COMPAGNI, DINO. – Born c. 1260 in Florence, died 26 Feb. 1324. Enrolled in the Wool Guild, he upheld democratic institutions in collaboration with Giano della Bella and was elected consul of his guild six times. In 1289, at the moment of the Guelph victory at Campaldino, he was one of the Priors. In November 1295 he was accused of failing to enforce the ordinances of justice. With the ascendancy of the Blacks he withdrew from political life and avoided exile by means of a letter of protest. He was buried in Florence, in the church of S. Trinita.
The *Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne' tempi suoi*, composed after 1310, spans the history of Florence from 1280 to 1312. A conciliatory temperament in political life, Compagni in his *Cronica* defends the position of the Whites and his own actions; some have therefore wished to regard the work as a prolonged autobiographical apology. In his Tacitean style, linear and solemn, Compagni reveals himself as a great artist and eloquent writer. His conception of life and history is theological; in the narrative frequent appeal is made to God as “guardian and guide of princes,” to the struggle between good and evil, and to divine justice which “often punishes secretly and removes good shepherds from wicked peoples who do not deserve them, giving them instead those they merit for their malice” (III, 12). The nineteenth-century polemic over the text of the *Cronica* concluded with the critical edition by I. Del Lungo (*D. C. e la sua Cronica*, Florence 1879–87). Among Compagni’s minor works are his early poems; at one time the doctrinal allegorical poem *L’Intelligenza* in ottava rima was attributed to him, an opinion no longer upheld after the studies of D’Ancona and I. Del Lungo. First published by Muratori in *Rer. Ital. Script.*, IX, pp. 465–536, it now appears in the 2nd ed., vol. IX, part 2, pp. XVI–456 with the notes of Isidoro Del Lungo.