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It remaineth now we speake two or three wordes of those Sermons the Bonzii are woont to make, not so many as ours in number, but assuredly very well prouided for. The Pulpit is erected in a great temple with a silke Canopie ouer it, therein standeth a costly seate, before the seate a table with a bell and a booke.
Reference to the same custom, of riders in Italy using umbrellas, is made in Florio's "Worlde of Wordes" , where we find "Ombrella, a fan, a canopie, also a festoon or cloth of State for a prince, also a kind of round fan or shadowing that they use to ride with in sommer in Italy, a little shade."
The Cacique was in his lodgings vnder a Canopie: and without doores, right against his lodgings, in an high place, they spread a mat for him, and two cushions one vpon another, where he sat him downe, and his Indians placed themselues round about him, somewhat distant from him, so that they made a place, and a void roome where he sate: and his chiefest men were neerest to him, and one with a shadow of Deeres skinne, which keept the Sunne from him, being round, and of the bignes of a target, quartered with black and white, hauing a rundell in the middest: a farre off it seemed to be of taffata, because the colours were very perfect.
But whatsoever the fashion or invention was, the trust was but fond that was committed to them, seeing that the art of lust and gold could make them as vain as the Italian engines of jealousy in this day. Thus, 'O Lentulus, says the poet, speaking figuratively to some nobleman, 'it is that thou art married; but it is some musician's or fencer's bastard that is born under thy lordly canopie."
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