And for this reason we find, side by side with the most
measured and polished social forms, something our age would call
immodesty, forgetting that by which it was corrected and counter-
balanced-- the powerful characters of the women who were exposed to it.
That in all the dialogues and treatises together we can find no
absolute evidence on these points is only natural, however freely the
nature of love and the position and capacities of women were discussed.
What seems to have been wanting in this society were the young girls
who, even when not brought up in the monasteries, were still carefully
kept away from it. It is not easy to say whether their absence was the
cause of the greater freedom of conversation, or whether they were
removed on account of it.
Even the intercourse with courtesans seems to have assumed a more
elevated character, reminding us of the position of the Hetairae in
classical Athens. The famous Roman courtesan Imperia was a woman of
intelligence and culture, had learned from a certain Domenico Campana
the art of making sonnets, and was not without musical accomplishments.
The beautiful Isabella de Luna, of Spanish extraction, who was reckoned
amusing company, seems to have been an odd compound of a kind heart
with a shockingly foul tongue, which latter sometimes brought her into
trouble.
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