captured aspects of contemporary life: the diffi culty of
enforcing dress codes, a chase after a runaway pig, a
quarrel between husband and wife, the embarrassment
of a youth who trips and falls while eyeing girls, a wet
soldier’s refuge from his own bare hovel in the warm
and well-stocked kitchen of a neighboring ecclesiast.
This period also saw the composition of some moral and
political canzoni, with pleas for peace and moderation.
Sacchetti himself collected his poetry over the years
into one volume, of which the autograph is preserved
in the Laurentian Library in Florence. He compiled his
collection of tales in the 1380s and 1390s. Of the 300
stories, 223 survived, a few with gaps or in fragments.
Besides these writings, we have sixteen of his letters and
a notebook, never intended for publication.
Sachetti died at San Miniato, where he was governor.
His tales went unappreciated by the humanists of the fol-
lowing century, but two sixteenth-century manuscripts
survived. The fi rst printed edition of a selection of tales
appeared in 1724.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni
Further Reading
Editions and Translation
La Battaglia delle belle donne, le Lettere, le Sposizioni di Vangeli,
ed. Alberto Chiari. Bari: Laterza, 1938.
Il libro delle rime, ed. Alberto Chiari. Bari: Laterza, 1936.
Opere, ed. Aldo Borlenghi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1957. (Trecentono-
velle, Sposizioni di Vangeli, Libro delle rime, Lettere.)
Tales from Sacchetti, trans. Mary Steegman. London: Dent, 1908.
(Eighty-three prudishly selected tales.)
Trecentonovelle, ed. Vincenzo Pernicone. Florence: Sansoni,
1946.
Il Trecentonovelle, ed. Antonio Lanza. Florence: Sansoni,
1984.
Critical Studies
Barbi, Michele. “Per una nuova edizione delle Novelle del Sac-
chetti.” Studi di Filologia Italiana, 1, 1927, pp. 87–131.
Caretti, Lanfranco. Saggio sul Sacchetti. Bari: Laterza, 1951.
Croce, Benedetto. Poesia popolare e poesia d’arte. Bari: Laterza,
1933, pp. 94–105.
Curato, Baldo. Lettura del Sacchetti. Cremona: Gianni Man-
giarotti, 1966.
Francia, Letterio di. Franco Sacchetti, novelliere. Pisa: Tipografi a
Successori Fratelli Nistri, 1902.
——. Novellistica. Milan: Vallardi, 1924, pp. 260–300.
Li Gotti, Ettore. Franco Sacchetti, uomo “discolo e grosso.”
Florence: Sansoni, 1940.
Li Gotti, Ettore, and Nino Pirrotta. Il Sacchetti e la tecnica musi-
cale del Trecento italiano. Florence: Sansoni, 1935.
Pernicone, Vincenzo. Fra. rime e novelle del Sacchetti. Florence:
Sansoni, 1942.
Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. A History of Italian Literature, rev. ed.,
ed. Thomas G. Bergin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1974, 117–119.
Janet Levarie Smarr
SÆMUNDR SIGFÚSSON INN FRÓÐI
(“the learned”; 1056–1133)
To his contemporaries, Sæmundr was known as a pre-
eminent churchman and a man of great learning. To
modern scholarship, he is known primarily as a founding
father of historical writing in Iceland, and of the great
dynasty of the Oddaverjar (“men of Oddi”). At various
points in the intervening centuries, folklore accused him
of sorcery, while scholarly speculation credited him with
the Eddas and with sagas ranging from Njáls saga to
Jómsvíkinga saga.
“Sæmundr (prestr) inn fróði” is mentioned sev-
eral times in the biskupa sögur (especially Hungrvaka,
Kristni saga, and the sagas of Jón O ̨mundarson), Íslen-
dingabók, annals, genealogies, and in other historical
writings. But there is no coherent medieval account of
his life, and virtually nothing by him survives in writing,
so that much remains unknown.
Sæmundr, the son of a priest, was born into a distin-
guished family that had lived at Oddi, South Iceland,
since about 900. He studied for some years in “Frakk-
land.” The Oddaverja annáll for 1077 specifi es Paris,
but this may be no more than a surmise, as is the sug-
gestion by modern scholars that Sæmundr attended the
cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. An entertaining
account of his return to Iceland in Gunnlaugr Leifesson’s
Jóns saga helga (early 13th century) tells how Jón and
Sæmundr outwitted the master astrologer who held
Sæmundr in his power. This legend seems to contain the
germ of later folktales in which Sæmundr, learned in the
black art, uses his cleverness to foil the Devil.
After his return to Iceland in or after 1076, Sæmundr
was ordained priest and became a “pillar of the church,”
building a new church at Oddi dedicated to St. Nicholas,
increasing its endowments and clergy, and preaching
and dispensing wise counsel in the neighborhood. He
probably also had a school there, for he is said in Sturlu
saga (ch. 1) to have fostered Oddi Þorgilsson, who, like
Sæmundr himself, became fróðr, “learned (especially
in native lore).” Of still greater national importance was
Sæmundr’s part, with the bishops, in establishing tithe
laws (1096) and other ecclesiastical laws.
Little else is known of Sæmundr’s life or activities
as priest and secular chieftain, because the records are
slight and the times relatively uneventful. However, it
is known that he and his two brothers married the three
daughters of Kolbeinn Flosason. With his wife, Guðrún,
he had three sons and a daughter, and their descendants,
who came to be known as the Oddaverjar, in many
senses built on the foundations laid by Sæmundr at Oddi.
Their power and wealth, augmented especially by the
tithes and other revenues paid to family-owned churches,
overtook those of other chieftainly families during the
time of Sæmundr’s distinguished grandson Jón Lopts-SACCHETTI, FRANCO