page_title: Rape of Fano
section_title: Reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Rape of Fano / History / Reaction
context_page_description: The rape of Fano is an alleged scandal that would have taken place on 26 or 27 May 1537 in the eponymous city, involving the warlord Pier Luigi Farnese who raped the Bishop of the city, Cosimo Gheri, during an inspection of the Marche fortresses. Its historical veracity is matter of debate. The event is recorded by the Florentine historian Benedetto Varchi in the 16th book of his Storia fiorentina. Nevertheless, a letter by Pietro Bembo, dated 5 January 1538, seems to confirm Varchi's account.
context_section_description: The contemporaries have left many stories of Pier Luigi Farnese's unbridled sexuality and his homosexual tendencies, but the so-called rape of Fano had an international echo, being also instrumentalized, due to its connection with the Pope's family, in religious controversies between Catholics and Protestants. Pier Luigi Farnese's sexuality became target of frequent satires ("pasquinate") and the poet Niccolò Franco of Benevento (1515 – 1570) invented the verb "pierluigiare", meaning "to sodomize by force". When Farnese was killed in 1547, a satirical epigram among many so imagined his descent into hell:
  Vis dicam? Ex italis stygias ut venit ad horas, / incoepit natibus Pluto timere suis.
  Do you want me to tell you? When from the Italian shores it came to those of the underworld / Pluto began to fear for his buttocks.
caption: Pope Paul III appoints Pier Luigi Farnese as Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Ilario Spolverini, 1720s.
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