''Salv'a lo vescovo senato'', also known as the ''Cantilena giullaresca'', because it was written for performance by a
jongleur
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...
, or ''Ritmo laurenziano'', because it was found in a
codex
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...
(Santa Croce XV, IV) of the
Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana
The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana or BML) is a historic library in Florence, Italy, containing more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze ...
in
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 an ...
, is a
lyric poem
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 ...
in the
Tuscan language
Tuscan ( it, dialetto toscano ; it, vernacolo, label=locally) is a set of Italo-Dalmatian varieties of Romance mainly spoken in Tuscany, Italy.
Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect, and it became the lan ...
. It was probably composed in the third quarter of the twelfth century (1150–71) by a Tuscan poet. It is the earliest surviving piece of poetry in an unmistakably Italian dialect.
''Salv'a lo vescovo senato'' comprises twenty monorhyming '' ottonari''. In the same manuscript is found a
martyrology
A martyrology is a catalogue or list of martyrs and other saints and beati arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts. Local martyrologies record exclusively the custom of a particular Church. Local lists were enriched by na ...
. Two internal references in the poem constrain its dating: a mention of
Galgano Inghirami Galgano or Galganus may refer to:
*Galgano Guidotti (1148 – 1181), or Saint Galgano, Catholic saint from Tuscany
*Galgano, an alternate name for Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian ...
,
Bishop of Volterra
The Diocese of Volterra ( la, Dioecesis Volaterrana) is a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical territory in Tuscany, central Italy. It is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Pisa.Grimaldo,
Bishop of Osimo
The Diocese of Osimo was a Roman Catholic diocese in Italy.
It was founded in the seventh century and in 1725 merged with the Diocese of Cingoli to form the Diocese of Osimo e Cingoli.Villano, Archbishop of Pisa, according to the hypothesis of Cesareo, following Mazzoni) making drawn-out praises and go so far as to predict for him a pontificate, in the hopes of obtaining a horse: if he obtains it, he will show it to the bishop of Volterra, Galgano.