Davila, Enrico Caterino

DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO. - Born at Piove di Sacco (Padua) on 30 Oct. 1576; in 1583 he was in France as page to Queen Catherine; at 18 he entered military service; in 1599 he was in the service of Venice; he was murdered by a servant on 26 May 1631.

He owes his fame to the Storia delle guerre civili di Francia. In his firm and detached style he gathers up the extreme thought of reason of state: « Non è cosa né lodevole né salutare il volersi fermare ed appagare nel mezzo » (Storia ecc., 2nd ed., Platoia 1852, p. 85): one must be able to carry the crime through to the end. He feels intimately the Machiavellian and Guicciardinian polemic, as well as that of the Counter-Reformation, on the best form of government, inclining toward a strong monarchy, aware as he is of the decline of the noble forces and of the germination of the great national States. A frankly political spirit, he presents religion, despite apparent phrases of great reverence, as an instrumentum regni. In a well-known passage rich in undertones the conversion of Henry IV is felt sub specie politica: « il re, ricevuta instruzione sufficiente in proposito degli articoli controversi nella fede, mostrò di rasserenar l'animo e di comprendere visibilmente la mano di Dio, che richiamandolo dagli errori lo riconduceva nel grembo della Chiesa » (op. cit., V, p. 179): he is not so much concerned with the sincerity of a conversion nor even with the vast religious consequences that such a conversion determined in the tangle of the French struggles and of European Christianity, as with the political forces expressing human cunning or greed.

Massimo Petrocchi