Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat, and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavory reputation and served time in prison due to the bankruptcy of a trading and banking company he worked for. His interest and elaboration in economic details, statistical information, and political and psychological insight signifies him as a more modern late medieval chronicler of Europe. His Cronica is viewed as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history. However, historian Kenneth R. Bartlett notes that "his reliance on such elements as Divine Providence links Villani closely with the medieval vernacular chronical tradition," that is to say, not linked closely with his Renaissance-era successors. In recurring themes made implicit through significant events described in his Cronica, Villani also emphasized three assumptions about sin and morality that guided historical events, these being that excess brings disaster, forces of right and wrong are at constant struggle, and that events are directly related to the will of God.

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