Brunetto Latini

   .... in la mente m’è fitta, e or mi accora,
la cara e buona imagine paterna
di voi, quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora
   m’insegnavate, come l’uom s’eterna.

(Inferno XV.82-85)

   .... fixed in my mind, and it pains me now,
is your good and cherished paternal image
from when in the world above, little by little,
   you taught me how a man makes himself eternal.

---

Above: Doré’s illustration of Brunetto’s encounter with Dante and Virgil

Readers of the Inferno certainly remember the scene commemorated here. Upon arriving at the burning sands of the sodomites, Dante recognizes his old teacher suffering under the rain of fire, and asks him with surprise:

... siete voi qui ser Brunetto?

(Inferno XV.30)

... are you here, sir Brunetto?

Brunetto Latini (ca. 1220-94) was a man of great prestige in Dante’s times. He was a philosopher, a scholar, rhetorician and politician. In the summer of 1260, Brunetto served as Florentine secretary at the court of Alfonso X el Sabio in Spain. On his way back in early September, he was startled to discover that the Ghibellines had taken over Florence after the Battle of Montaperti. Being a Guelph, he couldn’t return and, since he was already in France, he travelled to Paris.

There he joined a group of Florentine bankers and worked as a notary while writing his Tresor, a summa of rhetorical knowledge backed up with world history, which he wrote in French. After the Guelphs’ decisive victory at the battle of Benevento in 1266, he was finally able to go back to Florence and soon returned to city government. In fact, he spent half of 1287 as a prior in the Torre della Castagna (Chestnut Tower), which rises above Dante’s house.

Dante refers here to Brunetto as his teacher. The way “a man makes himself eternal” is, of course, through literature. Brunetto’s plaque is here on the exterior wall of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore because he was once buried here, in the north chapel. If you go inside, you can find what remains of his tomb.

Below: Brunetto Latini’s Column

Brunetto was buried here in a sarcophagus held up by columns at each corner. Of the whole structure, however, only this single column remains. Workers discovered it during restoration work in the 1600s and moved it to its current location, where a marble marker was added. The Latin reads:

“In honor of Brunetto Latini who died in the year 1294. He was a Florentine nobleman, a rejuvenator of eloquence and poetry, and the peerless teacher of Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti. This little column from his tomb, twice destroyed, was returned to a state of great splendor and placed here by the monks of this convent with the approval of Giuseppe Maria Mazzei, vicar general, for the benefit of the citizens of Florence, in the year 1751”

The ancient column itself bears Brunetto’s funereal inscription and family crest: “S(epulcrum) S(er) Burnetti Latini et filiorum” (Tomb of Ser Brunetto Latini and his children).

​Underneath that inscription is Brunetto’s escutcheon, with six yellow roses on a blue field:

Brunetto’s son, Perso, was a great favorite of the King of Naples (Charles I) and was allowed to incorporate the Angevin symbols of a red rake and golden lilies, which, though it never actually belonged to Brunetto himself, is the Latini coat of arms preserved at the Casa di Dante and still visible in Santa Maria Novella: