Brunetto Latini (c.
1220–1294), who signed his name
Burnectus Latinus in Latin and
Burnecto Latino in Italian, was an
Italian philosopher, scholar and statesman.
He was born in
Florence, the son of
Buonaccorso Latini. He belonged to the
Guelph party. After the defeat of
Montaperti, which took place while he was on embassy to
Alfonso el Sabio of Castile to seek help for Florence against the
Sienese, he took refuge for some years (1260-1266) in
France, but in 1266, he returned to
Tuscany and for some twenty years held successive high offices.
Giovanni Villani says that he was a great philosopher and a consummate master of
rhetoric, not only in knowing how to speak well, but how to write well. He was the author of various works in prose and verse.
While in France, he wrote his Italian
Tesoretto and in French his prose
Trésor, both summaries of the encyclopaedic knowledge of the day (the Italian 13th-century translation known as
Tesoro was misattributed to
Bono Giamboni). He also translated into Italian the
Rettorica and three orations by
Cicero. 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.82-87). Dante places Latini within the third ring of the Seventh Circle with the Sodomites. Dante writes: "clerks and great and famous scholars, defiled in the world by one and the same sin" presumably of
sodomy. According to John D. 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. Other critics point to the fact that outside of the
Divine Comedy, Latini is nowhere else accused of sodomy. 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.
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