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| Version | Summary | Created by | Modification | Content Size | Created at | Operation |
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In 18th- and 19th-century Italy, the cicisbeo (Italian pronunciation: [tʃitʃizˈbɛːo]; plural: cicisbei), or cavalier servente (chevalier servant in French), was the professed gallant and perhaps lover in a sexual sense of a married woman, who attended her at public entertainments, to church and other occasions and had privileged access to his mistress. The arrangement is comparable to the Spain cortejo or estrecho and, to a lesser degree, to the France petit-maître. The exact etymology of the word is unknown; some evidence suggests it originally meant "in a whisper" (perhaps an onomatopeic word). Other accounts suggest it is an inversion of bel cece, which means "beautiful chick (pea)". According to OED, the first recorded usage of the term in English was found in a letter by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu dated 1718. The term appears in Italian in Giovanni Maria Muti's "Quaresimale Del Padre Maestro Fra Giovanni Maria Muti De Predicatori" of 1708 (p. 734).
References
- Krünitz, Cicisbeo.
- Boswell, 17–19; Smollett; Black, 123–26; Forsyth, 377, 411–12. All cited in Patriarca.
- Patriarca.
- Barbagli, 331–36. Cited in Patriarca.
- Bizzocchi, 67–69. Cited in Patriarca.
- Cazzoli, 2028–35. Cited in Patriarca.
- Quoted in Francis Steegmuller, A Woman, A Man, and Two Kingdoms: The Story of Madame d'Épinay and the Abbé Galiani (New York) 1991:178.
- Hodgson, 16.
- Smollett, Letter XVII from Nice, July 2, 1764.
- Smollett, Letter XXVII from Nice, January 28, 1765.
