There is an odd bit of folklore attached to this church. As may be supposed, and as I have frequently verified, “the idle repetition of vain words,” as the heathen do, or prayers in a language which people do not understand, generally lead to most ridiculous perversions of the unknown tongue. A popular specimen of this is the Salve Regina delle Ciane Fiorentine di San Lorenzo, or the “Salve Regina of the Florentine women of the lower class, as given in San Lorenzo.” Ciana is given by Barretti as a specially Florentine word.
La Salve Regina.
“Sarvia della Regina, dreco la Misericordia, vita d’un cieco, spezia nostra, sarvia tua, te chiamao esule, fili e vacche!
“Ate sospirao, i’ gemeo fetente in barca e lacrima la valle.
“L’ la eggo educata nostra, illons in tus.
“Misericordia se’ cieli e in ossi e coperte, e lesine benedette, frutti, ventri, tubi, novi, posti cocche, esilio e tende!
“O crema, o pia, o dorce virgola Maria!—Ammenne!”
This is perfectly in the spirit of the Middle Ages, of which so much is still found in the cheapest popular Italian literature. I have elsewhere mentioned that it was long before the Reformation, when the Church was at the height of her power, that blasphemies, travesties of religious services, and scathing sarcasms of monkish life reached their extreme, and were never equalled afterwards, even by Protestant satirists. The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum of Hütten and Reuchlin was an
avowed caricature by an enemy. The revelations of monkish life by Boccaccio, Cintio, Arlotto, and a hundred other good Catholics, were a thousand times more damaging than the Epistolæ, because they were the unconscious betrayals of friends.
Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, entitled, The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market, or,