Francesco Guicciardini

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Francesco Guicciardini bigraphy, stories - Historians

Francesco Guicciardini : biography

6 March 1483 – 22 May 1540

Francesco Guicciardini ( 6 March 1483 – 22 May 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance. In his masterpiece, The History of Italy, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography, with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.

Final Years in Florence Under the Medici: 1534–1540

In 1531 Guicciardini was assigned the governorship of Bologna, the most important city in the northern Papal States by Clement VII.Correspondence, Op. med. vol. ix. Guicciardini resigned this post after the Medici pope’s death in 1534, and returned to Florence, where he was enlisted as advisor to Alessandro de Medici, “whose position as duke had become less secure following the death of the pope.” Guiccardini defended him in Naples in 1535 before Charles V, contesting the exiled rebels’ accusations of tyranny.Op. med. Volume IX He assisted in successfully negotiating the marriage of Alessandro to the emperor Charles V’s daughter Margaret of Parma in 1536 and for a short time Gucciardini was the most trusted advisor to Alessandro until the Duke’s assassination in 1537.

After the murder of Duke Alessandro in 1537, Guicciardini allied himself with Cosimo de’ Medici, who was just seventeen years old at the time and new to the Florentine political system. Guicciardini supported Cosimo as duke of Florence, however, Cosimo dismissed him shortly after his rise to power and Guicciardini retired to his villa in Arcetri, where he spent his last years working on the Storia d’Italia. He died in 1540 without male heirs.

His nephew, Lodovico Guicciardini, was also a historian known for his 16th-century works on the Low Countries.

Publication of his writings

None of Francesco Guicciardini’s works were published during his lifetime. It was not until 1561 that the first sixteen of the twenty books of his History of Italy were published. The first English "translation" by Sir Geffray Fenton was published in 1579.Sydney Alexander, op.cit. p.xxv Until 1857 only the History and a small number of extracts from his aphorisms were known. In that year his descendents opened the Guicciardini family archives, and committed to Giuseppe Canestrini the publication of his memoirs in ten volumes.Opere Inedite di Francesco Guicciardini (Firenze, 1857-1867) These are some of his works recovered from the archives:

  • Ricordi politici e civili, already noted, consisting of about 220 maxims on political, social, and religious topics;
  • Observations on Machiavelli’s Discorsi, which bring into relief the views of Italy’s two great theorists on statecraft in the 16th century, and show that Guicciardini regarded Machiavelli somewhat as an amiable visionary or political enthusiast;
  • Storia Fiorentina, an early work of the author, distinguished by its animation of style, brilliancy of portraiture, and liberality of judgment;
  • Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, also in all probability an early work, in which the various forms of government suited to an Italian commonwealth are discussed with subtlety, contrasted, and illustrated from the vicissitudes of Florence up to the year 1494.

To these may be added a series of short essays, entitled Discorsi politici, composed during Guicciardini’s Spanish legation. Taken in combination with Machiavelli’s treatises, the Opere inedite offer a comprehensive body of Italian political philosophy before Fra Paolo Sarpi.

Guicciardini and Machiavelli on politics and history

Guicciardini was friends with Niccolò Machiavelli; the two maintained a lively correspondence until the latter’s death in 1527. Though Guicciardini was on a somewhat higher social standing than his friend, through their letters a relaxed, comfortable relationship between the two emerges. "Aware of their difference in class, Machiavelli nevertheless was not intimidated by Guicciardini’s offices…or by his aristocratic connections. The two established their rapport because of mutual regard for each other’s intellect."Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, James B. Atkinson and Davis Sices, Trans. and Ed. (Northern Illinois Press: 2004) pp. xx-xxi They discussed not only personal matters, but political ideas as well and influenced one another’s work.