SOURCE: Introduction to The History of Florence, by Francesco Guicciardini, translated and edited by Mario Domandi, Harper & Row, 1970, pp. xiii-xxxvii.

In the following excerpt, Domandi examines the structure, style, and purpose of Guicciardini's History of Florence and notes that the work stresses the importance of rational thought. (Note: Only those footnotes are included which pertain to this particular excerpt.

After lying in the Guicciardini family archive for 350 years, the History of Florence was edited and published for the first time by Giuseppe Canestrini, as the third volume of his Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini.²² The original manuscript, bearing no title, is a continuous narrative, without division into books or chapters. The only attempts at subdivision of the material are evidenced by dates put in the margin of the text at the beginning of each year, starting in 1494 and ending in 1508. The manuscript ends abruptly in the middle of...