Guicciardini’s Ricordi: The Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini
Author: Geoff Berridge
Date: 2000
Francesco Guicciardini was born into a long-established patrician family in Florence in 1483. He trained and then practised successfully as a lawyer, but in January 1512 was sent by the signoria, despite his youth, as ambassador to Spain.1 His mission was conducted against a background of acute tension and at a time when the goodwill of Ferdinand the Catholic — that master of deceit’ 2 — was of the first importance to the republic. (Ferdinand’s soldiers, only recently allied to those of Pope Julius II against Florence’s ally, France, were entering the nearby Romagna.) Guicciardini remained in Spain until 1514. In his absence, and despite his diplomacy, the Florentine republic was overthrown by Spanish arms, the Medici restored, and his native city subjected to the influence of Rome. This meant at least that positions in the Papal administration were open to the city’s citizens, and in 1516 Leo X appointed Guicciardini governor of Modena and in the following year added Reggio to his responsibilities. This was the start of a twenty-year-long career during which he served three popes and rose ever higher in their esteem, though this did not always endear him to his fellow Florentines. He died in 1540, having served, inter glia, as lieutenant-general of the papal army and governor of Bologna, the most important of all the Papal lord-lieutenancies.
Related resources
The Diplomats, 1939-1979
12 Aug, 1994
The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy, 1877-1880
10 Mar, 2010
The British Interests Section in Kampala, 1976-7
16 Aug, 2012
Lord Elgin and the Marbles
14 Aug, 1998
The Professional Diplomat
21 Aug, 1969
The Breaking of Nations
19 Apr, 2006
Renaissance Diplomacy and the Reformation
18 Aug, 1989
US Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?
10 Aug, 2007
British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy
04 Aug, 2009
The Forgotten French
01 Aug, 2003
A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era
06 Aug, 2015
Tilkidom and the Ottoman Empire: The Letters of Gerald Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd, 1906-15
08 Aug, 2008
English Medieval Diplomacy
09 Aug, 1985
The evolution of diplomacy in the Caribbean
02 Aug, 2013
The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
01 Aug, 2003
The Imperial Component in Iran’s Foreign Policy: Towards Arab Mashreq and Arab Gulf States
19 Aug, 2011
Just a Diplomat
17 Dec, 2008
The History of Diplomatic Immunity
11 Dec, 1999
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
13 Aug, 2004
Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: The Inside Story of British Diplomacy
13 Aug, 2011
The languages of the Knights
17 Aug, 2001
Philosophy of Rhetoric
07 Aug, 1868
The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages
18 Aug, 1967
Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador
04 Aug, 1990
The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy
08 Aug, 1997
The History of Diplomatic Immunity
20 Aug, 1999
The Expansion of International Society
16 Aug, 1985
The post-modern state and the world order
11 Aug, 2000
Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The structure of diplomatic practice, 1450-1800
26 Apr, 2007
The British Diplomatic Service 1815-1914
04 Aug, 1983
The Turkish Embassy Letters
12 Aug, 1994
FDR’s Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis: From the rise of Hitler to the end of World War II
24 Aug, 2013
Regionalism in the Post-Cold War World
11 Aug, 2000
Beyond diplomatic – the unravelling of history
04 Aug, 2002
History and the evolution of diplomacy
06 Aug, 1998
The ‘Working’ Non-Aligned Movement: Between Belgrade, Cairo, and Baku – The NAM’s Leadership Visibility
07 Aug, 2020
Japanese middle-power diplomacy
10 Aug, 2012
Diplomacy in Ancient Greece
08 Aug, 1975
The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919
13 Aug, 1993
A Diplomat in Japan
04 Aug, 1921
Nation, Class, and Diplomacy: The dragomanate of the British embassy in Constantinople, 1814-1914
15 Aug, 2008
Public diplomacy: Sunrise of an academic field
15 Aug, 2008
Munitions of the Mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present era
03 Aug, 2003
A Manual of Greek Antiquities
04 Aug, 1895
Ottoman Diplomacy
06 Aug, 2004
Diplomacy and Secret Service
10 Aug, 2019
Machiavelli’s Legations
10 Aug, 2001
The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office
06 Aug, 1971
The Congress of Arras, 1435
25 Aug, 1972
The Summer Capitals of Europe, 1814-1919
03 Aug, 2017
The Evolution of Diplomatic Method
17 Aug, 1977
Post Cold War diplomatic training
19 Apr, 2006
The Diplomats, 1919-1939
11 Aug, 1994
Peacemaking 1919
09 Aug, 1933
A kind of diplomatic incantation: Exchanging British and Japanese diplomats in the Second World War
02 Feb, 2012
Misunderstood: The IT manager’s lament
06 Aug, 2004
British Envoys to Germany 1816-1866
09 Nov, 2006
Years of Upheaval
20 Aug, 1982