A new book by Arthur Field is to be welcomed, especially since its enticing title suggests it will take discussion of the Medici party's ideology to its beginnings, instead of limiting it to the decade 1454–64 that was covered in The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence, published by Field thirty years ago. In fact, the subject of the new book was announced in Field's challenging article published in Renaissance Quarterly a decade later, “Leonardo Bruni, Florentine Traitor? Bruni, the Medici, and an Aretine Conspiracy of 1437” (51.4 [1998]: 1109–50), in which he declared that “the story of Bruni's relations with Medicean and anti-Medicean intellectuals still needs to be written.” This is the story narrated in the book under review, which casts Bruni as an alienated member of the circle of “radical humanists” who sought to break with the cultural legacy of the Trecento.

It is useful to know this at the outset, since the reader is at once plunged in medias res—into lengthy citizen debates on topics (the catasto and rimbotto) that seem neither intellectual nor especially Medicean. The opening two chapters establish the terrain for the emergence of the Medici party and its distinct agenda as “radical,” owed to two humanists who take Cosimo in hand (Niccolò Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini, discussed in the last two chapters). This allows the three central chapters to be devoted to the oligarchs and their humanists, Bruni and Filelfo, the core of the book. Especially successful is the widely based discussion in the third chapter of the traditional Trecento culture adopted by the oligarchs. The short biographies in the remaining chapters are informative and lively—especially Poggio's, whose jokes, or facetiae, referred to here are more abundant than his contribution to the Medici's ideology, while the biography of Filelfo introduces a comparative newcomer to the Florentine scene. Overall, Field's erudition and extensive knowledge of published and unpublished texts provide a novel approach to Florence's culture wars, his relaxed style and topical allusions sweetening the seriousness of the argument (and the dense footnotes).

“Culture wars” is a term used once by Field (221), and it would have made a better title for this book (had it not already been used by Edward Muir), since, as Field admits, his portrayal of Filelfo (at least) is not of an intellectual. The odia academica by which all his humanists are riven seem contagious, in view of Field's opening salvos against “scholars of late” who don't share his views, not to mention the continuing guerrilla warfare in the footnotes. Few can fail to hear the whistle of the passing shot that grazes many of us—and just as alarming are its silences. One is particularly egregious: the failure to discuss in the text or mention in the bibliography the extensive work of Riccardo Fubini in this field, most notably establishing some time ago Bruni's close rapport with the oligarchs and analyzing fully the relationship between the oligarchic and Medici regimes (on Fubini and Bruni, see now Gary Ianziti's contribution to Fubini's festschrift, Il Laboratorio del Rinascimento, ed. L. Tanzini [2015], too late for Field's book but very relevant to his subject). All we have instead is the bare citation of one article in a footnote and a few passing asides. Things aren't very different for Dale Kent's Cosimo de’ Medici (her Rise of the Medici fares better). As with Fubini, the omissions are not irrelevant, since Kent's full account of Cosimo's oeuvre as a patron and his strong links to popular culture would have enriched the fragile evidence offered here for the humanists’ intellectual engagement with Cosimo, in addition to providing justification to Field's title.

Although preferences for Aristotle or Plato—Christianity or paganism, Italian or Latin, nobility as caste or as virtue—may usefully serve as markers to distinguish Bruni from his former radical friends, they don't in themselves define the importance of the newly recovered texts and Cosimo's contribution, through his patronage, to the intellectual resurgence (and not merely to his political campaign). Nevertheless, what we have here instead is something we lacked: a novel and perceptive account of the emotional undertow of the intellectual thrust of Florence's Renaissance—no small achievement.