DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO. — Born at Piove di Sacco (Padova) on 30 October 1576, in 1583 he was in France as a page to Queen Caterina; at the age of eighteen he entered the military, and in 1599 entered 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 together the ultimate expression of the doctrine of raison d’état: « 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 inwardly perceived the Machiavellian and Guicciardinian debate, as well as that of the Counter-Reformation, concerning the best form of government, inclining toward a strong monarchy, as he was conscious of the decline of the noble forces and the emergence of the great national states. A genuinely political spirit, he presents religion, despite the apparent expressions of great reverence, as instrumentum regni. In a well-known passage rich in implications, the conversion of Enrico IV is understood 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 concerned not so much with the sincerity of a conversion, nor even with the vast religious consequences that such a conversion brought about amid the tangle of the struggles within France and European Christianity, as with the political forces expressing human cunning or greed.