Gene Brucker, ‘Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence’

Gene Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986, 121 pp.

I’ll start with the New York Times review I read on the back cover, causing me to buy the book from a discount table:

[It’s] about stubborn love and the forms of law, and the impossibility of each to accommodate the ultimate claims of the other.

Not bad, eh? And it’s all happening in 15th century Florence, illustrated with contemporary woodcuts from Boccaccio’s Decamerone.

In one way the book is set in a world with no real parallel for us: Lusanna must sue Giovanni to prove their marriage only because of the emphatic class structure that defined life and relationships in Renaissance Florence. But, like a Shakespearean drama, once the stage is set, not only are the players familiar to us, in their beliefs, desires, habits, and prejudices, they hold up a disconcerting mirror to our own conduct.

Did Lusanna, daughter of an artisan, commit adultery? Or did she wait until the death of her husband before allowing herself to be wooed by Giovanni, an aristocrat? Did she poison her husband because of her infatuation with Giovanni? Did Giovanni lead her on only to abandon her for a younger and more eligible bride? The account is based exclusively on public archives; this, as they say, is a true story.

In the inquisitorial hearing each relies on hearsay to promote their own moral character and condemn the other’s. As to the alleged betrothal, someone is lying. All the while lawyers craft their clients’ cases, seek tactical advantage, play with words, and delay proceedings. Well before the inconvenient doctrine that separates church and state, the judge, who is an Archbishop, has the useful ability to ex-communicate those who do not comply with his orders. He actually does so in this case. But that’s all I’ll tell.

Published in the Vol 26(5) Alternative Law Journal, October, 2001, 265