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I CAPITOLI: Machiavelli's New Theogony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Haig Patapan
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Extract

The article considers Machiavelli's terza rima poems on Ingratitude, Ambition, Fortune and Occasion, generally called I Capitoli, in the context of Renaissance hermeticism, cabbala, erotic magic, and astrology. It argues that these poems, taken together and read as a whole, reveal Machiavelli's playful yet subversive cosmology that ousts the old gods by instituting a new theogony. At the same time, I Capitoli, addressed and dedicated to his friends, discloses Machiavelli's own ambitions and desires, delineating the subtle link between Niccolò the poet and Niccolò the prophet and benefactor.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , Spring 2003 , pp. 185 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2003

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References

I am grateful to the editor and the anonymous referees of The Review of Politics for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1. On the importance of books and writing see generally the Dedicatory Letter to The Prince and the Prefaces to Books I and II of the Discourses.

2. Regarding the “three kinds of brains” see The Prince, chap. 22. In particular see Machiavelli's reference to the authors of imaginary republics in chapter 15, and the specific reference to Xenophon who, by writing about Cyrus, influenced Scipio (chap. 14).

3. References to I Capitoli (by line number) are to the Gilbert translation of Ingratitude, Ambition and Fortune (The Chief Works and Others, trans. Gilbert, Allan [Durham, N C: Duke University Press, 1965])Google Scholar and to the Tusiani translation of Occasion (Tusiani, Joseph, Lust and Liberty: The Poems of Machiavelli [New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1963])Google Scholar. I have also referred to Machiavelli, Niccolò, Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, ed. Raimondi, Ezio, 6th ed. [Milano: Ugo Mursia, 1973]).Google Scholar

4. For commentary on specific poems and themes see, for example, Ascoli, Albert Russell and Kahn, Victoria, Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Najemy, John M., Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Parel, Anthony J., The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, Fortune Is a Woman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Price, Russell, “The Theme of Gloria in Machiavelli,” Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977): 588–631CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Ambizione in Machiavelli's Thought,” History of Political Thought 3 (1982): 383–445.Google Scholar

5. For general references see Kristeller, Paul Oskar, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964)Google Scholar; Schmitt, Charles, and Skinner, Quentin, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), hunchbacked and with a slight stammer, was often burdened with fits of melancholic despair. He became a priest in 1473 and later canon of Florence Cathedral. He was tutor to Lorenzo de' Medici and became the head of the Platonic Academy in Florence, based at Cosimo de Medici's villa in Careggi (Kristeller, , Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino).Google Scholar

7. The commentary, Commentarium in Convivium Platonis de Amore was first written in 1469 and printed in 1484, translated into the vernacular as Sorpa Lo Amore O ver' Convito di Platone (Nelson, John Charles, Renaissance Theory of Love (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), p. 69Google Scholar; Kristeller, , Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 286).Google Scholar

8. See generally Couliano, Joan P., Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar and Walker, D. P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

9. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) left his estate in Modena to devote his life to philosophy and theology and spent seven years traveling extensively, visiting the chief universities in Italy and France. Toward the end of his life he was converted by Savonarola (Copenhaver, Brian P., “Astrology and Magic,” in Schmitt and Skinner, Renaissance Philosophy, 264–300).Google Scholar

10. Upon seeing a copy of Moses de Leon's Zohar in the early 1480s, Pico became enraptured with cabbalistic ideas, to the point of persuading Pope Sixtus IV of the importance of translating Leon's text and other cabbalistic works into Latin (Beithchman, Philip, Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998], p. 65).Google Scholar

11. Among the 900 theses were twenty-six Conclusiones Magicae on natural and cabbalistic magic. His short and subsequently influential oration celebrating human freedom and dignity, intended as an introduction to the disputation of the 900 theses, subsequently became On the Dignity of Man (Yates, Frances A., Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964], p. 87).Google Scholar

12. Consider, for example, the ambiguous place of stars and magic in Christianity. See Augustine's condemnation of idols (City of God, VIII, xxiiiGoogle Scholar) and Thomas' differentiation between legitimate use of herbs and gems and illicit use of engraved stones, invocations and incantations (Contra Gentiles, III, civ–cviGoogle Scholar; Summa Theologica 2da 2dae, q 96, art ii.; Walker, , Spiritual and Demonic Magic, pp. 42–43).Google Scholar

13. See Parel, , Machiavellian Cosmos.Google Scholar

14. On Machiavelli's piety compare generally Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. Grayson, Cecil (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar and de Grazia, Sebastian, Machiavelli in Hell (New York: Vintage Books, 1994)Google Scholar with Sullivan, Vickie B., Machiavelli's Three Romes: Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics Reformed (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

15. On the “modernity” of Machiavelli see The Prince, Dedicatory Letter and chapter 15; Discourses, Prefaces to books I and II, and generally Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar, Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar, Mansfield, Harvey C., Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989).Google Scholar

16. In mid-February 1513, after the return of the Medici, Peitropaolo Boscoli accidentally dropped a piece of paper containing a list of names in the house of a family related to the Soderini. As Boscoli was known to be an opponent of the Medici the list was brought to the notice of the government and a plot suspected. Both Boscoli and his closest associate, Agostino di Luca Capponi, confessed they intended to change the government by assassination but denied that those on the list were part of the conspiracy. Nevertheless, on 12 February 1513 all on the list were arrested, including Machiavelli and Folchi. Machiavelli was imprisoned, tortured and fined, finally let off due to a general amnesty at the election of Leo X. Folchi, his close friend, was sent away for two years to the notorious castle at Volterra. He died in 1518 (Machiavelli, , Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, p. 1276Google Scholar; Hale, J. R., Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy [London: English Universities Press, 1961], p. 137).Google Scholar

17. To show the universality of this problem Machiavelli looks to Athens where “Ingratitude made her nest fouler than elsewhere” (130). Athens was foolish because “she knew what was good and chose not to follow it” (136). In the Discourses Machiavelli acknowledges that ingratitude is a “vice” though his subsequent discussion shows its necessary or “natural” basis (book I, chaps. 29, 30). What is remarkable in the Discourses is the Machiavellian advice to princes and republics on how to avoid ingratitude and his advice to captains and citizens on the modes to avoid being crushed by it (chap. 30)—Machiavelli's apparently dispassionate advice reveals the obdurate, perhaps insoluble problem of justice in the city.

18. Regarding this famous letter see Atkinson, James and Sices, David. Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), pp. 176, 190–191.Google Scholar

19. See his letter from Verona on 7 December 1509, where he states that the Venetians have found out to their cost that “for holding states, studies and books are not enough'(cited in Gilbert, Chief Works, p. 739).

20. For Aristophanes' speech praising eros see Plato's Symposium 188e–193e.

21. There is of course an enormous scholarship on Fortune in Machiavelli: see for example Pitkin, Fortune Is a Woman; Masters, Roger D., Fortune Is a River: Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History (New York: Free Press, 1998Google Scholar; Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996)Google Scholar. For references to Fortune in his political works see, for example, The Prince, chap. 25; Discourses, book III, chap. 9.

22. See Hale, , Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy, p. 113.Google Scholar

23. If Fortune “resists with the greatest might where she sees that nature is the strongest” (10–12) then Machiavelli, as someone who is brought low, is implicitly praising himself and deprecating Giovan Soderini.

24. See Machiavelli's famous cose vane letter of 31 January 1515 to Vettori (Atkinson, and Sices, , Machiavelli and His Friends, pp. 311–13)Google Scholar, and his discussion of the “wise man,” stars and Fates in his letter of 13–21 September 1506 to Giovan Battista Soderini, known as Ghiribizzi (fantasies or speculations) (ibid., pp. 134–36). The possibility of conquering nature, fully elaborated by Bacon, is made more explicit by Machiavelli in The Prince, chap. 25, with his use of the river metaphor: Fortune is said to be like a violent river that can be dyked and dammed (see Masters, generally, Fortune Is a River).Google Scholar

25. Regarding Machiavelli's reformulation of penance see his Exhortation to Penitence and Norton, Paul E., “Machiavelli's Road to Paradise: ‘The Exhortation to Penitence’” History of Political Thought 4 (1983): 31–42.Google Scholar

26. For a comparable case consider his other poetical work, the incomplete The (Golden) Ass, a parody of Dante's Divine Comedy that appropriates the hermetic and neoplatonic Apuleius' Golden Ass. According to Carlo Dionisotti (“Machiavelli, Man of Letter,” in Ascoli, and Kahn, , Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature, pp. 17–52), Machiavelli abandoned this poem upon reading Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. This arguably marks his turn from poetry to drama, resulting in his famous Mandragola as well as Clizia.Google Scholar

27. On contemptus mundi see Kraye (Kraye, Jill, “Moral Philosophy’Google Scholar in Schmitt, and Skinner, , Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 306–307)Google Scholar generally, and in particular her references to Pope Innocent III, De miseria humane conditionis; Bracciolini's De miseria humanae conditionis; Garzoni's De miseria humana.

28. On the difference between the honor-lover and the victory-lover in Plato's Republic see Craig, Leon, The War Lover (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).Google Scholar For Socrates' political moderation see generally his defence of the laws in the Crito and his denigration of tyranny in the Republic, book 9. Contrast this with Machiavelli's sole reference to Plato in the Discourses, book III, chap. 6, where he is described as a mentor of conspirators.

29. On Machiavelli's “malignity of fortune” see, for example, the Dedicatory Letter, The Prince.