Resumen de The balance of power in the Renaissance

I. Janzekovic

• The article presents the contentious concept of the balance of power in the Renaissance. Italian humanists adopted and adapted the concept of balance and applied it to politics. The chief among them was Francesco Guicciardini. The concept then spread over the Alps across Europe through translations of Guicciardini's History of Italy in the 1560s and 1570s. The article shows how and when different translations were made, how they influenced other writers, and how the concept became commonplace. The author argues that it was not the diplomats who spread the concept as has been thought for the last hundred years, but the historians and their literary works which were widely read and referenced.