Niccolò Machiavelli

An Intellectual Biography

Corrado Vivanti, Simon MacMichael

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781400849055
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A colorful, comprehensive, and authoritative account of Machiavelli's life and thought This is a colorful, comprehensive, and authoritative introduction to the life and work of the Florentine statesman, writer, and political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). Corrado Vivanti, who was one of the world's leading Machiavelli scholars, provides an unparalleled intellectual biography that demonstrates the close connections between Machiavelli's thought and his changing fortunes during the tumultuous Florentine republic and his subsequent exile. Vivanti's concise account covers not only Machiavelli's most famous works— The Prince, The Discourses, The Florentine Histories, and The Art of War —but also his letters, poetry, and comic dramas. While setting Machiavelli's life against a dramatic backdrop of war, crisis, and diplomatic intrigue, the book also paints a vivid human portrait of the man.

PART I

The Florentine Secretary

1

A Shadowy Period

THE FIRST HALF OF HIS LIFE

It may seem curious that we are ignorant of almost everything about Machiavelli until 15 June 1498, when, at the age of twenty-nine, he became secretary of the Florentine chancery. It is almost as though his life began only when he entered the service of the city of his birth. He was so deeply linked to Florence that in a letter written in the final months of his life he declared: “I love my native city more than my soul.”¹

The scant information that we do have regarding his youth has reached us thanks to the Libro di ricordi (Diary) of his father, Bernardo.² The latter was a doctor of law and belonged to a family counted, in previous centuries, among the “middle class, noted families”; they were called upon on a number of occasions to occupy important positions as magistrates of the comune, but then the family fell into decline, especially following the ascent to power of the Medici.³ From Bernardo’s diary we understand that his financial situation was not robust, and the environment in which his son grew up was very modest. Machiavelli himself declared: “I was born poor and I learnt earlier to stint myself rather than to prosper.”⁴

At the age of seven, he began to study the basic elements of Latin and at twelve to write in that language. Although he may not have received a refined humanist education,⁵ we should not take literally the statements of the historian Paolo Giovio, who wrote that Machiavelli had “no knowledge of Latin, or at least very little.”⁶ It is scarcely believable that—in the most glorious period of Florentine humanism—an almost unknown young man who was ignorant of the language then used in public affairs and international relations would have been called to fulfill the role of secretary of the second chancery, which was concerned not only with internal matters but also with war and therefore relationships with other states.⁷ Instead, Giovio’s statements should be interpreted to mean that he considered Machiavelli’s knowledge insufficient for composing works in that language, and we should also bear in mind that his encounter with Machiavelli happened when the latter was writing The History of Florence. Machiavelli’s decision to write the work in Italian, during the years when a lively debate had begun on the vernacular language, may have given rise to a certain disdain on the part of Giovio, who professed he was a historian who always wrote his works in Latin.

It appears, however, that Machiavelli had not learned the Greek language, even though in those times Florence was the chief center in Europe of the new Hellenistic culture, where Guillaume Budé, for example—the humanist who can be said to have introduced the new wisdom to France—perfected his teachings. One can quibble at length on Machiavelli’s ignorance of Greek only to be confronted by the fact that he was able to draw on the sixth book of Polybius, which did not yet have a published translation into Latin, when he used it in the Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius.⁸

In the Libro di ricordi we note that Bernardo Machiavelli was an inquisitive reader both of recent works, such as the Italia illustrata and the Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire by Flavio Biondo, and ancient texts, from Cicero to Pliny to Ptolemy.⁹ Thus, on 22 September 1475 he noted having negotiated with the printer Niccolò Alamanno the editing of the index of geographic names contained in Livy’s Decades and on 5 July 1476 of having kept “as a reward for my efforts” the printed pages of the work.¹⁰ The young Machiavelli therefore had the opportunity to read Livy at an early age, and besides we know from his father that, at seventeen years of age, he had the book rebound in half leather. Perhaps some discussions and hypotheses regarding the Discourses would have been clarified if this book had come down to us, or if at least we knew which edition was in Bernardo’s possession.

Of the third decade of Machiavelli’s life, a period that was decisive for his intellectual development, we have only a few glimmers.¹¹ A codex, transcribed in Machiavelli’s hand apparently in this period, was found in the Vatican Library of the De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius, the work that had been rediscovered at the start of the fifteenth century in a monastery at San Gallo.¹² It is reasonable to suppose that Machiavelli would not have undertaken such a demanding work without a real interest in this text of the highest poetry; at the same time this text is essential for the knowledge of a branch of Greek philosophy, which he no doubt found congenial, as we are aware from the numerous echoes of Lucretius that we find in his works.

In any event, the studies of his youth must have concentrated principally on the historians and political thinkers of the classical era that recur in his works: Livy himself, Tacitus, Sallust, and, among the Greeks, Plutarch, Polybius, and Xenophon. These are the writers to whom it is permissible to suppose he referred when in 1513 he wrote the famous letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, telling him that he had written The Prince:

On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.¹³

However, the legal texts his father owned were certainly not extraneous to his thoughts; a careful reading of his writings reveals echoes of them on some pages.¹⁴ Although notarial studies were no longer required at that time to be nominated to the Florentine chancery, a juridical training was part of Machiavelli’s education.

2

The Relationship with Savonarola

When Machiavelli entered the chancery of the Republic, Florentine political life was going through a period of agitated transition. Just four years had passed since Piero, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had been ousted in 1494 due to his “tyrannical” behavior and for having handed over some fortresses to France, with republican government restored after sixty years of Medici rule. In the immediate aftermath, the austere Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola imposed himself, who with his religious and moral rigor seemed to embody the severity of the florentina libertas, reestablished after years of concealed seigniorial regime. But the excesses of a strict moral discipline and the conflict with papal Rome, with which the finances of Florence were linked through so many channels, led to the fall of the friar. Condemned to death, on 23 May 1498, in accordance with the excommunication issued by Pope Alexander VI, he was hung and burned in Piazza della Signoria. For the time being, the aristoctratic party appeared to have prevailed, but the “governo largo” (a broad-based government), instituted by Savonarola, was not changed and the Great Council, its principal organ, remained in power.

Machiavelli’s entry to the chancery a few days after Savonarola’s execution raises some questions. His previous attempt to accede to that office in February of that year had been unsuccessful, but at that time, although weakened, Savonarola’s supporters had still been dominant. The behavior of Machiavelli toward the Dominican friar is generally seen as decidedly hostile, and in the nineteenth century the two personalities were counterposed as emblematic of, on one hand, the persistence of the Middle Ages and, on the other, the new era of the Renaissance, or, as would also be said, the age of faith and the age of science.

This judgment is based mostly on the letter that, a few months before Savonarola’s fall, Machiavelli wrote to Ricciardo Becchi, the Florentine ambassador in Rome, who had asked him for news of “matters here concerning the friar.” The picture Machiavelli drew is a firmly negative one, and at the end, after having described the latest preachings held in the church of San Marco, he concluded: “Thus, according to my judgment, he keeps on working with the times and making his lies plausible.”¹

Undoubtedly, at that moment, when Savonarola still held power, Machiavelli’s opinion of him was clearly unfavorable; it would be wrong, however, to judge his view in absolute terms. It is true that the friar, with a vision that was alien and contrary to Machiavelli’s ideas, conceived of civil society and the republic itself as being in the service of religion, but his support of the creation of a “governo largo,” in other words a government extended to a number of fairly elevated citizens, was viewed favorably by Machiavelli, and in the Discourses he states that Savonarola’s writings “show his learning, his prudence, and his mental power.”²

However, in the summer of 1497, Machiavelli aligned himself against the work of Savonarola, since the latter had violated a law granting a right of appeal—which the friar himself had supported—in order to prevent five citizens accused of conspiracy from escaping capital punishment. The episode is mentioned in the First Decennale (v. 153), the chronicle in verse form of events in Italy between 1494 and 1504; it is also recorded in the Discourses, following the passage showing a general appreciation of the friar’s writings. Evidently, even after many years, it remained in Machiavelli’s memory as a grave political blow from Savonarola; in fact, he wrote that “among other enactments to give the citizens security, he got a law passed permitting appeal to the people from the sentences of the Eight and the Signory in political cases . . . but when, a short time after its confirmation, five citizens condemned to death by the Signory on behalf of the government attempted to appeal, they were not permitted to do so; thus the law was not observed.”³ The deliberate breaking of a law for the benefit of party interests disgusted Machiavelli, who moreover disapproved of the religious fervor that had led the friar to practice a policy of dividing the citizens. As he explained in his letter to Becchi, Savonarola in his preachings “indicated two companies: one which serves under God, namely himself and his followers; the other under the Devil, namely, his opponents.”⁴ We do not know whether Machiavelli had already fully formulated the idea, subsequently developed in the Discourses, that the internal struggles of a city could be advantageous to political life if in the end they resulted in the creation of new statutes and new laws. However, his inclination to pursue a union among citizens manifests itself starting in the early years of his political activity, for example in the attempt—which failed at the time—to bring Alamanno Salviati, the most influential member of the group of optimates, closer to the gonfalonier Pier Soderini. All these reasons explain how, after the execution of Savonarola, the men of the Florentine government were able to consider Machiavelli’s opinions as being far removed from those of the Piagnoni, the followers of Savonarola, and therefore choose him as secretary of the second chancery in preference to other, more politically distinguished, candidates.

3

The Activity in the Chancery

The immediate problem for Florence at the time Machiavelli entered the chancery was the war with Pisa. The ancient maritime republic, conquered by the Florentines in 1406, had declared its liberty in 1494 when Charles VIII entered the city and the French sovereign granted its freedom.¹ Florence had unsuccessfully attempted to take the city back from the king, and then had tried to occupy it again by force; Pisa, however, had resisted and found protection in Venice, which, having sent a garrison, declared war on Florence, managing to penetrate its territory. The threat to Florence was a serious one, all the more so because among the Venetian army there was Piero de’ Medici, who could still count on his supporters in Florence, which he had ruled. Thus Florence, which to combat the Pisans had already engaged a renowned condottiere, Paolo Vitelli, sent him to oppose the Venetians, and he managed to halt their progress. The war threatened to exhaust the forces in the field, and the Venetians, who had also made an alliance with Louis XII, the new king of France, who wished to possess the Duchy of Milan, accepted in 1499 the Duke of Ferrara’s offer to mediate between the two republics and withdrew their troops. Now Florence could concentrate its forces on Pisa, but the resolution of the conflict with that city would be anything but rapid: the war would last ten more years, contributing greatly to the weakening of the republic, both internally and in its international ambition. In August 1499 Vitelli launched an attack against the rebellious city, which failed disastrously; even when the Florentine militia had opened a large breach in the walls of the city, the mercenary did not manage, or did not wish, to take advantage of the confusion that had overtaken the enemy’s defenses, and he withdrew his soldiers. As a result, the Pisans were able reorganize themselves and repulse the Florentines, who, suspecting a betrayal on Vitelli’s part, arrested him and cut off his head. Not by chance is the first political writing of Machiavelli concerned with Pisa itself and the necessity to “use force” to bring it back under Florentine control; one of his earliest letters is a tough reply addressed to a Lucchese chancellor, who had accused the Florentines of having killed their mercenary to avoid having to pay him.²

Machiavelli’s duties were not well defined, or perhaps it would be better to say that the division of work between the first and second chancery had not been well defined. In general terms, it can be said that while the first chancery occupied itself with foreign affairs, the second was principally tasked with internal affairs and the conduct of the war.³ We know, however, that Machiavelli very soon undertook diplomatic missions as well. Certainly, Marcello Virgilio di Adriano Berti, holder of the post of the first chancery, took precedence, holding the title of chancellor, and alongside that he taught at the Studio Fiorentino. But Machiavelli, the man who would become known as the Florentine secretary, had wide-ranging freedom of action precisely because of the indeterminate nature of his responsibilities, so much so that he was immediately also named secretary of the magistracy responsible for foreign affairs, the Ten of Liberty and Peace.

If the chancellors were no longer the prestigious scholars and men of letters whom they had succeeded to that office, such as Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, and Poggio Bracciolini,⁴ in that working environment the humanist tradition was still alive and well, so much so that we can establish that Machiavelli had drawn from it cultural influences comparable to those he obtained later in the company of ...