The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli's The Prince

John T. Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415707237
• eBook ISBN: 9781317536727
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is one of the most influential works in the history of political thought and the adjective Machiavellian is well-known and perhaps even over-used. So why does the meaning of the text continue to be debated to the present day? And how does a contemporary reader get to grips with a book full of references to the politics of the early 16th Century?

The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli's The Prince provides readers with the historical background, textual analysis, and other relevant information needed for a greater understanding and appreciation of this classic text. This guidebook introduces:

• the historical, political and intellectual context in which Machiavelli was working
• the key ideas developed by Machiavelli throughout the text and the examples he uses to illustrate them
• the relationship of The Prince to The Discourses and Machiavelli's other works

Featuring a timeline, maps and suggestions for further reading throughout, this book is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to be able to engage more fully with The Prince.

1

Machiavelli’s Life and Times

A story about Machiavelli when he was on his deathbed gives some idea of his character and his concerns, whether or not the account is authentic. Awakening from a dream, Machiavelli told those gathered around his bed that he had dreamt that, given the choice of going to heaven or to hell, he chose to go to hell so that he could converse with the ancient authors whom he so relished reading while alive rather than associate with the blessed souls of paradise.¹ On a related note, not long before he died on June 21, 1527, Machiavelli wrote a friend that he loved his fatherland more than his soul.² His correspondence throughout his life with friends and political associates bursts with discussions of politics, of the partisan maneuverings at home in Florence and the military and diplomatic scene across Europe and beyond, and is peppered with ribald stories and irreverent remarks on Machiavelli’s part and teasing from his friends concerning his less than regular Church attendance and his unorthodox views on matters religious, political, and otherwise. In short, the deathbed scene rings true even if it is not true—a fittingly ironic paradox for the author of The Prince.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born on May 3, 1469, in Florence. Machiavelli’s family had a long and sometimes distinguished record of public service to the Florentine Republic, with several of his ancestors and relatives having been elected to the most important offices of the state, although the family was never among the small elite that dominated Florentine politics. While some of his relatives enjoyed financial success and some political influence during his youth, Machiavelli’s own immediate family lived in modest circumstances and was not involved in political affairs. His father, Bernardo, obtained a doctorate in law, but he preferred a retired life devoted to humanistic studies to practicing his profession. His father owned a fairly large library for the time, with both a considerable number of manuscripts as well as bound books, which were still fairly rare at the time and quite expensive. The library contained classical authors of history, philosophy, and literature in Latin and perhaps Greek, although probably largely in Latin translation. Among other works, the library boasted a full edition of Livy’s history of Rome, which included an index of place names which Bernardo himself was commissioned to do in 1476, although he only got around to having the loose sheets of the edition along with his index bound as a set of books a decade later, when the future author of the Discourses on Livy would have been old enough to study the work. Bernardo was active in intellectual circles in Florence, and among his friends was Bartolomeo Scala, a humanist scholar and First Chancellor of Florence (the state’s highest administrative post). Scala made Bernardo a speaker in a dialogue he wrote on law, evidently as a tribute both to their friendship and to Bernardo’s expertise in the subject.

The education Niccolò received was the typical course of studies for a boy of his social standing and his father’s intellectual ambitions. The curriculum focused on learning to read and write Latin, the language of scholarship, law, political administration and diplomacy, and the Church. The training also included arithmetic and applications to accounting, an important subject in Florence given its power and wealth were based on banking, the wool trade, and other trading and manufacturing enterprises, although after he had lost his political posts Machiavelli admitted that he had no taste or talent for such trades. These studies would have occupied Machiavelli through his mid-teens, and he may have extended his education at the university in Florence, although there is no clear evidence that he did. A less conventional and more intriguing part of his training was the fact that he copied the entirety of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), the notorious materialist poem whose rediscovery in 1417 introduced an unapologetic Epicureanism into the intellectual discourse of the time and challenged philosophical and theological orthodoxies. The handwritten copy, with Machiavelli’s marginal comments on philological issues, manuscript variations, and sometimes the philosophical topics raised in the text, was discovered in the Vatican Library, of all places, about fifty years ago. The marginalia suggest that Machiavelli was enlisted in a project, probably in the early 1490s, to produce a more critically informed edition of Lucretius’ poem than yet existed. In addition to his Latin studies, which included translating Latin texts into Italian and vice versa, Machiavelli read works in the vernacular, and was particularly fond of the poetry of Dante and Petrarch. If Machiavelli’s education was of the kind that would prepare him for the law or some other profession, we have no evidence of his entering upon a career until he suddenly comes on the political scene in 1498 with his election as Second Chancellor of the Florentine Republic.

Florentine politics in Machiavelli’s youth and early adult life were tumultuous and dramatic. The Medici family had come to dominate Florence from 1434 onward, with the heads of the family being princes in all but name. Their rule was not uncontested, however. Most notably, on April 26, 1478, when Machiavelli was days away from his ninth birthday, a conspiracy led by the Pazzi family attempted to assassinate the heads of the Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano. The brothers were attacked in the Duomo during mass, and while Giuliano lie bleeding to death on the floor of the cathedral after being stabbed some twenty times, the wounded Lorenzo managed to escape. Meanwhile, the conspirators were trapped and the leaders of the coup were killed, with the leader of the Pazzi family thrown out a window of the Palazzo Vecchio, the governmental palace where Machiavelli would later work, and then his body being dragged through the streets by a mob and thrown into the River Arno. Another conspirator, an archbishop of the Salviati family, was hung from the same building clothed in his ecclesiastical robes. Lorenzo de’ Medici managed to regain control of the city and ruled until his death in 1492. Power passed from Lorenzo to his much less able son Piero, who lost control of the state after two years with the sudden turn in events that would throw Italy, and Florence with it, into turmoil for the next three decades.

In September 1494 word arrived in Florence that King Charles VIII of France had crossed the Alps into northern Italy with a formidable army, including the first siege train to include artillery. Charles marched toward Florence on his way to claim the throne of the Kingdom of Naples. The indecisive Piero de’ Medici refused to support the king’s expedition and so the French army began to sack and plunder towns in Tuscany within the Florentine dominion and threatened the city itself. A popular uprising in the city caused Piero to flee Florence, and Charles VIII entered Florence on November 17th without facing any resistance. As Machiavelli later wrote in The Prince, the French king took Italy “with a piece of chalk,” referring to the fact that the French troops were billeted in selected houses marked with chalk.

With the Medici exiled, the Florentine Republic was reestablished under the influence of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, whose fiery sermons had prophesied that Italy would be punished for her sins by a redeeming prince who would come from the north. Savonarola, who would become Machiavelli’s exemplar of an “unarmed prophet” in The Prince, called for political renewal, notably by proposing the expansion of the Great Council, in which supreme power was vested, to about 3,000 citizens to make it (relatively) more democratic. He also preached moral reform and urged the Florentines to burn lace, wigs, decks of cards, and other frivolous worldly possessions in what were called “bonfires of the vanities.”

The four years during which Savonarola dominated Florentine politics were times of complex partisan strife, including both the reemergence of traditional conflict between the elite families which had traditionally controlled Florentine politics and the more popular faction that had been given increased power under the newly reorganized republic, as well as conflict between the followers and opponents of Savonarola. The friar did not limit his call for religious reform to the Florentines, but became increasingly bold in his criticism of the sinful ways of the Church. An exasperated Pope Alexander VI finally excommunicated Savonarola in 1497 and threatened Florence if it continued to protect the friar. Under pressure from both the Church and the Florentines, Savonarola agreed to stop preaching on March 18, 1498, but not before Machiavelli was able to hear a few sermons in order to report on the friar’s activities to the Florentine ambassador to Rome. In the first extant letter we have from Machiavelli, dated March 9, 1498, he gives a lively summary of Savonarola’s sermons. He relates how the friar attacked his opponents as partisans of the devil, warned the city of the rise of a tyrant in their midst, and for good measure spoke of the wickedness of the pontiff. More interestingly, Machiavelli then offers his own judgment of Savonarola: “Thus, in my judgment, he acts in accordance with the times and colors his lies accordingly.”³ Shortly after these last sermons Savonarola was arrested and then tried and convicted of heresy. On the morning of May 23, 1498, Savonarola and two of his Dominican adherents were led into the square below the Palazzo Vecchio and hung and then burned, with the ashes carefully carted away and dumped into the Arno in order to prevent his followers from collecting any relics.

The fall of Savonarola set the stage for the rise of Machiavelli. The future author of The Prince began his position as Second Chancellor of the Florentine Republic on June 19, 1498, entering his office in the government palace less than a month after Savonarola’s execution and burning in the square below, and remained in his position and the other government positions he acquired until November 7, 1512. Machiavelli first stood for election for the chancery office in February 1498, but was defeated in the election in the Great Council by a pro-Savonarolan candidate. With the fall of Savonarola a little more than a year later, however, the Second Chancellor was dismissed, a new election was held, and Machiavelli prevailed over his anti-Savonarolan opponent. Since there was a desire to restore the chancery to its traditionally non-partisan role in administering the state bureaucracy, Machiavelli’s success in the election may have been due to the fact he was not strongly identified with any faction.

Political power in Florence resided in the elected council drawn from a citizenry that was restricted to families who had enjoyed citizenship for a century or more, while the highest magistracies and political posts were effectively controlled by a small group of wealthy and powerful families. Since elected officials tended to rotate office after short terms, the republic created an administrative body, the chancery, whose officials and staff were continued in office for long periods of time so that they could gain the necessary expertise. The chancery was therefore effectively the republic’s civil service. The chancellors and their staff drafted memoranda and diplomatic correspondence at the direction of the elected officials, but often enjoyed considerable influence over policy through their role as experienced administrators and as advisers to their superiors. The First Chancellor of the Florentine Republic was responsible for overseeing the entire chancery, including departments administering both internal and external affairs, but with particular responsibility for Florence’s relations with foreign states. In turn, as Second Chancellor Machiavelli was primarily responsible for supervising Florence’s relations with its subject cities and dominions, although he became increasingly involved with foreign relations and diplomacy as well. Less than a month after assuming his duties as Second Chancellor, Machiavelli was also appointed to serve as the secretary to the Ten of War, a body of officials overseeing Florentine military affairs. Later, in 1507, he was given the further responsibility of serving as chancellor of the Nine of the Militia, which administered the newly created militia, a project conceived and promoted by Machiavelli himself. In these various roles, Machiavelli would gain the “long experience” with political affairs of which he would later speak in the Dedicatory Letter of The Prince.

Machiavelli was an extraordinarily active and influential chancery official during his fourteen years in office. During that time, he went on over forty missions for his city, more than twenty of which were particularly significant, including diplomatic missions that involved delicate negotiations. His primary duties as Second Chancellor of administering affairs concerning Florence’s subject cities and dominions often intersected with his role as secretary to the Ten of War since these cities and dominions were either in rebellion, such as Pisa, or suffered bloody partisan conflict, such as Pistoia, or were captured by other states and regained by Florence through negotiation, such as Arezzo. Particularly significant in his role as Second Chancellor was the long struggle to recapture Pisa, which had broken away from Florentine control in the tumultuous times of the French invasion of 1494. Machiavelli personally directed or was heavily involved with the military operations against Pisa, including a failed attempt in 1504 to divert the course of the Arno away from Pisa in order to deprive the city of access to the sea and thereby to starve the Pisans into submission, an operation for which Florence hired Leonardo da Vinci as its military architect. Pisa was finally retaken in June 1509, in part through using the militia Machiavelli had finally persuaded the city to establish in 1506, a militia for which Machiavelli himself recruited the troops, directed their training, and oversaw in his third official role as secretary to the Nine of the Militia.

Soon after he assumed office Florence made use of Machiavelli for diplomatic missions, and came to rely on him for such important tasks to an unusual degree given that foreign affairs were not part of his official portfolio. Although he was never named as an ambassador on any of these missions, since such appointments were reserved for members of the elite, he played a major role as a negotiator as well as an intelligence gatherer who was experienced at sizing up the ever-changing political scene and its leading players. His first important missions involved negotiating terms with the mercenary captains, or condottieri, Florence hired, thus giving him direct experience with the subject of mercenary and auxiliary arms that would preoccupy him when he later wrote The Prince. His first important diplomatic mission was a seven-month-long stay at the French court in 1500–1, and he would return to France several more times during his career. In 1502 he was sent by the republic to observe and report back on the activities of Cesare Borgia, who was then conquering large portions of the Romagna and Marche, regions to the east and northeast of Florence, and fomenting rebellion among Florence’s subject cities. His eyewitness reports back to Florence on this mission, and another one he undertook from October 1502 to February 1503, include vivid assessments of Cesare Borgia’s personality and actions and contain eyewitness accounts of events such as Cesare’s grisly execution of his minister Remirro de Orco and his slaughter of his unreliable mercenary captains at Senigallia that would later make their way into The Prince. Similarly, Machiavelli was sent by his government to witness the papal conclave after the death of Cesare Borgia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, in August 1503, and reported back on the election of Pope Julius II and the new pope’s treacherous turn against Cesare Borgia, a dramatic series of events he also discusses in The Prince. Over the next few years Machiavelli was sent several times to negotiate with Julius II, particularly in the summer of 1506 as the so-called “Warrior Pope” led his troops, dressed in full armor, to conquer many of the same cities and provinces Cesare Borgia had earlier captured. Once again, Machiavelli’s direct experience with the impetuous pope would make it into the pages of The Prince. One of Machiavelli’s lengthiest diplomatic commissions occurred the following year when he was sent to the court of Maximilian I, the king of the Germans and would-be Holy Roman Emperor, with his mission lasting from December 1507 to June 1508. It was on that mission that he befriended Francesco Vettori, the man to whom he would first report writing The Prince six years later. Machiavelli was sent several more times over the next few years to negotiate with Maximilian as he attempted to extend his influence in Italy. His last diplomatic mission was a return to the French court in September to October 1511.

Machiavelli’s diplomatic missions and other official duties kept him away from Florence and his family for extended periods. In August 1501 Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini, whose family was also long involved in Florentine politics and whose brother-in-law, Piero del Nero, was elected to the Ten of War, the administrative body for which Machiavelli served as secretary. We have an affectionate letter from Marietta to Machiavelli, then in Rome, from November 24, 1503, in which she describes their newborn son: “For now the baby is well, he looks like you: he is white as snow, but his head looks like black velvet, and he is hairy like you. Since he looks like you, he seems beautiful to me. And he is so lively he seems to have been in this world for a year; he opened his eyes when he was scarcely born and filled the whole house with noise.”⁴ Machiavelli and his wife would have six children together, two girls and four boys, and despite his many absences he would prove a devoted father (if also a sometimes wayward husband).

In addition to exercising influence on Florentine military and foreign affairs in his official capacities, Machiavelli played some role in influencing Florentine politics as a close adviser to Piero Soderini, who was elected Gonfaloniere (the chief magistrate of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Map of Italy
• Chronology
• 1. Machiavelli’s Life and Times
• 2. The Composition of The Prince
• 3. The Title and Dedicatory Letter
• 4. Acquisition and the Emergence of the New Prince
• 5. The New Prince
• 6. Criminals, Citizens, Popes, and Other Types of Princes
• 7. Arms
• 8. Virtue and Vice
• 9. Prudence
• 10. Virtue, Fortune, and the Redemption of Italy
• 11. Machiavelli’s Political Thought and His Legacy
• References
• Index