Introduction

The name Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) has become a popular euphemism for deceit, ruthlessness and manipulation. As a politician, diplomat and philosopher, Machiavelli spent his twilight years producing what eventually became one of the Renaissance period’s most notorious and reviled tracts. First published in 1532, five years after his death, The Prince inevitably found its way onto Pope Paul IV’s (1476-1559) Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or index of forbidden texts, and has since been denounced by an entire succession of writers, philosophers and political commentators, among them William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Karl Marx (1818-1883).

Machiavelli’s most formidable opponent, however, came in the shape of Frederick the Great (1712-1786), a powerful German sovereign who produced his own literary denunciation of the Italian’s ideas. Known as Anti-Machiavel and inspired, at least in part, by François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), better known as Voltaire, Frederick’s eighteenth-century polemic sets out to question the moral and ethical implications of what is widely regarded as Machiavelli’s cold-blooded endorsement of merciless authority and cut-throat politics.

Hand-in-hand with my own commentary, which attempts to create a juxtaposition between the two opposing views, this series brings to light some of the most intriguing and controversial issues of the Enlightenment period itself.

* * *

Part One
AN ITALIAN IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Machiavelli and his World

BORN in Florence on May 3rd, 1469, Niccolò Machiavelli was the son of Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli (1426-1500), an Italian lawyer, and Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli. The young Niccolò was descended from a long line of judicial representatives and was therefore endowed with a very sagacious and analytical mind.

At the time of Machiavelli’s birth, Italy’s prosperous city-states were constantly at war with the Catholic Church and the entire period was characterised by an uneasy relationship between the Pope and the country’s ambitious princes.

This seemingly endless conflict between the secular and religious spheres – something that had begun during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a result of the bitter disputes that had taken place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines – also involved foreign interests and nations such as France, Spain and Switzerland competed for supremacy with the Holy Roman Empire. With countries tending to change their geopolitical allegiances at a moment’s notice, it was a very unpredictable time indeed and Machiavelli took an immediate interest in the fascinating and multi-faceted nature of power-politics. Machiavelli’s education, on the other hand, included a thorough grounding in Latin, grammar and rhetoric. It would stand him in good stead for the intellectual gymnastics that later became his raison d’être.

In 1494, following the removal of the notorious Medici banking dynasty that had governed the city for the past sixty years, Florence once again became a republic and Machiavelli – by now twenty-nine years of age – found himself a role in the second chancery, where he was based at the famous Palazzo Vecchio and made responsible for producing official documents on behalf of the Florentine government. Soon afterwards, he was made secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace, an administrative bureau which, despite the name, was in charge of overseeing the various departments of war, observing the country’s domestic business affairs and sending diplomats to other cities.

At the start of the sixteenth century, Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini (d. 1553) – who eventually bore him four sons and two daughters – and was himself sent to Rome as a diplomat and charged with maintaining official relations with the Papacy. These trips presented Machiavelli with an opportunity to study the behaviour of the Church, and he witnessed first-hand the blatant attempts of Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) and his father, Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), to extend their power throughout central Italy. Machiavelli had no time for Catholicism, but he certainly admired the manner in which Borgia perverted the religion in order to suit his own political agenda. Machiavelli also travelled to Switzerland, Germany and the French court of Louis XII (1462-1515), which gave him another valuable chance to improve his knowledge about the whys and wherefores of European diplomacy.

From 1503 until 1506, Machiavelli was placed in charge of reorganising the Florentine militia and, influenced by the writings of the Roman historian, Livy (59-17 BCE), ensured that the city’s defence force was comprised of proud local citizens and thus purged of disloyal mercenaries who had fought, not for principles and patriotism, but for filthy lucre and the ignominious spoils of war. In 1509, when the Florentine militia scored a notable victory over Pisa, Machiavelli himself was at the helm. Conversely, by 1512 Machiavelli and his men ended up on the losing side when they were defeated at Prato by the ‘Warrior Pope’, Julius II (1443-1513), and a mercenary army of Spanish troops. In the wake of this setback, Piero Soderini (1452-1522) resigned as head of the Florentine state and was exiled. These disappointing events were to influence Machiavelli’s writings a great deal.

Following the victory of Pope Julius II, the Florentine republic was dissolved and Machiavelli was forced out of office. In 1513, the returning Medici dynasty – which had now managed to secure the election of its very own Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici (1475-1521), under the name Pope Leo X – charged him with conspiracy and he was thrown into prison. Despite being tortured, however, Machiavelli continued to protest his innocence and was released after just three weeks. It was then that Niccolò retired to his farmland property at Percussina, near San Casciano, and began formulating his ideas about philosophy and producing some of his earliest writings. At the same time, he began corresponding with various political figures and even wrote several plays, among them La Mandragola (1524).

Machiavelli was chiefly influenced by the Greeks and Romans of the past, particularly Thucydides (460-400 BCE), Plato (428-348 BCE), the aforementioned Livy and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), but he also had a very modern mindset and was never afraid to explore new ideas or venture into fresh philosophical territory. One of his modernist tendencies was to promote empiricism and realism at the expense of idealism, managing to discuss politics in a way that was wholly detached from the lingering morality of European Christianity. Nonetheless, given his own educational background this was achieved through a decidedly Classical framework and, once again, enabled him to examine ideas and personalities through a more discerning and objective lens. Machiavelli’s refusal to acknowledge the prevailing religious attitudes of his day meant that he was often accused of promoting immorality and sadism. Vilified down the centuries, some of Machiavelli’s most vitriolic critics have included figures as diverse as William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Karl Marx (1818-1883).

It remains a fact that Machiavelli’s own political background in the Florentine republic inevitably brought him into direct conflict with the Church and he therefore elevated humanistic pragmatism above what he regarded as common superstition. Rather than feel guilty about what he considered to be the role of the superior man, Machiavelli was prepared to state quite openly that there was nothing wrong with personal ambition or striving for glory and that such things were virtues both in and of themselves. For Machiavelli, then, attaining good fortune was something entirely natural and a matter of will, not the result of divine intervention. He did, however, accept that religion had the ability to create order and discipline.

Machiavelli died in 1527 at the age of fifty-eight and was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in his native Florence.