FOLGORE DA SAN GEMINIANO

(Folgore San Gimignano, Giacomo da Michele)

(ca. 1270–ca. 1332)

The real name of this early popular 14th-century poet was Giacomo da Michele, but he is known to posterity as “Folgore,” a name that means “splendor.” Little is known of his life. He may have been the man of that name noted for his military deeds in 1305 and 1306 and ultimately made a knight in 1332, though many believe he died before that date. Certainly his poetic output, the 32 sonnets that have survived, dates only from about 1309 until 1317. His poems are in what has been called the “realistic-comical” style, and seem to have been produced as entertainment for the wealthy middle class citizens of Florence and of Siena.Folgore’s best-known work is a sonnet series calledSonetti de’ mesi, or “Sonnets of the months.” The series consists of 14 sonnets—one for each individual month plus a dedicatory sonnet and a concluding one. The sonnets for each month explore the pleasures and pastimes appropriate to each month, and at the same time give modern readers a realistic glimpse into the daily lives and the social customs and pursuits of wealthy Tuscans of the 14th century. Folgore dedicated these sonnets to Niccolò de’ Nisi of Siena, and praised him and his circle for being more courteous than Lancelot—a line suggesting that in the cities of Italy, wealth was creating a new “courtly” class of bourgeoisie, whose elegant tastes Folgore reflects and also refines with his verse. It was once believed that the Niccolò addressed in Folgore’s sonnet is the same Niccolò of Siena chastised as a notorious spendthrift by DANTE in canto XXIX of the Inferno (in theDIVINE COMEDY), but that view is no longer seriously held by scholars.

Folgore wrote another, lesser known sonnet sequence calledSonetti de la semanaor “Sonnets of the Week,” a series of eight poems on individual days of the week along with a dedicatory sonnet. These are dedicated to a Guelf nobleman and describe, again, the social gatherings of the wealthy. Five other extant poems seem to have been part of a projected series of 17, and deal with the qualities of knighthood in an allegorical style. Folgore, a strong advocate of the Guelf party (the Italian party made up mainly of the middle class that generally supported the pope in Italian politics), does express his political sentiments in at least four of his extant sonnets, including his chagrin at the Guelfs’ 1315 military defeat by the Ghibellines (the party supported by the aristocracy that generally supported the emperor in Italian politics). Since Folgore’s latest extant poems seem to be dated not long after this defeat, perhaps political fortunes influenced his abandonment of poetry. Or perhaps he died about this time, and was in fact not the same man knighted in 1332.We can only speculate. But interest in Folgore’s poetry was revived in the 19th century when new English translations of his “Sonnets of the months” were made by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Folgore’s value as a poet continues as people see in his poetry the realistic depiction of his times.

■ Aldington, Richard.A Wreath for San Gemignano. New York: Duel, Sloan and Pearce, 1945.

■ Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, trans.The Early Italian Poets. Edited by Sally Purcell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.