Up to the year 1857 Guicciardini's reputation depended on the
History of Italy, and on a few ill-edited extracts from his aphorisms. At that date his representatives, the counts Piero and Luigi Guicciardini, opened their family archives, and committed to Giuseppe Canestrini the publication of his memoirs, in ten volumes. The documents and finished literary work thus given to the world have thrown light on Guicciardini, as author and citizen. It has raised his reputation as a political philosopher into the first rank, where he now disputes the place of intellectual supremacy with his friend Machiavelli; but it has colored our moral judgment of his character and conduct with darker dyes. From the stores of valuable materials contained in those ten volumes, it is enough here to cite (1) the
Ricordi politici, already noticed, consisting of about 220 maxims on political, social, and religious topics; (2) the observations on Machiavelli's
Discorsi, which bring into relief the views of Italy's two great theorists on statecraft in the 16th century, and show that Guicciardini regarded Machiavelli somewhat as an amiable visionary or political enthusiast; (3) the
Storia Fiorentina, an early work of the author, distinguished by its animation of style, brilliancy of portraiture, and liberality of judgment; and (4) the
Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, also in all probability an early work, in which the various forms of government suited to an Italian commonwealth are discussed with subtlety, contrasted, and illustrated from the vicissitudes of Florence up to the year 1494. To these may be added a series of short essays, entitled
Discorsi politici, composed during Guicciardinis Spanish legation. Those who desire to gain an insight into the true principles and feelings of the men who made and wrote history in the 16th century will find it here far more than in the work designed for publication by the writer. Taken in combination with Machiavelli's treatises, the
Opere inedite furnish a comprehensive body of Italian political philosophy before Fra Paolo Sarpi.
See Rosini's edition of the
Storia d'Italia (10 vols., Pisa, 1819), and the
Opere inedite, in 10 vols., published at Florence, 1857. A complete and initial edition of Guicciardini's works is now in preparation in the hands of Alessandro Gherardi of the Florence archives. Among the many studies on Guicciardini we may mention Agostino Rossi's
Francesco Guicciardini e il governo Fiorentino (2 vols., Bologna, 1896), based on many new documents; Francesco de Sanctis's essay
L'Uomo del Guicciardini, in his
Nuovi Saggi critici (Naples, 1879), and many passages in P. Villari's
Machiavelli (Eng. trans., 1892); Eugène Benoist's
Guichardin, historien et homme du l'Italie au XVI siècle (Paris, 1862), and C. Gioda's
Francesco Guicciardini e le sue opere inedite (Bologna, 1880) are not without value, but the authors had not had access to many important documents since published. See also Geoffroy's article
Une Autobiographie de Guichardin d'après ses oeuvres inédites, in the
Revue des deux mondes (1 February 1874).
For readers who can only read English, the following are valuable editions of Guicciardini's works:
- Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy [translated by Sidney Alexander] (New York: Macmillan, 1969; paperback edition by Princeton University Press still in print). This work, the first true translation from the original into English, presents more than half of the original Italian text.
- Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) [translated by Mario Domandi with introduction by Nicolai Rubenstein] (New York: Harper & Row, 1965; reprint, still in print, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972).
- Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogue on the Government of Florence [translated and edited by Alison Brown] (Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). This is the first translation of this important work into English.