In 1894, German society was introduced to The Love Council, a scandalous new play by the playwright Oskar Panizza. The carnivalesque satire, dealing with the first recorded outbreak of syphilis in 1495, portrays the scourge as divine punishment for the rampant sexual excesses in the Vatican court of the Pope of the time, the notorious Rodrigo Borgia. Panizza was imprisoned for one year on 93 counts of blasphemy, the harshest sentence ever given to an artist in the Second Empire. This book contains a detailed history of the play on stage and the court proceedings that led to Panizza's imprisonment. A new English translation of the play is included, as well as a biography of its avant-garde, modernist author.