Book Review: Gary Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past

What follows is a book review I wrote during doctoral work on Leonardo Bruni. Professor Ianziti has written an insightful, critical work of scholarly import. That review was later published in the Journal of Faith and the Academy 8, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 97–101.

Book Review

Gary Ianziti. Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past. (I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2012. Pp. xiii, 418. $49.95.

According to many Florentine Renaissance scholars, Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444), scholar, chancellor, and statesman, was perhaps the most distinguished Italian humanist of the early Renaissance, often credited with pioneering modern historical methods.

During the past year, I read Bruni’s three-volume History of the Florentine People in the I Tatti Renaissance Library published by Harvard University Press. Bruni's History is a significant focal point in Gary Ianziti's work. Writing History in Renaissance Italy is a welcome contribution to scholarship on a historian central to the early Renaissance.

To supplement my work in Bruni's History two texts were read which include Brucker, Gene A.  Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378. 4 vols.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962 and Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.  Both works are of relevance to this review since Brucker and Baron wrote the standard texts forming the basis for much modern day Bruni scholarship. Brucker offers historical narrative while Baron provides a critical evaluation of historical questions. 

In this thorough, carefully investigated, and thought-inspiring study of Bruni’s corpus, Ianziti’s foremost question was not whether revision of historical texts and lore occurred rather the reasoning for alteration in sources by Bruni's pen. Ianziti recognizes that Bruni “contended in his preface that the whole of Florentine history should be placed under renewed scrutiny.” Further, Bruni “indicated that he intended to reinvestigate and retell the city’s past from a fresh perspective. His aim, then, was not to reprise and extend, but to reexamine and retell” (93). Ianziti positions Bruni as “avant-garde in Florence” who embodied “a new Italian scholarship” as “the new humanist approach to historiography” (2, 5, 9). Bruni used Villani’s chronicle as a historical source “reducing it to the level of a storehouse of information that he could use freely to fashion his own radically new interpretation of the city’s past” (9). Without blushing Ianziti states, "Rather than a reworking of actual documents, Bruni’s speech is pure fabrication” (224).  

In the chapter entitled "Writing from Procopius" "Bruni’s work can hardly be said to qualify as a leading example of humanist historical scholarship. More often, in fact, it has been singled out as a brazen attempt at high-handed literary theft; one of the classic, textbook cases of blatant plagiarism” (278). Questioning the motive of Bruni's authorship, Ianziti concludes that "Bruni does not approach his sources in an objective quest for truth. Rather, he subordinates them to his own purposes, which include the glorification of Florence as a political power of the first rank” (8). It is difficult in the reading of his Ianziti's volume to determine how he really feels about Bruni. He proposes a man lacking intellectual integrity yet applauds his great work. At one moment he reveres Bruni as a saint of Renaissance humanist scholarship and the next as a thieving amanuensis acting as a plagiarist assuming their texts as his own. Ianziti risks deconstructing Bruni's value by guiding the reader to view Bruni as a second rate historian and a first class plagiarist. However, considering the depth of humanist scholarship consistently unearthed by Ianziti through the years, it is my conclusion that Ianziti likely has a reconciliation of this question in his own scholarly mind but it is not made clear how the reconciliation occurs in this work.

After all evidence is weighed in the balance Ianziti refers to Bruni as "a critical historian" for the scholar today ascribing to Bruni "a new brand" of political and classical historiography (191, 147, 211), the moniker as inventor of literary biography in his Dante (177)  and applauds him as a cultural, classical and apologetic historian (171, 211, 233). Cicero is the “first example of Bruni's commitment to ‘scientific’ history. The work heralded the birth of the positivist historical methodology” (46). In this context, Ianziti professes that Bruni’s biography of Cicero operates on an entirely different paradigm “defined not as ‘scientific’ nor as ‘civic’ but as uncompromisingly political” (60). This is one of the strongest conclusions of Ianziti's work and is the key to understanding the writings of Bruni. Bruni did not write for scientific, civic, or religious reasons but rather for political and patriotic reasons.  His purpose was neither to excavate scientific or religious thought nor to define the civic mind. For Bruni, his love was glorious Florence. Bruni's History is replete with his deep passion, even lifelong infatuation, for Florence. “Bruni, in this instance, is working somewhat in the manner of a modern historian: moving beyond the hard data towards its interpretation” (83). Yes, the hard data "inspired Bruni's historical imagination.  Historical writing was actually a form of rewriting from a previous tradition...of robust revisionism that marks Bruni’s History” (281, 110). The historian cannot limit self to "a mere narrative of events but should also delve into causal explanation” (113).  

Being a linguist, it is of high interest to note Ianziti's command of words to describe precise details in the study of Bruni. Words such as “historical imagination” and “documentary parenthesis” (75), “Livian device of dramatization” (82), “the Polybian sketch” (85), “Carthaginian complacency” (84), “Etruscan myth” (106), “Bruni’s estruscanology” (108), “the Florentine dilemma” (125), “revisionist project” (130), “textual dialectics” (150),  “anti-Boccaccian strategy” (180), “Bruni the Aristotelian” (80), “maelstrom of party politics” (185), "civic rhetoric" (187), "Medici doctrine" (187), "oligarchical culture" (188), "paragons of civic virtue" (191), "dangers of demagogy" (197), "chancery propaganda" ( 210), “political realism” (215), “pro-Florentine apologetics” (221), “Visconti imperialism” (240), and "transient hegemonies” (255). The use of these terms demonstrates a rich soil of Bruni's mind to clearly articulate these key thoughts. 

Of the Plutarchan writings Ianziti asserts that Bruni had a deep commitment “to make his own contribution to the recovery of Roman antiquity” being evidenced in his translation of Plutarch  (41). Further, "Bruni’s commitment to the recovery of Roman history was of course hardly a neutral issue. It was patriotic in a broad, Italian sense” (32).  Bruni feels a patriotic duty to his homeland ‘for the glory of our ancestors, lest the record of their splendid and magnificent deeds be allowed to perish” (66). “So far we have seen how Bruni rectifies, embellishes, and adds to the Polybian account. But there are also instances where he rewrites entire key episodes of the war” (74). For example, “Livy therefore clearly indicated that four thousand men were put to the sword. How was it, then, that Bruni, in the de primo bello punico, dared to reduce this number to a mere three hundred?” (86). Ianziti asserts and I agree that Bruni "appears to have allowed himself to be guided by something like what Collingwood called the historical imagination” (75).  

Even though Bruni had “a longstanding association with the Florentine ruling elites it would be wrong to reduce the significance of Bruni’s History to it's role as a vehicle of Florentine propaganda” (92). Herein lies the literary question of the integrity of Bruni's work as a new Italian scholar par excellence. He cannot simply be reduced to Bruni the plagiarist or Bruni the propagandist. Bruni the protagonist promotes Florence and the Guelph Party as the heroes in a drama of the republic.  

Bruni pays "a sort of homage to Parte Guelfa. The whole purpose behind this section is in fact to celebrate the origins of the Parte” (98). “Bruni, in other words, is here placing the Parte Guelfa at the very center of Florence” (98). Indeed, this proposed argument is the strength of Ianziti's scholarly work. The “Etruscan myth” is the storyline that the ancient Etruscans “flourished across a wide stretch of Italy long before the rise of Rome” (106). “Bruni moves on from here to his famous discussion on the decadence of Rome under the emperors” (106). Bruni's held that "the key to the Etruscan story is continuity” (106). “Etruria thus not only predated Rome, but it also continued to exist after Rome’s demise” (107). After building his argument, Ianziti masterfully speaks of "Bruni’s Etruscanology” (108). Further,  “What was truly novel in Bruni was the central core of the enterprise itself: his setting out to write the history of a modern polity, whose rationale he located outside the framework of Roman law and lore” (109). 

In the chapter entitled "The Florentine Histories: A Sourcebook for Statesmen," Ianziti captures the true essence of why Bruni the plagiarist, propagandist, and protagonist all have their rightful role in the Florentine saga as chronicled by Leonardo Bruni. Ianziti writes, “The key to Bruni’s History thus lies in its symbiotic relationship with the regime. The work expresses the values, aspirations, and ethos of a new generation of leaders” (118). To further enhance the argument, Bruni’s attempts to forge a new concept of Florentine statehood was "not to add to it, but to revise it root and branch. Revisionism, therefore, did not spring from an independent critical spirit; rather, it was functional to the needs of the moment” (118). Revisionism indeed served the agenda well for the nascent regime that led Florence to the heights of power under the Medici oligarchs. “Bruni’s reassessment of Florentine history is meant both to discredit the mechanisms of communal governance and to reinforce the logic of oligarchical rule” (129).

In the chapter entitled "Bruni and Biography: A Life of Aristotle," Ianziti refers to “the ‘hagiographic’ character of Bruni’s portrait of Aristotle” (148). Bruni was not simply a revisionist historiographer but an inventor of the historical propaganda.  Ianziti says, "Bruni’sAristotle should be seen as an extension of his battle to redefine Aristotle’s position within Western culture” (149). Further, "Bruni did not write biography or, for that matter, history in a vacuum: each of his principal biographies addressed a specific text, in a dialectical spirit. The aim was to contest the established, or incipient canonical status of a rival text” (150).

In the chapter entitled "Medici Florence," it is noted that Bruni extolled "Petrarch [as] the founder of the humanist movement- that is, modern literature in Latin- just as he made Dante the founder of volgare literature” (178). In "Bruni, the Medici, and the Florentine Histories" the chancellor's "public letters reveal him to have been a zealous advocate of Medici policy" (187). Having successfully transitioned to a role in the Medici regime "it may not indeed be inappropriate to characterize these books [the three volume Florentine History] as constituting- among other things- a first attempt at a Medici history of Florence" (189). In summation Ianziti states, "The result was that he cautiously and quietly became the first in a long line of Medici historians" (203). Bruni was a fifteenth-century humanist who "operated within a culture of nuance" (193).  

According to Ianziti in "The Florentine Histories: From Policy to Propaganda," Bruni's work was simply political propaganda. His approach "served a didactic purpose" intent to reveal "the inner workings of politics to a new class of officials, diplomats, and magistrates" (203). Bruni's narrative of Florentine history is that of "an enlightened man of the fifteenth-century looking back on earlier times" (212).  At this point he was scholar and sage amount the Florentines. “This is Bruni’s tendency- to consign inconvenient facts to the black hole of silence” (230). Ianziti perceives Bruni as presenting "the descent into party strife after 1292 in Aristotelian terms as a corruption of good government” (140). Ianziti cautiously asserts, “Bruni may well have been committing the historian’s sin of anachronism” (141). “Bruni’s account, in other words, is informed by the Aristotelian idea that ‘the administration of justice...is the principle of order in political society’” (139).

"Writing from Procopius" is a reflection on Ianziti's thoughts of Roman history.  He suggests, “It is certainly quite true that Roman historians in general, and Livy in particular, tended to write according to what one student has called the ‘scissors and paste’ method” (280). Scissors and paste leads to a question of ownership of content and originality of authorship. Ianziti says, “Within a historiographical epistemology ruled by the concept of autopsy, truth was not something that emerged from the rigorous application of deep source criticism; it depended primarily on proximity to the events themselves” (280). Bruni was not a religious or morally inclined historian. Ianziti asserts that Bruni’s work related to Procopius contains "no hint of moral condemnation. His detachment from such categories of judgment is absolute" (295). Bruni's "narrative is couched in the clinical language of the political analyst whose sole objective is the determination of cause and effect. One could indeed cite many further examples of this tendency of Bruni’s to isolate political phenomena from moral, religious, or legal encumbrances” (295).  Bruni possessed an "underlying sense of political realism" (296).  

In "Memoirs of a Humanist" Bruni is quoted as saying that history "requires at once a long and connected narrative, causal explanation of each particular event, and the public expression of one’s judgment about every issue" (269). Ianziti states that "such indeed were the standards set by the great classical historians of antiquity” (269). The great classical historians wrote "historia. As Bruni tells us in the preface to History of the Florentine People, historia is a long and laborious task requiring many years of commitment" (273). The later History was written by an elderly man possessing a sage-like wisdom for his beloved Florence. Ianziti articulates here in a brief summary the totally of his entire career as the protagonist of the glorious republic: "It demands the careful study of copious source materials, which in the case of contemporary history could only mean submitting to the time-consuming process of sifting through eyewitness accounts, diaries, archival records, and the like, there being no authoritative narrative source to turn to” (273).  

Ianziti's Writing History is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in Renaissance, Leonardo Bruni, and the writing of history.