MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLÒ

MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLÒ. – Writer and politician, born on 3 May 1469 in Florence, died there on 22 June 1527.

I. LIFE AND WORKS

The journeys and assignments entrusted to him by the Florentine government were varied and of diverse kinds: to Appiano IV, lord of Piombino; in 1499 to Caterina Sforza Riario; in 1500 to Louis XII, in France, where he would return in 1510 and 1514; in 1501 to Pistoia and Arezzo;

in 1502 to Cesare Borgia, the Valentino; in 1503 to Rome, to Alexander III; in 1505 to Mugello, to carry out enlistments; in 1506, in the Pope’s retinue, to Latium, Umbria, the Marches, and Romagna; in 1507 to Germany, as bearer of instructions for Francesco Vettori, sent to the Emperor Maximilian; and, under the Medici, sporadically sometimes to northern Italy and sometimes to central Italy. Connected with these services are precisely those speeches, accounts, and reports that at once constitute office work and documents of his experience (Discorso fatto al magistrato dei Dieci sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499; Del modo di trattare i popoli della Val di Chiana ribellati; Descrizione del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nella ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, il Signor Pagolo e il duca di Gravina Orsini; Parole sopra la provvisione del danai; Rapporto di cose della Magna, 1508 — subsequently reworked in ’12 —; Ritratti delle cose di Francia, etc.). These writings, which today offer so many elements for reconstructing his thought, stand beside his major and more famous works, the fruit of disinterested solitary meditations: the Principe, the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, the Istorie fiorentine, and the Arte della guerra. As for M.’s other, no less vivid aspect, the literary one (the Mandragola, a milestone in the history of Italian theater, performed in Rome in 1520 and in Venice in 1522, the Clisia, the Satire, the Vita di Castruccio, chapters, and various discourses), it constitutes, so to speak, the otium of a spirit that, even in artistic expression and in its very taste for appearances, reveals that inclination, already evident in the political sphere, to grasp, in their essential nature, the attitudes of everyday reality.

Without doubt, the experience acquired in political offices, combined with knowledge of history and, moreover, with the very troubled phases of Florentine and personal life, helped provide the materials of thought later elaborated during the forced leisure of S. Casciano. M.’s was certainly a seething age: Florence passed from the carefree era of Lorenzo il Magnifico to Savonarola’s stern admonitions; there followed the local wars against Pisa, against rebellious Arezzo, and so on, and the republican regime (1502). The return of the Medici meant for M. expulsion from every office, a year of confinement, and, in 1513, trial and torture on suspicion—soon dispelled—of participation in the Boscoli and Capponi conspiracy. Subsequent political events kept Florence in continual turmoil, in connection with the struggles between Charles V, king of Spain, and Francis I, king of France, and culminated in the sack of Rome in 1527, followed that same year by the Medici’s renewed fall and the revival of the Republic. M. hoped in vain to be employed again (Francesco Tarugi was preferred to him instead), and with this final inclusion M.’s life came to an end, in that calamitous year, in anguished solitude.

An age of troubles and ferment, of changes in direction, of heated discussions with local or international implications (M. belonged to that circle of learned minds who gathered in the gardens of the Rucellai house: the “Orti Oricellati”), and of magnanimous ideals: this was answered in M. by the effort to find, amid the succession of conspiracies, some kind of platform for thought and action. As for his private life, we know that it was industrious, substantially honest, and family-oriented (in 1502 he had married Marietta Corsini, by whom he had five children), though burdened by financial hardships.

M.’s period of genuine historical-political meditation began in his retreat at S. Casciano, a small family estate, where he could alternate the company of rough peasants with meditation on the ancient masters: a double education that would sustain him in the simultaneous composition of the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio and the Principe. This treatise was composed under the title De principatibus, between July and December 1513, while he was working on the Discorsi, presumably with a view to the creation of a Medici state at the initiative of Leo X; and although the Principe has been granted a fame that may be called uninterrupted for centuries, there is no doubt that the two works form a single whole, an inseparable

intellectual enterprise: a kind of intellectual revanche on the part of a spirit that, frustrated in its aspiration to an otherwise positive political affirmation, could at last and only thereby grant itself the free and supreme satisfaction of “reasoning about the State.”

In the Principe, a brief treatise in twenty-six chapters, the origin and structure of autocratic states are studied (“what a principality is, of what kinds they are, how they are acquired, how they are maintained, why they are lost”), with rapid and incisive arguments on specific themes (virtù and fortune; the conduct of the ruler toward his followers, soldiers, confederates, etc.); but principally new states are viewed essentially as functions of the ruler’s vigilant initiative, the exclusive architect and judge of the conquest and maintenance of political order. Political order, as such, will determine episodically the content and limits of the prince’s “wisdom” or “prudence” (presupposed as legibus statusis): he will be able to act confidently in innovating or preserving his dominion, employing, as a prudent vir, that virtus which will essentially signify active willing, shrewd exploitation of favorable opportunities, the use of means suited to the end, and the overcoming of adverse fortune; relying, in short, on the image of the Centaur (“a prince must know very well how to use both the beast and the man”: chap. 17), and conducting himself now as the “lion,” now as the “fox.” The measure of action is the positivity of the result: that is what counts, even at the cost of being feared rather than loved (chap. 17), even at the cost of breaking sworn agreements (chap. 18); action, insofar as it realizes a concrete and supra-individual political end, is redeemed by an autonomous morality, which demands that for the fatherland one may be permitted to lose one’s soul.

Taken by itself, that is, independently of the Discorsi, the Principe can provide the various interpreters with a common point of departure: that of a diseased society which the vigorous «virtù» of the autocrat is committed to healing by any means: a preliminary corruptio, susceptible to discipline through an unscrupulous commitment that may perhaps depart from morality, either permanently (as insufficient to sustain the political world) or provisionally, without any a priori repudiation of higher ethical values, whether considered in themselves or as political values as well. The problem therefore remains of determining whether or not the Principe contains a conscious affirmation of the autonomy of politics, or, as it has been put, an affirmation of a politics which, insofar as it is politics as such—that is, «true» politics, crowned by positive success that «benefits» the State—would already in itself constitute a higher morality.

In the Discorsi (in three books), dedicated to Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai, the «long experience and continuous study of the affairs of the world» (Proemio) would seem to offer M. more peaceful perspectives, in considering political organisms naturally accustomed to freedom. Firm in his conviction concerning the perpetual recurrence of human movements, M. immersed himself in the reading of Livy, examining this or that moment, attitude, or problem peculiar to the life of republics. As an instructive paradigm, he benefited from the example of the Roman Republic, with its internal movements, its military experiments, its agrarian laws, its recourse to religion, its founding of colonies, its successes, and its corruptions and disturbances: so many subjects of analysis and commentary, directed, no less than in the Principe, and indeed more systematically, toward the scientific organization of the historical-political case material.

What is the relationship between the Principe and the Discorsi? Some have related the Principe to a program of militant politics, corresponding to the needs of the age, and the Discorsi to an educational program unrelated to immediate circumstances: on the one hand «practical politics», on the other «reflective politics», the two texts being reconciled in the author’s spirit, which would be political, certainly, but also educational, situated both within time and beyond time. In short, in the Principe the ideal of the «State-Individual», and in the Discorsi the ideal of the «State-Regime»; there, the «State-Force», here, the «State-Civilization»: the latter appearing, however, to be the only durable one, so that the author, having to choose between Romulus and Numa, would choose Numa (Russo).

Not, of course, that beyond mere technique the writer’s personal yearning, a breath of humane and honest feeling, does not often flash between the lines of the rigid historical-naturalistic lesson; but, on close examination, this yearning appears to be strictly supervised by the obligation of critical detachment, as though the author realized that feeling is not a scientific measure and may instead obscure the clarity of objective vision. What serves him as a valid measure is rather that experience (vedesi ancora per esperienza...), which is the opposite of passion. Yet, since experience has no limit—as he himself realized, owing to the continual variability of historical situations (sects, languages, accidents)—there ultimately follows the bitter futility of any theorizing that goes beyond the bare indication of certain general, constant tendencies of humanity.

In M., political life and moral life are divided or linked only accidentally; consequently, those allusions in the Discorsi to «freedom», «the people», and «civic life», in which some have wished to discern elements opposed to the authoritarian viewpoint of the Principe, ultimately prove truncated and empty. The «freedom» envisaged by the Discorsi is neither active nor creative, nor does it arise from any recognition of individual morality. Citizens are always viewed in the capacity of subjects, whether of the prince or of the laws, disciplined by a kind of superior force, or at least settled within arrangements suited to their nature, without any real possibility of a ius actione civitatis. Indeed, in the Arte della guerra (a work that, even in the author’s intention, completes the Principe and the Discorsi), while national militias are advocated, as recommended in the other two books, there is no wish that these militias be voluntary; that is, there is no hope that from these citizens, warmed by an intimate love of country, the spontaneity of sacrifice might arise. It is demanded that the citizens become soldiers solely at the prince’s command. Volunteers, M. says, «are not the best, indeed they are the worst in a province». It is for authority to demand this other form of contribution, of service, from the citizens, in whom, therefore, political feeling neither has nor ought to have autonomy as a source or initiative. Again, one may see in the Arte della guerra the lapidary statement of political necessity: «Compel citizens to love one another, to live without factions, to esteem private interests less than public ones». Civic love and social duty are envisaged as functions of coercion from above. And from above, too, must come the education in which M. places his confidence, but which is not at all an autonomous achievement of the individual, as Humanism had nevertheless recommended.

Ideally connected with the Arte della guerra and the principal trilogy is the Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca (1520), in which, through the fictionalized figure of the famous condottiero, the praise of active life («God is a lover of strong men»), placed at the service of civic commitment, is reaffirmed.

In the Istorie Fiorentine (suggested to him by Cardinal Giuliano de’ Medici in 1519, but officially commissioned on 8 November 1520 by the Florentine and Pisan Studio, with an annual subsidy of 100 florins for two years; and of which he was able to present the first eight books to Clement VII in 1525), M. reveals his most genuine inclinations: a scientific and pedagogical curiosity about political events, the sifting of historical materials, love of his native land and of Italy, and a taste for artistic representation.

The narrative extends in outline from the fall of the Roman Empire to 1434, and then, in greater detail, to 1492. The author’s intention, left unfinished, was to continue the history of events «both Italian and Florentine» up to his own day. Although various shortcomings in these Istorie—which M. undertook with fervor, declaring himself dissatisfied with the earlier efforts of others—can today be identified (inaccuracies, appropriations, and so forth), their documentary interest nevertheless remains considerable, including for the purpose of illuminating the author’s distinctive character: that penetration to the heart of facts; that appreciation of success as success («those who win, however they win, never again suffer the shame of it», III, 12); that view of order as secured above all by «the virtue of one who maintains it», because it «rarely happens», «by good fortune» (IV, 1), that civic dispositions preserve themselves through their own strength; the stark conception of the human tendency toward faction, disunity, and inconstancy, despite the eternal appeal of banners and myths such as peace and freedom. M. does indeed note «how powerful is the name of freedom, which no force subdues, no time consumes, and no merit outweighs» (II, 24), without perceiving, or accepting, the concept of freedom as the subject’s conscious moral sphere, itself creative of authority.

Further testimony to M.’s tenacious interest in political matters is provided by other marginal writings, such as the Discorsi sopra il riformare lo Stato di Firenze (composed in 1519), in which M. conceives a constitution, seeking to reconcile the (theoretical) existence of a republic with the retention of power in the hands of a ruling (Medicean) class; as well as by less significant pages, in which, nonetheless, M.’s effort always remains visible: to start from (concrete) reality and to fashion the forms of thought within II.
A mischievous taste for capturing the petty (though conventional) aspects of an unscrupulous reality can be found in M. the playwright. Although his first theatrical exercise, Le Maschere (now lost), dates from 1504, the Mandragola, performed perhaps in Rome in 1520 and certainly in Venice in 1522, and the Cilizia, performed in Florence in 1525, belong—like the Alma d’oro, a composition in verse assigned approximately to 1517—to the period of enforced leisure, when he strove (Prologo alla Mandragola) “with these idle thoughts / To make his unhappy time more gentle.”

In these theatrical fictions, as in other compositions (the various Capitoli: Di fortuna, Dell’ambizione, Dell’occasione; the Decennale; the Novella di Belfagor arcidiavolo), that literary vocation of M.’s finds, so to speak, direct expression—though in his political writings and his nervous letters it attains, in a single rush, striking results of artistic effect. One should also note the representational vitality placed at the service of the thesis defended in the Dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua, in which he, Niccolò, retorts to Dante, his adversarial interlocutor, celebrating against the latter the value of the Florentine character of the language.
II. THE M.’S VARYING FORTUNES. — Although the M. was able to see his comedies performed, he did not live to see the printing of the works to which his lasting fame is bound. The first editions date from 1531 (Rome, Blado) and 1532 (Florence, Giunta). But the manuscript of the Prince must have enjoyed an immediate and considerable circulation, if it could give rise to the singular circumstance (not yet clarified) of the insertion of material corresponding to that of the Prince in the De regnandi peritia (published in Naples in 1523, while the M. was still alive) by the celebrated philosopher Agostino Nifo da Sessa.

The very earliest public indications of the M.’s dangerous character did indeed proceed from a single ecclesiastical platform, but from different countries: Librium illum inveni, scriptum ab hoste humani generis, indeed Satanæ digito scriptum, proclaimed Reginaldo Pole (Apologia ad Carolum V Cœs., XXVIII-XXXV). The M. was pointed out by Girolamo Osorio as an impurus scriptor atque nefarius in his De nobilitate civili et christiana (Lisbon 1542, III). And a genuine denunciation is found in Ambrogio Catalino (Enarrationes, etc., De libris a Christiano detestandis et a Christianismo penitus climandis [Rome 1552]).

But, apart from such denunciations, there is evidence of the unofficial indictment of the M.’s work in 1549, in what Busini wrote to Varchi: “Here they forbid and prohibit the sale of all the works of our M.” In 1559, the M. appeared in the Index of Paul IV among the auctores quorum libri et scripta omnia prohibentur; the condemnation was confirmed by the Tridentine Index of 1566 (among the librorum prohibitorum auctores primae classis), and was subsequently maintained, despite several attempts to discriminate among the works once they had been expurgated.

Censures did not proceed solely from the Catholic side, nor for essentially religious reasons: they also came from the Protestant camp. In France, the Calvinist Innocenzo Gentillet, in his Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en bonne paix un royaume, contre N. M. le florentin (Lausanne 1576); Du Plessis Mornay (under the pseudonym Stefano Giunio Bruto), in the combative Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1577); the Huguenot Francesco de la Noue (Discours politiques et militaires, 1587); and others launched an entire campaign against the M. (a good polemical pretext against the politics of Queen Catherine de’ Medici was the fact that she was his fellow citizen): an anti-Machiavellian wave that would soon spread to England and the other countries, and would cause the words Machiavellian, Machiavellianism, and Machiavellization to enter the common political vocabulary.

It would be lengthy to list the Italian and foreign authors who, from the late sixteenth century onward, attacked the M. From Botero to Ribadameyra (Princeps christianus adversus N. M., etc.), from Possevino to Bozio (author of various polemics: De robore bellico... adversus M., Rome 1593; De Italiae Statu... adversus M., there 1595; De ruinis gentium... adversus impius politicos, Rome 1596), from Campanella to very many others, the series is long of those who, occasionally or deliberately, in Latin or in the vernacular, attacked a doctrine that evidently already had covert or overt sectatores. The accusations directed against this doctrine varied: lack of a scientific basis, depreciation of religious values, alteration of historical truth, moral corruption, political inadequacy, ultimately reaching, at the end of the seventeenth century, the grotesque Saggio sulla sciocchezza di N. M. by the Lucchese p. Gian Lorenzo Lucchesini (Rome 1697).

At the same time, however, though less visibly, the M. enjoyed considerable esteem. While one may discern the unconscious use of his mental attitudes by the very people who refuted him, the sporadic and independent defenses—sometimes causes, sometimes discoveries—which emerged, are highly significant, ranging, to mention only a few, from the respectful consideration shown by an Anonymous Sicilian to the well-known Apologia (1615) by Gaspare Scioppio. For Scioppio, the M. was a unmasker of tyrannies; a thesis (to which Campanella would object in the Atheismus triumphalatus) that, already suggested in a certain sense by Cardinal Pole himself, who was said to have heard in Florence that the M.’s intention was antityrannical, would later also be upheld by Alberico Gentili (for whom the M. was a laudator democratiae) and by Bacon of Verulam (De aug. scient., III), and would later be proclaimed by Foscolo in the Sepolcri.

Only toward the end of the seventeenth century would the M. be judged with a less acrimonious spirit. According to P. M. Doria (La vita civile, Augsburg 1710, p. 7), the M. had not at all advised the use of the malicious reason of state; on the contrary, he had imparted the soundest and most virtuous instruction to princes and peoples. The M.’s only fault was “in treating, as he did, the various kinds of tyrannies with the same indifference with which just principalities ought to be treated, prescribing rules and norms of government for all ... In short, M. is an open pharmacopoeia containing every prescription.” This marked the beginning of more measured evaluations, which allowed certain critics, alongside the obligatory censure, to offer an already significantly forthright appreciation (for Tiraboschi, the M. “proved to be one of the deepest and most experienced politicians ever to have lived, and the Discorsi are full of entirely just reflections, which reveal the rare genius of their author,” Storia della letterat. ital., VII, Florence 1809, p. 581). In the same eighteenth century, this appreciation already acquired a precise character with Gian Federico Christ’s De Nicolao Machiavello (Leipzig 1731), C. F. Feuerlein’s Missus thesium Machiavellisticarum (1742), and Rousseau, echoing Gentili’s thesis concerning the alleged unmasking by the M. of the princes’ evil arts in support of the republican ideal. These writings, however, were less well known than Frederick of Prussia’s Antimachiavel, with a preface by Voltaire (*Commentaires politiques et historiques sur le traité du Prince de M. et sur l’Anti-Ma-

chiavel de Frédéric II*), a violent indictment that essentially reproduced the traditional censures, and which was later further undermined by suspicion of insincerity.

With the nineteenth century, one may say that the period of the genuine assessment of the M. began. From Foscolo’s vindication, through the eulogies and illuminations of G. Ferrari, De Sanctis, and others, the M. was hailed as the herald of national ideals; then, from the final years of the nineteenth century onward, increasingly numerous analyses, investigations, and critical clarifications appeared, among which the labors of Tommasini (v. BIBLICA) and Villari (v. BIBLICA) remain especially noteworthy. Recent criticism, which takes its starting point from Croce’s considerations of the M. as an upholder of the autonomy of politics, debating and judging in various ways the questions raised by a more attentive, patient, and coordinated reading of the M.’s work, pursues, in Italy and abroad, the difficult task of interpretation and systematization, while reaffirming, in any case, the continuing relevance and importance of the themes that it proposes and imposes upon the scholars’ reflection.