In 1559, there is an enactment in Granada fixing the rents to be paid by the women for their rooms and accommodation in public brothels, and also detailing the furniture and food with which they were to be provided in return. This is similar to the minute legislation of the German cities. This public provision having been made, no person was allowed to lend these women bed-linen. The authorities of various cities might not permit a prostitute to reside in the town without previous examination by a duly licensed physician, who was to declare, upon oath, whether the woman then was or had recently been diseased. By some of the Spanish laws, _varraganas_ (kept mistresses or concubines) seem to have been a legal institution, for men of rank were forbidden to take slave-dancers, tavern-servants, procuresses, or prostitutes as concubines. This breach of the ordinary institutions of Christianity may probably have been a compromise of Moorish and Christian usages and morals. Before the final deadly struggle which ended in the expulsion of the Moors, intermarriages were not uncommon among the two peoples. Interchange of friendship and close intimacy existed between the races, and a mutual tolerance of each other's laws and customs was maintained, except by the enthusiasts of either religion. The Spanish jurists distinctly recognized the woman's right to recover the wages of her infamy. The scholiasts struck out various fine distinctions, for which the monkish dialecticians were so deservedly ridiculed by the free-thinkers of the eighteenth century, and these were debated and discussed with the utmost eagerness.[238] One question was whether, if the man paid beforehand, and the woman refused to complete the contract, he could compel her? The weight of opinion seemed to be that, as he contemplated an immorality, he could neither recover the money nor enforce the agreement. Another equally important point was the use to which the gains of prostitution might be lawfully applied. The legality of their gains would seem to have overridden the mode of their expenditure, but casuists thought otherwise, and, by a royal edict of Alphonse IX., it was decided that priests could not receive funds obtained from such impure sources. By the old Spanish law prostitutes were subjected to various disabilities in matters of inheritance or testamentary disposition. As mentioned in the review of the old German customs, the Church considered it a meritorious act to marry a harlot, on the assumption that thereby a brand was saved from the burning.[239] It is related of a young man that, while being led to the scaffold, a courtesan, struck by his manly beauty and bearing, offered to marry him, whereby, in virtue of a law or usage, his life would be saved. He rejected her proposition, as existence was not worth redemption at such a price. It is added that his life was nevertheless spared, in consideration of his spirit and courage.