What did Renaissance humanists write about when they wrote about politics—and why? How have modern scholars understood those writings, and to what ends? These are large questions, and it is no surprise that it takes a large book to answer them. Italian humanists who wrote on politics shared a distinct set of features and goals in these writings, for which James Hankins uses the term virtue politics. They hoped and believed that the study of ancient authors built character, and that leaders with good characters would rule good states, whatever else they thought about the particulars of good states and good rulers. This moral understanding of political life, argues Hankins, was a central feature of the humanist movement in general and of those whom he examines here in particular.

The topic of Renaissance political thought has a long and contentious history. Hankins identifies at least two major causes of contention. First, modern familiarity with the authors and sources is extremely uneven; some authors’ works still lack editions altogether, while others, such as Machiavelli, are studied to the point of excess. Second, anachronistic analytic categories have hampered modern understandings of Renaissance writers. Hankins addresses both of these issues as he moves chronologically from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, from Petrarch to Machiavelli. He is engaged at several levels in dialogue with modern scholarship in history and political thought from the mid-twentieth century onward—notably, Hans Baron on civic humanism, and the Cambridge School founded by Quentin Skinner. In the process he makes his case that for these humanists, writing on politics was a central part of their interest in moral philosophy.

Hankins begins by describing an era of political crisis in the age of Petrarch, whom he presents as the leading voice in defining both the crisis and the route to resolution. Petrarch's program of lifelong devotion to the reading of ancient authors for self-understanding and the building of character would also, he hoped, hold the key to better rulers, states, and political actors in general. His successors continued to advance these goals. By the mid-fifteenth century they were being aided increasingly by Greek authors; Hankins traces with care the recovery and reception of Xenophon, Isocrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and more, whose writings added complexity and depth to humanist understandings of politics and leadership. Hankins addresses directly the ways humanists defined and used terms such as republic, monarchy, and tyranny. He demonstrates conclusively that humanists might use the term republic to refer to a wide range of regime forms, though over the course of the fifteenth century it came increasingly to be used in opposition to forms of government by a single person. Its modern usage developed in the centuries that followed. A number of authors developed thoughtful cases for the value of monarchic rule.

Those readers already interested in the canonical sources will follow closely his detailed discussion of Bruni and Machiavelli. Just as important, however, is his bringing to our attention the work of humanists whose names seldom appear in histories of political thought, whose ideas do not fit into older schematic narratives, and whose works are little read and minimally accessible: Ciriaco of Ancona, George of Trebizond, Francesco Patrizi of Siena, Biondo Flavio, Francesco Filelfo, and others. Machiavelli's recurring interest in the necessity for leaders to undertake acts for the survival of the state that are themselves wrong, and his willingness to use the state's survival as its main goal and standard, puts him distinctly at odds with his colleagues, though he retained a similar interest in issues of the public good and personal morality.

Very clear organization helps render the book easy both to read and to consult by section, despite its length. Appendixes include excerpts by Petrarch (from De Vita Solitaria) and Bruni (Florentine Histories), as well as a list of early editions of the writings of Patrizi, whose wide sixteenth-century readership stands in stark contrast to the dearth of modern editions. Virtue Politics should set the history of Renaissance political thought on newer and more solid historical and textual foundations.