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Introduction XVII or fools’ play, was a recognized part of the drama in France. ‘ Le jeu du Prince des Sotz, Et mère sotte ; Ioué aux halles de Paris le mardy gras, Lan mil cing cens et vnze’ (February 24, 1512, n.s.) attacked in its ‘ Sottie’ Louis XII, fle Prince des Sotz’; and in its ‘ Moralité’ abused the Pope, ‘Phomme obstiné’, as cause of all the ills tormenting ‘Peuple françois’ and ‘Peuple ytalique’. But Folly’s freedom hurt no one. The French king witnessed this performance and bore no malice. The Pope was as little affected by the hard things that Folly said of him. In January 1518 Erasmus writes: ‘The Pope himself read the Moria and laughed. His only comment was this: “I am glad our Erasmus is in the Moria himself ;” and yet I deal with no one more scathingly than with the Popes.’ A month before in a letter to the powerful Abbot of St. Bertin’s at St. Omer, he said: ‘ This work, such as it is, pleases the learned of the whole world; it pleases bishops, archbishops, kings, cardinals, and Pope Leo himself, who has read the whole of it from beginning to end” The theologians, of course, were indignant; one 1507 b
