Constituting Freedom: Machiavelli and Florence 019881545X, 9780198815457

Citation preview

CONSTITUTING FREEDOM

Constituting Freedom Machiavelli and Florence

FABIO RAIMONDI Original Edition L’ordinamento della libertà. Machiavelli e Firenze (Verona: ombre corte, 2013)

Translated from Italian by Matthew Armistead

1

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/2017, SPi

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries First published in Italian © Ombre Corte 2013 English translation © Fabio Raimondi 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950094 ISBN 978–0–19–881545–7 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

To Tommaso and Filippo

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/2017, SPi

Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations

Introduction Aims A Republican Machiavelli Machiavelli and Political Modernity The Contemporary Relevance of Machiavelli The Conceptual Scheme of Machiavellian Discourse

1. Corruption and Inequality 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6.

The Problem Two Ways The Aporia of the Principality A ‘Well-Ordered Republic’ and the Transmission of Virtue The Dictatorship: the ‘Kingly Hand’ of the Republic Free and Servile Beginnings

2. Tumults and the Birth of Florence 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6.

The Beginning of Florence in Discourses The Origins and Naming of Florence in the Histories The Instability of Florence The Virtue of the Florentines and the Humours Freedom and Tumults The Paradigm of Florence

3. Political History of the Florentine Institutions 3.1. The Struggles Between the Nobles and the Division of the People (1215–98) 3.2. The Struggles Between the Nobles and the Popolo Grasso: the Duke of Athens and the Ciompi’s Tumult (1298–1353) 3.3. The Struggles Between the Popolo Grasso and the Popolo Minuto: the ‘Humours of the Parts’ (1353–93) 3.4. From the Oligarchic Republic (1393–1434) to the Medicean Principality (1434–92)

4. Constituting Freedom 4.1. The Republic (1494–1512) 4.2. The Return of the Medici 4.3. Recapitulation

xi xiii 1 1 1 3 5 6

9 9 14 17 21 24 27

32 32 35 39 42 48 51

54 54 62 71 80

93 93 103 109

viii 4.4. The Discursus 4.5. The Minuta 4.6. A Provisional Appraisal

Bibliography Index

Contents 112 124 129

138 151

What tumult’s in the heavens? William Shakespeare, I Henry VI Populi tumultus libertatis recuperandae saepe occasio fuit John Milton, Commonplace Book

Acknowledgements This book represents the first stage of a journey begun many years ago, along which I have been lucky enough to encounter numerous specialists on Machiavelli and benefit from the views and advice of many colleagues and friends. As I reach the end of this first stretch of my analysis of some of the key issues in Machiavelli’s political thought, I would first like to thank the members of the Study Group on Political Concepts of the University of Padua, directed by Professor Giuseppe Duso, with whom I have enjoyed exchanges illuminated by a genuine passion for research and from whom I have learned a great deal. I am also grateful to the participants in the Machiavelli seminars held at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Urbino from 2002 to 2006, under the friendly guidance of Professor Augusto Illuminati. Of the many people with whom I have had the opportunity to discuss Machiavelli and related matters in these years, I want to address a special thanks to: Alessandro Arienzo, Jérémie Barthas, Gianfranco Borrelli, Filippo Del Lucchese, Alberto Fabris, Fabio Frosini, Marco Geuna, Vittorio Morfino, Andrea Polegato, Luca Sartorello, Merio Scattola (in memoriam), and Giorgio Scichilone. More generally, my research also owes much to long discussions with Giso Amendola, Gennaro Avallone, Andrea Bardin, Luca Basso, Michele Basso, Adone Brandalise, Maurizio Merlo, Mario Piccinini, Gaetano Rametta, and Antonino Scalone. I wish to thank Anna Maria Lazzarino Del Grosso, Gennaro Maria Barbuto, Maurizio Ricciardi, Domenico Taranto, Stefano Visentin, and the anonymous readers at Oxford University Press for having the patience to read this text and for offering me such valuable advice. I would also like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to John P. McCormick for the interest he has shown in my work and, not least, for his availability and kindness. I must, of course, mention Professor Annibale Elia, director of the Department of Political, Social, and Communication Sciences of the University of Salerno, who immediately believed in and supported this translation, together with all my colleagues in the department. I also thank Matthew Armistead, whose professionalism and willingness have made the translation project pleasant and profitable, and, finally, Dominic Byatt and all his colleagues, whose patience created the conditions for the publication of this book. Last but not least, my loving thanks to Silvia for her wonderful ‘wandering causes’. Despite all the help I have received, I would like to stress that the responsibility for the end result is mine alone.

Abbreviations Machiavelli’s works AW or Art

The Art of War (Dell’arte della guerra)

CWNM

The Complete Works of Niccolò Machiavelli

D or Discourses

Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio)

DRGF or Discursus

Discourse on Remodelling the Government of Florence (Discursus florentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentii Medices)

EN

Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Machiavelli

FH or Histories

Florentine Histories (Istorie fiorentine)

L

The Letters of Machiavelli: A Selection

LCS

Legazioni. Commissarie. Scritti di governo

Let.

Lettere

M or Minuta

Minuta di provvisione per la Riforma dello Stato di Firenze

MCW

Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others

P or Prince

The Prince (De principatibus or Il principe)

S or Summary

Sommario delle cose della città di Lucca

Notes Fiorini

Notes to Machiavelli, Niccolò. Istorie fiorentine (libri I–III). V. Fiorini (ed.). Florence: Sansoni, 1962 [anastatic reprint of the first edition, 1894]

Gaeta

Notes to Let.

Inglese/D

Notes to Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. G. Inglese (ed.). Milan: Rizzoli, 2011

Inglese/P

Notes to Machiavelli, Niccolò. Il principe. G. Inglese (ed.). Turin: Einaudi, 2013

Montevecchi

Notes to Machiavelli, Niccolò. Istorie fiorentine e altre opere storiche e politiche. A. Montevecchi (ed.), in Opere. Turin: Utet, 1971, vol. II

Rinaldi

Notes to Machiavelli, Niccolò. De principatibus and Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. R. Rinaldi (ed.), in Opere. Turin: Utet, 1999, vol. I

Introduction AIMS The intention of this book is not to tackle, even if this were possible, all of the perennial problems of Machiavellian thought. More modestly, it aims to provide an initial response, in a schematic but hopefully sufficiently articulated form, to a central question that Machiavelli raised in the Discourses on Livy: ‘in what mode a free state, if there is one, can be maintained in corrupt cities; or, if there is not, in what mode to order it’.1 I provide an answer to this question by means of a selective examination of certain aspects of Machiavelli’s work rather than through an exhaustive study. My effort will, I hope, help prepare the way for deeper research in the future aimed at exposing the backbone of Machiavelli’s conceptual path. In assessing the perspectives of the Prince, the Discourses, and the Histories I will also reflect on the Discursus and the Minuta, two short writings of 1520–22 that offer valuable insights into Machiavelli’s major works. Before beginning the analysis of his texts, however, I believe it is appropriate to provide some general guidelines on my reading of Machiavelli.

A REPUBLICAN MACHIAVELLI Contrary to the assumption that Machiavelli was ‘to all intents [a] Medicean’,2 I will affirm the notion of an essentially republican Machiavelli, ‘militant’ not only ante rem perditas.3

1

D I.18, 49. See, amongst others, Bausi (2005), 179, 311; Martelli (2009), 36, 45; Butters (2010). I am citing only a few key works from the immense bibliography on Machiavelli, without pretence of completion. 3 See Guidi (2009) and (2016), in which Machiavelli’s concern with safeguarding the republican ‘constitution’ (ordinamento) of Florence, even after the return of the Medici, emerges clearly. The term ‘constitution’ is not used here in the modern sense—see McIlwain (1947)—but 2

2

Constituting Freedom

For Machiavelli the republic ‘is a specific form of regime’ that coincides with the opening of the Great Council, ‘experienced personally’ in the period in which he served as its secretary. It implies both ‘a collective order dependant on the participation of a large part of the population of a city’, that was a ‘bringer of freedom’, and ‘a business of customs’ (in a political rather than a moral sense) that called for an examination ‘of the political competence of the people, aimed at understanding if they could be considered to form a capable political subject’.4 However, it is not only this: Machiavelli had in mind a new type of republic, which did not resemble that of the frequently criticized period of 1494–1512 because it would have to have been built on an idea of a mixture of different kinds of mixed government (like that of Venice, for example). This idea will be explained in particular in Chapter 4, Sections 4.4 and 4.6. In the end, Machiavelli’s republic represents a very specific way of life, typically Florentine, that is preferable to any other, namely the ‘free and civil way of life’ (vivere libero e civile), the significance of which will be made clear in what follows (see in particular, Chapter 1, Section 1.6 and Chapter 4, Section 4.5). The theory I propose is that working for the Medici (something that Machiavelli had wanted to do from 1512 and that he eventually achieved only in 1520) did not mean having to accept their political perspective, and that Machiavelli was therefore always a republican, even in the Prince (see Chapter 1, Section 1.3). The presence of the Medici in Florence after their return in 1512 was impossible to ignore, and the question facing Machiavelli was therefore how to re-establish the city as a republic despite the fact that the power of the Medici was set against this. The fact that the Medici were both an obstacle and an opportunity is not something that Machiavelli kept hidden, and for him coming to terms with them meant convincing them that any principality would be unable to survive without transforming itself into a republic. And if the Medici represented one of the aspects of the problem that Machiavelli wished to resolve, the solution involved their overthrow, as emerges clearly in the Discursus and the Minuta (see Chapter 4, Sections 4.4–4.6). Machiavelli’s undertaking had always been to reform and regenerate Florence in a republican form after the return of the Medici. Even the scheme presented in Chapter XXVI of the Prince—that of making Italy a united political entity—which does not appear again in subsequent Machiavellian works, must be seen as an attempt to institute, preserve, and perhaps even to sharing the analogy of how medicine relates to the physical constitution as the sum of the characteristics (and their relations) that form the body: as a way of life and not in a merely legal sense. Politically, the reference is to the sum of laws and orders (ordini)—for an initial reconstruction, see Whitfield (1955)—that, in addition to customs (habits, traditions, language, religion, etc.), defines the specific way of life of a city. In this sense, ‘corruption’ acts as a complement to ‘constitution’: see Vasoli (2001), 349, n. 35. 4 Ménissier (2006), 152–8.

Introduction

3

extend to the whole peninsula the republican freedom typical of Florence.5 This freedom was no longer the Florentina libertas of the humanist civitas of the commune,6 nor the freedom to be found in the French kingdom, among the Swiss, or in certain German free cities, to say nothing of the kingdoms of Spain and England, the German Empire, and the Papal State.7

MACHIAVELLI AND P OLITICAL MODERNITY My reading distances itself from the interpretations which, from the Italian Risorgimento to Gramsci8 and beyond—one thinks, amongst others, of Althusser9—have placed Machiavelli’s ideas in both the setting of modern sovereignty and of the nation state. This formulation is still widespread today even in the most diligent historiography, and is fraught with dangerous misinterpretations.10 In fact, the concept of ‘sovereignty’ arose only in the seventeenth century, by way of the Reason of State and anti-Machiavellianism, originating from the conception of a political science based on the natural sciences and in particular on the Galilean method (as we can see in the works of Hobbes and Spinoza).11 For its part, the concept of the ‘nation state’ only emerged after the French Revolution.12 5

In contrast to Ardito, according to whom Machiavelli’s political aim is to establish a ‘territorial state’, in other words a state in the modern sense, albeit one that would make use of premodern republican institutions, in other words a state with both ‘a prince on the outside and a republic on the inside’: see Ardito (2015), 7–8. 6 See Baron (1966). 7 Here I will discuss freedom as a ‘free and civil way of life’. For an overwiew on the philosophical analysis of the concept of freedom in Machiavelli, also in relation to liberty, see Colish (1971). 8 9 See Gramsci (1991). See Althusser (1999), and Raimondi (2011). 10 See, for example, Mansfield (1983); Miglio (2011), 196–213, who interpreted Machiavelli using Hobbes’s categories. 11 A different approach, which nevertheless intends to distance itself clearly from Machiavelli, was formulated by Bodin as an attempt to keep together the rank-based structure of society and an unprecedented ‘concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign’ (Scattola, 1999, 62–3), who then made the intermediary magistrates participants of his power by investing them with an ‘imperium legitimum’ (Lazzarino Del Grosso, 2007). 12 I refer the reader to the research conducted by the Study Group on Political Concepts of the University of Padua, in particular to Duso (1987a) and (1999), from which I distance myself because I believe that political modernity cannot simply be reduced to the Hobbesian device. The Hobbesian State (in order to distinguish it from the ‘state’ that Machiavelli discusses, I will henceforth use the capital S) bases its theoretical and practical support on the ‘pact’ because through this Hobbes wants to ‘construct ex novo the political form, through the power of reason endowed with geometric clarity’. The ‘sovereignty’ derived from this is the modern form of ‘power’ that takes control of the ‘monopoly of physical force’, and ‘acts within the law and is legitimate because it is founded on the will of everyone’. This ‘irresistible’ power, the product of individuals’ renunciation of their jus in omnia (in other words, their ‘right to resistance’), thus finds itself unrestricted by the law: Duso (1987b), 7–39. If in Hobbes the pactum unionis is one

4

Constituting Freedom

I believe instead that Machiavelli should be positioned quite far from any Hobbesian state-centric perspective13 because he continued to theorize the survival of Florence as a republic,14 and the realization of this required a new political and institutional transformation: ‘a path as yet untrodden by anyone’15 that echoed the De rerum natura transcribed in his youth.16 It does not at all follow from this that Machiavelli was anti-modern or premodern, as many from Foucault17 to Esposito18 have argued. Modernity, in fact, cannot be reduced either to a device that entails a relationship between pact and sovereignty or to the nation state; modernity is not monolithic and sovereignty is not its synecdoche. Insisting that the Hobbesian device represents all of modernity is a historical fallacy because it is only one of its facets, albeit perhaps the one which has most asserted itself despite its intrinsic aporia.19 Prior to the Weberian polytheism of values, modernity—of which there is only one—was characterized by the infinity of principles. These principles, whose philosophical matrix is the atomism from which even Hobbes starts, but to neutralize it,20 enabled the construction of infinite forms of order (not only political). Such forms were sometimes incompatible with each other but, in every case, were never reducible to a single principle, even if—or perhaps because of this—the inclination towards unity was the dynamic that most defined it. The modernity of Machiavelli’s thought, thanks in part to the contribution of Lucretius’s atomism,21 lies in the assertion ‘that not all ultimate values are necessarily compatible with one another’ and that there is ‘more than one system of values, with no criterion common to the systems whereby a rational choice can be made between them’.22 This is a characteristic that drew criticism from various traditionalists such as Strauss and Arendt.23 Machiavellian thought is modern both in the political sphere and in philosophy. To make a brief early mention, one need only recall that, according to and the same as the pactum subjectionis, in Machiavelli there is an entirely different thought process at work, but not one that is necessarily anti-modern. 13 14 15 Ricciardi (1999), 37–8. Frosini (2001–2), 174. D I, preface, 5. 16 17 Lucretius, IV, 1–2, and also I, 928–9. See Foucault (2009). 18 Esposito (2012), 45–58. 19 See Raimondi (2005a). It has certainly not been overlooked that the stylization of modernity through the silhouette of the Hobbesian logical device does not only indicate a lack of understanding of the methodology of the sciences, but also feeds the suspicion of a specific political goal: that of attacking modernity in order to try to destroy it in the name of a postmodern illusion or of a nostalgia for an imaginary premodern period, which is the perspective in which a presumed naturalism in the political and social order and in its founding values is effective. 20 See Bardin (2014). 21 See most recently: Del Lucchese (2002), 50–67; Morfino (2006), 67–110; Rahe (2007); Brown (2010), 68–87 and (2015); Duvernoy (2010), 121–6; Roecklein (2012). 22 Berlin (1980), 71 and in greater depth, 69–75. 23 See Strauss (1958) and Castaldo (2008), 63–130.

Introduction

5

Machiavelli, ‘politics is not natural for man, despite being indispensable to him’.24 Moreover, his conception of freedom as effect of the constitution (ordinamento) implies that it is not ‘a natural or supernatural thing’ but rather something artificial originating only with and within the ‘city’,25 as a practice inscribed in the free and civil way of life: the constitution alone is the condition of freedom.

THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF MACHIAVELLI The Machiavellian will to re-establish Florence as a republic is part of a specific period in the history of Florence and Italy whose characteristics are worthy of special attention.26 In particular, I would like to highlight that Machiavelli’s decision to side with the ‘people’ (popolo)—in other words all those eligible for the Great Council—speaks to the struggle of the nascent bourgeoisie against the nobles and the ‘aristocrats’ (ottimati), the most important and influential citizens,27 in a context in which the people did not yet include all the inhabitants of a nation. Machiavelli was immersed in a fight historically defined by the conflicts among factions inside and outside Florence, and by its relationship with other Italian cities and the European powers of the time. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Machiavelli’s political analyses may contain insights still relevant today, provided that two pitfalls are avoided: 1) the belief that Machiavellian thought may be of use in rethinking the theory of the State, as argued by Althusser; 2) the belief that Machiavelli points to an alternative to the State, as many have imagined.28 On the contrary, Machiavelli’s proposition preceded the birth of the State and if, by chance, it seems to offer concepts within which to consider the nature of the State, one must resist the impulse to consider them suited to the task. This does not mean that Machiavelli’s ideas have been unable to reach beyond their own time, but even if they do it is not because he exerted some prophetic power. Rather his relevance endures because in his attempt to analyse a situation in its concrete historical reality in terms of politics, he provides directions, suggestions, and the means for thinking and acting politically. Machiavelli considered politics juxta propria principia without making it depend on economics, religion, ethics, or law: spheres whose existence he did not deny or avoid, but which he considered from an 24

25 26 Ion (2006), 94. Dejardin (2004), 67. See Najemy (2006). The former are defined by wealth and birth, while the latter also by their political weight in the city: the ‘government of aristocrats (ottimati)’, for example, is that of the ‘Consuls’: Mini (1593), 120–1 and then that of the ‘Senate’: Mecatti (1755), 608–9. 28 For example, Negri (1999), 37–96. 27

6

Constituting Freedom

exclusively and consistently political angle, thus transforming them. With this caveat, it is possible that Machiavelli still has something to say to all countries mired in the ford between feudalism and modernity, not by proposing new models to follow but by demonstrating a political practice, even of thought, that continues to pose questions. Today, Machiavelli’s analyses remain much as before, an indispensable reference point in thinking about politics in the present, even if, taking into account differences in historical circumstances, one should be very wary of simplistic attempts to find contemporary relevance. Machiavellian categories and ideas can be of use in analysing our present-day world because they make it possible to measure the distance that separates us from the world in which they were created. For example, he saw corruption as the inevitable disintegration of public order and the political organizations that belonged to it, explaining it as a result of the ‘matter’ of which they are comprised and of the times and the struggles that run through them and constitute them. The issue of corruption nowadays is fundamental not only for individual countries or for the European political project, but also for the entire world order established after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The corruption that principally occupied Machiavelli was Aristotle’s phthorá29 much more than dishonest and illegal behaviour, even if the link between the two phenomena should be investigated more deeply.30 The question of how to move from corruption to the re-establishment of the free and civil way of life is a constant theme during political crises, and is therefore extremely pertinent in our time. From this point of view, I believe that despite the fact that he speaks to us of a world that no longer exists, Machiavelli’s ideas are indispensable to any attempt to begin to consider the steady corruption of the world in which we currently live and to try to imagine how to revive and once more make effectual a free and civil way of life. In order for Machiavelli to be useful, however, we must first understand the concepts that he uses.

THE CONCEPTUAL S CHEME OF MACHIAVELLIAN DISCOURSE With this in mind, the present research attempts to retrace the backbone of reasoning followed by Machiavelli in order to respond to the problem of the corruption of Florence, a consistent theme in his thinking.31 29

See Aristotle (1955). For an overview of the theme, see Shumer (1979); Breschi (1988); Dejardin (2004). See among the more recent studies: Taranto (2001); Dejardin (2004); Marchand (2006); Black (2013). 30 31

Introduction

7

In order to provide the reader with a map with which to orient him or herself in the labyrinth of Machiavellian thought, I will summarize here, chapter by chapter, the analytical path that I have followed. Chapter 1 sets out the key terms and overall approach to the problem taken by Machiavelli. The cause of the corruption of a city is its inability to transform its orders. Only a republic can carry out this operation successfully because only it has as its goal the regeneration of the free and civil way of life, while the principality, even the civil principality, inevitably degenerates into tyranny. The possibility of re-establishing a free state in a corrupt city, therefore, only exists if it is not already a very corrupt city. If the city were in such a situation, the people would not be able to restore freedom since the principality leads to the emergence of the ‘kingly state’ and from thence to tyranny. Only after having brought virtue back to the city could its citizens create a well-ordered republic by equipping it with the necessary orders. The difficulty, for Machiavelli, resides in the fact that Florence, after the return of the Medici (1512), appeared to be a completely servile city and, therefore, a very corrupt city. The task is therefore to understand if there remained any virtue in Florence, and how this manifested itself. In order to tackle it, Machiavelli examined the beginning of the city, because virtue, being an expansive force set against corruption, revealed itself above all at the start. Virtue in fact ‘designate[d] the strength and vigour from which all human action arose’.32 The subject of the free or servile beginning of Florence is the focus of Chapter 2, which analyses the path taken by Machiavelli in the Discourses and the Histories. Despite historical appearances, which showed Florence to be totally servile and thus condemned to not being free, Machiavelli’s analysis demonstrates that the city was, in fact, constructed by people who were partly servile and partly free, and that its virtue expressed itself in the struggles against fortune, even if it generated political instability. The comparison between tumults, which made Rome great, and struggles, which characterized the history of Florence, was used by Machiavelli to distinguish between the different situations of the two cities and to show that Florence should not imitate the constitution of Rome but instead create its own way of exploiting the virtue generated by its own struggles. In order to grasp this, however, it is necessary to understand the political history of Florence’s institutions. This past, explored in Chapter 3 focused on the Histories, allows us to understand the concepts and proposals for the political reform of Florence that Machiavelli advanced in the Discursus and the Minuta, which were different to any previous constitution. Analysing the struggles that animated Florence from 1215 to 1512, Machiavelli revealed how the different

32

Gilbert (1984), 154–5.

8

Constituting Freedom

constitutions had emerged from these struggles, and as these constitutions initially neutralized the struggles then contributed to generating new ones. Underlining the defects of the past constitutions of the city, he set out the two main political coordinates around which he constructed his plans for the reform of Florence: the tumults and a new idea of mixture. In Chapter 4, after having briefly explored the presence of the theme of the constitution in his early political works (ante res perditas), in his correspondence, and in the Art of War (post res perditas), I examine in detail the proposals for a constitution presented in the Discursus and the Minuta. The salient aspects that emerge are: a) the strictly republican nature of Machiavelli’s political proposal; and b) the idea of a constitution based on a new way of conceiving of the mixture. Against every principality-oligarchy (such as the Medicean one) and against the (particularly Venetian) model of the mixed government, Machiavelli proposed a constitution capable of generating equality out of existing inequalities, because only through equality is it possible to establish a free and civil way of life that is then capable of regenerating itself continually through the encounter-clash of the humours.

1 Corruption and Inequality 1.1. THE P ROBLEM After having posed the question ‘in what mode a free state, if there is one, can be maintained in corrupt cities; or, if there is not, in what mode to order it’,1 Machiavelli quickly identified a difficulty that seems almost insoluble: how to maintain ‘a free state’, i.e. a free government, in a corrupt city if it exists, or to establish one if it does not. Such an endeavour is ‘very difficult [and it is] almost impossible to give a rule for it because it would be necessary to proceed according to the degrees of corruption’, to the point that ‘the difficulty, or the impossibility, of maintaining a republic in corrupt cities or of creating it anew’2 needs to be emphasized. ‘Free state’ and republican government are immediately associated and the problem therefore arises only at the collective level, since the republic as a whole is as much implicated in the process of corruption as in the daunting reorganization it calls for. The fact that the ‘state’, which Machiavelli discusses, is ‘in’ the city (which is no longer the summation of the cives, the civitas, but a more territorially extended area which also includes the surrounding countryside), makes it clear that the state and the city are not considered to be the same thing. It is precisely for this reason that freedom is dependent on their relationship. Just as ‘in Rome there was the order of the government, or truly of the state [and] the order of the state was the authority of the people, of the Senate, of the tribunes, of the consuls; the mode of soliciting and creating the magistrates; and the mode of making the laws’,3 so here the term ‘state’ is used to indicate the governmental apparatus of a city, its overall constitution, and the concrete functioning of both.4 This does not change the fact that in Machiavelli the term ‘state’ has different meanings, as has been established by the historiography,5 even if he never gets close to the Hobbesian concept of ‘sovereignty’ 1

2 3 D I.18, 49. D I.18, 49 and 51. D I.18, 49–50. See Gilbert (1984), 176–8. 5 See Hexter (1957); Chabod (1967), 591–661; De Vries (1957), 57–84; Chiappelli (1969), 32–6; Tenenti (1987), 53–97. 4

10

Constituting Freedom

whose existence requires a ‘pact’ under which the sovereign becomes absolutus, that is unbound from the laws, and citizens become subjects, and in which it makes no sense to oppose the will of the sovereign because it is identical to their own.6 For Machiavelli the state is: the government of a city; a territorially generic political organization; the exercise, on the part of one or many, of a political and military supremacy and therefore the sum of the prerogatives or interests of the governors; a stable aggregate on the territorial, institutional, or personal level (such as, for example, patrimony, duties, honours, and wealth). The term ‘free’ will be clarified later on. Now, let us briefly run over Machiavelli’s reasoning: ‘I shall presuppose’, he writes, ‘a very corrupt city, [where] neither laws nor orders can be found that are enough to check (frenare) a universal corruption’.7 In the extreme case of such a city, laws would not function properly because ‘laws have need of good customs so as to be observed’, and good customs would be absent because they ‘have need of laws to maintain themselves’.8 Laws and good customs, if taken in isolation, are incapable of checking corruption. Note the asymmetry: customs must be good for laws to be observed. Without the belief that a way of behaving is good because it engenders collective well-being, laws would not be taken seriously, and laws themselves become good only if they promote good customs. Despite this, Machiavelli was not a legalist and therefore an initial problem is that of understanding how good customs are formed, because a city without laws and thus without good customs, cannot exist since it would have no ‘form’.9 Thus however corrupt it may be the existence of a city implies the presence of a minimum of good customs that guarantees a minimal observance of the law. On the other hand: besides this, orders and laws made in a republic at its birth, when men are good, are no longer [suited] to the purpose later, when they have become wicked. If laws vary according to the accidents in a city, its orders never vary, or rarely; this makes new laws insufficient because the orders, which remain fixed, corrupt them.10

All beginnings are characterized by the goodness of the men and consequently by their orders and laws. It is important to understand that, for Machiavelli, this goodness is not a moral characteristic, i.e. one connected to the adequacy of eternal or divine values, but the force connected to the expansiveness of life that is the hallmark of virtue. Every time the vir inherent in vir-tue is weakened by the passage of time or by the inability, perhaps human inability, to reproduce it, corruption breaks out. Good and goodness are here purely political qualities, expressions of the virtue,11 ‘power of conservation and

6 9

See again Duso (1987a). 10 P VI, 23. D I.18, 49.

7

8 D I.18, 49. D I.18, 49. 11 Rinaldi, 528, n. 18.

Corruption and Inequality

11

growth’ connected to the will to ‘fight for the fatherland’,12 to die for it, to battle against fortune and struggle for the good of the republic. It is above a physical expression, which could not exist without the power of ideas or of prudence (among other things),13 but whose effect is always expansive.14 The cause of corruption is not the laws, which change according to events, but the orders, which by not changing prevent the regeneration of virtue. By not altering the orders, ‘which in corruption were no longer good, the laws that were renewed were no longer enough to keep men good; but they would indeed have helped if the orders had been changed together with the innovation in laws’.15 Corruption derives from the immutability of the city’s orders, which generates the bad customs that prevent laws from keeping men good, making change useless: ‘a republic’, in fact, ‘has need of new acts […] every day if one wishes to maintain it free’.16 Thus the primary cause of the corruption of good customs and, therefore, of good laws, is the inalterability of the orders. And since the orders are the sum of the institutions that define a city’s way of living,17 their immutability can be put down to different factors: to Christianity, to feudalism, or to money, ‘to the political irresponsibility of the people’,18 or other things. But what stops the orders from being changed? The Romans granted the consulate to whoever requested it since, at the beginnings when men were good, those who asked for it were motivated by virtue or else by a desire to do good for the collective. Rome became corrupted because the Romans, after having conquered half the world: became secure in their freedom, as it did not appear to them that they had any more enemies who ought to give them fear. This security and this weakness of their enemies made the Roman people no longer regard virtue but favour in bestowing the consulate, lifting to that rank those who knew better how to entertain men rather than those who knew better how to conquer enemies. Afterward, from those who had more favour, they descended to giving it to those who had more power; so, through the defect in such an order, the good remained altogether excluded.19

12

Rinaldi, 414, n. 12. For the importance of the argument, see Viroli (1998) and Landon (2005), despite the fact that I do not share their nationalistic approach. 13 For an overview see Garver (1987). 14 Rinaldi, 113, n. 19 and Polegato (2015), 81–147. 15 16 D I.18, 50. D III.49, 308. 17 If the laws (leggi) are rules that ‘vary according to the accidents’, the term ‘orders’ (ordini) does not evoke ‘the idea of [modern] constitution’, while De Vries believes that ‘order’ is a synonym for constitution in the modern sense: De Vries (1957), 9. Modern constitution, in fact, is unthinkable without Hobbesian sovereignty and indicates the set of permanent institutions that do not vary according to the accidents. 18 See Taranto (2003), 137; Dejardin (2004), 5–9, 14–21; Marietti (2005), 123; Del ÁguilaChaparro (2006), 226–30; Lupoli (2008), 168; Cadoni (1994), 27. 19 D I.18, 50.

12

Constituting Freedom

An overblown sense of security ultimately led the Romans to underestimate virtue, without which safety could not have been obtained, and to become depraved and corrupt by lowering themselves to assigning important positions to rhetoricians or, worse, to the powerful, who craved only to dominate. Once in the hands of the latter, it is extremely difficult for orders to be changed because doing so is not to the personal advantage of such people, and ‘the good’ people, if any still remain, are prevented from participating in public life. In fact: ‘the powerful propose laws, not for the common freedom but for their own power; and for fear of them nobody can speak against them. So the people came to be either deceived or forced to decide its own ruin.’20 Without good customs a city inevitably becomes corrupt. Such practices, in fact, last only if supported by good laws that depend on virtue, which in turn is linked to the presence of dangers against the city. As the history of Rome shows, virtue vanishes in the face of too much security. The only way to preserve virtue, which generates good customs, is to live in a position of relative but constant danger, dissatisfaction, and insecurity. Too much security begets vice. In the extreme case, this is certain: any excess of security triggers a degenerative drift and interrupts the reproduction of good customs that, since they can be the source of their own corruption, are never entirely good. If a city is destined to become corrupt, then the goodness of its origins (an extreme that is part of the presuppositions set out by Machiavelli at the beginning of this chapter) is purely mythical, invalidating the apparent moralism of Machiavelli’s reasoning. At the beginnings customs are good not because they possess some sort of purity or moral goodness, but because the beginnings provoke clashes, even violent ones,21 from which spring virtue. Thus the answer to the question with which we began, is political or at most calls for a ‘morality […] social and not individual’, irreducible to all other— not only Christian—moralities.22 And the answer requires a form of politics that seeks to survive by encouraging the development of virtue, which is generated only by accepting exposure to the danger of losing one’s life in an atomistic perspective in which ‘death is death, an event which must be considered not in relation to the other, but to itself, in its unsurpassable absoluteness’.23 Wanting a city ‘to maintain itself free in corruption’ means that ‘new laws’ are not enough because ‘new orders’ are also needed given that the political ‘form’ cannot be the same in a good ‘matter’ (which expands itself thanks to the struggles) and in a bad one (which is corrupted because of a lack of struggles). Even the political solution, however, encounters considerable difficulties. In fact, ‘these orders have to be renewed either all at a stroke, when they are discovered to be no longer good, or little by little, before they 20 23

D I.18, 50–1. Sasso (1967), 175.

21

Evrigenis (2008), 57.

22

Berlin (1980), 56 and also 58–9, 66.

Corruption and Inequality

13

are recognized by everyone’, but ‘both of these two things are almost impossible’.24 The renewal of the orders of a city is the only way to re-establish good customs, once these are corrupted. This, however, is ‘almost impossible’ and it therefore seems that there is no remedy for corruption, even if the ‘almost’ offers a glimmer of hope. Before passing judgement on the bad, let us examine the reasons for this apparent impossibility. There are two situations to consider: [1] If one wishes to renew [the orders] little by little, the cause of it must be someone prudent who sees this inconvenience from very far away and when it arises. It is a very easy thing for not one of these [men] ever to emerge in a city, and if indeed one does emerge, that he never be able to persuade anyone else of what he himself understands. For men used to living in one mode do not wish to vary it, and so much the more when they do not look the evil in its face but have to have it shown to them by conjecture. [2] As to innovating these orders at a stroke, when everyone knows that they are not good, I say that the uselessness, which is easily recognized, is difficult to correct. For to do this, it is not enough to use ordinary terms, since the ordinary modes are bad; but it is necessary to go to the extraordinary, such as violence and arms, and before everything else become prince of that city, able to dispose it in one’s own mode. Because the reordering of a city for a political way of life presupposes a good man, and becoming prince of a republic by violence presupposes a bad man, one will find that it very rarely happens that someone good wishes to become prince by bad ways, even though his end be good, and that someone wicked, having become prince, wishes to work well, and that it will ever occur to his mind to use well the authority that he has acquired badly.25

In the first case, it is not only the scarcity of a ‘prudent man’ that makes renewal almost impossible, but rather the fact that, seeing the dangers before others do, such a man must convince his fellow citizens to change the orders before they themselves appreciate the urgency. However, a man who is used to living in a certain way, and all the more so if the orders are in the hands of powerful people who use them for their own ends, is reluctant to confront (and sometimes even to acknowledge) the need for change, however gradual. The second case is no easier: change brought about ‘at a stroke’ would require a prince ready and able to use ‘extraordinary’ means, since ‘ordinary’ ones are mired in corruption. Here begin the problems of the Prince, which I will discuss in Section 1.3. Here we encounter a contradiction: if making a city return to the ‘political way of life’26 requires a ‘good man’, while becoming a prince requires a ‘bad 24

25 D I.18, 51. D I.18, 51 (the bracketed numbering is mine). ‘Political way of life’ indicates the general presence of a political organization; ‘civil way of life’ instead implies the political way of life, but demands a respect for the rules and is connected 26

14

Constituting Freedom

man’ capable of employing extraordinary methods, it appears that the situation calls for a very unusual person, one who is at once good and bad. Despite being good, he must use bad ways (extraordinary methods) to become a prince and, once having become such (that is, bad) he must behave like a good man, renouncing extraordinary methods and making use of ordinary ones to govern by means of new orders established by violence and arms. This paradox is followed by another contradiction, because: if indeed one had to create or maintain one [republic] there, it would be necessary to turn it more toward a kingly state (stato regio) than toward a popular state, so that the men who cannot be corrected by the laws because of their insolence should be checked in some mode by an almost kingly power (potestà quasi regia). To wish to make them become good by other ways would be either a very cruel enterprise or altogether impossible.27

To put a republic in order again it is necessary to turn it into a principality and then, after the prince has at least checked the insolents, turn it back into a republic. Machiavelli continued to explore this problem, in the form of its double contradiction, for all his life. At this point Machiavelli foresees only two possible options. The first is that of a republic, through which the regeneration of the city is possible starting with its sanior pars, however small: an approach which assumes that not all the matter of the city is corrupt. The alternative presupposes that the corruption is universal and that only a prince, who tends towards a ‘kingly state’, can try to reform the city. But this way is complicated by the fact that the eventual result would be a principality rather than a republic and that it would therefore become necessary to understand if and how a principality can turn itself into a republic.

1. 2 . TWO WAYS The Prince and the Discourses are parallel routes, which Machiavelli explores at the same time. To understand these different perspectives, it is useful to analyse Discourses I.16–17, in which two eventualities are indicated: 1) that with expansion (ampliare) (D II.2, 129), while the former is not (D I.6, 23). This makes the ‘civil way of life’ closer to the ‘free way of life’, which not only implies self-governance, selfdetermination, self-sufficiency, and autonomy, but also laws not established to suit the ambitions of an individual (FH III.5, 110). The ‘civil and free way of life’ is thus opposed to the ‘absolute and tyrannical’ way of life (D I.9, 30) because, being connected to the ‘common utility’ (D I.16, 45), it is the enemy of corruption. Tyranny, in fact, makes it impossible for one ‘to grow more in power (potenza) or riches’, and thus leads to the ‘servile way of life’ (D II.2, 130 and 132). 27 D I.18, 51.

Corruption and Inequality

15

‘a people used to living under a prince maintains its freedom with difficulty, if by some accident it becomes free’; 2) that ‘having come to freedom, a corrupt people can with the greatest difficulty maintain itself free’.28 Chapter XVI of Discourses appears to provide a first and partial response to the option of a principality. For as long as ‘a people’ is commanded by a prince, it is ‘a brute animal that […] has always been nourished in prison and in servitude’ and even if then ‘it is left free in a field to its fate, it becomes the prey of the first one who seeks to re-chain it, not being used to feed itself and not knowing places where it may have to take refuge’.29 Not being used to governing itself, ‘not knowing how to reason about either public defence or public offense […] it quickly returns beneath a yoke […], whenever the matter is corrupt’. Even where ‘there is more of the good than of the spoiled’, therefore, if the habit of self-governance and the knowledge this requires are missing it is difficult to live freely, while it is quite impossible ‘for a people into which corruption has entered in everything’.30 The solution of a principality and the kingly state, therefore, faces ‘another difficulty […], which is that the state that becomes free makes partisan [i.e. tenacious, obstinate] enemies and not partisan friends’. When a regime changes, for example from a principality to a republic, enemies are made of those ‘who were prevailing under the tyrannical state, feeding off the riches of the prince; and when the ability to prevail is taken away from them, they cannot live content and are forced, each one, to attempt to take up the tyranny again so as to return to their autonomy’. At the same time the republic: does not acquire partisan friends […], because a free way of life proffers honours and rewards through certain honest and determinate causes, and outside these it neither rewards nor honours anyone; and when one has those honours and those useful things that it appears to him he merits, he does not confess that he has an obligation to those who rewarded him. Besides this, the common utility that is drawn from a free way of life is not recognized by anyone while it is possessed: this is being able to enjoy one’s things freely, without any suspicion, not fearing for the honour of wives (donne) and that of children, not to be afraid for oneself. For no one ever confesses that he has an obligation to one who does not offend him.31

Passing from a principality to a republic means risking, on the one hand, returning to a ‘tyrannical state’32 and, on the other, incurring ‘ingratitude’.33 There are two ways of obviating such difficulties, namely ‘to kill the sons of Brutus’, in other words slay all the heirs of those who enjoyed privileged positions under the previous regime, or else to make friends of one’s enemies.34 Machiavelli believes:

28 31 34

29 D I.18, 44 and 47. D I.16, 44 and also P V, 21. 32 D I.16, 45 and also P III, 8 and VI, 23–4. D I.16, 45. D I.16, 45 and III.3–4.

30

D I.16, 44. 33 D I.29.

16

Constituting Freedom

unhappy [are] those princes who have to hold to extraordinary ways to secure their state, since they have the multitude as enemies. For the one who has the few as enemies secures himself easily and without many scandals,35 but he who has the collectivity (l’universale) as enemy never secures himself.36

The only ‘remedy’, therefore, ‘is to seek to make the people friendly to himself ’,37 since this is the only way that the prince can consolidate his ‘state’. In order to achieve this the prince ‘should examine first what the people desires; and he will always find that it desires two things: one, to be avenged against those who are the cause that it is servile; the other, to recover its freedom. The first desire the prince can satisfy entirely, the second in part’. For example, Clearchus, tyrant of Heraclea, ‘cut to pieces all the aristocrats (ottimati), to the extreme satisfaction of the people (dei popolari)’. The second aspect is more complicated: ‘since the prince cannot satisfy it, he should examine what causes are those that make [peoples] desire to be free’, and ‘he will find that a small part of them desires to be free so as to command, but all the others, who are infinite, desire freedom so as to live secure’. Both these parts, however, can be satisfied: the few can be handled ‘either by getting rid of them or by having them share in so many honours’, while the many can be appeased ‘by making orders and laws in which universal security is included, together with one’s own [princely] power (potenza)’.38 The so-called ‘civil principality’39 thus seems to be the solution to the problem of a city that is not entirely corrupt, because the prince uses violence against ‘the great’ (i grandi) to allow the people ‘to live secure and content’.40 We will see later on that even this solution presents certain problems that make it less dependable than it seems. Chapter XVII of Discourses instead examines the possibility ‘that a corrupt city that lives under a prince can never be turned into a free one, even if that prince is eliminated along with all his line’. Whether corruption begins from the ‘head’ or ‘the head’ is lost ‘when the trunk [is] sound (intero)’, or if, on the other hand, corruption spreads ‘through the members (membra)’, winning back freedom is not sufficient, because there would be no way of preventing it returning to its former debased condition. But even if the ‘head’ and his descendants were virtuous, after their death the city would revert ‘to its former tyranny’. The good fortune of Rome was that its ‘kings became corrupt quickly, so that they were driven out before their corruption passed into the bowels of that city. This lack of corruption—men having a good end—was the cause that the infinite tumults in Rome did not hurt and indeed helped the republic’. In conclusion:

The term indicates ‘a widespread political-social agitation which precedes true armed conflicts’ and ‘is a synonym of tumult’, even if the former is often attributed to the ‘private sphere’ or ‘private interests’ (Rinaldi, 444, n. 40 and 235, n. 110). 36 37 38 D I.16, 45. D I.16, 45. D I.16, 46. 39 40 P IX and the following Section 1.3 in this chapter. D I.16, 46. 35

Corruption and Inequality

17

where the matter is not corrupt, tumults and other scandals do not hurt; where it is corrupt, well-ordered laws do not help unless indeed they have been put in motion by one individual who with an extreme force ensures their observance so that the matter becomes good. I do not know whether this has ever occurred or whether it is possible; for it is seen […] that if a city that has fallen into decline through corruption of matter ever happens to rise, it happens through the virtue of one man who is alive then, not through the virtue of the collectivity (universale) that sustains good orders. As soon as such a one is dead, it returns to its early habit.41

A prince can also be both bad and good, like Epaminondas, and remain so for all his life without becoming corrupt, but when he dies his virtue will not be handed down, because personal virtue cannot be inherited. Chapters XVI and XVII of Book I of the Discourses thus appear to say that for a people to live freely it has to be accustomed to freedom and not be entirely corrupt. Yet it also appears to say that the figure of the prince has no influence over this process, because if he is a quasi-tyrant (Chapter XVI) he leaves his people (even if they are not corrupt) incapable of being free, while if he is virtuous but the people are corrupt (Chapter XVII), he cannot transmit to them his virtue and thus leaves them equally incapable of being free. Given that even the so-called ‘civil principality’ is not a solution since it cannot guarantee long-term stability, it should nonetheless be noted that the principality endows it with a capability that is indispensable even to a republic, remaining with it not if it frees itself from the principality, but only if it is applied by giving form—by force if need be—to the matter. Only if this form is good can the city resist corruption for a certain time, so that in a city not completely corrupt the one possible road towards the reorganization of freedom is constructed by combining at least two dynamics: tumults42 and equality, because the ‘corruption and slight aptitude for free life that arise from inequality that is in that city’43 is caused by the presence of ‘gentlemen (gentiluomini)’.44

1 . 3. T H E APORIA O F T H E P R I N C I P A L I T Y Before examining the republican approach indicated by Machiavelli, however, we must acknowledge the limits of the principality solution, since ‘new 41

D I.17, 47–8. A tumult is a collective encounter or clash, a coming together of forces that marks the beginning of every form of life. It is in itself good, in the non-moral sense, because it expands life beyond itself, even through destruction: it is the ‘ceaseless combat (aeterno certamine)’ (Lucretius, II, 119–20), the space in which the virtue of men manifests itself, and where they put their lives at risk for it. It should also be kept in mind that in the Discourses tumults belong to the people and not to ‘the great’, because only the former are moved by the salutary humour not to be dominated. 43 44 D I.17, 48–9. D I.55, 111–12. 42

18

Constituting Freedom

principalities that are acquired by others’ arms and fortune’45 as well as those obtained ‘through crimes’46 are both incapable of resolving the problem formulated in Discourses I.18 due to their instability and unreliability. But why are the ‘altogether new’ principalities that ‘are acquired through one’s own arms and virtue’47 also unfit for the purpose? The main difficulty is the fact that the latter are difficult to acquire because of the ‘new orders and modes that they [the princes] are forced to introduce so as to found their state and their security’. Even if a prince can introduce to the republic, ‘either all at stroke […] or little by little’, new orders that will guarantee its freedom, he must be aware that ‘nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage’.48 The reason, as also shown in Discourses I.18, is that: the introducer has all those who benefit from the old orders as enemies, and he has lukewarm defenders in all those who might benefit from the new orders. This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of adversaries who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they come to have a firm experience of them. Consequently, whenever those who are enemies have opportunity to attack, they do so with partisan zeal, and the others defend lukewarmly so that one is in peril (si periclita)49 along with them.50

The solution to this weakness can be derived only from the fact that ‘these innovators stand by themselves [and do not] depend on others’ or rather on the arms of others, since they can use their own arms ‘to use force’ or rather to introduce new orders by force of arms. But they will remain ‘powerful, secure, honoured, and happy’ only if they use ‘virtue’ to overcome the difficulties and dangers that they will encounter ‘along the path’.51 These princes, referred to as ‘armed prophets’,52 do not completely meet Machiavelli’s requisites, for two reasons. Firstly, anyone who becomes the prince after having introduced new orders remains in the principality form and does not complete the shift to the republic form. Secondly, such a prince governs by force and personal virtue and not with laws: his state is founded on personal qualities that will die with him, since they cannot be handed down to the next generation. This fact explains the inadequacy of new orders imposed by violence alone, as the examples of Agathocles and Liverotto da Fermo show.53 Thus, while the type of prince described in Chapter VI of the Prince has some interesting attributes, his profile is insufficient to solve the problem set out in Discourses I.18.

45

46 47 48 P VII. P VIII. P VI, 21. P VI, 23. ‘Periclitare’ means being in danger, but here, like in other parts of Machiavelli, it means ‘to be ruined’. 50 51 52 53 P VI, 23–4. P VI, 24–5. P VI, 24. P VIII. 49

Corruption and Inequality

19

Chapter IX of the Prince takes a step forward because it discusses an ‘altogether new’ principality that is obtained by ‘a private citizen […] not through crime or other intolerable violence but with the support of his fellow citizens’. In fact, to obtain such a principality ‘neither all virtue nor all fortune’ (the classification of P I, 3–4 is called into question) are required, ‘but rather a fortunate astuteness’54 is needed, a successful combination and mixture of virtue and fortune. The interest in this political form is attributable to the word ‘civil’ which refers to the ‘respect for the fundamental norms that protect the associated life and common good […], and thus is applicable without discrimination to republican or noble regimes’55 and also to the fact that ‘one ascends to this principality either with the support of the people or with the support of the great’.56 Leaving aside for the moment the question of the humours, of which I will speak further on, at this point it is appropriate to pause to consider the relationship with the people, since Machiavelli states that: 1) ‘he who comes to the principality with the aid of the great maintains himself with more difficulty than one who becomes prince with the aid of the people’; 2) ‘one who becomes prince through the support of the people should keep them […] to him (deve […] mantenerselo)’; 3) ‘one who becomes prince against the people with the support of the great must before everything else seek to gain the people to himself [because] for a prince it is necessary to have the people friendly; otherwise he has no remedy in adversity’.57 As he had stated in the Discourses, the important thing for any prince wishing to create a stable state is to ‘make the people friendly to himself ’.58 The civil principality would thus appear to correspond, at least in this regard, and in contrast to other principalities, to the demands set out in Chapters XVI–XVIII of the Discourses. And yet this is not so for at least three reasons. Firstly, the support of the people and of the great does not necessarily imply their virtue, a word that appears only once in Chapter IX of the Prince, albeit with reference to the prince and not to the ‘matter’, and is entirely absent from Chapter X, which is a kind of appendix to Chapter IX. We do not know if a civil principality can also exist in a fully or partly corrupt matter, but we

54

55 P IX, 38–9. Rinaldi, 206, n. 1. P IX, 39. The principality, therefore, is civil owing to the ‘way’ in which it is obtained and not because of its political ‘substance’: see Frosini (2005). Nevertheless, it remains true that the ‘civil principality’, taken as a whole, is ‘a paradoxical, not to say contradictory association of a de facto personal power and of civil institutions, in theory the only ones licensed to govern the city’, which renders it highly unstable: Larivaille (1996), 103. 57 58 P IX, 39–41. D I.16, 45. 56

20

Constituting Freedom

suppose that it can because the prince must be at least a little virtuous if he wants to achieve a ‘fortunate astuteness’, and, therefore, is presumably able to instil that quality in the ‘matter’. Secondly, the recourse to violence appears to be limited to the ‘protection […] in many modes’ of the people from the threat of the great59 by a prince who knows how to be bad and good according to eventualities and requirements.60 This appears to be confirmed in the statement that a prince ‘needs to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of fortune and variations of things command him, and […] not depart from good, when possible, but know how to enter into evil, when forced by necessity’.61 This virtuous behaviour depends on the ability of the prince to do the right thing at the right time, to seize the kairos. This is a desirable endowment but certainly not guaranteed. And yet the real problem of these ‘wise’ princes is another problem.62 Thirdly, these principalities in reality ‘customarily run into peril (periclitare) when they are about to ascend from a civil order to an absolute one’,63 in other words when they must move: from the civil regime, based on the favour of the citizens and more specifically for the people […] to the absolute regime, in which the power of the prince is not limited and at the same time supported by a precise social force, but finds in itself its own legitimacy (in this sense all the hereditary principalities discussed in Chapter II [of the Prince] are absolutist from their very foundation).64

The point, therefore, is the duration, which is to say the possibility of handing down hereditarily the new orders and good customs that such a prince, ‘a man full of heart’ who does not ‘get frightened in adversity’, has founded.65 The danger lies in the fact that ‘these princes either command by themselves or by means of magistrates. In the latter case their position is weaker and more dangerous’, because they depend completely on the whim of the magistrate, ‘who, especially in adverse times, can take away his state with great ease’ or can abandon or refuse to obey them. The prince of a civil principality, therefore, in 59

60 P IX, 40. D I.18, 51. P XVIII, 70, which refers back to XV, 61 and also to D I.26, 62. 62 63 P IX, 42. P IX, 41–2. 64 Rinaldi, 217–18, n. 126. The people, as we shall see, are not homogenous in Machiavelli— see Inglese (2006), 90 and Visentin (2013) and (2015)—nor does there ‘exist a sole people in the abstract’: Pedullà (2011), 339. After 1494, for example, it coincides with the sum of the ‘citizens’, those who, in Florence, could take public duties if they paid their taxes or if ‘beneficiati’: ‘all those whose names, or whose father’s or grandfather’s names, drawn for the three most prestigious executive boards (the Signoria, the Twelve Good Men, and the Sixteen Gonfalonieri) whether they had received the office or not’: Gilbert (1984), 17 and n. 14; Albertini (1970), 9; Varotti (1998), 48–9 and n. 54, 350, n. 43. It should nevertheless be kept in mind that, at times, ‘the people’ does not necessarily refer to a historical situation, because it is composed, for example, ‘of the virtuous citizen of a free republic’: Del Águila-Chaparro (2006), 221. 65 P IX, 41. 61

Corruption and Inequality

21

order to be certain that he has control of the state, has ‘to seize absolute authority’ and rely neither on any magistracy66 nor on ‘the popular humour’.67 In addition to the problem of heritability there is the issue of the necessary evolution towards the ‘absolute authority’ that a civil principality must achieve if it wishes to remain stable and secure: the need ‘to ascend’68 clashes with the initial support of the people and with the possibility that such a principality can be turned into a republic. Indeed, ‘an absolute authority corrupts the matter in a very short time and makes friends and partisans for itself ’.69 The civil principality, therefore, is not the solution to the problem of freedom in corrupt republics,70 because in a republic an ‘absolute authority’ is harmful, as the example of the Decemvirate shows.71 From the point of view of the Discourses, the Prince seems to be proof of the inability of any form of principality to resolve the problem of Florence (and perhaps of Italy) through the institution of a republic. However, when removed from this context and treated as a stand-alone work, it can also be seen as a means of requesting a post from the Medici,72 used to brand Machiavelli as a master of tyrants and totalitarianisms, or other such nonsense.73 For all that, the Prince is a key text for any understanding of modern but not Statecentric politics and can perhaps even be rehabilitated from a collective viewpoint,74 as an instrument with which to make a response to the question with which we began. But to understand if and how this might be practicable we must first reach the end of a long path that I will try to outline in the course of the following discussion.

1 . 4. A ‘W E L L -O R D E R E D RE P UB LI C’ AND THE TRANSMISSION OF VIRTUE Not by chance, the problem of heritability is addressed in Chapters XIX and XX in Book I of the Discourses, once it is established that the road 66

67 68 P IX, 42. Rinaldi, 219–20, n. 136. P IX, 42. 70 D I.35, 77. Baron (1961); Marietti (2005), 76–85. 71 72 D I.40, 86. L 142–4 to Francesco Vettori, 10 December 1513. 73 The Prince, in fact, can be read from a republican perspective, albeit without stretching towards the hypothesis that it was written as a trap designed to lead the Medici towards disaster by flattering them—see Dietz (1986) and Langton-Dietz (1987)—or believing that it was only a way to reveal the tricks of the prince to the people: see Baron (1961). While Machiavelli’s philosophy does contain a certain level of deceit (even in the Discursus, for example, adulation plays an important role), I do not believe that the issue is to understand whether he was a supporter of the Medici or if one needs to recognize the Secretary’s intention to manipulate them. Perhaps, as an alternative, one could theorize that the Prince was the way in which Machiavelli attempted to probe the possibility of turning Florence (and perhaps all of Italy) back into a republic by attempting to persuade the Medici, but that it met with a negative response. 74 Visentin (2013), 288–92. 69

22

Constituting Freedom

which leads from the civil principality to the absolute principality rather than the republic was not barred. How, then, can virtue be transmitted, if indeed this is at all possible? Rome, in its monarchical period, ‘chanced upon very great fortune’ because Romulus was ‘fierce and bellicose’, Numa Pompilius ‘quiet and religious’, and Tullus Hostilius ‘more a lover of war than of peace’. The virtue of a great prince can be enough to support a ‘weak prince’ who succeeds him, but since the expansiveness of his virtue does not last indefinitely, there is a need to turn, as in the ‘kingdom […] of France’, to ‘orders’ that preserve it.75 Here there is a first important shift: from the virtue of individuals to orders, even if France nevertheless remains a kingdom. What Machiavelli wants to point out, however, is that Rome, like the monarchy of Israel or of Turkey (coincidentally the monarchies of the other two monotheisms), was lucky and this was the sole reason why virtue was able to establish itself through a line of kings. No doctrine of the divine right of kings or of hereditary blood lines, but fortune alone blessed this realm for a certain period. Monarchical Rome, like the later imperial Rome, could therefore not serve as a model for Florence. But it was a different matter for republican Rome since ‘the highest command (imperio) was brought to the consuls, who came to that command not by inheritance or by deception or by violent ambition but by free votes, and were always most excellent men’, for which reason Romans enjoyed ‘their virtue and their fortune’ and the city was able to reach ‘its ultimate greatness’.76 The most important point of this short chapter,77 however, is that if ‘two virtuous princes in succession are sufficient to acquire the world’, as Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great demonstrated, ‘a republic [has to] do so much more, as through the mode of electing it has not only two in succession but infinite most virtuous princes who are successors to one another’.78 Thus free votes provide the means to transmit virtue: not by way of blood or law (the immortal body of the king), but by a combination of chance and choice. And seeing that a republic has many citizens and can choose from a large number of them, its likelihood of having a virtuous state is greater than those of a monarchy, kingdom, or principality, however civil. The passage seems to have been influenced by the naivety manifested in the mythologizing of the consuls. This, however, is not the end of Machiavelli’s reasoning, since he immediately clarifies: ‘this virtuous succession will always

75

D I.19, 52–3. D I.20, 54. Machiavelli rejects the doctrine of the ‘king’s two bodies’: see Kantorowicz (1997). Chance and the elections transmit virtue, because they make it possible to capture its birth. There is no legal or religious form that can guarantee the heredity of virtue. Only political action through specific orders is capable of doing so. 77 78 D I.20. D I.20, 54. 76

Corruption and Inequality

23

exist in every well-ordered republic.’79 Once again the decisive factor is not delegated to the individual, but to the constitution and its operation. Machiavelli had in point of fact already explained how in Rome even the consular institute had been corrupted on account of the inordinate security won by the Romans through the subjugation of Africa, Asia, and Greece.80 In conclusion, virtue is transmitted only in an apparently contradictory way: through free votes and a proper functioning of the constitution, the former not being enough.81 Accordingly, it is necessary to understand what the phrase ‘well-ordered republic’ actually means and what relationship it has, if any, with solving the problem of the ‘free state’ in a corrupt city. The compound ‘well-ordered’ appears several times in the way that concerns us in the Discourses, whereas in the Prince Machiavelli limits himself to affirming that the ‘well-ordered states and wise princes have thought out with all diligence how not to make the great desperate and how to satisfy the people and keep them content’.82 The most notable feature of a ‘well-ordered city’ is that in it ‘faults are never paid for with merits’83 and that in fact the ‘well-ordered republics institute rewards and punishments for their citizens and never counterbalance one with the other’. This means: that no well-ordered republic ever cancels the demerits with the merits of its citizens; but, having ordered rewards for a good work and punishments for a bad one, and having rewarded one for having worked well, if that same one later works badly, it punishes him without any regard for his good works. When these orders are well observed, a city lives free for a long time; otherwise it will always come to ruin soon. For if a citizen has done some outstanding work for the city, and on top of the reputation that this thing brings him, he has an audacity and confidence that he can do some work that is not good without fearing punishment, in a short time he will become so insolent that any civility (civilità) will be dissolved. If one wishes the punishment for malevolent works to be kept up, it is indeed necessary to observe the giving of rewards for good ones […]. Although a republic may be poor and able to give little, it should not abstain from that little; for every small gift given to anyone, in recompense for a good however great, will always be esteemed by him who receives it as honourable and very great.84

The constitution of a republic depends on the effectiveness of its orders, among which, apart from those of tumults and equality, there is also justice, which implies the existence of magistrates. This existence is incompatible with a principality because ‘when the people order magistrates, it should make them so that they have to have some hesitation about becoming criminals’.85

79 83 85

80 81 82 D I.20, 54. D I.18, 50–1. D I.35. P XIX, 74. 84 D I.22, 56. D I.24, 59 and also I.29–32, and III.28. D I.40, 89 (translation modified; hereafter t.m.).

24

Constituting Freedom

If a republic errs in the administering of prizes and punishments, it falls into tyranny86 or corruption.87 Before going on to examine the functioning of these orders and their relationships (see Chapters 2 and 3), it should be pointed out that ‘wellordered’ is a compound that also appears in the Discourses, where Machiavelli argues that the ‘well-ordered republics have to keep the public rich and their citizens poor’.88 It is an important theme because: enriching the treasury at the expense of private individuals means not distributing to the richest citizens the fruits of conquest and in fact taking away the wealth already concentrated in the hands of those who had accumulated it: a problem that is much more delicate because the owners of riches (patricians or great men) play a role […] in the political dialectic […]. Thus gaining a form of [equality] by distributing the fruits of conquest in the most just way […] was only possible, as Machiavelli had already written in [Discourses] I.17, by using the greatest extraordinary means, with the risk of shifting the republican constitution towards an authoritarian and tyrannical system.89

This was not the reason why Machiavelli ceased to look for a way to distribute wealth in the most just way. Equity, as opposed to abstract equality, is essential for the existence of a republic, but he wanted to find a way that would not lead to tyranny, as had often happened in the history of Florence (see Chapter 3).

1.5. THE DICTATORSHIP: THE ‘ KINGLY HAND’ OF THE REPUBLIC The Discourses confirms the answer given in the Prince to the opening question. Anyone who wants ‘to reform a state in a city’90 in such a way as to make it acceptable to those who live in it ‘is under the necessity of retaining at least the shadow of its ancient modes’, and this is also relevant to whoever wishes ‘to order a political way of life by the way either of republic or of kingdom’. The rule, however, applies only to a city that is not completely corrupt and certainly not to one that is very corrupt, where a new prince, having to ‘make everything new’, inevitably proceeds towards ‘an absolute power (potestà), which is called tyranny’,91 because he is required:

86

87 D I.29, 66. D III.1, 210–11. D I.37, 79. Interesting observations on this theme can be found in McCormick (2013). 89 Rinaldi, 609, n. 31. 90 Here it is clear that, if there is a state within the city, the term ‘state’ does not refer to the Hobbesian State that we have in mind when using the word. 91 D I.25, 60–1. 88

Corruption and Inequality

25

not to leave anything untouched in that province, so that there is no rank, no order, no state,92 no wealth there that he who holds it does not know it as from you […]. These modes are very cruel, and enemies to every way of life, not only Christian but human; and any man whatever should flee them and wish to live in private rather than as king with so much ruin to men.93

A totally corrupt city cannot go back to being free with a prince, not even an altogether new one, because the type of politics that a civil principality leads it towards will of necessity be tyranny. In this way, Machiavelli restates the aporia in which he is moving: on the one hand, returning a partially or totally corrupt republic to freedom requires a ‘kingly hand’,94 which, however, degenerates into tyranny. On the other, when faced with ‘a wicked prince’ there is no ‘remedy other than steel’.95 The undertaking, therefore, is either impossible or one must find a way to make the ‘kingly state’ compatible with the republican constitution. Romans and Venetians ‘turned to creating the dictator—that is, to giving power (potestà) to one man who could decide without any consultation and execute his decisions without any appeal’.96 In response to those who objected that the dictatorship was the reason for Rome’s degeneration into tyranny, citing the case of Julius Caesar (towards whom the Secretary’s judgement was scathing),97 Machiavelli made three observations: 1) dictatorship was a magistracy provided for by the Roman constitution, granted ‘according to public orders, and not by his own authority’ (in complete contrast, then, to the current meaning of the term), because ‘magistrates that are made and authorities that are given through extraordinary ways, not those that come through ordinary ways, hurt republics’;98 2) ‘the dictator was appointed for a time, and not perpetually’, for the sole purpose of solving a problem and ‘he could not do anything that might diminish the state’; 3) during the exercise of his duties, the dictator remained, in relation to anything that did not concern the reason for his appointment, under the control of the public authorities.99 Dictatorship was the republican constitution’s institutionalized equivalent of the kingly state and existed because the republic, having ‘a slow motion’, was 92 Here in the sense of political ‘status’ and, therefore, one might even say ‘authority’ (Rinaldi, 566, n. 12). 93 94 95 D I.26, 61–2. D I.55, 112. D I.58, 119. 96 D I.33, 71 and I.34. On the relevance of this magistracy, see Geuna (2017). 97 98 See D I.10, 31–3 and I.37, 80. D I.34, 74 and also I.40, 89. 99 D I.34, 74 and I.35.

26

Constituting Freedom

not always timely in confronting dangers.100 In this sense, the dictatorship may be called a ‘republican principality’.101 In any event, dictatorship should absolutely not be confused with tyranny, which is not a magistracy. In consequence, another order was seen to be necessary for the restoration of freedom to a corrupt republic: dictatorship, which alongside tumults, equality, justice, free votes, and the good organization and functioning of orders—up to this point the form taken by the constitution of freedom— made up the fundamental combination of the apparatus required for the government of a republic.102 The Decemvirate, for example, despite being freely elected, gave rise to disaster.103 Thus, just as important as free votes, were ‘the modes of giving authority and the time for which it is given’. This was because ‘if a free authority is given for a long time—calling a long time one year or more—it will always be dangerous and will have either good or bad effects according as those to whom it is given are bad or good’.104 For Machiavelli, it is not only the virtue of individuals that generates a ‘well-ordered republic’: there is also a constant need for a well-ordered impersonal political apparatus—the constitution105—geared towards establishing the orders that it must then always reproduce because ‘a republic will never be perfect unless it has provided for everything with its laws and has established a remedy for every accident and given the mode to govern it’.106 Dictatorship led to better outcomes than the Decemvirate because in the case of the former ‘guards were posted who made them [the dictators] unable to use their authority badly’, while in the latter ‘it happened all the contrary’. Ergo authority must be granted by the people ‘in the proper circumstances and for the proper times’.107 Machiavelli’s realism, which is the counterpart of his imagination, in no way idealizes the people108 or the nobles, the princes or the kings. Indeed, it spells out that a ‘perfect republic’ is very hard to bring about.109 If, in fact, one set out to re-establish the ‘civil and free life’ in a city corrupt in part or completely by turning to dictatorship, one would run into an obvious difficulty given that dictatorship is a republican magistracy and therefore requires that the city in question must already be a republic. For without a ‘guard’110 the dictator could easily be seduced by ‘absolute power’, unless of course he was a saint, a rare phenomenon among human beings. It is clear, on the other hand, that the dictator has functions other than this. Would a partly or entirely corrupt city in the end still have the ability to perceive the danger and turn to such a magistracy to avoid or correct it?

100 103 106 109

101 102 D I.34, 74–5. Barbuto (2007), 104. D I.34, 75. 104 105 D I.35, 76 and I.40. D I.35, 76. DRGF 114–15 and Lefort (2012), 236. 107 108 D I.34, 75. D I.35, 76–7. D I.37 and I.53. 110 D I.2, 14 and I.49, 234. D I.35, 77 and I.40, 89.

Corruption and Inequality

27

In the case of an entirely corrupt city, there would be no possible transition from a principality to a republic and it would be necessary instead to reconstitute the republic having abolished the principality. But since it is important that the ‘kingly state’ also exists in a republic, in the form of a dictatorship, this magistracy must already be one of the orders in place when the republic is created in order to be used whenever necessary. If the city is not totally corrupt, as in the case of Rome, then—following Livy—Machiavelli notes that it was ‘the Roman people [who recovered] its freedom’111 after the Decemvirate had established a tyranny. Livy’s account was more complex112 because it was the plebians, armed and on the streets (tumult), who imposed the restoration of its tribunes, ‘munimentum libertati’,113 the guard of freedom. This was an event that, one presumes, could occur only in a republic that was corrupt only to a certain extent and consequently still retained some desire for freedom. A prince could, at most, establish a civil principality, the degeneration of which has already been described.

1.6. FREE AN D S ERV ILE BEGINNINGS At this point, the problem that emerges in Machiavelli’s reasoning is that of the origin of a city, since ‘if those cities that have had a free beginning, such as Rome, have difficulty in finding laws that will maintain them, those that have had one immediately servile have almost an impossibility’.114 How, then, can we resolve the problem of Florence, whose beginning was not free from the outset?115 The ‘almost’, which disappears a few lines further on, leaves open a space for political intervention, albeit a complicated one, and allows Machiavelli to show that in its early days Florence was not completely enslaved (see Chapters 2 and 3), bearing in mind the uncertainty symbolized by the ‘almost’ and the fact that Florence changed thanks to an ‘opportunity (occasione)’, without, ever becoming a true republic.116 Only a republic that is born free can face up to the question posed in Discourses I.18 with any hope of success. What is, then, so important about birth, origin, or beginning that it becomes decisive? The issue is twofold: on the one hand, one must take in the significance and importance of free beginning (see Chapter 2) while on the other, since ‘new necessities in managing [a]city were always discovered’, compelling one ‘to create new orders’,117 we must understand that if it is impossible to foresee everything right from the beginning, it is at the same time often necessary to go back to the beginning to create new orders. 111 114

D I.46, 95. D I.49, 100.

112 115

See Livy (1939), III.50–5. Inglese/D, 269, n. 1.

113

116

Livy (1939), III.37, 122–3. 117 D I.49, 100. D I.49, 100.

28

Constituting Freedom

A good beginning is such because it enables one to prepare for whatever may come, providing the right tools to deal with every eventuality that may arise in the course of time. Moreover, a good beginning is dynamic rather than static: it continues into the long term, overcoming the obstacles presented by fortune.118 In Rome, for example, ‘that what an orderer (ordinatore) had not done, chance did’119 and this, albeit in different ways, also happened in Venice120 and Sparta.121 Chance, therefore, is an essential component of a good beginning and reveals that every beginning is itself plural, composed of various forces. The successful construction of a ‘well-ordered republic’ is a fruit of virtue, which manifests itself in knowing how to see, confront, and make use for the benefit of the ‘common good (bene comune)’, of which I will speak later, the opportunities offered by fortune. The capacity of foresight is ascribable to the fact that: in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same humours, and there always have been. So it is an easy thing for whoever examines past things diligently to foresee future things in every republic and to take the remedies for them that were used by the ancients, or, if they do not find any that were used, to think up new ones through the similarity of accidents.122

It is therefore a matter of being ready to recognize new circumstances, which cannot be traced back to examples from the ancient world and, together, to devise appropriate solutions. One might say that it is a matter of predicting everything, even the possibility of not predicting everything, which is really the one possible prediction, seeing that predicting the unpredictable is obviously a nonsense. A beginning is good, in other words, if by it the republic is set up in such a way that it can use its orders to confront even those things that could not be foreseen, because, by starting from and respecting its beginnings, it can update its orders in response to the ‘accidents’ that can occur.123 In Rome, which was ‘ordered by itself and by so many prudent men, [and] every day new causes emerged for which it had to make new orders in favour of a free way of life’, orders were issued that were capable of reordering the city, something that did not and does not occur in ‘other cities that have a more disordered beginning’.124 In Rome, therefore, it was not a single legislator, but most legislators who reordered the city, and chance also made an invaluable contribution. The fact that the renewal of a republic or a ‘sect’ may coincide with a return to ‘their beginnings (princìpi)’,125 is justified by the idea that goodness, as mentioned earlier, is not a moral quality, but instead is the expansive force

118 122

D III.1, 209. D I.39, 83–4.

119 123

D I.2, 14. D III.1, 209.

120

D I.6, 20. D I.49, 101.

124

121

D I.2, 10. 125 D III.1, 209.

Corruption and Inequality

29

inherent in everything that is born, grows, and tends to last.126 The beginning is always good not because what it starts is good, but because in all beginnings there is a force that produces change. Not by chance, Book II of the Discourses deals with certain choices that ‘the Roman people made pertaining to the increase (augumento) of its empire’ and ‘always increasing (in augumento) toward the best’,127 especially in relation to military organization given that expansion was considered by Machiavelli to be primarily, though not exclusively, territorial. This makes the phrase ‘imperialist republicanism’ to describe his position only partly accurate,128 ‘for since a city that lives free has two ends: one to acquire, the other to maintain itself free’.129 The increase, in fact, is the antidote to corruption, even if only up to a certain point,130 because the military aspect generates a virtue that is strictly political and which manifests itself, in particular, in the ability to produce new orders in the face of new needs, as we can see in the case of the ‘censors, which were one of those provisions that helped keep Rome free for the time that it lived in freedom’.131 Machiavelli maintains that this inventive, innovative, and expansive capacity is a prerogative—but not an automatic one—only of ‘those cities that have had their beginning free and that have been corrected (retto) by themselves’.132 The difference between ‘free beginning’ and ‘servile beginning’ underpins all Machiavelli’s reasoning, and must therefore be examined carefully. ‘Free beginning’ means ‘without depending on anyone’133 and coincides with the ‘free way of life’, recognizable from the fact that ‘cities have never expanded (ampliato) either in dominion or in riches if they have not been in freedom’: all towns (terre) and provinces that live freely in every part […] make very great profits (progressi) […] larger peoples are seen there, because marriages (connubi) are freer and more desirable to men since each willingly procreates those children he believes he can nourish. He does not fear that his patrimony will be taken away, and he knows not only that they are born free and not slaves, but that they can, through their virtue, become princes. Riches are seen to multiply there in larger number, both those that come from agriculture and those that come from the arts. For each willingly multiplies that thing and seeks to acquire those goods he believes he can enjoy once acquired. From which it arises that men in rivalry 126

127 P XV, 62. D II, preface, 125, and 123. Pedullà (2011), 397–402; then see Kersting (2006), 136; Hörnqvist (2004); Kennedy (2005). 129 D I.29, 66. 130 There are two main sides to expanding (ampliare): one makes it possible to vent humours outside the city, thereby avoiding a loss of virtue that in this way is regenerated. Since, however, there is no way to expand indefinitely—here is the other side—expanding brings with it the seeds of corruption, because ‘the period of command [and] the personal authority of the condottieri […] made […] available, for the factions at war, recognized and powerful leaders’: Inglese (2006), 133–4. 131 132 133 D I.49, 100. D I.49, 100. D I.1, 9. 128

30

Constituting Freedom

think of private and public advantages, and both the one and the other come to grow marvellously. The contrary of all these things occurs in those countries that live servilely; and the more they decline from the accustomed good, the harder is their servitude.134

The freedom present in the beginning must, however, be preserved and supported by a complex institutional apparatus—the constitution—whose function is to reproduce it repeatedly. Understanding its operation requires a long digression on the history of Florence. First, however, it is worth summarizing what has emerged up to now: to establish a free state in an entirely or partly corrupt city, or to maintain it if it already exists, one must establish a virtuous relationship between good laws and good customs. Since the customs must change according to the times, it is important to defeat corruption, which is produced by time itself135 though mainly by inequality.136 While imposing conservation, inequality hinders the renewal of the orders and engenders the loss of virtue, since it tends to inhibit the struggle for freedom, identified with the civil and free way of life of a republic and, specifically, that of Florence. This way of life does not only imply self-governance, self-determination, self-sufficiency, autonomy, and laws established for the common good rather than to gratify the ambitions of someone, but also the impulse to expand, and thus to increase.137 In order to renew the constitution, it becomes necessary to regenerate equality. The two ways explored by Machiavelli—the principality and the republic—present different problems, although the first is more dangerous than the second, which is the more difficult in that it has to mix different political and institutional dynamics: the tumults,138 equality, justice, free votes, the good functioning of the constitution, the dictatorship and, finally, the increase. Only by mixing these practices in an open constitution—which can regenerate by

134

135 D II.2, 129–33. D III.1, 209. 137 Sasso (1967), 114–15 and 124. D II.4. 138 Tumults are one of the practices through which the return to the beginnings, the antidote to corruption, is brought about—Illuminati-Rispoli (2011), 50—and form part of the ‘intrinsic accidents’ owed to the malfunctioning of certain ‘orders’; the growing rarity of ‘executions’, for example, gave ‘more space to men to corrupt themselves’, generating ‘greater danger and more tumult’ (D III.1, 210, and also Inglese/D, 578, n. 23). Vatter has proposed a reading of the return to the beginnings as a revolutionary event—(2000), 10 and all of part 3—because it emerges as a ‘repetition’ of the founding dynamic, which is not ‘form’ and which is always ‘plural’, involving also chance: Vatter (2000), 51, 68, 88. Returning to the beginnings would thus entail breaking with the past and thus regenerating history, which always and only (re)starts when a new period is born, from which one can look back. This is a reading that risks a teleological use of the paradigm of the French Revolution, rather than considering that in an atomistic logic there are always ruptures and new beginnings and never palingenesis. Tumults are not revolutionary, because ‘they do not go so far as the point of overturning the starting social order’: IlluminatiRispoli (2011), 55. 136

Corruption and Inequality

31

itself—to which a civil (republican) religion139 and poverty140 should be added, can one hope to reproduce time and again the virtue which a republic requires in order to be free. The starting point of the discussion is the distinction between a free and servile beginning.

139

D I.11–15 and Raimondi (2013b). The theme of religion is very important, but so vast that it cannot be considered here. For now I refer the reader to the important research by CutinelliRèndina (1998). 140 Gaille-Nikodimov (2004a), 92–101.

2 Tumults and the Birth of Florence 2.1. THE BEGINNIN G OF FLORENCE IN DISCOURSES The analysis of the history of Florence begins in Discourses I.1, where it explains that the city was built ‘by foreign races (genti)’ and that, ‘depending on others’, its ‘origin’ was not ‘free’ but servile: because—whether built by soldiers of Sulla or by chance (a caso)1 by inhabitants of the mountains of Fiesole, who, trusting in the long peace that was born in the world under Octavian, came down to inhabit the plain by the Arno—it was built under the Roman Empire. Nor, in its beginnings, could it make any increases (augumenti) other than those conceded to it by courtesy of the prince.2

Unlike Athens or Venice, which were founded by natives, or Rome, which can be considered to have been built by natives if one takes Romulus as its founder, or by foreigners if one looks instead to Aeneas, but which in any case had a ‘free beginning’,3 Florence had an uncertain origin (it was built either by Sulla’s soldiers or the Fiesolans), which was certainly foreign and not free. This made Florence incapable of achieving the ‘increases’ that in Rome made possible the agreement between the senate and the plebeians and thereby the mixed form of government, the usefulness of tumults, and the development of virtue. The definition of ‘free’ is surprising: the builders of cities are free when peoples, either under a prince or by themselves, are constrained by disease, hunger, or war to abandon the ancestral country and to seek for themselves a new seat.4

Freedom is not an autonomous exercise of one’s own will (as conceived by Hobbes), but the ability to confront restraints and find a solution that favours 1 ‘By chance’ means, as in other passages, ‘not required by nature, but as a historical result of an event—made up of passions and conflicts—in which there is, yes, a recognition of a prevalent tendency, but not one such that in certain conditions, by the same interplay of forces, a different tendency could not affirm itself ’: Inglese (2006), 111. 2 D I.1, 7–8 (translation modified; hereafter signified as t.m.). 3 4 D I.1, 9 and I.49, 100. D I.1, 8; my italics.

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

33

oneself. In other words, freedom is the ability to generate virtuous behaviour in the face of necessity.5 It is, therefore, a form of action in situ under constant limitations. Migrants can become virtuous and therefore free because they are forced to flee and not because they can avoid doing so: they can either go to live in existing cities, as did the Jews under the leadership of Moses, or build new ones, as did the Trojans led by Aeneas, but only in the second case can one ‘recognize the virtue of the builder and the fortune of what is built, which is more or less marvellous as the one who was the beginning of it was more or less virtuous’.6 This virtue can be recognized ‘in two modes: the first is in the choice of site, the other in the ordering laws’.7 In accordance with these parameters, no virtue was transmitted to Florence during its foundation, because its founders, not being free, were unable to bring their virtue to bear on the form of the city. Born in servitude,8 Florence appears destined to remain so, as demonstrated by its indulgent attitude towards calumnies, which are detested in free cities where slanderers are severely punished, because ‘from this it arose that on every side hatred surged; whence they went to division; from division to sects; from sects to ruin’.9 While voicing an accusation implies a relationship with truth, calumny aims to circumvent it and thus degenerates into unruly conflicts among factions.10 The freedom of a city guarantees the possibility of dispute among citizens by enshrining it within laws that are not designed to establish outcomes, but to prevent misuse. Florence thus appears to be used as a negative example, given that: it is not marvellous that the cities that have had their beginnings immediately servile have not difficulty but an impossibility in ever ordering themselves so that they may be able to live civilly and quietly. As one sees in what happened to the city of Florence: having had its beginning subordinate to the Roman Empire, and having always lived under the government of another, it remained abject for a time, without thinking about itself. Then, when the opportunity (occasione) came for taking a breath, it began to make its own orders, which could not have been good, since they were mixed with the ancient that were bad. So it has gone on managing itself, for the two hundred years of true memory that it has without ever having had a state for which it could truly be called a republic. […] Although many times, through public and free votes, expansive (ampia) authority has been given to a few citizens to enable them to reform it, they have not therefore ever ordered it for the common utility but always for the purpose of their part (parte), which has made not order but greater disorder in that city.11

5

See Kluxen (1967), Raimondi (2009), and Mansfield (2017). 7 8 D I.1, 8. D I.1, 8. D I.49, 101. 9 ‘Sect’ or ‘faction’ means a ‘part’ which acts for its own good and not for ‘common utility’ (D I.2, 12 and I.37, 80; I.49; I.54). 10 11 D I.8, 27–8 and also I.7. D I.49, 100–1; t.m. 6

34

Constituting Freedom

A little further on, Machiavelli, discussing the ‘province of Germany’, highlights two characteristics that explain what free and civilized living means: those republics in which a political and uncorrupted way of life is maintained do not endure that any citizen of theirs either be or live in the usage of gentleman; indeed, they maintain among themselves an even equality, and to the lords and gentlemen who are in that province they are very hostile. If by chance some fall into their hands, they kill him as the beginnings of corruption and the cause of every scandal. To clarify this name of gentlemen such as it may be, I say that those are called gentlemen who live idly in abundance from the returns of their possessions without having any care either for cultivation or for other necessary trouble in living. Such as these are pernicious in every republic and in every province, but more pernicious are those who, beyond the aforesaid fortunes, command from a castle and have subjects (sudditi) who obey them.12

The presence of ‘gentlemen’ was at the time a typical situation in the ‘kingdom of Naples, the town (terra) of Rome, the Romagna, and Lombardy’, where ‘no republic or political way of life has ever emerged’, so that ‘such kinds of men are altogether hostile to every civilization (civilità)’. Even if one wished to reorder them, ‘to introduce a republic into [these] provinces […] would not be possible’, but only a ‘kingdom’, a ‘kingly hand that with absolute and excessive power (potenza assoluta e eccessiva) puts a check on the excessive ambition and corruption of the powerful’.13 On the contrary, an example of the incompatibility between gentlemen and a republican order14 is ‘Tuscany’, where for a long time there had been ‘three republics—Florence, Siena, and Lucca’, in which ‘there is no lord of a castle and no or very few gentlemen’, while there was ‘so much equality that a civil way of life would easily be introduced there by a prudent man having knowledge of the ancient civilizations (civilità)’. Alas, the misfortune of these cities, and in particular of Florence, is that ‘up to these times it has not run into any man who has been able or known how to do it’:15 even a missed encounter has significant effects. In the analysis carried out in the Discourses, therefore, the diagnosis is changed: Florence is not entirely corrupt despite its servile origin because it possesses a virtue that, while not the same as the Roman virtue of the increase, leaves a glimmer of hope that it might be reordered as a republic. Its servile origin would, it appears, condemn Florence to never being able to order itself along republican lines, but at most as a principality. And yet ‘then, when the opportunity (occasione) came for taking a breath, it began to make its own orders, which could not have been good, since they were mixed with the ancient that were bad’,16 thus enabling it to free itself, at least partly, from its origin. This event was used by Machiavelli as the basis for his discussion on

12 15

D I.55, 110–11. D I.55, 112.

13

16

D I.55, 111–12. D I.49, 100.

14

Rinaldi, 694, n. 100.

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

35

the possibility of Florence reordering itself as a republic, despite it not yet having done so, because it led to the conditio sine qua non for the constitution of a republic—equality.17 But then, what else could have provided the Florentines with the means to seize the moment to establish their own orders if not a form, however veiled, of virtue?

2.2. THE ORIGINS AND NAMING OF F L O R E N CE I N T H E HISTO R IES The analysis of the ‘origin of Florence’18 passes through the Histories to then begin, in effect, in Book II, ‘a true masterpiece of our historical literature’.19 Saying that ‘among the other great and marvellous orders of the ancient republics and principalities that in our times have been eliminated was that by which they used to build many towns (terre) and cities anew and at all times’,20 Machiavelli lets slip a reference to ‘Italy, before the Roman Empire’, where ‘the Tuscans were very powerful by sea and by land’, due to their ability in ‘expanding (ampliare)’. This was, in other words, their aptitude for founding colonies,21 which showed that they had the same virtue as the Romans, linked by their ability for expansion. The virtue inherent in the greatness of the Tuscans and in the expansive power of Rome benefited Florence, because ‘in ancient times […] by virtue of these colonies, either new cities arose frequently or those already begun grew; and among these was the city of Florence, which had its beginning from Fiesole and its growth (augumento) from colonies’:22 the Fiesolans founded Florence, the soldiers of Sulla provided the expansive principle.23 The preconditions for the birth of Florence, then, were threefold: the existence of Fiesole, the Roman virtue to found colonies, and the encounter between the two. And yet these did not necessarily portend a union nor that such a union would survive. So what, then, made the relationship real and long-lasting? Machiavelli lists a series of contingent conditions that came together favourably: the need for the Fiesolans to make their ‘markets’ more convenient, efficient, and ‘more frequented’ led them to locate these ‘not on the hillside’, where the city was situated, but ‘in the plain between the foot of 17

18 19 D I.55. FH I.39, 51. Villari (1914), III, 240. 21 22 FH II.1, 52. D II.4, 135–6 and II.5, 140. FH II.1, 52–3. 23 For this reason Machiavelli criticizes the behaviour of Sparta and Venice—Münkler (2004) and Pedullà (2011), 345–7—which, in contrast to Rome (see D II.3–4), did not dare ‘open the way to foreigners’ (D I.6, 21), who are essential to expansion not only in a military sense: Vatter (2000), 110–12; Dejardin (2004), 117–20. For the same reason he condemned the continual ordering of exiles from Florence, especially in the Histories. 20

36

Constituting Freedom

the mountain and the Arno River’.24 Opportunity, which here corresponded to necessity, exerts force in an insufficiently defined situation, where taking action can determine the time of its transformation.25 Even opportunity, as indispensable as it is, is not yet everything: it was, in fact, ‘the cause of the first buildings’ which, with time, became ‘solid (ferme)’, permanent. But it was only after ‘the Romans had conquered the Carthaginians rendering Italy safe from foreign wars, [that] the buildings multiplied to a great numbers’. Only ‘security’, brought to Italy by the Romans, ‘enabled the dwellings […] to increase to such number that they took on the form of a town’.26 The presence of an opportunity—like a clinamen—and of an expansive principle capable of taking root virtuously does not explain everything that happened. Another pivotal moment was needed, which Machiavelli explains by taking up the thread of another history connected to Florence. This was the history of the Roman civil wars, which prompted first Sulla and then the second Triumvirate to send ‘colonies […] to Fiesole’ that established themselves ‘near the town (terra) already begun; and by this increase (augumento), the place became so full of buildings, men, and every other civil order that it could be counted among the cities of Italy’.27 The expansion, which was due to the quantitative increase of men in the area28 with the specific aim, typical of colonies, of guaranteeing the safety of the place and its expansivity, led to the growth of the Fiesolan markets to the point that they became a real city: the ‘town’ was only ‘a dentation (l’addentellato)’,29 a ‘hooked’ handhold30 that enabled the conjuncture. Chance (the never entirely knowable, indefinite, and uncertain sum of causes) brought about the encounter, which if it had taken place among forces unwilling to join together, would not have occurred. The circumstances existed for an encounter between a city and a principle of expansion, between a fertile land (material with a form of its own) and a principle of fertilization capable of changing it through interaction. From here followed, as after any birth, the question of the name. Machiavelli plays down the importance of Florence up to 1215, because it had ‘lived in the fortune under which those who commanded Italy lived’,31 parasitizing on a passive relationship in a way that attested to a deficiency of virtue, the prevalence of the servile side of its beginning. While taking account

24

FH II.2, 53. The idea that time is a result of a relationship is an atomistic one, because ‘time has no independent existence […] and it must be admitted that no one has a sense of time as an independent entity, but only as something relative to the movement of things and their restful calm’ (Lucretius, I, 460, 462–4); on this, Zanardi (1982) 77–8. 26 27 FH II.2, 53. FH II.2, 54. 28 29 D I.2, 11 and Lucretius, V, 1011–27. P II, 7. 30 Hamatus (Lucretius, II, 393 and 405) or ankistrode (αγκιστρωδε: Democritus, 44a, 71 or DK 68A, 37). 31 FH II.2, 54. 25

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

37

of the objective difference of power compared to the Roman Empire, which was too strong to be challenged, the Florentines’ lack of virtue made it impossible for them, ‘in those times’ to ‘grow (crescere)’ and to ‘do anything worthy of memory, because of the power (potenza) of those in the command (imperio) to whom they were subjects’. This was the case at least until 1010 when ‘they seized and destroyed Fiesole’, a cutting of the umbilical cord, a severance. Florence’s virtue was manifest by means of a war of conquest which, by means of destruction, produced the void that the city’s expansion required. It was not, however, evidence of full autonomy, because this action of the Florentines was only possible either with the consent of the emperors or during an interregnum, to the point that ‘the Florentines maintained themselves united until 1215, obedient to the conquerors, seeking no other command (imperio) than to save themselves’. Florence resisted until 121532 and only then, with the emergence of internal divisions, did its illness begin. Thus the city is worth remembering both for its weakness caused by internal divisions and for its ability to resist those divisions and do away with them. This is how its virtue began. The virtue connected to this expansion allowed the Florentines to conquer Fiesole and to start to institute certain orders autonomously, even if the servile nature of Florence emerged from time to time provoking the instability of governments. The origin of Florence is thus connected to a ‘true memory’33 and not to an uncertain, obscure, and mythical aura. Florence was a mercantile city by vocation, hence the form of its increase. Its foreign and partially servile origin was not eliminated but, thanks to the Roman colonists (immigrants) and to chance, it was supported by virtue. The history of Florence that Machiavelli tells symbolizes the break with the founding myths based on autochthony,34 common in classical and humanist historiography, according to which ‘for a good ending, one needs a good beginning. It is important to begin well, because of course the main thing is to continue well—this is storytelling’.35 On the other hand, Florence was a hybrid from the outset, mixed in the sense of a fusion,36 bred from a cross between Fiesolan natives and Roman colonists. The final push to the myth of Florence’s origins passes to the investigation on its name, about which there are various opinions: some believe that it derives from ‘Florino, one of the heads of the colony’, while others say it comes from ‘Fluenzia’ because it is situated on the banks of the Arno. Such views follow the classical records of the name, tracing an aristocratic genealogy (Florino is the mythical eponym, because he was a noble among serfs) or else the idea of the entity in keeping with the criteria of linguistic realism. For Machiavelli, on the other hand, nothing can truly be known about the origin of the name, because ‘it was always called Florenzia for whatever cause it was so 32 35

FH II.2, 54–5; t.m. Loraux (2000), 13.

33 36

34 D I.49, 101. FH II.2. See Raimondi (2005b).

38

Constituting Freedom

named; and so from whatever cause the origin might have been, it was born under the Roman Empire’.37 Nominalism rejects any idealism or substantiality of things, because it is ‘forces that easily acquire names, not names forces’.38 This affirmation echoes what was written in the Discourses on the eternity of the world and the impossibility of man to understand the origin except in mythical terms, since ‘the variation of sects and languages, together with the accident of floods or plague, eliminates the memories of things’.39 According to Machiavelli, at the start of the formation of a political aggregate40 there is always a contingent need, an urgency dictated by an unexpected event that forces men to take responsibility for what is happening. The ‘variations of governments arise by chance among men’, because, while at the beginning of the world people were spread far and wide, their propagation obliged them to come together in order to better protect themselves.41 Hence the need is represented by population growth, a purely quantitative mechanism with qualitative consequences. Similarly, Florence, born as a response to the Fiesolans’ need to improve their trade, is the product of an interaction between chance (fortune) and virtue. At the beginning of any situation one always finds at least one decisive encounter or clash, whose contingent nature implies that the situation lacks metaphysical foundations and cannot be deduced from a single principle. The nature of the struggles, political or otherwise, is in Machiavelli intrinsically pluralistic and not reducible to the dichotomy friend–enemy, and therefore cannot be traced back to a single form.42 Struggles are not perforce ultimately aimed at reciprocal suppression or elimination. Suffice it to consider, for example, the humours, or rather 37

38 FH II.2, 54. D I.34, 74. D II.5, 138, which recalls Lucretius, V, 324–50. In Machiavelli, an origin refers to the moment of birth (Lucretius, III, 686–7, IV 157–60), within a dynamic context of constant aggregation and disaggregation. In keeping with the atomistic way of thinking, the origin is an encounter among different processes (origins) that come together at a certain point and fuse together, generating new processes (see Book VI of De rerum natura). Birth is not a repetition of a mythical time, because it is a once and unrepeatable occurrence, leading to the rejection of the Polybian anakyklosis—see Sasso (1967), 161–280; Colonna d’Istria-Frapet (1980), 155–93; Reale (1985), 48–50—and already ‘in the Discourses the Polybian cycle [is] essentially overcome’: Inglese (2006), 111–14 and also Gagné (2011). 40 It is not correct, in my opinion, to speak of a ‘political body’, even if the term is used in Machiavelli’s texts: suffice it to recall the image of the ‘trunk’ which, while losing ‘the head’, could ‘easily be brought (ridursi) to live free and ordered’ (D I.17, 47). The aggregate is not a real body, even if it lives and appears to be one. I therefore prefer to speak, atomistically, of a ‘political aggregate’. 41 D I.2, 11. 42 On the contrary, Esposito (1984, 179–220, in particular, 192–201) does not distinguish among the different types of struggles, their constantly different position in time, and their equally unique internal temporality, with the result of theorizing them all within the Schmittian logic of ‘friend–enemy’, which implies that the relationship occurs only as a mutual willingness to neutralize one another. The demonization of struggles by Schmitt, which is a consequence of focusing only on their disruptive aspect, leads to a lack of recognition of their eventual aggregative capacity and, therefore, to embracing political positions that are openly reactionary. 39

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

39

‘when mutual passion has conspired to dash together the seeds roused throughout the limbs by the goads of Venus, and neither partners’ semen has been victorious or vanquished’.43 Along a path that goes from the Discourses to the Histories, Machiavelli made his diagnosis: Florence was born servile from people who were partly servile and partly free. The clear dichotomy between a free and servile beginning is dissolved, even if the repercussions of the clash between the two principles can be observed in the city’s ‘anomaly’,44 the continuous changes of government, its perennial instability.

2 . 3 . T H E IN S T A B I L I T Y O F FLORE NC E This diagnosis was also given in the Discursus, coeval with the writing of the Histories. Florence ‘has frequently varied [its] methods of government’, because ‘it has never been either a republic or a principality having the qualities each requires’.45 Florence had always had a hybrid and unstable form of government, a continuous oscillation between the republic and the principality as paradigms— cognitive modality of the medical and historical sciences46—and therefore as demonstrated by the case of the free/servile beginning of the city, non-existent in a pure form. The exemplarity of the political forms outlined in the Prince and the Discourses is dealt a blow by a reality that does not lend itself to being described by either model. During its long history Florence had been both a principality and a republic, albeit with characteristics that always made it unstable: because we cannot call that principality well-established (stabile), in which things are done according to the will of one man yet are decided (deliberano) with the approval (consenso) of many; nor can we believe a republic fitted to last, in which there is no content for those humours that must be contented if republics are not to fall.47

The main defect of Florence, as regards Machiavellian paradigms, is the dearth of involvement of the ‘collectivity’ (universale) in the political decisions of the city’s government. In ‘Cosimo’s government (stato) […] that was established with the people’s aid (favore)’ and ‘controlled (governato) by the prudence of two such men as 43 Lucretius, IV, 1216–19; on the aggregative aspect of struggles, see the notes on Machiavelli by Merleau-Ponty (1964). 44 45 Sasso (1993), II, 363. DRGF 101; t.m. 46 47 Zanzi (2013), 21–327 and 507–79. DRGF 101; t.m.

40

Constituting Freedom

Cosimo and Lorenzo his grandson’ (1434–94), the city’s weakness stemmed ‘from its having to decide (deliberare) through a large number what Cosimo planned to carry out’48 without founding the prince’s authority in his people, as advised in the Prince. But the ‘republic governed by aristocrats (ottimati)’ established by Maso degli Albizzi (1393–1434), and then that of Savonarola and Soderini (1494–1512) had other flaws. The first of these governments indulged in too frequent elections, which facilitated fraud, and failed to instil ‘fear in great men, so that they would not set up factions (sette), which are the ruin of a government (stato)’. Furthermore, the aristocratic republic had only: slight prestige (reputazione) and too much authority, being able to dispose without appeal of the life and property (roba) of the citizens, and being able to call the people to a parliament. Hence it [the aristocratic republic] came to be not the defender of the state but a means for causing its ruin, whenever an influential citizen could either control (comandare) or befuddle it. [Moreover,] that state also suffered from a disorder not of slight importance: that men in private station took part in deliberation on public business. This kept up the prestige of the men in private stations and took it away from those in official ones, and it had the effect of taking away authority and prestige from the magistrates—a thing opposed to every sort of civil order.49

To these ‘disorders’, finally, ‘was added another […]: the people did not have their share (non vi aveva dentro la parte sua)’. And for this reason the disorders were ‘countless’. This republic, if ‘external wars had not kept that government solid (non l’avessero tenuta ferma) […] would have fallen sooner that it did’.50 While private individuals who pursue their personal advantage provoke unrest in the city, the war against the Visconti was able to consolidate it, since it made the city face the risk of extinction and the loss of freedom, obliging the citizens to join forces for the sake of a common good (in this case survival), which goes beyond private wealth and restores the political-military relevance of the people. The second government, by contrast, was not ‘lasting (durabile), because the orders did not satisfy all the humours [of the] citizens; and on the other hand, the republic could not inflict punishment’. However, the most serious defect, which kept Florence far ‘from a true republic’, was the appointment of ‘a Gonfalonier for life, [because] if he was intelligent and wicked (savio e tristo), easily could make himself prince; if he was good and weak, he could easily be driven out, with the ruin of the whole government (stato)’. This was because he did not have ‘those around him who could protect him, if he were good; nor anyone who, if he were wicked, could restrain him or set him right’.51 48

49 50 DRGF 102–3. DRGF 102; t.m. DRGF 102; t.m. DRGF 103; t.m. In fact, in the Minuta (M 648–9 and for an analysis, Chapter 4, Section 4.5), Machiavelli takes as an example the post-Soderinian republic, when the Gonfalonier (not for life) 51

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

41

Florence, therefore, was a principality that was unable to become a republic and a republic that was unable to establish a constitution that could satisfy the humours; a diagnosis that confirms the conclusion of Machiavelli’s earlier analyses, according to which for a city to be stable it must be governed by one virtuous individual (thus as a principality), but in order to last it must become a republic: this [must] be taken as a general rule: that it never or rarely happens that any republic or kingdom is ordered well from the beginning or reformed altogether anew outside its old orders unless it is ordered by one individual. Indeed it is necessary that one alone gives the mode and that any such ordering depends on his mind. So a prudent orderer of a republic, who has the intent to wish to help not himself but the common good (bene comune), not for his own succession but for the common fatherland, should contrive to have authority alone […]. He should indeed be so prudent and virtuous that he does not leave the authority he took as an inheritance to another; for since men are more prone to evil than to good, his successor could use ambitiously that which had been used virtuously by him. Besides this, if one individual is capable of ordering, the thing itself is ordered to last long not if it remains on the shoulders of one individual but rather if it remains in the care of many and its maintenance stays with many. For as many are not capable of ordering a thing because they do not know its good, which is because of the diverse opinions among them, so when they have come to know it, they do not agree to abandon it.52

Florence’s dire failing was not having been able to combine virtuously the moment of its foundation (principality) with that of its duration (republic). For this reason: all these governments have been defective, [because] the alterations (riforme) in them have been made not for the fulfilment of the common good, but for the strengthening and security of the part (parte). Such security has not yet been attained, because there has always been in the city a part that was discontented, which has been a very powerful tool for anybody who wished to make a change (variare).53

The pursuit of private aims by one part generates ‘discontent (mala contentezza)’, because: human appetites are insatiable, for since from nature they have the ability and the wish to desire all things and from fortune the ability to achieve few of them, there continually results from this a discontent in human minds and a disgust with the things they possess. This makes them blame the present times, praise the past, and desire the future, even if they are not moved to do this by any reasonable cause,54

was Giovan Battista Ridolfi. For Machiavelli’s criticisms of Piero Soderini, see D III.3, 214–15; III.9, 240; III.30, 280. 52 53 54 D I.9, 29; t.m. DRGF 103; t.m. D II, preface, 125.

42

Constituting Freedom

making fighting inevitable because of ‘ambition’ to the point of ‘enmities and to war’.55 Thus there can be stability only on the basis of pursuing the common good and only in a republic which is governed by the many, for only then can every humour seek to have its particular needs and requests attended to and satisfied. Private interests, on the other hand, produce only endless disorders.56 But here we are still in the setting of ‘a classic republicanism’,57 separated from the aspect that characterizes the presentation of Florence’s history: struggles, whose variety cannot be reduced to a single classification, generate instability.

2.4. TH E VIRTUE OF THE FLORENTINES AND THE HUMOURS The analysis of Florence is sealed in the Histories, in which Machiavelli reiterates what he had said earlier and explains the nature and composition of the Florentines’ virtue. Examining the historical works of Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, Machiavelli noted: that in descriptions of the wars waged by the Florentines with foreign princes and peoples they had been very diligent, but as regards to civil discords and internal enmities, and the effects arising from them, they were altogether silent about the one and so brief about the other as to be of no use to readers or pleasure to anyone.58

This observation is important because in seeking to understand the reasons for Rome’s greatness, Machiavelli had placed great emphasis on the tumults, ‘the first cause keeping Rome free’, because ‘good examples arise from good education, good education from good laws, and good laws from those tumults that many inconsiderately damn’.59 Laws are the result of tumults: how, then, can they be regulated by them?60 The verb ‘regulate’ is used often by Machiavelli in the Discourses to refer to laws but never in relation to tumults which therefore do not normalize at all. If, as has often been said, laws should constitute some sort of institutional barrier to tumults, establishing the parameters of their legitimacy, they cannot have the destructive/constructive impact that Machiavelli assigns them. The ‘theorem of Machiavelli’, sounds like this: ‘the more [part] struggles […] lead the community to a point of rupture (or to the edge of dissolution), the more they force the power of the state (and of the ruling [parts]) towards the 55 56 58

D I.37, 78; Borrelli (2000), 15–38 and (2009), 27–64. 57 See D I.46 and III.28. Del Lucchese (2004), 28. 59 60 FH preface, 6. D I.4, 16. Bruni (2003), 466 and 473.

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

43

invention of institutions.’61 It is the ability to face up the supreme risk of annihilation62 that can revitalize the political aggregate as is confirmed by the reading of Livy63 not the legal or institutional normalization of tumults that neutralizes their power. The laws cannot regulate tumults, because these are what disrupt them and enables them, eventually, to exist, given that the result could also be the end of the political aggregate. This is what signals, in my opinion, ‘the absolute discontinuity [of Machiavelli] regarding the GrecoRoman tradition and fifteenth-century humanism’64 and renders it unclassifiable and unique.65 Not so much the idea of disciplining tumults, which, however, are not the only form of struggle. Tumults occur without the need for any authorization: they are an ‘organization without example’66 or an ‘ongoing disorder’.67 It is therefore impossible to regulate tumults in such a way that they do not harm the state.68 An idea that reveals even more the fear of having to come to terms with the desires of the people or the ‘salaried’69 almost identical to those of the great70 even in their destructiveness, without this ratifying their goodness or justice, as a certain populism pretends. Regulating tumults thus means wanting to remove their possible violence and thus neutralizing Machiavelli, as Vatter correctly argues.71 On the contrary, tumults are the engine of innovation and the manifestation of freedom:72 a republic must innovate on the back of tumults, or else it risks ruining itself if they go beyond a certain point, even if it does not transform itself. As always it is a question of promptness, timeliness. Laws delimit a type of struggle that tumults do not belong to, because they are the beginning: they are not the exception that proves the rule, but the power of the birth and the destruction of the rule. Even here the atomistic paradigm is relevant, because at the origin of something there is always an encounter or a

61 Balibar (2003), 113. The Marxist concept of class is the product of a scientific structure that the Machiavellian discussion does not have: Brudney (1984), 511, who nevertheless only scratches the surface of the issue. While Marx was able to understand the parts as classes—Rees (2004), 29–41; Screpanti (2011), 119–35—Machiavelli could not. While in Marx classes belong to the structure of the capitalist mode of production, the parts belong to the feudal order—GailleNikodimov (2004a), 33—and presented themselves in a mercantile city in the form of factions. Furthermore, while in Marx class politics is rooted in the economic situation—Lefort (1978), 217—the parts in Machiavelli are eminently political as their derivation from the humours demonstrates and they are not unrelated to ‘psychological’ influences—Wood (1973), 288–9— linked above all to desire. ‘Machiavelli does not explain class struggle through exploitation, but through property and, thus, through the desire of those who have to always have more, and of those who do not have to possess’: Althusser (1978), 84. 62 63 Berns (2000), 192–3. Pedullà (2011), 106–18. 64 65 Pedullà (2011), 43. Althusser (1999), 115–30. 66 67 Illuminati-Rispoli (2011), 44. Lefort (2012), 456. 68 Ménissier (2006), 176–7, 180 and Pedullà (2011), 123–33, 141. 69 70 Marietti (2005), 111. Pedullà (2011), 326–7, 332–3. 71 72 Vatter (2000). Dejardin (2004), 113; Geuna (2005), 25.

44

Constituting Freedom

clash among parts. The duration of a political aggregate is not guaranteed and cannot be guaranteed by anything, if not from the virtuous and collective struggle to the always possible tumultuous dissolution of the constitution. If, in conclusion, ‘tumults change, mould [and] reinvent the institutional forms from the beginning’73 this means that they are the point of possible nondurability of the constitution that is not the Hobbesian state of nature nor the state of exception or civil war (which, if anything, are the limits towards which tumults tend to go) but the reduction to principles.74 Pushing things a little, one might say that ‘a city is strong when it finds itself in permanent insurrection’75 or, in a more balanced way, that the ‘return to the beginnings was a continuous process’ which does not consist of ‘reconstructing the institutions which that society had had at the time of its beginnings’, but of innovating them in order to make them worthy of the times in keeping with the spirit of the civil and free way of life and the virtue required to order it.76 This is why ‘tumults cannot be resolved once and for all, not even by the perfect form of the mixed constitution’.77 If Florence’s anomaly was attributable to its beginning—at once free and servile—which resulted in perpetual infighting as factions competed for private benefits in a crescendo that from time to time led to disaster, then Rome is an important touchstone, albeit an inimitable one given the city’s different origin and other factors.78 Indeed, one of the reasons for its greatness was that it had regulated its internal strife, channelling it towards a common good through wars of territorial expansion, and thus diverting it from the path of ruin. Writing a history of Florence centred on ‘the causes (ragioni) of the hatreds and divisions in the city’ is, therefore, indispensable, in order that its citizens ‘may be able to maintain themselves united’ thanks to the experience that made ‘wise’ those who confronted the ‘dangers’ inherent in ‘hatreds and divisions’. In fact: if in any other republic there were ever notable divisions, those of Florence are most notable. For the most other republics about which we have any information have been content with one division by which, depending on accidents, they have sometimes expanded and sometimes ruined their city; but Florence, not content with one, made many. In Rome […] after the kings were driven out, disunion between the nobles and the people arose and Rome was maintained by it until its ruin. […] But in Florence the nobles were, first, divided among themselves; then the nobles and the people; and in the end the people and the plebs: and it happened many times that the winning parts (parti), was divided in two. From such divisions came as many dead, as many exiles, as many families destroyed as

73 76 78

74 Illuminati-Rispoli (2011), 34. D III.1. 77 Gilbert (1984), 184–5. Geuna (2005), 22. Gaille-Nikodimov (2004a) 127–58.

75

Dejardin (2004), 116–17.

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

45

ever occurred in any city in memory. And truly, […] no other instance appears to me to show so well the power (potenza) of our city as the one derived from these divisions, which would have had the force to annihilate any great and very powerful city. Nonetheless ours, it appeared, became ever greater from them; so great was the virtue of those citizens and the power (potenza) of their genius and their spirit to make themselves and their fatherland great that as many as remained free from so many evils were more able by their virtue to exalt it, than could the malice of those accidents that had diminished it overwhelmed it. And there is no doubt that had Florence enjoyed such prosperity after it had freed itself from the Empire as to have obtained a form of government to maintain it united, I know no republic either modern or ancient that would have been its superior, so full of virtue, of arms and of industry would it have been.79

Florence’s greatness was its capacity for self-preservation, achieved however with ceaseless toil, in the midst of struggles and divisions that might well have destroyed any other city.80 The fluctuation and change of Florentine governments were not only the product of the unfreedom of its beginning, but also the outcome of the resistance to its origin that fortune gave the city. The virtue of the free founder has its counterpart, in Florence, in the resistance to fate that its citizens displayed over the centuries. Is it possible that this virtue can generate a ‘free state’? The grave and natural enmities that exist between the men of the people and the nobles, caused by the wish of the latter to command and the former not to obey, are the cause of all evils that arise in cities. For from this diversity of humours all other things that agitate republics take their nourishment. This kept Rome disunited, and this, if it is permissible to compare little things with great, has kept Florence divided, although diverse effects were produced, in one city and the other. For the enmities between the people and the nobles at the beginning of Rome that were resolved by disputing were resolved in Florence by fighting. Those in Rome ended with a law, those in Florence with the exile and death of many citizens; those in Rome always increased military virtue, those in Florence eliminated it altogether; those in Rome brought the city from equality in the citizens to a very great inequality; those in Florence reduced it from inequality to a wonderful equality.81

In the first instance, it can be noted that all forms of struggle within cities can be traced back to those between ‘two diverse humours [that] are in every 79

FH preface, 6–7; t.m. Rubinstein (1967), 958; Garosci (1973), 213; Cabrini (1996), 351. 81 FH III.1, 105. According to Sasso (1993, II, 180–1), this step is in open contrast to what is argued in the preface to the Histories, because the ‘multiplication and fragmentation of opposing forces’ distances Florence from the Roman paradigm of the binary opposition between the people and the senate. In reality, here Machiavelli says that ‘the hostilities were defined through the fighting’, without prejudging their number: it is in fact this very multiplication of the actors involved in the struggle that characterizes Florence and must be explained by its paradigm, which cannot be that of Rome: Marietti (2005), 106–9. 80

46

Constituting Freedom

republic, that of the people and that of the great’.82 While, in fact, ‘the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people’ it is from this clash that ‘three effects […] occur: principality or freedom or license’.83 Freedom emerges as a result of tumults, because in the ‘nobles [great] one will see great desire to dominate’, while in the ‘ignobles [not nobles, people] [one sees] only desire not to be dominated; and, in consequence, a greater will to live free’. To be clear, here the notion of ‘dominating’ is the synthesis of ‘commanding and oppressing’, referring to the typically feudal relationship between dominus and servus and, while ‘the people’ denotes those who do not want to be dominated and act politically as a ‘guard of freedom’,84 ‘the great’ are those who by nature want to dominate. The sociological reference to the group that individuals belong to at birth is not important, given that there are men of noble extraction who side with the people and vice versa. In any event, what must be stressed is the dynamic by dint of which only the people, albeit comprising only one part of the city, can keep it free.85 The common good, then, is partisan and inharmonious, in contrast to classical republicanism and civil humanism.86 The people are not intrinsically better and more just, as if they possessed an innate moral imperative that inspires them to fight for freedom. On the contrary, they are driven by the need to gain recognition from the great for the fundamental role they play in the life of the city and, specifically, in the constitutive need of any republic in the mould of Rome, rather than of Venice or Sparta, to expand,87 an objective that can only be achieved with a popular army. The people, in point of fact, rioted whenever this ‘ambition’ was not fulfilled, fighting to ‘obtain a law [or not] to go to war’88 so that ‘if Rome wished to remove the causes of tumults, it removed too the causes of expansion (ampliare)’.89 Tumults prevent the dominio of the great over the people, forcing them to make good laws in favour of freedom, from which ‘good education’ and ‘good examples’ derive.90 Tumults are thus distinguished from ‘discords’ or ‘divisions’ that are typical of the nobility’s desire to enslave the people. The people, made up of those moved by the desire not to be dominated by the great, and the great, impelled by the desire to dominate the people, are parts rather than humours. Humours are the forces that come together to generate the parts. Since they are not individuals but belong to the political aggregate, they are to be understood—by analogy with a tradition that 82

83 D I.4, 16 and also I.16, 46; I.40, 88; FH II.12, 64. P IX, 39; t.m. 85 D I.5, 18. D I.4. 86 Adorno (1998) and, in particular, Del Lucchese (2004), 28–33. Interpretations that emphasize the rupture between Machiavelli and the humanist tradition can be found in Hulliung (1984) and Hankins (2014). 87 88 D I.6, 20–1. D I.4, 17 and Raimondi (2013a), 185–97 and (2013b), 166. 89 90 D I.6, 21. D I.4, 16. 84

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

47

stretches from the Pythagorean cosmology to the medical doctrine of Galeno, and also by Machiavelli’s use of universal quantifiers (‘every’, ‘all’)—as being at the same time historical and politically natural forces because they are always present in the city, even if their characteristics vary according to the times and in some cases may disappear altogether. This is a consideration that obliges one to make clear how the analogy with medicine is somewhat superficial (it works at most on a lexical level), given that the Machiavellian humours, two not four, are born and die with politics and are subject to change, something that is inconceivable in the aforementioned tradition. The criterion that distinguishes the humours is merely political and not based on social status and economic circumstances as in antiquity.91 It is connected to the contingency of a situation and is not an essence or an anthropological fact: there is no such thing as someone who possesses a particular desire and someone else who has its opposite because of a natural gift or innate principle. Desire depends on the political position in which an individual finds himself and, since goods are scarce, it is never a natural necessity, otherwise desire would become an essence and Machiavelli’s ideas would hinge on an anthropomorphism that it does not have, if ‘it might be true that fortune is arbiter of half of our actions, but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern’.92 Anyone who wishes to command or oppress the people, therefore, belongs to the great, but this does not mean that all who belong to this social group have such a desire. Similarly, those who do not wish to be commanded or oppressed by the great belong to the people, but this does not necessarily mean that those who are not commanded or oppressed by the great are part of the people, because those who are socially part of the people may want to be commanded or oppressed by the great or to command and oppress others. The political nature of Machiavelli’s distinction between the humours and, consequently, between the parts, together with the naturalism in which he seems to envelop it, emerges from the notion that between them there is a hierarchy that is not natural but rather historical and political. This hierarchy is absent in the humours of the cosmological–medical tradition, which, being all indispensable to the health of the cosmos–body, generate illness when one of them wishes to outmatch or undermine the others or when it wishes to isolate itself. Disease is caused by either excess or defect, in other words by lack of a balance based on the right proportions of different humours and not their presence in identical amounts. The humours refer, moreover, to a philosophy and a politics (primarily Plato and Aristotle, but the monologue by Menenius Agrippa also comes to mind) in which every part is fixed to its proper step and

91

Fioravanti (1999), 11–25.

92

P XXV, 98.

48

Constituting Freedom

role in the great ladder of being where it must stay so as not to subvert the metaphysical and political order. The humours, for Machiavelli, are politically natural, being found in every political circumstance, opposed and equal not by nature but by function: none is more important than the rest and even the absence of just one causes the dissolution of the political aggregate. As a result, in every city there are those who govern and those who are the governed. This difference is not the same as the contrast between commanding-oppressing or being commandedoppressed, because those who are governed govern and continue to govern. Establishing a relationship of tension and struggle between their own desires and the way in which the governors translate them into reality, the governed can, if they are citizens, rotate the governors and participate in government by obeying and overseeing the work of the governors. If they are not citizens, they can in any case support the government or rebel against it. Finally, insofar as the physiognomy of these groups is changeable (in Florence, for example, it is not the same as in Rome, and even within the same city it changes with the times, as the Histories show) and their opposition is often reduced to a binary arrangement, these forces exist simultaneously on a level of equality and one of hierarchy. These levels, being highly political, can always be overturned without encountering the condemnation of being para physin, as argued by Strauss.93 Thus all cities that are composed of (at least) two humours, are necessarily mixed, made up of parts that coexist without necessarily merging with each other and which live together only in struggle.94

2.5. FREEDOM AND TUMULTS For Machiavelli, freedom is identified with the ‘popular state’,95 in other words with the republican form, and not because it is only the people who governed in it, but rather because only in a republic is it possible for the people to selfregulate their relationship with the great by trying to prevent the hierarchical relationship becoming a master/servant one and preserving the equal importance of the humours. The traditional relationship was an expression of the feudal world that was being transformed by the development of mercantile capitalism brought forward by the people. Thus, if the history of Florence begins in 1215,96 the struggle among noble families that marks the beginning97 should be placed within the context of the expansion of the economic activities

93 95

94 See Strauss (1958) and Raimondi (2001). See Raimondi (2005b). 96 97 D I.2, 13. FH II.2, 54–5. FH II.3.

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

49

of the cities that distinguish the dawn of capitalism.98 Florence and Rome thus symbolize the difference between the modern and ancient world, adding another reason to the difficulty of applying the paradigm of the latter to the study of the former. Corruption is rooted in inequality and therefore ‘a people into which corruption has entered in everything cannot live free, not for a short time or at all’.99 Hence the problem of the gentlemen, the members of the feudal nobility entrenched in their strongholds to defend their privileges (idleness and rents) and who dominate the subjects with a non-expansionist attitude at odds with the idea of living freely and advancing wealth creation.100 Inequality arises from the inability to grow by territorial and economic expansion, as well as by extending citizenship to those who up to that moment were either excluded or not beneficiati, with the resulting abolition of relations of subjection. Increasing a dominion requires the help of the people101 and therefore the need for tumults, the aim of which was to produce the greatest possible equality, as is testified by the history of Rome. In that city, after the expulsion of corrupt kings and ‘before their corruption passed into the bowels of that city, this lack of corruption—men having a good end—was the cause that the infinite tumults in Rome did not hurt and indeed helped the republic’.102 Tumults are needed in order to pass laws that are indispensable to making ‘a republic so stable and steady’, but also ‘to order it in a mode so that those changing humours that agitate it can be vented in a way ordered by the laws’, as the negative example of Francesco Valori in pre-Soderinian Florence shows.103 Laws, in fact, are ‘the nerve and the life of a free way of life’.104 Tumults, therefore, are the only way to establish the greatest possible equality in a republic, or rather to ensure the reciprocal political recognition of the parts and their importance for the life of the city, and to benefit from the ‘common utility that is drawn from a free way of life’.105 This is ‘a pre-liberal conception of freedom by which laws defend the citizen not from the state, but from any subject who can take away his life, his goods, and his honour’ and thus, leaving aside the labels that thinkers from Berlin to Skinner and Pocock to Pettit have attached to this interpretation, ‘Machiavelli’s conception of 98 See Münkler (2007), 131–49 and Bec (1985), 41–5. The arch-devil Belfagor, in fact, chooses Florence for his adventure on earth, because ‘it seemed to him most fit to support one who employed his funds in money-lending’ (MCW II, 871); for the relationship between usury and the lampooning of capitalism, see Nelson (1949); the relationship between capital and usury appears in FH IV.30, 179. 99 D I.16, 44. 100 D II.2. He appears truly to find himself in front of someone who ‘championed the ascent of [bourgeois] society’: Horkheimer (1993), 335; t.m. This hypothesis, however, does not deal exhaustively with Machiavelli’s position, which if on the one hand it tells and analyses the history of this ascent, on the other hand it sets some limits to its support for bourgeois society. 101 102 103 D I.6, 21–2. D I.17, 48. D I.7, 24–5; t.m. 104 105 D I.33, 71. D I.16, 45.

50

Constituting Freedom

freedom escapes any scheme, [because] it remains an eminently political conception of freedom, […] in the non-juridical sense.’106 For Machiavelli, being free does not correspond to dominating,107 and it is possible only because the ‘populars (popolari)’ being unable ‘to seize [the freedom], they do not permit others to seize it’.108 The free and civil way of life is not a form of government and life respectful of the part (not class) hierarchy.109 Instead it is a paradoxical ‘conflictual equilibrium’110 or an unbalanced equilibrium that is asymmetrical, unstable, and always teetering on the brink of chaos, like an acrobat swaying as he walks on the high wire. It is a balancing act in which freedom and security are not guaranteed if not by placing oneself at risk in the tumults, which define an empty and unpredetermined space opened by the clashes that occur when the people ‘broke out into the streets […] shouting’, with ‘open disturbances (clamoribus modo apertis)’ and, much more dangerously, with ‘secret gatherings and conferences’111 that may lead to the use of arms.112 Politics ‘preserves life only if it regenerates, if it disturbs the equilibrium, if it produces differences. Equilibrium, on the other hand, is a principle of disorder, it makes one slide towards death’.113 Thus, however paradoxical it may seem, being virtuous above all involves fighting for freedom. The inability to do so indicates the presence of corruption. In fact, in a ‘corrupt city’ the governors are ‘not those who had more virtue but those who had more power (potenza)’,114 for which reason one cannot ‘live politically’ in it.115 And if the great, who have more power, are in charge, there is struggle but no virtue: not all struggles are equal. There is a profound difference between the tumults (of the people) and the discords (of the great): tumults express the desire not to be dominated and, ergo, of keeping clear the space of freedom in which the political struggle for the 106

107 108 Barberis (1999), 69. D I.40, 88. D I.5, 18. On the contrary: Guicciardini (2000), 23 and (2008), 19, 35–40. 110 Terray (1993), 159. 111 Livy (1967), II.23, 292–3; II.27, 306–7; a description taken up by Machiavelli in D I.4, 16–17. 112 See D I.54, 109; III.22, 268 and III.26, 272–3; FH I.27, 38; II.36, 97; II.39, 101; III.17, 128. Good tumults, therefore, cannot be reduced to bloodless ones, as Pedullà affirms—(2011), 42, 132, 176, 211—nor can the ‘modes’ of the tumults examined by Machiavelli be reduced to the secessio and the detractio militiae—Pedullà (2011), 136–7—since, on occasion, they are ‘extraordinary and almost wild (efferati)’ (D 1.4, 16). Violence, for Machiavelli, is not a problem in itself, but only if it is private rather than public and connected to the desire not to be dominated—Lefort (2012), 236–7: ‘the cruelties of the multitude are against whoever [the multitude] fear will seize the common good; those of a prince are against whoever he fears will seize his own good’ (D I.58, 119). The goodness of tumults does not depend on whether or not they are violent, but on the effect they produce, as Pedullà also recognizes: (2011), 168. Tumults are good if they make it possible to order freedom, otherwise they are bad or useless, whether they are violent or non-violent; the discrimination is political, not moral, so that even tumults caused by ‘bad aims’ can be useful: Pedullà (2011), 170. 113 114 115 Zanardi (1982), 74. D I.18, 50. D III.8, 238. 109

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

51

common good is waged. Discords, on the other hand, express the desire for domination, the intention to close the space of freedom, the political sphere, and to divide the city rather than unite it through mixture.116 There are therefore virtuous clashes (tumults) and wicked ones (discords), and they do not equate in any way.117 Furthermore, only ‘the common good […] makes cities great [and it] is not observed if not in republics’.118 In fact, ‘whoever examines their [of the tumults] end well will find that they have engendered not any exile or violence unfavourable to the common good but laws and orders in benefit of public freedom’.119 Ruination is ‘inevitable when social discords are polluted by the thirst for wealth’, when ‘the individual well-being becomes absolute, imposing itself as the sole political value’.120 The partisan nature of the common good must not escape, not because it matches the ideology or the moral values, economic interests or political needs of one part, but in the sense that it is incarnate in a part: the humour of ‘not wanting to be dominated’ is displayed and presented on the political scene always and only by one part. The schism between the humours gives structure to the political sphere,121 it is not an anthropological or moral constant, but rather a political one since ‘in all cities and in all people there are the same desires and the same humours, and there always have been’.122 The invariants, then, are desires and humours, not people. If there were no people who did not want to be dominated, there would not be a political space for a free and civil way of life, but only a struggle for goods or private interests and, therefore, a closed pre- or post-political space.

2.6. THE P ARADIGM OF F LORENCE Florence is another paradigm compared to that of Rome. Florence is not an example of a good constitution, because its fundamental characteristics are imbalance and a proliferation of instances of struggle between the humours, even if such struggles enabled it not to close itself within a space determined by the relationships of power between the parts. Its capacity for resistance, in fact, allowed it to develop a virtue rooted in all its citizens.

116 FH III.5. Commenting on fragment DK B 125 of Heraclitus, ‘even the kukeōn [ritual drink] separates (diistatai), if it is not stirred (mē kinoumenos)’, Loraux writes: ‘the city is a mixture as long as citizens of all kinds mix with one another […]. If there is no agitation, there is division. Or again: without struggle there is division’: Loraux (2001), 108–10. The last sentence does not appear in the translation used here, although it is present in the French original. 117 118 Lefort (2012), 460–1 and Visentin (2013), 280. D II.2, 130. 119 120 121 D I.4, 16. Barbuto (2007), 17. Geuna (2013), 112. 122 D I.39, 83.

52

Constituting Freedom

In a capitalist context tumults represent the struggle among the desires of the people and those of the great and ‘it is the force of [popular] desire that keeps open the question of the unity of the [city], [because] it does not allow the [collectivity] to be closed within the registry of [part] domination’.123 The common good is not, in Machiavelli, a form of harmonious coexistence or something held in common by everyone, but it corresponds to ‘the desires of free peoples [that] are rarely pernicious to freedom because they arise either from being oppressed or from suspicion that they may be oppressed’.124 In Florence, struggles favoured the mercantile growth, transforming inequality into equality. The paradigms of Rome and Florence, while exhibiting two very different models of economic and political development, have in common the fact that their expansion, territorial or mercantile, is always connected to citizenship and is possible only if it does not suppress the encounter-clash between the humours. Florence’s open unity, which meant that ‘it could easily have been reordered in any form of government by a wise lawgiver’,125 is due to the struggles of the people for an equal standing between the humours that is neither legal nor economic but political and material, the goal of which is not to produce only equivalence among the forces in play, but also a constitution suitable for a free and civil way of life. For this reason, tumults are not enough, even if they are one of the principles of virtue, because they are portents of freedom only if they take place in a city that is not entirely corrupt, one capable of combining the laws and the different humours and of giving each one its proper vent.126 If this does not happen, the constitution declines and corruption spreads causing scandals and discords between individuals with regard to private matters and property. Tumults have the task of highlighting the common good as a partisan good: do not dominate and do not be dominated. Florence had produced equality, but at the cost of an unstable constitution, which gave rise to the proliferation of sects and changes of government that made living freely and civilly difficult, in spite of favouring the development of the virtue that prevented the Florentine ‘matter’ from becoming totally corrupt. The equality achieved by Florence, which was the crucial condition for constructing a non-corrupt republic, is thus framed within a constitution that obviates the emergence of factions with the concomitant instability and continual change of governments, and also preserves equality without neutralizing the political struggles that produce it, being at once durable and dynamic. This is the problem that Machiavelli tried to solve, but before examining Machiavelli’s proposal (see Chapter 4) it is necessary to carry out a lengthy investigation into the historical forms assumed by the Florentine constitutions (see Chapter 3). 123 126

Lefort (1978), 229. D I.4, 17; I.7; III.6, 220.

124

D I.4, 17.

125

FH III.1, 106.

Tumults and the Birth of Florence

53

To introduce the problem, one must keep in mind that there are cities which ‘were given laws by one alone and at a stroke, either in their beginning or after not much time’, as ‘Lycurgus to the Spartans’ did, and others instead that ‘had them by chance and at many different times, and according to accidents, as had Rome’,127 ‘ordered by itself and by so many prudent men’:128 [1] so that republic can be called happy whose lot is to get one man so prudent that he gives it laws ordered so that it can live securely under them without needing to correct them. [2] On the contrary, that city has some degree of unhappiness that, by not having fallen upon one prudent orderer, is forced of necessity to reorder itself. Of these [3] still more unhappy is that which is the farthest from order, and [4] that one is farthest from it that by its orders is altogether off the right road that might lead it to the perfect and true end. It is almost impossible for those in this degree [4] to repair themselves by any accident whatever; the others [2 and 3] that, if they do not have perfect order, have taken a beginning that is good and capable of becoming better, can by the occurrence of accidents become perfect. But it is indeed true that they will never order themselves without danger, because enough men never agree to a new law that looks to a new order in a city unless they are shown by a necessity that they need to do it. Since this necessity cannot come without danger, it is an easy thing for the republic to be ruined before it can be led to a perfection of order. This is vouched for fully by the republic of Florence.129

Already in the Discourses I.2 Florence is not totally corrupt (case 4). If Sparta was blessed by fortune, which gave it Lycurgus (case 1), then Rome (case 2) and Florence (case 3) were less lucky but not entirely unfortunate, since they had a good or rather free beginning, albeit to a different degree.130 This enabled Rome to achieve perfect order via a haphazard route in which it responded virtuously to events, while another path led Florence to instability. Finally, it should be pointed out that for Machiavelli, the founder and legislator are not necessarily one and the same, as in the example of Lycurgus. In Sparta, as in Rome and Florence, fortune was one the founders, though not the legislator.131 Whereas Sparta had only one legislator, Rome had many, although this was not why it failed to reach perfection. In short, in fortunate cases there might be only one legislator, but there is never only one founder, because fortune always plays an important role, although not exclusively. And so we must now examine how Machiavelli describes the combination of virtue and fortune within the political and institutional history of Florence.

127 129 131

128 D I.2, 10. D I.49, 101. D I.2, 10–11; the bracketed numbering is mine. An idea that can also be found in P VI, 21.

130

D I.18, 49.

3 Political History of the Florentine Institutions 3.1. THE S TRUGGLES BETWEEN THE N OBLES AND THE DIVISION OF THE PE OPLE (1215– 9 8 ) The Histories begins in medias res ‘among other very powerful (potentissime) families in Florence were the Buondelmonti and Uberti; near to them were the Amidei and the Donati’. The circumstance indicates a state of division and tension, as the words ‘very powerful’ denote. In the setting of the family divisions of Florentine politics, the scheme of the rich widow Donati to marry off her daughter to Buondelmonte Buondelmonti has to be speeded up ‘when chance brought about the betrothal of Messer Buondelmonte to a young girl of the Amidei family’. Taking action during the window of opportunity between the engagement and the wedding, the widow sets out to put a stop to things by inducing Buondelmonte to change his mind.1 This scene sets the tone for the Histories, because it suggests the central importance of the appetites of the parts—which have already fragmented into factions (in line with the overall bent of the book)—in the affairs of the city and at the same time indicates the form that the conflictual structure of reality assumes in individuals. Not only is the city divided into factions that fight over private goods, but also each individual is divided among the different desires that influence his or her actions.2 As it turned out, Buondelmonti was bewitched by the charms of the young Donati after her mother ‘let him see her’. This prompted a change (clinamen) of his will and he decided to marry her, casting aside the daughter of the Amidei with whom he was already engaged, ‘not thinking of the faith he had pledged or the injury he did in breaking it, or of the evils he might encounter 1

FH II.3, 55. This Spaltung demonstrates that individuals and not just groups are divided, unmasking the mystification of the liberal conception of the parallel between the individual and the atom, despite their common etymological roots. 2

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

55

from breaking faith’. The evils materialized immediately, since ‘as soon as this thing became known, the Amidei and the Uberti families, which were related by marriage, were filled with indignation’, and this led to the formation of two new factions—the Buondelmonti and the Donati on one side, and the Amidei and the Uberti on the other—and subsequently to the murder of Buondelmonti.3 The new division is the encounter between private desires, social conventions, and political and private expediencies deemed immoral. Highlighting the purely private interests that drive the behaviour of the protagonists, Machiavelli shows that the blindness resulting from attitudes such as theirs leads to the ‘ruin [of] a free way of life’:4 ‘the shift from the struggle for honours to the struggle for things (roba) [is a] cause of the degeneration of the phenomenon of conflict’,5 because ‘much more men esteem property than honours’.6 Florence is torn apart by the various private, inbred, and unavoidable desires of the factions and families, and of the individuals who comprise them. Its exemplary nature, therefore, constitutes an aporia: in the cities the parts are intrinsic, yet are also the cause of the city’s ruin. Florence, however, actually lives on thanks to all of this, because a capitalist-mercantile city can exist and last only in this state of turmoil. Florence is the example of the new world and calls for a completely novel kind of knowledge: the ancient world has disappeared and that which has replaced it cannot be confronted with only knowledge gained in the past. Is it possible, then, that in such a city, politics— in other words the inevitable struggle among the parts—does not always lead to the brink of ruin? Is there a ‘virtue of disunion’, that makes ‘civil conflict [ . . . ] the engine of a free and powerful [city]’?7 The vendetta ‘divided the whole city’ leading to the formation of two factions that fought for a long time ‘without one dislodging the other’, continually alternating between truces and conflicts.8 This situation was the ‘dentation’ for the intervention of another force, with which the Guelph and Ghibelline parts that already existed outside, entered the city.9 The void between the Florentine factions favoured the involvement of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) who, seeking support in Tuscany for his attempt to become ‘king of Naples’ and wishing to strengthen his armies ‘against the Church’,10 sided with the Uberti, radicalizing and transforming the nature of the Florentine division. Once Frederick II had died (13 December 1250), the ‘men of the middle (uomini di mezzo)’ produced ‘the so-called constitution of the first people’,11 bringing peace back to the city and favouring the Guelph part.

3 6 10

FH II.3, 55–6. D I.37, 80. FH II.3, 56.

4 5 D I.7, 24. Del Lucchese (2001), 75. 8 9 Lefort (1978), 232. FH II.3, 56. FH II.4. 11 Cabrini (1985), 46–59.

7

56

Constituting Freedom

The ‘men of the middle’, identified with the popolo grasso, ‘a [group] between the nobles on the one hand and the artisans, small merchants, and workers [the so-called lesser people] on the other’,12 were certainly not impartial or neutral. However, they had ‘more credit with the people’ and, being united, ‘it seemed to them that the time had come to take the form of a free way of life and an order that would enable them to defend themselves, before the new emperor should acquire forces’.13 The initiative of the ‘men of the middle’ established orders that were congenial to them and would counterbalance the power of the nobles, without neutralizing the struggles, but instead turning them into an engine of the government. This is how the appointment of the ‘two foreign judges’, the ‘Captain of the people’ and the ‘Podestà’ should be seen. It was an act that gave Florence ‘the look of two republics, the Comune and the Popolo’, in which ‘the nobility and the people faced each other always ready to fight, yearning to overpower and to exclude each other in turn, and each [having] their own armies, councils, and insignias’:14 laws and armies, therefore, ‘because no order is stable without providing itself with a defender’.15 And ‘on these military and civil orders the Florentines founded their freedom’.16 The significance that Machiavelli attributes to the figure of the captain of the people is important. While in the Discourses, I.49 he was still seen: in a highly pernicious line of continuity with the old orders that originated from the city’s original state of servitude, [ . . . ] in the Histories, in which any reference to the burdensome legacy of Florence’s servile origin and the relationship between old and new orders had disappeared, the constitution of the first people emerges as a completely new situation.17

This is in keeping with the recognition of the virtue of the Florentines, which is expressed in the resistance to the disruptive potential of the struggles between factions through the institution of popular orders. The appearance on the political scene of the popolo grasso, capable of uniting, without ever unifying, the bipolar situation of the forces in play, made the year 1250 the high point of Florentine history. The mediation of the popolo grasso was in fact the imposition over the whole city of a constitution tailor-made for itself, of an organization that presents itself and constitutes itself as the political force of the city, where it flanked the noble orders as a counterweight. The ‘twelve citizens’, known as ‘the Ancients’18 were chosen among the people and they alone were ‘the supreme magistracy of the people and a Council that exists around the Captain’.19 The popolo grasso produced a reality that was not there before and which lasted until it could live on by recreating a need for it.

12 16

Fiorini, 129. FH II.6, 58.

13 17

14 FH II.4, 57. Fiorini, 130. 18 Cabrini (1985), 58. FH II.5, 57.

15

FH II.5, 57. 19 Fiorini, 131.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

57

The ‘first division’20 refers to the constitution of the popolo grasso. A constitution that produced the acquisition of ‘authority and force (forze)’ made Florence become the ‘head of Tuscany’ and ‘among the first cities of Italy’: it lasted ‘ten years’.21 The Guelph constitution disappeared because the Ghibellines managed ‘to regain the state’22 by reproducing the logic of the sects. The Ghibellines reformed the orders of the city on the basis of the interests of their part, reducing Florence to obeying a single individual (Manfred) and, ‘abolishing the magistrates and every other order through which any form of its freedom might appear’. They thus made themselves the enemy of ‘the collectivity (l’universale)’,23 creating the basis for their ‘ruin’.24 The Ghibellines, while showing that they knew how to grasp an opportunity, could not handle victory, although their government lasted ‘six years’.25 Their mistake consisted in seeing too late that ‘it would be well to win the people to their side, whom they had previously aggravated by every possible injury, by giving them some benefits’26 without considering that ‘a republic or a prince should not defer benefiting men in their necessities’.27 And, in fact, ‘if they had applied those remedies before necessity came, it would have been useful, but as they applied them now unwillingly (senza grado), the remedies were not only not useful but hastened their ruin’.28 Political action in the city is always immersed in the fragility of its foundation, and has no guarantee. This can be seen in the ‘victorious people’, who this time fell short of creating a constitution. It is thus not the people who are the bearers of the ‘good of the republic’,29 but rather its ability to move within the contingency of the struggles that dynamically determines a situation, like an army during a battle. It is not therefore the stable foundation of civil coexistence, because it is an inconsistent and unstable force among the others immersed in the struggles. The election to the papacy of Giovanni Gaetano Orsini (Nicholas III, 1277–80) changed things, and Machiavelli registers a new clinamen, interrupting the apparent continuum of his narrative with a personal critical observation of Guelph politics, hitherto inseparable from his praise for the people of Florence: the pontiffs always feared one whose power (potenza) had become great in Italy, even though it had grown through the favours of the Church, and because they

20

21 22 FH II.2, 55. FH II.6, 58; Fiorini, 134–5. FH II.6, 58. Here the ‘collectivity’ is not only the popolo grasso but all the non-noble citizens. The people constitute an uncertain figure of the ineliminable schism within the city and the source of its politics. The term ‘collectivity (universale)’ never refers to all the inhabitants of a territory, but the whole of a particular group, such as, for example, the citizens—Costa (1999), I, 58—from which are excluded: ‘the plebs, made up of unsalaried workers, poor artisans, servants, domestic workers, apprentices’, Del Águila-Chaparro (2006), 44–5; women, see Pitkin (2004); Verrier (2004); Spackman (2010), 223–38; and for a different reading, Cavallo (2007), 123–48. 24 FH II.7, 59 (translation modified; hereafter signified as t.m.); and D I.16. 25 26 27 28 FH II.9, 61. FH II.8, 60. D I.32, 70. FH II.8, 60. 29 FH II.9, 61. 23

58

Constituting Freedom

sought to bring down that power, there arose those frequent tumults and frequent changes that occurred in Italy. For the fear of one power (potente) brought the growth of someone weak, and when that one had grown, he was to be feared, and being feared they sought to bring him down.30

The arrival of the pope marked the start of the ‘papal signoria’, with which ‘the pontiff automatically becomes Senator of Rome for life’.31 Machiavelli denounced this policy, confirming what he had said in earlier works and the polemical setting of the Histories,32 which not only speak of internal struggles in Florence, but also take part in them. After this, since ‘Florence was then in very bad condition because the Guelph nobility had become insolent and did not fear the magistrates, [ . . . ] the heads of the people’ called back the Ghibellines ‘to put a stop to this insolence’. After various reversals, ‘a new form of regime (reggimento)’, with the Priors as ‘first magistracy’, was instituted in 1282.33 This marks ‘the moment in which the government of Florence, linking itself closely to the guilds (Arti), acquires the character of the government of the people and the merchants’ and with it a ‘natural tendency to become a little more exclusive every day’.34 This ‘magistracy’, in fact, ‘was the cause [ . . . ] of the ruin of the nobles, because through various accidents they were excluded from it by the people and afterwards crushed without any respect’. The victory of the people was brought about by the nobles themselves, who ‘in the beginning [ . . . ] consented to it [the institution of the Priors] because they were not united; for, as one desired too much to take away the state of another, they all lost it’. Under the ‘Priors’, later called ‘Signori’, the Florentines remained ‘quiet within [the city] for some time’ and the internal peace of the city made possible external expansion (augumento); consequently, ‘as the city grew in men and riches, it appeared appropriate also to extend the walls’.35 Cabrini notes that ‘with chapter XII [ . . . ] emerges, for the first time in the work, [the] subject of the inevitability of the struggles between nobles and people that constitute a sort of red line [ . . . ] of the complex [ . . . ] Machiavellian meditation’.36 In this context, a deeper division comes to light because, if: the wars outside and the peace within had almost eliminated the Ghibelline and the Guelph parts in Florence; only those humours were still excited that are naturally wont to exist in all cities between the powerful (potenti) and the people; for since the people want to live according to the laws and the powerful want to command to the laws, it is not possible for them to agree.37

30 32 33 36

31 FH II.10, 63. Mondin (1995), 230. See P XI; D I.12; Dionisotti (1980), 374, 377–8, 393–4. 34 35 FH II.11, 63–4. Fiorini, 152. FH II.11, 64. 37 Cabrini (1985), 95. FH II.12, 64; t.m.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

59

Only external wars38 forced internal divisions to be temporarily shelved, so that the city could be defended from the enemies that threatened it. In fact, the truce between the parts lasted only as long as the war, after which the humours re-emerged. Behind the division between the parts of Guelphs and Ghibellines lies the necessary one between the humours, even if from this point onwards the theory of humours begins to falter. What seemed natural in the Roman paradigm—the difference between those who want to dominate and those who do not wish to be dominated—appears to lose precision in the paradigm of Florence. If in Rome the separation between ‘nobles’ and ‘ignobles’39— between the patricians and non-nobles, the plebeians—was clear (or assumed to be so by Machiavelli and believed to be so by others, including his friends from the Orti Oricellari),40 in Florence, thanks to the people, it is more confused.41 The humours begin to be transversal and are no longer capable, assuming that they ever were, of identifying a specific position. The fluctuation of the term ‘people’ is remarkable. In only the chapters of the Histories analysed up to now, it is used in relation to: all Florentines;42 the non-nobles43 or the non-powerful44 in a general sense; the popolo grasso;45 or just one part, for example the ‘Guelph people’.46 Side by side with this ambiguity there is an even bigger one between the use of the word ‘people’ as a synonym of collectivity (universale)47 and a specific part separate from the plebs.48 The culmination of this then comes when the popolo grasso is divided internally on the issue of how the nobles should be treated:49 in this case there emerges a new division in the people and, with it, the people’s own will to command,50 which was meant to be the natural humour of the nobility alone. The people demonstrate their partisan nature in the interplay among different interests in the city, which is founded on the continued division of the people. Indeed, with the establishment of the ‘Gonfalonier of justice’,51 the guilds began to introduce ‘new laws to exclude the great [ . . . ] from offices and put them in a position of civil inferiority’.52 The opposition of the nobles, in particular the Guelphs, immediately made itself heard, leading the people, the part that now wanted to dominate, to harden their policy. And so, in a short time, Florence fell into the ‘same disorders’ as always.53 Not knowing what to do, the people called for ‘Giano della Bella, a man of very noble lineage but a lover of the freedom of the city’, who, together with the ‘heads of the guilds’, reformed it, strengthening the Gonfalonier militarily, increasing the obligations of the nobles, hardening the penalties for offenders, and decreeing that the ‘public report (fama) was sufficient for passing judgment’ 38 41 43 45 48 52

39 40 DRGF 102. D I.5, 18. See Gilbert (1949). 42 Borrelli (2013) and Visentin (2013), 278–83. FH dedication, 3; preface, 6. 44 FH preface, 7; II.4, 57; II.14, 66–7. FH II.12, 64. 46 47 FH II.8; II.9; II.11; II.13; II.14, 67. FH II.7, 59. FH II.7, 59. 49 50 51 FH preface, 7. FH II.14, 67. FH III.5, 111. FH II.12, 65. 53 Fiorini, 155. FH II.12, 65.

60

Constituting Freedom

(a provision that recalls the perniciousness of the calumnies denounced in Discourses I.8). Thus: by these laws, which were called the Ordinances of justice, the people acquired much reputation, and Giano della Bella much hatred, because the powerful had a very bad opinion of him as the destroyer of their power, and the rich men of the people envied him because it appeared to them that his authority was too much.

At the first opportunity, in fact, they forced him into ‘voluntary exile’.54 After Giano’s departure (in 1295), ‘the nobility rose up in hope of regaining its dignity; and judging the ills to have arisen from its divisions, the nobles united together’ and asked ‘the Signoria [ . . . ] to moderate in some part the severity of the laws’ made against them. So it was that ‘between the desire of the nobles and the suspicion of the people, they came to arms’. In actual fact, the war was averted, ‘while the one part and the other were preparing for battle’, by a crossparty alliance: ‘some men of the people as well as of the nobles, along with certain men of religion of good repute, placed themselves in the middle to pacify them’. They reminded the nobles that the reason for the laws passed against them was their ‘pride (superbia)’ and their ‘bad government’ and that taking up arms now meant ‘to wish to ruin their fatherland and to worsen their own condition’ and, finally, that ‘the people were far superior to them in number, riches, and hatred’. At the same time, they reminded the people ‘that it was not prudent always to want the ultimate victory, and that it was never a wise course to make men desperate, because he who does not hope for good does not fear evil’; and, finally, that the nobility ‘was that which had honoured the city in war, and therefore it was neither a good nor a just thing to persecute it with such hatred’. They therefore advised the people to moderate the laws against the nobles and to avoid war, because ‘many times it had been seen that the many were overcome by the few’. But there were internal divisions among the people who held ‘diverse views’: those who wanted to fight before the nobles acquired reinforcements, on the basis of the belief that they would never be placated by milder laws and that ‘their pride was so great that they would never lay it aside unless forced to do so’; and those ‘many others, wiser and of calmer spirit’ who believed that the former were not very eager to moderate the laws, but extremely eager to come ‘to battle’. The opinion of the latter ultimately prevailed, ‘provided that in accusations against the nobles, witnesses would be necessary’ de visu.55 At this point Machiavelli finds himself immersed in the stream of divisions of which he had spoken in the preface to the Histories and which made him play down the rigid connection between the people and the desire not to be commanded or oppressed. This was because what marked out the history of Florence is the division of the people between those who wanted to dominate 54

FH II.13, 65–6.

55

FH II.14, 66–7; t.m.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

61

and those who did not want to be dominated. In other words, the essence of the people is not the humour of not wanting to be dominated or wanting to dominate, but rather it is those who act according to the desire neither to be dominated nor to dominate that can legitimately bear the name popolo.56 The historical period to which Machiavelli refers here was for Florence, but not exclusively so, one of great internal and external transformations: in the city new figures—the merchants—imposed themselves arrogantly, demanding the right to participate in political life in virtue of their wealth. But while the people could no longer be excluded by the city, their inclusion was problematic, because they continually divided themselves on account of being a part based on private interests different to those of the nobles. In this situation, the danger of the temptation of tyranny was always present in the desire of one part or the other to make itself everything, to govern outside the law, as would transpire with the Duke of Athens,57 because ‘when a people brings itself to make this error of giving reputation to one individual, because he beats down those it [the people] holds in hatred, and that individual is wise, it will always happen that he will become tyrant of the city’.58 In consequence of the rise of the bourgeoisie, in fact, the humours are shrinking to just one for both the nobles and for the people59 because ‘neither of them desiring to be subjects (sottoposti) either to the laws or to men’,60 thus to dominate and not to be dominated. The desires that derive from this, however, are many—and here begins the shift from the humours and the parts to the ‘humours of the parts (umori delle parti)’.61 In the modern world the opposing humours of the nobles and the people fade away.62 Instead, the driving force of history is now the desires of individuals and, even these, in their infinite variety, cannot be reduced to a single eternal substance. The mixture, then, is no longer the coexistence of the parts in government, as in the Discourses, but the continual formation, destruction, and renewal of the parts, 56 The people thus seems to be ‘the source of a politics that does not have by telos the institution of a political form’, because being ‘characterized by a desire not to be dominated, its political action always exceeds its representation (figurabilité) in a form of political domination’ and, therefore, its particular political role is the ‘deconstruction rather than the construction of forms of government’: Vatter (2003), 156–7. Interpreting the politics of the people only as a subtraction does not seem convincing to me, because the problem of the people is not only that of exercising its deconstructive power, but of ensuring that it is also a constituent force in a suitable constitution. The desire of the people is not only reactive or resistive in relation to the great, but also proactive and constructive, because its aim is the free and civil way of life. Certainly, however, the people are not, for Machiavelli, only ‘passive’—on the contrary Foucault (2009), 271—not even in the Prince. 57 58 59 60 FH II.33–7. D I.40, 88; t.m. FH V.4, 189. FH IV.1, 146. 61 FH IV.26, 173; t.m. 62 The presence of two humours in the Prince IX is in line with this perspective because Books VII–VIII of Histories talk about the constitution of the Medicean principality that emerges beyond appearances, like a retrograde attempt at resistance and preservation to trap the rise of the bourgeoisie in the feudal folds of paternalism.

62

Constituting Freedom

the ceaseless shattering of the one humour into warring parts to satisfy their desires, as envisaged in the Discursus. The one humour is reflected in infinite desires that share the same objective and, therefore, must all find a way to vent their feelings possibly in an ‘ordinary mode’ and not in an ‘extraordinary mode’.63 Peace is not the end or the absence of struggles but rather it is the constant application of the forces at play in a new constitution, the aim of which is not to neutralize them, but to prevent the possibility of degeneration into tyranny. The orders of 1298 did not eliminate the disagreements between the nobles and the people, and ‘although there was some anger (indignazione) and suspicion between the nobles and the people, nonetheless they produce no bad effect, and everyone lived united in peace’. For this very reason ‘never was our city in a greater and more prosperous state than in these times’, so much so that ‘if this peace was not disturbed by new enemies inside, it did not need to fear those outside’. The military power of Florence had grown to such a point that its citizens no longer feared ‘either the Empire or its own [political] exiles, and with its [of Florence] forces it could have responded to all the states of Italy’.64 But evil came once more from within, because ‘there were two families in Florence, the Cerchi and the Donati, who were very powerful (potentissime) in wealth, nobility, and men’:65 an incipit which, recalling that of the Histories II.3, introduces the analysis of this new division.

3.2. THE S TRUGGLES BETWEEN THE NOBLES AND THE P O P O L O G R AS S O: THE DUKE OF ATH EN S AND THE CIOMPI ’S TU M U LT (1 2 9 8–1 3 5 3 ) Even peace and happiness do not guarantee stability, ‘since all things of men are in motion and cannot stay steady’.66 The ‘malign humours’,67 which take root in the human soul, were aroused by another family conflict (like that of 1215). This took place in Pistoia, a city divided into two factions, the Whites and the Blacks, which, being unable to resolve their discord, sought allies in Florence: the Blacks with the Donati and the Whites with the Cerchi. It was ‘this humour [that] increased the old hatred between the Cerchi and the Donati’.68 Like a seed blown in from outside, the division in Pistoia took hold and destabilized Florence. The factor that marked the difference from the incipit of Histories II.3 was the disparate social background of the Cerchi and the Donati: the former, ‘of 63 66

64 65 See D I.4 and I.7. FH II.15, 68; t.m. FH II.16, 68. 67 68 D I.6, 23. FH II.16, 68. FH II.17, 69.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

63

popular origin but made extremely rich from trade’; the latter an ‘ancient house of noble blood’.69 Compared to the ‘very powerful families’ that dominated the scene in 1215, in around 1300 the fight was no longer contained within the nobility, but was between a nouveau riche nobility (the Cerchi) and a long-standing but less wealthy one (the Donati). The division of Pistoia spread to Florence, causing ‘the whole city’ to split between the ‘white’ part (Cerchi/Ghibellines) and the ‘black’ part (Donati/ Guelphs), and the antagonism became so serious that even Pope Boniface VIII could not resolve it.70 Each part remained ‘malcontent’71 and the tumults continued until 1304, when ‘Florence was agitated by fire and steel’. The story of Corso Donati, who tried without success to ‘become arbiter between of both parts’and who, on account of his tyrannical ambitions was killed in 1308, closes the analysis of the internal fights between the Whites and the Blacks.72 On the death of ‘Messer Corso’, in fact, ‘the tumults ceased’73 but not the travails of Florence. The inability of the two factions to find a solution to their disagreements—the result of their incapability to make the people (the rest of the city) friendly to them—left the city unstable, although temporarily pacified. The invasion of Italy by Emperor Henry VII reignited the rivalry between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines which, after a series of mishaps, confirmed the fact that ‘it is natural to the Florentines that every state annoys them and every accident divides them’74 and after a period of calm established in 1328, led in 1340 to ‘new causes of change (alterazioni)’.75 Machiavelli’s narrative, from Histories II.16 to II.32, is repeatedly punctuated by the refrain that ‘always after an unforeseen event some old laws are annulled and others are renewed’,76 but the stormy period of 1298–1340 is important not so much for the usual superficial changes to the constitution, as for it being a forewarning of the years 1340–46 and ‘the events [ . . . ] perhaps the most crucial and explosive in the entire history of Florence’.77 It was the ambition of the ‘powerful citizens’78—the ‘popolani grassi’79— that reignited the ‘civil war of Florence’.80 Not content with the control they had established, they sought to increase it by giving ‘all authority’ to a captain, thereby setting the scene for a reaction by the nobles who, by means of a plot— and we know what Machiavelli thought of it81—attempted to ‘reform the state’ of the city by calling to arms the people who, clearly, were not the popolo grasso. The nobles were defeated, but this was not enough for the incumbent rulers, who: as men do almost always, the more authority they have, the worse they use it and the more insolent they become. Whereas at first it was one captain of the guard 69 72 76 79

Fiorini, 168–9. FH II.21, 75; t.m. FH II.28, 82. Fiorini, 225.

70

71 FH II.17. FH II.20, 72. 74 75 FH II.24, 78. FH II.25, 79. FH II.32, 86. 77 78 Cabrini (1985), 255; FH II.32–42. FH II.32, 86. 80 81 Cabrini (1985), 256. See P XIX; D III.6; FH VIII.1. 73

64

Constituting Freedom

that afflicted Florence, they elected another in the countryside (contado), and with very great authority so that men suspect to them could live neither in Florence nor outside. They were so stirred up against all the nobles that they were prepared to sell the city and them so as to avenge themselves. And as they waited for the opportunity (occasione), it came up well and they used it better.82

I agree with Cabrini’s evaluation, which sees in this passage Machiavelli’s intent to denounce ‘the total political folly, which is combined with the ambitious insolence’ of the rulers, rather than ‘justify or absolve the nobles’,83 an assessment consistent with the castigation that concludes Book II of the Histories. The opportunity for this was the war against Pisa over the Signoria of Lucca which, having been lost by Florence, ‘made the people of Florence indignant against those who were governing’. The ‘twenty citizens’, who governed the city, elected a ‘new captain’, Walter of Brienne (1302–56), Duke of Athens, in the hope that he would manage ‘to check (frenare) or to remove the causes for the slanders against themselves’. The ‘great’, that is the ‘nobles [ . . . ] lived malcontents, and many of them, having known Walter [ . . . ] thought the time had come when by the ruin of the city they could put out the fire burning within them’84 or could ‘bring an end to the hatred that blazed in their hearts against the popolo [grasso]’, which had mistreated them after the defeat of 1340.85 The nobles’ desire for revenge led them to regard Walter as the instrument for accomplishing it and, as always occurs with desire, they ‘did not understand the defects that were hidden under this small advantage’.86 Capable of anything in order to gain satisfaction, the nobles, contending that ‘they had no other mode of subduing the people that had afflicted them than to put themselves under a prince’, made it possible for the duke to ‘acquire the principality’. In addition to the motivations of the nobles, linked to the abuse they had suffered at the hands of the rulers, were the mercenary wishes of ‘certain popular families’ which, ‘burdened by debts, and being without means of their own, were desirous of having those debts satisfied by others’.87 These private reasons for this action crossed partisan lines and, despite the differences between them, could precipitate but one thing: ruin. Not for nothing did Machiavelli lambast ‘the great and the people in an equal condemnation’,88 because ‘men are slower to take what they can have than to desire what they cannot get’.89 Walter did not waste his opportunity and moved by his ‘ambitious spirit [and by] a greater desire to rule; and to give himself the reputation of a severe and just man and in this way to increase his favour with the plebs, he prosecuted those who had directed the war against Lucca’. He ‘took the 82 85 88

83 84 FH II.32, 87–9. Cabrini (1985), 270. FH II.33, 89–90. 86 87 Fiorini, 234. FH II.28, 83. FH II.33, 90. 89 Cabrini (1985), 276 and n. 46. FH II.31, 86, which recalls D I.37, 78.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

65

lives’ of some ‘and condemned many to exile and many to fines’.90 Thus began the tyranny of the Duke of Athens that befell Florence because it harboured aspiring governors amongst its inhabitants. The ‘executions frightened the middle (i mediocri) citizens’,91 in other words the ‘popolani grassi that are midway [mediani] between the great and lesser people, which Machiavelli understood as one with the plebeians’:92 ‘they [the executions] satisfied only the great and the plebs—the latter because their nature is to rejoice in evil and the former so as to see themselves avenged for the many injuries received from the people.’ The popularity and support for the duke grew to such a point that he asked the governors to grant him, for the good of the city, a ‘free lordship (signoria libera) [ . . . ], since the whole city was consenting to it’, but he was turned down. His reaction was to call the people to the streets and the ‘Signori’ found no ‘other remedy than to pray to him’.93 The plea, which had no historical basis and was ‘entirely Machiavellian’,94 was delivered by the spokesperson of the governors (the ‘Twenty’ or Signori), who Machiavelli had previously strongly criticized. It was delivered as a defence of the republican freedom of Florence in the form of a summa against tyranny. This is the text in its entirety: We have come, lord, to you, [ . . . ] for it appears certain to us that you want to obtain extraordinarily that which we have not granted to you in the ordinary way. Nor is it our intention to oppose your designs with any force, but only to point out to you how heavy a weight you are taking on your back, and how dangerous the course you are selecting, so that you can always remember our advice and that of those who counsel you otherwise, not for your advantage but to vent their rage. You are seeking to enslave (fare serva) a city which has always lived free; for the lordship (signoria) which we did indeed yield to the kings of Naples was in alliance and not in slavery (servitù). Have you considered how important this is in a city like this, and how vigorous is the name of freedom, which no force can subdue, no time consume, and no merit counterbalance? Think, lord, how much force will be necessary to keep such a city enslaved (tenere serva). Foreign forces, which you can always keep, are not enough; those from inside you cannot trust because those who are your friends now and who encourage you to select this course, just as they will have fought their enemies with your authority, will seek as they can to eliminate you and make themselves princes. The plebs in whom you trust will for any accident, though the slightest, reverse itself. So in a short time you may fear to have the whole city hostile, which will be the cause of its ruin and yours. Nor will you be able to find a remedy for the evil, because those lords (signori) can make their lordship (signoria) safe who have few enemies, whom either by death or by exile it is easy to eliminate; but amidst universal hatred one never finds any security, because you never know from whence evil may spring, and he who fears every man cannot secure himself against anyone. If indeed you 90 93

FH II.33, 90. FH II.34, 90–1.

91

92 FH II.34, 90. Fiorini, 236. Cabrini (1985), 282.

94

66

Constituting Freedom

try to do it, you aggravate the dangers, because those who remain burn more with hatred and are readier for revenge. That there is not enough time to consume the desires for freedom is most certain, for freedom, one knows, is often restored in a city by those who have never tasted it but who loved it only through the memories of it left to them by their fathers; and thus, once recovered, they preserve it with all obstinacy and at any peril. And even if their fathers had not recalled it to them, the public palaces, the places of the magistrates, the ensigns of the free orders recall it. These things must be recognized with the greatest desire by citizens. Which deeds of yours do you want to be a counterweight to the sweetness of free life or to make men lose their desire for present conditions? Not if were to add all Tuscany to this command (imperio), and if every day you were to return to the city in triumph over our enemies; for all the glory would not be its but yours, and the citizens would not acquire subjects but fellow slaves in whom they would see their own slavery (servitù) aggravated. And even if your habits were saintly, your modes benign, your judgments upright, they would not be enough to make you loved; and if you believe that they would be, you would be deceiving yourself, for to a man used to living unshackled every chain weighs and every links binds him. Besides, to find a violent state with a good prince is impossible, for of necessity either they must become alike or the one quickly ruins the other. Thus, you have to believe either that you have to hold this city with the greatest violence (for such a thing the citadels, the guards, and friends from outside many times are not enough) or that you have to be content with the authority that we have given you. And we urge to this, reminding you that that dominion is alone lasting which is voluntary. Nor should you, blinded by a little ambition, be led to place yourself where, unable either to rest or to rise higher (salire), you must necessarily fall with the greatest harm to yourself and to us.95

The specific contents of this defence can be traced back to the Prince and the Discourses, but the claim that Florence had always lived free is clearly rhetorical hyperbole96 which, along with the patriotism of remembrance and of symbols, was perhaps meant to placate the tyrant by showing him the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of governing a city accustomed to being free.97 Nevertheless, the speech did not move ‘the obdurate spirit of the Duke’. Taken in by the assurances of the duke, the governors of Florence made a final attempt to contain his rise by granting him the ‘lordship (signoria)’ for a year, but this was not enough because the ‘people’, gathered in the square, cried ‘for life!’ Neither a speech nor a constitution are enough to block the rise of a tyrant in the face of the will of the ‘multitude’. The tyranny of Walter began on 8 September 1342 when, having been granted the lordship (signoria) for life, he took possession of the Palazzo Vecchio with ‘inestimable sorrow and affliction of good men, and with great pleasure by those who either in ignorance or out of wickedness had consented it’.98 95 97

96 FH II.34, 91–3; t.m. FH II.30, 84 regarding the relations with the kings of Naples. 98 P V. FH II.35, 93–4.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

67

Tyranny or ‘absolute power (potestà assoluta)’,99 is both the supremacy of one together with the neutralization of the political power of the parts, as in the example of Clearchus,100 as well as a government that takes no account of the law, as in the case of Tarquin the Proud:101 it is always one who attempts to become, and sometimes does become, everything. This phenomenon is born ‘from too great a desire of the people to be free and from too great a desire of the nobles to command. When they do not agree to make a law in favour of freedom, but one of the parts jumps to favour one individual, then it is that tyranny emerges at once’.102 In contrast to licence or ‘anarchy’103 tyranny is the government of one man ruling for his own ends, acting beyond the laws. Moreover, according to Machiavelli, the licence no longer designates ‘all the corrupted governments of Polybius, oligarchy and demagogy’,104 because in the case of licence ‘neither private men nor public were in fear, and each living in his own mode, a thousand injuries were done every day’.105 In actual fact, it is ‘the principality [that] easily becomes tyrannical’.106 If, therefore, licence is the dissolution of any political form, because everyone just follows his own desires, tyranny has a form, although it lacks ‘a lever to support it and so soon breaks’, even if only ‘in free cities’ and not absolutely—‘tyranny does not have, as such, any future’.107 All political forms are mixed—even in tyranny not all the parts are suppressed—and the methods of mixing are never identical, given that each one is distinguished from the others by the kind of imbalance that it puts in place. Tyranny combines several factors: a) the solitude of the tyrant and his monopoly over government, assisted by subjects without any autonomy; b) the absence of laws, because the only law is the will of the tyrant; c) the exclusive pursuit of the individual, that is the private interests of the tyrant; and d) the systematic use of violence and corruption. Tyranny is a political form linked to the will of one and to extraordinary means—the continual exception to laws—used to establish and preserve it, but it also depends on the presence of a collective dimension, the subjects, whose action is a paradoxical inaction, a not doing anything that does not impede nor block the tyrant. Tyranny is an intrinsic tendency of politics, a path that is never completely barred, even when it is defeated. It is the attempt to simplify the political sphere, bringing it to its ground zero by reducing all powers to one in order to bring an end to struggles and instability. It is a temptation that sometimes even the people give in to. The attempt to abolish struggles is the true reductio ad unum of politics and leads to tyranny because it prevents utterly and completely the development of virtue and consequently freedom.

99 103 106

100 101 D I.25, 61. D I.16, 46. D III.5, 217. 104 Rinaldi, 434, n. 113. Rinaldi, 209, n. 18. 107 D I.2, 11. Sasso (1987–97), II, 491, 481, 503.

105

102 D I.40, 88. D I.2, 13.

68

Constituting Freedom

Tyranny subverts every free and civil way of life108 doing damage to everyone—notwithstanding the enticements and the ‘celebrations (festeggiamenti)’ granted to the plebs109—until the last remaining sparks of politics are restricted to specific passions: the ‘indignation’ of seeing ‘the majesty of their state ruined, the orders laid waste, the laws annulled, every decent being corrupted, all civil modesty eliminated’; the ‘shame’ from being forced ‘to honour the one they especially hated’; and finally the ‘fear (timore), as they saw the frequent deaths and continuing assessments with which he impoverished and consumed the city’.110 Tyranny not only contains the politics of antipolitics (the reductio ad unum), but also stands in blatant contrast to every form of stable constitution, because every arrangement is always arbitrary and changeable. And it is precisely the abolition of the orders that activates politically the aforementioned passions: the city was accustomed to do and to speak about everything and with every license and could not bear to have its hands tied and its mouth sealed. Thus the indignation and hatred grew to such a degree that they would have inflamed not only the Florentines, who do not know how to maintain freedom and are unable to bear slavery (servitù), but any servile people to recover their freedom. Wherefore many citizens of every quality resolved (deliberarono) to lose their lives or get back their freedom.111

The past, enshrined in memory and in the history of the city, plays a decisive political role, lighting the touchpaper of indignation, shame, fear, anger, and hatred that would otherwise remain inert. Tyranny ultimately fails because, while seeking to destroy every trace of free and civil way of life, it is not capable of erasing the memory of freedom that citizens retain in themselves and see reflected in the palaces and sites of public life. The aspect that Machiavelli adds to his anti-tyrannical theory is a new consideration of the history and of the exempla linked to the cultural and political function of the memory that a city preserves in the stories of its past, in the monumentality of its public buildings, and in the traditions of its political form: the last bastion of resistance to tyranny and the antidote with which to counteract it. Appealing to the republican memory of Florence, Machiavelli turns the Histories into a theoretical and political text because it is historical112 in the sense that it does not hide its own political perspective, in contrast to naïve, if not tendentious or incorrect formulations that commend history as an objective description of the facts.

108 FH II.36, 94. Among the many measures taken by the Duke of Athens there was also the prohibition ‘to anyone to carry arms’, in other words the centralization of military power, to which Machiavelli is opposed and which distances him from Hobbesian sovereignty. 109 The Ciompi in 1342, and this is the ‘first news of an association of Florentine workers [ . . . ], they had organized themselves [ . . . ] to secure wage increases’ and, after having obtained them, ‘evoked with sorrow the good government’ of the Duke of Athens: Screpanti (2008), 53–4. 110 111 112 FH II.36, 95. FH II.36, 95. Bock (1990), 188.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

69

The three plots that emerged against the Duke of Athens, one led by the Bishop of Florence, were unsuccessful because, being uncovered, they failed in their attempt to kill him. But, even so, they did succeed in restarting the production of virtue. The duke, in fact, found out about the plans and ‘made a list of three hundred citizens’ to execute after inviting them to the palace on the pretext of needing their advice. It was the custom to communicate such summons publicly to the citizens, and they, seeing that all the conspirators had been summoned, a sign that they had been found out, were incited ‘to take up arms, preferring to die like men, arms in hand, than to be led like cattle to the slaughterhouse’. They then decided ‘to start a tumult in the Mercato Vecchio on the following day, which was the 26th of July, 1343, and after that to arm themselves and to call the people to freedom’.113 Only the possibility of their imminent death drove them to stake their lives to earn their freedom, even if the turning point that led them to hatch the plots had been caused by the passions kindled by the memory of the republic: and this is the crucial point. The taking up of arms by the conspirators ended with the ‘the whole people armed with a cry freedom’. As the ‘battle (zuffa)’ turned in its favour the people reunited ‘to give form to the state’, and agreed to establish, first of all, a new, albeit simple magistrature, the embryo of future orders: ‘fourteen citizens, half from the great and half popular, who with the bishop would have whatever authority would enable them to reform the state of Florence’.114 Furthermore, after a lively negotiation the people decided to consign to the ‘fury of the multitude’ the duke’s counsellors, who were, literally, torn to pieces and eaten. This produced ‘an accord: [ . . . ] the Duke was to depart with his men and his things in safety and to renounce all his rights (ragioni) over Florence; and then, outside the domain, he was to ratify his renunciation in the Casentino’. And so it was. The tyranny of the Duke of Athens ended on 6 August 1343. Once the problems of foreign policy were resolved,115 the Florentines ‘turned to those inside’,116 in other words to the ‘reorganization of the government of Florence’117 and the first effect of this was the restoration of the ‘debate (disputa) between the great and the popular’.118 The victory over the Duke of Athens translated into the reorganization of the constitution, i.e. as had already happened,119 into a new division. After the dispute, the conclusion was that ‘the great should have one-third of the Signoria and half of the other offices’, the first provision was the establishment of the ‘quarters’ (in place of the sixths), each headed by ‘three Signori’, while the ‘twelve Good men, who belonged both to the great and the people or, to be precise, one third to the former and two thirds to the latter’ were replaced by ‘eight councillors, four of each sort’, i.e. one from the great and one from the 113 116

FH II.36, 96–7. FH II.29, 100.

114 117

115 FH II.37, 97–8; t.m. FH II.38. 118 Fiorini, 257. FH II.39, 100.

119

FH II.5.

70

Constituting Freedom

people in each quarter, abolishing ‘the Gonfalonier of justice and those of the Companies of the people’.120 At this point, however: the government having been established with this order, the city would have settled down if the great had been content to live with that modesty which is required by civil life; but they acted in a contrary way, for as private individuals they did not want companions, and in the magistracies they wanted to be lords. Every day produced some examples of their insolence and arrogance (superbia). This displeased the people, and they lamented that from one tyrant who had been eliminated a thousand had been born. Thus instances of insolence grew on one side and indignation on the other, so that the heads of the popular side pointed out to the bishop that the great were indecent and not good companions to the people; and they persuaded him to see to it that the great contented themselves with taking part in the other offices and left to the people alone the magistracy of the Signori.121

Once again it was the insolence and arrogance of the great that destabilized the city. The bishop ‘was naturally good, but it was easy to turn him first to one side, then to another’ since he had supported and then fought against the Duke of Athens, and then favoured the great in the reorganization of the city but now sided with the people. His attempt at mediation failed, while the great promised that they would defend ‘at their peril’ the position they had conquered. The people lost no time in reacting and ‘ran to the palace, armed and shouting’, frightening the great, who returned to their houses. With ‘noise and tumult’ the people succeeded in driving away the four greats who were part of the Twelve, and the eight remaining members of the people elected twelve priors, all from the people, and ‘chose one Gonfalonier of justice and sixteen Gonfaloniers of the companies of the people’. Finally, they ‘reformed the councils so as to put the whole government in the will of the people’.122 Following the ‘great scarcity’, during which ‘the great and the lesser people (popolo minuto) were malcontent—the latter because of hunger, the former for having lost their dignities’, Andrea Strozzi attempted to ‘take over the freedom of the city’ but failed: ‘this event (accidente)’, however, ‘gave hope to the great that they could compel (sforzare) the people, since they saw that the lesser plebs (plebe minuta) was in disaccord with it’ and thus, soon, ‘the whole city was in arms’.123 An attempt by the great to raise their heads led to an ‘engagement (zuffa)’, which seems to be unlike a tumult in that it was armed of necessity. After various events,124 this ‘ended with the apocalyptic vision of the people— mainly the most ignoble part—in a state of wild, uncontrolled frenzy setting out to plunder and loot, burn and destroy houses, palaces, and the towers of the great’.125 As usual, ‘the great having been conquered, the people reordered the

120 123

FH II.39, 100 and Fiorini, 258. 124 FH II.40, 101–2. FH II.41.

121

122 FH II.39, 100–1. FH II.39, 101. 125 Cabrini (1985), 355.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

71

state’ and since ‘the people were of three sorts—powerful, middle, and the low (potente, mediocre e basso)—it was ordered that the powerful should have two Signori, the middle people three, and the low three’.126 The state was reordered in the image and likeness of the people, divided among the grasso, mezzano, and minuto, although this new constitution was ‘not centred, as it was before the arrival of the Duke of Athens, in the hands of a few popular houses—which the chronicles called powerful or referred to by the name popolo grasso that previously distinguished the major guilds from the minor ones—but belongs to the whole of the people of the guilds’. This people, in short, while participating more broadly in government, is the ‘high and middle bourgeoisie of the major guilds’, to which was added ‘the lesser people of the minor guilds’.127 The people then determined that ‘the Gonfalonier should be first from one and then from another’, i.e. from the mezzani and the popolani: beside this, all the orders of justice against the great were resumed; and to make them even weaker, many of them were mixed among the popular multitude. This ruin of the nobles was so great and afflicted their part so much that they never again dared to take up arms against the people; indeed, they became continually more humane and abject. This was the cause by which Florence was stripped not only of its arms but of all generosity. After this ruin, the city maintained its quiet until the year 1353 [ . . . ].

Thus for ten years, after which, at the end of the ‘first war against the Visconti [ . . . ], parts started up inside the city and although the nobility had been destroyed, nonetheless fortune did not lack for ways to revive new troubles (travagli) through new divisions’.128

3.3. THE S TRUGGLES BETWEEN THE POPOLO G R A S S O A N D TH E POPO LO MINUTO : TH E ‘HUMOURS O F T H E P A R T S’ ( 1 3 53 – 9 3 ) The new phase in the history of Florence began after the power of the nobles had been tamed and the war with the Archbishop of Milan had ended because: the evil fortune of our city and its own orders, which were not good, gave rise to enmity between the family of the Albizzi and that of the Ricci, which divided Florence just as at first that between the Buondelmonti and the Uberti, and afterwards that between the Donati and the Cerchi has done.129

126 128

FH II.42, 104. FH II.42, 104; t.m.

127

Fiorini, 265–6. 129 FH III.2, 106.

72

Constituting Freedom

The struggle was between the Albizzi and Ricci and between the popolo grasso (men of the middle) and popolo minuto (lesser people),130 and followed both that of the nobles (Buondelmonti and Uberti) and that of the nobles and the popolo grasso (Donati and Cerchi). Machiavelli is expressing his own disappointment, due to the discovery that ‘the pride and ambition of the great was not eliminated but taken from them by our men of the people, who now, by the wont of ambitious men, seek to obtain the first rank in the republic. Having no other modes of seizing it than by discords, they have divided the city again’.131 It is now ‘the enmities between the people and the plebs’132 caused by the ‘fatal families’ of Florence133 that comes to the centre of Machiavelli’s analysis, which is based on the bitter observation that the people (bourgeoisie) had not proved capable of developing their own virtues, including military virtue, to displace those of the nobles, instead losing themselves in a disastrous imitation of their vices. Does this mean that there is no part that is naturally and permanently virtuous and, therefore, that there is no subject, as we would say today, capable of guaranteeing the free and civil way of life? Does Machiavelli derive from this the idea that only an impersonal organized constitution (the orders, the magistracies, the collective bodies, etc.), if functioning optimally, can accomplish the task? I believe that this hypothesis is worth evaluating by examining some of the more significant aspects of Book III of the Histories. The dreadful combination of ‘evil fortune [ . . . ] and [the] orders, which were not good’ gave rise to the resumption of hostilities between the Albizzi and Ricci families134 within, however, ‘a changed political framework, outside (the absence of the popes and emperors from Italy, infested with troops [ . . . ]) and inside (because of the ruin of the great and the resulting equality)’.135 The fighting, started in 1353 ‘by chance’,136 went through various phases and ended in 1372, only to recommence in 1375 and last until 1378, the year of the tumult of the Ciompi. One of the most interesting aspects of Book III of the Histories is the fact that Machiavelli abandons ‘entirely the explanation [ . . . ] of the servile origin of Florence’137 in order to focus his attention on another matter: ‘for ever since this province extricated itself from under the forces of the Empire, its cities have had no powerful check (freno) to restrain them and have ordered their states and government so as not to be free but divided into sects. From this have arisen all the other evils and all the other disorders that appear in it.’ The problem of the ‘common corruption’, no longer resides in the half-servile,

130 133 135

131 132 Fiorini, 272. FH III.5, 111. FH III.1, 106. 134 FH III.5, 111; Cabrini (1990), 25–52. FH III.2, 106. 136 137 Cabrini (1990), 26. FH III.2, 107. Cabrini (1985), 375.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

73

half-free origin of Florence, but in the division into sects; this is ‘the evil that one sees already great and yet keeps growing’: first, there is neither union nor friendship among the citizen, except among those who have knowingly committed some wickedness either against their fatherland or against private person. And because religion and fear of God have been eliminated in all, an oath and faith given last only as long as they are useful; so men make use of them not to observe them but to serve as a means of being able to deceive more easily. And the more easily and surely the deception succeeds, the more glory and praise is acquired from it: by this, harmful men are praised as industrious and good men are blamed as fools. And truly, in the cities of Italy all that can be corrupted and that can corrupt others is thrown together: the young are lazy, the old lascivious; both sexes at every age are full of foul customs, for which good laws, because they are spoiled by wicked use, are no remedy. From this grows the avarice that is seen in our citizens and the appetite, not for true glory, but for the contemptible honours on which hatreds, enmities, differences (dispareri), and sects depend; and from these arise deaths, exiles, persecution of the good, exaltation of the wicked. For good men, trusting in their innocence, do not seek out, as do the wicked, those who will defend them and honour them extraordinary, and so they fall undefended and unhonoured. From this example arises the love of part and the power (potenza) of parts, because bad men out of avarice and ambition, and good men out of necessity, participate in them. And what it is more pernicious is to see how the promoters and princes of parts give decent appearance to their intention and their end with a pious word; for always, although they are all enemies of freedom, they oppress it under colour of defending the state either of the best (ottimati) or of the people. For the prize they desire to gain by victory is not the glory of having liberated the city but the satisfaction of having overcome others and of having usurped the principality of the city. Having been led to this point, there is nothing so unjust, so cruel, or mean (avara) that they do not dare to do it. Hence orders and laws are made not for the public but for personal utility; hence wars, pacts, and friendship are decided not for the common glory but for the satisfaction of few. And if other cities are filled with these disorders, ours is stained with them more than any other; for the laws, the statutes, and the civil orders have always been and still are ordered not in accordance with free life but by the ambition of that part which has come out in top. Whence it arises that always when one part is driven out and one division eliminated, another emerges. For in the city that prefers to maintain itself with sects rather than with laws, as soon as one sect is left there without opposition, it must of necessity divide from within itself, because the city cannot defend itself by those private modes that it had ordered in the first place for its own safety.138

This extraordinary passage refers in some respects to the following one by the anonymous member of the Ciompi139 and allows one to point out that, despite its moralistic form, the contrast between good and evil is politically defined 138

FH III.5, 109–11; t.m., my italics.

139

Cabrini (1990), 44–5, n. 52.

74

Constituting Freedom

and, with it, so is anything that deserves the name of sect. What ‘distinguishes the divisions between what is beneficial or harmful to republics [is that] the former are those in which the competing parts aim at the common good, while the latter are those in which the disagreements of the parts have a private advantage as their aim’.140 But this is not enough, in just the same way as the reference to coming together or to profit—which can be directed towards the public interest or feed ambition141—is not. Other parameters are needed, such as: a) unbelief, opportunism, or convenient changes of faith or cassock, rather than consistency; b) the intention to deceive and the rewarding of those who do so most successfully, together with the disparagement of honesty and transparency; c) bad habits, instead of respect for the law; d) avarice and the aspiration for false honours, instead of innocence; and e) lies, either noble or popular ones, which oppress freedom, the lust for power, the exclusive pursuit of personal advantage, the ad personam laws, and the continuing separating into sects, rather than living freely and with civility. All this is not an anthropological or ethical matter but a political one. Machiavelli agrees with the remedy proposed by the sanior pars of the city for the reason that Florence ‘has been brought to such equality that for it to be able to rule itself is not very difficult’, but only if ‘Signori prepare yourselves to will to do it’, because ‘the malignity [ . . . ] can be overcome with prudence by putting a check on the ambition of those ones, by annulling the orders that nourish sects, and by adopting those that do in truth conform to a free and civil way of life’.142 But the ‘fifty-six citizens’ who were given the ‘authority’, perhaps because ‘it is very true that most men are more apt to preserve a good order than to know how to find one for themselves [ . . . ], gave more thought to eliminating the present sects than to taking away the causes of future ones; so they achieved neither the one nor the other’.143 The struggles that were produced by this144 were interrupted by a new kind of tumult in the history of Florence, that of the Ciompi (18 June to 31 August 1378), of which I will highlight the political reading advanced by Machiavelli. The entrance into the political scene of the ‘lowest plebs (infima plebe)’145 was an event that would change the face of the city forever. The speech by the Gonfalonier Luigi Guicciardini (1346–1403) was still supported by the rhetoric of the concordia ordinum between the rich parts of the city and, therefore, by the invitation to avoid ‘discords [and the] disunions’ in favour of a collaborative peace that was even open to a moderate commitment to reforms provided the requests be made ‘with civility and not with tumult and arms’.146 The Ciompi, however, brought to the fore ‘the hatred that the lesser people (popolo minuto) had for the rich citizens and princes of the guilds (Arti), since 140 143 145

Fiorini, 283–6. FH III.6, 112. FH III.12, 121.

141

142 FH III.5, 109. FH III.5, 112. FH III.7–11; Cabrini (1990), 53–88; Screpanti (2008), 92–102. 146 FH III.11, 120; Cabrini (1990), 83–8.

144

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

75

it did not appear to them that they had been satisfied for their labour as they believed they justly deserved’.147 This was a call for social justice that accompanied the ‘arsons and robbery’148 which occurred during the tumult, and referred to the political problem contained in the Programma del Ronco—not mentioned by Machiavelli—in which it was said that a man would receive only eight hours’ pay for twelve hours’ work.149 Thus it was initially a struggle for due recognition that animated the Ciompi, even in the face of the fact that the woolworkers, set in a ‘most powerful’ guild and not being able to have a guild of their own, were subordinate to the ‘arrogance of the captains of the Parts’, so ‘when they were either not satisfied for their labour or in some mode oppressed by their masters, they had no other place of refuge than the magistracy of the guild that governed them, from which it did not appear to them that they got the justice they judged was suitable’.150 The tumult occurred precisely because the normal outlet proved ineffective as a safety valve. In introducing the tumult and the speech of the anonymous member of the Ciompi, Machiavelli places the accent on the hatred, dissatisfaction, injustice, oppression, fear, and ‘indignation’151 of the lowest plebs and the lesser people: he never uses the word ‘freedom’, which features however in the speech by Guicciardini152 and in most of the earlier orations. The unknown member of the Ciompi makes a reference to freedom in the speech, but this alludes to the fact that ‘to be able to live with more freedom and more satisfaction than we have in the past’. The aim of the Ciompi, according to Machiavelli’s account, is not the freedom of the city, but revenge and acquisition of power: it is a freedom for them, ‘the way for us [ . . . ] to have for our freedom’,153 not for everyone. This is why Machiavelli shares the demands of the Ciompi, but not their political perspective: the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’—as the aim of the tumult has been defined—is of no interest to him. Negri has written that the episode of the Ciompi is, for Machiavelli: the discovery of the impossibility that Florence may have a mixed constitution [because], different from Rome, [ . . . ] the [part] struggle becomes stronger, to the 147

148 FH III.12, 121; my italics. FH III.12, 121. Screpanti (2008), 203–4. Machiavelli criticizes the tumult due to the factional spirit that, from a certain point on, characterized it—Zancarini (2004), 21–2—but this did not stop him from giving a public voice to the Ciompi—see Landi (2001) and Winter (2012)—taking up the custom of the pratiche, ‘advisory meetings’, which made the Signoria capable ‘of testing the citizens’ reactions to some of their proposals and of allowing the citizens to air their opinions’, even if ‘their recommendations were not binding’: Gilbert (1984), 65. Giving voice to the Ciompi meant echoing their economic and political demands and, therefore, it is reductive to attribute to Machiavelli simply ‘a greater appreciation [ . . . ] of the political capabilities of the masses’— Wolin (2004), 205—that are not idealized and are seen in a positive light only if they do not express the humour of the desire for dominion: Fontana (2002), 21, 23–4, 37–9, 41. 150 151 152 FH III.12, 121; t.m. FH III.13, 122. FH III.11, 120. 153 FH III.13, 122; my italics. 149

76

Constituting Freedom

point of determining the victory of the higher people (popolo grasso), [who, as a result,] lose the possibility of arming the Republic—the lesser people (popolo minuto), the plebs, the multitude, cannot be armed, because they represent vanquished subversion.154

Nevertheless, Machiavelli remains convinced, as he showed in the Discursus and the Minuta (and also in the Summary), that the republican civil and free way of life is possible only in a mixed constitution, albeit one completely different to that of Rome and Venice. Machiavelli does not point to the concordia ordinum nor to the dictatorship of the proletariat, but to the union through the struggles. The fact that the city is divided does not mean only that it is not united in the sense of being one unit, but that it is founded on division, that if it does not divide it does not exist. The mixture that Machiavelli has in mind is not a guarantee of mediation between the parts that neutralizes struggles, because it preserves and reproduces division by seeking to make it expansive. It is, in fact, the realization of the kind of mixture that remains linked to the possibility of responding to the question with which this book began. The recovery of freedom in a city that is not completely corrupt concerns only the possibility of institutionalizing struggles and not tumults,155 in such a way that ‘virtue, understood as the passion for what is public’, may assert itself.156 The content of the speech by the anonymous member of the Ciompi reveals the bias of the city government exercised, substantially continuously from 1267, by the Guelphs, against whom Machiavelli does not let slip the opportunity to deal yet another blow, almost going so far as to blame them for the tumult. The hatred of the plebs is motivated by the awareness that ‘only poverty and riches make us unequal’ and that, in the face of the ‘fraud’ and ‘force’, of the ‘deceit’ and ‘violence’ used by ‘all those who come to great riches and great power [ . . . ], [the plebs] should use force whenever the occasion for it is given’.157 Understanding themselves as being ‘a decisive force in the political scene of the city, [ . . . ] of having been used, [of being able to] act autonomously [and] that establishing themselves with a military organization had become an indispensable step’, the Ciompi ‘became a political subject’.158 If ‘God and nature have put all the fortunes of men in their midst, where they are exposed more to rapine than to industry and more to wicked than to good arts’ it is from here, then, that ‘it arises that men devour one another’. Inequality is the fruit of usurpation and, therefore, it is necessary to ‘free ourselves’ from usurpers and ‘to become so much their superiors that they will have more to lament and fear from you than you from them’. Inequality would never be

154 157

Negri (1999), 87; t.m. FH III.13, 122–3.

155

158

See Raimondi (2015). Screpanti (2008), 124.

156

Ricciardi (2001), 30.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

77

dealt with in a fair manner by the rich and powerful, because capital does not admit the existence of those who wish to divide it: it is thus necessary, according to the Ciompi, to take the reins of the city government and seek the ‘ruin for enemy’.159 Machiavelli’s disapprobation of the tumult is clear when he writes that the Ciompi, having ‘spirits [ . . . ] hot for evil [ . . . ], they decided to take up arms’.160 But it is not armed fighting that Machiavelli disapproves of, but rather that the tumult is in the hands of the ‘fury of this unleashed multitude’ which indulged in burning ‘the houses of many citizens, [ . . . ] hunting down those who were hatred either for public or for private cause’. If the ‘conspiracy’ of the Signori was ineffective, to the point that they felt ‘bewildered’,161 it should be remembered that, for Machiavelli, the ‘authority given to a multitude not tempered by any check never did any good’.162 The ‘unshackled multitude’163 conducts itself in the main like a part that does not seek the common good, because it wants to become everything, behaving like any ordinary sect or faction. The problem is ‘the impatient and fickle multitude’,164 ‘mighty (gagliarda) and cowardly’,165 whose organizational expertise Machiavelli purposely disregards.166 This omission allows him to introduce Michele di Lando, ‘a wool carder, [ . . . ] barefoot and scantily clothed’167 to the scene, a ‘positive [figure] of a reformer of the city, [ . . . ] a virtuous man who skilfully seized the right moment to turn it to account, not for himself, but for the city’.168 The whole scene is a theoretical-political drama—a complete historical fiction—created by Machiavelli, and di Lando is one of the actors, along with the Signori of the city, whose purpose is to display their powerlessness to contain the plebeians who, despite having justifiable demands, were motivated principally by a desire for revenge and personal gain. Di Lando played the part of the virtuous citizen, the only man capable of resolving the situation. And, to be sure, since ‘he was a sagacious and prudent man who owed more to nature than to fortune, he resolved to quiet the city and stop the tumults’. Thus ‘so as to begin with justice the command (imperio), [ . . . ] he had it publicly commanded that no one burn or steal anything; and to frighten everyone, he had a gallows erected in the piazza’. Additionally, he reformed the Signoria169 but, according to the ‘plebs, [ . . . ] Michele in reforming the state had been too partisan toward the greater people (maggiori popolani)’ so, unsurprisingly, they once again took up ‘arms’.170 159

160 161 FH III.13, 123. FH III.13, 124. FH III.14, 124–5. 163 164 FH II.32, 87. D I.57, 115. FH III.15, 126. 165 166 167 D I.57, 114–15. Screpanti (2008), 115–52, 189–216. FH III.16, 127. 168 Cabrini (1990), 111–12. For a number of interesting observations on Michele di Lando and Giano della Bella, figures through which Machiavelli continues his reasoning of the Prince and the Discourses, see McCormick (2017a). 169 170 FH III.16, 127–8. FH III.17, 128. 162

78

Constituting Freedom

Machiavelli’s omissions in this part of the history are such that there is little point in dwelling on the details of the institutional reform, summarized in just a few lines, because everything is played out ‘on the contrast between Michele and his virtue, [ . . . ] and the arrogance of the plebeians’,171 which is then defeated precisely by di Lando, who: in spirit, prudence, and goodness surpassed any citizen of his time, and he deserves to be numbered among the few who have benefited their fatherland, for had his spirit been either malign or ambitious, the republic would have lost its freedom altogether and fallen under a greater tyranny than that of the Duke of Athens. But his goodness never allowed a thought to enter his mind that might be contrary to the universal good; his prudence led him to conduct things in such a mode that many yielded to his part and others he was able to subdue with arms. These things caused the plebs to lose heart and the better guildsmen to reflect and to consider what ignominy it was for those who had overcome the pride of the great to have to bear the stench of the plebs.172

The failure of the Ciompi tumult is a turning point in the Histories, because after it nothing would ever be the same again. The Histories would continue for over five books but without the tension, except in rare exceptions, that pervades the pages preceding Chapter XVIII of Book III. An initial explanation for this is that after the tumult of the Ciompi, the republican conception of the civil and free life disappears from the history of Florence. The oligarchic republic and then the principality of the Medici, who governed the city from 1393 to 1492, were interesting but less engaging experiments. Nonetheless, even in the remainder of the Histories there are some noteworthy episodes that help answer the question with which we began, and I will focus attention on them. The defeat of the Ciompi led to yet another reform of the ‘state, [which], so ordered, put the city at rest for the time being’: this state ‘lasted for three years and was filled with exiles and deaths’ and, furthermore, ‘confirmed the division already begun [ . . . ] between the popular nobles (popolani nobili) and the lesser guildsmen (minori artefici)’, in other words the ‘popular [ . . . ] and [ . . . ] plebeian’ parts, so much so that from it ‘very grave effects followed at various times’.173 The parts changed, but the divisions remained and their baleful repercussions were the same as ever, namely attempts to usurp power to use it for personal ends.174 Chapter XXI, however, introduces a novelty, because in the ‘confused and tumultuous’ situation ‘in which the city found itself ’175 there were no longer two humours but the city: was full of diverse humours, everyone had a different end, and all desired to accomplish them before arms were put down. The ancient nobles, called ‘great’, 171 173

Cabrini (1990), 115–16. FH III.18, 130–1.

172

174

FH III.17, 129–30; t.m. Cabrini (1990), 125–48.

175

Cabrini (1990), 149.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

79

could not bear to be deprived of their public honours, and so they strove to recover them with all diligence; and for this they would have loved that authority be given back to the captains of the Parts. The popular nobles and the greater guilds (Arti) were not pleased with having to share the state with the lesser guilds and the lesser people; for their part, the lesser guilds wanted rather to increase than diminish their dignity, and the lesser people were afraid lest they lose their Collegi from their guilds. All these disputes made for many tumults in Florence in the space of a year: first the great took up arms, then the greater and then the lesser guilds and with them the lesser people; and many times in different parts of the city all were armed at a stroke.176

This is a passage of extreme importance, about which two aspects should be given careful attention: 1) the humours have increased in number to four: ancient nobles or great, popular nobles or greater guilds, lesser guilds, lesser people; 2) the humours have changed qualitatively and are now the same as the parts—if, before, as we have seen, it was the humours (wanting to dominate, not wanting to be dominated) that formed the parts (nobles and people) that are the political incarnation of the humours, now the parts and the humours coincide, because every part (nobles, popolo grasso, lesser people, plebs) has its own humour. The distinguishing features of the parts no longer stem from the relation between will and domination, but from the diverse and irreconcilable desires or interests of the various groups: the nobles wished to recover their public honours; the wealthy and powerful bourgeoisie no longer wished to share the state with the lesser guilds and the lesser people. The first were looking to increase their dignity while the second were anxious not to lose the political influence they had obtained; the plebs, impelled by resentment, yearned to exact retribution for abuses suffered. The humours, now, are merely the private interests of the parts: the ‘humours of the parts’ that Machiavelli discusses with reference to the republic of the aristocrats (ottimati) of 1393–1434.177 The fact that this change occurred in 1382, with the unequivocal recapture of power by the ‘popular nobles and the Guelphs’, while ‘the plebs lost it’,178 perhaps means that the failure of the republican hypothesis of a free and civil way of life opened the floodgates to the wishes of the parts and replaced humours with interests. These interests may therefore have brought about the gradual centralization of power that was to characterize the period of

176

FH III.21, 134–5; t.m. FH III.25 and IV.26, 173. Machiavelli demonstrates the shift from the paradigm of the passions to that of the interests—see Hirschman (1977)—judging it negatively. Mercantile interests were no obstacle to passions and, albeit with different dynamics, contributed to the weakness of Florence, complicating its political structure, which was no longer set up around a single line of demarcation (dominating/not being dominated) but along multiple lines, which constantly divide themselves forming ever-new partitions. 178 FH III.21, 135. 177

80

Constituting Freedom

the oligarchy and the Medicean principality, although this is an assumption that needs to be verified by reconstructing other stages of the history of Florentine institutions. Firstly, however, it is worth emphasizing that if Machiavelli seems pleased about the defeat of the Ciompi—‘the unshackled multitude [that], ignoring accepted standards, ruined the city’—he is not equally pleased about the victory of the great, under whose name the ‘popular nobles’ and the ‘greater guilds’ were united.179 Their ‘state, [in fact] neither [was] less injurious toward its citizens nor less oppressive in its beginnings than that of the plebs had been’,180 because it was ‘the prey of a few and subjected to their pride and avarice’.181 The institution of the ‘bag of selected (borsellino)’,182 the ‘cornerstone of the oligarchic regime’,183 because it mitigated ‘the effects of the draw’ ensuring ‘the dominant faction a legal majority of six votes in the supreme magistracy’,184 demonstrates this.

3.4. FROM THE OLIGARCHIC REPUBLIC (1393 – 1 4 3 4 ) TO THE MEDICEAN P RINCIPALITY ( 1434– 9 2 ) ‘The state that had been ordered in 1381 thus having been confirmed after six years’—the year, then, is 1387—‘the city lived very quietly inside until ’93’,185 when the oligarchic republic of Maso degli Albizzi began. After a series of attempts, lasting until 1400, to ‘overturn the oligarchic regime’,186 ‘the city [ . . . ] inside was quiet [up to] ’33’, with the sole exception of 1412,187 while the external peace was limited to the years 1414–22.188 The parts, however, even in the republic of the aristocrats (ottimati), were ‘revived [and] did not subside until the ruin of the state’, which came to pass in 1434 with the start of the Medicean principality. Book IV of the Histories is essentially dedicated to telling how, starting from 1420, the parts reformed and how they led to the end of the republic of the aristocrats. Machiavelli’s objective is to understand why ‘the city had [not] maintained itself united’ and how ‘the old humours had [ . . . ] been rekindled in it’. He is dealing with the familiar theme of virtue being the antidote to corruption: cities and especially those not well ordered that are administered under the name of republic, frequently change their governments and their states not between freedom and servitude, as many believed, but between servitude and license. For only the name of freedom is extolled by the ministers of license, who are the men 179 182 185 188

Cabrini (1990), 151. FH III.24, 138. FH III.25, 138. FH IV.2, 146.

183 186

180 FH III.22, 135. Cabrini (1990), 161. Cabrini (1990), 174.

181 184 187

FH III.23, 137. Fiorini, 349. FH III.29, 144.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

81

of the people, and by the ministers of servitude, who are the nobles, neither of them desiring to be subject either to the laws or to men. True, when it happens (and it happens rarely) that by the good fortune of a city there rises in it a wise, good, and powerful citizen by whom laws are ordered by which these humours of the nobles and the men of the people are quieted or restrained so that they cannot do evil, then that city can be called free and that state be judged stable and firm: for a city based on good laws and good orders has no necessity, as have others, for the virtue of a single man to maintain it.189

In ‘not well-ordered’ republics, governments or states frequently switch between servitude and licence: if there are no good laws and orders, therefore, there is not even the semblance of freedom which, reduced to a mere name, hides the desire not to be subjected to either laws or men. The theme of the good beginning returns, bolstered by reference to the ‘many ancient republics, [that] had states with long lives’.190 This is the framework presented in the Discourses and also in the Discursus and the Minuta: good orders are always the work of the virtue of one individual (as exemplified by Numa), but their preservation is possible only if they give rise to virtuous behaviour in many. Such shared behaviour is capable of making the city an autonomous constitution, self-reproducing because ‘kingdoms that depend solely on the virtue of one man are hardly durable, because that virtue fails with the life of that one’.191 There are, then, two moments in politics, the foundation and the duration: the first moment is that of the absolute beginning, which is necessarily the deed of one man alone, a single individual. But this moment is itself unstable, for ultimately it can as readily tip over into tyranny as into a [republic]. Whence the second moment, that of duration, which only by a double process can be ensured: the settlement of laws and emergence from solitude—that is to say, the end of the absolute power of a single individual.192

Florence did not have good laws or good orders, because neither a virtuous legislator193 nor chance set things in order for the long term, in part because of the struggle between noble factions, whose one desire was the servitude of others, and the people, whose one desire was to do as they pleased; both aimed to dominate and not be dominated. This state of affairs produced the instability characteristic of the city. Good orders and good laws, in fact, ‘have lacked and are lacking’ in all the cities that: have frequently changed and are changing their governments from a tyrannical to a licentious state, and back again. In these, through the powerful enemies each of them has, there neither is nor can be any stability, because the one state displeases good men, the other displeases the wise; the one can do evil easily, the other can do good only with difficulty; in the one, insolent men have too much authority, in 189 192

190 191 FH IV.1, 146; t.m. FH IV.1, 146. D I.11, 35–6. 193 Althusser (1999), 64–5 and also Roebuck (1952), 53. P VI and D I.10.

82

Constituting Freedom

the other, fools. And both the one and the other must be maintained by the virtue and fortune of a single man who can either fail by death or become useless because of his troubles.194

But even if one could count on the virtue of a possibly powerful individual,195 established not only because of fortune, he would always ‘fail by death or become useless because of his troubles’ and degenerate into tyranny if not rooted in the people by passing from the government of one to that of the many. Despite the fact that the oligarchic republic was supported, in the beginning, ‘first by the virtue of Messer Maso degli Albizzi, later by that of Niccolò da Uzzano’,196 it was not enough to bring about freedom. Virtue, even that of one or two men in succession is not enough197 because it is not passed on, if not through orders capable of reproducing it. The disunity and recklessness of the nobles, owing to the ‘humours, which were secretly beginning to boil again, [ . . . ] made the Medici family regain authority’.198 The war against the Visconti (1422–7) triggered this process, creating ‘complaints’ from its opponents who denounced ‘the ambition and greed of the powerful, accusing them of wishing to start an unnecessary war so as to indulge their appetites and to oppress the people so as to dominate them’. It was no coincidence that the ‘new taxes’ that were imposed ‘weighed more on the lesser citizens than the greater’,199 even if the republic of the aristocrats, which lasted forty years, ‘would have been less permanent (sarebbe durata meno) if the Visconti wars had not ensued, which kept it united’.200 It was precisely the war, however, that paved the way for the return of the Medici to Florence, because, on account of it not going well, the discontent of the Florentines grew, and they accused those who wanted it of pursuing it ‘not to defend freedom, which is their enemy, but to increase their own power (potenza)’.201 The opportunity that generated the birth of a principality of a tyrannical type was the institution of the ‘cadastre’ (catasto). Giovanni de’ Medici (1360–1429), ‘having become very rich and being of a kindly and humane nature’, became the magistrate and ‘to the multitude it appeared that it had gained a defender’, even though Niccolò da Uzzano had warned how dangerous it was ‘to foster one who had such reputation in the collectivity (universale)’, without being heeded.202 Giovanni de’ Medici, in fact, had a plan and an ambition: to become the prince of Florence by using the people to weaken the nobles, but without antagonizing them. The ‘citizens of Florence were weary of the taxes’ of war and ‘agreed to revise them’ in a more equal and stable form, imposing a proportional tax on the basis of wealth that weighed heavily on the ‘powerful citizens’, who

194 197 200

195 196 FH IV.1, 146; t.m. FH IV.1, 146. FH IV.2, 146; t.m. 198 199 D I.19. FH IV.3, 147–8. FH IV.4, 149. 201 202 DRFG 102. FH IV.7, 151. FH IV.3, 147–8; t.m.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

83

protested even before it was approved. Only Giovanni de’ Medici ‘openly praised it’, knowing that it ‘placed a partial restraint on the tyranny of the powerful’ (the ottimati, who governed Florence from 1393) in favour of the ‘collectivity (universale)’. Unfortunately: as it happens that men are never satisfied and, having got one thing, do not content themselves with that but desire something else, the people, not content with the equality in taxation that arose from the law, demanded that they return to time past to see how much less the powerful had paid according to the catasto and to make them pay enough to be equal with those who, so as to pay what they did not owe, had sold their possessions.

In short, the people requested that the measure be applied retroactively, fomenting the fears of the rich, who were no longer able ‘to carry on a war without loss to themselves, having to share in the expenses like [any] other’. Cunningly, Giovanni de’ Medici made himself, as regards the ‘excited humours’, the mediator capable of soothing them. In truth, he deplored the retroactive effect of the law but held that the law itself was right for the present and future and served ‘to reunite, not divide, the city’.203 The rhetoric of the common good in Giovanni’s eulogy—affirmed by Machiavelli, thereby ingratiating himself with the pope who had commissioned the Histories—is used skilfully by the representative of the Medici to reinforce his own prestige and to preserve and enhance the political ‘reputation’ of his family, one that, after his death in 1429, he passed down to his son and heir Cosimo.204 A tyranny205 was established without striking a blow, which apparently observed all the laws and orders of the republic; it was a perfectly legal transition that led from an oligarchic republic to the Medicean principality, which began on 6 October 1434. In Chapter I of Book V, Machiavelli makes a number of brief observations. The chapter has two very distinct parts, which in turn have two sections. The first is divided as follows: 1) from the start to ‘ . . . glory and good fortune’; 2) from ‘Whence it has been observed . . . ’ to ‘ . . . by an extraordinary force’. The second is divided into: 3) from ‘These causes . . . ’ to ‘ . . . ended without loss’; 4) from ‘So that virtue . . . ’ to the end.206 The first well-known section has sometimes been interpreted as the Machiavellian formulation for a ‘philosophy of history’ with reference to Polybius’s anakyklosis. But this, in point of fact, is not the case,207 for unlike the fixed cyclicity of a Polybian scheme, Machiavelli ‘acknowledges the existence of occasions capable of breaking and rendering more free this naturalistic mechanism (see Prince VI)’.208 There are three principal themes: [1a] Usually provinces go most of the time, in the changes they make, from order to disorder and then pass again from disorder to order, 203 206

204 FH IV.14, 158–60; t.m. FH IV.16. 207 FH V.1, 185–6. Sasso (1993), II, 422–3.

205

Sasso (1993), II, 376–90. 208 Montevecchi, 514, n. 1.

84

Constituting Freedom

[1b] for worldly things are not allowed by nature to stand still. As soon as they reach their ultimate perfection, having no further to rise, they must descend; and similarly, once they have descended and through their disorders arrived at the ultimate depth, since they cannot descend further, of necessity they must rise. Thus they are always descending from good to evil and rising from evil to good. [1c] For virtue gives birth to quiet, quiet to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin; and similarly, from ruin, order is born; from order, virtue; and from virtue, glory and good fortune.209

The three passages are structured as three antitheses whose terms outline three reversible movements: 1a) order–disorder; 1b) to rise–to descend, and good– evil; 1c) virtue–ruin. Even if the terms do not correspond entirely symmetrically, here is a rough scheme: from order = good = virtue one descends towards disorder = evil = ruin, from where one rises towards order = good = virtue again, but not automatically. A second, more precise scheme goes like this: from virtue one descends towards quiet, leisure, and disorder down to ruin, from where one rises towards order, virtue, and glory up to good fortune. This requires certain observations: a) There are two lines of synonyms: i) order, good, virtue, and ii) disorder, evil, ruin. b) The meaning of ‘to rise’ and ‘to descend’, which also appear in the Discursus,210 is clarified: the first refers to the move towards good, the second the opposite; they are moreover relative to the ‘ultimate perfection’ of ‘worldly things’, thus they do not refer to an absolute status but to the order (maximum perfection) and disorder (minimum perfection) of a worldly being. c) The two series of the second scheme are not symmetrical, because glory and good fortune result from virtue and ruin results from disorder. Consequently, things should be organized in this way: from glory and good fortune one descends through virtue, quiet, leisure, and disorder as far as ruin, from where one rises through order and virtue up to glory211 and good fortune, where it is clear that the upward degrees have no equivalents of quiet and leisure.212 One of the key problems of Machiavelli’s thought thus comes to light: why it is that ‘worldly things’, arriving at ‘ultimate perfection’ and being unable to rise further, ‘must descend’, and vice versa. The two extremes of the process, perfection–imperfection, are not static but dynamic, and constitute phases of a wider and more complex movement. Perfection is not immobility, nor is it a state of eternal bliss, but rather it is the point at which the process begins to tip towards its opposite after the fulfilment. Only when something arrives at its own relative and thus not absolute perfection—final because it does not

209

210 FH V.1, 185; the bracketed numbering is mine; t.m. DRFG 106. About ‘glory’ see Raimondi (2017). 212 It is interesting that on the rising side, from ruin to virtue, Machiavelli is more reticent than on the other side, even if this ladder best serves to understand how a corrupted city can be restored. And there is another curiosity: order comes before virtue and, in a way that is not stated here, actually produces it. Do these omissions or silences indicate fortune? 211

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

85

foresee the possibility of a further expansion—does it begin to descend, declining gradually towards disorder which, however, is not the nothing or chaos, but the crucible of new movements towards order and virtue. It is hard not to think of the Polybian anakyklosis, even if it is precisely its determinism that the next passage breaks. The second section highlights the consequences of the reasoning: [2] Whence it has been observed by the prudent that letters come after arms and that, in provinces and cities, captains arise before philosophers. For, as good and ordered armies give birth to victories and victories to quiet, the strength of wellarmed spirits cannot be corrupted by a more honourable leisure than that of letters, nor can leisure enter into well-instituted cities with a greater and more dangerous deceit than this one. This was best understood by Cato when the philosophers Diogenes and Carneades, sent by Athens as spokesmen to the Senate, came to Rome. When he saw how the Roman youth was beginning to follow them about with admiration, and since he recognized the evil that could result to his fatherland from this honourable leisure, he saw to it that no philosopher could be accepted in Rome. Thus, provinces come by these means to ruins; when they have arrived there and men have become wise from their afflictions, they return, as was said, to order unless they remain suffocated by an extraordinary force.213

The descending sequence of the previous passage, from virtue to disorder, is described in more detail, even compared to the Discourses I.18 (see Section 1.1), and it is especially worth noting the similarity between leisure, letters, and corruption which, then, is not only the result of inaction, but also of the free imagination. From virtue = good and ordered armies one descends, through victories, quiet, and leisure = letters = corruption, all the way down to evil. The aspect to underline is the end of the passage, where Machiavelli on the one hand reiterates the cycle of order–disorder, while on the other he makes clear that the return to order occurs only if men do not ‘remain suffocated by an extraordinary force’. There is, then, a possibility that the (natural?) circularity of the process may be interrupted. The third section, moving from the description of general rules to giving historical examples of them, changes the perspective: [3] These causes, first through the ancient Tuscans and then the Romans, have made Italy sometimes happy, sometimes wretched. And it happened that afterwards, nothing was built upon the Roman ruins in a way that might have redeemed Italy from them, so that it might have been able to act gloriously under a virtuous principality. Nonetheless, so much virtue emerged in some of the new cities and empires that arose among the Roman ruins that, even if one did

213

FH V.1, 185; the bracketed numbering is mine.

86

Constituting Freedom

not dominate the others, they were nonetheless harmonious and ordered together so that they freed Italy and defended it from the barbarians. Within these empires the Florentines, if they had less dominion, were not less in authority or power (potenza); indeed, because of their position in the middle of Italy, rich and ready for attack, either they successfully resisted a war begun against them or they gave victory to the one with whom they sided. If from the virtue of these new principalities times did not arise that were quiet through a long peace, neither were they dangerous because of the harshness of war. For one cannot affirm it to be peace where principalities frequently attack one another with arms; yet they cannot be called wars in which men are not killed, cities are not sacked, principalities are not destroyed, for these wars came to such weakness that they were begun without fear, carried on without danger, and ended without loss.214

The up–down movement described here is exemplified by the alternation between happiness and misery in Italy caused by the Tuscans (Etruscans) and Romans. The theme of the ancient greatness of the Florentines was revisited, as was the question of their origin traced back to the fall of the Roman Empire, on the ruins of which several different virtuous cities and empires (in the generic sense of ‘dominions’)215 were established, although nothing to equal those of the Romans or capable of raising Italy from its wretchedness. It was as if the end of the Roman Empire had set in motion the diffusion of a little of its virtue everywhere in the world, a virtue connected to two effects: the absence of the desire to dominate and the ability to free oneself from barbarians. The cities in question included Florence, whose origin now seems to have been entirely removed from the shadows of servitude and is, therefore, ascribable to the sphere of virtue which, diffused far and wide by the end of the Roman Empire, led to times that were not entirely peaceful but also not oppressed by particularly dangerous wars. Indeed, at the most the city was involved in skirmishes, perhaps because, as theorized by Montevecchi,216 they were waged by mercenaries; fortunate times, therefore. Finally, the fourth section closes the examination while opening the second part of the Histories, which deals with the Medicean principality,217 offering an interpretation that would not have pleased Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici). The importance of the passage lies in its presentation of a different way to break the cycle between order and disorder, as if the figure of the cycle were an abstract scheme useful for the measuring of reality, contact with which, however, distorts, becoming a concrete figure of history. [4] So that virtue which in other provinces used to be eliminated in a long peace was eliminated by vileness in the provinces of Italy, as can clearly be recognized in what will be described by us from 1434 to 1494. There it will be seen how in the end the way was opened anew for the barbarians and how Italy put itself again in 214 216

FH V.1, 185–6; the bracketed numbering is mine. 217 Montevecchi, 515, n. 6. FH V–VIII.

215

Montevecchi, 515, n. 5.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

87

slavery to them. And if the things done by our princes outside and at home may not be read, as are those of the ancients, with admiration for their virtue and greatness, they may perhaps be considered for other qualities with no less admiration when it is seen how so many very nobles peoples were held in check by such weak and badly directed armies. And if in describing the things that happened in this devastated world one does not tell about either the strength of soldiers, or the virtue of the captain, or the love of the citizen for his fatherland, it will be seen with what deceits, with what guile and arts the princes, soldiers, and heads of republics conducted themselves so as to maintain the reputation they have not deserved. It may, perhaps, be no less useful to know these things than to know the ancient ones, because, if the latter excite liberal spirits to follow them, the former will excite such spirits to avoid and eliminate them.218

In other provinces virtue was extinguished due to the long peace, in keeping with the pattern in which peace leads to quiet, quiet to leisure, and thence to ruin. In Florence, however, virtue was undermined instead by the cowardice of mercenary troops, of which the Medici made wide use and who did not hesitate to change sides when offered a better remuneration or else merely pretended to fight in order to avoid death. If, then, it is possible not to rise because of an extraordinary force, it follows that one can descend because of the pusillanimity of mercenaries and not only for the weakness resulting from the victorious end of wars or from the leisure induced by the love for ‘letters’. The cowardice that wiped out virtue can be seen at work, in particular, between 1434 and 1494 during the principality of the Medici, and had the effect of providing access for the barbarians (foreigners), turning Italy into their servant because it produced the loss of freedom, in the sense of autonomy and self-government. For this reason, the exploits of the Italian princes were not admired for their virtue, as those of the ancients had been, but because they showed how even noble populations can be restrained by weak and badly led armies. Even evil has its exempla and if the examples of virtue impel noble souls to imitate them, the examples of evil push for it to be shunned and eradicated: ‘so much did our Italian princes fear in others the virtue that was not in themselves, and they eliminated it, so that, since no one remained who had it, they exposed this province to the ruin that not long after wasted and afflicted it.’219 Cowardice belongs to mercenaries and those who hire them to fight in their place, because virtue is not born of situations in which one does not strive for freedom in person.220 The origin of Florence, therefore—and this appears to be Machiavelli’s last word on the subject—was partly free because it was fertilized by the dissemination of Roman virtue after the end of the empire. This freedom, however, was lost little by little for different reasons: the 218 219

FH V.1, 186; the bracketed numbering is mine. 220 FH VII.8, 286. See P XII and D I.43.

88

Constituting Freedom

factionalism of the parts (1215–1393), the personalization of the humours (1393–1434), and the vileness attributable to the Mediceans’ bad habit of using mercenary troops (1434–94). It is far from coincidental that from Book V onwards Machiavelli reintroduces extensively the tale of ‘things done [ . . . ] abroad’ alongside that of ‘things done at home’,221 just as it is no coincidence that the second chapter of Book V begins with an unflattering reference to the Italian princes and mercenaries. Cosimo’s return to Florence and the start of the Medicean principality are in continuity and discontinuity with the republic of the aristocrats. The continuity is the result of the presence of the ‘humour of the parts’, and the discontinuity the result of its minor harmfulness compared to ‘riches, relatives, and private enmities’.222 While the republic of the aristocrats was able to guarantee or even raise the status of all of the greats, in the Medicean principality, ‘having stripped the city of enemies or suspects of the state, they [the Medici family] turned to benefiting new men so as to invigorate their parts’: from the humour of parts to the humour of a single part, therefore. They restored to the fatherland the Alberti family and whoever else had been considered a rebel; they reduced all the great except for a very few to the popular order; they divided the possessions of the rebels among themselves at a low price. Besides this, they strengthened themselves with laws and new orders, and they made new lists for the lots (squittini), removing from the bags [the names of] their enemies and filling them with [the names of] their friends. And having been warned by the ruin of their adversaries, they judged that chosen lists might not be enough to hold the state firmly for themselves, and they decided that magistrates who have authority to shed blood should always be from the princes of their sect. They wished therefore that the couplers (accoppiatori) in charge of filling the bags with new names should have authority together with the old Signoria to create the new one. They gave authority to shed blood to the Eight of the Guard; they provided that exiles who had finished their terms could not return unless thirtyfour Signori and Collegi, who are thirty-seven in number, agreed to their return. They prohibited writing to exile or receiving letters from them, and every word, every hint, every usage that might in any part be displeasing to those governing was very heavily punished. And if there remained in Florence any suspect who had not been reached by these inflictions, he was hit with taxes that they ordered anew. In a short time, having driven out or impoverished all the enemy part, they secured the state for themselves. And so as not to be lacking help from outside and to rid themselves of those who might be planning to attack them, they allied themselves with the pope, the Venetians, and the Duke of Milan for the defence of their states.223

The rest of Book V and all of Book VI deal with the wars in which Florence was embroiled due to the political alliances of the Medici and the expansionist 221

FH preface, 6.

222

FH V.4, 189; t.m.

223

FH V.4, 189–90; t.m.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

89

actions of various Italian states between 1434 and 1463. This, then, also includes the period after the peace agreed with the Treaty of Lodi, signed on 9 April 1454224 which, while being ‘universal [ . . . ], was disturbed [ . . . ] by the ambition of mercenary soldiers’.225 These parts of the book lend weight to the theory, postulated in the Prince,226 that the cause of the ruin of Florence (and Italy) was primarily the excessive use of mercenary soldiers (especially by the Medici), to which could be added the ambition of many local princes,227 among which the case of Francesco Sforza stands out.228 Within the city, however, the new princes of Florence concentrated on ‘keeping their government steady’,229 which after only ten years (1444) had been renewed ‘by giving new authority to their friends and beating down their enemies’.230 The incipit of Book VII then reconnects the threads of the argument. Before starting, however, Machiavelli speaks more generally about republics, almost as a summary of his ideas and his last thought on the subject: those who hope that a republic can be united are very much deceived in this hope. It is true that some divisions are harmful to republic and some helpful. Those are harmful that are accompanied by sects and partisans; those are helpful that are maintained without sects and partisans. Thus, since a founder of a republic cannot provide that there be no enmities in it, he has to provide at least that there not be sects.231

What, then, are these sects and partisans, and how have they come into being? Is to be known that citizens in cities acquire reputation in two modes: either by public ways or by private modes. One acquires it publicly by winning a battle, acquiring a town (terra), carrying out a mission with care and prudence, advising the republic wisely and prosperously. One acquires it in private modes by benefiting this or that other citizen, defending him from the magistrates, helping him with money, getting him unmerited honours, and ingratiating oneself with the plebs with games and public gifts. From this latter mode of proceeding, sects and partisans arise, and the reputation thus earned offends as much as reputation helps when it is not mixed with sects, because that reputation is founded on a common good, not on a private good. And although even among citizens so made one cannot provide by any mode that there will not be very great hatreds, nonetheless, having no partisans who follow them for their own utility, they cannot harm the republic; on the contrary, they must help it, because to pass their tests it is necessary for them to attempt to exalt the republic and to watch each other particularly so that civil bounds are not transgressed.232

Sects and partisans arise when men buy reputation through private means (like Cosimo de’ Medici who had ‘the private and public way open to his 224 227 229 232

225 226 FH VI.32, 268. FH VI.33, 268. P XII–XIII. 228 See, for example, FH VI.37. Marietti (2005), 97–106. 230 231 FH V.31, 222. FH VI.7, 238. FH VII.1, 276. FH VII.1, 276–7; my italics.

90

Constituting Freedom

power’), because what is acquired publicly does no harm since it is based on ‘a common good’ and not on ‘a private good’: there is no longer, therefore, the common good. Because of this, those who purchase reputations based on a private good (interest), have an entourage of clients. Given that it is not possible to stop the rise of huge hatreds even among the citizens who acquire a reputation publicly, it is at the very least necessary to ensure that these are not fomented by opposing partisanships that would drag the republic towards ruin. The animosity that exists between these citizens is, however, also a benefit, because the citizens depend on the republic for their businesses and are therefore inclined to comply with the laws and see to it publicly that everyone else does the same. Expansive divisions imply a public competition in support of a common good, which consolidates the constitution of the republic and expands its vital horizon. Sects, on the other hand, are sterile divisions that spawn more divisions in an endless dichotomous process. Machiavelli concludes: the enmities in Florence were always accompanied by sects and therefore always harmful; never did a winning sect remain united except when the hostile sect was active, but as soon as the one conquered was eliminated, the ruling one, no longer having fear to restrain it or order within itself to check it, would become divided again.233

The issue of the virtue of the Florentines reappears once again, but not as a problem belonging to the city’s origin. The Florentines were initially virtuous, but lost their virtue with the passing of time. The task, then, is to understand whether it can be recovered and, if so, how. Never-ending damaging divisions marked Medicean Florence, so that ‘Florence continued in its disunions and troubles’.234 Machiavelli does not forget this fact in his panegyric of Cosimo, ‘Father of his Fatherland’, in which ‘[he] imitated those who write the lives of princes, not those who write universal histories’.235 Leaving rhetoric aside, the eulogy has a specific political function: idealizing, not without a certain irony, the portrait of the prince, stuck in the dichotomy between acquiring a reputation through public or private means, and showing that Cosimo fitted into both, but that the second counted for more.236 Machiavelli wanted to demonstrate: 1) that even a ‘liberal and magnificent’ prince237 is incapable of holding a city steady if he governs on the basis of vested interests and bestowing private favours; 2) that the constitution is unstable if it is linked to personal qualities that cannot be passed on hereditarily. Not even the principality of the Medici could keep the city united, as the conspiracies and continual divisions owed to ‘such diversity of humours’,238 233 236

FH VII.1, 277. FH VII.10, 288.

234 237

FH VII.5, 280; t.m. FH VII.5, 281.

235 238

FH VII.5–6, 284. FH VII.11, 289.

Political History of the Florentine Institutions

91

including those of the Medici,239 bore witness. Thus the instability of the principality, in spite of ‘the people’s aid’ and the two great personalities that governed, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici,240 was conditioned by the search for reputation by private rather than public means, which consequently filled the city with partisans. Indeed, every slight reform of the city’s governing orders reinforced only the side of the Medici.241 There followed constant attempts to subvert the state, particularly during the regime of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici: conspiracies, tumults, and wars,242 and after they were put down, the great: increased power (potenza) for themselves and terror to the others; they exercised this power without any hesitation and so conducted themselves that it appeared that God and fortune had given them that city in prey. Of these things, Piero [ . . . ] could do little to remedy them because he [ . . . ] could make use only of his tongue. Nor could he apply other remedies than to warn those citizens and pray them to live civilly and enjoy their fatherland safe rather than destroyed.243

The upshot was that, although this was a period in which ‘the rest of Italy lived quietly’,244 ‘Florence was greatly afflicted by its citizens, and Piero, hindered by illness, was unable to oppose their ambition’, despite his ‘decent thoughts’. His politeness was made clear in his invective against the unrestrained ‘cupidity’ and ‘ambition’ of the great, who ‘[despoiled] your neighbour of his goods, [sold] the justice, [escaped] the civil judgments, [oppressed] peaceful men and [exalted] the insolent’.245 The corruption of customs, the plots, and the tumults continued even on the initiative of Lorenzo de’ Medici,246 and characterized events up to the end of Book VII. The last book of the Histories is a counterpoint, altogether different from the apologia delivered in defence of Lorenzo de’ Medici after his death (9 April 1492). Machiavelli, in fact, emphasizes Lorenzo’s lust for ‘wanting too many things’247 and holds him responsible for the defeat in the war against the pope and the king of Naples because of dissension among the mercenary troops he had hired.248 Despite his political skill, Lorenzo de’ Medici and ‘the princes of the state decided to restrict the government and that the making of important deliberations should be reduced to a smaller number; they made a council of seventy citizens with the greatest authority they could give it in principal actions’,249 reducing the authority of the Priors and of the Gonfalonier of justice. The formidable centralization of governmental prerogatives in the hands of the Seventy, which ‘made it into the instrument of control of the whole politics of the city, internal and external’,250 is the only Florentine 239 242 245 247 250

240 241 FH VII.13. DRFG 102–3. FH VII.17, 295. 243 244 FH VII.10–20. FH VII.21, 300. FH VII.22, 300. 246 FH VII.23. See the episode of the war against Volterra: FH VII.30. 248 249 FH VIII.2, 319. FH VIII.10–16. FH VIII.19, 340. EN II.2, 744, n. 16.

92

Constituting Freedom

institutional arrangement that Machiavelli mentions in the whole of Book VIII of the Histories. The principality of Lorenzo de’ Medici was not an era of peace and prosperity for Florence, apart from the period that ran from 22 June 1487 to 9 April 1492,251 of which Machiavelli wrote a portrait ‘marked by the fullest eulogistic rhetoric’.252 In fact Machiavelli’s intention is to discredit the idea that the greatness of the Medici corresponded to the well-being of Florence.

251

FH VIII.36.

252

Montevecchi, 750, n. 18.

4 Constituting Freedom 4 . 1 . T H E RE P U B L I C ( 1 49 4– 1 5 12 ) The Medicean state ‘fell’1 with the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France, who had been invited by Ludovico Sforza, ‘the cause of the ruin of Italy’.2 After this, especially after the expulsion of the Medici while under the rule of Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence ‘decided to resume the form of a republic’.3 Machiavelli says nothing about those two years (1492–3) in the Histories4 just as he is silent about the birth of the republic. Charles VIII’s invasion in September 1494 and his triumphant entry into Naples on 22 February 1495 were confirmation of the changed international political climate and of Italy’s role in it. The Florentines had driven Piero de’ Medici out of the city because of his servile attitude towards the French king, to whom he had given control of a number of fortresses of strategic importance to the security of the city in exchange for support. Piero had moreover placed many functions of government under his own authority to the displeasure of several important aristocratic families who, led by Bernardo Rucellai and Paolo Antonio Soderini, formed a growing opposition. On 8 November 1494 Piero had to leave the city in which a new constituent phase began. On one side the aristocrats (the great), who had supported the Medici but in the end had driven them out with the help of the people, pressed for the establishment of a restricted, aristocratic government. On the other hand, the people sought broader participation in the city’s political decision-making, including the opportunity to hold posts in the magistracies. The two parts reached a compromise that led to the formation of a republican regime, in which ‘only 3,200 inhabitants out of a total of about 90,000 acquired the right to be represented in the Great Council’. This was effectively ‘a well-defined middle class of artisans and merchants, who thus obtained their long-desired participation in government; the workers continued to be excluded’.5

1 4

2 3 DRGF 103. FH VIII.18, 339. DRFG 103. 5 Sasso (1993), II, 33–45 and Black (2013), 244–5. Albertini (1970), 9.

94

Constituting Freedom

The true protagonist of the opening phase of the new Florentine republic was Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98), ‘ambitious and partisan’,6 whose preaching inflamed the people and the plebeians of Florence as he urged them to adopt a government that was as broad as possible and to reject the elitist plans of the aristocrats. However, the excommunication imposed on him by the Pope Alexander VI in May 1497 and the threat of an interdict on the city,7 eventually led to his execution (24 May 1498). Machiavelli provided a nowfamous definition of Savonarola as an ‘unarmed prophet’ who ‘was ruined with his new order of things’.8 He held that, while the friar was ‘the main promoter of the constitution, in Florence, of a Great Council open to 3,600 citizens, which was installed at the start of 1495’,9 he was also completely alien to the virtue that is developed with the exercise of arms.10 If, as Marchand has written, ‘Machiavelli needed three diplomatic posts to reach a higher level of political consciousness: at the court of France (1500) and the two in the court of Cesare Borgia (1502–3)’,11 in the Discursus de pace inter imperatorem et regem of 150112 the secretary already begins to widen the horizons of his political thought towards the ‘characteristics of a modern state’, which existed before the theorization of Hobbes and cannot be reduced to it:13 in France predominate: […] the political solidity of the kingdom […], the abundant resources that the sovereign can avail himself of directly through an excellent centralized fiscal organization [and] an excellent army for the defence of the territory […]. For the Empire, the opposite are the case: the weakness of the sovereign and disunity of the State, […] the meagre fiscal resources of the emperor [and] the selfishness of the princes.14

To these observations Machiavelli added concern for the ‘problem of relations between lord and subjects’ and for that of ‘one’s own arms’,15 all themes that formed the structure of his reflections. From the First Mission to the Court of France onwards the space taken by Machiavelli in his dispatches to the Signoria gradually increases as he expounds his thinking on the subjects in question, adding suggestions on what to do. This is demonstrated, for example, by the First Mission to the Duke

6

D I.45, 94. An ecclesiastical censure, through which citizens were banned from holy offices and certain sacraments, without their communion with the Church being entirely broken, as happens with excommunication. 8 9 P VI, 24. Inglese/P, 39, n. 52. 10 See L 85–9, letter to Ricciardo Becchi, 9 March 1498; D I.45, 93–4; III.30, 280. 11 12 EN I.3, 402. EN I.3, 429–34. 13 Nor even to that of the Reason of State, in relation to which Foucault believed Machiavelli to be a premodernist: see Foucault (2009), 65, 91–2, 96, 242–4. 14 15 Marchand (1975), 37–8. Marchand (1975), 39. 7

Constituting Freedom

95

Valentino (June 1502), when he indulgently gave a very flattering judgement of his host: this Lord is very splendid and magnificent, and so spirited at arms that there is no great thing that does not seem small to him; and for glory and for acquiring state he never rests, nor recognizes fatigue or danger. He arrives in a place before one can understand where he comes from; he makes himself beloved of his soldiers; he has knighted the best men in Italy. These are the things that make him victorious and formidable, as well as his perpetual good fortune.16

Other examples can be found in the long Second Mission to the Duke Valentino (October 1502 to January 1503). That Machiavelli’s interest in the constitution of the cities did not come to him late but was present right from the start of his work as secretary and chancellor is evidenced by the brief work entitled De rebus pistoriensibus, which was probably written in March 1502. In addition, further evidence is found in concise comments in the Discursus de pace inter imperatorem et regem. In De rebus pistoriensibus, Machiavelli gives precise advice on the ‘measures to be taken without delay’ in order for the Florentines to undertake a complete restructuring of the constitution of Pistoia and establish ‘a popular government and way of life’ (uno governo et vivere popolare) in the city.17 In September 1502 the Florentine republic had established the Gonfalonier as a position for life, an official who it was hoped would guarantee greater continuity in the city government, in which positions, chosen by lot, were of short duration. Piero Soderini, the man selected for the office, was a great admirer of Machiavelli and commissioned him to write a speech to be delivered before the Great Council about the ‘disastrous financial position’ of the city.18 In this work, entitled Words to be spoken on the law for appropriating money (March 1503), Machiavelli refashions all the political experience and knowledge that he had amassed and begins to elaborate a number of arguments that would subsequently feature in his later works. The incipit is quite brilliant: All the cities that ever at any time have been ruled by an absolute prince, by aristocrats (ottimati) or by the people, as is this one, have had for their protection force (forze) combined with prudence, because the latter is not enough alone, and the first either does not produce things or, when they have produced, does not maintain them. Force and prudence, then, are the might (nervo) of all the governments (signorie) that ever have been or will be in the world. Hence any man who has considered change of kingdoms and the destruction of provinces and of cities has not seen them caused by anything other than failure in arms or in good sense.19

16 19

LCS V.2, 247. MCW III, 1439.

17

Montevecchi, 34, 65.

18

Marchand (1975), 52.

96

Constituting Freedom

Force (the army) and prudence are the backbone of governments and are mutually supportive. Money is needed to make ready an efficient militia that would allow a city such as Florence to inspire respect and awe in all who might think to conquer it or seize its possessions. For the first time Machiavelli reinforces his rationale by citing two historical examples, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the exploits of Valentino: a technique that from here on becomes one of the primary characteristics of his thought. What prompts this recourse to history is the belief that ‘fortune does not change her decision (sentenza) when there is no change in procedure (ordine)’.20 If people do not change the constitution of their civil way of life in relation to the changes continually taking place around them, events will tend to repeat themselves more or less identically. The question of history is an aspect of the ‘anti-Florentine polemic’,21 expressed with varying degrees of subtlety,22 that reveals the critical attitude which Machiavelli, especially from Words to be spoken on the law for appropriating money onwards, takes towards the Florentine republic that rose from the ashes of the Medicean principality. Machiavelli’s republicanism is not uncritical, but always subjected to confirmation by facts. The weakness of the republic worried him and he therefore exhorts his government to act, ‘if [force and prudence] are there, to maintain them, and if they are not there, to provide them’. All the while, however, he is dumbfounded by the ‘obstinacy (durezza)’ of the refusal by the city authorities23 to release the funds required for an effective military policy. In this work the theme of virtue, which will bring us full circle to the chapter of the Discourses from which we began, is not yet present. Rather there is the refrain of a union between prudence, ‘diplomatic action, secrecy’,24 and force, which is in direct relation with freedom. The term ‘virtue’ appears instead—albeit without yet being conceptualized as it is later on in the Prince and the Discourses—in A Description of the Method Used by Duke Valentino in Killing Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, and Others of 1503.25 There it is juxtaposed with the term ‘fortune’,26 which tellingly is also used to denote wealth. Another important work from the second half of 1503 that permits us to look into Machiavelli’s laboratory is On the Method of Dealing with the Rebellious Peoples of the Valdichiana.27 Leaving aside the aspects of the work relating to the formulation of a ‘science of politics [and] of history’,28 I must underline the ideas that enabled Machiavelli to construct the problem that we

20 23 26 27 28

21 22 MCW III, 1443. Sasso (1993), I, 115–25. Marchand (1975), 63–6. 24 25 MCW III, 1439–40. Marchand (1975), 62. MCW I, 163–9. MCW I, 168. See a selection in MCW I, 161–2. The full original text is in EN I.3, 458–65. Marchand (1975), 74 and 105.

Constituting Freedom

97

find again in his major works and to gradually devise the appropriate language with which to tackle it. The introduction of the comparison with Livy and the ancient Romans allowed Machiavelli to produce a new critique of Florentine politics, one which focused not so much on the political form of the city (republic) as on its government, its constitution, and their operations. While in Words to be spoken on the law for appropriating money the main preoccupation was the possible conquest of Florence by foreign armies, in On the Method of Dealing with the Rebellious Peoples of the Valdichiana attention is centred instead on the attitude to take towards the subjects, especially restless ones. Machiavelli shows how in their approach to these people the Florentines had committed the mistake of not imitating ‘those who have been the masters of the world’, thus exposing the republic to ‘much more danger and much more expense’.29 The comparison is to Cesare Borgia, who Machiavelli praises for his ability—which he did not see in the government of Florence—to be one of those who ‘recognize the right time (occasione) and know how to use it very well’.30 The First Decade (Decennale), written in November 1504, reveals a certain pessimism from Machiavelli, who describes how, from 1494 onwards, the whole of Italy was marked ‘by the vicissitudes of splendid states and kingdoms’, while the ‘mountain paths’ and ‘swamps’ were ‘filled with blood and dead men’. Florence, since it ‘was not prepared (presta)’ to deal with ‘barbarian peoples’, ‘was scourged by their violence (assaggiò i colpi de la lor tempesta). So all Tuscany was in confusion’, losing ‘Pisa and those states the Medici family gave to the French’.31 The theme of ‘one’s own arms’ then begins to torment Machiavelli, who from 1504 to 1506 was now involved, during the increasingly tangled situation in Italy, in various diplomatic expeditions of a predominantly military kind, 29

EN I.3, 463–4. MCW I, 162. The portrait appears to be more of a form of schematization than of idealization, as is shown by the observations on the excessive debt to fortune taken on by Valentino—LCS V.2, 391–2 and MCW I, 162; Skinner (1981), 10–11—as well as the judgements expressed in the First Mission to the Court of Rome (October–December 1503), which show the ‘decadence of Cesare Borgia in Machiavelli’s eyes’—Marchand in LCS V.3, 32–5; Sasso (1993), I, 97–115, 133–44—together with the emphasis on his mistakes—Gerbier (2001), 67–77—and the incomplete nature of his virtue: Del Águila-Chaparro (2006), 111. The figure of Valentino is used by Machiavelli to show that even when the virtue and ‘political reason’ of only one man are at their highest level, they can nevertheless err; fortune does not delineate their ‘insurmountable limit’, thus refuting ‘the theory of the omnipotence of chance’, and it shows itself to be a kind of latent deficiency of virtue and reason, so that while they can never assert themselves over the void that structures them, they can nevertheless challenge it constantly and sometimes defeat it: thus, ‘there is not [and] there cannot be any guarantee that virtue prevails’; fortune is ‘that which resists the rational interpretation of events and, therefore […] attempts to predict’: Inglese (2006), 64–5, 74, 72. It is not only external to reason, but also internal to it—Sasso (1987–97), II, 127—in the form of a void that makes it possible to emerge and at the same time undermines its foundations as a point of possible weakness. 31 MCW III, 1445. 30

98

Constituting Freedom

and was probably also influenced by the events he witnessed during his First Mission to the Court of Rome on the occasion of the election of Pope Julius II (1503–13). The advance of the Venetians against territories held by Cesare Borgia, whose fortune was slowly waning, was alarming the pope, the king of France, and Florence. The end of Valentino and Florence’s fragility in the face of possible military attacks led Machiavelli to conceive and propose an ambitious project with several dimensions: to endow Florence once again with a militia that would allow the republic to defend its independence and to live free from mercenaries’ demand. It was a dream that had probably begun to take shape as early as 1500, at the time of the mercenary troops’ mutiny in the camp outside Pisa, and had then grown while Machiavelli was in France, where he had had a chance to see the quality of an army whose core was formed by the king’s subjects. […] The idea was received poorly in Florence. The Gonfalonier Pier Soderini, approved and supported it, but leading citizens, that is, aristocrats, viewed it coolly and suspiciously, in some cases with outright hostility.32

His writings about the Ordinanza—the plan to recruit and equip a militia made up of citizens and the subjects of Florence’s countryside, in which Machiavelli participated by taking charge of the farmers of Mugello and Casentino—begin in 1506. In Machiavelli’s opinion, the government of Florence was making the mistake of sitting on the fence, adopting a wait-and-see policy that ‘kept the city suspended’33 and made it vulnerable to incursions by foreign princes, as in the case of Emperor Maximilian I of Augsburg (1493–1519), of whom he speaks in the agitated letter (again to Ridolfi) of 12 June 1506.34 The idea of the Ordinanza is perhaps a sign that Machiavelli no longer believed it possible to construct a great Italian state ‘safe by himself ’,35 as Cesare Borgia, who was already in decline, had planned. Florence therefore had to consider defending itself, for all that this was an awesome challenge when facing the great transalpine armies. All of the writings about the Ordinanza that he authored in 1506, as well as the chapters in the Prince dedicated to armies,36 and obviously, The Art of War, bear witness to the extent to which Machiavelli deemed it vital to ‘order the state of Florence to arms’, as he wrote in La cagione dell’ordinanza (The Reason for the Militia). In fact, ‘those who mention empire, kingdom, principality, republic, who refer to men who command, beginning from the first rank and going down to the leader of a single brigantine, refer to justice and arms. You [the Florentine authorities] of justice 32

Viroli (2002), 81; regarding this topic see Guidi (2009) and Barthas (2011), which are fundamental to understanding the relationship between the use of mercenary troops and the financial politics of Florence. On the subject of credit see also Padgett-McLean (2011). 33 34 Let. 193, letter to Giovanni Ridolfi, 1 June 1504. Let. 223–7. 35 36 MCW I, 161. P XII–XIV.

Constituting Freedom

99

have not much, and of arms none’. And so he continues: even if for ‘a hundred long years’ Florence had lived ‘otherwise’ (in other words without a proper militia) ‘and maintained itself ’, the city’s new situation made it ‘impossible to be able to preserve [one’s own] freedom in the same way’.37 Changing ‘times’38 demand a change of orders if one desires to preserve freedom, which is here connected directly to armed resistance. More than strictly military issues, important though they be, it is the army’s internal political order that is most pertinent to Machiavelli’s argument, because in his reflections the army is always the backbone of the virtuous city: ‘those who consider an army, [in fact], to divide it crudely, finds it is composed of men who command and who obey’.39 The command–obedience relation is a key axis of the army and, for this reason, teaches a lesson about the free and civil way of life, in that ‘those [who] know how to command […] make a comparison between their qualities and those of whoever has to obey, and when they see proportion there, then they may command; when disproportion, they abstain from it’.40 The problem is that ‘the humours of Tuscany are […] like one who understands being able to live over himself [govern alone] [and] no longer wants a master, finding himself more armed and the master unarmed’.41 The feudalism of Tuscany makes it incapable of maintaining its freedom, since this necessitates a unified army, which implies a relationship of command and obedience: indeed, without giving the soldiers ‘a leader and guide, [one] cannot stand against enemies’, and providing a leader requires ‘a law that provides for this and a magistrate who controls it’. Moreover, ‘a multitude without a leader never does damage, or if it does it is easy to suppress’. Yet the existence of a leader and laws, and the magistrates that ensure they are adhered to, are not enough to create a stable order: it is also necessary to ‘mix in something religious to make [the soldiers] more obedient’.42 However, Machiavelli’s civil religion, unlike that of Hobbes,43 does not imply any transcendence, and therefore no political theology, unlike in Savonarola.44 This is because it is both contingent and circumstantial, in other words historic and political. To avoid the army being ‘badly used by a magistrate or a private person’ the solution is ultimately ‘to order the things in ways that they have several superiors’, who must be of three kinds: ‘those who keep them [the soldiers] ordered at home, those who command them in war, and those who remunerate them’. Specifically, ‘this new magistrate would keep them ordered at home; the Ten thereafter command them in war and the Signori, Collegi, Ten and a new Magistrate reward them and remunerate them: 37

EN I.3, 470. L 99, letter to Giovan Battista Soderini, 13–21 September 1506. The letter, published in L 96–100, has the wrong date, place, and recipient, but corresponds to the so-called Ghiribizzi al Soderino. 39 40 41 EN I.3 471–3. D III.22, 265. EN I.3, 471. 42 43 44 EN I.3, 474–5. See Raimondi (2013b). Quaglioni (2011), 53. 38

100

Constituting Freedom

and thus they would always confuse who is their superior, and recognize a public not a private’. To this it should be added that ‘nobody born in places where they command a company of men (bandiera), or have a house or possession there, can govern there’ and that ‘it is good every year to change the constables and to give them new roles, and to ban them some years after their first’.45 Such an organization is of course incompatible with the feudal order. In the Provvisione della ordinanza (The Provision for Infantry), whose incipit follows that of the Cagione, the accent is placed more on the insecurity that results from the lack of one’s own arms than on justice, ‘the republic of Florence being well supported by the orders that relate to justice’.46 Without entering into the copious details of the creation of the ‘9 officials of the Florentine Ordinanza and Militia’,47 the salient point is—as has already emerged from the previous work—the mixed or rather quarrelsome nature of the government of the citizen army that arises from the fact that members of the major and minor guilds (the former more than the latter) all had to be found a place. It was as if Machiavelli wanted to bring warfare into the city and place it in the service of its well-being. In contrast to the anxiety that drives the theorists of the Reason of State and Hobbes towards internal pacification, construed as absence of war, Machiavelli thinks of peace in terms of the outcome of an encounter and clash between the parts and of their always uncertain combination, which constantly risks disorder. The idea of the Ordinanza is a constant in the thought and political practice of Machiavelli, so much so that even after 1506 he continued to occupy himself with it whenever the opportunity arose.48 He developed the link between justice and armies in a series of writings which, from 1507 to 1512, outlined his experiences at the courts of France and in Germany. These texts provide useful information on the Florentine constitution and the relation between freedom and corruption. In the Report on the Affairs of Germany, written following his mission to the court of the emperor in 1507–8, Machiavelli expressed the view that would be echoed in the Discourse on the Affairs of Germany and on Emperor of 1509, the Portrait of the affairs of Germany of 1512, and in his major works. His account of the constitution used by the German communities, while succinct, draws attention to customs—both positive and negative—that he probably hoped would be given close attention by the Florentine authorities. As he does when discussing France, he quietly propounds a parallel between the German, French, and Florentine constitutions, hoping to find in the comparison some inspiration that would make steadfast the precarious stability of his home city. 45 48

46 EN I.3, 475–6. EN I.3, 477. EN I.3, 521, 523–33, 536–40, 588–93.

47

EN I.3, 478–92.

Constituting Freedom

101

The ‘Germans are rich […] because they live as if they were poor’: their frugality is based on self-sufficiency and owning only what is necessary, for which reason ‘their life [is] rough and free’ and ill-disposed to war, even though the country abounds in ‘population, wealth, and armies […] in public treasury’. This was an ‘order […] really admirable’49 but complicated by the ‘many different humours’ that generate ‘disunion’ when the different ‘free cities’ have to form an alliance. It is said that the ‘Swiss’, in particular, create the greatest problems, and this—Machiavelli opines—is because they want ‘to preserve their freedom and to protect themselves against the princes’. Furthermore, they are ‘inimical to the gentlemen’, so that ‘everybody enjoys perfect freedom, without any distinction amongst men, excepting only those who are members of the magistracies’. The ample freedom of the Swiss makes them similar to the ‘free and imperial cities, which are the nerve of the country, and who possess riches (danari) and well-regulated organization (ordine), [because] their chief aim is the preservation of their freedom, and not [the] increase of their dominions […], and all [are] accustomed to govern themselves’. In the end, the real ‘power (potenza) […] of Germany […] resides more in the free cities than in the princes’, be they ‘temporal’ or, worse, ‘ecclesiastical’,50 seeing as the free cities ‘live according to the ancient as regards both religion and military orders’.51 While the portrait of the German communities and cities is flattering and is reasserted in the Prince,52 it appears that Machiavelli feels that their ‘perfect freedom’ would not be enough when it comes to establishing the union—either with the Emperor or between themselves—that is needed to confront the dangers that surround them or of their possible (and feared) territorial expansion. It should not be forgotten that the Swiss were among the main providers of mercenary militias.53 In a similar way, in the Portrait of the affairs of France of 1511–12, an annotated summary of the Third Mission to the Court of France of 1510, Machiavelli describes the constitution of the French kingdom in an attempt to identify the ‘characteristics of a powerful state’. These were, he found, the

49 This order is defined by ‘three criteria: the people in arms, poverty, and autonomy’, to which is added, and not by chance, ‘equality’ or rather ‘the absence of hierarchical power’. This mixture generates a ‘society producer of courage’ if it becomes a ‘lasting structure’: Wicht (1995), 112–16, 164, 175. Poverty is ‘the most useful thing that may be ordered in a free way of life’ (D III.25, 271) and should not be confused with ‘destitution’, which is ‘total indigence, absolute privation’. Poverty, instead is ‘the property needed [so that] every man [can] live freely and respectably without any useless surplus’ and it has a political meaning because it ‘is the antidote to corruption’, given that he who ‘knows how to be poor is also free and independent of possessions’: Dejardin (2004), 75–9, 91–6, despite the excessive naturalism. 50 CWNM, Second Report on the Affairs of Germany (translation modified; hereafter signified as t.m.). 51 52 53 D I.12, 38 and I.55, 110–11. P X, 43–4. Zanzi (2013), 621–72.

102

Constituting Freedom

‘progressive concentration of all territory and all powers in the hands of a single man, the king, and thus the gradual diminution of baronial authority, the absence of a relatively powerful bourgeois class, and the total subjugation of the people’.54 But even the mighty kingdom of France presents a drawback: ‘the infantry that cannot be good for much, for […] they are […] all of the lower order and tradesmen from the country, and are so subordinated to the nobles and so abject in all their actions as to have become actually debased’, a problem that can be resolved only by turning to mercenary troops.55 Alongside this difficulty there are others that make French-style absolutism inadequate to solving the problems of Florence.56 Firstly, the fact that wealth is in the hands of the ‘gentlemen’ and does not circulate; secondly, that this situation impedes, politically, the creation of a group (the bourgeoisie) capable of challenging the dominion of the nobles; thirdly, the discretionary taxation of the king, which gives rise to strong inequality.57 The centralization of powers, therefore, cannot by itself produce the civil and free way of life, because the people are totally devoid of virtue, being unfit for war, and trapped in conditions of economic inequality.58 On the contrary, constitutions are more virtuous the more they create conditions that reduce the formation of advantageous positions, either material or symbolic. In the period 1499–1512, Machiavelli concentrated on the ‘study of a political structure that, whatever the character and quality of the sovereign may be, guarantees a state of maximum stability and maximum power’.59 Apart from the misleading Hobbesian vocabulary used by Marchand, the attention paid to the constitutions that Machiavelli exhibits in his mature works is the fruit of a precise diagnosis, expounded partially but clearly in the Discursus, where he declares that the republic did not last because: 1) ‘the orders (ordini) […] not satisfy all the humours among the citizens; and […] the government could not inflict punishment’; 2) a ‘true republic’ could not afford to have a ‘Gonfalonier for life’ who, if he were to be ‘intelligent and wicked, easily could make himself prince’, and if he were ‘good and weak, he could easily be driven out, with the ruin of the whole state’.60 The Florentine constitution is defective, irrespective of the individuals within it. The short summa of the period 1499–1512 set out in the Discursus61 is based on the analyses that Machiavelli carried out in those years and justifies the apparent anachronism that consists in using the works of 1499–1512 in sequence with those of 1513–22.

54 56 58 61

55 Marchand (1975), 266–7, 269. CWNM, An Account of the Affairs of France. 57 Ménissier (2010), 89–100. CWNM, An Account of the Affairs of France. 59 60 D I.16, 46. Marchand (1975), 392. DRGF 103; t.m. DRGF 101–3.

Constituting Freedom

103

4.2. THE RETURN OF TH E MEDICI ‘The only state now left to consider is that from 1512 to the present, and what its weakness and strong qualities have been, but because it is a recent affair and everybody knows it, I shall not speak of it’.62 Apart from the major works, the letters, which from 1513 ‘change tone’63 and the Art of War help us to understand what Machiavelli thought of Florence and its constitution under the Medici. The first letter post res perditas, dated ‘Florence, post 16 September 1512’, is addressed ‘to a noblewoman’, perhaps Isabella d’Este.64 In it, Machiavelli states that with the re-entry of the Medici to Florence, there ‘was established […] a certain new order of government’: it was in truth not completely new, given that it was little more than ‘the state in the form it had during the lifetime of the Magnificent Lorenzo’.65 As has been said: on 7 September [1512] a public consultation (pratica) decided to abolish the Gonfalonier for life and to elect the Gonfalonier for one year; to retain the Great Council, but transfer some of its competences to the Council of the Eighty which was enlarged by the permanent inclusion of all who had administered, inside or outside, the first honours: inside, those that had been either Gonfaloniers of justice or part of the Ten of the balìa […], outside, all those that were elected to the Council of the Eighty, had been ambassadors to princes or general commissars in war (Guicciardini, History of Italy, XI, 4). The new Gonfalonier was Giovan Battista Ridolfi.66

But this solution ‘still had too much of a popular government’67 and on 14 September, ‘there arose by chance some noise in the Public Square […] and at once the whole city was under arms’, to the point that to placate the supporters of the Medici, on the sixteenth day ‘a law was passed by which the magnificent Medici were reinstated in all the honours and ranks of their ancestors’.68 Thus ‘a balìa of 45 members’ was created, ‘all belonging to the most important families of the Florentine aristocracy’, the government was restored to the ‘form that it used to have before the year 1494’, and the Medici resumed control of the city, ‘but governing it more imperiously and with the most absolute will. […] In this way the freedom of the Florentines was oppressed with arms’:69 these final words belong to Guicciardini and Machiavelli would in all probability have agreed with them. To say that following this event the ‘city remains very quiet’70 is a way of representing the situation in which, as often happens, Machiavelli manages to allow the impartiality of the description and the bitter irony of his personal assessment to coexist.

62 66 69

DRGF 103; t.m. Gaeta, 358, n. 21. Gaeta, 359, n. 26.

63

Inglese (1989), 7. Gaeta, 359, n. 22. 70 L 96. 67

64

L 90. L 95–6.

68

65

L 95; t.m.

104

Constituting Freedom

Despite Florence’s regression to the Medicean principality,71 Machiavelli does not cease ‘to talk (ragionare) about the state’, even if ‘many times’ one sees ‘things turn out contrary to the notions and concept you form’.72 These were reasonings and conjectures that Machiavelli exchanged with Vettori,73 but which he hoped to use to gain credit with the Medici, as is evidenced by the famous letter (again to Vettori) of 10 December 1513, in which he writes that he wishes that the Medici ‘will make use of me […], because […] fifteen years while I have been studying the art of the state, I have not slept or been playing; and well may anybody be glad to get the services of one who at the expense of others has become full of experience’.74 His hope was not fulfilled and his disappointment led to moments of profound dejection75 before he was commissioned to write the Histories in November 1520.76 Machiavelli’s desire to work for the Medici was not at odds with his republican ideas: first of all, because this was the only way in which to work for the re-establishment of the republic in Florence; secondly, only by doing so could he use his ‘experience’ to attempt to convince the Medici to install the republic, both by demonstrating the aporetic nature of the principality (as he did in the Prince: see Chapter 1, Section 1.3) and by proposing a republican constitution to them (as in the Discursus and the Minuta: see this chapter, Sections 4.4 and 4.5). In the specific historical circumstance in which he conducted his reasoning and in which he could not imagine ‘republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth’,77 Machiavelli argued that the only way to bring back the republic to Florence was to convince the Medici to do so, even if he considered them to be of no use in preserving it. In addition to the Prince and the Discourses, the most important work prior to the Histories is The Art of War, written between 1519 and 1520 and published in 1521. In the writings on the subject of the Ordinanza, especially in the Cagione of 1506, one sees how much the military model was important to Machiavelli both from the point of view of defence and from the institutional and political perspective. Furthermore, in the Prince he had already argued: that it is necessary for a prince to have good foundations for himself; otherwise he must of necessity be ruined. The principal foundations that all states have, new 71

Najemy (2006), 425–6. L 104, letter to Francesco Vettori, 9 April 1513; t.m. 73 See, for example, the letters of 29 April, 10 and 26 August, 16 April and 10 December 1514. 74 L 144. 75 See the letters to Vettori of 10 June and 20 December 1514, and those to Giovanni Vernacci of 15 February 1516, 8 June 1517, 5 and 25 January 1518, and 15 April 1520. 76 Ridolfi (2010), 285, and Let. 505–12 for the pressure exerted by his friends of the Orti Oricellari on his behalf. 77 P XV, 61. 72

Constituting Freedom

105

ones as well as old or mixed, are good laws and good arms. And […] there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms, and where there are good arms there must be good laws.78

The good arms are ‘his own’,79 a conviction revived and reiterated in the Art.80 But the most interesting aspect is the organizational one, not so much in the technical–military sense, as that of the command–obedience relation, because, as is also written in the Prince, the art of war ‘is the only art which is of concern to one who commands’.81 And while in Machiavelli’s time, many believed that the ‘civilian life’ and the ‘military life’ were very different: if we consider ancient orders, we shall not find things that are more closely united, more in conformity, and of which one, necessarily, so much loves the other as do these, because all the arts that are provided for in a civility (civilità) for the sake of the common good of men, all the orders made in it so that men will live in fear of the laws and of God, would be vain if for them there were not provided defences, which when well ordered, preserve them, even though they themselves are not well ordered. And so, on the contrary, good orders, without military support, suffer the same sort of injury as do the rooms of a splendid and kingly palace, even though ornamented with gems and gold, when, not being roofed over, they have nothing to protect them for the rain. And if for every other order of men in cities and kingdoms every diligence should be used to keep them faithful, peaceful, and full of the fear of God, in the army is should be redoubled. Because from what man ought his native land to expect greater fidelity than from that one who has to promise to die for her? In whom ought there to be more love of peace than in him who can get nothing but injury from war? In whom ought there to be more fear of God than in a man who every day, being exposed to countless perils, has great need for his aid? This necessity, well considered both by those who give laws to empires and by those who are put in charge of military training, would bring it about that the life of soldiers would be praised by other men and with great zeal followed and imitated. But since military orders are wholly corrupted and have greatly diverged from ancient methods, about them have sprung up injurious opinions, which make everybody hate soldiering and avoid association (conversazione) with those who engage in it.82

War does not presuppose only military matters, but also political ones, concerning who gives orders and who must obey them, because ‘putting together an army or forming a republic not only conform to the same rules, but also require an identical human resources’.83 The Art, in fact, has the goal

78

79 80 P XII, 48. P XIII, 55 and 57. AW I, 584–7. 82 P XIV, 58. AW dedication, 566–7; t.m. 83 Fachard (1996), 165. Machiavelli’s plan to adapt the Justinian binomial ‘iustitia et armi’ to the political and institutional reality of Florence was aimed at improving the constitution by offering new soldiers greater popular participation in the government of the city in exchange for their commitment to the militia, in other words to provide more ‘justice and greater social equity’. This was a project that, starting from ‘the countryside’ would ‘gradually’ enter ‘into the 81

106

Constituting Freedom

of expounding ‘many things useful not merely in military but in civilian life’.84 And the first lines of the dialogue between Cosimo and Fabrizio confirm this: despite finding themselves ‘in an age so corrupt, in which one who wished to depart from the usual habit would be defamed and spoken against by everybody’, it would nonetheless be possible to introduce ‘into any civility (civilità) in which there is still left something good’, certain ‘things […] like the ancient ones’:85 to honour and reward the virtues, not to despise poverty, to esteem the methods (modi) and orders of military discipline, to oblige the citizens to love one another, to live without factions, to esteem private less than public good, and other like things;86 [it is, in fact, the] private forces and [the] foreign forces […] which are the ones that ruin a free way of life, [while] public forces and orders, which have their particular limits, do not lead beyond to something that may ruin the republic.87

The art of war, however, cannot be a job for life. The rejection of professional military men is motivated by the fact that ‘he will never be reckoned a good man who carries on an occupation in which, if he is to endeavour at all times to get income from it, he must be rapacious, fraudulent, violent, and must have many qualities which of necessity make him not good’ and, in fact, ‘a republic or a kingdom […] when they have been well ordered, has never allowed one of its citizens or subjects to practice it as a profession’.88 Armies cannot be permanent, because in this way they generate corruption, so that even giving ‘pay [to the] leaders […] is a very corrupt order, because a wise republic […] ought to use its citizens as leaders in war, and in time of peace have them return to their professions’.89 The citizens, however, must keep possession of their weapons, because ‘weapons borne by citizens or subjects, given by the laws and by order, never do damage; on the contrary they are always an advantage, and cities city’, where citizens would be granted ‘positions of command’, so as to establish a ‘relationship of trust between the government of the city and conscripted peasants’: Guidi (2009), 166, 283–384. 84 AW I, 569. 85 The imitation of the ancients, for Machiavelli, is not an idealization but the way to present a political project which, despite its stylization, shows that ‘in following the authority of the Romans, one does not follow the authority of the Romans, [because] the Romans discovered their modes and orders without any example (of other), by their prudence, through themselves’: Strauss (1958), 119. In other words: ‘what Florence can learn from Rome is something of which the Romans themselves did not have a theoretical knowledge because their institutions had been improvised in response to events’: Lefort (2000), 120. Collecting historical exempla cannot ‘be reduced merely to following the examples of the ancients’: Wolin (2004), 193. This is instead the instrument, which measured against the difference between the present and the past, helps us to position ourselves in relation to existing problems, through the ‘elaboration of the subject matter hitherto identified as classical antiquity’: Lefort (2012), 217. 86 87 88 AW 571–2; t.m. D I.7, 24. AW I, 573–5; t.m. 89 AW I, 580; t.m.

Constituting Freedom

107

keep themselves uncorrupted longer by means of those weapons than without them’. It is not, in fact, ‘weapons in the hand of citizens’ that ‘turn them into tyrants […], but that bad orders of government, fitting a city for tyranny, can do so. And since they had a good government, they did not need to fear their weapons’.90 Machiavelli does not neglect the problem of the calibre of the soldiers, who must have ‘honour and modesty; otherwise one who incites to discord and starts corruption may be chosen’, even if he underestimates the problem of ‘miserable training’, which generates a ‘vile spirit’, in which ‘any virtue in any way to be praised’ cannot grow.91 The question, indeed, goes well beyond the experience with which commanders select their soldiers or organize their legions, and beyond the family and local customs of the soldiers. Speaking about the education of the prince in matters of war, Machiavelli had prescribed an ‘exercise’ to be undertaken ‘with deeds [and] with the mind’. With ‘hunting’ and training the body to tolerate ‘hardships’, studying ‘the nature of sites’, and a commitment to ‘read histories and consider in them the actions of excellent men’, the prince must learn how to confront fortune in adversity, or, rather, to equip himself for the virtue that is born only from such an encounter. And if a wise republic must employ its own citizens as its war commanders, this implies that even ‘men of private fortune [can] rise to [the] rank’ of prince.92 The education of the masses at least here takes the form of disciplining them towards the smooth running of the army, because ‘spirited but unorganized men are much weaker than the timid but well-organized, because organization (ordine) expels men’s fear; disorder lessens their spirit’. Thus ‘a brave army is not made so by having brave men in it, but by having its tactics (ordini) well worked out (ordinate)’:93 in fact, ‘discipline does more in war than enthusiasm (furore)’.94 Here the order appears even more important than virtue. For Machiavelli, however, it is a question of reconciling the two. The problem of virtue is better addressed in republics than in kingdoms or principalities, because ‘republics usually honour virtue; kingdoms fear it’. Furthermore, virtue is linked to military activity, so that even ‘among […] the Tuscans, who fought a hundred and fifty years with the Roman people before they were conquered, a large number of excellent men did appear’. And while the ‘Christian religion’ is the enemy of virtue because it ‘does not impose the same necessity for defending ourselves as antiquity did’, even ‘where there are more empires (imperii)’ that generate ‘strong men’ such states are incapable of making their virtue last beyond their deaths. Where there is ‘little virtue […] fortune rules everything’, and one should therefore follow the example of ‘Germany (Magna), where there [is] much virtue’ because all the populations 90 93

AW I, 585–6; t.m. AW II, 608 and 611.

91

AW I, 588; t.m. AW VII, 718.

94

92

P XIV, 58–60.

108

Constituting Freedom

of which it is composed ‘are all jealous for their states (stati) and fear servitude […]; hence they all keep themselves masters and in honour’.95 Discipline is achieved through the exercise and certainty of punishment, because laws are insufficient on their own: ‘soldiers, when they live in barracks, are kept in order through fear and punishment; when they are led to war, through hope and reward.’96 How much more important, then, is the example of the superiors, because he who: above everything else keeps the army united [has] the reputation of the commander (capitano); this comes only from his virtue, because neither blood nor rank ever gives it without virtue. And the first thing a commander is expected to do is to keep his soldiers punished and paid [to avoid] tumult and discords which ruin an army,97

while remaining aware that it is ‘harmful to a republic or to a prince to hold the spirits of subjects in suspense and fearful with continual penalties and offences’.98 On the one hand, the situation requires a good constitution—a suitable combination of discipline, virtue, good customs, and good laws—something that assimilates the military and political professions. On the other hand, the difference between the two seems fundamental, as noted by the last quotation: tumults, the factor that can have a positive effect in politics because they are expansive, only have a negative effect on the army. The Art thus appears to bring us back to our starting point: how do good customs and laws come into being? Before going in search of an answer, which is not to be found in the Art, we must take note of certain issues that must always be borne in mind. The first is that the ‘commanders’, irrespective of their ability to lead and to punish, should never acquire too much authority and the way to ensure this does not happen is by not deploying them near their place of origin and by regularly changing their appointments.99 Additionally, such men must be good ‘orators because, unless they know how to speak to the whole army, they will have difficulty in doing anything good’. Rhetoric, which ‘lightens fear, sets courage afire, increases determination, uncovers deceptions, promises reward, shows perils and the way to escape them, reproaches, begs, threatens, fills with hope, praises, berates and does everything through which human passions are extinguished or excited’,100 is an integral part of the virtue of a commander. The second point to bear in mind concerns the end goal of war, which is to enrich the ‘public’ and not individuals, as was done by ‘the Romans, [who] provided [for this] by ordering that all the booty should belong to the public and that the public should then distribute it as seemed best’.101 The third is to remember ‘how dangerous it is to want to free a people 95 98

96 97 AW II, 622–4; t.m. AW VII, 719. AW VI, 698; t.m. 99 100 101 D I.45, 94. AW I, 592–3. AW IV, 661. AW V, 672.

Constituting Freedom

109

who want in every mode to be enslaved’.102 Throughout the Histories, for example, there are those, often nobles or members of the popolo grasso but seldom of other extraction, in whom Machiavelli recognizes the traits of virtue and considers potentially ideally suited to founding good orders. What is always missing in them, however, is the ability to make their virtue expansive by ensuring that it is transmitted from the individual to the ‘multitude […] which is regulated by laws, as was the Roman’, and not to one that was ‘unshackled, as was the Syracusan’.103 And sometimes, it is the people who resist the possibility of being free.

4.3. RECAPITULATION Before examining Machiavelli’s plans for the reorganization of Florence, it is worth summarizing what has been said so far. There are many elements that Machiavelli believes must be actively involved, combining with one another, to reorder the freedom in a corrupt city or preserve its freedom if such there is: and the two sides of the problem are not the same. It is therefore essential to distinguish between: A) establishing freedom in a completely corrupt city where it is not present; B) maintaining it and even growing and strengthening it in a city not entirely corrupt where it is already present. In the case of A there is no real solution: the only one would be to establish a principality, the best being a civil one, and yet however good a prince may be he will inevitably incline towards tyranny and, since the city is entirely corrupt, it would not know how to react. At this point, one is in the hands of fortune. Not by chance, Machiavelli affirms that his ‘reasonings are about those peoples among whom corruption has not expanded very much and there is more of the good than of the spoiled’,104 before corruption ‘had begun to spread through the members’.105 In the case of B, the solution is twofold: 1) a city ruled by a good prince (a civil principality); 2) a city governed without a prince (a republic). The problem with B1 is the non-heritability of virtue. A virtuous prince may know how to order a city well, providing it with orders designed to maintain freedom, but he can do nothing about his successor who, if he is not virtuous will destroy the good work done and with it the city, totally corrupting it, as in

102

FH III.27, 143.

103

D I.58, 117.

104

D I.16, 44.

105

D I.17, 47.

110

Constituting Freedom

the case of A. In Book III of the Discourses, Machiavelli tries to find a way around this difficulty by proposing the imitation of the exemplary historical and political behaviour of certain exceptional men, but he is well aware of the limitations of the idea, which is overly dependent on fortune. The limitations prompt him to seek an answer in constitution, which brings him to the question of the mixture. B2 is the only potential answer posed in Discourses I.18, even if it is very difficult. One simply cannot rely on the impulsive interplay of the parts that tend instinctively to overwhelm each other, creating the risk of the city relapsing into one of the other situations, as the history of the Florentine constitutions recounted by Machiavelli shows. In order for this approach to be viable, therefore, three conditions must be met: a) the orders of the city, despite their continual variation, must have in some way preserved the freedom and virtue present at the birth of the city; b) the constitution of freedom cannot be the work of anything but a good prince, who is such only if he knows that for the sake of its continuance a city must be entrusted to the organized multitude; c) in order that the people may govern and therefore make a city last, the constitution must first take the possibility of tumults into account, and then enable and unify a series of orders that includes equality, equity, justice, the participation of the army, elections, strengthening the public to the detriment of the private, dictatorship as an ordered method of reactivating (if required) the beginnings of the principality, the Great Council, the magistrates, and civil religion. Combining and keeping firmly unified these orders, in particular the moments of foundation and duration, requires taking ‘a path as yet untrodden by anyone’,106 bringing about a third possibility (B3). B3 is based on the institutional combination of the two main political forms that Machiavelli analysed and discussed in all his works: the principality and the republic. The first as a founding force, the second as a preserving force that can make things last. The problem of the city ruled by a good prince is resolved only by making it possible for the ordered multitude to receive the legacy of the founder’s virtue, thereby obviating the problem of its transmission: a strategy that requires the virtuous action of citizens. This approach necessitates a series of measures that have no guarantee of success but attempt to keep the multitude organized by allowing it to give vent to its humours and to pursue them by having access to public positions, within which it must confront—that is, encounter or clash—with other humours. 106

D I, preface, 5.

Constituting Freedom

111

The constitution is the institutional place where the humours are forced to take form by mixing, thus generating variable but sufficiently cohesive formations to take the decisions that republican life requires. Machiavelli notes that the capitalism of which he had personal experience— basically banking and trade—is by its nature unstable, being unable to achieve a state of immutable balance because its humours are individual. Since the parts are formed by the constant encounter-clash of the humours and everyone has their own humour or even humours—no longer collective passions but personal interests—the parts are made and unmade continually, engendering a political instability that cannot be eliminated, dissolving all that is solid in the air. The never-ending crisis provokes changes of governments, condemning capitalism, even in its primordial mercantile form, to perennial instability and therefore to a continuously destructive and constructive action of orders dictated by its needs. In the Discursus and the Minuta Machiavelli tries to imagine a form of stability in Florence, no matter how paradoxical, by making the city’s weakness the engine of a process of continual stabilization that prevents both the constitution’s dissolution and its crystallization that is herald of corruption, as well as a static equilibrium that is the result of the simple balancing of the parts, as in the situation in which there is ‘proportion […] from whoever forces to whoever is forced’.107 Machiavelli’s proposals should not be read as irony, although they contain some, but as an attempt to conceive a constitution that takes into consideration the capitalistic-mercantile nature of Florence without letting it dominate. If crisis is the nature of capitalism108 and if a stable constitution in capitalism does not appear possible, this does not mean giving in to the temptation of establishing a stable constitution at any cost, perhaps by abdicating political control to economic power, an obsession typical of a certain modernity (the Reason of State and Hobbes, just to mention the usual names). Instead it involves seeking to understand the need for politics in the performance of the market and therefore the cooperative form that makes possible a stable constitution even in the midst of the ceaseless changing of humours and their composition. The economy depends entirely on the constitution working properly, and this cannot allow that one part may have dominance over another because, as in war the nobles have need of the people to fight and win, so in economics the rich have need of the people to produce and consume. The possibility that both groups can give free play to their humours and find some personal advantage in the economic game calls for the continual 107

D I.55, 112. Del Lucchese, by arguing that ‘crisis is not the opposite of power: it is one of its expressions, a mode of its affirmation’ does he not risk involuntarily stating that crisis is not the opposite of capitalism but an aspect of its power, above all if the ‘desire’ founds itself on it? See Del Lucchese (2004), 1 and 35. 108

112

Constituting Freedom

political reshuffling of interests, creating, rather than a sort of democracy, a res publica that (i) starting from a division in parts (nobles, aristocrats or ottimati, people), mixes them, and produces others,109 (ii) joins the principality and republic structurally, much more than in Althusser’s sequencing, and (iii) makes tumults the engine of the constitution and not something that must be eradicated.110 We can now move on to analyse Machiavelli’s proposal, formulated first in the Discursus (Section 4.4 in this chapter) and then in the Minuta (Section 4.5 in this chapter), keeping in mind that the former is ‘much more than a circumstantial work’ because it is a ‘highly conceptual elaboration with a complex stratification’; furthermore, it is ‘the foremost point of the political thought’ of Machiavelli combining ‘a political-institutional proposal and a historiographical reflection’.111

4 . 4 . T H E DISCURSUS The Discursus and the Minuta aim to reorder the ‘state’, i.e. the government of Florence and they do not outline a reform of the entire city (which presumably would also include other aspects, from the militia to the finances, etc.). Here Machiavelli proposes a reform of the state and not of the constitution, and the state, as is evident, is only one component of the constitution. In the Discursus— a ‘text of extraordinary importance’112 and a ‘turning point’113—Machiavelli spells out what the exigency is that Florence must deal with: finding a form of government different to that of the Roman republic which is suitable to the 109 This does not entail the adoption of a democratic form based on the sovereignty of the people because, while it is beyond doubt that Machiavelli’s mixture is no longer the static preservation of the feudal orders that constituted the trick ‘of the more socially elevated and less numerous [parts]’—Cadoni (1962), 474—it is nevertheless elitist and not representative. 110 If tumults do not lead the republic to the edge of its dissolution, they have no positive political function, because only when faced with the possibility of a loss of freedom (as in war) can virtue be regenerated. The idea of the institutionalization of tumults, which would no longer inspire fear, which is ‘ineliminable from the theatre of politics’—Del Lucchese (2004), 221; and also Pedullà (2011), 239–58—and that of Machiavelli’s ‘nostalgia’ for the ‘regius metus’—Pedullà (2011), 141, 276—instead imply a metus tumultuum that does not belong to Machiavelli. Tumults produce new types of constitution, but cannot be placed within them, because they are either their point of rupture, and thus the possibility of the generation of new orders, or they are useless. The liberal interpretation—see, for example, Skinner (1981), 66—which reads tumults as producers of ‘a tensely balanced equilibrium’ that brings ever more refined and effective checks and balances, should be ruled out—see McCormick (2003), Geuna (2009), and Visentin (2009)—as should the idea that tumults can lead to the ‘Aristotelian equilibrium’: Pedullà (2011), 281–339. Furthermore, this fact calls into question the assumption, shared by a large part of the historiography, that Machiavelli supported the ‘theory of the three ambitions’: Guidi (1972). 111 112 113 Anselmi (1996), 189. Sasso (1993), I, 652. Najemy (1982), 558.

Constituting Freedom

113

instability that had constituted the city from its birth and which is at once its worst weakness and its greatest wealth. This instability was caused by the internal struggles that governed it and no form of government in the past had ever been able to overcome it. Machiavelli examines the various proposals for the restructuring of Florence that had been advanced up to that point:114 the one which argues that ‘no government can be established firmer than that existing in the times of Cosimo and of Lorenzo’, and the one by ‘some others’ who ‘wish one more inclusive’ government, identifying it with the opening up of the Great Council. He then observes that wanting to return to the state of Cosimo is inopportune both because it had been ‘weak’ and also because the weaknesses of those times would be redoubled in the present, ‘because the city, the citizens, the times are different from what they were then’ and thus ‘considering this unlikeness in times and in men, there cannot be a greater deception than to believe that upon such differently shaped matter one can stamp the same form’.115 In short, ‘in the political realm there are no models that are morally superior to the other’.116 The discrepancies between past and present in terms of times and men, however, do not only affect the principality/aristocratic project or the republican approach, but also call into question the strategy outlined by Machiavelli in the Prince, where the problem of Florence seemed to find a solution in the construction of an entirely new political entity (Italy). Since this project was never realized, it is necessary to find a different way to set the city in order. An initial indication emerges in the observation that: no firm government can be devised (si può ordinare) if it is not either a true principality or a true republic, because all the governments between these two are defective. The reason is entirely evident, because the principality has just one path to dissolution (risoluzione), that is, to descend toward the republic. And similarly the republic has just one path toward being dissolved (risolversi), that is, to rise toward the principality. States of a middle sort have two ways: they can rise toward the principality and descend toward the republic. From this comes their lack of firmness.117

Florence, however, ‘has frequently varied her methods of government [because it] has never been either a republic or a principality having the qualities each requires’.118 If ‘true’ republics and principalities119 are those that have all ‘the qualities each requires’, the reference is to the paradigms elaborated in the Prince and the Discourses, where the most stable principality is the 114

115 Sasso (1993), I, 657–86 and Albertini (1970), 20–37. DRGF 103–5. Albiac (2011), 22. 117 DRGF 106; t.m. ‘Being dissolved’ means here ‘to decide’, in keeping with the usage in D I.59, 120; II.15, 157 and FH VI.12, 243; VII.20, 300. ‘Rising’, on the other hand, refers, rather than to ‘a perfecting of qualities […], a quantitative reduction of political leaders’ (Rinaldi, 217, n. 125). 118 119 DRGF 101; t.m. DRGF 106. 116

114

Constituting Freedom

‘civil-popular’ one120 because the prince has ‘the people friendly’,121 and the most stable republic is the Roman one because it was ‘mixed’.122 Both these forms were ones which Florence had never assumed (see Chapter 2, Section 2.4), but as I hope I have shown, according to Machiavelli neither of the two alone is suitable to the reordering of Florence and, moreover, they are implicated in one another: the founding moment (principality) does not hold up without the preserving moment of duration (republic) and the one would not exist without the other. It is not a question, then, of choosing one of the two (principality or republic), but of mixing foundation and duration, starting with what already exists, namely the new Medicean regime.123 Machiavelli advises the pope (Leo X, Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici) ‘if he wishes to give Florence a firm state […] to set up there other than a true principality or a true republic having the parts each requires’,124 where ‘the parts’ refers to ‘all three kinds of government’: that of the king, the aristocrats (ottimati), and the people,125 although in Florence these correspond to ‘the most important, those in the middle, and the lowest (primi, mezzani e ultimi)’.126 Machiavelli immediately declares that he will not talk in detail about the possibility of setting up a principality ‘both because of the difficulty of establishing one here and because there are no facilities for doing it’.127 The reason is that ‘in all cities where the citizens are accustomed to equality, a principality cannot be set up except with the utmost difficulty, and in those cities where the citizens are accustomed to inequality, a republic cannot be set up except with the utmost difficulty’.128 Hence, to order a principality in Florence, ‘where equality is great, the establishment of inequality would be necessary’. At this point, giving further proof of his republican vocation, Machiavelli declares: ‘I shall pass over any further treatment of the principality and speak of the republic, […] because Florence is a subject very suitable for taking this form.’129 Florence is highly suited to becoming a republic because it has been able, notwithstanding the very many difficulties it has known and the unstableness of its governments, to maintain great equality among the citizens and, therefore, also ‘a political and incorrupt way of life’. This was because being a mercantile city—simultaneously its misfortune (the instability of its

120

121 122 Frosini (2005), 201. P IX, 41. D I.2, 14. My reading differs both from those who see the ‘civil principality’ as the middle form criticized here by Machiavelli as ‘an unstable intermediary state, neither a true principality nor a true republic’—Larivaille (1996), 103; Ménissier (2006), 183—as well as from the interpretation that argues that ‘the true principality’, in the Discursus, ‘is identified in the figure of a feudal pyramid that, with the king at its top, and the people at its base, has in the intermediate points […] the gentlemen who rule over the people and the princes who rule over the gentlemen, both being ruled over, together with the people, by the king’: Sasso (1967), 150. 124 125 DRGF 106; t.m. D I.2, 14 and also D I.19–20 and 25. 126 127 128 129 DRGF 107. DRGF 106. DRGF 106; t.m. DRGF 107; t.m. 123

Constituting Freedom

115

governments) and its good fortune (equality of its citizens)—it is devoid of ‘gentlemen’.130 Regardless of the attempt to establish a dialogue with the pope, Machiavelli conceived a constitution that was entirely different to the papal state.131 While Leo X planned to introduce a policy of the people132 based on personal and private connections within a strict hierarchy in which all citizens were subjects, Machiavelli, by contrast, deemed it necessary to move in the direction of a policy of the constitution to which an individual might be appointed who was ‘high-minded and who seems to deserve to outrank the others’.133 The pope had in mind a policy by which the Medici family would come to rule the city with the help of friends bound by favours, interests, and personal relationships (a concrete, material network of private ties that held the feudal system firmly in place, as attested by the direct personal management of the magistracies aimed at the subordination, control, and neutralization of their political weight), together with the captatio benevolentiae of the peasants and the poor through prudent taxation and greater speed in the administration of justice. Machiavelli, by contrast, imagined a much more complex system of distribution of offices, functions, and authorities that would have to include, on an equal basis, ‘the most important, those in the middle, and the lowest’, which is to say ‘the three different sorts of men who exist in all cities’ and to whom ‘those who organize a republic ought to give a place’ in the state. Only in this way would such a republic have ‘the qualities each requires’, and ‘the last government fell’ precisely because it had not fulfilled this need. Moreover, ‘though in Florence the citizens possess the equality mentioned above’, nevertheless an equalization of the diverse qualities of people had not taken place and, therefore, those whose activities had stayed focused on the common good should be recognized and rewarded, and ‘to men of this sort it is not possible to give satisfaction unless dignity is given to the highest offices in the republic’.134 On the first level of the state, Machiavelli proposes that there should be ‘sixty-five citizens of forty-five years and more, fifty-three for the major guilds, 130

D I.55, 111. It cannot be excluded that Machiavelli was attempting to convince Leo X and Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, as ‘temporary princes’—Marietti (2005), 179—to behave like the great founderslegislators (P VI, 22–3; D I.9, 29–30; II.3, 134) who, by exploiting the virtue of Florence, which was not entirely corrupt, reformed the city ‘on an egalitarian basis to arrive, through a monarchical phase, to a well-ordered republic founded on all the powers of the bourgeoisie’—Marietti (2005), 178—and which, after their death, would continue to exist in stability and for a long time. Machiavelli’s reasoning appears to hark back to what occurred in Rome after the expulsion of the Tarquins, when ‘no ancient order was innovated by the Romans, except that in place of a perpetual king there were two annual consuls. This testifies that all the first orders of that city were more conformable to a civil and free life than to an absolute and tyrannical one’ (D I.9, 30). 132 Raimondi (2003), 160 and Ménissier (2005), 14. 133 134 DRGF 107–8; t.m. DRGF 107–8; t.m. 131

116

Constituting Freedom

and twelve for the minor guilds, who should remain for life in the government’ but regularly exchange appointments. Proposing to the pope that he should ‘put in this first selection […] all your friends and trusted followers’, Machiavelli wants to place them within a meritocratic institutional organism based on a regular rotation of positions, so as to curb the clientelism of the Medici. The first level of government, in fact, was the purview of ‘the most important’ who were both the ‘great men’ (the rich) and the virtuous. Thus two very different types of men stood at the highest level of republican government: the friends of the Medici and the best citizens (the aristocrats in the etymological sense of the word), those considered distinguished by reason of their virtue, irrespective of their social position.135 In this way Machiavelli seeks to prepare the ground for a probable unpredictable dialectic of encounters and clashes between the great and the virtuous; a dialectic, however, enclosed within some rigorous rules. The second level—that of ‘those in the middle’ who are the intermediaries of the Medici and their private interests—is the ‘Council of Two Hundred’ or the ‘Council of the Selected’, because ‘all of its members would be chosen by Your Holiness’. While the first institutional level is mixed, the second is entirely the prerogative of the pope, who Machiavelli blandishes by saying that by exercising this privilege he would ‘give firmness to your authority in the city and to that of your friends, since you have the military and criminal justice in your hand, the laws in your bosom, and all the heads of the state as your supporters’.136 The third level, finally, must ‘satisfy the third and final degree of men, which is the whole general body (l’universalità) of citizens’. It is important ‘to restore their authority’ by reinaugurating ‘the Hall of the Council of One Thousand’, the Great Council, in which the presence of the Medici’s men would be ensured by ‘eight couplers’ who, overseen by ‘two citizens chosen by […] the citizens generally (l’universale)’,137 would have had to revise ‘the lists of citizens eligible’.138 The second and third level of state are clearly at risk of a high level of reciprocal struggle, but it almost seems as if Machiavelli was actually hoping for this, as if the third level was meant to counterbalance the second. The reopening of the Great Council is motivated by a proposition taken from the Prince (Chapter IX) and Book I of the Discourses (Chapters XVI and XL), namely that ‘without satisfying the generality of the citizens (l’universale), setting up a stable republic is always impossible’, and satisfying the Florentines signified reopening ‘the Hall’.139 Machiavelli, in accordance with the principle of giving vent to the humours,140 recommends that the pope assumes

135 138

136 137 DRGF 108–9. DRGF 109–10; t.m. DRGF 110; t.m. 139 140 Gilbert (1984), 52; t.m. DRGF 110–11; t.m. D I.4, 16–17 and I.7.

Constituting Freedom

117

ownership of this initiative, which might otherwise have become a watchword for his opponents. The plan represents an ‘order as a republic’ which, for as long as the pope and cardinal are alive, ‘is a monarchy, because you have authority (comandate) over the armed forces, you have authority over the criminal judges, you keep the laws in your bosom,’ and thus ‘there is nothing that your friends […] need to fear’ as long as the pope ‘has so much authority and they sit in the highest seats of the government’.141 At the same time ‘the generality of the citizens’ would also be contented, since, on the one hand, they would be granted ‘part of the allotments’, and, on the other, they would see their importance slowly increase, ‘because Your Holiness could now and then let the Council choose one of the Sixty-five who is lacking, and also one of the Two Hundred; and some of them you yourself would choose according to the times’.142 This magnanimous passage, which Machiavelli dangles in order to cajole the pope, was intended to have the effect of setting the constitution in motion. Given the high number of personnel necessary for its operation, and since something had to be given to the ‘generality of the citizens’ immediately and something else promised for a later date,143 it follows that the pope himself should now and then allow the Great Council to appoint some of the Sixty-five or the Two Hundred, thereby furthering the interrelatedness of the state’s three levels. The government of the pope, therefore, should ensure that ‘this present state’ was converted ‘in such a way into the other one, and the other into this, that they will become one and the same, and all one body, with peace for the city and everlasting fame for Your Holiness’.144 The monarchy would thus be transformed into a republic, not through the abolition of the three levels of the state but because access to all offices would be open to anyone, from among the great or the people, and the level of those in the middle would disappear. The mixture that Machiavelli had in mind is not linked only to the rotation of responsibilities and the dynamism of the hierarchy, but also to the merger of the three levels of the state, in cases of qualified majorities, for example.145 141 The term ‘monarchy’ is used only once in the Prince in reference to the ‘Turk’ to indicate a territory governed ‘by one lord’ while ‘the others are his servants’ and also only once in the Discourses in relation to the intention of the Venetians ‘to have a monarchy made like the Roman’ (P IV, 17; D III.31, 282), or rather a universal empire (with a probable reference to Dante’s use of the phrase). This term is often seen as a synonym of a new principality, but this is not the case, because the latter ‘lacked legitimacy’: Pocock (1975), 159. Compared to the ‘kingdoms’ like that of France, for example, ‘which is well-organized in its ranks and its orders, endowed with institutions that render its citizens, depending on their condition, into men endowed with rights [although I think privileges would be more accurate] and powers’, that of the Turk ‘is the dominion of a despot above uniformly servile subjects’: Vivanti (2008), 87. 142 143 DRGF 113; t.m. DRGF 100. 144 DRGF 113; t.m., my italics and also P XI, 47. 145 The Machiavellian idea of the mixture no longer has anything to do with antiquity— Taranto (2006), 59–60: ‘the summa of Machiavelli’s political discourse, is the discovery of the impossibility that Florence may have a mixed constitution’ in the Polybian sense, because this ‘is

118

Constituting Freedom

Machiavelli thus establishes a channel of communication among the different levels, in effect making the political aggregate mixed. He argues that the encounter—and, therefore in at least some cases also the clash—between the different humours of the great and the people is capable of bringing peace to Florence, because a republic does not last if it does not satisfy all its humours. The humours, according to the prescription of Galenic medicine, are fluid and need to circulate in the body, for whose life and health they are all indispensable. Their mixing produces a wholesome balance, whereas illness breaks out when one of these is isolated from the others and then seeks to eclipse them and overstretch itself, tampering with the correct proportions of their relationships: health is circulation, illness is isolation and fixation. Here Machiavelli is truly a theorist of ‘crisis’, something that means ‘a period of danger or suspense, […] a turning-point in the growth of an organism, institution, or people threatened by some weakness or disease, but finally regaining health and strength by successful resistance or adaptation to a vital challenge’.146 In addition to the mixing of the three levels, Machiavelli draws attention to the popular nature of his proposal with the appointment of ‘Sixteen Gonfaloniers of the Companies of the People’,147 something which has attracted the attention of a number of scholars:148 the Sixteen Gonfaloniers of the Companies of the People are to be chosen in the way and for the time for which they have been chosen up to now; they may be appointed on the authority of Your Holiness or chosen by the Council, as you please; you would merely make a second term less usual (solo accrescendo i divieti), so that the office will be distributed more widely through the city; and it should be specified that none of them could be taken from the Sixty-five. When they have been selected, four Provosts should be among them by lot, to hold office a month; hence at the end of their term all will have been Provosts. Among these four, one should be chosen, to reside a week in the Palace with the nine Signori in residence, so that at the end of the month all four of them will have been in residence. The said Signori resident in the Palace are not to do anything in a Provost's absence;149 he would not have to give his vote, but merely be a witness of their proceedings. He could indeed veto their decision in a case, and appeal it to all the Thirty-two in a body. So in the same way the Thirty-two could not decide anything without the presence of two of the said Provosts; yet the two would not impossible in the modern development of the market’: Negri (1999), 87. However, the mixture of humours provides a new perspective, because the ‘notion of a humour interferes like a sort of revolving platform (plaque tournante), [that] makes it possible to subvert the intellectual framework defined by the ideal of the mixed constitution, but also to preserve the question of the mixture (mélange) as the guiding thread in the reflection on free and durable institutions’: Gaille-Nikodimov (2004b), 161. 146 147 Baron (1966), 443. DRGF 111. 148 See, in particular, among the more recent, Marietti (2005), 184–5 and (2009), 248; Jurdjevic (2007), 1251; McCormick (2011), 103–7; Black (2013), 236–7. 149 See Polybius (2010), VI.16, 383 and on the power of intercessio, Polverini (2006).

Constituting Freedom

119

have there other authority than to delay a decision considered among the Thirtytwo and appeal it to the Council of the Selected. Neither could the Council of the Two Hundred decide anything, if there were not present at least six of the sixteen with two Provosts; yet the latter could not do anything other than take a case away from that Council and appeal it to the Great Council, when two-thirds of them were in agreement to do it. It would not be possible to assemble the Great Council without twelve of the said Gonfaloniers, among them at least three Provosts; there they would be allowed to give a vote like the other citizens.150

The Sixteen were appointed by the government of the ‘first people’ in 1250, having been given purely ‘military’ tasks151 and reappointed after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens.152 Here they exercised the right of veto, so that ‘the Signoria or the Council of the Two Hundred (l’altro Consiglio) does not decide a matter as the result of disunion, or does things opposed to the common good’. But the appointed of the Sixteen also had a compensatory purpose, because ‘on taking from the generality of the citizens […] the possibility of becoming the Signori, it is necessary to restore to them an office resembling that taken away’. Even so, ‘these Gonfaloniers’ would not exercise ‘their powers (ufficio)’, at least at first, ‘without the permission of Your Holiness’.153 McCormick’s comparison of the Sixteen with the Roman Tribunes of the plebs seems incomplete, because the right of veto exercised by the Provosts was only one of the prerogatives of the Tribunes. In actual fact, Machiavelli says, in Rome the ‘authority’ of the Tribunes of the plebs was that of being able ‘to accuse citizens to the people, or to some magistrate or council, when they sin in anything against the free state […], so that those alternating humours that agitate [the city] can be vented in a way ordered by laws’,154 although this was not the only way. The function of the Tribunes, in fact, implies that ‘social struggle is, on the one hand, organized (but not integrated, that is, controlled or tamed by the government: a qualitative subtlety obviously difficult to evaluate) and, on the other, that the objective effects that it produces are essentially different from the subjective intentions of the adversaries’.155 The power to accuse would not be exercised by the ‘Provosts’,156 but by ‘thirty

150 DRGF 111–12; t.m. The power of veto of the ‘Provosts’, emphasized by McCormick (2011), has no other aim but to direct difficult cases towards the Great Council as the decision-making body of last instance. Thus there is the possibility that in some cases controversies can be dissolved in the great assembly of the city where it is not certain that the parts represent themselves as such, despite this being composed of the people (middle and small bourgeoisie, artisans, etc.). It is not a coincidence that the ‘Provosts’ disappear in the Minuta, which McCormick does not talk about. 151 152 153 Marietti (2007), 64. IF II.39, 286. DRGF 112; t.m. 154 D I.7, 23–4 and also D I.6, 23; Coby (1999), 60. 155 Balibar (2003), 112; t.m. and for a more radical reading, Vatter (2000), 101–5. 156 Barthas (2015) instead proposes a different interpretation, one based on cross-referencing the Discourses and the Discursus.

120

Constituting Freedom

citizens, to be taken from the pouches of the Two Hundred and of the Sixty[five] together’ and assigned ‘to arrange for a Court of Appeal from (ordinare un ricorso agli) the Eight of Defence and Balìa’, which is to say ‘to summon (chiamare) the accuser and the accused within a certain time’.157 Barthas has objected that the Court of Appeal appears to receive accusations rather than formulate them,158 but everything depends on how we understand the ‘ricorso’ (appeal). It seems reasonable to assume that this would be a court appointed to deliver appeal verdicts, and this is compatible with the text, even if in this case it is not clear who would have the authority to request the ‘appeal’, since the Thirty would be judges and the Provosts would only have the power of veto. If, on the other hand, the Thirty launched the appeal, which would then be a procedure, they would have the power to accuse, while the court with jurisdiction would remain that of the Eight. Getting to the bottom of this question, in part due to a certain level of vagueness in Machiavelli’s text, calls for an ad hoc enquiry that I am not able to conduct or pre-empt in this work. However, what I believe I can say is that the ‘ricorso’, however it is interpreted, is an instrument that Machiavelli proposes above all to ensure that even the great can be punished. In fact, since ‘few citizens do not have the courage to punish important men (uomini grandi), […] it is necessary that for such a result many citizens should join (concorrano)’.159 But how? By launching or judging a new trial? It should not be forgotten, finally, that fear of the ‘ricorso’ was meant to encourage the ‘Eight to expedite cases and do justice’.160 There were, therefore, two institutions: the Sixteen and the Thirty who together performed the role of challenging the great that in Rome was the prerogative of the Tribunes of the plebs, thereby advancing the mixing of the humours more than the quest for some kind of balance. As is always the case with Machiavelli, the imitation of the ancients is not slavish, but responds to the historical and political circumstances of his time. Machiavelli declares that in a republic which is perfect because it is mixed (and not only because it is endowed with the function of the Tribunes) and

157 DRGF 112. The Eight, in Machiavelli’s plan, would be chosen by the pope, for as long as he is alive (DRGF 110), after which they would be elected by the Great Council (M 653). Historically, the Eight formed a magistracy whose role was one of policing and the management of public order, which gradually came to judge ‘criminal matters’ and ‘civil cases’: Guicciardini (1998), V, 132; Foscari (1839), 40. 158 Barthas (2015), 253, n. 65. 159 DRGF 113, which recalls D I.7, 25, in which Machiavelli states that ‘for to accuse one powerful individual before eight judges in a republic is not enough, the judges need to be very many because the few always behave in the mode of the few’, even if here he appears to allude ‘to the proposal of transforming Florence’s Council of the Eighty dominated by the people into a judiciary body’ (Rinaldi, 470, n. 62). 160 DRGF 113.

Constituting Freedom

121

thus able to last,161 all the humours must have, apart from a means of giving vent to their feelings, also their own advantage. Taking the case of Roman agrarian law162 as an example, he asserts that, since the demands of the two humours are often quite diverse, their encounter within the constitution can produce as much cooperation as struggle, as well as potential dissolution. The constitution proposed by Machiavelli is not based on a balance of powers163 because his problem concerns the establishment of a time of peace resulting from a ‘conflictual equilibrium’ among the humours, the satisfaction of which can be obtained only by regulating, within certain limits—the tumults are not adjustable—the possibility that the parts pursue their own desires: only then: [we] will see a secure prince in the midst of his secure citizens, and the world full of peace and justice; [we] will see the Senate with its authority, the magistrates with their honours, the rich citizens enjoying their riches, nobility and virtue exalted; [we] will see all quiet and all good, and […] all rancour, all license, corruption, and ambition eliminated. [We] will see golden times when each can hold and defend the opinion he wishes. [We] will see, in sum, the world in triumph, the prince full of reverence and glory, the peoples full of love and security.164

Everyone will have what they want as long as the functioning of the city is regulated by an intelligently designed constitution, which is such when it facilitates the participation of all the citizens in political life and public office. The constitution, even more so than the laws, is the channel that serves to control and direct the flow of the citizens’ desires in such a way that they might achieve their aims in a constant encounter-clash with the desires of others. The constitution serves to bring opinions and needs, desires and interests, into confrontation with each other, in the belief that only thereby can a common good be attained: a common good which assumes different

Machiavelli’s mixture ‘allows disagreements to continue and continually renews itself thanks to them. [This], then, no longer indicates a determinable and firmly acquired equilibrium nor an absolute criterion of judgment, but rather refers to a constant process of imbalance, and its perfection resides above all in allowing this imbalance, thus its lack of pre determination, to thus be able to tackle history. The law, therefore, no longer presents itself as the overcoming of conflict’: Berns (2000), 94. This conception is contrary to the interpretation proposed by Viroli (1990), 155, who, as in much of the historiography, veers a little too much in the direction of Guicciardini, despite not being supported by the text: see, for example, Jurdjevic (2007), 1252. 162 D I.37. 163 Mayr (1986), for example, places Machiavelli in the liberal current that adopted and imposed the system of the balance of power. More interesting, however, is the path proposed by Zanzi (2013), 21–327, according to whom the mechanisms of self-regulation to which Machiavelli might have been referring were taken from the science of medicine and physics and the natural history of the so-called Aristotle the Minor, and with the addition of certain juridical devices: D I, preface, 5–6; Quaglioni (2011), 57–75; Sartorello (2013). 164 D I.10, 74. 161

122

Constituting Freedom

forms in accordance with the times. The common good is rooted in what makes it possible to pursue it, namely the absolutely contingent plurality of encounters-clashes among the humours. Machiavelli does not postulate the inalterability of social statuses, because everyone can go either up or down on the ladder of wealth and honours: the only antidote to tyranny is, in point of fact, equality, which is generated by the struggles. Not by chance does he say that ‘the cause of the disunion of republic is usually idleness and peace; the cause of the union is fear and war’,165 ‘because most of the time idle peoples are an instrument for whoever wants to make a change (alterare)’.166 Union is always the result of a struggle, since in the face of danger that incites fear—a fear that mobilizes, unlike Hobbesian fear that immobilizes, driving people to put their trust in their sovereign—men are forced to set aside their private interests and think about what in that moment is held in common. Contrarily, if fear is generated by ‘offense by private individuals against private individuals’, it then ‘seeks for defence; for defence they procure partisans; from partisans arise the parts in cities; from parts their ruin’.167 Only necessity obligates people to behave collaboratively.168 Struggles fulfil a governmental function within republican orders which, at the same time, must put them to work by channelling them within institutional structures designed not to allow them to spill over and spread freely and recklessly, like a river that has broken its banks,169 although this can happen with the tumults. As in Rome, where tumults made the city powerful and wealthy, so in Florence struggles between the great and the people could be the driving force of economic and political growth if placed in a mixed form of government that permits the continual confrontation of humours, in spite of the risk that the tumults might surge out of their channels, causing a deluge that cannot be contained. What distinguishes Rome from Florence is the fact that its kingdom–republic–empire course cannot (and should not) be followed by Florence,170 which had blazed another paradigmatic trail: from principality to republic (from the Prince to the Discourses), and then, from monarchy to republic (in the Discursus), without devolving into an empire as happened to Rome. The Discursus implies a clinamen compared to the Prince and the Discourses. If Florence were to acknowledge the constituent role of tumults, the city would not be almost entirely corrupt and would lack only a form of government that could keep it united through struggles to make it truly great. The impossibility for the popular humour to follow ordinary ways in search of its satisfaction, for example, would lead it to take up arms, to reopen the Great Council and to seek revenge against the other part of the city.171 Without a 165 168 171

166 D II.25, 190. FH VII.12, 289. 169 Lucretius, V, 925–1027. P XXV. DRGF 115.

167

D I.7, 24; t.m. Del Lucchese (2001), 81.

170

Constituting Freedom

123

form of government trying to hold the city together through the encounterclash of the humours, the struggles could erupt into violence, perhaps a violence that was totally destructive and not constructive, one that ‘mars’ but does not ‘mend’.172 There is no other way, Machiavelli concludes: for escaping these ills than to give the city orders that can by themselves stand firm. And they will always stand firm when everybody has a hand in them, and when everybody knows what he needs to do and in whom he can trust, and no sort (grado) of citizen, either through fear for itself or through ambition, will need to desire innovation.173 [Morevoer, in order] to introduce effective and useful innovation—aimed at holding firm and stable the institutional orders of the city— the decisive contribution of the city consists in having the ability of self-discipline. Only by negotiating positively the possibilities offered by participation in civil life can one make it possible to order the state in such a way that it will administer itself.174

The orders of the city therefore need to be ‘brought to life by the virtue’ of the citizens:175 there is no difference between the desires of the citizens (whether great or not-so-great), not because they are all good, but because they are all equal.176 This is yet another effect of capitalism. The ability of the constitution to make all the citizens take part in the public life of the city does not presuppose a democratic regime. The republic is mixed because all kinds of citizens are present within it and, within precise rules, it is the encounter-clash of their humours that indicates what form of government the city requires, as long as the struggle is effectual but not unrestrained, even if such restraints can be overcome. In any case, the struggle should not be free in the Hobbesian sense. Machiavelli does not want to neutralize all the struggles in Florence,177 but only the ‘civil discords’ and the ‘internal enmities’ that cause ‘hatreds’ and ‘division’.178 Furthermore, he contends that a constitution was needed that, while sustaining them, was able to channel their potency towards a common good, of which they were simultaneously the cause and effect. Equality, therefore, the prerequisite and result of struggles, does not indicate an abstract formal equality as either point of departure or final goal: if the possibility of the encounter-clash must remain in place, albeit occurring in a context of shared rules, then equality can only mean a parity of the forces in play that does not allow the supremacy or ultimate victory of one over the other. Thus equality contains different material inequalities that are made to encounter or clash with each other, or else risk the disappearance of the potentially virtuous driving force of city life. In the Discursus, Machiavelli seems to be outlining a 172 174 175 177

173 D I.9, 29. DRGF 115; t.m. Borrelli (2000), 33, my italics; and also DRGF 115; Varotti (1998), 421. 176 D III.1, 210. See Caporali (2013). 178 See also Ames (2014) and Hankins (2014). FH preface, 6.

124

Constituting Freedom

sort of restless race between the different equalities–inequalities of the humours and this does not imply stability or the preservation of roles and status, but rather the need of their rotation. If in Rome struggles were aimed at gaining honours, in Florence they instead target wealth and, through it, dominion: this is another of the important differences between Rome and Florence that justify the search for a specific paradigm for the latter and represent the development, in Machiavelli, of an awareness of the radical change of political and economic horizon between the ancient world and that of his day. This has nothing to do with institutional engineering, because the Machiavelli’s political discourse makes struggles, the outcome of which is never predictable, the pivotal pin of the constitution. No peace is conceivable as the absence of struggles.

4.5. THE MINUTA With the death of Pope Leo X (1 December 1521), who was linked to the need for the Council of Two Hundred that was composed of his ‘men in the middle’, Machiavelli felt much more free to explain more clearly the republican ideal of his proposal, defined by Alessandro de’ Pazzi as ‘unusual in [Florence] and extravagant’.179 Writing directly to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, he begins by advocating its benefits: no order and no law is more commendable in men, or more acceptable unto God, than that through which is ordered a true, united and holy republic, in which suggestions are made freely, deliberations are conducted prudently, and action is taken faithfully. Where men, in deliberating on public matters, are called to set aside their private interests, and to turn only to the common good; where the friendships of the wretched and the enmities of the good have no place. Where appetites for a false glory are put extinguished, and those of the true and glorious honours are lit up. Where hatreds and enmities, disagreements and sects from which then arise deaths, exiles, afflictions of the good, exaltation of the wicked, have nobody to encourage them, but are at all times persecuted and extinguished by laws. Where in the public councils one can understand what men want, and what they intend to speak and advise freely.180

The republic has the primary duty to prevent, through the laws, the emergence of wicked, non-expansive forms of struggle. The hatreds–enmities–disagreements– sects sequence, to which are added the divisions that produce deaths, exiles, and suffering, which have ‘in the past and for all times disturbed and divided 179

EN 1.3, 642.

180

M 646.

Constituting Freedom

125

and damaged the city of Florence’181 closely resembles the Preface of the Histories,182 written after the Discursus and before 19 November 1523, the day in which Giulio de’ Medici became Pope Clement VII.183 Since there was no longer a need to mediate with the pope via a constitution that had autonomously changed from a monarchy to a republic, as proposed in the Discursus, but with there still being a need to mediate with the Medici, the ‘lords’ of Florence, Machiavelli did not hesitate to propose as reference point for the ‘reform of the state of Florence […] the year 1512 [when] Giovan Battista Ridolfi became Gonfalonier’.184 Having been elected after the escape of Piero Soderini, Ridolfi was the first and last Gonfalonier of Florence after the return of the Medici to the city. The confirmation of Machiavelli’s republican proposal is the renewed importance of the ‘Great Council (Consiglio Maggiore)’, to which should be ‘restored […] every and any pre-eminence, order and authority, that was at no time any bigger, from the month of August of the year 1512 backwards’. Simply by looking at the order in which the arguments are set out one can see the difference in Machiavelli’s intention. In the Discursus the description starts from the level of the principality (Signoria-Gonfalonier), then passes to that of the aristocrats (Council of Two Hundred), ending with that of the people (Council of One Thousand or Great Council). In the Minuta, on the other hand, he begins from that of the people, the Great Council, made up of 800 members, which elects the Gonfalonier (which was now to be a triennial appointment and no longer for life as in the time of Piero Soderini, because ‘one for life is dangerous’).185 Machiavelli then moves on to the ‘Council of the middle (Consiglio di mezzo)’ (made up of 100 people), the level of the aristocrats, charged with dealing with ‘those things which the Great Council cannot arrange’ and no longer a chamber of clients, before ending with the principality, represented by the ‘XII […] Reformers’ elected by the Medici.186 Even here, more than the tripartition as such, are underlined the relations that the levels of the state had to maintain among them, and compared to the Discursus there are important changes. The Great Council, made up of citizens who were ‘suitable […] according to the orders arranged by the city, and free of debt’, had the following functions: to ‘distribute honours, and create the magistracies, offices and councils in that way and form that in the past, in the aforementioned time, used to create and

181

182 183 M 646. FH preface, 6–7. Sasso (1993), II, 11 and also n. 10. M 646 and 648. 185 M 647–8. This demonstrates the distance between Machiavelli and Venice, given that ‘the Venetian example of the Doge was a source of inspiration for [a Gonfalonier for life], just as the Venetian Senate had inspired the proposal for a new council that would take over from the Great Council the business of fiscal legislation’: see Butters (1985), 44–5. 186 M 649 and 652. 184

126

Constituting Freedom

distribute’.187 Only after the formation of the Great Council was it possible to proceed to the election of the Gonfalonier, following this procedure: the Medici chose ‘three citizens aged over 45 suitable to the Council, free of debt, without any impediment’; the candidates had first to be elected to the Great Council and then present themselves to its members one at a time for further election to the post of Gonfalonier. The winner was the one who obtained more than half the votes in the first elections or obtained the greatest amount of votes in the next (something very similar took place, after the three years in office, for the re-election).188 In this way the Medicean humour was mixed with the popular humour, merging in the person of the Gonfalonier. The ‘Council of One Hundred’ or ‘of the middle’, in addition to assisting the Great Council, had the task, ‘together with the Signori and Collegi, [to] deliberate and […] obtain all levies of money’ and to take care of the ‘reform of the Monte’, that is the payment of interest on public debt.189 The quorum required for the Council business was sixty citizens out of the hundred and their votes were valid when they reached a two-thirds majority of those present. Foreseeing that some members might not be able to fulfil the whole of their commitment, Machiavelli had provided for their replacement through a complex electoral mechanism based on drawing lots, in which the unelected could, in some cases, move up in the Great Council190 thereby further mixing the humours. The Twelve Reformers were elected directly by the Medici, again from among debt-free men aged forty-five years or more: ten to be drawn from the major guilds and two from the minor. The choice was left to the prince (the Medici), but those eligible belonged to the level of the people, grasso and minuto. This recognition of the strategic importance of the ‘generality of the citizens’ (l’universale) was mindful of the turmoil that ‘the fury of [the] unshackled multitude’191 and their ‘spirits that were already hot for evil’192 brought to Florence in 1378. Even here the humours are forced to mix and fuse, to the point that eight of the Reformers and Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, ‘have as much authority as the whole of the people of Florence, to reform and reorder everything they judge, for the good and calm of the city […]; and they can make laws, orders, statutes, which they examine and support and which have the power (potestà) and value as if they were made and ordered by the whole population of Florence’.193 With the aim of demonstrating that ‘this authority so reserved is all to the benefit of the freedom and calm and living freely of a republic’, Machiavelli added some restraints that:

187 191

188 189 M 647. M 648–9. M 649–50. 192 FH III.14, 125; t.m. FH III.13, 124.

190

193

M 650–1. M 652.

Constituting Freedom

127

1) ‘it does not last […] more than a year’; 2) at the end of their mandate ‘these XII citizens and [the Cardinal] remain without any authority, nor can they extend their authority to themselves, nor give it to others in any direct or indirect way’; 3) they could not ‘lessen the number of the Great Council nor remove from it any distribution or election of offices, councils and magistrates’; 4) all the positions must be approved by the Great Council; 5) in exchange, the eight Reformers and the Cardinal would elect ‘three Signorie’: a) the ‘Eight of Guards and Balìa of the People of Florence’; b) the ‘Gonfaloniers of the Companies of the People’; c) the ‘Eight of Practice, or rather the Ten of War’, posts that after expiring become the exclusive competence of the Great Council.194 The Provosts disappear because here Machiavelli depicts a constitution that is already thoroughly republican, in which the power of veto no longer serves any purpose because all functions are exercised on a permanent basis by the Great Council.195 Furthermore, the insertion of the Twelve Reformers, which were not in the Discursus, allows the ‘suppression of the Medicean balìa [reintroduced] in 1512’.196 The Minuta ends there and, probably, was simply a draft for a better organized document. In any case, however, it shows that the problem on which Machiavelli does not cease to work is that of the transition from the Medicean regime to the republic,197 so the Minuta, ‘far from being a compromise […] appears to be the affirmation […] of a republic founded on the generality of the citizens (l’universale)’.198 The consistent element of Machiavelli’s reasoning here would appear to be, more than in the Discursus and in keeping with the Discourses, the problem of the beginning, because ‘the fortune of what is built […] is more or less marvellous as the one who was the beginning of it was more or less virtuous’,199 ‘so that republic can be called happy whose lot is to get one man so prudent that he gives it laws ordered so that it can live securely under them without needing to correct them’.200 But perhaps it is not like this. I hope it is now clear that Florence, according to Machiavelli, had had only a partially servile origin, but this did not prevent it from developing a virtue of its own that is manifest in the resistance to that origin, and that is whole with the desire to become free and to struggle forever to remain so. 194

M 652–4. The disappearance of the Provosts, therefore, does not imply the cancellation of the function ‘of surveillance and control of the elites in power’, as feared by Barthas (2015), 253. 196 197 Marietti (2007), 68–9. Marchand (2004), 273. 198 199 200 Marietti (2007), 69. D I.1, 8. D I.2, 10. 195

128

Constituting Freedom

The creation of the Reformers is, in fact, motivated by the need to ‘put an end to those scandals (scandali) that could be born in this beginning, and to be able to provide the things required for the perfection of a peaceful state’, in other words, so that ‘in the beginning of this government […] a scandalous person could not have opportunity, for his private passion, to create any scandal, and so that a person with a malignant soul, or a desire for revenge, or some other scandalous cause, had some restraint to hold him back’.201 Cajoling and flattering are skills of the Machiavellian prince and here it is surely obvious that the authority given to the Medici at the outset of the city’s reform was only intended to vent their appetites, so that they could not raise complaints later, when the republican constitution became fully operational without them. This means that the origin is no longer so important: as exemplified by Rome, it is possible to become a ‘perfect republic’202 without having in one’s origin a legislator like Lycurgus. Florence can become a stable republic by putting to work its specific virtue, which resides in its people and does not consist only of an ability to resist fortune but also of the ability to create a popular constitution. The virtue of the Florentines is not merely subtractive (non-dominion), but also constructive: the free and civil way of life does not come about only by not wanting to be dominated, but also by constructing orders that can stem and challenge corruption wherever it lurks. Machiavellian freedom, therefore, is a constitution underpinned by the humour of nondomination, inasmuch as it produces orders that suppress domination or destroy it. It is thus a positive and negative freedom at the same time—as even Skinner seems to admit203—but, being an eminently political freedom, it never takes on a definitive shape.204 The desire to be free is expressed in the propensity to struggle and Machiavelli counts on this desire in order that the scandals, which unavoidably result from government action, can be absorbed and neutralized by the republican constitution. It seems quite obvious that the Medici could not accord Machiavelli’s plan any recognition or importance (despite claims to the contrary by Jacopo 201

202 203 M 652–3. D I.2, 14. Skinner (2002), 162–3. In my opinion, Vatter risks taking an anarchical position by insisting only on the ‘no-rule’ of the people; see for example Vatter (2000), 130, because he ends up supporting the need for dominion until freedom (non-dominion) is established, with the result that he obtains a freedom that can never consolidate and endure. This position constitutes the other side of Pedullà’s (and many others) institutionalization of tumults, because for both scholars the Hobbesian State is necessary until the freedom of the people becomes manifest: in Vatter’s case as a subtraction to the sovereign power and in Pedullà’s as the possibility of reforming the State itself without endangering its existence. Both scholars risk taking a liberal or neo-Hegelian position, into which the interpretation of the popular will as a ‘pure negativity, the refusal of repression’ Lefort (2012), 229, also falls. Instead, as the Discursus and the Minuta show, the issue is to imagine the constitution of non-dominion, whose task is to block the emergence of the will to dominate and to contain it or destroy it in the event that it exists or presents itself. 204

Constituting Freedom

129

Pitti),205 and thus they stimulated the Florentines’ desire for freedom, which would bear fruit, in a changed European situation, in 1527, the year of the secretary’s death.

4 . 6. A P R O V I S I O N A L AP P RAI S AL The Discursus and the Minuta offer routes and solutions to establish a new republican constitution in Florence that are quite diverse, but which nevertheless have some points in common. The proposals of the two writings are unsatisfactory—marked by a certain ‘intellectualism’206—and yet are among the rare attempts to combine stability and change, where what is preserved does not concern the constitution (in a Machiavellian sense)—as constitutions do today—but rather the humour of those who do not want to be dominated. The Discursus and the Minuta are not the proposals of ideal models: they are not utopias, because it is ‘impossible to establish […] a universal model of politics [or to] plan the political on the basis of the aims established by the governing subject’207 and the differences between the Discursus and the Minuta, despite one work having been written not long after the other, demonstrate this. Rather, the two works deal with reforms that Machiavelli deemed would be helpful for the re-establishment and preservation, within the bounds of possibility, of a republican constitution in Florence in a given historical moment. It should also be noted that, if such a constitution is to work autonomously, it should not only be able to preserve itself, but when necessary also to reorder itself, activating the return to the beginnings spoken of in Discourses III.1. If a totally corrupt city can go back to being free ‘only for the brief rule of a good and virtuous prince’,208 after which it is then abandoned to the mercy of fortune and therefore is incapable of establishing a lasting constitution, one must understand that according to Machiavelli, the ‘corruption and [a] slight aptitude for free life arise from […] inequality’.209 If the city is totally corrupt, the reintroduction of equality is possible only by implementing the ‘greatest extraordinary means’210 which, apart from being self-evidently difficult, do not ensure a long duration. If, on the other hand, the city is not entirely corrupt, then the equality that still remains within it should be maintained and reinforced. And such, according to the Machiavelli of the Histories, the Discursus, and the Minuta, is the case of Florence. Only in a city in which there is at least an adequate level of equality— Florence, for example—is it possible to remodel the republic. If the founding 205 208

Guidi (1969), 586. Vasoli (2001), 346.

206 209

Sasso (1993), I, 692. D I.17, 48–9.

207

210

Albiac (2011), 66. D I.17, 48–9.

130

Constituting Freedom

moment must be a principality, then it must be a new and civil-popular principality, a ‘historical-collective foundation of the principality’211 which, with ‘one’s own arms and virtue’,212 can then preserve and reorder freedom when required. This principality should found the republic and then dissolve itself and, therefore, it does not correspond to what the Medici had reinstated in Florence. The new and civil-popular principality is a foundational organizing moment, because it is a collective entity: ‘the foundation of all states is a good military, and [if] where this does not exist there can be neither good laws nor any other good thing’.213 The recurring problem214 is first how to generate virtue in the political aggregate and then how to make possible the autonomous development in such a way as to produce, following Lucretius,215 a ‘collective virtue’, rather than to limit oneself to admiring it in exceptional men.216 In a not entirely corrupt republic, the violence of the prince can be useful, but since this degenerates sooner or later, thereby weakening the principality, it must be accompanied and sustained by the support of the people, which, through a sort of conflictual consensus, can either replace it or limit it.217 This is the ‘conflictual and popular republicanism’ of Machiavelli.218 The prince is a legislator who by renewing the constitution possesses, only in part, the characteristics of the founder,219 who usually acts in a politically unstructured context. This legislator-founder prince aims to put in place a constitution that, after his death, is free on account of his virtue, an intention that testifies to his political, not moral, goodness. The virtue of the political aggregate, therefore, can be generated through an example which produces, as the single advantage to whoever establishes it, glory: ‘and truly, if a prince seeks the glory of the world, he ought to desire to possess a corrupt city—not to spoil it entirely as did Caesar but to reorder it as did Romulus’.220 The true example is given by the one who, after having acted, can disappear because he has passed down his virtue: ‘the true prince would be one who, in the act of realizing his virtù, would render himself superfluous’,221 because ‘it is the safety of a republic or a kingdom to have not one prince who governs prudently while he lives, but one individual who orders it so that it is also maintained when he dies’222 like, for example, Romulus.223 The collective aspect resides in the fact that no legislator-founder prince can survive without popular support.224 The two phases described by Althusser, therefore, are in fact only one: there is no prince without his people (and vice 211 214 216 218 220 221 223

212 213 Procacci (1969), XXVIII–XXXI. P VI. D III.31, 283. 215 Skinner (1981), 53–7. Grimal (1982), 128. 217 Skinner (1981), 67–73. Wolin (2004), 198–200. 219 Barbuto (2013), 15. Pocock (1975), 169. D I.10, 33; see also Varotti (1998); Zmora (2007); Raimondi (2017). 222 Wolin (2004), 207. D I.11, 36 and Varotti (1998), 427. 224 D I.9, 29–30; Reale (1985), 58; Inglese (2006), 116. Wolin (2004), 205–11.

Constituting Freedom

131

versa) nor any new constitution without collective strength. It is the encounter between the virtuous individual and a not-entirely-corrupt and therefore stillvirtuous people that generates a stable constitution, even if not forever, because it is built on the precariousness of this conjunction and its ability to generate widespread virtue through constant exposure to possible dissolution (the tumults). This is the one and only alternative to the need for the sword in the kingly hand, an authority that contains the seed of tyranny. The legislatorfounder must exert influence on non-corrupt customs so as to sweep away corrupt ones and, therefore, the overall movement of foundation–duration is immediately collective, emerging in the form of a republic. The Discursus and the Minuta seek to resolve the problem in which freedom, founded on the desire not to be dominated, seems to make it impossible to arrive at a stable form of government, with the consequence that constitutive power can never create a constitutio or institutio populi.225 Treasuring the theoretical acquisitions obtained in the Histories and, specifically, from the idea of the confusion of the humours in Florence, Machiavelli proposes a constitution based on the new kind of mixture. In my opinion, it can therefore be rightly said that now the ‘safeguard of [freedom]’ is to be found in all three of the institutional levels and not only in the Provosts. I do not, however, share the view that this constitutes a turning point in the Aristotelian sense, that would produce a ‘hybrid republicanism’, a sort of synthesis of civic humanism and Aristotle.226 In fact, Jurdjevic, like almost all students of Machiavelli, interprets the mixture as juxtaposition, or overlapping, rather than fusion, and this leads him to perceive a similarity between Machiavelli’s proposition and the Venetian model and thus to veer towards a pro-Medicean reading of Machiavelli.227 This hermeneutic tendency, which is disseminating dangerously, not only presses the ideas of the mature Machiavelli on those of Gucciardini and on a revaluation (on the whole non-existent) of the Venetian model,228 but tends to remove, if not entirely destroy, the revolutionary content of Machiavelli’s thought, placing his reflections within a development, not very original, of the theory of ‘three ambitions’.229 This is a theory whose objective is to maintain social division in a certain historical moment, simply conceding the reciprocal control of the parts in order to make the old feudal structure compatible with the new exigencies of a capitalist mercantile society. This is an idea that can also be defined as ‘democratic’230 in a sense, but which tends to leave unchanged the relations of domination in societies based on rank.231 225

226 Vatter (2000), 122, 221–2, and n. 3. Jurdjevic (2007), 1253 and 1257. Jurdjevic (2007), 1255 and (2014). 228 See Cervelli (1974); Gilbert (1968) and (1977); Marietti (2005), 87–92; Avramescu (2011). 229 230 Varotti (1998), 280–395. Guidi (1972). 231 It does not seem to me that McCormick is aware of this risk when he proposes, on the heels of the Provosts of the Discursus albeit ‘as a thought experiment’, the adoption of a ‘People’s 227

132

Constituting Freedom

Instead, Machiavelli’s mixture is something profoundly different, because after starting from the traditional division of the republic composed of three states, he then tries to dissolve it. While many scholars interpret the mixed government, even in the Discursus, as a kind of Machiavellian conversion either to political realism from the utopianism of the Prince and the Discourses, or to Aristotelianism,232 in my opinion Machiavelli’s mixture has nothing to do with equilibrium.233 Machiavelli’s mixture is not an equilibrium, but a mixing (nothing more atomistic). The proof that this has nothing to do with mixed government in the classical and humanistic sense is his rejection, already made ready in the Discourses,234 of ‘three kinds of government: […] kings, […] aristocrats [and] people’,235 in whose place are the two humours of the great and the people. This scheme is repeated in the Discursus where the level of ‘those in the middle’ disappears after having been established. It must also be borne in mind that it is the asymmetry of the humours that generates the mixture, thus enhancing ‘the political capacities of the people, rather than identifying a sort of point of balance between the two humours’.236 This is what makes Machiavelli’s proposal incommensurable to the constitutions present in other realities (including that of Florence at the time of Savonarola and Soderini) and, in consequence, unclassifiable according to ancient and modern criteria. This is evidenced in A summary of the affairs of the city of Lucca, where Machiavelli went as an emissary in 1520. The city, in fact, although it had ‘good’ and ‘guilty’ aspects237 was ordered along tripartite lines: the ‘Signoria’, formed by ‘nine citizens’ plus a ‘Gonfalonier of justice’, the ‘Council of 36 citizens’ and the ‘General Council’ composed of ‘72 citizens’. These three magistracies held all ‘the great weight of their state’,238 had clearly defined tasks, and were never mixed, outlining a model that Machiavelli understandably compares to Rome and Venice and which has been defined as an ‘imperfect mixed state’.239 This imperfection, according to my reading, derives from the fact that Lucca’s system of government (i.e. the state) was not

Tribunate to be amended to the United States Constitution’: (2011), viii. The idea that social division is unchangeable and that therefore the highest level of possible democracy consists in creating institutions that allow the parts to put each other under mutual surveillance, perhaps through forms of institutionalized struggle, is a way of ratifying the inalterability of the parts and therefore that of the social structure. 232 Pasquino (1996) and Borrelli (2009), 57. 233 As contend, for example: Esposito (1984), 151–5; Anselmi (1996), 199; Nadeau (2003), 326 and 343; Gaille-Nikodimov (2004a), 83–5; Del Lucchese (2004), 67–8, 72; Geuna (2005) 29–30, Inglese (2006), 120–1. Also in the work of Bodin we find a critique of the mixed state, but with the intention of favouring a monarchy of ‘harmonious government’ in which the need for popular consensus and the preservation of monarchical power leads the latter to entrust access to public offices to the more deserving of the roturiers: see Lazzarino Del Grosso (2004). 234 235 Garosci (1973), 159; Gerbier (2005), 58. DI.2,14. 236 237 238 239 Baccelli (2002), 432. S 617–20. S 613. Bausi (2005), 308.

Constituting Freedom

133

mixed (in the Machiavellian sense), because it did not conceive the struggle between the humours as being the driving force of the state. Machiavelli’s ‘path as yet untrodden by anyone’ therefore does not seem to me to be close to aristocratic solutions,240 nor does it consist of a return ‘to the more ancient communal tradition’241 despite ‘the political opening to the humbler levels of Florentine artisans’.242 The fact that, in a capitalist world, humours come to cross social lines does not mean that ‘political power must play for time, play one force against another, delay the outbreak of a hostile conflict and thereby postpone for as long as possible the crisis of society and of the state’.243 On the contrary, it must produce the mixing out of which one can (re)generate and thus preserve equality. In this sense, the political action of those who do not want to be dominated ‘is not aimed so much at preserving a natural balance, or the presumption of such’—nor, I would add, at producing it—‘but rather at constantly recombining relations of strength’.244 This is a perspective very far from that in which it would be enough for the prince to make ‘orders and law in which universal security is included together with his power (potenza)’ to satisfy the desires of the people and, in particular, the desire to ‘recover its freedom’.245 I do not wish to arrive here at conclusions that seem to be as yet premature, because if the interpretative key I have used, ‘the attention to structures rather than to men’,246 is a sensible one, then it still requires further analysis. But to I distance myself both from a long tradition of interpretation that sees Machiavelli’s final works as a conservative shift towards aristocracy, often a Medicean aristocracy—on this argument see McCormick (2017b)—as well as from the theory that he had become sympathetic to Venetian mixed government: see Jurdjevic (2014), 76–7 and Suchowlansky (2016). Machiavelli often criticized Venice, but he also referred to it as ‘excellent among modern republics’ (D I.34, 74). Even admitting that in the Discursus Machiavelli was proposing ‘a hybrid of the Venetian system (where a closed number of citizens served for a long period) and the Savonarolan reorganization of government (where power was given to a large council of citizens)—Celenza (2015), 168—Venice still represents a situation of oligarchy, and thus cannot have served as an example for the constitution of Florence both because of Machiavelli’s constant criticism of oligarchy and because the levels of the state set out in the Discursus are characterized by the mixture of the humours. The second level of his scheme would, in fact, have had to disappear completely (Ricordo al Cardinale Giulio sulla Riforma dello Stato di Firenze—Memorandum to Cardinal Giulio on the reform of the constitution of Florence, 1522, in EN I.3, 644) or be substituted by another type of council. Furthermore, while it is reasonable to read the figure of the doge into those of the Roman pope and the Gonfalonier of the republic of Soderini (which are all lifetime positions), it cannot be ignored that the republic outlined in the Discursus is conceived as functioning without the pope, while the one described in the Minuta no longer requires the position of Gonfalonier for life. The Summary is a reasoned ‘report’ not a proposition. If it had been, Machiavelli would not have displayed any neutrality (S 616) and would have taken a clear position as he did in his other texts. His appreciation for some of the institutions of Rome and Venice and his admittedly more careful attention towards certain aspects of the Venetian system of government is part of the comparative approach that he uses to urge the Florentines to determine for themselves the best way to reform their state. 241 Marietti (2007), 60 and Fasano Guarini (1990), 39. 242 243 244 Marietti (2005), 116. Inglese (2006), 133. Visentin (2013), 279. 245 246 D I.16, 46; t.m. Sasso (1993), I, 496. 240

134

Constituting Freedom

close, I invite the reader not to forget that in Machiavelli, ‘order is not instituted in the break with disorder, but is articulated with an ongoing disorder’.247 Equality, in fact, ‘is not the end but the space of opposition’.248 Only the virtue of the citizens can reanimate the constitution, and moreover such a virtue depends only on the aptitude of the citizens to fight in order to expand the civil and free way of life of the city, and not to build individual positions of power and richness, etc. In this last case, the results are the ossification of the orders and their inability to change according to the times. If, therefore, temporal variations are at the origins of corruption, it is the human inability to respond promptly to fortune that is the cause of the degeneration of the orders and the spread of inequality. The irresolvable question of the kairos is the focal point of Machiavelli’s reflections, since not only is the virtuous response to fortune aleatory, but to be effective, instituting the orders must be conducted in line with the level of corruption249 and in a timely fashion, neither too soon nor too late.250 Men, on the other hand, are inclined to oppose progress, because it is difficult for them: to accept a world of becoming; they hunger for constants. This leads them to create an illusory world, which is then treated as though it were a real basis for action. In terms of human behaviour this often took the form of clinging to certain habits despite their having been long outdistanced by the pace of events. Men preferred the security of a false world which was known to the anxieties of a real world wherein the painful task of readjustment had to be undertaken anew.251 [Corruption, then, is a tendency inherent in things252 because] whenever engaging in combat through necessity is taken from men they engage in combat through ambition […]. The cause is that nature has created men so that they are able to desire everything and are unable to attain everything. So, since the desire is always greater than the power (potenza) of acquiring, the result is discontent with what one possesses and a lack of satisfaction with it. From this arises the variability of their fortune; for since some men desire to have more, and some fear to lose what has been acquired, they come to enmities and to war, from which arise the ruin of one province and the exaltation of another.253

Furthermore, it should be considered that even ‘the desire to defend freedom made each one try to prevail so much that he oppressed the other’.254 Given that there are no infallible remedies, politics remains a sphere that can never be placed in safety definitively because it does not necessarily produce safety. There are, however, certain precautions that, according to Machiavelli, are able to respond to changes in fortune. This has nothing to do with a politics of prudence or of the ‘lesser evil’,255 but one that sees the 247 249 251 253

248 Lefort (2012), 456 and also Del Lucchese et al. (2015). Sasso (1993), II, 207. 250 Gaille-Nikodimov (2004a), 114–21. D III.9 and Borrelli (2013). 252 Wolin (2004), 190. See Inglese (2006), 124 and 129. 254 255 D I.37, 78. D I.46, 95. Sfez (1999).

Constituting Freedom

135

collective and impersonal orders of the constitution as the only measures with which to combat reversals of fortune. Such orders do not foreshadow modern bureaucracy, because their task is primarily to produce the virtue that the governance of the city requires and only then to provide for its administration. In this sense: the best republic yields no solution to the political problem, [but] it distinguishes itself […] by its tacit abandonment of the idea of a solution. […] That is why the best republic is superior to all other regimes: it lends itself to movement. In the test of instability, it succeeds in obtaining the greatest stability,256

at least as much stability as possible. A dynamic constitution is needed to attain this result: a constitution unconnected with the modern idea of constitution, which, while subject to change, will always retain its rigidity. The one that Machiavelli had in mind must respond to changing times in order to reproduce and preserve the free and civil way of life. We are talking, then, of constructing—constituting and establishing—an open constitution that is dynamic and contrastive and which can be impersonal and automatic without ceasing to be political (which is to say, without becoming bureaucratic) and is, above all, able to involve the citizens in the production of the virtue necessary to its operation. This is a constitution that makes movement a driving force and turns its halting nature into the most stable form of government, albeit one suspended between equilibrium and collapse, between disintegration and contingent union. Its orders, including freedom, are not infallible bulwarks against degeneration nor an armour-clad defence against corruption, and their ambivalence is there to be seen.257 Yet while they may not be absolute guarantees against the corruption of the political aggregate, this does not change the fact that they can be instruments of its production and preservation, because it is precisely their uncertainty that continuously mobilizes the struggle and, with it, the production of virtue. As always, Machiavelli’s ideas are paradoxical: the greatest security is only possible by living and acting within a certain degree of insecurity, because any security that is thought to be definitive is always the illusory satisfaction of a desire that blocks the view of reality and generates the preconditions for collapse. Only within disorder can order be born, and this through the rearrangements of the elements,258 the movement of which never subsides. The ‘ceaseless combat’ (aeterno certamine), then, is at once the best possible guarantee of stability in a city and the greatest possible exposure to the risk of losing it. But often: the common belief of our Italian princes […] was that a prince needed only to think of a sharp reply in his study, to write a fine letter, to show quickness and

256 258

Lefort (2000), 136–8. Lucretius, II, 963–6.

257

Del Lucchese (2004), 71–2.

136

Constituting Freedom

cleverness in quotable sayings and replies, to know how to spin a fraud, to be adorned with gems and with gold, to sleep and eat with greater splendour than others, to be surrounded with wanton pleasures, to deal with subjects avariciously and proudly, to decay in laziness, to give positions in the army by favour, to despise anybody who showed them any praiseworthy course, and to expect their words to be taken as the responses of oracles. It did not enter the minds of these wretches that they were preparing themselves to be the prey of whoever attacked them.259

Without struggle there is no virtue and no freedom, as is pointed out by these verses, taken from the tercets On Ambition: And when someone blames nature if in Italy, so much afflicted and worn, men are not born so vigorous and hardy, I say that this does not excuse and justify our lack of worth, for discipline can make up where nature is lacking. This in times gone by made Italy flourish, and for conquering the world from end to end, stern discipline gave her daring. Now she lives, if it is life to live in tears, beneath the havoc and the fate which this great sloth of her deserves.260

It is therefore not just the fault of the princes261 if Italy is ‘without a head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, pillaged’,262 but also of its people, because if it is better than the prince,263 it is also true that ‘many times, deceived by a false image of good, the people desires its own ruin; and if it is not made aware that that is bad and what the good is, by someone in whom it has faith, infinite dangers and harms are brought into republics’.264 In Machiavelli’s proposal for the reordering of Florence there is a specific disenchantment typical of modernity based on the impossibility of joining the humours in a stable unity.265 An impossibility that once again recalls classical atomism. In Machiavelli, this does not mean surrendering to the idea of Destiny or, for the more optimistic, of Providence, but battling on to find the best possible form of coexistence in a particular historical moment: this is how virtue is born. And it is from his analysis of this problem that Machiavelli derives the idea that republics, or rather the political aggregates fuelled by collective virtue, are ‘wiser and more constant than a prince’,266 and one can trust them much more than such a prince.267 Faced with the powerful threat of foreign armies, the hope of being able to ensure the freedom of Florence could quite clearly not be linked only to the need to equip the city with a people’s army capable of repelling them.268 Without a widespread virtue, in fact, even a popular army would have been 259

260 AW VII, 724. MCW II, 737, vv. 109–20. As is stated in the page of the Art just referred to and also in D III.29. 262 263 264 P XXVI, 102. D I.58. D I.53, 106 and I.57. 265 266 267 Gaille-Nikodimov (2004a), 10. D I.58, 115. D I.59. 268 Even if Machiavelli in the Ghiribizzi d’Ordinanza (Speculations on conscription) of 1515 (see EN I.3, 588–93) had revisited the issue of the militia. 261

Constituting Freedom

137

capable of little. And so with the Discursus and the Minuta Machiavelli appears to look upon Florence for the final time with a somewhat disillusioned but not entirely hopeless smile, while perhaps thinking of his attempt to establish in that city, a republic that could expand itself thanks to an ultimately collective virtue, because ‘where there is not this goodness, nothing good can be hoped for, as it cannot be hoped for in the provinces that in these times are seen to be corrupt, as is Italy above all others’.269 One must never forget that ‘the few were always ministers of the few and of the most powerful’.270

269

D I.55, 110 and then D II, preface, 123.

270

D I.49, 101 and I.7, 25.

Bibliography Primary sources Works of Niccolò Machiavelli The English translations have all been checked by referring to EN: Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Machiavelli (2001 ff) 20 vols, of which 14 have been published to date (Rome: Salerno Editions). Changes to the translations used have been noted (t.m.) in the footnotes. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1989). Discourse on Remodelling the Government of Florence, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. I, pp. 101–15. (Discursus florentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentii Medices, in EN I.3, pp. 624–41). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1996). Discourses on Livy. Trans. H. C. Mansfield and N. Tarcov (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press). (Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, in EN I.2, 2 vols). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1988). Florentine Histories. Trans. L. F. Banfield and H. C. Mansfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). (Istorie fiorentine, in EN II.1–2, pp. 77–785). Machiavelli, Niccolò (2002–11). Legazioni. Commissarie. Scritti di governo (in EN V.1–7). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1984). Lettere. F. Gaeta (ed.), Opere, vol. III (Turin: Utet). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1989). Machiavelli. The Chief Works and Others, 3 vols. Trans. A. Gilbert (Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press). Machiavelli, Niccolò (2001). Minuta di provvisione per la Riforma dello Stato di Firenze (in EN I.3, pp. 646–54). Machiavelli, Niccolò (2001). Sommario delle cose della città di Lucca (in EN I.3, pp. 613–20). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1989). The Art of War, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. 2, pp. 561–726 (Dell’arte della guerra, in EN I.3, pp. 27–311). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1882). The Complete Works of Niccolò Machiavelli. Trans. C. Detmold (Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1988). The Letters of Machiavelli. A Selection. Trans. A. Gilbert (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1998). The Prince. Trans. H. C. Mansfield (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press). (De principatibus or Il principe, in EN I.1). Other classical works Aristotle (1955). On Coming-To-Be and Passing-Away. Trans. E. S. Foster (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press). Democritus (1999). The Atomists Leucippus and Democritus. Fragments. Trans. C. C. W. Taylor (Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press).

Bibliography

139

Foscari, Marco (1839 [1527]). ‘Relazione di Firenze’, in Eugenio Albèri (ed.). Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato (Florence: Tipografia all’insegna di Glio), II, vol. I, pp. 7–96. Guicciardini, Francesco (1998 [1508–9]). Storie fiorentine dal 1378 al 1509. A. Montevecchi (ed.) (Milan: Rizzoli). Guicciardini, Francesco (2000 [1512]). Del modo di ordinare il governo popolare, in La libertà moderata. Tre discorsi (Turin: La Rosa Editions), pp. 3–41. Guicciardini, Francesco (2008 [1521–6]). Dialogue on the Government of Florence. A. Brown (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Livy, Titus (1939). From the Founding of the City. Books III and IV. Trans. B. O. Foster (London/Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press). Livy, Titus (1967). From the Founding of the City. Books I and II. Trans. B. O. Foster (London/Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press). Lucretius (1969–2001). On the Nature of Things. Trans. M. Ferguson Smith (Indianapolis, IN/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company). Mecatti, Giuseppe Maria (1755). Storia cronologica della città di Firenze o siano Annali della Toscana, vol. II (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana). Mini, Paolo (1593). Discorso della nobiltà di Firenze, e de fiorentini (Florence: per Domenico Manzani). Polybius (2010). The Histories. Trans. R. Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Other sources Adorno, Francesco (1998). ‘Il «bene comune» di contro al «bene privato» in Machiavelli’, in Cultura e scrittura di Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno Editions), pp. 25–36. Albertini, Rudolf von (1970). Firenze dalla repubblica al principato. Storia e coscienza politica (Turin: Einaudi). Albiac, Gabriel (2011). Sumisiones voluntarias. La invención del sujeto político: de Maquiavelo a Spinoza (Madrid: Tecnos). Althusser, Louis (1978). Que faire? Unpublished MSS—Imec archive, ALT2. A2605.06/07. Althusser, Louis (1999 [1971–86]). Machiavelli and Us. Trans. G. Elliott (London/New York: Verso). Ames, José Luiz (2014). ‘Transformações do significado de conflito na «História de Florença» de Maquiavel’, Kriterion, no. 129, pp. 265–86. Anselmi, Gian Mario (1996). ‘Il Discursus florentinarum rerum tra progetto politico e prospettiva storiografica’, in Jean-Jacques Marchand (ed.). Niccolò Machiavelli. Politico, storico, letterato (Rome: Salerno Editions), pp. 189–207. Ardito, Alissa M. (2015). Machiavelli and the Modern State. The Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the Extended Territorial Republic (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press). Avramescu, Cătălin (2011). ‘Machiavelli and the Theory of Exemplary Constitutions’, in Leonidas Donskis (ed.). Niccolò Machiavelli. History, Power, and Virtue (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi), pp. 67–76. Baccelli, Luca (2002). ‘Machiavelli, la tradizione repubblicana e lo stato di diritto’, in Paolo Costa and Danilo Zolo (eds). Lo Stato di diritto. Storia, teoria, critica (Milan: Feltrinelli), pp. 424–59.

140

Bibliography

Balibar, Etienne (2003). L’Europa, l’America, la Guerra (Rome: manifestolibri). Barberis, Mauro (1999). Libertà (Bologna: il Mulino). Barbuto, Gennaro (2007). Antinomie della politica. Saggio su Machiavelli (Naples: Liguori). Barbuto, Gennaro (2013). Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno Editions). Bardin, Andrea (2014). Mechanicism, Science and Ideology: Hobbes’s Epistemological Revolution in Civil Science, PhD thesis, London: Department of Politics, History, and the Brunel Law School, Brunel University. Baron, Hans (1961). ‘The Republican Citizen and the Author of “the Prince” ’, English Historical Review, 76, no. 299, pp. 217–53. Baron, Hans (1966). The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Barthas, Jérémy (2011). L’argent n’est pas le nerf de la guerre. Essai sur une prétendue erreur de Machiavel (Rome: École française de Rome). Barthas, Jérémy (2015). ‘Il pensiero costituzionale di Machiavelli e la funzione tribunizia nella Firenze del Rinascimento’, in Lorenzo Tanzini (ed.). Il laboratorio del Rinascimento: studi di storia e cultura per Riccardo Fubini (Florence: Le Lettere), pp. 239–56. Bausi, Francesco (2005). Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno Editions). Bec, Christian (1985). Machiavel (Paris: Balland). Berlin, Isaiah (1980). The Originality of Machiavelli, in Against the Current. Essays in the History of Ideas (New York: Viking Press), pp. 25–79. Berns, Thomas (2000). Violence de la loi à la Renaissance. L’originaire du politique chez Machiavel et Montaigne (Paris: Kimé). Black, Robert (2013). Machiavelli (London/New York: Routledge). Bock, Gisela (1990). ‘Civil discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine’, in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (eds). Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 181–201. Bock, Gisela, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (eds) (1990). Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Borrelli, Gianfranco (2000). Non far novità. Alle radici della cultura italiana della conservazione politica (Naples: Bibliopolis). Borrelli, Gianfranco (2009). Il lato oscuro del Leviathan. Hobbes contro Machiavelli (Naples: Cronopio). Borrelli, Gianfranco (2013). ‘La divisione tra popolo e plebe: corruzione e innovazione secondo Machiavelli’, in Riccardo Caporali, Vittorio Morfino, and Stefano Visentin (eds). Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto (Milan: Mimesis), pp. 35–53. Breschi, Riccardo (1988). ‘Il concetto di «corruzione» nei «Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio»’, Studi storici, 29, no. 3, pp. 707–35. Brown, Alison (2010). The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press). Brown, Alison (2015). ‘Lucretian Naturalism and the Evolution of Machiavelli’s Ethics’, in Filippo Del Lucchese, Fabio Frosini, and Vittorio Morfino (eds). The Radical Machiavelli. Politics, Philosophy and Language (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill), pp. 105–27.

Bibliography

141

Brudney, Kent M. (1984). ‘Machiavelli on Social Class and Class Conflict’, Political Theory, 12, no. 4, pp. 507–19. Bruni, Francesco (2003). La città divisa. Le parti e il bene comune da Dante a Guicciardini (Bologna: il Mulino). Butters, Humfrey (1985). Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence 1502–1519 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Butters, Humfrey (2010). ‘Machiavelli and the Medici’, in John M. Najemy (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 64–79. Cabrini, Anna Maria (1985). Per una valutazione delle Istorie fiorentine del Machiavelli. Note sulle fonti del Secondo Libro (Florence: La Nuova Italia). Cabrini, Anna Maria (1990). Interpretazione e stile in Machiavelli. Il terzo libro delle Istorie (Rome: Bulzoni). Cabrini, Anna Maria (1996). ‘L’idea di Firenze dal primo Decennale alle Istorie’, in Jean-Jacques Marchand (ed.). Niccolò Machiavelli. Politico, storico, letterato (Rome: Salerno Editions), pp. 337–61. Cadoni, Giorgio (1962). ‘Libertà, repubblica e governo misto in Machiavelli’, Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto, 39, pp. 462–83. Cadoni, Giorgio (1994). Crisi della mediazione politica e conflitti sociali. Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini e Donato Giannotti di fronte al tramonto della Florentina Libertas (Rome: Jouvence). Caporali, Riccardo (2013). ‘L’uguale misura’, in Riccardo Caporali, Vittorio Morfino, and Stefano Visentin (eds). Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto (Milan: Mimesis), pp. 55–63. Caporali Riccardo, Vittorio Morfino, and Stefano Visentin (eds) (2013). Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto (Milan: Mimesis). Castaldo, Filomena (2008). L’evento, l’innovazione, la pratica virtuosa. Arendt legge Machiavelli (Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano). Cavallo, Jo Ann (2007). ‘Machiavelli and Woman’, in Patricia Vilches and Gerald Seaman (eds). Seeking Real Truths. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill), pp. 123–48. Celenza, Christopher S. (2015). Machiavelli. A Portrait (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press). Cervelli, Innocenzo (1974). Machiavelli e la crisi dello stato veneziano (Naples: Guida). Chabod, Federico (1967). Scritti sul Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi). Chiappelli, Fredi (1969). Nuovi studi sul linguaggio del Machiavelli (Florence: La Nuova Italia). Coby, Patrick J. (1999). Machiavelli’s Romans. Liberty and Greatness in the Discourses on Livy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Colish, Marcia L. (1971). ‘The Idea of Liberty in Machiavelli’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 32, no. 3, pp. 323–50. Colonna d’Istria, Gérard and Roland Frapet (1980). L’art politique chez Machiavel. Principes et méthode (Paris: Vrin). Costa, Pietro (1999). Civitas. Storia della cittadinanza in Europa, 4 vols (Rome/Bari: Laterza). Cutinelli-Rèndina, Emanuele (1998). Chiesa e religione in Machiavelli (Pisa/Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali).

142

Bibliography

De Vries, Hans (1957). Essai sur la terminologie constitutionnelle chez Machiavel (‘Il Principe’), PhD thesis, Université d’Amsterdam, Faculté de Droit. Dejardin, Bertrand (2004). Terreur et corruption. Essai sur l’incivilité chez Machiavel (Paris: L’Harmattan). Del Águila, Rafael and Sandra Chaparro (2006). La república de Maquiavelo (Madrid: Tecnos). Del Lucchese, Filippo (2001). ‘«Disputare» e «combattere». Modi del conflitto nel pensiero politico di Niccolò Machiavelli’, Filosofia politica, 15, no. 1, pp. 71–95. Del Lucchese, Filippo (2002). ‘Strategie della virtù tra necessità e libertà in Machiavelli’, Quaderni materialisti, no. 1, pp. 41–67. Del Lucchese, Filippo (2004). Tumulti e indignatio. Conflitto, diritto e moltitudine in Machiavelli e Spinoza (Milan: Ghibli). Del Lucchese, Filippo (2009). Conflict, Power and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza: Tumult and Indignation (partial translation of Del Lucchese, 2004, Tumulti e indignatio) (London/New York: Continuum). Del Lucchese, Filippo, Fabio Frosini, and Vittorio Morfino (eds) (2015). The Radical Machiavelli. Politics, Philosophy and Language (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill). Dietz, Mary G. (1986). ‘Trapping the Prince: Machiavelli and the Politics of Deception’, American Political Science Review, 80, no. 3, pp. 777–99. Dionisotti, Carlo (1980). Machiavellerie. Storia e fortuna di Machiavelli (Turin: Einaudi). Duso, Giuseppe (ed.) (1987a). Il contratto sociale nella filosofia politica moderna (Bologna: il Mulino). Duso, Giuseppe (ed.) (1987b). ‘Introduzione: Patto sociale e forma politica’, in Giuseppe Duso (ed.). Il contratto sociale nella filosofia politica moderna (Bologna: il Mulino), pp. 7–49. Duso, Giuseppe (ed.) (1999). Il potere. Per la storia della filosofia politica moderna (Rome: Carocci). Duvernoy, Jean-François (2010). La fabrique politique. Machiavel (Paris: L’Harmattan). Esposito, Roberto (1984). Ordine e conflitto. Machiavelli e la letteratura politica del Rinascimento italiano (Naples: Liguori). Esposito, Roberto (2012). Living Thought. The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy. Trans Z. Hanafi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Evrigenis, Ioannis D. (2008). Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fachard, Denis (1996). ‘Implicazioni politiche nell’Arte della guerra’, in Jean-Jacques Marchand (ed.). Niccolò Machiavelli. Politico, storico, letterato (Rome: Salerno Editions), pp. 149–73. Fasano Guarini, Elena (1990). ‘Machiavelli and the Crisis of the Italian Republics’, in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (eds). Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 17–40. Fioravanti, Maurizio (1999). Costituzione (Bologna: il Mulino). Fontana, Alessandro, Jean-Louis Fournel, Xavier Tabet, and Jean-Claude Zancarini (eds) (2004). Langues et écritures de la république et de la guerre. Études sur Machiavel (Genoa: Name). Fontana, Benedetto (2002). Force and Persuasion: The Representation of the People in Machiavelli (American Political Science Association), pp. 1–52.

Bibliography

143

Foucault, Michel (2009). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–8. Trans. G. Burchell (New York: Picador). Frosini, Fabio (2001–2). ‘«Niccolò Machiavelli—historico, comico e tragico». Patria, libertà, virtù’, Studi urbinati, no. 71–2, pp. 163–202. Frosini, Fabio (2005). ‘L’aporia del «principato civile». Il problema politico del «forzare» in Principe, IX’, Filosofia politica, XIX, no. 2, pp. 199–218. Gagné, Learry (2011). ‘A Modern Interpretation of Machiavelli’s Political Cycle’, Canadian Political Science Review, 5, no. 2, pp. 127–35. Gaille-Nikodimov, Marie (2004a). Conflit civil et liberté. La politique machiavélienne entre histoire et médecine (Paris: Honoré Champion). Gaille-Nikodimov, Marie (2004b). ‘A la recherche d’une définition des institutions de la liberté’, in Alessandro Fontana, Jean-Louis Fournel, Xavier Tabet, and JeanClaude Zancarini (eds). Langues et écritures de la république et de la guerre. Études sur Machiavel (Genoa: Name), pp. 143–64. Gaille-Nikodimov, Marie and Thierry Ménissier (eds) (2006). Lectures de Machiavel (Paris: Ellipses). Garosci, Aldo (1973). Le ‘Istorie fiorentine’ del Machiavelli (Turin: Giappichelli). Garver, Eugene (1987). Machiavelli and the History of Prudence (Madison, WI/London: University of Wisconsin Press). Gerbier, Laurent (2001). ‘Chapitre VII du Prince: des principautés nouvelles’, in Yves Charles Zarka and Thierry Ménissier (eds). Machiavel, le Prince ou le nouvel art politique (Paris: Puf), pp. 59–79. Gerbier, Laurent (2005). ‘Constitution mixte et complexion civile chez Machiavel (Discorsi, I, 2–9)’, in Marie Gaille-Nikodimov (ed.). Le Gouvernement mixte. De l’idéal politique au monstre constitutionnel en Europe (XIIIe–XVIIe siècle) (SaintÉtienne: Publication de l’Université de Saint-Étienne), pp. 57–69. Geuna, Marco (2005). Machiavelli e il ruolo dei conflitti nella vita politica, in Alessandro Arienzo and Dario Caruso (eds). Conflitti (Naples: Dante & Descartes), pp. 19–57. Geuna, Marco (2009). ‘Quentin Skinner e Machiavelli’, in Alessandro Arienzo and Gianfranco Borrelli (eds). Anglo-American Faces of Machiavelli. Machiavelli e machiavellismi nella cultura anglo-americana (secoli XVI–XX) (Monza: Polimetrica), pp. 577–622. Geuna, Marco (2013). ‘Ruolo dei conflitti e ruolo della religione nella riflessione di Machiavelli sulla storia di Roma’, in Caporali, Riccardo, Vittorio Morfino, and Stefano Visentin (eds). Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto (Milan: Mimesis), pp. 107–39. Geuna, Marco (2017). ‘Extraordinary Accidents in the Life of Republics: Machiavelli and Dictatorial Authority’, in David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Vergara Camila (eds). Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press), pp. 280–306. Gilbert, Felix (1949). ‘Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari: A Study on the Origin of Modern Political Thought’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, no. 12, pp. 101–31. Gilbert, Felix (1968). The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought, in Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.). Florentine Studies. Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (London: Faber), pp. 463–500.

144

Bibliography

Gilbert, Felix (1977). Machiavelli e Venezia, in Machiavelli e il suo tempo (Bologna: il Mulino), pp. 319–34. Gilbert, Felix (1984). Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Politics and History in SixteenthCentury Florence (New York/London: W. W. Norton). Gramsci, Antonio (1991 [1929–35]). Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica e sullo Stato moderno (Rome: Ed. Riuniti). Grimal, Pierre (1982). ‘Machiavel et la Justice dans la cité’, in Georges Barthouil (ed.). Machiavelli attuale—Machiavel actuel (Ravenna: Longo), pp. 125–30. Guidi, Andrea (2009). Un Segretario militante. Politica, diplomazia e armi nel Cancelliere Machiavelli (Bologna: il Mulino). Guidi, Andrea (2016). ‘Un autografo inedito di Niccolò Machiavelli: «Minuta di provvisione per la restituzione dei beni agli eredi dei Medici e per la riforma dello stato», 1512’, Laboratoire italien, no. 17, pp. 321–34. Guidi, Guidubaldo (1969). ‘Niccolò Machiavelli e i progetti di riforme costituzionali a Firenze nel 1522’, Il pensiero politico, 2, no. 3, pp. 580–96. Guidi, Guidubaldo (1972). ‘La teoria delle «tre ambizioni» nel pensiero politico fiorentino del primo Cinquecento’, Il pensiero politico, 5, no. 2, pp. 241–59. Hankins, James (2014). ‘Machiavelli, Civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue’, Italian Culture, 32, no. 2, pp. 98–109. Hexter, Jack H. (1957). ‘Il principe and lo stato’, Studies in the Renaissance, no. 4, pp. 113–38. Hirschman, Albert O. (1977). The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism Before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Horkheimer, Max (1993 [1930]). Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History, in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writing. Trans. G. F. Hunter, M. S. Kramer, and J. Torpey (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press), pp. 313–89. Hörnqvist, Mikael (2004). Machiavelli and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hulliung, Mark (1984). Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Illuminati, Augusto and Tania Rispoli (2011). Tumulti. Scene dal nuovo disordine planetario (Rome: DeriveApprodi). Inglese, Giorgio (1989). Introduzione a Machiavelli, Niccolò, Lettere a Francesco Vettori e a Francesco Guicciardini (1513–27) (Milan: Rizzoli), pp. 5–55. Inglese, Giorgio (2006). Per Machiavelli. L’arte dello stato, la cognizione delle storie (Rome: Carocci). Ion, Cristina (2006). ‘Conquérir, fonder, se maintenir’, in Marie Gaille-Nikodimov and Thierry Ménissier (eds). Lectures de Machiavel (Paris: Ellipses), pp. 93–128. Johnston, David, Nadia Urbinati, and Vergara Camila (eds) (2017). Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press). Jurdjevic, Mark (2007). ‘Machiavelli’s Hybrid Republicanism’, English Historical Review, 122, no. 499, pp. 1228–57. Jurdjevic, Mark (2014). A Great and Wretched City. Promise and Failure in Machiavelli’s Florentine Political Thought (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press).

Bibliography

145

Kantorowicz, Ernst H. (1997 [1957]). The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, with a new preface by W. Chester Jordan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Kennedy, Geoff (2005). ‘Historicizing Liberty and Empire: Machiavelli, Rome and Florentine “Imperialism” ’ . Kersting, Wolfgang (2006). Niccolò Machiavelli (München: C. H. Beck Vlg). Kluxen, Kurt (1967). Politik und menschliche Existenz bei Machiavelli. Dargestellt am Begriff der Necessità (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer). Landi, Sandro (2001). ‘Alcune considerazioni sulla «voce d’un popolo» in Machiavelli (Discorsi, I.58)’, Laboratoire italien, no. 1, pp. 35–52. Landon, William J. (2005). Politics, Patriotism and Language. Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘Secular Patria’ and the Creation of an Italian National Identity (New York: Peter Lang). Langton, John and Mary G. Dietz (1987). ‘Machiavelli’s Paradox: Trapping or Teaching the Prince’, American Political Science Review, 81, no. 4, pp. 1277–88. Larivaille, Paul (1996). ‘«Amo la patria mia più dell’anima». La passione per Firenze nella genesi del Principe e dei Discorsi’, in Jean-Jacques Marchand (ed.). Niccolò Machiavelli. Politico, storico, letterato (Rome: Salerno Editions), pp. 97–120. Lazzarino Del Grosso, Anna Maria (2004). Bodin e la critica della democrazia (Naples: Istituto Universitario Suor Orsola Benincasa). Lazzarino Del Grosso, Anna Maria (2007). ‘Le magistrature in Bodin’, Il pensiero politico, XL, no. 2, pp. 394–409. Lefort, Claude (1978). Les formes de l’histoire. Essais d’anthropologie politique (Paris: Gallimard). Lefort, Claude (2000). Writing. The political text. Trans. D. Ames Curtis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books). Lefort, Claude (2012 [1972]). Machiavelli in the Making (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press). Loraux, Nicole (2000). Born of the Earth: Myth and Politics in Athens. Trans. S. Stewart (Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press). Loraux, Nicole (2001). The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens. Trans. C. Pache and J. Fort (New York: Zone Books). Lupoli, Agostino (2008). ‘La nozione di «popolo corrotto» («corrupted people») in Machiavelli e Hobbes’, in Lorenzo Bianchi and Alberto Postigliola (eds). Dopo Machiavelli/Après Machiavel (Naples: Liguori), pp. 153–85. Mansfield Jr., Harvey C. (1983). ‘On the Impersonality of the Modern State: A Comment on Machiavelli’s Uses of Stato’, American Political Science Review, 77, no. 4, pp. 849–57. Mansfield Jr., Harvey C. (2017). ‘Machiavelli on Necessity’, in David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Vergara Camila (eds). Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press), pp. 39–57. Marchand, Jean-Jacques (1975). Niccolò Machiavelli. I primi scritti politici (1499–1512). Nascita di un pensiero e di uno stile (Padua: Antenore). Marchand, Jean-Jacques (ed.) (1996). Niccolò Machiavelli. Politico, storico, letterato (Rome: Salerno Editions).

146

Bibliography

Marchand, Jean-Jacques (2004). ‘Les institutions (ordini), les lois et les mœurs (costumi) chez Machiavel’, in Alessandro Fontana, Jean-Louis Fournel, Xavier Tabet, and Jean-Claude Zancarini (eds). Langues et écritures de la république et de la guerre. Études sur Machiavel (Genoa: Name), pp. 259–74. Marchand, Jean-Jacques (ed.) (2006). Machiavelli senza i Medici (1498–1512). Scrittura del potere/Potere della scrittura (Rome: Salerno Editions). Marietti, Marina (2005). Machiavelli. L’eccezione fiorentina (Fiesole: Cadmo). Marietti, Marina (2007). ‘Le Discursus florentinarum rerum de Machiavel: la réforme de la cité-État’, in Jean-Louis Fournel and Paolo Grossi (eds). Governare a Firenze. Savonarola, Machiavelli, Guicciardini (Paris: Istituto Italiano di Cultura), pp. 57–69. Marietti, Marina (2009). Machiavel. Le penseur de la nécessité (Paris: Payot & Rivages). Martelli, Mario (2009). Tra filologia e storia. Otto studi machiavelliani (Rome: Salerno Editions). Mayr, Otto (1986). Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press). McCormick, John P. (2003). ‘Machiavelli against Republicanism. On the Cambridge School’s “Guicciardinian moments” ’, Political Theory, 31, no. 5, pp. 615–43. McCormick, John P. (2011). Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McCormick, John P. (2013). ‘ “Keep the Public Rich, but the Citizens Poor”: Economic and Political Inequality in Constitutions, Ancient and Modern’, Cardozo Law Review, 34, no. 3, pp. 879–92. McCormick, John P. (2017a). ‘Faulty Foundings and Failed Reformers in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories’, American Political Science Review, 111, no. 1, pp. 204–16. McCormick, John P. (2017b). ‘On the Myth of a Conservative Turn in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories’, in David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Vergara Camila (eds). Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press), pp. 330–51. McIlwain, Charles H. (1947). Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Ménissier, Thierry (2005). ‘Le Discours sur les choses de Florence de Machiavel: logique et pragmatique de l’action politique’, Les Cahiers du CEVIPOF, no. 39, pp. 12–22. Ménissier, Thierry (2006). ‘République, ordre collectif et liberté civile’, in Marie GailleNikodimov and Thierry Ménissier (eds). Lectures de Machiavel (Paris: Ellipses), pp. 151–91. Ménissier, Thierry (2010). Machiavel ou la politique du centaure (Paris: Hermann). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1964). Signs. Trans. R. C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press). Miglio, Gianfranco (2011 [1974–76]). Lezioni di politica. 1. Storia delle dottrine politiche (Bologna: il Mulino). Mondin, Battista (1995). Dizionario enciclopedico dei papi. Storia e insegnamenti (Rome: Città Nuova).

Bibliography

147

Morfino, Vittorio (2006). ‘Tra Lucrezio e Spinoza: la «filosofia» di Machiavelli’, in Filippo Del Lucchese, Luca Sartorello, and Stefano Visentin (eds). Machiavelli. Immaginazione e contingenza (Pisa: Ets), pp. 67–110. Münkler, Herfried (2004). ‘Der Imperativ expansiver Selbsterhaltung. Machiavellis comparative Begründung für die Vorbildlichkeit der Römischen Republik’, in Herfried Münkler, Rüdiger Vogt, and Ralf Walkenhaus (eds). Demaskierung der Macht. Niccolò Machiavelli Staats- und Politikverständnis (Baden-Baden: Nomos), pp. 103–20. Münkler, Herfried (2007). Machiavelli. Die Begründung des politischen Denkens der Neuzeit aus der Krise der Republik Florenz (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch). Nadeau, Christian (2003). ‘Machiavel: domination et liberté politique’, Philosophiques, 30, no. 2, pp. 321–51. Najemy, John M. (1982). ‘Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History’, Renaissance Quarterly, 35, no. 4, pp. 551–76. Najemy, John M. (2006). A History of Florence 1200–1575 (Oxford: Blackwell). Najemy, John M. (ed.) (2010). The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Negri, Antonio (1999). Insurgencies. Constituent Power and the Modern State. Trans. M. Boscagli (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press). Nelson, Benjamin (1949). The Idea of Usury. From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Padgett, John F. and Paul D. McLean (2011). ‘Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence’, Journal of Modern History, 83, no. 1, pp. 1–47. Pasquino, Pasquale (1996). ‘Liberté et république chez Machiavel’, Les Annales de Clermont-Ferrand, no. 32, pp. 33–49. Pedullà, Gabriele (2011). Machiavelli in tumulto. Conquista, cittadinanza e conflitto nei «Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio» (Rome: Bulzoni). Pitkin, Hannah F. (1999). Fortune Is a Woman. Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press). Pitkin, Hannah F. (2004). ‘Meditations on Machiavelli’, in Maria J. Falco (ed.). Feminist Interpretations of Niccolò Machiavelli (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), pp. 49–92. Pocock, John G. A. (1975). The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Polegato, Andrea (2015). Il linguaggio politico del primo Machiavelli: prudenza, virtù e giustizia nelle lettere amministrative e diplomatiche (1498–1503). PhD thesis, Department of French and Italian, Indiana University. Polverini, Leandro (2006). ‘Il tribunato della plebe’, Il pensiero politico, 40, n. 2, pp. 360–8. Procacci, Giuliano (1969). ‘Machiavelli rivoluzionario’, in Niccolò Machiavelli. Opere scelte (Rome: Ed. Riuniti), pp. XIII–XXXVI. Quaglioni, Diego (2011). Machiavelli e la lingua della giurisprudenza. Una lettura della crisi (Bologna: il Mulino). Rahe, Paul A. (2007). ‘In the Shadow of Lucretius: The Epicurean Foundations of Machiavelli’s Political Thought’, History of Political Thought, 28, no. 1, pp. 30–55.

148

Bibliography

Raimondi, Fabio (2001). ‘En el umbral del bien y del mal: observaciones a Thoughts on Machiavelli de Leo Strauss’, Res publica, 4, no. 8, pp. 93–125. Raimondi, Fabio (2003). ‘Il paradigma-Firenze nel Discursus florentinarum rerum di Machiavelli: in principio sono i conflitti, i conflitti governano’, in Merio Scattola (ed.). Figure della guerra. La riflessione su pace, conflitto e giustizia tra Medioevo e prima età moderna (Milan: FrancoAngeli), pp. 145–75. Raimondi, Fabio (2005a). ‘Impossibile confine. Immaginazione e politica nel Leviatano’, Isonomia, pp. 1–57, . Raimondi, Fabio (2005b). ‘Machiavelli e il problema della costituzione mista di Roma’, Filosofia politica, 19, no. 1, pp. 49–61. Raimondi, Fabio (2009). ‘«Necessità» nel Principe e nei Discorsi di Machiavelli’, Scienza & Politica, no. 40, pp. 27–50. Raimondi, Fabio (2011). Il custode del vuoto. Contingenza e ideologia nel materialismo radicale di Louis Althusser (Verona: ombre corte). Raimondi, Fabio (2013a). ‘Libertà, sicurezza e tumulti: Machiavelli e la «corruzione» di Firenze’, in Riccardo Caporali, Vittorio Morfino, and Stefano Visentin (eds). Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto (Milan: Mimesis), pp. 185–97. Raimondi, Fabio (2013b). ‘Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan. Religion as Ideology’, in Alessandro Arienzo and Alessandra Petrina (eds). Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England. Literary and Political Influences from the Reformation to the Restoration (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate), pp. 173–84. Raimondi, Fabio (2015). ‘Les « tumultes » dans le Prince et dans les Discours. Notes pour un lexique machiavélien des luttes’, in Yves Charles Zarka and Cristina Ion (eds). Machiavel, le Pouvoir et le Peuple (Paris: Mimesis), pp. 157–73. Raimondi, Fabio (2017). ‘Agatocle o l’imperio senza gloria’, in Giorgio Scichilone (ed.). I principi del Principe (Bologna: il Mulino). Reale, Mario (1985). ‘Machiavelli, la politica e il problema del tempo. Un doppio cominciamento della storia romana? A proposito di Romolo in Discorsi I.9’, La cultura, no. 23, pp. 45–123. Rees, Edward A. (2004). Political Thought from Machiavelli to Stalin. Revolutionary Machiavellism (Houndmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Ricciardi, Maurizio (1999). ‘La repubblica prima dello Stato. Niccolò Machiavelli sulla soglia del discorso politico moderno’, in Giuseppe Duso (ed.). Il potere. Per la storia della filosofia politica moderna (Rome: Carocci), pp. 37–49. Ricciardi, Maurizio (2001). Rivoluzione (Bologna: il Mulino). Ridolfi, Roberto (2010 [1954]). The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli. Trans. C. Grayson (Abingdon: Routledge). Roebuck, Carl (1952). ‘A Search for Political Stability: Machiavelli’s “Discourses on Livy” ’, Phoenix, 6, no. 2, pp. 52–65. Roecklein, Robert J. (2012). Machiavelli and Epicureanism. An Investigation into the Origins of Early Modern Political Thought (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Rubinstein, Nicolai (1967). ‘Machiavelli e le origini di Firenze’, Rivista storica italiana, 79, no. 4, pp. 952–9. Sartorello, Luca (2013). Tra diritto, politica e morale: la modernità di Machiavelli (Padua: Cleup).

Bibliography

149

Sasso, Gennaro (1967). Studi su Machiavelli (Naples: Morano). Sasso, Gennaro (1987–97). Machiavelli e gli antichi e altri saggi, 4 vols (Milan/Naples: Ricciardi). Sasso, Gennaro (1993). Niccolò Machiavelli, 2 vols (Bologna: il Mulino). Scattola, Merio (1999). ‘Ordine della giustizia e dottrina della sovranità in Jean Bodin’, in Giuseppe Duso (ed.). Il potere. Per la storia della filosofia politica moderna (Rome: Carocci), pp. 61–75. Screpanti, Ernesto (2008). L’angelo della liberazione nel tumulto dei Ciompi. Firenze, giugno-agosto 1378 (Siena: Protagon). Screpanti, Ernesto (2011). Marx dalla totalità alla moltitudine (1841–43) . Sfez, Gérald (1999). Machiavel, la politique du moindre mal (Paris: Puf). Shumer, Sara M. (1979). ‘Machiavelli: Republican Politics and Its Corruption’, Political Theory, 7, no. 1, pp. 5–34. Skinner, Quentin (1981). Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Skinner, Quentin (2002). Vision of Politics. Vol. II. Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Spackman, Barbara (2010). ‘Machiavelli and gender’, in John M. Najemy (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 223–38. Strauss, Leo (1958). Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: Free Press). Suchowlansky, Mauricio (2016). ‘Machiavelli’s Summary of the Affairs of the City of Lucca: Venice as buon governo’, Intellectual History Review, 26, no. 4, pp. 429–45. Taranto, Domenico (2001). ‘Sur la corruption chez Machiavel: temporalité et espace privé’, in Gérald Sfez and Michel Senellart (eds). L’enjeu Machiavel (Paris: Puf ), pp. 41–57. Taranto, Domenico (2003). La virtù della politica. Civismo e prudenza tra Machiavelli e gli antichi (Naples: Bibliopolis). Taranto, Domenico (2006). La Miktè Politeia tra antico e moderno. Dal ‘quartum genus’ alla monarchia limitata (Milan: FrancoAngeli). Tenenti, Alberto (1987). Stato: un’idea, una logica. Dal commune italiano all’assolutismo francese (Bologna: il Mulino). Terray, Emmanuel (1993). ‘Une rencontre: Althusser et Machiavel’, in Sylvain Lazarus (ed.). Politique et philosophie dans l’œuvre de Louis Althusser (Paris: Puf ), pp. 137–60. Varotti, Carlo (1998). Gloria e ambizione politica nel Rinascimento. Da Petrarca a Machiavelli (Milan: B. Mondadori). Vasoli, Cesare (2001). ‘Machiavelli, la religione «civile» degli antichi e le «armi»’, Il pensiero politico, 34, no. 3, pp. 337–52. Vatter, Miguel (2000). Between Form and Event: Machiavelli’s Theory of Political Freedom (Dordrecht/Boston, MA/London: Kluver). Vatter, Miguel (2003). ‘Althusser et Machiavel. La politique après la critique de Marx’, Multitudes, no. 13, pp. 151–63. Verrier, Frédérique (2004). ‘Lecture paradoxale des «Discours» sub specie feminae: des exemples aux métaphores’, in Alessandro Fontana, Jean-Louis Fournel, Xavier Tabet, and Jean-Claude Zancarini (eds). Langues et écritures de la république et de la guerre. Études sur Machiavel (Genoa: Name), pp. 383–98.

150

Bibliography

Villari, Pasquale (1914). Niccolò Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, 3 vols (Milan: Hoepli). Viroli, Maurizio (1990). ‘Machiavelli and the Republican Idea of Politics’, in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (eds). Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 143–71. Viroli, Maurizio (1998). Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Viroli, Maurizio (2002). Niccolò’s Smile. A Biography of Machiavelli (New York: Hill & Wang). Visentin, Stefano (2009). ‘Immaginazione e parzialità. Note sull’interpretazione neorepubblicana del popolo in Machiavelli’, Giornale di storia costituzionale, 18, no. 2, pp. 31–47. Visentin, Stefano (2013). ‘«Tenere animato l’universale»: visibilità del popolo in Machiavelli’, in Riccardo Caporali, Vittorio Morfino, and Stefano Visentin (eds). Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto (Milan: Mimesis), pp. 275–92. Visentin, Stefano (2015). ‘The Different Faces of the People: On Machiavelli’s Political Topography’, in Filippo Del Lucchese, Fabio Frosini, and Vittorio Morfino (eds). The Radical Machiavelli. Politics, Philosophy and Language (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill), pp. 368–89. Vivanti, Corrado (2008). Niccolò Machiavelli. I tempi della politica (Rome: Donzelli). Whitfield, John H. (1955). ‘On Machiavelli’s Use of Ordini’, Italian Studies, no. 10, pp. 19–39. Wicht, Bernard (1995). L’idée de milice et le modèle suisse dans la pensée de Machiavel (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme). Winter, Yves (2012). ‘Plebeian Politics: Machiavelli and the Ciompi Uprising’, Political Theory, 40, no. 6, pp. 736–66. Wolin, Sheldon S. (2004 [1960]). ‘Machiavelli: Politics and the Economy of Violence’, in Politics and Vision. Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ/Oxford: Princeton University Press), pp. 175–213. Wood, Neal (1973). ‘The Value of Asocial Sociability: Contributions of Machiavelli, Sidney, Montesquieu’, in Martin Fleischer (ed.). Machiavelli and the Nature of Political Thought (London: Croom Helm), pp. 282–307. Zanardi, Maurizio (1982). ‘Il corpo rigenerato’, Il centauro, no. 5, pp. 56–85. Zancarini, Jean-Claude (2004). ‘La révolte des Ciompi. Machiavel, ses sources et ses lectures’, Cahiers philosophiques, no. 97, pp. 9–22. Zanzi, Luigi (2013). Il metodo del Machiavelli (Bologna: il Mulino). Zmora, Hillay (2007). ‘A World without Saving Grace: Glory and Immortality in Machiavelli’, History of Political Thought, 28, no. 3, pp. 449–68.

Index A Description of the Method Used by Duke Valentino in Killing Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, and Others 96 A summary of the affairs of the city of Lucca xiii, 132–3 Adorno, Francesco 46n86 Aeneas 32–3 Agathocles 18 aggregate 10, 38–9 political 38n40, 43–4, 46, 48, 118, 130, 135–6 aggregation/disaggregation 38n39 agrarian law, Roman 121 Agrippa, Menenius 47 Alberti, the 88 Albertini, Rudolf von 20n64, 93n5, 113n114 Albiac, Gabriel 113n116, 129n207 Albizzi, Maso degli 40, 80, 82 Albizzi, the 71–2 Alexander the Great 22 alteration (riforma) 41 see also change Althusser, Louis 3n9, 5, 43nn61 and 65, 81n192, 112, 130 ambition 14n26, 22, 30, 34, 42, 46, 63, 66, 72–4, 82, 89, 91, 121, 123, 134 ambitions, theory of three 112n110, 131 Ames, José Luiz 123n177 Amidei, the 54–5 An Account of the Affairs of France 102nn55 and 56 see also Portrait of the affairs of France anarchy 67 see also licence anger (indignazione) 62, 68 see also indignation Anselmi, Gian Mario 112n111, 132n233 appeal (ricorso) 25, 40, 118–20 appetite 73, 82, 124, 128 see also desire human 41 of the parts 54 Ardito, Alissa M. 3n5 Arendt, Hannah 4 aristocrats, the (ottimati) 5n27, 16, 40, 79–80, 82, 88, 93–5, 98, 112, 114, 125, 132 best citizens 116 Aristotle 6n29, 47, 121n163, 131 arms 13–14, 18, 45, 50, 60, 63, 68–71, 74, 77–9, 85–6, 94–5, 98–9, 100n49, 103, 122 one’s own 18, 94, 97, 100, 105, 130

army, the 57, 94, 96, 98–9, 105, 107–8, 110, 136 popular/citizen 46, 100, 136 arrogance (superbia) 70, 75, 78 see also pride Art of War, The xiii, 8, 98, 103–5, 108, 136n261 art of war, the 105–6 artisans 56–7, 93, 119n50, 133 Athens 32, 85 atom/atomism 4, 12, 30n138, 36n25, 38nn39 and 40, 43, 54n2, 132, 136 authority 9, 13, 25–6, 29n130, 33, 40–1, 57, 60, 63–6, 69, 74, 77, 79, 81–2, 86, 88–9, 91, 93, 96, 98, 100, 102, 106n85, 108, 115–21, 125–8, 131 absolute 21 autochthony 37 autonomy/autonomous 14–15, 30, 33, 37, 67, 76, 81, 87, 101n49, 125, 129–30 avarice 73–4, 80 Avramescu, Cătălin 131n228 Baccelli, Luca 132n236 bag of selected (borsellino) 80 balance of powers 121n163 Balibar, Etienne 43n61, 119n155 Barberis, Mauro 50n106 Barbuto, Gennaro Maria 26n101, 51n120, 130n218 Bardin, Andrea 4n20 Baron, Hans 3n6, 21nn70 and 73, 118n146 Barthas, Jérémie 98n32, 119–20, 127n195 battle 57, 60, 89 (zuffa) 69 see also engagement Bausi, Francesco 1n2, 132n239 Bec, Christian 49n98 Becchi, Ricciardo 94n10 beginning 7, 12, 17n42, 27–30, 32–5, 38, 41, 43–5, 48, 53, 58, 80–2, 85, 110, 127–8 see also birth, origin free and servile 7, 27–33, 36, 39, 44–5, 53 good 10–11, 28–9, 37, 53, 81 return to 131n138, 44, 129 Belfagor 49n98 beneficiati 20n64, 49 Berlin, Isaiah 4n22, 12n22, 49 Berns, Thomas 43n62, 121n161

152

Index

birth 5n27, 10, 21n76, 27, 32, 35–6, 38n39, 43, 46, 82, 84–5, 110, 113 see also beginning, origin Black, Robert 6n31, 93n4, 118n148 Blacks, the 62–3 Bock, Gisela 68n112 Bodin, Jean 3n11, 132n233 body, political 38n40 Boniface VIII (Caetani, Benedetto) 63 Borgia, Cesare (Duke Valentino) 94–8 Borrelli, Gianfranco 42n55, 59n41, 123n174, 132n232, 134n250 bourgeoisie 5, 49n100, 61n62, 71–2, 79, 102, 115n131, 119n150 Bracciolini, Poggio 42 Breschi, Riccardo 6n30 Brown, Alison 4n21 Brudney, Kent M. 43n61 Bruni, Francesco 42n60 Bruni, Leonardo 42 Brutus, sons of 15 Buondelmonti, Buondelmonte 54–5 Buondelmonti, the 54–5, 71–2 bureaucracy 135 Butters, Humfrey 1n2, 125n185 Cabrini, Anna Maria 45n80, 55n11, 56n17, 58n36, 63–5, 70n125, 72–4, 77–8, 80nn179, 183 and 186 cadastre (catasto) 82 Cadoni, Giorgio 11n18, 112n109 Caesar, Julius 25, 130 calumny 33 and public report (fama) 59–60 capitalism 43n61, 49n98, 52, 123, 133 and crisis 111n108 mercantile 48, 55, 111, 131 Caporali, Riccardo 123n176 captain 63–4, 85, 87 of the parts 75, 79 of the people 56 Carneades 85 Casentino 69, 98 Castaldo, Filomena 4n23 Cato 85 Cavallo, Jo Ann 57n23 Celenza, Christopher 133n240 censors 29 Cerchi, the 62–3, 71–2 Cervelli, Innocenzo 131n228 Chabod, Federico 9n5 chance 22n76, 28, 30n138, 32n1, 34, 36–8, 53–4, 72, 81, 97–8, 101n49, 103 see also fortune change (alterazione) 63 see also alteration to make a (variare or alterare) 41, 122

Chaparro, Sandra 11n18, 20n64, 57n23, 97n30 Charles VIII 93 check, to (frenare, freno) 10, 14, 34, 64, 72, 74, 77, 87, 90 Chiappelli, Fredi 9n5 Christianity 11–12, 25 Church of Rome 55, 57, 94n7 Ciompi, the 62, 68n109, 72–8, 80 citizens 7, 10, 13, 19–20, 22–4, 33–4, 40, 44–5, 48–9, 51n116, 57n23, 62, 66, 68–9, 73, 75n149, 77–8, 80, 82, 87, 89–91, 94n7, 98, 100, 102, 106–7, 110, 113–17, 119–21, 123, 125, 133–5 generality of the (l’universale) 116–17, 119, 126–7 most important/powerful/rich 5, 24, 40, 63, 74, 81–2, 98, 116, 121 citizenship 49, 52 city 2n3, 5, 7, 9–14, 16–17, 22–4, 27–9, 33, 37, 39, 41, 43–5, 47–9, 51n116, 53, 55, 60, 65–6, 68, 73, 76, 80–1, 86, 90, 99–100, 107, 109–11, 119, 121, 123, 129, 134–5 corrupt and entirely or totally corrupt/not entirely or totally corrupt 7, 9–12, 14, 16–17, 23–7, 30, 50, 52, 57n23, 84n212, 109, 115n131, 122, 129–30 free 3, 33, 67, 101 civility and civilization (civilità) 23, 34, 74, 105–6 clashes 12, 21, 39, 46, 50–1 class, Marxist concept of 43n61, 50 Clearchus of Heraclea 16, 67 Clement VII (Medici, Giulio De’) 86, 115n131, 124–6 clinamen 36, 54, 57, 122 Coby, Patrick 119n154 Colish, Marcia 3n7 collectivity, the (l’universale) 16–17, 39, 52, 57n23, 59, 82–3 collegi 79, 88, 99, 126 colonies 35–7 colonists 35–7 and natives 32, 37 Colonna d’Istria, Gérard 38n39 combat, ceaseless (aeterno certamine) 17n42, 135 command (imperio) 16, 20, 22, 29n30, 34, 37, 46, 66–7, 77, 98–100, 105 command and oppress, to/neither to be commanded nor oppressed 45–8, 59–60, 67, 98–9 command/obedience 20, 45–8, 58–60, 99, 105 commander (capitano) 107–8 common good (bene comune) 19, 28, 30, 40–2, 44, 46, 50–2, 74, 77, 83, 89–90, 105, 115, 119, 121–4

Index common utility 14–15, 33n9, 49 communal 133 commune 3 company of men (bandiera) 100 conceptual history 3n12 concordia ordinum 74, 76 conflicts 5, 16n35, 32–3, 50, 54–5, 62, 121n161, 130, 133 see also struggles conspiracies (congiure) 69, 77, 90–1 see also plots Constantinople 96 constitution (modern) 1–2n3, 11n17 of United States 132n231 constitution (ordinamento) 1–2n3, 5, 7–9, 23, 26, 30, 35, 41, 44, 52, 56–7, 61–3, 66, 68–9, 71–2, 81, 90, 94–7, 100–1, 105n83, 110–11, 112n110, 115, 117–18n145, 121, 123–5, 127–8, 130–1, 134–5 Florentine 100, 102–3, 133n240 good 51, 108 Guelph 57 Medicean 61n62 mixed 8, 44, 75–6, 117–18n145 of the first people 55–7 republican 24–5, 104, 128–9 Roman 25 stable 68, 111, 131 consulate 11 consuls 5n27, 9, 22–3, 115n131 consultation, public (pratica) 103 see also pratiche contingency 35, 38, 47, 57, 99, 122, 135 control, to (comandare or governare) 3n12, 21, 25, 39–40, 63, 91, 93, 99, 103, 111, 115, 119, 121, 127n195, 131 corruption 2n3, 6–7, 9–17, 24, 29–30, 34, 49–50, 52, 67, 72, 80, 85, 91, 100–1, 106–7, 109, 111, 121, 128–9, 134–5 Costa, Pietro 57n23 council 56, 70, 119, 124–5, 127, 133n240 general 132 of one thousand 116, 125 see also Great Council of seventy 91 of the eighty 103, 120n159 of the middle or council of one hundred 125–6 of thirty-six 132 of two hundred or council of selected 116, 119, 124–5 countryside (contado) 9, 64, 98, 105n83 couplers (accoppiatori) 88, 116 crisis 111n108, 118, 133 customs 2n3, 10–13, 20, 30, 69, 73, 75n149, 91, 100, 107–8, 131 Cutinelli-Rèndina, Emanuele 31n139

153

Dante (Alighieri) 117n141 De rebus pistoriensibus 95 De Vries, Hans 9n5, 11n17 debate (disputa) 69 debt 64, 97n30, 125–6 deceit 21n73, 76, 85, 87 decemvirate 21, 26–7 deception 22, 73, 108, 113 defence 15, 65–6, 88, 94, 104–5, 122, 135 degree 9, 53, 68, 84, 96, 116, 135 Dejardin, Bertrand 5–6, 11n18, 35n23, 43–4, 101n49 Del Águila, Rafael 11n18, 20n64, 57n23, 97n30 Del Lucchese, Filippo 4n21, 42n57, 46n86, 55n5, 111–12, 122n170, 132n233, 134–5 demagogy 67 democracy 112n109, 123, 131–2 Democritus 36n30 dentation (addentellato) 36, 55 descend, to (scendere) 11, 84–5, 87, 113 desire 11, 27–8, 42–3, 47–8, 50–1, 54–5, 58, 61–2, 64, 66–7, 73, 75n149, 81, 83, 86, 99, 121, 123, 127–31, 134–5 see also appetite of the great/nobles and people 16, 28, 43, 46, 52, 60–1, 64, 67, 77–9, 81, 93, 123, 133, 136 destitution 101n49 dictatorship 24–7, 30, 110 of the proletariat 75–6 Dietz, Mary G. 21n73 differences (dispareri) 73 Diogenes 85 Dionisotti, Carlo 58n32 diplomatic action 96–7 disagreements 62–3, 74, 121n161, 124 discipline 108, 136 military and civil 106–8 discontent (malcontento, mala contentezza) 41, 82, 134 discords 42, 46, 50–2, 62, 72, 74, 107–8, 123 Discourse on the Affairs of Germany and on Emperor 100 Discourses xiii, 1, 7, 14–19, 21, 23–4, 27, 29, 32, 34, 38–9, 42, 53, 56, 60–1, 66, 77n168, 81, 85, 96, 104, 110, 113, 116–17, 119n156, 122, 127, 129, 132 Discursus xiii, 1–2, 7–8, 21n73, 38, 62, 76, 81, 84, 102, 104, 111–12, 114n123, 119n156, 122–3, 125, 127–9, 131–3, 137 Discursus de pace inter imperatorem et regem 94–5 disease 32, 47, 118 disorder 28, 33, 40, 42–3, 50, 59, 72–3, 83–6, 100, 107, 134–5

154

Index

dissolution/dissolve, to (risoluzione or risolvere) 23, 39, 42, 44, 48, 67, 111–13, 119n150, 121, 130–2 divine right of the kings 22 division 33, 37, 44–6, 51n116, 54–5, 57–60, 62–3, 69, 71, 73–4, 76, 78, 89–90, 112, 123–4, 131–2 Doge, the 125n185, 133n240 dominate, to/not to be dominated 12, 17n42, 46, 49–52, 59–61, 79n177, 81–2, 86, 128–9, 131, 133 domination or dominion (dominio)/nondomination or dominion or no-rule 29, 49, 51–2, 61n56, 66, 75n149, 79, 86, 101–2, 117n141, 124, 128n204, 131 Donati, Corso 63 Donati, the 54–5, 62–3, 71–2 Duke of Athens or Brienne, Walter (Gualtiero) di 61–2, 64–6, 68–71, 78, 119 duration (durata) 20, 41, 44, 81, 95, 110, 114, 129, 131 see also lasting Duso, Giuseppe 3n12, 10n6 Duvernoy, Jean-François 4n21 education 42, 46, 107 eight councillors, the 69 eight judges 120n159 eight of guards or defence and balìa, the 120n157, 127 eight of the guard, the 88 eight of practice or ten of war, the 127 eight reformers 126–7 see also twelve reformers empire 85–6, 98, 105, 107, 117n141, 122 German 3, 45, 62, 72, 94 Roman 29, 32–3, 35, 37–8, 86–7, 122 encounter-clash 8, 17, 38, 43–4, 52, 100, 110–11, 116, 118, 121–3 engagement (zuffa) 70 see also battle engineering, institutional 124 enmities 42, 45, 72–3, 88–90, 123–4, 134 enrich, to 24, 108 enthusiasm (furore) 107 Epaminondas 17 equality/inequality 8, 10, 17, 23–4, 26, 30, 34–5, 38n42, 45, 48–9, 52, 72, 74, 76, 82–3, 101–2, 110, 114–15, 122–4, 129, 133–4 equilibrium 50, 121n161, 132, 135 Aristotelian 112n110 balanced 112n110 conflictual or unbalanced 50, 121 static 111 Esposito, Roberto 4n18, 38n42, 132n233 essence 47, 61

event (accidente) 11–12, 26–7, 30n138, 32n1, 34, 38n42, 46, 53, 63, 70, 74, 91, 96–8, 103, 106n85, 128n204, 134 evil 13, 20, 41, 45, 54–5, 60, 62, 65–6, 72–3, 77, 81, 84–5, 87, 126, 134 Evrigenis, Ioannis D. 12n21 example 28, 33–4, 39, 42–3, 46, 49, 51, 55, 67–8, 87, 106n85, 131, 133n240 historical 18, 21, 34, 51, 53, 55, 67, 70, 73, 85, 96, 107–8, 121, 125n185, 133n240 executions 30n138, 65 exiles 35n23, 44–5, 51, 62, 65, 73, 78, 88, 124 expansion, expand, to (ampliare) 7, 10–12, 14n26, 17n42, 22, 28–30, 35–7, 44, 46, 48–9, 52, 58, 76, 85, 88, 90, 101, 108–9, 124, 134, 137 see also grow, to (crescere)/ growth (augumento), increase, to/ increasing (augumento) Fachard, Denis 105n83 factions 5, 29n130, 33n9, 40, 43–4, 52, 54–6, 62–3, 75n149, 77, 80–1, 88, 106 see also sects faith 54–5, 73–4, 136 family/families 45, 48, 54–5, 62–4, 71–2, 80, 82–3, 88, 93, 97, 103, 107, 115 Fasano Guarini, Elena 133n241 fatherland (patria) 11, 41, 45, 60, 73, 78, 85, 87–8, 91 fear (timore) 11–12, 15, 18, 23, 29, 40, 43, 50n112, 57–8, 60, 62, 65, 67–8, 73, 75–6, 83, 86–7, 90, 105, 107–8, 112n110, 117, 120, 122–3, 134 feudal and feudalism 6, 11, 43n61, 46, 48–9, 61n62, 99–100, 112n109, 114–15, 131 few, the 16, 33, 60, 73, 78, 120n159, 137 Fiesole 32, 35–7 fifty-six citizens, the 74 Fioravanti, Maurizio 47n91 Fiorini, Vittorio xiii, 56–9, 63–5, 69–72, 74n140, 80n184 First Decade 97 First Mission to the Court of France 94 First Mission to the Court of Rome 97–8 First Mission to the Duke Valentino 94–5 Florence 1–8, 20–2, 24, 27, 30, 32–42, 44–5, 48–9, 51–66, 68–9, 71–5, 78–9, 81–3, 86–94, 96–100, 102–6, 109, 111–15, 117–18, 120n159, 122–33, 136–7 Florentine Histories xiii, 1, 7, 35n23, 39, 42, 45n81, 48, 54, 56, 58–64, 68, 72, 78, 80, 83, 86, 91–3, 104, 109, 125, 129, 131 Florentines 35, 37, 42, 56, 58–9, 63, 68–9, 82, 86, 90, 93, 95, 97, 103, 116, 128–9, 133n240 Fontana, Benedetto 75n149

Index force 3n12, 7, 10, 12, 15, 17–18, 20, 28–9, 32–3, 36, 38, 40, 42, 45–8, 52–3, 55–7, 59–62, 65, 68, 72, 76, 83, 85, 87, 95–6, 106, 110–11, 117, 122–3, 126, 129, 133, 135 private/public 106 foreigners 32, 35n23, 42, 56, 65, 87, 97–8, 106, 136 see also immigrants, migrants form 2–3, 10, 12, 14, 17–19, 21–2, 24, 26–7, 30n138, 32–3, 35–9, 43–5, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56–8, 61n56, 65, 67–9, 73, 82, 93, 97n30, 101, 103–4, 107, 111–14, 122–3, 125, 131, 134–6 fortune 7, 11, 16, 18–20, 22, 28, 33–4, 36, 41, 45, 47, 53, 71–2, 76–7, 81–4, 91, 95–8, 107, 109–10, 115, 127–9, 134–5 see also chance and virtue 19, 22, 38, 53, 82 forty-five members of balìa 103 Foscari, Marco 120n157 Foucault, Michel 4n17, 61n56, 94n13 foundation 20, 33, 41, 57, 81, 97n30, 104, 110, 114, 130–1 metaphysical 38 founder 32–3, 45, 53, 89, 110, 115n131, 130–1 fourteen citizens, the 69 France 22, 94, 98, 100, 102, 117n141 Frapet, Roland 38n39 fraud 40, 76, 136 Frederik II 55 freedom 2, 5, 7, 9, 11–12, 15–18, 21, 25–7, 29–30, 32–3, 40, 43, 46, 48–52, 56–7, 59, 65–70, 73–6, 78, 80–2, 87, 93, 96, 99–101, 103, 109–10, 112n110, 126, 128–31, 133–6 see also free and civil way of life republican 3n7, 65 French Revolution 3, 30n138 friendship 73, 124 Frosini, Fabio 4n14, 19n56, 114n120 Gaeta, Franco xiii, 103nn66, 67 and 69 Gagné, Learry 38n39 Gaille-Nikodimov, Marie 31n140, 43–4, 118n145, 132n233, 134n249, 136n265 Galeno 47, 118 Galilean method 3 Garosci, Aldo 45n80, 132n234 Garver, Eugene 11n13 gentlemen (gentiluomini) 17, 34, 49, 101–2, 114–15 Gerbier, Laurent 97n30, 132n234 German, Germany 3, 34, 100–1, 107 free cities 3, 101 Geuna, Marco 25n96, 43–4, 51n121, 112n110, 132n233 Ghibellines, the 55, 57–9, 63 Ghiribizzi al Soderino 99n38

155

Ghiribizzi d’Ordinanza 136n268 Giano della Bella 59–60, 77n168 Gilbert, Felix 7n32, 9n4, 20n64, 44n76, 59n40, 75n149, 116n138, 131n228 glory 66, 73, 83–4, 95, 121, 124, 130 God 73, 76, 91, 105, 124 gonfalonier 74, 98, 125–6, 133n240 of justice 59, 70–1, 91, 103, 132 for life/not for life 40n51, 95, 102–3, 125n185, 133n240 good, the/goodness 10–12, 20, 28, 33n9, 41, 43, 50n112, 65, 73, 77–8, 84, 106, 108, 124, 126, 130, 136–7 government 2, 5n27, 9–10, 26, 33, 39–40, 45, 48, 50, 52, 56–8, 60–1, 67–72, 76–7, 82, 89, 91, 93–8, 100, 102–3, 105–7, 112–17, 119, 122–3, 128, 131–3, 135 see also state aristocratic 5n27, 93 mixed 2, 8, 32, 132–3 popular 58, 95, 103 republican 9, 26, 116 Gramsci, Antonio 3n8 Great Council 2, 5, 93–5, 103, 110, 113, 116–20, 122, 125–7, 133n240 see also Council of One Thousand, the Hall great, the (grandi) 16–17, 19–20, 23, 43, 46–8, 50, 59, 61n56, 64–5, 69–72, 78–80, 88, 91, 93, 116, 120, 123 and the people 46–7, 52, 64–5, 69–70, 117–18, 122, 132 Grimal, Pierre 130n215 grow, to (crescere)/growth (augumento) 11, 14n26, 29–30, 35–8, 49, 52, 57–8, 62, 73, 93, 98, 107, 109, 118, 122 see also expansion/expand, to (ampliare), increase, to/increasing Guelphs, the 55, 57–9, 63, 76, 79 Guicciardini, Francesco 50n109, 103, 120–1 Guicciardini, Luigi 74 Guidi, Andrea 1n3, 98n32, 106n83 Guidi, Guidubaldo 112n110, 129n205, 131n230 guilds, the (Arti) 58–9, 71, 74–5, 78–80, 100, 115–16, 126 Hall, the 116 see also Great Council Hankins, James 46n86, 123n177 hatreds 33, 44, 60–2, 64–6, 68, 73–7, 89–90, 123–4 Henry (Arrigo) VII 63 heredity or inheritance/inherit, to 20, 22, 41, 90 of virtue 17, 22n76 Hexter, Jack H. 9n5 hierarchy 47–8, 50, 101n49, 115, 117 Hirschman, Albert O. 79n177

156

Index

history 30n138, 44, 49n100, 61, 68, 86, 96, 121nn161 and 163 philosophy of 83 science of 96 Hobbes, Thomas 3–4, 9, 11n17, 24n90, 32, 44, 68n108, 94, 99–100, 102, 111, 122–3, 128n204 honours 10, 15–16, 18, 49, 55, 60, 68, 73–4, 79, 85, 89, 103, 106–8, 121–2, 124–5 hope 13, 27, 31, 34, 60, 64, 70, 89, 100, 104, 108, 136–7 Horkheimer, Max 49n100 Hörnqvist, Mikael 29n128 Hulliung, Mark 46n86 humanism 43, 46, 131 humours 8, 17n42, 19, 28–9, 38–43, 45–9, 51–2, 58–9, 61–2, 71, 75n149, 78–83, 88, 90, 99, 101–2, 110–11, 116, 118–24, 126, 128–9, 131–3, 136 and/of the parts 61, 79, 88 popular 21, 122, 126 idealism 38 idleness 49, 122 Illuminati, Augusto 30n138, 43–4 imagination 26 free 85 imitation 72, 87, 90, 97, 105, 110 of the ancients 7, 106n85, 110, 120 immigrants 37 see also foreigners, migrants inaction 67, 85 increase, to/increasing (augumento) 29–30, 32, 34, 36–7, 45, 49, 59, 62–4, 68n109, 79, 82, 91, 94, 101, 108, 117 see also expansion, expand, to (ampliare), grow, to/growth indignation 55, 64, 68, 70, 75 see also anger individual 14n26, 17, 22–4, 26, 40–1, 46–7, 51–2, 54–5, 57, 61, 67, 70, 81–2, 102, 108–9, 115, 120n159, 122, 130–1, 134 Inglese, Giorgio xiii, 20n64, 27n115, 29–30, 32n1, 38n39, 94n9, 97n30, 103n63, 130n223, 132–4 ingratitude 15 injustice 75 see also justice innovation/innovators 11, 13, 18, 29, 43–4, 115n131, 123 insolence 14, 58, 64, 70 instability 7, 18, 37, 39–42, 52–3, 67, 81, 91, 111, 113–14, 135 see also stability intercessio 118n149 interdict 94 interests 10, 51, 57, 59, 67, 79n177, 90, 111–12, 115, 121, 126 private 16n35, 42, 51, 55, 61, 67, 79, 90, 116, 122, 124 public 74

Ion, Cristina 5n24 Isabella d’Este 103 Israel 22 Italy 2, 5, 21n73, 35–6, 57–8, 62–3, 72–3, 85–7, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 113, 136–7 judges 56, 117, 120n159 judgment 59, 66, 91, 121n161 Julius II (Rovere, Giuliano della) 98 Jurdjevic, Mark 118n148, 121n161, 131nn226 and 227, 133n240 justice 23, 26, 30, 43, 77, 91, 98, 100, 105n83, 110, 115–16, 120–1 see also injustice Justinian 105n83 kairos 20, 134 Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 22n76 Kennedy, Geoff 29n128 Kersting, Wolfgang 29n128 king 22, 25, 55, 91, 93, 98, 102, 114–15 kingdom 3, 22, 24, 34, 41, 81, 94–5, 97–8, 101–2, 105–7, 117n141, 122, 130 kingly 105 hand 24–5, 34, 131 power 14 state 7, 14–15, 25, 27 Kluxen, Kurt 33n5 La cagione dell’ordinanza 98–100, 104 Landi, Sandro 75n149 Landon, William J. 11n12 Langton, John 21n73 Larivaille, Paul 19n56, 114n123 lasting 35, 40, 66, 101n49, 129 see also duration lawgiver 52 see also legislator laws 2–3, 5, 9–12, 14n26, 16–18, 22, 26–7, 30, 33, 42–3, 45–6, 49, 51–3, 56, 58–61, 63, 67–8, 73–4, 81, 83, 88, 90, 99, 103, 105–6, 108–9, 116–17, 119, 121, 124, 126–7, 133 good 11–12, 30, 42, 46, 73, 81, 105, 108, 130 Lazzarino Del Grosso, Anna Maria 3n11, 132n233 Lefort, Claude 26n105, 43nn61 and 67, 50–2, 55n7, 106n85, 128n204, 134–5 legislator 28, 52–3, 81, 115n131, 128, 130–1 see also lawgiver, orderer leisure 84–5, 87 Leo X (Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo de’) 114–15, 124 letters, the 85, 87 licence see license licence 46, 67–8, 80–1, 121 see also anarchy life 12, 17n42, 40, 46, 49–50, 81, 111, 118, 123, 136 see also way of life

Index associated 19 civil/political 61, 70, 78, 105–6, 115n131, 121, 123 expansiveness of 10, 17n42 free 17, 66, 73, 78, 115n131, 129 military 105–6 public 12, 68, 123 rough and free 101 Liverotto (Oliverotto) da Fermo 18 Livy 27nn112 and 113, 43, 50n111, 97 Loraux, Nicole 37n35, 51n116 lords 34, 66, 70, 125 see also Signori lordship see Signoria lots (squittini) 88 Lucca 34, 64, 132 Lucretius 4n16, 17n42, 36nn25, 28 and 30, 38–9, 122n168, 130, 135n258 Lupoli, Agostino 11n18 Lycurgus 53, 128 magistrates 3n11, 9, 20, 23, 25, 40, 57–8, 66, 82, 88–9, 99, 110, 119, 121, 127 make the people friendly, to (farsi il popolo amico) 16, 19, 63, 114 man/men 5, 10–11, 13–14, 16, 18, 20, 25, 29–30, 34, 36, 38–41, 46, 49, 53, 55, 57–8, 60–7, 69, 72–7, 81–3, 85–6, 88–9, 95, 97–102, 105, 107–8, 113, 115, 117n141, 122, 124, 126, 133–4, 136 bad/good 10–11, 13–14, 66, 73, 81, 106 excellent 22, 107 exceptional 110, 130 great/important 24, 40, 116, 120 insolent 81, 91 military 106 of religion 60 of the middle, the (uomini di mezzo or mediocri, mediani, mezzani) 55–6, 72 of the people 45, 60, 72, 80–1 peaceful 91 private/public 67, 107 prudent 13, 28, 34, 53, 77, 127 virtuous 17n42, 77, 81, 116 wicked 10, 13 Manfred 57 Mansfield Jr., Harvey C. 3n10, 33n5 many, the 10, 16, 39, 41–2, 60, 82 Marchand, Jean-Jacques 6n31, 94–7, 102nn54 and 59, 127n197 Marietti, Marina 11n18, 21n70, 43n69, 45n81, 89n228, 115n131, 118–19, 127nn196 and 198, 131n228, 133nn241 and 242 Martelli, Mario 1n2 Marx, Karl 43n61 matter 6, 12, 14–15, 17, 19–22, 28, 52, 72, 106n85, 111, 113, 119

157

Mayr, Otto 121n163 McCormick, John P. 24n88, 77n168, 112n110, 118–19, 131n231, 133n240 McIlwain, Charles H. 1n3 McLean, Paul D. 98n32 Mecatti, Giuseppe Maria 5n27 Medici, the 1–2, 7, 21n73, 82, 92–3, 97, 103–4, 115–16, 125–6, 128, 130 regime, Medicean 78, 87–91, 103 Medici, Cosimo de’ 89, 91 Medici, Giovanni de’ 82–3 Medici, Lorenzo de’ (il Magnifico) 91–2 Medici, Piero di Cosimo de’ 91 Medici, Piero di Lorenzo de’ 93 medicine 2n3, 47, 121n163 Galenic 118 memory 33, 37–8, 45, 66, 68–9 Ménissier, Thierry 2n4, 43n68, 102n56, 114–15 mercenaries 64, 86–9, 91, 98n32, 101–2 merchants 56, 58, 61, 93 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 39n43 Michele di Lando 77–8 Miglio, Gianfranco 3n10 migrants 33 see also foreigners, immigrants military 29, 35n23, 40, 59, 97–9, 104–8, 119, 130 discipline 106 justice 116 organization (ordine) 29, 76 supremacy 10 militia, Florentine 96, 98–100, 105n83, 112, 136n268 see also Ordinanza Mini, Paolo 5n27 Minuta xiii, 1–2, 7–8, 40n51, 76, 81, 104, 111–12, 119n150, 124–5, 127–9, 131, 133n240, 137 mixed 37, 48, 71, 89, 116, 118, 126 political forms 67 state/government 2, 8, 32–4, 100, 105, 114, 122, 132–3 mixture 2, 8, 19, 51n116, 61, 76, 101n49, 110, 112n109, 117–18, 121n161, 131–3 modernity 3–4, 6, 21, 61, 111, 118n145, 132, 136 of Machiavelli 3–4, 136 modes 18, 20, 24–6, 33, 50n112, 66, 72, 89, 106 ordinary/extraordinary 13 private 73, 89 monarchy 22, 115n131, 117n141, 122, 125, 132n233 Mondin, Battista 58n31 Montevecchi, Alessandro xiii, 83n208, 86nn 215 and 216, 92n252, 95n17 moral, morality 2, 10, 12, 17n42, 28, 46, 50–1, 73, 113, 130

158

Index

Morfino, Vittorio 4n21 Moses 33 Mugello 98 multitude 16, 50n112, 66, 69, 71, 76–7, 80, 82, 99, 109–10, 126 Münkler, Herfried 35n23, 49n98 Nadeau, Christian 132n233 Najemy, John M. 5n26, 104n71, 112n113 Naples 34, 55, 65–6, 91, 93 natives 32, 37 necessity 20, 24–5, 27, 33, 36, 47, 53, 57, 66, 70, 73, 81, 84, 99, 104–7, 110, 122, 134 Negri, Antonio 5n28, 75–6, 118n145 Nelson, Benjamin 48n98 Nicholas III (Orsini, Giovanni Gaetano) 57 nine citizens 132 nine officials of the Florentine Ordinanza and militia, the 100 nobles/ignobles, the 5, 26, 44–6, 54, 56, 58–64, 67, 71–2, 78–82, 87, 102, 109, 111–12 nominalism 38 Numa Pompilius 22, 81 oath 73 Octavian 32 office 20n64, 95, 118–19, 126 public 121, 132n233 oligarchy 8, 67, 80, 133n240 On Ambition, tercets 136 On the Method of Dealing with the Rebellious Peoples of the Valdichiana 96–7 opportunity (occasione) 2, 18, 27–8, 33–4 , 36, 54, 57, 60, 64, 76, 82, 93, 100, 128 see also time, right order 2, 4, 9, 11n17, 25–6, 33, 53, 56–7, 70, 83–5, 94, 99, 101–3, 105–8, 113, 115n131, 124–5, 128, 134, 136 and disorder 83–6, 134–5 civil/absolute 20, 36, 40 feudal 43, 100 good 74 perfect/perfection 53, 84 political/social 4n19, 30n138, 48, 99 popular 88 public 6, 120n157 republican 34, 117 stable 56, 99 world 6 order, to 1, 9, 14, 23–4, 34, 44, 49–50, 53, 83, 85, 90, 98–9, 109, 114, 123, 130 orderer (ordinatore) 28, 41, 53 see also legislator orders 2, 7, 10–13, 16, 22–4, 26–8, 30n138, 33–5, 37, 40, 51, 53, 56–7, 62, 68–9, 71–4,

81–2, 91, 99, 102, 105–6, 109–11, 115n131, 117n141, 123, 125–6, 128, 133–5 ancient/old 18, 41, 56, 105 bad/good 17, 72, 81, 105, 107, 109 civil 56, 73 feudal 112n109 free 66 military 56, 101, 105–6 new 12–14, 18, 20, 27–30, 56, 88, 112n110 of justice 71, 100 popular 56 public 25, 106 republican 83, 122 stable 123 ordinances (ordinamenti) of justice 60 Ordinanza 98, 100, 104 see also Ghiribizzi d’Ordinanza, La cagione dell’ordinanza, militia, Provvisione della ordinanza origin 12, 27, 32, 34–5, 37–8, 43–5, 56, 63, 72–3, 86–7, 90, 108, 127–8, 134 see also beginning, birth pact, Hobbesian 3–4, 10 Padgett, John 98n32 paradigm 30n138, 39, 43, 45n81, 49, 79n177, 113 Florence 51–2, 59, 122, 124 Rome 45n81, 51–2, 59 partisans 15, 18, 21, 46, 51–2, 59, 64, 77, 89–91, 94, 122 parts 16, 42–4, 46–9, 51, 54–5, 58–9, 61–2, 67, 71, 73–6, 78–80, 83, 88–9, 93, 100, 110–12, 114, 119n150, 121–2, 131–2 Pasquino, Pasquale 132n232 passions 32n1, 39, 68–9, 76, 79n177, 108, 111, 128 past and present 8, 28, 30n138, 42, 55, 68, 75, 83, 106n85, 113, 124–5 patricians 24, 59 Pazzi, Alessandro de’ 124 peace 22, 32, 55, 58, 62, 74, 80, 86–7, 89, 92, 100, 105–6, 117–18, 121–2, 124 Pedullà, Gabriele 20n64, 29n128, 35n23, 43nn63, 64, 68 and 70, 50n112, 112n110, 128n204 people, the (popolo) 2, 5, 7, 9, 11–12, 15–17, 19–21, 23, 26, 38–40, 43, 46–8, 50–2, 54, 56–61, 63–73, 81–3, 93–7, 101–2, 108–12, 114–15, 117–20, 122, 125–6, 128n204, 130, 132, 136 and the great 20, 46, 64, 69, 117–18, 122, 132 and the nobles 44–5, 56, 58, 61–2, 79 and the plebs 72 and the senate 45n81

Index bourgeoisie 72 corrupted 15, 17n42, 49 desire of the 46–7, 51–2, 60–1, 67, 81, 133, 136 division of 59–60 good/virtuous 12, 131 greater, the (maggiori popolani) 77 in arms 101n49 lesser (popolo minuto, popolani) 56, 65, 70–3, 75–6, 79 men of the middle (popolo grasso) 56–7, 59, 62–4, 71–2, 76, 79, 109, 126 of Florence 57, 64, 126–7 powerful, middle, and the low (potente, mediocre e basso) 13, 58, 71 Roman 11, 27, 29, 107 the most important, those in the middle, and the lowest (primi, mezzani e ultimi) 71, 114 perfection/imperfection 53, 84, 121n161, 128, 132 persecution 73 Pettit, Philip 49 Philip II of Macedon 22 philosophers 85 see also philosophy philosophy 4, 21, 47, 83 see also philosophers Pisa 64, 97–8 Pistoia 62–3, 95 Pitkin, Hannah F. 57n23 Pitti, Jacopo 128–9 Plato 47 plebs, the 44, 57n23, 59, 64–5, 68, 72, 76–80, 89 lesser plebs (plebe minuta) 70 lowest (infima) 74–5 plots (congiure) 63, 69, 91 see also conspiracies Pocock, John G. A. 49, 117n141, 130n219 podestà 56 Polegato, Andrea 11n14 policy 58–9, 69, 98, 115 military 96 of the people/of the constitution 115 politics 5–6, 12, 21, 25, 43n61, 47, 50, 55, 57n23, 61n56, 67–8, 81, 91, 108, 111–12, 129, 134 Florentine 54, 97–8 science of 96 Polverini, Leandro 118n149 Polybius and anakyklosis 38n39, 67, 83, 85, 117–18 Portrait of the affairs of France 101 Portrait of the affairs of Germany 100 poverty 31, 76, 101n49, 106

159

power 3nn11 and 12, 5, 10–12, 19n56, 20, 35, 37, 42–3, 51, 56, 60–1, 67, 71, 74–6, 78–9, 90, 101–2, 111n108, 118–20, 127–8, 131–4 absolute (potestà assoluta) 26, 34, 67, 81 see also tyranny military 62, 68n108 of the Medici 2 potenza 14n26, 16, 37, 45, 50, 57–8, 73, 82, 86, 91, 101, 133–4 potestà 14, 24–5, 126 powerful, the (potenti) 12–13, 18, 29n130, 34–5, 41, 58–60, 63, 71, 75, 77, 79, 81–3, 102, 120n159, 136–7 city 45, 55, 122 families 54, 62–3 state 101 powers 5, 67, 102, 115n131, 117n141 balance of 121n163 ufficio 119 pratiche 75n149 see also consultation prestige (reputazione) 40, 83 pride (superbia) 60, 72, 78, 80 see also arrogance Prince, The xiii, 1–2, 131–4, 18–21, 23–4, 39–40, 61nn56 and 62, 66, 77n168, 83, 89, 96, 98, 101, 104–5, 113, 116–17, 122, 132 prince 3n5, 13–22, 25–7, 32, 40, 42, 50n112, 57, 64–5, 73, 82, 87–91, 94, 98, 101–2, 103–4, 107–9, 115n131, 121, 126, 128, 130, 133, 135–6 absolute 95 and people 19, 114n123, 130 bad/good 13–14, 17, 66, 109–10 Italian 87–8, 135 new 24 virtuous 22, 29, 109, 129 weak 22 wicked (tristo) 13, 25 wise 20, 23 principality 2, 7–8, 14–15, 17–19, 22–3, 27, 30, 34, 39, 41, 46, 64, 67, 73, 98, 109–10, 112–14, 117n141, 122, 125, 130 absolute or tyrannical 22, 82 aporia of the 17–21, 104 civil 7, 16–17, 19–22, 25, 27, 109, 130 Medicean 61n62, 78, 80, 83, 86–92, 96, 104 republican 26 stable 21, 113 true 113–14 virtuous 85 well-established 39 principle 4, 35–6, 38–9, 47, 50, 52, 116 reduction to the 44 priors 58, 70, 91 see also Signori private, the 25, 110 advantage 30, 74

160

Index

private, the (cont.) aims 41 benefits 44 cause 77 citizen 19 connections/ties 115 desires 55 enmities 88 expediencies 55 favours 90 fortune 107 good 51, 54, 89–90, 106 individuals, men or person 24, 40, 67, 70, 73, 99, 122 matters 53 means/modes 73, 89–91 passion 128 reasons 64 station 40 way 89 wealth 40 Procacci, Giuliano 130n211 Programma del Ronco 75 property 40, 43n61, 52, 55, 101n49 providence 136 Provosts 118–20, 127n195, 131n231 Provvisione della ordinanza 100 prudence 11, 39, 74, 78, 89, 95–6, 106, 134 public, the 24, 73, 76, 108, 110 authority 25 building/palace 66 business 40 cause 77 councils 124 duties 20n64 defence/offense 15 freedom 51 gift 89 good 106 honours 79 matters 124 means/ways 89–91 report (fama) 59 vote 33 punishment 23–4, 40, 102, 108 Pythagorean cosmology 47 Quaglioni, Diego 99n44, 121n163 quantity/quality 38, 113n117 quiet 33, 58, 71, 77, 80–1, 84–7, 91, 104, 121 Rahe, Paul A. 4n21 Raimondi, Fabio 3–4, 31n139, 33n5, 37n36, 46n88, 48nn93 and 94, 76n155, 84n211, 99n43, 115n132, 130n220 Reale, Mario 38n39, 130n223

reason of State 3, 94n13, 100, 111 reductio ad unum 67–8 Rees, Edward A. 43n61 reform 2, 7–8, 14, 24, 33, 41, 57, 59, 63, 69–70, 74, 77–8, 80, 91, 112, 115n131, 125–6, 128–9, 133n240 regime (reggimento) 2, 15, 19–20, 58, 80, 91, 94, 114, 123, 127, 135 religion 2n3, 5, 31n139, 60, 73, 101 Christian 107 civil 31, 99, 110 Report on the Affairs of Germany 100 republic 2–3, 7, 9–11, 13–18, 21–7, 30–1, 33–5, 39–46, 48–9, 52–3, 57, 69, 72, 76, 78, 80–1, 83, 89–90, 93, 96–8, 102, 104–6, 108–10, 112–15, 117–18, 120n159, 122, 124–33, 137 best 135 Florentine 4–5, 53, 94–6, 100 free 20n64 mixed 120, 123 of aristocrats (ottimati), oligarchic 40, 78–80, 82–3, 88 perfect 26, 128 Roman 112 Soderinian 40n51 stable 49, 114, 116, 128 true 27, 40, 102, 113–14, 124 well-ordered 7, 21, 23, 26, 28, 115n131 wise 106–7 republicanism 29, 42, 46, 131 of Machiavelli 1–2, 8, 17, 21n73, 48, 96, 104, 114, 124–5, 127, 129–30 resistance 45, 51, 56, 61n62, 68, 99, 118, 127 right to 3n12 revenge 64, 66, 75, 77, 122, 128 rewards 15, 23 rhetoric 108 Ricci, the 71–2 Ricciardi, Maurizio 4n13, 76n156 rich 24, 29, 54, 60, 63, 74, 77, 82–3, 86, 101, 111, 116, 121 riches (danari)/richness 14–15, 24, 29, 58, 60, 76, 88, 101, 121, 134 Ricordo al Cardinale Giulio sulla Riforma dello Stato di Firenze 133n240 Ridolfi, Giovan Battista 41n51, 103, 125 Ridolfi, Giovanni 98n33 Ridolfi, Roberto 104n76 Rinaldi, Rinaldo xiii, 10–11, 16n35, 19–21, 24–5, 34n14, 67nn103 and 104, 113n117, 120n159 rise, to (salire) 17, 66, 84, 87, 107, 113 Rispoli, Tania 30n138, 43–4 Roebuck, Carl 81n192 Roecklein, Robert 4n21

Index Romans 11–12, 22–3, 25, 35–6, 85–6, 97, 106n85, 108, 115n131 Rome 7, 9, 11–12, 16, 22–3, 25, 27–9, 32, 35n23, 42, 44–6, 48–9, 51–3, 59, 75–6, 85, 106n85, 115n131, 119–20, 122, 124, 128, 132–3 church or papal state 3, 34, 58, 115 Romulus 22, 32, 130 rotation 116–17, 124 Rubinstein, Nicolai 45n80 Rucellai, Bernardo 93 ruin 12, 18n49, 23, 25, 33, 40, 43–4, 51, 53, 55, 57–8, 60, 64–6, 68, 71–2, 77, 80, 84–90, 93–4, 102, 104, 106, 108, 122, 134, 136 rulers 63–4 safety 12, 36, 69, 73, 75, 130, 134 see also security Sartorello, Luca 121n163 Sasso, Gennaro 12n23, 30n136, 38–9, 45n81, 67n107, 83nn205 and 207, 93n4, 96–7, 112–14, 125n183, 129n206, 133–4 satisfaction/dissatisfaction 12, 16, 64, 73, 75, 115, 121–2, 134–5 Savonarola, Girolamo 40, 94, 99, 132 scandals 16–17, 34, 52, 128 Scattola, Merio 3n11 Schmitt, Carl 38n42 Screpanti, Ernesto 43n61, 68n109, 74–7 Second Mission to the Duke Valentino 95 Second Report on the Affairs of Germany 101n50 secrecy 96 sects 28, 33n9, 38, 52, 57, 72–4, 77, 88–90, 124 see also factions security 11–12, 16, 18, 23, 36, 41, 50, 65, 93, 121, 133–5 see also safety self-determination 30 self-discipline 123 self-governance/government 14–15, 30, 87 self-preservation 45 self-regulation 121n163 self-reproducing 81 self-sufficiency 14n26, 30, 101 Senate 5n27, 9, 33, 45n81, 85, 121, 125n185 servitude (servitù) 15, 30, 33, 56, 80–1, 86, 108 see also slavery seventy citizens, the 91 Sforza, Francesco 89 Sforza, Ludovico 93 shame 68 Shumer, Sara M. 6n30 Siena 34 signori 65, 69–71, 74, 77, 88, 99, 118–19, 126 see also lords, priors

161

nine, the 118 twenty, the 64–5 Signoria (lordship) 20n64, 60, 64–6, 69, 75n149, 77, 88, 94, 119, 125, 127, 132 libera (free) 65 papal 58 Sixteen Gonfaloniers of the companies of the people 20n64, 70, 118–20 sixty-five citizens, the 115, 117–18, 120 Skinner, Quentin 49, 97n30, 112n110, 128n203, 130nn214 and 216 slavery (servitù) 65–6, 68, 87 see also servitude society 3n11, 44, 49n100, 101n49, 131, 133 Soderini, Giovan Battista 99n38 Soderini, Paolo Antonio 93 Soderini, Piero 40–1, 95, 98, 125, 132–3 soldiers 32, 35, 87, 89, 95, 99, 105n83, 107–8 sovereign 94, 102 sovereignty, modern 3–4, 9–11, 68n108, 112n109, 122, 128n204 Spackman, Barbara 57n23 Sparta 28, 35n23, 46, 53 Spinoza, Baruch 3 stability/instability 7, 17–18, 37, 39, 42, 52–3, 62, 67, 81, 91, 100, 102, 111, 113–15, 124, 129, 135 stable 57, 82, 136 aggregate 10 city 41, 81 form of government 131, 135 state 3nn5 and 12, 7, 9–10, 16, 18, 20–1, 24–5, 33, 40, 42–3, 49, 57–8, 62–3, 66, 68–9, 71–3, 77–81, 89, 91, 95, 97–8, 102–4, 107–8, 111–17, 123, 125, 128, 130, 132–3 see also government art of the 104 free 1, 9, 15, 23, 30, 45, 119 kingly 7, 14–15, 25, 27 of Florence 69, 98, 112, 125 of Lucca 132–3 Medicean 88, 91, 94, 103 popular 14, 48 powerful 101 stable 19, 81 tyrannical 15, 81 virtuous 22 well-ordered 23 state, modern 3–5, 24n90, 44, 94, 128n204 State, Papal 3, 115 see also Rome Strauss, Leo 4n23, 48n93, 106n85 Strozzi, Andrea 70 struggles 5–8, 11–12, 30, 38–9, 42–5, 48, 50–2, 54–8, 62, 67, 71–2, 74–6, 81, 113, 116, 119, 121–4, 127–8, 132–3, 135–6

162

Index

subjects (sudditi, sottoposti) 10, 34, 37, 49, 61, 66–7, 94, 97–8, 106, 108, 115, 117n141, 136 substance/substantiality 19n56, 38, 61, 76 Suchowlansky, Mauricio 133n240 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius 32, 35–6 Swiss, the 3, 101 Taranto, Domenico 6n31, 11n18, 117n145 Tarquin the Proud 67 tax(es)/taxation 20n64, 82–3, 88, 102, 115 Ten of the balìa, the 103 Tenenti, Alberto 9n5 Terray, Emmanuel 50n110 theology, political 99 things done abroad/things done at home (cose di fuora/cose di dentro) 87–8 Third Mission to the Court of France 101 thirty citizens, the 119–20 thirty-two, the 118–19 time 6, 10, 20–1, 26, 30–1, 36n25, 38n39, 44, 47–8, 53, 56, 64–6, 78, 83, 86, 90, 95, 99, 113, 117, 121–2, 134–6 right 97 treasury, public 24, 101 Treaty of Lodi 89 tribunes of the plebs 9, 27, 119–20 triumvirate, Roman 36 troubles (travagli) 34, 71, 82, 90 Tullus Hostilius 22 tumult 7–8, 16–17, 23, 26–7, 30n138, 32, 42–4, 46, 48–52, 58, 62–3, 69–70, 72, 74–9, 91, 108, 110, 112n110, 121–2, 128n204, 131 Turkey and Turk 22, 117n141 Tuscany and Tuscans 34–5, 55, 57, 66, 85–6, 97, 99, 107 twelve citizens, the 56 twelve Good men, the 20n64, 69–70 twelve priors, the 70 twelve reformers 126–7 see also eight reformers twenty citizens, the see also Signori 64–5 tyranny/tyrant 7, 14–17, 21, 24–7, 61–3, 65–70, 78, 81–3, 107, 109, 122, 131 see also power, absolute Uberti, the 54–5, 71–2 union/disunion 35, 44, 55, 73–4, 76, 90, 96, 101, 119, 122, 135 usurpation 76 usury 49n98 utility 89 common 14–15, 33, 49 personal 73 see also private utopia 129, 132 Uzzano, Niccolò da 82

Valori, Francesco 49 Varotti, Carlo 20n64, 123n174, 130–1 Vasoli, Cesare 2n3, 129n208 Vatter, Miguel 30n138, 35n23, 43n71, 61n56, 119n155, 128n204, 131n225 Venetians 25, 88, 98, 117n141 Venice 2, 8, 28, 32, 35n23, 46, 76, 125n185, 131–3 vent, to (sfogare) 29n130, 49, 52, 62, 65, 110, 116, 119, 121, 128 Vernacci, Giovanni 104n75 Verrier, Frédérique 57n23 Vettori, Francesco 21n72, 104nn72 and 75 vice 12, 72 Villari, Pasquale 35n19 violence/violent 12–14, 16, 18–20, 22, 43, 50–1, 66–7, 76, 97, 106, 123, 130 public/private 50n112 Viroli, Maurizio 11n12, 98n32, 121n161 virtue 7, 10–12, 17–19, 21–2, 28–33, 35–7, 44–5, 50–2, 55, 67, 76, 80, 83–7, 94, 96–7, 102, 106–10, 112n110, 116, 121, 127–8, 130–1, 135–6 and fortune 19, 22, 38, 53, 82 and own arms 18, 130 collective 17, 130, 136–7 Florentine 37, 42, 45, 52, 56, 61, 69, 72, 90, 115n131, 128 military 45, 72, 87, 107–8 of the citizens 45, 51, 110, 123, 134 of the founder 45, 110, 130 personal/individual 18, 22, 26, 78, 81–2 Roman 34–5, 87 transmission of 22–3, 33, 82 Tuscan 35 Visconti, the 40, 71, 82 Visentin, Stefano 20–1, 51n117, 59n41, 112n110, 133n244 Vivanti, Corrado 117n141 void 37, 55, 97n30 Volterra 91n246 votes, free 22–3, 26, 30, 33 war 22, 29n130, 32, 37, 40, 42, 46, 59–60, 64, 71, 82–3, 86, 91, 99–103, 105–8, 111–12, 122, 134 civil 44, 63 way of life 2n3, 25 see also life absolute and tyrannical 14n26, 115n131 free and civil 2–3, 5–8, 13–15, 28–30, 34, 44, 49–52, 55–6, 61n56, 68, 72, 74, 76, 79, 96, 99, 101–2, 106, 128, 134–5 see also freedom political 13n26, 24, 34, 114 popular 95 servile 14n26 uncorrupted 34, 114

Index weapons 106–7 Weber, Max 4 Whites, the 62–3 Whitfield, John H. 2n3 Wicht, Bernard 101n49 Winter, Yves 75n149 Wolin, Sheldon S. 75n149, 106n85, 130nn217, 221 and 224, 134n251 women 57n23

Wood, Neal 43n61 Words to be spoken on the law for appropriating money 95–7 world, eternity of the 38 Zanardi, Maurizio 36n25, 50n113 Zancarini, Jean-Claude 75n149 Zanzi, Luigi 39n46, 101n53, 121n163 Zmora, Hillay 130n220

163