‘BELFAGOR
Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, La forma tragica del Principe; Peter E. Bondanella, Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance History, Robert J. Clements, “Anatomy of the Novella,” Comparative Literature Studies 9 (1972), 3-16, rpt. in Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Mark Musa and Peter E. Bondanella (New York: Norton, 1977); Joseph Gibaldi, “The Renaissance Theory of the Novella,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 2 (1975), 201-227, and “Towards a Definition of the Novella,” Studies in Short Fiction 12 (1975), 91-98; Luigi Russo, Machiavelli (Bari: Laterza, 1969).
THE MANDRAKE ROOT
Giovanni Aquilecchia, “La favola Mandragola si chiama,” in Giovanni Aquilecchia et al., eds., Collected Essays on Italian Language and Literature Presented to Kathleen Speight (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971); Sergio Bertelli, “When Did Machiavelli Write Mandragola?” Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971), 317-326; Franco Fido, “Machiavelli 1469-1969: Politica e teatro nel badalucco di Messer Nicia,” Italica 69 (1969), 359-375; Martin Fleischer, “Trust and Deceit in Machiavelli’s Comedies,” Journal of the History of Ideas 26 (1966), 365-380; Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Ezio Raimondi, Politica e commedia (Bologna: Il mulino, 1972); Roberto Ridolfi, Studi sulle commedie del Machiavelli (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1968); Luigi Russo, Machiavelli.
THE ART OF WAR
Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli: A Dissection; Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, “L‘arte della guerra o l’azione impossibile,” Lettere italiane 20 (1968), 281-306; Charles C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961); Felix Gilbert, “Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari: A Study in the Origins of Modern Political Thought,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 12 (1949), 101-131, and “Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War,” in E. M. Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944); Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment; F. L. Taylor, The Art of War in Italy, 1494-1529 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1921); Neal Wood, “Introduction” to Niccolò Machiavelli, The Art of War.
THE LIFE OF CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANI OF LUCCA
Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, “La vita di Castruccio o la storia come invenzione,” L’Approdo letterario 59-60 (1972), 89-113; Peter E. Bondanella, “Castruccio Castracani: Machiavelli’s Archetypal Prince,” Italica 49 (1972), 302-314, rpt. in Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance History; Castruccio Castracani degli Anteminelli: miscellanea di studi storici e letterari (Florence: Tipocalcografia Classica, 1936); Guido Guarino, “Two Views of a Renaissance Tyrant,” Symposium 19 (1956), 285-290; Alessandro Montevecchi, “La vita di Castruccio Castracani e lo stile storico di Machiavelli,” Letterature moderne 12 (1962), 513-521; Bernard Shea, “Machiavelli and Fielding’s Jonathan Wild,” PMLA 72 (1957), 55-73; J. H. Whitfield, “Machiavelli and Castruccio,” Italian Studies 8 (1953), 1-28, rpt. in Discourses on Machiavelli.
THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE
Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli: A Dissection; Alfredo Bonadeo, Corruption, Conflict, and Power, Peter E. Bondanella, Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance History, Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969); Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965) and “Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine: An Essay in Interpretation,” in Myron P. Gilmore, ed., Studies on Machiavelli; Marina Marietti, “Machiavel historiographe des Médicis,” in André Rochon, ed., Les Écrivains et le pouvoir en ¡talie à l’époque de la Renaissance (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974); Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato (Turin: Einaudi, 1970); Donald J. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).
MACHIAVELLI’S INFLUENCE
N. W. Bawcutt, “Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta,” Renaissance Drama 3 (1970), 3-49; Donald W. Bleznick, “Spanish Reaction to Machiavelli in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958), 542-550; Willis H. Bowen, “Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Machiavelli,” Italica 27 (1950), 313-320; James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (New York: John Day, 1943); C. Cardascia, “Machiavel et Bodin,” Bibliothèque d‘Humanisme et de Renaissance 3 (1943), 29-167; Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis, Studies in Machiavellianism (New York: Academic Press, 1970); Antonio D’Andrea, “Machiavelli, Satan, and the Gospel,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971), 156-177, “The Political and Ideological Content of Innocent Gentillet’s Anti-Machiavel,” Renaissance Quarterly 23 (1970), 397-411, and “Studies on Machiavelli and His Reputation in the Sixteenth Century,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1961), 214-248; Armand De Gaetano, “The Influence of Machiavelli on the Neapolitan Intellectual Leaders of the Risorgimento,” Italian Quarterly 5 (1961), 45-60; Dante Delia Terza, “The Most Recent Image of Machiavelli: The Contribution of the Linguist and the Historian,” Italian Quarterly 14 (1970), 91-113; Peter S. Donaldson, ed. and trans., A Machiavellian Treatise by Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1975); K. Dreyer, “Commynes and Machiavelli: A Study in Parallelism,” Symposium 6 (1951), 38-61; Felix Gilbert, “Machiavelli in Modem Historical Scholarship,” Italian Quarterly 14 (1970), 9-26, and Niccolb Machiavelli e la vita culturale del suo tempo (Bologna: Il mulino, 1964); Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1957); E. Harris Harbison, “The Intellectual as Social Reformer: Machiavelli and Thomas More,” Rice Institute Pamphlet 44 (1957), 1-45; Norman Holland, “Measure for Measure: The Duke and the Prince,” Comparative Literature 11 (1959), 16-20; Antony Jay, Management and Machiavelli: An Inquiry into the Politics of Corporate Life (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968); Vincenzo Luciani, “Bacon and Machiavelli,” Italica 24 (1947), 26-40, “Raleigh’s Discourse of War and Machiavelli’s Discorsi,” Modern Philology 46 (1948), 122-131, and “Raleigh’s Discourses on the Savoyan Matches and Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine,” Italica 29 (1952), 103-107; Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d‘Etat and Its Place in Modern History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957); Napoleone Orsini, Bacone e Machiavelli (Genoa: degli Orfini, 1936); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment; Mario Praz, The Flaming Heart (New York: Norton, 1973); Giuliano Procacci, Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1965); Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500-1700 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964); Irving Ribner, “Bolingbroke: A True Machiavellian,” Modern Language Quarterly 9 (1948), 177-184, “Machiavelli and Sidney: The Arcadia of 1590,” Studies in Philology 47 (1950), 152-172, “Marlowe and Machiavelli,” Comparative Literature 6 (1954), 349-356, and “Sidney’s Arcadia and the Machiavelli Legend,” Italica 27 (1950), 225-235; Robert Shackleton, “Montesquieu and Machiavelli: A Reappraisal,” Comparative Literature Studies 1 (1964), 1-14; Robert I. Williams, “Machiavelli’s Mandragola, Touchwood Senior, and the Comedy of Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside,” Studies in English Literature 10 (1970), 385-396.
A number of significant publications should be added to the bibliography of major interpretations of Niccolò Machiavelli’s thought that appeared in the original printing of this edition.
Several important studies in Italy should be noted: Jean-Jacques Marchand, Niccolò Machiavelli: i primi scritti (1499-1512) (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1975); Gian Mario Anselmi, Ricerche sul Machiavelli storico (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1979); Gennaro Sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli: storia del suo pensiero politico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980); Ugo Dotti, Niccolò Machiavelli: la fenomenologia del potere (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979); and Carlo Dioni
sotti, Machiavellerie: storia e fortuna di Machiavelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1980).
In English, a number of works covering the entire range of Machiavelli’s writings have appeared, testifying to the ever increasing interest in the Florentine’s works: Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), or his briefer Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Silvia Russo Fiore, Niccolò Machiavelli (Boston: Twayne, 1982); and Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in The Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Most recently, Sebastian de Grazia has completed an interesting intellectual biography of Machiavelli entitled Machiavelli in Hell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); and Wayne A. Rebhorn’s Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli’s Confidence Men (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) provides an original analysis of how literary traditions inform Machiavelli’s works.
While all aspects of Machiavelli’s life and writings have attracted critical attention, the emphasis in the literature during the last decade has been upon Machiavelli’s republicanism and the political tradition represented by his Discourses. For this aspect of Machiavelli, see: Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), or the new and complete translation of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, trans. Laura F. Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Mark Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); William R. Everdell, The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans (New York: Free Press, 1983); and Peter Bondanella, The Eternal City: Roman Images in the Modern World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).
—Peter Bondanella
Indiana University
THE PRIVATE LETTERS
EDITORS’ NOTE
One of the most characteristic literary forms during the European Renaissance was the private letter, a vogue begun in the fourteenth century by the indefatigable father of humanism, Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), and continued by his humanist successors for the next two centuries. Within the context of Italian Renaissance literature, the collections of letters by Petrarch, Michelangelo, Pietro Aretino, and Machiavelli—to mention only the most important and best known—not only constitute a rich source of valuable information about the lives and times of these men, but also contain some of the period’s best prose. While other literary genres had more confining boundaries, the private letter allowed a Renaissance writer the freedom to express his personal feelings to a friend in a relaxed tone, much as he might have done in an informal conversation. But while these familiar letters were usually addressed to close friends, they were almost always intended for a wider audience and, eventually, for posterity.
Machiavelli’s correspondence is notable for its striking mixture of styles and for the engaging self-portrait it contains of a man whose warmth and good humor belie the evil legends that have sprung up around his name. In a letter dated January 31, 1515, and addressed to Francesco Vettori, Machiavelli himself notes that his tone may surprise some readers in the future:
Anyone who might see our letters, my dear friend, and might note their diversity would be very amazed, for at one point he would think that we were very serious men, involved in weighty matters, and that we never entertained a thought which was not lofty and honest. But then, turning the page, he would discover that these same serious men were frivolous, inconstant, lustful, and occupied with trifles. This manner of ours, although to some it may be disgraceful, seems worthy of praise to me, because we imitate Nature, which herself is various, and anyone who imitates Nature cannot be criticized.
The following selection presents only seven of the nearly two hundred and fifty private letters which have been preserved from Machiavelli’s hand And this large number does not include the even more numerous edited and still unedited letters and chancery documents which he wrote or had written in his capacity as an employee of the Florentine republic. The first and earliest letter is addressed to the Florentine envoy at the papal court in Rome, Ricciardo Becchi. It describes Machiavelli’s reaction to one of Savonarola’s sermons and should be read together with Machiavelli’s remarks in The Prince about “unarmed prophets” (VI) and the views he expresses on religion in The Discourses. As far as contemporary scholars can determine, Machiavelli probably received his post in the government because of his lack of sympathy for the friar’s views, or “lies,” as he terms them here.
I
TO RICCIARDO BECCHI
In order to give you, as you requested, a complete report of things here concerning the friar, I would have you know that after delivering the two sermons, of which you have already received a copy, he preached on the Sunday of the carnival, and after saying many things, he invited all his devotees to share communion with him on carnival day at San Marco. And he said that he wanted to pray to God that He give some clear sign if the things that he had predicted did not come from Him; and he did this, as some say, in order to unify his following and to make it stronger in his defense, fearing that the newly elected (but not announced) Signoria might be opposed to him. When the Signoria was announced on Monday, an event of which you must be already fully aware, he judged it more than two thirds hostile to him, and since the Pope had sent a directive which summoned him, under pain of interdiction, and since he was worried that the Signoria might want him to obey immediately, he decided, whether by his own choice or whether so advised by others, to renounce the preaching in Santa Reparata and to go to San Marco. And so, on Thursday morning, when the Signoria assumed its authority, he announced in Santa Reparata that in order to avoid any scandal and to serve the honor of God, he wished to withdraw from his position and that the men should come to listen to him in San Marco while the women should go to San Lorenzo to hear Brother Domenico. When our friar found himself in his own home, you can well imagine with what audacity he began his sermons and with what audacity he continued them; since he was afraid for himself, he believed that the new Signoria would not hesitate to harm him, and since he had decided that a good many citizens would accompany him in his downfall, he began his talk by frightening everybody; he used arguments that were very convincing to those who did not examine them carefully, showing how his followers were the most excellent of men and his enemies the most wicked, using every rhetorical device that existed to weaken his opponents and to strengthen his own faction. Since I was present, let me tell you briefly about a few of these devices.
The source of his first sermon in San Marco was this passage from Exodus: “But the more they tortured them, the more they multiplied and grew” [1: 12]; and before he came to the explanation of these words, he showed why he had withdrawn and said: “Prudence is right thinking in practical affairs.”1 Then he said that all men have had and still do have a purpose, but that they are different ones: “For Christians, their goal is Christ; for other men, either present or past, it has been and still is something different, according to their religion. Since we who are Christians are directed to that end which is Christ, we should, with the utmost prudence and following the customs of the times, preserve His honor, and when it is time for a man to hide himself, he should hide, as we read of Christ and of Saint Paul”; and thus, he added, “It is our duty to do this and we have done it, for when it was time to resist danger, we did it, as was the case on Ascension Day, for to do so was demanded by the honor of God and the times. Now the honor of God requires that we yield to anger, and we have yielded.” And having given this brief speech, he described two groups of people—one that fought for God, this was himself and his devotees, and the other commanded by the Devil, which was his opponents. And having discussed this in great detail, he entered into an exposition of the words he had cited from Exodus, and he said that through tribulations good men increased in two ways, in spirit and in number; in spirit, since men join themselves more closely with God when adversity confronts them a
nd they become stronger, as their source is nearer, just as hot water set near a fire becomes hotter, since it is nearer its source. Men grow also in number. There are three types of men: the good man, and these are those who follow him; the perverse and obstinate, and these are his enemies; and another kind of man who is careless, devoted to pleasures, neither obstinate in evildoing nor dedicated to good deeds, since he cannot discern the one from the other; but when between the good and the bad there arises some factual difference (since opposites placed together are more clearly contrasted), he recognizes the evil of the wicked and the simplicity of the good, and he flees from the former and draws nearer to the latter, since all men avoid evil and willingly, by nature, they seek out the good; and so it is this way that in times of adversity the good increase and the evil become fewer. I recount this to you briefly, since the space of a letter does not permit a long explanation. Next, digressing, as is his habit, in order to weaken his enemies as well as to introduce his next sermon, he said that our internal strife could enable a tyrant to rise up who would destroy our homes and lay waste our lands; and this was not contrary to that which he had already preached, that is, that Florence was going to be prosperous and would rule all of Italy, since it would be only a short time before the tyrant would be driven out; and on this note he completed his sermon.
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