The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 36, October, 1860. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ