SALUTATI, COLUCCIO. - Humanist and politician, b. at Stignano in Valdinievole on 16 February 1331, d. at Florence on 4 May 1405. At Bologna, where from childhood he had followed his exiled father, he pursued legal studies. His vocation was poetry, but on his father's death he found himself in straitened circumstances and had to enroll in the training of notaries.
Having left Bologna after the fall of the Pepoli lordship (1351), protector of the exiles, he returned with his family to his native valley, where he practiced the notarial profession for some time. In 1367 he was for a few months chancellor of the Commune of Todi, then for about 2 years he followed the pontifical Curia of Urban V, without finding a stable position there, and took up the same office again at Lucca (1371). He finally attained peace and prosperity at Florence, where perhaps at the beginning of 1374 he was elected notary of the Tratte and the following year chancellor of the Signori. It was he who conferred dignity on that office, lavishing upon it for about 30 years the treasures of a vast culture and of an experience sustained by rare inner balance and great honesty of conduct. His official letters - which represent a genuine reform in the humanistic sense of the chancery style, until then bound to the models of a barbarous medieval Latin - seemed to the Duke of Milan more dangerous than a thousand knights in arms. Deeply religious, he violently attacked the antipope and the schismatic cardinals, but he was a convinced opponent of papal temporalism and tenaciously defended the independence of the Florentine government from pontifical interference. At his death he was decreed the title of poet and his corpse, crowned with laurel, received worthy burial in S. Reparata.
The office of chancellor was for Salutati the conscious realization of that intimate fusion between humanism and civil life which constitutes the synthesis of his thought. A passionate seeker of codices (he felt blessed the day he realized he had discovered Cicero's letters Ad familiares), he was the first to practice with scientific method the collation of manuscripts, thus initiating that textual criticism which was to remain one of the most conspicuous fruits of our humanism. The sanctity of poetry, as a synthesis of wisdom and revelation, and the educational value of classical studies he passionately defended in famous polemics with the Bolognese chancellor Giuliano Zonarini, with Carlo Malatesta, with Giovanni di Duccio da S. Miniato, with the blessed Giovanni Dominici, author of the Lucula noctis. A disciple and continuator of Petrarch, he gathered up and developed his aspirations in the sense of a more active participation in life and a more acute historical intelligence of the present. Certain of his anti-scholastic attitudes proceed from the belief in the primacy of the will over reason, of the active life over knowledge. To the sancta rusticitas of the mystics and hermits he counterposes the social value of the studia humanitatis; he recognizes the superiority of the laws over medicine precisely because the end of the former is the common good. Of notable importance, in the framework of the culture of the time, is Salutati also as a political thinker, for a certain reconciliation between democracy and principate, hinged on respect for legality, and for a breadth of views that leads him to live with quite another concreteness of intent the dream of Petrarch and of Cola of a confederated Italy bound to Rome tamquam membra cum capite.
Of Salutati'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; but for the official letters the old collection of L. Mehus and G. Rigacci, Florence 1741-42, is still useful). The Invectiva in Antonium Luschum in defense of Florence, edited by D. Moreni (ibid. 1826). The De nobilitate legum et medicinae and the De verecundia, in a single vol. edited by E. Garin (ibid. 1947). The De tiranno with Italian translation edited by F. Ercole (Bologna 1942). The De Hercule eiusque laboribus in 2 vols. edited by Ullman (Zurich 1951). Unpublished are the De saeculo et religione and the De fato, fortuna et casu. Latin verses in Carmina Illustr. poet. ital., VIII, Florence 1721, pp. 293-300. Eight youthful eclogues are lost.