HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor
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HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

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MEDIEVAL URBAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 337traditions in which the literary sensibility of Giovanni is indulged, tothe contemporary decades of intense political and economic-sociallife of his city, reconstructed with increasing concentration on thebasis of the best information and experience and, thus, also authorityin the complex concatenation of occurrences and changes ofregime. 48 It is interesting here to show that in the relationship betweenthe truly Florentine narrative contents and those of a general context(regional, Italian, and European), at first the latter distinctly prevails,but the text more and more tends to reverse itself, making thepatria emerge in an almost dominant position, on an almost universalhorizon, due to the enterprise and the intense industry of its cives.The experience that Villani had had in the artisanal and mercantilefield (affiliation with the companies of the Peruzzi andBonaccolsi) and his curriculum of public office in the Florentine commune(occupying various positions from 1316 to 1329), 49 if they didnot contribute to give to his work real official character, at least succeededin rendering it authoritative in the eyes of a large public ofreaders, both fellow-citizens and foreigners, because of his awarenessof the web that closely bound politics and economics from his Florenceto contemporary Europe. Such a wide reception was probably helpedalso by a providential vision of history, by the favor accorded to theecclesiastical world, and by his moderate Guelphism, which, prevalentor scarce in Florence and in the Tuscan world, succeeded ingiving a charge of optimism to his narration, although this was diminishedin the last years by natural calamities, bank failures, and deadlyepidemic phenomena. At the same time, his roving and far-seeingmerchant’s perspective prevented an attitude of rigid municipal moralismand, instead, provided an accurate exposition of the economicsocialfacts of his city in a European projection, sometimes underscoredin quantitative historical terms. 50 Based primarily on written sources,for the most part selected and sometimes reported in the text butalso and in a rather important way on personal testimony, his workends by being representative of many aspects of the Florentine worldin which it matured, subsequently extending its manuscript history. 5148Porta (1995), 125–38.49G. Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. Porta, xix–xx.50Porta (1995), 134–35.51Many times studied and published in the last centuries, the Nuova cronica onlyrecently has been made object of systematic philological investigations and of critical

338 AUGUSTO VASINAProceeding along the peninsula, it becomes ever more difficult,even in the late Middle Ages, to list authentic expressions of urbanhistoriography—incisive voices animated by the spirit of civic andcommunal consciousness—as lively and numerous as those alreadysingled out or capable of being singled out in the regions of the Poand Tuscany. The lands of the Anconetan March, of the Duchy ofSpoleto, and of the Duchy of Rome, subject to the pontifical monarchy,saw their civic autonomy weakened and the related manifestationsof local chronicle writing withered. 52 The city of Rome, however,provides one exception. Strong municipal demonstrations and socialand economic tensions developed, due to the deep vacuum whichhad been created in the city that had once been capital of the empire,then—in the course of the Middle Ages—of the papacy, and now—during the fourteenth century—was entirely deprived of its effectivenessand symbolic function as guide of Christianity, due to the transferof the popes to Avignon. The humiliation of the Romans at havinglost the exceptional inheritance of the capital city, and having lostalso the vital resources derived from the pilgrimage industry, re-animatedpolitical aspirations for recuperating their lost status. This theyattempted by means of the reaffirmation of the republican traditionof Rome in the context of a utopian design enlarged to the papacyand to the empire, which was led by the remarkable figure of aneducated Roman notary, Cola di Rienzo. He was the protagonist inhis city of a popular and anti-baronial movement that involved therevival of the Senate, 53 which has left a large echo in a really unusualnarrative text in the Roman historiographical tradition. That traditionhad been defined almost exclusively by the production of, andadditions to, the Libri pontificales of the church of Rome; by a production,that is, that was appropriate to universalistic norms, as infact was done, even if in more reduced measure, also in other greatecclesiastical centers of the peninsula, such as Milan and Ravenna,by means of the continuation of urban history on the schematic basestudies in the context of Florentine historiography and sometimes in specific relationto the figure and works of Dante Alighieri. See Porta (1995), 129, 133–34, andpassim.52Following the provisory count made for urban chronicle-writing of north-centralItaly, as in note 17, we can list works of urban historiography in the lands ofthe Papal States only in five cases in the Duchy of Rome and in only one case inthe Duchy of Spoleto.53On conditions in Rome in the fourteenth century, connected closely to thefigure of Cola di Rienzo, cf. Dupré (1952), passim.

MEDIEVAL URBAN <strong>HISTORIOGRAPHY</strong> 337traditions in which the literary sensibility of Giovanni is indulged, tothe contemporary decades of intense political and economic-sociallife of his city, reconstructed with increasing concentration on thebasis of the best information and experience and, thus, also authorityin the complex concatenation of occurrences and changes ofregime. 48 It is interesting here to show that in the relationship betweenthe truly Florentine narrative contents and those of a general context(regional, Italian, and European), at first the latter distinctly prevails,but the text more and more tends to reverse itself, making thepatria emerge in an almost dominant position, on an almost universalhorizon, due to the enterprise and the intense industry of its cives.The experience that Villani had had in the artisanal and mercantilefield (affiliation with the companies of the Peruzzi andBonaccolsi) and his curriculum of public office in the Florentine commune(occupying various positions from 1316 to 1329), 49 if they didnot contribute to give to his work real official character, at least succeededin rendering it authoritative in the eyes of a large public ofreaders, both fellow-citizens and foreigners, because of his awarenessof the web that closely bound politics and economics from his Florenceto contemporary Europe. Such a wide reception was probably helpedalso by a providential vision of history, by the favor accorded to theecclesiastical world, and by his moderate Guelphism, which, prevalentor scarce in Florence and in the Tuscan world, succeeded ingiving a charge of optimism to his narration, although this was diminishedin the last years by natural calamities, bank failures, and deadlyepidemic phenomena. At the same time, his roving and far-seeingmerchant’s perspective prevented an attitude of rigid municipal moralismand, instead, provided an accurate exposition of the economicsocialfacts of his city in a European projection, sometimes underscoredin quantitative historical terms. 50 Based primarily on written sources,for the most part selected and sometimes reported in the text butalso and in a rather important way on personal testimony, his workends by being representative of many aspects of the Florentine worldin which it matured, subsequently extending its manuscript history. 5148Porta (1995), 125–38.49G. Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. Porta, xix–xx.50Porta (1995), 134–35.51Many times studied and published in the last centuries, the Nuova cronica onlyrecently has been made object of systematic philological investigations and of critical

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