Florentine Civic Humanism

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Florentine civic humanism was a strong movement during the Italian renaissance. During this time, there were many differing ideas on humanism and how citizens and people should be governed and how they should live their lives. The Florentine civic humanists believed that liberty, virtue, republics and disdain for monarchies were the pillars for government and life. These ideas were earlier set forth by the Roman republic in their establishment of the city of Florence and were enforced and spread throughout the city-state through the Florentine constitution and the works of many humanists such as Bruni, Palmieri and Alberti. Their works demonstrated that living a life through civic humanism would allow one to become the best they could possibly …show more content…

The constitution laid the groundwork for the governing body in Florence where it had three main bodies known as the “Tre Maggiori” which were all elected offices. Below these offices were the Signoria, the Sixteen, and the Twelve. These elected officials had short-term office holdings in order to hold them accountable for their work. This was different from a monarchy that would allow a dictator to rule however he or she would like and make decisions on their own with no accountability. The fact that the terms ranged from two months to four months enforced accountability across all elected positions. In order to have equal representation across the entire city, it was enforced that there would be two priors elected from each quarter of the city. The city was then divided into four quarters which were as follows: San Giovanni, Santa Maria Novella, Santo Spirito and Santa Croce. Along with graphical balance, officials also were to be drawn from different socio-economic backgrounds. These divisions were made by guilds which represented the different commercial enterprises across the city. These precedents set forth in the constitution developed the idea of popular sovereignty, another concept of civil …show more content…

If civic humanism was the idea that there would be no monarchy and that the state would be ruled by the people, ultimately there must be some area of concentrated power. Leonardo Bruni attempted to answer this question with his statement that “the people are lord of everything.” He sought for the constitution to depict the whole-body citizen to be the enacting power. Because the citizens elected officials from each region of the city and each socio-economic background and these elected officials were held accountable, then it was the people of the city who were ultimately making the decisions that impacted the entire city-state. It was debated in the renaissance whether the republic should have a wide inclusive government or a restricted civic participation and ultimately the Florentines believed it should be a wide, inclusive government known as the governo

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