Machiavelli

by Miles J. Unger

  In the ensuing conclave a vigorous battle was waged between supporters of Cardinal de’ Medici and Machiavelli’s old friend Cardinal Francesco Soderini (brother of the former Gonfaloniere). In the end these two factions fought to a draw, ensuring the election of a colorless Dutchman, Cardinal Adriann Dedel, who ascended the throne on January 9, 1522, with the name Adrian VI.xvii In Rome the election of this nonentity drew jeers from the crowd outside the Vatican. In Florence the conflict between the two native-born cardinals merely helped widen the fissures that were opening within the ruling elite.

  With his position threatened by the death of his cousin, Cardinal Giulio tried to still the voices of discontent by repeating his old trick of inviting proposals for reform. Among those who rose to the bait was Machiavelli (who resubmitted the plan he had drawn up a few years earlier) along with many others who believed the restoration of free institutions and open elections was just around the corner. But as he had three years earlier, Cardinal Giulio backed down at the last minute. Rumors began circulating that instead of restoring their liberties, the Cardinal was preparing to install two Medici bastards—Ippolito, illegitimate son of Giuliano, and Alessandro, love child of Lorenzo—at the head of the government, demonstrating that he viewed Florence as little more than family property.

  Early in June 1522 a courier was intercepted by Florentine authorities as he was riding along the road toward Rome. In his saddlebag they found a letter addressed to Battista della Palla (the man who had been instrumental in convincing Pope Leo to stage the first Roman performance of La Mandragola) detailing a plot to assassinate Cardinal Giulio and proclaim a restored Florentine Republic. The Roman conspirators included not only della Palla but the two Soderini brothers; the leaders of the conspiracy in Florence were Zanobi Buondelmonti, Luigi Alamanni, and Jacopo da Diaceto, all of them close friends of Machiavelli from the Orti Oricellari. Buondelmonti and Alamanni managed to flee the city ahead of the constables, but other denizens of the Rucellai gardens, including Diaceto and Alamanni’s cousin (confusingly also named Luigi) were less fleet of foot. Led in chains to Le Stinche they were subjected to the usual harsh methods employed by the authorities to extract confessions. In an eerie reprise of the failed conspiracy of 1513, Machiavelli’s name once again came out during the interrogations. There was even testimony that Buondelmonti had planned to contact him but had been discouraged at the last minute because, as a poor man without connections, Machiavelli was in no position to help.

  Cardinal Giulio’s retribution was swift, though not, under the circumstances, excessive. Displaying what for him was an unusual decisiveness, he had Diaceto and Luigi Alamanni beheaded in the courtyard of the Bargello, and prevailed upon the Pope to arrest Cardinal Soderini in Rome. (Piero Soderini was spared a similar fate since he died on June 13.) Though Machiavelli himself escaped unscathed, he was understandably distraught at the disaster that had befallen his friends. The “brotherhood of the cool shade” was disbanded once and for all, and with it a happy chapter in his life had closed.

  Machiavelli himself never wrote of the disastrous events from the summer of 1522, though one can infer his troubled state of mind from the sparseness of his correspondence during these months. Most suggestive is the brief, bitter epitaph he composed upon learning of Piero Soderini’s death:

  The night that Piero Soderini ceased to breathe

  His soul journeyed to the mouth of Hell;

  But Pluto cried: “Thou foolish soul

  No Hell for thee! Go seek the Limbo of the babes!”

  The sarcastic tone of these lines was almost certainly prompted by Soderini’s role in the fiasco. On a personal level Machiavelli had every reason to be loyal to his old boss. In fact Soderini had tried more than once to find employment for his former assistant, offering him a position as secretary to the Republic of Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik) and a lucrative sinecure as secretary to the condottiere Prospero Colonna. Machiavelli turned down both offers, in part because he was too devoted to his native city to contemplate leaving it for any length of time, and partly because he worried that having dealings with the disgraced Gonfaloniere would cause him trouble with the authorities at home. (At one point he explained to Vettori that he would not visit his old friend for fear that when he returned to the city he would be taken straight to Le Stinche.) For all Soderini’s kindness to him, and for all the happy memories of their past collaboration, Machiavelli could not forgive this final indiscretion. The disastrous consequences of Soderini’s scheming confirmed the verdict pronounced in The Discourses that he was a decent man but an ineffectual leader.

  Machiavelli’s feelings were complicated by the fact that he himself had played a less than heroic role in the tragedy. He had little reason to regret not becoming entangled in his young friends’ harebrained schemes; he had always rejected such conspiracies both on practical grounds and on principle. Had Buondelmonti or Alamanni consulted him, he might have referred them to the chapter in The Discourses titled “On Conspiracies,” where he warns all who would set off down this most dangerous path that “there are very few, if any, who do not themselves get killed in the very act.” But he was sympathetic to their cause and it pained him to see them suffer.

  In fact he remained on the Medici payroll, retiring to his house in Sant’ Andrea to complete work on the Florentine Histories commissioned by the very man who had just executed his friends. He felt conflicted, though whether his anger was directed more at the Cardinal or his rash friends is difficult to know. For the most part he seems merely to have escaped into his work and into idle distractions. It was at this time that he began frequenting the villa of Jacopo Falconetti, where he replaced the more cerebral pleasures of the Rucellai gardens with the brickmaker’s boisterous bacchanals. It was also at this time that he began his passionate affair with the singer Barbera Raffacani, turning as he often did to the delights of the flesh when the rest of his life seemed to be falling apart. The lighthearted romp Clizia was also a product of these listless days. His attitude toward the world and its troubles is summed up in a single line he wrote to his brother-in-law Francesco del Nero. “I’ll send your regards to the chickens,” he wrote from Sant’ Andrea, a wry commentary on his rustic retirement.

  * * *

  i He was less tolerant when it came to his own son, Lodovico, who, according to Vettori, “has a boy with him” who “plays with him, sports with him, walks about with him, whispers in his ear; they sleep in the same bed” (April 16, 1523, in Machiavelli, et al., Machiavelli and His Friends, no. 281, p. 349). While Vettori was inclined to laugh it off as youthful indiscretion, Machiavelli seems to have been upset by what he believed was taking place.

  ii The identity of his lover at this time can only be guessed, but it seems likely that it was Tafani’s sister, since in a letter written a few months after revealing his affair, he urges Vettori to help her arrange a divorce from her husband, who was living with his mistress in Rome. (See letter no. 240 in Machiavelli et al., Machiavelli and His Friends, p. 295.)

  iii Machiavelli ultimately concluded that the Pope should back the French since they would demand less in victory than the Spanish. The worst possible course would be “remaining neutral,” which was never “useful to anyone confronted with these conditions” (Machiavelli to Vettori December 10, 1514, no. 241 in Machiavelli et al., Machiavelli and His Friends, pp. 295–302). Of course it was exactly this middle way that the Pope preferred.

  iv Such gatherings had long been a hallmark of Florentine intellectual life. In the late fourteenth century, leading citizens like Palla Strozzi and Cosimo de’ Medici had attended talks at the Camaldolese monastery given by Ambrogio Traversari. The famous “Platonic Academy” sponsored by Lorenzo de’ Medici was, similarly, less a formal institution than a gathering of like-minded intellectuals who met to discuss the great philosopher’s work at Marsilio Ficino’s villa at Careggi. After Lorenzo’s death, Bernardo Rucellai played host to the Platonic meetings at his garden.

  v The
gardens took their name from a plant, the orecella, that had been imported by the Rucellai family and that was used to make a purple dye important for Florence’s thriving cloth industry.

  vi Some have attributed Cosimo’s gentle nature to the fact that he was crippled from an early age. He attended gatherings at his garden by being carried about by servants in a specially made litter.

  vii Such philosophical dialogues date back to the time of Plato. The form was revived in the Renaissance, when it was used by writers like Bartolomeo Scala, who turned Niccolò’s father into a character in one of his dialogues (see Chapter 2), and Cristoforo Landino, who set his Disputationes Camaldulenses in a rustic monastery near Florence.

  viii Of course the sentiments did not originate with Machiavelli. They mirror closely Lorenzo de’ Medici’s famous carnival song: “How beautiful is youth that quickly flies away. He who would be happy, let him, for of tomorrow no one can say.”

  ix See, for example Chapter XV of The Prince where he declares “for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin,” or Chapter XIX where he says that “hatred may be engendered by good deeds as well as by bad ones.”

  x Karl Marx makes this point when he says: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historical facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” (from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon).

  xi He was not a pastry chef, however, but a brickmaker. His country villa housed a large kiln, or “forno.”

  xii In one respect, at least, Luther might be seen to have something in common with Machiavelli. His insistence that clergy should be allowed to marry was an accommodation to human nature that the Italian might well have applauded.

  xiii There was even some talk of Giulio following the path of Cesare Borgia, forsaking a career in the Church for that of a secular lord, but Pope Leo rejected the idea.

  xiv Paolo Vettori was chosen to serve as governor on Giuliano’s behalf, and it was in this context that the Vettori brothers sought Machiavelli’s counsel.

  xv When Savonarola managed to wring a similar concession from Pope Alexander on behalf of the Dominicans, the independence he gained was a crucial component of his power.

  xvi The fiorino di studio (florin of the studio) was worth barely half the standard gold florin, a sign that then, as now, academics were expected to spend their prestige when they ran short of hard cash.

  xvii Adrian was also the compromise candidate between supporters of France and of the Emperor, so little known that he offended no one.

  XIII

  NIGHTMARE AND DREAM

  “Since [Machiavelli] is unable to remedy the faults of mankind, he will do nothing but laugh at them.”

  —FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI TO ROBERTO ACCIAIUOLI

  BURYING HIMSELF IN MUSTY ANNALS OF THE PAST, Machiavelli was able to take his mind off the troubles of the present. With ink-stained fingers and stacks of yellowing documents by his side, he delved into the parade of folly that constituted the long and troubled history of his native city. The tramp of armies and roar of cannon were little more than distant rumors, drowned out by the sounds of chickens clucking and scrabbling in the yard below. Now in his mid-fifties, Machiavelli remained physically vigorous (as his gymnastics with the beautiful Barbera suggest) and mentally acute, but he no longer felt the same need to plunge headlong into the maelstrom. Perhaps it was simply that he had learned to live with disappointment. He would accept whatever came his way, willing, as always, to labor on behalf of his native land. But he did not expect to play the same vital role in affairs of state as he had in the reign of Piero Soderini, when the decisions he made could change the course of history.

  Machiavelli may have preferred to turn his back on what was happening beyond the fields and orchards of Sant’ Andrea, but he could not ignore for long the great events transpiring just beyond the horizon. The tragic farce of the failed plot against Cardinal Giulio had played out against a backdrop of growing menace. In 1516 the kings of Spain and France had signed the Treaty of Noyon, in which the Spaniards recognized the French claim to Milan in return for recognition of their rights in Naples. The treaty brought a rare interlude of calm, but each side was merely biding its time, regrouping and rearming for a more decisive battle.

  Now the rivalry threatened to erupt with renewed violence. The two great monarchs of Europe—Francis I, who had succeeded Louis XII in 1515 as King of France, and Charles, who had taken the Spanish throne the following year—had no intention of laying down their weapons until a final decision had been reached. In June 1518 the Flemish-born Charles added to his Spanish throne the title of Holy Roman Emperor. With territories stretching from the North Sea to the Rock of Gibraltar, from the ancient city of Naples to the virgin forests of the New World, Charles V’s empire was a vast, unruly patchwork of languages, peoples, and religions.i But despite the difficulties involved in managing such an unwieldy patrimony, Charles had more than enough energy left over to settle old scores with the Most Christian King of France.

  One might have hoped, along with Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and countless other Italian patriots, that faced with yet another cataclysmic war on native soil, the states of the peninsula would put aside their own differences long enough to present a unified front against the common enemy. But once again the Italians proved complicit in their own destruction. As they had in 1494, each city-state looked to its own short-term advantage, forging alliances with one or the other of the great powers and switching sides whenever they could cut a better deal.

  Machiavelli might well have resigned himself to a placid retirement had Fortuna, a creature of infinite jest, not taken it upon herself to stir the pot once more. In the fall of 1523 history took one of those sudden turns of the kind that made it so difficult to predict the trajectory of a man’s life. On September 14, Pope Adrian VI breathed his last, leaving the stage with as little fanfare as he entered it. Like Pius III, who had filled in between the reigns of Alexander VI and Julius II, he had been a stopgap pope, a compromise candidate when the top contenders had battled to a draw. The conclave to which Cardinal Giulio now hurried proved to be one of the most contentious in recent memory. The French King and the Holy Roman Emperor both realized that the new Pope could swing the balance of power in Italy and so they engaged in a bitter proxy war, deploying phalanxes of cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel like well-disciplined soldiers. After more than fifty days, Cardinal Giulio—who had the backing of the Emperor—prevailed over the French cardinals. On November 19, 1523, he was crowned with much pomp in St. Peter’s, taking the name Clement VII.

  After an interlude of less than two years a Medici was again seated on the papal throne, but there was no reason to suppose that, as far as the people of Florence were concerned, the arrangement—so breathlessly anticipated before the fact—would prove any happier than it had the first time. Having one of their own in the Vatican had merely given the Medici delusions of grandeur; they used their enhanced prestige not to promote the prosperity of their native city but to glorify their own family. Their ambition was embodied in the new tombs Michelangelo was currently working on in the family church of San Lorenzo. Compared to the austere Old Sacristy, which contained the remains of Cosimo and his two sons, the New Sacristy, commissioned by Cardinal Giulio before his departure for Rome, was a grandiose monument to the younger generation of the family. The two tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo are the work of a genius at the height of his powers, but their marmoreal splendor is out of all proportion to the nonentities who occupy them. The New Sacristy, with its seamless integration of sculpture and architecture, is one of the masterpieces of Renaissance art, but also a testament to the decay of the communal spirit that had animated Florentine life for centuries.

  For Machiavelli, Giulio’s elevation offered one last chance to make his mark on the public stage. Pope Leo had always regarded the former Second Chancellor with suspicion, but Machiavelli’s rel
ations with the new Pontiff were cordial. Over the years he had shown himself a loyal servant, swallowing his pride to take on even the least prestigious assignments, and both his dedication and the quality of his mind continued to impress Clement. Even his association with the conspirators of the Orti proved to be little more than a temporary embarrassment.

  With his friend now seated on the papal throne Machiavelli felt reinvigorated. After years spent in dull retirement it was time to dust himself off and see if he might yet make a contribution. By the beginning of 1525 he was close to finishing his Florentine Histories. As he had before when he sat with the completed manuscript of The Prince on his desk, he asked Vettori whether he should make the trip to Rome and present the work to his patron. “My dear friend,” Vettori replied with his usual equivocations:

  I don’t know whether to tell you to come with the book or not, since the times are not conducive to reading and to gift giving. But on the other hand, the night I arrived . . . the pope himself asked after you and whether you had completed the Historia as he anticipated. And when I told him that I had seen part of it and that you had reached the death of Lorenzo, and that it was something that would give satisfaction, and that you wanted to come and bring it to him but, due to the gloomy times, I had dissuaded you, he said to me: “He should have come. I am certain that his books will give much pleasure and be read eagerly.” These are the exact words he said to me, but I would not place too much faith in them, since you might come and still find yourself emptyhanded. Given the pope’s current state of mind, this could well happen.