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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_6a235ff7-4cf9-5ab2-a046-2bcf7dcc5aef">[2] Varchi, vol. i. p. 168; compare vol. ii. p. 87, however.

      CHAPTER V.

      THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS.

       Table of Contents

      Florence, the City of Intelligence—Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of Beauty—Florentine Historical Literature—Philosophical Study of History—Ricordano Malespini—Florentine History compared with the Chronicles of other Italian Towns—The Villani—The Date 1300—Statistics—Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets—Dino Compagni—Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century—Lionardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini—The Historians of the First Half of the Sixteenth Century—Men of Action and Men of Letters: the Doctrinaires—Florence between 1494 and 1537—Varchi, Segni, Nardi, Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini—The Political Importance of these Writers—The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of 1529—State of Parties—Filippo Strozzi—Different Views of Florentine Weakness taken by the Historians—Their Literary Qualities—Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli—Scientific Statists—Discord between Life and Literature—The Biography of Guicciardini—His 'Istoria d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' 'Ricordi'—Biography of Machiavelli—His Scheme of a National Militia—Dedication of 'The Prince'—Political Ethics of the Italian Renaissance—The Discorsi—The Seven Books on the Art of War and the 'History of Florence.'

      Florence was essentially the city of intelligence in modern times. Other nations have surpassed the Italians in their genius—the quality which gave a superhuman power of insight to Shakespeare and an universal sympathy to Goethe. But nowhere else except at Athens has the whole population of a city been so permeated with ideas, so highly intellectual by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit of the Italians existed in quintessence among the Florentines. And of this superiority not only they but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and Naples, were conscious. Boniface VIII., when he received the ambassadors of the Christian powers in Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee in 1300, observed that all of them were citizens of Florence. The witticism which he is said to have uttered, i Fiorentini essere il quinto elemento, 'that the men of Florence form a fifth element,' passed into a proverb. The primacy of the Florentines in literature, the fine arts, law, scholarship, philosophy, and science was acknowledged throughout Italy.

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