Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy

by James Hankins

Overview

Winner of the Helen and Howard Marraro Prize
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year

“Perhaps the greatest study ever written of Renaissance political thought.”
—Jeffrey Collins, Times Literary Supplement

“Magisterial…Hankins shows that the humanists’ obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way…For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be…nothing less than transformative.”
—Noel Malcolm, American Affairs

“[A] masterpiece…It is only Hankins’s tireless exploration of forgotten documents…and extraordinary endeavors of editing, translation, and exposition that allow us to reconstruct—almost for the first time in 550 years—[the humanists’] three compelling arguments for why a strong moral character and habits of truth are vital for governing well. Yet they are as relevant to contemporary democracy in Britain, and in the United States, as to Machiavelli.”
—Rory Stewart, Times Literary Supplement

“The lessons for today are clear and profound.”
—Robert D. Kaplan

Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; religious leaders preoccupied with self-advancement while feuding armies waged endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. “Men, not walls, make a city,” as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild the fabric of society by transforming the moral character of its citizens. Soulcraft, they believed, was a precondition of successful statecraft.

A landmark reappraisal of Renaissance political thought, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker. James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than laws, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the precursor to our embattled humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674278738
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Pages:	768
Sales rank:	415,584
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard University and founder and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library. He is the author of Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, winner of the Marraro Prize and a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year; Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena; and Plato in the Italian Renaissance; and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy. Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on Renaissance philosophy and political thought, he is a Corresponding Member of the British Academy.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 A Civilization in Crisis i

A New "Paideuma" and the Birth of the Humanities

The Causes of the Crisis

The Reform of Christian Culture

The Humanist Movement Takes Shape

2 Virtue Politics 31

Obedience and Legitimacy

Virtue Politics

Classical Sources of Virtue Politics

How Not to Reform a Republic

Eloquence and the "Virtuous Environment"

A New Way of Thinking about Politics

3 What Was a Republic in the Renaissance? 63

The Renaissance Concept of the State

What Is the Meaning of Respublica in the Italian Renaissance?

Respublica Romana

Respublica in Medieval Scholasticism

Leonardo Bruni and Respublica in the Fifteenth Century

Respublica: An Idealization of Ancient Government

Is Civic Humanism Found Only in Non-monarchical Republics?

4 Taming the Tyrant 103

Tyranny in Greek Philosophy

Cicero's Understanding of Caesar's Tyranny as Violation of Ius

Bartolus of Sassoferrato and Baldo degli Ubaldi

Petrarch on Living with Tyrants

Was Caesar a Tyrant? Petrarch, Salutati, Guarino, Poggio

Poggio on Tyranny and the "Problem of Counsel"

Pier Candido Decembrio on the Virtues of a Tyrant

The Recovery of Ancient Greek Sources on Tyranny

5 The Triumph of Virtue: Petrarch's Political Thought 153

Petrarch's Politics of Virtue

Cola di Rienzo: Populism and Its Limits

Petrarch's New Realism

6 Should a Good Man Participate in a Corrupt Government? Petrarch on the Solitary Life 174

The De Vita Solitaria: An Ideal of Private Life for Literary Men

The Defense of Private Life

Seneca versus Augustine: Political Obligation and Political Autonomy

7 Boccaccio on the Perils of Wealth and Status 192

Boccaccio's Political Experience

The Need to Reform the Materia Prima of Politics: Human Nature

Virtue, Education, and Tyranny

Boccaccio and the Humanist Debate about Private Wealth and Economic Injustice

Boccaccio and Virtue Politics

8 Leonardo Bruni and the Virtuous Hegemon 218

Why Florence Deserves to Be the Heir of Rome: The Panegyric of the City of Florence

Political Liberty as a Source of Virtue

The Etruscan Model: Leadership in a Federal Republic

Dante and Bruni on the Legitimation of Empire

9 War and Military Service in the Virtuous Republic 238

Late Medieval Civic Knighthood and the Context of Leonardo Bruni's De Militia

Excursus: The Humanists and Partisan Politics

Bruni's De Militia: A New Interpretation

Excursus on the "Virtuous Environment": Donatello and the Representation of Classical Military Virtue

Do Humanist Teachings on Warfare Anticipate Machiavelli?

Virtue in Military Life

Roberto Valturio on the Education of Soldiers

10 A Mirror for Statesmen: Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People 271

History as Political Theory

Virtue in the Service of the Republic's Glory

The Primacy of the Popolo and the Suppression of Factions

Moderation in Politics as the Key to Social Concord

11 Biondo Flavio: What Made the Romans Great 289

The Roma Triumphans and the Revival of Roman Civilization

What Was the Respublica Romana, for Biondo?

Biondo's Virtue Politics, Republicanism, and the Greatness of Rome

A Cosmopolitan Papalist

12 Cyriac of Ancona on Democracy and Empire 305

A Short History of the Term Democratia

Cyriac of Ancona's Attempted Rehabilitation of the Term Democratia

Cyriac the Caesarian

13 Leon Battista Alberti on Corrupt Princes and Virtuous Oligarchs 318

Why Virtue Is Incompatible with Court Life

Who Should Constitute the Political Elite?

The De Iciarchia and the Regime of Virtuous "House-Princes"

14 George of Trebizond on Cosmopolitanism and Liberty 335

George's Attack on Nativism and Defense of Cosmopolitanism

A Renaissance Libertarian?

15 Francesco Filelfo and the Spartan Republic 351

Filelfo and the Recovery of the Spartan Tradition

Filelfo and Humanist Adaptations of the Myth of Sparta

16 Greek Constitutional Theory in the Quattrocento 364

The "Second Wave" of Greek Constitutional Theory

Legitimation and the Republican Regime

Francesco Patrizi on Republican Constitutions

Delegitimation: Bruni and the Chivalric Ideal

Substitution: Platonizing Venice's Constitution

Mario Salamonio Compares Florence to Athens

17 Francesco Patrizi and Humanist Absolutism 386

The Recovery of Ancient Greek Monarchical Theory

Patrizi and His Project in the De Regno

Virtuous Royal Legitimacy and Humanist Absolutism

The Argument for Monarchy

Can Monarchical Power Be Virtuous?

How the King May Become Virtuous

18 Machiavelli: Reviving the Military Republic 423

The Calamità d'Italia

Machiavelli and Humanist Literary Culture

Machiavelli's Political Education and The Art of War

Why Princes and Republics Should Follow the Ancient Way of Warfare

19 Machiavelli: From Virtue to Virtù 449

Machiavelli's Prince and Renaissance Conceptions of Tyranny

The Machiavellian Revolution in Political Thought

Machiavelli's Virtù

20 Two Cures for Hyperpartisanship: Bruni versus Machiavelli 476

Two Competing Narratives of Florentine History

The Ordinances of Justice

Walter of Brienne and the Instability of Tyranny

The Restoration of Popular Institutions in 1343

Two Cures for Hyperpartisanship

21 Conclusion: Ex Oriente Lux 495

Appendixes 517

A Petrarch on Political Obligations: De vita solitaria 2.9.19-22 (Chapter 6) 517

B Speech of Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi before the Florentine Priors, 1399, from Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People, 11.75-78 (Chapter 10) 521

C Renaissance Editions, Translations, and Compendia of Francesco Patrizi of Siena's Political Works (Chapter 16) 525

Notes 529

Note on Sources and Translations-Abbreviations

Bibliography 651

Texts and Translations-Secondary Literature

Acknowledgments 699

Index of Manuscripts and Archival Documents 705

General Index 707

Editorial Reviews

[A] masterpiece…It shows—with erudition, diligent scholarship, and great intelligence—how the Renaissance humanists, beginning with Petrarch, became convinced that the viciousness and lawless violence of fourteenth-century Italy was not, as previous thinkers had suggested, a problem that could be solved through drafting better laws. Instead, they argued that the eight centuries of peace, stability, and unity under the Romans were a reflection not of that state’s laws but of the moral qualities of its rulers.

Times Literary Supplement - Rory Stewart

Virtue Politics…is both intellectual history and an intervention into contemporary education and political culture…[Hankins’s] sensitive and erudite readings of an impressively broad array of humanist texts make important contributions to our knowledge and understanding of humanism during Italy’s long fifteenth century.

Intellectual History Review - Charles F. Briggs

[The] magnum opus of a consummate intellectual historian. James Hankins is the living authority on Italian fifteenth-century neo-Latin literature…Hankins understands that by breathing new life into a beleaguered Renaissance movement, one can also come to the rescue of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian heritages, now under fire, on which the Renaissance drew, in order to understand the currently debated legacy of Western modernity. Inviting readers into the midst of an ongoing fray, Virtue Politics reminds us that we all have high stakes in this game.

European Legacy - Rocco Rubini

Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way…This is certainly a landmark publication…For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be—like that of virtue itself in the theories of the authors it studies—nothing less than transformative.

Noel Malcolmn Affairs

Extraordinary…The central theme…is that Renaissance humanism was neither a superficial aesthetic movement nor a purely political one. At its core, it was a movement of moral reform…Hankins’s grasp of the Italian Renaissance is deeply learned and insightful…Virtue Politics demonstrates why Hankins has earned his place as one of the world’s best intellectual historians of that period.

New Criterion - Khalil M. Habib

Investigates how [Renaissance humanists] explored a whole range of political issues. These included questions of wealth and economic injustice, the legitimacy of imperial rule, whether states should freely accept migrants and how to deal with debilitating partisanship… This work should prompt us to ask profound questions about the current culture of politics…A landmark piece of scholarship that will influence the study of political thought in the Renaissance for years to come.

Literary Review - Bijan Omrani

Perhaps the greatest study ever written of Renaissance political thought. The breadth of James Hankins’s book surpasses that of the reigning incumbents, Hans Baron’s Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance and the first volume of Quentin Skinner’s classic Foundations of Modern Political Thought. It is also a book of bold argument and relevance. Hankins concentrates on the classic Italian Renaissance—Petrarch to Machiavelli…However, he escapes the conventional fixation on Florence and its chancellors. Leonardo Bruni and Machiavelli are here, but so too are the Roman jurist Mario Salamonio, the Greek translator George of Trebizond, the travelling ‘merchant scholar’ Cyriac of Ancona. Nor does Hankins limit himself to the familiar canon, but mines a deep vein of histories, biographies, letters, orations and treatises, both printed and scribally published. His mastery of the archive is astonishing.

Times Literary Supplement - Jeffrey Collins

Virtue Politics gives an impressive and thorough tour of Renaissance humanism from Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni to Machiavelli…[It] puts on display the detailed investigation of sources that can only come with decades of thought and research.

Renaissance and Reformation - Amanda Madden

A magisterial work by one of the world’s leading experts on the intellectual history of the Renaissance…One of the many strengths of Hankins’ volume is the great erudition with which he persuasively presents a different paradigm for understanding the Italian Renaissance.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Carl O’Brien

Magisterial… Hankins has piled up evidence more than sufficient to make his case. He has, moreover, opened up a new field of study…Whatever the course of future scholarship, it will have been Virtue Politics that opened up the field and set the agenda for those who came after.

Claremont Review of Books - Paul A. Rahe

James Hankins is one of the most important scholars at work today in Renaissance intellectual history, so a new monograph from him demands attention…Virtue Politics will reset the discussion of Renaissance political thought for the next generation.

Neo-Latin News - Craig Kallendorf

So timely…A book that is not only the fruit of a long and accomplished career but that also offers a rich and deep perspective on two time periods simultaneously: the Italian Renaissance and our own. Which is another way of saying that Virtue Politics gives readers a clear-eyed account of how the most creative minds of the Italian Renaissance addressed the permanent problems of human nature, virtue, tyranny, and political decay.

Washington Examiner

James Hankins’s masterwork takes us from Petrarch’s struggles against a decadent academic clerisy to Machiavelli and Confucius. But the central narrative thread never loosens: that character and virtue are the anchors of all healthy political systems, whether democratic or not. The lessons for today are clear and profound.

Robert D. Kaplan

An enormous, sprawling work, providing rich and detailed but nonetheless succinct encapsulation of much of classical and medieval as well as, of course, Renaissance political theory…[A] rich and deeply erudite discussion of the Italian Renaissance.

VoegelinView - Jesse Russell

A work to celebrate…A major book which not only synthesizes much of his previous work, but develops it further in ways both pathbreaking and panoramic…As Hankins shows, the central project of humanism was political, to instill virtue in rulers; there was broad agreement on this one point, but fascinating disagreement on many others. Deeply scholarly but marvelously lucid and reader-friendly, this book will be the indispensable study of this whole topic.

Times Literary Supplement - Noel Malcolm

Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way…This is certainly a landmark publication…For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be—like that of virtue itself in the theories of the authors it studies—nothing less than transformative.

American Affairs - Noel Malcolm

10/28/2019

Harvard University history professor Hankins, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, illuminates the political theories of Italian Renaissance humanists in this exhaustive study. Modern scholars of the era have focused on anachronistic “ideas of liberty” and neglected other important strains of humanist thought, Hankins contends. Renaissance theorists conceived of freedom as a “fruit of virtue,” rather than a “natural right,” he claims, linking the concept of “virtue politics” to widespread corruption in 15th- and 16th-century Italy. Such philosophers as Flavio Biondo and Leonardo Brundi, Hankins writes, sought systematic political reform by reviving classical Greek and Roman culture, displacing heredity as the primary source of authority, and positing that laws were dependent on the “moral character” of rulers. Turning to Florentine statesman Niccolò Machiavelli, Hankins argues that his masterworks The Prince and Discourses are not as contradictory as they seem. In the former, Hankins writes, a “prudent ruler” foregoes his aspirations to moral probity in order to save his regime from external and internal threats. In the latter, a different set of needs (“to achieve great and long-lasting security and empire”) requires a more classically humanistic approach. Hankins’s clear chronology of events and tireless research lend credence to his analysis. This is a worthy contribution to the field of Renaissance studies. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] magnum opus…A history of the political thought of the Italian Renaissance: from Petrarch in the middle of the 14th century to Machiavelli in the early 16th…Hankins is a stylish and sensitive guide to these men and their works, acutely aware that the political questions with which they grappled—what made a tyrant? Could a good man serve him?—were, for them, far from purely theoretical…Readers of Virtue Politics will close the book not only with a richer understanding of the Renaissance, but with a sense of how very differently we might think about politics today.

Standpoint

Wide-ranging and magisterial…If a greater focus on character education based on classical virtue does come about in our own time, it’s reasonable to think that this shift will take its bearings and example from the past. Hankins’s history of the Renaissance humanists offers a useful starting place for discovering what that kind of cultural rejuvenation might look like.

Education Next - Ian Lindquist

The summation of a life’s work, however magnificent, is seldom relevant once finally published. But James Hankins’s Virtue Politics—his long-awaited, historically rich, philosophically profound investigation of Italian Renaissance political thought—could not have appeared at a more opportune moment. Hankins convincingly argues that the humanist movement was a pedagogical project intent on perfecting the souls of both citizens and leaders, thus facilitating a rich civic life conducive to liberty and justice. His recovery of the soulcraft and statecraft of Petrarch, Bruni, Boccaccio, Poggio, and others is indispensable—indeed, mandatory—reading in an age characterized by disaffected citizenries as well as ever more venal, craven, and malicious leaders.

John P. McCormick

Magisterial…Humanist scholars in the Italian Renaissance were concerned with many of the same puzzles that obsess us today…Hankins shows that the humanists’ obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power.

Wall Street Journal

A magnificent and major reinterpretation of Italian Renaissance political thought, and of the Italian Renaissance itself…It is a pleasure to spend time with this text…Anyone teaching the Renaissance or the history of political thought should have this volume readily at hand.

Fides et Historia - Stephen Varvis

A bold new argument about the nature and significance of Renaissance political thought and a sweeping new vision of humanism itself…An exceptional scholarly accomplishment—a tour-de-force defense of the aspiration to improve character, a survey of Italian humanism with a uniquely wide recognition of the range of issues it encompassed, and a provocative reinterpretation of Machiavelli’s thought that makes modernity’s dark prophet appear positively naive in comparison with Petrarch, all accompanied by lucid forays into contemporary political theory and philosophy. For students of early modern political thought and philosophy, Hankins’s book will be an essential point of departure for some time.

Journal of Modern History - Mark Jurdjevic

Gives Renaissance political thought the place it deserves within the history of Western political thought.

Bibliotheca Dantesca - Tommaso De Robertis

An accomplished study of the Renaissance humanists’ political thought…We are unlikely to see soon another book that combines such extensive and precise learning with such a mature and subtle grasp of important matters. We are fortunate to have it.

Law & Liberty - Mark Blitz

James Hankins is one of the world’s most distinguished authorities on the political thought of the Italian Renaissance, and Virtue Politics is a truly monumental work of scholarship, destined to leave its imprint for decades to come. It is—to a quite remarkable degree—a history of newly discovered things: new writers, new texts, new ideas, new connections.

Peter Stacey

Virtue Politics is suffused with eloquence, and truly innovative. James Hankins argues that Renaissance humanists worked for political regimes of vastly different types. What was important to them was that leaders put the interests of the state—its stability, peace, and flourishing—before their own more immediate enrichment, or desire for power, or other selfish imperatives. In short, they believed that you could and should judge the moral character of a state and of the people who ran it. The concept of ‘virtue politics’ offers a helpful corrective to prior attempts to situate Renaissance thinkers into teleologically conceived narratives of the history of political theory. Not only is this one of the most important books written on humanist political thought, it is in many ways the first, given the unique way Hankins frames his project. It will change the way scholars conceive of the history of political thought.

Christopher Celenza

A magisterial work by one of the world’s leading experts on the intellectual history of the Renaissance…One of the many strengths of Hankins’ volume is the great erudition with which he persuasively presents a different paradigm for understanding the Italian Renaissance.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Carl O’Brien

A work to celebrate…A major book which not only synthesizes much of his previous work, but develops it further in ways both pathbreaking and panoramic…As Hankins shows, the central project of humanism was political, to instill virtue in rulers; there was broad agreement on this one point, but fascinating disagreement on many others. Deeply scholarly but marvelously lucid and reader-friendly, this book will be the indispensable study of this whole topic.

Times Literary Supplement - Noel Malcom

Magisterial…Humanist scholars in the Italian Renaissance were concerned with many of the same puzzles that obsess us today…Hankins shows that the humanists’ obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power.

Wall Street Journal - Samuel Goldman