Francesco Guicciardini

Francesco Guicciardini (born March 6, 1483, Florence—died May 22, 1540, Santa Margherita a Montici, near Florence) was a Florentine statesman, diplomat, and historian, author of the most important contemporary history of Italy, Storia d’Italia.

Guicciardini was born of an aristocratic Florentine family that played a prominent role under Lorenzo de’ Medici (the Magnificent). From 1498 to 1505 Guicciardini studied civil law at Florence, Ferrara, and Padua and subsequently set up legal practice at Florence. In 1508 he married Maria, daughter of Alamanno Salviati. In the same year, he began to write his family memoirs and his Storie fiorentine (History of Florence) from 1378 to 1509. The latter constitutes one of the major sources for the history of the republican regime after 1494 and reveals Guicciardini’s gifts for historical analysis and narrative. Elected in 1511 as Florentine ambassador to King Ferdinand of Aragon, he was at the Spanish court when in 1512 the Florentines, under the pressure of Spanish troops, restored the Medici, who had been exiled in 1494. On his return to Florence in 1514, he resumed his legal practice; in 1514 he was a member of the Otto di Balìa, who were in charge of internal security, and in 1515 of the Signoria, the highest magistracy. In 1513 Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X; in 1516 he appointed Guicciardini governor of Modena and in 1517 also of Reggio. Until 1534 Guicciardini served the papacy almost continuously.

As governor of an exposed and recently acquired part of the Papal States, in which he had to face internal disorders as well as external dangers, Guicciardini showed outstanding administrative gifts. His severe and sometimes ruthless measures were effective in restoring order but also caused him unpopularity. The outbreak of the war in northern Italy between King Francis I of France and the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, with whom Leo had concluded an alliance, turned Reggio into a military outpost of the Papal States, and in July 1521 Guicciardini was appointed commissioner general of the papal army.

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During this time, Guicciardini became also a prolific political writer, composing numerous memorandums and treatises, mostly in the form of discourses on political problems of the day, often in connection with his official duties. A number of them deal with the government of Florence, on which he also wrote, between 1521 and 1525, the Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze (Dialogue on the government of Florence). In this he advocates an aristocratic regime on the Venetian model as the ideal constitution for his city. In his capacity as commissioner general, he prevented, by his courage and determination, Parma from falling into French hands in December 1521. But the death of Leo X in the same month jeopardized his career temporarily; after the election of Pope Adrian VI, he was at first deprived of the governorships of Modena and Reggio but recovered them at the end of 1522. In 1523, after Adrian’s death, he had to defend both cities against their original ruler, the duke of Ferrara. Reggio capitulated, but Modena was held by Guicciardini against superior odds. After the election of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici as Clement VII, Guicciardini earned his reward by being appointed, in 1524, president of the Romagna, the northernmost papal province. In the critical situation after the Battle of Pavia, when the army of Charles V was preparing to advance south, Guicciardini conveyed to the pope much advice, and in January 1526 he was called to Rome. There he played a prominent role in the papal counsels, advocating an alliance with France against Charles V. The resulting League of Cognac, concluded in May 1526, was to no small extent his work, and in June he was appointed papal lieutenant general with the army of the league. The failure of the league to prevent the imperial army under the duke of Bourbon from advancing on Florence and Rome involved him once more in the fate of his native city.

The danger in which Florence found itself as a result of Clement’s policy had increased the opposition to the Medici regime. When, on the arrival of the duke of Urbino with his army near Florence, the Medici left the city to welcome him (April 26, 1527), a revolt broke out. Guicciardini, who had arrived shortly before to help protect the city, succeeded in preventing the duke from assaulting the palace of the Signoria by negotiating a free pardon in return for surrender. A few days later, Bourbon’s army captured Rome, and this was followed by the expulsion of the Medici from Florence and the restoration of republican government in that city.

The collapse of Pope Clement’s authority in Rome rendered Guicciardini’s position as his lieutenant general untenable, while his long association with the Medici made him suspect in republican Florence. The victory of the intransigent republican faction in Florence and the fall of the gonfalonier Niccolò Capponi, who had been trying to come to terms with the pope (April 1529), followed by the advance of the imperial army on the city, endangered Guicciardini’s position, and in September 1529 he left Florentine territory for the papal court. Thereafter he fully supported Clement’s bid for a Medicean restoration in Florence, while seeking to obtain favourable conditions for the Florentines. In March 1530 he was condemned as a rebel at Florence. Between 1528 and 1530 Guicciardini worked on his second history of Florence and compiled the most concise and varied expression of his views on society and politics in his collection of maxims and observations, the Ricordi. His political thought is frequently akin to, and sometimes more radical than, that of his friend Niccolò Machiavelli, with whom he shared, despite his long service with the papacy, a criticism of the contemporary church. He disagreed, however, in his Considerazioni intorno ai “Discorsi” del Machiavelli (“Considerations on the ‘Discourses’ of Machiavelli,” c. 1530), with Machiavelli’s interpretation of Roman history as evidence for a political science. After the city’s surrender, he returned as papal representative and took a leading part in the persecution of the republicans. In 1531 Clement appointed him governor of Bologna, but he lost this post after the accession of Paul III in 1534. Back in Florence, he acted as legal adviser to Duke Alessandro de’ Medici and began work on a history of Italy during his lieutenantship that, redrafted during the following years, became the nucleus of his far more ambitious Storia d’Italia (History of Italy), which covers Italian history in the period 1494 to 1534. He began the work probably in 1536; the final revision was not completed when he died. Written by a statesman closely associated with many of the events he described, and by a historian who in his critical use of evidence followed and surpassed his humanist predecessors, the History of Italy is the most important contemporary history of Italy during the period of upheaval and invasion in the early 16th century.

After the murder of Alessandro in 1537, he helped secure the succession for Cosimo, probably hoping to limit the ducal powers which he considered excessive. Disappointed in his hopes and personal ambitions, although still holding high office under the new ruler, he devoted the last years of his life, in his villa at Santa Margherita a Montici, to the composition of his Storia d’Italia, the crowning achievement of his life.

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