Among the details which he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be commemorated the enormous bequests to public charities in Florence--350,000 florins to the Society of Orsammichele, 25,000 to the Compagnia della Misericordia, and 25,000 to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.

The poorer population had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by mal-administrators.[1] The foundation of the University of Florence is also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this calamity.
[1] Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S.Maria Nuova, which seems to have been well managed.
The whole work of the Villani remains a monument, unique in mediaeval literature, of statistical patience and economical sagacity, proving how far in advance of the other European nations were the Italians at this period.[1] Dante's aim is wholly different.

Of statistics and of historical detail we gain but little from his prose works.

His mind was that of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who seizes salient characteristics, not that of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity in his account of facts.

I need not do more than mention here the concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in the Divine Comedy, of all the chief cities of Italy; but in his treatise 'De Monarchia' we possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first essay in constitutional philosophy, to which the literature of modern Europe gave birth; while his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the cardinals, the emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like manner the first instances of political pamphlets setting forth a rationalized and consistent system of the rights and duties of nations.