Literary Culture in Bologna from the Duecento to the Cinquecento

Literary Culture in Bologna 499 Chapter 19 Literary Culture in Bologna from the Duecento to the Cinquecento Gian Mario Anselmi and Stefano Scioli* Anselmi and Scioli The Middle Ages Bologna la Dotta In the late 1970s Natalino Sapegno described the cultural ferment within the city of Bologna at the turn of the 12th century, a time when the city’s reputation reached far beyond its borders, attracting beneath its towers scholars and students, men of culture and science, both from within the Italian peninsula and across the Alps. In Bologna, according to Sapegno, “not only did the tradition of commentators of the Justinian corpus and canon law grow richer, from Irnerio to Accursio and Odofredo, but also the distance between the disci- plines of law and rhetoric was reduced.” To Bologna, particularly from nearby Tuscany, came masters of oratory and letter writing, and in turn from Bologna the cult of rhetoric spread far and wide and reached through Pier delle Vigne to the Sicilian court of Frederick II. In his native city the Bolognese Guido Faba applied and extended the use of rhetorical devices and rhythmic clauses from Latin to the vernacular. Nor were these Bologna’s only glories. In Bologna, Sapegno located “the first signs of the avid curiosity that greeted works of literary fiction hailing from France, registered in the scholastic Latin of the doctores”: Odofredo recounts how he traveled to Gascony in order to acquire works of Provençal poetry, and Boncompagno da Signa “attests to the growing fortune of the goliards [wandering students who wrote satirical poetry] and celebrates the fame of Bernart de Ventadorn.”1 In his essay, which constitutes the illustrious antecedent of a rich tradition of studies,2 Sapegno thus reconstructs for the city, beyond its already existing reputation in the Duecento for “wealth” (pinguis, or rather ubertas omnium * This work is the fruit of close collaboration. In particular, the section dedicated to the Middle Ages up to and including the section “Petrarch in Bologna,” is by Stefano Scioli, and the section dedicated to humanism and the Renaissance is by Gian Mario Anselmi. 1 Sapegno, “Emilia-Romagna,” p. 274. 2 For example, Bertacchini, Emilia Romagna. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004355644_021 500 Anselmi And Scioli rerum),3 a broader picture of it as “learned,” (dotta) – an authentic center of culture and a fulcrum of knowledge, a rich mosaic of individual yet interre- lated tesserae. Bologna became the “nexus of the ancient and the new civilization, of scholastic and profane culture, of Latin and Romance litera- ture.” This link between “ancient culture” and “modern culture” (the starting point for Sapegno’s essay), was the fortuitous and pioneering outcome of Tommaso Casini’s tesi di laurea, dedicated to Bolognese culture of the 12th and 13th centuries and published in 1883 in the first volume of the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, directed by Arturo Graf, Francesco Novati, and Rodolfo Renier. In that essay, Casini, a student of Giosuè Carducci, highlighted the essential nature of Bolognese culture by studying the “elements” that con- tributed to its creation. On the one hand, these elements included two literary influences. One was “classic, having survived within the ruins of ancient civilization throughout the Middle Ages,” and also included the new poetry of romance, “created by the fusion of Germanic and Latin populations and repre- sentative of the chivalric ideal of feudal civilization.” The other influence constituted the “popular tradition [that] unfolded in the political movement of the communes and was affirmed in popular art, once the linguistic develop- ment of the new Italian vernacular was almost complete.”4 During the next 70 years, although other studies of value were written, the interpretative ideas of Sapegno and Casini were not addressed and not given new life until re-invigorated by Carlo Calcaterra, whose work then became essential reading for generations of scholars. But the socio-political environ- ment had changed profoundly and the fundamental issues were reignited by more intensive motives. Under the leadership of Calcaterra, who wrote in such a different and difficult time, amid the still smoking rubble and open wounds of the Second World War, scholars turned to the “recovery of ethics and civil coexistence.”5 Bologna’s general cultural contribution was to a broader con- struct of a shared European identity. Calcaterra, a student of Graf and Renier, seeking to trace the actions of Alma Mater Studiorum within cultural history, and to confront the desolate landscape offered at that time by human barbar- ity, created a moving dialogue with the “great immortals” (beginning with Rolandino de’ Romanzi, Accursio, Odofredo, and Egidio Foscherari) calling to them as they walked the streets of 13th and 14th century Bologna. He sought to find in Bologna of the past the light and lessons of a noble spiritual tradition 3 Bologna was also known as craisse, for example, in the Roman du Comte de Poitiers. See Chines, La parola degli antichi, p. 13. 4 Casini, “La coltura bolognese,” p. 32. 5 Pasquini, “Introduzione,” p. 22..

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