Rome, 1530s. We’re still inside the convent with Nanna and Antonia, but the candles have burned a little lower, and the stories a little bolder.
In this second part of Day One in Aretino’s Dialogues, the holy feast turns into a full-blown farce of saints and sinners. The wine flows, the Murano glass “fruits” make their mischievous return, and Nanna begins to see that the convent is less a house of God than a masquerade of men’s making. Her “another trap” isn’t just the locked door behind her — it’s the illusion that women ever had a choice in the first place.
Host Williamaye Jones guides us through the satire beneath the scandal: how Aretino turned hypocrisy into humor, confession into commentary, and sin into a mirror for society’s own desires. Five hundred years later, his words still make us laugh — and still make us blush.
Listen in as Nanna continues her irreverent education of Antonia and follow the threads of devotion, deception, and desire through the most scandalous convent in Renaissance literature.
Think less repentance, more revelation, and just a hint of holy trouble. 😉
Listen to the full episode here →
This notorious passage in the episode shows Nanna “abating her temptations” by riding a glass pistil (a Murano-glass phallus). The act mingles devotion, pleasure, and punishment. Her bleeding mouth and body mark both physical pain and symbolic transgression: she’s wounded by the very tools meant to preserve her virtue.
When she says they might “throw me in prison, bound in chains like a lewd woman,” Aretino folds satire into tragedy. The Church condemns her for feeling what her body naturally feels — for being human. The glass object becomes emblematic of the Renaissance paradox: pleasure as sin, sin as spectacle, and truth as something that always cuts.
Suffragan [sʌ frə gən]: A bishop subordinate to a metropolitan bishop; mentioned when Aretino playfully mocks Church hierarchy.
“Figurative chant as Brusiana of Buovi d’Antona” : Likely a reference to poetic heroines of Italian romance epics (Buovi), symbolizing women who became muses or moral lessons in Renaissance verse.
Glass pistil: A Murano-glass object shaped like a phallus, used satirically in Aretino’s convent scene. The nuns claim these “fruits” soothe temptation, but their use exposes the hypocrisy beneath enforced chastity.
Bartolomeo Colleoni [bar-tō-LŌ-mē-ō ko-LĀ-lō-nē]: A 15th-century Venetian condottiero famed for his bronze equestrian statue in Venice (by Verrocchio). His surname, sounding like coglioni (“testicles” in Italian), became a running pun in Renaissance humor.
Visibilium: Latin for “of visible things.” In Aretino’s line “he applied his clyster to the reverend’s visibilium,” it mockingly refers to the priest’s exposed body parts.
Clyster [KLYS-ter]: An enema device used in early modern medicine. Here it becomes a biting sexual-satirical image of misuse of power and bodily violation.
“Asshole Missal”: Wordplay on Missal (book of Catholic Mass prayers) paired with the profane, mocking the sanctity of the Church’s ritual language.
Holy hermit of Camaldules: Refers to a member of the Camaldolese hermit order, invoked ironically amid the story’s excess.
Libera nos a malo [LEE-beh-rah nōs ah MAH-loh]: Latin for “Deliver us from evil.”
Gratia plena [GRAH-tee-ah PLEN-ah]: “Full of grace,” from the Ave Maria prayer.
Tarantala (Tarantella) [tah-rahn-TAH-lah]: A frenzied Italian folk dance said to cure tarantula bites; here it symbolizes ecstatic release and erotic motion.
Lamentations of Rhodes: An allusion to the island of Rhodes, whose fall inspired poetic “lamentations.” Aretino uses it as hyperbolic mourning — grief mingled with excess.
Quintain [KWIN-tīn]: A tilting target for jousting practice; metaphor for an erotic or moral test.
Pecora campi [PEH-ko-rah KAHM-pee]: Italian for “sheep of the fields,” used metaphorically for innocence or naïve participants in vice.
Santa sanctorum [SAHN-tah SAHN-KTOH-room]: Latin “Holy of Holies,” the innermost sacred space — used ironically for private acts or hidden chambers.
Marforio’s Statue in Rome: An ancient marble river-god figure in Rome that became one of the city’s “talking statues,” where citizens posted anonymous political satires. Aretino’s readers would have recognized it instantly as a symbol of irreverent truth-telling.
Aretino’s genius lies not in shock but in revelation. He turns the sacred into the satirical without stripping it of meaning. The laughter is uncomfortable because it asks: how much of this performance still echoes today? We no longer lock women behind convent walls. We just build subtler ones of expectation, reputation, and restraint.
Be sure to comment if there's anything else you'd like to know and I'll be sure to answer with an update.
Next time, Nanna reveals the "trap" as she continues to unveil the secrets of nuns' life to an enraptured Antonia.
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