A History of the Wife (15 page)

should marry again. It was not unusual for a widow to leave her hus- band’s home, without the clothes and jewelry given her at the time of her wedding, or her dowry and trousseau, which her children were sometimes slow to return to her. Florentine archives are filled with suits of widows against offspring who refused to restore dowries to their mothers or stepmothers.

Sometimes the gifts were taken back soon after the marriage. The husband may have just borrowed them from friends and relatives for the wedding period, to be returned within a year. Or he might be obliged to sell them to professional lenders, so they could be passed on to other husbands—for a fee.

An even more complicated set of rules prevailed over the giving of rings. On the wedding day, the husband gave his wife two or three rings. In addition, in Florence, either on the day of the wedding or the next morning, the husband’s father and some members of his family presented the bride with several rings, as many as as fifteen or twenty in wealthy noble families. Many of the rings were given by the married women of the family to welcome the new bride into the female fold. But these gifts, too, had only ritual value; they were no more the possession of the bride than the clothes and jewels offered by her husband. In time, they would be passed on to future brides entering the kinship circle.

During the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the sums laid out for dowries, gifts, and weddings increased considerably throughout Italy. It became more and more difficult for families to dower all their daughters, and many young women chose the convent instead of marriage as a cheaper alternative. (To place a girl in a convent rather than in marriage cost about half as much.) In the Veneto, the region around Venice, by the sixteenth century dowries had reached such size that the recent decline in Venetian commerce was blamed on the willingness of patrician husbands to live off their wives’ dowries.

We tend to think of the dowry as a disadvantage for women, and it certainly was for those who had difficulty acquiring one. It was undoubtedly the most obvious indicator of a woman’s marriageability and the most crucial factor in determining who would marry whom. But for a woman with a handsome dowry, it was a permanent status symbol persisting long after the marriage had taken place.
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For all the information about the artifacts of marriage—dowries, rings,

contracts, and the like—they tell us little about the interpersonal rela- tions between husband and wife, which are always difficult to ferret out. The family memoirs (
ricordanze
) written by men were generally circumspect in expressing emotions, and similar documents written by women were extremely rare. There was, however, one moment when circumspection sometimes broke down: when a wife died. Then a hus- band sometimes permitted himself the words of affection the wife may, or may not, have heard while she was alive.

Such words as
dulcissima
(sweetest),
dilectissima consors
(most delightful partner), and
dilectio
(fondness) are found in the journals of several memorialists regarding their recently deceased wives, suggest- ing an affection that went beyond merely conventional praise. A writer from Bologna burst forth with an extravagant lament: “I loved her more than seemed possible, because I don’t believe there is or has ever been a woman better than she.”
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Negative feelings were expressed and recorded at another end point—when a marriage broke down. Then husbands and wives had every reason to express their grievances before the ecclesiastical author- ities who were charged with granting annulment and divorce. The curi- ous story of Giovanni and Lusanna, discovered and presented by historian Gene Brucker, allows us to enter into the personal space of a Florentine couple.
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Based on the records of a court notary, it is a story of sex, passion, adultery, clandestine marriage, and annulment. In its own peculiar way, it tells us about the circumstances under which fifteenth-century Florentine women did—and did not—contract legal marriages.

THE STORY OF LUSANNA AND GIOVANNI

Lusanna and Giovanni were born in 1420 in Florentine homes that were separated by a five-minute walk. And there the similarities in their origins end, for Lusanna was the daughter of an artisan and Gio- vanni the son of a high-ranking notary. The Della Casa family, of which he was a member, belonged to the upper echelons of Florentine soci- ety, whereas Lusanna’s family consisted of petit-bourgeois artisans and tradesmen. In the highly stratified Florentine world of the early Ren- aissance, a match between these two families would have been unthinkable.

And, indeed, when it came time for Lusanna to marry at the age of seventeen, her father arranged a marriage for her to Andrea Nucci, a twenty-nine-year-old linen-maker and the son of a prosperous baker, living only a few hundred meters away. Lusanna’s sizeable dowry of 250 florins was duly noted in the marriage contract drawn up by the local notary.

Five years later, while visiting one of the neighborhood churches, Giovanni saw Lusanna. Lusanna, it appears, was extremely beautiful, and though married, she would not have been out of bounds for a wealthy Florentine merchant sniffing about for an affair. Still in his early twenties, he was not yet of an age to marry, but certainly of an age and position to entertain an irregular liaison. For the next decade, Lusanna and Giovanni were lovers. As a member of the artisan commu- nity, she seems to have moved about freely and unchaperoned, some- thing that would have been impossible for her upper-class counterparts. In addition, she was unencumbered by children.

As for her legal husband, we know next to nothing about him, except that he died in 1453, making a marriage between Lusanna and Giovanni not only possible, but, from her point of view, highly desir- able. When Giovanni finally consented to a wedding ceremony, Lusanna’s brother, Antonio—now the guardian of his sister’s honor— argued for the presence of a notary, who usually officiated at Florentine weddings and drew up the nuptial contract. But at this point, Giovanni, demurred, insisting that the marriage must be kept secret for fear of alienating his father, who would disinherit him. Giovanni suggested instead that his friend, the Franciscan friar Fra Felice Asini, officiate at the wedding.

Did this wedding actually take place? This is the question that had to be determined by the archbishop of Florence in 1455. The case had gone up all the way to the Pope, who had sent a letter to the archbishop with the following concerns: “Our beloved daughter in Christ, Lusanna di Benedetto, a Florentine woman, has informed us that, despite a mar- riage legally contracted between herself and a certain Giovanni di Lodovico della Casa, he has married another Florentine woman in a public ceremony with an exchange of vows and rings and with other customary solemnities.” The Pope’s letter instructed the archbishop to investigate the case and, if Lusanna’s allegations proved true, to dissolve Giovanni’s second marriage, and impose penalties upon him for con-

tracting a bigamous union.

Testifying on behalf of Lusanna were twenty witnesses, including three members of her family and Giovanni’s erstwhile friend, Fra Felice Asini. According to their collective memory, the wedding party had consisted of Giovanni and Lusanna, her brother Antonio and his wife, his stepmother, and two friends. Fra Felice testified that after supper Giovanni stated that he wanted to take Lusanna as his wife, and that the members of the wedding party formed a circle around him and the cou- ple. First the friar asked the bride and groom, in that order, whether they wanted to be married to each other. When each had responded affirmatively, Giovanni took a ring from his left hand and placed it on Lusanna’s finger. The bridegroom exchanged kisses with the members of Lusanna’s family, and presented them with gifts. Giovanni and Lusanna then went into a bedroom to consummate their marriage. Such was the improvisational event that Lusanna judged to be a valid marriage.

After the wedding, Giovanni did not live continuously with Lusanna, though he spent occasional nights with her. When she appeared in public, Lusanna continued to wear her widow’s garb, but at home she dressed as a married woman. In the city, Giovanni and Lusanna kept their marriage secret, but in the country, they enjoyed the rustic life of married lovers. Five local peasants testified that they saw Giovanni and Lusanna together, and considered them husband and wife.

Eight months later, Lusanna discovered that Giovanni had con- tracted a marriage with Marietta, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a dis- tinguished family. This had occurred shortly after the death of Giovanni’s father, which, according to Lusanna’s supporters, should have been the occasion for him to publicly acknowledge his marriage to her. On several occasions she pleaded with him to do so and abandon his second union, but he refused. At this point there was nothing for her to do but appeal to the ecclesiastical authorities.

Giovanni denied that the two had ever been married. He admitted to having had sexual relations with her since 1443, and tried to blacken her name by presenting an image of her as a promiscuous woman with several lovers. In the words of his procurators: “Motivated by lust, Lusanna desired to have carnal relations with him [Giovanni], for he was young and well endowed... .” Giovanni’s witnesses vouched for his good reputation, and some of Lusanna’s neighbors pictured her as a

woman of low moral character. A wife who stared openly at men when she walked in the street, instead of lowering her eyes as good women should; a wife who was known to have had a lover while her husband was alive, and maybe more than one—how could one believe her word? The case dragged on for several months, with Giovanni contending that Lusanna had never been more than his concubine, and Lusanna insisting that she was his legitimate wife. Giovanni played upon the sense of improbability for one of his rank and youth to marry a socially inferior “old” woman (remember that they had been born in the same year). Lusanna’s procurator retorted that beautiful women of lowly ori- gins were known to have married men of a higher class. In the end the archbishop decided in favor of Lusanna. Even a clandestine marriage such as this one—something the church had tried to abolish through its insistence on the publication of banns three weeks before a wedding and the celebration of weddings in church—had to be recognized, if both parties had pledged, in the presence of witnesses, to become hus- band and wife. Giovanni’s second marriage was declared bigamous, and he was ordered to acknowledge Lusanna as his lawful wife and treat her with “marital affection,” under penalty of excommunication. For once,

it seems, justice had been meted out to the lowly.

But this is not the end of the story. Giovanni appealed the arch- bishop’s verdict. Because he was rich and well connected, he was able to effect a reversal of the earlier judgment. Somewhere between 1456 and 1458, the marriage between Giovanni and Lusanna was declared null and void. Giovanni would go on to found a legitimate family with Marietta, a partner from his own class and one capable of bearing chil- dren so as to continue the Della Casa family line. No trace of Lusanna has been found after 1456.

In the end, money, power, social convention, and the desire for legit- imate heirs prevailed. Giovanni and Lusanna’s story is a testimony to two contradictory realities that seem to be prevalent in every age. On the one hand, sexual love is a force that strains to fulfill itself, no matter what the obstacles. The barriers of class (and race or religion) or the vows of fidelity spouses swear to one another may be swept aside by the sheer force of sexual passion. Lovers who have known that kind of intensity will say to themselves, “Ah, yes.”

On the other hand, most people tend to respect the laws and cus- toms honored by their families, communities, and nations, and among

them, none ranks higher than the belief that sexual love belongs, first and foremost and perhaps exclusively, within marriage. Men and women, even those predisposed to multiple sexual partners, usually pay public homage to the ideal of monogamy.

In the case of Giovanni, in his “youth” he had allowed himself an adulterous affair with a married woman. But when the time came for him to fulfill the marital expectations of his family and social milieu, he was not about to legalize his union with Lusanna—a woman of a lower station and “barren” to boot. He did what was expected of him. He married a much younger woman from his same background, one who enhanced his family’s reputation and gave him children. From the point of view of the social order, he “did the right thing.” But from the point of view of the moral order, his actions are more questionable.

And what should we think of Lusanna’s story? She was certainly not a representative Italian wife by any means. Like Héloïse 250 years earlier, she was headstrong and passionate, willing to take risks for her lover despite the censure her behavior was bound to incur. Although her liaison did not result in the enduring second marriage she had hoped for, it did not lead to any of the severe forms of pun- ishment that had been standard for proven adultery during the earlier Middle Ages.

Members of the Jewish community in Italy during this period were, of course, not subject to canon law; they had their own authorities who determined whether a marriage was valid or not, and what to do if it became dysfunctional. The following incident recorded in 1470 opens a window into a Jewish marriage during the late Middle Ages.
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Hakkym ben Jehiel Cohen Falcon, a Jewish innkeeper from Pavia, appealed to Jewish authorities for permission to take back his wife after she had fled the conjugal home. For months she had been pressing him to give up his livelihood as an innkeeper. “You’ve got to leave this business,” she complained, but the husband, by his own admission, paid her no heed. Finally, as he tells the story, “my wife picked herself up right at noon, took all the silver vessels and her jewelry, and repaired to the house of a Gentile woman, a neighbor, to whom my wife went frequently.”

When the husband tracked his wife down at the neighbor’s home, he