The world or the Maremma

“The world or the Maremma” is the extravagant phrase Michele Scalza uses to enlarge a local joke into a universal boast. In his argument, Florence’s Cadgers are not merely the oldest and noblest people in Florence: they are the finest gentlemen in the world—or even in the Maremma. The awkwardly expansive pairing helps make the claim comic, while the wager turns its absurdity into a contest with a concrete prize.

The Boast and Its Setting

The phrase appears during a gathering at Monte Ughi, where a group of young Florentines debate which families are Florence’s oldest and best gentlemen. Scalza, described as a notably merry and agreeable companion with a supply of unusual stories, interrupts their discussion by declaring that the Cadgers—professional beggars associated here with Santa Maria Maggiore—outrank every family they have named. His claim is deliberately startling: the Cadgers are neighbors whom the young men know, not a remote or obscure people whose standing could escape their judgment.

The Comic Proof

When the others accuse Scalza of fooling them, he stakes a supper for the winner and six companions, with the result to be decided by a mutually accepted judge. He then builds his case on the premise that greater age means greater nobility. The Cadgers, he says, were created when God had only just begun learning to draw; everyone else was made after God had mastered the art. Their irregular faces—unequal eyes, misshapen noses, jutting chins, and broad jaws—become his supposed evidence that they are God’s earliest, roughest sketches and therefore older than the rest of humanity.

The Phrase’s Payoff

The wager’s conclusion completes the inversion: Scalza’s listeners laugh at his reasoning, yet accept it and award him the supper. “The world or the Maremma” supplies the boast with its comic reach, carrying a neighborhood joke beyond Florence while the addition of the Maremma makes the grand scale itself sound playfully excessive. The story also links the joke to another moment in the gathering: Pamfilo had invoked the Cadgers while describing Messer Forese’s appearance, and Scalza’s closing win recalls that comparison. The expression thus belongs to a sequence of teasing exchanges in which a supposedly serious ranking of gentility is made ridiculous by the very people and faces used to support it.