SOURCE: Introduction to Dialogue on the Government of Florence, by Francesco Guicciardini, edited and translated by Alison Brown, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. vii-xxviii.

[In the following excerpt, Brown provides a close assessment of Guicciardini's Dialogue, compares his work to that of his colleague Machiavelli, and concludes that while Guicciardini preferred freedom to tyranny, he was ultimately a practical man who believed in realpolitik.]

The year 1509 … marks Francesco's initiation into the life of politics, when he was summoned for the first time to a consultative meeting of citizens, or pratica (see Glossary). In 1511, aged only 28, he was elected Florentine ambassador to Spain, and it was there, at Logrogno, that he wrote the Discourse which anticipates in many respects his reform scheme in Book II of the Dialogue [on the Government of Florence]. It offers a blueprint for the reform of the republican regime headed by Piero Soderini, completed (if we are to believe its date, '27 August 1512') just before the collapse of this regime at the hands of the Spanish at the end of August, and several weeks before he would have heard about it. The same period of relative leisure also inspired the first of three versions of reflective Ricordi or Maxims, which he twice revised during similar periods of enforced leisure, in 1528 and 1530. Kept well-in-formed by his family of the new situation in Florence, and of 'who stood highest in Medici favour', he was allowed to return home in January 1514.

Far from being disadvantaged by the fall of the republican regime and restoration of the Medici, Francesco found himself on his return favoured by a series of offices, initially in Florence and later in the Papal States. He was happy to accede to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici's wish that he, rather than his elder brother, should take his father's place as one of the Seventeen Reformers in 1514. The following year he was appointed a member of the Eight of Ward and then a member of the Signoria, and in December that year he was appointed a consistorial advocate by the Medici pope Leo X. These interim years of office in Florence produced two more political writings on Florentine government, On the Government of Florence after the Medici Restoration in 1512 and On How the Medici Family Should Secure Power for Themselves. Both realistically accept that, since self-preservation is the objective of government, the Medici will have to protect themselves against popular opposition by building up a group of partisans who will have more to lose than gain by a change of regime: 'so that utility, indeed necessity, and not just love' will ensure their support (Del governo, p. 266). The second piece, written in 1516, shows early traces of the influence of Machiavelli's Prince—as Gennaro Sasso has pointed out¹—in its 'digression' about the problem of ruling new states and reference to Cesare Borgia and Francesco Sforza. Accepting that the Medici are now 'bosses' (padroni) of Florence, it suggests that they could avoid the problems experienced by Lorenzo il Magnifico by feeding their friends in Rome, not Florence, 'now that they have the pontificate in their hands' (Del modo, pp. 273, 279): prescient advice in view of the reward he himself received from them later that year.

Francesco's first papal appointment marked another turning-point in his life, as he may himself have recognised at the time. For this was the moment when he apparently had his first horoscope written, anticipating by some months his appointment as papal Governor of Modena in the summer of 1516, when it said he began to enjoy 'wealth and office in a very alarming and difficult position'. The following year he was appointed Governor of Reggio as well as Modena, in 1521 papal Commissary General in the war against the French, in 1524 President of the Romagna under the new Medici pope Clement VII (the year in which he possibly had a second horoscope prepared), and in 1526 papal Lieutenant General of the War of the League of Cognac.

It was during this period of his life, more precisely between August-November 1521 and, at the earliest, April 1524, that Francesco wrote the Dialogue on the Government of Florence. It is dated in its second preface (B; see p. xxv below), which states that it was begun 'at the time of Leo, when I found myself in the position of his Commissary General in the imperial and papal army in the war against the French', and was finished 'now that I have been appointed by Clement Governor of all the cities in the Romagna, which are extremely disturbed and full of infinite difficulties because of the uprisings that followed Leo's death'. So it belongs to the period when Florentines were optimistic about a return to a more republican government. After the death in May 1519 of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, Florence's Captain General and the last legitimate descendant (with Leo X) of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Florentines had been consulted by the well-liked cardinal Giulio de' Medici about how their city should be governed. Since Giulio was popular in Florence and known to be fond of the city, they were evidently confident that he would treat their suggestions seriously and introduce constitutional reform. So it seems likely, as Giovanni Silvano has suggested,² that-far from being written after the moment for a republican restoration had 'gone forever', in Pocock's words—Guicciardini's Dialogue shared the same very practical purpose as Machiavelli's Discourse on the Government of Florence after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici and other blueprints proposed at this time.

The situation was transformed in a paradoxical way by two events. The first was the abortive plot to kill Giulio de' Medici in 1522, which alienated Giulio and, instead of reducing Medici power in Florence, increased it. The second was Giulio's elevation to the papacy as Clement VII in November 1523. By initially strengthening the Medici's position in Florence, these events must have increased the fear Guicciardini had already expressed (in prefaces A and B, pp. 2, 5, nn. 4 and 19) of alienating his patrons through his republicanism. Yet, at the same time, the growing and openly-discussed posibility of revolution in Florence, now governed by the unpopular cardinal Silvio Passerini and the young Medici bastard Ippolito, raised a worse spectre for Guicciardini of being victimised by the republican regime as a Medicean—and possibly suffering the same fate as Bernardo del Nero, his alter ego, who was executed for his Medici sympathies. So whereas the first preface (A) expressed the hope of publishing the Dialogue, 'before I grow old', despite the danger of doing so with Florence 'under the shadow of the Medici government' (in A and B), its final preface (C) disclaims any political relevance or intention to publish (p. 4 and nn. 4, 14). The final preface also adds a flattering reference to Piero Soderini's republican government. Instead of suggesting that he might be thought ungrateful to the Medici in writing the Dialogue, he now alludes to Xenophon and Aristotle in order to suggest his political detachment (since Xenophon's loyalty to Athens was evidently not compromised by his biography of Cyrus, nor Aristotle's loyalty to Alexander the Great by his Politics (p. 4)); and at the same time he removes names from the text to modify his earlier more trenchant comments on both regimes. Far from being detached, however, these cosmetic adjustments to the text and its convoluted preface suggest that the Dialogue was both relevant and potentially dangerous in the later 1520s.

In May 1527, a year after Guicciardini was appointed Lieutenant General of the papal army, Rome was sacked by imperial troops and the Medici regime in Florence fell. Losing his position, Guicciardini retired to his villa outside Florence, where he wrote two imaginary orations which accurately forecast what was to happen two years later, the Accusatoria, in which he accuses himself of crimes against the state before a session of the Court of Forty, and the Defensoria, in which he defends himself. Increasingly isolated as the republican government in Florence became more extreme, he began his second history of Florence, the Cose florentine, as well as a third version of his Maxims. The Treaty of Barcelona between Clement and Charles V in June 1529 obliged the Emperor to restore the Medici to Florence. Threatened with imprisonment and banishment by the republican government, Guicciardini fled from Florentine territory; despite acting as mediator between Florence and the Pope, however, he was accused of contumacy and banished as a rebel. His Considerations on the 'Discourses' of Machiavelli was written as he travelled as an exile to Rome, whence he returned as papal emissary to restore order in Florence after its final capitulation in August 1530. Rewarded with the Governorship of Bologna—but not the Romagna, as he had hoped—Guicciardini finally retired to Florence after the death of Clement VII in September 1534. Before then, however, he had been responsible for helping to establish Alessandro, the illegitimate last descendant of the elder Medici line, as Duke of Florence in 1532. In January that year he had repeated to the Pope the advice he had given Leo X in 1516: that the Medici should not establish a principate but strengthen their partisans in the city, among whom he now openly included himself (Discourse of 30 January 1532, p. 455). A balia was created (as he had recommended) and in April 1532 it appointed him one of the Twelve Reformers who made Alessandro Duke of Florence. Later he became one of Alessandro's closest advisers and was principally responsible for defending him against the exiles' charges of tyranny in 1535-6, asserting not only that Alessandro's ducal title was legitimate, since it had been granted by the delegated authority of a Florentine parlamento with imperial consent, but that his behaviour was 'most holy and his government free and pious'.³

The equivocation of Guicciardini's political stance is reflected in the Dialogue on the Government of Florence, whose republican idealism seems equally at odds with its political pragmatism and realpolitik. The problems Guicciardini faced in the 1520s in writing what Sasso calls 'this brief but complex' work⁴ make it, as we have seen, deliberately ambiguous and difficult to decode. For if we adopt a republican reading and identify Guicciardini with the idealism of Book II, we would interpret del Nero's defence of Medici tyranny in Book I as Guicciardini's safeguard against the danger of alienating his papal employers; whereas if we identify Guicciardini with del Nero's position in Book I, we would read Book II as his protection against a possible republican restoration. Revisions to the first draft suggest that he modified criticism both of the Medici and of the republican regimes. After 1527, however, the republican restoration and his banishment as a rebel in 1529 made the parallel between his position and del Nero's very evident. Perhaps, as Sasso has suggested,⁵ it was already in Guicciardini's mind when he was writing the Dialogue.

It purports to represent a discussion held in the villa of Bernardo del Nero just after the revolution of November 1494, which replaced the 'narrow' regime headed by Piero de' Medici with a more 'open' regime, under the control of a Great Council of some three-and-a-half thousand members. Bernardo del Nero, the former Medici supporter beheaded in 1497 for failing to reveal a pro-Medicean conspiracy, defends the Medici regime against the charges of the other younger participants, who in varying degrees all represent republican opposition to the Medici. Piero Capponi, a key figure in the downfall of the Medici and in the new regime, is a representative of the old mercantile aristocracy of Florence, the so-called ottimati, or optimates, who had governed Florence since the 1380s; Pagolantonio Soderini and Piero Guicciardini (the author's father) participate as citizens who played an influential role in consultative discussions after 1494, Pagolantonio as a leading Savonarolan and Piero Guicciardini as a more cautious supporter of the Savonarolan regime and also, as Ficino's pupil, the 'academic' voice in the Dialogue.

Ever since Cosimo de' Medici's return from exile in 1434, the Medici party had been narrowing the basis of power in Florence. It was gradually undermining the authority of the old-established councils of the People and Commune by replacing them with other, smaller councils, or by using special legislative powers, or balia, to bypass them altogether. At the same time it controlled elections to offices through the use of select scrutineers, or accoppiatori. This regime was overthrown in November 1494, as a reaction against the Medici's growing autocracy and the incompetence of Piero de' Medici when faced with the French invasion. It was replaced initially by a government controlled by twenty optimates (among them, Piero Capponi); and then, after the intervention of the Dominican monk Savonarola, by a more open regime drawn from members of an enlarged Great Council of major office-holders over four generations, which became a potent symbol of the new republican regime. The Dialogue thus claims to represent a discussion about the rival merits of liberty, or open government, and restricted, or narrow government, based on 'the actual conversation' once held by its participants. Yet in approaching it, we must remember that del Nero, 'almost like an oracle' (p. 3), is allowed to enjoy the benefit of foresight in predicting the outcome of the 1494 revolution some 30 years after the events he describes. And since the argument for liberty is presented by members of the oligarchy which had replaced the guild regime in 1382 and had collaborated closely with the Medici after 1434, the issues are inevitably less clear-cut—and more interesting—than the antilogical form of the Dialogue initially suggests.

The Dialogue opens with a general discussion about the nature of revolutions and how to judge them. Whereas del Nero as a Medicean argues that such political upheavals always do more harm than good to a city, Soderini defends the 1494 revolution by distinguishing it from other types of political change, which he condemns for their factionalism. What he condemns are changes or alterazioni like those of 1433 and 1434 (when Cosimo de' Medici was exiled and restored to power), or those of 1466 and 1478 (following the Pitti and Pazzi Conspiracies), which simply transferred power within the ruling elite or increased its political control. Quite different, he argues, are revolutions or mutazioni that transform 'one species of government into another' (p. 7), such as the 1494 overthrow of the Medici regime, which restored liberty to the people. Although historians still argue about the extent to which the 1494 revolution in Florence differed from earlier changes, we can all today readily understand the issue at stake: the merits and demerits of overturning restrictive or 'narrow' governments in the name of popular freedom.

Soderini's suggestion that del Nero is also secretly pleased by the restoration of liberty in Florence encourages del Nero to define his position and social status. Unlike the other speakers, he does not belong to one of the old optimate families, 'not being of noble birth nor surrounded by relatives' as they are, nor is he well-educated. Instead, he is a self-made man who has become their political equal through his own efforts and through the patronage and friendship of the Medici. This serves to alert us to the fact that his approach to politics is going to be far from traditional. We should not be misled by the fact that it is he who first introduces the traditional scholastic argument that, of the three types of government—of the one, the few and the many—government of one man when good is the best. For he does so only to undermine it by insisting, against the scholar Piero Guicciardini, that in fact governments must be judged by results, not by principles.

Judging only by results, del Nero is able to argue that there is no difference between legitimate and illegitimate regimes ex titulo (one of Bartolus of Sassoferrato's two types of tyranny) since their claim to power is irrelevant to their ability to rule. In this way he destroys one of the time-honoured definitions of tyranny as the worst of the six types of government according to the scholastic typology. He then proceeds to replace this old typology with new simplified terms that can easily be understood 'by the man in the street' (p. 12; they are discussed more fully on pp. xxv-xxvi below). But his distinction between what he colloquially calls 'broad' and 'narrow' government is not only easily comprehensible to all levels of Florentine society. It also enables him usefully to gloss over the old distinction between optimate government 'of the few' and Medici one-man government. According to his classification, instead of being different types altogether, the difference is simply one of degree.

Equally novel is his attack on Capponi's argument, based on Florence's long history and reputation as a free commune, that free and open government is the city's natural form of rule and therefore the best for it. On the contrary, del Nero responds, free communes were not introduced 'to allow everyone to participate in government', but simply 'to safeguard the laws and the common good', which is best achieved by one man, if he is good (p. 17). And far from being natural to the city, he continues, Capponi's much-vaunted freedom and equality is in fact no more than a slogan, used as a means of social advancement by the outs to get into power, and then discarded by them once they have achieved their objective (pp. 36-7). By distinguishing between civil and political liberty, and then by reductively defining liberty and equality as techniques for social advancement, del Nero offers a radical attack on the republican myth, which he then uses to undermine Capponi's patriotic defence of communal 'freedom' and noble virtue.

After this innovative introduction, which marks del Nero's importance in the Dialogue, the remainder of the first book is devoted to a discussion of the pros and cons of Medici government according to the three headings proposed by Capponi: the administration of justice, the distribution of honours and offices (which includes an interesting discussion of methods of taxation), and foreign policy. While Capponi condemns the Medici on each count for their favouritism and self-interest, del Nero defends them on the grounds that knowing favouritism is preferable to ignorant incompetence, and the Medici's successful self-interestedness preferable to the factionalism and disorder created by the optimates' destructive competition for honour and glory, what Sasso calls a 'Hobbesian' free-for-all.⁶ Although not obviously original, since much of the material is familiar from Guicciardini's History of Florence, the interest of this long discussion lies in its combination of the general and the specific—its illustration of general political arguments (for example, popular government's lack of secrecy and expertise) with specific. Florentine examples. Particularly interesting is its everall account of the Medici patronage, or 'Big Boss', system of government, which is marked by favours or 'considerations' (rispetti) paid to friends and 'satellites' (satelliti), 'jobs for the boys' (pascere gli amici), corrupt practices (aggiramenti), organised gangs and chiefs (capi) in the countryside, and control of enemies through marriage and tax manipulation.

Del Nero's portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici in the Dialogue has been described by Felix Gilbert and Nicolai Rubinstein as Lorenzo's 'posthumous image', which became the source of the 'mythic Golden Age' Lorenzo.⁷ But what is striking is its often unflattering realism and the amount of agreement between del Nero and his republican critics about Lorenzo's role. As del Nero comments, there was a danger that 'we'll find ourselves agreeing too closely with each other' (p. 58). Describing Lorenzo pragmatically as a man who knew his job, because 'this was the trade in which he'd set up shop', del Nero provides the most telling evidence of Lorenzo's abuse of power in admitting that he gave offices to men who then 'obeyed his signals', kept careful watch on people's behaviour, so that 'pleasing him acted as a reward and being in his bad books served as a punishment', and used taxes 'as a stick to beat people with' (pp. 23, 54, 49). So when Capponi proceeds to describe Lorenzo's malpractices in greater detail, it is no surprise to find that nearly all of them can be substantiated by other evidence. We know that Lorenzo influenced legislation and elections on behalf of friends and supporters, brought pressure to bear on the decisions of the Mercantile Court (see Bibliographical note, p. xxxvi) and the criminal court of eight citizens, the Eight of Ward, and enjoyed special powers and privileges, like the right to bear arms, which were denied to other citizens. Lorenzo also signed military contracts and treaties single-handed and laid 'his hands on communal funds' as Capponi puts it (p. 30), incurring a debt with the communal Monte of over 22,000 florins by the time of his death.

It seems likely that many details of this portrait were supplied to Guicciardini by his father and grandfather Jacopo, or were contained in family papers—such as Lorenzo's personal intervention in the surrender of Pietrasanta in 1484, when Jacopo was Florentine commissary, or his use of communal money, which Jacopo as a Monte treasurer would also have known about. Thus we find ourselves presented, not with opposing images of Lorenzo, but with a single and convincingly realistic image of the political broker and power-monger, a man familiar to all our participants. Far from dismissing it as a flattering myth, we should read this dialogic portrait as an accurate picture of Lorenzo, his two faces, far from being merely a literary construct, betraying the optimates' ambivalence towards the man they both collaborated with and resented. The truth was, as they all knew, that their own prosperity to a large extent depended on Lorenzo's dominance.

When the argument is resumed the following day and del Nero is persuaded to describe his ideal government, we expect something more innovative than what we are given, which is a blueprint for a government on the Venetian model: a life Gonfalonier at its head, a life senate of 150 men, in whom real power is vested, an executive magistracy of ten, with an elected advisory pratica, and a Great Council, as well as an appeal court of forty. Most of its features—with the exception only of the senate, which was briefly introduced after Soderini's fall in September 1512—had in fact been introduced by the reforms of 1502. It was then, after lengthy debate about the rival merits of a life head of state or a life senate, that the two-monthly office of Gonfalonier of Justice was transformed into an elective life office and the Quarantia established as a court of appeal in place of the Great Council (p. 124, n. 316). It is Soderini, rather than del Nero, who first presents the argument that in all states, both classical and contemporary, "it is always the virtue of a few people that counts', for only a few are capable of attaining true glory and honour (p. 91). But because del Nero's scheme closely resembles the government Guicciardini proposed in his Logrogno Discourse of 1512, 'On how to order the popular government', especially in its desire for government to be in the hands of 'men of worth', uomini da bene, represented by a senate drawn from old optimate families like his own, it has been taken to represent not only the views of del Nero and the other disputants, but Guicciardini's too. As Pocock points out,⁸ it is here that del Nero approximates most closely to aristocratic values in accepting ambition and the desire for honour as virtues—provided they are exercised and rewarded in a public arena. His argument climaxes in a paean of praise for optimate government, where the ruler freely steps down to allow the best men to win true honour and glory through exercising public offices for the good of their country, the Dialogue concluding with the hope that del Nero's 'lucid and wise' discourse will enlighten the whole city and be acted on in the speakers' lifetime (p. 168).

This reading of the Dialogue as a republican tract that reflects Guicciardini's own optimate ideals has met with widespread approval. In simultaneously providing a career structure open to talent and restricting power to a small elite, it reassures us about Guicciardini's republicanism and at the same time is consistent with the early-modern trend towards greater elitism. In 1459 the Signoria of Florence had been renamed 'priors of liberty' instead of 'priors of the guilds', since this title (the law states) had suggested that 'humble and abject people, the lowest of the low' had 'worked their way into government'. The guilds were subsequently given a reduced role in government, which became restricted to fewer longer-term and more experienced citizens, ruling in the interests of the rich banking and merchant class. Guicciardini's blueprint reflects these trends in its disparagement of 'workshop' values and its attempt to deprive tradespeople of an active role in government, which he wanted to be limited to experts, wise men ruling in the interests of the state as a whole.

Yet there are problems in accepting this as the only reading of the Dialogue. This is partly because of the difficulty of accepting its republican rhetoric at face value. As the leading ideology of the day, piously invoked by the government in prefaces to laws and two-monthly orations on justice, its claim to provide wise, impartial government was belied by the self-interest of rich banking and merchant optimates like Guicciardini himself, as his discussion of taxation can serve to illustrate. Fearing that the people will 'overburden the better-off and that a tax or catasto, based on a written return of all sources of wealth, would be 'dishonest' if it forced merchants to publicise their 'true state of affairs', del Nero prefers the Medici's arbitrary methods of assessment, which, though dangerous if used as 'a stick to beat people with', nevertheless operated in the best economic interests of the merchant class—and therefore, as he would claim, of the state as a whole (pp. 49-50).

Such a reading also fails to do justice to the Dialogue's apparent novelties and the ambiguity of del Nero's role in it. It is difficult to reconcile the unconcealed admirer of the Medicean system in Book I with the republican sage in Book II, or to explain his radicalism in both books. For after undermining the old distinctions between good and bad government in Book I, del Nero further erodes the moral basis of political power towards the end of Book II, where he outspokenly argues that, 'for reason of state', political power inevitably depends on unchristian actions like murdering prisoners of war and placing bounties on human heads. Here, and in his later defence of Alessandro de' Medici's rule, Guicciardini is as iconoclastic as Machiavelli in arguing for a divorce between the worlds of politics and religion. Perhaps not surprisingly, del Nero warns the other disputants against publicising his views on Christian morality and on the difficulty of living in the world 'without offending God', for 'we can cope with this argument among ourselves, but we shouldn't however use it with others, nor where there are more people' (p. 159).

So there is no easy or straightforward republican reading of the Dialogue. Few historians today accept De Caprariis' 'Crocean' suggestion that the contrast between Books I and II represents Guicciardini's retreat 'from politics to history',⁹ but by emphasising its political relevance as a whole, they exacerbate the problem of defining what its purpose was. In view of Guicciardini's difficult situation, it is interesting to note that on two occasions (in the preface and in the first draft of the beginning of Book II) Piero Guicciardini is described as a passive participant in the discussion, who 'won't want to let himself be understood' (pp. 3, 83, n. 228). So if Guicciardini wished to protect himself, then of course the ambiguity of the Ciceronian dialogue form, which presents both sides of the political debate without concluding in favour of either, served his purposes very well. He was not influenced only by humanist models, however. As a lawyer as well as a humanist by training, he was skilled in adversarial techniques, and it is likely that his legal career, as Osvaldo Cavallar has suggested,¹⁰ exercised an important influence on his political thinking. We know that his admiration for the adversarial court and for the practice of publishing arguments in advance provided models for his projected government, to enable citizens to arrive at the truth and win fame and reputation by 'presenting themselves well'. And on the evidence of the two orations he wrote in 1527, one accusing himself of imagined charges of malpractice, the other defending himself, it was his habitual practice to argue both sides of the question and to formulate his ideas as opposites, as when he suggests that 'everyone necessarily either loves liberty or he loves the tyrant, and if he loves one, he must hate the other' (Oratio accusatoria, p. 219). So if the Dialogue purposely offers an open choice, it would perhaps be wrong to impose on it a single reading or interpretation.

An open reading also has the advantage of making the Dialogue accessible to a wide audience, as a discussion of political principles instead of simply one of Florentine politics. Yet in accepting it, as in accepting the 'safe' republican reading, we risk missing the more dangerous implications of the work that Guicciardini apparently wanted to conceal by using the ambiguous dialogue form. For just as his two-faced portrait of Lorenzo concealed a single coherent image of the man, so his dialogue about politics in Books I and II may conceal a more pragmatic and integrated argument than either of the above approaches indicates. So without attempting to suggest a single or uniform interpretation, we may be able to discover the prevailing direction of its argument by clarifying some of its special features.

In the first place, it is clear that Guicciardini's preferred government is not a hereditary aristocracy limited to the optimates, as it might appear, but rather a meritocracy. Florentine history had amply demonstrated that the weakness of aristocratic government lay in its factionalism and competitiveness, from which the optimate regime of 1382-1434 (idealised by Capponi) was saved only by external wars and reaction to the Ciompi revolt. So although political power in Guicciardini's model is concentrated in the hands of a life senate of 150 men, who exercise the key political, financial and judicial functions in the state, final legislative power rests in the hands of the popular Great Council, which also appoints to other offices. At the same time, the practical authority of the senate and its executive of Ten is moderated both by the life Gonfalonier and by apratica, or junta, chosen from the senate by outside electors. Life membership of the senate is won not by birth but by previous performance in administrative offices and public debate. For as Guicciardini says in his Considerations on the 'Discourses' of Machiavelli: 'the optimates must not be drawn always from the same lines and families, but from the whole body of the city … and a senate must be elected to deal with difficult matters, containing the flower of the prudent noble and rich men of the city'.¹¹

There is no better way to illustrate what Guicciardini meant by this than by considering Bernardo del Nero's role in the Dialogue. One reason for being chosen as Guicciardini's alter ego could have been, as Sasso has suggested,¹² his fate in being victimised as a Medicean in 1497, which Guicciardini may have feared would be his own fate, and which he tried to avert through the argument of the Dialogue. In birth and social status, however, as Giovanni Silvano has been the first person to stress,¹³ del Nero was very different from Guicciardini: not an optimate at all but an artisan, a secondhand clothes dealer, whom Guicciardini had earlier listed as one of Lorenzo de' Medici's clients who owed his position to Lorenzo's patronage alone. Although called 'extremely cruel and extremely ambitious' before his execution in 1497, there is no doubt he was a man of ability and judgement, who enjoyed important political offices in the Medici, as well as in the republican, regime. He was also well-read—although, as he says in the Dialogue, ignorant of Latin. Like Socrates in Plato's dialogues, he is clearly intended to represent the practical wisdom of the common man. So if he and another Medici upstart, the unpopular Antonio di Miniato Dini, are described in the Dialogue as 'wise men' (pp. 3, 72 (notes), 126) and del Nero is also 'a man of worth', its ruling elite is certainly not intended to be closed but open to all men of talent, to whom it offered access to the top honours.

At the same time it is not a popular government either, despite del Nero's origins and the important role in Guicciardini's argument of the Great Council (consisting of all the citizens, now defined as the major officeholders over four generations). In Book I, he had criticised the new Great Council for encouraging tradespeople and workers to enter the government, as he had in the Logrogno Discourse. There, following the example of the Romans, he had wanted the members of an enlarged Great Council to appoint to offices without being qualified to exercise them (pp. 224-5). In Book 11 of the Dialogue he allows the Great Council to approve all laws without discussion and appoint to all offices (apart from the Gonfaloniership and the senate, which are to be nominated by the senate and then approved by the Great Council; and ambassadors, commissaries and the Ten of War, to be appointed by a special electoral council or junta). But he deprives it of any other powers, 'because I don't trust the judgement of the people, nor would I ever recommend them being allowed to decide any affair of importance' (p. 153). He also disparages them for loving the tyrant's 'festivals, jousts and public games', as well as the magnificence of his house and court, 'which are the things that appeal to the lowest classes' (p. 160). In his Maxims (C 140, Appendix, p. 174 below), as well as in the Considerations (pp. 102-6), he describes the common people as 'a mad animal gorged with a thousand and one errors and confusions'. So although Guicciardini valued the people's role in curbing the senate, and pragmatically recognised that 'now that they have had a taste of the Great Council … And so set their hearts on their free government… there's no hope of getting them to forget it' (Maxim 38, p. 172 below), he otherwise had a low opinion of their ability.

Guicciardini's negative view of the people is reinforced by comparing his views with Machiavelli's. Although Machiavelli is alluded to only once in the Dialogue, for arguing that the excellence of Rome's army depended on its excellent administration, he is present throughout in absentia—providing the 'other' voice in the dialogue through Piero Guicciardini, who scrupulously presents 'the authentic thought of his great fellow-citizen'.¹⁴ Whereas Machiavelli's model is Rome, Guicciardini's is Venice. Whereas Machiavelli admires Roman conflicts, the role of the tribune of the plebs, and the militia, Guicciardini thought the conflicts were destructive, the tribunes far less effective than the kings in protecting the people and advancing their rights, and the militia successful only because it was established under its kings, well-disciplined and highly reputed—which would not be the case if Florence were to establish a citizen militia. Since the tribunate (in Florence, the office of Captain of the People, abolished in 1477) and the militia were symbols of popular government, Guicciardini's hostility to them marks him as antipopular by comparison with Machiavelli.

The remaining figure in Guicciardini's government is the elected head of state or life Gonfalonier. Although in the Dialogue this figure is subordinate to the senate, which is the real centre of power, in the Medicean state (as in Machiavelli's 1520 blueprint) the position is of course occupied by the Medici themselves. After his experience of Piero Soderini's life office, we cannot know how confident Guicciardini was of the life Gonfalonier's capacity to control the optimates (especially since he attributes Soderini's fall in his Oratio accusatoria, p. 228, to his 'negligence, or patience or pusillanimity'), or of their capacity to control a powerful Gonfalonier. It is revealing, perhaps, that he refers to the life Gonfalonier as 'a boss or patron … not a lord who rules, but someone who being a fixture will necessarily devote the thought and care to the city's affairs that bosses give to their own affairs' (p. 101), since these are the terms Guicciardini uses to describe Lorenzo's role in the city, not Soderini's. He knew, too, that because of their wealth and status in Rome, the Medici could not realistically be exiled from Florence for ever, so he proposed what he describes as his 'new way of doing things', that is, recalling them to Florence once the republic was firmly established (p. 167).

Guicciardini's description of the life Gonfalonier's role as a boss or patron, not a lord, also suggests that he was aware of the later distinction made between the spheres of public and private interest. It may be objected that since he does not use this vocabulary, we cannot legitimately use it either. However, both Guicciardini and Machiavelli do use the public/private antithesis to contrast constitutional or public authority with private ambition and favouritism. And it is clear from Machiavelli's reiteration of this antithesis in his writings that he uses the words public and private to make exactly the distinction Guicciardini makes in the Dialogue between the Medici's constitutional authority and their private use of partisans, chiefs and favourites. Thus Machiavelli contrasts Neri Capponi's public route to power with Cosimo's 'public and private' route, through friends and 'partisans' (Florentine Histories, bk. II, ch. 2); and in the Discourses (bk. 1, ch. 16) he recognises that one of the great weaknesses of republican government is its inability to win the support of grateful partisans, since everyone expects rewards and honours as his due without any sense of obligation to the government. It was perhaps with this weakness in mind that Guicciardini on several occasions after 1512 and 1530 urged the Medici to create partisans in Florence to solidify their authority through bonds of obligation. In contrast to Machiavelli, however, who consistently condemns this fusion of public and private interest, Guicciardini seems precociously aware that it may be necessary, in order to recreate the stability achieved by Lorenzo de' Medici's semi-public, semi-private role in Florence.

Such other clues as we have suggest that the direction of Guicciardini's thought was towards the concentration of power in a strong head, whether this head was a senate or a prince. These clues include his new political vocabulary, which glossed over the old distinction between good and bad government, his tough views about the reality of power, and his conviction that 'in Florence power must necessarily either be held by one man alone or pass totally into the hands of the people'. They also include his admiration for monarchy in Rome, as well as his later support for Alessandro's rule in Florence, and his frankly-admitted enjoyment, in his self-accusation, of his own magnificence and 'unbounded authority' as papal governor, having 'received more favours from the Medici than any other citizen' (Oratio accusatoria, pp. 207, 209-10; cf. Maxim C 107, p. 173 below). Because affairs of state, the 'serious matters', are confined to the senate, which acts as mediator, we should perhaps hesitate to call his government 'mixed' in balancing power equally between its three constituent parts. Yet at the same time it is novel in insisting that all these parts contribute to government in varying degrees. Reading the Dialogue as a whole, we can see that Guicciardini, like Machiavelli in his 1520 Discourse, realistically acknowledges the need for power to be concentrated in the hands of a single head, the Medici—'during their lifetimes', as Machiavelli put it—or a senate of wise men. Despite loving liberty and republicanism more than tyranny, he did business with both types of regime, like del Nero, who must remain the key to an integrated understanding of the Dialogue.

Texts and editions

There are two surviving manuscripts of the Dialogue, both in the Guicciardini family archives in Florence (described by R. Ridolfi, L 'Archivio della famiglia Guicciardini, Florence, 1931). One, the first draft, is entirely autograph (A). The second is a later version in a secretary's hand (B), which has been corrected by the author (C), making C the definitive version. The dialogue has been published in three editions, by G. Canestrini in Guicciardini's Opere inedite (vol. 11, Florence, 1858), by R. Palmarocchi (Bari, 1932), who provides a full critical edition with alternative readings from A and B, and most recently by E. L. Scarano (UTET, Turin, 1970). In my translation I have followed Palmarocchi, adopting his nomenclature and his use of C for the printed text, and quoting variant readings from A and B where they throw light on C or provide interesting evidence of changes of thought. From this point of view, the earlier versions of the preface (Palmarocchi, pp. 295-301, printed in an Appendix by Scarano, pp. 475-83) are particularly valuable, and for this reason they have been described in expanded footnotes to the preface. The reader should not to be deterred either by the Jamesian convolutions of the preface, nor by its bulky footnotes, since both are untypical of what follows.

Language and concepts

There was at the time a long-standing debate in Florence about how to translate Florentine political terminology into Latin—should new words be invented or classical words used instead, and, indeed, should Latin be used at all? By writing his Histories and this Dialogue in Italian, not Latin, Guicciardini was already departing from the practice of most humanist scholars, as he was in rejecting scholastic terminology to define types of government in this Dialogue. After introducing this terminology, which distinguishes between six types of good and bad government of 'the one, the few or the many' (kings, aristocracies and polities ruling for the common good, tyrants, oligarchies and democracies ruling for their own self-interest), and more broadly between oligarchy and democracy, representing wealth and poverty (pp. 10-13), Guicciardini purposely discards it in favour of new words which more accurately describe his view of Florentine political history. This he saw not so much as a cycle of constantly-changing regimes, according to the classical formulation, but rather as a series of subtle and constantly-changing shifts in the balance of power between openness, largezza, and narrowness, strettezza. Thus at one end of the scale, the 1290s guild regime and the 1490s Savonarolan regime could be seen to represent broad or open government, while the oligarchic government in Florence from 1382-1434, as well as the almost one-man government under Lorenzo de' Medici, represent narrow or 'very narrow' government. Because of the imprecision and fluidity of the political situation at this time, these words offered a sliding-scale which was not only conveniently mobile but was also non-moral, thus avoiding the need to distinguish clearly between republican, oligarchic and tyrannical government. Yet the significance of Guicciardini's use of these words has been largely lost, tanks to translators and commentators who have either attempted to force them into ill-fitting classical clothing (stato stretto has been translated as 'despotism', or 'absolutism', as well as optimate government)—or else, more commonly, have left them untranslated. It is important, however, to respect Guicciardini's language by avoiding scholastic terminology and adopting his 'new' but vulgarly colloquial words—such as largo and stretto, which had popular religious and sexual, as well as political, connotations, and were readily understood by the man in the street. Hence I have nearly always translated stato largo or libero as a broad or free regime/government, stato stretto as a narrow one. Just because they do not belong to a typology familiar to us, they convey the novelty and effect intended by Guicciardini.

Guicciardini uses three other words, fortune, humours and virtue (fortuna, umori and virtu in the Glossary), which together help to define his mental world. Although it is Capponi who distinguishes himself from the other participants in the Dialogue for having practically no learning, 'apart from a bit of astrology picked up from his father' (pp. 10-11), Guicciardini himself—despite the whiggish rationalism of the Dialogue and his numerous maxims about 'the madness of those who believe in astrology' (Maxims C 23, 57, 58, 114, 207 and B 170)—was evidently more influenced by popular astrology than we might think. In Anthony Parel's convincing account of Machiavelli's cosmos,¹⁵ Machiavelli believed that the cyclical pattern of history was caused by the influence of the unchanging planets on cities and men, change being introduced by the play of fortune, which affects countries and people differently according to their humours and temperament. Although differing in emphasis, Guicciardini's account of the cycle of history in the Dialogue, in which 'everything which exists at present has existed before' (p. 16), resembles Machiavelli's, as does his account of the natural life-cycle of cities, which are difficult to reform when old (pp. 140, 148-9, 153), his frequent use of bodily and medical analogies (pp. 41, 62, 97-9, 157), and his attempt to find the right government for Florence 'after considering the nature, the quality, the conditions, the inclinations—in a word, the humours of the city and its citizens' (p. 97). We know from the Dialogue that his own father had a 'melancholic, balanced and happy disposition, according to Marsilio Ficino' (p. 11), and he evidently agreed with Machiavelli about the importance of being born at the right time, 'when your own special virtues or qualities are valued' and on the virtual impossibility of changing one's nature 'according to the times', to escape fortune's thrall (Maxim 31, pp. 171-2; cf. pp. 81 and 141, and Maxim 216, p. 174 below). For fortune is 'just as influential as many believe', or at least 'quite powerful in ensuring that things are born in time to enjoy the right company and occasion to be able to achieve their effect' (pp. 139, 148). Anyone who tries to escape the power of fortune through change and revolution incurs her anger, 'in whose dominion these things lie' (p. 84). And although fortune can bring success and prosperity if she smiles on the city, her cornucopia is not unlimited and can be used up (pp. 139, 148-9, 90). He also talks of the impossibility of 'escaping one's fate', of the natural cycle of human affairs and, 'as you others like to say, of fate, which very often has more force than men's reason or prudence' (pp. 3, 140, 79-80); and of 'the dispositions of the heavens and destiny' being more important than counsel in bringing about Piero de' Medici's fall (p. 10).

Guicciardini's use of the words fate and fortune suggest that he shared the same view of the world as Machiavelli. Yet his emphasis on the particular and the exceptional enabled him to avoid the determinism of Machiavelli's rules and generalisations, nor does he apparently share the paganism that Parel attributes to Machiavelli. For although he was as critical of the Roman Church and its clergy as Machiavelli, he did not rule out the power of God's providence in influencing events. On one occasion he refers to 'fortune, or God's goodness', on another to Italy's situation after the French invasion being 'more or less in the hands of God', and elsewhere he states that 'God loves liberty.' (pp. 135, 70, 91). Despite finding it difficult to accept that goodness and evil were not rewarded and punished by God, he still thought it impossible that 'divine justice', or God (as the first draft A has it), would allow the Medici exiles to be put to death as outlaws, when they themselves had killed no one (p. 163; cf. Maxims C 91, 92). His view of man's natural goodness and virtue also differs from Machiavelli's. Virtue, or individual merit, which can bring success independently of fortune, is for Guicciardini a moral or civic quality, closely associated with the performance of deeds that benefit the republic, rather than Machiavellian ability or prowess. It remains difficult to know how Guicciardini reconciled these different elements in his cosmos. Despite his lucidity of thought and expression, his penetrating but sceptical comments on the world suggest that his beliefs are as unfathomable as his God, whom he describes, in the words of the Bible, as 'a profound abyss' (Maxim C 92, quoting from Romans 11:33). It is this combination of qualities that makes him one of the most important and challenging writers in the early-modern period.

Notes

¹ G. Sasso, 'Machiavelli and Guicciardini', in Per Francesco Guicciardini. Quattro studi, Rome, 1984, pp. 94-5.

² Gli uomini da bene di F.G: coscienza aristocratica e repubblica a Firenze nel primo '500', Archivio storico italiano 148 (1990), pp. 856-60; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton, 1975, p. 221.

³ J. Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, Florence 1858, II, pp. 335-74 at p. 350; G. B. Busini, letter to B. Varchi (30 May 1550), in Lettere, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1860, p. 220.

⁴Per Francesco Guicciardini, p. 183; cf. Silvano, 'Gli uomini da bene, p. 861.

⁵Per Francesco Guicciardini, pp. 189-94; cf. pp. 172-9.

⁶ Ibid., p. 19.

⁷ See Bibliographical note below.

⁸ Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 248-251, 258-261.

⁹ See Bibliographical note below.

¹⁰ O. Cavallar, Francesco Guicciardini Giurista. I Ricordi degli Onorari, Milan, 1991, pp.

¹¹Selected Writings, ed. C. and M. Grayson, Oxford, 1965, p. 65.

¹² See note 5 above.

¹³ 'Gli uomini da bene', pp. 862-3.

¹⁴ Sasso, Per Francesco Guicciardini, p. 105.

¹⁵The Machiavellian Cosmos, New Haven and London, 1992; cf. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 31-48.