Three students of the classicist Piero Vettori turned to the study of vernacular language at midcentury and therafter: Benedetto Varchi, Girolamo Mei, and Vincenzio Borghini.Mei circulated his writings only in manuscript; he wrote especially on metrics and rhyme, and referred to the recently available writings of Aristoxenus of Taranto as well as Aristotle’s Poetics to discuss perception and judgment. Varchi acknowledged Bembo’s immense contributions but like Borghini, felt he had conflated the study of language with literature. Varchi used Aristotelian tools to analyze languages. They distinguished between literature as art and language as natural to humans; hence, its variation follows rules that are subject to rational analysis.Borghini devoted attention to the fourteenth-century vernacular, including an edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron that could withstand the Index of Forbidden Books.He also proposed a plan for teaching vernacular language in Florence’s schools.

The wedding of Francesco de’Medici and Giovanna of Austria was accompanied by processions and art that celebrated Florence’s history and its cultural and artistic achievements. Vincenzio Borghini and Giorgio Vasari worked with Duke Cosimo on the program. New paintings on Florentine history in the Palazzo Vecchio led Girolamo Mei to write a treatisethat challenged Borghini’s assessment of the city’s history, using evidence that included the writings of Annius of Viterbo. They exchanged letters that raised issues about the use of ruins and other non-textual evidence. Borghini went on to write Discorsi on Florence’s history and traditions that also explored methods of studying the past; he wrote on medieval coinage, on families and family crests, the nature of nobility, and more. Borghini argued that traditions and social practices develop and change like languages. Many typically Florentine customs, he suggested, developed in parallel with the formation of the city’s government in the thirteenth century.