Writing his dialogues on The Civic Life in the mid 1430s, Matteo Palmieri proudly emphasised the position of cultural pre-eminence attained by his native Florence in the course of his own lifetime. ‘Every thoughtful person must thank God for having been permitted to be born into this new age, so full of hope and promise, which already rejoices in a greater array of nobly-gifted talents than the world has seen in the course of the previous thousand years’ (pp. 36–7). Palmieri was of course thinking primarily of the achievements of the Florentines in painting, sculpture and architecture – the achievements in particular of Masaccio, Donatello and Brunelleschi. But he also had in mind the remarkable efflorescence of moral, social and political philosophy that occurred in Florence at the same time – a development initiated by the humanist Chancellor Salutati, further extended by such leading members of his circle as Bruni, Poggio and Vergerio, and later taken up by a number of young writers whom they clearly influenced, including Alberti, Manetti, Valla and Palmieri himself.

A great deal of attention has naturally been paid to the question of why such a concentrated study of moral and political issues should have arisen in Florence during this particular generation. The answer which has had the greatest impact on recent scholarship has been the one proposed by Hans Baron in his study of The Crisis of the Early Renaissance.