Creating The Florentine State

This book offers a comprehensive approach to the study of the political history of the Renaissance: its analysis of government is embedded in the context of geography and social conflict. Instead of the usual institutional history, it examines the Florentine state from the mountainous periphery - a periphery both of geography and class - where Florence met its most strenuous opposition to territorial incorporation. Yet, far from being acted upon, Florence's highlanders were instrumental in changing the attitudes of the Florentine ruling class: the city began to see its own self-interest as intertwined with that of its region and the welfare of its rural subjects at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Contemporaries either remained silent or purposely obscured the reasons for this change, which rested on widespread and successful peasant uprisings across the mountainous periphery of the Florentine state, hitherto unrecorded by historians.

The innovative city culture of Florence was the crucible within which Renaissance ideas first caught fire. With its soaring cathedral dome and its classically-inspired palaces and piazzas, it is perhaps the finest single expression of a society that is still at its heart an urban one. For, as Brian Jeffrey Maxson reveals, it is above all the city-state – the walled commune which became the chief driver of European commerce, culture, banking and art – that is medieval Italy's enduring legacy to the present. Charting the transition of Florence from an obscure Guelph republic to a regional superpower in which the glittering court of Lorenzo the Magnificent became the pride and envy of the continent, the author authoritatively discusses a city that looked to the past for ideas even as it articulated a novel creativity. Uncovering passionate dispute and intrigue, Maxson sheds fresh light too on seminal events like the fiery end of oratorical firebrand Savonarola and Giuliano de' Medici's brutal murder by the rival Pazzi family. This book shows why Florence, harbinger and heartland of the Renaissance, is and has always been unique.

In the middle decades of the sixteenth century, the republican city-state of Florence--birthplace of the Renaissance--failed. In its place the Medici family created a principality, becoming first dukes of Florence and then grand dukes of Tuscany. The Fruit of Liberty examines how this transition occurred from the perspective of the Florentine patricians who had dominated and controlled the republic. The book analyzes the long, slow social and cultural transformations that predated, accompanied, and facilitated the institutional shift from republic to principality, from citizen to subject. More than a chronological narrative, this analysis covers a wide range of contributing factors to this transition, from attitudes toward office holding, clothing, and the patronage of artists and architects to notions of self, family, and gender. Using a wide variety of sources including private letters, diaries, and art works, Nicholas Baker explores how the language, images, and values of the republic were reconceptualized to aid the shift from citizen to subject. He argues that the creation of Medici principality did not occur by a radical break with the past but with the adoption and adaptation of the political culture of Renaissance republicanism.

This volume gathers together seventeen original essays that represent the new directions being taken by historians of the Florentine Renaissance. Florence has often been studied in the past for its distinctive urban culture and society, while insufficient attention has been paid to the important Tuscan territorial state that was created by Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These essays offer new and exemplary approaches toward state-building, political vocabulary, political economy, civic humanism, local history and social patronage.

This book explores the decision of Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to create a ghetto in Florence, and explains how a Jewish community developed out of that forced population transfer.

Burr Litchfield traces the development of the patrician elite of Florence from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the growth of a bureaucratic state in Tuscany during this period, and the changing relationship of the patricians to the state apparatus. His discussion of this largely neglected period of Italian history shows that the elite of the Florentine Renaissance Republic continued as the main component of the urban office-holding aristocracy under the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and that they had an important role in the transition from Renaissance communal institutions to those of a regional state. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The beginnings of the state in Europe is a central topic of contemporary historical research. The making of such early modern Italian regional states as Florence, the kingdom of Naples, Milan, and Venice exemplifies a decisive turn in the state tradition of Western Europe. The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300-1600 represents the best in American, British, and Italian scholarship and offers a valuable and critical overview of the key problems of the emergence of the state in Europe. Some of the topics covered include the political legitimacy of the aborning regional states, the changing legal culture, the conflict between church and state, the forces shaping public finances, and the creation of the Italian League. The eight essays in this collection originally appeared in the Journal of Modern History. Contributors include Roberto Bizzocchi, Giorgio Chittolini, Trevor Dean, Riccardo Fubini, Elena Fasano Guarini, Aldo Mazzacane, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera. This volume will appeal to historians, historical sociologists, and historians of political thought.

Excerpt from The History of Florence Iccolo machiavelli received in the year 1520, from Giulio de' Medici, the commission to write his [storie Fiorentine. His Dedication of the completed work to Pope Clement VII. Was written in I 527, the year of Machiavelli's death. This book has a place of honour in the history Of Modern Literature, as the first work in which the Annal-writing of {he Chronicler gave place to the more artistic shaping of a. History that found in political societies of man the operation of first principles of life under varying social conditions. With simple grouping of details into coherent chapters, Machiavelli first shows how the shaping of Italian states, the making of modern Italy, produced conditions that affected from within and from without the public life of Florence. Then he begins in his second book the History of Florence herself, which he brings down to his own time, and closes with the death of Lorenzo de' Medici; natural end of an epoch in the History of Florence. Machiavelli's own age at that time was twenty-three. The English version here given of Machiavelli's History is reprinted from the first complete translation of The Works of the Famous Nicolas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence. Written originally in Italian, and from thence newly and faith fully translated into English. London, folio, 1675. Twenty years later there was a second edition of this folio, and there was a third edition in 1720. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Builders of Florence It has been said already that this book has no pretension to completeness, and a glance at the table of contents will show that from among the many important and monumental buildings of Florence few indeed - only twelve - have been Chosen for treatment here. Be it so, the critic will say, but if few, yet why these few? Why go afield to Settimo and neglect the Badia of Florence? Why speak of Santa Maria Novella and find no word for Santa Croce? The reader, who sees his favourite Church or palace thus passed by, is asked to believe at least that an underlying reason and no mere caprice has dictated the Choice of which he com plains. History and architecture, let him remember, are the twin determinants here, and that not separately but together, inwoven in this book as they surely are in fact and in life. But so, it will be understood how Choice has been at once limited and directed, fixed on certain buildings as possessing both architectural and historic interest, and such as lend themselves readily as illustra tions of the City's life, whether commercial, ideal, or political. And, even in Florence, such buildings are not innumerable. His purpose thus cleared and defined, with some of the con sequences to which it has led in the minor yet important matters of selection and arrangement, the author, as he commits his work to the press, takes this welcome occasion to thank all those private and public persons and authorities whose kind help has assisted and encouraged its appearance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.