Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-n7pht Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T23:01:59.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Patrician Sages and the Humanist Cynic: Francesco Filelfoand the Ethics of World Citizenship*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

W. Scott Blanchard
W. Scott Blanchard*
Affiliation:
Misericordia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The fifteenth-century humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481) spent much of the period from 1429 to 1444 involved with Florentine politics, becoming a strong advocate on behalf of the patrician oligarchs, many of whom were exiled in 1434 at the return of Cosimo de’ Medici from eleven months of exile. Filelfo’s works from the period, including his satires, the Oratio ad exules, and the consolatory treatise entitled Commentationes Florentinae de exilio, were a response to the Florentine political crisis. Filelfo demonstrates in these works not only a rhetorical and political purpose on behalf of his patrons, but also takes the opportunity to reflect on the notion of world citizenship, a philosophical concept derived largely from Stoic and Cynic sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 1107 - 1169
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research for this essay was supported by grants from The Renaissance Society of America/Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento and the College Misericordia Faculty Development Committee, to both of whom I am grateful. An earlier version of the paper was discussed at the Wesleyan University Seminar on the Renaissance, and I wish to thank Laurie Nussdorfer, Marcello Simonetta, and John Paoletti for the invitation to present there. I also wish to thank David Marsh, Diana Robin, Riccardo Fubini, Chris Celenza, Silvia Fiaschi, and an anonymous reader for helping me at various stages of my work on Filelfo. Citations of Filelfo’s letters are from both the Venice 1502 edition, and from ms. Triv 873. Quotations from the Satyrae are given in English translation in the text, and cited in the footnotes by book (decade), hecatostich, and line number(s); the footnotes also give the Latin, cited by page number in Fiaschi’s edition for decades 1–5, or by folio number of the Milan 1476 editio princeps for decades 6–10. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. I have used the following abbreviations for libraries in citations of manuscripts: Amb = Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana; Triv = Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana; FBN = Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale; BMawr = Special Collections, Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania.

References

Adam, Rudolf Georg. “Francesco Filelfo at the Court of Milan (1439–1481): A Contribution to the Study of Humanism in Northern Italy.” PhD diss., Oxford University, 1974.Google Scholar
Albanese, Gabriella. “Le raccolte poetiche latine di Francesco Filelfo.” In Francesco Filelfo nel quinto centenario della morte (1986), 389–458.Google Scholar
Alberti, Leon Battista. Opera inedita et pauca separatim impressa. Ed. Girolamo Mancini. Florence, 1890.Google Scholar
Alberti, Leon Battista. Intercenales. Ed. Franco Bacchelli and Luca D’Ascia. Bologna, 2003.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York, 2006.Google Scholar
Baron, Hans. From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni: Studies in Humanistic and Political Literature. Chicago, 1968.Google Scholar
Becker, Marvin. Florence in Transition. 2 vols. Baltimore, 1968.Google Scholar
Belle, Lawrence. “A Renaissance Patrician: Palla di Nofri Strozzi, 1372–1462.” PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1972.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens. Cambridge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
W. Scott, Blanchard. “The Negative Dialectic of Lorenzo Valla: A Study in the Pathology of Opposition.” Renaissance Studies 14, no. 2 (2000) : 149 – 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boschetto, Luca. Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze: biografia, storia, letteratura. Florence, 2000.Google Scholar
Brennan, Timothy. At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Today. Cambridge, MA, 1997.Google Scholar
Alison M, Brown. “The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici, Pater Patriae.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961) : 186 – 221 Google Scholar
Brucker, Gene. The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, 1977.Google Scholar
Bruni, Leonardo. Epistolarum libri VIII. Ed. L. Mehus. 2 vols. Florence, 1741.Google Scholar
Bruni, Leonardo. Leonardo Brunis Rede auf Nanni Strozzi. Ed. Susanne Daub. Stuttgart, 1996.Google Scholar
Bruni, Leonardo. Laudatio Florentine Urbis. Ed. Stefano Baldassarri. Florence, 2000.Google Scholar
Aristide, Calderini. “Ricerche intorno alla biblioteca e alla cultura greca di Francesco Filelfo.” Studi italiani di filologia classica 20 (1913) : 204 – 424 Google Scholar
G, Canestrini. “Versi fatti da Niccolò da Uzzano, predicendo la mutazione dello stato.” Archivio storico italiano 4 (1843) : 285 – 300 Google Scholar
Gian Mario, Cao. “Tra politica fiorentina e filosofia ellenistica: il dibattito sulla ricchezza nelle Commentationes di Francesco Filelfo.” Archivio storico italiano 155 (1997) : 99 – 126 Google Scholar
Gian Mario, Cao. “The Prehistory of Modern Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus in Fifteenth-Century Italy.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 64 (2001) : 229 – 80Google Scholar
Cavalcanti, Guido. Istorie Fiorentine. Ed. Guido di Pino. Milan, 1944Google Scholar
Chittolini, Giorgio. “Il ‘privato,’ il ‘pubblico,’ lo Stato.” In Origini dello Stato: Processi di formazione statale in Italia fra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera, 553–89. Bologna, 1994.Google Scholar
Cicero. On Ends. Trans. H. Rackham. 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA, 1931.Google Scholar
A, D’Addario. “Acciaiuoli, Angelo.” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 1 (1960) : 77.Google Scholar
Fred, Dallmayr. “Cosmopolitanism: Moral and Political.” Political Theory 31 (2003) : 421 – 42Google Scholar
Davies, Jonathan. Florence and Its University during the Early Renaissance. Leiden, 1998.Google Scholar
Martin, Davies. “An Emperor without Clothes? Niccolò Niccoli under Attack.” Italia medioevale e umanistica 30 (1987) : 95 – 148 Google Scholar
Laura, De Feo Corso. “Il Filelfo in Siena.” Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria n.s. 11 (1940) : 181 – 209, 292 – 316 Google Scholar
Dio Chrysostom. Discourses 12–30. Trans. J. W. Cohoon. Cambridge, MA, 1939.Google Scholar
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Philosophers. Trans. R. D. Hicks. 2. vols. Rev. ed., Cambridge, MA, 1950.Google Scholar
Carlo, Errera. “Le Commentationes Florentinae de exilio di Francesco Filelfo.” Archivio storico italiano series 5, no. 5 (1890) : 193 – 227 Google Scholar
Fabroni, Angelo. Pallantis Stroctii Vita. Parma, 1802.Google Scholar
Ferraù, Giacomo. “Le Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.” In Francesco Filelfo nel quinto centenario della morte (1986), 369–88.Google Scholar
Silvia, Fiaschi. “Prima e dopo la raccolta: Diffusione e circolazione delle Satyrae di Francesco Filelfo.” Medioevo e Rinascimento 14 (2000) : 147 – 65Google Scholar
Silvia, Fiaschi. “Autocommento ed interventi d’autore nelle Satyrae del Filelfo: l’esempio del codice Viennese 3303.” Medioevo e Rinascimento 16 (n.s. 13) (2002) : 113 – 88Google Scholar
Fiaschi, Silvia. “Deformazioni storiche e propaganda politica negli scritti antimedicei di Francesco Filelfo.” In Il principe e la storia: Atti del convegno Scandiano 18–20 Settembre 2003, ed. Tina Mattarese and Cristina Montagnani, 415–37. Scandiano, 2005.Google Scholar
Arthur, Field. “Leonardo Bruni, Florentine Traitor? Bruni, the Medici, and an Aretine Conspiracy of 1437.” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1998) : 1109 – 50Google Scholar
Filelfo, Francesco. Satyrae. Milan, 1476.Google Scholar
Filelfo, Francesco. Epistolarum familiarum libri XXX–VII. Venice, 1502.Google Scholar
Filelfo, Francesco. Cent-dix letters grecques de Francois Philelphe. Ed. and trans. Emile Legrand. Paris, 1892.Google Scholar
Filelfo, Francesco. De psychagogia: Editio princeps dal Laurenziano 58, 15. Ed. Guido Cortassa and Enrico V. Maltese. Alessandria, 1997.Google Scholar
Filelfo, Francesco. Satyrae I (Decadi I–V). Ed. Silvia Fiaschi. Rome, 2005.Google Scholar
Fiocco, Giuseppe. “La Biblioteca di Palla Strozzi.” In Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore di Tammaro de Marinis, 2:289–310. Verona, 1964.Google Scholar
Francesco Filelfo nel quinto centenario della morte: Atti del XVIII Convegno di Studi Maceratesi. Ed. Rino Avesani et al. Padua, 1986.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. Umanesimo e secolarizzazione da Petrarca a Valla. Rome, 1990.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. “Cultura umanistica e tradizione cittadina nella storiografica fiorentina del ‘400.” In La storiografica umanistica, 1:399–433. Messina, 1992a.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. “Contestazioni quattrocentesche della Donazione di Costantino: Niccolà Cusano, Lorenzo Valla.” In Costantino il grande, dall’antichità all’umanesimo, ed. Giorgio Bonamente and Franca Fusco, 1:385–431. Macerata, 1992b.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. Quattrocento fiorentino: Politica, diplomazia, cultura. Pisa, 1996.Google Scholar
Garin, Eugenio. Prosatori latini del Quattrocento. Milan, 1952.Google Scholar
Gigante, Marcello. “Ambrogio Traversari interprete di Diogenio Laerzio.” In Ambrogio Traversari nel VI centenario della nascita: convegno internazionale di studi, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 367–460. Florence, 1988.Google Scholar
Erving, Goffman. “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor.” American Anthropologist 58, no. 3 (1956) : 473 – 502 Google Scholar
Gregory, Heather. “Palla Strozzi’s Patronage and Pre-Medicean Florence.” In Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (1987), 201–20.Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul F. Critics of the Italian World, 1530–60: Anton Francesco Dono, Nicolò Franco, and Ortensio Lando. Madison, 1969.Google Scholar
Germano, Gualdo. “Francesco Filelfo e la curia pontificia: una carriera mancata.” Archivio della società romana di storia patria 102 (1979) : 189 – 236 Google Scholar
Gualdo Rosa, Lucia. “La struttura dell’ epistolario Bruniano.” In Leonardo Bruni cancelliere della Reppublica di Firenze, ed. Paolo Viti, 368–89. Florence, 1990.Google Scholar
Guasti, Cesare. Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi per il Comune di Firenze dal MCCCXCIX al MCCCCXXXIII. 3 vols. Florence, 1867–73.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. 2 vols. Boston, 1984.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA, 1991.Google Scholar
Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, MA, 1963.Google Scholar
Ianziti, Gary. Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan. Oxford, 1988.Google Scholar
Victoria, Kahn. “Habermas, Machiavelli, and the Humanist Critique of Ideology.” Publications of the Modern Language Association 105 (1990) : 464 – 76Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Perpetual Peace and Other Essays. Trans. Ted Humphrey. Indianapolis, 1983.Google Scholar
Kent, Dale. The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426–1434. Oxford, 1978.Google Scholar
Kent, Dale, and Francis William Kent. Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaissance Florence: The District of the Red Lion in the Fifteenth Century. Locust Valley, 1982.Google Scholar
Kent, Francis William, and Patricia Simons. “Renaissance Patronage: An Introductory Essay.” In Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (1987), 1–21.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. History of Florence. Trans. M. Walter Dunne. New York, 1960.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, 1981.Google Scholar
Malherbe, Abraham J., ed. The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition. Missoula, 1977.Google Scholar
Mancini, Girolamo. Francesco Griffolini, cognominato Francesco Aretino. Florence, 1890.Google Scholar
Martines, Lauro. The Social World of the Italian Humanists, 1390–1460. Princeton, 1963.Google Scholar
Martines, Lauro. Strong Words: Writing and Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, 2001.Google Scholar
Najemy, John, ed. Italy in the Age of the Renaissance. Oxford, 2004.Google Scholar
Najemy, John, ed. A History of Renaissance Florence. Malden, MA, 2006.Google Scholar
Martha, Nussbaum. “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Political Philosophy 5 (1997) : 1 – 25 Google Scholar
Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy. Ed. F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons. Canberra, 1987.Google Scholar
Plutarch. Vol. 7 of Plutarch’s Moralia. Trans. Phillip DeLacy and Benedict Einarson. Cambridge, MA, 1959.Google Scholar
Poliziano, Angelo. I Detti Piacevoli. Ed. Mariano Fresta. Siena, 1985.Google Scholar
Diana, Robin. “A Reassessment of the Character of Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481).” Renaissance Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1983) : 202 – 24Google Scholar
Diana, Robin. “Humanist Politics or Vergilian Poetics? Filelfo’s Odes 2.2 and 3.4.” Rinascimento 2nd series, 25 (1985) : 101 – 25Google Scholar
Robin, Diana. Filelfo in Milan: Writings 1451–77. Princeton, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romano, Ruggiero. Tra Due Crisi: l’Italia del Rinascimento. Turin, 1971.Google Scholar
Rosmini, Carlo de’. Vita di Francesco Filelfo da Tolentino. 3 vols. Milan, 1808.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Nicolai. The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494). Oxford, 1966.Google Scholar
Remigio, Sabbadini. “Notizie su la vita e gli scritti di alcuni dotti umanisti del sec. XV.” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 5 (1885) : 162 – 69Google Scholar
Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. New York, 1994.Google Scholar
Schofield, Malcolm. The Stoic Idea of the City. Chicago, 1991.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven, 1990.Google Scholar
Simonetta, Marcello. Rinascimento Segreto: Il mondo del Segretario da Petrarca a Machiavelli. Milan, 2004.Google Scholar
Vasoli, Cesare. “Le Commentationes de exilio di Francesco Filelfo.” In Exil et Civilisation en Italie (XII ème –XVI ème siècles), ed. Jacques Heers and Christian Bec, 119–34. Nancy, 1990.Google Scholar
Vespasiano da Bisticci. Vite. Ed. Aulo Greco. 2 vols. Florence, 1970–76.Google Scholar
Viti, Paolo. Leonardo Bruni e Firenze: Studi sulle lettere pubbliche e private. Rome, 1992.Google Scholar
Paolo, Viti. “Filelfo, Francesco.” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 47 (1997) : 613 – 26Google Scholar
Massimo, Zaggia. “Indice de De iocis et seriis Filelfiano.” Rinascimento (second series) 34 (1994) : 157 – 235 Google Scholar
Zippel, Giuseppe. “Il Filelfo a Firenze (1429–1434).” In Storia e cultura del Rinascimento italiano, ed. Gianni Zippel, 215–53. Padua, 1979.Google Scholar