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Hankins, James

Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller were the most important interpreters of Renaissance humanism in the half century following the Second World War. This article explores the differences between their two interpretations from a biographical perspective, making use of their unpublished correspondence. Key passages from their correspondence are published in an appendix.

Leonardo Bruni's aim in the De militia (ca. 1420) was to co-opt the most glamorous of medieval ideals, the ideal of chivalry, and to reinterpret it in terms of Greco-Roman ideals of military service. In so doing he aimed to make the reform of knighthood in Renaissance Florence into an aspect of the revival of antiquity.

It is argued that modern characterizations of republican liberty as adhering to a "non-domination" model of liberty are inaccurate for the period of the Italian Renaissance, and that the humanists of the period, aside from Machiavelli, did not see political liberty primarily as instrumental to the pursuit of private ends.

The idea that a republic is the only legitimate form of government and that non-elective monarchy and hereditary political privileges are by definition illegitimate is an artifact of late eighteenth century republicanism, though it has roots in the “godly republics” of the seventeenth century. It presupposes understanding a republic (respublica) to be a non-monarchical form of government. The latter definition is a discursive practice that goes back only to the fifteenth century and is not found in Roman or medieval sources. This article explains how the definition emerged in Renaissance Italy.

Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) was not a Platonist and was in fact deeply concerned about Plato's compatibility with Christian teaching. He contributed to the revival of Platonic studies in Renaissance Italy primarily because of his interest in the figure of Socrates. Analysis of the citations of Plato in his writings show that he had direct knowledge only of the Timaeus, Phaedo and the Republic, and most of his direct knowledge of Plato was acquired in the last five years of his life.

After an early flirtation with Lucretius, Marsilio Ficino, the leading Platonic philosopher of the Renaissance, became a confirmed enemy of the Epicurean philosopher. This chapter discusses the extensive critique of Lucretius found in Ficino's Platonic Theology (1482). The vehemence and extent of Ficino's critique suggests that Ficino believed Epicureanism to be a 'live option' in Medicean Florence and a threat to his project of renewing Christian theology through Platonic wisdom.

Modern studies of Italian humanist political thought emphasize the theme of republican liberty, but this conception has been understood in anachronistic ways and exaggerated in importance. Much more central is the problem of how to encourage virtuous and prudent behavior in the ruling class. The humanist answer — a classical education in virtue and wisdom, along with the creation of new social technologies of persuasion — was comprehensively rejected by Machiavelli, whose own approach to political success truly introduced new modi e ordini.

Francesco Petrarch’s involvements in the politics of Trecento Italy have often been the subject of criticism by later readers of his works—in effect, by that same posterity whose good opinion he so eagerly sought, and not just in the famous letter To Posterity. Indeed almost all of Petrarch’s literary interventions in the political life of his times come interlaced with pre-emptive apologias for his own stances. Petrarch knew that what he did and what he wrote would draw criticism, or was already drawing criticism. And his works certainly offer to hostile eyes what military tacticians would call a ‘target-rich environment’.