But for the war on porn?

The war against classical values is older than most people  think. It dates back at least to the Renaissance era, when artists became enchanted with — and copied — ancient art.

Giulio Romano and Marcantonio Raimondi met in Rome, where High Renaissance darling Raphael personally trained each one. Raphael’s sudden death in 1520 left star pupil Romano in charge of Raphael’s vast artists’ studio, which at the time was weighed down with completing the elaborate frescoes in the Raphael Rooms at the Vatican.

Raimondi, an engraver with a reputation for making impeccable copies of existing works, had wowed Raphael with an engraving inspired by his print of “Lucretia.” Raphael took Raimondi under his wing, eventually opening an engraving school for him to run.

The problem for Raimondi is that his impeccable copying of existing works led to trouble for him, because the existing works were ancient porn, and new printing methods allowed them to be cranked out in a manner heretofore unknown:

Romano, also an architect, quit the studio in 1524 to begin working in Mantua on his fresco and architecture opus, Palazzo Te, the extraordinary digs of the city’s ruling Gonzaga family. Before departing, Romano left Raimondi with some of his erotic designs for the palazzo, drawings inspired by the coital images on ancient Roman brothel tokens. Using Romano’s designs, Raimondi created the “I Modi” (literally, “The Ways,” but known as “The Sixteen Pleasures”), 16 scenes of mythological couples in graphic lovemaking positions. The greatest invention of the Renaissance, the printing press, made possible Raimondi’s next move: He printed “I Modi “for public sale and consumption.

Pope Clement VII was incensed. He had Raimondi imprisoned, and ordered the images hunted down, banned, and the plates and prints destroyed. (Only nine fragments of the engravings — naughty bits removed — survive in the British Museum, although a copy of the “I Modi,” attributed to the 16th century engraver Agostino Caracci, appeared shortly after the original was banned).

Clement VII was a Medici through and through. Born into intrigue, his father had been assassinated when he was but a month old during the Pazzi Conspiracy so he was raised by his uncle Lorenzo the Magnificent. He had been a very close with Raphael, who painted his friend the future pope this way in 1519:

Considering the notorious Medicis, I’m sure he’d had a little fun and adventure in his youth.

But when the engraver got carried away and created a public demand for porn, all hell broke loose, and Clement had to do something. Predictably, he decided to impose ruthless censorship, including the death penalty:

Such incendiary images pushed Clement VII into warning that anyone who published “I Modi” faced the death penalty. This drastic and unprecedented attempt by the Church to censor what an artist could create and circulate also established a premiere rule of thumb for what defines pornography: a sinful desire for the forbidden. (The meaning of the word pornography — broadly, the depiction of erotic behavior — has shifted since its introduction into English in 1857; it initially referred to prostitution).

Aretino’s sonnets exploited the transgressive power of Raimondi’s erotic images. Aretino seized the “I Modi” as a way to expose the corruption among high society by linking graphic sex and language to political and religious subversion. Riddled with coarse language and carnal ideas, his sonnets mock the papal court and name names, taking relentless shots at prominent figures and courtesans of the day.

But the gravest danger for the aristocracy was the new marketplace for porn, which Raimondi and Aretino were pioneering. With the printing press capable of spitting out 3,600 pages a day, Aretino’s “Postures” could be quickly duplicated and packaged in an affordable, portable format with the potential to inform untold masses about the demoralized elite. And this was no idle threat. It was just this sort of pornographic political propaganda that would help effectuate the executions of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI during the French Revolution.

That would be enough to frighten anyone in a position of leadership, and Clement had every reason to be afraid. For it was just this sort of thing that was fueling Protestantism, and angry Protestant soldiers were a major driving force behind the Sack of Rome just a few years later.

I doubt that Clement VII was singularly obsessed with waging war on porn, though. He was a politician reacting to immediate circumstances without much thought to long-term future consequences.

Interestingly (and parenthetically) it is worth noting that the Sack of Rome in turn fueled Clement’s refusal to allow Henry VIII an annulment:

In 1527 Henry asked Pope Clement to annul the marriage, but the Pope refused. According to canon law, the Pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of a canonical impediment previously dispensed. Clement also feared the wrath of Catherine’s nephew, Charles V, whose own troops were responsible for the episode earlier that year that included the sack of Rome.^[7] In the matter of the annulment, no progress seemed possible: the Pope seemed more afraid of Emperor Charles V than of Henry.

Any Medici would have concurred on that one too. Under normal circumstances, Henry might have been able to get what he wanted in a face-saving backroom deal. But because of dangerous military realities, a showdown was unavoidable, and it erupted when Henry defied Clement and married Ann Boleyn anyway:

The Pope responded to the marriage by excommunicating both Henry and Cranmer from the Catholic Church. For some time, the news was kept from the new queen, for fear it would bring about a miscarriage.

Consequently in England, in the same year, the Act of First Fruits and Tenths transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the English Crown. The Peter’s Pence Act outlawed the annual payment by landowners of one penny to the Pope. This act also reiterated that England had “no superior under God, but only your Grace” and that Henry’s “imperial crown” had been diminished by “the unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions” of the Pope.^[10] Ultimately Henry led the English Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy (1534) that established the independent Church of England and breaking from the Catholic Church.

And we all know what that led to, don’t we? Had Henry gotten his way and England remained Catholic, there would have been no war with Spain, no naval buildup, no sinking of the Armada, no Protestant British colonies in the New World, and of course no United States of America.

Here’s an example of what had managed to persist despite centuries of censorship, and was being printed at the time of this country’s founding:

Sheesh. I need my second cup of coffee.