ABSTRACT
Alighieri Dante's knowledge of Florentine history does coincide with the content of Sanzanome's chronicle. Sanzanome's Gesta Florentinorum proceeds strictly year by year, and records only Florence's military campaigns against feudal castles in the contado and the overcoming of other obstacles to Florentine expansion. Since Sanzanome is so exclusively concerned with Florentine expansion into the contado, the point at which that coincidence shows itself is the middle of Paradisoxvi, where Cacciaguida talks about the same thing, though from the point of view of the city as the recipient of immigrants from the vanquished towns and castles. Dante's material on Florentine families, especially the long passage in the second half of Paradisoxvi, may be compared to similar material in two fourteenth-century Florentine chronicles. The narrative contained in the chronicle is interrupted by a large gap between the years 1249 and 1285.
