Франческо Гвиччардини: Итальян саяхатшысы, тарихшы және мемлекет қайраткері

Italian writer, historian, and politician (1483–1540)
the historian and statesman

Francesco Guicciardini (franˈtʃesko ɡwittʃarˈdiːni; 6 March 1483 – 22 May 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance. In his masterpiece, The History of Italy, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.

Francesco Guicciardini was born on 6 March 1483 in the Italian city of Florence, which was part of the Florentine Republic. He was the third of 11 children of Piero di Iacopo Guicciardini and Simona di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi. The Guicciardini were well established members of the Florentine oligarchy as well as supporters of the Medici family. Influential in Florentine politics, Guicciardini's ancestors had held the highest posts of honour in the state for many generations, as may be seen in his own genealogical Ricordi autobiografici e di famiglia. Piero Guicciardini had studied with the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who stood as his son's godfather. Like his father, Francesco received a fine humanist education and studied the classics, learning both Latin and a little Greek. The boy was sent by his father to study law at the Universities of Ferrara and Padua, where he stayed until the year 1505. The death of an uncle, who had occupied the Diocese of Cortona, induced the young Guicciardini to seek an ecclesiastical career. Thus, the ambitious Guicciardini once again turned his attention to law. At 23, he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to teach legal studies at the Florentine Studio. In 1508, Guicciardini married Maria Salviati, the daughter of Alamanno Salviati, cementing an oligarchical alliance with the powerful Florentine family. In the same year, he wrote the Memorie di famiglia, a family memoir of the Guicciardini family, the Storie Fiorentine (Tales of Florence), and began his Ricordi, a collection of personal maxims and reflections.

Having distinguished himself in the practice of law, Guicciardini was entrusted by the Florentine Signoria with an embassy to the court of the King of Aragon, Ferdinand the Catholic, in 1512. He had doubts about accepting the position because it came with so little profit and would disrupt his law practice and take him away from the city. However, Francesco's father convinced him of the court’s prestige and the honour of having been chosen at such a young age. "No one could remember at Florence that such a young man had ever been chosen for such an embassy", he wrote in his diary. Thus Guicciardini started his career as a diplomat and statesman. His Spanish correspondence with the Signoria reveals his power of observation and analysis, a chief quality of his mind. Guicciardini eventually returned home to Florence, where he took up his law practice again; in 1514, he served as a member of the Otto di Balìa, who controlled internal security, and in 1515, he served on the Signoria, the highest Florentine magistracy.

Like many Florentine aristocrats of his day, Guicciardini believed in a mixed republican government based on the model of the Venetian constitution; despite working so often and closely with the Medici, he viewed their rule as tyrannical. Guicciardini was still able to reconcile his republican ideals and his support of the Medici: "The equality of men under a popular government is by no means contradicted if one citizen enjoys greater reputation than another, provided it proceed from the love and reverence of all, and can be withheld by the people at their pleasure. Indeed, without such supports, republics can hardly last." Shortly after the Sack of Rome, Guicciardini returned to Florence, but by 1527, the Medici had been expelled from the city, and a republic had been re established by the extreme anti Medici Arrabiati faction. Because of his close ties to the Medici, Guicciardini was held suspect in his native city. In March 1530, as a result of his service to the Medici, Guicciardini was declared a rebel and had his property confiscated. This final Florentine Republic did not last long, however, and after enduring the Siege of Florence by imperial troops for nine months, in 1530 the city capitulated. Under the command of Clement VII, Guicciardini was assigned the task of punishing the Florentine citizens for their resistance to the Medici, and he dealt out justice mercilessly to those who had opposed the will of the Pope. Benedetto Varchi claimed that in carrying out his task, "Messer Francesco Guicciardini was more cruel and more ferocious than the others".

In 1531, Guicciardini was assigned the governorship of Bologna, the most important city in the northern Papal States by Clement VII. Guicciardini resigned after Clement's death in 1534 and returned to Florence, where he was enlisted as advisor to Alessandro de' Medici, "whose position as duke had become less secure following the death of the pope". He assisted in successfully negotiating the marriage of Alessandro to the emperor Charles V’s daughter Margaret of Parma in 1536, and for a short time Gucciardini was the most trusted advisor to Alessandro until the Duke's assassination in 1537. Then, Guicciardini allied himself with Cosimo de' Medici, who was just 17 and new to the Florentine political system. Guicciardini supported Cosimo as duke of Florence; nevertheless, Cosimo dismissed him shortly after rising to power. Guicciardini retired to his villa in Arcetri, where he spent his last years working on the Storia d'Italia. He died in 1540 without male heirs. His nephew, Lodovico Guicciardini, was also a historian known for his 16th century works on the Low Countries.

Guicciardini is best known as the author of the Storia d'Italia (History of Italy), which provides a detailed account of politics in the Italian Peninsula between 1490 and 1534. Written during the last years of his life, this work contains the historian's observations collected over his entire lifetime and was a work intended for posterity. As Gilbert writes: "The History of Italy stands apart from all his writings because it was the one work which he wrote not for himself, but for the public." In his research, Guicciardini drew upon material that he gathered from government records as well as from his own extensive experience in politics. His many personal encounters with powerful Italian rulers serves to explain his perspective as a historian: "Francesco Guicciardini might be called a psychological historian—for him the motive power of the huge clockwork of events may be traced down the mainspring of individual behavior. Not any individual, be it noted, but those in positions of command: emperors, princes and popes who may be counted on to act always in terms of their self interest—the famous Guicciardinian particolare." Inn the following excerpt, the historian records his observations on the character of Pope Clement VII: "And although he had a most capable intelligence and marvelous knowledge of world affairs, yet he lacked the corresponding resolution and execution. For he was impeded not only by his timidity of spirit, which was by no means small, and by a strong reluctance to spend, but also by a certain innate irresolution and perplexity, so that he remained almost always in suspension and ambiguous when he was faced with those deciding those thing which from afar he had many times foreseen, considered, and almost revealed." Moreover, what sets Guicciardini apart from other historians of his time is his understanding of historical context. His approach was already evident in his early work The History of Florence (1509): "The young historian was already doubtlessly aware of the meaning of historical perspective; the same facts acquiring different weight in different contexts, a sense of proportion was called for." In the words of one of Guicciardini's severest critics, Francesco de Sanctis: "If we consider intellectual power [the Storia d'Italia] is the most important work that has issued from an Italian mind."

Guicciardini was friends with Niccolò Machiavelli; the two maintained a lively correspondence until the latter's death in 1527. Guicciardini had a somewhat higher social standing than his friend, but through their letters, a relaxed, comfortable relationship between the two emerges. "Aware of their difference in class, Machiavelli nevertheless was not intimidated by Guicciardini's offices or by his aristocratic connections. The two established their rapport because of mutual regard for each other's intellect." They discussed personal matters and political ideas and influenced each other's work. Guicciardini was critical of some of the ideas expressed by Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy: "Guicciardini's principal objection to the theories which Machiavelli advanced in the Discourses was that Machiavelli put things 'too absolutely.' Guicciardini did not agree with Machiavelli's basic assumption that Rome could serve as a perfect norm." Both were innovative in their approach to history:"Machiavelli and Guicciardini are important transitional figures in the development of historical writing. The historical consciousness that becomes visible in their work is a significant rupture in our thinking about the past Human agency was a central element in the historical thought of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, but they did not have a modern notion of individuality They started to disentangle historiography from its rhetorical framework, and in Guicciardini's work we can observe the first traces of a critical historical method."