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

Indeed, it is very hard, surveying the list of twenty poetic works included for the first time, to
identify any clear method or system behind their selection for censure. Contained in the list
are poets clearly deemed to be immoral, such as Nicolò Franco (c.1515-1570), whose opera
omnia is prohibited. 15 It also includes illustrious names such as the Venetians Pietro Bembo
(1470-1547) (whose Rime are banned until they have been adequately expurgated) and
Gabriel Fiamma (1533-85), alongside the now almost entirely unknown Bolognese Vitale
Papazzoni (c.1530-after 1600), whose Rime were published once only, in Venice in 1572. 16
Rather surprisingly, three volumes of collected Petrarchism make an appearance, one by a
group of Tuscan authors, one addressed to the gentlewomen of Rome, and the second volume
only of Gabriel Giolito‟s famous series of Petrarchan anthologies. 17 To give an idea of how
unusual the Parma Index‟s concern with poetry is, twelve of the twenty works censured in
Parma were subsequently included on the Roman Indexes of 1590 and 1593, and only four
new poetic works were added to the Index in 1590. The Clementine Index of 1596 includes
none of the poetic works previously cited.
Whatever the reasons for a certain paranoia about poetic texts in Parma in 1580, what
is clear is that a total of twenty banned poetic texts is a laughably small number when we
consider the production of the Italian presses throughout the sixteenth century to meet a
15 Franco’s Rime contro Pietro Aretino had already appeared in the Indexes of 1559 and 1564: see Thesaurus de
la littérature interdite, p.189. The author was beheaded in 1570 for writing satirical verses against the pope:
for more information see Paul F. Grendler, Critics of the Italian World, 1530-1560: Anton Francesco Doni,
Nicolò Franco, and Ortensio Lando (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Carlo Simiani, La vita e le
opere di Nicolò Franco (Turin-Rome: L. Roux, 1894).
16 On Bembo’s Rime see Brian Richardson, ‘From Scribal Publication to Print Publication: Pietro Bembo’s Rime,
1529-1535’, Modern Language Review, 95 (2000), 684-95. On Fiamma’s Rime Spirituali and other works, see
Carlo Ossola, ‘Il “queto travaglio” di Gabriele Fiamma’, in Letteratura e critica: studi in onore di Natalino
Sapegno (Rome: Bulzoni, 1976), III, pp.239-86. On Papazzoni’s Rime see Walter L. Bullock, ‘Vitale Papazzoni: A
Whimsical Petrarchista of the Cinquecento’, Italica, 12 (1935), 51-65.
17 Primo volume della scielta di stanze di diversi autori toscani, raccolte da M. Agostino Ferentelli (Venice: Gli
eredi di Melchiorre Sessa ad instantia dei Giunti di Firenze, 1571); Per donne romane. Rime di diversi raccolte
et dedicate al Signor Giacomo Buoncompagni da Muzio Manfredi (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1575); Rime di
diversi nobili huomini et eccellenti poeti nella lingua thoscana. Libro secondo... (Venice: Giolito, 1547).
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