Filippo Villani

Filippo Villani (* around 1325 in Florence ; † around 1405 there ) was an Italian writer, lawyer and historian.

Filippo Villani was a son of Matteo Villani and the nephew of the famous Florentine historian Giovanni Villani . He worked as a legal scholar and judge, served as Chancellor in Perugia between 1376 and 1381 and was friends with Coluccio Salutati , among others . He completed his father's chronicle by adding chapters 61-102 to its 11th book, thus leading the history to 1364.

Filippo Villani also wrote the work Liber de origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus in Latin , which deals with the origins of Florence and the life of important personalities in this city. The first part contains almost nothing but fables; the second part, Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus , was published in Latin by Gustavo Camillo Galletti in Florence in 1847, but the first was the writer and historian Giammaria Mazzuchelli in Venice in 1747 under the title Vite d'uomini illustri Fiorentini in an old Italian translation, the surpasses the original in elegance, but is inferior to it in accuracy. This work was the first attempt at a national literary history, since the famous Florentines whose lives he described were mostly scholars and writers. The author often knows how to portray his characters perfectly with just a few strokes; his style is lively and powerful, only sometimes too short and broken off.

As Boccaccio's successor , Villani had publicly read and commented on the Divina Commedia of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri since 1391 .

expenditure

• Giuliano Tanturli (Ed.): Philippi Villani De origine civitatis Florentie et de eiusdem famosis civibus. Antenore, Padua 1997
• Saverio Bellomo (ed.): Filippo Villani: Expositio seu comentum super “Comedia” Dantis Allegherii. Le Lettere, Florence 1989
• Giuseppe Porta (Ed.): Matteo Villani: Cronica. Con la continuazione di Filippo Villani , Parma 1995

literature

• Michele Luzzati: Villani . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 8, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-89659-908-9 , Sp. 1678.

Web links

• Filippo Villani Biography of Lorenzo Tanzini (Italian)
• Filippo Villani biography of Bruno Basile in the Enciclopedia Dantesca (1970)
• Publications about Filippo Villani in the Opac der Regesta Imperii