Coluccio Salutati, Petrarch and Boccaccio

In 1375, the year he was appointed chancellor of the Commune of Florence, Salutati accepted the daunting spiritual legacy of Petrarch, who had died a year earlier, and Boccaccio, who had died the year he took office.

Salutati had neither the refinement nor the brilliance of the two great poets, but he offset this with the same intellectual mettle, augmented by the ability to succeed where they had failed. It was thanks to Salutati that in 1397 Florence invited the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras to teach Greek language and literature at the city university (Entry n. 69).

The revival of comprehensive direct knowledge of Greek, promoted by Salutati, thus had more widespread and enduring ramifications than the attempts made by Petrarch and Boccaccio. This revival ultimately permeated Florentine culture as a whole and thus its importance went beyond a purely individual level.