The Book of the Courtier

(11th April 2021)

(opening music)

Liz

Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history, I’m Liz

Hazel

And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history. And today we have a third person

Liz

Nick is back to talk to us more about medieval stuff

Hazel

Yeah! I’m excited

Nick

This falls firmly into the early modern camp

Liz

Medieval-ish

Nick

Yeah. I mean, early modern is just medieval in a nicer coat

Liz

Yeah

Hazel

It’s just medieval in a nicer climate

Nick

Yeah and it’s got a printing press to tell all of its buddies about its nicer coat

Liz

And special laws about who can wear the nice coats. But that’s a different episode, that’s gonna be next episode

Nick

Yes

Liz

This episode…

Nick

That does remind me of an in...of a question I have, because there’s a lot...always controversy about how you start and end an era, academically speaking. There’s sort of always talking in medieval studies about, you know, is it 1450, 1475, do we count the discovery of the quote unquote “new world” as when it becomes early modern, and I wondered, what’s the, in archaeology, like more material history, what’s, where’s the big crossover point where people are firmly digging their heels in, is it the same thing of like…

Liz

Well in UK archaeology it’s generally 1485, because that’s the Battle of Bosworth, so when you go from Plantagenets to Tudors, that’s the line between medieval and early modern

Nick

Of course, that makes sense, because a lot of the kind of study, like in...that I encountered was dealing with the interiority and the difference between public and private selves, and there’s a hell of a lot of scholarship invested in trying to get inside the head of the Tudors, and seeing them as kind of prototypical modern rulers, in a sense, we look at them in the way people often do with presidents and premiers of the 20th century

Liz

But anyway! What have you been making or baking Hazel, because we’re gonna do the structure of the episode! We’re not getting into philosophy here

Hazel

Aww but what if I want to philosophise on this domestic history podcast

Liz

This is not a historical theory podcast

Hazel

Nooooo

Liz

If someone wants to give us patreon money to make them a bonus episode about the line between medieval and early modern we will do, but this is not about that, this is about an Italian manners book

Nick

It is indeed. Though you could make some cracking historiography merch

Hazel

Are you saying I can’t talk about post-processualism

Liz

I think if you do I will come to Kent...or Sussex...I don’t remember where you’re in, I will come to your house

Hazel

It’s just a blur to you

Liz

I will come to the south and I will physically fight you

Hazel

I mean that’s contemporary archaeology isn’t it? Anyway!

Liz

Theory was the bane of my life at undergrad, I hated it, I just wanted to look at bones

Hazel

I like contemporary, I’m sorry

Liz

I like contemporary, I don’t like theory

Nick

It’s ok that you want to look at bones, because books are just tree bones

Liz

Yes they are. What have you been making or baking Hazel!

Hazel

So I’ve been, did I talk about this on the last? I don’t think I did. I’m making up my dress form, which is a pattern from Bootstrap Fashion, where you can send your measurements and they will like send you a pattern to make your own, like, custom dress form, which is a much cheaper way of getting a customised dress form except you have to make it yourself, so. This sounds like an advert, it’s not an advert, it’s just what I’ve been doing

Liz

It is very cool, and I would like to do it, but the problem is I need a dress form to learn how to do the sewing thing. You can see the problem

Hazel

Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t necessarily...it depends what you want to do, like whether you want to go straight into doing your own designs and stuff but yeah it, I would say not been easy for me, but it’s definitely doable, like I’ve learned some new stuff doing this and the materials are stuff that you can easily find, and it’s pretty...it seems to be pretty accurate to my body, although I have heard some things about the bust height and stuff not matching up, so I think it’s always worth it if you wanted to do that to provide, like, all of the measurements, ‘cause there’s an optional extra measurements section

Liz

I mean breasts kind of do what they want

Hazel

Yeah, that is true, there’s no taming them, but yeah it seems to be shaping up pretty well so far, and, yeah, it’s weird, there’s like a deflated human torso just hanging out on my ironing board right now. Yeah that’s been an interesting process and I will hopefully be finished soon. How about you?

Liz

I don’t think I’ve made anything new, because large projects. I finished the blanket that I’m making for you, and I planted some edible flowers

Hazel

I’m internally screaming, awesome

Liz

Because I like to eat flowers, and those are the ones you can eat without getting sick. I am…

Hazel

I love the idea of colourful salads

Hazel

Like, my, my daemon is a goat, and I wish to eat the flowers

Nick

You crave that vegetable

Liz

I do crave that vegetable. So, Nick, you terrible terrible person, what are you teaching us about?

Nick

Is this how you treat all your guests?

Liz

Just the ones I’m married to

Nick

Ok. Well, what I’ll be talking about is a guy who was a fixture of my undergrad degree

Liz

Your undergrad degree being English Lit

Nick

English, yes, and also cropped up in medieval studies. He is the go-to man for discussions of early modern societal trends and fashions and courtly life and, you know, that’s a crowded field, there’s so many

Liz

He’s the gossip girl

Nick

He is the gossip girl. It’s Baldassare Castiglione, and his Book of the Courtier

Hazel

Excellent start

Liz

Medieval Italian names are so good

Nick

They are, there’s some cracking ones in here there’s...but first I shall, like, explain a little bit more what it’s about, and how it’s put together. It’s basically a discussion, a long discussion over a few days with Castiglione putting in these real historical figures, and every...and people are exchanging views about what to wear, what not to wear, how to not sounds too boastful, how to just get everything just right so that nobody thinks you’re the biggest tool in the shed, basically

Hazel

Ok, so it’s not like, actual real conversations, he’s made them up as examples

Nick

Yeah, yeah for instance there’s a conversation between Cesare Gonzaga, another good name, and Frederico, who probably has a much longer noble name but I don’t care about that right now, yeah he says, Gonzaga says “if a gentleman is worthy in other things, what he wears will neither enhance nor diminish his reputation.” “You are right,” countered Frederico, “but who among us when he sees a gentleman passing by wearing a gown quartered in various colours, or covered in strings and ribbons and bows and crosslacings does not take him for a fool or a clown?” “Anyone who may have lived for some while in Lombardy.” Said Pietro Bembo

Liz

Aw, Bembo

Nick

Yeah. That gives you a little flavour of how it’s put together. This is quite a, quite a nice translation I think by George Bull. Thank you George Bull it’s very...that did feel like a very modern, a very modern conversation compared to some of the translations I imagine we’ve all had to look at of older historical texts

Liz

Definitely. I do...I know it’s very silly but I enjoy Bembo being in there just being very sassy because he was a lover of Lucrezia Borgia so he’s just going “here’s Bembo’s opinion”

Nick

“It’s Bembo time”

Liz

Like, he was a poet and probably slept with Lucrezia Borgia and that’s basically everything that he’s known for

Hazel

Ok, this is really is like celebrity gossip

Nick

Yeah the...it’s one of those texts where you feel like you’d enjoy it a lot more coming to later, I think, talking about my own personal experience of reading this, because this is in the middle of looking at, say, Paradise Lost, or Hamlet, or other things like that where a lot of the other things we’d read from the early modern period would be pretty action packed, or procrastination packed with some pretty speeches, but this is something that seems very abstract and far removed for a lot of people.

It’s very much the kind of thing that you will only ever read if you’re a student of this subject, but then you do come across some thoughts in here and you go “oh my god we’ve been having the same conversations for centuries”

Liz

Yeah and I think it is especially in the clothing section which is what I wanted you to talk about

Nick

Yeah, so somebody saying “so old people talk about courts in the same way that they talk about everything else, and affirm that those which they remember from the past were far more excellent and full of outstanding men than those we know today.” Like, people have found it’s never too early to start being nostalgic

Hazel

Yeah, isn’t there a quote from Cicero where, so in like ye ancient Roman times where he’s like “well, times aren’t as good as they used to be, children don’t listen to their parents, and everyone is writing a book”

Nick&Liz

Yeah

Liz

‘Cause literally everyone just goes “back in my day”

Hazel&Nick

Yeah

Liz

It’s the human condition

Nick

Yeah

Liz

Like, we established a couple of episodes ago that people go “is anyone gonna eat that”, people also go “back in my day”, these are the two things people say

Nick

One thing that really stood out to me in, in looking at it kind of for fashion and things like that, was discussing whether or not fashion counts as a form of deceit, whether trying to make yourself look better than you are, if you’re obscuring your true character or enhancing what’s already there like

Hazel

Ooh

Nick

Yeah, like

Liz

Taketh yon lady swimming on thou first date

Nick

Yeah, here’s an example. “And if you have a lovely jewel without setting and it passes into the hands of a goldsmith, who greatly enhances its beauty by setting it well, would you not say that he is deceiving the eye? And yet he deserves praise for the deception, since through good judgement and skill his cunning hands often add grace and adornment to ivory or silver, or to a lovely stone by setting it in fine gold, so you must not say that art or this kind of deceit, if you want to call it so, deserves censure, nor is it wrong for a man who believes he is competent in some matter to seek for an occasion when he can demonstrate his abilities and, in the same way, to conceal the things which he believes merit little praise, though everything should be done with circumspection and reserve.

Do you not recall that without appearing to seek them out King Ferdinand was always ready to seek the opportunity, from time to time, to go about in his doublet? And this he did because he was proud of his physique. And also, since he did not have attractive hands, that he rarely, if ever, took off his gloves? I also seem to remember that Julius Caesar very readily took to wearing a laurel wreath to hide his baldness.

But in all these matters one must be very prudent and judicious so as not to exaggerate in any way, very often in avoiding one error a man falls into another, and in seeking to win praise, wins blame”

Liz

Ok, that was a very long but very interesting quote, but now all I can think about is the king of Spain walking around in a tank top and gloves

Nick

Yep, basically

Hazel

It’s a look, and I like it

Liz

It is a look

Nick

Probably a leathery tank top

Liz

Oh that phrase makes me uncomfortable (Nick and Hazel laughing in the background) but also, merch idea

Nick

Yeah go for it. Can you get some redbubble leathery tank tops?

Liz

We can try

Hazel

I really do like the sentiment in that though, because it’s essentially saying like, well yeah, it’s changing the look of something to make you look at it differently, but that’s ok because, you know, it’s done for good reasons, which I like because I would have thought it was gonna go towards the whole, you know, dressing above your station or to conceal certain things is trickery, you know, like people like to say that about people who wear a lot of makeup. “It’s trickery!” I guess would be a modern parallel, but they’re…yeah I really like that notion of well, yeah, but that’s ok! It’s all good!

Nick

Absolutely, yeah, it’s, yeah Cesare Gonzaga talks specifically about the real or fake beauty of a woman but it seems like it’s a very tricky thing that Castiglione’s doing when he makes these statements about deception’s a skill, or having some character or another say, you know, taketh thy woman swimming, because, y’know, you can’t necessarily pinpoint one of these people, because none of them are Castiglione, and say “ah, that’s what he thinks, that’s the claim he’s making” and I think that allows him to be very safe, in a way, because it’s sort of just a low-stakes drama or comedy is what’s happening here. They’re just talking

Liz

But the fact that it’s fictionalised versions of real people is really odd. Like if I went out and wrote a book where like, I don’t know who equivalents would be, Charles Dance and Carolanne Duffy just have a conversation about people going out in stiletto heels. Like that’s basically the same thing!

Nick

You know what this is, it’s The Crown

Hazel

Oh! That’s a good point!

Liz

It’s RPF

Nick

Oh no, so that is the, that…

Liz

It’s political RPF

Nick

So that’s the bone of contention here, is it like The Crown or RPF, or is The Crown RPF?

Liz

I would argue that The Crown is RPF

Hazel

Absolutely it is, yeah. Fictionalised account

Liz

For people that don’t know that’s Real People Fiction, or fanfic about actual people

Nick

It’s weird

Liz

Yeah

Hazel

Which The Crown absolutely is because it’s a fictionalised drama about real people who are still living now, which…

Liz

Yeah like it’s not historical fiction, because yeah, I think at the point that The Crown’s at now pretty much every character in it is still alive, so it’s just RPF, as is this book

Hazel

But then again I guess you could argue this book is fictional accounts of real people, but for the purpose of discussion, like it’s not really, I suppose, trying to represent the opinions of these people like it’s more like, just for the purposes of, like, discussion like ok you can imagine these people having this discussion

Liz

Oh yeah like, I get that, but I still find it...I know it’s like a thing? Like Plato had a thing where it had conversations between him and random made-up people to make his points, like this isn’t a new thing when he’s doing it, but I still find it really weird. Like it’s not as bad as Plato basically making up people in order to own them, which I’m sure our philosopher former housemate would agree is exactly what that is

Nick

Basically

Liz

But it’s still odd

Nick

Certainly is

Liz

So what sort of opinions is he espousing then, or are these fictionalised real people espousing, because I saw you making a lot of notes

Nick

Well there’s this one count, I think it’s Count Ludovico. That’s the problem, somebody’s side of a conversation starts on one page and it goes three pages on so it’s hard to tell who’s doing the misogyny

Liz

Some Italian noble

Nick

Yeah, some Italian noble’s doing a misogyny. \*tripping over words\* This guy’s doing kind of a patronising, y’know, “I like women, I respect them, but have they considered doing all of these things differently because I-that’s how I like it”.

“Now every woman is extremely anxious to be beautiful, or at least failing that, to appear so. So when nature has fallen short in some way, she endeavours to remedy the failure by artificial means. That is why we find women beautifying their faces so carefully and sometimes painfully, plucking their eyebrows and forehead, and using all those tricks and suffering and all those little agonies which you ladies imagine men know nothing about but which they know only too well”

Hazel

Oof

Liz

See that is a very common thing isn’t it, oh the ladies want to be beautiful, I can’t imagine why. I can’t imagine what outside force is telling women they have to be beautiful

Nick

Yeah, I feel…

Liz

It’s just them being weird

Nick

Yeah, I feel like in this next bit you start to feel, the response to this is interesting because...that starts to make me feel that maybe Castiglione is more on the woman’s side, because there’s quite a put-down here by Madonna Costanza Borgoso, “who laughed and said ‘it would be far more courteous of you to continue with your discussion and to say what is the source of grace and to seek of courtiership, rather than seek to expose the faults of women to no purpose’”

Liz

Nice. Hazel, as the woman on this podcast

Hazel

The token lady

Liz

What are your opinions about Italian Count Number 1

Hazel

Well, it very much sounds like the dude who is sort of trying to show off with his knowledge of, like, all the, like you said, all the little sufferings that women do and think men don’t know anything about but we do. Yeah, sort of like, do you though?

Liz

Is he the fake ally?

Hazel

Yeah, it sort of seems like a...I guess not necessarily passing judgement on it, but it seems quite arch, you know? Sort of like “ah I see what you’re all doing to try and be beautiful” but he doesn’t really talk about the why of it, you know, like you said, like, it’s more of a comment on what people are doing, without any thought to like, why they might be doing this, other than just oh to be beautiful, because reasons

Liz

Because wanting to be neutral...to be beautiful is a neutral thing, with no particular cause or effect

Nick

This guy gets worse by the way

Liz

Oh no

Nick

Do you wanna hear him get worse? “Surely you realise how much more graceful a woman is who, if indeed she wishes to do so, paints herself so sparingly and so little that whoever looks at her is unsure whether she is made up or not, in comparison with one whose face is so encrusted that she seems to be wearing a mask, and who dare not laugh for fear of causing it to crack, and who changes colour only when she dresses in the morning, after which she stays stock still all the rest of the day like a wooden statue, letting herself be seen only by torchlight in the way a wily merchant shows his cloth in a dark corner”

Liz

So yeah, taketh yon lady swimming

Nick

Yeah that is that to a T, isn’t it

Hazel

See that-that is- that is so modern in its sentiment, like that’s the exact same conversation that happens today about, you know, the whole no makeup look thing

Nick

Absolutely

Liz

But it’s also in the era when makeup is there to deliberately make you look, like, all pale but with some red bits

Nick

Pale but not in the way…

Liz

Like it’s not as bad as now where it’s like, “yes I just have naturally blue glittery eyelids”, but it’s still not great

Nick

It’s, it’s the pale that makes it look like I’m saintly, not like I’m dying

Liz

Yeah we’re not Victorians

Hazel

I think it’s interesting that it- certainly beauty standards change but this conversation doesn’t

Nick

Yeah, it strikes me that one of the interesting things about this period that Castiglione is really exemplifying here is that there’s a sort of lateral move, in a sense, ‘cause you can see that there’s more of a development of the idea of the public and the private, especially in a bit that I want to read out that follows that in just a second. You get this increased perception of public and private which allows for more, just more interesting drama for instance, and more- it just opens up a whole lot of other gateways for discussion but at the same time means there’s something else you can accuse a woman of, aside from somebody being impious.

There’s, you know, they’ve got this whole system of courtliness that’s really expanding in complexity, and it means there’s so many more things that you can do wrong

Liz

And it’s all women’s fault

Nick

Yup. Yeah there’s...it gets really weird here talking about how if you see a woman passing along on her way to church does it...and, yeah, she has to raise just enough of her skirts to reveal her foot and a little of her leg, “does it not strike you as a truly graceful sight if she is seen just at that moment, delightfully feminine, showing her velvet ribbons and pretty stockings. Certainly I find it very agreeable, as I’m sure you all do, because everyone assumes that elegance in a place where it is generally hidden from view must be uncontrived and natural rather than carefully calculated, and that it cannot be intended to win admiration”. There’s the thing it’s like…

Liz

Ladies wearing fancy underwear are more pious

Nick

That’s the thing! It’s an interesting…

Liz

Is that a correct interpretation?

Nick

Well the way I’m seeing it is kind of “you don’t know you’re beautiful”, almost

Hazel

I was just thinking that like, not to quote 2010s pop, but “you don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful”

Nick

Yeah

Hazel

Like, is he saying that, well, it’s interesting that you think all this is uncontrived? I guess that the first person is saying that it seems more desirable or more elegant to them, because it’s, like, uncultivated or like it’s- it’s seen as something that’s normally covered but in this case is candid, I guess is the word I’m looking for

Nick

Yeah, I guess it’s- it’s a combination, like it’s definitely an all of the above thing, it’s “oh I’m not supposed to see that, she’s not trying to be...show agency, so I don’t feel threatened”

Liz

And also, yeah, again with the it being a very modern thing, it’s that thing of be perfect, but don’t be high maintenance. You have to be effortlessly perfect and attractive

Nick

Yeah, it’s

Liz

Otherwise you’re deceitful! You’re a terrible slut with your ribbons!

Nick

Yeah it’s very much, I’m gonna mix metaphors horribly here, it’s a tightrope thing, it kind of comes across as like, it’s, this isn’t human interaction you’re talking about Signore Counterino, you’re talking figure skating. Effortless, but privately pursuing perfection and the appearance of effortlessness. Like, how many more of these little agonies would you need to go through to be this guy’s perfect girl

Liz

I’m gonna guess all of them

Nick

Yeah

Hazel

I do have to say though, if I was a renaissance lady, and I had, you know, spent money on all of these really pretty stockings and garters and ribbons and things, and, you know, spent all the time getting dressed up in them, I would definitely flash some ankle and calf like, I didn’t spend all that money on expensive garters for nobody to see them

Liz

I have to ask, does this book have a lot of stuff about men’s fashion? ‘Cause I mean that went wild in this period

Nick

Here and there, yeah, here and there

Liz

I’m guessing not as much, but I just...there has to be something

Nick

Yeah there’s...I mean like the big things that stood out to me was like, the discussion of a lot of people, a lot of men dressing flashy look like clowns, unless you’re in Lombardy

Liz

Apparently

Nick

Everyone dresses like that in Lombardy

Liz

Those wacky lombards

Nick

The wacky wacky lombards, it’s my favourite Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Yeah, it does seem to be men, don’t look like a clown. You know, look nice, but don’t do the kind of Ferdinand, Julius Caesar midlife crisis kind of thing

Liz

Leather tank top

Nick

Yeah, don’t wear a, don’t wear the leather tank top but just be classy. You know these...there’s not too much...there’s a lot more about the interiority of men, as is the least surprising thing, you know, here’s how you try to flatter somebody without seeming slimy, here’s how you, you know, bring up your poetry or ask the king’s theatre censor to read your stage play. I don’t know if anybody actually says that in there but they may as well do

Hazel

Does sound like useful advice

Nick

Yeah, it’s more practical advice towards men, and then some admonishments from men to women in this, it seems. I feel like I’m giving a reductive view, like a more detailed reading I think would show, would delve further into the women of this book, because they are very interesting in the way they respond very politely but pointedly to this stuff

Liz

I’m sure, but it’s not a short book, and we’re half an hour in already

Nick

Yeah. Well, one thing that I noticed just before the episode started, which I found really interesting, was somebody being incredibly modern. Frederico talking about, responding to a guy called Signore Magnifico

Liz

(snorts) Mister Magnificent

Nick

I know that’s gonna be more of a title than a name, I’m sure he’s got a proper name

Liz

But also, Mister Magnificent

Nick

Mister Magnificent. Yeah, he’s talking about somebody’s being quite stern about women being in passionate love and whatnot is not suitable for women who are married, and talking about women wanting to have affairs and, you know, wow a woman exercising sexual agency, that’s tricky

Liz

Disgusting

Nick

But Frederico says I think you are...yeah, “this opinion of yours seems to be very austere, and I imagine you must have learned it from some preacher of the sort that reproach women for falling in love with ordinary laymen so that they can keep the best things for themselves. Indeed I think you are imposing excessively hard rules on married women, for there are many to be found whose husbands hate them for no reason at all, and do them great injury, sometimes by loving other women and sometimes by subjecting them to all the annoyances they can think of. And then again, some women are forced by their fathers to marry old men who are in poor health and filthy and disgusting, who make their lives one long misery.

And if these women were allowed to get a divorce from those with whom they are so badly matched then perhaps it would be improper for them to love someone other than a husband, but sometimes through bad fortune or incompatibility of temperament or through some other cause it happens that in the marriage bed, which ought to be a haven of concord and love, cursed and devilish dissension plants its evil seed to produce anger, suspicion, and the sharp thorns of hatred, which torture those unhappy souls cruelly bound together ‘til death by an indissoluble bond”

Liz

Is this...is this pro-divorce renaissance Italian?

Nick

It is pro-divorce renaissance Italian. That is…’cause the thing is there’s some nice writing in this book at various points on various different sides. There’s...I do think that at the very least when he’s making characters say some horrible stuff he’s at least being reasonably inventive about it. Like a lot of it comes across as very hackneyed now because we’ve heard the kind of “oh you don’t want to smile in case it ruins your makeup” thing a million times but 500 years ago, yeah people had only said that half a million times so it’s new stuff.

But with this it’s very...it’s very impassioned there, it’s, yeah it seems to be very, very particularly upset about the filthy and disgusting old men in poor health, like the idea...unhappy about a husband treating a wife badly but also oh man, these beautiful ladies they deserve better. By the way I, Frederico, am always around. But I could be reading the lines- things into it

Liz

I was getting that as well, it’s a little bit white knight

Nick

Yeah, little bit

Hazel

It seems like he’s doing his best to present, sort of, objective conversations, as it were. Then I mean, obviously, maybe not because it’s all him writing, but yeah, I mean, I’m unclear on whether, does it end with the...do any characters win the argument at some point or is more just there’s conversations between people giving both sides of the argument?

Liz

Yeah, is it kind of a pause your video here to discuss lipstick?

Nick

Well would you like to know who has the last word in this book?

Hazel

I would

Nick

“Signora Emilia replied ‘on condition that Signore Gaspare should want to criticise women and slander them in his usual manner, he shall give his bond to stand trial, for I arraign him as a fugitive from justice’”

Hazel

Excellent

Liz

I have to ask

Nick

Yeah

Liz

Do we know that this was a real man that wrote this? Because I’m getting vibes in places that there’s a lady just going “I’m sick of all of these men telling me what to do

Nick

I-he’s…

Liz

Like do we know that he’s a real person

Nick

Oh yeah he’s very well documented, papal nuncio

Liz

Disappointing

Nick

Yeah, but I guess that he was just a genuinely forward-thinking figure for 1528 which, that is some pretty strong stuff in that book, ‘cause I’d forgot how it ended, I thought it was just going to be “and shall we discuss these matters some more?” “no, sir, no I need to return to my studies and you to your court, I wish you well” “and you also”. Like that is how you’d expect it to end, isn’t it

Liz

Yeah, but instead it’s, almost exactly 500 years ago, a woman saying “stop criticising women please”

Nick

Yeah, they have a lot of those goodbyes, it’s the dawn begins and everybody’s leaving after the party but it’s...it is very much a kind of “By the way, you thought it was going to be an open ended thing, but just so you know”

Liz

I’d like to state an opinion

Nick

And I think this would be...it is a very interesting book imagined written by a woman, but it’s also...to me it’s very interesting that this...about how perceptive he is when writing about those concerns and about those expectations, because, you know, I can imagine somebody being, in some cases, “you’re being a bit too harsh, not all women are like this deceitful model you’re setting out”, but in fact he’s going a bit further and saying “woah that sounds a bit much, your expectation here and there”. It does make these people sound quite unreasonable

Hazel

It sounds like a thing that has been written by someone who has definitely spent a lot of time hanging around in the courts and with the nobility and has heard all of these kinds of discussions go on again and again

Nick

Yeah. Thinking about it, with, as papal nuncio in particular I imagine that, you know, I know that the Vatican has always been very much, very much a driving force in earthly affairs in the period, because yeah all sort of battles and things happened, but as a nuncio you imagine him to be less involved than some other ambassadors and courtly types in that, in the grottier things. He’s like (clears throat) “by the way the Church says ‘no stop it’” rather than turning up for canapés and just being able to do whatever because you’ve got the power, he’s representing the Pope, so maybe that made him a bit more a bystander in a sense

Liz

I’d love to know what his relationship with his wife was like

Nick

Yeah, that’s…

Liz

‘Cause nuncios could get married, couldn’t they, so I assume that he had one

Nick

Yeah, just gonna have a little peek. Essentially a courtier, it says in this Penguin Classics brief biography, part of an ancient Italian aristocratic family, so he had it made

Liz

Definitely knew what he was on about then

Nick

Yeah

Hazel

Did the book, was formally published, or was it one of those things that gets written and gets passed around the author’s friends and circles? Just wondering if it was something that was available to, for young courtiers that might just be starting out on their networking journey, I guess

Nick

Ok, when he’d, when he’d written it, yeah he roughed out a draft about ten years before it was properly finished, and kind of wrote it in a period when he got fired from a non-nuncio job, just a regular kind of courtier job and was living on his estate and just basically writing out a whole bunch of stuff about how these conversations go. He showed it to several friends, including Pietro Bembo, who appears in it.

Yeah, he was constantly urged to publish it, little more was done however until 1526 when somebody, when he had, yeah little was done until 1526 when he heard of somebody’s death, and he had a lot of memories coming back of that time of his life. So it was very much towards the end of his life, he didn’t have to…

Liz

But it was like, published-published

Nick

Yes, April 1528. Distributed, it was a small circulation, to friends and to the most important personages, but, you know, being Castiglione, being somebody from a noble line who is a diplomatic figure, that’s gonna be everyone. You know this guy parties

Liz

And also like, I feel like friends and important personages for someone active in court circles, is gonna cover most people who can read

Nick

Yeah definitely

Hazel

He sounds very much like the guy who knows everyone

Nick

Yeah, absolutely. It’s something that’s come up just again and again every time you study the renaissance. Had a huge effect I think on people then, and also the interpretation of it by modern scholars, like Stephen Greenblatt who’s like, the man when it comes to just broad studies of the renaissance, likes to talk about self-fashioning, which seems to come up in this book a bit as a concept, “well why would you not dress yourself up a bit fancy, because that’s a skill, that’s not fake”. Like the blacksmith thing and the jewel, it’s yes you’re changing something, it’s not natural, but the fact that you did it makes it so, makes it natural, it’s…

Liz

That’s quite nice really

Nick

Yeah

Liz

Only you can make you

Nick

Exactly, and it’s not something...it’s something that seems to be brought up, that they don’t extend to women that same notion. It’s masculine self fashioning

Liz

Well that’s because women don’t have agency

Hazel

Or souls

Nick

Makes me think of the…

Liz

Women are just horny and extravagant and need to be stopped. That’s the renaissance attitude, right?

Nick

It’s...yeah it’s not a book I’ve thought about for a while, but when we talked about it when we brought it up as a thing to discuss on the episode, it’s, yeah it got me really fired up and curious and it’s got some cracking stuff in there hasn’t it

Liz

Yeah

Nick

It’s, it’s a lot braver than expected, and I think the same’s true for a lot of early modern works, ‘cause you just kind of picture them as being very controlled and staid in their interactions with each other. ‘Cause a lot of modern historical dramas, for instance, if they’re showing you a court they’re very prim and proper, they act like Victorians

Liz

Even in stuff like Reign

Nick

Yeah, in stuff like Reign which is about Mary Queen of Scots

Liz

And is very ahistorical in...like it’s ahistorical in very fun ways but it’s also very “and everyone was very proper because they were posh and it was the olden times

Nick

Yeah it’s very much a 19th-20th century idea of poshness, but if you wanted to be realistic about how people conducted themselves, then you need to be way freer with it, like stick a spittoon in there somewhere. It may not be correct in strict materialist terms but it gives you the vibe

Liz

Yeah, it’s like changing the music in a historical thing to pop so that people understand that it’s the popular music of the time, rather than playing some classical and everyone goes “ah, classical, the sophisticated music

Nick

Absolutely

Liz

This is turning into a different discussion. I’m very sorry that people are just getting all of my historical fiction opinions

Nick

Yeah, but I think coming back to, coming back to the book, it is something that, it is a very good general source on the kind of cultural conversations that would be going on, and like we’ve been saying for the past hour it’s really modern, and I think so much of the popular perception of the past is often in shows like that so getting it, getting things from the, like from the horse's mouth is really different

Liz

Definitely

Nick

‘Cause you don’t just get the one character who says “excuse me, I am the woman who stands up for herself and tries to change things”, it’s all of these women

Liz

The woman who uses the word patriarchy in the 16th century

Nick

Yeah, it’s all of the women in this book stand up for themselves in different ways and they say, they have different critiques of the way men view them, and the men often have critiques of the way men do things and view women, and don’t necessarily follow through on them, but it’s a lot more layers than you get on TV

Hazel

It’s really interesting as a kind of social, yeah just like a slice of life I guess. And yeah, I guess we do tend to think of the past as like a very serious place, possibly because a lot of the text that we might have seen in school are more serious or perhaps moralising ones but this...it sounds like he was having fun with it

Nick

Yeah, I feel it’s kind of, I think our perception of the past is kind of like if somebody went to the local, went to a park around here or a canal, like a couple hundred years on, they found an ancient sign that said “no swimming in the duckpond” and they concluded “ah, see, it was a serious time, nobody swam in duckponds”, rather than “somebody did that so they had to put a sign up”. That’s how I feel about all those moralising works you mentioned. All of these, all this code is there because somebody broke it

Liz

Yeah, in order to be against something that thing has to exist

Nick

Absolutely yeah. One thing I wanted to bring up, because it’s hard to see which side the book is on sometimes, is just imagine it staged. Just take a couple of conversations from it and stick it up on stage and you’ve got some contemporary theatre, really, just about ideas, and I think you get across a much more layered idea if you actually acted it out. That’s my suggestion, I’m closing on as a guest, anybody out there with a stage and a cast, get Bembo-ing. Somebody be Bembo

Liz

Bembo-ing?

Nick

Yeah. You wanna Bembo?

Liz

I’m...I’m uncertain what that would involve so I’m gonna say no

Hazel

Would you hate me if I Bembo-ed with your spouse?

Liz

As long as you remain six feet apart. Leave room for renaissance Jesus

Nick

I dunno if Bembo has the best lines, but he has the best name

Liz

Yeah, it’s a very good name. So, yeah, on that note. Yeah, if you want us to make you a bonus episode, or if you want access to patreon exclusive recipes and a discord server we are on patreon as BreadandThread

Hazel

We also have a twitter, @breadandthread, where you can see updates about the episodes, what’s coming up next, things that we’ve been up to, and historical hot takes

Liz

And if you want to suggest an episode or inform us of your Bembo-ing, you can email breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com. So, thank you for listening, and we’ll be back next time with sumptuary laws

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