their fame. The author of the “Curiosities of Literature,” who has devoted two or three pages to their history, has quoted only seven of Pasquin’s epigrams, six of which are taken from a very rare work, published at Basle, so long ago as the year 1544, with this title—“Pasquillorum Tomi Duo.” No later collection having been attempted until the present year, great was the eagerness with which we sat down to devour M. Lafon’s book;[1] but that was quickly done, for the choicest part of M. Lafon’s book consists only of a score or two of epigrams, some of which we shall translate, with one or two pasquinades taken from other sources; after a few words of our own about their reputed authors.
Their history, after much sifting, has come at last to be substantially as follows:
There lived in Rome, in the fourteenth century, one Pasquin, a tailor, who had much custom and kept many journeymen. Both master and men allowed themselves great freedom of speech in censuring their superiors, of every degree, up to the cardinals and the pope himself. The disdain with which the members of the Papal court looked down on men of their condition secured to these railers an impunity of which persons of higher mark began, ere long, to take advantage. Whatever strokes of satire could not be avowed by the real authors, except at the cost of their lives, were fathered upon Pasquin and his saucy varlets, and, as common fame is never critical in such cases, the people gave their ready aid to a subterfuge which fell in with their humour. Hence it became an established custom to attribute to Maestro Pasquino all the wicked wit that was discharged anonymously upon the dignitaries of church and state.
After the tailor’s death his name and functions were imposed by popular acclaim on an ancient statue, which had been recently exhumed, and erected at the angle of the Orsini Palace, where it still remains. It is much mutilated, but is the ruin of a very fine work, and was greatly admired by Bernini. Count Maffei believed that it represents Ajax defending Menelaus. The statue of Marforio, in the courtyard of the Capitolian Museum, represents a recumbent river-god, and its name is a corruption of that of the place where it was found—Martis Forum. Marforio is the friend and confidant of Pasquin, and generally plays second fiddle to him in their joint performances, the one starting topics and the other despatching them; but occasionally these rôles are reversed. It was not through any sudden freak of the people that the heritage of the sharp-tongued tailor devolved on his marble representative. The thing came to pass in the most natural way in the world. The statue having been set up in one of the most frequented thoroughfares of Rome, the municipal authorities began to use its pedestal for posting up their notices and by-laws; the clergy and the court, following this example, placarded it with their banns, their bulls, and indulgences; and this suggested to the malcontents the idea of making it “a vehicle for the keenest satire in a land of the most uncontrolled despotism.” The intense bitterness of feeling which has rankled for five centuries in the hearts of the Romans may be measured not only by the virulence, but by the daring pertinacity with which they caused the stones of their city to cry out against their tyrants. There remained no hope of mercy for the man who was detected, by night, in the act of furtively affixing a paper to the marble, and yet the peril was incessantly braved. In the reign of the Borgias, a Venetian, who had translated a Greek epigram on the Pope and his son, was strangled, and every one who was suspected of a similar crime was thrown into the Tiber with a stone about his neck. Under Pius V., who was canonised, offenders of this kind were hanged, and their bodies were burned by the Inquisition. This was the fate, among others, of Aonius Palearius, the Latin poet, who indeed had added to his literary crimes the still deeper guilt of rejecting the cross, that is to say, the letter T, from his Christian name AnTonius.
In the pontificate of Sixtus V., who had begun life as a barefooted herdboy, Pasquin was seen wearing a dirty shirt, and the following dialogue took place between Marforio and him:
Marforio. “How slovenly you are grown, Pasquin; what a dirty shirt you have on! You are as black as a collier.”
Pasquin. “That is because my washerwoman has been made a duchess.”
The washerwoman was the Pope’s sister. Apropos of this pasquinade, Brantôme relates “an admirable action” of his Holiness. The Pope was so enraged that he issued a proclamation offering a reward of ten thousand crowns for the name of the man who had insulted himself and his sister, and promising, besides, that if the offender would reveal himself, his life should be spared, and the reward should be paid to him. The unfortunate wit fell into the trap, presented himself to Sixtus, and received the ten thousand crowns on the spot.
“I have made thee a promise,” said his Holiness, “and I will keep it; not for my life would I break faith with thee; but there is another thing I have not promised thee, and which I will yet fulfil—that is, that the hand which has written so ill shall be cut off, that thou mayest remember never again to write such scandalous words.”
“Many great personages,” observes Brantôme, “would not have so strictly kept their word in so scandalous and injurious a matter; and for that he did so, it behoves us to praise this great Pope.”
All other means of suppression having proved unavailing, Clement VIII. thought to silence the pasquinaders by destroying their mouth-piece, and Pasquin was condemned by a commission, composed of Cardinals, to be broken in pieces and thrown into the Tiber. Fortunately, however, before the sentence was executed, Clement’s nephews consulted Tasso, who dissuaded them from having recourse to so puerile an expedient. “If you throw Pasquin into the river,” said the poet, “he will turn all its mud into swarms of frogs that will never cease croaking night and day.”
The first epigram in M. Lafon’s collection is addressed to Paul II., and plays upon the double meaning of the word beatus—saintly—blest in a worldly sense.
- ↑ Pasquin et Marforio, Histoire Satirique des Papes, traduite et publiée pour la première fois par Mary Lafon. Paris, Dentu, 1861.
