The Eleventh and Twelfth Books of

Giovanni Villani’s “New Chronicle” Rala

I. Diakité (Editor)
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-eleventh-and-twelfth-books-of-giovanni-villanis-ne
w-chronicle-rala-i-diakite-editor/
The Eleventh and Twelfth Books of Giovanni Villani’s New Chronicle
Research in Medieval
and Early Modern Culture XXXI
Studies in Medieval
and Early Modern Culture LXXIX
The Eleventh and
Twelfth Books of
Giovanni Villani’s
New Chronicle
Translated from the Italian by
Rala I. Diakité and Matthew T. Sneider
The book has been published with the support of the Fitchburg State University‘s Amelia V.
Gallucci-Cirio Endowment.

ISBN 978-1-5015-1842-3
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1426-5
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1408-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021942797

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Alessandro Streghi, Storie di Lucca in ottava rima, f.193r, sec. XV, Biblioteca
Statale di Lucca, ms. 2629. Su concessione del Ministero della Cultura – Biblioteca Statale
di Lucca. Esplicito divieto di ulteriori riproduzioni o duplicazioni con qualsiasi mezzo.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck

www.degruyter.com
Rala expresses her most profound gratitude to Nick, Tanty, and Sali, who have
encouraged and supported her work on this project.

Matthew expresses all his love and gratitude to Cristina and Emilia.
Table of Contents

Matthew T. Sneider
Introduction I – Historical Introduction 1

Rala I. Diakité
Introduction II – The Transmission of Villani’s Nuova Cronica: Manuscripts,
Rewritings, and Print 17

Notes on the Translation 39

The Eleventh and Twelfth Books of Giovanni Villani’s New Chronicle 43

Bibliography 427

Index 449
Matthew T. Sneider
Introduction I – Historical Introduction

Introduction
The world of the New Chronicle is vast, centered in Florence but stretching to the
horizons of the world known to the citizens of that cosmopolitan city. The inter-
ests of its author are many, but one constant is his concern with tracing the im-
pact of events in this broader world on Florence. The present two books reveal
this story in all its complexity, with particular emphasis on the challenges
posed to the city by dangerous foreign enemies.¹

Uguccione and Montecatini

In the background of many events described in Books Eleven and Twelve lies the
1310 descent of Henry VII into Italy. Although Dante Alighieri famously saw him
as a figure destined to restore harmony to the war-torn peninsula, the conse-
quences of his discesa were far from peaceful: his coming touched off bitter con-
flict as Ghibelline forces crystallized around Henry and Guelph forces crystal-
lized around Robert of Naples. Florence was a main protagonist in this
conflict and its clash with the emperor culminated in a failed siege of the city
in 1312.²
The death of the emperor in 1313 did nothing to free Florence from danger,
for the city immediately faced a new challenge from Pisa, now under the power
of Uguccione della Faggiuola.³ Uguccione, a member of an aristocratic family
who had served the emperor during his recent campaigns, was emblematic of
the turn to signoria, one-man rule, which was undermining the more broadly
based power structure of communes throughout Northern Italy.⁴ By 1314 Uguc-
cione had seized control of Lucca and was threatening Pistoia, presenting a di-

 For detailed treatments of the following history , treatments which helped structure the pre-
sent introduction, see Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze and Schevill, History, 194– 225.
 See Bowsky, Henry VII in Italy, and especially 49 – 50 (Dante’s praise of Henry) and 171– 77
(war with Florence).
 For Uguccione della Faggiuola’s origins and rise to power, see Meek, “Uguccione della Fag-
giuola.” See also Vigo, Uguccione, 4– 15 and Schevill, History, 197– 198.
 For the turn to signoria in the years following the death of Henry VII, see Schevill, History,
194– 196 and Green, Castruccio, 8 – 10.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514265-001
2 Matthew T. Sneider

rect challenge to Florentine primacy in Tuscany. Whatever may have been the
stakes of this challenge—plunder, territory, trade—our chronicler saw it through
the lens of party conflict. Uguccione’s power rose to its zenith during a period
when hatred between Guelphs and Ghibellines had been intensified by Henry’s
descent into Italy, and when Villani first mentions him in the ninth book of the
chronicle he describes him as a “Ghibelline and enemy of the Florentines.”⁵
Uguccione’s successes therefore menaced more than the position of Florence
as the dominant city in Tuscany—they also threatened the party of the Church
and gave hope to the city’s exiles, who fought alongside him.⁶
Uguccione’s greatest triumph was his victory over Florence and her allies at
the Battle of Montecatini on 29 August 1315.⁷ Uguccione’s Pisan and Lucchese
forces, supplemented by German knights, may have been outnumbered but
his generalship and the skill of his soldiers won the day as they attacked and
scattered the poorly organized forces of Florence. Villani describes the outcome
of the battle as a “painful defeat” and notes the great losses, especially among
the houses of the grandi and of the grandi popolari, but emphasizes his city’s re-
solve in the face of defeat:

The Florentines were not dismayed by this defeat. Rather, with vigor they set about restor-
ing their city of Florence, laying new plans, and acquiring men-at-arms and money; they
built palisades at their moats to defend themselves; and they sent to King Robert for a
war captain.

Indeed, he suggests, the defeat was in some sense a victory, in that it did not
pave the way to the seizure of the city by its exiles or lead to a collapse in the
Florentine way of life, or in Florentine prosperity:

[T]he Florentines maintained their defences against Uguccione, without losing power or
lordship or castello or [any] other possession. And so, the Ghibellines and the Florentine
exiles were disappointed, for they had believed that they would capture the city after
the defeat. Indeed, the opposite occurred, for the harm it caused was not so great, and
in Florence itself it was as though no defeat had occurred, for the artisans never left off
doing their work.⁸

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, IX: 96.

 Villani notes that Uguccione’s forces at Montecatini included “all the Ghibellines of Tuscany
and exiles of Florence.” Villani, Nuova Cronica, X: 71.
 On Montecatini and its consequences, see Meek “Uguccione della Faggiuola”, Vigo, Uguccione,
74– 79, and Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 800 – 810.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, X: 72 and 74.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 3

Castruccio and Altopascio

Among the combatants at the Battle of Montecatini was Castruccio Castracani
degli Antelminelli, condottiere and military supporter of Uguccione. Castruccio
was born into the influential Castracani family of Lucca—a family with roots
among the city’s merchants and bankers, but a family that also boasted a con-
nection with the noble Antelminelli. As a young man, Castruccio followed his fa-
ther into exile and spent the early fourteenth century as a wandering soldier-of-
fortune, fighting under the banner of King Philip the Fair and a series of masters
in Italy. When Henry VII launched his invasion of Italy, Castruccio was one of the
many Luccan exiles who gave him their support.⁹
It was in the wake of Henry’s expedition that Castruccio developed his con-
nection to Uguccione, who recognized his abilities and chose him as a “close col-
laborator.” Castruccio was in Lucca when that city was violently seized and plun-
dered by the Pisan signore—indeed he was directly involved in this terrible
event.¹⁰ Afterwards the ambitious Castruccio began to acquire a base of power
as viscount of the Bishop of Luni and vicar of the Communes of Sarzana and Sar-
zanello (titles later supplemented by an imperial vicariate granted by Frederick
the Fair). It was with these titles that Castruccio led a contingent of troops from
the Lunigiana at the Battle of Montecatini.¹¹
In early April 1316, a series of dramatic events saw Castruccio emerge as the
most threatening of Florence’s enemies. Uguccione, fearing the ambition of the
Lucchese condottiere, and reacting to acts of violence he had committed, had
him arrested and imprisoned in Lucca. According to Villani, Uguccione’s son Ra-
nieri, his vicar in Lucca, was unwilling to carry out the death sentence as he had
been ordered given Castruccio’s support in the city. He therefore summoned his
father, who departed Pisa to ride to Lucca, only to learn that Pisa had risen in
rebellion against him. Having lost Pisa, he then faced a second rebellion in
Lucca. Castruccio was released from prison and quickly took control of the
city, while Uguccione and his son departed to take refuge with Cangrande
della Scala, fortune having turned rapidly and decisively against them.¹²

 For this see Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani.” See also Green, Castruccio, 38 – 48.
 For this see Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani.” See also Green, Castruccio, 48 – 60.
 For this see Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani.” See also Green, Castruccio, 60 – 61.
 For these events, see Meek “Uguccione della Faggiuola”, Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani”,
Vigo, Uguccione, 86 – 88, and Green, Castruccio, 72– 74. Villani’s account is in Nuova Cronica,
X: 78.
4 Matthew T. Sneider

The triumphant Castruccio worked to secure his power in Lucca and the Lu-
nigiana and in 1322 began to build a strong bastion for his lordship—the castello
dell’Augusta.¹³ At the same time, as the “reference point for all the Ghibellines of
Tuscany”, he campaigned for the imperial party and came into conflict with Flor-
ence.¹⁴ His 1325 assumption of power over Pistoia, whose government he con-
signed to Filippo Tedici, profoundly shocked the Florentines and touched off a
new, more serious, conflict with the city on the Arno. The Florentines, under
the command of Raimondo de Cardona, pushed toward Luccan territory and oc-
cupied the key fortress of Altopascio, midway between Pistoia and Lucca. Ac-
cording to Villani, however, the Florentine forces tarried too long at the castello
and began to lose men to flight and sickness. Castruccio, meanwhile, kept his
forces in secure defensive points and waited for reinforcements from Ghibellines
north of the Apennines.
Castruccio’s men, supported by soldiers led by Azzone Visconti of Milan
(paid in coin and encouraged by the fair women of Lucca, according to our
chronicler), faced the Florentines on 23 September 1325. Fortune was not with
the Florentine troops that day and in “a short time” the city’s forces were “routed
and defeated” and began a desperate flight from the battlefield, pursued by the
forces of Castruccio. Raimondo de Cardona, the Florentine commander, was
wounded in the fighting and captured, then imprisoned in Lucca. By the end
of the day thousands of Florentine soldiers had been killed or captured and
the train of the army—including, most grievously, the Florentine carroccio—
had been taken by the Ghibellines. Castruccio’s victory was followed by a
rapid crumbling of Florentine defenses that allowed him to penetrate all the
way to Florence.¹⁵
Villani’s description of the battle is extensive, and explains the loss in terms
of generalship, morale, and betrayal (he claims the commander of the second
line abandoned his post out of loyalty to the Visconti). As always, however,
our chronicler sees even mightier forces at work—he declares:

And so, in a short time, false fortune turned against the Florentines, [she] who, turning
[her] false face of felicity on them, had flattered the city with such pomp and victory.
But it was most certainly the judgment of God against enormous sins to cast down such
prideful power, and such a noble cavalry and valiant popolo, as were at first the Florentines
in the said host, because of the more base among them, and the excommunicates among

 For this see Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani.” See also Green, Castruccio, 79 – 122.
 For this see Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani.” See also Green, Castruccio, 123 – 161.
 For the Battle of Altopascio, see Luzzati, “Castruccio Castracani”, Green, Castruccio, 167– 82,
Schevill, History, 201– 203, and Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 1015 – 20. Villani’s description is in
Nuova Cronica, X: 306.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 5

them; and so one should not trust in the power of men, but only in the pleasure and the
will of God, and in His disposition.¹⁶

Book Eleven

Castruccio and the Bavarian

Villani begins Book Eleven by describing the coming of Charles of Calabria to

Florence in 1326, sent by his father Robert the Wise to serve as the city’s signore
in the wake of Altopascio. The chronicler details the grand company accompany-
ing the lord and asks the reader to note

this great undertaking of the Florentines, for, having suffered so many afflictions and such
losses of men and possessions, and so many ruptures all together, in less than one year,
through their efforts and money, they had brought to Florence such a lord and such barons
and such chivalry, and also the papal legate—and this was thought a great thing by all Ital-
ians, and by everyone, wherever it was known.¹⁷

As glorious as the scene may have been, in the chronicler’s view the duke’s ar-
rival had a very dangerous consequence: it spurred the Ghibelline powers of
Northern Italy to invite Louis IV, King of the Romans, to march into Italy. Part
of Book Eleven records the alarming events connected with this enterprise, as
the “Bavarian”—our chronicler never dignifies him with an unqualified imperial
title—is crowned with the iron crown and then descends through the peninsula
toward Rome. Villani dwells with particular interest on the Bavarian’s time in
that city—seat of popes, capital of emperors, mother of Florence. He pays special
attention to the various ceremonies whereby Louis sought to establish and dis-
play his power as emperor. He gives us a sense of their majesty, their participants
lifted above the audience on a stage set up against Saint Peter’s Basilica, but he
clearly sees them as counterfeit, as masks for heresy and stubborn disobedience.
Indeed, he asks the reader to observe that

many clerics, prelates and friars of all orders came with the Bavarian to Rome who were
rebels and schismatics against Holy Church, the bilge water of the heretics of Christianity
in defiance of Pope John¹⁸

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, X: 306.

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 1.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 55.
6 Matthew T. Sneider

and to note the arrogance of the

damned Bavarian, since you will not find in any ancient or new chronicle that any Christian
emperor ever had himself crowned except by the pope or by his legate, either before or
after, even those who were very opposed to the Church—only this Bavarian.¹⁹

Present at Louis’s first coronation ceremony in Rome, during which he was ac-
claimed as emperor by the people of the city, was Florence’s mortal enemy,
the victor of Altopascio, Castruccio Castracani.²⁰ The relationship between the
Bavarian and the Luccan signore was deeply threatening to Florence. During
the descent toward Rome, Castruccio assisted Louis in his capture of the city
of Pisa, and in return Louis recognized Castruccio’s control of Lucca and Pistoia
and granted him the title of “duke.” During this period of triumph, Villani in-
forms us that the two journeyed to Pistoia and that Castruccio showed the Bavar-
ian “how Pistoia was on the border and close enough for launching attacks on
Florence”—a clear statement of their future intentions.²¹
In the wake of the imperial coronation, Villani gives us a Castruccio at the
height of his glory,

dubbed as a knight with great honors, confirmed as duke, and made Count of the Palace
and senator of Rome. More importantly than all of this, he was lord and master of the court
of the said emperor and was even more feared and obeyed than the Bavarian.

Indeed, according to Villani, he dressed his very body with emblems of triumph:
he had a garment of crimson samite made with letters of gold on the front spell-
ing out the words “What God Wills” and on the back “What God Wills Will Be
Done.” For our chronicler, of course, this garment is a perfect symbol of Castruc-
cio’s folly: “And so, he himself prophesied the future judgments of God.”²²
As Louis Green notes, the first of these “judgments” arrived immediately
after Louis IV’s coronation, when, through a combination of good fortune and
the generalship of Filippo Sangineto, Duke Charles’s deputy, soldiers fighting
on Florence’s behalf managed to capture the city of Pistoia. Villani describes Cas-
truccio as sorrowing for the loss of the city, fearing for the stability of his other
possessions and regretting his decision to accompany Louis IV to Rome. His re-
sponse was to depart immediately, and Villani represents this departure as a

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 56.

 For Castruccio’s relationship to Louis of Bavaria and the events described below, see Green,
Castruccio, 210 – 59 and Schevill, History, 204– 207.
 Green, Castruccio, 218 – 22 and Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 38.
 Green, Castruccio, 225 – 26 and Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 60.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 7

turning point in the story: without the fortunate Castruccio at his side, Louis
could not hope to carry out his plans for invading the Regno. Indeed, after
some campaigning in Campagna, he was forced to abandon his plans for an in-
vasion, owing to his lack of money, a scarcity of provisions, and the defense pro-
vided by Charles of Calabria. Louis retreated to Rome, where his power had lost
its luster for the Romans. He eventually left the city, followed by a coda romana
of jeering citizens, and made his way north to Viterbo and then to Todi.²³
In Villani’s view it was during Louis’s time at Todi that Castruccio and the
Bavarian posed their greatest threat to Florence. Present in Todi were Florentine
exiles and Ghibellines from all over Tuscany, who urged the emperor to move his
troops to Arezzo and then on to besiege Florence. Their plan was for Louis to ar-
rive from the south and Castruccio from Prato; meanwhile the Ubaldini and the
Ghibellines of Romagna would close the roads to the north. The exiles represent-
ed to the emperor that

once he had defeated the city of Florence (which was very much within his power) he
would be Lord of Tuscany and of Lombardy and then he could quite easily conquer the
Kingdom of Puglia, taking it from King Robert.

Villani tells us that the Florentines were terribly afraid, particularly because it
was near harvest time, and so they would be hard put to supply the city in
the event of a siege, but despite their fear of being surrounded by “such powerful
tyrants and enemies,” our chronicler records the resolve with which they pre-
pared their city for the worst: they reinforced their castelli, they gathered up pro-
visions from the countryside, they sent for their allies, and they kept careful
guard over their city “by day and night.” In sum, like “bold men they were
ready to endure every suffering and every deprivation in order to keep their
city, with the aid of God.”²⁴
Indeed, according to Villani, they owed their suvival to God, who turned His
favor toward Florence by foiling the designs of the Bavarian and liberating it
from its terrible enemy Castruccio. The signore’s bold return to Tuscany from
Rome had borne quick fruit, as he re-asserted his power over his possessions,
assumed control of the city of Pisa, and besieged the Florentine soldiers in Pis-
toia, eventually forcing the city to surrender. His efforts at the siege, however,
rushing from fortification to fortification under the “sun of Leo,” pushed him
to his physical limits and despite his great strength and energy he died of an ill-
ness on 3 September, 1328. In his account of Castruccio’s death Villani describes

 Green, Castruccio, 227– 30 and Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 59, 60, 78, 95.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 97.
8 Matthew T. Sneider

the lord with a mix of admiration and disapproval, as “wise” and “accomplish-
ed” but also as “cruel” and “vainglorious”—a man who fully believed that he
would be Lord of Florence and King of Tuscany. As Louis Green suggests, for Vil-
lani, the lesson of Louis IV’s discesa and Castruccio’s various enterprises seems
to be that good fortune cannot endure in the face of divine disapproval: punish-
ment always falls in the end. Death took Castruccio suddenly, treating the great
man in the same way it treats the small, and, although he confessed at the end,
our chronicler insists that he died still burdened by his sin of disobedience to the
Church.²⁵

Book Twelve

Messer Mastino and Lucca

At his death, Villani tells us, Castruccio told his gathered friends that they would
“see upheaval.” This prediction proved very accurate, as a variety of powers
competed in the suddenly transformed political and military context of Central
Italy. Florence certainly reaped rewards from the death of the Lucchese signore,
as the city presently overwhelmed a hungry and terrified garrison to capture the
castello di Carmignano. But while this capture made many hope that “good for-
tune had turned its favor toward the Florentines,” the city still faced many chal-
lenges.²⁶
The conflict in these years sometimes made allies of former enemies and en-
emies of former allies. Villani, for example, spends much time recording the af-
fairs of the papal legate Bertrand du Pouget in the Po River Valley. Pope John
XXII had sent Du Pouget to Italy in 1320, with the task of reining in the power
of the Ghibelline signori and reaffirming the power of the church. Although
the crusade against the Visconti had mixed results (the forces of the church
failed to capture the city of Milan and were defeated at Vaprio d’Adda in
1324), over the course of the decade he won control of a number of cities includ-
ing Alessandria, Piacenza, Parma, and Reggio and in 1327 he assumed lordship
of Bologna. At the beginning of the 1330s, however, the legate allied himself with
King John of Bohemia, the son of Emperor Henry VII, who had begun his own
discesa, during which he came to control many cities—including Lucca, which

 Green, Castruccio, 253 – 54, 258 – 59 and Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 87.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 103.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 9

drew him into conflict with Florence.²⁷ This alliance, which Villani suggests was
part of a plot hatched by the Pope and the King of France to deprive the Italians
of their “freedom”, provoked general opposition by the forces in Italy; indeed,
the second half of Book Eleven records the strange spectacle of traditionally
Guelph Florence allied with traditionally Ghibelline signori in an alliance em-
braced by King Robert to bring King John and the papal legate to heel.²⁸
The decline of the two political and military leaders, starting with the king’s
loss of Brescia and Bergamo in 1332, continuing with the defeat of their com-
bined forces by an army of the league at Ferrara in 1333, and ending with
King John’s departure from Italy in 1333 and the legate’s expulsion from Bologna
in 1334, left Florence with another problem: their league ally, the signore of Ver-
ona, Mastino II della Scala. Messer Mastino was the successor of Cangrande
della Scala, who had expanded the Della Scala state through the acquisition
of neighboring towns and castelli and their territories. The chronicle contains
a fascinating chapter in which Villani describes the origins of the Della Scala,
tracing the rise to power of Cangrande’s uncle Mastino I, whom he describes
as a “large and strong person, and a brawler and a gambler” but “bold, worthy,
and wise in his affairs” lifted to fortune through service to the tyrant Ezzelino da
Romano. After his murder by “noble men” who resented the tyranny of one of
such low birth, his brother Alberto I carried out a vendetta, having the assassins
summoned to a meeting, reassuring them with carefully chosen words, and hav-
ing them killed once military support arrived.²⁹ As Villani presents him, Mastino
II is a worthy successor to such men: bold and audacious, driven by a desire for
power, but also shrewd to the point of dishonesty.³⁰
Of foremost concern to Florence’s rulers was control of the city of Lucca,
which was to have been its “prize of war” as a member of the Guelph-Ghibelline
league.³¹ In the years following the death of Castruccio, Lucca had gone through
a series of revolutions and had fallen under the power of a variety of signori. Cas-
truccio intended that his sons succeed to his power, but the Bavarian acted
quickly to depose them and took control of the city through an imperial vicar.
The emperor’s power over the city, however, was short lived. A contingent of
poorly paid German troops rebelled against him and took up residence in the
nearby castello del Cerruglio. Eventually they raided the city, claimed it as

 For this, see Jugie, “Bertrando del Poggetto.” See also Ciaccio, Il Cardinale Legato. Villani,
Nuova Cronica, XI: 167, 170, 171, and 177.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 180 and XI: 202.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 95.
 For Mastino, see Varanini, “Mastino della Scala.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 5.
10 Matthew T. Sneider

their own, and sought to sell it to the highest bidder, including the Florentines,
who, to our chronicler’s disappointment, on several occasions failed to take ad-
vantage of the opportunity. Lucca, thereafter, experienced frequent uprisings, at-
tempted coups d’etat, and changes of lord—it was successively controlled by
Gherardino Spinola of Genoa, King John of Bohemia, the Rossi of Parma, and fi-
nally Mastino della Scala of Verona.³²
Mastino acquired Lucca from the Rossi in November 1335, ostensibly on be-
half of the Florentines but in Villani’s view, because “because he imagined, in
his excessive and mad greed and due to evil counsel, that by means of the
city of Lucca and its strength, he could gain the lordship of all of Tuscany.”³³ Vil-
lani supplies proof of the danger he posed when he describes a failed conspiracy
that same month to overthrow the government of Fazio da Donoratico in Pisa
and to give lordship of the city to Messer Mastino.³⁴ After a period of false nego-
tiations, in 1336 Mastino’s intention to keep the city became clear and the Flor-
entines, mindful of his threat to “pay a visit to the gates of Florence with four
thousand armored knights on horseback, to beat down the pride of the Floren-
tines” made ready for war—raising money, gathering troops, and calling for as-
sistance from their allies.³⁵ As Villani sees it, the most important decision they
made was to create an alliance with the city of Venice, an alliance which the
chronicler presents as a great marvel and which he describes as “the greatest
thing ever undertaken by the Commune of Florence.”³⁶
The progress of this war forms one of the main strands of the middle portion
of Book Twelve. It began with a set of chevauchées by Messer Mastino’s troops
into Florentine territory, but as the war unfolded the power of the alliance
began to tell against the signore of Verona. Our chronicler sees the beginning
of the end with the 1336 occupation of Bovolenta, which allied troops used to
sow destruction around Padua and other possessions of Messer Mastino. The tak-
ing of Padua and the rebellion of Brescia in 1337 were two further successes,
enormously increasing a confidence dramatically expressed by the allies’ deci-
sion to run a palio outside the walls of Verona in 1338—to humiliate Messer Mas-
tino by demonstrating his impotence.

 For these shifting lordships and the events described below, see Green, Lucca Under Many
Masters, 17– 201 and Schevill, History, 215 – 217.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 40.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 42.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 44 and 45.
 The alliance also included other powers opposed to the Della Scala, including the Visconti of
Milan. Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 49 and 50.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 11

And yet, it was precisely in this triumphant period that fortune began to turn
her favor away from Florence. The alliance with Venice, so crucial for the for-
tunes of the league, ended when that city reached a separate arrangement
with Messer Mastino, much to the dismay and anger of our chronicler—his
city was forced to join this peace, which left Lucca under the control of Mastino.³⁷
Sometime later Florence narrowly avoided an outbreak of civil violence, as a con-
spiracy by certain grandi, supported by powers outside the city, was discovered
and thwarted.³⁸ When Mastino lost the city of Parma to a rebellion by Azzo da
Correggio in 1341, making it impossible for him to hold Lucca, it must have
seemed as though the achievement of Florence’s great ambition was at hand.
The city’s “rejoicing”, however, proved to be premature. Villani tells us that in
a “wise” and “clever” move, Messer Mastino now offered to sell the city of
Lucca to the highest bidder, ably pitting Florence against its rival Pisa; when
Florence agreed to make this purchase for a rate, Villani tells us, far in excess
of what it could have paid years earlier, Pisa reacted by placing the city under
siege.³⁹
The war between Florence and Pisa included raids into the respective terri-
tories of the two cities but focused on Lucca. At the decisive moment, the city of
Lucca was occupied by a handful of Florentine officials and their troops, but be-
sieged by the Pisans. In 1341, an initial attempt to break the siege seemed headed
for success, but the fortunes of war turned in the midst of the battle and Florence
suffered a humiliating defeat. Villani describes how the city, full of resolve, set
about gathering a “great and noble” host to lift the siege of Lucca, calling on
its resources and drawing on the assistance of its allies (including the “avari-
cious” King Robert, who required that he be granted possession and lordship
of the city in return for his assistance – although in our chronicler’s view his
offer was quite inadequate). A combination of poor generalship, strong fortifica-
tions, bad weather, and low provisions, however, led to a shameful retreat and
then in short order, disaster of disasters, the surrender of Lucca and the occupa-
tion of that city by Pisa in 1342. Villani describes the political consequences and
the cosmic meaning of this great disaster:

And so, because of what had happened the standing of the Florentines was greatly lowered,
since they had more than four thousand good knights and an enormous popolo, and yet
they lost such a contest and venture through poor counsel and poor leadership and gener-

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 90.

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 118.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 127, 130 and 131.
12 Matthew T. Sneider

alship. Or rather, through the judgment of God, to lower the pride and greedy ingratitude of
the Florentines and their leaders.⁴⁰

History and the Hand of God

Our chronicler was directly involved in these dramatic events: he served as one
of the Florentine hostages in Ferrara, guaranteeing Florentine payment of the
price for Lucca. When the hostages learned, to their despair, of the failure of
the first Florentine relief force to break the Pisan siege, one of their number ap-
proached our chronicler with a question:

O you who have made and who are making a record of our past deeds, and of the other
great events in the world—what could be the reason that God has permitted this hardship
to befall us, since the Pisans are greater sinners than we, as they are traitors and as they
have always been enemies and persecutors of Holy Church, while we have been its obedient
supporters?⁴¹

Villani answered this question “as God inspired us, beyond our small wisdom,”
responding that one of Florence’s sins was greater than those of the Pisans—a
lack of faith and a lack of charity. When the hostage protests, pointing out the
charitable generosity of the city, Villani responds that yes, as far as almsgiving
is concerned Florence is generous, but this generosity only protects it from great-
er dangers. The problem is the Florentines’ deeper lack of charity, which is man-
ifested in their ingratitude toward God, their lust for power and estate, their lack
of loyalty toward one another and toward the commune. This is a very significant
moment in the chronicle. First, the knight’s question reveals that our chronicler
was clearly recognized as a repository of historical knowledge about his city, a
public resource to be consulted in a moment of great need. Second, his answer
reveals a view of history in which God intervenes, granting protection and visit-
ing punishments as merited by the moral character of his peoples. The mestiere
of the chronicler combines these two things, since to make the correct decisions,
to merit divine protection, means having examples of past virtue and past vice.⁴²

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 140.

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII: 135.
 On this episode as evidence for community knowledge of the chronicler’s work, see Ragone,
“Le scritture”, 804. On the role of the chronicler as an historian of the divine will, see Clarke,
“The Villani Chronicles,” 121– 123, Green, “Historical Interpretation” and more extensively
Green, Chronicle into History. For the “didactic” role of the chronicle as well as its “providential
design”, see Rala Diakité’s introduction to Villani, The Final Book, 1-10 and especially 5-7.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 13

On one occasion in Book Eleven, for example, Villani provides examples of

Florentine virtue, highlighting the piety and charitable generosity of two holy
laypeople of Florence, regarded by the people as saints, and notes that “God per-
formed clear miracles through each of these two men, healing the sick and the
crippled and doing many other things.”⁴³ He also profiles a modest citizen “di
piccolo affare” who, having no offspring, left a bequest to all the poor people
of Florence—six denari per person were given to more than seventeen thousand
people.⁴⁴ In Villani’s view, when the citizens of Florence imitate the lives of such
men, they win the love and the assistance of God: in a famous chapter from Book
Eleven he recounts the terrible grain shortage that took place in 1328-1330, so ter-
rible that officials in the grain market had to be protected from rioters by sum-
mary amputation of limbs. After detailing the efforts of the commune to feed the
popolo and to prevent any social disorder, he writes:

And I tell the truth when I say that in no city were so many alms given to the poor by the
wealthy and pious citizens as were given during that terrible famine by the good Floren-
tines. Hence, without question, I reckon and believe that because of these alms and this
provision for the poor popolo, God protected and will continue to protect our city from
great adversities.

He goes on to write that he has spent so much time describing this matter

to set an example for future citizens of our city, that they might take measures and provi-
sions when our city falls into so perilous a famine, so that the popolo might be safe in the
favor of and reverence for God, and so that the city might not fall into the dangers of an
uprising or rebellion…⁴⁵

Charity and policy as a bulwark against starvation and social disorder, charity
and policy as a means of maintaining the popolo in its proper relationship
with God—this is the lesson Villani wishes to impart.
Villani is equally concerned with pointing out the consequences of stubborn-
ly clinging to vice, describing the divine punishments which are the wages of sin.
The most extended meditation on this theme in this volume comes at the begin-
ning of Book Twelve, where Villani describes a truly biblical disaster: the great
Arno Flood of 1333. He notes that the flood hit the city when it was in “very pow-
erful and in a good and prosperous state,” giving force to Christ’s warning: “Be
vigilant, for you know neither the day nor the hour of God’s judgment.” Once the

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 176.

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 163.
 Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 119.
14 Matthew T. Sneider

rain began, nothing availed the terrified inhabitants of the city, not the ringing of
church bells nor their cries of “Have pity! Have pity!” The devastation visited on
the city, described in great detail, was greater than any since its destruction at
the hands of “Totila flagellum Dei.”⁴⁶
This event, unparalleled in devastation and loss of life, offers Florence, and
the chronicler, an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between the heavens
and the world, between natural events and divine providence. The lengthy sec-
ond chapter records the debates that took place in Florence about the causes and
the meaning of the flood: “whether it had come about by natural causes or by
the judgment of God.” The astrologers pointed to a complex series of movements
and conjunctions that brought about the flood and focused its destruction on
Florence (as opposed to Pisa). The theologians, by contrast, pointed out that
even if the stars did have their part, the movements of the stars were piloted
by God “since God is superior to every heavenly movement, and it is He who
moves, sustains, and governs these [movements].” Although God’s reasons are
utterly inscrutable to nostra fragile natura, the chronicler urges his readers to
be conscious of God’s power to send His judgments down on the world “either
out of His gracious mercy or for the execution of His justice.” The fate of Floren-
tines was to suffer the latter, as punishment for their sins, which he recounts in
great detail: pride, greed, envy, extravagance, gluttony, lust, ingratitude. Never-
theless, the flood also reveals the mercy of God, in that the city was not entirely
destroyed, owing to the “prayers of the saintly and religious people living in our
city and its territory, and because of the great alms that are given in Florence.”
Villani urges his readers—carissimi fratelli e cittadini—to take heed of their dan-
ger and notes that reading and understanding his chronicle should motivate
them to “correct themselves and leave off their vices and sins, due to the fear
and the threats of God’s justice, for the present and in times to come; so that
the anger of God spreads no further over us, and so that we can patiently and
with strong spirit sustain adversities, recognizing God as omnipotent.”⁴⁷

 On this disaster and Florentine reactions, including those of Giovanni Villani, see the sour-
ces listed in this book, XII, 1– 2.
 On this debate and Villani’s sense of the flood as divine punishment for a list of sins, see
Salvestrini, “L’Arno e l’alluvione fiorentine del 1333”, 240 – 252 and especially 248 – 249 and
Green, Chronicle, 33 – 34. Villani, Nuova Cronica, XII:2.
 Introduction I – Historical Introduction 15

Towards the End of the World

But it was precisely this kind of punishment that fell upon Florence at Lucca,
first the defeat of the Florentine relief force, then the surrender of the city to
the Pisans. The punishment was double because it damaged Florence in its ma-
terial power and in its public image. One imagines that for Villani, the city de-
served what it got, since he frequently inveighs against a lust for power and lord-
ship that reveals dissatisfaction with the gifts of God.
The twelfth book therefore ends on a “down note,” contrasting dramatically
with such expressions of confidence in the future as the celebration of the birth
of two new lion cubs, which were said to be “good and prosperous fortune for
the Commune of Florence.”⁴⁸ But worse was to come for the city, as the chroni-
cler notes in his conclusion to the book, when he points forward to one of the
chief matters of the thirteenth book—the coming of the Duke of Athens to Flor-
ence. The “great” and “perilous” “changes” set in motion by the duke included a
period of tyranny in Florence, enormously increased social tensions, and vio-
lence.
These political disasters are painted into a larger canvas that includes such
events as the beginning of the Hundred Years War between France and England,
the failure of Florence’s greatest banks, the first manifestations of the Black
Death, and a series of widespread and devastating earthquakes. The descriptions
of the latter two events include miraculous occurrences that highlight the super-
natural lessons they were intended to teach humanity: vermin rained from the
heavens; men, women, and animals turned into marble-like statues; cross-shap-
ed cracks appeared in a piazza, oozing blood and water. The call to repentance
was clear, and some responded to it, as did the money lenders of one city who,
in the wake of the earthquakes, forswore their sinful avarice and began to repay
their ill-gotten gains. More telling, however, is the chronicler’s description of re-
actions to the first wave of the Black Death in the East. There, the many marvels
caused non-Christian rulers to consider conversion to the true faith, until, that is,
they saw that their Christian neighbors were suffering just as badly as they,

 On lion cubs, Villani’s shift from confidence to uncertainty, and the “decade of crisis” from
1338 to 1348, see Brucker, Florentine, 3 – 9. See also Rala Diakité’s introduction to Villani, The
Final Book, 8 – 9. Villani, Nuova Cronica, XI: 184 and XII: 67.
16 Matthew T. Sneider

whereupon they persisted in their “wickedness”—God’s wrath was universal, it

afflicted everyone.⁴⁹
The relentlessness and universality of these afflictions, the blindness of
many to their lessons, lend, as Louis Green has noted, a distinctly apocalyptic
cast to Book Thirteen.⁵⁰ The very last words of the chronicle declare that the dan-
ger and the destruction caused by the earthquakes “are great signs and judg-
ments of God, and [do not occur] without reason and divine permission, and
[are] among those miracles and signs that Jesus Christ, preaching, foretold to
his disciples as appearing at the end of the world.”⁵¹ Although he would not sur-
vive this age, dying of the plague in 1348, Villani undoubtedly took comfort that
his voice would survive him, issuing its—perhaps final—call to his great city to
redeem itself before God.

 Villani does tell us that at least some people, the inhabitants of a city whose waters were
filled with crawling worms, did convert to Christianity. Villani, The Final Book, XIII: 84 (plague)
and XIII: 122 and 123 (earthquakes).
 On apocalypticism in the Nuova Cronica, and Villani’s description of these two disasters, see
Green, Chronicle into History, 35 – 38 and especially 37.
 On these words see Green, Chronicle into History, 38. Villani, The Final Book, XIII: 123.
Rala I. Diakité
Introduction II – The Transmission of
Villani’s Nuova Cronica: Manuscripts,
Rewritings, and Print

Introduction
Giovanni Villani’s fourteenth-century Nuova Cronica represents an ambitious
gathering of historical sources, ancient and contemporary, into a universal
chronicle in the vernacular, with Florence at its center. Villani’s choice of the ver-
nacular responded to the needs of a new and broader audience of Florentines,
assuring the chronicle’s popularity, as well as its participation in the develop-
ment of the written vernacular in a period noted for the works of Dante, Boccac-
cio, and Petrarch. The transmission of Villani’s text, from the early manuscript
tradition through the modern print editions, is characterized by complexity, re-
writing, and innovation. The manuscript tradition consists of a large number
of codices, with a high degree of variation among them, revealing the interven-
tions on the part of both author and audience. Within a half century of its ap-
pearance, the Nuova Cronica also inspired a series of abbreviations and rework-
ings within and across genres. The early print tradition of the Nuova Cronica,
spurred by sixteenth-century debates around the codification of the Italian lan-
guage, promoted Villani’s text as a model of vernacular prose, and editors turned
their developing methods of philology and textual criticism to the task of pre-
senting an authoritative version of the work. Giuseppe Porta, editor of the
most recent critical edition of the text, took on the challenge of the complex
manuscript tradition, producing an edition which, though not definitive on all
counts, provides some answers and opens new avenues of inquiry. Our transla-
tion of Villani’s Nuova Cronica Books Eleven and Twelve, mirroring the author’s
goal of accessibility, adds itself to the long journey of this text.

Villani’s Nuova Cronica and Its Early Readers

Judging by the number of extant manuscripts, Villani’s Nuova Cronica enjoyed
immense success, a sort of bestseller status, in its day and beyond. With his

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514265-002
18 Rala I. Diakité

111 manuscripts,⁵² Villani, if he were included, would come in tenth in Bernard

Guenée’s ranking of great European historians of the Middle Ages, just below
Bede, Cassiodorus, and Higdon. His chronicle also surpasses the near one hun-
dred copies of Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale and far exceeds the
forty-nine copies of Froissart’s chronicle. In Italy, it outshines contemporary
chronicles both in vernacular and Latin, such as Dino Compagni’s Cronica,
which has twenty extant copies, or the Gesta Imperatorum et Pontificum with
its two copies.⁵³ As compared to works of literature, there are more copies of Vil-
lani’s chronicle than of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, with its less than sev-
enty manuscripts,⁵⁴ though its numbers hardly approach the more than seven
hundred extant manuscripts of Dante’s Commedia.
While the Nuova Cronica recounts events both near and far,⁵⁵ its intended
readers were most certainly Florentine. In the prologue, Villani identifies his
ideal audience as “our citizens, now and to come”; his text will inspire the Flor-
entines “in virtue and in great actions” for “the well-being and stability of our
Republic” (my italics). Indeed, a majority of the manuscripts seem to have
been produced in Florence and environs. This is evident from the inscriptions

 Giuseppe Porta, editor of the recent critical edition of the Nuova Cronica, compiled a census of
manuscripts of Giovanni, Matteo, and Filippo in three parts. Porta, “Cens. I” (1976), “Cens. II”
(1979), and “Aggiunta al Cens.” (1986). The census lists a total of 111 items, but two of these
are print editions, included for their valuable annotations. To these should be added two manu-
scripts at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 930 and MS 931.
These were both unknown to Porta, since they were held in private collections until after his cen-
sus was published. These two manuscripts are available in complete high-resolution digital ver-
sions at https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digital-collections/digital-collections-beinecke-library.
MS 930 is a fourteenth-century manuscript on paper, written by two hands in cursive chancery.
It includes Book I, Chapter 1 to Book XII, Chapter 69. The auction house description proposes an
extremely early dating, perhaps within the lifetime of the author: see Christie’s, Lot 230: Villani,
Giovanni. On the other hand, MS 931 is a mid-fifteenth-century manuscript on parchment, “a sin-
gle hand, in gothico-humanistica libraria, on the basis of Italian Hybrida.” This is a condensed
version of the chronicle, taking up only fols. 1r–66r, including Book II, Chapter 1 to Book 10,
Chapter 217. See Yale University Beinecke … MS 931 Giovanni Villani Croniche (Summary).
 Guenée, Histoire, 250. Both Alessandro Barbero and Jérémie Rabiot provide useful compara-
tive figures showing the relative popularity of the Villani text. Barbero, “Storia e politica fioren-
tina,” 13–22, and Rabiot, Écrire, comprendre et expliquer, 30-31.
 Branca, Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, vol. 1 and vol. 2. Cursi, Il “Decameron”:
Scritture, scriventi, lettori.
 Villani wished to emulate the broad scope of classical Roman writers, “who treated the great
and small deeds of the Romans, as well as what foreigners were doing in the world,” and thus
he decides to “cover the deeds of the Florentines, extensively, as well as notable things of the
world, briefly.” Villani, Nuova Cronica, IX: 36.
 Introduction II 19

or annotations that tell us who commissioned, copied, owned, lent, and read the
manuscripts and the inflections in the spelling of words.
Of course, Florence in Villani’s day was a large and prosperous urban center,
whose rapid economic growth, based on commerce and banking, had fostered
literacy. Villani himself tells us that in the year 1336, the population of Florence
was ninety thousand, and in the city

We find that at any time, anywhere from eight thousand to ten thousand boys and girls
were learning to read. There were anywhere from one thousand to twelve hundred appren-
tices who were learning arithmetic and calculation in six schools. And there were anywhere
from five hundred fifty to six hundred [students] who were learning grammar and logic in
four large schools.⁵⁶

This newly literate demographic of merchants, artisans, and civil servants were
eager consumers, as well as creators, of vernacular texts. As Alison Cornish
points out, “Italians’ sudden and wide access to reading and writing in this pe-
riod had the effect of turning readers into writers.” This period saw a meteoric
rise in the number of translations of classical and medieval works into the ver-
nacular.⁵⁷ Original vernacular works began to flourish as well—not only the well-
known works by Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, but a wide array of religious
and didactic works, poetry and prose.
In his preface to the chronicle, Villani expresses the desire that his use of the
vernacular will make his work accessible to a wider group of readers, saying: “I
will furnish a faithful narrative in this book in plain vernacular, in order that the
laypeople [without the Latin training of clerics] as much as the literate may draw
therefrom profit and delight.”⁵⁸ Villani addresses his text to readers of both low
and high levels of literacy. Responding to the curiosity of this varied audience,
he included material from a considerable number of literary sources—Virgil,

 “Trovamo che’ fanciulli e fanciulle che stavano a leggere del continuo da VIIIm in Xm. I gar-
zoni che stavano ad aprendere l’abbaco e algorisimo in VI scuole da M in MCC. E quelli che sta-
vano ad aprendere gramatica e loica in IIII grandi scuole da DL in DC.” Villani, Nuova Cronica,
XII: 94. For clarity, abbaco was a kind of business math and algorismo was a calculation with
arabic numbers, both training for commerce, whereas gramatica (grammar) and loica (logic)
were advanced studies which included Latin. For a treatment of schooling in Florence and vicin-
ity during medieval and Renaissance periods, see Black, Education and Society in Florentine Tus-
cany, as well as Davis, Education in Dante’s Florence.
 Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 1– 15.
 Villani writes “E però io fedelmente narrerò per questo libro in piano volgare, a ciò che li
laici siccome gli aletterati ne possano ritrarre frutto e diletto.” Villani, Nuova Cronica, I: 1.
20 Rala I. Diakité

Livy, Statius, William of Tyre, Marco Polo, and Dante, to name only a few⁵⁹—as
well as documentary sources, and his own narrative of events during his day. The
chronicle became a resource for Florentines, bringing them together around a
common understanding of their origins and history.
Responding to the popularity of the Nuova Cronica and the historical prac-
tice modelled by its author, Giovanni’s brother Matteo continued the chronicle
to the year of his death in 1363, and Matteo’s son Filippo added material through
the year 1364.

The Manuscript Tradition

There is no clear indicator of when Villani’s Nuova Cronica began to circulate, as
we have neither an original copy in the author’s hand, nor any manuscript with
firm dating much before the 1370s, which is more than twenty years after the au-
thor’s death in 1348. That said, we are able to conjecture that the circulation of
manuscripts had probably commenced by 1341, since in Book XII: 135, recount-
ing an event from 1341, Villani portrays himself as already famous among his
peers for his chronicle. But it could have been earlier, since many manuscripts
contain only Books I–X, covering events up to October 1333, or Books I–XI: 51,
covering events up until July 1336, and it is thought that these circulated as in-
tegral units before the last books were complete, perhaps not as early as 1333
(since a completed text, given the time required to write and revise, could not
be contemporary to the events themselves), but a few years after 1333 and before
1341.⁶⁰
The manuscript tradition demonstrates an active production and circulation
of the chronicle over a period spanning more than a century. The earliest surviv-

 Franca Ragone treats Villani’s methods in the use of source materials in Giovanni Villani,
13 – 53 and provides a listing of known sources in Giovanni Villani, 16 – 21. As to his sources in
Latin, it is unclear how much Villani translated himself and how much he relied on translations
done by others; Ronald Witt has questioned Villani’s level of proficiency in Latin, suggesting
that he may have accessed many of his sources in translation. Witt, In the Footsteps of the An-
cients, 191.
 Louis Green proposes that Villani begins preparatory work for the chronicle shortly after
1300. The scholar admits the difficulty of determining the timeframe for Villani’s composition
of material covering the years 1280 to 1339, but from textual evidence conjectures that “it was
about 1322 that Villani began making a more or less continuous record of events.” At “some
date between 1333 and 1341,” Villani would have begun to “cast the work…in its final
form,” while also adding more material, which he did until the year of his death in 1348.
Green, Chronicle, 167.
 Introduction II 21

ing manuscripts have been dated to 1370, or just before. Thirty-eight of the extant
manuscripts—about one-third—can be dated to the last quarter of the fourteenth
century. Fourteen—or one-eighth—are datable to the period around the turn of
the century. Forty-eight copies of the Nuova Cronica—or 43 percent—were pro-
duced in the fifteenth century. Only six manuscripts, or 5 percent of the total
number, were produced after 1500, a period which saw the development of print-
ing (and the print edition of the chronicle in 1537), four of these being short ex-
cerpts.
The manuscripts that circulated did not all contain the entire text as we
know it.⁶¹ Of manuscripts that survive today, for example, some include Books
I–X, and others only the last two books, XI–XII. Another group of manuscripts
includes Books I–XI: 51. Just over ten contain the complete text, that is from I
to XII. It is likely that these varied configurations reflect the way that the author
released the text as he progressed in his work. This will be discussed further, in
the section on the critical edition.
The manuscripts, in their physical characteristics, display great variety in
format and materials, a wide range in quality, and evidence of diverse modes
of production. That said, the majority are of modest nature, meant more to be
handled and consulted than kept as precious treasures.⁶² Villani’s intention
was to facilitate selective reading; indeed, he states that “we will begin … to
mark the years at the top of every page, each time following the next in an or-
derly manner, so that one might more easily find the things of the past.”⁶³ Cer-
tain manuscripts (eighteen) also have a listing of chapter headings preceding the
text, which assisted the reader wishing to find a specific part of the text.⁶⁴

 In the manuscript and print tradition, the Nuova Cronica has typically been divided into
twelve books. In a limited number of manuscripts, there is the beginning of a new book midway
through Book I (Book I, Chapter 38) which causes all the subsequent books to move up by one,
so the last book is actually the thirteenth; such is the case in Palatino 1081 (Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale di Firenze, hereafter BNCF). Giuseppe Porta has followed this numbering of books in
his edition. While speaking of the manuscript and print tradition, I prefer to retain the
twelve-book numbering so as to avoid confusion. When citing a locus in the text, I will use Por-
ta’s numbering.
 Ragone, “Le scritture parlate,” 805.
 “E cominceremo omai al di sopra d’ogni carta a segnare gli anni Domini seguendo di tempo
in tempo ordinatamente, acciò che più apertamente si possano ritrovare le cose passate.” Villa-
ni, Nuova Cronica, V: 18.
 Ragone suggests that the “apparatus of consultation” not only facilitated the reader’s non-
linear encounter with the text, but the author’s as well, as he made additions to different areas
of the text. Ragone, Giovanni Villani, 133 – 36.
22 Rala I. Diakité

The majority are on baser material, paper; only a small number (nineteen) of
the manuscripts are on more costly parchment. The great majority are in gothic
cursive while a few of the the older manuscripts are written in the more formal
gothic letter libraria script, with some of the later manuscripts in a humanistic
cursive. While most of the Nuova Cronica manuscripts are done in the hand of
a single copyist, eighteen are in two or more hands. The majority of manuscripts
have rubrics and chapter initials in colored ink, often with larger and more elab-
orate initials at the beginning of a book; this ornamentation varies widely in
quality, some quite refined, with use of gold and colored inks (fifteen of
these), and others with lesser artistry and materials, or applied to only part of
the text.
The inscriptions and annotations of the manuscripts offer a glimpse into the
variety of copyists, owners, readers, and scholars of the Nuova Cronica. An early
manuscript, the Riccardiano 1532, is prized for its inscription in the hand of Vil-
lani’s son: “which book I, Matteo of Giovanni Villani, had copied in the year 1377,
and it is exact.”⁶⁵ Inscriptions furnish evidence of readers of diverse social strata:
names from wealthy families such as Altoviti, Benci, Strozzi are to be found, as
well as those of lower status such as Antonio di Benedetto di Francesco “petti-
nagnolo” (a comb maker), who copied the text for himself, alongside other his-
torical and religious texts.⁶⁶ Another manuscript was owned by a potter, who
signs “Clemente di Giovanni di Clemente Ricci, potter.”⁶⁷ Inscriptions and read-
ing notes also reveal scholars who gravitated to Villani’s chronicle, such as Gian-
nozzo Manetti (1396–1459), Gino di Neri Capponi (1423 – 1487), Giovanni Mazzuo-
li, “lo Stradino” (1480 – 1549), Vincenzo Borghini (1515 – 1580), Ludovico
Castelvetro (1505 – 1571), Sperone Speroni (1500 – 1588), Giovanni Angelo Duke
of Altemps (1586 – 1620), and senator and historian Carlo di Tommaso Strozzi
(1587–1671).⁶⁸
Some manuscripts of particular interest are: 1) the previously mentioned
Ricc. 1532, presumably copied in 1377 by Villani’s son Matteo from an original
exemplar, known as the “Davanzati,” for one of its owners; this manuscript is

 Ricc. 1532, in Porta, “Cens. I,” 108.

 Pal. lat. 584, in Porta, “Cens. I,” 101. Marco Cursi describes the maker of this manuscript as a
person having the lowest level of writing skills, incapable, but extraordinarily tenacious. This
miscellany in vernacular is chaotic, lacking any organizational features to assist the reader.
Cursi, “Il libro del mercante: Tipicità ed eccezioni,” 167– 70.
 Porta, “Cens. I,” 112. “Questo libro sie di chimenti digiovanj di chimenti ricj vasaio.”
 Porta, “Cens. I,” 68 (Manetti); “Cens. I,” 88 – 89 (Capponi); “Cens. I,” 96 and “Cens. II,” 103 –
104 (Mazzuoli); “Cens. I,” 71– 72 and “Cens. II,” 98 (Borghini); “Cens. II,” 96 – 97 (Castelvetro);
“Cens. II,” 110 – 11 (Speroni); “Cens. I,” 67– 68 (Altemps); “Cens. I,” 90 – 91, 93, 99 (Strozzi).
 Introduction II 23

one of the most trusted versions; 2) The Ricc. 1533, a manuscript of high quality
thought by Porta to represent the “primitive” version of the text; 3) Manuscript
II.I.289 of the National Library of Florence, thought by scholar Arrigo Castellani
to be the oldest of all the manuscripts; 4) The Pal. 1081, the base of some early
print editions; 5) The Marciana Italiano Z.34, one of the earliest manuscripts
(around 1370) which ends at Book VII: 31, studied by sixteenth-century scholars
associated with the Accademia della Crusca; 6) The Marciana Italiano VI.270, an-
other very early manuscript (1368 – 1370) containing Books I–V; and 7) Chigi
L.VIII.296, a luxury manuscript on parchment, with finely decorated initials
and over two hundred color illustrations of historical scenes, held at the Vatican
Library in Rome.⁶⁹

Rewritings of the Nuova Cronica Material

As rich as it is, the manuscript tradition represents only a partial picture of the
transmission of the Nuova Cronica in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The
huge success of Villani’s text, the weak sense of authorship in the medieval pe-
riod, the increased literacy in the flourishing mercantile city, and the lack of an
established historical genre, provided fertile ground for a wide and multiform
array of rewritings of the chronicle. Indeed, Porta notes that “In the fourteenth
century, and in the following centuries … a secondary literature develops, con-
sisting of anthologies and compendia, passed down independently by single co-
dices, or as extracts … or late continuations in prose … or extended versifica-
tions.”⁷⁰
Some early readers of Villani’s text adapted it to their needs by creating con-
densed versions. Abbreviating was viewed as a worthy and essential task in the
Middle Ages. From a practical standpoint, the Nuova Cronica was a voluminous
text, not only hard to read cover to cover, but physically large and unwieldy in
the two-volume format that included all its books. As previously mentioned,
the textual apparatus of the chronicle (rubric list, dates at head of pages) was
meant to facilitate consultation of the text and implied a selective reading
which might address the needs of the reader in that moment. A condensed ver-

 Frugoni and Barbero, Il Villani illustrato; Magnani, La cronaca figurata; Cursi, “Un nuovo co-
dice.”
 “Nel Trecento e nei secoli successivi, in dipendenza del ruolo villaniano si sviluppa una let-
teratura secondaria formata da fioretti e compendi, tramandati indipendentemente da singoli
codici, o estratti … o tarde continuazioni in prosa … o estese versificazioni.” Porta, “La cronaca
a Firenze,” 160.
24 Rala I. Diakité

sion of the New Chronicle could concretize this selective reading, including only
what was of interest to its intended audience.
A work known as the Cronaca di Partenope (1348 – 1350) represents a re-
purposing of Villani for a Southern Italian audience.⁷¹ Composed shortly after
the death of our chronicler, it consists of five separate but interconnected seg-
ments compiled by an unidentified author somehow connected to the Angevin
court, writing for that audience. The third section contains two extended excerpts
from Villani’s chronicle which include only those chapters relevant to the city
and the Kingdom of Naples.⁷² As Samantha Kelly notes, the Cronaca di Partenope
was the first vernacular chronicle of Naples, and “became the foundation for the
historiography of both the city and the kingdom of Naples into the seventeenth
century,” inspiring in turn a number of works.⁷³ Given the strong commercial and
political ties between Florence and Naples, the transfer of the New Chronicle to
this different environment is not surprising, but the fact that this rewriting hap-
pens so early and is so fecund, speaks to the appeal and adaptability of Villani’s
text.
The Storia fiorentina of Ricordano Malispini (last quarter of the four-
teenth century) which follows Villani’s text up to the year 1286 was long
thought to be a thirteenth-century work that Villani himself had used as a
source, but is now considered the work of a falsifier who composed it in the
last quarter of the fourteenth century, perhaps from a compilation.⁷⁴ The author,
Malispini, states in the prologue, “And because I know that everyone likes brev-
ity, I will speak as briefly as I can, covering the material I have planned to tell.”⁷⁵
Malispini has removed material, usually non-Florentine topics, and has inserted
information on old Florentine families and urban archeology.

 Caracciolo, The Cronaca di Partenope. The first print edition was Giovanni Villani, Cronaca di
Partenope, edited by F. del Tuppo (Naples: Francesco del Tuppo, 1486), printed more than fifty
years earlier than the Nuova Cronica, and mistakenly under Villani’s name. The second edition
was Chroniche de la inclyta cità de Napole emendatissime, con li bagni de Puzolo et Ischia. Nuoua-
mente ristampate, con la tauola (Stampate in la inclita cita de Neapole: per m. Euangelista di
Presenzani de Pauia, adi XXVII de Aprile 1526).
 “IIIa, the longer of the two excerpts (168 chapters), begins with the Saracen sieges of the
eighth century and continues to 1325, while IIIb (59 chapters) begins with Villani’s opening
chapters of universal history and proceeds to 1296.” Caracciolo, Cronaca, 11.
 Caracciolo, Cronaca, 4– 5.
 Malispini, Storia fiorentina. For details and bibliography on the now concluded scholarly dis-
cussion regarding the dating of Malispini’s chronicle with respect to Villani’s see Mastroddi,
“Ricordano Malispini.”
 “… perch’io soe che a ciascuno piace brevità, si dirò brievemente il più ch’io potrò, sodisfa-
cendo alla materia, a quale hoe ordinata di dire.” Malispini, Storia fiorentina, 1.
 Introduction II 25

Marchionne di Coppo Stefani dei Buonaiuti (after 1385), in the preface of

his Cronaca fiorentina, tells of his “toil and time and care spent in finding
books and writings, so that … [he] … could bring to those who desired it, the
memory of the founding of Florence and its exaltation and the ways of life of
its citizens and the governments of the city.”⁷⁶ Despite his pretensions to tedious
research, the chronicler follows Villani’s text from biblical origins up to 1348,
using other sources for events to 1385.⁷⁷ He employs a method of selection
which privileges material concerning Florence, leaving out Villani’s wider hori-
zons of Italy, Europe, and beyond. His adaptation of Villani’s material greatly re-
duces the supernatural and astrological interpretations of events, and focuses
narrowly on the internal politics of Florence, with some concern for powerful
families.⁷⁸
Domenico di Leonardo Buoninsegni’s Istoria Fiorentina (after 1460)⁷⁹
openly declares its dependence on the chronicle of Giovanni (with the continu-
ations of Matteo and Filippo). Buoninsegni was a wealthy Florentine patrician
and merchant, who held important offices in the Florentine government, and in-
volved himself in humanist study and pursuits during the early years of the Med-
ici regime. In the prologue to the Istoria, he explains the motivation for his ab-
breviation of Villani’s text:

Whosoever toils to condense writings, and most of all lengthy histories by others, should be
commended rather than blamed … And the reason it is good to do so, is because the dis-
position of the majority of men or the bad habit is such that, out of tedium, people abandon
reading long stories, and the short ones they read.⁸⁰

 “… mi puosi in cuore di durare fatica e mettere tempo e sollecitudine in ritrovare libri e scrit-
ture, acciò ch’io potessi chi di ciò avesse vaghezza riducere loro a memoria la edificazione della
città di Firenze e la esaltazione di quella e i modi della vita de’ cittadini e i reggimenti della
città.” Buonaiuti, Cronica fiorentina, 1.
 Ragone, Giovanni Villani, 81.
 Buonaiuti, Cronaca fiorentina. Ragone, Giovanni Villani, 80 – 102, 165 – 76. De Vincentiis,
“Scrittura storica e politica cittadina,” and Sestan, “Buonaiuti, Baldassarre, detto Marchionne.”
 Buoninsegni, Historia Fiorentina.
 “Qualunque s’affaticha in abbreviare scripture et massimamente storie distesamente tractate
da altri, più tosto de’ essere commendato che in alcuno modo biasimato … . Di quinci nasce
etiandio la ragione che bene sia a così fare, perché se la complessione di grande parte degli huo-
mini o il cattivo uso è tale che per tedio abandonano il legere le lunghe storie, et le brievi leg-
gerebono.” This prologue, absent from the print edition of Buoninsegni’s chronicle (Historia
Fiorentina (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1581)), was rediscovered, edited, and presented by An-
thony Molho in “Domenico di Leonardo Buoninsegni’s Istoria Fiorentina,” 256 – 66. See also
Molho, “Domenico Buoninsegni.”
26 Rala I. Diakité

Like Malispini and Marchionne, Buoninsegni selects “only those things that
seem to belong to our city of Florence,” and eliminates “things regarding foreign
and far-flung countries.”⁸¹ After thus condensing Villani’s chronicle, Buoninseg-
ni adds material to cover events through the year 1460. Anthony Molho observes
that Buoninsegni’s Istoria Fiorentina demonstrates the survival of a “very tena-
cious tradition of condensing and copying” within the civic environment of
the humanist era.⁸²
The following three abbreviated versions of the Nuova Cronica are found in
one copy only, produced apparently for individual use. The “Lami compilation”
(second half of fourteenth century) , named after scholar Vittorio Lami who
discovered it, was composed in the fourteenth century by an anonymous author
who eliminated the first twenty-eight chapters of Villani’s text, and others
throughout the work.⁸³ Lami provided strong evidence that this compilation
was the source for the above-mentioned chronicle of Malispini, thus helping
to establish the precedence of Villani’s text.⁸⁴ Another abbreviated version was
penned by a shoemaker, Domenico di Giovanni del Terosi (late fourteenth
or early fifteenth century). In a subscription, he states that his source was
“a book about all the feats that were in all the lands of Italy and in many
parts of the world” and that he “drew from it only the feats that belonged to
and happened in the city and commune of Florence, and they are beautiful
and marvelous things, and they do not go beyond 15 July 1336 because in that
book there was nothing further.”⁸⁵ The Manuscript 931 at the Beinecke Library
(late fourteenth or early fifteenth century), demonstrates a similar focus on
Florence; its author manages to condense the vast New Chronicle material
from the origins to 1332 into only 130 handwritten pages.
A different sort of abridgement is represented by a small set of chapters from
Book XIII (1– 5, 6, 16, and 17) recounting the short-lived rule of Walter of Brienne
(also known as the Duke of Athens) over Florence. In a moment of economic cri-

 “… pigliando solamente quelle cose che mi paranno apartenenti alla nostra città di Firenze,
et lasciando quelle de’ paesi strani et longiunqui.” Molho, “Domenico di Leonardo Buoninseg-
ni’s Istoria Fiorentina,” 265.
 Molho, “Domenico di Leonardo Buoninsegni’s Istoria Fiorentina,” 264.
 Lami, “Di un compendio inedito,” 379.
 Lami, “Di un compendio inedito,”415 – 16.
 “… dun | libro chetrataua di tutti ifatti chefurono | intutte letterre d itali edimolte parte del m|
ondo esolamente uetrassi i fatti che si aparten | chono e auenono alla citta echomune difiren|ze
edi loro operazione emis-fatti che auenono alla | nostra citta che sono belle emarauigliose chose
| enontratano piu auanti che nel mille trec|iento trentasei adi . xv. di luglio perche in | quello
libro non trattaua piu avanti.” Tenneroni, “Di un compendio inedito,” 4. See also Ragone, Gio-
vanni Villani, 201– 2.
 Introduction II 27

sis, the Florentine grandi invited this French noble to lead the city, and shortly
thereafter the popolo proclaimed him signore for life, but he was expelled less
than a year later because of his tyrannical rule. This set of chapters, with slight
variations, is present in nine compendia-type manuscripts, functioning as a sort
of mini-text.⁸⁶
As in the above example, the Nuova Cronica text may appear in partial form,
alongside other texts; indeed, about one-quarter of the Villani manuscripts are
found in compilations.⁸⁷ The compilation is often produced by a person of mid-
dling culture, able to write, who wished to gather together texts that interested
them, in a sort of portable library. One example, documented by Porta in his cen-
sus, is a fifteenth-century manuscript, Magliabechiano XXV.345 in the National
Library of Florence, which includes, in addition to Villani’s Duke of Athens ex-
tract, orations by several fifteenth-century humanist figures, a letter by Leonardo
Bruni, a small compendium of various chronicles found in two other manu-
scripts, Goro Dati’s History of Florence, various historical notes, a letter by Gio-
vanni Boccaccio to Pino de’ Rossi (1362), a partial poem, some astrological
notes, and sayings from people involved in the Duke of Athens events.⁸⁸ These
types of texts offer us rich insights into the cultural horizons of readers. In the
Magl. XXV.345, the fact that Villani is found in the context of humanist works,
suggests that his work still held value for the generation succeeding his own.

Rewritings Across Genre

Some of the rewritings of Villani’s New Chronicle have involved the transfer of the
material across genre or language in an effort to reach a new audience in a new
cultural context. This section will present three adaptations of Villani, by authors
Antonio Pucci, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, and Domenico di Giovanni da Corella.
The Centiloquio by Antonio Pucci (1373) transforms Villani’s chronicle—up
to the year 1336—into Dantean tercets intended for public spoken or sung perfor-
mance.⁸⁹ Pucci, a bell ringer and town crier for the Commune of Florence, wrote

 Nine manuscripts have an excerpt which includes Nuova Cronica, XIII: 1– 5, 6, 16, and 17.
From Porta, “Cens. I” and “Cens. II,” manuscripts #29, #53, #56, #60, #61, #65, #66, #70, #76.
 There are twenty-six manuscripts in which the Villani text appears in a compilation. Using
Porta’s numbering of manuscripts from “Cens. I” and “Cens. II,” these are: 16, 20, 28, 29, 36, 42,
45, 46, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 82, 86, 95, 106, 107.
 Porta, “Cens. I,” 98 – 99.
 There is no critical edition, but the text is available in Antonio Pucci, Delle poesie di Antonio
Pucci.
28 Rala I. Diakité

comic poetry, civic poetry, and stories on legendary subjects, many of which were
intended for oral performance before a popular audience, in the tradition of the
cantari. ⁹⁰ The opening of the Centiloquio highlights the low register, orality and
brevity:

In praise and honor of the true Deity

I wish to speak of ancient deeds,
For the pleasure of coarse men like me.
And because lengthy preaching is tedious,
And it seems, that those who read or listen
sometimes complain,
I was seized one day by a strong desire
To condense the Chronicle into rhyme,
If death does not first strip me of life.⁹¹

We know that the Centiloquio was complete by around 1373, judging by the clos-
ing chapter which describes the state of Florence in that year and makes an
eventually unfulfilled request to one of Villani’s sons to furnish the remainder
of the text, so that he could continue his work. In her analysis of Pucci’s rewrit-
ing of the chronicle, Maria Cristina Cabani discerns a desire for brevity with re-
spect to his source, a more evident presence of the narrating voice, a greater
focus on Florence for a Florentine audience of middle to low culture, and an em-
phasis on concrete events that the public would have taken part in, such as fu-
nerals, processions, and floods.⁹²
The Pecorone (1378 – 1385) re-proposes the text of the Nuova Cronica in the
form of short stories, in the wake of the huge success of Boccaccio’s Decameron

 Recent valuable contributions to the study of Pucci’s relation to Villani are: Cella, “Il ‘Cen-
tiloquio’ di Antonio Pucci e la ‘Nuova Cronica’ di Giovanni Villani,” and Cabani, “Sul Centiloquio
di Antonio Pucci.” Regarding Pucci’s other historical poems, see Cabani, “I cantari della Guerra
di Pisa,” and Ute Limacher-Riebold, “I componimenti di argomento storico di Antonio Pucci.”
On town criers, see Milner, “Fanno bandire, notificare, et expressamente comandare.” Wilson
Blake’s engaging and insightful study on the canterino tradition in Renaissance Italy, with sec-
tions on both Antonio Pucci and Malizia Barattone (who can be connected to the Pecorone, an-
other rewriting of the New Chronicle), came out just as this volume was going to print; see Blake,
Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy.
 Pucci, Centiloquio, I: 1, “A laude, ed onor del vero Iddio / Di fatti antichi intendo ragionare, /
A diletto d’ogni uom grosso, com’io. / E perchè attedia il lungo sermonare, / E par, ch’alcuna
volta se ne doglia / Colui, che legge, e chi lo sta a ascoltare; / Venne un giorno a me talento,
e voglia / Di breviar la Cronica per rima / Se morte in prima vita non mi spoglia.”
 Cabani, “Sul Centiloquio di Antonio Pucci,” 21– 81. See also Roberta Cella, “Il Centiloquio.”
 Introduction II 29

and the parallel flourishing of vernacular prose.⁹³ The unidentified author, who
became known as Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, set material from Villani’s chronicle
into a narrative frame that mimics Boccaccio’s: two interlocutors, a monk and a
nun, tell each other one story per day for twenty-five days. Of the Pecorone’s fifty
stories, thirty-two are drawn from Villani’s text, and each story may include sev-
eral chapters from the chronicle (Day 25, Story 1, for example, combines sixty-
three chapters!).⁹⁴ The other stories are drawn from contemporary traditions.
Scholars have noted an almost exact correspondence between the above-men-
tioned Day 25 Story 1 and the Part IIIA of Cronaca di Partenope, hypothesizing
that Giovanni Fiorentino may have accessed the Villani material via a Neapolitan
version of the chronicle and not directly.⁹⁵
Ser Giovanni made some revisions to the text borrowed from Villani, even in
ways that could diverge from the perspective of his source. He made additions of
fantastical material to events narrated by the chronicle—the magical qualities of
the porphyry columns given to Florence by Pisa, for example. In the latter sec-
tion of the Pecorone, however, after Day 18, the source text from Villani is hardly
edited at all. The Pecorone, once thought to be of limited interest because of its
dependence on the Nuova Cronica, has more recently been appreciated for the
light it sheds on issues of intertextuality and the relationship between develop-
ing forms of historical and fictional narrative.⁹⁶
Almost one century later, we find a humanist-era version of the Nuova Cron-
ica, this time a Latin poem in heroic hexameters, known as De Origine Urbis
Florentiae (1475 – 1483) (On the origins of the city of Florence), by the Domini-
can friar Domenico di Giovanni da Corella.⁹⁷ Da Corella spent most of his life

 Giovanni Fiorentino, Pecorone, ed. Esposito. The title and author name are drawn from a
sonnet at the end of the work (568, vv. 3–7), whose authenticity, however, is not certain.
 The correlation of chapters between Ser Giovanni’s stories and Villani’s chapters can be
found in Giovanni Fiorentino, Pecorone, xviii–xxii.
 Messina, “Dalla cronaca alla novella,” 95, citing Stoppelli, “I sonetti,” 191. In fact, in his ar-
ticle, Stoppelli presents persuasive evidence that the Ser Giovanni author of the Pecorone was a
Florentine court performer, active at the Angevin court of Naples, whose stage name was Malizia
Barattone.
 The 2018 doctoral dissertation of Felice Messina, “Dalla cronaca alla novella, tra historia e
fabula: Paradigmi interpretativi e forme di riscrittura della Nuova cronica di Giovanni Villani”
examines both the Cronaca di Partenope (39 – 90) and the Pecorone (91– 149) as reinterpretations
and rewritings of Villani’s Nuova Cronica. For further information on Ser Giovanni, see Pignatti,
“Ser Giovanni.”
 For recent bibliography of Da Corella’s De Origine Urbis Florentiae, See Amato, “Il manoscrit-
to di dedica,” 491. For Da Corella’s biography and public readings of Dante in 1469, see Ricci,
“Domenico da Corella.”
30 Rala I. Diakité

at the convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, serving the Dominican order
in various offices, and finally as vicar general from 1415 to 1453. At the end of his
term as vicar general, he devoted himself to poetry, writing the more famous The-
otocon (1464– 1465) and then the De Origine. The poem, articulated into six long
books, follows the first six books of the Nuova Cronica, from the origins of Flor-
ence through the arrival of Guelph champion Charles of Anjou in 1267. Along
with Villani, Leonardo Bruni is also a source. The poem celebrates the happy
state of Florence under the rule of the Medici, beginning with a rather triumphal
tone:

Florence, the noble colony founded long ago by the Romans,

Built under the favorable star of Mars,
Which, full of the wind of benign fortune,
Now surpasses the Tuscan cities in wealth and strength
O citizens, inspiring me, an old man, to renew poetry …⁹⁸

The poem includes an excursus regarding the festive tournaments in Florence of

1475, in which Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici participated. It did not circulate
widely, and soon fell into obscurity—there are only two extant manuscripts.⁹⁹ Da
Corella’s De Origine demonstrates the desire to adapt Villani’s text to a new era of
humanist classicism and authoritarian Medici rule, as well as the difficulty of
that endeavor.

The Print Tradition

The print tradition of the Nuova Cronica unfolds in parallel with the growth of
the printing industry in Italy, as well as the development of editing methods,
and the consequent standardization of vernacular Italian.¹⁰⁰ The print editions
of Villani’s chronicle also reflect the nascent fields of manuscript study (paleog-
raphy) and textual criticism (philology) that were a part of humanistic study in
the Renaissance. Most important, for the fortune of Villani in the sixteenth cen-
tury, was a renewal of interest in the vernacular, which became manifest in the
“Questione della Lingua,” a lively debate among scholars and writers concerning

 “Urbs a Romanis olim praeclara Colonis / Edita sub dextro Florentia sidere Martis / Quae
suit, & flatu fortunae plena benignae / Nunc opibus superat Thuscas, & viribus urbes, / Me
vetus, o cives, renovare poema coegit … .” This text can be accessed in the partial transcription
provided by Bandini in his edition of Corella’s De Origine, vol. 3, col. 864.
 Amato, “Il manoscritto di dedica,” 493, n. 8.
 Richardson, Print Culture, 182– 83.
 Introduction II 31

the type of vernacular that should form the basis for the standard written Italian.
In that context, Villani was prized as an example of the purity of fourteenth-cen-
tury vernacular. This interest in the linguistic aspect of the Nuova Cronica en-
dures, even as historical methods and styles change over the centuries. The im-
portant print editions of the Nuova Cronica are four from the sixteenth century,
one from the eighteenth century, and one nineteenth-century edition.
The first print edition of Villani’s chronicle appeared in 1537, published by
Bartolomeo Zanetti in Venice, with the title Croniche di Messer Giovanni Vil-
lani… . It was edited by Giacomo Fasolo and included only the first ten books.¹⁰¹
The timing of the edition follows upon the publication of the influential 1525
treatise Prose della volgar lingua (Prose in the vernacular) by the Venetian cardi-
nal, scholar, and literary theorist Pietro Bembo. Bembo’s treatise promoted the
Florentine vernacular of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a model for
written Italian.¹⁰² He included Villani among a select few great writers of
prose, describing him as one “who was of Dante’s time and wrote the Florentine
history, and is not to be slighted.”¹⁰³Another stimulus to the study of the vernac-
ular was the rediscovery of Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia (On the eloquence of
the vernacular), an unfinished treatise on the Italian vernacular, written in the
early fourteenth century.¹⁰⁴ In 1529, it had been rescued from oblivion and pub-
lished in an Italian translation by the Vicentine playwright Gian Giorgio Trissi-
no.¹⁰⁵
The preface of the Zanetti edition highlights the linguistic qualities of Villa-
ni’s text, with a sense of admiration, and unfamiliarity. The editor states that he
decided to “enrich the vernacular with such a book” which he describes as “so
sublime a work.”¹⁰⁶ Fasolo’s editorial method involved the use of one excellent
manuscript (one that was “extremely antique,” reflecting “the perfection and
method of the writer that composed it”) which he attempted to reproduce faith-
fully. The reader was “not to marvel if some words to be found there are not com-
mon in our times, and those that are in use, [are] written differently than at pre-

 Fasolo most likely had a manuscript containing only ten books, but it has not been iden-
tified by scholars.
 Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua.
 In Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, Bk 2, pt. II: “Giovan Villani, che al tempo di Dante fu e
la istoria fiorentina scrisse, non è da sprezzare … .”
 Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia.
 Trissino, De la volgare eloquenzia. Printer for that edition was Tolomeo Gianicolo, a pseu-
donym for Bartolomeo Zanetti, who was publisher for the 1537 print edition of the Nuova Cron-
ica. For a modern edition of Trissino’s work, see Trissino, De vulgari eloquentia, ed. Fenzi.
 “… all’ultimo … [ho] … deliberato d’arricchire la vulgare lingua nostra lingua d’uno tanto
libro.” Villani, Le Croniche, ed. Fasolo, 1v.
32 Rala I. Diakité

sent, [as] one knows, that this is an ancient writer, [who] spoke according to the
language of his times, and used its spelling and ways of writing, as much in
verbs as in nouns, which things, although they may vary from current usage,
we have not wished to touch them.”¹⁰⁷
The Venetian printing of the 1537 Zanetti edition may have been influenced
by unstable economic and political conditions in Florence. During this period,
the printing industry of Florence was at a low point, whereas that of Venice
was thriving. Florence had seen the expulsion of the Medici in 1527, the republic
re-established, the siege of Florence by Charles V in 1530, and the return to
power of the Medici, with the installation of Alessandro de’ Medici as hereditary
duke.¹⁰⁸ Just six months before the publication of the Zanetti edition, in January
of 1537, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, had been assassinated.
Seventeen-year-old Cosimo de’ Medici, of a cadet line of the family, was made
duke, and in July, repelled an attack led by Florentine rebels at Montemurlo, out-
side Florence.
Almost twenty years later, in 1554, the remaining books of Villani’s chronicle
were released under the title La seconda parte della Cronica universale … ¹⁰⁹
by the official ducal printer Lorenzo Torrentino of Florence.¹¹⁰ In the same
year, Torrentino published the first edition of the chronicle of Matteo Villani,
who had continued his brother Giovanni’s chronicle until 1363.¹¹¹ Lodovico Do-
menichi, the editor of Matteo Villani’s text, and probably also editor of the un-
signed Second Part, attempted more sophisticated methods. In the preface to
Matteo’s chronicle, Domenichi stated that, on account of illiterate copyists, the
manuscripts were mostly incorrect, so he had amended the text with other
manuscripts, with the advice of men of judgment. He had brought the text to
the best possible state, while not at all changing the meaning.¹¹² Villani scholar
Francesco Paolo Luiso discovered the exemplar for this edition of the Nuova

 In Villani Le croniche, ed. Fasolo, 2r, “antichissimo” … “quella perfectione & modo che esso
Scrittore le ha composta” … “ne ti maraviglierai se alcuno vocabulo in essa truovassi non solito a
nostri tempi, e quegli che sono in uso, altrimenti scritti di quello che al presente, si sa, per esser
questo scrittore antichissimo, & secondo la lingua de sui tempi hauere parlato, & usata la sua
orthographia, & modo di scrivere, tanto i verbi quanto i nomi, le quali cose, ben che siano varie
da quello che si usa, non habbiamo uoluto pero’ toccare.”
 For the effects of political events on printing in Florence during this period, see Pettas,
Giunti, 40–41; Richardson, Print Culture, 127.
 Villani, La Seconda Parte della Cronica Universale de Suoi Tempi (1554).
 He was a Fleming, né Lorenz van den Bleek. On Torrentino as the ducal printer of Florence,
and his first commissions, see Kemp, “Florentine Pandects,” and Pettas, Giunti, 48, 66 – 69.
 Only Books I–IV were included. M. Villani, La prima parte della Cronica Universale.
 M. Villani, La prima parte, 3v.
 Introduction II 33

Cronica; it was in fact a fourteenth-century manuscript, Vecchio Pal. 1023 (now

called Pal. 1081), which showed drops of ink, printer’s catchwords and numera-
tion, and a series of detailed corrections made by the editor.¹¹³ Luiso was able to
identify a few reasonable corrections, but many others that are arbitrary or even
ideologically driven, along with some egregious errors.¹¹⁴ The next edition of
1559 incorporates this one.
The Giunti edition of 1559 is the first printing of the entire text of the Nuova
Cronica. Retitled now, in line with humanist tastes, as “Historie” (or histories) in
the place of “Cronaca” (chronicle), it basically reproduced the Zanetti and Tor-
rentino editions, combining them into a “complete set” as it were, edited by Re-
migio Nannini. Significantly, though the Giunti press was based in Florence, the
Giunti had the edition printed for them in Venice, by Niccolò Bevilaqua—for the
first time. Pettas, in his masterful history of the Giunti press of Florence, consid-
ers this an “important departure, that should have shamed Duke Cosimo.” They
did this to avoid running afoul of the ten-year copyright of the Torrentino 1554
edition, but possibly also because of Florence’s “tariffs … both many and
high,” costly materials, and greater distribution expenses.¹¹⁵
The editor Nannini compares Villani’s text to “antique medallions” in need
of “settings or frames,” which can protect and beautify them. In an extended
metaphor, the editor likens his annotations to these settings. He also calls the
chronicle “a most beautiful museum piece.” Nannini states that he did not
want to change anything in the spellings or the expressions, except for a few
commas, so that the reader can see the great difference between modern and an-
cient writers, and since restoration of an antique can make it seem less genu-
ine.¹¹⁶
Incidentally, Porta’s census includes a copy of the 1559 Giunti edition,
marked up with textual variants and a note identifying the original manuscript
upon which the edition was based: the Pal. 1081. It bears an owner’s inscription
“Vincenti’ Borghinj liber.”¹¹⁷ Vincenzio Borghini (1515–1580), an influential fig-

 Luiso, “Le edizioni,” 297. Porta, “Cens. I,” 102.

 Luiso, “Le edizioni,” 296 – 309, and see also Richardson, Print Culture, 138 – 39.
 The Giunti, in a 1563 petition to gain the ducal printing contract after the death of Torren-
tino, compared the difficulty of printing in Florence with the better circumstances in “Venice,
France and Germany … [where] … printing is flourishing and there are able artisans and every-
thing is cheaper.” Distribution was easier in Venice as well, as “Venice … [is] … where people
come to buy.” Pettas, Giunti, 84– 85.
 “medaglie antiche,” “ornamenti o cerchi,” “bellissima anticaglia.” Villani, La prima parte,
ed. Nannini, 3r, 3v.
 Porta, “Cens. I,” 82. He also owned another manuscript, now held at the Florentine Biblio-
teca Laurenziana, LXII.5. Porta, “Cens. I,” 70–71.
34 Rala I. Diakité

ure in the cultural and intellectual sphere of Florence under Grand Duke Cosimo
I de’ Medici, made important advances in methods of philology and textual criti-
cism of vernacular literature.¹¹⁸ He dedicated himself to the study of the lan-
guage of Villani, and having harshly criticized the 1559 Giunti edition, unfortu-
nately died before he could apply his research to an improved edition.¹¹⁹
The next edition was published in 1587 by the Giunti of Florence, under the
title Storia di Giovanni Villani Cittadino Fiorentino. ¹²⁰ This edition, overseen
by Baccio Valori, a respected member of the Accademia Fiorentina, is supposed-
ly based on the 1559 Giunti edition, supplemented by the Contarini and Torna-
quinci manuscripts (Italiano Z.34 and II.i.289).¹²¹ In his prologue, Valori praises
the language of the chronicle—“if one desires a Tuscan writer, pure and purged,
it is Giovanni Villani”—but then makes wordplays on Villani’s last name: that au-
thor has been “rudely [villanamente] lacerated by the print editions,” something
Valori has noticed in his “rustic [villanesco] leisure.” Valori’s literary friends have
asked him to bring forward a text that he has nearby, since there has been “such
growth in the prestige of our language, such that by now it is studied like Latin
and Greek.”¹²² This 1587 edition of the chronicle was used as one of the sources
for the first dictionary of the Italian language, the Vocabolario della Crusca, pub-
lished in 1612.¹²³
After a pause of almost 150 years, in the pre-Enlightenment era, Villani’s
chronicle was published with the Latin title Johannis Villani Florentini Historia
universalis a condita Florentiae usque ad annum MCCCXLVIII by the eminent
scholar and historian, Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1728). The impetus for Mura-
tori’s initial interest in medieval historical texts was a juridical conflict, the
Church’s claim on lands of the Este family, his Modenese patrons. His research
later evolved into the monumental twenty-eight-volume series of historical works
called the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab anno æræ christianæ 500 ad annum
1500 of which Villani’s Nuova Cronica is a part. Between 1723 and 1751, Muratori
collected, oversaw the editing of, and published 2,116 works—over 2,000 of them

 For a reassessment of his role in the development of lexicography and his role in the Ac-
cademia della Crusca, see Woodhouse, “Borghini.”
 Borghini’s research notes and his unfinished annotations on the Nuova Cronica have been
published in a critical edition by Riccardo Drusi. See Borghini, Annotazioni sopra Giovanni Villani.
 Villani, Storia, ed. Valori.
 Richardson, Print Culture, 175.
 Villani, Storia, ed. Valori, 2.
 See Accademia della Crusca, Lessicografia della Crusca in rete.
 Introduction II 35

previously unedited.¹²⁴ For Villani’s text, he relied upon the 1559 Giunti edition,
amended with the “Recanati” codex (Italiano Z.34) which had been the base for
the Zanetti edition, plus another from the Ambrosiana Library, in Milan. Mura-
tori’s edition was harshly criticized by scholars for neglecting Florentine exem-
plars and specifically Ricc. 1532, in favor of two manuscripts he seemed to
have at hand.¹²⁵ While the edition itself did not represent a marked improvement
over earlier editions, the context of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores and its ele-
vation of primary sources for use in a more scientific study of history infused
new value into the Nuova Cronica as a historical document.
The Florentine Magheri edition was published in 1823 with the title La
Cronica di Giovanni Villani a miglior lezione ridotta coll’aiuto de’ testi a
penna. ¹²⁶ The editor Ignazio Moutier used six manuscripts, with the Ricc. 1532
as base for the first part and Ricc. 1533 for the last two books.¹²⁷ The editor
praises the Nuova Cronica most enthusiastically for its “historical truth, simplic-
ity of narration, elegance of style, appropriateness of words, and … that native
purity and frankness of expression,” as one of “the best works of the fourteenth
century.”¹²⁸ The edition includes a lengthy introduction, listing of chapters
index, glossaries, and additional documents useful for the study of the chroni-
cle. It became known as “the vulgata” and was used as the basis for a number
of printings in the nineteenth century, demonstrating a consistent interest in Vil-
lani’s chronicle during the era of the Italian Unification.
The edition, however, had evident defects. Giuseppe Porta, while preparing
his own edition of the Nuova Cronica, characterized the Magheri text as a “mon-
strous mixture,” born of “a principle of contamination,”¹²⁹ since its editor had
used, as a base, two manuscripts from different redactional phases (Ricc. 1532,
“definitive,” and Ricc. 1533, “archaic”), which he then amended with the other
manuscripts dated as late as the sixteenth century. In sum, the print versions
of the Nuova Cronica from the sixteenth to the ninteenth centuries, though re-

 Villani, Historia, ed. Muratori. For biographical information, see Imbruglia, “Ludovico An-
tonio Muratori.”
 Villani, Cronica, ed. Moutier, 9 – 12. Muratori’s edition was attacked through a public letter:
Anonymous, Lettera di *** a un amico. And the response, not from Muratori, but on his behalf:
Argelati, Risposta dell’Amico alla lettera di ***.
 Villani, Cronica, ed. Moutier.
 Villani, Cronica, ed. Moutier, I: xxi.
 “… la storica verità, semplicità di narrazione, eleganza di stile, proprietà di parole, e …
quella natia purità e schiettezza di espressione, per cui tanto piacciono le migliori opere del Tre-
cento.” Villani, Cronica, ed. Moutier, I: vii.
 Porta, “L’ultima parte,” 25, 27; Porta, “Cens. I,” 61.
36 Rala I. Diakité

vealing the editors’ intention to produce an authentic form of the text, were un-
able to attain this goal.

The Critical Edition

As we have seen in the previous section, the abundance of manuscripts of Villani’s
chronicle provides exciting opportunities to explore its diverse audience, and yet,
this same embarrassment of riches has proved an obstacle to those desirous of es-
tablishing an authentic version of the text. The absence of an autograph, and the
“intricate tangle” of the manuscript tradition¹³⁰—that is, the myriad variants in
words, phrases, and even brief passages—greatly complicate efforts to identify the
form of the original text set forth by Villani. The process of arriving at a definitive
text must necessarily address the author’s compositional method, in what form/s
and when the text was “officially” released, and the means and rhythm of its dis-
tribution. From the late nineteenth century on, a series of respected scholars—Vittor-
io Lami, Demetrio Marzi, Francesco Paolo Luiso, Arrigo Castellani—worked diligent-
ly to classify all the manuscripts and establish their relationships to one another, in
order to produce a critical edition, but without success. It would take more than 150
years from the last edition until a new one would be published.
In the case of the Nuova Cronica, a critical edition was urgently desired in order
to address numerous linguistic, literary, historical, and political issues. As scholars
admired Villani’s text as a model of fourteenth-century vernacular, they keenly un-
derstood the importance of differentiating the original text from non-authorial var-
iants that had accumulated during the long manuscript tradition. Given that this
chronicle is an example of early vernacular prose, literary scholars would benefit
from a reliable version of the text, capable of contributing to a study of developing
genres, styles, and intertextuality during this period. From the historian’s perspec-
tive, a critical edition would facilitate inquiry into the place of the Nuova Cronica
within the historical forms of this period—from annals and chronicles, to vernacu-
lar family chronicles, to humanist histories. Finally, in political terms, insofar as
Villani’s chronicle represents a Guelph and merchant perspective during the late
communal government of Florence, a reliable text would allow us to differentiate
the original text from later variants reflecting altered political circumstances.
Giuseppe Porta did succeed in publishing a critical edition of the Nuova
Cronica in 1991.¹³¹ This is the text upon which our translation is based. Porta’s

 Cursi, “Un nuovo codice,” 142.

 Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. Porta.
 Introduction II 37

edition was preceded by a thorough census, examination, and classification of

the extant manuscripts (which included the continuations by Giovanni’s brother
Matteo and nephew Filippo).¹³² Porta also published a series of preparatory ar-
ticles which presented some issues in the manuscript tradition, and hypotheses
he was developing.¹³³ His study of the manuscript tradition led him to group the
manuscripts into two families, the first reflecting an “archaic” version, and the
second reflecting a “definitive” version which, in his view, incorporated addi-
tions and improvements by the author.¹³⁴ Porta explains that the “archaic” ver-
sion is best represented by the exemplar Riccardiano 1533, and the “definitive”
version by Riccardiano 1532. The “archaic” version is missing what Porta believes
to be later authorial additions by Villani, although it also includes some impor-
tant passages that are inexplicably missing in the definitive version.
As he developed his critical edition, for Books I–X Porta used the “defini-
tive” Ricc. 1532 (and three other manuscripts that share similar characteristics).
For Books XI and XII he used the “archaic” Ricc. 1533 manuscript (for the early
chapters of XI), and BNCF, Pal. 1081 for the rest of Book XI, amending these with
a group of five other codices.¹³⁵
Porta developed a hypothesis regarding Villani’s compositional method
which took into consideration his study of the variants, as well as the ways in
which the twelve (or thirteen) books of Nuova Cronica were articulated into phys-
ical volumes. According to Porta, Villani released editions to the public in orig-
inal (“archaic”), then revised (“definitive”) versions, in this way:

1) Villani released an “archaic” version of Books I–X. (α)

2) He then released (α) with the addition of new material – Book XI, Chap-
ters 1– 51
3) Next, he released Books XI and XII. (a)

 See note 1.

 See Porta, “Testimonianze,” “L’ultima parte,” “Sul testo e la lingua,” “La storiografia Fior-
entina,” “Giovanni Villani storico e scrittore,” and “La costruzione della storia.”
 Porta, “Nota al testo,” in Nuova Cronica, vol. 1, xxv.
 The numbering of books in this section is based on the traditional twelve book format of
the Nuova Cronica, as described in note 10. Definitive version of Books I–X: Biblioteca Riccardi-
ana, Ricc. 1532; BNCF, II.1.253; BNCF, II.1.260; and Biblioteca Corsiniana, 44.G.4. Definitive ver-
sion of Books XI:52–XII: BNCF, Pal. 1081; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 939; Biblioteca
Corsiniana, Cors. 44.G.4 (Book XII); Biblioteca Laurenziana, LXII.4; Biblioteca Laurenziana,
Ashb. 511: BNCF II.1.251. See Porta, “Nota al testo,” in Nuova Cronica, vol. 1, xxviii, and “L’ultima
parte.”
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Baeye (Baaye), 217, 226, 232, 250, 151

Baeyens, 146

Bafloo, 56

Baincthun, 103

Bakke, 250, 251

Bakker, 137

Baksma, 237

Baldewyn, 162

Baldowin, 167

Balen, 72

Baling, 216

Balinghem, 129

Balk, 36, 37, 237

Balkedieven (Balketsjeaven) van ’t Ameland, 6, 27

Balkema, 240

Balkstra, 237

Balling, 216

Ballingham, 129

Baltrum, 88

Barbaren van Sint-Quintens-Lennik, 73

Bareld, Barwald, 160, 200

Barends, 124
Barent, 132

Barent Gerbrenz, 259

Bargestrûpers van Ternaard, 36

Bargsma, 240

Barsingerhorn, 63

Bart, 221, 232

Bartele, Bartle, 214, 232

Bartelt, 132

Barteltsje (Barteltje), 217, 232, 250

Bartha, 232

Barthold, 132, 232

Bartholda, 232

Bartholomeus, 227

Bartje, 232

Bartolt Mesmaker, 269

Barwout, Baerwout, 160

Barwoutswaarder, 160

Bassingham, 129

Bauck, 274

Baucke Holtsager, 269

Baucke Scutmaker, 269

Bauck Jans wedue, 264

Bauduin, 162

Bauke, 203, 215, 218, 220

Baukje, 203, 217, 220, 229, 232, 250, 251

Bauwe, 162, 212, 229, 232

Bauwens, 146, 158

Bava, 232

Bavo, 162, 218, 229, 232

Bazenville, 210

Bazinghem, Bazinghen, 96, 129

Bean, Berend, Beert, Barend, Baart, Bernhard, 232

Beannefretters van Idsegahuizen, 37

Beannehûlen van Pingjum, 36, 37

Beantsjes van Koudum, 37

Bearn (Beern), 148

Beart (Beert), 148

Beatrix, 251

Becquestraat, 119, 120

Becuwe, 134

Bedum, 56

Beekmans, 134

de Beemster, 63, 65

Beenhauwers van Male, 76

de Beer, 143

Beernaerts, 146, 148

Beersel, 72

Beert, 146

Beetgum, 36, 37

Behaghel, 134

Beintse, 214

Beitse, 214

Bekaert, 144

Belcele, 73

Bele Henrix Scillinx dochter, 183

Bele naturlyke dochter Arnts van Hypelberch, 186

Beli, Bely, Belie, Bele, Belitje, 183, 189

Belle, 6, 77, 79, 82

Bellebrune, 118

Bellefleuren van Blya, 35

Benne, Benno, 212, 230, 232

Bennert, Bernhart, 232

Benningbroek, 63

Bennington, 105

Benschop, 62

Bense, 214
Bente, 214, 232

Bentje, Benskje, Benna, 232

Bercht, 100

Berchtold, 132

Berchtwin, 100

Berebrona, 118

Beren van Menaldum, 36

Beren van Warder, 63

Berend, Berent, 148, 259

Berengeville, 110

Berenschieters van Benschop, 62

Bergkruipers van Geeraartsbergen, 93, 79

Bergman 193 [297]

Bergum, 36, 37

Berlicum, Berlikum, 34, 50, 129

Berlinghen, 129

Bernaart, Bernaert, 132, 134, 145, 148, 166, 168

Bernert Lucht, 272

Bernhard, Bernhart, 132, 166, 168, 145, 148, 212, 259

Bernlef, Bornlef, Bernolf, 201, 202

Bernlef, Bornlef, Bernlef, 201, 202

Bernou, Bernw, 201, 202, 227

Beroald, Baroald, 160

Beroldasheim, 160

Bert, 100

Bertha, Bartha, Brechta, 232

Berthe, 131

Berthold, 100

Bertin, 100

Bertinghem, 97, 100

Bertolf, 100

Bertout, 100, 132

Bertrand, 131

Bertsheim, 160

Bertwyn, 100

Berwald, 160

Berwout, 160

Berwouts, 146, 158, 160

Bess, 210

Bessele, 214

Bessembinders van Maxenzeele, 71, 73

Bessingue, 96, 97, 101

Bethune, 81

Betse, 214
Betse-Rinse-Piet, 176

Bettens, 146

Betthie van Staueren, 271

Beverwijk, 63

de Beyer, 134

Beyths, 274

de Bie, 143

Biense, 214

Bientse, 214

Bierma, 240

Biervliet, 76

Bieswal, 134

Biizesniders van Tietjerk, 36

Bindert, Binnert, Bernhard, 132, 200, 232

Binke, 215, 232

Binne, 212, 216, 232, 241

Binnert. (Zie Bindert)

Binnewijzend, 63

Binse, 214, 223, 232, 241

Binsma, 241

Binte, 214

Bints, 232
Bintse, Bintsen, 214, 216

Bintsje (Bintje), 215, 232

Bintske, 232

Birdaard, 36, 49

Birlingham, 129

Bisschop, de Bisschop, 140

Bjintsen, 214

Blackburn, 117

Blackenberg, 116

Blaes, 146, 147

Blanckaert, 134

Blanckenberghe, Blankenberge, 27, 74, 77

Blankenham, 59

Blauw, 246

Blauwbuiken van Exaarde, 73

de Blauwe, 141

Blauwe Reigers van Heer-Hugo-waard, 63

Blauwmutsen van Leiden, 66

Blauwstra, 246

Blauwvingers van Zwolle, 5, 28, 59

Blavoet, 134

de Bleecker, 139
Bleien van de Gaastmeer, 37, 67

Bleien van Oostwoud, 63

Bleien en Bleisteerten van Zwartsluis, 59

Blekenaker, 120

de Bleye, 143

Blieken van Gorinchem, 66, 67

Bloeme, 134

Blokker, 63

Bloklichters van Warfum, 56

Blokzijl, 59

Blomhard, Bloemhart, 145

Blommaert, 145

Bloote Beenen van Aartswoud, 63

Bluffers van ’s-Gravenhage, 66

Blya, 35

Blynde Gertza, 262

Boaike (Booike, Boike), 215, 216

Boaite (Booite, Boite), 214, 216

Boaitse, Boaitsen (Booitse, Booitsen, Boitse), 215, 216

Boaitsje (Booitje), 215, 216

Boarn (Boorn), 117

Boarnsweach (Boornzwaag), 117

Boarnwert (Bornwerd), 117

Boaye (Booye, Boye), 212, 216, 235

Boaying (Boying), 216

Bob, 150, 210

Bockhexen van Thunum, 57

Bochout, Bocholt, 120

Boddaert, 144

Bodse, 214

Boekema, 240

Boele, Bolo, 212, 232

Boeltsje (Boeltje), 215

Boerma, 240

Boersma, 240

Boerwegue, 124

Boeseghem, 95

Boete, 214, 232

de Boeve, 141

Boeykens, 146

Boffershil, 121

Bokke, 212

Bokkingkoppen van Harderwijk, 60

Boksum, Boxum, 36
Bolke, 215

Bollema, 237, 240

Bôllen van Drachten, 36

Bollezeele, 95

Bolsward, 14, 16

Bolte, 214 [298]

Boltjes, 240

Bonemersene, 120

Bonne, 132, 212, 224

Bonningues, 96, 97, 101

Bonsen, 214

Bonte, 214

Bontinck, 146

Bonthie Fisker, 268

Bontjema, 244

Bontsje (Bontje), Bonna, 214, 215, 231, 244

Bontun, 121

Boonaert, 144

Boone, 146

Boonen van Blokker, 63

Boonenknoopers van Oudenaarde, 73, 79

Boon-eters van Groningen, 55, 56

Boonpeulen van den Ilp, 63

Boonpeulen van Wormer, 63

Bootjema, Botiema, 244

Bootsje (Bootje), 244

Bootsma, 240

de Borchgrave, 140

Borenga, 238

Borgmans, 193

Borkeloo, 87

Borkum, 88

Born, Borne, 59, 117

Bornhem, 72

Bornlef, Bernlef, Bernolf, 201, 202

Boschkrabben van Bornhem, 72

Boschma, 239, 246

Boschuilen van Buggenhout, 73

Boschuilen van Dworp, 73

Boskpleats, 239

Bote, Botho, 212, 229, 232, 244

Boterkoppen van Diksmuiden, 74, 79

Botermelkzakken van Etterbeek, 73

Botervreters van Dixmude, 6

van Bothnia, 235

Botsje (Botje), Botha, 231

Botte, 212, 232, 235

Botte Aukenz, 258

Botte Obbez, 258

Botte Scroer, 267

Bottinga, Bottenga, 235

Bouckaert, 144

Bouchoute, 77

Boucquehault, 120

Boudewijn, 132, 162, 167

Bouke, 215, 244

Boukema, 244

Bouken, 132

Boukje, 232

Boulemberg, 116

Bouma, 241

Bournemouth, 117

Bouwe, 212, 229, 232, 241

Bouwen, 132

Boxum, Boksum, 36

Boye, 132
Boyenga, Booyenga, Booienga, Boyunga, 235

de Brabander, 143

Braken van Kassel, 82

Bramendal, 117

Brancquart, 144

Brand, 211

de Brauwere, 140

Brecht (mansnaam), 100

Brecht (plaatsnaam), 73

Brechtje, 132, 227, 232

Brechtwulf, 100

Breendonk, 72

Breeuwsma, 245

Brêgebidlers van Heeg, 34

Brêgebidlers van Warga, 34

Brekken van Beersel, 72

Breskens, 87

Breughelman, 182

Briedstic, 120

den Briel, Brielle, 66, 67, 284

Brijbekken van Workum, 14, 28

Brijbekken van Zwolle, 28

Brijbroeken van Werkendam, 67

Brijhappers van Blankenham, 59

Brimsters van Buitenpost, 36

Britsum, 35, 37

Brocshole, 121, 124

Broek in Waterland, 63

Broekophâlders van Oostermeert, 36

Broeksma, 240

Broekzele, Brussel, 117

de Broere, 134

Brongar, 161

Bronger, 200

Brotryck, 201

Brucht, 227

Bruckdal, 117

Brugge, 72, 74, 76

Bruggema, 239, 240

Brugsma, 240

Bruin, Bruno, 229

Brunemberg, Brunesberg, 116

Brunevelt, 120

Bruno, Bruyn, 116, 132, 147

Brussel, 50, 51, 71, 72

de Bruycker, 141

Bruyn Sydensticker, 268

de Bruyne, 141

Bruynooghe, 137, 142

Bruysschaert, 144

Bruysten, Brusten, Brustyn, 190

Bruysten Yseboutssoen, 174, 190

Bucho Koster, 268

de Buck, 143

Bueter-eters van Dixmude, 76, 79

Buggenhout, 73

Buisma, 240

Buitenpost, 36

Bultinck, 146

Burger, 141

Burggraeve, 140

Burhafe, 57

Buttstekers van Oldorf, 57

Buva, 232

Buvo, 229, 232

Buwko op Westerfelden, 273

Buysse, 146

Cabeljau-eters van Nieupoort, 77

Cadzand, 67, 68 [299]

Caen, 110

Caerdemaeckers van Deynse, 77, 81

de Caesemaecker, 140

Caesemaeckers van Belle, 77, 82

Calenberg, 116

Calkpit, 121

Callens, 140

Caluwaert, 142, 144

de Caluwe, 141

Cammenga, Cammingha, 240

Candeel-eters van Meenen, 77, 81

Cannaert, 144

Cappelaere, 134

Cappoen-eters van Meessene, 77

Caprycke, 77

Cardinael, 140

Carels, 146

Carolinensyl, 57

Cartigny, 110
Cassele, Kassel, 76

Casteleyn, 140

Catharina, 213, 217, 228

Cathem, 110

van Cauwenberghe, 134

Celen Claes Wolfssoen, 177

de Cenninck, 138, 140

Charles, 132, 133

Cholinchova, 113

Christiaens, 146

Cies, 210

Claes Claes Wielmanssoen, 177, 194

Claes Drager, 269

Claes Heynez, 258

Claes Laurens, 258

Claes Scuteferger, 269

Claes Spoelman, 269

Claes Steenbicker, 269

Claes Thysz, 258

Claey, 150

Claeys, Clays, 148, 150

Claeyssens, Clayssens, 146, 147

Claus, 192

Clauwaert, 137, 144

de Clerck, de Clercq, 140

Cleverns, 57

Cnoop, Cnoops, Cnopius, 190, 191

Cocquyt, 143

Coelinck, 146

Coen, 162

de Coen, 142

Coenradt, 132

Coens, 162, 146, 158

Cokermaeckers van Ruurl, 77

Colbrandt, 146

Cole, Colen 112, 117

Coleberg, Colemberg, Colenberg, 116

Colembert, 116

Colen, Colens, 113

Coles, 113

Coleshill, 113

Colinck, 113

Colincktun, 103, 129

Colle, 113
Collington, 129

van der Colme, 134

Colo, 112, 113, 130

Colobert, 112

Coloman, 112

Colpaert, 144

Colsbergium, 117

Colstidi, 113

Comene, Komen, 77

Compoost-eters van Loo, 77

Connaert, 144, 145

Conyn-eters van Duunkercke, 76, 82

de Coninck, 140

de Conynck, 134

Cool, Coolen, 113

Coolkercke, 77, 113

Cools, 113

Coolskamp, Colescamp, 113

Coolsma, 133

de Cooman, 140

Coopman, 140

Coppejans, 146