STUDIA HUMANITATIS BRUNIANA

Leonardo Bruni (Aretino) (1369-1444) was a major figure of the Renaissance, whose great contribution to Western Culture, however, can be summed up in a few sentences. His entry in this section is therefore short, but indispensable.

In his public life, he was a high official (Chancellor) of Florence. His main contribution to Western culture was in history writing, and in defining humanities as a major subject of interest and study.

His most significant work was the monumental Historiarum Florentinarum Libri XII, on account of which he was honored by the city of Florence and--on the same account--is also called the first modern historian. In fact, he was the first ever historian to distinguish the three distinct periods of history: Antiquity, Middle, and Modern History, the concept, from which the term Middle Ages was coined by his contemporary, also a historian, Flavio Biondo (1392-1463). The idea for this tripartite division of history must have originated with Petrarca (see the preceding entry). Petrarca wrote about a “Dark Age,” extending from the time of the fall of Rome (the end of golden Antiquity) until Petrarca’s time, which he saw as the beginning of the new age of modernity. From such periodization of history it was only natural to make the next step, referring to the middle period of history as the Middle Ages.

History writing was by no means all that Bruni engaged himself in. He also wrote biographies of Aristotle and Cicero in Latin, and of Dante and Petrarca in Italian. This may be argued to be history as well, but he also made a number of excellent translations into Latin of several works of Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Plutarch. It was Bruni who first used the phrase studia humanitatis, meaning the study of human endeavors, as distinct from those of theology and metaphysics, which is where the terms humanism and humanities come from. Considering that humanism, as such, is a profound cultural, philosophical, and even theological phenomenon, we must acknowledge Bruni’s role in its formulation as extending beyond history-writing into the sphere of shaping the philosophical outlook of the Renaissance and, consequently, of all modernity, for which reason his permanent presence in this section, although brief and succinct, has been firmly ascertained.