![]() ![]() ![]() “That’s what the Florentines had really from the time of Dante forward,” says King. ![]() They really believed there was something to knowing how to read and write, and to numeracy. Compare that to Paris or Milan at the time, which boasted just a 20 to 25 per cent comparable literacy rate. Not Latin, mind, which was the language of education. “One of the best estimates is that it was seven out of every 10 adult males were able to read in the vernacular,” says King. “Clearly, it wasn’t something genetic or something in the water … something that had to be happening within that society that enabled people to shine,” says King, whose latest, “The Bookseller of Florence,” takes us through description and anecdote to 15th-century Italy and the heart of the Renaissance.Īnd the thing about the Renaissance that Florence commanded more than anyone else? Literacy. ![]() The city was producing geniuses including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and one of the questions historians have had for decades, according to author Ross King is: How did a city of just 40,000 people create so much? So what was it about Florence that allowed Vespasiano da Bisticci, the son of a mere wool trade worker, to scale great economic and social heights, becoming one of the most influential men in the city and of the Renaissance?įlorence in the mid-1400s was punching above its weight in terms of art and culture and literature and ideas. ![]()
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