Born in an era when the Madonna/whore syndrome ran rampant, Tullia d'Aragona was trained by her mother to be an honest, educated courtesan like her. In an age when humanist learning was rife, it is not surprising that some men enjoyed the presence of women who were both intellectually and physically stimulating. Like her contemporary court ladies and sister courtesans, Tullia read music, played the lute, and, composed verse. Naturally sharp, she was renowned for her abilities to converse on a wide range of subjects.

      As the secular and religious authorities grew more and more conservative and clamped down on infractions of the moral code, Aragona moved from city to city to find a town with an hospitable climate, living in Adria, Venice, Ferrara, Siena, Florence, Rome, and Venice. Denounced while living in Siena in 1544 for not wearing the fashion prescribed for a courtesan, she would thereafter struggle to preserve her image as a refined courtesan. Although she had powerful protectors, Siena's political regime fell and she was forced to moved to Florence. Denounced there, too, she was granted an exemption to the sumptuary laws for courtesans on the grounds that she was a poet. Shortly thereafter her poems were published. In a move designed in part to help restore her image as an educated, intellectual, refined courtesan, her book Dialogue on the Infinity of Love (1547) was published in Venice by the end of the year.

      She immediately became famous: never before had a woman dared to write on the topic of love and no other woman would dare to write on love for centuries to come. Although numerous books and tracts were circulating on the topic of love, some of which even viewed women in a positive light, Aragona still managed to inject new ideas into the debate. Time after time, Aragona links the issues of love and sex to the broader treatment of women.

      She rebuts commonly pronounced prejudices against women. As feminists were to do four centuries later, Aragona notes that if women wrote the books, the ideas contained in them about the nature of men and women would be very different. In a very bold move, she writes from the premise that all reasonable men assume that men and women are inherently equal. In a typically feminist attitude, she trusted her experience more than the pronouncements of authorities. In an era when the Catholic church was the only legitimate religious institution in Italy, she advocated freedom of thought and freedom of speech saying, "Yes, but I'll tell you something that's very true: when one is speaking of our mortal world, it's really not acceptable to introduce elements of the divine, because the latter is so perfect that we shall never be able to comprehend it, and each individual is entitled to pronounce his own opinion about it." (page 63)

      This short excerpt from Dialogue shows the fast pace and realistic manner in which the Dialogue moves.

      "Varchi: So you want me to bow to authority!
      Tullia: No, Sir. I want you to bow to experience, which I trust by itself far more than all the reasons produced by the whole class of philosophers.
      Varchi: So do I. But what experience would that be?
      Tullia: Surely you know far better than I do that innumerable men, both in ancient and modern times, have fallen in love. Then, because of anger or some other feeling, whatever the reason might have been, they have stopped loving and jilted the women they had loved." p. 71-72

For a longer excerpt, check out my booknotes file Dialogue on the Infinity of Love

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