SOURCE: "Notes: Sordello," in The Troubadours of Dante, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1902, pp. 173-76.

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...