The Salacious Life of Casanova
Casanova - not the most handsome guy in the world...
Giacomo Casanova (1725-98) was more than just a man of the world. His manipulative charm enabled him to get round almost anyone. He even convinced the Pope to give him a dispensation to read pornographic books, which were forbidden by the Church. He managed to move around the highest aristocratic circles. Due to his extravagant lifestyle he was often in debt, and running away from angry creditors. He developed quite a reputation for seducing the ladies and so in 1755, at the age of 30, he was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition, charged with contempt for religion and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Of course, being Casanova, he could not stand for this and escaped from prison, and went on to travel throughout Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, England, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Russia and Asia Minor, having numerous affairs on the way.
Casanova was said to know how to manipulate women's minds as well as their bodies. He would make sure he had captivated them psychologicaly, before moving on to the physical part of the affair. Although his 'love' was passionate it was short-lived and ended once he had sated his desire fully, at which point he would move on to another woman. I reckon nowadays he would be known as a cad.
Casanova's sex life was in no need of spicing up, as one can see from his memoirs too. He generally preferred one to one sex with women, had a penchant for anal sex and sometimes liked to have two women in bed simultaneously. He also liked going to orgies. Homosexual wasn't really his thing but he did have some such encounters. One of these was in Turkey with the then Turkish foreign minister, another was fondling the penis of the impotent Duke Maddaloni and the most important was an encounter with a Lieutenant Lutin in St. Petersburg, who apparently looked like a woman. In Casanova's own words: "...he took hold of me and, believing that he found he pleased me, put himself in a position to make both of us happy."
Comments
There never was a single monolithic office of ‘The Inquisition’ except in later legend. Instead, in the Middle Ages there were independent inquisitors who travelled around giving their support to local tribunals and occasionally acting independently. Later particular circumstances caused inquisition tribunals to be set up in Spain, Portugal, Venice, Rome, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Most of these were independent except for nominal control by the papacy. The way these local tribunals were run was culture specific and depended on their political support and the strength of competing sources of judicial control.
(Sources: page 439, Kelly; page 122, Edward Peters Inquisition California University Press, 1989)
On a more frivolous note, as for Casanova not having been a handsome fellow, I have little doubt he would have appealed to modern sensibilities, but on the other hand I think he looks radically different in every portrait of him I've seen. He looks horrid in the one you posted, and actually OK in this one (lipstick and mascara aside): http://www.chocolate.org/misc/giacomo-casanova.html. Anyway, a few tid-bits for Casanova beginners, just for starters:
Casanova is no two-dimensional cad, it says so here, too!:
http://billbeuttler.com/work29.htm
Wikipedia, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Casanova
Everything that Casanova has ever written or published (how did the guy find the time besides everything else that he got up to?!): http://users.dickinson.edu/~emery/works.htm
Some rather nice illustrations based upon his Memoirs, by one Auguste Leroux: http://www.cubra.nl/casanova/index.htm