I know I read in a very reliable source - LeBras? Bernard of Clairvaux?
whoever? - that fallen Crusaders were likened to the Holy Innocents slain
by Herod.
Heimbucher would tell, I'd guess, about Mary Magdalene. I have the
impression that houses connected with her name - a thirteenth century
order? - are said to have been initially for so-called "fallen" women but
that they ended up occupied by those who had not been of that condition.
In Leah Otis' study of late medieval state regulated prostitutes, one
notes the yearly penitential week when some were converted. I'd guess -
though Otis did not - that they became hospital workers or nurses -
admirable careers for the retired poor of the much mistreated second sex.
John Mundy
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