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  • Re, baroni, popolo: La politica di Giovanni Pontano
  • Riccardo Fubini
Claudio Finzi . Re, baroni, popolo: La politica di Giovanni Pontano. Rimini: Il Cerchio Iniziative Editoriali, 2004. 215 pp. index. bibl. €16. ISBN: 88-8474- 058-4.

This is an accurate, although somehow old-fashioned, book. Finzi carefully explores Pontano's political treatises (especially the De principe and De obedientia), but scarcely hints at the real background of Pontano's writings. With this [End Page 1309] statement I mean both the relationship of his humanistic treatises with their main "sources" (Aristotle's Ethics and Cicero's De officiis above all), and, on the other side, the political and constitutional situation of the Kingdom of Naples. At any rate, an indispensable complement to Finzi's book is the edition and commentary by G. M. Cappelli of Pontano's De principe (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2003). Also, the relationship of Pontano's political and moral writings with the celebrations by Panormita and Facio of King Alfonso's rule should be more accurately specified. The continuity of the Neapolitan academy is plain, and emphasized by Pontano himself; yet some undeclared, noteworthy shifts can be recognized. For instance, Pontano represents the ora del libro, the time of reading at Alfonso's court, as a kind of humanistic academy; according to Panormita's more realistic representation, it consisted of an alternation of profane and sacred lectures by "poets, philosophes and theologians," who exercised themselves in "reading, disputing, and preaching" (see Pontano, De principe, 26ff.). It should be remembered that Panormita and Facio constituted the party that excluded Valla from the Neapolitan court. No doubt Pontano also pursued the same anti-Vallian bias with his avowed Aristotelian and Ciceronian orthodoxy, yet in his writings we can eventually recognize some tacit influences of Valla's moral thought. I refer in particular to Pontano's emphasis on voluntarism in political action, which sometimes put him at odds with his own Aristotelianism. The main concept of the De principe — "majesty" (maiestas), through which Pontano defines the ruler's sovereignty — is not drawn from doctrinal tradition, but from the common usage of the kings' honorary title ("vulgus in hoc sequar": De principe, 54). The subject of De obedientia too, according to Pontano, was never tackled by classical writers. With the word Pontano means a wider (and more political) concept than the virtue of "faith," or the feudal "fidelity" — accordingly, he can eschew the embarrassing question of the feudal submission of the Neapolitan kingdom to the Church. Not always can the rules of political action be easily defined: "prudence" is manifold according to the variety of situations, "since truth is taking the most various directions" ("cum veritas plurima habeat diverticula": De principe, 76). For these reasons Finzi and others — for instance, J. H. Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (1987), 249-52 — compare Pontano to Machiavelli. This is misleading. Machiavelli's "new prince" directly faces reality; and, in order to reestablish the broken network of rules and fidelities (precisely the "obedience" of Pontano), the good old virtues of the Specula principum prove themselves to be inept. On the contrary, Pontano's writings are grounded in a solid tradition of legitimacy and doctrine. Pontano's aim is to enlarge this tradition, in order to adapt more and more moral rules to reality. His political assumptions are marked by an emphasis on the authority of the king, which nevertheless does not exclude some polemical hints, especially that the vice of "avarice" is the harshness of fiscal policy. Pontano is a subtle, sensitive interpreter of contemporary politics: he truly deserves the attention that Finzi, among others, has recently paid to him.

Riccardo Fubini
University of Florence
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