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Civic Genealogy from Brunetto to Dante

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Civic Genealogy from Brunetto to Dante University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 The Root Of All Evil: Civic Genealogy From Brunetto To Dante Chelsea A. Pomponio University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Medieval Studies Commons Recommended Citation Pomponio, Chelsea A., "The Root Of All Evil: Civic Genealogy From Brunetto To Dante" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2534. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2534 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2534 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Root Of All Evil: Civic Genealogy From Brunetto To Dante Abstract ABSTRACT THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL: CIVIC GENEALOGY FROM BRUNETTO TO DANTE Chelsea A. Pomponio Kevin Brownlee From the thirteenth century well into the Renaissance, the legend of Florence’s origins, which cast Fiesole as the antithesis of Florentine values, was continuously rewritten to reflect the changing nature of Tuscan society. Modern criticism has tended to dismiss the legend of Florence as a purely literary conceit that bore little relation to contemporary issues. Tracing the origins of the legend in the chronicles of the Duecento to its variants in the works of Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri, I contend that the legend was instead a highly adaptive mode of legitimation that proved crucial in the negotiation of medieval Florentine identity. My research reveals that the legend could be continually rewritten to serve the interests of collective and individual authorities. Versions of the legend were crafted to support both republican Guelfs and imperial Ghibellines; to curry favor with the Angevin rulers of Florence and to advance an ethnocentric policy against immigrants; to support the feudal system of privilege and to condemn elite misrule; to denounce the mercantile value of profit and ot praise economic freedom. Consideration of the shifting social and political landscape of Florence further reveals a programmatic personalization of the legend over the course of the Trecento, as the boundaries between civic and familial history are increasingly obscured. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Kevin Brownlee Subject Categories Medieval Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2534 THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL: CIVIC GENEALOGY FROM BRUNETTO TO DANTE Chelsea A. Pomponio A DISSERTATION in Italian For the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation _________________________ Kevin Brownlee Professor of Romance Languages Graduate Group Chairperson _________________________ Kevin Brownlee Professor of Romance Languages Dissertation Committee David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English Fabio Finotti, Mariano DiVito Professor of Italian Studies THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL: CIVIC GENEALOGY FROM BRUNETTO TO DANTE COPYRIGHT 2016 Chelsea A. Pomponio This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ iii To my mother iv ABSTRACT THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL: CIVIC GENEALOGY FROM BRUNETTO TO DANTE Chelsea A. Pomponio Kevin Brownlee From the thirteenth century well into the Renaissance, the legend of Florence’s origins, which cast Fiesole as the antithesis of Florentine values, was continuously rewritten to reflect the changing nature of Tuscan society. Modern criticism has tended to dismiss the legend of Florence as a purely literary conceit that bore little relation to contemporary issues. Tracing the origins of the legend in the chronicles of the Duecento to its variants in the works of Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri, I contend that the legend was instead a highly adaptive mode of legitimation that proved crucial in the negotiation of medieval Florentine identity. My research reveals that the legend could be continually rewritten to serve the interests of collective and individual authorities. Versions of the legend were crafted to support both republican Guelfs and imperial Ghibellines; to curry favor with the Angevin rulers of Florence and to advance an ethnocentric policy against immigrants; to support the feudal system of privilege and to condemn elite misrule; to denounce the mercantile value of profit and to praise economic freedom. Consideration of the shifting social and political landscape of Florence further reveals a programmatic personalization of the legend over the course of the Trecento, as the boundaries between civic and familial history are increasingly obscured. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... IV PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... VI CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2 .................................................................................................................................. 34 CHAPTER 3 .................................................................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER 4 .................................................................................................................................. 98 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 138 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................ 144 vi PREFACE To visitors of Florence, the hilltop town of Fiesole offers a scenic retreat from which to escape the hustle and bustle of the city below. Travelers wander through the verdant hillsides and sprawling villas unaware of the region’s darker history, when bitter conflict between the neighboring towns once permeated Florentine consciousness. From the thirteenth century well into the Renaissance, the legend of the city’s origins, which cast Fiesole as the antithesis of Florentine values, was continuously rewritten to reflect the changing nature of Tuscan society. Legends,1 by their very nature, are subject to the vicissitudes of history. Conceived in the first decades of the thirteenth century as an expression of nationalist propaganda, the legend of Florence’s origins soon demonstrated its versatility by crossing social, political, and literary boundaries. Within the space of a century, authors engaged with the legend in chronicles, encyclopedias, manuals of rhetoric, epic poetry, historical novels, and biographies. Within these genres, the legend could be continually rewritten to serve the interests of collective and individual authorities. Versions of the legend were crafted to support both republican Guelfs and imperial Ghibellines; to curry favor with the Angevin rulers of Florence and to advance an ethnocentric policy against immigrants; 1 Nathalie Bouloux aptly notes the problematic tendency among historians to refer to Italian Laudes civitatum as “foundational myths,” an expression “qu’il conviendrait sans doute d’expliciter et de critiquer, en premier lieu parce qu’elle suppose une opposition entre nos deux temps, celui des origines, mythiques, et celui de la réalité historique: elle se fonde sur notre conception de la vérité historique plus que sur celles des auteurs médiévaux et leur stratégie d’écriture” (103, n.1). See Bouloux, “Étymologie, géographie et origines des villes en Italie (XIIIe-XIVe siècles): le cas génois,” in Le Passé à l’épreuve du présent: appropriations et usages du passé du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, edited by Pierre Chastang (Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008), pp. 103-17. vii to support the feudal system of privilege and to condemn elite misrule; to denounce the mercantile value of profit and to praise economic freedom. The desire to discover one’s origins is an impulse shared by each of the writers represented in my research. The earliest documented interest in Florence’s foundation dates from the very beginning of the commune. Bouloux notes: “Passage obligé de toute chronique urbaine, la recherche des origines fonctionne à partir de principes simples: plus une ville est ancienne, plus elle en retire du prestige; plus son fondateur est illustre, plus elle en tire gloire. La construction des origines permet de définir la nature profonde d’une cité mais aussi d’en préfigurer le destin” (103). Despite the legend’s diffusion in the literary and civic consciousness of medieval Florence, it has only recently begun to enjoy critical discussion. Curiously, the few studies that have broached this topic have concentrated largely on Giovanni Villani’s interpretation of Florentine history in the Nuova cronica and its relation to Dante’s Commedia.2 Few critics have considered Dante’s relation to chronicles antecedent to Villani, or how Dante adapted the legend from the literary or poetic tradition. In the only published monograph on the relationship between Florence and Fiesole, Marthe
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