Establishing Independence: Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People and Ritual in Fifteenth-Century Florence

Abstract

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a city's foundation story explained where that city fit into the broader world of European politics, particularly in relation to the Emperor and the Papacy. Centuries before the establishment of scientific principles for the evaluation of historical arguments, fifteenth-century historians and their governors were virtually powerless to establish the legitimacy of new historical narratives in the face of opposing textual or political claims. Therefore, cities turned to ritual to establish their latest version of the past as more accurate than all others. In this chapter, the author argues these points using a case study of the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni's presentation of his History of the Florentine People to the Florentine government in 1428 and 1439. Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People presented an historical origin and narrative that gave both theoretical independence and legitimacy to the Florentine Republic. Keywords:European politics; History of the Florentine People ; Leonardo Bruni