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Ancient History

Tinder Would Probably Ban These Famous Historic Figures

Geoffrey Rush, as the Marquis de Sade. The Telegraph

The Marquis De Sade Would Have Been a Shoo In for a Tinder Ban And Jail Time

Book cover of the Marquis de Sade’s ‘Justine’. Kobo

De Sade returned to France in 1776 and resumed the kinds of perversions that get people kicked off Tinder. They steadily intensified, and one scandal followed another in quick succession. Finally, the authorities tricked him in 1777 to go to Paris to visit his supposedly sick mother. Unbeknownst to him, she had actually died. When he reached Paris, de Sade was arrested and locked up in the dungeon of a royal fortress. He was kept there, in harsh conditions, until 1784, when he was transferred to the Bastille. He remained there until transferred to a mental asylum two days before the Bastille was stormed in 1789.

Tinder - The Marquis de Sade in old age
The Marquis de Sade in old age. Lost in the Funhouse

De Sade was released in 1790 amidst France’s revolutionary turmoil. He took to the new order, and took to calling himself “Citizen Sade”. Within months, he got himself elected to the National Convention as a representative of the far left. He barely survived the Reign of Terror, during which he was imprisoned for a year. He emerged from jail in 1794, utterly destitute. In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered de Sade arrested and imprisoned without trial for pornographic novels he had written years earlier. In 1803, de Sade’s family had him declared insane and transferred from prison to a mental asylum. There, he continued to write, and staged plays with inmates as actors. His writing career ended in 1809, when de Sade was transfered to solitary confinement, and deprived of pen and paper.

 

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Aggrawal, Anil – Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects (2010)

All That is Interesting – Andrew Robinson Stoney May Have Been England’s Worst Husband, Ever

AV Club – The Young Pope John XII Died as He Lived: Fornicating

Balfour, Patrick, Lord Kinross – Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (1977)

BBC History – Charlemagne

Catholic Answers – It Is Better to Be Herod’s Pig Than Son

Cracked – 5 Historic Figures Who Would Definitely be Banned From Tinder

CVLT Nation – Japan’s Most Infamous Killer Geisha

Daily Sabbah, August 7th, 2015 – The History of Fratricide in the Ottoman Empire

Encyclopedia Britannica – Mariamne, Wife of Herod

Encyclopedia Britannica – Marquis de Sade

Gulik, Robert Hans Van –  Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese S*x and Society From ca. 1500 BC Till 1644 AD (2003)

History Collection – Stunning Images Captured of the Most Attractive People in History

Independent, The, March 27th, 2005 – His Dark Materials

Jewish Encyclopedia – Mariamne

Lely, Gilbert – The Marquis de Sade, a Biography (1961)

Mad Monarchs – Sado of Korea

Moore, Wendy – Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match (2009)

Murderpedia – Sada Abe

New Advent – Pope John XII

PBS – Tiberius

Perowne, Stewart – The Life and Times of Herod the Great (1959)

Ranker – Facts About Ibrahim I, the Man Who Lived in a Cage

Schaeffer, Neil – The Marquis de Sade: A Life (2000)

Sima Qian – Records of the Grand Historian

Suetonius – The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Tacitus – The Annals

Written by

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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