N. 23. - The inscription to commemorate BRUNETTO LATINI is placed outside the Chapel of the Carnesecchi in Santa Maria Maggiore, inside of which there is an inscription and part of an ancient tombstone of Brunetto Latini.
Reading edition
..... in la mente m’è fitta, ed or mi accora, La cara e buona imagine paterna Di voi, quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora M’insegnavate, come l’uom s’eterna. DANTE, Inferno, XV, 82–85. ..... in my mind is fixed and touches now My heart, the dear and good paternal image Of you, when in the world from hour to hour You taught me, how a man becomes eternal. Longfellow’s translation.
Dante finds Brunetto Latini among those, who had sinned in the world by doing violence to Nature. Ser Brunetto, a Florentine, the secretary and chancellor of the city, was Dante’s preceptor. Villani sums up his account of him by saying, that “he was himself a worldly man, but he was the first to refine the Florentines from their grossness, and to instruct them in speaking properly and in conducting the affairs of the Republic on principles of policy”.
PORTINARI