At an angle of the palace which Pius VI., (Braschi,) with paternal
liberality, built for the residence of his family, before the French
Revolution put an end to such beneficence, stands the famous statue of
Pasquin, giving its name to the square upon which it looks. It is
little more now than a mere trunk of marble, bearing the marks of
blows and long hard usage. But even in this mutilated condition it
shows traces of excellent workmanship and of pristine beauty. The
connoisseurs in sculpture praise it,[1] and the antiquaries have
embittered their ignorance in regard to it by discussions as to
whether it was a statue of Hercules, of Alexander the Great, or of
Menelaus bearing the body of Patroclus. Disabled and maimed as it is,
it is thus only the more fitting type of the Roman people, of which it
has been so long the acknowledged mouthpiece; and the epigrams and
satires which have made its name famous have gained an additional
point and a sharper sting from the patent resemblance in the condition
of their professed author to that of those for whom he spoke.
It is said to have been about the beginning of the sixteenth century
that the statue was discovered and dug up near the place where it now
stands, and the earliest account of it seems to be that given by
Castelvetro, in 1553, in his discourse upon a _canzone_ by Annibal
Caro. He says, that Antonio Tibaldeo of Ferrara, a venerable and
lettered man, relates concerning this statue, that there used to be in
Rome a tailor, very skilful in his trade, by the name of Pasquin, who
had a shop which was much frequented by prelates, courtiers, and other
people, so that he employed a great number of workmen, who, like
worthless fellows, spent their time in speaking ill of one person or
another, sparing no one, and finding opportunity for jests in
observing those who came to the shop. This custom became so notorious
that the very persons who were hit by these sharp speeches joined in
the laugh at them, and felt no resentment; so that, if any one wished
to say a hard thing of another, he did it under cover of the person of
Master Pasquin, pretending that he had heard it said at his shop,--at
which pretence every one laughed, and no one bore a grudge. But,
Master Pasquin dying, it happened, that, in improving the street, this
broken statue, which lay half imbedded in the ground, serving as a
stepping-stone for passengers, was taken up and set at the side of the
shop. Making use of this good chance, satirical people began to say
that Master Pasquin had come back. The custom soon arose of attaching
to the statue bits of writing; and as it had been allowed to the
tailor to say everything, so by means of the statue any one might
publish what he would not have ventured to speak.[2]
Thus did Hercules or Alexander change his name for that of Pasquin,
and soon became almost as well known throughout Europe under his new
designation as under his old. If the statue were not dug up, as is
said, until the sixteenth century, its fame spread rapidly; for,
before Luther had made himself feared at Rome, Pasquin was already
well known as the satirist of the vices of Pope and Cardinals, and as
a bold enemy of the abuses of the Church.
But the history of Pasquin is not a mere story of Roman jests, nor is
its interest such alone as may arise from an amusing, though neglected
series of literary anecdotes. In the dearth of material for the
popular history of modern Rome, it is of value as affording
indications of the turn of feeling and the opinions of the Romans, and
of the regard in which they held their rulers. The free speech, which
was prohibited and dangerous to the living subjects of the temporal
power of the Popes, was a privilege which, in spite of prohibition,
Pasquin insisted upon exercising. Whatever precautions might be taken,
whatever penalties imposed, means were always found, when occasion
arose, to affix to the battered marble papers bearing stinging
epigrams or satirical verses, which, once read, fastened themselves in
the memory, and spread quickly by repetition. He could not be
silenced. "Great sums," said he one day, in an epigram addressed to
Paul III., who was Pope from 1534 to 1549, "great sums were formerly
given to poets for singing: how much will you give me, O Paul, to be
silent?"
"Ut canerent data multa olim sunt vatibus aera:
Ut taceam, quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?"
In his life of Adrian VI., the successor of Leo X., Paulus Jovius, not
indeed the most trustworthy of authorities, tells a story which, if
not true, might well be so. He says, that the Pope, being vexed at the
free speech of Pasquin, proposed to have him thrown into the Tiber,
thinking thus to stop his tongue; but the Spanish legate dissuaded
him, by suggesting, with grave Spanish wisdom, that all the frogs of
the river, becoming infected with his spirit, would adopt his style of
speech and croak only pasquinades. The contemptibleness of the
assailant made him the more dreaded. Did not the very reeds tell the
fatal secret about King Midas?
Pasquin was by no means the only figure in Rome who gave expression to
thoughts and feelings which it would have been dangerous to the living
subjects of the ecclesiastical rule to utter aloud. His most
distinguished companion was Marforio, a colossal statue of an ocean or
river god, which was discovered in the sixteenth century near the
forum of Mars, from which he derived his name. Toward the end of the
same century, he was placed in the lower court of the Palazzo de'
Conservatori, on the Capitol, and here he has since remained.
Dialogues were often carried on between him and his friend Pasquin,
and a share in their conversation was sometimes taken by the Facchino,
or so called Porter of the Palazzo Piombino. In his "Roma Nova,"
published in 1660, Sprenger says that Pasquin was assigned to the
nobles, Marforio to the citizens, and the Facchino to the common
people. But besides these there were the Abate Luigi of the Palazzo
Valle,--Madama Lucrezia, who still sits behind the Venetian palace
near the Church of St. Mark,--the Baboon, from which the Via Babbuino
takes its name,--and the marble portrait of Scanderbeg, the great
enemy of the Turks, on the _façade_ of the house which he at one time
occupied in Rome. Each of these personages now and then issued an
epigram or took part in the satirical talk of his companions. Such a
number of cold and secure censors is not surprising in a city like
Rome, where the checks upon open speech are so many, and where priests
and spies exercise so close a scrutiny over the thoughts and words of
men. Oppression begets hypocrisy, and a tyrant adds to the faults of
his subjects the vices of cowardice and secrecy. Caustic Forsyth,
speaking of the Romans, begins with the bitter remark, that "the
national character is the most ruined thing at Rome"; and in the same
section he adds, "Their humor is naturally caustic; but they lampoon,
as they stab, only in the dark. The danger attending open attacks
forces them to confine their satire within epigram; and thus
pasquinade is but the offspring of hypocrisy, the only resource of
wits who are obliged to be grave on so many absurdities in religion,
and respectful to so many upstarts in purple." Thus if the Romans
lampoon only in the dark, the fault is to be charged against their
rulers rather than themselves. The talent for sarcastic epigram is
hereditary with the people. The pointed style of Martial was handed
down through successive generations. The epigram in his hands was no
longer a mere inscription, an idyl, or an elegy; it had lost its
ancient grace, but it took on a new energy, and it set the model,
which the later Romans knew well how to copy, of satire condensed into
wit, in lines each of whose words had a sting.
The first true Pasquinades--that is, the first of the epigrams which
were affixed to Pasquin, and hence derived their name--are perhaps
those which belong to the reign of Leo X. We at least have found no
earlier ones of undoubted genuineness; but satires similar to those of
Pasquin, and possibly originating with him, as they now go under the
general name of Pasquinades, were published against the Popes who
preceded Leo. The infamous Alexander VI., the Pope who has made his
name synonymous with the worst infamies that disgrace mankind, was not
spared the attacks of the subjects whom he and his children, not
unworthy of such a father, degraded and abused. Two lines could say
much:--
"Sextus Tarquinius, Sextus Nero, Sextus et iste:
Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit."
"Sextus Tarquinius, Sextus Nero, this also a Sextus" (Alexander
Sextus, that is, Alexander the Sixth): "always under the Sextuses has
Rome been ruined." And as if this were not enough, another distich
struck with more directness at the vices of the Pope:--
"Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum:
Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest."
"Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. He bought them first,
and has good right to sell."[3]
Alexander had gained his election by bribes which he did not pay, and
promises which he did not keep; and Guicciardini tells in a few words
what use he made of his holy office, declaring, that, "with his
immoderate ambition and poisoned infidelity, together with all the
horrible examples of cruelty, luxury and monstrous covetousness,
selling without distinction both holy things and profane things, he
infected the whole world."[4]
In 1503, after a pontificate of eleven years, Alexander died. Rome
rejoiced. Peace, which for a long time had been banished from her
borders, returned, and she enjoyed for a few days unwonted freedom
from alarm and trouble. Her happiness found expression in verse:--
"Dic unde, Alecto, pax haec effulsit, et unde
Tam subito reticent proelia? Sextus obit."
"Say whence, Alecto, has this peace
shone forth? wherefore so suddenly has
the noise of battle ceased? Alexander
is dead."
The rule of Borgia's successor, Pius III., lasting only twenty-seven
days, afforded little opportunity to the play of indignant wit; but
the nine years' reign of Julius II., which followed, was a period
whose troubled history is recorded in the numerous epigrams and
satires to which it gave birth. The impulsive and passionate vigor of
the character of Julius, the various fortunes of his rash enterprises,
the troubles which his stormy and rapacious career brought to the
Papal city, are all more or less minutely told. The Pope began his
reign with warlike enterprises, and as soon as he could gather
sufficient force he set out to recover from the Venetians territory of
which they had possession, and which he claimed as the property of the
Papal state. It was said, that, in leading his troops out of Rome, he
threw into the Tiber, with characteristic impetuosity, the keys of
Peter, and, drawing his sword from its sheath, declared that
henceforth he would trust to the sword of Paul. The story was too good
to be lost, and it gave point to many epigrams, of which, perhaps, the
one preserved by Bayle is the best:--
"Cum Petri nihil efficiant ad proelia claves,
Auxilio Pauli forsitan ensis erit."
"Since the keys of Peter profit not for
battle, perchance, with the aid of Paul,
the sword will answer."[5]
Julius was the first of the Popes of recent times to allow his beard
to grow, and Raphael's noble portrait of him shows what dignity it
gave to his strongly marked face. The beard was also regarded
traditionally as having belonged to Saint Paul. "For me," the Pope was
represented as saying, "for me the beard of Paul, the sword of Paul,
all things of Paul: that key-bearer, Peter, is no way to my liking."
"Huc barbam Pauli, gladium Pauli, omnia Pauli:
Claviger ille nihil ad mea vota Petrus."
But the most savage epigram against Julius was one that recalled the
name of the great Roman, which the Pope was supposed to have adopted
in emulation of that of Alexander, borne by his predecessor:--
"Julius est Romae. Quid abest? Date, numina, Brutum.
Nam quoties Romae est Julius, illa perit."
"Julius is at Rome. What is wanting?
Ye gods, give us a Brutus! For
when Julius is at Rome, the city is lost."
Pasquin became a recognized institution, as we have said, under Leo
X., and was taken under the protection of the Roman people.[6] His
popularity was such as to lead to consequences of which he himself
complained. He was made the vehicle of the effusions of worthless
versifiers, and he was forced to cry out, "Woe is me! even the copyist
fixes his verses upon me, and every one bestows on me his silly
trifles."
The application of these verses was alike appropriate to the life of
the Pope, or to the reigns of Alexander VI., Julius II., and the one
just beginning.
"Me miserum! Copista etiam mihi carmina figit;
Et tribuit nugas jam mihi quisque suas."
He seems to have been successful in putting a stop to this injurious
treatment; for not long after he declared, with a sarcasm directed
against the prominent qualities of his fellow-citizens, "There is no
better man at Rome than I. I seek nothing from any one. I am not
wordy. I sit here and am silent."
"Non homo me melior Rome est. Ego nil peto ab ullo.
Non sum verbosus. Hic sedeo et taceo."
It had become the custom, upon occasions of public festivity, to adorn
Pasquin with suits of garments, and with paint, forcing him to assume
from time to time different characters according to the fancy of his
protectors. Sometimes he appeared as Neptune, sometimes as Chance or
Fate, as Apollo or Bacchus. Thus, in the year 1515, he became Orpheus,
and, while adorned with the _plectrum_ and the lyre of the poet,
Marforio addressed a distich to him in his new character, which hints
at the popular appreciation of the Pope. The year 1515 was that of the
descent of Francis I, into Italy, and of the bloody battle of
Marignano. "In the midst of war and slaughter and the sound of
trumpets," said Marforio, "you sing and strike your lyre: this is to
understand the temper of your Lord."
"Inter bella, tubas, caedes, canis ipse, lyramque
Percutis. Hoc sapere est ingenium Domini."[7]
But the character of most of those pasquinades which belong to the
pontificate of Leo is so coarse as to render them unfit for
reproduction. A general licentiousness pervaded Rome, and the vices of
the Pope and the higher clergy, veiled, but not hidden, under the
displays of sensual magnificence and the pretended refinements of
degraded art, were readily imitated by a people taught to follow and
obey the teachings of their ecclesiastical rulers. Corruption of every
sort was common. Virtue and vice, profane and sacred things, were
alike for sale. The Pope made money by the sale of cardinalates and
traffic in indulgences. "Give me gifts, ye spectators," begged
Pasquin; "bring me not verses: divine Money alone rules the ethereal
gods."
"Dona date, astantes; versus ne reddite: sola
Imperat aethereis alma Moneta deis."
Leo's fondness for buffoons, with whom he mercilessly amused himself
by tormenting them and exciting them to make themselves ridiculous, is
recorded in a question put to Pasquin on one of his changes of figure.
"Why have you not asked, O Pasquil, to be made a buffoon? for at Rome
everything is now permitted to the buffoons."
"Cur non te fingi scurram, Pasquille, rogâsti?
Cum Romae scurris omnia jam liceant."
Leo died in 1521. His death was sudden, and not without suspicion of
poison. It was said that the last offices of the Church were not
performed for the dying man, and an epigram sharply embodied the
report. "Do you ask why at his last hour Leo could not take the sacred
things? He had sold them."
"Sacra sub extremâ, si forte requiritis, horâ
Cur Leo non potuit sumere: Vendiderat."
The spirit of Luther had penetrated through the walls of Rome; and
though all tongues but those of statues might be silenced, eyes were
not blinded, nor could ears be made deaf. Nowhere was the need of
reform so felt as at Rome, but nowhere was there so little hope for
it; for the people stood in equal need of it with the Church, whose
ministers had corrupted them, and whose rulers tyrannized over them.
"Farewell, Rome!" said Pasquin.
"Roma, vale! Satis est vidisse. Revertar
Quum leno, meretrix, scurra, cinaedus ero."
When Leo's short-lived successor, the gloomy Fleming, Adrian VI., who
was the author of the proposal to destroy Pasquin, despatched his
nuncio to the diet of Nuremberg to oppose the progress of Luther, he
told him in his instructions to "avow frankly that God has permitted
this schism and this persecution on account of the sins of men, and,
above all, of those of the priests and the prelates of the Church."
Pasquin could not have improved on these words. And when, twenty
months after his elevation to the papacy, this hard old man died, the
inscription--which he ordered to be put upon his tomb was in words fit
to disarm the satirist:--"Here lies Adrian VI., who esteemed nothing
in his life more unhappy than that he had been called to rule":
"_Adrianus VI. hîc situs est, qui nil sibi infelicius in vitâ quam
quod imperaret duxit."
During the pontificate of Clement VII., Rome suffered under calamities
too terrible and too depressing to admit of the frequent display of
the humor or the satire of Pasquin. The siege and sack of the city by
the army of the Constable de Bourbon wrought too much misery to be set
in verse or to be sharpened in epigram. One shrewd jest of this time
has, indeed, been preserved. Clement was for months a prisoner in the
Castle of Sant' Angelo, unable to stir abroad. "_Papa non potest
errare_" said Pasquin, or one of his friends, with a play on the
double meaning of the last word, and a scoff at Papal pretension: "The
Pope cannot err": he is too well guarded to stray. But when the Pope
died in 1534, Pasquin did not spare his memory. He had lately changed
his physician, and taken one named Matteo Curzio or Curtius; and when
his death took place, not without suspicion of malpractice, the
satisfaction of the people was expressed by the appearance of a
portrait of this new doctor, with the inscription, in words borrowed
from the Vulgate, "_Ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi!_"
"Curtius has killed Clement," said Pasquin. "Curtius, who has secured
the public health, should be rewarded."
"Curtis occidit Clementem. Curtius auro
Donandus, per quem publica parta salus."
Nor was this all. Pasquin declared, that, on occasion of Clement's
death, a bitter strife arose between Pluto and Saint Peter as to which
should receive the Pope:--
"Noluit hunc coelum, noluit hunc barathrum."
The Saint has no place for him, and the ruler of the lower regions
fears the disturbance that he will make in hell. The quarrel is cut
short by the arrival of Clement himself upon the spot, who, finding no
entrance into heaven, declares that he will force himself into hell:--
"Tartara tentemus, facilis descensus Averni."
The fifteen years of the pontificate of Clement's successor, Paul
III.,--years, for the most part, of quiet and prosperity at
Rome,--afforded ample opportunities for the display of Pasquin's
spirit. The personal character of the Pope, the exactions which he
laid upon the Romans for the profit of his favorites and his family,
and his unblushing nepotism were the subjects of frequent satire. The
Farnese palace, built in great part with stone taken from the
Colosseum, is a standing monument of the justice of Pasquin's rebukes,
the sharpness of which is concentrated in a single telling epigram.
"Let us pray for Pope Paul," said Pasquin, "for zeal for his house is
consuming him":--
"Oremus pro Papâ Paulo, quia zelus
Domus suae comedit illum."
At another time Marforio addressed a letter to Pasquin, in which he
tells him of the Pope's reply to an angel who had been sent to him
with the message, "Feed my sheep" "Charity begins at home," had been
the answer of the Pope. And when the Roman people had prayed Paul to
have pity on his people, Paul had replied, "It is not right to take
the children's bread and give it to dogs."
But Pasquin was now to be brought into greater notoriety than ever. In
spite of the efforts of the successors of Adrian, the Reformation had
rapidly advanced, and the Reformers, scorning no weapons that might
serve their cause, determined to turn the wit of Pasquin to their
account. In the year 1544, a little, but thick, volume appeared, with
the title, "Pasquillorum Tomi duo." It bore no name of editor or
printer, and professed to be published at Eleutheropolis, the City of
Freedom, or, as it might be rendered in a free translation, the City
of _Luther_. Its 637 pages were filled with satire; it was not merely
a collection of Pasquin's sayings, but it contained epigrams and
dialogues derived from other sources as well. The book was of a kind
to be popular, as well as to excite the bitterest aversion of the
adherents of the Roman Church. It long since became a volume of
excessive rarity, most of the copies having been destroyed by zealous
Romanists. The famous scholar, Daniel Heinsius, within a century after
its publication, believed that a copy which he purchased, at a cost of
a hundred ducats, was the only one remaining in the world, and he
inscribed the following lines upon one of its blank pages:--
"Roma meos fratres igni dedit. Unica Phoenix
Vivo, aureis venio centum Heinsio."
"Rome gave my brothers to the fire.
A solitary Phoenix, I survive, and at cost
of a hundred gold pieces I come to Heinsius."
But Heinslus was mistaken in supposing his copy to be unique; and
bibliographers of later date, while marking the rarity of the book,
have recorded its existence in various libraries. At this moment two
copies are lying before us, probably the only copies in America.[8]
The editor of this publication was the Piedmontese scholar and
Reformer, Coelius Secundus Curio. His early life had been eventful,
and he had experienced the tender mercies of the Roman Church. He had
been persecuted, his property had been seized, he himself compelled to
fly, on account of his liberal views. He had been in the prisons of
the Inquisition, from which he had escaped only by a successful and
ingenious stratagem. At length, wearied with contention, he took up
his abode in Protestant Switzerland, where he passed in quiet the
latter years of his useful and honored life.[9] It was while here that
he compiled this book, and sent it as a missile into the camp of his
opponents, the enemies of freedom of thought and of the right of
private judgment. From this time Pasquin's fame became universal. The
words _pasquil_ or _pasquinade_ were adopted info almost every
European tongue, and soon embraced in their widening signification all
sorts of satiric epigrams. A great part of the volume published by
Curio is made up, indeed, of attacks on the Roman Church which have no
connection with Pasquin as their author. The style and the subject of
many of them betray a German origin; and some of the longer pieces so
closely resemble, in point, in humor, and in expression, the
celebrated "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum," that there can be little
doubt that Ulrich von Hutten, or some one of his coadjutors in that
clever satire on the monks and clergy, had a hand in their
composition.[10]
But, leaving the pasquinades of other people, let us come back to the
sayings of Pasquin himself. No one has surpassed him in his own way,
and his store of epigrams, illustrating life and manners at Rome, is
abundant. The pontificate of Sixtus V., from 1585 to 1590, was full of
material for his wit. The only man in Rome who did not tremble under
the rod with which this hard old monk ruled his people and the Church
was the free-spoken marble jester. The very morning after the election
of Sixtus, Pasquin appeared with a plate of toothpicks, and to the
question of Marforio, what he was doing with them, he replied, "I am
taking them to Alexandrino, Medicis, and Rusticucci," the three
cardinals who had been most active in securing the Papacy for the new
Pope. The point of the joke was plain to the Romans: it meant that his
adherents, instead of gaining anything by their efforts, had been
deceived, and would have nothing to do now but to pick their teeth at
leisure.
Leti, in his entertaining and gossipping life of this most merciless
of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the
temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty
shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen,
replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman
a princess,--meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had
formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and
a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his
Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but
to no purpose. Upon which he stuck up printed papers in all the public
places of the city, promising, upon the word of a Pope, to give the
author of the pasquinade a thousand pistoles and his life, provided he
would discover himself, but threatened to hang him, if he was found
out by any one else, and offered the thousand pistoles to the
informer." Upon this the author was simple enough to make confession
and to demand the money. Sixtus paid him the sum, and then, saying
that he had indeed promised him his life, but not freedom from
punishment, ordered his hands to be cut off, and his tongue to be
bored, "to prevent him from being so witty for the future." This act,
says Leti, "filled every one with terror and amazement." And well
might such a piece of Oriental barbarity excite the horror of the
Romans.[11] Pasquin, however, was not alarmed, and a few days
afterward he appeared holding a wet shirt to dry in the sun. It was a
Sunday morning, and Marforio, naturally surprised at such a violation
of the day, asked him why he could not wait till Monday before drying
it Pasquin answered, that there was no time to lose; for, if he waited
till to-morrow to dry his shirt, he might have to pay for the
sunshine;--hinting at the heavy taxes which Sixtus had laid upon the
necessaries of life, and from which the sunshine itself might not long
be exempt.
It was near about this time that a caricature was circulated in Rome,
representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly
attempting to escape from his devouring beak. _Merito haec patimur_,
"We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral
it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the
harshest applications, and the despotic severity of Sixtus did much to
restore decency and security to life. He left the Romans in a far
better condition than he found them; and it would have been well for
Rome, if among his successors there had been more to follow his
example in repressing vice and violence,--in a word, had there been
more King Storks and fewer King Logs.
The most poetic of pasquinades, and one in which wit rises into
imagination, belongs to the pontificate of Urban VIII. (1623-1644.)
This Pope issued a bull excommunicating all persons who took snuff in
the churches of Seville; whereupon Pasquin quoted the following verse
from Job (xiii. 25):--"_Contra folium_ _quod vento rapitur ostendis
potentiam tuam? et stipulam siccam persequeris?_"
This is a very model of satire in its kind, and of a higher kind than
the pasquil, which Coleridge quotes as an example of wit, upon the
Pope who had employed a committee to rip up the errors of his
predecessors.
"Some one placed a pair of spurs on the statue of St. Peter, and a
label from the opposite statue of St. Paul.
"_St. Paul_. Whither, then, are you bound?
"_St. Peter_. I apprehend danger here;--they'll soon call me in
question for denying my Master.
"_St. Paul_. Nay, then, I had better be off, too; for they'll question
me for having persecuted the Christians before my conversion."[12]
In his distinction between the wit of thoughts, of words, and of
images, Coleridge asserts that the first belongs eminently to the
Italians. Such broad assertions are always open to exceptions, and
Pasquin shows that the Romans at least are not less clever in the wit
of words than in that of thoughts. Take, for example, the jest on
Innocent X. which Howel reports in one of his entertaining letters.
This Pope, who, says the candid historian, Mosheim, "to a profound
ignorance of all those things which it was necessary for a Christian
bishop to know, joined the most shameless indolence and the most
notorious profligacy," abandoned his person, his dignity, and his
government to the disposal of Donna Olympia Maldachini, the widow of
his brother. The portrait of the Pope may be seen in the Doria Gallery
at Rome; for it is still esteemed an honor by the noble family to
which the gallery belongs to be able to trace a relationship to a
Pope, even though so vile a one as Innocent "_Magis amat papa Olympiam
quam Olympum_" said Pasquin; and the pun still clings to the memory of
him whom his authorized biographer calls "_religiosissimo nelle cose
divine e prudentissimo nelle umane."_ But superlatives often have a
value in inverse ratio to their intention. There is a curious story
told by the Catholic historian, Novaes, that, after the death of
Innocent, which took place in 1655, no one could be found willing to
assume the charge of burying him. Word was sent to Donna Olympia that
she should provide a coffin for the corpse; but she replied that she
was only a poor widow. Of the cardinals he had made, of the relations
he had enriched, none was to be found who had charity enough to treat
his remains with decency. His body was taken to a room where some
masons were at work, and one of them out of compassion put a tallow
candle at its head, while another, fearing lest the mice, of which
there were many in the apartment, might disturb the corpse, secured a
person to watch it through the night. At length one of the officers of
the court procured a cheap coffin, and one of the canons of Saint
Peter's gave five crowns to pay the expenses of the burial.[13] A
moralist might comment on this story, and might compare it with
another which is told in a life of Innocent, written during the reign
of his successor, and published with approval at Rome. In this we are
told that at the time of his death a marvellous prodigy was observed;
for that, when his corpse was borne on a bier from Monte Cavallo to
the Vatican, at the moment of a violent storm of wind and rain, not a
drop of water fell upon it, but the bier remained perfectly dry, and
the torches with which it was accompanied were none of them
extinguished. What wonder, that, after this, it is added, "that his
memory is venerated in many places at Rome"?[14] Of all the
troublesome race of panegyrists, the Roman variety is the most
ingenious and the least to be trusted.
When Bishop Burnet was travelling in Italy, in the year 1686, the
doctrines of the Spanish priest Molinos, the founder of the famous
sect of Quietists, had lately become the object of attack of the
Jesuits and of suspicion at the Papal Court. His system of mystical
divinity is still of interest from its connection with the lives of
Fénelon and Madame Guyon, if not from its intrinsic character. Like
most other mystical doctrines, his teachings seem to have been open to
the charge, that, while professedly based on the highest spirituality,
they had a direct tendency to encourage sensuality in its most
dangerous form. Molinos was at first much favored at Rome and by the
Pope himself; but at the time of Burnet's journey he was in the
custody of the Holy Office, while his books were undergoing the
examination which finally led to the formal condemnation of
sixty-eight propositions contained in them, to the renunciation of
these propositions by their author, and to his being sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment Burnet relates that it happened "in one week
that one man had been condemned to the galleys for somewhat he had
said, another had been hanged for somewhat he had writ, and Molinos
was clapt in prison, whose doctrine consisted chiefly in this, that
men ought to bring their minds to a state of inward quietness. The
Pasquinade upon all this was, "_Si parliamo, in galere; si scrivemmo,
impiccati; si stiamo in quiete, all' Sant Uffizio. Eh! che bisogna
fare?_" "If we speak, the galleys; if we write, the gallows; if we
stay quiet, the Inquisition. Eh! what must we do, then?"
With the changes of times and the succession of Popes, new material
was constantly afforded to Pasquin for the exercise of his peculiar
talent. Each generation gave him fresh subject for laughter or for
rebuke. Men quickly passed away, but folly and vice remained. "Do you
wonder," said Pasquin, once, in his early days, referring to his
changes of character, "do you wonder why Rome yearly changes me to a
new figure? It is because of the shifting manners of the city, and the
falling back of men. He who would be pious must depart from Rome."
"Praeteriens, forsan miraris, turba, quotannis
Cur me Roma novam mutet in effigiem.
Hoc urbis mores varios, hominumque recessus
Indicat: ergo abeat qui cupit esse pius."
During the eighteenth century Italy did not abound in poets or wits,
and Master Pasquin seems to have shared in the dulness of the times.
Toward its end, however, when Pius VI. was building the palace under
the corner of which the statue was to find shelter, the marble
representative of the tailor watched his proceedings with sharp
observation. Long ago he had rebuked the nepotism of the Popes, but
Pius had forgotten his epigrams. "Cerberus," he had said, "had three
mouths with which he barked; but you have three, or even four, which
bark not, but devour."
"Tres habuit fauces, et terno Cerberus ore
Latratus intra Tartara nigra dabat.
Et tibi plena fame tria sunt vel quatuor ora
Quae nulli latrant, quemque sed illa vorant."
Every one who has been in Rome remembers how often, on the repairs of
ancient monuments, and on the pedestals of statues or busts, are to be
seen the words, "_Munificentiâ Pii Sexti_" thrusting themselves into
notice, and occupying the place which should be filled with some
nobler inscription. The bad taste and impertinence of this epigraph
are often enhanced by the slightness of the work or the gift which it
commemorates. During a season of dearth at Rome, in the time of Pius,
when the bakers had reduced the size of their loaves, Pasquin took the
opportunity to satirize the selfishness and vanity of the Pope, by
exhibiting one of these diminished loaves bearing the familiar words,
"_Munificentiâ Pii VI._"
The French Revolution, the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, the
brilliant essays of liberalism of Pius IX., the Republic, the siege of
Rome, the reactionary government of late years, have alike supplied
matter for Master Pasquin, which he has shaped according to the
fashion of the times. He still pursues his ancient avocation. _Res acu
tetigit._ But the point of the needle is not the means by which the
rents in the garment of Rome are to be mended,--much less by which her
wounds are to be cauterized and healed. The sharp satiric tongue may
prick her moral sense into restlessness, but the Roman spirit is not
thus to be roused to action. Still Pasquin deserves credit for his
efforts; and while other liberty is denied, the Romans may be glad
that there is a single voice that cannot be silenced, and a single
censor who is not to be corrupted.
[Footnote 1: Bernini, being asked what was the most beautiful statue
in Rome, replied, "That of Pasquin." This reply the sensible Milizia
taxes with affectation,--saying, that, although an artist may discover
in the work some marks of good design, it is now too maimed to pass
for a beautiful statue. Possibly Bernini was thinking of his own works
in comparison with it.]
[Footnote 2: Andreas Schott,--who published an Itinerary of Italy
about the beginning of the seventeenth century, copies this account,
and adds,--"At present this custom is prohibited under the heaviest
penalties."]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Piozzi, in her amusing _Journey through Italy_, ii.
113, quotes these verses and gives a translation of them which shows
that she quite mistook their point. In spite of her quoting Latin,
Greek, and even on occasion Hebrew, her scholarship was not very
accurate or deep.]
[Footnote 4: The Historie of Guicciardin, reduced into English by
Geffray Fenton. 1579. p. 308. Another epigram of barbarous bitterness
against Alexander refers, if we understand it aright, to one of the
gloomiest events of his pontificate, the murder of his son Giovanni,
Duca di Gandia, by his other son, Caesar Borgia. Giovanni was killed
at night, and his body was thrown into the Tiber, from which it was
recovered the next morning.
Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,
Piscaris natum retibus ecce tuum."
"Lest we should not fancy you, O Sextus,
a fisher of men, you fish for your own son
with nets."]
[Footnote 5: Vasari relates, that Michel Angelo, when he was making
the bronze statue of Julius, at Bologna, having asked the Pope if he
should put a book in his left hand,--"No," replied the fiery old man,
"put a sword in it, for I know not letters": "_Mettivi una spada, che
io non so lettere._"]
[Footnote 6: At the beginning of his pontificate, upon occasion of
Leo's taking possession of the Lateran with a solemn procession, an
arch of triumph was erected at the bridge of Sant' Angelo, which bore
an inscription worthy of the tailor's successor:--
"Olim habuit Cypria sua tempera, tempora Mavors
Olim habuit, sua nunc tempora Pallas habet."
"Venus once had her time, Mars also has
had his, but now Minerva rules."]
[Footnote 7: In Murray's _Handbook for Rome_, a book for the most part
of great accuracy, there is a curious blunder in the account of
Pasquin. It is said, that, "on the election of Pope Leo X., in 1440,
the following satirical acrostic appeared, to mark the date
MCCCCXL:--'_Multi caeci cardinales creaverunt caecum decimum (X)
Leonem:_ 'Many blind cardinals have created a tenth blind Lion.'" Now
in 1440 Leo was not born, and no Pope was chosen in that year. Leo was
not made Pope till 1513, and the acrostic has apparently nothing to do
with the date of his accession to the pontificate.]
[Footnote 8: One of those copies was formerly in the Royal Library at
Munich, and sold as a duplicate. The other has the bookplate of the
Baron de Warenghien. Colonel Stanley's copy sold for £11 lls. The book
was printed at Basle, by Jean Oporin. See Clément, _Bibl. Cur. Hist,
et Crit._, vii. 371. See also, for an account of it, Salleugre, _M.m.
de Litt._, ii. 6, 203; and Schelhorn, _Amoen. Lit._, iii. 151.]
[Footnote 9: An entertaining and curious account of Curio and his
family is to be found in a commemorative oration delivered in 1570
before the Academy of Basle by Stupanus, and printed by Schelhorn in
_Amoen. Lit._, Tom. xiv.]
[Footnote 10: In two or three of the dialogues Hutten is introduced as
one of the speakers; and several of the poetic epigrams are ascribed
to him by name.]
[Footnote 11: In Luther's _Table-Talk_, he says, "Whoso in Rome is
heard to speak one word against the Pope received either a
Strappecordo or is punished with death, for his name is _Noli me
tangere._" Pasquin himself has hardly said a shrewder saying than
this. _Noli me tangere_ is the name under which Pius IX. pleads
against the diminution of his temporal power, while he threatens his
opponents with the Strappecorde.]
[Footnote 12: _Lectures upon Shakespeare and other Dramatists_, ii.
90.]
[Footnote 13: Novaes, x. 56. Artaud de Montor, _Hist. des Pont. Rom._,
v. 523.]
[Footnote 14: _Vita d' Innocenzio X._, dal Cav. Ant. Bagatta.]
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