The CyberSybils Unroll Scroll Eleven ~ Tullia

TULLIA

Aretino, the Italian Renaissance poet with a talent for penning pornography, despised Tullia d’Aragona for her intelligence and described the tall beauty with the aquiline nose as a cold whore of the mind; however, that misogynist was but one detractor in a universe filled with male admirers. Not long after the ink of Aretino’s scathing remark had dried, six of the cortigiane’s young Florentines had circulated a petition, stating: We do assert that our Lady and Patroness, the most illustrious Signora Tullia d’Aragona, has no equal or like in the past, nor will have in the centuries to come.

Their praises, of course, were not mere flattery, certainly not when a poet of Muzio’s standing declared his adoration, begging the temptress to press her lips to his mouth and suck the live spirit from his very soul. Or when the nobleman Martelli sent Mistress Tullia letters that read: As your nobility is more than mortal, praises of the human intellect are not appropriate for so high a subject.

Yes, the illegitimate offspring of a libertine Cardinal of Aragon and wild Guilia of Rome had risen quickly above the ranks of ordinary prostitute, establishing herself not as meretrix honesta, but rather, because of her renown for displays of perfect cruelty, as mastix honesta, a title of which Tullia thoroughly approved.

Many were the potential swains who danced the pavanne or the rosina, barefoot at her command, hopeful that when the lute strings she plucked fell silent, their reward would be her bed. Yet the Aragonese laughed at their antics and smiled at their delusions, for the only taste of her favor was occasionally and rarely served-up on the stinging end of a whip’s silk cracker. The young boys and the old men understood her rule the best; the remainder of their sex, she ignored. The novelist Giraldi could not help commenting in his latest bestseller that although the fabulously wealthy Duke Orsini spent scads of scudi on the Aragonese, Tullia played him unmercifully, as though she despised him, and never granted the aristocrat an audience without first making him suffer a thousand, minor trials.

So when the self-styled philosopher and famous writer, Benedetto Varchi, received an ode of praise from the woman whose would-be-lovers all attested to her demanding nature, the middle-aged author was understandably flummoxed.

The lines:

Lovely little bird, Your martyrdom is upon you,
And the pain surpasses all that has come before,
Weep singing in a sad discordant key,
And singing myself in the hope that your days never change,
I turn my face to Rome, but not my back to you.

caused his throat to tighten and his eyes to slightly bulge.

What nonsense is this? Varchi scribbled over the unconventional tribute and thinking quickly, added: Call the cat the cat - or a spade a spade - what do you mean?

And that impertinent reply was forthwith swiftly conveyed by messenger to Tullia’s stately house.

What Varchi did not understand was that the Aragonese had marked him as her own. At Tullia’s Academy, many illustrious persons were in attendance, one being Guido Biazi, who informed his Hypatia that a certain gentleman of letters, one Benedetto by name, had been recently released from prison for allegedly oscillating between vice and virtue as easily as did the Franciscan friars between matins and vespers.

The Aragonese was intrigued by Biazi’s report, always on the lookout for distinguished devotees of her chosen art form. So, when poesy was returned complete with inglorious graffiti, Tullia chuckled, commanded the maid, Lucrezia, to bring a fresh sheet of paper, then sat down and wrote: For my part, I believe that severity is the mother of all loves, but then, who is the father?

“Return this to Signor Varchi,” the poetess grinned whilst she instructed the page to be about his business. “Let us see who is the victor in a matched contest of wits.”

Then Tullia dressed in robes of black, fastened a scarlet band across her white forehead and practiced the Rite of Colchis, standing with two handfuls of sacred salt before flames burning in their censer, reciting: Thus will Varchi’s heart be moved within his breast and thus will the flame go to him, to mock the vulgar and to bring us pleasure.

At that same appointed time, in a far less fashionable part of Florence, Varchi opened yet another missive, a billet doux which caused his hand to tremble and his legs to shake. For Tullia of Aragona was indeed a High Priestess of Polymastigate; a child of Goddess Flagella, a devotee of the Furies whom he had a mind to respectfully tame.

Crying out for the messenger to wait, Benedetto quickly wrote his future mistress: If severity be the mother of all loves, then indeed, knowledge of that stern lady is the father. Therefore, one cannot love without bonds, any more than the figures of the Zodiac might spin outside the circle of the heavens. Allow me to counsel you as to the astral scheme of fearless Venus, so that together we might shine more brightly than any pole star.

The wise Varchi then took up his favourite celestial globe, kissed its paper mâché hide, and sent the sphere to the new Salome: that beloved, cold mistress of the merciless, intriguing mind, whose gift of a blazing comet would soon prayerfully take shape as traces of sparking trails, tendered jointly upon canopies of infinite space.