''Il Novellino'', also known as ''Le cento novelle antiche'' ("One Hundred Ancient Tales"), is an anonymous

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

collection of

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

written in the Tuscan vernacular between 1280 and 1300. It was first published in 1525 by , a friend of

Pietro Bembo Pietro Bembo, (; 20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547) was a Venetian scholar, poet, and literary theory, literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Re ...

. The author of the collection is unknown; several details from the stories included in the collection suggest that he was a layperson from

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

and likely belonged to the Ghibelline faction.

References

13th-century literature Medieval Italian literature Italian short story collections {{Story-collection-stub