We may find it hard to appreciate these and other
arguments of the same kind, but Dante's passion never fail s to carry
us with him. In his letters he appears as one of the earliest
publicists, and is perhaps the first layman to publish political tracts
in this form. He began early. Soon after the death of Beatrice he
addressed a pamphlet on the State of Florence 'to the Great ones of the
Earth,' and the public utterances of his later years, dating from the
time of his banishment, are all directed to emperors, princes, a nd
cardinals. In these letters and in his book De Vulgari Eloquentia
(About the Vernacular) the feeling, bought with such bitter pains, is
constantly recurring that the exile may find elsewhere than in his
native place an intellectual home in language and culture, which cannot
be taken from him. On this point we shall have more to say in the
sequel.
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. The wealth of the
Papal court at Avignon, which at the death of John XXII amounted to
twenty-five millions of gold florins, would be incredible on any less
trustworthy authority.
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