In Italy, vapor baths were recognized officially and tolerated as places of public debauchery; this was also the case in Avignon. The Synodal statutes of the Church of Avignon, in the year 1441, bear an ordinance drawn by the civil magistrates and applicable to married men and also to priests and clergy, forbidding access to the vapor baths on the Troucat Bridge, which were set apart as a place of tolerated debauchery by the municipal authorities. This ordinance contained a provision that was very uncommon in the Middle Ages, _i.e._, a fine of ten marks for a violation of the law during day time and twenty marks fine for a violation occurring under cover of night. In 1448 the city council of Avignon again tried its hand at regulating the vapor baths at the bridge; but the golden days of debauched women had long before passed away, and the previous century had witnessed the acme of the courtesans’ fortunes. The sojourn of the Popes at Avignon had gathered together from all over the Globe a motley collection of pilgrims and begotten a frightful condition of libertinage; we have the authority of Petrarch in saying that it even surpassed that of the Eternal City, and Bishop Guillaume Durand presented the Council of Vienna with a graphic picture of this social evil. According to the proclamation of Etienne Boileau, Mayor of Paris in the reign of Louis IX., barber bath keepers were forbidden to employ women of bad reputation in their shops in order to carry on under cover, as in the massage shops of the present day, an infamous commerce, on penalty of losing their outfit—seats, basins, razors, etc.,—which were to be sold at public auction for the profit of the public treasury and the Crown. But we know full well that the Royal Ordinance of 1254, which had for its object the reformation of public debauchery, was only applied for the space of two years, and that the new law of 1256 re-established and legalized public prostitution which offered less objectionable features than clandestine prostitution.