Machiavelli, Niccolò

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Machiavelli, Niccolò

Personal

Born May 3, 1469, in Florence, Florentine Republic (now Italy); died June 21, 1527, in Florence, Florentine Republic; son of a lawyer; married Marietta Corsini, 1501; children: four sons, two daughters. Religion: Roman Catholic.

Career

Statesman, political theorist, and author. Republic of Florence, head of Second Chancery, 1498, secretary of diplomatic/military agency, 1498-1512; helped organize standing militia, 1509; writer, beginning c. 1513.

Writings

Decennale Primo (poetry), 1504.

Discorso dell'ordinare lo stato di Firenze alle armi, c. 1507, translation published in Discourses, 1970.

Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio, c. 1518, translated by Edward Dacres as Machiavelli's Discourses upon the First Decade of T. Livius, Thomas Paine (London, England), 1636, translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella as Discourses on Livy, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

La Mandragola (play; produced in Florence, 1518; also see below), [Florence], c. 1518-1524, published with an introduction by Giorgio Inglese, Mulino (Bologna, Italy), 1997, translated as Mandragola, 1927, translated as The Mandrake in The Comedies, 1985.

Dell'arte della guerra, 1521, translated by Peter Whithorn as The Art of War, [London, England], c. 1550, reprinted in Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, Volume 3, 2001, translated by Christopher Lynch as Art of War, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2003.

La Clizia (play; produced in Florence, 1525; also see below), [Florence], 1532, translation published as Clizia in The Literary Works of Niccolò Machiavelli, 1961.

Discourso o dialogo intorno a la nostra lingua, c. 1531, translated as A Dialogue on Language in The Literary Works, 1961.

Il principe, [Florence, Italy], 1532, published with La vita die Castruccio castracani da Lucca, Aldus (Florence, 1540, edited by Piero Melograni, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1999, translated as The Prince, 1560 and subsequently translated by George Bull, Penguin (Harmonsworth, England), 1968, translated by Anthony Grafton, Penguin (New York, NY), 2003, translated by Rufus Goodwin, Dante University Press (Boston, MA), 2003.

Istorie Fiorentine, 1532, translated by Thomas Bedingfield as The Florentine History, William Ponsonby (London, England), 1595, translated as The Florentine History in Eight Books, C. Harper (London, England), 1674, portions translated by Judith A. Rawson as The History of Florence, Washington Square Press (New York, NY), 1970.

La vita die Castruccio castracani da Lucca (also see below), published with Il principe, Aldus (Florence), 1540, translated as The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca, [London, England], 1729.

Novella di Belfagor arcidiavolo (fiction), [Florence], 1545, translated by John Wilson as Belphegor; or, The Marriage of the Devil, J. Leake (London, England), 1691, translated as The Marriage of Belphegor, J. Watts (London, England), 1729, published in The Literary Works, 1961.

Tutte le opere de Nicolo Machiavelli (collected works), [Florence, Italy], c. 1550.

The Works of the Famous Nicolas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence, translation by Henry Neville, J. Starkey (London, England), 1675, translated by Ellis Farneworth as The Works of Nicholas Machiavel (includes Examen du Prince, or Anti-Machiave, by Frederick II, King of Prussia), T. Davies (London, England), 1762.

Opere (includes Il principe, Il modo che tenne il duca Valentio, and I cinque primi libri delle historie fiorentine), 1726.

(Adaptor) Andria (play; based on a drama by Terence; also see below), published in Opere inedited in prose e in verso, [Florence], 1763, translated as The Woman from Andros in The Comedies, 1985.

The Living Thoughts of Machiavelli, edited by Carlo Sforza, Longmans Green (New York, NY), 1940.

Opere, eight volumes, Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy, 1961-1968.

The Letters of Machiavelli: A Selection, edited by Allan H. Gilbert, Capricorn Books (New York, NY), 1961.

Lust and Liberty: The Poems of Machiavelli, translated by Joseph Tusiani, Obolensky (New York, NY), 1963.

Opere letterarie, edited by Luigi Blasucci, Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 1964.

Chief Works and Others, three volumes, translated by Allan Gilbert, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1965.

Opere (collected works), four volumes, 1968-1989.

The Discourses, edited by Bernar Crick, Penguin (Harmondsworth, England), 1970.

Tutte le opere (collected works), edited by Mario Martelli, Sansoni (Florence, Italy), 1971.

Legazioni, commissarie, scritti di governo, edited by Fredi Chiappelli, 1971.

Teatro (plays: includes Mandragola, Clizia, and Andria), edited by G. Davico Bonino, Einaudi (Turin, Italy), 1979.

The Comedies (plays; bilingual edition; includes The Woman from Andros, The Mandrake, and Clizia), edited and translated by David Sices and James B. Atkinson, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 1985.

Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, ten volumes, Salerno (Rome, Italy), 1997—.

The Other Machiavelli: Republican Writings by the Author of The Prince, edited by Quentin P. Taylor, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1998.

Mandragola; Seguita da Clizia e Andria, edited by Alessandro Capata, Grandi Tascabili Economici Newton (Rome, Italy), 2003.

The Prince and Other Writings, translated by Wayne Rebhorn, Barnes & Noble Classics (New York, NY), 2003.

Works published in numerous anthologies, including The Ruthless Leader: Three Classics of Strategy and Power, edited by Alistair McAlpine, Wiley (New York, NY), 2000.

Several of Machiavelli's early works were published in Latin. Works have been translated into numerous languages.

Sidelights

Best known for his works The Prince and The Art of War, fifteenth-century Italian statesman Niccolò Machiavelli remains influential centuries after his death as the first writer to break with the tradition of Aristotle and disentangle the art of politics from an ethical code based on an idealized vision of human nature. Grounded in Renaissance humanism, with its Greek and Roman foundations, Machiavelli's works reflect the spirit of the age in their anticlericalism and their rejection of God as the guiding force behind human events. Perhaps best summarized in the statement "the ends justify the means," Machiavelli's political philosophy shocked his contemporaries and cast him into the role of intellectual arch-villain for several centuries.

The Age of Nation-States

While Machiavelli was born into an aristocratic Florentine family, his family's social standing was not matched by financial wealth. Although the events of his childhood remain shrouded in mystery, he was most likely aware of the political events occurring in his native city during his upbringing. One of four city-states in modern-day Italy, Florence had been ruled since 1434 by the Medici, a wealthy family with roots in banking and close ties to the Vatican. Like the rest of Italy, Florence was threatened by an ongoing battle for control of Naples between France and Spain, both of which had eyes on the Italian peninsula. Supported by the French, the reformist Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola wrested control of Florence from Piero de'Medici in 1493 and established a new republic. A moral zealot determined to purify Florence from the corrupting influences of the Renaissance, Savonarola was eventually removed from power and burned at the stake as a heretic; some historians believe that Machiavelli may have played a small part in this insurrection.

In 1498, after the fanatical Savonarola's execution and the establishment of a Florentine Republic under Pier Soderini, twenty-nine-year-old Machiavelli gained a public appointment as secretary that brought with it much prestige. Widely read in the classics—particularly the histories of Tacitus and Livy—the young civil servant now supplemented his classical studies of politics with personal observation through his active role in the diplomatic negotiations of his native Florence. In 1502 he married Marietta Corsini, with whom he would have four sons and two daughters.

Machiavelli's first political post was as diplomat and secretary of the republic's second chancellery under Florentine gonfalonier Soderini. In this capacity he was assigned to implement the policies of his superiors, carrying on diplomatic correspondence, writing reports, and serving as Florentine ambassador at the courts of France and Rome. He became familiar with the political maneuverings and intrigues of his day, including those of Pope Julius II and Spain's notorious Borgia family, which included Lucretia Borgia and her brother Cesare, an illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI who was able to forge a new state in Romagna while his father occupied the papal throne. Although he was a fair ruler, Soderini was viewed by Machiavelli as weak and indecisive in contrast to the ambitious and ruthless Cesare Borgia. Borgia's efforts to gain control over much of central Italy despite several attempts to unseat him, and his ability to retain power through intimidation and cruelty prior to his death in 1507 presented a study in contrasts and inspired Machiavelli to theorize on the qualities that made a leader truly effective and led to much of his later writing.

Writing Career Inspired by Difficulties

Inspired by his classical studies, in 1510 Machiavelli helped to organize a Florentine citizen's militia; two years later, when Spanish troops overran the nearby city of Prato, Machiavelli reportedly ordered his militia to join what proved to be a successful effort to depose Soderini. The Medicis, led by Giovanni Medici, quickly filled the void and took control of Florence, but with Giovanni's election to the papacy as Leo X in 1513, brother Giuliano was given control of Florence. By now dismissed as chancellor, and with his loyalty to the Medici family suspect, Machiavelli was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, then exiled to his estate at San Casciano. Obviously, it was clear that his political career was in jeopardy and that steps needed to be taken in order to ingratiate himself with the new political leaders of the region.

Machiavelli had already determined that, in the event his political career ended, he had sufficient talent that the writing life could provide him with a suitable living: he had already publishing his first book, a collection of verse, in 1504, and had begun to synthesize his views on politics in the 1507 volume Discorso dell'ordinare lo stato di Firenze alle armi. Optimistic that the Medici family would prove to be the uniting force of his beloved Catholic Italy due to their control over both Florence and the papacy, and recognizing the potential in aiding such a government, Machiavelli now set about outlining his theories about what made rulers able to hold political power in Il principe, or The Prince.

Completed in 1513, Il principe is informed by Machiavelli's study of the political writings of Plato, Cicero, and St. Augustine, as well as by his observations of Cesare Borgia. In Machiavelli's opinion the only way to unite the four Italian states into a political entity strong enough to repel the incursions of France or Spain was by following the model of the Roman Republic as set forth by Livy and Tacitus. Expounding at great length on the importance of a strong and loyal military, he also maintained, unlike political theorists before him, that politics must be detached from morality; it is not the job of a prince to serve as a moral example for his people. As he wrote, "My intent being to write a useful work for those who understand, it seemed to me more appropriate to pursue the actual truth of the matter than the imagination of it. Many have imagined republics and principalities which were never seen or known really to exist; because how one lives is so far removed from how one ought to live that he who abandons what one does for what one ought to do, learns rather his own ruin than his preservation." In the budding scientific spirit that would, centuries later, come to full flower in the Enlightenment, Machiavelli viewed the state as an organism subject to natural laws of growth and decay. He defined the goal of a politician as the acquisition and retention of political power, and the expansion of that power through conquest. Ironically, only by conquest abroad could peace be preserved at home; once the state ceased to grow, entropy would cause it to decay, with social and political turmoil the result.

In keeping with the humanist spirit of the Renaissance, Machiavelli believed that, although circumstances might help or hinder the process, every man is capable of determining his own destiny. A contrast to the medieval notion of divine will as well as to the classical legacy—that humans suffer whimsical fates at the hands of ancient acts perpetrated by the gods—this notion is also in contrast to the teachings of Christianity, which combined fatalism with the imperative to care for one's fellow man or woman as one's self. Combining this new notion of self-determination with his belief that all men are basically self-serving and corrupt, Machiavelli's central argument in The Prince is that it takes an evil man to know and battle evil: a powerful prince must act like "a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion in order to frighten off wolves." A prince—a politician capable of gaining and holding political power—must consequently be ruthless and cruel in order to preserve the health of the state. Like a fox, he must publically exhibit the virtues of honesty, mercy, uprightness, piousness, and humaneness, and when circumstances force him to be deceitful, his dishonesty should be hidden. Machiavelli goes on to argue that a successful leader must instill fear rather than admiration in his subjects in order to retain allegiance, yet he should also avoid being hated.

From Political Theorist to Playwright

While The Prince was submitted to Lorenzo Medici in 1513, its advice fell upon deaf ears. Published in Italy decades later, the book shocked the reading public and angered the Church; almost five centuries later the term "Machiavellian" still has negative connotations in its reference to an amoral, ruthless, calculating, and exclusively self-serving individual. While he had hoped that a career in the Medici government might be his, this was not to be, and Machiavelli was forced to fall back on his decision to write professionally.

In addition to other books of political theory and history, such as The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani (1520), and Istorie fiorentine (1526), he also wrote a short novel and three plays: Mandragola (1518), La Clizia (1525), and Andria. Considered one of the finest examples of the commedia erudita popular during the Italian Renaissance, Mandragola reflects its author's political writings and his astute knowledge of psychology through its intricately plotted comedy about a foolish husband, the lawyer Nicia, who is manipulated into ordering his virtuous wife, the beautiful Lucrezia, into the bed of a lustful young man. Less popular with contemporary audiences than Mandragola, La Clizia is based on Casina by Plautus, and satirizes the elderly playwright in its story of an old man who lusts after his young ward.

Written during the same period as The Prince, Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, which many scholars argue are more reflective of the author's personal views, present a humanistic commentary on a classical text, while also promoting the goal of a united Italy. In this work, which is longer and more rambling than The Prince, he examines political liberty among a state's citizenry and questions whether self-government is not more beneficial than a monarchy. He also chastizes the Catholic Church for preventing the unification of the Italian states due to fear of eroding its own waning power base.

Apart from a 1526 commission from Pope Clement VII to inspect the fortifications of Florence and two minor diplomatic missions early the following year, Machiavelli never again returned to the political realm. His hopes for Florence also came to naught: following Florentine governor Guilio Medici's rise to the papacy his replacement proved inept and the family lost its hold on the region in favor of a third republic. Hopeful to gain a position in this new government, he was rejected in the spring of 1527 due to his long relationship with the now-vanquished Medici family. Machiavelli died in Florence only months later, in June of 1527. Three years later Florence was crushed by the forces of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was crowned king of Italy by Pope Clement VII and founded the Habsburg dynasty.

From Villain to Visionary

Following his death, Machiavelli was reviled by scholars who misinterpreted his pragmatic approach to political theory, and he was also poorly served by translators such as Simon Patericke and French writer Gentillet who preferred a sensationalist interpretation to intellectual accuracy as a way of gaining readers. His central caveat—that the political amorality of princes is exclusive to nation builders and is not a model for public servants or ordinary citizens—was ignored in the wave of denigration that followed his death, and in the first Index, published by Pope Clement VIII in 1559, his books were banned by the Church. On the Elizabethan stage and in English literature of the period, playgoers and readers quickly came to recognize the diabolical stereotypical Machiavelli, as well as such adherents as Iago in Shakespeare's Othello. A 1573 poem by Gabriel Harvey attributes to Machiavelli the crimes of poison, murder, fraud, and violence, while the play The Jew of Malta (1588) by Christopher Marlowe introduces a corrupt figure named Machiavel.

If you enjoy the works of Niccolo Machiavelli

If you enjoy the works of Niccolo Machiavelli, you might want to check out the following books:

Aristotle, The Politics, 1985.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.

Peter Paret, editor, Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, 1986.

As the Enlightenment and the political shifts throughout the Modern age altered the perspective of both historians and political and social theorists, Machiavelli's reputation improved. The liberalism of the nineteenth century incorporated several tenets that have roots in Machiavelli's works, among them the supremacy of civil over religious power and the preference for republican rather than monarchical government. The realpolitik philosophy that guided some modernizing governments toward longevity by rejecting lofty ideals and instead stressing their own nation's needs rather than those of other countries, is also based on Machiavelli's work. The Prince ends with a quotation from Petrarch's patriotic poem "Italia mia": "Virtue will take arms against fury, and the battle will be brief; for the ancient valor in Italian hearts is not yet dead." While this exhortation fell on deaf ears in 1513, it would inspire the nineteenth-century nationalist Risorgimento to revise their view of Machiavelli and hail him as a political visionary.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Bock, Gisela, and others, editors, Machiavelli and Republicanism, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

de Grazia, Sebastian, Machiavelli in Hell, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1989.

Prezzolini, Guiseppe, Niccolò Machiavelli—The Florentine, Brentano's (New York, NY), 1928, reprinted, 1966.

Ridolfi, Roberto, Machiavel, Sansoni (Florence, Italy), translated by Cecil Grayson as The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1963.

Skinner, Quentin, Machiavelli, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1981.