Bruni, Leonardo

BRUNI, LEONARDO. - Historian and humanist, b. at Arezzo ca. 1374 (and for this reason also called Leonardo Aretino); he studied with Malpaghini and with Chrysoloras, also frequenting 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, owing to his fame as a Latinist, he obtained a post as secretary in the papal Curia; he was therefore present at the Council of Constance and recounted in an Epistola 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 body was crowned with laurel in the presence of the Florentine people, and the eulogy was delivered by Giannozzo Manetti. Buried in S. Croce, a majestic monument was erected to him, a valuable work of art by B. Rossellino; the inscription was dictated by Carlo Marsuppini: « Postquam Leonardus e vita migravit, Historia Iuget, Eloquentia muta est; ferturque Musas tum Graecas tum Latinas lacrimas tenere non potuisse ».

The work of his whole life was the Historiarum fiorentini populi libri (edited by E. Santini, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, XIX, III, Città di Castello 1914-26), published at Strasbourg in 1610, later translated into the vernacular by Donato Acciaiuoli. The narrative moves from the Roman origins of Florence and reaches the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, which occurred in 1402. Machiavelli in the Storie fiorentine reproached B. for having been "timidly silent" about the factions that most agitated Florentine life, but B. was interested, beyond history, in the absolute elegance of Latin; for the pleasure of modeling his characters on the examples of Livy and Sallust, the Florentines were skillfully dressed up as people of the good old times, with all the solemnity of the classical pallium. But B. considered only "living beings" (cf. De Avaritia) those who had succeeded in being authors or at least translators or disseminators of the eloquence or doctrine proper to the Greco-Roman world. He therefore did not wish to learn the Hebrew language, assuring Poggio Bracciolini that such study was "useless, indeed harmful." Noteworthy are his translations of the Ethics and the Politics of Aristotle and of some dialogues of Plato, and even more so the historical work: De bello italico adversus Gothos. Of greater interest for the knowledge of the man and his times is the Rerum suo tempore gestarum commentarius (edited by C. Di Pierro, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, XIX, III, 1926). Among his other writings, mention should be made of the essay on the value of woman in society: De studiis et literis tractatulus, and the lives of Petrarch and Dante; especially that of the Alighieri is "the work of a wise and grave historian who weighs the facts before accepting them, who makes wide use of written evidence and on that bases his assertions" (G. L. Passerini).

Giovanni Fallani