 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica (Book XIII, 1342-1348)
Giovanni Villani, wealthy merchant and politically active citizen in his native Florence,
composed the Nuova Cronica between the early 1300s and the year 1348, when his efforts were
truncated by his untimely death in the plague. The chronicler addresses his work to a
readership of “laici,” or laymen (I,1), proposing to gather together the disparate sources
on the Florentine past, since a knowledge of history would provide moral instruction for
future generations of citizens.
Our work on the Nuova Cronica begins with the encoding of a section of particular importance for the history of Florence—the thirteenth and final book running from 1342 to 1347. We have chosen to begin with a number of thematic elements which speak to Villani’s central concerns. We are defining those sections of text which are thematically focused on lordly government—its context, its rise, its actions, its opponents and its collapse. We are also defining episodes of “force”—military, personal (assault or murder), judicial (punishment, exile or execution). Other themes include discussions of money/economic issues, moralizing/moral judgments and Villani’s use of sources. We are also defining the men and women who people the Cronica. Our attributes include type (whether a person is “fictitious” or “real”), gender, place of origin or residence, lay-clerical status, social status, title, “official” political role, “unofficial” political role, factional allegiance. We are including in this work of definition only such information as Villani provides to the reader. It should be noted that this list is in continual transformation—we discard or adopt elements and attributes as we deem necessary.
We also expect to provide links in our digital text to annotations (biographies, explanations, definitions and bibliographies), images and other chronicles. By providing enough of the latter we hope to turn our “digital Villani” into a closely woven web of voices commenting on the major events of the era. Our central focus will once again be on the final book of the Cronica but we hope to complement this with a section which selects more widely—a sort of “showcase” which gathers together and annotates thematically related episodes from the Cronica. v As we encode and annotate the text we will also be working on producing an English translation which will ultimately appear alongside the searchable Italian text. We hope students and scholars will find this translation useful—there is no modern translation of Villani’s later books.
For more information about this text, please see our weblog, particularly the Villani project posts.
Team members
- Rala Diakite, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, Fitchburg College
- Matthew Sneider, Assistant Professor of History, University of Massachusetts at
Dartmouth