ABSTRACT
Francesco Guicciardini, in his Ricordi, speaks of marriage as an alliance between families, determined by the need of political cohesion or by the opportunity of adding to wealth and of increasing power. The best kind of married life one would expect under these conditions would be a perfunctory discharge of duty and that kind of affection which grows from the habitual association of people not violently antipathetic. If there is little evidence of amatory passion in wedded life, there is much of conjugal attachment; pairs seem to have got on together pretty much as wedded folk do under conditions of greater freedom. The girls are with the mother in villegiatura, the boys are with the father, in training for active life. Women marrying into a noble house almost invariably conducted themselves in a very correct manner.
