Note [195] page 126. The poet Caius Valerius Catullus, (born about 87 B.C.), was a native of Verona and a friend of Cæsar and Cicero. His extant works include one hundred and sixteen poems, lyric, epigrammatic, elegiac, etc. His 69th Ode is a dialogue between the author and a door.
Note [196] page 127. Pope Nicholas V, Tommaso Parentucelli, (born 1398; died 1455), was a native of Pisa, whence his family were exiled in his infancy. Although his father died when he was nine years old, and in spite of great poverty, he contrived to study at the University of Bologna. Later he served as tutor in the Albizzi and Strozzi families at Florence, thus earning enough money to return and take his theological degree at Bologna. He then entered the service of the archbishop of the latter city, whom he accompanied to Florence, and there became a friend of Cosimo de' Medici and a member of the literary society of the place. In 1443 he was made Bishop of Bologna, and four years later was elected pope, an elevation that he owed solely to his reputation for learning and to the comparatively small esteem in which the office was then held. The humanists were delighted at the election of one of their own number. As pope, he devoted his revenues to maintaining a splendid court, to the rebuilding of the fortifications and palaces of Rome, and to the enrichment of scholars. During his pontificate the city became a work-shop of erudition. He founded the Vatican Library, for which he collected five thousand volumes, and the list prepared by him for Cosimo de' Medici to use in beginning the Library of San Marco, was followed also by Duke Federico of Urbino. He was a small, ugly man.
Nihil Papa Valet, ‘the Pope is good for nothing.’[nothing.’]
Note [197] page 127. I.e., in the second tale of the Eighth Day.
Note [198] page 127. Calandrino is an unfortunate and very amusing character appearing in the third and sixth tales of the Eighth Day and in the fifth tale of the Ninth Day.
Note [199] page 128. Niccolò Campani, called Strascino, (born 1478; died between 1522 and 1533), was an excellent actor of Sienese rustic comedies and farces, and the author of verses and of a Lament that was very popular in the 16th century. He frequented the court of Leo X, and several of Castiglione’s letters (1521) tell of efforts to secure the actor’s services for the Marquess of Mantua, and of furnishing him with twenty-five ducats, a horse, and a papal pass, for the purpose.
Note [200] page 128. ‘This place,’ i.e., Urbino.
POPE NICHOLAS V
TOMMASO PARENTUCELLI
1398-1455
Enlarged from a coloured cast of a medal, in the King’s Library at the British Museum, by Andrea Guazzalotti (1435-1495). See Armand’s Les Médailleurs Italiens, i, 49, no. 6.