GUICCIARDINI

guicciardini, francesco (1483-1540), the celebrated italian historian and statesman, was born at florence in the year 1483, when marsilio ficino held him at the font of baptism. his family was illustrious and noble; and his ancestors for many generations had held the highest posts of honour in the state, as may be seen in his own genealogical _ricordi autobiografici e di famiglia_ (_op. ined._ vol. x.). after the usual education of a boy in grammar and elementary classical studies, his father, piero, sent him to the universities of ferrara and padua, where he stayed until the year 1505. the death of an uncle, who had occupied the see of cortona with great pomp, induced the young guicciardini to hanker after an ecclesiastical career. he already saw the scarlet of a cardinal awaiting him, and to this eminence he would assuredly have risen. his father, however, checked this ambition, declaring that, though he had five sons, he would not suffer one of them to enter the church in its then state of corruption and debasement. guicciardini, whose motives were confessedly ambitious (see _ricordi, op. ined._ x. 68), turned his attention to law, and at the age of twenty-three was appointed by the signoria of florence to read the _institutes_ in public. shortly afterwards he engaged himself in marriage to maria, daughter of alamanno salviati, prompted, as he frankly tells us, by the political support which an alliance with that great family would bring him (ib. x. 71). he was then practising at the bar, where he won so much distinction that the signoria, in 1512, entrusted him with an embassy to the court of ferdinand the catholic. thus he entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and statesman. his conduct upon that legation was afterwards severely criticized; for his political antagonists accused him of betraying the true interests of the commonwealth, and using his influence for the restoration of the exiled house of medici to power. his spanish correspondence with the signoria (_op. ined._ vol. vi.) reveals the extraordinary power of observation and analysis which was a chief quality of his mind; and in ferdinand, hypocritical and profoundly dissimulative, he found a proper object for his scientific study. to suppose that the young statesman learned his frigid statecraft in spain would be perhaps too simple a solution of the problem offered by his character, and scarcely fair to the italian proficients in perfidy. it is clear from guicciardini's autobiographical memoirs that he was ambitious, calculating, avaricious and power-loving from his earliest years; and in spain he had no more than an opportunity of studying on a large scale those political vices which already ruled the minor potentates of italy. still the school was pregnant with instructions for so apt a pupil. guicciardini issued from this first trial of his skill with an assured reputation for diplomatic ability, as that was understood in italy. to unravel plots and weave counterplots; to meet treachery with fraud; to parry force with sleights of hand; to credit human nature with the basest motives, while the blackest crimes were contemplated with cold enthusiasm for their cleverness, was reckoned then the height of political sagacity. guicciardini could play the game to perfection. in 1515 leo x. took him into service, and made him governor of reggio and modena. in 1521 parma was added to his rule, and in 1523 he was appointed viceregent of romagna by clement vii. these high offices rendered guicciardini the virtual master of the papal states beyond the apennines, during a period of great bewilderment and difficulty. the copious correspondence relating to his administration has recently been published (_op. ined._ vols. vii., viii.). in 1526 clement gave him still higher rank as lieutenant-general of the papal army. while holding this commission, he had the humiliation of witnessing from a distance the sack of rome and the imprisonment of clement, without being able to rouse the perfidious duke of urbino into activity. the blame of clement's downfall did not rest with him; for it was merely his duty to attend the camp, and keep his master informed of the proceedings of the generals (see the correspondence, _op. ined._ vols. iv., v.). yet guicciardini's conscience accused him, for he had previously counselled the pope to declare war, as he notes in a curious letter to himself written in 1527 (_op. ined._, x. 104). clement did not, however, withdraw his confidence, and in 1531 guicciardini was advanced to the governorship of bologna, the most important of all the papallord-lieutenancies (correspondence, _op. ined._ vol. ix.). this post he resigned in 1534 on the election of paul iii., preferring to follow the fortunes of the medicean princes. it may here be noticed that though guicciardini served three popes through a period of twenty years, or perhaps because of this, he hated the papacy with a deep and frozen bitterness, attributing the woes of italy to the ambition of the church, and declaring he had seen enough of sacerdotal abominations to make him a lutheran (see _op. ined._ i. 27, 104, 96, and _ist. d' it._, ed. ros., ii. 218). the same discord between his private opinions and his public actions may be traced in his conduct subsequent to 1534. as a political theorist, guicciardini believed that the best form of government was a commonwealth administered upon the type of the venetian constitution (_op. ined._ i. 6; ii. 130 sq.); and we have ample evidence to prove that he had judged the tyranny of the medici at its true worth (_op. ined._ i. 171, on the tyrant; the whole _storia fiorentina_ and _reggimento di firenze_, ib. i. and iii., on the medici). yet he did not hesitate to place his powers at the disposal of the most vicious members of that house for the enslavement of florence. in 1527 he had been declared a rebel by the signoria on account of his well-known medicean prejudices; and in 1530, deputed by clement to punish the citizens after their revolt, he revenged himself with a cruelty and an avarice that were long and bitterly remembered. when, therefore, he returned to inhabit florence in 1534, he did so as the creature of the dissolute alessandro de' medici. guicciardini pushed his servility so far as to defend this infamous despot at naples in 1535, before the bar of charles