Machiavelli

Summary

[Bayle's Dictionary shows how Machiavelli's writing at the turn of the eighteenth century was continuing to inspire new translations and editions. To express his own opinion Bayle reprints a book review of a recent translation of The Prince from his journal Nouvelles de la république des lettres. Having reported the adverse criticism, Bayle defends, with reservations, the school which exonerated Machiavelli from the charge of advocating a statecraft without moral purpose. Machiavelli's aim according to scholarly opinion, Bayle shows, had never been other than to defend the republic against tyranny. He differed from other thinkers in his acknowledgement of the paradox that government must sometimes set itself above ordinary morality.]

Machiavelli (Niccolò), a native of Florence, was a man with much insight and an excellent pen. He had a sprinkling of Latin but he started off in the service of a learned man who, having shown him many fine passages of the ancient authors, gave him the task of inserting them in his books [(A)]. He wrote a play in the style of the ancient Greeks [(B)], which proved so great a success that Leo X used it to entertain the city of Rome. He was secretary and afterwards historiographer to the republic of Florence. The Medicis procured this employment for him with a good salary to compensate him for having been tortured upon the rack. He suffered in this way when he was suspected of complicity in a conspiracy on the part of the Soderini against the House of the Medicis.