Brothel, by Joachim Beuckelaer, 1562
12 April 2023
A brothel is, of course, a place where prostitutes ply their trade. It is a word that developed within English, tracing back to an Old English root but with semantic and morphological changes over the centuries. The current meaning doesn’t appear until the Early Modern period.
Brothel can be traced back to the Old English root broþ-, meaning to degenerate, contemptible. The root is more commonly found in the verb abreoþan, meaning to fail. That latter verb appears in the poem The Battle of Maldon, which was probably written shortly after 991 C.E. The passage in question depicts the thane Offa attempting to rally the English troops after the death of their lord, Byrhtnoth:
Us Godric hæfð,
earh Oddan bearn, ealle beswicene.
Wende þæs formoni man, þa he on meare rad,
on wlancan þam wicge, þæt wære hit ure hlaford;
forþan wearð her on felda folc totwæmed,
scyldburh tobrocen. Abreoðe his angin,
þæt he her swa manigne man aflymde!(Godric, the cowardly son of Odda, has betrayed us all. Many a man thought that when he rode away on his horse, on that stately steed, that it was our lord; therefore, the army on the field became scattered, the shield wall broken. May his attempt fail that he put to flight so many men!)
And by the Middle English period we see the noun brethel, meaning a contemptible person, a wretch. And a brethel could be either male or female. It appears by c.1275 in the form breþeling in a poem bearing the modern title of Ten Abuses:
Hwan þu sixst on leode.
King þat is wilful.
And domesmon niminde.
Proest þat is wilde.
Bischop slou.
Old mon lechur.
Ȝunch mon lieȝer.
Wimmon schomeles.
Child un-þeaud.
Þral vn-buxsum.
Aþeling briþeling.
Lond wið-ute laȝe.
Al so seide bede;
Wo þere þeode.(When you see in a people
A king that is willful;
A judge a bribe-taker;
A priest is wanton;
A bishop a sloth;
A old man a lecher;
A young man a liar;
A woman shameless;
A child unmannerly;
A thrall rebellious;
A prince a bretheling;
A land without law;
Thus said the prayer:
Woe to the nation.)
The modern form brothel appears by c.1470 when William Langland uses it in the A-text of his poem Piers Plowman:
Freres and faytors han founden suche questions
To please with this proude men seththe pestilence tyme;
Thei de-foulen vre fey at festes ther thei sitten.
For nou is vche boye bold brothel and other,
To talken of the trinite to beon holden a syre,
And fyndeth forth fantasyes vr faith to apeyre;
And eke de-fameth the fader that vs alle made,
And craken aȝeyn the clergie crabbed wordes.(Friars and imposters have devised such questions
To please these proud men since the pestilence time,
They befoul our faith when they sit at feasts.
For now is one boy a bold brothel and another
Talking of the Trinity so as to be held as an authority [or wretch],
And putting forth fantasies that damage our faith;
And also defame our Father that made us all,
And uttering wicked words against the clergy.)
By c.1450, the meaning of brothel had narrowed to one specific type of undesirable person, the female prostitute. The narrowing was probably influenced by the noun bordel, also meaning prostitute.
This sense appears in a Middle English translation of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (Of Illustrious Women). The section on the goddess Venus includes the following lines which tell of so-called “sacred prostitution” that, at least according to Herodotus and Ovid, in book ten of his Metamorphoses, allegedly compelled all women of Cyprus to commit at least one act of prostitution in a temple dedicated to the goddess:
Wyves and maydens also she dydd compel
To vse the flesh in open strumpetry
And ordeyned places therin for-to ly,The which in Englond stves men do call,
A bordello-howse of swyth vnthryftyness,
To exercise actys venereal
Permytted for this encheson, doubtless,
To avoyde more vnclenness;
And ȝit men deme it in many place elsewhere
To be as son spede of a brothel as theere.(Wives and maidens she also did compel
To use their bodies in open stumpetry
And ordained places for them to lay.That which in England men call stews,
A bordello-house of great liberality,
To exercise venereal acts
Permitted for the reason, doubtless,
Of avoiding more uncleanness;
And yet men deem it in many other places
To as readily engage a brothel as there.)
(Historians today generally discount the idea that sacred prostitution actually happened, at least not as imagined in the written sources.)
The compound brothel-house appears by 1521, in Alexander Barclay’s poem The Boke of Codrus and Mynalcas:
But suche as be riche and in promocion
Shall haue my writyng but in derisyon
For in this season great men of excellence
Hath to poemys no greatter reuerence
Than to a brothell or els a brothelshous
Madde ignorance is so contagyous.(But those who are rich and of advanced rank
Shall hold my writing but in derision;
For in this season great men of excellence
Have for poems no greater reverence
Than for a brothel or else a brothel-house.
Foolish ignorance is so contagious.)
And by the end of the sixteenth century the -house was dropped, and brothel had come to designate a place of prostitution. From Henry Smith’s 1592 Satans Compassing the Earth:
I doe verely thinke that some here did come from as bad exercises as the deuill himselfe: and that when they doo depart from this place, they will returne to as badde exercises againe, as the Deuill did: Some vnto the Tauerns, and some vnto the Alehouses, and some vnto Stages, and some vnto Brothels, and some vnto dicing, and some vnto quarrelling, and some vnto cosening.
Sources:
Barclay, Alexander. The Boke of Codrus and Mynalcas. London: Richard Pynson, 1521, sig.b4v–cr. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“The Battle of Maldon.” In Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record 6. New York: Columbia UP, lines 237b–43, 13. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B.203,
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. breoþan, v.
Langland, William. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, vol. 1 of 2. Walter W. Skeat, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886, A-Text, Passus 11, lines 58–65, 291–92. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. brothel, n., bretheling, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2022, s.v. brothel, n., brethel, n., bretheling, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. brethe, v.
Schleich, Gustav, ed. Die Mittelenglische Undichtung von Boccaccios De Claris Mulieribus. Palaestra, 144, 1924, lines 803–12, 40. London, British Library, MS Additional 10304. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Smith, Henrie. Satans Compassing the Earth. London: Thomas Scarlet, 1592, sig. B6r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“Ten Abuses.” In Richard Morris, ed. An Old English Miscellany. Early English Text Society, OS 49. London: N. Trübner , 1872. London, British Library, Cotton MS. Caligula A.ix, fol. 248v. Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.
Image credit: Joachim Beuckelaer, 1562. Walters Art Museum. Public domain image.