Chapter 3

Brunetto Latini’s Il Tesoretto

A Case Study in Chivalric Reform

Chivalry played an ambivalent, if not deleterious, role in Florentine society, encouraging knights and men-at-arms to utilize extreme violence in order to defend both their personal and familial honor (honor violence) and their collective honor (social violence). Indeed, chivalry intensified the violence committed by practitioners to a degree unmatched by other groups in Florentine society. This is a crucial point, because while the ready recourse to violence was not exclusive to nobles or to a class of knights, chivalric identity was centered in large part on the exercise of transgressive honor and social violence.

Not surprisingly, the determined violence central to chivalric identity was a source of considerable anxiety for contemporary Florentines. Members of the great merchant and banking lineages of the popolo grasso, although willing participants when they stood to profit materially or politically, lamented the disruption to business and governance caused by wide-scale internecine fighting and, on occasion, outright civil war. Meanwhile, Florentine popolani of lower and middling social status were at once terrified of the chivalric elite’s violent aggression, of which they were the most common recipients, and attracted by the intoxicating mixture of their social prestige and power (see chapter 2). All popolani agreed, however, that chivalric violence posed a real and serious threat to public order and civic concord in late medieval Florence, so much so that concerned individuals both within and outside of the chivalric cultural community sought to reform the chivalric lifestyle, especially the centrality of violence.

It is important at this point to differentiate the concept of chivalric reform from that of a “civilizing process,” first introduced by Norbert Elias and recently applied with more nuance to communal Italy by John Najemy.¹ Elias argued that the violent and reckless medieval warrior elite were “civilized” (i.e., turned into courtiers) by the coercive power of centralized states in early modern Europe.² Najemy observes this same process occurring much earlier (the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) in the cities of northern Italy, where the process of “defining, codifying, and legislating standards of behavior that modified the character of the aristocratic classes” achieved notable success.³ This “civilizing process,” however, ignores two important realities: first, the various reform efforts put into motion in communal Italy, especially in Florence, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were not entirely successful in stamping out the powerful attraction to and influence of chivalry, especially among magnates and exiles (fuorusciti); and second, change was not imposed exclusively by external parties bent on eliminating chivalric violence or browbeating elite warriors into accepting a more pacific and subservient role in communal society.⁴

Strong currents of reform can be detected emanating both from within chivalric circles as well as from sympathetic outsiders—men like Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio—in late medieval Italy.⁵ While these messages of chivalric reform can be construed as having somewhat similar goals as the “civilizing process” promoted by the popolani, their origin and fundamental nature were chivalric, not civic. In other words, these reformers drew upon reformative debates, themes, and virtues inherent in the ideological world of chivalry.⁶ They believed the best way to define the proper use of violence, to rein in the traditional autonomy of the chivalric elite, and to redirect their loyalty toward service of a sovereign power was through the use of language and virtues already present within chivalric discourse.⁷

These “internal” reform messages were disseminated primarily through the substantial corpus of imaginative literature, especially prose romances that circulated in Florence and Tuscany during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As discussed in the introduction, Constance Bouchard and Richard Kaeuper have argued for the necessity of using imaginative literature to understand chivalry in the general European context, especially chivalric reform currents, and this holds true for Florence and Tuscany.⁸ Likewise, the recent studies by Martin Aurell and Lorenzo Caravaggi lend credence to the idea that many Florentine and Tuscan knights read and listened to literary works.⁹ To this body of scholarship should be added the insights provided by Ronald Witt, Kristina Olson, and Franco Cardini, which in toto paint a convincing picture of literate or semiliterate knights who would have been more than capable of understanding, possibly even fully reading and writing, works of imaginative literature.¹⁰ As a result, it seems likely that they, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, would have readily consumed and debated the reform currents embedded within these works, even if the extant evidence does not offer much insight into how these messages were received and internalized.

Brunetto Latini and Chivalric Reform

Although prose romances were the most common medium for the transmission of chivalric reform messages in Florence and Tuscany, this chapter will focus on a single allegorical poem that served a similar purpose: Brunetto Latini’s Tesoretto (Little Treasure, ca. 1267).¹¹ Latini’s Tesoretto is one of the earliest reform works to circulate in Florentine chivalric society during the thirteenth century, and it is representative of a larger body of prescriptive works cutting across genres that followed. At first glance Latini seems to be an unlikely “internal” reformer: he was a notary by profession and a prominent intellectual and political theorist.¹² Despite these popolani bona fides, however, he was also well versed in general European concepts of chivalry after spending six years in exile in France. During these years he was immersed in the chivalric culture of that kingdom, no doubt well aware of the perceived failures and excesses of French knighthood. Since the powerful influence of chivalry was not contained by traditional political and cultural boundaries in late medieval Europe, but rather was shared by knights and men-at-arms on both sides of the Alps, it seems likely that Latini adapted many of the reform ideas circulating in France for use in his native Florence.¹³

The chivalric nature of the Tesoretto is further reinforced by the fact that Latini wrote two very different works upon his return to Florence in 1267. The first, Li Livres dou Trésor, was a treatise composed in French and was addressed to the “rhetoricians and rulers in the government of the Italian communes, the class that provided the podestà.”¹⁴ The Trésor discusses the appointment, qualifications, duties, and comportment of a podestà and other leading officials, among other topics. The second, the Tesoretto, was an allegorical poem composed in the Italian vernacular with content, as we shall see, directly relevant to the lives of the chivalric elite. This suggests that Latini had a specific audience in mind: Florentine knights and men-at-arms.¹⁵

Brunetto Latini’s great admiration for the chivalric lifestyle and its practitioners, like that of many of his contemporaries, was naturally tempered by a healthy dose of fear. Both emotions are understandable given that this group during Latini’s lifetime comprised many of the leading figures in Florence, men like Corso Donati (d. 1308), Tegghiaio Aldobrandi degli Adimari (d. ca. 1266), and Farinata degli Uberti (d. 1264). As we have seen, these men, in sharp contrast to Brunetto Latini, boasted distinguished lineages, owned great landed estates and urban possessions, were the leaders of sizable bodies of armed men, and possessed the military experience and leadership necessary to protect and expand the interests of the Florentine territorial state. Due to this social prestige and power, the chivalric lifestyle had numerous admirers and imitators, but many who aspired to the social benefits of chivalry were deeply concerned with the consequences of chivalric violence on public order and civic concord.¹⁶

The Tesoretto directly reflects this combination of admiration and anxiety. For Latini, the violence of the Florentine chivalric elite did not need to be eliminated but rather controlled. This could be accomplished by inculcating knights and men-at-arms with a message of reform aimed at tempering the more violent aspects of their lifestyle, thus allowing them in the process to become productive members of Florentine society.¹⁷ This effort involved promoting certain reformative chivalric virtues, often with language drawn from newly available classical sources.¹⁸ Similar to other reformers, like Albertano of Brescia, Latini attached great importance to the idea of balancing the vigorous and even joyous exercise of prowess with prudence, mesuré (restraint), and wisdom.¹⁹ It is crucial to recognize that perhaps unlike Albertano, however, Latini sought not to delegitimize chivalric violence but rather to promote its proper and controlled use.²⁰ Likewise, Latini sought to combat the traditional autonomy of the chivalric elite by advocating a hierarchical concept of loyalty to a sovereign power (in his case, the communal government of Florence).²¹ He also encouraged these warriors to utilize their considerable martial experience and expertise in the service of that power.

In addition, Latini, adapting a classical concept, conceived of knighthood as a profession or art (arte) that could be not only taught and learned but also reformed. The use of the knight as student of the Virtues in the Tesoretto strongly suggests that Latini believed that the chivalric elite were not only capable but also worthy of being reformed. Latini’s goal was therefore not to excise the chivalric elite from the civic body or to redefine chivalric ideas by giving prominence to the civic virtues promoted by the popolani, but rather to encourage strenuous (used in the sense of the Latin strenuus or active) knights and men-at-arms to exercise proper and controlled violence, to rein in their traditional autonomy, and to accept a leading but more inclusive role in society.

Brunetto Latini’s Tesoretto contains strong messages of reform designed for an explicit audience: the Florentine chivalric elite. As suggested previously, Latini sought to balance respect for the traditional nature of the chivalric lifestyle with an emphasis on the reformative strands inherent in chivalric discourse, thus crafting a reform message that would have been more easily digested by the intended recipients. Critical to this reform message is the author’s discussion of the nature of true nobility, one that includes qualities and virtues incorporated from both chivalric and classical currents (especially Aristotle’s Ethics).²² For Latini, there was a clear difference between nobility and gentility: nobility was a product of lineage and tradition, and thus was inherited; gentility was something demonstrated. Latini writes,

Gentility is nobility of personal action, the demonstration of the positive attributes traditionally associated with the ideal version of the nobility of the blood (valor and bravery in war, courtesy, leadership, generosity) by individuals regardless of their lineage. More importantly, a person who demonstrates gentility does not fall into the excesses associated by most Florentines with nobility of the blood (and by extension, chivalry), especially violence against the popolani and internecine conflict with other members of the elite. The nobility are clearly connected in Latini’s mind to civic discord and were considered a threat to the successful rule of the Florentine government. Instead, a man of gentility “is pleasing to the people” and a productive member of society. Virtuous acts done in the interest of the commonwealth earn him praise and honor.²⁴

Concepts of nobility traditionally associated with the general European context, especially nobility of the blood, remained important to Latini and many of his contemporaries, despite the threat “nobles” (i.e., the chivalric elite) posed to civic concord and the growth of a centralized public authority. That this is true is at least partly the result of the powerful influence of honor in late medieval Florentine society. Moreover, Florentines at all levels of the social hierarchy maintained a deep-seated respect for the distinguished lineages of their city, whose members “evoked fear, respect, and hatred, as well as pity when they fell on hard times.”²⁵ Latini accordingly acknowledges that if two men are equally “gentle” (i.e., demonstrate the same level of gentility), the man with a better lineage is customarily considered by society to be superior:

This view on nobility and gentility is reflected in Latini’s reform program, which encourages knights and men-at-arms of exalted noble lineage to demonstrate their gentility. In this way, a nobleman of distinguished lineage and demonstrated gentility would serve as a model for other members of the chivalric elite, becoming in the process a productive and leading member of Florentine society.

Latini held up certain great knights as models of reformed chivalry. These models were drawn from a myriad of sources—both historical and literary (especially chivalric romance and epic)—and included contemporaries or near-contemporaries of the audience of these works, as well as famous figures from antiquity.²⁷ Latini’s model knight is also likely the anonymous dedicatee of the Tesoretto, possibly a Florentine who served Charles of Anjou (king of Naples, 1266–85) during his conquest of the kingdom of Sicily in the mid-1260s. This knight is described by Latini as a “worthy lord” of noble birth (alto legnaggio) and demonstrated gentility, having “no equal either in peace or war.”²⁸ Thus, Latini’s model knight demonstrates his quality in both civic life and warfare, the two arenas in which a reformed Florentine knight was expected to “[do] things of profit” and “[live] honorably.”²⁹

Not surprisingly, Latini’s ideal knight excels by demonstrating both gentility and nobility. It is important to note, however, that Latini’s reform program inextricably intertwines the two concepts (gentility and nobility) and their concomitant virtues. Therefore, virtues traditionally associated with gentility, especially wisdom and prudence, are also associated by Latini with nobility as he addresses his ideal knight:

Likewise, Latini connects gentility to the chivalric and noble virtues of courtesy, largesse, and especially prowess. He writes,

The inclusion of prowess in this constellation of virtues in the galaxy of gentility-nobility is, as we shall see, critical to Latini’s reform message. Any reading of contemporary chivalric literature, especially romances, leaves no doubt about the dominant position of prowess in the pantheon of chivalry.³² Kaeuper has argued that knights and men-at-arms in the general European context worshiped “the demi-god prowess,” and as we have seen, this holds true for the Florentine chivalric elite as well.³³ Thus, Latini had to balance the need to valorize chivalry with the desire to reform it. He consequently praises his model knight wholeheartedly not only for his prowess, but also for his wisdom and prudence.

The seemingly ideal combination of wisdom, prudence, and prowess is buttressed in Latini’s text by two strands of reform, one more traditionally chivalric and the other classical. In Latini’s mind, and that of other reformers in thirteenth-century Italy, traditional chivalric motifs and characters (Lancelot and Tristan) could be easily reconciled with classical history and mythology (Hector and Achilles), and thus be attached to the burgeoning revival of classical works.³⁴ Traditional chivalric qualities also had their counterparts (albeit not always direct equivalents) in classical texts.³⁵ The classical intellectual tradition lent authority to such reform efforts.

After the dedicatory message, Latini assumes the role of narrator and witnesses the reformation of a Florentine knight by a series of personified virtues. It is important that Latini chooses a knight (“bel cavalero”) as the recipient of explicit messages of reform in the Tesoretto, rather than the public servant and good popolano of the Livres dou Trésor.³⁶ The message promoted by the virtues is intended to reform the knight in his profession and send him home well educated in war (“ben apreso di guerra”). The reference to education is predicated upon Latini’s conception of arms as an arte, that is, as a set of practices that could be taught and learned, a matter in which one could give good instruction or advice based on experience.³⁷ Latini, in this way, adapts to a contemporary chivalric context the classical idea that the practitioners of a profession can be reformed. As such, the Tesoretto should be considered neither an antecedent nor a direct contribution to the efforts of some members of the popolo grasso to create a demilitarized service knighthood.³⁸ The Tesoretto is instead about the honor, behavior, and worldly success of a strenuous knight within Florentine society.³⁹ In short, Latini’s goal is to soften the rough edges of the chivalric lifestyle in order to allow these knights and men-at-arms to become productive members of Florentine society, particularly as soldiers and military leaders who focus their violent energies on external enemies rather than their fellow citizens. Latini does not seek to end chivalric violence or subsume it into the publicly accepted and regulated practice of vendetta, but rather to define proper ways of using it, thus engaging with a major reform theme found in chivalric literature across Europe.⁴⁰

In the Tesoretto Latini’s knight and the personified virtues come together at an imagined noble court presided over by an “Empress” named Virtue. Latini describes the Empress Virtue as the

This Empress has several daughters, including three that represent important tenets of chivalry: Prudence, “Whom men in the vernacular / Call simply Good Sense”;⁴² Temperance, “Whom people at times / Are accustomed to call Measure”;⁴³ and finally Fortitude, “Who at times by custom / Is called Power of Courage / By some people.”⁴⁴ The identity of these three figures, blending chivalric and classical virtues, is critical: fortitude (i.e., martial courage or bravery, not the ability to endure) was closely connected to prowess, the sine qua non of chivalry, while the practice of temperance (i.e., restraint or mesuré) and prudence (i.e., caution and wisdom) allowed a knight or man-at-arms to know when, where, and how to demonstrate his prowess to achieve the greatest success.⁴⁵ Thus, Latini stresses the ideal combination of fortitude tempered by restraint and prudence. The emphasis upon these basic tenets of chivalry and the balance they provide is also recurrent in chivalric reform literature outside of Italy and therefore is not unique to the civic culture of Italian cities and towns.⁴⁶

Latini’s message of reform is clearest when his knight meets four grand mistresses present at the Empress’s court: Ladies Generosity, Courtesy, Loyalty, and Prowess. These four figures again represent important tenets of chivalry and will be responsible for reforming the knight. The importance attached to the cooperation of the personified virtues is made clear by Latini, who writes that “their working together / Seems to me very gracious / And useful to people.”⁴⁷ Latini’s reform message is consistent throughout the poem: the ideal combination of prowess, prudence, and restraint is necessary to temper the violence and channel the martial ardor of the chivalric elite and make these warriors productive members of Florentine society.

It is useful to consider each of the knight’s instructors in turn. The first, Lady Generosity, likely played two roles in Latini’s reform program.⁴⁸ Her moral role promoted in the minds of the audience the virtues of generosity and charity in contrast to the sins of avarice and envy. Her social role as generosity, particularly in the extravagant form recognized in chivalric circles as largesse, was widely acknowledged as an important means of differentiating knights and men-at-arms from the wealthy merchants and bankers of the popolo grasso who actively sought the social benefits and trappings of chivalry.⁴⁹ Naturally, the moral and social roles were intimately connected. While merchants and bankers were often associated with greed and envy, knights were traditionally associated with extreme generosity. In this way, Latini employed moral differentiation as a means of buttressing the claims of social superiority made by the chivalric elite.

Another important contribution made by Lady Generosity is the identification of knighthood as a profession (mestero) or art (arte). As discussed previously, this is a crucial point because professions were taught, and accordingly their practitioners were capable of being retaught or reformed. Latini, in his role as narrator, writes that Lady Generosity

This is a clear statement of Latini’s goal to reform the way in which Florentine knights (and by extension, men-at-arms) comported themselves in their profession.

Lady Courtesy, “In whom always rests / Every prize of worthiness,” is the next grand mistress who imparts instruction to Latini’s knight.⁵¹ Lady Courtesy tells him that “In acts, do not be too bold, / But gain for yourself from others / To whom your deeds are pleasing.”⁵² What is gained is honor, the result of fellow members of the chivalric cultural community recognizing not just a knight’s prowess but also its proper exercise. Critical to Latini’s reform message then is the belief that prowess must be exercised with humility. To praise one’s own prowess or honor is dishonorable and shows a distinct lack of courtesy. Some contemporary works of imaginative literature go so far as to suggest that to praise oneself negates the praise of others, leading the authors of these works to make explicit the motivation behind the rare instances when a heroic knight takes the time to bask in the reflective glow of his own glory. In the Tavola Ritonda, for example, when Tristano speaks highly of himself, the author makes clear he does so only out of necessity and not for the wrong reasons: “And, in truth, messer Tristano praised himself greatly and spoke very highly of himself there with the dame, so that the dame felt secure, and would take him on this adventure; he did this for no other reason.”⁵³

Honor is also intimately connected to courtesy when it is shown to a worthy recipient. In this vein, Lady Courtesy instructs the knight to “always bear in mind / To associate with good people” and to “Honor the truly good friends / As much as yourself, / On foot and on horse.”⁵⁴ Courtesy informs how a knight should interact with others, whether they are his social equals and superiors (“on horse”) or inferiors (“on foot”):

Closely related to this discussion, and an important element of Latini’s reform program, is the connection Lady Courtesy makes between courtesy and self-control, especially in social or public situations. Lady Courtesy instructs the knight to go “Very courteously” (molto cortesemente) if he rides through the city, “Rather than going unreined / With great wildness.”⁵⁶ She continues by exhorting the knight to move confidently among the people:

In doing so a knight projects his knightly state or franchise, a term that lacks a precise definition but is generally considered the attitude and comportment befitting a free and noble man. More specifically, this implies the self-confidence and social grace that befits a man of nobility and gentility. Accordingly, Lady Courtesy instructs the knight to

Latini would have been well aware of the great desire among members of the Florentine chivalric elite to be acknowledged both at home and abroad as members of an international order of knights and men-at-arms (ordo militum). This acknowledgment would have served as validation of their lifestyle and as a bulwark against the rise of “new men” (i.e., the popolo grasso) whose immense wealth threatened the social superiority long enjoyed by traditional chivalric families. Latini was also cognizant of the violent consequences of conflict between the Florentine chivalric elite and these “new men.”⁵⁹ Latini therefore sought to appease his chivalric audience by acknowledging the validity of franchise, while also promoting a message of reform by connecting franchise to gentility. He wanted these men of noble lineage and franchise to demonstrate their gentility and become productive, leading members of Florentine society, ostensibly eliminating, in his mind, the need of the chivalric elite to prove their superiority through violence.

Lady Loyalty, the third grand mistress who undertakes the task of instructing Latini’s knight, represents one of the central tenets of chivalry and a virtue used by those seeking to temper the customary autonomy of the chivalric elite. While traditionally loyalty had the meaning of faithfulness to one’s word or reliability, Lady Loyalty instead emphasizes a hierarchical meaning of loyal service to one’s patria.⁶⁰ This is an understanding of loyalty and service drawn from classical works, one that was developing in chivalric circles during this period and could be applied to either a commonwealth or a sovereign lord. In the context of Florence, it would have been critical to promote loyalty among members of the chivalric elite to the communal government in order to successfully establish a sovereign territorial state and maintain civic concord and public order. Lady Loyalty consequently exhorts Latini’s knight to risk his life in the service of his patria:

The difficulty facing Latini when advocating this conception of loyalty is that while such service promised honor and prestige, it threatened the traditional autonomy of the chivalric elite and gave rise to the possibility that they might have to fight against relatives or friends. This would have been particularly relevant in the case of Florence, as many among the Florentine chivalric elite maintained close connections to exiles and nobles in other regions of northern and central Italy.⁶²

Finally, the knight comes before Lady Prowess, who cuts a striking figure in her boldness and confidence, echoing contemporary depictions of knights across a variety of genres.⁶³ It is notable that Lady Prowess most forcefully conveys Latini’s reform message, promoting prudence and restraint. Given the centrality of prowess to chivalry, the knight’s interaction with this grand mistress deserves special attention. Her praise of prowess is matched by her insistence on its proper (restrained and acceptable) use. She instructs the knight, saying

She continues by highlighting the dangers of failing to temper prowess with prudence and restraint, telling the knight that “He whom madness troubles / Will not rise to such heights / That he will not tumble to the depths.”⁶⁵

Latini’s message about the importance of the proper exercise of prowess must be seen in two contexts: warfare proper and other forms of chivalric violence. In the context of war, Lady Prowess emphasizes the exercise of restraint, wisdom, and prudence in the decision to go to war or to confront the enemy in battle: “And more, do not rush / Into war or battle, / And do not be a creator / Of war or of scandal.”⁶⁶ Once war has been undertaken and battle engaged, Lady Prowess instructs the bel cavalero that

Reform literature on both sides of the Alps, including imaginative literature, also promotes this message. One need only think of the example of Roland, the eponymous hero of the Chanson de Roland, a chivalric work well known at the Angevin Court at Naples by the late thirteenth century (King Charles I [d. 1285] chose to copy Roland in naming his sword Durendal), to understand the negative consequences of failing to balance bravery and prowess with prudence and restraint.⁶⁸

Lady Prowess continues her discussion of chivalric conduct in battle, instructing the knight:

This long quotation repays closer examination. The first portion of Lady Prowess’s instruction certainly would have fallen on receptive ears: strenuous knights and men-at-arms throughout medieval Europe, including those in Florence, whose expertise and experience in warfare made them the driving force behind most military campaigns.⁷⁰ She counsels,

This advice echoes a trope recurrent in imaginative literature, one that would have been commonplace in Florentine chivalric culture. Indeed, the best way for a knight to maintain and increase his honor was by demonstrating his prowess in battle, as war was considered an ennobling enterprise.

Following the exhortation to demonstrate nobility and prowess in battle, Lady Prowess attacks cowardice:

Attacks upon cowardice and the promotion of bravery and prowess in battle are themes that would have resonated with the martial ardor of the honor-driven Florentine chivalric elite. If war was recognized throughout the medieval world as an ennobling activity, surely the Florentine chivalric elite used it, as with generosity, to further differentiate themselves from the popolo grasso.

Lady Prowess’s emphasis upon prudence and restraint applies not only to the battlefield, but also to altercations in the streets and in the halls of government when the honor of the participants was also at risk. When conflict arises away from the field of battle, Lady Prowess advocates first seeking redress through the courts, which is not surprising given the profession of the author:

Lady Prowess warns the knight to be cautious before resorting to violence in such a conflict:

Prudence may necessarily replace an immediate and reckless act of violence.

While Lady Prowess includes a plea for the knight to stoically endure challenges to his honor or person, there is an implicit acknowledgement of the difficulty of this request, especially if the act causing dishonor is committed in public under the watchful eye of a chivalric community with a very touchy sense of honor.⁷³ Not surprisingly therefore, Lady Prowess hints immediately thereafter that such challenges might be difficult to endure and a knight might be required to respond through force:

If force is required, it should be undertaken with bravery and without fear of death. Again, this is a message that would not have been out of place in imaginative literature and one that certainly would have resonated with Florentine knights and men-at-arms.

While Lady Prowess forcefully promotes her reform message, it is not an all-or-nothing proposal. The tensions in Latini’s instruction suggest that the author was well aware that the courts could not solve every problem and that the chivalric mentality conceived of violence as the best, if not the only legitimate, weapon for rectifying offenses.⁷⁵ First Lady Prowess tells the knight

She goes on to contradict herself, however, when she states that

Beneath the seemingly conflicting advice is the same reform message one detects throughout the text: Lady Prowess exhorts the knight to exercise prudence when dealing with these situations and restraint when the decision has been made to resort to violence. Most important of all, however, is Lady Prowess’s exhortation that a knight must avoid the shame of failing to avenge dishonor.

By emphasizing reformative virtues inherent in chivalry, Latini constructed in the Tesoretto a multifaceted reform message that sought to temper chivalric violence and ardor by promoting restraint and prudence, while still respecting the traditional lifestyle of these strenuous knights and men-at-arms. In this way his allegorical poem has much in common with the prose romances utilized in previous chapters. The burgeoning revival of classical works in late medieval Florence no doubt encouraged Latini to occasionally utilize terminology for these virtues that differs from that of other contemporary reformers who were active north of the Alps; the content, however, is strikingly consistent.⁷⁸ Indeed, the revival of classical ideals and ideas should not be seen as conflicting with chivalric culture. For example, Richard Kaeuper has argued that Aristotelian courage could easily be (and was) perceived by chivalric culture as a sanitized form of prowess.⁷⁹ Thus, the content of Latini’s reform in the Tesoretto clearly parallels that which was current across the Alps, albeit sometimes couched in somewhat different terms: the virtue of courage (i.e., fortitude or prowess) must be tempered by other virtues, primarily temperance (i.e., mesuré or restraint) and prudence.

In addition, through the use of this classical language, the reform messages embedded in the Tesoretto foreshadow the chivalric reform movements that developed in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in both Italy and France. Despite these similarities, it is important to place Latini’s chivalric reform program in its proper context. If we compare the Tesoretto with Leonardo Bruni’s De militia (On Knighthood, ca. 1420) we can detect an important difference: Latini’s and Bruni’s respective currents of reform moved in different directions as they confronted different problems. James Hankins has argued that Bruni’s De militia functioned as a reform text aimed at remilitarizing the pusillanimous “carpet knights” whom contemporaries excoriated as stains on the glory of Florence. This remilitarization was to be accomplished by “co-opt[ing] the most glamorous of medieval ideals, the ideal of chivalry, and … re-interpret[ing] it in terms of Graeco-Roman ideals of military service.”⁸⁰ Thus, Bruni sought to reinvigorate a Florentine knighthood seemingly bereft of courage, prowess, and martial experience.⁸¹ Latini, on the other hand, dealt with an overly stimulated, excessively violent, and highly militarized chivalric elite fiercely protective of their perceived honor, prestige, and autonomy. As a result, he sought to curb the violent excesses of the chivalric elite through reform that was aimed at minimizing the disorder and violence plaguing Florence in the middle of the thirteenth century, but without drastically redefining the ideology or membership of the chivalric cultural community.

The comparison of these two attempts to reform the Florentine chivalric elite, admittedly in fundamentally different ways based on the exigencies of the world in which each lived, highlights the critical importance of context. While reforms emphasizing ideals such as discipline and loyalty and service to the commonwealth might be considered classical in their origins, reformers who operated in a more traditional chivalric milieu easily adopted them. Again, this should not be surprising, as chivalry was eminently practical, capable of taking root in a variety of social terrains and of being fed by a variety of traditions.

In addition, the Tesoretto reveals a great deal about contemporary Florentine culture and reflects Latini’s serious concerns about the tumultuous conflicts that plagued his city, especially the factional wars that led to his exile in 1260. For Latini, the violence of the Florentine chivalric elite needed to be reformed so that these knights and men-at-arms could become productive members of society. Latini sought to accomplish this goal by conceiving of knighthood as a profession or art (arte) that could be reformed through reeducation. The use of the knight as student of the Virtues indicates that Latini thought the institution and its members were not only capable but also worthy of being reformed. Latini’s goal was therefore not to detach the chivalric elite from the larger civic body, nor to eliminate chivalric violence altogether, or even to demilitarize the institution of knighthood, but rather to encourage the proper and controlled exercise of violence and to make these strenuous elite warriors accept their important role in society.

But did Latini’s reformative virtues and ideal behaviors influence members of the Florentine chivalric elite to change their behavior? The evidence presented in chapters 1 and 2 strongly suggests that many knights and men-at-arms failed to consistently put Latini’s reformative virtues and ideal behaviors into practice, even though many streams of the larger current of reform continued to be explored by important literary figures like Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, as well as chronicle writers like Dino Compagni and the Villani.⁸² Despite their efforts, unreformed knights and men-at-arms continued to commit acts of honor and social violence during the remaining decades of the thirteenth century, and many came to be labelled magnates. This violence continued, in many cases unabated, into the middle of the fourteenth century and beyond, leading Boccaccio to conclude that the chivalric mentality of the Florentine elite was “not pliable and receptive to correction.”⁸³

It would be wrong, however, to interpret this sustained violence as proof that reform efforts like Latini’s had no impact upon the chivalric elite. Klapisch-Zuber’s study of the Florentine magnates from the mid-fourteenth through the mid-fifteenth century makes clear that many of these men returned to civic society after modifying their behavior or proving that they had broken with the traditional lifestyle of their predecessors and kinsmen.⁸⁴ For other members of the chivalric elite this process was not so smooth, as reintegration had to work around chivalry’s still powerful influence. This often meant the modification of certain behaviors, like when and where to engage in honor and social violence, while also the intensification of other chivalric activities that were more widely accepted in civic society, like the profession of arms. Buonaccorso di Neri Pitti, the focus of the epilogue, exemplifies this reformed version of the chivalric lifestyle.