Queer Places:
Chiesa di S. Paolo, Via S. Polo, 35139 Padova PD
Michele di Bartolomeo degli Odasi (c. 1450–1492), pen name Tifi (dagli) Odasi (Latinized as Tifetus or Typhis Odaxius), was an Italian poet and author of macaronic verse. Vittorio Rossi has published an anonymous Latin epigram in which Niccolò Còsmico is accused of sodomising the kitchen-Latin poet Tifi Odoasi.
Very little is known of his biography, apart that he was born and died at Padua, the son of Bartolomeo da Martinengo and Sara da Camarano, brother to Lodovico Odasio. Tifi Odasi is best known as the author of Macaronea, a burlesque poem mixing Latin and Italian dialects (Tuscan and Venetian of Padua).[1] Some scholars conjecture that Tifi Odasi was the author of Nobile Vigoncae opus ("The Work of Noble Vigonza"), another work in macaronic Latin.[2] The attribution is not widely accepted, however.[3]
Macaronea or Carmen Macaronicum de Patavinisis ("Macaronic Song from Padua") is a comical poem by Tifi Odasi. The poem tells of a prank played on an apothecary by a band of university students called macaronea secta. It is written in a mix of Latin and Italian, in hexameter verse (as would befit a classical Latin poem). It reads as a satire of the bogus humanism and pedantism of doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of the time. The year of first printing is not indicated on the book itself, but is believed to be 1488 or 1489. The author's pen name is given as "Tifi" in the frontispice, and as "Tifetus" in an acrostic that precedes the text. The title of the poem is thought to come from maccerone, a kind of pasta or dumpling eaten by peasants at the time.[4] The poem was a success; it was reprinted several times, and inspired many other Macaronea in the following decades.
The date of Odasi's death is not known, but it must be placed at the end of 1492, as can be deduced from the aforementioned letter of 26 January 1493 in which his brother Ludovico asked the Marquis of Mantua Francesco II Gonzaga to intercede with the Venetian authorities in favor of the other brother Antonio, who aspired to the post of vice-collateral long held by his brother Tifi, who died "in these last few months". In his will, Tifi ordered to be placed in the church of S. Paolo near the Molino bridge, where, according to his wishes, in 1494 a chapel was built by the brothers Ludovico and Antonio to house his body and that of his brother Francesco, in the meantime, deceased.
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