attributed to Albert Milioli: Liber de temporibus and
Cronica imperatorm. Not until the twentieth century
did Salimbene’s Chronicle receive the scholarly and
critical attention it deserves.
See also Frederick II; Giovanni di Piano Carpini;
Joachim of Fiore
Further Reading
Editions and Translation
The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, trans. Joseph L. Baird, Gi-
useppe Baglívi, and John Robert Kane. Medieval and Renais-
sance Texts and Studies, 40. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and
Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1986. (With bibliography.)
Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam, 2 vols., ed. Ferdinando
Bernini Scrittori d’Italia, 187–188. Bari: Laterza, 1942.
Salimbene de Adam. Cronica, 2 vols., ed. Giuseppe Scalia. Scrit-
torl d’Italia, 232–233. Bari: Laterza, 1966.
Critical Studies
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. New York: Doubleday, 1957, pp.
187–188.
Auzzas, Ginetta. “Salimbene da Parma.” In Dizionario critico
della letteratura italiana, 3 vols. Turin: UTET, 1973, Vol.
3, pp. 293–294.
Carile, Antonio. Salimbene e la sua opera storiografi ca: Delle
lezioni tenute alla. Facoltà di Magistero dell’Università di
Bologna nell’anno accademico 1970–1971. Bologna: Pàtron,
1971.
Coulton, George Gordon. From Saint Francis to Dante. New
York: Russell and Russell, 1968.
Crocco, Antonio. Federico II nella Cronica di Salimbene. Naples:
Empireo, 1970.
D’Alatri, Mariano, and Jacques Paul. Salimbene da Parma:
Testimone e cronista. Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini,
1992.
Sainati, Augusto. Studi di letteratura latina medievale e uman-
istica: Raccolti in occasione del suo ottantacinquesimo
compleanno. Padua: Antenore, 1972.
Violante, Cinzio. La cortesia chiericale e borghese nel Duecento.
Florence: Olschki, 1995.
Steven Grossvogel
SALUTATI, COLUCCIO (1331–1406)
Coluccio Salutati was born at Stignano, on the frontier
between Ghibelline Lucca and Guelf Florence, and was
carried into exile when the Ghibellines seized power
in the area shortly after his birth. He was raised and
educated at Bologna, where he studied under Pietro
da Moglio, a member of the third generation of Italian
humanists. Salutati was trained as notary and in 1350–
1351, after his father’s death, he returned to Stignano
with his family and began practicing his profession.
Between 1351 and 1367 Salutati earned his living as
a notary, but by 1356 he was already playing a major
political role in the rural commune of Buggiano, of
which Stignano formed one of four villages. He married
a local woman, Caterina di Tomeo di Balducci, in 1366.
In 1367 he moved to Todi to become its chancellor; in
1368 he moved to Rome, where he worked in the papal
chancery under Francesco Bruni. After being unable
to fi nd suitable employment with the papacy, Salutati
became chancellor of Lucca with Bruni’s help in 1370.
Almost immediately, however, he became embroiled in
a factional dispute, and in 1371 he lost his position and
reluctantly returned to Stignano. He had lost his fi rst
wife while he was still in Lucca; sometime between
1372 and 1374, widowed with a small boy, he married
Piera, the daughter of Simone Riccomi. He and Piera
had at least eight children.
Salutati was called to Florence in 1374 to assume
the newly created secretaryship of the tratte, the offi ce
supervising elections to Florentine offi ces; in 1375 he
became chancellor. As the offi cial responsible for con-
ducting the Florentine government’s correspondence
with the provinces and with foreign powers, he almost
immediately established his reputation as the greatest
author of offi cial letters in western Europe. He was able
to demonstrate his virtuosity immediately, because 1375
marked the beginning of a three-year war between Flor-
ence and the papacy, a war whose major battles were
propaganda campaigns designed to retain and attract
allies. Perhaps his greatest epistolary triumphs came in
1390–1406, when he assumed responsibility for repre-
senting to western European powers the issues involved
in Florence’s bitter struggle with the Visconti of Milan.
Florence’s archenemy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, is said
to have stated that “a letter of Salutati’s was worth a
troop of horses.” Having been chancellor for thirty-one
years, during which time he navigated the troubled
waters of Florentine political life with unerring tact,
Salutati died in 1406.
Salutati was infl uenced, after 1367, by Petrarch’s
concern with integrating Christianity and pagan letters,
but he never achieved the mature Petrarch’s confi dence
in their harmoniousness. Salutati, who is less classiciz-
ing in style than Petrarch and more obviously intrigued
by scholastic philosophy and theology, betrays, the
weak welds in Christian humanism. Although he was
a family man and a devout Florentine patriot, his De
seculo et religione (1381), praising the superiority of
the monastic life, represented a genuine ascetic element
in his thought. His last private letters unambiguously
affi rm his allegiance to Christian truth over and against
pagan culture. Nonetheless, up to the last year of his
life his devotion to ancient literature remained strong.
Under his infl uence, Florence brought the great Greek
scholar Manuel Chrysoloras from Constantinople in
1397 to teach Greek at the university. Whereas a previ-
ous attempt in 1360–1362, with Leonzio Pilato, had
failed to arouse the interest of the city’s young people,
the arrival of Chrysoloras marked the rebirth of Greek
studies in western Europe.SALIMBENE DE ADAM