The Origin of Republic 1

The idea of a republic first appeared in the writings of Italian scholars of the Renaissance, most importantly Machiavelli. Machiavelli divided governments into two types, principalities ruled by a monarch and republics ruled by the people.

In medieval Northern Italy a number of city states had commune or signoria based governments. In the late Middle Ages, writers, such as Giovanni Villani, began thinking about the nature of these states and the differences from the more common monarchies. These early writers used terms such as libertas populi to describe the states. The terminology changed in the 15th century as the renewed interest in the writings of Ancient Greece and Rome caused writers to prefer using classical terminology. To describe non-monarchial states writers, most importantly Leonardo Bruni, adopted the Latin word res publica.

While Bruni and Machiavelli used the term to describe the non-monarchial states of Northern Italy, res publica has a set of interrelated meanings in the original Latin. The term can quite literally be translated as 'public matter.' It was most often used by Roman writers to refer to the state and government,[citation needed] even during the period of the Roman Empire. The English word commonwealth derives from a direct translation of res publica, and its use in English is closer to how the Romans used the term res publica.[