He was probably a friend of
Dante Alighieri who made him into the main character of the 2nd canto of the
Purgatorio (the second part of the
Divine Comedy). All that is positively known about him is what is found in Dante's work and it has been impossible to identify him with absolute certainty with any of the Casellas named in contemporary documents. To whatever is said of him in Dante's work one can add (with some degree of probability) information furnished by the earliest commentators of the
Divine Comedy:
Pietro di Dante,
Benvenuto da Imola,
Buti and
Landino give him as being born in
Florence, while an anonymous early commentary of the
Divine Comedy gives him as being born in
Pistoia. Potential mentions of this Casella in other documents include a mention in
Codex Vaticano 3214 (Casella dedit sonum, i.e. "Casella set [this] to music") that he set to music a madrigal by
Lemmo da Pistoia, and a mention of him in a
sonnet by
Niccolò de' Rossi. There is also a document denoting that Casella might have received a fine in July 1282. Casella died in 1299 or early in the year 1300, since Dante enters Purgatory in 1300. From what is said of him in
Purgatorio, Canto II, it appears that he was a friend of Dante, and that he set to music poetry by Dante himself, namely the
canzone Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona found in Dante's
Convivio and possibly some other short poems by Dante. Specifically, in line 107 of the Canto II, it might be inferred that the
amoroso canto ("amorous song") that Dante connects with Casella is a specific indication that Casella's music was (at least in part) in the monodic style which accompanied Occitan lyric poems, or Italian lyric poems in the Occitan manner. == Role in the
Divine Comedy ==