ABSTRACT
Franco Sacchetti was born to a noble Florentine Guelf family, perhaps in Ragusa, where his father did business. Sacchetti spent many years as a merchant. By 1352, he was also composing traditional love poems. In 1354, he married Felice di Nicolò Strozzi. In honor of the Strozzi women, he composed, probably shortly before his marriage, The Battle of Women, consisting of 272 mediocre octaves describing the victory of young, beautiful, virtuous ladies over old, ugly, vice-ridden hags. In the early 1360s, during the war between Florence and Pisa, Sacchetti began to be involved in the city’s politics and as an administrator of Florentine territories. In 1376 he was sent as ambassador to Bologna; in 1383, when he married for the second time, he was a member of the otto di balia; in 1384 he became a prior for the San Giovanni area; during the wars with the Visconti in 1388–1392, he served as counselor to the Florentine government; and throughout the late 1380s and the 1390s he was governor over a series of Florentine territories outside the city.
