Progenies maledicta quidem villana vocatur,
and extends through forty lines of condensed abuse.
[435] Mac. xvi. p. 66.
[436] Mac. xx. p. 152. From this point onward the poet and Merlin are one person:
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Nomine Merlinos dicor, de sanguine Mantus, Est mihi cognomen Cocajus Maccaronensis. |
[437] The Novella of Luca Philippus, who kept a tavern at the door of Paradise, and had no custom, since no one came that way so long as Gulfora ruled on earth, forms a significant preface to her episode. See Mac. xxi. p. 180. The altercation between this host and Peter at the rusty gate of heaven is written in the purest Italian style of pious parody.
[438] Aretino's Cortigiana contains a very humorous exorcism inflicted by way of a practical joke upon a fisherman.
[439] See above, [Part i, p. 453, note 2], for the distinction between the fiends and the sprites drawn by Pulci.
[440] See Lasca's Novella of Zoroastro; Bandello's novels of witchcraft (Part iii. 29 and 52); Cellini's celebrated conjuration in the Coliseum; and Ariosto's comedy of the Negromante. These sources may be illustrated from the evidence given by Virginia Maria Lezia before her judges, and the trial of witches at Nogaredo, both of which are printed in Dandolo's Signora di Monza (Milano, 1855). Compare the curious details about Lombard witchcraft in Cantù's Diocesi di Como.
[441] It may be remembered that the necromancer in Cellini sent his book to be enchanted in the Apennines of Norcia. Folengo alludes to this superstition: