On October 31, 1501, the Papal Palace hosted the Banquet of Chestnuts. According to a diary account by Pope Alexander VI’s master of ceremonies Johann Burchard, it was an eventful evening. William Manchester described it in A World Lit Only by Fire:
After the banquet dishes had been cleared away, the city’s fifty most beautiful whores danced with guests, “first clothed, then naked.” The dancing over, the “ballet” began, with the pope and two of his children in the best seats. Candelabra were set up on the floor; scattered among them were chestnuts, “which,” Burchard writes, “the courtesans had to pick up, crawling between the candles.” Then the serious sex started. Guests stripped and ran out on the floor, where they mounted, or were mounted by, the prostitutes. “The coupling took place,” according to Burchard, “in front of everyone present.” Servants kept score of each man’s orgasms, for the pope greatly admired virility and measured a man’s machismo by his ejaculative capacity. After everyone was exhausted, His Holiness distributed prizes – cloaks, boots, caps, and fine silken tunics. The winners, the diarist wrote, were those “who made love with those courtesans the greatest number of times.”
The fete was dramatized in The Borgias, narrated by Burchard:
It is my sad duty to report that the said habits did not remain on the comely maidens long beyond the first course. They flaunted their nakedness for the cardinals with the abandon for which Roman prostitutes are noted.
Item: 200 candied chestnuts.
The festivities began at ten and descended into debauchery around midnight. La bella Farnese distributed the chestnuts on the floor and challenged the valiant damsels to pick them up using only their nether regions, in which enterprise they showed considerable invention.
The orgy inspired German illustrator Heinrich Lossow to paint The Sin (1880).
Lutheran Guilt 