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

  "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.

* * * * *

THE SUMMONS

  My ear is full of summer sounds,   With summer sights my languid eye;  Beyond the dusty village bounds  I loiter in my daily rounds,   And in the noon-time shadows lie.  The wild bee winds his drowsy horn,   The bird swings on the ripened wheat,  The long, green lances of the corn  Are tilting in the winds of morn,   The locust shrills his song of heat.  Another sound my spirit hears,   A deeper sound that drowns them all,—  A voice of pleading choked with tears,  The call of human hopes and fears,   The Macedonian cry to Paul!  The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;   I know the word and countersign;  Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,  Where stand or fall her friends or foes,   I know the place that should be mine.  Shamed be the hands that idly fold,   And lips that woo the reed's accord,  When laggard Time the hour has tolled  For true with false and new with old   To fight the battles of the Lord!  O brothers! blest by partial Fate   With power to match the will and deed,  To him your summons comes too late,  Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,   And has no answer but God-speed!* * * * *