FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI. — Historian, political thinker, and statesman. Born in Florence to Piero di Simone Gianfigliazzi on 6 March 1483, died on 22 May 1540. Having obtained his degree in civil law at Pisa in 1505, he practised law successfully until 1511, when the Florentine Republic appointed him ambassador to Spain to King Ferdinand the Catholic. This legation, begun in 1512, concluded in 1514, after which he returned to Florence, where, following the fall of the Republic, he placed himself at the service of Lorenzo de’ Medici. At the latter’s request, Guicciardini was appointed governor of Modena in 1516, a post he held until 1524, his responsibilities gradually extending to Reggio (1517–23) and Parma (1512–22); subsequently, thanks to the protection of Clement VII, he became president of Romagna. It was during this long service to the Pope that dark clouds gathered over the Italian horizon with the resumption in 1521 of the war between Francis I of France and Charles V, allied with Leo X. Personally, Guicciardini was convinced that the true danger for Italy lay in the victory of the “imperials,” who had already taken control of the Milanese, and he championed, amid the shifting policies of the papacy, an alliance of Italian states with the King of France, an alliance formalised at Cognac in 1526. With the collapse of this policy, the sack of Rome in 1527, the fall of the Medici in Florence, and the establishment of a new Republic, Guicciardini came under suspicion and accusation; in 1529 he appeared before the “Eight of Ward,” and in 1530 he was condemned by the “Quarantia.” During the reconstruction of the Florentine government, his programme (a mixed constitution) clashed with the papal programme favouring Medici absolutism, leading to his removal from the city and his appointment as governor of Bologna (1531–34). Later, as Medici policy turned towards the imperials, Guicciardini, now exploited and shunned, retired to his villa at Santa Margherita in Montici, where from 1537 to 1540 he devoted himself to writing his *Storia d’Italia*, the first serious attempt to understand and illustrate in all its complexity the secular life of the peninsula.
Unlike other minds drawn to a multiplicity of interests (Machiavelli himself, with whom he is often—and not always appropriately—compared, was also a man of humanistic and literary impulses), Guicciardini may be said to have been entirely devoted to political responsibility, both in the sphere of practical action and in that of inner reflection. As ambassador, lieutenant, and governor, his life was one of unceasing civic engagement, linked to a continuous critical examination and moral judgment. Thus, if there is a political thinker deeply grounded in experience, it is Guicciardini, constantly led to draw conclusions and to record “memoirs.” Yet this abundance of lived experience, meticulously recorded, while providing a complete picture of his reflections, may inadvertently lend itself to the most varied interpretations, given the difficulty of distinguishing between incidental material and essential elements in reconstructing his authentic ethical and political world. Certainly, the turbulent and shifting phase of Florentine, Italian (one might say European) life at the time, projected onto his personal experience, contributed now to inflating, now to exacerbating, his outlook in one direction or another. This experience, however, is fundamentally, as lived life, the basis and condition of his fragmentary or extended reasoning. Far more than history, which is hard to assess, it is immediate chronicle, everyday reality, that forms the soil from which the flower of his thought springs. A lesson drawn from reality (changes of regime, breaches of agreements, plays of political forces, etc.) that inevitably gave him the measure of human motives, the empire of events, the instinct for “particular interests,” and schooled him in that science of politics whose naked technicism would be increasingly revealed from Machiavelli onward. A fellow student, but often more astute, than Machiavelli, Guicciardini derived a richer set of lessons: his recognition of “reason of state” is evident (the phrase recurs in his writings, though not in Machiavelli’s, to whom the paternity of the formula has nonetheless always been attributed); vivid too is his intuition of the concept of “political class” (the efficacy of an organised minority in the conquest and management of public affairs), which would only much later receive its doctrinal formulation; and above all, Guicciardini’s assessment of the political world of men is lucid, arising more from a “prudence” tied to the relative and the useful than from anything else. Undoubtedly, it is his cold temperament that, even in private life, led him to rigorous intellectual balance, instilling a measure of scepticism and disillusionment into his discourse. He was not stirred by futuristic or bookish schemes (“How different practice is from theory!” *Ric.*, 35), nor warmed by the dream of an “agrarian law” to redress the unequal distribution of wealth (the distinction between “yours” and “mine” seemed to him ineradicable, and “equality” unattainable). Thus, most of the customary exemplary lessons of history seemed to him open to quiet revision (hence his corrections to Machiavelli), and as for the organisation of the Florentine state, his ideal remained (in the *Dialogue on the Government of Florence*) that “mixed government,” which was the not-original formula of most Renaissance politicians.
The perspective of “particular interests” was seen (especially in the 19th century) by Guicciardini’s critics as a facile assertion, if not outright “exacerbation,” of individualism (hence the cliché of Guicciardini as a conservative and “bourgeois” figure). Yet while recent scholarship (U. Spirito, following De Sanctis) has interpreted this stance as an interesting anticipation of the modern “liberal” vision of social life, it may also be observed that this “particular interest” does not, after all, signify the selfish demand of an *homo homini lupus*, indifferent to the community and devoid of higher ideals. Indeed, one must not forget that, while Guicciardini was well aware of human frailty, the empire of fortune, and the allure of opportunity, he also possessed (in contrast to Machiavelli) a vivid and ringing confidence in man’s natural goodness. (“All men, by nature, are inclined more to good than to evil,” *Ric.*, 134); “if anyone is found who by nature is more inclined to do harm than good, one may certainly say that he is not a man but a beast or a monster, since he lacks that inclination which is natural to all men” (*op. cit.*, 135); “all those who derive no greater fruit or satisfaction from doing harm than from doing good are inclined toward good...” (*Dialogue on the Government of Florence*, II; etc.). It is this genuine human tendency that explains, in Guicciardini—despite observations on the evils arising from “opportunities to corrupt or pervert this instinct” (*loc. cit.*)—his widespread appreciation of ethics, honour, and religion (his tributes to the Pope and to faith are not to be dismissed as rhetorical), which, beyond certain sharp expressions of anticlericalism, remained the best and greatest bulwark of individual and collective morality (the supreme end of individual happiness would be to resemble God: *Ric.*, 16).
This certainty cannot be refuted by the very hypothesis that the practical origin of States (constituted power) is violence (Ric., 48), which elsewhere is corrected by the Aristotelian observation that «cities were instituted principally for the security of those who gathered there and to provide the conveniences required by human life» (Dial. del reggim. di Firenze, II). A violent origin, which, consistently, would explain the fatality of the «reason of State» and the bitter conclusion that «States cannot be governed according to conscience» (Ric., 48): since the acknowledgment of something demonic in earthly life, already made, for example, by certain Augustinian currents, does not exclude the possibility of redemption and recovery of the «right path», thanks to the work of true prudent men and upright individuals, who continually strive to overcome private selfishness.
We may conclude that the multiplicity of elements confirmed supports the profound complexity of his experience and argues in favor of a dialectical view of social life, according to which the natural forces of good must clash with the ineluctable seductions of the earthly city, as it is now constituted. This dialectic forms the troubled fabric of history, made of actions and reactions, for which it is even beneficial that a Martin Luther should exist to stimulate the Church’s healing work. The very historiographical inquiry to which he devoted himself from his youth serves as a stern inspection of the centuries-old human process concerning the fate of Italy; yet even if this abundant recording of events and contingencies does not, in the end, strip from the man G. the abiding possibility—amidst contingency—of appealing to his own inner self and dignity as a source of restored moral excellence. The *Consolatoria*, the *Accusatoria*, the *Defensoria*, the *Ricordi* themselves, and the various scattered autobiographical material, all bear witness to a vigilant conscience, an interior monologue, a yearning to transcend the malignity of what has happened, scrutinizing and purging the self in the conquest of a truth equally valid not only for the individual and the community, but also for chronicle and history. Among other works, the *Storia d’Italia* was placed on the Index (7 January 1627).
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QUICCIARDINI, PIERO. – Reformer, descendant of Francesco Guicciardini, b. in Florence on 21 July 1808, d. there on 23 March 1886. In his youth he was close to the group of Tuscan Catholic liberals, acquired notable agrarian-technical knowledge, and also devoted himself to organizing infant schools in Tuscany with keen attention to the theories and practical implementations of his time (Aporti, Naville, etc.). He separated from the Catholic Church (1836) due to an internal crisis, influenced also by friendships with a group of Evangelicals (especially the Genoese Matilde Calandrini); without officially adhering to any Protestant sect, he began attending the services of the Reformed Evangelical Church in Florence. By 1846 he was already a fervent organizer.
For his opposition to the «religion of State» he was imprisoned in 1851. Later, when his confinement was commuted to exile, he resided in England, hosted by the local aristocracy. It was during this stay that G. joined the sect of the Plumptonians or Darbites, recently founded; he later attracted Teodoro Pietricola Rossetti (cousin of the more famous Gabriele Rossetti), who played a significant role in the Darbite mission in Italy. In 1854 G. was rebaptized into the Darbite sect. The same year he returned to Italy and chose Nice, in the Sardinian States, rather than Florence, as his residence. He then systematically began, with some fellow believers, the work of «evangelizing» Italy, alternating his stays in Italy with periods in England and Switzerland. After the crisis of the Grand Ducal government in 1859 he returned to Florence, only to leave again due to the lack of the unlimited religious freedom he had hoped for under Ricasoli. He continued to oversee his evangelizing efforts closely, though he did not align with parallel Protestant initiatives or the formulation of a common creed. In the controversy sparked by Pietricola Rossetti’s pamphlet *Principi della Chiesa romana, della Chiesa protestante e della Chiesa cristiana* (1863), G. declared himself in solidarity with Pietricola, which earned him the ire of other sects. He spent the final years of his life on his estates in Tuscany. In 1885, the year before his death, due to doctrinal and disciplinary disputes, G. separated from the Plumptonian community in Florence. Of limited theological learning, G. based his theories on a blend of Protestant reform and Catholicism, including: the Trinity, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, salvation by grace, justification by faith, anti-papalism, revivalism, and pietism.