Il Guerrin Meschino
Written in Florence by Andrea da Barberino in eight chapters, Guerino Il Meschino (Guerin the Wretched) was one of several of Barberino's compositions written in the early fifteenth-century that commented on early medieval themes.
Here the author offers a narrative of global travel that draws on the popular imaginiative travel literature of the late fourteenth century. While Barberino was known to build on French sources for his Italian narratives, this romance appears to have no basis in earlier French narrative.
Instead, like the imaginitive travel narratives it bears resemblence to, Barberino draws on a variety of sources ranging from the Alexander Romance to Dante to Ptolemy. Insofar as he makes his title character a descendent of the Carolingian dynasty, this narrative can, however, be loosely classified as part of the "Matter of France."
First circulating in manuscript and then printed in Padua in 1473, Meschino details the journey of a young man in the imperial court of Constantinople who wandered the ninth-century world, all the way to the kingdom of Prester John, seeking information about his parents. This search for his family is also understood as a search for his identity as a warrior, thus bearing on the chivalric themes so popular of this era of romance.
The prose romance draws much on the Mandevillian Style of travel lore in which a character follows a somewhat versimilar travel route through the Holy Land before arriving in India at the kingdom of Prester John. Upon discovering Prester John and his kingdom, the reader is treated to an extensive description of the Prester's opulent palace. After a battle, Guerino is offered half of India by the Prester himself.
Following his encounter with Prester John, Guerino journeys back westeward through Rome and Spain before finally finding his parents, here described as the King and Queen of Durazzo, perhaps a nod to erstwhile King of Naples, Jerusalem, and Hungrary Charles of Durazzo (1345-1386).
Olschki (p. 96) describes the text as "the most popular volume of fictional geography," a popular genre of the late-middle ages. Barberino's text influenced Dati's The Great Magnificence of Prester John (ca. 1499).
Rogers contextualizes:
A Near Easterner who journeyed to the Farther East and subsequently visited Pope Eugenius II (reigned 824 to 827) provides the subject of an Italian story, Guerino il Meschino, which has retained its popular appeal down the centuries and was well known to Dati.
Allaire has analyzed the text's portrayal of Muslims. Like the St. Thomas legends, Guerrino Il Meschino portrays a floating coffin.
Guerrino Il Meschino was made into a film in 1950.
