Primary Source Reading: I Modi

I Modi is the first published book to be censored by order of the Catholic Church. It wasn’t so much its sexual explicitness that drew the ire of the Pope, but the book’s joyful celebration of sex without procreation, among other things. Support the show on Patreon here to hear it.

Source Read: Romano, Giulio; Raimondi, Marcantonio; Aretino, Pietro; and Waldeck, Count Jean-Frederic-Maximilien. I Modi: The Sixteen Pleasures, An Erotic Album of the Italian Renaissance, trans. and ed. Lynne Lawner (Northwestern University Press, 1988).

For The Episode: The Erotic Publication That Scandalized Renaissance Europe