June 13, 2019 • 33 mins
Nowadays it's no secret that some Papal administrations from centuries past were a bit more scandalous than others, but when master engraver Marcantonio Raimondi created prints of explicit art located within the papal palace, the church was scandalized. Learn more about the bizarre tale of "The Sixteen Pleasures".
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. We we have a a bit of a
disclaimer I think, or a bit of a bit of
a thing we must say for the beginning of this episode,
and is just like a trigger warning or now is
that different? Is that the same as a disclaimer? I
I guess a trigger warning is a genre of a
disclaimer knoll Um. But yeah, either way, it's it's a
(00:50):
thing you have to say at the top this episode.
We are kind of a family show, you know, you
and I we were, and our super producer Paul Mission
controlled that Kent as well as our super producer Casey Pegram,
who has returned, as it turns out, from his secret
life as an international criminal. What is the exactly again?
(01:14):
I keep getting them the stories mixed up? He is,
simply so, you know, all of us on this show,
including our including our producer Maya Cole give it up
for her. Its our first day you know wave tour.
They're all of us are generally like PG people, maybe
PG thirteen. This is not a it's not a hard hitting,
(01:35):
mature theme show. And on the show. On this show,
we in our personal lives, we can oh my gosh,
it goes off wow very quickly. But but today's show
uh no Fooling does encounter some things that may not
be may not be appropriate for all listeners. So if
you're one of the very very kind teachers whoever whoever
(01:59):
uses show uh for for your students, surely that's not
a thing I think cople of times. Yeah, But if
you're one of those teachers, UM, listen through the entirety
of this episode before playing it for your your students,
Or if you're some kind of prude and prone to
pearl clutching, um, I would also maybe skip this one,
or maybe give it a go, and it will make
(02:21):
you grow up a little bit. You will have you,
You'll have that Aladdin a whole New world moment. Right.
That's my favorite part of that movie. It is such
an amazing movie overall. Are you going to see the
live version? I gotta say that the physics of it
absolute garbage. They would be torn to shreds or they
would like suffocateing on the carpet. Give me a break.
I always thought the carpet sort of created this field.
(02:42):
You are vetsy magical thinking. I like that. It's it's
a story about magic. Is quality, suspension of disbelief, my friend,
well done, speaking suspension of disbelief. Yeah, that's a weird
that's a weird segue. But today's episode addresses a little
bit of hypocrisy in Catholic Church. Uh, addresses something that
(03:04):
you and I both I think found fascinating but maybe
not entirely surprising. Yeah, possibly a little titilating, Yes, yes,
a little a bit of twitter patient indeed, we should
get right to it. Um. Today's episode is I don't know,
you could kind of this is a bit of a
miss number to refer to it like this, but I
still like it. The band sixteenth century pornographic sex guide
(03:26):
made in you guessed it, the Vatican True story. True story, folks, Yes,
this is this is entirely uh, this is entirely nonfictional.
So nowadays, when people think of the pope right the
the head of the Catholic Church, we typically are going
(03:47):
to think of maybe someone who's kind of isolated, kindly
older man in white with a unique set of hats.
But in sent trees leading up to the modern day,
popes were somewhat uh, salacious or what's that other word
(04:07):
we were, Yes, well, I mean, you know, here's the
thing too, there's a public facing pope ness, and then
there's the private facing Pope nous. I made up the
word pop nous just now, but I thought it was good.
I think I'm okay with it. Um, But think about
I mean, we know this from all the expose a
s that have been going on about the Catholic Church
for decades now and beyond. Where As it turns out
(04:29):
some of these kindly older gentlemen in their you know,
robes and whatnot, we're actually not so kindly at all,
and we're doing pretty terrible things behind closed doors when
they thought they could get away with it. Um, this
is not that necessarily. This is a little more just
being a little on the naughty side and perhaps commissioning,
as legend would have it. There's different version of the
story some pornographic art in a particular space in the
(04:53):
Vatican that is now referred to as the solid Deconstantino,
Well done done, what an authentico accent? Oh thank you?
Do you remember that earlier conversation. Uh, this is the
point you brought up, Nold, that I thought was very
interesting where I can't remember whether this was on air
of whether we were just hanging out after work, but
(05:15):
you said you said to me, like, Ben, you notice
that we're always very careful not to stereotype people were
do unfair caricatures, except for Italian people and apparently Australians.
We got an email where people were like, hey, I
really like the show, but all you ever do talk
we would talk about about my home country is bad
Australian accents and Genitalia references. I believe little Australia. But
(05:38):
that's that's neither here nor there um. But yeah, we
do try our best to being to be thoughtful and
uh in courteous. So if there is anything that sounds
like a stereotypical or Italian accent or caricature where thereof
it is simply our bad pronunciation and feel pretty gell
at us. So. The Satellah Dick Constantina is one of
the largest rooms in the Vatican and at this point
(06:01):
in time it depicts um kind of Fresco paintings of
the first Roman emperor to convert Christianity, constantine Um, and
it is believed by some, though I don't I have
not found any equivocal and equivocal evidence for this that
those were painted on top of some rather selaceous uh
(06:23):
let's call it Renaissance pin up type type paintings, right right. Yeah,
The way this story goes is that once upon a time, uh,
there were a series of there were there were a
series of very explicit paintings of lovers historical figures throughout history,
(06:46):
in explicit, explicit uh romantic positions. Yeah, and I mean
more so than just depictions, like they were almost intended
to be like a guide book, sort of like the
Commis or something like that. And I think there were
how many of them? Were there been sixteen? Yes, there
were six sixteen for the sixteenth century. That's totally why
(07:09):
they did that. And um, we'll get to this in
a little bit. But Raphael was one of the most
well renowned artists of the time and adorned many a
room in the Vatican with his incredibly elaborate what would
you call the style of Raphael ben uh. He was
the he's considered the architect of the High Renaissance. Full
(07:29):
name rafael O Sonzio da Urbino, and he was born
in fourteen eighty three, passed away at the age of
thirty seven in fifteen twenty, allegedly after a night of
wild passion. Wild passion. Yeah, all signs point to Rafael
being a bit of a of a horny boy and
keeping company with some others of that ilk um. There
(07:52):
was sort of a cabal of these sort of letchy
older men that kicked it in this particular palazzo that
belonged to a man who was a patron of the
arts by the name of Augustine. No cheege cheese. Is
it like gelie chee cheegye. I'm gonna do a hard
g What do you think? I think it was a
very smart move to put both of those pronunciations out
(08:14):
there so yell at me about the wrong one and
praised me for the correct I it is. It's going
to be okay, do you think so? I think it'll
be okay? Dude. The the ire of the Internet never
ceases to terrify me. Well, it's spelled c h I
g I c h I. Banker to the Vatican, Banker
to the Vatican, like iron bank kind of dude, right serious,
like like power behind the purse to the Vatican, one
(08:36):
of the most powerful institutions in the world. And he
would have Uh, I don't know, I've I've heard them
referred to as wild garden parties. Um. And he owned
a palatial estate by the Tiber River and had a
vast collection of erotic art, including a particularly lewed statue
of uh Greek god and fellow horny boy Pan or Puck. Right,
(09:01):
likely anatomically correct, I think, is what we're getting at.
Despite his day job, his private life was extraordinarily hedonistic,
there's a fair way to say this. And he and
his pals were considered libertarian, but not the way we
think of libertarianism today, in terse of you know, being
pro weed and anti anti government in any sense. Right, yeah, yeah,
(09:24):
this means that they were, in contrast to the official
doctrine or public view of the Catholic Church. They were
very now let's say open, right, they are at this
point kind of polyamorous swingers. They're yeah, they're seeking all this. Uh,
They're they're seeking the carnal pleasures. Uh. It's similar to
(09:48):
Hugh Hefner's playboy mansion. This is this is a surprisingly
apt comparison. They likely had a grotto in this particular
state as well. I would imagine, Yes, Uh, and they
had a lot of guests uh the upper echelons of
society at the time. One regular guest was a writer
named Pietro Aretino, and he described the erotic art in
(10:09):
this famous villa by saying, why shouldn't the I see
what delights it most? Exactly? Because the Vatican was infamous
for covering up nude sculptures, any kind of depiction of
the male nude form or female new form, they would
require the artist to drape it like um, I believe
Michelangelo's one of his famous some of his famous nudes
(10:30):
were required to be added onto with additional material to
cover them up, kind of like the Statue of Liberty
originally had the exactly that's right, I totally forgot it,
or like the famous fig leaves of that dam and
even on that's totally but I think that Artino very
accurately summed up what this whole kind of cabal of dudes,
with their whole like kind of therapy of life, kind
(10:54):
of Fidelio kind of vibe, was all about, why shouldn't
the I see what delights him most exactly? So in
his bedroom, the banker Cheegy had a fresco of Alexander
the Great in a in a sexually explicit position with
his wife Roxanne and Rafael himself. Like Rafael is famous
(11:18):
at this time, he has a team of people working
under him. So it's a big deal that he himself
paints some of the most famous frescoes in the villa.
But according to his biographer, an author named A. V. Sarry,
Raphael himself uh couldn't work properly in this environment because
(11:40):
uh the sorry says the guy had a sex addiction. Uh.
So Raphael's lover at the time had to be given
a bedroom in the in the location, so he would
paint and then go full around and then go back
and paint, rinse and repeat. Uh. And this, according again
to his biographer, is what is what actually, this is
(12:02):
the situation that led to his death at the early
age of thirty seven. And he left. When he passed away,
he left his his business, his work to his most
talented assistant, a guy named Giulio Romano or Gulio Romano.
Let's think about him the way we might think of
a modern street artist today. Right, A lot of these
(12:23):
folks are known as the you know, power behind the throne,
and like the style guide of like this, you know,
everything associated with this person's brand. But everyone from like
a shepherd ferry to likely a banks or whatever has
like teams of people working with them to help them
recreate their work and like do it in different locations,
especially when it comes to like reproducible stuff. And so
(12:43):
this assistant was kind of his right hand man and
could literally take the baton and kind of like keep
the business going after his uh, you know what would
you call it his master? Now his boss, I guess
his boss. Yeah, after his mentor after he uh you know,
I had a very erotic death, very erotic death the
(13:04):
story of Rafael. Yes, and so now now this guy
is the successor. Here, Romano is in charge of this team.
He has inherited this. One of the connections he inherits
is a printmaker named Mark Cantonio Ramondi. I want to backtrack,
You're just slightly not backtrack really, but this is where
(13:25):
the story diverges a little bit. I've seen a couple
of spots that say, okay, he was hired to paint
that Constantine room, which was considered one of the Raphael
rooms in the Vatican because Rafael had done many of them.
But then this room was left uncompleted, uh when he
had passed away, So his assistant was supposed to go
(13:45):
in there and finish it. I've seen that. And then, um,
I know Pope Leo the tenth was going to make
Rafael like an honorary high Church officials because of all
his work that he had done. It's really funny considering
that he was a known sex addict and kind of letch.
But that didn't come to fruition because he of course
passed away. But whoever employed his assistant to supposedly paint
(14:08):
this room, Um, the assistant got irritated at him, legend says,
and he instead decided to paint these sixteen erotic scenes
on these panels. That's one version of the story. Yeah,
and there are a couple of different versions. So before
raw Fael's death, just just to rewind in time a
bit in fifteen sixty and a guy named Cardinal Bibiana
commissions Rafael to decorate his personal bathroom with these nude
(14:32):
nymphs bathing while uh, very anatomically correct satyrs are spying
on them. And this only flies because the cardinals bathroom
is considered a private place, right so these various works
of art, explicit sexual art, were never meant to be
a matter of public discussion or even public knowledge, right,
(14:56):
uh it goes. Is the same way with the erotic
frescoes on the wall alls of the solid Diconstantino. Whether
they were commissioned or drawn out of spite, right, that's
the that's the big divergence on the story. They were
either commissioned on purpose or drawn as kind of a troll. Well,
it is a divergence of the story. But then I've
also seen a version of the story where the Vatican
doesn't come into it at all, like where this guy
(15:19):
just drew these himself and then had them and then
had had them maker, the printmaker dismate, disseminate them. Because
that's where we get into more of the idea of
this thing, as this collection of nudes, as being the
first form of widely circulated pornography, right the sixteen postures
as they came to be known. So so the printer
(15:42):
Marcantonio Rimondi engraves and prints these explicit illustrations of sex
acts drawn by Romano, and he publishes this in fifty
four under the title I Moody, which translates as the positions.
And this is not erotic cu this is not you know,
(16:03):
some sort of sensitive exploration of the human esthetic visually.
This is pornography. Yeah, dude, I'm looking at him right now.
They are They're really They're in SFW. They really really are.
If you want to get a look at them, if
you're really interested, you can go there's an article on
Dangerous Minds dot net that has all of them. Actually
that's not true, that we'll get to this. They ultimately
are lost to time, but the idea of what they
(16:25):
are were was recreated because it created like a whole
new genre of stuff, you know, which is like, let's
depict sex x and as frank away as humanly possible,
often with satyrs and mythical creatures as well, so that
you're gonna see a lot of that stuff. So if
you want to catch that yourself, it is n SFWS.
Ben said, you can go to dangerous mind dot net
and the headline is an eighteenth century guide to sex position.
(16:46):
So you can just search for that right there. Great site.
And I'm sure many people have just probably run into
that earlier. Why wouldn't you have? Why would you not? So?
According let's go back to this divergence in the story.
According to Lynn Loner, who is an art story and
focusing on the Renaissance in Italy, in fifty three, Giulio
began the decoration of the solid de Konstantino and the Vatican,
(17:09):
and the pope at the time, Clement the seventh, was
tardy in paying the bill, and hence the beef, and
hence the beef, and so then he says, all right,
you know what, I'll keep working, but I'm gonna draw
these sixteen postures. That doesn't make sense. That would be
a real risk to do that when don't you think
do you think he felt like totally above the law
(17:31):
that he could like essentially graffiti this guy's walls with
what would be considered filth, you know, because let's not
forget the collected versions of these we're jumping around time
a little bit. Ultimately end up getting the printer whose
name I'm is escaping me now Ben, who's the printer
Raymond getting him thrown in jail by the pope. So
(17:54):
the idea of maybe some of these nudes existing behind
closed doors, like you said, Ben and private um, maybe
wouldn't have caused the pope to totally go full ham
on it and trying to, you know, censor it out.
But once it starts being disseminated, you now in printed form.
It it's it's um. It's like something that has to
be squashed. Right. Let's talk a little bit about Pope
(18:16):
Clement the seventh as well. He's a real peach. So
he was pope from three to fifteen thirty four. Uh.
He was known for being a bit of a flip flopper.
He didn't really keep his word. He would make and
break alliances with France, Spain, and Germany over the course
(18:37):
of his papacy. He was inclined to changing his political
views to match those of whoever was the most powerful
and wealthy at the time, and as a result, his
critics said that he was not to be trusted. So
he was the sort of he, at least from what
we can tell historically, he was the sort of person
(18:58):
who would attempt to swindle people out of money, which
is where where this whole thing begins. If you, if
you trust the historians who say that the postures arrive
out of spite. When the sixteen Postures are published, as
you said, Ramondi is thrown in jail by Clement the
seventh and because the printmaker has some powerful friends, he
(19:20):
is eventually released. But you can't screw the lid back
on Pandora's jar here now, and instead that not only
do they not screw the lid back on Pandora's jar,
they like bespoke the jar even further. Because you remember
that guy ar and Tino we talked about, who had
that fantastic quote about give the eyes what they want
or whatever. Um, he really wanted to double down and
(19:41):
lean into that because he uh composed sixteen absolutely filthy,
raunchy sonnets that described each of the of the scenes
in poetically graphic detail. Uh. And in a an introduction
to this book, the new addition the just sort of
an incantation to the reader, an invocation, yes, exactly, invocation
(20:04):
of the muses of of of raunchiness. H quote, come
view this, you who liked to okay without being disturbed
in that sweet enterprise, I would have added a second suite.
I would have been that sweet sweet enterprise. Yeah. Well,
we have the benefit of retrospect editorialism. So this is
(20:26):
a blockbuster, absolute smash, no pun intended. Yeah, yeah, it's
uh It's strange because Romano, the guy who was made
these images, has already absconded from Rome. He is a
court artist in Mantua and RAYMONDI you know, before he
(20:47):
was released, he was stuck in prisoned by himself, and
the church attempted to seize and destroy all copies of
the book. They didn't want that getting out. The Church
is really good at eradicating unflattering literature, sure are, yeah,
But in fifteen seven Imodi was reissued with those licentious
poems we mentioned earlier, and it became a blockbuster. It
(21:11):
was selling out across Europe, and the book had many names.
It was called Imody, the posture, the fashion. It's also
known as Tarantino's Postures, the sixteen Pleasures, or the omnibus
venerischimatibus nias huh as Latin, what does schematibus man? It
must mean some form of position. In fact, when I
(21:33):
google the word, the first thing that comes up as
emodi again, so that obviously just refers to the function
and practice of moving the limbs around in particular arrays. Right, yeah, exactly.
So this did more than just make money and get
people thrown in jail. Though it was one of those
rare works of erotica, or let's be honest, pornography that
(21:55):
jumped from niche to mainstream. You know what I mean.
It's sort of like, in a way, it's similar to
fifty Shades of Gray. Yeah, that's true. And there's a
really great article from Atlas Obscura called Europe's first pornographic
blockbuster was made in the Vatican that makes that very connection.
Or something like Deep Throat, which was a pornographic film
(22:17):
that became pretty widely disseminated and almost like tongue in
cheeckenly Uh talked about in you know, polite social circles,
right right, people would performatively clutch their peoples and hide
their faces gibbling. Yeah, so you refer to it as
a joke, you know what I mean, to be a
little bit edgy in conversation. Some people will even argue
(22:38):
that William Shakespeare himself snuck a reference to this book
in Uh in a Winter's Tale when he talks about
that rare Italian master Julio Romano. There was a sixteenth
century Italian phrase book that was aimed at English tourists,
and it taught them how to ask in Italian for
(23:01):
the works of Arantino at bookstores to must dude. But alas,
I guess I'm gonna say, Alas, I mean, thankfully we
have these these lovely recreations that you can see on
the dangerous mind side. But the book itself, and as
far as I know, the text of the Sonnets are
pretty much worked successfully eradicated by the Vatican, and the
(23:21):
original the original frescoes as well. If you'd like to
believe that they're buried underneath those uh those you know,
paintings of Constantine, the Life of Constantine. You know, that's
possibly one way you could uncover that mystery, if you
want to go in there and start scraping away the
paint not recommending that. Wait wait, wait, I'll recogn serious
business due they will throw you in some sort of
like dungeon. Listen to me, carefully, grad students, art historians.
(23:48):
I my spider sense tells me there might be a
grant in here, maybe even a dissertation. Surely there's a
way you could X ray them or something and penetrate
I mean, I'm not sure exactly how technology works. Really,
that's not what kind show this is. But but it's
true that there were illegal or bootleg copies of IMODI
or things purporting to be IMODI that were printed for
(24:09):
over a century afterwards, well into the sixt hundreds. There's
no way to know how many works were printed, but
because churches and governments cooperated to hunt down and destroy
the copies, at least with as much enthusiasm as people
sought to collect and print them. We don't have a
(24:30):
record of the actual sixteen postures that were depicted. Well,
there's a few. We don't have all a few little
scrappys that remain in the collection of the British Museum.
We do have the sudence I found some and off
the air it sent these two as well. Uh there.
(24:54):
You know, you can blame a little bit on the translation.
But they're pretty. They're pretty body. Let's like Canterbury Tales
body or like. So okay, so we'll I'll read one, okay,
and we'll we'll need to beat this. So Paul, I'm
(25:14):
gonna make eye contact with you. Be ready for this.
That's some intense eye contact right there. I moved here. Yeah, okay,
here we go. Stick your finger up my old man.
Thrust caso in a little at a time, Lift up
my leg maneuver well, now pound with all inhibitions gone.
Oh I got bad. It's worse. I believe this is
(25:36):
a tastier feast than eating garlic bread before a fire.
It goes on. Okay, wow, I get what you were expecting. No,
I don't see. When you start bringing the food metaphors
in there, that's when it really turns turns me, dude,
And we should talk about this. Can we talk about this?
We can totally not read any of those effort again. Um, yeah,
I took one for the team. God, Oh my good heavens. Okay, So,
(26:00):
speaking of pearl clutching, I'm I'm being I'm i am
very much blushing. Listen that we gotta we gotta get
this out of the way. Before we went on the air,
we were deciding whether or not to like, whether to
use the word pornography or porn and you Ben mentioned
that you always felt the word porn was more salacious nowadays,
and we were trying to figure out why that was.
(26:21):
I don't know why. Yeah, it must it must entirely
be a subjective thing. I guess. Um, pornography at least
sounds a little more academic, I guess. And Also, there's
something that puts me ill at ease when people describe
non sexual things as porn, like when people say, oh,
food porn, or even when you know, I saw somebody
(26:43):
who was I met someone's dog. I love dogs, and
uh I was. I was rubbing the dog's belly and
the dog's owner says, oh, yeah, she's she's like such
a slept for belly rubs, and that was really gross
to me. We're just scratching this dog. Well, you know,
I mean, people are taking that word back, but I
think that that's a good point. I I really am
with you on the food stuff. Like, I don't think
(27:05):
either one of us like it when someone describes a
bite of cake as orgasmic or or sumptuous. It just
didn't know. It turns me, it turns, it turns my
exquisite is fine, that's not exit. I was just feeling
the riff. Yeah, no, it's true. But I think we've
got to the bottom of it. I think both of
us feel the same way. But I think we used
a combination of porn and pornography in this episode because
(27:25):
it was you know, it's about all the all the
mini shades, fifty shades of of renaissance, uh erotica. And
that's also I think why that Sonnet really did it
for me, not in a good way, because once you
started bringing garlic bread into the equation, I'm like, leave
garlic bread out of uh. It's it's funny because this
(27:45):
is UH sort of producer replise literal first day. We
did warn her, we do, we try to. We're not
a naughty show. We're not. We are we are if
we are nothing if not wholesome. We are very old general.
But this is this is fascinating because I think a
lot of I think a lot of people who enjoy
reading about the history of the Catholic Church. I think
(28:07):
a lot of us are familiar with the scandalous popes
of years gone by, but we're maybe not as um
as aware of the the pornography that that the Catholic
Church unwittingly created, unleashed on the world. That's it. That's
the thing though, right, I mean, it's sort of like
(28:28):
the idea of uh, I don't know, prostitution or sex
work being the oldest profession. I don't know. That's sort
of a misnomer probably, but it makes sense because it's
a thing that people in some form or fashion need.
It's like a gap people need filled. Well that's very
very graphic sounding. Um, but in terms of like there's artists,
why wouldn't artists do this, It's sort of I wonder
if they didn't even realize, like the idea that that
(28:49):
this can be a stand in for actual, you know, sex,
because someone had to invent the idea of pornography, rightly,
I think it's parallel thinking. I mean fairly certain many
lonely people invented the idea of pornigraphy, erotic cave painting
and sculptures, you know, the venus figures, that's right, I
(29:13):
I you know, I've got to admit I'm usually laser
focused when we're exploring these fascinating stories and all, but
I still have this pdf up and it is startling. Yeah,
and it is a it is a splash of cold water. Really.
So you can find you can find this book. You
can find translations of it available on Amazon. Again, again
(29:36):
categorically emphatically not safe for work. But what a strange,
amazing story and what a bizarre effect this had on
the world. Were okay though, right we looked at it
at work. Yeah, job, it is it is literally our job.
We had a reason for. If I t comes at us,
we can say we were doing this for an episode
(29:58):
at least I was I don't want to. I mean,
I'm I'm I'm along for the right before I'm hanging
onto your coat tails, story going? We are going home
or to the bar or something that's right. This concludes
today's episode, but not our show. We do hope you
enjoyed this, this strange journey we're in. Uh where in
(30:20):
both of us? Uh? Did take? Did take some off
air breaks? Laughing a bit? Because we're emotionally both Probably
what nine between us combined combined? That's a cumulative effect.
Are our powers combined? We are a nine year old boy? Great? Uh?
So we want to hear your stories too. What are
(30:40):
some of the weird scandalous tales of art in years
gone by? Did you end up with a copy of
the Commissuitra when you were fourteen? I did? You did? Sure? Did?
I saw one? But I never had my old copy.
I had it hidden under my mattress. That's fine, I'm
going with it. No, that's good. Good for you, man.
(31:01):
It feels kind of academic. It's academic, and it's also
personally liberating for me. There there you go, man, Thanks
for joining us for the show. Thanks as always to
our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Decade La Bouche Casey Pegram.
We'll be back very soon. It's true he's returning. Thanks
also to Christopher Haciotis, Thanks to our research associate Gabe.
(31:23):
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed that nifty little riff
you here at the opening of every show. And by
the way, we promised to do this on a previous
episode but did not get to it. I just want
to point out that Alex's fantastic new show Ephemeral, is
live in the feed on any place you get your podcast,
and the episode he talked with us about concerning the
(31:43):
Call Your Brothers, we had said on the episode that
it wasn't coming out for another month or so. He
actually switched it up and it is now out in
the Ephemeral feed, So go catch that and get the
whole story of these weird kind of hermidy horder brothers,
good save, good save, well done, and well put. Because
we did. We did assure him, yeah, we'll do it,
(32:04):
We'll do it in a previous episode, but now we
have finally made good on it. Alex, if you were
listening every soon to be ardent fan of ephemeral, go
check it out. Do not hesitate. So we'll be back
very soon with a new ridiculous and hopefully a bit
less salacious episode into it. I was perfectly comfortable, except
when you said the thing about the old man and
(32:25):
the garlic bread. That really threw meant to me. Yeah,
like that's gonna stay with me. It really is. It's
a it's an image, that's for sure. You and I
have read the full things the rest of it. I
stopped there. Um, But if you want to share any
of this stuff with us, Comma Sutra, any of the poetry,
any of this kind of you know, what your whatever,
(32:45):
your sexual journey has been. Maybe that's too much. We
don't need all that, but you can do it either
by joining us on our Facebook group, which is called
Ridiculous Historians, or we have a really cool community of friends,
folks that like the show, that are talking to each other,
sharing memes, discussing the episodes. All of that. All you
have to do is say either me and Ben's name
kind of Genie style to gain entry, or honestly say
(33:08):
something that gives either of us at chuckle also sure
it's a good pun. I'm Missycher For those You can
also find us on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram,
both as a show and as our real life personas. Recently,
I went to the Comic Strip Museum in Belgium and
was very surprised by the deeply racist roots of that.
(33:31):
You can see some of those adventures of my instagram
where I am at Ben Bully and I am at
how Now Noel Brown. If you want to do any
of that stuff, just shoot us an email where we
are ridiculous at i heart radio dot com. See you
next time. Books. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(33:51):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. We we have a a bit of a
disclaimer I think, or a bit of a bit of
a thing we must say for the beginning of this episode,
and is just like a trigger warning or now is
that different? Is that the same as a disclaimer? I
I guess a trigger warning is a genre of a
disclaimer knoll Um. But yeah, either way, it's it's a
(00:50):
thing you have to say at the top this episode.
We are kind of a family show, you know, you
and I we were, and our super producer Paul Mission
controlled that Kent as well as our super producer Casey Pegram,
who has returned, as it turns out, from his secret
life as an international criminal. What is the exactly again?
(01:14):
I keep getting them the stories mixed up? He is,
simply so, you know, all of us on this show,
including our including our producer Maya Cole give it up
for her. Its our first day you know wave tour.
They're all of us are generally like PG people, maybe
PG thirteen. This is not a it's not a hard hitting,
(01:35):
mature theme show. And on the show. On this show,
we in our personal lives, we can oh my gosh,
it goes off wow very quickly. But but today's show
uh no Fooling does encounter some things that may not
be may not be appropriate for all listeners. So if
you're one of the very very kind teachers whoever whoever
(01:59):
uses show uh for for your students, surely that's not
a thing I think cople of times. Yeah, But if
you're one of those teachers, UM, listen through the entirety
of this episode before playing it for your your students,
Or if you're some kind of prude and prone to
pearl clutching, um, I would also maybe skip this one,
or maybe give it a go, and it will make
(02:21):
you grow up a little bit. You will have you,
You'll have that Aladdin a whole New world moment. Right.
That's my favorite part of that movie. It is such
an amazing movie overall. Are you going to see the
live version? I gotta say that the physics of it
absolute garbage. They would be torn to shreds or they
would like suffocateing on the carpet. Give me a break.
I always thought the carpet sort of created this field.
(02:42):
You are vetsy magical thinking. I like that. It's it's
a story about magic. Is quality, suspension of disbelief, my friend,
well done, speaking suspension of disbelief. Yeah, that's a weird
that's a weird segue. But today's episode addresses a little
bit of hypocrisy in Catholic Church. Uh, addresses something that
(03:04):
you and I both I think found fascinating but maybe
not entirely surprising. Yeah, possibly a little titilating, Yes, yes,
a little a bit of twitter patient indeed, we should
get right to it. Um. Today's episode is I don't know,
you could kind of this is a bit of a
miss number to refer to it like this, but I
still like it. The band sixteenth century pornographic sex guide
(03:26):
made in you guessed it, the Vatican True story. True story, folks, Yes,
this is this is entirely uh, this is entirely nonfictional.
So nowadays, when people think of the pope right the
the head of the Catholic Church, we typically are going
(03:47):
to think of maybe someone who's kind of isolated, kindly
older man in white with a unique set of hats.
But in sent trees leading up to the modern day,
popes were somewhat uh, salacious or what's that other word
(04:07):
we were, Yes, well, I mean, you know, here's the
thing too, there's a public facing pope ness, and then
there's the private facing Pope nous. I made up the
word pop nous just now, but I thought it was good.
I think I'm okay with it. Um, But think about
I mean, we know this from all the expose a
s that have been going on about the Catholic Church
for decades now and beyond. Where As it turns out
(04:29):
some of these kindly older gentlemen in their you know,
robes and whatnot, we're actually not so kindly at all,
and we're doing pretty terrible things behind closed doors when
they thought they could get away with it. Um, this
is not that necessarily. This is a little more just
being a little on the naughty side and perhaps commissioning,
as legend would have it. There's different version of the
story some pornographic art in a particular space in the
(04:53):
Vatican that is now referred to as the solid Deconstantino,
Well done done, what an authentico accent? Oh thank you?
Do you remember that earlier conversation. Uh, this is the
point you brought up, Nold, that I thought was very
interesting where I can't remember whether this was on air
of whether we were just hanging out after work, but
(05:15):
you said you said to me, like, Ben, you notice
that we're always very careful not to stereotype people were
do unfair caricatures, except for Italian people and apparently Australians.
We got an email where people were like, hey, I
really like the show, but all you ever do talk
we would talk about about my home country is bad
Australian accents and Genitalia references. I believe little Australia. But
(05:38):
that's that's neither here nor there um. But yeah, we
do try our best to being to be thoughtful and
uh in courteous. So if there is anything that sounds
like a stereotypical or Italian accent or caricature where thereof
it is simply our bad pronunciation and feel pretty gell
at us. So. The Satellah Dick Constantina is one of
the largest rooms in the Vatican and at this point
(06:01):
in time it depicts um kind of Fresco paintings of
the first Roman emperor to convert Christianity, constantine Um, and
it is believed by some, though I don't I have
not found any equivocal and equivocal evidence for this that
those were painted on top of some rather selaceous uh
(06:23):
let's call it Renaissance pin up type type paintings, right right. Yeah,
The way this story goes is that once upon a time, uh,
there were a series of there were there were a
series of very explicit paintings of lovers historical figures throughout history,
(06:46):
in explicit, explicit uh romantic positions. Yeah, and I mean
more so than just depictions, like they were almost intended
to be like a guide book, sort of like the
Commis or something like that. And I think there were
how many of them? Were there been sixteen? Yes, there
were six sixteen for the sixteenth century. That's totally why
(07:09):
they did that. And um, we'll get to this in
a little bit. But Raphael was one of the most
well renowned artists of the time and adorned many a
room in the Vatican with his incredibly elaborate what would
you call the style of Raphael ben uh. He was
the he's considered the architect of the High Renaissance. Full
(07:29):
name rafael O Sonzio da Urbino, and he was born
in fourteen eighty three, passed away at the age of
thirty seven in fifteen twenty, allegedly after a night of
wild passion. Wild passion. Yeah, all signs point to Rafael
being a bit of a of a horny boy and
keeping company with some others of that ilk um. There
(07:52):
was sort of a cabal of these sort of letchy
older men that kicked it in this particular palazzo that
belonged to a man who was a patron of the
arts by the name of Augustine. No cheege cheese. Is
it like gelie chee cheegye. I'm gonna do a hard
g What do you think? I think it was a
very smart move to put both of those pronunciations out
(08:14):
there so yell at me about the wrong one and
praised me for the correct I it is. It's going
to be okay, do you think so? I think it'll
be okay? Dude. The the ire of the Internet never
ceases to terrify me. Well, it's spelled c h I
g I c h I. Banker to the Vatican, Banker
to the Vatican, like iron bank kind of dude, right serious,
like like power behind the purse to the Vatican, one
(08:36):
of the most powerful institutions in the world. And he
would have Uh, I don't know, I've I've heard them
referred to as wild garden parties. Um. And he owned
a palatial estate by the Tiber River and had a
vast collection of erotic art, including a particularly lewed statue
of uh Greek god and fellow horny boy Pan or Puck. Right,
(09:01):
likely anatomically correct, I think, is what we're getting at.
Despite his day job, his private life was extraordinarily hedonistic,
there's a fair way to say this. And he and
his pals were considered libertarian, but not the way we
think of libertarianism today, in terse of you know, being
pro weed and anti anti government in any sense. Right, yeah, yeah,
(09:24):
this means that they were, in contrast to the official
doctrine or public view of the Catholic Church. They were
very now let's say open, right, they are at this
point kind of polyamorous swingers. They're yeah, they're seeking all this. Uh,
They're they're seeking the carnal pleasures. Uh. It's similar to
(09:48):
Hugh Hefner's playboy mansion. This is this is a surprisingly
apt comparison. They likely had a grotto in this particular
state as well. I would imagine, Yes, Uh, and they
had a lot of guests uh the upper echelons of
society at the time. One regular guest was a writer
named Pietro Aretino, and he described the erotic art in
(10:09):
this famous villa by saying, why shouldn't the I see
what delights it most? Exactly? Because the Vatican was infamous
for covering up nude sculptures, any kind of depiction of
the male nude form or female new form, they would
require the artist to drape it like um, I believe
Michelangelo's one of his famous some of his famous nudes
(10:30):
were required to be added onto with additional material to
cover them up, kind of like the Statue of Liberty
originally had the exactly that's right, I totally forgot it,
or like the famous fig leaves of that dam and
even on that's totally but I think that Artino very
accurately summed up what this whole kind of cabal of dudes,
with their whole like kind of therapy of life, kind
(10:54):
of Fidelio kind of vibe, was all about, why shouldn't
the I see what delights him most exactly? So in
his bedroom, the banker Cheegy had a fresco of Alexander
the Great in a in a sexually explicit position with
his wife Roxanne and Rafael himself. Like Rafael is famous
(11:18):
at this time, he has a team of people working
under him. So it's a big deal that he himself
paints some of the most famous frescoes in the villa.
But according to his biographer, an author named A. V. Sarry,
Raphael himself uh couldn't work properly in this environment because
(11:40):
uh the sorry says the guy had a sex addiction. Uh.
So Raphael's lover at the time had to be given
a bedroom in the in the location, so he would
paint and then go full around and then go back
and paint, rinse and repeat. Uh. And this, according again
to his biographer, is what is what actually, this is
(12:02):
the situation that led to his death at the early
age of thirty seven. And he left. When he passed away,
he left his his business, his work to his most
talented assistant, a guy named Giulio Romano or Gulio Romano.
Let's think about him the way we might think of
a modern street artist today. Right, A lot of these
(12:23):
folks are known as the you know, power behind the throne,
and like the style guide of like this, you know,
everything associated with this person's brand. But everyone from like
a shepherd ferry to likely a banks or whatever has
like teams of people working with them to help them
recreate their work and like do it in different locations,
especially when it comes to like reproducible stuff. And so
(12:43):
this assistant was kind of his right hand man and
could literally take the baton and kind of like keep
the business going after his uh, you know what would
you call it his master? Now his boss, I guess
his boss. Yeah, after his mentor after he uh you know,
I had a very erotic death, very erotic death the
(13:04):
story of Rafael. Yes, and so now now this guy
is the successor. Here, Romano is in charge of this team.
He has inherited this. One of the connections he inherits
is a printmaker named Mark Cantonio Ramondi. I want to backtrack,
You're just slightly not backtrack really, but this is where
(13:25):
the story diverges a little bit. I've seen a couple
of spots that say, okay, he was hired to paint
that Constantine room, which was considered one of the Raphael
rooms in the Vatican because Rafael had done many of them.
But then this room was left uncompleted, uh when he
had passed away, So his assistant was supposed to go
(13:45):
in there and finish it. I've seen that. And then, um,
I know Pope Leo the tenth was going to make
Rafael like an honorary high Church officials because of all
his work that he had done. It's really funny considering
that he was a known sex addict and kind of letch.
But that didn't come to fruition because he of course
passed away. But whoever employed his assistant to supposedly paint
(14:08):
this room, Um, the assistant got irritated at him, legend says,
and he instead decided to paint these sixteen erotic scenes
on these panels. That's one version of the story. Yeah,
and there are a couple of different versions. So before
raw Fael's death, just just to rewind in time a
bit in fifteen sixty and a guy named Cardinal Bibiana
commissions Rafael to decorate his personal bathroom with these nude
(14:32):
nymphs bathing while uh, very anatomically correct satyrs are spying
on them. And this only flies because the cardinals bathroom
is considered a private place, right so these various works
of art, explicit sexual art, were never meant to be
a matter of public discussion or even public knowledge, right,
(14:56):
uh it goes. Is the same way with the erotic
frescoes on the wall alls of the solid Diconstantino. Whether
they were commissioned or drawn out of spite, right, that's
the that's the big divergence on the story. They were
either commissioned on purpose or drawn as kind of a troll. Well,
it is a divergence of the story. But then I've
also seen a version of the story where the Vatican
doesn't come into it at all, like where this guy
(15:19):
just drew these himself and then had them and then
had had them maker, the printmaker dismate, disseminate them. Because
that's where we get into more of the idea of
this thing, as this collection of nudes, as being the
first form of widely circulated pornography, right the sixteen postures
as they came to be known. So so the printer
(15:42):
Marcantonio Rimondi engraves and prints these explicit illustrations of sex
acts drawn by Romano, and he publishes this in fifty
four under the title I Moody, which translates as the positions.
And this is not erotic cu this is not you know,
(16:03):
some sort of sensitive exploration of the human esthetic visually.
This is pornography. Yeah, dude, I'm looking at him right now.
They are They're really They're in SFW. They really really are.
If you want to get a look at them, if
you're really interested, you can go there's an article on
Dangerous Minds dot net that has all of them. Actually
that's not true, that we'll get to this. They ultimately
are lost to time, but the idea of what they
(16:25):
are were was recreated because it created like a whole
new genre of stuff, you know, which is like, let's
depict sex x and as frank away as humanly possible,
often with satyrs and mythical creatures as well, so that
you're gonna see a lot of that stuff. So if
you want to catch that yourself, it is n SFWS.
Ben said, you can go to dangerous mind dot net
and the headline is an eighteenth century guide to sex position.
(16:46):
So you can just search for that right there. Great site.
And I'm sure many people have just probably run into
that earlier. Why wouldn't you have? Why would you not? So?
According let's go back to this divergence in the story.
According to Lynn Loner, who is an art story and
focusing on the Renaissance in Italy, in fifty three, Giulio
began the decoration of the solid de Konstantino and the Vatican,
(17:09):
and the pope at the time, Clement the seventh, was
tardy in paying the bill, and hence the beef, and
hence the beef, and so then he says, all right,
you know what, I'll keep working, but I'm gonna draw
these sixteen postures. That doesn't make sense. That would be
a real risk to do that when don't you think
do you think he felt like totally above the law
(17:31):
that he could like essentially graffiti this guy's walls with
what would be considered filth, you know, because let's not
forget the collected versions of these we're jumping around time
a little bit. Ultimately end up getting the printer whose
name I'm is escaping me now Ben, who's the printer
Raymond getting him thrown in jail by the pope. So
(17:54):
the idea of maybe some of these nudes existing behind
closed doors, like you said, Ben and private um, maybe
wouldn't have caused the pope to totally go full ham
on it and trying to, you know, censor it out.
But once it starts being disseminated, you now in printed form.
It it's it's um. It's like something that has to
be squashed. Right. Let's talk a little bit about Pope
(18:16):
Clement the seventh as well. He's a real peach. So
he was pope from three to fifteen thirty four. Uh.
He was known for being a bit of a flip flopper.
He didn't really keep his word. He would make and
break alliances with France, Spain, and Germany over the course
(18:37):
of his papacy. He was inclined to changing his political
views to match those of whoever was the most powerful
and wealthy at the time, and as a result, his
critics said that he was not to be trusted. So
he was the sort of he, at least from what
we can tell historically, he was the sort of person
(18:58):
who would attempt to swindle people out of money, which
is where where this whole thing begins. If you, if
you trust the historians who say that the postures arrive
out of spite. When the sixteen Postures are published, as
you said, Ramondi is thrown in jail by Clement the
seventh and because the printmaker has some powerful friends, he
(19:20):
is eventually released. But you can't screw the lid back
on Pandora's jar here now, and instead that not only
do they not screw the lid back on Pandora's jar,
they like bespoke the jar even further. Because you remember
that guy ar and Tino we talked about, who had
that fantastic quote about give the eyes what they want
or whatever. Um, he really wanted to double down and
(19:41):
lean into that because he uh composed sixteen absolutely filthy,
raunchy sonnets that described each of the of the scenes
in poetically graphic detail. Uh. And in a an introduction
to this book, the new addition the just sort of
an incantation to the reader, an invocation, yes, exactly, invocation
(20:04):
of the muses of of of raunchiness. H quote, come
view this, you who liked to okay without being disturbed
in that sweet enterprise, I would have added a second suite.
I would have been that sweet sweet enterprise. Yeah. Well,
we have the benefit of retrospect editorialism. So this is
(20:26):
a blockbuster, absolute smash, no pun intended. Yeah, yeah, it's
uh It's strange because Romano, the guy who was made
these images, has already absconded from Rome. He is a
court artist in Mantua and RAYMONDI you know, before he
(20:47):
was released, he was stuck in prisoned by himself, and
the church attempted to seize and destroy all copies of
the book. They didn't want that getting out. The Church
is really good at eradicating unflattering literature, sure are, yeah,
But in fifteen seven Imodi was reissued with those licentious
poems we mentioned earlier, and it became a blockbuster. It
(21:11):
was selling out across Europe, and the book had many names.
It was called Imody, the posture, the fashion. It's also
known as Tarantino's Postures, the sixteen Pleasures, or the omnibus
venerischimatibus nias huh as Latin, what does schematibus man? It
must mean some form of position. In fact, when I
(21:33):
google the word, the first thing that comes up as
emodi again, so that obviously just refers to the function
and practice of moving the limbs around in particular arrays. Right, yeah, exactly.
So this did more than just make money and get
people thrown in jail. Though it was one of those
rare works of erotica, or let's be honest, pornography that
(21:55):
jumped from niche to mainstream. You know what I mean.
It's sort of like, in a way, it's similar to
fifty Shades of Gray. Yeah, that's true. And there's a
really great article from Atlas Obscura called Europe's first pornographic
blockbuster was made in the Vatican that makes that very connection.
Or something like Deep Throat, which was a pornographic film
(22:17):
that became pretty widely disseminated and almost like tongue in
cheeckenly Uh talked about in you know, polite social circles,
right right, people would performatively clutch their peoples and hide
their faces gibbling. Yeah, so you refer to it as
a joke, you know what I mean, to be a
little bit edgy in conversation. Some people will even argue
(22:38):
that William Shakespeare himself snuck a reference to this book
in Uh in a Winter's Tale when he talks about
that rare Italian master Julio Romano. There was a sixteenth
century Italian phrase book that was aimed at English tourists,
and it taught them how to ask in Italian for
(23:01):
the works of Arantino at bookstores to must dude. But alas,
I guess I'm gonna say, Alas, I mean, thankfully we
have these these lovely recreations that you can see on
the dangerous mind side. But the book itself, and as
far as I know, the text of the Sonnets are
pretty much worked successfully eradicated by the Vatican, and the
(23:21):
original the original frescoes as well. If you'd like to
believe that they're buried underneath those uh those you know,
paintings of Constantine, the Life of Constantine. You know, that's
possibly one way you could uncover that mystery, if you
want to go in there and start scraping away the
paint not recommending that. Wait wait, wait, I'll recogn serious
business due they will throw you in some sort of
like dungeon. Listen to me, carefully, grad students, art historians.
(23:48):
I my spider sense tells me there might be a
grant in here, maybe even a dissertation. Surely there's a
way you could X ray them or something and penetrate
I mean, I'm not sure exactly how technology works. Really,
that's not what kind show this is. But but it's
true that there were illegal or bootleg copies of IMODI
or things purporting to be IMODI that were printed for
(24:09):
over a century afterwards, well into the sixt hundreds. There's
no way to know how many works were printed, but
because churches and governments cooperated to hunt down and destroy
the copies, at least with as much enthusiasm as people
sought to collect and print them. We don't have a
(24:30):
record of the actual sixteen postures that were depicted. Well,
there's a few. We don't have all a few little
scrappys that remain in the collection of the British Museum.
We do have the sudence I found some and off
the air it sent these two as well. Uh there.
(24:54):
You know, you can blame a little bit on the translation.
But they're pretty. They're pretty body. Let's like Canterbury Tales
body or like. So okay, so we'll I'll read one, okay,
and we'll we'll need to beat this. So Paul, I'm
(25:14):
gonna make eye contact with you. Be ready for this.
That's some intense eye contact right there. I moved here. Yeah, okay,
here we go. Stick your finger up my old man.
Thrust caso in a little at a time, Lift up
my leg maneuver well, now pound with all inhibitions gone.
Oh I got bad. It's worse. I believe this is
(25:36):
a tastier feast than eating garlic bread before a fire.
It goes on. Okay, wow, I get what you were expecting. No,
I don't see. When you start bringing the food metaphors
in there, that's when it really turns turns me, dude,
And we should talk about this. Can we talk about this?
We can totally not read any of those effort again. Um, yeah,
I took one for the team. God, Oh my good heavens. Okay, So,
(26:00):
speaking of pearl clutching, I'm I'm being I'm i am
very much blushing. Listen that we gotta we gotta get
this out of the way. Before we went on the air,
we were deciding whether or not to like, whether to
use the word pornography or porn and you Ben mentioned
that you always felt the word porn was more salacious nowadays,
and we were trying to figure out why that was.
(26:21):
I don't know why. Yeah, it must it must entirely
be a subjective thing. I guess. Um, pornography at least
sounds a little more academic, I guess. And Also, there's
something that puts me ill at ease when people describe
non sexual things as porn, like when people say, oh,
food porn, or even when you know, I saw somebody
(26:43):
who was I met someone's dog. I love dogs, and
uh I was. I was rubbing the dog's belly and
the dog's owner says, oh, yeah, she's she's like such
a slept for belly rubs, and that was really gross
to me. We're just scratching this dog. Well, you know,
I mean, people are taking that word back, but I
think that that's a good point. I I really am
with you on the food stuff. Like, I don't think
(27:05):
either one of us like it when someone describes a
bite of cake as orgasmic or or sumptuous. It just
didn't know. It turns me, it turns, it turns my
exquisite is fine, that's not exit. I was just feeling
the riff. Yeah, no, it's true. But I think we've
got to the bottom of it. I think both of
us feel the same way. But I think we used
a combination of porn and pornography in this episode because
(27:25):
it was you know, it's about all the all the
mini shades, fifty shades of of renaissance, uh erotica. And
that's also I think why that Sonnet really did it
for me, not in a good way, because once you
started bringing garlic bread into the equation, I'm like, leave
garlic bread out of uh. It's it's funny because this
(27:45):
is UH sort of producer replise literal first day. We
did warn her, we do, we try to. We're not
a naughty show. We're not. We are we are if
we are nothing if not wholesome. We are very old general.
But this is this is fascinating because I think a
lot of I think a lot of people who enjoy
reading about the history of the Catholic Church. I think
(28:07):
a lot of us are familiar with the scandalous popes
of years gone by, but we're maybe not as um
as aware of the the pornography that that the Catholic
Church unwittingly created, unleashed on the world. That's it. That's
the thing though, right, I mean, it's sort of like
(28:28):
the idea of uh, I don't know, prostitution or sex
work being the oldest profession. I don't know. That's sort
of a misnomer probably, but it makes sense because it's
a thing that people in some form or fashion need.
It's like a gap people need filled. Well that's very
very graphic sounding. Um, but in terms of like there's artists,
why wouldn't artists do this, It's sort of I wonder
if they didn't even realize, like the idea that that
(28:49):
this can be a stand in for actual, you know, sex,
because someone had to invent the idea of pornography, rightly,
I think it's parallel thinking. I mean fairly certain many
lonely people invented the idea of pornigraphy, erotic cave painting
and sculptures, you know, the venus figures, that's right, I
(29:13):
I you know, I've got to admit I'm usually laser
focused when we're exploring these fascinating stories and all, but
I still have this pdf up and it is startling. Yeah,
and it is a it is a splash of cold water. Really.
So you can find you can find this book. You
can find translations of it available on Amazon. Again, again
(29:36):
categorically emphatically not safe for work. But what a strange,
amazing story and what a bizarre effect this had on
the world. Were okay though, right we looked at it
at work. Yeah, job, it is it is literally our job.
We had a reason for. If I t comes at us,
we can say we were doing this for an episode
(29:58):
at least I was I don't want to. I mean,
I'm I'm I'm along for the right before I'm hanging
onto your coat tails, story going? We are going home
or to the bar or something that's right. This concludes
today's episode, but not our show. We do hope you
enjoyed this, this strange journey we're in. Uh where in
(30:20):
both of us? Uh? Did take? Did take some off
air breaks? Laughing a bit? Because we're emotionally both Probably
what nine between us combined combined? That's a cumulative effect.
Are our powers combined? We are a nine year old boy? Great? Uh?
So we want to hear your stories too. What are
(30:40):
some of the weird scandalous tales of art in years
gone by? Did you end up with a copy of
the Commissuitra when you were fourteen? I did? You did? Sure? Did?
I saw one? But I never had my old copy.
I had it hidden under my mattress. That's fine, I'm
going with it. No, that's good. Good for you, man.
(31:01):
It feels kind of academic. It's academic, and it's also
personally liberating for me. There there you go, man, Thanks
for joining us for the show. Thanks as always to
our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Decade La Bouche Casey Pegram.
We'll be back very soon. It's true he's returning. Thanks
also to Christopher Haciotis, Thanks to our research associate Gabe.
(31:23):
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed that nifty little riff
you here at the opening of every show. And by
the way, we promised to do this on a previous
episode but did not get to it. I just want
to point out that Alex's fantastic new show Ephemeral, is
live in the feed on any place you get your podcast,
and the episode he talked with us about concerning the
(31:43):
Call Your Brothers, we had said on the episode that
it wasn't coming out for another month or so. He
actually switched it up and it is now out in
the Ephemeral feed, So go catch that and get the
whole story of these weird kind of hermidy horder brothers,
good save, good save, well done, and well put. Because
we did. We did assure him, yeah, we'll do it,
(32:04):
We'll do it in a previous episode, but now we
have finally made good on it. Alex, if you were
listening every soon to be ardent fan of ephemeral, go
check it out. Do not hesitate. So we'll be back
very soon with a new ridiculous and hopefully a bit
less salacious episode into it. I was perfectly comfortable, except
when you said the thing about the old man and
(32:25):
the garlic bread. That really threw meant to me. Yeah,
like that's gonna stay with me. It really is. It's
a it's an image, that's for sure. You and I
have read the full things the rest of it. I
stopped there. Um, But if you want to share any
of this stuff with us, Comma Sutra, any of the poetry,
any of this kind of you know, what your whatever,
(32:45):
your sexual journey has been. Maybe that's too much. We
don't need all that, but you can do it either
by joining us on our Facebook group, which is called
Ridiculous Historians, or we have a really cool community of friends,
folks that like the show, that are talking to each other,
sharing memes, discussing the episodes. All of that. All you
have to do is say either me and Ben's name
kind of Genie style to gain entry, or honestly say
(33:08):
something that gives either of us at chuckle also sure
it's a good pun. I'm Missycher For those You can
also find us on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram,
both as a show and as our real life personas. Recently,
I went to the Comic Strip Museum in Belgium and
was very surprised by the deeply racist roots of that.
(33:31):
You can see some of those adventures of my instagram
where I am at Ben Bully and I am at
how Now Noel Brown. If you want to do any
of that stuff, just shoot us an email where we
are ridiculous at i heart radio dot com. See you
next time. Books. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(33:51):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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