Who were the “canterini”? Under this name we usually include the authors of cantari, narrative poems in ottava rima, created for public performance, often centered on chivalric tales or novellas, but not exclusively. Some canterini staged stories inspired by historical works, or even by events they had personally witnessed. In this way, the canterino brought History to the people, performing in village squares and fulfilling a vital social role by conveying political, moral, and religious messages to a broad audience.

Their storytelling style was surprisingly modern, resembling today’s TV series: the audience was guided through the narration, and whenever the story paused, a recap of the “previous episodes” was provided to reconstruct the plot. For longer compositions, which could last several days, each section often ended with a kind of “trailer” designed to entice listeners to return the following day for new developments. Suspense was heightened through the narrative technique of entrelacement, the interweaving of multiple storylines. This effort to engage even a non-intellectual public has led scholars to describe the historical cantari as an early form of “public history avant la lettre.”

One particularly fascinating figure is the sixteenth-century canterino Pietro Mattei, a craftsman from Chiusdino (near Siena). Mattei was clearly literate: his works echo Renaissance epic poetry, but also draw from Virgil, Homer, Petronius, and Plato. Remarkable is the closing of one of his prologues: Valete. Pietro Mattei de Chiusdino fecit. Evidently, the canterino had some command of Latin. Despite this apparent erudition, Mattei was highly aware of the rhetorical strategies needed to capture an audience’s attention, frequently using proverbs and popular sayings. His vocabulary was distinctly vernacular, reflecting local speech with expressions such as accasa for “a casa” (at home), volsuto for “voluto” (wanted), gattivo for “cattivo” (bad), and so on.

Among his historical cantari we find Il passaggio dei Turchi, which focuses on the impact of Turkish corsair Khayr al-Dīn’s raids on the communities of Siena. Supported by French king Francis I against Charles V of Habsburg (Siena’s ally), Khayr al-Dīn’s naval guerrilla forms the backdrop of the work. Mattei, however, places his emphasis on preserving “the memory of Chiusdino’s deeds / for those to come, so they may recount it.”