33 pages • 1 hour read
Gene A. BruckerGiovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPreface-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
In the Preface to Giovanni and Lusanna, Gene Brucker describes his work as a “microhistory” (viii). Unlike traditional historical analyses, which focus on governments and larger political events (such as wars), microhistories often narrate the circumstances of an individual’s life in a certain historical period. As a result, microhistories demonstrate what it was like to live in that person’s society. Microhistories often focus on individuals from classes or groups that are underrepresented in traditional history books, such as “peasants, artisans, vagabonds [...] [and others] from the lower echelons of the social order” (ix).
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Context”
Giovanni and Lusanna is a historical book that recounts a legal trial in Florence that occurred during the mid-1400s. The two central figures of the trial are the plaintiff, Lusanna di Girolamo, and the defendant, Giovanni di Ser Lodovico della Casa. Lusanna alleges that she and Giovanni secretly married before Giovanni married another Florentine woman, making Giovanni guilty of bigamy—the crime of being married to two people at once.
In Chapter 1, Brucker describes the societal context of the trial and introduces each of the major figures. Brucker learns of the trial through his research in the Florentine archives of the notary Ser Filippo Mazzei. As Brucker notes, fifteenth-century Florence is a “legalistic and litigious society,” and notaries occupy an important and respected position in Florence’s hierarchical social order (1). In his role as a notary for the archiepiscopal curia, Mazzei serves the Archbishop Antoninus and other church officials. Mazzei also attends all cases that are tried in the archiepiscopal court, making detailed notes of everything that occurs.
Born in 1420, Lusanna is the only daughter of an immigrant tailor, Benedetto di Girolamo. Her father is a successful artisan and owns a sizeable amount of real estate, which makes him somewhat wealthier than other Florentine artisans. Bendetto pays a large dowry of two hundred and fifty florins so that Lusanna can marry Andrea Nucci, a baker from the same neighborhood as Lusanna. While attending church one day in the 1440s, Lusanna meets Giovanni, marking the beginning of their twelve-year love affair.
As the son of a prominent Florentine notary, Giovanni hails from a far wealthier family than Lusanna’s. The della Casa family is part of Florentine’s upper class and is friendly with a number of prominent families, including the Medicis—the wealthiest family in Florence. Giovanni works as a banker for his older brother’s business, slowly amassing a sizable fortune during his twenties. Aristocratic families often pay large sums to marry their daughters to prosperous families like Giovanni’s. However, Giovanni has remained a bachelor because he is preoccupied by his love for Lusanna.
The final figure Brucker introduces is Archbishop Antoninus, who presides over the legal trial between Giovanni and Lusanna in his capacity as “head of the Tuscan archdiocese” (12). Antoninus has a reputation as a fair and capable administrator of the Catholic Church and Florence. He is known for meeting with anyone who comes to him for advice, regardless of social status. Though wealthy Florentines such as the Medicis try to use their status to influence Antoninus in court matters, he is impervious to their manipulation and judges cases fairly. In June 1455, Antoninus receives a letter from the Pope in Rome, informing him of the case between Lusanna and Giovanni. The letter instructs Antoninus to investigate and determine whether Giovanni committed bigamy.
Preface-Chapter 1 Analysis
Brucker argues that his microhistory of the relationship and trial between Giovanni and Lusanna is particularly valuable because it contains the voices of women and lower-class Florentines, whose experiences are typically omitted from historical records. These voices are recorded in the trial’s witness testimony, where they provide insight into how Florentines understood “love, marriage, and the moral conventions governing relations between the sexes” (3). The case of Giovanni and Lusanna is particularly revealing because they both come from such different social classes. Their trial includes witness testimonies from social classes spanning across Florentine’s highly-stratified society because Giovanni is part of an upper-class family while Lusanna belongs to a family of middle-class artisans.
Throughout the first chapter, Brucker reiterates how difficult it is to reconstruct the affair between Lusanna and Giovanni. Though Mazzei’s notes on the trial are extensive, they only record information relevant to the trial. As a result, there are many gaps in the historical record about Lusanna and Giovanni, such as the reason Giovanni remained a bachelor for so long. Though Brucker can make informed guesses about what happened during these gaps, the true and complete account of Lusanna and Giovanni’s relationship is still unknown.
