The origin of this
custom in the Middle Ages is obscure, and the ritual of the ceremony
never became fixed. It was a public demonstration, an outward and
visible expression of literary enthusiasm, and naturally its form was
variable. Dante, for instance, seems to have understood it in the sense
of a halfreligious consecration; he desired to assume the wreath in the
baptistery of San Giovanni, where, like thousands of other Florentine
children, he had received baptism. He could, says his biographer, have
anywhere received the crown in virtue of his fame, but desired it
nowhere but in his native city, and therefore died uncrowned. From the
same source we learn that the usage was till then uncommon, and was
held to be inherited by the ancient Romans from the Greeks. The most
recent source to which the practices could be referred is to be found
in the Capitoline contests of musicians, poets, and other artists,
founded by Domitian in imitation of the Greeks and celebrated every
five years, which may possibly have survived for a time the fall of the
Roman Empire; but as few other men would venture to crown themselves,
as Dante desired to do, the question arises, to whom did this office
belong? Albertino Mussato was crowned at Padua in 1310 by the bishop
and the rector of the University. The University of Paris, the rector
of which was then a Florentine (1341), and the municipal authorities of
Rome, competed for the honour of crowning Petrarch.
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