Coluccio Salutati

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Coluccio Salutati

Coluccio Salutati (16 February 1331[a] – 4 May 1406)[1] was an Italian Renaissance humanist and notary, and one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence; as chancellor of the Florentine Republic and its most prominent voice, he was effectively the permanent secretary of state in the generation before the rise of the powerful Medici family.

Early career

Salutati was born in Stignano, a tiny commune near

Papal curia of Pope Urban V recently returned from Avignon.[3] In 1370, through his connections in the curia he was made chancellor of the powerful Tuscan city of Lucca, a post he quickly lost in internecine struggles there.[4]

Chancellor of Florence

In 1374 Coluccio received an appointment in Florence and the following year was appointed

Dante.[9] Occasionally his letters had unintended consequences. When he wrote to the people of Ancona in 1376, inciting them, in the name of their freedom, to revolt against the governor imposed by the pope, he called to mind the evils Italy had suffered on behalf of the French. Word of his nasty tone got to the King of France, which prompted a most conciliatory letter from Salutati, assuring the King that he meant no harm and that Florence would always be a friend to France.[10]

In testimony to his service as chancellor the city of Florence paid 250 florins for his funeral in 1406.[11]

Cultural achievements

Coluccio's cultural achievements are perhaps even greater than his political ones. A skilled writer and orator, Coluccio drew heavily upon the classical tradition and developed a powerful prose style based on the Latin of

antiquity not simply to reproduce it, but in order to produce something new".[12] In this sense his own view of humanism was broader-based than the antiquarianism of the generation of humanists he fostered.[13]

An admiring correspondent of Petrarch, he spent much of his salary on amassing a collection of 800 books, slightly less than his contemporary Niccolò de' Niccoli.[14] He also pursued classical manuscripts, making a number of important discoveries, the most important being Cicero's lost Letters to his Friends (Epistulae ad Familiares), which showed Cicero as a defender of republican liberty.[15] Coluccio also did important studies of history, tying Florence's origin not to the Roman Empire but to the Roman Republic.

He promoted the work of younger humanists such as

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Niccolò de' Niccoli, Leonardo Bruni and Pier Paolo Vergerio.[16]

He also brought the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras to Florence in 1397 to teach one of the first courses in Greek since the end of the Roman Empire. After Boethius, few Westerners spoke or read Greek. Many ancient Greek works of science and philosophy were not available in Latin translation. By Salutati's time, a few Latin texts of Aristotle had arrived in Europe via Muslim Spain and Sicily. These texts, however, had been translated from Arabic, rather than directly from the Greek. By bringing Chrysoloras to Florence, Salutati made it possible for a select group of scholars (including Bruni and Vergerio) to read Aristotle and Plato in the original ancient Greek.[17]

Notes

  1. ^ Some scholars such as Augusto Campana, Mario Martelli (’’Schede per Coluccio Salutati’’, Interpres, IX, 1989, pp. 237-25), and others support the date of 1332 on the basis of letters in which Salutati writes of his own age. This date of birth is also accepted by Harvard University Press for Coluccio Salutati's works edition (The I Tatti Renaissance Library).

References

  1. ^ Schwartz, Thomas G. (1934). A Biography of Coluccio Salutati (Feb 16, 1331 – May 4, 1406). Retrieved 14 February 2018.
  2. ^ Italian "Scimmia di Cicerone", with implied praise.Tanzini, Lorenzo. "Il cancelliere letterato". Medioevo (145/146). De Agostini: 100.
  3. Avignonese papacy
    lasted from 1305 to 1367.
  4. ^ Witt, 2000:2.
  5. ^ Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: how the world became modern, 2011:123.
  6. ^ Witt, Ronald. In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni. Boston: Brill, 2000. Page 305
  7. ^ Witt, 2000:305
  8. ^ Gundersheimer, Werner L. The Italian Renaissance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1965. Page 13
  9. ^ Tanzini, Lorenzo. "Il cancelliere letterato". Medioevo (145/146). De Agostini: 103.
  10. ^ Witt, 2000:313.
  11. ^ Caferro, William. John Hawkwood. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. 2006. Page 315
  12. ^ Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390–1460 :(Princeton) 1963:25.
  13. ^ Observed in Greenblatt 2011:
  14. ^ Brydges, Sir Egerton (1821). Res Literariæ: Bibliographical and Critical, for Oct. 1820. C. Beranger. p. 278. Retrieved 14 February 2018.
  15. ISBN 9781444192964
    . Retrieved 14 February 2018.
  16. ^ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Coluccio di Pierio di Salutati" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  17. ^ Griffiths, Gordon, Hankins, James, and Thompson, David. The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni. Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies. 1987. Page 23

External links

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