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Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

John M. Najemy
John M. Najemy*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

Some years ago, Felix Gilbert observed that alone among Machiavelli's writings the Florentine Histories had not yet found a defined place in the interpretations of their author's intellectual development. This is less true today than it was then, owing in part to the work of Gilbert himself but also to that of other interpreters of Machiavelli storico, such as Carlo Dionisotti, Marina Marietti, Gian Mario Anselmi, and still others. Whereas Gilbert then rightly claimed that “the case of the Istorie Fiorentine is peculiar because the judgments about this work vary so fundamentally that they cannot even be narrowed down to issues on which a dispute could focus,” the very paper in which this observation was made proceeded admirably to identify several important issues on which future discussions of the Florentine Histories would have to turn.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Winter 1982 , pp. 551 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1982

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References

1 Felix Gilbert, “Machiavelli's ‘Istorie Fiorentine': An Essay in Interpretation,” in Studies on Machiavelli, ed. Myron P. Gilmore (Florence, 1972), p. 75. This essay has been reprinted in Felix Gilbert, History: Choice and Commitment (Cambridge, Mass., 1977). pp. 135-53. For some other recent discussions of Machiavelli's historical writing, see, inter alia, Dionisotti, Carlo, “Machiavelli storico,” in Machiavellerie (Turin, 1980), pp. 365–409 Google Scholar; Marietti, Marina, “Machiavel Historiographe des Medicis,” in Les Ecrivains et le Pouvoir en halie a Vepoque de la Renaissance (deuxieme serie), ed. Rochon, A. (Paris, 1974), pp. 81–148 Google Scholar; Gian Mario Anselmi, Ricerche sul Machiavelli Storico (Pisa, 1979); and my “Arti and Ordini in Machiavelli's Istorie Fiorentine,” in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, eds. S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus (Florence, 1978), I, pp. 161-91.

2 Gilbert, “Machiavelli's'Istorie Florentine,’ “ pp . 85-86.

3 Martelli, Mario, “Preistoria (medicea) di Machiavelli,” Studi di Filologia Italiana, 29 (1971). pp. 377–405 Google Scholar.

4 Machiavelli, Niccolò, Lettere, ed. Gaeta, F. (Milan, 1961), pp. 227-28Google Scholar: “fu promulgata una legge, per la quale furono questi magnifici Medici reintegrati in tutti gli honori et gradi de’ loro antenati. Et questa città resta quietissima, et spera non vivere meno honorata con l'aiuto loro che si vivesse ne’ tempi passati, quando la felicissima memoria del magnifico Lorenzo loro padre governava.” On this letter, see M. Marietti, “Machiavel Historiographe des Médicis,” pp. 82-84.

5 For these events, see Ridolfi, Roberto, Vita di Niccolò Machiavelli, 4th edition (Florence, 1969)Google Scholar, chapters XII and XIII. For Machiavelli's belief that he owed his freedom to Giuliano, see the letter to Francesco Vettori of 18 March 1513 in Lettere, p. 234. Our understanding of Machiavelli's attitude toward the Medici in the winter of 1512-13 has recently been enhanced by the discovery of the confession of one of the accused conspirators in the Boscoli plot, Giovanni Folchi; see Stephens, J. N. and Butters, H. C., “New Light on Machiavelli,” English Historical Review, 97 (1982), pp. 58–59 Google Scholar and 67. In it Machiavelli is reported to have said about the new Medici government “that it appeared to him that this regime would not be governed without difficulty, because it lacked someone to stand at the tiller, as Lorenzo de’ Medici had properly done so” (translation by Stephens and Butters). No doubt it was in part this expression of skepticism about the younger Medici that got Machiavelli into trouble. But the underlying assumption of his remark was that the regime would indeed need a strong leader at the helm if it was to survive, and Machiavelli's reference to the example of Lorenzo the Magnificent in making this point recalls the similar evocation of Lorenzo's memory in the letter of September 1512 (see the preceding note). Common to both statements is the notion that Florence's future depended on the ability of the younger Medici to rule in the image and memory of “their father.” The sense of dependence on the Medici that Machiavelli attributes to the republic in these passages has its parallel in the expression of his personal dependence on Giuliano in having been saved from an even worse fate in connection with the Boscoli plot scandal. The mood it bespeaks is also consistent with Machiavelli's appeal to the Medici in the Prince to redeem Italy from its sufferings and humiliations. The Folchi confession certainly reveals some ambivalence in Machiavelli's feelings about the Medici, but the appeal for strong leadership under the paternal example of Lorenzo fits very well with the Machiavellian voice of 1513 that called to the Medici for political and personal salvation.

6 E.g., Lettere, pp. 244, 305, 368.

7 Machiavelli, Niccolò, Il Principe e Discorsi, ed. Bertelli, S. (Milan, 1960), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar (dedication to Lorenzo) and 101-105 (exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians), where Italy's last hope is said to be that “la illustre casa vostra … possa farsi capo di questa redenzione” (p. 102).

8 Niccolo Machiavelli, Discursusfiorentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentii Medices, in Arte deltaguerra e scrittipolitici minori, ed. S. Bertelli (Milan, 1961), pp. 261-77.

9 On the commission, see Gilbert, “Machiavelli's ‘Istorie Fiorentine,’ “ pp. 76-82. For Machiavelli's own summary of the commission, see Lettere, p. 397. And for the letter de'dicatory to Clement VII, see Machiavelli, Niccoló, Istorie Fiorentine, ed. Gaeta, F. (Milan, 1962), pp. 65–67 Google Scholar.

10 However, no attempt will be made in these pages to deal with the complex question of Machiavelli's use of his sources. This is not because I consider the problem unimportant. Quite the contrary, in fact: Machiavelli's reading of earlier chroniclers and historians furnished him with the raw material for his Histories, and the history of that reading, if ever we could reconstruct it, would be an enormously valuable guide to the evolution of Machiavelli's thinking. (The best recent attempt at an overview of the literary sources employed by Machiavelli for the Florentine Histories is found in the third chapter of Gian Mario Anselmi's Ricerche sul Machiavelli Storico, cited above in note 1.) Indeed the whole question of Machiavelli's relationship to the historiography that preceded him is a far more complex and significant matter than the mere search for his sources of information. Like his perception of the Medici, it was an evolving mix of appropriation and antagonism. Machiavelli certainly made heavy use of these sources for factual data, examples, and stories, and even for some of the interpretive themes that inform the structure of the Histories. But his approach to this material was always critical, sometimes polemical, and at times manifestly subversive. In my “Arti and Ordini” (see note 1 above) I tried to show something of this process at work in the polemic against Leonardo Bruni in the second and third books of the Florentine Histories. It is Machiavelli's tendency to appropriate and yet consciously to subvert his sources that makes any search for their influence on him a one-sided approach to the problem. Because he did not depend uncritically on these sources, the identification of their traces in the texture of the Florentine Histories can never serve to “explain” why Machiavelli wrote as he did on any particular theme. In other words, the text is not a function of its sources; rather, it emerges from the confrontation of Machiavelli's language with them. This essay attempts an analysis of the language Machiavelli employed in writing about the Medici and reserves the history of the confrontation with his sources for other pages.

11 Machiavelli, Niccolò, Decennale primo, in Tutte le Opere, ed. Martelli, M. (Florence, 1971), pp. 940-50Google Scholar. For critical discussion of this first of Machiavelli's literary efforts, see Dionisotti, Carlo, “Machiavelli Letterato,” in Studies on Machiavelli, ed. Gilmore, Myron P., pp. 103-43Google Scholar, now reprinted in Dionisotti, Machiavellerie, pp. 227-66; and Sasso, Gennaro, Machiavelli: Storia del suo pensiero politico (Naples, 1958), pp. 87–94 Google Scholar.

12 Il Principe e Discorsi, p. 32 (chapter 6); p. 47 (chapter 9); p. 55 (chapter 12).

13 For the method and organization of the Discourses, see Felix Gilbert, “The Composition and Structure of Machiavelli's Discorsi,” in his History: Choice and Commitment, pp. 115-33.

14 Discorsi, III, 6; in 77 Principe e Discorsi, pp. 411-12.

15 For the chapters on Cosimo, see below. Machiavelli's discussion of the Pazzi conspiracy is in Discorsi, III, 6; in Il Principe e Discorsi, pp. 396, 402-405.

16 Discorsi, I, 8; I, 49; II, 19, 21, 25; in Il Principe e Discorsi, pp. 152, 242-43, 336, 342, 357.

17 Il Principe e Discorsi, p. 242. The English translations in this essay are my own, except where otherwise noted. However, I have frequently consulted and sometimes based my translations on the following: for the Discourses on Livy, the translation by Christian E. Detmold in Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince and the Discourses (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; for the Art of War, the revised edition of the Ellis Farneworth translation in Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Art of War (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; for the Discourse on Florentine Affairs After the Death of Lorenzo, the translation by Rawson, Judith A. in Machiavelli: The History of Florence and Other Selections, ed. Gilmore, Myron P. (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and, for the Florentine Histories, the Rawson translation, ibid., and especially that of Gilbert, Allan in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. III (Durham, 1965)Google Scholar.

18 See my “Arti and Ordini,” pp. 168-72.

19 Discursus, In Arte deltaguerra e scritti politici minori, pp. 261-65.

20 On the Vita, see F. Gaeta's introduction in Istorie Florentine, pp. 3-5; Whitfield, J. H., “Machiavelli and Castruccio,” in Discourses on Machiavelli (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 111-39Google Scholar; F. Gilbert, “Machiavelli's ‘Istorie Florentine,’ “ pp. 78-79; and Skinner, Quentin, Machiavelli (Oxford, 1981), pp. 79–80 Google Scholar.

21 The first book of the Istorie is a general history of Italy from the fall of the Roman Empire to 1434, and long sections of books V and VI are devoted to the political and military history of the Italian states in the fifteenth century.

22 See my “Arti and Ordini,” pp. 168-87.

23 Il Principe e Discorsi, p. 207.

24 Ibid., p. 208.

25 Ibid.

26 For the language of ordini in Machiavelli, see Ercole, F., La Politica di Machiavelli (Rome, 1926)Google Scholar, chapters II and III; Whitfield, J. H., “On Machiavelli's Use of Ordini,” Italian Studies, 10 (1955), pp. 19–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Discourses on Machiavelli, pp. 141-62; and, for the use of this language in the second and third books of the Istorie, my “Arti and Ordini.” On Machiavelli's language and especially his tendency to provide terms with technical meaning, see Chiappelli, Fredi, Studi sul Linguaggio del Machiavelli (Florence, 1952)Google Scholar, which conducts this inquiry within the pages of the Prince, and the same author's Nuovi Studi sul Linguaggio del Machiavelli (Florence, 1969), which pursues a similar analysis of Machiavelli's writings from his first three years in the Chancery.

27 Il Principe e Discorsi, p. 153: “né mai uno ingegno savio riprenderà alcuno di alcuna azione straordinaria, che per ordinare un regno o constituire una republica usasse.“

28 Ibid., pp. 246-47.

29 Ibid., pp. 381-82.

30 Arte delta guerra e scrittipolitici minori, pp. 330-31.

31 Discursus, in Arte delta guerra e scritti politici minori, pp. 261-62.

32 Ibid., pp. 262-63.

33 Istorie, pp. 65-66. The translation is by Gilbert, Allan, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, III, p. 1029 Google Scholar, except for my rendering of Giovanni's “bonta” as “goodness” and of Lorenzo's “magnificenzia” as “magnificence.“

34 On the Giannotti letter, see Myron Gilmore's “Introduction” to his edition of the English translation of the Istorie in Machiavelli: The History of Florence and Other Selections, pp. xxvi-xxvii; also, Gilbert, “Machiavelli's ‘Istorie Florentine,’ “ pp. 85-86.

35 Istorie, V, 10, p. 341; V, 21, pp. 359-61; V, 28, p. 372; V, 29, p. 375; V, 31, p. 376; V, 35, p. 385; VI, 15, p. 409; VI, 16, p. 410; VI, 23, p. 423.

36 Istorie, VII, 11, pp. 469-70 (for 1466); VIII, 2, pp. 510-11 (for the Pazzi conspiracy).

37 The legendary lawgivers of chapter 6 of the Prince. In the introductory first chapter to book IV of the Histories, Machiavelli raises the possibility of a reform of the ordini by some “savio, buono e potente cittadino” in language very reminiscent of the first book of the Discourses. But the thought is not even complete before Machiavelli undercuts it by stressing that this happens only very rarely: “Vero è che quando pure avviene (che avviene rade volte) che per buona fortuna della citta surga in quella un savio, buono e potente cittadino… . “ Furthermore, the test of such an ordinatore's success is that the reformed city, “being established on good laws and good ordini, will have no need of the virtu of a single man … to maintain it.” Thus, the very passage that recalls the figure of the lawgiver, so dear to the Prince and the Discourses, ends by obliterating it; see Istorie, p. 271. In emphasizing that in the Florentine Histories Machiavelli relinquished the expectation of reform by a single lawgiver and turned his hopes elsewhere (see the conclusion of this essay), I am aware of having changed my mind with regard to what I wrote in the final paragraph of my “Arti and Ordini“; see p. 187.

38 For an illuminating reading of this passage in the context of Machiavelli's use of the famous sixth book of Polybius, see Sasso, Gennaro, “La teoria dell'anacyclosis,” in his Studi su Machiavelli (Naples, 1967), pp. 210-14Google Scholar.

39 Istorie, pp. 325-26: “Vengono pertanto le provincie per questi mezzi alia rovina: dove pervenute, e gli uomini per le battiture diventati savi, ritornono, come e detto, all'ordine, se gia da una forza estraordinaria non rimangono suffocati.“