Scio Florentinam urbem from the manuscript number 519 of the Jagiellonian Library. Analysis and critical edition

The article includes an analysis and critical edition of an anonymous letter which questioned the primacy of Florentine writers over ancient Roman ones in terms of eloquence and scholarship. A brief codicological description of the BJ 519 manuscript, which contains this text, and a characterisation of its contents are presented. Phrases used in the text, topoi, references to ancient authors, and the work’s context within the intellectual land-scape of fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Italy are discussed.