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Updated: June 21, 2025
To the two Villani, Giovanni as well as Matteo, we owe not so much deep political reflection as fresh and practical observations, together with the elements of Florentine statistics and important notices of other States. Here too trade and commerce had given the impulse to economic as well as political science. Nowhere else in the world was such accurate information to be had on financial affairs.
Turning to him, what was her horror at seeing not Leonarde Da Vinci, as she had supposed, but Villani Brandini, a rejected suitor, and seeming friend to Da Vinci, who had discovered the plan of escape by some means, and revenged himself upon the lady in this manner.
Was it possible that Villani, her tormentor and cruel persecutor, indeed wished her well and desired to become her friend?
Now whether Villani is strictly right in his chronicle matters little or nothing. We know that Fiesole was an Etruscan city, that with the rise of Rome, like the rest, she became a Roman colony; all this too her ruins confirm. With the fall of Rome, and the barbarian invasions, she was perfectly suited to the needs of the Teutonic invader.
With blazing eyes, from which sparks of fire actually seemed to flash, and a form that appeared to dilate, Teresa turned full upon Villani. "How now, traitorous villain? Is not your list of perjuries, thefts, deceptions and murders long enough, but you must add to it, ere you are qualified to become the privy councillor to the arch fiend?
The great historical personage whom George Eliot paints in "Romola" is Savonarola, and I think faithfully, on the whole. In the main she coincides with Villani, the greatest authority. In some respects I should take issue with her. She makes the religion of the Florentine reformer to harmonize with her notions of self-renunciation.
The analysis of style receives a different development from Scheffer-Boichorst. In his last essay he undertakes to show that many passages of the 'Chronicle, especially the important one which refers to the Ordinamenti della Giustizia, have been borrowed from Villani. This critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost always cuts both ways.
Of the wealth and purposefulness of Florence at that time, in spite of the disastrous bellicose period she had been passing through, Villani the historian, who wrote history as it was being made, gives an excellent account, which Macaulay summarizes in his vivid way.
'The Guelf party, writes Giovanni Villani, 'forms the solid and unalterable basis of Italian liberty, and is so antagonistic to all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he must of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline. Milan, first to assert the rights of the free burghs, was now the chief center of despotism; and the events of the next century resume themselves in the long struggle between Florence and the Visconti.
"God never made Genius to be envied!" interrupted Villani, with an energy that overcame his respect. "We envy not the sun, but rather the valleys that ripen beneath his beams." "Verily, if I be the sun," said Rienzi, with a bitter and melancholy smile, "I long for night, and come it will, to the human as to the celestial Pilgrim! Thank Heaven, at least, that our ambition cannot make us immortal!"
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