[In the following excerpt, Chaytor outlines Sordello's biographical history and explores Dante's significant inclusion of the poet in the Purgatorio and De Vulgari Eloquentia, finding that "there is no necessity whatever … to imagine that two separate Sordellos are mentioned."]

There is much uncertainty concerning the facts of Sordello's life: he was born at Goito, near Mantua, and was of noble family. His name is not to be derived from sordidus, but from Surdus, a not uncommon patronymic in North Italy during the thirteenth century. Of his early years nothing is known: at some period of his youth he entered the court of count Ricciardo di San Bonifazio, the lord of Verona, where he fell in love with his master's wife, Cunizza da Romano (Par. ix. 32) and eloped with her. The details of this affair are entirely obscure; according to some commentators, it was the final outcome of a family feud, while others assert that the elopement took place with the connivance of Cunizza's brother, the notorious Ezzelino III (Inf. xii. 110): the date is approximately 1225. At any rate, Sordello and Cunizza betook themselves to Ezzelino's court. Then, according to the Provencal biography, follows his secret marriage with Otta, and his flight from Treviso, to escape the vengeance of the angry relatives. He thus left Italy about the year 1229, and retired to the South of France, where he visited the courts of Provence, Toulouse, Roussillon, penetrating also into Castile. A chief authority for these wanderings is the troubadour Peire Bremon Ricas Novas (see introd. to XLII), whose 'sirventes' speaks of him as being in Spain at the court of the king of Leon: this was Alfonso IX, who died in the year 1230. He also visited Portugal, but for this no date can be assigned. Allusions in his poems show that he was in Provence before 1235: about ten years later we find him at the court of the countess Beatrice (Purg. vii. 128), daughter of Raimond Berengar, count of Provence, and wife of Charles I of Anjou. Beatrice may have been the subject of several of his love poems: but the 'senhal' Restaur and Agradiva, which conceal the names possibly of more than one lady, cannot be identified. From 1252-1265 his name appears in several Angevin treaties and records, coupled with the names of other well-known nobles, and he would appear to have held a high place in Charles' esteem. It is uncertain whether he took part in the first crusade of S. Louis, in 1248-1251, at which Charles was present: but he followed Charles on his Italian expedition against Manfred in 1265, and seems to have been captured by the Ghibellines before reaching Naples. At any rate, we find him a prisoner at Novara in September 1266; pope Clement IV induced Charles to ransom him, and in 1269, as a recompense for his services, he received five castles in the Abruzzi, near the river Pescara: shortly afterwards he died. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but from the fact that he is placed by Dante among those who were cut off before they could repent it has been conjectured that he came to a violent end. He has left to us forty poems, including fragments and the Ensenhamen, and stands high above the Provencal-Italian school of his time. Dante mentions him twice—in the famous passage in the Purgatorio (vi. 58 et seqq.) and in the De Vulgari Eloquentia (i. 15). The question why Dante gave Sordello so honourable a place in his poem has been the cause of much controversy: on the one hand, it is said that Sordello's didactic poem, the Ensenhamen, with its high and pure morality, made a great impression upon Dante; whereas other critics consider the lament for Blacatz as the cause. The arguments are to be seen in detail in De Lollis' edition of Sordello, and O. Schultz, Zeitschrift für Rom. Phil. vii. 214. Two facts seem to tell against the Ensenhamen theory: first, that there were other Provencal didactic works extant, as good as or better than Sordello's poem, and probably no less accessible to Dante: we may instance 'The four cardinal virtues' of Daude de Pradas, and the 'Romans di mondana vida' of Folquet de Lunel. Further, the poetical value of the Ensenhamen seems small to us, and the sentiment commonplace compared with the chivalrous ideal of the Vita Nuova, though its theory agrees with that upheld in the Convito. On the other hand, the kings mentioned in the Blacatz lament are partly coincident with the series in the Purgatorio: the lament itself was a famous poem, was twice parodied by other troubadours, and must have been known to Dante. In fact, as has been often observed, the episode of the eaten heart at the outset of the Vita Nuova is probably drawn from this source.

The passage in the De Vulg. El. i. 15 has also been the subject of controversy: 'Dicimus ergo quod forte non male opinantur qui Bononienses asserunt pulcriori locutione loquentes, cum ab Imolensibus, Ferrariensibus et Mutinensibus circumstantibus aliquid proprio vulgari adsciscunt; sicut facere quoslibet a finitimis suis conicimus, ut Sordellus de Mantua sua ostendit, Cremonae, Brixiae atque Veronae confini: qui tantus eloquentiae vir existens, non solum in poetando, sed quomodocunque loquendo patrium vulgare deseruit.' 'We say, then, that they are probably not far wrong who assert that the people of Bologna speak a more beautiful tongue (than other dialects), because they receive into their own speech some elements from their neighbours of Imola, Ferrara, and Modena; even as we have concluded that anybody (who writes poetry in his vulgar tongue) borrows from his neighbours, as Sordello shows in the case of his native Mantua, to which Cremona, Brescia and Verona are adjacent: and he, who was a man of such distinguished eloquence, not only in poetry, but in every other mode of expression, abandoned his native dialect.' 'Facere' is the 'verbum vicarium,' equivalent to 'aliquid … adsciscere,' and 'suis' refers to 'quoslibet.' Dante, then, in searching for the Illustre vulgare, speaks of the dialect of Bologna as being mixed: this might be an argument in its favour, inasmuch as he has already pointed out that all writers in their own tongue used a mixed dialect: for examples, see the previous chapters. He now adds a further instance, Sordello, who strengthens the argument in favour of mixed dialects, because so distinguished a man as he employed such a dialect. But, he adds, Sordello abandoned his dialect: that fact shows that it could not have been curiale et illustre, just as the defection of Guido Guinicelli and others from the dialect of Bologna is an argument fatal to the pretensions of that dialect, which is the present subject of discussion. In other words, the remark that Sordello abandoned his own dialect for Provencal is an anticipation of the argument employed towards the end of the chapter, whereby the pretensions of Bologna are quashed: if certain local dialects were curialia et illustria, poets would not abandon them as they do. The text, then, seems plain as it stands, and there is no necessity whatever to suppose lacunae, or to imagine that two separate Sordellos are mentioned in the Purgatorio and the De Vulg. El. respectively. If none of Sordello's early essays in his native dialect have come down to us, that is hardly a matter for surprise.