The Correspondence of Coluccio Salutati (Vol. 1)

Only the faithful devotion that he nurtures for his house therefore spurs him to writeWhat, therefore, impelled me to write? Unshaken faith and innate devotion, which, following in the footsteps of my ancestors, I have always borne toward the most sacred royal blood; your humanity also gave me hope, you who have always shown yourself gentle and accessible to those of lower station.

and the nobility of the subject.The vast and admirable subject matter itself and your deeds also invited me, which by their majesty as well as their abundance could rouse even sluggish spirits and any dormant genius. And that

He recalls the coronation of Charles in Rome by the hand of the pope,we may briefly touch upon the sequence of events as it has reached us, you, in the city of Rome, with an intrepid mind and a great soul conceiving of things greater than your fortune would permit, consecrated and anointed according to the rite of Holy Mother Church by the hands of the true vicar of Jesus Christ and most blessed Supreme Pontiff, Urban VI, were elevated to the glorious height of the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Sicily on that most holy day when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ poured out the promised Holy Spirit in the visible appearance of fire upon those preachers of the kingdom of God and champions and athletes of the Christian faith, which day,

occurring on the same day in which one hundred and sixteen years earlier the great Charles of Anjou had conquered Naples;ever to be recalled in celebrated memory, was the first after the calends of June (1), one hundred and sixteen years having already elapsed since the auspicious beginning of those same kingdoms under your illustrious predecessor, Charles I. And thus, in the sixth year of the twelfth decade since the title of such great dominion came to your ancestors—the fullness and dignity of which numbers we leave to the mystical treatisers of arithmetic to be contemplated in their midst—you, with a favorable heaven and, as the outcome teaches, with the favor of God, the Architect of the heavens, ascended the loftiness of the royal throne. Then, trusting in the justice of your cause, accompanied by a small army, on the seventh day before the calends of

the entry into the kingdom,July, you entered the kingdom due to you (2), and with finally no enemies in your way, [you entered] into the cities and towns which your most glorious spouse, of masculine virtue and manly

where there awaited him theaudacity, already for so long a time among conti-

(1) Charles was crowned in Rome on June 2, 1381. From the day before is the bull with which the pope invests him with the kingdom together with his promise and oath; RAINALDO, Ann. ad a. §§ II-XXIII; LUENIG, Cod. diplom. II, 1147 ff.; GIANNONE, Storia del reame di Napoli, Milan, 1823, book XXIII, ch. v, vii, 349.

(2) On the 25th of June Charles had crossed the borders.