Pilgrimage, Print, and Performance: Giuliano Dati’s Roman Cantari

This article discusses three poems written in the early 1490s by the Florentine Giuliano Dati (1445–1524), a penitentiary priest at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome: the Stazione e indulgenze di Roma (1492–93), Tractato di Santo Ioanni Laterano (1492–94), and Aedificatio Romae (1494). Composed in the popular cantare verse form, which was strongly associated with public performance, these works are an unusual example of printed guides to Rome aimed specifically at an Italian audience. Situating Dati’s cantari within the broader culture of the Roman pilgrimage, the article assesses their relationship with established textual and performance traditions and considers the pastoral motivation behind their production. In doing so, it advocates for closer attention to the permeability between ephemeral print and performance in late medieval pilgrimage and devotional culture.