Millers as Fornicators and Mills as Places of the Sin : Sexual Offences in Křivoklátsko Area at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century
Abstract
The presented paper deals with the topic of sexual offenses that were committed by millers or their companions, or that occurred in a mill, in the first half of the 18th century in the Křivoklát dominion. The initial primary sources are the interrogation protocols in fifteen individual cases and the church registers, in which the births of illegitimate children or the marriages of some fornicators are recorded.
The main topic of the study is the question of the honor of the milling profession and the impact of sexual delinquency on it. The study tries to penetrate into individual cases with the help of microhistorical approach, analyze those cases in detail and then create an image of understanding honor and its loss.
One of the main conclusions is that in the mills, thanks to the increased mobility of people, there were numerous sexual interactions, both with millers and other visitors. However, people who lost their honor through committing a sexual offense did not affect the honor of their relatives, nor was the owner of the mill affected if other people committed adultery on its premises.