"main-springy; perspective-this and techno-that"

"This ribald, blustery, frank, coarse innuendo-laced tract (28 leaves long) was not terribly unusual when it was printed in 1545, celebrating as it does the low- and high-cultural private life of Renaissance Italy. Doctors, poets, gluttons, cheats and of course lots of beautiful women romp around ostensibly in an attempt to prove the usefulness of their sinful vices, relating it all somehow to the disease-improved poetic capacities of the STD-bestowed Petrarch, master of forlorn and unrequited love poetry and the father of Humanism…

     Stumbling into things like this makes you remember that the Renaissance wasn’t all stuffy and main-springy; perspective-this and techno-that; they had their fun, too, even in 1545, and put it into print."
— Ptak Science Books
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"In the Renaissance, sex and sensuality were seen as the first steps towards salvation. From the Neo-Platonist philosophers under Lorenzo de Medici, it was concluded that love of the body was the first step on the long ladder towards a love of wisdom and ultimately of God and therefore it was to be embraced and not hidden away.
     The double-standard [that] existed during that time indicated that men had sexual freedom, often with courtesans and mistresses long before their marriage, whereas women were expected to be virgins at marriage and faithful to their husbands afterwards. A woman and her lover could be killed for unfaithfulness, whereas a man was expected to be unfaithful. It was thought that a woman cannot receive pleasure from anything but a man. Isabella de' Medici was strangled at the dinner table by her husband for being unfaithful. Neither Lucrezia Borgia nor Alfonso d'Este were faithful to each other and Cesare Borgia was rumoured to have at least eleven illegitimate children in his short lifetime."
— The Borgias
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