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Biography

Leonardo Bruni was born ca. 1370 in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. In his youth, he came to Florence and joined the circle of people around Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), the elderly Florentine chancellor who was actively promoting the new focus on the studia humanitatis – that is, the study of history, poetry, grammar, rhetoric, and ethics – among both learned people and the population at large. Bruni was among the first to publish Latin translations of Greek texts under the tutelage of Manuel Chrysoloras (1350–1415), a Byzantine who began teaching Greek in Florence in the late 1390s. Multiple translations of Greek texts into Latin and even Italian followed, in addition to original works heavily indebted to Greek models. Beyond his prolific translations, Bruni also published works of history, philosophical instruction, education, model letters and speeches, biographies, political treatises, and others. He was the official historian of the Florentine Republic from 1415 and served as the city’s chancellor, that is, the city’s head secretary and occasional spokesperson, from 1427 until his death in 1444. Bruni was arguably the most widely read author and translator of the fifteenth century (Hankins 1997).

Bruni lacked a coherent underlying set of philosophical principles that shaped his writings. Instead, Bruni wrote works across genres for different purposes and in different contexts. Despite their heterogeneity, his writings across genres served as a model that many later writers, orators, and thinkers sought to emulate. Moreover, Bruni came from comparatively humble origins in Arezzo, and yet he transformed his station into that of a prominent statesman and patrician within Renaissance Florence, a position that he passed down to his son. Bruni’s rise in power and wealth through learning and politics served as a model that others sought to emulate throughout the fifteenth century. This essay examines some of the many areas in which Bruni’s writings and life proved influential, particularly during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: his activities as an orator and letter writer; his translations; his writings on language, politics, history, ethics, and metaphysics; and his model career as a humanist statesman.

Orator and Letter Writer

Most of Bruni’s professional life was spent writing letters and delivering speeches, and, in both areas, his works served as influential models throughout the fifteenth century. Bruni’s career as a secretary began in 1405 when he joined the men charged with writing letters and documents for Pope Innocent VII (r. 1404–1406). Bruni continued to serve as a papal secretary for the next 6 years, serving under two more popes before leaving papal service around 1410. For a single year, Bruni took over the position of Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, a role that required him to write letters and documents conveying the decisions of the city’s officeholders and their advisors. In 1411, he briefly returned to papal service before ending that role again and returning to Florence in 1415. It was not until 1427 that Bruni returned to an official secretarial role. In that year, Bruni resumed his former position as Chancellor of the Florentine Republic. It was a post he held until his death in 1444 (Griffiths et al. 1987). Over the course of these decades, Bruni created an immense body of letters and speeches in both the vernacular and in Latin, a quantity far too large to list individually here.

Over his career, Bruni wrote commissions and letters to Florentine diplomats, letters to foreign rulers, summaries of speeches delivered in advisory bodies, wrote speeches for others to deliver, speeches for himself, and collected letters sent to friends and colleagues. The content of the overwhelming majority of this work was indebted to the very specific political circumstances at hand. The instructions and basic contents for most of these documents were determined by the Florentine officeholders at the time. Nevertheless, one common theme to which Bruni often returned in these writings related to the significance and legitimacy of republican regimes in a European world dominated by princely rule. Bruni frequently framed the decisions provided to him by officeholders within the context of Florentine liberty, by which he generally meant the ability of Florence to set its own external agenda, free from external claims to power, as well as the freedom of elite Florentines to aspire to and occasionally hold political office (Viti 1992; Griffiths 1999).

Bruni broke with past Florentine chancellors in his more overt emulation of classical rhetorical models and his rejection of more recent styles. Previous chancellors and orators had striven to emulate a formal rhetorical style, known as the ars dictaminis, which relied upon quite specific word patterns, superlative adjectives, and other particulars. Bruni, however, led the way to a new form of oratorical eloquence aimed at imitating classical rhetoricians such as Cicero. He was a master at emulating the classical Latin style that he and his contemporaries valued. In orations, Bruni emphasized the rearrangement of words toward aural effect. He also sought to base the vocabulary of his Latin speeches much more closely to the words and forms used by ancient writers. His speeches were frequently modeled explicitly on classical models (Witt 2000). For example, his speech delivered before the Florentine mercenary captain Niccolò da Tolentino (1350–1435) was based upon an ancient speech by Cicero, the Pro lege manilia (Maxson 2015). Bruni’s speeches became highly sought after as models to emulate, and later speakers have left examples of speeches heavily indebted to words uttered by Bruni on similar occasions.

Translations and the Theory of Translating

Bruni’s translations from Greek into Latin and from Latin into Italian introduced multiple new texts and authors to Latin Europe. The study of Greek, while not unknown, was little practiced in the centuries before Bruni. As such, many classical authors were completely unknown in western Europe, while others were known only through descriptions or short extracts included in late Antique and early medieval encyclopedic works. Bruni was among the first group of individuals who actively sought to reintroduce Greek works into western Europe through Latin and vernacular translations. For example, his first Greek to Latin translations were also some of his most popular, partly for their subject matter and partly for their short length: St. Basil’s Letter to the Youth, which defended the value of a liberal arts education, and Xenophon’s Hiero, which explored the benefits and drawbacks of being a ruler (Hankins 1997; Maxson 2010). Many other works followed. Bruni translated several Lives of Plutarch, including the lives of Aemilius Paulus, Cato, Demosthenes, Mark Antony, and others. In addition to Xenophon’s Hiero, he also translated Xenophon’s Apology. He created Latin versions of several dialogues by Plato, such as the Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, as well as a set of letters then thought to have been written by Plato. Bruni also translated the Nichomachaen Ethics and the Politics by Aristotle, in addition to the Oeconomics (at the time considered genuine). Bruni reintroduced several speeches by Demosthenes, excerpts from Homer, parts of Aristophanes, and others. These translations brought works to readers in western Europe that had not been read there in centuries.

Many of these translations into Latin were then translated into Italian and even other languages, at times under Bruni’s supervision. Bruni’s conception and use of the vernacular as a literary and learned language will be discussed in more detail below, but for here, it is sufficient to state that Bruni not only reintroduced some of the now classic works of Greek philosophy into the Latin west, but vernacular translations of his works by others helped popularize the texts for the large and literate population of the Italian peninsula and beyond. Bruni’s Latin translation of St. Basil’s Letter to the Youth, for example, was translated into both Italian and Spanish. Bruni’s biography of Cicero existed in Latin, Italian, and French versions. His On the Gothic War was translated into Italian, Spanish, and even English, while his On the Punic War had an extensive manuscript tradition in both Latin and Italian, with fewer copies of versions in French, Spanish, and Catalan. Both Bruni’s Introduction to Moral Philosophy and his Hiero existed in German editions, among other languages (Hankins 1997). In short, Bruni’s introduction of several Greek classics to Latin and vernacular readers secure him primacy of place in the history of Renaissance thought and philosophy.

Yet, in addition to his actual translation of Greek works, Bruni was also innovative in terms of his ideas about how best to translate a work from one language into another. Specifically, Bruni advocated for translators to capture the sense of a passage when translating, rather than focusing on the then more traditional practice of translating one word at a time. In his On the Correct Way to Translate, Bruni urged translators to capture the ideas of a text but also to transfer, as much as possible, the eloquence of the original author into the new language (Bernard-Pradelle 2008; Hankins 2003; Botley 2004). These ideas about translation led Bruni into a heated controversy with a contemporary Aristotelian philosopher. For two centuries, scholastic philosophers had been relying upon a literal Latin translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. Bruni produced a more rhetorical translation (1416) that altered both the sense and the vocabulary of the text in Latin. His translation was controversial and sparked an exchange that reveals how far Bruni’s approach differed from previous translators. Bruni’s critic (Alfonso da Cartagena (1384–1456)) claimed that Aristotle was not eloquent as Bruni had claimed; that Boethius was the translator of the older version, not a Dominican friar as Bruni had claimed; and that Bruni was wrong to have criticized this older translator. Bruni responded to each point in turn, stating that Aristotle was in fact eloquent, that Boethius was not the translator; and that he was merely criticizing the translation and not the integrity of the previous translator. The matter did not end there, however, and a second controversy erupted nearly 10 years after the book’s original publication. In this second controversy, Bruni’s accuser was far more wide-ranging. He questioned Bruni’s attempts to make the text more rhetorical and thus stray from the familiar terms of the older translation. He argued that Aristotle, as an authority, spoke the truth and that those instances where he seemed incorrect were places where Aristotle had attempted an allegory or, perhaps, where the translation might be incorrect. He contended that Bruni was placing rhetorical eloquence above philosophical content, but that in philosophy true eloquence came, not from style, but from finding and understanding answers to questions. Bruni responded to these arguments by reiterating the claims he had made earlier about translation, namely, that his concern as a translator was to render into Latin that which the Greek had said (Griffiths et al. 1987).

Bruni’s translations in practice at times deviated from his ideal of capturing the sense and eloquence of an original text. For example, Bruni – and other fifteenth-century translators – tweaked or even removed passages that he found offensive or unnecessary. For example, Bruni removed or modified references to homosexual relations in works by Plato and Xenophon. Bruni also tended to paraphrase and choose Latin words for Greek concepts that reinforced the usual values and assumptions of Bruni’s contemporaries, thus making the classical work in question intentionally more palatable to his audience (Hankins 1990). Moreover, Bruni’s contemporaries argued that he did not distinguish adequately between translating and composing original works. The most prominent example of this was Bruni’s History of the Gothic Wars, which was heavily indebted to Procopius’ book on the same topic. Detractors of Bruni’s treatment, particularly a rival Biondo Flavio (1392–1463) who was writing an account of the same events, argued that a history based upon a single source was insufficient for constructing an accurate historical narrative (Ianziti 2011).

Bruni’s translations enjoyed enormous success in the decades after his death. Manuscript copies of early translations of short works like St. Basil’s Letter to the Youth and Xenophon’s Hiero exist in 200 or more copies. Copies of Bruni’s translations of various lives by Plutarch and dialogues of Plato exist in dozens of copies each. Vernacular versions of Bruni’s Latin translations were created, and an Italian version of Bruni’s translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics survives in at least ten copies, while the Spanish version is preserved in at least five more manuscripts. Even more popular were vernacular versions of Bruni’s historical works, which often exist in dozens of manuscript copies (Hankins 1997). Bruni’s translations were progressively replaced by later translators, such as Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus, in the latter fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Conceptions of Language

Bruni’s prolific career as a translator fit into a broader context of reflection upon the relationship and statuses of different languages. These concepts arose across several works that spanned Bruni’s career. In Bruni’s Dialogues, the individuals presented discuss different opinions on the significance of vernacular writings by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio versus the Latin production of the same figures. Bruni returned to these themes much later in his two biographies of Dante and Petrarch, respectively. He also contributed to a discussion among learned papal secretaries about the relationship between the vernacular and Latin.

In many ways, Bruni’s views on the relationship and respective statuses of different languages were quite traditional. He argued that the study of Hebrew, for example, was a waste of time, given that what was significant from Hebrew writings already existed in Latin. Bruni’s arguments contrasted with those advanced by some of his contemporaries. For example, Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) viewed the study of Hebrew as useful, if for nothing else the insight it offered into the translation methods of Saint Jerome. Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) worked to learn Hebrew and created a rough translation of the Vulgate Bible into Latin, even as his primary motivation was the conversion of Jews to Christianity (Botley 2004).

Bruni’s views on the status and validity of Italian as a literary language seem to have changed over the course of his career (Hankins 2006). In the early fifteenth century, Bruni was close to Niccolò Niccoli (1364–1437), a man who viewed the vernacular with some disdain. He and others around him were known for their learned discussions in which they praised Antiquity, sought to recover the writings and forms of classical Latin as it had been read and written during the ancient period, and bemoaned the loss of the ancient world and its culture over the past millennium. Niccoli and like-minded individuals grouped the vernacular into that postclassical period of decline. Bruni’s Dialogues preserves some of the types of arguments that this group was making. The vernacular, they argued, was the language of the mob and unfit for literary expression. As examples, they offered texts such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Petrarch’s Sonnets, and Boccaccio’s Decameron. They argued that these three famous Florentine authors should be judged solely upon the style of their Latin works. and all three men were found wanting (Griffiths et al. 1987; Bruni 1996; Bernard-Pradelle 2008). It was quite common to view Latin as a superior and more sophisticated literary language than the vernacular, but the embrace of this extreme form of classicism was controversial even among humanists (Quint 1985). Bruni seems to have been ambivalent in his early career: the way the arguments are presented in his Dialogues suggests they may not have had his full support, even as the work explicitly states that Bruni was sympathetic to them.

Bruni’s audience for his original works and translations was expanded through the vernacular versions mentioned above. Bruni’s use of the vernacular, however, coincided with views on the origins of Italian that differed from those of his contemporaries and of modern linguists. In 1435 Bruni engaged in an oral discussion about the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in the classical past. Bruni argued that classical Rome, like fifteenth-century Florence, had two distinct languages. He claimed that a speaker in classical Rome like Cicero was only understood by the well-educated, while most people only understood a few Latin words, much like many of Bruni’s contemporaries experienced the mass. Bruni’s arguments contrasted sharply with those of his contemporary Biondo Flavio, a long-serving papal secretary who penned several long humanist histories. Biondo argued that Latin was the only language of the classical world, even as there were clearly different styles of expression. Over time Latin had changed, and the vernaculars had differentiated themselves from both Latin and each other. Biondo’s arguments are much closer to how modern students of language view their subject; however, both Bruni and Biondo’s positions were taken seriously in the 1430s, and the debate has been positioned as one of the earliest theoretical and historical discussions on the relationship between Latin and Italian, a discussion that continued into the next century (Celenza 2015; Griffiths et al. 1987; Tavoni 1984). Bruni’s arguments fit into stronger affirmations of the literary potential of the vernacular than he had offered earlier in his career, as evidenced by passages in his Life of Dante written around the same period (Baron).

Political Writings

Perhaps Bruni’s best-known works in recent decades are his largely pro-republican works written on behalf of the Florentine state. These works spanned over forty years of Bruni’s life and have given rise to heated debates among historians over the dating of specific works, the depths of Bruni’s sincerity in writing them, and their originality. The most significant works in this debate have been Bruni’s Dialogues, his Praise of the City of Florence, his Oration for Nanni Strozzi, and his History of the Florentine Republic. Each of these works fits into a different context: The Dialogues and the Praise were literary works produced in the early 1400s; the Oration (ca. 1428) and History (1415–1444) were works written while Bruni served as head secretary of Florence. Yet, despite their temporal and contextual differences, all four works argue that Florence enjoyed a legitimate form of republican government. This legitimacy derived from the Roman Republic, under which Florence was founded by Roman veterans. As the descendant of Rome, Florence could argue that it did not owe allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, the French, the Byzantine Emperor, or the pope, because all these figures traced their authority back to the Roman Empire, which postdated the republic. Thus, not only was the city independent, but all its wars and territorial claims were justified because Florence was heir to the same lands once possessed by its Roman republican progenitor (Fubini 2003).

Bruni’s arguments for the independence and authority of the Florentine Republic built upon the thought of earlier writers. The fourteenth-century thinker Bartolo da Sassoferrato had expounded a definition of tyrannical rule based upon a legitimate source of power and benevolent treatment of the ruled. Bruni’s mentor Coluccio Salutati had picked up this definition and used it in his treatise On the Tyrant, a work written around 1400 and thus at a time when Bruni was a member of his circle. Bruni applied this same definition across his original political works. For example, in both the Dialogues and the Praise, Bruni used the illegal usurpation and wicked rule of the Roman emperors as evidence to delegitimize their claims – and thus those individuals claiming descent from them – over Florence. On only one occasion did Bruni question the legitimacy of non-republican forms of government and instead applied standard definitions of just versus unjust rule to evaluate the validity of competing claims to power (Maxson 2010).

Bruni also conceived of the Florentine republic along the traditional lines of an oligarchic regime ideally consisting of a well-educated, wealthy, and noble patriciate. He worked closely with the Florentine Guelph Party – a governmental body that sought to promote oligarchic government of the most established families in Florence – to rewrite their bylaws. He dedicated a treatise, On Knighthood (ca. 1420), to the city’s most prominent members of the oligarchic regime (Bayley 1961). Additionally, Bruni sought to position himself, socially, among the Florentine oligarchs, although he was clever enough to avoid inextricable entanglements and thus managed to enjoy political prominence throughout the politically tumultuous 1420s, 1430s, and 1440s in Florence (Martines 1963; Viti 1990; Maxson 2014; Field 1998).

Yet, Bruni’s arguments were innovative in several ways too. Although relying upon standard abstract foundations for his republican thought, Bruni’s writings had far wider implications than previous thinkers. Bruni helped create a form of “civic humanism” that was a malleable concept that spread throughout the population of Florence. Civic humanism in this context was the propagation of the idea of the legitimacy of the Florentine republican form of government; that this government was rightly dominated by a small group of individuals; and that all other members of the Florentine ruling groups had the possibility of holding office on occasion, with the expectation that this potential for and occasional practice of officeholding would bring social honor, but not real political influence (Najemy 2006). The Florentine population seems to have bought into this conception of rule, and it helped reinforce the increasingly restricted nature of political power in Florence during the 1410s, 1420s, and 1430s. Thus, Bruni’s arguments, while not necessarily original in an abstract sense, were innovative in the extent of their widespread application.

In addition, the ways that Bruni presented and sought to prove his points were also original. The Praise of the City of Florence, for example, was modeled on a Greek oration in praise of Athens. This emulation was original because it made such heavy use of a Greek text, as well as for Bruni’s reintroduction of a solid, classical example of a Ciceronian style (Witt 2000; Griffiths et al. 1987). In another example, in the Oration for Nanni Strozzi, Bruni made a blanket condemnation of all princely rule, an extreme statement that he did not repeat, but one that demonstrates the lengths to which his argument about the legitimacy of Florence’s republican government could be stretched (Hankins 2000b). Bruni shaped the narrative and structure of his History of the Florentine People to emphasize the city’s independence and legitimate claims to rule others, points further developed in the next section.

Bruni’s arguments about Florentine republicanism had a long-lasting impact on the history of political thought in Europe. The republican, patriotic, and civic duty ideas popularized by Leonardo Bruni were picked up by other writers, most notably Niccolò Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century. Readers of Machiavelli, in turn, also adopted these republican ideas, with influences felt throughout many political thinkers of the Enlightenment. The ideals of civic humanism have been traced in the writings of men like Thomas Jefferson, who helped draft the foundational documents for the United States (Pocock 1975). The concept of civic humanism, meanwhile, in slightly altered form, has even been controversially assigned to the underlying principles of American, British, French, and Italian governments during the late twentieth century (Hankins 2000a).

Historical Writings

Bruni wrote biographies and histories of classical, medieval, and even contemporary events. Bruni’s first original historical writing was a biography of Cicero published in 1413. In 1415, Bruni was commissioned to write an official history of the Florentine Republic in Latin and based upon classical models. Although this project occupied him for the rest of his life, Bruni also produced several other pieces of historical writing while he worked on that project. In 1422, Bruni published his On the First Punic War to fill in a key missing section from Livy’s only partially extant history of Rome. Around 1430, Bruni returned to biography and penned a Life of Aristotle, in part to offer a counter-narrative to the portrait offered by the classical writer Diogenes Laertius, which a rival (Ambrogio Traversari [1386–1439]) was then translating from Greek into Latin. Another pair of biographies followed in 1436, this time of the Florentine poets Dante and Petrarch, where the contrasting prudentia of the two men in political affairs was brought to the forefront. Three more historical works appeared toward the end of Bruni’s career: The Commentary of Greek Affairs (1439) relied heavily on a work of Xenophon to present a history of Greece in the fourth-century BCE; Bruni’s On His Own Times (1441) chronicled a history of Bruni’s lifetime from his own perspective; and finally, in 1441 Bruni published his On the Gothic War, which drew heavily upon Procopius’ version of the same events (Ianziti 2011).

Across this multitude of works, Bruni made many innovative moves in the study of the past. For example, he was among the first historians to adopt the influential periodization scheme of European history into a classical past, a middle age in which the major achievements of the classical past were lost, and then a Renaissance period in which those classical innovations were being rediscovered. He was among the first historians to conduct archival research to help construct an historical narrative, an approach that is particularly revealing in the latter books of the History of the Florentine People (Bruni 2001–2007). Bruni expanded the scope of history to include places outside the ordinary: for example, his Commentary was the first work of Greek history published in Latin since Antiquity (Ianziti 2011). When constructing historical interpretations, Bruni at times ostentatiously compared and critically analyzed the sources available and tended to rely upon those evidentiary sources that were closest to the events discussed. The best-known example of this approach was in Bruni’s account of the role of Charlemagne in Florentine history, where Bruni concluded it was unlikely that Charlemagne had refounded Florence, but had instead just helped rebuild the city. Bruni’s adoption of Livy as a model for an official history of Florence inspired imitators throughout the Italian peninsula. Courts and other republics scrambled to have their own version of the past created to compete with the version so eloquently written by Bruni. The sum of these many innovations has inspired some historians to label Bruni as the first modern historian (Ianziti 1997).

Alongside and often underlying these multitudinous innovations, Bruni retained many of the motivations and practices of his historical predecessors. For example, Bruni’s critical use of sources was sporadic and usually was used as a tool to argue for or against a historical point that served to legitimize or delegitimize a historical action or claim. Bruni clearly viewed the period before his own as lacking in Latin eloquence, but Bruni did not question that political arguments in the present could be and were based upon unbroken lineages back to classical Antiquity. Bruni’s incorporation of source material into his own works often constituted only superficial changes for stylistic purposes. Some of his historical works, such as his On the Gothic War, were criticized already in Bruni’s own day as being so close to his original sources as to blur the lines between an original work and a translation. Bruni presented logical and historical arguments for interpretations that furthered his own goals and that of his patrons, but he also relied on quite traditional means to establish historical narratives as more “true” than a competing claim. For example, in both 1428 and 1439, Bruni presented drafts of his History of the Florentine People to the Florentine government amidst rituals rife with civic and religious significance. The inclusion of the books in these rituals sought to associate divine favor and blessing upon the narrative, and then the copies of the books presented were housed within the chapel in the principal Florentine governmental building. Research, logic, and beseeching divine favor all meshed together to argue for the accuracy of Bruni’s narrative (Maxson 2012).

Ethical and Metaphysical Writings

Renaissance humanists like Leonardo Bruni embraced a different kind of learned ideal than had been prized in the medieval period. In Antiquity, two different types of learned ideals had emerged. On the one side, some individuals prized the pursuit of philosophy, which they understood as the pursuit of truth and understanding. On the other side, others prized the pursuit of oratory, which they understood to mean the ability to speak, argue well, and persuade others to a specific proposition. The philosophical side of this coin had dominated European learned discourse since the 1000s. Humanists, particularly from the mid-1300s, began offering a competing ideal that focused on the study of ethics and the tools necessary to persuade others to ethical action or the orator’s point of view (Griffiths et al. 1987). Toward this end, the humanists argued that people should receive an education grounded in moral philosophy, the tools of persuasion (grammar and rhetoric), and a pool of emulative examples (poetry and history). Bruni presented this basic model for education in his Treatise on the Study of Literature, while his contemporaries made similar arguments in educational treatises of their own (Kallendorf 2002).

Bruni made one contribution to contemporary debates about ethics in his popular compendium of classical ethics, his Introduction to Moral Philosophy. The work draws heavily upon various works by Cicero and Aristotle, even as it diverges from both authors in various specifics. Bruni’s work examines three basic questions: Is there an end to human affairs? What is that end? And how is that end acquired? After quickly affirming that a final end does in fact exist, the treatise examines the nature of that end by presenting differing answers based upon different schools of classical philosophy, particularly the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics. All of them are in basic agreement that happiness is the common end, and thus Bruni turns to discussing the pursuit of virtues and the avoidance of vices as the path toward this final end (Griffiths et al. 1987; Bernard-Pradelle 2008). Although the content of the work is largely derivative, during the fifteenth century it enjoyed wide circulation, existing in dozens of manuscript copies as well as a German and a Spanish translation (Hankins 1997). In addition, the work is interesting as an historical piece in that it was among the first philosophical works of the Renaissance based upon classical sources in their original languages, rather than intermediaries. The book also features a consideration of Aristotle not as “The Philosopher,” but as one thinker among many (Griffiths et al. 1987).

Other Contributions: Textual Studies and Political Career

Beyond the ideas and style of his writings, Bruni made important contributions in areas outside of his oratory, original writings, and translations. Bruni played a role in the rediscovery of Latin texts in the early fifteenth century and in the humanist-influenced changes in status measures during the 1400s. Bruni himself made few manuscript discoveries, although he was both interested in the efforts of and corresponded with individuals, like Poggio Bracciolini, who were more actively scouring monastic libraries for new classical texts. With more classical texts and authors, and with more manuscript copies of previously known works available, Bruni’s contemporaries began comparing works and passages across copies to compare and correct texts. There is little evidence of Bruni’s role in these early philological inquiries in Latin manuscripts, but Bruni did offer corrections in Greek manuscripts, making him one of the first individuals to critically emend Greek works (Griffiths et al. 1987).

In addition, Bruni’s political career outside of the Florentine chancery helped to change how people thought about the importance of learning as a marker of social status. Highly prestigious governmental appointments in Florence were reserved for key members of the Florentine ruling group. Marriages, meanwhile, occurred between families who could, one way or another, claim equal status within Florentine society. By traditional standards, Bruni should not have had access to either the most significant political offices or major marriage alliances. He was an immigrant from Arezzo and thus could not claim an ancient ancestral history of holding prestigious political office in Florence, a key standard by which social status was measured. His work as a papal secretary and then chancellor gave him access to political power and secrets, but it was indirect – Bruni was charged with framing the decisions that other people made and keeping to himself the secrets of others. Finally, his economic standing in his youth does not seem to have been particularly exceptional.

However, Bruni used his ability with humanist letters and financial acumen to largely overcome his background and pass down an enhanced social position in Florence to his son. Already by 1427, Bruni was among the wealthiest citizens in Florence (Martines 1963). By that date, he had also cultivated strong connections, both within the Florentine ruling regime and with Pope Martin V, a man who was quite hostile toward Florence during his pontificate but whom, for reasons that remain unclear, Bruni seems to have enjoyed good relations and served as an occasional go-between. In 1426 Bruni secured an election as a diplomat to the pope, the type of position almost always reserved for the more elite members of the Florentine ruling groups. More positions followed in the Florentine domestic sphere. His career reached its peak with his appointment to the Dieci di Balìa in (1439, 1440, and 1441). This immensely powerful group was an ad hoc governmental body convened at times of war. Its members were handpicked and as such always featured the key individuals from the Florentine regime. In addition to his great wealth and political status, Bruni’s orations, letters, treatises, and translations were known in both Latin and Italian. Not all of Bruni’s learned and dilettante contemporaries liked or agreed with Bruni, but his style and contents were a reference point for admirers and detractors alike, across Florence and beyond (Maxson 2014; Martines 1963).

As Bruni’s contemporaries argued over whether nobility was an in-born or earned trait, Bruni’s success provided a practical example for people who viewed nobility as something that could be attained through the acquisition of wealth, political honors, and displays of humanist learning. People from all walks of life sought to emulate the learning and success of people like Bruni, particularly from the 1420s. The consequence of this emulation was a change in the social view of humanist learning from a fringe interest associated with a few classical scholars to a necessary component in the education of anybody with social and political aspirations. By the 1480s, just four decades after Bruni’s death, a reputation for learning could allow people to overcome other economic, familial, or political shortcomings in their background and be viewed as the equal of people with far greater amounts of the traditional marks of status.