Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome byMelissa Meriam BullardReview by: Lauro MartinesThe American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Jun., 1981), pp. 612-613Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1860441 .

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612 Reviews of Books

This is an interesting and significant first book. Ex- amining the complexities of politics in Renaissance Venice, Robert Finlay has brought a synthesizing vision and a wealth of detail to a topic that has long deserved closer study. From a virtually required starting point-the myth of Venice-Finlay sails bravely out onto the rough seas of the reality of Ve- netian governance. The "constitution" is dispensed with quickly, for Finlay argues cogently that Vene- tian politics were too fluid to be delimited by for- mal governmental structure. Rather he uses that structure as a setting for examining the interplay of family, age, and personality. In the process he draws several suggestive conclusions; for example, that the Doge was more powerful than constitu- tional limitations and previous scholarship have im- plied; that age was a primary factor in selection for and moderation in office; and that Broglio-the ille- gal electioneering for office and votes-"was the oil that made the complex machinery of state function so smoothly for so long that it seemed that Venice was free from ambition and faction" (p. 221).

Many of his points are not new; the discussion of Broglio is reminiscent of a paper delivered at a War- wick convegno in the early seventies. But Finlay mar- shals an extensive scholarship that should move de- bate significantly ahead. And in the end he comes to the provocative conclusion that the myth of Ven- ice, like all myths, does have an important historical meaning: it "extolled as intrinsic to the constitution that which was an appearance produced by the pol- itics that gave life to the constitutional order" (p. 287). It remains to be seen whether proponents of the myth will accept an interpretation that comes dangerously close to throwing their baby out with the bath water.

A first book that attempts so much cannot be ex- pected to be without fault. Particularly suspect are the discussions of the status of cittadini and the dan- gerously rapid treatment of lower-class attitudes to- ward the closed government. A potentially more telling problem stems, paradoxically, from the book's real strength. Finlay has drawn his primary material from five noble Venetian diarists: Marin Sanuto, Girolamo Priuli, Pietro Dolfin, Marcan- tonio Michiel, and Domenico Malipiero. Their fas- cination with and, in the case of Sanuto, virtually obsessive recording of how they perceived govern- ment working provide a vivid picture of political life. But Finlay's approach also allows him largely to avoid a mass of archival material that is only be- ginning to be investigated. Ultimately, the verdict of archival research may significantly undermine the subjective account presented by these diarists. Aware of this problem, Finlay sums it up best him- self: "A study of politics based principally on the diaries cannot pretend to flawlessness.... One fi- nally must take refuge in Priuli's justification that it

is better to proceed despite flaws than not to pro- ceed at all" (p. 13). This work demonstrates Priuli's point.

GUIDO RUGGIERO

University of Cincinnati

MELISSA MERIAM BULLARD. Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome. (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1980. Pp. ix, 197. $24.50.

In 1508 Filippo Strozzi, born to an illustrious Flo- rentine family, married a Medici heiress, thereby forging a bond that also tied him eventually to two Medici popes and to the coming lords of Florence. Soon his new relations heaped favor on him at Flor- ence and Rome, where he founded banks, got the lion's share of the banking business, and was cata- pulted into one of the era's great financial empires. His fortunes peaked under Popes Leo X (d. 1521) and Clement VII (d. 1534), until the latter's death sent the courtier-banker scurrying to rescue what re- mained of his empire.

Although the story of Filippo's financial shenani- gans and spectacular rise is complex and devious, Melissa Meriam Bullard tells it with enviable skill in 178 pages. The freshness and importance of her version are based upon arduous archival research in Rome and Florence.

Depositor general for popes as well as for the gov- ernment of Florence, Filippo concealed his lucrative doings with the help of talented agents and double sets of account books. He also got the connivance of government insiders and key officials in Florence, appointees and followers of the Medici. By this means, he and his Medici patrons converted Flor- ence's tax coffers into a tool of papal policy and ne- potism. Hundreds of thousands of gold florins were thus rerouted. Contemporaries were aware of this but could not prevent it, owing to the Medicean control of Florentine public office, including the keeping of the city's fiscal records. Accounts were certainly doctored, yet the record somehow speaks for itself, catching even Filippo's tricky dealings in wet grain supplies and debased coinage.

Indeed, sources are so multitudinous that Bullard was forced to scratch many surfaces, making her book the more suggestive. Her soundings reveal that we do not yet sufficiently understand major aspects of papal finance (for example, the detailed powers of the depositor general). We know too little about the overall cost of the Italian wars and less still about their hobbling effects on the Italian economy. The princely profits of papal bankers, viewed as a function of percentages of interest taken, are still terra incognita because interest was disguised in the

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Modern Europe 613

official accounts. Again, the history of the Floren- tine public debt (the monte) in the decades around 1500 has yet to be written. When it is, we shall know more about Bullard's dramatic claim that a gulf was opening within the Florentine aristocracy between the many who were merely wealthy and the few whose wealth became fabulous. Properly handled, these questions should occupy teams of historians for years.

LAURO MARTINES

University of Caljfomi'a, Los Angeles

JAN LINDHARDT. Rhetor, Poeta, Historicus: Studien iiber rhetorische Erkenntniss und Lebensanschauung im ital- ienischen Renaissancehumanismus. (Acta Theologica Danica, number 13.) Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1979. Pp. 197. f 60.

The works of the Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati have served scholars as a favorite touch- stone for testing Renaissance humanism's value and modernity. Among scholarly assessments Jan Lind- hardt's work will rank as a fine contribution. Like many other students of Salutati's works, Lindhardt focuses on apparent contradictions in the views Salutati expressed at various stages in his life. Some scholars have perceived these anomalies as outward manifestations of a struggle in Salutati's mind be- tween medieval and humanist ideas. Thus Alfred von Martin spoke of Salutati as a zerrissener Mensch. Lindhardt agrees neither with von Martin nor with those who wish to resolve the apparent con- tradictions by dividing Salutati's works into rhetori- cal and substantive writings. The most unflattering version of this approach accepts the term rhetoric in its present derogatory connotation and labels Salu- tati's so-called rhetorical writings ornamental at best, deceptions-to-please at worst. In a more flat- tering version, rhetoric is a respectable but merely technical enterprise that endows substance with beautiful form.

Lindhardt sides with more recent scholarship that sees rhetoric as a discipline by far exceeding the scope of mere form. He discerns no gulf between the worlds of eloquentia and veritas or sinceritas. Rhet- oric-the sister of poetics in Salutati's words-be- comes an equal to philosophy and theology. The works of Salutati and his fellow humanists represent serious interpretations of the human life. In the con- text of that life thought can accommodate what logically seem contradictions. Thus De seculo et reli- gione, advocating monasticism, fits with Salutati's call for the vita activa. Through a monastic life Christians love God and through the active life they love other humans. Salutati is also seen as a media- tor in the great controversy over the respective

status of volition and wisdom. The quest for knowl- edge can be combined with an emphasis on human will if knowledge becomes knowledge for action's sake. Lindhardt sees rhetoric as transcending the world of pure logic and leading to a truth on hu- man terms, which not only enables modern scholars to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in Salutati's views but also equipped Renaissance humanists to cope with an ever more complex intellectual world. Lindhardt's book enriches Salutati scholarship by its careful analysis and its cautious synthesis. While commendably free of the verbal fog sometimes en- countered in this field, its exposition is at times a bit lengthy, and its German text should have had bet- ter proofreading.

ERNST BREISACH

Western Michigan University

DOMENICO SELLA. Crisis and Continuity: The Economy of Spanish Lombardy in the Seventeenth Century. Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press. 1979. Pp. ix, 255. $18.50.

In this elegant and well-written study, Domenico Sella sets out to modify and refocus the perceptions of Spanish Lombardy embedded in the available literature. In his view, that literature contains three major flaws: an excessive emphasis on the urban economy, a failure to identify the causes of the sev- enteenth-century crisis, and a tendency to portray the crisis as an "irreparable break in the economic and social texture of Lombard history."

An introductory chapter detailing the period of prosperity subsequent to the treaty of Cateau-Cam- bresis of 1559 provides the author with an opportu- nity to lay out the economic geography of the terri- tories of Milan and to assert the significance of the agricultural base in sustaining that prosperity. The transition to overpopulation, food shortages, and the growing dependence of northern Italy on Baltic grain at the beginning of the seventeenth century is an easy, logical one that serves to introduce the pe- riod of crisis. Diffusion of technological skill and the consequent loss of markets supplemented food pres- sure in troubling Milan, but these negative forces were only a prelude to the seventeenth-century dis- ruptions marked by plague, depopulation, war, and agricultural and industrial dislocation. In a care- fully reasoned chapter, Sella endeavors to allocate blame for economic decline among taxation, war, and foreign competition. In doing so, he notes that the aggregate impact was far more severe in the cities than in the countryside and that the country- side exhibited a healthy resilience during much of the dark seventeenth century. Even rural industry appears to have resisted decline, to have found sources of capital, and even to have benefited from

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