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Dino Compagni's Chronicle contains the account of a contemporary. See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169; Mach. Ist. Fior. end of book ii. Archivio Storico, vol. xvi. See also the article 'Perugia, in my Sketches in Italy and Greece. Vol. iii. p. 347. See App. ii. for the phrases 'Squittino' and 'Borse. Of these new nobles the Albizzi and Ricci, deadly foes, were the most eminent.
Yet the German historian has made out an undoubtedly good case by proving Villani's language closer to the original Ordinamenti than Compagni's.
Yet it is not easy for a foreign critic to deal with the question of Dino Compagni's Chronicle a question which for years has divided Italian students into two camps, which has produced a voluminous literature of its own, and which still remains undecided. The point at issue is by no means insignificant.
The peace with Pisa, which was concluded during Compagni's tenure of the Gonfalonierate, is not mentioned, though this must have been one of the most important public events with which he was concerned.
The arguments against the authenticity of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle' may be arranged in three groups. The first concerns the man himself.
Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle. The defenders of its authenticity, forced to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies, fall back upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit of the author, from the difficulties of fabricating a personal narrative instinct with the spirit of the fourteenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's errors or of a thorough-going literary process of rewriting at a later date, from the absence of any positive evidence of forgery, and from general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism.
The first critic to call Compagni's authenticity in question was Pietro Fanfani, in an article of Il Pievano Arlotto, 1858. The cause was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler German authority, P. Scheffer-Boichorst. The works which I have studied on this subject are, 1. Florentiner Studien, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1874. 2.
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