Description:
FIRST EDITION. A "masterpiece of scientific history," Guicciardini's History of Italy was "undoubtedly the greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the modern era. It remains the most solid monument of Italian reason in the 16th century, the final triumph of that Florentine school of philosophical historians which included Machiavelli …" (Britannica, 11th ed.).Born in Florence, Francesco Guicciardini's colleagues and contemporaries included Niccolò Machiavelli, Girolamo Savonarola, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and popes Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III. Oliver Goldsmith wrote of him: "He was at once (what seldom happens to be united in the same person) a scholar, a soldier, and a politician." This lent him a unique perspective on the history of the powerful nation-state of Florence and the role of Italy in Europe at the turning of the sixteenth century. The Historia d'Italia was the first to discuss the Italian peninsula as a unified entity among the other nation-states in… Read More