Uguccione of Lodi

UGUCCIONE OF LODI. - A man of arms and of letters who lived between the last decades of the 12th century and the first of the 13th, born perhaps at Cremona, into a family from Lodi; he belonged, perhaps, to the Waldensian sect or to that of the "Poor Lombards."

He wrote in the Venetian vernacular a short poem: The book on the creation of the world, death, hell, paradise, human vices, especially pride and avarice. The book is divided into two parts: the first in monorhymed stanzas of dodecasyllables and hendecasyllables; the second (also called Istoria) in nine-syllable couplets with rhymed couplets. The first, amid so much sermonizing, contains an interesting confession by the author: as long as he was "vigorous, dashing, valiant more than Orlando" he did not care for God, indeed he says: "encontra Ti fui fer et combattente" ("against You I was fierce and combative"); having become "old and white-haired," he gave himself over to penance. The second part freely translates French didactic-religious poems. Other works are attributed to U., in which many verses of the Book are found, namely: The contemplation of death; On the weeping and birth of man (a reworking of the De contemptu mundi); the Advent of the Antichrist, modeled on the Epistle of Asson and on the Ludus paschalis de Antechristo (1161), but with new touches in the central part. U.'s rhymes, immersed in the apocalyptic climate of the end of the 12th century, have, even in their prolixity, a rough suggestiveness. Pietro da Bersegapè and Giacomino da Verona inserted verses of U. into their short poems.

Maria Sticco