To thee be the glory
Which saints, in the highest, accord.
Pietro Gonella, a Franciscan monk of Tortona in Piedmont, is the reputed author of a long meditative poem on the miseries and follies of life and the certainty of death and judgment, which Du Méril found in a manuscript of this century. If he be not mistaken as to the date of the manuscript, of course, Eug. de Levis (Anecdota Sacra, Turin, 1789) is wrong in ascribing it to Pietro, as there were no Franciscans in the twelfth century. The chronology is important because of the relation of the poem to the Dies Irae. In point of metrical form they differ only in this Heu! Heu! mala mundi vita (better known as the Cum revolvo toto corde, from the opening line of its second part), having four lines to the verse instead of three. In point of sense the resemblances are so striking as to suggest that Thomas of Celano has ploughed with the heifer of his earlier countryman. In proof of this take these stanzas:
Terret me dies terroris,
Irae dies et furoris,
Dies luctus et moeroris,
Dies ultrix peccatoris.
Veniet Judex de coelis,
Testis verax et fidelis,
Veniet et non silebit,