[76] Ferdinando dei Medici, the cardinal whom Montaigne had recently met at the Grand Duke’s table in Florence.
[77] This Caraffa was first advanced by his kinsman, Paul IV., but banished on the accession of Pius IV. Pius V. restored him to his offices, and Gregory XIII. made him librarian of the Vatican. In Essais, i. 51, Montaigne writes “d’un Italien, que je vien d’entretenir, qui a servy le feu Cardinal Caraffe de maistre d’hotel jusques à sa mort.”
[78] The fistula, or pipe, through which the Pope drinks the consecrated wine. It would hardly give, as Montaigne suggests, any security against poison; this would be compassed by “pregustation” on the part of the sacristan and the butler.
[79] Louis Chasteignier de la Roche Posay, seigneur d’Abain. He went with Henry III. into Poland, and was subsequently sent by Henry as ambassador to Rome. He was afterwards charged by the Pope to carry the papal absolution to Henry IV.
[80] The text from which the passage within brackets is translated was written by Montaigne himself on the margin of the MS.—Querlon’s note.
[81] Giacomo Buoncompagni, the illegitimate son of the Pope. His mother was a servant in the house of Girolamo, the Pope’s brother, in Bologna, where Giacomo was born in 1548. He was brought up by his father, and his mother was afterwards dowered by Girolamo and married to a Milanese mason. After his education was finished he was appointed to numerous offices, his father having been made Pope in 1572, and the lordships of Vignola, Sora, Arce, Arpino, and Aquino were purchased for him. He was a soldier and a patron of letters, and a favourable example of his kind. He died in 1612.
[82] Montaigne is probably referring to the Pope’s banishment of Giacomo to Perugia in 1576, on account of an attempt made by his son to protect a servant from the due operation of the law. With regard to nepotism Gregory was moderate. He made two of his nephews cardinals, but the well-known story tells how he ordered his brother back to Bologna when he heard he was on his way to Rome to ask for preferment. Ranke, i. 290.
[83] Probably Montaigne and the ambassador. The Cardinal de Sens was Nicolas de Pelvi, afterwards Archbishop of Reims.
[84] Essais, ii. 11: “Je me recontray un jour à Rome, sur le poinct qu’on defaisoit Catena, un voleur insigne: on l’étrangla sans ancune émotion de l’assistance, mais quand on vint à le mettre à quartiers, le bourreau ne donnoit coup, que le peuple ne suivist d’une voix plaintive, et d’une exclamation, comme si chacun eust presté son sentiment à cette charongue.” Catena was thirty years of age, and was charged with fifty-four murders.
[85] “Je conseillerois que ces exemples de rigueur, par le moyen desquels on veut tenir le peuple en office: s’exerçassent contre les corps des criminels. Car de les voir priver de sepulture, de les voir bouillir et mettre à quartiers, cela toucheroit quasi autant le vulgaire, que les peines qu’on fait souffrir aux vivans.”—Essais, ii. 11.