Civic humanism and Florentine politics

Najemy, John M.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511558474.004

Cited by 36 publications

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“…Both Bruni and Bracciolini were far more concerned with protecting the legacy of the leading families of Florence, it turns out, than providing an accurate and useful account of the political and social conflicts that drove Florentine history (FH Preface). Not only did they neglect to include any sustained treatment of elite conflict during the years prior to Medici rule, civic humanists like Bruni and Bracciolini speciously traced the origins of Florentine republicanism to a glorified vision of Florentine harmony and unity (more generally, see Hankins, 2000; Jurdjevic, 1999; Najemy, 2000). Florentine republicanism, according to this traditional humanist historiography, owed its existence to the virtue of the great men of Florence whose prudence and valor safeguarded Florentine independence from foreign subjugation under the Roman emperor and later Milan.…”

Section: The Origins Of Florentine Sectarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was during this period, under the patronage of the new patrician class, that civic humanist writing on the relationship between virtue, politics, and freedom proliferated. The myth of consensus and paternalistic leadership espoused by the humanists legitimized the oligarchic power and authority of the Albizzi state (Jurdjevic, 1999; Najemy, 2000). Writers like Bruni lauded the “dutiful and subservient citizen” who remained a respectful distance from those who exercised real power (Najemy, 2000: 92).…”

Section: The Origins Of Florentine Sectarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories

Maher

2017

European Journal of Political Theory

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This article draws a connection between socio-economic inequality and political corruption based on a reading of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories. Prevailing interpretations of the Histories attribute the moral corruption and civil conflict Machiavelli condemns as the source of Florence’s republican failure to the unique historical conditions of early-modern Florence. In this article, I trace Florentine corruption and factionalism to the perennial problem of inequality. Through his narration of the two centuries of Florentine history leading up to Cosimo de Medici’s ascent to first citizen, I contend, Machiavelli demonstrates the deleterious effect of inequality on the social relations, organizational forms, and modes of collective action in Florence. At the same time, his depiction of Florence’s transformation from a quasi-feudal commune dominated by a nobility with private armies to a modern commercial city ruled through patronage illustrates the contingent modality of inequality and the particularly subversive way it can manifest in the more civil republics of the modern era.

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Section: The Origins Of Florentine Sectarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Origins Of Florentine Sectarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories

Maher

2017

European Journal of Political Theory

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“…But even if we view these speeches as conventional Florentine propaganda repackaged to provide ideological cement for the grip of the governing elite, this does not mean that Bruni's rhetoric served only to provide him with eloquent cover for political careerism (cf. Siegel 1966: 25;Najemy 2000). Irrespective of their author's intentions, the speeches testify to the potential of classical humanist rhetoric for the effective and influential expression of a republican ideology with liberty, justice, and equality, in conjunction with imperial power, at its core (Pocock 2003: 59-60, 550;Skinner 1978, 1: 103).…”

Section: <2> Rhetoric and Republicanism: Bruni And Machiavellimentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhetoric and Early Modern Politics

Gowland

2015

The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies

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This chapter examines the relationship between rhetoric and politics in early modern Europe, focusing on the impact and legacy of Renaissance humanism. After summarizing the background from which politically orientated humanist rhetoric emerged in the city-states of late-medieval Italy, it discusses the role of rhetoric and public speech in the works of two influential proponents of republican political thought: Leonardo Bruni and Niccolò Machiavelli; for both authors, civic rhetoric is both the lifeblood and the potential undoing of republics. It then presents the ways in which rhetoric was incorporated into humanistic theories of princely government, especially in exhortations to virtue and discussions of counsel. Finally, turning to the works of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, it illustrates the reconsideration—and the downgrading—of the political status of rhetoric in the era of monarchical absolutism.

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“…As Fubini and others have argued, during this period in the Italian city-states, the government (reggimento) of the Signoria begins to claim that it alone represents what Bruni and other civic humanists call the 'full, free, total and absolute power and authority of the entire Florentine people', bypassing the traditional communal, guild-based social forms of representation (Fubini, 1992, p. 226;Najemy, 2000). The Signoria's claim to represent the absolute power of the populus was prepared by a constant 'state of war y inherent to the politics of territorial enlargement' that allowed 'a state of emergency [to] become, so to speak, the norm and conditioned internal politics, offering justification for institutional changes' (Fubini, 1992, p. 229).…”

Section: How the Savage Plebs Became An Obedient Army: Christian And mentioning

confidence: 99%

The quarrel between populism and republicanism: Machiavelli and the antinomies of plebeian politics

Vatter

2011

Contemp Polit Theory

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This article discusses the current debate between populist and republican accounts of democracy. To talk about democracy is inevitably to talk about the idea of a people and its power. From the beginnings of the Western political tradition, 'the people' has referred to both a constituted part of society (populus) and to a part excluded from political society (plebs). The article examines the differences between populism and republicanism in light of the different ways in which these two parts relate to each other, and the resulting conceptions of the power of the people. For populism, the people have power when the plebs achieves hegemony within the populus by wresting control of the state from the 'wealthy' elites. According to the alternative republican account developed in this article, instead, the people have power when the plebs inscribes within the state the possibility of abolishing relations of rule. The distinction between these two conceptions of popular power is pursued in terms of the opposing attitudes that populism and republicanism have in relation to the rule of law. The article also raises a hypothesis as to the historical reasons for these distinctions between populism and republicanism by examining three historical moments, which are crucial for the development of plebeian politics: the early Roman republic, the Augustinian foundation of a Christian republic and the crisis of guild republicanism in Machiavelli's age. Contemporary Political Theory (2012) 11, 242-263. doi:10.1057/cpt.2011.25; published online 11 October 2011Keywords: populism; republicanism; rule of law; plebeian politics; Machiavelli; Cicero The revival of republican political theory has brought to the fore once again the importance of distinguishing between freedom as non-domination, which depends on the rule of law, and freedom as collective self-rule, which depends on a conception of popular sovereignty. For neo-Roman political theorists, popular sovereignty, being a species of sovereignty, is part and parcel of a theory of the state, whereas the rule of law -at least as it is conceived in the modern republican tradition -is not a mutation of state sovereignty r

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Civic humanism and Florentine politics

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories

The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories

Rhetoric and Early Modern Politics

The quarrel between populism and republicanism: Machiavelli and the antinomies of plebeian politics

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