Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence

In Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, published in 2004, historian Gene Brucker describes the events of a single relationship in fifteenth-century Florence. This “microhistory” of a romance and subsequent court trial demonstrates how Florentine society treated love, marriage, and social class.

In Chapter 1, Brucker reveals that he learned of the relationship between Giovanni di Ser Lodovico della Casa and Lusanna di Girolamo through the records of the notary Ser Filippo Mazzei. As fifteenth-century Florence is a highly litigious society, notaries such as Ser Filippo play crucial roles in their community. Ser Filippo is the notary in the archiepiscopal court of Archbishop Antoninus, who is the highest religious authority in Florence. In 1455, the Pope issues Antoninus an order to investigate the claims of Lusanna, the daughter of a tailor and the widow of a baker. Lusanna alleges that she secretly married Giovanni, who has since married another woman—a crime known as bigamy. As Antoninus’s notary, Ser Filippo dutifully records every step of the ensuing church investigation and trial.

Chapter 2 outlines Giovanni’s and Lusanna’s respective portrayals of their relationship. According to Lusanna, the aristocratic bachelor Giovanni began his romantic advances toward her while she was married to her husband, Andrea Nucci, though she did not reciprocate them at the time.