BONVESIN da Riva. — Poet and grammar master, born in Milan between 1240 and 1250, died there on 13 March 1315. Of aristocratic family, he entered the Order of the Humiliati.
His output is in Latin and in the vernacular, more frequently using monorhymed quatrains in Alexandrine verse. Among his works in the vernacular, the *Libro delle tre scritture* holds the greatest merit; completed before 1274, it narrates in more than two thousand verses the pains of hell (*scrittura nigra*), the sufferings for redemption (*scrittura rossa*), and celestial joy (*scrittura doata*). He makes no mention of purgatory: he is silent, not denying; and this cannot be taken to make him a heretic. With this poem, worthy of study, B. is one of the first precursors of Dante. A noteworthy minor work is the *Trattato dei mesi*. Also highly esteemed are some didactic compositions: *Disputatio rosae cum viola*, *De quinquaginta curialitatibus ad mensam*, *De elemosynis*, and a vernacular version of Cato’s *Disticha de moribus*. A simple and clear narrator, he always aims at a moral purpose, not an artistic one.