Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XIII
Florence is besieged by Julius' Spanish allies and the Republic falls, bringing the return of the previously deposed Medici. Upon Julius's death, Giovanni Medici is named Pope (taking the name Leo X) and Florence is once again ascendent.
Machiavelli's connection to the former Republican government of Florence places him under suspicion and he is arrested. At first, he cannot believe he can so quickly be disgraced -- "January does not vex me, provided February favors me." But he is falsely implicated in a plot, imprisoned, and tortured.
Machiavelli's friends arrange for his freedom and he goes into exile. There, impoverished, he consorts by day with rural tradesmen -- a butcher, a miller and two furnace makers -- but at night figuratively dons "royal and Curial robes" and mentally enters the world high politics, the world of The Prince.
The Prince, Roeder suggests, is in one sense Machiavelli's application for employment by the Medici, specifically Giuliano Medici who seeks to parlay his brother's Papacy into a state much as Caesare Borgia attempted. In line with this, The Prince is also an attempt to rehabilitate the memory of Caesare Borgia and his campaign to create a powerful state from Italy's patchwork of squabbling, divided city states. Ironically, Giuliano will be more influenced by Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, which is being written at the same time in another corner of Italy.
Roeder suggests that, in the end, The Prince "unwittingly confirms Savanarola," replacing the Friar's religious faith with a faith in the State and thus equally vulnerable to the liberatory spirit of the era. It is, thus, backwards looking, doomed to failure and "a melancholy work."
"For the salvation of Italy [Machiavelli] prescribed a code of cultured savagery, which was too primitive to be sucessfully practiced by a race which, for better or for worse, had outgrown barbarism."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment