This was a prelude of things to come. The man with such a wise and forgiving heart would not be forgiven by those he had mocked with his sharp tongue. He was not an evil man, as many of his contemporaries supposed and as history has assumed, but something worse: he was tactless. Pointing out uncomfortable truths turned out to be an unpardonable crime, while the countless acts of cruelty, treachery, and violence to which he bore painful witness—and that he tried to ameliorate through a philosophy rooted in a realistic assessment of human nature—were passed over with barely a yawn. Even before his death he had become notorious for his irreverence and the pleasure he took in exposing the bankruptcy of shopworn pieties. His compatriots split their sides laughing as his comic inventions Messer Nicia and Nicomaco strutted about the stage like pompous fools, but when he sought to fashion a theory of politics that might accommodate such flawed specimens, they balked, unwilling to follow his logic to the end. People could forgive almost anything but the shattering of their illusions. For a man who prided himself on his insights into the human heart, who could subtract the resentment derived from the murder of a relative from the resentment engendered by the loss of an estate and find the precise remainder, he was remarkably careless in assessing the effect his words had on others. Above all he was singularly incapable of playing the devious games he recommended to others as the way to get ahead.
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Doctors no longer claim that one can die from a broken heart, but even the most scientific physician would admit that crushing disappointment can take a toll on a body already worn out from years of stress and overwork. On June 10, Machiavelli learned that the job of Second Chancellor went to Francesco Tarugi, an undistinguished functionary who had previously served as Secretary to the Eight. Though Machiavelli’s failure to get the appointment could hardly have come as a surprise, it was yet another bitter blow. In 1512 he had met disappointment with reserves of inner strength. These reserves were long since gone, depleted by age and years of frustration. Only two weeks earlier he had been riding about the countryside on the government’s business; less than two weeks later he was laid low with abdominal pain brought on, his son Piero believed, by an overdose of the same homemade remedy he had prescribed for his friend Guicciardini. The crisis was sudden and severe, striking down an elderly but still vigorous man in midstride.vii
Machiavelli’s death has spawned legends as persistent and contradictory as his life. From Piero we have a spare but almost certainly accurate account: “My very dear Francesco,” he wrote to his maternal uncle,
I can only weep in telling you that our father, Niccolò, died on the 22nd of this month, from pains in the stomach caused by a medication he took on the 20th. He confessed his sins to Brother Matteo, who kept him company until his death. Our father has left us in the deepest poverty, as you know.
Such a matter-of-fact account, from such an unimpeachable source, might seem uncontroversial, but those who revere Machiavelli as the great prophet of atheism dismiss Piero’s account of a priest administering last rites as a pious fiction intended to hide their hero’s true nature. But there is no reason to believe that Piero invented this deathbed scene. Machiavelli, as we have seen, was a harsh critic of Christianity, but he reserved most of his scorn for those corrupt priests who took advantage of the weak and the gullible. He was certainly never a devoted churchgoer, but he conformed outwardly to the conventions of the day, entering the sacrament of marriage and baptizing his children. There is no reason to believe that in his final moments he would have defied those traditions to which he had subscribed, if only casually, throughout his life.
In accepting last rites, Machiavelli may simply have been taking the path of least resistance, but it also possible that, like many nonbelievers, he had a change of heart as he felt his end approaching. It is likely that as he was faced with his own imminent death, he was apprehensive and unsure. He could not fall back on the comfort of simple faith, but neither was he certain that the soul was merely an illusion conjured by the material body. He was never doctrinaire, particularly when it came to such vast, inscrutable matters as life and death, and would not have presumed to know what awaited him in the world to come.
Easier to discern than the dying man’s innermost thoughts is the impact his passing had on those around him. This is most clearly revealed in a legend that quickly sprang up around his final vigil. The so-called “Dream of Machiavelli” is almost as old as Piero’s letter, but despite the ancient pedigree it seems too perfectly crafted to be anything but apocryphal. Lying close to death, the story goes, Machiavelli told his friends who had gathered at his bedside of a dream he had. In his vision he saw two columns of men. One consisted of miserable wretches dressed in rags. When he asked who they were, they replied: “We are the saintly and the blessed; we are on our way to heaven.” Then he spied another column, this one filled with men dressed in fine robes, deep in conversation. As he approached he recognized many of them: Plato, Plutarch, and Tacitus, all discussing grave matters of state. When asked what brought them here, they replied: “We are the damned of Hell.” Having told his story, Machiavelli turned to his guests and, smiling, declared that it was among these learned men, rather than pious fools, that he hoped to spend eternity.
It is an appealing story but one that, unfortunately, does not ring true. Certainly, the cynical wit was typical of Machiavelli, who rarely missed a chance for mischief; in fact the legend echoes some of his own words, including those famous lines in his letter to Guicciardini where he explains that the best way to get to heaven is to learn the path to hell.viii But Machiavelli was no philosopher-saint like Socrates, a creature of superhuman virtue unaffected by the torments of the flesh. He was the first to admit his own weaknesses, and a lofty indifference to adversity was hardly his style. Out of respect for this most down-to-earth of philosophers, who famously declared that he would rather stick to the truth of things than to fancies, one ought to treat this dream as a charming fiction.
The one form of immortality Machiavelli believed in wholeheartedly was the immortality conferred by a famous name. Perhaps this was the only way to better fickle Fortuna, whose writ had little sway beyond the grave. Though he could not be sure that his name would endure in the world he was now departing, perhaps he took some comfort in the modest but real successes he had already achieved. The one thing he could not have anticipated as he closed his eyes for the last time, in the house of his ancestors near the Ponte Vecchio in the city he loved best in the world, was that his name would not only endure but that history would proclaim him one of the truly remarkable figures of a remarkable age.
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i Not least of Charles’s headaches were the revolts inspired by Luther and his followers in the northern reaches of his dominions.
ii The Pope was evidently pleased with what he read since he awarded the author an additional 120 gold ducats.
iii The disappointment was more than made up for by a hugely successful run in Venice, where La Mandragola was performed before overflow crowds. In a development that must have pleased Machiavelli no end, his comedy was judged by most to be far superior to Plautus’s Menaechmi, being performed simultaneously to far smaller audiences.
iv After Charles’s victory at Pavia, Clement was forced to realign himself with the Emperor. But only a few months later he was discovered plotting with the chief minister of the Duke of Milan to betray the Spaniards. When this scheme unraveled he went crawling back once again into the Spanish fold.
v Henry VIII of England was to have been included in the new alliance but backed out at the last minute.
vi One of the main points of The Art of War is that amateur soldiers are preferable to professionals. For instance, “a good man could not make war his only profession” (Book I, p. 17). Giovanni’s demonstration may have been intended to show Machiavelli the error of his ways.
vii It is impossible to say with any certainty what killed Machiavelli. Some modern theories include a ruptured appendix o
r a gastric ulcer. It is also likely that the medicine Machiavelli used to treat his stomach problems accelerated his death.
viii It also recalls some lines in La Mandragola where the hero Callimaco says, “Don’t you know how little good a man finds in the things he has longed for, compared with what he expected to find? On the other hand, the worst you can get from it is that you’ll die and go to Hell. But how many others have died! And in Hell how many worthy men there are!” (La Mandragola, IV, i, in Chief Work, vol. 2, p. 805.)
XIV
FINGER OF SATAN
“Behold here then the end and scope which I have proposed unto myself, that is, to confute the doctrine of Machiavelli.”
—INNOCENT GENTILLET, CONTRE-MACHIAVEL (1576)
MACHIAVELLI WAS INTERRED IN THE SMALL FAMILY chapel in the Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce, across the Arno River from his house in the city. The ceremony was private, attended by family and friends. In keeping with the life of a man of few means and modest achievements, the tomb was unassuming. Time, it seemed, would soon swallow up the name of the former Second Chancellor of Florence; at best he would be a footnote in the long and illustrious history of the republic he claimed to love more than his own soul but that had repaid his devotion with ingratitude.
This initial neglect might surprise visitors to Florence today who find themselves in a city that has come to embrace her patriotic son. Streets, hotels, and trattorie bear his name, and his sardonic likeness peeks out from many a souvenir shop and postcard stall. The change in attitude is embodied at Santa Croce itself, where Niccolò Machiavelli, comic playwright and midlevel civil servant, now resides in a tomb every bit as grand as those dedicated to such other Florentine greats as Cosimo de’ Medici, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarotti.i He was moved here from his obscure grave in the eighteenth century when the fame he had achieved in the years since his death made his anonymous burial plot seem an embarrassment. The man once dismissed as a second-rate hack willing to sell his principles to whoever would give him a job was now hailed as the great defender of Florentine liberties and a second Moses pointing his compatriots toward the as yet unborn Italian nation.
Unfortunately, the pompous monument captures nothing of the spirit of the man it commemorates. Atop the marble sarcophagus sits a beautiful woman, embodiment of the fatherland, holding a shield that carries a likeness of the former Second Chancellor; the supporting plinth is inscribed “Tanto nomini nullum par elogium” (“For so great a name, no words will suffice”), an ironic epitaph given the silence with which his death was greeted at the time. In fact the whole monument smacks of opportunism. It is a begrudging and belated recognition of the genius who had lived among them but whose achievement they could appreciate only after it was pointed out by others.
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Florentines can be forgiven their initial neglect on the grounds that in the summer of 1527 they had more important things on their mind. The cause of Florentine liberty, to which Machiavelli had devoted his life, was in peril, and the particular course he had charted very much in disrepute. He had followed a cautious path when the times demanded a more heroic stance. The events that led to his final disappointment were in fact the opening salvo in the last desperate struggle for Florentine independence, and the atmosphere of existential crisis that gripped the city in those days was hardly conducive to a dispassionate reassessment of his career.
Ironically, the government that replaced the discredited regime of Cardinal Passerini and the Medici bastards largely conformed to the model he set out in one of those writings—his “Treatise on the Reform of the Florentine Government,” commissioned by Cardinal Giulio in 1520—but this was not sufficient to rehabilitate a reputation tainted by his years of working with the enemy. The Savonarolan Great Council was restored, as Machiavelli had recommended, and those steering committees through which the Medici subverted the normal functioning of government were largely abolished. Real power was placed once again in the hands of the Gonfaloniere, while his term in office was limited to a single year to prevent him from assuming dictatorial power.
But the new republic was never given a fair chance. It was born in crisis and throughout its three years of existence never knew a minute of peace. This last great experiment in republican rule was doomed from the outset, as was the cause of Florentine independence. The small city-state that had sprung from the medieval commune was an anachronism in the era of the great nation-states. Florentines had taken advantage of the Pope’s defeat and imprisonment to throw off the hated yoke, but they remained babes surrounded by hungry wolves. Florence could maintain her independence only as long as the Emperor and the Pope remained mortal enemies, but that happy state of affairs was unlikely to last since it was in the interests of each to seek a modus vivendi.
In December 1527, Pope Clement was released from captivity. Among the most urgent items on his agenda was recapturing his native city. Rapprochement between the two universal rulers of Christendom was facilitated by another geopolitical crisis, one that had begun in far-off England, where King Henry VIII had fallen in love with the charming Anne Boleyn. To marry Anne, Henry had first to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon; the fact that Catherine was Charles V’s aunt, and that the power to dissolve the marriage lay in the hands of the Pope, meant that the Emperor had a powerful incentive to mend fences with Clement. In June 1529, Clement and Charles signed the Treaty of Barcelona, in which the Emperor pledged military assistance in restoring the Medici to Florence, with the tacit understanding that the Pope would return the favor by refusing Henry’s request for a divorce.ii In August, Florentines’ already slim hopes suffered another dispiriting blow when they learned that their longtime ally, Francis, had signed the Treaty of Cambrai with Charles, renouncing French claims in Italy.
The tiny republic was now effectively isolated. But despite the enormous odds, Florentines pulled together in one final heroic act of resistance. Like the last stand at the Alamo, the siege of Florence in 1530 is a tale of futile courage, a doomed twilight struggle whose romance belies the ugly reality of suffering, starvation, and disease. Had Machiavelli lived, he almost certainly would have been among the defenders on the walls, lending his expertise to the engineers who were strengthening the ramparts as the imperial army began to surround the city. Instead, overseeing the city’s fortifications was another great Florentine patriot, Michelangelo Buonarotti, whose talents, like those of his rival Leonardo, extended to the arts of war.
Not all Florentine patriots, however, stood with the republic against the papal army. Francesco Guicciardini, after some initial indecision, chose to side with the Medici and their Spanish patrons against his native city. Here one sees the essential difference between the aristocratic Guicciardini and his humble friend. Guicciardini belonged to the ottimati, the ruling elite of Florence that often found itself torn between fear of Medici tyranny and an even greater terror of the unruly people, while Machiavelli placed his faith in the collective wisdom of the popolo. When the government, under the pressure of war, became increasingly radicalized, threatening to ruin the ottimati through heavy taxation and outright confiscation, Guicciardini threw his support behind the besiegers.
By the summer of 1530 the blockade by the vastly superior forces of the Pope had reduced the city to near starvation, a condition to which Florentines might have succumbed sooner had the pressure on the food supply not been relieved by the death of thousands from the plague that was ravaging the poorer neighborhoods. In August the people of Florence reluctantly bowed to the inevitable and surrendered. Guicciardini was among the hard-liners in the new regime. In the bloody purge that followed the change in government he advocated the harshest measures against those now condemned as rebels, declaring “if one wishes to put this state on a proper footing, mild measures are useless.”
The restoration of the Medici on the strength of imperial arms effectively put an end to Florence as an independent state. Its subservient status was confirmed in 1532 when
Alessandro de’ Medici was named Duke of the Florentine Republic, a high-sounding title that made him little more than a feudal vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. The demise of Florence as a sovereign state closed a chapter in European history and in the history of Western civilization. It was in the small city-states of Italy, and Florence in particular, that the intellectual, scientific, and artistic revolution known as the Renaissance was born and flourished. And it was in the small city-state of Florence that Machiavelli learned the secrets of statecraft. The chaotic and often violent political culture, with its factions and class rivalries, temporary alliances and secret cabals, all struggling for control, convinced him that society conformed to no divine plan but was instead shaped and reshaped by personal ambition. In this bustling mercantile metropolis, humankind was revealed as an intensely political animal, hungry for power and jealous of his neighbors—a creature of infinite appetite and infinite possibility.
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