CINO DA PISTOIA (127o-1336), Italian poet and jurist, whose full name was GUITTONCINO DE' SINIBALDI, was born in Pistoia, of a noble family. He studied law at Bologna under Dinus Muggelanus (Dino de Rossonis: d. 1303) and Franciscus Accursius, and in 1307 is understood to have been assessor of civil causes in his native city. In that year, however, Pistoia was dis turbed by the Guelph and Ghibelline feud. Cino was a Ghibelline, and had to leave Pistoia. Pitecchio, a stronghold on the frontiers of Lombardy, was yet in the hands of Filippo Vergiolesi, chief of the Pistoian Ghibellines; Selvaggia, his daughter, was beloved by Cino (who was probably already the husband of Margherita degli Unghi) ; and Cino betook himself to Pitecchio. He was not with the Vergiolesi at the time of Selvaggia's death (131o) , at the Monte della Sambuca, in the Apennines, whither the Ghibellines had been compelled to shift their camp. In 1313 the emperor died, and the Ghibellines lost their last hope. Cino appears to have thrown up his party, and to have returned to Pistoia. There after he devoted himself to law and letters. After filling several high judicial offices, a doctor of civil law of Bologna in his 44th year, he lectured and taught from the professor's chair at the Universities of Treviso, Siena, Florence and Perugia in succession.
Cino, the master of Bartolus, and of Joannes Andreae the cele brated canonist, was long famed as a jurist. His commentary on the statutes of Pistoia, written in two years, is said to have great merit ; while that on the code (Lectura Cino Pistoia super co(lice, Pavia, 1483 ; Lyons, 1526) is considered by Savigny to exhibit more practical intelligence and more originality of thought than are found in any commentary on Roman law since the time of Accursius. He was the friend and correspondent of Dante's later years, and possibly of his earlier also, and was certainly, with Guido Cavalcanti and Durante da Maiano, one of those who re plied to the famous sonnet A ciascun' alma press e gentil core of the Vita Nuova. In the treatise De Vulgari Eloquio Dante re fers to him as one of "those who have most sweetly and subtly written poems in modern Italian." Petrarch coupled Cino and Sel vaggia with Dante and Beatrice in the fourth chapter of his Trionfi d' Amore. As a poet Cino has moments of true passion and fine natural eloquence. Of these qualities the sonnet in mem ory of Selvaggia, to fui in sull' alto e in sul beato monte, and the canzone to Dante, Avengnache di omaggio piiu per tempo, are in teresting examples.
The text-book for English readers is D. G. Rossetti's Early Italian Poets, which contains a memoir of Cino da Pistoia and some admirably translated specimens of his verse. See also Ciampi, Vita e poesie di messer Cino da Pistoia (Pisa, 1813) .