Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
Yet a sketch of the situation is necessary in order to bring into relief the different points of view maintained by Segni, Nardi, Varchi, Pitti, and Nerli respectively. At the period in question Florence was, according to the universal testimony of these authors, too corrupt for real liberty and too turbulent for the tranquil acceptance of a despotism.
It contains not only the "Giace Cartago," and the "appena i segni," &c., but the contrast of the pride with the mortality of man, and, above all, the "dying" of the cities, which is the finest thing in the stanza of its imitator. " Passan le signorie, passano i regni;"
That period is marked by the years 1494 and 1537. The names of the historians of this period are Niccolo Machiavelli, Jacopo Nardi, Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Nerli, Donato Giannotti, Benedetto Varchi, Bernardo Segni, and Jacopo Pitti.
Famous it was for wild boar, in the winter, dressed with sweet sauce and pine nuts, and for baked porcupine and strange messes of tomatoes and cheese, and famous, too, for its good old wines in the days when wine was not mixed with chemicals and sold as 'Chianti, though grown about Olevano, Paliano and Segni.
Rarely have the entangled events of a specially dramatic period been set forth more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance of style. Segni is deficient, when compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, minuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal for truth which makes Varchi incomparable.
The policy of which Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had prepared before his fall a reconciliation with Clement through the intervention of the Emperor, according to the terms of which the Medici should have been restored as citizens of paramount authority, but not as sovereigns.
And his contemporaries and successors, Jacopo Pitti, Guicciardini, Segni, Varchi, Vettori, what a circle of illustrious names! And what a story it is which these masters tell us! The great and memorable drama of the last decades of the Florentine republic is here unfolded.
There is something almost grotesque in the bare recital of these successive factions; yet we must remember that beneath their dry names they conceal all elements of class and party discord. Vol. i. pp. 324-30. See, too, Segni, p. 213, and Giannotti, vol. i. p. 341. De Comines describes Siena thus: 'La ville est de tout temps en partialité, et se gouverne plus follement que ville d'Italie.
There is no doubt that both the actions and the writings of contemporaries justified a considerable amount of scepticism regarding the purity of Platonic affections. The words and lives of many illustrious persons gave colour to what Segni stated in his History of Florence, and what Savonarola found it necessary to urge upon the people from his pulpit.
But Segni and Nerli were given for the first time to the press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and Guicciardini's History of Florence in 1859. The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the year 1527 to the year 1538; that of Segni from 1527 to 1555; that of Nardi from 1494 to 1552; that of Pitti from 1494 to 1529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 1537; that of Guicciardini from 1420 to 1509.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking