VILLANI, GIOVANNI. — He is the foremost representative of Florentine bourgeois historiography of the fourteenth century. He belonged to a Popolo family of S. Procolo and was engaged in commerce. His father was a Villano di Stoldo, who is said to have been a member of the Signoria in 1300; his will dates from 1321 and mentions his four sons, G., Filippo, Francesco, and Matteo.
The firstborn, Giovanni, the historian, must have been born in the thirteenth century, perhaps even before 1275–80. At the beginning of the following century Giovanni was already a partner in the Peruzzi Company and its representative at the Roman Curia. This explains how the Villani belonged to the black party: politics and commerce were united. In his work Giovanni tells us that he was in Rome in 1300 for the Jubilee, but he says nothing about his commercial activity. In the following years the Company’s business took him to France and Flanders; «to this stay are owed the extensive notices concerning the events in Flanders and the battle of Courtroi». In 1307 he was in Bruges; in the following years he was already in Italy, in Siena. Around 1309 Giovanni must have left the Peruzzi Company. After 1310 the phase of his political activity began. In 1316 he was appointed prior, then he was ambassador to Pisa to negotiate peace, and thereafter an official in charge of the mint. In 1321 he was prior again; he was then appointed official responsible for the construction of the walls. In 1327 the Duke of Calabria placed him in charge of the minting of coinage. The appointments followed one another: V. was of mature age and enjoyed great prestige in Florence. In 1329 he was engaged in negotiations to establish an agreement with the German mercenaries of the Gerruglio; then he was official in charge of the construction of the gates of S. Giovanni, and subsequently of the construction of the bell tower of the Badia. In 1331 he was camerlengo for the construction of the walls; this office brought him an accusation of embezzlement. He was tried and had to render an account of his administration. In 1341 he went to Ferrara as a hostage for the 250,000 florins stipulated in the agreement with the Scaligeri for the purchase of Lucca: he remained there for two months. In 1342 he was in Florence, a witness to the events surrounding the duke of Athens. Throughout these years he had pursued commercial activity in the Bonaccorsi Company. The bankruptcy of the Bardi in 1345 involved him as well, and as a merchant «cessans et fugitivus» he had to resign himself to imprisonment in the Stinche. The Liber carceratorum recorded his release from prison under guarantee on 4 February 1345. V. died of the plague in 1348 and was buried at the Annunziata in the chapel of the Crucifix. He had married twice: by monna Sibilia he had had three sons, Giovanni, Bernardo, and Francesco; by donna Mona di Francesco de' Pazzi he had had Arrighetta, Villano, and Matteo.
V.’s Cronaca apparently relates to the impressions made upon his mind by the monuments of ancient Rome that he saw during his stay in 1300 and by his reading of the ancient historians. Compagni, too, alludes to the monuments seen in Rome during the Jubilee. V. could hardly have devoted himself to his work before returning from his travels; nor were the readings of the ancient historians to which he alludes certainly undertaken in his youth. V. began compiling from the chronicles that enjoyed the widest circulation (for example, Martino Polono), in order to produce a work that would prove useful to anyone wishing to write in the future. The work was divided into 12 books; the first six deal with biblical and Roman history; with book VII the account of the history of Florence begins, from the descent of Carlo d'Angiò to 1332; from 1333 to 1348 events are narrated in books XI and XII.
The division of the material certainly depended on the time spent in composition and on the years during which V. wrote. In accordance with the practice of chroniclers, events are narrated year by year, but there is often an attempt to go beyond chronological order and to connect events through a causal order. V. is an entirely medieval writer. He recounts prodigious occurrences and sees in events the divine Providence that rewards and punishes. The purpose of the work is in fact to teach the Florentines to avoid vices, to live virtuously, and to govern the State wisely. He is therefore a moralist writer; even when he speaks of business, he judges according to the medieval criterion of good and evil, of the corruption of new men, and of the simple, sober customs of an age for which he feels nostalgia. Yet, apart from this inadequacy in judgment, he recounts, at times even vividly, the economic and financial activities of the Florentines of his time, revealing great competence and an ability to perceive everything concerning commercial life. At such moments his style, which is generally poor and even heavy, far removed from the vigorous passion of Dino Compagni, rises and becomes forceful. Thus, when he sketches the figure of some personage with bold strokes, he seems to reveal the merchant’s habit of observing and judging, through a robust synthesis, the people with whom he deals. Usually, however, his narrative resolves itself into an exposition of innumerable minor facts and uncontrolled, uncritical episodes, which the merchant keeps in mind merely to learn about the affairs of princes and personages with whom he might have to conduct business, without taking an interest in knowing the why or the how, content to have more or less precise reports of a colorful nature. These are generally reports transmitted by Florentine merchants from the great information center, Avignon, or from other French-Flemish commercial centers—reports that are basically accurate but embellished and often transformed so as to make them novelistic and fantastic.
A problem already discussed, but on which no definitive conclusions have yet been reached, concerns the structure of the Cronaca and its sources. Thus, the question of the relations between V. and Dante has been examined. Contacts between the two authors have been established; a common source has been suspected, while others have considered the possibility of interpolations or corrections by V. himself. The relations between V. and the Malispinian chronicle have likewise been discussed: here too, res sub iudice.
The work of Giovanni V. was continued by his brother MATTEO, who wrote the events from 1348 to 1363 in 10 books, but in a sustained, solemn style. Matteo’s son, FILIPPO, who was a man of letters, a humanist, and a reader of Dante in Florence, added another book to the work of his uncle and father, bringing the account up to 1364. Compendia in prose and verse of G. V.’s Cronaca were soon produced, such as Pucci’s Centiloquio.