Brunetto Latini

Brunetto Latini (* around 1220 in Florence , † 1294 ) was an Italian statesman, scholar and writer, also known as Dante's teacher and fatherly friend .

Life

Brunetto Latini was born in Florence around 1220. In 1260 he traveled to King Alfonso of Castile from his hometown, which was torn by power struggles, as envoy of the party of the Guelphs . After the victory of the Ghibelline party that same year, he was exiled and settled in Paris, where he used his involuntary leisure to do literary work.

After the restoration of the rule of the Guelfs due to the defeat of the Ghibellines in the Battle of Benevento , he returned to Florence in 1266 and held important offices. In 1273 he was appointed first chancellor of the republic - albeit with little political weight - and in 1287 secretary of the city republic. During this time he took care of the upbringing of young Dante, who was close to him through family connections and probably owed him the foundations of his encyclopedic and classical education. Brunetto died in 1294.

Dante and Virgil talk to Latini in hell. From an illustrated commentary on the Divine Comedy , circa 1345

Dante set a monument to his mentor in Canto 15 (Hell) of the Divine Comedy . He describes him there as the one who "taught him how people strive for eternal glory", but he transfers him to the sodomites and lets him suffer their torments. The reason for this is not entirely clear, there is no contemporary information about Brunetto's sex life. It is possible that Dante Brunetto was stuck not because of his sexual inclinations towards the sodomites, but because of what was then offensive in his texts.

Works

In exile in Paris, Brunetto wrote his Livre du Trésor (Book of Treasure) in French , a kind of encyclopedia of geographical-natural history, philosophical-moral and biblical-ancient historical knowledge of the time and at the same time politics and rhetoric. The work was intended as a textbook and reference work for a broader, i.e. H. non-clerical, especially urban patrician public.

The Trésor , written in sober French prose , for which at that time there were only models written in Latin, became in turn the model for numerous similar works written in the vernacular in France and elsewhere in Europe. The fact that Brunetto wrote in French in order (as he himself notes) to reach as many readers as possible testifies to the importance that French had now gained as a European lingua franca.

The model for the Trésor was, among others, Cicero , whose De Inventione Brunetto had previously translated and provided with extensive commentaries, this commented translation being one of the most important sources of the ancient Italian language.

Another work that was created almost at the same time is the Tesoretto (edited by von Zannoni, Florence 1824), an epic-moralizing poem in an allegorical guise written in Italian, which can be regarded as a forerunner of the Divina commedia .

Furthermore, Brunetto is attributed the translation of three Ciceronian speeches, Pro Q. Ligarius , Pro M. Marcellus and Pro rege Deiotaro , but the attribution of the translation of the speeches against Catiline is doubtful.

A collection of Epistolae, conjecturae et observationes by Brunetto appeared in two volumes (Rome 1659).

Brunetto Latini is of outstanding importance for the development of the Italian language, as Giovanni Villani describes him as the “beginner and master in the development of the Tuscan language”.

Work editions

Livres dou safe

• Il Tesoretto e il Favolello , hersg. by B. von Wiese, in: Zeitschrift für Romansische Philologie 7, p. 236 ss.
• Li livres dou Trésor , published by Polycarpe Chabaille , Paris 1863.

literature

• Giorgio Inglese:  Latini, Brunetto. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 64:  Latilla – Levi Montalcini. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2005.
• Christel Meier : Cosmos Politicus. The change in function of the encyclopedia in Brunetto Latini . In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 22 (1988), pp. 315-356, ISSN  0071-9706 .
• Thor Sundby: Della vita e delle opere di brunetto Latini ("Brunetto Latinos levnet og skrifter", 1869). Florence 1915.

Web links

• Literature by and about Brunetto Latini in the catalog of the German National Library