*It's interesting to contemplate how frail a "sense of history" is, and how tied-up it is with the dense mysteries of the unknowable future and the ruined past.
Again from THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY by John Addington Symonds.
This makes the clear emergence of a scientific sense for history in the year
1300 at Florence all the more remarkable.
In order to estimate the high quality of the work achieved by the Villani it is only necessary to turn the pages of some early chronicles of sister cities which still breathe the spirit of unintelligent medieval industry, before the method of history had been critically apprehended. The naivete of these records may be appreciated by the following extracts.
A Roman writes: 'I Lodovico Bonconte Monaldeschi was born in Orvieto, and was brought up in the city of Rome, where I have resided. I was born in the year 1327, in the month of June, at the time when the Emperor Lodovico came. Now I wish to relate the whole history of my age, seeing that I lived one hundred and fifteen years without illness, except that when I was born I fainted, and I died of old age, and remained in bed twelve months on end.'
Burigozzo's Chronicle of Milan, again, concludes with these words: 'As you will see in the Annals of my son, inasmuch as the death which has overtaken me prevents my writing more.'
Chronicles conceived and written in this spirit are diaries of events, repertories of strange stories, and old wives' tales, without a deep sense of personal responsibility, devoid alike of criticism and artistic unity. (((They are blogging, in other words.)))
Very different is the character of the historical literature which starts into being in Florence at the opening of the fourteenth century.
Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims crowded the streets of the Eternal City, he was moved in the depth of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins of the discrowned mistress of the world.
'When I saw the great and ancient monuments of Rome, and read the histories and the great deeds of the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and by Lucan, and by Livy, and by Valerius, and Orosius, and other masters of history, who related small as well as great things of the acts and doings of the Romans, I took style and manner from them, though, as a learner, I was
not worthy of so vast a work.'
Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the
steps of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and within hearing of
the monks at prayer, he felt the _genius loci_ stir him with a mixture
of astonishment and pathos.
Then 'reflecting that our city of Florence, the daughter and the creature of Rome, was in the ascendant toward great achievements, while Rome was on the wane, I thought it seemly to relate in this new Chronicle all the doings and the origins of the town of Florence, as far as I could collect and discover them, and to continue the acts of the Florentines and the other notable things of the world in brief onwards so long as it shall be God's pleasure, hoping in whom by His grace I have done the work rather than by my poor knowledge; and therefore in the year 1300, when I returned from Rome, I began to compile this book, to the reverence of God and Saint John and the praise
of this our city Florence.'
The key-note is struck in these passages. Admiration for the past mingles with prescience of the future. The artist and the patriot awake together in Villani at the sight of Rome and the thought of Florence.
The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the Chronicle which
Giovanni Villani carried in twelve books down to the year 1346. In 1348
he died of the plague, and his work was continued on the same plan by
his brother Matteo. Matteo in his turn died of plague in 1362, and left
the Chronicle to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year 1365.
Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest, both as a master of
style and as an historical artist. Matteo is valuable for the general
reflections which form exordia to the eleven books that bear his name.
Filippo was more of a rhetorician. He is known as the public lecturer
upon the Divine Comedy, and as the author of some interesting but meager
lives of eminent Florentines, his predecessors or contemporaries.
The Chronicle of the Villani is a treasure-house of clear and accurate
delineations rather than of profound analysis….
