Caufeynon (La Ceinture de Chastete, 1904) believes it only dates from the Renaissance (Schultz, Das Hoefische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesaenger, vol. i, p. 595; Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. v, p. 272; Krauss, Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, p. 247).  In the sixteenth century convents were liable to become almost brothels, as we learn on the unimpeachable authority of Burchard, a Pope’s secretary, in his Diarium, edited by Thuasne who brings together additional authorities for this statement in a footnote (vol. ii, p. 79); that they remained so in the eighteenth century we see clearly in the pages of Casanova’s Memoires, and in many other documents of the period.

The Renaissance and the rise of humanism undoubtedly affected the feeling towards asceticism and chastity.  On the one hand a new and ancient sanction was found for the disregard of virtues which men began to look upon as merely monkish, and on the other hand the finer spirits affected by the new movement began to realize that chastity might be better cultivated and observed by those who were free to do as they would than by those who were under the compulsion of priestly authority.  That is the feeling that prevails in Montaigne, and that is the idea of Rabelais when he made it the only rule of his Abbey of Theleme:  “Fay ce que vouldras.”

A little later this doctrine was repeated in varying tones by many writers more or less tinged by the culture brought into fashion by the Renaissance.  “As long as Danae was free,” remarks Ferrand in his sixteenth century treatise, De la Maladie d’Amour, “she was chaste.”  And Sir Kenelm Digby, the latest representative of the Renaissance spirit, insists in his Private Memoirs that the liberty which Lycurgus, “the wisest human law-maker that ever was,” gave to women to communicate their bodies to men to whom they were drawn by noble affection, and the hope of generous offspring, was the true cause why “real chastity flourished in Sparta more than in any other part of the world.”

In Protestant countries the ascetic ideal of chastity was still further discredited by the Reformation movement which was in considerable part a revolt against compulsory celibacy.  Religion was thus no longer placed on the side of chastity.  In the eighteenth century, if not earlier, the authority of Nature also was commonly invoked against chastity.  It has thus happened that during the past two centuries serious opinion concerning chastity has only been partially favorable to it.  It began to be felt that an unhappy and injurious mistake had been perpetrated by attempting to maintain a lofty ideal which encouraged hypocrisy.  “The human race would gain much,” as Senancour wrote early in the nineteenth century in his remarkable book on love, “if virtue were made less laborious.  The merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be sustained?"[78]