The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian and mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his imperial court. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than 300 poems of

courtly love Courtly love ( oc, fin'amor ; french: amour courtois ) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing var ...

between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfred.

Origins

These poets drew inspiration from the

troubadour A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a '' trobair ...

poetry of

Occitania Occitania ( oc, Occitània , , or ) is the historical region in Western and Southern Europe where the Occitan language was historically spoken and where it is sometimes still used as a second language. This cultural area roughly encompasse ...

written in langue d'oc, which applied the feudal code of honor to the relation between a man (acting as the vassal) and a woman (acting as king or superior). This is a reversal of the traditional role of women, traditionally dependent on men, and marks a new awareness in

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

society: the decadence of

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...

with the increasing power of the

middle class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...

, causes a shift in the reading public, the epic (traditionally devoted to great military pursuits) gradually giving way to the lyric (generally focused on love). In the lower Middle Ages more and more women were reading books than ever before and poetry tried to adapt to their point of view and their newly acquired role in society. This features Occitan poetry, then very influential in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. What distinguishes the Sicilian School from the troubadours, however, is the introduction of a kinder, gentler type of woman than that found in their Occitan models; one who was nearer to

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ' ...

's madonnas and

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

's Laura, though much less characterised psychologically. The poems of the Sicilians hardly portray real women or situations (Frederick's song cannot be read as autobiographical), but the style and language are remarkable, since the Sicilians (as Dante called them) created the first Italian literary standard by enriching the existing vernacular base, probably inspired by popular love songs, with new words of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

and Provençal origin.

The work of a roving school

"It is lyric poetry to be in the forefront of literature, inspiring a widespread enthusiasm whose effects will be felt for centuries. The initial boost given by the Sicilian poets from the Svevs' court, the first to use a standardised vernacular to make art poetry will be passed on to many others: and all of them, not just the pedantic imitators of the Siculo-Tuscan school (such as Bonagiunta Orbicciani) but also Guinizzelli, the poets of

Dolce Stil Novo ''Dolce Stil Novo'' (), Italian for "sweet new style," is the name given to a literary movement in 13th and 14th century Italy. Influenced by the Sicilian School and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Divine Love. The name ''Dolce Stil Novo'' w ...

and more widely all writers of verse, will have to deal, though by different degrees, with the Sicilian models, so that some peculiarities will be assimilated into standard usage of

Italian poetry Italian poetry is a category of Italian literature. Italian poetry has its origins in the thirteenth century and has heavily influenced the poetic traditions of many European languages, including that of English. Features * Italian prosody is a ...

." (

Bruno Migliorini Bruno Migliorini (; 19 November 1896 – 18 June 1975) was an Italian linguist and philologist. He was the author of one of the first scientific histories of Italian language and was president of the Accademia della Crusca. Biography Migliorin ...

, ''Storia della letteratura italiana'') Though yet confined to a few notaries and dignitaries of the emperors, such poetry shows for the first time uniform linguistic traits and a richness in vocabulary far exceeding that of the Sicilian language by which it was inspired. The ''Magna curia'' was not based in any given city, but always moving across Southern Italy, a fact which helped the school avoid the temptation of choosing any local dialect as the starting point for their new language. That is why the new standard was a

Koiné language In linguistics, a koiné language, koiné dialect, or simply koiné (Ancient Greek κοινή, "common anguage) is a standard or common language or dialect that has arisen as a result of the contact, mixing, and often simplification of two o ...

, a melting pot of many different vernaculars. The reason for moving from city to city was mainly political. Although his experiment was short-lived, Frederic successfully created the first modern state in Europe, run by an efficient bureaucracy: its members were neither appointed from the aristocracy nor the clergy with good reason, since the former were far more interested in defending their own privileges than the welfare of the country and often plotted against him in the hope of regaining their power, while the latter were basically faithful to the Pope, his biggest enemy. Frederic was in fact dismantling the feudal system of government inherited from the Normans, his ''magna curia'' and minor dignitaries were usually chosen from lay orders (like his poet-notaries). He also abolished internal barriers: free trade brought prosperity to the South, making

Bari Bari ( , ; nap, label= Barese, Bare ; lat, Barium) is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, southern Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Ital ...

(as witnessed by Cielo in his ''Contrasto'') one of the richest cities in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

. But, keeping this modern state afloat, meant that his barons had no power to collect taxes, their greatest source of revenues. Hence the necessity for Frederick to bring law and order by moving his court to and fro.

Style and subject-matter

Though the Sicilian School is generally considered conventional in theme or content it rather "stands out for his refined lexicon, near to the style of ''trobar clus'' and for the wise treatment of figures of speech and metaphors of ''stylnovistic taste'' taken from natural philosophy" (Cesare Segre). There is a visible move towards neoplatonic models, which will be embraced by

in the later 13th century

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different na ...

and

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 ...

, and more markedly by

. Unlike the Northern Italian

s, no line is ever written in Occitan. Rather, the Occitan repertoire of

chivalry Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It was associated with the medieval Christian institution of knighthood; knights' and gentlemen's behaviours were governed b ...

terms is adapted to the Siculo-Italian

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

and morphology, so that new Italian words are actually coined, some adapted, but none really loaned. A most famous specimen is ''Io m'aggio posto in core'' by Giacomo da Lentini, who apparently inspired the movement. Giacomo da Lentini is also widely credited by scholars (as Francesco Bruni, Cesare Segre et al.) for inventing the

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

, a literary form later perfected by Dante and, most of all, Petrarch. He uses it in a number of poems. We quote here the most famous that probably inspired the whole school:

The limitations of Sicilian poetry

The main inhibiting factor on Sicilian poetry was probably the political censorship imposed by Frederick: literary debate was confined to courtly love. In this respect, the poetry of the north, though stuck to the

langues d'oïl The ''langues d'oïl'' (; ) are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. These belong to the larger ...

, provided fresher blood for

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...

. The north was fragmented into communes or little city-states which had a relatively democratic self-government, and that is precisely why the '' sirventese''

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other f ...

, and later, Dante's ''

Divina Commedia The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature an ...

'' and sonnets were so popular: they referred to real people and feelings, though often idealised like Beatrice. A sirventese is, in effect, eminently political: it usually refers to real battles and attacks real military or political enemies, the author often being the soldier or the knight involved in the strife, as in Guittone d'Arezzo's ''Rotta di Montaperti'' (Defeat of Montaperti), a bloody battle where

Manfred of Sicily Manfred ( scn, Manfredi di Sicilia; 123226 February 1266) was the last King of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen dynasty, reigning from 1258 until his death. The natural son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Manfred became regent over the ...

, Frederick's son, defeated the Guelphs. Dante commemorated this event in his epic La Divina Commedia many years later. Frederick's censorship is also apparent from the structure of the song: the Sicilians transformed the '' tornada'', the strophe which in troubadour poetry contains a dedication to a famous person with a ''congedo'', where the poet bids goodbye to his reader and asks the song to bear his message to his lady. The re-shaping of the

Occitan_language Occitan (; oc, occitan, link=no ), also known as ''lenga d'òc'' (; french: langue d'oc) by its native speakers, and sometimes also referred to as ''Provençal'', is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valle ...

model also involved the suppression of music. The authors' work was intended for reading, which called for logical unity, posing a question, proposing, and finding a solution in the end. That meant no interchangeable lines as in troubadour poetry and fewer repetitions: for a French ''jongleur'' who sang his poems these were necessary, but they sounded redundant to the Sicilian authors. Their legacy is apparent in Dante and Petrarch's lyrics. The sonnet is even more exacting on this point: the separation between the octave and the sestet is purely a logical one, the rimes drawing a visual line between the first and last part. However, the fact that Italian poetry was being made for the reading public may have facilitated its circulation.

Realism and parody: '' Cielo d'Alcamo''

Though

lyric poetry Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...

prevailed at Frederick's (and later Manfredi's) court, it is at this time that we have an interesting exception in ''Rosa fresca aulentissima'' (transl: "Fresh very perfumed rose"), widely known as ''Contrasto'' and attributed to Cielo d'Alcamo (also known as ''Ciullu di Vincenzullu''. The modern form of "Cielo" is "Michele".), about which modern critics have much exercised themselves. This ''Contrasto'' is written in a

Sicilian language Sicilian ( scn, sicilianu, link=no, ; it, siciliano) is a Romance language that is spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands. A variant, ''Calabro-Sicilian'', is spoken in southern Calabria, where it is called Southern Calabr ...

close to that spoken in the city of

Messina Messina (, also , ) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 219,000 inhabitants in t ...

, with several influences from continental Italian variants. The subject is a humorous fight between two young lovers, a kind of poetry quite common in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

(as ''contrasti'' or ''pastorelle''). It is about a young suitor who sneaks into the garden of a young lady from a rich Sicilian family and secretly declares his love to her. He then tries to seduce the girl with his one-liners; she berates him for his "ill" intentions and keeps him at bay to protect her honor, but her prudeness proves eventually to be just a love game: she gives in completely to his bold advances. However, the language uses much of the courtly language of lyric poetry and the result is a parody of the Sicilian School's clichés. The ''Contrasto'' belongs to the time of the emperor Frederick II (it can be dated between 1230 and 1250, but probably closer to the latter), and is also important as a proof that there once existed a popular, independent of literary, poetry prior to Frederick's times. Now most critics agree that the ''Contrasto'' of Cielo d'Alcamo is probably a scholarly re-elaboration of some lost popular song. It is perhaps the closest to a kind of poetry that has perished or which was smothered by the Sicilian literature of Frederick's. Its distinguishing feature was its hilarity and down-to-earthedness as opposed to the abstract verse of the Sicilian School. But it has been argued that its style betrays a profound knowledge of Frederick's movement and some critics have hinted the man who penned it must have been acquainted with or even been part of, the court itself. Given the highly satiric and erotic vein Ciullo d'Alcamo may well be a fictitious name. His ''Contrasto'' shows vigor and freshness in the expression of feelings: Such "low" treatment of the love-theme shows that its subject-matter is certainly popular. This poem sounds real and spontaneous, marked as it is by the sensuality characteristic of the people of southern Italy.

Linguistic notes on the Sicilian standard

The standard of the Sicilian school combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, Latin, Provençal and to a lesser, but not negligible extent, Apulian and certain southern dialects. Such a

melting pot The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative being a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous throu ...

greatly helped the new

Italian language Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 8 ...

: the Occitan suffixes ''-ièra'' and ''-ça'', for example, generated hundreds of new Italian words in ''-iera'' and ''-za'' as it. ''riv-iera'' ("river") or ''costan-za'' ("constancy"). Such affixes would be then adopted by Dante and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of

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 ...

writers. Dante's styles ''illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale'' were partly developed from his close study of the Sicilian School which he quotes widely in his studies, especially in his '' De Vulgari Eloquentia''. The Sicilian school was later re-founded by Guittone d'Arezzo in

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

following the death of Manfredi, Frederick's son, so many of these poems were later copied in manuscripts that widely circulated in

. This first standard in which they were written, was, however, modified in Tuscany. In fact, Tuscan

scrivener A scrivener (or scribe) was a person who could read and write or who wrote letters to court and legal documents. Scriveners were people who made their living by writing or copying written material. This usually indicated secretarial and ad ...

s perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italian dialects (i, e, a, o, u) as a seven-vowel one (i, é, è, a, ó, ò, u). As a consequence, the Italian texts may contain lines that no longer rhyme with each other (sic. -i > tusc. -é, sic. -u > tusc. -ó). Tuscans also changed words as ''gloria'' ron. glɔriato ''ghiora'', ''aju'' ron. aju("I have) to ''aggio'' ron. addʒoetc. Though some original texts have been restored to their original Sicilian, we must see such remakes only as tentative reconstructions of originals that, unfortunately, may have been lost forever. Dante and his contemporaries would take this newborn language a step further, expanding and enriching it with even more words of Latin and Florentine origin, carefully working on the style to create ''volgare illustre'', a higher standard quite close to today's Standard Italian.

Poets

* Cielo d'Alcamo * Pier delle Vigne * Inghilfredi * Stefano Protonotaro * Odo delle Colonne * Rinaldo d'Aquino *

Jacopo Mostacci Jacopo (also Iacopo) is a masculine Italian given name, derivant from Latin ''Iacōbus''. It is an Italian variant of Giacomo. * Jacopo Aconcio (), Italian religious reformer * Jacopo Bassano (1592), Italian painter * Iacopo Barsotti (1921–1987) ...

* Giacomino Pugliese * Giacomo da Lentini * Arrigo Testa * Mazzeo Ricco * Perceval Doria * Frederick II, emperor *

Manfred, king of Sicily Manfred ( scn, Manfredi di Sicilia; 123226 February 1266) was the last King of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen dynasty, reigning from 1258 until his death. The natural son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Manfred became regent over the ...

* Enzo, king of Sardinia * Rugieri d'Amici *

Guido delle Colonne Guido delle Colonne (in Latin Guido de Columnis or de Columna) was a 13th-century Italian judge and writer, who lived in Messina. He is the author of a prose narrative of the Trojan War entitled ''Historia destructionis Troiae'' ("History of the d ...

References

*Migliorini, B., ''Storia della letteratura italiana''. Firenze, Sansoni, 1987 *Giudice A., Bruni, G., ''Problemi e scrittori della letteratura italiana''. Torino, Paravia, 1983. *''Antologia della poesia italiana'', ed. C.Segre and C. Orsola. Torino, Einaudi, 1999. *Bruni, F., ''L'Italiano: testi e documenti''. Torino, Utet, 1984. *''Rimatori del '200 e del '300'', ed. M. Vitale. Torino, UTET, 1989. *Mendola, Louis, ''Sicily's Rebellion against King Charles'' (with poem of Cielo d'Alcamo), New York, Trinacria, 2015. {{Authority control Italian poetry Culture of Sicily Sonnet studies History of Palermo Medieval literature