MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLÒ

Political theorist and historian; b, Florence, Italy, May 3, 1469; d. there, June 2, 1527. The Machiavelli family belonged to the old rural nobility, which, on taking up residence in the city, gave the Commune numerous magistrates, priors, and gonfaloniers. Despite Machiavelli's distinguished lineage, Niccolò's own father counted among the poorest members of the family. He was an attorney, forbidden to practice law in the city of florence, because he had been for a time imprisoned as a debtor. His father eked out a living in genteel poverty on the city's outskirts, administering the few lands that he had and furtively practicing the law. These straightened circumstances affected Niccolò Machiavelli's early years. Although he was educated, he was never trained as a humanist, nor could he read or speak Greek, one of the chief signs of social and educational distinction in late fifteenth-century Florence.

Life. Niccolò's life may be divided into three periods: the first, the time of study and preparation that ended in 1494 when he entered public office of the Republic; the second (1494–1512), a period of political activity; the third, from 1512 to his death. In the last period he devoted himself to intense literary activity, apart from the last two years of his life, when he was again occupied with affairs of state.

First Two Periods. No reliable information is available for his first period. His works contain very little autobiographical data, and his letters do not refer to the years of his youth. From 1494 he emerges as an official of the Republic of Florence. In 1498, Niccolò Machiavelli was made head of Florence's second chancery, an important office for one who was then only 29 years old. The town's second chancery was concerned with foreign policy, military organization and in part with internal affairs (e.g. police matters). Machiavelli made more than 30 diplomatic missions while serving in this capacity. His associations with the first chancery were also important: it was headed by the learned humanist Marcello Virgilio Adriana, who perhaps exercised some influence on Machiavelli's cultural formation.

In the midst of political events and intrigues, Machiavelli reflected on them and derived inspiration for his future thought. He was constant in his devotion to experience as an effective teacher and in his daily observation of men and things, a habit he was still to retain even at San Casciano after his political disgrace. All this is clear from a letter to his friend Francesco Vettori (Dec. 10, 1513): "Then I betake myself to the street and go to the inns. I talk with those who pass, asking them for news about their localities. I hear various things and I note the different tastes and diverse thoughts of men" (Letter 137).

Some of the embassies exercised a decisive influence on Machiavelli's mind, such as the two (June and October 1502) to Cesare Borgia (Il Valentino), the astute and unscrupulous prince in whom the young secretary saw the type of statesman needed in a divided Italy over-run by foreigners, or the two missions to the Court of Rome (1503, 1506), which gave him an opportunity to study the temporal government of the Church. When entrusted with a mission to Pisa, that rebellious city within the Tuscan state, he conceived the plan of establishing a citizen militia that would replace Florence's untrustworthy mercenary troops. He began to enroll soldiers throughout the territory of Florence, and in 1506 he obtained the establishment of a special magistracy, the Nove di Milizia, and became its secretary. In 1509, in the final phase of the siege of Pisa, Machiavelli himself employed the first detachments of his ordinanza, or new militia. During these years Machiavelli also appears to have been involved with the artist Leonardo da Vinci in an illfated plan to divert Tuscany's Arno River away from the restive city of Pisa.

New matter for observation and meditation was offered to Machiavelli by his missions outside of Italy to Louis XII of France (1500, 1504, 1510) and to the Emperor Maximilian I in the Tyrol (1507). For this intense activity as a functionary, diplomat, and penetrating observer, there is copious documentation extant in the form of official correspondence and of reports.

Third Period. When the Republic of Soderini fell in 1512 and the Medici reentered Florence with the aid of the forces of the Holy League, Machiavelli, the devoted functionary and republican at heart, was put aside. He was exiled in the territory of the state and condemned to forced leisure at San Casciano, precisely in the country (the "four houses") of Sant'Andrea in Perussina. For his life in this period there is extant correspondence with his friend Francesco Vittori, the Florentine orator close to Pope leo x (de' medici). It is especially important for an understanding of the origins and value of Machiavelli's major works and for his judgments on the particular events of the time. He was born for political action—or so at least he believed—and did not resign himself to the role of an idle spectator, even if his writings are owed to this period of political inactivity. He entertained the false hope that his friend could influence the pope so that he might be recalled to Florence and enter the service of the Medici. But his republican past stood in the way. There was nothing left for him to do except to unbosom his angry despair to Vettori, play practical jokes with his friends in the shop of Donato Del Corno, or find consolation in good dinners—although his means were limited. Machiavelli himself describes his day in detail in the letter to Vettori cited above.

In 1520 came the first sign of benevolence from the Medici. Cardinal Giulio (the future Pope clement vii) requested Machiavelli to write a history of Florence, but he was not given any position of even modest importance before 1525, when, at the request of Clement VII and Medicean Florence, he was entrusted with two missions to his friend Francesco Guicciardini, lieutenant general of the papal army in the war against the Spaniards. After the pope had decided to strengthen the defenses of Florence, Machiavelli was asked to work out a plan for the fortifications and was appointed chancellor of the five procurators for the walls. This was a modest post, in which he experimented again with his citizen militia (ordinanza ), entrusted to the command of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere.

Events, however, took a rapid and disastrous turn. The German mercenaries (lanzichenecchi ), under the command of the Lutheran Georg Frundsberg, invaded and sacked Rome. Clement VII shut himself up in the Castel Sant' Angelo; Florence rebelled against the Medici, and they were forced to leave. Machiavelli, who had come to intimate terms with them, found himself again put aside. He did not survive long following this second embarrassment. His son wrote to Nelli that "he confessed his sins to Friar Matteo, who stayed with him until his death" ("lasciossi confessare le sue peccata da un frate Matteo"). His remains lie in S. Croce in Florence near those of Galileo, Alfieri, and Foscolo. His monument bears the inscription "tanto nomini nullum par elogium"; it was erected only in 1787 on the initiative of the Englishman Lord Cooper.

Works. The first significant work was Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino nell' ammazzarre Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, il signor Paolo e il duca di Gavina Orsini (written perhaps 1509). It describes with cold and penetrating observation the massacre at Senigallia that was skillfully prepared and carried out with deliberate ferocity by Cesare borgia. As Norsa has noted [ Machiavelli (Milan 1948) 47], this short piece exhibits one of Machiavelli's characteristic procedures: "his tendency to transform reality by interpreting and evaluating it according to the principles of his political doctrine. History has value in so far as it furnishes experimental confirmation of these principles." His most famous work, Il Principe, a brief treatise in 26 chapters, was composed between the second half of 1513 and the first days of 1514. The author delineates with artistic power the figure of the prince, resolved without any scruple whatever to attain his end, i.e., to rescue Italy from ruin and even to unify the peninsula politically. The Prince is completed by the Discorsi sulla prima Deca di Tito Livio, in three books. Begun in this period and continued to the end of 1517, it is a free political commentary on certain passages of Livy and of other ancient historians, an unsystematic but effective exposition of the political thought of its author. The fundamental importance that Machiavelli attached to the army in relation to the government of the state is revealed, especially by the systematic exposition and the very careful form in which he presents his ideas, in the treatise L'arte della guerra, written between 1516 and 1520. The Vita di Castruccio Castracani (1520) is a kind of historical novel, representing as an ideal warrior prince a condottiere of Lucca. But Machiavelli wrote genuine historical works. His Istorie florentine, composed between 1520 and 1525 in eight books, covers the city's history from its beginning to the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1492). Even here Machiavelli applies his political doctrines to historical facts in such a way that the latter serve to demonstrate the former.

In these works he already reveals himself also as a powerful and original writer, taking a high place among the great prose artists of the Italian tongue. His artistic propensities and qualities are more prominent in works more explicitly literary. II Decennale primo and II Decennale secondo (incomplete) are chronicles in terza rima dealing with Florentine events from 1494 to 1504 and from 1504 to 1509. These and other verse compositions, e.g., I Canti Carnascialeschi, give him no claim to be called a poet. His I Capitoli morali have little interest as compared with his incomplete L'Asino d'Oro, written between 1516 and 1517. His authorship of II Discorso o dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua is dubious. The Favola del demonio che prese moglie, better known as Novella di Belfagor Arcidiavolo, is a mordant satire on women, but a reworking of a traditional story. His La mandragola, the masterpiece of Cinquecento comedy, was first played at Florence, perhaps in 1520, and often elsewhere, with great success, and continues to live. His other comedy, La Clizia, is an imitation, being a verse translation of Terence's Andria; its influence was marked. Except for L'arte della guerra and Mandragola, all his works were published posthumously; during his lifetime the principal works circulated in MSS among friends.

Thought. In 1531 and 1532 the printers Baldi at Rome and Giusti at Florence published II Principe and the I Discorsi respectively, the two basic texts containing the political thought of Machiavelli, "the first theorist on the interests of the state," as Meinecke calls him, and the founder of modern political science. Machiavelli establishes this science in its own autonomous domain, free from all moral implications and religious influence. His method relies upon historical and empirical observation of political events, either those he is familiar with from contemporary Europe or stories drawn from the works of the ancients. From these events he attempts to derive universal scientific observations about politics. He thus reduces politics to a series of technical problems, to the essential theory of power that is obedient to certain perennial laws that either ensures failure or success in the exercise of power. This is the originality of Machiavelli's concept of politics. Even if it has its limits by what it excludes (all moral and religious implication) and what it includes, politics is regarded as the body of practical rules and immutable laws to be applied coldly to obtain or preserve power, for affirming one's own will to power and for achieving success, and all this "technically" and "scientifically."

Corruption of Nature. Human nature has always been and is, immutably, corrupt and turned toward evil, Machiavelli affirms, in accordance with a Christian tradition of original sin. Man is ruthless in seeking what he regards as useful to him, but is never satisfied. He abandons himself blindly to the most insane passions, to the lust for riches, pleasures, power, and success. He follows the blind determinism of his natural instinct (and this permits us to make use of "the experience of the ancients" for understanding modern affairs and for providing for the present and, in some measure, even for the future), which is turned not only to cupidity, but also to meanness, cowardice, duplicity, etc. Christianity has not redeemed humanity; on the contrary, it has promoted man's decline by its glorification of humble and contemplative men: "And if our religion demands that you have fortitude in you, it means that you should be able to suffer bravely rather than to do anything bravely. This manner of life, therefore, seems to have made the world weak and to have given it only as a prey to wicked men…" (Discorsi 2.2).

On the one hand, the remedy lies in the few good men—exceptions to the rule of human wickedness—who think of the common good and not of themselves alone; on the other, it lies in the state, understood as a power of dominion and coercion. This power should be employed in such a way that the ruler takes no thought about the means he uses to enforce order. Machiavelli understands order as a superior end that justifies the use of political power. In this way of thinking, religion is only an instrument of rule, a means to an end. It is not privileged among all means at a prince's disposal, but only one means on the level of all the others.

Fortune and virtù. Thus the effective prince imposes his will over the human passions so that he can curb and govern them. Machiavelli defines "fortune" as all that is unforeseeable and irrational, all that is chaotic and contingent in human experience. By contrast those things that fall within the sphere of human action—whatever is knowable, foreseeable and controllable—is what he identifies as virtù. Virtù, he also defines as vigor and physical health, heroic fortitude of spirit, astuteness and ability, the capability of foreseeing events and of controlling them through one's will. These allow the prince to establish order in chaos and in evil. Fortune "shows its power where there is no ordered virtù to resist it and it turns its force where it knows that no embankments or barriers have been made to hold it" (Principe ch. 25).

Decline of States. But order is always partial and temporal; as soon as the master loosens his grip, the chaos of the passions reassumes its sovereignty. The iron and ruthless will of the statesman can restrain, control, and build an order by fear and force, but it cannot educate and redeem corrupt humanity. States, created by the virtù of a few men and by the purpose of virtù itself, are a temporal triumph of superior wills over the chaos of the unbridled mass. However, because of the irreparable corruption of man, states are destined to decline and decay. Hence the necessity for other dominating wills to put the blind forces of fortune back into their proper channels—and to this end any and every means is legitimate—and thus bring them under the laws of order. The study of the means best adapted to achieve this purpose is precisely what constitutes "technical politics," or the totality of the maxims that the statesman ought to follow and that, basically for Machiavelli, are suggested by the practice of his age and of all ages. It would be better if men were good, but this is not possible. Therefore, "men are so far removed in how they live from how they ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done will soon learn to bring about his own ruin rather than his preservation. Accordingly, a man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in all respects, invites his own ruin since he is among so many who are not good" (Principe ch. 15).

It has been said that to understand fully the Machiavellian principle that every means is legitimate to secure order, it is necessary to keep in mind the Italy of Machiavelli's time, with its attendant strains caused by political disunity and foreign invasion. It must also be remembered that Machiavelli wrote The Prince in part to rehabilitate his fortunes with the medici following the collapse of Florence's republic. Scholars have long debated whether II principe represents an ironic document, one in which Machiavelli subsumed his republicanism to curry favor with the Medici. Whatever the source of the ideas in Machiavelli's Principe —whether they derived from his deep concern about the course of Italian politics or from his exile from the center of power in Florence—the ideas of that work have long been seen as one of the most troubling products of early-modern European political theory. When they are viewed from one direction, Machiavelli helped to establish the modern science of political theory, a science that emphasized observed political behavior and eventually natural law. Yet seen from another, his works gave birth to a tradition of Machiavellianism in which the ends of political order and stability were to be justified with any and all means.

Bibliography: Works. A complete critical ed. and a comprehensive systematic bibliog. do not exist. Opere, ed. p. fanfani et al., 6 v. (Florence 1875–77), contains the Legazioni and other official correspondence; Lettere familiari, ed. e. alvisi (Florence 1883); ed. g. lesca (Florence 1929); ed. f. gaeta (Milan 1961); Tutte le opere storiche e letteraria, ed. g. mazzoni and m. casella (Florence 1928); Opere, ed. a. panella, 2 v. (Milan 1939); Tutte le opere, ed. f. flora and c. cordie (Milan 1949–); Opere, ed. m. bonfantini (Milan 1954); Istorie florentine, ed. p. carli, 2 v. (Florence 1927); Dell' arte della guerra, ed. p. pieri (Rome 1937); II Principe, ed. l. a. burd (Oxford 1891), with full commentary; ed. m. casella (Rome 1929); ed. f. chabod (Turin 1924; new ed. l. firpo 1961); Discorses, ed. and tr. l. j. walker, 2 v. (London 1950), with English tr. and full, accurate commentary. Literature. a. norsa, II principio della forza nel pensiero di Niccolò Machiavelli (Milan 1936), a bibliog. of 2,113 items. l. russo, Machiavelli (4th ed. Bari 1957). a. h. gilbert, Machiavelli's Prince and Its Forerunners (Durham, NC 1938). h. butterfield, The Statecraft of Machiavelli (New York 1956). a. renaudet, Machiavel (new ed. Paris 1955). u. spirito, Machiavelli e Guicciardini (2d ed. Rome 1945). g. sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli: Storia del suo pensiero politico (Naples 1958). j. namer, Machiavel (Paris 1961). f. gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini (Princeton 1965). j. h. hexter, "The Loom of Language and the Fabric of Imperatives: The Case of II Principe and Utopia, " American Historical Review 69.4 (1964) 945–968. p. godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli (Princeton 1998). j. hexter, The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation (New York 1973). j. najemy, Between Friends: Discourses of Power in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515 (Princeton 1993). j. g. a. pocock, The Machiavellian Movement (Princeton 1975). r. ridolfi, Vita di Niccoli Machiavelli (Florence 1969). q. skinner, Machiavelli (New York 1981).

[m. f. sciacca]