GUICCIARDINI, FRANCESCO Italian historian and statesman, was born at Florence on Mar. 6, 1483. He studied at the universities of Ferrara and Padua, and at that time contemplated a career in the church. Owing, however, to the opposition of his father, he turned his attention to law, and at the age of 23 was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the Institutes in public. He advanced his political prospects by his marriage with Maria Salviati. In 1512 the Signoria sent him on a mission to the court of Ferdinand of Spain, and Guicciardini issued from this first trial of his skill with an assured reputation for diplomacy, which in the Italy of that time implied an ability to meet plot with counterplot, and parry force with sleight of hand.
In 1515 Leo. X. took him into service, and made him governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule, and in 1523 he was appointed viceregent of Romagna by Clement VII. Guicciardini was thus virtual master of the papal States beyond the Apennines, during a period of great difficulty. In 1526 Clement made him lieutenant-general of the papal army. In this capacity he witnessed from a distance the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement, without being able to rouse the duke of Urbino into activity. Clement did not withdraw his con fidence, and in 1531 Guicciardini was advanced to the governor ship of Bologna, the most important of all the papal lord-lieu tenancies. This post he resigned in 1534 on the election of Paul III., preferring to follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes.
It may here be noticed that though Guicciardini served three popes through a period of 20 years, he hated the papacy with a deep bitterness, attributing the woes of Italy to the ambition of the church. The same discord between his private opinions and his public actions may be traced in his later conduct. Guicciardini believed that the best form of government was a commonwealth administered upon the type of the Venetian constitution ; and we have ample evidence to prove that he had judged the tyranny of the Medici at its true worth. Yet he did not hesitate to place his powers at the disposal of the most vicious members of that house for the enslavement of Florence. In 1527 he had been declared a rebel by the Signoria on account of his well-known Medicean prejudices; and in 1530, deputed by Clement to punish the citi zens after their revolt, he revenged himself with a cruelty and an avarice that were long and bitterly remembered. When he re turned to Florence in 1534, he did so as the creature of the dis solute Alessandro Medici, and he pushed his servility so far as to defend this infamous despot at Naples in before the bar of Charles V., from the accusations brought against him by the Florentine exiles (Op. fined. vol. ix.). He won his cause; but he justified the reproaches of his contemporaries, who describe him as a cruel, venal, grasping seeker after power, eager to support a despotism for the sake of honours, offices and emoluments secured for himself by a bargain with the oppressors of his country. Varchi, Nardi, Jacopo Pitti and Bernardo Segni are unanimous upon this point ; but it is only the publication of Guicciardini's private mss. that has made us understand the force of their invectives. After the murder of Duke Alessandro in Guicciardini espoused the cause of Cosimo de' Medici, a boy unused to the game of statecraft, hoping to rule Florence as grand vizier under this inexperienced princeling. But Cosimo displayed the genius of his family for politics, and dismissed him. Guicciar dini spent his last years in the composition of the Storia d'Italict. He died at Florence on May 23, 1540.
The Storia d'Italia (1561-64) dealt with the period it was translated into most European languages. It is a masterpiece of scientific history, and is remarkable for treating the history of Italy for the first time as a national whole, and not as the accumulation of separate principalities and republics. The whole tangled skein of Italian politics, in that involved and stormy period, is unravelled with a patience and insight that are above praise. The Storia d'Italia was undoubtedly the greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the mod ern era, though it owes its greatness in part to the importance of the period with which it deals. It remains the most solid monu ment of Italian reason in the 16th century, the final triumph of that Florentine school of philosophical historians which included Machiavelli, Segni, Pitti, Nardi, Varchi, Francesco Vettori and Donato Giannotti.
Though Guicciardini lived through that agony of the Italian people, he does not seem to be aware that he is writing a great historical tragedy, and never ceases to be an impartial spectator— a cold and curious critic. He maintained that the explanation of historical events could only be traced in the detailed study of human character and motive. His writing is therefore over burdened with detail which, although it tends to destroy the proper perspective of his work, very accurately portrays the principles underlying his method.
Up to the year 1857 the fame of Guicciardini as a writer, and the estimation of him as a man, depended almost entirely upon the Storia d'Italia, and on a few ill-edited extracts from his aphorisms. At that date the Guicciardini family entrusted to Giuseppe Canestrini the publication of his hitherto inedited mss. The works thus brought to light include (I) the Ricordi politici, consisting of about 400 aphorisms on political and social topics, which illustrate Guicciardini's conviction that man is naturally actuated by the basest motives; (2) the observations on Machi avelli's Discorsi, which very clearly show his lack of political idealism; (3) the Storia Fiorentina, an early work; (4) the Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, also probably an early work, in which the forms of government suited to an Italian commonwealth are discussed, and illustrated by the vicissitudes of Florence up to the year 1494; and (5) Discorsi politici, composed during his Spanish legation. Taken in combination with Machiavelli's trea tises, the Opere inedite furnish a comprehensive body of Italian political philosophy anterior to the date of Fra Paolo Sarpi.
See Rosini's edition of the Storia d' Italia (Io vols., Pisa, 1819) and the Opere inedite (ed. Canestrini, io vols., 1857). Ste also Agostino Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini e it governo Fiorentino (2 vols., Bologna, 1896).