Prostitución reglamentada y las congregaciones jesuíticas

Abstract

Thorough the early modernity, the regulated prostitution was based on a contradiction: while the practice was tolerated, women who practiced it were persecuted and criminalized. The “Compendio” of the popular missionary Jesuit Pedro de Leon shed light on a specific issue of this problem: the Company’s congregational practice, which sought to limit or end the activity. Although it could mean a more benevolent position on public women, it was the other side of the coin: the discipline of the female body. Both violence and segregation, as well as Jesuit congregations, responded to the discipline of women needed by the community of the faithful in a scenario of strengthening of the Confessional States.