Fornication is generally consensual sexual intercourse between two people not married to each other. John Calvin viewed adultery to be any sexual act that is outside the divine model for sexual intercourse, which includes fornication. For many people, the term carries an overtone of moral or religious disapproval, but the significance of sexual acts to which the term is applied varies between religions, societies, and cultures.
In modern usage, the term is often replaced with more judgment -neutral terms like premarital sex , extramarital sex , or recreational sex. In the late 4th century, the Latin Vulgate , a Latin translation of the Greek texts, translated the term as fornicati , fornicatus , fornicata , and fornicatae.
In Latin, the term fornix means arch or vault. In ancient Rome, prostitutes waited for their customers out of the rain under vaulted ceilings, [ 11 ] and fornix became a euphemism for brothels , and the Latin verb fornicare referred to a man visiting a brothel. John Milton plays on the double meaning of the word in The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty : "[She] gives up her body to a mercenary whordome under those fornicated [ar]ches which she cals Gods house. A survey undertaken by the American Sociological Review between and covering 31 developing countries found that "94 percent of Jews During the sixth century, Emperor Justinian formulated legislation that was to become the basis of Western marriage law for the next millennium.
Under his laws, cohabiting couples were no longer recognised as married and their children were regarded as illegitimate, with the same status as the children of prostitutes. However, the status of illegitimate children could be updated if the parents later married. In the s, "it was common practice for ordinary couples to cohabit before marriage and for cousins to marry one another" [ 19 ] and there was very little stigma around bastards at any social level in medieval England.
However, attitudes shifted a few generations later when bastards were no longer able to claim the English throne. During the ascendancy of the Puritans , an Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery and Fornication was passed by the English Council of State in However, notorious and open lewdness, when carried to the extent of exciting public scandal, continued to be an indictable offence at common law, however fornication in a private sense was not illegal.
