Florence, Renaissance and Early Modern State: Reappraisals

Abstract

Four more books on history of late medieval Florence: an analytical account of Florentine electoral system from 1280 to 1400, two biographies of Coluccio Salutati, chancellor from 1375 to 1406, and a transcript of consultative meetings of Florentine citizens during one year of Salutati's chancellorship, 1401, a key moment for Hans Baron's interpretation of Renaissance. All are fundamental reading for historians of Florence and late medieval commune, scrupulously researched and authoritatively presented, but how do they relate to wider world? Following recent loss of confidence in much-vaunted liberty, republicanism, and modernity of Italian Renaissance, Florence too is somewhat demoded. Here as elsewhere elitism, ritualism, and longue dure'e have taken their toll, leaving Florence no longer precocious but a retarded case of aristocratization or rearistocratization of society that took place throughout Italy in late medieval periodor so it is argued.' Nevertheless, Florence enjoyed one of most developed city economies in late Middle Ages, with a complex society that included a land-based aristocracy, an advanced commercial class thinking in terms of profit and loss, a large administration, and an industrial proletariat. It developed from a pluralistic guild-based commune towards a more unitary and centralized state in fifteenth century and at same time became center of a classical revival that had a wide impact on rest of Europe-from being famous as the source of gold, the fifth essence in 1300, Florence was