Letters

Salutati can also be credited with an impressive body of public and private letters (Entry n. 33). Over a period of approximately three decades, from 1375 to 1406, he wrote the official correspondence of the Florentine Republic, sent within and outside the Italian peninsula, using stylistic forms inspired by essentially classical models, but also with recourse to the traditional rhetorical precepts and grammar of his era. This correspondence, quite impassioned in some cases, includes about 10,000 letters and has been handed down to us through drafts and copies from city records.

At the same time, as the magister of a new culture Salutati also wrote an enormous number of private letters, in which he plies a personal style that chiefly follows the example of Cicero and Petrarch. Thus, we find two separate areas of production distinguished by extremely diverse styles and registers, as demonstrated by the debate in which Salutati was forced to abandon the classical form of address, the second-person singular tu, and adopt the notarial plural form vos in his public correspondence.