and the epitaph he composed for Dante’s tomb that
was recorded by Boccaccio in his life of Dante. The
correspondence has come down to us in the Laurentian
Library manuscript 29.8, which was owned and possibly
copied by Boccaccio. This manuscript also contains the
longer eclogue to Mussato, two other verse epistles,
and part of an epic poem about a besieged city and the
conquered queen’s pleas for mercy. This last fragment
refl ects Giovanni’s protohumanist Virgilian mind-set,
which rather pedantically deemed great literature the
eloquent account in Latin hexameters of a contem-
porary political or military event. This is the source
of Giovanni’s dismay at Dante’s choice of argument
and vernacular expression—a dismay that prompted
Giovanni to initiate the Latin correspondence. In the fi rst
epistle, Giovanni suggests worthy matter from contem-
porary Italian history for a proper Latin opus: the tragic
drama of the late Holy Roman emperor Henry VII in his
struggles in Italy; the recent aggression by Uguccione
della Faggiuola in Tuscany; the victories of the imperial
vicar Cangrande della Scala (Dante’s esteemed patron
and the dedicatee of Paradiso, and Mussato’s nemesis)
against Padua. Giovanni chastises Dante for wasting his
talent by trying to bring serious themes to the vulgar
herd (seria vulgo). Ever the professor, Giovanni begs of
Dante something worthy of academic study. He offers
to place the coveted laurel crown, the ancient sign of
literary glory, on Dante’s brow in triumphant celebration
amid the scholars of Bologna.
Dante satisfi es his request, though not without some
degree of ironic—perhaps even affectionately mock-
ing—play. Dante had already been resident for some
years in Ravenna at the court of Guido Novello da
Polenta when he received the missive from Bologna.
He takes up Giovanni’s classical challenge by reviv-
ing the highly stylized conventions of the eclogue or
pastoral poem, usually a dialogue among shepherds
in a prelapsarian fantasy land. Virgil had written ten.
Thus Dante casts himself as Tityrus, his friend and fel-
low exile Dino Parini as Meliboeus, and Giovanni as
Mopsus. Within this elaborate code, Dante explains that
he should defer the poetic coronation until he has com-
pleted Paradiso and hopes even then to be celebrated
in his native Florence. Hoping to improve Giovanni’s
opinion of his vernacular verse, Dante announces that
he will send along “ten bottles” (decem vascula) of milk
from a segregated, much-loved sheep of his fl ock (ovis
gratissima), as yet unmilked and on the verge of burst-
ing (ubera vix quae ferre potest, tam lactis abundans).
Some critics take this as a reference to ten cantos of
Paradiso, a signifi cant confi rmation that the poem was
circulating in part before its completion.
In response, Giovanni delights in taking up the pas-
toral fi ction and returns a work strongly dependent on
Virgil’s second eclogue, in which the shepherd Corydon
sings his love for the beautiful young boy Alexis. At the
end of Virgil’s poem, Corydon threatens to fi nd himself
“another Alexis” (alienum Alexim) should his affections
continue to be scorned. Giovanni’s eclogue professes his
admiration and love for Dante, sympathizes with Dante’s
desire to be celebrated in Florence, but implores him
nonetheless to visit Bologna, where an alluring pastoral
idyll awaits (“Alexis shall spread wild thyme to be thy
couch ...”). Finally, Giovanni warns that should Dante
scorn him, he will “quench his thirst at the Phrygian
Musone,” a reference to Padua’s river and to Mussato,
Dante’s poetic rival. Curiously (for us), Giovanni ap-
pears to have considered Mussato the greater poet:
Mussato had, after all, composed his epic Ecerinis on
the cruel tyranny of Ezzelino in Padua and had accord-
ingly been crowned poet laureate in 1315, a distinction
which neither Dante nor Giovanni had achieved and
which inspired awe in Giovanni at least.
The response from Dante apparently reached
Giovanni in Bologna only after Dante’s death. In this
enigmatic fi nal eclogue, Dante relates that he would visit
Bologna were it not for his fear of a certain “Polyphe-
mus,” whose precise identity remains a mystery. In his
(never inscribed) epitaph for Dante’s tomb, Giovanni
lauds him as theologian, philosopher, and “glory of
the muses, most-loved author of the common people”
(gloria musarum, vulgo gratissitnus auctor), who wrote
in both Latin and the vernacular (laicis rhetoricisque
modis). Of Dante’s works, Giovanni singles out for
mention the Comedy, Monarchia, and, appropriately,
the series of eclogues interrupted by his death.
Giovanni was also the author of a verse epistle
known as Diaffonus and several pedagogical works:
commentaries on Virgil’s Georgics and Ovid and a brief
ars dictaminis.
See also Albertino Mussato; Dante AlighieriFurther Reading
Alessio, Gian Carlo. “I trattati grammaticali di Giovanni del
Virgilio.” Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 24, 1981, pp.
159–212.
Cestaro, Gary P. “Virgilio, Giovanni del.” In The Dante Encyclo-
pedia, ed. Richard Lansing. New York and London: Garland,
2000, pp. 865–866.
“Egloge.” In Dante Alighieri, Opere Minori, Vol. 2, ed. Enzo
Cecchini. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979, pp. 645–689.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “Un’ Ars dictaminis di Giovanni del
Virgilio.” Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 4, 1961, pp.
181–200.
Martellotti, Guido. “Egloghe. In Enciclopedia dantesca, Vol.- Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970a, pp.
644–646.
——. “Giovanni del Virgilio.” In Enciclopedia dantesca, Vol. - Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970b, pp.
193–194.
Raffi t, Guy P. “Dante’s Mocking Pastoral Muse.” Dante Studies,
114, 1996, pp. 271–291.
GIOVANNI DEL VIRGILIO