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.
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