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Five Hundred Years of Italian Scholarship on Machiavelli's Prince

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2013

Giovanni Giorgini
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Abstract

Machiavelli's Prince circulated widely in manuscript form in Italy way before its publication in 1532. Its reception was mixed from the start: some readers found in it a frank, sometimes ironic, description for the benefit of the people of the evil means used by bad rulers; others read in it evil recommendations to tyrants to help them maintain their power. The history of the reception of the Prince in Italy discloses a book with many facets: the impious and amoral Machiavelli of the Jesuits; the republican champion of the people, who unveiled the evil practices of tyrants, of the Enlightenment and Romantic readers; the citizen and patriot who fought for the liberation of Italy of the “Risorgimento”; the nationalist author who realized the limits of popular sovereignty and the necessity of force during the Fascist era; and many more Machiavellis and Princes present in Italy in the past five hundred years.

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Research Article
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The Review of Politics , Volume 75 , Special Issue 4: Machiavelli's Prince , Fall 2013, pp. 625 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2013 

In a famous letter to Francesco Vettori dated December 10, 1513, Machiavelli informed his friend that he had completed a booklet De principatibus, on which he had been working for about six months.Footnote 1 Afterwards, the Prince circulated in manuscript form and was widely known well before its publication in 1532, as it is testified by the existence of seven manuscripts datable to before that date.Footnote 2 A test of this widespread circulation, reception, and notoriety is perhaps the fact that the Prince was included, together with other works of Machiavelli, in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1559:Footnote 3 by that time, “there were in circulation approximately fifteen editions of the Prince and nineteen of the Discourses and French translations of each”;Footnote 4 the first Latin translation, by the reformed Umbrian exile Silvestro Tegli, would appear in 1560.

Another, perhaps peculiar, sign of early circulation and reception is the treatment it received by Agostino Nifo (1473–1545), an Aristotelian scholar who happened to be in Florence and working with the Giunta printers at the same time as Machiavelli: he had access to the manuscript of the Prince and drew heavily from it or, rather, he “plagiarized”Footnote 5 it with the intent of reasserting conventional Aristotelian moral and political ideas in his De regnandi peritia (1523).Footnote 6 The book appeared in Latin in Naples and belongs to a literary genre which flourished in Italy in the second part of the fifteenth century: the literature on the qualities of the perfect (Christian) prince, prompted by the diffusion of this form of government in the entire Italian peninsula and especially in the North.Footnote 7 Not only did Nifo neutralize Machiavelli's innovative teaching; he completely overthrew it by reproposing a catalogue of virtues for the prince—notably magnificentia and liberalitas—which had been deliberately shown to be dangerous and discarded by the author of the Prince; an array of virtues taken mostly from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Cicero's De officiis. This operation is perfectly exemplified by Nifo's replacement of Machiavelli's innovative notion of political virtù with the traditional prudentia. Nifo's most conspicuous “innovation” is possibly his introduction, right from the first book, of a distinction—based on moral, legal, and religious grounds—between the prince and the tyrant, or rex and tyrannus; a distinction well known to Machiavelli but deliberately obliterated in the Prince.Footnote 8 Putting together arguments taken both from the classics and from medieval legal theory, Nifo condemned the tyrant for the unlawfulness and illegitimate origin of his power as well as for his evil exercise of it and for the pursuit of his private interest instead of the common good: as a consequence tyranny is an unstable regime. Nifo's conclusion that glory on earth and beatitude in heaven are the rewards for the good shepherds of people is perfectly in line with the traditional teaching on princely virtues but surely un-Machiavellian, since the Florentine secretary was persuaded that a prince must be ready to damn his soul in order to rule well.

Among the first readers, Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) holds a special place because of his close acquaintance (and sometimes complicity) with Machiavelli and his familiarity with his writings. He had access to Machiavelli's still unpublished Prince and Discorsi and wrote his Observations on the Discourses (1528),Footnote 9 a sort of running commentary in thirty-nine chapters on the main political ideas of his friend. Guicciardini admired Machiavelli's bold innovativeness in all matters,Footnote 10 but he expressed his disagreement with the idea that Rome could be an example for the reform of Florence and Italy and, more generally, that such an imitation of the past was possible. He believed that events recur in a manner similar to the past but circumstances change and it is therefore impossible to draw inspiration for action from past examples: rulers should rather rely on their “discretion” and prudence. Although Guicciardini did not agree with Machiavelli's pessimistic outlook on human nature (he believed that men are by nature inclined to do good), he shared Machiavelli's realistic approach to the “art of statecraft” and believed that cities should not be ruled “philosophically” (namely, in a Platonic fashion) but “according to the common usage of the world”; however, he was persuaded that a governo misto, a mixed regime combining prince, aristocrats, and people, was the best government in all circumstances and the best “protection of liberty,” thereby rebutting Machiavelli's idea that a “princely hand” is better in dire situations when the state is at peril of destruction.

The Florentine humanist Benedetto Varchi (1503–1565) wrote a history of Florence in sixteen volumes under request of the Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (published only in 1721),Footnote 11 where he covered the years from 1527 up to 1535. He reported the slanderous news that Machiavelli fell sick and soon died after the election of Donato Giannotti to the position of secretary to the Ten to which he aspired;Footnote 12 in a quick review of the fame and legacy of Machiavelli, Varchi remarked that he was hated by the entire city because he had addressed his Prince to Lorenzo de' Medici “so that he should make himself absolute lord of Florence.” More specifically, this “really impious work, which should not only be blamed but also destroyed,” gave the impression to the wealthy that the author taught how to rob them, and to the poor that he taught the prince how to deprive them of their honor; and to both that he taught how to strip them of their liberty.Footnote 13

Traiano Boccalini (1556–1613) in his cheerful Ragguagli di Parnaso (1612) and Pietra del paragone politico (1615) gave voice to a republican interpretation of the Prince which was already subtly present in Machiavelli's first publisher, Bernardo Giunta:Footnote 14 Machiavelli, under the veil of recommending expedient policies to the rulers, in fact wanted to disclose and expose to the people the cruel and immoral practices of the Italian princes. Besides some funny remarks on the “Florentine wicked master of politics” which allude to Machiavelli's already established bad fame, Boccalini devoted the Ragguaglio 89 to Machiavelli. The setting is farcical but the defense put up by the Florentine secretary is very serious: he maintains to have taken the rules and precepts with which his works are replete from the actual actions of some princes; the Parnassian judges in the end condemn him but for another “crime”: Machiavelli “wanted to set the world on fire, by trying to turn simple people into clever ones and by furnishing light to those moles [the people] whom Nature with great circumspection had created blind.”Footnote 15 It is thus clear that the reception of the Prince in Italy was dual from the beginning: while some authors read in it recommendations for princes and tyrants alike about how to keep their power, others found that, under a veil of irony, Machiavelli was exposing the evil means used by absolute rulers (who did not need any teaching in this respect).

“Machiavelli in Hell”: Dominicans, Jesuits, and Other Early Critics of Machiavelli

By the time Boccalini wrote his Ragguagli not only was Machiavelli's fame widespread all around Europe, together with the newly coined words “Machiavellian” and “Machiavellianism”;Footnote 16 there were also authors who dedicated their time, energy, and ingenuity to the noble task of refuting his purportedly impious and immoral teaching while reevaluating Christian virtues, classic ideals, or both. Among the first to do so in Italy was the archbishop Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553), who wrote many books against Lutherans and Calvinists to defend the Catholic orthodoxy. He was also the author of a De libris a christiano detestandis (1552), a chapter of which is devoted to Machiavelli's Prince: “Quam execrandi Machiavelli discursus et institutione sui Principis.”Footnote 17 Politi's attacks are motivated by Machiavelli's anti-Christianity, which results in noxious and immoral maxims. The church historian Tommaso Bozio (1548–1610) was famous in his day for his works in which he argued for the supremacy of the Catholic Church over all other Christian confessions; most notably his De signis Ecclesiae Dei contra omnes haereses, published in 1591, was reprinted many times in France and Germany. He also wrote a number of books, dedicated to Pope Clement VIII and the Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (his nephew), devoted to a point-by-point refutation of Machiavelli's arguments, which make him the most eminent author of works adversum Machiavellum in the Counter-Reformation, together perhaps with Pedro de Ribadeneira.Footnote 18 Two appeared in the same year, 1593: in De robore bellico Bozio attacked Machiavelli for his false accusation that the Christian religion makes men weak, unable and unwilling to fight. Drawing from history, as well as from the works of Aristotle and Aquinas, he argued that the virtues of the soul have priority over military art and showed that Catholics have always been powerful fighters and ruled over many peoples. He also argued against Machiavelli's preference for civic militia and defended the church's notion of bellum iustum.Footnote 19 In De imperio virtutis he maintained that Machiavelli used Circe-like potions to turn men into beasts.Footnote 20 Here Bozio addressed the problem of “reason of state” and argued that power must be submitted to natural right and divine law as well as to the principles of the Catholic faith. He used historical examples to show that virtuous and faithful princes were loved by their people and had a better life and success than those who faked their virtues and used fraud. In a subsequent work, the huge De ruinis gentium et regnorum (1595),Footnote 21 Bozio broadened his scope and drew on his immense erudition to attack not only Machiavelli but all the impious politicians of the age and to argue for the inseparability of power and religion. He took his bearings from the assumption that the world is not ruled by chance or fortune but by an intelligent creator and that happiness consists in perfect virtue, which resides both in action and in contemplation; he went on to maintain that success and worldly goods are dependent on virtue and religion. Bozio's final onslaught adversus Macchiavellum is the De antiquo et novo Italiae statu (1595), in which he exposes the “unashamed lies” of Machiavelli concerning Christian religion and the papacy.Footnote 22 Here again Bozio's display of historical and literary erudition is enormous and serves the purpose of showing that before Constantine there were actually no good rulers and concluding that only the pope, who possesses the plenitude of spiritual and temporal power, has the authority to create legitimate sovereigns.Footnote 23

Some of the members of the newly established Societas Iesu, founded by Ignatius of Loyola and approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, distinguished themselves for the vigor and the sagacity of their rebuttals of Machiavelli's ideas. For the Jesuits Machiavelli was the author who invented “reason of state” (an expression actually never used by Machiavelli) and invoked and defended the superiority of politics over religion, of the state over the church, of Rome over Jerusalem. They felt their job should consist in overthrowing his teaching by showing that it was not only impious but also detrimental to princes who wished to succeed in ruling their countries. The best result in this line of enterprise is without doubt Giovanni Botero's (1544–1617) Della ragion di Stato (1589), which had an enormous practical impact on the policies of many European sovereigns.Footnote 24 Botero maintained he had observed the popularity and reverence in which the works of Machiavelli and Tacitus were held in the courts and determined to show that the reason of state and the reason of conscience should never be separated. Botero reinstated justice as the cardinal virtue in a state and, taking on an Aristotelian idea, maintained that a preeminently virtuous prince is naturally obeyed by his subjects, aristocrats as well as commoners. The work also contains a phenomenology of peoples devised after Aristotle and the Hippocratic writings.

Another Jesuit, Antonio Possevino (1533–1611), launched an all-out onslaught at Machiavelli, whose effigy had been in the meantime burned; in his Iudicium (1592) he put together and attacked as pernicious writers Machiavelli, De la Noue, Bodin, and Duplessis-Mornay.Footnote 25 The impression one receives is that Possevino was only dimly acquainted with Machiavelli's work, of which he does not seem to have firsthand knowledge (for instance, he believes that the Prince is composed of four books). Machiavelli is accused of being a clever man lacking piety and religion altogether whereas history shows that Roman emperors and contemporary sovereigns had better political and military results if they were pious and had recourse to religion. The Jesuit Gian Lorenzo Lucchesini (1638–1716) wrote a Saggio della sciocchezza di Nicolò Macchiavelli (1697)Footnote 26 in which he contrasted Machiavelli's “foolish axioms” with the divine rules of Solomon in order to show that the latter are a better choice for successful rulers: in the Proverbs one may find all the maxims for wise and useful policies. Indeed, in them both princes and private citizens may find rules valuable in politics, economics, and private morality. Lucchesini also showed Machiavelli to be without judgment in his admiration for Cesare Borgia, whose mistakes are duly reviewed, and in his recommendations, which produce the contrary effect to what Machiavelli purports. The qualities of the excellent ruler, which are instrumental in keeping the throne, are in fact justice and fear of God. The accusations and counterarguments are not new; perhaps the most striking feature of this book is the general tone of derision and contempt, and the use of an unprecedented scurrilous language. A later commentator, the poet Ugo Foscolo, remarked that librarians used to shorten the title on the back of the book and in their catalogues as Stupidities of Father Lucchesini.

The Italian Enlightenment and “Risorgimento”: Machiavelli the Patriot

Italian Enlightenment authors show a remarkably different attitude toward Machiavelli: they study his works (instead of simply attacking him with only a second-hand knowledge of his thought) and put forth an interpretation that emphasizes the superior importance of the Discourses over the Prince. A good specimen of this line of interpretation is the slim but well-informed work by Giuseppe Maria Galanti (1743–1806), Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli cittadino e segretario fiorentino (1779), which should have been the introduction of a prospective reprint of Machiavelli's works that never saw the light because of church intervention.Footnote 27 Here Galanti maintained that one should refer to the Discourses in order to know the real thought of Machiavelli, who, in this work, puts forth a “completely opposite” doctrine to that of the Prince. This interpretation was welcomed and repeated by many Italian patriotic and republican authors, such as Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), who has an important place not only in Italian literature but also as a reference point for all the young patriots fighting for a free and unified Italy who will realize the “Risorgimento.” Alfieri's booklet Del Principe e delle lettere (1778–1786) revolves around two main themes: hatred for tyranny and love for liberty. In it he shows how tyranny is, among other things, detrimental to literature.Footnote 28 Machiavelli is among the modern authors who “really enlightened the world, analyzing the faculty and the rights of man”; he is the only philosopher in Italy since Cicero who investigated political and moral truths and had an unsurpassable knowledge of the human heart; however, he is unknown and not esteemed in his own country. Alfieri's main point is that in the Prince one could find a few immoral and tyrannical sentences, but these serve the purpose of showing the people the ambitious and deliberate cruelties used by tyrants, who need not be instructed since they have always used them and will always use them “according to their need, sagacity, and dexterity. Conversely, in Machiavelli's histories and in the discourses on Livy, in his every word and thought, one breathes liberty, justice, sharpness of mind, truth, and great nobility of mind so that everyone who reads him well and has high ideals and identifies oneself with the author cannot but become an ardent enthusiast of liberty and a most enlightened lover of every political virtue.”Footnote 29

Not dissimilar is the judgment of another great poet and man of letters of the age, Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), who is arguably the first Romantic poet in Italy. His life and works are characterized by a patriotic strain mixed with an exacerbation of feeling. His interpretation of the Prince is remarkable because it occurs in a work—I sepolcri (1807)—whose leitmotiv is the importance of the great examples of the past to spur the virtue of the Italians. More specifically, Foscolo summarizes in one line an interpretation which had a long tradition among republican authors (Boccalini, Alfieri, Baretti): Machiavelli is the “great man” who, while pretending to reinforce the power of princes, discloses its real nature beyond the pomp and “the laurels” and shows to people how it is actually founded on blood and tears. In fact, Machiavelli wanted to show the moral toil exacted by power and wished to educate citizens and politicians to hate tyrants. Elsewhere Foscolo described Machiavelli as “the most farsighted of political writers, who expected Italy's deliverance from its reunion under only one prince, even if he be a tyrant.”Footnote 30 Foscolo wrote also a Commentario critico degli scritti e della fama di Machiavelli, a compilation about Machiavelli's works, editions, and reception.Footnote 31

Subsequent Italian interpreters were influenced by the Romantic and patriotic zeitgeist of the “Risorgimento” and interpreted Machiavelli as an ardent republican and a forerunner of the reunification of Italy. Thus Francesco De Sanctis (1817–1883), the author of History of Italian Literature, which had the merit of being the first such work to appear after Italy was reunited in one kingdom in 1860 as well as of having a Romantic and patriotic undertone throughout, focused his interpretation on Machiavelli's “man”: Machiavelli's hero is the tamer of man and nature. He showed that moral responsibility lies in the choice of the end, not in the means. He praised Machiavelli's patriotism and his attempt to awaken Italy from its moral slumber through the work of an Italian prince, and added that Machiavelli had in Italy the same effect that the Reformation had in other European countries. Notwithstanding his realistic approach, in the end Machiavelli was deluded in his hopes of deliverance of Italy, but this is understandable because he had a poetic nature and disillusionment soon came. De Sanctis concluded that Machiavelli's real muse was not enthusiasm but rather irony, and his acute sense of observation made him a man of the Risorgimento.Footnote 32

The historian and politician Pasquale Villari (1827–1917), a senator in the parliament of the newly reunified Italy, devoted a monumental work to Machiavelli and his age, Niccolò Machiavelli e i suoi tempi (1877–1882), which was translated into English by his wife Linda White Mazini Villari as The Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli and circulated widely. This work is written in beautiful prose and characterized by the unfailing judgment of the author; it is also a treasure chest of news and information on everything concerning Machiavelli. The statesman Pasquale Stanislao Mancini (1817–1888), former minister of public instruction, lauded Machiavelli for emancipating political science from the “theological yoke”: instead of subordinating politics to religion, Machiavelli showed how religion can be fruitfully used in politics; nor did he place politics under philosophy or ethics, because he considered it an “experimental doctrine” which should be studied historically. Machiavelli did not transform “what is” into “what should be”; he “did not elevate the fact to right” but left the moral and legal problem out of the realm of politics. Seen in this perspective, Machiavelli's writings are consistent: he was interested in “the relation between certain means and causes with certain ends and effects.” In fact, the account of the evil means suited to maintain an unjust and tyrannical regime is the least original part of his writings; his originality lies in considering any absolute principality a tyranny.Footnote 33 In this idea of the separation, operated by Machiavelli, of politics from morality and legal theory already lie the seeds of Croce's famous portrait of Machiavelli as the discoverer of the autonomy of politics from morals.Footnote 34

Machiavelli in the Age of Tyrannies

At the turn of the century, when the Romantic and patriotic interpretation of the Prince had subsided, Machiavelli's ideas were taken up, albeit very differently, by the theorists of the elite: Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Roberto Michels. Pareto (1848–1923), who praised conspicuously Machiavelli's originality and daring, was especially interested in his treatment of religion: he found that his idea of the importance of civil religion was superior to Savonarola's ascetic vision, which was a hindrance for Italy and for the Renaissance ideals. Religion, which binds together a people, is the equivalent of contemporary ideology: Machiavelli, like Aristotle and Polybius, studied the reality of political phenomena scientifically and was also a master of political psychology; he caught some everlasting aspects of politics and humankind and his insights are therefore still topical.Footnote 35 Michels (1876–1936), originally a socialist and then a supporter of Fascism, praised the realism of Machiavelli's art of politics and saw in him a “master of patriotic and revolutionary dictatorship.”Footnote 36 Mosca (1858–1941) had a peculiar fate among interpreters: a “gentleman conservative,” in Piero Gobetti's definition, “the second founder of political science in Machiavelli's country,”Footnote 37 Mosca's realism has often been associated with Machiavelli, to the point that James Burnham included him among “the Machiavellians” together with other theorists of the elite.Footnote 38 However, Mosca was a moderate but sharp critic of Machiavelli and his sympathy went more to Guicciardini and to his ideal of a rule by savi, or wise men, in politics: he considered Machiavelli's approach to politics archaic and unscientific; therefore he could not be included among the founders of modern political science, of which he laid at most the cornerstone.Footnote 39

The two most powerful and influential interpretations of Machiavelli in Italy in the twentieth century were undoubtedly those of the liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce and of the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci. For Croce (1866–1952) Machiavelli faced the “antinomy of politics and morality” and dared to maintain the autonomy of politics, its belonging to a separate sphere from morality.Footnote 40 After Machiavelli, politics could not be considered a specification or a part of ethics anymore: Machiavelli showed that it has its own independent laws and rules and therefore cannot be considered evil either, although—Croce lamented—this is still what is taught to Catholic philosophers (an expression he obviously disliked, since philosophy in his opinion did not admit of adjectives). Far from refuting morality, Machiavelli was “one of the loftiest and most sorrowful souls” in history, who tried to implement morality in the world as much as he could. Machiavelli, Croce concluded, did not sacrifice morality in favor of politics but rather admitted their mutual autonomy; one could only blame him for not succeeding in bridging their respective autonomies. It is interesting to note that the other great Italian idealist philosopher—Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944)—had a view of Machiavelli more in “light and shade”: in his opinion Machiavelli had caught the importance of the creative individual in politics and was to be lauded for his love of the country; on the other hand, his notion of the state was somewhat obscure because Machiavelli had not realized the moral value of the state; in addition, his individualism, his instrumental use of religion and his naturalistic view of fortuna typical of the Renaissance were to be rejected.Footnote 41 Another conservative Catholic philosopher, Augusto Del Noce (1910–1989), attributed to Machiavelli a decisive role in the crisis which gave birth to modernity: he was the originator of modern atheism in its two varieties, nihilistic (as in Nietzsche) and positive (as in Marx); he was the real master of the libertin thinkers, who inherited his atheism and his view of politics devoid of a moral guide and identified with power.Footnote 42

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) read Machiavelli through Jacobin and Leninist lenses and saw in Machiavelli's Prince the archetype of the communist party.Footnote 43 He considered Machiavelli “the most classic teacher of politics for the Italian ruling classes.” What is peculiar in his interpretation is that Gramsci read Machiavelli historically, in the context of his age, but maintained that his teachings had universal value. He found the central feature of the Prince in its being a “living” book, where political ideology and political science unite in the dramatic form of a “myth”: discarding both utopia and scholastic treatise, Machiavelli moulded the image of a leader who embodies the “collective will.” The historic instantiation of the myth of the Prince in the twentieth century should be the revolutionary party, characterized by a political ideology which has a “hegemonic” role and aims at organizing the collective will of a scattered people. The concluding chapter of the Prince aimed at spurring the people—not a generic people but the people of readers Machiavelli has persuaded with his arguments—to action; it is not extrinsic but rather the necessary element which scatters light on the entire work and makes it a “political manifesto.” Machiavelli's realistic lesson is that statesmen must know that certain means, although typical of tyrants, are required in order to achieve certain ends.

It may not be altogether surprising to find Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) among the readers and fans of the Prince; however, it is noteworthy that his fascination for this work prompted him to submit a text on Machiavelli to the University of Bologna in pursuit of an honoris causa degree in 1924, which was later published as an article, “Preludio al Machiavelli,”, in the journal Gerarchia.Footnote 44 In this work, which he described as “not a cold, scholastic dissertation, replete with quotes from other authors, but rather a drama,” Mussolini addressed the question of Machiavelli's relevance for contemporary times and answered that, although the external circumstances of living have changed radically, the minds and characters of people have remained the same. He shows to be especially interested in Machiavelli's pessimistic anthropology, in his outstanding psychological ability to depict men the way they really are: in so doing Machiavelli described not only contemporary Florentines or Italians but men without distinction of time and space; he depicted human nature. Machiavelli's pragmatism, or even cynicism, is the logical consequence of this view of humanity. The core of Mussolini's interpretation lies in his conviction that Machiavelli identified the antithesis between prince and people, between state and individual: Mussolini believes that the word “prince” in Machiavelli stands for the state, because individuals have selfish interests and try to evade restraint as much as they can whereas the state transcends the life of individuals and represents organization and limitation. It thus appears evident that the notion of sovereignty of the people is a tragic fraud: the sovereignty graciously given to the people is swiftly taken back when there are important decisions to be made; pure consensus is not enough to rule, force is also required at some point.Footnote 45 Mussolini's article marked the highest point of an interpretation of Machiavelli, strongly influenced by the ideas of Nietzsche and Le Bon, which focused on the relationship between the prince and the masses and asserted the necessity of an authoritarian trait in the ruler, who could use force, fraud, or charm in order to lead the masses.

One may also note a curious and interesting fact about the fortune of the Prince in Italy in the twentieth century: three prime ministers wrote presentations for editions of the Prince which, as it may be expected, emphasized different aspects of this work. They are the Fascist Mussolini, who interpreted the Prince as a requiem to popular sovereignty and a reminder of the necessity of force in politics;Footnote 46 the Socialist Bettino Craxi, who took the opportunity to criticize Gramsci and the Communist interpretation of the political party as modern prince; and the center-right politician/entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, who added to his edition the forged annotations of Napoleon.Footnote 47

In the twentieth century there have been some other noteworthy interpretations of Machiavelli in Italy, coming from different perspectives—history of political thought, modern history, and history of Italian literature. One should first of all mention the work of Roberto Ridolfi (1899–1991), who wrote a life of Machiavelli (1954) which remains the standard biographic reference for this author. Then Federico Chabod (1901–1960), one of the subtlest and most refined historians of the century, to whom we owe the commonly accepted dating of The Prince—between June and December 1513.Footnote 48 Chabod wrote the entry “Machiavelli” for the Italian encyclopedia Treccani (1934), a monumental work devised and directed by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile which has had an everlasting importance for Italian culture. Chabod observed that Machiavelli's reasoning in the Prince is logical until the last but one chapter, but when he addresses the problem of the role of fortune political passion overwhelms him: he aims at convincing both the young Lorenzo de' Medici and his readers that there is room for action; and in fact chapter 25 is followed by the exhortation to set Italy free from barbarian rule. Reason and imagination, logic and feeling, coexist in this work and the chapter titles in Latin testify to Machiavelli's intention to curb his own imagination whereas the expressions in vernacular show his participation in the deeds he narrates.Footnote 49 Chabod was also the director of the Italian Institute for Historical Studies, founded by Croce, hosted in his palazzo in Naples and endowed with his huge library, where generations of historians have done postgraduate work since 1946. Among them have been many original Machiavelli scholars who studied under Chabod, such as Gennaro Sasso and Nicola Matteucci. Sasso (1928–) is the author of many works on Machiavelli which are characterized by a painstaking philological attention and by a historicist approach.Footnote 50 He situated Machiavelli's thought in the political and cultural context of the age, investigating his philosophical sources and his influences together with the historical circumstances of his actions.

Nicola Matteucci (1926–2006), arguably the most interesting liberal thinker in Italy after Croce, emphasized the unity of Machiavelli's thought, the identity of the central tenets of his major works, against the still widespread tendency to interpret the Prince and the Discourses as arguing for two completely different views of the best regime, one monarchical and one republican. Matteucci believed that Machiavelli's bewilderment in the face of contemporary events, his acute awareness of the crisis of Italian political culture, his deep doubts about “the very capacity of reason to understand the reality of the human world,” were at the foundations of his thought and explained his few inconsistencies. Faced with the dramatic situation of contemporary Italy, Machiavelli discovered one all-important truth: politics is a serious matter that has its own inflexible, albeit dramatic, rules; far from being separated from morality (the realm of “ought”), politics has its own deontology and therefore the new prince must be ready to “damn his own soul” (Discourses 3.43) in order to save his state and people.Footnote 51

Not less interesting were the interpretations of The Prince coming from historians of literature, the “Italianisti,” among which two stand out for their originality. Luigi Russo (1892–1961) described Machiavelli as an “artist of politics” and saw in his prince an expression of Renaissance individualism: depicted as a solitary and tragic hero, who acts without the people and above history, Machiavelli's prince is in fact “a dream, the prince-artist, the prince-engineer, who deals with the life of peoples with absolute indifference and mastery.”Footnote 52 Russo found The Prince to be in a dialectical relation with the Discourses, which simply showed “another phase of his passion for political technique”: the two great works show Machiavelli's ability to examine “the two indissoluble moments of politics: the moment of authority, and the moment of liberty.” Russo concluded by underscoring the discrepancy between chapter 26 and the rest of The Prince: this last chapter has a “Savonarolian” trait which contrasts with Machiavelli's general intent to examine and depict politics as an art and a technique. Francesco Flora (1891–1962), the author of what is arguably the most elegant and perceptive history of Italian literature of the twentieth century,Footnote 53 found Machiavelli to be a “contemplative person,” not a man of action because his thought went constantly beyond everyday action. His genius consisted in finding what is universal in every state, the everlasting essence of all states in all their different instantiations, in “transforming into general principles of universal politics the petty circumstances in which he did his business as secretary.” In Italy there were “many princes but only one Machiavelli.” Machiavelli was a rigorous political philosopher because he was interested in the eternal laws of politics: the most inescapable is the law of necessity. At the end of the Prince the state becomes the motherland: this way politics redeems itself and becomes a moral idea.

Footnotes

1 N. Machiavelli, Letter to Francesco Vettori of December 10, 1513 in Machiavelli, N., Lettere (Torino: Utet, 1984); and Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, ed. Atkinson, J. B. and Sices, D. (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004). On this letter and the correspondence with Vettori in general see Najemy, J., Between Friends (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

2 Three were written by Machiavelli's friend Biagio Buonaccorsi, who urged the recipient of one copy to defend the work against those who would criticize it simply “out of malice or envy”: see Kahn, V., “Machiavelli's Afterlife and Reputation to the Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli, ed. Najemy, J. M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 239–55. See also Richardson, B., “The Prince and Its Early Italian Readers,” in Niccolò Machiavelli's “The Prince”: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Coyle, M. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 18–39; Gaeta, F., “Appunti sulla fortuna del pensiero politico di Machiavelli in Italia,” in Il pensiero politico di Machiavelli e la sua fortuna nel mondo (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1972), 21–36.

3 See Firpo, L., “Le origini dell'antimachiavellismo,” Il Pensiero Politico 2 (1969): 337–67.

4 Bireley, R., The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 14. This is a very informative work although I quite disagree with the author's view of Machiavelli.

5 Renaissance writers appropriated texts liberally and creatively and did not have our current standards of citation: hence it is misleading to speak of “plagiarizing” without qualification. See the remarks in Larivaille, B. and Pernet-Beau, S., Une réécriture du Prince de Machiavel, le De Regnandi Peritia de Agostino Nifo, bilingual ed. (Université de Paris-Nanterre X: Centre de Recherches de Langue et Littérature Italiennes, 1987); see also Borsetto, L., Il furto di Prometeo: Imitazione, scrittura, riscrittura nel Rinascimento (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 1990); Grafton, A., Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

6 Augustini Niphi Medicae Philosophi Suessani De Regnandi Peritia, Ad Carolum. VI. Imper. Caesarem Semper Augustum (Naples, 1523).

7 The literature includes such works as Bartolomeo Platina, De vero principe (1481), Giuniano Maio, De maiestate (1492), Francesco Patrizi, De regno (1494), and Giovanni Pontano, De principe liber (1503). See Cosentino, P., “Un plagio del Principe: il De regnandi peritia di Agostino Nifo,” Semestrale di Studi (e Testi) Italiani 1 (1998): 139–60. On the Speculum Principis literature see the classic Gilbert, F., “The Humanist Concept of the Prince and The Prince of Machiavelli,” Journal of Modern History 11 (1939): 449–83. On Nifo, and more generally the early reception of Machiavelli, see Anglo, S., Machiavelli: The First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Finally, see Procacci, G., Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l'Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1965) and Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell'età moderna (Rome: Laterza, 1995).

8 On this see Strauss, L., Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); Giorgini, G., “The Place of the Tyrant in Machiavelli's Political Thought and the Literary Genre of the Prince,” History of Political Thought 29, no. 2 (2008): 230–56.

9 Guicciardini, F., Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, in Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini, ed. Canestrini, G., vol. 1 (Florence: Barbera, Bianchi e Comp., 1857).

10 See for instance Guicciardini's letter to Machiavelli of 18 May 1521, where he acknowledges that his friend is “extravagant from the common opinion and inventor of new and unusual things.”

11 Storia fiorentina di Messer Benedetto Varchi, nella quale principalmente si contengono l'ultime revoluzioni della Repubblica fiorentina, e lo stabilimento del Principato nella casa de' Medici: colla tavola infine delle cose più notabili (Cologne, 1721).

12 In fact, it was the obscure Francesco Tarugi, a former secretary to the Dieci di Pratica, who got the position on June 10, 1527; Machiavelli died eleven days later. Giannotti was appointed secretary on September 23, 1527, when Machiavelli was already dead.

13 B. Varchi, Storia fiorentina IV, 5. This judgment echoes the words written by Giambattista Busini in a letter to Varchi dated January 23, 1549: “the entire city hated him because of the Prince: to the wealthy it seemed that his Prince was a document intended to teach the duke how to deprive them of their entire property, to the poor to deprive them of all their liberty. The Piagnoni regarded him as heretic, the good as dishonest, the bad as one more depraved or more crafty than them, so that everyone hated him.” Busini added that Machiavelli “loved liberty extraordinarily” (Lettere di Giambattista Busini a Benedetto Varchi sopra l'assedio di Firenze, ed. Milanesi, G. [Florence: Le Monnier, 1861], 84–85).

14 Or, more accurately, second publisher since Giunta's edition in May 1532 was preceded by a few months by Blado's (January 1532). In his dedicatory letter, Giunta compared Machiavelli to a physician who describes poison as well as medicines so that people can stay away from them.

15 Boccalini, T., De' ragguagli di Parnaso (Venice, 1630), 421–24.

16 The word “Machiavellian” is found for the first time in 1566 spelled “mache villion”; in the Sempill Ballates (1568) attributed to Robert Sempill it recurs as “Machivilian.” “Machiauilisme” is found in T. Nashe, Pierce Peniless (1592); “Machiavilianisme” recurs in T. Tuke, True Trial (1607). Cotgrave, R., Dictionarie of the French and English tongues (London, 1611) translates the French word “Machiauelisme” as “subtle policie, cunning roguerie.” The Italian “machiavellista” and “machiavello” are current since the sixteenth century.

17 Ambrogio Catarino Politi, De libris a christiano detestandis, et a christianismo penitus eliminandis (Rome, 1552). On Politi see Caravale, G., Sulle tracce dell'eresia: Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553) (Florence: Olschki, 2007).

18 See R. Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince.

19 Bozio, T., De robore bellico diuturnis et amplis catholicorum regnis liber unus: Adversus Macchiavellum (Rome, 1593); the work was reprinted in Cologne the following year, with some corrections, including the correct spelling Adversus Machiavellum (used also in other reprints of Bozio's works by the same publisher).

20 Bozio, T., De imperio virtutis sive imperia pendere a veris virtutibus non a simulatis libri duo: Adversus Macchiavellum (Rome, 1593).

21 Bozio, T., De ruinuis gentium et regnorum adversus impios politicos libri octo (Rome, 1595).

22 Bozio, T., De antique et novo Italiae statu libri quatuor: Adversus Macchiavellum (Rome, 1595; Cologne, 1595).

23 This idea was reiterated in another huge work: Bozio, T., De iure status sive de iure divino et naturali ecclesiaticae libertatis ac potestatis (Rome, 1600).

24 Botero, G., Della ragion di stato libri dieci (Venice, 1589).

25 Antonii Possevini e Societate Iesu Iudicium (Lyon, 1593).

26 Lucchesini, G. L., Saggio della sciocchezza di Nicolò Macchiavelli scoperta eziandio col solo Discorso Naturale, e con far vedere Dannose anche à gl'Interessi della Terra le Principali sue Massime (Rome, 1697).

27 Galanti, G. M., Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli cittadino e segretario fiorentino (Naples, 1779). On this aspect of the Italian Enlightenment see Ferrone, V., The Politics of Enlightenment (London: Anthem, 2012).

28 Alfieri, V., Del Principe e delle lettere, in Opere di Vittorio Alfieri (Italia, 1805), 19:111.

29 Footnote Ibid., 120–21.

30 Foscolo, U., Della patria, degli scritti e della fama di Niccolò Machiavelli (1811), in Opere complete di Ugo Foscolo (Naples, 1860); see also his Discorso storico sul testo del Decamerone di Messer Giovanni Boccaccio (Lugano: Ruggia, 1828).

31 Foscolo, U., Commentario critico degli scritti e della fama di Machiavelli, in Prose letterarie (Florence: Le Monnier, 1850); see, for instance, 2:452.

32 De Sanctis, F., Storia della letteratura italiana (Naples: Morano, 1870).

33 Mancini, P.S., Della dottrina politica del Machiavelli (Turin: Lampato, Barieri, 1852).

34 Another prominent statesman who drew inspiration from Machiavelli in his works and political action was the Bolognese Marco Minghetti (1818–1886): see his Opuscoli letterari ed economici (Florence: Le Monnier, 1872) and the Scritti politici, ed. Gherardi, R. (Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, 1986).

35 Pareto, V., Trattato di sociologia generale (1916) (Turin: Utet, 1988), 2286; see also 2357.

36 Michels, R., “Gaetano Mosca e la teoria dello Stato” (1929), in Socialismo e Fascismo (1925–1934), ed. Panella, G. (Milan: Giuffrè, 1991).

37 Gobetti, P., “Un conservatore galantuomo,” La Rivoluzione Liberale 3, no. 19 (1924); now in Scritti politici, ed. Spriano, P. (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), 652. Gobetti was a liberal opponent of Fascism, the founder of many liberal enterprises in Italy, who was murdered by the Fascists in 1926.

38 Burnham, J., The Machiavellians (New York: John Day, 1943).

39 Mosca, G., “Il Principe di Machiavelli quattro secoli dopo la morte del suo autore” (1925), in Ciò che la storia potrebbe insegnare: Scritti di scienza politica (Milan: Giuffrè, 1958), 673–720.

40 Croce, B., “Machiavelli e Vico: La politica e l'etica,” in Etica e Politica (1931) (Bari: Laterza, 1981), 204–9; “La questione del Machiavelli,” in Indagini su Hegel e schiarimenti filosofici (Bari: Laterza, 1949), 174–86.

41 Gentile, G., “Religione e virtù di Machiavelli” (1918), in Studi sul Rinascimento (Florence: Sansoni, 1923), 107–12, and “L'etica di Machiavelli” (1920), in Studi, 113–20.

42 Noce, A. Del, “Riflessioni sull'opzione ateistica” (1961), in Il problema dell'ateismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 335–75.

43 Gramsci devoted the entire notebook 13, written in jail between 1932 and 1934, to Machiavelli: Gramsci, A., Quaderno 13: Noterelle sulla politica del Machiavelli, ed. Donzelli, C. (Turin: Einaudi, 1981). The literature is conspicuous. See especially Medici, R., La metafora Machiavelli: Mosca Pareto Michels Gramsci (Modena: Mucchi, 1990) and Fontana, B., Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

44 Mussolini, B., “Preludio al Machiavelli,” Gerarchia 3, no. 4 (April 1924): 204–9; the essay was republished as a pamphlet Preludio al “Machiavelli” nel quarto centenario di Machiavelli (Rome: Tipografia Il Popolo d'Italia, 1927) and was reprinted in Machiavelli, N., Il Principe, con il Preludio al Machiavelli di Benito Mussolini (Milan: Società Anonima Notari, 1928). For many reasons the h.c. degree was never conferred upon the Duce: see de Felice, R., Mussolini il fascista (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), 465–66. It is noteworthy that the Socialist member of parliament Giacomo Matteotti, just before being kidnapped and killed by the Fascists, wrote a reply which is also a complete refutation: “Machiavelli, Mussolini and Fascism,” English Life, July 1924: 87ff. On this see Canali, M., Il delitto Matteotti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997).

45 The necessity of “force,” together with “consensus,” was also the gist of Mussolini's previous article sent to Gerarchia, an onslaught on liberalism, deemed to be old-fashioned as a method of government: Mussolini, B., “La forza e il consenso,” Gerarchia 2, no. 3 (March 1923).

46 On Mussolini's and the Fascist use of Machiavelli, as well as on the reactions they prompted in Italian anti-Fascist intellectuals (such as Matteotti, Gobetti, and others) see the very well-informed Barbuto, G. M., Machiavelli e i totalitarismi (Naples: Guida, 2005).

47 See Mitarotondo, L., “Il Principe fra il ‘Preludio’ di Mussolini e le letture del Ventennio,” in Machiavelli nella storiografia e nel pensiero politico del XX secolo, ed. Bassani, M. and Vivanti, C. (Milan: Giuffrè, 2006), 59–78. The prefaces to the Prince of Mussolini, Craxi, and Berlusconi were published in “Testi e pretesti: Tre presentazioni del ‘Principe,’” Il Ponte 54 (1998).

48 Chabod argued against Meinecke and his idea that The Prince had been written in different stages. This idea has been recently revived by Mario Martelli, who argued that Machiavelli wrote two versions, one “in haste” in 1513 and one with additions and alterations in 1518. The notion of the two versions was rejected by Sasso; Giorgio Inglese, in his introduction to The Prince, stated that even if Machiavelli did make changes to the text, these do not date further than May 1514. For the sources and an informative and well-balanced account see Russo, F., Bruto a Firenze (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2008). I agree with Gennaro Barbuto that, lacking the manuscript copy of The Prince, the problem of its dating cannot be solved once and for all: however, we know from a letter of Niccolò Guicciardini to his father Luigi that a manuscript copy already circulated in the summer of 1517. See Barbuto, G., Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2013): 126–28.

49 Chabod, F., Scritti su Machiavelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1964).

50 Sasso, G., Niccolò Machiavelli (1958) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); Machiavelli e gli antichi e altri saggi, 4 vols. (Milan: Ricciardi, 1987–97).

51 Matteucci, N., “Niccolò Machiavelli,” in Alla ricerca dell'ordine politico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 31–67. See also his provocative “Machiavelli politologo,” in Alla ricerca, 69–108.

52 Russo, L., Prolegomeni al Machiavelli (1931), in Machiavelli (Rome: Laterza, 1988). One may compare this view with Singleton, C. S., “The Perspective of Art,” Kenyon Review 15 (1953): 169–89, where Machiavelli's prince is depicted as an artist interested only in the beauty and soundness of his construction.

53 Flora, F., Storia della letteratura italiana (Milan: Mondadori, 1940).

Ibid