La Trobe University - Library: Medieval Music Database - Annual cycle of feasts of liturgical chant, liturgical polyphony and secular music of the late middle ages.

La sacrosanta carità d'amore

ballata by Bartolino da Padova with text by Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio

Sources

Florence: Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Palatino 87 (Squarcialupi Codex), fol. 103v-104 (2/2);
Lucca: Archivio di Stato 184 (Mancini Codex), fol. 27 (2/2);
Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds nouv. acq. français 6771 (Reina Codex), fol. 14 (2/2);
Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana XIV, lat. 223, fol. 34v (text).

Facsimiles

1. The Lucca Codex. Codice Mancini. Introductory Study and Facsimile Edition, edited by John N das and Agostino Ziino, Lucca: Libreria musicale italiana editrice, 1990.
2. Il Codice Squarcialupi edited by F. Alberto GALLO, Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1992.

Editions

1. Der Squarcialupi-Codex Pal. 87 der Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana zu Florenz, edited by Johannes Wolf and H. Albrecht, Lippstadt: Kistner and Siegel, 1955, p. 162.
2. Italian Secular Music: Bartolino da Padova, Egidius de Francia, Giulielmus de Francia, Don Paolo da Firenze, edited by W. Thomas Marrocco, Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1975. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century IX, p. 34 (Pn6771).
3. WILLIAMS, Carol J. The Mancini Codex: A Manuscript Study, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Adelaide), 3 vols., 1983, Vol. II, p. 16.

Text Editions

CORSI, Giuseppe. Rimatori del Trecento, Turin: Unione tipografica editrice torinese, 1969, p. 504.

Literature

1. PETROBELLI, Pierluigi. 'Bartolino da Padova', Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome: 1960, p. 634.
2. GOLDINE, Nicole. 'Fra Bartolino da Padova, musicien de cour', Acta Musicologica, XXXIV (1962), pp. 151-152.
3. PETROBELLI, Pierluigi. 'Some dates for Bartolino da Padova', Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk, edited by Harold Powers, Princeton/New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 87-89.
4. BROWN, Howard M. 'The Trecento harp', Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, edited by Stanley Boorman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 55.
5. HALLMARK, Anne. 'Some evidence for French influence in northern Italy, c.1400', Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, edited by Stanley Boorman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 193-226.

Text

La sacrosanta carità d'amore,
dico quella verace
che duo voler un face
nel mondo trova pochi possessori.

Perché vertù ch'è la radice e 'l nodo
di quell'amor perfetto,
sbandita è già dell'umano intelletto
né ha pregio né lodo.

Ma sopra ogni virtù pregiato è 'l frodo;
purità manca a fé
ciascun pur guarda a sé
vestendo panni a cangiante colore

Translation

Holy charity,
by which I mean true love,
inspiring human will,
is something only a few have in this world;

because virtue, which is the root and focus
of that most perfect love,
has been cast out from the human intellect,
and is not prized or praised.

Above all virtue Fraud is prized.
Faith lacks purity.
And all people look only after themselves,
changing the colour of their cloaks.
Text revision and translation © Giovanni Carsaniga