UGUCCIONE da LODI. — A man of arms and letters who lived between the final decades of the 12th century and the early years of the 13th, born perhaps at Cremona to a Lodi family; he belonged, perhaps, to the Waldensian sect or to that of the «poveri lombardi».
He wrote in the Venetian vernacular a poem entitled Il libro sulla creazione del mondo, la morte, l'inferno, il paradiso, i vizi umani, specie superbia e avarizia. The book is divided into two parts: the first in monorhymed laisses of twelve- and eleven-syllable lines; the second (also called Istoria) in nine-syllable couplets with rhymed pairs. The first, amid all its sermonizing, contains an interesting confession by the author: so long as he was «vigoroso, aitante, prode più d'Orlando», he had no care for God; indeed, he says: «encontra Ti fui fer et combattente»; having become «vegio e canuo», he devoted himself to penance. The second part freely translates French didactic-religious poems. Other works are attributed to U., in which many verses from the Libro are found, namely: La contemplazione della morte; Del piangolavie nascimento dell'omo (a reworking of De contempta mundi); l'Avvento dell'Anticristo, modelled on the Epistola di Assone and the Ludus paschalis de Antechristo (1161), but with new elements in the central part. U.’s rhymes, immersed in the apocalyptic climate of the end of the 12th century, possess, despite their prolixity, a rough evocative power. Pietro da Bersegapè and Giacomino da Verona inserted U.’s verses into their poems.