ABSTRACT

G. B. Guarini hardly exaggerated when he declared the courtier of his time to be bound “by no tie of shame or gratitude,” but Courts have never been very remarkable for austere virtue and have sometimes been charged with unedifying sexual licence and intrigue. It may be doubted how far the courtly morals of the period fell below the usual elegant standard. A passion for the good opinion of one’s equals, class-feeling, conscience and egoism combined to establish an ideal standard, to which many wife-murders must be attributed. The old Roman law which permitted immediate vengeance to be taken on those caught in flagrante adulterio had been repeated in some of the communal statutes. The persistence of barbarous methods of justice sometimes reveals the unsuspected, and perhaps some growing sense of modesty in woman is indicated by the threat exercised by a Roman official in 1565.