Cino da Pistoia

(ca. 1270–ca. 1337)

   Cino da Pistoia was a jurist by vocation, but his posthumous reputation rests on his fame as a lyric poet. He was admired by both DANTE and PETRARCH, and is sometimes seen by scholars as an intermediary between the two, in some ways following the former and anticipating the latter.

   Cino was born to a wealthy Pistoian family. He studied law, first in Pistoia and then at the University of Bologna, and subsequently taught law in Siena, Naples, Florence, and in Perugia. Cino, a member of the party of Blacks Guelfs (a group generally made up of bankers and old-money interests), became embroiled in the sometimes turbulent politics of his day and, from 1303 to 1306, was under a sentence of exile from Pistoia.He was, like Dante, a supporter of the cause of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII. He became well known as a jurist through his influential legal treatises, particularly his commentary on the first nine books of Justinian’s Codex entitled Lectura in codicem or “Readings in the Codex,” published in 1314. In 1324 he was made an honorary citizen of Florence. He died in Perugia in about 1337. Today, Cino is remembered chiefly as a poet. Dante praises his lyrics several times in De VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. His poetry displays some of the features of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (“Sweet new style”), the school of Dante and CAVALCANTI: Like theirs, his poetry focuses on an internalized image of his lady. But he is known for very personal poetry—he wrote a sonnet of sympathy to Dante upon the death of his beloved Beatrice. And Cino’s own best-known poetry concerns his grief over the loss of his own lady, Selvaggia. In the SONNET “Io fui ’n su l’alto e ’n sul beato monte” (“I was on the high and blessed mountain”), he describes himself at his lady’s tomb:

   There I called in this manner on Love:

   “Let Death draw me to himself,

   my sweet god, for here lies my heart.”

   (Goldin 1973, 435, ll. 9–11)

   This personal focus, and his characteristic theme of grief and longing, appealed to Petrarch who, like Dante, knew Cino personally and who paid Cino tribute both in a CANZONE (LXX) about his predecessors and in a SONNET (XCII) written upon Cino’s death.

   Bibliography

   ■ Cino da Pistoia. The Poetry of Cino da Pistoia. Edited by Christopher Kleinhenz. New York: Garland, 1985.

   ■ Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History. New York: Doubleday, 1973.

   ■ Tusiani, Joseph, ed. The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry. New York: Baroque Press, 1974.