In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (2001) 721-743 [Access article in PDF] Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate Mark Jurdjevic Republicanism has dominated the historiographies of English and American political thought for the past two decades. 1 Its success derives principally from J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, which presents a sweeping vision of an ancient Aristotelian republican (...) language that persisted for centuries in the mental landscape of the western world. Resurrected in Renaissance Florence, the language of republicanism continued to resonate powerfully in Stuart and Hanoverian Britain and colonial America. Pocock and those sympathetic to his work attributed the power and significance of republicanism to its internal discursive coherence over time; because of its deep roots in the European classical and Renaissance past, republicanism--not liberalism--provided the intellectual weapon with which the English and the Americans rebelled against the Stuart and Hanoverian monarchies. Pocock's provocative repudiation of the significance of John Locke and liberalism, as well as his suggestion that the revolutions of 1641, 1688, and 1776 were animated not by a utopian, forward-looking political ideology but by a backward-looking desire to restore a classical political order, generated a still-ongoing academic debate. 2 [End Page 721]This debate has not appreciated a crucial point: Pocock misunderstood Florentine political thought and mischaracterized its central tenets. 3 Unnecessary confusion has been generated by the lack of communication between specialists in Renaissance political thought and historians of English and early American political thought, as well as by the total dependence of English and American historians on Pocock for their understanding of "civic humanism." 4 Most historians of England and America skeptical of Pocock's argument have shown that republican language, where it did occur in England and America, differed in substantial and significant ways from the Florentine variety. 5 What they have actually shown, I hope to make clear, is that manifestations of republicanism in England and America differed only from Pocock's misunderstanding of the Florentine variety; Florentine republican language echoes strongly in the English and American republicanism that recent scholarship emphasizes.In this essay I seek to reintegrate Italy into the republican debate and, by doing so, to revitalize the argument that structural linguistic similarities pervaded the republicanism of Florence, England, and America. 6 I concentrate on the most important and contested point in English and American revisionism, the dialectical engine of TheMachiavellian Moment: the alleged incompatibility between virtue and commerce in "classical" republican theory. Pocock asserted that Florentine republicans mistrusted commerce and private wealth as corrupting forces in public life and he employed this perceived virtue-commerce antipathy as the link between his republican moments.The most leveling critiques of Pocock's republican tradition have rejected it on this point. Recent research on the relationship between commerce and virtue in the English and American republican contexts has reached a quite different conclusion: that republican theory was frequently elaborated in harmonious conjunction with a new ideology of commercial society. [End Page 722]Pocock, however, misunderstood civic humanism and the role of commerce in Renaissance republicanism. Florentine humanists believed that commerce and the private pursuit of wealth made possible the survival and integrity of the republic. Florentine republicanism of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was the ideology of an ascendant merchant elite; it provided a political language that integrated republican virtue with the habits, values, and mentality of the merchant. We should not therefore be surprised to see republicanism flourishing in later commercial societies. Although the virtue-commerce relationship in Renaissance republicanism was precisely the opposite of Pocock's claim, it directly anticipates the commercial element of republicanism that recent English and American scholarship emphasizes.I undertake three tasks; first, I survey and compare recent work on republicanism in America, England, and Italy; second, I show how Pocock selectively read the primary and secondary sources on Renaissance Florence; third and most importantly, I analyze the economic attitudes of Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini, Girolamo Savonarola, and Florentine... (shrink)

Guardians of Republicanism examines the relationship between the Valori family and the political and intellectual evolution of the Florentine Renaissance. Following the family's fortunes over five generations, Jurdjevic retraces its involvement in the political struggles that marked this turbulent period in the history of Florence.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 185-206 [Access article in PDF] Machiavelli's Sketches of Francesco Valori and the Reconstruction of Florentine History Mark Jurdjevic... As for the lies of these citizens of Carpi, I can surpass them all, because it has been a long time since I became a doctor of that art... for some time now I have never said what I believed and never believed (...) what I said; and if indeed I do sometimes tell the truth, I hide it behind so many lies that it is hard to find.... Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini, Carpi, 17 May 1521. 1Is Machiavelli a reliable source for Florentine history? This article addresses that question by focusing on a remarkable discrepancy in Machiavelli's writing: the Florentine secretary's contradictory interpretations of Francesco di Filippo Valori, a major figure in the post-Medicean republican regime and one of the leaders of the Savonarolan movement. In the Discourses, Machiavelli described Valori as an ambitious politician whose quasi-princely power engendered dangerous factional violence. Several years later, in The Natures of Florentine Men, one of the few texts from Machiavelli's literary corpus that has yet to receive any sustained analysis, Machiavelli described Valori as a republican patriot who consistently sought the common good and upheld the republic's laws. Both assessments were written over a decade after Valori's murder (1498). [End Page 185]What caused Machiavelli to alter his initial interpretation? Were both accounts part of a larger single interpretation of the Florentine statesman? If not, which portrait more faithfully conveyed the nature of Francesco Valori's career and its effect upon Florentine political life and what did Machiavelli hope to achieve by the other portrait? Finally, why did Machiavelli praise a man so directly associated with Savonarola and the political party that had excluded Machiavelli from office before 1498? Machiavelli's reputation as an opponent of Savonarola was the cause of his rejection for an office in the Second Chancery in February 1497, during Valori's term as Gonfaloniere di giustizia. It was also a likely cause of his more spectacular success in April 1498, immediately following the downfall of Savonarola and Valori. 2This article examines the political circumstances surrounding the composition of The Natures of Florentine Men, Machiavelli's ties to the Valori family, and contemporary accounts of Valori's personality and career. It argues that The Natures are the preliminary sketches of the unwritten ninth book of the Florentine Histories and that Machiavelli, writing in a Florence of renewed Medici power, rewrote Valori's role in recent history to obscure his own ties to the principal statesmen of the Soderini regime. In particular, arguing from a different set of sources, it confirms Felix Gilbert's cautious and often-forgotten reminder about the impact of politics and political survival on the pioneering historical literature of early sixteenth-century Florence: that Machiavelli and Guicciardini "frequently had political purposes when discussing historical events and thus consciously constructed a historical myth." 3The Valori family played a prominent role in the political and cultural life of Quattrocento Florence. The family had been allied with the Medici since Cosimo de' Medici's political ascent in 1434 and Bartolomeo Valori, as a generous patron of neo-Platonic philosophy, became a close friend of Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino. Francesco, however, dramatically realigned the family's political identity and loyalties along strong anti-Medicean lines. He began his political career as a successful participant in the Medici party, receiving numerous offices and distinctions, including election as Gonfaloniere di giustizia three times (1484, 1489, 1493). When the political tide turned against Piero de' Medici in 1494, however, Valori was among the first ottimati to capitalize on Medici weakness. He participated in the popular revolt against Piero de' Medici and became one of the constitutional founders of the new Republic. His power and ambition became famous, even notorious, after he emerged as one of the most important and powerful political allies (1495-98) of the prophetic friar... (shrink)