Abstract

Clizia, the titular protagonist of Machiavelli's play, was trapped between her master's sexual advances and her mistress's attempt to avoid scandal. For their part, and with no arbiter in sight, husband and wife remained at strategic loggerheads as to whom the young girl should marry. After lengthy bickering, a solution finally emerged:Sofronia: Who should we turn to?Nicomaco: Who else but to our own confessor fra Timoteo, who is a little saint and has already performed several miracles.Sofronia: Such as?Nicomaco: What do you mean, “Such as?” Don't you know that through his prayers donna Lucrezia, messer Nicia Calfucci's sterile wife, became pregnant?Sofronia: What a miracle, a friar gets a woman pregnant! It would have been a real miracle if a nun got her pregnant!