Note 59 — Book the Second (continued 3)

A comical side-light on this naïve age is given in the Annales Bononiensis, (Muratori xxiii. 890) on the occasion of an outbreak of plague. Penitence, fasting, and flagellation were resorted to. Butchers closed their shops for eight days. And, that sorrow for sin was not confined to respectable people may be gathered from the fact that “meretrices ad concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quàdam quae cupiditate lucri adolescentem admiserat, depreheusâ, aliae meretrices ita illius nates nudas corrigiis percusserunt ut sanguinem emitteres.”