BONVESIN da RIVA. - Poet and grammar teacher, born in Milan between 1240 and 1250, died there on 13 March 1315. Of an aristocratic family, he joined the Order of the Humiliati.
His output is in Latin and in the vernacular, most frequently using monorhymed quatrains in Alexandrine verse. Of his vernacular works, the most valuable is the Libro delle tre scritture, completed before 1274: in more than two thousand verses it recounts the punishments of hell (scrittura nigra), the sufferings required for redemption (scrittura rossa), and celestial joy (scrittura dotata). It makes no mention of purgatory: it is silent, it does not deny it; and this cannot justify considering him a heretic. With this poem, worthy of study, B. is one of Dante’s earliest precursors. A work worthy of note is Il Trattato dei mesi. Also highly esteemed are certain didactic compositions, Disputatio rosae cum stola, De quinquaginta curialitatibus ad mensam, De elemosynis, and a vernacular rendering of Cato’s Disticha de moribus. A simple and clear narrator, he always aims at achieving a moral, rather than an artistic, purpose.