Cant'ari

CANT'ARI. - Narrative poems, whose rich production flourished especially in Tuscany from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. They were, as a rule, composed by popular poets and street singers or mountebanks (cantampanca), who sang them in the square (in Florence, the little square of S. Martino al Vescovo), accompanying themselves on the viol, on fixed days and hours, before an audience composed chiefly of common folk. The custom of the street singers was so pleasing to our common people that in certain cities such as Florence, Perugia, and Aquila they were paid a stipend by the Commune. The names of the authors of the cantari have rarely come down to us, but Antonio Pucci (1310-88), "bell-founder and town crier" of the Commune of Florence, has remained famous. The meter used was, as a rule, the ottava, although sometimes narrative poems in the meter of the sirventese or the ballata were designated by the name of cantare. The cantare (often also called istoria) consisted of about fifty ottavas, a length that allowed sufficient development of the tale without wearying the audience; but at times the subjects treated required compositions of greater extent, comprising a number, even a considerable one, of cantari. The material was drawn from everything that constituted the imaginative and spiritual world of the audience to which they were addressed.

According to their principal subjects, the cantari have been divided into various groups, listed below, with the most important cantari indicated for each: 1) Legendary and fairy-tale cantari (Bel Gherardino, Lionbruno, Donna del Vergiù, Reina d'Oriente); 2) Chivalric cantari, developing the themes of the Carolingian and Breton cycles (Rotta di Roncisvalle, Rinaldo da Montalbano, Storia di Milone e Berta, Vanto dei Paladini, cantari of Tristano, of Lancillotto, of Carduino); 3) Historical cantari, inspired by events and personages of Italian history from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century (Guerra di Pisa, Guerra aquilana di Braccio, Sacco di Volterra, Istoria del Duca Valentino); 4) Classical cantari, developing episodes of the ancient Greek and Roman world (Guerra di Troia, Fatti di Cesare, Piramo e Tisbe); 5) Sacred cantari, about which some particular notice will be given. As for their material, these comprise: a) Hagiographic legends; b) legends inspired by the Bible and the Gospels; c) Moralizing legends. For the first group, which is also the most important, there exist cantari relating to the saints: Alberto, Anthony Abbot, Bernardino da Siena, Catherine martyr, Cristina, Christopher, Feliciano, James, John Chrysostom, George, Julian of Buon Albergo, Lawrence, Lucy, Ursula, Sebastian, Stephen, Theodora, and a few others. Among those of the second group we recall the cantari of Adam and Eve, St. John the Baptist, St. Mary Magdalene, the Resurrection, the Vengeance of the Savior, the Last Judgment, and the life, lament, and passing of the Madonna. Into this group one may also place two fourteenth-century poems which, although composed in a tone of greater literary distinction, do not fundamentally depart from the style of the cantari, namely: the Fanciullezza di Gesù, by fra' Felice da Massa, and the Passione di Cristo, by Niccolò di Mino Cicerchia (1364), both authors being followers of St. Catherine of Siena. Among the principal moralizing legends, note should be taken of: Il castellano, Leonzio, La cortigiana, Il giocatore disperato, "storia bellissima di Senso che cercava di non morire mai."

As for their character and poetic value, the sacred cantari partake of a style and a body of procedures more or less common to all cantari and connected with the character of improvisation (in a relative sense) and of popularity that distinguishes these poems. Their authors, that is, make use of similar formulas for the opening and closing of the cantari and of a whole terminology formed of adjectives, adverbs, and entire stereotyped lines and used as opportunity requires, to facilitate the rapid composition of the poem.

In short, one finds in them a kind of "aedic style" by which it is impossible to distinguish the personality of the individual authors of the c., or to bring out their different scope even from the point of view of aesthetic value: these are compositions that all have the same family likeness, even if distant in time or coming from different regions. Compared with the fairy-tale or chivalric c., the sacred c. generally prove to be of mediocre workmanship and of scant poetic quality. There is none that can bear comparison with the flowing octaves of the c. of Liombruno or with the epic quality, even if episodic, of the c. of the Aquilan war. Nevertheless, in the best examples, as in the c. of St. Alexis, St. Catherine, St. George, St. John the Evangelist, the qualities proper to these compositions, such as narrative fluency, vividness, spontaneity, leave their mark on the poems and make them pleasant reading. For absolute poetic value, on the other hand, the two above-mentioned poems of the Childhood of Jesus and the Passion of Christ stand out. In these, intense religious feeling finds accents among the deepest and loftiest in all Italian sacred poetry: stanzas 41c-13 of the Childhood (on the silence of Jesus in the desert) and the episode of the meeting between Mary and Jesus in Niccolò di Mino Cicerchia's Passion deserve to enter the poetic heritage necessary to every cultured person.

The sacred c. are still, for the great majority of them, unpublished, scattered in codices, incunabula and popular printings of various libraries (Casanatense and Corsiniana in Rome, Nazionale in Florence, Marciana in Venice, the library of Wolfenbüttel in Bavaria, etc.). Some have been published from time to time in journals of philology or literary history, but a critically edited collection such as Levi gave us for the legendary c. does not yet exist. The situation in this regard emerges from the essay by Cianciolo cited below. Important is the fact that several of these sacred c. were reproduced in popular booklets, in crude printings, for various centuries down to our own, and some have even passed into the oral tradition of the people: sure proof of their vitality.

Paolo Toschi