Sordello

SORDELLO. - Italian troubadour, b. at Goito ca. 1200, d. ca. 1269.

After an adventurous and turbulent youth (at Verona he abducted the wife of Ricciardo di S. Bonifacio, Cunizza, at the wish of her brother, Ezzelino III da Romano), in Provence, where he sought refuge with Count Raymond Berengar IV, he seems to have adopted a more upright manner of life, which justifies his reputation as a gentle knight. He was in the retinue of Charles I of Anjou on the expedition to Italy: in a brief of 22 Feb. 1261 Pope Clement IV reproached the King for his ingratitude toward S., whose praises he celebrated. In 1269 S. received from the Angevin the investiture of certain castles in Abruzzo. The second phase of S.'s life, as well as the suggestiveness of the Compianto in morte di ser Blacatz, a violent satire of the rulers of the time, and of the Ensenhamento de honor, a code of the elect life, explain the celebration of him that Dante makes in canto VI of the Purgatorio. Of S. the Alighieri also had occasion to praise, in the De vulgari eloquentia, the gracefulness of his poetic language. There remain to us, besides the poems cited, 45 other lyrics in which, over some lascivious note, there prevails the Platonic yearning for the woman loved and sung with accents that prelude the dolce stil nuovo.

Enzo Navarra