Among the Popes, there was none who so liberally patronized jesters as Leo X. It has been said of this prelate that a witty fool had always a much better chance of obtaining an audience of him than a grave philosopher. Jovius and Guicciardini agree in the fact of the papal predilection for fellows who could afford him mirth, not merely by their light learning, but by their gross and heavy appetites. The same writers especially allude to the favour which Leo extended to buffoons, and to those so-called arch-poets who played the fool and miserably degraded themselves for the sake of a half-gnawed bone and a handful of ducats. The most famous, yet not the grossest of these mirthmakers, was Querno, a Neapolitan by birth, with a diminutive figure, a huge appetite, and an unquenchable thirst. The mock ovation of this arch-poet, his march to the Capitol, crowned with a wreath of vine, carrot, and cabbage-leaves, and mounted on an elephant, is a well-known incident, as is also his bandying of indifferent Latin verses, improvised for the nonce, with Leo himself. This buffoon, although by no means devoid of mental endowments, was content to stand by at papal banquets, and amuse the godly company by the greedy avidity with which he swallowed the fragments and half-consumed dishes despatched to him from the pontiff’s table. If Querno was a buffoon, he was at least that sort of fool to perform whose part efficiently requires a certain sort of wit. But Leo had other jesters who had no merit but the sorry one of being disagreeable fools. Of these we may judge by what is said of two of them, a greedy, insatiable fellow named Martinus, and a mendicant brother called Marianus. They certainly were wonderful buffoons in their way, for one could take a pigeon, roasted or stewed, compress it into a species of gigantic bolus, and swallow it whole, at one gulp. The other made no difficulty of devouring forty eggs at a meal, and indeed on high festive days, wondering and applauding guests saw him deliberately devour a score of capons! Of the extravagance of Leo’s table, his successor, Adrian VI., was heartily ashamed, having a sort of disgust for a pontiff who, in the company of buffoons like Querno, Gazoldo, Britonio, and Baraballo, could eat himself into an indigestion, or see others do so, on costly dishes of peacock-sausages. But in this case we have an instance of that easy compounding for one’s own sins by denouncing those of our neighbours. Adrian did not care for costly dishes or jesters; but his appetite was under less control than that of Leo, if it be true, as Jovius says of him, that the Flemish pontiff drank himself into chronic disease on strong beer. “Contrahisse morbum assiduum cerevisiæ potu.”