Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni was a pivotal figure in the Italian Renaissance, renowned for his contributions to Humanism, history, and political thought. Born around 1370 in Arezzo, he faced significant challenges during his early life, including civil war and the loss of his parents. Moving to Florence, he studied law and Greek, eventually becoming an influential scholar under the guidance of notable educators like Lino Coluccio Salutati and Manuel Chrysoloras. Bruni gained prominence as a translator and historian, with significant works such as "History of the Florentine People," which established him as a leading authority on ancient literature and a foundational figure in historical writing.
His innovative methods and narrative techniques redefined how history was recorded and understood, emphasizing civic virtue and the role of educated citizens in governance. Bruni's civic Humanism posited that the health of the state depended on the moral and intellectual development of its people. He held various political roles, including serving as chancellor of Florence, and his legacy continued to influence historians and scholars long after his death in 1444. Bruni's work remains significant in the study of Renaissance humanism and the evolution of historical writing.
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Leonardo Bruni
Italian scholar and writer
- Born: c. 1370
- Birthplace: Arezzo, Republic of Florence (now in Italy)
- Died: March 9, 1444
- Place of death: Florence (now in Italy)
Bruni was a leading Italian Renaissance figure, a Humanist scholar whose work was important in the development of historiography.
Early Life
Leonardo Bruni (BREW-nee) was the son of Cecco Bruni, a small grain dealer in Arezzo. As a result of civil war, Bruni and his father were imprisoned in 1384, with the young Bruni held apart from his father in a castle room on the wall of which was a portrait of Petrarch. Bruni would later write that his daily viewing of the painting of this famous Italian poet and Humanist inspired him with an eagerness for Humanist studies. The years following the war and his imprisonment were difficult for Bruni. His father died in 1386, his mother in 1388; family resources declined sharply.
In spite of the family hardship, Bruni moved to Florence, perhaps to live with relatives, and began his studies. From 1393 to 1397, he studied law in Florence and came to the attention of the medieval scholar Lino Coluccio Salutati. In 1396, another scholar, Manuel Chrysoloras, moved to Florence and did much to broaden Bruni’s career and education. In 1397, Bruni shifted to the study of Greek, in which Chrysoloras educated and then inspired him to complete a series of translations of several classical literary items from ancient times, many of which had been overlooked for centuries. These included works by Xenophon, Saint Basil, Procopius, Polybius, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Thucydides, and Aristotle. Before he was thirty-five, Bruni’s achievement in this work led to his stature among contemporaries as the leading authority on the subject of ancient literature.
Life’s Work
As a result of his recognition as a literary figure and because of his proficiency in Latin and Greek, Bruni received an appointment in 1405 as a secretary to Pope Innocent VII . Except for a brief period in 1410 and 1411, he would spend ten years with the papal court in Rome. In 1411, when he was forty-one years of age, he married. Although little is known about his wife or her family, it is known that she brought to the marriage a dowry that reflects a family of wealth and status. Bruni also became a close acquaintance of Baldassarre Cossa, who became Pope John XXIII during the schism of the Papacy until the famous deposition in 1415 at the Council of Constance (1414-1418). As a result of the loss of power by his patron, Bruni returned to Florence, where he settled into an active life in historical study and writing, Florentine politics, and personal investments.
It was as a historian that Leonardo Bruni became a great Renaissance scholar. Through translations, dialogues, biographies, commentaries, and his monumental Historiae Florentini populi (History of the Florentine People, 2001), Bruni changed historical writing and thought so significantly that he was referred to as the “father of history” for at least two centuries after his death. Numerous Italian historians were influenced by his methods and style, and his impact extended into other disciplines. Although there is no complete chronology of Bruni’s historical works, the list is impressive. It begins with his Laudatio Florentinae urbis (in praise of the city of Florence) and the Dialoghi ad Petrum Paulum historum (dialogues dedicated to Pier Paolo Vergerio), both produced between 1401 and 1405.
Laudatio Florentinae urbis is an attempt to present a thorough view of the Florence city-state in its geographic and historical perspectives, a total view of the city. The work is based, in part, on the model of Aristides’ eulogy of Athens in ancient Greece. Bruni sought to explain how Florentine institutions and politics evolved from the Italian past, in itself a new historical method. It was also in this work that Bruni’s civic Humanism emerged. He expressed the view that the health of the state must ever be based on the educated and ethical sense of the citizenry, factors that, in his view, had contributed much to the glory and fame of Florence. Dialoghi ad Petrum Paulum historum was a combination of two dialogues that served as reproductions of conversations between scholars from two Florentine generations. Here Florence is presented as the preserver of the best features of Republican Rome and classical Greece. Together the two works are credited with marking the beginning of a new Humanism, a new civic sentiment, and a new view of the past.
Bruni’s greatest work was his History of the Florentine People, the first and, as some would argue, the greatest achievement of Renaissance historical writing. Bruni intended this work to be a complete history of Florence to 1404 in order to explain the greatness of this Italian city-state. He concluded that the civic virtue of its citizens and the republican form of its government were key explanations for its greatness. In his view, Florence was the shining example of what people living in political freedom could accomplish. The setting for much of his history was the conflict between Florence and Milan. Although some scholars have criticized Bruni’s continued use of the rhetorical methods of Greek and Roman historians and his heavy emphasis on the symbols of the classical age, the work served as a model for historians for many years. Bruni’s research was in response to clearly articulated questions and in pursuit of relevant causal relationships. He became more than a chronicler and instructed those who followed him that history must be true, utilitarian, documented, instructive, readable, thematic, respectful of the past, viewed in epochs or eras, and focused on those matters that human beings can control, specifically politics. Finally, History of the Florentine People is important for the significant narrative techniques it introduced.
There are other writings for which Bruni received recognition. These include his De militia (1421; on knighthood), in which he advanced the establishment of the idea of a citizen-army for Florence; his 1427 funeral oration for a Florentine general, Nanni degli Strozzi, who had fought successfully against Milan, thus serving to promote the interests of freedom and humanity; and his De studiis et litteris (1421-1424; Concerning the Study of Literature, 1897), one of the first treatises to advance a program of education based on the humanities that offers a demonstrated concern for women as well as men. In his later years, he published his memoirs, {I}Rerum suo tempore gestarum commentarius{/I} (1440-1441; commentary on the history of his own times), a perspective on contemporary history that substantially departed from the work of previous chroniclers.
The success of his literary career led Bruni into a prominent political role in Florence by the middle of the 1420’. He became a member of a number of prominent trade and professional guilds, served as an ambassador to Pope Martin V in 1426, and in 1427 became the chancellor of Florence. In the latter position, he would play a major role in the political and military affairs of the state, an influence he would continue until his death in 1444. Tax records indicate that by 1427, he was one of the wealthiest persons in Florence, possessing a series of farms, houses, and investments. In 1431, his son Donato married into a prominent family and would himself occupy a visible place in the affairs of Florence for many years. Clearly Bruni spent a considerable amount of time promoting his personal political power and personal wealth.
The important role of Bruni in the affairs of Florence is borne out by the elaborate public funeral given on his death in 1444. This proved to be an event of major importance, attended by figures of prominence from a wide area. His funeral oration was given by a leading statesman, and one of the most gifted sculptors of Florence prepared a marble tomb for him. Niccolò Machiavelli, the famous author and statesman of the Italian Renaissance, was buried beside Bruni on his death in 1527.
Significance
Bruni was one of the outstanding figures of the Italian Renaissance. In the first half of the fifteenth century, he was the leading figure in the development of Humanism, history, and political thought. His translations of ancient Greek texts from Aristotle and Plato made a major contribution to European scholars for centuries. He was clearly the greatest authority on ancient literature for his time. His own biographies, dialogues, histories, and commentaries created a virtual revolution in historical writing and thought. He divided the past in new ways, placed a new emphasis on sources, developed new narrative forms, and established Humanism as a political necessity in the struggles among the Italian city-states. He is the most important example of civic Humanism in the early Renaissance.
Bibliography
Bruni, Leonardo. The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts. Translated and introduced by Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance Society of America, 1987. Commentaries on the translations provide valuable information about the author.
Cochrane, Eric. Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. A superb study of the emergence, growth, and decline of Renaissance historiography. Places Bruni in historical perspective. References are made to several hundred historical writings of the period. An outstanding work on an important period in the development of historical writing.
Griffiths, Gordon. The Justification of Florentine Foreign Policy: Offered by Leonardo Bruni in His Public Letters, 1428-1444. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1999. Griffiths presents an analysis of Bruni’s attitude toward Florentine foreign policy, based on documents from the Florentine and Venetian archives. Bibliography.
Hankins, James. Repertorium Brunianum: A Critical Guide to the Writings of Leonardo Bruni. Vol. 1. Rome: Istitute Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1997. In this volume, the first of three, Hankins provides a list of manuscripts by Bruni.
Ianziti, Gary. “Bruni on Writing History.” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (Summer, 1998): 367. The author examines the evolution of Bruni’s writings during the period between 1404 and 1443, in particular the Cicero novus, Commentarii de primo bello punico, and the De bello italico.
Kallendorf, Craig W., ed. Humanist Educational Treatises. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Kallendorf provides a translation and analysis of Bruni’s The Study of Literature, along with other essays on education by Humanists of the same period. Bibliography and index.
Witt, Ronald G. In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni. Boston: Brill, 2000. Contains a chapter on Bruni and his contributions to Humanism. Bibliography and indexes.