Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy

Winner of the Helen and Howard Marraro Prize
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year
"Perhaps the greatest study ever written of Renaissance political thought."
—Jeffrey Collins, Times Literary Supplement
"Magisterial...Hankins shows that the humanists' obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power."
—Wall Street Journal
"Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way...For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be...nothing less than transformative."
—Noel Malcolm, American Affairs
"[A] masterpiece...It is only Hankins's tireless exploration of forgotten documents...and extraordinary endeavors of editing,...