My friend Lauro Martines, who has died aged 98, was an outstanding and original historian of Renaissance Florence and Italy.
In his first book, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390-1460 (1963), he went well beyond the traditional history of ideas to study the humanists in the historical context of the Florentine elites and the politics of the time. In Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (1968), he highlighted the role of lawyers in the development of state power, revealing fresh aspects of Florentine politics.
