Cino da Pistoia

After graduating from the Studium at Bologna in 1292, Cino da Pistoia became a distinguished jurist and taught law at the universities in Siena, Perugia and Naples. His lyric output consists of 20 canzoni, 4 ballads and 134 sonnets following similar lines to those of Dante and to some extent also of Cavalcanti, but displaying a preference for melancholic tones and the theme of distance and memory, probably the reasons for Petrarch’s appreciation of them. Although he too trusted in Henry VII’s plan to restore the Empire, Cino was linked to Dante by a close friendship, as indicated in the canzone Avegna ched el m’aggia più per tempo, written to console his friend upon Beatrice’s death, and by a solid group of poems of correspondence, including Dante, quando per caso s’abbandona. Dante responded with a short Epistle in Latin (Epistle III) that accompanied his sonnet Io sono stato con Amore insieme, in which he reiterates the inevitability of love’s passion. The poetic solidarity between the two authors is confirmed by the position of absolute prestige which Cino occupies in the De vulgari eloquentia: he is in fact considered the leading Italian exponent of the poetry of venus and the only poet other than Dante of whom it is claimed that they “have written vernacular poetry more sweetly and subtly” (De vulg. Eloq., I 10 2[1]. The absence of explicit references to Cino in the Commedia may seem surprising, but stems from its surpassing of the traditional lyrical poem, a genre in which Cino had excelled. This, however, did not prevent Ciro from writing, on Dante’s death, a moving commemoration of his old friend’s art and humanity, Su per la costa, Amor, de l’alto monte, a canzone.

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[1] “dulcius subtiliusque poetati vulgariter sunt”.