04: Florentine Humanists I

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The literary culture of medieval Italy

 Phases: in Italy

• early 1300-1400
• middle 1400-1500
• late 1500-1600 ca

Main features as visible by 15th c:

•  educational program: studia humanitatis (humanities)
  • Grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy    
  • Cicero Quintilian
• professions: “Man of letters” Schoolteachers/notaries; secretaries; public officials
• Writings: styles and genres based on Latin antiquity Editors Founders of libraries

Early humanists ca. 1300  

•  teachers, lawyers, notaries: Padua, Florence, other northern cities  
•  leisure reading, writing of literature  

Languages:      

• Latin:
  •  Church business
  •  university scholarship    
• Provencal (vernacular)  courtly literature from north of Alps   
• Volgare (vernacular)      
  •  business documents      
  • preaching: Dominicans, Franciscans
  • early Italian poetry: court of Frederick II
• Greek: part of second phase of movement

Early development in Florence:

Brunetto Latini, Dante’s Teacher (d. 1294)      

 

  Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 – 1321)

Vita Nuova;  Commedia

Francesco Petrarca  (1304 Arezzo-1374 Arquà)

Livy, Cicero, Augustine

• Exiled Florentine family; 1312 Avignon for father’s notarial career.
• Montpellier, Bologna
• Avignon; minor orders, household of Giov. Cardinal Colonna til 1337
• Livy
• 1337 first visit to Rome
• 1340 crowned as poet there by King of Naples
• 1345 Discovery of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, Brutus, Quintus. Cicero, Augustine (354-430)

 

 

Petrarch, Canzoniere. Ms On parchment.
Florence, 28 July 1464, written by Carlo di Palla Guidi. Yale, Beinecke Marston MS 261, f. 1r

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

The “Three Crowns” of Florence (Tre Corone): Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406)

• notary. Friend of Petrarch
•  chancellor of Lucca, then of Florence 1375-1406 war against Visconti in Milan
•  brought in teacher of Greek, Manuel Chrysoloras, 1397-1400
• collecting, copying mss

 

 

 

 

 

humanist culture after 1400

1. collecting, editing manuscripts

2.  Greek

3. public arena

4. schoolteachers

5. group of learned people outside universities

–first big center: Florence

Leonardo Bruni  (c. 1370-1444); chancellor from 1427
Salutati  Chrysoloras
History of Florence
Panegyric to City of Florence