Further Reading
Armour, Peter. “Inferno XV.” Lectura Dantis, 6 (suppl.), 1990,
pp. 189–208.
Brunetto Latini. Il tesoretto, ed. and trans. Julia Bolton Holloway.
New York: Garland, 1981.
——. The Book of the Treasure (Li livres dou trésor), trans. Paul
Barrette and Spurgeon Baldwin. New York: Garland, 1993.
Carmody, Francis J., ed. Li Livres dou Trésor de Brunetto Latini.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947.
Ceva, Bianca. Brunetto Latini: L’uomo e l’opera. Milan: Ric-
ciardi, 1965.
Holloway, Julia Bolton. ed. Brunetto Latini: An Analytic Bibli-
ography. London: Grant and Cutler, 1986.
Jauss, Hans Robert. “Brunetto Latini als allegorischer Dichter.” In
Formenwandel: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Paul Böck-
mann. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1964, pp. 47–92.
Kay, Richard. Dante’s Swift and Strong: Essays on Inferno XV.
Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978.
Wallace, David. “Chaucer and the European Rose.” Studies in the
Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, 1, 1984, pp. 61–67.
——. “Brunetto Latini.” In Medieval France: An Encyclopedia,
ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn. New York: Garland,
1995, pp. 151–152.
William Marvin and David Wallace
BUONCOMPAGNO DA SIGNA
(c. 1165–c. 1240)
Together with Bene da Firenze and Guido Faba, Buon-
compagno (or Boncompagno) was among the leading
representatives of the Bolognese school of the rhetori-
cal ars dictaminis (art of prose composition) during its
heyday in the thirteenth century, and of these three he
was by far the most versatile and colorful. He was born
in Signa, near Florence, sometime between 1165 and
- He began his studies in Florence and probably
completed them in Bologna. By 1194, he had begun his
career in Bologna as a teacher (magister) of rhetoric;
eventually he became the preeminent doctor of that
discipline, which served largely as a propaedeutic to
the study of law. (At the time, law predominated in the
university at Bologna.) After 1215, he worked in Venice,
Reggio, and Padua; he returned to Bologna by 1235,
but in 1240 we fi nd him in Florence. The chronicler
Salimbene of Parma also reports that Buoncompagno
tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain an appointment at the
papal curia in Rome in 1240. Buoncompagno died,
apparently in poverty, in the hospital of San Giovanni
Evangelista in Florence.
Buoncompagno’s writings centered on ars dictami-
nis, and his most infl uential work in this genre is the
Rhetorica antiqua, or Ancient Rhetoric, also known as
Boncompagnus (1215, revised 1226). This is primarily
a vast collection of sample letters, arranged according
to the social positions of writers and recipients, and
covering a wide variety of situations from students’
requests for money from home to correspondence with
popes and emperors. It had been preceded by smaller
works in the genre. V tabule salutationum (Five Catalogs
of Salutations, c. 1194) gave a systematic overview of
epistolary greetings, to which X tabule (Ten Catalogs)
added instructions, now lost, for composing letters,
privileges, orations, and wills. Tractatus virtutum (Trea-
tise on Virtues, c. 1197) discussed virtues and vices of
style. Notule auree (Golden Notes, c. 1197) provided
suggestions for openings of letters, a subject revisited in
Breviloquium (Summary, c. 1203). Palma (c. 1198) gave
general rules for the main parts of a letter—salutation,
narration, and petition—as well as for some secondary
parts, such as the introduction (exordium), appeal for
goodwill (captatio benevolentiae), and conclusion; it
also discussed prose style. Ysagoge (1204) provided
systematic instruction on salutations, the parts of the
letter, and introductions. Rota veneris (before 1215)
was a collection of sample exchanges of love letters,
i.e., letters for initiating, maintaining, and ending amo-
rous relationships; it thus was part of a tradition of ars
amatoria exemplifi ed by Ovid and Andreas Capellanus.
In Rota veneris, Buoncompagno in effect constructed
satirical (epistolary) novellae, anticipating aspects of
the narrative art of Giovanni Boccaccio.
Buoncompagno’s interest in prose composition
extended beyond letters to various types of legal docu-
ments; thus he included within ars dictaminis elements
of ars notaria, which received particular attention in the
legally-oriented professional climate of Bologna. He
published brief works on the writing of privileges and
confi rmations (Oliva, 1199), statutes (Cedrus, 1201),
and wills (Mirra, after 1201).
While Buoncompagno’s work refl ects a general shift
toward written composition in medieval rhetorical stud-
ies, he did not entirely neglect the traditional focus of
the discipline: oratory. His historical work on the siege
of Ancona (c. 1172), Liber de obsidione Ancone (written
between 1198 and 1200), echoes the rhetorical traditions
of classical historiography both in its emphasis on the
moral lessons of history (in this case the encouragement
of the heroic defense of Italian liberties against a foreign
oppressor) and in its inclusion of several orations during
the course of the narrative. Moreover, Buoncompagno’s
second major treatise, Rhetorica novissima (1235), was
devoted to training advocates in rhetoric for their oral
pleadings; it represented an attempt (unsuccessful) to
replace classical works such as Cicero’s De inventione
and Rhetorica ad Herennium, which continued to be
used for such instruction in the Middle Ages. Rhetorica
novissima also includes brief remarks on the conduct of
negotiations and popular assemblies.
Rivalry with Cicero is also a theme of Buoncompag-
no’s two philosophical tracts: Liber de amicitia (Book of
Friendship, c. 1204) and Libellus de malo senectutis et
senii (Little Book on the Evils of Old Age and Decline,
c. 1240). In Liber de amicitia, Buoncompagno distin-BRUNETTO LATINI