Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World PDF
Preview Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World
Be Like the Fox Machiavelli’s Lifelong Quest for Freedom ERICA BENNER W. W. Norton & Company Independent Publishers Since 1923 New York • London Contents Dramatis Personae Maps Preface 1. The Importance of Good Faith 2. Take Nothing on Authority 3. Do Not Be Deceived by False Glory 4. Beware of Doctors 5. Have No Fear of Giants 6. How to Speak of Princes 7. Recover Your Freedom 8. The Way to Paradise 9. So Blinded Are You by Present Greed 10. Build Dykes and Dams 11. Fortune Loves Impetuous Young Men 12. How to Win 13. Measure Yourself and Limit Your Hopes 14. Be Like the Fox 15. Simulate Stupidity 16. Imagine a True Republic 17. Never Give Up Aftermath Notes Bibliography Acknowledgements Index Dramatis Personae Machiavelli Household Niccolò Machiavelli, Second Chancellor of the Florentine Republic from 1498 to 1512; also a poet, playwright, historian and political writer Bernardo and Bartolommea Machiavelli, his parents Primavera, Margherita and Totto Machiavelli, Niccolò’s sisters and brother Marietta (Corsini) Machiavelli, Niccolò’s wife Bernardo, Ludovico, Piero, Guido, Baccina and Totto Machiavelli, their children Nencia, Bartolommea Machiavelli’s servant girl Nicolò di Alessandro Machiavelli, Bernardo Machiavelli’s younger cousin and neighbour Machiavelli’s Friends Biagio Buonaccorsi, Niccolò’s loyal coadjutor in the Chancery Agostino Vespucci, another office-mate, a member of the patrician Vespucci family, connoisseur of fine art and publisher of Machiavelli’s first published work Filippo Casavecchia, another colleague and close friend Francesco Vettori, a leading patrician who holds many political posts in the republic and under Medici rule, and one of Machiavelli’s most intimate correspondents The Orti Oricellari circle: Cosimo Rucellai (grandson of Bernardo), Zanobi Buondelmonti, Luigi Alamanni, Battista della Palla Francesco Guicciardini, a lawyer, historian, and leading political figure under the Medici government after 1512 Jacopo Falconetti, a wealthy businessman of humble origins who hosts a spectacular production of Machiavelli’s play Mandragola Barbera Salutati Raffacani, a young singer and musician with whom Machiavelli is enamoured in his later years The House of Medici Lorenzo, known as il Magnifico, Florence’s political leader from 1469 to 1492 Giuliano, Lorenzo’s younger brother, murdered in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 Lorenzo’s sons Piero, Lorenzo’s eldest son and heir; Florence’s leader from 1492 to 1494 Giovanni, who became Pope Leo X in 1513 Giuliano, later Duke of Nemours Piero’s children Lorenzo di Piero, later Duke of Urbino and leader of Florence Clarice, who marries Filippo Strozzi Others Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici, Piero’s Naples-born wife and Regent of Florence from 1515 to 1519 Giulio de’ Medici, son of the murdered Giuliano, who became Pope Clement VII in 1523 Alessandro and Ippolito de’ Medici, sons, respectively, of Lorenzo di Piero and Giuliano di Piero Other Protagonists in Florence The family Pazzi, leaders of a conspiracy against the Medici in 1478 Bartolomeo Scala, Florentine Chancellor under the Medici and Bernardo Machiavelli’s close friend Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar from Ferrara whose popular sermons and prophecies give him great authority in Florence Bernardo Rucellai, a patrician opponent of popular government and founder of the Orti Oricellari gardens, where Machiavelli would take part in discussions that inspired his Discourses and Art of War Messer Guidantonio Vespucci, a famous patrician lawyer and Rucellai’s political ally Tommaso Soderini, a patrician elder statesman in the early years of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s government Soderini’s sons Paoloantonio Soderini, a supporter of popular government and of Savonarola Piero Soderini, elected Florence’s first Gonfalonier (Standard-bearer) for Life in 1502 Francesco Soderini, Bishop of Volterra and later Cardinal, one of Machiavelli’s early political mentors Others Paolo Vitelli, a renowned Italian mercenary, captain of Florence’s military forces from 1498 to 1499 Filippo Strozzi (‘the younger’), scion of the wealthy Strozzi family, married to Clarice de’ Medici Outside Florence The Italians Caterina Sforza Riario, ruler of Forlì and Imola in the Romagna, Florence’s closest Italian ally The Pisan people, who rebel against Florentine rule in 1494 and engage Florence in a draining war Vitellozzo Vitelli, Paolo Vitelli’s brother and second-in-command, later allied with Cesare Borgia The French King Charles VIII, whose armies pass through Italy and linger in Florence in 1494 King Louis XII, Charles’s successor, the Florentine republic’s most important foreign defender Cardinal Georges d’Amboise, King Louis’s chief counsellor Florimond Robertet, another of King Louis’s advisers King François I, Louis’s successor Non-Florentine popes and their relatives Pope Sixtus IV, born Francesco della Rovere, thought to have been behind the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, the subject of much gossip concerning his nepotism and other corruptions Cesare Borgia, his son, appointed captain of the papal troops by his father and given the French title Duc de Valentinois Pope Julius II, born Giuliano della Rovere, popularly known as il Papa terribile (the fearsome pope) for his impetuous and warlike disposition Preface 1 In the winter of 1538, an Englishman living in Italy travelled to Florence. Cardinal Reginald Pole was a devout adherent of the Church of Rome at a time when the English Reformation threatened to tear the Church apart. He had fled into self-imposed exile from his native shores after opposing King Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and settled in Italy. Along with his other business in Florence, Pole had a personal mission. About a decade before this journey, he’d had a conversation with Thomas Cromwell, a man of low origins who now served as the king’s most intimate counsellor. Cromwell had stopped at nothing – or so it seemed to Pole – to indulge Henry’s lusts and blasphemies. It was this ambitious adviser who, Pole believed, had masterminded the monarch’s divorce, put England in a state of war with the Church, had priests and noblemen murdered – and had always found some righteous pretext to colour these deeds. Contemplating the evils that had driven him from his homeland, Pole longed to get his hands on a book about statecraft that Cromwell had praised when they’d met. The book’s author was a citizen of Florence. He had died over ten years previously, so Pole could not meet him in person. But if the cardinal could read that book, it might help him better understand Cromwell’s mind and Henry’s actions, and thereby make sense of what was happening to his poor England. On acquiring a copy, Pole began to read with fascination, then with growing horror. ‘I had scarcely begun to read the book,’ he later wrote, ‘when I recognized the finger of Satan, though it bore the name of a human author and was written in a discernibly human style.’ The Florentine’s text laid bare all the doctrines that seemed to guide Cromwell’s policies. Princes, it said, should build their states on fear rather than love. Since they live in a world teeming with lies and violence, they have no choice but to practise duplicity. Indeed, the prince who best knows how to deceive will be the most successful. In short, Pole declared, the book Cromwell so admired is full of ‘things that stink of Satan’s every wickedness’. Its author is clearly ‘an enemy of the human race’. The book that so appalled Cardinal Pole was the Prince, and the name of its author Niccolò Machiavelli. Aghast and intrigued, Pole was determined to find out more about the man who could write such things. Machiavelli, it transpired, had at one time caused a good deal of trouble for Florence’s own princely family, the Medici. In 1512, a year before Machiavelli wrote his most notorious work, the new Medici government had ejected him from the civil-service posts he’d held for nearly fifteen years, then imprisoned and tortured him on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the principality. These fragments of biography must have come up when Pole asked his Florentine hosts about their compatriot. For, he wrote, when he told them his thoughts about the book, they excused the author, ‘answering the charge with the same argument that Machiavelli himself had offered when they had confronted him’. Machiavelli’s reply, the Florentines said, had been that not everything in the Prince expressed his own opinions. Rather, he’d written what he thought would please a prince, particularly the Medici prince to whom he dedicated the slender volume: Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, a young man with tyrannical leanings. But, Pole’s unnamed hosts continued, Machiavelli’s aim wasn’t just to flatter his way into favour: he had a more sinister purpose. This wiliest of writers had no illusions about the utility of his cynical teachings. In fact, he was sure that any prince who put them into practice would soon arouse popular hatred and self- destruct. And this, said Pole’s Florentine friends, was precisely what Machiavelli wanted. His design ‘was to write for a tyrant those things that are pleasing to tyrants, bringing about in this way, if he could, the tyrant’s self-willed and swift downfall’. In other words, the book’s most shocking advice was ironic. Its author wore the mask of a helpful adviser, all the while knowing the folly of his own advice, hoping to ensnare rulers and drag them to their ruin. This explanation made sense of something that had bothered Pole while reading the Prince. Though Machiavelli was clearly a man of uncommon intelligence, some of his maxims seemed to show, as the cardinal put it, a ‘crass stupidity’. It seemed obvious to Pole that a prince who wins power through fear won’t achieve security for himself or his state. The Prince claimed to put hard political facts ahead of moral ideals. But as a handbook on how to secure power, its advice was flagrantly unrealistic. Machiavelli’s self-proclaimed realism, his book’s main selling point, was a fraud. And Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, and England were among its first victims. Cromwell had taken the Prince at face value, Pole insisted, imbibing its devilish doctrines in the belief they were highest prudence – and in doing so had walked straight into Machiavelli’s trap. If the writer were alive, he’d be laughing at his handiwork. The results, though, were no laughing matter. England in 1539 was far along the road to perdition, and other Christian monarchs might soon go the way of Henry, should they or their counsellors fall under Machiavelli’s spell. ‘Mark this well, rulers,’ Pole warned; beware of this two-faced writer. ‘For it is the aim of his doctrine to act like a drug that causes princes to go mad,’ making them attack their own people with ‘the savagery of the lion and the wiles of the fox’. Pole was the first of many readers to demonize Niccolò Machiavelli and associate his name with the unscrupulous practices of men like Thomas Cromwell. The Prince as political poison, its author as a cunning fox, Old Nick, Satan’s emissary, cold-blooded destroyer of kingdoms and of true religion: these images of Machiavelli and his writings soon came to play a big role in the propaganda wars stirred up by the Reformation. The conjurors of this demonic Machiavelli were mostly men of religion, both Catholic and Protestant. The enemies they branded as Machiavelli’s disciples challenged traditional relations between Church and state. Some were devout Christians like Cromwell who sought to weaken political ties with the Church of Rome. Others called for a new, more secular kind of politics. Some of these sixteenth-and seventeenth-century challengers fought back by defending the Florentine against their opponents’ smear campaign. And in this way a very different Machiavelli – this one altogether human, and humane – joined his evil double on the political stage. His champions found their undevilish Machiavelli mainly in his Discourses and Florentine Histories, much 2 longer books than the fast-paced Prince. This Machiavelli was a thoroughgoing 3 republican, a ‘eulogist of democracy’. His aim was to defend the rule of law against corrupt popes and tyrants. And he sought to uphold high moral standards, not lower them to fit the gritty realities of political life. True, his morality came from ancient writers such as Livy, Plutarch and Xenophon rather than Christian Scriptures, and he loved to ridicule the empty moral platitudes of his day. But he never wanted to sever politics from morality. He simply wanted to put morality on firmer, purely human foundations. But how could this image of a virtuous Machiavelli be squared with everything he says in the Prince ? His defenders’ answer was that the Machiavelli of the Prince is a master ironist, a dissimulator who offers advice that he knows to be imprudent. On this point, though in nothing else, they agreed with Cardinal Pole. But while Pole thought that Machiavelli dissimulated so that he could poison princes’ minds and drive them mad, his admirers believed he did 4 so only to unmask their deceits and their secret lusts for power. When he writes that Pope Alexander VI never did anything, or ever thought of anything, but how
The list of books you might like
