Politics, history and republican institutions in the first Quattrocento: Florence by Leonardo Bruni

Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), chancellor and historian, is the author of one of the main praises of the city of Florence of this period. In writing to Laudatio florentinae urbis (1403-1404), the humanist describes Florence and its government as a well-ordered, beautiful, wholesome, free and participatory city. The paper analyzes this text not only as a rhetorical piece, but highlights the republican ideals of freedom, self-government and citizenship. From an institutional point of view, Laudatio offers the foundations of mixed government, which would become a central aspect of Renaissance republicanism. From the ancients, Bruni removes the idea of the division of powers from the classic triad monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, with the separation of functions in each of these pure forms. Bruni points out that both aspects of antiquity can be found in the Florentine institutions of his time, in such a way that he observes in the historical fact the realization of an ancient political theory, complementing, therefore, the idealization of the city.