Latin and Vernacular in Quattrocento Florence and Beyond: An Introduction

LEONARDO BRUNI WAS one of the greatest humanists of the early quattrocento. He represents the “new generation’s talent for a more classicizing style and of the new locutionary energy that it provided.” Bruni is recognized as the quintessential humanist of his time: “if Bruni is not a typical Quattrocento humanist, nobody is.” Bruni set the standard for humanistic prose writing of the early quattrocento, and his legacy goes beyond the confines of the history and politics of Florence. Some of the most copied and studied works by Bruni in fifteenthcentury Italy were his translations from Greek to Latin. His Latin versions of Greek histories paved the way for the reception of ancient Greek literature in the