Magister Bene De Florentia

In the annals and chronicles of the Italian city-states from before the second half of the 1200s, on occasion passages from letters or entire epistles useful for determining the political context of the reported events can be found. This paper shows how the majority of these are authentic documents interwoven with the narrative discourse, and evidences a marked variation in the chronology of the phenomenon: letters are frequent adjuncts to the narrative text in the 13th century, while they are less common in the preceding century. This practice does not appear to be significantly affected by geography, and the presence or absence of letters is more dependent on the tone and type of literature. Indeed, exemplary texts are full of epistolary writings, while they are conspicuously absent in vehement partisan pamphlets.
The principal texts considered are: the Annales Ianuenses, the Annales Pisani by Bernardo Maragone, the annals by Ottone and Acerbo Morena, the Annales Placentini by Codagnello, the Annales Placentini Ghibellini, the Gesta Florentinorum by Sanzanome, the Chronicon Faventinum by Tolosano, the Liber de obsidione civitatis Anchonae by Boncompagno da Signa, and the Chronica by Rolandino da Padova.