L'incoronazione di Mussato nell'età di Dante: una ricognizione delle corrispondenze in versi

On the solemn anniversary of Christmas 1315, in Padua, Albertino Mussato was crowned historian and poet. The initiative had been promoted by the College of Arts of the Paduan Studium, with the support of Bishop Pagano della Torre and Rolando da Piazzola, judge of the Comune and friend of the poet. The laurel wreath, which reinstated a rite reserved for the poets of antiquity, was conferred on Mussato for two works: the tragedy Ecerinis and the monumental Historia augusta, in prose, but some of the Paduan poet’s Epistles also bear significant traces of the episode. This essay examines precisely these epistolary testimonies, trying to measure the resonance that the news of the poetic crown had among Mussato’s correspondents, i.e. in centers bordering Padua, such as Venice and Bologna, and attempting to verify whether the fame of that the event and its ideological implications could influence the contemporary bucolic correspondence between Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio.