Bichilino da Spello

Quichilino da Spello was the author of the Pomerium rethorice ('Orchard of Rhetoric'), a treatise on the ars dictaminis (art of letter-writing). It was written while Quichilino, a native of Spello, was a professor at the University of Padua. It was dedicated to a Venetian canon named Stephanus Nayn. It was completed in 1304 before the death of Pope Benedict XI on 7 July.

Quichilino explains the title of his work as indicating a (garden of trees) from which rhetoric is picked like fruit or apples . For example, the king of France may choose to call the sultan of Cairo "procurator of Satan" , but the republics of Genoa and Venice, who have commercial relations with Egypt, should call him "most excellent prince" or the like. On "salutations between friends and associates", he writes: Such a friendly manner of speaking is possible for a king to a king, soldier to soldier, judge to judge, doctor to doctor, cleric to cleric, and from anyone to someone who is his equal, and even from a superior to an inferior, if he so wishes. However, an inferior should not speak to a superior in such a friendly manner, however much they may be bound by friendship, but in a way befitting his own status.

The Pomerium is preserved in a single manuscript, now Bern, Stadtbibliothek, 220. Another manuscript that once existed, Metz, Bibliothèque municipale, 1206, is now lost.