Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

This image of the prodigal son comes from a manuscript of Barlaam und Josaphat. On the viewer's left, the young man enters a brothel wearing rich clothing and a feather circlet only later to be forced out looking unkempt and dirty. The story of the prodigal son is often depicted in works of art due to its themes of human frailty and redemption. The prodigal son walking into the brothel wears fashionable particolored hose and a very short belted gown. The length and beauty of men's hair was highly prized in Germany according to foreign travelers and here serves to emphasize how low the prodigal son has fallen when he has spent his money. At the entrance to the brothel, the sex workers are welcoming and wear beautiful clothing and flowers in their flowing hair. On the viewer's right side, women are forcing him out with a distaff and other implements. One woman has her dress tucked up as if she were cleaning house. The manuscript features 138 illustrations in ink and colored washes on paper. It was produced in the workshop of Diebold Lauber, a manuscript illuminator who specialized in illustrated books on paper using a serial method of production that streamlined the copying and artwork.

This image refers to the biblical parable of the prodigal son that comes from Luke 15:11-32. It concerns a second son who requests that his father give him his inheritance. The father complies and the son goes out and squanders his wealth with sex workers until he has no money. Unfortunately, a famine affects the country, and he is forced to take a job feeding pigs, unclean animals in Jewish law. Realizing that instead of living with pigs he could be living with his father, he decides to return home, apologize and beg to be treated as a servant. When he returns, he finds that his father welcomes him with open arms and provides all that he needs. The older brother is upset and the father reassures him of his love while explaining why they are celebrating the return of their lost family member.

This parable is one of the moral tales in Barlaam und Josaphat which is a retelling of the story of the Buddha that first appeared in Europe around the eleventh century. Rudolf von Em wrote this account in the 1220s in Middle High German. The titular character's name, Josaphat, derives from the Sanskrit Budhasaf or Bodhisattva. Josaphat meets a hermit named Barlaam who converts him to Christianity through telling parables. One of them is the parable of the prodigal son. In the illustrations the prodigal son entering the brothel closely resembles Josaphat both in physical features and clothing, emphasizing the parallels between the two lives. Both Barlaam and Josaphat were recognized as saints in western Europe as early as the thirteenth century and Jacobus de Voragine included their story in The Golden Legend. This collection of saints' lives, written around 1260, is viewed as second only to the Bible in popularity with over a thousand medieval manuscript copies surviving.

Though the text and illustrations of Barlaam und Josaphat focus on the men in these stories, the women in the prodigal son's parable are integral to that account. The sex workers in this illustration are part of a public brothel. Brothels were not necessarily a place where women were exploited and had no autonomy. In continental Europe brothels were legalized ways that civic authorities sought to control men's lust and guard "honest" women's virtue. This rationale was encouraged by religious thinkers including St. Augustine. The brothel keeper rented the building from municipal authorities and charged the sex workers for room and board. The brothel workers managed their fees and could hope to leave by saving money for a marriage dower that would allow them to "turn to honor." The figure of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute supported this act of redemption and change in status. While regulations survive for these business arrangements, there is also evidence of brothel keepers who used violence and intimidation to force women into sex work and debt bondage. Jamie Page has studied the case of the public brothel in Nördlingen in 1471 in which the keepers were brought to trial and banished. Women from the brothel testified to the abuses they suffered including a forced abortion and inability to leave the brothel. Subsequently the city council rewrote the regulations to avoid exploitation and required that brothel workers report any violation of the rules, so that the council could remedy it.