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An Italian novelist; born at Castelnuovo, Piedmont, about 1480; died after 1561. In Rome he became a Dominican friar, then entered a monastery in Milan, but led on the whole a roving life, sojourning in various cities and at several of the petty courts of Italy until 1525, when he went to France. Made bishop of Agen by Henry II. in 1550, he resigned that dignity in 1555. His tales, 214 in number, present vivid delineations of the loose manners of those times, and have frequently served as a source to many succeeding story-writers and dramatists; "Mr. Munchhausen" (1901) "Uncle Sam, Trustee" (1902); "Proposal under Difficulties" (1905); "Alice in Municipaland" (1907).