Bøker av Francesco Guicciardini

A collection of writings by papal advisor and historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540), including letters, treatises, reports, and orations spanning his long career in service to the Medici.

A scholarly edition of works by Francesco Guicciardini. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This is the first translation into English of Guicciardini's Dialogue on the Government of Florence. Written in the early 1520s by the author of the famous History of Italy, as well as a History of Florence and Political Maxims and Reflections, this dialogue presents what is arguably the most searching and comprehensive analysis of the politics of his times. Like Machiavelli, his contemporary and friend, Guicciardini rejects classical republican arguments in the name of the new political realism and acknowledges the important role of patronage and graft in contemporary politics and the illegitimacy of nearly all forms of political power. In this Dialogue he provides one of the clearest expositions of the term 'reason of state', which he was one of the first to employ and which he uses to justify the priority of state interest over private morality and religion.

"In the history of Renaissance thought, Guicciardini's Ricordi occupy a place of singular importance. Few works of the sixteenth century allow us so penetrating an insight into the views and sentiments of its author as these reflections of the great Italian historian... Like Machiavelli's Prince, the Ricordi form one of the outstanding documents of a time of crisis and transition; but unlike the Prince, they range over a wide field of private as well as public life. In doing so, they revel the man as well as the political theorist."-Nicolai Rubenstein, from the Introduction "Unlike Machiavelli-inveterate dreamer and cynic-Guicciardini's mind is remarkable for the balance and masterly coolness of its judgment."-Federico Chabod