The ''Ritmo bellunese'' or ''Cantilena bellunese'' is a brief
vernacular Venetian passage in an anonymous fragment of a
medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...
chronicle of events in the history of
Belluno
Belluno (; lld, Belum; vec, Belùn) is a town and province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Located about north of Venice, Belluno is the capital of the province of Belluno and the most important city in the Eastern Dolomites region ...
between 1183 and 1196. From ''circa'' 1198, it is the earliest securely datable text in an Venetian vernacular. It is preserved in manuscript in the Catalogo de Vescovi (bishops' catalogue) of the Museo Civico (civic museum) in Belluno.
The ''Ritmo'' consists in a single
hendecasyllabic
In poetry, a hendecasyllable (sometimes hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and ...
quatrain
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.
Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greec ...
surrounded by prose. The German historian Phillipp August Becker argued that it was not in fact verse, and Carlo Salvioni believed it was composed of
alexandrines
Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French '' Rom ...
. It is not strictly syllabic, but the rhyme scheme is clear. It forms part of the narration of the war Belluno and its ally
Feltre
Feltre ( vec, Fèltre) is a town and ''comune'' of the province of Belluno in Veneto, northern Italy. A hill town in the southern reaches of the province, it is located on the Stizzon River, about from its junction with the Piave, and southwes ...
waged against
Treviso
Treviso ( , ; vec, Trevixo) is a city and ''comune'' in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 84,669 inhabitants (as of September 2017). Some 3,000 live within the Veneti ...
, in which they acquired territory in the proximity of the latter (1193). There is no transition between prose and verse, nor between Latin and vernacular. The four lines describe the destruction of Casteldardo, a Trevisan outpost near
Trichiana
Trichiana is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Belluno in the Italian region Veneto, located about north of Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto ...
, which was dismantled and its parts thrown into the river
Ardo
Ardo (or ''Ardonus'', possibly short for ''Ardabastus''; died 720/721) is attested as the last of all Visigothic kings of Hispania, reigning from 713 or likely 714 until his death. The Visigothic Kingdom was already severely reduced in power and a ...
. The capture of six Trevisan knights is also boasted:
Linguistically, the text is in a form of
Venetian
Venetian often means from or related to:
* Venice, a city in Italy
* Veneto, a region of Italy
* Republic of Venice (697–1797), a historical nation in that area
Venetian and the like may also refer to:
* Venetian language, a Romance language s ...
(in which it is called the ''Ritmo Belumat'' or ''Belunéxe''), as indicated by the conjugation of the third person masculine with the clitic ''i'' (as in ''i lo zetta'', which in modern Venetian would be ''i lo ga getà'' or ''i l'à getà'') and the northern tendency to lose final vowels (as in ''Ard'', ''part'', ''cavaler''). The preterite tense, now disappeared in Venetian, but not in Italian, is used (as in ''getà,'' ''duse'').
[ Arrigo Castellani, ''I più antichi testi italiani: edizione e commento'' (Bologna: Pàtron, 1973), cited in the Italian Wikipedia article.]
Notes
{{reflist
Editions
*In ''Rime giullaresche e popolari d'Italia''. Vincenzo de Bartholomaeis, ed. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926.
*In Carlo Salvioni. "Ancora del Cavassico: la cantilena bellunese del 1193". ''Nozze Cian=Sappa-Flandinet''. Bergamo: 1894.
Italian literature