For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy - Brandy Williams 2016

Tullia D’Aragona
Stories from the Ancestors

A century after Cosimo de Medici hosted the council of churches, another Cosimo de Medici ruled Florence. The great-great-grandson of his predecessor’s brother, this new Cosimo was elected head of the Republic. He set about organizing public services and commissioning public buildings and artistic works. His Spanish wife, Eleanor de Toledo, produced a child nearly every year, ultimately providing the family with eleven children; her sons went on to rule or to join the church, while her daughters married into noble families.

This was the Florence where Tullia d’Aragona celebrated her greatest triumphs. Her mother, the courtesan Giulia Campana, was married to Costanzo Palmieri d’Aragona. To make the family more intriguing, Giulia and Tullia gave out the story that Tullia’s father was actually Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. Since the cardinal was the illegitimate grandson of the King of Naples, this cast Tullia as an unacknowledged royal heir—a courtesan princess.

Giulia brought her daughter up in her trade, teaching her the arts of singing, dancing, and lovemaking. Mother and daughter traveled throughout Italy and maintained a household frequented by learned men. Tullia was named for the ancient orator Marcus Tullio Cicero, and she proved to be as eloquent as her namesake, exchanging poetry with her admirers, notably her great friend and supporter Girolamo Muzio.

LOVER OF KNOWLEDGE

“Tell me again,” Tullia said, laying her bare arms atop his chest. Even sated as they were, he shivered with delight when her skin touched his skin. “Which of my poems do you love the most? Tell me!”

Girolamo reached up to stroke her hair, blonde, showing a slight line of a darker color at the roots. “Your eyes,” he murmured. “How they haunt me.”

“The poem,” she prompted.

“I have heard you say that the joy of love cannot be perfect if all the senses are not involved in it. And is this touch itself not perfect?”

She slapped a hand against his chest. “Muzio!”

Laughing, he said obediently:

“I will only say that following

your destiny your soul has left you

to enter into me as its true abode,

And my soul, it can truly be said,

united now with yours, as is my star,

is moved by you to change your ways.”

“Have you really changed your ways?” he said, looking soft and vulnerable.

“I have changed my ways.” She lifted her head to look out at the green river drifting slowly past the little tree where they had spread their blankets. “I love only you.”

“No more competitions to win your hand?” he teased, wrapping her hair around his hand. “How many men did I best—five? Six? And I wasn’t your first choice!”

“You are my only choice,” she said. “Remember that I didn’t choose for riches. I chose the best poet.” She turned her eyes down to his face. “I chose the man who could teach me the mysteries of the universe. That the universe is made from love.”

“My Diotima,” he said. “My priestess of love.” Surging with passion, he lifted himself up and rolled her over onto the grassy riverbank, covering her face with kisses. “Your turn. Tell me. Which of my poems do you love the most?” He propped himself up on an elbow, waiting.

Looking up into his eyes, she said:

“My soul, while you live, remember

that what is eternal glows within you,

open your breast to everlasting love

“And remember, too, that the shining light,

the sweet sound, the bright spirit

are for you the stairway to heaven”

“Lift me,” she said, turning her face up for a kiss. “Rise,” he said, bending down to give it.

Renaissance Humanism

Plethon brought Platonism to Florence. Marsilio Ficino made Platonic and Hermetic texts accessible to Western scholars. For the next century the Florentine courts brought together people from around the European continent; inspired by Plethon, Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola, these Italian intellectuals studied Greek and read works that had been forgotten in Western Europe. Students of the ancient texts naturally reencountered the deities and myths of the Pagan world, and these images and themes surfaced in Renaissance paintings and writings.

Intellectuals grew more willing to challenge the authority of the Roman church. These new philosophers called themselves “humanists,” and they developed the idea that the individual is the center of their own universe, focusing attention on living a beautiful and enjoyable life in the present. It was a stark contrast to the Church’s emphasis on unchanging doctrine and the focus on life after death.

Throughout the sixteenth century, the Roman church’s power waned. Martin Luther published his theses in 1510, and Lutheranism was well established by 1530. Henry VIII took England away from the pope in 1534. Suddenly there were alternatives to the Church as well as a dawning awareness that there was more than one religion, more than one way to view the world.

Tullia d’Aragona lived in that thin slice of secular space, newly opened and always threatening to close.

A WOMAN OF LETTERS

“It’s good of you to see me,” Tullia said.

Eleanor smiled warmly. “It’s good to see a new face. I’m bored beyond belief.” She frowned at the room. “I’ve been trapped in here all winter; I need a change of scenery. I have a mind to buy a summer house.”

“You have an eye for color,” Tullia said, admiring the blue and purple velvet walls.

Eleanor beamed at her. “Do you think so? I thought when I buy the house I’ll do all the rooms in a single color. A blue room, a yellow room, white … ” She smiled. “How do you find the villa? Everyone tells me you have turned it into the place to be for an intellectual discussion.”

“My mother adores it,” Tullia said. “She walks along the river.” Tullia couldn’t bear to walk there herself; the river reminded her of her too-brief years with Muzio. Her pregnancy had forced her to flee from him and society, to hide and bear her child in secret.

“And your sister?” Eleanor prompted. “Does Penelope enjoy it as well?”

For an unmarried woman to bear a child would expose her to shame, and for a courtesan to have a child would make her less attractive. A little sister, on the other hand, was charming, and Giuliana already had one child, so the family bent the truth to reshape its image, as they always had. “She grows like a weed. This is a good place to raise a child.” Tullia sighed. “It’s so peaceful, after Siena.”

“I don’t even know who holds Siena this week,” Eleanor said. “The French? The Spanish? Is it ours again?” She shook her head. “I am glad you are here. Florence is a much safer place for you.”

Seeing her opening, Tullia drew the little books from the folds of her dress. “I’ve brought you a copy of my little book of poems. A small thanks.”

Turning the cover, Eleanor brightened. “Why, you’ve dedicated it to me!” She paged eagerly through the book. “You’ve included the one you wrote to me! ’For such beauty and virtue shines in you … ’” She trailed off. “Well, I am not beautiful, and I confess my sins like any other woman. But it is good to be thought so in public.”

“You are known to be pious,” Tullia said. She leaned forward slightly, striving to look earnest but not desperate. “I find that I grow more pious as I age. I wish the public to know that about me.”

Eleanor cast her a shrewd look. “We are both women with a public face and a private one,” she said. “My husband did not inherit his power and he fights to keep it. I fight alongside him in my own way. I wear the gowns and the jewelry; I endow the holy orders with property. So that when he leaves I rule in his stead until he returns.”

Sensing she had pushed as far as she could, Tullia willed herself to relax into her chair. “It must be tedious. I wish I could be more entertaining.”

“You could sing for me,” Eleanor said. “I’ve heard that your voice would turn a marble statue to warm flesh. It’s why I asked you to meet me in my music room.”

“That must be what men see in me,” Tullia said. “I don’t have your beauty.” Eleanor laughed and did not contradict her. Tullia went on, “I don’t have anything prepared.”

“Here’s a song book,” Eleanor said.

Rising, Tullia paged through it. “I haven’t seen this one,” she said. Humming to clear her throat, she began, “L’Amor Dona Ch’lo Te Porto. The love, my lady, that I bear for you … ”

When she finished, more than one pair of hands applauded. She turned and saw that two men had slipped into the room while she sang. “My lord,” she said, dropping a curtsy to Cosimo de Medici.

“Such an angelic voice. I knew it must be you,” he said. He turned to the cleric who had entered with him. “Have you met Tullia d’Aragona?”

The man scowled. “D’Aragona, you say? She’s a courtesan! Why isn’t she wearing the yellow scarf?”

That old charge, she thought. She’d stared it down twice in Siena, daring to live outside the designated prostitute section of town, and had only won by inventing a husband. She’d already faced the charge once in Florence, accused of wearing a cloak that only respectable women could wear.

Eleanor stood to lay a soothing hand on the man’s arm. “She’s a gentle woman,” she said.

De Medici said, “Fasseli gratia per poetessa,” pardon her, she is a poet.

Eleanor handed the book of poems to her husband. “Look at this book of her work. She’s dedicated it to me.”

“But you yourself made the law!” the cleric appealed to Cosimo.

Flipping through the book, Cosimo said absently, “And I can grant exemptions.” He looked into Tullia’s worldly eyes and smiled at her. “A woman of letters is an ornament of Florence.”

She held his gaze frankly. “I will dedicate my next book to you.”

Dialogue on the Infinity of Love

Tullia’s next book was a contribution to the literature of dialogues about love. She herself had appeared as a character in one such text, Sperone Speroni’s Dialogue of Love, where she was cast as debating her lover Bernardo Tasso, Muzio’s rival. Now that she was thirty-seven, living in Florence and protected by powerful patrons, at the height of her physical and intellectual powers, Tullia dared to take center stage herself, speaking as a woman and a lover in her own voice about her own experience. In Dialogue on the Infinity of Love she cast herself as a main character debating her friend Benedetto Varchi. She traded love poems with Varchi as she did with many of her intellectual male admirers and lovers, but Varchi was a friend with a difference—he loved men.

In the text, Varchi enters her parlor where she is entertaining a number of men with a lively philosophical discussion. Varchi worries he has interrupted the conversation. Tullia says it was her turn to talk, but perhaps he would engage her in dialogue, unless he refuses to do this with a woman, since he holds them as philosophically inferior.

The question they have been discussing is this: can love be endless, or does one always love within bounds? There is vulgar love, based on physical desire, and honest love, including companionship. Vulgar love ends when desire is satisfied. Bodies can merge, but souls cannot, so honest love is never satisfied and thus endless.

What about the love of men for men? Tullia was greatly daring to consider this question. Plato’s symposium praised love between older men and younger men and denigrated love between men and women; in fact he went so far as to question whether men could truly love women, since women are intellectually inferior. When this work was translated into a Christian culture that condemned homosexuality, Neo-Platonists struggled to understand this new view of sexuality.

Tullia dared to question why homosexuality was considered to be sinful if Plato had praised it. In her dialogue she established a justification for Varchi’s affection for men, acting as his friend as well as playing to his sensibilities.

Tullia also challenged the Platonic ideal that considered women to be intellectually inferior. Who better to consider the infinity of love than a woman dedicated to love? Who better to write a Platonic dialogue on love than a Neo-Platonic courtesan?

Lessons of Tullia

The year after the publication of her poems and the dialogue, Tullia’s life took a sadder turn when both her mother and her daughter died. Her looks fading, Tullia found she could no longer retain younger lovers. She left Florence for Rome. Although she had not chosen her lovers for their wealth, she had managed to save for her retirement and lived in a modest section of town. She turned her attention to writing and produced her final and largest work, The Wretch, Otherwise Known as Guerrino, not yet translated into English. In the introduction to this work, she complained for the first time about her mother’s choice to raise her daughter as a courtesan; she wished she had not learned so much about life at such an early age.

Tullia died in 1556 at the age of forty-six. Her will surfaced a few surprises: she left her estate to a previously unknown son, Celio. She also noted that she ended her life unable to write and was being cared for by a trusted friend whom she did not name.

Tullia d’Aragona was a Neo-Platonic philosopher in the tradition of Diotima, Gemina, Hypatia, Asklepigenia, and many others. Although her mother and her society cast her as a courtesan, she sought out men who could educate her and appreciate her intellect as well as her charms. She persisted in presenting herself to the world as a writer as well as a lover, and she has left us beautiful and profound meditations on the nature of love.

Notes on the Story

The poem fragments exchanged by Girolamo and Tullia are the translations of Irma Jaffe and Gernando Colombardo in Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets. Jaffe and Colombardo provide many details of Tullia’s life.

Giulia and Tullia presented Penelope as Tullia’s sister, but many scholars point out that Giulia was over forty and Tullia was twenty-five when Penelope was born, so it is likely that Penelope was her daughter.

“Fasseli gratia per poetessa” was the phrase Cosimo de Medici wrote on the document that freed Tullia from wearing the prostitute’s yellow veil.