Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 1Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
History
Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Vol 1
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
Erotic literature
Well! of a truth I should never have done, were I to adduce all the
infinity of examples of great ladies and Roman Emperors of yore, in
whose case their husbands, though sore cajoled and albeit very cruel
men, did yet refrain them from exerting their cruelty and undoubted
rights and privileges against their wives, no matter how dissolute and
ill-conducted these were. I ween few prudes were there in those old
days, as indeed is sufficiently declared in the history of their lives,
and as may be plainly discerned by careful examination of ancient
portraits and medallions representing them; for indeed you may behold
in their fair faces this same lubricity manifestly and obviously
displayed by chisel and graver. Yet did their husbands, cruel Princes
as these were, pardon them, and did put none of them to death, or but a
very few. So would it seem true that these Pagans, not knowing God, yet
were so gentle and clement toward their wives and the human race, while
the most part of our Kings, Princes, great Lords and other Christian
men, be so cruel toward the same for a like offence.
4.
Natheless must we herein greatly commend our brave and good Philip
Augustus,[24] King of France, who after having put away his wife
Angerberge, sister of Canute, King of Denmark, which was his second
wife, under pretext she was his cousin in the third degree on the
side of his first wife Ysabel, though others say he did suspect
her of unfaithfulness, yet did the said King, under the weight of
ecclesiastical censures, albeit he had married again elsewhere, take
her back again, and so conveyed her home behind him on horseback,
without the privity of the Diet of Soissons, that had been summoned to
decide this very matter, but was too dilatory to come to any conclusion
thereon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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