There is many a delightful story in Miroslav Bertoša’s Times of Violence, Times of Fear,[1] covering all sorts of crimes in Istria of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. One of them is of Meneghina Moretti and Giulio Gravisi.[2] As is always the case with Bertoša, who does not like inventing things, it was plucked from the rich Venetian archives. Giulio was a nobleman, and Meneghina was from a rich merchant family. Both were from Buzet. He was twenty-four when the story begins, and she was seventeen. Meneghina’s family took Giulio to court for deflowering her without marrying her. He spent about four months in jail before it was found out that it was she who had pursued him in the amorous affair rather than the other way around. In short, he was a victim of her charms, and she was a most charming young woman. Giulio was released, and Meneghina’s family disinherited her without much ado. According to the morals of the time, it was up to him to pursue her, and her behavior was thus deeply immoral. Abandoned by all, having not a dime to her name, she ended up in Kopar on the Istrian coast, where she turned into a prostitute. Or donna del mondo in the language of the archives. What a wonderful term for a modern woman!

Footnotes

1. Zagreb: Durieux, 2011.

2. Op. cit., pp. 352-357.