Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  There were no pews in the church that day. The temporary benches sometimes used to accommodate parishioners had all been removed to allow the greatest possible number of people to be admitted. And into the vast open space thus created they poured, thousands of people, intent on hearing the word of God.

  The friar had chosen not to celebrate the mass, so it began without him. He remained secluded in a small chamber behind the sacristy, the greatest orator in all of history, since Cicero himself. But unlike the latter, who freely admitted to severe crises of nerves and even bouts of vomiting before he spoke, Savonarola was utterly calm. He waited for his moment—and prayed.

  By virtue of their early arrival, Niccolo, Biagio, and Pagolo had secured places with a good view of the pulpit from which the sermon would be delivered. After the gospel was read, the friar was summoned. There was a hush in the church. You could have heard a lone fly buzzing high up in the dome, but there were no flies. The friar was preceded across the sanctuary by a deacon bearing a single, lighted candle. He mounted the pulpit with head bowed and stood for a moment in silent prayer. Slowly he made the sign of the cross, slowly he lifted his head and filled his lungs with air. Slowly he raised both arms, and intoned, “Oh, Egypt!” in a trembling voice that unnerved even the most stalwart members of the congregation.

  In no one was the consternation greater than it was in Niccolo Machiavelli, in whom the fear of dreaded pronouncements and calamitous events foretold was mixed with the shock of recognition. The great, fiery preacher was the puny monk he had saved from certain death by snowballs over ten years ago! The formidable Savonarola was only the pitiful, defenseless Fra Girolamo!

  Shocked as he was by this discovery, Niccolo had little time to consider what it might mean, for he, like everyone else present, was being sucked into the vortex created by the friar’s thundering voice and his riveting, hypnotic eyes.

  Here he spoke of pestilence and famine, of plagues more severe than those God had inflicted upon the Egyptians, of a great hammer smashing the city of Babylon. The exact words were sometimes difficult to discern, but there was no mistaking the sense of them. His threats and calls for repentance fell like thunderclaps shaking even the relics of the true cross and the bones of Saint Reparata that lay buried beneath the main altar.

  Niccolo Machiavelli, more perspicacious than the average Florentine and more inclined to doubt and cynicism when it came to modern-day prophets, began to recover his wits. The force of the friar’s onslaught had initially drawn him in, but now, with an effort of the will, he succeeded in resisting the magnetism—in detaching himself a little from the rising tide of prophetic fury.

  What, after all, is he saying? Niccolo found himself thinking. Nothing that you couldn’t read in Jeremiah, or Isaiah—Egypt and Babylon, wars and rumors of wars, cleansing fire and great destruction. Repent while there is still time! Niccolo was on the verge of dismissing the preacher as a fanatic, a genius, but still, at bottom, just another religious fanatic, when the friar’s sermon suddenly took a decidedly modern and quite specific turn. While his rhetoric remained firmly entrenched in the Old Testament prophets, his message became quite pointedly anchored in the history and politics of contemporary Florence.

  “I predicted the time appointed for the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici. I stood before you and spoke of a flaming tower crashing to the ground. It has come to pass. The tower of vanity has been pulled down, and the soul of the tyrant consigned to hell.”

  Here Savonarola’s tone changed abruptly, became soothing, almost fatherly. He spoke of Florence and her history, of her ancient love of liberty and her recent degradation and subjection to tyranny. It was this attachment to liberty, to civil government, he argued, that set Florence apart, made her constitutionally incapable of submitting to a tyrant for any length of time.

  He then called for throwing off the yoke of slavery and reestablishing popular rule. He was no longer dawdling with the prophets on the banks of the Nile and the Jordan. He had come home to the banks of the Arno, and he was calling for nothing short of a revolution. He had taken a decisive step beyond the pulpit, beyond the harmless clamoring of the fire-and-brimstone preacher.

  “The Lord’s anger has been unleashed upon the world. His thirst for vengeance is not easily slaked. And He has chosen me, unworthy and useless among all His servants, to bring you a warning of His terrible wrath.

  “It is for this, to warn you of His coming scourge, that God has sent me here to Florence, for Florence lies in the center of Italy, like the heart in the center of a man. God deigned to choose her for the task of making His proclamation. From here, his message will be spread abroad to all parts of Italy and the world.

  “And this is the message—Repent and cleanse your hearts, reclaim your liberty, and make yourselves strong to resist the coming flood.” Here the preacher reverted to a harrowing description of the flood, frightening, not in its imagery, but in the unprecedented specificity of its historical content: He claimed that the pope would be dead within three months and even fixed the exact date in late July. And he warned that, in his place, the Antichrist would then ascend the throne of Saint Peter, that a black cross would rise from Rome, stinking and filthy with corruption, and reach out to embrace the whole world, that it would engender storms and tempests and great confusion wherever it touched.

  And then he spoke of the vision that had come to him the night before, of the sword of the Lord, poised and ready to strike, of a great voice issuing from three faces, but surrounded by a single light that called upon him to convert the sinners before the coming of divine punishment. He saw a multitude of angels arrayed in white descending from heaven to earth, offering men red crosses with white mantles, which some accepted and some rejected. “Then, slowly, the hand brandishing the sword began to stir, filling the air with dense clouds of hail and thunder, and then with a rain of swords and arrows and fire!”

  The people of Florence were spellbound, frightened to death, but Savonarola did not leave them with mere apocalyptic horrors and graphic threats of unspecified future retribution. He went on to interpret the vision for them. Today, as had been announced, he had important news to communicate. What he announced with ruthless specificity and to the utter dismay of his stunned congregation was that in two years’ time, Charles VIII of France would storm across the Alps at the head of an invincible army and lay waste to Italy.

  In the course of his sermon, the friar’s voice had, at times, pounded like mighty waves upon the shore, while at other times it had drawn itself up into placid, shimmering pools among the rocks. Now, for a moment he remained silent, surveying his reeling flock, and then, with otherworldly calm, he delivered the final, devastating blow: “Today, O Florence, you have heard with your ears not the voice of a humble friar, but the voice of God Almighty himself. Amen.”

  The friar climbed down from the pulpit and disappeared. The mass continued as if a dream, bells were rung on cue, responses mechanically chanted. A few souls even staggered to the communion rail, but no one could put out of his mind for long the message of impending doom, or the fact that he had just heard pronounced before them the judgment of Almighty God.

  Even Niccolo left the church deep in thought and feeling drained, as though in the aftermath of some blinding, sexual explosion—or a brush with death.

  Meanwhile, the external world was quietly organizing itself for the timely fulfillment of Savonarola’s prophecies. Florence tottered on the verge of revolution. Charles VIII, newly ascended to the throne of France, was already twitching with the anxiety of conquest. Pope Innocent was duly expiring, and behind the scenes in Rome, a Spaniard, the most nefarious, abominable man ever to occupy the throne of Saint Peter, was deftly maneuvering to buy the Papacy. All these things would come to pass in the fullness of time. And their effect on the course of Niccolo Machiavelli’s future would be convulsive.

  And in faraway Spain, too, events little remarked by Savonarola were conspiring to convulse Niccolo’s life. The year w
as 1492, and as is well known, the king and queen of Spain were about to sponsor an expedition to the Indies that would change the face of the globe for centuries to come. Less remarked by history, but infinitely more important for the upheavals it would eventually introduce into the life of Niccolo Machiavelli, the Most Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, had just decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

  In the weeks and months that followed the death of Lorenzo, the fortunes of the Medici party rapidly deteriorated, due in no small part to the incompetence and insensitivity of Lorenzo’s son and heir, the twenty-two-year-old Piero. Such was his unpopularity that when he was obliged to leave the sumptuous Medici palace, he was generally preceded through the streets by a “penny man.” It was his job to fling handfuls of coins at the restive crowds who, in scrambling after them, left a path clear for the haughty Piero to proceed unmolested.

  If Piero’s sphere of misbehavior was secular government, Lorenzo’s second son, Giovanni, chose the church. He had been elevated to the cardinalate just three weeks after his father’s death. One of the last acts of Lorenzo’s life had been the transfer of astronomical sums into the papal treasury to ensure the ecclesiastical career of his second son.

  Unlike Piero, who was handsome and athletic, Giovanni Cardinal de’ Medici was flaccid and flabby. Folds of fat already hung about his face and neck. His body was a puddle of soft, pasty flesh. Although intelligent, his habit of holding his mouth wide-open, gaping at all times, gave him an air of moonstruck imbecility. Since infancy, he suffered from an anal fistula that produced a condition of chronic flatulence. Throughout his life as a prelate, wherever he went, he was accompanied by an odor, not of sanctity, but of decay, by the fetid seepage of his own digestion and the smell of rich food rotting away. An abbot at the age of eight, on the day he received the red hat, the badge of the cardinalate, he was only sixteen years old. Already, his eyesight was failing him.

  If the Medici grip on the hearts and minds of the Florentine people was indeed growing weaker every day, that of Savonarola was waxing in strength. His uncanny, but accurate, prediction of the death of Lorenzo had once and for all allowed him to lay claim to the mantle of the prophet. The death of the pope three months later and the accession of an insidious Spaniard to the papacy were enough to wipe out any lingering doubts as to his credibility. As his following grew, the friar became more vehement in his denunciation of the Medicean tyranny. He reiterated his call for repentance and urged his followers to array themselves in “the white garments of purification.” Above all, he continued to emphasize the perils of the coming French invasion, saying that the king of the Gauls and his armies would come like barbers with gigantic razors to shave Italy down to the skin, clearing the land of everything in their path. At other times, he drew upon the imagery of the great flood and urged Florence to build what he called an Ark of Repentance against the coming inundation.

  Apocalyptic excitement was mounting in the city, but it was as yet unfocused. Occasional riots broke out. It was in order to quell one of these that Piero grudgingly assented to address the restless crowds. He did so at one o’clock (an hour deemed propitious by his astrologers) from the same balcony where four generations of Medici leaders had stood and spoken to the people of Florence. Upon showing himself, he was greeted, as were his predecessors, with the shouts of Balls! Balls! Balls! But the acclaimants this time were a mangy lot, obviously drunk. As Piero spoke in his thin, unconcerned voice, a new cry was raised from the crowd, something spontaneous and uncoached, passionate and not bought by Medici money. It grew in strength, quickly overwhelming the anemic, singsong Balls! Balls! Balls! that issued from the coterie of paid supporters. Piero was forced to abandon his efforts to make himself heard above the roar, and he retreated with what amounted to his death knell ringing in his ears—Popolo e libertá! Popolo e libertá! Popolo e libertá!

  In the crowd that day were anti-Medici forces from across the spectrum of political postures as well as many of the disaffected—workers locked out of factories, victims of the failing economy. Among them were Niccolo Machiavelli and Biagio Buonacorsi, scions of slightly better families, but for all that, no less enthusiastic supporters of the causes of the people and freedom—Popolo e libertá. Young and optimistic, they were swept up in the swell of sentiment that animated this crowd. These were heady times. Revolution was in the air, and for weeks now, the two high-spirited young men had been feeding off of the excitement of popular ferment.

  Both were hoarse from the political exertions of the day by the time they left the piazza. “How long can he last, Biagio?” said Niccolo referring to the apparently imminent demise of Piero de’ Medici.

  “You know as well as I do that he can last a long time if he pays off the right people and hires enough mercenaries.”

  “But he won’t. He’s too stupid or arrogant, and besides, this time things are different,” said Niccolo. “This time there’s Savonarola to be reckoned with, and he’s not likely to switch allegiance or let the people forget his distaste—excuse me, God’s distaste—for Medici rule.”

  “You have a point,” conceded Biagio. “Maybe they will throw him out. But then what? Do you think the friar is going to run the city? That would be something. Government by paternosters! You go to the friar with a problem, a complaint? Excuse me while I consult God on the matter, he says. It won’t take a minute. Someone’s convicted of a crime? Seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys, my son, now go forth and sin no more!”

  “I don’t think he’s all that naive,” said Niccolo. “I think he’s up to something concrete. I think he has a plan.”

  “Oh, sure, he has a plan. He’s just waiting for the burning crosses to fall from the sky and the great white flood to sweep across the mountains and a giant scorpion to sting Piero.”

  “You’re not separating the images from the substance,” argued Niccolo. “Oh, I don’t mean the prophecies—your guess is as good as mine as to what they’re supposed to mean. But in every sermon lately, behind the fireworks, he’s been talking about tyranny and civil government. I think he’s serious. I think he really wants to see the establishment of some sort of representative council to replace the tyrant.”

  “Maybe,” countered Biagio, “and maybe he just wants to be the new tyrant.”

  “I’m going to ask him,” Niccolo declared calmly. “I know him.”

  “Sure you do,” jeered his companion.

  “I’m serious,” and Niccolo quickly recounted the incident of the snowball attack that had attended the monk’s Florentine opening.

  “And you’re sure it was the same man?” Biagio still seemed doubtful.

  “Positive,” affirmed Niccolo. “Later that day, in the evening I went to hear him preach. My mother made me accompany her. He was pathetic. I felt sorry for him. A little man in that big, cold church. And his voice—he brayed like a jackass. Jumped around in the pulpit.”

  “Hmmph! I don’t see how it could be the same man, if he was that sorry a preacher,” said Biagio.

  “Trust me, Biagio. It’s him. You want to come along?”

  “No, not I,” replied Biagio, “I’m going to the tavern. I thirst.”

  “Assignation with Beatrice?” said Niccolo with a knowing smirk.

  “Ahime, Beatrice!” groaned Biagio. “You haven’t heard then? Beatrice has left me for another.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Our Lord Jesus Christ!” sighed Biagio, slumping forward on the table. “Beatrice has been touched, yes, touched is the word she used, touched by the friar’s preaching. She’s repented, Niccolo. Renounced sin and me. She’s one of his followers now. Wears the white robe of repentance and spends all day in church praying for poor, lost souls like us.”

  As the two separated, Biagio called out after his companion. “Tell him to send Beatrice back to me, Niccolo. He owes you one.”

  Niccolo sauntered out into the midday sun and all the details of life being acted out around him. Two cats w
ere copulating. An old man, absorbed in the low spectacle stood over them, cackling and occasionally poking at them with a stick.

  There was a self-conscious spring in Niccolo’s step as he made his way toward the church and convent of San Marco. He held his head high, back erect, and hands clasped together behind him as he walked. No more or less dandified than other young men his age, he wore a short, pleated jacket, laced up the front and cinched at the waist. The deep-blue sleeveless jacket was set off smartly by a red shirt and tight red hose, which he judged showed his legs and buttocks to good advantage. Although it was cold and a stiff wind occasionally blew up, Niccolo let his blue cloak hang rakishly open. He was young and hatless.

  With respect to dress, Florence was a town of relative sobriety, especially when compared to the extravagance of cities like Rome or Venice. So it was with some amusement that Niccolo turned to stare at a couple he spotted while crossing the Piazza Santa Croce. She was wrapped in at least twenty-five yards of bright green taffeta, crimped and gathered in endless tiers. Rotund of figure, she resembled nothing so much as a walking head of lettuce, if the word walking could be used to describe her fitful progress across the icy stones. Leaning heavily on her escort, she tottered on an outrageously high pair of zoccoli, a Venetian affectation in which the sole and the heel of the shoe were built up with wood to give the impression of height to those not naturally endowed with it. In the case of the lettuce, the shoes added almost a full eighteen inches to her stature.

  But he, oh he, was even more magnificent to behold! All pink and black and shot through with gold and silver. Such was the dazzle of his appearance in the bright sun that it was at first difficult to break it up into its component parts. Gradually the details emerged—the outer cape of shiny silk, pink and black checks, each rectangle outlined with thick braided strands of silver and the whole trimmed in white fur. Hose—pink with fanciful designs woven through them in red and black. The hat, pink and fur-lined as well, its glorious brim wide enough to shelter a family of four from the rain, was surmounted by a curled feather, the length of a man’s arm. Intent upon his discourse with the lettuce, the owner of this finery occasionally flung an arm into the air for emphasis. When he did so, other treasures, hidden beneath the shocking cape stood revealed—chains and bejeweled weapons, and what looked like a flowered jacket.