early medieval history of Florence. Of contemporary events
Villani has a very exact knowledge. Having been a sharer in the
public affairs and in the intellectual and economic life of his native
city, at a time when in both it had no rival in Europe, he depicts
what he saw with the vividness natural to a clear mind accustomed
to business and to the observation of mankind. He was Guelph,
but without passion; and his book is much more taken up with an
inquiry into what is useful and true than with party considerations.
He is really a chronicler, not an historian, and has but little method
in his narrative, often reporting the things which occurred long
ago just as he heard them and without criticism. Every now and
then he falls into some inaccuracy; but such defects as he has are
largely compensated for by his valuable qualities. He was for half
a century eyewitness of his history, and he provides abundant
information on the constitution of Florence, its customs, industries,
commerce and arts; and among the chroniclers throughout Europe
he is perhaps unequalled for the value of the statistical data he has
preserved. As a writer Villani is clear and acute; and, though
his prose has not the force and colouring of Compagni's, it has the
advantage of greater simplicity, so that, taking his work as a whole,
he may be regarded as the greatest chronicler who has written in
Italian. The many difficulties connected with the publication of
this important text have hitherto prevented the preparation of a
perfect edition. However, the Chronicle has been printed by L. A.
Muratori in tome xiii. of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (Milan,
1728), and has been edited by I. Moutier and F. G. Dragomanni
(Florence, 1844). Among other editions is one published at Trieste
in 1857 and another at Turin in 1879. Selections have been translated
into English by R. E. Selfe (1896).
Villani's Chronicle was continued by two other members of his family, (1) Matteo Villani, his brother, of whom nothing is known save that he was twice married and that he died of the plague in 1363, continued it down to the year of his death. Matteo's work, though inferior to Giovanni's, is nevertheless very valuable. A more prolix writer than his brother and a less acute observer, Matteo is well informed in his facts, and for the years of which he writes is one of the most important sources of Italian history. (2) Filippo Villani, the son of Matteo, flourished in the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century. In his continuation which goes down to 1364, though showing greater literary ability, he is very inferior as an historian to his predecessors. His most valuable work was a collection of lives of illustrious Florentines. Twice, in 1401 and 1404, he was chosen to explain in public the Divina Commedia. The year of his death is unknown.
See P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Florentiner Studien (Leipzig, 1874); G. Gervinus, “Geschichte der Florentiner Historiographie” in his Historische Schriften (1833); U. Balzani, Le cronache Italiane nel media evo (Milan, 1884); A. Gaspary, Geschichte der italienischen Literatur (Berlin, 1885); O. Knoll, Beiträge zur italienischen Historiographie im 14. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 1876), and O. Hartwig, “G. Villani und die Leggenda di Messer Gianni di Procida” in Band xxv. of H. von Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift.
- (U. B.)
VILLANOVA, the name given to an ancient cemetery in the neighbourhood of Bologna, Italy, and generally applied by archaeologists to all the remains of that period, and to the period itself, owing to the discovery therein of a large number of the characteristic remains of the earliest Iron Age of Italy. The antiquities of this culture are widely spread over upper Italy and differ essentially from those of the previous epoch known as Terramara, and they have been described by some as following at a considerable interval, for they show a great advance in metal work. The chief cemeteries of the Villanova period are at Bologna, Este, Villanova, Golasecca, Trezzo, Rivoli and Oppiano. As there can be no doubt that the Terramara culture was that of the aboriginal Ligurians (see, however, Terramara), so the Villanova is that of the Umbrians, who, according to the historians, were masters of all northern Italy, as far as the Alps at the time of the Etruscan conquest (c. 1000 B.C.). They contain cist-graves, the bottoms, sides and tops being formed of flat unhewn stones, though sometimes there are only bottom and top slabs: the dead were burnt, and the remains are usually in urns, each grave containing as a rule but one ossuary; sometimes the vessel is covered with a flat stone or a dish inverted, sometimes the urns are deposited in the ground without any protection. The vases are often hand-made and adorned with incised linear ornament, though in later times the bones were often placed in bronze urns or buckets. Though iron is steadily making its way into use, flat, flanged, and socketed and looped celts of bronze are found in considerable numbers. Brooches of many kinds, ranging from the most primitive safety-pin fashioned out of a common bronze pin (such as those found in the Bronze Age settlement at Peschiera on Lake Maggiore), through many varieties, are in universal use. Representations of the human figure are practically unknown, but models of animals of a rude and primitive kind are very common, probably being votive offerings. These are closely parallel to the bronze figures found at Olympia, where human figures were likewise rare. All these objects are decorated in repoussf with geometric designs. The culture of the Villanova period is part of the Hallstatt civilization, though the contents of the Hallstatt (q.v.) graves differ in several marked features from the antiquities of the ordinary Villanova period, there is no breach of continuity between Hallstatt and Villanova, for the types of Vadena, Este, Golasecca and Villanova are found in the Hallstatt culture. The connexion between the north and the south of the Alps is never interrupted. The chief difference lies in the fact that the Celts of the Danubian region made greater advances in the development of weapons and defensive armour than their kindred in northern Italy. The Po and Danube regions alike are characterized by bronze buckets, cists, girdles and the like, wrought in repoussé with animal and geometric designs; but the introduction of iron into Italy is considerably posterior to its development in the Hallstatt area.
See Montelius, La Civilisation primitive en Italie; Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, vol. i.; Brizio, in C. R. Acad. Inscr. (1906), 315 sqq.; Grenier, in Mélanges de l'école française (1907), 325 sqq.; Pigorini and Vaglieri have contributed articles to the Rendiconti del Lincei and the Notizie degli scavi from 1907 onwards.
- (W. Ri.)
VILLANUEVA DE LA SERENA, a town of western Spain, in the province of Badajoz, near the left bank of the river Guadiana, and on the Madrid-Badajoz railway. Pop. (1900) 13,489. Villanueva is a clean and thriving place, with good modern public buildings—town hall, churches, convents and schools. It is the chief town of an undulating plain, La Serena, locally celebrated for red wine and melons. Grain and hemp are also cultivated, and live stock extensively reared in the neighbourhood.
VILLANUEVA Y GELTRU, a seaport of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona; on the Barcelona-Tarragona section of the coast railway. Pop. (1900) 11,850. Villanueva is a busy modern town, with manufactures of cotton, woollen and linen goods, and of paper. It has also iron foundries and an important agricultural trade. The harbour affords safe and deep anchorage; it is a lifeboat station and the headquarters of a large fishing fleet. The coasting trade is also considerable. Villanueva has a museum, founded by the Catalan poet, historian and diplomat, Vittorio Balaguer (1824-1901), which contains collections of Roman, Egyptian and prehistoric antiquities, besides paintings, engravings, sculptures, coins and a large library, including many valuable MSS.
VILLARD, HENRY (1835-1900), American journalist and financier, was born in Speyer, Rhenish Bavaria, on the 10th of April 1835. His baptismal name was Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard. His parents removed to Zweibrücken in 1839, and in 1856 his father, Gustav Leonhard Hilgard (d. 1867), became a justice of the Supreme Court of Bavaria, at Munich. Henry was educated at the gymnasium of Zweibrücken, at the French semi-military academy in Phalsbourg in 1849-50, at the gymnasium of Speyer in 1850-52, and at the universities of Munich and Wurzburg in 1852-53; and in 1853, having had a disagreement with his father, emigrated—without his parents' knowledge—to the United States. It was at this time that he adopted the name Villard. Making his way westward in 1854, he lived in turn at Cincinnati, Belleville (Illinois), Peoria (Illinois) and Chicago, engaged in various employments, and in 1856 formed a project, which came to nothing, for establishing a colony of “free soil” Germans in Kansas. In 1856-57 he was editor, and for part of the time was proprietor, of the Racine (Wis.) Volksblatt, in which he advocated the election of John C. Frémont (Republican). Thereafter he was associated (in 1857) with the Staats-Zeitung, Frank Leslie's and the Tribune, of New York, and with the Cincinnati Commercial
