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Evidence on the Presence of the Cane Corso in Italy over the Centuries. Paolo Breber
Before reviewing the evidence on the Cane Corso in Italy in past times, I want to stop for a while on the term itself. It is about a renowned name full of history, which we mostly find out in cynegetic treatises and in ancient hunting chronicles within Italian limits. However, we need to underline that I caught this name alive in Foggia from people’s lips; therefore, officially calling the race this way, it has not been a scholarly archaeological term of cynology. When it had almost disappeared from dictionaries for decades, in southern Italy the term kept on existing in the daily language, thanks to a marked conservatism of these areas. I was also able to catch the expression: "…ugly like a cane corso," which evidently refers to the fierce appearance of the race. There was a moment, however, when it seemed that this name would be betrayed. Giovanni Bonatti, one of the first dog lovers interested in this race, tried to rename it as Dogo Pugliese [Apulian Dog] (this time, it was really an affected archaeological term), but he soon luckily acknowledged his faults. So, the Cane Corso can keep on bearing its glorious, secular name, unlike the Neapolitan Mastiff and the Maremma-Abruzzi Sheepdog whose traditional nomenclature has been changed. What is the etymology of the term "Cane Corso?" Different answers have been given to such question. The easiest one would contemplate the dog’s origin in Corsica. But is or has Corsica been renowned for its Molossians like Great Britain, Epirus, or the Near Asia? I personally never found references about it. And even if Corsica were the origin of the dog, it is certain that it is about a very far origin, because this race has been present with such a name in Italy since at least 1200 A.D. (see ahead). Bonatti suggested a quite acceptable origin from a Provençal root, which means coarse in English. Lately, there are people who would see the Latin word "cohors" or "cors" meaning that it was a dog accompanying the cohorts of Roman legionaries, but this interpretation seems to me a little too audacious. More often, words of Latin origin do not assume the nominative case in Italian, but the ablative case. To these various hypotheses, I can also add one of my hypotheses. Girardon, in his work "Il cane nella storia e nella civilta’ del mondo" [The Dog in the History and in the World Civilization] (1930), narrates that, until the 18th century, in the hunting of deer, bear, or wild boar, "the most important part was reserved to Great Danes so called da corpo, which were attacking the beast seizing it by the ears, to distinguish them from the Great Danes so called da camera, which the lord was keeping in his bedroom in order to protect himself from possible assaults" (p. 122). If we consider that our dog is still used for hunting the wild boar in the above-mentioned manner, that the word Corso could derive from the French word corps, i.e., corpo [body] in Italian (as much as corsetto [corset] is equal to the word corpetto [vest; literally: little body]); if we also consider that I personally have heard alternatively calling the race in Foggia Cane da Corso; for all these reasons, we could refer to what Girardon said. The reason why the dog is called this way is maybe in the fact that it has to make an attempt at a corpo a corpo [hand-to-hand fighting] with the hunted animal. This differs from the other dogs of the pack, which have to confine themselves to following the tracks, flushing the prey, and chasing it. Let’s review now the evidences on the historical presence of Cane Corso in Italy. By reporting the following citations, I do not have any pretence of having exhausted the sources. My research confined itself to verifying the presence of the dog century after century; in so doing, we can reasonably suppose a long and continuous presence of it. A friend of mine pointed out to me the most ancient and complete reference. It is located in an heraldic book where, thanks to a coat of arms and its history, it is possible to compare the term corso with a specific morphological type. The text narrates: "Monaldeschi, in his notebook from year 1238 and those from the following years, refers much bravery in favor of the Colonnesi family performed by Berardo di Evangelista Corso; Monaldeschi demonstrates here that this family is now called de’ Berardi, then it is called de’ Evangelisti, and later it is called de’ Corsi, even though it was the same family. The de’ Corso’s last name was given to them by the Popolo Romano who endowed them with this name and the coat of arms with a jumping cane corso because of Evangelista’s boldness and bravery demonstrated on his Popolo’s duty, as Monaldeschi says." The text is accompanied by a coat of arms (Picture 1) where we clearly recognize the image of our dog. This precious evidence allows us to have no perplexity on the morphological type to be associated with the name "cane corso," whenever this appears in historical texts. With the second evidence, at that time pointed out to me by Bonatti, we are in the middle of Renaissance. It is located, I say, in the famous treatise on Natural Sciences from Konrad Gessner, in the Volume De Quadrupedibus (1551): "Canum ex Corsica (Kursshund) in Italia, Romae praecipue, usum esse aiunt adversos apros et boves feros" ["Dog from Corsica in Italy, especially in Rome, that people say they are used against wild boars and oxen."] In such a few words there is a lot of information. By assigning Corsica as its native land, Gessner follows the easiest interpretation in explaining its name, even if Rome is the center for the dog’s spread. In the Roman country, a wild cattle-breeding with large livestock has been practiced since ever, and the wild boar has always been brought together. For this reason, we do not have to show surprise that people made a large use of the corso here. Erasmo da Valvasone, in his poem "La Caccia" [The Hunting] (1591), unmistakably summarizes us the features of the race:
[* Corso = corsa, running]
The dog can be perfectly recognized: hold, great strength, little resistance in running. This third characteristic distinguishes it from the Great Dane which, instead, was actually used for chasing. We have to notice that Valvasone traveled very little in his life; therefore, we have to infer that the corso was also known in his native Friuli region. For the century of 1600, we can cite "L’Economia del Cittadino in Villa" [The Citizen’s Economy in the Villa] from V. Tanara (Bologna, 1644): "People hunt with three sorts of dogs: ten bloodhounds, ten greyhounds, and large dogs (lurchers), especially mastiffs and corsos." This is the classic composition of a pack for big game, i.e., essentially for deer and wild boar. The bloodhounds’ task is to find the animal; the greyhounds push it in the open air, they reach it and surround it; the mastiffs and the corsos have to seize it and hold it tight to allow the hunter to finish it off. My friend Paoletti recently brought to my attention the catalog of the exhibition "Natura Viva in Casa Medici" [Alive Nature in the Medici’s House] (Florence, Pitti Palace, December 14th 1985 – April 13th 1986). The catalog refers that "in 1771, in Saint Mark’s menagerie were kept: one lioness, two tigers, two she-wolves, one vulture, five foxes, and one cane corso." In the same year, it was published in Milan, for the types of G. Galeazzi, the Italian edition of Natural History from Georges Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon. In tome IV, where he is talking about the dog, on page 239 there is a scheme where the author hypothetically reconstructs the phylogenetic bond among various types of dogs, and also the cane corso finds a place in it. In a completely different context, we find another citation referred to this period. In the interesting volume "la Bestia Feroce" [the Ferocious Beast] edited by M. Comincini (1991, Diakronia publisher, Vigevano), it is reconstructed a news relevant to the alarm provoked in the Lombard and Piedmontese lowlands at the end of 1700 by the appearance of a ferocious, solitary beast, which was assaulting and feeding on isolated children, who were caught while they were pasturing animals in the moor. Apart from the horror for children’s deaths, the story is rendered even more sinister by the fact that those few people who managed to see the beast were not able to class it. A witness describes it this way: "This beast is like a big cane corso, it has got reddish hair on its back and little white hair under its venter, it has got a large head like the cane corso’s one with straight ears on high," (1792, in the neighborhood of Milan). Therefore, under the suspicion that it was a dog and not a wolf or another beast, the authorities issued, among others, the following ordinance: "We order the owners of cane corsos and dogs with fiery temperament, used to rushing and biting even if they had not been provoked, to keep them safely tied up in their respective houses, so that they should not harm anybody in any way," (Province of Novara, 1805-1815, Departmental Prefecture of Agogna folders no. 1887-1888). By entering in the middle of 1800, I found the following paragraph on page 102 in the text "Elementi di Storia Naturale" [Elements of Natural History] from G. Omboni (Milan, 1852). "The cane corso is striped, it looks like the bloodhounds or the gun dogs, and it is used for watch." Particularly interesting is what the well-known naturalist F. Mina’ Palumbo reported in his "Catalogo dei Mammiferi della Sicilia," [Catalog of Mammals of Sicily] (Palermo, 1868) on page 45: Cane corso. Obtuse and short head, very big snout, ears leaning on the top, ash-colored down, obliquely striped in black, little intelligence. Catania, Petralia Sottana, Castelbuono, Palermo. English cane corso. Dog with very strong shapes, its very big head, its more protruding lower jaw are distinctive features of this species. It is common in England, I saw beautiful types in Palermo coming from that place. The discriminating element between domestic and English corso is mainly indicated in the prognathism of the second one. This statement is full of implications due to the controversy currently going on concerning the jaws of the domestic corso. According to Mina’ Palumbo, a source of great respect and reliability, we come to the conclusion that a light prognathism appearing sometimes in the domestic dog, has evidently arrived through immission of English blood, and it is consequently an extraneous element. The judgement of little intelligence in the domestic corso is curious; who knows what the author meant by that? The type of striping described is noteworthy; it is among the most characteristic and beautiful coats of hair: black stripes on an ashen bed. In the first edition of the Dictionary of Italian Language from N. Zingarelli (1922), we find the definition: "Corso, species of big and ferocious dog with black fur." Zingarelli was from Cerignola, and therefore he was supposed to know this race well. Another evidence of this period uses the corso as a term of comparison to describe an animal, which was supposed to be a lynx. From the Report of the President, 1926, Autonomous Institution of the Abruzzi’s National Park, page 51: "Francesco Lippa, municipal guard from Villavallelonga, recounts of having recently been present to a fight between his dog and an animal which, from his description, we have the right to believe it was really a lynx. All the more so as the dog had to abandon the fight, since it was wounded. Lippa ensures the dog had a tawny coat of hair and was similar to a cane corso with tufts of hair at the top of its ears. Also Dr. Giorgio Corrado, a union veterinarian for Barrea-Pescasseroli, referred what he got to know from Angelo Sante d’Andrea from Villetta. In a place at the slopes of Mount Greco towards the end of June 1924, people saw an animal showing the following features: its appearance and size were those of a cane corso, and the tufts of hair at the top of its ears were very visible." With its sturdy head and cut ears and tail, the corso looks like a lynx, indeed. This approach to a feline calls back to people’s mind that the ancients believed the Molossian to be originated from the crossbreed between a she-dog and a tiger. As last document of this excursus on evidences relevant to the long history of the cane corso in Italy, I would like to report the passage relative to the headword "Presa" [hold] in the Dictionary of the Italian Language on Hunting by P. Farini and A. Ascari (1941), Garzanti publisher, Milan. "Presa: it is said to greyhounds or lurchers [cane da presa], it means mouth, since this is the only instrument for them to hold something. Tommaseo points out ‘He held him like a lurcher.’ Then, almost proverbially, ‘He is like a lurcher, when he seizes, he doesn’t let go anymore.’ Note that seizing and not letting go anymore are just the character and the virtue of the lurcher; therefore, the lurcher must have a big and strong mouth to easily seize and hold at any cost. It wouldn’t be useful to easily seize and bite if this weren’t worth restraining the caught animal, so that the hunter can either seize or kill it. In fact, the greyhound [levriere] is called this way by the fact that it catches and kills hares [lepre]; however, even if it is also useful for the wild boar’s hunting, it is not a lurcher with respect to this beast because the greyhound bites it only by the thighs, but then lets the beast go; whereas Mastiffs, Bulldogs, Corsos seize and hold even bulls…" The evidences reported above are just scraps of history of the cane corso. I found some of them, some friends of mine pointed some others out; they are certainly not the results of a systematic bibliographic and archival research, which would surely bring in many other citations. I want to point out that I confined myself to the documents where the term "cane corso" appears. Many others, where the terms "big dogs" and "lurchers" are found, almost certainly refer to the same race. Finally, I need to point out that, until 1800, the cane corso was known and probably present in all Italy, from Lombardy to Sicily. Only from this period on, its presence restricts to Southern Italy, where environmental and cultural premises of the race persist longer.
Captions. Picture 1. Coat of arms of the Corsi family, Rome, 13th century.
Picture 2. The cane corso was always used in undertakings where maximum of strength and courage were requested. In this engraving from 1700, we see the dog ready to start off on a wolf.
Picture 3. In this picture from the novel "La Ca’ dei Cani" [The House of Dogs], Strenna pel 1841, we see the reconstruction of a scene imagined at the court of Bernabo’ Visconti, known for his extravagant hunting with dogs with hundreds of them. In the foreground, next to the lord, a cane corso.
Picture 4. Colored lithograph from last century with an image representative of the cane corso.
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