Poggio Bracciolini
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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(Gian Francesco) Poggio Bracciolini (February 11, 1380 – October 30, 1459) was one of the most important Italian Renaissance humanists. He recovered a great number of classical texts, mostly lying forgotten in German and French monastic libraries, and disseminated copies among the educated world. Gershon Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke was dedicated to him.
Facetiae
Bracciolini's Facetiae, a collection of humorous and indecent tales expressed in the purest Latin Poggio could command are the works most enjoyed today: they are available in several English translations. This book is chiefly remarkable for its unsparing satires on the monastic orders and the secular clergy. Rabelais was familiar with the Facetiae at the time he wrote Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Poggio published his Facetiae in 1451, when he was seventy years old. They were not condemned by the Vatican because they were written in Latin, legible by the clerical class and incomprehensible to the masses.
