MAINARDI, ARLOTTO. - Called “il Piovano,” because he was incumbent of the parish church of S. Cresci ai Maciuoli, where he was born in 1396; he died in Firenze on 24 Dec. 1484. He was a contemporary and relative of Archbishop s. Antonino Pierozzi. He visited Flanders, England, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as a ship’s chaplain.
His witty and good-natured disposition lives on in the Facezie, which, collected by an anonymous compiler and first printed in Firenze around 1510, were translated into various languages. Their most lively form and apparent ingenuousness are shot through with a genuine acuity of observation; nor is it difficult to discern, amid the mass of odd sayings and episodes, a moral substance of purely popular character. Before Mass, s. Filippo Neri would have some of the Facezie read to him so as not to be overtaken by ecstasy (L. Ponnelle-L. Bordet, St. Philippe Neri, Parigi 1929, p. 77). The jest concerning wine and thrushes is also known through its pictorial representation by Giovanni da S. Giovanni (Pitti). The inscription on the Piovano’s tomb in the Florentine church of Gesù Pellegrino is the final indication of the man’s originality: “This burial-place was caused to be made by the piovano Arlotto for himself and for all those persons who might wish to enter therein.”