Cingar in like manner drew his blood from Pulci's Margutte:

Alter erat Baldi compagnus, nomine Cingar,
Accortus, ladro, semper truffare paratus;
Scarnus enim facie, reliquo sed corpore nervis
Plenus, compressus, picolinus, brunus, et atrox,
Semper habens nudam testam, rizzutus et asper.
Iste suam traxit Marguti a sanguine razzam,
Qui ad calcagnos sperones ut gallus habebat
Et nimio risu simia cagante morivit.

Falchettus boasted a still stranger origin:[427]

Sed quidnam de te, Falchette stupende, canemus?
Tu quoque pro Baldo bramasti prendere mortem.
Forsitan, o lecor, quæ dico, dura videntur,
Namque Pulicano Falchettus venit ab illo
Quem scripsere virum medium, mediumque catellum;
Quapropter sic sic noster Falchettus habebat
Anteriora viri, sed posteriora canina.

It would be too long to relate how Baldus received knightly education from a nobleman who admired his daring; how, ignorant of his illustrious blood, he married the village beauty Berta; and how he made himself the petty tyrant of Cipada. The exploits of his youth are a satire on the violence of local magnates, whose manners differed little from those of the peasants they oppressed. In course of time Baldus fell under the displeasure of a despot stronger than himself, and was shut up in prison.[428] In the absence of his hero from the scene, the poet now devotes himself to the exploits of Cingar among the peasants of Cipada. Without lowering his epic tone, Folengo fills five books with whimsical adventures, painting the manners of the country in their coarsest colors, and introducing passages of stinging satire on the monks he hated.[429] Cingar, finding himself on one occasion in a convent, gives vent to a long soliloquy which expresses Folengo's own contempt for the monastic institutions that filled Italy with rogues:

Quo diavol, ait, tanti venere capuzzi?
Nil nisi per mundum video portare capuzzos:
Quisquam vult fieri Frater, vult quisque capuzzum
Postquam giocarunt nummos, tascasque vodarunt,
Postquam pane caret cophinum, celaria vino,
In Fratres properant, datur his extemplo capuzzus.
Undique sunt isti Fratres, istique capuzzi.
Qui sint nescimus; discernare nemo valeret
Tantas vestitum foggias, tantosque colores:
Sunt pars turchini, pars nigri, parsque morelli,
Pars albi, russi, pars gialdi, parsque bretini.
Si per iter vado telluris, cerno capuzzos:
Si per iter pelagi, non mancum cerno capuzzos;
Quando per armatos eo campos, cerno capuzzos;
Sive forum subeo, sive barcam, sive tabernam,
Protinus ante oculos aliquem mihi cerno capuzzum.

There will soon be no one left to bear arms, till the fields, or ply the common handicrafts. All the villains make themselves monks, aspiring to ecclesiastical honors and seeking the grade of superiority denied them by their birth. It is ambition that fills the convents:

Illic nobilitas sub rusticitate laborat,
Ambitio quoniam villanos unica brancat.

This tirade is followed by the portrait of Prae Jacopinus, a village parson whose stupidity is only equaled by his vices. Jacopino's education in the alphabet is a masterpiece of Rabelaisian humor, and the following passage on his celebration of the Mass brings all the sordidness of rustic ceremonial before our eyes:[430]