Such was the material at the service of the old chroniclers, and all they had to rely upon regarding the origin of Florence. The earliest chronicler of whom any remains are extant is the judge and notary Sanzanome, who, as already noted by us, wrote his "Gesta Florentinorum" at the beginning of the thirteenth century. We find him mentioned more than once in Florentine documents from 1188-1245.[23] Although we cannot be certain that this name always referred to the same individual, it is certain that the same chronicler records his presence in the war of Semifonte in the year 1202, and in that of Montalto in 1207. Besides, his work is found in a Florentine codex of the thirteenth century, and if not in his own hand, in the character of about the same period.[24] This first attempt at Florentine history, written in Latin by a judge and notary, supposed by Milanesi and Hartwig to have been a native of a neighbouring town, but resident in Florence, has a stamp of its own, very different from that of all subsequent Florentine chronicles. Sanzanome says nothing as to the origin of the Commune and its internal constitution. After a vague and hasty allusion to the old legend,[25] he starts with the war and destruction of Fiesole in 1125, "cum eius occasione Florentia sumpsisset originem." Thus, from the beginning, he shows us the Commune already established, with its consuls and captains, and proceeds to recount its conflicts with neighbouring powers in a stilted, rhetorical fashion, with uncertain and often erroneous dates, and with speeches in strained imitation of ancient Roman historians. Consequently some writers refused to assign any historic value to his work. But, on the other hand, critics of greater weight and impartiality, such as Hartwig, Hegel, and Paoli, have recognised that the work of this notary, who was almost a precursor of the fifteenth-century humanists, is a literary phenomenon, and that the fact of its isolation makes it the more remarkable as a proof of ancient Florentine culture, and also because we find beneath its rhetorical flourishes much useful information on the early history of Florence.