The Name “Cane Corso”. Paolo Breber
When the Cane Corso was in the fateful process of entering the conventional show-dog universe in the 1970s, newly-coined names like “Mastino Pugliese” were already being proposed by fanciers. But I insisted that the traditional name used by the countrymen should be kept because this has always been the colloquial way the mastiff/catch dog is called in Italy.
The most recent mention of “cane corso” in print I am aware of is from 1941 and is found in the Italian glossary of hunting terms (Dizionario della Lingua Italiana di Caccia) by P. Farini and A. Ascari. Another reference relatively close to us is in the 1922 edition of the Italian Language Dictionary by N. Zingarelli. In fact, the Cane Corso is mentioned recurrently in documents all the way back to the Middle Ages. As proof I can cite the following references: Minà Palumbo, 1868; Omboni, 1852; Malacarne, 1851; Martin, 1845; Costa, 1839; D’Alessandro, 1723; Tanara, 1644; Birago, 1626; Valvassone, 1591; Gessner, 1551; Acquaviva, 1519; Baldus, 1517; Macchiavelli, 1517; Monaldeschi, 1327-40. Thus the name which I picked up while chatting with country folk in the south of Italy is in fact a living heritage from a remote past.
But what is its derivation? The most common error is the misleading consonance between the name of the breed and that of the native of Corsica, which spells “Corso” in Italian. Other fanciful interpretations have also been given recently but in my opinion “corso” derives from “cors” which is the word for “body” in the vernacular spoken in some parts of France, Spain and Italy. The root is obviously “corpus”, the Latin for “body”. In this way Cane Corso comes to mean “body dog”. But what is meant by “body dog”? To explain the term, we must again go to past sources.
Hans Friedrich von Fleming in Der Vollkommene Teutsche Jäger (Leipzig. Martini, 2 voll. 1719) thus discourses (in translation). “The English mastiffs which the great lords once used to purchase with great expense from England and Ireland are now also bred in Germany. The larger and comelier become Chamber Dogs (Kammerhund) because their place is in the bedroom to guard their masters from the nightly assaults of assassins. Aside from these, other English mastiffs are called Body Dogs (Leibhund) and serve to hunt Deer, Wild Boar and Wolf. They have to be carefully trained not to attack from the front but to go for one or the other ear because otherwise the bear will tear them apart, the deer will pierce them with its tines, the wild boar will gore them with its tusks and the wolf will wound them with its fangs. In the stables they should be kept on a chain and each dog fed separately.” These terms applied to dogs are obviously borrowed from the way retainers were once distinguished between a household attendant, e.g. chamberlain, and a rustic henchman, e.g. bodyguard. The “chamber dog” and the “body dog” must be understood as being both mastiffs but absolving their function in different contexts: the former moving in a gentler domestic setting while the latter leading a rough rural existence.
Although Britain was for long famous for its mastiff/catch dogs, the basic canine type involved is not a product of that country. The mastiff/catch dog is in fact cosmopolitan, used by drovers, butchers, keepers and hunters everywhere in Europe from Roman times to the 19th century.
And now we come to the English word “cur” which I think is related to “corso”. If we consider how the English word “corps” is pronounced “cor” the step to “cur” is very short. The current meaning of “corps” is limited to a military body of men but it derives, like “corso”, from the Latin “corpus” which means “body” in a every sense.
Nowadays “cur” is a disparaging way of calling any undefined dog, but it seems that once upon a time it specifically indicated the mastiff. According to a 16th century source cited by Ash (1927), curs formed a precise category comprising “mastiffs, shepherd dogs, and house-curs”. The shepherd dogs meant here would be of the large, aggressive, sheep-guarding type which were, and still are in Spain and Italy, known as “mastines” and “mastini” respectively. That a “cur” was once understood to be a mastiff is also confirmed by Manwood, in his Treatise of Forest Laws (1717) where he writes: “The Mastives and such like curres”.
It would seem, therefore, that a “cur” was originally a mastiff/catch dog employed by such people as wardens, gamekeepers, drovers, butchers and swineherds. Since these occupations were servile and rustic the cur was considered of lower rank than the sporting hounds and toy dogs of the gentry. In other words, the cur was a dog employed in coarse occupations (this also makes us wonder whether “corso” and “coarse” might be related semantically). With time the term lost its association with the mastiff type and simply became a general term for any lowly dog kept by rustic folk. The last time we are able to identify the cur as a mastiff/catch dog is in Bewick’s General History of Quadrupeds (1790) where it reads:
“The Cur Dog is a trusty and useful servant to the farmer and grazier; and, although it is not taken notice of by naturalists as a distinct race, yet it is now so generally used, especially in the North of England, and such great attention is paid in breeding it, that we cannot help considering it as a permanent kind. They are chiefly employed in driving cattle; in which way they are extremely useful. They are larger, stronger, and fiercer than the Shepherd’s Dog; and their hair is smoother and shorter. They are mostly black and white colour. Their ears are half-pricked; and many of them are whelped with short tails, which seem as if they had been cut: These are called Self-tailed Dogs. They bite very keenly; and as they always make their attack at the heels, the cattle have no defence against them: In this way they are more than a match for a Bull, which they quickly compel to run. Their sagacity is uncommonly great. They know their master’s fields, and are singularly attentive to the cattle that are in them: A good Dog watches, goes his rounds; and, if any strange cattle should happen to appear amongst the herd, although unbidden, he quickly flies at them, and with keen bites obliges them to depart.”
It is an established fact that men who had to do with cattle like drovers and butchers traditionally used dogs of mastiff/catch dog derivation.
If the word “cur” has a foreign origin this would therefore suggest a foreign origin of the mastiff/catch dog attached to it. Britain was famous for a long time for its mastiffs so much so that the words for mastiff in Germany, France and Spain are Dogge, Dogue and Dogo respectively, clearly betraying an English origin. However, the case of “cur” seems to point in the opposite direction, to a dog imported from abroad, seemingly from Italy in the 16th century, when that country was the centre of excellence for horses, dogs and so many other things.
Trace of the Italian origin of the Cane Corso is found in German sources too. The Swiss Konrad Gesner, in his famous and much quoted History of the Animals (1551), in describing mastiff dogs used in hunting, mentions the “Kursshund” from Italy, which he says was very common in Rome where it was used with wild boar and feral cattle. The last mention in German literature of the “Curshund” as a mastiff used in hunting is in Fitzinger (1876).