1. Charles Radding, A World Made by Men: Cognition and Society, 400-1200 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985): 175-186 on the notarial school of Pavia. [BACK]

2. On the medieval Italian courts see the rich survey by A. Roncaglia in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 33-147; 53 on King Cunipert, Felix, and Stephanus Monachus (or Magister), a monk probably stemming from Bobbio who praised Cunipert's policies. [BACK]

3. Roncaglia, ibid.: 54-57. [BACK]

4. Ronald G. Witt, "Medieval Italian Culture etc.," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy (1988): 1: 29-70 at 36. On the Italian cathedral schools and their decline around 1100 see Ronald G. Witt's forth-coming study, anticipated in the paper just cited, especially 41: "as an institution the cathedral school lost its leading role in Italian education after 1100." On the schools of Verona see Rino Avesani, "La cultura veronese dal secolo IX al secolo XII," in Manlio Pastore Stocchi et al., eds., Storia della cultura veneta, 6 vols. (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1976-1986) 1: Dalle origini al Trecento (1976): 240-270 at 251-257. The brilliant and scholarly Ratherius (d. 974) was bishop of Verona in the late tenth century. [BACK]

5. Franco Gaeta in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 186 f. [BACK]

6. See A. Roncaglia in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 65. [BACK]

7. Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, "Stephanas Grammaticus da Novara," Studi Medievali 3 (1908-1911): 499-508; J. Fleckenstein (1956); Jaeger (1987): 572. [BACK]

8. See A. Roncaglia in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 73 f. [BACK]

9. Ibid.: 81. [BACK]

10. Text arranged in seven books in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 11 [ = MGH SS 11] (1854) 591-681. On Benzo see Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 9.2.2-3 (Munich: Beck, 1923-1931): 3: 454-457; Percy Ernst Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches bis zur Investiturstreit, 2 vols. (2d ed. Darmstadt: Gentner, 1957): 1: 258 ff. See Jaeger: 56, 122-125, 171, 228, 278n., 284n. Jaeger: 122 says he was "probably an Italian, possibly a Greek." [BACK]

11. "Principes vero delectatione bonae famae largissimi; gens adulari sciens, eloquentiae in studiis inserviens in tantum ut etiam ipsos pueros quasi rhetores attendas . . . . Equorum ceterorumque militiae instrumentorum et vestium luxuria delectatur." PL: 149: 1102b-c; Jaeger: 200 f. (his trans.). See the thoroughly courtly context of the praises of the Norman rulers in the poem of 2,500 lines in five books by William of Apulia (Puglia), Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, in La geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. M. Mathieu (Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1961), usually dated between 1090 and 1111. [BACK]

12. A. Roncaglia in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 97-105. [BACK]

13. Second of Vitae prima et secunda s. Bernardi episcopi Parmensis, ed. E. P. Schramm, in MGH SS 30.2 (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1926): 1114-1127 at 1323 f.: "Erat enim aspectu formosus, animo robustus, distribuendo largus, armis edoctus, conversatione iocundus, genitrici sue subiectus, honore avidus,  . . . et ideo cunctis eum agnoscentibus gratiosus et carus." [BACK]

14. "Copia librorum non defuit huicve bonorum / libros ex cunctis habet artibus atque figuris"; "Timpana cum citharis stivisque lirisque sonant hic / ac dedit insignis dux premia maxima mimis." Vita Mathildis (or De principibus canusinis) 2: 1370 f. in MGH SS 12: 405 f. and ibid. 1: 830 f. in MGH SS 12: 368. See A. Roncaglia in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 94. [BACK]

15. For example, A. Vàrvaro, Letterature romanze del Medioevo (1985): chap. 1. [BACK]

16. Middle High German Wälsch, German Welsch, originally meaning "Celtic," probably from the Celtic tribe of the Volcae (like Eng. Welsh, Wales, and Cornwall), had come to mean Roman, Romance, or Italian—and also "foreigner," as in Walloon and Irish Gaelic gall. [BACK]

17. As a relevant example, as late as circa 1400 the castle of Runkelstein near Bolzano was richly decorated with frescoes apparently inspired by Wirnt von Grafenberg's Wigalois (1204-1209 or 1210-1215), Rudolf von Ems's popular story of Willehalm (from ca. 1235-1240), and Der Pleier's Garel von dem blühenden Tal (ca. 1260). [BACK]

18. Der Wälsche Gast, ed. H. Rückert: vv. 1124-1126. Jaeger: 266. [BACK]

19. Corrado Bologna, "La letteratura dell'Italia settentrionale nel Duecento," in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 7.1 (1987): 101-188; 123-141 on minstrels operating within the burghers' communes. Aurelio Roncaglia, "Le corti medievali," ibid. 1 (1982): 33-147 on literary activities at medieval Italian courts, and Franco Gaeta, "Dal comune alla corte rinascimentale," ibid. 1: 157 on the social shifts from communes to Renaissance courts. [BACK]

20. P. Zumthor (1987): 73, citing from Daniela Goldin's course notes Boncompagno da Signa: Testi (Venezia: Universitá; Centrostampa, 1983): 45 f., but see full text of these letters in D. Goldin, B come Boncompagno: Tradizione e invenzione in Boncompagno da Signa (Padova: Centrostampa, 1988): 83-88, from the largely still unpublished Boncompagnus chapter 7, with ample critical analysis on pp. 53-78. On the love letter as a formal genre in Buoncompagno and the other masters of ars dictaminis, see Ernstpeter Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam: zur Gattungsgeschichte des mittelalterlichen Liebesbriefes, Beiträge zur romanischen Philologie des Mittelalters 10 (München: Fink, 1975). [BACK]

21. Zumthor (1987): 72, based on Constance Bullock-Davies, Menestrellorum multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978): 67-173. [BACK]

22. Aurelio Roncaglia, ed., Antologia delle letterature medievali d'oc e d'oïl (Milano: Accademia, 1973): 367-371, with bibliography p. 630, including the dating by Rita Lejeune. [BACK]

23. Text in Joseph Linskill Hill, ed., The Poems of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (The Hague: Mouton, 1964): 108-116, no. 4. [BACK]

24. A. Roncaglia in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 108-113. [BACK]

26. The Latin original's numerous vulgarizations in all vernaculars included no fewer than five Tuscan versions, the earliest of them dating from 1288. The Tuscan texts derived from the French translation, Li livres dou gouvernement des rois (see my chap. 3, end), rather than from the Latin original, hence Italian villa for French ville and ruga for "street": see 3.1.1 in Cesare Segre and Mario Marti, eds., La prosa del Duecento (Milano, Napoli: R. Ricciardi, 1959): 267, based on the manuscripts. [BACK]

27. 3.30; Tuscan version in La poesia del Duecento: 290 f. [BACK]

28. "Iste imperator derisiones et solatia et convicia ioculatorum sustinebat et audiebat impune et frequenter dissimulabat se audire. Quod est contra illos qui statim volunt se ulcisci de iniuriis sibi factis. Sed non bene faciunt, cum dicat Scriptura Ecclesiastici X: 'Omnis iniuriae proximi ne memineris et nichil agas in operibus iniuriae.' Item Proverbiorum XII: 'Fatuus statim indicat iram suam; qui autem dissimulat iniuriam, callidus est.'" Gianfranco Contini, ed., Letteratura Italiana delle Origini (Firenze: Sansoni, 1970) 25, from Cronica, ed. Ferdinando Bernini, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1942). [BACK]

29. Duby, "La vulgarisation des modèles culturels dans la société féodale," Hommes et structures (1973): 299-308 at 306-308. [BACK]

30. On the general matter of clerical presences among the literati see Roberto Antonelli and Simonetta Bianchini, "Dal clericus al poeta," in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 2 (1983): 171-227. [BACK]

31. Not surprisingly, secular courtiers thought likewise, as did in the following century the eminent maître d'hôtel of Charles the Bold of Burgundy and tutor to Philip the Handsome, Olivier de La Marche (1422-1502): see M. Keen (1984): 148-151. Olivier de La Marche authored the important Chronique and the bizarre allegorical/moral Triumphe des Dames. [BACK]

32. C. Donati, L'idea di nobiltá in Italia (1988): 3-7, 18 n. 1. Bartolus's commentary dealt with Justinian's book 12, "De dignitatibus": dignitas corresponds to "nobilitas secundum volgare nostrum," so that, Bartolus opines, although we do not have technical juridical treatises on nobility, we can rightly treat it under this heading: "licet sub nomine nobilitatis non habeamus aliquem specialem tractatum, tamen habemus hunc librum de dignitatibus," hence "de nobilitate recte tractare possumus." Cited by Donati, p. 18 n., with reference to the text in Bartolus a Saxoferrato, In Secundam Codicis Partem (Venetiis: n. p., 1585): 45v-48v. See Anna T. Sheedy, Bartolus on Social Conditions in the Fourteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press; London: P. S. King and Staples, 1942; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1967): esp. 105-125. [BACK]

33.   William P. Shepard and Frank M. Chambers, eds. and trans., The Poems of Aimeric de Peguilhan (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1950): 146, poem no. 26. [BACK]

34. See Alberto Vàrvaro, "La curia fridericiana," in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 7.1 (1987): 86-98. [BACK]

35. Lauro Martines (1979): 65 f. [BACK]

36. Contini, ed., Letteratura Italiana delle Origini (1970): 163 f. [BACK]

37. "I cortesi costumi e li belli e piacevoli riggimenti." Il libro de' vizi e delle virtudi, in C. Segre and M. Marti, eds., La prosa del Duecento (1959): 756. Also Bono Giamboni, Il Libro de' vizî e delle virtudi e il Trattato di virtù e di vizî, ed. Cesare Segre (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1968). Note the emphasis on outer conduct, as in the courtly tradition, and the hendiadys costumi e reggimenti, which returned in Francesco da Barberino's Reggimento e costumi di donna.

See a lively description of court life in Verona at the time of Cangrande in Immanuel Giudeo's Bisbidis, edited by Vincenzo de Bartholomaeis, Rime giullaresche e popolari d'Italia (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926; rpt. Bologna: A. Forni, 1977): 68-71. De Bartholomaeis also explored the documentary value of Provençal poetry as a source for Italian history in his edition Poesie provenzali storiche relative all'Italia, Fonti per la storia d'Italia 71/72 (Roma: Tipografia del Senato, 1931). [BACK]

38. Text of the Tesoretto in Gianfranco Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. (Milano, Napoli: Ricciardi, 1960): 2: 169-277. Also, Brunetto Latini, Il Tesoretto, ed. and trans. Julia Bolton Holloway (New York, London: Garland, 1981). [BACK]

39. See Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento (1960): 2: 170 for Giovanni Villani's characterization of Brunetto as the first educator ( digrossare ) of the Florentines in the art of speaking and governing. [BACK]

40. Treatises and manuals on ethic abound in medieval literature both in Latin and the vernaculars, and often the versions redacted in Italy were based on French originals. Well known among such compilations are Domenico Cavalca's Pungilingua, a vulgarization of the French Dominican Guillaume Perrault's (or Peyraut, Peraldus or Paraldus, Paraldo in Italian: ca. 1200-ca. 1261) Summa aurea de virtutibus or Summa virtutum et vitiorum, a casuistic tome after pagan and Christian sources (printed Lyon 1546), and the Pisan Dominican Bartolomeo di San Concordio's (ca. 1262-1347) popular Summa casuum conscientiae, also available in the vernacular as the Maestruzzo or Pisanella by Giovanni dalle Celle. Excerpts from these and other authors in Prosatori minori del Trecento, 1: Scrittori di religione, ed. Giuseppe De Luca, La Letteratura Italiana: Storia e Testi 12.1 (Milano, Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1954). On Peraldus in Italy and the whole tradition of the exemplum see Carlo Delcorno, L'exemplum nella predicazione volgare di Giordano da Pisa, Venezia, Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, Memorie, v. 36, fasc. 1 (1972); idem., L'exemplum e la letteratura tra medioevo e rinascimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989). [BACK]

41. See the annotated text in Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento (1960): 1: 703-712, or in Contini's comprehensive edition Le opere volgari di Bonvesin da Riva, 1 (1941). [BACK]

42. Anonimo Genovese, Poesie, ed. Luciana Cocito (Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1970). Also the annotated selection in Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento (1960): 1: 713-761. Cf. Lauro Martines (1979): 85. [BACK]

43. "Le ovre dirite e le virtu(t)e / son merze bonne e zernue; / de fin da or in quele inpiega": vv. 161-163 of "Exposicio de modo navigandi," a long poem on the art of navigation (no. 145 in Cocito ed.: 621-639). See L. Martines (1979): 87-93 for an interesting analysis of this Genoese poet. [BACK]

44. Paola Mildonian, "Strutture narrative e modelli retorici: Interpretazione di Novellino I-V," Medioevo romanzo 6.1 (1979): 63-97 on new sense of nurtured nobility in Guinizelli and the Novellino. [BACK]

45. On Buonaccorso's impact see the detailed analysis in Hans Baron's seminal The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955): 1: 365 f.; 2: 623-628 (abridged in 1 vol. 2d ed., ibid., 1966). [BACK]

46. Maria Corti, "Le fonti del Fiore di virtù e la teoria della 'nobiltà' nel Duecento," Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 36 (1959): 77. [BACK]

47. Cited by Vallone (1950): 10, from I Fioretti di San Francesco, ed. Giovanni Getto (Milan: A. Martello, 1946): xxxvii, 119. [BACK]

48. Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento (1960): 259-261 with complete text. See P. Mildonian, op. cit. (1979). [BACK]

49. Text in C. Segre and M. Marti, eds., La prosa del Duecento (1959): 548-554. [BACK]

50. Ibid.: Conto 19 at 551-554: "Tristano e Lancelotto e altri assai ei regni loro lassaro e diero altrui, volendo cavalieri tali divenire: che quelli è re che en bontà ben se regge" (553); and the virtue that qualifies one as a true knight and king lies "in operare onne bontà d'amore de cavallaria de cortesia de larghezza de lealtà de fermezza [constancy] e de ciascun valore" (552). [BACK]

51. "Re e signore solamente in operare ordenato e in fare e inviare; in operare onne bontà d'amore de cavallaria de cortesia de larghezza de lealtà de fermezza e de ciascun valore" (552). [BACK]

52. Antoine Thomas, Francesco da Barberino et la litérature provençale en Italie au moyen âge (Paris: E. Thorin, 1883). See the critical edition by Giuseppe E. Sansone (Torino: Loescher-Chiantore, 1957). [BACK]

53. A. Parducci, Costumi ornati (1928), and the semidiplomatic editions of the Reggimento by Carlo Baudi di Vesme (Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 1875) and of the Documenti by Francesco Egidi, 4 vols. (Roma: Società Filologica Romana, 1905-1927). [BACK]

54. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, eds., Storia della Letteratura Italiana 2: Il Trecento (Milano: Garzanti, 1965, 1973): 688-697, and 701 for Bindo, not included among the curiali. [BACK]

55. Some of the texts of Bindo di Cione, Antonio da Ferrara, Francesco di Vannozzo, and Simone Serdini in Natalino Sapegno, ed., Poeti minori del Trecento (Milano, Napoli: Ricciardi, 1952): 1-278, and Il Trecento, dalla crisi dell'età comunale all'Umanesimo, eds. Raffaele Amaturo et al., La Letteratura Italiana, Storia e Testi, 2.1, ed. Carlo Muscetta (Bari: Laterza, 1971): 527-568. [BACK]

56. For example, Vannozzo's canzone of 1374 on the states of the world, "Correndo del Signor mille e trecento / anni settantaquatro," in Sapegno ed. (1952): 218-222. Of course, this tradition of court poetry continued in the following centuries: see Carlo Dionisotti, "Niccolò Liburnio e la letteratura cortigiana," Lettere Italiane 14 (1962): 33-58; Eugenio Garin, "La cultura fiorentina alla corte dei Medici," in Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, eds., Storia della Letteratura Italiana 3: Il Quattrocento e l'Ariosto (Milano: Garzanti, 1966): 310-317; Domenico De Robertis, "Poesia delle corti padane," ibid.: 614-631; Paola Vecchi Galli, "La poesia cortigiana tra XV e XVI secolo. Rassegna di testi e studi (1969-1981)," Lettere Italiane 34 (1982): 95-141. [BACK]

57. An interesting comparative survey of the transformations of the chivalric and courtois ideas in fifteenth-century European literature is T. Klaniczay et al., eds. (1988), especially the contributions by Michel Stanesco, Jean Miquet, Hana Jechová, and Lucie Brind'Amour, pp. 405-459. The scholarly usefulness of the volume is, however, impaired by the lack of precise bibliographic refer- ences for all quotations, and the Italian material is particularly unreliable in detail. [BACK]

58. After A. Schiaffini's edition see this text also, together with other memoirs by Florentine merchants, in Vittore Branca, ed., Mercanti scrittori: ricordinella Firenze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento: Paolo da Certaldo, Giovanni Morelli, Bonaccorso Pitti, Domenico Lenzi, Donato Velluti, Goro Dati, Francesco Datini, Lapo Niccolini, e Bernardo Machiavelli (Milano: Rusconi, 1986): 84, par. 351. [BACK]

59. Branca ed.: par. 82, p. 13, with reference to Morelli, Proverbi in Ricordi (1969): 47, for the proverbial phrase misura dura. Other passages with admonishments to use measure in Paolo's Libro paragraphs 3, 81, 232, 243, 375, 377, and 383 (Branca ed.: 5, 12, 45, 46, 92, 93, and 96). [BACK]

60. Schiaffini ed.: 91-93; Branca ed.: 19 f., par. 103. See Remo Ceserani and Lidia De Federicis, eds., Il materiale e l'immaginario, 10 vols. (Torino: Loescher, 1979-1988): 3: 134 f., 597-600, 633. [BACK]

61. Schiaffini ed.: 211-214. See Ceserani and De Federicis, 3: 599. Paolo da Certaldo (83 f.) is one of the many witnesses of the bourgeois practice of marrying off the daughters as early as possible, on the average around the age of fifteen, since unmarried women could be a greater burden and a less disposable commodity than they had been in feudal families. Consequently, Florentine fathers regularly falsified their declarations for the fiscal catasto in order to make their daughters appear younger. See Anthony Molho, "Deception and Marriage Strategy in Renaissance Florence: The Case of Women's Ages," Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988): 193-217 at 205. Similar advice in Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli (1371-1444), Ricordi, ed. Vittore Branca (Firenze: Felice Le Monnier, 1956): 210. As evidenced by the memoirs conveniently available in V. Branca's Mercanti scrittori (1986), from Paolo da Certaldo's Libro to Francesco Guicciardini's Memorie di famiglia, the family was the vital structure and real center of the merchants' life and ethos, as it had been, in different ways, in early feudalism. [BACK]