Brunetto Latino

Profile

Brunetto Latino was a notary, magistrate, and student of philosophy and rhetoric, exiled in France between 1260 and 1266, where he composed in French his major work, the Tresor, a vast encyclopedic work intended to disseminate knowledge; after returning to Florence he became chancellor of the Commune and an authoritative figure in its deliberations until his death, which occurred in 1294. He also left two allegorical poems in Italian vernacular, the Favolello and the Tesoretto, as well as translations of Cicero and the Nicomachean Ethics. Dante recognizes him as his own teacher during the descent into the seventh circle, where he finds him among the sodomites under the fiery rain, and addresses him calling him ser Brunetto, with a tone of long familiarity and veneration; Brunetto, in turn, treats him as figliuol, exhorts him to follow his star, and predicts for him an exceptional literary destiny, indicating in rhetoric put to political use the meaning of his own teaching.