Before I start on the historical connotations of the name
and how it was derived, let me tell you of my many conversations while in Italy
with experts/passionates of not only the Cane Corso but all Southern Italian
breeds, such as Cosmo Verdino of Rio Nerro kennel. These old-time Corstisti told
me that all large dogs in the south that where cropped and docked where called
"Cane Corso" Each province had it’s own idea (based on what the dog
was utilized for) of what a Cane Corso was. I was told that the type of dog
selected to base the standard on was only one type, a good type, but nonetheless
only one type of the many types of Cane Corso. Some of the quotes I will present
for you will somewhat substantiate this hypothesis.
While none can know exactly when descendants of the Roman
Canis Pugnaces came to be known as the Cane Corso, we can suppose an approximate
timeline from literature. In an article written by Renzo Carosio based on
documents dated 1862 entitled "Upon the Salso-Marziale water in Farfa Di
Sabina,Memories of Dott. Lorenzo Costantini from Poggio S. Lorenzo" The
subject of the article is the siege of The Castle of Triburco in 1138. It is
believe that these documents contain the first literary references to the Cane
Corso breed specifically "The first to run in order to avenge the
terrible infamy inflicted to the Abbot were the inhabitants of Montopoli, which
were known by tradition to be brave men of arms, all provided with Cane Corso’s
for there own defense and the defense of the land, so they were called Corsari
(Corsairs)." the article further describes the ferocity in which the
Coros’ fought "Those big dogs caused a terrible massacre during the
attack, because the long lack of food made them more aggressive. The rebels had
to run away and in the end abandon the castle" "But the Montopolesi
discovered by chance a secret passage leading to the inside of the fortress,
Through which some Cane Corso’s, starving themselves and devoid of water for
days, entered the castle. When they saw the inhabitants of Triburco, they were
so hungry that they furiously rushed against those people causing a massacre.
The exhausted defenders of the castle got so scared because of the slaughter
that they abandoned the fight, looking for a way out in the waters of the Farfa
river" The next referance’s are courtesy of Il Cane Corso written
by Giusppe Chiecchi and Giorgio Gualtieri who offer a rather detailed summery of
the breed as it appears in Italian literature
"The word corso first appears in written records in
the early sixteenth century, and was, from the beginning, closely linked the
functions of hunting and guarding. Teofilo Folegno (1491-1544) uses the word,
depicting the Cane Corso in mortal combat with a bear or lion wounded by a
hunter; in the second case, the Corso is presented as a quite interesting
alternative to the molosser ("canes inter seu corsos sive molossus").
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) uses the Cane Corso in an enigmatic and
unfinished short poem, entitled L 'Asino (The Ass): "I saw a sly fox, and
to my dismay I could find no net to catch him; and a can corso howling at the
moon."
The Swiss writer Konrad von Gesner (1516-1565), in the
Historia animalium, which was, one could say, the first modem zoological text,
deals rather extensively with the Cane Corso. Even as he equivocates on the
dog's origin (he would make it Corsican), he offers a meticulous description of
the large head and the drooping upper lip ("cervice et capite maximum,
labro superiori super inferius dependente"); of the strong teeth, the
muscled neck, and the broad chest, ("acutis dentibus, collo tumente,
pectore ampio"); and of the arched digits and the strong, curved claws
("duris ac curvis unguibus").
This morphological form is entirely oriented towards
big game hunting, and hence has a propensity for certain marked
characteristic and functional factors: the Cane Corso is veryaudacious in
chasing down and in confronting wild animals in deadly close in fighting
("sunt feroces inprimis et ad quaecumque animalia invadenda
capiendaquae audacissimi"). Thanks to its powerful articulation, the
Cane Corso holds the ground with great stability, and tenaciously seizes and
brings down prey ("ut solo inhaerere magis possint, quo validius feram
prostemant conculcentque").
Tito Giovanni Scandiano, in the Poem of the Hunt
(1556), depicts the Cane Corso powerfully assaulting and formidably taking
hold of prey ("to assail, bite, and hold boars, bears, and
wolves").
In the short poem Leporea (1628), written in honor of
Cardinale Scipione
Borghese, for the villa recently completed in Rome, we
find our dog, beside the hound, in a fierce hunt:
Here the blind hounds and corsi
dogs, armed with rabid ferocity
attack -wolves, asps, lions, and bears
you will see the hunters come back home with his.
Mina Palumbo, in the Mammals of Sicily (1868),
separates the molosser "Canis Molossus": common name "English
Cane Corsu") from the mastiff and interprets the name corso as a
vulgarization of the latter ("Canis mastivus""'. common name
"Cani Corsu"), and, furthermore, offers a succinct and partial
morphological description, ("obtuse, short head, very large muzzle,
ears hanging from the apexes, gray skin with black oblique stripes, little
intelligence"). The Cane Corso 's bite and stare reach even into the
proverbial. Giovanni Verga, in Malavoglia (Bad Will) (1881), says, "He
bites worse than a cane corso," Tommaseo, in his dictionary, offers the
metaphor, "can corso, a man of proud aspect and attitude."
In this brief summary, we save the last place for two
poetic allusions. The first is by
Erasmo di Valvason (1523-1593), a writer who moved from
his fief in Friuli to the Gonzagas' Mantovan court. In his didactic poem La
Caccia (The Hunt) (1591), he understands the term corso to be either a heavy
type of mastiff or a lighter variety, adapted to the pursuit, in addition to the
seizing, of bear, wolf, and boar. Here is a very effective description of the
latter:
Like a greyhound it should be dexterous and quick
but of person more robust and large
it should be big, but not so heavy or weighed-down
by great mass that it loses its breath;
if should abound in large bones and nerves
and it should be easily angered, harsh and proud.
It should be noted that Valvason, in describing the Cane
Corso, finds nothing better than to establish the differences between it and its
extreme opposites: on one side, the greyhound (more or less the actual hound),
of which it possesses the agility but not the delicate physique, and on the
other, massive dogs (like the Neapolitan and English mastiffs), from whose
heaviness it is
distinguished, freeing itself for the hardy and nervy
chase.
The second allusion comes from Giovan Battista Marino
(1569-1625). The myth of Actaeon, a formidable hunter changed into a stag by
the vengeful Artemis and then run down and torn to pieces by his own dogs,
lights the poet's fervid imagination and his pyrotechnic formal ability. In
the homonymous idyll included in the collection La sampogna (The Italian
bagpipe), Marino organizes the description of the hunt for Actaeon, writing,
among other things:
The free and frank greyhounds
are the first on the trail
Further back and slower
come the Alan dogs and the corsi
The Turkish and Persians follow
fearless and zealous...
What follows is a list of breeds so overabundant that it
covers the entire canine population. What needs to be underlined, in any case,
is the presence of the Cane Corso, caught in the tumultuous action of the
pursuit, hardly slower than the greyhounds, and yet powerful, tenacious, and
unflinching"
In his book "Il Cane Corso"
Flavio Bruno gives us a great description of the various provincial names
attributed the Cane Corso in the Meridone (south) "Corsus"
is a very ancient Provencal adjective that means "robusto" in Italian
- in English "robust" - and that in the spoken language of many areas
of Southern Italy has the same meaning even today, to the point that it has
actually been changed into a noun: Corso.
One cannot exclude the possibility of a
Provencal influence if one considers that the Angevins from Provence might have
been among the "tourists" who, from 1246-1442, raided here and there
in the lands of Southern Italy that had been marked for conquest.
To this etymological supposition we can
add another, equally authoritative, from "I nostri cani" (2/79) by L.
Gentili. Recalling Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columnella in his "De re rustica"
Gentile points out that the guard dog was called "cane da corte" where
"corte" indicates, etymologically, an enclosed and fenced-in area
(courtyard): cohora, chors, cors.
Cohors, in any case, also takes on the
meaning of "body guard" – cohors praetoria (Caesar): the general’s
body guard; cohors regia (Livy): the king’s body guard; cohors scortum
(Cicero): protector, escort, today..."gorilla".
Supposing, then, that power, muscle, and
vigor would have been required by such roles, we find it very clear that "corso"
indeed indicates a "robust" dog used to guard and defend. In Southern
Italy "Corso" becomes "cors" in its original idiom due to
the practice of dropping final vowels. Because of the precise function and some
of the morphological characteristics of the individual dog, for Southern Italy
"Cors" has always, without fail, meant "robust."
The legionary’s war dog was an efficient
and terrible killing tool: very aggressive and protected by an iron-spiked
collar, it was carefully trained to throw itself on the enemy and kill him with
bites to the throat.
An elderly matchmaker from Capitanata,
when the bride’s family asked for references for the groom, responded with
great simplicity: "jč nu cors". It was more than a speech. The woman
wanted, in other words, to say that all of the manly and masculine virtues, both
physical and moral, were united in that young man. He was tenacious, vigorous,
and... virile.
It is difficult to unravel the
relationship between the qualities of the man and those the dog: Do qualities of
the man describe the dog, or do those of the dog describe the man?
In the strip of land between Lucania and
Calabria, in certain limited areas, the tern "Can’ Huzz", that is,
"Cane Guzzo" by phonetic extension, was used, with the same meaning:
"robust" and "strong." And finally, in upper Lucania,
especially towards Irpinia, there was "Cuňrsicu": Corsico, Cane
Coriscano – a robust and strong dog.
In Molise and the surrounding areas people
have always talked about "Corzi" or "Corsi" dogs: short
haired molossoids with larger appetites than the Abruzzese mastiff, which were
employed as "cani da corte" (courtyard dogs) to guard farm buildings
and the masters’ large villas in addition to being used as "cani da presa"
(seizing dogs) in big-game hunting (especially for boar, wolf, and bear).
The term "Corzo" or
"Corso" probably is derived from the Latin cohortium, the genitive
plural of the word cohors, (or chors) cohortis, understood as the terrain
adjacent to the villa, akin to the hortus, -us (garden). It would have been
used, more or less, to designate the dog held in the cohors-villatica, that is
to say, the "Canis Villaticus."
The Abruzzese and Molisano dictionary
(Rome 1968) written by Ernesto Gianmaria contains the term "Córz∂",
used in the dialect of Campobasso to indicate a "guard dog."
It is my belief that the phrase Cane Corso until the mid
1970’s refered more to a type of dog than a specific breed of dog. Meaning one
would say you need a strong robust dog (Cane Corso– Cane meaning dog, Corso
meaning robust/strong) to guard the masseria, or to hunt porcupine.