Hence all the other chroniclers had to face one and the same problem: how to write a history, or even a bare chronicle of the earliest beginnings of Florence, from the scant and fragmentary accounts at their disposal? The notary Sanzanome shirked the difficulty by saying nothing of the foundation of the town, and then expanding his narrative with rhetorical flights, fictitious speeches, and descriptions of battles, in which his own fancy and imitation of the classics played the main part. But this method was neither congenial nor possible to the simpler folk of a later day, who sought to write as they spoke, and whose culture was slighter, or at all events very different from the notary's. These chroniclers, therefore, had no basis to build upon save one legend and a few scraps of information that could not possibly satisfy their patriotic pride.
Fortunately for their purpose, just at this time—namely, towards the middle of the thirteenth century—an event of great literary importance occurred, serving to put the Florentine chroniclers on a new track. A Dominican monk, one Martin of Troppau, in Bohemia, surnamed therefore Oppaviensis, vulgarly known as Martin Polono, chaplain, apostolic penitentiary, and afterwards archbishop, wrote an historical work which, although of no remarkable merit, had an extraordinary and rapid success. It was a species of manual of universal history, chronologically arranged under the names of the various emperors and Popes, down to the year 1268. Its author afterwards carried it down to a few years later, with an introduction treating of the times anterior to the Roman Empire.26 This book was mechanically arranged, and stuffed with anecdotes, blunders, and fables; but was the work of an eminent prelate, inspired with the Guelphic spirit. The author's method of arranging the events of the Middle Ages under the headings of Popes and Emperors served as a leading thread through the vast labyrinth. It is certain that his book was rapidly diffused throughout Europe, especially in Italy, and above all in Florence. As Prof. Scheffer Boichorst remarks: "Its first translator was a Florentine, and another Florentine, Brunetto Latini, the first to make use of it." In fact, the Florence libraries have numerous copies of it in Latin MSS. of the fourteenth century, while others of the same period comprise an Italian translation that, according to the results of learned research,27 must have been produced in Florence towards 1279.28 This fact alone is a most luminous proof of the rapid popularity and diffusion of the work. As it was a common practice with the scribes of that period to insert alterations of their own in the works they copied out, it may have easily occurred to some transcriber of this translation to enrich it here and there with the more important of the few facts then known of the early history of their city. But as Martin Polono's work was only brought down to the end of the thirteenth century, and items of Florentine history had increased in number and extent, so it came about that all these additions forsook universal history and were solely devoted to that of Florence. In this way the former merely served, as it were, as an introduction to the latter; a result highly gratifying to municipal self-complacency.
One of the first works introducing Martin Polono's book, translated, shortened, re-written, and with several interpolated Florentine items, is that entitled "Le Vite dei Pontefici et Imperatori Romani," once attributed to Petrarch, and existing in several Florentine fourteenth-century codices. In this work, however, Florentine history is still given very secondary importance, and indeed when at last, after various sequels and alterations, it finally appeared in print in 1478, Polono's primitive method was still maintained by giving summaries here and there of the lives of the other emperors and Popes. But other versions soon appeared in which Florentine history filled a larger space.29 In a fourteenth-century MS. of the Naples National Library, first examined by Pertz, we find Martin Polono's share of the work considerably curtailed, and the history of Florence not only much extended, but likewise carried down to 1309.30 Here one begins to see that the writer was chiefly interested in Florentine events. Professor Hartwig was so struck by this fact as to be at the pains to extract everything relating to Florence from the MS., and print it apart, as one of the authorities probably recurred to by Villani.31 In a chronicle attributed to Brunetto Latini the same purpose is still more clearly indicated. Some of the Florentine news contained in it were long and frequently extracted, printed, and employed; notably the list of Consuls and Podestà used by Ammirato, and a narrative of the Buondelmonti tragedy (1215), differing considerably from Villani's version of the tale. It was speedily decided that the author must have written in 1293, since he records an event of that year, and says that he witnessed it with his own eyes.32 Later, this Chronicle was attributed to Brunetto Latini, although the narrative is carried down to a date when Dante's master must have certainly ceased to exist.33 During his learned researches in Florence Dr. Hartwig discovered a MS. that, in all probability, is the original autograph of the Chronicle.34 Although mutilated—starting only from 1181—this Codex is doubly precious, as it clearly shows the method on which this and many similar works were compiled. There is a middle column containing the usual mangled version of Martin Polono35; and here on the margins, between the rubrics and sometimes even the lines, are added notices of general history, drawn from other sources, and special records of Florentine events.
The history is thus brought down to 1249, where a gap occurs extending to 1285, from which year the author continues his narrative to 1303.36 But in this second part the character of the work is entirely changed. Having no longer Martin Polono as a guide, he now forsakes that prelate's method. The affairs of the Empire and the Church are reduced to still smaller proportions, more space is given to those of Florence, and instead of being scattered haphazard over the narrative, they are now united and carried steadily on. Thus we see a real chronicle of Florence gradually developing before us and acquiring a special value of its own. Its discoverer, Dr. Hartwig, at first considered it an autograph, but finally conceived doubts on that score. The great disorder of the manuscript; its mutilated commencement; the gap between thirty-six years in the middle; the absence of certain records, comprised in certain excerpts from it, quoted by old writers; the discovery that many of these writers quoted from another MS. of the Chronicle belonging to the Gaddi Library; all this justified his statement that the problem could not be finally solved without the aid of the Gaddi Codex, which he had not yet been able to discover.
On the other hand, Professor Santini maintained, in a prize essay, that the Gaddi Codex could only be a copy of that found by Hartwig, and that the latter must be the mutilated original manuscript. After a short time the question was ultimately decided by another student of our Istituto Superiore, Signor Alvisi, who, having unearthed the Gaddi Codex in the Laurentian Library, found it to be a fifteenth-century copy.37 Here the various fragments—arranged in separate columns in the original MS.—are joined with the remainder of the text, though often in an arbitrary fashion. Here, too, there is the gap between 1249–85, but the Chronicle, instead of starting from 1181, begins, like Martin Polono's first compilation, with Jesus Christ—primo e sommo Pontefice—and the Emperor Octavian. Thus, it may now be affirmed, that the Codex in the Florence National Library is a genuine and, as it were, photographic representation of the method employed for the earliest compilations of Florentine historiography. It allows us to see the author at work, as it were, before our eyes.
Another, but far less perfect, specimen of this kind of production is afforded by the Lucca MS., to which previous allusion has been made. The author carefully tells us that it was composed between the years 1290 and 1342. He transcribes the whole legend of the origin of Florence, and then gives his Italian pasticcio of Martin Polono, beginning from the Emperor Octavian. But he intersperses it with "many