Peuple et république à l’aube de l’humanisme : sur l’inconscient politique de Leonardo Bruni

Abstract

Through the analysis of certain aspects of Leonardo Bruni’s language, and in particular his use of “popolo” and “res publica”, we strive to understand the extent to which the politics of the early humanists remained rooted in the recent past of the City of Florence, despite the obvious ideological innovations (and without considering those of a stylistic and literary nature). Bruni seems to have inherited the primacy and unity of the Florentine people directly from the discourses of the 14th-century jurists. On the other hand, “respublica” turns out to be, in his texts, both an entirely traditional notion and the emblem of the process of essentialisation of a people reconstituted in its universal dimension thanks to the definitive expulsion of conflict from the horizon of possibilities. At the same time, in a dialogue with Claudia Moatti in particular, we try to ascertain how, with which tools, some research on Roman history helps us grasp the metamorphoses of the ‘people’ in a much later period.