CURIONE, Celio Secondo. Pasquillorum tomi duo. Quorum primo versibus ac rhythmis, altero soluta oratione conscripta quamplurima continentur, ad exhilarandum, confirmandumque hos perturbatissimo rerum statu pij lectoris animum, apprime conducentia. Eorum …

Public Poetic Polemics

CURIONE, Celio Secondo. Pasquillorum tomi duo. Quorum primo versibus ac rhythmis, altero soluta oratione conscripta quamplurima continentur, ad exhilarandum, confirmandumque hos perturbatissimo rerum statu pij lectoris animum, apprime conducentia. Eorum catalogum proxima à praefatione pagella reperies. Eleutheropoli [i.e. Basel]: s.n. 1544.

Small 8vo. Eighteenth-century calf, spine richly gilt in compartments, raised bands, gilt red morocco lettering-piece to spine, edges stained red; pp. [16], 537 [i.e. 637], [1 (blank)]; bound without final blank R8; woodcut initials, pp. 271–278 printed in gothic letter; slight wear to corners, endcaps chipped, front free endpaper renewed; title somewhat soiled with old repairs to verso (touching two characters), occasional light marginal dampstaining, closed paperflaw to f. h6, pinhole wormhole to upper margin of ff. C1–D6, small wormtrack to lower margin of quires K–O, tiny hole to last two ff. (touching a single character); overall a very good, crisp copy; seventeenth-century marginal annotation to p. 31.

First edition of this collection of ‘pasquinades’, anonymous lampoons originally posted in public places in Rome, and other anti-papal texts in Latin, Italian and German: a key source for the history of political satire during the Reformation.

Celio Secondo Curione (1503–1569) was a humanist scholar from Cirié in Piedmont. While serving as professor of humanist letters at the University of Pavia, he converted to Protestantism. In 1542, he fled to Switzerland to escape religious persecution and settled in Basel, where he became a leading figure among the Italian religious refugees and a vocal advocate of religious tolerance. His notable works include Pasquillus extaticus (1542), a satirical critique of corruption within the Roman Church, and De amplitudine beati regni Dei (1554), written in opposition to John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination.

The term ‘pasquinade’ derives from Pasquino (Latin: Pasquillus), the nickname of an ancient statue in Rome’s Parione district. Since its rediscovery in 1501, Romans have affixed anonymous satirical verses to it, mocking the Papal government and denouncing social injustices, thus making Pasquino the first of the city’s famed ‘talking statues’.

In his Pasquillorum tomi duo, Curione compiled and partially translated into Latin a wide selection of these texts – prose, verse, and dialogues – that had appeared on the bases of the talking statues during the first half of the sixteenth century. To this material he added texts from the Northern European anti-curial tradition, as well as his own compositions, including Pasquillus extaticus et Marphorius, a poetic dialogue between Pasquino and another of Rome’s talking statues, Marforio (pp. 427–529).

The volume includes eulogies of Martin Luther (notably pp. 282–295), Ulrich von Hutten’s satirical Trias Romana in both Latin and German (pp. 192 ff.), and the Julius exclusus e coelis, a pointed satire traditionally attributed to Erasmus (pp. 317–324).

Adams P-390; BM STC German, p. 676; USTC 682981; VD16 C 6433; Brunet IV, col. 410 (‘peu commun’).

SKU: 2122132