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Comparing 4 Renaissance Writers Before discussing the theme of the legitimacy of government by comparing four renaissance writers, we have to examine the concept and history of governing and the nature of authority. Governing is a matter of organizing people and resources to achieve some goal. Goals differ from providing a better life for those on whom governance is being executed to insuring that those who govern sustain their power and control. Governing demands some form of legitimated power, or authority, and a structure. This is the state, through which the power can be exercised. Just as authority has always been a part of human relationships, the state has existed in some form as long as people have lived in society.
Authority is considered to be the basis of all kinds of order. Mostly it is thought of as a part of the political process. For the state to exercise the power necessary to maintain order, it must be based on some form of authority, as authority conveys legitimacy. In fact, all human relations consist of elements of authority. The creation of economic and social order is a political function in which people participate in a variety of ways. Some scholars spent a lifetime looking at the topics of authority and sense of community in societies.
This interesting theme is discussed by the four renaissance writers in this form or the other. We will discuss the legitimacy of government and will compare their visions and opinions. The absence of a single, concentrated authority and the constant jockeying for power among princes led to intellectual speculation about the origin and application of authority, - writing about 1513, Machiavelli discussed how rulers should rule. He devoted very little space to the source of authority, talking rather of how the ruler should win the people over to him. He assumes that power is authority. Machiavelli, in his writings, dismissed the intricate social and institutional relations of the Middle Ages.
For Machiavelli, there are the sovereign and the individual. He recognized that the sovereign's authority was derived from a covenant with the people. However, this covenant was irrevocable and the sovereign, or the state, was all powerful in the life of the individual. It is stated that there were no other institutions to compete for the time, energy and loyalty of the individual. Machiavelli was looking for the basis for the art of governance on science rather than on Christian principles. He focused on how to preserve the state by any effective means.
His writings are concerned with the principles on which such a state is founded, and with the means by which they can be implemented and maintained. Machiavelli, later supported by Leviathan, was a discourse on how the state should function to be worthy of the absolute loyalty on which it was based. Law arrived at and applied rationally would enable each individual to pursue his own interests and convince him that his own interests would be best served through the authority of the state. Machiavelli, saw the society in which people submitted themselves to a supreme authority that was expressed in rational law. Machiavellian notions of legitimacy were followed by the works by Home and Locke who later stated that supreme authority is limited and divided into legislative and executive. A society in which supreme authority was vested in the state, but in which other institutions could also flourish.
The purpose of Marsilius's book is to argue that no pope or other churchman has any coercive power, still less plenitude of power, even over the clergy in Church matters. What, then, are priests and bishops? Answer: Their government is not a matter of authority or power, but a service and an office. Their ruling is nothing more than the inculcating of God's word, by which they guide Christians and overcome heresy. In any state there can be no more than one government, which must be secular, since the clergy have no coercive power, and government is coercive. From the single secular government all coercive power in the territory is derived.
This last point is the notion of sovereignty, still going strong: the notion that only one supreme authority can have any right to coerce individuals living in a given territory, except when that authority delegates coercive power to some agency. The sovereign authority was expressed as the General Will whose purpose was to secure the general good. To obtain the benefits of this general good, individuals must subordinate themselves completely to the General Will, the execution of which is left to the state. However, the Supreme Authority remains vested in the community of individuals. In comparison with Machiavelli, rather than being an anomalistic view of political order, Marsilius views on church and civil governance represent a timely expression of how order and authority is to be organized.
Marsilius quotes Aristotle's Politics, and suggests his own book as an addition to Aristotle's treatment of revolution. However, there is one cause of change in states: a certain perverted opinion, which came to be adopted as an aftermath of the miraculous effect the Christian Church produced by the supreme cause God long after Aristotle's time. This opinion is that the pope has coercive power, indeed plenitude or fullness of power. Some of the popes 'assert that they are over all the other bishops and priests in the world, with corresponds to every kind of jurisdictional authority. It is worthy to say that some of the recent Roman bishops make this claim not only with regard to bishops and priests, but even with regard to all the rulers, communities, and individuals in the world. They assumed universal coercive jurisdiction over the whole world under the all-embracing title plenitude of power limited by no human law.
Francesco Guiccardini (1483 - 1540), florentine diplomat and historian, in his turn writes about changes in Italian warfare. Guiccardini's brief, lucid analysis now seems more accurate in its description of the changed nature of warfare in Italy subsequent to the French invasion of 1494 than in his uncharacteristically optimistic assessment of the new-found ability of Italian government to defend themselves. Italy would remain for decades a relatively defenseless battleground for its more powerful northern neighbors. Guiccardini was very cynical, comparing to other writers, in description of the legitimacy of government. Bishop Seyssel and Gulliame Bude both write of ideas similar to Machiavelli's in their books. Thus, he outlines and evaluates the various epochs of Italian literary history according to the forces that shaped toward a national culture.
In that scheme, Guiccardini stands as the representative of a political and moral background of the Italian culture. 1526 Clement VII employs Machiavelli to inspect the fortifications at Florence and then sends him to attend the Francesco Guicciardini, who greatly influenced Machiavelli's knowledge of history and political awareness. It was a Spanish plot against Bartholomew Asian, leader of the Venetian army, that prompted Francesco Guiccardini to note the contrast between the norms of sixteenth-century Europe and those of ancient Rome: "So different are the customs of the soldiery of today from those of antiquity, when such plots were even revealed by enemy to enemy. " In the final reference, we will mention German Leon Battista Alberti (1404 - 1472), who was an important writer, architect, and art theorist. He was a true Renaissance man. His interests and abilities included mathematics, poetry, and playing the organ.
This excerpt comes from his book of advice for men who wanted to have families. Presented as a dialogue, it provides insight into Renaissance theories of child development, marital relations, and home economics. It was the family which assumed the role of protection and control of the individual. In his book, Leon Batista emphasize the importance of the family in building healthy society and in establishing the legitimacy of government. The family was considered a divine institution in which the husband ruled with absolute authority, and the subordination of the weaker sex to the stronger was not open to question. Thus it was the family, and above all the pater familias, that was responsible for educating and disciplining its members, choosing suitable marriage partners for the children, and directing their career choices.
Men's career options lay in the public domain, where social origins and kinship networks were as important as education and training in the choice of profession they would ultimately practise. After a prolonged and relatively rowdy adolescence, men moved out of their youth group into a variety of social roles, be it the aristocratic career of the courtier or that of the urban banker, the international merchant, the skilled craftsman, or the more humble life of the urban laborer or the rural farmer. Women of all social classes had but one "career", and that was marriage. Be she the daughter of a Prince or that of a purse maker, a woman's destiny lay in the private domain of marriage and the family. Leon Battista Alberti mastered Antiquarianism, Engineering, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Poetry. He has remained something of an enigma throughout the five centuries following his death in 1472.
This might not matter were it not for the fact that at stake are fundamental questions, such as the origins of why we now train architects rather than master masons or of why European cities became planned around public spaces. By linking proportion with underlying harmonious causes, Alberti was refering back to a long tradition of philosophical thought, one which, in the West at least, began with Plato and Pythagoras. In comparison with Machiavelli's view of legitimacy and governance it has a significant contrast, as he concerned more with the effective reality of things rather than idealistic notions. Bibliography: Due, D. Italian Renaissance. Manchester: The University Press, 1962.
Ellison, M. Francesco Guiccardini and Italy. New York: Harvard University Press, 1974. Gewirth, A. Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of Peace. New York: Columbia University Press.
Vol. I-II. , 1951. Lodge, S. The Close of the Middle Ages: 1273 - 1494. Edinburgh: University Press. Period III in the Periods of European History, 1978.
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Research essay sample on Comparing 4 Renaissance Writers
