Foligno

“ But where, as here at Foligno, a whole city has made itself a festival, where there are multitudes of citizens and soldiers and country-people slowly moving and gravely admiring, with the decency and order characteristic of an Italian crowd, I have nothing but a sense of satisfaction.
It is sometimes the traveller's good fortune in some remote place to meet with an inhabitant who incarnates and interprets for him the genius loci as he has conceived it. ”

“ The road to Foligno was one of the most beautiful and agreeable walks that I ever took. For four full hours I walked along the side of a mountain, having on my left a richly cultivated valley.
It is but sorry travelling with a vetturino, it is always best to follow at one's ease on foot. In this way had I travelled from Ferrara to this place. As regards the arts and mechanical invention, on which however the ease and comforts of life mainly depend, Italy, so highly favoured by nature, is very far behind all other countries. ”

“ Pope Eugene IV. sent a force against Foligno, to which the inhabitants opened their gates, and the last of the Trinci, Corrado II., was beheaded. Henceforth Foligno belonged to the states of the church until 1860. It suffered from a severe earthquake in 1832. Foligno is a station on the main line from Rome (via Orte) to Ancona, and is the junction for Perugia. Three miles to the E. is the abbey of Sassovivo with cloisters of 1229, very like those of S. Paolo fuori le Mura at Rome, with pairs of small columns supporting arches, and decorations in coloured mosaic (“Cosmatesque” work) . ”

“ Since railways have been carried from Rome through Narni and Spoleto to Ancona and Perugia, Foligno has gained considerably in commercial and military status. It is the point of intersection for three lines; the Italian government has made it a great cavalry dépôt, and there are signs of reviving traffic in its decayed streets. Whether the presence of a large garrison has already modified the population, or whether we may ascribe something to the absence of Roman municipal institutions in the far past, and to the savagery of the mediæval period, it is difficult to say. ”

“ In the beautiful cloistered garden of the Scuola di Arti e Mestieri he has gathered together reproductions in plaster, toned to the exact colour of the originals, of all the most beautiful monuments in Umbria. A labour of love which may be responsible for some of the extraordinary energy to be found in Foligno, which with Viterbo leads the way among the smaller towns of Italy in the glorious work of freeing ancient monuments from the plaster prisons in which they have lain hidden from the world during the last three centuries. ”

“ They had hoped that the king would be stopped by the pope's legate, who had come to Foligno to forbid him, in the name of the Holy Father, and on pain of excommunication to proceed any further without his consent; but Louis of Hungary replied to the pope's legate that, once master of Naples, he should consider himself a feudatory of the Church, but till then he had no obligations except to God and his own conscience. Thus the avenging army fell like a thunderbolt upon the heart of the kingdom, before there was any thought of taking serious measures for defence. ”

“ But, standing apart from the battle, and looking only at the text, and not at the bewildered comment, we find in the editions of Foligno, Jesi, and Naples, and in many other ancient texts, a reading which seems to us somewhat easier than the one commonly adopted. We copy the lines after the Foligno:—
Per chio laueggio neluerace speglio che fa dise pareglio alaltre cose et nulla face lui dise pareglio. ”

“ Foligno himself have been assigned by various critics as his teacher. Personally, I incline to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, whose easel paintings in the Gallery of Perugia seem to foreshadow the typical Perugino background; but it is yet more probable that either as a master or (as suggested by Crowe and Cavalcaselle) as a journeyman associate he may have come under the influence of Piero della Francesca, and gained from him that intimate knowledge of perspective which appears in all his later works. ”

“ We might hazard a conjecture that the Lombards, when they ruled the Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman municipia, encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours. But of this there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be affirmed with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno grew in power and became the chief commune of this part of Umbria. ”

“ She gives you time to breathe. The Borgia had a sinking of the stomach; he hankered after a filling of Lombard sausage a little while since. Gandia cut in, and Cesare cut in, per Bacco! But mark my words, Amilcare, the appetite will return. You will have the Duke in your March before many days. Therefore my advice to you is—Avoid Foligno; fortify Nona."
Amilcare looked his man in the face. "And my advice to myself, Galeotto, is—Seek Foligno, and so fortify Nona. Addio." He went out like a man who has found his way. ”

“ It was, for example, painted by Pietro Antonio of Foligno, in the fifteenth century, in SS. Antonio e Jacopo at Assisi, and by Pisanello in the old church of the Tempio at Florence, and, in the next century, by Palmezzano in S. Biagio di S. Girolamo at Forlì, and by Lo Spagna in a small chapel or tribune dedicated to St James, about four miles from Spoleto, on the way to Foligno. The same legend is painted on one of the lower windows of St Ouen, and again on a window of St Vincent, at Rouen. Many more cases might, no doubt, be easily collected. ”

“ Our self-appointed guide was a bright little fellow, and never once begged like the other children who followed us. So when he showed us the road to Foligno where we must ride on the morrow, J. gave him a sou. At the door of the Albergo he said he must go home, but not to supper; he never had any. He asked at what time we should leave in the morning, when he would like to come and say good-by. Felice notte—"a happy night"—were his last words as he turned away. ”

“ Standing at the junction of the railways from Rome and Florence to Ancona she is of considerable commercial importance to-day, with numerous sugar refineries and paper mills, and a large carburet factory on the banks of the Topino. But never did a city so small and compact hide the cloven foot of commercialism as well as Foligno. It is true that looking down on her from Perugia or Spoleto, she is seen, lying like a bride in the green valley, below a veil of fine white dust or smoke from the carburet factory ”

“ So, too, had been the Roman Campagna, but that was not tenanted, for its owners, the Roman barons, had let it to merchant farmers, who did not maintain peasants there, but in harvest time hired husbandmen from all over Italy, to the number of forty thousand, to gather [Pg 332] in the crops. From Foligno he turned to the right and crossed the Apennines just below Assisi, and travelled toward the Adriatic coast, making a pilgrimage to Loreto, a place like Lourdes, celebrated for its miracles, and for the "very same little house in which Jesus Christ was born in Nazareth." ”

“ Rocking to and fro, Folengo threw himself upon the floor, where he lay writhing and twisting in his death agony. His face turned black, and his eyes started from his head, like those of a strangled man. ”

“ In a flash of recollection Flint remembered the startled look that had come into his assailant's eye after they had clinched. It was the same man who had too late realised that his antagonist was not Fowler. "Thank God! you are for ever safe from any exposure from that man," he said, gravely, "and the name of Fowler has never been known in San Francisco save in all respect and honour. It is for you to take back—fearlessly and alone!" ”

“ During the course of these adventures, Folengo diverts his readers with many brilliant passages and bits of satire, at one time inveighing against the license of balls, at another describing the mixed company on board a ship of passage; now breaking off into burlesque pedigrees, and then again putting into Berta's mouth a string of Lutheran opinions. Though the personages are romantic, the incidents are copied with realistic fidelity from actual life. We are moving among Italian bourgeois in the masquerade of heroes and princesses. ”

“ No one in the crowd had stirred or interfered.
"You've done for French Pete this time, Mr. Fowler," said a voice at his elbow. He turned gaspingly, and recognised his strange benefactor, Flynn. "I call you all to witness, gentlemen," continued the gambler, turning dictatorially to the crowd, "that this man was first attacked and was unarmed." He lifted Flint's limp and empty hands and then pointed to the dead man, who was still grasping the weapon. "Come!" He caught the half-paralysed arm of Flint and dragged him into the street. ”

“ He caught the half-paralyzed arm of Flint and dragged him into the street.
"But," stammered the horrified Flint, as he was borne along, "what does it all. mean? What made that man attack me?"
"I reckon it was a case of shooting on sight, Mr. Fowler; but he missed it by not waiting to see if you were armed. It wasn't the square thing, and you're all right with the crowd now, whatever he might have had agin you."
"But," protested the unhappy Flint, "I never laid eyes on the man before, and my name isn't Fowler."
Flynn halted, and dragged him in a doorway. "Who the devil are you?" ”

“ He does not merely laugh, but mixes satire with ribaldry, and points buffoonery with biting sarcasm. Since the burlesque style had by its nature to be parasitical and needed an external motive, Folengo chose for the subject of his parody the romance of Orlando, which was fashionable to the point of extravagance in Italy after the appearance of the Furioso. ”

“ But the great matter of macaronic poetry was Teofilo Folengo, of whose life we know just sufficient to give us a notion of the personal character of these old literary caricaturists. Folengo was descended from a noble family, which had its seat at the village of Cipada, near Mantua, where he was born on the 8th of November, 1491, and baptised by the name of Girolamo. He pursued his studies, first in the university of Ferrara, under the professor Visago Cocaio, and afterwards in that of Bologna, under Pietro Pomponiazzo ”

“ But why should I dwell upon one or two instances of Folly, when there are so many of like nature. Conceitedness and self-love making many by strength of Fancy believe themselves happy, when otherwise they are really wretched and despicable. Thus the most ape-faced, ugliest fellow in the whole town, shall think himself a mirror of beauty: another shall be so proud of his parts, that if he can but mark out a triangle with a pair of compasses, he thinks he has mastered all the difficulties of geometry, and could outdo Euclid himself. ”

“ Folengo's sharp satiric wit, as we shall remark in another chapter, finally pursued them with the shafts of ridicule in Baldus and Zanitonella. Thus pastoral poetry completed the whole cycle of Italian literature—expressed itself through dialogue in the drama, adhered to Virgilian precedent in the Latinists and their Italian followers, adopted the forms of popular poetry, and finally submitted to the degradation of Maccaronic burlesque.
We can well afford to turn in silence from the common crowd of eclogue-writers. Yet one poet emerges from the rank and file, and deserves particular attention. ”

“ Ingoldsby’s description of the Folkestone of his day, early in the nineteenth century, still in part holds good. To him it was “a collection of houses which its maligners call a fishing-town, and its well-wishers a watering-place. A limb of the Cinque Ports, it has (or lately had) a corporation of its own and has been thought considerable enough to give a second title to a noble family. Rome stood on seven hills—Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy. ”

“ In this emergency he took refuge in a Benedictine convent at Brescia. When he made himself a monk, Folengo changed his Christian name to Teofilo, by which he is now best known in literature. But he did-313- not long endure the confinement of a cloister. After six years spent among the Benedictines, he threw the cowl aside, and ran off with a woman, Girolama Dieda, for whom he had conceived an insane passion. [386] This was in the year 1515. During the next eleven years he gave himself to the composition of burlesque poetry. His Maccaronea appeared at Venice in 1519, and his Orlandino in 1526. ”

“ The treatment is admirable; the characters, some of whom are historical, and others sketched after Tassoni's contemporaries, have an air of reality altogether wanting to the personages of Folengo's parodies; there is enough of idyllic charm and tender pathos here and there to approve the writer a true poet, while humour dominates, and many of the sarcasms are really profound. A more biting irony on the wretched dissensions which had been the ruin of Italy cannot be conceived ”

“ She has disappointed me, rejected me, insulted me; she does not care for my cockatoo, Parade, nor wish to be introduced to my most particular friend, Lady Fashion!" and Folly almost cried with spite and vexation.
"She will not escape me so easily," said Pride; "my arts are deeper than yours. I have resolved that her bird shall die, and die it shall, before to-morrow, let her guard it as well as she may."
"She always keeps Content beside her," observed [151] Folly, "and you know that neither of us are able to take it away by force." ”