Some pertinent info from a harsh review of Field's work (same guy who proposed Bruni was actually waffling in his allegiance to the Medici)
Hester Schadee on Arthur Field. The Intellectual Struggle for Florence: Humanists and the Beginnings of the Medici Regime, 1420-1440. London: Oxford University Press, 2017. 400 pp. $130.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-879108-9.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/7651/re ... beginnings
The third part of the book must then establish that the “Medicean” humanists in fact had an ideology. But Niccoli famously wrote nothing, Marsuppini very little, and Traversari authored exclusively translations, so that the burden of formulating one falls squarely on Poggio. (Also in consequence, the chapter on Niccoli contains a lot of material already discussed regarding Bruni and Filelfo, and later repeated for Poggio.) Field postulates three domains where Poggio provided intellectual foundations for the Medici regime: the definition of nobility, the role of money in society, and political legitimation (p. 295). The former point is made primarily by reference to Poggio’s dialogue On Nobility, in which Niccoli, debating Lorenzo de’ Medici (Cosimo’s younger brother), shows it to be a social construct. Marsuppini’s poem on the same theme, dedicated to Poggio, lends support, although it is less clear what Poggio’s dialogue Whether an Old Man Should Marry and his Facetiae, entertaining though they are, contribute to this topic (pp. 303-7). The question of money is addressed by means of Poggio’s first publication, a dialogue, On Avarice (completed in 1428, but existing in an earlier version also), the only work in which he touches on the matter. This enterprise is complicated by the fact that, as Field knows, the Medici “had only just begun to coalesce as a party” by that date (p. 309). The text is also difficult to interpret, since it is unclear whose viewpoint is presented as correct (if indeed there is one simple answer: John Oppel, whose article on the work Field strangely does not cite, argued for a combination of those of the main and of the last speaker).[10] Field settles on the final contributor as expressing Poggio’s own opinion, namely that wealth is useful for society as long as princes and prelates do not succumb to immoderate desires. This he calls the “embryonic” Medici party line (p. 315). The third issue, that of political legitimacy, is addressed only in the book’s last three pages drawing on the Caesar-Scipio Controversy, in which Poggio contrasts the virtuous Scipio with the fractious Caesar. Field takes up John Oppel’s argument (from another article, cited not here but in the previous chapter, p. 273) that Poggio’s Scipio stood for Cosimo, and his Caesar for Albizzi (or perhaps for the Milanese duke Filippo Maria Visconti, as argued by Claudio Finzi, uncited).[11] My edition of this text, forthcoming in The I Tatti Renaissance Library, contains an argument against these identifications which I will not repeat here. I note, however, that Poggio’s consistent association of the popularis Caesar with the lowest dregs of Roman society and those who desire revolution sits extremely uncomfortably with Field’s portraits of the aristocratic Albizzi and popular Cosimo de’ Medici.[12]
“How, then, could Filelfo argue in the 1430s that ‘without Poggio Cosimo was feeble, maimed, and weak’?,” Field asks in conclusion (p. 317, also p. 229).[13] This citation from Filelfo’s unedited Oratio ad exules optimates, advanced by Field as evidence for Poggio’s crucial role as Medici ideologue, in fact pertains to a rather different argument. Inveighing against the beastly immoralities of Poggio, Filelfo asserts that the humanist had proffered himself as guide (“dux”) to Cosimo on this path of vice; in that sense, Poggio and his patron had something to give to each other.
So that must be our 1437 Latin title:
Oratio ad exules optimates
Actually, here it is in full:
Oratio in Cosmum Medicem ad exules optimates Florentinos
Opera secondaria
Riferimenti CALMA (2011) vol. III 5 p. 518
Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, V 10 sup., 1r-58r
http://sip.mirabileweb.it/title/oratio- ... tle/121519