BRUNI, LEONARDO. — Historian and humanist, born in Arezzo ca. 1374 (and therefore also called Leonardo Aretino); he studied with Malpaghini and with Chrysoloras, attending also the circle of Coluccio Salutati and the periodic meetings and conversations held by the humanists of S. Spirito in the Augustinian convent in Florence. From 1405 to 1415, on account of his fame as a Latinist, he obtained a position as secretary in the papal curia;
he was therefore present at the Council of Constance and recounted in an Epistle to Niccolò Niccoli the events of his journey from Verona to the city of the council. Elected chancellor of the Signoria of Florence in 1417, he held the office until his death, which occurred on 8 March 1444. His remains were crowned with laurel in the presence of the Florentine people, and the eulogy was delivered by Giannozzo Manetti. Buried in Santa Croce, a majestic monument was erected to him, a fine work of art by B. Rossellino; the inscription was composed by Carlo Marsuppini: «Postquam Leonardus e vita migravit, Historia luget, Eloquentia muta est; ferturque Musas tum Graecas tum Latinas lacrimas tenere non potuisse».
The work of his entire life was the *Historiarum florentini populi libri* (ed. E. Santini, in *Rerum italicarum scriptores*, XIX, III, Città di Castello 1914–26), published in Strasbourg in 1610 and later translated into the vernacular by Donato Acciaiuoli. The narrative begins with the Roman origins of Florence and extends to the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1402. Machiavelli, in his *Florentine Histories*, reproached Bruni for having been «timidly silent» about the factions that most agitated Florentine life, but Bruni was interested not only in history but in the absolute elegance of Latin; for his taste in shaping his characters on the models of Livy and Sallust, the Florentines were deftly clothed as people of the good old days, with all the solemnity of classical garb. Yet Bruni considered only «living beings» (cf. *De Avaritia*) those who had succeeded in being authors or at least translators or disseminators of the eloquence or learning of the Greco-Roman world. He therefore refused to learn Hebrew, assuring Poggio Bracciolini that such study was «useless, indeed harmful». Notable among his translations are those of Aristotle’s *Ethics* and *Politics* and some dialogues of Plato, but even more so his historical work *De bello italico adversus Gothos*. Of greater interest for understanding the man and his time is the *Rerum suo tempore gestarum commentarius* (ed. C. Di Pierro, in *Rerum italicarum scriptores*, XIX, III, 1926). Among his other writings, worth recalling is his essay on the value of women in society: *De studiis et literis tractatus*, and the lives of Petrarch and Dante; especially the latter is «the work of a wise and grave historian who weighs facts before accepting them, who makes ample use of written evidence and bases his assertions upon it» (G. L. Passerini).