 1520. They reached their greatest development in
the fifteenth century.[1883] The mere existence of an article so
degrading to both husband and wife as the girdle[1884] is significant of
the mores of the period, and shows how far the mores can go to make
anything "right," or properly customary.

+584. Judgment is beclouded by the atmosphere formed by the mores.
Education.+ Witch persecutions are another case of the extent to which
familiarity with the customs prevents any rational judg