Domenico Cavalca

Domenico Cavalca
First page of the Italian vernacular translation of the Vitae patrum, before 1474
Born	c. 1270 Vicopisano, Republic of Pisa
Died	October 1342 Pisa, Republic of Pisa
Nationality	Italian
Occupation(s)	Dominican friar, writer, scholar

Domenico Cavalca OP (Vicopisano, c. 1270 – Pisa, October 1342) was an Italian Dominican friar and writer. He wrote a wealth of moral and ascetic vernacular treatises.^[1]

Born around 1260 or 1270 in Vicopisano, after his earliest childhood education he entered the monastery of Saint Catherine in Pisa at the age of sixteen. Around 1300, he was counselor to the Vicar of Pisa, Bonagiunta, and was named confessor of the Signore della Misericordia. He lived a life of irreproachable morals, characterized by attention to the poor and the sick. Cavalca dedicated much time and care to nunneries in the province of Pisa and his activity led to the foundation in 1342, just before his death, of the Dominican nunnery of Santa Marta (today no longer existing) in Pisa.^[2] At his death in November, 1342, his funeral procession drew a crowd of the poor and afflicted.

The works of Cavalca, of religious or ascetic subject, are in part original, in part derived from Latin texts. His treatises are strongly influenced by Summae virtutum ac vitiorum, a treatise written in the thirteenth century by the French Dominican William Perault.

Cavalca became a very famous writer and in the following centuries many works were attributed to him, but in many cases these were erroneous attributions. He was essentially a popularizer, but his versions of some of the Church Fathers were later highly valued by linguistic purists.^[1] Cavalca was called "the father of Italian prose" by the literary critic Pietro Giordani.^[3]

• Vite dei santi Padri. Translation into the vernacular of the Vitae Patrum. The Vite dei Santi Padri was immensely popular during the Middle Ages. Carlo Delcorno lists 199 surviving manuscripts.^[4]
• Dialogo di San Gregorio. Translation into the vernacular of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I.
• Atti degli Apostoli. Translation into the vernacular of the Acts of the Apostles.
• Epistola di San Girolamo a Eustochio. Translation into the vernacular of a letter of Saint Jerome to Eustochium.
• Specchio di Croce. A treatise inspired by the image of Christ on the cross, with many reflections on the passages of the four Four Gospels about the Passion.
• Medicina del cuore ovvero trattato della Pazienza. A collection of two treatises dedicated to wrath and patience.
• Specchio dei peccati (The mirror of sins), 1333. A treatise with reflections on confession and penitence.
• Pungilingua. A treatrise on the dangers of the misuse of the language.
• Frutti della lingua. A treatise on preaching.
• Disciplina degli spirituali. A treatise about common wrong attitudes of people devoted to spiritual life.
• Trattato delle trenta stoltizie. A treatise about the errors made in the fight against the temptations of the evil.
• Esposizione del Simbolo degli Apostoli.

• Debenedetti, Santorre (1931). "CAVALCA, Domenico". Enciclopedia Italiana. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
• Delcorno, Carlo (1979). "CAVALCA, Domenico". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 22: Castelvetro–Cavallotti (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
• Gehl, Paul F. (1994). "Preachers, Teachers and Translators: The Social Meaning of Language Study in Trecento Tuscany". Viator. 25: 308–312. doi:10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301217.
• Took, John (2002). "Cavalca, Domenico". The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-818332-7. Retrieved 30 August 2024.
• Casagrande, Carla (2003). ""Specchio di Croce". Domenico Cavalca e l'ordine degli affetti". Comunicazioni Sociali. 25 (2): 221–230. doi:10.1400/23894.
• Sassi, Mario (2022). "The language of a preacher: Cavalca, Passavanti, and the firts steps toward a national vernacular". Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa. LVIII (1): 27–50. doi:10.1400/288387.