TOMASINO de' CERCHIARI (THOMASIN de' CERCLARIA, de' ZIRCLARIA, von ZIRCLARE). - Born probably at Cividale some years before 1188; died about 1235.
A member of the household of Wolfger, bishop of Aquileia, 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 and 1216, in High Middle German, a didactic poem, Der weltliche Gast (ed. by H. Rückert, Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1852), of 14,752 verses, divided into 10 books, important for the chivalric morality of the period and for the influence of Romance literatures. Also noteworthy are its polemical references to the Tyrolean poet Walther von der Vogelweide, whom he may have known at the court of Aquileia.