Brunetto Latini

Writer, born in Florence, Tuscany, NC Italy. A Guelph, he was forced into temporary exile by the 1260 Ghibelline victory. There he wrote, in French, the encyclopaedic and very successful Li livres du Trésor. He also wrote, in Italian, La Rettorica, a popularization of Cicero's work, and the poems ‘Tesoretto’ and ‘Favolello’.

Brunetto Latini (c.1220 - 1294), who signed his name Burnectus Latinus in Latin and Burnecto Latino in Italian, was a Florentine philosopher, scholar and statesman.

He was born in Florence, the son of Buonaccorso Latini.

While in France, he wrote his Italian Tesoretto and in French his prose Tresor, both summaries of the encyclopaedic knowledge of the day (the Italian 13th-century translation known as Tesoro was misattributed to Bono Giamboni). The Italian translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, is often misattributed to Brunetto Latini: it is a work of Taddeo Alderotti instead.

He is famous as the friend, teacher and counsellor of Dante Alighieri, who immortalized him in The Divine Comedy (see Inferno, XV. Dante places Latini with in the third ring of the Seventh Circle with the Sodomites. Sinclair Dante respected Latini immensely but nonetheless felt it necessary to place him with the sodomites since, according to Sinclair, this sin of Latini's was well known in Florence at the time. Some therefore have suggested that Latini is placed in Canto XV for being violent against art (Latini wrote in French instead of Florentine) or perhaps also to demonstrate that even the greatest of men may be guilty of private sins.

Many of the characters in Dante's Inferno can also be found as flesh and blood persons amongst the legal and diplomatic documents Brunetto Latino wrote in Latin.