Epilogue

This chapter looks into the fate of Florentine chivalry in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It recounts the chivalric life of Buonaccorso di Nero Pitti, the scion of a prominent banking family, whose ricordanza records his remarkable efforts to fashion and claim a chivalric identity. By considering Buonaccorso's life as an example, the chapter highlights developments within that culture, as chivalric practitioners modified their behavior in certain contexts in order to preserve their access to the political and economic benefits accrued from participation in civic society. The chapter emphasizes that Buonaccorso provided a powerful example of a new model of chivalric practitioner in early Renaissance Florence: one who straddled the line between the chivalric and civic cultural communities. It concludes by showing that chivalric ideology exercised a powerful influence among a sizeable segment of the lay elite in late medieval Florence from the late twelfth through the early fifteenth centuries.