United States or Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife and painted her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase living men and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside him and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles VI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of love and death and madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.
So far, you may say, there is nothing suspicious or very outlandish about his rig; but turpiter desinit formosus superne, there is something highly remarkable á continuacion. Do you see that blanket which is drawn tightly up, fore and aft, toward his waist, and, there confined by means of a belt which his querida has richly ornamented for him, falls over in uneven folds like an abbreviated kilt?
Statesman, chemist, engineer, shipbuilder, soldier, above all, navigator, painter, plasterer, and statuary; like the hungry Greek adventurer of Juvenal, omnia novit: like Horace's wise man amongst the Stoics; be the subject boots, beauty, bullocks, or the beer-trade, he is universal instructor and referee. "Et sutor bonus, et solus formosus, et est rex."
In the affinity of their language to those of the countries to which they went, these missionaries from the West found a very great advantage. It is the glory of Pope Formosus, the same whose body underwent a posthumous trial, that he converted the Bulgarians, a people who came from the banks of the Volga.
Theodora, an influential lady, fell in love with a young priest of Ravenna, and had him elected Pope, by the name of John X. Her daughter Marozia, a young girl and a virgin, gave herself to Pope Sergius III, a capricious, fantastic man, who had once had the witty idea of digging up Pope Formosus and subjecting him, putrefied as he was, to the judgment of a Synod.
Erat autem satis formosus, et valens, et vltra modum in verbis et factis maturus, et principalis, et satis diligebatur a suis, magis tamen metuebatur, et erat epilepticus, nemine tamen sciente.
Polychro. and other doo affirme, that pope Formosus did accursse king Edward and the English nation, for suffering the bishops sees to be vacant, it can not stand with the agreement or the time, vnlesse that the cursse pronounced by Formosus for this matter long afore was not regarded, vntill Edward had respect thereto.
Calyptorhynchus Banksii, VIG. and HORSF. Leachii xanthonotus, GOULD. Polytelis melanura. Platycercus Baueri, VIG. and HORSF. Barnardi, VIG. and HORSF. Adelaidiae, GOULD. flaveolus, GOULD. Psephotus multicolor. haematonotus, GOULD. Melopsittacus undulatus. Euphema aurantia, GOULD. elegans, GOULD. Pezoporus formosus.
So he unloaded his bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at the age of forty-eight rose to the Papacy. Being a handsome man, he was fain to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals dissuaded him from this parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as Paul in 1464. A vulgar love of show was his ruling characteristic.
Among other horrid acts Platina relates that he rescinded the acts of Pope Formosus, compelled those whom he had ordained to be re-ordained, dragged his dead body from the sepulchre, beheaded him as though he were alive, and then threw him into the Tiber!
Word Of The Day