Cavalcanti, Guido - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 695

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

CAVALCANTI, GUIDO. — Poet, true founder of the dolce stil novo, born in Florence around 1255, the son of Cavalcante de' C., a nobleman and Guelph; he married Beatrice, daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, a nobleman and Ghibelline. But the political marriage did not inspire in him any desire for political peace. In 1280 he stood surety for the Guelphs for the peace concluded by Cardinal Latino; in 1284 and 1290 he was a member of the city council; and in 1292, having just escaped an ambush set for him by Corso Donati, he went on pilgrimage to S. Jacopo di Compostella; but he did not go beyond Nîmes, and in Toulouse, in the church of the Daurade, a woman, Mandetta, stirred his heart. Having returned to Florence, although excluded from the popular government by the Ordinances of Justice of July 1295, he, a nobleman, took the side that stood closest to the people, that of the Cerchi, and from 1296 to 1300 was a passionate adversary of the Donati faction, until, together with the leaders of both factions, he was sent into exile, to Sarzana (24 June 1300). There he contracted malaria; recalled to his homeland, he died there on 29 August of that same year, 1300. His Rime comprise approximately 50 compositions, including canzoni, ballads, and sonnets.

“He was, as a philosopher, a virtuous man in many respects, except that he was too tender-hearted and irascible,” says Villani; and his contemporaries unanimously portray him as a man of lofty intellect and gracious manners, but disdainful and solitary; Boccaccio adds that he went about speculating in the manner of the Epicureans; and one may believe with Nardi that his theory of love was tinged with Averroism, which in practice could lead to Epicureanism. For C., love is, in fact, a passion that proceeds from the sensitive soul, subject to the irresistible influence of Mars, and not from the intellect, a separate substance,

(from Guido Cavalcanti, Rime, Genoa 1931)
CAVALCANTI, GUIDO — Anthology of rhymes by various poets, including C. Cod. Chigiano L. VIII. 305, f. 56° (14th century) — Vatican Library.

who “enjoys solely a life of reason, which consists in the contemplation of truth”; and when the passion of love becomes so violent and consuming as to obscure the intellect, it brings about man’s death—that moral death which consists in the loss of the use and mastery of reason (Nardi). But rather than for the subtle verses in which C. investigates and analyzes his states of love, as a poet he is to be celebrated for the verses in which he pours forth images of beauty and grace, and of surrender to a most tender, tremulous, and dreamlike feeling of love, full of sighs, tremors, and fears almost of death.

BIBL.: For the critical text of the Rime, V. Rimatori del dolce stil novo, edited by L. Di Benedetto, Bari 1939. For the commentary and bibliography, V. Rimatori del dolce stil novo, edited by V. BANCA, Genova 1941 and Dolce stil novo, edited by C. Cordiè, Milano 1942. For his life, V. Del Lungo, Dal secolo e dal poema di Dante, Bologna 1898, pp. 3–61; M. Barbi, G. C. e Dante di fronte al governo popolare, in Studi danteschi directed by M. Barbi, 1 (1920), pp. 101–11; id., Dante, vita, opere, fortuna, Firenze 1933, pp. 207–70. For his thought and art, V. E. G. Parodi, Poesia e storia nella Divina Commedia, Napoli 1921, pp. 211–30; V. Rossi, Scritti di critica letteraria, I, Firenze 1930, pp. 19–90; N. Sapegno, Il Trecento, 2ª ed., Milano 1938, pp. 23–32; B. Nardi, L'averroismo del primo amico di Dante, in Studi danteschi directed by M. Barbi, 25 (1940), pp. 43–79; M. Casella, « Dolce stil novo » in Storia illustrata della letteratura italiana written by a group of scholars, I, Milano 1942, pp. 93–116; B. Nardi, Di un nuovo commento alla canzone del C. sull'amore, in Cultura neolatina, 6–7 (1946–47), pp. 123–35. Alberto Chiari