Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Italy

"From Pliny to Petrarch to Pope-Hennessy and beyond, many have understood the obvious connection between portraiture and commemorative practice. This book expands and nuances our understanding of Renaissance portraiture; the author shows it to be complexly generated within a discourse of male anxiety and pre-mortuary mourning. She argues that portraiture could defer memory loss or, at the very least, pictorially console the subject against his own potentially unmourned death.

This book recognizes a socio-cultural anxiety – the fear not merely of death but also of being forgotten – and identifies a set of pictorial, literary and theoretical strategies consequently formulated to ensure memory. To explore this phenomenon, this interdisciplinary but fundamentally art historical project merges early modern visual culture and critical theories of the body. The author examines an extensive selection of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century male and female portraits, primarily associated with the Medici family, circle and court, in and against both historical writings and contemporary discourses, including literary and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, feminism and gender studies, and critical theories of race and disability.

Re-membering Masculinity generates new ideas about both male and female portraiture in early modern Florence, raises even more questions about the experiences and representations of widowhood and mourning, and re-configures our understanding of masculinity – from the early modern male body to 'Renaissance Man' to postmodern manhood."

I tribunali vescovili costituiscono un argomento ancora relativamente poco studiato, ma di grande interesse storiografico. Questo lavoro deriva dall'analisi del patrimonio documentale della Corte Episcopale di Jesi, una vasta massa di documenti suddivisa tra l’Archivio di Stato di Ancona e l’Archivio Diocesano di Jesi.
La parte più rilevante di tale patrimonio è quella relativa alle azioni criminali e civili promosse dalla corte. L’esame di tali procedimenti, oltre novecento per l'ambito criminale, ha permesso di analizzare il modello di azione della corte che in estrema sintesi si può definire inerente a due grandi settori della vita delle comunità: il primo è il foro del clero, che riguarda le azioni criminali del clero secolare, l'altro si occupa delle azioni e dei crimini dei laici ed è particolarmente importante in quanto riguardante molti aspetti della struttura sociale. Poiché i delitti di cui si occupa il tribunale sono sia quelli inerenti i peccati mortali che quelli definiti dai bandi e regolamenti vescovili, comprendono molte fattispecie: dai crimini più strettamente inerenti il controllo della morale (adulterio, concubinato, fornicazione, infanticidio, prostituzione), a quelli più apertamente violenti (aggressione, disordini, evasione, ingiurie, omicidio, rissa), per finire con quelli a carattere patrimoniale (debiti, furto, usura).
Queste azioni contro i maleficia producono decisioni di vario tenore da parte dei giusdicenti, spesso risultanti in condanne anche severe, determinando un rapporto profondo tra il tribunale e la società nella quale opera.

The episcopal courts are a subject to which few studies have been dedicated, but of great historical interest. This study is derived from the analysis of the documentary heritage of the Episcopal Court of Jesi, a very large mass of documents, divided between the State Archive of Ancona and the Diocesan Archive of Jesi.
The most significant part of this heritage is that relating to criminal and civil actions brought by the court. The examination of these proceedings, more than nine hundred for the criminal sphere, has allowed us to analyze the model of action of the court that in a nutshell we can define inherent to two major areas of community life: the first is the forum of the clergy, concerning the criminal actions of the secular clergy, the other one deals with the actions and crimes of the laity and is particularly important as it concerns many aspects of the social structure. Being the crimes referred to both the ones related to mortal sins and those defined by episcopal outlawings, they include many cases: from crimes more closely related to the control of morality (adultery, concubinage, fornication, infanticide, prostitution), to those more openly violent (aggression, disorder, jail breaking, insults, murder, brawl), to end with those of a financial nature (debts, theft, usury).
These actions against the maleficia produce different decisions by the judges, often resulting in severe convictions, determining a deep relationship between the court and the society in which it operates.

This book investigates the actions of marriage tribunals by analyzing the richest source of marriage suits extant in Italy, those of the Venetian ecclesiastical tribunal, between 1420 and the opening of the Council of Trent. It offers a strongly representative overview of the changes the Council introduced to centuries-old marriage practices, relegating it to the realm of marginality and deviance and nearly erasing the memory of it altogether. From the eleventh century onward, the Church assured itself of a jurisdictional monopoly over the matter of marriage, operating both in concert and in conflict with secular authorities by virtue of marriage’s civil consequences, the first of which regarded the legitimacy of children. Secular tribunals were responsible for patrimonial matters between spouses, though the Church at times inserted itself into these matters either directly, by substituting itself for the secular authority, or indirectly, by influencing Rulings through their own sentences. Lay magistratures, for their part, somewhat eroded the authority of ecclesiastical tribunals by continuing to exercise autonomous jurisdiction over marriage, especially regarding separation and crimes strictly connected to the nuptial bond and its definition, including adultery, bigamy, and rape.

In the Machiavellian Clizia the character of the old Nicomaco gets “armed” for his night of love with Clizia: he goes to the apothecary in Florence and buys a satirionne a concoction based on the bulbous roots of an orchid, the satyrion, pepper, seeds of wild asparagus, seeds of rocket, onions and spices noted for their aphrodisiac virtues.  Messer Nicomaco in Clizia exemplifies a character common to many comedies of the period: the old man in love, usually laughed at and sometimes punished for his erotic desires and amorous schemes.  In the exploration of characters of old fools in love and their search for the right erotic aid, dramatists had an opportunity to address the social and sexual tensions of renaissance society.  In fact mentions of aphrodisiacs for old lovers in many comedies open a discourse on the sexual impotence of old patriarchs and at the same time their continuing sexual desires, a discourse that contemporary humanistic literature often shunned or found inappropriate.  While the early modern discourse on the desire for sexual potency and its link to nutrition was an important part of the literary imagination of the day, it was contested by a range of other discourses, notably a humanistic view of old age as a happy period free of carnal desire and humoral medical theories that considered sex in old age as dangerous for the body.