By achieving the monumental task of translating the eleventh and twelfth books of Giovanni Villani's New Chronicle, Rala I. Diakaté and Matthew T. Snider have finally made available to English readers the integrality of the text, since they had already translated in 2016 book 13 (428) and Rose Self had done the first ten books in 1896 (39). The book opens with Matthew T. Snider's “Historical Introduction” (1–16), where he stresses how Villani's peculiar's standpoint is characterized by positioning the city of Florence at the center of the world history (1) within the backdrop of the 1310 descent of Henry VII into Italy, famously welcomed by Dante as the possible peace bringer (1). After the emperor's death in 1313, Pisa, ruled by Uguccione della Faggiuola, a Ghibelline supporter, defeated Florence at the battle of Montecatini in 1315. Castruccio Castracani, from Lucca (allied of Pisa), was also a Ghibelline exiled who joined Henry VII and became “close collaborator” (3) of Uguccione, who jaloused his military worth and ambitions and had to abandon Tuscany, while Castruccio secured his domination over Lucca, the Lunigiana and Pistoia. Castruccio with his Milanese allies, and Florence came to blows at Altopascio, a fortress midway between Pistoia and Lucca conquered by the Florentines, where the former inflicted to the latter a crushing defeat. At this point, book 11 begins, when Charles of Calabria comes to Florence in 1326, sent by Robert the Wise as the city's ruler. His arrival determined once again the Ghibelline's reaction, with the emperor Luis IV crowned in Rome by the pope, in the presence of Castruccio, who therefore posed an even sorer threat to Florence (6). In another overturn of fortune, Pistoia is lost, and Castruccio severs ties with Luis, while the latter loses his chances for an invasion of the Kingdom of Naples. The Ghibelline's forces reunite, making a plan to seize Florence, but Castruccio dies at the reconquest of Pistoia, which makes Giovanni comment that “good fortune cannot endure in the face of divine disapproval” (8). In book 12, Giovanni tells how the curious alliance between the papal legate Bertrand du Pouget and King John of Bohemia, son of Henry VII, provokes the equally strange partnering of Florence and other Ghibelline signorie, which eventually leads them to victory (9). Nevertheless, Mastino II della Scala, ruler of Verona, after joining the league against Bertrand and King John, attempts to expand his domination over north-central Italy, conquering Lucca in 1335 (10). A war soon commences, and Florence achieves initial success, thanks to Venice's support (10). This is soon reversed when Venice agrees to peace with Mastino, still leaving Lucca in his hands, which leads to a new war between Florence and Pisa, which ended in 1342 with Lucca's loss. In Giovanni's view, his own historic tale constitutes a series of “examples of past virtues and past vices” (12), necessary to “make correct decisions, to merit divine protection” (12), as in book 11, on the occasion of the grain shortage of 1328–1330 (13), while the 1333 Arno flood, in book 12, shows the consequences of clinging to vices (14). The book's final events (the arrival in Florence of the Duke of Athens, future tyrant, the beginning of the Hundred Years War, the apparition of the black plague in the East and a series of earthquakes) add to this apocalyptic note (15).In “The Transmission of Villani's Nuova Cronica: Manuscripts, Rewritings, and Prints” (17–38), Rala I. Diakaté examines VIllani's Cronica transmission, characterized by “complexity, rewriting, and innovation” (17), and the early rise of the text to “model of vernacular prose” (17), as shown the 111 manuscripts left mostly copied in Florence and its region (18). Florence's privileged economic status had in fact made it the ideal cradle for the development of literacy (19), and, in his preface, Villani speaks of the vernacular as intentionally chosen to ease the access to his work (19). On the basis of this popularity, Giovanni's brother Matteo, and his son Filippo, continued it through the year 1364, after the author's death in 1348. Although our first manuscripts date from the 1370s, they started circulating at least by 1341 (20), and were produced throughout more than a century, although not all contain the complete text (21), while also containing information about their owners, copyists, readers, and scholars (22–23). As with all successful medieval texts, the Cronica underwent a wide process of rewriting, in other words of adaptation, abbreviation, compilation, often to facilitate consultation and selective reading (23–24). After discussing the most relevant of these (24–27), Diakaté presents (27–30) the three most important adaptations: the Centiloquio (1373) by Antonio Pucci, the anonymous Pecorone (1378–1385), and the Latin poem De Origine Urbis Florentiae (1475–1483) by Domenico di Giovanni da Corella. Finally, the editor examines the Cronica's six more relevant print editions (31–36), which span from the sixteenth century (as early as 1537) through the nineteenth century (the Florentine Magher edition of 1823). He notes here how they reflect both the development of the printing industry and the editing methods (30), and the “Questione della Lingua” (30), since Villani's language and style was considered an example of perfect purity (31). He concludes his argument with an in-depth analysis of the 1990–1991 Porta critical edition (35–38), made very complex by the “intricate tangle” (36) of the manuscript tradition and yet important to address literary, historical, and political issues (36). Porta divides the manuscripts into two families: the first reflects the New Chronicle's archaic version, while the second is the definitive one, based on Giovanni Villani's compositional method of additions and improvements (37–38). In the final section (“Notes on the Translation,” 39–41), the editors provide some useful information for the Chronicle's full understanding, such as about the spatial organization of the city throughout the eleventh-fourteenth centuries (39–40), the dating, measuring and monetary system employed in thirteen century Florence (40–41). After the translation (43–426), the book is ended by a precious bibliography, comprising a list of “Villani Editions” (427–28) and “Secondary Sources” (428–47).Making Villani's New Chronicle available in English provides the scholars working on early modern Italy with a founding model of historiography valid, as I noted, on a linguistic level as well. Champion of the long series of “minor” medieval masterpieces, Giovanni Villani's work gave in fact an essential contribution to the molding of the Italian literary language, as the editors recall. As such, their endeavor will remain as an exemplary scholarly milestone.
Enrico Minardi (Wed,) studied this question.