Qualiter ad stagnum Nursæ sacrare quadernos.
With regard to Val Camonica, see the actual state of that district as reported by Cantù. Folengo in the Orlandino mentions its witches. Bandello (iii. 52) speaks of it thus: "Val Camonica, ove si dice essere di molte streghe."
[442] Witchcraft in Italy grew the more formidable the closer it approached the German frontier. It seems to have assumed the features of an epidemic at the close of the fifteenth century. Up to that date little is heard of it, and little heed was paid to it. The exacerbation of the malady portended and accompanied the dissolution of medieval beliefs in a population vexed by war, famine and pestilence, and vitiated by ecclesiastical corruption.
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Hic sunt Grammaticæ populi, gentesque reductæ, Huc, illuc, istuc, reliqua seguitante fameja: Argumenta volant dialectica, mille sophistæ Adsunt bajanæ, pro, contra, non, ita, lyque: Adsunt Errores, asunt mendacia, bollæ, Atque solecismi, fallacia, fictio vatum... Omnes altandem tanto rumore volutant Ethicen et Physicen, Animam, centumque novellas, Ut sibi stornito Baldus stopparet orecchias. Squarnazzam Scoti Fracassus repperit illic, Quam vestit, gabbatque Deum, pugnatque Thomistas. Alberti magni Lironus somnia zaffat. |
[444] This hypothesis receives support from the passage in which Baldus compares his new love for Crispis, the paragon of all virtues, with his old infatuation for Berta, who is the personification of vulgar appetite, unrefined natural instinct. See the end of Book xxiii.
[445] The rage of a man who knows that he has chosen the lower while he might have trodden the higher paths of life and art, flames out at intervals through this burlesque. Take this example, the last five lines of Book xxiii.:
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Sic ego Macronicum penitus volo linquere carmen Cum mihi tempus erit, quod erit, si celsa voluntas Flectitur et nostris lachrymis et supplice voto. Heu heu! quod volui misero mihi? floribus Austrum Perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus aprum. |
[446] Zanitonella, p. 3.
[447] Ibid. p. 2. Compare Sonolegia xiii. ib. p. 40.