SALUTATI, LINO COLUCCIO. – Humanist and political figure, born at Stignano in Valdinievole on 16 February 1331, died at Florence on 4 May 1405. In Bologna, where he had followed his exiled father from childhood, he pursued legal studies. His true vocation, however, was poetry, but upon his father’s death he found himself in straitened circumstances and had to enroll in the notarial apprenticeship.
After leaving Bologna following the fall of the Pepoli lordship (1351), which had protected the exiles, he returned with his family to his native valley, where for a time he practiced as a notary. In 1367 he served for a few months as chancellor of the Commune of Todi, then for about two years followed the papal Curia of Urban V, without finding stable employment, and resumed the same office at Lucca (1371). He finally found quiet and comfort at Florence, where perhaps at the beginning of 1374 he was elected notary of the Tratte and the following year chancellor of the Signori. He dignified that office, devoting to it for about thirty years the treasures of his vast learning and experience, sustained by rare inner balance and great moral integrity. His official letters—representing a veritable humanistic reform of chancery style, hitherto bound to the forms of barbarous medieval Latin—seemed to the Duke of Milan more dangerous than a thousand armed knights. Deeply religious, he violently attacked the antipope and the schismatic cardinals, yet he was a convinced opponent of papal temporalism and tenaciously defended the independence of the Florentine government from papal interference. At his death he was granted the title of poet, and his laurel-crowned body received fitting burial in S. Reparata.
The office of chancellor was for S. the conscious realization of that intimate fusion between humanism and civic life which constitutes the synthesis of his thought. A passionate seeker of manuscripts (he considered himself blessed the day he discovered Cicero’s *Ad familiares* epistles), he was the first to apply the scientific method to manuscript collation, thus initiating textual criticism, which was to remain one of the most fruitful achievements of our humanism. The holiness of poetry, as the synthesis of wisdom and revelation, and the educational value of classical studies were passionately defended in famous controversies with the Bolognese chancellor Giuliano Zonarini, with Carlo Malatesta, with Giovanni di Duccio da S. Miniato, and with Bl. Giovanni Dominici, author of the *Lucula noctis*. A disciple and continuer of Petrarch, he gathered and developed his aspirations toward a more active participation in life and a sharper historical understanding.
Certain of his anti-Scholastic attitudes stem from his faith in the primacy of the will over reason, of active life over mere knowledge. Against the *sancta rusticitas* of mystics and hermits he upheld the social value of the *studia humanitatis*; he recognized the superiority of law over medicine precisely because the end of the former is the common good. Also noteworthy in the cultural landscape of his time is S. as a political thinker for his attempt to reconcile democracy and principality on the basis of respect for legality, and for a breadth of vision that led him to pursue with far greater concreteness of purpose the dream of Petrarch and Cola di Rienzo of an Italy confederated and united to Rome *tamquam membra cum capite*.
Of S.’s numerous works the most important is the *Epistolario* in 4 vols., published by F. Novati in *Fonti per la storia d’Italia* (Rome 1891–1911); for the official letters, however, the old collection by L. Mehus and G. Rigacci (Florence 1741–42) remains useful. *Invecchia in Antonium Luschum* in defense of Florence, ed. D. Moreni (ibid. 1826). *De nobilitate legum et medicinae* and *De verecundia*, in one volume ed. E. Garin (ibid. 1947). *De tyranno* with Italian translation ed. F. Ercole (Bologna 1942). *De Hercule eiusque laboribus* in 2 vols. ed. B. L. Ullman (Zurich 1951). Unpublished are *De saeculo et religione* and *De fato, fortuna et casu*. Latin verses in *Carmina illustr. poet. ital.*, VIII, Florence 1721, pp. 293–300. Eight juvenile eclogues are lost.