Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince, written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.
For many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is also important to historians and scholars of Italian correspondence. He worked as secretary to the second chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power.
After his death Machiavelli's name came to evoke unscrupulous acts of the sort he advised most famously in his work, The Prince. He concerned himself with the ways a ruler could succeed in politics, and believed those who flourished engaged in deception, treachery, and violence. He advised rulers to engage in evil when political necessity requires it, at one point stating that successful founders and reformers of governments should be excused for killing other leaders who would oppose them. Machiavelli's Prince has been surrounded by controversy since it was published. Some consider it to be a straightforward description of political reality. Many view The Prince as a manual, teaching would-be tyrants how they should seize and maintain power. Even into recent times, scholars such as Leo Strauss have restated the traditional opinion that Machiavelli was a "teacher of evil".
Even though Machiavelli has become most famous for his work on principalities, scholars also give attention to the exhortations in his other works of political philosophy. The Discourses on Livy has been said to have paved the way for modern republicanism. His works were a major influence on Enlightenment authors who revived interest in classical republicanism, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Harrington. Machiavelli's philosophical contributions have influenced generations of academics and politicians, with many of them debating the nature of his ideas.
Life
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli, on 3 May 1469. The Machiavelli family is believed to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months and who formed the government, or Signoria; he was never, though, a full citizen of Florence because of the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time even under the republican regime. Not much is known about Machiavelli's early life, thus one of the main sources that historians rely on regarding his experiences exists in his father's diary, found in the 20th century. His family was a huge influence on his life, and it is said that it was his heritage which instilled Machiavelli with his preference for a republican form of government. There isn't much known about Machiavelli's mother as few facts have been found about her life by historians.Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era. The Italian city-states, and the families and individuals who ran them, could rise and fall suddenly as popes and the kings of France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire waged acquisitive wars for regional influence and control. Political-military alliances continually changed, featuring condottieri, who changed sides without warning, and the rise and fall of many short-lived governments.
Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin by his teacher, Paolo da Ronciglione. It is unknown whether Machiavelli knew Greek; Florence was at the time one of the centres of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494 Florence restored the republic, expelling the Medici family that had ruled Florence for some sixty years.
Diplomatic career
Shortly after the execution of Savonarola, Machiavelli was appointed to an office of the second chancery, a medieval writing office that put Machiavelli in charge of the production of official Florentine government documents. Shortly thereafter, he was also made the secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace, the Florentine council responsible for diplomacy and warfare. His appointment remains a mystery to scholars as he was a very young man, 29 at the time, with no experience in law or public office.Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini in 1501. They had seven children, five sons and two daughters: Primerana, Bernardo, Lodovico, Guido,, Baccina and Totto.
Machiavelli's position as a secretary enabled him to witness firsthand the state-building methods of the Pope Alexander VI, and his son, Cesare Borgia. Machiavelli often wrote highly about Cesare, stating in one letter that "this lord is splendid and magnificent", and that his pursuit of glory he "knows neither danger or fatigue". Machiavelli personally witnessed the brutal retribution Cesare Borgia inflicted on his rebellious commanders, Oliverotto Euffreducci and Vitellozzo Vitelli in Sinigaglia on December 31, 1502, an event he famously chronicled in a political work, A description of the methods adopted by the Duke Valentino when murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini. In many of his early writings, Machiavelli emphasized the danger of offending a ruler and then expecting to trust him afterward. In 1503, Machiavelli was dispatched to Rome to observe the papal conclave that ultimately selected Julius II, who was a bitter rival of the Borgia family, as pope, despite Cesare's support for his election. As Cesare's power waned, Machiavelli documented his downfall in his poem First Decennale.
Machiavelli also was present during Pandolfo Petrucci's consolidation of his rule in Siena, later noting in his works that he "governed his state more with those who were suspected of him than with others".
In the first decade of the sixteenth century, he carried out several diplomatic missions, most notably to the papacy in Rome. Florence sent him to Pistoia to pacify the leaders of two opposing factions which had broken into riots in 1501 and 1502; when this failed, the leaders were banished from the city, a recommendation which Machiavelli had disagreed with from the outset, and would later advise governments in similar situations to do the opposite. Machiavelli's official duties within the Florentine Republic, including his involvement in the disturbances of Pistoia and the rebellion of Arezzo, were not of major political consequence but served as critical experiences that shaped his intellectual development. Though his influence was subtle, often exerted through anonymous chancery work, biographers suggest he advocated for firm punishment of rebellious cities, a stance consistent with his known political attitudes, even if not fully implemented. These events, and the evident structural weaknesses of Florence's government compared to figures like Borgia, offered Machiavelli valuable insights. While his official report De rebus pistoriensibus was routine and unremarkable, his later discourse Del modo di trattare i sudditi della Valdichiana ribellati marked a turning point as it was more reflective and analytical, blending historical knowledge with political thought, and is considered his first mature, literary political work not driven by immediate bureaucratic necessity.
At the start of the 16th century, Machiavelli conceived of a militia for Florence, and he then began recruiting and creating it. He distrusted mercenaries, and instead staffed his army with citizens, a policy that yielded some positive results. By February 1506 he was able to have four hundred farmers marching on parade, suited, and armed with lances and small firearms. Under his command, Florentine citizen-soldiers conquered Pisa in 1509.
Exile and later years
Machiavelli's success was short-lived. In August 1512, the Medici, backed by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato. In the wake of the siege, Piero Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state and fled into exile. The experience would, like Machiavelli's time in foreign courts and with the Borgia, heavily influence his political writings. The Florentine city-state and the republic were dissolved. Machiavelli was ordered to remain in Florence for a year, and to pay a surety of one thousand florins. He was falsely implicated in a conspiracy to remove the Medici family from power merely because his name was on a list of possible sympathizers. Despite being subjected to torture, he denied involvement and was released after three weeks.Machiavelli then retired to his farm estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, near San Casciano in Val di Pesa, where he devoted himself to studying and writing political treatises. During this period, he represented the Florentine Republic on diplomatic visits to France, Germany, and elsewhere in Italy. Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time he began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that were both popular and widely known in his lifetime. Politics remained his main passion, and to satisfy this interest, he maintained a well-known correspondence with more politically connected friends, attempting to become involved once again in political life. Machiavelli had a lengthy correspondence with his close friend, Francesco Vettori. In one of his letters which he details his life after his exile, he described his latest project as one of his "whimsies" that would later be called Il Principe, and that he is planning on filling the work "with everything he knows".
As the letter to Vettori continues, he described his current situation:
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savour. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.
Though scholars often debate on the time of the composition of the Discourses on Livy, it is often said that he was composing the work in the years between 1515 and 1517.
From 1516 Machiavelli had freqented the Orti Oricellari gardens, a place where it was common for humanists and philosophers to discuss anti-tyrannical themes, and it was in these gardens where Machiavelli gained a friendship with Bernardo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti, men whom Machiavelli would dedicate his Discoursi to.
In 1520, Machiavelli won the favor of the Medici family, and Giulio Cardinal de Medici commissioned him to write a work of history of the city of Florence. Machiavelli saw this as an opportunity to get back into his political career, thus he began working on what would later be known as The Florentine Histories. During this period, Machiavelli also wrote the Dell'arte della guerra, which was the only work published during his lifetime.
In his exile, he also wrote plays, including Clizia, The Mandrake, and The Golden Ass.
After the 1527 Sack of Rome, the Medici were thrown out of Florence once more, and citizens set up a republican form of government. There were discussions to give Machiavelli a post in this new government, which were rejected due to the favors he was given to by the Medici.