Sex & The Book / Eroticism and licentiousness at the Renaissance court of the Queen of Angoulême

The protagonist of our Christmas Sex & the Book is a queen, a true queen, and not just anyone. Margaret, daughter of Charles of Valois and Louise of Savoy, was born princess of Angoulême in the distant 1492, became Duchess of Alençon and finally Queen of Navarre. She was a writer, poet and a great patron. A cultured woman (she spoke seven languages), she filled her Renaissance court with artists, poets and thinkers. Her brother - Francis I, King of France - often asked her for political opinions and Margherita frequently found herself playing crucial roles for the fate of the nation. Close to the Protestant doctrine, she aspired to overcome the conflict with the Catholic Church, but was unable to achieve it, also due to the repressive policy adopted by her brother in the last years of his life. She was also a benefactress, financed the opening of hospitals and orphanages. He died in his Tarbes castle in 1549.

"My daughter, your sins are so great that in order to pay for them it is necessary that I impose on you as a penance to carry my friar's cord on your naked flesh". The girl, who did not want to disobey them, replied: "Give me this cord, my father, and I will not fail to carry it". "My daughter," resumed that crafty friar, "it has no power if placed in your hands. It is necessary that for the first time these very hands of mine, from which you will have to receive absolution. acquitted of all your sins ".

L'Heptaméron it is probably the best known work by Margherita d'Angoulême. Published posthumously and anonymously in 1558, it was born with the intention - declared in the Prologue - to refer to the model of Decameron by Boccaccio, much loved by the Queen of Navarre, who had ordered a translation into French in 1545. Just like the Decameron in fact, it is a collection of short stories put together from a "frame" thanks to a very similar narrative device: a group of people find themselves exiled to the countryside and decide to tell each other stories to kill time. If in Boccaccio the exile was due to the plague in Florence, in the Heptaméron it is simply a spring shower that destroyed the bridge to return to the city and which will take ten days to rebuild. In the intentions of the queen, the novellas should have been one hundred, as in the Italian model: ten for ten days. The work, however, remained unfinished and Margherita managed to write only seventy-two, hence the title - also posthumous - of Heptaméron.

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Sapiosexual: when it is intelligence that ignites eroticism

The character of the short stories, whose purpose was certainly not publication, but pure court fun, is licentious, sometimes obscene, if one considers the context, the time and the rank of the author - a woman, for di more! The passage shown is an example. It is taken from the novella XXI, which tells of how the beautiful daughter of the lady of honor of the Countess of Aiguemont, went to a friar to confess in order to receive the Eucharist on Christmas Eve. The penance imposed on her by her father was the one you read: to allow him to surround her in all her nakedness with his cord. The girl, weeping, refused and the friar denied her acquittal. Very worried about being sentenced to hell by now, she told everything to her mother, who in turn reported to the countess. The latter, who had great faith in the friar, was disappointed, but at the same time could not help but laugh, amused by his perverse wit. So he ordered that he be taken and beaten with the rod until he confessed, and then sent back to the convent tied hand and foot.

All the novellas of the Queen of Navarre have a single subject: love in all its forms, from the most angelic to the most scurrilous. His intent is clearly the exaltation of the most honest sentiment, an invitation to perfect love, to an almost religious morality, and yet from his stories exudes a vicious fun, a joy that is that of those who know well the strength of desire and which makes each of its pages full of timeless sensuality. What can I say, honor the queen!

by Giuliana Altamura

Here you can read the previous appointment with the column, Sex & The Book / Extreme sex as freedom and self-affirmation in the "eros told by Jana Černá