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year: 2012
isbn: 9789042926080
pages: X-166 p.
Boncompagno da Signa, «Amicitia» and «De malo senectutis et senii»
Summary:
Boncompagno was born in Signa, not far from Florence, sometime between
1165 and 1175. He first studied at Florence but soon moved to Bologna,
becoming a teacher of grammar and rhetoric there. One of the most famous
teachers of rhetoric in his time, he was regarded by his contemporaries as
being the most skillful, the most original, and the most fertile in
imagination of them all. The Amicitia was written toward the end of
1205 at Rome. Its unspoken purpose is to act as a guide in identifying and
classifying the various kinds of people who try to gain our trust by
posing as friends. Indeed, the text excels in describing in exuberant
detail the many 'false' friends we encounter in life. Boncompagno's last
work (he died sometime after 1240), the Libellus de malo senectutis et
senii, was written when he was old and, as a final irony, without
friends. It contains a stark description of the human condition as each
one enters into old age and decrepitude and finally encounters death. To
the end, Boncompagno continues to regard all of human life with a
skeptical, even cynical eye, a detached observer of and commentator on the
society of his time.