Stefano Protonotaro
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Stefano Protonotaro da Messina (
fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
1261) was a poet of the Sicilian School, probably at the court of Frederick II. He left behind only three (or four) poems, but one is the earliest piece of writing in the Sicilian language. This work is of immense philological and linguistic importance.


Life

He was born at
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 ...
in the
Kingdom of Sicily The Kingdom of Sicily ( la, Regnum Siciliae; it, Regno di Sicilia; scn, Regnu di Sicilia) was a state that existed in the south of the Italian Peninsula and for a time the region of Ifriqiya from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 un ...
and was, as his name implies, a protonotary. He is mentioned in only two documents: one of 1261 from Messina, while he was a live, and a posthumous one from 1301 (probably near the date of his death). If he is the same person, as seems probable, as a "Stefano da Messina" mentioned in other documents, he made Latin and Greek translations of two Arabic treatise on astronomy—''Liber rivolutionum'' (Book of Revolutions) and ''Flores astronomiae'' (Flowers of Astronomy)—which he dedicated to King Manfred, son of Frederick II. He was probably one of the later Sicilian poets, since one of his ''commiate'' (addresses to a lover) shows the influence of Guittone d'Arezzo.


Work and context

The poets of the Sicilian School usually composed in the Sicilian language. At a time when all the Italian languages were very similar, Tuscan copyists altered the Sicilian word endings and other orthographic conventions to produce Tuscanised texts. Stefano's '' canzone'' ''Pir meu cori alligrari'', is the only work of the Sicilian School that is preserved in both Sicilian (which has five vowel sounds) and Tuscan (which has seven). Gian Maria Barbieri reported to have found it in a "libro siciliano", probably an
Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...
chansonnier A chansonnier ( ca, cançoner, oc, cançonièr, Galician and pt, cancioneiro, it, canzoniere or ''canzoniéro'', es, cancionero) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings o ...
from Sicily, and copied it. This copy was first printed in 1790 by Gerolamo Tiraboschi. The original has since been lost. ''Pir meu'' is written in '' coblas unissonans'', with two feet of abC form and a ''sirma'' that is dDEeFF, followed by a '' tornada'' that is identical in structure. One of the central images in the piece is that of ''la dulzuri / chi fa la tigra in illu miraturi'': "the delight / that the tigress has in her own mirror". Stefano likens seeing his lady for the first time to this delight. This image was first employed in a ''
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'' of Rigaut de Barbezieux: the tigress is said to be enchanted by her own beautiful stripes and so be forget about the hunters that pursue her. The mirror image may also be used to structure the motifs of the poem, the second half being a motivic mirror-image of the first. While ''Pir meu'' is written in the standardised Sicilian of court poetry, the ''volgare (siciliano) illustre'', the first stanza shows hints of the common tongue (''siciliana-comune''). Stefano's poem has been used, with varying degrees of liberty, to re-create Sicilian versions of the Tuscanised legacy of other Sicilian poets. Besides ''Pir meu'', Stefano left two other songs, ''Assai cretti celare'' and ''Assai mi placeria''.Attributed to ''Istefano di Messina'' in one manuscript. A fourth, ''Amor, da cui move tuttora e vene'', customarily assigned to Pier delle Vigne, has been lately ascribed to Stefano. It is characterised among his works for its dependence on bestiaries for creating simile and
image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
. He alludes to a deer and a unicorn.


Notes


External links


"Stefano Protonotaro"
''Microsoft Encarta Enciclopedia Online'' (2008).
"Stefano Protonotaro da Messina: Canzoni".
''Poeti del Duecento'', G. Contini, ed. (Milan–Naples: Ricciardi, 1960).

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stefano Protonotaro Da Messina Writers from Messina Italian male poets Sicilian School poets Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown 13th-century Italian poets 13th-century translators