IT is now time to turn our attention to the work of Niccolò Machiavelli, placing special emphasis on Frederick II’s own analysis of each individual section and offering a few thoughts of my own.

Machiavelli begins by dedicating his work to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino, grandson of the identically-named “Lorenzo the Magnificent” and a member of the ruling Florentine dynasty. Ironically, it was Lorenzo’s uncle – Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici – who had become Pope Leo X in 1513 and then gone on to persecute Machiavelli himself. Indeed, whilst it has been said that the dedication is shrouded in mystery, I believe there is a slight hint of sarcasm in Machiavelli’s words and that he intended it to serve as an audacious philosophical sermon for those who were unable to appreciate his own position.

Take then, this little gift in the spirit in which I send it. If it is carefully read and considered by you, you will learn my extreme desire that you should attain that greatness which fortune and your other attributes promise. And if, my lord, from the mountain top of your greatness, you will sometimes turn your eyes to these lower regions, you will see how undeservedly I suffer great and continued bad fortune.

Given the great and inestimable power of the Medici family itself, Machiavelli’s remarks are necessarily respectful, but they are clearly the words of someone who feels that he has been grossly misunderstood and unfairly treated. The extent to which Lorenzo di Piero familiarised himself with Machiavelli’s work is uncertain, but the fact that he died of syphilis at the age of just twenty-six it is clear that he was never able to apply its princely tenets to his own short life.

Given that Frederick II had a huge advantage over Machiavelli in that he was able to discuss the Italian’s ideas in the knowledge that his long-deceased counterpart would never get the chance to defend himself, the preliminary remarks that preface Anti-Machiavel are far less respectful than Machiavelli’s words to Lorenzo di Piero. He begins by placing Il Principe in its rightful context:

The Prince is to ethics what the work of Spinoza is to faith. Spinoza sapped the fundamentals of faith, and drained the spirit of religion; Machiavel corrupted policy, and undertook to destroy the precepts of healthy morals: the errors of the first were only errors of speculation, but those of the other had a practical thrust.

Spinoza, therefore, is portrayed as one of Machiavelli’s allies in the war against spirituality, despite the fact that the Jewish thinker developed his own ideas a century later. Nonetheless, Frederick is correct to view both men as being part of the burgeoning Enlightenment that so dramatically affected the centuries leading up to his own birth. Bemoaning the fact that the Church has not attacked Machiavelli in the way that it has denounced Spinoza, Frederick is determined to

defend humanity against this monster which wants to destroy it; I dare to oppose Reason and Justice to sophism and crime; and I ventured my reflections on Machiavel’s Prince, chapter by chapter, so that the antidote is immediately near the poison.

What Frederick really finds so objectionable about Il Principe, is that it seeks to corrupt those in positions of power and not simply the low number of curious individuals that chanced upon the text at the time. Poison a prince, therefore, and you poison those who are subject to his authority. In this respect, Machiavelli is considered a dangerous subversive:

The kings have the capacity to do good when they have the will. In the same way they can also make evil. The lives of the people are sometimes pitiable, and they have very good reason to fear abuse of the sovereign power, when their goods are in prey when the prince’s avarice asserts itself. Their freedom is at the mercy of his whims; their peace and security are vulnerable to his ambition and perfidy; and their very lives are subject to his cruelties! Machiavel’s advice, if followed uncritically by a prince, may lead to real tragedies in the real world.

Frederick ends his opening salvo by comparing Machiavelli’s poor selection of aristocratic exemplars to the likes of Nero, Caligula, Tiberius and other cruel despots of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, it is Frederick’s wish that after reading his scathing account of Il Principe

the world would be convinced that the true policy of the kings, founded only on justice, prudence and kindness, is preferable in any direction to the disjointed and arbitrary system, full of horror, that Machiavel had the effrontery to present to the public.

TO BE CONTINUED…