Filippo Villani and his ‘Vita’ of Guido Bonatti

Abstract

By twentieth-century American standards, or fourteenth-century Florentine standards, Filippo Villani, nephew of the more famous Giovanni Villani, was a successful man. As early as 1361 he held a chair of jurisprudence in the Studio at Florence, was appointed chancellor of the Commune of Perugia in 1377, which position he held for five or six years, and in the latter years of his life spent a very pleasant old age as public reader of Dante at Florence.In addition to his public duties, he wrote in Latin and published in 1381-82 a work in two books on the history of Florence and the lives of her famous citizens, which gained the approval as well as the corrections and comments of the learned Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of the Commune of Florence. We may well imagine that Filippo, as a chronicler, following in the footsteps of his uncle Giovanni and his father Matteo, was infected by the brilliant revival of Latin letters set in motion by Petrarch and spurred on by Salutati.