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

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?"

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, 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:—

"Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. He bought them first, and has good right to sell." 3 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.

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 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."

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:—