A reminiscence of this custom was exhibited in Belgium as late as 1834, at the musical contest in Brussels, when several troops of musicians from various provinces entered the city, with their especial “fou” at the head of every company.
Among the Popes, there was none who so liberally patronized jesters as Leo X. It has been said of this prelate that a witty fool had always a much better chance of obtaining an audience of him than a grave philosopher. Jovius and Guicciardini agree in the fact of the papal predilection for fellows who could afford him mirth, not merely by their light learning, but by their gross and heavy appetites. The same writers especially allude to the favour which Leo extended to buffoons, and to those so-called arch-poets who played the fool and miserably degraded themselves for the sake of a half-gnawed bone and a handful of ducats. The most famous, yet not the grossest of these mirthmakers, was Querno, a Neapolitan by birth, with a diminutive figure, a huge appetite, and an unquenchable thirst. The mock ovation of this arch-poet, his march to the Capitol, crowned with a wreath of vine, carrot, and cabbage-leaves, and mounted on an elephant, is a well-known incident, as is also his bandying of indifferent Latin verses, improvised for the nonce, with Leo himself. This buffoon, although by no means devoid of mental endowments, was content to stand by at papal banquets, and amuse the godly company by the greedy avidity with which he swallowed the fragments and half-consumed dishes despatched to him from the pontiff’s table. If Querno was a buffoon, he was at least that sort of fool to perform whose part efficiently requires a certain sort of wit. But Leo had other jesters who had no merit but the sorry one of being disagreeable fools. Of these we may judge by what is said of two of them, a greedy, insatiable fellow named Martinus, and a mendicant brother called Marianus. They certainly were wonderful buffoons in their way, for one could take a pigeon, roasted or stewed, compress it into a species of gigantic bolus, and swallow it whole, at one gulp. The other made no difficulty of devouring forty eggs at a meal, and indeed on high festive days, wondering and applauding guests saw him deliberately devour a score of capons!
Of the extravagance of Leo’s table, his successor, Adrian VI., was heartily ashamed, having a sort of disgust for a pontiff who, in the company of buffoons like Querno, Gazoldo, Britonio, and Baraballo, could eat himself into an indigestion, or see others do so, on costly dishes of peacock-sausages. But in this case we have an instance of that easy compounding for one’s own sins by denouncing those of our neighbours. Adrian did not care for costly dishes or jesters; but his appetite was under less control than that of Leo, if it be true, as Jovius says of him, that the Flemish pontiff drank himself into chronic disease on strong beer. “Contrahisse morbum assiduum cerevisiæ potu.”
According to some writers, it was the fool Baraballo, and not Querno, who was processionally conducted in mock pomp through the streets of Rome, to be crowned in the Capitol. The absurd verses of this jester procured for him this doubtful honour; but when he uttered dull jokes in bad measure, Leo would order him to be bastinadoed,—and to such depth could one of the most intellectual of pontiffs stoop to find relaxation from heavy duties and oblivion of as heavy responsibilities. But he might cite as example and excuse the Pontiff Paul II., who from 1458 to 1464 found exquisite delight in the poor jests of his official fools. But Paul was at least more orthodox than Leo, and in that distinction there is a world of difference.
Both these pontiffs differed from Benedict XIV., who was Pope from 1740 to 1758. Benedict loved a joke, but he loved to make it himself, and he might therefore be set down among those potentates who have been their own fools. When he was yet but Consistorial Advocate—a sufficiently grave and responsible dignitary—the spirit of fun so strongly influenced him, that at carnival-time he would issue into the thronged streets in the burlesqued costume of a doctor of divinity, and, mounting on a stool, would hold forth to the other gay masquers, denouncing their sins so pleasantly that their only regret was, that they were not fathoms deeper in iniquity, that they might laugh the more at the comic recapitulation of their offences. When Benedict became Pope, he endeavoured to suppress the carnival orgies; but the popular voice expressed itself so menacingly that he was content to leave others to enjoy what he could no longer participate in himself. He then confined himself to playing tricks on the Cardinals. His chief butt was Cardinal Passionei, a patient, orthodox man, who equally hated heresy and the Jesuits. The papal jokes were practical; as when the Pope, hearing that his Eminence had ordered a chest of books to be sent to him, contrived that a chest should reach him full of the most famous heretical and condemned volumes. The papal enjoyment here consisted in beholding the horror of the Cardinal on opening the case, and in seeing the delicate disgust with which he seized each work with a pair of tongs, and tossed it into the fire.
The spiritual prince-electors followed the fashion, and retained fools who seem to have been pretty plainly spoken. Thus, when the Elector Brendal of Mayence asked his jester what he thought of the newly-gilded chancel of the cathedral, Sir Motley replied, “I think it is very like the golden goblet in which the Hessians drink sour beer. Your newly-gilded chancel will be filled by dirty thieves of monks.”
Far bolder, however, was the reply of the electoral buffoon, Witzel, to Wolfgang, another Elector of Mayence, who asked him of what gender the word Mater was. “Well,” answered the fool, “mine is generis feminini; but your Electoral Highness’s mater is generis communis.” The fools of the Mayence Electors, it may be added, were not all remarkable only for wit; one at least, Pastore, fool to Albert of Mayence, was a kindly and brave-hearted man. When he knew there was a design on foot to make away with a Reforming preacher named Winkel, who, in 1527, had been summoned to Mayence to render account of his stewardship, Pastore aided him to escape. Poor Winkel was ultimately murdered; but the good deed of Pastore was not forgotten by the Reformers in their indignation against the more wicked agents of his unscrupulous master.
The electors of Cologne kept so princely a court that the uniform of the jesters rubbed against that of the body-guard. Such samples, however, as I can find of their wit do not say much for their humour or delicacy. That wit appears to have been exercised chiefly against their ghostly masters’ vices, and in this respect they had no sinecure. Or it was exhibited in rather uncleanly practical jokes, or as uncleanly repartees, and a record of the fact may well take place of a sample from the measure.
In treating of the jesters of foreign countries, there is some difficulty in conveying a fair idea of their wit, as by mere translation the point is ordinarily lost. The jests of Crafulla, a clever buffoon, yet not an official fool, who was constantly in the society of the Cardinal de’ Medici, are exactly in this condition. It is not much better with Barciacca, the house fool of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. Such wit as he had will not bear, and is hardly worthy, translation; while his practical jokes are really not worth narrating. One can only wonder how any of the Medici, refined and learned men, could laugh at such sorry amusement. Barciacca once compared himself with the Cardinal, on the ground that he daily fed as many as his Eminence; and when the latter expressed doubt of the fact, the fool stripped himself to the drawers, to exhibit the marks of the thousands that began feeding on him as soon as he lay down to sleep in the bed assigned him in the Cardinal’s palace. Ippolito laughed at this till he nearly lost breath. The joke only shows that the palazzo Cardinale was not of the cleanest, and that in point of humour his Eminence was easily pleased.
Again, if we look to the fools of Cardinals in England, we shall not find them particularly distinguished for happiness of wit. The best thing uttered by Cardinal Wolsey’s jester, Saxton, was his wish that Wolsey might become Pope. “For you see,” said he, “Peter’s father being a fisherman, he ordered all men to eat fish in Lent, for the sake of his father’s trade; now, your Eminence’s father having been a butcher, we should hope, for a similar reason, to be ordered to eat meat all the year round.” This is at least as good as anything that is told of foreign fools in the palaces of Cardinals; and I may add, that Wolsey’s fool was prophet also, if we may credit the story in which we are told, that, once, as the Cardinal was contemplating the design for a tomb intended for himself, the fool remarked, “The tomb is well enough, but your Eminence’s bones will never lie in it,” which proved to be true.