Most of the historical records we have from the Renaissance come from a specific socioeconomic class – the Patricians or quasi-aristocracy. This is where we get our understanding of the social mores of the Renaissance. In the Patrician class women were powerless outside the home, and had severe restrictions imposed on their associations and their movements.

However, the majority of the population, who were at best semi-literate, left few records of their social life. We can assume from tax records of the time that there was a large population that did not operate according to the same social rules of the Patricians. In this class, women worked by neccessity and therefore had to have some freedom. They were not restricted by the constraints on their upperclass counterparts.

As many posters have written, prostitution was widespread during this time and this would have provided men with opportunities to partake in unmarried sex; indeed, in Renaissance Venice brothels were regulated by the government.

With the expenses of marrying off a daughter (the crippling dowry, the ceremony etc) many Patrician fathers who had several daughters chose to send the daughters they could not afford to marry off to the convent to become nuns. Unwilling young girls in such a closed environment were soon exploited and there are many historical accounts of convents being set up as brothels!

Prostitution was one way. There were a lot of courtesans back then, for the upper class guys, and your regular streetwalkers for the lower class ones. If you, a woman, didn’t have a husband or a father, then your employment options were pretty much limited to servant or prostitute. Also, people don’t always do what they’re supposed to. Some married women would have affairs, and some unmarried women would have sex without getting paid for it. Of course, the women who did have sex outside of marriage were scandalous at best. Courtesans were blamed for plagues, and unmarried nonvirginal women were outcasts. Getting caught or making a living out of it wasn’t exactly fun, but women did do it.

1) Even back in the Renaissance, there were unmarried women.

2) The married women didn’t obey the rules!

Put simply, waaaaaaay back all firmly believed women were a walking sin because of Eve. Therefore they were controlled and told they had to repent, while the men just did as they pleased.

Sad but true.

Perhaps the woman that a husband was having sex with wasn’t married herself.

Most normal people were to busy trying to survive in these times, let alone have affairs. It was just the upper class who did this sort of thing and well I suppose they still do it today, so nothing has changed.

yeah, the women only had sex with their husbands and the men only had sex with women.

ha ha

Easy- haven’t you ever heard people refer to prostitution as the “world’s oldest profession?” The dudes went to Renaissance hookers, or sometimes there were just peasant women, widows and such, who didn’t mind tossing a freebie to noble dudes like knights and such.

Well, of course, it makes sense! This could be arranged. The men would simply have sex with prostitutes, courtesans, and mistresses. And the married women would have sex only with their husbands.

It makes perfect sense.