Abstract

The first draft of Teofilo Folengo’s Baldus, knows as the Paganini (1517), ends with the killing of the witch Culfora. The episode is very short and unbound from the rest of the poem. In the Toscolanense (1521), the second draft of the work, Folengo substantially rewrote the episode of Culfora: the few lines of the Paganini version become two cantos (21-22), and Culfora becomes the queen of a very powerful sect whose members are cardinals and contemporary politicians. This article examines this episode, with particular focus on the overlapping between fiction and historical reality (the corruption of the Church)