[933] Arch. Stor. append. ii. p. 310. The Mystery of the Annunciation at Ferrara, on the occasion of the wedding of Alfonso, with fireworks and flying apparatus. For an account of the representation of Susanna, John the Baptist, and of a legend, at the house of the Cardinal Riario, see Corio, fol. 417. For the Mystery of Constantine the Great in the Papal Palace at the Carnival, 1484, see Jac. Volaterran. (Murat. xxiii. col. 194). The chief actor was a Genoese born and educated at Constantinople.
[934] Graziani, Cronaca di Perugia, Arch. Stor. xvi. 1. p. 598. At the Crucifixion, a figure was kept ready and put in the place of the actor.
[935] For this, see Graziani, l. c. and Pii II. Comment. l. viii. pp. 383, 386. The poetry of the fifteenth century sometimes shows the same coarseness. A ‘canzone’ of Andrea da Basso traces in detail the corruption of the corpse of a hard-hearted fair one. In a monkish drama of the twelfth century King Herod was put on the stage with the worms eating him (Carmina Burana, pp. 80 sqq.). Many of the German dramas of the seventeenth century offer parallel instances.
[936] Allegretto, Diarii Sanesi, in Murat. xxiii. col. 767.
[937] Matarazzo, Arch. Stor. xvi. ii. p. 36. The monk had previously undertaken a voyage to Rome to make the necessary studies for the festival.
[938] Extracts from the ‘Vergier d’honneur,’ in Roscoe, Leone X., ed. Bossi, i. p. 220, and iii. p. 263.
[939] Pii II. Comment. l. viii. pp. 382 sqq. Another gorgeous celebration of the ‘Corpus Domini’ is mentioned by Bursellis, Annal. Bonon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 911, for the year 1492. The representations were from the Old and New Testaments.
[940] On such occasions we read, ‘Nulla di muro si potea vedere.’
[941] The same is true of many such descriptions.
[942] Five kings with an armed retinue, and a savage who fought with a (tamed?) lion; the latter, perhaps, with an allusion to the name of the Pope—Sylvius.