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Censoring Laughter CHAPTER 6 Censoring Laughter That Counter-Reformation censorship proceeded with rigor to suppress mock- ery and criticism of the ‘neighbor’, that is, the Christian ‘neighbor’, in poetry is no secret. Often such measures concerned texts in which the clergy and the religious were targeted, and sometimes texts that harmed the laity. A large number of texts in the vernacular and Latin were prohibited, suspended until they were corrected or severely expurgated. Among the literary texts con- cerned were works by the Three Crowns, Boccaccio’s Decamerone, sonnets of Petrarch in Vergerio’s Alcuni importanti luoghi tradotti fuor delle epistole latine and Dante’s Divina Commedia as well as Niccolò Franco’s Delle Rime contro Pietro Aretino, novelle, satires, and books on poetics and language such as Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d’Aristotele and Francesco Alunno’s Ricchezze della lingua volgare sopra il Boccaccio.1 When Constabile published new lists in the 1570s, he included several authors and titles that up until then had not figured nominatim in the Index. Among them were even more texts pertaining to the novella and satire genres and burlesque poetry, all of which were deemed immoral. In Constabile’s May Aviso of 1574 we find Facetiae by Arlotto Mainardi (1580/90/93), novelle such as Girolamo Parabosco’s I Diporti, Il Pecorone by Giovanni Fiorentino, the 1573 rassettatura of the Decamerone, Giovan Francesco Straparola’s Notti piacevoli and Burchiello’s Rime e sonetti. Another list compiled by Constabile, dated the same year, includes Ariosto’s Satire.2 Two other lists, probably dat- ing back to 1580, refer to a volume containing satires by Ariosto and other unnamed authors: Nota de libri prohibiti et d’alcuni sospesi, fin che di loro venghi fatta nuova espurgatione dalla Santissima Inquisitione universale. Oltra quelli che sono contenuti nell’Indice generale fatto già per ordine et decreto del sacro Concilio di Trento (according to ILI, ix c. 1580) and Annotatio librorum prohibito- rum, et eorum qui suspensi fuerunt usque ad novam expurgationem Santissime Inquisitionis preter eos qui continentur in Indice Generali edicto sacri Concilii Tridentini decreto. A Roman list of prohibited books sent to the Inquisition of Modena dated 15 August 1577 also names Francesco Sansovino’s Cento novelle and other authors of novelle, some of which are mentioned in internal black- 1 Cf. Indexes of 1558/59–1596, in ILI, viii–ix. 2 Cf. Ex Vercellis. Libri parte sospesi fin a novo aviso dalla S. Romana et universal Inquisitione, & parte del tutto prohibiti [signed by Constabile, dated 22 May 1574], in ILI, ix, 756–7. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/978900430���5_007 Censoring Laughter 197 lists of the Congregation or in later official Roman Indexes, such as Bandello, Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti and Agnolo Firenzuola.3 As the general laws of the Index suggest and internal lists of the Congregation for the Index confirm, many more texts of various genres were concerned than the official and published Indexes reveal. The Roman censorial authori- ties made use of poetic genres in order to define prohibited works. The first Roman Index of 1557, which was not promulgated, lists a considerable number of pasquinades and a general prohibition of the genre. As explained above, this prohibition concerns all writing (“Pasquilli, seu conscriptiones omnes . .”) in which God, the saints, the sacraments, the Catholic Church, its cult or the Holy See are “detracted” (“detrahatur”). It is no wonder that the landscape of vernacular poetry, especially the novella genre, changed considerably after the promulgation of the first Roman Index in 1558/59. Books were suppressed, expurgated or published in foreign countries. A purged anthology of Bandello’s novelle was published by Ascanio Centorio degli Ortensi at Milan in 1560. The fourth part of Bandello’s Novelle was published posthumously in Lyons in 1573. It is no secret that censorship influ- enced the creative process of contemporary authors. Giraldo Cinzio proposed a ‘reformed’ poetic theory of the novella in his 1565 Ecatommithi, followed by Sebastiano Erizzo’s Sei Giornate in 1567, Novelle of Ascanio de’ Mori da Ceno in 1585 and Duecento novelle of Celio Malespini in 1609. The first expurgated version of the Decamerone was prepared by Tomas Manriquez, master of the sacred palace in Rome, in collaboration with some philologists from Florence.4 It was released in 1573 (Florence: Filippo and Jacopo Giunti), but immediately prohibited by Constabile. A second version was prepared by Lionardo Salviati (Venice: Giunti, 1582), and a third by Luigi Groto detto il Cieco (Venice: Fabio and Agostino Zoppini and Onofrio Farri, 1588). Eventually, Francesco Dionigi produced the Decameron spirituale in 1594 and dedicated it to his patron Girolamo Cardinal Rusticucci, who, significantly, had tight connections to rad- ical members of the Roman censorship authorities, was appointed Cardinal Vicar of Rome by Sixtus V and served as Camerlengo under Clement VIII.5 Critics have observed that, in expurgating texts from defamatory utterances targeting the clergy and religious, Counter-Reformation censorship neglected (“trascurare”) immorality such as contents of an erotic and obscene nature,6 as 3 Ibid. 750–1. 4 See Chiecchi and Troisio, 30 at n. 7. 5 Ibid. 10s. 6 Raul Mordenti, ‘Le due censure: la collazione dei testi del Decameron “rassettati” ’, 261s, Nicola Longo, ‘Fenomeni di censura nella letteratura italiana del Cinquecento’, ibid. 275–84, 282ss..
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