In 1260, the anziani of the comune and popolo of Florence--their [110] republican senate modeled on that of ancient Rome (senatus populusque romanus, or SPQR)--chose Brunetto Latini as ambassador to the regal and almost imperial court of Castile. Brunetto had already served his republic in drawing up peace treaties between Florence and Siena and between Florence and Arezzo; fine holograph documents exist of both these treaties. 2   The radical Florentine commune, which had ousted the landowning aristocracy from government in 1250, an event followed by the death of the opposed Ghibelline leader Frederick II in 1251, had at first experienced a decade of great energy and prosperity. Now war clouds were gathering. In 1257, Pisa was treating with Alfonso el Sabio, proposing his election as emperor, in return for his support against Lucca, Florence, and Genoa. That nomination was successful; he was elected at Frankfurt in April 1257, in opposition to the already elected Richard of Cornwall. 3   Brunetto Latini was later to write his account, in his chronicle section of Li livres dou tresor: "A division [arose] among the the princes of Germany, for some supported the king and emperor His Highness Alfonso king of Castile and of Spain, [while] others supported the count Richard of Cornwall, brother of the king of England." 4

Ghibelline and aristocrat Farinata degli Uberti, exiled to Siena, was treating with Manfred of Sicily, Frederick's illegitimate son and heir, against Florence. 5   The rival city-states were playing dangerous power games leading up to the disaster that would be the battle of Montaperti. In desperation, Guelf Florence decided to dispatch two statesmen, both of them also poets. They sent Guglielmo Beroardi first to Richard of Cornwall, Alfonso's rival imperial candidate, at Worms, and then to the eight-year-old Conradin, grandchild of Frederick and nephew of Manfred in Bavaria. They sent Brunetto Latini to Alfonso el Sabio. Florence thus hoped to gain the support of one or all of these imperial candidates against Ghibelline Siena and Manfred of Sicily. 6

Electing Alfonso as emperor was insufficient. The next part of the gamble would be the imperial candidate's coming to Italy at the head of his army, running the gauntlet of the feuding city-states and their factions, to be crowned emperor by the pope in malarial Rome. Alfonso was wise to dally with the idea but not swallow the bait. It is most probable that Latini's instructions as ambassador were to the effect that Florence would aid Alfonso in his coronation journey, if he in turn would wage war against Manfred and Siena. The Guelf republic had turned emperor-maker in desperation. In this it failed. Later the Florentine Guelf bankers were to succeed in colluding with the pope--though they were in exile and under[111] papal interdict for the murder of the Ghibelline abbot Tesoro of Vallombrosa--in making Charles, the count of Provence and Anjou, senator of Rome (June 1265) and then king of Sicily (6 January 1266).

So important was the embassy in Florentine history that Giovanni Villani, in his Crónica diFirenze, allotted to it an entire chapter, drawing his narration from archival chancery material, some of which was likely to have been generated by Brunetto Latini himself:

In that same year, there being such a delay that the electors of the empire out of discord elected two emperors, one party (in which were three of the electors) electing King Alfonso of Spain, and the other party of the electors electing Richard Count of Cornwall and brother of the king of England; and because the realm of Bohemia was in discord, and two of them were made king, each gave their vote to his party. And for many years there was this discord of the two candidates. But the church of Rome more favored Alfonso of Spain, because he could have come with his forces and combatted the pride and control of Manfred; for which reason the Guelfs of Florence sent him ambassadors to persuade him to come, promising him great help if he would favor the Guelf party. And the ambassador was Ser Brunetto Latini, a man of great wisdom and authority; but before he could complete the embassy, the Florentines were defeated at Montaperti, and King Manfred seized control of all Italy, and the power of the party of the church was much diminished, for which reason Alfonso of Spain abandoned the task of the empire and Richard of England did not pursue it. 7

It was customary for ambassadors to be cultured and capable of writing and exchanging poetry and prose. Up until this time, Brunetto seems to have been well acquainted with texts from the axis of Rome--of Cicero, Sallust, Lucan, and Livy--texts concerning the civil war and the republic and concerning the loss of civil liberties with the coming of the Caesars. His translations of speeches made by Cicero, Cato, and Catiline survive in the cancelleresca script and are found in collections of chancery letters begun by Frederick's chancellor Pier delle Vigne, continuing through the Florentine republic's chancellor Leonardo Bruni Aretino. 10    It was in Spain that Brunetto likely first truly encountered the Greco-Arabic axis of learning and acquired translations of Aristotle's Ethics and Politics made there as well as the Alfraganus-Ptolemy Almagest. He was to translate these into French as Li livres dou tresor and later into Italian as Il tesoro., in the latter case using the Ghibelline and Sicilian-endorsed translation of the Nicomachean Ethics. 11    He would later teach these texts to Dante, who would eventually use them for the structuring of his own great poem.

Islamic Toledo had fallen to the Christian King Alfonso VI in 1085. [113] Spain at that time encouraged pluralism; the thirteenth-century kings Fernando III and Alfonso X of Castile retained something of the style of their forebear Alfonso VI, who was called "king of the three religions." To this day, Toledo is a city of mosque, synagogue, and church buildings. Toledo, and Seville after its conquest in turn from the Arabs in 1248, became centers for translations from the Arabic of Islamic and Greek materials into Latin and the Romance languages. The intermediaries for these translations were often Jewish alfaquines or physician-savants (the hakim). The final form was usually shaped by foreigners at the court, who included Gerard of Cremona for the Almagest of Alfraganus, Hermann the German for the Ethics of Aristotle, and Bona venture of Siena for the Ladder of Mahomet. 12    Though it is quite probable, as Walter Goetz and Francis Carmody have argued, 13   that Brunetto did not stay in Toledo, he would have been at Alfonso's peripatetic court in either Seville or Córdoba, or both; and he would have encountered Alfonso's translators and seen his chancery at work there, a process of abiding interest to the man who (according to Demetrio Marzi) was Florence's first chancellor. 14   Alfonso's court would also have given Brunetto a pluralistic parallel to the court of Frederick in Sicily. Although hated by freedom-loving Guelfs, Frederick's chancery was also their model, Brunetto copying out the letters of Frederick's chancellor Pier delle Vigne, in order to appropriate that Ghibelline style for Guelf uses. 15

In encountering Aristotle, the Guelf republican who so consciously modeled his own style upon that of Cicero found the literary means to balance these differences in power structures. Alfonso was himself involved with the text of Aristotle's Politics at the time, and he probably talked to Brunetto of that work. 16   Cicero was the staunch Roman republican; Aristotle was the democratic Athenian tutor to the imperial Macedonian Alexander, and Brunetto learned how to compromise, to harmonize these opposites. Both Cicero and Aristotle were now to be Latini's literary and political role models. We find later manuscripts of the Rettorica showing, within the two curves of the letter S, the two portraits of the Roman Cicero and the Florentine Brunetto. 17   We likewise find, in manuscripts of the Tresor, in its different partidas, portraits both of Brunetto teaching his students and of Aristotle. In these, Aristotle may even be garbed as an Arab complete with turban, seated upon a mosque floor, reading from a text in Arabic, and teaching it to his students; Alexander may be shown playing his schoolboy jest of having Aristotle ridden by the beautiful, golden-haired, red-garbed Phyllis about the castle courtyard, while the laughing young prince looks down upon them both. 18

[114] In Dante's case, exile was to mean the writing of a masterpiece. His teacher preceded him. In the Tesoretto (11. 143-62), Brunetto tells how he learned of his own exile. News traveled slowly in the Middle Ages. As he was making his way home from his failed embassy, he met a student from Bologna in the pass of Roncesvalles who gave him the news:
 

Venendo per la valle  Del piano di roncisvalle,  Incontrai un scolaio  Sour un muletto baio,  Che venia da bolongnia,  E sanca dir mençogna  Molt'era savio e prode:  Ma lascio star le lode  Che sarebbero assai.  E io'l pur domandai  Novelle di toscana  In dolce lingua e piaña;  Ed e' cortesemente  Mi disse immantenente  Che guelfi di fiorença  Per mala provedença  E per força di guerra,  Eran fiíori de la terra,  E'l dannaggio era forte  Di pregione e di morte.

Coming through the valley  Of the plain of Roncesvalles,  I met a scholar  Upon a bay mule,  Who was coming from Bologna,  And, without telling lies,  He was very wise and brave:  But I leave behind the praises  That would be great indeed.  And I also asked him  For news of Tuscany  In the sweet and clear tongue;  And he courteously  Told me immediately  That the Guelfs of Florence  Through ill fortune  And through the force of war,  Were exiled from that land,  And the penalty was great  Of imprisonment and death.

That setting of the opening of the Tesoretto's dream vision in the valley of Roncesvalles echoes back to the Chanson de Roland and forward to the opening of Dante's Commedia where that poet, likewise deeply sorrowing, would enter a dream-vision landscape and where later, deep in hell, he vould hear Roland's horn reverberate intertextually with visions of dwarfs, giants, and windmills, intertextually reflecting back to John of Salisbury and forward to Miguel de Cervantes.

There is a letter from Brunetto's father, who was similarly a notary, which begins: "Bonaccorsus Latinus of Florence to his beloved son Brulectus, notary, now at the court of the most excellent lord Alfonso, king of he Romans and of Spain, sent by the commune of Florence, greetings and oving paternal affection." The text goes on to speak of the tears that wet and stain the pages of the letter, on the part of both writer and reader. It next narrates the account of the battle of Montaperti on Saturday, 4 September, describing how the Guelf Florentines were now under papal pro-[115] tection in Lucca and how exile had been proclaimed against Brunetto and others: "putting you and other Guelfs and supporters under perpetual banishment." 19   Brunetto's brother Latinus Bonaccursi, later to be a banker and at this time possibly a student at Bologna, brought the letter from Lucca. 20

In the dream vision of the poem--part fantasy and part fact, as was also to be the case with Dante's Commedia--Brunetto then describes himself, deeply sorrowing, making his way to France. The text specifically mentions Montpellier. We also know of his presence in Arras, Paris, and Bar-sur-Aube from important holograph documents (one now in the Vatican, the other in Westminster Abbey), which he wrote for the Florentine Guelf government-in-exile. These letters involve negotiations with the papacy, in which the Florentine banking families raised funds by means of the crusade tithe, to pay Charles of Anjou to fight against Manfred of Sicily. 21

Because the Florentines despaired of Alfonso's help, they had selected as their champion Charles of Anjou, brother of King Louis IX of France. But they had doubts about Anjou's ability to understand their republican form of government. To make this lesson very clear, Brunetto set to work to write in French a book whose first part contained an encyclopedic history and geography of the world (including a bestiary), whose second part translated Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as well as treating of vices and virtues, and whose third part discussed the use of Ciceronian rhetoric in a republican city-state or commune. The book concluded with a "politics" section, a complete account of how a commune elected its chief executive or podesta, who would take the oath to protect its liberties. It is in this final section that Latini gives the letter to Charles of Anjou inviting him to be senator of Rome, and to swear upon Rome's Capitoline Hill to uphold the constitution and freedom of Rome's republic. It is clear that Latini in the Tresor was taking from Alfonso el Sabio the "treasure" of wisdom, Aristotle's Ethics, and was attempting to transmit this material to Charles of Anjou, to educate him as Aristotle had educated Alexander. At the same time, Arnolfo di Cambio, architect of Florence's communal Palazzo Vecchio, sculpted the statue of Charles of Anjou as a Roman senator in a toga, constitution in hand, for placement on the Capitoline. 22   Alfonso was envisioned as a Greco-Arabic, democratic philosopher-king; Charles was cast in the role of a Roman republican senator. The material acquired from the one was given to the other.

The literary manuscripts underscore what the political documents [116] have also demonstrated: that Brunetto Latini was in Arras first and then Paris. He would have traveled to the great fair in Champagne at Bar-sur-Aube, where Florentine bankers arranged for major financial transfers, especially the payments to Lucca for its protection of exiled Guelfs residing in its San Frediano district. 23   Many of the Tresor manuscripts are in the Picard dialect of the Arras region--the Artois and Picardy mentioned by Chaucer in connection with his Canterbury Tales' Squire, a region that had strong associations with both England and the great Florentine bankers. The Tresor is widely dispersed throughout Europe; copies are found in the Vatican, El Escorial, Leningrad, Oxford, Arras, Brussels, Paris, Naples, and elsewhere. 24   (These are all cities with which the Florentine bankers had dealings.) The first version is a diplomatic presentation text, written for Charles of Anjou. But Brunetto was able to make generic copies of the Tresor and present them also to other major figures the Florentines wished to influence and impress, such as Alfonso el Sabio.

Among other texts Brunetto wrote was the Tesoretto. When first editing it, I believed that the dedication was not to a monarch but a friend. There is a charming joking quality (scherzo rather than serio) to Brunetto's texts, especially in those aspects dealing with his relationships and interactions within the texts to his readers. I now realize, from reading more widely amongst Latini's manuscripts, that his dedications were to monarchs as friends, and also to other friends as individuals whom he could educate and to whom he could dedicate his books in the same manner as he did to monarchs, both addressed with tu as his equals. He envisioned the Republic of Letters as a place of laughter combined with wisdom. Besides the Arabic learning Brunetto acquired at Alfonso's court, the Tesoretto text also shows the influence of the Roman de la Rose, which originated in the Lorris-Meung region to the southwest of Champagne's Troyes and Bar-sur-Aube. He wrote his books on the models of both Cicero and Aristotle, for his commune, for rich bankers, for counts, for kings, for emperors, for popes. Given this evidence, it is now clear that the Tesoretto or "little treasure" was originally written as a charming and witty diplomatic thank-you letter to Alfonso el Sabio, perhaps prefacing a translation into French or Italian of the Alfraganus-Ptolemy Almagest or of the entire Tresor (the dream vision breaks off just as Ptolemy is about to narrate to Latini all of his wisdom). 25   TheTesoretto is preface to another text, some manuscripts stating that it is theTesoro maggiore or "greater treasure." There is a reference to a Tesoretto having been in the library of the Marqués de Santillana, though it no longer seems to exist in that collection. 26   We know of seven [117] teen manuscripts of the Tesoretto, most of them in Italy. One is in Krakow, one at Cornell, and one in Paris, but none today is in Spain; three are bound with Dante's Commedia. 27

Another Latini text that made its way to Alfonso el Sabio is a splendid translation into Italian of Aristotle's Ethics. In this instance, it is not the translation of the text from Spain by Hermann the German; instead it translates the text from Sicily by Taddeo d'Alderotti in Bologna. 28   Its exemplar may be the manuscript in chancery script written on a thirteenth-century legal palimpsest at Yale (Marston 28); the Biblioteca Nacional manuscript (10124) in Madrid is written in the Bolognan libraria script we see in other contemporary Brunetto Latini manuscripts from his workshops in France and in Italy. The first translation of Aristotle made by Latini was acquired from Alfonso, then given to Charles of Anjou. This second translation is the official Ghibelline version of Aristotle, now subverted and taken over by the Guelf writer, for it was first authorized to be taught at the University of Bologna by Frederick II's Pier delle Vigne and then sent by Manfred of Sicily to the University of Paris to be its authorized text. 29   (An error has crept into scholarship that the Tesoro simply copied an Ethics that Taddeo had already translated into Italian; Taddeo's version is in Latin.) We can tell from the manuscripts of the texts in Paris that Brunetto had access to both translations while in exile in France. 30   He had earlier made use of the official Ghibelline style, imitating and mocking it in his letter sent by the commune of Florence to the commune of Pavia on the occasion of the murder of Abbot Tesoro of Vallombrosa. 31   Many years later, Dante was to comment that Taddeo's version left much to be desired. 32   Is one hearing him repeat a lecture comment made by his teacher, the translator of the text into Italian, and from this does one assume that Latini preferred the text from Spain by Hermann the German to the text at Bologna by Taddeo d'Alderotti? This may well be the case.

In return for these manuscripts, Alfonso el Sabio may have sent to Brunetto Latini (or to the Florentine bankers whom he represented-- Florence's Guelf government-in-exile, allies of the pope, and recognized king- and emperor-makers) the splendid Cantigas de Santa Maria now in the Biblioteca Nazionale. 33   If so, it was probably a suggestion to them that he would appreciate their further support for his imperial coronation. Already elected in 1257, Alfonso had written to the pope in 1264, making that request. 34   But Bishop García di Silves, carrying that message for the second time, was murdered by the Florentine Ghibelline Rinier dei Pazzi in December 1267. For that violence, Dante would memorialize him in the [118] Inferno as "Rinier Pazzo, who made such war on the roads" (XII.I37: A Rinier Pazzo, chefecero alie strode tanta guerra). The Guelfs had been under ecclesiastical interdict from 1258 to 1266 for their murder of Abbot Tesoro of Vallombrosa, a murder used as a "just war" excuse for the battle of Montaperti by the Florentine Ghibellines-in-exile under Farinata and the Sienese commune. Now the Ghibellines, in turn, were placed under an interdict; their murder of a bishop acting as emissary of a king-who-was-almost-emperor canceled out the murder of a treacherous abbot, in this chess game of the politics of violence. But it is clear that neither Guelf nor Ghibelline much desired continuing Alfonso's candidacy. Instructions to Brunetto appear to have been to maintain friendly and literary contact with the Castilian king; actual monetary support was to be for Charles of Provence and Anjou, not as emperor but as senator of Rome, king of Sicily and Jerusalem, and imperial vicar of Tuscany. Neither the popes nor Florence wanted more emperors, after Frederick II.

The splendid French Tresor, now in the Escorial, is a second-redaction manuscript, containing the chronicle's continuation through the defeat of Conradin at Tagliacozzo by Charles of Anjou. It is interesting that the section on vices and virtues is much annotated in Latin in its margins, possibly by Brunetto for Alfonso. But the manuscripts that proliferate in Castilian translations are first-redaction manuscripts, concluding with Brunetto Latini's exile because of the Montaperti defeat; this may indicate the presence formerly of an earlier first-redaction Tresor in Seville. 35

After the battle of Benevento on 26 February 1266, it became rather clear to the Florentines that Charles, now senator of Rome and king of Sicily, had no intention of reading or upholding the principles of Aristotelian and Ciceronian government presented to him by Brunetto Latini in Li livres dou tresor. Brunetto served as protonotary to Jean Britaud, Charles's vicar in Tuscany, but only for a brief period from 1267 (after his return from Paris) to 1269 or possibly 1270. Then there is a strange silence. One wonders where he was. Brunetto wrote no new literary texts during this period, other than to update the chronicle sections of the French and Italian versions of the Tresor I Tesoro. Archival documents in Bologna refer to him twice in connection with family members and bank loans in 1270. 36   He was noted as absent, or his Florentine residency as in the past tense, in two documents of 1275 and 1280. He was mentioned once in 1282 at a council meeting of the Capitani, just after the institution of the priorate. 37   From that time on, he was enormously active in Florentine affairs, constantly mentioned in council meetings and involved in diplomacy from 1283 fol-[119] lowing the Sicilian Vespers (Charles of Anjou dying in 1285) until June 1292, and acting as prior in 1287. His speeches deal with constitutional matters and diplomacy, with liberty and the freeing of slaves, and with political prisoners. They have about them the flavor of both Aristotle and Cicero. ³⁸ The minutes for these meetings refer to Brunetto as the wise man. He had begun his political career in 1254 as the notary for the Senate or anziani of Florence's Primo Popolo government. He was now the distinguished senior statesman of the Secondo Popolo. He is discussed as such at his death, again receiving an entire chapter in Giovanni Villani's Chronicle, as well as a vita in Filippo Villani's Lives of Illustrious Florentines.39

During this last part of Brunetto's life, new versions of Li livres dou tresor appear, translated into Italian as the Tesoro with historically updated material in chronicle style, through the reign of Charles of Anjou, including the Sicilian Vespers. These versions were earlier thought to have been done by Bono Giamboni and to be Ghibelline, not Guelf. One late paper manuscript has the translation ascribed to Bono Giamboni; the early manuscripts and the first printed edition clearly state they are by Brunetto Latini. Nor should the weather-vane political shift be so polarized. Brunetto was not only a legal colleague of Bono Giamboni but a friend. Even in the worst moments of exile, Brunetto made a point of writing poetry that included Ghibelline with Guelf. His poem Il favolello on friendship, for example, was dedicated to the Ghibelline Rusticho di Filippo, who wrote tenzoni concerning Charles of Anjou; it also mentions and praises the Guelf poet Palamidesse Belindoti, member of the banking family named in a Westminster Abbey document concerning payment of the tithe by England toward Charles of Anjou's expenses. This capacity to see both sides was typical of Brunetto, who also wrote Il fiore dei filosafi, a tenzone between Cicero and Cato, whose authorship he claims in the preface to the Orazioni. Brunetto's circle of poet friends, both Ghibelline and Guelf, wrote increasingly skillful and witty tenzoni about and against Charles of Anjou. 40   It is clear that Brunetto was capable of becoming extremely critical of Charles; it is even possible that he took part in the Sicilian Vespers against him. 41   The Tresor texts that Michele Amari edited in Altre narrazione exist in a milder version (of which there are several manuscript copies, including the Ambrosian library's G 75 sup.). It also survives in a more extreme version (Maglia-bechian MS VIII, 1375), consisting of narration interspersed with diplomatic letters concerning the event, including the pope's letter criticizing Charles of Anjou for bad government of his kingdom. 42   The assumption that these chronicle additions to the Italian Tresor are Ghibelline is not [120] valid. They are part of Guelf political propaganda, now turned against their former patron who had so bitterly disappointed them. Giovanni Villani is to repeat their material in his Guelf Crónica.

These Tesoro continuations are of great interest, since not a few of them chronicle the secret cloak-and-dagger diplomacy between the pope, the Byzantine emperor Michael Palaeologus, and King Peter of Aragón through the intermediaries Gianni di Procita and a northern Italian called Accardo Latino; disguised as Franciscans, these agents travel between three rulers and instigate the Sicilian Vespers against Charles of Anjou. 43   These various accounts come replete with secret diplomatic documents. These can be partly retrieved in the Vatican Secret Archives, which mention the embassy and stress the importance of knowing Greek for this purpose. ⁴⁴ Such documents can also be retrieved in Spanish archival materials, in which letters are found by Gianni di Procita and others to Alfonso el Sabio, explaining that King Peter is unable to aid Alfonso in his campaign against his sons, due to preparations for the invasion of Sicily. 45   Interestingly, this facility in Greek was not in the Renaissance but in the Middle Ages. Brunetto's knowledge of Greek, acquired partly in Arabic Spain, perhaps partly even at Constantinople itself, was greater than Dante's.

If these Tesoro continuations represent Brunetto Latini's own thinly disguised "Foggy Bottom" or State Department memoirs, as I suspect, they go far to explain the presence of his manuscripts not only in Castile but also in Aragón. Translated into Catalan and Aragonese, they can be found in Barcelona and Gerona. 46   Again, these are texts designed to teach kings good government and either are the complete Tesoro or give its third part, the "rhetoric" section of that text. In one instance, that text is actually bound with an Aragonese chronicle account of the Sicilian Vespers, though the document is admittedly late. 47   After the partial failure of the Vespers revolt and the ensuing deaths of kings Peter and Charles, the kingdoms of Naples and Aragón cultivated close ties, the Aragonese court educating the Angevin King Robert of Naples during his imprisonment by them in Catalonia from 1288 and arranging his marriage in 1297 to Violante, the daughter of King Peter of Aragón and Constance of Swabia. One of Brunetto's sons was later ambassador to King Robert in 1314; another was associated with his court. It appears that Brunetto and the Guelf Bonaccorsi banking family and associates, while continuing to maintain friendly relations with Alfonso of Castile, next backed Charles of Anjou, then turned against him and plotted with Peter of Aragon, and that they finally worked to reconcile the Aragonese and Angevin crowns.

[121] The reigns of both Alfonso and Charles ended in disaster. Alfonso's brother betrayed him, then Alfonso's own sons warred against their father. Pressed for money, Alfonso destroyed the delicate interracial relations in his kingdom by his use of Jews as tax gatherers. The Sicilians likewise finally rose in revolt against overtaxation, in this case against the tithe for Charles's crusades, first with his brother King Saint Louis in the disaster at Tunis and then in Charles's own preparations to capture Constantinople. Had the Florentine bankers aided Alfonso financially instead of Charles, perhaps Spain could have maintained its culturally diverse richness. We know that the pope eventually permitted Alfonso to keep the crusade tithe for his own Spanish wars, supposedly against Muslims. 48

Certainly the Florentines, through the manuscripts Brunetto acquired when on embassy to Alfonso el Sabio, were able to commence a magnificent tradition which combined the praxis of politics and its theory in philosophy. Brunetto's manuscripts, conveying that material, were used as diplomatic presentation volumes in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries throughout Europe. These manuscripts failed to have much of an impact on Charles of Anjou, to whom Florence gave so generously (of others' money); in their own right and in Dante's use of them, however, they reached audiences everywhere, and they especially influenced both Castile and Aragón.

One Tesoro manuscript especially needs to be noted. Written in 1287, it is a fine early text. Only the fact that it is mutilated, lacking its beginning and ending, has led to its neglect by scholars other than Helene Wieruszowski. 49   The manuscript is of special interest because it contains Brunetto's Sommetta, formulae for notaries in letters between important dignitaries. It includes a form for the pope to use in writing to Alfonso el Sabio: "Bishop Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to the illustrious and beloved dear son, Alfonso king of Castile." 50   Following that formula is the mode of address to King James of Aragon, King Peter having died in a fall from his horse. The text also gives Aristotle's Ethics and Brunetto's Política--his material on how a city-state, the comune, elects the podesta, who swears to protect its constitution. The text was probably dictated by Brunetto, in his customary manner, to a chancery apprentice. In 1287, when Dante Alighieri was twenty years old, Brunetto was shortly to be prior of Florence and was involved diplomatically with Archbishop Ruggieri and Count Ugolino of Pisa; the formulary includes the manner of address between the pope and Archbishop Ruggieri. 51   Roberto Weiss has discussed the relationship between poetry and chancery later in the Renaissance. 52   I believe this rela-[122] tionship is also here, first with the model established by the imperial Ghibelline Pier delle Vigne in Sicily, then in Florence with Guelf republican Brunetto Latini. Verona has a fine Tresor manuscript that was a diplomatic presentation copy to a doge of Venice; it is possible that Dante was instrumental in obtaining that manuscript and intended to make use of it diplomatically. 53   Indeed, Latini manuscripts in both French and Italian, including Bergamese, are scattered throughout this region of Italy--in Milan, Ferrara, Verona, Bergamo, Brescia, Venice, and San Daniele del Friuli. Other copies are more predictably in Florence, Rome, Naples, and Palermo. Brunetto's texts, acquired partly from Spain, thus had a far-reaching influence.

Probably because of Alfonso's approval of them, these texts also had a tremendous impact upon Castilian Spain. In this instance, Spanish material, or Greco-Arabic material deriving from Spain, was returning to her in Brunetto's French and Italian translations. The French Tresor and the Italian Ethics are in the Biblioteca Escorial (L.II.3) and in the Madrid Biblioteca Nacional (10124). These are contemporary productions; in Madrid's Biblioteca del Palacio, the Italian Tesoro (11,857) is later, dated 1333 ("This book is called the greater treasure, which was composed by Ser Burnecto Latini of Florence; he wrote [it] in the year 1333"). Translations of these texts were made into Castilian as well as Aragonese and Catalan, as noted earlier. These proliferated throughout Spain; today there is one manuscript in Seville, four at Salamanca (which did not orginate there), six at Madrid, and one at El Escorial; there may well be more. 54   One translation of the Tresor was made perhaps by Alfonso el Sabio, according to Ferreiro Alemparte. Manuscripts of the Academia de la Lengua (209, XV), Biblioteca del Palacio (II,3011), Biblioteca Nacional (3380), and Salamanca University (1811 and 1697) make that attribution. 55   The supposed authorship of the French Tresor in the Escorial (e.III.8) as by Alfonso X likewise indicates this. Alfonso's son Sancho commissioned a translation by Alfonso de Paredes, the physician tutor (alfarquï) of his own son Fernando; these manuscripts are centered on Seville. 56   Besides the direct presence of Brunetto's texts and translations in Spain, there is also the indirect presence of his work and teaching through the text of Dante's Commedia, as translated by the alchemist nobleman Enrique de Villena. 57

It was Alfonso el Sabio and his work, especially his Aristotelian legal writings in the Castilian vernaculars and his Marian poetry in Galician, which probably gave Brunetto Latini the model for his own writings in the vernacular. These were first in Picard French (in order to educate Charles of [123] Anjou both in Aristotelian democracy and in Ciceronian republicanism, and thereby protect Florence's communal liberties) and then by translation into his own Italian. That Alfonsine model of the production of books both in texts and miniatures, observed by Brunetto at Alfonso's court, was to be transmitted in turn to the young Dante Alighieri and would result in Dante's Commedia. All three men knew how to organize a workshop for the production of books, one that doubled as a chancery for the production of diplomatic letters of state. Brunetto also transmitted the Islamic literary model of teacher and student; this could involve father and son, as when Aristotle wrote his Nicomachean Ethics for his child. We see the model in Petras Alfonsi's writings, where a converted Spanish Jew used the Arabic teaching model in order to convey Islamic learning to the Latin Christian world. That is likewise Brunetto's model, in which a master dictates his lectures to his students ("and then the master said") as in the Tresor and the Tesoro. That was to be in turn Dante's model, with Virgil as fatherly schoolmaster and Dante as schoolboy. In Dante's encounter with Brunetto (Inferno, XV) the text evokes Cicero by the references to Catiline and Fiesole, and Aristotle by the hail of flames from theRoman d'Alexandre. And the student looking down upon the master--Dante clothed and dignified, Latini naked and ridiculed--echoes the young Alexander looking down upon Aristotle. 58   We remember that Aristotle's Ethics is prefatory to his Politics; Brunetto's use of Aristotle is similarly prefatory to centuries of Florentine politics.

It is an intriguing hypothesis that Brunetto Latini's diplomatic exchange of manuscripts with Alfonso el Sabio--including his account in the final partida of the Tresor of the election of a city governor as podestà to be above corruption--may have shaped in turn Cervantes's presentation of Sancho Panza's ideal governorship of the island. This in turn may have shaped Gonzalo's moving speech in Shakespeare's Tempest, and explain why the names there are Spanish rather than the expected Italian. The dream and the reality of these fictional and factual texts, if we can keep translating them into modern idiom, not only shaped the past but may also give us models of constitutional electoral government--a tesoro or tresor-- for the future.

2. Robert Davidsohn, Geschichte von Florenz, trans. as Storia di Firenze by Giovanni Battista Klein (Florence: Sansoni, 1977), 2: 687-89; Archivio di Stato di Firenze, MS 225, fol. 9; Ricordano Malispini, Storia fiorentina (Florence: 1816; repr. Rome: Multigrafica, 1976), 139. The treaties are in Archivio di Stato di Siena (ASS), 20 April 1254, original diplomatic document, copied in Caleffio vecchio, fol. 33ov, ed. Giovanni Cecchini (Florence: Olschki, 1935), 2: 779, no. 567; Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), 25 August 1254, Capitoli di Firenze 29, fols. 189-91, published in Documenti dell'antica costituzione del comune di Firenze. Appendice: parte prima, 1251-1260, ed. Pietro Santini (Florence: Olschki, 1952), 75-78.

3. Davidsohn, Firenze, 2: 617-18.

4. Escorial, MS Tresor L. II. 3, fol. 25v; ed. Francis J. Carmody, Li livres dou tresor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), 80-81 (from second redaction manuscripts): "Vient une devision entre les princes de alemaine car luns esleirent a roi et a enpereor monseignor anfons rois de chastelle et despaigne, li autres esleurent li cuent ricart de cornoaille frere au roi dengleterre. " The remainder of this chronicle account deserves consultation, as it gives in full the context of these events written by a participant.

5. Davidsohn, Firenze, 2: 666-67.

6. Ibid., 2: 687-88.

7. Crónica, 4 vols. (Florence: Magheri, 1823; repr. Rome: Multigrafica, 1980), 2: 99-100 (Vl. lxxiv): "Nel detto anno, essendo d'assai tempo prima per gli elettori ello'mperio eletti per discordia due imperadori, Puna parte (ció furono tre de' lettori) elessono il re Alfonso di Spagna, e Paltre parte degli elettori elessono Ricciardo conté di Cornovaglia e fratello del re d'Inghilterra; e perché il reame di Boémia era in discordia, e due se ne faceano re, ciascuna diede la sua boce alla sua parte. E per molti anni era stata la discordia de' due eletti, ma la Chiesa di Roma piú favoreggiava Alfonso di Spagna, accioch'egli colle sue forze venisse ad abattere la superbia e signoria di Manfredi; per la qual cagione i guelfi di Firenze gli man-darono ambasciadori per sommuoverlo del passare, promettendogli grande aiuto acciochè favorasse parte guelfa. E l'ambasciadore fu ser Brunetto Latini, uomo di grande senno e autoritade; * ma innanzi che fosse fornita l'ambasciata, i Fiorentini furono sconfitti a Montaperti, e lo re Manfredi prese grande vigore e stato in tutta Italia, e'l podere della parte della Chiesa n'abasso assai, per la qual cose Alfonso di Spagnia lasciò la'mpresa dello'mperio, e Ricciardo d'Inghilterra no la seguio. " The asterisk designates a variant in Rerum italicarum scriptores," ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori, 25 vols. in 28 (Milan: 1723-1751), XIII, col. 204: "il quale fece molti Libri."

8. Ed. Julia Bolton Holloway (New York: Garland, 1981), 8-9, lines 113-34.

9. Fols. II, 50v (twice), 65v, 74v. The illumination showing Brunetto with King Alfonso is on fol. 1v; it is reproduced by Holloway in Alfonso, Emperor, 473, and in her edition of the Tesoretto, 154. Il libro diMontaperti (un. MCCLX), ed. Cesare Paoli (Florence: Vieusseux, 1889), 34, 123, 148 (twice), 172.

10. I am currently editing these texts, thirteen of which are extant in Italy; all demonstrate a chancery context. Three examples are: Florence, Riccardian 1538; Biblioteca Vaticana, Chig. L.VII, 267; and Verona, Bibl. Capitulare, DXIX. For Pier delle Vigne see A. Huillard-Breholles, Vie et correspondence de Fierre de la Vigne, ministre de l'empereur Frédéric II (Paris: Pión, 1864); Pier delle Vigne, Epistolarium quibus res gestae ejusdem imperatoris aliaque multa ad historiam ac jurisprudentiam spectantia continentur libri VI, ed. J. Rudulph Iselms (Basel: Schard, 1740).

11. There was an Arabic genre, the "Book of Treasures," such as that written by Job of Edessa in AD. 814; see F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 70; Miguel Asín Palacios, La escatalogía musulmana en la "Divina Commedia," 3rd edn. (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1961), 384. See also M. Jourdain, Récherches critiques sur l'âge et l'origine des traductions latines d'Aristote et sur des commentaires grecs ou árabes employes par les docteurs scholastiques (Paris: Fantin, 1819). Because of one (late, paper) Venetian manuscript ascription of the translation into Italian to Bono Giamboni rather than to Latini, editors from the nineteenth century ascribed that text to Bono rather than Brunetto. The ascription is no longer accepted by Giamboni scholars; see Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, Storia della letteratura italiana (Milan: Garzanti, 1965), 1: 605-15, and Cesare Segre and Mario Marti, Prosa del duecento (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959), 311. Manuscript study also shows that the Tesoro was produced by Latini himself.

12. Madeleine Dillay, "Une source latine de Brunetto Latini," in Recueil des travaux offerta à M. Clovis Brunei (Paris: Société de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1955), 366-86. Alfraganus, Il libro dell'aggregazione delle stelle: secondo il códice Mediceo laurenziano Plut. 29. cod. 9, contemporáneo di Dante, ed. Romeo Campani (Città di Castello: Lapi, 1910). Jaime Ferreiro Alemparte, "Hermann el Alemán, traductor del siglo XIII en Toledo," Hispania sacra XXXV (1983): 9-48. See also the work of Asín Palacios (381-87), Cerulli, and Sepúlveda above in n. 1.
 

13. Goetz, "Brunetto Latini und die arabische Wissenschaft," Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch 21 (1939): 105; Latini, Tresor (Carmody edn.), xvii. Carmody, who belongs to the "debunking" school of scholarship, claims that there is no evidence in Brunetto's work of his visit to Spain: "Les ouvrages de Latini ne montrent aucune influence des lettres espagnoles, aucune connaissance du pays; du Tesoretto nous savons seulement que Latini a passe près de Roncevaux et par Montpellier."

14. La cancellería delia repubblica florentina (Rocca S. Casciano: Capelli, 1910), 35-48. Marzi is perhaps incorrect here, as the Primo Popolo did not centralize power, and we witness a rotation of notaries functioning in this manner, Latini not being the most prominent of them.

15. Manuscripts demonstrating this are Riccardian 1538 in Florence and Biblioteca Vaticana, Chig. L.VII.267, both of which include Latini's own letter as chancellor, written in Pier delle Vigne's style, addressed to Pavia on the occasion of the Florentines' murder of the Pavian abbot Tesoro of Vallombrosa. The Sicilian chancery, from the brilliant Norman tradition, combined Byzantine Greek bureaucracy with that of the Arab world, the chancellor being termed "logothete" and the system capable of functioning multilingually, sensitive to and thereby controlling all cultures in its midst. See Ernst Kantorowicz, Federico II imperatore, trans. Gianni Pilone Colombo (Milan: Garzanti, 1976).

16. Ferreiro Alemparte, Hermann, 24, quotes Alfonso X's Partidas , II.1.6: "e señaladamiente Aristotels en el libro que se llama Politica."

17. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Mag. II.IV.127.

18. Especially true of the manuscripts in London, British Library, Addit. 30024, fol. 226v; 30025, fol. 72v; and in Carpentras, Bibl. Municipale, 269. See Julia Bolton Holloway, "Brunetto Latini and England," Manuscripta 31 (1987): 11-21, esp. 18.

19. "Bonacursius latinus de florencia dilecto filio Bornéete notario, ad excellen-tissimum dominum Alfonsum romanorum et hispanorum regem iamdudum pro comuni florentie destínate, salutem, et paterne dilectionis affectum. Mestam flebilis epistole paginam, quam forte videbis lituris multipliciter maculatam, defluens ab instrinsecus diluvium lacrimarum quas nec debebam nec poteram continere, scri-bentis faciem, pectus, et cartularrí proluebat"; "te et alios guelfos et populares bannis perpetuis supponentes"; in D. Donati, "Lettere politiche del secólo XIII sulla guerra del 1260 fra Siena e Firenze," Bullettino senese di storia patria 3 (1896): 223, 230-32. Brunetto's father, "Bonaccursus Latinus de Lastra, imperiali auctoritate judex et notarius," compiled the atti of the vescovado of Fiesole (Davidsohn, Firenze, 3: 211).

20. Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher, Geschichte Castiliens im 12. und 13. Jahr-hundert, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Lembke (Gotha: F. A. Perthes, 1881), 2: 476; Tresor (Carmody edn.), xv. Lodovigo Frati, "Brunetto Latini speziale," Giornale dantesco 22 (1914): 207-9. The Bonaccorsi family are later found as bankers at the court of King Robert of Naples, the Villani family associated with them, until the 1312 bankruptcy and expulsion from the kingdom; see Romolo Caggese, Roberto d'Angio e isuoi tempi (Florence: Bemporad, 1922), 581-89 and passim. This may explain why both Latini and Villani chronicle not only Florentine but also Neapolitan and Sicilian history.

21. Arch. Seg. Vat., Instr. Miscell. 99 (Arras, 15 September, and Paris, 26 October 1263), published in M. Armellini, "Documento autógrafo di Brunetto Latini relativo ai ghibellini di Firenze scoperto negli archivi delia S. Sede," Rassegna italiana, 5 (1885): 360-63. Hans Foerster, Mittelalterliche Buch und Urkundschriften auf 50 Tafeln mit Erlaüterungen und vollständiger Transkription (Bern: Haupt, 1946), 64-65, plate XXXV. Bruno Katterbach and Carolus Silva-Tarouca, "Epistolae et instrumenti saeculi XIII," in Exempla scriptorum edita consilio et opere procuratorum bibliothecae et tabularii Vatícane, fasc. 2 (Rome: Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana, 1930), 20, plate 21. Westminster Abbey Muniment 12843, unpublished (Bar-sur-Aube, 17 April 1264). Davidsohn, Firenze, 2: 607-9, 701, 741, 754; 3: 30.

22. Davidsohn, Firenze, 2: plate 33, reproduces the sculpture in Rome's Palazzo dei Conservatori. The letter occurs in Tresor, 3: 77 (Carmody edn., 396-97).

23. Davidsohn, Firenze, 2: 754; 3: 30. E. Jordan, De mercatoribus earnerae apostolicae saeculo XIII (Paris: 1909), notes that the Florentine bankers named in the Brunetto documents—Thomas Spiliati, Hugo Spina, and others—are associated with Arras (25-30, 97).

24. Julia Bolton Holloway, Brunetto Latini: An Analytic Bibliography (London: Grant and Cutler, 1987), 20-32.

25. Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 6556, a Latin Alfraganus, written in Bolognan libraria typical of Brunetto's book-production workshop, speaks (fol. 2v) of Asaph ebreum, an alfaquin or Jewish court physician associated with its translation. Can anyone recall him as associated with Alfonso's court or another such manuscript ascribed to him? For Alfraganus in Dante (taught him by Latini) see Paget Toynbee, "Dante's Obligations to Alfraganus in the Vita nuova and Convívio," Romania 24 (1895): 413-32; M. A. Orr (Mrs. John Evershcd), Dante and the Early Astronomers , intro. Barbara Reynolds (London: Wingate, 1956 [1st edn. 1913]). See also my previous version in Alfonso, Emperor, which discusses Alfraganus material in greater depth.

26. In Berthold Weise's preface to his second edition of the Tesoretto (Strasbourg: Heitz and Mundel, 1909), Biblioteca Románica, vols. 94-95. Mario Schiíf, however, in La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane (Paris: Bouillon, 1905), does not give any Tesoretto manuscripts, though citing other Latini manuscripts in Madrid. The librarians of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid note that thousands of their manuscripts are uncatalogued, and it could be among these.

27. For information on Tesoretto manuscripts, see Il Tesoretto (Holloway edn.), xxviii-xxxv; and Holloway, Brunetto Latini: Bibliography , 16-19.

28. Madrid, Bibl. Nac., 10124, in Bolognan libraria with careful corrections to text, and a miniature. An awkward study of Latini manuscripts is Concetto Mar-chesi, "II compendio volgare dell'Etica aristotélica e le fonti del VI libro del 'Tresor,'" Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 42 (1903): 1-74, who believed Latini's source manuscript was Laurenzian Gadd. 87, inf. 41, and assumed the manuscript's date to be 1243. Although 1243 was the date of its original translation which is repeated in this manuscript copy, the colophon to the whole manuscript, written in the same hand, gives 1313.

29. Taddeo Alderotti was an Averroist professor of medicine; see N. G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 77-82 and passim. An especially fine manuscript of Taddeo's Consilia medicina (Biblioteca Vaticana, lat. 2418, fol. 93) includes material by Avicenna with Averroes's commentary and an illumination of a physician in a red gown examining a urinal. Its script is Bolognan libraria.

30. Paris, Bibl. Nat., 16581, giving Hermann the German's Latin translation of Aristolé's Ethics is written in Bolognan libraria; it has careful annotations to the text in a hand like Brunetto Latini's in holograph legal documents. Bibl. Nat., lat. 12954, has a note on its flyleaf in Brunetto Latini's hand that "this book [Iste liber] contains the book of Seneca and the book of Aristotle's Ethics." The texts are in Bolognan libraria., the Ethics noting that it was translated from Arabic into Latin by Taddeo, 9 April 1244. A third such text is at Arras. Thus, Brunetto had access to both translations into Latin in France.

31. Pier delle Vigne's style, also mocked by Dante in Inferno, XIII, employed outrageous biblical puns. Brunetto's letter puns upon Tesoro's name, bidding the Pavians not to lay up their treasure (tesoro) on earth but in heaven. He puns also upon livres as both books and money in the title Li livres dou tresor, and within it in the letter to Charles of Anjou. Dante puns upon Brunetto's name, having him browned and cooked beneath the flames of hell. See Bibl. Vat., Chig. L.VII, 267, fol. 111v-113, a manuscript having associations with Brunetto's son, notary to Robert of Sicily. See Chig. L.VII, 249, fol. 44-45% and Riccardian 1538 for letter.

32. Convivio, I.10.70; Paradiso, XII, 83. Excellent discussions of Dante's Vita nuova and use of Averroism in connection with Brunetto Latini are to be found in Francesco Novati, "II notaio nella vita e nella letteratura italiana delle origini," in Freschi e minii del augento (Milan: Cogliati, 1925); Domenico de Robertis, II libro delle "Vita nuova," 2nd edn. (Florence: Sansoni, 1970). Guido Cavalcanti was also an Averroist and also Brunetto Latini's student.

33. Antonio García Solalinde, "El códice florentino de las Cantigas y su relación con los demás manuscritos," RFE 5 (1918): 143-79. John E. Keller and Richard P. Kinkade, "Iconography and Literature: Alfonso Himself in Cantiga 209," Hispania 66 (1983): 348-52 and plate. The manuscript was originally Palatine, then Magliabechian, today Banco Rari 20.

34. Arch. Seg. Vat., A. A. Arm. 1-18, n. 167, published in Katterbach and Silva-Tarouca, "Epistolae et instrumenta," table 22a. Other documents in Instr. Misc. 87, 1257/1268: "Articuli propositi a procuratoribus Alphonsi regis Castellae coram Clem. IV, ad probandum eius electionem in Regem Romanorum a nonnullis Electoribus Imperii facta an. 1257, contra Riccardum, fratrem Regis Angliae, qui ab aliis Electoribus inauguratus fuerat. Exemplar membr. 9 paginorum"; Instr. Misc. 56, 23 March 1276: "Innocentius PP V concedit Regi Castellae et Legionis ecclesiasticarum decimarum . . . pro subsidio contra Saracenos. Bulla orig. carens plumbo."

35. I was unable to see Biblioteca Colombina 5-1-6 (formerly, Vitrina VI?), which I had thought was French but is Castilian, as it is in restoration in Madrid. Spurgeon Baldwin tells me it is possibly thirteenth century. He and Charles Faulhaber appear to think there are two separate manuscripts, but the librarian insists these are the same one. The Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras 13-3-18, is copied from it; it is late, and its ink is bleeding badly from current dampness, making much of its text illegible.

36. Frati, "Brunetto": 207-9.

37. ASF, Liber Fabarum I, fol. 49v, Consulte della repubblica florentina dell'anno MCCLXXX al MCCXCVIII, ed. Alessandra Gherardi (Florence: Sansoni, 1896), I, 109.

38. They are to be found in the Isidore del Lungo appendix in Thor Sundby, Della vita e delle opere di Brunetto Latini, trans. Rodolfo Renier (Florence: Le Monnier, 1884), 200-77, extracted from Consulte della repubblica (Gherardi edn.), which in turn published the Libri fabarum from the Archivio di Stato di Firenze.

39. Villani, Crónica, 2: 22; 8: x. Filippo Villani, "Brunetto Latini rettorica," in Le vite d'uomini illustri fiorentini (Florence: Magheri, 1826), 32. I do not present them here, but other lives of Brunetto appear in archival manuscripts which also mention the Spanish embassy.

40. Ernesto Monaci, Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli (Rome: Editrice Dante Alighieri, repr. 1955), 290-91. See Bibl. Vat., 3793, for tenzoni of Palamidesse Bellindoti, Guglielmo Beroardi, Rustico di Filippo, Brunetto Latini, and others.

41. Michele Amari, La guerra del Vespro Siciliano, 2 vols. (Paris: Baudry, 1845), 1: 200, gives Bartholomew of Neocastro's account in which a Ser Bonaccorso, one of Brunetto's banker relatives, goes so far as to fell the king "with a good shot from a ballista" artillery engine (con bel tiro di mangana) from the walls as the king seeks refuge in the church of Santa Maria in Messina, while a Latini Tesoro manuscript notes and praises this same Bartholomew of Neocastro's presence during the Sicilian Vespers; and a collection of Pier delle Vigne and Brunetto Latini letters (Bibl. Vat., Chig. L.VII, 267) includes the letter written from the commune of Palermo to that of Messina, couched in the most ringing rhetoric concerning freedom. It is of interest that Brunetto, the Ciceronian republican, should have associations both with Gianni di Procita, the Mario Savio of the Vespro Siciliano, and with Dante's relative, Giano della Bella, who played out a similar role in Florence. The square in Palermo where the Sicilian Vespers revolt commenced is next to that of Garibaldi's Risorgimento uprising.

42. Amari, Altre narrazione del Vespro Siciliano scritte nel buon secólo della lingua (Milan: Hoepli, 1887), 23-229, which publishes the Biblioteca Nazionale's Tresor, VIII, 1375.

43. San Daniele del Friuli, Biblioteca Communale, 238, fol. 42. Folio 45 discusses il re de raona, the king of Aragon; it elsewhere mentions the presence of Henry, brother of Alfonso el Sabio, "li romani et donno arrigo il filgliolo del re di castello il qualera sanatore di roma," who had been created such by Charles of Anjou in 1266 when in exile from Spain because of his treachery to Alfonso, but who then fought against Charles, receiving Conradin in Rome. See Steven Runciman, I Vespri siciliani: storia del mondo mediterráneo alia fine del tredicesimo secólo , trans. Pasquale Portoghese (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976); Amari, Altre narrazione ; "Due croniche del Vespro in volgare siciliano del secólo XIII," ed. Enrico Sicardi, in Raccolta degli storici italiani, ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1917), 3-29; these accounts deserve comparison with that of Giovanni Villani.

44. Instr. Misc. 157-60,592,1276,1278. See also Charles-Joseph Hefele, Histoire des candles, trans. H. Leclercq, 10 vols. in 20 (Paris: Letouzey, 1907-1938), 6: 1, 153- 270.

45. Isidoro Carini, Gli archivi e le biblioteche di Spagna in rapporto alia storia d'ltalia in genérale e di Sicilia in particolare (Palermo: Statute, 1884), 2: 45-46; register of Peter II, letter from Gi(ov)anni di Procida to Alfonso el Sabio (Aleira, 18 January 1281), fol. 115, another to Don Sancho (Valencia, 1 April 1282), fol. 117; (19 May 1282), fol. 118, etc.

46. In Barcelona: Arxiu d'Historia de la Ciutat, MS Gremis 1/129; Biblioteca de Catalunya, MS 357; and Biblioteca Episcopal del Seminar Conciliar, MS 74 (with chronicle including Sicilian Vespers). Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10.264. El Escorial, 234 (lost). Gerona, Archivo Catedral, 60. Further associations between Aragon, Sicily, and Florence can be gleaned from such documents as Rome, Biblioteca Angelica , B.VIII, 17; Palermo, Qq.G1, fols.1-141v (where the lost Neapolitan Angevin archives, burnt in 1944, can be partly retrieved dirough copies of material relevant to Aragon and Sicily made by interested individuals, in the first instance by "Nicolás Cardinal Aragonie"); and the Bibliothèque Mazarine copy of the first printed edition of the Tesoro as splendidly illuminated with the arms of Aragon.

47. Barcelona, Biblioteca Episcopal del Seminar Conciliar, MS 74. Though dated as late as 1416, the manuscript copies faithfully conventions one finds in contemporaneous Brunetto Latini manuscripts: capitalization of Rey (King), yellow wash applied to small capitals, alternate red and blue of large ones, the careful inclusion of material concerning Alfonso of Castile, Conradin's death at Palermo, the Sicilian Vespers, and "Rey Carlo" (fols. lv-lviiii). It is also explicitly written to teach "Rey Don Jaime" Aragonese history and is bound with the third part of the Tresor in Catalan: "Assi comença lo libre del tresor de Mestre brunet lati qui parla de le ensenyaments de bona parlería." Beautifully written out in Brunetto Latini's manuscript style, it is of great interest. This Catalan text of Tresor III is published as Libre dels enseynaments de bono, parlería, ed. Juan Codina y Formosa, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Real Academia de Buenas Letras, 1902-1903), 1:181-85, 246-50, 315-23, 377-80; 2: 52-55, 94-103, 157-68, 203, 216, 279-87, 427-35, 475-83. The Aragonese chronicle likewise deserves publication. Curt J. Wittlin has published two of three volumes of the Libre del tresor: versio catalana, de Guillem de Capons, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Barcino, 1971-1976), Els Nostres Classics, A (102, 111) of the Biblioteca de Catalunya, MS 357; it is reviewed by Francisco J. Hernández, RCEH 2 (1977-1978): 315-21. The Castilian version still lacks a complete edition.

48. Arch. Seg. Vat., Instr. Misc. 56 (23 March 1276): "Innocentius PP. IV concedit regi Castellae et Legionis ecclesiasticarum decimarum . . . pro subsidio contra Saracenos. Bulla orig. carens plumbo."

49. See her "Brunetto Latini ais Lehrer Dantis und der Florentiner (Mit-teilungen aus Cod. II.VIII.36 der Florentiner National Bibliothek)" Archivio italiano per la storia delia pietà, 2 (1959): 171-89; also in her Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura, 1971), 515-61. Besides giving parts of the Ethics and the Politics, this manuscript also has astronomical material, a horoscope (there is a tradition that Brunetto cast Dante's), and the notarial formulary the Sommetta (which is dated around 1286-1287).

50. Fol. 75rv: "Como lo papa scrive a li Re et a le Reine [rubric]. [Paragraph sign] Gregorio vescovo servo di servi di dio Al preclaro et amato figliuolo lodoyco Re di francia. Al preclaro et amato figliuolo Anfonso Re di castella. Al preclaro et amato figliuolo Adoardo Re dinghilterre. Al preclaro et amato Jacomo Re dará-gone ... Al preclaro et amato figliuolo Karolo. Re di sicilia." He adds that, when writing to queens, the forms are changed from masculine to feminine.

51. "Come lo papa scrive a Vescovi et a li arcivescovi [rubric]. Gregorio vescovo. Al venerabile frate in xpo. R. archivescovo di Pisa. Al venerabile frate in xpo. O. vescovo di Luccha."

52. The Spread of Italian Humanism (London: Hutchinson, 1964), 35. Pier delle Vigne had similarly been chancellor and professor, establishing the tradition; see Armando Petrucci, Notarii: documents per la, storia del notariato italiano (Milan: Guiffre, 1958), 17. The contemporary tradition that Brunetto was Dante's teacher, stated by Dante himself, was debunked by Vittorio Imbriani, "Che Brunetto Latini non fu maestro di Dante," Studi danteschi (Florence: Sansoni, 1891), 335-80; but this was most ably countered by Novati in "II notaio nella vita," 269-76, and in Le Epistole, conferenza letta de Francesco Novati nella Sala di Dante in Orsanmichele (Florence: Sansoni, 1905).

53. Verona, Bibl. Capitulare, DVIII.

54. The Biblioteca de Palacio MS has: "Questo libro si chiama il tesoro maggiore il quale fu composto per ser Burnecto latini di firençe. Scripsit anno mcccxxxiii." See Spurgeon Baldwin, The Medieval Castilian Bestiary (Exeter, England: University of Exeter, 1982). Catálogo de los manuscritos catalanes, valencianos, gallegos y portugeses de la biblioteca de El Escorial, ed. E. J. Zarco Cuevas (Madrid: Tip. de Archivos, 1932). Charles Faulhaber, "Retóricas clásicas y medievales en bibliotecas castellanas," Abaco 4 (1973): 151-300. A. R. D. Pagden, "The Diffusion of Aristotle's Moral Philosophy in Spain, ca. 1400-ca. 1600," Traditio 31 (1975): 287-373. Francisco López Estrada, "Sobre la difusión del 'Tesoro' de Brunetto Latini en España," Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens 16 (1960): 137-52 (which only discusses the manuscript in the Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras, 13-3-18).

55. Ferreiro Alemparte, "Hermann el Alemán," 17: "Aqui comiença el libro del tesoro que fabla di muchas nobles cosas, el qual fiso e compuso el muy noble e muy virtuoso rrey don Alfonso de Castilla el qual se partió en tres libros o partes." It should be noted that the Salamancan manuscripts did not originate there but were given to the university from the royal collection, with the bookplate of the Emperor Napoleon as ruler of Spain. Biblioteca Nacional MS 3380 does have a Salamanca connection but is an odd forgery, purporting to have been written by Alfonso VI in 1065.

56. Ferreiro Alemparte, "Hermann el Alemán," 15 (Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras, 13-3-18): "Aqui comiença el libro del thesoro que traslado maestre Brúñete de latyn en rromance francés, et el muy noble don Sancho fijo del muy noble Rey don Alfonso . . . mando trasladar de francés en lenguaje castellano a maestre Alfonso de Paredes fissico del jnfante don Ferrandod ... e a Pascual Gómez escriuano del Rey sobre dicho e fabla de la nobleza de todas las cosas."

57. Alan Deyermond and John K. Walsh, "Enrique de Villena como poeta y dramaturgo: bosquejo de una polémica frustrada," NRFE 28 (1979): 57-85. A. Labandeira Fernández, "Un cronista español del siglo XV entre la ciencia de Brunetto Latini y la nobleza de Suero de Quiñones," RABM 79 (1976): 73-95. Antonio Torres-Alcalá, Don Enrique de Villena (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1983).

58. Marvin B. Becker, "The Communal Paideia and Emerging Humanism," Florence in Transition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 34, 35, 42, 60, mentions Brunetto Latini and speaks throughout of the importance of Cicero and Aristotle in Italian communes, not stressing that it was Latini who translated these two authors into the Italian vernacular precisely for the purposes of communal government. My work on Brunetto Latini was greatly shaped by Quentin Skinner, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. I, in his Foundations of Modern Political Thought. My thanks to Professor Southern for his gift of "Dante and Islam," Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. Derek Baker (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), 133-45, and to Professor Aaron Sayvetz for his "On the Alfonsine Astronomical Tables," Romance Quarterly 33 (1986): 343-47.