Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 39-58 [Access article in PDF] A Life in Politics: Leonardo Bruni's Cicero Gary Ianziti Leonardo Bruni's Life of Cicero deserves to occupy an important place in the annals of early modern history-writing. 1 Completed in October 1415, the Cicero marks a turning point in Bruni's career. It represents his first major foray into the field of historiography, preceding by a few months his completion of the first book of the more famous History of Florence. 2 The Cicero contains many of the features upon which Bruni's reputation as a historian was later to be based. It is written in concise, elegant Latin; it demonstrates a high degree of sophistication in its handling of a wide range of source material; it reveals the workings of a mature, critical intelligence capable of formulating judgments that often go against the grain of accumulated tradition. 3 Nor should we be surprised that Bruni's breakthrough into such territory took place within the framework of biography. Since the time of Petrarch, life-writing had been practiced by Italian humanists as the preferred form of historical composition. 4 Bruni's mentor Coluccio Salutati was a devotee of the genre, and Bruni himself served his apprenticeship [End Page 39] in history-writing by translating seven of Plutarch's Lives between 1405 and 1412. 5Bruni's Cicero was an immediate success in its own day. 6 It even supplanted its most august rival, Plutarch's ancient biography of Cicero. The latter had begun to circulate in the West as early as 1401 in the Latin version executed by another of Salutati's protégés, Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia. 7 After the appearance of Bruni's Cicero, however, Plutarch's Cicero came under duress. By the 1430s Bruni's Cicero was "more widely diffused" than Plutarch's. 8 Bruni's text soon became standard, to the extent that the editio princeps of the Latinized Parallel Lives (Rome, 1470) printed Bruni's Cicero in preference to Plutarch's, setting a precedent followed by subsequent editions down to 1514. 9 The trend then suddenly reversed: Plutarch's biography (in the 1401 translation of Angeli) staged a remarkable comeback, returning to occupy its rightful place in the Latin editions of the Parallel Lives published after that date. 10 Bruni's Cicero meanwhile sank into oblivion. Its primacy had lasted almost one hundred years. [End Page 40]The first modern scholar to deal with Bruni's Cicero was Hans Baron. As early as 1928 Baron had found a place for the work within the scheme of "civic humanism," or Bürgerhumanismus as he then called his emerging concept. In his edition of Bruni's selected writings, Baron included a section from the Cicero, that dealing with the Roman statesman's literary output. 11 The decision to publish this extract rather than the whole work was in part dictated by Baron's conviction that most of Bruni's Cicero was a mere reworking of Plutarch and therefore unworthy of further attention. 12 But the choice of the section on Cicero's literary activity also depended on the fact that it contained statements which appeared to confirm Baron's view of Bruni as a "civic humanist." In particular, Baron emphasized Bruni's presentation of Cicero's literary studies as intimately connected with his political activity. In later years Baron often quoted these same passages in support of his "civic" thesis. 13This is not the place to discuss the wider implications of Baron's thesis itself. It will be enough to note that with regard to Bruni's Cicero, the "civic" focus was purchased at the expense of the work as a whole. One does not have to look very far into Bruni's Cicero to realize that it can hardly be described as subservient to Plutarch. Moreover, it contains passages in which Bruni shows himself to be much less sanguine than Baron about the supposed healthiness of the connection between letters and political life. For example, when weighing up...