This wavering and semi-indulgent attitude towards prostitution was indeed generally maintained by theologians.  Some, following Augustine and Aquinas, would permit prostitution for the avoidance of greater evils; others were altogether opposed to it; others, again, would allow it in towns but nowhere else.  It was, however, universally held by theologians that the prostitute has a right to her wages, and is not obliged to make restitution.[196] The earlier Christian moralists found no difficulty in maintaining that there is no sin in renting a house to a prostitute for the purposes of her trade; absolution was always granted for this and abstention not required.[197] Fornication, however, always remained a sin, and from the twelfth century onwards the Church made a series of organized attempts to reclaim prostitutes.  All Catholic theologians hold that a prostitute is bound to confess the sin of prostitution, and most, though not all, theologians have believed that a man also must confess intercourse with a prostitute.  At the same time, while there was a certain indulgence to the prostitute herself, the Church was always very severe on those who lived on the profits of promoting prostitution, on the lenones.  Thus the Council of Elvira, which was ready to receive without penance the prostitute who married, refused reconciliation, even at death, to persons who had been guilty of lenocinium.[198]

Protestantism, in this as in many other matters of sexual morality, having abandoned the confessional, was usually able to escape the necessity for any definite and responsible utterances concerning the moral status of prostitution.  When it expressed any opinion, or sought to initiate any practical action, it naturally founded itself on the Biblical injunctions against fornication, as expressed by St. Paul, and showed no mercy for prostitutes and no toleration for prostitution.  This attitude, which was that of the Puritans, was the more easy since in Protestant countries, with the exception of special districts at special periods—­such as Geneva and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—­theologians have in these matters been called upon to furnish religious exhortation rather than to carry out practical policies.  The latter task they have left to others, and a certain confusion and uncertainty has thus often arisen in the lay Protestant mind.  This attitude in a thoughtful and serious writer, is well illustrated in England by Burton, writing a century after the Reformation.  He refers with mitigated approval to “our Pseudo-Catholics,” who are severe with adultery but indulgent to fornication, being perhaps of Cato’s mind that it should be encouraged to avoid worse mischiefs at home, and who holds brothels “as necessary as churches” and “have whole Colleges of Courtesans in their towns and cities.”  “They hold it impossible,” he continues, “for idle persons, young, rich and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars,