S

SACCHETTI, FRANCO

(c. 1330–1400)
Franco Sacchetti was born to a noble Florentine Guelf
family, perhaps in Ragusa, where his father did business.
Sacchetti spent many years as a merchant. By 1352, he
was also composing traditional love poems. In 1354,
he married Felice di Nicolò Strozzi. In honor of the
Strozzi women, he composed, probably shortly before
his marriage, The Battle of Women, consisting of 272
mediocre octaves describing the victory of young, beau-
tiful, virtuous ladies over old, ugly, vice-ridden hags. In
the early 1360s, during the war between Florence and
Pisa, Sacchetti began to be involved in the city’s politics
and as an administrator of Florentine territories. In 1376
he was sent as ambassador to Bologna; in 1383, when
he married for the second time, he was a member of
the otto di balia; in 1384 he became a prior for the
San Giovanni area; during the wars with the Visconti
in 1388–1392, he served as counselor to the Florentine
government; and throughout the late 1380s and the
1390s he was governor over a series of Florentine ter-
ritories outside the city.
The 1370s brought a series of sorrows, both per-
sonal and public. Sacchetti was in Florence during the
plague of 1374. That year and the next saw the deaths
of Petrarch and Boccaccio, whom he lamented in son-
nets expressing his admiration and sense of loss. Two
years later, his fi rst wife died, mourned affectionately
in his verse. Meanwhile Florence was threatened by the
expansionism of the Milanese and by papal agents who
sought to restrict Florentine trade routes across papal ter-
ritories. To fend off the latter, Sacchetti became involved
in the “war of the eight saints” (1375), but hard times
and high wartime taxes contributed to the revolt of the
ciompi (1378). Some of Sacchetti’s poems express his
views on current political events. “The world is full of
false prophets,” begins one; another starts, “Wherever

virtue is lacking, there all worldly power must soon fail

and come to a painful end”; and one ends, “Tell the pope,

where he is awaited, that all the limbs fare ill when the

head is obstinate in evil.”

At the same time, Sacchetti was composing song lyr-

ics, combining a popular immediacy of content with a

technical interest in various forms for music. One cactia

describes how girls, gathering fl owers and mushrooms

in the woods, are scattered by a thunderstorm while the

poet, watching them entranced, gets soaked by the rain.

“Blessed be the summertime,” begins another song. In

1389, during a moment when tension had relaxed, he

took part in the garden conversations and entertainments

described in Il paradiso degli Alberti. He married for a

third time in 1396.

During his later years, Sacchetti began to write in

prose. His unfi nished Commentary on the New Tes-

tament, perhaps written in 1381, seeks to apply the

evangelists’ words to problems and issues of daily life.

The use of contemporary moral examples in his bibli-

cal commentary led to his writing the Trecentonovelle

(Three Hundred Stories, 1385–1397), accounts of recent

events or jokes, unframed but surrounded by personal

and moral refl ections. The work includes serious issues,

despite the frequent stories about pranks and witticisms.

Although Sacchetti refers to himself in the preface as

“unschooled,” his life experiences had made him sensi-

tive to the importance of peace and to the prevalence of

injustice. A number of novelle comment on how degen-

erate nobles live by plunder taken from the less fortunate

and get away with crimes while the poor, persecuted

for minor offenses, have no recourse against the rich

and powerful. On the other hand, Sacchetti opposed the

presumption of ignorant folk, and several tales present

Giotto or Dante wittily putting down ambitious fools.

With a clear eye for details of food, dress, and behavior,

and with a conversational style, Sacchetti delightfully