SUBSECTION 4 How mockery, slander and bitter jokes cause melancholy

It is an old saying: a blow from a word strikes deeper than a blow from a sword. Many people are as deeply wounded by a slander, a coarse and bitter joke, a defamatory writing, a lampoon, satire, fable, epigram, stage play or the like as by any misfortune whatever.

Princes and rulers who are otherwise happy, with everything at their command, secure and free, “whose power has given them immunity for their crimes,” are grievously troubled by such lampoons and satires. They fear a railing Aretino more than an enemy in the field. This led most princes of his time, according to some accounts, to give him a generous pension so that he would not attack them in his satires.

The gods had their Momus, Homer his Zoilus, Achilles his Thersites, Philip his Demades. The Caesars themselves were regularly taunted in Rome. There was always a Petronius or a Lucian in those days, just as there will always be a Rabelais, an Euphormio or a Boccalini in ours.

Pope Adrian VI was so deeply offended and troubled by the lampooners at Rome that he ordered the statue to be demolished and burned, and its ashes thrown into the Tiber. He would have done so immediately if Lodovicus Suessanus, a witty companion, had not dissuaded him by saying that Pasquin’s ashes would turn into frogs at the bottom of the river and croak worse and louder than before.

“The touchy tribe of poets”: hence Socrates in Plato advises all his friends who care about their reputations to stand in awe of poets. They are formidable fellows, able to praise or blame as they see fit. “This shows how much fiercer the pen is than the sword.”

The prophet David complains in Psalm 123:4 that his soul was filled with the mockery of the wealthy and the contempt of the proud. In Psalm 55:4, because of the voice of the wicked and their hatred, his heart trembled within him and the terrors of death came upon him: fear and horrible fear, and so on. And in Psalm 69:20: “Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of sorrow.”

Who, falling into the mouths of such people, does not have the same cause to complain, and feel the same distress? Many are so insolently spiteful, with sarcasm so constantly on their tongues, so bitter and so foolish, that, as Baldassare Castiglione observes, they cannot speak without biting. They would rather lose a friend than a joke. Whatever company they enter, they mock and lord it over their inferiors, especially those who depend on them in any way. They play on someone’s weakness, mistreat or trick them, until by their manipulation and deceit they have made “a madman out of a fool,” a dazed simpleton or idiot, all to amuse themselves.

As long as he can get a laugh for himself, He spares none of his friends.

Friends, people on neither side, enemies: all are alike to them. Turning a fool into a madman is their sport, and they have no greater happiness than mocking and ridiculing others. Like the people in Apuleius, they must sacrifice to the god of laughter once a day, or become melancholy themselves. They do not care how they torment and mistreat others, provided they can cheer themselves up.

Indeed, their intelligence serves only this purpose: to provide amusement and crack a coarse joke, which is “the lightest fruit of talent,” the froth of wit, as Cicero holds. For this they are often applauded. In all other conversation they are dry, barren, straw-like, dull and heavy. Here lies their talent; in this alone they excel and please themselves and others.

Leo X, that mocking pope, took extraordinary pleasure in playing upon simple people and making fools of them, as Giovio records in book 4 of his life. By praising some and persuading others to do this or that, he made “the dull into utter fools and objects of the greatest ridicule, and fools into madmen”: simple fellows became complete idiots, and foolish people quite mad before he had finished with them.

He gives one memorable example: Tarascomus of Parma, a musician, was so manipulated by Leo X and his accomplice Bibbiena that he thought himself a man of exceptional skill, though he was really a ninny. They induced him to compose foolish songs and invent ridiculous new rules, which they praised highly: tying up the arm with which he played the lute to make his stroke sweeter, and taking down the tapestries because the voice would be clearer when it reverberated from the wall.

In the same way, they persuaded a certain Baraballius of Gaeta that he was as good a poet as Petrarch. They wanted him crowned poet laureate and to invite all his friends to the ceremony. They so filled the poor man with the idea of his poetic excellence that, when some of his wiser friends told him how foolish he was being, he became very angry and said they envied his honour and prosperity. It was strange, says Giovio, to see an old man of sixty, venerable and dignified, so thoroughly deceived.

But what can such mockers not do, especially if they find a pliable person to work upon? Indeed, who is so wise or judicious that he cannot be manipulated like this, especially if some exceptionally clever people set upon him? The man who drives others mad, if treated in the same way, would be just as mad himself, just as distressed and tormented. He might cry out with the character in the comedy: “By Jupiter, are you, a mere man, to drive me mad?”

For in these matters everything depends on how they are taken. If he is a simple soul and does not notice it, all is well: he may happen to amuse others without being troubled himself. But if he recognizes his foolishness and takes it to heart, it torments him worse than any whipping. A bitter joke, slander or calumny pierces deeper than any loss, danger, bodily pain or injury whatever: “it flies lightly,” as Bernard says of an arrow, “but wounds gravely.” Especially when it comes from a venomous tongue, it cuts, as David says, like a two-edged sword. “They shoot bitter words as arrows,” Psalm 64:3; and “they struck with their tongues,” Jeremiah 18:18, so hard that they leave an incurable wound.