Chapter 6 Absolutist Thought in Italy and France
1. The Emergence of Absolutist Thought in Italy
By the 12th century, the Italian city-states had evolved a new form of government, new at least since ancient Greece.
Instead of the usual hereditary monarch as feudal overlord, basing his rule on a network
of feudal dominion over land areas, the Italian city-states became republics.
The commercial oligarchs who constituted the ruling elite of the city-state would elect
as ruler a salaried bureaucratic official, or podesta, whose term of office was short
and who therefore ruled at the pleasure of the oligarchy.
This city republican form of government began at Pisa in 1085 and had swept northern Italy
by the end of the 12th century.
Since the age of Charlemagne in the 9th century, the German or Holy Roman emperors were legally
supposed to be rulers of northern Italy.
For several centuries, however, this rule was merely pro forma, and the city-states
were de facto independent.
By the mid-twelfth century, the Italian city-states were the most prosperous countries in Europe.
Prosperity meant the standing temptation of wealth to loot, and so the German emperors,
beginning with Frederick Barbarossa in 1154, began a two-centuries-long series of attempts
to Conquer the Northern Italian Cities.
The incursions came to an end with the resounding defeat of Emperor Henry VII's expedition
of 1310 to 1313, followed by the abject withdrawal and dissolution of the imperial army of Louis
of Bavaria in 1327.
In the course of this chronic struggle, legal and political theorists arose in Italy to
to give voice to an eventually successful Italian determination to resist the encroachment
of the German monarchs.
They evolved the idea of the right of nations to resist imperial attempts at conquest by
other states, what would later be called the right of national independence or self-government
or national self-determination.
During the two centuries of conflict, the major ally of the Italian city-states against
the German Empire was the Pope, who in that era was able to put Papal armies into the
field.
As the Papal armies helped the cities roll back the Emperor's forces during the thirteenth
century, the city-states found to their growing chagrin that the Pope was beginning to assert
Temporal Power Over Northern Italy, and those claims could be backed up by the Papal armies
occupying large sections of the Italian peninsula.
For a while, some theorists toyed with the idea of reversing Italian policy and submitting
to the German emperor in order to rid themselves of the Papal threat.
And among this group was the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who advanced his pro-imperial
and anti-papal views in his Monarchy, written at the height of the imperial hopes for the
1310 expedition of Henry VII.
The end of the imperial threat soon afterwards, however, made this turn to the emperor impractical,
as well as unpalatable to the majority of Italians.
And so a new political theory was needed by the oligarchs of the Italian city-states.
Such a theory would assert the claims of the secular state, whether republic or monarchy
made little difference, to rule at will, unchecked by the age-old moral and often concrete authority
of the Catholic Church to Limit State Invasions of Natural Law and Human Rights.
In short, the Italian oligarchs needed a theory of state absolutism, of secular power, untrammeled.
The Church was to be impatiently relegated to the purely theological and religious area,
while secular affairs would be in the entirely separate hands of the State and its temporal
power.
This amounted to the politique doctrine, as it would come to prevail in late 16th century
France.
As we have seen above, the Italian oligarchs found their new theory in the writings of
the political theorist and university professor Marsiglio of Padua.
Marsiglio can therefore be considered the first absolutist in the modern western world,
and his Defensor Patches, 1324, the first main expression of absolutism.
While Marsiglio was the founding theorist of absolutism in the West, the specific form
of his own cherished polity quickly became obsolete, at least in Padua.
For Marsiglio was an adherent of oligarchical republicanism, but this form of government
proved short-lived and disappeared in Padua soon after the publication of his treatise.
During the latter half of the 13th century, the Italian city-states became riven between
the old oligarchs, the magnati, striving to retain their power, and the newly wealthy
but disenfranchised popolani, who kept attempting to gain power.
The upshot was that throughout Northern Italy during the last half of the 13th century,
beginning with Ferrara in 1264, power was seized by one man, one senior, one despot,
who imposed the hereditary rule of himself and his family.
In effect, hereditary monarchy had been established once again.
They were not called kings, since that would have been an absurdly grandiose title for
the territory of one city, and so they gave themselves other names, Permanent Lord, Captain
General, Duke, etc.
Florence was one of the few cities able to resist the new tide of one-man rule.
In 1328, four years after the publication of Defensor Pacis, the Della Scala family
finally managed to impose their control over the city of Padua.
The Della Scalas had taken over Verona in the 1260s, and now, after many years of conflict,
Congrande Della Scala was able to seize power in Padua as well.
To inaugurate a new tradition of fawning adulation of tyranny was the prominent Paduan literary
figure Ferreto de Ferretti, circa 1296 to 1337, who abandoned his previous republicanism
to compose a long Latin poem on the rise of the Della Scala.
The hero con grande had come, according to Ferretti, and brought peace and stability
Furetti at last to turbulent and torn Padua.
Furetti concluded his Panegyric by expressing the fervent hope that the descendants of Con
Grande della Scala would continue to hold their scepters for long years to come.
2.
Italian Humanism, The Republicans
The defenders of the old oligarchic republics countered the rise of the signori with a pro-republican
absolutism of their own.
This development began in the teaching of rhetoric.
By the early 12th century, the University of Bologna and other Italian centers for training
lawyers had developed courses in rhetoric, originally the art and style of writing letters,
to which was later added the art of public speaking.
By the first half of the thirteenth century, the professors of rhetoric were including
direct political commentary in their lessons and handbooks.
One popular form was a propagandistic history of their particular cities, glorifying the
city and its rulers and expressly devoted to inculcating the ideology of support for
the ruling elite of the city.
The most prominent early master of this genre was the Bolognese rhetorician Boncampagno
da Cigna circa 1165 to 1240, whose most popular work was The Siege of Ancona, 1201 and 1202.
Another prominent form developed by Italian rhetoricians in the second half of the thirteenth
century was advice books for rulers and city magistrates, in which political advice was
directed to the rulers.
The most important early advice book was John of Viterbo's The Government of Cities, which
he wrote in the 1240s after serving as a judge under the elected ruler or podesta of Florence.
Viterbo, however, was not a full absolutist, since his determinedly moral approach counseled
the ruler always to pursue virtue and justice, and to avoid vice and crime.
Whereas the Italian teaching of rhetoric at Bologna and elsewhere was narrowly practical,
the French professors of rhetoric in the thirteenth century upheld the classical Greek and Roman
and Writers as Models of Style. The French method was taught at the University of Paris
and particularly at Orléans. By the second half of the thirteenth century, Italian rhetoricians
who had studied in France brought the new approach to Italy, and the broader, more humanistic
approach quickly swept the field, dominating even the University of Bologna. Soon these
Early humanists began to study the ideas as well as the style of the classical poets,
historians and orators, and began to enliven their political theory with classical references
and models. The most important of these early humanist
rhetoricians was the Florentine Brunetto Latini, circa 1220 to 1294. Exiled from his native
of Florence, Latini went to France at the age of 40 and imbibed the works of Cicero
and the French rhetorical approach. During his exile, Latini composed his leading work,
The Books of Treasure, which introduced Cicero and other classical writers into the traditional
works of Italian rhetoric. On his return to Florence in 1266, Latini also translated and
published some of Cicero's major works.
Particularly important in the new learning was the University of Padua, beginning with the great judge Lovato Lovati, 1241-1309,
whom no less a poet than Petrarch, mid-14th century, called the greatest Italian poet up to that time.
The most important of Lovati's disciples was the fascinating character Alberto Musato, 1261-1329.
Lawyer, politician, historian, dramatist and poet, Musato was the leader of the Republican faction in Padua,
the main opposition to the lengthy campaign by the Della Scala family to seize power in that city.
Ironically enough, Ferretto de Ferretti, the panegyrist of the Della Scala victory, had been a fellow-disciple in the Lovati circle.
Musato wrote two histories of Italy. His most prominent literary effort was the notable Latin verse play Etcherinus, 1313 and 1314, the first secular drama written since the Classical era.
Here, Moussotto employed the new rhetoric as politician and propagandist.
He explains in the introduction to the play that his chief purpose was to convey with lamentations
against tyranny, specifically, of course, the tyranny of the Della Scala's.
The political propaganda value of Echerinus was quickly recognized by the Paduan oligarchy,
which crowned Musato with a laurel wreath in 1315 and issued a decree ordering the play
to be read aloud each year before the assembled populace of the city.
The new study of the classics also gave rise to sophisticated city chronicles such as The
Chronicle of Florence, written in the early 14th century by Dino Campagni, circa 1255
1324, a prominent lawyer and politician of the city. Indeed, Compagny was himself one
of the rulers of the Florentine oligarchy. Another important example of Republican rhetorical
humanism was Bonvacin della Riva's book, The Glories of the City of Milan, 1288. Bonvacin
was a leading professor of rhetoric in Milan.
All these writers—Latini, Musato, Campagni and others—were concerned to work out a
political theory in defense of oligarchical republican rule.
They concluded that there are two basic reasons for the rise of the hated signori—the emergence
of factions within the city, and love of greed and luxury.
Both sets of ills were, of course, an implicit attack on the rise of the nouveau riche popolani,
and the challenge of the popolani against the old republican magnates.
Without the new wealth of the popolani or the rise of their factions, the old oligarchy
would have gone on their way undisturbed in the quiet exercise of power.
Lompani put it baldly, Florence was disrupted because the minds of the false popolani had
been corrupted to do wrong for the sake of gain.
Latini sees the source of evil in those who covet riches, and Musato attributes the death
of the Paduan Republic to the lust for money which undermined civic responsibility.
Not the emphasis on the lust or coveting of money, that is, by new wealth.
Old, and therefore good, wealth, that of the magnates, does not require lust or coveting
since it is already in the possession of the oligarchy.
The way to end factions, according to the humanists, was for the people to put aside
Personal Interests for Unity on behalf of the Public or Civic Interest of the Common
Good
Latini set the tone by bringing in Plato and Aristotle, Plato for instructing us that we
ought to consider the common profit above everything else, and Aristotle for stressing
that if each man follows his own individual will, the government of men's lives is destroyed
and Totally Dissolved.
Blather about the public interest and the common good may be all very well until the
time comes to interpret in practice what these cloudy concepts are supposed to mean, and,
in particular, who is supposed to interpret their meaning.
To the humanists, the answer is clear, the virtuous ruler.
Trust virtuous rulers, trust in their virtue, and the problem is solved.
How are the people supposed to go about selecting virtuous rulers?
That was not the sort of embarrassing question posed or considered by the Italian humanists,
for that would have led ineluctably to considering institutional mechanisms which might promote
the selection of virtuous rulers, or, worse yet, prevent the selection of the vicious.
Any such tampering with institutions would have led to checks on the absolute power of
rulers, and that was not the mindset of these humanist apologists for the sovereign power
of oligarchy.
The humanists were clear, however, that virtue inheres in the individuals and not in noble
and noble families per se.
While it was surely sensible of them to avoid centering virtue in hereditary noble families,
it also meant that the virtuous ruler could personally reign unchecked by any traditional
family ties or commitments.
The only check offered to ensure the virtue of rulers, the only real criterion for such
Such Virtue was if the rulers followed the advice of these humanists, as elaborated in
their advice books.
Happily, while Latini and his humanist followers established all the preconditions for absolute
rule, they did not proceed to endorse absolutism itself.
For, like John of Viterbo before them, they insisted that the ruler must be truly virtuous,
CLEAVING TO HONESTY AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE
Like John of Viterbo and others in what has been called the Mirror of Prince's Literature,
Latini and his followers insisted that the ruler must avoid all temptations to fraud
and dishonesty, and that he serve as a model of integrity.
To Latini and the others, true virtue and the self-interest of the ruler were one and
are the same.
Honesty was not only morally correct, it was also, in a later phrase, the best policy.
Justice, probity, being loved by his subjects rather than being feared, all would also serve
to maintain the ruler in power.
Seeming to be just and honest, Latini made clear, was not enough.
The ruler, both for the sake of virtue and for keeping his power, must actually be as
he wishes to seem, for he will be grossly deceived if he tries to gain glory by false
methods.
There was, in short, no conflict between morality and utility for the ruler.
The ethical turned out, harmoniously, to be the useful.
The next great burst of Italian humanism came in the city of Florence nearly a century later.
The independence of Florence, the stronghold of oligarchic republicanism, was threatened
for three-quarters of a century, from the 1380s to the 1450s, by the Visconti family
of Milan.
John Galeazzo Visconti, Signor and Duke of Milan, set out in the 1380s to reduce all
northern Italy to his subjection. By 1402, Visconti had conquered all northern Italy
except Florence, and that city was saved by the sudden death of the Duke. Soon, however,
And Galeazzo's son, Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, launched the War of Conquest again.
All-out war between Florence and Imperial Milan continued from 1423 until 1454, when
Florence induced Milan to recognize the independence of the Florentine Republic.
The embattled status of the Florentine Republic led to a revival of republican humanism.
While these early 15th century Florentine humanists were more philosophically oriented
and more optimistic than their early 14th century Paduan and other Italian predecessors,
their political theory was very much the same.
All these leading Florentine humanists, much better known to later historians than the
by the earlier Paduans, had similar biographies. They were trained as lawyers and rhetoricians,
and they became either professors of rhetoric and or top bureaucrats in Florence, in other
cities, or at the papal court at the Vatican. Thus the doyen of the Florentine humanists
was Coluccio Salutati, 1331-1406, who studied rhetoric at Bologna and became Chancellor
at various Italian cities in the last three decades of his life at Florence.
Of Salutati's main disciples, Leonardo Bruni, 1369-1444, studied law and rhetoric in Florence,
became secretary at the papal curia, and then became a top bureaucrat and finally Chancellor
of Florence from 1427 until his death.
Pierre Paolo Vergherio, 1370-1444, began training in law in Florence, and then rose
to secretary at the Papal Curia, and, similarly, Poggio Braxiolini, 1380-1459, studied civil
law at Bologna and Florence, and then became a professor of rhetoric at the Papal Curia.
The second generation of the salutati circle also followed similar careers and had kindred views.
Here should be mentioned the distinguished architect Leon Battista degli Alberti, 1404-1472,
of the great banking family, who earned a doctorate in canon law at Bologna and then
became a papal secretary.
Giannuzzo Manetti, 1396-1459, was educated in law and humanistic studies in Florence
and then served for two decades in the Florentine bureaucracy, later becoming secretary at the
papal curia and finally secretary to the King of Naples.
and Matteo Palmieri, 1406-1475, became a top bureaucrat for five decades in Florence,
including eight different ambassadorships.
3. Italian Humanism, The Monarchists
The political and economic decline of the Italian city-states after the turn to the
The Atlantic in the late 15th and 16th centuries was marked in foreign affairs by the repeated
invasions of Italy by armies of the burgeoning nation states of Europe.
The French kings invaded and conquered Italy repeatedly from the 1490s on, and from the
early 1520s to the 1550s, the armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire fought over Italy
as a Battleground for Conquest.
While Florence and the remainder of northern Italy were being invaded from without, republicanism
throughout Italy finally gave way to despotic one-man rule of the various signori.
Whereas republican forces, headed by the Colonna family, had managed to deprive the popes of
of their Temporal Power during the mid-15th century. By the end of that century, the Popes,
led by Alexander VI, 1492-1503, and Julius II, 1503-1513, managed to reassert themselves
as unchallenged temporal monarchs over Rome and the Papal States. In Florence, the powerful
The Cosimo de' Medici family of bankers and politicians began slowly but surely to build
up their political power until they could become hereditary monarchs, signori.
The process began as early as the 1430s with the great Cosimo de' Medici and culminated
in the seizure of power in 1480 by Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Lorenzo ensured his one-man rule by setting up a Council of Seventy with complete control
over the Republic, all comprising his own supporters.
The Republican forces fought back, however, and the struggle lasted another half century.
In 1494, the Republican oligarchs forced Lorenzo's son Piero into exile after he had surrendered
Florence to the French.
Republican rule collapsed in 1512 when the Medici took command with the aid of Spanish
troops.
Medici power then reigned until 1527 when another Republican revolution drove them out.
But two years later, the Medici Pope, Clement VII, induced the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor,
Charles V to invade and conquer Florence on the Medici's behalf. Charles did so in 1530,
and the Florentine Republic was no more. Clement VII, left in charge of Florence by the Emperor,
appointed Alessandro de Medici ruler of the city for life, and Alessandro and all his
heirs were also named lords of the city in perpetuity. The government of Florence dissolved
dissolved into the Medici Grand Dukie of Tuscany, and the Medici's ran Tuscany as monarchs for two more centuries.
The final triumph of the Signori put an end to the optimism of the early 15th century Republican humanists,
whose successors began to grow cynical about politics and to advocate lives of quiet contemplation.
Other humanists, however, seeing on which side their bread was buttered, executed a quick shift from praising republican oligarchy to lauding one-man monarchy.
We have already seen Ferretto Ferretti's swiftness in composing a panegyric to the Della Scala tyranny and Padua.
Similarly, around 1400, the peripatetic and usually republican P. P. Vergerio, during his stay in monarchical Padua, composed a work, On Monarchy, in which he hailed that system as the best form of government.
Monarchy, after all, ended tumult and the ceaseless conflict of factions and parties.
It brought peace, safety, security, and the defense of innocence.
Also, with the victory of Visconti absolutism in Milan, the Milanese humanists quickly fell
into line, composing panegyrics to the glory of princely and especially of Visconti rule.
Prince Huberto de Sembrio, circa 1350-1427, dedicated four books on local government to
Filippo Maria Visconti in the 1420s, while his son, Pierre Candido de Sembrio, 1392-1477,
keeping up the family tradition, wrote a eulogy in praise of the city of Milan in 1436.
With the triumph of the Rule of the Signore throughout Italy in the late 15th and early
16th centuries, pro-Princely humanism reached a peak of enthusiasm.
The humanists proved to be nothing if not flexible in adjusting their theories to adapt
from republican to princely rule.
The humanists started turning out two kinds of advice books, to the prince and to the
The Courtier, on how he should conduct himself toward that prince.
By far the most celebrated advice book for courtiers was The Book of the Courtier by
Baldessare Castiglione, 1478-1529.
Born in a village near Mantua, Castiglione was educated at Milan and entered the service
of the Duke of that city.
In 1504 he became attached to the court of the Duke of Urbino, which he served faithfully
as diplomat and military commander for two decades.
Then in 1524 Castiglione was passed over to the Emperor Charles V in Spain, and for his
services Charles made him bishop of Avila.
Castiglione composed the book of the courtier as a series of dialogues between 1513 and
in 1518 and the book was first published in 1528 in Venice.
The work became one of the most widely read books in the 16th century, known to Italians
as il libro d'oro, clearly touching a nerve in the culture of that epoch in its description
and celebration of the qualities of the perfect courtier and gentleman.
The Florentine humanists of the early 15th century had been optimistic for man, for his
quest for virtus or virtu or excellence, and for the honor, praise and glory which more
traditional Christians had thought due only to God.
It was therefore easy for the later 16th century humanists to transfer that quest for excellence
Humanists and Glory from individual man to being the sole function of the prince.
Thus Castiglione declares that the courtier's chief goal, the end to which he is directed,
must be to advise his prince so that the latter may attain the pinnacle of glory and make
himself famous and illustrious in the world.
The earlier republican humanists had nurtured the ideal of liberty, by which they meant
not the modern concept of individual rights, but republican, generally oligarchial, self-government.
Castiglione expressly condemns such old notions on behalf of the monarchical virtues of peace,
absence of discord and total obedience to the absolute prince.
In the book of the courtier, one of the characters in the dialogue protests that princes hold
They hold their subjects in the closest bondage so that liberty is gone.
Castiglione shrewdly counters, in age-old terms used in numerous apologia for despotism,
that such liberty is only a plea that we be allowed to live as we like, rather than according
to good laws.
Since liberty is only licensed then, a monarch is needed to establish his people in such
A leading writer of advice books to both the prince and the courtier, and a man who bears
the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first mercantilist, was the Neapolitan duke
Diomede Carapha, 1407-1487. Carapha wrote The Perfect Courtier while serving at the court
of Ferdinand, King of Naples in the 1480s, as well as the Office of a Good Prince during
the same period.
In the perfect courtier, Carapha set the tone for Castiglione's enormously influential
work a generation later.
In his Office of a Good Prince, Carapha set the model for the form of economic advice
presented by consultant administrators.
As in many later works, the book begins with principles of general policy and defense,
then goes on to administration of justice, to public finance, and finally economic policy
proper.
In detailed policies, Caraffa's advice is relatively sensible, and not nearly as totally
power-oriented or as statist as later mercantilists advising fully-fledged nation-states.
The budget should be balanced, since forced loans are comparable to robbery and theft,
and taxes should be equitable and moderate in order not to oppress labor or drive capital
from the country. Business should be left alone, but, on the other hand, Caraffa called
for subsidies of industry, agriculture and commerce by the state, as well as substantial
and Federal Welfare Expenditures. In contrast to the later mercantilists, foreign merchants declared caraffa should be made welcome because their activities are highly useful to the country.
But there is no hint in caraffa in contrast to the scholastics of any desire to understand or analyze market processes.
The only important question was how the ruler can manipulate them.
As Schumpeter wrote of carafe, the normal processes of economic life harbored no problem for carafe, the only problem was how to manage and improve them.
Schumpeter also attributes to carafe the first conception of a national economy, of the entire country as one large business unit managed by the prince.
Caraffa was, so far as I know, the first to deal comprehensively with the economic problems of the nascent modern state, the fundamental idea that Caraffa clothed in his conception of the Good Prince, of a national economy which is not simply the sum total of the individual households and firms, or of the groups and classes within the borders of a state.
It is conceived as a sort of sublimated business unit, something that has a distinct existence and distinct interests of its own and needs to be managed like a big farm.
Perhaps the leading work among the new genre of advice books to princes was that of Francesco Patrizzi, 1412-1494, in his The Kingdom and the Education of the King,
Written in the 1470s and dedicated to the first activist pope, Sixtus IV, engaged in restoring the temporal power of the papacy in Rome and the Papal States, a Sienese humanist, Patrizzi, was made Bishop of Gaeta.
As in the other humanist advice books, Patrizzi sees the locus of vertus in the prince.
But it should be noted that along with his fellow pro-prince humanists, as well as the
earlier republicans, Patrizzi's virtuous prince is very much the model of Christian
virtue.
The prince must be a staunch Christian, and must always seek and cleave to justice.
In particular, the prince must always be scrupulously honest and honorable.
He is never to engage in deceit, never to tell a lie, and never to permit others to
tell lies.
Alone with his fellow later humanists, however, Patrizzi speaks of the prince as having a
different set of virtues from his more passive subjects.
As the maker of history and the seeker after glory, for example, the prince is not supposed
The triumph of the Signori led to many advice books entitled simply The Prince.
One was written by Bartolomeo Sacchi, 1421-1481, in 1471, in honor of the Duke of Mantua, and
An important one by Giovanni Pontano, 1426-1503, who introduced himself to King Ferdinand of
Naples by writing The Prince in his honor in 1468.
In return, King Ferdinand made Pontano his secretary for more than 20 years.
Pontano continued to extol his patron in two separate treatises praising the twin princely
Virtues in Ferdinand of Generosity and Lavish Splendor.
In On Liberality, Pontano declares that nothing is more undignified in a prince than lack
of generosity.
And in On Magnificence, Pontano insists that creating noble-building, splendid churches
and theaters is a crucial attribute of princely glory, and lauds King Ferdinand for the magnificence
and Majesty of the Public Building He Had Constructed
4.
Old Nick, Preacher of Evil or First Value-Free Political Scientist
The Italian humanists had propounded the doctrine of absolute political rule, first by Republican
oligarchs and next by the glorified despot, the monarch or prince.
But one crucial point remained to free the ruler of all moral shackles and to allow and
even glorify the unchecked and untrammeled rule of royal whim.
For while the humanists would hear of no institutional check on state rule, one critical stumbling
block still remained, Christian virtue.
The ruler, the humanists all admonished, must be Christian, must cleave always to justice,
and must be honest and honorable.
What was needed then to complete the development of absolutist theory was a theoretician to
fearlessly break the ethical chains that still bound the ruler to the claims of moral principle.
That man was the Florentine bureaucrat Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, in one of the most
influential works of political philosophy ever written, The Prince.
Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence to a moderately well-off Tuscan noble family.
His personal preference was clearly for the old oligarchic republic rather than for the
Signore, and in 1494, when the Republicans kicked the Medici's out of Florence, young
Niccolo entered the city bureaucracy.
Rising rapidly in the government, Machiavelli became secretary of the Council of Ten, which
managed the foreign policy and the wars of Florence.
He held this important post until the Medici's reconquered Florence in 1512, serving in a
and a series of diplomatic and military missions.
Machiavelli was nothing if not flexible, and this philosopher extraordinaire of opportunism
greeted the return of the hated Medici's by attempting to ingratiate himself in their
eyes.
During the year 1513 he wrote The Prince, superficially yet another in the traditional
The Medici's, however, did not take the bait, and the only thing left for Machiavelli was
is to embark on a literary career and to drift back into Republican conspiracies.
Machiavelli took part in conspiratorial Republican meetings at the Orocellari Gardens on the
outskirts of Florence, owned by the aristocrat Cosimo Rucellai.
It was at the Orocellari Gardens that Machiavelli discussed the drafts of his second most important
book, the discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livy, written from 1514 to 1519.
Niccolo Machiavelli was reviled throughout Europe during the 16th century and on into
the next two centuries.
He was considered to be someone unique in the history of the West, a conscious preacher
Preacher of Evil, a diabolic figure who had unleashed the demons in the world of politics.
The English used his given name as a synonym for the devil, Old Nick.
As Macaulay put it, out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out
of his Christian name, a synonym for the devil.
In modern times, Machiavelli's reputation as a preacher of evil has been replaced by
by the admiration of political scientists as the founder of their discipline.
For Machiavelli had cast off outdated moralism to look at power coolly and hard-headedly.
A tough-minded realist, he was the pioneer developer of modern, positive, value-free
political science.
As the mercantilist, power-oriented founder of modern scientific method, Sir Francis Bacon
Well, which was Machiavelli, a teacher of evil or a value-free political scientist?
Let us see.
At first glance, the prince was very much like other mirror-of-princes advice books
of the late 15th century humanists.
The prince was supposed to seek virtue or excellence, and was supposed to pursue honor,
glory and fame in the development of such excellence.
But within this traditional form, Machiavelli wrought a radical and drastic transformation,
creating in this way a new paradigm for political theory.
For what Machiavelli did was to redefine the critical concept of virtue.
For the humanists, as for Christians and classical theorists alike, virtue, excellence, was the
fulfillment of the traditional classical and Christian virtues, honesty, justice, benevolence,
etc.
For old Nick, on the contrary, virtue in the ruler or prince, and for the late humanists,
after all, it was only the prince who counted, was, simply and terribly, as Professor Skinner
In short, the overriding, if not the only, goal for the prince was to maintain and extend
his power, his rule over the state.
Keeping and expanding his power is the prince's goal, his virtue, and therefore any means
necessary to achieve that goal becomes justified.
In his illuminating discussion of Machiavelli, Professor Skinner tries to defend him against
the charge of being a preacher of evil.
Machiavelli did not praise evil per se, Skinner tells us.
Indeed, other things being equal, he probably preferred the orthodox Christian virtues.
It is simply that when those virtues became inconvenient, that is, when they ran up against
the overriding goal of keeping state power, the Christian virtues had to be set aside.
The more naive humanists also favored the prince's keeping his state and achieving greatness
and glory.
They believed, however, that this could only be done by always maintaining and cleaving
to the Christian virtues.
In contrast, Machiavelli realized that cleaving to justice, honesty and other Christian virtues
might sometimes, or even most of the time, conflict with the goal of maintaining and
expanding state power.
For Machiavelli, orthodox virtues would then have to go by the board.
Skinner sums up Machiavelli as follows.
Murray's final sense of what it is to be a man of virtue and his final words of advice
to the prince can thus be summarized by saying that he tells the prince to ensure above all
that he becomes a man of flexible disposition.
He must be capable of varying his conduct from good to evil and back again, as fortune
and circumstances dictate.
Professor Skinner, however, has a curious view of what preaching evil might really be.
Who in the history of the world, after all, and outside a Dr. Fu Manchu novel, has actually
lauded evil per se, and counseled evil and vice at every step of life's way?
Preaching evil is to counsel precisely as Machiavelli has done.
Be good so long as goodness doesn't get in the way of something you want, in the case
of the ruler that something being the maintenance and expansion of power.
What else but such flexibility can the preaching of evil be all about?
Following straight away from power as the overriding goal and from his realism about
Power and Standard Morality being often in conflict, is Machiavelli's famous defense
of deception and mendacity on the part of the prince.
For then, the prince is advised always to appear to be moral and virtuous in the Christian
manner, since that enhances his popularity, but to practice the opposite, if necessary,
to maintain power.
Thus Machiavelli stressed the value of appearances of what Christians and other moralists call hypocrisy.
The prince, he writes, must be willing to become a great liar and deceiver, taking advantage of all the credulous.
For men are so simple that the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.
Or, in the immortal words of P. T. Barnum centuries later, there's a sucker born every minute.
And, again, in praising fraud and deceit, Machiavelli writes that contemporary experience
shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their
word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end,
have overcome those abiding by honest principles.
or, in the words of another astute American social critic, nice guys finish last.
There is, of course, an inner contradiction in a preacher of deceit candidly broadcasting
such views to one and all, for as rulers begin to adopt a pragmatic philosophy, which is
their natural inclination in any case, the deluded public may begin to awaken to the
and the true state of affairs. The suckers may wise up. And then continuing deceit by the ruling class might well prove counterproductive.
The great liars and deceivers might no longer find so many subjects so ready to be deceived.
Niccolo Machiavelli, therefore, was unquestionably a new phenomenon in the Western world, a conscious preacher of evil to the ruling class.
What of his alleged contributions in founding a hard-nosed, realistic, value-free political science?
First, one of his main contributions has been claimed to be the overwhelming use of power, of force and violence, by the rulers of state.
Machiavelli was scarcely the first political philosopher who understood that force and violence are at the heart of state power.
Previous theorists, however, were anxious to have that power curbed by ancient or Christian virtues.
But there is a certain refreshing realism in Machiavelli's total casting off the cloak of virtue in politics
and in his seeing the state plainly as unadorned brutal force in the service of sheer power.
There is a profound sense, too, in which Machiavelli was the founder of modern political science.
For the modern policy scientist, political scientist, economist, sociologist, or whatever,
is a person who has put himself quite comfortably in the role of advisor to the prince, or,
more broadly, to the ruling class.
As a pure technician, then, this counselor realistically advises the ruling class on
how to achieve their goals, which, as Machiavelli sees, boils down to achieving greatness and
glory by maintaining and expanding their power.
The modern policy scientists eschew moral principles as being unscientific and therefore
outside their sphere of interest.
In all this, modern social science is a faithful follower of the wily Florentine opportunist.
But in one important sense, the two differ.
For Niccolo Machiavelli never had the presumption or the cunning to claim to be a true scientist
because he is value free.
There is no pretend value freedom in old Nick.
He has simply replaced the goals of Christian virtue by another contrasting set of moral
principles, that of maintaining and expanding the power of the prince.
As Skinner writes, it is often claimed that the originality of Machiavelli's argument
lies in the fact that he divorces politics from morality and, in consequence, emphasizes
the autonomy of politics.
But the difference between Machiavelli and his contemporaries cannot adequately be characterized
as a difference between a moral view of politics and a view of politics as divorced from morality.
The essential contrast is rather between two different moralities, two rival and incompatible
accounts of what ought ultimately to be done.
And social scientists, in contrast, pride themselves on being realistic and value-free.
But in this, ironically, they are far less realistic, or perhaps less candid, than their
Florentine mentor.
For as Machiavelli knew full well, in taking on their role of advisor to the rulers of
of State, the value-free scientist is willy-nilly committing himself to the end and, therefore,
to the overriding morality of strengthening the power of those rulers.
In advocating public policy if nowhere else, value-freedom is a snare and a delusion.
Old Nick was either too honest or too much of a realist even to consider thinking otherwise.
Niccolo Machiavelli, therefore, was both the founder of modern political science and a
notable preacher of evil.
In casting out Christian or natural law morality, however, he did not presume to claim to be
value-free as do his modern followers.
He knew full well that he was advocating the new morality of subordinating all other considerations
to Power and to the Reasons of State Machiavelli was the philosopher and apologist par excellence
for the untrammeled, unchecked power of the absolute state.
Some historians like to contrast the bad Machiavelli of the prince with the good Machiavelli of
his later, though less influential, discourses.
Failing to convince the Medici's of his change of heart, Machiavelli reverted in the discourses
to his republican leanings. But the old nick of the discourses is in no sense transformed
by goodness. He is simply adapting his doctrine to a republican as against a monarchical polity.
Obviously, as a republican, Machiavelli can no longer stress the virtue and the greatness
of the Prince, and so he shifts ground to a kind of collective virtue by the community
as a whole, except that in the case of the community, of course, virtue can no longer
be doing great deeds and maintaining one man's power.
It now becomes acting always in the public good, or the common good, and always subordinating
In contrast, Machiavelli condemns the pursuit of private interest as corruption.
In short, Machiavelli is still holding the maintenance and expansion of state power to
be the highest good, except that now the state is oligarchic and republican.
What he is really preaching is similar to the creed of earlier Republican humanists.
Each individual and group subordinates itself and obeys without question the decrees of
the oligarchic ruling class of the Republican city-state.
Niccolo Machiavelli is the same preacher of evil in the discourses as he had been in the
Prince.
One of the first atheist writers, Machiavelli's attitude toward religion in the discourses
is typically cynical and manipulative.
Religion is helpful, he opined, in keeping subjects united and obedient to the state,
and thus those princes and those republics which desire to remain free from corruption
should above all else maintain incorrupt the ceremonies of their religion.
Man could also make a positive contribution if it glorified strength and other warlike
qualities, but unfortunately, Christianity has sapped men's strength by preaching humility
and contemplation.
In a tirade anticipating Nietzsche, Machiavelli charged that Christian morality has glorified
humble and contemplative men, and that this peaceful spirit has led to existing corruption.
Machiavelli thundered that citizens can only achieve virtue if their highest goal is maintaining
and expanding the state, and that therefore they must subordinate Christian ethics to
that end.
Specifically, they must be prepared to abandon the restraints of Christian ethics and be
willing to enter on the path of wrongdoing in order to maintain the state.
The state must always take precedence.
Therefore, any attempt to judge politics or government on a scale of Christian ethics must be abandoned.
As Machiavelli puts it with crystal clarity and great solemnity at the end of his final discourse,
when the safety of one's country depends upon the decision to be taken,
No considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail.
Machiavelli's views and the essential unity with his outlook in the prints are shown in his discussion in the discourses of Romulus, the legendary founder of the city of Rome.
The fact that Romulus murdered his brother and others is justified by Machiavelli's view that only one man should impose the founding constitution of a republic.
Machiavelli's wily conflation of the public good with the private interests of the ruler is shown in the following mendacious passage.
A sagacious legislator of a republic, therefore, whose object is to promote the public good
and not his private interests, should concentrate all authority in himself.
In such concentration the end of establishing the state excuses any necessary means.
A wise mind will never censure anyone for taking any action, however extraordinary,
which may be of service in the organizing of a kingdom or the constituting of a republic.
Machiavelli concludes with what he calls the sound maxim that reprehensible actions may
be excused by their effects, and that when the effect is good, as it was in the case
of Romulus, it always excuses the action.
Throughout the discourses, Machiavelli preaches the virtue of deceit for the ruler.
He insists also, in contrast to previous humanists, that it is better for a ruler to be feared
than to be loved, and that punishment is far better than clemency in dealing with his subjects.
Furthermore, when a ruler finds that a whole city is rebelling against his rule, by far
the best course of action is to wipe them out altogether.
Thus, Professor Skinner is perceptive and correct when he concludes, in regard to the
prints and the discourses, that the underlying political morality of the two books is thus
the same. The only change in Machiavelli's basic stance arises out of the changing focus
of his political advice. Whereas he was mainly concerned in the prints with shaping the conduct
of Individual Princes, he is more concerned in the discourses with offering his counsel
to the whole body of the citizens.
The assumptions underlying his advice, however, remain the same as before.
Machiavelli is still, at one and the same time, a preacher of evil and a founder of
of Modern Political and Policy Science.