La politique de l'experience: Savonarole, Guicciardini et le republicanisme florentin.

Jean-Louis Fournel and Jean-Claude Zancarini. La politique de l'experience: Savonarole, Guicciardini et le republicanisme florentin.

Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2002. Pbk. 386 pp. index. bibl. [euro]21. ISBN: 88-7694-563-6.

The common theme of this book is the transforming effect of "the wars of Italy" upon political and historical thinking in Florence. Savonarola and Guicciardini are its protagonists and Machiavelli makes frequent appearances. As the authors point out, moreover, there were a number of other Florentine thinkers who were attempting to think anew about politics, war, political institutions, and history. They shared the sense of living in a new historical epoch and of being engaged in an urgent debate (with past writers as well as with each other). The authors' organizing principle is J.G.A. Pocock's "Machiavellian moment" when, as he put it, "the republic was seen as confronting its own temporal finitude" (The Machiavellian Moment, viii), and they build on the work of Ridolfi, de Caprariis, Gilbert, von Albertini, Rubinstein, Cadoni, and many others as well. However, they offer some fresh insights based on close and perceptive reading of texts. Their treatment of Guicciardini's development as an historian in relation to his career is especially strong.

Part 1 deals with Savonarola's apocalyptic response to the crisis that opened in 1494 with the French invasion of Italy, the overthrow of the Medici in Florence and the ensuing debate on the restoration of republican liberty. Although Machiavelli and Guicciardini gave no credence to Savonarola's messianic vision for Florence and each of them (especially Guicciardini) had reservations about the governo largo the friar championed so resolutely, their writings reflect his influence and they shared his conviction that they were living in new times that required new moral and political solutions. The three were pioneers in grounding political and historical thinking in experience, connecting theoretical reflections and concrete political situations. As for Savonarola, unlike the vague millenarianism of contemporary anonymous and pseudonymous texts, oral prognostications, and mendicant preaching, his was a precise vision, conceived in response to the national and domestic crisis of 1494 and addressed to the specific characteristics and circumstances of the Florentine republic. As such, the authors insist, it owed little to what I myself have described as "the myth of Florence," a secular, traditional celebration of Florence's destiny as the daughter of Rome. In fact, they contend, Savonarola represents the first stage of "deflorentinization," the abandonment of the parochial, civic focus that had long characterized the historical-political thinking of Florentines.

In parts 2 and 3, Fournel and Zancarini demonstrate in great detail the factors that explain Guicciardini's transformation from family and civic-oriented writer of ricordi and commentaries on his beloved city republic to the master observer and stylist who authored the Storia d'Italia. This trajectory from the parochial to the universal was determined by Guicciardini's personal experiences in the Florentine and Italian crises, that long series of mainly distressing events in which he played an active, sometimes decisive, role as a high-level diplomat and administrator, first for Florence then for the papacy. The authors dispute Vittorio de Caprariis's formula "dalla politica alla storia," pointing out that although the balance between action and reflection naturally shifted with the winding down of his public career, Guicciardini was always an observer and commentator as well as a man of action.

All (not "pour partie," as Fournel and Zancarini would have it) of the chapters in this volume were previously published as papers, some as introductions to translations of texts. Fournel and Zancarini have reworked them into a more or less coherent book, although they have not avoided a certain redundancy and considerable repetition, particularly in the chapters on Guicciardini. Moreover, not all the material fits neatly under the central theme, especially in the Savonarola section. They huff and puff about methodology in determining Savonarola's sincerity and his belief in his prophetic inspiration, and their analysis of the "confessions" is not only distracting but already somewhat out of date, since they seem not to have had available the complete edition of the trial record by I. G. Rao, P. Viti, and R. M. Zaccaria, I Processi di Girolamo Savonarola (1498) Florence, 2001.

One could wish for a more comprehensive index and a sturdier binding. In my copy the pages are already falling out.

DONALD WEINSTEIN

University of Arizona