Jacopo da Leona, also spelt Iacopo was an Italian

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 ...

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...

and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wr ...

who died in 1277. A

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

by profession, he became a nobleman's secretary and later a judge. Sixty of his

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 ...

s survive.

Life and work

Beginning life as Jacopo del Tancredo in the village of Levane,

Arezzo Arezzo ( , , ) , also ; ett, 𐌀𐌓𐌉𐌕𐌉𐌌, Aritim. is a city and ''comune'' in Italy and the capital of the Province of Arezzo, province of the same name located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about southeast of Florence at an elevation o ...

, Leona took his later surname from the Castle of Leona (''Castello di Leona''), on which his village depended. Here he learnt the work of a notary, under the patronage of the family of Ubertini of Arezzo, and one of the Ubertini, Ranieri, employed him as a secretary. Leona went with his master to Volterra, and in 1273, when Ranieri was elected as a

bishop A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ...

, Leona was appointed as a judge. Of Leona's poetry, a songbook of sixty sonnets survives, of which the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...

's manuscript Codex 3793 ('' Canzoniere Vaticano latino 3793'') contains seven. All of the sonnets belong to the years before 1277. They divide broadly into

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

and

love poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

, which is original but mannered, adopting the style and themes 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 vari ...

. Leona’s best known work, which takes the form of a

dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is ...

, has the title "Lady, I lament me of you" (''Madonna, di voi piango e mi lamento'').Aurelio Roncaglia, ''Per due sonetti di Cecco Angiolieri ed uno di Jacopo da Leona'' (1941) in ''Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana'', vol. CXVIII (353-354), pp. 81-92 On Leona’s death, Guittone d'Arezzo addressed an ode to him which calls him Giacomo da Leona and refers to him as a

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the o ...

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leona, Jacopo da 1277 deaths 13th-century Italian poets Italian male poets Sonneteers Year of birth unknown 13th-century Italian jurists People from the Province of Arezzo