No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Notes from the Florentine Archives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The Florentine chronicler, Giovanni Villani, takes time out from his spare narrative of the hectic events of the revolutionary year 1294 to devote a chapter to the commemoration of the death of that ‘worthy citizen whose name was Brunetto Latini,’ and who ‘was a great philosopher, and was a perfect master in rhetoric….’ No Florentine of his generation, opines Villani, could speak so eloquently or write so artfully as that ‘worthy citizen.’ It was the notary, Ser Brunetto Latini, who composed the justly renowned commentaries on Cicero's rhetoric, as well as compiling perhaps the best of all encyclopedias written by thirteenth-century Italians (Il Tresor). Moreover, he held the highest communal offices, repeatedly went on key diplomatic missions, and was longtime Chancellor of the Commune. In all things he was un' uomo civile. Above all others of his generation he ‘refined the Florentines,’ teaching them to counsel wisely, orate effectively, and to rule the republic according to the precepts of Aristotle's Politics.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1964
References
1 Villani, G., Cronica, ed. Dragomani, F. (Florence, 1845), viii, 10.Google Scholar
2 Inferno XV, 85.
3 The medieval Italian artist depicts hierarchically ‘the seven liberal arts and le virtù’ with which ‘l'uom s'etterna.’ Cf. Miniature of Niccolò da Bologna (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. B 42 inf., f. 1), reproduced in the Fabbri brothers’ edition of La Divina Commedia (Florence, 1964), vol. 15, pp. 240-241.
4 Camera del Comune Entrata, an unnumbered folio (July I-August I, 1367), vol. cxx.
5 Hauvette, H., ‘Della parentela esistente fra il MS. Berlinese del Decameron e il Codice Mannelli,’ Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana (1895), xxxi, pp. 162 ff.Google Scholar
6 Libri Fabarum, 13,1, f. 22v. (Documents cited are to be found in the Archivio di Stato, Florence.)
7 Ibid., 21, f. 38 (December, 1341). The last document pertaining to the political career of Barberino I have been able to locate is in Camera del Comune, 26, f. 125v (April, 1348).