39 Facts About Giovanni Villani

Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence.

Giovanni Villani was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavoury reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and banking company he worked for.

Giovanni Villani's Cronica is viewed as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history.

Giovanni Villani was inspired to write his Cronica after attending the jubilee celebration in Rome in 1300 and noting the venerable history of that city.

Giovanni Villani outlined the events in his Cronica year for year, following a strictly linear narrative format.

Giovanni Villani provided intricate details on many important historical events of the city of Florence and the wider region of Tuscany, such as construction projects, floods, fires, famines, and plagues.

Giovanni Villani's work has received both praise and criticism from modern historians.

Giovanni Villani was born into the Florentine merchant middle class.

Giovanni Villani was the son of Villano di Stoldi di Bellincione, who came from an old and well-respected arti maggiori family of merchants.

Giovanni Villani was a member of the Arte di Calimala guild in Florence since 1300, serving on the mercanzia council of eight.

Giovanni Villani returned to Florence in 1307 where he married and settled down for a life of city politics.

Giovanni Villani became one of the priors of Florence in 1316 and 1317.

Giovanni Villani went with the Florentine army to fight against Castruccio Castracani, lord of Lucca, and was present at Altopascio during Florence's defeat.

From 1329 to 1330 Giovanni Villani was a commune-appointed magistrate of provisioning protecting Florence from the famine's worst effects.

Giovanni Villani was sent on another diplomatic mission in 1329, this time to Bologna to meet Cardinal Bertrand de Pouget.

Giovanni Villani was sent with others as a hostage to Ferrara, to ensure that Florence made good on a debt; he resided there for some months in 1341.

The bankruptcy of the Buonaccorsi Company led to Giovanni Villani's conviction and imprisonment in 1346, as he was a main partner.

The figure Giovanni Villani asserted of 400,000 Florins owed to the Peruzzi by Edward alone equalled Giovanni Villani's estimate for the entire payroll of 30,000 workers of the Florentine cloth industry in 1338.

Giovanni Villani was a staunch supporter of what he deemed the liberties of the Church, while criticizing the new popular government of the novi cives since they protested against the many legal exemptions the Church enjoyed.

Giovanni Villani's work is an Italian chronicle written from the perspective of the political class of Florence just as the city rose to a rich and powerful position.

Yet Giovanni Villani still relied upon the Chronica de origine civitatis as the prime source for Florence's early history in his narrative.

Giovanni Villani was certain that the Republic of Florence had experienced a great setback on its path to glory with the defeat of the Guelphs by the Ghibellines at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260.

In 1300 or shortly after, Giovanni Villani began working on the Cronica, which was divided into twelve books; the first six deal with the largely legendary history of Florence, starting at conventionally biblical times with the story of the Tower of Babel up to the year 1264.

Giovanni Villani outlined the events in his Cronica in year-to-year accounts; for this he has gained criticism over the years for writing in an episodic manner lacking a unifying theme or point of view.

Giovanni Villani wrote his Cronica in the vernacular language rather than Latin, the language of the educated elite.

Giovanni Villani's chronicles are intercut with historical episodes reported just as he heard them, sometimes with little interpretation.

Giovanni Villani is perhaps unequalled for the value of the statistical data he has preserved.

Giovanni Villani was a Guelph, but his book is much more taken up with an inquiry into what is useful and true than with factional party considerations.

For example, Giovanni Villani described the story of Count Ugolini of Pisa, who at the height of attaining his ill-gotten wealth and power was overthrown and eventually starved to death along with his sons.

Giovanni Villani stressed that those who gained prestige would fall prey to pride; confidence in their position would then lead them to sin, and sin would bring on a stage of decline.

Green points out that in Giovanni Villani's writing there are two significant earthly powers that seem to be exempt or immune from this theory of immorality leading to downfall: Florence and the papacy.

Besides Divine Providence, Giovanni Villani acknowledged other events that he believed were explainable via the supernatural.

Giovanni Villani believed that certain events were really omens of what was to come.

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin states that Giovanni Villani was most likely serving as a Peruzzi representative in Flanders when he heard the story of the French Jew who in 1290 tried to destroy Host bread but was unsuccessful as the bread allegedly bled profusely as he stabbed it, and turned into flesh as he attempted to boil it in water.

Giovanni Villani was unable to finish the line as he succumbed to the same plague.

Giovanni Villani was buried in the Church of Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Giovanni Villani's Cronica was considered an important work at the time, valuable enough for his brother and nephew to continue it.

Giovanni Villani's written work on Dante Alighieri and the age in which he lived has provided insight into Dante's work, reasoning, and psyche.

In regard to his own time, Giovanni Villani provides modern historians with valuable details on Florentine social and living habits, such as the growing trend and craze of wealthy Florentines in building large country homes far outside of the city.