ABSTRACT
In a recent article for Political Theory the present writer argued that republican humanists of the Italian Renaissance were not, as a rule, exclusivist' in their constitutional theory. It occurs in Leonardo Bruni's Oratio in funere Nanni Stroze, in a passage often cited as an example of fiery republican sentiment by modern authorities on civic humanism. In medieval civil law legitimus can certainly mean what is in accordance with legally enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands' one of Weber's three kinds of legitimacy. It is in the midst of explaining and defending how Florentines safeguard their liberty that Bruni introduces his legitimacy argument, based loosely on Aristotle's constitutional analysis. Reviewing the history of Bruni's efforts to translate Aristotelian constitutional terminology into Latin raises a hermeneutical dilemma with regard to the Strozzi oration.
