Introduction

Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406) was chancellor of the Florentine Republic from 1375 until his death, the first in a distinguished line of humanists to hold that position. He was revered as a father figure by the younger generation of Florentine humanists, including Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, and was responsible for inviting the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras to Florence in order to teach Greek, thus inaugurating a new phase in the humanist movement.

For most of his life, Salutati's ethical stance was broadly, though superficially, Stoic, and was based on his reading of the Roman moralists Cicero and Seneca. In the 1390s, however, he gradually moved towards a more Peripatetic outlook, particularly in relation to the emotions. He became increasingly doubtful that the Stoic demand for complete impassivity was feasible, favouring instead the more realistic Aristotelian belief that emotions needed to be controlled and channelled in the proper direction, rather than eradicated. At the same time, Salutati's sincere, if rather shallow, commitment to Christianity began to deepen. The key moment in the development of his own personal brand of Christian Aristotelianism was the death of his beloved son Piero from the plague in May of 1400. The intolerable grief which this event provoked convinced him that human beings were incapable of suppressing such profound emotions and that relief could only be found though faith in the ultimate wisdom and goodness of God's providential plan for mankind.