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Machiavelli's Prince: Background and Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Eric Voegelin
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Extract

The name of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), to the public at large, still lies in the shadow of moralistic condemnation. The anti-Machiavellian propaganda of the Counter-Reformation concentrated on the principles of political craftsmanship, developed in the Prince, as its target; and, apart from a narrower circle of historians, Machiavelli has ever since remained the author of the famous work, while the morality of his advice to rulers has remained the great issue of evaluation. It is hardly necessary to say that such preoccupations with moralistic propaganda cannot form the basis for a critical analysis of Machiavelli's ideas. All we can retain from the caricature is the consciousness that something extraordinary has occurred, a severe break with the traditions of treating political questions, the consciousness that with the author of the Prince we are on the threshold of a new, “modern” era. Even this element of the caricature, however, needs qualification. The furious concentration on the evil book has created the illusion that its author was a solitary figure, something like a moral freak. That, of course, is not so. There is nothing solitary or enigmatic about Machiavelli. His ideas, like everybody's, have a solid pre-history stretching over generations; and they were shared in his time by others. Historically unique, however, is the genius of Machiavelli as well as the strange disposition of circumstances directing his genius toward the crystallization of die ideas of die age in the symbol of die Prince who, through fortuna and virtù, will be the savior and restorer of Italy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1951 , pp. 142 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1951

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References

1 This study of “Machiavelli's Prince” is taken from the writer's History of Political Ideas to be published by the Macmillan Company of New York. It is a section from the chapter on “Machiavelli” in Volume III.Google Scholar

2 I would base this judgment on the Storia Fiorentina which Guicciardini wrote in 1509 for his own clarification. (The existence of the work became known only after the middle of the nineteenth century.) At this time, his active political planning was still directed towards an aristocratic republic. His republicanism, however, was not doctrinaire. He wrote as a party-man who detested both the Medici and the Popolani. His interests were still strictly Florentine; there was no sign yet of an understanding of the greater Italian problem which he masterfully unfolded in his late Istoria d'ltalia. One may say that even more than for Machiavelli the republicanism following the French invasion was his school of thought. But his attitude is already that of the analyst of action; and the theory of human nature which he employs in weighing the wisdom of actions is already radically “realistic,” far more than Machiavelli's, making no allowance whatsoever for motivations of a spiritual, moral or traditionalist nature that would disturb the strict rationality of power politics.

3 On Machiavelli's, Arte della Guerra (1520)Google Scholar see the study by Gilbert, Felix, “Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Earle, E. M. (Princeton 1943). Machiavelli was not too much impressed by the merely technological problem of the artillery and made the national militia the center of his military reform. The idea of a national militia, however, was out of season. In the centuries up to die French Revolution, the art of war developed the instruments of the professional army. The national army became die effective instrument of warfare indeed only with the development of republican rertu (in the sense of Montesquieu) in the broad masses. While the idea was historically out of place, it is nevertheless important for us as die convincing symptom of Machiavelli's basic nationalism and republicanism.Google Scholar

4 For Albornoz and the Constitutiones Egidianae see Emerton, Ephraim, Humanism and Tyranny, Studies in the Italian Trecento (Cambridge, 1925).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 von Martin, Alfred, Coluccio Salutati's Traktat “Vom Tyrannen” (Berlin-Leipzig, 1913).Google Scholar See also the same author's Coluccio Salutati und das humanistische Lebensideal (Leipzig, 1916Google Scholar); also Emerton, Ephraim, op. cit.Google Scholar

6 I am summarizing these characteristics from the account given of humanistic historiography in Fueter, Eduard, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (3rd edition, Munich-Berlin, 1936), pp. 9–55.Google Scholar

7 For a critical edition of the Mongol diplomatic documents see Voegelin, Eric, “The Mongol Order of Submission to European Powers, 1245–1255,” in Byzantion, Volume XV, 1940–1941.Google Scholar

8 The shadow of Asia continued to fall on the West. The elimination of the Turkish danger in the eighteenth century, was immediately followed by die rise of Russia that has developed into die most formidable menace to the existence of die West. For a late transformation of the image of Timur, and its transfer to Napoleon in Russia, the reader should see Goethe's, “Der Winter und Timur” in the West-Oestlicher Divan.Google Scholar

9 Poggii Florentini Oratoris et Philosophi Opera (Basle, 1538), pp. 344 ff.Google Scholar

10 The doubt has been raised by Oliva, Joannes, an editor of Poggio's, De rarietate fortunae (Paris, 1713Google Scholar). Poggio, consistently calls Timur Tambellanus.Google Scholar If he had received his information from soldiers qui fuere in ejus castris, these soldiers probably would have at least known the name of their captain. To Oliva it seems entirely incredible that a humanist should not have displayed his knowledge of the correct name if he had possessed it. Op. cit., Preface, p. xvi.Google Scholar

11 On the problem of fame see Burckhardt, Jakob, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, Part II, Chapter 3:Google Scholar “Der moderne Ruhm.” One of the earliest sugǵestions of the problem of intramundane fame may be found in Dante, , De Monorchia, I, 1Google Scholar: “Omnium hominum in quos amorem veritatis natura superior impressit, hoc maxime interesse videtur, ut quemadmodum de labore antiquorum ditati sunt, ita et ipsi posteris prolaborent, quatenus ab eis posteritas habeat quo ditetur.” The passage is of interest not only because it shows Dante's anxiety to enrich posterity, to “contribute” something to the intramundane stream of meaning, but also because of the pronounced rivalry with the ancients in this endeavor. The paragraph goes on to ask: what sense could there be to demonstrate again what the ancients have demonstrated already? We have to do something new. And the new in his case was the exploration of the idea of the universal, temporal monarchy. In these beginnings we see the close relation between the idea of an intramundane stream of meaning, the notion of a memory of mankind in history, the interpretation of civilized achievement as a “contribution,” the rivalry between the ancients and moderns, the feeling of an obligation to add one's own “contribution” to the stream, and the idea of a progressive accumulation of meaning. With Poggio, fame has already the function of the immortalitas which, in the nineteenth century, was dogmatized by Comte into immortality through life in the, memory of the Grand-Etre.

12 Poggii Bracciolini Florentini Historiae de varietate fortunae Libri quatuor (Paris, 1713), pp. 25 ff.Google Scholar See on this question Walser, Ernst, Poggius Ftorentinus, Leben und Werke (1914), pp. 237 ff.Google Scholar, and Werner Kaegi in his Introduction to Walser, Ernest, Gesammelte Studien zur Geistesgeschichte der Renaissance (Basel, 1932), p. xxvi.Google Scholar For the incorrectness of the jortuna secunda of the victor with the fortuna adversa of the defeated see Poggio's, De humanae conditionis miseria, in Opera (Strassburg, 1513), fol. 45 ro.Google Scholar

13 De rarietate fortunae, p. 36.Google Scholar

14 For the attack on the achievements of antiquity and on the ancient historians see De varietate fortunae, p. 77 and pp. 37 ff.Google Scholar For the tone of the attack is characteristic in the passage, Op. cit., p. 38, where Poggio rattles off the chichés of Roman war reports in order to praise Timur: “Nunquam, cum toties acie pugnasset, non victoriam reportavit: castris semper tutissimum elegit locum: acie instructa omnibus copiis saepe conflixit: plures hostium exercitus ad internecionem fudit ac delevit: Scythas, Persas, Medos, Armenios, Arabas, Assyriam, Asiamque subjecit: Reges multos proelio fusos fugatosque prostravit, delevit, cepit: urbes multas praesidiis et natura loci munitas, vi militum expugnavit, nihilque ei defuit quod in summo imperatore requiratur.” All that stuff and nonsense Timur did as well as any of the ancient conquerors and, thus, “nothing was missing in him that goes into the making of a supreme war-lord.”Google Scholar

15 See Poggio's, Letter in Opera, (Basle, 1538), pp. 344 ff.Google Scholar

16 Precisely the same situation recurs in thel eighteenth century under the impression of the rise of Russia. The parallel between Poggio and Voltaire could be carried further, insofar as both men were intensely aware of the existence of China and let their reflections on die Chinese Empire influence their sense of proportion with regard to the importance of the West on the world scene. As Book IV of his De varietate fortunae, Poggio published Nicolo de' Conti's report of his Asiatic travels in 1414–1439, which contain (from other sources) intelligences about China. See on this question Sensburg, Waldemar, Poggio Bracciolini und Nicolo de Conti in ihrer Bedeutung für die Geographic des Renaissancezeitalters (Mitteilungen der k.k. Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien, Volume 49, 1906)Google Scholar and Longhena, Mario, I, manoscritti del IV libro del De Varietate Fortunae di Poggio Bracciolini (Bollettino della Societa Geographica Italiana, Ser. VI, Vol. 2, 1925).Google Scholar

17 The image of Timur is to be found in Poggio's, De varietate fortunae, pp. 36 ff.Google Scholar The later presentation of Timur, in De humanae conditionis miseria (Opera, Strassburg, 1513), fol. 44 vo-45 ro, is briefer.Google Scholar

18 Enea, Silvio tried has hand twice at a Vita Tamerlani.Google Scholar One is to be found in his Historia rerutn ubique gestarum quam alii Cosmographiam et mundi universi historiam appellant, in the section on Asia, Opera Omnia (Basle, 1571), p. 313.Google Scholar A second Vita is contained in the section on Europa, Op. cit., p. 395.Google Scholar A briefer reference to Timur is contained in his De ritu, situ, moribus et conditione Germaniae, descriptio, Op. cit., p. 1060.Google Scholar

19 The more important Vitae Tamerlani after Enea Silvio are those of Cambini in his Commentario della origine de'turchi et imperio della casa Ottomand (1538), fol. 4 ro–7 vo; of Giovio, Paolo in his Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basle, 1561), pp. 165–173;Google Scholar of Mexia, Pero in his Silva de varia lecion (Venice, 1553Google Scholar), fol. 187 vo– 192 vo. The title of Mexia's Vita is of interest because it stresses the points which seemed relevant to contemporaries: Del excellentissimo Capitan y muy poderoso rey el gran Tamorlan, delos reynos y provincias que conquisto, y de su discipline e arte militar. Very elaborate, finally, is Perondino's, Magni Tamerlanis Seytharum Imperatoris Vita (printed with the Opera of Chalcocondylas [1556], pp. 235–248). Perondino's Vita is the basis for Louis LeRoy's.Google Scholar

19a Bap. Fulgosii Factotum dictorumque memorabilium Libri IX (Paris, 1578).Google Scholar

20 Tiraboschi, , Storia della letterature italiana, Vol. VI/ 2, p. 105.Google Scholar

21 See the significant comParisons between Timur and Hannibal.

22 The romantic search for the empirical model of the Prince (was it Cesare Borgia or the Medici to whom the Prince is dedicated?) is futile, in our opinion. Empirically, Machiavelli would welcome anybody as the savior of Italy. A search of this kind disregards the origin of the image in mythical imagination; moreover, it disregards the systematic distinction of various types of virtù which are illustrated by the empirical cases of Prince, Chapters 6, 7 and 8.

23 Machiavelli, , Opera, ed Mazzoni, and Casella, (Florence, 1929), pp. 747 ff.Google Scholar

24 Op. cit., p. 759.Google Scholar

25 Op. cit., pp. 747 f.Google Scholar

26 We are conducting our analysis strictly on the level of Machiavelli's self-interpretation. For the larger problems involved in the imaginative creation of the Myth of the Hero, the reader should refer to Rank, Otto, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (2nd edition, Leipzig-Wien, 1922Google Scholar). For the special variant of this myth in the case of the biography of artists, see Kurz, Otto and Kris, Ernst, Die Legende vom Kuenstler (1934)Google Scholar, and Kris, Ernst, Zur Psychologie alterer Biographik. (Imago, Vol. XXI, 1935).Google Scholar

27 Vita, Op. cit., p. 761.Google Scholar