The Renaissance was a period in history and a cultural movement. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era, beginning in the late 14th century and ending in the 17th century. The movement as a whole was devoted to efforts to revitalize and transcend the ideas and achievements of antiquity. It began in Florence, Italy, where it quickly grew and became the center of the movement. It is known in several fields, such as painting, thought, architecture, technology, and sculpture. Although in the Renaissance there were numerous terrific ideas were discovered, this essay is to introduce and inform those key political values that were proposed during the Florentine Renaissance. There were three very important political thinkers appeared in the Florentine Renaissance: Leonardo Bruni, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Girolamo Savonarola; they had a unique vision of politics.
Leonardo Bruni was a man with excellent views on the political values of Florence. He was born in 1370 and died on March 9, 1444, a leading Italian humanist. He has left his name in history because he recounted the two political principles and the distribution of offices that made Florence successful. He thought that Florence had an internal order that was far ahead of the rest of the region, The interior of this city-state is very harmonious; there is nothing incongruous or out of place. In the city, classes, the judiciary, and officials all have their clear positions and accusations, and there is little that is unclear. This wonderful situation was achieved thanks to two of Florence's core political values: firstly, justice, “justice is held most sacred in the city” (From Bruni’s Panegyric to Florence) as he said; the next thing is freedom, “without which this great people would not even consider that life was worth living” (From Bruni’s Panegyric to Florence). He supported his viewpoint by stating the composition of societies. The government has increased the number of magistrates to nine people and reduced their tenure from one year to two months to limit their excessive power, aiming to create a more just sentencing system and curb corruption. The city is divided into four districts, with citizens selecting two representatives from each. To improve the city, eight elected citizens and an outstanding leader are needed to handle national affairs and rule. Twelve other Goodmen are also present to assist the eight citizens. In the military, model soldiers are elected for a 4-month term. This decision aims to create a more stable and well-known city. He stated that Florence has a very well-developed political system to maximize its citizens' access to the two principles of justice and freedom, which are the key to Florence's leading position.
Another famous and very important Renaissance man was Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), he owes his eminence chiefly to his two works, The Prince and Discourse on Livy. These two were the most-read literary materials of the time, and they were both books to know that a prince or a government successfully governs a country. His main point through The Price is that “it is necessary for a ruler who wishes to maintain his position to learn to be able to be not good” (The Price, 53), it teaches price should not be generous. This statement was ahead of its time, at a time when most people believed that monarchs needed to be friendly to the people. Monarchs needed to use their good image to unite the people in order to run the country well. But Machiavelli’s theory gives good points and proofs, such as that of Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor, who had a reputation for generosity but who seldom took the treasure from the treasury to give it to the people and who distributed a portion of the property he had obtained by plundering it to the people. Once the property in the treasury was used, the ruler would need to keep taking money from the treasury to maintain his title of generosity, knowing that there was no money. In his second most famous work, Discourse on Livy, he stated, “This universal well-being is nowhere secured save in a republic” (Discourse on Livy). And it's a successful idea about supporting a free government. The main reason for his success was his distinctive but well-reasoned brilliant political ideas of teaching rulers to govern the country, as shown in his two works.
The last person who had key political ideas during the Renaissance was Girolamo Savonarola. What he proposes is to look at the fruits of Florence as a whole and what he is trying to do from the perspective of the Apostle of Religion. He suggested that Florence could succeed because of God, “one can say that all God's saints and elect receive from God a special light that inclines them to believe firmly those things which God does or shows in His Church, in general as well as in particular” (Savonarola141) means thanks to that light given by God, people nowadays are able to have so many brilliant ideas. That light is what keeps them from going astray and taking the right path. This is also an aspect of the idea that has a different perspective but is very necessary. He tried to convince people that we should be grateful for God's selfless dedication and kindness to us. There are three steps to this: understanding God and eternal life, ending God's grace and thanking, and the initial actual effort. And overall, he was more sincere in persuading Florence to accept God rather than disbelieving him.
Therefore, the three people who had made political values of the Florentine Renaissance are Leonardo Bruni, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Girolamo Savonarola. The three of them have their own perspectives on political thought, analyzing current political thought, giving principles that go against the current rulers of the country, and thinking from a religious perspective and trying to convince people to believe in God. The ideas of these three prominent scholars are great in theory, but we don't know what happens when brought into reality. The fact that these ideas are still relevant in the modern world is also a topic that deserves to be studied in depth.
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