Excerpt from Jacob Burckhardt and the Renaissance: 100 Years After; Papers on the Great Historian, Read at the Meeting of the Central Renaissance Conference, Celebrating the Centenary of the Publication of Die Cultur Der Renaissance in Italien, Held at the University of Kansas, April 28-30

My choice of subject for this panel is the continuing utility of some of Jacob Burckhardt's thinking on Renaissance political history. For I think it can be demonstrated that much of what is most interesting in contemporary work on Renaissance politics, is either inspired by or runs parallel to, ideas and methods developed by Burckhardt. We Should remember, to begin with, that Burckhardt did think about political history. The fragments of his lectures which have been published deal with political topics as often as not.1 And Part I of his classic essay, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, the centennial of whose publi cation we honor during this year and in this panel, is focused on politics. That Part I is often labelled by students of Burckhardt as political background for what is primarily an essay in cultural history.2 But this is to do it an injustice. For it contains ideas about Renaissance politics which are important and provoca tive in themselves. Of these ideas, the central one, which serves as a theme for the entire section, is his famous claim that in Renaissance Italy the State became, for the first time, a work of art. By this Burckhardt meant that in Renaissance Italy one finds developing a new Spirit of rational calculation in politics. This new Spirit took various forms within various Italian governments: it produced deliberate and ruthless seizure and control of absolute power in such despots as the rulers of fifteenth-century Milan; it produced collection and use of social Statistics among such oligarchic cliques as the rulers of Renaissance Venice; it produced planning of government Structure by elaborate constitutions in the fertile minds of such Renaissance intellectuals as the Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli. This new Spirit also shaped relations between Italian states of the Renaissance: in peace it produced a tough-minded, intricate new diplomacy; in war it produced fighting forces and methods which were almost entirely mercenary.

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