Bonvesin da la Riva (Lombard pronunciation: [bũʋeˈzĩː da la ˈriːʋa]; sometimes Italianized in spelling Bonvesino or Buonvicino; c. 1240 – c. 1313) was an Italian Medieval writer and poet. Bonvesin was a notable Lombard poet and writer, giving one of the first known examples of the written Lombard language.^[1] He is often described as the "father" of the Lombard language

A well-to-do Milanese lay member of the Ordine degli Umiliati (literally, "Order of the Humble Ones") Bonvesin was a teacher of (Latin) grammar. He taught in Legnano and in Milan and wrote several moral and didactic works, both in Latin and in the Milanese vernacular. All his Milanese writings, which are conventionally given Latin titles, are in verse, their exclusive metrical form being alexandrines in monorhymed four-line stanzas.

The most important is probably the Liber di Tre Scricciur, completed before 1274. Over 2,000 lines long and divided into three parts, it describes the torments of Hell, Christ's Passion, and the rewards of Paradise. There is no mention of Purgatory, a fact which has sometimes led to accusations of heresy. The work is tightly constructed and contains quite powerful depictions of the punishments of the sinners, which show a talent for grotesque, even fearsome realism.

A similar talent emerges in the De elemosynis, an account of contemporary hospitals in Milan, containing some grim descriptions of patients and their illnesses. In fact, Bonvesin seems to have had a particular interest in the care of the sick, leaving money to hospitals in his wills of 1304 and 1313.

A rather more cheerful and engaging insight into contemporary society is afforded by the De quinquaginta curialitatibus ad mensam ("Fifty courtesies at Table"), which lists the fifty rules of good table manners (don't slurp from a spoon, don't dip your bread in a communal wine-cup, etc.).

Another picture of contemporary Milan is painted by the Latin De magnalibus urbis Mediolani ("On the Marvels of Milan"), written in the late spring of 1288, which differs from earlier descriptions in not focusing on saints and churches, but rather praises the city for its size and wealth, backing up its claims with extensive facts and figures. Bonvesin's De magnalibus urbis Mediolani, languished unknown in a single manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, until 1894. Its eight chapters form a monument of civic pride typical of the Italian communes, written by a man in a position to offer an unrivalled statistical report of the city that he felt was exalted above all others, like the eagle among birds. In Milan, he counted the belltowers (120) and the portoni, massive front doors of houses (12,500), the city's lawyers (120), physicians (28), ordinary surgeons (at least 150), butchers (440) and communal trumpeters (6). His order, the Umiliati, served as a kind of civil service in Milan, collecting taxes and controlling the communal treasury, so he was in a position to know. His long inventory of the fruits and vegetables that Milanesi were eating served as a rare source of ordinary fare for the historian of cuisine.^[2]

Bonvesin's many religious works include a number of lives of saints and a series of vernacular contrasti—dialogues between, for example, the soul and the body, or the Devil and the Virgin Mary. He also composed allegorical contrasti. In the Disputatio mensium the months of the year rebel against their king, January, taking turns to boast of their qualities and benefits, whilst in the Disputatio rosae cum viola the most humble of flowers, the violet, puts forward a case for its superiority over the most magnificent, the rose.

• Select Poems. ed. and trans. P. S. Diehl and R. Stefanini. Bern and NY: Lang. 1987. ISBN 978-0820404271.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

• Debenedetti, Santorre (1930). "BONVESIN da la Riva". Enciclopedia Italiana. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 28 February 2025.
• Ragni, Eugenio (1970). "Bonvesin da la Riva". Enciclopedia Dantesca. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 28 February 2025.
• Gragnolati, Manuele (2000). "From Decay to Splendor: Body and Pain in Bonvesin da la Riva's Book of the Three Scriptures". In Caroline Walker Bynum; Paul Freedman (eds.). Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 83–98. doi:10.9783/9780812208450.83.
• Honess, Claire (2002). "Bonvesin de la Riva". The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 28 February 2025.
• Katherine L. Jansen; Joanna Drell; Frances Andrews, eds. (2009). "Bonvesin della Riva on Milan and Its Contado (1288) translated from Latin by Frances Andrews". Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 16–19. doi:10.9783/9780812206067.16.

• Avalle, D'Arco Silvio (1970). "BONVESIN da La Riva". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 12: Bonfadini–Borrello (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.

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