25 Facts About Francesco Guicciardini

Francesco Guicciardini was the third of 11 children of Piero di Iacopo Guicciardini and Simona di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi.

The Francesco Guicciardini were well-established members of the Florentine oligarchy as well as supporters of the Medici family.

Piero Francesco Guicciardini had studied with the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who stood as his son's godfather.

The death of an uncle, who had occupied the Diocese of Cortona, induced the young Francesco Guicciardini to seek an ecclesiastical career.

Francesco Guicciardini preferred to lose great present profits and the chance of making one of his sons a great man rather than have it on his conscience that he had made one of his sons a priest out of greed for wealth or great position.

In 1508, Francesco Guicciardini married Maria Salviati, the daughter of Alamanno Salviati, cementing an oligarchical alliance with the powerful Florentine family.

Francesco Guicciardini had doubts about accepting the position because it came with so little profit and would disrupt his law practice and take him away from the city.

However, Francesco Guicciardini's father convinced him of the court's prestige and the honour of having been chosen at such a young age.

Francesco Guicciardini's Spanish correspondence with the Signoria reveals his power of observation and analysis, a chief quality of his mind.

Francesco Guicciardini insisted on being recalled and even sent a letter to the youthful Lorenzo de' Medici in an attempt to secure a position in the new ruling group.

Francesco Guicciardini eventually returned home to Florence, where he took up his law practice again; in 1514, he served as a member of the Otto di Balia, who controlled internal security, and in 1515, he served on the Signoria, the highest Florentine magistracy.

In 1523, Francesco Guicciardini was appointed viceregent of the Romagna by Clement VII.

Shortly after the Sack of Rome, Francesco Guicciardini returned to Florence, but by 1527, the Medici had been expelled from the city, and a republic had been re-established by the extreme anti-Medici Arrabiati faction.

Under the command of Clement VII, Francesco Guicciardini was assigned the task of punishing the Florentine citizens for their resistance to the Medici, and he dealt out justice mercilessly to those who had opposed the will of the Pope.

Benedetto Varchi claimed that in carrying out his task, "Messer Francesco Guicciardini was more cruel and more ferocious than the others".

In 1531, Francesco Guicciardini was assigned the governorship of Bologna, the most important city in the northern Papal States by Clement VII.

Francesco Guicciardini resigned after Clement's death in 1534 and returned to Florence, where he was enlisted as advisor to Alessandro de' Medici, "whose position as duke had become less secure following the death of the pope".

Francesco Guicciardini assisted in successfully negotiating the marriage of Alessandro to the emperor Charles V's daughter Margaret of Parma in 1536, and for a short time Gucciardini was the most trusted advisor to Alessandro until the Duke's assassination in 1537.

Francesco Guicciardini supported Cosimo as duke of Florence; nevertheless, Cosimo dismissed him shortly after rising to power.

Francesco Guicciardini retired to his villa in Arcetri, where he spent his last years working on the Storia d'Italia.

Francesco Guicciardini's nephew, Lodovico Guicciardini, was a historian known for his 16th-century works on the Low Countries.

None of Francesco Guicciardini's works was published during his lifetime.

Francesco Guicciardini is best known as the author of the Storia d'Italia, which provides a detailed account of politics in the Italian Peninsula between 1490 and 1534.

Francesco Guicciardini was friends with Niccolo Machiavelli; the two maintained a lively correspondence until the latter's death in 1527.

Francesco Guicciardini had a somewhat higher social standing than his friend, but through their letters, a relaxed, comfortable relationship between the two emerges.