Retórica e Política em Coluccio Salutati: a Tirania entre a República e a Monarquia

Abstract

The 14th century Italian humanism stimulated a new sight at Antiquity and, especially, at rhetoric, which, in line with the awareness of distancing from the past, enabled an epistolary work that integrated politics and the discursive construction of history. Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, immersed in a context of disputes between local authorities and the Catholic Church, is one of the main responsible for defending the interests of the commune and, as well, for preserving local stability, threatened by the confluence of conflicting designs on the direction of Florentine politics. The present work aims to understand, from the sketched scenario, the political thought of Coluccio Salutati, especially regarding his defense of the republic or monarchy as the best form of government. Through an analysis of the public and private letters of the notary of Stignano and, chiefly, of the missive Contra maledicum et obiurgatorem qui multa pungenter adversus inclitam civitatem Florentie scripsit, also known as Invective against Antonio Loschi da Vicenza, and the treatise De tyranno, the study finds tyranny as the main counterpoint against which Salutati’s considerations about the republic and monarchy will be outlined. The revaluation of the Roman past, to highlight the republican origins of Florence or to greet the imperial period of Julius Caesar’s government, adds to the defense of freedom (both of a libertas florentinae and a libertas Italiae) and starts to create, in the author's works, a scenario of sincere defense of a republic and a monarchy. Therefore, in spite of those who see in Salutati a relativist or someone unconcerned about the best form of government, we understand that the author uses rhetoric to create images of politics that reflect, in a coherent and sincere way, the defense of both the forms of government as the best. In an evident consubstantiation of the crossroads of the 14th century, between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Coluccio Salutati, a man of his time, uses the counterpoint to tyranny to outline one of the most complex defenses of monarchy and republic in nascent humanism.