Boncompagno da Signa (also ''Boncompagnus'' or ''Boncompagni''; c. 1165/1175 – after 1240) was an Italian scholar, grammarian, historian, and philosopher. Born in

Signa Signa () is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Florence in the Italian region Tuscany, located about west of Florence. Signa borders the following municipalities: Campi Bisenzio, Carmignano, Lastra a Signa, Poggio a Caian ...

, near

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

, between 1165 and 1175, he was a professor of

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...

(''ars dictaminis'') at the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...

and then the

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...

. In the early thirteenth century, he was one of the first Western European authors to write in the vernacular, in his case

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

. He spent his career travelling between

Ancona Ancona (, also , ) is a city and a seaport in the Marche region in central Italy, with a population of around 101,997 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region. The city is located northeast of Rome, on the Adriatic ...

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, and Bologna and died at Florence. He wrote a history of the 1173 Siege of Ancona, his only work of that kind, and works on

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

. His love of elaborate practical jokes is described by Helen Waddell in ''The Wandering Scholars'' (1927). The events of the 1173 Siege of Ancona were narrated in 1204 in da Signa's ‘’Liber de Obsidione Anconae’’. This book especially made widely known the self-sacrifice of the widow Stamira, who had a major role in saving the city. Of this book, three copies remain: one is kept in the Vatican, the second in the

National Library of Paris National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland ...

and the third remained unpublished until 1723, when it was bought by Father Auriberti of Brescia, from which the text was translated and published by the historian

Ludovico Antonio Muratori Lodovico Antonio Muratori (21 October 1672 – 23 January 1750) was an Italian historian, notable as a leading scholar of his age, and for his discovery of the Muratorian fragment, the earliest known list of New Testament books. Biography Bor ...

in 1725. In the Nineteenth Century this copy was again sold and transferred to Cleveland, Ohio.

Works

*''Tractatus virtutum'' *''Rhetorica novissima'' *''Palma'' *''Quinque tabulae salutationum'' *''Rota veneris'' *''Bonus Socius e Civis Bononiae'' (disputed authorship) *''Liber de Obsidione Ancone''

Sources

*Boncompagno da Signa. 1975. ''Rota veneris'', facs. ed. Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints: . * Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio. Boncompagno da Signa. El ‘Tratado del amor carnal’ o ‘Rueda de Venus’. Motivos literarios en la tradición sentimental y celestinesca (ss. XIII-XVI). Pamplona: Eunsa, 2002. * Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio. Boncompagno da Signa. La rueda del amor. Los males de la vejez y la senectud. La amistad. Madrid: Gredos (Bliblioteca Clásica Gredos), 2005.

External links

''The History of the Siege of Ancona''

12th-century births 13th-century deaths People from Signa Italian classical scholars 13th-century Italian historians Italian philosophers University of Bologna faculty University of Padua faculty {{Italy-historian-stub