Also known as:
Italian: Piovano Arlotto, il Piovano
MAINARDI, ARLOTTO. - Called "il Piovano," because he was the titular priest of the parish church of S. Cresci ai Maciuoli, where he was born in 1396, and died in Florence on 24 December 1484. He was a contemporary and relative of the archbishop St. Antoninus Pierozzi. He visited Flanders, England and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as a ship's chaplain.
His facetious and good-natured temperament lives again in the Facezie, which, collected by an anonymous editor and first printed in Florence around 1510, were translated into various languages. The exceedingly lively form and the apparent naivety veil a real acuteness of observation; nor is it difficult to isolate from the thicket of sayings and bizarre episodes a moral substance of purely popular stamp. Before Mass, St. Philip Neri would have someone read him one of the Facezie so as not to be overcome by ecstasy (L. Ponnelle-L. Bordet, St. Philippe Neri, Paris 1929, p. 77). The jest of the wine and the thrushes is also known for the pictorial representation of it made by Giovanni da S. Giovanni (Pitti). The epitaph on the Piovano's tomb in the Florentine church of Gesù Pellegrino is the ultimate token of the man's eccentricity: "Questa sepoltura ha fatto fare il piovano Arlotto per sé e per tutte quelle persone le quali dentro entrare vi volessino."
Bibliography5 worksWorks: Le faccezie del p. A., preceded by his life and annotated by G. Bacini, Florence 1884; Scelta di faccezie e burle del p. A. edited by
BIBL.: Works: Le faccezie del p. A., preceded by his life and annotated by G. Bacini, Florence 1884; Scelta di faccezie e burle del p. A. edited by L. Bracalori, ibid. 1936. Studies: A. Wenebiki, Le faccezie del p. A., Berlin 1910; L. Di Francia, Novellistica, I, Milan 1924, pp. 380-90; B. Migliorini, Dal nome proprio al nome comune, Geneva 1927, pp. 157-58; G. Peytavi de Faugères, Figures fiorentines d'autrefois. Un Rabelais florentin: le « Piovano Arlotto », in Nouvelle revue, 4 (1937), pp. 378-84.
Navarra, Enzo. “Mainardi, arlotto.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VII, coll. 1858–1859. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1951. https://azioneromana.com/article/mainardi-arlotto.
MLA
Navarra, Enzo. “Mainardi, arlotto.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VII, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1951, coll. 1858–1859. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/mainardi-arlotto.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec7_mainardi_arlotto,
author = {Navarra, Enzo},
title = {Mainardi, arlotto},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {VII},
pages = {1858--1859},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1951},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/mainardi-arlotto}
}
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