If she is rich, then she is beautiful, fine, complete and perfect. Then they burn like fire and love her dearly, like pork and pie, and are ready to hang themselves if they cannot have her. Nothing is more common these days than for a young man to marry an old woman, as they say, for a bit of property: “an ass laden with gold.” Though she is an old crone without a tooth in her head, with neither good character nor a good face, a born fool—provided she is rich—she will have twenty young gallants courting her in an instant. As the woman in Suetonius said, “They court my possessions, not me.” It is for her land or money, not for her sake; and, as he added, it would be an excellent match if she were out of the way.

On the other hand, many a lovely young woman will throw herself away on an old, doting, decrepit fool—

Though twice a child, he stammers with worn-out mouth, He plucks the first, well-tended roses of a rare girl—

Rheumatic and gouty, suffering from twenty diseases, perhaps with only one eye, one leg, no nose, no hair on his head, no sense in his brains and no virtue: if he has land or money, she will take him before every other suitor.

Provided he is rich, that barbarian pleases her.

If he is rich, he is the man—a fine man, a handsome man. She will go to Jacatra or Tidore with him: “Gelasimus of the Golden Mountain.” Sir Giles Goosecap or Sir Amorous La Foole shall have her. As Philemasium told Emmusus in Aristaenetus, “Without money everything is useless.” Hang the man who has none! “It is pointless to discuss marriage without means. Do not trouble me with such proposals. Let others do as they please: I will make sure of a man who keeps me finely and splendidly dressed.” Most women share her view: “Character will be the last question asked.” She will inquire about his character some other time—when everything is over, the match made and everyone gone home.

Lucian’s Lysia was a handsome young woman with many fine gentlemen courting her—Ethecles, a senator’s son; Melissus, a merchant; and others. But she abandoned them all for a certain Pasius, a low, shaggy, bald-headed rogue. Why? His father had recently died, leaving him sole heir to his property and lands.

This occurs not only among grubbers in the dust, poor wretches who will sell their souls for money: the same bait can catch our most powerful, mighty and illustrious princes. That proud, domineering upstart, the bishop of Ely in Richard I’s reign, who governed during the king’s absence, sought to strengthen himself and maintain his power. As William of Newburgh relates, “he took care to bind many powerful nobles to himself through marriages with his female relatives.” He married his poor kinswomen, who came over from Normandy in droves, to the greatest nobles in the land. They gladly accepted these matches, fair or foul, for themselves, their sons, nephews and so on. “Who would not desire so splendid a connection, in the hope of great advancement?” Who would not do as much for money and preferment, as my author adds?

Vortigern, king of Britain, married Rowena, daughter of Hengist, the Saxon prince and his mortal enemy. Why? She had Kent as her dowry. In 1386 Jagiełło, grand duke of Lithuania, was so deeply enamoured of Hedwig that he converted from paganism to Christianity and was baptized as Władysław, along with all his subjects for her sake. But why? She was Poland’s daughter and heir, and he wanted the two kingdoms united. Charlemagne eagerly courted the empress Irene, but, says Zonaras, “for the kingdom”: to join the Eastern Empire to the Western.

Yet what becomes of all these matches made for money or property, through deceit or burning lust—those “whom foul desire has joined”? What follows? At first they are almost mad, but it is a mere flash. Chaff and straw catch fire quickly and burn fiercely for a while, yet go out in a moment. So it is with matches made through the attractions of burning lust. Where there is no regard for honesty, family, virtue, religion, education and the like, they are extinguished in an instant: hatred replaces love, and regret and even despair replace joy.

Francesco Barbaro, in On Marriage, book 1, chapter 5, tells of a certain Philip of Padua who fell in love with a common prostitute and was on the point of going mad for her. His father, having no other sons, let him have her. But after a few days the young man began to loathe her and could not even bear the sight of her: he fell from one madness into another. Such is the usual outcome for these lovers. Anyone who marries in this way or for such reasons should expect no better fortune than Menelaus with Helen, Vulcan with Venus, Theseus with Phaedra, Minos with Pasiphae, or Claudius with Messalina: shame, sorrow, misery, melancholy and discontent.