The Correspondence of Coluccio Salutati (Vol. 1)

BOOK FIVE.

I.

To Francesco del Bene (1).

To the noble and prudent man Francesco di Iacopo del Bene, honorable vicar of Valdinievole and Ariana, his dearest superior, etc. .Co.

Florence, March 11, 1381.
He recommends to him certain of his friends and kinsmen wrongly accused of homicide.

My most singular superior. On account of a certain homicide committed against the person of Guido d'Arighetto, I have heard that you have detained and harassed in his person Simo di Simo of Stignano, whom I regard as my brother. At which I am as grieved as

(1) The name of Francesco di Iacopo di Francesco del Bene is one that appears to us at every moment in the Florentine documents of this time, for he held a good number of offices, undertook several embassies, and was intimately involved in all the disturbances that agitated the city in his day. In 1358 he appears among the officials of the Studio; cf. Gherardi, Statutes of the Studio of Florence, p. 288. Sent in 1363 to Germany to recruit troops against the Pisans, he descended "through harsh seasons," as Pucci says (War between the Florentines and Pisans from 1362 to 1365 in Delizie d. erud. tosc. VI, 238), "with four counts" followed by many people. In 1368 he was a prior (Delizie cit. XIV, 82); in '75 podestà at S. Gimignano (State Archives in Florence, Estrazioni di vicari &c. n. 249, f. 24 B, February 21, 1374, s. f.) and in the same year designated to assume the vicariate of Valdinievole for six months beginning in November (Camarlinghi della Cam., Uscita gener. di condotta, 1374-75, May 4). The following year finds him again among the priors (Delizie cit. XIV, 180). Two years later, however, he was "denounced" [tamburato] as a Ghibelline, certainly due to the hatred that someone in the then-all-powerful "party" bore against him (Libro delle apert. del tamburo of Niccolò di Cecco da Perugia, f. 11 B, October 3, 1377); so that it cannot then come as a surprise to see him pointed out as one of the instigators of the Ciompi and one of the "movers" of the riot