The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence. By Brian Maxson.New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. x+302. $95.00 (cloth); $76.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).

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Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsThe Humanist World of Renaissance Florence. By Brian Maxson.New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. x+302. $95.00 (cloth); $76.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).Elizabeth McCahillElizabeth McCahillUniversity of Massachusetts Boston Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Humanist World of Renaissance Florence offers exciting new insights on a familiar topic. Florence has long been seen as a Renaissance capital, where art, literature, and scholarship combined to create a dazzling cultural efflorescence. However, much of the recent work on the Renaissance has argued or acknowledged that this cultural phenomenon was limited to a small elite.In response to such arguments, Brian Maxson presents a compelling body of evidence to prove that the Renaissance, or at least the humanist scholarship that was one of its key components, had a widespread impact in fifteenth-century Florence. He does this by broadening the definition of the term “humanist,” typically used to describe authors who wrote original works in Latin and sought to revive a classical rhetorical style. Maxson acknowledges that the number of such individuals (whom he terms “literary humanists”) was relatively small. He argues, however, that a far broader group of Florentines (“social humanists”) participated in the humanist movement in some way. They were friends with literary humanists and sometimes their patrons. They appear in humanist dialogues and were the addressees of letters from luminaries like Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, and Giannozzo Manetti. They collected classical texts and either studied with or sent their sons to study with literary humanists. Maxson’s goal in The Humanist World is to illustrate the importance of social humanists to the humanist movement and thus to redefine the role humanism played in Quattrocento Florentine society.The book begins with an excellent introduction, which situates Maxson’s work within the context of recent scholarship on Florentine humanism. After outlining the sorts of personal and literary connections that can be retraced with the surviving evidence (chap. 1), Maxson discusses the social humanists’ varying degrees of engagement with humanism in chapter 2 and delves into the social and economic status of these individuals in chapter 3. (Maxson includes approximately one hundred individuals in his category of social humanist.) These chapters, and the book as a whole, showcase an impressive and painstaking process of detective work. Maxson has combed published and unpublished letters, book inventories, humanist texts, and specialized biographical works to find evidence of interest in humanism. By the end of chapter 3, he builds a powerful case that a wide range of Florentine men (most of them patricians, but only some of them from the uppermost echelons of society) were involved in classical scholarship. He also situates this intellectual interest within the complex ties that other scholars have identified as quintessentially Florentine. Whether learned friendships complemented and augmented an individual’s neighborhood, familial, and political allegiances or ran counter to them, Maxson persuades the reader that they were a natural addition to the dense webs of interconnection among Renaissance Florentines.The second part of The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence traces one of the primary ways in which humanists used their rhetorical skills: in diplomatic missions, especially missions to major courts. In chapter 4, drawing on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Marcel Mauss, Maxson argues that the panegyrics that began a diplomatic mission represented an important cultural gift, which augmented “symbolic capital for the diplomats, Florence, and the host ruler” (92). Increasingly over the course of the fifteenth century, the most successful diplomatic orations were those that showcased classical learning, but this did not mean that Florence always sent its most skilled rhetoricians abroad. In chapters 5, 6, and 7, Maxson explores the balance between status and rhetorical ability in diplomatic appointments. For the most part, because of their parvenu social status, literary humanists were not considered suitable for diplomatic missions; instead, they exhibited their talents in the domestic political arena. It was the social humanists who were chosen for prominent diplomatic positions, and their humanistic abilities became increasingly important over the course of the two periods Maxson examines, 1400–55 and 1456–85. According to Maxson, “Diplomacy suggests that, as more people pursued humanist letters, the prestige attached to a learned reputation increased and fundamentally altered the way people could increase their social and political status in Renaissance Florence” (129). By the election of Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, Bartolomeo Scala, the son of a miller, was considered the most appropriate Florentine to congratulate the new pontiff.Maxson’s arguments about the development of Florentine and Italian diplomacy are fascinating, in large part because they are so nuanced. He convinces his reader because he is careful not to overemphasize the importance of humanism in the diachronic story he tells. This reader would have appreciated more examples; chapters 6 and 7 contain compelling passages from specific orations, but more and longer quotations would have helped clarify the significance of the humanistic infiltration of diplomatic rhetoric. Maxson may also overstate his case when he claims that “the driving force behind the spread of the humanist movement was the search for social status” (180). As he himself repeatedly notes, most of his actors are mute, and thus it is difficult to reconstruct their reasons for pursuing humanist studies.One other potential criticism of the book has to do with readability. The wealth of prosopographical information Maxson has accumulated is impressive, but it does not make for easy reading, particularly in chapters 2 and 3. This is due primarily to the nature of the evidence. For scholars, the picture that emerges at the end of these chapters is well worth the effort they demand, but they are unlikely to appeal to undergraduates or nonspecialist graduate students.In spite of these minor reservations, this is an important, erudite, compelling book. It will change the ways in which modern scholars think about humanism and its role in Renaissance Italian society. More generally, The Humanist World offers an exciting example of how the techniques of social history can expand the scope of intellectual history and the questions of intellectual history can enrich the materials used by social historians. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 89, Number 1March 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690171 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.