Francesco Bruni, La citta divisa. Le parti e il bene comune da Dante a Guicciardini.

Cervigni, Dino S.

Francesco Bruni, La citta divisa. Le parti e il bene comune da Dante a Guicciardini. Collezione di testi e di studi. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Pp. 620.

The name of the distinguished Italianist Francesco Bruni appears as author or collaborator of several volumes reviewed in this section of AdI's twenty-first issue. Among all these, this volume--La citta divisa. Le parti e il bene comune da Dante a Guicciardini--is by far the most demanding intellectually and most ambitious in scope. Chronologically, the author ranges from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, as the subtitle indicates; and yet, primarily in the introduction and conclusion, he makes challenging remarks drawn from his specific field of inquiry that he appropriately applies to our contemporary time. The study concerns politics, primarily the development and the (apparent) disappearance of political parties as the Italian peninsula's states moved from the medieval comune to the signoria. At the same time, Bruni draws very effectively from works of poetry, theology, ethics, philosophy, figurative arts, and virtually all cultural productions of the centuries he examines and beyond. It is precisely this specific, and yet broadly contextualized focus that allows the author to deal not just with history and politics per se, but also to analyze the political development of Italian cities from such a comprehensive view as to qualify this volume as a study, not just of the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance, but rather of Italy's cultural and intellectual history from a European perspective.

The introduction ("Premessa" 9-18) contextualizes the notion expressed by the title, La citta divisa, from medieval to Renaissance times; it does so with an overture toward the function of parte and partiti (but also such related notions as setta, fazione, patriota, and partigiano) in our contemporary time, as if the medieval city's internal divisions had not disappeared at all with the institution of signoria in the late Renaissance. Quoting Count Giovanni Gozzadini who in 1875, shortly after Italy's unification, wrote about Italy's urban towers as physical reminders of past "civili discordie" that he wished would never again occur in the newborn Italy, Bruni matter-of-factly points to contemporary Italy's "civili discordie" as discussed in a recent text: Norberto Bobbio's and Maurizio Viroli's Dialogo intorno alla repubblica (Roma: Laterza, 2001). Somewhat polemically, Bruni points out how the two distinguished scholars see in contemporary Italy the coexistence of two notions of a country ("due Italie"), shared by two opposing factions, each one claiming for itself the right to represent the entire nation's common good. Bruni cleverly fends off the objection that to claim the existence of "due Italie distinte" may belong to any normal debate of ideas: "Sostengo invece che una simile posizione del problema dipende da alcuni caratteri della storia italiana che sono diventati storiografia e ideologia a causa di una riflessione critica assolutamente insufficiente [...]" (12), a notion that constitutes precisely--Bruni adds--one of the volume's theses. To clarify his critical position, Bruni, surprisingly, but also refreshingly, comments on the divisions created within the United States by the Vietnam War, commemorated by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, "senza distinzioni di razza, fede o sesso" (13): a notion, therefore, that seeks to go beyond all political differences and recognize equality to all. Referring once again to Bobbio's and Viroli's Dialogo, Bruni further objects to the two scholars' trenchant comments about the Italians' "cattiva educazione religiosa" (Dialogo 37), viewed by both as "una malattia della vita civile italiana" (Bruni 14). Bruni views this negative comment as tendentious and cliched, since it was expressed, for instance, by the Swiss Simonde de Sismondi and refuted by Alessandro Manzoni. Precisely at this juncture Bruni makes a very bold claim, whose validity the entire volume seeks to demonstrate: "Certo che intendere la religione in termini puramente negativi elimina dalla storia italiana, anche intellettuale e culturale, non solo cio che e frutto della cultura religiosa, ma anche cio che deriva dall'incontro del classicismo umanistico con il cristianesimo, e cioe quasi tutto. Fatta questa sottrazione, resta molto poco" (14; my emph.). To be sure, Bruni allows also for the presence of a gray area: "[...] una zona grigia, mista di valori e insufficienze, di bene e male, di buone intenzioni e cadute, con tentativi e successi parziali [...]" (16).

After further objecting to Bobbio's and Viroli's political and ideological posturing (15), Bruni clarifies the volume's thesis, amply demonstrated by the four central chapters (Chs. 2-5). As political factions and parties tore apart medieval and Renaissance Italy, another social, indeed religious, institution gradually arose with the purpose of fostering that unity and harmony that political parties were intent on destroying time and again. Bruni refers to such religious institutions as "il mondo dell'Osservanza" or the world of the Observance and the Observants; namely, those religious orders--primarily those who recognized St. Francis as their founder, but also the Dominicans--whose members sought "con le parole e le opere l'obbedienza (o, appunto, osservanza) della regola originaria," especially in its strictest form (16).

To the members of religious orders, especially itinerant and charismatic Franciscan and Dominican preachers, Bruni attributes the merit of having often opposed the political parties' divisions, thereby attaining that reconciliation that secular magistrates and leaders were either unable to obtain or could obtain only through the exile of so many citizens. (On the issue of exile, see Annali d'italianistica 20 [2002], devoted to this topic.) Considerations of the common good, therefore, were very important, whether their scope was limited to the city (Remigio dei Girolami) or sought to comprehend the whole of humankind (Dante). In brief, Francesco Bruni analyzes the world of the Observance not just in itself, but in its close relation with the intellectual and literary world of the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. The volume's six chapters succeed in achieving this purpose eminently well.

Chapter 1 (19-144) focuses on the parties or rather the "spirito fazioso"--as well as their counterpart: the pursuit of the common good--of the medieval comuni, which Bruni examines through treatises (Bartolo da Sassoferrato; Remigio dei Girolami), figurative representations (Lorenzetti's frescoes in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena), literary works (Dante's Comedy), and historical documents. He concludes this chapter with valid considerations--based on writings and written testimony, respectively--of two figures known only to the cognoscenti: a Jew from Rome (Immanuel Romano) and a tailor from Treviso (mastro Manfredino).

The chapters that follow focus on the world of the Observance: its birth and diffusion; the function and language of sermons and religious images; the female religious orders; books and libraries; etc. (Ch. 2, "Nascita e affermazione dell'Osservanza," pp. 145-250); the preachers in Quattrocento Italy (especially Giovanni da Capestrano, Bernardino da Siena, Savonarola), but also such institutions as Monte di Pieta (Ch. 3, "Predicatori nel mondo italiano del Quattrocento," pp. 251-341); sacred and profane images and Christ's monogram (Ch. 4, "Immagini sacre, immagini profane, monogramma di Cristo," pp. 343-403); and then again images and signs of the Observance, from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries, focusing primarily on the humanists and the members of the religious orders portrayed in Masuccio Salernitano, Bandello, and Luigi da Porto's tale of Juliet and Romeo (Ch. 5, pp. 405-58).

After shedding light on the world of the Observance and its function in the civic life of the Italian cities, in the sixth and final chapter Bruni returns to a territory more familiar to most readers; namely, Machiavelli (459-74) and Guicciardini (474-536). Bruni's reading of Machiavelli is extremely interesting; that of Guicciardini is altogether revolutionary, since he opposes the narrow, mostly negative view developed by De Sanctis (490-92) and then appropriated not only by Bobbio and Viroli but also, among others, by Alberto Asor Rosa ("Ricordi di Francesco Guicciardini," Letteratura italiana, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa, Le opere, Torino: Einaudi, 1993, 2: 3-94). In objecting to the reading proposed by so many Italian scholars, which is not shared, however, by such non-Italian scholars as Albertini and Rubinstein, Bruni identifies in Guicciardini a nucleus of ideas that are "pienamente cristiane" (494), "un nucleo di idee religiose, accordate all'assenso della fede e, per altro verso, corroborate dalla razionalita (non dal razionalismo) che gli veniva dalla tradizione classica" (496). At this juncture Bruni can finally offer his definition of Guicciardini's much debated il particulare, a word that Bruni--an eminent philologist--derives from particula and parte: "Nella scala formata dalla totalita sociale del bene comune, dalla parte, dall'individuo, il particulare di cui qui si parla si colloca sul terzo gradino, non sul secondo occupato dalla parte. Quindi il particulare mio coincide con l'io del Guicciardini" (500). Finally, at the end of his analysis of Guicciardini, Bruni can link the politician and historian to the preachers of the Observance studied earlier: "Per un paradosso [...] un laico che si e adoperato per affermare la signoria dello stato e della legalita non ha avuto miglior fortuna dei francescani che, cercando di arginare le parti, sono stati accusati di essere stati inefficaci. Anche il caso di Guicciardini, insomma, deve essere riaperto, studiato seriamente e valutato con equita critica" (536).

At the end of Chapter 6, Bruni draws a series of conclusions (536-43), which apply to the entire volume, quoting texts from various centuries (Guicciardini; Benedetto Varchi; Manzoni; Sismondi; etc.) and shedding new light on the still controversial relation between secular and religious authorities. Bruni appropriately quotes Manzoni's reflections on the lazzeretto, an institution--Manzoni writes (Promessi sposi, Ch. 31)--that the secular authority was unable to manage and that therefore passed on to the religious authority, the Franciscans, represented by Fra Cristoforo. Bruni concludes, therefore, that those issues connected with "la questione dei rapporti tra l'autorita spirituale e il poter civile, si spinsero fino alle soglie dell'unita d'Italia e, per dire il vero, ben oltre il 1861" (542).

The book concludes with a vast bibliography, listing all primary (547-59) and secondary sources (559-99) employed in the volume, followed by several indices (60320): all extremely useful as well as indicative of the book's vast scope.

In conclusion, Francesco Bruni's study is highly commendable for its in-depth research, brilliant thesis, rigorous argumentation, vast scope, intellectual honesty and courage, lucid and elegant style. I cannot but apologize for the brevity of this review and invite all readers, therefore, to peruse the volume and appreciate its wealth and depth.

Dino S. Cervigni, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill