LATINI, BRUNETTO. - Notary and man of letters, b. in Florence ca. 1220, d. there ca. 1294. In 1260 he was sent by the Florentine Guelphs to ask Alfonso X of Castile for help against the forces of Manfred.
After the defeat of the Guelphs at Montaperti, he went into exile in France, where he translated Cicero's Rhetoric and wrote the Tesoretto and Li livres dou trésor. Having returned to Florence after the Guelph victory of Benevento (1266), he was a notary and scribe of the Commune, and held important offices. G. Villani (Cronica, VIII, 10) calls him «the refiner of the Florentines in making them skilled in speaking well and in knowing how to guide and govern the Republic according to policy». Dante the judge condemns him for the sin against nature; but Dante the man attests all his reverence for him, who taught him «how man makes himself eternal» (Inferno, XV, 85).
The Tesoretto is an allegorical-didactic poem, unfinished, of 2240 seven-syllable lines rhyming in couplets, which narrates a journey through the realms of Nature, the Virtues and Love. In the same meter B. composed the Favolello, a kind of didactic letter to Rustico di Filippo on the duties of friendship. Li livres dou Trésor is a vast encyclopedia in French prose, consisting of three main parts, of which the first treats of the origins of the world and the earliest histories, of astronomy, geography and natural history, the second of the vices and virtues according to Aristotelian ethics, the third of rhetoric and politics. The Tesoro was translated into the vernacular by Bono Giamboni.
Bibliography4 works
Giulio Natali