The Plutarchan Option: Leonardo Bruni's Early Career in History, 1405-1414

Abstract

'U I he standard accounts of Leonardo Bruni's involvement in history-writing all have one thing in common: they leap over the period 1405-1414 as largely irrelevant.1 The bare facts in the case may be stated by way of a prologue. In his Laudatio Florentinae urbis (1404), Bruni announced in no uncertain terms his intention of writing a history of Florence, the city he had presumably come to adopt as his own.2 At the beginning of the following year, however, Bruni left Florence to seek employment in the Roman curia. His subsequent period of service to various Popes was to last for ten years, with only one brief interruption.3 During his decade in the curia