The earliest accounts that relate the foundation of the Camposanto to earth brought from the Holy Land are to be found in a group of anonymous chronical texts that were composed in two slightly different versions in 1342 and 1354. As in the Lucca chronicle, they state that the Camposanto had been founded in 1200,…Continue reading Pisan Chronicles from the mid-fourteenth century

The vernacular chronicle preserved in a manuscript in Lucca connects the date 1200 to the start of two important building campaigns: the Arsenale as a fortified port for the city’s warships, and the Camposanto as the new cemetery of the Cathedral. The note about the Camposanto was added as a marginal gloss  by the same…Continue reading Anonymous, Chronaca di Pisa (c. 1340)