Part 1 — The Pope’s Answer to Queen Mary I.

YOU are too violent, dear madam, and men of my age and grandeur require more moderation. I am acquainted with your history, and know your zeal; by the same token, you need not waste your lungs to acquaint me with either the one or the other. To be free with you, I am not of the humour to espouse madly other peoples passions, tho’ I should leave the triple crown destitute of all pomp and greatness. But I will make the hereticks blot out of their writings, if possible, the names of Antichrist, devouring Dragon, Wolf disguis’d in sheeps-skin, and several others as abusive. Do you not believe people are weary of paying a blind obedience to the see of Rome? Imperious France has made us sensible of it; and it is not the fault of the eldest son of the Church, if he does not dethrone his mother. Ecclesiastical censures are now out of fashion, and no more minded than pasquinades. We were scorn’d and ridicul’d in your father’s time; and tho’ you were as handsome as my quondam mistress, Donna Maria di S. Germano, you would not oblige me to put up fresh affronts for your sake. Your husband is to blame to treat you with such indifference, and I think it very ill for an infected worm-eaten carcase to despise so devout a queen. But I cannot imagine why the popes, who live all under the same zone with you, suffer such coldness. Suppose your husband should, like a heretick, despise their exhortations, one of their decrees has power enough to divorce you; which in time, I hope, may advance your grandeur; for we hear Pluto is in love with you for your zeal, and Proserpine is given over by the physicians. Therefore take my advice, and drink as little water as you can; for being dropsical, the water of Styx must needs be prejudicial to you, and the church would lose an admirable good friend. I offer you no indulgences, they are pure mountebank drugs, and were you got no farther yet than Purgatory, have not the virtue to bring you out. But grant they had that power, as your amours stand now, I suppose you would not desire it; so, till I have the happiness of wishing your imperial majesty much joy, I am, &c.