FOLENGO, TEOFILO. — Poet, born at Mantova on 8 Nov. 1491, died at Campese di Bassano on 9 Dec. 1544. As a boy he studied under a priest in the Ferrarese, and in 1509 entered the Order of the Benedictines, living until 1525 among Brescia, Mantova, and Padova.
During this period the first version of the Baldus (Venice 1517) and the second (Toscolano 1521) appeared, in macaronic Latin and under the pseudonym Merlin Coccio. Following friction with his superiors, he left the Order in 1525, without, however (as was written for a long time), taking up a life of pleasure. For five years he remained outside the Order, publishing in 1526 a poem in Italian, the Orlandina, and in 1527 the Casa del Triperuno, in verse and prose, in Latin, macaronic Latin, and Italian. In 1530, in order to be readmitted to the Order, he withdrew into solitude near Sorrento, and in 1534 re-entered the Benedictines. In the meantime he had published a poem in ottava rima, L'Umanità del Figliwal di Dio (Venice, ca. 1533). He also wrote numerous other hagiographical and ascetic works, among which the Atto della Pinta deserves mention. But F. is best known as the macaronic poet, the most felicitous author (more than of the Moschaca, the Zanionella, and the Epigrammi, which, together with the masterpiece, make up the Maccherones, now in the edition by A. Luzio, Bari 1928) of the Baldus, a poem extraordinarily rich in ironic humanity, at once imaginative and realistic, the product of exquisite literary education and uninhibited popular humour. Recent studies, especially those of Billanovich, have erased the image of a worldly and heretical F., restoring to his true image as a poet a cultural and moral balance derived essentially from sacred studies and the religious habit.