HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE  
           LIBER MALEDICTUS  
                     
               PART XII  
                     
   Catholic Theology and the laws of 
  nations where monotheistic religions 
  have had a de facto monopoly of the 
 state, view obscene imagery as a fount 
    of infectious criminal and moral 
disease. Those who come in contact with 
   it, not only become infected, but 
    commit a sin and a crime in the 
process. This conception is less absurd 
  than it may, at first glance, seem.  
                     
                  ***  
                     
        The criminalization and 
  "diabolicization" of eroticism had a 
  sound rational basis - an attempt to 
    contain the epidemic of venereal 
diseases which had plagued Europe since 
     the late Middle Ages and whose 
  consequences, especially during the 
  Renaissance, were only slightly less 
disastrous than those of the cholera or 
          plague epidemics.   
                     
                  ***  
                     
 Lascivious literature and imagery were 
 considered, and not without reason, to 
   be as hazardous to one's physical 
   health and well-being as it was to 
   one's spiritual well-being or the 
 health of one's soul. Porn did indeed 
 pose a certain risk, albeit indirect, 
    of contracting disease. It most 
   certainly can, in some instances, 
 produce an inducement to having sexual 
 relations - a rather risky pastime in 
 an era of such frightening epidemics.  
                     
                  ***  
                     
  Iconographic production, for its own 
   purely technical reasons which had 
  little to do with either theology or 
   morality, was quite successful in 
defining the maximum level of lubricity 
   possible with any given process of 
           image production.  
                     
                  ***  
                     
 Drawings can reach levels of eroticism 
   unreachable for prints produced by 
  metal-plate engraving in the process 
 called chalcography. The level of this 
  latter procedure may be surpassed by 
   lithography, while resulting more 
  lascivious than woodcut prints. The 
.prurience of painting may surpass all 
 these, but photography surely remains 
     the most compelling of all.    
                     
                  ***  
                     
Because of its potential for augmenting 
 imagery's "lubricity level", progress 
 in the techniques of image production 
 has for centuries had to contend with 
  the obstacles placed in its path by 
 religious morality as well as criminal 
   law. That progress should overcome 
    these obstacles, was and remains 
   inevitable, thanks largely to the 
 general principles of merchandising.   
                     
                  ***  
                     
    Despite the relentless and often 
   ferocious repression which Aretino 
 rather polemically dubbed, "the swine 
practice of prohibiting the eye to gaze 
   upon that which most it desires", 
     neither Religion nor the State 
 succeeded in castrating the eroticism 
 of the sense of sight - a component of 
    eroticism as necessary to sexual 
   satisfaction as physical contact.  
                     
                  ***  
                     
 The most censurable (according to the 
   theological hierarchy) of the acts 
 depicted the original chalcographs by 
Marcantonio Raimondi (which were passed 
 down through the woodcuts to end up in 
this CD) is sodomy. Indeed, in the Kama 
  Sutra of I MODI this "unnatural" act 
    appears as frequently as normal 
    intercourse. The "sin of sight", 
scopophilia, accompanies each and every 
  act. One might even say it is their 
  raison d'etre - the couples depicted 
     are acting for the pleasure of 
   observing and exhibiting their own 
       penetrating experiences.  
                     
                  ***  
                     
 From the point of view of sexological 
 behaviour analysis and the sexographic 
study of its representation, I MODI are 
   masterpieces of exhibitionism and 
    scopophilic sin, better know as  
 voyeurism, a sinful impulse satisfied 
 as well by coitus as by sodomy.   Only 
once is there even the vaguest allusion 
to male cunnilinctus and in no instance 
  is there any reference to the dread 
           sin of fellatio. 
                     
                     
                  ***  
                     
  In comparison to currents trends in  
   photographic and cinematographic   
 hard-core porn, and even according to 
 the theological scale of sexual guilt, 
    the woodcut images of the Liber 
  Maledictus are, on the whole, rather 
  tame. Nevertheless, their obscenity 
 content depends, not on the monotonous 
 depiction of the sexual habits of the 
    time, but on the medium of their 
    expression  - a wooden template 
     which, in terms of information 
  quantity, can attain a mere hundred 
 thousandth of the visual vividness of 
        today's optical images.