Grice e
Modio – il disonore sessuale -- la filosofia del Tevere – filosofia italiana –
Luigi Speranza (Santa Severina). Filosofo. Grice: “Only in Italy a philosopher
writes a treatise on a river – although the Isis would not be out of place for
some Magdalenite!” – Grice: “His convito is a jewel!” – Seguace di Neri.
Originario di Santa Severina, borgo collinare della Calabria Ulteriore, fu
avviato agli studi di filosofia presso l'Archiginnasio di Napoli; in seguito
passò a Roma, dove si avviò agli studi in medicina divenendo allievo di
Fusconi. Modio frequenta gli ambienti
accademici, dove entrò in contatto con alcuni dei maggiori esponenti di spicco
di quell'epoca come Molza e Tolomei.
Pubblica la sua prima opera letteraria più famosa dal titolo I”l convito;
overo, del peso della moglie: un dialogo diegetico” (Roma, Bressani) -- ambientato
a Roma durante il carnevale della città capitolina, in cui viene trattato il
tema delle corna durante un convivio presieduto dall'allora vescovo di Piacenza
Trivulzio e a cui parteciparono anche Gambara, Marmitta, Benci, Selvago,
Raineri e Cesario. E altresì grande estimatore degli saggi di Piccolomini. Durante la stesura in lingua volgare di un
Operetta de’ Sogni, si ammala di febbre altissima. Si spense dopo qualche
giorno a Roma, nella tenuta di palazzo Ricci in via Giulia. Altri saggi: “Il Tevere, dove si ragiona in
generale della natura di tutte le acque, et in particolare di quella del fiume
di Roma” (Roma, Luchini) “Origine del proverbio che si suol dire "anzi
corna che croci" (Roma, A. degli Antonii,” Jacopone da Todi, I Cantici del
beato Iacopone da Todi, con diligenza ristampati, con la gionta di alcuni
discorsi sopra di essi e con la vita sua nuovamente posta in luce” (Roma, Salviano).
Prospetto autore, su edit16.iccu.. Modio, Il Tevere, cit., c. 45r Anno di pubblicazione della medesima opera. G.
Cassiani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia
Italiana.Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy explores the new directions being taken
in the study of sex and gender in Italy from 1300 to 1700 and highlights the
impact that recent scholarship has had in revealing innovative ways of
approaching this subject.In this interdisciplinary volume, twelve scholars of
history, literature, art history, and philosophy use a variety of both textual
and visual sources to examine themes such as gender identities and dynamics,
sexual transgression and sexual identities in leading Renaissance cities. It is
divided into three sections, which work together to provide an overview of the
influence of sex and gender in all aspects of Renaissance society from politics
and religion to literature and art. Part I: Sex, Order, and Disorder deals with
issues of law, religion, and violence in marital relationships; Part II: Sense
and Sensuality in Sex and Gender considers gender in relation to the senses and
emotions; and Part III: Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image investigates
gender, sexuality, and erotica in art and literature.Bringing to life
this increasingly prominent area of historical study, Sex, Gender and Sexuality
in Renaissance Italy is ideal for students of Renaissance Italy and early
modern gender and sexuality. SEX,
GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN RENAISSANCE ITALY Sex, Gender and Sexuality in
Renaissance Italy explores the new directions being taken in the study of sex
and gender in Italy from 1300 to 1700 and highlights the impact that recent
scholarship has had in revealing innovative ways of approaching this subject.
In this interdisciplinary volume, twelve scholars of history, literature, art
history, and philosophy use a variety of both textual and visual sources to
examine themes such as gender identities and dynamics, sexual transgression and
sexual identities in leading Renaissance cities. It is divided into three
sections, which work together to provide an overview of the inf luence of sex
and gender in all aspects of Renaissance society from politics and religion to
literature and art. Part I: Sex, Order, and Disorder deals with issues of law,
religion, and violence in marital relationships; Part II: Sense and Sensuality
in Sex and Gender considers gender in relation to the senses and emotions; and
Part III: Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image investigates gender, sexuality,
and erotica in art and literature. Bringing to life this increasingly prominent
area of historical study, Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy is
ideal for students of Renaissance Italy and early modern gender and sexuality.
Jacqueline Murray is Professor of History at the University of Guelph. Her
research focuses on premodern sexuality, at the intersections of ecclesiastical
and popular lay culture, and she is currently examining the premodern
experience of masculinity and male embodiment. Nicholas Terpstra is Professor
of History at the University of Toronto, working at the intersections of
gender, politics, charity, and religion in early modern Italy, with a focus on
civil and uncivil society, religious refugees, and the digital mapping of early
modern social realities and relations.SEX, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN RENAISSANCE
ITALYEdited by Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas TerpstraFirst published 2019 by
Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor
& Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter,
Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark
notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record
for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murray, Jacqueline, editor. | Terpstra,
Nicholas, editor. Title: Sex, gender and sexuality in Renaissance Italy / edited
by Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New
York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018045788 (print) | LCCN 2018048468 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH:
Sex—Italy—History—To 1500. | Sex—Italy— History—16th century. | Sex
role—Italy—History—To 1500. | Sex role—Italy—History—16th century. |
Renaissance—Italy. Classification: LCC HQ18.I8 (ebook) | LCC HQ18.I8 .S494 2019
(print) | DDC 306.70945/09031—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045788 ISBN:
978-1-138-54244-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-54245-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-00872-3
(ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLCDedication This collection is dedicated
to Konrad Eisenbichler, a true Renaissance man who produces bold and prodigious
scholarship in multiple research areas with grace, ease, and erudition. For
Konrad, sociability is correlated with scholarship. He has spent his career
creating communities and networks of scholars around the world. These networks
have been brought together through his tireless work for learned societies,
publication series, and journals. Konrad not only produces scholarship but is
also heavily invested in disseminating the scholarship of others. Scholarly
interests often have unusual and serendipitous origins. In a certain sense,
this collection began with a codpiece. Konrad’s first scholarly contribution to
the field of sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy developed out of a
casual conversation with a colleague who provided enthusiastic encouragement.
What resulted was a presentation playfully entitled “The Dynastic Codpiece” to
the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies in 1987. He revised and published
it as “Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere” (Renaissance
and Reformation, 1988), an article still cited thirty years later. In this
truly groundbreaking interdisciplinary piece, Konrad examined the overly large
codpieces worn by Renaissance men for the social and familial messages they
conveyed, showing how the messages passed between the generations in competing
dynastic portraits. The article established Konrad as a new and powerful voice
in the study of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Italian Renaissance. It also
illustrated beautifully how his scholarship is inherently interdisciplinary,
bridging and incorporating history and literature with artistic
representations. Konrad greets friends, colleagues, and students with warmth,
good humor, and generosity. A significant manifestation of his academic
hospitality is revealed in the multitude of conferences he has organized: forty
between 1983 and 2018. These are special events, international in nature, and
ref lecting the hostorganizer’s generosity. They are venues conducive to the
exchange of ideas and the formation of friendships. It is most appropriate that
the most recent of these focused on “Early Modern Cultures of Hospitality.” The
themes generally ref lect Konrad’s sense of the discipline and where it is
going; these conferences most often culminate in a significant collection of
essays, including Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern
West (1996; co-edited with Jacqueline Murray) which helped to promote the study
of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Konrad has
made myriad contributions to individuals and institutions. His contributions to
Renaissance scholarship span social history, women’s history, religious
history, and literature. He publishes equally in Italian and English,moving
easily between scholarly cultures. A scholar with a global reach, he interacts
with colleagues spread across North America, to Italy and Europe more broadly,
as well as Australia and South Africa. The heart of his many contributions to
the study of Italian Renaissance society lies in his research on sex, gender,
and sexuality. In recognition of that, some of his friends and colleagues
joined to celebrate Konrad’s creativity, scholarship, and friendship with
essays that demonstrate the creative developments in the field since that
fateful codpiece three decades ago. We are honored to dedicate this volume to
Konrad Eisenbichler in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to
Renaissance society and culture.CONTENTSList of illustrations Acknowledgments
Notes on contributors 1 Sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy: themes
and approaches in recent scholarship Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstraix
xi xii1PART ISex, order, and disorder192 The lord who rejected love, or the
Griselda story (X, 10) reconsidered yet again Guido Ruggiero213 Sexual violence
in the Sienese state before and after the fall of the republic Elena Brizio354
In the neighborhood: residence, community, and the sex trade in early modern
Bologna Vanessa McCarthy and Nicholas Terpstra535 Though popes said don’t, some
people did: adulteresses in Catholic Reformation Rome Elizabeth S. Cohen75viiiContentsPART
IISense and sensuality in sex and gender 6 “Bodily things” and brides of
Christ: the case of the early seventeenth-century “lesbian nun” Benedetta
Carlini Patricia Simons 7 In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce (1557) Thomas V.
Cohen 8 Aesthetics, dress, and militant masculinity in Castiglione’s Courtier
Gerry Milligan9 The sausage wars: or how the sausage and carne battled for
gastronomic and social prestige in Renaissance literature and culture Laura
Giannetti9597125141160PART IIIVisualizing sexuality in word and image18110
Gianantonio Bazzi, called “Il Sodoma”: homosexuality in art, life, and history
James M. Saslow18311 Vagina dialogues: Piccolomini’s Raffaella and Aretino’s
Ragionamenti Ian Frederick Moulton21112 Giovan Battista della Porta’s
erotomanic art of recollection Sergius Kodera22713 “O mie arti fallaci”:
Tasso’s saintly women in the Liberata and Conquistata Jane Tylus247Bibliography
of Konrad Eisenbichler’s publications on sex and gender Index268 271ILLUSTRATIONSFigures
4.1 4.2 6.1 6.2 6.36.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6Agostino
Carracci, Bononia docet mater studiorum, 1581. Agostino Carracci, Bononia docet
mater studiorum, 1581. Parmigianino, Visitation, pen and wash. Giovanni di
Paolo, Paradise, 1445, tempera and gold on canvas, transferred from wood.
Francesco Vanni, St. Catherine of Siena orally draining pus from an ill woman
and being rewarded with liquid from Christ’s wound, 1597, engraving. Sodoma,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, Scenes from the Life of Saint Catherine of Siena: The swooning
of the saint, 1526, fresco. Caravaggio, Saint Francis receiving the stigmata,
ca. 1595–96, oil on canvas. Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, marble,
1645–52. Anonymous German nun, Consecration of Virgins, ca. 1500. Sodoma, Abbey
of Monteoliveto Maggiore, Saint Benedict Is Tempted by a Female Devil, fresco,
1505–8. Sodoma, Monteoliveto, Miracle of the Colander, fresco, 1505–8. Sodoma,
Monteoliveto, St. Benedict welcomes Sts. Maurus and Placidus, fresco, 1505–8.
Majolica plate, attributed to Master C.I., ca. 1510–20. Musée national de la
Renaissance, Écouen, France. Sodoma, The Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,
Villa Farnesina, Rome, fresco, 1517–19. Sodoma, Saint Sebastian, processional
banner, Pitti Palace, Florence, 1525.55 58 103 105106 108 109 110 115 186 187
189 191 193 196xIllustrations10.7 Sodoma (attributed), Allegorical Man, ca.
1547–8, oil, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. 13.1 Luca Giordano, “Olindo e
Sofronia,” Palazzo Reale gia’ Durazzo (Genova).202 249Tables 4.1 Residence of
registered prostitutes in Bologna’s quarters 4.2 Streets with ten or more
resident prostitutes in 1604, by quarter56 57ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe editors would
like to thank Vanessa McCarthy who donned two hats for this project, that of an
author and that of editorial associate. Her scholarly knowledge and
administrative expertise contributed significantly to the preparation of this
volume, and we’re grateful for her dedication and expertise. We would like to
thank the editorial team at Routledge for their support and guidance over the
course of this project. Laura Pilsworth guided it through its inception and
commissioning, while Lydia de Cruz shepherded it through the final stages of
preparation and production, assisted by Morwenna Scott. The University of Guelph
and the University of Toronto provide generous support for the research
activities of Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra respectively. Thanks as
well to the congenial group of scholars whose work is collected here. While
editing collections is sometimes likened to herding cats, these colleagues were
responsive, generous, and patient. Above all, they were enthusiastic about the
opportunity to contribute to a collection which could serve as a gift to a
friend and colleague, Konrad Eisenbichler, who has himself been the soul of
generosity. We are honored to have worked with you all. Jacqueline Murray
Nicholas TerpstraNOTES ON CONTRIBUTORSElena Brizio teaches Medieval and Early
Modern Italian History at GeorgetownUniversity – Fiesole Campus and in the
Internship Program at IES Abroad (Institute for the International Education of
Students) in Siena. She has published on the political and institutional
history of Siena in the Trecento; her current research focuses on the cultural,
economic, and social power of Sienese women in the Italian Renaissance. In 2013
she was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation and the
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto and in
2015 she was awarded a Renaissance Society of America Summer Grant to study at
the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation at the University of Toronto to
pursue her research on maternal inheritance. Elizabeth S. Cohen is Professor of
History and Director of the Graduate Programin History at York University
(Toronto). She has published widely on sexuality and gender in early modern
Rome including, most recently, The Youth of Early Modern Women, co-edited with
Margaret Reeves (2018); Daily Life in Renaissance Italy with Thomas V. Cohen
(2001, 2017) and Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials before the Papal
Magistrates with Thomas V. Cohen (1993). Thomas V. Cohen has taught History and
Humanities at York University (Toronto) since 1969. His research focuses on the
history of Renaissance Rome, where he studies the cultural and political
anthropology of both the city and its hinterland. His work, often
microhistorical, experiments with language and narrative form, in the hope of
enlarging and enriching scholarship’s rhetoric and larger art. His most recent
book, co-edited with Lesley Twomey, is Spoken Word and Social Practice: Orality
in Europe (1400–1700) (2015). He also translated Claire Judde de Larivière, The
Revolt of Snowballs: Murano Confronts Venice, 1511 (2018).Notes on contributorsxiiiLaura
Giannetti is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Miami.Her
first book, Lelia’s Kiss: Imagining Gender, Sex and Marriage in Italian
Renaissance Comedy, was published in 2009; she is now writing a monograph on
Food Culture and the Literary Imagination in Renaissance Italy. On her new
project she has published several articles in edited volumes and leading
journals such as California Italian Studies and Quaderni d’Italianistica. She
is a former Villa I Tatti Fellow and Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at
her own institution. She was the Charles Speroni Visiting Chair in Medieval and
Renaissance Literature at UCLA in spring 2016, and a Research Fellow at the
Institute for Historical Studies, University of Texas, Austin (2016–17).
Sergius Kodera is Dean of the Faculty of Design at New Design University,
St. Pölten, Austria. Since he received his doctorate in 1994 he has been
teaching Renaissance Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Vienna. He completed his habilitation in 2004. He has held
fellowships in London (Warburg Institute), Vienna (IFK), and New York
(Columbia). He has published on and/or is a translator of Renaissance authors
such as Marsilio Ficino, Fernando de Rojas, Machiavelli, Leone Ebreo, Girolamo
Cardano, Giovan Battista della Porta, and Giordano Bruno. Currently he is
working on a book-length study on Della Porta in English. His main fields of
interest are the history of the body and sexuality, magic, and media. Vanessa
McCarthy completed her Ph.D. in 2015 at the Department of Historyand Women
& Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. She currently
teaches early modern history at the Department of Historical and Cultural
Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough. She is the co-editor of “Sex Acts
in the Early Modern World” (Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme,
38/4, Fall 2015). Gerry Milligan is Associate Professor of Italian at the
College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York (CUNY). He has published articles on masculinity, women authors, and
theatre in the Italian Renaissance. He is the author of Moral Combat: Women,
Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature (2018) and is co-editor with
Jane Tylus of The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain
(2010). Ian Frederick Moulton is Professor of English and Cultural History in
the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. He
has published widely on the representation of gender and sexuality in early
modern European literature. He is the author of Love in Print in the Sixteenth
Century: The Popularization of Romance (2014) and Before Pornography: Erotic
Writing in Early Modern England (2000), and editor and translator of Antonio
Vignali’s La Cazzaria, an erotic and political dialogue from Renaissance Italy
(2003). He is also co-editor of Teaching Early Modern English Literature from
the Archives (2015).xivNotes on contributorsJacqueline Murray is Professor of
History at the University of Guelph. Herresearch focuses on premodern
sexuality, at the intersections of ecclesiastical and popular lay culture. She
is co-editor of Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West
(1996), Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval
West (1999), and Marriage in Premodern Europe: Italy and Beyond (2012). Her
current research examines the premodern experience of masculinity and male
embodiment. She is an award-winning teacher and one of Canada’s 3M National
Teaching Fellows, and has held the Donald Bullough Fellowship in Mediaeval
History at St Andrew’s University. Guido Ruggiero is Professor of History and
Cooper Fellow of the College ofArts and Sciences at the University of Miami. He
has published on the history of gender, sex, crime, magic, science, and
everyday culture, primarily in Renaissance and early modern Italy. Recent
publications include The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of
the Rinascimento which won the American Association for Italian Studies prize
for the best book (2014). He has received awards from Harvard’s Villa I Tatti
in Florence (1990–91, 2012), the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton
(1981–82; 1991), and at the American Academy in Rome (2011). James M. Saslow is
Professor Emeritus of Art History at City University ofNew York, as well as an
author and arts journalist. His work focuses on the Italian Renaissance and
Baroque period, with special interests in gender and homosexuality. A founding
member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY, a former
national co-chair of the Queer Caucus of the College Art Association, and a
board member of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, he has been writing and lecturing
about historical and contemporary arts connected to LGBTQ experience for forty
years. His pioneering survey, Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality
in the Visual Arts (1999), received two Lambda Literary awards. His most recent
book, co-edited with Babette Bohn, is The Blackwell Companion to Renaissance
and Baroque Art (2012). Patricia Simons is a Professor in the Department of
History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her books include The
Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History (2011) and the co-edited
Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (1987). Her studies of the
visual and material culture of early modern Europe have been published in
numerous anthologies and peer-review journals, ranging over such subjects as
female and male homoeroticism, gender and portraiture, the cultural role of
humor, and the visual dynamics of secrecy and of scandal. Nicholas Terpstra is
Professor of History at the University of Toronto, working at the intersections
of gender, politics, charity, and religion. His recent publications include
Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An AlternativeNotes on
contributorsxvInterpretation of the Reformation (2015) and Cultures of Charity:
Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy (2013),
which won the Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association and the Ruth
Goodhart Gordan Prize of the Renaissance Society of America. He has also
co-edited Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and
the Early Modern City with Colin Rose (2016). Jane Tylus is Professor of
Italian at Yale University. Recent books include Siena, City of Secrets (2015),
Cultures of Early Modern Translation (with Karen Newman, 2015), a translation
and edition of the complete poetry of Gaspara Stampa (2010), and Reclaiming
Catherine of Siena: Literature, Literacy, and the Signs of Others (2009), which
won the Howard Marraro Prize for Outstanding Work in Italian Studies from the
Modern Language Association. She is General Editor for the journal I Tatti
Studies in the Italian Renaissance. She has held visiting positions at the
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Yale University, and in 2015 was Robert
Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti in Florence.1 SEX, GENDER, AND
SEXUALITY IN RENAISSANCE ITALY Themes and approaches in recent scholarship
Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas TerpstraFrom the mid-nineteenth through the
mid-twentieth centuries, the Italian Renaissance was approached almost
exclusively as a period of learning, elegance, and manners as ref lected by the
arts and letters of the time. In The Book of the Courtier Castiglione’s perfect
courtier embodied virtù and sprezzatura, the two qualities that epitomized
Renaissance masculinity. Elite men were celebrated for their bravado, skill,
and insouciant nonchalance, whether these were exercised on the fields of
battle, the production of art or poetry, or the seduction of women. Castiglione
also details the qualities of the ideal court lady, a woman valued for her
beauty and affability along with her manners, intellect, and ability to please
men. These qualities were appreciated equally in another group of notable
women, the courtesans whose beauty and literary accomplishments were acclaimed
by poets and artists alike. Thanks in part to the enduring inf luence of Jackob
Burckhardt’s Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860; English
translation 1878), this idealized portrayal of sixteenth-century Italian men
and women dominated twentieth-century historiography and shaped how a number of
generations understood sex, gender, and sexuality in the Renaissance. The
idealized creations of Castiglione and Burckhardt, their princes and poets,
court ladies and courtesans, appeared as the bright stars in the Renaissance
firmament, and contributed to the lure of the field. Yet all along they were
chimeras, stereotypes created by Renaissance elites and perpetuated by modern
scholars of Renaissance culture. Even when individuals appeared to embody these
ideal qualities, they were the exceptions, standing apart from thousands of
their contemporaries, urban and rural, rich and poor, educated and illiterate,
respectable and disreputable. The idealized courtier, court lady, and courtesan
obscure everyday life in Renaissance Italy. In the 1970s, scholars began to ask
new questions that ultimately led to a recalibration of research on the history
of sex, gender, and sexuality in the2Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas TerpstraRenaissance.
One of the earliest collections was Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance (edited by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, 1978), which includes topics
that are wide ranging and represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
They include sexuality within marriage, sexual sins and eroticism, celibacy,
hermaphrodites, homosexuality, and how the human body was understood. These
essays from the 1970s foreground important questions about sex, gender, and
sexuality in the past. Yet their scope and insights are constrained. Most
essays are based on close, summative readings of literary texts from Dante and
Chaucer to Shakespeare and other imaginative authors, but these close readings
of texts lack the contextualization or critical perspective to enhance their
insights. While the occasional essay engages with multiple sources and genres,
the absence of critical theoretical and interdisciplinary analysis inhibits the
development of a more comprehensive picture of how issues of human sexuality
were actually addressed at this time. Significantly, however, the authors did
identify emerging themes that would become central to the study of sex, gender,
and sexuality. This collection opened the way to the study of topics such as
the nature of the sexed human body, the complexities of celibacy as a
sexuality, and the f luidity of sexualities and genders. While prescient in
research subjects, the authors did not employ the theoretical and
methodological tools that developed soon after publication, tools that were
necessary for deeper and more complex analyses of sex, gender, and sexuality.
These tools were being forged with the new theories and methodologies of the
1970s that were opening new research subjects and that led to innovations and
new definitions of the individual and the self. A series of studies in that
decade revolutionized scholarship and have continued to have a transformative
inf luence on the understanding of the history of sex, gender, and sexuality
into the twenty-first century. The most inf luential authors behind this work
perceived the Renaissance to be more complex both in the quotidian aspects of
daily life and also in extraordinary behaviors. In 1978, the first volume of
Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality occasioned both excitement and
consternation among historians of sex. Foucault, a philosopher and leading
post-structuralist scholar, wrote extensively on social construction and social
control in European society, including studies of prisons, madness, and
surveillance. These perspectives informed his ref lections about the
construction and control of sexuality in the European past. Indeed, Foucault’s
intervention challenged scholars to reexamine their approaches to sex and
sexuality. Another major contribution to the recalibrating of historical
studies of sex, gender, and sexuality was John Boswell’s Christianity, Social
Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980). Boswell demonstrated that in the premodern
world there were men who engaged in homosocial and/or homosexual relationships,
although traditional history had obscured them behind the ecclesiastical
rhetoric of homophobia. Boswell argued that there were gay men throughout
premodern Europe but his methodology and conclusions were criticized as
essentialist and lacking the appropriate consideration of context and cultural
inf luences such as Foucault had urged. Nevertheless, despite criticismsSex,
gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 3about essentialism, Boswell did
uncover homosexual (sodomitical) and homoaffective men across society,
integrated into both clerical and secular societies. In this way, Boswell
forged a path for scholars to search for and analyze multiple sexualities that
had been overlooked by traditional history or were obscured by the absence of
explicit evidence. One of the most telling criticisms levelled at both Foucault
and Boswell was their neglect of gender as a category of historical analysis.
Arguably, men and women experience the world differently according to how
society evaluates and constructs women. This applies equally in the realm of
sex and sexuality, which is neither natural nor essential. Foucault paid scarce
attention to women’s alternative experience of social construction and
surveillance of sex and sexuality. Similarly, while lauded for opening the past
for research on homosexuality, Boswell was criticized for eliding lesbians and
other non-normative women under the category “gay,” thus perpetuating their
invisibility. A more refined and incisive analytical framework emerged out of
these debates. What began as women’s history in the 1970s, with the goal of
recuperating women in the past, transformed into the critical lens of feminist
studies, which analyzed the institutions and structures that restricted or
shaped their lives, or contributed to their invisibility in historical
scholarship. The other significant theoretical contribution to the new study of
sex, gender, and sexuality falls under the rubric of cultural studies. This is
a multifaceted approach emerging from literary studies, postmodernism,
discourse analysis, and other theoretical perspectives that provided scholars
with new linguistic and analytical tools. This versatile and complex
perspective also encouraged explicitly interdisciplinary research which suits
the intricate nature of sex, gender, and sexuality. As a result, there is a
richer sense of the possibilities that were available for the lived reality of
sex, gender, and sexuality and an expanded ability to study and evaluate the
values, beliefs, and experiences of people in the past. These innovations
emerged at a time when the traditional Burckhardtian narratives were being
widely criticized by political, social, and intellectual historians, and by the
mid-1980s new scholarship was appearing that brought new insights to sex and
gender in the Italian Renaissance. They applied methodologies that bridged
differences in social and economic status, sex, sexuality, and gender,
geography, and religion. While the traditional sources of high culture—art and
literature in particular—continued to provide a valuable foundation for
understanding the rich cultural life and artefacts of the Renaissance, new
analytical approaches yielded new insights. Diverse sources of evidence—court
records, letters, chronicles, and Inquisitorial documents, among
others—provided access to new populations including servants and prostitutes
and the inhabitants of the streets and taverns of myriad Italian towns and
cities. These new critical studies were a prelude to the research that would
appear in the next two decades. Guido Ruggiero’s The Boundaries of Eros: Sex
Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (1985) early on demonstrated how new
methodologies and new sources were able to reveal hitherto unexplored worlds of
Renaissance sex, gender, and4Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstrasexuality.
Ruggiero examines the wide variety of sex crimes that were committed in Venice
and he analyzes the various courts and disciplinary councils which enforced the
laws, including those pertaining to sexual transgressions. The records reveal
an intricate and contradictory approach to regulating sexuality that extended
from conventional acts such as adultery and fornication to more egregious
behaviors including rape and sodomy. Ruggiero’s essays meet the challenges and
opportunities posed by Foucault and Boswell, by feminist history and gender studies.
His interdisciplinary reading of the evidence, ranging from the many cases
discussed by the criminal courts, along with careful analysis of individual
testimony, widened the scope of enquiry. Ruggiero’s discussion reveals the rich
detail about individuals, as they negotiated the social norms of sexuality and
gender. He brings readers to an understanding of the social context and how
individuals were integrated into their local communities and that of wider
Venetian society. The movement towards more sophisticated, nuanced, and focused
considerations is also ref lected in Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and
Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (1996) by Michael Rocke. In many ways,
Rocke took on the challenge presented by John Boswell to identify men who had
sex with men in their social contexts. Rather than othering them or pulling
these men out of their community, Rocke engages with homosexuality as an
integral part of Florentine society and culture. He examines seventy years of
documentation from the “Office of the Night,” which was established to oversee
denunciations of homosexual (sodomitical) activity. This allowed Rocke to trace
the nature of relationships between men, how they were treated by society, how
and why they were denounced to the court, and the penalties levied. His
scholarship reveals that, despite the harsh evaluation of sodomy in
ecclesiastical law and in various secular jurisdictions, Florence displayed
remarkable tolerance. Where Boswell’s research had scanned 1000 years of European
history, seeking to identify men who were possibly homosexual, Rocke analyzes
deep and focused sources to identify a specific group of men, applying
sophisticated theoretical and methodological tools to reveal new understandings
of non-normative sexuality in the Italian Renaissance. Judith Brown’s Immodest
Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1986) similarly
contributed to the new approaches to sexuality and identity. She focused on
non-normative sexuality, although in a unique context. Here the background is
not the streets, homes, and markets of the large, cosmopolitan cities of
Renaissance Italy. Rather, Brown’s subjects lived within the walls of a
convent, separated from the worldly temptations of secular life. Yet, even in a
community of women vowed to chastity, Brown finds convoluted self-identities
and a sexual relationship between two women that was transgressive and
multivalent. The case of the “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini was instantly
controversial. Could two nuns possibly have a conscious lesbian sexual
identity, given the social norms and religious context in which they lived?
This is the same criticism that greeted John Boswell’s assertions about “gay”
men in premodern Europe.Sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 5There
was widespread agreement that categories such as gay or lesbian were products
of late twentieth-century Western society and to impose them back in time was
anachronistic and misleading. Moreover, in this case, the individuals evoked
far more questions than those of sexual identity or sexual activity, with a
relationship complicated by angelic possession and mystical visions. The debate
surrounding Carlini’s activities and identities continues, as Patricia Simon’s
essay in this collection demonstrates. Yet one of the most enduring
contributions of Brown’s study, for the history of sexuality and gender, is her
ability to cross 600 years and engage intimately with individuals of the past.
This is a history of two nuns, in an out-of-the-way convent, who experienced
rich and problematic inner lives, beyond what might be expected. Whether the
women can be categorized as “lesbians” does not dispel the impact of
recuperating lost women and a lost past, the meaning and implications of which
continue to attract scholarly analysis. The profound transformation that
occurred between 1978 and 1996 in the study of sex, gender, and sexuality in
premodern Europe began with the recognition of new topics and moved to a more
rigorous application of the intervening theoretical and methodological insights
of Foucault and Boswell, of feminism and cultural studies. If the former
approach is exemplified by essays collected in Human Sexuality in the Middle
Ages and Renaissance (1978), the latter is evident in the essays in Desire and
Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (edited by Jacqueline
Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler, 1996). This volume stresses that human behavior
manifests both continuities and transitions that can be independently evaluated
and separated from arbitrary and obsolete periodization. Many essays integrate
traditional periods moving seamlessly into a premodern world. Some essays rely
on traditional Renaissance evidence but deploy law, art, and literature to
examine new research questions. Rona Goffen examines Titian’s frescoes to
explore misogyny. Other authors address innovative, even bold or cheeky themes.
Feminism and critical theory are deployed throughout the collection. The
usefulness of interdisciplinarity to reveal new aspects of society and cultural
experience is equally evident. Dyan Elliott’s reexamination of the reciprocity
of the conjugal debt, the notion that a husband and wife have equal call on
their spouse for sexual access jostles the foundations of premodern marriage. Rather
than accepting the idea that a married couple’s sex life was balanced and
equitable, Elliott concludes that wives were subordinate even in bed and had no
right to refuse sexual intercourse. Ivana Elbl examines the doubly
transgressive sexual liaisons among Portuguese sailors to Africa. Sailors, who
were often already married with families in Europe, frequently formed enduring
relationships with African “wives,” transgressing both Christian monogamy and
establishing irregular relationships with non-Christian women. Significantly,
in Africa these unions were ignored or tolerated by Portuguese leaders,
ecclesiastical as much as secular. More theoretically adventuresome is Nancy
Partner’s exploration of the psychological dimensions of sexuality. She applies
contemporary psychological theory, in particular Freud, to assess the sexual
dimensions6Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstraof mystics and their ecstatic
visions. Even the realm of masturbatory pornography is probed through Andrew
Taylor’s critical reading of marginalia and other physical marks and stains on
manuscript pages which could ref lect the sexual responses of readers to the
texts. The essays in Desire and Discipline reveal the richness, diversity, and
intellectually invigorating research that in just two decades had made the new
field of sex, gender, and sexuality one of the most exciting areas in
Renaissance studies. While ref lecting new research areas, the roots of which
can be found in the theoretical and methodological innovations in the late
twentieth century, the essays in Desire and Discipline build upon traditional
topics and themes and frequently employ conventional Renaissance sources, to
stimulate a metamorphosis of old research perspectives into new and innovative
ones. Thus, the ideal courtier has become a man subject to gender-based
analysis while the lens of feminist analysis reveals the court lady to be not
so much an equal but rather a pale, subordinate shadow to the courtier.
Similarly, freed from her artificial manners and learning, the courtesan is
revealed as a masculine fiction sanitized from the precarious and harsh life of
Renaissance prostitutes. The last quarter of the twentieth century, then, was a
watershed for the historiography of sex, gender, and sexuality. Pioneering
scholarship foreshadowed issues that would preoccupy later scholars and set the
trajectory for subsequent research. This scaffolding of new research questions,
theories, and methodologies has resulted in creative approaches that are
rapidly transforming the field. While monographs have been, and continue to be,
written about sex, gender, and sexuality in the Renaissance, it seems that
these topics, at this point in the evolution of scholarship, lend themselves
more readily to the genres of essays or journal articles. The essay form allows
scholars to analyze focused bodies of evidence and arrive at conclusions that
are precise and demonstrable. Presumably, at some point these focused studies
will coalesce into broader discussions leading to more generalized conclusions.
For the moment, however, the essay collection remains the most significant
means for the dissemination of research. Two essay collections in particular
demonstrate the very promising new approaches to research into sex, gender, and
sexuality in the twenty-first century. In A Cultural History of the Human Body
in the Renaissance (2010), Katherine Crawford provides a chapter that offers
redirection from the perspectives of Foucault. She points back to the important
role of classical literature, mediated by Christian values, in the formation of
beliefs about sexuality and marriage, and classical medical literature which
defined the sexed body. In A Cultural History of Sexuality edited by Bette
Talvacchia (2011), nine essays address a wide variety of questions about
Renaissance sexuality as they emerge from diverse sources. Essays focus on the
troubled categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and sex with respect
to religion, medicine, popular beliefs, prostitution, and erotica. Collectively,
this collection opens wide the possibilities in the study of sex, gender, and
sexuality.Sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 7In order best to
demonstrate how recent work has reshaped and advanced the field of sex, gender,
and sexuality in Renaissance Italy, we have organized the essays of this
collection into three sections. The first, “Sex, Order, and Disorder,” deals
primarily with issues relating to legal and political themes, and particularly
with efforts by authorities both political and ecclesiastical to channel or
control sexuality. The second section, “Sense and Sensuality in Sex and
Gender,” highlights recent work that has taken some of the turns that are
rewriting historical narratives generally, above all histories of the senses,
of the emotions, and of food. The third section, “Visualizing Sexuality in Word
and Image,” considers how we work with early modern f luidity around identities
and boundaries, and whether we might now be more restrictive than they were in
categories that we bring to our analysis.Sex, Order, and Disorder One of the
most obvious sites of sex and disorder in Renaissance Italy surely lies with
the buying and selling of women’s bodies. Burckhardt’s perspective that
courtesans were elegant, intellectual companions, surviving more on sexual
titillation than selling their bodies, has endured, despite the inf luence of
feminist research. In particular, Veronica Franco was seen as an elegant,
ideal, and appropriate companion for Renaissance princes.1 Much research on
courtesans has focused on Franco and her courtesan sisters. It highlights the
courtesan’s learning, ability to write poetry and sing pleasing songs, and,
most importantly, to entertain men while avoiding becoming common sexual
property and losing their allure and their living. Tessa Storey adheres to the
older view, assessing the social status of courtesans, suggesting that they
were linked to “elite manhood and male honor,” idealizing the relationships
between clients and courtesans who were certain that proximity to powerful men
would protect them.2 However, the other side of courtesan life was a precarious
one of dependence and fear of falling into common prostitution. Social and
criminal vulnerability highlights the lives of all prostitutes, include high
status courtesans. Even Veronica Franco was called before the courts to account
for her behavior. More vulnerable courtesans and prostitutes lived
precariously, prey to men of all sorts, accosted in the streets, and struggling
to support themselves and maintain their dignity. The records of their
appearances before the courts reveals they often managed without protectors or
financial security. 3 Early on Elizabeth Cohen examined the rough and ready
life of prostitutes on the streets of Rome, revealing a form of sociability and
social integration.4 Diane Yvonne Ghirardo brings an innovative approach to the
role and experience of urban prostitutes. She examines urban planning in
Ferrara, revealing the city’s ongoing attempts over decades to maintain
prostitutes in the same locales.5 Focusing on the economics of prostitution in
Venice, Paula Clarke finds that regulation of prostitution became less rigorous
over time, with women experiencing more freedom and the concomitant growth of
the sex trade.68Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas TerpstraGuido Ruggiero opens the
section “Sex, Order, and Disorder” in this collection with a broader approach
to order and disorder in sexuality. He offers a rereading of Boccaccio’s
often-studied story from the Decameron of Griselda, a woman who patiently
endures the series of humiliations that her husband Gualtieri devises in order
to test her faithfulness. The critics and creative artists who have puzzled
over the tale and its meaning for centuries have focused mainly on Griselda and
on issues of class and gender. Ruggiero moves a step further to ask how those
who heard it in the fourteenth century might have received it as a political
message. Gualtieri is not only a cruel husband. His willingness to be cruel and
unjust to his spouse Griselda highlights the dangers that all may encounter
when societies fall under the control of rulers who are narcissistic, vain, and
insecure. Florentines could look around to other cities where lords treated
citizens as Gualtieri treated Griselda; sexual and political violence were
interchangeable and marriages were contracted for money rather than love. There
was no reason to suppose that Florence would be exempted from that kind of
cruelty and exploitation. The Griselda story offered the lessons of a Mirror
for Princes, but it was also a Mirror for Merchants, warning them of what would
happen when love did not animate their closest personal relationships. What
Boccaccio warned the Florentines about in the fourteenth century was precisely
what the Sienese were experiencing in the sixteenth. Elena Brizio observes that
sexual violence remained common across Italy. Men used it as a tool to control
girls, boys, married women, and widows. In the context of the wars of the
1550s, when Florence annexed Siena, its political “use” expanded greatly.
Sexual violence was a means of imposing or confirming power over subordinates,
and men across the political, ecclesiastical, mercantile, and professional
spheres considered sexual violence a legitimate mode of operating in their
social sphere, and so exercised it freely. In contrast to what Boccaccio
described, the absolute ruler who came to dominate mid-sixteenth-century Siena
positioned himself on the opposite side of the dynamic. Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici
proclaimed strict punishments for sexual violence against both men and women in
a law of 1558, threatening either death or galley servitude for those
convicted. Brizio describes this setting and moves from metaphor to practice as
she reviews archival sources, judicial records, and public reports to see how
sexual violence was perceived before and after the law issued in 1558. Duke
Cosimo I was dealing with more than just a different political milieu, and
Brizio also explores whether the changes in the normative codes brought about
by the Council of Trent had an impact on social attitudes to sexual violence in
Siena and its locale. Normative codes were becoming more explicit and
restrictive across Italy in the sixteenth century, but did they have much actual
effect? Like Cohen, Ghirardo, and Clarke, Vanessa McCarthy and Nicholas
Terpstra document and analyze the sex trade in a particular city. Their focus
is on working-poor prostitutes’ residential patterns in early modern Bologna,
and they find that on the whole these women were integrated into, rather than
pushed to the margins of, their local neighborhoods and the wider city.
Bologna’s activist and ambitiousSex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy
9archbishop Gabriele Paleotti was rebuffed when he attempted to impose
Tridentine norms for public sexuality. The Bolognese instead approached
regulation as a matter of market rather than morals, allowing those prostitutes
registered with a civic magistracy to practice prostitution almost anywhere within
the city walls. While about half of the 300–400 women registered clustered in
specific, unofficial red-light neighborhoods, the other half lived on streets
with only one or two other registered prostitutes, where their neighbors were
more often workingpoor men and women. In spite of the strict normative codes
that continued to be preached and publicly posted by ecclesiastical
authorities, prostitutes were seldom actually shunned or marginalized because
of their sex work. They were more often incorporated into the working-poor
neighborhoods and the larger social fabric of early modern Bologna. These
tensions between norms and practice certainly intensified as Tridentine rules
became more specific, and as ecclesiastical and public regimes worked to
determine whether and how to implement them. In Rome, these authorities came
together in particularly complicated ways. Elizabeth Cohen explores how they
attempted to address and adjudicate the various forms of sexual impropriety
that their normative codes were describing in ever more precise detail. Sexual
misconduct came under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, but the
records of these courts do not survive in Rome. Criminal court records do
survive, however, and since these took charge of some sex offenses we can see
how people responded to the new rules. Cohen looks in particular at cases of
adultery, which was often defined by the married status of the woman and which,
like sodomy, could actually cover a broader range of actions than might be
grouped today under the term. Reviewing some trials of real or imagined
adulterous relationships, Cohen finds that it is impossible to determine how
effective the “reforms” actually were. There was simply more driving these
relationships forward than any narrow definition allows: romance, exploitation,
assault, and sheer comedy all shape the court testimonies, and show that the
parties in many so-called adulterous relationships were thinking less often of
sex—or the pope—than authorities thought.Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender
The possibilities for research on sense and sensuality in the Italian
Renaissance are myriad. The richness and abundance of voices, producing or
employing sensual outcomes, and the voices of desire and of sex and of pleasure
combine into a garden of delights. Here again, recent essay collections prove
particularly valuable for the variety of forms, voices, and experiences that
they are able to convey. In The Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy (2010)
Sara Matthews-Grieco gathers eight essays that ref lect upon the various ways
in which visions of sensuality could circulate, including on painted furniture,
decorated bedroom ceilings, or musical instruments, erotic language, or
pornographic engravings. So, too, cultural practices are explored such as
sensuality within marriage, music in domesticcontexts, and sexual innuendos in
writing or in doodles in a book. This collection, then, reveals how creative
Renaissance people could be in demonstrating desire and articulating their
sensual pleasures. Sexual orientation and sexual desire have also come under
scrutiny. A significant collection of essays edited by Melanie L. Marshall,
Linda L. Carroll, and Katherine A. McIver, Sexualities, Textualities, Art and
Music in Early Modern Italy (2014), brings together nine essays that explore
sexual desire and sexual orientation through multilayered and intersecting
interpretations of art, music, and texts. The result is an intriguing
collection of scholarship that maximizes opportunities for interdisciplinary,
collaborative research across the disciplines, as an outgrowth of work on
critical theory and intertextuality. In a more literary context, marriage
orations have revealed some writers not only praised marriage in conventional
terms for political ends, social expediency, and the delights of family.
Alongside extolling the pleasures of the marriage bed for a husband, some
extend that vision of sensuality and sexual pleasure to the wife as well,
challenging conventional notions that only prostitutes took pleasure in sex,
and not respectable matrons.7 The sensual possibilities of homosexual
activities, especially related to male prostitution, were part of Michael
Rocke’s study Forbidden Friendships. He argues that male prostitution was
harshly condemned, especially anal penetration, as something no adult man
should permit. Nevertheless, an examination of some contemporary writers
reveals an appreciation of homosexual sensuality along with defenses of sodomy
and male prostitution which harkened back to the superior evaluation of
homosexuality in classical literature.8 The role of pedagogical pederasty and
its celebration within Renaissance mentoring systems has equally been explored
in literary sources by Ian Moulton who demonstrates the currency of such
studies to both a popular and educated audience.9 These studies show that while
male sexuality has been visualized, both in the Renaissance, and by scholars of
the Renaissance, as virile and active, it was also vulnerable and contingent.
For example, castration was always a possibility in war, for medical reasons,
as a consequence of vendetta, or for social or aesthetic reasons.10 Impotence
also was part of male sexuality, with extensive social, economic, and political
ramifications. Some of these issues are explored in Sara F. Matthews-Grieco’s
edited volume Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th century)
(2014). Impotence could be implicated in social unrest among urban dwellers or
occasion political turmoil among the elites. It could be physiological, subject
to medical intervention, or magical leading towards the Inquisition and the
Renaissance’s fear of witchcraft. Six essays focus on various aspects of the
social, cultural, political, medicinal, and literary discussions of impotence
in Italian courts and cities, together providing an integrated and provocative
view of male sexuality and sensuality. The essays in this collection’s second
section, “Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender,” traverse back and forth
between literature and the lives of men and women. Our literary accounts span
what was formerly cast as the division ofhigh and low, including both
Castiglione’s serious prescriptions on when a sleeve is more than just a
sleeve, and also some more comic accounts by lesser-known poets of when a
sausage is more than a sausage. We pair these with two microhistorical accounts
of sexual pairings, one grown notorious in recent decades by the controversies
that erupted when it was first published, and the other more obscurely
quotidian. We aim in bringing them together to revisit what scholars may bring
to such accounts, and how that shapes our readings in ways we may want now to
rethink. In the first of these microhistorical studies, Patricia Simons
re-examines the case of Benedetta Carlini, the early seventeenth-century nun
and abbess described above and made famous in Judith Brown’s Immodest Acts
(1986). When Brown identified Carlini as a lesbian, on the basis of documents
that showed her as having regular orgasmic sex with a younger nun under her
supervision, her work stirred controversy. Historians like Rudolph Bell firmly
rejected the description of Carlini as “lesbian” on the basis that sexual
activities did not imply sexual identities. Simons takes the discussion a step
further, arguing that the question of identity is less important now than one
related to sense and emotion. Did they—and should we—see their sex as mainly
physical? Or were there registers of erotic mysticism that would have led both
Benedetta and Mea to frame their contact together as expressions of a spiritual
relationship? While some of their contemporaries, like some of ours, may see
their religious language as pretext, what happens when we take it seriously and
take them sincerely? As the example of their congregation’s patron saint St.
Catherine of Siena showed, medieval mysticism provided enough of a language and
model for the erotic potential of religious imagery. Thomas V. Cohen then
explores another example of when we need to ask whether a transgression is
always a transgression, by looking at the case of Ludovico Santa Croce, and the
gang he gathered around him to prowl the streets of Rome. The life lived well
needed witnesses for validation, and Ludovico’s ego amplified his other drives
as he led a group of young conversi to visit the statuesque courtesan Betta la
Magra. They shared food, drink, and more, and Ludovico’s boundary crossing
brought him to court. But what were his transgressions? Was it just proper and
improper sexual practices, was it individual intimacy moving to group sex, was
it about commoners and nobles, or about Christians and those who, despite
having been “made Christian” were still considered in some way ebrei ? If
transgression lies in in the eyes or voices of the witness, we have here a
complicated intersection of identities and codes, values and practices. The
questions here, as in Benedetta Carlini’s convent, lie with what those in the
bed and those around it thought about norms and deviances. Gerry Milligan
brings us to what many consider the uber code of the early modern male,
Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, the canonical text that we noted
at the beginning of this essay. Milligan looks in particular at the relation
Castiglione draws between clothing and masculinity. Clothing was fundamental to
Renaissance discourses of gender and sexuality. While it wascommon to read that
what men wore was critical to discussions of violence, military preparedness,
and virtue, it’s not at all clear just how clothing was supposed to do what it
did. Was it cause or effect, or sign and symbol of masculinity or effeminacy?
Castiglione saw clothing choice as potentially one of life or death, and that
not just for reputation alone. As Italy suffered through the invasions of
French, Spanish, and Germans, it was common, albeit perhaps too easy, to
correlate a soldier’s effectiveness to what he had worn. As Milligan asks,
might a focus on clothing show us how aesthetics and militarism functioned in
Renaissance projects of social control? Laura Giannetti then takes us from dead
seriousness to dietary satire with approaches to a question that Freud might
well have faced: is it ever the case that a sausage is just a sausage? Italians
valued word play as much as sexual play, and found the convergence of the two
absolutely compelling. Carne was meat, f lesh, and inevitably the male organ,
and while mendicant preachers may have condemned all of them together, most
Italians appreciated them individually for each of their meanings. Religious
authorities never managed to expand the imaginative forms of their dismay at
the gluttony and carnality that sausages represented; the most they could do
was draw on Galen’s counsel of moderation to reinforce their message of
self-denial. Yet Gianetti shows that authors and artists who were more
aesthetically than ascetically driven began to explore the imaginative
potential of sausages as symbols of vitality, fertility, and prowess. Their
poems and stories disseminated messages of a humble meat that grew into a
powerful cultural symbol.Visualizing sexuality in word and image As early as
1978, Thomas G. Benedek’s article “Beliefs about Human Sexual Function”
examined ideas about the sexed body, noting in particular the persistence of
the one-sex theory that women and men had parallel sex organs, with the male
organs externalized and female organs internalized. Moreover, the balance of the
humors—hot, cold, moist, dry—also impacted the nature of any individual’s
sexual makeup. Thomas Laqueur, like previous scholars, based much of his
argument on medical texts. It was not only the words, but also the images that
seemed to portray inverted genitals. Laqueur’s analysis went further, however,
to the conclusion that the one-sex body and the humors meant that both women
and men needed to ejaculate semen for conception to occur.11 Laqueur’s
suggestion that Renaissance doctors and others believed in the two-seed theory
was controversial and stimulated a great deal of scholarship on both science
and medicine and gender and the body. Interest in the sexed body and the
physicality of sex and sexuality has continued to expand, embedding medical
perspectives of the sexed body into a cultural context. In her study The Sex of
Men (2011), Patricia Simons extended the critical study of men’s history to
focus on the physiological construction of men. Her analysis is based upon
exhaustive, interdisciplinary research includingtheoretical, textual, and
visual evidence. Simons re-focuses attention on the centrality of semen to
masculinity and fertility, thus rebalancing the dominant phallocentric
evaluation of premodern gender. Sexual acts and sexual pleasure have embraced
topics and methodologies that would have been unthinkable by earlier scholars.
The collection Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy (2010), edited by Allison Levy,
includes an amazing array of topics that illuminate sexual activities in new
detail. Renaissance images and objects portray an imaginative array of sexual
positions in sources, both textual and physical, ranging from Aretino’s writing
on sexual positions to their portrayal on medicinal drug jars. Patricia Simons
pushes the cultural history of sex and sexuality further in her essay about the
dildo. An analysis of the physical objects is set against descriptions of their
imagined use. Renaissance books were sufficiently explicit, however, that the
need for visualization was unnecessary. In Machiavelli in Love (2007), Guido
Ruggiero challenges some of the fundamental ideas about the history of sex and
sexuality proposed by Foucault and which have subsequently dominated research.
Rejecting Foucault’s assertion that sex and sexual identity were modern
inventions, Ruggiero demonstrates that in fact there was Renaissance sex and
Renaissance sexual identity, dismissing earlier theoretical obstructions. Using
a combination of court documents and imaginative literature, he highlights the
complexities of mind, body, and desire, and the formation of masculine
identity. In many ways, this book moves the historical study of premodern
sexuality onto a new and more sophisticated plane, one that reveals individuals
in their uniqueness. In The Manly Masquerade (2003), Valeria Finucci presented
one of the earliest analyses of Renaissance men as an inf lected category
deploying not only feminist theory but also psychoanalytic theory to understand
the constructions of masculinity from both a psychological and cultural
perspective. One of the most violent and sexually problematic figures of
Renaissance Italy was the brilliant goldsmith/artist Benvenuto Cellini.
Margaret Gallucci presents a new twist to traditional biography by integrating
a multidisciplinary analysis of Cellini, his artistic brilliance, his penchant
for violence and disorderliness, and his transgressive homosexuality that was
sufficiently public to result in criminal proceedings and house arrest. Following
new literary criticism and sexuality and gender studies, Gallucci tries to move
beyond simplistic evaluations of homosexuality and misogyny to make sense of
Cellini’s complex artistic life and disorderly behaviors.12 The third section
of this collection, “Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image,” takes up these
questions of sex acts, the body, and identity by focusing on four cases of
creative artists who employ sexuality and gender in ways that challenge social
norms and expectations, and that raise questions both then and now about
identity and voice. James M. Saslow returns to the questions around sexual acts
and sexual identities that emerged in disputes around the “lesbian” nun
Benedetta Carlini, and to which Castiglione’s sartorial strictures allude. He
argues that the case of Italian painter Gianantonio Bazzi (1477–1549)
contributesto the larger ongoing controversy in queer studies over whether we
can locate an embryonic homosexual self-consciousness in Renaissance culture.
Bazzi’s fondness for young men gave him the nickname “Il Sodoma” and he never
shied away from making this a central part of a very public persona. We have
little documentary evidence for his private feelings, yet his art embodied and
transmitted homosexual desires, and it is clear from the series of commissions
that he attracted an audience which read and sympathized with those clues.
Saslow reviews Sodoma’s artworks, patrons, and reputation over a few centuries
and ref lects on what the larger stakes are both methodologically and
ideologically as we weigh whether these do indeed provide sufficient evidence
for a homosexual self-consciousness. Sexual agency and identity are complex
enough when we are aiming to interpret what an individual says in a court room
or inquisitorial investigation, or conveys in a painting or poem. What do we do
when men pretend to adopt the voice of women and project desire, intent, and
agency? Ian Frederick Moulton compares two such works, Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti
and Alessandro Piccolomini’s La Raffaella, both of them written in the 1530s,
and both featuring an experienced woman mentoring a younger woman on the finer
points of sex and sexuality. In both, the older woman assures her younger
companion that her desires are legitimate and should be acted on to the
fullest, even when transgressive. In both these desires are essentially
projections of male fantasies. Moulton explores what we learn from male
projections of female speech, identity, agency, and particularly how male
visualization and ventriloquizing exposes larger issues around the place of
women and the articulation of sex and gender in early modern society. While we
often emphasize the transformative effects of printing, early modern culture continued
to value the oral and visual, and it brought these together in the art of
memory. Sergius Kodera reaches back to classical texts that recommended erotic
images as particularly memorable, and to the early modern author Giovan
Battista della Porta’s L’arte del ricordare (1566) which specifically advised
stories of sex between humans and animals as aides memoires. Myths of Leda,
Europe, Ganymede, and others were all drawn into this work, though more overtly
in the vernacular than the Latin version. Kodera follows this visualization of
intercourse between humans and animals beyond the arts of memory and on to
texts on cross-breeding and to the paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and
Titian, seeing all of these as examples of a distinctively early modern embrace
of variety, engagement, and hybridity in sexuality. In the final essay, Jane
Tylus traces how Torquato Tasso depicted women in both the Gerusalemme liberata
(1581) and the Gerusalemme conquistata (1593). While he felt that his powers as
an epic poet were expanding, the later work reduces the role and influence of
female characters. The shift underscores how the Liberata was more radical in
its conception and execution. As he aimed to style himself more
self-consciously as an epic poet in the classical tradition, Tasso moved from
Virgil to Homer as his model, a move at once stylistic and also insome sense
moralistic – he saw this as an answer to criticism of his language and of what
he called the “fallacious artistries” that had marked the earlier poem. Gender
become critical to his conception of what is true in art, though with
ambivalent results – the woman who intervened with power was superseded by the
woman who intervened with tears. These essays explore themes that were only
emerging two decades ago. Their authors’ commitment to taking both an
interdisciplinary and intersectional approach allows re-evaluation of
interpretations which were in danger of becoming too rigid and which may have
imposed too much on what the voices in stories, trials, letters, and
images were aiming to express. Contradiction, ambivalence, and ambiguity
abound. Recent work in all three areas that we have singled out has explored
just how widely the gaps between prescription and reality yawn in the period,
in part because of ambivalence on the part of those promoting normative
regimes. Yet gaps more often emerged because these regimes aimed too far beyond
what people expected and were willing to live with in their neighborhoods,
their relationships, and expectations. As we move forward undoubtedly there
will be new insights gleaned about the lives and loves of Renaissance people.
The intellectual and evidential foundation outlined here in letters, court
records, poems, pamphlets, and artworks will continue to support a rich and
diverse research culture. And there are new questions on the horizon. The
literary, philosophical, artistic, and existential implications of transgender
are only in a nascent stage of investigation, despite the initial and hesitant
foray made in Human Sexuality. Some topics and themes will percolate until new
sources and new perspectives allow new insights and conclusions. As the study
of sex, gender, and sexuality moves forward, the dialogue between past and
present will continue, animated by sharp disagreements, punctuated by moments
of clarity, and moving steadily towards a deeper understanding of lives lived
in a period of creative foment. The voices gathered here, and the creative
exchange they offer, advance that discourse on the lives of those who made the
Renaissance a fascinating period of critical change.Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan. Storey, “Courtesan Culture.” Cohen and
Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome. Cohen, “Seen and Known.” Ghirardo,
“The Topography of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara.” Clarke, “The Business
of Prostitution in Early Renaissance Venice.” D’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual
Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations of Fifteenth-Century
Italy.” Rocke, “‘Whoorish boyes.’” Moulton, “Homoeroticism in La cazzaria
(1525).” See Finucci, The Manly Masquerade. Laqueur, Making Sex. Gallucci,
Benvenuto Cellini.Bibliography Benedek, Thomas G. “Beliefs about Human Sexual
Function in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” In Human Sexuality in the Middle
Ages and Renaissance. Edited by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, 97–119. Pittsburgh:
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1978. Boswell, John. Christianity,
Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the
Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1980. Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian
Nun in Renaissance Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Burckhardt,
Jackob. The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Translated by S.G.C.
Middlemore. Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 2003. Castiglione,
Baldassarre. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by Charles S. Singleton.
Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959. Clarke, Paula. “The Business of
Prostitution in Early Renaissance Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 68, no. 2
(2015): 419–64. Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Seen and Known: Prostitutes in the
Cityscape of Late-SixteenthCentury Rome.” Renaissance Studies 12, no. 3 (1998):
392–409. Cohen, Thomas V. and Elizabeth S. Cohen. Words and Deeds in
Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1993. D’Elia, Anthony F. “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned
Brides in the Wedding Orations of Fifteenth-Century Italy.” Renaissance
Quarterly 55, no. 2 (2002): 379–433. Finucci, Valeria. The Manly Masquerade:
Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2003. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Volume
1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Gallucci, Margaret A. Benvenuto Cellini: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Artistic
Identity in Renaissance Italy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Ghirardo,
Diane Yvonne. “The Topography of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara.” Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians 60, no. 4 (2001): 402–31. Kalof,
Linda and William Bynum, eds. A Cultural History of the Human Body in the
Renaissance. Volume 3. New York: Berg, 2010. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body
and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1990. Levy, Allison M., ed. Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice,
Performance, Perversion, Punishment. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Marshall, Melanie
L., Linda L. Carroll, and Katherine A. McIver, eds. Sexualities, Textualities,
Art and Music in Early Modern Italy: Playing with Boundaries. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2014. Matthews-Grieco, Sara F., ed. Cuckoldry, Impotence, and Adultery
in Europe (15th–17th century). Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. ———. The Erotic Cultures
of Renaissance Italy. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Moulton, Ian Frederick.
“Homoeroticism in La cazzaria (1525).” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
10, no. 4 ( July/August 2003): 19–21. Murray, Jacqueline and Konrad
Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern
West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas,
ed. Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, 1978.Rocke,
Michael. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance
Florence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. ———. “ ‘Whoorish boyes’:
Male Prostitution in Early Modern Italy and the Spurious ‘second part’ of
Antonio Vignali’s La cazzaria.” In Power, Gender, and Ritual in Europe and the
Americas: Essays in Memory of Richard C. Trexler. Edited by Peter Arnade and
Michael Rocke, 113–33. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies,
2008. Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and
Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Ruggiero, Guido. The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance
Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. ———. Machiavelli in Love: Sex,
Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A
Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Storey, Tessa.
“Courtesan Culture: Manhood, Honour, and Sociability.” In The Erotic Cultures
of Renaissance Italy. Edited by Sara F. Matthews Grieco, 247–73. Farnham:
Ashgate, 2010. Talvacchia, Bette, ed. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the
Renaissance. Oxford: Berg, 2011.PART ISex, Order, and Disorder2 THE LORD WHO
REJECTED LOVE, OR THE GRISELDA STORY (X, 10) RECONSIDERED YET AGAIN Guido
RuggieroOne of the last works that Francesco Petrarch wrote was a short story
in Latin which he claimed to have translated from the Italian of the final tale
of Boccaccio’s Decameron —the novella of the patient Griselda, who accepted
every cruel test her husband, Gualtieri, tried her with to assure her
worthiness as a wife. In Petrarch’s version Griselda was a humble peasant and
Gualtieri the esteemed Marquis of Saluzzo, a prince loved by all for his wise
rule. Tellingly, he claimed that he was translating the tale because it was so
very useful as a lesson on how to treat a wife that it needed to be in Latin to
gain the wider circulation that the universal language of learned men merited.
And, in fact, Boccaccio’s original version has been long read in that light,
almost as if Petrarch’s Latin retelling determined its meaning for future
generations. Recently, moreover, with more sophisticated discussions of gender,
his perspective has garnered even greater purchase, with Boccaccio’s tale being
criticized for its misogynistic vision of matrimony and support for a husband’s
absolute power over a wife. In turn, this perspective has even colored the way
some read the Decameron itself, discovering behind its laughing stories and
powerful, clever women a conservative defense of traditional patriarchy. But in
this essay, I want to suggest with a historian’s eye that the story of
Griselda’s ideal wifely qualities and her husband’s wisdom is in reality not
there in the Decameron (X, 10). For while that tale has been often read as an
account of Griselda, and her virtually biblical acceptance of her husband’s
will, it may well have read at the time as a story much more about the many
negative qualities of Gualtieri.1 For he is presented throughout as a dangerous
tyrant moved by a misguided sense of honor and a rejection of the emotion of
love, which meant that he was incapable of being either a good husband or a
good ruler from the perspective of fourteenth-century Florentine readers. Thus,
this tale is not just concerned with love and marriage, but also crucially with
rule and the rule of princes, in this casenegatively portrayed as tyrants. In a
way, then, I want to argue that it is Boccaccio’s “The Prince” a century and a
half before Machiavelli. Even the language of the day nicely sets up this
theme: for the term signore (lord) had multiple meanings that could span the
gamut of power relationships from the everyday husband as signore/lord over his
wife and household, to the local signore/lord/noble with power over those below
him, on to the signore/lord/ ruler (either a prince or a tyrant depending on
one’s perspective), and, of course, finally on to the ultimate signore, the
Signore/God. As we shall see, all these meanings are at play in Boccaccio’s
version of this tale. The teller of this story of multiple signori, the
irrepressible Dioneo, suggests its negative tone right from the start,
immediately warning that he finds Gualtieri’s behavior in general and towards
his wife “beastly.”2 He states f latly, “I want to speak about a Marquis, not
all that magnificent, but actually an idiotic beast. . . . In fact, I
would not suggest that anyone follow his example. . . .”3 This,
obviously, is hardly the wise prince Petrarch created in his supposed
translation of the tale. Dioneo then more subtly attacks him as a ruler
(signore), remarking that he was a young man who spent all his time “in hawking
and hunting and in nothing else.”4 Here we have echoes of an earlier tale in
the Decameron, the third tale of day two, about spendthrift Florentine youths
who threw away the riches left them by their aristocratic father by living the
thoughtless life of young nobles hunting, hawking, and living like signori.5
Significantly, those Florentine youths, after they lost their inherited
fortune, regained it by going to England and loaning money at interest to the
apparently even more foolish signori there, the English nobility, like many Florentine
bankers.6 Yet quickly they squandered their riches again, because, as the story
stresses, they returned to living like signori, eschewing the virtù that made
their Florentine merchant/banker contemporaries so successful. What, one might
well ask, was this virtù that had allowed them to remake their fortune and that
repeatedly brings success to the denizens of Boccaccio’s tales? At one level
the answer is simple. For Boccaccio’s contemporaries virtù was a term that
identified the range of behaviors that allowed one to succeed and made one
person superior to another. Simply put, it marked out the best. But the
simplicity of that definition quickly dissolves before the fact that largely
because it was such a telling term its meaning was highly contested and f luid,
in fact changing considerably over time, place, and across social divides.
Speaking very broadly, in an earlier warrior society many saw virtù in
aggression, direct action, often violent; and in physical strength, blood line,
and blood itself, even as at the same time moralists and philosophers often saw
it in more Christian behavior that rejected violence and aggression. In the
cities of northern Italy in the fourteenth century this traditional vision of
virtù was first expanded, then increasingly overshadowed by a vision more
suited to the urban life of the day and newer merchant/banker elites. For many
at the time, virtù required the control of passions—in contrast to an earlier
vision that privileged their moredirect expression—and included a strong lean
towards peaceful, mannered conduct that required reasonable, calculating (at
times sliding into cunning) behavior that controlled the present and
significantly the future as well.7 In sum, virtù, even as it was contested and
changed over time, was a word of power that helped to define an urban male
citizen and a truly good man. In the end, however, these youths were saved from
their un-virtù -ous behavior by a virtù -ous nephew, Alessandro, who first
re-established their fortunes via once again astute money-lending, and then
with his virtù won a bride who turned out to be the daughter of the king of
England, effectively overcoming all their foolish misdeeds. From this
perspective, it is clear that the signore Gualtieri, much like Alessandro’s
uncles, was not a virtù -ous or good prince, ruling as he should. Rather, by
not attending to anything but his own youthful pleasures, he was acting in a
way that Florentines would have easily associated with their fears about
contemporary signori/tyrants; for such rulers were seen by them as ruling all
too often merely to serve their own whims and selfish pleasures at the expense
of their subjects. And, in fact, proudly republican Florence had recently in
1342 experienced a brush with a signore/tyrant of its own, Walter of Brienne.
He had been appointed to a one-year term as ruler of the city in the hope that
he would be able to overcome an economic crisis caused by the failure of the
major banking houses of the city. But, as was often the case, he quickly
attempted to take power permanently as a signore and was just as quickly thrown
out after only ten months of unpopular rule. Almost immediately afterwards, a
popular government returned to power, and it remained wary of signori of any
type.8 Significantly, however, most Anglophone critics have failed to note that
the Italian for Walter is Gualtieri and thus that Florence had thrown out a
tyrannical Gualtieri of their own just a decade before Boccaccio completed the
Decameron. Tellingly the negative behaviors often associated with contemporary
tyrants are immediately linked to the tale’s Gualtieri and his marriage by
Dioneo, who notes that not only did he not pay attention to anything else but
his own selfish pleasures, he “had no interest in either taking a wife or
having children. . . .”9 This, then, had created problems with his
subjects. As they, like all good subjects, wanted him to take on the
responsibilities of a mature male and ruler by marrying; for marriage was seen
at the time as perhaps the most important sign of reaching full maturity and
taking on the sober responsibilities of an adult male.10 Moreover, with
marriage, a prince began to produce the heirs that would secure an ordered
passage of power at his death, something that for his subjects was crucial.
With Gualtieri’s rejection of this, in essence Dioneo had presented his readers
with a questionable signore/lord/ruler who refused to give up his youthful and
irresponsible ways to rule as an adult prince with virtù.11 In the end, then,
although he reluctantly gave in to his subjects’ demands, he decided to do so
by taking a bride without consulting with anyone. And once again this would
have troubled contemporaries. Arranged marriages were the norm in fourteenth-century
Florence and more widely and crucially theywere negotiated by parents or
relatives to secure broader family goals or, in the case of rulers, meaningful
alliances. The immature Gualtieri instead took his marriage personally in hand
to secure his selfish desires with no concern for his family, his subjects, or
even love. Moreover, his lack of love in selecting his bride also evoked the
negative presentation in Decameron stories of many unhappy marriages where the
lack of love had led to bad matches, especially for women. Repeatedly the tales
advocated avoiding this ill-fated situation by marrying for true love, exactly
what Gualtieri rejected. From his perspective marrying for love and loving his
wife would have endangered his un-virtù -ous life, focused on his own personal
pleasures. And at the same time, it would have also signaled the end of his
freedom from his responsibilities as a ruler and declare that he had acquiesced
in becoming the signore/prince that his subjects desired and that Petrarch had
rewritten him as being in his misleading supposed Latin translation of the
tale.12 Making his disgruntlement clear, Gualtieri finally did knuckle under to
his subjects’ demands, but warned them that whoever he might chose, they must honor
her as their lady or feel his anger.13 The reality behind that warning was soon
dramatically revealed.14 For Gualtieri had for some time been observing a
pretty, well-mannered peasant girl who lived nearby. Yet crucially what made
her most attractive to Gualtieri was the fact that as a humble peasant he was
confident that he could dominate her so that she did not interfere with his
youthful lordly pleasures, the selfish key to his marital strategy again.15
Following Gualtieri’s misplaced desires, we are drawn ever deeper into the dark
morass of unhappy marriages in the Decameron. Having selected his bride without
disclosing her identity to anyone and without her even being aware of it, he
insisted that his subjects come with him to celebrate the matrimony. And so it
was that one day they followed him to an unlikely nearby village where the
peasant girl, Griselda, lived in poverty with her father. The scene is nicely
set by the narrator of the tale Dioneo, as he describes how the richly attired
relatives of Gualtieri and his most important subjects arrived on horseback
before Griselda’s humble hut. When she, dressed in rags, rushed onto the scene,
anxious to see who their lord’s new bride would be, to everyone’s surprise
Gualtieri called down to her by name to ask to speak with her father. She
replied modestly that he was inside and accompanied him in to the peasant hut
to talk with her father, Giannucole.16 Even her father’s name reeked of
Griselda’s humble status, for Giannucole is the diminutive for Giovanni. Using
the diminutive for an adult male, and a pater familias at that, essentially
denied him any status or honor. Gualtieri underlined the point when he did not
waste any time with niceties on a person who, given that lack of status, did
not warrant them from his perspective. Thus, he did not ask Griselda’s father
for her hand as simple politeness required; rather he announced that he had
come to marry her. Then, continuing in his high-handed ways, he turned to her
and demanded that if he took her for his wife, “will you always be committed to
pleasing me and never do or say anything that would upset me.”17 Once again the
absenceof love in Gualtieri’s approach to his future bride is stunning,
especially for the tales of the Decameron; and moreover, his lack of regard for
her father, and for her is deeply troubling. Turning to Florentine history and
traditions once more it seemed almost as if his way of treating Griselda and
her father echoed what the citizens of Florence most disliked in the
high-handed ways of local nobles/lords that they had rejected in the 1290s when
they passed their revered Ordinances of Justice. These laws were ostensibly
designed to punish local nobles and their ilk (labeled magnates) for just such
high-handed behavior and mistreatment of common folk. And these Ordinances had
become a symbolic keystone of Florentine republican government and its civic
vision and would remain so across the Rinascimento. In fact, one of the few
times that the Ordinances were questioned was when they were cancelled almost
immediately after Walter of Brienne, the other Gualtieri and would-be Signore
of Florence, was driven out. After he was expelled in 1343, the Ordinances were
momentarily cancelled by a short lived aristocratic government and then almost
immediately reinstated by the popular government that replaced both Gualtieri
and that unpopular aristocratic moment, as a strong reminder that the city
would not allow signori of any type to mistreat Florentines. And although
Gualtieri did not himself revoke the Ordinances, the black legends that grew up
around his rule often made him responsible for their momentary elimination and
an attack on popular republic government.18 All that this implies is underlined
by the famous marriage scene that follows, for Gualtieri, with his demands met,
takes Griselda by the hand and leads her from her home. There in front of the
whole group of his elegantly dressed subjects to their surprise and dismay he
ordered her stripped naked.19 He then had her re-dressed with the aristocratic
clothing and the rich accoutrements that made up a noble’s wardrobe and only
then consented to marry her. As often noted, this dramatic scene in its
undressing and re-dressing of his bride essentially symbolized and perhaps
contributed to the rebirth that Gualtieri believed he was engineering,
transforming Griselda from a humble peasant to a noble wife, using clothing as
both a symbol and a tool. And indeed, the tale goes on to point out how quickly
and successfully she impressed the gathering, appearing to take up easily the
manner and bearing of a princess in her new noble clothing. That impression was
confirmed in the days following, when, as Gualtieri’s wife, she displayed to
all impressive manners and wifely virtues. In sum, once redressed she was
capable of being transformed from a humble peasant to a noble princess—the very
stuff of fairy tales and popular fantasy. But it is also the very stuff of
Florentine beliefs at the time—the elite of the city had shifted from old noble
families to a newer merchant/banker group who dominated Florence both
economically and socially. Thus, a humble peasant who gained the opportunity
and the dress to move at the highest social levels was an attractive conceit,
demonstrating that anyone with virtù could behave as well as the old nobility.
From that perspective Griselda had that delicious quality of fulfilling
contemporary fantasies, even if many rich Florentines would havebeen comforted
perhaps by the fact that such a leap for someone of her status was highly
unlikely. Yet there is a way in which the dramatic stripping of Griselda—a
theme that would have great popularity in the future in literature and art—has
masked a deeper honor dynamic involved in this troubling marriage. In fact, the
tale’s Florentine audience would have been aware from the first that marriages
were virtually always moments when issues of honor were central. That was why
fathers usually played such a significant role in such affairs: they had, in
theory at least, the mature judgment to evaluate the complex calculus of family
honor involved in a marriage alliance between two families without letting
youthful emotions interfere. Unfortunately, from this perspective the young, selfish,
self-centered Gualtieri fell far short of this ideal, as the tale made
abundantly clear. Nonetheless, Gualtieri was aware of the honor dimensions of
his marriage and was anxious to resolve them in his own high-handed way.
Anticipating the resistance of his subjects to his marriage of a peasant and
its implications for the honor of all involved—a marriage that he saw as
serving his interests and not theirs—from the first he insisted that they
accept his choice and “honor” it and him as their ruler. And, of course, as
long as his misguided honor was a driving force replacing love in his approach
to marrying Griselda, it crippled the relationship and his ability to be a good
husband and suggested a similar situation vis-à-vis his subjects as a ruler
where love for his subjects was also lacking. Crucially in this way of seeing
things, his behavior evoked strong echoes of other husbands and princes in the
tales of the Decameron whose lives were destroyed by their misguided sense of
honor. In turn, such behavior echoed Florentine fears about the dangers of a
central/northern Italian world where it appeared—in many ways correctly—that
the days of republics like theirs were a thing of the past. They were being
rapidly replaced by the one-man rule of signori who claimed to be princes, but
more often than not seemed to Florentines to be self-serving tyrants like
Gualtieri, more concerned with their misguided honor and selfish pleasures than
just rule. Yet in the short term things seemed to be looking up for Gualtieri’s
honor and his marriage. Not only did Griselda win over his subjects, she soon
became pregnant and produced a daughter. But not long after the happy birth,
the f laws in his personality and his treatment of his wife began to reveal a
deeper, darker truth. Almost as if he feared to succumb to the success of his
marriage, he decided to test his wife to assure himself that she was ready to
honor all his lordly wishes, no matter how cruel and tyrannical they might be.
Significantly, however, he defended these tests to Griselda as a concern for
his honor, complaining that his subjects were murmuring about her lowly peasant
origins and the similar baseness of her daughter. In fact, his claim was
presented as false by Dioneo. Gualtieri’s honor was never questioned by his
subjects in this context; actually, they are portrayed as quite happy with his
bride, even as they were surprised by her success as a lady. Griselda, however,
accepted his false claims, and, as a result, unhappily understood the worries
about his honor thatwere supposedly tormenting Gualtieri. Thus, she replied
obediently as a subject to such a lord must: “My lord (Signor mio), do with me
what you will as whatever is best for your honor or contentment I will accept
. . .”20 (1239). Once again one wonders how this would have played
for Florentine republican readers, who saw in such one-man rule and unjust
claims of honor the essence of tyranny—the greatest danger to their own
republican values and way of life. And in the context of an unloving, unhappy
marriage, we are faced with a man and a relationship definitely gone wrong and
a poor wife whose suffering Florentines could feel.21 Things quickly go from
bad to worse. Evermore the tyrant, Gualtieri deceitfully uses his honor to
excuse his most outrageous demands on his wife/subject. First, he has a servant
take her daughter away. And making it clear that he is acting on the lord’s
orders, the servant implies that he has been instructed to kill the child. With
great sadness Griselda hands over her baby. Although Gualtieri is impressed by
her obedience and strength in the face of his horrible demand, nonetheless he
allows her and his subjects to believe that the child has been killed, while he
secretly sends it off to relatives in Bologna to be raised. Continuing his
testing of her, when she gives birth to a male child and heir, he once more
claims the child’s life, using again the excuse of fearing for his honor and
his rule. Woman, because you have made this male child, I cannot find any peace
with my subjects as they complain insistently that a grandson of Giannucole
will after me become their Signore, so I have decided that if I do not want to
be overthrown, I must do with him what I did to the other [child]. Moreover,
given all this [I must sooner or later] leave you and take another wife.22
Dioneo, however, makes it clear to his listeners that once again this claim is
false, noting that Gualtieri’s subjects were not complaining about the boy’s
humble background or the loss of honor it implied. In fact, he points out that
in the face of the apparent murder of both children, his subjects “strongly
damned him and held him to be a cruel man, while having great compassion for
Griselda.”23 Hardly the response of those anxious to see an unsuitable heir or
wife eliminated or those enthusiastic about their exemplary prince, as Petrarch
misleadingly portrayed him. Still, as her lord and their tyrant, both she and
they had no option but to bow down before his cruel will, yet another lesson
about the dangerous honor of lords and their potential for heavy-handed tyranny
that would not have been lost on republican Florence. So, the second child
joined the first in apparent death—while Griselda lived on sadly under the
shadow of her husband’s warning that eventually he would end the whole problem
of her humble birth besmirching his honor and threatening his rule by putting
her aside to take an honorable bride.
And finally, after twelve years Gualtieri decided that his daughter had grown
old enough to pass as his new bride; and it was time for the last tests of his
wife. Thus, he acted onhis earlier promise, informing her that he was ready to
dissolve their marriage in order to take a more suitable wife. Claiming that he
had secured a dispensation from the pope to put her aside, he gathered his
subjects together to make the announcement that he was sending her back to her
father and her humble life as a peasant. Evidently, he was not content to
continue his cruel testing of his wife in private; rather his cruel deeds had
to be displayed before his subjects. The power to rule and the honor it
required were at play and perhaps also a desire to warn his subjects that he
was their signore as well and capable of similar deeds to defend his honor and
assert his control over them. But considering what fourteenth-century
Florentines would have made of this new outrage is again suggestive; for almost
certainly they would have seen in this a cruel lord acting as a tyrant, mistreating
his most loyal subject in a way that no right-thinking republican Florentine
would ever accept—in sum Gualtieri was the model anti-prince. Gualtieri
announced, then, before his troubled subjects and the abject Griselda, that he
was renouncing her as his wife because in the past my ancestors were great
nobles and lords of these lands, where your ancestors were always laborers
(lavoratori ), I wish that you will no longer be my wife, but rather that you
return to the house of Giannucole . . . and I will take another wife
that I have found that pleases me and is befitting [to my status].24 In sum,
his ancestors were nobles and rulers and Griselda’s were humble laborers;
therefore, their marriage was unsuitable and he was literally suffering the
dishonor of being a lord badly married. The term “lavoratori ” used to describe
her ancestors, while it could be used as a synonym for a peasant, may well have
suggested something more troubling yet. The more normal terminology for
Griselda’s ancestors would have been contadini or villani,25 but by contrasting
his nobility with her status as descended from lavoratori, Gualtieri once again
was asserting status claims that would have ruff led Florentine feathers. For
the people of Florence, who had fought so hard across the thirteenth century to
drive out high-handed nobles like Gualtieri, had done so in the name of
protecting the laborers of the city from just such high-handed behavior. In
fact, the Ordinances of Justice labeled such behavior as typical of the nobility.
And the Ordinances were celebrated as wise legislation designed to discipline
and punish the nobility and protect lavoratori from their high-handed ways.
Once again, the recent attempt to eliminate the Ordinances in 1342 and the
threat that posed to the laborers of the city would have added weight to the
negative valence of Gualtieri’s speech.26 All this cruel testing of Griselda
calls up echoes of another person often associated with her and this tale, who
had also suffered greatly under his lord, the biblical Job. In fact,
commentators have often pointed to the parallels betweenGriselda’s patient
suffering at the hands of her signore/lord/husband and Job’s suffering at the
hands of his Signore/Lord/God as a reason for seeing her as an exemplary wife
and loyal subject accepting her husband’s rightful dominance, just as Petrarch
later recreated her.27 There is an immediate problem with this parallel,
however, for Job’s Lord did not actually deal out the setbacks that deeply
wounded him. He merely withdrew his protection and left the door open for Satan
to attempt to destroy Job’s faith, ultimately without success. From that
perspective Gualtieri seems more to parallel Satan than God. Despite that
often-overlooked theological nicety, however, the God (Signore) of the Old
Testament who allowed the testing of Job might seem to vaguely parallel at a
higher level her lord (signore), Gualtieri’s, testing of Griselda. But
tellingly in the Trinitarian view of time being preached aggressively in
Florence when the Decameron was being written and as war loomed with the
papacy, that Old Testament God and His troubling relationship with humanity
following the original sin of Adam and Eve—often portrayed as dishonoring that
Signore —was seen by many as no longer the order of the day. Christ’s love and
his sacrificing of his honor to die as a common criminal to save humanity was
seen as inaugurating a new order and dispensation, a view especially stressed
by a powerful group of local preachers at the time. And the Godliness of that
new age, Boccaccio’s present, was totally alien to Gualtieri and totally alien
to his relationship with his wife and his subjects—for crucially, he explicitly
rejected love in favor of jealously protecting his honor, much like the
vengeful Lord of the Old Testament and nothing like the God of Love of the New.
In a work that over and over again stresses the importance of love, love in
marriage and in the best relationships between men and women, Gualtieri becomes
the cruel husband, the anti-prince, the tyrant par excellence, and a ref
lection of a relationship with the wrathful God of the Old Testament that no
longer obtained. And, of course, this last tale of the Decameron is told by
Dioneo—literally “Dio Neo,” the “new god” of love—who makes it clear that he
finds Gualtieri unsuitable as a husband, ruler, and most certainly as any kind
of a lover. But this was merely the prelude to his last cruel testing of poor
Griselda. For Gualtieri then demanded that she return to prepare and oversee
his wedding to his new bride. Once again Griselda accepted this command. But
significantly Dioneo insists on making a critical clarification: Griselda
accepted his cruel command not as a patient ex-wife or as a loyal subject, but
out of love for Gualtieri. He explains that she accepted only because “she had
not been able to put aside the love she felt for him.”28 Thus she returned to
the palace as a servant, to prepare the new wedding for her beloved. Dioneo
relates a number of humiliating moments in the preparations and underlines once
again their injustice by noting the deeply troubled reactions of Gualtieri’s
subjects to her abuse and their repeated calls for a more just treatment of
her. The humiliation comes to a head when Gualtieri has his new bride brought
to his palace for the wedding. Presenting her to Griselda, he cruellytwists the
knife of her humiliation in public again, asking her opinion of his new lady.
She answered, My lord . . . she seems to me very good and if she is
as intelligent as she is beautiful, as I believe, I am certain that you ought
to live with her as the most content signore in the world. But still I would
pray that those wounds that you gave before to the earlier one [wife], you
spare this one; because I doubt that she could resist them, for she has been
raised with great gentleness, whereas the other was used to hardships from her
childhood.29 Yes, Griselda has suffered and finally even she has complained.
Subtly, and without ever referring to herself by name, she has pointed out
finally the unjust nature of his rule over her and by implication over his
subjects. It would be satisfying to claim that Griselda’s final faint
demonstration of defiance caused Gualtieri to change his ways, but Dioneo has
already informed us that Gualtieri was ready to act even before she spoke. Thus
ignoring her comments, he declares: Griselda it is time that you finally hear
the fruit of your long patience and that those who have held me to be cruel and
unjust and bestial learn that it was all according to plan, wishing to teach
you how to be a wife and teach others how to pick and keep a wife and [finally]
to guarantee my peace as long as we would live together.30 In the end, then,
even Gualtieri admits that his lordly ways have been cruel, unjust, and
bestial, but he justifies them by claiming that he has taught Griselda how to
be a good wife. And many commentators, following Petrarch, have taken this
claim at face value, arguing that Gualtieri is the demanding but just hero of
the tale and Griselda the ideal wife fashioned by his treatment of her. Yet, in
fact, as the story makes clear over and over again, his cruelty did not teach
her anything. She came to him, as she has just pointed out, already accustomed to
suffering and accepting the hardships that life brought her as a peasant. She
was born into hardship and suffering and she adapted quickly to her lord and
his mistreatment because of her own inherent peasant ability to suffer and lack
of a sense of honor. Indeed, one would be hard put to find a place where the
tale or Dioneo suggest that she learned anything from Gualtieri. And while the
fourteenth-century Florentine readers of this tale were more usually urban
dwellers than peasants and thus theoretically not as inured to hardship and
suffering, they were proudly not nobles either, and it is hard to imagine them
accepting from local nobles the treatment that Gualtieri dished out. Moreover,
it is hard to imagine that they would have felt sympathy for Gualtieri’s
defense of his cruel ways, as they too would have been unlikely to feel any
need for such lessons from nobles or signori to learn the patience necessary to
survive as subjects (as they had recently demonstrated throwing out their own
Gualtieri) or for that matter even to survive as wives.Actually, it might seem
strange that finally after retaking Griselda as his wife and explaining his
whole plan to his subjects and her, the couple are portrayed by Dioneo as
living happily ever after. But providing an explanation for that improbable
happy ending is a startling and significant admission by Gualtieri: for, as
unlikely as it might seem, all his cruel tests have led him finally to a
crucial transformation— the decisive often overlooked climax of the tale. He
has finally discovered the emotion of love and has fallen in love with his
victim, Griselda. He confesses at the last: “I am your husband who loves you
more than anything and believe me when I say that there is no man more content
than I in his wife.”31 Crucially with that admission, and Griselda’s ongoing
love that survived his every cruelty, no longer is their marriage simply an
unhappy mismatch with a wife subject to her lord/husband defending his
misguided honor and selfish noble pleasures. Rather, now it is exactly the kind
of marriage that the Decameron advocates over and over again. With love as its
emotional base, the happy ending that the story, and the Decameron itself,
requires is possible and Gualtieri, his wife, and perhaps even his subjects can
live happily ever after—not a divine comedy perhaps but a human one.32 For in
the end Griselda survived a cruel lord, and with her willingness to suffer and
peasant patience, she, not he, for a moment at least became the true teacher,
teaching a tyrant who rejected love to love and to become a true prince—in this
she was perhaps more Christ-like than Job-like. Let me suggest that by
contemporary Florentine standards or those of the imagined and real women
listeners of Dioneo’s tale, Gualtieri’s mistreatment of his wife was anything
but a model of an ideal marriage until everything changed with love at its
conclusion, despite Petrarch’s claim to the contrary. In the end, then, she was
a victim, but in ways that many critics have had trouble seeing. First, of
course, at the hands of her cruel lord/husband. But also at the hands of the
would-be aristocrat and anti-republican Petrarch. For despite his claims about
what he saw as an ideal of marriage, he also retold her tale in Latin to
celebrate the honor of the often cruel signori—tyrants and lords—that he
cultivated for patronage and support far from the republican Florence that
claimed him at times with difficulty as an honored son. Still, in the end she
and love won out, a fitting conclusion to the new god of love, Dioneo, and his
tale, as well as to Boccaccio’s Decameron.Notes 1 I have used for this tale and
all citations from the Decameron the classic edition edited by Vittorio Branca:
Boccaccio, Decameron. In this reading that looks more closely at the Marquis of
Saluzzo, I am following the path breaking lead of Barolini in her article “The
Marquis of Saluzzo.” But I emphasize more a Florentine perspective on the tale
than Barolini and am less inclined to follow her strategy of using game theory
to explain what she labels as the Marquis’ beffa. I discovered after I wrote an
early draft of this essay Barsella’s excellent article “Tyranny and Obedience.”
My account stresses more the marital as well as the political side of the tale
and looks more closely at the Florentine political and social world of the day,
while she offers a more complete analysis of the ancient and medieval
theoretical literature on tyranny; but we both agree that the tale is more
about Gualtieri as a tyrant than about Griselda as a model wife.2 Decameron,
1233. “Beastly” often seems to serve as code word or signal that the male so
labelled has sexual appetites that are “unnatural” by Boccaccio’s standards and
hence like those of a beast. If beastly is being used in that sense here, it
would add another dimension to the Marquis’ rejection of marriage and the love
of women, one that Boccaccio regularly paints in a negative light. Barolini
provides an interesting discussion of the term drawing similar conclusions but
emphasizes its echoes of Dante’s usage of the term, along with its classical
and Aristotelian dimension—a perspective that would undoubtedly have had its
weight for learned readers and listeners, but perhaps less for a broader
audience at the time. Barolini, “Marquis of Saluzzo,” 25–26. 3 Ibid., 1233;
italics mine. 4 Ibid., 1234. 5 The three are described as the young sons of a
noble knight named Tebaldo from either the Lamberti or the Agolanti
families—both Ghibelline families exiled from Florence in the late Middle Ages
and thus suspect already in fourteenth-century Florence with its strong Guelf
tradition. 6 Although it should be noted that the prospects of profits from
loaning money to the English had become less appetizing after the recent
failure of Florentine banks in 1342, in part caused by the King of England’s
reneging on his debts to them. Actually, recent scholarship has argued that
local bad loans in Tuscany and debts built up in the ongoing wars in the region
were more responsible for the bank failures, but contemporary accounts tended
to place a heavy emphasis on the King of England’s actions—perhaps as a way to
divert attention from the more local issues involved. Barsella notes also this
connection in “Tyranny and Obedience,” 74–75. 7 Ruggiero, Machiavelli, 163–211.
This vision of virtù and its development across the Rinascimento in Italy is
one of the central themes of my effort to reinterpret the period in my book The
Renaissance in Italy. From this perspective, Boccaccio’s Decameron with its
stress on virtù is a work that fits more in the world of fourteenth-century
Italy than as a work of medieval literature as it is often characterized. Of
course, many of his tales have medieval sources and echoes, but significantly
they are rewritten with a very different set of values more characteristic of
fourteenth-century Florence and the city-states of central and northern Italy.
8 Walter (Gualtieri) of Brienne actually makes an appearance in the Decameron
in his own right as one of the nine “lovers” of the Sultan of Babylon’s
daughter, and a quite bloody “lover” at that (II, 7). Boccaccio also wrote a
quite uncomplimentary account of his life in his De Casibus Virorum Illustrium,
Lib. IX, cap. 24. 9 Decameron, 1234. Dioneo, however, does follow this comment
with what appears to be a compliment for this lack of desire to marry, “for
which he was to be seen as very wise” (1234). Yet what follows undercuts the
force of this apparently very traditional negative vision of marriage. And
throughout the Decameron Boccaccio seems to provide an unusual number of tales
that see well-matched marriages as positive and at least potentially happy. 10
For this see the discussion in Ruggiero, Machiavelli, 24–6, 172–73 and
Giannetti, Lelia’s Kiss, 18, 131–34. 11 While the character Gualtieri had the
same name as the recent Florentine would-be tyrant, this is not to argue that
he was the only tyrant being referred to in the tale. In actuality Florence was
surrounded by dangerous and aggressive tyrants who were capable of instilling
fear in the city even if they were not named Gualtieri. As often noted, the
fourteenth century, following in the footsteps of the thirteenth, was a period
where republics were losing out to tyrants everywhere and Florence found
themselves surrounded by aggressive signori on virtually all sides. 12 This
lack of love also played a significant role in his lack of a positive
relationship with his subjects, once again the micro-level of life, in this
case marriage, reflecting the macro-level of life, in this case Gualtieri’s
rule. Both lacked love and that stood literally at the heart of his negative
consensus reality for his subjects and for the Florentine readers of his tale.
13 Clearly with the repetition of “insisting” and Gualtieri’s will, the tale is
playing on will as a dangerous source of sin when misplaced as it is in this
case. Of course, will from a1415 16 17 181920 2133theological perspective is
the basis of all sin, which in the end is merely willing to turn away from the
good and ultimately God. In this case Gualtieri might be seen as willfully
turning away from love, the good and God much like Satan turned away from love,
the good and God in the greatest rejection of all. At this moment in the tale
with his willing misdeed, it might be argued Gualtieri confirms his fallen
state. Barolini suggests that in these demands Gualtieri, unhappy with his
subjects’ calls for his marriage, is setting up a beffa at their expense—a very
typical form of Florentine joke that in this case punishes them for forcing him
to marry against his will—and the key to the beffa is forcing them in turn to
accept the peasant wife that he will pick unbeknownst to them. Although there
is a logic to this perspective, it seems more likely that contemporaries would
have assumed the driving force in his decision to take a peasant as a wife was
his belief that she would have to be totally subservient to him, something that
Barolini stresses as well. Decameron, 1235. Although the text is clear that
Gualtieri entered the house alone, the discussion between Gualtieri, the
father, and Griselda requires that she had entered as well. Perhaps it is
significant that she is so humble that her entering the house with Gualtieri
does not require mention. Ibid., 1237. The Ordinances of Justice were first
passed in Florence on January 18, 1293 and while their meaning at the time has
been much debated, they became with time a kind of civic monument to the ideal
of Florence as a republic ruled by the popolo without the interference of the
traditional Tuscan rural nobility, labeled magnates, who had once dominated the
city. For the debate and the more complex reality of the Ordinances and the
magnates themselves see my Renaissance, 77–82 and 94–97 and the overview of
Najemy in A History of Florence, 81–89, 92–95, 135–38, and for a more detailed
study see Lansing, The Florentine Magnates. Suggestively, Petrarch in his
rather different retelling of the tale, softens this act of prepotency and male
power that once again here strongly underlines Gualtieri’s cruelty and lack of
required manners. He adds the telling detail that Gualtieri had Griselda
surrounded by women of honor before she was stripped. Here we see how the tale could
be changed to make it a hymn to a wise and careful husband anxious to arrange
the right kind of marriage that would assure a matrimony that functioned as it
should with the husband in command and the woman subservient and obedient. But
Dioneo’s careful scripting of Gualtieri’s boorish and self-centered behavior in
line with his high-handed ways that evoke the psychological violence of the old
nobility, strongly suggest a very different vision of Gualtieri and his
marriage—a negative vision in line with many of the tales about the injustices
of arranged marriages in the Decameron. Decameron, 1239. One might note here
that although Griselda is clearly a victim, she is hardly a heroine as often
claimed by critics. There are in fact any number of actual female heroines in
the Decameron whose tales were constructed to show their virtù and ability to
control their own lives and virtually always their goal of winning a meaningful
love in life and often in marriage. Perhaps the best example of this, and a
virtual anti-Griselda tale, that gives the lie to Petrarch’s and later critics’
vision of Griselda as a model wife is the tale of Gilette of Narbonne (III, 9),
who empowered by love cures the king of France and overcoming a series of
seemingly impossible trials (typical of medieval lover’s tales and more
normally male knights) in the end thanks to her virtù wins the love of the man
she loves, her husband, Bertrand of Roussillon. In this tale he is also
portrayed as a cruel lord, but Gilette is anything but passive and takes her
life in her own hands to win out in the end—a model of what a woman can
accomplish with real virtù in the name of love. It is suggestive also that
Gilette is an upper-class non-noble from an urban setting not unlike the
Florentine readers of the Decameron and much more easily accepted as active and
aggressive than the humble peasant Griselda. Similar virtù overcoming a husband
both cruel and foolish is presented also in tale (II, 9) where a Genoese woman,
who takes the name Sigurano da Finale, passes as a male and flourishes in a
series of adventures thanks to her virtù and in the end recovers the love of
the husband she loves despite his murderous misdeeds.3422 23 24 2526 2728 29 30
31 32Guido RuggieroDecameron, 1241. Ibid. Ibid., 1242–43. In fact, this is the
only use of the term in the tale, usually she and her father are referred to as
poor and it is noted that he is a swineherd not a laborer. The title of the
tale refers to her as “una figliuola d’un villano” and later when referring to
her unexpected virtù, her dress and by inference her status is referred to as
“villesco”: “l’alta vertù di costei nascosa sotto i poveri panni e sotto
l’abito villesco.” For this see Brucker, Florentine Politics, 114; Najemy,
Florence, 135–37. On the Ordinances see note 18 above. Branca actually points
out the textual parallels noting that in the story of Job I:20 he states “Nudus
egressus sum . . . nudus revertar” in reference to Griselda’s “ignuda
m’aveste . . . Io me n’andrò ignuda . . .” (1243). In the
New Oxford Annotated Bible, the famous lament of Job is rendered “Naked I came
from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return; the Lord gave, and the Lord
has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job I:20 [614]). Decameron,
1244–45. Ibid., 1246. Ibid., 1247. Ibid. Critics have from time to time
referred to the Decameron as “The Human Comedy” playing on an apparent contrast
with Dante’s Divine Comedy, but I would suggest that Boccaccio’s comedy was
more divine than it might at first seem and Dante’s more human.Bibliography
Barolini, Teodolinda. “The Marquis of Saluzzo, or the Griselda Story Before It
Was Hijacked: Calculating Matrimonial Odds in the Decameron 10:10.” Mediaevalia
34 (2013): 23–55. Barsella, Susanna. “Tyranny and Obedience: A Political
Reading of the Tale of Gualtieri (Dec., X, 10).” Italianistica XLII, no. 2
(2013): 68–77. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. Edited by Vittorio Branca.
Turin: Einaudi, 1992. Brucker, Gene. Florentine Politics and Society 1343–1378.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962. Giannetti, Laura. Lelia’s
Kiss: Imagining Gender, Sex, and Marriage in Italian Renaissance Comedy.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Lansing, Carol. The Florentine
Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1991. Najemy, John. A History of Florence, 1200–1575. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2006. Ruggiero, Guido. Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society
in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2007. ———. The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the
Rinascimento. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.3 SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN
THE SIENESE STATE BEFORE AND AFTER THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC Elena BrizioSexual
violence in Renaissance and early modern Siena was widespread, barely
manageable, and apparently accepted, though not always legitimized, especially
when it applied to particular social classes. Both the nobility and the clergy
considered it their “right” to engage in behavior that underscored their social
superiority.1 This included not only the use of weapons, but also brawls,
thievery, private vendettas, and sexual violence. Such behavior did not,
however, pertain only to them: commoners also forcefully imposed their
brutality, sexuality, and violence on less powerful victims who happened to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time, or whose only fault was their
vulnerability. But not all victims, whether male or female, endured violence
passively. For everyone whose voice was not heard, there were many others who,
in spite of their age or sex, protested the violence they had endured and
described it in detail. Unlike other Italian cities, medieval Siena did not
have a single government office charged with the social control of the
population and the suppression of behavior deemed to be unacceptable.2 This
changed in 1460 when the government established the office of the Otto di
custodia (Eight in charge of Protection) to oversee behavior and public
health.3 After several changes to its name and tasks, the office was abolished
in 1541 by the Spanish protectorate, and then reestablished in 1554 as the
Ufficiali sopra la pace (Officers in charge of the Peace) in order to settle
citizen disputes and prosecute both blasphemy and violence. Yet this
incarnation was also short-lived, and the office was abolished at the fall of
the Republic in 1555.4 The administration of justice was entrusted first to the
Captain of the People (Capitano del popolo), and then to the Captain of Justice
(Capitano di giustizia), before being abolished in 1481. Some of its tasks were
entrusted to the Rota court in 1503, but in the event the 1481 suppression was
not definitive, and the Captain of Justice seems to have recovered some
functions in the first half ofthe sixteenth century. The office of the Captain
of Justice was formally revived when Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici issued an edict
on the “Reformation of the Government of the City and State of Siena.” in 1561,
and it acquired criminal jurisdiction over the city and the podesterie (the
administrative structures into which the countryside was organized).5 The
Captain of Justice also gained those tasks previously entrusted to the Criminal
Judge (Giudice dei malefizi ),6 and functioned under the supervision of the
Governor (Governatore).7 The Governor was now the top official in the new
administration. He enjoyed “broad political and administrative functions,
supervised the public order, issued regulatory actions and had the control of
all sentences of tribunals.”8 All other magistrates lost their jurisdiction
over criminal lawsuits.9 These frequent changes to judicial offices in Siena
help us understand why documentation on crime is scattered throughout many
different archival collections and series. It is also incomplete, because much
material has been lost. As a result, it is not possible to analyze the Sienese
records in as thorough a social or statistical way as it has been done for
Florence.10 The preliminary analysis presented in this essay—which uses Sienese
documents for the years just before and after the fall of the Republic
(1555)—will serve to illustrate at least some cases of violence at a time in
Sienese history that, from the perspective of the history of crime, still awaits
detailed analysis. A preliminary analysis reveals just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the questions that arises from a first glance at the documentation is
why so much of the surviving documentation refers to violence in the
countryside and not in the city. Perhaps extra-judicial agreements between the
parties, reached in order to avoid denunciation, were more common or widespread
in the city. Or, perhaps, much of the documentation for urban violence has not
survived to the present day. In Siena, and especially in the Sienese
countryside already devastated by war, famine, and other problems, Medicean
legislation over criminal activities took a long time to be applied and become
the norm. One of the reasons for this was that the countryside suffered from a
very slow reconstruction process. It took not only time, but a lot of effort,
to erode and limit local authorities and personal powers that, for decades
after the fall of the republic, continued to impose a social code that
penalized those on the lower levels of the social scale.What the law said The
rubric on sexual violence in the last republican Sienese statute (1545)
followed medieval precedent and listed only adultery, rape, and abduction, in
that order, as crimes of violence.11 Sexual intercourse with a married woman of
whatever social rank or with an unmarried virgin was punishable by the
imposition of a financial penalty; abduction for the purpose of sexual
violence, on the other hand, was punishable by death. The definition of sexual
violence required that the abductor (raptor) marry the victim, if the father or
the senior male members of her family deemed it appropriate, or alternatively
that he provide her withSexual violence in the Sienese state 37a dowry. If
sexual violence was perpetrated against someone’s wife or daughter, it damaged
the honor of the husband and the family, so the culprit had to, somehow,
adequately restore that damaged honor.12 Sexual violence by men on men,
described in the statute as “a dreadful kind of violence that is used against
nature on men,” demanded that the rapist be jailed and pay a fine, but if the
rapist was over forty years old, he was to be burned at the stake.13 The
regulation in the Duchy of Florence was similar: in 1542 Duke Cosimo I revised
the law against “the nefarious, detestable, and abominable vice of sodomy” and
not only increased the fines but also imposed physical punishments and even the
death penalty on repeat offenders.14 Once Siena had been ceded by King Philip
II of Spain to the Medici in 1557 and incorporated into the duchy of Tuscany,
the 1558 revision of the Florentine law on sexual violence also applied to the
city. This revised law removed the fines and imposed only physical punishments
for “those who will use force and violence to women and men to satisfy their
sexual desire.”15 If the violence did not lead to an effusion of blood, the
culprit was to be sent to the galleys for a certain number of years to serve as
a chained rower; if, on the other hand, there had been an effusion of blood the
culprit was to be executed. The only exception allowed, and this only for
Florentine and Sienese citizens, was commuting the sentence to the galleys into
a jail term, but this only at the discretion of Duke Cosimo I. Such discretion
generally depended on the social rank, personal reputation, and family honor of
the culprit.The rape of women and young girls The new law was tested almost
immediately. “Since this case was of such manifest enormity, and the first
since the publication of Your Excellency’s last pronouncement against violence
on men and women”:16 so begins a letter by Orazio Camaiani (or Camaini),17 a
diligent official and Captain of Justice in the “New State” (Stato Nuovo) of
Siena, to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in the winter of 1559. Camaiani went on to
relate a case of attempted sexual violence against “a poor widow of Belforte”
who, on resisting her attacker, was hit by him so hard that she bled.18
Camaiani’s information came not from first-hand observation, but from letters
he had received from the vicar of Belforte (fol. 13r), a small mountain-top
hamlet about 45 km west of Siena. It included all the necessary negative
requirements—night, loneliness, violence. The “poor widow,” who is never named
in the letter,19 had been assaulted during the night in her own home by two men
who entered on purpose in order to rape her; she resisted the attack, screamed
loudly, and was wounded in the head and face. Her attackers ran away without
succeeding in their intent. The widow did, however, recognize one of her
attackers, “a certain Terenzio Usinini, Sienese” (fol. 13r) and reported him.
The Captain of Justice thus knew for whom to look. The information was sent to
Duke Cosimo I, but what has survived is scattered and incomplete. It does,
however, point to the many cases of violence in a territory that was still
sufferingfrom the aftermath of the raids and devastations brought about by the
recent Florentine conquest of Siena (1552–59) and the republic’s difficult
process of submission to its new Florentine lord. We know very little about
Terenzio Usinini. There is no record of his having been baptized in Siena,20 so
we can assume that he was born and baptized in the countryside. He also does
not appear among the very few Usinini who held secondary appointments in
Sienese offices.21 His family pedigree or that fact that the family belonged to
one of the major political groups in Siena, the Monte of the Riformatori, were
of no help to him—in referring to Terenzio, the Captain of Justice noted that
“a worst name against a person cannot be heard in the entire town.”22 In fact,
Terenzio did not have a good reputation—after hearing that he had been accused
of attempted rape, other women in town went to the Captain of Justice to report
that he had raped them, too, or had attempted to do so. Terenzio managed to
escape arrest on this occasion, but his accomplice, a priest, was not as
fortunate—he was captured thanks to a peasant who tricked him with the help of
a woman who was priest’s former lover. The incomplete records do not tell us
what happened to either Terenzio or the priest. We can, however, determine that
Terenzio seems to have been a violent highborn individual who behaved as if he
were above the law and thought he could force his sexual desires upon
subordinate women. This may, in fact, be to a certain extent true because
Terenzio seems to have managed somehow to escape justice. While highborn locals
might have been able to get away with sexual violence and escape justice, the
sexual misbehavior of state officials, who were to uphold the legal system, was
more problematic, especially when such officials used their power to abuse
women and girls. Already in 1378, Pietro Averani from Asti, a district judge
was dismissed because he had used the power of his office (sub pretextu offitii
) to rape a young virgin girl living in Siena.23 In a case from 1554, a
community in the countryside asked the government in Siena to “immediately”
send another commissioner to replace the current one whose violence against
some local women was such that it was about to cause serious disorders. One
“young, respectable, and good” local woman even went to Siena herself and, in
tears, described to the magistrates how the said commissioner had come into her
house at night on the excuse of seeing how the soldiers had been billeted and
had started to lay his hands on her, at which point she had begun to scream and
he stopped.24 Though problematic, the sexual misbehavior of this representative
of the legal system seems to have elicited little more than a request for
removal from the post or relocation, and no actual physical punishment meted
out on the guilty party. We do not know whether this was the limit of what
plaintiffs could expect. In a different case, blasphemy was added to the charge
of attempted violence. This rendered the accusation much more dangerous because
blasphemy was considered an “open crime,” that is, clear and public. Angela
reported that Bastiano, the servant of the Bargello (that is, of the chief of
police), “on many occasions requested her honor from her.”25 After beating her
several times because sherefused, he entered her house while her husband was
away and tried to rape her, at which point she started screaming. After
threatening her, “he pointed the dagger at her throat saying ‘whore of God, if
you scream I will slaughter you,’” but she continued to scream and so he left.
The examples given so far point to a somewhat spontaneous, even impulsive attempt
on the part of the men to engage in sex with an unwilling woman. There are also
cases of carefully planned attempts. Agnoletto the Corsican, for example, not
knowing how other to seduce a young woman, did so by impersonating a priest;
“because he did not know how else to rape a young girl, he took the clothes the
archpriest wore during Lent and, dressed like him, started confessing her in
church.” This particular record continues by pointing out that Agnoletto “raped
many women and did other impudent things.”26 We have further examples of
premeditated rape. A notary reports that Pompeo di Giovanni from Monticello, a
45-year-old man, married and with two daughters, had engaged in “robberies,
rapes and, in general, all other sorts of abuses done and committed” including
“raping, together with other men, Iacoma the daughter of Filippo, his
relative,” and of “having prided himself for having entered through the roof
into Antonia di Censio’s house only to have sex with her and perhaps he did so,
and because there was no point in screaming she, for the sake of her honor,
kept quiet about it.” The notary continues his report with the comment that he
“will remain silent on what Pompeo did to certain poor young women who were
walking by” and then concludes by recording that Pompeo was eventually found
guilty of a long list of robberies and sentenced to the gallows.27 After the
Council of Trent (1545–63), a new detail enters into notarial descriptions of
sexual violence: some defendants now tried to justify themselves by explaining
that they had been tempted by the devil. In 1571, Sandro was accused of raping
five-year-old Santina in a wheat field and causing her to bleed from her
vagina.28 In his defense, Sandro told the Captain of Justice that when he went
in the field to “shout at some children doing some damage,” Santina and
Elisabetta came by. Sandro was then tempted by the devil to sit down and grab
the said Santina and put her on his lap, and having pulled out his tail [i.e.
penis] through the opening of his trousers, he inserted the second finger of
his right hand into Santina’s nature [i.e., vagina] and, having seen that it
could enter easily, took out his finger and started pointing his tail towards
her nature and, in so doing, he could have hurt her and she shouted one or two
times. Hearing the little girl scream, her uncle Domenico rushed to help her
and found her crying and “totally wrecked and bloody.” He hit Sandro with a bow
he had in his hands and moved him away from the girl. Sandro later confessed that
since he could not put his member inside Santina’s nature, he was about to
finish [i.e. ejaculate] between her thighs or in some other way as best hecould
because the devil grabbed him by the hair and he [Sandro] could not stop himself,
but the said Domenico stopped him. Sandro’s deposition claims that when he was
raping the girl he was not his own self, but was under the control of the devil
to the point that he was not physically able to do otherwise until an external
force, Domenico, interrupted him and stopped the devil’s control. Referring
directly to the 1558 law mentioned above, the Captain of Justice pointed out
that, in cases of violence with effusion of blood, the accused must incur the
death penalty. Perhaps to elicit a more merciful sentence, the Captain of
Justice described Sandro as “a young man between 25 and 30 years old, a
bachelor, and more a fool than a scoundrel.” The plea was successful—Sandro was
spared his life and received the lighter sentence of “two or three years in the
galleys.”A matter of honor, but whose honor? In a letter of March 1524 to the
government in Siena, Bartolomeo di Camillo, at that time podestà (chief
magistrate) of Sarteano, reported a disturbing case of rape: A certain local
man, Agnolo di Ipolito, entered into the house of a certain Giovanni Baptista
Tucci, a citizen of Siena, and found a daughter whose name is Iuditta, who is
around fourteen-years-old and not yet married, and violently took her and
because she did not consent, he started hitting her and eventually he raped her
by force so that he broke her nature. 29 Podestà Petrucci then went on to say
that: It seemed to me that, since I am in this town, for the honor of your
Excellencies first and for my own honor secondly, I had to bring this shameful
case to your attention so that it will not go unpunished. Petrucci explained
how he sent soldiers to Agnolo’s house to arrest him, but the accused was
defended by one of his brothers and other relatives, as well as by the town’s
priors. Because the victim’s father, Giovanni Baptista Tucci, was a Sienese
citizen, Sienese statutes applied and overrode Sarteano’s local customs and
statute (capitoli ). Petrucci thus assumed that he had the authority, as
podestà of Sarteano, to deal with the case, so “In a friendly way, I let the
Priori know that I did not want to bypass their local customs, but I wanted [to
uphold] my honor.” The situation quickly deteriorated and one of Agnolo’s
relatives fired “two rif le shots together with offensive words” against the
podestà. Another relative, Petrucci reports, “told me, answering back, that if
I would have gone to his house, he would have punched not only me, but Christ
himself.”Two days later, Petrucci reported that news of the rape had reached
one of the subordinate judges in his podestarial team, and that this judge,
together with some soldiers, went once again at Agnolo’s house to arrest him.
Agnolo’s uncle, Ser Giovanni di Gabriello, threatened them, saying that if the
judge tried to get in, he would throw bricks or stones at him. In his report to
Siena, Petrucci underlines the fact that “Your Excellencies know that these
actions are done against you, that in this place I am your delegate, and that
in order to preserve your honor I am ready to give my life.” Two days after
this, Cardinal Giovanni Piccolomini, archbishop of Siena, wrote from Rome to
the Sienese Concistoro (the lords and main officers) in support of Ser
Giovanni; perhaps as a way to show that Ser Giovanni enjoyed important
connections and patronage, or perhaps as an attempt to limit more severe
outcomes. “Because they had some other enmities [in town]” cardinal Piccolomini
informed the Concistoro, Ser Giovanni di Gabriello and his relatives did not recognize,
in the darkness of the night, the podestà ’s soldiers and so they defended
themselves. He added that Ser Giovanni “in a good-natured and simple way used
some inappropriate words” without realizing that he was speaking to the podestà
and his soldiers. Cardinal Piccolomini continued that he was certain that the
lords of Siena would recognize “the good faith of this country town and in
particular of the family and household of said Ser Giovanni who have always
been good servants of our city” and suggested that the lords “might show all
possible leniency.” A month later, podestà Petrucci happily wrote: Magnificent,
excellent and powerful lords [. . .] in order to carry out what your
Excellencies have ordered [. . .] I sent for Giovan Baptista Tucci,
his wife, and his daughter on the matter of what Agnolo di Ipolito had done,
and about the marriage that has to be contracted between them.30 Clearly, the
legal solution reached in this case of rape was for the rapist to marry his
victim. The records do not indicate what Iuditta, the victim, might have
thought of such a solution, or even what she felt about the entire case. There
is no trace of her in the reports or the letters. What is ever-present,
instead, is the matter of honor—the honor of Siena, of its magistrates, and
their delegate, of the town of Sarteano and its priors and local statutes; of
Agnolo’s family; of Tucci’s family; and of Iuditta’s own self, which would now
be restored through marriage with her assailant. In all of this, the discourse
is male while the female voice of Iuditta is completely absent.The rape of
young boys Rocco from Campiglia confessed under torture that, while he was at
home eating, a certain Curtio, a little boy around eight years old, entered his
house and asked him for something to eat; the said Rocco grabbed him and laid
him over a table and, having lifted his clothes, put his tail [penis] between
the boy’s butt cheeks with the intention of knowing him carnally.The boy’s
screams stopped Rocco from proceeding any further in the attempted rape. Under
questioning, Rocco admitted that “he did put [his penis] between the boy’s
thighs but then finished the job with his hands.”31 In light of the accusation
and confession, the Captain of Justice in 1571 asked not only that the usual
fine for such sodomitical activities to be levied on Rocco, but also that he be
given jail time on account of “the young age of the boy.” The request for jail
time may point to the Captain of Justice’s understanding of the aggravating
factor in the case (the boy’s tender age) and, perhaps, to his personal
feelings about it, but the bureaucratic language of the report does not allow
us to delve further into the case nor to understand more fully how Rocco
himself might have justified his aggression of Curtio. It does, however, point
to the risks and dangers that came with child poverty (Curtio entered the house
to ask for food) and the opportunistic behavior of men in the grip of sexual
impulses. The charges levelled a few years earlier in 1567 against Giovanni, a
25-yearold man from Sinalunga, “strong and well-shaped,” were many and
varied.32 The records tell that that he was “in jail, indicted for having
carnally known a she-ass and also for having used the nefarious sin [sic] vice
of sodomy.” He was also accused of having sodomized Salvatore, a boy of “around
four or five years of age and of having broken his ass [sic] sex.” Salvatore
was not the only boy Giovanni had attempted to sodomize; he had done the same
to “another little boy [also named Giovanni] of the same age [as Salvatore] or
a little more”, but this boy managed to run away crying. Under “rather rigorous
torture,” Giovanni explained that he had found a she-ass along the way, moved
her off the public road and into a scrub where, he felt the need to mount her
and so, approaching her from the back, he put his member into her nature, but
because she did not stop moving and grazing, after having kept it there for a
little while, he pulled it out and climaxed as he did so. Giovanni also
confessed to having taken little Salvatore to a vineyard where, having lifted
his clothes, he directed his natural member into the boy’s ass [sic] sex, but
because the boy was small he could not insert it more than two fingers, and
because this was hurting the little boy, the boy started to struggle and scream
so Giovanni let him go and climaxed outside, and he did not notice that he had
broken the boy’s sex or caused an effusion of blood. An aunt of the little boy
declared, instead, that when little Salvatore came home “the blood was running
down his thighs and his ass [sic] sex was chapped.” Giovanni justified himself
saying that when they were in a barn he told the child “if you come here, I
will fuck you” and then added that “it is not true that he wanted to sodomize
him.” The records conclude that “in line with the statutesof this city, it does
not look as if Giovanni is subject to capital punishment,” even though blood
had been spilled, “but we could condemn him to the galleys, with the approval”
of the Governor. Aside from the various crimes listed in this deposition
(bestiality, sodomy, child abuse, physical violence causing bleeding), there is
an interesting idiosyncrasy in the records. The notary seems to have had second
thoughts about some of the words he was using and seems to have felt compelled
to attenuate the language; he did so by striking out some words and
substituting them with more neutral, though still very precise, terms. As a
result, “ass” became “sex” and “sin” became “vice.” While the first correction
suggests an attempt to use terminology that is less vulgar or vernacular in
favor of a more technical term, the second suggests the presence of a moral
consideration whereby the Christian concept of “sin” is replaced by the more
secular concept of “vice.” All the previous cases deal with sexual violence in
the countryside or smaller towns in the region. The only case of sexual
violence I have found in the city of Siena itself involved a young apprentice
working in a slaughterhouse in the district of Fontebranda.33 Ascanio accused
the butcher Lando, an associate of his employer Orlando, of having sodomized
him in the slaughterhouse and having beaten him for resisting. Ascanio
explained that it happened “in the workshop when we were going to stretch the
tallow in the workshop dais” (fol. 169v). When Ascanio turned down Lando’s
sexual request, Lando “took me by the arms, tore the lace off my leggings and
lowered them. Then he lowered my head, came into me from behind, and did his
wicked things [ poltronerie] to me, and once he had done them, he punched me
twice in the back.” Ascanio told the court that he informed his employer
Orlando, who in turn informed the shop boys working with Lando as well as other
people. Ascanio’s accusation was, however, undermined by his own admission that
he had already, on several occasions, been the passive partner in same-sex
intercourse with soldiers in Montalcino and with a soldier in Siena in the
service of Cornelio Bentivoglio (fol. 170v). In other words, Ascanio had
previously been sexually active with other men. Perhaps for this reason Lando
did not suspect at first that he had been arrested for having sodomized
Ascanio, but thought, instead, that he had been arrested for having beaten him
(fol. 171r). Questioned on the details of what happened in the slaughterhouse,
Lando reported that perhaps Ascanio had misinterpreted his joking words “what
do you think, come here I want to fuck you.” This led the judge to interrogate
Ascanio once again, this time with his hands tied. The youth once again
declared that “Lando started beating me and wanted to force me and he bent me
over and sodomized me” (fol. 172r), but this time Ascanio added that he did not
resent his having been beaten. Ascanio was then questioned a third time, this
time in front of Lando, who maintained his defensive line saying: “I told him
jokingly ‘come here, I want to fuck you’ because he did not want to come.”
Interrogated again, Lando confirmed “I ordered him to bring the tallow and to
stretch it up, but I did not do anything with him nor with anyone else” (fol.
172v). Ascanio, too, continued to affirm his own version of events pointingout
that this happened not only at Lando’s slaughterhouse, but once also at
Fontebranda (where Ascanio refused to go along with the attempted sodomy). When
Lando kept saying that the accusation was levelled at him because of the
beating he had given Ascanio, the latter asked the judge call other witnesses
saying, “let the shop boys come here and they will tell you what I told you”
(fol. 173r). In the end, Ascanio’s situation became quite complicated as he
paradoxically changed from being the accuser to being the accused. He was
jailed (allegedly on charges of sodomy), but on 25 December, in celebration of
the Nativity, he was pardoned and released “by decree of the lords” (fol.
173r).34 Several factors worked against Ascanio. His position as an apprentice
was perhaps too weak to sustain the charges he levelled against a master
butcher such as Lando, or to raise doubts about the truth of Lando’s
deposition. In a situation such as this, the court seems to have given credence
to the more senior and more socially respectable individual. Similarly, the
fact that Ascanio’s employer failed to support him in his case must have raised
suspicions. Lastly, Ascanio’s admission of having previously engaged in
same-sex intercourse with soldiers both in Siena and in Montalcino worked
against him. Although Ascanio had the courage to denounce a superior for a
sexual crime that was not uncommon, his social status and his previous sexual
encounters with men not only placed his testimony in doubt, but actually served
to find him guilty and put him in jail.The clergy and violence After Siena fell
to Florentine forces in 1555 the Sienese government and part of the Sienese
population moved to Montalcino, a small town about 40 km due south of Siena, in
a last attempt to resist the conquest and preserve the centuriesold republic. Among
the volumes of deliberations that have survived from the “Republic of Siena
retired in Montalcino” (Repubblica di Siena ritirata in Montalcino) there is
the denunciation deposited by Mona Antilia di Andrea, a woman living in
Castelnuovo dell’Abate, in which she asks for justice for her eight-yearold son
who, she reports, has been “damaged” ( guasto) by the French friar Carlo who
worked at the ospedale (hospital or hospice) attached to the Olivetan abbey of
Sant’Antimo, in the plains just below Castelnuovo.35 The Sienese authorities
summoned the friar to appear in court within three days to defend himself
against the accusation that “he had had sodomitical intercourse with the said
young boy and had broken his ass” (“di havere fatto culifragio”). Because the
friar was French, the court decided to inform the French Marshal Blaise de
Lasseran-Massencome, seigneur de Monluc, who had commanded the French troops
during the defense of Siena and had then moved to Montalcino with the Sienese
government and exiles. A week later, Monluc was informed that the friar had
been arrested in Piancastagnaio where the podestà was told to keep the
Frenchman in jail and under close surveillance until further notice. About a
month later, the friar was transferred to the Franciscan convent in Montalcinowhere
the friars were advised of his alleged crime, told to guard him well, and await
further orders. At this point, the documents fall silent and we do not know
what further ensued with Friar Carlo. We are thus left with no information on
what he might have said in his defense, what further evidence the mother and
the boy might have brought into consideration against him, or what
the final verdict might have been. What we do have, however, is the record
of a mother asking for justice against a foreign clergyman who was the subject
of, and possibly defended by, a powerful foreign military figure in the region,
this during a difficult moment in a war that had devastated the countryside and
brought about the near-total collapse of the government and the republic. Civic
and moral regulations were still in effect, but the silence of the incomplete
records and the transfer of the accused friar to another convent, rather than
to a city jail, seem to imply that such regulations had not been strictly
applied and that the friar probably escaped justice. The Sienese government,
whether in exile or not, was not the only jurisdiction to deal with sexual
violence by the clergy. Ecclesiastical courts also dealt with sexual crimes, as
we can see from the records in the fonds of Cause criminali housed at the
Archiepiscopal Archive in Siena.36 The collection includes the precepts, that
is the summons to appear in court, and some of the trial records, but once again
many of the files are incomplete. In fact, in the majority of documents and
final sentences issued by the archbishop’s vicar are missing, so this case can
only be known in its general outlines.Menica and the priest Ser Mauro Criti One
case for which we do have a complete set of documents deals with the charges
levelled against the priest Ser Mauro Criti, rector of Campriano di Murlo, a
hamlet 17 km south of Siena.37 According to the charges brought forth by the
victim’s father, the priest used an excuse to enter the accuser’s house and,
finding the man’s twelve- or thirteen-year-old daughter Menica alone at home,
tried to sweet-talk her by asking her if she wanted him to buy her a pair of
shoes. Aware of the priest’s intentions, Menica responded with “I want God to
give you a misfortune.” Ser Mauro “then reached out for her neck and kissed her
and tried to do something else, but she yelled.” Menica’s shouts were heard by
Laura Pasquinetti, a nine-year-old girl who arrived just in time to see the
priest leave. He pretended to throw some snow against the window, and said to
Menica: “Be quiet, you little beast, I’ll buy you a pair of shoes.” Menica’s
father asked that the priest be justly punished, having damaged both his and
his daughter’s honor, even though he had to admit that “he could not prove the
fact, except as he had told it, because when it happened there was no one else
at home.” Although the evidence came from two under-age girls, Menica and
Laura, the court was nonetheless obliged to pursue the case. A note signed by
FilippoAndreoli, secretary of the Governor of Siena, Federico Barbolano di
Montauto, laid out the guidelines the vicar was to follow: The very reverend
vicar of the most reverend lord archbishop of Siena will make sure that in the
states of His Highness [Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici] crimes committed by priests
will not go unpunished and he will not fail to ensure that both public honesty
and private interest are upheld. With this note, Andreoli was referring to the 1558
Florentine law on sexual violence and Cosimo’s determination that it be applied
evenly and universally. The trial, which lasted almost a year, gathered
testimonies not only from the two girls who had been ocular witnesses, but also
from many other people, and brought to light the fact that the priest was no
saint. At first, the interrogation of Ser Mauro revolved around what he did
that day. His responses claimed that his conduct had not been socially
improper—he said that when he called at the house and realized that no adult
was present he simply went away (fol. 4v). He stubbornly denied having thrown
snow at the window, but admitted to having thrown snow elsewhere that day, as
confirmed by other witnesses. Brought in for questioning once again, this time
with Menica in the room, Ser Mauro reacted with surprise and fear at seeing the
girl (fol. 13r), who accused him without fear (fol. 13v). From the examination
of other witnesses, the vicar learned that Ser Mauro had also been physically
and sexually violent with Caterina, a young girl about fourteen years old,
unmarried, who had been brought up by a certain Bernardino. According to
testimony, Ser Mauro had “misled and kidnaped Caterina [. . .]
brought her to his house, where he kept her for several weeks, raping her and
using her contrary to the law [contra forma iuris]” (fol. 23v). He also sought
to take advantage of Hieronima, the servant of a priest who had previously been
stationed in Campriano. Ser Mauro asked her to wash his clothes in exchange for
his giving lessons to one of her sons and then added that he would “give her
more affection than the other priest”, and this contrary to the law [contra
forma iuris] (fol. 23v). Other witnesses reported that the priest was a
confirmed card player and always had with him a deck of cards “that he says is
a present from a beautiful girl” (fol. 30v). Ser Mauro denied everything, even
under torture, but was found guilty nonetheless and fined 100 lire, removed
from his church in Campriano, and confined in Siena for two years.Filippo and
the presbyter Ser Cristofano Another case heard by the bishop’s court in
Grosseto deals with a mother who brought charges against a priest who had raped
her son. Monna Caterina, a thirty-year-old widow living in Campagnatico, in the
outskirts of Grosseto, reported that the presbyter Ser Cristofano “has raped my
little son Filippo.”38 The narrative she provides illustrates a mother’s care
and a young victim’s shame. “For the past year I have sent my Filippo to his
[Ser Cristofano’s] school andone evening when he came back one I noticed he was
unhappy and very sad.” Caterina asked what was going on, but Filippo refused to
answer. Later that evening, when she was “undressing him to put him in bed, I
saw his shirt very bloody and I asked him what blood was this.” Filippo
confessed that on that day, the priest had called him in his bedroom and had
given him a book and he had approached him and while he pretended to teach him,
he did that horrible thing on the back, and because the little boy yelled, he
hit him few times. Ser Cristofano threatened the boy not to reveal anything to
me nor to someone else and so, “looking carefully at the boy, I saw that he had
hurt him and had broken his ass and so I decided he would not attend school
anymore.” In her testimony, Caterina also reported that she heard that Ser
Cristofano had raped “Monna Lena, a widow at that time” and that rumor went
around the entire countryside that “he torn her behind.” But what troubled
Caterina more was that she and Ser Cristofano were cousins39 —presumably, she
did not understand the reason behind his “bad behavior” against his
twelve-year-old nephew Filippo. When the bishop’s vicar interrogated young
Filippo, the story matched closely with what his mother had reported. Both
accounts pointed to a familiar closeness and confidence that the presbyter had
showered on Filippo in order to sodomize him. Filippo recounted: I know Ser
Cristofano of Ventura, the priest in Campagnatico and my kin, and I attended
his school for a year or perhaps more and one evening, after the other pupils
had left, I remained there to serve him at dinner and after he had dined he
stood up and he went to sit on a chair in his bedroom and he called me. After I
made the bed, we went back and he sat again on the same chair. Then he gave me
an illustrated book and he put me between his legs: he untied my pants and
lifted up my shirt and put his thing into my ass and caused me pain. I started
to scream and asked him to let me go, but he was holding me and he was
thrashing and kept telling me “be quiet, be quiet” and he closed my mouth so I
could not scream and he put his thing into my ass and then he let me go. I went
home and, along the way, I could not walk because he hurt me in the ass and I
was bleeding and I went to bed and my mother saw my shirt and I think she
believed it was scabies because at that time I had it, and then I told her: and
she did not want me to go to school again and I did not go anymore. In response
to a direct question, Filippo answered, “I never saw nor do I know whether Ser
Cristofano did something like this to any other student.”40 Family relation was
the justification Ser Cristofano used to keep Filippo back, have him serve
dinner, and make the bed. Once there, he used the “illustrated book” to entice
the boy enough to sodomize him, counting on the fact that Caterina, as a widow,
did not have a husband to defend the family or take action against the
presbyter, whose social and cultural position in town served, in part, to
protect him.Reading the document with modern eyes, we note Caterina’s maternal
sensitivity: she immediately realized that Filippo was unhappy and hiding
something. Her understanding of her son and her emotional connection with him
were strong and deep. She also had aspirations for her son, enough to send him
to be educated by a learned relative who might open doors in life for the boy.
In spite of this, Caterina was not about to accept her cousin’s violence
against her son and reacted quickly and with determination: “I did not want him
to go to his school anymore” she told the vicar’s notary, and then, perhaps to
temper her rage, added “I consider him [Ser Cristofano] wicked man [tristo]41 because he raped my
little boy Filippo.” Although Filippo was about twelve years old at the time,
Caterina referred to him as a citto (little boy), using a typically vague term
for a child that could be adapted to the legal necessities of the moment—in her
eyes, Filippo was an innocent child and not a possibly compliant youth. In
fact, the records do point to Filippo’s physical weakness and to his inability
to deal forcefully enough with the situation to avoid the rape—caught by
surprise, he reacted strongly and screamed, but to no avail because the
priest’s adult strength, his shutting Filippo’s mouth to prevent the boy from
screaming, and his repeated command to the boy to “be quiet” while he raped him
all contributed to overpower and subdue Filippo. The consequences of the
priest’s violence were not only physical—lacerations, bleeding, pain—but also
psychological—the boy’s depression and silence on his return home. While in
cases of anal rape in Venice, the authorities, already in the fifteenth
century, sought the help of surgeons and barbers to examine and report on the
lesions and physical damage done to the victim’s body,42 this was not the case
in Siena. There is no trace of such provisions in the surviving statutes of the
Sienese barber surgeons’ guild.43 The only reference I have found to an
obligation to report on wounded persons is a decree of February 1556 (reissued
in 1563) signed Governor Ferdinando Barbolani di Montauto, which refers to
wounds in a general way, and not to wounds specifically caused by sexual
violence or sodomy.44 In a case of some years later, a certain Arcangelo
charged the chaplain Ser Andrea with having sodomized his eight-year-old son
Sabbatino, who had been a boarding student in the chaplain’s school, and with
having threatened him (Arcangelo) with a weapon.45 Arcangelo reported that “one
night, while sleeping in bed with Sabbatino, Ser Andrea sodomized him forcibly
and against Sabbatino’s will, so that he broke his ass and then abandoned him.”
As he was being raped, the young boy screamed and was heard by a neighbor. The
physical damage done to Sabbatino was such that he could not walk. Archangelo
heard of this from a local miller who presumably heard the news through the
small talk of the neighbors, and went to the chaplain’s house to get his son
and take him home. A few days later, Arcangelo went to pick Sabbatino’s things,
but the chaplain refused to return them. In front of other people, the chaplain
threatened Arcangelo with a hatchet while “another man who is in his house took
an harquebus.” Ser Andrea’s violent behavior was not limited to Sabbatino:Arcangelo
reported that “he has sodomized four more little boys,” among them two of the
miller’s sons.Conclusion The case studies presented in this essay point to a
much larger corpus of documents dealing with legal cases against perpetrators
of crimes of sexual violence. A first observation we might draw from the
evidence presented is that, ten years after the publication and implementation
of the 1558 Florentine law against sexual violence, cases were still being
handled with leniency towards the accused—at least in Sienese territory. In
spite of mounting evidence that included precise and detailed information from
the victims, supporting evidence from eye-witnesses and other people, and in
spite of the use of torture (in a few cases) to extract further information or
confirm previously given information, alleged culprits seem generally to have
received lenient sentences that spared their life. What is also striking is
that all defendants denied the allegations raised against them, even under
torture. In their defense, the accused used standard diversion tactics in order
to have the case dismissed or the penalty reduced. This included suggesting that
the children’s allegations were reliable because of their young age, or the
fact that the children may have been prompted by others to say things that were
not true, or that they had been instructed on what to say in order to build a
case against the accused. Was this sexual violence against minors “normal” at
the time? To modern eyes, the cases and evidence presented here may seem
extreme and even unbelievable, and some contemporaries probably felt the same
way. Yet, as Ottavia Niccoli reminds us, we must not imagine a constant in
“human nature” that might allow us to apply our criteria, our sensibility, our
perceptions to people who lived five or six hundred years ago, except in very
general terms. The mental frame of our ancestors was, in fact, and at least
under some aspects, very different from ours.46 We can observe that those
mothers, fathers, and relatives who sought justice for their victimized
children did so without fear of the court, or public opinion, or the
bureaucratic lengths of time the process would entail. We can also note how
local communities were not sympathetic towards people in positions of authority
who behaved in improper ways towards the young people they were supposed to
educate, defend, and protect. The Sienese evidence suggest that these cases,
unlike those in Florence or Venice, were not about voluntary choices.47 These
were not cases of same-sex consensual sodomy or prostitution for profit. These
were violent acts perpetrated by men in power over young people who could not defend
themselves. As Patricia Labalme aptly said, “although there is herein much to
pity and much toprotest, this is a story without a moral.”48 The evidence from
the Sienese records points to the same conclusion.Notes 1 Di Simplicio, “La
criminalità.” For the later period, Di Simplicio, Peccato penitenza perdono. 2
For the case of violent behavior in Bologna see Niccoli, Il seme della
violenza. 3 Archivio di Stato di Siena (hereafter ASSi), Guida Inventario, 105,
119–23. 4 Ibid., 105. 5 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. IV, 120. 6 ASSi,
Guida Inventario, 121. 7 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. IV, 120. 8 ASSi,
Guida Inventario, 123. 9 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. IV, 117. 10 For
social aspects, see Rocke, Forbidden Friendships. For statistical aspects, see
Zorzi, “The Judicial System.” 11 Ascheri, ed., L’ultimo statuto, III. 76 “De
poena adulterii, stupri et raptus,” 315. 12 Brackett, Criminal Justice, 111. 13
Ascheri, ed., L’ultimo statuto, III. 79 “De poena sogdomitarum,” 316. 14
Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. I, 211–12. 15 Ibid., vol. III, 267–68. 16
Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASFi), Mediceo del Principato
(hereafter MdP) 1869, fol. 13r (February 16, 1559). 17 Giansante, “Camaiani
Onofrio.” 18 ASFi, MdP 1869, fol. 27r. 19 It may be possible that she is
“domina Francisca relicta quondam Michelagnoli Iacobi de Belforte” with whom
Terenzio had disagreements for some quantities of wheat, ASSi, Curia del
Placito 750, not foliated (November 4, 1555). 20 He does not appear in ASSi, Ms
A 33, fol. 305r (battezzati), a compilation of baptismal records from church
registers in the Baptistery and civic records in the office of the Biccherna.
21 ASSi, Ms A 39, fol. 203r (riseduti). 22 ASFi, MdP 1869, fol. 21bisr. 23 ASSi,
Notarile ante cosimiano 99, not foliated. Pietro was also legum doctor. 24
ASSi, Concistoro 2453 ad datam (April 18, 1554). 25 ASSi, Capitano di giustizia
645, fols. 17r–19r (August 1570). 26 ASSi, Repubblica di Siena ritirata in
Montalcino 63, passim (1557). 27 ASSi, Biccherna 1127, fol. 24v (1544); ASSi,
Capitano di giustizia 645, fol. 94r–v (July 1571). 28 ASSi, Governatore 436,
fol. 86r–v (June 28, 1571). 29 ASSi, Concistoro 2081, not foliated (March 20–24
1524). 30 ASSi, Concistoro 2080, not foliated (April 26, 1524). 31 ASSi,
Capitano di giustizia 645, fol. 78r–v (May 29, 1571). 32 ASSi, Capitano di
giustizia 611, fols. 138v–139r (April 8, 1567). 33 ASSi, Capitano di giustizia
150, fols. 169v–173r (November 2, 1555). 34 It was common custom to free some
prisoners during the most important religious celebrations. 35 ASSi, Repubblica
di Siena ritirata in Montalcino 5, not numbered (April 29, 1555). 36 Archivio
Arcivescovile di Siena (hereafter AASi), L’Archivio Arcivescovile di Siena, ed.
G. Catoni and S. Fineschi (Rome: 1970). 37 AASi, Cause criminali 5509, insert 3
(January 23–December 6, 1569). 38 AASi, Cause criminali 5502, insert 4 (May
5–September 1, 1552). 39 “To me he is a cousin brother” (“a me è fratello
consobrino”), that is, a cousin born to a sister of Caterina’s mother.40 “For a
similar case, see Marcello, “Società maschile e sodomia.” 41 The Treccani
Italian vocabulary defines as tristo a person who has a bad attitude. 42 In
1467 the Council of Ten issued a law that obliged doctors to report “anyone
treated for damages resulting from anal intercourse”; see Ruggiero, The
Boundaries of Eros, 117. 43 ASSi, Arti 37 (1593–1776). 44 ASSi, Statuti di
Siena 64, fol. 72r. 45 AASi, Cause criminali 5504, insert 4 (February 19–March
5, 1559). 46 “Non dobbiamo immaginare una costanza della ‘natura umana’ che ci
consenta di applicare i nostri criteri, la nostra sensibilità, la nostra
attitudine percettiva a chi è vissuto cinque o seicento annifa, se non in
termini generalissimi. L’attrezzatura mentale di quei nostri antenati era
infatti, almeno sotto alcuni aspetti, molto differente dalla nostra.” Niccoli,
Vedere, vii. 47 For Florence, see Rocke, “Il fanciullo” and Rocke, Forbidden
Friendships. For Venice and the Veneto see Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros. 48
Labalme, “Sodomy,” 217.Bibliography Archival sources Archivio Arcivescovile di
Siena (AASi) Cause criminali 5502 and 5509 L’Archivio Arcivescovile di Siena.
Edited by G. Catoni and S. Fineschi. Rome: 1970. Archivio di Stato di Firenze
(ASFi) Mediceo del Principato (MdP) 1869 Archivio di Stato di Siena (ASSi) Arti
37 Biccherna 1127 Capitano di giustizia 150, 611, and 645 Cause criminali 5504
Concistoro 2080, 2081, and 2453 Curia del Placito 750 Governatore 436 Guida
Inventario. Rome: 1994. Manuscript A 33 and 39 Notarile ante cosimiano 99
Repubblica di Siena ritirata in Montalcino 5 and 63 Statuti di Siena 64Published
sources Ascheri, Mario, ed. L’ultimo statuto della Repubblica di Siena (1545).
Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati, 1993. Brackett, John K. Criminal
Justice and Crime in Late Renaissance Florence, 1537–1609. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992. Cantini, Lorenzo. Legislazione Toscana. Volume 1, 3,
and 4. Florence: nella stamperia Albizziniana, 1800. Di Simplicio, Oscar. “La
criminalità a Siena (1561–1808): Problemi di ricerca.” Quaderni Storici 49
(1982): 242–64. ———. Peccato penitenza perdono, Siena 1575–1800: La formazione
della coscienza nell’Italia moderna. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994.Giansante,
Mirella. “Camaiani Onofrio.” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 17, 1974.
Labalme, Patricia. “Sodomy and Venetian Justice in the Renaissance.”
Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 52, no. 3 (1984): 217–54. Marcello, Luciano.
“Società maschile e sodomia: Dal declino della ‘polis’ al Principato.” Archivio
Storico Italiano 150 (1992), 115–38. Niccoli, Ottavia. Il seme della violenza:
Putti, fanciulli e mammoli nell’Italia tra Cinque e Seicento. Rome-Bari:
Laterza, 1995. ———. Vedere con gli occhi del cuore: Alle origini del potere
delle immagini. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2011. Rocke, Michael. Forbidden
Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996. ———. “Il fanciullo e il sodomita: pederastia,
cultura maschile e vita civile nella Firenze del Quattrocento.” In Infanzie:
Funzioni di un gruppo liminale dal mondo classico all’Età moderna. Edited by
Ottavia Niccoli, 210–30. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1993. Ruggiero, Guido.
The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crimes and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985. Zorzi, Andrea. “The Judicial System in Florence
in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.” In Crime, Society and the Law in
Renaissance Italy. Edited by Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, 40–58. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.4 IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD Residence, community,
and the sex trade in early modern Bologna Vanessa McCarthy and Nicholas
TerpstraEarly seventeenth-century Bologna was unique for its relatively
tolerant legislation on female prostitution. Rome, Florence, and Venice
required meretrici (prostitutes) and donne inhoneste (dishonest women) to
inhabit designated areas and streets. Romans settled on the large area of Campo
Marzio for their residence, Venetians ordered women to reside in the old
medieval civic brothel known as the Castelletto near the city’s commercial
center, the Rialto, and Florentines designated a few streets located in the
poorest areas of each city quarter.1 Segregation was motivated by concerns
about morality as well as the more pragmatic issues of civic disorder, noise,
an policing. Containment protected
sacred spaces and pious inhabitants from the immorality and disruption of
prostitutes and their clients and made it easier for authorities to locate and
arrest violators, thereby increasing order as well as the fees and fines
collected.2 By contrast, Bologna permitted registered prostitutes to live
across the city, and the records of its prostitution magistracy demonstrates
that they did. The extant annual registers from 1583 to 1630 provide a rare
opportunity to map where hundreds of registered prostitutes lived in the city,
and to trace individual women’s movements. Only about half lived on streets
with ten or more prostitutes, and very few dwelt on streets with twenty or
more. Consequently, most Bolognese could count prostitutes and dishonest women
as near neighbors, and for many laboring-poor, prostitution and prostitutes per
se were not a serious problem.3 Regulation and enforcement in Bologna show that
secular and religious civic authorities and the general populace approached
prostitution primarily as an issue of economics and public order, and only
secondarily as an issue of morality and public decorum. Due to the city’s
economic reliance on university students, civic authorities had long regulated
prostitution as a commercial issue and prostitutes as fee- and fine-paying
workers governed by a civic magistracy known as the Ufficio delle Bollette (Office
of Receipts). Established in 1376, theBollette registered “Foreigners, Jews,
and Whores” (Forestiere, Hebrei, et Meretrici ). After having tried civic
brothels and sumptuary regulations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
and residential zones in 1514 and 1525, Bolognese civic authorities of the
later sixteenth century bucked prevailing trends with comparatively relaxed
legislation that underscored the connections between prostitutes, Jews, and
foreigners as coherent communities living and working in the local body social
while remaining legally outside the body politic.4 The Bollette’s officials and
functionaries negotiated between legislation, their own interests, and the
needs of individual prostitutes when enforcing regulation. The hundreds of
women who registered annually as prostitutes were integrated into local
communities through residence and through familial, work, and affective
relationships, and had greater opportunities for agency than broader cultural,
religious, and social ideals would lead us to expect. There were bumps on the
road to this more relaxed regime. In the late 1560s, the Tridentine reforming
Bishop Gabriele Paleotti attempted to separate prostitutes and other dishonest
women from most of Bolognese society through residential confinement. Citing
the desire “to restrain their wickedness and uncontrolled freedoms of life” and
to stop them from polluting others with their “filth,” Paleotti and the papal
legate published three decrees that ordered all prostitutes, courtesans, and
female procurers to live in a handful of specific city streets. Yet Paleotti
was overstepping his jurisdiction. His ambitious reforms failed within eighteen
months, and by 1571 the civic government had regained exclusive control over
regulation.5 It returned to the more tolerant strategy employed before the
bishop’s intervention: all prostitutes and dishonest women were required to
register and purchase moderately priced licenses from the Bollette, but they were
neither required to wear distinguishing signs nor to live in assigned streets
or areas. They were free to live throughout the city. Scholars of Roman,
Venetian, Milanese, and Florentine prostitution have tracked the contrasts
between strict legislation and lax prosecution. Prostitutes regularly lived
outside of designated streets and areas, sometimes thanks to exemptions sold by
the magistrates.6 Yet these cities kept their stricter legal regimes on the
books. What was distinct about a city that largely abandoned that regime? This
essay examines the residential and social integration of prostitutes in
Bologna’s neighborhoods. It first maps their distribution across the city in
order to examine how far residential “freedom” extended in practice. While about
half of registered prostitutes clustered on sixteen specific streets, the other
half lived on eighty-five other streets with ten or fewer other prostitutes. It
then reviews registrants’ sometimes complex and contested relationships with
family, clients, lovers, friends, and neighbors using evidence recorded in the
annual registers and testimonies given to the Bollette’s officials. Most were
integrated into local networks through the familial, affective, and working
relationships they had with other local men and women, and they gave and
received support and companionship. Finally, it examines late sixteenth- and
early seventeenth-century proclamations forbidding prostitutes from residing in
specific city streets. Thesedecrees ref lect the civic government’s pragmatism:
they were issued in response to the specific complaints of powerful convents,
churches, and schools located in areas with large prostitute populations. Trial
records, cultural sources, and recent scholarship on gossip and visibility
shows that most neighbors were aware of what these women did and that they were
not troubled by it. What they did find troubling were the displays of wealth by
individual women, the noise and disorder that some brought to their
neighborhoods, and instances where neighbors lost control over their
communities. The Bollette provided a vehicle for handling these complaints
without criminalizing the prostitutes. Taken together, the residential and
legal evidence demonstrates that prostitutes lived in most workingpoor
neighborhoods of early modern Bologna and that they were largely tolerated as a
fact of life.The geography of early modern Bolognese prostitution The majority
of registered prostitutes lived in the area between the second and third sets
of city walls (see Figure 4.1), the “inner suburbs” where the urban poor
typically clustered in Italian cities.7 Only a handful of prostitutes lived
near the city center, usually on short alleys hidden behind larger publicFIGURE
4.1Agostino Carracci, Bononia docet mater studiorum, 1581.56buildings that had
been licensed for prostitution in earlier centuries.8 The civic brothel noted
in the 1462 Bollette regulations had been immediately south-west of the Piazza
Maggiore and civic basilica of San Petronio, and some prostitutes worked by
particular gates and markets, but from the sixteenth century Bolognese
meretrici moved to houses across the low-rent inner suburbs.9 Table 4.1
charts the number and percentage of registrants who lived in each quarter in
1584, 1604, and 1624. The quarters differed in size and population as Figure
4.1 shows, and the larger quarters of Porta Procola and Porta Piera housed more
prostitutes. Few lived by the north-western city wall in Porta Stiera, which
appear on Agostino Carracci’s 1581 map (reproduced here) as dominated by
fields.10 The sharp rise and fall in the number of women registering
demonstrate the inconsistencies of early modern bureaucracy, with total numbers
increasing by 327 from 1584 and 1604 (from 284 to 611) and then plummeting by
466 between 1604 and 1624 (from 611 to 165). Lucia Ferrante has argued that in
1604 the Bollette was operating with unusual efficiency, and perhaps even
over-zealously.11 The f luctuations tell us more about where the Bollette
concentrated its work than about where all the prostitutes and dishonest women
actually lived. Charting residence by quarter demonstrates that prostitutes
spread themselves fairly evenly throughout the outskirts of the city, and
across each quarter. In 1604, registrants lived on at least 102 streets, yet
only eight streets had twenty or more women, and only eight were home to ten to
nineteen women (see Table 4.2). A few streets housed larger numbers, like
Borgo Nuovo di San Felice, in the western quarter of Stiera by the city wall,
and Campo di Bovi, located by the eastern city wall in the quarter of Porta
Piera.12 Women also clustered in the ghetto after the Jews were expelled from
the Papal States for a final time in 1592.TABLE 4.1 Residence of registered
prostitutes in Bologna’s quarters1584Porta Piera Porta Procola Porta Ravennate
Porta Stiera Total16041624Number of resident prostitutesPercent of total
registrantsNumber of resident prostitutesPercent of total registrantsNumber of
resident prostitutesPercent of total registrants41 80 69 60 25016.4 32 27.6 24
100179 175 76 131 56132 31.2 13.5 23.3 10073 44 10 26 15347.7 28.8 6.6 16.9 100*This table includes only those women with
identifiable addresses. In 1584, this was 88% of all registrants (250 of 284
total registrants), in 1604 it was 91.8% (561 of 611), and in 1624 it was 92.7%
(153 of 165). Sources: Campione delle Meretrici 1584, 1604, 1624.The sex trade
in early modern Bologna 57 TABLE 4.2 Streets with ten or more resident
prostitutes in 1604, by quarterQuarter of Porta PieraQuarter of Porta ProcolaQuarter
of Porta StieraCampo di Bovi: 36Senzanome: 36Jewish Ghetto: 21Frassinago: 21Borgo
Nuovo di Fondazza: 29 San Felice: 47 San Felice by the Broccaindosso: 10 gate:
13 Avesella: 10Borgo di S. Giacomo: 20 Borgo di Santa Caterina di Saragozza: 21
Torleone: 18 Borgo degli Arienti: 14 Borgo di San Marino: 17 Bràina di stra San
Donato: 13 Gattamarza: 13Quarter of Porta RavennateSource: Campione delle
Meretrici 1604.This was an ironic reversal of the situation in Florence, where
the ghetto was deliberately located within the old brothel precinct in 1571.13
In 1604, twentyone women lived in this area. Most streets in Bologna’s inner
suburbs numbered only a few prostitutes. In 1604, 84 percent (86 of 102) of the
streets on which they registered housed nine or fewer prostitutes, and these
women accounted for almost half of all registrants that year (44 percent).
Further, 66 percent (68 of the 102 streets) housed five or fewer. Consequently,
many of these women lived on streets that were not dominated by prostitutes. A
typical example of this is the south-western corner of the city (see Figure
4.2). In 1604, three of the area’s streets were heavily populated by
prostitutes: Senzanome housed 36, Frassinago housed 21, and Borgo di Santa
Caterina di Saragozza housed twenty-one. However, the majority of the
neighborhood’s streets had five or fewer resident prostitutes and dishonest
women: five women lived on Altaseda, four on Nosadella, and three on
Capramozza. The surrounding streets of Bocca di lupo, Belvedere di Saragozza,
Borgo Riccio, and Malpertuso had two or fewer. On these streets prostitutes
mixed with day-laborers, artisans, and merchants. They rented rooms from pork
butchers and shoemakers, lived in inns, and resided next to potters.14 These
were their immediate neighbors, separated only by the porous boundaries of
walls, stairways, doorways, and windows where they had frequent day-to-day
interactions.15 Like other working-poor women, they were not confined to the
streets that they lived on, but could and did move through the surrounding area
buying food, engaging in chores, finding work, visiting friends, and going to
the Bollette to buy their licenses.16 As Elizabeth S. Cohen writes, prostitutes
were both “seen and known” in their neighborhoods.FIGURE 4.2Agostino Carracci,
Bononia docet mater studiorum, 1581.Networks, neighborhoods, and communities
The Bollette’s records reveal prostitutes’ affective social and familial
circles. Some women were registered as living in their mother’s, sister’s, and
(more rarely) cousin’s homes, while other women’s female kin, housemates,
lovers, and servants bought their licenses. Notaries did not consistently
record such details, making quantitative analysis difficult.17 While men
regularly appear in the registers paying for licenses, the specifics of their
relationships with the women were almost never recorded. The Bollette’s
records, particularly testimonies in cases of debt against clients and
long-term partners, provide rich information aboutThe sex trade in early modern
Bologna 59women’s familial, social, and work relationships. However, the
tribunal devoted more effort to investigating unregistered women suspected of
prostitution, than to the hundreds of women who had bought licenses. The
Bolognese evidence can be placed in the context of evidence from other northern
Italian cities demonstrating how prostitutes were surrounded by family,
housemates, and allies. In early seventeenth century Venice, three-quarters of
213 prostitutes noted in a census lived with other people. Most headed their
own households, but some were boarders or lived with their mothers. The
majority of those who headed households sheltered dependent female kin,
children, and a variety of unmarried women, including servants and other
prostitutes. A few heads of households (6 percent) lived with men, who were
either their intimates or boarders.18 Roman parish censuses from 1600 to 1621
show similar cohabitation patterns: 47 percent of prostitutes lived with at
least one family member, mostly children but also siblings, nieces and nephews,
and widowed mothers.19 Everyone within the household economy benefitted from
the income and goods earned by these women. Bologna’s registers give examples
of sisters as registered prostitutes, like Dorotea di Savi, called
“Saltamingroppa” (literally “Jump on my behind”) and her sister Benedetta, who
lived together with their servant Gentile on Broccaindosso.20 Similarly,
Margareta and Francesca Trevisana, both nicknamed “La Solfanella” (“The
Matchstick”), lived together on Borgo di Santa Caterina di Saragozza for eight
years. While Francesca registered annually from 1598 to 1605, Margareta did so
only in 1602, 1604, and 1605.21 Before registering, Margareta likely enjoyed
the income that her sister earned through prostitution and may have assisted in
preparing for and entertaining clients. The Bollette suspected that she had,
and so launched an investigation against her when she became pregnant in
1601.22 Mothers and daughters also lived and worked together, like Lucia di
Spoloni and her daughter Francesca, who lived on San Mamolo by the old civic
brothel area, and Anna Spisana and her mother Lucia, who lived together on
Borgo degli Arienti.23 In 1604, Domenica di Loli bought licenses for her
daughters Francesca and Margareta, and all three lived just south of the church
and monastery of San Domenico on Borgo degli Arienti. Francesca had lived on
the street since at least 1600, and while she was no longer registering in
1609, her sister still was. Margareta continued to live on Borgo degli Arienti
until 1614, perhaps with her mother and sister.24 Prostitutes often lived
together in rented rooms, small apartments, and inns. Residential clustering
was not uncommon for unmarried women, who shared the costs of running a
household through lace making, street-peddling, prostitution, and laundering.25
The largest could count as brothels, though there were relatively few of them.
In 1583, twenty-one dishonest women lived in the house of Gradello on Bologna’s
heavily populated Borgo Nuovo di San Felice, by the eastern wall. Yet while
registrations climbed in the 1580s, the group at Gradello’s shrank to fourteen
women in 1584, and eleven in 1588.26 Moreover no other large houses appeared
through this period. In 1604, the street with mostregistrations was Borgo Nuovo
di San Felice, with forty-seven women, and the largest single group was
thirteen who gathered in the house of Lucrezia Basilia, while the rest had five
or fewer.27 On the second and third most populated streets, Campo di Bovi and
Senzanome, no house had more than six registered prostitutes living in it.28
These larger clusters were often inns, where prostitutes benefitted from the
presence of other women and the protection of innkeepers. Inns popular with
prostitutes included those of Matteo the innkeeper (“osto”) on Frassinago and
of Angelo Senso on Pratello. Seven registered women lived at Matteo’s inn in
1589, and ten lived in Angelo’s inn in 1597.29 Few women stayed at inns for
more than a year and most registered without surnames, but instead with
reference to a town, city, or region, like Flaminia from Ancona (“Anconitana”),
Francesca from Fano (“da Fano”), and Ludovica from Modena (“Modenesa”) who
lived at Matteo’s place in 1598. These could have been recent migrants or women
identifying by parents’ origins or using pseudonyms. The inns and brothels
helped them build social networks as they secured places of their own. Yet, it
was more common for women to live with one or two other prostitutes in rented
rooms and small apartments. In 1597, Lucia Colieva lived with Elisabetta di
Negri on Borgo di San Martino, and the following year she joined another
registered prostitute, Vittoria Fiorentina, on Senzanome.30 Similarly, in 1601
Isabella Rosetti, Giulia Bignardina, and Cassandra di Campi all lived together
in Isabella’s home on Frassinago. A year later Giulia had died and Cassandra
was no longer registered.31 For just under ten years, Madonna Ginevra Caretta,
who was unregistered, managed a small apartment where six to eight registered
prostitutes lived.32 Unlike Bologna’s inns and taverns, Ginevra’s household was
mobile, moving across town and back again over the years it operated. In 1588
it was located on Saragozza, in the south-western corner of the city, and the
next year it moved to San Colombano in the northwest quarter of Stiera. At
least one woman, Lena Fiorentina, followed Ginevra to the new street, where she
remained for almost a decade before moving to Paglia.33 A few of the
prostitutes lived with Ginevra for years, like Pelegrina di Tarozzi, who stayed
for four years, and Chiara Mantuana, for three.34 Domenica Cavedagna,
registered for thirteen years (1597–1609), ran a house on Centotrecento and
then on Bràina di stra San Donato.35 Seven other prostitutes lived with her in
1604, and a year later three had left but six new women had moved in. A few
stayed with her for four or five years.36 The Bollette’s registers explain why
some of the women moved out of the homes run by women like Ginevra Caretta and
Domenica Cavedagna. Some entered service (either domestic, sexual, or both)
while others moved to different streets or left Bologna entirely to try their
luck elsewhere.37 While living with other prostitutes could bring economic,
professional, and even personal security, it could also bring personal rifts or
increased attention from the police (sbirri ), who saw these homes as easy
targets for making arrests. Men interacted with registered prostitutes as
occasional clients, long-term amici, absentee husbands, jealous lovers, and as
acquaintances, if not friends.Single women, whether unmarried or widowed, were
financially and socially vulnerable, subject to sexual slander, to charges of
magic and sorcery, and to general suspicion by neighbors and authorities
alike.38 Relationships with men afforded them a degree of protection from the
financial and social marginalization they experienced because of their gender,
economic status, and work, and so women turned to them not just for income and
companionship but also for a measure of protection. The civic government had
always prohibited married women from prostituting themselves, since by doing so
they committed adultery. The 1462 statutes ordered whipping and expulsion for
the women, and fines of 100 lire for officials who looked the other way.39
Women living with husbands could not register with the Bollette, though
abandoned wives sometimes could. Francesca di Galianti claimed in 1604 that her
husband Bartolomeo di Grandi went to war three or four years previously,
leaving her with a three-year-old daughter to feed. She had since given birth
to a daughter with a cloth worker Giovanni, with whom she had been living for
about a year “to make the expenses.”40 For the Bollette, the question of
whether abandoned women like Francesca could and should register was a
practical one since women who registered were women who paid fees. These women
appealed to the sympathy of Bollette officials by claiming that they were
married but had not seen their husbands in many years, leaving unanswered the
question of whether their husbands were alive or dead. This ambiguity about the
ultimate fate of their husbands would have freed them from charges of adultery
at the archbishop’s tribunal (if the husband was alive) while at the same time
freeing them from registration with the Bollette (if he were dead). Francesca
did not state whether she thought her husband was dead or alive, and ultimately
a kinsmen Vincenzo Dainesi swore that he would ensure she left her “wicked
life” (“mala vita”) and take her into his home to live with him and his wife.41
The officials were satisfied with this, and so Francesca remained unfined and
unregistered. In 1586, Vice Legate Domenico Toschi authorized police to seize
“all married women who do not live with their husbands” caught at night in bed
with their lovers (amatiis).42 Archbishop Gabriele Paleotti believed such women
were clearly committing adultery, and Pope Sixtus V’s bull Ad compascendum
(1586) ordered that any married person whose spouse was alive and had sex with
another person—even if they had a separation from an ecclesiastical court
—should be sentenced to death.43 Toschi’s decree was reconfirmed ten years
later by the new vice legate, Annibale Rucellai, and a third time in 1614.44 If
a woman returned to her husband, she was to be immediately deregistered and
could not be allowed to practice prostitution. If she continued, she was no
longer under the Bollette’s jurisdiction, but rather that of the archbishop. Stable
relationships with men, referred to in Bologna as amici, “lovers,” or as amici
fermi, “firm friends,” offered a measure of economic security for prostitutes
by providing money, clothing, and food in varying amounts depending on the
men’s own status.45 When Arsilia Zanetti sued Andrea di Pasulini, notary of thearchbishop’s
tribunal, for compensation for their three-year sexual relationship (“amicitia
carnale”), she noted he had given her three pairs of shoes, a pair of
low-heeled dress slippers, and a few coins (a ducatone, half a scudo, and a
piastra, a Spanish coin).46 Buying the woman’s licenses could also be part of
the arrangement, as Pasulini had also done for Arsilia.47 Even though Bologna’s
monthly rate of five soldi, and annual rate of three lire, was extraordinarily
low—only onefifth of what Florentine prostitutes paid—this was another expense
that women did not have to worry about and suggested commitment on the part of
the men.48 Lovers and friends helped women in their interactions with the law.
The cavalier Aloisio di Rossi had a three-year sexual relationship with
Pantaselia Donina, alias di Salani, and when her landlord complained to the
Bollette that she had not paid the rent, di Rossi acted as her procurator and
ultimately paid the landlord.49 Other prostitutes maintained relationships with
local, low-level arresting officers (sbirri); Elizabeth S. Cohen has uncovered
many relationships between prostitutes and such men, noting that “the two disparaged
professions often struck up alliances in which the women traded sex,
companionship, and information for protection and money.”50 Such partnerships
were not unusual in Bologna. In May 1583, the sbirro Pompilio registered
Francesca Fiorentina as his “woman” (“femina”) and got her a six-month license
for free.51 In 1624 three women registered as living in the “casa” of the
Bollette’s esecutore, Pietro Benazzi, on Borgo di San Martino.52 Pietro
registered Caterina Furlana on January 11, 1624 and paid for her one-month
license. She was subsequently de-registered because “she went to stay in order
to serve Pietro Benazzi.” When Caterina di Rossi moved out of her place on
Borgo degli Arienti and into Pietro’s house, she paid for one month and never
again.53 Though these Bollette functionaries could not keep these women’s names
out of the registers, they could keep them from paying for licenses, even when
they were most likely still living by prostitution, and may have protected them
from harassment by other court officials. Male friends could also be rallied
for support, particularly by women who had lived in one street or area for a
substantial period of time, building reputations and financial and social ties
with their neighbors. When Margareta Trevisana “The Matchstick” (Solfanella)
was investigated by the Bollette in 1601, she had been living on Borgo di Santa
Caterina di Strada Maggiore with her sister for at least eight years. She
confessed that three years earlier she had given birth to the child of Messer
Antonio Simio, a married man.54 The Bollette had investigated her then,
allowing her to remain unregistered on the promise that she would reform her
life and go to live with an honorable woman. In 1601 she was pregnant with the
child of another man and was living with her sister Francesca, a registered
prostitute.55 Margareta produced statements signed by two male neighbors who
described her as a good woman (“donna de bene”) the whole time they had known
her, while her parish curate confirmed that she had confessed and taken
communion the previous Easter.56 On further questioning by the Bollette, the
priest claimed that he had known Margareta for about ten or twelve years,
having first met herwhen he lived in the same house as she and her sister. He
claimed not to know what kind of life Margareta led, but admitted that she
appeared pregnant, and was, as far as he knew, not married. The priest’s
testimony cleared her of charges of adultery, but could not save her from
registration, a three-lire fine, and probation.57 In May 1602, Margareta
produced statements about her “honest life and reputation” provided by two
different neighbors and another curate at Santa Caterina di Saragozza, and her
name was removed from the register.58 Margareta lived on the same street for
ten or twelve years, had relationships with neighbors and housemates, had a
sister with whom she lived, and was able to rally four male neighbors and two
parish priests to support her. She and others moved amongst family, friends,
long-term lovers, and occasional clients, building relationships on reciprocal,
if uneven, bonds of financial, emotional, and legal support and protection.
They were not just physically a part of Bologna’s working-poor neighborhoods,
but also socially and affectively integrated into their communities.Bad
neighbors While Bolognese civic law tolerated prostitution and permitted
prostitutes to reside throughout the city, public disorder was always a
concern. Decrees published by the Bolognese legate, at the request of convents,
churches, confraternities, and schools, frequently lamented the dishonest words
and daily and nightly reveling by prostitutes and other disreputable people.59
Men socialized in prostitutes’ homes, eating, making music, and talking.60
While some parties remained relatively quiet, others filled the neighborhood
with winefueled singing, laughing, and the sounds of dancing and of fights over
games of chance. The noise was intrusive, disruptive, and alarming: blasphemous
words, violent acts, and sexual slander carried through windows, over walls,
and into streets, squares, and other residences. Broadsheets illustrating
prostitutes’ lifecycles usually included knife fights by men who discovered
that “their” woman had another lover.61 Barking dogs, brawling men, and
screaming women heard through f limsy walls and open windows added to the noise
of crowded squares, laneways, and streets.62 Men also fought in doorways and on
streets in full sight and hearing of neighbors. To reduce these disturbances,
Papal Legate Bendedetto Giustiniani forbade prostitutes from throwing parties (
festini ) or “making merry” (trebbi ) in the homes of honest people, or even
from eating or drinking in taverns and inns. Other decrees forbade games of
chance and betting, like dice and cards.63 Lawmakers recognized that it was
less the prostitutes than the men with them who were the problem. In 1602
prostitutes were forbidden from travelling through the city at night with more
than three men, under fine of 100 scudi for the men and whipping for the
women.64 Eight years later, Legate Giustiniani forbade prostitutes from going
through the city at night with any men, under penalty of whipping for both the
men and the prostitutes.65Enclosed communities of male and female religious
frequently complained about the noise of prostitution. Bolognese authorities
attempted general exclusionary zones around convents in the 1560s without
success and so moved to proclamations expelling prostitutes and other
disreputable people from specific streets; this was similar to Florence, where
the streets designated for prostitution were de facto exclusionary zones around
most convents.66 Between 1571 and 1630, at least fifty proclamations cleared
twenty-five distinct streets in Bologna, about one-quarter of all the streets
inhabited by prostitutes in 1604. Most proclamations concerned eight specific
convents on the city’s outskirts, though a few male enclosures were also protected.67
All either had elite connections or were newly built, and most were near
streets heavily populated by prostitutes. In 1603 Vice Legate Marsilio
Landriani forbade all prostitutes, procurers, and other dishonest women from
living on a cluster of streets bordering the Poor Clares’ house of Corpus
Domini, established in 1456 by S. Caterina de’ Vigri, and the Dominican convent
of Sant’Agnese (est. 1223), one of the city’s richest and most prestigious
convents with over 100 nuns.68 Landriani’s proclamation stated that the nuns
were greatly disturbed and scandalized by the daily and nightly reveling of
prostitutes, procurers, and other disreputable people, the “dishonest” words
that they spoke, and the wicked examples they posed.69 Prostitutes had just over
a month to move out, and those found there after the deadline would be publicly
whipped, while their landlords would be fined fifty gold scudi and lose their
outstanding rents.70 Yet few prostitutes were actually registered on these
streets.71 While registrations generally dropped dramatically in the 1610s and
1620s, these streets declined the most, with only two prostitutes remaining by
1614.72 In 1622, the expulsion was repeated almost verbatim with the addition
of two neighboring streets that housed a handful of prostitutes; none remained
by 1624.73 Concerns about pollution continued, particularly around shrines. The
confraternal shrine of the Madonna della Neve was built in 1479 to shelter a
miraculous image of the Virgin on the street Senzanome at the south-western
corner of the city.74 Senzanome had twenty-three registered prostitutes in
1594, thirty-six in 1604, and thirty-five in 1609. Yelling, singing, mocking,
and jesting disturbed the peace, interrupted the Mass and other divine offices,
and forced young, unmarried girls and respectable residents to hide in their
houses. Confraternal brothers repeatedly complained to the legate about the
noise of Senzanome’s prostitutes and other “people who have little fear of God
and his most holy mother.” 75 Between 1587 and 1621 four proclamations expelled
dishonest people and prostitutes from Senzanome and around Santa Maria della
Neve.76 One of 1608 threatened women caught residing or lingering in the street
with a fine of ten scudi the first time, and expulsion the second time.77 Men
could be fined ten scudi the first time, and another ten scudi and three lashes
the second time. This proclamation even named three specific women, Giulia da
Gesso, Doralice Moroni, and Ludovica Giudi, “as well as every other meretrice.”
78 A year later all three of these women were still living on Senzanome, with
Doralice Moroni registeredin the house of the priest Campanino and Giulia da
Gesso in the house of a priest of San Niccolo.79 Moreover, they shared the
street with thirty-five other registered prostitutes. Yet the prostitutes
gradually did move away, and in 1614 and 1624, only two women registered on
Senzanome.80 The Legate’s 1621 decree ordered dishonorable people living on Senzanome
to move to Frassinago, to Borgo Novo, or to “another street appointed to
similar people” where there were no convents, churches, or oratories.81
Neighbors had direct, day-to-day contact with prostitutes and knew details
about their lives. Gossip—the sharing of local and extra local information—
typified neighborhoods and formed the basis of community self-regulation.82
People constantly watched and listened to their neighbors from the streets, in
doorways, through windows, on balconies, and through f limsy walls.83 Early
modern prostitution was public and visible. Michel de Montaigne remarked that
prostitutes sat at their widows and leaned out of them, while others observed
that the women promenaded proudly through the streets.84 In his Piazza universale
di tutte le professioni del mondo (1616), Tommaso Garzoni described how
prostitutes worked to catch men’s eyes while sitting at their widows, gesturing
and bantering with them.85 Some called attention to themselves by wearing
brightly colored gowns with ostentatious decorations and jewels on their
fingers and at their necks.86 Contemporary Italian broadsheets depict women
sitting at their widows and in their doorways while older women act as
go-betweens.87 Bollette testimonies show that Bolognese knew a great deal about
the prostitutes who were their neighbors. Witnesses often claimed that they had
seen women going through the streets or into buildings and apartments with men.
In 1601, Caterina Marema told that when she lived in the same casa as Lucrezia
Buonacasa, she frequently saw the tailor Gian Domenico Sesto come to stay and
sleep with her.88 Others saw more intimate behavior, like Bartolomea, daughter
of Antonio di Miani, who claimed that she knew her neighbors Margareta and
Cornelia were “meretrici” because she saw them laughing, dancing, embracing,
and kissing men. She also heard that they went to register with the Bollette.89
Still others testified more simply that “everyone in the neighborhood considers
her to be a whore,” or, “everyone says that she is his whore.” Finally, some
men talked with each other about their sexual relationships with women. Silvio,
son of Rodrigo di Manedini, claimed that over the previous three years his
friend Tarquino, a sbirro, told him repeatedly that he was “screwing”
(chiavava) Lucrezia Buonacasa.90 In this case, Silvio claimed also to have
first-hand knowledge of their relationship: he said that he had seen the two in
bed together at Lucrezia’s house on via Paradiso and at the watch house of the
sbirri. In a close knit, intensely local world like this, prostitutes and
dishonest women would have been hard-pressed to keep their relationships and
work a secret. In pragmatic terms, some women may not have wanted to keep their
work a secret: gossip and visibility acted as advertisement and could attract
better clients. Local knowledge of women’s attachments to men might also earn
them a measure of respect, even if only while the relationship continued,
especially ifthe man was honored locally because of his wealth or status. These
relationships could bring a sort of social protection. Whether or not women or
their clients and lovers made spectacles of themselves, prostitution was both
seen and known. Most working-poor people were not overly scandalized by the
fact that their neighbors lived by prostitution, or perhaps they had resigned
themselves to living amongst them. No evidence has come to light that
working-poor women and men made a concerted effort to drive prostitutes and
dishonest women as a group out of their neighborhoods. Most streets on which
registered prostitutes lived housed ten or fewer such women, and prostitutes
may have been quieter and less given to overt public display, since they did
not have to compete with each other for the attention of the men and youths who
came in search of their services. With fewer women there was less of the
serenading, violence, and harassment by rowdy students and drunken men that
offended neighbors, and less attention from patrolling officers looking to fill
their purses with rewards for arrests.91 Tessa Storey has argued that as long
as Roman prostitutes maintained local order and the appearance of
respectability, neighbors did not see them as an exceptional problem. A few written
complaints requesting the eviction of specific prostitutes from their streets
identified only the most scandalous and the loudest, on grounds that they posed
bad examples by “touching men’s shameful parts and doing other extremely
dishonest acts” in the streets.92 Those who were well behaved—and these were
actually listed by name—were welcome to stay provided that they continued to
behave. Working-poor neighbors who found the women’s work immoral or offensive
or their noise and disorder overwhelming could move to one of the 100 or so
other city streets that were not heavily populated by prostitutes. Even in
1604, the year when the highest number of prostitutes and dishonest women
registered with the Bollette, only sixteen streets had ten or more registrants
living on them, and only eight had more than twenty. At least half of all
Bolognese prostitutes were more widely dispersed through the city, and this may
explain why we see no concerted efforts to dispel them as a group. Beyond this,
it became increasingly difficult to successfully prosecute violations like
adultery or the lack of license. A 1586 order from the vice legate to the
Bollette’s officials suggested that small-scale rivalries were behind too many
frivolous denunciations. Henceforth, unless a woman was found in flagrante with
a man, the testimonies of two neighbors of good repute and the local parish
priest would be required in order to find her guilty.93Conclusion For many
working-poor Bolognese men and women, living amongst prostitutes was a fact of
life. Whether they respected these neighbors or not, they learned to live with
them. Prostitutes and dishonest women had their places in the local kinship,
social, and economic networks of their neighborhoodsand the larger city. This
is not to say that they were not mocked, or that those who treated them with
courtesy fully respected them. Yet while some prostitutes annoyed, overwhelmed,
and frightened some neighbors with their noise, scandal, and violence, they
were also the sisters, mothers, lovers, and friends of many others. Elizabeth
S. Cohen has argued that “[prostitute’s] presence corresponded to an intricate
engagement in the social networks of daily life. In practice, if not in theory,
the prostitutes occupied an ambiguous centrality.”94 Tessa Storey suggests that
restrictive legislation, especially residential confinement, elicited sympathy
from Romans, who were not overly concerned about the immorality of
prostitution.95 This was also true in Bologna, where prostitutes were far more
widely distributed across the entire city. Religious authorities like Gabriele
Paleotti found them immoral and disruptive, posing bad examples and needing to
be separated and marginalized. Yet civic authorities and most lay people appear
to have held more nuanced attitudes, engaging prostitutes in the body social
and using bureaucratic registration to mediate their place in the body politic.
The sources generated by the Ufficio delle Bollette in the later sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries reveal these women operating within networks of
sociability, work, and family. They demonstrate women who fit within their
communities, more uneasily at sometimes than others, and who both gave and
received the resources of support, companionship, and security that
characterized the community-centered world of early modern Italy.Notes 1 Cohen,
“Seen and Known,” 402. Hacke, Women, Sex, and Marriage, 179. Brackett, “The
Florentine Onestà,” 291–92 and 296. Terpstra, “Locating the Sex Trade,” 108–24.
2 Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà,” 290–91 and 295; Cohen, “Seen and Known,”
404– 05; Storey, Carnal Commerce, 70–94; Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 48–49. 3
For expanded analysis and archival documentation, see: McCarthy, “Prostitution.”
4 Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna (hereafter BUB), ms. 373, n. 3C, 151v–152v.
Terpstra, Cultures of Charity, 205–06, 329. McCarthy, “Prostitution, Community,
and Civic Regulation,” 40, 54–61. 5 Archivio di Stato di Bologna (hereafter
ASB), Boschi, b. 541, fol. 170v, “Bando sopra le meretrici et riforma de gli
altri bandi sopra a cio fatti” (January 31 and February 1, 1568). For more on
this episode and the gendered politics of social welfare reform in
sixteenthcentury Bologna: Terpstra, Cultures of Charity, 19–54, 206–07. For the
comparatively loose regime in the Convertite: Monson, Habitual Offenders. 6
Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 403 and 405–08; Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 49;
Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà,” 292. Terpstra, “Locating the Sex Trade,” 116-21.
7 Miller, Renaissance Bologna, 16–17. Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred.” 8 For
example, Isotta Boninsegna and Giovanna di Martini. In 1604 Polonia, daughter
or widow of Domenico Galina of Modena lived on Simia, while in 1614 Maria
Roversi did, and in 1630 Domenica Borgonzona lived there. ASB, Ufficio delle
Bollette 1549– 1796, Campione delle Meretrici (hereafter C de M) 1584, [np] “I”
and “G” sections; 1604, [np] “P” section; 1614, 190; 1630, [np] “D” section. 9
This street was called variously the “via stufa della Scimmia,” the
“postribolo,” or “lupanare Nuovo,” as well as the Corte dei Bulgari. Fanti, Le
vie, vol. 2, 516–17. McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 20–67.10 Biblioteca Comunale di
Bologna (hereafter BCB), Gabinetto disegni e stampe, “Raccolta piante e vedute
della città di Bologna,” port. 1, n. 14. http://badigit.comune.bologna.it/ mappe/14/library.html
11 Ferrante, “‘Pro mercede carnale,’” 48. 12 Borgo Nuovo di San Felice was one
of the streets that Bishop Gabriele Paleotti had ordered prostitutes to live
in. ASB, Boschi, b. 541, fols. 170r–171v, “Bando sopra le meretrici” (January
31 and February 1, 1568). Zanti, Nomi, 16. 13 Muzzarelli, “Ebrei a Bologna,”
862–70. 14 Francesca Ballerina rented from Giacomo the pork butcher (lardarolo)
on Frassinago. Giacoma di Ferrari da Reggio, Ursina de Bertini, and Lucrezia di
Grandi all lived in the house of Giovanni Pietro the shoemaker (calzolario) on
Senzanome. Lucia Tagliarini lived on Frassinago in the inn of Zanino. Giovanna
Querzola, alias Stuarola, lived on Nosadella between the potter (pignataro) and
the shoemaker (calzolaro). C de M 1604, [np] “F”, “I”, “V”, “L”, “T”, and “G”
sections, respectively. 15 Cohen and Cohen, “Open and Shut,” especially 64 and
68–69. 16 Chojnacka, Working Women; Cohen, “To Pray.” 17 For instance, in 1604,
611 women registered and only eleven mothers and four sisters were recorded as
purchasing licenses for their kin. McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 220–21. 18 Of the
213 prostitutes who appeared in the censuses, one-third had children.
Chojnacka, Working Women, 22–24. 19 Storey, Carnal Commerce, 128–29. On widowed
mothers, 114. 20 Benedetta was listed as “sorella di Saltamingroppa.” C de M
1604, [np] “B” and “D” sections. 21 C de M 1605, 175. For Francesca, see C de M
1598, 56; 1599, 49; 1600, 68; 1601, 60; 1602, 72; 1603, 72; 1604, [np] “F”
section; 1605, 86. For Margareta, see C de M 1602, 201; 1604, [np] “F” section;
1605, 175. In 1605, Margareta was deregistered when she began working as a wet
nurse for the Ercolani, a senatorial family. As the register reads: “Sta per
balia del 40 Hercolani.” 22 C de M 1601, 140. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette
1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] fol. 19v (June 28, 1601). 23 C de M 1584,
[np] “L” section. Both were registered under Lucia’s name. C de M 1624, [np]
“A” and “L” sections. 24 C de M 1600, 73; 1604, [np] “F” and “M” sections; 1609,
171; 1614, 172. Domenica was not registered. 25 Hufton, “Women without Men.”
Chojnacka, Working Women, 18–19. Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 406. 26 C de M 1584
and 1588. 27 Of those who registered, almost all gave their street and
residence (44 of 47). For names of co-habitants: McCarthy, “Prostitution,
Community, and Civic Regulation,” 224–25. 28 A total of twenty-seven (75
percent) of the thirty-six women who lived on Campo di Bovi identified their
homes: five lived in the “casa” of Messer Filippo Scranaro, and the rest lived
with two or fewer other prostitutes. A total of thirty (87 percent) of the
thirtyfive women who registered on Senzanome identified their homes: six lived
in the “casa” of Giulia di Sarti, called l’Orba (the Blind), who was not registered,
and four lived in the “casa” of Giovanni Pietro the shoemaker. Otherwise, all
the rest lived with two or fewer other prostitutes. C de M 1604. 29 C de M 1589
and 1597. 30 C de M 1597, 61 and 86 respectively; C de M 1598, 95 and 142
respectively. 31 C de M 1601, 99, 78, and 176 respectively. 32 This was between
1588 and 1597. Ginevra registered once, in January 1588, when she paid for a
one-month license. C de M 1588, [np] “G” section. In 1588, six registered
prostitutes lived with her, in 1589 seven did, and in 1594 and 1597 eight did.
C de M 1588; 1589; 1594; 1597. 33 C d M 1589, [np] “L” section; 1594, [np] “L”
section. C de M 1599, 28. Ginevra was still there in 1601, when Margareta
Tinarolla lived in her home. See C de M 1601, 130.34 C de M 1594, [np] “P”
section; 1597, [np] “P” section. C de M 1597, [np] “C” section; C de M 1599,
28. 35 For her first registration, see C de M 1597, [np] “D” section. 36 Eg.,
Gentile di Sarti, C de M 1601, 79; 1605, 100, and Domenica Fioresa, C de M
1604, [np] “E” section; 1609, 66–67. 37 Lucia Fiorentina left Ginevra’s to
serve in the house of a local scholar (“Signor Dottore”). C de M 1589, [np] “L”
section. Diana di Sacchi Romana lived in Ginevra’s casa in January 1594, but
moved twice more that year, to Borgo Polese and then to Altaseda. C de M 1594,
[np] “D” section. C de M 1594, [np] “L” section, Lucia Fiorentina. It is
unclear but possible that this was the same Lucia who entered service in 1589.
38 Chojnacka, “Early Modern Venice,” especially 217 and 225. McCarthy,
“Prostitution,” 253–314. 39 See ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni dei
Forestieri, Scritture Diverse, busta 1, “Statuti,” [np] fol. 8r. 40 ASB,
Ufficio delle Bollette 1549-1796, Filza 1604, [np] “Die 21 May 1604,” fol. 1r.
41 Vincenzo is described as Francesca’s “cognatus.” Ibid., fol. 1r–v. 42 This
permission was copied into the 1586 register and the 1462 illuminated statutes:
C de M 1586, [np] “Z” section (28 June 1586); ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette e
Presentazioni dei Forestieri, Statuti, sec. XV, codici miniati, ms. 64, 28. 43
For Paleotti’s reaction, see BUB, ms. 89, fasc. 2, Constitutiones conclilii
provincialis Bonon. 1586, fol. 95v, cited in Ferrante, “La sessualità,” 993. 44
ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601, [np] “Decreto d[e]lle
bolette” (November 20, 1596); Filza 1614, [np] “Dalla letura delli statuti si
cava che le Donne di vita inhonesta si possono descrivere nel campione in 4
modi” (undated). 45 John Florio defines “amico” as “a friend, also a lover.”
Florio, Queen Anna’s, 24. See also Cohen, “Camilla la Magra.” 46 The suit was
brought to the Bollette. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601,
[np] “Arsilia Zanetti” (November 12, 1601). For a detailed study of Bolognese
registered prostitutes who took clients to the Bollette’s tribunal for debt,
see Ferrante, “‘Pro mercede carnale.’” 47 Pasulini bought her two six-month
licenses in July 1598 and January 1601. Arsilia’s son, Giovanni Battista, paid
for the other months. C de M 1598, 48; 1599, 3; 1600, 4; 1601, 4. 48 Archivio
di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Onestà, ms 1, ff. 27r–31v. Terpstra, “Sex
and the Sacred,” 77. 49 Ludovico Pizzoli, the Bollette’s esecutore, claimed
that for three years Rossi had purchased her licenses because he was having a
continuous sexual relationship with her even while she was having sex with
other men: ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1606, “Cont[ra]
Pantaselia Donina[m] al[ia]s de Salanis” (August 19, 1605), fol. 1r. John Florio
defines “amicítia” as “amity, freindship [sic], good will.” Florio, Queen
Anna’s¸ 24. The Bollette’s 1602 register confirms that Rossi paid for her
licenses in person as well as giving money to Pizzoli to pay on his behalf. C
de M 1601, 160; 1602, 154; 1603, 170. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796,
Filza 1601, “Molto Ill[ust]re et Ecc[ellen]te Sig[no] re” (May 14, 1601). 50
Cohen, “Balk Talk,” 101. 51 The record in the register does not say why it was
given for free, only that Pomilio “solvet nihil.” C de M 1583, [np] “F”
section. 52 These were Angelica Bellini, Caterina Furlana, and Caterina di
Rossi. C de M, 1624, [np] “A” and “C” sections. 53 Both in Ibid., [np] “C”
section. 54 This was according to the curate of her parish church. ASB, Ufficio
delle Bollette 1549– 1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] fols. 20v–21v (June 20, 1601;
July 2, 1601). For her sister Francesca’s registrations: C de M 1598, 56; 1599,
49; 1600, 68; 1601, 60. 55 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum
1601, [np] fol. 19v (June 28, 1601) and fol. 20r–v (June 30, 1601).56 ASB,
Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601, [np] “Malg[are]ta Sulfanela”
(June 27, 1601). 57 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np]
fols. 20v–21v (July 2, 1601). 58 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza
1603, [np] (26 June 1602). C de M 1602, 21. The Convertite confirmed this
removal: ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1603, [np] untitled
(October 12, 1602). 59 See, for instance, BCB, Bandi Merlani, V, fol. 106r,
untitled, begins “Non essendo conveniente che presso li Monasteri j di Monache”
(March 24, 1603). McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 131–97 60 Cohen, “‘Courtesans,’”
202. 61 “Vita et fine miserabile delle meretrici” (“Life and Miserable End of
Prostitutes”), ca. 1600, in Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip, 275. Giuseppe
Maria Mitelli, “La vita infelice della meretrice compartita ne dodeci mesi
dell’anno lunario che non falla dato in luce da Veridico astrologo” (1692),
Museo della Città di Bologna, 2470 (re 1/425). 62 Cohen, “Honor and Gender,”
especially 600–01. Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred,” 71, 79–80. 63 ASB,
Assunteria di Sanità, Bandi (XVI–1792), Bandi Bolognesi sopra la peste, 45,
“Bandi Generali del Ill[ustrissimo] et Reverendiss[i]mo Monsignor Fabio Mirto
Arcivescovo di Nazarette Governatore di Bologna,” (February 17, 18, and 19,
1575), fol. 2v; BCB, Bandi Merlani, V, fol. 64r, “Bando Sopr’al gioco, &
Biscazze, alli balli nell’Hosterie, & che le Donne meretrici non vadano
vestite da huomo” (December 9, 1602). 64 Ibid. 65 Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library (hereafter Fisher), B-11 04425, “Bando generale dell’Illustrissimo,
& Reverendissimo Sig. Benedetto Card. Giustiniano Legato di Bologna” (June
23 and 24, 1610), “Delle Meretrici. Ca XXVIII,” 60–61. 66 In 1565, Governor
Francesco de’Grassi set the exclusionary zone at 30 pertiche (approximately 114
meters), while in 1566 Francesco Bossi extended the zone to 50 pertiche (190
meters). See Martini, Manuale di metrologia, 92. ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali,
vol. 3, fol. 16r (February 1, 1565); ASB, Boschi, b. 541 (February 1 and
8, 1566), fol. 115r. Florence reduced its exclusionary zone from 175 to 60
meters in this time (i.e., from 300 braccia to 100): ASF, Acquisti e Doni 291,
“Onestà e Meretrici” (May 6, 1561). Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred,” 78–79. 67
These convents were San Bernardino, Santa Caterina in Strada Maggiore, San
Guglielmo, San Leonardo, San Ludovico, Santa Cristina, San Bernardo, Corpus
Domini, and Sant’Agnese. Proclamations also protected the new monastery of San
Giorgio, the Benedictine monastery of San Procolo, the college of the
Hungarians, the Jesuits and their school, the new church of Santa Maria
Mascarella, and the shrine of the Madonna della Neve. McCarthy, “Prostitution,”
131–97. 68 Zarri, “I monasteri femminili,” 166, 177. Johnson, Monastic Women,
235–37. Fini, Bologna sacra, 14. 69 BCB, Bandi Merlani, V, fol. 106r, untitled,
begins “Non essendo conveniente che presso li Monasterij di Monache” (March 24,
1603). 70 One-third of each fine was to go to the accuser, one-third to the
city treasury, and onethird to the esecutore. 71 In 1601, one woman registered
on Bocca di lupo, two on Capramozza, and four on Belvedere di Saragozza. In
1604, one registered on Bocca di lupo, three on Capramozza, and one on
Belvedere di Saragozza. C de M 1601 and 1604. One of the women who lived on
Belvedere in 1601 continued to do so in 1604, while another had moved three
blocks west to Senzanome, and a third had moved across town to Campo di Bovi by
the north-eastern wall. These were Vittoria Pellizani, Gentile di Parigi, and
Angela Amadesi, called “La Zoppina.” For Vittoria: C de M 1601, 204 and 1604,
[np] “V” section. For Gentile: C de M 1601, 74 and 1604, [np] “G” section. For
Angela: C de M 1601, 136 and 1604, [np] “A” section. 72 These were Camilla di
Fiorentini, who lived in the house of Caterina the widow, and Cecilia Baliera.
C de M 1614, 288 and 39 respectively.73 See BCB, Bandi Merlani, XI, fol. 28r,
untitled, begins “Non essendo conveniente, che appresso li Monasterij di
Monache” (January 18, 1622). In 1624, four women lived on Altaseta and none on
Mussolina. 74 Guidicini, Cose notabili, vol. III, 179–80 and volume III, 346–50.
75 The proclamation clearly states that the order was made at the insistence of
the “Huomini della Madonna dalla Neve, Confraternità di essa, e persone honeste
di detta strada.” BCB, Bandi Merlani, X, fol. 128r (August 20, 1621). 76 These
were published in 1587, 1602, 1608, and 1621. BCB, Bandi Merlani, I, fol. 449r,
untitled, begins “Devieto di affitare a persone disoneste nella contrada di S.
Maria della Neve” (April 26, 1587); ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 15, fol.
198r, untitled, begins “Essendo la Contrada di Santa Maria dalla Neve sempre
stata Contrada quieta” (January 31, 1602); ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol.
17, fol. 225r, untitled, begins “Havendo l’Illustriss[im]e Reverendiss[ime]
Sig[nor] Car[dinal] di Bologna pien notitia” (June 6, 1608); BCB, Bandi
Merlani, X, fol. 128r, “Bando Contra le Meretrici, & Persone inhoneste”
(August 20, 1621). 77 “non possa, ne possano, ne debbano sotto qual si vogli
pretesto, a quesito colore fermarsi, o star ferme per detta strada, sotto il
portico, suso il lor’uscio, o d’altri, o suso l’uscio dell’ Hostarie.” ASB,
Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 17, fol. 225r (June 6, 1608). 78 “comanda
espressamente all GIULIA da Gesso, all DORALICE Moroni, alla LUDOVICA Guidi,
& ad ogn’altra MERETRICE [sic].” ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 17, fol.
225r (June 6, 1608). 79 C de M 1609, 73, 121, and 151, respectively. 80 These
were Agata Martelli, alias Bagni, from Castel San Pietro and Lena di Stefani
who lived in the casa of Messer Domenico Bonhuomo. C de M 1614, 19 and 1624,
[np] “L” section. 81 BCB, Bandi Merlani, X, fol. 128r, “Bando Contra le
Meretrici, & Persone inhoneste” (August 20, 1621). Though Savelli did not
specify which “Borgo Nuovo” they should move to, in all likelihood he meant
Borgo Nuovo di stra Maggiore, which had no convents or churches on it. 82 Cohen
and Cohen, “Open and Shut,” 67–68. 83 Cowan, “Gossip,” 314–16; Cohen and Cohen,
“Open and Shut,” 68–69. 84 Cohen, “‘Courtesans,’” 204–05; Cohen, “Seen and
Known,” 396–97. In a later article Cohen argues that “[t]hough typically
noisier and more abrasive than feminine ideals would dictate, much of
prostitutes’ street behavior was not radically distinct; rather it fell toward
one end on a spectrum of working class practices.” Cohen, “To Pray,” 310. 85 Tommaso
Garzoni, Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, nuovamente
ristampata & posta in luce, da Thomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo (Venice:
Appresso l’Herede di Gio. Battista Somasco, 1593), 598. Available online from
the Università degli Studi di Torino OPAL Libri Antichi internet archive at http://archive.org/details/Scansione GIII446MiscellaneaOpal,
cited in Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 397, n. 18. 86 Ibid., especially 396–97 and
399; Storey, Carnal Commerce, 172–75. 87 “Mirror of the Harlot’s Fate,” ca.
1657, reproduced on 278–79 in Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip: Volume 1 and
Storey Carnal Commerce, 37. Vita del lascivo (“The Life of the Rake”), ca.
1660s, Venice, reproduced on 39–44 of Storey, Carnal Commerce. 88 ASB, Ufficio
delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] January 22, 1601. 89 Ibid.,
[np] July 23, 1601. 90 Ibid., [np] January 22, 1601. John Florio defines
“chiavare” as “to locke with a key. Also to transome, but now a daies abusively
used for Fottere.” He defines “fottere” as “to jape, to flucke, to sard, to
swive,” and “fottente” as “fucking, swiving, sarding.” Florio, Queen Anna’s, 97
and 194, respectively. 91 On the attraction of lawmen to streets known for prostitution,
gambling, and drinking: Cohen, “To Pray,” 303; Storey, Carnal Commerce, 99–100.
92 The complainants referred to themselves as honorati and gentilhuomini,
curiali principali, and artegiani buoni e da bene. Storey, Carnal Commerce, 91,
n. 103. She dates the two letters from 1601 and 1624.93 For the vice legate’s
order, as transcribed into the 1586 register: C de M 1586, [np], untitled,
begins “Ill[ustrissim]us et R[everendissi]mus D[ominus] Bononorum Vicelegatus
in eius Camera” (June 28, 1586). 94 Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 409. 95 Storey,
Carnal Commerce, 1–2.Bibliography Archival sources Archivio di Stato di Bologna
(ASB) Assunteria di Sanità, Bandi (XVI–1792) Boschi, b. 541 Legato, Bandi
speciali, vol. 3, 15, and 17 Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Campione delle
Meretrici 1583, 1584, 1586, 1588, 1589, 1594, 1597, 1598, 1599, 1600, 1601,
1602, 1603, 1604, 1605, 1609, 1614, 1624, and 1630 Ufficio delle Bollette
1549–1796, Filze 1601, 1603, 1604, 1606, and 1614 Ufficio delle Bollette
1549–1796, Inventionum 1601 Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni dei
Forestieri, Scritture Diverse, busta 1 Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni
dei Forestieri, Statuti, sec. XV, codici miniati, ms. 64 Archivio di Stato di
Firenze (ASF) Acquisti e Doni 291 Onestà, ms 1 Biblioteca Comunale di Bologna
(BCB) Bandi Merlani, I, V, X, and XI. Gabinetto disegni e stampe, “Raccolta
piante e vedute della città di Bologna,” port. 1, n. 14. http://badigit.comune.bologna.it/mappe/14/library.html Biblioteca
Universitaria Bologna (BUB) Manuscript 373, n. 3C Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library (Fisher) B-11 04425 Museo della Città di Bologna (MCB) 2470 (re 1/425)Published
sources Brackett, John K. “The Florentine Onestà and the Control of
Prostitution, 1403–1680.” Sixteenth Century Journal 24, no. 2 (1993): 273–300.
Chojnacka, Monica. “Early Modern Venice: Communities and Opportunities.” In
Singlewomen in the European Past. Edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M.
Froide, 217–35. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999. ———. Working
Women in Early Modern Venice. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2001. Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Balk Talk: Two Prostitutes’ Voices from Rome c.
1600.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (2007): 95–126. ———.
“Camilla l Magra, prostituta romana.” In
Rinascimento al Femminile. Edited by Ottavia Niccoli, 163–96. Rome: Laterza,
1991.———. “Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome.” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 22, no. 4 (1992): 597–625. ———. “Seen and Known:
Prostitutes in the Cityscape of Late-Sixteenth-Century Rome,” Renaissance
Studies 12, no. 3 (1998): 392–409. ———. “To Pray, To Work, To Hear, To Speak:
Women in Roman Streets c. 1600.” Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008):
289–311. ———. “‘Courtesans’ and ‘Whores’: Words and Behavior in Roman Streets,”
Women’s Studies 19 (1991): 201–08. ——— and Thomas V. Cohen, “Open and Shut: The
Social Meanings of the Cinquecento Roman House.” Studies in the Decorative Arts
(Fall/Winter 2001–02): 61–84. Cowan, Alexander. “Gossip and Street Culture in
Early Modern Venice.” Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008): 313–33. Fanti,
Mario. Le vie di Bologna. Saggio di toponomastica storica, 2 volumes. Bologna:
Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 2000. Ferrante, Lucia. “La sessualità come
risorsa. Donne davanti al foro Archivescovile di Bologna (sec. XVII).” In
Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome 99, part 2 (1987): 989–1016. ———. “‘Pro
mercede carnale.’ Il giusto prezzo rivendicato in tribunale.” Memoria: Rivista
di storia delle donne 2, no. 17 (1986): 42–58. Fini, Marcello. Bologna sacra:
tutte le chiese in due millenni di storia. Bologna: Pendragon, 2007. Florio,
John. Queen Anna’s new world of words, or, Dictionarie of the Italian and
English tounges, collected and newly much augmented by John Florio. London:
Melch. Bradwood for Edw. Blount and William Barrett, 1611. Guidicini, Giuseppe.
Cose notabili della città di Bologna, ossia, storia cronologica de suoi stabili
sacri, pubblici e privati. Volume 3. Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1982. Hacke,
Daniela. Women, Sex, and Marriage in Early Modern Venice. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004. Hufton, Olwen. “Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in England and
France in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984):
355–76. Johnson, Sheri F. Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval
Bologna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Kunzle, David. History of
the Comic Strip. Volume 1: The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture
Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450–1825. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1973. Martini, Angelo. Manuale di metrologia, ossia
misure, pesi e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli.
Torino: Loescher, 1883. McCarthy, Vanessa. “Prostitution, Community, and Civic
Regulation in Early Modern Bologna.” Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2015
Miller, Naomi. Renaissance Bologna: A Study in Architectural Form and Content.
New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Monson, Craig. Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of
Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2016. Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. “Ebrei a Bologna nel XVI
secolo.” In Bologna nell’età moderna (secoli XVI–XVIII), v. 3, n. 1:
Istituzioni, forme del potere, economia e società. Edited by Adriano Prosperi.
Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008. Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions:
Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993. Storey, Tessa. Carnal Commerce in
Counter-Reformation Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Terpstra,
Nicholas. Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief
in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. ———.
“Locating the Sex Trade in the Early Modern City: Space, Sense, and Regulation
in Sixteenth-Century Florence.” In Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in
Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City. Edited by Nicholas Terpstra
and Colin Rose, 107–24. London: Routledge, 2016. ———. “Sex and the Sacred:
Negotiating Spatial and Sensory Boundaries in Renaissance Florence.” Radical
History Review 121 ( January 2015): 71–90. Zanti, Giovanni de. Nomi, et cognomi
di tuttle le strad et borghi d Bologna: Dicchiarando la origine del principii
loro. Bologna: Pellegrino Bonardo, 1583. Zarri, Gabriella. “I monasteri
femminili a Bologna tra il XIII e il XVII secolo.” Atti e Memorie della
Deputazione di storia patria per le province di Romagna n.s., 24 (1973):
133–224.5 THOUGH POPES SAID DON’T, SOME PEOPLE DID Adulteresses in Catholic
Reformation Rome Elizabeth S. CohenAdultery was no simple sexual lapse.
Intricately bound to the fundamental institution of marriage, it threatened
honor, family, and livelihood. Traditionally, this grave offense merited harsh punishments
like stoning, although by the sixteenth century these had much softened. A sin,
a crime, and a breach of contract, in early modern Italy it could be prosecuted
under several kinds of law. Beyond canon law’s jeopardy for both spouses, under
Roman law enshrining patria potestas, adultery was overwhelmingly a wife’s
transgression, to which, furthermore, she was presumed to have consented.1 So,
a vengefully passionate husband or kinsmen who killed a wife found f lagrantly
abed with a lover could claim immunity from prosecution for murder.2 The
adulteress herself figured ambiguously as a theme in Italian paintings, prints,
and stories. Nevertheless, neither law nor broader cultural norms ref lected
adultery’s complexities as social experience on the ground. To juxtapose
prescriptive and lived understandings and to test the crime’s notoriety, we
turn to judicial records. For contrast with our culturally framed expectations
and to glimpse the everyday worlds of most early modern people, this essay reconstructs
four stories from adultery prosecutions in the Roman Governor’s court circa
1600. The particular crimes of these non-elite women and men involved
companionship and sex, but little else was directly at stake. My accounts seek
to represent both social dynamics and a vernacular culture of sexuality
accessible alike to the educated and the illiterate. I highlight a cluster of
adulteresses who cultivated not primarily instrumental, but rather personal,
alliances outside marriage. The lovers’ choices transgressed and had
consequences both at home and in the public courts. Nevertheless, their
misconduct was not radically out of step with an everyday culture of sexuality
that endured even in Catholic Reformation Rome. Adultery had a lengthy history
as a cultural, legal, and behavioral problem. From the twelfth century, an
ambivalent medieval literature on humanlove—from Andreas Cappelanus to
Gottfried von Strassburg—suggested that passion and marriage did not mix.
Despite the Renaissance emergence of more positive takes on sex, the notion
persisted that intense eroticism was seldom the business of husbands and
wives.3 The church still taught that marriage was the only licit setting for
sex, while discouraging the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. The
iconography of love on domestic objects linked to betrothals and weddings
promoted family policy as much as private spousal gratification.4 Although
married people may not have behaved as they were told, they have left few words
about sex. If conjugal relations did often tend to routine, adultery could be
easily imagined by contemporaries, and by scholars since, as an agreeable
alternative. Popular histories have repeatedly featured swaggering Renaissance
noblemen, including prelates, who dallied sensuously with mistresses and
fathered bastards. Their female partners, who ranged from servants to
gentlewomen, were often married, and so adulteresses.5 A wife’s adultery posed
problems for both her spousal household and her natal family, but sometimes
brought them benefits as well. Under ancient Roman law still frequently cited
in the Renaissance, uncertainty about paternity and corruption of the lineage
was one major cost.6 Adultery also rattled the public honor of a patriarchal
family that could not control its assets, including the chastity and fertility
of its women. These concerns appear as conventional rhetoric, but it is far
from clear how much they actually drove Renaissance husbands’ retribution.
Certainly, charges of adultery were invoked to instigate violence against an
inconvenient kinswoman and to cover other, less high-minded goals. On the other
hand, where doctrines of sexual exclusivity could bend in practice,
adulteresses might reap rewards rather than punishments for their liaisons,
especially with powerful men. For example, Giulia Farnese, wife of the Roman
baron Orsino Orsini and the mistress of Pope Alexander VI in the 1490s,
arranged a cardinal’s hat for her brother, Alessandro, the future Pope Paul
III.7 Even bastards could be absorbed and their mothers supported. In the 1460s
Lucrezia Landriani, married conveniently to a Milanese courtier, bore four
illegitimate children to the young Galeazzo Maria Sforza before he became Duke
of Milan and took a bride. Bearing their father’s name and raised in his court,
Lucrezia’s brood included Caterina Sforza, the future indomitable Countess of
Forlí.8 The husbands of these high-f lying adulteresses managed their role, its
perks and its costs, more and less deftly. In Florence, the husband of Bianca
Cappello, the mistress and later wife of Grand Duke Francesco I, retaliated by
intemperate womanizing of his own, and died at the hands of his paramour’s
kinsmen.9 Husbands did not take adultery lightly, but there might be multiple
stakes and more than just one bloody end. The dark emotions of
adultery—jealousy and anger—struck men and women alike. Legends of aristocratic
adulteresses killed in flagrante delictu by vengeful husbands arouse pity,
horror, and titillation in later readers. Although the threat and the rhetoric
surely circulated, documented historical examples are few.10 More modest women,
too, had reason to fear even unmerited spousal violence.For example, in a
miracle attested in 1522, the Madonna della Quercia of Viterbo saved a woman
mortally assaulted by a suspicious husband, egged on by his mother.11 More
peaceably, a Quattrocento necromantic recipe promised that to make a wife
“persevere in honest alliance with her husband.”12 Moreover, although
adulterers were rarely prosecuted, women deeply resented their husbands’
philandering. In the 1550s a pious Bolognese gentlewoman, Ginevra Gozzadini,
asked her spiritual director if she owed the marital debt to her errant
husband. Though reluctant to release his disciple from godly duties, Don Leone
Bartolini allowed her to decline if her husband refused to forgo his “public
adultery and also grazing on his wife like a pig and not a Christian.”13
Renaissance Italian visual and literary culture depicted four roles in
adultery’s drama: the wife; the husband or cuckold; the lover; and the chorus
of the public. Though shadowed by misogyny, views of women were mixed. Ancient
and medieval texts widely posited female propensities to falling in love and to
undisciplined and mercenary carnality. Beauty, coupled with fickle mind, made
women at once temptresses and easy prey to seducers. These risky frailties in
turn justified tightly constraining rules. In parallel, novelle, poetry,
madrigals, and commedia dell’arte evoked both woe and delight with
representations of love and romantic adventure. Magic, too, offered women and
men ways to attract and bind a lover.14 Mainstream cultural norms often lumped
non-conforming women together as sexual transgressors. Yet prestige and class,
singled out some for celebration. Thus, as whores, prostitutes stood for the
obverse of female virtue, but courtesans, especially those dubbed
counterintuitively “honest,” earned renown among elite men for their manners
and cultural finesse. Even Saint Mary Magdalene appeared in paintings as the
brightly dressed, or undressed, playgirl who was the foil to her model
penitent. The adulteress partook of this generic bad girl, at once attractive
and corrupt, but her jeopardy under law invited ambivalence. For example, many
early modern artists represented the Gospel story of the woman “taken in
adultery.”15 Sixteenth-century Italian paintings usually depicted a beautiful,
young woman, thrust by the Pharisees’ heavy legal hand to stand alone before a
crowd to be judged. Although conventional language suggested that she was in
some sense caught or trapped, she was still deemed to have consented to dire
offense. Viewers would hear Jesus first chide her persecutors, “Let he who is
without sin cast the first stone,” and then tell her to go and sin no more. All
were sinners, not least the adulteress, but law must not trump Christian mercy.
Among the men’s roles, not the male adulterer nor the wife’s lover, but rather
the husbandly cuckold claimed a share of cultural preoccupation. The
aristocratic choice between familial vengeance or instrumental accommodation
often came down on the latter side. Instead of destroying the adulteress, the
cuckold had his reasons for complacency. In visual imagery, art historians have
shown betrayed husbands responding as much with dismayed forbearance as with
hot ire. Comparing paintings of Joseph, the helpmate of the Virgin Mary, and
Vulcan, the spouse of Venus, Francesca Alberti explained how the aging husbands
ofexceptional wives, though vulnerable to mockery by artists and viewers,
served divine ends.16 Louise Rice tracked Italian depictions of the cuckold
from a nasty late fifteenth-century allegorical engraving through sixteenth-century
literary parodies from Aretino and Modio, and finally to Baccio del Bianco’s
drawings. These last offered whimsically ironic scenes that normalized both the
cuckold and the adulteress.17 Ambivalently allotting pleasure and agency to
women and complicating the revenge narrative, novelle offered socially more
varied cultural constructions of adultery. In the Decameron, Boccaccio
exploited these possibilities in more than twenty-five stories featuring
adultery that fancifully permuted its spousal roles.18 The married women of the
novelle, again almost always beautiful, pursued love and reaped their
adulterous pleasures with ambiguous culpability. At the expense of dull or
aging husbands, some wives schemed cleverly both to achieve their desires and
to elude discovery and punishment.19 Others, honest, virtuous, and alluring,
had to be tricked by would-be lovers into learning that sex outside marriage
was more fun.20 Lucrezia in Machiavelli’s Mandragola found similar fortune.
Although female delight was only a means to an end in the Decameron’s elegantly
ironic lessons, a more literal reading of the stories at least gave a space to
imagine wives’ extra-domestic enjoyment. Boccaccio’s cuckolded husbands reacted
variously to adultery’s challenges to honor and to its remedies in law. In Day
4, Story 9, a gentlewoman let herself fall to her death after her vindictive
husband fed her the heart of her paramour. Explained the woman, since she had
given her love freely, she was the guilty one and not the lover. In a lighter
vein, Day 3, Story 2 parodied the narratives of murder in f lagrante and, less
directly, of Christ forgiving the adulteress. A king, discovering his wife and
a groom asleep together, cut the man’s hair to mark his guilt. When the lover
woke, he scotched his jeopardy by similarly tonsuring other servants. In the
end, the king, rejecting a petty vendetta that would broadcast his dishonor,
announced cryptically to his assembled entourage: “He that did it, do it no
more, and may you all go with God.”21 In Day 6, Story 7, a hapless husband,
fearing penalty if he killed his adulterous wife himself, hauled her before the
public court, where, by statute, she faced a sentence of death by fire. Unlike
the Gospel’s submissive adulteress, the respected Madonna Filippa staunchly
defended herself with two claims. First, as in the tragedy of Day 4, she did it
for her “deep and perfect” love for Lazzarino. Secondly, having gotten her
husband to agree that she had always satisfied his every bodily wish, she
asked: “what am I to do with the surplus? Throw it to the dogs? Is it not far
better that I should present it a gentleman who loves me more dearly than
himself, rather than allow it to turn bad or go to waste?” The gathered
populace of Prato greeted this charming riposte with approving laughter and, at
the judge’s suggestion, altered the harsh statute to punish only adulteresses
who did it for money.22 Christian rules as implemented through ecclesiastical
courts also ref lected more everyday cultural norms. Although by medieval canon
law both spouses owed the marital debt, in customary practice expectations
differed for husbandand wife. As historian Cecilia Cristellon shows, the church
courts of preTridentine Venice aimed less to police sex than to stabilize
marriages and to minimize scandal.23 Many proceedings, often brought by women,
sought to formalize separations or annulments of couples who had long since
parted company. Adultery by wife or husband was a charge to blacken character
but was seldom advanced as the source of a broken marriage.24 In fact, among
the lower orders, adultery was a common product of widespread, informal serial
monogamy. Finding themselves for various reasons without present spouses,
people readily took up new heterosexual partnerships. Although adulterous, such
concubinage, sometimes with a formal blessing that made it bigamy, was often
marriage-like and, in the absence of contrary evidence, usually accepted by the
lay community. In the face of these popular habits, fifteenth-century church
courts worked to sharpen the boundaries of marriage, and the Council of Trent’s
legislation assimilated concubinage more and more to prostitution.25 Even so,
ecclesiastical judges continued less to punish adulterous sex by itself than to
seek better moral and spiritual discipline around marriage as a whole. Let us
turn now to Rome at the end of the sixteenth century to gauge the moral climate
and social textures in which our everyday adulteries took place. For some
decades Catholic reformers had worked to burnish Rome’s reputation as a fitting
capital for a resurgent church. Issuing repeated regulations (bandi ) to
suppress blasphemy and vice, local authorities particularly targeted gambling
and adultery.26 Yet these official pronouncements better registered moralistic
concern than they energized a thorough cleansing of the civic body. Parallel
rules sought to constrain the practice of prostitution, although that trade and
fornication by the unmarried were transgressive but not criminal. The
magistrates’ concerns turned mostly on guarding sacred sites from taint and
restraining violence and disorder by prostitutes’ clients. Yet enforcement of
decrees around illicit sex remained sporadic. Pius V’s ghetto for prostitutes
of the late 1560s at the Ortaccio did not last long as either structure or
policy. That moment was the reformists’ exception rather than the trend. The
early sixteenth-century celebrity of Rome’s honest courtesans had certainly
waned, but in 1580 the gentleman traveler Montaigne was still keen to admire
and visit their kind.27 More generally, the historian of crime Peter
Blastenbrei concluded that, for two decades immediately post-Trent, Rome was de
facto quite accommodating of heterosexual irregularities and sometimes
attracted couples seeking to escape sharper discipline elsewhere.28 All told,
by 1600, reform in the papal city had subdued the Renaissance culture of f
leshly pleasures, but effective suppression of non-marital sex was scarcely
true on the ground. The labyrinth of Rome’s institutions and, especially, the
mobile demography of its residents consistently subverted the religious and
moral aspirations of its leadership.29 The city’s population swelled, from
35,000 in 1527, after the catastrophic Sack by Hapsburg imperial troops, to
around 100,000 in 1600.30 Few people were native Romans. Visitors and migrants
f lowed in—men and women, of all social ranks from ambassadors and nobildonne
to pilgrims, cattledrivers,and servants. Many also left town. In a f luid
residential geography, most people rented their accommodations and often moved
house. Although many households had a nuclear core or its remnants, complete
families were fewer than in many cities.31 Lodgers and informal clusters of
housemates were common. People also changed jobs frequently, and some worked in
one part of the city but, regularly or occasionally, ate and slept elsewhere.
As a result, ordinary Romans had repeatedly to renegotiate the personnel and terms
of daily life. Furthermore, Rome’s sharply skewed sex ratio yielded distinctive
economic and marital dynamics. The urban population counted, roughly, only 70
women for every 100 men. Celibate clerics were not the primary culprits. Many
of the surplus men came to the city to provide for the needs and comforts of a
courtly society, by serving in great households of prelates or secular lords or
by supplying goods.32 With males doing much of the domestic work and without a
major textile industry, the market for female labor in turn was weak. Of the
many men, some married in Rome to help establish themselves, but others had
wives elsewhere, or were young and not ready to settle down.33 Although some,
nubile, women found husbands readily, many others were left to improvise when
fathers died or spouses left town for shorter or longer absences. Typically,
they struggled to live piecemeal from laundry, spinning, and sewing. As in
Venice, concubinage was common. Prostitution, too, though never as rampant as
some hysterical reformers claimed, was another, potentally better paid
recourse. Often informally and intermittently, younger, more presentable or
gregarious women offered mixes of sexual, social, and domestic services to a
shifting contingent of unpartnered men, and to some husbands as well. As a
concubine or prostitute, a married woman faced legal jeopardy for adultery.
When a husband did not, as obligated, support his wife, she had to find
alternatives. Sometimes, he had wasted the dowry. Often, he had been long away,
having intentionally or not abandoned his wife. A woman, in turn, unknowing if
her spouse had died, often proceeded as if he had and set up new partnerships.
In the absence of contrary information, neighbors tended to presume legitimacy
for couples who lived appropriately, including taking the sacraments at church.
Nevertheless, married women living as prostitutes, concubines, or even bigamist
wives were liable, if denounced, to prosecution. The discipline and prosecution
of adultery in early modern Rome has left only erratic traces. No trial records
survive from the tribunal of the Vicario, who bore many of the city’s episcopal
functions for the pope. 34 As an offense of “mixti fori,” however, adultery
sometimes came before the criminal courts.35 Killing women for honor was rare,
especially in the city, and the ferocity of the ancient law had attenuated.
Going to law, though risking unwelcome publicity, became more common, even for
noblemen.36 In the 1580 edition of Rome’s Statuta, carnal and associated crimes
occupied a brief three pages and mostly specified due punishments.37 In
practice, these penalties were often negotiated down, so the statutory
guidelines are interesting mostly as a ref lection of judicial thinking and
broader cultural values. This section began with sodomy and a tersepronouncement
of death by burning. Next, a longer paragraph, De Adulterio e incestu, spoke
first of “adultery with incest,” before turning to “simple adultery.” For this
last, punishments were calibrated to the woman’s honesty and the man’s social
rank. For sex with an “honest” wife, a plebian man faced a hefty fine of 200
scudi and three years of exile. A gentleman owed double the fine and the exile,
and a baron triple. Notably, this scale of penalties targeted the common
circumstance of high-status men making alliances with women of lower rank. On
the other hand, the chance that even a middling family would successfully haul
a nobleman into court was slim. Continuing, the statute declared that if the
wife was poor and “inhonesta, but not a public prostitute,” the penalties were
halved.38 Reputation ( fama) in the neighborhood legally determined a woman’s
“honesty.”39 At the same time, where early modern criminal law recognized that
virgins might resist forcible def loration (stupro), wives were still held
complicit in adultery.40 Thus, every proven adulteress was, in principle, to be
sequestered for correction in a casa pia for errant wives (malmaritate), where
her husband or family paid her expenses. From the later sixteenth century,
adultery came before the Governor’s court by two routes. By legal tradition,
reiterated in the Statuta, sexual crimes involving respectable women received
public intervention only when brought by a kinsman with honor at stake.
Institutional justice, seeking to promote itself and to tame the violence of
self-help vendetta, encouraged this recourse with some success. Thus, husbands
initiated many of the Governor’s adultery trials, although typically with a
keen eye to retaining spousal property.41 On occasion, angry women prosecuted
their husbands for adultery.42 To note, the Governor’s criminal court in
general took seriously women’s complaints, even without male backing. Their
testimony as accused or witness, usually recorded under the same intimidating
circumstances as men’s, bore analogous weight. Especially for offenders from
the lower social ranks, adultery also came to the court’s attention by an
investigation ex offitio, on the state’s initiative. Usually, a secret report
by a mercenary spy or grouchy neighbor launched the case, followed by a police
raid.43 Such arrests were often handled by summary justice that imposed a fine
and issued an injunction against further misconduct.44 A few cases led to full
trials, and my stories here of “simple adultery” are among them.45 Although
these examples were not formally typical, they involved ordinary people getting
into relatively routine kinds of trouble. Bodies and honor were at stake, but
neither money nor property were central for either husbands or wives. All the
women had engaged actually or potentially in sex with men of their own choosing
outside the bonds of marriage. From the tales of these willing adulteresses who
ended up in court, we can learn about a range of possibilities for extramarital
adventures and about the narratives and discourses that explained them and
hoped to extenuate culpability. These women, though several years married, were
often young. In other Governor’s court trials around f lawed marriages the
wives typically complained of mistreatment to justify their straying. In none
of these four stories, however, did that rhetoric appear. The husbands, when
theysuspected or learned what was afoot, were angry, but the trials were not
about ending a marriage. The lovers, themselves unmarried, were among the many
unattached men in Rome, and met the adulteresses through family and local
connections. Also telling are the ways that neighbors and colleagues took part,
both in the trysts and in their discovery and discipline. In my first two
adultery stories, unhappy husbands tried, more and less cannily, to corral
their wandering wives. For both, events transpired close to home. In the first
case, the spouses spoke of Tridentine teachings to repair a troubled marriage.
The pastoral discipline had failed to work, however, and the next time the
irate husband resorted to self-help, seriously beating his incorrigible wife.
The domestic violence brought the problem to public notice. In the second
story, the husband confronted his wife with her misconduct reported by
neighbors. When she faced down his efforts at proper spousal correction and
still continued to roam, the husband turned for help to the ecclesiastical and
public authorities. They, in time, intervened, but notably declined to rush
into a private matter without good cause. The first tale provocatively mixed
elements of Boccaccio with Catholic reform teaching to the laity. A very short
trial from May 1593 recounted adultery trouble that exploded within the cramped
premises of a fruit and vegetable seller in central Rome.46 After the
beleaguered husband, Hieronimo, had resorted to self-help, the resulting
domestic violence led an unnamed informant to alert the police. In this
instance, probably because the wife, Caterina, lay injured, instead of
collecting testimony at the prison, the notary first hurried to the respectable
shopkeeper’s premises to interview both spouses. Husband and wife testified
immediately in the heat of events and again, later, in jail. The would-be
lover, the shop assistant Leonardo, nimbly decamped before the law arrived. As
was common for many city dwellers, Hieronimo Ursini from Milan kept shop on the
street f loor and lived upstairs with his wife, Caterina, but evidently had no
children. Two garzoni (shop assistants) slept in an adjacent room. The
fruitseller had good reason to suspect his young wife. By his account,
Caterina, whom he spied often f lirting in the window “with this one and that
one,” had repeatedly tried his patience. Worse, he once had caught her at her
mother’s house, “almost in the act” of having sex with a tavern keeper.
Nevertheless, Hieronimo averred piously, “I forgave her, and she promised to do
no more wrong, and we confessed together to the parish priest and took
communion, and I took her back and led her home, pardoning everything and
keeping her always as well as possible” (ff. 1125r–v). Portraying himself as a
pious and forgiving husband, Hieronimo sought to meliorate the court’s view of
his later, less irenic, behavior. The testimony, which likely was approximately
true, shows us a man of modest status deftly invoking good Catholic teaching.
Caterina in turn confessed, “Truly, I did wrong (torto) to do what I did to my
husband, because I once fell into error (errore) at my mother’s house, where I
had sex with Giovanni Angelo the tavern keeper, and even so, my husband forgave
me and took meback into the house” (ff. 1128r–v). Here she acknowledged not
only Hieronimo’s forbearance, but also her own inclinations to illicit
pleasure. Hieronimo’s jealousy thus primed, on a May morning he climbed early
out of the bed that he shared with his f lirtatious wife. According to his
testimony, he intended to go to a garden on the edge of the city to cut
artichokes for the shop. He tried to rouse his two garzoni who were sleeping in
another room. One got up, but Leonardo, also from Milan, claimed to be sick and
would not rise. Suspecting the lay-a-bed of setting a “trap,” Hieronimo sent
the other assistant out to collect the produce, but he himself slipped into the
shop and hid behind a barrel. After a while, Leonardo entered the shop,
“sighing,” according to the hidden Hieronimo, “an amorous sigh.” A few minutes
later, Caterina appeared, asking where her husband was. “Gone to cut
artichokes,” replied Leonardo. Immediately, said Hieronimo, Caterina began to
adjust the garzone’s ruff ( fare le lattughe), and quickly the two became playful
and kissed each other. The husband, seeing that “Leonardo wanted to lift her
skirts and do his thing ( fare il fatto suo),” burst out of hiding shouting,
“Oh traitor, oh traitor, you do this to me!” (ff. 1126r–v). Seeing his master
thus enraged, Leonardo, expediently, slipped out the shop door and disappeared
from the story. Caterina retreated hastily up the stairs, and Hieronimo surged
after, beating her with a broomhandle, a domestic weapon of choice for women as
well as men, with his fists, and with his belt. So incensed was he that he
pinned her down with his knees on her belly and then on her shoulders, while
hauling on her braids, so that he left her “as if dead,” swollen, bloody, and
with bruises “blacker that your Lordship’s hat” (ff. 1126v–1127r). Hieronimo
volunteered all these details, and one suspects that he may have shocked even
himself with his ferocity. Caterina’s tale of the putative adultery and its
sorry aftermath provides another perspective. Not surprisingly, she presented
herself as aggrieved and “mistreated.” Nevertheless, she reported a similar
account leading to the f lirtatious exchange with Leonardo. Her husband, having
left early without a word, she rose two hours later. Going into the next room,
Caterina rousted Leonardo to get up and open the shop, while she swept. When
she went down for a basket to hold the sweepings, she found Leonardo, wrestling
with a pair of sleeves. He asked for help in attaching them, and the two began
laughing as they struggled with the laces. Just then, Hieronimo sprang out and
began to assault his wife. Confirming Hieronimo’s confessed details and adding
blows with the head of a hatchet, Caterina claimed that he wanted to kill her.
But, “please God,” he had not (f. 1125v). Later, pressured by the court at a
second interrogation, the wife admitted to some greater provocation of her
husband. In this version, as she came into the shop, Leonardo asked that she
help lace his sleeves and moaned about not feeling well. She joked that he was
not going to die, and they began to play so that, as in Hieronimo’s account,
the garzone had kissed her “lustfully (lusuriosamente)” on the cheek and she
responded in kind (f. 1128r–v). Though more theatrical than some tales, this
domestic drama had several points in common with other neighborhood adulteries.
First, illicit relationssprouted very close to home. These were the
settings—through work and domestic propinquity—in which wives were likely to
meet other men. Perhaps surprisingly to us, these were also the spaces in which
adultery—its initiations and often its consummations—took place. People
understood the risks and costs of getting caught; at the same time, privacy,
such as we imagine it, was simply not a reality for most people. While married,
Caterina had practiced serious f lirtations first in her mother’s house and
then in her husband’s, with one of their live-in employees. Even if no real sex
had transpired with Leonardo, Caterina saw the wrongful pattern of her conduct.
She evidently enjoyed the play and appreciation of her guilty encounters, but
she gave little sign of personal feelings for her lovers. In contrast, there
does seem to have been some commitment, however f lawed on both sides, between
the spouses. While we may doubt that Caterina changed her ways, she did express
a sense of responsibility and a belief that she should make peace with her
husband. The brevity of the trial suggests that the magistrate was content to
dispatch the matter quietly. Both spouses had to answer for their
transgressions— Caterina’s sexual misconduct and Hieronimo’s excessive
correction.47 The second story of adultery is the only one of the four where
the husband himself brought his private troubles to the authorities.48 For more
than six months, Bartolomeo from Genoa, alerted by friends, investigated
suspicions and then sought to correct his errant wife, Isabetta from Rome. He
had tried several times in previous months to enlist the help of the Vicario’s
ecclesiastical tribunal, but in vain. Recently, however, he had procured a
warrant, probably from the Governor’s court (ff. 832r–v, 834r). So, a police
patrol met Bartolomeo outside the building where the lovers had been seen and
at his direction made arrests that led to the trial.49 Events took place in a
shared neighborhood and within a community of workers, several of whom
testified. In this slightly larger, but still face-to-face social terrain,
friends and neighbors, notably men this time, had a crucial role in managing
their comrade’s disarray. On Saturday, October 22, 1604, right after the
arrests, Bartolomeo, coachman to a Monsignor Dandini, complained formally
against his wife and Francesco Cappelli from Florence (ff. 831r–v). Bartolomeo
had married Isabetta six years earlier; although native Roman women were few,
they often married men from outside who sought to establish themselves in the
capital. It was a second marriage for Isabetta, who had a grown stepson and a
son who lived together in another neighborhood (f. 840v). Bartolomeo lived with
Isabetta and their young son near San Pantaleone in the city center. The
accused lover, a twelve-year resident of Rome who served as coachman to another
churchman, the Archbishop of Monreale, worked from a stable nearby.
Bartolomeo’s complaint charged Isabetta with spending “unusually much ( piu
dell’ordinario)” time with Francesco. According to reports from several men,
including a third coachman, while Bartolomeo lay on his sick bed, Isabetta came
and went late in the evening from the stables where Francesco worked. Once
healthy again, Bartolomeo berated his wife for her visits and threatened her
with arrest and public whipping (f. 831r). She, however, denied all charges and
challenged her husband to do his worst(f. 831v). Nevertheless, Bartolomeo
asked his friends to spy on her movements (ff. 833v–834r). One morning
Bartolomeo’s nephew brought word that Isabetta had been spotted a few streets
away going with Francesco into the Palazzo de Picchi. Bartolomeo sent a
messenger to alert the city police. When they arrived, Bartolomeo told them to
arrest Francesco, then descending the stairs. The husband entered the building,
collected Isabetta, and sent her, too, off to jail (f. 831v). Note that the
Governor’s police were willing to act, but left it to the respectable husband
to hand over his wife. After the arrests, neighbors and colleagues testified to
having seen Francesco and Isabetta often together over many months and hearing
talk in the piazza of their being lovers. One man observed her three or four
times in the last month taking advantage of walking her son to school to stop
to talk with Francesco in the courtyard of the Massimi family palace (f. 837v).
Another neighbor, Alfonso, intervened directly. Because, he said, Isabetta was
his commare, his spiritual kinswoman, he had invited her a month earlier to his
house. There, with his own wife present, Alfonso told the wayward Isabetta of
the rumors that she was in love (inamorata) with Francesco and having sex with
him. Alfonso urged to her to smarten up (stesse in cervello) and amend her
ways, because her husband knew and had a warrant to send her to jail, and
because it dishonored Alfonso himself, who had helped marry her so respectably
(ff. 834r–v). In their early testimonies, the lovers took different tacks. The
unattached Francesco downplayed the whole business. He acknowledged, as did
Isabetta, that they had known each other in the neighborhood for three or four
years. Yet Francesco dismissed her presence in his room or any adulterous
reasons for it, “I cannot know the heart of that woman or why she came up” (f.
835v). Isabetta, pressed hard through several interrogations, tried
ineffectually to parry the court’s questions. She garbed herself conventionally
as a dutiful housewife who minded her own business and seldom went out: “I have
to keep working if I want to live” (f. 841r). Accordingly, she implausibly
denied knowing local geography; then, insisting that she had never set foot in
the stables, she fudged the meanings of being “inside” a place (f. 839r). She
invoked her own good name, though in an elaborately conditional mode: “What do
you imagine, your Lordship, if I had gone out while my husband was sick, that
would have been a fine honor from me” (f. 839v). Blaming her neighbors for
their spiteful testimony, she invoked the chronic enmities of local life: “what
fine witnesses are these? this is how they repay the courtesies and good will
that I have used with them” (f. 843r). Later, however, she backtracked on some
of these claims with a pathetic tale of going out at night to fetch some greens
to feed the ailing Bartolomeo. Passing by the stable’s open door, she said,
Francesco had called out to her, “‘how is your husband?’ I, in tears, answered
that the doctor offered little hope, and then Francesco responded, ‘look, if
you need anything, be it money or anything else, just ask’” (ff. 843r–v). Spun
this way, the errant wife’s visit to the stable got folded into a stirring
picture of her desperate efforts to help her husband and of the fellow
coachman’s sympathetic offer of aid.Near the end of the trial, the accused
lovers, confronted with repeated testimony to their private meetings at the
stable and in the palazzo, were pushed to address the presumption that they met
for sex. As a judge said in another trial, “solus con sola, one does not
presume they are saying the paternoster.”50 When pressed, Francesco exclaimed,
“Your Lordship, I will take 100,000 oaths that I had no carnal doings with
Isabetta!” He continued, “I can show your Lordship that only with great
difficulty can I go with women, and when I do, it is rarely and to my great
injury (danno), because four ribs got cut by a Turkish scimitar when I served
as a soldier on the galleys of the Grand Duke” of Tuscany (f. 849v). Here we
have detail so baroque that we may have to believe it. Francesco aimed to
suggest, with timeless logic, that his encounters with Isabetta were not,
actually, sex. Whatever it was, however, he feared culpability and had tried,
with various moves, to def lect it. Interestingly, Isabetta’s final remarks
also denied a sexual relationship by alluding to Francesco’s behavior. In her
words, “if he were as proper (netto) with other women as he is with me, he would
never have had sex with any woman.” Then, reaffirming her veracity, she
concluded with a shift to a rhetoric of intention and sin, “If I had done wrong
(errore) and if Francesco had sex with me, I would say so freely and ask for
forgiveness, but because I did not do it, I cannot say I did” (ff. 850v–851r).
Much more was at stake for Isabetta than for her lover. Knowing well that, in
sneaking around while her husband was ill, she had erred in the eyes of her
peers, she did not counter Bartolomeo’s charges with complaints of
mistreatment. Yet she stood on her word that she could not confess a lie. There
the trial record ended with the usual legal instruction that both accused
parties be released into the jail’s public rooms (ad largam) with three days to
prepare a defense. Accumulated circumstantial evidence, rather than catching
lovers in the sexual act, was sufficient for neighbors and, in turn, their
publica vox et fama attesting to the offense had weight in court. Nevertheless,
perhaps fearing retaliation, people appear not to have turned each other in too
quickly. Once an adulterous coupling became common, local knowledge, a friend
or associate might assay an informal warning to wife, husband, or lover.
Consensus likely deemed these matters family business, better handled privately
and with minimal scandal. In this case, Bernardino not only chose official
help, but had to persist to get it. In two other stories private adultery and
its public prosecution unfolded in different circumstances. Here the adulteresses
took advantage of wider urban terrains when pursuing their romantic yearnings.
The husbands, although present in the city, were not principal players in
bringing the cases to court. Neighbors, on the other hand, took active part,
facilitating the alliances or tolerating them for some time, until a moment
arrived when someone alerted the authorities. These times, when the police
raided an illicit rendezvous, they acted ex offitio, on the newer legal premise
that the court could intervene directly, without a kinsman’s request, to ensure
order among the city’s lower-status residents. In a third episode of simple
adultery, prosecuted in January 1605, the husband, Giovanni Domenico, was in
fact the last to know. The short trial consists of apolice report and
testimonies from several neighborhood witnesses.51 Neither wife nor lover spoke
on record, but procedural annotations at the document’s end register their
choice not to challenge any of the witnesses. Most likely, the adulterers
accepted a summary decision that ordered them to pay fines and agree formally
not to consort any more. Giovanni Domenico di Mattei from Lombardy and his
wife, Madalena, lived on the Tiber Island with their two young children and an
orphan boy whom they kept “for the love of God” (f. 145v). Husband and wife
shared a business selling doughnuts from their home (f. 143r). Giovanni
Domenico also commuted daily across the city to Piazza Capranica to work as an
assistant to a doughnut-maker (ciambellaro) (f. 145r). The job required his
being away overnight, but every morning he returned to his family quarters,
evidently bringing pastries to sell. One Wednesday morning, Giovanni Domenico
came home to find that Madalena had been arrested, along with Pietro Gallo from
Parma, a twenty-five-year-old barber’s garzone who lived two doors down the
street (ff. 144r, 145v). According to the official report, a neighbor’s
denunciation had informed the authorities that “every night after four hours (10
p.m.) Pietro habitually goes to sleep with Madalena” (f. 143r). Receiving word
again last night that the barber was there, the police raided the house late on
a chilly January evening. With professional savvy, the lieutenant posted men to
watch the exits before knocking on Madalena’s door, which she opened after a
few minutes’ delay. While a search inside found no man, a loud noise overhead
alerted the police to visit the roof, but in vain. They did soon discover the
barber in his nightshirt in his own bed, where he protested that he had been
checking the premises above on behalf of his absent landlord. Unconvinced, the
police led the two lovers off to jail (ff. 143v–145r). When Giovanni Domenico
came home to the unpleasant surprise of his wife’s arrest, he learned that
Pietro the barber, carrying a sword (a further offense), had been in the house
at night with Madalena. The cuckolded husband went immediately to make a formal
complaint and to demand, according to the protocol, the severest punishments for
Pietro, Madalena, and anyone with a part in “leading him to her” (ff. 145r–v).
The young orphan, Giovanni Santi, nicknamed Scimiotto (Little Monkey), also
testified then under his master’s auspices. The boy explained that, during the
four months that he had lived in the household, Madalena had many times sent
him to invite the barber to eat, and that, when Giovanni Domenico was away,
Pietro stayed to sleep. He shared the bed with Madalena and the two children,
while the young witness slept on the f loor in the same room. The lover usually
entered through the door, but sometimes through a window belonging to a
laundress (ff. 146r–v). During her husband’s nightly absences and in plain view
of the neighbors, Madalena had carried on adulterously with, like the other
women, a young, unmarried man who lived nearby. The affair (amicizia) had been
going on for as much as two years, according to gossip in the local wineshop
(f. 148v). A hatmaker who lived in the house between the two lovers had for six
months heardlocal “murmuring” that Pietro was having sex (negotiava) with
Madalena. In passing back and forth, the neighbor had many times seen the
barber in her house, their “talking and laughing together publicly .
. . sometimes in the morning, sometimes after eating, sometimes toward
evening” (f. 147r). Often, said the hatmaker, other men also hung out
convivially at the shop, eating doughnuts, or, in season, roasted chestnuts (f.
148v). Giovanni Domenico must have been around sometimes when such sociability,
presumably good for business, took place. Yet, about a month before the
arrests, the hatmaker saw fit one day in his shop to warn the young barber:
“the people of Trastevere say you’re having sex with the doughnut-maker’s wife;
if you don’t straighten up, you’ll go to jail.” When Pietro denied it, the
hatmaker replied that it was not his business, but that the barber had better
mind his (f. 147r). Cesare the tavern keeper had also challenged Pietro.
Several weeks ago, Cesare had gone to Madalena’s to borrow matches and found
her eating with the barber and another man. Seeing the tavern keeper, Pietro
had slipped away to hide. Later that day, Madalena’s small son came to Cesare’s
house to get a light. Jokingly, he asked the boy: “who was sleeping with your
mother last night?” (f. 148r). Later still, Pietro stormed into the tavern and
began to threaten the host, saying that he should take care of his own house
and not speak of others, or that he would get his head stove in. Cesare,
figuring out how his words had passed from the child to his mother and to
Pietro, protested that he had only spoken in jest (f. 148r). Although
propinquity and opportunity during Giovanni Domenico’s regular absences clearly
favored the liaison, we must guess at what drew these two lovers together. The
unmarried barber could readily have found sex and even a quasi-domestic
companionship elsewhere among the city’s prostitutes. The illicit pair seemed
to enjoy each other’s company, alone together and also in groups. In Rome where
many men were on their own, taking meals in others’ houses, sometimes in return
for a contribution in food or money, was not unusual. Pietro’s sleeping over,
especially when he lived so close by, was less acceptable. Interestingly,
though, no one called Madalena a whore or said that she was in it for money.
This suggests that there was something companionable about the connection, and
that may have colored local reactions, at least initially. Some shift of
neighborhood opinion in recent weeks, however, had led the hatmaker to confront
Pietro and the tavern keeper to make his tactless joke to Madalena’s son. How,
then, did the cuckolded husband not suspect? Seemingly, none of the neighbors
said anything to him. At least, when he came home to discover the arrests, he
hastily adopted a posture of righteous ignorance and mustered shreds of
domestic mastery by adding his complaint to the magistrate’s file.
Nevertheless, given local practices, the marriage probably muddled on. The
fourth case shows a different pattern of adulterous assignation.52 The lovers
had been acquainted through family connections for several years. The older
married woman, infatuated with a younger man, a cloth dealer, organized their
sexual trysts. Completely absent from the trial, the cuckolded husband figured
only as an angry specter in his wife’s mind. Here again, a neighbor’s
denunciationlaunched the official investigation. Testimonies from the two
lovers and from several women neighbors arrested with them confirmed and
extended the police report. On Saturday, March 23, 1602, in mid-afternoon, a
police patrol raided a modest upstairs room in the Vicolo Lancelotti near the
Tiber river. According to their lieutenant, an unnamed local informant reported
that a married woman had been meeting a lover there on Saturdays for some
months (ff. 1219r–v). The lodging belonged to Filippa from Romagna, a weaver
and the wife of Hieronimo Morini, though evidently alone in Rome (f. 1220r).
Two other women on their own, including Filippa’s commare Marcella, also shared
the staircase. On Saturday, hearing men barge into the building, the weaver was
able to warn the lovers, so that the police arrived to find the pair, both
fully clothed, the man sitting on the bed and the woman standing beside him.
But when the man rose, lifting his cloak from the bed, the lieutenant spotted a
“shape” ( forma) betraying the couple’s activity (f. 1219r). The woman, Livia,
was known to all present as the wife of Pietropaolo Panicarolo, a carpenter
from Milan (f. 1224v). Confronted by the police, she threw herself tearfully on
her knees and begged not to be taken to prison, because “this is the time” that
her husband would kill her. The man, Marino Marcutio from Gubbio, took an
officer aside, saying “I am a merchant” and offering money or whatever he
wanted in order to let them go, the woman in particular (ff. 1219r–v). But the
righteous policeman refused the bribe, bound the pair, and sent them to jail.
The adultery’s backstory emerged from the interrogations. Livia testified that
she had been married for twenty-six years, although she likely included a brief
first marriage contracted when she was very young (ff. 1225r–v). That husband
had died before she was old enough to go live with him, and probably she had
been wed soon again to Pietropaolo. In any case, in 1602 Livia must have been
at least thirty-five and maybe older. She lived with her husband, but, like
Caterina and Hieronimo in the first story, they had no children. Besides
Livia’s fear of Pietropaolo’s violence should he discover the adultery, we know
nothing of their relationship. As in the third case, the geography in this one
spread out across the center of the city. Livia lived currently not far from
the Trevi Fountain and was accustomed to moving good distances around the city
on her own (f. 1221v). Marino, a younger man, kept shop across town on a corner
where the street of the Chiavari met the Piazza Giudea (f. 1220v). Livia had
come to know Marino eight years before in her own home, where she nursed his
seriously ill cousin, who later died (ff. 1227r, 1229r). Marino had also shared
recreation and games with her husband, Pietropaolo, and the merchant’s parents
had more recently lodged in the carpenter’s quarters during the Holy Year of
1600 (f. 1229r). Through these domestic encounters, Livia had fallen in love
with Marino and had long strategized to meet him discreetly for sex. Livia had
known Filippa for two years, during which time the weaver, who worked on a loom
in her room, had made three cloths for the more aff luent carpenter’s wife (f.
1221r). Filippa had visitedLivia’s house to collect yarn for the loom and to
deliver finished cloth, and Livia had called in the Vicolo Lancelotti, although
it was a good way from her home. So, bumping into Filippa at various spots
around town, Livia importuned her repeatedly for the use of her room to meet
Marino (f. 1221v). Though reluctant, Filippa eventually gave in to the woman
who gave her work. At risk of being charged as a go-between, the weaver said
she had refused any compensation, but Livia said that she had given Filippa
five giulii for the two recent assignations (f. 1227v). In Livia’s own
words, she had loved and been in love (inamorata) with Marino for years, and
her infatuation had propelled her to arrange a series of private encounters
“not having opportunity to enjoy him ( goderlo) in my house out of respect for
my husband” (f. 1225r). Livia and Marino both acknowledged having met privately
a number of times at Filippa’s room, and twice in the last week that was the
focus of the investigation. On the Monday before the arrests, the pair had had
a rendezvous at Filippa’s house. Duly chaperoned by a nephew, who left
immediately, Livia arrived first after the midday meal and joined the weaver in
her room. Marino appeared about a half hour later, bringing some collars for
starching as a standard cover story for his presence. After chatting brief ly,
Filippa withdrew and left the pair alone. Sometimes, the door was open during
the couple’s visits, but on this, as on another, occasion they had been locked
inside for about an hour (f. 1221r). When later the policeman asked Filippa
what the couple had been doing, she replied, “you know very well that when a
man and a woman are together, it is not licit to see what they are doing” (f.
1219v). Although all the women witnesses echoed the sentiment that Livia was in
love, it was not clear whether, when the couple next met on Saturday, they had
sex. Livia was angry with Marino, because she thought that he was chasing
another woman, and they had had words. She also insisted with dubious piety,
“on Saturday I don’t commit sin, not even with my husband (il sabbato non fo il
peccato, ne anco con mio marito)” (ff.1221r, 1225r). Although during the
arrests Marino had tried to protect Livia, under interrogation his story aimed
first to exonerate himself. He acknowledged that he had met Livia once before
Christmas, twice before Carnival, and another two times during Lent, but, he
insisted, only to talk. Making the implausible claim that he only sought the
carpenter’s wife’s help in order to secure a “simple benefice” for his brother
who was a student, he denied sex altogether (f. 1229v). Describing their emotional
bond, he notably cast the feelings in terms of Livia’s warmth toward him, “she
is a friend to me and loving because she has helped me (mi e amica et amorevole
perche mi ha fatto de servitii ),” referring to her nursing his mother and
cousin (ff. 1231v–1232r).53 To dislodge the lovers’ conf licting testimony and
to convict Marino, the court proceeded to torture the adulteress in front of
the merchant (f. 1234r–v). Using the lighter instruments of the sibille that
compressed the hands, this formal act of judicial stagecraft intended, as in
Artemisia Gentileschi’s case, to authorize the claims of the sexually
compromised woman.54 The tactic failed, nonetheless, to elicit a change in
Marino’s testimony that denied any sex, or touch, or kisses,or even hearing
that Livia was in love with him (f. 1236v). The judge probably did not believe
Marino, but legally his respectability and his adamancy held good weight.
Livia’s unknown fate, on the other hand, would have lain in part with her
invisible husband. If less dramatic than high culture’s renderings of adultery,
adorned by the heft of law, familiar biblical tropes, and colorful narrative in
paint and words, these everyday stories of wives seeking illicit moments of
love and fun have their own art and pathos. For example, there is the coachman
Francesco’s alleged sexual impairment due to a Turkish scimitar injury. Or the
hardworking doughnut guy cuckolded by the young barber. Or Filippa the poor
weaver, who got into trouble because her friend and employer Livia wore down
her resistance to playing hostess to a sexual rendezvous. Paradoxically
perhaps, the criminal court’s address to transgression here tells us more about
what really happened, and what happened to most people some of the time than
the great dramas of high art. Despite reformers’ efforts to discipline marriage
and sex, a customary culture that tolerated various forms of heterosexual error
persisted in Rome long after Trent. In these four cases, only one husband
sought the court’s help. In the others, neighborhood informants alerted the
authorities to a public disorder, but only after an adulterous liaison had been
known in their midst for some time. While the Governor’s court prosecuted
lovers as well as errant wives, the women usually had more to lose, but also
perhaps to gain. Even if unwise, some married women broke the rules and went
looking for love. What they found was usually close to home so that their
adventures took place under the eyes of a local community. These neighbors knew
often well before the law got involved and responded in diverse ways. Adultery
posed a social problem that demanded a solution, sooner or later. Although the
law had its own ambitions, in these sorts of everyday misdeeds justice did not
intervene with a devastating external discipline.Notes 1 Cristellon, “Public
Display,” 182–85, summarizes Italian legal and customary views of adultery. 2
Clarus, Opera omnia, 51b. 3 Besides essays in Matthews-Grieco, ed., Erotic
Cultures, see Bayer, ed., Art and Love, including essays by Musacchio (29–41)
and Grantham Turner (178–84). 4 Ajmer-Wollheim, “‘The Spirit is Ready’” 5
McClure, Parlour Games, 36–38. 6 Esposito, “Donna e fama,” 97–98, states this
standard view. 7 Cussen, “Matters of Honour,” 61–67. 8 Lev, The Tigress of
Forlì, 3–20. 9 Musacchio, “Adultery, Cuckoldry,” 11–34; on Piero’s death 17–18.
10 On wife-killing by nobleman Carlo Gesualdo in Naples, 1590, see Ober,
“Murders, Madrigals”; on Vittoria Savelli in the Roman hinterland, 1563, see
Cohen, Love and Death, 15–42. Killings of noble wives not caught in flagrante
delictu often had motives linked to claims on property or power rather jealous
rage. 11 Esposito, “Donne e fama,” 98 + n. 61.12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
2425 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 4546 47 48 49Elizabeth
S. CohenGal, Boudet, and Moulinier-Brogi, eds., Vedrai mirabilia, 241.
Kaborycha, ed., A Corresponding Renaissance, 172 + n. 19. Gal, Boudet, and
Moulinier-Brogi, Vedrai mirabilia, 251. Examples include: Titian (1510); Rocco
Marconi (1525); Palma il Vecchio (1525–28); Lorenzo Lotto (1528); Tintoretto
(1545–48); Alessandro Allori (1577). Alberti, “‘Divine Cuckolds.’” Rice, “The
Cuckoldries.” Boccaccio, Decameron. For example, Day 3, Story 3; Day 7, Story
2. For example, Day 3, Story 2; Day 4, Story 2. Ibid., 241–46. My translation
of the quote. Ibid., 500–01. Cristellon, Marriage, the Church, 14–19, 159–90.
For French parallels, see Mazo Karras, Unmarriages, 165–208. Ferraro, Marriage
Wars also includes cases in secular courts, where issues of property, often
pursued by husbands, have greater visibility; yet women brought many more suits
than men, 29–30. In the complaints, adultery was generally subordinate to other
concerns, 71. Cristellon, “Public Display,” 175–76, 180–85, Scaduto, ed.
Registi dei bandi, vol. 1 (anni 1234–1605), passim. Storey, Carnal Commerce,
108-14, 242–43. Blastenbrei, Kriminalität im Rom, 274–75. Cohen and Cohen,
“Justice and Crime.” Sonnino, “Population,” 50–70. Da Molin, Famiglia, 93–95.
Sonnino, “Population,” 62–64. See also, Nussdorfer, “Masculine Hierarchies.” Da
Molin, Famiglia, 243. The unexplained disappearance of Vicariato tribunal
records precludes Roman comparisons with Venice. Marchisello, “‘Alieni,’”
133–83. See also in the same volume, Esposito, “Adulterio.” Blastenbrei,
Kriminalität im Rom, 273, n. 160. Statuta almae urbis Romae, 108–09, for what
follows. Forcibly abducting prostitutes was a crime. Ibid., 109. Esposito,
“Donna e fama,” 89–90. Marchisello, “Alieni,” 137, 166–68; Esposito,
“Adulterio,” 26–27. Alternatively, the legal narrative for the charge of
sviamento, leading astray, shifted more blame onto the lover. For example,
Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale criminale (hereafter ASR
GTC), Processi, xvi secolo, busta 256 (1592), ff. 540r–62; see also,
Blastenbrei, Kriminalität im Rom, 272, 275. For example, ASR GTC, Processi,
xvii secolo, busta 25, ff. 17r–26v; (1603); busta 91, ff. 1153r–1159r (1610).
In parallel, the Statuta almae urbis Romae, 110, declared that men keeping
concubines were liable for fines of 50 scudi. Counts based on small numbers of
surviving records do not reflect behaviour or even patterns of prosecution.
Nevertheless, it may be useful to note that this type of “simple adulteries”
represent about a quarter of the adultery prosecutions between 1590 and 1610.
ASR GTC, Processi, xvi secolo, busta 270, ff. 1124r–1128v. References to
specific folios appear in parentheses in text. The trial record ended with the
usual note that those charged had three days to prepare their formal defense. I
have found no record of a judgment, but it is likely that the couple were
fined. ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 37, ff. 830r–851r. The charge
preteso adulterio (appearance of adultery) carried a lesser burden of proof.Adulteresses
in Catholic Reformation Rome50 51 52 53ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta
36, f. 63v. ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 44, ff. 142r–149r. ASR GTC,
Processi, xvii secolo, busta 17, ff. 1218r–1238r. The range of colloquial
meanings for “amica” and “amorevole” was broad. Here Marino used these words to
indicate friendship and affiliation, rather than romantic or sexual alliance.
54 Cohen, “Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi,” 58–59 + n. 47.Bibliography
Archival sources Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale
Processi, xvi secolo, busta 256 (1592) Processi, xvi secolo, busta 270 (1593)
Processi, xvii secolo, busta 17 (1602) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 25 (1603)
Processi, xvii secolo, busta 36 (1604) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 37 (1604)
Processi, xvii secolo, busta 44 (1605) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 91 (1610)Published
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Counter-Reformation Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.PART IISense
and sensuality in sex and gender6 “BODILY THINGS” AND BRIDES OF CHRIST The case
of the early seventeenth-century “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini Patricia
SimonsOn November 5, 1623, two Capuchin friars sent by a papal nuncio finished
their investigation regarding whether abbess Benedetta Carlini was a valid
mystic. An earlier, local study drawn up for Pescia’s provost in 1619 had been
amenable to her claims. In July 1620, she became the first abbess of the newly
enclosed convent, a prestigious appointment that suggests belief in her story.
Yet Benedetta’s authority within the nunnery was not universally accepted and
she lost the support of the civic establishment, leading to the new
investigation by more distanced authorities. They decided that she had been
deceived by the devil because, according to evidence from disaffected nuns,
signs such as her stigmata were faked. New evidence also included the testimony
of the abbess’ assistant, Bartolomea Crivelli (often called Mea), who
unexpectedly told the men, in explicit detail, about sexual relations between
the two women. Most scholars were similarly surprised when Judith Brown
published the supposedly “unique” case in 1986, in Immodest Acts: The Life of a
Lesbian Nun.1 Responses were varied, the lengthiest being Rudolph Bell’s
evaluation in 1987, which argued that the nuncio was already determined to
silence Benedetta and that her subsequent lengthy imprisonment in the convent
was imposed by the nuns rather than external authorities, a claim refuted by
Brown.2 The details of the internal, civic, and ecclesiastical power plays cannot
be definitively known, but the sexual dynamics are clear. Over thirty years
later, it is time to reconsider this case, neither adhering to a modernist
notion of strict sexual identity nor relegating Benedetta and Mea to the
margins. In keeping with Konrad Eisenbichler’s ability to draw out erotic
implications from literary and archival evidence, this essay respects the
reality of the women’s intimacy and examines textual and visual materials in
order to situate them in their spiritual and sensual context. This case offers
specific details and terminology for what might be called corporeal
spirituality, the unequivocal coexistence of amorous language, sexual deeds,
pious rhetoric, and religious faith.3Since Benedetta’s visions entailed
visitations from Christ, whom she married in a public ceremony, and messages
from angels such as Splenditello, in whose voice she often spoke, Brown claimed
the two nuns were engaged in a heterosexualized affair: The only sexual
relations she seemed to recognize were those between men and women. Her male
identity consequently allowed her to have sexual and emotional relations that
she could not conceive between women. . . . In this double role of
male and of angel, Benedetta absolved herself from sin and accepted her
society’s sexual definitions of gender.4 Brown’s judgment associates male sex
with masculine gender, and in turn a presumed dichotomy between the two women
is seamlessly laminated onto their sex acts. However, this does not accord with
either the women’s physical actions, or with possibilities engendered by the
sensual spirituality of premodern Catholicism. The souls and f lesh of nuns
were not as neatly divided as a later, secular view imagines. Despite the
Foucauldian point that discourses of repression can generate the very thing
they seek to silence, the presumption of religious “purity” and feminized
innocence has hardly disappeared. Benedetta’s case remains nearly ignored in
studies of European religion or is cited brief ly with no new interpretation.5
It is seen as an aberration on two counts: she was a nun with a sex
life—considered an oxymoron—and her sexual activity was with another
woman—thought to be impossible in her time and setting. Documented cases of
nuns having sex with clergy or secular men, as well as anti-clerical, fictional
stories about such conjunctions, are taken as ordinary, natural, feminine acts
by women who were supposedly frustrated in an entirely earthly way.6 But
Benedetta, it seems, must be a “unique” case, even “bizarre,” who assumed a
male guise and cannot be assimilated into religious history.7 My point here is
to remove her from the interdependent frameworks of deviance and
heterosexuality, and to reintegrate her into a religious context. Benedetta
literally acted out what was usually a world of visual and imaginary culture.
Here I try to reconstruct a premodern nun’s agency and the imagination of
religious women, who were not necessarily repressed victims with no recoverable
history of any import. Nunneries were loci of social and economic power,
particular inhabitants inf luenced secular women and male authority figures
ranging from fathers to confessors, and some women like Benedetta negotiated
rich emotive lives for themselves. We tend to think of nuns as women restricted
by institutional confines and discourses that denied them their bodies, but
Benedetta’s story urges us to examine the materiality of passion, of art, and
of past lives. Only the report of the Capuchins told of Benedetta’s sexual
transgressions— f lirting with two male priests as well as “immodest acts” with
a woman—and only at the end of its account.8 The inquiry concluded that her
visions andecstasies were “demonic illusions.”9 Along with her disturbingly
erotic behavior, the inquirers were concerned by their discovery that apparent
signs of her special favor, the stigmata, nuptial ring, and a bleeding
crucifix, were all forged. The friars integrated Carlini’s sexual behavior with
her spiritual behavior—all were sinful and diabolically inspired. In an
important sense, we need to take this contemporary contextualization seriously,
understanding that Benedetta’s visions were not utterly divided from her
corporeal acts. The aspiring mystic, then in her early thirties, had been
having regular sex with Mea for at least two years. Neither investigation was
sparked byrumors of sexual sin, nor is it clear how central that particular
misconduct was to her lifelong imprisonment within the convent.10 Benedetta’s
story most resembles cases of what Anne Jacobson Schutte has called “failed
saints,” or what Inquisitors termed “pretended holiness” (affetata santità).11
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century penance for a nun’s sexual sin ranged from
expulsion or permanent incarceration in the convent to just two years of
penance there.12 No witnesses or other evidence confirmed Mea’s testimony and
if she had not made a voluntary confession, no one could have uncovered the
information. The demoted abbess Carlini herself renounced her past and never
acknowledged Mea’s claims. The unusually visible sexual aspects may not be
unique. Recalling her secular life of the 1670s, and her enjoyment of men
courting her, St. Veronica Giuliani later emphatically interrupted one of her
autobiographies. A sentence written in capital letters alluded to imprecise
errors, implicitly sexual: “I bore great tribulation for the sins I committed
with those spinsters and I did not know how to confess them.”13 Cloistered
women may have enjoyed undocumented but thoroughly physical relationships in
secluded spaces. From at least the twelfth to the seventeenth century,
incidents of same-sex eroticism within female convents are recorded. Around
1660, nuns at Auxonne accused their mother superior of bewitching them, of
wearing a dildo, of kissing, and penetrating them with fingers.14 Sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century women in Italian religious refuges for convertite
(ex-prostitutes) and malmaritate (abused wives) became friends and in some
cases nearly half the inhabitants formed couples sharing rooms, where
“officials discovered women who were sexually involved with other women.”15
Close living and supportive conditions also obtained in non- or semi-cloistered
communities of pious laywomen. Bell’s critique of Brown usefully corrected
various errors, while nevertheless making new mistakes. His chief point was
that the male investigators “had no lack of imagination or conceptual framework
for describing love between two women” and that it was the nuns rather than the
Church officials who condemned Benedetta to life-long imprisonment.16
Certainly, she seems to have been a demanding, imperious abbess who could not
cope with the dissension her rule engendered, perhaps in part due to newly
instigated clausura. Brown’s label of “lesbian,” despite her careful
acknowledgment that it was anachronistic, provoked much criticism. One reviewer
of the book, using yet more historically inappropriate terms, insisted that
“Carlini is heterosexual or, more properly,bisexual in both her inclinations
and conduct.”17 Disagreements over labels and details should not distract from
the fundamental fact that physical, sexual contact took place between two nuns.
Too often, a series of dichotomies misinform discussions of sexual practices. A
binary between the mind and the body, the soul and its vessel, is often mapped
onto other seemingly concomitant divides, not only between masculine and
feminine but also the celestial and the mundane. The presumption is that religious
ideologies constantly repress bodily desires and only secular, putatively
modern, frameworks are capable of acknowledging material passion. In a similar
vein, a contrast is regularly drawn between “real sex” (whatever that is) and
“Romantic Friendships” amongst women. Both the abbess’s visions and her sexual
deeds were informed by conventions shaping the lives of all nuns as brides of
Christ at a time when dualism was not naturalized. Discussing the exegetical
tradition regarding the biblical Song of Songs as an allegory about the soul’s
union with the divine, E. Ann Matter noted that the text was “the epithalamium
of a spiritual union which ultimately takes place between God and the
resurrected Christian—both body and soul.”18 Benedetta’s mysticism links her to
a tradition of female spirituality “that made the body itself a vehicle of
transcendence. . . . Corporeal images were the stuff with which nuns
described their experiences.”19 Heterosexualization of the story is too
simplistic, too ignorant of complex issues related to gender dynamics as well
as intersex and transgender bodies. What Brown calls Benedetta’s “double role
of male and of angel” and “her male identity” was not a consistent performance
of masculinity. Speaking on occasion as an angel named Splenditello or as
Christ, the nun was a medium for the divine rather than for her “self ” in a
modern sense of individual identity, and none of her contemporaries, including
Mea, considered her male. During sex, neither seventeenth-century woman believed
the other was transformed into a man, and their sex did not necessitate resort
to “instruments” or dildos, devices that so obsessed confessors. For two or
more years, “at least three times a week,” when the women shared a cell as
mistress and servant, they had sex, in the day as well as at night or in the
early morning.20 Although Mea sought to protect herself by claiming she was
always forced, and a degree of intimidation or overbearing insistence may well
have been involved, she implicitly admitted pleasure. “Embracing her,” the
abbess “would put her under herself and kissing her as if she were a man, she
would speak words of love to her. And she would stir on top of her so much that
both of them corrupted themselves.” The women did much more than engage in what
Brown and Bell describe, using the dismissive misnomer, as “mutual
masturbation.”21 They touched each other until orgasm, in vigorous and multiple
ways, including actions that were not possible for a single person, and had no
need of a phallus. Rubbing or “stirring” their genitals together to the point
of “corruption,” they also manually penetrated each other and actively used
their mouths. Presenting herself as more passive, Mea recounted how even during
the day the abbess grabbed her handand putting it under herself, she would have
her put her finger into her genitals, and holding it there she stirred herself
so much that she corrupted herself. And she would kiss her and also by force
would put her own hand under her companion and her finger into her genitals and
corrupted her.22 A slightly later expansion of the account accentuated
Benedetta’s inventive pursuit of pleasure, saying that “to feel greater
sensuality [she] stripped naked as a newborn babe,” and “as many as twenty
times by force she had wanted to kiss [Mea’s] genitals.”23 The document,
although stressing the younger woman’s reluctance, also showed a comprehension
of how satisfying the actions could be: “Benedetta, in order to have greater
pleasure, put her face between the other’s breasts and kissed them, and wanted
always to be thus on her.” During the day in her study, while teaching her
companion to read and write, the abbess again enjoyed sensual contact, having
Mea “sit down in front of her” or “be near her on her knees . . .
kissing her and putting her hands on her breasts.” Despite the reticence Mea
tried to convey in her statement, it was clear her lover sought mutual delight.
When manually arousing Mea, Benedetta “wanted her companion to do the same to
her, and while she was doing this she would kiss her.” The older woman was
presented as active and insistent. If Mea tried to refuse, the abbess went to
the cot “and, climbing on top, sinned with her by force,” or she would arouse herself
(“with her own hands she would corrupt herself ”). Hence, in a phrase recorded
only a few times in Mea’s testimony, the younger woman conceptualized her
vigorous, forceful lover in standard terms, saying “she would force her into
the bed and kissing her as if she were a man she would stir on top of her.” Mea
probably had no sexual experience with men, so her comparison was not based on
a Freudian model of the phallus or anatomical knowledge of a penis, but on a
sense of gendered roles whereby the man took a physically dominant position.
Benedetta and Mea enacted substantive, varied sex, in a range of modes,
positions, times, and locations. Benedetta’s case spurs us to ask questions
about the management of nunneries. How did seemingly “innocent” and “repressed”
women learn about sexual details and inventively contravene prohibitions? A
stock opposition between knowledgeable yet repressive male authorities, and
ignorant nuns without any agency, cannot satisfactorily apply. Some inhabitants
of nunneries shared a degree of sexual experience and innuendo with their
companions. Dedicated to God after her mother survived difficult labor in 1590,
Benedetta was a nine-year-old villager when she entered the religious life.24
Most other entrants (and boarders) were similarly prepubescent or in their
early teens, but some were older, sexually experienced women, such as widows or
former prostitutes. Heterogeneity was increased by the presence of converse,
servants and lay sisters who entered at slightly older ages, did not profess,
and sometimes frequented the outside world, although the growth of
post-Tridentine enclosure made this less likely from the late sixteenth century
onward. The popular and much reprinted Colloquies (1529) by Augustinian friar
Erasmus suggested that nunneries were filled with “morewho copy Sappho’s
behavior (mores) than share her talent,” and that “All the veiled aren’t
virgins, believe me.”25 Through whatever means, cloistered women could have
clear ideas about how to attain sexual pleasure. An anonymous nun, literate in
Latin, wrote a love poem to another religious woman in the twelfth century,
noting that “when I recall how you caressed / So joyously, my little breast / I
want to die.”26 Confessors and canonists educated women in their obsessive
sense of sexual sin. Due to the urging of questioners, or to a sense of guilt
that welcomed the relief of voluntary confession, Venetian Inquisitors heard in
the 1660s about how the “failed saint” Antonia Pesenti fought in the nighttime
against diabolic temptations to masturbate.27 St. Catherine of Siena (1347–80)
was tormented by sexual visions.28 Such a woman, who strenuously resisted
association with secular men outside her family ever since she was a girl and
refused to place herself on the marriage market, nevertheless had some
comprehension of the conventions of sexual sin. Secular inspirations included
farmyard sights, carnival songs, and oral jokes. Sermons, or the queries of a
confessor, further embedded a degree of simple knowledge, horrifying yet
fascinating. Nuns were governed by regulations suspicious of erotic activity in
all-female environments, such as the provision since the early thirteenth
century of night-lights to deter illicit entries into cells, regular checks on
sleeping arrangements, supervision of female as well as male visitors, and
careful control of the grille and other points of contact with the wider world.
Yet those very rules made everyone aware of the possibility of contravention.
Many penitentials and texts of canon law voiced a concern about nuns erotically
touching or using “instruments” with each other, possibilities paradoxically
furthered through inquiries in the confessional.29 Visual culture, including
widely circulated prints and paintings of the damned, was another means whereby
nuns were incorporated into a communal imagination regarding both sin and
sensual piety. Explicit condemnations of same-sex activities led occasionally
to illustrations in religious texts or on the walls of convents.30 Sensitive
contact was also represented. Mutual tenderness and awe between the embracing
Mary and Elizabeth at the Visitation, liturgically celebrated in the musical
crescendo of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) sung every day at Vespers, was
powerfully pictured by artists such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Jacopo Pontormo,
and Parmigianino ( Figure 6.1).31 Saints’ lives contained legends like
Catherine of Siena suckling at Mary’s breast or St. Catherine of Genoa tenderly
kissing a dying woman on the mouth.32 A woman’s understanding of sex and
sensuality might have been based more on discursive than experiential
practices, but it could seem all the more real in its visionary presence. The
chief focus of my study is legitimized, mystical eroticism in convents, leading
to Benedetta’s mistaken, kinetic literalization of spiritual metaphors. Her
pious and sexual performances intertwined on at least three levels of efficacy.
Instrumentally, her access to the divine persuaded the younger, initially
illiterate Mea to be a witness to the visionary experiences and to become a sex
partner.Parmigianino, Visitation, pen and wash. Galleria Nazionale, Palazzo
della Pilotta, Parma.FIGURE 6.1De Agostini Picture Library/A. DeGregorio/Bridgeman
Images.Whether the ambitious nun was a self-aware manipulator throughout, or
convinced by her own delusions, is neither knowable nor particularly pertinent.
For some time Mea and the other nuns, the confessor, local officials, and the
townspeople were all caught up in a visionary scenario they wanted to believe.
At Benedetta’s funeral in 1661, the populace had to be kept away from a body
they stillthought capable of miracles.33 The investigators eventually judged
Benedetta a “poor creature” deceived by the devil, and she agreed that
everything was “done without her consent or her will.”34 That defense of
unconscious possession was already evident during the days of her acceptance by
the community, but it shifted from being divine favor and spiritual rapture to
becoming demonic deception. On the psychological level, the two women were
provided with an effective way to cope with guilt. Until Mea “confessed with
very great shame” about their sex, the angel Splenditello convinced her the
women were not sinning. 35 Initially hesitating, in the presence of a host of
saints led by Catherine of Siena, to obey Christ’s command to disrobe so he
could place a new heart in her body, Benedetta was reassured by Jesus, who said
“where I am, there is no shame.”36 The Capuchin investigators thought her
putative ecstasy “partook more of the lascivious than of the divine” but the
earlier inquiry, and the convent’s inhabitants like Mea, had not taken it
amiss. After all, Saints Catherine of Siena, Catherine de’ Ricci (1522–90), and
Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607) received hearts from Christ, and numerous
images in printed or painted form continued to disseminate this aspect of
female sanctity’s typology.37 Secular poetry and pictures also represented the
gifting of manly hearts as a token of a courtly love that metaphorically
elevated carnal desire into an idealized realm, without losing sight of erotic
thrill.38 Nuns were increasingly devoted to Christ’s wounded heart, and
imagined their own hearts as inner loci to be entered by their heavenly groom.
The crucial difference was that Benedetta’s imagination was so inventive, and
her belief system so literal, that representation of her participation in this
mystic ritual included physical—“lascivious”—details. Thirdly, on the affective
level, Benedetta’s mysticism heightened her sense of desire, not only for union
with the divine, but for sex aided by angels. Equally, it could be said that
her yearnings exacerbated her mysticism. Recourse to mystical fantasy endowed
her passion with a structure and rhetoric. Rather than sublimation through
piety, Benedetta’s case history indicates an intensifying of acts spiritual and
sexual. Much of her complex psyche is summed up by the striking act of benediction
she performed after sex: as Splenditello, “he made the sign of the cross all
over his companion’s body after having committed many immodest acts with
her.”39 Priest, angel, nun, lover, guilty and grateful, powerful and placatory,
Benedetta moved her hand over a body she rendered simultaneously sacral and
sensual. Alongside a renewed disciplinary zeal regulating cloistered life,
CounterReformation culture witnessed a heightening of the emotive register of
piety. In doing so, the Catholic Church accentuated a venerable, central
heritage that used human bodies to imagine spiritual passions. So, in the
Mystic Nativity of 1500–01 (National Gallery, London), Botticelli’s angels
reenact the ritual of the kiss of peace, a regular liturgical moment, but
potential eroticization is indicated by its conjunction with a nuptial kiss and
by the exclusion of sinners from the ritual.40 Primarily same-sex pairs kiss
and embrace in Giovanni di Paolo’s midfifteenth-century panels representing
eternal paradise ( Figure 6.2).41 Angels andFIGURE 6.2 Giovanni di Paolo,
Paradise, 1445, tempera and gold on canvas, transferred from wood, 44.5 × 38.4
cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Open access.souls of the blessed
greet each other, and the blissful unions are all manifested as moments of
physical intimacy. Men in religious costume embrace, two secular women tenderly
touch, near them two Dominican nuns entwine in one unit, and angels enfold men
into the sweet realm of grace. Some female mystics were blessed with a miracle
of lactation.42 Catherine of Siena’s experiences especially inf luenced
Benedetta because her mother was devoted to Catherine and the convent was under
her aegis as its patron saint.43 That role model’s mouth drained pus from a
woman’s breast and the abnegation was rewarded by what her confessor termed an
“indescribable and unfathomableliquid” f lowing from Christ’s side.44 Both
scenes featured in one of the prints comprising a well-disseminated series
illustrating Catherine’s life, designed by Francesco Vanni and first issued in
1597, then reissued in 1608 ( Figure 6.3).45 Her confessor Raymond of Capua
presented Christ as Catherine’s sensual lover: “putting His right hand on her
virginal neck and drawing her towards the wound in His own side, He whispered
to her, ‘Drink, daughter, the liquid from my side, and it will fill your soul
with such sweetness that its wonderful effects will be felt even by the body.’”
Raymond brief ly noted that an earlier confessor had written about how “the
glorious Mother of God herself fills her [i.e. Catherine] with ineffable
sweetness with milk from her most holy breast.”46 Nurtured at the breasts of
Christ and Mary, and moaning that “I want the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ” in
church before his body f luid miraculously satisfied her so that “she thought
she must die of love,” Catherine’s inf luential model of sanctity encouraged
women such as her follower Benedetta Carlini to believe in sensate relief of
their spiritual desires.47FIGURE 6.3 Francesco Vanni, St. Catherine of Siena
orally draining pus from an ill woman and being rewarded with liquid from
Christ’s wound, 1597, engraving, 25.7 × 28.9 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Open
access.Benedetta’s maleness supposedly derived from her role-playing as Jesus
or an angel, yet neither Christ nor angels were unequivocally male. In a
fundamental sense, of course, Christ was masculine, the son of God endowed with
visible, male genitals to prove the infant’s assumption of Incarnational
humanity.48 His adult manifestation was also primarily masculine and
patriarchal. Imitative adoration of their heavenly spouse could lead to
mortification and even stigmatization, but nuns were not masculinized through
such actions and they did not automatically become lovers of men. Stigmatized
like Christ or speaking at times as though Christ was delivering a message,Benedetta
was not Jesus, but his bride and servant. Cloistered women were privileged
followers of Mary’s role as sponsa, the heavenly bride reenacting the Song of
Songs and enjoying sensual relations with an adult, loving Christ. But when a
German cleric regretfully noted that “it properly is the prerogative of his
[i.e. Christ’s] brides” alone to enjoy sensual union with a celestial
bridegroom, he nevertheless vicariously enjoyed a homoerotic fantasy by
instructing nuns to kiss Christ “for my sake.”49 As scholars have shown, in
many ways the metaphorical body of Christ was “feminine” or homoerotic or,
rather, polymorphous in its sensual charge.50 Nuns imagined themselves as
suckled infants, nurtured adults, mothers, spouses, female friends, all sharing
an affinity as “sisters and daughters in Jesus Christ,” as Catherine de’ Ricci
addressed a group of nuns in October 1571 after the death of “your dearest
mother,” their abbess.51 While Christ was their child and groom, and Mary their
exemplar, nuns were also enfolded in a female genealogy of succession and a
feminine household of multiple sisters, daughters and mothers. Fellow nuns
tenderly support Catherine of Siena when she is so affected as to faint after
receiving the stigmata, painted by Sodoma in the mid-1520s for the Sienese
chapel dedicated to her within the Dominican headquarters of her cult (Figure
6.4).52 Catherine is shown with exemplary female acolytes whose intimate,
gentle regard for her swooning body suggests a bodily care and
unselfconsciousness that requires no masculine intervention. Nuns took on more
than one persona in this labile community of affection. After Benedetta married
Christ in a special ceremony on May 26, 1619, a brief investigation did not
distrust her mysticism, and on July 28, 1620 her religious sisters elected her
abbess, head of the new Congregation of the Mother of God.53 As such, “mother”
abbess Benedetta embraced her “daughter” and fellow “sister” Mea. Brown conf
lates being male with taking on an angelic guise, but Benedetta took on no such
“double role of male and of angel.” When using the voice of an angel, she was
not adapting a role assigned to unambiguously male figures. Since theologians
such as Aquinas believed angels might assume f lesh but had no natural bodies
or functions, the ethereal creatures were officially asexual. Names, pronouns,
and visual representations implied a degree of masculinity about God’s
messengers, but often of a childlike or pubescent and androgynous kind. At the
very moment when Gabriel carried the message transmitting the Logos into the
body of the Virgin Mary, that archangel was often depicted as especially
androgynous. It was probably to a frescoed Gabriel that the orphan,Sodoma,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, Scenes from the Life of Saint Catherine of Siena: The
swooning of the saint, 1526, fresco. Siena, S. Domenico. Scala/Art Resource,
NY.FIGURE 6.4The “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlinilater Beata, Vanna of Orvieto
pointed on a church wall when she said “this angel is my mother.”54
Splenditello and Benedetta’s other angels empowered rather than masculinized
her. Splenditello and company were celestial, barely gendered embodiments of
winged eros or desire, rather than of a particular lover. Mea’s account moved
directly from details of their sex to the statement that the mystic “always
appeared to be in a trance (ecstasi ) . . . Her angel, Splenditello,
did these things, appearing as a beautiful youth (bellisimo giovane) of fifteen
years.”55 The attractive adolescent was endowed with the kind of homoerotic
potential celebrated in contemporary paintings such as Caravaggio’s The
Stigmatization of St. Francis produced in the first decade of the seventeenth
century (Figure 6.5).56 Like the contemporaneous Splenditello, the seraphic
spirit of celestial love who gently supports Francis is a creature ostensibly
male but fundamentally symbolic of an eroticism which does not insist on
singular identifications of gender or sex. The saint swoons in the arms of a
lover whose pictorial form embodies the ineffable and polymorphous. Francis’s
pious identification with the supreme exemplar Christ is physically and
metaphorically consummated as he receives the stigmata in a mystical experience
necessarily represented in erotic terms. A little more than twenty years after
Mea’s confession, Gianlorenzo Bernini began work on a three-dimensional
figuration of The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Figure 6.6). With caressing gaze,
divine light, a conventional arrow of Love, andFIGURE 6.5 Caravaggio, Saint
Francis receiving the stigmata, ca. 1595–96, oil on canvas, 94 × 130 cm.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.Photo credit: Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY.FIGURE
6.6Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, marble, 1645–52. Rome, S. Maria dellaVittoria.
Photo credit: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.delicate gestures, Bernini’s embodiment
of celestial spirit visits upon Teresa an experience of divine transport. A
childlike member of the ranks of the cherubim gently strips Teresa of her
worldly garments, lifting the robe so that blissful fire will sear her soul
with what she called “a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several
times so that it penetrated to my entrails.”57 As Teresa described her rapture
in the early 1560s, “this is not a physical, but a spiritual pain, though the
body has some share in it—even a considerable share.” Corporeal sensation was
certainly perceived by an anonymous critic who, around 1670, accused Bernini of
having “dragged that most pure Virgin not only into the Third Heaven, but into
the dirt, to make a Venus not only prostrate but prostituted.”58
Contemporaries, in other words, were quite aware of the fine line between
sensuality and spirituality, a boundary crossed not only by Benedetta but by
the renowned artist Bernini. Benedetta’s staging of such favors as her
stigmatization and her nuptials with Christ were eroticized events akin to
those depicted by artists. She involved an entire community of nuns and a local
populace in earthly manifestations of the divine, just as Caravaggio did in oil
paint, Bernini in marble, or preachers with words. Miracles were understood to
be physically manifest, and visions subtly brought the divine into the
corporeal realm. The late thirteenth-century mystic Gertrude of Helfta wondered
why God “had instructed her with so corporeal a vision.” Her question was
rhetorical, as any acceptable mystic knew: spiritual and invisible things can
only be explained to the human intellect by means of similitudes of things
perceived by the mind. And that is why no one ought to despise what is revealed
by means of bodily things, but ought to study anything that would make the mind
worthy of tasting the sweetness of spiritual delights by means of the likeness
of bodily things (corporalium rerum).59 As the seamstress and “failed saint”
Angela Mellini knew about her visions in the 1690s, “one never sees things with
the eyes of the body, but everything is seen intellectually.”60 On the other
hand, this reassuring statement was delivered to an Inquisitor, whereas a note
written by her halting hand understood that emotional passion had very real
effects. Thinking of such things as the pains she suffered in her heart, in
imitation of Christ’s passion, she observed that “love makes me experience the
truth of sufferings through the senses, now it beats, now it purges, now it
hurts and now all sorts of torments are felt.” In order to truly convey the
exactitude and reality of her sensate love, in September 1697 she sketched a
diagram of her wounded heart, complete with lance, nails, hammer, cross, and
crown of thorns. That drawing was produced for her confessor, a man she desired
so much that she felt “great heat in all the parts of my body and particularly
of movements in my genitals.”61 Like a courtier offering a heart to the
beloved, and like the related love-imagery for the soul’s yearning after the
divine, Angela availed herself of religious rhetoric and resorted to physical
signs when lovingChrist and wooing her priest. Similarly, on Caravaggio’s
canvas and in Bernini’s chapel, light is divine and natural, the ecstasy
spiritual and embodied. So, too, Benedetta’s sensate and emotive life was a
continuous blend of illusion and reality, spirit, and similitude. Echoing her
model, Catherine of Siena, Benedetta experienced visions, stigmatization, the
exchange of hearts, and a marriage with Christ. Catherine’s reception into
heaven after her death, disseminated in Francesco Vanni’s engravings and
various paintings, entailed a tender, intercessory greeting by Mary.62
Catherine’s charitable nursing brought her mouth into contact with one dying
woman’s breast (Figure 6.3), and on another occasion she transformed an ill
woman into her spouse.63 “Full of burning charity,” Catherine rushed to the
hospital to tend a bereft woman, “embraced her, and offered to help her and
look after her for as long as she liked.” She motivated herself by “looking
upon this leper woman, in fact, as her Heavenly Bridegroom.” Benedetta took the
actions of her exemplar further, embracing another woman in a relationship
where each was a spouse, each a bride. At some level, she perhaps believed the
words God spoke to Catherine, that “In my eyes there is neither male nor
female.”64 To have an impact, mysticism had to present a degree of spectacle,
and thus cross into the physical realm. The special favors bestowed on some
mystics were invisible, but then other signs had to appear, especially as the
Church grew more cautious about legitimizing local cults, feminine excesses,
fakery, and piety which might turn out to be diabolical in origin. Lucia Broccadelli’s
stigmata arrived during Lent in 1496 but only becoming visible at Easter, after
Catherine of Siena’s supplication in heaven persuaded Christ “that the stigmata
should be visible and palpable in me.”65 For several years, the Dominican
visionary was highly favored by the lord of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este, and
officials, including the Pope’s physician, examined her wounds to their
satisfaction. But the fortunes of this “living saint” suffered a reversal when
her ducal patron died in 1505. The sisters, chafing under her strict rule, were
able to mount a counter-offensive because the stigmata had disappeared. Lucia
was imprisoned for fraud within the convent for nearly forty years, until she
died in 1544. A potential mystic impressing only a relatively small town and
without a powerful supporter, Carlini also encountered a backlash from her
fellow religious and was investigated in an even more stringent climate. Once
the Counter-Reformation took hold, especially after the Council of Trent
(1545–63), there was an increase in cases of women ultimately judged “failed
saints” or diabolically possessed. Concomitantly, the number of female
canonizations decreased, with a suspicion of women deemed credulous and
excessive further abetted by Urban VIII’s more strict procedures for
canonization.66 Two hundred years earlier, Catherine of Siena’s confessor,
Raymond of Capua, later Master General of the Dominican Order, was persuaded of
the veracity of her mystical experiences, despite the invisibility of her
marriage ring and stigmata, by “watching the movements of her body when she was
in ecstasy.”67 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi begged Christ that her mystical ring
andThe “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini113stigmata be invisible, but the impulse
for humility was neatly balanced by kinetic and audible theatre similar to
Catherine’s. Her very wish not to be singled out became itself part of the
record collected by her community. In May 1619, Benedetta staged an elaborate
wedding witnessed by the secular elite of Pescia. The first inquiry into her
holiness began the very next day. But her renewal of the ring (with saffron)
and stigmata (with a large pin) only emerged in the course of the later
investigation.68 Judged fraudulent by Bell, Benedetta may nevertheless have been
acting in good faith, marking her body artificially only when doubts grew,
trying to persuade the sceptics by secondary, external signs that she truly
believed were there on her soul.69 When a Capuchin nun, the blessed Maria
Maddalena Martinengo (1687–1737), piously took a needle to her own body, it was
not counted diabolical. She embroidered the instruments of the Passion “with
the needle threaded with silk . . . into her own f lesh, nice and
big, as chalice-covers are embroidered, nor without bleeding.” 70 To retain her
status and stem the tide of opposition in an increasingly fractious convent,
Benedetta may have inscribed her body without thinking that the act was
forgery. Self-mutilation recurs in the lives of mystics, including Angela of
Foligno’s searing of her genitals, Margaret of Cortona’s desire to cut her
face, and Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s gouging of her f lesh.71 Benedetta’s
piercing, documented by a hostile witness who came forth only after the convent
turned against their imperious abbess, may have been motivated in part by a
genuine element of imitatio Christi. Rather than judge her by later standards
of verisimilitude and honesty, it would be more appropriate to understand her
actions, and subsequent downfall, as a naïve, over-literal, and undisguised
performance of spiritual conventions that found no meaningful political support
amongst higher authorities or in a discordant convent. Like other aspirants to
mysticism, Benedetta displayed her celestial vision through mime, “motioning
with her hands as if she were taking” souls out of purgatory, for instance, but
her choreography went so far as to publicly process in a prearranged mystic
marriage, and to act out her erotic drive with Mea.72 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi
also kinetically staged her exceptionality. She mimed her wedding with Christ,
or in pantomime indicated to the novices under her care that she was being
stigmatized. Her charges reported that “she held her hands open, staring at a
figure of Jesus that she had on top of her bedstead; she looked like St.
Catherine of Siena. So, we thought that at that point Jesus gave her his holy
stigmata.” 73 Eroticizing a dormitory, looking at one image and mimicking
another, Maria Maddalena involved her young female audience in a highly visual
fantasy that drew on widely familiar iconography of female mysticism. Those
visualizations were further instilled through skills of internalized sight.
Trained, like all Catholics, in contemplative techniques merging the inner and
outer eye, Maria Maddalena and her faithful novices witnessed the material
reality of a vision. Meditative practices imagined narratives set in
contemporary settings, with familiar faces, placing a premium on immediacy and
recognition that was also highly valued in visual culture. Visions were
regularly made tangible,when nuns cared for and dressed dolls of the Christ
Child, acted out the stigmatization, wrote and performed religious plays, or,
in Catherine of Bologna’s case, painted and drew images inspired by her
raptures.74 To make fantasy real, to don the mantle of holy figures, was
orthodox rather than perverse. Benedetta’s concrete sexualization of her
religious scenario was not unique. In the early sixteenth century, a Spanish
canon lawyer had justified his inordinate lust for some nuns in Rome by arguing
that since, as a cleric “he was the bridegroom of the Church and the nuns were
brides of the Church,” they could have “carnal relations without sin.” 75
Imprisoned until he renounced these beliefs, the educated man had muddled
certain doctrines, but his conf lation of spiritual allegory and physical
desire was present in the writings of many a mystic and it was visualized in
numerous visions or works of art. By making her desires earthly as well as
divine, Benedetta misunderstood conventions, but she did not invent outside a
context. While she cannot be posited as a mainstream example of premodern
religiosity, there was a logic to Benedetta’s actions that does not rely on a
reading of her as a skeptical, manipulative fraud. Angelic disguise transformed
the mystic aspirant Benedetta into a forceful seductress, whose tenderness and
ecstatic passion was not rigidly fixed along differently sexed lines. Mea
reported: This Splenditello called her his beloved; . . . [and said]
I assure you that there is no sin in it; and while we did these things he said
many times: give yourself to me with all your heart and soul and then let me do
as I wish.76 Like the facilitating angel in the mystic encounters represented
by Caravaggio and Bernini, Benedetta’s guardian angel was imagined as a
beautiful, curlyhaired youth dressed in gold and white.77 The young angel was
an instrument of persuasion, the abbess a figure of command and intimidation.
Splenditello’s power derived from a patriarchal hierarchy in heaven, but he
sounded like a youth rather than a god. His counterpart in Caravaggio’s
painting does not heterosexualize that encounter; and in Bernini’s ensemble the
young angel eroticizes a spiritual ecstasy that cannot be crudely reduced to
phallic penetration by an adult man. Nor does Splenditello’s presence amidst
the couplings of Benedetta and Mea reduce them to a differently sexed twosome.
There was a third, disembodied protagonist in each of these raptures. The
divine was elemental light in Caravaggio’s painting and Bernini’s sculpture. In
Benedetta’s visions, as in her sex with Mea, the divine was literally
articulated, through voice. Christ or Splenditello was a pivot in a
triangulation of desire in which one of the results was frequent, very real sex
between two women.78 The interpretation of Benedetta’s acts within the
framework of a heterosexualized bride of Christ points to the need to
reconsider in quite what ways Jesus was a spouse. Three kinds of marital
imagery informed the regulation of female religious: liturgical, allegorical,
and mystical. While all nuns were incorporated liturgically and could picture
their souls as allegorical spouses of the heavenlybridegroom, only mystics
experienced additional nuptials. In 1619, Benedetta’s mystic marriage was an
overt, preplanned, public festival, as was her first marriage to Christ in 1599
at the age of nine, taking the veil, ring, and crown at a ceremony celebrated
by a bishop, though occasionally the celebrant was an abbess.79 In a drawing by
an anonymous German nun around 1500, enthroned Virgin Mary/Ecclesia replaces
the priest (Figure 6.7).80 Strikingly, the figure of Christ, particularly as an
adult, is absent from many such images. When he does appear, as in an
illuminated manuscript of the rule of St. Benedict produced for Venetian nuns,
he can bestow the nuptial crown on two Brides at once.81 Describing the ritual
as one involving “the giving of a woman to a man” and using the term “heavenly
husband” mistakenly suggests a scenario akin to a modern, secular, nuclear
family.82 Analogy should not be confused with actuality. The acculturation
entailed complex, multiple interchanges, evident in the drawing (Figure 6.7).
Its scroll carries the inscription “Take this boy and take care of [i.e.
suckle] me (nutri michi). I will give you your reward.”83 Like a priest
offering the veil, ring, and crown, and then the eucharist, the Virgin begins
to speak, licensing the earthly virgin to embrace the baby. But the infant
takes over, urging the young nun to suckle him and promising her eternal
reward. Her spouse is an infant, not a dominant patriarch, nor an earthly
“husband.” Christ was a communal groom, and a commonly nurtured babe. He was
more visible, and more often adult, in images of the allegorical and mystical
levels of marriage.84 Mystic marriages of saints show the adult, or often
infant, Christ as the pivotal locus of mediation, yet the rhetoric and ritual
of marriage also visually and symbolically bonds two or more female charactersFIGURE
6.7Anonymous German nun, Consecration of Virgins, ca. 1500.Photo credit:
Jeffrey Hamburger. Used with permissionwho are devoted to God’s son. Catherine
of Siena imitated St. Catherine of Alexandria’s mystic marriage with Christ,
and thereafter the subject of union became popular.85 Female saints, especially
the earlier Catherine, are usually depicted in the act of espousal to an infant
Christ offered by his mother Mary, just as the German nun remembered (Figure
6.7). Thereby, two holy women engineer a mystical union over the body of a
small child. To say that Christ becomes “the object of exalted maternal
instincts rather than sublimated sexual desire,” however, is to assume that a
nurturing woman’s affection has no component of passion, and that all female
desire must be focused on a male object.86 The child-groom can be shown as a
young, unknowing instrument guided by his mother, as in a painting by
Correggio, where the interplay of hands is particularly sensitive.87 Courtly
decorum amongst adults becomes in Correggio’s visualization an intimate, gentle
affair in which the child is too young to grant seigneurial permission. Held
close so that his body is subsumed in his mother’s, at other times he is a
virtual extension of her body, helping to connect through compositional line
and symbolic gesture a succession of two or more female figures. His small arms
and shoulder stand in for Mary’s left arm in a later painting by Ludovico
Carracci, so that his torso becomes especially symbolic of a presence that
almost need not be there.88 Guercino’s painting of 1620 depicts a gentle touch
between the two women, and tender glances link the three characters, but Christ
is relegated to the opposite side.89 Visual management of nuns’ fantasies could
imagine them in very physical, explicit actions. A cycle on the Song of Songs
painted in the mid-fourteenth century on the walls of a nun’s gallery at
Chelmno in eastern Prussia imagined Sponsa eagerly pulling her spouse into her
bedchamber.90 It literalizes the Canticle: “I will seize you and lead you /
into the house of my mother” (8:2). Such pictures made manifest an emotive
intensity that the all-female audience knew they were meant to share with other
women.91 In Northern Europe, the instructional habit of elaborating the amorous
interchange between Christ and the soul produced a sequential narrative version
illustrated in comic-strip fashion, Christus und die minnende Seele (Christ and
the loving soul), written in German in the late fourteenth century, later
disseminated in printed sheets and books.92 The divine lover embraced the soul,
wooed her with music, and crowned her in a ritual reminiscent of a wedding
ceremony. She obeyed Christ’s command to divest herself of worldly garments
when he said “If you wish to serve me, you must be stripped bare.” It is
unlikely that Italian nuns like Benedetta knew this particular text or its
imagery, but the practice of encouraging a religious woman’s fantasy through
narrative, whether in sermons, sung words, wall paintings, prints, books, or
paintings, fostered a widespread, eroticized imagination. The soul’s rapturous
reach toward its divine lover from a supine position on a bed, as represented
in the Rothschild Canticles, was echoed in Bernini’s marble display of Ludovica
Albertoni arching up from a bed where the disarranged sheets are even more
telling a sign of the soul’s ecstasy.93 Within this ideological structure,
BenedettaCarlini could imagine herself as a privileged soul experiencing
ecstatic union with the actual body of Mea. On one of the three occasions when
she addressed Mea in Christ’s voice, “he said he wanted her to be his bride,
and he was content that she give him her hand; and she did this thinking it was
Jesus.”94 Even if the abbess was a manipulative faker, as a crude and cynical
reading might have it, Mea believed the illusion, according to her
self-protective testimony. If neither woman was skeptical at the time of the
conversation, then the words and gesture performed a tangible, if
unconventional, enactment of bridal mysticism. Christ was manifest in a
human—and female—body rather than only present to the mind’s eye, yet the two
believers went on with the corporeal pantomime. If one or both of the earthly
players did think that Christ was not speaking, then at least one of them heard
a marriage proposal being offered by one woman to another yet did not rebuff or
denounce it at the time. Benedetta utilized the traditional metaphors and
scenarios of erotic mysticism, but at certain moments she took the logic beyond
doctrinal limits. She only assumed Jesus’ voice during three conversations with
Mea.95 Twice she spoke “before doing these dishonest things,” first when Jesus
took Mea’s hand and suggested marriage. The second time was in the choir,
“holding [Mea’s] hands together and telling her that he forgave her all her
sins.” “The third time it was after [Mea] was disturbed by these goings on,”
and was reassured that there was no sinfulness, and that Benedetta “while doing
these things had no awareness of them.” All three occasions offered comfort and
framed sex, occurring either before or after their “immodest acts,” but
Benedetta did not present herself as a sexually active Christ. However much
bridal mysticism structured Benedetta’s actions, she never took on the persona
of Christ during sex with Mea, instead acting through an angel when she used
any guise at all. Perhaps she is best described as a mystic playwright, someone
who wrote scripts during visionary or ecstatic experiences but who acted out
rather than wrote down the dramas, for an audience that included not only Mea
but also on occasion the other nuns and the local populace. Plays by nuns were
performed by inmates who cross-dressed for the male roles.96 In 1553 Caterina
de’ Ricci played the part of twelve-year-old Jesus speaking, with “signs of
particular love,” lines from the Song of Songs to a fellow nun who was acting
as St. Agnese.97 Taking multiple roles, such as Christ or angels with a variety
of dialects and ages, as well as sponsa and anima, Benedetta was a consummate
performer whose voice and appearance fitted the occasion.98 The mutual gestures
of Benedetta and Mea literally followed the Song of Songs: “My beloved put
forth his hand through the hole / and my belly trembled at his touch / I rose
to open to my beloved / my hands dripped myrrh / . . . / I opened the
bolt of the door to my love” (5:4–6). Mea’s account of how Benedetta “put her
face between the other’s breasts and kissed them, and wanted always to be thus
on her” recalls the Canticle’s enjoyment too. In the adaptation of the biblical
Song in the Rothschild manuscript compiled for a nun, Sponsus delightsin
breasts: “between my breasts he will abide . . . Behold my beloved
speaketh to me: How beautiful are thy breasts, thy breasts are more beautiful
than wine.”99 The phrase “sister my bride (soror mea sponsa)” was particularly
apt. It occurs four times in the Song (4:9, 10, 12; 5:1), along with “open to
me, my sister my friend” (sor mea amica mea) (5:2). Imitating the soul’s
statement in Christus und die minnende Seele that “I must go completely naked,”
Benedetta “stripped naked as a newborn babe.” Each recalled the Song’s bride:
“I have taken off my garment” (5:3). The sequential narrative of the romance
between Christ and the soul also had the womanly soul say “I cannot read a book
unless you are my master” and “I will tell no-one, love, what I have heard from
you,” each lines Mea could have uttered to her abbess.100 Benedetta spoke
another line, taking on the voice of Christ to offer the symbolic emblem of
mystical marriage: “Since you delight me, love, I set a crown upon you.” She
lay on top of Mea, “kissing her as if she were a man [and] she would stir on
top of her so much that both of them corrupted themselves,” an arrangement, and
finale, which bears comparison with the miraculous levitation experienced by
the Capuchin nun Maria Domitilla in Pavia at the very same time, 1622. She
recorded that Christ united his most blessed head to my unworthy one, his most
holy face to mine, his most holy breast (petto) to mine, his most holy hands to
mine, and his most holy feet to mine, and thus all united to me so very
tightly, he took me with him onto the cross . . . I felt myself
totally af lame with the most sweet love of this most sweet Lord.101
Benedetta’s models, such as the sponsa, the anima, and Catherine of Siena, were
feminine, metaphorical, or legendary, and her mistake in dogma was to take the
symbolic literally. Benedetta acted as though the material was the spiritual:
stripping for Christ or Mea like an obedient and pleasured soul in the Northern
sequential romance; kissing a woman or suckling at a breast as did certain
female mystics or saints; engaging in mutual, manual penetration of an orifice
in line with the Song of Songs; proposing and performing marriage as though she
could take both roles in a mystical drama. Her sex partner, Mea, was always a
female figure, assigned a feminine part. Benedetta enjoyed repeated sex with a
woman, not because that was the only body available to her, but because their
religious beliefs were not predicated upon some exclusionary, modern notion of
heterosexual identity. Through the vicissitudes of confession and documentary
survival, we happen to know that in the early 1620s two under-educated women in
a provincial Tuscan convent took religiously legitimized and visualized passion
to a literal level. Brides of Christ, nurtured on the notion that their cells
were bedchambers for nuptial union with a shared, metaphorical spouse, became
in those very spaces lovers on an earthly plane. In seventeenth-century Pescia
a patriarchal logic led to an alternative rite of passion. This does not mean
that the women’s sexual arousal was incidentalor insignificant, but that their
sensual and spiritual inspirations were neither entirely insincere nor
irreligious. Benedetta Carlini was a nun, abbess, articulate angel, feminized
soul, female mystic, and woman’s lover.Notes 1 Brown, Immodest Acts, 4; Bell,
“Renaissance Sexuality,” with “virtually unique” on 487, Brown’s response,
503–09, and Bell’s reply, 510–11. I am grateful to Professor Bell for sharing
his microfilms of the documents. The Italian of two missing frames, his figs. 1
and 2, was partly published in the Italian edition of Brown’s book, Atti
impuri, esp. 184– 86. I will endeavor to place digital copies of the documents
in the Deep Blue repository of the University of Michigan. Ideas here were
first explored in a talk at the University of Michigan (January 2000). I am
grateful for everyone’s attention in numerous audiences since then, but for
conversations I especially thank Louise Marshall and Vanessa Lyon. 2 Bell,
“Renaissance Sexuality,” 501–2, Brown’s response, Immodest Acts, 507. 3
Partner, “Did Mystics Have Sex?” 296–311; Salih, “When is a Bosom,” 14–32. 4
Brown, Immodest Acts, 127. 5 An exception is Matter, “Discourses of Desire,”
119–31. 6 Documented cases include Brucker, ed., The Society of Renaissance
Florence, 206–12; Chambers and Pullan, with Fletcher, eds., Venice. A
Documentary History, 204–05, 208. 7 Matter, “Discourses of Desire”, 122–23:
“the nature of Benedetta Carlini’s sexual encounters with her sister nun is so
bizarre as to defy our modern categories of ‘sexual identity.’” 8 Brown,
Immodest Acts, 161–64. 9 Ibid., 110–14, 160–64; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,”
491. 10 Carlini’s imprisonment “in penitence” ended when she died in August
1661: ibid., 132. Upon Mea’s death in September 1660, the recorder referred to
Benedetta’s fraud rather than sexual deeds: when Benedetta “was engaged in
those deceits” Mea “was her companion and was always with her.” But Mea was not
imprisoned: ibid., 135. 11 Jacobson Schutte, “Per Speculum in Enigmate, 187,
195 n. 11. For another case see Ciammitti, “One Saint Less.” 12 Brown, Immodest
Acts, 7–8, 136; Rosa, “The Nun,” 221; Velasco, Lesbians in Early Modern Spain,
92. 13 Bell, Holy Anorexia, 70. 14 Barstow, Witchcraze, 72, and further cases,
139–41. Others include Velasco, Lesbians in Early Modern Spain, 113–24. 15
Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, 92–93, 208–09 n. 65. 16 Bell,
“Renaissance Sexuality,” 498. 17 Cervigni, “Immodest Acts,” 286. 18 Matter, The
Voice of My Beloved, 142. 19 Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles, 4. 20 Unless
otherwise indicated, quotations are from Brown, Immodest Acts, 117–18, 120– 22,
162–64 passim (with emphases added). 21 Brown, Immodest Acts, 120; Bell,
“Renaissance Sexuality,” 486, 495, 497, 499. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 498 (“le ha
voluto baciare le parti pudente”); Brown, Immodest Acts, 120. 24 Ibid., 21–22,
27–28. 25 Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39: Colloquies, 290. 26 Coote, ed.,
The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, 118–21 for this and another example. 27
Schutte, “Per Speculum in Enigmate,” 192. 28 Raymond of Capua, Life of St
Catherine of Siena, 91–93. 29 Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, 43, 61, 99, 102,
138–39, 149–50, 172 n. 136.30 For a female couple sinning sexually in a Bible
Moralisée of c. 1220, see Camille, The Medieval Art of Love, 138–39, fig. 125.
For the 1468 fresco of the Inferno situated in an upper room of the convent
founded by St. Francesca Romana, with a couple of indeterminate sex, but
probably male, lying side by side on the lowest (and most easily seen)
register, see Bartolomei Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana, Pl. 27. 31
Ghirlandaio’s panel is in the Louvre, Pontormo’s remains in Carmignano. 32 See
n. 43 below; Jorgensen, “‘Love Conquers All,’” 102–03. 33 Brown, Immodest Acts,
137; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 502. 34 Brown, Immodest Acts, 108, 129,
130. 35 Ibid., 163–64. 36 Ibid., 63, 158, with subsequent quotations from 107,
117, 164. 37 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 165–67; Kaftal, St
Catherine in Tuscan Painting, 72–77; Bianchi and Giunta, Iconografia di Santa
Caterina da Siena, 112–14 and passim; Maggi, Uttering the Word, 176 n. 15;
Vandenbroeck, et al., Le Jardin clos de l’ame, nos. 147, 169; Brown, Immodest
Acts, 63–64. 38 Camille, Medieval Art of Love, 111–19, and passim, including
figs. 19, 55, 80. 39 Brown, Immodest Acts, 163. 40 Payer, Sex and the
Penitentials, 105; McNeill and Gamer, eds., Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 81,
152. When Ercole d’Este married Renée of France in Paris in June 1528, at the
Pax they kissed each other: Gardner, The King of Court Poets, 194. 41 The
quotation is from Rosa, “Nun,” 222. A detail of embracing Dominican women from
the panel in Siena’s Pinacoteca appears on the cover of Brown’s book. 42 Walker
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 101, 126, 131–32, 157, 165–80, 270–73, and
passim. 43 Brown, Immodest Acts, 26, 41. 44 Raymond of Capua, Life of St
Catherine, 141, 147–48 (hereafter quoted from 148). 45 Marciari and Boorsch,
Francesco Vanni, 118–27. 46 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 179. 47
Ibid., 170–71. 48 Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ. 49 Hamburger, The Visual
and the Visionary, 390. 50 Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother; Rambuss, Closet
Devotions. 51 St. Catherine de’ Ricci, Selected Letters, 39 (no. 47).
Subsequent quotations come from Letters 19, 46. 52 For the frescoes by Sodoma
and an earlier one by Andrea Vanni in the same church see Riedl and Seidel, Die
Kirchen von Siena, II, pt. 2, pls. VII, 596, 627–28 (and pl. 276 for Rutilio
Manetti’s canvas of 1630). 53 Brown, Immodest Acts, 41. 54 Frugoni, “Female
Mystics, Visions, and Iconography,” 139. 55 Brown, Immodest Acts, 163, a
translation here adjusted according to the cropped photograph of the passage in
Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 501 (fig. 2), because Brown conflates the
information on Splenditello and on another angel Radicello (a fanciullo) aged
eight or nine. The common misperception is thus that Splenditello was a boy. 56
Gregori, “Caravaggio Today,” no. 68. 57 Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint
Teresa of Ávila, 210 (ch. 29). 58 Bauer, ed., Bernini in Perspective, 53. 59
Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 165–66; Hamburger, Visual and the Visionary,
147. 60 Ciammitti, “One Saint Less,” 149. 61 Ibid., 150–52, fig. 3. 62 Bianchi
and Giunta, Iconografia, nos. 43, 438, p. 126. 63 Raymond of Capua, Life of St
Catherine, 131, 133. 64 Ibid., 108–09. During her visionary union with God, the
medieval mystic Hadewijch noted that God “lost that manly beauty” so that he
dissolved and “then it was to me as if we were one without difference”: Bynum,
Holy Feast, 156. 65 Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, 366–81, 401–05,
431-32, 464–67, 562.The “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73
74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99
100 10121Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, 141–42, 220–38; Bell, Holy
Anorexia, 151, 170–71. Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 100, 175–6.
Brown, Immodest Acts, 160. Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 493. Rosa, “Nun,”
201–02. Bell, Holy Anorexia, 99, 107, 175, with other cases passim; Tibbetts
Schulenburg, “The Heroics of Virginity,” 29–72. Brown, Immodest Acts, 159.
Maggi, Uttering the Word, 34 (my emphasis). On Catherine of Bologna see Wood,
Women, Art and Spirituality. Weyer, De praestiis daemonum, 184–85. Brown,
Immodest Acts, 163; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” fig. 2. Brown, Immodest
Acts, 64–65, 122. On erotic triangulation, see the classic study Kosofsky
Sedgwick, Between Men, esp. Ch. 1. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 56–61, 240 nn.
125–26; Lowe, “Secular Brides and Convent Brides,” esp. 43; Vandenbroeck, et
al., Le Jardin clos de l’ame, nos. 168, 172. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, Pl. 7.
Lowe, “Secular Brides and Convent Brides,” fig. 3. The phrases are in ibid.,
which often uses “heavenly husband” and has the other phrase on 44. But at 56ff
she points out how often Christ is absent from images, although the essay’s
point is to suggest parallels between the secular and religious ceremonies.
Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 56–58. Vandenbroeck, et al., Le Jardin clos de
l’ame, nos. 148, 178 and fig. 106a; Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 113–15.
Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 99–101, explicitly noting the
antecedent with “another Catherine, a martyr and queen.” Hamburger, Nuns as
Artists, 57, 239 n. 118. Ekserdjian, Correggio, 137–38. Emiliani and
Feigenbaum, Ludovico Carracci, no. 1. In Parmigianino’s red chalk drawing of
the subject for an altarpiece, c. 1523–24, the Child does not appear at all:
Franklin, The Art of Parmigianino, 104–06. Stone, Guercino, 84 n. 62.
Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 85–87, fig. 156 (and see fig. 159); Hamburger,
Visual and the Visionary, 409–10, fig. 8.5. Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality,
128ff, 252 n. 31, 253 n. 37. Gebauer, “Christus und Die Minnende Seele. Both
nuns and secular women were readers. Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 106–10,
155–62, f. 66r (Pl. 7); Perlove, Bernini and the Idealization. Bernini’s motives
included wanting to atone for his brother Luigi sodomizing a boy in St. Peter’s
(13–14). Brown, Immodest Acts, 163. Ibid., 163–64. Weaver, “Spiritual Fun,”
177, 181–83. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 194–96. Splenditello
spoke in three dialects: Brown, Immodest Acts, 160. Hamburger, Rothschild
Canticles, 82, 179, cf. Song of Songs 1:1, 1:12, 4:5, 4:10, 7:3, 7, 8, 12, 8:1,
10. Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip, vol. 1, 23. Brown, Immodest Acts, 162;
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The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1996.7 IN BED WITH LUDOVICO SANTA CROCE (1557) Thomas V. CohenLet us take two
tawdry events, male affronts to women, with social history’s eye to assets,
both cultural and material, and to the subtle exchanges that bound men to men,
women to women, and one gender to the other. This is social history in
nearly-literary mode, keen to read texts closely. We have text of two
kinds—first the words on paper provided by a small tangle of criminal trials.
If not the actual words spoken before and by the court or in the streets,
taverns, and brothels, still these records do come close. The conventions and
imperatives of the court itself, and the imperfect scribal hand have, as
always, refracted actual speech, but the Roman-legal habits of verbatim
transcription still offer material for close, thoughtful reading. Second comes
the fabric of the city itself, for our scoundrel and his allies prowled and
enjoyed their small corner of Rome, with its streets, squares, and assorted
monuments, an urban backdrop and firm anchorage for memories. The urbanscape,
so prominent both in what happened and in the telling, in itself invites a
reading no less close than the one we accord words on paper. So, before turning
to the deeds, note the spaces where they took place. We are in Rome’s Rione
Regola, or Arenula, a zone sometimes little changed from the 1550s and 1560s of
our stories. Nevertheless, the urbanism of first united Italy and then the Duce
made drastic alterations. In the later 1880s, the wide Via Arenula ripped
inwards from the Tiber, obliterating a web of streets and squares, and
demolishing the church and convent of Santa Anna, right under the grand 1890
apartment where I once lived and wrote. The church survives only in the names
of Via Santa Anna, and of a pleasant trattoria whose menu depicts my own abode.
A second nineteenth-century destruction obliterated the ghetto, replacing it
with a grand synagogue and some lumpish buildings. And then, under Mussolini,
nostalgia for the Caesars erased the medieval fabric around the fish market at
Pescheria, reducing tight neighborhoods to sterile archeology.So, to trace our
scoundrel and his entourage, we must fall back on the old maps, especially the
splendidly accurate Nolli Plan of 1747, and read street plans, the surviving
urban fabric, and words in court, together. The Nolli plan shows how, from
1555, once the ghetto gates went up, a street our witnesses call the strada
dritta became crucial for mobility, especially at night. It is hard today to
recapture that very ancient urban street, today the Via del Portico d’Ottavia.
Down by the old ghetto, it is now so wide that restaurants sprawl into it to hawk
carciofi alla giudia, and, on their Sabbath, Rome’s Jews gather after services
for a great chiacchiera —communal conversation. Further north, Via Arenula and
the unkempt park in Piazza Cairoli, and a vague piazza before the baroque
facade of San Carlo, have all smudged the profile of this street, which, in the
sixteenth century, was no less tight than straight. Moreover, it was handy,
skirting the ghetto to link the fishmongers’ square at Pescheria to Piazza
Giudia. It then passed the palace of the Santa Croce, Renaissance in spirit
but, like Palazzo Venezia, still half-medieval in shape, with an ornamental
square tower today lopped short. The Santa Croce, banished by Sixtus IV, had
lost their houses; readmitted, they threw up this palace, with its elegant
diamond-studding on the wall. As the Nolli map shows, heading northwest, the
street, at a bivio (a fork), slotted into Via Giubbonari, a curving passage
today still narrow. Joseph Connors, in his “Baroque Urbanism,” discusses the
extremely ancient streets of this part of Rome, pointing out how they wander
eastwards from the bridge from Hadrian’s Tomb, now Castel Sant’Angelo, forking
as they go.1 The Renaissance papacy used these roads often, as a way to San
Giovanni in Laterano and across Rome, and palaces of the early Renaissance
clustered along them. For our nocturnal misdeeds, the wide network mattered
little, but the local Strada Dritta bore much social traffic. Our louche
central character straddled lines—moral, social, sexual, and religious. A liminal
man, he was and is hard to place, and his actions, crossing boundaries ethical
and social, remind us not to put Rome and Romans into boxes. His name reveals
his hybrid nature—Ludovico Santa Croce. At first glance, nothing strange there,
but, as genealogies show, the civic noble Santa Croce, descending, they
believe, from Publius Valerius Publicola, anti-Tarquin and one of Rome’s first
consuls, in the sixteenth century named their children almost exclusively from
Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus: not a Ludovico in sight. Moreover, law courts
called him “the son of the late Giovanni Antonio de Franchi” so, if he was a
Santa Croce, the noble house somehow adopted him.2 A friend, aware of this f
limsy identity, says of him, “The said Messer Ludovico si fa romano de casa de
Santa Croce et per romano il tengo.”3 Close reading: the friend does not call
him a Santa Croce: just “si fa”—“he claims to be”; the friend readily affirms
his Roman identity but, as to family, balks. But Ludovico, clearly, grew up
some at the family’s palace. A friend recalls: “I have known him for more than
twelve years in Rome and I knew him when he was a lad [ putto] here at the
Santa Croce [qui alli Santa Croce].”4 Magrino, the witness, a very recent
Jewish convert (Feast of the Annunciation, 1556), testifies not at the prison
as is usual, but at home, asIn bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 127he is sick, and
with his “here at the Santa Croce” shows how, now fatto christiano, he has
moved a mere block or so beyond the ghetto gate at Piazza Giudia to lodgings
near the Santa Croce palace. Ludovico is sufficiently Santa Croce that, back in
Carnevale of 1557, a noble Santa Croce helped bail him out of prison.5 But he
is no signore; his cronies call him messer instead. This title f lags both his
status and its ambiguity. In 1557, at his first trial here, Santa Croce is
“about twenty-six, as he asserts.”6 If so, then either his friend Magrino knew
him longer than twelve years or, back then, age fourteen, he had become a
fairly lanky putto. He was born in 1531 or so. By 1565, at the second trial, he
would be thirty-four. No sign of a marriage. His loves, we will see, were all
casual, among the whores. No sign, either, of a craft, trade, or civic office.
He probably still lived at the palace as, for sex, he took his hireling women
to the bathhouse (stufa) or bunked down with them at friends’ and seldom, if
ever, took them home. So how did he pass the days? He hung out at the
Pescheria, the fish market at one end of the Strada Dritta. And the company he
kept: fishmongers, Jews, and recent converts. Plus prostitutes. He ate, drank,
caroused, and got into abundant trouble. In 1565 the court asks for his
criminal record: I have been in prison three or four times, here in Tor di Nona
and in Corte Savelli. I don’t remember why. And his lordship asked him that he
at least tell for what crimes and excesses he was investigated and tried. He
answered: I cannot remember things that are fifteen or sixteen years old, but I
know well that I have not been under investigation either for homicides or for
ugly things [cose brutte]. It is true that I remember that I was in jail in
Corte Savelli for having had a brawl with another gentilhomo, and for it I paid
ten scudi to Messer Pietro Bello.7 Here, Ludovico is as evasive as his memory
is fuzzy; cose brutte indeed came up in court. The court asks after a
jailbreak.8 The fight was probably in Carnevale, 1557, when Pietro Bello was a
judge on staff.9 In June, 1563, Ludovico was wounded in a brawl where he, a
reluctant fighter, stabbed a spice-trader in the chest.10 In a trial of another
unruly gentleman, the court asks the suspect’s serving woman if her master ever
wanted to kill our Ludovico. “I don’t know,” she says, “but know that the said
Ludovico was wounded once and that [my master] Pietro de Fabii rejoiced.”11 So
Ludovico is a man on many margins. A self-proclaimed gentilhomo, he haunts the
edge of his foster-family, in a neighborhood strung between Jews and
Christians, and his socializing crosses boundaries of station, ethnicity,
family, community, and moral action. So let’s join him for the evening. We
begin not along the Strada Dritta, but atop Piazza Navona, by Torre Sanguigna
and the Pace church, with two Christians, doublet-makers both. It was before
Christmas, 1556.12 Antonio Scapuccio and Mario di Simone came offwork at the
Ave Maria sunset bell. Mario, aged twenty, lived across town, by Santissimi
Apostoli. With Antonio he went back three years, from their work.13 As for
Ludovico, Antonio had known him since childhood: “at the time I and he were
lads, we had a close friendship.”14 Antonio, via Ludovico, knew that Fabritio,
another convert, kept a house where friends gathered. “Antonio brought me to
the house of Fabritio, Jew-made-Christian, who sells ironware.”15 When the
doublet-makers arrived, Ludovico was there, with Magrino, and one Giulio
Matuccio, and the host, Fabritio.16 So began their evening. “We all decided, in
agreement, to go find a Signora called Vienna Venetiana, friend of the aforesaid
Giulio Matuccio.”17 Mario adds: And when we were at Vienna’s house—she lived at
Torre Sanguigna— Antonio Scapuccio knocked on the door, and the mother, if I
remember, said that she had hurt her arm and could not keep us company, and
that we should let her off.18 Torre Sanguigna was far from Ludovico’s haunts.
“We left and went to a pie-shop, also near Torre Sanguigna, and got ourselves a
pasticcio. And I don’t remember which of us paid for it.”19 Magrino, a convert,
adds that the pie contained a shoulder of pork.20 Ludovico stepped in,
announcing as they walked: let’s fetch my whore!21 So entered Betta, a
cortigiana grande, says Mario, meaning not a top-rank prostitute, but, as
Magrino says disparagingly, a big tall woman—“una donna grande longaccia.”22 Betta
lived near the stufa of Felice, near the Cavaglieri family palace, two blocks
north of the strada dritta.23 As the five trailed after him, Ludovico vaunted
his sex with her: And Ludovico said it again, while he was going with us for
that woman, and he was heading to knock on her door . . . that last
night he had slept with this woman, and he said that she had a fine ass and
that it gripped firmly.24 At Betta’s lodgings, the men remained outside.
Ludovico called or knocked and the prostitute came down, and, oddly, if she
really had slept with him the night before, in error she embraced the wrong
man, as if Ludovico, though a gentilhuomo, was hard to tell from the company he
kept.25 “And we asked her if she wanted to come to dinner with us, showing her
the pasticcio, and she said yes, and came away. And going down the street
Messer Ludovico and she went arm in arm.”26 The passage illustrates handsomely
some workings of Roman prostitution. Note how complex were the exchanges
between these women and their customers. Roman prostitution was seldom simple
sex for plain cash. Like many transactions in the economia barocca, it had wide
bandwidth and complex linkages forward, backward, and across society.27 Betta
here accepted a promise of food and entertainment, and furnished public
gestures of affection, a gift to Ludovico, who could f launt her to posse and
to street.In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 129The party, with Betta making
seven, retired to Ludovico’s hang-out, the inn at Pescheria, called after its owner
Domenidio.28 It was some hour after nightfall.29 “All of us, in company, went
to dinner at the aforesaid inn, and we brought with us a pasticcio, and we
ate.”30 To this osteria, patrons readily brought food. After dinner, the whole
group went to spend the night at Fabritio’s dwelling, near Ludovico’s own
house, where Ludovico, other times that winter, sometimes brought women: “in
the time that he was made Christian . . . he lent me the room.”31 On
the way, the men say, Ludovico again boasted of anal sex with Betta.32 The room
had but a single bed; Fabritio, leaving the bed to his gentleman guest,
hospitably withdrew to a little attic, a solarello —“no great thing”—and
slept.33 Magrino “gave the command to fetch from home a mattress, which we
threw on the f loor.”34 Ludovico and Betta undressed at once and slipped under
the covers.35 There was a bed curtain. It would have had many colors, and it
was mine [Magrino’s]. And to a question he answered: It was not spread around
the bed but gathered to one side.36 Ludovico, in his account, avers that the
curtain was draped around the bed. 37 While Magrino settled somehow on a chair,
clothed, to spend the night, the two doublet-makers and Giulio huddled on the
mattress. Ludovico, meanwhile, lay snugly in one convert’s bed and another
convert’s hangings, in a convert’s house. “Before the light was put out we were
all joking and chatting, and Messer Ludovico told us please to put out the
light.”38 And then, as men settled for the night, Ludovico thrust his arm out from
the covers, making a letter “O” with his index and middle finger.39 Lest he
shame Betta he said nothing, Antonio avers, but Mario claims he boasted
loudly.40 Mirth erupted. Everybody laughed at that and said to one another, “He
has fucked her in the ass. Fire! Fire!”41 The stake, of course. And slim regard
for Betta! What is going on here? The social psychology of this scene is
tangled. We have three Christian artisans, two ex-Jews on the f luid boundary
of the ghetto, and one semi-gentleman half outside his noble family, a troop
cemented, perhaps, by Ludovico’s leadership, occasional largess, and arrant
breach of sexual and moral rules. All six men share in Betta’s humiliation.
Ludovico parades his transgression and the risks he runs and, laughing, the cronies
applaud and, vicariously, thrill to his vulnerability. Collusion cements this
solidarity. Ludovico and Betta were the first to fall asleep.42 Much later, say
the others, invited by Ludovico to join them in the bed, Magrino left the
chair, climbing in still clothed, and fell asleep.43And then awoke, jostled by
the bounce of sex. I could feel it when he was screwing her, and she had her
bottom towards Ludovico and she was turned with her face toward me. And it was
one time that I felt it, and I did not see him stick it in because it was no
affair of mine. I know well that he was screwing her, and he was shoving her
towards me, so that it made me wake up.44 Magrino is remembering events before
Christmas, almost nine months earlier. The trial took place in August, 1557,
first at the Inquisition, at the Ripetta. Halfway through, interrogations moved
to the prisons of the Governor of Rome. That is why this record survives.
Precisely two years later, when Paul IV died, Rome’s most tumultuous Vacant See
broke out. Mobs attacked the Inquisition’s Ripetta offices, burning the papers,
and ransacked the house of the tribunal’s notary.45 Later, Napoleon’s
supporters would destroy the Inquisition’s later trials, so a transcript such
as this is rare indeed. Both at Ripetta and later, this trial has a Holy Office
feel; the magistrates treated the courtroom as a confessional, sparing neither
shame nor feelings with their swift, intrusive questions. Why did the matter
slip to the criminal court? The crime in question, though moral and involving
converts, revealed no taint of heresy. Prostitution in mixed company was no
crime and the court was after anal intercourse. He was asked if on that night
he the witness heard the said Betta moaning and crying out, because the said
Messer Ludovico was having intercourse and fucking her [ futuebat] from the
back. He answered: “I could hear it when she was screwed the first time by
Messer Ludovico. She was crying out [si lamentava]. But one can cry out for several
things.” And to a question of me the notary he said: “She can cry out the way
women do.” And I the notary asked, “And how do women do?” He said, “They can
cry out because it pleases them and they can cry out because it hurts them too.
But, one time, as I said, I felt it when he screwed her.”46 When the
Inquisition hauled her in, Betta did her all to prove it wasn’t so. Her
testimony about what went on in bed surely did her little good, as, on point
after point, she lied elsewhere about her history with Ludovico, shown as far
skimpier than others alleged. Her testimony, earthy and vehement, catches well
a prostitute’s voice in court. He never did it to me in that place. It is true
that Messer Ludovico told me to turn around, that he wanted to do it cunt-backwards
[a potta retro], and I told him, “You want to trick me. You want to stick it in
contrary-wise.” And he said no, that he wanted to do it cunt-backwards, and so
I turned around and he did it to me cunt-backwards. I know where he went in,
and if he was fooled, I was not fooled.47In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 131Betta
appears twice in the record. The first time, to cover for the weakness of her
case, she regales the judge with promises to live in virtue. If I had consented
to the other way, it would seem to me that God would not keep me on earth. And
if I have done wrong in one way, I don’t want to do wrong in the other. And if
I get out of this I want to go to Santa Maria di Loreto, and then to my home to
do good works, and I want to go this September. And if he wants to say that he
did it to me from behind against Nature, he is lying through his throat, and he
is tricked, and, me, I am not tricked, because I protect myself from this the
way I do from fire.48 The next morning, Betta, Ludovico, and most of the posse
stayed. (Mario, sleeping clothed, had slipped off early to his shop.)49 At
breakfast, the boasts went on: She never heard a word when Messer Ludovico told
us that he had twice screwed Betta in the ass, but he said it at length to us.
He was asked if the said Betta was at the table eating with them, how could
Ludovico have said those words, since they could be heard by Betta. He
answered: I will tell you. We were kidding Ludovico . . . and when he
said it at the table she had not yet sat down.50 As current events show sadly,
Renaissance Italy was hardly the only place where, for some admirers, the
swaggering abuse of women gives callous men allure. Jump eight years ahead. It
was 1565, not 1557, and Ludovico was now some thirty-four years old. Still
unmarried, still at loose ends, he haunted the same tight quarter, up to little
good. He had a new entourage; none of the same men turn up. At the center, as
ever, sat that osteria of Domenidio, in Pesheria. His cronies were, this time,
two or three fishmongers and one Cesare Vallati, son of the civic noble family
that owned a palace on the square, facing its ghetto gate. The Vallati house
still stands, pared back to its medieval core, which now bears sad plaques
about Roman Jewish deaths at Nazi hands. Cesare was gentleman enough to hold,
they said, a civic office.51 On Friday, November 23, the friends stirred up
dinner at the inn. Meo, fishmonger, says: Ludovico Santa Croce came to me, as I
was in Pescheria. It may have been a half-hour after dark, and he asked me if
we wanted to go to dinner together at the osteria of Domenidio. I said yes and
so I picked up some fish, and along with Grillo and Ludovico we went to the
osteria of Domenidio, and while we were setting up to eat Cesare arrived and said,
“I want to eat with you,” and so he too sat at the table and we were four in
all.52Meo reports that, when he left his fish-bench, he brought sardines, while
Grillo fetched clams.53 In the midst of dinner, “a Jew”—nobody names him, ever—
joined the group; no sign he ate with them.54 After dinner, except Grillo, all
left together. “Let’s go to the house of my whore,” said Ludovico. “We said,
‘let’s go!’ and Cesare said, ‘I want to join you.’”55 The court asks later, did
Cesare and Ludovico go with sword in hand?56 Probably. The men took the strada
dritta, the ghetto to their left, the Santa Croce tower to the right, over to
Il Crocefisso, behind or under where the big church of San Carlo later stood.57
Ludovico’s woman of the month was Olimpia, who, it turned out, was off with an
amico, a regular of hers, who, she says, felt ill, so she headed homeward with
a Lorenzo stufarolo in tow.58 But when Ludovico and his cronies arrived, only
the house’s mistress, Lucretia, was yet home. Olimpia calls Lucretia the house
padrona; in court, Ludovico will call her a whore, whom he has known for years,
presumably hooking up with tenant after tenant.59 At Olimpia’s front door, the
four men, masking voices and pretending to speak Spanish, shouted, “Open up the
door!” Lucretia: “They banged six or seven times, for I was not of a mind to
open, ever.”60 At last I went to the window and told them that I did not want
to open for them under any circumstances, and told them to change their talk
because no way could I not recognize them. I knew them just fine, but, with my
tenant not home, and because, I knew, they wanted nothing of me, I had no
intention of opening for them. Instead, I said, I would throw water on their
heads if they did not get away from the door.61 The four men loped east to Via
dei Chiavari, still in Lucretia’s sight.62 There they encountered a second
Lucretia. Wife of wealthy Cyntho Perusco, and mother of two children, she was
returning with a servant—but with no light, lest she be seen and
recognized—from a call on her procurator.63 Two men armed with swords and
daggers, with their swords under their arms and the daggers in hand unsheathed,
came at us and at once they stopped me and one of them put his hand to my neck,
feeling my neck, thinking that perhaps I had some chain necklace or string of
gems.64 And I said to them, “I am a poor woman. What do you want of me?” And I
was screaming, “Thieves thieves!” When they heard that, they let go of me.65
Giovanni Maria, the servant, thought he recognized one of the four assailants:
“Ah Meo, why are you doing this to us?”66 Meo at once hid his face behind his
cape.67 Giovanni Maria’s assailants, Meo and the Jew, grabbed him. “They were
holding on to me and they told me to keep silent, and they held the naked
daggers to my neck.”68 The assailants released their quarry, only brief ly.
Lucretia will tell the Governor: “When we had walked three or four paces, the
same men,In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 133with some others, made a circle
around me and some of them grabbed me from one side and some from the other,
putting their daggers to my throat.”69 Giovanni Maria tells the Governor: “they
began punch me and shove me and they threw me to the ground.” 70 Adds Lucretia:
And they took from him a pouch. In it were ten giulios, between testoni coins
and giulio coins, and a gold ring that was mine, with a Jesus on the top, and
on the bottom, there is a “claw of the great beast” [a fabled stone with
curative powers], which was also in that pouch, and they took from it also the
belt and a handkerchief. The ring contains 18 giulii of gold.71 Giovanni Maria
adds that the pouch had been tied to his waist and that Lucretia had removed
her ring to wash her hands.72 One of the band of four, almost certainly Cesare
Vallati, as Ludovico was by now no youngster, may have had second thoughts:
When this [theft] was done one of those youngsters took me by the hand and told
me, “Come here. I promise you as a gentleman that I will not hurt you.” And he
asked me, who was that woman. And I told him that she was not for them, and
that they should let her go, and that she was the wife of Messer Cynthio
Perusco.73 Ludovico had other ideas. One of the two underlings, probably not
the Jew but Meo, asked him “Messer, what are we to do?” “Carry her off, carry
her off!” 74 And they tried with all their might to lead me to a house, for
they took me by force and they dragged me . . . But I cried out,
“Thieves! Thieves! Is this how you assassinate people in the street!” And I
told them that I had nothing on me and that they should come to my house, that
was near there.75 The assailants hauled Lucretia into an alley.76 Lucretia was
convinced that they wanted to drag her to a stufa, a bath house of the sort
Ludovico haunted. As they pulled her, Lucretia fell in the mud, losing her
pianelle, her clogs. “She told them that her clogs had fallen off, and they
told her to keep walking, and they were making her walk up that alley, leading
her, as there were three or four around her.” 77 And then, providentially, down
the alley came two men, in front a servant with a torch, and, behind him, his
master, Agostino Palloni, a man of substance whose house stood close to the
Santa Croce palace.78 And when the light arrived, I recognized the gentleman, and
I begged him for the love of God to help me. And while I was saying those
words, one of those young men, who had dragged me, as he thought that the light
was not coming from that side and that he would not be seen—Messer Agostino
recognized one of those young men, who is called Cesare Romano.And at that
Messer Agostino said, “Ah Cesare, what are you doing [che fai]. What is this!
Do you see that you [tu] are doing wrong?79 Turning towards Agostino, says
Giovanni Maria, Lucretia tripped on an iron grate and once more fell and then,
as supplicant, grasped his cape: “Ah, Messer Agostino, don’t abandon me
. . .!”80 Agostino, Lucretia, and Cesare then stood together, a
threesome. First off, Cesare, to catch his social balance, tried to place
Lucretia as a Roman matron. Then Agostino did the same. Giovanni Maria tells
the Governor: The man whom Agostino had called Cesare asked Madonna Lucretia if
she knew Cyntho Perusco. She said, “Yes, I know him, and I have two children
with him, and he is my husband.” And Messer Agostino asked Madonna Lucretia if
she knew Messer Francesco Calvi, and she said yes, and if he came to her house
with her she would show him her daughter.81 Gentleman to gentleman! Cesare
Vallati, in night’s shadow, had strayed well outside his class’s code of
conduct, and Agostino’s torch jolted him back from the abyss. He switched codes
as nimbly as he could. Then Messer Agostino turned to Cesare and told him,
“Cesare, son, you have done wrong.” And then Cesare told Messer Agostino to
leave, and said that he would have Madonna Lucretia escorted by a servant of
his.82 No such thing happened, of course. After questions to Lucretia about how
she came to be out after dark, Agostino, with his torch and serving man,
conveyed them both back home.83 At her window, the other Lucretia, the madam,
had seen and heard the fracas. Outraged, woman to woman, she strove to allay
the trouble. I heard a woman who was starting to scream, and when I looked
toward where I heard that cry, I looked and saw a woman with a man, and she was
screaming, “What do you want with me, brothers, pull the door rope for me, pull
the door rope for me!” and when I heard those words, I feared it might be some
neighbor, and I knocked on the window of Diana and told her, “Listen to your
sister who is screaming,” and she answered, “My sister is here at home.”84
While Cesare and Agostino parleyed, the other three miscreants probably crept
away, and soon, all four were back at Olimpia’s door. This time they had luck,
as Olimpia turned up, with Lorenzo her bathhouse worker, and his lute. “I came
back home and I found Ludovico Santa Croce there at my door, along with Meo the
fishmonger and with two others whom I did not know, but there was aIn bed with
Ludovico Santa Croce 135Jew.”85 Lucretia opened for Olimpia and, willy-nilly,
in came all the others, with Ludovico, as usual, in the lead.86 Note Lucretia’s
version: At that moment, my tenant called Olimpia arrived, along with an amico
called Lorenzo the bathhouse worker, who played the lute, and I had to pull the
rope, and then there came in, along with my tenant, Ludovico Santa Croce, Meo,
Cesare Vallati, and a Jew.87 We learn from Olimpia several things. For one, the
Jew was a stranger, known only, presumably, by his obligatory Jew’s cap. For
another, Cesare Vallati had rejoined the crew. And, for a third, while she knew
Meo, Vallati, a stranger to her if not to the madam, was less central to
Ludovico’s habitual posse. Neither he nor the Jew had been part of the dinner’s
start; though locals, they were hangers-on. When the men entered, Lucretia, the
madam, upbraided them. “And when they were up the stairs, I said to them, ‘Oh
this is a fine state of affairs! Poor women cannot go in the street.’ And they
told me that they weren’t the ones who did it.”88 Lorenzo, with the lute, would
prove Ludovico’s undoing. The men all stayed a while in Olimpia’s room,
listening to him play. And then Ludovico led Olimpia off to the Santa Anna
stufa to spend the night. The other three escorted him down the block, then
went their separate ways.89 We catch a bit of the denouement via Barbara, Meo’s
ex-puttana, who, she tells the court, had after three years broken with him
because he owed her big money on borrowed goods. Barbara had moved to Monte Savelli,
just a block down-river from Pescheria.90 I went to bed without dinner because
I felt ill, and while I was in bed with Annibale the fish-monger I heard
passing in the street Cesare Vallati with other people whom I did not see, and
he said, “Your faithful servant, Signora Barbara, my heart!” I made no
answer.91 Annibale and Barbara went back, she says, three years; she swam as
easily among the fishmongers as a mackerel in the sea. But Cesare Vallati,
clearly, slipped through these same waters; in the intimate spaces of the city,
these men and women moved up and down class lines. Annibale, when asked, would
tell Madonna Lucretia what he knew about the crime. Small world!92 The very
next day, Madonna Lucretia sent her servant to scout the local bathhouses.
Lorenzo, the fellow with the lute, a paesano, led Giovanni Maria to Ludovico
and Meo, who would be arrested on Monday, together.93 At Olimpia’s, the four
men, said Lorenzo, had been “in a terrible mood and all of them distressed.”94
Agostino Palloni, meanwhile, refused to help Lucretia—“he sent word to me
through Cynthio that it wasn’t a gentleman’s role to accuse anybody, and that
was it was enough that I had suffered no harm.”95 Citing class solidarityhe
covered for Cesare Vallati, who either f led or ducked prosecution. The Jew,
luckily nameless, got away. We have neither a sentence nor knowledge what our
four villains did with the rest of their lives. Our story of status slippage
and hasty re-calibration, coarse male solidarity, callous abuse of women, and
female resilience models a careful reading of words, places, and actions, with
an eye to the density of webs and the fine-grained texture of lives in time and
space, to lay out the ref lexes with which Romans navigated their city.
Ludovico, uneasily perched on several margins, could build coalitions, trading
his noble connections, hospitality, slovenly rapaciousness, and access to paid
female sex and company for male support and applause. To Cesare he offered a
pathway down, to the others perhaps a step upwards. These male solidarities in
a moral grey zone show the porosity of Rome’s social boundaries and its
alliances’ often easy give.Notes 1 Connors, “Alliance and Enmity,” 208–09. 2
Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale, Processi (16o
secolo), busta 38, case 23, folio 568r: “Ludovicus de S. Cruce filius q. Io.
Ant. d. Franchis.” Henceforth, I give busta and folio only. 3 38.23, 559v:
Antonio Scapuccio, August 15, 1557, to a notary at the Holy Office. 4 38.23,
573r, Magrino, August 26, 1557, at home sick, to a notary. 5 38.23, 579v:
Ludovico cites Valerio Santa Croce and noble Mario Mellino. For Magrino’s
conversion at the Annunciation in 1555: 38.23, 573r, Magrino. 6 38.23, 568r. 7
Busta 103, 909r: Ludovico Santa Croce: “. . . costione con un altro
gentil’homo . . .” 8 103, 909v: “fregit carceres et unde exivit.” 9
38.23, 572v: “questo carnevale [1557] . . . messer Ludovico uscii di
pregione in Corte Savella.” 10 Investigazioni 80, 181v–183v, for 23–24, from
June, 1563. 11 38.19, 461v: “. . . se ne reallegrava.” 12 38.23,
577v: Betta: “. . . avanti natale.” 13 38.23, 562v-563r: for age and
employment; for the friendship and the workplace: 38.23, 562v–563r. 14 38.23,
559v: “eravamo regazi havevamo amicitia intrinseca insieme.” 15 38.23, 562v:
Mario: “Fabritio giudio fatto Cristiano che venne li ferri.” 16 We know little
about Giulio, never interrogated. Ludovico seems to place him among the
converts: 38.23, 570r–v: “Vi pratica in questa casa Julio Mattuzzo, Fabritio
doi o tre altri giudei facti christiani . . . de continuo li se ce
vengono giudei et d’ogni sorte de generatione.” But no other witness calls
Giulio a convert. 17 38.23, 563r–v: Mario. 18 38.23, 563v: Mario:
“. . . lei o la madre . . . disse che era ferita in uno
braccio et che non posseva abadarci et che lavessemo per scusata.” 19 Ibid.:
Mario: “. . . a un pasticciero pur presso Torre Sanguigna et
pigliassemo un pasticcio . . .” 20 38.23, 574r: “comprassemo una
spalla de porco.” 21 38.23, 564r: Mario: “. . . disse per la strada
che voleva pigliar detta cortigiana.” 22 38.23, 573v. 23 38.23, 563v: Mario:
“apresso la stufa de Felice presso li Cavalieri.” 24 28.23, 561r: Antonio
Scapuccio: “. . . ando con noi per dicta donna et voleva bussare la
porta . . . che haveva bravo culo et teneva bene.”In bed with
Ludovico Santa Croce 13725 38.23, 574: Magrino, for Ludovico’s call: “Messer
Ludovico chiamandola . . .”; 38.23, 564r: Mario: “credendosi di
abracciar messer Ludovico abraccio un altro in loco suo in cambio.” 26 38.23,
564r: Mario: “Mostrandoli il pasticcio et per la strada messer Ludovico et liei
andavano abracciati insieme.” 27 Ago, Economia barocca. 28 38.23, 560r: Antonio
Scapuccio: “l’ostaria de Domenidio in Piscaria.” 38.23, 574r: for the name’s
origin. 29 38.23, 564r: Mario, for the time. 30 38.23, 560r: Antonio di
Scapuccio: “tutti de compagnia . . . portassimo . . . un
pasticcio . . .” 31 38.23, 568v: Ludovico Santa Croce:
“. . . Fabritio giudio facto christiano apresso . . . [a]
casa mia nel tempo che e facto christiano et lui me impresto la stantia”; 38.
560r: Antonio Scapuccio: “presso la casa de Santa Croce.” 32 28.23, 561r:
Antonio Scapuccio for the boast: “et di poi che andassemo a magnar a l’ostaria
. . .” 33 38.23, 574v: Magrino: “un solaretto di sopra quale era poca
de cosa”; 38.23, 572r: Fabritio: “dormivo io sopra una solarello.” 34 38.23,
560r: Antonio Scapuccio: “. . . un matarazo quale lo buttassemo in
terra.” 35 38.23, 574v: Magrino: “. . . spogliati si misero sotto li
panni.” 36 38.23, 574v–575r: Magrino: “un paviglione che saria de piu colori
quale era il mio . . . radunato da una banda.” 37 38.23, 569r.
Ludovico claims to have closed the curtain: “mettevo il paviglione atorno.” 38
38.23, 564v: Mario: “et avanti che la lume fosse svitata stavamo a burlare et
ciancinare . . . che di gratia volessemo svitar la lume.” 39
38.23, 561v: Antonio Scapuccio: “. . . facendo un zeno con il deto
grosso et con il deto indice facendo uno O designando che lui haveva chiavato
nel culo dicta donna”; 38.23, 564v: Mario: “Dicendo forte con noi altri Nel
proprio facendo con il detto grosso et con il indice il tondo.” 40 38.23, 561v:
Antonio Scapuccio: “lui non diceva chiaramente per rispecto de dicta donna che
non volea svergognarla”; Loudly: Mario: “Dicendo forte.” 41 Ibid.: Antonio
Scapuccio: “. . . la chiavata in culo foco foco.” 42 38.23, 574v:
Magrino: “forno primi messer Ludovico et la donna.” 43 38.23, 574r: Magrino,
for sleeping clothed: “et io ancora dormi . . . vestito”; for much
later: 38.23, 560r: Scapuccio: “Giovanni Maria . . . dipoi a un gran
pezo . . . se ando a corigare nel medemmo lecto.” 44 38.23, 575r:
Magrino: “io ho inteso quando lui la chiavava et lei teneva le natiche verso
Ludovico et lei voltata con il viso verso di me et io una volta il sentia et io
non lho visto metter dentro perche io non ce ho tenuto le mane. So bene che la
chiavava et lui sbatteva detta [no noun] verso di me che mi fe svigliato.” 45
Hunt, The Vacant See, 183–84. 46 38.23, 575v: notary and Magrino: “. . .
langere et lamentare eo quia . . . ipsam retro negotiabat et
futuebat. Respondit io sentivo che le quando fu chiava[ta] la prima volta da
messer Ludovico si lamentava. Ma si posseva lamentare de piu cose
. . . Si posseva lamentare come fanno le donne . . .
Se posono lamentare che li sappia bono et si posono lamentare che se li faccia
male ancora. Ma io una volta come o detto o sentito che l’habia chiavata.” 47
38.23, 577v: Betta, August 23, 1557: “lui mai ha fato in tal loco e e ben vero
che messer Ludovico mi disse che mi voltassi che me lo voleva far a potta retro
et io li disse tu me voi gabare tu me voi mettere al contrario et lui disse de
no che il voleva fare a potta retro et cossi io mi voltai et mi fece a potta
retro. Io so dove intro. Si lui se e gabbato non me sonno gabbata io.” 48
38.25, 567r: Betta, August 21, 1557: “. . . mi parrebbe che dio non
mi tenesse sopra la terra et se ho fatto male per una via, non voglio far male
per laltra, et si io ne esco voglio andare a Santa Maria de Loreto et poi a
casa mia a far bene . . . et se si gabba lui non mi gabbo io, perche
me ne guardaro come dal fuoco.”49 38.23, 565r: Mario. 50 38.23, 576r–v: “Lei
non intese mai parole . . . Noi davamo la baia a Ludovico .
. . quando lui il diceva a tavola lei non se ce era messa ancora.” 51
103, 911r: Ludovico: “me pare che sia cancelliero de conservatori.” 52 103,
906v: Meo: “. . . voleamo andare a cena al’hostaria de domenedio
insieme . . . et cosi righai certo piscio et . . . andammo
alhosteria . . . et mentre voleamo cenare arrivo li Cesare
. . . lui se messe a tavola et cenammo tutti quatro insieme.” 53 103,
907r: Meo: “portai certe sarde . . . et Grillo porto certe telline.”
54 103, 907v: Meo: “un’hebreo . . . venne . . . mentre che
magnammo.” 55 103, 907r–v: Meo: “voliamo andar a casa della mia puttana et noi
dicemmo andamo et Cesare ancora disse io ve voglio fare compagnia.” 56 103,
911v. 57 The present Via del Monte della Farina was then Via del Crocefisso,
named for church, San Biagio del Crocefisso (or del Annulo), demolished circa
1617 to expand San Carlo: Lombardi, Roma, 222; Delli, Le Strade, 339; Gnoli,
Topografia, 91; Adinolfi, Roma, 171. Olimpia probably lived towards San Biagio.
58 103, 913r: Olimpia: “da uno amico mio quella sera . . . tornai a
casa et trovai Ludovico Santa Croce li alla mia porta”; 913v for the name
Lorenzo. 59 103, 918r: Ludovico: “sono parecchi anni.” 60 103, 917r: Lucretia
the madam: “parlando spagnolo et contrafacendo il parlare loro solito . . .
apri qua la sporta che batterno sette o otto volte ch’io non li volsi mai
aprire.” 61 Ibid.: “. . . non li volevo aprire . . .
dovessero mutare parlare perche non potessi di non cognoscerli, . . .
ma per non ci esser’ la mia pigionante in casa et sapendo che non voleano
niente da me io non li volsi aprire anzi . . . haverci buttato del
acqua in testa se non si fussero levati dalla porta.” 62 Ibid.: “correre verso
li Chiavari.” 63 103, 889r: Lucretia the wife: “retornandome . . .
senza lume et con una cannuccia in mano per non esser vista ne conosciuta.” One
Cynthio Perusco lodged by the Minerva: Bullettino della Commissione
archeologica comunale di Roma 29, 15. One puzzle: on October 7, 1567, a Cinzio
Perusci by San Marcello, not the Minerva, buried a wife named not Lucretia but
Ortensia. de Dominicis, Notizie biografiche, 275; And, at court, (103, 899r)
Lucretia appears as “Lucretia q. Petri”—no father’s family name, no husband’s
name. Is Lucretia a femina, a semi-wife? 64 Ibid., r–v: Lucretia: “Doi armati . . .
me si ferno incontro et subbito me fermorno et un di loro me misse la mano al
collo tastandomi il collo pensando forsi ch’io havessi qualche collana o
vezza.” 65 Ibid., v: “. . . io son poveretta che volete da me
strillando ai ladri ai ladri . . . me lasciorno”; the servant
confirms this and notes that other men were also holding Lucretia: 103, 902r.
66 103, 902r: 25: “. . . perche questo a noi.” 67 Ibid.: “se misse la
cappa inanti il viso et pero non posso saper’ ne poddi veder’ se l’era quel
Meo.” 68 Ibid.: “. . . pugnali nudi presso alla gola.” Why daggers?
The gentlemen, with their swords, held Lucretia. 69 Ibid.: Lucretia:
“. . . un cerchio intorno et chi mi pigliava da un canto et chi dal
altro mettendomi li pugnali alla gola.” Giovanni Maria: Ibid., 902r: “ci
fermamo per paura.” 70 Ibid.: Giovanni Maria: “. . . dar de i pugni
et d’urtoni et mi buttorno in terra.” 71 103, 900r: Lucretia: “. . .
con un yesu di sopra et di sotto c’e l’ongia della gran bestia . . .
ancho la cintura et un fazzoletto: che l’anello ci e 18 giulii d’oro.” This
“yesu” may have been a monogram. Giovanni Maria confirms almost all these
goods. 72 103, 902r–v: Giovanni Maria: “una scarsella che io portava
cinta. . . . a tenere lavandosi la mano . . . messo in la
scarsella.” 73 103, 902v: Lucretia: “. . . vi prometto da gentilhuomo
de non ti far dispiacer . . . che non era per loro . . .
che era moglie di Messer Cynthio Perusco.” Cesare had yet to hurt the servant.In
bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 13974 Ibid,: Giovanni Maria: “messer che volemo
fare . . . menavola via menavola via.” See also Lucretia: 103, 899v:
“menala su menala su strascinala.” Why do we say Meo and not the Jew? Note
Meo’s ongoing relationship with Ludovico, their habit of joint action, plus
that prompt “Messer.” 75 103, 899v: Lucretia: “. . . con molta
instanza di menarmi in una casa che . . . per
forza . . . me strascinavano . . . a i ladri a i ladri
a questo modo si assassina alla strada, . . . che venessero in casa
mia . . .” Why this invitation? Probably demonstrate her station, not
to proffer loot. 76 103, 199v: Lucretia: “per andare al arco delli catinari.”
The present Via dei Falegnami then was Via dei Catinari: Gnoli, Toponomia, 69.
This Arco was demolished for San Carlo ai Catinari: Gnoli, Toponomia, 11. 77
103, 903r: Giovanni Maria: “. . . gl’era cascate le pianella
. . . diceano che caminasse . . . la faceano camminar
. . . tre o quattro attorno.” See also Lucretia: 103, 899v: “cascai
in terra in un fangho et lasciai li pianelle.” 78 For Agostino Pallone’s house,
see Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds, 136. For the two men: 103, 903r: Giovanni
Maria: “arrivò quel che portava la torcia accesa et . . . mr Agostino
Palone . . . per il medesimo vicolo.” In 1577, Agostino would be buried
in Santa Maria in Publicolis, the Santa Croce family church: de Dominicis,
Notizie biografiche, 267. 79 103, 899v–900r: Lucretia: “. . .
cognobbi detto messer . . . per l’amor de dio che me aiutasse
. . . pensandosi che il lume non venesse da quella banda et de non
esser visto detto mr Augistino cognobbe . . . Cesari romano, al quale
disse Mr. Augustino ah Cesari che fai, che cosa e questa[!] . . .” 80
103, 903r: Giovannia Maria: “casco con una gamba in una ferrata et
. . . se attacò alla cappa di Messer Augistino . . . Mr Augustino
di grazia. non me abbandonate per l’amor de Dio.” 81 103, 903r–v: Giovanni
Maria: “. . . se conosceva Cyntho Perusco, et lei disse si che lo
cognosce et ho doi figli con lui et e mio marito et . . . se la
conosceva messer Francesco Calvi et lei disse de si . . . se li
andava in casa con lei che li mostraria la figlia.” 82 103, 903v: Giovanni
Maria: “. . . Cesari figlio tu hai fatto male . . . che
andasse via che farria accompagnare Madonna Lucretia da un suo servitore.” 83
Ibid.; Lucretia: “m’accompagno con la torcia.” 84 103, 917r–v: Lucretia the
madam: “. . . guardai et viddi una donna con un’homo che cridava: che
diceva che volete da me fratelli che volete da me fratelli et diceva tiratimi
la corda tiratimi la corda . . . dubitando io che non fusse qualche
vicina, io bussai alla fenestra della Diana . . . senti quella tua
sorella che crida . . .” “Tiratimi la corda” here refers to
Lucretia’s door-rope: “open up for me!” with a dative. 85 103, 913r: Olimpia:
“. . . trovai Ludovico Santa Croce li alla mia porta assieme con Meo
pescivendolo et con doi altri . . . ci era un’hebreo.” 86 Ibid.:
Olimpia: “. . . Ludovico fu il primo”; 103, 918: Ludovico Santa
Croce: “il primo io d’intrare in casa.” 87 103, 917r: Lucretia the madam: “. . .
Olimpia insieme con un’ suo amico che si chiama Lorenzo stufarolo, quale sonava
di liuto. Et me bisogno tirar’ la corda et alhora intro . . .
Ludovico Santa [Croce] Meo Cesar Vallati et un hebreo.” 88 103, 917v: Lucretia
the madam: “. . . o bella cosa, le povere donne non ponno andare per
la strada et loro dissero che non erano stato.” 89 103, 913v: Olimpia, “Meo et
l’altri ci accompagnorno sino alla stufa et poi se ne andorno con dio”; 914v:
Meo: “insieme alla stufa et poi io me ne tornai a casa mia e Cesare e l’hebreo
andorno a fare i fatti suoi.” 90 103, 922r: Barbara claims Meo has been her
amico for three years; 103, 904r: Barbara: “e un mese ch’io l’ho lassato perche
non mi piace piu l’amicitia sua et perche ha dieci scudi delli mei in mano.”
Monte Savelli is today’s Teatro di Marcello, now stripped bare by archeology.
91 103, 922r: Barbara: “me ne andai a letto senza cena perche io me sentivo
male et mentre ch’io stavo a letto con Annibale pescivendolo sentei passare per
la strada Cesare 92 93 94 95Vallata con altre genti . . . et disse
servitor’ Signora Barbera cor mio ch’io non li resposi altrimente” 103, 914r:
Giovanni Maria: “madonna Lucretia domando a . . . pescivendolo
predetto per che causa fussi preso questo messer Ludovico et . . .
rispose che fu preso perche haveva preso una donna nella strada.” 103, 905v:
Meo, on Tuesday: “io fui preso hiermatina in Ponte ch’io non so perche causa
assieme con Messer Ludovico Santa Croce.” 103, 901r: Lucretia the wife: “et che
stavano molto di mala voglia et tutti afflitti.” 103, 900v: Lucretia: “lui mi
mando a dir per il detto Cynthio che non era offitio da gentilhomo di accusar
nesuno e che mi bastava che io non havessi ricevuto mal nesuno.”Bibliography
Archival sources Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale
Processi (16° secolo), busta 38, case 19 Processi (16° secolo), busta 38, case
23 Processi (16° secolo), busta 38, case 25 Processi (16° secolo), busta 103Publisd
sources Adinolfi, Pasquale. Roma nell’età di mezzo, rione Campo Marzo, rione S.
Eustachio. Florence: Le Lettere – LICOSA, 1983. Ago, Renata. Economia barocca:
mercato e istituzioni nella Roma barocca. Rome: Donzelli, 1998. Bullettino
della Commissione archeologica comunale di Roma 29 Cohen, Thomas V. and Elizabeth
S. Cohen. Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1993. Connors, Joseph. “Alliance and Enmity in Baroque Urbanism.”
Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 25 (1989): 207–94. de Dominicis,
Claudio. Notizie biografiche a Roma nel 1531–1582, desunte dagli atti
parrocchiali. Rome: Academia Moroniana, n.d. Delli, Sergio. Le Strade di Roma.
Rome: Newton Compton, 1975. Gnoli, Umberto. Topografia e toponomastica di Roma
medioevale e moderna. Rome: Edizioni dell’Arquata, 1984. Hunt, John M. The
Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum.
Leiden: Brill, 2016.8 AESTHETICS, DRESS, AND MILITANT MASCULINITY IN
CASTIGLIONE’S COURTIER Gerry MilliganIn two unrelated sixteenth-century texts,
a Renaissance prince was described as vulnerable to assassination because of a
f lawed fashion judgment. In his Historia patria (published 1503), the courtier
Bernardino Corio recounted that just before Galeazzo Sforza left his castle on
December 26, 1476, he put on and then took off his corazina because he felt
that the chest armor made him look “too fat.”1 The lack of armored protection
was crucial as Galeazzo was famously stabbed to death during mass later that
day. In his analysis of the event, Timothy McCall provocatively suggests that
Galeazzo’s fatally bad judgment was determined by fashion; Galeazzo, according
to McCall, was inf luenced by the growing pressure to conform to cultural
expectations of a slim masculine figure.2 Sixty years later, a Florentine prince
was murdered by stabbing, and similar to the description of Galeazzo Sforza, a
chronicler of the episode points to clothing’s role in the affair. Benedetto
Varchi’s Storia fiorentina (incomplete at his death in 1565) recounts that just
before Duke Alessandro de’ Medici left his bedchamber on the night of his
murder in 1537, he contemplated whether he should wear his gloves “da guerra”
(for war) or his perfumed gloves “da fare all’amore” (for making love).3
According to the story, Alessandro chose the love-gloves as they better matched
his sablelined cape and were suited to his planned sexual escapade. He
apparently chose unwisely. Elizabeth Currie argues that Varchi added this
presumably invented anecdote about gloves in order to communicate—through sartorial
metaphors—the gap between Duke Alessandro’s expected dutiful behavior and his
actual irresponsible conduct.4 To Currie’s analysis, I add that the glove
anecdote also participates in what had become a literary pattern of associating
men’s clothing with physical weakness. If, in the first episode, the author
indicates how a soft doublet made Galeazzo defenseless to the knife blade, in
the second, the writer implies that the outcome of Alessandro’s evening might
have been different had the princechosen his gloves “da guerra.” The two
historiographical accounts of Galeazzo’s and Alessandro’s murders underscore
not only the high stakes of men’s clothing choices but the relationship between
literary representations of dress and elements of masculinity. Varchi, like so
many writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, chose to articulate men’s
dress as integral components in representations of violence, war preparedness,
moral virtue, and sexuality. Clothing was thus fundamental to Renaissance
discourses of masculinity. While masculine subjectivity as performed through
dress has been the focus of several excellent studies by fashion and art
historians, what has gone somewhat unexplored is how clothing functioned in
such discourses of masculinity.5 Was, for example, clothing presented as a
symptom of men’s loss of masculine virtue or did writers claim that clothing
had a more active role in the imperilment of men? Did so-called effeminate
clothing cause men to weaken, or was it merely a byproduct of a so-called anima
effeminato? This essay will address these questions by looking at the
interconnection of male dress, effeminacy, and militarism in Baldassare
Castiglione’s Libro del cortegiano (Book of the Courtier). I have chosen to concentrate
on Castiglione’s Courtier because of its prominent place in the history of
dress and fashion as well as its role in the history of masculinity.6 The
Courtier presents male dress as a high-stakes enterprise; a misstep in clothing
not only had grave consequences for a man’s reputation, it was also a question
of life or death. Like the gloves of Alessandro de’ Medici and the cuirass of
Galeazzo Sforza, a man’s clothing choice could lead to glory or personal
injury, and it could also result in (at least in Castiglione’s assessment)
large-scale military defeat.Arms in the Courtier Very early in the book,
Ludovico da Canossa declares arms to be the primary profession of the courtier
[1.17].7 Yet, the privileged status of arms is not a settled question, and it
is destabilized during a debate of arms vs. letters.8 The debate is framed by
the same Ludovico, who asserts that the French only respect arms and abhor
letters. Ludovico extols the value of letters by describing several successful
military generals who trotted off to battle with copies of the Iliad or other
literature at their side. His examples of successful and literary generals are
offered as proof that the French were erroneous in their belief that literature
damaged a man’s ability to fight: “Ma questo dire a voi è superf luo, ché ben
so io che tutti conoscete quanto s’ingannano i Francesi pensando che le lettre
nuocciano all’arme” (1.43, p. 92) (But there is no need to tell you this, for I
am sure you all know how mistaken the French are in thinking that letters are
detrimental to arms) (1.43, p. 51).9 Ludovico’s accusation of the misguided
French could as well have been leveled against Italian contemporaries of
Castiglione, since none other than Niccolò Machiavelli himself was proclaiming
that letters were injurious to arms in both his Art of War as well as his
Florentine Histories.10Contrary to the view of the French (and Machiavelli),
Ludovico proposes that letters are beneficial to arms; letters bring glory, and
glory inspires courage in warfare: “Sapete che delle cose grandi ed arrischiate
nella guerra il vero stimulo è la gloria. . . . E che la vera gloria
sia quella che si commenda al sacro tesauro delle lettre” (1.43, p.92) (The
true stimulus to great and daring deeds in war is glory. . . . And it
is true glory that is entrusted to the sacred treasury of letters) (1.43, p.
51).11 When Ludovico notes that literature, like the Iliad, could have a
positive effect on soldiers, he shifts the debate that began with the hierarchy
of arms and letters to the correlative and causative relationship between arms
and letters.12 For Ludovico, arms and letters are “concatenate” (conjoined)
(1.46). Ludovico’s assessment of the positive effects of letters on arms is
troubled by the fact that France, at least since 1494, had proven itself to be
militarily superior to Italy. He hedges his argument in a prebuttal,
acknowledging that others might cite recent French military success as evidence
against his claim: “Non vorrei già che qualche avversario mi adducesse gli
effetti contrari per rifiutar la mia opinione, allegandomi gli Italiani col lor
saper lettere aver mostrato poco valor nell’arme” (1.43, p. 93) (I should not
want some objector to cite me instances to the contrary in order to refute my
opinion, alleging that for all their knowledge of letters the Italians have
shown little worth in arms) (1.43, p. 51). To this objection, Ludovico states
that the defeat of literate Italians by illiterate French is the fault of only
a few men: “la colpa d’alcuni pochi aver dato, oltre al grave danno, perpetuo
biasimo a tutti gli altri” (1.43, p. 93) (the fault of a few men has brought
not only serious harm but eternal blame upon all the rest) (1.43, p. 52). The
debate of arms and letters in the Courtier raises two key points for my
analysis on dress and militarism. The first is that there is an anxiety among
the speakers that the actions of a “few men” can bring shame on all men.13 The
book’s project of social control depends in great part on this anxiety. Indeed,
the belief that massive military defeat was caused by a few deviant men gives
urgency to the entire masculine normativizing process (i.e., the ideal
courtier). The second point, related to the first, is that men’s ability to win
wars could be affected (positively or negatively) by what are presumably
unrelated aspects of a courtier’s masculine identity. Throughout the Courtier,
not only letters but music, dance, and of course dress are all placed in a
context of their relationship to warfare.14 When, for example, one speaker
condemns music as effeminate, another will anxiously argue that music stirs
soldiers to combat, and thus it is rightfully masculine (I.47). The book
delineates the court and the battlefield as discrete yet interrelated spaces.
The courtier-soldier is expected to shuttle between the two while performing
hegemonic masculinity in both.15 The challenge is that certain practices of
masculinity were viewed as causing a negative effect in one or the other space.
The battlefield, in particular, is shown as vulnerable to the presence of
courtly practices. Analogously, the court’s refined spaces were shown as
incompatible with certain military behaviors.16 Nonetheless, the court often
measured itself against a functionality in war (e.g., music was useful in war)
just as men in court adopted martial aesthetics (e.g., court dress was an
adaptation of the military tunic).17 There thus arises a tension within the
Courtier between the masculinity of courtly practices and the masculinity of
warfare, and this tension is routinely expressed as a fear that practices at
court are deleterious to combat. The speakers never clearly articulate how
dress, letters, and music might endanger war tactics and strategies, but they
do repeatedly imply that refined behavior threatens masculinity. The reader is
then left to leap the epistemological gap that assumes such a claim to be true.
The cumulative effect of this rhetorical technique is that a fear of effeminacy
underlies the entire project to produce an ideal courtier, and this fear is
often articulated in terms of dress and aesthetics.18Aesthetics and masculinity
before Castiglione The association of men’s dress and aesthetics with
effeminacy has a literary tradition that stretches at least back to Classical
antiquity. Craig Williams’ groundbreaking text, Roman Homosexuality, provides
scores of ancient examples of writers reproaching men’s aesthetics. In Roman
texts, clothing, perfumes, and grooming habits were frequent subjects of scorn.
According to Williams, men’s aesthetics were invoked as part of accusations of
effeminacy in what was consistently a reproach of men’s loss of dominion and
self-mastery.19 More recently, Kelly Olson’s Masculinity and Dress in Roman
Antiquity has provided a systematic look at dress in ancient Rome, and she
usefully pinpoints specific elements of dress, perfumes, and grooming to show
how the Roman man “walked a fine line” between expected grooming and dressing
practice and what was considered effeminate.20 As we move into the Middle Ages
and Renaissance, writers adopted these Classical condemnations of men’s dress
and added their own brand of Christian morality. Renaissance legal codes and
prescriptive literature justified the regulation of male dress under the
auspices of protecting state expenditures, preventing deviant sexuality, or
ensuring the salvation of the soul.21 For example, Francesco Pontano (f l.
1424–41), a professor in republican Siena, attacked male hair styling,
cosmetics, and ornate garments as a civic and Christian moral problem.22 In his
treatise Dello integro e perfetto stato delle donzelle (On the whole and
perfect state of girls), a work written primarily about women’s vanities, the
author states that “vain and superf luous ornament” should be disdained by all
males “who want to be called real men.”23 Certain men, he states, do not care
if they are esteemed as masculine, and thus they spend extraordinary amounts of
time on hair and skin care.24 He complains that men multiply the effect of
their grooming habits by fussing over dress as well: “Ma i maschi moltiplicano
questo errore or co’ lisciamenti or con continui increspamenti di falde, e
arrondolamenti de’ cappucci a diadema, e infiniti altri loro frenetichi e
babionerie” (But men multiply this error, sometimes using cosmetics and at
other times with their continual ruff ling of crinoline and swirls of hoods in
the shape of a tiara, as well as their infinite other frenzies and
buffooneries) (Pontano 22). For Pontano, so-called luxurious dress muddied the
gender binary as well as presented a peril to Christian morality since, as he
states, vanities and ornament debased men, who were “made to be equal to the
angels” to a status “below pigs.”25 Dress imperiled the body and the very soul
of men. Effeminate dress, he states, showed disrespect for God. The crowd of
ornate men “non crede che Dio sia, e che non sia alcuno altro iudice che quegli
del podestà ovver del capitano” (does not believe that God exists, and that
there is no other judge than the podestà or commander) (Pontano 22). Pontano
made so-called effeminate dress a moral and theological issue. Similarly, other
writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries voiced concern about the
morality of dress with respect to sexuality and class status. The chronicler
Giovanni Villani (c. 1280–1348) worried that men’s fashion could create
dangerous alliances with foreign powers and blur class differences, and San
Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444) complained that young men’s short tunics and
tight hose were too erotic.26 Ironically, those same tight hose were
reevaluated in the sixteenth century as evidentiary proof that the male youths
of the past were uncorrupted.27 There has as yet been no systematic study of
the condemnations of men’s dress in early modern Italy, but such a study would
aid our understanding of possible thematic shifts. Not only did the targets of
these condemnations vary (e.g., short tunics, tight hosiery), so too did the
rhetoric used to vilify certain dress undergo changes. There seems to be one
significant moment in the history of dress and masculinity at the beginning of
the sixteenth century, when condemnations of so-called effeminate male dress
shifted from threats of Christian imperilment to failed militancy.28 The
anxiety over dress and militarism had real-world implications such as the
standardized military uniform, just as it may have also inspired some
unexpected rhetoric, such as the praise of an unkempt look.29 Most importantly,
it made the abstract notions of dependency and autonomy visible; men’s clothing
carried the meanings of military victory or loss. Castiglione’s Courtier has a
distinct place within the normativization process of the militaristic masculine
body as it is an early—possibly the earliest— example of sixteenth-century
rhetoric of effeminacy, dress, and military defeat. Castiglione began writing
his text during the chaotic years between the invasion of France in 1494 and
the Sack of Rome in 1527. In this period of instability, he chose to point to
certain courtly behaviors, including dress, in relation to the military losses
that were still potentially viewed as reversible. The Courtier blames the
subjugation of the Italian people on certain refined masculine behaviors that
were otherwise unrelated to militarism, but so, too, it suggests that the
salvation of Italy lay in the hands of this same class of men, men who often
marked their class by the very dress that undermined their masculinity. There
are two moments in which Castiglione suggests that men’s clothing played a role
in military loss. I will analyze these passages along with other textual
examples of men’s aesthetics and dress to demonstrate that Castiglione is in
effect not only making pronouncements about dress but, more importantly, is
establishing a practice whereby men can redeem their masculinity through
speaking about the effeminizing power of aesthetics. The spoken condemnation of
courtly dress purportedly critiques gender and class structures, but like the
dress itself, this very speech is what marks the speaker as belonging to the
properly masculine elite.30Male aesthetics and dress in the Courtier Book One:
sprezzatura and gender nonconformity In Book One, the primary speaker, Count
Ludovico da Canossa, says that the ideal courtier should have a manly yet
graceful face. What is to be avoided, he exclaims with disgust, are certain
male grooming habits: [your face] has something manly about it, and yet is full
of grace. . . . I would have our Courtier’s face be such, not so soft
and feminine as many attempt to have who not only curl their hair and pluck
their eyebrows, but preen themselves in all those ways that the most wanton and
dissolute women in the world adopt; and in walking, in posture, and in every
act, appear so tender and languid that their limbs seems to be on the verge of
falling apart; and utter their words so limply that it seems they are about to
expire on the spot; and the more they find themselves in the company of men of
rank, the more they make a show of such manners. These, since nature did not
make them women as they clearly wish to appear and be, should be treated not as
good women, but as public harlots, and driven not only from the courts of great
lords but from the society of all noble men. (1.19, p. 27) Certo quella grazia
del volto, senza mentire, dir si po esser in voi . . . tien del
virile, e pur è grazioso . . . . di tal sorte voglio io che sia lo
aspetto del nostro cortegiano, non così molle e femminile come si sforzano
d’aver molti, che non solamente si crepano i capegli e spelano le ciglia, ma si
strisciano con tutti que’ modi che si facciano le più lascive e disoneste
femine del mondo; e pare che nello andare, nello stare ed in ogni altro lor
atto siano tanto teneri e languidi, che le membra siano per staccarsi loro
l’uno dall’altro; e pronunziano quelle parole così aff litte, che in quel punto
par che lo spirito loro finisca; e quanto più si trovano con omini di grado,
tanto più usano tai termini. Questi, poiché la natura, come essi mostrano
desiderare di parere ed essere, non gli ha fatti femine, dovrebbono non come
bone femine esser estimati, ma, come publiche meretrici, non solamente delle
corti de’ gran signori, ma del consorzio degli omini nobili esser cacciati.
(1.19, pp. 49–50) For Ludovico, the so-called effeminate courtiers are not by
nature “molle” (soft) or “ femminile” (feminine), but they work very hard (si
sforzano) to make themselvesappear to be so. Moreover, he links aesthetics to
acts of despised behavior, particularly obsequious dependency. This condemned
behavior occurs when, as Ludovico explains, men affect their appearance and
speech around other men of rank. We can situate these despised men within the
context of Ludovico’s own theory of sprezzatura. Coining a new term, Ludovico
describes sprezzatura as the art of “ciò che si fa e dice venir fatto senza
fatica e quasi senza pensarvi” (1.26, p. 60) (making whatever is done or said
appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it) (1.26, p.
32).31 In the case of the men who plucked their eyebrows, curled their hair,
and augmented certain behaviors around men of rank, they have failed at this
art. Rather than concealing a performance, as sprezzatura demands, these men
drew attention to the act of ingratiating themselves to men of authority. Their
failed performance of sprezzatura thus resulted in the loss of reputation and
power, a point also made by Ludovico in his definition of the new term:
Accordingly, we may affirm that to be true art which does not appear to be art;
nor to anything must we give greater care than to conceal art, for if it is
discovered, it quite destroys our credit and brings us into small esteem.
(I.26, p. 32) Però si po dir quella esser vera arte che non pare esser arte; né
più in altro si ha da poner studio, che nel nasconderla: perché se è scoperta,
leva in tutto il credito e fa l’omo poco estimato. (1.26, p. 60) Successful
sprezzatura, on the other hand, offered the courtier an ability to perform a
“compelling” version of himself that masked a very different, perhaps less
putatively masculine identity.32 This “manly masquerade,” however, risked
pointing to both a fantastic masculine ideal as well as to the absence of that
ideal.33 Dress and aesthetics, or more precisely, the discussions of dress and
aesthetics in the Courtier, form a paradox in the logic of sprezzatura. When
the speakers complain of the “effeminate” dress or grooming habits of men, they
imply that some idealized masculine version of these men existed before the
offending grooming or dressing occurred.34 However, this anchoring of
essentialist manhood is dismissed in the Courtier. Instead, the speakers
reaffirm that since very few men are born with the qualities of the ideal
courtier, the ideal (read masculine) courtier manipulates his body, behaviors,
and dress. If the ideal courtier is therefore a man who must alter his person
in order to be masculine, then the ideal masculine pre-altered courtier—much
like the idealized Urbino court itself—is a pastoral fantasy.35 The men who
alter their hair and posture when among men of rank, in effect, draw attention
to this absence of essential masculinity in all but the rarest courtiers. These
men fail at a sprezzatura of masculinity not because they ornament themselves,
but because they have exposed the necessity of ornamenting themselves. It is so
great an infraction that Ludovico angrily condemns these men to be punished not
as women but as “public harlots.” Of course, the reference to prostitution is
significant for it foreshadows an episode (discussed below) in Book Four where
Ottaviano explains that all courtiers must use their bodies, speech, and
behavior to gain princely favors. The irony is that the principal difference
between the despicable groomed courtier with plucked eyebrows and the masculine
courtier with less apparently plucked eyebrows is solely aesthetic; both sell
themselves for favors. The offending behavior of the groomed courtier is
therefore that he has failed to conceal this economy.Book Two: foreign dress
and foreign occupation Given the gravity of the punishment that Ludovico doles
out to certain courtiers, it is apparent that a mistake in styling and grooming
could pose a serious threat to masculinity. Thus, choosing proper male dress
also caused anxiety for the upwardly mobile courtier. In Book Two, Giuliano de’
Medici expresses his personal difficulty regarding the variety of dress
available to men, and he asks for assistance “to know how to choose the best
out of this confusion” (2.26). Federico Fregoso responds to this question by
stating that men should dress according to the “custom of the majority.”
Fregoso then states that the majority of Italians wore the styles of various
foreign cultures and that these foreign fashions signaled which cultures would
dominate Italian men.36 But I do not know by what fate it happens that Italy
does not have, as she used to have, a manner of dress recognized to be Italian:
for, although the introduction of these new fashions makes the former ones seem
very crude, still the older ones were perhaps a sign of freedom, even as the
new ones have proved to be augury of servitude . . . Just so our
having changed our Italian dress for that of foreigners strikes me as meaning
that all those for whose dress we have exchanged our own are going to conquer
us: which has proved to be all too true, for by now there is no nation that has
not made us its prey. (2.26, pp. 88–89) Ma io non so per qual fato intervenga
che la Italia non abbia, come soleva avere, abito che sia conosciuto per
italiano; che, benché lo aver posto in usanza questi novi faccia parer quelli
primi goffissimi, pur quelli forse erano segno di libertà, come questi son
stati augurio di servitù . . . cosí l’aver noi mutato gli abiti
italiani nei stranieri parmi che significasse, tutti quelli, negli abiti de’
quali i nostri erano trasformati, dever venire a subiugarci; il che è stato
troppo più che vero, ché ormai non resta nazione che di noi non abbia fatto
preda. (2.26, p. 158)Fregoso’s fashion advice poses a host of problems
regarding identity and autonomy. By suggesting that men “follow the majority,”
he undermines agency, sovereignty, and control, themes often repeated as
central to masculinity by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century authors. Manliness
is the ability to look like others, to disappear in the crowd; but it is also
ironically defined as following the crowd’s errors. For, as Fregoso states, the
majority of Italians have made a grave error and adopted foreign dress, which
leads to invasion and occupation.37 If fitting in is a masculine virtue, it
could even mean implicating oneself in Italy’s political and military losses.
Fregoso’s concern about foreign dress is a Classical trope that has
considerable fortune in the Renaissance, where French and later Imperial
invasions were not infrequently associated with foreign fashions. 38 The
epistemological link of fashion and invasion was so imbedded in the culture
that even one hundred years after Castiglione wrote his Courtier, the Spanish
priest Basilio Ponce de Leon suggested that God castigated Italy with invasion
in 1494 precisely because Italian men wore French fashions.39 Within the
Courtier itself, foreign fashion does not incur God’s wrath, but rather, it
beckons other nations to “venire a subiugarci” (come and subjugate us). Such a
logic—where large scores of men were responsible for invasion because of their
fashion choice—stands in contrast to Ludovico’s claim in Book One when he
claimed that the collapse of Italy was caused by a “few men.” Book Two thus
broadens the guilty parties of Italy’s subjugation from a “few men” to a
“majority” of (upper class) men, who, like Castiglione himself, were bedecked
in the latest Spanish and French trends.Books One and Two: fashion theory and
agency The first two books are differentiated also by the way they discuss
men’s aesthetics. In Book One, for example, there is no association between
aesthetics and military loss. Ludovico did not state that plucked eyebrows and
curled hair brought about military defeat. Rather, his complaint was limited to
gender nonconformity. On the other hand, Book Two draws a direct line between
aesthetics (foreign dress) and military failure. This shift from Book One to
Book Two might be explained by the general ideological difference that
distinguishes the two books. Virginia Cox has convincingly argued that Book One
proclaims that a courtier’s virtue ensures him success, while in the more
cynical Book Two, success at court is depicted as at the whim of the prince.40
In particular, military bravery is praised only when it can be observed by
others, particularly by the prince. To risk one’s life when no one is watching
would be a waste of one’s personal resources. Virtue, therefore, is whatever
the courtier makes seen in the eyes of others. In the context of Book Two,
where the courtiers participate in an economy that trades in appearance of
virtue rather than intrinsic virtue, clothing takes a central role in masculine
identity construction. It thus follows that Fregoso attempts to draw a direct
relationship between appearance and essence. He statesthat one must be
attentive to what type of man he wishes to be taken for, and then act and dress
accordingly, “aggiungendovi ancor che debba fra se stesso deliberar ciò che vol
parere e de quella sorte che desidera esser estimato, della medesima vestirsi”
(2.27, p. 160) (I would only add further that he ought to consider what
appearance he wishes to have and what manner of man he wishes to be taken for,
and dress accordingly) (2.27, p. 90). Such action is necessitated by the belief
that external appearance (including mannerisms) communicates a person’s
identity: “tutto questo di fuori dà notizia spesso di quel dentro” (2.28, p.
161) (all these outward things often make manifest what is within) (1.28, p.
90). The body makes legible the soul, and this externalization of virtue and
morality is problematized by the fact that the courtier is taught to manipulate
the body according to his fashion. One speaker, Gasparo Pallavicino, pushes
back on the theory that dress determines personal character. He states that one
should not “judge the character of men by their dress rather than by their
words or deeds” (2.28, p. 90). To Gasparo’s comment, Fregoso responds that
although deeds and words are more important than dress, dress is “no small
index” (non è piccolo argomento) (2.28) of the man. Fregoso’s insistence that
dress is ref lective of the essence of man is, however, hard to reconcile with
the fact that one’s projected image, as Fregoso himself states, can be false:
“avvenga che talor possa esser falso” (2.28) (although it can sometimes be
false) (2.28, p. 90 translation altered to ref lect original). Despite
Fregoso’s suggestions otherwise, behavior, dress, and bodily adornment do not
convey an unproblematic version of the self. In the elegant fishbowl of the
court, courtiers manipulate dress with the hopes that others might be duped
into believing that it represents an intrinsic identity. Fregoso’s fashion
theory, though not cohesive, does communicate to other men that a fashion faux
pas imperils the courtier’s masculinity in two ways: it points to a perceived
essential effeminacy, or it demonstrates an inability to mask this effeminacy.Book
Four: Ottaviano’s paradox The last mention of dress in the Courtier is in Book
Four, and it famously gives elegance of dress a virtuous purpose. In Book Four,
Federico Fregoso’s brother, Ottaviano, declares that dress, manners, and
pleasantries permit the courtier access to the prince so that he can provide
the ruler with wise counsel. According to Ottaviano, the courtier must fashion
himself with this mask of the “perfect courtier” so that he can lead the prince
away from the ills of vice through deception, “ingannandolo con inganno
salutifero” (beguiling him with salutary deception) (4.10, p. 213). Ottaviano’s
interjection has received much scholarly attention in part because it exposes
the fashioning of the perfect courtier as a performance of deceit.41 Berger, in
particular, has noted how this deceit can have an effect on the integrity of
the courtier: The byproduct of the courtier’s performance is that the
achievement of sprezzatura may require him to deny or disparage his nature. In
order tointernalize the model and enhance himself by art, he may have to
evacuate – repress or disown – whatever he finds within himself that doesn’t
fit the model. (20) If sprezzatura requires the courtier to deny or disparage
his own nature, then there is an implicit notion that the courtier also risks
destabilizing his identity, including his masculine identity.42 This is no more
apparent than when we consider how a courtier’s agency is compromised by the
act of sprezzatura, an act of self-fashioning that is dependent on the will of
others. Ottaviano addresses this very process head on. He states that elegance
of dress, along with singing, dancing, and general enjoyment, change a man and
make him effeminate. Relevant here, this effeminacy has consequences not only
on a courtier’s identity but also on state security: I should say that many of
those accomplishments that have been attributed to our Courtier (such as
dancing, merrymaking, singing, and playing) were frivolities and vanities and,
in a man of any rank, deserving of blame rather than of praise; these elegances
of dress, devices, mottoes, and other such things as pertain to women and love
(although many will think the contrary), often serve to merely make spirits
effeminate, to corrupt youth, and to lead to a dissolute life; whence it comes
about that the Italian name is reduced to opprobrium, and there are but few who
dare, I will not say to die, but even to risk any danger. (4.4, p. 210) anzi
direi che molte di quelle condicioni che se gli sono attribuite, come il
danzar, festeggiar, cantar e giocare, fossero leggerezze e vanità, ed in un omo
di grado più tosto degne di biasimo che di laude; perché queste attillature,
imprese, motti ed altre tai cose che appartengono ad intertenimenti di donne e
d’amori, ancora che forse a molti altri paia il contrario, spesso non fanno
altro che effeminar gli animi, corrumper la gioventù e ridurla a vita
lascivissima; onde nascono poi questi effetti che ’l nome italiano è ridutto in
obbrobrio, né si ritrovano se non pochi che osino non dirò morire, ma pur entrare
in uno pericolo. (4.4, pp. 367–68) Ottaviano’s claim marks a critical shift
from the other cited passages. It is the only time in the Courtier where
clothing (along with other courtly behaviors) is described as rendering men
effeminate. In Book One, distasteful grooming habits are practiced by those men
who “wish” that they were women, and in Book Two, foreign dress beckons
military defeat. In Book Four, clothing causes effeminacy, and the effeminized
man loses wars. The passage is not only a significant moment in the Courtier,
it is an important moment in the history ofeffeminacy. To my knowledge, it is
one of the earliest Renaissance texts that figures clothing and other behaviors
as the agents that cause effeminacy leading eventually to military defeat.43
Ottaviano’s brief interjection on clothing would have provided the attentive
listener with (again) some troubling fashion advice. The passage forms what I
call Ottaviano’s paradox: on the one hand, Ottaviano affirms that elegant dress
may be necessary to ingratiate the prince and engender virtue, while on the
other, he warns that dress has deleterious effects, effeminizing the courtier’s
soul and bringing shame to him and Italy. If the courtier performs his
requisite duties (which include ingratiating the prince with dress, dancing,
music, etc.), he cannot escape losing his own masculinity. It is unclear how
the reader is to navigate this paradox. Castiglione may have been genuinely
concerned with the possible effeminizing effects of dress, or there may have
been some irony in placing these words in the mouth of Ottaviano.44 Ottaviano
had, in fact, been derided for his unusual dress in the earlier version of the
book known as the seconda redazione (written 1520–21).45 Moreover, Castiglione
was himself quite the fashionista. His letters tell us that he was deeply
concerned with his own dress, both at court and during military operations.
Many of his letters to his mother refer to his need for appropriate clothing,
and on some occasions, he refers to this clothing as necessary for exercises
carried out in a context of war.46 The fact that Castiglione has left us
extensive writing on dress from the period raises hermeneutical questions about
Ottaviano’s statement that courtly dress and activities “make spirits
effeminate and corrupt youth” and eventually lead to the shame of Italy. Surely
the author was not suggesting that winning wars merely a matter of changing
clothing. I propose that Castiglione was less interested in changing the garments
and grooming habits of Italians than he was in investigating how the rhetoric
about aesthetics functioned in defining identity and motivating social groups.
His book explores how courtly practices, including dress, determined the
boundaries of an elite ruling class, but so too does it explain how the
language used to discuss these practices could shift the values added to such
practices. Thus, Ottaviano’s paradox—where the courtier is virtuous if he
ingratiates the prince but loses his virtue of masculinity by doing so—is in
effect a masterful demonstration of sprezzatura. When Ottaviano utters his
words, he not only explains how courtliness denigrates a man for a virtuous
cause, he also reveals how a courtier can assume an intentional and masculine
participation in this virtuous cause. He derides the very courtly practices
that he himself performs and then engenders them with virtue.47 By showing that
a courtier sacrifices his masculinity on the altar of state security, Ottaviano
offers a reclamation of masculinity for any courtier. The trick is, however,
that the courtier must be willing to decry the very practices that make him a
courtier in order to claim this masculinity. Ottaviano states, in effect, “I
criticize the grooming of men as effeminizing, but I will also perform these
acts for the larger good of pleasing the prince.”By way of a conclusion, we
will turn to this same moment in the second manuscript edition, or seconda
redazione.48 Here Ottaviano’s passage appears in Book Three (the final book of
the manuscript). It is spoken by Gasparo and, most importantly, the condemned
effeminate activities are not routine courtly behavior, but belong to young
courtiers in love: Do you not believe that the young would be doing a much more
praiseworthy thing if they were to concentrate on arms to defend the patria,
their own honor, and the dignity of Italy, rather than to go around with their
hair all coiffed, perfumed, and strolling through the neighborhoods with their
eyes glued to the windows above without considering anything in the world
except their own priorities? And what purpose do these devices and mottoes and
elegances of dress serve other than vanity and frivolity? And what is the point
of dancing at balls and masquerades as well as games and music (and other such
things that you praise so much)? What do these things offer other than to give
birth to the effeminizing of men’s spirits as well as corrupting and reducing
youth to a delicious and lascivious life? Whence, as Signor Ottaviano so well
says, it comes about that the effect of all this is that the Italian name is
reduced to opprobrium, and one cannot find a man who dares, I will not say die,
but even to risk any danger. And all of this is the cause of women.
(Translation mine) Non credete voi che li giovani facessero opera più
laudevole, se attendessero all’arme per difender le patrie e l’onor loro e la
dignità de Italia, che andar con le zazare ben pettinate, profumati,
passeggiando tutto dì per le contrade, con gli occhi alle finestre senza
pensare cosa alcuna di quelle che più gl’importano? e queste imprese e motti et
attillature insomma a che servano altro che a vanità e leggiereze? e danzare e
ballare e mascare e giuochi e musiche e tai cose, fatte con tanta diligenzia e
che voi tanto laudate, infine che partoriscono altro che effeminare gli animi,
corrompere la gioventù e ridurla a vita deliziosa e lascivissma? Onde, come ben
talor dice el signor Ottaviano, ne nascono poi questi effetti che il nome
italiano è ridutto in obrobrio, né si truova uomo che osi non dirò morire, ma
purentrare in un pericolo. E di tutto questo sono causa le donne. The
manuscript passage, like that of the final 1528 version of the Courtier quoted
earlier, tells us that men’s dancing, games, music, and elegance of dress are
dangerous to Italian sovereignty. However, there are important differences
between these two textual examples. In the seconda redazione, dressing and
music, etc. are presented as the vices specific to young lovers. This
characterization of lovers fits clearly within Gasparo’s stated distaste for
any action that involves the courtship of women. Additionally, Gasparo explains
the relationship between warfare andeffeminate behaviors in simple terms of
time allocation; men should choose to spend time fighting to “defend their
homelands,” but instead they focus on love. Thus, when he states that dancing,
masquerades, and games effeminize men’s spirits, it follows that this causal effect
is at least in part due to the fact that men are busied with these activities
and not fighting. When the author adapted the passage for the final version, he
changed not the effeminizing practices but the cast of the shameful men, and he
removed the phrase that explains that these practices simply took up too much
of the courtiers’ time. In Courtier Book Four, the list of mottoes, devices,
dancing, and dress are not described as what courtiers do to woo women, but
rather, they are general courtly practices. Indeed, Ottaviano mentions the
previous evenings’ discussions and takes aims at these activities and practices
that are described by Ludovico and Fregoso in Books One and Two.49 These
courtly practices were not performed to attract only the attention of women,
but also (and primarily) of men; in particular, these practices attracted the
attention of other courtiers and, most importantly, the prince. What Ottaviano
offers his peers is the chance to reclaim a masculinity of purpose, even while
operating in a gender paradox where dress and acts necessarily effeminized the
men who pursued this purpose. Ottaviano reclaimed courtly masculinity by
denigrating the necessary courtly practices and dress that enabled the courtier
to pursue virtue. His accusatory rhetoric allows the disempowered male to
assert masculinity even in the performance of dependency. Castiglione’s book
enacted the same performance as Ottaviano’s utterance; the book as a whole
takes aim at dress as effeminizing while explaining that such dress typified
the ideal, masculine, and virtuous courtier. These accusations of the practices
of men also served the larger function of the Courtier’s normativizing project,
where the “few men” who were responsible for the shame of Italy might be refashioned
into warrior heroes. The nagging question is just how aesthetics figured into
this degradation of Italy. It is doubtful that Castiglione (or any other
Renaissance writer) would suggest that changing one’s ruff les and sleeves
would be the key to defeating the French or the Habsburg empire, but why, then,
we should ask, did writers frame military defeat in terms of silks and ruff
les? It would seem that we still have much to learn about how aesthetics and
militarism functioned in the Renaissance projects of social control.Notes 1
Corio, Storia di Milano, 2: 1398–99: “il duca se misse una corazina, quale cavò
dicendo parebbe troppo grosso, puoi se vestì una veste di raso cremesino
fodrata di sibelline e cinto con uno cordono di seta morella la biretta.” 2
McCall, “Brilliant Bodies,” 472. 3 Varchi, Storia Fiorentina, Vol. 3, Book 15,
186. 4 Currie, Fashion, Introduction. 5 See, for example, Simons,
“Homosociality and Erotics,” Currie, Fashion, Biow, On the Importance, and
Eisenbichler, “Bronzino’s Portrait.” 6 Paulicelli, Writing Fashion, 3. On
masculinity and dress in the Courtier see Quondam, Tutti i colori and Currie,
Fashion.7 All Italian quotes of the Cortegiano are from the Garzanti edition.
All English quotes are from the Javitch edition (2002) of the Singleton
translation. 8 Najemy, “Arms and Letters.” The hierarchy of arms is challenged
by Ludovico himself, who states that letters are the “true and principal”
adornment of the courtier. Moreover, Bembo argues that arms are actually the
adornment of letters; see ibid., 211. 9 Castiglione’s references to France
change from manuscript to print edition. In one of the earliest manuscript
editions of the book, he calls those who do not appreciate letters, barbari.
Pugliese, “The French Factor.” 10 For a discussion of Machiavelli’s position on
arms and letters see Najemy, “Arms and Letters,” 207–08. For a later discussion
on the danger of letters to arms see Stefano Guazzo’s “Del paragone dell’arme
et delle lettere” in which an interlocutor suggests that some people fear that
letters “si snervassero gli huomini Martiali,” Stefano Guazzo, Dialoghi
piacevoli (Piacenza: Pietro Tini, 1587), 167. 11 See Albury, Castiglione’s
Allegory, 65. 12 Ludovico is here discussing the influence of literature on war
rather than the study of combat manuals. On Urbino’s master at arms, Piero
Monte, who published the “first significant combat manual ever to be printed,”
see Anglo, The Martial Arts, 133. 13 My reading on this passage differs from
Najemy’s, which argues that Ottaviano, in Book Four, implicates the courtiers
as the few bad men, responsible for Italy’s decline. 14 In Book One, Gasparo
states that music and other “vanities” “effeminar gli animi” of men. Quondam’s published
edition of Manuscript (L) Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnhamiano 409
shows that Castiglione originally phrased his concerns differently, without
using the word “effeminize”: “e cosi fatte illecebre enervare gli animi.”
Quondam, Il libro del Cortegiano. 15 On hegemonic masculinity, see Connell,
Masculinities, 77. 16 Although warfare is typically shown to be endangered by
courtly behaviors, there are some moments in which the court is shown to be
negatively affected by the presence of warriors; see Book I.17. 17 Newton,
Fashion, 1–5; Blanc, “From Battlefield to Court.” 18 On effeminacy in the
Courtier see Milligan, “The Politics of Effeminacy.” On effeminacy in the study
of pre-modern texts, see Halperin, “How to Do.” 19 Williams, Roman Homosexuality,
125–58. 20 Olson, Masculinity and Dress; see chapter four in particular. 21 See
Blanc, “From Battlefield to Court” for a discussion about several
fourteenth-century chronicles that blame a sudden change in dress for battles
and plague. See also Muzzarelli, Breve storia; Mosher Stuard, Gilding the
Market; Sebregondi, “Clothes and Teenagers”; Muzzarelli, Guardaroba Medievale.
22 Francesco Pontano, along with his brother Ludovico Pontano, was a professor
at the university of Siena. On Francesco Pontano see Marletta, “L’umanista
Francesco Pontano.” 23 “Il quale tanto più è vituperoso in loro in quanto
debbono in tutto essere rimoti da ogni vano e superfluo ornamento, s’eglino
debbono e vogliono esser detti veri maschi.” Pontano, “Dello integro e perfetto
stato,” 22. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 24 “Li quali non
minor tempo e industria mettono raschiamenti di coteche e scialbamenti di gote
e di collo e de’ vari pelatogi e scorticatogi, e di bionde e d’acque sublimate
e stillate, che si facciano le femine.” Ibid. 25 “Talché oggidì l’uomo che fu
fatto presso che pari agli angeli ’e di sotto a’ porci e a qualunque altro
sporco e vile animale.” Ibid. On dress and gender confusion in early modern
England see the essays by Epstein and Straub, Body Guards. 26 See Sebregondi,
“Clothes and Teenagers,” which shows how preachers such as San Bernardino da
Siena complained about the erotic elements of tight hose and short doublets.
Ibid., 31 cites Sermon 37 of Prediche di San Bernardino vol. 3. 27 Sebregondi,
“Clothes and Teenagers,” 36. 28 Not all writers condemned male dress. Leonardo
Fiorivanti states that the only way to make this “miserable world” better is to
dress well and eat well, and that young men dress extravagantly and then change
their dress when they reach the age to marry and29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 383940
41 42 434445have children. Fiorivanti, Dello specchio, Book I, chapter 9, 27.
On the other hand, Anton Francesco Doni (1513–74) and Scipione Ammirato
(1531–1601) both criticize military failings while discussing men’s dress and
aesthetics. In language that is contrary to modern notions of military
discipline, writers such as Pio De Rossi (1581–1667) suggested that the most
courageous warriors were slovenly, dirty, and untidy. De Rossi, Convito morale,
42. On Rossi see Biondi, “Il Convito.” This mechanism functions similarly to
the “hypocritical rhetoric of self-censorship” identified by Carla Freccero in
that an utterance pretends to do one thing while performing a different function.
Freccero, “Politics and Aesthetics,” 271. On scholarly interpretations of
sprezzatura see Javitch; Rebhorn, Courtly Performances; and Berger Jr., The
Absence of Grace. On the “more compelling figure” see Rebhorn, Courtly Performances,
38; on the virility of sprezzatura see Berger, Absence of Grace, 11. I borrow
the term “manly masquerade” from Finucci, The Manly Masquerade. How Renaissance
writers characterized the pre-dressed (naked) man as masculine or effeminate is
discussed by Paulicelli, Writing Fashion, ch. 3. According to Berger,
Castiglione casts an idyllic, unreal version of Urbino. Berger describes how
Castiglione discloses to the reader his process of casting Urbino as unreal in
a “metapastoral” gesture Berger, Absence of Grace, 119–78. On this passage see
Quondam, Questo povero cortegiano and Milligan, “The Politics of Effeminacy.”
See Currie, Fashion; Paulicelli, Writing Fashion. On Classical examples see
Williams, Roman Homosexuality. Castiglione himself cites an ancient anecdote of
Darius III, King of Persia (336–330 b.c.), told by Q. Curtius Rufus,
Historiorum Alexandri Magni III, 6. For Renaissance examples see Lando, Brieve
essortatione, which states that the Syrians have dominated the Italians through
their perfumes, and Lampugagni claims that Italians follow French fashions like
monkeys, Della carrozza da nolo. Lampugnani also complains of women who seek to
“dis-Italianize” themselves by adopting foreign fashions. De Leon, Discorsi
novi, published in Spanish in 1605. “E, quando in Italia cominciarono a
vestirsi all’usanza di Francia, molti ciò mirando con prudenza temerono, che i
Francesi havessero a mal trattargli; e non s’ingannò l’anima loro, come fra
pochi giorni mostrò il successo. Di modo che la natione, che lascia la sua
foggia di vestito antica, e naturale per imitare quella de’ Regni stranieri,
ben può temere, che Dio non la castighi con guerre, persecutione, rubamenti, e
mali trattamenti che le faranno fatti da coloro, i cui habiti ella va imitando,”
628. Cox, The Renaissance Dialogue, 54. On Ottaviano’s interjection see
Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, Albury, Castiglione’s Allegory, and Quondam,
Questo povero cortegiano. Berger does not characterize courtliness as weak or
effeminizing; he instead states that the successful performance of sprezzatura
demonstrates a certain virile mastery. Berger, Absence of Grace, 1–12. In his
“Education of Boys” Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini suggests that clothing can make
boys soft and effeminate. He particularly warns against feathers and silk.
Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys,” 71. Basilio Ponce de Leon, Discorsi
(Italian Translation 1614) suggests that clothing makes spirits effeminate and
soft “Legislatori antichi giudicarono così (e la isperienza lo insegna) che non
tanta delicatezza di vestiti si assottigliano gli animi, e di virile, e forti
divengono bassi effeminate e molli,” 626. Some assert that Ottaviano’s response
might be due to his “republican” leanings. This seems to be overstated given
that Ottaviano was the nephew of Guidobaldo de Montefeltro, spent much of his
childhood at the Urbino court, and was himself a prince of Sant’Agata Feltria.
In response to how a courtier should dress, Federico responds “Voi lasciate una
sorte de abiti che se usa, e pur non si contengano tra alcuni di questi che voi
avete ricordati, e sono quegli del signor Ottaviano.” Castiglione, Seconda
redazione, II.26, 110.46 See, for example, letters 29 and 30. Castiglione, Le
lettere, vol. I, 1497–1521. 47 Ottaviano’s censoring of courtly dress follows
Carla Freccero’s analysis of “’hypocritical’ rhetoric of self-censorship,” in
that it is as much about establishing identity groups as it is about a sincere
rebuke of argument. Freccero, “Politics and Aesthetics,” 271. 48 For a useful
review of the manuscript revisions to the text, see Pugliese, Castiglione’s
“The Book of the Courtier”, 15–24. 49 “Estimo io adunque che ’l cortegiano
perfetto di quel modo che descritto l’hanno il conte Ludovico e messer
Federico, possa esser veramente bona cosa e degna di laude; non però
simplicemente né per sé, ma per rispetto del fine al quale po essere
indirizzato” (4.4) Castiglione, Il libro del Cortegiano, ed. Nicola Longo, 367.Bibliography
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universale. Venice: Sessa, 1583. Freccero, Carla. “Politics and Aesthetics in
Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano: Book III and the Discourse of Women.” In Creative
Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Thomas M. Greene.
Edited by David Quint, Margaret W. Ferguson, G.W. Pigman III, and Wayne A.
Rebhorn, 259–79. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
1992. Guazzo, Stefano. Dialoghi piacevoli. Piacenza: Pietro Tini, 1587.
Halperin, David. “How to Do the History of Homosexuality.” GLQ: A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies 6, no. 1 (2000): 87–123. Lampugagni, Agostino. Della
carrozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire, et usanze alla moda. 1648. Lando,
Ortensio. Brieve essortatione a gli huomini. Brescia, 1545. Marletta, Fedele.
“L’umanista Francesco Pontano.” Nuova rivista storica 26 (1942): 32–41. McCall,
Timothy. “Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North
Italy’s Quattrocento Courts.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16,
no. 1/2 (September 2013): 445–90. Milligan, Gerry. “The Politics of Effeminacy
in Il cortegiano.” Italica 83, no. 3–4 (2006): 347–69. Mosher Stuard, Susan.
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Italy.” In Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War, 1500–1530. Edited
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nell’occasione delle nozze Riccomanni-Fineschi. Edited by Cesare Riccomanni,
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Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical
Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.9 THE SAUSAGE WARS Or how the
sausage and carne battled for gastronomic and social prestige in Renaissance
literature and culture Laura GiannettiIn Girolamo Parabosco’s comedy La
fantesca (published in 1556) the sexual activities of a maid, the young
cross-dressed Pandolfo who impregnated his young lover Giacinta, were
humorously referred to with a culinary metaphor, that of inserting meat in the
oven: People, the female servant has become a male in two houses at once as you
have seen. And she has shown that she is a better cook than a housekeeper,
because she knew better how to put the meat (carne) in the oven than make beds
or sweep the house. (V, c. 94)1 The Italian word carne with its multiple
meanings of meat, f lesh, and the masculine sexual organ commonly served as a
tool for clever word play in Italian literature from the Decameron to the Canti
carnascialeschi and enjoyed a renaissance of its own in sixteenth-century comic
prose, poetry, letters, and everyday language.2 The early modern dietary corpus
reinforced the religious association between eating meat, gluttony, and lust.
All nutritious food, in particular meat, created more blood than needed by the
body; therefore the surplus translated into an extra production of sperm, which
in turn fueled the sex drive.3 A traditional view of the link between gluttony
and lust holds that biblical accounts of the Fall considered gluttony the
opening door to lust, although the Garden of Eden’s transgression consisted in
eating the forbidden fruit, a fig or an apple according to different versions,
and not eating immoderately. Many medieval theologians and then Pope Gregory
the Great, a medieval doctor of the Church, defined gluttony mainly as a desire
to stimulate the palate with delicacies, while also exceeding what was
considered necessary for basic nourishment and health.4 But then he drew a more
precise connection between the two sins and differentorgans of the body: “when
the first (stomach) fills up excessively, inevitably, the other are also
excited to sin.”5 Gluttony excites the senses and therefore can carry the
sinner to sins of the f lesh. In Dante’s Inferno, and following Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, incontinence (of desire) was the link between gluttony and
lust. Paolo and Francesca in Canto V are among the “peccator carnali, / che la
ragion sommettono al talento” [Inf. 5.38–39]). Although for Dante gluttony was
a sin worse than lust, the common vision at his time was that eating
immoderately and lusting were both sins of carne, the f lesh.6 If early
theologians’ readings discussed gluttony without referring to a particular
food, it was meat that later became the preferred target of moralists and came
to be associated with ideas of lasciviousness and lust. Traditionally, animals
such as the boar, pig, wolf, and/or ape in late medieval and early Renaissance
visual and prescriptive sources represented luxuria7 and gluttony, as
inextricably and negatively bonded together.8 Sixteenth-century prints,
paintings, broadsheets, and emblem books kept those associations alive in
society and culture even as the associations between those animals and gluttony
or voracity often surpassed their association with luxuria.9 Sins of the f lesh
were often symbolized as sins of carne in the sense of meat.10 But before
delving into the imaginative perceptions and symbolism attributed to meat-eating
it is advisable to recall brief ly what the lived practice and experience of
consuming meat in medieval and Renaissance Italy involved. Symbol of power and
violence, masculinity and aggressive sexuality, luxury and abundance, meat was
often associated with the aristocracy and its lifestyle.11 As Massimo Montanari
and Alberto Capatti have shown, in the Middle Ages the noble table first saw a
triumph of big game gained through hunting but later the preference was
directed more toward smaller game such as pheasants, quails, and/or farmed
animals, like geese and capons. The new court nobility of the twelfth century
no longer identified with the warriors’ taste for big, bloody game.12 Gross and
nutritious meat was now left to peasants, usually in the form of pork. City
dwellers also enjoyed the meat of the pig in the form of sausages but strove to
differentiate themselves from the rural inhabitants by buying and eating veal,
beef, and small birds. Although Fernand Braudel famously called “carnivore” the
period in Europe between 1350 and 1550,13 Italians of the period had other food
resources and could not, and often did not care to eat meat every day.
Nonetheless, eating meat, and especially good meat, remained an indicator of
social elevation and offered the promise of good health. The preference of the
new court nobility for small birds and farmed animals received the approval of
contemporary doctors, who exalted birds as a source of exceptional nutritional
value, with the caveat that it was best suited to an aristocratic diet.14 It
was not just the symbolic and nutritional value that was considered important;
in dietetic tracts partridges and quails excelled also for their delicate taste
and their lightness. But not all agreed. Vatican librarian and gastronome
Platina (1421–81) was more open to the pleasures of eating a much wider range
of meats, demonstrating more catholic tastes. His De Honesta Voluptate et
Valetudine(first Italian edition 1487) is full of numerous recipes that included
poultry, organ meats, fowl, pork, and sausages. Still much like many doctors,
cooks, and courts stewards, he agreed that meat in general was a food healthier
than others and had an elevated nutritional value.15 The reputation of meat as
a primary source of nourishment and good health continued in the sixteenth
century, and was particularly strong among surgeons, medical practitioners, and
professors of “secrets.” A Spanish “surgeon and empirical doctor”16 who lived
in Rome, Giovan Battista Zapata (ca. 1520–86), claimed that all meat products
sustained good health, as long as they were roasted with a rosemary oil and a
mixture of other herbs and spices, and were accompanied by good wine.17
Zefiriele Tommaso Bovio (1521–1609)—a Veronese nobleman and lawyer who later
became a medical practitioner—wrote a treatise at the end of the sixteenth
century against the “medici rationali ” who wanted to impose a strict meatless
diet on sick people. He claimed that doctors knew that eating good meat and
drinking wine had the power to restore health but kept the secret to themselves
for fear of losing fees from patients who recovered from illness and stayed
healthy eating meat.18 The nutritional value of meat was thought to rest on the
idea that meat could transform into the substance, the very carne, of the human
body. The steward Domenico Romoli affirmed in his cooking manual that those who
invented the eating of meat did it both for taste but especially for health
reasons: they knew that “more than any other food, it is meat (carne) that
makes f lesh (carne).”19 In his view eating meat meant literally giving
nutriment to human f lesh.20 Renouncing meat, however, was a crucial
requirement for early Christian hermits and monks. It represented unequivocally
the mortification of the f lesh and contempt for the body, although numerous
sources show that meat-eating in many monasteries was fairly normal. In
general, the suspicion of meat running through Christian texts in the period
appeared to be based on an association of the eating of meat with fears of the
f lesh and sexual incontinence. San Bernardino’s preaching in the fifteenth
century aggressively linked meat consumption with unruly sexuality and was
particularly severe on policing widows and youths’ eating practices. He
represented the extreme side of a widespread religious censure of culinary
pleasures and the sense of taste, emphasizing the presumed dangers of uniting
desire for meat and unruly sexuality.21 Outside of the monastic world,
religious proscriptions on food dictated that for periods of fasting, such as
Lent, abstinence from animal f lesh, meat, poultry, and eggs, was mandatory to
mortify the body and its appetites. And Lent was not just the forty days that
followed Carnival; every Friday and many vigils during the year were Lenten
days when meat was proscribed as well.22 How much weight did this religious
censure or the ideology of the ascetic abstention from eating meat actually
have? Apparently not much in everyday life or culture. The desire for meat, originally
condemned as gluttony and a carnal practice that took one away from the life of
the spirit, was often identified in theliterary imagination with positive
expressions of sexual desire. The longstanding Christian prohibition against
eating meat associated gluttony and illicit sexuality, and the Galenic dietary
theory reinforced this, claiming that the body of the meat eater would have a
surplus of blood and thus an increased sex drive. Literary sources valorized
the gastronomic desirability and sexual powers promised by eating meat. Slowly
but surely the sexual/alimentary play on carne as food and f lesh, positively
portrayed in imaginative literature and culture of the sixteenth century,
battled successfully against earlier moralistic discourses insisting on
restraint of the body and its instincts.23 The emerging cultural war of the
period opposed a disciplining view of the body and posited the increasing
importance of pleasure and taste in both life and literature, with the
enjoyment of meat, carne and f lesh, at their very center.Appetite for meat in
literature Returning to the courtly taste for birds in the Renaissance, the
link between eating birds and the lustful consequences that followed was
visible in literary texts, fresco cycles, and dietary discourses, albeit with
different meanings. While Dantesque Inferno punishment scenes in late medieval
Italian dietary treatises and church fresco cycles dwelt on the negative
consequences of eating birds or eating too much meat, literary texts presented
a competing discourse. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, novelle collections such
as those by Niccolò Sacchetti (ca. 1332–1400), Giovanni Sercambi (1348–1424),
Anton Francesco Grazzini (1503– 84), and Niccolò Bandello (1485–1561), and many
satirical and licentious poems, all exploited the phallic meat metaphor to
elicit laughter as well as sexually allusive word-play.24 Boccaccio made clear
in his Conclusione to the Decameron that the obscene language he had used came
from everyday usage and included words from the culinary world: It is not more
shameful that I have written words that men and women spell out continuously
such as hole, peg, mortar, pestle, sausage, and mortadello. Dico che più non si
dee a me esser disdetto d’averle scritte che generalmente si disdica agli
uomini e alle donne di dir tutto dì foro e caviglia e mortaio e pestello e
salsiccia e mortadello. Many contemporary tales depict adulterous lovers or
lovers-to-be enjoying meals with game, fowl, and poultry in preparation for the
carnal pleasures to come. The “carne” metaphor to designate the male member had
a notable literary tradition. Giovanni Sercambi’s Novelliere (written ca.
1390–1402) presents many instances of the metaphorical/sexual use of the word
carne, in some cases distinguishing between “raw” and “cooked” meat to indicate
the male sexual organ and actual meat.25 In the novella “Frate Puccio e Madonna
Alisandra,” Pseudo-Sermini26 plays on the double meanings of food and sex and
the pleasureof tasting the meat and its f lavor.27 The metaphor of “fresh meat”
to indicate the male sexual organ continued unabated in the sixteenth century
as seen in a laughing novella by the Sienese Pietro Fortini (ca. 1500–ca. 1562)
where a lusty friar offers a pound of “carne fresca” for free to a young woman
with the excuse that religion does not let him enjoy meat that day. The novella
naturally ends with the friar being beaten by the woman’s husband and with the
laughter of the brigata listening to the story.28 The offer of an attractive
bird for a meal often opened the way to a carnal relationship. In one
sixteenth-century novella by Grazzini, the priest Agostino, enamored of his
parishioner Bartolomea, decided to entice her with the offer of a large and
plump duck. Bartolomea, who was a woman of “easy taste” (buona cucina), let him
inside her house and made love to him with the hope of gaining the duck. But
the early return of her husband allowed the priest to escape with his duck,
leaving her literally empty handed. Agostino bragged cleverly that she would
never find another duck, or another member, so large and plump. But, as often
happens in Italian novelle, women were cleverer than their lovers. Bartolomea
was no exception; when Agostino came back with a duck and two capons to make
peace and love again, she got her revenge. With the help of her husband she
beat him and sent him away barely able to walk, keeping the birds to enjoy with
her husband.29 In this novella, birds carried out their multiple roles: they
were an enticing and valued meat, able to stimulate the senses at many levels
but also able to transform gluttony and lust into laughter and pleasure. In
sixteenth-century comedies, birds such as partridges and pheasants could serve
as domestic aphrodisiacs, for both old men and young. In Donato Giannotti’s
comedy Il vecchio amoroso (written ca. 1533–36), old Teodoro, in love with the
young female slave his son has brought home from Sicily, organizes a banquet
where the food includes delicacies like fat capons, birds (starne), and
pigeons, served with wine and sweets, in order to prepare him for the rigors of
lovemaking.30 The meat of birds was believed to arouse lust because it was seen
as hot and moist; for this reason Messer Nicomaco, in the comedy Clizia, plans
to eat a half bloody pigeon before his night of love with the young Clizia.
Perhaps because of this popular belief, or perhaps because it was the most
prized and elegant type of meat, Pietro Aretino, in one of his letters from
Venice in 1547, invites the painter Titian to a dinner at his house with a
famous courtesan, Angela Zaffetta, promising that the main dish to be served
would be roasted pheasants.31 Adulterous lovers with their lascivious dinners
were the protagonists of a great number of plays and novella. Some specific
language used in sixteenthcentury poetry, dialogues, and comedies also
suggested that the desire for meat was closely connected to the practice of
sodomy.32 A type of meat that was used euphemistically to signify sodomy,
either with men or women, was the young male goat or “capretto.” Pietro Aretino
in his Ragionamento (1534) used the masculine gender and the diminutive form of
“capretto” to indicate the act of sodomy with a nun, in obvious contrast with
the word “capra,” the adult goat used to refer to vaginal sex. In describing a
moment at an orgy in a convent, Aretino exploited the culinary metaphor of meat
to its fullest: Tired, at the first morsel of the goat he asked for the young
goat . . . I tell [you] that as soon as he got it, he stuck inside
the meat knife and madly enjoyed seeing it in and out . . . stucco al
primo boccone della capra, dimandò il capretto [. . .] dico che
ottenuto il capretto, e fittoci dentro il coltello proprio da cotal carne,
godea come un pazzo del vederlo entrare e uscire. (Emphasis mine) 33 Matteo
Bandello similarly narrates a tale about Niccolò Porcellio, humanist, poet, and
historian at the court of Francesco Sforza in Milan, and well known for his
notorious passion for young boys. Bandello expresses Porcellio’s desire with
the culinary euphemism: he loved “la carne del capretto molto più che altro
cibo” (he always preferred the meat of the young male goat much more than any
other food). In his final confession, he justified his vice as the most natural
thing in the world because it corresponded to his natural taste, and it was a
“buon boccone”: Oh, oh, Reverend Father, you did not know how to interrogate
me. Playing with young boys is for me more natural than eating or drinking to a
man . . . go away as you do not know what a good morsel is
. . . oh, oh padre reverend, voi non mi sapeste interrogare. Il
trastullarmi con i fanciulli a me è più naturale che non è il mangiar a il ber
a l’uomo . . . andate andate che voi non sapete che cosa sia un buon
boccone.34 Porcellio insisted that his sexual behavior—the preference for young
male goat meat—was as natural as it was natural to eat and drink for humans.
His narrator Bandello explained first that Porcellio was forced to marry by the
Duke in order to soften the opinion people had of him as someone who always
preferred “the meat of young goat.”35 The food metaphor, so widely employed in
the novella, was indeed perfect to address his sexual desire as a manifestation
of taste, which can vary according to different people. Contemporary literature
of the Land of Cockaigne included fantastic maps of Cuccagna [Cockaigne in
Italy] where meat, in all of its incarnations, for rich and for poor, was
center stage, while the theatrical Battaglia fra Quaresima e Carnevale
regularly ended with the victory of Carnival and meat eating.36 The carne of
the lascivious goat and luxurious hot birds were generally enjoyed by the rich.
Yet it was the meat of the more humble pig, in the form of sausages that became
dominant in sixteenth-century literature as a food easily conducive to sexual
play, gastronomical delights, and a festive world.The triumph of the sausage
The Allegory of Autumn by Niccolò Frangipane, a follower of Titian, is a
remarkable painting displaying a lascivious satyr who sticks one finger into a
split melon and with his other hand grabs a sausage on top of a table full of
other autumn produce. In the cultural imaginary and in the common understanding
of the period, that sausage in hand proclaimed with a perverse smile that it
was known as a type of meat that promised and was well suited for indulgence,
alimentary and sexual.37 The metaphorical use of the term “salsiccia” was not
new. Many tales in Sercambi’s Novelliere, fifteenth-century carnival songs, and
humorous and popular print allegories of Carnival used the same metaphor
associating the consumption of meat/sausages with the pleasures of the senses,
especially sexual pleasures. In one novella by Sercambi, a libidinous widow
living with her brother, who had not arranged for her to marry again, realizes
that there is a similarity between the sausages her brother brought home and
the instrument with which her dead husband had made her happy. She decides to
satisfy “the need she had of a man” using those sausages as an instrument of
pleasure and consumes them little by little until discovered by her brother. 38
A popular sixteenth-century print studied by Sara Matthews-Grieco shows an old
lower-class woman selling a sausage during Carnival, just before the time of
Lent, when both meat and sexual intercourse will have to be forgotten. While
Sercambi’s humorous novella does not attack the widow, who is described as
young and naturally deprived of sexual pleasure, the prints and grotesque
portraits studied by Matthews-Grieco, more often cruelly satirize old
lower-class women desirous of sausages. 39 Pork occupied a particular cultural
space in the realm of meat of the time. Far from high-class birds, or middle-class
poultry and veal, the pork sausage was the food of the poor, the peasant, or at
best, the uneducated.40 Sausages, particularly pork sausages, were a food
appealing to taste but otherwise problematic as gross, humid, full of fat, and
unsuited to a delicate stomach—or so claimed several early modern doctors and
apothecaries. Humoral physiology dictated that the f lesh of a hot and humid
animal would be beneficial only to a person with a cold temperament who needed
to adjust his/her complexion: people with predominantly moist/hot humors should
therefore avoid pork.41 Practice was, however, more complex. Some doctors
associated with the Galenic revival of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
promoted the meat of pig as nutritious and easy to digest, although more suited
to physical workers. In fact, for all the undesirable characteristics noted,
the idea that pork was nourishing and healthful enjoyed wide circulation in
dietaries and medical treatises. From there, it was added as a significant
qualifier to the traditionally unfavorable descriptions of pigs, and ultimately
found its way into comic and burlesque literature, where it merged with the
well-established carnivalesque passion for fat meat and gastronomical excess.
The Galenic revival maintained descriptionsof pork as gross and humid, but gave
more positive press by affirming that it was a nutritious meat. Indeed, despite
these warring visions, the sausage and pork continued to win their battles in
both literature and life.42 Even with their negative medical and social
reputation, sausages had had their partisans in the gastronomical world for at
least two centuries. Platina provided a general and expected warning against
the meat of pork at the beginning of Book VI (“you will find pork not healthful
whatever way you cook it”) but then offered three recipes for sausages, all
derived from maestro Martino: pork liver sausages, blood sausages, and the
range of sausages known as the Lucanica.43 Platina was more interested in showing
how to cook and smoke the meat of pork than in talking about social
suitability. He included an elaborate recipe for roast piglet stuffed with a
mixture of herbs, garlic, cheese, and ground pepper, beaten eggs, slowly cooked
over a grill. At the end of this tempting recipe, he added the usual medical
advice: “The roast piglet is of poor and little nourishment, digests slowly,
and harms the stomach, head, eyes, and liver.”44 While the roast piglet was
ostensibly not a fare suitable for higher classes, Platina’s detailed recipe
and the ingredients used meant that the medical proscriptions against pork were
losing ground to the culinary practices of courts and an emerging gastronomical
culture. In a similar way, Marsilio Ficino, who considered pork a meat more
suitable to laborers who already had pig-like physical features, admitted that
dressing pork with expensive and luxurious spices could transform it into a
valuable food.45 Significantly, in this vein, a testimony by Cristofaro da
Messisbugo (late fifteenth-century–1548), steward at the court of the Este in
Ferrara, showed how dressing up pork and sausages elevated such meat above its
common status as a food prescribed for rustic people. Messisbugo’s cookbook,
Banchetti, composizioni di vivande et apparecchio generale (published in 1549),
exalted the famous “salama da sugo,” still today a renowned Ferrarese
specialty. In his recipe he explained how the less noble parts of pork were
mixed together with expensive spices such as cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon to
create a dish that the Este family appreciated. Apparently, the salama was
served especially at wedding banquets because of the reputed aphrodisiacal
quality of its spicy sauce.46 Sex, pleasure, and taste were clearly winning
battles for the once-humble sausage. The salsiccia, fresh or cured, also took
center stage among a group of bawdy poems on fruit, vegetables, and other
humble foods, authored by three of the most representative poets writing in the
bernesque style, Anton Francesco Grazzini, Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543), and
Mattio Franzesi (ca. 1500–ca. 1555). Firenzuola composed a canzone, and
Grazzini and Franzesi capitoli, praising pork sausage for its alimentary and
sexual properties, and demonstrating its social primacy over “superior” foods
such as pheasants and capons. And, as if in a philosophical debate, these poems
regularly elicited long, scholarly, and often obscene prose comments. The
erotic allusions of their verses were clearly associated with the consumption
of meat during Carnival, suggesting both the literal consumption of carne as
meat and of carne as f lesh of a more sexual variety.47 As we have alreadyseen,
pig meat had a mixed reputation because it was considered dangerous on one hand
and nutritious on the other. Imaginative literature built upon medical and
gastronomical culture to produce a more complex vision that allowed
considerable room for ambiguity and ambivalence. Pork never entirely lost its
reputation for promoting debased gluttony and pig-like manners, but it also
gained a more positive reputation as a pleasurable food suitable for both
peasants and upper classes to enjoy, as these poems demonstrate.48 The “Canzone
del Firenzuola in lode della salsiccia,” written between 1534 and 1538 by the Florentine
poet and dramatist,49 boasts of the primacy of his writing on the sausage and
plays on the double erotic sense: “Since no fanciful poet / has dared yet / to
fill his gorge with the sausage” (“poi ch’alcun capriccioso / anchor non è
stato oso / de la salsiccia empirsi mai la gola”).50 He concludes with an
invocation to the canzone itself to go and tell the poets’ friends in Florence
the secrets of this most perfect food.51 Probably written in Rome while he was
a member of the academy known as the Virtuosi52 and followed by an ironic prose
commentary signed by a mysterious Grappa,53 the poem recognizes its affiliation
with the bernesque poets. Yet it humorously affirms that they deserved an herb
crown on their head because they lauded the oven, figs, and “boiled chestnuts”
but not the sausage, “the most perfect food.”54 Firenzuola presented the pork
sausage produced in Bologna as a food worthy of poets but good also for rich
priests and lords, learned men, and beautiful women. He argued that it had a better
reputation than the highest priced meat of the time, veal. The poem blended
sexual innuendos and gastronomical discussion in its overtly simple description
of how to make the sausage. And following the bernesque tradition, it mocked
doctors’ recommendations about when to eat certain foods and reassured readers
that the sausage “is good roasted and boiled, for lunch or for dinner, before
or after the meal”; all these prepositions suggested different parts of the
body and different types of sexual intercourse.55 Firenzuola then adds what he
labels a “beautiful secret”: never use the sausage during the hot months of
summer but wait until August has passed. According to Aristotelian physiology,
men who are already by nature hot and dry are less potent in the summer when
the excessive heat of the season takes away their sexual force.56 Nonetheless,
he argues that even old men who have lost their heat can be young again thanks
to the mighty sausage.57 Finally, and appropriately, for his reportedly
polymorphous tastes, Firenzuola concluded that one could make sausages with
“every type of meat,” referring to all possible sexual practices.58 The
sausage’s morphology, then, links it to the male member and to its features
that could be seen both as gastronomic and sexual: Sausages were ordered from
above / to amuse those who were born into the world / with that grease that
often drips from them; and when they are cooked and swelled / you can serve
them in the round dish, although a few today want them with the split bread. Fur
le salsiccia ab aeterno ordinate / per trastullar chi ne veniva al mondo / con
quell’unto che cola da lor spesso; et quando elle son cotte e rigonfiate, le si
mettono in tavola nel tondo. / Altri son, che le vogliono nel pan fesso, / ma
rari il fanno adesso; / che il tondo inver riesce più pulito, / né come il pan,
succia l’untume tutto.59 When a sausage is cooked and ready to serve,
Firenzuola advised, it would be best to display it on the table “nel tondo”
(the round dish and, metaphorically, the bottom) although others preferred it
served with the “pan fesso” (split bread or, metaphorically again, a woman’s
genitals). But there are few who prefer the latter today, Firenzuola added. As
a Florentine, he prefers the domestic Florentine sausage, large and firm, red
and natural, and encased in clean skin. The metaphors roasted or boiled and the
adjectives “tondo” and “ fesso” (round and split/foolish), refer to sodomitical
and heterosexual encounters, while also alluding to different gastronomical
appetites. The poem concludes in an ecumenical and procreative tone, affirming
that the creation of sausages was intended to give pleasure and utility to
everyone, but in the end the good sausages would always be the reason why men and
women were born into this world.60 Firenzuola’s poem affirms that while the
sausage is for everybody and every taste, gustatory and sexual, when served
“after” and roasted it is good only for upper classes. Like other bernesque
poets, he seems eager to assign a higher social status to this “popular” (and
economic) food. In fact, usually it was roasted fowl and roasted meat that was
theoretically reserved for upper classes. Since he is suggesting sodomy with
the reference to roasted meat, that sexual practice is seen as the nobler
activity, although forbidden. Elevating a lower-class food to a higher status
was the perfect metaphor for speaking in favor of sodomy and introducing social
values along with the sexual. What function did this type of poetic imagery
serve in a period when sodomy was a crime and even the depiction of
non-sodomitical sexual acts in an artistic work such as I Modi proved to be so
controversial? It seems likely that images had more power to move viewers than
writings, but in an era of printing reproduction, cheap copies of poetry, like
the one produced in the Vignaiuoli and Virtuosi circle, could circulate outside
an intended audience of intellectuals and fellow poets. It is therefore
difficult to assess the impact of these texts, but the humor and the
metaphorical language dedicated to meat, vegetables, and fruits may have helped
allay the anxiety among authorities, both religious and civic, about the
diffusion and circulation of writings exalting sodomy.61 The long Capitolo in
lode della salsiccia by Anton Francesco Grazzini, which is followed by an
erudite and playful prose commentary by the same author, extolled the sausage
mainly from a gastronomical point of view, humorously contrasting its
attractions with moralizing medical lore, and interweaving it once again with
sexual innuendos.62 Presenting himself as a knowledgeable gastronome, Grazzini
also praised the primacy of the Florentine sausage, superior to capons,
partridges, and all the meat of birds, as well as to highly prized fish such as
lampreys and eels.63 After defining it as a meal worthy of poets and emperors,
and begging Greece and Rome to recognize the superiority of the sausage made in
Florence, Grazzini once again lauded its colors and its appearance. In
addition, much like the cookbooks of his day, he listed its ingredients:
well-ground lean meat and fat from the pig, salt and pepper, cloves, cinnamon,
oranges, and fennel, all stuffed in a case of animal intestines.64 However, he
clarified that his intent was not to explain how to make it but to laud the
sausage’s beauty, taste, and goodness. And citing the process of stuffing,
“imbudellar la carne,” Grazzini took the opportunity to shift the poem from the
culinary to the sexual. He saluted women who always wanted to have their body
full of sausages because they are good and healthy—another battle won in the
same sausage wars.65 The prose Comento sopra il Capitolo della salsiccia di
maestro Niccodemo dalla Pietra al Migliaio, also authored by Grazzini, makes
clear that although women love the sausage, the double sense is again a
reference to sodomy. The “buona carne,” well done, well cut, and making a good
show when displayed in the round dish, once again is a pretext to laud the male
bottom. Furthermore, the view of the tagliere wins over all the other poetic
images (including those taken from fragments of Petrarch’s poems) such as eyes,
hair, breasts, or feet of Beatrice and Laura.66 A long section of the Comento
on the gastronomical virtues of pork begins with a verse from a sonnet by
Petrarch dedicated to the name of Laura: “O d’ogni riverentia et d’honor
degna.” In this line he humorously shifts abruptly from Petrarch’s words
honoring his beloved Laura to the more mundane culinary and sexual wonders of
pork, the only meal worthy of poets and emperors.67 Even Petrarch’s untouchable
Laura takes her blows in the sausage wars. Throughout the long prose comment on
his own poem on the pork sausage, Grazzini attacked Petrarchan poetry and
current medical lore regarding sausages and pork’s meat. The playful
observations on the ability of the sausage to heal every illness—while
maintaining a sexual overtone—reads like a learned medical prescription listing
several herbs and substances used by apothecaries to prepare their confetti,
pills, and tonic drinks.68 Yet Grazzini also made the straightforward culinary
point that Florentine pork and lard, key ingredients in their sausages, were
exceptionally good for roasting and frying as well as the essential ingredient
for making the popular bread with lard called pan unto. The attraction to lard,
the white fat of pork, was echoed in a poem by the author and translator
Lodovico Dolce (1508–68), “Salva la verità, fra i decinove,”69 dedicated to a
gift of wild boar he had received from a friend. This wild pork is defined as
“a magnificent and regal gift” whose rich fatty f lavor “will make Abstinence
die of gluttony and Carnival lick his fingers.” 70 His enthusiasm for lard in
the poem leads to a dream where Dolce witnessed himself, in an Ovidian fashion,
metamorphosed into a succulent sausage, rich with fat dripping from the
extremities of his body.71 Dolce gave the transference theory of Renaissance
doctors a positive spin, since eating pork actually transformed him if not into
the animal itself, into its gastronomical essence and pleasure. Accordingly,
his poem exploited the common ideaof closeness and fratellanza between pigs and
humans in an iconic and paradoxical way that privileged the sausage.72 The
third poem on sausages was written by Mattio Franzesi who dedicated it to a
certain “Caino spenditore,” a friend presumably in charge of food provisioning
in Florence.73 Franzesi employs the language of gastronomy in an amusing
pairing with quotidian language referring to sodomy. The sausage is called
“buon boccon” (excellent morsel) and “boccon sì ghiotto and divino” when it is
paired again with the beloved specialty panunto, declared superior to two
famous upper-class foods, the impepato and marzipan.74 Franzesi, like Dolce,
describes the panunto or slices of bread with sausage inside as a divine and
gluttonous morsel, definitely superior to luxury foods like the beccafico, a
fat and fresh songbird.75 Moreover, the salsiccia does not cost much and can be
used in many different ways to sustain a meal: it can substitute for a salad
(i.e., a woman)76 and priests in particular use it often because they do not
need to cook it but can just warm it up between their hands. All the
affirmations in Franzesi’s poem can be read in a double sense, as gastronomical
discussion or as a metaphorical way of talking about the phallussausage and its
pleasures. He refers with technical precision to the gastronomical side of
sausages, even when metaphorically discussing sexual acts.77 The sausage is
better than prosciutto (both come from pork), when boiled (used with women),
and is a good meal for sauces and “guazzetti ” (sauces). Moreover, all the
birds in the world would be like truff les without pepper and confetti without
sugar, if not accompanied by sausages. A meal with sausages is a meal for taste
and pleasure, not a meal for nourishment. Franzesi then describes its shape,
and how to make a good-tasting, good-smelling sausage, using spices, herbs, and
the unique ingredient for Florentine sausages, fennel. The poem ends with a
list comparing the sausage in the panunto as equal to Florentine gastronomical
specialties, such as the ravigiuolo cheese with grape, cheese with pears, old
wine with stale bread, and others. Exalting a humble subject fitted well with
the agenda of the bernesque poetry that lauded simple foodstuffs and everyday
objects. But privileging sausages over songbirds was clearly not just a
rhetorical ploy because it implied a comparison between a food for rustic
people and a luxury food. Franzesi, like Grazzini before him, contributed in
his poem to elevating the social status of the pork sausage. It was not simply
a food “da tinello,” for poor courtiers used to eating the leftovers of their
lord, but a meal worthy of rich people and important prelates.78 In sum, poets,
novellieri, and dramatists from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries took
full advantage of the possibilities offered by the different meaning inherent
in the word carne. It allowed them to discuss virility, sexual potency,
masculinity, and sodomy under the guise of the gastronomical discourse. The
sausage poems fit well with the constant preoccupation and advice of medical
and dietary literature of the time on how to ensure sexual potency. The novelle
discussed sexuality between men and women, endorsing a decisively masculine and
traditional view that depicted women as lusty and desirous of raw carne,which
is able to heal every illness and satisfy every need. The poems on sausages
confirm this hierarchical vision of sexuality dominated by the mighty phallus.
Yet they also endorse a concept of diverse gastronomical taste, lesso and
arrosto, nel tondo or nel fesso, to offer a variety of views of sexuality that responded
to every gusto. These poems on sausages were written in the cultural circle of
the Vignaiuoli and Virtuosi academies, well known in the period for their
substantial corpus of poetry dedicated to the comparison of fruit and
vegetables to sexual organs and sexual acts. The not-so-covert sexual sense of
most of those poems exalted sodomy, in their praise of peaches or carrots, or
sexuality with women in poems on salads and figs. Poems on the mighty sausage
covered all the bases of sexuality, although with a preference, often openly
stated, for male–male sexuality. Intriguingly, the poetic and linguistic play
on carne in the form of sausage allowed lengthy descriptions of an Italian and
Florentine gastronomic specialty of the time, totally ignoring the negative
vision of pigs as gluttonous, dirty animals presented by dietary literature.
Since gluttony was the quintessential behavior represented by pigs, what better
way to reclaim pork in the sausage wars than to use it to symbolize
gastronomical richness and sexual variety? If sins of the f lesh were often
symbolized as sins of carne in medieval times, now in a perfect reversal the
pleasures of the f lesh were symbolized by the pleasures of eating meat in all
of its variety, thanks in part to these sausage wars. Thus, while a moral and
disciplinary vision tried to control the discourse on food and eating in
medical and dietetic treatises of the sixteenth century, a counter-argument
advanced playfully in literature and bernesque poetry presented carne as a
metaphor for the pleasures of the senses.79 The conceptual pairing of gluttony
and lust in medieval tradition began to lose ground to a much more complex
world of food, taste, and pleasure, and the no longer quite so humble sausage
led the way.Notes I would like to thank Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra
for inviting me to contribute to this volume in honor of Konrad Eisenbichler, a
friend and scholar who always supported my work and my career. The research and
writing of this essay took place when I was a fellow at the Institute for
Historical Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, in 2016–17. Some of the
topics of this essay were discussed at events at the University of Toronto in
2015 and University of Melbourne in 2012. Belated thanks to Konrad Eisenbichler
and Catherine Kovesi. This essay is part of my forthcoming book Food Culture
and the Literary Imagination in Renaissance Italy. 1 Girolamo Parabosco, La
fantesca, quoted in Giannetti, Lelia’s Kiss, 143. 2 The popularity and
frequency of the word carne to indicate the male sexual organ was matched in
Renaissance literature and culture by the use of bird terminology to indicate
the virile member as well as, less frequently, the female organ and sexual
intercourse. Allen Grieco has recently catalogued and analyzed the numerous
references to birds in imagery and literary sources and has studied birds and
fowl as food to understand the connection between eating birds and fowl, and
sexuality. He has uncovered the widely shared humoral perception of birds as a
“hot” food which tended to over-stimulateThe sausage wars3 4 5 6 7891011 12 13
1415 16 1718 19173the senses. In this way he was able to give a deeper
explanation of the theological link between gluttony and lust typical of the
period, pointing out the reason why, in common perception, the consumption of
luxurious and heating food, especially birds, stimulated the sexual function.
According to the taxonomy of the Great Chain of Being, birds belonged to air
and they were hot and humid: when eaten they would transfer their properties to
the body and stimulate carnal appetite. See Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks.”
Albala, Eating Right, 144–47. Quellier, Gola, 15–16. Cited in Grieco, “From
Roosters to Cocks,” 123. Much later, gluttony was defined as the consumption of
luxury foods, particularly birds. On Dante’s conceptualization of sins see
Barolini, Dante, chapter 4. The Latin word “luxuria” meant
extravagant/excessive desire (for power, food, sex, money, etc.) and in the
Italian form “lussuria” became the word for lust in medieval Italy. In Inferno
“lussuriosi” sinners are those who had excessive love of others, thus
diminishing their love for God. Gluttony is a sin of incontinence like lust. In
medieval bestiary and other iconographic sources especially north of the Alps
gluttony is often represented as a fat man holding a piece of meat and a glass
in his hands and riding a swine or a wolf. Quellier, Gola, 15–23. For medieval
bestiaries see chapter one in Cohen, Animals. In Italy church frescoes
represented gluttons in Hell suffering the tantalic punishment. At the end of
the sixteenth century, in the first edition of Cesare Ripa Iconologia (without
images) Gluttony (Gola) is described as “donna a sedere sopra un porco perché i
porchi sono golosi . . .” and Gourmandize (Crapula) is identified
with a “donna brutta grassa . . .” Iconologia, 111 and 54. This
helps to explain, for instance, why the famed preacher San Bernardino da Siena
in his Lenten sermons in fifteenth-century Florence condemned the desire of
Florentine young men for capons and partridges, claiming they opened the doors
to a life of sensual foods and sensual pleasure. In particular, he linked
gluttony to lust and sodomy. Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari, ed. Ciro
Cannarozzi (Pistoia: Tip. A. Pacinotti, 1934), II: 45–46, quoted in Vitullo,
“Taste and Temptation,” 106. Montanari, “Peasants,” 179. Montanari and Capatti,
La cucina italiana, 76–77. Pheasants and partridges represented the ideal
components of a refined and tasty banquet, possible only for people with means.
Braudel, Capitalism, 129. “Danno ottimo nutrimento, risvegliano l’appetito,
massime a’ convalescenti e sono cordiali. Nuocono a gli infermi, e massime à
quei che hanno la febre e fanno venir tisichi i villani.” Residing on a high
position on the Great Chain of Being, they represented powerful people and,
accordingly, were sternly cautioned against for rustic people, to whom,
according to Pisanelli, they could be dangerous. Pisanelli, “De beccafichi,
Cap. xxvi” in Trattato de’ cibi, 33. Similarly, pheasants and partridges are
responsible for provoking asthma in rustic people (Cap. xxvii and xxix). In his
work, Bartolommeo Sacchi, known as Platina, paid much attention to the
idealistic principle of moderation derived from the Greek and Roman world,
along with his interest in the revival of Epicureanism. Platina, On Right
Pleasure. Eamon, Science, 163. Giovan Battista Zapata, Li maravigliosi secreti
di medecina, et chirurgia, nuovamente ritrovati per guarire ogni sorta
d’infirmità, raccolti dalla prattica dell’eccellente medico e chirurgico Giovan
Battista Zapata da Gioseppe Scientia chirurgico suo discepolo (Venice: Pietro
Deuchino, 1586; 1st ed. Rome, 1577), 37–41, quoted in Scully, “Unholy Feast,” 85.
Eamon, Science, 188. Bovio, Flagello. He gives the example of a doctor whose
wife was sick and how he cured her with a diet of French soup, capon, and wine
but could not apply the same treatment to his other patients in fear of losing
business; see 45–46. “più facilmente di carne si faccia carne che di qualunque
altra sorte di cibo.” Romoli, La singolare dottrina; “Delle carni in generale,”
205r. Domenico Romoli (n.d.) previously17420 2122 2324252627 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 4041Laura Giannettiworked as a cook with the name of Panunto
(oiled bread) and then became steward for Pope Julius III. For poor people and
peasants in particular, pork continued to be the meat of choice; and although
it had a negative reputation, in the case of people occupied in heavy physical
work, pork was reputed nourishing and healthful. Florentine communal statutes
of 1322 prohibited innkeepers from serving up culinary delights because they
could attract men and boys and incite them to commit the unspeakable sin of
sodomy. Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 159. During Cosimo the Elder’s regime
Florentine Archbishop St. Antonino—in his confessor’s manual—warned against
sloth, excess food, and drink as causes of sodomy. Toscan, Le Carnaval, vol. I:
190. See Giannetti Ruggiero, “The Forbidden Fruit,” especially pages 31–33.
Later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Church allowed
consumption of eggs, butter, and cheese during famines and epidemics. See
Gentilcore, Food and Health. One of the most important representatives of this
tendency was the Venetian noble Alvise Cornaro who wrote the extremely
successful Trattato della vita sobria in 1558. In general, moralists’ writers
of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance continued to advise against
eating food that would produce excessive heating of the body. The dietetic
literature, particularly the influential earlier author Michele Savonarola and
the later Baldassar Pisanelli, supported the restriction of birds and fowl to
particular categories of people held to be more capable of controlling the
passions they induced, such as the powerful and rich or those needier of
stimulation such as the sick and the ailing. Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks,”
115. See novella “De Novo Ludo” (Sercambi, Novelliere) available online at
www.classicitaliani. it/sercambi_novelle_08.htm where Ancroia enjoys her time
with the priest: “la donna, come vide Tomeo fuora uscito, preso un fiasco del
buon vino, una tovagliuola, alquanti pani e della carne cotta per Tomeo, et al
prete Frastaglia se n’andò e con lui si diè tutto il giorno piacere, pascendosi
di carne cruda e carne cotta per II bocche . . .” Apostolo Zeno in
the eighteenth century attributed the author name Gentile Sermini to the two
anonymous caudexes containing the novelle. Monica Marchi in her critical
edition of the novelle prefers to use Pseudo-Sermini instead of the
conventional name Gentile Sermini. See Marchi, “Introduzione,” in
Pseudo-Gentile Sermini, Novelle, 10–22. The novelle were written in the first half
of the fifteenth century. “[ . . . ] non altramente fece la valente
madonna Alisandra che, agustandole molto la carne e ‘l savore, per quello
dilettevole giardino, preso insieme d’acordo giornata . . .”
Pseudo-Gentile Sermini, Novelle, xi, 270. Fortini, Le giornate, I, xvi,
296–300. Grazzini (Il Lasca), Le Cene, I: vi, 80–94. Giannotti “Il vecchio
amoroso,” II: i, 40–41. On remedies for impotence, and early modern drama, see
Giannetti, “The Satyr.” “A Tiziano,” in Aretino, Lettere, 67–68. This section is
partially based on Giannetti Ruggiero, “The Forbidden Fruit,” 31–52. See
“Ragionamento Antonia e Nanna,” in Aretino, Sei giornate, 38. “The Roman
Porcellio Enjoys the Trick Played on the Friar in Confession,” in Bandello,
Novelle, vi: 125. See the discussion of the tale in Giannetti, Lelia’s Kiss,
181–82. Ibid., 181. On the battles between Quaresima and Carnival see
Ciappelli, Carnevale. Albala, Eating Right, 168 and 181. The painting is now in
the Museo Civico of Udine. Sercambi, “De vidua libidinosa” in “Appendice,”
Novelle inedite, 417–18. Matthews-Grieco, “Satyr and Sausages.” Several
novelle, from Boccaccio to Sacchetti, related the closeness in everyday life of
pigs and humans in rural and urban areas and the importance of pork for
sustenance, but also the negative perception of pigs and filthy and gross
animals. For instance, see Sacchetti LXX, CII, CXLVI, CCXIV. For Boccaccio see
“Calandrino e il porco.” Already in the Middle Ages, from the perspective of
the Great Chain of Being, pork and the quadrupeds occupied a questionable
position—they were not part of Air like birdsThe sausage wars4243 44 45 46 47
4849 50 51 5253 54 55 5657 58 59 60 61nor of the Earth but somewhere in
between; and pig in particular occupied one of the lowest position among all
quadrupeds. Grieco, “Alimentazione e classi sociali,” 378–79. Pigs were
voracious animals and, according to the Galenic doctor, eating their fattening
meat would transform a person in a pig, as a later image of Gola as a woman
sitting on a pork would make really explicit. For instance, in the second half
of the sixteenth century, Baldassar Pisanelli advised eating sausages and
salami in moderation, but recognized in them some positive characteristics such
as reawakening of appetite and helping to make drinking more pleasurable.
Pisanelli, Trattato de’ cibi, c. 13. Platina, On Right Pleasure, Book VI, 281.
Ibid., 277. Ficino, Three Books on Life, Book 2, 181. See http://lauramalinverni.wordpress.com/201702/04/i-salumi-alla-corte-estensecristoforo-messisbugo/ See
the section “Sausages and Salami” in Matthews-Grieco, “Satyr and Sausages.”
Pietro Aretino in his comedy Il Filosofo summarizes well this new ambivalence
about pork when he had one of his characters resolutely affirm: “refined sugary
confections (the biancomangiari) and quails do not stimulate taste as do steaks
and sausages.” Pietro Aretino, Il Filosofo, III, 15. See the text in Romai,
Plaisance, and Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 313–15. Firenzuola is also
author of the famous dialogue On the Beauty of Women. vv. 12–14. “Canzon, vanne
in Fiorenza a quei poeti,” v. 76 The Virtuosi academy was the continuation of
the Vignaiuoli academy, one of the first “academies” of sixteenth-century
Italy, an informal gathering of intellectuals that met for dinner, witty
conversations, music, and poetry in the early 1530s. Around 1535 or slightly
later, the Vignaiuoli renamed themselves Academia della Virtù and/or Reame
della Virtù and continued their activities until ca. 1540. Meetings, often held
at Carnival time, featured improvised speeches and the recitation of poems,
frequently accompanied by music. The Vignaiuoli was one of the first academies
in Italy to privilege the usage of vernacular and became most famous for the
poetic production of so-called “learned erotica,” as well as for their
anti-Petrarchan and anti-classicist poetic stance. Grappa, now identified with
Francesco Beccuti, comments on Firenzuola’s poem. See Grappa, Il Comento. On
Beccuti see Fiorini Galassi “Cicalamenti.” The allusion here is to the poem
Sopra il forno by Giovanni della Casa, De’ Fichi by Francesco Maria Molza, and
In lode delle castagne by Andrea Lori. All three are poems dedicated to the
female genitals. “Mangiasi la salsiccia innanzi et drieto / a pranso, a cena, o
vuo’ a lesso o vuo’ arrosto / arrosto et dietro è più da grandi assai; /
innanzi et lessa, a dirti un bel segreto / non l’usar mai fin che non passa
Agosto.” vv. 30–35. “Perchè in estate gli uomini sono meno capaci di fare
l’amore, le donne invece lo sono di più [. . .]? Perché gli uomini
sono più inclini a fare l’amore d’inverno, le donne in estate? Forse perché gli
uomini sono di natura più caldi e secchi [. . .]?” Aristotele,
Problemi, ed. Maria Fernanda Ferrini (Milan: Bompiani, 2000), IV, 25–28, quoted
in Pignatti, ed., Ludi Esegetici II, 200. “O vecchi benedetti! / questo è quel
cibo che vi fa tornare giovani e lieti, et spesso ancho al zinnare” vv. 58–60.
“Fassi buona salsiccia d’ogni carne: /dicon l’istorie che d’un bel
torello/dedalo salsicciaio già fece farla /e a mona Pasife diè a mangiarne?
Molti oggidí la fan con l’asinello . . .” vv. 46–50. vv. 61–65. “Basta
che i salsiccioli/cotti nei bigonciuoli, / donne, dove voi fate i sanguinacci,
/ son cagion che degli uomini si facci.” vv. 72–75. On the cultural function of
humor see Matthews-Grieco, “Satyr and Sausages,” 37.62 For the text of the
canzone, see Grazzini, “In lode della salsiccia,” in Romei, Plaisance, and
Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 227–30. For Grazzini “Comento di maestro
Nicchodemo dalla Pietra al Migliaio sopra il Capitolo della salsiccia del
Lasca,” see ibid., 231–309. There is no secure date regarding the writing of
the Comento but it should have been written around 1539–40. See Franco
Pignatti, “Introduzione,” in Romei, Plaisance, and Pignatti, eds., Ludi
esegetici, 163. 63 Ibid., vv. 22–33. 64 Ibid., vv. 76–81. 65 Ibid., vv. 94–111.
66 “La bellezza del tagliere non è come forse molti credono, e non consiste in
l’esser bianco, non di buon legno, non tondo, non ben fatto, ma si bene
nell’essere pieno di buona carne ben cotta e ben trinciata; . . .
tolghinsi pur costoro i capelli di fin oro, la fronte più del ciel serena, le
stellanti ciglia . . . come dire le Laure, le Beatrici, le Cintie e
le Flore!” Grazzini, Comento di Maestro, 240–41. 67 Sonetto n. 5 of Canzoniere
on the name of Laura: “Quando io movo i sospiri a chiamar voi” 68 “Perciò che
quei traditori de’ medici la prima cosa levono il porco e non vogliono a patto
nessuno che n’habbia l’ammalato per mantenergli bene il male addosso, sendo il
porco e maggiormente la salsiccia, habile e possente a guarir d’ogni malattia e
più sana che la sena, più necessaria che la cassia, più cordiale che il
zucchero rosato, più ristorativa che il manicristo, et insomma ha più virtù che
la bettonica.” Grazzini, Comento di Maestro, 280–81. The terzina commented is
103–05: “Io crederria d’ogni gran mal guarire/ quando haver ne potessi un
rocchio intero,/ancor ch’io fussi bello e per morire.” 69 In Dolce, Capitoli.
70 “dono invero magnifico e reale,/da far morir di gola l’astinenza/e leccarsi
le dita a Carnevale.” Ibid., vv. 10–12. 71 “E chi m’avesse allora allora
punto/aria veduto uscir liquor divino/del corpo, ch’era pien di grasso e
d’unto.” Ibid., vv. 43–45. 72 Some authors trying to dignify pork, recycled
Galen’s idea expressed in De alimentorum facultatibus where he argued
troublingly that pork was pleasurable because it was similar to human’s flesh.
For instance “Le carni del Porco fra tutte le altre carni dei quadrupedi han
vittorie in nutrire e dar più forza ai corpi perché cosi nel gusto come nello
odore par che habbiano una peculiar unione e fratellanza col corpo umano si
come da alcuni si è inteso che per non sapere hanno gustato la carne
dell’huomo” [For taste as well as for odor, it seems that the meat of pork has
a peculiar unity and likeness with the human body, as some reported, who tasted
human flesh while not knowing it] in Un breve e notabile trattato del
reggimento della sanità, ridotto dalla sostanza della medicina di Roberto
Groppetio 362–63 v. The little volume is attached to La singular dottrina. It
is not clear whether it was written by Panunto himself or not. For a similar
affirmation see also: Della natura et virtù de’ cibi, 68v. Not all agreed with
this troubling similarity but it was quite a common affirmation in many medical
treatises and in some literary works of the time. 73 In Romei, Plaisance, and
Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 316–18. 74 “Qui non è osso da buttare al cane,
/ e’l suo santo panunto è altra cosa/che lo impepato overo il mrzapane,” vv.
25–27. 75 “Dicon che la midolla del panunto,/incartocciata come un cialdoncino,
/ tal che di sopra e di sotto appaia l’unto, / è un boccon sì ghiotto e sì
divino, / che se lo provi ti parrà migliore/ch’un beccafico fresco e
grassellino,” vv. 38–42. It should be noted that even the luxury food, the
beccafico, had strong sexual overtones. 76 The cultural discourses that
surrounded salad in early modern Italy and Europe were complex and rich,
ranging from sexuality and manners, to taste, gastronomy, and class identity.
See Giannetti, “Renaissance Food-Fashioning.” Online at: http://escholarship.
org/uc/item/1n97s00d. 77 “è un boccon sì ghiotto e sì divino, / che se lo provi
ti parrà migliore/ch’un beccafico fresco e grassellino,” vv. 40–43. Franzesi,
“Capitolo sopra la salsiccia,” 316–18.78 “Questo non è già pasto da tinello/ma
da ricchi signori e gran prelati / che volentieri si pascon del budello.”
Ibid., vv. 79–81. 79 On the disciplining vision of the sixteenth century and a
counter-discourse in dramatic literature see Giannetti, “Of Eels and Pears.”Bibliography
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5, no. 1 (March 2010): 106–18.PART IIIVisualizing sexuality in word and image10
GIANANTONIO BAZZI, CALLED “IL SODOMA” Homosexuality in art, life, and history
James M. SaslowFrom his mid-thirties, the Lombard-Sienese painter Gianantonio
Bazzi (1477– 1549) was publicly known as “Il Sodoma.” This epithet translates
as “Sodom,” the biblical city eponymous with sexual transgressions that were
then both a sin and a crime. Sodomy bracketed multiple acts, but most commonly
referred to love between men; so, his nickname might be freely rendered as “Mr.
Sodomite.” Our principal biographical source is Giorgio Vasari, whose Vita of
Bazzi (1568) recounts several revealing or scandalous episodes. A few are
exaggerated or false, skewed by Vasari’s disdain for both homosexuality and
Siena. However, his plausible explanation of how the artist earned his
sobriquet is not refuted by other evidence. Vasari describes him as a gay and
licentious man, keeping others entertained and amused with his manner of
living, which was far from creditable. . . . [S]ince he always had
about him boys and beardless youths, whom he loved more than was decent, he
acquired the by-name of Sodoma.1 While sources for private feelings are scanty
and often problematic for this period, and Sodoma left little first-person testimony,
this and other records suggest a prima facie case for the artist’s erotic
interest in other males. He is unique in Renaissance Italy as the only artist
whose homosexuality was frankly avowed and widely known. His character and
sexual interests offer a provocative case study of the intersections between
eros and creativity, and how that sensibility was manifested in his imagery.
His experiences further suggest that there were overlapping audiences eager to
receive and respond to that sensibility. Sodoma exhibited other character
traits also considered eccentric or insolent, and was fond of capricious
pranks; the monks at Monteoliveto Maggiore, his first large commission,
referred to him as “Il Mattaccio,” the “crazy fool.”2 Hewas an impudent mocker
of moral decorum: Vasari reports indignantly about the nickname Sodoma that “in
this name, far from taking umbrage or offence, he used to glory, writing about
it songs and verses in terza rima, and singing them to the lute with no little
facility.” He was also infamous for his f lamboyant clothing and for keeping an
entire menagerie in his home, including pet birds, monkeys, squirrels, and race
horses; Vasari called the house “Noah’s Ark.”3 He entered his horses in public
contests, and we can date his sobriquet back to a series of races in Florence
from 1513 to 1515. When his steed won, the heralds asked what owner’s name to
announce; Bazzi replied, “Sodoma, Sodoma,” indicating that he was already known
by that name and willing to be associated with it. The incident also reveals
the precarious social landscape that known or suspected sodomites had to
negotiate. Thumbing his nose at a mocking public backfired: a group of outraged
elders incited a mob attack, during which he narrowly escaped being stoned to
death.4 Anecdotes and documents notwithstanding, historians have long tried,
for widely differing reasons, to chip away at the foundations of a
historiographical tradition dating back to Vasari himself. For it was Vasari,
unwittingly anticipating modern queer scholarship, who first understood Sodoma
as having homosexual desires and assumed some connection between his sexuality
and his work.5 To the prudish chronicler, that connection was negative: Vasari
blamed Sodoma’s failure to achieve greatness on his excesses of character, from
laziness to carnality, scolding that if he had worked harder, “he would not
have been reduced to madness and miserable want in old age at the end of his
life, which was always eccentric and beastly.”6 Value judgment aside, the
assumption that artists’ personalities and passions are intimately imbricated
with their work runs throughout Vasari’s biographies. Modern generations,
beginning with the homophile Victorian critic-historians John Addington Symonds
and Walter Pater, acknowledged the same connection with a positive valence,
reading Sodoma’s androgynous figures and distinctive iconography as revealing
glimpses into the sensibilities of a man aware of both his own desires and the
gap separating that passion from social norms. The path they laid down guided
post-Stonewall gay studies through the early 1980s.7 More recently, postmodern
theoreticians, stressing the ever-shifting social constructions of sexuality
and identity, have countered such attempts to posit any individual sexual
identity or group homosexual consciousness, however embryonic and sporadic, in
that era. Their methodology, inspired by scholars from Michel Foucault to Eve
Sedgwick and David Halperin, dismisses such formulations as anachronistic over-reading.8
The generational shift in goals and methods, from “gay and lesbian studies” to
“queer studies,” instigated an ongoing debate. These theoretical polarities
have implications for the present study, which aims to excavate the embodied
passions and creative process of an individual who felt homosexual desire, and
to reconstruct, to whatever extent possible, an early moment in the gradual,
fitful emergence of self-aware homosexual sensibilities and self-expression.Although
I defer consideration of this theoretical controversy until the essay’s end, my
working hypothesis parallels the nuanced historiography of Christopher Reed,
who reminds us that, although readings of Renaissance homosexuality as similar
to modern conceptions were convincingly challenged by Foucault’s insistence
that [the modern] sexual typology was not invented until the nineteenth
century, [nevertheless] no idea is without roots, and subsequent scholarship
provided evidence that convinced even Foucault to recognize stages in the
eighteenth, the seventeenth, and even the sixteenth century leading to the
invention of homosexuality as a personality type.9 As a personality, Sodoma was
among the few early modern artists who visualized homoerotic desire. This essay
investigates that process along three intertwined axes: life, work, and
historiography. His biography provides a unique microhistory of an early avowed
homosexual and his culture’s understanding of that inclination. His works gave
visual expression to his erotic sensibility, and contemporary patrons and
spectators, from pederastic monks to libertine aristocrats, were ready to
receive it sympathetically. Finally, I conclude with a more personal
historiographical meditation on the controversy over whether embryonic
homosexual consciousness can be located in early modern culture.Early religious
works Arriving in Siena as a young man, Sodoma established relations with the
Chigi family and the Benedictine order, who commissioned numerous works, mainly
on sacred themes.10 Officially, since Christianity condemned all
non-procreative sex, theological narratives offered next to no scope for
“homo-representation”; but his religious pictures nonetheless provide material
for queer readings. If a subject contained any potential for imagining or
accentuating a homoerotic subtext, Sodoma exploited it more than any artist of
his time except Michelangelo (also a lover of men), seldom missing an
opportunity to foreground male beauty or intimacy in nude or suggestively clad
bodies. Many images celebrate the boyish, androgynous type that was the most
common object of adult male desire at the time, while a few idealize the more
heroic male adult body; he often derived both figure types from classical
sculptures with a homoerotic pedigree. And many members of the audience for his
imagery, both clerical and lay, were likely to appreciate this eroticized
beauty. The first example of the interlinked sensibilities of artist and
spectators is his fresco cycle for the abbey at Monteoliveto Maggiore, outside
Siena (1505–08), depicting the life of the order’s founder, St. Benedict.11
Payment records confirm several Vasarian details about the artist, from his
early nickname, Mattaccio, to his use of apprentices ( garzoni ) and his
fondness for extravagant finery. Although the austere life of the founder of
monasticism was unpromising terrain,Sodoma found novel pretexts for inserting
numerous visual features—often rare or unique inventions—that would appeal to
the homosexual or bisexual gaze. Most striking in its novel and ironic
departure from the subject’s nominal moral is the illustration of Benedict
seeking relief from a female devil’s sexual temptation by stripping off his
clothes and f linging himself into spiny briar bushes12 (Figure 10.1). Unlike
the few earlier representations of this scene, Sodoma renders the vegetation
soft and unthreatening: rather than conveying mortification of the f lesh, he
presents in full frontal view a nude of heroic proportions, reclining
comfortably in a pose modeled on classical prototypes. The all’antica beauty of
the body displaces attention from the saint’s physical self-abnegation onto his
potential to arouse erotic desire—precisely what Benedict is trying to suppress.13
The most personally revealing of the frescoes is the Miracle of the Colander
(Figure 10.2), in which the saint and his homespun miracle (repairing a
household sieve) are shunted to the left, leaving the central focus on the
figure of Sodoma himself, showing off his legendary wardrobe. His self-portrait
corroborates Vasari’s disdainful take on him as a fop, “caring for nothing so
earnestly as for dressing in pompous fashion, wearing doublets of brocade,
cloaks all adornedFIGURE 10.1 Sodoma, Abbey of Monteoliveto Maggiore, Saint
Benedict Is Tempted by a Female Devil, fresco, 1505–8.Photo credit:
Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.Gianantonio
Bazzi, called “Il Sodoma”FIGURE 10.2187Sodoma, Monteoliveto, Miracle of the
Colander, fresco, 1505–8.Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività
Culturali/Art Resource, NY.with cloth of gold, the richest caps, necklaces, and
other suchlike fripperies only fit for clowns and charlatans.” Here, as elsewhere,
Vasari seems well informed about specific details of Sodoma’s life and work:
his comment is supported by the abbey account books, which describe a garment
much like the one Sodoma wears here, an embroidered gold cape listed among
elaborate items of apparel as a form of payment from the monks, who had
received it from a wealthy nobleman.14 The artist also surrounds himself with
exotic animals, just as Vasari noted he liked to do: birds and two pet badgers.
Sodoma’s sartorial tendencies and other biographical details connect him to a
contemporaneous homosexual demimonde in ways that Vasari himself was perhaps
unaware of, but which is well attested in social history of the period. His
clothing, fondness for androgynous youths, and writing of satirical poetry are
all behaviors then associated with sodomites as an identifiable group with its
own recognizable customs. Research by Michael Rocke, Guido Ruggiero, and others
into the prevalence of sodomy and the emergence of urban homosexual networks in
early modern Italy has revealed that they were so widespread they can scarcely
be called a “subculture.” As Rocke puts it, Bazzi’s brand of sexuality became
“an increasingly common feature of the public scene and the collective
mentality.”15 In Florence, a special sodomy court heard hundreds of casesannually
until 1502; a substantial percentage of males passed through at some time in
their lives.16 Hence “sodomy was . . . a common part of male
experience that had widespread social ramifications.” Rocke notes that “this
sexual practice was probably familiar at all levels of the social hierarchy”
and among a wide range of professions.17 Among those occupations are the
“beardless boys” whom Vasari blames for the artist’s nickname, probably his apprentices
and workshop assistants. Artists’ studios being all-male, “the potential for
homoerotic relations in such an environment was high,”18 and intimate,
sometimes sexual relations between assistants or models and their masters are
suggested by documents on artists from Donatello to Leonardo da Vinci and
Botticelli. Closer to Sodoma’s time, the bisexual sculptor Benvenuto Cellini
was taken to court by the mother of one apprentice for coercing him sexually.19
This common social pattern gives Sodoma’s behavior wider implications, since
his actions were shared with countless other men. His wardrobe is the clearest
exemplar of those erotic implications. Helmut Puff has documented the role of
material culture in formulating and enacting sexual subcultures, and how
extravagant clothing was a marker of effeminacy and sexual deviance. Exchange
of rare and costly textiles or clothing could betoken homosexual relationships,
either as gifts for love or payment for services.20 By the mid-fifteenth
century, San Bernardino da Siena’s sermons thundered against boys’ receiving
clothing and money for sex.21 Within the field of costume studies, which
asserts “the centrality of clothes as the material establishers of identity
itself,” clothing is understood as a set of materialized symbols with social
functions and meanings. As Jones and Stallybrass have explored, clothes can
either embody and reinforce submission to normative social roles (uniforms) or,
when deployed in violation of sumptuary standards, mark the wearer as consciously
rejecting those norms—as Sodoma did by appropriating the dress of an
aristocrat.22 Thus, portraying himself in extravagant, coded finery was a
subversive act of self-identification with a marginalized minority: in Andrew
Ladis’s phrase, “a pose of arrant foppishness, as if the painter personified
the very diabolical temptations of the f lesh that he painted and lived, not
excluding what was commonly known as ‘the monastic vice’”23 —a revealing
euphemism for sodomy. The artist gives freest play to erotic signifiers in the
scene of St. Benedict welcoming two disciples, Saints Maurus and Placidus, amid
the wealthy youths’ retinue and onlookers24 (Figure 10.3). While the disciples
are modestly clothed and posed, both the epicene youth on the center axis and
the African groom at right are shown da tergo, Italian for a rear view that
spotlights the buttocks. The central youth and his mirror image at far left are
boyish androgynes, embodying the predominant pattern of pederasty, in which
mature men sought stillfeminine adolescents for anal intercourse. Thus, some
viewers, at least, would have appreciated the erotic implications of the
motif.25Gianantonio Bazzi, called “Il Sodoma”Sodoma, Monteoliveto, St. Benedict
welcomes Sts. Maurus and Placidus, fresco, 1505–8.FIGURE 10.3Photo credit:
Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.Reinforcing
this erotic interpretation, the two youthful onlookers at center and left also
sport versions of Sodoma’s own elaborate clothing, as does the groom to the
right of center. They f launt the styles associated with homosexual seduction:
tight multicolored stockings, long hair, and extravagant fringes, hats, and
colors.26 Such clothing had long been associated with sodomites; Alainof
Lille’s De planctu naturae (ca. 1160) lamented that these men “over-feminise
themselves with womanish adornments.”27 San Bernardino da Siena inveighed
against parents who let their sons wear short doublets and “stockings with a
little piece in front and one in back, so that they show a lot of f lesh for
the sodomites,” resulting in such an appealing adolescent always “having the
sodomite on his tail.”28 These suggestive details may have been projections of
Sodoma’s erotic mindset, but it is highly likely that they resonated with some
of the monks who were his primary audience. Shifting our focus from the artist,
we should also examine the mental world of his viewers. Reception theory or
spectator theory asks not what did the artist put into the work, but, rather,
what did the audience take out of it? What interests, beliefs, or habits of
seeing did his audience have, and how did that subject-position influence their
reading of his messages? As Adrian Randolph observed regarding the reception of
Donatello’s homoerotic bronze David, an artwork can function as “a receptacle
for the beholder’s imaginative concerns.” His and other studies have explored
how reception of religious art was determined by the viewers’ gender,
particularly in convents, where nuns often specified subjects relevant to their
experience; these insights can be extended to male religious and to sexuality
as well as gender.29 Sodoma’s audience here was exclusively male clergy,
proverbially stereotyped as sodomitical.30 Temptations were exacerbated by the
enforced closeness of clerical living arrangements: several scenes depicting
Benedict and his monks highlight their day-to-day intimacies both emotional and
physical.31 To head off such dangers, the rules of the order specified that no
brother is permitted to enter the cell of another without permission of the
abbot or a prior; if this is permitted, they may not remain together in the
cell with the door closed. And no monk may touch another in any way
. . . A light was to burn all night in the dormitory area and
latrine, presumably to prevent secret trysts under cover of darkness.32 Such
precautions were not entirely effective, as a few visual examples attest. A
near-contemporary satirical painted plate depicts a monk pointing to a youth’s
bare bottom; the caption explains, “I am a monk, I act like a rabbit” (Figure
10.4)—then, as now, a symbol of tireless sexuality, particularly
homosexuality.33 A Flemish print depicts a 1559 event in Bruges in which three
monks were burned at the stake for “sodomitical godlessness.”34 These starkly
contrasting examples dramatize the contradictory culture within the religious
world: male–male sex was acknowledged, though officially taboo and sometimes
severely punished, yet often tolerated and even laughed about. Outside
monastery walls, free from Church proscriptions, Sodoma found more overt
opportunities to celebrate such love.FIGURE 10.4 Majolica plate, attributed to
Master C.I., ca. 1510–20. Musée national de la Renaissance, Écouen, France.Photo
credit: ©RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.Secular subjects Sodoma illustrated
secular subjects for private patrons and domestic settings. His most
career-boosting painting depicted the Roman heroine Lucretia, whose suicide to
preserve family honor after she was raped symbolized the ideal of married
women’s honorable chastity; gifted to Pope Leo X, it earned the artist a papal
knighthood.35 When the opportunity arose, however, as with sacred images, hepaid
unusual attention to the homoerotic elements of myth and history, which offered
explicit exemplars of male devotion and passion. And the audience for his
best-known classical project, a fresco cycle for the papal banker Agostino Chigi,
was the sophisticated, libertine Roman society who were as likely to share his
sexual interests and habits of spectatorship as were the monks at
Monteoliveto.36 In 1516–17, Chigi commissioned Sodoma to decorate the bedroom
of his villa, now called the Farnesina. The wealthy financier’s love nest,
shared with his mistress Francesca Ordeaschi, offers a revealing microcosm of
the hedonistic, tolerant atmosphere of High Renaissance Rome, where even popes
had mistresses and bastards, and humanist classical culture provided
justification for libertine bisexuality all’antica.37 Numerous rooms were
painted with erotic myths both heterosexual and homosexual.38 Given Chigi’s
personality and interests, Sodoma was a sympathetic addition to his creative
team. Although Sodoma married in 1510, his nickname was public knowledge by
1513, when he registered as “Sodoma” in a list of racehorse owners, and two
years later had the heralds call that name. After describing our artist’s
clothes, manners, and mocking spirit, including the racing incident, Vasari
reports that “in [these] things Agostino, who liked the man’s humour, found the
greatest amusement in the world.” The appreciative patron requested episodes
from the life of Alexander the Great, historically implied as bisexual.39 The
principal scene recreates a lost Greek painting of Alexander’s marriage to
Roxana, known through an ancient ekphrasis—a classicizing tribute to Chigi and
his beloved40 (Figure 10.5). The emperor proffers a marriage crown to the
princess, while putti cavort in playful eroticism. To the right stand two
idealized men: nude Hymen, god of marriage, and torch-bearing Hephaestion,
Alexander’s intimate companion and, in some accounts, lover. Both figures are
based on a well-known Greek statue, the Apollo Belvedere, depicting the most
vigorously bisexual of the gods.41 While principally a heterosexual scene,
then, the picture’s sub-theme is nude male beauty and the passion Hephaestion
represents. Sodoma’s audience was predisposed to appreciate this story’s erotic
duality. Many patrons and viewers had bisexual or homosexual desires; an
anecdote in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (ca. 1514) reports that “Rome
has as many sodomites as the meadows have lambs.” The erotic tone among these
clerics, aristocrats, artists, and writers was light-hearted; while sodomy was
outlawed, enforcement was spotty and penalties light.42 Eyewitness testimony
for “queer visuality” at the Farnesina comes from raunchy bisexual author
Pietro Aretino, who spent time there while Sodoma was painting. Aretino
recorded an ancient statue of a satyr chasing a boy, an explicit complement to
the loftier male love in Sodoma’s fresco. He wrote to Sodoma twenty-five years
later, expressing nostalgia for their shared youth, and wishing that “we were
embracing each other now with that warm feeling of love with which we used to
embrace when we were enjoying Agostino Chigi’s home so much.”43 One glimpses
the atmosphere of an affectionately demonstrative, pansexual pleasure-palace.
Like the life it looked out upon, Sodoma’s picture is a mélange of sexualities,
with intimacy between men given “equal time.”FIGURE 10.5 Sodoma, The Marriage
of Alexander and Roxana, Villa Farnesina, Rome, fresco, 1517–19.Photo credit:
Scala/Art Resource, NY.Further evidence for the casual attitude toward
homosexuality—Sodoma’s in particular—is a set of epigrammatic couplets
published in 1517 by Eurialo d’Ascoli, a poet in the circles around Chigi,
Aretino, and Leo X, bluntly informing his readers that “Sodoma is a pederast.”
The poem celebrates Sodoma’s painting of Lucretia, which earned his knighthood;
only the final verses turn comic. Having praised the artist for verisimilitude
that brings Lucretia back from the dead, Eurialo imagines her interpreting this
miracle as an opportunity to convert the artist sexually. The narrator then
asks her his own facetious question, implying that as a sodomite the artist
would not normally be inspired by female subjects: Now beautiful Venus grants
me the nourishment of light breezes [i.e., earthly life], So that I can reclaim
you, Sodoma, from tender youths. Sodoma is a pederast; why then, Lucretia, did
he make you So lifelike? He has our buttocks instead of Ganymede. Nunc mihi
pulchra Venus tenui dat vescier aura, Ut revocem a teneris, Sodoma, te pueris.
Sodoma paedico est; cur te Lucretia vivam Fecit? Habet nostras pro Ganimede
nates.44Sodoma’s knighthood was cited by whitewashing early scholars as proof
that the artist could not have been homosexual, since such sins would have
disqualified him from religious honors.45 But here we see again how casually
this milieu treated sexual transgressions. The fabulously wealthy Chigi married
Ordeaschi in 1519, and Leo X—himself a reputed sodomite who, Vasari records,
“took pleasure in eccentric and light-hearted figures of fun such as [Sodoma]
was”— legitimized their four children.46 Worldly success was hardly evidence
against impropriety. Eurialo’s couplets recall Vasari’s statement about
Sodoma’s nickname that “he used to glory [in it], writing about it songs and
verses in terza rima, and singing them to the lute.” As with clothing, Sodoma
was participating in another cultural tradition that linked artists, writers,
and readers of non-normative sexuality in a web of self-expression. Bawdy
burlesque poetry treated all sexuality with lighthearted comedy; Sodoma’s texts
have not survived, but we can garner some sense of their contents and tone from
verses by contemporaries. What Deborah Parker labels “a poetry of
transgression,” full of sexual innuendo and whimsical exaggeration, circulated
in manuscript, public readings, and print.47 The father of burlesque poetry,
Francesco Berni, was banished from Rome in 1523 for too openly mourning a young
male lover.48 The genre became popular among visual artists eager to establish
their intellectual credentials through writing, including such homosexuals or
bisexuals as Michelangelo, Bronzino, and Cellini.49 Sodoma’s personality chimed
perfectly with the genre’s subversive insolence. Bronzino’s capitolo “In Praise
of the Galleys,” for example, unashamedly eroticizes the all-male world of
oarsmen on ships, muscular and sweaty males confined in close quarters where
sex among themselves was the only outlet: here “boiled and roasted meats are
hardly ever mixed,” a common metaphor for vaginal (wet) versus anal (dry) sex.
Berni, expanding on the trope that priests are sodomites, declares that their
example is infecting monks, using a fruity symbol for boys’ buttocks: Peaches
were for a long time food for prelates, But since everyone likes a good meal,
Even friars, who fast and pray, Crave for peaches today. Le pesche eran già
cibo da prelati, Ma, perché ad ognun piace i buon bocconi, Voglion oggi le
pesche insin ai frati, Che fanno l’astinenzie e l’orazioni.50 The sardonic,
guilt-free humor of such texts suggests, as Domenico Zanrè describes, “a
marginal undercurrent operating within an official cultural environment,” and
demonstrates that “certain individuals were able to produce alternative
literary responses within a dominant . . . milieu that attempted to
contain and, insome cases, exclude them.”51 An incident around 1530
corroborates Sodoma’s own refusal to accept derogatory comments from authority:
when a Spanish soldier insulted him, the artist got revenge by drawing his
portrait and identifying him to his superiors.52 San Bernardino was furious
precisely because so many sodomites seemed unrepentant and unafraid of divine
judgment. What enraged him and Vasari was not these men’s behavior alone, but
the quality Italians call faccia tosta—“cheek” or “a big mouth”—refusal to give
even lip service to official mores.53 The burlesque mode evinces the first buds
of an oppositional response to social disapproval: a selfaware articulation of
outsider status, and an emerging rebellion against social convention that
opened a space, however narrow, for asserting alternative consciousness and
self-affirming values.54 Greco-Roman texts and images served Sodoma, like other
homosexual artists and patrons from Michelangelo to Caravaggio, as validation
for their all’antica desires and pretexts for visualizing male beauty and
eros.55 Within educated elites, a tolerant, classically inspired hedonism held
its own against legal and clerical taboos until late in Sodoma’s lifetime, when
the Council of Trent began its anticlassical reform (1545). In this libertine
culture, an artist widely known for sexual nonconformity was able to smilingly
adopt a derogatory nickname as a public identity and even f launt his sexual
interests in word and image, with little harm to his string of major
commissions and honors.Later religious works Sodoma’s late commissions were
predominantly religious. As at Monteoliveto, these images emphasize the erotic
appeal of figures who are nominally not sexual: saints, angels, and soldiers.
Whereas at the monastery it was possible to analyze the reactions of a specific
clerical audience, commissions for more public locations could be viewed by the
whole cross-section of society, some proportion of which, as outlined earlier,
would have understood and welcomed homoerotic allusion. As Patricia Simons has
explained, “Renaissance imagery might appear to condemn non-normative sex
. . ., but it was possible for viewers to take works in other,
imaginative directions.”56 Sodoma’s best-known work, depicting Saint Sebastian
(1525), epitomizes his typical traits: androgynous classicizing male beauty,
emotional pathos and sensuous chiaroscuro (Figure 10.6).57 Iconographically, it
offers a prime example of his sensitive antennae for elements of religious
narrative with specialized appeal. Sebastian was a Roman soldier who refused to
renounce Christianity, for which Emperor Diocletian, despite their intimate
personal relationship, ordered him shot by archers. Saint Ambrose’s hagiography
establishes their strong emotional bond, open to erotic interpretation: he
notes that Sebastian was “greatly loved” by Diocletian and his co-emperor
Maximian (intantum carus erat Imperitoribus).58 Sodoma paints a virtually nude,
Apollo-like Sebastian with blood trickling from several wounds. He looks
longingly at the angel bringing a martyr’s crown—his reward for loving
sacrifice to God—with an expression that couldFIGURE 10.6Sodoma, Saint
Sebastian, processional banner, Pitti Palace, Florence,1525. Photo credit:
Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.equally connote
divine or earthly ecstasy. While his bond with the emperor offered a secular
hint at Sebastian’s sexual inclinations, the implied passion between Sebastian
and the godhead is a more important, and universal, emotional dynamic, with a
profound yet ambivalent homoerotic subtext. For all Christians, intense, loving
union with Christ was the ultimate spiritual goal; for men, however,
exhortation to the symbolically feminine ideal of passive, ecstatic submission
to another male raised the specter of sodomy. The phallic arrows piercing
Sebastian evoke sexual penetration, a symbol of the saint’s necessary, but
problematic, feminization;59 they also recall Cupid’s love-inducing shafts,
multiplying the signals for an erotic response. Cinquecento image-makers were
expected to encourage such a passionate response because, as Simons observes in
relation to Christ, for Sebastian too “the visualization of supreme beauty was
necessary in order to induce reverence.”60 Theoretically, religious images
could function on these two levels simultaneously, without contradiction: the
lure of physical beauty would hopefully lead the viewer to a higher spiritual
adoration. In practice, however, it was difficult to police the borders between
earthly and heavenly passion. We know that Sebastian’s beauty was experienced
as problematically titillating by at least one sex: the Florentine artist-monk
Fra Bartolommeo painted a nude image of the saint so appealing that female
parishioners admitted in confession that it stimulated carnal thoughts, after
which it was taken down.61 It was just such temptations that the Council of
Trent acknowledged when it set out to purge church imagery of eroticism. So, it
is not difficult to imagine that men, as well as women, were attracted to
Sodoma’s provocative Sebastian in the physical sense.62 The “seeming
contradictions of deliberately evoking erotic desire in religious painting”
have been parsed by Jill Burke, who sees in this practice “a deep and knowing
ambivalence toward sexuality” that signals “a huge variance between official
rhetoric and widely accepted practice.”63 By including formal and iconographic
cues to a homoerotic response, Sodoma could appeal to men who, like himself,
experienced love and desire in male terms. Like extravagant dress and burlesque
poetry, pictorial ambiguity opened another narrow cultural space for expressing
alternative sexuality.Historiography: a modest proposal This essay has aimed to
demonstrate three propositions: that Sodoma was known for, and acknowledged,
desire for men; that his work evinces a distinctive mode of seeing and
representing that expresses that erotic inclination; and that contemporaneous
audiences would have appreciated that sensibility. As Ruggiero asserts, It is
no longer possible to ignore the general shared culture of the erotic and its
omnipresence in daily exchange, nor is it possible to overlook the particular
subcultures that coexisted at the time and that were such a central part of
daily life.64Without claiming anachronistically that this evidence establishes
anything so coherent and exclusive as a modern “gay identity,” I submit that
these emerging networks and customs, alongside visual and literary production
on homosexual themes, constitute early shoots of an alternative sexual
consciousness that would reach critical mass only during the Enlightenment. I
accept the historiographic formulation of the Renaissance as “early modern,”
which stresses continuities from that culture into the modern era, presupposing
a model of cultural change that is gradual and evolutionary rather than abrupt
and discontinuous. To quote Reed again, “If modern ideas of sexual identity and
artistic self-expression cannot be simply mapped onto the Renaissance
. . . it is nevertheless true that these notions have Renaissance
roots.”65 However, to seek the “roots” of anything “modern” in anything “past”
has become problematic since the advent of postmodern theory. There are now, as
Reed observes, “wildly varying interpretations of Renaissance art’s
relationship to homosexuality”66 —more broadly, of relationships among desire,
behavior, identity, and self-expression. To social constructionists, the search
for glimmers of an alternative, proto-modern awareness in Sodoma’s ambiente is
misguided. There can be no transhistorical connections between sexual actors in
different periods, because sexual identity is not innate or fixed; rather, it
is created through social discourses that define and control sexuality, an
unstable product of external forces acting on the passive individual. There
were no homosexual persons, only homosexual acts. Puff ’s formulation: “Sodomy
was not thought of as a lifelong orientation, let alone a social identity,” is
echoed by Reed’s: “[S]exual behavior in Renaissance Italy was not seen as a
basis for individual identity.”67 This school coined the term “essentialist” to
disparage earlier researchers who, from Symonds to John Boswell, saw sufficient
commonality with those in earlier times who desired other men to justify searching
the Middle Ages and Renaissance for branches of a sexual family tree dating
back before 1867 (when “homosexual” was coined). Without accepting all the
methodological baggage identified with an often over-simplified “essentialism,”
one can still maintain that someone calling himself “Mr. Sodomite” seems a
prime excavation site for evidence of such genealogical links, since his name
rendered his erotic proclivity a “lifelong social identity.” Like a genetic
mutation that may crop up in random individuals, and only gradually spread
across a species’ gene pool, Sodoma constituted an irruption of anomalous
possibilities that, while not yet fully articulated, began to diffuse new forms
of sexual identity and self-expression that increased over the next several
centuries. These methodological disagreements center on two questions: one
external and sociological, the cultural categorization of homosexual behavior;
the other internal and psychological, the conscious experience of individuals
who desired other men and their degree of agency within a hostile official
discourse. There was clearly a dominant conceptual structure of canon and civil
law that confined homosexuality to taboo acts that might potentially tempt
anyone, within whichour modern notion of inherent sexual “orientations” was not
officially recognized. Just as clearly, however, no culture is monolithic, and
a complex of alternatives operated alongside these formal structures. As we
have seen, the elements of this quasi-underworld were in place by the sixteenth
century: meeting places, distinctive behaviors, and cultural expressions.68 As
Ruggiero has outlined, such “illicit worlds had their own coherent
discourse,”69 which viewed male–male sexuality as an amusing peccadillo;
suggested that some individuals were drawn to it by distinctive character
traits; and expressed awareness of (and resistance to) the gap between official
values and their own experience. The solution to this impasse lies in moving beyond
an “either–or” cultural analysis to a “both–and” approach. Instead of setting
arbitrarily precise boundaries to ever-shifting conceptions of sexuality, it
would more accurately ref lect Sodoma’s transitional environment to acknowledge
the temporal overlapping of contrasting systems of thought and behavior, and to
explore the realities of those who negotiated the dialectic between them. Two
tendencies in current scholarship, however, militate against such open-ended
rapprochement. The first is reluctance to accept evidence for alternative
sexual consciousness; the second is ascribing to cultural discourses an
unrealistic power over against embodied experience. What follows is part
summary, part personal statement: a roadmap out of an increasingly pointless
stalemate, and a brief for greater attention to the lived experience of
men-who-had-sex-with-men and its genealogical links to later generations. Two
principal examples of the discord over what “counts” as evidence of sexual
desire and identity are the tendency to downplay or deny evidence for Sodoma’s
sexuality, and the disregard of alternative language imputing distinct
personality to sodomites. First, the present examination of how Sodoma
expressed his homoerotic desires depends on establishing that his nickname was
in fact a marker of his sexuality, which raises the question: how reliable is
Vasari? Unfortunately, as Paul Barolsky notes, “How we read Vasari depends on
our sensibility and taste. We all ride our own hobbyhorses.” 70 Since the
Victorians, homophobic scholars have attempted to discredit Vasari and defend a
respected Old Master against any implication of immorality in “his
evil-sounding sobriquet.” 71 Efforts to give it a non-sexual meaning are highly
speculative: Enzo Carli supposes the nickname was simply Bazzi’s own little
joke, “with which . . . he loved to glorify himself
facetiously,” but it strains credibility that a heterosexual man would consider
a false claim of deviancy “glorifying.” 72 When such dismissals are echoed by
queer-studies scholars, the hobby-horse is epistemological caution rather than
morality, but the effect is the same: to erase facets of queer history that
conf lict with a higher belief—that homosexuality did not (yet) exist.73 We do
have to read Vasari cautiously: despite the author’s claims, Sodoma’s wife
never left him, nor did he die poor.74 Because few details in Vasari’s
psychological profile are confirmed by other sources, postmodern skepticism
insists that any statement not independently documented is probably false. But
Vasariis generally most informed about artists close to his own time, many of
his artistic facts are documentable, and details in the Vite of Sodoma and
Beccafumi indicate that he visited Siena, saw artworks, and interviewed
informed sources. Moreover, his characterization of Sodoma as capricious,
insolent, and sodomitical is corroborated by three period sources: Eurialo
d’Ascoli’s couplets, Paolo Giovio’s life of Raphael (“a perverse and unstable
mind bordering on madness”), and Armenini’s account of Sodoma’s revenge for an
insult.75 Thus, this essay has followed a less restrictive approach, accepting
any statement that is not contradicted by external sources as possible and
perhaps likely. All historical reconstructions involve judgments of
probabilities; giving one’s sources “the benefit of the doubt” can make up for
any loss of positivistic certainty with gains in breadth, depth, and detail.
Secondly, there is linguistic evidence that particular psychological traits were
becoming attached to habitual sodomites; but this suggestive vocabulary is
often brushed aside to “save the phenomenon” of an episteme of acts, not
personalities. I agree with Simons that “both categorical approaches are
problematic.” A more subtle, inclusive view is adumbrated by Robert Mills, who
demonstrates that the juridical focus on potentially universal acts was in
tension with moral, Church perspectives which also sought to make an identity
of the sodomite . . . by characterizing sodomy as a more enduring
kind of practice, a vice for which one had a particular disposition, tendency
or taste. . . . [S]uch perspectives developed unevenly, over long
periods of time, [but there are] signs that some medieval thinkers
. . . wished to pin the sin down to particular bodies and selves.76
Examples of how “Sodoma” might thus denote an individual with an inborn sexual
preference include one of Matteo Bandello’s humorous tales (novelle), ca. 1540,
in which the dying Porcellio, pressed by his confessor to admit that he
performed acts “against nature,” claims to misunderstand the question because,
he says, “to divert myself with boys is more natural to me than eating and
drinking.” 77 Similarly, Giordano Bruno’s Spaccio della bestia triunfante
(1584) praises Socrates for resisting “la sua natural inclinatione al sporco
amor di gargioni” (his natural inclination toward the filthy love of boys).78
Dall’Orto has surveyed numerous Renaissance Italian terms for those who commit
homosexual acts, notably inclinazione, which implies “leaning” in a particular
direction.79 Similar spadework for the French cognate inclination has been
performed by Domna Stanton, while numerous other French and English tropes,
such as “masculine love,” have been catalogued by Joseph Cady.80 Language was
clearly emerging at this point articulating distinctive traits among those
drawn to sodomy: not yet an “identity” in the modern sense, but a critical
shift toward notions of internal difference. If postmodernism underplays
evidence of sexual self-awareness, it conversely overestimates the power of
discourse, unduly minimizing individual agencyand the imperatives of the
embodied self. The ability of collective discourse to enforce social norms is
never absolute. It engages in perpetual dialectic with the potentially anarchic
desires of society’s diverse individual members, a situation in which “lived
eroticism did not always conform to the rules of social hierarchy,”81 from
Romeo and Juliet to Sodoma and his apprentices. This ineluctable tension arises
because discourse is inculcated into the mind, whereas sexual desire is
grounded in parts of the biological organism less susceptible to rational
suasion. Embodied experience is transhistorical: lust, like hunger, pre-exists
cultural conditioning, and “the recalcitrant realities of human conduct”82 are
insistent enough when unsatisfied to overcome any social convention. This essay
has marshalled evidence that Sodoma, and his contemporaries with similar inclinations,
felt a dissonance between their desires and the dictates of society, and they
possessed sufficient agency to imagine alternative values—what Walter Pater
viewed as a signal Renaissance development, a “liberty of the heart” that
enabled nonconformists to move “beyond the prescribed limits of that system.”83
Individual bodies are not mere passive receptacles for an overpowering
discourse “poured into” them, but are capable of awareness of that effort at
marginalization, and of active resistance. The ultimate question lying behind
such methodological differences is: why do we do queer history? Here again,
divergent answers ride different hobbyhorses: postmodernists focus on
epistemology, while those open to historical continuity are more interested in
phenomenology. The former philosophize, “How and what can we know about
Renaissance sexuality?” answering that we can comprehend little about a
shifting discourse in which “sexuality” did not exist; the latter
psychoanalyze, “How did it feel for sexual outsiders to negotiate this social
regime?,” and seek clues in intimations of difference in life, language, and
art. While the former stress chronological discontinuity, the latter seek a
“usable past,” a narrative that produces affinities and resonances across time.
The latter project is inherently political: as George Chauncey characterizes
emerging queer studies in the late nineteenth century, claiming certain
historical figures was important to gay men not only because it validated their
own homosexuality, but because it linked them to others. . . . This
was a central purpose of the project of gay historical reclamation.
. . . By constructing historical traditions of their own, gay men defined
themselves as a distinct community.84 Put another way, this school, and this
essay, seek to recover evidence of homosexual desire and expression—however
fragmentary, ambiguous, and carefully historicized—to counter centuries of
suppression, and it seems ironic when social constructionism abets the same
historical erasure. A final image, recently attributed to Sodoma, provides an
enigmatic but tantalizing coda to this discussion85 (Figure 10.7). His hair
garlanded with leaves, beard and brows untamed, “Allegorical Man” leers like a
satyr while his rightJames M. SaslowFIGURE 10.7Sodoma (attributed), Allegorical
Man, ca. 1547–8, oil, Accademia Carrara,Bergamo. Photo credit: Scala/Ministero
per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.hand makes the contemptuous
gesture of “the fig,” an insult that, since Martial’s Epigrams (2:28), can
imply that the receiver is a sodomite. The picture’s precise iconography
remains unexplored; Radini Tedeschi suggests the gesture alludes to Sodoma’s
nickname, and the picture may thus be a final self-portrait, literally or
symbolically. If so, it contrasts poignantly with the artist’s first
self-portraitforty years earlier ( Figure 10.2). Once young and beardless, his
foppishness a silent assertion of nonconformity, he has aged to a still
elaborately costumed but more overtly defiant graybeard, telling the world in
gesture what his burlesque poems expressed in words: I am what I am, I’ve
survived your derision, and I still don’t care what you think. Admittedly, this
interpretation remains speculative, but it would effectively bookend the
scenario of Sodoma’s life and work presented here. Our ability to entertain
such a hypothesis depends, however, on more than attribution and iconography.
The potential to recover the self-expression of creative Renaissance sodomites
also requires a polyvalent openness to a range of both personal and cultural
evidence and interpretive methods. Hearteningly, many seminal postmodern
theorists are more accepting of multiplicity than their acolytes. Foucault
praised Boswell’s conception of “gay,” while Carla Freccero deploys Foucault’s
own theoretics against his discontinuity between early modern and modern
sexuality. She approvingly cites David Halperin’s suggestion that we supplement
rigidly compartmentalized ideas of identity with concepts of “partial identity,
emerging identity, transient identity, semi-identity . . .,” the
better to “indicate the multiplicity of possible historical connections between
sex and identity.”86 Murray reassures us that “the alternative to intellectual
conformity is not a lack of coherence but rather a series of interwoven,
complementary . . . approaches.”87 Perhaps the most balanced and
inspiring methodological f lag has been raised by Valerie Traub, who recalls
that, while seeking traces of early modern same-sex eros, she assumed “neither
that we will find in the past a mirror image of ourselves nor that the past is
so utterly alien that we will find nothing usable in its fragmentary traces.”88
I have sought in Sodoma not a mirror-image, but a family resemblance. He is
“usable” as our ancestor: someone with whom we share an identifiable lineage of
desire and self-expression, in whose uniquely chronicled creative life we can
recapture the origins of an increasingly prominent familial trait.Notes1 2 3 4
5This essay grew from a paper delivered at a 2007 conference at University of
Toronto organized by Konrad Eisenbichler. Thanks to Patricia Simons for her
constructive suggestions. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 380; Vasari, Lives, 7: 246.
Vasari repeats these accusations in his Vita of Domenico Beccafumi, ed.
Milanesi, 5: 634–35. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 382; Vasari, Lives, 7: 247. Vasari, Le
vite, 6: 381; Vasari, Lives, 7: 246. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 389–90; Vasari, Lives,
7: 251, records the old men’s protest; for documents for the 1513 and 1515
races, see 6: 389 n. 3, 390 n. 1; Bartalini and Zombardo, Giovanni Antonio
Bazzi, 44–45, nos. 15–19. A note on terminology: I use “homosexual” throughout
in the narrow descriptive sense, to refer to sexual desire or behavior between
persons of the same sex. Although modern audiences read “homosexual” with
broader connotations of psychology and identity, here it is only shorthand for
“male–male sex.” In modern typology, Sodoma would be considered bisexual, since
he was also married and a father.6 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 379; Vasari, Lives, 7:
245. The artist did not die destitute or insane: see below, n. 74. 7 Fisher, “A
Hundred Years,” 13–39, outlines the activist project of research into
Renaissance homosexuality since the nineteenth century. 8 For an overview of
this position, see Grantham Turner, “Introduction,” 8, n. 3. 9 Reed, Art and
Homosexuality, 54–55. 10 Bartalini, “Sodoma.” 11 The standard English monograph
remains Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi; for Monteoliveto see 93, cat. no. 4. See
further on the abbey Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 138–47; Batistini, Il Sodoma;
documents in Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti, 15–31, no. 7. 12 Hayum, Giovanni
Antonio Bazzi, 93, no. 4.8; Batistini, Il Sodoma, no. 8. The incident is
recorded by Gregory the Great, Life of St. Benedict, chap. 2. 13 Only a few
illustrations of this subject are known: both a fresco by Spinello Aretino (San
Miniato, Florence) ca. 1387 and a panel by Ambrogio di Stefano Bergognone, ca.
1490, show a pale, unidealized body among prominent briars. A sexual reading of
the series is supported by Kiely, Blessed and Beautiful, chap. 7, “Sodoma’s St.
Benedict: Out in the Cloister.” 14 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 383; Vasari, Lives, 7: 248,
for the quote and cloak. The gift, along with other payments of fabrics and
clothing, is transcribed by Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti, 18–19, 266. See also
Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 78–80. 15 Rocke, “The Ambivalence,” 57. 16 Rocke,
Forbidden Friendships, 3–6; his book provides extensive data and analysis of
fifteenth-century Florence. On sodomy elsewhere, see Ruggiero, The Boundaries
of Eros; Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, chap. 9; Mormando, The
Preacher’s Demons. For a Europe-wide perspective, see Crompton, Homosexuality
and Civilization, chaps. 10–12; Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 79–102. 17 Rocke,
Forbidden Friendships, 112, 134. 18 Simons, “The Sex of Artists,” 81. 19 Rocke,
Forbidden Friendships, 163; Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 262–69.
20 Puff, “The Sodomite’s Clothes,” 251–72. 21 Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche
volgari, ed. Pietro Bargellini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1936), 796–97, 898, cited and
discussed in Dall’Orto, “La fenice,” 5, and n. 27 and n. 28. See also Rocke,
“Sodomites.” 22 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 2–7. 23 Ladis,
Victims, 109. 24 Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 94, no. 12. 25 On anal sex as
social practice and artistic motif, see Saslow, Ganymede, chaps. 2–3; Rubin,
“‘Che è di questo culazzino!’”; Grantham Turner, Eros Visible, 274–99. Sodoma’s
Deposition, ca. 1510, similarly spotlights the rear view of a soldier: Hayum,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 117, no. 7. Other artists emphasized rear views, often
motivated by the formalintellectual challenge of the paragone: Summers,
“‘Figure come fratelli.’” When we have evidence of an artist’s sexual
proclivities, as with Sodoma, it is reasonable to explore whether he imbued the
motif with personal erotic interest; lacking such evidence, however, we cannot
know which other artists might have done the same. Regardless of artistic
intent, similar stimuli would invite similar audience responses. 26 Similar
figures appear in scenes no. 1, 30, and 36 as catalogued by Batistini (Hayum,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 93–4, nos. 1, 20, 26). 27 Alain of Lille, The Plaint of
Nature, trans. James Sheridan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1980), 187, cited
in Puff, “The Sodomite’s Clothes,” 260. 28 Bernardino, as quoted by Rocke,
“Sodomites,” 12, 15; cited in Simons, The Sex of Men, 99. 29 Randolph, Engaging
Symbols, 151, chap. 4. For nuns, see Hayum, “A Renaissance Audience”; for both
sexes, Hiller, Gendered Perceptions. 30 On the prevalence of clerical sodomy
see Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance; Mills, Seeing Sodomy, chap. 4; Rocke,
Forbidden Friendships, 136–37. See also Parker, Bronzino, 37: “burlesque poets
tended to present clerics as sodomites.”31 Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi,
93–94, nos. 4.13, 4.14, 4.21; Batistini, Il Sodoma, nos. 13, 14, 31 (illns. 59,
60, 68). 32 The regulations are in the monastery’s fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century chronicle: Regardez le rocher, 182–83, 418–19 (my
translation). 33 Illustrated and discussed in Saslow, Pictures and Passions,
103–04. 34 Frans Hogenberg, Execution for Sodomitical Godlessness in Bruges,
1578; illustrated in Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 327. 35 Vasari,
Le vite, 6: 387; Vasari, Lives, 7: 250. 36 On the city’s licentious paganism,
see Bartalini, Le occasioni, 39–86. 37 Rowland, "Render unto Caesar.” 38
Other homoerotic images are in the Sala di Psiche, where Ganymede appears
twice, and one spandrel depicts Jupiter kissing Cupid; Saslow, Ganymede in the
Renaissance, 135–40; Turner, Eros Visible, 109–33. 39 Vasari, Le vite, 6:
384–88; Vasari, Lives, 7: 248–50. Alexander and Hephaestion’s love is alluded
to by Aelian, Various History, 12: 7, and other ancient authors. 40 Hayum,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 164–77, no. 20; Bartalini, Le occasioni, 78–81; Radini
Tedeschi, Sodoma, 193–94, no. 56. 41 On Sodoma’s use of classical sources and
gender ambiguity see Smith, “Queer Fragments.” 42 Baldassare Castiglione, The
Book of the Courtier, book 2, chap. 61. On the sexual tone in Rome, see
Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 269–90; Talvacchia, Taking Positions.
Leo X’s Rome also associated sartorial effeminacy with homosexuality:
pasquinades mocked Cardinal Ercole Rangone and sodomite friends for “going
around disguised as nymphs”: Burke, “Sex and Spirituality,” 491. 43 Aretino, Lettere
sull’arte, vol. 1, no. 68 (1537), vol. 2, no. 244 (1545); Aretino, The Letters,
123–25, no. 58. Other sources record a sculpted Antinous, Hadrian’s lover:
Bartalini, Le occasioni, 73–75. 44 d’Ascoli, Epigrammatum, 11v–12r; Bartalini
and Zombardo, Fonti, 64–67, no. 29; Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 71–72. 45 Ibid.,
23. 46 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 386–88; Vasari, Lives, 7: 250. On Leo’s sodomitical
reputation see Giovio’s biography, in Le vite di dicenove, 141v–142v. 47
Parker, Bronzino, chap. 1; Parker, “Towards;” Rocke, Forbidden Friendships,
3–5; Tonozzi, “Queering Francesco”; Zanrè, Cultural Non-conformity, chap. 3. 48
Tonozzi, “Queering Francesco,” 589–91. 49 On these artist-authors see Parker,
Bronzino; The Poetry of Michelangelo; Gallucci, Benvenuto Cellini. 50 Fisher,
“Peaches and Figs,” 158–59. 51 Zanrè, Cultural Non-conformity, 1-2. 52
Armenini, De’ veri precetti, 42–43; Vasari, Le vite, 6: 393; Bartalini, Le
occasioni, 17. 53 Dall’Orto, “La fenice di Sodoma,” 71-72, quoting Bernardino,
in Le prediche volgari, ed. C. Cannarozzi (Pistoia: Pacinotti, 1934), 277. A
document dated 1531, purportedly Sodoma’s tax declaration, is even more
insolent, signed with a sexual vulgarity; Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti,
131–33, 281–92. While now considered a seventeenth-century forgery, it
demonstrates that a “legend” about Sodoma’s sexual brazenness persisted after
his death. 54 See Milner, “Introduction.” 55 Sodoma depicted anther homoerotic
myth distinctively: his Fall of Phaeton is almost unique in including Phaeton’s
cousin Cycnus, with whom literary sources imply a loving relationship (Hayum,
135, no. 12). Suggestively, the only other artist to include Cycnus was
Michelangelo. 56 Simons, “European Art,” 135. 57 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 390;
Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 191, no. 24; Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 211–12,
no. 73. 58 Acta sanctorum, 2: 629, 20 Januarii; Jacopo da Voragine’s
thirteenth-century Golden Legend repeats this phrase (s.v. “St. Sebastian”).59
On arrow symbolism, including homoerotic potential, see Cox-Rearick, “A ‘Saint
Sebastian,’” 160–61. 60 Simons, “Homosociality,” 38. 61 Vasari, Vita of Fra
Bartolommeo. For additional complaints about sexualized Sebastians, see Bohde,
“Ein Heiliger,” 86, n. 18. 62 Sodoma’s later depictions of Sebastian evoke the
same erotic subtext. In his Madonna and Child with Saints, ca. 1541–44 (Hayum,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 257, no. 43), Sebastian stares at Jesus, who toys with
the saint’s arrow—a phallic detail seen in no other image. Similarly unique is
Sodoma’s Resurrection, 1535 (Hayum, 235, no. 33) in depicting the angels as
nude putti. 63 Burke, “Sex and Spirituality,” 488–92. 64 Ruggiero,
“Introduction,” 2. 65 Reed, Art and Homosexuality, 43. 66 Ibid., 47. 67 Ibid.,
43; Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 84–85. 68 On this alternative culture in
various cities see Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 87; Ruggiero, “Marriage,”
23–26; Dall’Orto, “La fenice di Sodoma,” 61–64, 79. 69 Ruggiero, “Marriage,
Love,” 11. 70 Paul Barolsky, “Vasari’s Literary Artifice,” 121. 71 Cust,
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 10. 72 Carli, Il Sodoma, 9–12; Carli, “Bazzi.” 73 See,
e.g., Patricia Simons, “Sodoma, Il,” 286. 74 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 379, 398,
citing contradicting documents, 399 n. 1. 75 On Eurialo see above, n. 44;
Armenini, n. 52. On Giovio’s biographies see n. 46; for his comment on Sodoma
(“praepostero instabilique iudicio usque ad insaniae affectationem”) see
Bartalini and Zambrano, Fonti, 83–86, no. 35. 76 Simons, “Homosociality and
Erotics,” 48, n. 4; Mills, “Acts, Orientations,” 205. 77 Bandello, Tutte le
opera, ed. Flora, 1: 95, novella 6; Bandello, Tutte le opera, trans. Payne, 1:
94–8. 78 Bruno and Campanella, Opere, 321. 79 Dall’Orto, “La fenice di Sodoma,”
74–76; Dall’Orto, “‘Socratic Love,’” esp. 34–35, 46–50. 80 Stanton, “The
Threat.” See further Stanton, ed., Discourses of Sexuality; the historiographic
overview by Smith, “Premodern Sexualities”; Cady, “The ‘Masculine Love.’” 81
Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 87. 82 Brundage, “Playing,” 23. 83 Pater, The
Renaissance, 3–6, 18–19; Fisher, “A Hundred Years,” 19–23. 84 Chauncey, Gay New
York, 285–86. 85 Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 257, no. 118. 86 O’Higgins, “Sexual
Choice,” 10; Halperin is quoted and discussed in Freccero, Queer, 48. 87
Murray, “Introduction,” xiv. 88 Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in
Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002), 32.Bibliography
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Non-conformity in Early Modern Florence. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004.11 VAGINA
DIALOGUES Piccolomini’s Raffaella and Aretino’s Ragionamenti Ian Frederick
MoultonIn 1539, Alessandro Piccolomini, a thirty-one-year-old Sienese nobleman
living in Padua, published a short dialogue: La Raffaella, ovvero Dialogo della
bella creanza delle donne [Raffaella, or a Dialogue on women’s good manners].1
Piccolomini’s dialogue, in which an older woman encourages a younger one to
commit adultery, owes much to the example of Pietro Aretino’s scandalous
Ragionamenti (1534, 1536),2 in which an experienced courtesan teaches her
daughter how to become a prostitute. While the filial relationship between La
Raffaella and the Ragionamenti has long been noted, the cultural and ideological
significance of this relationship remains largely unexamined. Both texts
imagine private female conversations: what do women talk about when no men can
hear? The answer in both cases is men. Men and sex. (What else would men think
that women talk about?) Both texts are male fantasies of female pedagogy and
sexual knowledge, in which male authors adopt a voice of experienced femininity
to articulate imagined feminine perspectives on sex, gender relations, and
gender identity. In the Ragionamenti, the women’s conversations are scandalous,
but also, at times, radical and transgressive, questioning fundamental norms of
gendered behavior and exploring the role of power in gender relations.3 Despite
Aretino’s ambivalent misogyny, the Ragionamenti imagine possibilities of female
agency and power. Piccolomini’s Raffaella, on the other hand, merely encourages
women to subvert one form of male authority in order to submit to another; it
imagines freeing wives from their husbands the better to subordinate them to their
male lovers. Piccolomini playfully suggests that this shift is doing women a
favor because it acknowledges their need for sexual pleasure.4 His text takes
the subversive energy of the Ragionamenti and turns it into a safe, sly joke.
Women, it turns out, do not want autonomy: they want to submit to younger,
sexier men. In La Raffaella, female agency is not a threat to male dominance—it
simply rewards ardent male lovers over dreary husbands.The conversations of
Aretino’s Ragionamenti take place over six days. An experienced courtesan named
Nanna is discussing with a younger prostitute named Antonia what way of life
would be best for her teenaged daughter Pippa—should she grow up to be a nun, a
wife, or a whore? Nanna spends the first three days of the dialogue recounting
her own experiences in each of these roles; at the end of the third
day she and Antonia decide that Pippa should be a prostitute. They reason that
while nuns break their vows and wives are unfaithful to their husbands,
prostitutes (for all their faults) are not hypocritical—they are simply doing
the necessary work they are paid to do.5 This ends the first volume. In the
sequel, having decided Pippa’s future, Nanna and Antonia teach her the things
she will need to know. On the fourth day, they instruct her how to be a
successful courtesan; on the fifth, they discuss men’s cruelty to women; and on
the sixth they listen while a midwife teaches a wetnurse how to make a living
procuring women for sex with men. In all the discussions about prostitution,
Nanna’s instruction focuses not on how to satisfy men but on how to manipulate
them. The condition of a prostitute is inherently hazardous, and Nanna and
Antonia teach Pippa how to survive and thrive in a world of gender warfare,
where men are always seeking to exploit women, sexually, physically, socially,
and financially. Throughout the Ragionamenti the text takes an ambivalent
attitude to its speakers. On the one hand, Nanna and Antonia are monstrous
women who embody a wide range of misogynist stereotypes. They are deceitful,
amoral, gluttonous, greedy, garrulous, and fickle. On the other hand, they are
cunning tricksters, who use their superior intellect to dupe those who try to
exploit and manipulate them. Nanna is at once a shocking figure of feminine
excess and an insightful satirist who bears more than a passing resemblance to
Aretino’s own persona as an epicurean scourge of powerful hypocrites.6 The
Ragionamenti contain shockingly explicit descriptions of a wide range of sexual
activity, but almost all of these are in the early chapters of the text, in
which nuns betray their vows in endless orgies and wives betray their elderly
husbands to find satisfying sex elsewhere.7 The chapters on prostitution focus
not on sexual pleasure or technique, but rather on how best to earn money and
swindle clients. Aretino’s whores are not particularly interested in sexual
pleasure—they want money, power, and status instead. And the best way to attain
all three is by selling the promise of sexual availability while deferring
sexual activity for as long as possible; the ideal relationship is one where a
man is paying large amounts of money without ever actually managing to have
sexual relations with the woman he is buying. As Nanna puts it, “lust is the
least of all the desires [whores] have, because they are constantly thinking of
ways and means to cut out men’s hearts and feelings.” (“La lussuria è la minor
voglia che elle abbino, perché le son sempre in quel pensiero di far trarre altrui
il core e la corata.”)8 Through a series of cunning tricks, deals, and lies,
Nanna ends up living in luxury in a fashionable house protected by gangs of
armed men whom she employs to remove unwanted suitors.9 She survives and
thrives by manipulating male desire and profiting from male gullibility.Nanna’s
worldly success is, of course, a fantasy that bears little relation to the
actual living and working conditions of most early modern prostitutes,10 but
the Ragionamenti admit this as well. Nanna knows she is not normative, and that
her position remains precarious: “I must confess that for one Nanna who knows
how to have her land bathed by the fructifying sun, there are thousands of
whores who end their days in the poorhouse.” (“Ti confesso che, per una Nanna
che si sappia porre dei campi al sole, ce ne sono mille che si muoiono nello
spedale.”)11 On the sixth day, the Midwife agrees: “A whore’s life is
comparable to a game of chance: for each person who benefits by it, there are a
thousand who draw blanks.” (“E so che il puttanare non è traffico da ognuno; e
percìo il viver suo è come un giuoco de la ventura, che per una che ne venga
benefiziata, ce ne son mille de le bianche.”)12 Consequently, Nanna makes sure
to spend a lot of time warning her daughter Pippa about the many ways that men
can harm the women in their power. In contrast to Aretino’s earthy dialogue of
whores, Piccolomini’s La Raffaella consists of an imagined discussion between
two upper-class women: Raffaella, an elderly, impoverished, but well-born
woman, and Margarita, a newly married wealthy young noblewoman. The tone of
conversation in La Raffaella is certainly more polite and decorous than Nanna
and Antonia’s profane and bawdy language in the Ragionamenti.13 Raffaella, a
friend of Margarita’s late mother, presents herself as a pious widow, eager to
help Margarita adjust to the challenges of being an adult woman and the
mistress of a household. Throughout her talk of pass-times, cosmetics,
deportment, and fashion, Raffaella advises Margarita to take full advantage of
youthful pleasures; if a woman does not enjoy herself while she is young and
beautiful, she is sure to become bitter in her old age: As for God, as I said
earlier, it would be better, if it were possible, to never take any pleasure in
the world, and to always fast and keep strict discipline. But, to escape even
greater scandal, we must consent to the small errors that come with taking some
pleasures in youth, which can be taken away later with holy water. . .
. And moreover, in all this I’m telling you, presuppose that this little
necessary sin will bring you much honor in the world, and that these pleasures
that must be taken can be managed with such dexterity and intelligence that
they will bring no shame from anyone. Quanto a Dio, già t’ho detto che sarebbe
meglio, se si potesse fare, il non darsi mai un piacere al mondo, anzi starsi
sempre in digiuni e disciplina. Ma, per fuggir maggior scandalo, bisogna
consentir a questo poco di errore che è di pigliarsi qualche piacere in
gioventù, che se ne va poi con l’acqua benedetta. . . . E però
in tutto quello che io ti ragionerò presupponendo questo poco di peccato, per
esser necessario, procurerò quanto piú sia possibile l’onore del mondo, e che
quei piaceri che si hanno da pigliarsi sieno presi con tal destrezza e con tal
ingegno, ch non si rimanga vituperato appresso de le genti.14Margarita’s
husband is constantly away on business; she is bored and feels neglected. By
the end of the dialogue, Raffaella has convinced Margarita to embark on an
adulterous affair with a young man named messer Aspasio (who bears more than a
passing resemblance to Piccolomini himself ).15 It becomes abundantly clear to
the reader that convincing Margarita to sleep with messer Aspasio has been
Raffaella’s goal all along. As the dialogue ends, Margarita looks forward
eagerly to her planned affair, completely unaware of how she has been
manipulated by the older woman. She exults, Having learned today through your
words that a young woman needs, to avoid greater errors, to pour out her spirit
in her youth, and having heard certainly from you the good words of messer
Aspasio and the love he bears me, I am resolved to give all of myself to him
for the rest of my life. And thus having pledged eternal fidelity to messer
Aspasio—whom she has barely met—Margarita goes on to offer the impoverished
Raffaella bread, cheese, and ham as a reward for her kindness.16 Given its
subject matter, it is not surprising that some readers interpreted La Raffaella
as an attack on women’s moral character: older women are presented as corrupt
and amoral; younger women as hedonistic and naive. Women of all ages, it seems,
are concerned primarily with deceiving men to obtain sexual pleasure. Beyond
its general cynicism regarding female virtue, La Raffaella also gives precise
and effective direction on ways to deceive one’s husband and to discreetly
carry on long-term affairs. Raffaella warns Margarita against writing love
letters—especially if her lover is married.17 She recommends that her lover be
unmarried, if possible (messer Aspasio is a bachelor!).18 Raffaella tells
Margarita she will need a trusted servant to communicate with her lover, and
that she should choose that person with great care.19 She recommends a rope
ladder for giving a lover access to private rooms without anyone in the
household knowing.20 Raffaella encourages Margarita to take full advantage of
the pleasures that wealth and leisure can bring, but she insists that all these
pleasures are worthless without the final consummation of adulterous sex:
What’s love worth without its end? It’s like an egg without salt, and worse.
Holidays, dinners, banquets, masques, plays, gatherings at villas and a
thousand other similar pleasures are icy and cold without love. And with love
they are so pleasurable and so sweet that I don’t believe that one could ever
grow old among them. In every person love inspires courtesy, nobility, elegance
in dress, eloquence in speech, graceful gestures, and every other good thing.
Without love, they are little esteemed, like lost and empty things. E amore poi
che val, senza il suo fine? Quel ch’è l’uovo senza’l sale, e peggio. Le feste,
i conviti, i banchetti, le mascere, le comedie, i ritruovi di villae mille
altri cosí fatti solazzi senz’amore son freddi e ghiacci; e con esso son di
tanta consolazione e cosí fatta dolcezza, ch’io non credo che fra loro si
potesse invecchiar mai. Amor riforisce in altrui la cortesia, la gentilezza, il
garbo di vestire, la eloquenza del parlare, i movimenti agraziati e ogni altra
bella parte; e senza esso son poco apprezzate, quasi come cose perdute e
vane.21 The “end” of love, which in Neoplatonic treatises was seen as a
beatific transcendence of earthly desires, is here clearly redefined simply as
sex.22 As a result of passages like this, La Raffaella was attacked both as an
insult to women and as an instruction manual for adultery.23 That the text was
explicitly dedicated by Piccolomini to “the women who will read it” (“A quelle
donne che leggeranno”) only made matters worse.24 Piccolomini was destined from
youth for an ecclesiastical career,25 and at the time he wrote La Raffaella he
was starting to make a name for himself in Italian intellectual circles.26 He
had published La Raffaella under his academic pseudonym, Stordito Intronato,
but this did little to conceal his identity. Responding to criticism of the
dialogue, Piccolomini disavowed La Raffaella almost immediately, writing in 1540
that the text was a “joke,” written only for his own amusement.27 Clearly, he
felt that La Raffaella’s scandalous reputation was not suitable for his public
image and future aspirations. Unlike Aretino, who published the Ragionamenti in
two installments, Piccolomini not only never published a sequel to La
Raffaella, he never wrote anything like it again.28 In his retractions,
Piccolomini insisted that he had meant no insult to women in La Raffaella, and
compared his work to the licentious novelle in Boccaccio’s Decameron, intended
to give “a certain pleasure to the mind, that cannot always be serious and
grave” (“per dare un certo solazzo a la mente, che sempre severa e grave non
può già stare”).29 Although Piccolomini consistently downplayed the dialogue’s
significance, La Raffaella remained in print and remained popular. There were
nine Italian editions in the sixteenth century, as well as three separate
translations into French.30 Indeed, La Raffaella is the most frequently
republished of all Piccolomini’s texts, and one of the few still in print in
the twenty-first century.31 Though criticized for its licentiousness,
generically La Raffaella was in the mainstream of the literature of its time.
Neoplatonic dialogues dealing with love and sexuality were a staple of Italian
literary and academic culture, from Bembo’s Asolani (1505) and Judah
Abrabanel’s Dialogi d’amore (1535), to Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo d’amore
(1542), and Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo . . . della infinità d’amore
(1547). Along with books on love, books on the status of women and on feminine
deportment were also produced in great numbers in Italy in the midsixteenth
century. Advocating adultery may have been scandalous, but men telling women
how to behave was commonplace. Besides internationally inf luential texts such
as Juan-Luis Vives’ De institutione feminae christianae (1523)32 and Baldassare
Castiglione’s Cortegiano (1528),33 there were dozens of lesser known or more
specialized books, such as Giovanni Trissino’s epistle on appropriate conduct
forwidows (1524),34 and Galeazzo Flavio Capella’s treatise on the excellence
and dignity of women (1526).35 The vast majority of these texts were written by
men, and many were prescriptive works that attempted to define appropriate
female conduct.36 Of 125 works listed by Marie-Françoise Piéjus dealing with
the status of women published in Italy between 1471 and 1560, only two were
authored by women: Tullia d’Aragona’s 1547 Dialogo . . . della
infinità d’amore and Laura Terracina’s 1550 Discorso sopra tutti li primi canti
d’Orlando Furioso.37 Given Piccolomini’s deep engagement with academic and
literary culture, it is not surprising that La Raffaella draws on a wide range
of contemporary texts. The character of Raffaella herself has a strong
resemblance to the central figure of the procuress from Fernando de Rojas’ La
Celestina,38 and passages in Piccolomini’s dialogue closely echo debates over
proper feminine dress in Castiglione’s Cortegiano.39 But arguably the most important
model for La Raffaella remains Aretino’s Ragionamenti.40 To begin with, there
are precise textual echoes: La Raffaella’s discussion of cosmetics closely
follows passages from Aretino’s work,41 as does Raffaella’s reference to the
illicit sexual activities of nuns.42 Even Raffaella’s notion, quoted above,
that youthful sins can be removed with holy water, recalls a speech by Antonia
about the relative insignificance of the sins committed by whores.43 Beyond her
similarity to the title character of La Celestina, Piccolomini’s Raffaella also
recalls the Midwife from the sixth book of the Ragionamenti. Certainly, the
Midwife’s following account of her own techniques are a good description of
Raffaella, who comes across as a pious churchgoer, says she loves Margarita
like a daughter, and has endless advice on fashions and hairstyles: It was
always my habit to sniff through twenty-five churches every morning, robbing
here a tatter of the Gospel, there a scrap of orate fratres, here a droplet of
santus santus, at another spot a teeny bit of non sum dignus, and over there a
nibble of erat verbum, watching all the while this man and that girl, that man
and this other woman. . . . A bawd’s work is thrilling, for by making
herself everyone’s friend and companion, stepchild and godmother, she sticks
her nose in every hole. All the new styles of dress in Mantua, Ferrara, and
Milan follow the model set by the bawd; and she invents all the different ways
of arranging hair used in the world. In spite of nature she remedies every
fault of breath, teeth, lashes, tits, hands, faces, inside and out, fore and
aft. Io che ho sempre avuto in costume di fiutar venticinque chiese per mattina,
rubando qui un brindello di vangelo, ivi uno schiantolo di orate fratres, là un
giocciolo di santus santus, in quel luogo un pochetto di non sum dignus, e
altrove un bocconicino di erat verbum, e squadrando sempre questo e quella, e
quello e questa. . . . Bella industria è quella d’una ruffiana che,
col farsi ognun compare e comare, ognun figilozzo e santolo, si ficca per ogni
buco. Tutte le forge nuove di Mantova, di Ferrara, e di Milano pigliano la
sceda da la ruffiana: ella trova tutte l’usanze de le acconciaturedei capi del
mondo; ella, al dispetto de la natura, menda ogni difetto e di fiati e di denti
e di ciglia e di pocce e di mani e di facce e di fuora e di drento e di drieto
e dinanzi.44 In his Novelle (1554), Matteo Bandello mistakenly attributed La
Raffaella to Aretino, in part because of its resemblance to the Ragionamenti.45
Clearly, the similarity of the two texts was apparent to contemporary readers.
Socially and intellectually, Piccolomini and Aretino were on friendly terms in
the years immediately following La Raffaella’s publication. Piccolomini wrote to
Aretino in December 1540, publicly praising his satirical attacks on the abuses
of the powerful.46 And in 1541, two years after La Raffaella appeared in print,
Piccolomini invited Aretino to join the newly founded Accademia degli
Infiammati in Padua. As Marie-Françoise Piéjus has suggested, both the
Ragionamenti and La Raffaella function as parodies of the ubiquitous conduct
books addressed to women in the mid-sixteenth century. The Ragionamenti and La
Raffaella are “provocative text[s], animated by an ironic cynicism that,
parod[ies] point by point the lessons habitually taught to women.” By focusing
on women’s sexual lives, both Aretino and Piccolomini “attest to the divorce
between openly affirmed principles and the daily conduct of [their]
contemporaries.”47 What makes these texts parodic is their sexual subject
matter; they both, in differing ways, affirm women’s fundamental sexuality and
attest to the central role of sexual desire in women’s lives. This is precisely
the aspect of femininity that most of the conduct books are trying most
urgently to restrain, repress, and police. The vast majority of
sixteenthcentury conduct books written for women are designed to make women
into good wives: chaste, silent, and obedient—pleasing to their husbands and compliant
to the wishes of their male relatives.48 It is telling that these two parodic
texts are both written in the voice of women. Rather than having a male author
lay down the law for women (like Vives does), or imagining a conversation where
women listen silently as men debate (as in Castiglione), both the Ragionamenti
and La Raffaella imagine female conversations with no men present. In
Ventriloquized Voices, her study of early modern male authors’ adoption of
female voices, Elizabeth Harvey has argued that “in male appropriations of
feminine voices we can see what is most desired and most feared about women.”49
If Harvey is right, what Aretino and Piccolomini most desired and feared about
women was their sexuality—and the ways their sexuality creates possibilities
for female agency. In both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella, an older woman
instructs a younger one on issues of gender and sexuality—and on ways to trick
men to get what they want. In both cases, the absence of male auditors creates
the illusion that the reader is privy to the secret truth of feminine speech.
It is significant that both Aretino and Piccolomini imagine that the main topic
that women discuss in private is their sexual relations with men. While the
conversation in both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella is wide-ranging, both
dialogues arguably fail the Bechdel test—an assessment that asks whether or not
a work of fiction has twonamed female characters who talk to each other about
something other than their relationships to men.50 In both works, the women are
constantly concerned about their interactions with men and how their actions
are perceived by men. The very categories of female life as set forth in the
Ragionamenti—nuns, wives, and whores—are defined by the ways in which women’s
sexual relations with men (or their lack) are structured and determined. In
their desire to hear the truth of female sexuality, both the Ragionamenti and
La Raffaella metaphorically echo a tradition of masculine fantasy in which
female genitalia are compelled to speak. In the thirteenth-century French
fabliau Du Chevalier qui fist les cons parler [The Knight Who Made Cunts
Speak], a poor, wandering knight who treats some bathing fairies with courtesy
and discretion is rewarded with the magical power to make vaginas talk.51 He
uses this power to discover the truth in situations where people are lying to
him: when he encounters a miserly priest riding on a mare, he makes the mare’s
vagina tell him how much money the priest is hiding. When a countess sends her
maid to seduce the knight, he makes the maid’s vagina reveal the plot.
Eventually, he makes even the countess testify against herself by compelling
her nether regions to speak.52 The vagina, it seems, always tells the truth.
This provocative trope reappears most famously in Denis Diderot’s 1748
libertine novel Les Bijoux indiscrets [The Indiscreet Jewels], in which a
sultan has a magic ring that makes vaginas tell all. While there is no evidence
that either Aretino or Piccolomini were aware of such tales of talking vaginas,
the gender dynamics of their texts are remarkably similar. The trope of a man
magically forcing a vagina to speak is culturally resonant on a number of
levels. On the most basic level, these stories are fantasies of masculine
power: the masterful male commands the female body to do his bidding and reveal
its knowledge. There is comedy, of course, in the blurring of function between
vagina and mouth—the earthy lower body inevitably tells a tale that refutes the
refined upper body. It is important to note that what the vagina says does not
merely contradict what the mouth says; it unerringly reveals the hidden truth
of the situation. Just as the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella ironically imagine
the sexual desires hidden behind a public façade of decorous femininity, in
these stories, the mouth tells lies, but the vagina tells the truth of the
body; it cannot lie. Indeed, in all these texts, the vagina is the truth, the
essence, the thing itself. The truth of woman is her sex. The same assumption
underlies Eve Ensler’s popular 1996 feminist play The Vagina Monologues, an
episodic work in which women of various ages and backgrounds recount their
sexual experiences, some positive, others negative. While the play was acclaimed
for giving voice to women’s sexuality, it was also criticized for reducing
women to their genitalia: as feminist scholars and activists Susan E. Bell and
Susan M. Reverby wrote, “The Vagina Monologues re-inscribes women’s politics in
our bodies, indeed in our vaginas alone.”53 But of course, in Ensler’s work,
the author who wrote the lines and the actors who perform them are all women.
The voices we hear are the women’s voices—not men’s imagination of what a
woman’s voice might sound like if there was no man there to hearand record it.
In Aretino and Piccolomini’s vagina dialogues, it is always only men
talking—even if the characters are female. Piccolomini’s ventriloquized fantasy
of female speech in La Raffaella is all the more remarkable given that the
Academy of the Intronati,54 the organization under whose auspices he published
the dialogue, was more arguably more open to women than any other
sixteenth-century Italian academy. The Accademia degli Intronati [the Academy of
the Stunned] was founded in 1525 by a group of six Sienese young men. The
avowed object of the group was “to promote poetry and eloquence in the Tuscan,
Latin and Greek languages” and their motto was: Orare, Studere, Gaudere,
Neminem laedere, Neminem credere, De mundo non curare [Pray, Study, Rejoice,
Harm no one, Believe no one, Have no care for the world].55 Membership in the
Intronati was restricted to men, but as Alexandra Coller has argued, “women
were awarded much more than a merely ornamental presence within the context of
the academy [of the Intronati], whether as sources of inspiration,
correspondents in educationally-oriented literary exchanges, or as discussants
in female-centered dialogues.”56 Sometime around 1536, not long before he wrote
La Raffaella, Piccolomini himself wrote a brief Orazione in lode delle donne
[Oration in Praise of Women]. He delivered the oration to the Intronati in
person on his return to Siena from Padua in 1542 and it was published three
years later.57 Utterly rejecting La Raffaella’s notion that love must be
sexually consummated to have any real value, Piccolomini’s oration draws
heavily on the Neoplatonic idealization of love articulated in Pietro Bembo’s
Asolani, and in Bembo’s concluding speech in the Fourth Book of Castiglione’s
Cortegiano. In this discourse, love is primarily a spiritual discipline that
paradoxically leads to a transcendence of physical desire. Women’s beauty is an
earthly echo of divine Beauty, and Beauty can be used by the lover to reach a
higher plane of spiritual awareness.58 Women are thus to be served, adored, and
obeyed, in the way that a Courtier should serve, adore, and obey his Prince.59
Many texts written by members of the Intronati were dedicated to female
patrons, including a translation of six books of Virgil’s Aeneid and
Piccolomini’s own 1540 translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, a classic
treatise on household management.60 A text from the later sixteenth century,
Girolamo Bargagli’s 1575 Dialogo de’ giuochi [Dialogue on Games], describes the
activities of the Intronati in the 1530s, and attests to the support of the
Academy by “many beautiful and noble ladies” (“Molte belle e rare
gentildonne”).61 Some scholars have suggested that women may have even
participated in meetings of the Academy, a rare occurrence in sixteenth-century
Italian intellectual culture.62 An unpublished dialogue by Marcantonio
Piccolomini, a kinsman of Alessandro and a founding member of the Intronati,
imagines a scholarly dialogue between three Sienese gentlewomen on whether God
created women by chance or by design.63 At the outset, however, not all the
Intronati were so welcoming to women— at least if Antonio Vignali’s Cazzaria
(1525) is any indication. Vignali’s dialogue, in many ways a defense of sexual
relations between men, is a fiercely and crudelymisogynist text, a product of
an exclusively male environment that denigrates women at every turn.64 The
Cazzaria was a scandalous text. It was initially circulated in manuscript among
the Academy’s members and was probably printed without its author’s consent.
Although it was not publicly acknowledged or defended by the Intronati at any
point, it was nonetheless written by one of the Academy’s founding members and
was one of the most prominent products of the Academy’s early years.65
Piccolomini was surely familiar with the text— indeed, his kinsman Marcantonio
Piccolomini (Sodo Intronato) appears as one of La Cazzaria’s main characters.66
However eccentric and outrageous it may be, La Cazzaria is arguably an accurate
ref lection of the attitudes towards women of at least some of the Intronati’s
founding members. If the Intronati’s respectful and inclusive attitude towards
women represented in Bargagli’s Dialogo de’ giuochi is to be believed, things
must have changed a lot by the late 1530s. But it is quite possible that the
Intronati’s relatively positive public attitude towards women masked more
negative private views. Perhaps Alessandro Piccolomini’s ironic attitude
towards women in La Raffaella is a product of this conf lict. As we have seen,
the Ragionamenti ’s attitude towards its female speakers is always ambivalent.
But La Raffaella’s presentation of its speakers is much more straightforward.
Raffaella is a manipulative woman who is working throughout with a very
specific goal in mind—to convince Margarita to have an adulterous affair with
messer Aspasio. Margarita is simply a dupe. Whatever Piccolomini’s praise of
women, whatever support the Intronati gave and received from Sienese
noblewomen, La Raffaella ironically suggests that women are fundamentally
submissive to male desire. Raffaella’s considerable ingenuity is entirely
subordinate to the schemes of messer Aspasio. She has no other function than to
help him obtain his desires, and she is in many ways an abject character,
forced to make her living by tricking young women into having sex with
manipulative men. Piccolomini’s idealistic role as defender of women in his
Orazione and elsewhere has an ironic echo in the dedicatory epistle to female
readers that prefaces La Raffaella. Here Piccolomini insists that he has always
been a staunch defender of women against their detractors. He claims that La
Raffaella clearly shows “the appropriate life and manners appropriate for a
young, noble, beautiful woman,” and holds up the character of Raffaella as
proof that women are capable of “great concepts and profound statements and
good judgment.”67 He decries the double standard that sees extra-marital
affairs as “honorable and great” for men, and “utterly shameful for women.” He
admits that if a woman were to be so foolish as to conduct an affair in a way
that would arouse suspicion, that would be “a great error,” but he trusts that
his female readers “will be full of so much prudence, and temperance that
[they] will know how to maintain and enjoy [their] lovers” for years and years.
“There is nothing more pleasing nor more worthy of a gentlewoman than this.”68
In the epistle, Piccolomini is doubling down on the joke that underlies La Raffaella
as a whole: what women want most of all is satisfying sex with anattractive and
f lattering young man. Anyone who helps them attain this goal becomes their
greatest champion.As we have seen, Aretino’s Ragionamenti argue at length that
at least some women prefer money, status, and power to sexual pleasure. But
this is largely because the whores of the Ragionamenti are not comfortable,
upper-class women like those in La Raffaella. Aretino’s whores want power, but
his nuns and wives, whose material well-being is secured either by the Church
or by their husbands, want sex. In the more elevated world of La Raffaella, the
wealthy and well-born Margarita lives in luxury; all that is missing from her
pleasurable life is a satisfying sexual partner. The condition of Nanna, Pippa,
Antonia—and indeed of Raffaella, Piccolomini’s impoverished elderly bawd—is
much more precarious. The single-minded pursuit of sexual pleasure, it seems,
is a privilege of the upper classes, of those women who are not compelled to
participate directly in a capitalist market for goods and services in which
their sexuality is primarily a commodity used to raise capital. Aretino’s
attitude to women is often disdainful and dismissive; Piccolomini almost always
f latters his female readers. And yet, it is the Ragionamenti that imagine
autonomous women who manage to hold their own in conf lict with men, whereas La
Raffaella presents women who are entirely dominated by men in one way or
another. The Ragionamenti fantasize about the ways in which women trick men; La
Raffaella fantasizes about the ways women can be tricked. Aretino’s Nanna
provides a powerful contrast to Piccolomini’s fantasy of feminine submission.
In Book 2 of the Ragionamenti, when Nanna recounts her experiences as a wife,
she does exactly what Raffaella urges Margarita to do— she takes young lovers
who can satisfy her sexually in ways her impotent husband cannot. But the key
difference is that Nanna makes that choice for herself—she is not tricked into it
by a male suitor who is using a female confidant to manipulate her. Even before
becoming a prostitute, Nanna is always looking out for herself. She tricks her
lovers in the same way she tricks her husband. She plays to win and is never
duped. And unlike Margarita, who promises to devote herself exclusively to
messer Aspasio, Nanna’s adultery is utterly promiscuous: Once I had seen and
understood the lives of wives, in order to keep my end up, I began to satisfy
all my passing whims and desires, doing it with all sorts, from potters to
great lords, with especial favor extended to the religious orders—friars,
monks, and priests. Io, veduto e inteso la vita delle maritate, per non essere
da meno di loro, mi diedi a cavare ogni vogliuzza, e volsi provare fino ai
facchini e fino ai signori, la frataria, le pretaria, e la monicaria sopra
tutto.69 Eventually she ends up stabbing her husband to death when he assaults
her after catching her having sex with a beggar.70 It is hard to imagine
Piccolomini’s wellbred Margarita acting in a similar manner should her husband
ever catch her with messer Aspasio. Piccolomini’s Raffaella fits into larger
trends in the ways in which Aretino’s Ragionamenti were read and assimilated
into mainstream early modern culture.Broadly speaking, texts that were inspired
or inf luenced by the Ragionamenti adapted Aretino’s text in ways that made it
less subversive and conformed better to traditional ideas of early modern
gender relations. Later editions, translations, and adaptations of the
Ragionamenti focused on Book 3 of the first day, on the life of whores, and
presented the text to readers simply as a catalogue of female deceit and
monstrosity in which the satirical and subversive elements of Nanna’s character
were downplayed in order to make her a purely negative figure.71 In a similarly
reductive move, La Raffaella takes the notion that women will attempt to
deceive men, and limits it to the particular case of aristocratic wives
deceiving their husbands—a model which fits well into traditional discourses of
courtly love that go back to the twelfth century.72 Women are represented as
fundamentally passionate creatures that desire physical pleasures above all
else, and these are found more naturally with young men in adulterous
relationships than with respectable, mature, and neglectful husbands.
Margarita’s husband spends too much time on “business” and not enough with his
wife, and the well-bred and discreet messer Aspasio is the natural solution to
Margarita’s problems. Raffaella the bawd is not disrupting traditional
aristocratic patterns of behavior, she is facilitating them. As long as the
affair remains discreet, everyone will benefit and no one will care.
(Machiavelli makes much the same point in his play Mandragola, but in that case
the satiric irony is obvious.) In La Raffaella the extent to which Piccolomini
supports Raffaella’s argument is not clear. As we have seen, he explicitly
endorses her point of view in his dedicatory epistle to his female readers. But
the degree of irony in the epistle is an open question. It is enough that
Piccolomini had deniability when he needed it—La Raffaella, as he later
claimed, was obviously a youthful joke. Later commentators agreed that the
dialogue, though seemingly immoral, was actually a witty jeu d’esprit. The
nineteenth-century scholar and editor Giuseppe Zonta called La Raffaella a
“jewel of the Renaissance, the most beautiful ‘scene’ that the sixteenth
century has left us, in which didactic intent develops deliciously out of a
comic drama” (“gioiello della Rinascita, la più bella “scena” che il
Cinquecento ci abbia lasciato, dove l’intento didattico deliziosamente si
svolge di su una comica trama”).73 Many things have been said about Aretino’s
Ragionamenti, but no one ever claimed that they were a beautiful jewel.Notes 1
On sixteenth-century editions of La Raffaella, see Zonta, ed., Trattati
d’amore, 379–82; Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 175–77. There are no known
surviving copies of the 1539 edition. Zonta believes the first edition may have
been published in 1540. 2 Aretino, Ragionamento della Nanna; and Dialogo di M.
Pietro Aretino. 3 Moulton, Before Pornography, 132–36. 4 See the dedicatory
epistle to “quelle donne che leggeranno,” Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 31. Unless
otherwise indicated, all references to La Raffaella are to this edition. 5 On
prostitution as a form of labor and commerce in the Ragionamenti see Moulton,
“Whores as Shopkeepers,” 71–86.6 Moulton, Before Pornography, 132–36. On
Aretino’s public image, see Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr. 7 Moulton, Before
Pornography, 130–31. 8 Aretino, Sei giornate, 132–33. English translation:
Aretino, Aretino’s Dialogues, 116. All English quotations from the Ragionamenti
are from this edition. 9 Aretino, Sei giornate, 115–16; Aretino’s Dialogues,
102–03. 10 See Larivaille, La Vie quotidienne, esp. chapter 6 on the economic
and personal exploitation of whores and chapter 7 on syphilis. On hierarchies
of prostitution, see Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 35–37. 11 Aretino, Sei
giornate; Aretino’s Dialogues, 135–36. 12 Aretino, Sei giornate, 283–84;
Aretino’s Dialogues, 310. 13 Baldi, Tradizione, 106–07. 14 Piccolomini, La
Raffaella, 41. All translations from La Raffaella are my own. 15 Piéjus, “Venus
Bifrons,” 121. 16 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 119. 17 Ibid., 101–02. 18 Ibid.,
94. 19 Ibid., 112. 20 Ibid., 113. 21 Ibid., 110. 22 Ibid., 135 n. 120. 23
Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 82–83. 24 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 27. 25 Piéjus,
“Venus Bifrons,” 86. 26 Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 10–48. 27 “Molte cose
che per scherzo scrisse già in un Dialogo de la Bella Creanza de le Donne,
fatto di me più per un certo sollazzo, che per altra più grave cagione.”
Dedicatory epistle to Piccolomini, De la Institutione. See Piccolomini, La
Raffaella, 7. 28 He did publish two comedies: L’Amor costante (1540) and
L’Alessandro (1545). See Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 177–78, 187–88. 29
Piccolomini, De la Institutione (f. 231r-v). See Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 8. 30
Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 81, 161. 31 See the 1960 bibliography of Piccolomini’s
published works in Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 173–96. 32 An Italian
translation of Vives’ De institutione feminae christianae was published in
Venice in 1546 under the title De l’institutione de la femina. A second edition
appeared in 1561. Vives’ treatise was also the model for Ludovico Dolce’s Della
Institutione delle donne (Venice: Giolito, 1545). Further editions of Dolce’s
text were published in 1553, 1559, and 1560. 33 Burke, The Fortunes of the
Courtier. 34 Trissino, Epistola. 35 Capella, Galeazzo Flavio Capella Milanese.
36 Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady. 37 See the chronological bibliography of 125
works on women published in Italy between 1471 and 1560, Piéjus, “Venus
Bifrons,” 156–65. Women did address the issue in unpublished texts, such as the
collected letters of Laura Cereta (ca. 1488). See Cereta, Collected Letters.
Published texts by women were more common is the later years of the sixteenth
century. For an overview of “protofeminist” writing in early modern Italy see
Campbell and Stampino, eds. In Dialogue, 1–13. 38 Baldi, Tradizione, 99–102.
Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 11–15. 39 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 108. On the
larger influence of the Cortegiano on La Raffaella, see Baldi, Tradizione,
86–90. 40 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 9. Baldi, Tradizione, 100–07. 41 Piéjus,
“Venus Bifrons,” 106, 118, 126. 42 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 43.43 Aretino,
Sei giornate, 139; Aretino’s Dialogues, 158. 44 Aretino, Sei giornate, 285,
291; Aretino’s Dialogues, 312, 318. 45 Bandello, Novelle, 1.34. Included in a
list of licentious books, along with the poems of Petrarch, Boccaccio’s
Decameron, and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. See Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 83. 46
Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 43–44. Piccolomini and Aretino corresponded in
1540– 41. Five letters from Piccolomini to Aretino are included in Marcolini,
ed., Lettere scritte. See also Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 253–54. 47 “De
là naît, comme dans les Ragionamenti, un texte provocateur, animé pare une
ironie cynique qui, parodiant point par point les leçons habituellement données
aux femmes, renverse la finalité d’une conduite désormais subordonnée à la
recherche du plaisir”; “Piccolomini constate, comme l’Arétin, un divorce entre
les principes ouvertement affirmés et la conduite quotidienne de ses
contemporains.” Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 147–48. My translation. 48 Kelso,
Doctrine, 78–135. 49 Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices, 32. 50 The Bechdel–Wallace
test was first outlined in 1985 in Allison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch
Out For. See Alison Bechdel, “The Rule,” in Dykes to Watch Out For (Ithaca, NY:
Firebrand Books, 1986), 22. Bechdel attributes the idea to her friend Liz
Wallace, and says the ultimate source is a passage in Virginia Woolf ’s A Room
of One’s Own. See also Selisker, “The Bechdel Test.” 51 Rossia and Straub,
eds., Fabliaux Érotiques, 199–239. 52 In order to silence her vagina, the
Countess stuffs it with cotton, but the Knight is able to make her anus speak
as well, and all is revealed. 53 Bell and Reverby, “Vaginal Politics,” 435. 54
On the Intronati, see Constantini, L’Accademia. 55 Maylender, Storie delle
accademie d’Italia, vol. 3, 354–58. 56 Coller, “The Sienese Accademia,” 223.
See also Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 86-103. 57 Coller, “The Sienese Accademia,”
224. A second edition of the Orazione appeared in 1549. See Cerreta, Alessandro
Piccolomini, 189. 58 Moulton, Love in Print, 48–53. 59 Piéjus, ‘L’Orazione,
547. Coller, “The Sienese Accademia,” 225. 60 Piccolomini translated one of the
six books of the Aeneid. For these and other examples, see Piéjus, “Venus
Bifrons,” 91–96. 61 Bargagli, Dialogo de’ giuochi, 22. Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,”
89. 62 Ibid. She cites Elena De’ Vecchi, Alessandro Piccolomini, in Bulletino
Senese di Storia Patria (1934), 426. 63 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 93–96. The
untitled dialogue is roughly contemporaneous with La Raffaella. 64 Vignali, La
Cazzaria, 40–41. 65 Ibid., 21–26. 66 As well as appearing in La Cazzaria and
being the author of the aforementioned scholarly dialogue between three women,
Marcantonio Piccolomini (1504–79) also appears as the primary speaker of
Bargagli’s Dialogo de’ giuochi. 67 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 29. 68 “Io vi
confesso bene, poiché gli uomini fuori di ogni ragione tirannicamente hanno
ordinato leggi, volendo che una medesima cosa a le donne sia vituperosissima e
a loro sia onore e grandezza, poich’egli è cosí, vi confesso e dico che quando
una donna pensasse di guidare un amore con poco saviezza, in maniera che
n’avesse da nascere un minimo sospettuzzo, farebbe grandissimo errore, e io piú
che altri ne l’animo mio la biasmarei: perché io conosco benissimo che a le
donne importa il tutto questa cosa. Ma se, da l’altro canto, donne mie, voi
sarete piene di tanta prudenza e accortezza e temperanza, che voi sappiate
mantenervi e godervi l’amante vostro, elletto che ve l’avete, fin che durano
gli anni vostri cosí nascostamente, che né l’aria, né il ne possa suspicar mai,
in questo caso dico e vi giuro che non potete far cosa di maggior contento e
piú degna di una gentildonna che questa.” Ibid., 30–31.69 Aretino, Sei
giornate, 89; Aretino’s Dialogues, 102. 70 Aretino, Sei giornate, 90; Aretino’s
Dialogues, 103. 71 Such texts include Colloquio de las Damas (Seville, 1548);
Le Miroir des Courtisans (Lyon, 1580); Pornodidascalus seu Colloquium Muliebre
(Frankfurt, 1623); and The Crafty Whore (London, 1648). See Moulton, “Crafty
Whores,” and Moulton, Before Pornography, 152–57. 72 On Courtly Love as a
cultural phenomenon, see Newman, ed., The Meaning of Courtly Love. On the
cultural origins of courtly love, see Boase, The Origin and Meaning. 73 Zonta,
ed. Trattati d’amore, 377.Bibliography Abrabanel, Judah (Leone Ebreo). Dialoghi
d’amore. Rome: Mariano Lenzi, 1535. Aragona, Tullia d’. Dialogo . . .
della infinità d’amore. Venice: G. Giolito, 1547. Aretino, Pietro. Aretino’s
Dialogues. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Marsilio, 1994. ———.
Dialogo di M. Pietro Aretino, nel quale la Nanna il primo giorno insegna a la
Pippa sua figliola a esser puttana, nel secondo gli contai i tradimenti che
fanno gli huomini a le meschine che gli credano, nel terzo et ultimo la Nanna
et la Pippa sedendo nel orto ascoltano la comare et la balia che ragionano de
la ruffiania. Turin?: 1536. ———. Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia,
fatto in Roma sotto una ficaia, composto del divino Aretino per suo capricio a
correttione de i tre stati delle donne. Paris?: 1534. ———. Sei giornate. Edited
by Giovanni Aquilecchia. Bari: Laterza, 1969. Baldi, Andrea. Tradizione e
parodia in Alessandro Piccolomini. Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2001.
Bandello, Matteo. Novelle. 3 vols. Lucca: Il Busdrago, 1554. Bargagli,
Girolamo. Dialogo de’ giuochi. Venice: Gio. Antonio Bertano, 1575. Bechdel,
Alison. “The Rule.” In Dykes to Watch Out For. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books,
1986. Bell, Susan E. and Susan M. Reverby. “Vaginal Politics: Tensions and
Possibilities in The Vagina Monologues.” Women’s Studies International Forum 28
(2005): 430–44. Bembo, Pietro. Gli Asolani. Venice: Aldo Romano, 1505. Boase,
Roger. The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European
Scholarship. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977. Burke, Peter. The
Fortunes of the Courtier: European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Campbell, Julie
D. and Maria Galli Stampino, eds. In Dialogue with the Other Voice in
Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing.
Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter, 2011.
Capella, Galeazzo Flavio. Galeazzo Flavio Capella Milanese della eccelenza et
dignità delle donne. Venice: Gregorio de Gregorii, 1526. Castiglione,
Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by
Charles Singleton. New York: Norton, 2002. ———. Il libro del cortegiano. Edited
by N. Longo. Milan: Garzanti, 2008. Cereta, Laura. Collected Letters of a Renaissance
Feminist. Edited and translated by Diana Robin. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997. Cerreta, Florindo. Alessandro Piccolomini: Letterato e filosofo
senese del cinquecento. Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati, 1960. Coller,
Alexandra. “The Sienese Accademia degli Intronati and its Female
Interlocutors.” The Italianist 26 (2006): 223–46. Constantini, Lolita
Petrarchi. L’Accademia degli Intronati di Siena e una sua commedia. Siena:
Editrice d’Arte “La Diana,” 1928.Diderot, Denis. Les Bijoux indiscrets. Paris:
Garnier Flammarion, 1968. Harvey, Elizabeth D. Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist
Theory and English Renaissance Texts. New York: Routledge, 1992. Kelso, Ruth.
Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 1956. Larivaille, Paul. La Vie quotidienne des courtesanes en Italie au
temps de La Renaissance. Paris: Hachette, 1975. Marcolini, Francesco, ed.
Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino. 1551. Scelta di curiosita letterare 132. 4
vols. Bologna: 1875. Maylender, Michele. Storie delle accademie d’Italia. 5
vols. Bologna: Lincino Capelli, 1926. Moulton, Ian Frederick. Before
Pornography:Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford, 2000.
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Early Modern England’. Edited by Sasha Roberts. Critical Survey 12, no. 2
(Spring 2000): 88–105. ———. Love in Print in the Sixteenth Century: The
Popularization of Romance. New York: Palgrave, 2014. ———. “Whores as
Shopkeepers: Money and Sexuality in Aretino’s Ragionamenti.” In Money,
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Wolfthal and Juliann Vitullo, 71–86. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Newman, F.X., ed.
The Meaning of Courtly Love. Binghampton, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1973. Piccolomini, Alessandro. De la Institutione di tutta la vita de
l’homo nato nobile in città libera. Venice: Hieronymum Scotum, 1543. ———. La
Raffaella, ovvero Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne. Edited by Giancarlo
Alfano. Rome: Salerno, 2001. Piéjus, Marie-Françoise. ‘L’Orazione in lode delle
donne di Alessandro Piccolomini.’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana
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Raffaella d’Alessandro Piccolomini.” In Images de la femme dans la littérature
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Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1980. Rossi, Luciano and Richard Straub, eds. Fabliaux
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poche, 1992. Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and
Power at the End of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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d’Orlando Furioso. Venice: G. Giolito, 1550. Trissino, Giovanni Giorgio.
Epistola . . . de la vita che de tenere una donna vedova. Rome: 1524.
Vignali, Antonio. La Cazzaria: The Book of the Prick. Edited and translated by
Ian Frederick Moulton. New York: Routledge, 2003. Waddington, Raymond B.
Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in SixteenthCentury
Literature and Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Zonta,
Giuseppe, ed. Trattati d’amore del Cinquecento. Bari: G. Laterza, 1913.12
GIOVAN BATTISTA DELLA PORTA’S EROTOMANIC ART OF RECOLLECTION Sergius KoderaDella
Porta’s brief thirty-two-page treatise on the art of memory1 appeared in print
in Naples in 1566. There was another edition in 1583; in 1602 Della Porta
published a revised Latin version of the text under the title Ars reminscendi.2
Despite the fact that The Art of Remembering did not see nearly as many press
runs as Della Porta’s more famous works on natural magic and physiognomy, and
despite (or because of?) its brevity, his art of memory was frequently utilized
by seventeenth-century preachers.3 Given its author’s dubious reputation with
Catholic orthodoxy—and his constant difficulties with the Inquisition—this
popularity might seem quite amazing.4 In both a series of articles and a book
chapter, Lina Bolzoni has discussed The Art of Remembering; my contribution
here seeks to elaborate on Bolzoni’s work by examining the function of a
peculiar sequence of images appearing in Della Porta’s text—images that inf
luence the entire structure and character of The Art of Remembering. Della
Porta recommends the use of explicit sexual fantasies as the most powerful
images for organizing the process of recollection. The use of erotic images was
not uncommon in the medieval and early modern tradition of the art of memory.
Yet in Della Porta’s text, images depicting sex between human beings and
animals are amazingly prominent (and especially in the two Italian versions of
the Arte del ricordare than in the later Latin Ars reminiscendi ). Here I will
argue that Della Porta’s use of pornographic and even, in the modern sense of
the word, sodomitic imagery is not merely a consequence of the more innovative
aspects of his instructions for developing the capacities of memory. Rather, these
images resonate in other of Della Porta’s numerous and highly inf luential
texts—namely, his texts for the theater, on human physiognomy, natural magic,
cross-breeding, and marvels (meraviglia) in general. Such pornographic images
thus refer to the core topics of his most important texts—and, accordingly, to
his general endeavors as an early modern magus.5The art of memory Basically,
the art of memory consists of imagining a spatial structure—for instance, a
house with different rooms (loci )—and then furnishing these spaces with
objects and persons (imagines).6 The next step is to walk through the rooms of
this imagined building and to assign to each one item one wishes to recall, in
the precise order of movement through the architectonic structure. Originally
developed in classical antiquity for public orators, this method allows a
speaker to recall the general content and order of a speech, but the “art of
memory” was also used to recollect specific sequences of words. In this “art,”
it is crucial to visualize and memorize a mental structure, with its loci and
imagines, in the greatest possible detail. To facilitate this formidable task,
the masters of the art of memory frequently recommended that the images have a
strong emotional nature (imagines agentes). Conspicuously, manuals for the art
therefore often recommend erotically charged images as imagines agentes.7
Remembrance thus becomes dependent on—and simultaneously synonymous
with—exercising vivid (and, as we shall see, predominantly male) sexual
fantasies. The imaginary loci populated by a sequence of well-ordered and
striking images tend to acquire a life of their own. As Bolzoni writes: “it is
easy to imagine how centuries of experience in memory techniques have given
scholars some idea of the complex nature of mental images and their capacity to
inhabit their creators, to come alive and escape their control.”8 And yet the
affective movement of the soul, produced by recalling a set of emotionally
charged images, clashes with the imperative of order that is the other vital
aspect of the art of memory.9 Thus—in contrast to modern literary authors who
acknowledge and actively employ this same phenomenon in developing their
texts—the masters of memory were faced with the arduous task of restraining the
life of their own figments.10Della Porta’s mnemotechniques Della Porta’s
approach to the topic is characterized by a methodical pluralism that is
typical for the art of memory. Along with the basic principles outlined above,
he presents different ways of organizing memory.11 For example, he recommends
memorizing a group of ten to twenty women whom one has loved to organize a
system of pleasant and striking mnemonic images. He contends that when
employing the phantasmata of women one has made love to or one has desired, one
can succeed in remembering not only one word, but an entire verse or even
several verses.12 Della Porta also states one particular system as his most
innovative and preferred innovative contribution to the art. For setting up the
loci, he recommends memorizing little neutral cubicles eight palms long, each
populated with different impressive personae: here, the sexually attractive
women one has made love to or has been in love with are placed alongside
cubicles occupied by friends, jesters, noblemen, and matrons.13 Della Porta
accordingly recommends the use not only of men and women personal
acquaintances, but also of charactertypes—especially from comedy—that during
the sixteenth century were populating contemporary stage plays. In this
respect, The Art of Remembering follows a widespread tradition in
sixteenth-century treatises, as seen for example in Lodovoco Dolce’s
contemporaneous Dialogo del modo di accrescere e conservare la memoria
(1562).14 Another important precept in Porta’s Art of Remembering is that the
sequence of personae must vary; for example, he suggests “a woman, a boy, a
girl, a relative, an elderly man.”15 It is crucial to note that this succession
of personae is as fixed as the structure of the cubicles where they are
placed—which they “inhabit,” as it were. This implies that the personae become
part of the spatial setting, of the architecture of the memory palace, the
locus.16 These loci/personae determine the temporal sequence in which the
imagines appear, and in turn the content to be memorized in the correct
sequence (this content I will term the memorandum). In contrast to the fixed
personae, Della Porta defines the images as “animated pictures” which we
construct or spin out ( fingere/recamare) using the faculty of fantasy to
represent things and words.17 The images are mobile and variable: they
constitute what the personae in their fixed sequence do. And these activities
must be extraordinary in every respect; clothed in lavish and shining robes,
the personae’s movements should resemble larger-than-life actors, presenting
the mind with a “painting that is new, strange, marvelous, unusual, pleasant,
varied, and horrific (spaventevole).”18 Moreover, an image should also be
composed of a variable set of living and dead objects, which, like stage props,
are added to the persona—for instance, a cornucopia or a swan. Della Porta
recommends the use of relatively few loci/personae, condensing the sequence of
memoranda to a maximum of ten images agentes, as comic and tragic playwrights
would.19 One cannot help speculating that Della Porta discloses here a vital
aspect of his writing techniques as a prolific and inf luential author of
comedies.20 He obviously followed the advice of his predecessors, shaping his
personae in ways reminiscent of the exceedingly grotesque personae in his
mannerist comedies.21 The most salient feature of these plays is that they use
a limited set of characters whose social roles and statues are fixed in a set
of stock scenes.22 The practicability of this system is obvious, because there
is no need to memorize hundreds of loci and imagines. Yet there is one obvious
difficulty. This artificial memory is rather limited, because it will only
allow the practitioner to memorize one story (or a sequence of ten words).Della
Porta’s ars oblivionis This limitation is, of course, a general difficulty for
the art. From the time of its invention, the ars memoria has entailed an ars
oblivions, an art of forgetting, that in turn allows for the memory to be
organized anew. This is a difficult task, because laboriously constructed
chains of association between personae, imagines, and memoranda must now be
erased.23 Della Porta says that if we wish to remember a new story or a new set
of words, we can assign the same set of personae, in the same sequence, the
task of forging a new sequence of images.To this aim, we must imagine the fixed
sequence of personae in their cubicles, with these “usual suspects” stripped
naked or merely covered in white sheets, all in identical upright posture,
leaning with their shoulders against the walls of their cells.24 In Della
Porta’s system, the sequence of personae set in neutral cubicles is a permanent
pattern. He compares the personae to the lines on a specially varnished sheet
for musical compositions; it is inscribed with permanent lines, but what is
written onto them can be washed off. Thus, just as the musical notes (or signs)
are impermanent and can be reinscribed onto that sheet in a new order, creating
a new melody, so the old imagines agentes may be erased, with the personae free
to assume the pose of new imagines agentes.25 It is not only the architectonic
structure that functions as locus; the personae (who are usually classified as
“images”) become an aspect or a part of “place.”26 The personae assume the
paradoxical role of living statues—and this oxymoron aptly circumscribes the
self-contradictory function of the memory images: in order to impersonate new
imagines agentes, they should be plasmatic, but at the same time their bodies
must remain precisely fixed in dress, comportment, gesture, and the
corresponding affects communicated by these visual traits. However, Della Porta
prescribes that even when the personae are imagined naked, leaning against the
wall—in order to prepare them for a new role in another story—they should not
be the neutral recipients of images. Rather, they must be imagined in a highly
individualized form. And their actions are not arbitrary: Della Porta
prescribes constructing these stock characters of the imagination in the most
fitting way with respect to “age, facial traits, occupation, and comportment
(mores).”27 The personae’s actions are predetermined by their sex, social
status, and concomitant habits. Moreover, these actions of the personae—who
become the permanent abodes of the variable imagines—have to be related to the
content of the word or the story to be remembered. Della Porta’s technique of character
development was an important and original modification of the traditional
system of loci and imagines.28 In this way, the formal structure of the memory
is brought into a strong— and reciprocal—relationship with the content that is
to be memorized. In a key example, Della Porta writes that the entire story of
Andromeda can be remembered by the image of a naked, shivering, and wailing
woman chained to a rock.29 The setup of highly individualized loci/personae is
vital for the intricate task of memorizing a sequence of individual images.
Since more than one image is required, the spatial arrangement of the
personae/imagines becomes very important. The Latin version of The Art of
Remembering supplies the following example: if the word to be remembered is
avis (bird) and the cubicle is inhabited by the persona of a boy, then he
should be Ganymede; if it is “cook” then he cooks the bird;30 if the word is
taurus (bull) and a robust boy inhabits the cubicle, then we should imagine
Hercules wrestling with Achelous;31 if we wish to remember horn (cornus) and a
virgin inhabits the cubicle, we visualize her covered in f lowers and fruits,
like a Naiad with a cornucopia in hand.32The Italian Arte del ricordare gives
different examples.33 If we suppose the word “bird” to be the memorandum for a
prostitute (meretrice), Della Porta suggests constructing an image of Leda
during sexual intercourse with Jupiter in the guise of a swan.34 This direction
is confirmed in many other examples: for instance, under the memorandum “bull”
in the locus/persona of a virgin, we might imagine the rape of Europa.35 If the
memorandum “bull” embodies the locus/persona of a meretrice (prostitute), then
we should forge an image of Pasiphaë having sexual intercourse with the bull.36
There is no doubt that the imagery of the vernacular Arte del ricordare is more
graphic, more sexually explicit, and less polished than the later Latin
version. Yet all the versions recommend sexually explicit, or at least
erotically charged, imagines agentes. Another striking feature of Della Porta’s
examples is that all memoranda— the “bulls,” “horns”— are words with sexual
connotations. Of course, uccello “bird” in Italian denotes the penis; thus, the
sexual connotation is as present in the memorandum as in the image. 37 This
intimate thematic connection highlights the rule that imago and memorandum must
be as closely related as possible. These examples reveal that Della Porta
wishes his readers to entwine their individual memories of (present or former)
personal acquaintances with the stories of classical mythology to construct
imagines agentes; like interlacing arches, they support the architecture of the
memory palace. It seems that the thematic link between imago agens and
memorandum is rather uncommon in the art of memory. Usually the imagines
agentes are used as placeholders for any content; for example, one could use
the imagines agentes of naked women to remember any sort of text, not only
erotic topics. Della Porta’s thematic over-determination would seem to imply
that his true interest lay in the actual topics to which the imagines agentes
and their corresponding memoranda refer; namely, a discourse concerning the
human body, the porous boundaries between human beings and animals. Inherent in
these tales of sex with animals is the generation of
monstrous—marvelous—offspring.Panoptic visions and living statues From a
Foucaultian perspective, Della Porta’s vision of the defenseless personae in
their mental prison cells has a panoptic character (though the term here is
used, of course, anachronistically). Whereas gazing at naked or sparsely
dressed human bodies, even in the imagination, can be considered a form of
symbolic violence, it is a technique of visualization in which the different
qualities of men and women of various ages, sexes, and professions become—quite
brutally— reduced to their physical features, because they are bereft of their
clothing and the social insignia, which denote, circumscribe, and protect their
social status and their moral integrity. This practice of examining the
physical features of naked men and women is echoed in the art of physiognomy of
which Della Porta considered himself a master. In fact, in his lavishly
illustrated works on the topic we find many depictions of the naked bodies of
men and women, with textssupplying the reader with the character traits (mores)
ascribed to various medical complexions; that is, the constituent factors of
human bodies and their affinities within the animal world.38 Measuring and
classifying naked human bodies according to their occupational and concomitant
social status was a widespread artistic practice during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries following the techniques for painters described in Leon
Battista Alberti’s De pictura (On Painting, 1435). Della Porta very closely
echoes and even plagiarizes Alberti, adapting Alberti’s instructions for
painters into his art of memory. In order to create images that appear lifelike
and therefore suited for communicating human emotions, Alberti recommends that
painters first draw human figures naked and only subsequently dress them (“ma
come a vestrie l’uomo prima si disegna nudo poi il circondiamo i panni”). 39 In
this context, the parallels between Alberti’s and Della Porta’s ideas are
obvious. In order to create emotionally charged imagines agentes they must be
as lifelike as possible, which means—especially in the case of erotic
imagines—that we undress the personae. Yet, whereas Alberti had pointed to the
appropriate decorum of his images, Della Porta opts for
larger-than-life-personae—for grotesque and exaggerated representations.40
Another point of reference between the De pictura and The Art of Remembering is
that Alberti links his measurements of human bodies to the proportions of
buildings. In Alberti’s context, an implied relation of architecture and body
clearly results from the process of constructing representations of irregular,
organic forms in central perspective. The architectural space must be
circumscribed before inserting the non-geometrical figures which are to
“inhabit” that space. The parallel to Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering is
striking, since for him as well the personae are an integral part of the loci
they inhabit. Paradoxically, Della Porta’s personae can be considered moving
statues. On the one hand, they must be imbued with as much life as possible; on
the other hand, they must freeze in one position, like a tableau vivant. But
the idea that moving statues are sexually arousing is much older than Della
Porta; Andromeda (one of the key examples in Della Porta’s The Art of
Remembering) is described by Ovid as sexually arousing to Perseus, her
liberator, because her naked body resembles a marble sculpture. “When Perseus
saw [Andromeda], her arms chained to the hard rock, he would have taken her for
a marble statue (“marmoreum esset opus”), had not the light breeze stirred her
hair, and warm tears streamed from her eyes. Without realizing it, he fell in
love (“trahit inscius ignes”).”41 When viewed from the perspective of
contemporary theater, Ovid’s erotic statue of Andromeda brings to mind the
“living statue” of Hermione in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (V, 3) or Othello’s
description of Desdemona’s body as “whiter skin . . . than snow” and
as “smooth monumental alabaster” (Othello V, 2, 4–5). On Shakespeare’s stage,
this transformational power from living being to statue (and back again, in the
mode of comedy) is associated with male violence against women caused by
jealousy. Such marble statues may also play an important role in imaginings of
pregnant women. In a more general context, tales of walking statues are
associated with magical arts, as demonstrated in Apuleius’Metamorphoses, a work
closely associated with magic. Lucius, the protagonist of this second-century
Roman novel, describes his arrival in Corinth, the capital of Greek witchcraft:
There was nothing I looked at in the city that didn’t believe to be other than
it was: I imagined that everything everywhere had been changed by some infernal
spell into a different shape – I thought that the very stones I stumbled
against must be petrified human beings, . . . and I thought the fountains
were liquefied human bodies. I expected statues and pictures to start walking,
walls to speak, oxen and other cattle to utter
prophecies, . . .42 A magician’s power thus is akin to what a
master of memory does: turning one thing into another. This topic is intimately
linked to Della Porta’s other interests in the arts of cross-breeding, of
physiognomy, and of natural magic. Yet the relationship between Della Porta’s
imagines agentes and contemporary painting becomes even more striking upon a
closer examination of the individual imagines agentes ref lected in
contemporary media.Ovid’s Metamorphoses as represented by Titian’s paintings
Virtually all the examples in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering refer to the
thicket of myths recorded in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This is no wonder; as the
most inf luential “pagan” text of the Middle Ages and beyond, the
Metamorphoses43 constitute a substantial encyclopedia of the transformations of
the bodies of gods and human beings—transformations caused mostly by violent sexual
acts of transgression on the part of gods, heroes, or powerful men upon their
helpless victims. Ovid’s text is thus a rich source for the primary task of
Della Porta’s art of memory: not only to associate but to exchange one image
for another. Moreover, Andromeda, Leda, Ganymede, Io, and Actaeon, to mention
but a few of the imagines mentioned in the Ars reminiscendi, were highly
popular subjects for contemporary artistic representation. It is thus no wonder
that Della Porta explicitly refers to the paintings of Michelangelo, Rafael,
and Titian in his writings.44 In the mode of synecdoche, these imagines agentes
serve as abbreviations for entire stories that are reduced to one single imago
agens, just as Della Porta had postulated in the case of Andromeda.
Accordingly, Titian’s most famous works supply the reader with instructive
illustrations for Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. His key example,
Andromeda (in Perseus and Andromeda 1554–56), is represented by Titian with a
body as white as a marble statue, chained to her rock, with a vivid facial
expression, her arms depicted in an unusual, expressive pattern of movement.
The same applies to Europa (in Rape of Europa 1559–65), with the major
difference that she is not shown in an upright position like Andromeda, but
instead reclining against the back of the bull/Zeus; both female figures are
naked, their sexual organs barely covered by a piece of white transparent
garment. In all likelihood, this is whatDella Porta imagined as the lenzuola
with which the bodies of his personae should be covered in their ground
positions. Of course, Titian created many striking erotic female figures. One
thinks of his many Venuses, but also his renderings of a seductive St. Mary
Magdalen (1530–35) or St. Margaret (ca. 1565), paintings also remarkable for
the impressive movements of their subjects’ arms as well as gesture, (lack of )
apparel, and extravagant demeanor. The myth of Actaeon is the subject of two of
Titian’s most impressive paintings: the Death of Actaeon (1559) and The Fate of
Actaeon (1559–75). In the latter painting, the hunter’s head is already
transformed into the form of a horned stag. With the exception of Leda and the
Swan (by Michelangelo), nearly all the mythological subjects mentioned in Della
Porta’s treatise are represented in Titian’s most famous works. We thus do not
lack examples of contemporary paintings illustrating the imagines agentes in
Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. Yet there is one notable exception: the
story of Pasiphaë (on whom see below). Like the imagines agentes in The Art of
Remembering, Titian’s figures seem to be frozen in their movements, despite
their vividness. An entire story is reduced to one spectacular moment—a
snapshot (to use an anachronistic term). This reduction is not merely a
convenient tool for remembering a myth in a wink of time. It also constitutes
an intervention eclipsing all other aspects of the story that are not
represented in the one imago agens. Titian’s paintings, like Della Porta’s
imagines, are evocations of a story in the mode of synecdoche. Alive and dead
at the same time, they are fetishistic representations catering to a male gaze,
for a specific set of sexual fantasies. Moreover, the fragmentation implicit in
this process also allows for a reduction of different myths to a limited set of
structural elements or topics which all point to one and the same topic. This
is exactly what Della Porta does in the examples given in The Art of
Remembering; he evokes one and the same topic (for instance, a bull) in various
loci/personae and the concomitant imagines agentes they enact. Moreover, all
the different topics he uses as examples for memoranda (bull, horn, bird) may
be subsumed under one single general topic: sex between human beings and
animals.Pasiphaë As I shall argue in what follows, the myth of Pasiphaë
fulfills a paradigmatic function for Della Porta’s memory technique, since it
corresponds so precisely with his preferred focus in natural magic, the mating
of different species and the creation of marvelous monsters. The myth is well
known. Pasiphaë falls in love with a bull, has intercourse with the animal, and
conceives the Minotaur. The sexual act leading to this monstrous birth is made
possible through the cunning intercession of Daedalus. This archetypal male
master-engineer from classical antiquity constructs a cow-shaped wooden frame
in which Pasiphaë could hide while being penetrated by the bull.45 The
remarkably imaginative and colorful myth of Pasiphaë thus conjoins illicit sex,
the art of the engineer, and the tale of a monstrous offspring.Pasiphaë is a
woman in love with an animal. She has sexual intercourse with a real bull, with
her desire thus inclined toward the animal world. Ergo, she impersonates a
highly negative image of women in the patriarchal societies through which the
myth has travelled. This gender bias is highlighted when we compare Pasiphaë to
the rape of Europa.46 Both Pasiphaë and Europa are situated in a liminal
territory of intersection between the animal, human, and divine— between
bodies, souls, and noumenal entities. Indeed, Europa is an inversion of
Pasiphaë’s story. Zeus here figures as a male lover and a god disguised as a
bull who has sexual intercourse with the maid Europa. Her fate is oriented
towards the stars. To have sex with a god in animal guise is a ticket to
immortality. To have sex as a woman with a real animal leads to ostracism and
to the birth of monsters. Thus, it is no wonder that there are copious
visualizations in fine art of the myth of Europa, but virtually none of
Pasiphaë. From the perspective of the art of memory, we may say that Pasiphae
and Europa, as imagines agentes, are inversions of each other. The mode of
synecdoche, whereby an imago agens embodies the stories of Europa and Pasiphaë,
invites a synoptic perspective on both myths, connecting as intersecting arches
in the image of a woman having sex with a bull. But this contradicts the
specific image of Pasiphaë observed in the myth, where the woman engaged in
sexual intercourse with the animal was a (real) bull covering a (dummy) cow.
Pasiphaë in fact disguises herself in what one could call a statue of a
cow-like imago in the art of memory, thus transforming the dummy cow into a
caricature of a “living statue.”47 Yet this image, on face value, shows an act
that can be observed frequently. The myth’s image of a cow and a bull mating
(again, on face value) cannot qualify as an imago agens, nor is it clear why it
should be used in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering in the locus of the
meretrice. This does not mean the wooden cow is irrelevant to the phantasmatic
transactions that characterize the basic method of the art of memory, namely to
exchange one image for another. For the myth of Pasiphaë points in an oblique
way to Daedalus’s sublime craftsmanship, his ability to fabricate a wooden
image which deceives a bull. Despite the fact that Pasiphaë is a witch (Circe’s
sister), she seemingly has not been able to concoct a magical love potion that
would sexually attract the bull. In order to fulfill her desire, she needs the
help of a male master engineer. In Greek philosophical terminology, this
ability to produce potentially eternally lasting objects (like tables) is called
“poetic.” Daedalus is thus pursuing an activity that he shares with the poets.
Indeed Daedalus’ prop is a powerfully poetic cow, and the image he created has
the power to evoke a series of (brutally violent) images which are not the
image: they are quite literally “in” the image. The dummy cow (with its dark
inside where the male imagination can pursue its most graphic phantasies of
penetration) is a model for the associative processes at work in the art of
memory—but it is in itself not an imago agens. In marked contrast to Ovid’s
version of the story, where Pasiphaë is disguised in a dummy cow, Della Porta
apparently wishes his readersto create an imago agens in which a prostitute has
sexual intercourse with a bull without recourse to Deadalus’ prop. Pasiphaë’s
myth points to the idea that the birth of monsters, in this case the Minotaur,
requires the intervention of a male mastermind, who not only helps to beget the
deviant creature, but also provides the means to contain the dangers arising
from it, for it is Daedalus who constructs the famous maze in which Pasiphaë’s
child is imprisoned.48 This image of Deadalus as creator and container of
monsters or marvels epitomizes the role Della Porta wished to assign to himself
as a cunning magus.49 Here, at the crossroads between mechanical device and intervention
into the organic body, Della Porta’s particular form of late Renaissance
natural magic, physiognomy, and the theater unfolds. Actually, the imago agens
of a woman having sex with a bull has an interesting relationship to Della
Porta’s Magia naturalis. Here we learn of Della Porta’s keen interest in
practices of cross-breeding between human beings and animals. To bolster his
claims, he cites the usual suspects for such stories: Pliny, Herodotus, Strabo
and their tales of women who were raped by billy goats, producing monstrous
offspring.50 This leads him to believe that “some of the Indians have usual
company with bruit beasts; and that which is so generated, is half a beast, and
half a man” (Magick 2, 12, 43). Della Porta also contends that it would be
possible for a man to inseminate a fowl under the right astrological
constellation and the right medical complexion.51 In order to create a
human/animal monster, Della Porta does not resort to the kind of contraption
Deadalus constructed for Pasiphaë, but relies instead on his expertise in
measuring, not the proportions of the head as did Alberti, but rather the
lengths and depths of male and female sexual organs, the course of the stars,
and the assessment of the medical complexions inscribed in the physical traits
of human beings and celestial bodies alike. These parameters—basically a
doctrine of signatures—are also the most decisive indicators in Della Porta’s
texts on physiognomonics, where he postulates the close resemblance of human
beings to certain animals, with attendant implications for the human
character.52Apuleius’ Metamorphoses This impression is confirmed by looking at
another imago agens where a woman has sex with an animal. In both the Italian
and Latin versions of The Art of Remembering, Della Porta claims that we
remember the woman having intercourse with the ass from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
better than we do the heroism of a Muzius Scevola.53 Apuleius’ Metamorphoses,
the second-century novel better known as The Golden Ass, is an interesting
source for The Art of Remembering, because Apuleius describes the sexual act
between an ass (not a bull) and a woman in great detail.54 Lucius, the
protagonist of The Golden Ass, is a young man obsessed by witchcraft who is
transformed into an ass after he applied the magical unguent concocted by
Pamphile, a powerful Thessalian witch. In the shape of an ass—although never
losing consciousness that he is a man—Lucius livesDella Porta’s erotomanic art
of recollectionthrough a veritable odyssey during which he is beaten and
mistreated. When one of his many keepers discovers that this ass is
particularly clever, he makes Lucius the object of special exhibitions and a
rich woman falls in love with the ass and hires it. In contrast to Pasiphaë,
this woman has sex with the animal without any recourse to a prop. Both Lucius
and the woman seem to enjoy the act, in spite of his asinine and—hence
proverbially large—sexual organ. This changes as soon as Lucius has to perform
the act again, this time as a cruel public entertainment in an amphitheater,
where a female convict, before being devoured by wild beasts, is sentenced to
have intercourse with the ass. Lucius deeply resents this act and manages to
escape.55 It is interesting to note that Apuleius explicitly links his
salacious story of the wealthy woman who has sex with the ass to the myth
Pasiphaë, given he calls the woman asinaria Pasiphaë (an ass-like Pasiphaë).56
The story is thus marked as a parody of the myth of Pasiphaë in the form of a
blunt satire on late Roman mores. Upon closer scrutiny, this story of the
noblewoman and the ass is—again structured by a set of inversions, an oblique
evocation of the myths of the rape of Europa as well as of Pasiphaë. In
Apuleius it is a man, Lucius, who has been turned into the shape of an
ass—neither a god ( Jupiter) who willfully changes his shape into a bull (as in
the Europa myth), nor a witch (Pasiphae) who desires a real bull and who needs
the help of a male engineer to fulfill her desire. Instead, Lucius is a man who
has been changed into an animal, not by a Pasiphaë (who was incapable of doing
that job for herself ) but by another relative or follower of Circe—Pamphile.
The sexualized content with a specific violence towards female bodies is deeply
inscribed into the story of Apuleius and, consequently, in the imago agens
prescribed in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering, which again condenses the
stories of Pasiphaë (the prostitute has sex with a bull) and the story of the
sodomite noblewoman in Apuleius, as well as including the plan to showcase the
act with female convict. The extremity of this imago agens is enhanced by the
fact that such acts of bestiality were a capital crime in Della Porta’s time,
primarily because they were believed to engender monstrous offspring, to
humanize the animal world, and simultaneously to animalize the human
perpetrators.57Io: more cows Another myth Della Porta mentions in his The Art
of Remembering —this time, as an imago agens for remembering the word
“horns”—is the story of Io.58 Her story is most pertinent because it concerns a
beautiful Naiad who is raped by Jupiter and subsequently transformed into what
Ovid describes as an extremely beautiful cow. In this shape, Jupiter wishes to
protect the girl he has violated from the wrath of his ever-jealous wife.
Unexpectedly, however, Juno likes the animal and receives it as Jupiter’s gift.
Suspecting some ruse from her husband, she proceeds to have the animal
protected by Argos, the moment in the story Della Porta employs as imago agens.
According to Ovid, Io did not lose consciousness of herreal identity but,
rather, terrified by her transformation, she seeks the company of her (human)
family. Io’s father suspects that the tame, suspiciously human cow is his
daughter. He exclaims in desperation that he had been “preparing and arranging
a marriage (thalamos taedasque praeparam I, v 558), hoping for a son-in-law
. . . now you must have a bull from the herd for husband, and your
children will be cattle (de grege nunc tibi vir, nunc de grege natus habendus.
v.660).” Eventually, Juno discovers Io’s true identity, her wrath subsides, and
Io is fully restored to her former human shape. Similar to Apuleius’ story of
Lucius in his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes Io’s transformations from human
being into cow and back again in great detail.59 Io’s story is constructed as a
set of inversions of the story of Europa. Jupiter approaches Io in the form of
a human being (not as a handsome bull) and he transforms not his own body but
that of the maid into the shape of a beautiful cow, a body in which the
sexually abused girl is deeply unhappy. However, the affinities between Lucius
and Io are even more striking; their stories appear as mirrored inversions
along the gender divide. Both their bodies are transformed into the shapes of
animals (a cow viz. an ass), both are beautiful and attractive in that guise (
Juno unexpectedly takes a liking to the cow, the noblewoman has sex with
Lucius), neither of them lose consciousness of their human nature and suffer in
their shape as animals (but Io seeks the company of her father, whereas Lucius
wants his girlfriend back), both are subsequently transformed into human shape
again, and both were originally transformed in order to escape imminent
persecution. (Io is turned into a cow by Jupiter in order to protect her from
Juno’s wrath, Lucius is mistakenly transformed into an ass in order to escape
from the law.) The specific aspect making the stories of Europa, Io, Pasiphaë,
and Lucius so significant for Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering is the
constant interplay of various but related inversions of plots. Indeed, this
method is intrinsic to the modes of transformation prescribed by this
particular art.60 Interchangeability arises from the set of oblique
inter-textual references and inversions of plots, as amalgamated in a given
imago agens.61 In the mode of synecdoche, an imago agens is designed to
represent an entire story in one image. This is a constitutive strategy of
Della Porta’s mnemotechnique, which aims at the thematic interconnecting of
persona/locus, imago agens, and memorandum. For example, a prostitute Della
Porta has slept with (persona/locus) in turn embodies Leda having sex with
Jupiter (imago agens) in order to remember the word bird (memorandum). Della
Porta’s personal (phallic) imagination thus becomes entwined with classical
myth. Within the positional logic of loci/personae in Della Porta’s The Art of
Remembering, therefore, Leda, Io, Europa, Pasiphaë, the Roman noblewoman, and
the female convict all become different imagines agentes into which one and the
same memorandum may be inscribed. Thus, the porous boundaries between human
beings and animals integral to Della Porta’s imagines agentes not only indicate
his personal taste for a bizarre and grotesque imaginary and his studiesin
physiognomy; they embody the basic principles of the Renaissance natural magic
tradition of which Della Porta was a late (yet inf luential) exponent. It
allows for a “syn-opsis,” a viewing together of very different stories that
bolsters one of the foundational tenets of Renaissance natural magic: the
universal drive for wholeness permeating the entire enlivened and sexualized
cosmos, where the male and female aspects strive to unite. By dint of his
profound knowledge of the occult sympathies and antipathies between things, the
natural magus has the power to tap and organize these cosmic erotic forces so
that he may produce his marvels.62 Within this Renaissance tradition, the human
imagination has not only a specific capacity of the soul for evoking and then
transforming images that originate from sensory perception. The human
imagination also had the power to shape the body it inhabited, as well as other
bodies.The formative power of maternal longings Renaissance natural magic
coopted an ancient belief in order to exemplify the extraordinary formative
powers of the human imagination. If a woman was exposed to a strong sensation
or harbored an intense longing during intercourse or pregnancy, this state was
thought to inf luence the formation of the embryo in her womb. Renaissance magi
thus believed that the image of its mother’s obsession was impressed on the
fetus and the future child would physically resemble the entity she had longed
for during intercourse. Della Porta makes direct reference to such ideas and
related practices. Initially, it appears that he is simply repeating the highly
popular theories on maternal longings encountered in authors as diverse as
Ficino and Castiglione.63 In the circular reasoning characteristic of natural
magic, this set of beliefs about the imagination also opened implications for purposefully
shaping future children, by positively conditioning the imagination of the
mother. A frequently repeated segreto for creating beautiful children
recommends exposing women during intercourse and pregnancy to paintings or
sculptures of beautiful children, inf luencing the future child’s shape via
beautiful imaginamenta.64 Della Porta refers directly to this bedchamber
practice: place in the bed-chambers of great men, the images of Cupid, Adonis,
and Ganymedes; or else [. . .] set them there in carved and graven
works in some solid matter, [. . .] whereby it may come to passe,
that whensoever their wives lie with them, still they may think upon those
pictures, and have their imagination strongly and earnestly bent thereupon: and
not only while they are in the act, but after they have conceived and quickened
also: so shall the child when it is born, imitate and expresse in the same form
which his mother conceived in her mind, when she conceived him, and bare in her
mind, which she bare him in her wombe.65 It is fascinating that Della Porta’s
two discourses on memory and on what one could call family planning are also
interconnected through his choice of visualexamples, of imagines agentes. As in
The Art of Remembering, we again encounter the images of Adonis and Ganymede
and of Cupid. Significantly, in contrast to Della Porta’s The Art of
Remembering, where predominately female personae cater to male sexual
fantasies, all of the images that Magia naturalis prescribes for pregnant women
are of beautiful boys. Della Porta’s ideas on the power of maternal longings
entail a creative female capacity to produce such images in the shape of
children; her imagination is engaged with the future. A master of the art of
memory, on the other hand, is engaged in recollecting the past. Hence, the
process in the pregnant woman’s imagination constitutes an inversion of the
process prescribed in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering: the woman’s
imagination allows a marble statue to come alive, whereas the (male) master of
the art of memory seeks to freeze the image of a living person (preferably a
sexualized woman) into an imago agens—that is, he turns the figment to stone,
symbolically killing the persona just when it appears to be most alive. This
excursion into beliefs about the effects of maternal longings allows us to
re-contextualize the mental process structuring Della Porta’s The Art of
Remembering. The imagination is a faculty of the human soul capable of
producing loci and imagines agentes, to be frozen into statues, into tableaux
vivants. The story of the maternal longings confirms Della Porta’s creed that
the human imagination can also materialize its products; in both cases, the
image may be unfrozen and directed back to its starting position to assume a
new pose. The master of Della Porta’s art of memory thus arrogates for himself
a phantasmatic power over life and death, inherently a much greater power that
the pro-creative capacity he has ascribed to women. The asymmetric gender bias that
emerges in this account is instructive. As in the story of Daedalus and
Pasiphaë, the art of memory also refers to the preeminent ability of the male
magus to create monsters through artificial cross-breeding, whereas the
imagination of a pregnant woman requires male protection and guidance to its
power to shape future children.Conclusion The evidence for my claim that
Porta’s choice of memory images in his The Art of Remembering is not arbitrary,
but instead it is closely related to the overreaching project he pursued as
author of texts on (and a practitioner of ) natural magic, physiognomy, and the
theater. A set of classical myths—Andromeda, Europa, Io, Pasiphaë, and
Aktaion—handed down by Ovid, parodied by Apuleius, and painted by Titian, was
put to a specific use in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. In the mode of
synecdoche, he instructs the reader on how to reduce an entire story to a
single imago agens (for instance, the image of naked Andromeda chained to her
rock). The imago agens thus functions as a synopsis of the entire myth. This
oscillation between the modes of synopsis and of synecdoche—entailing a
constant process of re-focalization—in effect constitutes the basic cognitive
operation in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. Since it reduces a whole
welter of ancientmyths to one common narrative, the mode of synecdoche
facilitates the perception of thematic or structural affinities between
different myths. Accordingly, a series of imagines agentes referring to very
heterogeneous stories allows a leveling in our perception of these different
narratives and their content. The mode of synecdoche is conducive to
focalization on a single topic via myriad topical affinities (which become highlighted
in the mode of synopsis). In Della Porta’s mnemotechnique, this re-focalization
of a series of stories may transpire not only through a heightening affinity,
but also in the mode of inversion (for instance, in the myths of Europa and
Pasiphaë). In The Art of Remembering, this results in the reduction of the
stories of Io, Pasiphaë, and Europa (as well as Apuleius’ asinaria Pasiphaë )
to the topic of women having sex with animals and generating monstrous
offspring (bulls, cows, asses). This topical affinity is also pertinent to the
relationship between of sexualized imagines agentes and memoranda (bulls,
horns, birds). The imagines agentes operate within the imagination of the
master of the art of memory. This particular mental faculty not only receives
such images; it also has the capacity to transform them into new images—images
which in turn have the power for transforming the human body. Not only does
Della Porta’s laboratory of monstrous hybridization constitute a hotbed for the
literary imaginary, but the literary image also models the reader’s
imagination, and once the imagination is infected by an image, these images may
acquire a life of their own. This reasoning has its ultimate proof in the
belief that a pregnant woman’s fantasies inf luence the form of the future
child. At the thematic intersections of literature, visual art,
physiognomonics, natural magic, the core topic—sex with animals and the
generation of monstrous offspring—becomes embedded (in the literal sense of the
word) with personal erotic experiences. The women who have intercourse with
animals are impersonated by the women with whom Della Porta has had—or wished
to have—intercourse. As mnemonic personae/loci and hence as slaves of his
erotic fantasy, they are forced to embody any role assigned to them by their
master. Della Porta is thus obliquely portraying himself in the process of
recollecting his own memories—living statues of women who have sex with animals
who may be seen as surrogates for him. In a series of constant mise en abimes
mirroring a phallic erotic imagination, Della Porta points his readers (and
himself ) towards the center of a truly mannerist Minotaur’s abode.Notes I wish
to thank Marlen Bidwell-Steiner for many invaluable discussions and comments. 1
On the art of memory, see Yates, The Art of Memory; Bolzoni, The Gallery of
Memory; Carruthers, The Book of Memory. 2 The Latin Ars reminiscendi was
published 1602. L’arte del ricordare was purported to be the Italian
translation by a Dorandino Falcone da Gioia, but this was in all probability a
pseudonym for the author himself. Both texts are edited in Della Porta, Ars
Reminiscendi: L’arte di ricordare. For the first English translation of the
Italian version and a well-informed introduction to the text in English, see
Della Porta, The Art of Remembering/L’arte del ricordare. On the differences
between the Italian and the Latin versions, see in that edition2423 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 1112 13 14 15 16 17 18 1920 21 22 2324 25 26 27 28 29Baum, “Writing
Classical Authority”; also Bolzoni, “Retorica, teatro, iconologia, 340, with
footnote 5; Maggi, “Introduction,” in Della Porta, The Art of
Remembering/L’arte del ricordare, 29–30; Balbiani on the fortuna of Della
Porta’s Magia naturalis in La Magia naturalis. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory,
175. Valente, “Della Porta e l’inquisizione.” On which see Kodera “Giambattista
della Porta,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For a succinct and highly
influential discussion of the medieval technique of the art, see Rhetorica ad
Herennium, ed. and trans. Nüsslein, 164–80 (bk III, §§ 28–40, XVI–XXIV); Yates,
The Art of Memory, 63–113. On the medieval use of memory images, Carruthers,
The Book of Memory, 59, writes: “Most importantly, it is ‘affective’ in nature,
that is, it is sensorily derived and emotionally charged.” See also ibid., 109,
134, and 137. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 130–31. Della Porta, Ars
Reminiscendi, 75. See for instance Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 26–32. As Bolzoni,
The Gallery of Memory, p. 137 (with footnote 12) has pointed out, it is
interesting to note that the Ars reminscendi explicitly warns against the use
of medicines or drugs for enhancing the capacitances of memory, whereas in
Della Porta had presented such recipes in his Magia naturalis. Della Porta, Ars
Reminiscendi, 68. On the notion of phantasmata in Della Porta, see Kodera,
“Giovan Battista della Porta’s Imagination.” Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 70.
See Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 92 and the attendant notes directing the reader to
medieval sources of this method. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 70. Dolce,
Dialogo del modo, 33–34, for example, does not try to assimilate the personae
to the loci, but instead distinguishes between them. Della Porta, Ars
Reminiscendi, 17. It is interesting to note that Della Porta does not seem to
be picky about terminology, as for him very different notions—similitudo, idea,
forma, simulacrum are synonyms with imago. Ibid., 79. Galileo loved exactly
such character traits in Ariosto’s heroes; cf. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory,
211. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 17–18. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 167
has pointed to the fact that Della Porta is here quoting almost verbatim from
Leon Battista Alberti’s, De pictura, 2. 40, arguing that “the theatrical
tradition becomes a point of reference to the painter who has to paint an
istoria.” For a discussion of the number of loci from a different contemporary
perspective see Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 39–43 with many references to earlier
sources. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 162–63; Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 145,
footnote 345 with much scholarly literature on the connections between the art
of memory and theater. Kodera, “Bestiality and Gluttony.” Clubb,
“Theatregrams,” has called these variable parts theatergrams. One possibility
is to generate a locus which is then invariably used, because it is recharged
with new imagines that have the capacity to store a new set of memoranda. Yet
if this process of re-inscription of the extant structure proves impossible,
one must destroy the entire setup. In order to do this, many masters of memory
suggested methods that were outright iconoclastic; cf. Bolzoni, The Gallery of
Memory, 142–44. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 18. Ibid. Carruthers, The Book
of Memory, 131 on the pictorial turn of medieval art of memory. Della Porta,
Ars Reminiscendi, 76. Ibid. Ibid., 17–18.30 This otherwise puzzling imago seems
to be a remnant from a manuscript version of the Arte del ricordare, which
refers as examples for imagines agentes to one of Boccaccio’s Novellae, on
Chichibio, of the Decameron VI, 4 (Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 77); in that
version Della Porta also mentions two more highly salacious stories from the
Decameron (III, 10 and VIII, 7); see Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 79 and 95;
see also Baum, “Writing Classical Authority,” 159. 31 The hero Hercules and the
river god Achelous were fighting over Deianeira, the daughter of Dionysius.
During the battle between the two rivals, the bull-headed river god turned
first into a snake and then into a bull, whose right horn is broken by
Hercules; according to one version, Hercules took that horn down to Tartarus
where it was filled by the Hesperides with golden fruit and is now called Bona
Dea (cornucopia). Graves, The Greek Myths, 553–54; Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. IX,
vv. 1–92. Observe that the cornucopia appears in the next imago agens. 32 Della
Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 18. 33 This increasing prurience is a general tendency
in Della Porta’s works and is probably due to the increasingly intolerant
intellectual climate characterizing the last decades of the sixteenth century;
on this see Kodera, “Bestiality and Gluttony,” 86–87 with references. 34 Della
Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 77. 35 Della Porta here had openly referred to the
myth, whereas in the Ars reminiscendi he only alluded to it—namely, by
describing the iconography of one of Titian’s most famous paintings (the
persona of a virgin sitting and playing on a bull and holding a crown over the
animal’s head). 36 In the Latin version the prostitute was substituted with the
lover of one’s wife. In the Latin version, ibid., 22, Leda is completely
omitted. 37 The word ucello (bird) denotes penis, with birds commonly looming
large in all kinds of erotic metaphors; on the semantics of ucellare (the word
denoting prostitution, ridicule, and penis) see Alberti, “Giove ucellato,”
59–64; for similar contexts in Della Porta’s theater, see Kodera, “Humans as
Animals,” 108–09. 38 Compare Schiesari, Beasts and Beauties, 61–64 for
perceptive remarks on the gender bias of Della Porta’s Physiognomy. 39 Alberti,
Della pittura, 122–24 (bk 2, §36) For a discussion of the relevant passages,
see for instance Heffernan, Cultivating Picturacy, 71–73. 40 Bolzoni, The
Gallery of Memory, 167. 41 Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, vv 671–675; 112. 42
Apuleius, Metamorphoses: The Golden Ass, Book ii, § 1, 22. 43 See Innes,
“Introduction,” 19–24. 44 So does Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 146-47, mentioning
Titian’s Europa and Akataion. 45 Ovid, Ars amatoria libri tres, 26–28, bk. I,
v. 289–326, Ovid., Metamorphoses, bk. VIII, v. 134–36; Graves, The Greek Myths,
293–94. 46 On Europa, see ibid., 194–97. 47 A caricature of the animation of
statues by Egyptian magi, as described by Hermes in the Corpus Hermeticum, an
account which it is well known, and haunted many renaissance minds; for a
commented edition, Copenhaver, Hermetica. 48 A labyrinth, i.e., an
architectural structure designed expressly to get lost in, as opposed to orderly
architectural structures—and also the inversion of the clearly represented
structure of loci in the art of memory. 49 See Kodera, Disreputable Bodies,
275–93 and Della Porta, De i miracoli, 23–25, bk I, ch. 9. 50 Della Porta,
Natural magick, 43, bk 2, ch. 12. 51 Kodera, “Humans as Animals,” 109–15; Della
Porta, Magia naturalis libri XX, 76, bk II, ch. 12. This passage is an
elaboration of Aristotle on crossbreeding, from De generatione animalium 4.3,
769b. In this case Della Porta’s credulity is greater than that of many of his
educated contemporaries, who were usually more skeptical about the possibility
of producing offspring through sex between humans and animals. For a very
interesting24452 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 6263 64 65Sergius Koderacontemporary
discussion of the topic, which clearly accentuates the ways in which Della
Porta is bending his evidence, see Varchi, “Della generazione dei Mostri,”
99–106. On this see MacDonald, “Humanistic Self-Representation,” Kodera,
Disreputable Bodies, and Schiesari, Beasts and Beauties. Della Porta, Ars
Reminiscendi, 78–79. Cf. Apuleius, Metamorphoses lib. X, §§ 19–22. For a
succinct introduction to that text, and relevant secondary literature, see
Kenney in Apuleius, Metamorphoses, ix–xli. Ibid., 84–186; 190–94, bk 10, §
19–23; § 29–35. Apuleius, Metamorphoseon, bk. 10, § 19, l. 3. See Liliequist,
“Peasants against Nature,” 408. On the increasing belief in the real existence
of such hybrid animals in the later Middle Ages, see Salisbury, The Beast Within,
139 and 147. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk I, vv. 588–662 and 724–45, Graves, The
Greek Myths, 190–92. Just see the example of the re-transformation: Ovid,
Metamorphoses, bk I, vv 737–46, trans. Mary M. Innes, 48. For Lucius’
transformations into an ass and back again, see Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 52, bk
3, § 25 and ibid., 202–03, bk 11, § 13–14. In that vein of thought, many more
things could be said also on the story of Hercules and the bull-headed river
god Achelous (on whom, see above, endnote 31). The Arte del ricordare mentions
not only association from the same (dal simile, Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi,
80 and 81) but also aggiungere, mancare, trasportare, mutare, partire (ibid.,
85) and trasponimento dal contrario (ibid., 95). Kodera, “Giambattista della
Porta,” 8–9 for a short introduction to the idea that all things in the
universal hierarchy of being are moved by the (irrational) forces of attraction
and repulsion they feel for one another. Porta provides an impressive
description of the macrocosmic animal, the male and female aspects of which
mingle in a harmonious and well-coordinated way; cf. Della Porta, Magia
naturalis, bk. 1, ch. 9. Della Porta, Natural magick, 51: “Many children have
hare-lips; and all because their mothers being with child, did look upon a
hare.” For an earlier source see Ficino, De amore, 252. For an introduction to
the history of these seemingly widespread practices and the related artwork
during the Renaissance, see Jacqueline Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of
Childbirth, 128–39. Della Porta, Natural magick, 53.Bibliography Alberti,
Francesca. “Giove ucellato: quand les métamorphoses sefont extravagantes.” In
Extravagances amoureuses. L’amour au-delà de la norme à la Renaissance. Actes
du Colloque international du Groupe de recherche Cinquecento plurale, Tours,
18–20 Septembre 2008. Edited by Élise Boillet and Chiara Lastraioli, 41–70.
Paris: Champion, 2010. Alberti, Leon Battista. Della pittura: Über die
Malkunst. Edited and translated by Oskar Bätschmann and Sandra Gianfreda.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlche Buchgesellschaft, 2014. Apuleius, Lucius.
Metamorphoseon. Edited by Rudolf Helm. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1992. ———.
Metamorphoses: The Golden Ass. Translated by E.J. Kenney. London: Penguin,
1998. Balbiani, Laura. La Magia naturalis di Giovan Battista Della Porta:
Lingua, cultura e scienza in Europa all’inizio dell’età moderna. Bern: Peter
Lang, 2001. Baum, Gregory. “Writing Classical Authority, and the Inter Text of
Memory: From Giambattista della Porta’s L’arte del ricordare to the Ars
reminiscendi.” In Giovan Battista della Porta, The Art of Remembering/L’arte
del ricordare. Edited and introduced by Armando Maggi, translated by Miriam
Aloisio, 147–61. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2012.Della Porta’s erotomanic art of
recollectionBolzoni, Lina. The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic
Models in the Age of the Printing Press. Translated by Jeremy Parzen. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001. ———. “Retorica, teatro, iconologia,
nell’arte della memoria del Della Porta.” In Giovan Battista della Porta nell’
Europa del suo tempo. Edited by Maurizio Torrini, 337–85. Naples: Guida
Editori, 1990. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in
Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Clubb, Louise
George. “Theatregrams.” In Comparative Critical Approaches to Renaissance
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Battista. Ars Reminiscendi. L’arte di ricordare. Edited by Raffaele Sirri.
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Pisa: Scuola normale superiore, 2001. Ficino, Marsilio. De Amore/Commentaire
sur le Banquet de Platon. Edited by Raymond Marcel. Paris: Belles Lettres,
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Natural Philosophy. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies,
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Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. DOI: http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html ———.
“Giovan Battista della Porta’s Imagination.” In Image, Imagination and
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In Lezzioni di M. Benedetto Varchi, 85–132. Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1590.
Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. London: Penguin, 1969.13 “O MIE ARTI
FALLACI” Tasso’s saintly women in the Liberata and Conquistata Jane TylusThe
second half of Torquato Tasso’s tormented life was taken up by his epic poem
Gerusalemme liberata and the painstaking revisions he made to it following its
unauthorized publication in 1581. Posterity has canonized the 1581 poem rather
than its more sprawling successor, Gerusalemme conquistata, which Tasso proudly
dedicated to Pope Clement VIII’s nephew when he published it in 1593. Posterity
notwithstanding, Tasso claimed that his “poema riformato” was far superior to
the earlier work largely because of “the much more certain knowledge I now have
of myself as well as of my writings” (“la certa cognizione ch’io ho di me
stesso e de le mie cose”).1 One result of this new certainty seems to have been
if not the eradication of the Liberata’s female characters, at least the
curtailing of their inf luence.2 The enchantress Armida virtually disappears
after Canto 13, lamenting her failures to keep the Christian army’s strongest
knight with her forever, and no longer converting to Christianity as in the
surprising end of the Liberata. The princess of Antioch, Erminia, is denied her
remarkable role in the Liberata as the discoverer and healer of the Christian
knight Tancredi’s wounded body and the revealer of a secret plot against his
captain, Goffredo. Two extraordinary Christian women are completely excised
from the Conquistata: Gildippe, who dies fighting by her husband’s side in the
Liberata’s twentieth canto, and Sofronia, who offered her life to save the
Christian refugee community in a captive Jerusalem, and who, in turn, is saved by
the Muslims’ most celebrated woman warrior, Clorinda. Only Clorinda’s tale is
relatively untouched—with the exception of her rescue of Sofronia. Both the
Liberata and the Conquistata tell of her strident independence and her baptism
into her mother’s Christian faith as she lies dying by the hand of Tancredi,
who has killed what he loved. This essay will not so much catalogue the
Conquistata’s many revisions as attempt to gauge the changing role of the
female body in Tasso’s epic practiceTylusand its relationship to Tasso’s
growing ambivalence about the status of the “arti fallaci” in his poetry—a
phrase, as we will see, that is uttered by the much altered character of
Erminia toward the end of the Conquistata. And even if Clorinda and Armida continue
to stand out in their memorable particularity in the Conquistata, they are
joined by a new host of women who exist largely to create a “dynamic that is
reassuringly familial,” as Claudio Gigante has observed, and who no longer
possess the self-conscious artfulness that characterized female characters in
the Liberata.3 The contrast allows us to see how potentially radical the Tasso
of the Liberata was and at the same time how his transformations of women in
the Conquistata are tied to his reconceptualization of himself as an epic
poet.4 I will elaborate some of these arguments by turning to developments that
led to the Conquistata, necessarily addressing selective incidents within both
poems in order to depict the nature of Tasso’s poetic transformation. One
episode in particular offers itself up for special consideration. It concerns a
female figure in the Liberata who has not attracted much attention, and who, as
mentioned above, is nowhere to be found in the revised poem: Sofronia.5 Willing
to die in exchange for the salvation of her fellow Christians, she is rescued
and subsequently exiled from Jerusalem. The contrast between this stirring
episode in the Liberata and its muted aftermath in the Conquistata could not be
greater, as the following pages will show. At the same time, they attest to
what might be called Tasso’s desire for the organicity of his revised epic, a
poem in which individual characters would be immune from the criticism launched
against Sofronia herself. For according to the Gerusalemme’s first readers, the
episode that centered on her in Canto 2 was “poco connesso” to the Liberata as
a whole.6 This lack of continuity, in turn, has a stylistic echo in the
infamous critique of Tasso’s language as “parlar disgiunto” or disjointed speech—a
disjointedness even Tasso acknowledged when he claimed to have learned it from
Virgil, admitting that it can tempt one to swerve dangerously from the “truth”
in its pursuit of fallacious artistries.7 The path toward wholeness in the
Conquistata thus marks a turn away from Virgil and toward the more narratively
f luid Homer, as readers of Tasso (and Tasso himself ) have readily
ascertained.8 But this path also goes through the body of the female,
inscripted into the Conquistata as bearer of a new epic model of integration
and personal loss. It is a body that the chastened Tasso, in his final critical
writings on his poetic output, may also have recognized as his own. * ** In the early
1680s, the prolific Luca Giordano executed a series of paintings for a Genovese
palazzo recently acquired by the nobleman Eugenio Durazzo. Among the works
Giordano designed for the entryway into a palace that was on the “must-see”
list of every foreign visitor to Genova, were portraits of the death of Seneca
and the Greek hero Perseus. But his paintings also featured a large canvas
depicting an event from the Liberata’s story of Sofronia, the brave young woman
who volunteers to die for her fellow Christians and who, along with the man who
loves her, is saved by Clorinda. Moved by the taciturn stance of thefemale
victim before her, Clorinda asks Aladino, Jerusalem’s king, to free the two
Christians in exchange for her promise that she will perform great deeds in
Jerusalem’s defense, and Giordano chooses to display this moment in his work9
(Figure 13.1).10 At the same time, Clorinda’s back is turned, so that the real
savior of the two Christians bound at the stake seems to be a painting of Mary
which angels are holding aloft—suggesting that Giordano’s work may also be
about the salvific powers of art. Mariella Utili has written of Giordano’s
intent to throw into relief the religious aspect of the story: “the exaltation
of Christianity, which had been the basis for the immediate success of Tasso’s poem
and which many other artists before Giordano had noted as well.”11 Yet with
respect to the episode of Sofronia and her would-be lover Olindo, who begs to
die with her, such a remark might seem ironic. For this story provoked almost
more than anything else in the epic the concerns of the poem’s Inquisitorial
readers, and in turn Tasso’s worries aboutFIGURE 13.1Luca Giordano, “Olindo e
Sofronia,” Palazzo Reale gia’ Durazzo (Genova).Photo credit: Zeri Photo
Archive, Bologna, inv. 110885.the extent to which its inclusion would threaten
the Liberata’s publication. So much so, that in a telling letter written on
April 3, 1576 to his friend and literary confidant Scipione Gonzaga he writes,
“Io ho giá condennato con irrevocabil sentenza alla morte l’episodio di
Sofronia” (“I’ve already condemned the episode of Sofronia to death, and my
decree is absolute”).12 Having barely escaped death at the hands of Jerusalem’s
king, Sofronia was condemned anew by Tasso. The reasons for this condemnation
are several, even as the episode contains within itself a germ of the process
that will define Tasso’s method in the Conquistata. One reason certainly has to
do with the painting which Giordano has f loating in the sky—a touch
unaccounted for in the Liberata itself, but prepared for by the odd narrative
Tasso weaves in the opening of Canto 2. For the catalyst that set off a
tyrant’s rage, leading him to sentence Jerusalem’s Christians to death, is
indeed a work of art: an image of Mary taken from the Christians’ church by the
magician and former Christian Ismeno, who is convinced of its supernatural
abilities to protect the walls of the city against the Crusaders. He places
Mary’s picture in a mosque so as to provide “fatal custodia a queste porte.”13
For reasons on which Tasso coyly refuses to pronounce—(“O fu di man fedele opra
furtiva, / o pur il Ciel qui sua potenza adopra, / che di Colei ch’è sua regina
e diva / sdegna che loco vil l’imagin copra: / ch’incerta fama è ancor se ciò
ascriva / ad arte umana od a mirabil opra”; “It was either the work of a
stealthy hand, or heaven interposed its potent will, disdaining that the image
of its queen be smuggled somewhere so contemptible” [2: 9]14)—the immagine
mysteriously disappears from the mosque into which Ismeno has smuggled it.
Certain that the Christians have contrived to steal it back, Aladino plots for
them universal slaughter, until the beautiful Sofronia steps forward to take
the blame so that her people will not die, a confession the narrator describes
as a “magnanima menzogna,” a magnanimous lie. In a letter, however, written
soon after he released the poem to an official reading, Tasso seems fearful
that the stolen immagine has invoked the ire not of Aladino but of Silvio
Antoniano, the Roman Inquisitor and official in charge of granting the right of
nihil obstat for books published in Rome. Writing to Luca Scalabrino on a later
occasion, he continued to insist on excising the “episodio di Sofronia”:
“perch’io non vorrei dar occasione a i frati con quella imagine, o con alcune
altre cosette che sono in quell’episodio, di proibire il libro” (“I don’t want
to give the friars a chance to condemn the book because of that image, or
because of any other little things found in the episode”).15 Much of interest
has been written of the status of images in the aftermath of Trent, some of it
in regard to the poem’s second canto. As Naomi Yavneh has pointed out, Trent
was preoccupied with limiting the role that excessive popular devotion played
in religious life, and its stance on images was no exception: it perforce
needed to clarify the extent to which “immagini” were only the simulacri for
the things to which they pointed. As such, the importance of an object in
referencing beyond itself—its deictic function—was accentuated by the orthodox
proclamations from the 1570s and 1580s. One typical characterization of the
post-Tridentine image, although from the Seicento, is offered by the JesuitGiovanni
Domenico Ottonelli. He suggests that in gazing at a painting, “which represents
something other than the thing which it resembles, and from which it takes its
name” (“che rappresenta un’altra cosa, di cui tiene la simiglianza, e prende il
nome”), one must recognize that “while the image renders visible what is
invisible, the image is only worthy of honor by virtue of resemblance, not
substance.”16 Moreover, as Yavneh goes on to point out, in the episode from
Tasso’s Liberata, the transformation of the painting of Mary into a thing of
“substance”— i.e., it alone can save Jerusalem from harm—is initiated by the
renegade Christian, Ismeno, unable to leave his former religion completely
behind him (“Questi or Macone adora, e fu cristiano, / ma i primi riti anco
lasciar non pote; / anzi, in uso empio e profano / confonde le due leggi a se’
mal note”; “He adores Mohammed, as once he adored Christ, but cannot now
abandon the first way, so often to profane and evil use confounds the two
religions out of ignorance” [2: 2]). It is Ismeno who recommends that Aladino
place “questa effigie lor” of Mary, “diva e madre” or goddess and mother of the
Christian’s god (2: 5) into the mosque because of its talismanic status—an
idolatrous reading in which the Christians, who leave their offerings before
the “simulacro” do not, apparently, concur.17 One can only speculate as to what
about the “immagine” in Canto 2 might have angered Tasso’s inquisitorial
reader; the letter from Antoniano detailing his objections to the Liberata does
not survive. But it is striking that another vergine, Sofronia, proclaims for
herself the protective status Ismeno gave to the immagine of Maria. Her
sacrifice thus effects a substitution originally engineered by the apostate.
She too adopts the language of female uniqueness when boldly stating to the
king Aladino her “crime”: “sol di me stessa, sol consigliera, sol essecutrice”
(“I was the only one [who knew of it], one counselor, one executor alone”; 2:
23). When Olindo challenges Sofronia’s magnanimous lie, arguing that a mere
woman would be unable to carry out the theft, she insists again on her
autonomy: “Ho petto anch’io, ch’ad una morte crede / di bastar solo, e
compagnia non chiede” (“I too have a heart, confident it can die but once. It
does not ask for company”; 2: 30). But Tasso links her in other ways to the
Madonna that Ismeno made into a singularly potent object. As commentators have
noticed, Tasso compares her to the stolen image when her veil and mantle are
roughly taken from her when she is led to the stake.18 Just as Mary’s image,
“enveloped in a slender shroud” (“in un velo avolto”; 2: 5) was seized
(“rapito”) by Ismeno, so are Sofronia’s veil and mantle seized from her
(“rapit[i] a lei [Sofronia] il velo e ’l casto manto”; 2: 26). And an allusion
to Mary’s face (“il volto di lei”) returns with “smarrisce il bel volto in un
colore / che non è pallidezza, ma candore” (“the lovely rose of [Sofronia’s]
face is lost in white which is not pallor, but a glowing light”; 2: 26). And
yet the resonances between Sofronia and an inimitable female figure do not end
here. Giampiero Giampieri has noted that the white coloring of Sofronia at the
stake is echoed eleven cantos later when Clorinda, the third vergine of the
canto, dies at Tancredi’s hands. This pale demeanor at death’s arrival in turn
has its haunting origins in the phrase accompanying the suicides of Virgil’smost
prominent female character, Dido, and the historical figure on whom she is
partially modelled, Cleopatra. These intertextual allusions thus trace an unsettling
historical trajectory, insofar as far from being “vergini,” unlike their
Tassian counterparts, both women are known for their sensuality and, in Dido’s
case, unrequited passion. At the same time, Clorinda, like Sofronia, occupies
the role enjoyed by Dido and Cleopatra before romantic liaisons led them
astray. They are all the singular, female supports of their people. When
Islam’s powerful woman warrior enters Jerusalem in Canto 2, Clorinda is defined
as the self-sufficient savior of a people that Sofronia and—according to
Ismeno—the immagine of Mary have been before her. In greeting Clorinda, Aladino
bestows on her the signal distinction of the warrior who alone can protect the
city (“non, s’essercito grande unito insieme / fosse in mio scampo, avrei più
certa speme”: “though a whole host should come to rescue me, I would not hope
with greater certainty”; 2: 47). Not only does he concede to her his scepter
(“lo scettro”) but he adds, “legge sia quel che comandi” (“let the law be what
you command”; 2: 48), an honor that prompts Clorinda to ask for her reward in
advance: the release of the two Christians.19 Even as Clorinda will exact
bloody penalties on the Christians who attack the city to which she pledges her
protection, this fantasy of female potency that begins in Canto 2 will be
eclipsed outside Jerusalem’s walls when Clorinda is killed by Tancredi:
Meanwhile they whispered of the bitter chance behind the city wall confusedly
till finally they learned the truth. At once through the whole town the bad
news made its way mingled with cries and womanly laments, as desperate as if
the enemy had taken the town in battle and f lew to raze houses and temples and
set the ruins ablaze. Confusamente si bisbiglia intanto del caso reo ne la
rinchiusa terra. Poi s’accerta e divulga, e in ogni canto de la città smarrita
il romor erra misto di gridi e di femineo pianto; non altramente che se presa
in guerra tutta ruini, e ’l foco e i nemici empi volino per le case e per li
tèmpi. (12: 100) The defeat of a city in wartime evoked in this moving simile
is the fate that Ismeno believes Jerusalem will avoid if Mary’s image is placed
in the mosque; that Sofronia believes her people will avoid if she dies at the
stake; and thatAladino believes his kingdom will avoid if Clorinda agrees to
defend his city. And the moment, of course, looks backward again to Virgil, and
to the demise of another city, Carthage, upon the death of another singular
woman. “The palace rings with lamentations, with sobbing and women’s shrieks,
and heaven echoes with loud wails—even as though all Carthage or ancient Tyre
were falling before the inrushing foe, and fierce f lames were rolling on over
the roofs of men, over the roofs of gods” (IV: 667–71).20 The “città smarrita,”
the urbs in ruin: in both Aeneid 4 and the Liberata, the figurative collapse of
the city, portrayed in a simile that reveals the grim devastations of war, is
tied to the death of a woman characterized as savior. And in both cases, the
two cities of these respective poems will be invaded by the enemy—one during
the Punic Wars that are only predicted in the Aeneid, the other in Canto 20 of
the Liberata. At the same time, the simile of Canto 12 following Clorinda’s
death can be said to silence the diabolical suggestion that women’s bodies
might be sufficient protection for Jerusalem’s community; or in rhetorical
terms, that the female body stands in an analogical relationship to the city
and can procure its health. Sofronia’s self less action in Canto 2 procures
temporary salvation for the Christians. But genuine salvation arrives only
eighteen cantos later, when Goffredo’s troops invade Jerusalem and secure it
for its “rightful” owners. In the meantime, Sofronia, like the Madonna’s image,
has been withdrawn forever from the poem. Following her rescue by Clorinda, she
does not refuse Olindo her hand in marriage, and with him and others “di forte
corpo e di feroce ingegno” (whose bodies are robust and spirits bold; 2: 55)
she is banished, so fearful is Aladino of having so much virtue nearby (“tanta
virtù congiunta . . . vicina”; 2: 54). Some of the banished wandered
aimlessly (“Molti n’andaro errando”; 2: 55) while others traveled to Emmaus
where Goffredo’s troops are gathered. Of Sofronia and Olindo, however, no more
is heard. All Tasso divulges of their fate is that they both went into exile
beyond the bounds of Palestine (2: 54). Such a finale to Sofronia’s sacrificial
offering ensures—intentionally, it would seem— that the episode is indeed “poco
connesso” to the rest of the poem. Inserted into the beginning of the Liberata,
the story of Sofronia operates as a virtually self-contained unit, ending with
its main protagonist banished from Jerusalem. That the episode can be said to
trace Tasso’s ambivalences regarding “tanta virtù congiunta” in not one, but
three, female characters, is suggested by both Sofronia’s and the immagine’s
summary dispatch from the poem—as though to insist on the heretical nature of
Ismeno’s view of the painting, and the women’s views of themselves, as
sufficient to protect a city.21 But there may be another link between the
exiled women and the immagine. The latter is both more and less than an icon:
it is a work of art, in ways which the woman themselves may replicate. Much of
the threat represented by Sofronia has to do with her inscrutability, which
mirrors the unknowability of the immagine’s fate and of the painting itself.
Moved by generosity and “fortezza,” Sofronia exits alone among the people (“tra
’l vulgo”) after Aladino orders the Christians’ houses burned. But as she
journeys publicly to meet the king, Tassointroduces some seemingly gratuitous
phrases: she neither “covers up her beauty, nor displays it,” and “Non sai ben
dir s’adorna o se negletta, / se caso od arte il bel volto compose” (“If chance
or art has touched her lovely face, if she neglects or adorns herself, who
knows”; 2: 18). Similarly, she is described in relationship to the young
Olindo, who has loved her desperately from afar, as either “o lo sprezza, o no
‘l vede, o non s’avede” (“she scorns him, or does not see him, or takes no
note”; 2: 16), and of her considerable beauty, she “non cura, / o tanto sol
quant’onesta’ se ’n fregi” (“cares not for it, or only as much as required by
honor’s sake”; 2: 14). Even as Tasso depicts her as a “virgin of sublime and
noble thoughts” (“vergine d’alti pensieri e regi”), he wastes no time in adding
that she is also “d’alta beltà” (2: 14), suggesting that we do not know whether
Sofronia is aware of her beauty’s effect on her admirers. In short, she is the
product of an artfulness that at once belies her sincerity and renders her
inaccessibility to public scrutiny even more pronounced. Indeed, Sofronia is
impugned throughout Canto 2 in various ways that can only force the reader to
suspect if not her motive—which emerges following her struggle to balance
masculine virility or “fortezza” and female modesty (“vergogna”)22—then at
least her self-presentation in a public space. And because she is a woman,
“amore” emerges as the vehicle through which her integrity can be compromised.
Or as Tasso says in introducing Olindo and in returning to the language used
only several stanzas before of the chaste image of Mary and its supposed
ability to provide “fatal custodia” to the gates of Jerusalem: “tu [amor] per
mille custodie entro a i più casti/ verginei alberghi il guardo altrui
portasti” (“although a thousand sentinels are placed, you [Love] lead men’s
glances into the most chaste of dwellings”; 2: 15). The uncertain status of
Sofronia’s agency and her inability to control the reception of her offer are
highlighted again after the king, furious over her assertions that she was
right to steal the image, orders her to be burned: “e ’ndarno Amor contr’a lo
sdegno crudo / di sua vaga bellezza a lei fa scudo” (“too slight a shield is
womanly grace for Love to f ling against the crude resentment of the king”; 2:
25): as though she—or Love working through her—might cunningly be able to
soften the tyrant in his resolve. The manner in which Sofronia is tied to the
stake—her veil and “casto manto” stripped violently from her and used to tie
“le molli braccia” (2: 26)—and the ensuing appearance of Olindo beside her,
“tergo al tergo,” heighten the barely suffused sensuality of the preceding
stanzas in which Sofronia’s ambiguously constructed femininity has been a muted
but persistent theme. “O caso od arte.” This is the phrase that threatens to
turn Sofronia into the seductress Armida, who appears two cantos later at the
threshold of the Christians’ camp to lure the Crusaders away from war. Sofronia
is no Armida. Yet in depicting Sofronia’s inner conf lict between “fortezza”
and “vergogna,” while refusing to declare the extent of Sofronia’s artful
self-consciousness, Tasso highlights the problems that emerge when a woman
thrusts herself into the public gaze.23 The questioning presence of male
spectators, a group into which Tasso inserts the (male) reader by way of the
narrator’s interventions, ultimately pointsto the inability of Sofronia—and by
extension, of the immagine of Mary and of Clorinda, who has already unknowingly
inspired the passion of the Christian knight Tancredi—to control the effects of
her self-presentation. Like the Didos and Cleopatras before her, she is unable
to escape from the controlling system of gender that makes her into the object
gazed upon and fantasized about as though she were a work of art. At the same
time, what prevents Sofronia from becoming a martyr and hence giving her life
for her people is another woman, Clorinda: who at first appears to the populous
as a male warrior (“Ecco un guerriero [ché tal parea]”) but who is betrayed as
a woman by her insignia, the tiger. When Clorinda enters into the crowded
piazza where the two Christians are tied to the stake, she notes Olindo weeping
“as a man weighed down with sorrow, not pain” (“in guisa d’uom cui preme /
pietà, non doglia)” while Sofronia is silent, “con gli occhi al ciel si fisa /
ch’anzi ‘l morir par di qua giù divisa” (“her eyes so fixed on heaven that she
seems to be leaving this world before she dies”; 2: 42). Clordina’s response to
this sight—a Clorinda raised in the woods and led to disdain female pastimes
such as sewing and embroidery—is extraordinary: “Clorinda intenerissi, e si
condoles / d’ambeduo loro e lagrimonne alquanto” (“Clorinda’s heart grew tender
at this sight; she grieved with them, and tears welled up in her eyes”; 2: 43).
Such tenderness leads her to ask for the two Christians as a gift in advance of
her promised salvation of the city: a salvation, as we will soon know, she can
never achieve. Her pity for a woman like herself—at once self-contained and yet
vulnerable to others’ fantasies about her sexuality—breaks through the
religious and ethnic differences on which the Liberata as a whole depends, and
arguably questions for Muslims and Christians alike the very premise of the
war. Clorinda will be revealed later in the poem as the daughter of a Christian
mother, and in retrospect one might see her recognition of herself in Sofronia
as a premonition of her true identity. Yet, at this early point in the poem,
her alignment of herself with Sofronia, along with Tasso’s allusions to
Virgil’s fateful women, creates a potentially scandalous community of women whose
unpredictable and often unreadable actions threaten to undo the transcendental
militarism on which the poem is based. The crisis of the immagine, in Ismeno’s
feverish recasting of its significance, is like that of the women who are
endlessly substituted for it: complete within itself, it has no deictic
function, failing to refer beyond itself to heavenly powers. Sofronia, too,
points only to herself (“Sol essecutrice”), a presumed self-sufficiency that
Tasso’s narrator translates into inaccessibility. It creates for Sofronia the
same unknowable status of the stolen painting, and an unknowability Clorinda
can only admire, and in which she similarly partakes. Tasso’s simile of the
city that dissolves into f lames upon Clorinda’s death ten cantos later is thus
ultimately a failed simile. That he will go on to banish all of his Christian
women from the end of the Liberata suggests both his attempt to contain the
threat represented by the female figures of Canto 2 and his inability to
integrate Christian and Muslim women alike into the culminating events of the
poem. Clorinda and Gildippe are dead, Erminia is in an “albergo” somewherewithin
the city, Armida utters words of conversion but only on Jerusalem’s outskirts,
and Sofronia has disappeared forever. To be sure, on the one hand, Tasso’s poem
generally refuses to allow any character to stand in for the whole and thus
represent the city, earthly or celestial, by him or herself, as the belated
“Allegoria del Poema” attests and as numerous episodes involving Rinaldo and
Goffredo suggest.24 In an early letter, Tasso protests the custom of romance
that allows single characters to decide the fate of entire empires: “non ricevo
affatto nel mio poema quell’eccesso di bravura che ricevono i romanzi; cioè,
che alcuno sia tanto superiore a tutti gli altri, che possa sostenere solo un
campo” (“In my poem, I don’t allow that excess of bravura that the romance
welcomes, in which one figure emerges as greater than all the others, capable
of defending the battlefield all by himself ”).25 To this extent, transforming
the painting of Mary or the body of Clorinda into singularly protective forces
copies the excess of romanzi which Tasso claims to avoid. Only the uniting of
Goffredo’s “compagni erranti” or wandering companions under “i santi segni” can
win for the Christians their city (1:1). The liberation of Jerusalem is the
work not of women, but of men; and not of a single man, but many. On the other
hand, unlike Goffredo or Rinaldo, these “virtuous” women do indeed disappear
from the poem, suffering the fate of the “poco connesso” and summarily excluded
from the larger body into which Tasso incorporates his men in the
“Allegoria.”26 Yet is such exclusion ultimately a penalty? While at work on the
Liberata, Tasso was penning his brief pastoral play, the Aminta, where he
experiments with the inaccessibility of a vergine in the figure of Silvia,
whose own near-violation while tied to a tree is reminiscent, even in its
phrasing, of Sofronia’s violent torture. The Liberata’s “Già ’l velo e ’l casto
manto a lei rapito, / stringon le molli braccia aspre ritorte” (“they tear
away her veil and her modest cloak, bind hard her tender hands behind the
back”; 2.26) echoes Silvia’s victimization at the Satyr’s hands.27 But the
exposure of Silvia’s and Sofronia’s bodies is in turn contrasted with the
degree to which they refuse to be contaminated by the violence that surrounds
them even as they are vulnerable to varying interpretations of their sincerity.
The fact that following their rescues neither female character is seen again
suggests an additional layer of inscrutability, as though Tasso chose to
protect the privacy of his vergini from those who would compromise their
virtue.28 Perhaps only in a world where epic values— the seizing of Jerusalem
from the renegade Ismeno and the infidel Turks—are unequivocally positive can
Sofronia’s premature departure be construed as a loss, rather than a gain. The
phrase used with respect to the mosque from which Mary’s image is taken—“a vile
place heaven holds in disdain”—might stand in for the contaminated city as a
whole that Sofronia inhabits with other embattled Christians. Tasso’s own
narrative gesture with regard to all women of “fortezza,” Clorinda included,
saves them from the bitter militarism that informs the second half of his poem,
preserving for them a space offstage—or above it. But Tasso continued to ponder
the ideal relationship of the female body to his epic project, one which would
rely on integration rather than separation. Such integration demanded a very
different kind of poem from the Liberata, whoseMuslim male warriors, if not its
women, are diabolical figures from whom the city must be wrested. The
Conquistata has typically been glossed as a work that celebrates the
Counter-Reformation Church in all its militancy. But attentiveness to the new
women of the revised poem, beginning with a lamenting Mary who has stepped out
of the painting to become a character, may suggest otherwise.29 * ** Death appears
in the Conquistata’s opening stanza, where the triumphant prolepsis of
“compagni erranti” joining together under “santi segni” no longer exists, and
where the explicit allusions to the failures of hell, Asia, and Africa to
defeat the Crusaders is replaced by a description of how Goffredo’s military
feats “di morti ingombrò le valli e ’l piano, / e correr fece il mar di sangue
misto” (“filled the plains and valleys with the dead, and made the sea run red
with blood”). With death, there is mourning—and a world, as Tasso will call it
late in the poem, of “femineo pianto” female lament (23:117). And the first
evidence of female mourning that we see in Tasso’s “poema riformato” is that of
the Virgin Mary, who makes a surprising cameo appearance at precisely the
moment occupied in the Liberata by the episode with Sofronia. Threatened, as
before, by the impending arrival of Crusaders, Aladino decides that the
Christian community within the walls poses a danger, and in his rage swears to
put them all to death. A stolen painting no longer exists to provoke his anger,
but almost immediately the subject of that painting appears, as Tasso’s
narrator redirects our gaze from the cowering Christian citizens of Jerusalem
to heaven, in two entirely new stanzas: Holy Compassion, you did not keep your
thoughts hidden to yourself, as you gazed down from the celestial and sacred
realm onto the site where the King had lain buried, and at his faithful f lock.
Thus: “Lord,” you cried, “help, help—for now I alone am not sufficient to save
their lives.” Upon seeing those moist eyes—the eyes that had wept for her Son
who died on the cross—the Father said, “now let me turn my attention to their
fear” . . . and the savage man [Aladino] tempers his insane rage. Non
fu ’l pensier, santa Pietate, occulto a te ne la celeste e sacra reggia, donde
guardavi il luogo in cui sepulto il Re si giacque, e la fedel sua greggia.
Pero’: – Signor, gridasti, aita, aita, ch’io non basto a salvarli omai la vita.
Vedendo il Padre rugiadosi gli occhi di lei che pianse in croce estinto il
Figlio, – Vo’ – disse – ch’al Timor la cura or tocchi – . . . . [e]
Tempra dunque il crudel la rabbia insana. (2: 11–13) 30Thanks to this heavenly
intervention that happens in the blink of an eye (“ad un girar di ciglio”),
Aladino will “temper his rage” by burning the fields where the Crusaders might
have found food and by exiling, rather than killing, the faithful—excepting “le
vergini”—from Jerusalem, who depart in tears (“gemendo in lagrimosi lutti”; 2:
53). But their laments will not endure for long. When they come upon the
Crusaders in their camp, they offer their services to Goffredo and participate,
presumably, in the final attack on their former city in the closing cantos of
the new poem. As in Canto 2 of the Liberata, we have a threatened community,
and once again Mary figures in its protection. But for those familiar with the
Liberata, this episode in the Conquistata’s second canto represents a loss
rather than a gain, albeit a puzzling loss. Having omitted the episode of
Sofronia that apparently, he, and many of his first readers, found so
troubling, Tasso leaves us with the mere shadow of the women who once occupied
the status, rightly or wrongly, of Jerusalem’s saviors: a mourning mother. When
Mary calls upon God to temper Aladino’s wrath, she is gazing at a tomb: “il
luogo in cui sepulto/ il Re si giacque.” Jerusalem is a place of death, both
past and imminent, and Mary is not celebrating her son’s resurrection, but
weeping for his demise on the cross. Her grief is rehearsed again in the
following canto in stanzas also new to the Conquistata, where it will be shared
by other mothers—many of them Muslim. On tapestries which Goffredo shows the
two ambassadors who have arrived from the enemy’s forces—one of them, Argante,
“intrepid warrior” (“intrepido guerriero”; 2: 91)—is the thunderous defeat of
Antioch, which the Christians have just taken. Tasso lingers not over the
victorious assault on the city but on the artist’s attentiveness to women’s
loss as they watch their sons die below them: talented artist, you made the
faces of their mothers’ pallid and pale, for life no longer was welcome to
them. From above each one gazed at her dead child, who lay on the earth by
enemies oppressed, his head affixed to the enemy lance; and tears bathed their
dry cheeks. And so he created great variety among these images of grief
. . . con viso vi [il maestro accorto] feo pallido e smorto le madri,
a cui la vita allor dispiacque. D’alto mirò ciascuna il figlio or morto che tra
nemici oppresso in terra giacque, e’l capo affisso a la nemica lancia; e di
pianto rigò l’arida guancia. E variò le imagini dolente . . . (3:
48–9) The resulting “istoria” tells of a “Città presa, notturno orror, tumulto,
/ ruine, incendi e peste”, to which the artist adds “Fuga, terror, lutto, e mal
fido scampo / . . . . e correr feo di sangue il campo” (“A city
seized, nocturnal horrors, tumult, ruin, firesand plague . . .
flight, terror, grief, and luckless escape, and he made the field run with
blood”; 50). Argante, the Christians’ enemy, is gazing on these images, and one
could argue that his perspective inf lects the presentation of the tapestries,
much as Aeneas’s grief in Book 1 colors his reception of the carvings in
Carthage that detail the fall of Troy. Yet, elsewhere in the descriptions, we
hear of the “pious Goffredo,” the “good Beomondo,” the “great Riccardo.”
Moreover, the direct apostrophes to the Christian reader (“Italici e Germani
uscir diresti . . .” [2: 17]) suggest that it is Tasso’s narrator—and
Tasso himself—who lingers over the mournful details. In fact, the singular
concentration on the Conquistata’s women as vehicles of lament suggests that
Tasso is far from making their response to loss yet another diabolically tinged
inspiration. Riccardo, formerly the warrior Rinaldo, now also has a mother, who
like Thetis, emerges from sea-depths to comfort her son when his friend Rupert
dies. The prayers of Riccardo in turn are carried by heaven to a female figure
who with tearful face (“con lagrimoso volto” 21: 74) asks God, as did Mary much
earlier, to bring aid by turning “your pitying face to my warrior” (“al mio
guerrier pietoso ’l ciglio”; 72). But as the scenes of the tapestry suggest, women’s
presence as mourners is most visible in the sections devoted to Argante,
scourge of the Christians, and in the Conquistata clearly meant to be a double
for Hector from Homer’s Iliad. To strengthen this parallel with the Homeric
poem, Tasso had to give Argante a wife to protest his going out into battle as
Andromache did with Hector, and a mother—and a Helen—who will mourn him when he
dies.31 In the Liberata, this “intrepido guerriero” was killed by Tancredi
after a bloody duel outside Jerusalem’s walls. The wandering Erminia, in love
with Tancredi, literally stumbles over the bodies when she is escorting the spy
Vafrino back to the Christians’ camp, and restores Tancredi to health with
pious prayers and herbal medicines. Argante is summarily ignored by the pair
until Tancredi insists that they carry his bloody corpse with them to
Jerusalem: “non si frodi / o de la sepoltura o de le lodi” (do not deprive him
of burial or of praise; 19: 116). But we hear no eulogies, nor do we witness
Argante’s burial, and he is as arguably isolated in death as in life. The
Argante of the Conquistata receives a very different fate after he dies at
Tancredi’s hands. His body is given to the women of Jerusalem, who eulogize him
at the close of Canto 23 as husband, father, and son, as well as fierce
protector of his city. This last role is given explicitly to him by Erminia,
rechristened Nicea in the Conquistata, who laments her inabilities to save him
in the plaintive cry “O arti mie fallaci, o falsa spene! / A cui piú l’erbe omai
raccoglio e porto / da l’ime valli e da l’inculte arene? / Non ti spero veder
mai piú resorto, / per mia pietosa cura” (“O my fallacious arts, o my false
hope! What use now the herbs that I gather and carry from the dark valleys and
the hidden sands? I no longer hope to see you risen, saved by my compassionate
healing”; 23:126). The woman who in the Liberata had collected medicinal herbs
for her beloved Tancredi, and who is addressed by him as “medica mia pietosa”
after she saves him from death, here reproaches herself for having failed to
rescue Tancredi’s enemy Argante. Ifshe saved Tancredi and Goffredo—and the
Christian cause—in the Liberata, here she can confess only her failed arts, and
in the context of prophetically imagining a future of grief and destruction in
the wake of Argante’s death: “Sola io non sono al mio dolor; ma sola / veggio,
dopo la prima, altre ruine, / altri incendi, altre morti: e grave e stanca, /
quest’alma al nuovo duol languisce e manca” (“I’m not alone in my grief, but I
alone can see after this first destruction, more ruin, more fiery blazes, more
deaths; and tired and heavy, this soul will languish and expire, sickened by
new sorrows”; 127).32 These three weeping women—mother, wife, and friend whose
arts cannot save a dead man—integrate Argante not only into the life of the
city and the family, but into the future, as the women who survive him imagine
their fates as vividly as the female survivors of Hector in the Iliad imagine
theirs. Or as Argante’s wife, Lugeria, laments, “Ne la tenera etate è il figlio
ancora, / che generammo al lagrimoso duolo, / tu ed io infelici . . .
/ non vedrá gli anni in cui virtù s’onora, / Né la fama tua” (“Our son whom you
and I—unhappy— conceived only for tearful sorrow is still in his tender years
. . . he will see the years in which virtue is bestowed on him, nor
will he know your fame” (23:119). For herself, she can envision only “foreign
shores” (“lidi estrani”) and service in the entourage of some proud, Christian
lord. The lines closely follow those of Andromache in the Iliad, much as the
lament of Argante’s mother (“Difendesti la patria, e palme e fregi / n’avesti,
or n’hai trafitto il viso e ’l petto”; “You defended our country, and had
honors and laurels; now your face and breast are pierced [by a lance]”) repeats
that of Hecuba in Iliad 24. Thus just as in the Iliad, as Sheila Murnaghan has
written, female lament has the function of tying the hero back into his
community, while making it clear that the hero’s kleos or fame is achieved at
women’s expense.33 Such a constitution of a larger, more sorrowful, poem can be
allied in turn with Tasso’s new relationship to epic. Even for a poet as
relentlessly psychoanalyzed as Tasso, the creation in the Conquistata of the
familial contexts that Tasso may have longed for after the death of his mother,
never knew, may come as a surprise.34 Tasso’s redefinition of the epic poet in
his unfinished Giudizio del poema riformato, the last of his critical works,
may instead have been in response to those readers of the pirated Liberata who
complained about the inauthenticity of some of the characters’ emotions that
drove the poem. In particular, he argues forcefully in the Giudizio for the new
sentiment he seeks to generate throughout the Conquistata: pity, or “la
commiserazione e de la purgazione de gli affetti” (“commiseration and purgation
of its effects”; 165). With respect to Argante, whom he explicitly declares to
have now fashioned as “most similar to Hector” (“similissimo ad Ettore”), he
comments, where Argante earlier was not wretched, now he’s completely so,
because he’s been changed from a foreign and mercenary soldier into the son of
a king and a Christian queen, and has become the natural prince of the city:
defending his father, loving his wife, and constant in his defense and in hisfaith;
and so that pity that is denied him by [Christian] law can be granted out of
natural and human sentiment. dove la persona d’Argante prima [nella Liberata]
non era miserabile, ora è divenuta miserabilissima, perché di soldato straniero
e mercenario è divenuto figliuolo di re e di regina cristiana e principe
natural di quella città, difensor del padre, amator de la moglie e costante ne
la difesa e ne la fede; e però quella pietà che si niega a la legge si può
concedere a la natura ed a l’umanità. (164) Arguing against the likes of Dion
Crisostomos who complained about the scenes of mourning in Homer (“Defunctum
vero memoria honorate non lachrymis” [“the memory of the dead are not honored
by tears”]), Tasso strives for a poetics “that is more humane and more
appropriate to civil life” (“piú umana e piú accommodata a la vita civile”),
resisting not only Dion but Plato and the Pythagoreans as “too rigid and
severe” (“troppo rigida e severa”). Taking sides with that “most excellent
Aristotle,” Tasso argues for a poetry that will motivate the sentiment of
compassion “even for the enemy” (“ancora da’ nemici”; 178), and hence for the
creation of a human community in which one takes stock not so much of differing
religious beliefs, but of the parallels that make all humankind members of a
single family. Thus, for example, the king Solimano is to be considered not as
the emperor of the Turks, but as a valorous prince and father of a valorous and
compassionate son. . . . If they were deprived of the theological
virtues, they did not lack natural virtue, nor those bred by custom. non come
imperator de’ Turchi, ma come principe valoroso e padre di valoroso e di
pietoso figliuolo . . . quantunque fosser privi de le virtú
teologiche, non erano senza le virtú naturali e quelle di costume. (177) As a
result, as Alain Goddard has observed, Solimano and Argante both now fail to
embody “a code of values opposed to that of strict Catholic orthodoxy” (“un
code de valeurs opposé à celui de la stricte orthodoxie catholique”)35 —a
failure that unleashes “a tide of ambivalence” despite the ideological claims
made throughout for Catholicism’s supremacy. And the figures who help to
generate such ambivalence and, in particular, compassion for those with
“natural virtues” are largely Tasso’s women, as the Conquistata shapes not only
a new definition of masculinity but a new role for its women.36 Tasso’s early
readers may have challenged the authenticity of Armida’s conversion, the
“saintliness” of Sofronia, the status of the missing “immagine,” and the
rationale for Erminia’s midnight foray into the Christian camp, and her
supposed self lessness when ministering to a wounded Tancredi.37 The
Conquistata seems dedicated rather to making female behavior transparent and
unquestionably sincere, a sincerity that Erminia/Nicea’s rebuke of her “artifallaci”
confirms. The ubiquitous female mourner, for whom Mary is paradigmatic,
embodies the essence of non -theatricality, conveying a spiritual intensity
which Tasso himself longed to experience as clear from his late canzone to the
Virgin, “Stava appresso la Croce,” in which he asks Mary to become the
guarantor of his own prayerful sincerity: “Fa ch’io del tuo dolor / senta nel
cor la forza” (“Grant that I may sense in my own heart the power of your grief
”), and later in the poem, “Fa ch’l duol sia verace / e ’l mio pianto sia vero”
(“Enable my grief to be authentic, my lament sincere”).38 If—with the exception
of Clorinda—there was no place for this expression of commiseration in the
Liberata, fixated as it was on the triumphant attaining of the city, the
Conquistata ensures with its weeping mothers and, on occasion, fathers and
friends, that we see Jerusalem’s conquest as mixed a blessing as was the defeat
of Troy. If the body recognized in the Liberata’s “Allegoria” is an exclusively
militaristic one, the corpus of the Conquistata is familial, in which men are
humanized, perhaps feminized, through their claims to having mothers, wives, or
children. In the meantime, Erminia’s pious arts of healing, Sofronia’s daring
sacrifice, and the immagine itself—aspects of feminine “artistry” not easily
assimilable to this model—are gone. * ** One final
glance at Luca Giordano’s painting may help to clarify the trajectory I have
attempted to chart throughout this essay. The interesting detail of Mary’s
image, lifted high above the scene of impending death, can be said to resolve
for Genova’s Counter-Reformation audience the identity of the “thief ” which
Tasso had left in abeyance. Clearly the “mano” that perpetrated the theft was
that of the queen of Heaven herself, who forcibly intervenes when her image is
placed in a mosque, and who exhibits her power by rescuing not only her
“immagine” but the brave Sofronia. Giordano restores Mary’s protective
immagine, letting us “see” it for the first time as he rescues Mary herself
from oblivion in a work that makes the exaltation of Christianity derive from
her comforting presence. To this extent, the painting confirms the overtly
Catholic structure on which the Conquistata insisted. But it does so by
countering the very notion, emphasized by Mary herself in the Conquistata’s new
second canto, that she is “not enough now to save their lives” (“io non basto a
salvarli omai la vita”). Perhaps the key word in the passage is “omai”: now, as
opposed to some earlier time when Mary presumably was sufficient. Reading
backward from Mary’s phrase in Canto 2 of the Conquistata, one emerges with a
nostalgic vision of female sanctity which the Liberata never intended to
confirm; but a vision which for Tasso may have resided in a not-so-distant past
before Trent, found in a work such as the Divina commedia, in which the Virgin
has power to do more than weep. Her compassion can be said to have generated an
entire poem, and it is thanks to her example that Beatrice is able to say to
Virgil in Inferno 2, “amor mi mosse” (“love moved me and made me speak”).
Giordano’s late seventeenthcentury painting willfully misreads the Liberata, as
it envisions a world in which Mary can glowingly transmit her power to the two
central women of Canto 2in the form of light radiating from her painting. The
work of art thus comes to possess a divine, unambiguously protective status
such as a renegade Christian, the wizard Ismeno, would confer on it—even if
Tasso himself would not. 39 This was a world that never did exist in the
Liberata. But that may finally be beside the point. Yet as Tasso tried to
create a poem “senza arti fallacy,” newly directed toward the compassionate
involvement of all its personaggi, Muslims and Christians alike, in the family
of the “vita civile,” Mary and the women like her enable a different kind of salvation,
albeit of a less dramatic kind. If threats of “parlar disgiunto” and episodic
discontinuity hang over the Liberata; if the three women of Canto 2 both
embodied and actualized these threats, once we arrive at the inclusive poem
that is the Conquistata, the lonely isolation of heroic difference is no longer
a danger. And as a result, there are no more female heroes.40Notes 1 Tasso,
Lettere, ed. Guasti, 5: 72; the letter is from July 1591, when he had almost
completed the Conquistata. 2 For a summary of how female characters change in
the Conquistata, see Goddard, “Du ‘capitano’ au ‘cavalier sovrano,’” 236–38.
Also of interest is Picco, “Or s’indora ed or verdeggia.” 3 See Gigante’s
introduction to Tasso’s Giudicio sovra la Gerusalemme riformata, xlviii, as
well as his discussion of the Giudicio and Conquistata in Tasso, chapter 13. 4
That the female figures of the Liberata are intriguing mirrors for Tasso
himself is not a new argument; particularly in the wake of a feminist criticism
that has focused on Armida and Clorinda. In some cases, such as Stephens’
article on Erminia (“Trickster, Textor, Architect, Thief ” or Miguel’s “Tasso’s
Erminia,” 62–75, a female character’s narrative and artistic capabilities are
put forth as convincing evidence for self-portraits of the author/artist. 5 For
two recent studies devoted to the episode of Sofronia, Giamperi, Il battesimo
di Clorinda and Yavneh, “Dal rogo alle nozze,” 270–94; also see the few pages
dedicated to Sofronia in Hampton’s Writing from History, 116–18. 6 Some early
readers of the Liberata considered the episode “poco connesso e troppo presto,”
a point with which Tasso concurred; e.g., the letter to Scipione Gonzaga from
April 3, 1576; Lettere di Torquato Tasso, vol. I, letter #61; 153. Molinari’s
edition of the Lettere poetiche of Tasso contains this letter with ample
critical text; 374. The debate over the episode went on for a period of many
months in 1575 and 1576; see the excellent account of Güntert, L’epos
dell’ideologia regnante, 81–85. 7 The syntactic “difetto” or defect that Tasso
claims he learned from reading too much Virgil is that of “parlar disgiunto”:
“cioè, quello che si lega più tosto per l’unione e dependenza de’ sensi, che
per copula o altra congiunzione di parole . . . pur ha molte volte
sembianza di virtù, ed è talora virtù apportatrice di grandezza: ma l’errore
consiste ne la frequenza. Questo difetto ho io appreso de la continua lezion di
Virgilio . . .” (Lettere, vol. I, 115). Fortini calls attention to
the symptomatic crisis of “parlar disgiunto” in relationship to Canto 2 in
Dialoghi col Tasso, 81, describing it as “la frattura degli elementi del
discorso per ottenere maggior rilievo, maggiore drammatizzazione e
magnificenza.” 8 Tasso’s references to Homer in his Giudicio are extensive, as
are his spirited defenses of Homer against those who would call him a liar; he
often invokes Aristotle’s praise of the poet. 9 On Tasso’s impact on and
interest in the visual arts more generally, see Waterhouse, “Tasso and the
Visual Arts,” 146–61 and, more recently, Unglaub’s Poussin and the Poetics of
Painting and Traherne’s “Pictorial Space and Sacred Time,” 5–25.Jane Tylus10
The image is item 176 in the catalogue Luca Giordano, ed. Ferrari and Scavizzi.
11 See Utili’s entry on Giordano’s Olindo e Sofronia in Torquato Tasso, 313. 12
From the letter to Scipione Gonzaga of April 3, 1576; in Lettere di Torquato
Tasso, 153; Lettere poetiche, 374. This came less than a month after Tasso had
informed Luca Scalabrino on March 12, that he was going to add “eight or ten
stanzas” to the end of the Sofronia episode, in the hope of making it seem
“more connected” (“che ‘l farà parer più connesso”); ibid., 339. 13 I use the
edition of Fredi Chiappelli; II: 6. 14 Translations of the Liberata are from
Jerusalem Delivered, trans. Esolen; occasionally modified. 15 Lettere, I, 164;
also in Letter poetiche, 406; italics mine. 16 Yavneh, “Dal rogo alle nozze,”
272–73. 17 Giampieri, Il battesimo di Clorinda, 27, has noted in the “casto
simulacro” of Mary a parallel with the famous Palladium of Troy: Mary’s image
takes the place of the Palladium, and this substitution is extended further
when Sofronia herself “porta quella salvezza che tutti si aspettavano
dall’efige della Madonna” once the Madonna is gone. 18 See Yavneh, “Dal rogo
alle nozze,” 150, as well as Warner, The Augustinian Epic, 86. 19 This line is
echoed by Armida eighteen cantos later, when she proclaims herself Rinaldo’s
“ancilla,” and observes that his word is her law: “e le fia legge il cenno” (20:
136). Intentionally or not, the line brings us full circle to the missing image
of Mary, but reducing the supposed potency of that image and the women who
mirror it to a gesture of submission to a “conquering” Gabriel. 20 Virgil,
Eclogues, Georgiecs, Aeneid I–VI, 441. 21 The Judith echoes are relevant as
well, on which see Refini, “Giuditta, Armida e il velo,” esp. 87–88. But unlike
Judith, who dominates the second half of the apocryphal book of Judith,
Sofronia and Clorinda disappear long before the ending. 22 “A lei, che generosa
è quanto onesta, / viene in pensier come salvar costoro. / Move fortezza il
gran pensier, l’arresta / poi la vergogna e ‘l verginal decoro; / vince
fortezza, anzi s’accorda e face / sé vergognosa e la vergogna audace” (2: 17).
23 Eugenio Donadoni remarked on Tasso’s “incapacità di ritrarre una santa,” and
while he doesn’t elaborate, he clearly has in mind the puzzling presentation of
Sofronia herself. Torquato Tasso, 324. 24 As Lawrence F. Rhu nicely puts it,
the “Allegoria,” first composed in 1576, probably functioned “as a guarantor of
acceptable intentions in the face of potential censorship . . .
rather than as a sure guide in the right direction for a comprehensive
interpretation of his poem”; The Genesis of Tasso’s Narrative Theory, 56. At
the same time, with regard to the conflict between the “one and the many,” the
poem, with its announced attention to bring together Goffredo and his “compagni
erranti,”and the Allegoria, focused on demonstrating how the bodies of the (male)
warriors are eventually incorporated within the body of the army, seemingly
speak with a single voice. 25 Lettere, vol. 1, 84. Interestingly, Tasso will
exempt Rinaldo from this rule. 26 On the possibility that Tasso resists making
his female warriors stronger than the men, see Günsberg, The Epic Rhetoric of
Tasso, 128: “female valour is described essentially in terms of negative
comparatives. This culminates in male supremacy over a femininity that is
already fragmented, and in an act characterized by sexual overtones”—such as
the deaths of Clorinda and Gildippe. 27 See Act III, scene 1, from Aminta, and
Tirsi’s description of the Satiro’s would-be rape of Silvia: She is tied with
her own hair, to a tree, while “‘l suo bel cinto, / che del sen virginal fu
pria custode, / di quello stupro era ministro, ed ambe / le mani al duro tronco
le sstringea; / e la pianta medesma avea prestati / legami contra lei
. . .”; lines 1237–42; from Opere di Torquato Tasso, Volume 5: Aminta
e rime scelte. 28 For a more sustained reading of the Aminta and Tasso’s
protectiveness of his two main characters, see my chapter in Writing and
Vulnerability, 82–95. 29 In truth, a more nuanced criticism of the Conquistata
has emerged in recent years, including that of Goddard and of Residori, L’idea
del poema, as well as in the recent article of Brazeau, “Who Wants to Live
Forever?” Yet critics have been overly hasty to dismiss the30 31 323334 35 3637
38 39 40265later poem as the project of Tasso’s new Counter-Reformation
orthodoxy. This may be the case, but surely only in part; as the Giudicio and
contemporary letters attest, Tasso was involved in a continuing dialogue with
ancient authors, and the Conquistata attests to his desire to write a poem that
creates more of a balance between opposing forces. Gerusalemme conquistata, II:
11–12. Luigi Bonfigli’s edition, which comprises part of his five-volume Opere
di Torquato Tasso, regrettably has no notes; there is still no fully annotated
modern version of the poem. Shortly after Argante’s death a trio of female
mourners lament his loss in a passage taken directly from Iliad 24; the fact
that they appear in the Conquistata’s twenty-third canto makes the connection
structural as well as thematic. See Stephens, “Trickster, Textor, Architect,
Thief,” on Erminia, in which he talks about Erminia’s imitation of Helen; while
he finds in the Conquistata allusions to Helen’s weaving (Canto 3), he does not
consider the Homeric echoes in Canto 23. Also see my “Imagining Narrative in
Tasso.” Murnaghan, “The Poetics of Loss in Greek Epic,” 217: “As she gives
voice to her role as the bearer of Hector’s kleos, Andromache’s words fill in
what Hector’s gloss over . . . [she] insists that the creation of
kleos begins with grief for the hero’s friends and enemies alike. . .
. Before it can be converted into pleasant, care-dispelling song, a hero’s
achievement is measured in the suffering that it causes, in the grief that it
inspires.” Ferguson’s Trials of Desire and Enterline, The Tears of Narcissus
explore psychoanalytic material. Goddard, “Du ‘capitano’ au ‘cavalier
sovrano,’” 240n. I want here to make note of Konrad Eisenbichler’s suggestive
work with respect to new versions of masculinity articulated in early modern
Europe, and especially to his generous support of the volume that Gerry
Milligan and I edited for his series at the University of Toronto, The Poetics
of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance
and Reformation Studies, 2010). The letters that take up these various
episodes, surely to be read in the larger context of Tasso’s oeuvre, include a
majority of the letters in Molinari’s Lettere poetiche, which date from March
1575 through July 1576. Opere di Torquato Tasso, vol. V, 583. See Traherne,
“Pictorial Space and Sacred Time,” for a bracing discussion as to why Tasso
refused to indulge in any ekphrasis of sacred images in his work—as in his late
poem, Lagrime. In the Conquistata, Tasso adds eight stanzas (15: 41–8)
representing a prophetic dream regarding Clorinda’s future baptism as a
Christian—a future less certain in the Liberata, when a number of verbs suggest
the possibility of an only apparent conversion (“pare,” “sembra,” etc.).Bibliography
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for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003.Books Conference proceedings and
essay collections Love and Death in the Renaissance. Edited by K.R. Bartlett,
Konrad Eisenbichler, and Janice Liedl. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1991.Konrad
Eisenbichler Bibliography 269Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the
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University of Toronto Press, 1996. The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society,
1150–1650. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and
Renaissance Studies, 2002. The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of
Florence and Siena. Edited and with an introduction by Konrad Eisenbichler.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.Articles and essays “The Religious Poetry of
Michelangelo: The Mystical Sublimation.” Renaissance and
Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 23, no. 1 (1987): 123–36. Reprinted in
Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English. Edited by William E. Wallace.
Volume 5, 123–36. New York: Garland, 1995. “Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of
Guidobaldo II della Rovere.” Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et
Réforme 24, no. 1 (1988): 21–33. “Political Posturing in Some ‘Triumphs of
Love’ in Quattrocento Florence.” In Petrarch’s ‘Triumphs’: Allegory and
Spectacle. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler and A.A. Iannucci, 369–81. Ottawa:
Dovehouse Editions, 1990. “La carne e lo spirito: L’amore proibito di
Michelangelo.” In Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia (Università di
Siena), Volume 11, 359–70. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1990. Published
contemporaneously in Antioco malato: Forbidden Loves from Antiquity to Rossini,
359–70. Firenze: Olschki, 1990. “Il trattato di Girolamo Savonarola sulla vita
viduale.” In Studi savonaroliani: Verso il V centenario. Edited by Gian Carlo
Garfagnini, 267–72. Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1996. “Prima opera a stampa
di Savonarola: I consigli per le vedove.” Città di vita 53, vol. 2–3 (1998):
161–68. Published contemporaneously in Savonarola rivisitato (1498–1998).
Edited by M.G. Rosito, 65–72. Firenze: Edizioni Città di Vita, 1998. “Laudomia
Forteguerri Loves Margaret of Austria.” In Same-Sex Love and Desire Among Women
in the Middle Ages. Edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn,
277–304. New York: Palgrave, 2001. “Savonarola e il problema delle vedove nel
suo contesto sociale.” In Una città e il suo profeta: Firenze di fronte al
Savonarola. Edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 263–71. Firenze: SISMEL, 2001.
“Poetesse senesi a metà Cinquecento: tra politica e passione.” Studi
rinascimentali: Rivista internazionale di letteratura italiana 1 (2003):
95–102. Published contemporaneously in Rinascimento e Rinascimenti: Storia,
lingua, cultura e periodizzazioni, 95–102. Salerno: Università di Salerno,
2004. “Un chant à l’honneur de la France: Women’s Voices at the End of the
Republic of Siena.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 27, vol.
2 (2003): 87–99. “At Marriage End: Girolamo Savonarola and the Question of
Widows in Late FifteenthCentury Florence.” In The Medieval Marriage Scene:
Prudence, Passion, Policy. Edited by Sherry Roush and Cristelle Baskins, 23–35.
Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005.
“Codpiece” and “One-sex theory.” In the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Edited
by Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Jamsheed Choksy, Judith Roof, and Francesca Sautman, 1:
308 and 3: 1087. Detroit: Thomson/Gale, 2007. “Adolescents” and “Laudomia
Forteguerri.” In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality
through History. Volume 3: The Early Modern Period, 1400–1600.Konrad
Eisenbichler BibliographyEdited by Victoria L. Mondelli and Cherrie A. Gottsleben,
6–8 and 94–95. New York: Greenwood Press, 2007. “Erotic Elements in the
Religious Plays of Renaissance Florence.” In Worth and Repute in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Barbara Todd. Edited by Kim Kippen
and Lori Woods, 431–48. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance
Studies, 2010. “La Tombaide del 1540 e le donne senesi.” In Alessandro
Piccolomini (Sienne 1508–1579). À la croisée des genres et des savoirs. Actes
du Colloque International (Paris 23–25 septembre 2010). Réunis et présentés par
Marie-Françoise Piéjus, Michel Plaisance, Matteo Residori, 101–11. Paris:
Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III, 2012. “Fils de la louve: Blaise
de Monluc et les femmes de Sienne.” Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et
Réforme 37, vol. 2 (Spring 2014): 5–18. “Sex and Marriage in Machiavelli’s
Mandragola: A Close(t) Reading.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et
Réforme 40, vol. 1 (2017): 13–35.INDEXEntries in italics refer to figures;
entries in bold refer to tables. abandoned women 61 Abrabanel, Judah 215
Accademia degli Infiammati 217 Accademia degli Intronati 219–20 Actaeon 233–4,
240 Ad compascendum (papal bull) 61 adultery: as crime of violence 36; cultural
narrative of 75–8; in fiction 211, 214–15; legal definitions of 9; locations of
83–4; prosecutions for 75, 78–91, 92nn24, 45; and prostitution 61, 63 Aeneid
219, 224n60, 253, 259 aesthetics: and masculinity 144–5, 147; and military
prowess 149, 152, 156n29; and social control 12, 154 agency: of courtiers 151;
female 14, 54, 78, 211, 217 Agnoletto the Corsican 39 Agnolo di Ipolito 40–1
Alain of Lille 189–90 Alberti, Francesca 77–8 Alberti, Leon Battista 232,
242n19 Albertoni, Ludovica 116 Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke 141–2 Alexander the
Great 192, 193 Alexander VI, Pope 76 Altaseda 57, 69n37 Amadesi, Angela 70n71
Aminta (Tasso) 256, 264n27 anal penetration 10, 51n42, 129–30, 188, 204n25; see
also sodomyAndreoli, Andreoli 45–6 androgyny 107, 185, 187–8, 195 Andromeda
230, 232–3, 240 Angela of Foligno 113 angels, Carlini invoking 100, 104, 107–9,
114 animals, sex with 14, 43, 227, 231, 234–7, 241, 243–4n51 Antoniano, Silvio
250–1 Apuleius 232–3, 236–8, 240–1 Arenula 125–6 Aretino, Pietro: and Il Sodoma
192–3; and Piccolomini 217; Ragionamenti 14, 164–5, 211–13, 215–18, 221–2
aristocratic behaviour 221–2 Aristotle 32n2, 161, 168, 243n51, 261, 263n8
Armida 247–8, 254, 256, 261, 264n19 “arti fallaci” 248, 263 autonomy 145, 149,
211, 251 Averani, Pietro 38 badgers 187 Baliera, Cecilia 70n72 Ballerina,
Francesca 68n14 Bandello, Matteo 165, 200, 217 Bandello, Niccolò 163 Bargagli,
Girolamo 219–20, 224n66 Barolsky, Paul 199 bastards 76, 192 beastliness 32n2Bechdel
Test 217–18, 224n50 beffa 31n1, 33n14 Belforte 37 Bell, Rudolph 11, 97, 99, 113
Bellini, Angelica 69n52 Belvedere di Saragozza 57, 70n71 Bembo, Pietro 215, 219
Benazzi, Pietro 62 Benedek, Thomas G. 12 Benedict, Saint 185, 186, 188, 189,
190 Benedictine order 70, 185 Bernardino da Siena, Saint 145, 162, 173n10, 188,
195 bernesque poetry 167–8, 171–2 Berni, Francesco 194 Bernini, Gianlorenzo
110, 111–12, 114, 116, 121n93 bestiality see animals, sex with Betta la Magra
11, 128–31 Bianco, Baccio del 78 bigamy 80 Bignardina, Giulia 60 birds: eating
163–4, 172–3n2, 174n24; symbolising the penis 231 bisexuality 100, 186, 192,
194, 203n5 blasphemy 35, 38, 63, 79 Blastenbrei, Peter 79 Bocca di lupo 57,
70n71 Boccaccio, Giovanni 8, 21–2 Bollette see Ufficio delle Bollette Bologna:
Borgo degli Arienti 59, 62; Borgo di San Martino 59–60, 62; Borgo di Santa Caterina
di Saragozza 57, 59; Borgo di Santa Caterina di Strada Maggiore 62; Borgo Nuovo
di San Felice 56, 59–60; Borgo Riccio 57; Broccaindosso 57, 59; men’s
relationships with prostitutes in 61–2; regulation of prostitutes in 61, 63–5,
68n17; residencies of prostitutes in 8–9, 53–60, 55, 56, 66–7; sausages of 168
Bolzoni, Lina 227–8 The Book of the Courtier (Castiglione) 1, 11; arms and
letters in 142–4; dress and aesthetics in 146–54; homosexuality in 192; on
women’s behaviour 215–16, 219 Bossi, Francesco 70n66 Boswell, John 2–5, 198,
203 Botticelli, Sandro 104, 188 Bovio, Zefiriele Tommaso 162 Bràina di stra San
Donato 57, 60 Braudel, Fernand 161 Brizio, Elena 8 Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo)
194brothels 54, 57, 59–60, 125; see also prostitution Brown, Judith 4, 11,
97–8, 107, 120n55 Bruno, Giordano 200 Buonacasa, Lucrezia 65 Burckhardt, Jackob
1, 7 burlesque literature 166, 194–5 Cady, Joseph 200 Camaiani, Orazio 37
Campi, Cassandra di 60 Campo di Bovi 56, 60, 68n27, 70n71 canon law 75 Canossa,
Ludovico da 142–3, 146–9, 154 Capatti, Alberto 161 Capella, Galeazzo Flavio 216
Cappelli, Francesco 84–6, 91 Cappello, Bianca 76 Capramozza 57, 70n71 Captain
of Justice (Siena) 35–40 Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da 109, 111–12, 114,
195 Caretta, Madonna Ginevra 60, 68n32, 69n37 Carli, Enzo 199 Carlini,
Benedetta: becoming abbess 107; entry into religious life 101; imprisonment of
119n9; investigation into 97–9; marriage to Christ 113, 115–17; modern
controversy over 99–100; sexual contact with Mea 100–1, 104, 114–15, 117–19;
spirituality of 102–4, 109, 111–14 carne, multiple meanings of 12, 160–5, 170–2
Carnevale (neighbourhood) 127 Carnival 90, 102, 162, 165–7, 170, 175n52
Carracci, Agostino 55, 56, 58 Carracci, Ludovico 116 Castiglione, Baldassare 1,
11–13, 142, 145, 152, 156nn35, 38, 239 castration 10 Catherine de’ Ricci, Saint
104, 107, 117 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint 116 Catherine of Bologna, Saint
114 Catherine of Genoa, Saint 102 Catherine of Siena, Saint 11, 102, 104–7,
106, 108, 112–13, 116, 118 Cavedagna, Domenica 60 Cazzaria (Vignali) 219–20
Cellini, Benvenuto 13, 188, 194 Chauncey, George 201 Chigi family 185, 192–4
Christ: Carlini speaking as 100, 117; Carlini’s visitations from 98, 104, 111;forgiving
the adulteress 77–8; gender of 107; loving union with 106, 114–16, 115, 121n81,
197 Christianity: and eating meat 162–3; and masculinity 144–5; and sexuality
185 Circe 235, 237 Clarke, Paula 7 Clement VIII, Pope 247 Cleopatra 252, 255
clergy: sexual violence by 35, 44–9, 98; and sodomy 190, 194 Clorinda 248–9;
baptism of 265n40; body of 256; death of 247, 251–3, 264n26; and Sofronia 255
clothing: foreign 148–9; and masculinity 11–12, 141–2, 144–7; and military
defeat 152; and sexual deviance 188–90 Cockaigne, Land of 165 Cohen, Elizabeth
7, 9, 57, 62, 67, 71n84 Colieva, Lucia 60 Coller, Alexandra 219 Colloquies
(Erasmus) 101–2 “compagni erranti” 256–7, 264n24 concubines 80, 92n44 conjugal
debt 5, 77–8 Connors, Joseph 126 Conquistata see Gerusalemme conquistata
convents: power of 98; prostitution and 55, 63–4; sexuality within 4–5, 97, 99,
101–2 Corio, Bernardino 141 Cornaro, Alvise 174n23 Correggio, Antonio da 116
cose brutte 127 Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke 8, 37, 46 cosmetics 144, 213, 216
Council of Trent 8–9; and adultery 79, 82; and failed saints 112; and images
250–1; nunneries after 101; and sodomy 195 Counter-Reformation 104, 112, 257,
265n29 court ladies 1, 6 courtesans: in fiction 211–12; idealized depiction of
1, 6–7; in Rome 79 courtiers: ideal 1, 6, 143–4, 146–7; sacrificing masculinity
150–2 Crawford, Katherine 6 Criminal Judge (Siena) 36 Cristellon, Cecilia 79
Crivelli, Bartolomea (Mea) 11, 97, 99–104, 109, 113–14, 117–18, 119n10
cross-breeding 14, 227, 233–4, 236, 240, 243n51 cuckoldry 77–8Currie, Elizabeth
141 Cycnus 205n55 Daedalus 234–6, 240 Dante Aligheri 2, 32n2, 34n32, 161, 163
d’Aragona, Tullia 215–16 d’Ascoli, Eurialo 193, 200 de Bertini, Ursina 68n14 de
Montaigne, Michel 65 Decameron: adultery in 78; Branca’s edition of 31n1;
culinary language in 163; and Dante 34n32; and della Porta 243n30; female
heroines in 33n21; Griselda and Gualtieri in 8, 21–31; and La Raffaella 215;
Walter of Brienne in 32n8 deceit, courtiers and 150 de’Grassi, Francesco 70n66
della Porta, Giovan Battista 14, 227; Art of Memory 228–31, 240–1, 241–2n2; and
myth 234–8; and natural magic 239–40, 242n11; and nudity 231–2; and Titian
233–4 d’Este, Ercole 112, 120n40 the Devil, and sexual violence 39–40 di Loli
family of prostitutes 59 Dido 252, 255 dildos 13, 99–100, 102, 166 discourse,
and social norms 200–1 Dolce, Ludovico 170–1, 223n32, 229 Domenidio, inn of
129, 131 Domitilla, Maria 118 Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi) 188,
190 Donina, Pantaselia 62 dress see clothing Durazzo, Eugenio 248–9
ecclesiastical courts 9, 45, 61, 78–9 effeminacy: in clothing 12, 142–7, 150,
155n14, 156n43, 188, 205n41; and military defeat 151–4 Eisenbichler, Konrad
v–vi, 97, 265n36, 268–70 Elbl, Ivana 5 Elliott, Dyan 5 embodied experience
199–201 England, debts to Florence 32n6 Ensler, Eve 218 epistemological caution
199, 201 Erminia/Nicea 247–8, 255, 259–62, 263n4, 265n32 erotic forces, cosmic
239 erotica, learned 175n52 essentialism 2, 147, 198 Europa 235, 237Fabritio
128–9 faccia tosta 195 fallacious artistries 15, 248 Farnese, Giulia 76 the
Farnesina 192 female bodies 7, 218, 237, 247–8, 253, 256; see also genitals,
female Ferrante, Lucia 56 Ferrara 7, 112, 167, 216 Ferrari da Reggio, Giacoma
di 68n14 Ficino, Marsilio 167, 239 Finucci, Valeria 13 Fiorentina, Francesca 62
Fiorentina, Lena 60 Fiorentina, Lucia 69n37 Fiorentina, Vittoria 60 Fiorentini,
Camilla di 70n72 Firenzuola, Agnolo 167–9 Florence: annexation of Siena 8; bank
failures in 32n6; conquest of Siena 38, 44; ghetto of 57; homosexuality in 4,
187–8; laws on sexual violence 46, 49; nobility and tyranny in 23, 25–8, 30–1,
32n11; prostitution in 53, 64, 70n66; sausages of 169–71 forgetting, art of
229–30 fortezza 253–4, 256 Fortini, Pietro 164 Foucault, Michel 2–6, 13, 184–5,
203 Fra Bartolommeo 197 France: in Book of the Courtier 155n9; humiliation of
Italy 142–3, 145, 149, 152, 154, 156n38 Francesco I, Grand Duke 76 Franchi,
Giovanni Antonio de 126 Francis, Saint 109 Franco, Veronica 7 Frangipane,
Niccolò 166 Franzesi, Mattio 167, 171 Frassinago 57, 60, 65, 68n14 Freccero,
Carla 156n30, 203 Fregoso, Federico 148–50 Fregoso, Ottaviano 148, 150–4,
155n13, 156n44 Furlana, Caterina 62, 69n52 Gabriel, Angel 107–9 Galen 12, 163,
166, 175n41, 176n72 Galianti, Francesca di 61 Gallucci, Margaret 13 gambling
63, 79 Ganymede 14, 193, 205n38, 230, 233, 239–40 Garzoni, Tomazzo 65gender:
and art 14–15; Foucault and Boswell on 3 gender bias 235, 240 gender
nonconformity 146, 149 genitals: of animals 237; female 39, 100–1, 111, 113,
169, 175n54, 218, 224n52; male 107; mediaeval theories about 12 Gentileschi, Artemisia
90 Gertrude of Helfta 111 Gerusalemme conquistata (Tasso) 14, 247; female
characters in 257–63; as orthodox 264–5n29; and Sophronia episode 250
Gerusalemme liberata (Tasso) 14, 247; female characters in 247–8, 253–6, 263n3;
Sofronia episode in 248–51, 263n6 Gesso, Giulia da 64–5 Ghirardo, Diane Yvonne
7 Giampieri, Giampero 251 Giannetti, Laura 12 Giannotti, Donato 164 Gigante,
Claudio 248 Gildippe 247, 255, 264n26 Giordano, Luca 248–50, 249, 262–3
Giovanni Maria 132–5 Giudi, Ludovica 64 Giustiniani, Benedetto 63 gluttony 12,
160–4, 168, 170–2, 173nn3–9, 212 Goddard, Alain 261 Goffen, Rona 5 Gonzaga,
Scipione 250, 263n6 gossip 55, 65, 87 Gozzadini, Ginevra 77 Grandi, Lucrezia di
68n14 Grazzini, Anton Francesco 163–4, 167, 169–71 Gregory the Great, Pope 160
Grosseto 46 group sex 11 Hadewijch 120n63 Halperin, David 184, 203 Harvey,
Elizabeth 217 hearts, gifting of 104 Hercules 230, 243n31 Homer 14, 259, 261,
263n8, 265n32 homoeroticism: between nuns 99, 102; in master-apprentice
relationship 188; in religious imagery 107–11, 120n30, 185, 188–90, 189, 195–7,
196; in in Renaissance Italian art 194–5, 205n38; in Sodoma’s secular work 192homosexuality:
among clergy 190, 191; clothing denoting 188–90, 205n42; in early modern Italy
187–8; Il Sodoma and 183–4, 193–5, 199; in Renaissance scholarship 2–4, 13–14,
184–5, 198–9, 201; Saslow’s use of term 203n5; see also lesbians; sodomy
honour: and adultery 75–6, 81, 85; in Decameron 21, 24, 26–31, 33n19; male 7;
and sexual violence 37–41 honour killings 80, 91n10 Il Sodoma (Gianantonio
Bazzi) 13–14; “Allegorical Man” 201–3, 202; biography of 183–4, 205n53; early
religious works 185–90; historiography of 197–201; later religious works of
195–7, 206n62; painting of Catherine of Siena 107, 108; secular art of 191–5
Iliad 142–3, 260, 265n31 images: holy 250–3, 255, 261–2; sexual 9, 14, 227–8,
231 imagination, phallic 235, 238, 241 imagines agentes 228, 231, 233–8, 240–1,
243nn30–1 imitatio Christi 113 immagine see images, holy impotence 10 incest,
laws on 81 incontinence of desire 161–2, 173n8 inns, and prostitution 57, 59–60
Inquisition 3, 10, 99, 111, 130, 227, 249–51 instruments see dildos
interdisciplinarity 5 intersectionality 15 inversions 235, 237–8, 240–1, 243n48
Io 233, 237–8, 241 Italian Renaissance: idealised image of 1; scholarship on
sex and gender in 3–5 Jews: and prostitutes 54, 56–7; in Rome 126–9 Job 28–9,
34n27 Kodera, Sergius 14 La Raffaella (Piccolomini) 14, 213–14; and Aretino’s
Ragionamenti 211; depiction of women 214–15, 220–1; textual sources 216–17
Labalme, Patricia 49 labyrinth 243n48 lactation, miracle of 105Landriani:
Lucrezia 76; Marsilio 64 lavoratori 28 Leda and the swan 14, 231, 233–4, 238,
243n36 lenzuola 234 Leo X, Pope 191, 193–4, 205n41 Leonardo da Vinci 188
lesbians, use of term for Renaissance women 3–5, 11, 99 levitation 118 Liberata
see Gerusalemme liberata loci, in art of memory 228–32, 234–5, 238, 240,
242nn19, 23, 243n48 Lorenzo the bathhouse worker 132, 134–5 love: in La
Raffaella 214, 222; masculine 200; Neoplatonic discourse of 215, 219 Lucanica
sausages 167 Lucretia, wife of Cynthio Perusco 132–5, 138n63 Lucretia (Roman
heroine) 191, 193 Lucretia the madam 132, 134–5 Lugeria 260 lust 114, 160–1,
164, 172, 173nn3–10, 201, 212 luxuria 161, 173n7 Machiavelli, Niccolò 78,
142–3, 155n10 magic: charges of 61; and love 77; natural 227, 233–4, 236,
239–41, 244n62 Magrino 126–30 male dress 142, 144–5, 148, 155–6n28; see also
clothing, and masculinity male solidarity 136 malmaritate 81, 99 Malpertuso 57
manly masquerade 147, 156n33 Mantuana, Chiara 60 Marcutio, Marino 89 Marema,
Caterina 65 Margaret of Cortona 113 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Saint 104,
112–13 marital debt see conjugal debt marriage: arranged 23–4, 33n19; mystical
115–16, 118; and passion 76 married women, sexual laws about 36, 61, 80, 88–9
Martelli, Agata 71n80 Martinengo, Maria Maddalena 113 marvels 227, 234, 236,
239 Mary Magdalene, Saint 77, 234 Mary mother of Christ: and Catherine of Siena
112; in Gerusalemme conquistata257–9; images of 249–54, 256, 262–3, 264nn17,
19; as mourner 262; and mystical marriage 107, 115, 116; Visitation of 102, 103
masculinity: arms and letters in 143–4; as conformity 148–9; and courtiers’
self-presentation 144–8, 150–2, 154; Renaissance 1, 11–13 masturbation 100, 102
maternal longings 239–41 Mattei, Giovanni Domenico di 86–8 Matthews-Grieco,
Sara 9 Matuccio, Giulio 128–9, 136n16 Mauro Criti 45–6 McCall, Timothy 141
McCarthy, Vanessa 8 Mea see Crivelli, Bartolomea meat: eating 160–3, 165, 167,
172; and sexuality 162–5, 169; see also carne; sausages memory, art of 14,
227–33, 235, 239–41, 242n7 Meo 131–5, 139n74 Messisbugo, Cristofaro da 167
Michelangelo 14, 185, 194–5, 205n55, 233–4 militarism 12, 142–3, 145, 154,
255–6, 262 Mills, Robert 200 Minotaur 234, 236 misogyny 5, 13, 77, 211–12, 220
mixti fori 80 monogamy, serial 79 monstrous offspring 234, 236–7, 241
Montalcino 43–4 Montanari, Massimo 161 Montauto, Federico Barbolani di 46, 48
Monte of the Riformatori 38 Monteoliveto Maggiore 183, 185, 186–7, 189, 192,
195 Moroni, Doralice 64 Moulton, Ian Frederick 10, 14 Murnaghan, Sheila 260
Muslim women 247, 255, 257–8, 263 mysticism: erotic 11, 100, 102, 104, 117,
197; physical signs of 112–13 myths, classical 14, 192, 205n55, 230–1, 233–5,
237–8, 240–1 naked bodies: physiognomy of 231–2; in Titian 234 Negri,
Elisabetta di 60 Neoplatonism 215, 219 Niccoli, Ottavia 49Nolli Plan 126
normative codes 8–9 Nosadella 57, 68n14 novelle 21, 77–8, 163–6, 171, 174nn26,
40, 200, 215, 217 nunneries see convents nuns: as brides of Christ 104, 107; in
fiction 212; lust of clergy for 114; and prostitutes 64; sexual activities of
4–5, 97–100, 216 Office of the Night 4 Olimpia 132, 134–5, 138n57 Ordeaschi,
Francesca 192, 194 Ordinances of Justice 25, 28, 33n18 Orsini, Orsino 76 Otto
di custodia 35 Ottonelli, Giovanni Domenico 251 Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso) 170,
232–3, 235, 237–8, 240 Paleotti, Gabriele 9, 54, 61, 67 Pallavicino, Gasparo
150, 153, 155n14 Palloni, Agostino 133–6, 139n78 Panicarolo, Pietropaolo 89
panopticon 231 Paolo, Giovanni 104, 105 Parabosco, Girolamo 160 Parigi, Gentile
di 70n71 Parker, Deborah 194 parlar disgiunto 248, 263n7 parodies 78, 217, 237
parties, prostitutes throwing 63 Partner, Nancy 5–6 Pasiphaë 231, 234–8, 240–1
Pasulini, Andrea di 61–2, 69n47 Pater, Walter 184, 201 patria potestas 75 Paul
III, Pope 76 Paul IV, Pope 130 pederasty 188, 193; pedagogical 10 Pellizani,
Vittoria 70n71 personae, in art of memory 228–32, 234, 242n16 Perusco, Cynthio
132, 134, 138n63 Pesenti, Antonia 102 Petrarch, Francesco 170; version of
Griselda story 21, 24, 29, 31, 33n19 Phaeton, Fall of 205n55 phallus, sexuality
centred around the 100–1, 171–2; see also genitals, male Philip II of Spain 37
physiognomy 227, 231, 233, 236, 239–40 Piazza Navona 127Piccolomini, Alessandro
211, 215–16, 224n60; Oration in Praise of Women 219–20; see also La Raffaella
Piccolomini, Marcantonio 219–20, 224n66 Piéjus, Marie-Françoise 216–17 Pietro,
Giovanni 68nn14, 27 piety, emotive register of 104 pity 49, 76, 255, 260–1 Pius
V, Pope 79 Pizzoli, Ludovico 69n49 Platina (Bartolommeo Sacchi) 161–2, 167,
173n15 “poco conesso” 248, 253, 256, 263n6 poetry, and homosexuality 184, 194
Ponce de Leon, Basilio 149 Pontano, Francesco 144–5 Poor Clares 64 Porcellio,
Niccolò 165, 200 pork: poetic praise of 170, 172; social attitudes to 161,
166–8, 174n21, 174–5nn40, 41, 176n72 pork sausage 166–8, 170–1 Porta Piera 56–7
Porta Procola 56–7 Porta Stiera 56–7 postmodernism 3, 184, 198–201, 203 power,
in gender relations 211–12 printing, transformative effects of 14 procuresses
54, 212, 216 prostitution: behaviour associated with 63–5; and courtesans 7;
and courtiers 148; in della Porta 231, 236–8, 243n36; evidence of 3;
ex-prostitutes 99; in fiction 211–13, 216, 221–2; and Ludovico Santa Croce
127–8; male 10; men’s interaction with female 60–3; residential patterns in
Bologna 8–9, 53–6, 55, 57; social and familial circles of 58–60, 65–7 Puff,
Helmut 188, 198 queer studies 184, 199, 201 queer visuality 192 Querzola,
Giovanna 68n14 Randolph, Adrian 190 rape see sexual violence Raphael (Raffaello
Sanzio da Urbino) 14, 200, 233 Raymond of Capua 106, 112 reception theory 190
Reed, Christopher 185, 198 re-focalization 240Renaissance Italy see Italian
Renaissance Renaissance scholarship, sexuality and gender in 1–6 Renaissance
sex 3, 13 Rice, Louise 78 the Ripetta 130 Rocke, Michael 4, 10, 187–8 Rojas,
Fernando 216 Roman antiquity, effeminacy in 144 Roman law 75–6 romance 9, 118,
256 Romantic Friendships 100 Rome: adultery trials in 9, 82–91; early modern
street plan 125–6; prostitution in 53, 59, 66–7, 79–80, 128; regulation of
illicit sex in 79–82; Renaissance demography of 79–80; sexual bohemianism in
192–3 Romoli, Domenico 162 Rosetti, Isabella 60 Rossi, Aloisi di 62, 69n49
Rossi, Caterina di 62, 69n52 Ruggiero, Guido 3–4, 8, 13, 187, 197, 199
Sacchetti, Niccolò 163 Sacchi Romana, Diana di 69n37 Sack of Rome (1527) 79,
145 saints, failed 99, 102, 111–12 same-sex eroticism see homoeroticism San
Colombano 60 Santa Caterina di Saragozza 63 Santa Croce, Ludovico 11, 126–36 Santa
Croce family 126, 139n78 Sarteano 40–1 sausages 11–12, 161–3, 165–72, 175n42
Savi, Dorotea and Benedetta di 59 sbirri 60, 62, 65 Scapuccio, Antonio 127–9
Schutte, Anne Jacobson 99 Sebastian, Saint 195–7, 196, 206n62 Sedgwick, Eve 184
self-expression 184, 194, 198, 203 self-fashioning 151 self-harm 113 semen
12–13 sensuality: in Renaissance Italy 9–10; and spirituality 98, 101–2, 111;
women known for 252 Senzanome 57, 60, 64–5, 68nn14, 27, 70n71 Sercambi,
Giovanni 163–4, 166 sex crimes 4 sex ratio, in Rome 80 sexual fantasies 227–8,
234, 240sexual identity 4–5, 11, 13, 97, 119n7, 184, 198–9 sexual innuendos 10,
168–9, 194 sexual non-conformity 195, 201 sexual positions 13 sexual violence:
against women and young girls 37–8; against young boys 41–4; in art 191; in
classical myth 231; by clergy 35, 44–9, 98; laws on 4, 36–7, 49; in Renaissance
Italy 8 sexuality: female 217–18; Foucault on 2–3, 13; male 10, 172 (see also
phallus); and meat eating 162; Neoplatonic discourse on 215; newer approaches
to 3–6, 12; in poetry 194; see also homosexuality Sforza, Caterina 76 Sforza,
Galeazzo 141–2 Shakespeare, William 2, 232 shrines, prostitution around 64
sibille 90 Siena: administration of justice in 35–6; Il Sodoma in 185; sexual
violence in 8, 35–50; Vasari on 183 Simio, Antonio 62 Simon, Patricia 5 Simone,
Mario di 127–9, 131 Simons, Patricia 5, 11–13 sin, sexual 2, 42, 99, 102 single
women, vulnerability of 61 Sixtus V, Pope 61 slander, sexual 61, 63 social
constructionism 198, 201 social control 2, 12, 35, 143, 154 Socrates 200
sodomy: defences of 10; in early modern Italy 187–8, 198–200, 203; and meat
164–5, 169, 171–2, 174n21; preachers against 173n10; regulating 4; Roman laws
on 80–1; Sienese laws against 37, 42–4, 47–9; use of term 9; see also anal
penetration; homosexuality; Il Sodoma Sofronia: episode of 247–52; Giordano’s
paintings of 248, 249, 262; inscrutability of 253–6 Song of Songs 100, 107,
116–18 Speroni, Sperone 215 spirituality, sensual imagery of 97, 100, 104–12
Spisana, Anna and Lucia 59 Splenditello 98, 100, 104, 109, 114, 120n55, 121n98
Spoloni, Lucia and Francesca di 59 sponsa 107, 116–18 spousal violence, and
adultery 76, 82–3 sprezzatura 1, 146–7, 150–2, 156n42 Stanton, Domna 200
statues, living 230–3, 235, 240–1, 243n47 Statuta 80–1, 92n44 Stefani, Lena di
71n80 Stiera 56, 60 stigmata 97, 99, 107, 109, 111–14 Storey, Tessa 7, 66
strada dritta 126–8, 132 stufa 127–8, 133 subcultures 187–8, 197 Symonds, John
Addington 184 synecdoche 233–5, 238, 240–1 synopsis 239–41 Tagliarini, Lucia
68n14 Tarozzi, Pelegrina di 60 Tasso, Torquato 14–15; “Allegoria del Poema”
256, 262, 264n24; and female bodies 247–8; Giudizio del poema riformato 260–1;
and Sofronia episode 249–50; see also Gerusalemme conquistata; Gerusalemme
liberata Taylor, Andrew 6 Tedeschi, Radini 202 Teresa, Saint 109–11, 110
Terracina, Laura 216 Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) 5, 14, 92n15, 164, 166, 233–4,
240, 243n35 Torre Sanguigna 127–8 torture 41–2, 46, 49, 90 Toschi, Domenico 61
transgender 15 Traub, Valerie 203 Trevisana, Margareta and Francesca 59, 62–3
Tridentine rules see Council of Trent Tuscany, duchy of 37 Tylus, Jane 14
Ufficiali sopra la pace 35 Ufficio delle Bollette 53–62, 65–7, 69n49 Urban
VIII, Pope 112 Ursini, Hieronimo 82–4 Usinini, Terenzio 37–8 Utili, Mariella 249
The Vagina Monologues 218 vaginas see genitals, female Vallati, Cesare 131,
133–6 Vanna of Orvieto 109 Vanni, Francesco 106, 112 Varchi, Benedetto 141–2
Vasari, Giorgio 183–8, 192, 194–5, 199 Venetiana, Vienna 128 Venice:
prostitution in 53, 59; sex crimes in 4, 48, 79 Veronica Giuliani, Saint 99 Via
del Portico d’Ottavia 126 Via Santa Anna 125 Vicario 80, 84, 92n34 Vignaiuoli
169, 172, 175n52 Villani, Giovanni 145 Virgil 14, 219, 248, 251–3, 255, 262
Virgil 263n7 virtù: in Boccaccio 22–3, 32n6, 33n21; in Tasso 253 Virtuosi 168,
172, 175n52 visions, religious 5–6, 98, 111–14 visual culture 98, 102, 113
Vives, Juan-Luis 215, 217, 223n32 Walter of Brienne 23, 25, 32n8 whores see
prostitution witchcraft 10, 235–7; see also magic women: abuse of 131, 136;
depictions in Renaissance culture 14, 77, 171; honest and dishonest 53–4, 56–7,
59, 64–6, 81 (see also prostitution); in the Intronati 219–20; men writing
about 211–14, 217–22; men writing for 215–17; in myth 235; published and
unpublished texts by 223n37; see also female bodies women’s history 3–4 word
play 12 Yavneh, Naomi 250–1 Zanetti, Arsilia 61–2, 69n47 Zanrè, Domenico 194
Zapata, Giovan Battista 162 Zonta, Giuseppe 222 Giovanni Battista Modio. Modio.
Keywords. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Modio” – The Swimming-Pool Library. https://www.flickr.com/photos/102162703@N02/51745705644/in/datetaken/
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