Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 352 - The Teacher of Our Actions - Renaissance Historiography.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, The Teacher of Our Actions – Renaissance Historiography They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But Machiavelli would say that this gets things backwards. The reason to study history is precisely so that you can repeat it, solving new problems with solutions that have worked in the past. As Machiavelli says in his Discourses on the Roman Historian Livy, he who wishes to see what is to come should observe what has already happened. In particular, we should look back to antiquity, when the Romans provided examples for anyone who seeks to achieve great things, especially in matters of war. Thus, he has his main speaker in a dialogue, called On the Art of War, say, I shall never depart in giving examples of anything from my Romans. Admittedly, history can also instruct us on what not to do. This is the sort of lesson we can learn from more recent history, thinks Machiavelli, since so many bad decisions have been made by Italian statesmen in general and by the city of Florence in particular. As my grandfather liked to say, everyone is useful if only to serve as a bad example. The disparaging remark about Florence comes at the beginning of the fifth book of Machiavelli's History of the City, which was written in the early 1520s at the behest of a pope who was also a member of the Medici family. The project was not, to put it mildly, a novel one. A series of men who held the office of chancellor in the 1400s had each written a history of Florence, beginning with Leonardo Bruni, followed by Poggio Braccionini, and then Bartolomeo Scala. More generally, historical research had been part of the humanist movement at least since Petrarch, who did fundamental philological work restoring the writings of Livy. The humanists like to say that history is the teacher of our actions, precisely because of the wealth of examples it offers for emulation. And its study was an important part of the study of rhetoric. Both points are made by a humanist we met some episodes back, Izotta Nogarola. She wrote, Our ancestors called history life's teacher, for knowledge of the past fosters prudence and counsel. History encourages a certain perfection of style, adorned with every splendour, an opulence of words, a power of speaking, a wealth of anecdotes that illumine the oration and make it admirable. What more is there to say? All excellent orators gain their vitality and passion from history. That sentiment would have had the full approval of Leonardo Bruni, who throughout his career devoted much energy to the writing of histories. He certainly thought that history should report on events as they really happened. As he comments in the preface of his treatise on the War of the Italians against the Goths, it is the business of history to make a literary record of the times, whether they are prosperous or adverse. One must write about whatever happened. But even if history must follow the truth, as he also says, it is still a form of rhetoric and should involve suitable ornament. But how to go about learning to write history the right way? Well, this is the Italian Renaissance, so the answer is obvious. One should of course follow the patterns set by ancient historians, those who wrote in Greek, like Polybius and Thucydides, and those who wrote in Latin, like Julius Caesar, Livy, and Sallust. Among them, Livy had a special status. As just mentioned, Petrarch worked on this historian back in the 14th century, and the Greek emigre George Trapezuntius recommended him highly in his treatise on rhetoric. So Machiavelli was coming late to the party when he devoted his discourses to Livy a couple of generations later. That work is a commentary, but the Renaissance humanists frequently just repeated material from earlier historians, albeit with some adaptation. We know of a debate involving the humanist Giovanni Pontano on the question whether a new work of history should draw on just one source or combine many sources, failing to reproduce sources at all wasn't even considered as an option. So when Bruni's fellow historian and critic, Biondo Flavio, accused him of borrowing too heavily from the ancient historian Procopius in a historical treatise, he wasn't complaining about plagiarism, but only of Bruni's dependence on one author instead of several. Another way Bruni imitated his classical models was to include many set-piece speeches drawn from his own imagination in order to capture the thinking behind various historical decisions. This is a technique he would have learned from, among others, Thucydides, whom Bruni was the first Western humanist to know well. The cultivation of eloquence was only one reason to read and write history. There was also the cultivation of virtue. The humanist Pier Paolo Vergiero thought an even better tool for instilling good character than moral philosophy, and Coluccio Salutati agreed on the grounds that history is livelier than straightforward exhortation. Again, the rationale for seeing history as a teacher of our actions was that it could provide us with models to imitate. Thus Lorenzo Valla said that it teaches by example, guarino guarini, that it inspires man to act virtuously and inflames him to deeds of glory. For Bruni, reading history offers the sort of experience naturally acquired by older people who have seen more of life than the young so that it is a discipline that makes us wiser and more modest. His dual interests in rhetoric and virtue are on show in his Life of Cicero, a revision of the biography of this great orator and philosopher written by Plutarch. As I'm guessing you may not remember, we covered Plutarch, not to be confused with Petrarch, way back in episode 80. He was himself a philosopher and historian who wrote a set of paired lives of prominent Greeks and Romans, one of whom was Cicero. When Bruni read this, he found it insufficiently admiring of this leading humanist role model, which is why he wrote a new biography, as he explained in a preface to the work. Though Bruni also once commented that history is one thing, panagyrich another, this gives us a hint of the close connection between rhetoric, offering praise of something, which is what panagyrich means, and the kind of rhetoric involved in writing history. Hence those histories of Florence written by the chancellors of the city, which were, among other things, works of praise. We're told that Bruni boasted of giving Florence immortality by writing his history of the city. His successor, Poggio, echoed that assessment in his funeral oration of Bruni, the work deserved the highest praise from all ages and secured eternal fame for the city. Bruni's history is indeed still praised today for its empirical and source-based approach to history, which allowed him to unmask earlier legends as being just that, legends. He famously showed that the city was not really founded by Julius Caesar, as claimed by an earlier historian of Florence named Giovanni Villani. And he poured cold water on another idea of Villani's, namely that the man who revived the city after it declined along with the Western Roman Empire was none other than the living revival of that empire, Charlemagne. But while we should not discount Bruni's evidence-based approach to history, it should also be noticed that these details from his history fit into a political agenda. The interpretation of that agenda has changed over the past decades along with the interpretive line taken on Bruni more generally. We saw how Hans Baron championed the idea of civic humanism in the Italian Renaissance and made Bruni the leading figure in that movement, a proponent of republicanism and thus an opponent of imperial oppression. Baron read Bruni's History of Florence as fitting perfectly into this pattern, arguing that Bruni emphasized the Etruscan roots of Florence, making it a kind of counterpoint to Rome. No wonder then that Bruni sought to distance the history of his city from figures like Julius and Charlemagne. Very much in contrast to the earlier Dante, whose work on monarchy celebrated Roman Empire and wished devoutly that all Christendom would be united once again under a single ruler, Bruni was no imperialist. He saw ancient Rome as draining Italian cities of their strength, like a large tree preventing the smaller ones around it from flourishing. And when it came to more recent history, Bruni praised the Florentines for their stand against tyrannical Milan, whose leader, Gian Gallazzo Visconti, threatened all free people in Italy. But, as Baron's reading of Bruni has come under criticism, so scholars have begun to see different motives at work in his History of Florence. We saw that Bruni always had a fair degree of sympathy for oligarchy and had no trouble making peace with Medici power. Given that he received lucrative tax concessions from the city's government, probably in return for his work on the history, it's hardly surprising that it tends to promote the viewpoint of that government and of the nobles who dominated it. The latter part of the work was written under Medici rule and duly commends members of the family for their civic virtue. These might be members of the family who were already dead, but this still reflected well on the Medici. As the Bruni scholar Gary Ianzitti has written, image was all, and history writing was an image-making or breaking enterprise. The events referred to might have taken place decades earlier, no matter, reputation hinged on the actions of one's immediate ancestors as much as on those of oneself. Another critic of Bruni, Francesco Fillelfo, accused him of turning his history into a propaganda piece for the Medici, and though this is an exaggeration, the work certainly shows that Bruni knew who was buttering his bread. The more ideological aspects of the history duly reflect the values of the nobles who dominated the republican government of Bruni's time. He openly endorses those values, writing, I am moved by what men think good, to extend one's borders, to increase one's power, to extol the splendour and glory of the city, to look after its utility and security. You could hardly summarize better the goals of the automati, as Machiavelli will later understand them. This also explains why, as I mentioned in an earlier episode, Bruni was horrified by an earlier event in Florentine history, the Chompi Revolt, when the guilds took over the city and installed a truly popular republican government. Bruni had no time for this sort of thing, and was also strongly opposed to the distribution of government offices by random lot, on the grounds that it would cut the link between political leadership and the individual virtue cultivated by the nobility. Bruni's interest in that sort of virtue helps to explain a feature of his history that distinguishes it from earlier chronicles, those written in the Middle Ages, where they typically sought to show how God's plan was revealed in history, Bruni placed great stress on individual human agency, and saw this as the driving force behind events. He was followed in this by his fellow humanist, historian and chancellor, Poggio Braccionini. Poggio's history of Florence is a kind of sequel or continuation of Bruni's, much as we saw in our earlier look at the Byzantine historians, who would carry on the story where earlier accounts had left off. In this case, Poggio takes up the history of Florence in 1402, and brings the tale to 1454, the year that peace was agreed with Milan. Like Bruni, he depicts Florence as the brave protector of Italian liberty against Milanese aggression, and says that this justifies their participation in warfare. How much more just it is to fight for liberty and to avoid coming under the domination of others. He also echoes Bruni's support for an oligarchic, or narrow republic, pointing to the Cianpi revolt as an example of the way that factionalism can bring down republics, and also remarking that the people, or popolo, are often too cowardly to support the performance of great deeds by the city. So, with his contrast between the popolo and the nobility, or ottomati, Machiavelli was once again anything but an innovator. Still, his historical works could not have been written by anyone else. They are stuffed with his characteristic aphorisms, like this quotable passage from his Discourses on Livy, Then there are moments of cynicism to match anything in The Prince. And the one-liners routinely offer genuine insight. If only Robespierre had read Machiavelli's History of Florence and underlined the sentence, nobody should start a revolution in a city in the belief that later he can stop it at will or regulate it as he likes. As we have already discussed, he used history to generate, and then illustrate, his own theories about political life. This applies not least to his views on republics, which are broadly positive because he's so impressed by the achievements of the Roman Republic. For the same reason, it's not just any republic that will satisfy him, it needs to imitate the Romans as much as possible. In the preface of his History of Florence, he echoes the claim of our favorite sentence from the Discourses, that internal dissension can be helpful for the vibrancy of a republic. But to prevent this dissension from turning into factionalism, the city needs to direct its aggression outward. As the Discourses put it, If a republic does not have an enemy outside, it will find one at home. Unfortunately, Florence has mostly failed to live up to the Roman standard, its progress constantly undermined by bad laws and self-interested factionalism. Its failure is more than an illustration of the general law that opposition between the people and the nobles, caused by the latter's wish to rule and the former's not to be enthralled, bring about all the evils that spring up in cities. After all, Rome was able to manage this opposition and even benefit from it. Machiavelli explains that this is because the people of Rome had more realistic expectations and desires, being happy to let the nobles get on with conquering and winning glory so long as they were not actively oppressed. In Florence, by contrast, the popolo were always trying to constrain the nobles from seeking their natural goals. Like Bruni, Machiavelli likes to use rhetorical showpiece speeches in his history. And in one of these, he represents a spokesman of the popolo and his amoral opposition to the nobility. Machiavelli offers us a reason to think that the lessons of Rome would apply just as well to Renaissance Florence, namely that human nature never really changes. It is because all people have the same desires and the same traits that he who diligently examines past events easily foresees future ones. His assumption that the plebeians of ancient Rome may be readily compared to the popolo of 15th century Florence is a good example of this kind of thinking. One of those chancellor historians, Bartolomeo Scala, might have been criticizing Machiavelli in advance when he complained about historians who want to trace everything back to antiquity and omit with silence much that has been changed or innovated since then. Machiavelli displays this habit even, or in fact especially, when discussing warfare, which you'd think would have changed quite a lot since the Roman phalanxes were efficiently mowing down barbarians, until they weren't. In his dialogue on the art of war, he insists that this is a domain of political life that can be modeled on the ancients especially well. For instance, he argues that such developments as gunpowder weapons make surprisingly little difference. Artillery does not make it impossible to use ancient methods and show ancient vigor. Machiavelli is at his most Machiavellian when discussing the topic of warfare. He assumes a zero-sum distribution of power, territory, and wealth between cities, and seems to think that there are only two relationships possible between states, peaceful antagonism and active warfare. Medieval concerns with justice in matters of war seem to be, if you'll pardon the expression, ancient history, as Machiavelli states as an obvious fact that war is only ever fought to strengthen oneself and weaken one's opponents. This attitude would be echoed by a younger historian, who on many other points found reasons to disagree with Machiavelli, Francesco Guicardini. He wrote a critical commentary on Machiavelli's Discourses and a series of his own historical works. Guicardini makes great use of the rhetorical setpiece, often pairing two speakers who argue on either side of a political issue. Often, these speeches concern the wisdom of declaring a war, and it's astonishing how rarely the speakers bother to argue that a prospective war is or is not justified. Thus, a speaker who opposes a war against the papacy doesn't worry about the religious implications, except to note that it could be bad for the city's reputation. Elsewhere, a spokesman urges the citizens of Venice to aim for noble and high goals, but again only for the sake of good reputation. All of which is no wonder, since Guicardini is just as persuaded as Machiavelli that foreign policy is a dog-eat-dog business. Any city, he says, must either be powerful enough to oppress others, or she must be oppressed by others. Frequently, he has historical figures argue against launching wars on the grounds that it opens one to adverse turns of fortune. Fortune is a theme that runs through all the histories we've looked at, and increasingly so, as the generations go on. It is not so much emphasized by Bruni, but Poggio wrote a treatise on the topic, and described political rulers as actors performing in what he called the theater of fortune. Fortune is one of Machiavelli's favorite concepts, and guides much of his advice, as when he suggests that it's better to starve an enemy army than to attack it, because in open warfare, fortune is much more powerful than ability. He often credits specific political successes to good fortune, seeing this as key to the career of Cosimo de' Medici, for example. Still, Machiavelli thinks wise decisions like those made by the Romans can enable one to master fortune to some extent. Its malice can be overcome by prudence. Furthermore, he tends to see the fluctuations of fortune as a mere ebb and flow in the tide of historical cycles which have a kind of natural inevitability, such that states will always fall away from the peak of their power and perfection. Guicciardini was, if anything, even more impressed by the unpredictability of fortune. He wrote that human affairs are as subject of change and fluctuation as the waters of the sea agitated by the winds. For this reason, he was less confident than Machiavelli that one can apply the lessons of history to predict the future. Experience shows that almost always, the opposite happens to what men, no matter how wise, expected. Nonetheless, a constant refrain of his writings is the trait of prudence. It helps to restrain emotion in political decision-making, and allows rulers to spot opportunities as they arise. With this, Guicciardini applies a lesson of his own taken from antiquity. Aristotle envisioned a virtue of practical wisdom which allowed the wise man to deal effectively with particular situations as they arose. The more such situations one has met, the better one's chances of reacting to them successfully. What history provides, from Guicciardini's point of view, is not so much models to imitate as a wealth of experience on which to draw. It should be said that the figures I've discussed in this episode were far from the only historians to write in the Italian Renaissance. It was an interest widely shared among humanists, and even members of socially marginal groups were getting in on the act. Two 16th century Jewish authors, Elijah Kapsaly and Joseph Haak-Cohen, wrote chronicles of recent European history, and Lucrezia Marinelli produced a history of the Fourth Crusade. But I'd like to end with a remark by another historian named Francesco Vettori, one that might have struck even Machiavelli as overly cynical. Vettori said that all the talk of freedom and liberty is a mere fantasy. All the republics and the principates I know of from history or have seen for myself were tyrannies, he said. To speak freely, all governments are tyrannical. It is only in the pages of utopian works by authors like Plato and Thomas More that one could see a population living without tyranny, which as it happens gives us a perfect transition to the next episode. Next time we'll be talking about texts that describe the ideal political arrangements of imagined cities, cities better than the ones whose histories were praised and criticized by the likes of Bruni and Machiavelli. I hope it's not utopian to think you'll join me for that next time here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.