TOMASINO de' CERCHIARI (THOMASIN de CERCHIARI), de ZIRCLARIA, von ZIRKLARE. — Born probably in Cividale a few years before 1188, died c. 1235.
A familiar of the Patriarch of Aquileia Wolfger, later a canon of Aquileia, he went to Germany where he first wrote in a Romance language (probably Italian) a treatise on courtesy and between 1215–16 in High Middle German a didactic poem, *Der weltliche Gast* (ed. H. Rückert, Quedlinburg and Leipzig 1852) of 14,752 lines, divided into 10 books, important for the chivalric morality of the time and for the interconnections of the Romance literatures. Notable in it also are the polemical remarks against the Tyrolean poet Walther von der Vogelweide, whom he may have met at the court of Aquileia.
BIBL.: G. Grion, *Tomasino de' Cerchiari poeta civiladese del Duecento*, Udine 1894; L. Torretta, *Il 'Walscher Gast' di T. di Cerclaria*, in *Studi medievali*, 1 (1904), pp. 24–76; Catherine Teresa, *Burgheir and peasant in the works of Th. V. Z.*, Washington 1936.