Re-Writing Trent, or What Happened to Italian Literature in the Wake ...

aware of the possibility of censure. How the Parma censors came to possess the work is an
intriguing question: they seemingly had to hand a copy, or at least knew the work well
enough to cite a specific poem for censure, a work listed as „la stanza felice Chiesa povera
dell‟oro‟. 30 The third work on the list, Ranieri‟s Stanze in lode di Maria Vergine, was perhaps
guilty of a blurring of genre boundaries which upset the Parma censors. Collections of Stanze
in lode di... were more often directed at living men and women, were encomiastic in nature,
and could often be playful and irreverent. 31 Thus the introduction of the Virgin Mary into
such a courtly and amorous poetic context may have been deemed unseemly, although
Ranieri was not the only author to do this. Marco Rosiglia‟s work on Mary Magdalene
perhaps came in for condemnation for similar reasons to Maraffi‟s Figure. While the poem in
ottava rima on the Magdalene‟s conversion seems conventional enough, later editions of the
work also contain vernacular translations of the Pater noster and Ave Maria and other free
interpretations of liturgical texts which may well have attracted condemnation. 32 What seems
clear, however, is that this very short list of devotional poetic works is like a drop in the
ocean when set in the context of the numbers of similar works being printed by Italian presses
in the period. 33 Again one gets a sense of a censor who happened to have to hand certain
books, and acted unsystematically based on available material.
Certainly more insidious than the individually banned volumes and authors, given
their tiny numbers, were the blanket prohibitions of various kinds of literary practice that
30 Thesaurus de la littérature interdite, p.273.
31 An example of a more standard use of the genre would be Adriano Valerini, Stanze in lode del molto illustre
signore il signor Tullo Guerrieri. E della signora Giulia Brambati sua consorte (Verona: Sebastiano dalle Donne,
e fratelli, 1577). A more playful text is Ludovico Martelli, Stanze in lode delle donne (Florence: Bernardo di
Giunta, il vecchio, 1548).
32 The titlepage to the 1546 edition (Venice: Giovanni Padovano), for example, reads ‘Aggiontovi il Pater noster
l’Ave Maria volgare, & il Credo esposto in terzetti, Con uno priego devotissimo a Maria vergine per impetrar
gratia essendo infermo’. The author is cited as ‘Marco Rasilia da Foligno’.
33 For a sense of production of devotional literature in the period, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian
Vernacular Religious Books, 1465-1550: A Finding List (Geneva: Droz, 1983); and for the later period, Lorenzo
Baldacchini, Bibliografia delle stampe popolari religiose del XVI – XVII secolo. Biblioteche Vaticana,
Alessandrina, Estense (Florence: Olschki, 1980).
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