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Machiavelli, Niccolò

2023; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-19542-6_30

2198-9850

Diego Quaglioni,

Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527), Florentine humanist, diplomat, and historian, “the greatest political writer of the Renaissance” (Fassò 2001, 28). We know almost nothing about him until 1498, when, 4 years after the exile of the Medici family, the spiritual leader who led the renewal of the Florentine republic, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, was sentenced to death and a new government was elected in Florence, giving to the young Machiavelli the role of secretary of the second chancery of the republic, in charge of international relations. He served the republic for almost 15 years, undertaking many important diplomatic missions and writing a large number of official reports. In 1512 the Medici family came back to power in Florence, and Machiavelli was dismissed from the chancery, accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, and exiled in the contado, where in 1513 he wrote the little book De principatibus, i.e., The Prince (published only in 1532, after Machiavelli’s death). Later, around 1518–1519, he wrote the Discourses on Livy. In 1520 he began the composition of a broad treatise on the Art of War (Arte della guerra), where he proposed the establishment of a citizen army. In the same year, the Florentine cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (after 1523 Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to compose an official history of Florence (Florentine Histories), which in 1525 Machiavelli presented to the pope. He also wrote poems and plays, such as Clizia and La mandragola, as well as numerous other historical, literary, and occasional writings, as the fable Belfagor arcidiavolo. He died in Florence in 1527, shortly after the sack of Rome by the troops of Emperor Charles V (see Ridolfi 1978).