"A new era in arts and letters was dawning in Rome with the reign of Pope Leo X. Humanists achieved greater influence in his time, and rhetoric was idolized at the court to such a degree that it led to a new form of entertainment, featuring disputations and literary contests....
The pope particularly loved music and his household accounts record numerous payments for the purchase of instruments and the service of musicians.... he used his gardens as settings for banquets and concerts....
In addition to his affinity for the arts, the pope demonstrated a great love of buffoonery. Historians have claimed that this pleasure in vulgarity, which was not prevalent in royal courts of the period, derived from Florentine taste and custom." [pp. 88-9]Some commenters, Bedini relates (and Domenico Gnoli detailed), thought these entertainments came about because of the lack of ladies at the papal court, allowing for 'greater license and grosser expression'. Others say the pope was combatting melancholy due to the stresses of the job and his physical frailties. Leo was said to pay a lot to those who could amuse him.
Perhaps the greatest of the buffoons was Fra Mariano of the Fetti line, from Florence. Another was the Abbot of Gaeta, one Giacomo Baraballo, also from Florence. Bedini explains that when Pope Leo was confirmed, Baraballo hurried to Rome where he was "... duly registered among the scutiferi or shield-bearers."
"Perhaps the most memorable entertainment of the period took place at the conferring of Roman citizenship upon Leo's brother, Giuliano de' Medici, in September 1513. For the occasion a great wooden theater in the classical style was erected on the Campidoglio and decorated with paintings by the major artists in Rome. One of the featured events was the reading of poetry and recitation of the Penulo of Plautus. Seventy-two poets were convened to comment on a poem entitled Epulum by Simone Seculo; notable among them was the Abbot of Gaeta, who signed himself modestly 'Baraballo, arch-poet'." [p.91]Fra Mariano himself had even described this act of Baraballo as that of "... a prince and inventor of a new madness." Apparently, the new Pope had such a good time with this, and since the patron saints of his family were the paired Saints Cosmo and Damiano, Leo X decided to have a festival every year in this manner, and in those saints' honor in Rome. The Abbot Baraballo was to play a central role in this, the following year as well, in 1514. But that time he would sit atop the prized white elephant that the pope kept for his entertainment. This elephant is the focus in this, Bedini's extensively detailed work.
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Silvio A Bedini: The Pope's Elephant; Penguin Books, NY, NY 2000
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