Coluccio Salutati (b. 1331–d. 1406) is primarily known today as the scholar who ensured that the humanist movement established by Petrarch was passed on successfully to Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, and other scholars of the next generation. His approach to learning was more traditional than Petrarch’s; but from his base as chancellor of Florence, he began to associate humanism with the active political life in a way that would have a decisive impact on the next generation of scholars. His surviving writings range from official letters to learned treatises on government and ethics. In addition, many books survive from his substantial library, allowing us to see what his intellectual interests were and how he read his books.
Craig Kallendorf, Oxford Bibiliographies Online.
As Chancellor of Florence, Salutati "first used in the public documents of his office the sonorous Latin of Cicero, and thus forced upon Popes and Princes the necessity of securing for themselves scribes and secretaries who were masters of the classic style."
Harry Thurston Peck, A History of Classical Philology, 268.
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