## 1. The Baron Thesis



Baron used the term civic humanism to describe the fusion of two
distinct currents of Florentine thought: apolitical so-called
"Petrarchan" humanism, on the one hand, and the Guelf
tradition of patriotic resistance by the Florentine city-state to
imperial domination, on the other (Kallendorf 1996). The
"rebirth" of ancient letters and wisdom (*studia
humanitas*) marked a revolutionary change in the European mind,
but it remained limited to the contemplative pleasure and edification
of quietist poets and scholars until the beginning of the fifteenth
century. Thereafter, it merged with the assertive defense of the
sovereign independence of the increasingly rich, powerful, and
confident merchant cities of Italy. The fusion was effected, according
to Baron, as a response to a crisis, namely, the reaction of the
intellectual and political leadership of Florence to the aggressive
expansionism of the despots of Milan. The resulting exaltation of
liberty combined patriotic self-defense with the upholding of a
republican way of life that departed from medieval ideals by asserting
worldly values and embracing the active life in a manner evocative of
the republics of antiquity. According to Baron's thesis, in the
face of military danger the patterns of society, economy, and politics
came to cohere in a culture, i.e., an ethos infused with an
educational vision. The main champions of this were the great
chancellors of the Florentine Republic, Coluccio Salutati and,
especially, Leonardo Bruni, top civil servants and public
intellectuals combined, who restored the practical pertinence of
classical learning in the process of establishing the terms of a new
civil consensus.



Beyond seeking to identify civic humanism with a particular time and
place, Baron studied the political culture of Renaissance Florence as
an instance of an exemplary mode of communal existence. Florentine
civic humanism represented for him furthermore a decisive turning
point in history. For Baron it was an epochal event that, by looking
backward to antiquity, pointed forward to modernity--a movement
that he embraced wholeheartedly as a liberating, civilizing,
progressive process. The advent of civic humanism marked for Baron the
victory of secular economic, social, and political ideals versus the
asceticism, religious obscurantism, and hierarchy of the Middle Ages
(see Yoran 2007). Civic humanism provided the vital vehicle for the
translation of the exalted ancient idea of citizenship to the modern
age. The humanist defense of republican liberty against monarchical
tyranny announced for him the beginnings of modern democratic thought,
elevated by an educational ideal of classical inspiration, and
accompanied by renewed cultural creativity. Civic humanism was thus
the harbinger of the unequivocally positive trends in modern European
civilization. The value of such achievements appeared all the more
compelling since they were not theoretical postulates derived from
abstract speculation, but represented historically realized
exempla.



Baron's reconstruction of civic humanism was not only directed
against other-worldly values and notions of medieval deference, but
also against different modes of construing modernity in terms of the
autonomy of the self. At issue here, beyond the characterization of a
historical period, was the definition and evaluation of modernity
itself. Baron wished to see the autonomous humanity he perceived
emerging in quattrocento Florence integrated within a constitutional
frame and anchored by patriotic attachment to the community. Baron
advocated a vast scholarly program to establish the Italian humanist
tradition as a major source of modernity. The polities he posited as
commendable are not conceived as formal frames of individual life
goals--in other words, empty liberalism--but textured wholes
into which human autonomy is woven. To state it somewhat
anachronistically, accepting the nexus of public solidarity embedded
in civic humanism, and viewing it as an equivalent of civil society,
Baron's thesis overlaps considerably with today's
communitarianism.


## 2. Civic Humanism and Republicanism



As previously suggested, both Baron and Garin generally regarded civic
humanism as an equivalent to or as a particular variant of
republicanism, meaning a conception of politics in which government is
in principle the common business of the citizens. The
"city" provides the environment--a public
space--for human fulfillment. More specifically, they appear to
believe that civic humanism derives from classical republicanism of
some variety ascribed to Aristotle, Cicero, and Polybius among others
(although knowledge of Book VI of the latter's
*Histories* before the beginning of the sixteenth century is
disputed [Nederman 2016; Hankins 2016; Monfasani 2016]). Civic
humanism is linked in principle to a classical educational program
that goes beyond the formative capacity of participatory citizenship
itself and involves the conscious revival of ancient ideals.
Republican candor, simplicity of manner, opposition to ostentation,
luxury and lucre, are common, though not universal, republican themes.
Civic humanists, it is said, promote republican ideals responding to
the fragility of the republic and the need to provide against its
corruption and decay with the passage of time.



According to Baron, numerous civic humanist theorists emphasized that
the republic requires widespread civic virtue, i.e., the active
engagement of citizens united by a concern for the common good. The
virtues of citizenship are in turn developed and enhanced by being
exercised in upholding republican political and legal institutions and
making them work by being involved in their operation. Republican life
is then thought to be formative of the public spirit on which it
rests. Republican freedom depends on constant civic activity. The
polity is taken to cohere by means of the common acceptance of
standards of justice that are more than procedural rules. The purpose
of the commonwealth is the realization of human potentiality,
encouraging the flowering of all forms of creativity and ingenuity
insofar as they contribute to public welfare. The republic is the
necessary medium of self-realization, not merely the condition of
possibility of private endeavors. There is a link furthermore between
the freedom of the citizen and the independence of the republic.
Citizen armies and the right to bear arms are therefore common
postulates of republican theory. Adherents to the "Baron
thesis" use all of these confluences of civic humanism and
republicanism to support their contention that the two positions are
inseparable.



One important extension of Baron's position has been proposed by
John Pocock (1975). Pocock takes Renaissance civic humanism to be an
estimable manifestation of republican and patriotic collective
sentiment. For Pocock as well as Baron, civic humanism must be
considered the response to a crisis amounting to what Machiavelli
would call an *occasione*, a moment of disorder that gives
scope to the formative activity of a new beginning that nevertheless
looks to the past in order to guide its future. The dilemma faced by
Florentine civic humanists, according to Pocock, was to fit the idea
of an Aristotelian polis within the framework of a Christian
understanding of time. One answer to the experience of disorder was
the explicitly millenarian exaltation of the leader of
Florence's republic from 1494 to 1498, the Dominican preacher
Girolamo Savonarola. In Pocock's view, civic humanism provided a
secular alternative to Savanarola's prophetic republicanism, in
the form of a revived Aristotelian "science of virtue" as
the means of overcoming the republic's temporal finitude. Given
doubts that have been raised with regard to the philosophical depth of
the supposed Aristotelianism of the Florentine humanists, another
recent scholar of civic humanism, Quentin Skinner has, as an
alternative, stressed its Roman rather than Hellenic antecedents
(Bock, Skinner, & Viroli 1990: 121-141). This is not just a
matter of identifying sources. Skinner's revised position means
rather that in his view, civic humanism advocated active citizenship
as a means to liberty from foreign and domestic domination, rather
than as a self-fulfilling human end. In more recent times, Skinner has
shifted his position from an historical claim to an entirely
philosophical one, in line with the purely theoretical conception of
republicanism discussed above (e.g., Skinner 1998).



Ironically, in Pocock's adaptation of Baron's thesis,
virtue is opposed to property, and it is the urban, bourgeois
entrepreneurs and the chancery of the modernizing state, the very
creators of civic humanism in Baron's mind, that reside on the
wrong side of the fence. Baron's civic humanists advocated a
departure from the medieval ideals of contemplation and asceticism to
assert an active life that included trade and profit (Jurdjevic 2001:
727-728). In the Pocockean version of republicanism, civic
virtue is opposed to a vision of citizenship that embraces the private
pursuit of gain. This kind of virtuous polity cannot, however, be
Florence--and certainly not Baron's Florence--the
*palazzi* of which were built with the profits of banking,
manufacturing, international trade, and interest on the city's
public debt. Pocock's rearward glance to Aristotle (and even
Skinner's to Rome) did not take into account the historical
realities of the Renaissance Italian cities, Florence in
particular.


## 3. Varieties of Civic Humanism



Baron's interpretation assumes that civic humanism has a core
that holds together all of those with whom is associated. In other
words, there is presumed to be a single set of principles to which all
civic humanists must subscribe in order to merit that appellation.
Pocock attempted to circumvent this problem by treating republicanism
in linguistic rather than programmatic terms. As such it was available
to be picked up, selectively and thematically, as circumstances
dictated or allowed. Taken on its face, Pocock's conception of
republicanism invites us, in turn, say the same about civic humanism,
namely, that it need not be equated with a single political position
(that is, republicanism). Although Pocock does not acknowledge it, the
general discursive ambit of civic humanism licenses Italian thinkers
to apply its language to an extensive range of political systems and
phenomena.



James Hankins has taken this point a step further by severing Italian
Renaissance humanism from political forms entirely. Hankins aims to
challenge directly Baron, Pocock and similar advocates of civic
humanism who equate it with republican liberty, while also tempering
the long-standing alternative view that humanism was primarily an
apolitical literary and cultural movement (2019: xii). Hankins argues
instead that humanists were driven by what he terms "virtue
politics," by which he means improvement of "the character
and wisdom of the ruling class with a view to bringing about a happy
and flourishing commonwealth" (2019: 37). The great humanists
thus ought to be understood not as advocates for any particular
"constitutional form of the polity" or for "the
express consent of the governed" (2019: 37). Rather, political
legitimacy rested on moral legitimacy. Only with Machiavelli, Hankins
contends, was the link to the virtue that humanism propounded
decisively broken (2019: 449-475). But *pace* Hankins
(2019: xxi), humanists in fact disputed about which type of government
was most desirable, as shall be discussed presently, and certainly did
not discount that one system should be preferred over others.


### 3.1. Leonardo Bruni



For Baron and many others, Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) was
regarded to be the paragon of Italian civic humanism (Hankins 1995:
327; Witt 2003: 392-442), the exemplar of the synthesis of
humanistic study and public engagement: he served twice as the
Chancellor of Florence and was intermittently employed in
administrative posts by the papacy. At the same time, Bruni was a
prodigious author and translator, composing a multi-volume history of
the Florentine people (based on his access to primary sources),
producing Latin versions of works by Aristotle (including the
*Politics*) and other Greek texts, writing biographies of
notable Italians for popular consumption, among many additional
literary activities.



Most significantly for current purposes, Bruni used his great
erudition to defend and promote the cause of republican government,
especially as practiced in Florence during his day. His
*Laudatio* (1403-1404 [1978]) are paeans to the city
generally (for instance, in terms of architectural and artistic
beauty, its cleanliness, its locale, and its plentiful resources) but
also specifically to the virtue of its citizens and its institutions.
(Recall a central feature of the "Baron thesis" mentioned
above derived from the claim that the Milan crisis of 1402 gave birth
to civic humanism in both theory and practice, with Bruni as its
exemplary exponent.) Like his contemporaries, Bruni believed that
Florence had been founded by the Romans during the republican period,
rendering its citizens characteristically lovers of freedom who stood
also opposed to imperial and tyrannical rule. This heritage from Rome
also yielded the source for Florence's mild and peaceful
relations with other Italian cities and their citizens, signaled by
its protection of all Italy from the domination threatened by the
Milanese. Florence was, in effect, the savior of the Italian
people.



Both the *Panegyric* and the *Laudatio* explain the
greatness of Florence in terms of its self-governing political system.
The institutions both foster and are fostered by the public virtue of
citizens. Bruni postulates a triad of fundamental republican
principles that Florence draws together: liberty (*libertas*),
equality (*aequalitas*), and just law (*ius*). The
Florentine constitution is so organized that citizens are free because
they are equal before the law. These qualities bring us to one of
Bruni's favorite concepts in his political theory: harmonious
cooperation and balance among all groups and classes within the city.
Other Italian cities, he observes, are rife with class conflict
between the great men and mass of the people. The Florentine republic
differs because the entire body of its citizens participate, as
appropriate, in the government, which, because it is checked in its
power, resists the temptation of tyranny, whether by the few or the
many. Civic humanism, at least as understood by Baron and scholars
working in a similar vein, is perfectly captured in the accounts of
Florence in the *Panegyric* and *Laudatio*.


### 3.2 Coluccio Salutati and Aurelio Lippo Brandolini



Yet the fundamental premises of Renaissance civic humanism do not
necessarily entail republicanism. Many of the cities of
fifteenth-century Italy were in fact governed by individuals who were
self-styled princes or by oligarchic dynasties. As Quentin Skinner
observed many years ago (1978: 118-128), humanists were not
adverse to modification of the virtues associated with civic
government to suit conditions of a princely regime (see also Skinner
2002: 118-159). Baron sought to excuse or dismiss such ideas,
but his arguments have been challenged.



One of the most notable figures to take up this agenda was Coluccio
Salutati (1331-1406) in a treatise entitled *De tyranno*
(*On Tyranny*; 1400 [1927]. Salutati had been not only
Bruni's instructor but also his immediate predecessor as
Chancellor of the Florentine republic. In the view of Salutati, there
are valid reasons that one should stand prepared to countenance
tyrannical rulers at times. In support of what might seem at first
glance an odd position for a humanist to embrace, he introduces a
distinction between two types of tyrants: those who rule without valid
title (usurpers) and those who possess a legitimate claim to office
but use their powers unlawfully and unjustly as a result of their
prideful characters. This difference is decisive for Salutati, whose
main concern is with the propriety of slaying tyrants in general and
with the murder of Julius Caesar in particular.



According to Salutati, the appropriate treatment of a tyrant is wholly
dependent upon whether or not he is a usurper. If so, then those
subject to him may invoke the Roman law principle that it is
"lawful to repel by force the assailant of an individual or a
piece of property and if he persists, to kill him" in order to
justify resistance to a tyrant (1927: 86). By contrast, Salutati
condemns those who argue that wicked princes ought to be killed even
when they hold their office by right. He asserts that only the public
authority that placed a ruler in office (whether a superior or the
community) enjoys the right to remove him from power; private persons,
acting in their own right, have no say in the matter.



Salutati rounds off his treatise by applying his argument to the case
of Caesar. He purports to prove (in a highly polemical refutation of
Cicero) that Caesar was not a usurper, but instead held legitimate
office authorized by the Roman people. Indeed, Salutati maintains that
if Caesar seemed to behave tyrannically, it was because the tumultuous
condition of the times called for such conduct. Caesar is to be
praised as the savior of Rome, not condemned as a tyrant.
Consequently, it was entirely wrong for private citizens to slay
Caesar, since he had not usurped public power. Moreover, to the extent
that he was serving the common good, the Romans as a people had no
legitimate warrant to remove him from office. Salutati thus
approaches, if he does not explicitly endorse, a conception of
benevolent despotism that challenges the usual bases for
distinguishing between king and tyrant.



Another Florentine humanist--albeit it not of the stature of
Bruni and Salutati--went still further in praising monarchy.
Aurelio Lippo Brandolini (c.1454-1497) in his *De
comparatione reipublicae et regni* (*On the Comparison of
Republic and Kingdoms*; c. 1490) defends kingship against the
charge made by his fellow Italians (especially, Florentines) that it
was inferior to republican government. Writing at the court of the
Hungarian King Mattias, whose patronage he briefly enjoyed, Brandolini
constructed a dialogue between a Florentine merchant, Domenico, and
the king himself, in which every conventional rationale for the
superiority of republics to other constitutional systems, especially
monarchies, is proposed and examined, only to be decimated. Regardless
of whether or not Brandolini wrote *De comparatione* merely as
piece of flattery for King Mattias, his arguments for kingship still
warrant serious attention.



In the first two books of the dialogue, Domenico's case in favor
of the superiority of republican constitutions is demolished by
Mattias. This is hardly what might be expected of a civic humanist, at
least if one regards Bruni as the paradigmatic instance thereof. But
Brandolini manages to use precisely the tools of his humanist training
to dismiss the main values that led humanists to praise the Florentine
republican constitution. Of more immediate interest, at the beginning
of the third and final book of *De comparatione*, the
discussion turns to the examination and defense of the proposition
that the governance of one person is best. Initially, this position is
supported by means of a set of analogies to the helmsman, the military
commander, and the head of the household. Thereafter, the debate
concentrates on how the rule of a single excellent man constitutes a
safeguard against the real possibility of destructive factionalism
that flows from governance by the many.



By way of proof, Mattias narrates a notably revisionist account of
Roman history, according to which the early kings successfully
preserved peace and concord. Their replacement by consuls led
naturally and inescapably to the decline of the city over time into a
series of civil wars in which various men contended for power. In the
same passage, Mattias indicates that Lorenzo de'Medici in
Florence achieved the same effect as did the Roman monarchs, namely,
eliminating from the city the tumults caused by factionalism. A
single, defining political will yields unity. Brandolini thereby
adopts a position precisely opposed to Bruni, who, as has been seen,
claimed that the Florentine republican constitution was the source of
harmonization among the classes. Brandolini and Bruni focus on
precisely the same problem--how to curb faction leading to class
conflict--but they arrive at radically different conclusions.
Arguably, nothing about Bruni's position is inherently more
exemplary of civic humanist than Brandolini's.


### 3.3. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini



It would be difficult to find anyone during the fifteenth century
better qualified than Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405-1464) to
claim the mantle of civic humanism. As was the case with the authors
already discussed he was steeped in the *studia humanitas* from
a fine Florentine education. An almost exact contemporary of the great
humanists Palmieri, Valla and Patrizi, he enjoyed a sterling
reputation for his writings; his letters, in particular, compare
favorably in their style as well as their substance with the best of
humanist literature. He held positions in the imperial court as a
secretary and diplomat, and eventually worked his way up the ladder of
ecclesiastical preferment to be elevated to the papal see as Pius
II--often called the first "humanist pope". Yet, in
his most famous work of political thought, *De ortu et auctoritate
imperii Romani* (*On the Origin and Authority of the Roman
Empire*; 1446), Piccolomini advanced a defense of a universalist,
imperial and even absolutist ideal of government under the banner of
the Holy Roman Empire. As with many of the authors previously
surveyed, such a position would seem wholly incompatible with civic
humanism.



Piccolomini's argument starts, but does not finish, with
kingship. Kings were first authorized in the earliest times of human
history in order to shield the rights of weaker men from injury by the
stronger. This is a theme common to numerous republican civic
humanists, drawn from a position held by Cicero, who was an important
source for them. The king is regarded as the personification of
justice. His moral character outshines that of his fellows, so he does
not require law as the foundation of his rule, since his judgments are
so rooted in a sense of justice and equity that they enjoy the force
of law. A conventional account of the breakdown of kingship would
involve the declining morality of successive kings, leading to
tyranny. By contrast, Piccolomini detects a quite different inherent
weakness in political arrangements associated with kingship,
regardless of the moral qualities of a particular royal incumbent.



In *De ortu*, he points out that the creation of a king was not
a unique or isolated event. Rather, throughout the world there are
many kings who rule over a plurality of territories. As these kingdoms
defined and expanded their geographical boundaries or spheres of
jurisdiction, they inevitably came into conflict. And since there was
no means of arbitration amongst such coequal powers, the resolution of
disputes between them occurred by means of armed engagements. These
ensuing conflicts between royal powers and their peoples are directly
the function of an inescapable structural limitation endemic to
localized or regional kingship *per se*. It is not morally
corrupt rulers alone who are held responsible for clashes over lands
and rights. Instead, any king who is performing his duties properly
will, Piccolomini supposes, inevitably enter into contention with
another king and will be compelled to turn to warfare.



Consequently, the political model of an independent network of
kingships is incompatible with the very purpose which warranted the
creation of kings, namely, the maintenance of just and harmonious
relations among human beings. The decentralized distribution of royal
power ultimately produces an effect which is exactly contrary to that
intended. Empowered as the agent of social harmony, kingship proves to
be its enemy, confounding rather than reinforcing the justice which
the ruler is charged with upholding. Notice here how the problems of
conflict and the absence of harmony, addressed by many civic
humanists, manifest themselves in Piccolomini's thought as well.
His solution, however, is quite different from his Florentine
colleagues. Since the particularity of royal regimes runs afoul of the
ordained end of political power, the attainment of justice, and the
order that comes with it, can only be achieved by a universality of
political rule, that is, a single world empire. In imperial government
alone does political power finally attain a form consistent with the
aim of its original authorization. Once again, one may plausibly
assert that civic humanist principles might move in a direction quite
divergent from republicanism (Lee 2018).


### 3.4 Niccolo Machiavelli



Machiavelli (1469-1527) is doubtless the best known of all the
authors discussed here on account of his *Il principe*
(*Prince*; c. 1513-1514) and (to a lesser extent)
*Discorsi* (*Discourses*; c. 1514-1519). The
former is a somewhat notorious advice-book for rulers who wish to gain
and hold power; the latter evaluates the strengths of a republican
system of government. Machiavelli was deeply involved in governing the
republic of Florence, serving in several important official
capacities, until a 1512 coup against the regime engineered by the
Medici family cost him his position. Less often recognized is that he
wrote prolifically--poetry, plays, histories, military
manuals--and left us with a large collection of correspondence
and dispatches from his diplomatic activities (Nederman 2023).
Scholars from many viewpoints, judge Machiavelli to be the epitome of
civic humanist republicanism during the later Italian Renaissance
(Najemy 1996). The academic literature on Machiavelli's thought
is immense. Any serious attempt to summarize it is a fool's
errand.



Stated simply, Machiavelli encapsulates the multiple forms of civic
humanism that have been examined. On the one hand, the
*Discorsi* is said to epitomize the republican ideals of
self-governance and active citizenship commonly associated with the
essence of civic humanism. (As mentioned in the Introduction,
Machiavelli is one of the primary historical figures to whom
contemporary republican philosophers look for ideas and inspiration.)
On the other hand, *Il principe* exemplifies the tendency of
some civic humanists who have been considered above to look toward
monarchic regimes as the preferable form of rule. A plethora of
scholarly effort has been directed toward attempting to reconcile
these two evidently very contradictory positions. Some interpreters
suggest, for instance, that the *Discorsi* represents his
"real" views, and that *Il principe* is a satire or
an attempt to win back his job in the Florentine government or to
reveal to his fellow citizens the "real" inner workings of
princely regimes. Others propose that *Il principe* reflects
Machiavelli's true teachings and that the principles ascribed to
the *Discorsi* are little more than extensions of his earlier
tract. And some simply assert that no accord is possible.



It should be obvious, then, that the characteristics of the civic
humanist propensities ascribed by scholars to Machiavelli may be
understood in a vast number of ways. Given the diversity of
interpretations, it is perhaps of greater utility to identify a single
central theme shared by *Il principe* and the *Discorsi*
and various civic humanists already discussed. Specifically,
Machiavelli, like prior Florentine humanists, confronted in his
writings the quarrels that arose from conflicts between contending
sets of interests, whether classes or political entities. All of the
authors previously addressed praised their favored form of government
(republic, monarchy, empire) on the grounds that it introduced harmony
and peace between clashing groups.



In both of his works, Machiavelli acknowledges the existence within
every community of two inherently incompatible classes: the
*grandi* (nobles) and the *popolo* (masses). The nobles
seek to dominate those beneath them; the masses desire only to be free
from domination. He clearly believes that these two parties can never
be brought together in a peaceful fashion. Their interests are simply
incommensurable. So, Machiavelli's dilemma is how to avoid the
nobles and the masses from warring against one another. He provides
two possibilities. In *Il principe*, he remarks that a prince
who wishes to maintain his power must curb the aspirations of the
nobility, to the extent that a ruler may reasonably consider
cold-blooded murder as one of his tools. The people, by contrast,
should be treated mildly. Indeed, Machiavelli insists that if a prince
must choose to side with one or the other class, he should always take
up the cause of the masses. Why? First, because their numbers are so
much greater than those of the nobles that they are bound to prevail.
Second, because the *popolo* are so distant from the machinery
of government headed by the prince that they are unable to observe the
sometimes vicious means by which he must rule. Third, because they,
being uneducated, are easily led by appearances and are unable to
apprehend the truth that the prince seeks to conceal.



The *Discorsi* treats class conflict in an entirely different
way, namely, as a positive or productive feature of a well-developed
republican system. Machiavelli's epitome of an ideal republic is
ancient Rome, in which tumult was rife. According to him, by
permitting rather than suppressing the collision between these two
sets of interests, Rome succeeded in actualizing and maintaining the
paramount value of liberty. In a republic of the Roman sort, the
nobility (via the Senate) has the main responsibility for governing,
but the people check that power by means of countervailing offices
(such as the tribunes) and popular dissent. The struggle between them
actually generates the liberty of the whole, both in terms of
self-government unbeholden to either external forces or to tyranny and
by assuring that the people's desire not to be dominated is
achieved.



Machiavelli recognizes that he is adopting an unusual perspective,
since customarily the blame for the collapse of the Roman Republic has
been assigned to warring factions that eventually ripped it apart. By
contrast, he insists that precisely those conflicts generated a
"creative tension" that was the source of Roman liberty.
Other republican models (such as those adopted by Sparta or Venice)
produced weaker political systems, ones that are either stagnant or
prone to decay when circumstances change. The ultimate sign of the
unique greatness of the Roman Republic is its conquest of huge amounts
of territory, as a result of the *grandi* and the
*popolo* setting aside their ultimately interminable struggles
(at least for a time) in order to cooperate in the subjugation and
exploitation of vast lands. Class struggle is thus socialized and put
to effective use. It has been suggested, and with good reason, that a
signal element of Machiavelli's political project was to promote
Florence as the new Rome that will impose its domination over the rest
of Italy. It is perhaps not too great a stretch to call him a civic
humanist with imperialistic pretensions (Hornqvist 2004).


## 4. The Pre-history of Civic Humanism



As previously noted, Baron posited that the birth of civic humanism
occurred precisely out of the 1402 crisis in Florence. This position
has been challenged on various historical grounds, most notably by
Seigel (1966). One problem with Baron's claim stems from his
evident lack of familiarity with the political philosophy of preceding
centuries. Long before the beginning of the *quattrocento*,
political authors (some of Florentine origin) had undertaken the
defense of the republican system of government generally and of the
Roman Republic in particular in terms redolent of civic humanism.
Writing c. 1265, a Florentine civil servant exiled to France, Brunetto
Latini (1993), argued for the superiority of republics (communes) over
other types of constitution and also described in detail the
mechanisms of republican governance. Around 1300, another Italian, the
Paris-educated scholastic philosopher Ptolemy of Lucca (1997),
composed an extensive brief favoring the Roman Republic as the ideal
form of government (Blythe 2009; but see also Yun 2008 and Nederman
and Sullivan 2012). The size of the list of pro-republican political
theorists writing before 1402 could be multiplied many times over.



Why was Baron inattentive to pre-Renaissance European republicanism?
The answer may be traced to what civic humanism represented to him:
modernity, secularity, rationality; in sum, the "glory" of
the Renaissance in contrast with the benighted Middle Ages. Scholars
have long since realized that a dividing line drawn between medieval
and early modern periods is wholly unwarranted (Nederman 2009). Just
as civic humanism as the designation of an intellectual movement
within the tradition of Western political theory proves to be quite
capacious, so its existence and development should be regarded as more
fluid historically than has often been claimed.