Martellino

Martellino is a Florentine comic performer whose skill at impersonation gives him a way into a packed shrine in Treviso—and whose carefully staged body makes him the target of the crowd once his deception is exposed. In his episode, a feigned disability first opens a path through a crowd gathered around a reputed saint; when the trick is unmasked, the same body that seemed miraculously healed is dragged down, beaten, and placed in legal danger. The reversal makes Martellino’s performance both the engine of the comedy and the cause of its peril.

Identity and Performance

Martellino travels with Stecchi and Marchese, two fellow townsmen who visit the courts of princes and lords, entertaining spectators by disguising themselves and imitating other people with practiced movements and grimaces. The three arrive in Treviso for the first time and find the city in commotion over Arrigo, a poor German burden-carrier reputed to have lived a holy life. After his death, people say, the great church’s bells rang without anyone pulling them; Trevisans proclaim him a saint, carry his body to the Cathedral, and bring the sick and disabled in hope of healing.

The performers want to see the spectacle, but the Cathedral is crowded, with armed men stationed there to prevent disorder. Martellino proposes to solve the problem through his craft: he will counterfeit a cripple, while Stecchi and Marchese support him as if he cannot walk unaided. The plan depends on the crowd’s compassion and its desire to bring an afflicted person to the saint. His performance is therefore not simply an imitation for its own sake; it is a calculated use of the expectations surrounding the shrine.

The Feigned Cripple at the Shrine

In a deserted place, Martellino twists his hands, fingers, arms, legs, mouth, eyes, and entire face until he appears dreadfully palsied. Stecchi and Marchese take him up and carry him toward the church, asking people in God’s name to make room. The crowd yields passage, and the three reach the place where Saint Arrigo’s body lies. Some gentlemen lift Martellino and lay him upon the body in the hope that he will recover his health.

Martellino sustains the illusion while onlookers wait to see what will happen. He gradually appears to regain control, first opening a finger, then a hand, extending an arm, and finally stretching out his whole body. The crowd answers the apparent recovery with a cry of praise for Saint Arrigo. The episode briefly places Martellino at the center of a public miracle: his skilled control of gesture produces the spectacle that the onlookers believe they have witnessed. But his trick cannot withstand recognition by someone who knows him.

Recognition, Violence, and Accusation

A Florentine nearby recognizes Martellino only after the apparent cure, when the performer’s body is straight again. The man laughs and explains to some Trevisans that Martellino was never crippled and is known for imitating whatever shape he chooses. The crowd immediately changes its interpretation of the scene. What had looked like a healing now appears to them as mockery of the saint and of their devotion.

The Trevisans seize Martellino, pull him down, tear at his hair and clothes, and strike him with fists and feet. Stecchi and Marchese recognize that matters have gone badly, but fear for themselves and do not come to his aid; they even cry out with the crowd for his death while considering how to get him away. Marchese finds an opening by going to the officers outside the church and claiming that a man inside has stolen his purse, which he says contained a hundred gold florins. The accusation is a ruse to put Martellino into official custody rather than leave him to the crowd.

A dozen sergeants break through the crush and pull the battered performer from the people’s hands, taking him to the palace. Some in the crowd follow and, seeing that he has been arrested as a pickpocket, make the same accusation themselves. The Provost’s judge, described as crabbed and ill-conditioned, examines Martellino and has him put to the strappado when he treats the arrest lightly. The comic impersonator has passed from one threatening interpretation of his body to another: first a cripple apparently cured, then a scoffer at sacred things, and finally a suspected thief.

Defense and Narrative Role

After the torture, Martellino asks that each accuser be required to say when and where the alleged theft occurred. Their answers contradict his recent arrival in Treviso: some say he robbed them days earlier, while others claim it happened that very day. He argues that he has only been in the city for a few hours and appeals to the Prince’s officer who keeps the register of strangers, as well as to his host, to verify his account. His defense turns the accusers’ multiplication of claims into evidence against them.

Meanwhile, Stecchi and Marchese, hearing that the judge has already tortured Martellino, fear that their attempt to rescue him from the crowd has delivered him into worse danger. They find their host, who takes them to Sandro Agolanti, a resident with considerable influence with the Prince. After hearing the account, Sandro goes to the Prince and prevails upon him to send for Martellino. The episode supplied here ends with that intervention underway; it does not establish the outcome of the Prince’s inquiry.

Martellino’s story turns on the instability of public appearances. His bodily impersonation works because the crowd reads it through its hopes for a miracle, but the recognition of a single witness reverses the meaning of the same gestures and unleashes collective punishment. His practiced ability to become other shapes gives him access and comic power, yet it offers no protection when spectators cease to treat the scene as a performance. The story’s reversals also distinguish the crowd’s immediate certainty from the more testable claims of Martellino’s defense: contradictory dates and a record of his arrival may matter more than the accusation repeated by many voices.