Machiavelli - The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford-Warburg Studies)

OXFORD–WARBURG STUDIES General Editors C H A R L E S H O P E and I A N M A C L E A N

Oxford–Warburg Studies comprise works of original research on the intellectual and cultural history of Europe. They aim to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the study of medieval, renaissance, and early modern Europe, and in particular to explore both visual and literary aspects of the classical tradition.

OXFORD–WARBURG STUDIES

Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy Sydney Anglo (Second edition) Giotto and the Orators Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350–1450 Michael Baxandall (Paperback) Joseph Scaliger A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship I Textual Criticism II Historical Chronology Anthony Grafton The Palazzo Vecchio 1298–1532 Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic Nicolai Rubinstein The Government of Florence under the Medici 1434–1494 Nicolai Rubinstein (Second edition) The Apocryphal Apocalypse The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment Alastair Hamilton Children of the Promise The Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization of Youths in Florence 1427–1785 Lorenzo Polizzotto Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century A. D. Momigliano (Re-issued)

MACHIAVELLI–THE FIRST CENTURY Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance

SYDNEY ANGLO

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Sydney Anglo 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–926776–6

978–0–19–926776–7

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

PREFACE Prefaces are very difficult to write and, like many authors, I tend to leave their composition until the last possible moment. I always hope, in vain, that inspiration will strike and that I shall be able to give some novel twist to what is customarily a dry recital of all the people who have in any way contributed to a work but who are in no way responsible for its shortcomings. Of course, I should greatly prefer to be able to blame my shortcomings upon others but, although this book has been decades in the making, on the whole I have worked by myself, in my own way, and at my own tempo. There are thus only a few individuals I should like to mention: but they have, in various ways, been important to me. One particular debt is to the late Nicolai Rubinstein who, over many years, never failed to stir my conscience at the tardy progress of this book and never failed to encourage me to bestir myself. I bitterly regret that he did not live to see the finished work, but hope that his many surviving friends and pupils will not think it unworthy of his memory. Another debt which I am anxious to record is to a far less famous scholar who died over seventy-five years ago. This was John Wesley Horrocks (1877–1930), whose unpublished thesis, ‘Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion’ (1908), has been ransacked by generations of scholars—but only occasionally with due acknowledgement. After the Great War, Horrocks became a lecturer at Southampton College, where he remained until his early death at the age of 52, having published a volume in the Southampton Records Society, some papers on the voyage of the Mayflower, and a history of mercantilism. I do not know why he never revised and published his Machiavellian researches, but it was his thesis which first encouraged me to pursue Machiavelli’s fortunes and, although my own studies have gone in many directions not considered by Horrocks, I still regard his work with admiration and even affection. Now rather tattered, eccentrically typed on a variety of papers in different coloured and sometimes fading inks, the thesis is

vi

PREFACE

remarkable as a pioneering study of a vast range of English primary sources in their historical context. I am grateful to my brother Andrew who, aided and abetted by his wife Avril, followed up one especially tricky line of enquiry and saved me a good deal of time and energy. Two old friends have been very helpful over a long period: Rhys Robinson, who has a wonderful knack of finding unexpected historical items in unexpected places; and Cecil Clough, whose extraordinary command of Italian sources has often amazed (and sometimes dismayed) me. My greatest debt, though, is one which I hesitate to acknowledge— not because it is anything less than enormous, but because the debtor is my wife, Professor Margaret McGowan, who, like me, greatly dislikes fulsome, sentimental, personal tributes, and cringes when encountering them in other people’s books. For decades now we have scrupulously refrained from mentioning each other in our prefaces, but her help—turning up countless succulent references in obscure places, reading every version of every chapter of this book, commenting on and criticizing them bluntly and always to the point—has been so immense that I could not possibly feel at ease with myself if I did not record it with my thanks. And so I do. S.A.

CONTENTS Abbreviations

ix

Introduction: Problems Regarding Method

1

part i. early readership 1. The Earliest Readers of Machiavelli: Miscellaneous and Military

17

2. Creative Plagiarism: Agostino Nifo’s De regnandi peritia

42

3. Early Readers of Machiavelli: Comment and Discourse

85

4. A Hostile Cardinal: Reginald Pole and his Apologia

115

5. Osorio and Machiavelli: From Open Hostility to Covert Approbation

143

6. Machiavelli and the Index of Prohibited Books

164

7. Machiavelli’s Keenest Readers: The Early Translators

183

part ii. the rhetoric of hate 8. In Praise of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

229

9. Innocent Gentillet and Machiavelli’s ‘Maximes tyranniques’

271

10. In the Wake of Gentillet: Evolution of the ‘Machiavel’ Stereotype in France and England

325

viii

C ON TENTS

11. More Machiavellian than Machiavel: The Jesuits and the Context of Donne’s Conclave

374

part iii. adaptation, attack, defence 12. Gentillet’s Final Assault: The ‘Contre-Machiavel’ of 1585

417

13. From Sublime to Ridiculous: Some Serious Readers of Machiavelli

434

14. Writers on the Art of War

477

part iv. machiavelli and non-machiavelli 15. Paradoxes on the Reception of Machiavelli’s Military Thinking

517

16. Systematic Immorality: The Courtier’s Art

573

17. Systematic Fragmentation: The Vogue of the Political Aphorism

630

Epilogue

671

Bibliography Index

681 735

ABBREVIATIONS Anglo (1969) Bertelli and Innocenti

BL BNF Bozza Cal. S.P. Foreign

Cal. S.P. Ireland Cal. S.P. Scotland

Cockle Contre-Machiavel (1576)

Contre-Machiavel (1602)

D’Andrea and Stewart

DBI DNB

Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli: A Dissection (1969) Sergio Bertelli and Piero Innocenti, Bibliografia Machiavelliana (Verona, 1979) British Library Bibliothe`que Nationale de France Tommaso Bozza, Scrittori politici italiani dal 1550 al 1650 (Rome, 1949) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Edward VI and Mary, ed. W. B. Turnbull (1861) Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, ed. H. C. Hamilton (1860–90) Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland, ed. J. Bain, W. K. Boyd, et al. (Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1898–1952) Maurice J. D. Cockle, A Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642 (1900) Innocent Gentillet, Discours . . . contre Nicolas Machiavel Florentin (Geneva, 1576) Innocent Gentillet, A Discourse . . . Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine, trans. S. Patericke (1602) Innocent Gentillet, Discours contre Machiavel: A New Edition of the Original French Text, ed. A. D’Andrea and Pamela Stewart (Florence, 1974) Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1960– ) Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephen and S. Lee (1885–1900)

x

A B B R E VIATION S

Fourquevaux

Raymond de Beccarie, Sieur de Fourquevaux, Instructions sur le faict de la guerre (Paris, 1548) E´mile Gasquet, Le Courant Machiave´lien dans la pense´e et la litte´rature anglaises du XVI sie`cle (Montreal, Paris, and Brussels, 1974) Adolf Gerber, Niccolo` Machiavelli: Die ¨ bersetzungen Handschriften, Ausgaben und U seiner Werke im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Gotha and Munich, 1912–13) John Wesley Horrocks, ‘Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion’ (D.Litt. thesis, University of London, 1908) Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, R. H. Brodie, and J. Gairdner (1862–1932) Rodolfo de Mattei, Dal premachiavellismo all’antimachiavellismo (Florence, 1969) Tutte le opere . . . di Niccolo` Machiavelli, ed. Guido Mazzoni and Mario Casella (Florence, 1929) Public Record Office Giuliano Procacci, Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli (Rome, 1965) A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland. And of English Books Printed Abroad, rev. edn. by W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and K. F. Pantzer (1986–91)

Gasquet (1974)

Gerber

Horrocks (1908)

LP

Mattei (1969) Mazzoni and Casella

PRO Procacci (1965) STC

Introduction: Problems Regarding Method In his book Great Pianists of Our Time, the German critic Joachim Kaiser refers to a certain kind of ‘trifling’ piano playing where performers ‘by arbitrarily accentuating particular notes in a richlyscored passage suddenly spell out quite new melodies, because wherever there are a hundred notes, it is naturally possible to pick out ‘‘baa-baa-black sheep’’ or a national anthem’.1 This arbitrariness is, I feel, analogous to certain kinds of writing about the history of ideas: especially when it concerns the ways in which a particular thinker was read, interpreted, and absorbed by later generations; or when it tries to establish such relative matters as influence and significance. It is all too easy to select, from the cyclopean mass of documentary evidence available to an assiduous searcher, numerous fragments which may be stuck together to make an imposing show both of completeness and of central importance. Yet often both the completeness and the centrality are as unconvincing as an emphasis on the notes of ‘baa-baa-black sheep’ would be in the midst of a Chopin Scherzo. When trying to make sense of the ways in which Machiavelli was read in the century following the first publication of his works, I have been deeply conscious of this danger, and of several other methodological difficulties which will be described in the course of this introduction. I have also been increasingly aware of the fact that intellectual abstractions (such as civic humanism, republicanism, rhetoric, and an arcana politica) which are commonly regarded as essential elements in the reception of Machiavelli, seem scarcely 1 Joachim Kaiser, Great Pianists of Our Time (1971), 90.

2

INTRODUCTION

to have mattered to the majority of the wide range of authors whose works I have trawled. It is as though, like C. P. Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’, there co-exist two wholly different kinds of intellectual history: immaculately organized expositions of the elevated ideas of Renaissance academics and philosophers by their modern counterparts; and an untidy, pragmatic, and almost entirely secular jumble of notions in which abstractions count for very little—if not for nothing. It is the latter which, I feel, corresponds more closely to the ways in which sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century people read Machiavelli or, just as important, the ways in which they pondered what are now categorized as Machiavellian topics, but without reading him. This book is an exercise in writing about the history of ideas, which tries to remain faithful to the surviving records relating to the first century of Machiavelli’s availability to a reading public. In the last analysis, my main concern is not with a single author and the reception of his work, but rather with some of the principal secular preoccupations of Renaissance Europe. Because Machiavelli’s themes were important to his own and to subsequent ages, and because he wrote in a manner which excited interest, anger, revulsion, or admiration, it is possible—by pursuing some of the ways in which his works were read or ignored within differing contexts—to illustrate how a wide range of people thought about these matters. For those to whom Machiavelli is a culture hero, it may seem improper to use him merely as a means of approaching the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. To others less given to Machiavelatry, and more concerned with the history of ideas, the method followed in this book may prove suggestive.

some g ener a l d iffic u l t ies Between 1513 and 1525 Niccolo` Machiavelli wrote a series of works dealing with political, military, and historical matters. One of these, the Arte della guerra, was published in 1521: but the rest of his major writings (Il Principe, I Discorsi, and the Istorie fiorentine), together with a number of lesser works, were not published until 1531–2, that is nearly five years after his death. That people were

INTRODUCTION

3

keen to purchase these books is clear, because several publishers found it worthwhile to reissue them with a frequency altogether unusual in the sixteenth century; and, while it is true that this traffic in Machiavelli waned somewhat in the latter half of the century, his works continued to be reissued regularly well into the early seventeenth century and far beyond the period with which this book is concerned. Not everybody who buys a book necessarily reads it: but there is irrefutable evidence that Machiavelli was being read because his works were, from time to time, cited with an accuracy only possible for those with first-hand knowledge. Moreover, he received considerable attention from enthusiastic translators into French, English, Spanish, and Latin; and it is difficult to translate an admired book without reading it thoroughly. It is evident that other people, too, had heard of these books because they alluded to them. And there were yet others who did not know the books at all, but had heard of their author, to whom they referred, generally with disapprobation. His name eventually became even better known than his writings, and this process was formalized when, in 1611, Randle Cotgrave defined the French word Machiavelisme as ‘subtle policie, cunning roguerie’. Machiavelli had entered the French and English languages (and the Spanish and German, too) and his subsequent career could, and frequently did, proceed quite independently of the books he had written. The number of editions and translations of Machiavelli’s books, the considerable range of interests shown by those who referred to them, the different contexts within which such references were made, and the fact that the author’s name not only entered the vocabulary of every European language but has also remained current to the present day—all make it worthwhile to enquire further into the nature of his reception. Unfortunately, this enquiry is not at all straightforward, and methodological difficulties arise the moment that any attempt is made to reduce the sources to order. For not only was there no single reception in Europe, there were not even separate receptions which can intelligently be considered within the confines of a single country. The problem is a common one in the history of ideas. An interesting subject of study undoubtedly exists—inasmuch as Machiavelli’s books were

4

INTRODUCTION

purchased, read, discussed, and commented upon—but the materials with which the historian has to work are disparate, confused, and even messy. They constitute nothing more than a large number of individual, and mostly discrete, responses ranging in magnitude from one-word insults to full-length treatises. The more one reads the clearer it becomes that there were no characteristically regional reactions to Machiavelli; that similar people reacted differently to him at different times; that they were frequently influenced more by the emotional context within which they encountered him than by anything intrinsic to his work; and that their views were sometimes influenced by the observations of other writers who were often not even their fellow countrymen. Such material can be rendered as a historical narrative only by doing it grave violence. To create, from the surviving records of Machiavelli’s Renaissance readers, an English face, a French profile, or even an Italian countenance, is merely an academic game. This is not a subject such as the administrative history of some government department, or a man’s life, or a war, or a monarch’s reign. There is no more or less continuous, more or less finite, series of records from which a coherent account may legitimately be constructed. Nor is there any single class of writing upon which the historian may concentrate, for Machiavelli wrote about a wide variety of issues: politics, war, ancient and modern history, morality, and religion. His readers were as diverse as his subject matter, and their uneven remains lie scattered about geographically, chronologically, and thematically. Careful scrutiny of such relics can reveal what may reasonably be described as ideas; and these ideas must have had a history. But it cannot be told as a simple, self-contained narrative; and, even where that approach may seem possible, the story can be extended only a little way before connections become blurred and irrelation sets in. With regard to the reception of Machiavelli, many modern treatments go astray in a variety of ways. Too much critical weight is imposed upon too limited, too select, and too disparate a body of evidence. Frequently connections are implied (by the simple process of juxtaposition) between materials which are not, in fact, related. Often there is an attempt to construct a finished picture from evidence which is, at best, fragmentary and which, however

INTRODUCTION

5

much it may be augmented by further research, must always remain so—rather like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing and with no notion of what the completed image should look like. Unsatisfactory, too, is the method whereby scholars, confronted by the demands of a broad temporal span and a large number of texts, tend to reduce the art of pre´cis almost to absurdity: rendering down long and complex books to a few paragraphs. They offer what are said to be the principal themes and arguments, with little regard to language, imagery, and mental idiosyncracies. Intellectual history at this level is akin to literary history based primarily on plot summaries. Furthermore, many general studies of the reception of Machiavelli severely (and, in my view, arbitrarily) limit the fields within which they are prepared to seek their material so that, while attention is always devoted to conventional intellectual contexts involving philosophy and political thought, other contexts—such as military thinking or the literature of selfadvancement—are largely ignored. Few of these studies (Procacci and de Mattei excepted) suggest that Machiavelli’s abiding interest in the art of war was, in fact, the area in which serious readers throughout the sixteenth century most frequently cited him.2 Reluctance to accept that the history of Machiavelli’s reception, like the study of Machiavelli himself, is inadequate if divorced from military matters is bad enough: but worse still is failure to heed the emotional contexts within which Machiavelli was read and commented upon. There are certain important texts which cannot be understood without a close examination of the anger and hatred which engendered them. The results of all this may be seen in neatly organized monographs where neutered Renaissance readers of Machiavelli concern themselves with classical antecedents, political abstractions, legal theory, and—that comprehensive resource of the culture historian— rhetoric. We scarcely ever hear about the violence, pragmatism, irrationality, and stupidity which were as all-pervasive in the sixteenth century as they are in our own age, and just as intimately 2 Giuliano Procacci, Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli (Rome, 1965); Rodolfo de Mattei, Dal premachiavellismo all’antimachiavellismo (Florence, 1969).

6

INTRODUCTION

related to people’s thinking. We never hear the furious shouts of polemicists, the crash of battle, the shrieks of the massacred. The reception of Machiavelli takes place in an orderly world of books and of learned, if sometimes earnest, debate. Academic and sanitized, this kind of thing is the history of ideas without blood and guts. It never conveys the flavour of Machiavelli’s Europe; it systematizes the unsystematic; and it tidies up the irredeemably messy.

some specific examples All historians are subject to the vagaries of the survival or loss of evidence: but the historian of ideas is especially vulnerable. The problem may be illustrated by a specific statistical comparison. A scholar wishing, for example, to reconstruct the reign of Henry VIII can deploy (at a minimum estimate) more than 50,000 state papers, foreign and domestic; a mass of surviving personal and official correspondence; an incalculable quantity of local records; several hundred literary sources; and an array of architectural and pictorial evidence. But what of the historian of the reception of Machiavelli? Even if attention is confined to the earliest phase of that subject, one is faced with some curious facts and figures. Between the second edition of the Arte della guerra in 1529 and the placing of all Machiavelli’s writings on the papal Index of Prohibited Books in 1559, there were at least twelve further editions of the Arte della guerra, twenty-six of the Discorsi, seventeen of Il Principe, and fifteen of the Istorie fiorentine. In other words, there were some seventy-one separate issues of these books: a remarkable achievement by a secular author within a thirty-year span. Yet for that same period (even extending it back into Machiavelli’s own lifetime to take account of the early manuscript circulation of his writings) there is first-hand evidence for barely fifty readers of his works throughout Europe—and these include translators and plagiarists as well as those whose reading of Machiavelli is attested merely by some passing reference. Thus, for a period of more than thirty years, there is not even an average of one reader per Machiavellian edition. That the books were purchased and

INTRODUCTION

7

perused by more than this tiny group is a likely presumption: but, however imposing the materials left by these fifty readers may seem when heaped up together (especially when quoted, paraphrased, transmuted into the base metal of modern academic jargon, and augmented by largely irrelevant biographical information), they remain exiguous and disconnected. The difficulty may be illustrated in another way by posing a riddle. What do the following have in common: a Neapolitan Aristotelian; a Venetian historian; a Florentine administrator; a Pavian medical practitioner; a Parisian alchemist; a noble French soldier; a common English soldier; an English Protestant propagandist; an English educationist; a Welsh gambler, embezzler, and anti-Spanish conspirator; an English Catholic who admired Bishop Gardiner, supported the Spanish marriage, and advised Philip of Spain on how to govern England; a Catholic cardinal who became Archbishop of Canterbury; and a Holy Roman Emperor? The answer, of course, is that they are all among the select few whose early readership of Machiavelli is attested. Yet that common factor is wholly accidental. It only becomes essential within the context of what is, after all, a contrived enquiry. Some of these men are well known to historians on their own merits; but others survive solely because of their fortuitous reading of one famous author. By grouping together such people, the historian of ideas creates a link which, in itself, has little more intellectual significance than the discovery, say, that all of them may have been left-handed—and certainly less than would be the discovery that they had read several other authors in common. When the enquiry is pursued into the early seventeenth century, there is a far greater mass of evidence and the number of Machiavellian references greatly exceeds the number of Machiavelli editions. But they are still mostly discrete and nowhere suggest that there was ever a school or group of Machiavellians. There is more cohesiveness about anti-Machiavellians: but that is because many of them borrowed from each other and, with only a couple of exceptions, rehearsed the same arguments. Further difficulties arise when we enter those ill-lit intellectual areas where critics go about their trade of allotting ‘significance’ and determining ‘influence’. The attitude of historians, when confronted by the magical name of Machiavelli or by some

8

INTRODUCTION

recognizable fragment of his work, is often on approximately the same level of sophistication as the modish Citation Indexes. It is not illuminating to find Machiavelli’s name, or a few isolated phrases from his oeuvre, mentioned without evidence of knowledge or understanding. That citations occur in sixteenth-century texts does not automatically guarantee their worth. A majority of Machiavellian references are mere cant usages of his name to indicate disapproval and, individually, their intellectual content is negligible. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that, en masse, they have a contextual importance, providing a general background of hostility which might conceivably have affected anyone who did study the works of the man behind the term of abuse. Certainly, they should not be ignored: though how much weight they should be allowed is difficult to determine. There is yet another unpalatable fact to be considered. For the most part, the serious reception of Machiavelli (and, in conjunction with this, the serious ‘influence’ of his work) is, in the main, not the record of great minds and famous men. Much is hidden away in the lucubrations of obscure people whose writings either had only a fitful impact or none at all. Who, apart from specialists, is familiar with Atanagi, Cadamosto, Bombini, Garimberto, Girardi, Vintimille, Charrier, Otevanti, or Diego de Salazar? On the other hand, there were some really big names in intellectual history—Bodin, Montaigne, and Bacon, for instance—whose knowledge of Machiavelli is indisputable and whose observations show keen awareness of the implications of what they read. Inevitably, articles and books explicate Bodin and Machiavelli, Montaigne and Machiavelli, Bacon and Machiavelli: but it is not clear why the interest of such men in Machiavelli should be deemed remarkable since they all read hundreds of other authors, absorbed them, and used them for their own purposes. What has yet to be demonstrated is that the thinking of any one of these major figures would have been significantly different without Machiavelli, or that it was shaped by a reading of Machiavelli. As I have already suggested, there is something amiss with the technique of picking, from the crowded pages of such writers, only the scattered passages with a Machiavellian resonance, cementing them together, and then presenting the result as proof of ‘influence’.

INTRODUCTION

9

The selection of isolated scraps from a writer’s total oeuvre, in order to suggest a disproportionate (though not necessarily fictive) Machiavellian significance, is related to another fallacy whereby allusions to Machiavelli in a specific group of writings are picked out and accumulated. A prime example of this may be seen in studies of the polemic which spewed forth during the French civil wars in the closing decades of the sixteenth century. Some scholars have argued (correctly) that Machiavelli loomed increasingly large in people’s minds after the St Bartholomew massacres of 1572. They have, however, further argued (wrongly) that this was eventually consummated in a tremendous explosion of antiMachiavellism after the assassinations of the Guises and of Henri III in 1588–9. These views are based, first upon the publication of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel and its undoubted popularity; and secondly, and more specifically, upon an analysis of some thirty pamphlets, issued between the assassinations and the end of the sixteenth century, in which Machiavelli’s name occurs. The argument has been widely accepted: but what has not been allowed for is the fact that between the years 1588 and 1599 there were published, in France alone, well over a thousand pamphlets. This polemical mass constitutes the context within which those references to Machiavelli must be set; and, within that context, his stature dwindles to something much smaller than has conventionally been estimated. References need to be evaluated one against another. Employing a man’s name as a term of abuse cannot be equated with serious discussion based upon first-hand knowledge of his writings; and even an informed passage, set within the context of a broader discussion of several other texts, is something very different from a work shaped primarily by reading a single author. If these criteria are applied to the mighty agglomeration of French polemic, it becomes apparent that only a few texts amount to serious comment on (or use of ) Machiavelli’s works. Thirty references in thirty pamphlets would be very impressive indeed. Thirty references in more than a thousand is considerably less so.3 3 This kind of distortive technique—leafing through the indexes of books in order to locate just those references which suit one’s purpose, while ignoring all others; collecting names of fine appearance, ‘sans regarder si c’est a` propos ou non’—was already being ridiculed by Franc¸ois Portes in 1574. See below, Ch. 8.

10

INTRODUCTION

The habit of concentrating only on those references which fit some preconceived pattern while ignoring all those which do not, brings me to what is, perhaps, the most knotty problem facing the historian of ideas. Without exception, studies of Machiavelli’s reception have ignored pregnant silences. It would be an instructive though wearisome task to compile a checklist of all those works (histories and controversies both political and religious, defences of the utility of Christian polity, attacks on atheism, recommendations of chicanery and worldly wisdom, treatises on the art of war, and treatments of Roman history) which might reasonably be expected to have included some reference to, or at least some echo of, Machiavelli—but which did not. What is to be done when, instead of a banquet of succulent Machiavelliana, there is little or no evidence for his presence? Or, to put it another way, what is to be done when there is a plethora of material which, though relevant thematically, does not suit the historian’s particular purpose? The usual method adopted in such cases is to ignore the embarrassing or ill-fitting topics, and to stress just those areas where Machiavelli’s presence is readily documented: a procedure which inevitably inflates the importance of the subject. Silence is a vital element in the history of ideas. It is analogous to musical interpretation which depends not only upon the accurate execution of printed notes but also on imaginative handling of the spaces between them. Fully to appreciate Machiavelli’s place in the first century of his reception, we need to understand why he is sometimes not where we think he ought to be.

strategies The tasks I have set myself in this book have been to find ways to articulate some of the awkward silences and to say things which may help towards an understanding of sixteenth-century attitudes towards Machiavelli’s work, but without inadvertently creating some spurious historical entity. My attempted solution is to combine a variety of approaches—textual, contextual, chronological, and thematic—in order to illustrate the limitations as well as the

INTRODUCTION

11

range of Machiavelli’s impact during the first century of the availability of his work to a reading public. I examine, therefore, a variety of contexts: some within which his books had a demonstrable though irregular relevance, such as military thinking or political morality; others, such as the polemic after the St Bartholomew massacres, where Machiavelli’s relevance is less than, or different from, that which has customarily been assumed; and yet others, such as the literature of self-seeking or hard-edged political aphorisms, which have been deemed especially Machiavellian but which, on closer scrutiny, prove not to have been so. I give detailed attention to a number of authors (such as Nifo, Pole, Osorio, and Gentillet) who are familiar but who seem to me to have been misinterpreted or inadequately commented upon; while equally I draw attention to other writers (like Beacon, Vigene`re, Cinuzzi, Baccellini, and Pichi) who are less familiar but who afford valuable insights into the ways in which Machiavelli’s work was read. I have also tried, in some chapters, to collect together material according to the seriousness with which the writers concerned actually studied Machiavelli, regardless of whether or not they fall within the conventional canon of ‘greatness’, and regardless (though not invariably) of issues of nationality. The history of ideas is not a very neat subject: and this is, accordingly, not a very neat book. It does, none the less, have as rational a structure as I could give it. In the first three parts, the contexts and topics are arranged in a roughly chronological order. The final section deals with themes which span the entire period under consideration, although much of the material used relates to the seventeenth century. Part I, ‘Early Readership’, consists of seven chapters dealing with the following: military writers; Agostino Nifo and his plagiarist, Lucio Paolo Rosello; some knowledgeable readers of Machiavelli such as Guicciardini, Lazarus von Schwendi, William Thomas, and George Rainsford; the hostility of Cardinal Pole; the comparable hostility of Bishop Osorio, who did, however, change his mind about Machiavelli; the papal Index of Prohibited Books and its limited significance; and finally Machiavelli’s translators, who were his keenest and most influential students. Part II, ‘The Rhetoric of Hate’, is introduced by a study of the polemic spawned by the St Bartholomew massacres

12

INTRODUCTION

and followed by three further chapters: on Gentillet’s ContreMachiavel; on the aftermath of this publication, together with the evolution of the Machiavel stereotype; and on the identification of Machiavellism with the Jesuits, especially as satirized by John Donne. Part III, ‘Adaptation, Attack, Defence’, is concerned with writers (both favourable and hostile) whose work takes Machiavelli seriously—though without necessarily revealing a comprehensive knowledge of his original texts. This section comprises three chapters. The first examines Gentillet’s revised Contre-Machiavel of 1585; and the second gathers together a number of readers, both enthusiastic and hostile, who knew Machiavelli’s works at first hand—including the oddities Barnaby Barnes and Gabriel Harvey, the analytical critic David Hume of Godscroft, and Richard Beacon, the brutal realist. The final chapter of this section discusses military thinkers and observers (Baccellini, Tarducci, Cinuzzi, and Vigene`re). Part IV, ‘Machiavelli and NonMachiavelli’, has three chapters each concerned with a context where Machiavelli’s relevance might be anticipated but where expectations are not fully realized. The first of these deals with paradoxes on the art of war, that is the way in which Machiavelli was reduced to a series of debating topics; the second with systematic immorality in the literature devoted to achieving success at court; and the last with the systematic fragmentation of political thought induced by an obsession with aphorisms. All these chapters are intended to be read as a series of overlapping views so that, sometimes, where several are superimposed, the picture becomes denser but more confused; while elsewhere, where the material is isolated, it is clearer in definition. It might be felt that on occasions—such as the chapter devoted to the St Bartholomew massacre—the contextual information is out of proportion to its Machiavellian content. But this is deliberate. I believe that summaries of abstract ideas convey nothing essential to readers unacquainted with the literature at first hand. In a battle of words, the words themselves and the tone in which they are used are at least as important as their arguments.4 4 Similarly, it may be thought that I have devoted excessive space to Agostino Nifo: but his De regnandi peritia is so complex, and has been so consistently

INTRODUCTION

13

Finally, given the intentional anti-orderly nature of this book, I feel that it would have been inappropriate to fabricate a ‘conclusion’ summarizing the biography of all the leading ideas—like a nineteenth-century novel rounding itself off by narrating the subsequent fate of its leading characters. Instead, I have chosen to pursue both the obsession with aphorisms and the first century of Machiavelli’s reception to their logical (if improbable) confluence. My Epilogue, therefore, deals with a version of Il Principe, rewritten in alphabetical order and published with the approval of the Inquisitor General of Florence. This is perhaps the most bizarre book in the history of Machiavelliana and a fitting end to a complex and paradoxical enquiry. In a book of this kind it is inevitable not only that primary sources will be in a variety of languages—particularly French, Italian, and Latin—but also that many of them must be cited frequently and sometimes at length. It is, however, no longer the practice simply to quote original texts and leave them to speak for themselves: but the demand for translation poses problems both of length and consistency; and, although by instinct and training, I should have preferred to provide readers with everything in full, I have instead followed the path of what I feel to be common sense. Thus I sometimes give lengthy passages from texts which seem especially important or typical, and explicate these with translations and paraphrases. At other times I offer the translations and paraphrases but draw attention only to particularly revealing words or phrases from the original sources. My aim has been to achieve both readability and comprehensibility, while retaining as much as possible of the original flavour of texts. In pursuance of that last aim, I have used—whenever possible, and when they are good enough— English translations contemporary with the Continental texts; and I have retained the original orthography for all primary sources because I feel that modern-spelling versions lose vastly more in quality than they gain in legibility. misrepresented, that a detailed analysis seems the only way both to show what the work is about and to establish its proper place in the history of Machiavelli’s reception.

This page intentionally left blank

PART I

Early Readership

This page intentionally left blank

1 The Earliest Readers of Machiavelli: Miscellaneous and Military ‘This poison is spread through the courts of princes in this man’s books which are circulating almost everywhere.’ That was how Reginald Pole, addressing the Emperor Charles V about the year 1539, referred to the spread of Machiavelli’s doctrines.1 A couple of years later, the Portuguese cleric Jeronimo Osorio was at pains to refute Machiavelli’s views on Christianity because he perceived that the number of those who, ‘either stirred uppe by his writings or of their voluntary motions, were partakers of his wickedness and fury, [which] were far and wide dispersed’.2 Machiavelli’s toxic qualities, wickedness, and fury remain matters of debate and doubt: but there is no gainsaying the rapid circulation of his writings, noted by these two early critics. Editions of his four principal books poured from the presses of Italy so that by the time Pole was writing there were already twenty-two different printings available; and, in the short period which then elapsed before Osorio’s attack was published, a further twelve Machiavelli editions had appeared. This extraordinary spate continued for more than a decade, with another twenty-six Italian editions augmented by two Spanish and five French translations up to 1555. And then something remarkable occurred. In 1556 there were Florentine editions of the Clizia and Mandragola, but then— even prior to the notorious Index of Prohibited Books which has 1 Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V. Caesarem super quatuor libris a se scriptis de unitate ecclesiae, in Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis et aliorum ad ipsum collectio, ed. A. M. Quirini (Brescia, 1744–57), i. 137. 2 Jeronimo Osorio, De nobilitate christiana (Lisbon, 1542); trans. W. Blandie, The five bookes . . . of civill and christian nobilitie (1576), fo. 102.

18

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

always been regarded as a watershed in the history of ideas— publication of Machiavelli ceased in Italy and did not resume until 1630, and then only in an expurgated version. Moreover, apart from a few translations between 1559 and 1563, there were no further editions of Machiavelli’s major works until 1571, which ushered in another period of publishing activity.3 This chronological distribution of Machiavelli editions is reinforced by another striking fact. As I have already indicated, there are about fifty overt or covert references to Machiavelli’s work up to 1560, most of which either reveal or at least suggest first-hand knowledge of the original texts. However, in the following fifteen years, although references continue, several now carry the hallmark of mere hearsay, and Machiavelli’s name begins to part company from the author’s original work and to assume a life of its own as a term of opprobrium. There is thus, I believe, a period which may reasonably be defined as the early reception of Machiavelli. Unfortunately, describing this early reception is much more difficult than defining it because much of the surviving evidence is inconclusive, fragmentary, or unconnected.

scraps a nd morse ls Charles V may not have been a sympathetic recipient of Pole’s diatribe. The Emperor, according to the Venetian Francesco Sansovino, had no high opinion of letters and delighted in only three books, which he caused to be translated into his own tongue: ‘one for instruction in civil life, and this was Il Cortegiano of Count Baldasar de Castiglione, the other for affairs of state, and this was Il Principe with the Discorsi of Machiavelli, and the third for the rules of warfare and this was the History with all the other things by 3 The translations referred to are as follows: in French, Les discours (1559) and Le Prince (1563); in Latin, De Principe (1560); and in English, The Arte of Warre in 1560. The outline of this publishing history is best studied in Sergio Bertelli and Piero Innocenti, Bibiografia machiavelliana (Verona, 1979); although Adolf ¨ bersetzung seiner Gerber, Niccolo` Machiavelli: Die Handschriften, Ausgaben und U Werke im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1912–13) provides much more detail on specific editions.

THE EARLIEST READERS

19

Polybius’. If this statement were correct then the mighty Habsburg would have to be regarded as the most distinguished of Machiavelli’s early readers: though, as Sansovino points out, the Emperor took far greater pleasure in arms which he regarded as the ‘true foundation of kingdoms’. Sansovino’s testimony receives partial corroboration from the fact that the Emperor himself claims to have read and approved of the Discorsi and may well have been involved in initiating the Spanish translation of 1552: but sadly there is no evidence which would enable us to pursue further the extent of Charles’s knowledge of Machiavelli.4 Nor can we penetrate behind the fact that a copy of Gohory’s 1544 translation of the first book of the Discorsi—though in the royal binding of Franc¸ois Ier—was, nevertheless, presented by the translator not to the King but to Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France.5 And we know nothing about the Machiavellian knowledge of Franc¸ois’s son, Henri II, beyond the fact that he purchased a copy of Charrier’s 1546 translation of the Arte della guerra.6 Amongst the various scraps and morsels which constitute so much of the surviving evidence for Machiavelli’s early reception, those indicating ownership of a Machiavellian text are perhaps the least satisfactory. Possession of a book, while suggesting some kind of interest, implies neither knowledge nor opinion. There were others, besides Henri II and Anne de Montmorency, who owned Machiavelli editions. Jean Grolier, Treasurer of France, had copies of the 1540 Aldine Arte della guerra, Il Principe, and the Istorie fiorentine bound for him, but whether or not he ever peeked between the 4 Francesco Sansovino, Il simolacro di Carlo quinto imperadore (Venice, 1567), fo. 21: ‘Pero` si dilettava di leggere tre libri solamente liquali esso haveva fatto tradurre in lingua sua propria. L’uno per l’institutione della vita civile, e questo fu il Cortegiano del Conte Baldasar da Castiglione, l’altro per le cose di stato, e questo fu il Principe con Discorsi del Machiavello, e il terzo per gli ordini della militia, e questo fu la Historia con tutte le altre cose di Polibio.’ On the Spanish translation of the Discorsi, see below, Ch. 7 n. 32. 5 Le´opold Delisle, Chantilly: Le Cabinet des Livres. Imprime´s ante´rieurs au milieu du XVIe sie`cle (Paris, 1905), no. 1148. Delisle describes the royal binding but notes that the fact that Gohory offered his work to Montmorency is attested by ‘une de´dicace autographe soigneusement e´crite en regard du titre’. 6 Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, Re´serve, R.523. See Ernest QuentinBauchart, La Bibliothe`que de Fontainebleau et les livres des derniers Valois a` la Bibliothe`que Nationale (1515–1569) (Paris, 1891), no. 190.

20

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

sumptuous covers remains a mystery.7 The same may be said of Claude Gouffier, Duke of Roannez, who had a copy of the 1540 Aldine Discorsi bound for him;8 of Pierre Basilhe and Jean Chauderon, who both owned copies of Il Principe; and of Antoine Du Prat, ‘pre´voˆt de Paris’, who owned one of the Venetian editions of the Istorie fiorentine, the 1548 Gohory translation of the Discorsi, and one of the two French translations of Il Principe published in 1553.9 Enigmas all: though less so than William Cecil, subsequently Lord Burleigh, for whom Sir William Pickering, English ambassador in France, procured several books including a Euclid and a ‘discourse’ of Machiavelli. Unhappily these two were ‘so buggerly bound’ that they were fit only for the bonfire; and the young Cecil can only be classified as almost-an-owner of a Machiavelli edition; while Pickering’s knowledge of the text cannot even be guessed at.10 On the other hand, Nicolas d’Herberay, Seigneur des Essarts, ‘commissaire ordinaire d’artillerie’, whose ownership of the Discorsi is recorded under the date 27 October 1552, cared sufficiently about Machiavelli to write a liminary poem for Gohory’s translation of that text.11 In England, William Lambard, later to become the acknowledged authority on Justices of the Peace, inscribed his name twice in a copy of Cappel’s French translation of Il Principe: once in 1560, and again in 1562, when he added a Greek inscription 7 For Grolier’s Arte della guerra, see Delisle, Chantilly, no. 1147. His Il Principe and Istorie fiorentine are in the British Library (press marks C.27.d.2 and C.27.d.3 respectively). 8 Delisle, Chantilly, no. 1145. 9 A. H. Schutz, Vernacular Books in Parisian Private Libraries of the Sixteenth Century According to the Notarial Inventories (Chapel Hill, NC, 1955), 55–6. 10 This episode took place in 1551 and it is a salutary reminder that one should not make too much of an isolated instance. It is obvious that the Machiavelli text was not thought to be of any special significance, and that the mere accident of ‘buggerly’ binding meant that it was not considered to be worth saving. See Cal. S.P. Foreign, Edward VI, 516, 520, 522. A manuscript, Certayne selected chapters translated oute of Nicholas Machiavell his 3 bookes of dyscourses upon the firste decade of Livie, survives at Hatfield House (Hatfield MS 273–3). But it is not known whether this was acquired by Sir William Cecil or his sons. See E´mile Gasquet, ‘Machiavelli’s Discourses: A Forgotten English Translation’, Notes and Queries, ns 5/4 (Apr. 1958), 144–5. 11 For d’Herberay, see Schutz, Vernacular Books; also see below, p. 597.

THE EARLIEST READERS

21

to the effect that one should look before leaping.12 Even more politically pregnant was the inscription written by Edward Unton in his copy of Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine (Venice, 1537): ‘Machiavelli Maxima / Qui nescit dissimulare / nescit vivere / Vivere et vivas / Edw. Unton’.13 Another sympathetic owner, this time in Italy, was the literary jack of all trades Antonio Francesco Doni—well known to Machiavelli bibliographers for his edition of a version of Belphagor and for an ambiguous remark which has, mistakenly, been interpreted as expressing doubt about Machiavelli’s teachings.14 But Doni was also an enthusiast for La Mandragola; owned most of Machiavelli’s works; and lamented that their author was to be numbered amongst those who remained unappreciated.15 Indeed, says Doni, Machiavelli had, in his lifetime, suffered many injuries and vexations yet, ‘amidst the blows of fortune he had written these works, Discorsi, Historie, Il Principe, Mandragola Comedia, Clitia Comedia, Dell’arte della guerra, L’Asino d’oro, & altri capitoli, & novelle’—all of which the bibliographer characterizes as ‘molto nobile et honorate’.16 Four years later (in 1554), Girolamo Ruscelli, in the annotations to his edition of La Mandragola, showed that he, too, was acquainted with a variety of Machiavelli’s writings and had, moreover, an interesting stylistic comment to make. The play itself he praised for its pure Tuscan language, ‘like that of Boccaccio and the other good Tuscan writers’. Indeed, Machiavelli who was both ‘learned and judicious’, and who showed himself to be familiar with Boccaccio’s work, ‘never wrote anything other than fine 12 For Lambard, see the copy of Cappel’s translation in the British Library, press mark 523.d.30. 13 See The Unton Inventories, ed. J. G. Nichols (1841), p. xxxviii. Unton visited Italy in 1563–4, and a fragment of his itinerary survives in British Library, Sloane MS 1813. 14 The edition of Belphagor is in Doni’s La Seconda Libraria (Venice, 1551), fos. 89–97v. See Gerber, i. 44 ff.; and Machiavelli, Operette satiriche, ed. L. F. Benedetto (Turin, 1920), 9 ff. The ambiguous reference occurs in Doni’s I marmi (Venice, 1552), 81, when, in a dialogue concerning the various forms of criticism, one of the interlocutors observes that Machiavelli’s works are ‘belle’ but ‘they teach certain things which do not please me’. Giuseppe Prezzolini, Machiavelli (New York, 1967), 207, interprets this literally as Doni’s own critical judgement. 15 I marmi (1552), 52–3. 16 La libraria del Doni, nella quale sono scritti tutti gl’autori vulgari (Venice, 1550), fos. 34v–35.

22

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

language’. In Ruscelli’s view this shows that, although Machiavelli’s Discorsi and many other things printed in Rome after his death often seem rough in style, this was not the author’s fault but resulted from the carelessness of those who had them printed and ‘corrected’. These interventions had actually spoiled Machiavelli’s work. Unless proper care is taken, transcription always introduces errors—especially when the work is undertaken by those who, unfamiliar with the author’s language, consider it corrupt and therefore do with it as they please.17 There were others who knew Machiavelli’s works, or are said to have known them, but whose comments are either exiguous or nonexistent. The tantalizing nature of such material is well exemplified in what is probably the earliest bibliographical reference to Machiavelli. This occurred in 1545 when Conrad Gesner briefly noted, under De re militari, that a certain ‘Nicolaus Florentinus’ had written on the subject.18 Three years later Gesner expanded this entry, referring to the seven books addressed to Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi by Niccolo` Machiavelli the Florentine, ‘very elegantly translated from the Italian into Latin by Jean Morel, Parisian’.19 17 Girolamo Ruscelli, Delle comedie elette novamente raccolte insieme, con le correttioni & annotationi di Girolamo Ruscelli, Libro primo (Venice, 1554), 181–2: ‘non iscrivesse mai d’altra lingua che buona, e per questo vedendosi che I suoi discorsi, e molte di quell’altre cose che furono stampate in Roma doppo la morte sua, sono in moltissime cose scorrette di lingua, non diremo che fusse perche egli non la sapesse, ma perche quegli che le fecero stampare e corressero, le guastessero, e scorreggessero in quella guisa; e perche il trascrivere porta sempre errori, quando non vi si ha molta cura, e cosı` lo stampare; o` ancor piu tosto perche quei che n’hebber cura, non sapendo essi la lingua, e trovando in quel libro alcune voci e modi diversi della lingua che essi havean per buona, li tenessero per corrotti, e li facessero parlare nel linguaggio loro, poi che l’havevan sotto, e potevano senza gabbia farli apparare; o` profrire a` lor modo’. 18 Bibliotheca Universalis (Zurich, 1545), 520: ‘Nicolaus Florentinus quidam scripsit de re militari’. 19 Conrad Gesner, Pandectarum sive Partitionum universalium . . . libri xxi (Zurich, 1548), fo. 324. The entry reads: ‘De arte militari. Petrus Lagnerius. Nicolai Machiavelli Florentini libri 7. Italici ad Laurentium Strossam patritium Philippi filium, per Janum Morelium Parisium Latine traducti elegantissime’. The allusion to Pierre Lagnier is to his edition of Cicero’s Sententiae and has nothing to do with the Machiavellian text. The entries for Machiavelli in Gesner are interesting. The Appendix Bibliothecae Conradi Gesner (Zurich, 1555), fo. 85, has ‘Nicolai Machiavelli Florentini de re militari li. 7. e Tusco in Latinum traducti per Ioan. Morelium Parisinum’. The fuller version in the Pandectarum Libri was

THE EARLIEST READERS

23

This is potentially of immense interest, for Morel had been secretary to Erasmus and was subsequently the centre of a Parisian literary salon which included many of the most important scholars and poets of the time—Utenhove, Buchanan, Turne`be, Dorat, Du Bellay, and Ronsard.20 No Latin translation of the Arte della guerra prior to that of 1610 is known to survive: yet Gesner’s reference to Morel is so specific that it raises the possibility that there really had once been such a version amongst the first generation of Machiavelli translations. Another disappointment is John Bridges who, as Bishop of Oxford, was to achieve notoriety in the Marprelate controversy when he was lampooned as a ‘doctor of Divillitie’ whose ‘writings and sermons tend to no other end then to make men laugh’.21 In a dedicatory letter to Francis, Earl of Bedford, prefaced to his translation of Gualther’s sermons, Bridges claimed to have spent three or four youthful years in Italy and to have translated ‘the three bookes of Machiavelles discourses’ into English ‘more than fourtene yeares past’, which would have been about the year 1556. In 1572, when this dedication was published, he was still toying with the idea of offering his version of the Discorsi to the Earl although he had been given pause by a recent sermon at Paul’s Cross where the preacher had asserted that the book was ‘unworthy to come abroade into mennes handes’. Bridges remained unconvinced by the preacher and observed that ‘to confesse a truth, I heard no stronge reasons alleaged against the booke, but they might (as followed much later by Simmler’s enlarged edition of the Bibliotheca (Zurich, 1574), 522, where Silvestro Teglio’s Latin translation of Il Principe was added. Finally, in a further enlarged edition revised by Johan Jacob Frisius (1583), 628, there are additional references to the Clizia, Discorsi, and Istorie fiorentine. Morel crops up again in Jean Jacques Boissard, Icones quinquaginta virorum illustrium, Part III (Frankfurt am Main, 1598), 326. A strange transmutation of the whole story occurred in the Premier volume de la Bibliotheque de Sieur de la Croix-du-Maine (Paris, 1584), 186, where under the name of Jacques Gohory—who did indeed translate the Discorsi—it says, ‘il a traduit les sept livres de l’art militaire, de Nicolas Machiavel Florentin, escrits par luy en langue Toscane & depuis faits Latins par Jean Morel Parisien’: an error followed by later bibliographers. 20 On Morel, see La Croix-du-Maine, Premier volume, 250–1; I. D. McFarlane, Buchanan (1981), esp. 180–2. 21 Oh read over D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy worke (1588), title page, and sig. A.2.

24

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

I thought) with ease ynough have beene answered, although the Inveigher was himselfe a discourser’. None the less, Bridges himself was not entirely happy with his ‘rude and unripe’ translation and, in the end, decided to suppress it—which he did so effectively that it cannot be found: and his subsequent works of religious dispute do not impress with Machiavellian resonance.22 No less disappointing is the knowledge that we glean from a letter written by G. B. Ricasoli in July 1547, noting that one Baccio del Bene was possessed of the keenest wit and was a student both of Machiavelli and Lucretius.23 Del Bene was a notable early sixteenthcentury Italian emigre´ in France; was the son-in-law of Biaggio Buonaccorsi, who was a colleague and close friend of Machiavelli himself; had connections with Jacopo Corbinelli (who certainly was a knowledgeable reader of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and other political writers); and eventually became a significant figure in the Palace Academy of Henri III. Yet there is little that one can do with this information. Davila, it is true, tells us that, every day after dinner, Henri III would withdraw in the company of Del Bene and Corbinelli to read Polybius, Tacitus, and especially Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Il Principe, to draw out rules for his political designs. But Davila was writing long after the death of all three men. We cannot know whether Del Bene and Corbinelli ever seriously discussed Machiavelli, with or without Henri III; and, if they did, whether such discussion in general, or Del Bene’s knowledge of Machiavelli in particular, ever made the slightest impact upon intellectual history. What we do know, however, is that Del Bene wrote a number of Latin poems, including an elaborate City of Truth dedicated to Henri III, and that this latter work was an allegory of the Nicomachean Ethics culminating in sublime mysteries. The zealous seeker after Machiavelliana might—without such texts—have imagined Del Bene’s time very differently employed.24 22 See Rudolph Walther, An hundred, threescore and fiftene homelyes or sermons uppon the Actes of the apostles, trans. John Bridges (1572), Dedication, sig. a.2v–3. The volume had been entered in the Stationers Register in 1570–1. 23 Cited by Lucien Romier, Les Origines politiques des guerres de religion (Paris, 1913), 164 n. 4. 24 On Del Bene, see the article in the Enciclopedia italiana. On his connection with the Palace Academy, see Frances Yates, The French Academies (1947), 33,

THE EARLIEST READERS

25

The dangers of hypothesis on the basis of inadequate evidence may be further illustrated. Consider, for example, the case of Donato Giannotti, who is well known to historians as a personal friend of Machiavelli, a scholar, a political writer, and a practical administrator who was, in October 1527, appointed Secretary to the Dieci di Guerra—an office held long previously by Machiavelli himself.25 Giannotti was even described by one contemporary as ‘heir to his [Machiavelli’s] office and to his thought’; and we know, from his own letters and other references, that he had discussed the Istorie fiorentine with its author during its composition, that he possessed a manuscript of that work, and that he was acquainted with the Arte della guerra.26 Furthermore, we know that Giannotti—both before and after he entered the office once occupied by his old friend—was concerned with problems similar to those pondered by Machiavelli and, indeed, by all contemporary Italian political thinkers: the nature, strengths, and demerits of the Venetian constitution; the best constitution for Florence; the struggle between freedom and tyranny; and the advantages, or otherwise, of a native militia. Given all this, one might imagine— had Giannotti’s political writings not survived—that they must have been richly Machiavellian. But Giannotti’s political writings do survive: and they are not. Machiavelli and his ideas do occur in Giannotti’s work but, in general, the differences and distance between the two authors are considerably more marked than similarities or proximity. Or consider an allusion to ‘Nicolaus Machiavellus, historicus & secretarius Florentinus’ in the Catalogus of British authors 108, 214. On his reading with Corbinelli and Henri III, see Enrico Caterino Davila, Historia delle guerre civili di Francia (London, 1755), 410. 25 On Giannotti, see Roberto Ridolfi, ‘Sommario della vita di Donato Giannotti’, Opuscoli (Florence, 1942), 55–164; Randolph Starn, ‘Additions to the Correspondence of Donato Giannotti’, Rinascimento, 15 (1964), 101–21; Felix Gilbert, ‘The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought’, in Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (1968), 490–500; Mattei (1969), 85–8, 296–7; Randolph Starn, ‘ ‘‘Ante Machiavel’’: Machiavelli and Giannotti’, in Myron P. Gilmore (ed.), Studies on Machiavelli (Florence, 1972), 287–93; Donato Giannotti, Republica fiorentina: A Critical Edition and Introduction, ed. Giovanni Silvano (Geneva, 1990). 26 Donato Giannotti, ‘Lettere inedite’, ed. L. A. Ferrai, in Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 4th ser., 3 (1884–5), 157 ff.

26

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

published in 1557 by the notorious ‘Bilious Bale’. It occurs in an appendix to the entry devoted to another remarkable figure of the Henrician Reformation, the lawyer and controversialist Christopher Saint German. Bale is heaping dirt upon Pope Clement VII and notes how, in that Pontiff’s time, Machiavelli had revealed the evils which had befallen Christians through papal ambition. In particular, Bale alludes to two passages in the Istorie fiorentine exposing the base origins of the cardinals and the three ill-used techniques for papal aggrandizement—excommunication, indulgences, and force of arms. This reference suggests, on Bale’s part, a first-hand knowledge of Machiavelli. And so we might conclude were it not for the fact that his account is derived entirely from an entry in another Catalogus—this time devoted solely to anti-papal authorities—the compilation by Mathias Flacius Illyricus, which had been issued, only a year prior to Bale’s work, by the same printer, Johann Oporinus of Basle. Mathias is more detailed than his successor; and he provides the information that Machiavelli ‘floruit ante annos 30’. Moreover, in the second, and enlarged, edition of his Catalogus (1562), he uses Machiavelli as an authority against false Catholic miracles—with their spectres and other Satanic impostures. ‘I would add’, he says, ‘a few of his words’; and he quotes in Italian, though out of context, two sentences from the Istorie fiorentine. It is evident that Mathias really did know this text; and it is equally evident that Bale knew Mathias. What we do not know is whether Bale ever bothered to glance at the Istorie fiorentine himself.27 A few years previously, another anti-papal author, Charles du Moulin, the eminent French jurist, had cited Machiavelli’s opinion in the Istorie fiorentine concerning the origin of the name of Florence; and he accepted Machiavelli’s account of the rebuilding of Florence by Charlemagne 250 years after the city had been 27 Mathias Flacius Illyricus, Catalogus testium veritatis, qui ante nostrum aetatem reclamarunt Papae (Basle, 1556), 993; Catalogus (Basle, 1562), 567. Cf. John Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae . . . Catalogus (Basle, 1557), 662. The passages to which Mathias refers are Istorie fiorentine, I. ix, xi and then I. v; Bale refers to the first two of these passages. Another derivative from Mathias is Henri Estienne, De la conformite´ des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes (Paris, 1566), 565, where Machiavelli is cited to the effect that the popes aggrandize themselves ‘par excommunications, par pardons, et par armes’.

THE EARLIEST READERS

27

destroyed by Totila.28 More significantly, Du Moulin also accepted Machiavelli as an authority on the ways in which the popes had downtrodden both the Empire and Italy itself: ‘comme dict Nicolas Marchianegli [sic] au livre I. de son Histoire Florentine, ou il attribue aux Papes tous les saccagemens advenuz en Italie, et quasi en toute l’Europe depuys la translation de l’Empire’.29 Du Moulin’s use of modern historians such as Machiavelli provoked swift reproof from ‘Raimondus Rufus’, who considered them unreliable.30 But did either of these learned French disputants ever think more deeply about Machiavelli once this exchange—itself only a microscopic fraction of their work—had taken place? And what of the unknown Englishman who wrote from Antwerp early in 1540, concerning the affairs of France and the Empire: ‘and mythynkyth that that proverbe of makiavelly which sayeth that, whan the Dawnger of a warre is over oon, it is better to prevene it than to deffarre it where verey Salutiffer ffor the ffraunche kynge. But God is the worker of all’? This is an allusion to the third chapter of Il Principe where Machiavelli notes that the Romans always considered the future implications of present difficulties and never deferred a necessary war, knowing that such delay is only to the advantage of others: ‘sapevano che la guerra non si leva, ma si differisce a vantaggio di altri’. Since the idea is only a detail in Machiavelli’s chapter, the fact that the anonymous writer 28 Charles Du Moulin, Commentarius ad edictum Henrici secundi contra parvas datas & abusus curiae Romanae (Paris, 1552). There was an augmented French version, Abus des petites dates, reservations, preventions, annates, et autres usurpations & exactions de la Cour de Rome, contre les Edictz & ordonnnances des Roys de France (Lyon, 1564), 292. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, II. ii (Mazzoni and Casella, 409b), discusses the rival testimony of Pliny, Tacitus, and the Pseudo-Frontinus (De coloniis). Du Moulin believed that, with regard to the name of Florence, Alciato had followed Machiavelli without acknowledgement: but, although Alciato’s opinion is the same as Machiavelli’s, he appears to have arrived at it independently. See his Cornelius Tacitus exacta cura recognitus et emendatus (Venice, 1534), fo. 253. 29 Abus des petites dates (1564), 439–40, 480, 560. The last reference is clearly to Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, I. ix—the same passage noted by Mathias and Bale. 30 In Molineum pro pontifice maximo, cardinalibus, episcopis, totoque ordine sacro: defensio (Paris, 1553), 141–4. This was published as the work of Raimondus Rufus but was attributed to Pierre Gregoire, first by Pierre Bayle and subsequently by Louis Moreri.

28

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

picked it up suggests that he knew the text fairly well. But beyond that one cannot venture.31 Did Domenichi, when he quotes with relish an alleged statement by Giovanni de’ Medici that the only difference between himself and Machiavelli was that the latter knew how to write well whereas he knew how to do well, really know anything about Machiavelli’s work?32 Were Segni’s observations that Aristotle’s view of corruption in the Politics was used in Il Principe, and that Machiavelli distorts the notion of avarice from Aristotle’s Ethics, his only insights into the Florentine’s work?33 When La Perrie`re, in the early pages of his Miroir politique, mentions Machiavelli on three occasions, one of which involves a summary of an identifiable passage from the Discorsi, are we to assume that he was steeped in Machiavellian lore, or has he simply stumbled upon something relevant to his purpose in the course of reading several political treatises?34 Similarly, when Jean Nestor twice alludes to Machiavelli in the opening pages of his work on the Medici, are we to be impressed by his use of the Florentine secretary’s history or surprised that he uses it so little?35 Does the fact that Anselmo Turmeda wrote in imitation of the Asino d’Oro provide any basis for further speculation concerning the early penetration of Machiavellism into Spain?36 Is there more to say about the Machiavellism of Andrea Calmo’s polyglot comedy La potione, first published in 1552, other than that it was an unacknowledged abridgement of La Mandragola and was subsequently reissued thrice?37 And when Dionigi Atanagi discusses the nature, nobility, and status of history, its authors, and its laws; praises the primitive but diligent pioneering work of the Villani; and then goes on to single out 31 British Library, Cottonian MS Galba B.x, fo. 92 (calendared in LP, xv. 356). 32 Lodovico Domenichi, La nobilta` delle donne (Venice, 1549), 37. 33 Bernardo Segni, Trattato dei governi di Aristotele tradotto di greco in lingua vulgare fiorentina (Florence, 1549), 7, 290; L’Ethica d’Aristotele tradotta in lingua vulgare fiorentina (Florence, 1550), 180. 34 Guillaume de la Perrie`re, Le miroir politique (Lyon, 1555), 13, 20, 23. 35 Jean Nestor, Histoire des hommes illustres de la maison de Medici (Paris, 1564), 1, 3. 36 See Marcelino Mene´ndez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos espan˜ola, ed. D. Enrique Sanchez Reyes (Santander, 1946–8), ii. 489–90. 37 For the editions of Calmo’s comedy, see Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI: 100, 129, 133; XVII: 1.

THE EARLIEST READERS

29

Machiavelli for having both expanded the scope of historical writing and embellished it: what is there to do beyond taking note of the fact and remarking that this comment by a typical midsixteenth-century Italian literary hack is one of barely six references to the Istorie fiorentine surviving from the early decades of Machiavelli’s reception?38 I pose these rhetorical questions simply because that is the most realistic form in which such heterogeneous shreds of information may be presented. Brief, particularized, and disparate, they raise far more problems than they can ever solve and they are often more indicative of Renaissance reading habits than of a primary concern with Machiavelli. For example, the early relics of Machiavellian learning bequeathed by Remigio Nannini and Marco Cadamosto suggest preoccupation solely with eloquence. The former was a professional anthologizer of whose compilations one, the Orationi militari, includes material from the Istorie fiorentine—acknowledged with the author’s name in the first edition of 1557 but, in the editions subsequent to the Index of Prohibited Books of 1559, referred to simply as material taken from the eight books of the ‘historie di Firenze’. Nannini did the same in his Orationi in materia civile e criminale, first published in 1561, where Machiavelli appears anonymously as the ‘autore’ of the Florentine History. Much later, as we shall see, Nannini did more than merely copy stirring passages from Machiavelli: but, though normally scrupulous in listing sources, he never again refers to Machiavelli by name.39 On the other hand, in 1543, Cadamosto acknowledged no sources whatever in his little collection of modern bons mots.40 For him, Machiavelli 38 Dionigi Atanagi, Ragionamento de la eccelentia et perfettion de la historia (Venice, 1559), fo. 10v: ‘Nicolo` Machiavelli assai havrebbe aggrandita e abbellita la historia, se come propriamenta, e sensamente, cosı` piu` ornatamente havesse le sue narrationi spiegate, e distese.’ Atanagi was at least sufficiently well known to figure, more than forty years later, in Traiano Boccalini’s De’ ragguagli di Parnaso (Venice, 1612), I. xxxiii—an absurd hearing before Apollo. Perhaps the earliest reference to the Istorie fiorentine occurs in a letter written by Annibal Caro to Benedetto Varchi in 1533 (the year following the first edition), requesting that some sheets missing from ‘le Istorie del Machiavelli’ might be supplied to Giovambattista Guidacci. See Annibale Caro, Lettere familiari, ed. Aulo Greco (Florence, 1957–61), i. 10–12. 39 On Nannini, see below, Ch. 16. 40 On Cadamosto, see below, Ch. 17.

30

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

was merely one of several effective writers and, accordingly, he incorporates sentences from Il Principe presumably to be used as striking quotations within a variety of literary contexts. Such concern for style rather than content, and for pithily expressed opinion rather than extended argument, may well represent the attitude of many of that undocumented public whose enthusiasm encouraged publishers to print edition after edition of the master’s works.

m a c h i a v e l l i a s a mi l i t a r y a u t h o r i t y The case was, however, rather different with regard to Machiavelli’s status as a writer on the art of war. Here it was not only his pithy style which excited interest but also his views which were often—though not always—regarded as authoritative. All students of Machiavelli are familiar with Bandello’s story that the author of the Arte della guerra was once challenged by the distinguished soldier Giovanni de’ Medici to drill 3,000 troops in the manner described in his book. After a couple of sweaty and frustrating hours, Machiavelli had still not managed to get the men organized: whereupon Giovanni took over and quickly put them into array. Whether or not the incident really took place, it has generally been interpreted as a comment upon the inadequacies of armchair soldiery; and other versions of the story make a similar distinction between theory and practice.41 However, the tale has another significance because it depends for its effect upon two assumptions: that Machiavelli fancied himself as an expert on the art of war; and that his reputation as a military theorist was well established. That war was important to Machiavelli himself is obvious. Military organization, military virtu`, and the dangers arising from military incapacity were his constant preoccupations. War filled his books and formed the core of his political thinking. Good arms lead to good laws; princes should devote all their attention to military matters; the 41 Matteo Bandello, La prima parte de le novelle (Lucca, 1554), Novella XL. Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolo` Machiavelli (London, 1963), 229–30 and note, seems inclined to accept the story as true. For analogous observations by Domenichi and Cardano on Machiavelli’s practical incompetence, see Mattei (1969), 296.

THE EARLIEST READERS

31

greatness of Rome was founded upon military expertise and sound military institutions; and conversely the decadence of Italy, and of Florence in particular, resulted from military incompetence. Equally clear is Machiavelli’s standing as a theorist. Donato Giannotti, for example, when extolling the virtues of waging war with one’s own troops and avoiding the use of mercenaries, was content to refer his readers to Machiavelli’s treatment of these well-worn themes.42 Cornelius Agrippa, discussing the vanity of the art of war, listed those who had written on the subject— contrasting the multitude of ancient authorities (including Xenophon, Xenocrates, Onosander, Vegetius, Frontinus, and Aelian and ‘antiquiores multi’) with the moderns of whom only ‘Volturius, Nicolaus Florentinus, Jacobus comes Perliliarum et alii pauci’ are mentioned.43 Antonio Vacca, in a verse appended to Giovio’s brief biography of Machiavelli, refers to Machiavelli’s quality as a military authority who had rescuscitated the ancient arts of war; Gesner, as we have seen, noted the Arte della guerra in his bibliography; and the title page of the second edition of Fourquevaux’s Instructions sur le faict de la guerre stated that the work had been extracted from ‘Polybe, Frontin, Vegece, Cornazan, Machiavelle, et plusieurs autres bons autheurs’.44 Mutoni recorded the great men who had written on the art of war including, ‘de nostri tempi’, Valturio, Machiavelli, Porcia, and the ‘miraculous treatise’ of Giovan Giacopo Leonardi (a work of considerable reputation but which was never published).45 Finally, the French translation of Vallo similarly listed military authorities and included only five moderns: the Frenchman, ‘Guillaume de Langey’ (that is the 42 See Giannotti, Republica fiorentina, ed. Silvano, 217, 230. 43 Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, De incertitudine & vanitate scientiarum decla-

matio (Cologne, 1531), Cap. LXXIX, sig. r.6r–v. 44 For Vacca’s verse, see Paolo Giovio, Elogia veris clarorum virorum imaginibus apposita (Venice, 1546), p. LXVII; for Gesner, see above; for this edition of Fourquevaux, printed by Michel Vascosan (Paris, 1549), see The ‘Instructions sur le faict de la guerre’ of Raymond de Beccarie Sieur de Fourquevaux, ed. G. Dickinson (London, 1954), pp. cxiii–cxiv. 45 Stratagemi dell’arte della guerra, di Polieno Macedonio, Dalla Greca nella volgar lingua Italiana, tradotti da M. Nicolo Mutoni (Venice, 1552), sigs.* 2–6v— the dedicatory letter addressed to Giovan Jacopo de’ Medici, Marchese di Marignano. In addition to the authors named above, Mutoni also refers to several writers on the duel.

32

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

author of the Instructions); Valturius who wrote in Latin; and the Italians, Cornazzano, Machiavelli, and Della Valle himself.46 These lists, though brief, are suggestive of the state of military literature up to the middle decades of the sixteenth century. The preponderance of ancient authorities is to be expected: but what is striking about the moderns is that there are only six of them (excluding the unpublished Leonardi, who dealt with fortification), and that all are heavily dependent upon the classical sources—even when, as is the case with Cornazzano, a specific interest in contemporary warfare is expressed.47 Valturio and Cornazzano wrote well before the end of the fifteenth century; Porcia is lightweight; Della Valle is rudimentary and mainly concerned with fortification; and the Instructions, based largely upon Machiavelli, is only a truly independent work when dealing with contemporary French military organization. Machiavelli was outstanding by default— although it should be recognized that the aspect of his work which he himself deemed most important (that is his juxtaposition of ancient and modern exemplars) was certainly anticipated by Cornazzano, who has received little credit for his efforts. Machiavelli’s status as a military authority is also attested by the numerous early editions and versions of his major works, all of which either wholly or in large part concern war. The Arte della guerra itself was not only the first of his serious books to be published but was also the first to be translated from the Italian when, in 1536, Diego de Salazar used it as the basis for his own Spanish Tratado de re militari.48 Ten years later, Jean Charrier published a French version which was shortly followed by Fourquevaux’s Machiavellian adaptation. Finally, in 1560, com46 Battista della Valle, Vallo. Du faict de la guerre et art militaire . . . Le tout nouvellement ordonne´ et augmente´ (Lyon, 1554), sig. B.3. 47 See Diego Zancani, ‘Antonio Cornazzano’s ‘‘De l’integrita` de la militare arte’’’, in S. Anglo (ed.), Chivalry in the Renaissance (Woodbridge, 1990), 13–24; Roberto L. Bruni and Diego Zancani, Antonio Cornazzano: la tradizione testuale (Florence, 1992), 115–22, 175–81. 48 According to Sergio Bertelli, there was another Spanish version of the Arte della guerra by Francesch de Pedrosa. See Niccolo` Machiavelli, Arte della guerra e scritti politici minori, ed. Sergio Bertelli (Milan, 1961), 323. The work is listed and described in Almirante—Francisco de Pedrosa, Arte y supplimento Re militar (Naples, 1541)—but I have not seen or located a copy.

THE EARLIEST READERS

33

pleting the series, Peter Whitehorne issued his version, which was to remain the only published English translation of any of Machiavelli’s works until Bedingfield’s Florentine historie in 1595. There was plenty of opportunity for people to read Machiavelli’s words, ponder them, and make them their own: and the opportunity was evidently too good to be missed. For the period up to the inclusion of Machiavelli’s writings in the Index of Prohibited Books, there survive few critical discussions of his ideas and, of these, a majority concern war and are characterized by a recognition of what Machiavelli was trying to achieve by combining classical knowledge with modern experience. This point was made in the earliest comment of all, in a letter written in September 1521 by Cardinal Giovanni Salviati thanking Machiavelli for his gift of the first edition of the Arte della guerra. The Cardinal had delayed writing until he had read the text diligently; and the more he thought about it the more it pleased him, for it combined ancient perfection with the best of modern practice to form an invincible army. The disorders of modern forces—whether French, Imperial, papal, or Turkish—arise from their lack of the ‘ordini’ described by Machiavelli; and Salviati is grateful that there is at least somebody in Italy who understands what constitutes ‘il vero modo di militare’.49 The rigorous application of Machiavelli’s historical method, expecially with regard to warfare, is a feature of Agostino Nifo’s De regnandi peritia (1523), a complex and subtle reworking of Il Principe, which is the subject of my next chapter. But there was nothing complex or subtle about Antonio Brucioli who, in his Dialogo del Capitano, uses material from the Arte della guerra with lacklustre exactitude. All Brucioli’s borrowings from Machiavelli are, in fact, borrowings at one remove from Vegetius, Frontinus, and Polybius; and his little dialogue has no independent value for our knowledge either of the Renaissance art of war or its classical models.50 In this respect two later works, published in 49 The letter is printed in Pasquale Villari, Niccolo` Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, 2nd edn. (Milan, 1895–7), iii. 415–16. 50 For the Machiavellian passages, see Antonio Brucioli, Dialogi, ed. Aldo Landi (Naples, 1982), 233–59. Landi also prints the French translation by Traian Paradin (1551) at 527–49.

34

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

France, have more to offer. The first of these, by Guillaume du Choul, is important in the history of the reconstruction of ancient military practice and is interesting because it uses Machiavelli not as an authority on modern warfare but as an authority on the ancients when, for example, Du Choul opposes Polybius on the nature of Roman arms and argues that modern cavalry is superior to that of the ancients.51 Du Choul inspired yet another student of Machiavelli, Gabriel Symeoni, to attempt his own analysis of military behaviour as exemplified in the career of Julius Caesar: though the intention here was not antiquarian reconstruction but rather to use Caesar as the basis for more general reflections. Thus Symeoni stresses the importance of arms for princes, and despises mercenaries. He is sympathetic to wars undertaken for revenge, though he advises princes to keep such intentions secret; strongly rejects criticism of the ancients; and even considers that they would have fared well against modern artillery. He argues that princes should observe the ancient laws of the subjects and allies of whom he has need; emphasizes the value of cruelty to strike fear into an enemy; and contrasts the brevity of the Romans’ wars, and the power of their armies, with corrupt modern practices. Few of Symeoni’s ideas are new: but his book remains interesting for its unusual combination of Machiavellian resonances with its use of epigraphical learning to point the way to military knowledge.52 Later in the sixteenth century there was a move against slavish respect for the ancient military writers and against authors such as Machiavelli who exemplified it. But this independence was not characteristic of many of Machiavelli’s early readers. One, Francesco Guicciardini, hinted at things to come in his Considerazioni sopra I Discorsi di Machiavelli, but this work remained in manuscript and exerted no contemporary influence. Guicciardini selected only four military topics for comment—whether passes should be guarded, whether money is the sinews of war, whether it 51 Guillaume du Choul, Discours sur la castrametation et discipline militaire des romains (Lyon, 1557), fos. 8v–9, 22, 24r–v, 25v. 52 Gabriel Symeoni, Cesar renouvelle´. Par les observations militaires (Paris, 1558), fos. 1r–v, 10, 12v, 18v–19v, 32–34v, 36v–37, 38v–39v, 46v–47, 50v–53v. On this curious Italian scholar, see Toussaint Renucci, Un aventurier des lettres au XVIe sie`cle (Paris, 1943).

THE EARLIEST READERS

35

is better to await an enemy or attack him, and whether fortresses are harmful or useful—and, as was his wont, he subjects Machiavelli’s views to the harsh test of common sense and finds them wanting. His negative response is not because the views expressed in the Discorsi are necessarily wrong but because Machiavelli’s exaggeration, blind zeal for the Romans, and cavalier treatment of examples which do not fit his theories, make them only partially right.53 Guicciardini was among the first in a long series of commentators who responded to Machiavelli’s aphoristic and disjunctive manner by reducing his ideas to a series of debating topics.54 One of these questions, concerning the value of citadels to princes, was considered in two early works dealing with military architecture and, curiously, the first of these, by Pietro Cataneo, is largely sympathetic to Machiavelli’s arguments as set forth in Il Principe.55 Cataneo uses the same examples, and reaches the same conclusion that the best defence is to be loved by one’s subjects. He also elaborates on Machiavelli, pointing out that the building of citadels is especially harmful in those cities which have been long accustomed ‘a vivere libere’, because of the immense amount of civic destruction needed to make way for the fortifications. He insists, however, that circumstances vary according to time and place, so that there may be good reasons compelling princes to fortify not only their confini but also all the natural strongholds within their dominions—a satisfactory conclusion for an author embarking upon a treatise on military architecture. Cataneo did not acknowledge his source: but his debt to Machiavelli was noted by Girolamo Maggi when discussing the opinion of ‘alcuni’ who had maintained that citadels should not be built in cities.56 Maggi was writing shortly after the papal prohibition against the reading of Machiavelli, so he begins judiciously by 53 Francesco Guicciardini Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Cecil and Margaret Grayson (1965), 87–9, 109–12, 117–19. 54 See below, Chs. 15–16. 55 Pietro Cataneo, I quattro primi libri di architettura (Venice, 1554), I. xvi, fos. 18–19. For the controversy in general, see J. R. Hale, ‘To Fortify or Not to Fortify? Machiavelli’s Contribution to a Renaissance Debate’, in his Renaissance War Studies (1983), 189–209. 56 Girolamo Maggi, Della fortificatione delle citta (Venice, 1564), I. xvii, fos. 13v–16v.

36

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

asserting that it was many years ago that he had read the books of the ‘Secretario Fiorentino’ where he had found his condemnation of the citadels and fortresses customarily built in cities.57 He points out that Pietro Cataneo, ‘huomo di molto diligentia’, had embraced Machiavelli’s views, which are then rehearsed and—although preceded by a cautious ‘s’io ben mi ricordo’—are given with a precision which suggests that Maggi had the text before him when he wrote.58 This is even more evident when he proceeds to other views expressed by the same author, which he identifies as ‘Nel cap. 24 del lib. 2 de Discorsi’, and refutes point by point. For the arguments deployed by those who do not agree with Machiavelli, Maggi cites the Discorsi militari of a certain Paolo Ligi whom I cannot identify.59 Then, at the end of his long refutation, he notes that Dionigi Atanagi (whom we have met as an admirer of the Istorie fiorentine) had referred him to a discourse against the ‘Secretario Fiorentino’ contained in certain letters by Giovan Francesco Lottini, ‘a man of much judgement’ who had expressed a similar view supported by very strong arguments.60 I do not know whether these letters have survived: but the arguments they contained were probably much the same as those later published in Lottini’s Avvedimenti civili, where those who deplored citadels were reprimanded because they had against them the authority of Aristotle, ‘un molto grand’huomo’.61 The tendency to fragment Machiavelli’s ideas, to pick and choose themes, and then paste them together to form an argument, became increasingly marked in the 1550s. We have already seen it in the writings of Pietro Cataneo, Du Choul, and Symeoni; and it is 57 Maggi (fo. 13v) writes: ‘sono molti anni, che leggendo io e’ libri del Secretario Fiorentino, trovai che egli danna le Rocche, Cittadelle, o` fortezze, che le vogliamo chiamare, quali si soglion fare nella Citta`’. 58 Ibid., fo. 13v, provides a marginal reference: ‘Nel Lib. Del Principe. cap 20’. 59 Ibid., fo. 14v, gives a marginal reference: ‘M. Paolo Ligi nel ca. 7. del lib. I. de’ Discorsi militari’. 60 Ibid., fo. 16r–v: ‘Di questo parere e` ancora M. Giovan Francesco Lottino Volterrano, huomo di molto giuditio, nel discorso, che egli contra il Secretario Fiorentino, fa in certe sue lettere, secondo che mi riferı` il virtuosissimo M. Dionigi Atanagi, che se lesse, nelle quali mi affermava, che si contenevano gagliardissime ragioni’. 61 Giovanni Francesco Lottini, Avvedimenti civili (Venice, 1575), cap. xxv, esp. 17–18.

THE EARLIEST READERS

37

apparent in the dedicatory epistle prefixed to Niccolo` Mutoni’s translation of Polyaenus’ Stratagemi.62 Mutoni’s letter consists largely of an arrangement of several passages from Il Principe and the Discorsi to support a lofty opinion of warfare and an enthusiasm for military deceits. He begins by pointing out that great empires are built not only with religion and laws but also with arms, and he adapts the opening sentences of Discorsi, I. 10, to stress this point before moving on to a statement that princes should have no other object nor thought than the ordinances and exercises of war as the only means either to maintain those who are born to rule or to enable men to rise from humble fortune to the highest rank. This is taken verbatim from Il Principe, 14, and the rest of that same chapter follows almost complete: on the need to practise war in time of peace; to engage in hunting which is the image of war; to read histories which describe notable deeds, show how to gain victories, and avoid losses; and to imitate great soldiers. Above all, says Mutoni, the prince must study the use of fraud in military matters. And here he gently slips first into Discorsi, III. 40 (justifying, in war, behaviour which would be reprehensible in private life for it is as laudable to defeat an enemy by cunning as by force) before adding a postscript, from Il Principe, 18, that ‘where the skin of the lion will not suffice, one has recourse to that of the fox’. So, by Machiavellian degrees, Mutoni at last reaches his principal objective, which is to provide an elaborate definition of the stratagemi which form the subject of Polyaenus’ text. Mutoni is interesting both for his disingenuousness in referring to Machiavelli by name at one point while using him without acknowledgement elsewhere, and for the knowledge of Il Principe and the Discorsi demonstrated by his pastiche. But only a few years later military writers were avoiding Machiavelli’s name altogether while still plundering his works shamelessly. The pastiche technique is apparent in the strange book by Antonio Girardi which combined Machiavellian observations on war with a translation of an oration on peace by Reginald Pole, Machiavelli’s first significant literary adversary.63 It is apparent, too, in Ascanio Centorio degli 62 See above, p. 31. 63 Antonio Girardi, Discorso intorno alle cose della guerra, con una oratione della pace (Venice, 1558). Girardi despises mercenaries; argues that an army requires

38

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Hortensii’s Discorsi which began to appear in 1558.64 And it is even apparent in the Institution de la discipline militaire which, though critical of Machiavelli, still uses the Arte della guerra as the basis for its own examination of the rival merits of the phalanx, legion, and modern battle formations.65 This process of fragmenting Machiavelli’s ideas is especially striking in Girolamo Garimberto’s Il Capitano Generale of 1556. Garimberto was a cleric who ended his career as Bishop of Gallese but who, in his writings on government and on fortune, had already shown himself conversant with Machiavelli’s works.66 When he came to compose his book on warfare it was largely to the Discorsi and the Arte della guerra that he turned for inspiration, method, and subject matter—although he also makes effective use of Fourquevaux’s Instructions for more up-to-date information on modern battles.67 His style, too, like that of Machiavelli, favours disjunctive formulations, though Garimberto is more diffuse and repetitive. His procedure is to follow a general discussion of a particular issue with ancient examples, especially from the career both good captains and good soldiers; feels that artillery has not altered the really important method of killing—that is cold steel; recognizes the power of fortune especially in war, and laments modern Italian corruption in general, and the decay of military discipline in particular. It is not difficult to see where all this came from: although Girardi does strike an independent note by maintaining that money is the nerve of war. 64 Ascanio Centorio degli Hortensii, Il primo (– quinto) discorso sopra l’ufficio d’un capitano general di essercito (Venice, 1558–62) deals with such familiar topics as the rival merits of a good general with a poor army and a poor general with a good army; the need for a prince to introduce military discipline, which is the best way to achieve greatness; the value or otherwise of fortresses; the corruption of modern military discipline; the reasons why modern battles are less bloody than those of the ancients, and so on. 65 Institution de la discipline militaire au royeaume de France (Lyon, 1559), 64–9. The anonymous author names Machiavelli ‘with honour’ as one who, though inadequate on modern warfare, was valuable on the ancients, although he still concludes, ‘par lesquelles choses susdictes je pense estre assez apparent, que l’instruction de Machiavelle n’a la fermete´ de la phalange Macedonique’. 66 Garimberto is now known principally as a connoisseur of ancient art. See Clifford M. Brown, Our Accustomed Discourse on the Antique: Cesare Gonzaga and Gerolamo Garimberto. Two Renaissance Collectors of Greco-Roman Art (New York and London, 1993). On Garimberto more generally, see Mattei (1969), 135–42. 67 Girolamo Garimberto, Il Capitano Generale (Venice, 1556). There is a discussion of Garimberto’s mixed relationship with Machiavelli in Mattei (1969), 135–42.

THE EARLIEST READERS

39

of Julius Caesar, and then add modern and contemporary instances. The plan is not slavishly executed. Individual examples are themselves subjected to further scrutiny; and Garimberto is not unwilling to challenge Machiavelli. On the other hand, he has little originality, and much of his material is derived from Vegetius and other classical authors, either directly or via the Machiavellian conduit.68 Certainly it is not difficult to recognize his deep involvement with Machiavelli’s ideas. He comments on how military virtu` has enabled men to rise from humble origins to high position; and he devotes a whole chapter to the preparations necessary to bring off a military coup. He condemns Italian dependence on cavalry, which he says is unsuited to local terrain, arguing that ‘l’anima d’una impresa e` la buona fanteria’; and, scorning ‘la moltitudine disarmata’, he cites the sorry case of Ludovico Sforza, who lacked troops of his own and died in prison.69 As for the conduct of war itself, Garimberto examines the relative advantages of taking the offensive or awaiting the enemy’s invasion and—rejecting the nice distinctions made by Machiavelli in Discorsi, II. 12—he argues in favour of carrying the war into the enemy’s territory, ‘perche (come si suol dire) huomo assaltato e` mezzo perduto’ (pp. 151–8).70 Similarly, when weighing the relative merits of attacking first in battle or awaiting the enemy’s assault, Garimberto again specifically rejects Machiavelli’s argument and supports vigorous aggression (pp. 448–54).71 For Garimberto, cruelty in war, and particularly in sieges, is blameworthy if used gratuitously, but excusable if used when necessity demands: just as physicians who have not succeeded 68 Thus we encounter many familiar observations: different provinces produce men inclined to different sorts of ‘milizia’; success in war depends upon training in peacetime; discipline, quick action, and ‘buon ordine’ lead to victory; auxiliaries are unreliable; troops fight best when victory is their only hope; skirmishes are a valuable preliminary to battle; generals require eloquence to encourage their men. All this, and much else, is the conventional pabulum of military writers within the classical tradition. 69 Il Capitano Generale, 36–8, 98–107. Further references are given in the text. 70 Cf. pp. 223–6, where Garimberto writes of the advantages of a swift invasion and conquest of enemy territory which not only confuses and terrorizes the adversary but also augments one’s own reputation. 71 The relevant passage under attack is Discorsi, II. 45, which is certainly one of Machiavelli’s silliest non sequiturs.

40

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

with medicines and ointments must resort to ‘il ferro o` il fuoco’ (pp. 285–90). Stratagems, too, are recommended as a means of gaining victories in a less bloody and more humane way. Ruses may even be gainfully employed against one’s own troops as when, for instance, it is vital to restrain their ardour so that battle is not joined too soon. Here recourse to religion might be helpful, although, like Machiavelli, Garimberto fears that modern troops are without discipline and ‘in consequenza senza religione, o` con poca’. The Romans had the advantage of being able to manipulate auguries and superstitions whereas Christians lack such means. Nevertheless, says Garimberto, it remains possible to exploit religion and he makes the bizarre suggestion that an excess of zeal among the troops might be curbed by saying that on certain days Christians are not allowed to shed blood (pp. 354–9, 188–90). While Garimberto is at pains to introduce modern examples of leadership and battle into his text, recent technical developments in the art of war do not much concern him. They only arise when he discusses modern and ancient valour with special reference to the effects of artillery, and it is interesting here that he begins by saying that he cannot deal adequately with this subject without first distancing himself from Machiavelli’s opinions. The fact is that terrible slaughter had been inflicted by artillery and handguns at Ravenna, Marignano, and Bicocca—battles where blood was shed indiscriminately, ‘de i Capitani, i Condottieri, e de i privati soldati’—and Garimberto dismisses Machiavelli’s assertion that in twenty-four years of modern war in Italy fewer captains had been slain than in ten years among the ancients. Guns can reach anywhere and everybody; they penetrate military formations, and obscure the sight of men and horses with smoke and fire. The resulting disorder renders modern armies less effective as soldiers than were the ancients: but it certainly does not mean that they are intrinsically less valiant (pp. 118–31).72 These arguments against Machiavelli are well supported and sensibly organized. Yet elsewhere, when 72 In order to refute Machiavelli, Garimberto provides a long list of recent commanders who have been slain by firearms—culminating in Giovanni de’ Medici, ‘splendor dell’armi de’ tempi nostri’. Later (pp. 491–7) Garimberto argues that modern armies are courageous and well armed, but are ruined by lack of organization and discipline.

THE EARLIEST READERS

41

explaining why the wars of the ancients were more bloody than those of the moderns despite the development of firearms, Garimberto not only repeats Machiavelli’s views that the wars of the Romans were short, decisive, and sanguinary, but also accepts his assertion that artillery was ineffectual in battle because it could only fire once, and that its shot generally passed harmlessly overhead (pp. 497–503). Garimberto is a good example both of the kind of influence exerted by Machiavelli’s military thinking in the midsixteenth century and of its limitations. Moreover, since his modest work is one of the most extended treatments of Machiavellian themes in this period, it reminds us how much we are at the mercy of inadequate, fragmentary, and uneven sources. We know that up to the middle decades of the century there were twelve editions and several translations of the Arte della guerra, and that Machiavelli’s other major works—all teeming with military observations—were even more frequently published and translated. Yet, for that period, the number of individuals whose reactions to Machiavelli’s military thinking have survived total fewer than one for every three Machiavelli editions published: and of those individuals only a bare handful were soldiers.73 Who were the others? Giannotti, like Machiavelli himself, was an administrator, diplomat, and man of letters. Nifo and Agrippa were philosophers; Vacca a poet; Du Choul and Symeoni antiquaries; Gesner a bibliographer; Brucioli a biblical scholar; and Salviati a cardinal. Garimberto, though thoroughly familiar with Machiavelli’s writings and greatly imbued with their spirit, was a cleric. His book reduces the art of war to academic debate about stylized topics; and no military man could gain much profit from reading such stuff. It is not unintelligent or ill-informed. It is simply bookish. 73 Salazar, Whitehorne, and Fourquevaux were all soldiers. Guicciardini had practical experience of warfare, and the same is probably true of the author of the Institution de la discipline militaire.

2 Creative Plagiarism: Agostino Nifo’s De regnandi peritia In 1521 Agostino Nifo, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pisa, published a treatise on the behaviour of the best princes, which he dedicated to the insignificant rulers of the insignificant town of Sessa. It dealt with the necessity of prudence, justice, modesty, clemency, piety, honesty, magnificence, liberality, fortitude, and temperance; the desirability of such skills as painting, music, athletics, and a knowledge of history; and with the worldly glory and eternal beatitude to be enjoyed by the ruler possessing these virtues and accomplishments.1 Nifo was aged about 48 and had long been esteemed as a scholar and teacher. His Aristotelian translations and commentaries were well known and were to remain in use for over a century; he had written on Averroes, astrology, astronomy, meteorology, medicine, physiognomy, and demonology; and he had engaged in a celebrated controversy with the formidable Pietro Pomponazzi.2 Nifo was, moreover, a man of the world and, despite an uncouth manner, was celebrated as a wit and Lothario, and was on good terms—or deemed himself to be on good terms—with the great and the powerful: hunting with Prospero Colonna; valued counsellor to 1 Agostino Nifo, Libellus de his quae ab optimis principibus agenda sunt (Florence, 1521); ed. by Gabriel Naude´: Augustini Niphi Suessani Opuscula Politica: cum G. Naudaei de eodem auctore judicio (Paris, 1645), 93–150. 2 For general information on Nifo’s career, see P. Tuozzi, ‘Agostino Nifo e le sue opere’, Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di scienze, lettere e arti di Padova, ns 20 (1904), 63–86; Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923–58), v. 69–86; Gennaro Monarca, Agostino Nifo vita ed opere: traccia per una riscoperta (n.p., 1975); Edward P. Mahoney, Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance: Nicoletta Vernia and Agostino Nifo (Aldershot, 2000).

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

43

the ‘Great Captain’, Gonzalo de Cordova; and certainly a prote´ge´ of Pope Leo X, who created him Count Palatine and gave him the right to use the name Medici. Despite these credentials, his Libellus of 1521 was a conventional speculum principis based solely upon ancient examples. From beginning to end there is not a single reference to a modern prince and, although the work may have interested some contemporary other than its author, no trace of such interest has survived.3

il principe a t s e c o n d h a n d Two years later Nifo returned to political theory with a remarkable volume unlike any other which had been published hitherto. Abandoning the microbic Italian princelings, he now sought the favour of the Emperor Charles V for a work devoted to the practical knowledge of ruling—De regnandi peritia—which, though less completely ignored than its predecessor, still attracted scant attention at the time.4 However, like a long-buried murder victim, it caused great excitement when, 350 years later, scholars exhumed it, conducted their post mortem, and pronounced the victim to be Niccolo` Machiavelli’s Il Principe.5 Nifo’s text, they declared, was merely 3 It has been argued by Carlo Dionisotti, Machiavellerie: storia e fortuna di Machiavelli (Turin, 1980), 133, that this conventional treatise was a direct response to Machiavelli’s Il Principe. This is just possible, although, in the light of what was soon to follow, highly unlikely. 4 Augustini Niphi de regnandi peritia ad Carolum V. Imperatorem Caesarem semper augustum (Naples, 1523): referred to hereafter as DRP. The text was edited by Gabriel Naude´, in Augustini Niphi Suessani Opusculorum politicorum pars prima (Paris, 1645), 1–88. There is a modern facsimile edition with French translation by S. Pernet-Beau and an introduction by Paul Larivaille, Une ree´criture du Prince de Machiavel: le De regnandi peritia de Agostino Nifo (Paris, 1987). There is a curious story, concerning Nifo and Charles V, told by Matthieu Coignet in his Instruction aux princes pour garder la foy promise (Paris, 1584), 159, to the effect that when the Emperor was in Naples (presumably in 1535) he sent for ‘un Nyphus grand Philosophe’ and asked him how to govern an empire well. To which the philosopher replied that the Emperor should keep about his person such counsellors and worthy men as the Emperor made show of thinking Nifo to be. 5 A clutch of eager scholars hastened to have their say, but the earliest were Luigi Settembrini, Lezioni di letteratura italiana, 2nd edn. (Naples, 1870), ii. 171; Jean Fe´lix Nourrisson, Machiavel: l’histoire du Machiave´lisme et de Machiavel

44

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Machiavelli’s masterpiece mangled; rendered into tedious Latin; brutally reordered; chopped up into four books; and, insult added to injury, followed by a fifth book full of princely platitudes claiming to serve as an ‘antidote’ to the preceding ‘poison’. Worse still, Nifo nowhere acknowledged his source, which could only have been a manuscript version of the as-yet-unpublished Il Principe. The villain’s crime was out. It was a ‘brazen’ and ‘daring’ plagiarism perpetrated by a thief who ‘prostituted his larceny’ by offering it to the Emperor.6 It was trash by a third-rate deformer and exploiter of a great man’s original creation. Nifo’s notoriety was assured and, henceforth, the abusive label plagiarist has been almost inseparable from his name. Of the many scholars who refer to the De regnandi peritia, perhaps only its two modern editors have attempted a dispassionate assessment, and even they do not (in my view) really understand what Nifo was doing; while Giuliano Procacci, usually a judicious critic, is unable to hide his distaste for a writer who, he feels, destroyed the very essence of Machiavelli’s work in creating his own, vastly inferior, treatise.7 Yet, closer attention to both context and text reveals that the matter is by no means as simple as the historical pathologists have suggested, for there is, running through Nifo’s varied writings, a rich vein of ambiguity and cynicism. In his early treatise, De intellectu, he had, as Lynn Thorndike pointed out, ‘played somewhat perilously with the Averroistic doctrine of the unity of the intellect, professedly opposing it but also overthrowing many arguments advanced by others against it’. His treatment of demons (Paris, 1875), 192–225; Francesco Fiorentino, ‘Del Principe di N. Machiavelli e di un libro di A. Nifo’, Giornale di filosofia e lettere, scienze e politiche, ns 1 (1879), 94–114; Oreste Tommasini, La vita e gli scritti di Niccolo` Machiavelli nella loro relazione col machiavellismo (Rome, 1883–1911), ii. 137–9. Many have since added to the ‘exposure’ of Nifo’s crime: among them Villari, Burd, Persico, Ferrara, Valletta, Prezzolini, Procacci, Firpo, and Dionisotti. 6 Giuseppe Ferrari, Corso su gli scrittori politici italiani (rev. edn., Milan, 1929), 250. Monarca, Agostino Nifo, 60–9, raises the possibility that it was Machiavelli who plagiarized Nifo! But this is not a hypothesis which can withstand close scrutiny of the texts. 7 Nifo, trans. and ed. Pernet-Beau and Larivaille, Une ree´criture du Prince; Procacci (1965), 3–27; and the same author’s Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell’eta` moderna (Rome, 1995), 63–71. For Pernet-Beau’s mistranslation of the key words in Nifo’s work, see below, nn. 16, 17.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

45

is similarly equivocal, for he proposes to discuss them ‘according to natural reasons and physical causes’ but adduces magic as the sole ground of proof.8 His De immortalitate animae, dedicated to Leo X, was commissioned to oppose Pomponazzi: yet there is little fundamental difference between the two authors, and Nifo’s appeal to revelation as against natural reason carries no more conviction than does his adversary’s similar equivocation. Even less straightforward is his attitude (expressed in his influential work on the false prognostications) towards the reality of the biblical deluge said to be due in 1524; while the real intentions of his book on courtiers are deliberately obscure. This last work, De re aulica (in which Nifo modestly ranked himself among the foremost writers on ‘things natural’ of the last hundred years), is in two books, the first of which is a riposte to those who would fashion courtiers like scaled-down versions of the princes whom they are to serve. Nifo suggests that courtiers exist solely to please their masters; and his analysis of the techniques whereby ‘affability’ might be exercised includes observations on flattery which, in their moral neutrality, anticipate the cynical precepts of the later courtly Taciteans.9 He also discusses the role of women at court, and is critical of the fashion for erotic conversation—perhaps of the sort we may see reproduced in Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano— though it is evident that he himself revelled in such aulic titillation, delighted in dirty jokes, and ventured well beyond the confines of mere books in pursuit of his keen interest in sexual activities. Nifo was accorded a brief, and characteristically inaccurate, biography by Paolo Giovio, which included an epigram by Joannes Latomus celebrating the philosopher’s propensity for enlivening dry syllogisms with amusing stories.10 Furthermore, the ‘amoroso 8 Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, v. 82–5. 9 De re aulica (Naples, 1534); ed. Naude´, Niphi . . . Opusculorum, 240–358; Italian trans. by F. Baldelli (Genoa, 1560). In his treatment of affability Nifo includes a discussion of laughter, which is one means to gaining princes’ favour which he himself exploited to good effect. See his De re aulica, pt. I, chs. 35–44. On courtly cynicism, see below, Ch. 16. 10 Paolo Giovio, Le iscrittioni poste sotto le vere imagini de gli uomini famosi, le quali a` Como si veggiono (Florence, 1552). There is an amusing though wild translation of Latomus’s verse in the English version of Pierre Bayle, The Dictionary Historical and Critical (London, 1737), iv. 379 n. 25: ‘Away ye fools, who

46

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Nifo’, as he was called, published treatises on feminine beauty and on the art of love; and is said to have been so besotted at the age of 70 with a young girl that, at the sound of music, he would forget the agony of his gouty feet and start to caper about the dance floor.11 In view of all this learned lubricity, it is odd that Nifo’s critics missed the opportunity to compare him with his idol Aristotle, who was vulgarly supposed to have made a fool of himself in sexual matters and was sometimes represented as a naked dotard being ridden and mocked by an equally naked lady.12 Nifo was a curious and complex intellectual personality—very different from the plagiarizing pedant depicted by his modern enemies.13 Of encyclopedic erudition, immense industry, keen intelligence, and great fluency, he was well able to absorb and adapt any material that appealed to his fancy. And here it is important to consider the more general context of authorial habits and conventions. The word plagiarism, so often associated with Nifo, has moral resonances inappropriate to much early sixteenthcentury scholarship, for it suggests that a scrupulous acknowledgement of sources was a normalcy which could be contrasted with the plagiarist’s unsavoury spoliations. But there was no such normalcy. Sometimes authors referred to the origins of their material; sometimes they did not; and Nifo’s adaptation of Machiavelli was no different in kind from Machiavelli’s own incorporation of classical think Philosophy / Too grave for jokes and wanton venery. / What, does not florid Niphus think it best / Midst dry syllogisms to crack a jest?’ 11 Nifo is described as ‘amoroso’ by Michel Angelo Biondo: first in his Angitia cortigiana (Rome, 1540), sig. B.1v; and then in his Angoscia, la prima furia del mondo (Venice, 1542), sig. C.4v. Since Biondo refers to Nifo as ‘mio maestro’ (Angoscia, sig. A.4v), perhaps his testimony should be heeded. See also Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, Ill., 1956), 158. The English version of Latomus’s verse exclaims, ‘How wondrous pleasant must it be to see / This great Philosopher at seventy, / Inspir’d by love with shaking head advance, / And trembling knees to grace the airy dance?’ In the light of later slang usage, ‘trembling knees’ is an inspired mistranslation of ‘undulatis passibus’. 12 On this tradition, see George Sarton, ‘Aristotle and Phyllis’, Isis, 14, pt.1, no. 43 (May, 1930). 13 Nifo figures in Traiano Boccalini’s De’ ragguagli di Parnaso. Centuria prima (Venice, 1612), p. xliv—a dispute with the historian Platina (represented as a pastry cook) whom he has attacked with a rolling pin for the imputation of gluttony.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

47

authorities, without acknowledgement, in his Arte della guerra.14 To appropriate the work of another writer, living or dead—words, phrases, images, and ideas—was not unusual. Nor was it reprehensible, provided that such material was employed within a new structure and made to serve a different purpose. There were occasions, certainly, where one author merely took over the work of another, not only without acknowledgement, but with scarcely any alteration or new application. Nifo himself was, on several occasions, the victim of such treatment.15 In general, though, the application of modern notions of plagiarism to his De regnandi peritia is an unhelpful anachronism because Nifo’s book is not a mindless Latin butchery of Il Principe. It is an altogether more subtle concoction. Political Practicalities Addressing himself to Charles V, Nifo recalls that he had previously offered the Emperor a brief treatise on the false prognostication of a flood. Now he has something which, considering the extent of Charles’s empire, is far more necessary: that is the De regnandi peritia. Nifo’s choice of title is significant. He is not writing another conventional mirror for princes. His subject is, specifically, peritia—the skill, the practical knowledge, which is gained only by experience—and by that word we may judge the impact of Machiavelli’s Il Principe on Nifo who had, only two years previously, produced his idealized Libellus on the ‘Best Princes’, based on ancient philosophers and a limited number of classical exemplars.16 Now Nifo has shifted his emphasis to actualities. Such practical knowledge, he admits, is almost innate in the 14 There is a good discussion of the modern, anachronistic use of the word ‘plagiarism’ in Larivaille’s introduction to Une ree´criture du Prince, pp. iv–vi. 15 Nifo was treated by others with even less respect and no more acknowledgement than he had accorded to Machiavelli. On Brucioli’s use of Nifo’s De pulchro, see his Dialogi, ed. Landi, 352–7, 359–61; on Portinarius’s use of Nifo’s De demonibus, see Thorndike, v. 85–6. On Rosello’s ruthless adaptation of three of Nifo’s texts, see below, pp. 80–4. On Domenichi’s plundering of the second book of Nifo’s De re aulica, see Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady, 211. 16 Pernet-Beau, in her translation of Nifo’s work, renders De regnandi peritia as L’art de regner, which completely misses the point of the treatise.

48

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Emperor, who derives from a long line of rulers. Indeed, as Nifo sententiously remarks, in offering this book he is simply spurring a willing horse. Nevertheless, he does not fear to write about all these things which he has noted both in ancient and more recent histories and in the long wars waged in Italy; for in these the Emperor will find ‘tum tyrannica, tum regia facinora breviter explicata, veluti in Medicorum litteris venena & antidota’. Here, in conjunction with the word peritia, lies the key to Nifo’s treatise. He is explicating evil deeds (facinora)—sometimes tyrannical, sometimes kingly—just as, in the writings of doctors, are explicated ‘poisons and antidotes’, so that Charles may avoid the one and know how to use the other.17 Nifo, though consistently misrepresented by his modern commentators, could not be more clear. It is not the brief statement on the ‘honourable kind of ruling’ at the end of his treatise which constitutes the antidota. It is the evil deeds of kings which serve as the antidote to the evil deeds of tyrants. It is true that Nifo does not explain, either here or elsewhere in his book, precisely how this would work. The difference between the two kinds of ‘evil deeds’ can reside only in the authority of the perpetrators, and we must bear in mind that, for Nifo, tyrants may become kings by beneficent government, while the heirs of tyrants may also become kings simply through inheritance. In effect Nifo is making an impossible distinction which could resolve itself only into the proposition that the ‘evil deeds’ he describes are evil when committed by evil rulers for evil ends. When committed by legitimate and responsible monarchs, such as Charles V, they are not evil at all. This is an extraordinary position. But it is, I think, one which fairly represents Nifo’s thinking on the matter of political expediency after he had absorbed Il Principe. It is well known that Machiavelli’s Il Principe circulated in manuscript.18 Indeed, in December 1513, Machiavelli had himself 17 In translating the words ‘tum tyrannica, tum regia facinora breviter explicata’ as ‘les actions des tyrans, et d’autre part celles des rois’ Pernet-Beau similarly obscures Nifo’s meaning. The word ‘facinus’ could mean a deed (good or bad), but this was not its normal usage—and certainly the choice of such a word (ambiguous but carrying definite connotations of evil) rather than a more neutral noun fits perfectly with Nifo’s slippery mentality. 18 Larivaille, in his introduction to Une ree´criture du Prince, pp. viii–ix, discusses the question of which text of Il Principe was used by Nifo.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

49

been concerned, even before he let the text out of his hands, that Pietro Ardinghelli—personal secretary to Pope Leo X—might appropriate it and thereby gain honour.19 I doubt whether Nifo, philosopher and astrologer, aroused similar anxiety in Machiavelli: yet Nifo it was who first saw how to turn Il Principe to his own advantage. Here, very different from his own conventional exercise on how the best princes should behave, was a discussion of politics dealing almost entirely with the problems faced by new princes, and replacing the customary parade of academic wisdom with ancient and modern historical examples juxtaposed to lay bare the sempiternal realities of power. Moreover, although hereditary monarchs are specifically excluded from the discussion in Il Principe, it was evident that their difficulties would differ little from those analysed by Machiavelli. The possibilities offered by Machiavelli’s ruthless concentration on what is rather than on what ought to be, were not lost upon Nifo: but the material was, from his point of view, unsatisfactorily presented. Machiavelli’s argument, though not disorderly, is idiosyncratic; and single chapters often discuss widely divergent issues. Yet the overall structure of Il Principe moves relentlessly towards a violent denunciation of modern Italian princes and an appeal for messianic deliverance from the oppression of barbarian invaders. Unfortunately, the dedicatee whom Nifo had in mind, the Emperor Charles V, though himself one of those ‘stinking barbarians’, would certainly not enjoy being informed of that fact by an Italian professor. The last three chapters of Il Principe were thus useless to Nifo and were rejected along with the ironic comments on the Papacy in chapter 11. Similarly, and significantly, Nifo rejected Machiavelli’s fifteenth chapter. This dealt with the very issue which attracted Nifo’s attention in the first place—the gap between traditional political theory and normal political practice—but it was far too explicit for his deliberately oblique and ambiguous technique. The remaining twenty-one chapters form the basis of the De regnandi peritia: though many passages are deleted; examples are reordered; chapters are broken up into smaller sections; and the 19 Machiavelli, Lettere, 10 Dec. 1513 (Mazzoni and Casella, 886a).

50

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

pieces redistributed according to Nifo’s own scheme.20 The material, he says, has been divided into five books. The first deals with the ways in which private persons may acquire kingdoms. The second is on the arms, soldiers, and methods whereby territories are protected from the invasion of enemies. The third examines the duties, crafts, and ingenuities (versutiae) which preserve them from insults, defections, and rebellions of subjects; the fourth treats certain ‘common matters’ useful for both; and the fifth is devoted to what Nifo is pleased to call the ‘honourable kind of ruling’. Throughout the work, Machiavelli’s historical evidence (particularly modern exempla) is heavily augmented. Nifo sometimes returns to Machiavelli’s own sources to expand particular points; incorporates comment from classical authorities, especially Aristotle; adds his own critical observations and glosses; and introduces new themes as they occur to him. Acquiring a Kingdom Apart from the enigmatic conclusion of the De regnandi peritia, it is the first book which is least dependent on Il Principe—though its structure is suggested by Machiavelli’s opening chapter, which mentions different kinds of principalities and how they are acquired. Nifo elaborates Machiavelli’s brief statement by suggesting that there are ten different modes of gaining power—by fortune, virtus, crime, arms, guile, faction, insurrection, the favour of citizens, election, and succession—to each of which he devotes a chapter. One of the shortest concerns men who gain their kingdoms through virtus which, in the context, means conventional moral virtue rather than Machiavellian virtu`. Even now, writes Nifo, as though astonished, ‘some come to royal authority through virtue, as did nearly all the kings who ruled in the Golden Age’. However, his only examples, Saturn and Numa Pompilius, do not suggest confidence in the present generation. This is all the more striking 20 Tommaso Persico, Gli scrittori politici napoletani dal 1400 al 1700 (Naples, 1912), 147–68, includes an analysis of Nifo’s use of Machiavelli; but Pernet-Beau and Larivaille, pp. ii–iii, are fuller and more precise.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

51

because the following chapter, the longest in the book, deals with those who obtain princedoms through crimes, and is largely a translation of two-thirds of Il Principe, 8, with its harsh truths about Agathocles and Oliverotto da Fermo. Here, Nifo is able to repeat his source’s uncharacteristically pious judgement on the Sicilian tyrant whose virtu` was not really virtu` at all, because ‘it cannot be called virtu` to kill fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without pity, without religion’. Machiavelli had offered no similar moral comment on Oliverotto, so Nifo renders the original statement—that this thug had ‘made himself Prince’ (si fece principe)—by ‘tyrannus creatur’; adding that he might have reigned long but for the vengeance of God, carried out by Cesare Borgia, who himself meets a similar fate in Nifo’s third book. The rest of Book I is illustrated principally by ancient examples until, when discussing those who obtain power through the favour of citizens, Nifo makes an interesting observation on recent Italian history. There are those, he says, who come to power neither by crimes, nor force, nor other disgusting methods (‘nec aliis obscenis modis’), but by the favour of their citizens. These cannot absolutely be described as rulers or princes, for they do not hold sway openly, but by ‘requests and consultations’: though, to be sure, their requests and consultations may be more than commands to the citizens, for anyone who does not comply is pursued as an enemy. ‘Of this sort’, explains Nifo, ‘in our own time were Lorenzo de’ Medici, the father of Pope Leo X, a man most prudent among the Florentines, Giovanni Bentivoglio among the Bolognese, and Pandolfo Petrucci among the Siennese’.21 All these long upheld an ‘agreeable tyranny (iucundam tyrannidem) through popular favour’. This realistic assessment of citizen-based government is followed by a brief word on elected rulers, before the book closes with a pregnant statement on the succession of kings, which renders Nifo’s political morality more dangerously topsy-turvy than Machiavelli’s notorious upside-down catalogue of virtues in Il Principe. The sons of legitimate kings may themselves succeed legitimately. But even where the father had gained power by one of 21 DRP, I. 10. Nifo returns to this group (De’Medici, Bentivoglio, and Petrucci) in DRP, III. 10.

52

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

the other nine dubious methods already described—and might on that account have been deemed a tyrant—‘his successor is called king by historians’ (qui tamen huic succedit, rex ab historicis dicitur). Moreover, continues Nifo, citing Diodorus, this is indeed how kingdoms originated. He does not develop the point further. He does not need to. If every kind of political extremism may ultimately be legitimized by a simple act of succession, then the amount of water in Nifo’s ‘watered-down’ Machiavellism is almost imperceptible; and his consistent use of the word ‘tyranny’ in the next three books of the De regnandi peritia, to indicate such behaviour, carries no moral weight. Warfare Nifo’s second book, dealing with the arms by which kingdoms are defended against enemies, is principally a reworking of the military chapters of Il Principe (12, 13, 14, 20), which included little that was ethically problematic. Nifo accepts Machiavelli’s classification of armies as either native, mercenary, auxiliary, or mixed troops, and closely follows his source both in hostility towards mercenaries and auxiliaries, in a lukewarm view of mixed soldiery, and enthusiasm for princes who rely on their own forces. In the group of chapters into which he divides Machiavelli’s discussion of fortresses (Il Principe, 20)—though he begins with a very close rendition of Machiavelli’s opening paragraphs (De regnandi peritia, II. 12, 13)—his use of his source becomes free, and he incorporates an increasing number of his own examples. Indeed, throughout this second book, Nifo is at pains to give the material a personal stamp. Sometimes his devices are truly shameless as when, translating Machiavelli verbatim, he blithely writes ‘it seems to me’ (II. 3); or renders Machiavelli’s ‘respondo’, in reply to some hypothetical question, by a grandiose ‘respondibimus’ (II. 4). More interesting are Nifo’s glosses on his text. For example, adapting Machiavelli’s comment that mercenaries fight only for their stipend, he writes that they desire neither glory nor victory, and cites Horace (Ep. II. 40): Ibit eo quo vis, qui zonam perdidit—‘He who has lost his purse will go whither you wish’. Similarly, where Machiavelli refers simply to the fact that the

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

53

Swiss are completely armed and completely free, ‘armatissimi e liberissimi’, Nifo stresses that, though they are few in number, and hemmed in by great powers who might easily conquer them, yet— because the Swiss employ their own forces and aim at lasting freedom—they have not been subdued and have lived for a long time in the greatest liberty (II. 3). Sometimes Nifo likes to add a little rhetorical ornament: as when he heightens Machiavelli’s brief statement that the first who gave great renown to mercenaries was ‘Alberigo da Conio, romagnolo’, by likening this first occasion to the entry of the Trojan horse (II. 5). Sometimes Nifo provides a name or detail to enhance the original narrative. Machiavelli, for example, referred to Francesco Sforza’s having become Duke of Milan through being armed, and to his sons’ having lost power through neglecting arms. Nifo, however, makes specific allusion (II. 10) to Francesco’s son Ludovico, who, ‘when he was betrayed by the Swiss was foully captured by Louis King of France and died in a filthy prison’ (Ludovicus Sfortia Helvetiis prodentibus, a Ludovico Gallorum Rege turpiter captus, in carcere foede periit). Sometimes he adds a longer illustrative passage from literature, as at the end of the same chapter where he illustrates the importance of military studies for the prince by rehearsing Aesop’s fable of the Lion and the Fox.22 Elsewhere, Nifo augments Machiavelli with Aristotelian glosses, ancient and modern examples, and personal comment. A good example of this is in the chapter (II. 11) discussing the need for princes to devote themselves to military skills in time of peace— based upon Il Principe, 14. He begins with an allusion to Aristotle’s views on the relationship between war and peace and his observation that warlike deeds are not in themselves desirable.23 But Nifo then asserts, as though it were his own opinion (Nos autem . . . asserimus), Machiavelli’s advice that princes should prepare themselves for war in time of peace both by action and by study. Nifo stresses, as does Machiavelli, the value of hunting as military preparation; but, in addition, he alludes to the way in which the ancient Greeks with their Olympiads, and the Romans 22 Cf. Rosello, Il ritratto del vero governo del principe (Venice, 1552), fos. 75v–76. 23 This reference is probably to Aristotle, Politics, VII. 14. xiii; 15. I.

54

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

with their public games, trained for war. In modern times, too, the Swiss and the Germans practised only those sports which would make them more teachable and apt for military activity. At this point Nifo cites a modern Italian example, Vitelozzo Vitelli, who drilled and trained his foot soldiers in peacetime, so that they were prepared, in time of war, to advance on even the most powerful adversaries, and were never seen to turn their back on the enemy. Machiavelli’s account of the value of hunting is again taken up to demonstrate how it teaches the general about different terrains, encampment, modes of attack, and siege work. Nifo follows his source closely although there are several interpolations, including a quick reference to Plato for the view that there is a great similarity between hunting and warfare.24 Machiavelli’s example of Philipomenes, Prince of the Achaeans, is used by Nifo, who precedes it with an interesting modern example of his own acquaintance. Years earlier, Nifo had completed his work on the helionoric figures of the stars while hunting in the Roman forests with Prospero Colonna, the noted condottiere, whom he had then described as most active (‘strenuissimus’).25 Now in the De regnandi peritia, again in the context of hunting, Nifo refers to Prospero Colonna, this time as ‘strenuissimus Dux’ who had only recently provided testimony to the usefulness of hunting when, with inferior forces and contrary to the expectation of many observers, he had gloriously defeated the French at Milan through his knowledge of the terrain and his experience of castrametation. It is ironical that Nifo should describe as ‘most active general’ a leader whose excessive caution earned him the name of ‘Cunctator’. Nevertheless, Prospero certainly had inflicted heavy defeat on Lautrec in the Lombard campaign of 152l–2, and this reference is the most topical in the De regnandi peritia. It shows that Nifo was content neither to translate Machiavelli, nor to adorn his source with classical exempla. On the other hand, Philipomenes’s habit of discussing hypothetical military situations with his friends, as described in Il Principe, does lead Nifo into a digression, only 24 Nifo may have had Plato, Laws, I. 633, in mind although there the idea is simply that hunting is one of various activities designed with war in mind. 25 De figuris stellarum helionoris praeclari libri duo (Naples, 1526), fo. xxxixr–v. See Thorndike, v. 73.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

55

marginally relevant, on the usefulness of private declamation and debate where, although learnedly referring to the orator Calvus, Nifo in fact transcribes part of the definition of Declamatio from Calepinus’s Dictionary which cites Calvus.26 Nifo bases two chapters in this second book of the De regnandi peritia on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, I. 4. In his chapter on the considerations necessary for those who wish to wage war (II. 9), he fills out Aristotle’s sparse references to military strength and weakness by alluding to the different types of army (native, mercenary, or auxiliary) and to whether troops are effeminate or warlike, novices or veterans. He also emphasizes a prince’s need to understand the problems of his commanders, citing a proverb—that an army composed of sheep but led by a lion is more powerful than an army of lions led by a sheep—which had been in Machiavelli’s own mind when he wrote on a similar issue in the Discorsi, III. 12. Then, at the end of this book, Nifo similarly expands Aristotle’s reference to national defence and the need to know the strength and quality of one’s forces, and the location of fortified places. One ought, says Nifo (II. 18), to know whether the troops are ‘proprii, an mercenarii, vel auxiliares, si experti, si fortes’. Clearly Nifo, generally condemned for having Aristotelized Machiavelli, was not averse to Machiavellizing Aristotle when appropriate. Nifo and Machiavelli’s Moral Problems It is in the third book of the De regnandi peritia—an examination of the techniques whereby both kings and tyrants preserve their territories against rebellion, popular uprisings, and civil commotion— that Nifo first has need to cope with some of the moral problems posed by Machiavelli, who continues to appear anonymously as ‘historians’ who assert or note things. Nifo’s fourteen chapters are based on material contained in Il Principe, 2–10, which are adapted extensively yet selectively; and Nifo is rarely content to translate without some adjustment, addition, or observation. 26 Ambrosius Calepinus, Dictionarium ex optimis quibusque authoribus (Strasburg, 1510), sig. Q4: ‘Declamationem esse domesticam exercitatione Calvus scribit’.

56

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Moral comment is reserved principally for the nefarious deeds of Cesare Borgia: though Nifo, discussing the ways whereby a new prince may hold down a state accustomed to live freely under its own laws, draws attention to the Roman technique of destruction and enfeeblement which is, he acknowledges, safer than other methods, but also more cruel and savage—‘tutior modus est, licet crudelior, ac truculentior’ (III. 5). Elsewhere, when treating princes who gain power by crime, he renders Machiavelli’s observation that injuries should be done at one blow, whereas benefits should be conferred little by little, very concisely as ‘ut malum totum simul, bonum paulatim fiat’ (III. 8)—but introduces it as a ‘tyrannicum praeceptum’. The rest of Nifo’s adjustments are mainly a matter of supplementary examples and descriptions both ancient and, more commonly, modern. Thus we have not only Caesar representing the elected rulers whose new and oppressive laws result in failure, but also Ferdinand of Aragon (the Catholic)—Charles V’s grandfather— whose recovery of the kingdom of Naples from France demonstrated the ease with which hereditary rulers, provided that they are popular, can reassert lost authority (III. 1). To illustrate the difficulties faced by new rulers, Nifo cites, in addition to Caesar, the career of Ludovico Sforza, the problems of the Venetians in Cyprus, and the deeds of his favourite name-dropee, Prospero Colonna. Following Machiavelli in his analysis of Louis XII’s errors, Nifo adds a citation from Aristophanes, refers to Alexander the Great, and expands Machiavelli’s detail concerning Ferdinand the Catholic (III. 3). On one occasion he cites a saying of Diocletian, misquotes some lines of Ovid en passant (III. 7), and adds Sulla’s activities to those who make acquisitions through crime.27 Considering rulers who obtain ‘civilis dominus’ by a combination of prudence and fortune, Nifo returns to the group of modern Italians who illustrated this genre in his first book, but adds Cosimo de’ Medici, and a reference to the government of Genoa.28 Debating 27 Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II, ll. 13–14: ‘Nec minor est virtus, quam quaerere, parta tueri. / Casus inest illic: hic erit artis opus.’ Nifo (III. 7) quotes this as ‘nec minor (ut Ovidius) virtus est parta tueri quam nova comparare, casus inest illic, hic erit artis opus’. 28 The group first appear in DRP, I. 10.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

57

the merits of the proverb that he who builds on the people builds on mud, Nifo alludes to Catiline, Caesar, the Aragonese monarchs, and Prospero Colonna; while the dangers which threaten civil authority are illustrated by reference to Caesar and to Dionysius the Younger of Syracuse (III. 13, 14). When dealing with those who gain principalities by taking advantage of opportunity to exercise their virtus, Nifo agrees with Machiavelli that Fortune must first provide that opportunity, and he uses four of Machiavelli’s examples—Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus, and Hiero of Syracuse—avoiding only Moses, whom Machiavelli himself had touched upon with cautious irony. However, in his discussion of Hiero, Nifo recognizes that Machiavelli had not only used Justin but had misquoted him, and he therefore goes back to the classical source, expands his discussion to include references to Hieroclytus and Pyrrhus, and corrects Machiavelli’s ‘quod nihil illi deerat ad regnandum praeter regnum’ (that he lacked nothing but a kingdom to be a king) by transcribing ‘prorus ut nihil ei Regium praeter Regnum deesse viveretur’, which is more accurate, though still not precisely in Justin’s order. This is noteworthy as an instance of Nifo’s tendency, from time to time, to penetrate behind Machiavelli—the sort of thing which, on a more superficial level, is manifested by completing a reference in Il Principe to the ‘duca di Ferrara’ with the name ‘Hercules’ (III. 1). On the other hand, the concluding chapter of Nifo’s third book is interesting as an elaboration of Machiavelli very much in the spirit of Machiavelli himself. Nifo has wandered from his point for, having considered the dangers which threaten ‘civiles Principes’, he moves on to the ways in which they might successfully defend themselves against external enemies. Basing himself on Il Principe, 10, Nifo suggests two methods. The first is for the prince to fortify his town and encourage his people in warlike activity—the technique practised by the German cities on their own behalf. And to those who object that people will not remain steadfast when they see their fields and towns devastated, Nifo replies, with Machiavelli, that the able prince will encourage his subjects. But he transforms the adroitness (‘destrezza’) of Machiavelli’s prince into precise manipulation: by ‘simulated messages, forged letters, and other stratagems always bringing hope of safety and victory to

58

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

the people’. Nifo then proceeds to the second mode of defence, which has been ‘already set forth’: namely the creation of one’s own native army solely dependent upon the prince’s fortune. The Swiss are again the great example, and Nifo repeats his earlier observations on their merit, adding that other modes of defence, such as mercenary or auxiliary troops, are risky and uncertain. Details such as these are indicative of Nifo’s concern to personalize his text. But far more noteworthy is his treatment of Cesare Borgia, who is first considered in a chapter devoted to those who gain power by fortune (III. 7). Machiavelli’s own treatment of Cesare had been unsatisfactory. He had contrasted two modes of acquisition: by virtu` or by fortuna. Those who gain power by the former may experience many tribulations but, once successful, they can be overthrown only with the greatest difficulty. On the other hand, those who rise by fortune alone may certainly enjoy rapid success; but they tend to lose their principalities just as rapidly, unless they have sufficient virtu` to lay those foundations (after coming to power) that others are able to establish in advance. Machiavelli then provided two examples within living memory: Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. Francesco was the man who, by the ‘requisite means and with his own great virtu`’, became Duke of Milan; and that which he acquired with a thousand anxieties he was able to maintain with little trouble. Borgia, however, acquired power through the fortune of his father and lost it in the same way. It is true that Machiavelli did go on to say that Cesare had done everything that could be done by a prudent and virtuoso man to build those foundations afterwards which should have been provided before. But it was to no avail, and Borgia power collapsed through an ‘extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune’. Nifo simplifies this juxtaposition. For him, both rulers were aided by fortune but, whereas Francesco Sforza secured himself by seconding fortuna with his own virtu` and prudence, Cesare Borgia added only cruelty and crime and, when his father’s fortune failed, he lost his state. This is not, as has been argued by Procacci, diametrically opposite to what Machiavelli said: because it is not correct to argue that Cesare Borgia was for Machiavelli a prince not only fortunate but also ‘prudente e virtuoso’. Machiavelli did try to make it appear so, but his argument was weakly constructed and

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

59

self-contradictory. He subsequently elaborated favourably on Borgia’s methods; but the fact remains that, in the passage under discussion, Machiavelli contrasted not only virtu` with fortuna but also Francesco Sforza with Cesare Borgia—and he cast Francesco unambiguously in the role of the virtuoso. In any case, modern scholarship, in its zeal to defend Il Principe at all costs, has exaggerated both the talent and significance of Cesare Borgia, whose dependence on fortune—in the shape of his papal father and French aid—had been perfectly well assessed by Machiavelli at the time of his legations both to Cesare and to Pope Julius II.29 Nifo, too, had observed Cesare’s career independently and had included a brief account of the young gangster’s crimes in his analysis of the Causes of our Calamities, published in 1505.30 He returns to this subject in the De regnandi peritia, III. 9, which deals with the taming of the Romagna by Ramiro d’Orco and the subsequent execution of Ramiro by his master, Cesare Borgia. It is, however, not clear whether Nifo’s account, which is more elaborate than Machiavelli’s, is merely an imaginative embellishment or is based on an alternative source. Both authors agree that Ramiro was cruel, expedite, effective, and unpopular; and that Cesare determined to eliminate him in order to suggest that Ramiro had been responsible for all injuries. According to Machiavelli, Cesare had set up a central court in the province, under a president, where every city would be represented by an ‘avvocato’. Then, as a separate issue, Machiavelli had observed that Cesare, wishing to demonstrate that the unpopular governmental rigour had not been his doing, had caused Ramiro to be cut into two pieces and displayed in the piazza at Cesena. In Nifo’s De regnandi peritia, Cesare summons to Cesena all the ‘advocati’ whom Ramiro had injured, in order to hear their complaints and to examine thoroughly certain writings—‘Cesenae itaque advocatis omnibus, quos ille iniuria affecerat, auditusque eorum querimoniis, perlictisque libellis’—so that he might make clear to everybody that the cruelty originated with the minister. 29 Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli: A Dissection (1969), 36–42. 30 Euthici Augustini Niphi Philotei Suessani de nostrarum calamitatum causis liber

(Venice, 1505), BNF Re´serve R.107 in fol., ‘Praefatio’, fo. 2r–v.

60

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Then with his own hand, in the sight of everybody, he ran Ramiro through with a sword. Thereafter, he showed such benevolence to those who remained his subjects that ‘his name is still celebrated up to our own time’. Thus by this trick, when he had destroyed his enemies and reconciled everybody else, he finally secured his principate only to lose it ignominiously when, like Oliverotto, he suffered the vengeance of God. The career of Cesare Borgia poses no problem for political moralists since, though he enjoyed brief worldly success, he soon suffered an unsavoury retribution—‘ulciscente Deo’.31 On the other hand, the central chapters of Il Principe (16–19) are far more perplexing because, in them, Machiavelli deliberately dislocated the political morality of his own and of preceding ages. For centuries, those who had written books of advice for princes had assured their pupils that it was necessary to practise virtues such as liberality, clemency, faithfulness, and so on. Now Machiavelli was telling his ‘new’ prince that such virtues would be admirable were the world an ideal place: but that, since it is not, moral behaviour of this kind can only lead the ruler to ruin. Machiavelli set tradition on its head. His intention was to shock; and Nifo, who had himself recently published a treatise on princes in which conventional values were extolled, could not let this challenge pass unheeded. Nor, since he was determined to write about the skills which rulers gain through practical experience, could he simply reiterate the ancient ideals.

31 Cesare Borgia’s career attracted the attention of poets in a manner quite independent of Machiavelli’s controversial treatment. Very shortly after his death he was the subject of a dull La historia dela morte del duca Valentino (Venice, 1507?). But much more interesting is Le lachrimevoli lamentationi del duca Valentino, figliuolo che fu di Papa Alessandro sesto (Venice, 1543), in which Cesare himself bemoans the unhappy results of his ruthless deeds, recognizing that he has fallen from the heights to the depths, not through the deeds of others but through his own mistake. Cruelty was his ‘prima gloria’; his hands were stained with the blood of his own family; he had driven the Colonna and Orsini from Rome; made himself great with sword and gallows; had raped women and violated sanctuary; despoiled the Church; and had poisoned, drowned, and strangled those who opposed him. Yet, as soon as his father died, fortune overthrew him in an instant.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

61

Nifo’s and Machiavelli’s Liberality To see in Nifo’s adaptation of this part of Il Principe nothing but a half-hearted moralization of something which he found too hot to handle is to exaggerate both the consistency of Machiavelli and the obtuseness of Nifo. Machiavelli, in setting forth his topsy-turvy catalogue of virtues, plays rhetorical tricks upon his readers; and Nifo should not be condemned for seeing through the hyperbole and perversions of his source. The fourth book of the De regnandi peritia is a revision of conventional political morality, undertaken by Nifo in response to Machiavelli’s violent challenge. It is not a plagiarism of Il Principe. It is a critique. Machiavelli’s basic contention was that, within a realistic political context, the traditional view of virtues and vices must be reversed. Thus the prince will do himself more good and less harm by niggardliness than by liberality; by cruelty than by clemency; by making himself feared rather than loved; and by breaking his word than by keeping faith amidst changing circumstances. Machiavelli did, however, lay great stress upon maintaining the appearance of conventional virtue to facilitate policy and, cautioning the prince to avoid being despised or hated, he briefly analysed the conspiracies hatched against rulers who had failed in this last endeavour. Nifo tackles these issues in the same order as Machiavelli, apart from deferring consideration of oath-breaking till after the question of hatred and conspiracies had been dealt with. Thus he opens his fourth book with a long chapter on liberality, incorporating from Machiavelli’s discussion only a few sentences principally on the modern examples of effective parsimony, Pope Julius II, Louis XII, and Ferdinand (‘your maternal grandfather’ Nifo adds for the benefit of his dedicatee, the Emperor). Princely liberality was a well-worn theme and, in essentials, Machiavelli’s treatment of it differed little from his classical sources. It had always been recognized that, while liberality was a virtue, it could easily degenerate into prodigality which might then force a ruler, intent on maintaining appearances, into becoming increasingly oppressive and demanding. Tacitus had put the matter succinctly: ‘Falluntur, quibus luxuria specie liberalitatis

62

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

imponit’ (those with whom profusion passes for liberality are deceived).32 Machiavelli, by choosing to interpret liberality as something which must, in practice, always degenerate into prodigality, has no difficulty in maintaining that it is better to be parsimonious because, in the long run, it enables a prince to manage his affairs without burdensome taxation. By this simple dialectical device, Machiavelli can offer—under the guise of a shocking originality—a number of trite observations largely culled from Cicero’s De officiis. By contrast, stressing the important distinction which Machiavelli had recognized but chose to gloss over, Nifo notes two sorts of liberality: one as understood by the multitude but which, in reality, was nothing but prodigality; the other as comprehended by wise men, and which was fully discussed in Aristotle’s Ethics.33 Nifo’s chapter is built upon the contrasting vices, avaritia and luxuria, which, according to Livy (Decades, XXXIV. 4), were the two plagues which destroy all kingdoms. However, Nifo argues, by luxuria Livy did not understand immoderate debauchery, but rather prodigalitas, which is the liberality of the mob (vulgaris liberalitas). It is precisely this false virtue which drives princes to despoil their people; to become despised as indigent; and to become rapacious and robbers of their subjects. Some modern rulers who erred in this respect are Alphonso of Aragon, Virginio Orsini, and Fabrizio Colonna. The truly liberal prince will avoid such depradations and will, even when unable to be actively generous, attempt to gain good will by kindness. Cyrus is one ancient example of such a ruler; while a modern instance, with whom Nifo ends the chapter, is Prospero Colonna, who is especially skilled in this type of liberality and thereby has protected his subjects ‘even up to the present day’—though, in fact, this was not for much longer since Prospero died at the end of 1523. In the latter half of the sixteenth chapter of Il Principe, Machiavelli raised two possible objections to his own argument on the advantages of meanness. What, he asked, if someone were to 32 Tacitus, Histories, I. 30. 33 Nifo here alludes to his earlier work on the behaviour of the best princes (Libellus, ch. 18), where this point had been discussed. Cf. Aristotle, Ethics, IV. 1.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

63

point out that Caesar and others had gained power by the exercise of liberality? Or that there had been princes, highly successful with their armies, who had been deemed ‘most liberal’? In the first place, he replied, it is necessary to observe that liberality may be employed either to obtain power or to maintain it. Caesar had been successful on his way up, but would have destroyed his own authority had he long continued in the same lavish vein. Similarly, there is a distinction between liberality with one’s own resources and with resources taken from others. The former is harmful because, says Machiavelli—in words wrested from Cicero who had not, in fact, condoned making free with others’ belongings— ‘there is nothing which so consumes itself as liberality, for while you exercise it, you lose the power to do so’ (‘non ci e` cosa che consumi se stessa quanto la liberalita`; la quale mentre che tu usi, perdi la faculta` di usarla’).34 On the other hand, that prince acts wisely who is generous to his soldiers with the spoils of war—‘of that which is neither your own, nor your subjects’, you can be a bountiful giver’. All this Nifo accepts without a qualm.35 His only additions are to gloss Caesar’s putative fate—had he continued to be lavish—by referring to Nero; and to render Machiavelli’s ‘respondo’ with his customary royal ‘respondemus’ (De regnandi peritia, IV. 2). Cruelty, Clemency, Love, and Fear Machiavelli’s drastic revaluation of the relative merits of cruelty, clemency, love, and fear (Il Principe, 16, 17) next occupies Nifo, who divides the material into four chapters: the value of cruelty in the preservation of a principate; whether it is better for the prince to be feared or loved; the example of Hannibal and Scipio; and the question whether it is possible for a prince to be feared without being hated. Here, Nifo sometimes translates sentences directly from Il Principe, and sometimes paraphrases them; but, more often, he plays with these ideas in an attempt to offer a better 34 Cf. Cicero, De officiis, II. 15. 35 ‘Debet ergo & qui ad principatum aspirat, & qui in bellis a militibus beniuolentiam captare velit, liberalitate splendere, non ea omnino elargiendo, quae sua sunt, aut subditorum, sed quae ex praeda lucratur.’

64

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

balanced, if less dynamic, evaluation than Machiavelli. Thus his discussion of cruelty and clemency weighs two views: the conventional one which favours the latter, and the opinion of ‘some’ (nonulli)—that is Machiavelli—to whom cruelty seems more efficacious. To substantiate the latter position, Nifo cites Cesare Borgia’s successful reduction of the Romagna; replaces Machiavelli’s reference to the harmful clemency of the Florentines in relation to Pistoia with a similar failure in the kingdom of Naples; translates Machiavelli’s opinion that the dangers which face new princes necessitate the use of cruelty; and cites the identical lines of the Aeneid in which Dido excuses the inhumanity of her reign. Nifo then largely abandons his source, offering two further ancient examples—Cambyses and Sulla—of the practical advantages of cruelty, before moving on to the opposite viewpoint with instances of politically effective clemency. He also distinguishes between plain cruelty and rigorous justice. The latter he regards as valuable, and expedient even when applied to those who have not themselves committed any crime but may cause political unrest—and here Nifo refers to the Greek use of ostracism against those so suspected. It is important, he continues, to consider the nature of the principate, for in some places peace can only be secured by cruelty whereas in others such procedure would be calamitous. Therefore both cruelty and clemency can be useful to the prince, provided that each is regulated by prudence and plain reason. At this point Nifo returns to Machiavelli. Clemency, arising from excessive trust, makes the prince careless and contemptible; cruelty, arising from excessive distrust, renders the prince intolerable. A balanced position is required; and Nifo concludes by combining this Machiavellism with a cynically pious reminder that God is called by holy men a ‘compassionate and just lord’, and that compassion is here placed before justice.36 The rival advantages gained by princes through being feared or loved are dealt with in similar fashion by Nifo, who gives first the view of nonulli, that it is far safer for a ruler to be feared. This 36 Machiavelli had himself been troubled by this point, and in the Discorsi, III. 22, he gave a view of clemency in a prince very different from that advanced in Il Principe, 17.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

65

would not be the case if all men were good and agreeable; but, since evil predominates, they are moved more by dread of punishment than by a sense of obligation for benefits rendered. Nifo adapts Machiavelli’s statement on this issue (Il Principe, 17), but slips in a sentence from the following chapter to round out the idea of flawed human nature.37 However, he glosses the argument with a wellknown classical tag, Oderint dum metuant—‘Let them hate me so long as they fear me’—which is not what Machiavelli counselled.38 On the contrary, he had stressed that the prince should always try to avoid being hated: though, as critics have frequently remarked, it is difficult to see how anyone acting in the manner suggested in Il Principe could possibly achieve this. Nifo adds to his mixture the example of Sulla (who had inspired both love and fear with excessive benefits to his friends and fierce punishment for his enemies) before making his own essential distinction between the practice of a king and that of a tyrant. For the latter, fear is the more potent weapon; whereas the love of his subjects, gained by benevolence, is more natural in a king. Unfortunately, Nifo then proceeds to cloud the issue by describing two kinds of love—one innate, such as the love of God; the other voluntary, such as the love of agreeable things—so that, on this view, we are moved to love a good king by natural compulsion but only esteem a tyrant if he bestows benefits. The difficulty is that, since Nifo has only just mentioned that kings win love through benevolence, the essential distinction between king and tyrant remains obscure. Like Machiavelli, Nifo not only attributes Hannibal’s success in retaining unity within a heterogeneous army to cruelty, but also attributes Scipio’s failure to prevent sedition in an homogeneous army to benevolence. Machiavelli had concluded that, since men love according to their own will but fear according to that of the ruler, a ‘wise prince’ should build upon that which is his own rather upon that which belongs to others. The idea is borrowed by Nifo with only one alteration: the ‘principe savio’ becomes 37 DRP, IV. 4. 38 Oderint dum metuant: Suetonius, Caligula, 30; Cicero; Seneca, etc. See Burton Stevenson, Stevenson’s Book of Quotations Classical and Modern, 3rd edn. (1937), under ‘Hate’, p. 867, col. 2.

66

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

‘tyrannus’. This still leaves unresolved the problem raised by Machiavelli (Il Principe, 17) when, in pursuing this policy of being feared rather than loved, the prince must avoid being hated and can achieve this simply by abstaining from the property and womenfolk of his subjects. Machiavelli’s treatment was unsatisfactory, and Nifo devotes a short chapter (IV. 6) to this knotty problem. Can a prince be feared without incurring hatred? At first sight this may seem impossible: yet we have the example of God who, though feared by all, is hated by no one; and of sons who may fear their father without hating him. So it is possible, as in these examples, to feel both fear and love simultaneously. Equally one may experience fear unaccompanied by other emotions, as is the case with a flash of lightning; or experience both fear and hatred, as for a formidable enemy. Here Nifo returns to Machiavelli and the case of a prince who may inspire fear without hatred simply by acting mercilessly while yet refraining from injuring his subjects and their property, and by acting always according to law and reason. Such a ruler will not be loved, because he does not provide his people with the benefits which promote affection; he will not be hated, because he does nothing hateful; but he will be feared, because he is implacable towards malefactors. This is an interesting attempt by Nifo to meet the various objections to Machiavelli’s strategy but, like Machiavelli, he founders upon the rock of his own gloomy view of human nature. Stern, uncompromising rulers, however strictly they remain within the law, tend to be hated by an unappreciative and peccant populace. Machiavelli had considered the ways whereby princes incur hatred, and had listed these at the beginning of Il Principe, 19, together with the qualities which make them despised—fickleness, frivolity, effeminacy, pusillanimity, and irresolution—before discussing conspiracies and the way in which various rulers, especially Roman emperors, had met their deaths. Nifo divides the material into several chapters: the cause of conspiracies and the extent to which they should be feared or disregarded, with special reference to the Bentivogli of Bologna (IV. 7); the value of the French parlement in keeping both people and nobles loyal to the Crown (IV. 8); the reason why several Roman emperors met violent ends,

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

67

despite their benevolence (IV. 9); and how princes might avoid assassination (IV. 10). In these chapters, on the whole, he preserves both Machiavelli’s ideas and words, though rearranged so that each chapter can end with a suitable aphorism. He also expands the classical information, especially concerning the death of Alexander Severus, and enlarges upon the impossibility of avoiding a dedicated, single-handed assassin. Here he cites two examples: Mutius Scaevola’s attempt on the life of the Etruscan king; and the modern parallel when Galeazzo Sforza was murdered in church during the sacred service.39 Further Moral Problems Nifo now (IV. 11) returns to the difficult eighteenth chapter of Il Principe and the problem of oaths and oath-breaking, which he introduces with some classical examples. Leaders such as Hannibal, Hamilcar, almost all the Africans, and Ptolomaeus Ceraunus, achieved greatness despite habitually breaking their word. Some historical writers, says Nifo, assert that there are two modes of combat: by force of arms, which appertains to beasts; and by laws and reason, proper to man. Unfortunately, the latter mode does not always suffice, so that the wise ruler must also know how to use bestial methods when required. Machiavelli’s reference to the education of Achilles by Chiron the centaur is repeated in the De regnandi peritia, as is Machiavelli’s gloss that the story indicates the need to act both as man and beast, to observe or violate faith, as circumstances demand. Nifo’s only addition is a shameless, ‘ut ego quidem interpretor’ (‘as I indeed interpret it’). Bestial behaviour would not be necessary were all one’s allies reliable; but, since the majority of men are evil and faithless, the prince will find himself constrained to break his word. Thus far Nifo follows Machiavelli. But he then asks a further question. To what extent may a tyrant carry out the kingly office, which is to speak the truth and to honour one’s promises? Apollonius is cited 39 Galeazzo Sforza was killed on his way into the church of Santo Stefano at Christmas 1476. This murder is referred to by Machiavelli in his chapter on conspiracies in the Discorsi, III. 6, and is discussed at greater length in the Istorie fiorentine, VII. 34–5.

68

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

to the effect that lying is for slaves not free men; and Nifo points out that, according to Herodotus, even the Persians deemed lying unworthy of a king. Moreover, once the tyrant has been detected in falsehood how can he win other allies without whom he can scarcely preserve his kingdom? This is a good question—debated to the present day by students of Machiavelli—and Nifo was the first to pose it. The answer, says Nifo—‘as they say’—is that a tyrant may seem to act as a king if he simulates good faith; gives public assurances that he will observe religion in all things; punishes those who despise keeping faith; and acts like a zealot for truth, a defender of justice, and an enemy of undue severity. If he simulates in this way, the tyrant will be regarded as honest by the ignorant multitude, and his fraud will only be detected by the wise, who are very few in number. ‘I can tell you’, writes Nifo, once again assuming his Machiavellian mantle, ‘which kings and potentates, within our own memory and that of our fathers, have commonly been esteemed great and just by breaking treaties and violating the law; but I pass it over out of respect’. This was prudent, since the king in Machiavelli’s mind—and therefore presumably in Nifo’s—was Ferdinand of Aragon, grandfather to Nifo’s dedicatee. Nifo elaborates on Machiavelli’s concise statement that everyone sees what you seem to be, but few really know what you are. Simulation is a sensory matter, whereas truth is intellectual, and the vulgar herd, who are stirred more by the senses than by the intellect, are thus moved by appearances rather than by understanding—‘magis oculis quam mente’. Machiavelli had argued that it was necessary for the new prince to appear to have all the conventional moral virtues and, indeed, to practise them when it was safe to do so, but that he should also be able to act immorally ‘per mantenere lo stato’. Nifo is less explicit and far more cautious. In his opinion the tyrant ought to keep faith in most cases, and should only violate his oath on those very rare occasions when reason of state demands it—‘regnandi causa’—for if the tyrant does perjure himself, witnesses will never be lacking because, as Pliny observes, there is no lie so impudent that it passes unnoticed.40 40 Pliny, Nat. Hist., VIII. 34.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

69

At this point Nifo slides unobtrusively from Machiavelli’s Il Principe into Cicero’s De officiis, stressing that the Romans used to maintain that an oath was a religious affirmation witnessed by God and should, therefore, always be observed, and citing Cicero’s examples of keeping faith, even when this had involved supreme sacrifice.41 Moral philosophers, adds Nifo, do concede that princes may employ ambush or treachery (insidias) in just wars, provided that they do not break their word. In very difficult circumstances, Sertorius tricked his own soldiers, and Caesar himself, as Cicero testifies (De officiis, I. 8), maintained that the law might be broken, ‘regnandi causa’: though Nifo concludes lamely that Caesar’s dictum was tyrannical whereas Regulus’ action, in submitting to torture and death rather than break his promise, was religious and regal. Reputation In Il Principe, 21, Machiavelli had examined the ways whereby princes gained renown. The foremost of these was the achievement of great enterprises and acting in such a fashion as to be always remarkable. The prince should always be an outright friend or downright enemy and should never sit on the fence. He should appear as an admirer of ability and as one who rewards excellence. He should encourage commerce and agriculture. In addition, he should provide public shows to entertain his people but, while setting an example of ‘umanita` e di munificenza’, he must always maintain his dignity. Characteristically, Machiavelli devotes unequal space to these methods: making much of great enterprises; providing a miniature treatise on the dangers of neutrality; and cramming the rest into one short paragraph. Equally characteristic is Nifo’s treatment (IV. 12, 13). He divides his subject into four categories (derived from Aristotle, though with some relation to Machiavelli); reinterprets Machiavelli’s idea of neutrality, while reserving fuller discussion of this topic for the next chapter; ignores the idea of public shows altogether; but greatly expands other suggestions only touched upon in Il Principe. Also characteristic is the veil of ambiguity which Nifo casts over everything he writes. 41 Cf. Cicero, De officiis, I. 13; III. 29, 32.

70

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

For the first method of gaining eminence, Nifo follows Machiavelli in discussing great deeds and in exemplifying these by Ferdinand of Aragon’s rise from insignificance to power, his conquest of Granada, and his hegemony over the whole of Spain. But whereas Machiavelli describes these actions as ‘extraordinary’, Nifo calls them ‘grandia facinora’—that pregnant term already encountered in his opening address to Charles V. Facinora was only rarely used to indicate deeds in general. Normally the word indicated crimes, and to qualify facinora merely as ‘great’ leaves their morality conveniently undefined. Nor is that the end of Nifo’s tricky treatment of Ferdinand. Machiavelli himself had been explicit for he described Ferdinand’s handling of the Marrani as ‘making use of religion’ and ‘pious cruelty’, and described the invasion of Africa as being ‘under the same cloak’. Nifo is more circumspect, commenting that, in his actions, Ferdinand omitted nothing which would ‘seem religious’—‘nihil quod religiosum videretur, praetermisit’. This may not be as outspoken as Machiavelli: but it is a vast distance from the ‘eulogy and panegyric’ detected here by one modern reader of the De regnandi peritia.42 Subsequently Machiavelli had launched into a long disquisition on the dangers of neutrality; but Nifo twists the argument to fit his second requisite for princely fame, which is for the ruler to be firm of faith. Like Machiavelli, he urges the prince to be either a true friend or a declared enemy, and he condemns neutrality as a mark of timidity which is usually disastrous. Unlike Machiavelli, who forgot that he had earlier advocated keeping treaties only when they are advantageous, Nifo more logically stresses that, to have the reputation of a good ally, it is vital to observe agreements. This is not conventional morality. It is common sense. Nifo is certainly prepared for his prince to transcend the ethical norms when occasion demands. This is made clear in the third mode of behaviour necessary for a great reputation: rerum honestarum ostentatio, & subditorum cura. Again Nifo’s choice of words is significant. Care of the prince’s subjects is a genuine concern which Nifo explains as promoting trade, agriculture, and commerce.

42 Procacci (1965), 24.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

71

By contrast, when it comes to honourable conduct it is only the ‘outward show’ (ostentatio) that matters. Machiavelli had said simply that the prince should show himself a lover of virtu`, giving shelter to virtuosi, and honouring those who excel in any art. Nifo says much the same, but draws attention to the artifice of the prince’s patronage by preceding it with ‘ostentatio quidem’, and by citing Dionysius the Younger, who often used to remark that he supported learned men not because he admired them but because he wished to be admired by others for their sake. This was not groundless, remarks Nifo, for a prince is generally considered to have as much wit as those with whom he is in constant companionship. He then cites Euripides to the effect that tyrants are made wise by familiarity with wise men; adding that, in his own time, the Florentine tyrant Lorenzo de’ Medici always had famous men about him, almost as attendant sycophants (‘quasi continuos asseclas’).43 Another effective cover is zeal for religion. Nothing renders a prince more worthy of respect. And antiquity regarded leaders such as Numa Pompilius, Hercules, Alexander, and Aeneas, who enriched religious worship, not only as worthy of praise, but numbered them amongst the gods. Nifo’s last mode of gaining reputation is facilitas: that is affability and approachability. This was not mentioned by Machiavelli, but Nifo feels that nothing is more agreeable to the people than that their ruler should always be ready to hear their complaints; and he cites the story of a jester who declared that he would sooner serve a blind master than a deaf one, because it mattered less for his deeds to pass unobserved than for his words to go unheeded. One ancient and one modern example serve to illustrate the value of facilitas. Philip of Macedon subdued more people with affability than by force of arms; while Ferdinand I, King of Naples, gained power by the exercise of easy and pleasant manners, never failing to appear, in all things, as a guardian and father—smiling, modest, and never harsh or bitter. A prince ought, therefore, to be easy-mannered, though never to the extent that he becomes contemptible, as did 43 The saying concerning familiarity with wise men is attributed by Sophocles, Plato, and then Nifo, to Euripides. Burton Stevenson, Stevenson’s Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases (1949), 2405, no. 3.

72

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Commodus, who participated in public gladiatorial exhibitions and was despised by everybody.44 Nifo next asks whether a prince should, when discord arises between other states, declare himself for one side or remain uncommitted (IV. 13). Machiavelli’s own discussion of this topic was not one of his happier performances. He began by arguing that it is always more useful, when two of your powerful neighbours came to blows, to make a positive declaration of amity or enmity. Neutrality offers only two possibilities. The first is that, if the victor is very powerful, you will invariably fall prey to him because you did not offer support in time of need. The Achaeans, for example, who were requested by Antiochus to remain neutral in his projected war against Rome, were warned by the Roman envoy that such neutrality would leave them at the mercy of whichever side proved victorious. Machiavelli further suggested that, even when the victorious party is powerful enough to have you at his mercy, there will be a bond of amity between you if you have declared for him; and ‘men are never so dishonest that they will oppress you with a display of ingratitude’. This was an odd sentiment from the self-proclaimed realist who had just turned conventional morality upside down: but worse silliness was to follow. Victories, Machiavelli continued, are never so decisive that the victor can show no consideration, especially to justice. Even if your ally loses, you will be sheltered by him and you become companions in a fortune which may rise again—two vapid reassurances which Machiavelli leaves unexplained. The second possible result of neutrality, in Machiavelli’s view, occurs when neither of the combatants is sufficiently powerful to worry you, even when one of them triumphs. Here it is especially prudent to take one side and thereby assist in the destruction of the other; for then the victor, who could not have succeeded without your help, remains at your discretion. Conversely, Machiavelli argued, except under necessity a prince should never make an alliance with one more powerful than himself in order to attack others, because he will then remain the victor’s prisoner. An example of this was the Venetian alliance with the King of France 44 On the contemptible Commodus, cf. Il Principe, 19.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

73

against the Duke of Milan, which eventually led to the republic’s ruin. On the other hand, when such a combination cannot be avoided (as happened to the Florentines when the Pope and Spain attacked Lombardy) then the prince must choose one side or the other. Finally, Machiavelli declares that no polity can constantly play safe. Doubtful courses are inevitable; trying to avoid one danger leads to another; and prudence consists in judging these and choosing the lesser evil. This treatment could scarcely be less satisfactory. Apart from the simplistic trust in the prince’s good will which (as Machiavelli had already assured us) is worthless, there is nothing to indicate that the Venetians really acted more unwisely or less under constraint than did the Florentines. The caveat about not allying with a stronger power against a weaker flatly contradicts the exhortation to declare oneself. Nor is it clear how a ruler can remain uncommitted when aid is demanded by an extremely powerful state against one of the prince’s own enemies. Nifo pursues the question of neutrality, and resolves the difficulties by making the greater part of his chapter a commentary on the Roman envoy’s warning to the Achaeans, from which he derives his principal dictum that failing to take sides is dangerous and, for the most part, fallacious.45 For Nifo, the Venetians are yet another instance of the perils of neutrality for, in his opinion, they did not ally themselves with France but simply ‘permitted’ Louis XII to overthrow Ludovico Sforza. They tried to play safe. And not long afterwards, he says, they fell prey to the victor when the French defeated them at the River Adda: that is at the Battle of Agnadello. But Nifo, too, is at fault. It is not true that the Venetians refused to take sides against Ludovico Sforza, for they signed a treaty of alliance with France, promising financial and other support in return for a large piece of Milanese territory which they duly received. It is no more clear in Nifo than in Machiavelli either that the Venetians had much choice in the matter or that their mauling at Agnadello, ten years later, resulted directly from this misalliance with France. 45 Curiously, although Nifo refers back to Machiavelli’s source for the Achaeans (that is to Livy XXXV. 49), he actually quotes it rather less accurately.

74

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Nifo tampers with history simply to retain an appearance of dialectical consistency before ending the chapter with a very curious, tangential observation. He is convinced that neutrality in the face of armed conflict is a hazardous course, and he argues the case less equivocally than Machiavelli: but it raises in his mind the whole question of taking sides, both in external and internal disputes. In the latter case, is neutrality invariably harmful? Nifo thinks not, and he takes as his example Solon, the famous legislator, called to office to resolve the strife between the upper and lower classes of Athens, and who resisted the blandishments and threats of both parties. He might have made himself a despot by siding with one or the other faction; but he steadfastly refused, and tried always to maintain a balance between them. He sought concord; and it was advantageous to the state that he proved so brilliant at resolving contradictions and discords. His neutrality was intended not for the sake of war but for peace. The next chapter of the De regnandi peritia (IV. 14) is an adaptation of some remarks made by Machiavelli concerning how the quality of a ruler may be judged by the quality of those whom he chooses as servants. There are three types of intellect, according to Machiavelli: those who understand for themselves; those who can grasp what others comprehend; and those who understand neither by themselves nor with the aid of others. All of this Nifo repeats in portentous style, adding a saying of Cyrus and some lines from Hesiod, via Aristotle, which were probably the source for Machiavelli’s own observations.46 This is tepid fare: but Nifo does better (IV. 15) when he considers the qualities requisite in an adviser to princes and tackles the much more thorny problem of whether rulers should ever correct an error by revising orders, or should regard their decisions as immutable. Here Nifo borrows only two short sentences from Machiavelli, who had said little on these topics. For Nifo, however, the questions seem so crucial that they demand the longest chapter in his treatise.47 A king’s councillor, he suggests, should be prudent and not only knowledgeable in history, but also experienced in all 46 Hesiod, Works and Days, 293, cited by Aristotle Nic. Ethics, I. 4. 47 Only the Proemium of Book V is longer than this chapter.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

75

practical affairs. His task is threefold: first to investigate a problem; then to judge the merits of possible courses of action; and finally to offer advice. He should be devoted to his master, so that his counsel will be for the benefit both of prince and people. Here Nifo slips in a trite fragment of Il Principe to the effect that the prince should never trust advisers who think only of their own advantage; adding that they should be men famous for virtue and moral purity (‘virtute ac sanctimonia’), because wicked councillors lead the prince into danger.48 Therefore, the prince must enjoin his advisers to speak only the truth, even when it seems contrary to his opinion. None the less, it is not good for the prudence of the prince to derive from his council. Rather the council should derive from the prudence of the prince. This is the same sentiment with which Machiavelli had concluded his chapter on flatterers: but Nifo attributes it to Chilon, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, and adds that decisions which stem from a prince’s own wisdom are firm with the force of law, whereas those which proceed from the councillors’ prudence are dangerous and unstable. Decisions should be taken only after thorough discussion, and Nifo emphasizes the importance of total secrecy until orders have been issued for executive action. If they are revealed before action has been taken, it becomes necessary to change them, and this is extremely harmful to the reputation of a prince. The whole question of changing policies, and the effect that this may have on the ruler’s authority, prompts Nifo into some of his most striking personal reflections. Kings, he boldly declares, must first take advice, then carefully deliberate, and finally put their decisions into effect ‘unalterably’—‘demum deliberata immutabiliter executioni mandare’ (IV. 15). ‘Mutability in deliberations’, he continues, citing Socrates, ‘displays want of foresight and the worthlessness both of counsellors and of the prince.’ Yet, supposing that, despite the utmost care, an error is made. Should the prince, knowing his mistake, revoke a decision? Some feel that, having taken every care in consultation, kings cannot err: but, to Nifo, this is no answer, for the hypothesis is that, even after 48 In Il Principe, 22, Machiavelli writes, ‘Quando tu vedi el ministro pensare piu` a se` che a te etc.’

76

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

such consultation, they have indeed erred. Others argue that the king must revoke his order, for it is human to err and stupid to persist in a mistake. However, the problem remains that changing a policy may greatly vitiate regal authority. To illustrate this difficulty Nifo postulates the case of a nobleman who injures someone, but avoids giving satisfaction to the injured party in order not to blemish his own nobility. This, says Nifo, is for no other reason than because the nobleman considers mutability a dishonour. How much less, therefore, ought a king revoke his commands once they have been issued; and this is why some maintain that royal commands—just or unjust—should never be rescinded. Another approach to this problem is to concede that kings may rescind a command provided that they do not yield to persuasion. Instead, having allowed a sufficient time to elapse, they should pretend that certain new contingencies have arisen and blame these for any changes of policy. Ways are never lacking whereby princes are able to shift their ground while yet preserving authority. Nifo now summarizes his own position again. It is magnanimous and regal not to revoke orders issued after due deliberation, nor to yield to the arguments of those amongst whom the prince’s authority should be strong. On the other hand, it is pious and religious to rescind commands which are unjust and evil. This is a notable instance of Nifo’s trickiness for, since he has already established that the ruler must never yield to persuasion, who—apart from the prince himself—can ever determine the justice of his actions? The depravity of the princes of his own day, laments Nifo, is patent. Their councillors are neither philosophers nor jurisconsults. Nor are they noted for prudence, virtue, and benevolence. On the contrary, they are crooked, lack practical experience, and are concerned only with their own prerogatives. Villains, especially those greedy for money and advancement, can never be good advisers. A knowledge both of history and practical affairs is of paramount importance. Indeed, without these skills councillors are useless; and Nifo pours scorn on those who spend their lives studying commentaries by jurists such as Bartolus and Baldus, and who foolishly believe that these contain everything they need to know. Nifo’s independence of thought is even more surprising in his next chapter (IV. 16), which deals not merely with the avoidance of

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

77

flatterers—which Machiavelli had discussed in Il Principe—but also with the ways in which flatterers might be useful to a prince. This is a great question, says Nifo. Should flatterers be permitted or should they be utterly eschewed? From one point of view they seem necessary. If men may speak freely in the presence of a prince and even contradict him, then the ruler’s authority is diminished. On the other hand, if he is advised only by flatterers then he may never perceive his errors. This is Nifo’s cue for a selection of apophthegms on the evils of sycophancy: Quintus Curtius on princes being more frequently overthrown by flatterers than by enemies; a similitude between crows devouring the eyes of corpses and flatterers blinding the living; and Demosthenes on the preferability of falling among crows who only eat the dead, to falling among flatterers who consume the living. Flatterers praise what is reprehensible, and blame what is praiseworthy. They say whatever is pleasing to a prince, clinging to him like a shadow, and laughing dutifully at his jokes. It may, therefore, seem obvious that such creatures should be excluded from a prince’s secret councils. Nevertheless, writes Nifo, once the prince has deliberated and has made a decision, then he should allow no one into his presence but flatterers. His decisions must be regarded as laws; and those who oppose them must be recognized as enemies detracting from his majesty. A ruler who wishes to maintain authority will never allow anyone to proffer advice uninvited. Thus flatterers, who praise their prince’s decisions, advance his authority. They show his subjects what they should believe. Nifo’s views on the value of yes-men are unusual and, some years later, in De re aulica, he developed his ideas on sycophancy not from the standpoint of the ruler’s advantage but rather from that of the toady himself. Writers from classical times to Machiavelli had inveighed against sycophants: yet Nifo can see practical merit in such public-relations officers who market politicians and policies regardless of their intrinsic worth or worthlessness. It sounds more modern than Machiavelli’s moralistic injunctions; and it is certainly more cynical. After this novelty, Nifo provides an anticlimactic final chapter to his fourth book. Returning to its opening theme of liberality and parsimony, he considers princely magnificence, observing that,

78

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

while princes should certainly live splendidly, they should not carry such splendour to excess. Without magnificence princes appear niggardly; but if their lifestyle becomes extravagant and degenerates into debauched luxury, then their authority is jeopardized. Nifo again cites Livy to the effect that luxury and avarice are the two plagues which overturn states; refers to classical examples both of sumptuary laws and of the self-indulgence which had led to the assassinations of Nero, Caligula, Vitellius, and Commodus; and concludes with Aesop’s fable of the birds, when the peacock’s demand that he be elected king because of his beautiful raiment was countered by the jackdaw’s asking how he would help his subjects against a hostile eagle. Thus princes should be chosen not for outward appearance, but for fortitude and prudence. And with this platitude Nifo ends Book IV. ‘Honourable Methods’ of Government? The fifth, and final, book of the De regnandi peritia, professing to treat of ‘honourable methods’ of government, has always been regarded as Nifo’s pious ‘antidote’ to the preceding four books of poison. But, as we have seen from the opening address to Charles V, this is not so; and the falsity of this interpretation becomes even more apparent when the book itself is scrutinized. It begins with a vigorous preface concerning the rarity of absolute purity in princes who are, by their very position, exposed to forces of corruption far more powerful than those which assail ordinary citizens. Yet the desire to rule and to excel others is as natural as the desire for food, drink, and—typical of Nifo—for sexual love. Just as the latter appetites only become criminal when they are directed towards voluptuousness, so it is with political power when it is exercised beyond reason. A king may become a tyrant if he rules tyrannically: but, conversely, a tyrant may become a king if he changes tyrannical into kingly rule. The line between virtue and vice is, for Nifo, difficult to draw. One may easily shade into the other. Princes are born virtuous, but become evil if they govern badly, and Nifo can name only a few who always exercised their power honourably. And, very significantly, they are all ancients.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

79

The rest of this fifth book, comprising six brief chapters, distinguishes between rulers by succession, by just and unjust election, and those who have gained power by some extraordinary means; and it continues with a statement of the best education for princes, the model for which is to be found among the ancients. In Nifo’s opinion, the education of modern rulers is worthless, laughable, and trivial so that no one should be astonished if kings nowadays are most pernicious—‘Quaere nemo mirari debet, si Reges hodie sceleratissimi sint’ (V. 4). They should, therefore, devote no less attention to the education of their sons than the husbandman pays to the cultivation of crops and plants. The book then ends suddenly with two very strange chapters. ‘We now’, says Nifo, ‘expound the end of tyrants’: and he does simply that, listing a number of nasty obits with scarcely a critical comment. Finally, in contrast, comes the fate of the honourable king: respect, glory, fame, and eternal life. Here Strabo, Homer, and Isocrates, as well as Aristotle, are referred to; but Nifo, it seems, can think of no honourable modern princes, and the only ruler mentioned is Demetrius Phalareus, whose contempt for the statues erected to him by the Athenians is cited with approval, but whose misrule, exile, and death by snakebite are not alluded to. Nifo’s fifth book is a statement of the utmost cynicism. Its very platitudes, as elsewhere in this author’s oeuvre, turn out to be largely tongue in cheek; and it is nonsense to interpret this concluding section as some kind of alternative ‘moral’ strategy for the political activist. In fact, it offers no practical advice whatever. Its references are principally to classical philosophers. And it is totally divorced from Regnandi peritia—that is from practical government. It has, therefore, nothing to do with Nifo’s real subject matter other than to demonstrate, for those who take the trouble to think about what he says, that this ‘honourable type of rule’ is rarely related to ancient exemplars and never to modern. Conversely, for those who do not bother to think about it, Nifo has piously cleansed himself of all taint of worldly corruption.49 49 Nifo’s slipperiness and cynicism is underscored by his next work on politics, Augustini Niphi de Medicis philosophi suessani libellus de rege et tyranno (Naples, 1526); ed. Naude´, in Opuscula, 151–239. This is ostensibly a straightforward contrast between the activities and qualities of a tyrant and those of a king.

80

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

a p o s t s c r i p t . il principe at third h and That Nifo’s unauthorized use of Machiavelli’s Il Principe did not go unnoticed is evident from the letter dated 8 May 1532 prefixed by Bernardo di Giunta to his edition of Il Principe. Addressing himself to Giovanni Gaddi of the Apostolic Camera, Giunta specifically requested the cleric’s protection for Machiavelli’s book against those who had translated it into Latin and had published it as their own work. This could only be a complaint against Nifo who, two decades later, was repaid in his own coin when in 1552 the Paduan jurist and poet Lucio Paolo Rosello published Il ritratto del vero governo del principe dall’essempio vivo del gran Cosimo de’ Medici and dedicated it to Cosimo’s eldest son, Francesco (then about fifteen years of age) in order to show how his father, the Duke of Florence, exemplified everything that a prince should be.50 In course of time, Francesco came to exemplify most of the things that a prince should not be: but that is another story. Rosello has long held a tenuous place in history by dint of being a correspondent of Melanchthon and an Italian supporter of the Reformation; but he merits greater recognition for his sheer effrontery. By comparison, Nifo (his victim) seems positively bashful. The Ritratto is divided into three parts: first a dialogue concerning the providence and prudence necessary for princes both in the government and the conservation of their states; then Some of the material in the first part (on the tyrant) overlaps that discussed in the De regnandi peritia: but the differences are more striking than the similarities and most of the section is derived from Aristotelian treatments of tyranny including a discussion of whether one may kill a tyrant ‘impune’. It is, however, worth noting that, whereas the forty-three chapters on the tyrant include (in addition to all the customary classical examples) several references to modern rulers, the section on the king has only one passing contemporary reference (to the poor quality of the successors of Francesco Sforza). Once again it seems that Nifo could not think of modern examples to illustrate good kingship. 50 On Rosello, see Tommaso Bozza, Scrittori politici italiani dal 1550 al 1650: saggio di bibliografia (Rome, 1949), 33; Andrea Del Col, ‘Lucio Paolo Rosello e la vita religiosa veneziana verso la meta` del secolo XVI’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 32 (1978), 422–59; Thomas M’Crie, History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy in the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh and London, 1832), 120–2; Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540–1605 (Princeton, 1977), 102, 107.

CR E A T I V E P L A G I A R I S M

81

a discussion of the relative merits of arms and letters; and finally a translation from the Greek of two orations addressed by Isocrates to Nicocles King of Cyprus. Whether through pride in his translation from the Greek, or because he recognized the hopelessness of trying to pass off a classical text as his own creation, Rosello dutifully acknowledges Isocrates as the author of his third section. Elsewhere, however, he is less scrupulous and it is only close scrutiny which reveals that his Ragionamento primo is essentially a translation of large parts of the fourth and fifth books of Nifo’s De regnandi peritia: eked out with sections from other parts of the same work, together with linking passages of dialogue and some deft toadyism directed at Cosimo, Duke of Florence.51 Moreover, the Ragionamento secondo is virtually a complete Italian rendition of Nifo’s treatise on the relative importance of arms and letters, followed by further substantial borrowings from the De regnandi peritia.52 Nifo’s treatment of Machiavelli had been ingenious if disingenuous. Rosello’s treatment of Nifo shows little evidence of thought beyond what was necessary to translate Latin into Italian and to remain silent about his sources. Inevitably, given its provenance, Rosello’s Ritratto deals with such matters as the preservation of a state by a new prince; the uses of cruelty and clemency; the relative merits of being loved or feared; the extinction of one’s enemies; the danger of overmuch liberality; the proper employment of councillors; the importance of military knowledge to princes; arms as the basis for the security of the state; the decadence of modern soldiery; the inutility of mercenaries; the superiority of national forces; and the disadvantages of fortresses. All of this is familiar Machiavellian fare, but derived at third hand from Nifo complete with augmented examples, ancient and modern. I have set out Rosello’s borrowings in the 51 I first drew attention to Rosello’s use of Nifo in my ‘Crypto-Machiavellism in Early Tudor England: The Problem of the Ragionamento dell’advenimento delli Inglesi, et Normanni in Britannia’, Renaissance and Reformation, ns 2 (1978), 182–93 at 188–90, 192–3. I was then under the impression that Rosello had, on one occasion, gone back beyond Nifo to Il Principe itself. I now find that I was mistaken. 52 Rosello, fos. 43v–71, is a seriatim translation of Nifo’s De armorum literarumque comparatione commentariolus (Naples, 1526). However, as can be seen in the Appendix to this chapter, at the end he reverts to the De regnandi peritia.

82

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Appendix to this chapter, where the extent of his dependence on Nifo and, indirectly, the relationship of his work to Machiavelli’s Il Principe can easily be seen. As an original work, Rosello’s Ritratto is worthless. It is not even an especially intelligent adaptation of its source. But it is an extraordinary example not only of how controversial ideas may be transmitted unwittingly, but also how readers may be deluded by a simple change of language. Apart from Giunta’s complaint about Latin adaptations of Il Principe, we know nothing about contemporary responses to Nifo’s De regnandi peritia. Nor, apart from some borrowings in George Rainsford’s Ragionamento dell’advenimento delli Inglesi et Normanni in Britannia, is there more evidence relating to the reception of Rosello’s work. However, in Eton College Library there is preserved Jacques-Auguste de Thou’s copy of the 1538 Venetian edition of Il Principe.53 It is bound with Rosello’s Ritratto of 1552 together with Rosello’s edition of a work by Marco de la Frata et Montalbano.54 So there is a possibility that at least one important Renaissance reader recognized Rosello’s Machiavellian genealogy. But if others noticed the family resemblance their insights have not survived. 53 This edition is listed in Bertelli and Innocenti, 16 and Gerber, ii. 33–4. 54 Marco de la Frata et Montalbano, Discorsi de principii della nobilta (Venice, 1551).

APPENDIX ROSELLO, NIFO, AND MACHIAVELLI In this Appendix, I list the principal passages in Rosello’s two Ragionamenti (R), which are based on Nifo’s De regnandi peritia (N), and indicate their ultimate relationship to Machiavelli’s Il Principe (P). I have not listed Rosello’s use of Nifo’s De armorum literarumque comparatione commentariolus in the second Ragionamento because it has no Machiavellian resonances.

ragionamento primo R fo. 8r–v R fo. 9v R fo. 10 R fo. 10r–v

N IV. 8 N I. 2 N I. 5, 6, 7 N I. 11, 12

R fo. 10v R fo .11v R fo. 12

N V. 3 N II. 15, 14 N II. 16

P 20 P 20

R fos. 12v–13v R fos. 14–15v R fos. 15v–17 R fo. 17 R fo. 17v

N IV. 1, 2 N IV. 3 N IV. 4 N IV. 5 N IV. 6

P 16 P 17 P 18 P 17 P 19

R fos. 17v–18 R fo. 18r–v

N IV. 7 N IV. 9

P 19 P 19, 9

R fo. 19

N IV. 11

P 18

P 19, 9 P8

French parlement Origin of states Ways of gaining power Just monarchy introduced by election or succession Nature of election Factions Winning over those who are initially hostile Liberality Cruelty and clemency Love and fear Hannibal’s cruelty Can a prince be feared yet not hated? Conspiracies Violent deaths of many emperors Keeping faith

84

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

R fo. 20 R fo. 20v R fo. 21

N IV. 12 N IV. 12 N IV. 14

R fos. 21v–23 R fos. 23v–25v R fos. 25v–26 R fo. 27v R fos. 28v–30

N IV. 15 P 22, 23 N IV. 16 P 23 N IV. 17 P 16 N V. 2 N V. Proemio

R fo. 30r–v R fos. 30v–31

N V. 1 N V. 4

R fos. 36v–37

N III. 1

P 21 P 22

P2

How princes gain reputation Accessibility Councillors and taking advice More on councillors Flatterers Splendour and its dangers Advice on good government Princes’ vices: difficulties of public life Honest government Education of princes’ children Hereditary princes

ragionamento secondo R fos. 71v–73 R fo. 73r–v R fos. 73v–74

N II. 2, 3 N II. 4 N II. 5

P 12, 13 P 12 P 12

R fo. 74r–v

N II. 6

P 13

R fo. 74v

N II. 7

P 13

R fo. 75 R fos. 75v–76

N II. 9 N II. 10

P 14

R fos. 76–77v R fo. 78r–v

N II. 11 N II. 13

P 14 P 20

R fos. 78v–79v R fos. 79v–80

N II. 17 N III. 4

P 20 P 4, 5

R fo. 80r–v

N III. 5

P5

R fo. 81r–v R fos. 81v–82

N III. 6 N V. 5

P6

R fos. 82v–83

N V. 6

Types of soldiery Florentines and Venetians Origins of mercenaries in Italy Weakness of mercenaries and auxiliaries Charles VII and Louis XI of France: different policies Army of sheep led by a lion Prince’s necessary preoccupation with war Military education and skills Arming or disarming the people Fortresses Alexander, Darius, and afterwards Governing cities that were formerly free Virtu` and opportunity Comparison between just prince and tyrant Virtue

3 Early Readers of Machiavelli: Comment and Discourse Given the rapidity with which Machiavelli’s writings were first disseminated, and the almost continuous stream of editions which followed thereafter, it is remarkable how little information has survived concerning their impact. Historical judgement must depend upon whatever evidence is available and, on that basis, Machiavelli’s works seem only infrequently to have stimulated general political speculation or to have been adapted to meet the requirements of a specific political situation. For the period up to the end of the 1550s, barely a handful of such instances remain and—since three of these relate to affairs in England—the distorting effects of random survival are apparent.

the ‘ discorsi ’ c o n s i d e r e d By far the most illustrious of these pioneers was Machiavelli’s younger contemporary and friend Francesco Guicciardini. In 1530, while exiled in Rome, Guicciardini evidently had access to a manuscript copy of the Discorsi (probably the autograph version published by Blado in the following year) and was moved to jot down a number of observations in a notebook.1 These notes remained unpublished until the mid-nineteenth century but are now an established part of the Guicciardini canon and, under the 1 For the dating, composition, and context of the Considerazioni, see Roberto Ridolfi’s introduction to his edition of Guicciardini’s Le cose fiorentine (Florence, 1945). See also Ridolfi’s The Life of Francesco Guicciardini (1967), pp. 206–8.

86

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

title Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli, they are generally treated as a coherent, though unfinished, work.2 It is, however, unlikely that Guicciardini ever intended to pursue the project to any sort of ordered conclusion. The Considerazioni deal with only thirty-nine of Machiavelli’s total of 142 chapters and two prefaces; the distribution even of the selected chapters is extremely uneven; and much of the comment is concerned merely with odd details which have caught Guicciardini’s eye. Moreover, when one takes into account the fact that none of the individual Considerazioni ever exceeds the length of a short essay, while many run to only seventy words, and that they often deal with issues tangential to those discussed by Machiavelli, then it becomes clear that these jottings remain at a vast distance from constituting even an ‘unfinished work’. This is worth stressing because it has been claimed that Guicciardini’s omissions in the Considerazioni are ‘as revealing as his disagreements or qualifications’3—which would mean reading significance not only into his selective comments on selected passages in selected chapters of the Discorsi, but also into the fact that he excludes something like 70 per cent of Machiavelli’s work from any consideration at all. Omissions on such a scale are scarcely susceptible to any sort of interpretation. It is what Guicciardini says that is important: not what he does not say. And what he says constitutes the most cogent of all Renaissance attacks on Machiavelli. Part of his scorn, it must be admitted, is attributable to his aristocratic caste of mind—to his attitude towards the relative merits of nobility and populace— where he is diametrically opposed to Machiavelli who, in the 2 The Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio were first published in Guicciardini’s Opere inedite illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini e publicate per cura dei Conti Piero e Luigi Guicciardini, i (Florence, 1857), 3–79. A more correct version was edited by Roberto Palmarocchi, Scritti Politici e Ricordi, in Guicciardini Opere, viii (Bari, 1933), 1–65. My references are to the translation and edition by Cecil and Margaret Grayson, in Francesco Guicciardini: Selected Writings (1965). There are several analyses of the Considerazioni including Villari, Niccolo` Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, ii. 356–69 (Eng. trans., n.d., pp. 144–52); Mattei (1969), 124–33; Peter Bondanella, Francesco Guicciardini (Boston, 1976), 61–70. But I think that the discussion in Mark Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian’s Craft (Toronto, 1977), 81–93, could scarcely be improved upon. 3 Bondanella, Francesco Guicciardini, 68.

EARLY READERS

87

Discorsi at least, professed a perverse confidence in the judgement of the lower orders. For Guicciardini, the multitude have neither discernment nor consistency: ‘they do not distinguish, and with the same ease they return to the decisions they first condemned, to hatred of what they loved, to love what they hated’. In short, he says, ‘one cannot deny that a people in itself is a treasury of ignorance and confusion’.4 This is certainly an important difference between the two thinkers; but the dissection of Machiavelli in the Considerazioni addresses issues more fundamental than the virtues and vices of social classes—more fundamental indeed than the general questions of virtue and vice which have bothered moralists throughout the ages. Guicciardini does not froth over with indignation in the manner of outraged defenders of Christianity; nor does he waste ammunition on political abstractions. He simply exposes Machiavelli’s incorrigible fondness for false dichotomies; his abuse of historical evidence (indeed his ignorance of what historical evidence really is); his flawed status as a purveyor of political fantasies rather than of practicalities; his love of sweeping generalizations; and his partiality for ‘extraordinary and violent methods’, especially on paper. Moreover, the Considerazioni reject the very assumption upon which the whole of Machiavelli’s Discorsi is predicated. The institutions and practices of the Roman republic do not, in Guicciardini’s view, constitute the ideal exemplar for modern political behaviour. ‘I do not think’, he notes, ‘that they were such that those seeking to establish a republic should take them as their model.’ He repeatedly indicates the defects of Roman government, and argues that these were so grave that it was only the excellence of Rome’s military discipline which averted disaster: which was all very well for a city dependent on ‘force of arms’, but far less satisfactory in cities ‘ruled by the struggles, ever-changing circumstances, and arts of peace’ (pp. 69, 103). It is not only Machiavelli’s constant harping on Roman superiority in general which irritates Guicciardini. He is also quick to take issue on matters of detail. With regard to fortresses, for 4 Francesco Guicciardini: Selected Writings, 104–5. Further references are given in the text.

88

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

example, he is stung to observe that ‘one should not praise antiquity so far that one condemns all modern uses which were not current with the Romans’. We know by experience that many things familiar to us were unimagined by the ancients; and we know that states differ in nature and circumstances. Certain things may be required in one place and not in another: ‘thus if the Romans used not to build fortresses in subject cities, that is not in itself a reason why it should be wrong to build them today’ (p. 117). Repeatedly, Guicciardini castigates Machiavelli’s dogmatic assertions for their failure to take into account the significance of differing political contexts. Situations arise where decisions cannot be based on ‘a firm rule’. Conclusions must be drawn from ‘the mood of the city and from the state of affairs which changes according to the state of the times, and other mutable circumstances’ (p. 101). Inextricably bound up with his conviction that Roman examples are largely inapposite is Guicciardini’s recognition that Machiavelli’s handling of Roman history is itself defective. The Considerazioni abound in examples of ways in which material from Livy has been misinterpreted by Machiavelli or is at least susceptible to some alternative interpretation. This is the very heart of the matter.5 Machiavelli had specifically claimed that his great achievement was to reveal how political rules may be derived from a systematic juxtaposition of ancient and modern examples—and especially from the contrast between Roman virtus and modern corruption. This is a methodological bubble, and Guicciardini bursts it mercilessly. As Mark Phillips, in his analysis of the Considerazioni, observes: when confronted with the most powerful political theory of the day, Guicciardini did not so much respond to Machiavelli’s political conclusions as to his historical means. Over and over he subjects Machiavelli’s arguments to a sceptical critique focusing on the inadequacy of his historical evidence and the simplicity of his historical analysis. Thus the debate of the two Florentines assumes a wider character and becomes a debate over the uses of history.6 5 More than forty years later, Innocent Gentillet recognized this fundamental weakness in Machiavelli’s work and dwelt on it constantly. See below, Ch. 9. 6 Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini, 81–2.

EARLY READERS

89

Assessment of that debate depends largely upon which of the two Florentine thinkers a critic happens to prefer. It is something of a tradition to acknowledge Guicciardini’s penetrating intelligence while criticizing him for lacking the sweep and imagination of Machiavelli. Villari, the most influential nineteenth-century commentator, accepted that, although Guicciardini’s observations ‘may more readily, and often more usefully, serve as guides in the daily practice of life and affairs’, Machiavelli’s precepts ‘open new horizons to the study of the logical and necessary connection of historical events, and to the study of human society and the action to be exercised upon it by the statesman’.7 A similar contrast was later drawn by Ridolfi, who recognized that, while Guicciardini’s critical remarks are ‘nearly all correct’, they reveal his limited vision. ‘He who knew how to see his friend’s weak points with such marvellous acuity’, Ridolfi exclaims, ‘had not observed that all those errors are merely rough stones on the surface of new roads opened up by his thought.’ One cannot deny that, by the process of fallacious reasoning, it is possible to reach correct conclusions from false evidence. But equally one cannot deny that, with regard to the Discorsi and the Considerazioni, the issue was essentially how historical sources were to be chosen with discrimination, reported accurately, and interpreted logically. And here Guicciardini, despite the fragmentary nature of his remarks, proved himself the master. Summarizing some of the reasons for the incomplete state of the Considerazioni, Ridolfi suggested that it would be impossible to say if the observations, which had arisen in Guicciardini’s mind while reading, ‘became fewer when he came to write, or whether as the work grew he felt a certain weariness in it, or if quite simply he lacked time to finish it’.8 The fact that the Considerazioni start off with a long run of nearly consecutive chapters from Book I of the Discorsi, and then become markedly rarer and increasingly random, suggests that the idea of ‘weariness’ is the most likely of these alternatives. It would not be surprising if Guicciardini had become thoroughly vexed by the fundamental differences between his conception of historical argument and what he regarded as the inept historical technique of 7 Villari, Niccolo` Machiavelli, Eng. trans., ii. 152. 8 Ridolfi, The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, 208.

90

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Machiavelli. To have pursued the matter further—pointing out error after error, and fallacy after fallacy—would only have resulted in unvarying repetition. And that would have been tedious both for Guicciardini and for posterity.

t h e ‘ di s c or s i ’ a n n o t a t e d Some eighteen years after Guicciardini had abandoned his Considerazioni, Lazarus von Schwendi, a young German soldier in the service of the Emperor Charles V, worked his way systematically through all three books of his brand-new copy of Gohory’s French version of the Discorsi in the composite edition of 1548, and, in a small, neat hand, adorned the margins of the entire text with copious Latin annotations. The volume has been preserved in the municipal library of Colmar where it was discovered by Lina Baillet, whose heavily documented analysis of the marginalia gives a very clear idea of the impact made by Machiavelli on one intelligent reader coming fresh to his political, historical, and military ideas.9 What we do not know—and never can know—is how typical Schwendi was as an early reader of Machiavelli. Later described by Jacques-Auguste De Thou as ‘famous for his great actions, his cleverness, and his courage’, Schwendi was to enjoy a remarkable career first as a gifted military commander and theorist, then as a diplomat, and finally as an irenic statesman seeking to resolve the religious discord in Germany.10 He entered 9 Lina Baillet, ‘Schwendi, lecteur de Machiavel’, Revue d’Alsace, 112 (1986), 119–97. It is a pity that Baillet never went on to publish a complete annotated edition of the marginalia: but her detailed analysis, extensive quotations, and translations provide an excellent basis for studying Schwendi’s reactions to Machiavelli. All my parenthetical references to Schwendi are to Baillet’s study. 10 Jacques-Auguste De Thou, Histoire universelle (London, 1734), v. 42. There is a considerable but elderly German literature on Schwendi, and there is no book-length study more recent than Johann Ko¨nig, Lazarus von Schwendi, Ro¨misch Kaiserlicher Majesta¨t Rat und Feldoberst, 1522–1585 (Schwendi, 1934). For his thinking on religious and ecclesiastical policy, see Kaspar von Greyerz, ‘Lazarus von Schwendi (1522–1583) and Late Humanism at Basel’, in Manfred P. Fleischer (ed.), The Harvest of Humanism in Central Europe: Essays in Honour of Lewis W. Spitz (St Louis, 1992), 179–95. The Allgemeine deutsche Biographie gives Schwendi’s date of death as 1584!

EARLY READERS

91

the service of Charles V in 1545, and by 1548 had already distinguished himself in military affairs at Gotha and Grimmenstein; had written against the abuses of mercenary troops; and had been entrusted with the task of arresting the Landsknecht commander Sebastien Vogelsperger along with two other mercenaries who had sold their services to the King of France. There is some reason to suppose that the accused commanders had acted within the laws governing their profession: but they were arrested, tried, and executed. Sentence was carried out on 7 February 1548 when Vogelsperger made a bitter speech on the scaffold, accusing Schwendi of trapping him by false promises. For a while, Schwendi was under a cloud and—although publicly defended by the Emperor—he himself was left feeling uneasy about the incident and about the kind of political expediency which he was soon to encounter in the pages of Machiavelli’s Discorsi. Of Schwendi’s education we know almost nothing, but it is clear that his knowledge of both French and Latin was excellent. He was able not only to read Gohory’s translation but also to correct typographical and other errors in vocabulary and syntax; and he was a sufficiently fluent Latinist to be able to go through the text, pen in hand, writing notes with scarcely a slip or correction.11 One problem of which Schwendi, like many other readers, seemed unaware was that dependence upon a translation meant that he was always at one remove from Machiavelli’s own thinking (pp. 132–6, 140–1). This was especially the case in the first book of the Discours where Gohory often paraphrases very freely; and it is something which was to affect the work of a later and more influential reader of Machiavelli, Innocent Gentillet.12 Despite this, few significant aspects of Machiavelli’s thought are so compromised as to distort Schwendi’s reading, which proves to have been thorough, detailed, and consistent. He was not a radical thinker like Machiavelli and Guicciardini; nor did he have the latter’s sure hand in exposing the former’s 11 Baillet, ‘Schwendi’, 122, 125 n. 11, 142–7. Baillet (p. 142) points out that while Schwendi’s notes to the text are principally in Latin, he does use French to annotate Gohory’s own marginal notes. 12 On Gohory’s errors, see below, Ch. 7; and on Gentillet’s resultant misunderstandings, see below, Ch. 9.

92

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

methodological flaws; and, while he shared their taste for aphorisms, he was much more prone to general moralization. But his comments still reveal an independent mind, engaging with Machiavelli and challenging him not only on ethical matters but also on details of history, politics, and the art of war. As one might expect, Schwendi’s greatest problem with Machiavelli arises in those chapters of the Discorsi which deal with the political use of religion and with the conflict between Divine Providence on the one hand and Fortuna on the other. When faced, for example, with praise for those who have founded a religion (Discorsi, I. 10), Schwendi complains that Machiavelli writes as though ‘religion were more a human invention than a unique gift of God’—thus correctly describing Machiavelli’s thinking while failing to recognize its accuracy. In the following chapter, when Numa is praised for duping the Roman people by pretending to have been inspired by a nymph, the political use of religion so shocks Schwendi that he can think of nothing more crushing to write than ‘Note here the judgement of the author on religion’ (pp. 152–3). And he is no less outraged by Machiavelli’s audacity in misrepresenting the Magnificat to establish how, when David became King of Israel, he had ruthlessly reorganized the kingdom from top to bottom (Discorsi, I. 26).13 ‘Note’, exclaims the horrified Schwendi, ‘how the author impiously applies Scripture to serve his purpose’—as though such selective deformation were not the pabulum of all religious controversy (p. 153). He is equally upset by the constant references in the Discorsi to the role of Fortuna in Roman history. To Schwendi this is a thoroughly pagan notion, and the fundamental difference between his view of the historical process and Machiavelli’s is well exemplified in an assessment of the relative importance of Fortuna and Virtu` to Rome’s acquisition of empire (Discorsi, II. 1). ‘Why’, asks Schwendi, ‘does not the author attribute the first cause to Divine Providence, which wished 13 The Discourses of Niccolo` Machiavelli, trans. Leslie J. Walker (1950), ii. 53; in his first note to this chapter, Walker explains that the words quoted by Machiavelli from Luke 1: 53 (qui esurientes implevit bonis, et divites dimisit inanes) are ‘not said of David but of the Lord’, nor does it begin with ‘qui’; and he adds that ‘Machiavelli would often have heard the Magnificat sung, but appears to have but a hazy notion of what it is all about’.

EARLY READERS

93

the Roman Empire to come to such grandeur, as was predicted many centuries earlier by the Prophet Daniel?’14 The question is rhetorical: but the implied answer is that Machiavelli has no respect for biblical prophecies, and that this is reprehensible. Such issues find Schwendi at his most conformist, although he springs a number of interpretative surprises, particularly when refraining from adverse comment where conventional morality would seem to invite it. Pondering Machiavelli’s paradox that ‘those people who live closest to the Church of Rome, the head of our religion, have less religion’ (Discorsi, I. 12), Schwendi writes in the margin, ‘Je na¨her Rhom Je bo¨ser Christ’ (p. 142). This, the only German-language note in the entire volume, is wholly noncommittal (‘The nearer Rome, the poorer the Christian’) and it is impossible to say whether Schwendi would have endorsed Guicciardini’s remark on the same chapter: ‘One can never speak ill enough of the Roman court, for it is an infamy, a pattern of all the opprobrium and vituperation of the world.’15 We might, none the less, have expected other aspects of Machiavelli’s hostility towards Christianity to prompt some sort of reaction from Schwendi. Demanding why modern men are less fond of liberty than were the ancients, Machiavelli finds an answer in the same reason that makes him consider them less bold—that is in the difference between pagan religion and Christianity (Discorsi, II. 2)—and he sarcastically explains that ‘our religion, having taught us the truth and the true way of life, leads us to ascribe less esteem to worldly honour’. Christians have so exalted meekness, he sneers, and so disparaged military and civil honour that the world has fallen prey to the wicked: ‘our religion has glorified humble and contemplative men, rather than men of action’. The chapter in which this idea is set forth is one of Machiavelli’s worst thought-out and most meandering arguments.16 It includes his silly laudation of pagan blood sacrifices; an attack on the 14 Baillet, ‘Schwendi’, 149, 156. Cf. pp. 158–60, which examine in detail Schwendi’s responses to Discorsi, II. 29 where Machiavelli discusses Livy’s assertion that ‘Fortune blinds men’s eyes when she does not wish them to obstruct her designs’. 15 Francesco Guicciardini: Selected Writings, 81. 16 See Anglo, Machiavelli (1969), 111–13.

94

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

effeminacy of the modern age; an awkward attempt to shift the blame from Christianity itself to those who have misinterpreted its values; and finally an even more awkward attempt to blame the Roman Empire which had wiped out the ancient republics. The whole section is a sitting target for any critic, and this very vulnerability may perhaps explain why Guicciardini chose not to bother with it. Yet Schwendi, despite annotating the chapter very heavily, neither alludes to the flaws in Machiavelli’s reasoning nor seizes the opportunity to defend the merits of his faith. Unlike Osorio, who rushed to the defence of Christianity as a military religion, Schwendi contents himself with merely summarizing, and even repeating, some of Machiavelli’s assertions: ‘why it should be that in our times men are not as ferocious and bold as formerly’; ‘the religion of the pagans placed beatitude in worldly glory and excellence, while ours, on the contrary, naturally requires a disregard for all worldly things’; ‘the world has become effeminated through our religion’; and ‘it has fallen prey to the impious and the wicked’. Did either Schwendi (who must have been familiar with the depravities of Protestants and Catholics alike in Germany) or Machiavelli (who was familiar with the brutality of the French, Spanish, and German troops in Italy) really believe that Christians were less bloodstained and less prone to violence than their pagan forebears? There is a similarly acquiescent response from Schwendi to one of Machiavelli’s most startling attacks on Christianity. Dealing with the problem of revivifying religion by constantly restoring it to its origins (Discorsi, III. 1), Machiavelli describes how the Christian faith had been rescued from extinction by St Francis and St Dominic, whose poverty and exemplification of Christ’s life had restored religion to the minds of men in whom it had already vanished. At this point Schwendi notes in the margin, ‘Our religion restored and affirmed by the examples of holy men’. But then Machiavelli gives the argument a devastating twist, for he goes on to say that the new religious orders founded by these saints were so powerful that they prevented the dishonesty of prelates and religious leaders from ruining Christianity. The holy men lived so frugally and gained such credit as confessors and preachers that they convinced people ‘that it is evil to speak evil of evil’, and good to live obediently under depraved prelates. Chastisement has been

EARLY READERS

95

left to God. And so the heads of the Church behave as badly as possible, because they do not fear a punishment which they neither see nor believe in. To depict St Francis and St Dominic as facilitators of religious corruption is a daring conception, and Schwendi duly underlines the passage. He even adorns the margin with a hand pointing a finger at the underlined section, reinforcing this with two directional lines and the word ‘NOTA’ in capital letters.17 What he does not do is offer a word of criticism or doubt. In addition to such unexpected disinclination to take issue with Machiavelli, there is a more general omission to which Baillet draws attention. She cites a number of occasions where Schwendi recognizes that Machiavelli’s zeal for the military and freedomloving qualities of the German cities is based upon a lack of knowledge. When, for example, the Germans are praised for their refusal to countenance anybody to live like a ‘gentleman’ (Discorsi, I. 55), Schwendi notes laconically, ‘He speaks of the Swiss’ (p. 174). Yet at no point does Schwendi make any allusion to the religious problems which then plagued the Empire. He never refers to the Reformation, and the war of the Schmalkaldic League is seen solely from a military point of view (p. 184). Of course, as an aspiring military man, Schwendi would inevitably have been attracted to those parts of the Discorsi which dealt with the art of war: and such material looms very large indeed. Not only does nearly a quarter of Machiavelli’s book consist of chapters devoted specifically to the nature and purpose of war, or to armies, tactics, and leadership, but military matters also crop up regularly throughout the rest of the work.18 And, while on many matters of detail Schwendi is prepared to dispute, augment, or modify statements in the Discorsi, it is clear from his marginal annotations that he shared the general respect of early readers for Machiavelli as a military authority (pp. 188–9). Frequently, Schwendi simply summarizes or adapts the material in the text by citing recent events, often within his own experience. When, for example, Machiavelli discusses whether it is better, under 17 Baillet, ‘Schwendi’, 181, Illustration no. 5. 18 Walker’s edition of the Discorsi, 160–1, gives a convenient breakdown of the chapters specifically devoted to military matters.

96

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

threat of attack, to strike first or await the enemy (Discorsi, II. 12), Schwendi notes that the aggressive advice given by Hannibal to Antiochus ‘ought to be applied against the Turk’, but also points out that the opposite counsel has been adopted by ‘the French of our time’. Commenting on Machiavelli’s assertion that modern artillery is of little advantage to those defending a fortified position against enemies whose artillery train is on higher ground or who arrive before the defences are complete (Discorsi, II. 17), Schwendi notes a contrary example ‘in the siege of the Emperor’s camp at Ingolstadt’ (August 1546)—but only as a matter of interest, not in order to refute Machiavelli (pp. 175, 182). He is similarly reminded of current affairs when reading Machiavelli’s argument that no general can avoid battle if his adversary is determined to force one on him (Discorsi, III. 10). Machiavelli postulates the case of a commander who has massed his army together but recognizes that, for lack of money or allies, it cannot be kept long in the field. In such circumstances the commander would be insane not to try his fortune before the army has to be disbanded, because delay will result in certain defeat whereas taking the initiative might yet lead to victory. For this short passage, Schwendi offers two marginal comments. One (‘When is it necessary for us to try the fortune of battles’) merely draws attention to Machiavelli’s content. But the other (‘This the leaders of the Schmalkaldian league do not know’) alludes to a contemporary shortcoming which Schwendi has himself observed (p. 182). There is one major issue where Machiavelli arouses in Schwendi an almost unreserved sympathy. Both are convinced of the gross inferiority of mercenary forces as compared with a national army. Already, in 1547, Schwendi had written two short works exposing the dubious practices of military hirelings: the first, dedicated to the Emperor Charles V, relating the tricks they use to make a fine but false show at a military inspection; the other dealing more generally with the abuses of such troops.19 Machiavelli’s contempt for hired soldiers, his admiration for the Roman army, and his 19 A treatise, Vom Betrug in der Musterung, and a satirical dialogue, Vasguillus. See Baillet, 129–30. The texts were published in Eugen von Frauenholz (ed.), Der erste deutsche Verku¨nder der allgemeinen Wehrpflicht (Hamburg, 1939), 25–69.

EARLY READERS

97

insistence that the latter should serve as a model for contemporary rulers, all accorded perfectly with his annotator’s own estimate of modern armies and how they should be reformed. Many of Schwendi’s marginal maxims attest to this: ‘all people are apt for arms if they find a distinguished leader’; ‘foreign mercenary soldiers do not fight with good spirit’; ‘auxiliary soldiers are extremely dangerous, unless they are kept in our power’; ‘it is better to make peace with an enemy on unfavourable terms than to admit foreign auxiliaries into a city or kingdom’; ‘the security of all political states depends on the virtue and military skill of subjects and not on foreign auxiliaries’ (pp. 185–8). This theme was to remain of absorbing interest to Schwendi, who eventually devised his own scheme for the raising and training of a national army for the Empire. It is, however, impossible to determine to what extent, if any, he was influenced by Machiavelli on an issue where he had already made up his mind.

machiavelli and the henrician reformation After his retirement from military life, Schwendi devoted his energies to seeking a resolution of the religious conflicts which troubled the German states; and it is hard to imagine that his earlier reading of Machiavelli would have had any relevance to this ambition. In England, by contrast, there were men happy to use their Machiavellian knowledge to argue the case for politicoreligious exclusionism. As Henry Parker, eighth Baron Morley, pointed out to Thomas Cromwell in February 1537 (in a letter accompanying a gift of the Istorie fiorentine and Il Principe), the history was written for Clement VII, late bishop of Rome, but Youre Lordship will marvell moche when ye do reade yt, how he durst be so bolde to present suche a worke unto hym; ffor he so declaryth theyer petygrew, that yf one schulde reade a hundreth boks, he myght lake to know of theyere usurpacion which he schall fynde aparent in his fyrst Boke.20 20 Parker’s letter is printed in Henry Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History (1824–46), 3rd ser., iii. 63–7, where it is assigned to 1537, although Gasquet (1974) suggests the year 1539, which is less likely.

98

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Parker declares that, while he has not had Cromwell’s first-hand experience of the affairs of Italy, ‘yf they use such frauds, myscheves, treasuns, and conspyrasys, as he wryttyth that they do, I do not skant account them amongest Chrysten men’. He singles out, as especially revealing, the unjust proceedings of the Popes against Florence. These deeds are so similar to their current treatment of Henry VIII that the resistance of the Florentines may serve the King as a wonderful example; and Parker begs Cromwell ‘to schew the very words’ to the King, ‘for I do think his Majestie shall take great pleasure to see them’. Finally, in order to save Cromwell much tedium, ‘in suche places as the Author touches anything concerning the Bysschop of Rome’, Parker has noted it ‘with a hand or with words in the margant to the intent it schuld be in a redynes to youe at all tymes in the redyng’. This, unlike Schwendi’s personal notes, was annotation for political purposes; and the recognition that Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine constituted an anti-papal thesaurus anticipated the similar insight of Mathias Flacius Illyricus and John Bale by twenty years.21 But, in this respect, Parker had himself been anticipated by another Englishman, Richard Moryson, who is the first adequately documented English student of Machiavelli. Moryson’s career as an official pamphleteer and apologist for the Henrician Reformation during the 1530s was a hectic one. He wrote in defence of the royal divorce and supremacy; attacked the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536; vituperated against Reginald Pole whom he condemned as a traitor; and in 1539, under threat of a French invasion, not only patriotically exhorted the nation to take up arms but also prepared a translation of Frontinus’ military Stratagems as a contribution to the potential war effort.22 In several of his pamphlets Moryson found it useful to 21 This aspect of Machiavelli’s work was, of course, later to become a major focus of attention when the papal censors got busy. For a revealing example of such hostility, see William McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton, 1989), 257–8. McCuaig discusses the notes of an anonymous censor, in a dossier devoted to Sigonio’s De regno Italiae, complaining that Sigonio says that the ruin of Italy had been caused by the Popes—‘and aside from the fact that this is the opinion of Machiavelli in the Discorsi, it is a danger in these times’. 22 For Moryson’s career as a polemicist, see W. Gordon Zeeveld, Foundations of Tudor Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948); David Sandler Berkowitz, Humanist

EARLY READERS

99

refer to Machiavelli’s work and this has, inevitably, excited susceptible historians. How far might Moryson be considered a ‘Machiavellian’? On the one hand, he was familiar with the Florentine master; on the other, he was concerned with supposedly religious matters such as the number and nature of the Sacraments. A terrible conundrum! But the issue is—like many attempts at categorization and disjunction—intellectually sterile.23 Readers are not necessarily disciples. Selective citation neither demands nor precludes wholesale approbation. Different books may be studied, and a variety of notions may be entertained, simultaneously. Machiavelli himself read widely, wrote copiously, expressed divergent ideas, and adopted such conflicting political stances that, to this day, scholars cannot make up their minds about him. Was even Machiavelli a ‘Machiavellian’? With regard to Moryson, the truth of the matter is uncomplicated. An ambitious scholar, well versed in classical literature, he sought advancement by immersing himself in the murky waters of the English Reformation and plying his pen on behalf of Henry VIII’s policies. In this task he found Machiavelli useful in providing detailed evidence against the Papacy, helpful in illuminating difficult issues such as sedition, and congenial for an apparently realistic approach to worldly affairs.24 At the same time, however, there was a whole area of controversy, sparked off by the Reformation and relevant to the contemporary situation in England, which Machiavelli had not touched upon—nor could have touched upon since it was posterior to his own experience. Debate concerning the Sacraments was as much political as religious in motivation and Moryson could not ignore it: but his pragmatism and the limits of his Christian morality are strikingly illustrated in the ‘Epistle to the King’s Majesty’, prefacing his translation of Frontinus, where Scholarship and Public Order: Two Tracts against the Pilgrimage of Grace by Sir Richard Morison (1984); and G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972). 23 For this debate, see Zeeveld, Foundations, 184–9; Christopher Morris, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker (1953), 65–7; Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli (1964), 34–40; Berkowitz, Humanist Scholarship, 70–80. 24 Nevertheless, later in his career, Moryson clearly considered himself as somewhat unrealistic in political judgement as compared with the much more astute ‘Machiavellist’ Throckmorton. See below, pp. 101–2.

100

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

he discusses the whole question of the relative efficacy of ‘Policy of mind’ and physical strength. Like Machiavelli, he favours policy while recognizing the need, in certain situations, to employ force. Everything depends on circumstances so that evil deeds may, at times, prove to be the best course of action, and political morality is reduced to a question of expediency.25 This seems reminiscent of Il Principe but is not necessarily (or even probably) derived from it. Certainly Moryson never cites that work. On the other hand, we do know that he read the Istorie fiorentine and the Discorsi with sufficient attention to be able to draw upon them for his own polemical purposes. On his return to England from Italy in May 1535, Moryson immediately began work on his Apomaxis calumniarum, a reply to Johann Cochlaeus on behalf of Henry VIII’s divorce. This includes a discussion, obviously drawn from the first book of the Istorie fiorentine, of the methods used by Popes Gregory III, Gregory V, and Nicholas II to augment their power; and, when Moryson reaches the pontificate of Alexander III, the debt is made explicit by a reference to ‘Nicholao Macchavello’, who wrote ‘very diligently’ concerning the affairs of Italy.26 However, before the Apomaxis could be put into print, the Pilgrimage of Grace provided Moryson with a more urgent occasion to deploy his propagandist skills, and he promptly produced two pamphlets against the rebels, of which one, A remedy for sedition, includes material from all three books of the Discorsi and again refers to Machiavelli by name.27 Three years later, 25 See below, Ch. 15, pp. 536–7. 26 Apomaxis calumniarum, convitiorumque (1537), fos. 80–1. The first scholar to notice this Machiavellian reference in the Apomaxis was John Wesley Horrocks, ‘Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion’ (D.Litt. thesis, University of London, 1908), 43–5. It was Horrocks, too, who noticed that a Latin letter from Moryson to Cromwell in Aug. 1535 (LP ix. 198) included a discussion of English affairs which was in a ‘Machiavellian vein’, though not necessarily derived from Machiavelli. It concerns how, in well-ordered states—although provision has always been made for rewards and punishments—former merit is not allowed to outweigh present misdeeds. The case in point is the execution of Thomas More; and Moryson cites the Roman example of Manlius Capitolinus. The issue is certainly treated by Machiavelli, Discorsi, I. 24, but the example of Manlius is accompanied there by others, and all the details given by Moryson come directly from Livy, VI. x. 16. 27 See the edition of A remedy for sedition (1536) in Berkowitz, Humanist Scholarship, 112, 114, 122–3, 129, 133–4, 141, 147, 149, 154, 156, 159, 162.

EARLY READERS

101

Moryson found further use for Machiavelli in his Invective against the great and detestable vice, treason, attacking Reginald Pole and demonstrating the futility of rebellion against a king who, like Henry VIII, is protected by God. In his preface, Moryson sets out the perils of all conspiracies, even against tyrants such as Nero; and his arguments here are derived from Machiavelli’s long discussion of conspiracy in the Discorsi, III. 6. It is true that Moryson uses Machiavelli very selectively and translates only odd sentences. But these passages are worth noting as the first recognizable part of a Machiavellian text to be printed in an English form.28 There is a certain irony about the preface to the Invective and, indeed, about Moryson’s career in general. In 1535, as a young impecunious scholar in Padua, clad in borrowed breeches, he had been befriended and encouraged by Reginald Pole whom he praised for rescuing him from ‘hunger, cold, and poverty’.29 Four years later, Moryson—by then official propagandist for the Henrician Reformation—was upbraiding his erstwhile patron as a traitor who wore a cardinal’s hat to cover his ‘bloody pate’; as the very ‘pole from whence is poured all this poison’; and as a ‘pole of little water, and that at a wonderful low ebb’.30 Moryson also declares that a conspiratorial letter, from Pole to his family in England, was written by the Devil himself: ‘author of al dissention, al rebellion, all treason’.31 It is curious to reflect that, while Moryson was writing this diatribe and its Machiavellian preface, Pole was busy composing his Apologia ad Carolum V which included the attack on Il Principe (a work written by ‘the finger of Satan’), destined to make Pole Machiavelli’s earliest significant moralistic adversary. Moryson’s later career—his various diplomatic missions, honours, and rewards under Henry VIII and Edward VI, and then exile under Mary—are of no concern here. But he was responsible for one other noteworthy Machiavellian ‘first’. In October 1551, after two years of fluctuating fortune, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and formerly Lord Protector, was arrested; and this prompted Moryson to ponder the difficulties of assessing political behaviour with any accuracy. Writing to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton on 18 November, 28 An invective ayenste the great and detestable vice, treason (1539), sigs. a.2–5v. 29 LP ix. 102. 30 Invective, sigs. B.8v, C.8. 31 Ibid., sig. E.5v.

102

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

he felt obliged not only to confess his own failure to understand Somerset’s true character, but also to praise Throckmorton’s superior penetration in this respect. Moryson had been convinced that a man like Somerset would feel gratitude for having been forgiven a ‘throng of faults’ and for having recovered (through another’s benefits) ‘not only lost land but honour’. Throckmorton, by contrast, was a ‘Machiavellist’ and thought it best ‘to mistrust the worst’. Thus he saw deeper into the Duke of Somerset’s nature; ‘guessed rightlier of his doings’; and ‘thought he would not forgive displeasures’. E´mile Gasquet, in drawing attention to this letter, points out that it contains what is, perhaps, the first use of the word ‘Machiavellist’: and he notes that, at this stage of its history, it carried no pejorative overtones. A clear line was being drawn between Moryson’s own idealistic failure to understand political motivation and the realistic assessment thereof by a ‘Machiavellist’—and Throckmorton was expected to understand this distinction and to regard it as a compliment.32

machiavelli and the edwardian reformation Wilder and more adventurous than Moryson’s journey from rags to riches was the career of another student of Machiavelli, William Thomas—the first writer so far discovered, not merely in England but in Europe itself, to attempt topical political analysis on the basis of Machiavelli’s work. The salient features of his life are well known.33 He is generally thought to hail from Llanthomas in Breconshire although, as Adair laconically remarked, when trying 32 Gasquet (1974), 111–13. Another reference to Machiavelli in a letter of 13 July 1552 (Cal. S.P. Foreign, 1547–53, no. 550), sent by Moryson from the Imperial court to William Cecil, has been consistently misconstrued. It refers to a malicious story put about by a traitor servant that Moryson was in the habit of reading Bernardino Ochino’s sermons and sometimes Machiavelli to his household. Moryson may well have been reading such diverse literature: but the letter merely states that this is what has been said about him. 33 See E. R. Adair, ‘William Thomas: A Forgotten Clerk of the Privy Council’, in R. W. Seton-Watson (ed.), Tudor Studies (1924), 133–60; and the article ‘William Thomas’ by T. F. T. Baker in S. T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558 (1982), 439–43. The pioneering study on Thomas’s

EARLY READERS

103

to piece together the evidence for his life: ‘Thomas is so common a name, and Welsh genealogy so mystical a science, that William Thomas’s ancestry must remain a highly speculative problem.’34 He sought his fortune in the service of Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse to Henry VIII; and for some time he prospered. Unfortunately, he also sought his fortune at the gaming table where he fared less well. ‘Folly and misfortune of play’ forced him to leave England hurriedly—with some of his master’s funds still sticking to his fingers. He got as far as Venice before being intercepted, in April 1545, by the English agent who reported what ‘pitiful moan the young man maketh, with incessable weepings for his trespasses which seemeth to grieve him no less than death’.35 Precisely what happened to Thomas, at this point, is unclear: but he was certainly able to tour Italy widely through the next four years. It was during this period that he wrote a number of books, including a vigorous defence of Henry VIII’s divorce and antipapal policies, incorporating a sharp denunciation of Pole’s treason;36 and a pioneering textbook, Principal rules of the Italian grammer, which enjoyed three editions between 1550 and 1567.37 It was also at this time that Thomas prepared his Historie of Italie (1549), which provides potted summaries of the history, antiquities, and sights of Rome, Venice, Naples, Florence, Genoa, Milan, and some of the smaller city-states.38 The compilation is little more interest in Machiavelli is Horrocks (1908), ch. 4. The fullest examination of Thomas’s work is the University of London MA thesis by Peter J. Laven, ‘The Life and Writings of William Thomas’ (1954), which is, sadly, also unpublished. Another slant on Thomas’s skill in adapting historical sources (Livy on this occasion) to topical issues is given by A. J. Carlson, ‘Mundus Muliebris: The World of Women Reviled and Defended ca.195 B.C. and 1551 A.D. And Other Things’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, 24 (1993), 541–60. See also S. Anglo, ‘ ‘‘Our Extremest Shift is to Work by Policy’’: William Thomas and Early Tudor Machiavellism’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1984), 31–50. 34 Adair, ‘William Thomas’, 134. 35 LP xx, pt. 1, no. 515. 36 Il Pellegrino Inglese n’el quale si defende l’innocente, & la sincera vita de’l pio & religioso re d’Inghilterra Henrico ottavo (n.p., 1552). There also survives an English manuscript translation, not in Thomas’s hand, which was eventually published: first by Abraham D’Aubant in his The Works of William Thomas (1774); and then by J. A. Froude, The Pilgrim (1861). 37 Principal rules of the Italian grammer, with a dictionarie (1550). 38 William Thomas, The historie of Italie (1549); 2nd edn. (1561).

104

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

than a guidebook for tourists although, decades later, it was admired by another English Machiavellian, Gabriel Harvey, who thought it comprised ‘Excellent Histories, and notable Discourses for every politician, pragmatician, negotiatour, or anie skillfull man’, and deemed it ‘A necessarie Introduction to Machiavel, Guicciardin, Jovius’.39 It also has some interest for the historian of the early reception of Machiavelli, because he is the only literary source specifically acknowledged by Thomas. ‘Conferryng’, says Thomas, ‘the discourse of divers authours togethers, toucheyng the Florentine histories, and findyng the effectes of theim all gathered in one by Nicolas Macchiavegli, a notable learned man, and secretarie of late daies to the common wealthe there: I determined to take hym for myne onely auctour in that behalfe.’40 In fact, his account of Florentine history is nothing but an abridgement of Machiavelli’s book, so boiled down that it degenerates into a mere recital of names, dates, and events—with nothing salvaged from the original’s historical reflections—though, from time to time, as in the summary of the lives of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Thomas does reproduce his source in recognizable detail. In 1549 the gambling scholar returned to England where he made an astonishingly rapid rise to position and prosperity. By April 1550, he was sworn Clerk to the Privy Council, and was assigned sole care of the Council’s Register; and it was late in the same year (or early in 1551) that he offered himself to the boy King, Edward VI, as an instructor on political issues.41 Hitherto, wrote Thomas, the King had concerned himself with the study of tongues rather than with history or policy. But now Edward needed to gain ‘knowledge of such examples as in this and other regiments heretofore have happened’. Thomas, accordingly, feels that he can do no less than submit a list of political problems for the 39 This is part of the note written by Harvey at the beginning of the ‘Table’ of his copy of the 1561 edition of The historie of Italie. See Virginia F. Stern, Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library (Oxford, 1979), 237. 40 The historie of Italie, fo. 140. 41 British Library, Cottonian MS Titus B. II, fos. 96–102: printed in Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser., ii. 187–95. Both Horrocks and, later, Peter Laven, attempted to identify the Machiavellian sources for Thomas’s questions, but had to concede that, in just a few cases, the ambiguity of Thomas’s phrasing was beyond resolution.

EARLY READERS

105

King to ponder; adding that ‘though these be but Questions, yet there is not so small a one emongest them, as woll not mynister matter of much discourse worthie the argument and debating’. Eighty-five questions are appended: and, although Thomas claims to have gathered them ‘out of divers aucthors’, they are principally derived from the chapter headings either of Machiavelli’s Il Principe or Discorsi. Thomas is concerned that his offer of advice (and any fruit that might come of it) should be kept secret, so that Edward would be able to excite admiration when opportunity arose. This effective ruse is enlarged upon when—in response to the King’s immediate demand for an opinion ‘tooching the reformacion of the coyne’ (a matter not included in the list of questions)— Thomas sends his reply sealed as though it were some ordinary communication from the Council, ‘assuring your highnes that no creature lyving is or shalbe privie either to this, or to any of the rest through me’. The reason for this secrecy is that, ‘your Majestie may utter these matters of your own studie; whereby it shall have the greater creadite with your Counsaill’.42 This advice is reminiscent of Castiglione: both in the sprezzatura whereby the King is to display an expertise not actually his own, and in the good counsel offered by Thomas as a cortegiano trying to encourage his ruler along the right path. It is even possible that Thomas saw himself as one of those wise counsellors, described by Machiavelli in Il Principe, 22, as giving lustre to a prince intelligent enough to heed their advice.43 Apart from the short letter on the coinage—which itself displays an attitude towards human venality which might be deemed ‘Machiavellian’, and which includes a reference to ‘the daunger to be aucthor of a newe thinge’, prompted by Discorsi, III. 3544—there survive four of Thomas’s political discourses, of which three derive 42 Cottonian MS Vespasian D. XVIII, fos. 27v–28; Thomas, The Works, ed. D’Aubant, 170–1. There is nothing arcane about this, as is suggested by Peter S. Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State (Cambridge, 1988), 41–4. It is merely a Castiglionesque ruse to help Edward seem cleverer than he really is. 43 Two of Thomas’s political questions derive from this chapter of Il Principe: No. 16, ‘What is to be observed in chooseng of Officers’; and No. 23, ‘Howe much good mynisters ought to be rewarded and the evill punished’. 44 The twenty-fourth of the series of questions, submitted to Edward VI, is ‘Howe daungerouse it is to be aucthor of a newe matter?’ See Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser., ii. 191.

106

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

from his eighty-five questions.45 In one of these, he has altered the original problem propounded by Machiavelli, Discorsi, I. 5 (Whether the safeguarding of Liberty may better be entrusted to the People or to the Magnates), to something more likely to be intelligible to his royal Tudor audience: Weather it be better for a common wealthe, that the power be in the nobilitie or in the commonaltie.46 Guicciardini, too, had been perplexed by Machiavelli’s original formulation and had similarly modified it—for purposes of discussion—into a question concerning the whereabouts of political power.47 Like Guicciardini, Thomas shares neither Machiavelli’s enthusiasm for the common people, nor his hostility towards the upper classes—although he does condemn aristocratic ambition which may lead to ‘crewell handelinge’ of inferior persons: wherefore Macchiavegli in his discourses of the libertie of a common wealthe, determineth that in caces of extremitie, wheare the magistrates or nobilitie use this tyrannie, the commociones of the people are necessarie to mitigate thexcesse of the greate mennes ambicion.48

However—basing himself not only on Machiavelli’s historical examples, but going back to their Livian originals, and incorporating material from Froissart along with echoes of Il Principe— Thomas argues that, while Aristocracy is far superior to Democracy, Monarchy is better than either, and that even a Prince’s tyranny is more tolerable than the Commons’ power. Thomas’s discourse, Wheather it be expedient to varie with tyme, is based upon arguments and examples advanced both in Il Principe, 25, and the Discorsi, III. 9: although the material is considerably augmented by a quotation from Petrarch’s ‘tryomphe of tyme’, a scriptural reference, citations from Philippe de Commynes, Cicero, and Livy, material derived from Thomas’s own 45 British Library, Cottonian MS Vespasian D. XVIII, fos. 2–46. All five discourses were printed in John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), II. ii, 365–91, but are better consulted in Thomas, The Works, ed. D’Aubant, 131–92. The transcription in both cases is inaccurate—but D’Aubant’s is markedly less so. A new, fully annotated edition of these discourses would be useful. 46 Cotton MS, fos. 19–26v; Thomas, Works, ed. D’Aubant, 159–69. 47 Guicciardini, Considerations, ed. Grayson, 70. 48 Cotton MS, fo. 24v; Works, ed. D’Aubant, 167. Thomas is clearly thinking here of Machiavelli, Discorsi, I. 4, 6.

EARLY READERS

107

Historie of Italie, and a speech made by Edward III at Calais. Thomas concludes that no one can prosper in this world: that woll not varie in his proceadings according to the tyme: For as there is nothing more pleasaunt than the concorde of musicke: nor nothing more displeasaunt than the discorde therof; so whan doings and tyme agree, there is nothing more happie, nor whan they disagree, nothing more unhappie: having in them much more variacion than tewnes in musicke have.49

A third discourse considers What Princes Amitie is best, and takes as its starting point Machiavelli’s Discorsi, II. 11, though again Thomas—in writing of the ‘politike amitie’ (which is the only sort that he considers possible), as opposed to the ideal friendship extolled by Cicero—also has in mind Il Principe, 15. In addition, he incorporates material from elsewhere in the Discorsi (II. 23), refers back to Livy, cites both Cicero and English history, and argues the importance of allying with princes of like religion—a matter which Machiavelli had not anticipated.50 The remaining discourse, My private opinion toocheng your Majesties outwarde affaires at this present, is, in some ways, the most interesting of all; for here—abandoning his set questions— Thomas branches out to apply to current English problems the ideas already advanced in his studies of princely adaptability and alliances.51 The discourse was written between July and September 1551, and Thomas could see grievous dangers ahead. In the days of Henry VIII, England had been feared by all its neighbours. It had no need to esteem any of them. But now, ‘the cace is so altered that bicause we are both hated and contempned of them all, we for lack of our owne estimacion must either esteeme them and redeeme our estimacion or elles pearishe’. War threatens on every side. Yet England cannot undertake hostilities without falling prey either to the enemy or to some expensively ‘purchaced frende’. Only two possible remedies suggest themselves: ‘either frendeship to helpe us, or tyme to make ourselfes stronge’. The former is not feasible, because ‘we have no neighbour of uniforme religion’, so our only 49 Cotton MS, fos. 2–10v; D’Aubant, 131–44. 50 Ibid., fos.11–18; D’Aubant, 147–55. 51 Ibid., fos. 34–46; D’Aubant, 179–92.

108

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

recourse is to gain time: ‘and bicause neither is our force so ordred, that we may trust thereby to wynne our tyme, nor our treasure such as we may purchase it: therfore our extreamest shifte is to worke by policie’. England is confronted by two powerful princes—‘the frenche King a doubtfull frende, and Themperor a dissembling foo’—and Thomas therefore advocates subtle diplomacy, working on the Emperor’s jealousy of France, and suggesting to him an alliance. This policy is to be pursued even to the point of promising to alter Religion although, of course, this would be mere dissembling for ‘the wynneng of tyme’. Thus the Emperor (hoping for changes in England) and the French King (fearing this Anglo-Imperial league) may refrain from hostilities against England, so that, ‘your Majestie shulde not only gett tyme more and more to establishe Religion within your Realme: but also to putt your subjectes in a readinesse, and to provide you of money against the tyme of hostilitie’. This study of England’s ‘extreamest shifte’ was, as far as we know, Thomas’s last political discourse in the Machiavellian vein. It is an adroit summary of the alternative policies available to a beleaguered England and, like the other discourses, has a clarity of structure and appropriate choice of examples ideally suited for the instruction of a youthful monarch. It is a great pity that Edward VI did not demand and receive more answers to Thomas’s Machiavellian questions, for the complete series would have constituted a minor masterpiece in the history of political pedagogy—especially since Thomas demonstrates an ability to use Machiavelli as a springboard for pertinent speculation rather than as mere fodder for plagiarization. It was not to be: although Thomas did, at about this period, prepare two more translations (Barbaro’s account of his travels to Tana and Persia, and Sacrobosco’s astronomical treatise De Sphaera), and continued to serve as Clerk of the Privy Council until some months after the death of Edward VI.52 The precise nature of his activities in the early part of Mary’s reign will probably remain a mystery. But it is evident that, as an ardent 52 The translation of Barbaro is in British Library, Royal MS 17.C.X, and was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1873. The Sacrobosco is in British Library, Egerton MS 837.

EARLY READERS

109

anti-Catholic and staunch defender of Henry VIII, he was unhappy over the impending change in religion, and especially hostile to the projected marriage between the Queen and Philip of Spain. Despite his familiarity with Machiavelli’s warnings about the dangers of conspiracy, he was implicated in Wyatt’s rebellion; accused of plotting against the life of Mary herself; found guilty of high treason; and executed on 18 May 1554.53

machiavelli and the s panish marriage Two months after Thomas’s death, the Spanish marriage was celebrated and, with this in mind, another British student of Machiavelli applied his knowledge of Il Principe and the Discorsi (augmented by a few other sources) to prepare a work introducing Philip to the mysteries of British history and government and suggesting possible political procedures. The work, entitled Ragionamento dell’advenimento delli Inglesi, e Normanni in Britannia (Discourse on the coming of the English and Normans to Britain), survives in two Italian manuscripts—one intended for Philip himself, and the other for Charles V’s minister, Cardinal Granvelle.54 According to its title page, the text has been translated from English into Italian by a certain George Rainsford, and it caused a stir when finally published in 1975 because (again according to its title page) the English original had been composed by no less a personage than ‘il molto riverendo Signor Stephano Gardinero’—that is Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor of England. The Ragionamento is cast in the form of a dialogue between ‘Stephano’ (who is unmistakeably identified as Gardiner) and ‘Alphonso’, and it makes extensive, first-hand use of Machiavelli— both of Il Principe and, more especially, of the Discorsi—although, 53 Machiavelli, Discorsi, III. 6 deals with conspiracies and must have been in Thomas’s mind when he framed his questions: No. 13, ‘What is th’occasion of Conspiracies?’; and No. 14, ‘Wheather the People commonly desire the destruction of him that is in aucthoritie, and what moveth them so to do?’ 54 The text was edited with an English translation, introduction, and notes by P. S. Donaldson, as A Machiavellian Treatise by Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1975).

110

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

unlike the more subtle Thomas, the author simply incorporates large chunks of these works into his text.55 The argument of the Ragionamento is sometimes awkward and contradictory: but it is certainly a striking attempt to apply extremist doctrines to a contemporary political situation and, were it indeed by the eminent Gardiner, we should have to admit that it demonstrates Machiavellian scholarship at a very high social level indeed. Unfortunately, it is highly improbable that it was written by the famous Bishop in English, and is much more likely to have been written by the obscure George Rainsford in Italian.56 The Ragionamento is a rare instance where consideration of a text’s authorship is more significant than a detailed examination of its content; and it is, therefore, worth reviewing the problem in some detail. There are several reasons for rejecting Gardiner’s authorship. In the first place, from internal evidence, it seems that the work was still being written after 25 October 1555; and its modern editor, Peter Donaldson, argues that ‘Gardiner worked on the treatise during the very last weeks of his life while confined, for the most part, to his bed’. However, we know that the Bishop was mortally sick by the beginning of October and that, in the fortnight before his death, he was in the kind of agony which, while not precluding the possibility of polishing up a political treatise for an absentee monarch, was scarcely conducive to it. Second, the Ragionamento is supposed to have been written in English and translated into Italian after Gardiner’s death: whereas, had it really been the case that Gardiner wished to offer a treatise to a Spanish monarch inexpert in English, he would certainly have used the Latin in which he had already composed the majority of his political and controversial works and in which Philip might be expected to have had at least a modest competence. Third, the work is quite unlike anything else in Gardiner’s known oeuvre. Fourth, there is no

55 These Machiavellian borrowings are, with one exception, fully elucidated by Donaldson in his edition and notes, and he conveniently summarizes them at p. 16 n. 1. The missing passage is noted in my ‘Crypto-Machiavellism in Early Tudor England’, 192 n. 6. 56 I first expressed scepticism in ‘Crypto-Machiavellism in Early Tudor England’. I am now even more convinced that Gardiner was not the author.

EARLY READERS

111

evidence that Gardiner, although he had been in Italy as an ambassador during Henry VIII’s divorce proceedings, was either a reader or collector of works in Italian.57 Fifth, the Ragionamento puts into the mouth of one interlocutor, Alphonso, fulsome praise of the other, Stephano; and, since the latter is Bishop Gardiner himself, this would constitute a breach of decorum ill-befitting an author’s own pen.58 Sixth, decorum would have been violated even further had Gardiner used himself as the principal interlocutor in his own dialogue. Seventh, against all this, the only evidence for Gardiner’s authorship is the single declaration on the title page; and the reason for such a fiction is obvious enough. A political text attributed to the Chancellor of England was infinitely more likely to be read than if it were offered as the unaided work of a nobody of whom neither Philip nor anyone else had ever heard. There are also arguments which militate against the Ragionamento’s ever having been written in English. The use of Machiavelli’s Italian is sufficiently close to have suggested to Professor Donaldson that Rainsford revised Gardiner’s putative original with Machiavelli’s writings to hand.59 This may also be said of the treatment accorded another Italian political dialogue, Lucio Paolo Rosello’s Il ritratto del vero governo del principe, much of which consists of a translation of Nifo’s De regnandi peritia, which is, itself, a Latinized adaptation and expansion of Machiavelli’s Il Principe.60 Thus, if Donaldson were correct, we should have to 57 Furthermore, the author of the Ragionamento is not only knowledgeable about the much-published Machiavelli, he is also familiar with the minor Lucio Paolo Rosello: something which could only reasonably be expected of a very eclectic and up-to-date Italianist. 58 Alphonso says to Stephano that he has arrived at the court of ‘Philip, King of England, where I find that your authority (which shows the man), your singular prudence in public affairs, your firm constancy in the Catholic faith, and the incorruptible justice you minister to all, show me clearly that all your qualities merit no less praise (rather much more) than their public repute throughout Europe, however honourable’ (Ragionamento, ed. Donaldson, 106)—not a bad testimonial to write of oneself. 59 Ragionamento, ed. Donaldson, Introduction, 15 n. 1. The same point is made in the introduction to Donaldson’s edition of George Rainsford’s Ritratto d’Ingliterra, in the Camden Miscellany, XXVII (1979), 56. 60 On Rosello’s Ritratto, see above, Ch. 2. On Rainsford’s use of it, see my ‘Crypto-Machiavellism in Early Tudor England’, 188–90 and nn. 8–15.

112

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

believe that Rainsford’s knowledge both of Machiavelli and Rosello was so intimate that he was able to recognize and locate wholly unacknowledged and unreferenced borrowings in an English adaptation before incorporating and revising them when turning them back into Italian. In this respect, we also have to take into account another work, a Ritratto d’Ingliterra composto da Georgio Rainsfordo appended by Rainsford to the Ragionamento so that ‘nothing might be lacking in this little book that might contribute to an understanding of the laws, procedures, customs, nature and humor of the people of Britain’.61 This, too, incorporates adaptations of Machiavelli (adding material from another piece, the Ritratto di cose di Francia, to the stock of Machiavellian knowledge) and, as in the similar passages of the Ragionamento, they are sufficiently close to the original Italian to suggest that the author had a text before him—but sufficiently different to suggest a conscious attempt to avoid verbatim transcription. Naturally, Donaldson does not suggest that Rainsford composed his Ritratto first in English, turned Machiavelli’s Italian into English, and then translated the whole thing back into Italian. But this would be scarcely more far-fetched than the notion that he identified a whole series of Machiavellian borrowings in an English text and then modified the originals in his Italian translation. However, all difficulties and absurdities disappear if we assume that the Ragionamento, as well as the Ritratto, was composed in Italian, and that both were written by somebody called George Rainsford who was anxious to address Philip but was unable to do so directly in Spanish or Latin.62 This assumption also helps resolve a number of legal and other blunders which would be 61 Ragionamento, ed. Donaldson, 103. 62 Donaldson nowhere gives serious consideration to the possibility that Rainsford might have been the author of the Ragionamento, but implies an argument against it by maintaining, in his introduction to the Ritratto, 59–64, that there are significant differences of opinion between the Ragionamento and the Ritratto: on the dissolution of the monasteries, class relations, and the question of war with France. These differences are superficial, and the arguments seeking to establish them are tendentious and—in the case of Rainsford’s alleged bellicosity—almost frivolous. Donaldson, in his Machiavelli and Mystery of State (Cambridge, 1988)—an attempt to turn Machiavelli’s political ideas (which remained completely accessible throughout the sixteenth century) into a ‘secret’ doctrine or Arcana politica—makes only one reference, and that in passing, to Rainsford (at p. 44).

EARLY READERS

113

surprising in the Lord Chancellor, but less so in some lesser mortal.63 The argument of the Ragionamento is that if Philip were to rule wisely and with justice, he could establish a firm dynasty in England. The difficulty with the text is that, while it warns Philip against the deeds of Canute and the Danes, it encourages him to act like the successful William the Conqueror, who ‘fortified himself with his Normans against the natives’; killed off rivals in the royal line; deprived the English of their offices and dignities which he bestowed upon his own people; oppressed his subjects with ‘new tributes and taxes every day’; and built fortresses to subjugate the land.64 New princes, writes the author, cannot avoid cruelty, the use of force, and the practice of what might conventionally be deemed vices. William the Conqueror had to face continuous revolts and plots. None the less he conquered his enemies, pacified the revolts, transformed the kingdom, gave it laws and honours, and left it to his successors in peace and trust; and he did so by employing cruelty which was without doubt more praiseworthy than that harmful compassion and mercy of Richard II and Henry VI (fo. 111r–v). This belief in laudable cruelty, together with a long argument that it is safer to be feared than loved, obviously derives directly from Il Principe—with telling additions from Rosello—and, as with Machiavelli, the topsy-turvy morality leads to confusion. What precisely is being advocated? The efficacy of severity, perhaps? But then the author, having presented this case convincingly, remembers that he is advising the new King of England, and therefore suddenly asserts that such methods are only for those who have obtained a realm by force of arms. One who has obtained it ‘through favour of friends, hereditary laws or by matrimony must take a different course to keep his state’—‘mercy, affability, and generosity’ (fo. 123r–v). 63 There is a discussion of these legal blunders by Dermot Fenlon in his review of Donaldson’s edition of the Ragionamento in Historical Journal, 19 (1976), 1019–23. 64 Ragionamento, ed. Donaldson, fos. 99v–101. Further references are given in the text.

114

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

That is comforting. But it becomes less so if we remember that to many Englishmen the Spanish marriage seemed not in the least like the ‘legitimate succession, confirmed by all orders’, that Stephano claimed it to be (fo. 135r–v). Wyatt’s rebellion, though successfully suppressed, had not been the trivial emotional outburst of an insignificant minority. Relations between Spaniards and Englishmen began badly with the very arrival of Philip and his entourage, and deteriorated thereafter. Few informed observers could have expected even an attempt at the soothing policies described in the Ragionamento; and the grim alternatives are set out there with stark clarity. The author certainly demonstrates facility in handling Machiavellian material. What he does not demonstrate is a concern for what would happen to the people of England should his suggestions be put into practice. But whether this is an indication of inadvertency, obtuseness, or ruthless intelligence is yet another matter which cannot now be determined. Apart from their irrelation, what is particularly striking about these early students of Machiavelli is their serious, and on the whole favourable, attitude towards his work. They read what he had written; thought about it; and absorbed it. Guicciardini, despite severe methodological misgivings, was clearly stimulated by the Discorsi and accepted the book on its own secular terms. Schwendi, however unhappy he may have been over Machiavelli’s disregard for Divine Providence, was sufficiently impressed by the Discorsi to give evidence of detailed scrutiny, and register general approval, on almost every page of his copy. Moryson, Thomas, and Rainsford all found Machiavelli useful and congenial, and had a command of his work which enabled them to adapt it for their own ends. However, there were other, very different readers of the early editions of Machiavelli’s works: men so shaken by his unconventional morality and his hostility towards Christianity that their only thought was to join battle immediately and destroy him. First in the field was Cardinal Reginald Pole, Moryson’s beˆte noire, who was determined to have Machiavelli ‘put down out of all remembrance’.65 But the task, as we shall see, was quite beyond him. 65 LP xv. 721.

4 A Hostile Cardinal: Reginald Pole and his Apologia From the end of 1538, well into 1539, Cardinal Reginald Pole was composing a work which he intended for the Emperor Charles V. It is known as the Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V. Caesarem super quatuor libris a se scriptis de unitate ecclesiae—the title bestowed by its eighteenth-century editor—though, as far as we know, it was never actually presented to the Emperor; and it was not published until some 200 years after its composition.1 In the course of this Apologia, it became expedient to attack Il Principe in a section which has given Pole some claim to be considered as Machiavelli’s first serious adversary. But Pole’s views on Machiavelli are only incidental to the purpose of the work in which they occur. In order to understand the attack on Machiavelli, we must understand what the Apologia is about; and to understand that we must consider the sequence of events which led to its composition.2 1 Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V. Caesarem super quatuor libris a se scriptis de unitate ecclesiae, in Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis et aliorum ad ipsum collectio, ed. A. M. Quirini (Brescia, 1744–57), i. 66–171. Gustave Constant, La Re´forme en Angleterre (Paris, 1930), i. 546 n. 258, 590 n. 405, says that the Apologia was published at Louvain in 1569: but I can find no trace of this and it is likely that Constant was confused by John Fowler’s edition of Pole’s De summo pontifice, which was published at Louvain in 1569. 2 The first serious critique of the Apologia was Paul Van Dyke, ‘Reginald Pole and Thomas Cromwell: An Examination of the Apologia ad Carolum Quintum’, American Historical Review, 9 (1903–4), 696–724; reprinted in his Renascence Portraits (London, 1906), 377–418. Horrocks (1908) includes a full description of Pole’s work, though with little critical comment. G. R. Elton, ‘The Political Creed of Thomas Cromwell’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 6 (1956), 69–92, offers a few trenchant comments on the worthlessness of Pole’s testimony. The most recent interpretation of the Apologia, as a work full of arcane

116

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Reginald Pole’s education had largely been sponsored by Henry VIII and culminated in a protracted sojourn in Italy followed by a shorter visit to Paris. Like everybody else in England, Pole was sucked willy-nilly into the controversy arising from the issue of Henry’s divorce, but he obtained permission to leave England, and returned to Italy via Avignon early in 1532. Three years later he received an urgent request from the King to give his opinion on the Divine Law concerning two major issues: the validity of a marriage with a deceased brother’s widow; and the status of the papal supremacy. Pole set to work and his answers grew into a substantial book, the form and nature of which was determined by three factors: his abhorrence for the King’s concupiscence and shoddy treatment of Catherine of Aragon; by the news of the executions of Fisher and More for whose piety and learning his admiration was unbounded; and by the tendentious arguments of Bishop Sampson’s defence of Henry’s position.3 By the time that a manuscript copy of Pole’s Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione (generally now referred to as the De unitate) was sent to Henry, it had become not a gentle rebuke to his former patron and an earnest exhortation for him to mend his ways, but a meaning and prophetic imagery, by Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State, 1–35, is one that I cannot accept. My reasons will appear in the ensuing discussion and notes. 3 Richard Sampson, Oratio qua docet, hortatur, admonet omnes potissimum Anglos, regiae dignitati cum primis ut obediant etc. (1535?). Donaldson, Machiavelli (pp. 20–1) writes that ‘many of the arguments Pole uses in the Apologia against Henry’s self-exaltation are anticipated in the De Unitate, in which Henry’s corruption is traced not to Machiavelli, but to the inflated conception of the sacredness of kings proposed by Sampson in his Oratio’. This is true enough but, just a few pages later, at pp. 27–8 (in order to establish the pre-eminence of Cromwell in Pole’s view of English politics at the time of the composition of the De unitate) Donaldson argues that, since Sampson’s work was not the most significant of the books defending Henry’s supremacy, Sampson is merely a scapegoat. He further suggests that ‘Pole’s focus on Sampson makes face-saving easier, for counselors closer to the king are spared mention’. But, in fact, the entire argument of the De unitate is built upon a systematic refutation of Sampson’s work which, after all, had been specifically sent to Pole, who could not be expected to take a modern historian’s view of the relative importance of Henry VIII’s henchmen. In any case, it is hard to see why, in a work which consistently condemns Henry as a bloody, hypocritical, and fornicating tyrant, Pole should be at pains to spare the feelings of the King’s advisers.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

117

violent diatribe against a bloody tyrant and a call to Charles V to turn from his crusade against the Turks to the more serious threat of the English infidel. Pole asserted that the De unitate was meant only for the eyes of Henry VIII. But this claim was false. Pole’s own correspondence; the words and public tone of the treatise itself (including an impassioned address to the Emperor Charles V); and the fact that he prepared variant versions, with the more opprobrious passages concerning Anne Boleyn carefully pruned from the manuscript sent to the King: all testify to the author’s disingenuousness.4 At any event, a copy quickly made its way to the papal printer, Antonio Blado, at Rome and the work was probably printed, if not published, in 1536.5 Early in the following year, Pole assumed an unassailable position as England’s arch-traitor when his involvement in encouraging a foreign invasion of England to support the northern rebellion became known. It was probably at some time after this that he came across Machiavelli’s work (most likely the Istorie fiorentine) which so shocked him that he determined to do everything within his power to have it suppressed.6 The situation in England—from Pole’s point of view—further deteriorated with the increasingly violent campaign of iconoclasm, culminating in the destruction of the shrines of Thomas Beckett and the burning of the saint’s bones, and with the attack on Pole’s family. His brother Geoffrey was arrested in August 1538; and this was followed by the arrest and execution of his eldest brother Lord Montague and by the detention of his mother, Lady Margaret 4 Whether or not Pole originally intended to publish the De unitate remains, just possibly, open to question: but there can be no doubt about the work’s strident public tone with its frequent expostulations to the people of England and Pole’s own declaration that he wishes his voice to be heard throughout Christendom (De unitate, Lib. III, fo. cviiv). Nor is there doubt about Pole’s claim to be addressing, not merely the King but also the English nation (Epist. Reg. Pol., i. 434, 437). 5 I say ‘quickly’ made its way to Blado, because the printed version assumed that both Catherine of Aragon (died Jan. 1536) and Anne Boleyn (died May 1536) were still alive. 6 LP xv. 721: deposition of John Legh in 1540, in which he reports a conversation with Pole in Rome about two years earlier. Pole is said to have warned Legh against reading Machiavelli’s ‘story’ and to have been determined to have the work ‘dystinkyd and put down out of all remembrance’.

118

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Pole. All this was the immediate background to Pole’s mission to the Emperor, whom he visited at Toledo in February 1539. It was at this period that the Apologia was begun as an explanation or defence of the publication of the De unitate—though it was not completed until later in the year.7 Its bitter and violent tone is sufficiently explained by the combination of Pole’s own politicoreligious convictions about the wanton destruction of the unity of the Church by Henry VIII; by the personal tragedy of his own brothers and mother; and by the dreadful (because in some ways true) assertions of his erstwhile prote´ge´, Richard Moryson, that Pole himself had been instrumental in bringing ruin upon his family. ‘What greater tourmente can be wyshed unto the’, demanded Moryson, in his Invective ayenste the great and detestable vice, treason, ‘than al the world to knowe, that thou by these abhomynable treasons, hath cast away thy famylie.’8 One especially interesting feature of the Invective’s condemnation of Pole’s brother Lord Montague is the fact that its warning against the dangers of conspiracy is based upon Machiavelli’s Discorsi, III. 6, which is the earliest published translation into English of any part of Machiavelli’s work.9 Pole was not aware of this irony but, had he been, he might have made much of it.

t h e de unitate a n d t h e apologia The immediate political context of the Apologia is evident from its references to the fate of Exeter, Montague, and Neville, and from Pole’s specific answer to Moryson’s Invective which had defended these executions. Moreover, the relation between the Apologia and the De unitate is intimate. Pole summarizes and refers to his earlier work, and repeats some of its material: his initial reluctance to write against his former patron; the executions of Fisher, More, the Bridgettines and Carthusians; and the exhortation to the Emperor 7 I say that the Apologia was not completed until later in the year because of its references to Richard Moryson’s An invective. See the following note. 8 Richard Moryson, An Invective, especially at sigs. B.7v–8. 9 An Invective, sigs. a.2–5v.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

119

to take up arms against Henry, who is worse than the Turks. Less obvious, but more relevant to Pole’s attack on Machiavelli, was the repetition—or rather transmutation—of certain motifs which had first occurred in the De unitate. One of these is the repeated contrast between Henry’s vices and the conventional catalogue of princely virtues—justice, piety, clemency, and so on. Another is the insistence on Henry’s use of religion as a cover for the shameful truth. A third is the frequent reference to Satan: partly as a generalized personification of evil; partly as a way of abusing (by association) those whom Pole despises; and partly as a specific image deriving from the Gospels of Mark and Luke, when Satan takes Christ to the pinnacle of the temple and then to the mountain top, displaying all the kingdoms of the world and tempting him— ‘all these things will I give thee’.10 In the De unitate, the evil advisers are labelled ‘instruments of Satan’ whispering in the King’s ear, and all are anonymous with the exception of Richard Sampson, who is especially castigated as the author of a book which was itself the instrument of Satan leading the King into evil (‘qui instrumentum Sathanae fuit ad id tibi persuadendum’). But what remained concealed by these emissaries of evil is the fact that Satan himself placed the King on the pinnacle of the temple, showed him all the goods and possessions of the priests, and promised that they would be his if he declared himself head of the church. The Satanic book, the contrast between virtues and vices, the accusation that religion is being used as a cloak, and the image of Satan the tempter, all recur in the anti-Machiavellian section of the Apologia—but they have undergone a strange metamorphosis. About halfway through the Apologia, Pole writes that so many obstacles stood in the way of the King’s divorce that Henry had been on the brink of abandoning the scheme when the messenger of Satan had approached him with an irresistible temptation. In a long speech, this Satanic adviser had shown Henry how he could obtain his desires with a great increase of power, honour, and utility.11 10 For an apocalyptic interpretation of the Satanic images (based upon a literal reading of Pole’s metaphor), see Donaldson, Machiavelli, 27–30. 11 Apologia, 118–23.

120

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Men in private station, subject to the laws and to the prince’s command, were able to obtain what they wanted even when it was illicit. Should a king, who is above the law and indeed makes the law, not be able to achieve as much as a private citizen? Henry’s problem resulted from the timidity of his counsellors or, rather, from the evil will of those who were more concerned with the interests of his subjects than of the King himself. Not that Henry would ever wish to do anything dishonourable: but he should not be too strictly tied by the rules of those who disputed in schools about the nature of what was honourable or disgraceful. Such people maintained that there was a natural principle of honour from which no one, whether prince or private person, could deviate and so they placed the same yoke on both, despite their dissimilar conditions. Moreover, experience shows that opinions concerning honour vary from place to place and from one age to another; and, if honour may be altered by human will, who has a will superior to that of the Prince whose wishes must be accepted as laws and whose actions may not be judged by his subjects? In the matter of the divorce, Henry had not only the opinions of the universities but also the law of God on his side so that, if some external authority such as the Bishop of Rome refused to accept his position, the King might go his own way—and with great advantage. At this point Pole repeats the metaphor already used in the De unitate. The messenger of Satan took the King, ‘as it were’ (quasi), to the pinnacle of the temple or high mountain, showing him all the possessions of the Church which would be his if only he were to declare himself Head of the Church—a title which could easily be obtained if the King had suitable ministers, and which should be enforced by punishing those who resisted it as traitors. This was the substance of the arguments deployed by the messenger of Satan (nuncio Satanae), as reported by Reginald Pole who, while admitting that he was not present, declares that there is nothing of any significance in the speech which he has not either understood from the nuncio himself or from those who share his counsels. What Pole claims to have done is to gather together the sum of dispersed material uttered at different times. It is not, he is at pains to point out, in the least something he has invented

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

121

himself, but only what he has drawn from these sources and now brings to the light as true.12

t h e me s s e n g e r o f s a t a n At any event, continues Pole, Henry was so impressed that he immediately admitted the speaker to a place among his intimate and principal advisers. And who was this messenger of Satan? ‘If you should ask for such a name’, Pole declares dramatically, ‘they call him Cromwell’, a low-born English commoner who served for a while as a soldier in Italy, then as a merchant’s clerk, and finally returned home to mix with advocates in order to advance himself in the field of law: ‘because he knew that he possessed a supple and clever intelligence to defend the wrong as well as the right—an intelligence he had greatly sharpened by associating with foreigners, for he always despised the ingenuousness of our people’. However, he did not prosper greatly in this profession, nearly coming to grief at the fall of Wolsey, ‘whose sycophant he was’, until the plight of the monasteries gave him the opportunity to display his natural aptitude for ruin and plunder (p. 127). There is a tendency among modern critics to assume that the demonic and apocalyptic fulminations of sixteenth-century controversialists are to be taken literally and are, therefore, susceptible to systematic interpretation. However, like most polemicists whose principal metaphoric repertory was scriptural, Pole has immense difficulty in keeping his abuse consistent either with itself or with the biblical material upon which he draws. He is so incensed against Cromwell that he ties himself into a knot (familiar enough to those who have trudged wearily through the literature of witchcraft and demonology) trying to establish that the minister was an instrument 12 Apologia, 123–4: ‘Neque enim sic dico, sed haec vere affirmo, si fortassis hoc ordine & modo, quae a nuncio Satana dicta sunt, non possum affirmare me expressisse, qui non interfui, amen hoc possum affirmare, nihil in illa oratione positum alicujus momenti, quod non vel ab eodem nuncio eo narrante intellexi, vel ab illis, qui ejus consilii fuerunt participes, sparsim quidem ab illis, & diversis temporibus dicta, quorum ego summam in unum collegi, quae minime ex meo ingenio excogitavi, ut verisimilia, sed ex illorum excepi, quae profero ut vera.’

122

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

both of Satan and, simultaneously, of God’s anger against the King—God having made a present of Cromwell’s life to Satan so that he could ‘more grievously cast down the King’s spirit and hold him in tighter bonds for the destruction of both, and to be a scourge to all those others whom God’s providence had decided in some cases to punish, and in others to cleanse’. Nor does Pole’s imagery stand up to scrutiny when he suggests that Cromwell came forward ‘like the man possessed of the devil whose story is told in the Gospel, because he lived among the tombs and was very savage’ (p. 128). As a matter of fact, in the Gospel (Matthew 8: 28; Mark 5: 2–5; Luke 8: 27–9) the demons inhabiting this man (two men according to Matthew) were driven out by Christ into a herd of swine who thereupon dashed themselves into the sea (or lake) and were drowned. Pole uses this story to emphasize the extent of Cromwell’s own iniquity. How many legions, or rather armies, of demons is it conceivable dwell in this one man, who does not live among tombs, but overthrows all monuments and destroys temples, and the most holy places dedicated to God? From their ruins he sallies forth and attacks everybody. He does not drive a herd of swine into the sea, but drives a herd, or rather so many herds, of men down to Hell, since he rends and torments everybody. Can this be done by the violence of one legion? Or of two? Or of three? Or have not rather all the armies (agmina) of hell gathered here in him? The relationship between Pole’s vituperation and the story in the Gospel is desperately strained, and the accusation of demonic possession is nothing more than an emotional outburst against the man whom Pole blames for the destruction of monuments commemorating saints and for driving men from the ‘foundation of their faith into the sea of the dead’. It is true, Pole continues, that heretics and schismatics have done as much; but not even the worst of these has attempted to destroy the laws at their very base. Yet Cromwell does this by making human will the foundation and model of rightness. Some may ask, continues Pole, how it is possible to assert that Cromwell is destroying the foundation of the laws when he establishes all his actions in laws; when he does nothing except on the basis of the law and will not act contrary to it; when he gives ‘greater authority to the laws than is to be found anywhere in the

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

123

world’, and attaches so much importance to them that they can exercise their power no less over past events than over future ones? Yet the truth of the matter is that Cromwell’s insistence on legality is nothing but a perversion. Under his guidance, laws are ‘the slaves of men’s will and the servants of their desires’; and the source from which this great evil arises is the conviction that rectitude derives not from nature but from the opinion of men: ‘for the foundation of the laws is in rightness and if this be removed, or rooted in men’s opinion as in the wind, what more is left for them or for rightness to survive?’ (p. 130). This is what Lucifer constantly strives to persuade men of: that rightness derives from no deeper source than the will of that very creature to whom knowledge of rightness has been granted. The question, says Pole, is whether these drastic ideas concerning the source of rightness and the law really are held by Cromwell. Surely he would not be so unwise as to say this kind of thing in public? Indeed, those who have heard his public utterances assure us that he has, on his lips, the teaching of Christ and of the Gospel. Nevertheless Pole protests that he would never make such assertions about the inner workings of another man’s mind without clear proofs; and these are forthcoming from Cromwell’s own words (in a private conversation with Pole) and his actions. The actions Pole deals with later; but first he reports the conversation which allegedly took place between himself and Cromwell at Cardinal Wolsey’s residence (p. 132–6).

the strange conversation between pole and cromwell The date of this conversation—if it ever occurred—can be surmised solely from the contextual information supplied by Pole himself. He tells us that he had only recently returned to England from Italy (‘recens ex Italia’) in the midst of the Divorce question which was just beginning to be openly debated; and that Cromwell, who was at that time Wolsey’s sycophant (assecla), had opened the conversation by taking the opportunity of congratulating Pole on his return (captata primum ansa me alloquendi ex gratulatione de

124

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

reditu). Since Pole had returned to England in October 1526, we must assume that the meeting would have taken place either at the end of 1526 or very early in the following year.13 Cromwell, it is alleged, had turned the conversation towards the duties of a wise counsellor in a prince’s court, partly because of the disagreements at that time over the Divorce and partly to ascertain Pole’s own position in this matter. Pole’s answer was within the conventional De regimine principum tradition—where the counsellor must have regard, above all, to the prince’s honour and advantage—and he expounded rightness and expediency in terms of natural law and according to the ‘writings of pious and learned men’. Cromwell was not impressed. This sort of thing, he replied, was often loudly applauded in the schools or when uttered on the public platform, but in private counsels they carried little weight, received no applause, and (if reiterated) induced nausea and caused their author to be disliked and even ruined. The reason for this, continued Cromwell, is that such advice practically never fitted in with the will of princes and was completely alien to courtly practice. Wise and experienced men take careful note of the time, the place, and the company before proferring their advice; whereas learned but inexperienced men often make mistakes in this respect by rushing ‘headlong into unpopularity with princes, since they do not know how to adapt themselves and their remarks to the place, the time, and the person’. These are not things which can be learnt in the classroom, and those who ‘come fresh from the schools to the concerns of princes often run onto the rocks through inexperience’. According to Pole, Cromwell concluded that the function of the wise counsellor is primarily to discover the direction of his prince’s will—something which requires considerable skill because the words of princes, while necessarily full of religion, piety, and all the other virtues, are often at variance with their inner desires: In this, then, the wise eye of the counsellor must be on the alert to track down the inner will of the prince and, having found it, so to exert his intelligence and so to behave that the prince gains his desires and, at the 13 On the date of Pole’s return to England, see Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen and H. M. Allen, vi (Oxford, 1926), nos. 1627, 1761, 1817.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

125

same time, despite that, there shall not be visible any backsliding or schism in religion. He who knows how to adapt everything so that it agrees with religion and the prince does not appear to be neglecting any virtue (for this is what most pleases princes); has fulfilled all the functions of a wise counsellor; and in proportion as a man can, in his natural ability, approach this ideal: he will be regarded by all as wise. This is the readiest way to keep influence and authority among princes. Thus, in fact, a man who achieves this goal can be useful to himself and his family.14

Pole professes to have been appalled at this discourse, which he claims to have summarized on the spot—or at least as soon as he reached home.15 It was as though, had Cromwell lived in the time of Nero when that ruler had wished to murder his mother, he would have ‘thought out some reason of piety for doing it’.16 Certainly he would have discovered something, for ‘he knows no law contrary to the prince’s will, and makes it his religion to flatter the prince, and counts as all the other virtues to agree with him contrary to his own nature’. However, at the time, Pole held his tongue and merely suggested that Cromwell was taking up this position for the sake of argument. This Cromwell denied, declaring that Pole was as yet too inexperienced to understand political realities. A brief speech from a single experienced man had more value than many volumes from unworldly philosophers; while if the technique of politics had to be learnt from books then at least Pole should read ‘those which relied more on experience than on speculation’. He had such a work: written, admittedly, by a modern man, but a man who was very clever and sharp—one who did not pursue his dreams, like those which Plato writes about in his Republic, which has not, after all these centuries, found a place among men, but rather things which the daily experience of affairs approves and shows to be true.17 This book would help Pole 14 Apologia, 134. This passage is very similar to the systematic immorality advocated in later courtly literature by Taciteans such as Ducci and Du Refuge. See below, Ch. 16. 15 Ibid.: ‘e quibus ego hanc summam apud me de ejus animo, si ita, sit loqueretur. sentiret, statim feci’. 16 Cf. Tacitus, Annals, XIV. 7, which describes the trick devised by Anicetus, a freedman and former tutor of Nero, in order to justify the murder of Agrippina, the Emperor’s mother. 17 Apologia, 135.

126

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

remedy the deficiencies resulting from his lack of experience, and Cromwell was prepared to send it to him.18 ‘What more need I say?’, writes Pole who promised to read the book if it were offered, and promptly departed. A little after this conversation is supposed to have occurred, Henry’s increasing concupiscence drove his advisers from him so that he came to rely upon the ‘mad wisdom’ (insana prudentia) of Cromwell, who feared neither God nor man; and at that point Pole, recognizing the full significance of the conversation at Wolsey’s, decided to leave England.

the bo o k wri tte n by the f i nge r of satan The promised text was never sent: but Pole claims to have seen it later. With information gleaned from those familiar with Cromwell’s private (or secret) studies (secreta eius studia), ‘when he had time for reading’, and with the persistence of one trying to intercept enemy dispatches, Pole had discovered the very work setting out all the enemy’s plans and the methods whereby religion, piety, and virtue could be more easily destroyed (p. 136). The author of this book was the ‘enemy of the human race’, a very ‘finger of Satan’, though bearing the name of a man: ‘Machiavelli, a Florentine who is utterly unworthy to have so noble a city as his fatherland’. Everything written by this ‘son of Satan’ reeks of evil; and among his books is one entitled De Principe. Were Satan a ‘king in the flesh’, he would give no other advice to his heir than that contained therein. The poison ‘was spread throughout the courts of princes in this man’s books, which are circulating almost everywhere’ (Sparsum est enim hoc venenum per Principum aulas in hujus 18 In pursuit of his thesis that such political realism constituted a sort of Arcana imperii, Donaldson, Machiavelli, 7, writes that ‘Pole’s story of his meeting with Thomas Cromwell is designed to reveal how Cromwell came to know about this doctrine, while at the same time demonstrating that Cromwell wanted to keep it a secret’. It was not much of a secret if Cromwell was prepared to share it with the squeamish Pole. And, I would add, it was not much of a secret when anybody could see it described in systematic accounts of tyranny readily available from Aristotle onwards. As Gentillet was later to observe, it was all in Bartolus. See below, Ch. 9.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

127

libris, qui ubique fere circumferuntur). Such doctrine threatens the safety not only of princes but also of their subjects for, by inducing madness in rulers, it makes them attack their people ‘as wolves and tigers attack sheep, or foxes attack poultry’ (pp. 137–8). Pole then exhorts his readers—who comprise not only the Emperor and princes but also ‘all the tribes, nations, and peoples’ (omnes gentes, universas nationes, & populos)—to consider Machiavelli’s advice concerning religion. Machiavelli urges the prince never to seem indifferent in this matter because, properly used, it enables him to achieve whatever his heart can desire. People are readily deceived by an appearance of religion, whereas genuine piety is likely to be harmful, ‘since religion itself can hardly ever conform to the interests of men, and can rarely be respected with profit’. No sincerely religious prince can escape without some loss ‘amid the trickery of the human mind’. Machiavelli’s recommendation, therefore, is to respect religion when it is in your interest to do so; and, even when it is not, to avoid rejecting it openly. According to Pole, Machiavelli advises those who would counsel a prince that the best place for their intelligence and prudence, and a ‘noble field’ for their abilities, is the seeking out of fine-sounding principles borrowed from religion or from some likeness of virtue. An adviser who could not transfer some appearance of virtue to any kind of desire conceived by his master was ‘completely unworthy to be summoned to the counsels of a prince’ (p. 139). Moreover, continues Pole, Machiavelli makes it clear that what he says about religion goes for all the virtues which religion extols: piety, good faith, justice, liberality, and clemency. Such virtues, if practised continually, are especially harmful to a prince; though they may, on occasion, be exploited to advantage. In any event, it is always useful to appear to practise them. Two animals, the lion and the fox, are to be taken as models and, since fear is more efficacious than love in governing a state, the force of the lion is essential especially when establishing power. On other occasions, however, when fraud may be more efficacious, the prince should emulate the fox for he must know how to use either mode as required since this, according to Machiavelli, is the method taught by practical experience. The other method of governing—following the conventional virtues taught by learned men—is a noble ideal, but the more it is

128

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

adhered to the worse the prince fares. There is no place for virtuous rulers, especially when they live with men ‘full of treachery and guile, who can never be ruled without trickery’; and the better a prince knows how to simulate virtues and dissimulate his rejection of them the more readily will he achieve his aims (p. 140). This then, cries Pole, is the substance of Machiavelli’s teaching on the art of kingship; and he will not insult Charles V by refuting so impious a doctrine. Were the Emperor’s young sons to be infected with this sort of thing, the royal spirit would at once be extinguished in their breasts just as the vital spirit in their bodies would be extinguished by an infusion of poison. Machiavelli’s book has no other object than to corrupt in princes the quality of doing good; while particularly pernicious is its advice that piety and religion should be respected only when they are advantageous. This, says Pole, is atheism. It is: tantamount to teaching that you should regard no religion as true, that you should believe that there is no God, that you should reject divine providence from the world and shut out its force and power. He who, not because of frailty but of deliberate purpose and judgement, holds such a view of religion—that it can be rejected or retained according to a man’s personal advantage—by this very judgement is indicating that no account should be taken of God’s will, which is expressed in religion, without always making it subject to man’s interests: a consequence of which is that, in the mind of a man who has these opinions, there is no God. (p. 142)

Even the heathen would never have tolerated this. Yet Christians not only allow men to write these things with impunity, but also tolerate ‘such a pupil of such a teacher’, who carries out his precepts more vigorously than Plato carried out those of Socrates or the disciples those of Christ.

cromwell and henry viii as disciples of machi ave lli Pole is now able to return to Cromwell and to Henry VIII. We may best understand the pupil, he says, by observing how closely he follows his master. Machiavelli’s teaching has no other aim but to corrupt the whole kingly character and to ‘wipe out the spirit of

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

129

God in all men’. This is truly inspired by Satan who rejoices the more that crimes and impieties are hallowed with a holy name— where religion is regarded not as a means of saving a man’s soul, ‘but as a mousetrap to catch the members of his family like mice, in order to mutilate and destroy them’. Such a man no longer sins through frailty; nor can he be restored in respect of the sins he commits, because he sees in religion (by which alone he could be saved) no other value than to deceive those beneath him. The impiety of all this is obvious but, in Pole’s view, what is even more abominable is that this teaching has been committed to writing, published abroad, and is now being translated into practice (pp. 143–4).19 Henry VIII’s deeds are cruel, monstrous, sacrilegious, impious, licentious, and filthy. Yet they have all been concealed beneath a pretence of religion. His lusts and desires have, from the very first, been covered with a great show of religiosity as, for example, when he complained that he was ‘compelled by God’s law to abandon his wife and unite with a concubine’. Seeing that this would not suffice, he then appealed to all the colleges of learning and, despite his bitter quarrel with the Pope, would not abandon the title Defensor Fidei. In that tragicomedy, in fact, what was done without the pretence of religion? But when he had turned from wilfulness to cruelty and had made of this mixed comedy a true tragedy because of his outstanding brutality, in which he excelled all tyrants and impious men, he could not have put his teacher’s precepts into practice better in this respect at least (and in it everything else is included) that he should serve his own desires and lusts under the pretext of religion. In this single conception the whole teaching of Machiavelli and Cromwell is included. (pp. 144–5)

Yet, according to Pole, in one respect the King made a mistake and departed from the precepts of his mentor. Henry wished to lay his hands on certain nobles whom he suspected ‘because of their virtue’ and, realizing that this would be difficult (because his cruelty had made them equally suspicious of him), he sent them letters of safe-conduct, ‘sealed with the royal seal and with every appearance of good will towards them’. Then, as soon as they 19 ‘Verum hoc magis abominandum, eandem non chartis solum tradi, & circumferri, sed ita ab ejusdem discipulis reipsa, & actionibus.’

130

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

arrived, he encompassed their death—an action perfectly in accord with his training to ensnare his opponents by a pretence of good faith. However, when challenged by one of the noblemen, Henry made the error of boasting openly ‘as if marvelling at the fellow’s stupidity’ in believing the safe-conduct to have any value other than that of a trap. This reply was overheard by many people and was quite contrary to Machiavelli’s art, which recommends that the prince must always find means of making it believed that any broken agreement is entirely the fault of his adversaries: ‘but the King replied too quickly, before his pedagogue could prompt him’. Cromwell would not have been at a loss to find some suitable excuse, for he had deceived large numbers of people—always alleging that they were responsible for their own deaths because they had conspired anew after a promise had been given. Yet, with all his skill, even Cromwell had not been able to prevent one of the King’s victims, as he was being dragged away to execution, from producing Henry’s safe-conduct and showing it to the people, crying out that ‘the King’s good faith was dying with him; let them beware then, if they wanted to live, how henceforth they put their trust in their King’ (p. 146). The source of this anecdote is obscure. It may have no provenance beyond Pole’s own imagination working upon the events following the northern insurrections of 1536–7, when the King had promised pardons but used subsequent rebellion to justify a flurry of executions. On the other hand, the same idea (though represented as a bold stroke of Henrician genius) occurs in John Bale’s play Kynge Johan, when Sedition, fresh from his efforts in the North, is trapped by Henry VIII, who appears in the guise of Imperial Majesty. ‘Where is the pardon that ye did promise me’, demands the villain, only to be rebuffed by Imperial Majesty’s jest, ‘from doing more harm thou shalt soon pardoned be’.20 The coincidence between the two—one blindly hostile to the King, the other blindly approbatory—is striking and suggests some tradition which is now lost. For Pole, the story represents an unMachiavellian lapse on the part of Henry who was otherwise 20 John Bale, Kynge Johan, ed. Barry B. Adams (San Marino, Calif., 1969), ll. 2577–85.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

131

following the rules of his master ‘to the last detail’ and, inadvertently, was also demonstrating both the nastiness of the doctrine and its fatuity. Of course, gibes Pole, Machiavelli would doubtless rather be accused of impiety than of foolishness but, in fact, ‘nothing is more blind, nothing more stupid than impiety’. Moreover, Machiavelli’s ‘barbarous folly’ is revealed by his rejection of love as the foundation of a prince’s power, and his recommendation of fear while, at the same time, urging his prince not to incur hatred. Yet hatred always follows fear, ‘just as a shadow follows the body’, especially in the case of a man whose parade of virtue is false. Machiavelli warned the prince never to be detected in his imposture: but this lies not with man but with God and is, in any case, impossible for a prince whose every deed, words, sighs, and groans are noticed. Just how impossible it is successfully to maintain the deception is, in Pole’s view, proved by Henry VIII’s own failure. This King even had the advantage of a youthful reputation for religion and piety, and had used it to cloak his vices. Yet whom has he deceived? Do his family and those who live in his kingdom—‘where these crimes are committed as in a theatre’—not see the impiety in his heart? Do they not perceive the pretence and trickery of which hardly any foreign nation is unaware? (p. 148). No one has ever tried harder than Henry to conceal his wickedness. Yet the more he has attempted to hide his shame the more it has been revealed by divine providence. What an extraordinary spectacle it is to behold a king actually demanding that the learned of Europe should judge him to have been living an unchaste life for twenty years. If, to all this, is added his notorious cruelty, avarice, and sanctimony, then it becomes clear that God’s vengeance is already at work and only the final element remains: ‘that he be destroyed from the midst of the people’ (p. 150). It is true that Henry’s Machiavellian adviser had taken precautions by changing the foundation of the King’s rule from that of love and affection to one of fear. But, demands Pole—abandoning the arguments of ‘true reason’ (that is piety and conventional morality) and turning instead to the argument from ‘practical experience’ at which Machiavelli is supposed to be superior— where has he read in history that it is safer for a prince to rule

132

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

with fear rather than affection? Even judging the matter according to results, ‘though they are a most unreliable criterion’, the theory is not supported by a single example (p. 131).21 Indeed, every prince who has become an object of terror has hastened his own destruction. What more can be said? Is impiety so blind that a man who claims to teach others has not seen what the consensus of all ages approves and ‘which all reason, and all experience which is consonant with reason, cries aloud and proves with daily examples’. Yet, adds Pole—referring to a visit he had made to Florence ‘last winter’ (superiori hyeme)—Machiavelli’s fellow citizens had attempted to excuse him when, in a conversation about Il Principe, Pole had accused him of impious blindness. These Florentines claimed that Machiavelli had himself answered precisely the same charge by alleging that, since the man for whom he was writing had a tyrannical disposition, it had been necessary to put things into the book which could not fail to please such a nature. However, if these ideas were put into practice then, said Machiavelli, his own opinion was just the same as that of everybody else who had written about the training of rulers, and as experience teaches: the prince’s reign would be short. This is what Machiavelli longed for, because in his heart he was ablaze with hatred for the tyrant and hoped that the advice in Il Principe would hasten his ruin. And this, jeers Pole, is how the Florentines excused such mental blindness (pp. 151–2).22 What of Cromwell? Well, says Pole, if he should wish to bring forward a similar excuse, then he must take responsibility for being a performer in the tragedy which Machiavelli set forth only in words, for this much is certain: anybody who intended to drag his 21 ‘Hoc quidem scio (ut ex eventis res judicetur, quo ipse maxime nititur, quamquam fallacissimo judice) nullius Principis exitum hoc confirmare.’ 22 This idea that Machiavelli was deliberately giving bad advice (so that the tyrant would ultimately destroy himself ) crops up from time to time in later works. See Matteo Toscano, Peplus Italiae (Paris, 1578), 92; Alberico Gentili, De legationibus libri tres (1585), 109; Andre´ Rossant, Les Meurs Humeurs et Comportemens de Henry de Valois representez au vray depuis sa Naissance (Paris, 1589), 10; Thomas Fitzherbert, The first part of a treatise concerning policy and religion (1606), 330. The passage in Toscano was later cited by Fabio Albergati, as noted by Mattei (1969), 228–9 n. 1.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

133

prince to destruction could never find a quicker route. Henry is on the verge of ruin. At home and abroad his behaviour has earned him the enmity of all virtuous men. The vengeance of God is at hand. And it is at this dramatic point that the Apologia turns, from an examination of Machiavellian theory and Henrician practice, to a more specific discussion of the political situation and a call for Christendom to unite against the enemy in its midst.

p o l e ’s v iew of machiavelli: its value and l imitations The ‘Machiavellian’ section of Pole’s Apologia has a threefold interest. First, it attempts to demonstrate that Il Principe exerted a direct influence upon Thomas Cromwell and hence upon English politics. Then it offers a nearly contemporary hostile reading of Machiavelli. And finally, this reading, if it did not influence later attitudes, none the less typifies the responses of those readers who, like Pole, could not stomach Machiavelli’s challenging aphorisms on what constitutes an effective (as opposed to a virtuous) political morality. Pole’s statements concerning Cromwell’s views—though sometimes taken seriously by historians—have no authority whatever. The conversation at Wolsey’s was, he says, his sole personal encounter with Cromwell so that, according to his own testimony, the only thing he ever heard Cromwell say about politics was that a counsellor should tell princes whatever they wished to hear and ensure that everything was done to make their acts appear religious and virtuous. It is not impossible that the conversation, or something like it, actually took place. The two men could have met at Wolsey’s and, had they done so, there might well have been some difference of opinion between the pragmatic Cromwell and the naively idealistic Pole who was about fifteen years his junior. On the other hand, the conversation is supposed to have occurred at least eleven (and perhaps twelve) years before Pole reports it, and the claim that he had mentally summarized it ‘on the spot’ looks suspiciously like an afterthought designed to give his circumstantial account some semblance of verisimilitude. It rings no more true

134

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

than the clumsy rhetorical device in the De unitate when, after an emotional appeal to the Emperor Charles V to wage a crusade against England, Pole exclaims: ‘But what am I doing? I seem to have been carried away by fervour, I seem to have completely forgotten with whom I was conversing. For here I have addressed my treatise to the Emperor as if I was dealing not with you, my Prince [Henry VIII], but with him’.23 There is no reason to trust the accuracy of Pole’s account of the conversation, nor to accept his assertion that, in 1526–7, Cromwell was a reader of Il Principe. In so far as this issue has been a matter of historical debate the argument has always centred on whether or or not Cromwell could have read the text several years prior to its publication in Italy in 1532; and those who support this possibility have argued that manuscripts of Il Principe were plentiful and that ‘Cromwell had lived in Florence where the chances of hearing of this writer and acquiring a copy of his as yet unpublished work must have been better than in most other places’.24 The problem with this is that we do not know precisely when Cromwell lived in Florence. His earliest recorded visits to Italy antedate the composition of Il Principe by several years; and although he was in Rome early in 1514 and again in 1517–18 there is no evidence that he visited Florence on either occasion.25 In any case, Machiavelli was not a household name at this early period; and the little that we know about the circulation of manuscript copies of Il Principe does not suggest that they were so plentiful and fashionable in 1517 that a casual English traveller could have, or would have, purchased a copy. It is not quite impossible. Nor is it impossible that Cromwell might have obtained a Machiavelli manuscript after his return to England in 1518 and before 1527. But neither suggestion is plausible. All this is matter for conjecture and the exercise of common sense. But one thing is clear: however shocked Pole professes 23 De unitate, fo. CXIIII; trans. Joseph G. Dwyer, Pole’s Defense of the Unity of the Church (Westminster, Md., 1965), 278. 24 Donaldson, Machiavelli, 32. 25 On Cromwell’s earliest visits to Italy, see George B. Parks, The English Traveller to Italy (Rome, 1954), 366, 376. On his mission to Rome in 1517–18, see W. E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England 1327–1534 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 510–11.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

135

himself to have been he certainly did not immediately recognize in Cromwell the instrument of Satan so graphically depicted in the Apologia. He had still not been vouchsafed this insight into Cromwell’s infernal mission when, during 1536, he was composing the De unitate where, despite its bitter invective against Henry’s advisers, there is not a single reference to Cromwell and where, moreover, the ‘instrument of Satan’ is specifically identified as the book written by Richard Sampson. Even in the early months of 1537 Pole was still able to write to Cromwell in a seemingly friendly manner though—in view of Cromwell’s current standing in English affairs and especially his role in the events of 1536—it is hard to accept Pole’s hearty commendations to Henry’s VicarGeneral as any more genuine than his denials of complicity in the northern rebellions. Whatever Pole’s apologists may say to the contrary, he was not a frank writer. Nor was he a careful and retentive reader of his own words.26 Nor is his chronology to be relied upon. He argues that Cromwell came to the fore when he stiffened Henry’s resolve over the Divorce. He also argues that Cromwell came to the fore when he encouraged the attack on the monasteries. But several years separate these issues. He claims to have left England when Cromwell ousted Henry’s other ministers. Yet Pole departed at the very beginning of 1532 when Cromwell was far from being Henry’s sole, or even principal, counsellor. Equally unconvincing are Pole’s personal reminiscences. The alleged conversation at Wolsey’s is supposed to have taken place shortly after Pole’s return from Italy, which was late in 1526. A little later (paulo post) the King was deserted by his old counsellors and came to rely on Cromwell; whereupon (tunc) Pole took flight on what was, presumably, his final farewell to Henrician England in January 1532. A period of more than five years is thus glossed over. Pole’s adverbs of time are very approximate, and this becomes significant when we consider his account of his discovery that Il Principe was the book recommended by Cromwell. He had seen it, he says, ‘afterwards’ (postea). But how long afterwards? Certainly not prior to the composition of the De unitate in 1536, and perhaps not until 1538, by which time 26 See Van Dyke, ‘Reginald Pole’, 711, 716–17.

136

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

there were five or six printed versions of Il Principe circulating in Italy.27 Whenever it was, Pole was both scandalized and excited by the revelation that, in the central chapters of Machiavelli’s book, there was a precise and virtually complete enunciation of the principles underlying the corrupt political practices against which he had inveighed in the De unitate—Henry VIII’s deliberate rejection of the Christian virtues and his cynical use of religion as a cloak for iniquity. In the De unitate there is neither a Machiavelli nor a Cromwell. In the Apologia there are both: and Pole’s interpretation of Il Principe in the latter work is determined by his view of English politics as set forth in the former.28 Thus for Pole much of Il Principe—the analysis of different kinds of state and their acquisition; the discussion of soldiery; the exhortation to the princes of Italy—would hardly have seemed relevant. It was only the deliberately topsy-turvy political morality which engaged his attention. Machiavelli’s little book was designed to shock strait-laced readers; and it succeeded. Everything we know about Pole’s background, career, and personality suggests that when, in the Apologia, he recommends traditional speculum principum wisdom, he was perfectly serious; and his convictions could only have been strengthened by the situation in England and by the fate of his family. He was bound to attack the argument advanced in the fifteenth chapter of Il Principe, that traditional ethics inevitably spell ruin for any prince attempting to practise them in a world where evil prevails. Similarly, he was bound to abhor Machiavelli’s advice that although, from the practical point of view, such virtues are disastrous, it is important to simulate them. This is precisely what Pole had already diagnosed as Henry VIII’s sinister habit. The alleged advantages of being feared rather than loved, together 27 Bertelli and Innocenti, nos. 18, 19, 24, 36, 37, 41. Van Dyke has some sensible remarks on the likely date of Pole’s ‘discovery’ of Il Principe, though he confuses the issue by accepting that there really had been a book offered by Cromwell to Pole, and that this book was Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. 28 Donaldson suggests that Pole deliberately hid his views on Cromwell and Machiavelli in the De unitate as part of some arcane and prophetic strategy. But this is a very strained reading of the two texts, which ignores most of what they actually say in favour of apocalyptic and cryptic clues akin to the type of ingenuity which used to be deployed in the ‘Bacon is Shakespeare’ controversy.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

137

with the need to avoid being hated (Il Principe, 17, 19), were likewise pounced upon because they represented not only Henry’s practice but also his most signal failure; while the lion and fox metaphor (Il Principe, 18) comprised, for Pole, the whole truth about Henrician policy with its unsavoury amalgam of oppression and treachery. Above all, as befits a Cardinal of the Church of Rome, Pole discerns in Machiavelli’s wholly utilitarian treatment of religion the most reprehensible part of Il Principe and of Henry’s actions alike. To assert that religion has no validity beyond its political efficacy is tantamount to asserting that it has no validity at all. It is atheism. This is Pole’s inference from Il Principe; and it is a legitimate one. Nevertheless, Pole’s reading of Machiavelli is flawed not merely because his observations are confined to a few chapters of only one work whose context he ignores, but also because his moral indignation encourages him to go beyond the text. He attributes to Machiavelli specific advice that counsellors must be able to cover their master’s misdeeds with an appearance of virtue.29 But although Machiavelli does advise the prince to employ this cloak for all deeds, however evil, he does not say that this is what counsellors should advise. He offers no guidance whatever to underlings. They only figure in Il Principe when Machiavelli discusses the qualities that a prince should seek in them and, more especially, when he warns rulers to avoid flatterers by encouraging counsellors to speak the truth. The kind of toady discerned by Pole in Il Principe would, theoretically, have received short shrift from the Machiavellian prince. On the other hand, were counsellors to tell their prince that a particular course of action is disgraceful yet, at the same time, suggest how he might represent it as pious and honest, then they would be doing nothing different from Machiavelli himself in his role as adviser to the Medici in Il Principe; and Pole’s comment, though inaccurate, is not very wide of the mark. The fundamental question posed in the Apologia concerns the merit of counsel based upon scholastic traditions of good princely behaviour as against the pragmatism of men versed in the harsh verities of political intercourse. It was a question raised not only by 29 Apologia, 139.

138

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Machiavelli himself, in the fifteenth chapter of Il Principe, as the prelude to his deliberate reversal of Speculum principum norms, but also by other less reprehended authors. The position execrated by Pole, and which he attributes to a Machiavellian poison as yet unpublished in 1527, had been debated in print a decade earlier by the Englishman whom Pole revered and whose execution was the principal cause of the rage characterizing the De unitate and the Apologia. The Utopia, first published at the end of 1516, includes a long dialogue between Thomas More disguised as himself and More disguised as Raphael Hythlodaeus, the traveller freshly returned from the land of Utopia. Hythlodaeus’s knowledge and wisdom are so impressive that More urges him to find a place at some prince’s court where his advice would help the commonwealth. This Hythlodaeus refuses to do, pointing out that there are plenty of books full of precepts which princes might follow were they so inclined, and that to proffer prudent and virtuous counsel (recommending, for instance, peace and restraint to rulers bent on war and vice) would be to invite ridicule. More accepts that in the extreme examples cited by Hythlodaeus it would be no wonder if his words fell on deaf ears for—although this school philosophy is not unpleasant among friends’ familiar conversation—in the deliberations of kings, where great matters are debated with authority, ‘these thinges have no place’. That, says Hythlodaeus, is precisely his point. There is no room for philosophy in the courts of princes. More rejoins that although there is certainly no place for this ‘schole philosophie’ which thinks all things fitting for every occasion, there is, nevertheless, another kind of philosophy, more suitable for political life (alia philosophia civilior), which knows its own place and accommodates itself to the situation in hand. Even if it is impossible to root out evil opinion or to cure established vices, yet this is no more a reason to abandon the commonwealth than to forsake a ship in the midst of a tempest because one cannot command the winds. Nor is there any sense in trying to drive into people’s heads any notion which is patently inimical to them: But you must with a crafty wile and a subtell trayne studye and endevoure your selfe, as much as in yow lyethe, to handle the matter wyttelye and handsomelye for the purpose; and that whyche yowe can not turne to

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

139

good, so to ordre it that it be not very badde. For it is not possible for all thynges to be well onles all men were good. Which I thynke wil not be yet thys good many yeares.

This subtlety is rejected as madness by Hythlodaeus, who protests that he is unable to speak other than the truth. Were he to take a place at court, then either he would perpetually and uselessly disagree with his colleagues, or else he would have to agree with them and thereby further their madness. Nor can he understand More’s suggestion that matters might be bent and handled so dexterously that evil, even if not eradicated, might yet be reduced. At court ‘noughtye counselles muste be openlye allowed and verye pestilent decrees muste be approved’. Mere faint praise is regarded as treachery; and so far from being able to do the slightest good, the evil company will sooner ‘perverte a good man, then be made good them selfes’.30 The argument put into Hythlodaeus’s mouth recalls that conventional medieval hostility which regarded courts and courtiers as mutually corruptive. On the other hand, the part More writes for himself is an adaptation of the defences of the vita activa which had occupied many Italian humanists from the late fourteenth century onwards, and which laid civic responsibility firmly upon the shoulders of those who had skill requisite for the service of their commonwealth. More also highlights the contrast between the philosophies of school and court, suggesting a compromise which might have offended Pole had he noticed the propinquity of More’s words to the doctrine attributed in the Apologia to both Machiavelli and Cromwell. There were other analogues, too. Roughly contemporary with Il Principe and the Utopia were the first three books of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano which, in its own way, confronts the difficulty of offering honest advice to unreceptive princes. Castiglione’s treatment of the issue is very slippery; and the courtier’s role is 30 For the original Latin text with an accurate but dreary translation, see the Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter, in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, iv (New Haven and London), 98–103. My quotations are from the translation by Ralph Robinson (1551), sigs. F.5–6v, which is in juicier English and, in this section at least, quite close to the original.

140

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

uncomfortably akin to that of the sycophant—pliantly pleasing and regardful in his choice of time, place, and person for his every utterance. The question of what to do about serving an evil ruler is evaded by linking virtuous exhortation to abandon such a prince (rather than abet his wicked designs) with a cautious reminder that rulers may know more than their servants; that appearances of good and ill are deceptive; and that it is important to obey the commands of a superior rather than to trust to one’s own judgement. By the time that Il Cortegiano was published in 1528 (too late to be the work supposedly recommended by Cromwell)31 a final book had been added and, in it, Castiglione addressed the problem less evasively. Courtiers must employ their skills to gain the prince’s favour the more readily to induce him to virtue, for the advice to be given by these courtiers is within the Speculum principum tradition. It is further suggested that princes should select a number of wise men who may be relied upon to speak the truth; while it is recommended that courtiers should abandon a wholly evil ruler. Idealism is, however, again tempered by pragmatism when one of Castiglione’s interlocutors stresses the need for successful courtiers to know the nature of their prince so that they may select the most effective route to that favour which is necessary if they are to lead him to virtue. The prime example of this policy is Aristotle who, ‘practising the ways of a good courtier’, was able to exert a beneficial influence upon Alexander the Great; whereas Calisthenes—who wished to remain a pure philosopher without any admixture of courtiership—lost his life and brought infamy upon his prince. The problem was felt to be acute for, early in this final book, the interlocutor Ottaviano is made to say that modern princes are so corrupted by evil custom, ignorance, and selfesteem, and so suffocated by lying flatterers that, were some severe philosopher to lay before them the fearful face of true virtue (quella orrida faccia della vera virtu`), they would either abhor him or else make him a laughing stock.32 31 Van Dyke, ‘Reginald Pole’, 712–14, argues that Il Cortegiano was the book recommended by Cromwell. But apart from the unlikelihood that any such recommendation was made, Castiglione’s book was not published until at least a year after the alleged conversation. 32 Il Cortegiano, IV. viii.

A HO S T I L E C A R D I N A L

141

The issues at stake, and the difficulties associated with them, were real enough: but More and Castiglione could use the ambiguities of the dialogue form to explore the subject while masking their own opinions so effectively that, to this day, we remain uncertain of them. On the other hand, both Machiavelli in his treatise and Pole in his invective were absolutely clear on the status of traditional political morality; and both writers—Machiavelli implicitly and Pole explicitly—indicated the type of advice which they deemed necessary for princes. Later writers, too, addressed the problem and their solutions ranged from a reiteration of conventional pieties to open advocacy of courtly sycophancy. Pole, as we have seen, deprecates the latter course: yet his statement of the theory is almost a pre-echo of the systematic immorality subsequently advocated by cynics such as Lorenzo Ducci. In this, as in other respects, the Apologia anticipated subsequent developments. Pole was a well-educated, though only moderately intelligent man of a thoroughly conventional cast of mind, and his Apologia is the earliest surviving detailed critique of Il Principe. The methods he adopts for refuting Machiavelli have, therefore, a special interest irrespective of the fact that they can have exerted little influence. His exclusive concentration upon the issues of religion and political morality, and the way in which this resulted in his taking part of Machiavelli’s work for the whole, were to become commonplace. But there were other more important prophetic features of Pole’s approach. He was the first to recognize that, to argue effectively against Il Principe’s topsy-turvy political morality, it was necessary to undermine its very foundations; so that, despite his conviction that ‘true reason’ (applying the touchstone of Christian ethics) is the only serious test of any human activity, Pole was prepared to refute Machiavelli on purely utilitarian grounds. Machiavelli’s precepts do not work. This is the crux of Pole’s argument because, in Il Principe, he believed that he had found the theoretical justification and inspiration for the political practice of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. Machiavelli is analysed to reveal the underlying structure and purposes of Henrician policy; while Henrician policy is analysed to lay bare the futility of Machiavelli’s theories. The impossibility of carrying such policies to a successful conclusion is evidenced by Henry’s

142

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

own deeds, which have resulted not in security and prosperity but in hatred, ignominy, and ruin. Pole’s argument is circular and simplistic. Nearly fifty years later, however, a similar approach was employed more comprehensively by Innocent Gentillet who, like Pole, believed that in Machiavelli’s writings he had discovered the intellectual source of corrupt contemporary policy, and similarly sought to refute both theory and practice on the grounds of their proven inutility. Gentillet resembled Pole in another respect. He, too, was not writing—as posterity has insisted—primarily to refute Machiavelli. Each polemicist was concerned, rather, to expose the evils of a particular regime which was translating Machiavellian precepts into practice. Gentillet’s attack, however, made a substantial impact on contemporary Europe. Pole’s unpublished diatribe did not.

5 Osorio and Machiavelli: From Open Hostility to Covert Approbation Long before Pole wrote his Apologia, the Emperor Charles V, for whom it was intended, had been offered Nifo’s De regnandi peritia. There is no evidence that Charles ever read that cynical manipulation of Machiavelli’s ideas, though he was later said to have been a devoted student of Machiavelli.1 On the other hand we do know that the Emperor had been deeply unimpressed by Pole’s diplomacy in 1539, and it is unlikely that the platitudinous political morality of the Apologia, written at the same period, would have pleased him better had it been presented to him. Yet, despite the fact that this critique remained in an unregarded manuscript version for more than two centuries, there is one tiny morsel of evidence to suggest that Pole was deemed knowledgeable concerning Machiavelli. He returned to England as papal legate towards the end of 1554; and on 7 April 1555 he received a book from a well-known scholar. The donor was Roger Ascham, who had for some time been seeking advancement at court and had already sent an identical present to Lord Paget, Cuthbert Tunstall, and Sir William Petre. The book, Jeronimo Osorio da Fonseca’s De nobilitate civili et christiana, includes a lengthy attack on Machiavelli and, although this was not the work’s principal attraction for Ascham, he refers to it in three of his covering letters.2 He notes 1 On Charles V’s alleged interest in Machiavelli see above, Ch. 1, pp. 18–19. 2 Roger Ascham, The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A. Giles (1864), ii. 390–1, 440–2, 436–7. And see L. V. Ryan, Roger Ascham (Stanford, Calif., 1963), 325 n. 27 on the order and dating of these letters.

144

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

that Osorio writes against Machiavelli, who has been recognized by many good men to have wickedly disparaged and even impiously ridiculed the religion of Christ, ‘always with great cleverness, but frequently not with a healthy understanding’.3 The wording of this passage is virtually identical in each of Ascham’s three letters which mention Machiavelli: but there is one significant difference. In the letter to Pole, Ascham inserts the words ut scis—‘as you know’. I do not know how Ascham knew what Pole knew but, since he claims to have been on friendly terms with the Cardinal and to have enjoyed intellectual conversations with him, the most likely source is from direct contact. Pole’s response to Osorio’s treatment of Machiavelli is another unknown: though the vigorous denunciation of this beˆte noire, exposing depravity in a work other than Il Principe, is likely to have appealed to him. Jeronimo Osorio was born at Lisbon in 1506, and studied civil law at Salamanca, philosophy at Paris, and theology at Bologna. He lectured on Scripture at the University of Coimbra; and served as secretary to Prince Luiz, and as tutor to the Prince’s son. He enjoyed a long and fairly distinguished career in the Church, though the last years of his life were clouded by a conflict with the Portuguese King Sebastian and, more fundamentally, by the dramatic decline of Portugal itself.4 Such reputation as remains to him rests principally on three facets of his activity: the immense, but quickly fading, contemporary respect for his skill as a Latinist and historian; his letter to Queen Elizabeth suggesting that she return to the Catholic fold, and the ensuing controversy with Walter Haddon;5 and his attack on Machiavelli. These are 3 It seems as though Ascham had been reading Giovio on Machiavelli. 4 See Francisco Elias de Tejada, ‘Las doctrinas polı´ticas de Jero´nimo Oso´rio’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho espan˜ol, 16 (1945), 341–88; Francisco Leite de Faria, ‘As muitas edic¸o˜es das obras de Dom Jero´nimo Oso´rio’, Rivista da Biblioteca Nacional (Lisbon), 1 (1981), 116–35; Nair de Nazare´ Castro Soares, O Prı´ncipe Ideal no Se´colo XVI e a Obra de D. Jero´nimo Oso´rio (Coimbra, 1994). There is very little on Osorio in English apart from Aubrey F. G. Bell, ‘The Humanist Jeronymo de Osorio’, Revue hispanique, 73 (1928), 525–56. 5 On Osorio’s English connection, see L. V. Ryan, ‘The Haddon–Osorio Controversy (1563–1583)’, Church History, 22 (1953), 142–54; and, more fully documented, Le´on Bourdon, ‘Jeronimo Osorio et les humanistes anglais’, in L’Humanisme portugais et l’Europe. Actes du XXI e colloque international d’e´tudes

OSO RI O

145

disparate and incommensurable matters—a kind of historical flotsam—all that is left bobbing about after the vessel itself and the bulk of its cargo have been submerged by time. Yet, in his own day, Osorio was the ‘Portuguese Cicero’, valued both for his matter and manner; and his moral, political, and historical works circulated widely and were much reprinted throughout the sixteenth century. His debut as an author was made with the five books De nobilitate— two on civil nobility and three on Christian nobility—first published at Lisbon in 1542, and it is in the final book of this work that Osorio, having discussed justice and liberality, moves on to Christian fortitude and magnanimity. He feels obliged to treat these last two qualities at length because of the ‘peevish and perverse dealinge of them which cannot finde in theyr hartes to yelde unto Christian men the commendation of that Vertue’.6 And these peevish and perverse critics soon resolve themselves into the person of Machiavelli and those influenced by him. Osorio is clearly aware of a range of Machiavelli’s writings, for he introduces him as a ‘certaine malepert, saucye, and wicked writer in bookes in which he hath contayned the history of his owne Citty, and many questions pertaininge to the state of a commonwealth in the Hetruscan tongue’, and later makes an oblique reference to Il Principe, pointing out that Machiavelli is a ‘notable author that instructeth princes how to undoe their countrye which teacheth them to establish the wealth and estate of humanistes. Tours, 3–13 Juillet 1978 (Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Centre culturel Portugais: Paris, 1984), 263–333. 6 The five bookes of the famous . . . H. Osorius, contaynynge a discourse of civill and christian nobilitie, trans. William Blandie (1576), fo. 86. The 16th-c. editions of the De nobilitate Christiana were as follows: (Lisbon, 1542); (Florence, 1552); (Basle, 1571); (Basle 1573); (London, 1576); (London, 1580); (Basle, 1584); (London, 1589); (Antwerp, 1595); (Cologne 1595). It was included in Osorio’s Opera Omnia (Rome, 1592); while parts of the section against Machiavelli were reprinted in Antonio Possevino, Iudicium de Nuae militis Galli, I. Bodini, P. Mornaei, N. Machiavelli & Antimachiavelli scriptis (Rome, 1592), and subsequent editions (Lyon, 1593 and 1594). Parts of Possevino’s digest even found their way into Teglio’s edition of Machiavelli’s Princeps (Oberursel, 1600). With the exception of Blandie’s English translation (1576), all these editions are in Latin. My quotations, except where indicated, are from Blandie’s version, which has the virtue of being in lively Elizabethan English while remaining (for the most part) fairly true to the original.

146

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

theire kingdomes not so much by equitie and curtesie, as by guilfull pollice and crueltye’. Osorio would willingly have compassion for the deceased author were it not for the fact that he continues ‘nowe to corrupte many more with his vile and pestilent writinge, then in time past with his lewd life most reprochfull and subjecte to contempt’. It is necessary to engage with the ‘spirite and ghoste of this wicked person’, for his mischief is ‘spreade farre and wide, and hath greately infected manye with pestilente contagion’.7 Osorio’s concern is not with general political theory but with the various virtues which together constitute Christian nobility. The hostile discussion of Christianity in the Discorsi particularly attracts his attention because, by countering its arguments, he can demonstrate the nature of Christian fortitude and its superiority over the pagan virtues. The offending chapter in the Discorsi (II. 2) comprises one of the feeblest of Machiavelli’s arguments. Its theme is the nature of the people against whom the Romans had to fight and, more particularly, the obstinacy with which these people had defended their liberty. This leads Machiavelli to ponder the contrast between ancient virtu` and modern corruption as exemplified by the diminished love of liberty and attenuated vigour of his contemporaries arising, he suggests, from the differences between ancient and modern education. These, in turn, depend upon differences in religion: ‘because our religion, having shown us the truth and the true way, makes us esteem less the honour of the world: whereas the Gentiles—esteeming it greatly, and having placed therein the highest good—were more fierce in their actions’. This can be appreciated by comparing the magnificence of their religion and its sacrifices ‘full of blood and ferocity’ with the humility of our institutions and their lack of vigour. The ancients did not consider men blessed unless they were full of worldly glory. Christianity, on the other hand, glorifies the humble and contemplative more than the active. It has ‘placed the highest good in humility, abjection, and in contempt for human things; the other [religion] placed it in greatness of spirit, in bodily strength, and in 7 Christian nobilitie, fos. 89v –90, 96. Cf. fo. 102, where Osorio notes wide dispersal of the ‘number of them which either stirred uppe by his wrytinges, or of theire voluntarye motion, were partakers of his wickednes and fury’.

OSO RI O

147

all the other things fitted to make men most powerful’. Christianity, Machiavelli concedes, demands fortitude: but this is a passive quality of suffering, not the active achievement of great deeds, and it has caused the world to become weak and fall prey to wicked men who can manage affairs securely because the generality, seeking only paradise, think more about bearing injuries than about avenging them. Thus far Machiavelli has laid the blame for modern decadence squarely upon the tenets of the Christian faith. Yet he suddenly adopts a different stance. Though it seems that the world has become effeminate, and that heaven is disarmed, this has without doubt come about through the baseness of men who interpret Christianity according to sloth, and not according to virtu`. Because if they had considered that it permits us to exalt and defend our fatherland, they would have seen how it wishes us to love and honour it, and to prepare ourselves to be able to defend it. So, he continues, this kind of education and the misinterpretation of Christianity have caused the lack of republics as compared with the past, and also resulted in there being less love of liberty. This ought to have been the end of Machiavelli’s case: but suddenly—in one of those tangential leaps which characterize his thought—he declares that he believes ‘rather that the reason for this is that the Roman empire with its arms and greatness wiped out all the republics and all self-governing communities’, and even though subsequently the Roman Empire disintegrated, its cities have never been able to pull themselves together again, nor restore their civic freedom. This is the paralogism which Osorio sought to confute. Its laxity and inconsequentiality provide easy targets; and Osorio makes things even easier for himself by inferring more than Machiavelli implies and by putting foolish words into his mouth. He accurately notes that Machiavelli had blamed Christianity for the decay of that greatness of spirit which flourished in ancient times, but he goes on to say that Machiavelli had also attributed the ruin of the Roman Empire to the Christian faith—and this is not what Machiavelli wrote. Nor, strictly speaking, did he even imply it. However, Osorio’s aim is better when he points out that Machiavelli had attempted to mitigate his offence by asserting that the decay of

148

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

nobility came about not through the fault of Christianity itself but rather through those who had misinterpreted it—a feeble attempt at exculpation which Osorio scornfully dismisses as a ‘most inept medicament’ (ineptissimam illam medicinam). Osorio now moves on to the first phase of his refutation by citing against Machiavelli the vast numbers of men, women, and even children whose Christian fortitude enabled them to endure prodigious torments, and to choose a glorious and honourable death rather than to live ‘stayned wyth ignomye and shame’.8 This argument, of itself, would only serve to confirm Machiavelli’s opinion that Christianity was strong on suffering but weak on revenge; and Osorio later meets this objection. But first he disposes of the idea that the Roman Empire had been undermined by Christianity; and his arguments are interesting because they suggest that his reading of Machiavelli not only angered him but might also have exerted a positive, if unacknowledged, influence on his thought—something which becomes more apparent later in his career.9 Has not this ‘fine fellow’, demands Osorio, ‘which is so expert in all matters of pollecie’ read in learned authors that states follow a natural course of growth and decay? Nothing is immortal. Everything which has a beginning must eventually come to an end. So it is with states. The might of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Athenians, and the Macedonians have all been extinguished either by some other power or simply through old age. No wise man wonders at the destruction of commonwealths. Instead he considers nothing so worthy of admiration and study as the long continuance of a great state, and therefore supposes the question to be asked is rather ‘why Sparta so many yeares continued in the self same maner of governmente, and in the self same order of disciplyne; than why the glorye and wealth of the Athenians so soone decayed’. The greater the structure the more likely it is to fall by its own weight, so that the long survival of Rome is especially remarkable by reason of that city’s unequalled glory and dominion. Yet this Machiavelli fellow laments the decay and 8 Christian nobilitie, fo. 90v . 9 See below, pp. 156–63, for the Machiavellism of Osorio’s De regis institutione.

OSO RI O

149

fall of Rome as though it ‘shoulde have beene perpetuall, excepte it had beene hindered by the religion of Chryste’. Why, demands Osorio, does this madman not enquire ‘what other thing hath decayed the welth of the Romayne Empire?’.10 This gross misrepresentation of Machiavelli is a good example of what happens when a reader is so incensed by one detail of a text that he fails to pay attention to anything else. The whole of the Discorsi is precisely that rumination on the extraordinary durability of a great empire, which Osorio believes to be the concern appropriate to a wise man. Machiavelli himself notes the inevitability of political decay which may be temporarily delayed, as it was by Rome, but cannot be stopped.11 He likewise comments on the case of Sparta and compares it with Rome, demonstrating how the longevity of the former was gained by avoiding the expansion and widespread dominion of the latter, and acknowledging how Rome’s very greatness contributed to its eventual ruin.12 Machiavelli also has much to say about the internal discords which tore Rome asunder. He would have agreed with Osorio’s judgement that Rome’s decline began with the ‘bloudy broils’ between Sulla and Marius, the rise of imperial government, and the destruction of republican liberties.13 He would also have sympathized with Osorio’s impassioned cry that, after tyranny gained the upper hand at Rome, all the worthy qualities whereby the Roman people had earned their renown began to decay: frugality gave place to greed; hardiness in war was replaced by ‘tenderness and niceness’ of body and mind; and respect for the laws changed to impudent boldness and unbridled lust. And he would have endorsed Osorio’s comments on how the riotous behaviour of the emperors cut Rome off from all prosperity; how assassinations grew to a custom, with good rulers as likely to fall victims as the bad; how the army would make and break emperors for a ‘booty in ready money’; and how the rival rulers waged ceaseless wars, consuming all that remained of Rome’s wealth.14 Machiavelli would have agreed with all these observations because he had himself suggested them; though he would have been 10 Christian nobilitie, fos. 91v ---92. 11 Cf. Discorsi, I. 2, II. 1, III. 17; and Istorie fiorentine, V. 1. 12 Discorsi, I. 2, 5, 6. 13 Ibid. I. 37. 14 Cf. ibid. I. 10.

150

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

astonished to find them set out against him in order to refute a theory he had never advanced. Osorio here scales the heights of ineptitude. Inaccurate and pleonastic, he labours his misreading for page after page; and it is not surprising that when Antonio Possevino included Osorio’s attack on Machiavelli in one of his own works he omitted the whole of this section on the alleged reasons for the fall of Rome, and resumed the text only when Osorio returned to more solid ground with his discussion of Machiavelli’s ideas on Christian fortitude.15 Machiavelli had argued that Christian glorification of humility makes men less likely to perform the great deeds undertaken by the pagans for the sake of worldly renown. Osorio rejects this, suggesting that desire for human praise is not the only inspiration for virtuous and courageous acts. Love of one’s country, concern for personal honour, reverence for the laws and for religion: all these are better spurs to great deeds and they are ‘most perfectly contayned in the rules and institution of Christians’. It is not terrestrial but immortal glory that the Christian seeks. Pride, insolence, cruelty, and brutishness have nothing to do with valour, and it is an error to believe that courage arising from fury is true fortitude. It is, rather, nothing but the ‘cruel egrenes of a savage beast’. Here, Osorio alludes to the perverted morality of Il Principe. Machiavelli, he observes, may apply any name he wishes to cruelty and perfidy, but the wise man recognizes that the humility extolled in the Scriptures (together with clemency and mildness) is the exemplar of true fortitude, and is certainly no impediment to it. All the virtues are, as it were, glued together, se conglutinae sint, so that it is no more the mark of a magnanimous spirit to be able to sustain the attack of an enemy than to be able to control anger and other passions. There has never been a man famous for his strength who has not also been praised for his gentleness—a dubious proposition which Osorio supports with the no less equivocal examples of Themistocles, Pericles, and Julius Caesar. Conversely, the meaner and more abject a spirit, the greater its propensity towards rage and cruelty. Look at the barbarians, says Osorio; and look at women, ‘than whom there is nothing more feeble and nothing 15 For Possevino, see above, n. 6, and below, Ch. 11, pp. 386–9.

OSO RI O

151

more vindictive’. Modesty is the light of virtue, and only a perverse madman would condemn Christian mildness as weakness, for it is the magnanimous who do not give way to wrath when ‘nipped with tauntes and provoked with injury’.16 That Christ taught men to requite insult with kindness and injury with benefits, Osorio is prepared to admit; and it might thus seem that gentle Christians would never drive back invaders or resist evil with force of arms. Yet whoever thinks this neither properly weighs the ‘distinctions of dutyes’ nor the differences of persons, places, times, and causes. Christians, who are moderate and patient in tolerating private offences, are most eager to uphold public safety and liberty, especially when it affects the dignity of religion. Then they adjudge mildness a disgrace, and patience a heinous crime. Characteristically, Osorio’s two prime examples of this Christian synthesis of gentleness and martial zeal in the cause of religion are Moses and David: though he adds vaguely that many Christian princes, too, have distinguished themselves in similar fashion, while Christ himself had shown the way by using a whip on those who had committed sacrilege and polluted the sacred ceremonies—the standard reference for those seeking to justify Christian violence.17 Osorio now turns to Machiavelli’s comparison between the ancient bloody sacrifices which stirred men to ferocity, and the bloodless ceremonies of Christianity which did no such thing. Such frenzy, blindness, and stupidity astound Osorio, who points out the folly of supposing that somebody inured to the ‘butcherly manglinge of beastes’ is likely to prove a valiant man. If this were true then why, he asks, do we not muster all the butchers and all the public executioners who, being used to blood and cruelty, would rush upon the enemy and keep us safe from every danger? Osorio enjoys his little touch of irony: but this seemingly bizarre notion was a commonplace among writers assessing the military potential of different civilian occupations, and its ultimate source is Vegetius, who had argued that there was some sense in recruiting practical men such as blacksmiths, carpenters, victuallers, and huntsmen. Machiavelli, in the Arte della guerra, follows Vegetius 16 Christian nobilitie, fos. 95v
96v .

17 Gospel according to St John 2: 15.

152

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

and does, indeed, add butchers (beccai) to the list of skills favoured by some authors—though he is less committed to them than was Christine de Pisan a century earlier when she had valued butchers because they were accustomed to shedding blood and ‘to smyte with axes’.18 For Osorio this is manifest nonsense; and he moves on to demonstrate, with much force, that pagan sacrifices and ceremonies are more likely to have induced timorousness than courage in the hearts of the beholders. He pours scorn on the silliness of birdgazers and soothsayers to whom every natural phenomenon— the flight of birds, an earthquake, thunder, or even the dining habits of chickens—is portentous. Under the influence of such beliefs men live in constant fear and uncertainty: Wilt thou say that those ceremonies, those filthye and old wives superstitions did instruct men and trayne them up in prowesse and chivalrye? which make men stout of stomache and courage tremble, which misleade theyr myndes from constancie, which hinder their devises that tend to common safty? doest thou in this manner shew thy dutifull harte towards Almighty God, by whose meanes and gratious goodnes we are disburdened and delivered from so wicked, so uncleane, so frantick and mad superstition, that thou darest presume to preferre the same before the religion of Christ? (fo. 99r---v )

Christianity rejects these inanities. There is nothing which can ‘daunt or dismay’ a Christian because he knows that he is guarded by a mighty army of angels and, more important, because his constancy is maintained by the foreknowledge of immortality. Caesar reported that the Gauls were inspired by their druids to believe in life after death through the passage of the soul from one body to another; and, if this ‘vile fond superstition’ inspired them to perform great feats of courage, what then, demands Osorio, may be achieved through the true and assured convictions of the 18 Christian nobilitie, fo. 97v . Further references are given in the text. Cf. Vegetius, I. 7; Machiavelli, Arte della guerra, ed. Bertelli, 350; Christine de Pisan, The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyvalrye, ed. A. T. P. Byles (EETS, 1932), 38. Butchers are also recommended for front-line duty in Le Victorial. Chronique de Don Pedro Nin˜o Comte de Buelna par Gutierre Diaz de Gamez son Alferez, 1379–1449, trans. and ed. Comte A. de Circourt and Comte de Puymaigre (Paris, 1867), 8–9.

OSO RI O

153

Christian? Finally, in addition to this, there is the power of the love which inflames those who have truly entered the profession of Christ. Love and charity are the greatest of all inspirations to hazardous undertakings because nothing seems too difficult for those who are thus moved, and they are even prepared to suffer death through the most ‘exquisite torments of the body that can be devised’ (fo. 101v ). There is no comparison between the pagan and Christian faiths, and no purpose in piling up further arguments to establish Machiavelli’s wickedness and madness. Osorio concedes that he has, perhaps, spent longer on this matter than he should: but it was a necessary digression because his central purpose has been to set forth the honour and dignity of Christian nobility which Machiavelli had attempted to defame. This is the end of the formal refutation of Machiavelli: but the remainder of the De nobilitate christiana is a kind of epilogue to it. What, asks Osorio, of those who abhor all knowledge of warfare and who deem military skill opposed to Christ’s commands? He is almost as vehemently opposed to pacifism as to Machiavelli. War undertaken for the defence of religion is, he writes, wonderfully extolled in the Scriptures—a fact which cannot be denied by pacifists who, none the less, argue that it is merely another of those customs which belonged to the Old Law but are no longer admissable. In order to sweep such objections aside, Osorio rather begs the question by using the Old Testament figure of Deborah to demonstrate the curse which falls upon those who fail to do their utmost in the wars of the Lord. The holy ceremonies and mysteries, many of which were undoubtedly rendered obsolete when their prophetic purpose was fulfilled by the coming of Christ, can in no way be compared with warfare which was ‘ordayned for the preservation of the common wealth’, and which wholly appertains to ‘civill policie’. The state can only be maintained and ‘as it were propped up’ by strength and force of arms: ‘for as much as all thinges in time of peace to be practised and exercised, are under the tuition and defence of martiall prowesse: he that taketh away the knowledge of feates of armes, worketh the overthrowe of the common wealth’ (fos. 102v
103r ). Had such a situation truly resulted from Christian doctrine then a madman like Machiavelli might, with some reason, criticize it. But the truth of the matter is

154

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

that Christ did not wish the civil state to be overthrown. Indeed, he wished it to be established and confirmed. Just as the magistrate is armed with the authority of the laws to suppress wickedness within the state, so the soldier, clad in armour, may with his sword repel danger. All of this, together with a citation of the words of John the Baptist to the soldiers (Luke 3: 14), are the conventionalities of Christian apologists for war.19 But Osorio’s recognition that war is occasioned by the intrinsic evil of human nature is more interesting. There is a gap between everyday reality and the Christian ideal, which Osorio highlights in a positively Machiavellian outburst: Truly nothing were more hartely to be desired of a Christian man, then that all men woulde refrayne themselves from wickednes and sinnefull luste. But forasmuche as that cannot alwayes fall oute, and in steede of continencie, unbrideled luste, in steede of justice either forraine force, or civil broyles use to aryse, then of necessitie either the force of the ennemye is wyth weapons and mayne strength to be beaten backe, or the outrage of oure citizens with sword to be repressed. (fo. 103r )

Pacifists condemn such a view as opposed to Christian charity: but Osorio repudiates their argument by stressing his distinction between private and public morality. Christ, he admits, commanded that we should not seek to avenge an injury—praecipit Christus ne illatam injuriam ulciscamur—a passage which, brilliantly mistranslated in Blandie’s edition as ‘Christ hath commanded that we should be revenged of our enemyes’, must have set many a bewildered English reader to scouring the Gospels in vain. The original Latin is more conventional, but Osorio contrives to give it a completely relativist gloss. No doubt, he says, it is the property of perfect and absolute virtue, when we suffer private wrongs and injuries, to show a ‘singular and wonderfull patience of the mynde’; but when either the safety of our country, or the honour and state of our religion is threatened, then it is proper to ‘take an invincible stomach’ against outrage and villainy. Christian peace does not subsist in idleness and repose. It has to be fought 19 See R. H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace (Nashville, Tenn., 1960), 53–65.

OSO RI O

155

for. And the remainder of the De nobilitate christiana comprises a list, with suitable comments, of those who have fought zealously to maintain peace. First there are the Hebrews, Abraham, Gideon, Joshua, and Jephtha; then a series of Christians, Constantine, Theodosius, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, and Godefroy; and finally a miscellaneous selection of Iberian warriors, Ferdinand of Aragon, Alphonso I of Portugal, Sanchez, Emmanuel, and the contemporary John III, brother of Osorio’s dedicatee, Prince Luiz. The De nobilitate proved a popular work and there were at least nine further Latin editions, including that in Osorio’s Opera omnia, by the end of the sixteenth century. Blandie’s English translation was published in 1576; and the section against Machiavelli was thrice reprinted by Possevino in the 1590s, whence it found its way into the Oberursel edition (and others) of Teglio’s Latin translation of Il Principe, and thence into the apparatus of Hermann Conring’s own Latin version of Il Principe in 1660.20 The impact of this critique of Machiavelli is, none the less, impossible to assess. Although we know that, in addition to Pole and Ascham’s other chosen targets, the De nobilitate was owned by such dignitaries as Queen Elizabeth I and William Cecil, we have no knowledge of their reactions to it.21 Osorio’s arguments are rarely cited. Yet, despite their obvious limitation to only one point in one chapter of one work by Machiavelli, and despite the fact that even from this single point a false inference is drawn, his treatment of Machiavelli is not entirely negligible. He recognizes the unsatisfactory shiftiness of Discorsi, II. 2; effectively mocks Machiavelli’s enthusiasm for blood sacrifices; and offers a stout defence of Christian fortitude against the charge of pusillanimity. But especially noteworthy is his refutation 20 See above, n. 6. On the editions of Teglio’s translation with the section from Osorio, see Bertelli and Innocenti, Bibliografia, secolo XVII, nos. 2, 10, 24, 41, 48, 96; and for Conring, ibid., no. 54. 21 The copy of the De nobilitate (Florence, 1552) in the British Library, press mark 521.d.2, has a manuscript presentation letter from Johannes Spithovius. This letter was thought to be addressed to Queen Mary, but Bourdon, ‘Jeronimo Osorio’ dates it to 1559 and it is, therefore, written to Queen Elizabeth. The title page of the 1552 edition of the De nobilitate christiana which is preserved at Hatfield House is autographed ‘Gulielmus Cecilius 1553’, and is reproduced in E. M. Tenison, Elizabethan England (Royal Leamington Spa, 1933–61), i. 191.

156

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

of those false interpreters of Christ’s attitude towards peace and war who had been alluded to by Machiavelli. Osorio, in fact, uses the very same arguments advanced by Machiavelli as the true interpretation of the Christian position which not only permits us to defend our native land, but exhorts us to prepare ourselves for this worthy task. Even Osorio’s suggestions concerning the underlying causes for the decline of Rome are, as we have seen, a selective simplification of Machiavelli’s own more extended treatment.

o s ori o as a machi ave lli an The assumption of Machiavellian arguments in the De nobilitate may have been unconscious. Nearly thirty years later, however, when Osorio wrote his own treatise on kingship, he found some of Machiavelli’s views valuable as a focus of debate, and made skilful though unacknowledged use of them. The De regis institutione et disciplina, offered by Osorio to King Sebastian of Portugal in 1571, is cast in that favourite dialogue form which served to hide the precise beliefs of so many Renaissance authors from contemporaries and posterity alike.22 Political arguments are advanced and then refuted by Osorio with equal facility and he handles the dialogue with great dexterity, cogently expounding positions which he may well have found personally distasteful. He confronts, for example, the idea that too zealous a regard for religion undermines the honour and dignity of princes. Evil advisers attack their ruler’s piety by telling him that religion encourages a man not to punish offences but rather to endure injuries patiently; and they argue that such an effeminate attitude has nothing of magnanimity, greatness, or honour about it.23 This ground had been covered in the De nobilitate, and Osorio’s 22 De regis institutione et disciplina Libri VIII ad Serenissimum et Invictissimum Portugaliae Regem Sebastianum (Lisbon, 1571). Other Latin editions appeared at Cologne in 1572, 1574, 1588. There was also a French translation by Pierre Brisson, L’instruction et nourriture du prince (Paris, 1583). My references are to the 1571 Lisbon edition. 23 De regis institutione, iii, fo. 72r--v .

OSO RI O

157

protagonists easily demonstrate the falsity of such iniquitous counsel. But there is greater subtlety in Osorio’s handling of a related, though more complex, political issue which reveals that he had read and seriously pondered Machiavelli. Should princes always keep faith and speak the truth? One of Osorio’s interlocutors, Menesius—who consistently advocates the middle way in all things—accepts that it is a great evil to lie ‘often’, to violate one’s word, and to break treaties. Yet there are times and circumstances when keeping a promise can seriously prejudice the whole nation; and it is then necessary for the king either to abandon the care of his state or to proceed by craft and cunning.24 Lysander’s defence of his own trickery in public affairs is cited here. Denounced, on the grounds that lying was unfitting for somebody descended from the line of Hercules, Lysander had replied that, on the contrary, Hercules had been the first to cover himself with the skins both of the lion and the fox. Moreover, Lysander had not merely said this but had shown, in his actions, that he believed nothing unworthy if it served to augment his state. Without doubt, continues Menesius, love of one’s native land is so important that we may sometimes be obliged to endure shame on its behalf. It is true that many princes behave like this simply to increase their personal power: yet even they do not incur infamy for lying, but are praised by prudent men and enjoy a reputation for virtue and industry. Conversely, those who refuse to violate their oath cannot wish to increase their empire and are mocked as stupid and guileless.25 It would be an infinite task, says Menesius, to number those princes, celebrated in the writings of learned men, who have achieved conquests more by fraud than by open warfare and 24 Ibid., fo. 36: ‘Fateor equidem facinus esse, plerumque mentiri, fidem datam fallere, et in conditione atque pacto non manere. sed incidunt saepe tempora, in quibus non possis stare promissis, sine magno Reipublicae detrimento. tunc igitur, Rex aut Reipublica curam abijciat opus est; aut multa subdole atque versute moliatur.’ 25 Ibid., fo. 36r--v : ‘Et profecto tanta est caritas patriae, ut omnis etiam interdum turpitudo, gratia illius subeunda videatur. quanquam multi Reges id non tam patriae amore, quam suae dominationis augendae causa faciunt: et tamen mentiendo, non solum nullam infamiam suscipiunt: verum etiam simul cum virtutis et industriae fama, ingenij atque prudentiae laudem consequuntur. illi vero qui ne fidem fallant, imperium augere nolunt, ut stulti, et nimis simplices irridentur.’

158

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

who, considering profit rather than honesty, have thereby obtained riches and glory. Nor are examples confined to the ancient histories. How many treaties have been agreed by Christian rulers, and how many have endured when not confirmed and maintained by considerations of profit? Agreements have been broken the moment that peace threatened utility. And this is true not merely of Carthaginians, Turks, and other tyrants who have founded their empires upon evildoing; it is just as true of Christian princes whose names have nevertheless not been spotted by any opprobrium of impiety. Just consider how they have violated their oath in order to obtain the lands of others, and you will understand how virtually every king measures religion solely by the criterion of utility. Yet, despite this, their names are spread everywhere with admiration: ‘and so I say that those princes are most greatly to be praised who, when the safety of the state requires, disregard the promise they have given’ (Illud tamen dico, eos Principes qui cum Reipublicae salus postulaverit, fidem datam neglexerint, summis esse laudibus efferendos). Indeed, it might be argued that those who break a promise for the good of their land have not betrayed their faith at all but have, rather, preserved it by honouring a greater obligation. Conversely, anybody who ruins his homeland by keeping his word has committed the utmost crime of perfidy. Doctors frequently lie to alleviate the sickness they wish to cure, and princes must do the same to secure the preservation of their states. While seeking the glory of honesty, they must not lose their reputation for prudence and sanity; and they must beware lest, wishing to honour agreements with foreigners, they violate the trust of those whom they are supposed to protect. The entire matter is summed up in a neat paradox: ‘when the common good demands, in order to maintain faith a prince does not hesitate to break it’ (ita fidem conservare, ut cum id communis utilitas flagitaverit, fidem violare non dubitet).26

26 De regis institutione, iii, fo. 37v .

OSO RI O

159

The strain laid upon personal morality by necessity and responsibility was a standard political problem. It had been mooted by Aristotle, and examined by those who commented upon him. The issue was probed by medieval lawyers and philosophers; Aquinas pondered it; and the humanists added their own contributions to the debate.27 The propriety of choosing the lesser of two political evils had many reputable antecedents. Yet, for his arguments, Osorio resorted instead to Machiavelli. In Il Principe, the case for breaking faith when reason of state so demanded had been set out explicitly and without compromise; and Osorio must have had these passages in mind when he set about building a convincing argument for his mouthpiece, Menesius. We can recognize Machiavelli’s belief in the ultimate value of good faith in a prince (‘Quanto sia laudabile in uno principe mantenere la fede e vivere con integrita` e non con astuzia, ciascuno lo intende’); his regret that, nevertheless, circumstances generally make it impossible to act with perfect virtue; his recognition that princes must know how to employ the cunning of a fox in order to preserve their land; his view that blind adherence to conventional virtue can lead to the vice of political ruin; his revelation that a multitude of modern rulers, despite their having increased their dominions by lying and deception, continue to enjoy honour and praise (‘Facci dunque uno principe di vincere e mantenere lo stato; e mezzi saranno sempre iudicati onorevoli e da ciascuno laudati’). All these are adapted by Osorio, who does not simply transcribe them verbatim, but welds the ideas together; elaborates on them; intelligently extends Machiavelli’s lion/fox metaphor by identifying its origin in the story of Lysander; and, above all, draws out the key moral issue. The central problem for Osorio is a traditional one. Do considerations of the common good and of duty to their own subjects inevitably force princes to violate the ethical norms? And is such violation more apparent than real, because it results not merely in a lesser evil but also in a greater good? Into the mouth of Menesius, Osorio puts a sophisticated and cogent Machiavellian argument which he subsequently refutes in a 27 On all this, see Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100–1322 (Princeton, 1964).

160

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

conventional but no less sophisticated manner by demonstrating both the corrupting tendency of habitual political dishonesty— when vices masquerade as virtues—and the instability of political life when devoid of trust. Osorio is no innocent. He comprehends the practical limitations imposed by human peccancy on rulers who pursue the paths of righteousness, and especially on those who wish to live at peace. These difficulties are debated in the De regis institutione; and the warrior ethic, which had been so prominent in the De nobilitate, is again defended in Machiavellian terms. The issue first arises near the beginning of the book in a discussion of the relative merits of Arms and Letters. One of Osorio’s interlocutors argues that, while letters and the sciences are all very well, they do not help princes in public affairs. Indeed, they may even prove dangerous. One does not want a prince who can subtly define manliness, but rather one who actively displays that quality.28 Cato the Censor is cited to the effect that love of letters had been the ruin of Rome;29 and Osorio’s speaker reinforces the argument by referring to the annals of Portugal itself. What sciences, he asks, had augmented the kingdom? Letters? Philosophy? Beautiful and eloquent speech? Certainly not! The people had been ignorant, and even the nobility had largely been illiterate; yet they had braved the tempests of war and won the trophies of virtue. By contrast the Portuguese of his own day are well educated but can scarcely hang on to the territories won by the courage of their ancestors. This argument, too, is challenged by another speaker who offers the conventional solution: recommending that princes should pursue the mean by combining skill in both arms and letters. But the issue was not so easily resolved, and it recurs in different guises elsewhere in the De regis institutione. There is, for instance, an elaborate treatment of the Liberal Arts in the fifth book where the arguments for their importance to princes are stated at such length and with such eloquence that there can be no doubt that the author’s own views are here on display. The difficulty for Osorio, however, is his abiding conviction that good arms are essential for the welfare 28 De regis institutione, fo. 21v : ‘Nec enim indigemus Rege, qui virtutem acute deffiniat; sed qui virtutis officio strenue fungatur.’ 29 Ibid., fo. 24r--v . Cf. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, V. 1. The passage in question is in Plutarch, Life of Cato the Censor, XLVI–XLVIII.

OSO RI O

161

of any state, and that Christians have a duty to respond to that need. We may see this in a tangential but critical discussion of whether money or virtus constitutes the ‘nerve of war’. In the De regis institutione the debate is won decisively on behalf of virtus with an argument derived from Machiavelli. Those who claim that money constitutes ‘belli nervos’ are quite mistaken, for military success is more a matter of character than of wealth. Virtus furnishes the money, but money does not provide the virtus (Bellum enim, non tam pecunia, quam virtute conficitur: et virtute pecunia comparatur, non virtus pecunia).30 The immense riches of Darius could not prevail against the military capacity of Alexander; whereas the converse was manifestly true. From this it follows that there can be no sure defence based on treasure where virtus is lacking.31 Even more strikingly Machiavellian is Osorio’s consideration of the significance of good arms not only for the protection of the body politic but also for its moral welfare. As in his discussion of good faith and the observation of treaties, Osorio does not cite Machiavelli’s texts but, rather, ponders their implications; and on this topic he seems wholly sympathetic to his source while remaining true to the muscular Christianity of his own earlier writings. Republics must be strong as well as rich because wealth, in itself, simply encourages predators. Dangers loom largest when a nation is lulled into a sense of security, for neither friendly agreements with kings nor alliances with foreigners suffice for the preservation of the state. Security can only be achieved by greatness of spirit and force of arms. Treaties are observed by hostile powers just so long as they are unable to harm you by overt or covert belligerence; but the moment that they perceive an opportunity to surprise you by some dirty trick (scelus) then there is no religion which prevents them from taking advantage of the stupidity of those who rely on treaties.32 To confirm this, Osorio cites the example of the 30 De regis institutione, ii, fo. 64. Cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, II. 10; Arte della guerra, VII. 31 De regis institutione, fo. 64: ‘Darii gaza Alexandri Magni virtutem oppressit: Alexandri porro virtus omni Darij gaza potita est; ex quo sequitur nullum esse firmum praesidium, ubi virtus abest, in divitiarum affluentia constitutum.’ 32 Ibid., vii, fo. 234r--v : ‘Nec enim iunctae cum Regibus amicitiae, neque foedera cum Gentibus finitimis icta: sed animi virtus et armorum potentia

162

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Athenian commander Iphicrates who recognized that his enemies kept faith only when they were unable to wage war. Thus a good and wise prince who never breaks his word ought not to assume that others will behave in like manner. As long as he is strong in arms so will his allies keep faith with him; but if he relies on their benevolence he will be ruined the instant he relaxes his vigilance. Virtus and military strength protect the state, and a wise man gives attention to war in time of peace just as, in time of war, he strives to achieve a good peace: Sapientis igitur est, in summa pace de bello cogitare, et in bello omnem belli gerendi rationem ad pacem dirigere. A long period of tranquillity makes people forget what war is like, and it is necessary to exercise them in arms so that they can resist attack. Garrisons must be maintained regularly in frontier towns; and experts must be retained by the king and promoted according to merit, in order to train men to observe proper military discipline. Strength is vitiated by otiosity; industry languishes: men’s character is dulled; vices increase; crimes break out; and the spirit is oppressed. Any war, however hard and dangerous, is preferable to this insidious so-called peace. For that cannot be deemed peace which, by pestilential arms, undermines frugality, continence, and all the virtues, and which delivers up the entire state in fetters to its enemies. This empty name of peace deludes ignorant men as it suddenly deprives them of all fortune and liberty.33

Reipublicae statum tutum et incolumem praestare possunt, qui enim vel nimis cupiunt, vel nimis invident, tam diu foedus sancte percussum religiose conservant, quam diu nihil nec aperto Marte, nec ex insidiis se nocere posse confidunt. ubi vero primum sibi rei per scelus augendae occasionem oblatam vident, nulla religione impediuntur, quo minus eam confestim arripiant, et stultitia eorum qui in foederibus acquiescunt, ad suam praedam abutantur.’ 33 De regis institutione, vii, fo. 235r--v : ‘Otio namque et securitate franguntur vires; languescit industria, habescit ingenium; vitia crescunt; scelera prorumpunt: animi status opprimitur: flagitiorum omnium bellum inexpiabile concitatur; usque adeo, ut quodvis bellum quamvis durum et periculosum huic insidioso pacis nomini longe praeferendum sit. Nec enim pax illa dicenda est, quae frugalitatem, et continentiam, et omnes denique virtutes pestiferis armis evertit: universamque tandem Rempublicam constrictam hostibus tradit, nomen itaque pacis inane hominibus imperitis illudit, ut eos improviso fortunis omnibus atque libertate spoliet.’

OSO RI O

163

This had been Machiavelli’s message to his own countrymen fifty years earlier. He had castigated the corruption, soft living, and lack of martial virtue which had left them prey to more vigorous states, and had recommended continual military preparedness as the principal prophylactic against such degradation.34 It was natural that Osorio (confronted by a similarly enervated, otiose and failing nation) should have responded to these despondencies and especially to the despairing analysis of political effeteness in the Istorie fiorentine. Osorio’s De regis institutione may not be one of the ‘great books’ of the sixteenth century—as its only modern English critic has argued—but it merits serious attention.35 Its handling of dialogue is skilful and convincing; its arguments are eloquently expressed, crisply organized, and fully explored; its intellectual range and stylistic mastery are far beyond that of the better-known De nobilitate; and in some small measure that superiority is due to a reading of Machiavelli’s works and to a careful consideration of the political problems raised therein. It is ironic that it is his crude attack on Machiavelli, thirty years earlier, which has earned Osorio the tiny measure of fame which he still enjoys. 34 Cf. Machiavelli, L’Asino d’Oro, V, ll. 76–127, in Mazzoni and Casella, 830–1; Arte della guerra, ‘Proemio’; and especially the Istorie fiorentine, V. i—which is virtually a blueprint for Osorio’s lament. 35 This is the judgement of Aubrey Bell, ‘The Humanist Jeronymo de Osorio’, 539–45.

6 Machiavelli and the Index of Prohibited Books Listed among the authors used by Tommaso Porcacchi to elucidate his edition of Guicciardini’s La historia d’Italia (1574), there occurs, under the letter S, a certain ‘Secretario Fiorentino ne’ discorsi & altrove’. This ‘Secretario’ is, of course, Machiavelli; and Porcacchi’s marginal annotations to Guicciardini’s text include material from Il Principe, the Discorsi, and Istorie fiorentine. The finding references to these works, and the quotations themselves, are accurately given, despite Porcacchi’s frequent qualification (when providing a Machiavellian source), ‘if memory doesn’t deceive me’, and his claim not to have seen any of these works, nor to have been ‘permitted’ to see them, for more than twenty years.1 Those two intervening decades would take Porcacchi’s Machiavellian studies back to 1554, which saw the last Italian editions of all Machiavelli’s major works prior to the papal prohibitions of 1557

1 La historia d’Italia di M. Francesco Guicciardini Gentil’huomo Fiorentino, divisa in venti libri. Riscontrata con tutti gli altri historici & auttori, che dell’istesse cose habbiano scritto e ornata in margine con l’Annotationi de’ riscontri da T. Porcacchi (Venice, 1574), fos. 24v, 63v, 107, 131, 141v, 182v, 303. Porcacchi, fo. 32v, also has a recognizable quotation from Machiavelli’s Decennale Primo, ll. 34–6; and at fo. 148, where Guicciardini is dealing with Cesare Borgia’s dire deeds at Sinigaglia, Porcacchi writes: ‘Il Secretario Fiorentino in un suo particolar trattato descrisse gia` il modo c’haveva tenuto per opprimer molti Signori d’Italia.’ Although Porcacchi is disingenuous whenever he has to deal with Machiavelli as a writer, he is happy to cite him by name as a participant in Florentine affairs as, for example, at fo. 131v (‘Al Re furon mandati per querelarsi Francesco della Casa, e Nicolo Macchiavelli, che si trovarono in fatti’); and at fo. 479, where Porcacchi mentions a letter from Machiavelli to Bartolommeo Cavalcanti.

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

165

and 1559.2 The coincidence is suspicious: especially since, after all that time, Porcacchi could still apparently quote from his sources verbatim. Both the coy circumlocution, ‘Secretario Fiorentino’, and the fact that Porcacchi obviously had the texts in front of him, tell us something about the nature and effectiveness of Machiavelli censorship in sixteenth-century Italy. Machiavelli’s inclusion, in the first papal Indexes, among those authors whose entire literary output was forbidden—Auctores, quorum libri et scripta omnia prohibentur—has generally been regarded as the natural culmination of early clerical hostility to his ideas; and, on the whole, this is a reasonable assumption. But the publication of the Index has also been represented as a watershed in the story of Machiavelli’s reception: and this is only partially true.3

early hostility Despite the immediate, and continuing, popularity of Machiavelli’s works there had always been some antagonists or, more precisely, talk about such antagonists. Even around 1514–16, when Il Principe was newly completed and circulating only in manuscript, one of the author’s friends, Biaggio Buonaccorsi, had declared that those who appreciated Machiavelli’s merit must be prepared to defend him fiercely against those who, through malignity or envy, might try ‘to bite and tear him’.4 Many years later, in January 1549, Giovanni Battista Busini, in a letter to the historian Benedetto Varchi, reflected on Machiavelli’s failure at the end of his political career and suggested that this had been due to an almost universal antipathy towards Il Principe: the rich believing that it taught the 2 Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, nos. 104–13. In Italy, only the comedies Clitia and Mandragola were published subsequently (by Giunta in 1556). 3 This view was strikingly expressed by L. Arthur Burd in the introduction to his famous edition of Il Principe (Oxford, 1891), 49–51. Burd describes the Index of 1559 as the ‘great prohibition which was intended utterly to destroy the works of Machiavelli’; and he goes on to say, of the Index of 1564, that it ‘canonised and permanently fixed certain errors of criticism’ and ‘led to the publication of a very large number of books’ against Machiavelli. 4 Biaggio Buonaccorsi, dedicatory letter to Pandolfo Bellacci. See Gerber, i. 84–6; Bertelli and Innocenti, pp. xxx–xxxi.

166

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Duke to take away their possessions; the poor fearing that it encouraged the removal of their freedom; the Piagnoni (who still professed support for the long-dead Savonarola) deeming the author a heretic; the virtuous thinking him dishonest; and the wicked considering him even worse and more bold [piu valente] than they were themselves.5 It is inherently unlikely that, prior to publication, Il Principe had achieved the kind of widespread notoriety through every class of society that Busini suggests; but, whatever the rights or wrongs of these recollections of Florentine attitudes in 1527, it is clear that in 1532, when the Florentine publisher Bernardo di Giunta issued Il Principe—a few months after Blado’s Roman edition—hostility was in the air. Giunta felt obliged to exhort his dedicatee, Giovanni Gaddi, to defend the work against those who constantly attacked it furiously, ‘unaware that those who teach the use of herbs and medicines also give instruction in poisons so that, recognizing them, we may protect ourselves from them’. There is no art or science, adds Giunta, ‘which may not be put to evil use by evil men’.6 These ambiguous remarks have been productive of much debate concerning the real purpose of Il Principe: but they also intimate that for some contemporaries the work was decidedly controversial. Subsequently, the attacks of Pole and Osorio gave substance to such hints; and the work of two other writers—the historian Paolo Giovio and the theologian Ambrogio Catharino—must have added impetus to the process whereby Machiavelli’s vilification became institutionalized. Giovio’s observations were first published in 1546 in his Elogia— a series of brief biographies each originally written to accompany one of the portraits of famous men collected in his villa at Lake Como. The book was translated, rather freely, into Italian, and it was several times reprinted; and the account of Machiavelli, compounded of misinformation and damnation by faint praise, has been repeatedly quoted and questioned.7 Was Machiavelli really ignorant 5 Lettere di G. B. Busini a Benedetto Varchi, ed. G. Milanesi (Florence, 1861), 84. 6 Bernardo di Giunta, dedicatory letter ‘Al molto reverendo Monsignore Messer Giovanni Gaddi, Cherico della Camera Appostolica, et padron suo osservandissimo’, Il principe di Niccolo Machiavelli (Florence, 1532), sig. þ2r
v. 7 Paolo Giovio, Elogia veris clarorum virorum imaginibus apposita (Venice, 1546); Le iscrittioni poste sotto le vere imagini de gli uomini famosi, le quali a` Como

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

167

of Latin letters? Did his knowledge of the classics really come from Marcello Virgilio, his superior in the Florentine administration? Did he really die from an unnecessary dose of quack medicine? For contemporaries, however, these biographical dubieties were far less significant than Giovio’s critical observations because, while acknowledging Machiavelli’s excellent Tuscan style and skill as a historian, he also accuses him of falsifying evidence and mixing ‘secret poison’ amidst the sweet ‘honey of his eloquence’. Worse still, he states unequivocally that Machiavelli had denied the existence of God and was a ‘mocker and an atheist’. Giovio’s views on Machiavelli were a mere jeu d’esprit: but they appeared at a critical moment and gained an authority quite out of proportion to their size and merit.8 The publication of the Elogia coincided with the opening of the Council of Trent—intended to stem the tide of heresy in Europe—and the acidulous little biography shows how easily Machiavelli’s views on policy and religion could be isolated from the rest of his work and how they might attract the attention of censors seeking to purge Christian Europe of dangerous ideas. Prominent at those early sessions of the Council of Trent was a trenchant Italian controversialist, Ambrogio Catharino, who might have remained in well-merited obscurity had he not found a cheap ticket enabling him to make the long journey into posterity: he had si veggiono, tr. H. Orio (Florence, 1552). Many authors cited Giovio against Machiavelli and were, in their turn, plagiarized, cited, or translated by others. Matthieu Coignet, for example, in his Introduction aux princes pour garder la foy promise (Paris, 1584), 184, writes about the way in which power gained by evildoers is of short duration; refers to Cesare Borgia and others ‘que Machiavel nous propose a` imiter’; comments that the said author is, not without cause, ‘depeint par Paul Jove des qualitez d’ignorant Dieu et les bonnes lettres, et censure´ par le Concile de Trente’; and adds a marginal note, ‘Machiavel autheur pernicieux’. Cf. the English trans. by Sir Edward Hoby, Politique discourses upon trueth and lying (1586), 120. It is noteworthy that the original treatise, both in manuscript (BNF MS fr. 643 and 644) and print, is dedicated to Catherine de’ Medici. Two years after Coignet’s publication, Pierre Le Loyer, IIII. Livres des Spectres ou apparitions (Angers, 1586), 47–8, says that Machiavelli is regarded by everyone as a ‘mocker and atheist’—‘ainsi que dit Paule Jove’. Cf. the English trans., Treatise of Specters or straunge sights (1605), fo. 22v. For more influential users of Giovio (Antonio Possevino and Joannes Molanus), see below, Chs. 11, 13. 8 On Giovio, see T. C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton, 1995).

168

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

the good fortune to denounce a famous man.9 His short diatribe against Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Il Principe is buried in a massive volume of miscellaneous, and largely disjunct, theological outpourings published at Rome in 1552 by Antonio Blado, Machiavelli’s first printer; and the relevant chapter itself forms part of a digression within a discussion of how expedient it is to translate the Scriptures into the vernacular tongues. The first part of this digression deals with books which ‘must be abhorred by the Christian and which should be wholly banished from Christendom’; the second part is the piece against Machiavelli; and there follows a consideration of the just punishment of heretics.10 These materials are scarcely integrated, but their significance within the climate of Trent and the mounting campaign against heretical and other dubious literature is obvious. Catharino deplores the poisonous and secret circulation of heretical books, scattered among the multitude and entrapping the minds of the inquisitive—spitting out every filth and impiety— just like the obscene books of the ancient poets. Man is easily corrupted by such lascivious and impious authors and, worse still, amongst the moderns there have been those who do not blush to imitate the pagans with impure verses. Even Petrarch 9 Born in Siena c.1484, Lanceloto Politi studied canon and civil law and entered the Dominican Order in 1517, whereupon he adopted the name Ambrosius Catharinus in honour of two Sienese saints. For an account of his works, see Louis Ellies Dupin, Histoire de l’e´glise et des auteurs eccle´siastiques du seizie`me sie`cle (Paris, 1701–3), v. 8–59. 10 The two subsections (De libris Christiano detestandis, & a Christianismo penitus eliminandis and Quam execrandi Macchiavelli discursus & institutio sui Principis) are tagged on to a Quaestio an expediat Scripturas in maternas linguas transferri which is itself added to De divinis et canonicis scripturis. All of this is contained in a volume entitled Disputatio pro veritate immaculatae conceptionis, which was printed by Blado at Rome in Apr. 1552 and has its own pagination and register of signatures. But, to complicate the matter even further, the material in this volume is listed at the head of another volume printed by Blado in Nov. 1551 (Enarrationes in quinque priora capita libri Geneseos), which is followed by a second work, Catharino’s Assertiones, which itself has a separate pagination and register of signatures. The digression (on books which should be destroyed and on Machiavelli) occurs in the Disputatio (1552) at sigs. K.3v–4v (cols. 339–44). The entire sequence was issued in a facsimile edition by Gregg Press (Ridgewood, NJ, 1964). I record these details in order to make clear that the attack on Machiavelli is a deeply embedded minor part of a minor part of a minor work by an author who, despite his contemporary reputation, may reasonably be classified as very minor indeed.

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

169

and Boccaccio are condemned by Catharino because the sweet melodies of their stories about libidinous lovers captivate the minds of curious and stupid people. ‘Alas!’, he laments, ‘Woe is me! Who once as a boy sucked these poisonous sweets.’ Thanks be to God, though, through the intercession of a good angel, he had recognized ‘death in the vessel’, and begged that his youthful sins would not be recorded. At this point, having worked himself up to a suitable pitch of self-loathing and self-righteousness, Catharino at last arrives at his principal objective. He has recognized the malignity and damage wrought by this kind of study and the ways in which such works are spread abroad among the multitude by the printing press (a Typographo), and he demands that they should be consumed with flames. Yes indeed, the books of lascivious authors must be burnt for they serve no purpose other than to corrupt, and Catharino especially notes that Ovid was banished from Rome by Augustus Caesar on account of the De arte amandi.11 The need to combat the influence of such books now brings Catharino to another source of corruption no less worthy of correction. He is greatly astonished that in any land ruled by Christian princes there should have been tolerated and publicly sold certain books by an author ‘wholly destitute of religion and a contemner thereof ’. The name of this author is ‘Nicolaus Machiavellus’, who wrote several works, among which are two in his Tuscan tongue, one called Discursus and the other entitled Princeps. In these he reveals himself as both impious and atheistical: allowing nothing to the providence of God; and considering religion as wholly a matter of human opinion and persuasion. None the less, he wishes his prince to profess belief. Heretics, notes Catharino, use the same trick for, although they think nothing of the ceremonies of the Church, they pretend to retain some observances allegedly as an inducement to the weak. This man—‘if he merits the name of a man’—teaches the 11 This was, in fact, the reason given in the Imperial decree for Ovid’s banishment, but the truth of the matter remains in dispute. In the papal Index of 1564, Regula VII, prohibiting ‘without exception’ books treating of licentious and immoral matters, exception is made of ancient books, written by the Gentiles, because of the ‘elegance and quality of their language’. See Franz Heinrich Reusch, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Tu¨bingen, 1886), 249; Index de Rome 1557, 1559, 1564: Les premiers index romains et l’index du Concile de Trente, ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1990), 817.

170

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

prince that, to be master of his dominion, he should rather seem a worshipper of religion and a lover of virtue than to be so in truth. Such doctrine, exclaims Catharino, defiles our age, and—finding it impossible to remain silent—he exhorts his reader to attend to what Machiavelli says in Il Principe concerning how far it is expedient for the prince to keep faith. ‘Listen, pious reader, I beseech you, and consider and deplore the unhappy condition of the times. This is his opinion faithfully expressed by me in Latin words.’ And there follows a close but selective translation of the first three-quarters of Il Principe, 18, encompassing some of Machiavelli’s most disturbing pronouncements: the idea that those princes who hold faith in slight esteem achieve great things and overcome those who keep their word; the metaphor of the centaur, ‘half man and half beast’; the metaphor of the lion and the fox; the idea that the astute prince will never lack ‘colours and subterfuge to excuse his perfidy’; and the example of Pope Alexander VI who did nothing else but deceive, and who promised much but performed nothing. Catharino then dwells further on Machiavelli’s assertion that, while it is not necessary for a prince to have the virtues of piety, faith, humanity, religion, and integrity, it is necessary to simulate them. Practising such virtues leads to ruin and, indeed, the ‘new prince’ will often have to act contrary to them, having a mind ready to turn whithersoever the winds may blow, to follow wherever fortune may direct, and to do evil whenever it is requisite so to do: These and other diabolic writings of the same type are published by this perfidious and extraordinary teacher of faithlessness; are read and defended with applause by certain people; and, what is more deplorable, it appears that there are not lacking those who carry out this impious and most wicked doctrine. When I think about it I am forced to cry out, Oh unhappy state of the times. (col. 342)

The Pagans themselves abhorred such notions, says Catharino, and he cites the famous lion/fox passage from Cicero’s De officiis to show just how diametrically opposed was the ancient philosopher to the modern monster.12 Even the powerful tyrant, Julius Caesar, deliberately left some doubt about whether one might violate the law for the sake of government; whereas ‘he of whom we are 12 Cicero, De officiis, I. xiii. 41.

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

171

speaking, fearing neither God nor men, proposes and recommends in absolute terms that the law may be violated’.13 Furthermore, ‘whether or not the lovers of this world wish it’, Catharino feels that he must draw attention to the ‘enormous stupidity’ of Machiavelli, who proposes as his prime exemplars for imitation Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia, both of whom came to terrible ends and are regarded with horror. Finally, in a fervent coda, Catharino exhorts Christian princes to take heed as, with two largely irrelevant quotations from the Gospels, he winds up his passionate but dialectically feeble denunciation of Machiavelli.14 the index and machiavelli The immune system of corporate Christianity has often proved vulnerable to the virus of independent thought. But the confluence of the printing press and major doctrinal schisms within Christendom made political and religious authorities increasingly anxious to control the flow of ideas, both by prohibiting the inimical and by promoting the acceptable. Surprisingly, open debate and measured argument were briefly considered as options but soon proved too perilous. As a papal brief, dated 21 December 1558, sadly explained: A number of ecclesiastics, both regular and secular, who were hopeful of being able to combat the Lutherans and the other heretics of our time and to overthrow their heretical doctrines, and who secured for the purpose permission from the Apostolic Chair to read the works of these heretics, found themselves confused and influenced by these writings so that they were quite largely led astray and perverted into the acceptance of heretical errors.15 13 Col. 342. The phrase in question—‘Si violandum est ius, regnandi causa’— is derived by Catharino from Cicero, who explains that Julius Caesar (himself adapting it from Euripides) always had it in his mouth. See Cicero, De officiis, III. 21. Barnabe Barnes, Four bookes of offices (1606), 110–11, associates the idea with Machiavelli’s Il Principe, 17, and writes that ‘There is one imperious rule which the Machivellian politics have taught to colour their wickedness, according to that saying of Euripides cited by Cicero from the mouth of Julius Caesar: Namsi violandum est ius, regnandi gratia violandum est: aliis pietatem colas.’ 14 Catharino cites Luke 13: 31, 32 and John 19: 11. 15 Reusch, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum, 213; translated in G. H. Putnam, The Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence upon the Production and Distribution of Literature (New York, 1906), i. 171.

172

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

It seemed safer, therefore, to limit such access and to concentrate upon a programme of rigorous prohibition. This issue had been very much in the air in the early sessions of the Council of Trent, although we do not know whether or not Catharino was personally involved in helping to formulate the policy of censorship.16 In fact, he died in 1553 and preparations for the papal Index of Prohibited Books were not fully under way until after the election of Gian Pietro Carafa as Pope Paul IV in May 1555, when it was entrusted to a commission of the Inquisition headed by its Commissioner General, Michele Ghislieri. Lists of opprobrious authors and books long predate the invention of printing, although—as Catharino had implied—it was the ease with which texts could now be reproduced mechanically that really agitated authorities, Catholic and Protestant alike. There had already been several compilations of works to be prohibited and/or destroyed, and some of these provided the foundation for the first papal Index of Prohibited Books, which was printed in 1557 by Blado, but was so full of errors, and aroused such controversy, that another two years were to pass before a corrected version was deemed fit for publication.17 Machiavelli—as scholars like to point out—was one of the authors whose entire works were condemned in the 1557 and 1559 Roman Indexes, and again when the list was revised and issued under the name of Pope Pius IV in 1564 (the Tridentine Index).18 However, the comprehensive condemnation of Machiavelli was not, in itself, the primary aim of Counter-Reformation literary policy; and it is important not to create an impression that the Indexes of Prohibited Books were conceived simply in order 16 Even less concerned in this process was Reginald Pole, whose name is sometimes loosely connected with the inclusion of Machiavelli’s works on the Index. He was present only at the earliest stages of the Council of Trent and was not involved with the preparation of the Index. 17 For more than a century, the standard collection of materials relating to 16th-c. indexes of prohibited books has been Reusch, Die Indices. However, this has largely been superseded by the excellent series of volumes published by Droz and the University of Sherbrooke, Index des livres interdits, under the general editorship of J. M. de Bujanda. 18 These volumes are now best studied in Bujanda’s edn., Index de Rome 1557, 1559, 1564.

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

173

that he might be persecuted. In 1559, he was only one out of a total of just over 600 named authors whose complete works were deemed unacceptable; and, in the same Index, the lists of anonymous works, or works by authors only partially condemned, amounted to another 450 items or more. Under the letter N (buried amidst twenty-three other unfortunates called Nicholas), ‘Nicolaus Macchiavellus’ may just be discerned squeezed between ‘Nicolaus Krompach’ and ‘Nicolaus de Pelhrzimow’, neither of whom has ever been regarded as a celebrity or as a principal target for the censors’ rage. Machiavelli was in no way singled out. Yet he was singular. There was no other contemporary author who could so convincingly be regarded as an amalgam of atheist, despiser of Christianity, enthusiast for pagan religion, advocate of tyranny, admirer of force and fraud, and proponent of a topsy-turvy political morality. This was how he had been depicted by Pole, Osorio, Giovio, and Catharino; and if, in addition to this catalogue of misdemeanours, we remember that he was also being cited in England, France, and Germany as an authoritative anti-papal historian, then it is easy to see why Machiavelli should have earned his place amongst the authors prohibited by the wise men of Trent.

how effective were the indexes? In Protestant England, of course, papal prohibitions counted for nothing.19 But in Catholic France, too, little notice was taken of the condemnation of Machiavelli. Admittedly, a decade passed in which the only Machiavellian text issued was a reprint of D’Auvergne’s translation of Il Principe in 1563, but French versions of both Il Principe and the Discorsi reappeared in 1571 and continued in vogue thereafter. 19 There is a curious passage in Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli, 52, asserting that ‘the ban on Machiavelli in England in the sixteenth century seems to have taken the form of a refusal to license the printing of il Principe and I Discorsi’. But there is no evidence for such a ban—as E´mile Gasquet pointed out in his Le Courant machiave´lien.

174

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

More noteworthy is the fact that Machiavelli was not named in the independent Spanish Cathalogus of proscribed books, issued in 1559 by the Inquisitor General Fernando de Valdes; and it has been suggested that this may have been a direct result of the Emperor Charles V’s enthusiasm for the Discorsi, which had been published in Otevanti’s Spanish translation in 1552 and 1555 under the Emperor’s privilege and with a dedication to his son Philip. Nevertheless, judging by results, there is little doubt that the various papal prohibitions effectively killed off further publication of Machiavelli’s works in the Iberian peninsula;20 and the same is true of Italy, where there were no indigenous Machiavellian editions after 1554 until the Discorsi politici e militari, ascribed to an anagrammatical author ‘Amadio Niecollucci’, was printed in Venice in 1630.21 There were, though, editions of the original texts of Machiavelli’s major works with false Italian imprints prepared by that enterprising Elizabethan printer John Wolfe, who recognized and seized the unique business opportunities offered by the hamstringing of native Italian presses.22 In much the same spirit, but 20 The Discursos de Machavello, en qualquer lingua are forbidden in the Portuguese Index of 1581; and Machiavelli’s works are prohibited in their entirety in the Index of the Inquisitor General Gaspar de Quiroga in 1583. See Reusch, Die Indices, 359, 422; Index de l’Inquisition portugaise 1547, 1551, 1561, 1564, 1581, ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1995), 476–7; Index de l’Inquisition espagnole (1583, 1584), ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1993) 480, 658, 960. On the Spanish position with regard to Machiavelli, see Helena Puigdome`nech, Maquiavelo en Espan˜a (Madrid, 1988), esp. 41–72. It is worth noting, though, that Machiavelli sneaked into Spanish (and probably into Spain) in a new edition of Diego de Salazar’s plagiarism, Tratado de re militari, hecho a manera de dialogo (Brussels, 1590). Similarly, a favourable allusion to Machiavelli’s name could slip into Spanish in a translation of a foreign book such as Tommaso Garzoni, La piazza universale (1576), 644: ‘Il Machiavello, nel primo libro de’ suoi discorsi, mostra che la milizia e` quella che con eterna gloria de’ suoi professori mirabilmente soggioga il mondo’; which reappears in Christoval Suarez de Figueroa, Plaza universal de todas ciencias y artes (Madrid, 1615), fo. 292v, where, after citing Cicero’s Pro Murena, ‘dize obedecer a las armas toda cosa’, he continues, ‘Muestroa el Machiavelo ser la milicia, quien con eterna lea de sus sequaces, llena de gloria el mundo.’ 21 Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVII, no. 30; Gerber, ii. 106. 22 Wolfe also took advantage of the Italian ban on another naughty author, Pietro Aretino. On Wolfe’s activities, see Adolph Gerber, ‘All of the Five Fictitious Italian Editions of Writings of Machiavelli and Three of Those of Pietro Aretino’, Modern Language Notes, 22 (1907), 2–6, 129–35, 201–6; Harry Sellers, ‘Italian Books Printed in England before 1640’, The Library, 4th ser.,

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

175

for a different audience, the Italian Protestant emigre´ from Forligni, Silvestro Teglio, prepared a Latin translation of Il Principe which was published by Perna at Basle in 1560, and went through another seventeen editions up to 1699.23 However effective the Indexes may have been in both Spain and Italy from the perspective of printing and publishing history, their impact on readership is less clear. Surviving records of a specifically Spanish response to Machiavelli are scattered and scanty until the seventeenth century.24 There were a number of writers who clearly had some first-hand knowledge of Il Principe or the Discorsi.25 But, on the whole, such evidence as there is does not 5 (1924), 105–28; Harry R. Hoppe, ‘John Wolfe, Printer and Publisher (1579– 1601)’, The Library, 4th ser., 14 (1933), 241–88; D. B. Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing in England, 1550–1640 (New York, 1973), 5–13, 95–102, 109–17. 23 Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, nos. 130, 145, 166, 167, 186, 192, 197, 200; Secolo XVII, nos. 2, 10, 24, 41, 48, 54, 81, 96, 103. For Latin translations of the Discorsi, from 1588 to 1649, see Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, nos. 184, 189, 197, 198; Secolo XVII, nos. 9, 21, 22, 40, 49. 24 The early reception of Machiavelli in Spain is a subject which has been much studied, although there is not really much to study. For bibliography, see Puigdome`nech; and Elena Cantarino, ‘Tratadistas politico-morales de los siglos XVI y XVII (Apuntes sobre el estado actual de la investigacio´n)’, El Basilisco, 21 (1996), 4–7. See also Patrizio Rigobon, ‘Le traduzioni spagnole de ‘‘Il Principe’’ di Niccolo` Machiavelli: appunti per un storia’, in Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 25 (1986), 143–62. 25 Sebastia´n Fox Morcillo, in his De regni regisque institutione libri III (Antwerp, 1556), shows that he was well acquainted with Il Principe although he refers neither to the work nor its author by name, and does not accept Machiavelli’s political morality. Also familiar with Il Principe was Fadrique Furio´ Ceriol, El concejo y consejeros del prencipe (Antwerp, 1559); trans. John Blundevill, A very briefe and profitable treatise declaring how many counsells, a prince ought to have (1589). On Fox Morcillo and Furio´ Ceriol, see Ronald W. Truman, Spanish Treatises on Government, Society and Religion in the Time of Philip II (Leiden, 1999), chs. 3 and 4. As Truman observes, neither of these works made much impact, if any, in Spain. Another, later writer on counsellors, Bartolome Felippe, includes Machiavelli in the list of some 220 sources cited in his treatise; and his work shows knowledge of both the Discorsi and the Istorie fiorentine and provides adequate marginal references. See Felippe’s Tractado del conseio y de los consejeros de los Principes (Coimbra, 1584), fos. 34v, 102–104, 107v–108, 112v–113v, 127–128v, 129v, 130v. There was a self-styled ‘segunda impression’ issued as from ‘Turino, 1589’: but this was, in fact, the work of the notorious London printer, John ‘Machiavel’ Wolfe, who also published an English translation (complete with the marginal Machiavellian references) by his friend John Thorius—The Counsellor a treatise of counsels and counsellers of princes, written in Spanish by B. Phillip.

176

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

convey an impression of keen interest, apart from the furious hostility of Ribadeneira on the one hand, and the extensive borrowing by Balthazar Ayala on the other.26 Although Machiavelli’s works were not proscribed by Valdes, they were condemned in the next Spanish Index (published in May 1583), possibly through the implacability of the Jesuit Juan de Mariana; and thereafter Machiavelli’s reputation was officially doomed in Spain.27 There was, however, a proposal to prepare an expurgated edition of his works.28 On 9 November 1584, the Secretary of Antonio Folch de Cardona, Duke of Sessa, wrote to the Council of the Inquisition concerning Machiavelli’s four major works which, he said, contained much that was curious and erudite. He argued that, although there were some errors therein, these ‘could be easily expurgated and corrected’, and he recommended that Marco Antonio de Aldana should prepare a translation from Italian into Castilian. This overture met with no response and, in the following June, the Secretary again insisted that a translation of Machiavelli’s four principal books would have great practical value, and he added the name of another possible translator, Juan Bautista Cardona, Bishop of Vic. Nothing came of that suggestion either, and Machiavelli disappeared from the annals of Iberian printing until the mid-nineteenth century. In Italy, too, attempts were made to obtain permission for the publication of an expurgated version of Machiavelli’s major writings.29 Between February and September 1562—that is after the Englished by I.T. (1589). There is a copy of Wolfe’s ‘Turino’ edition in the British Library (press mark C.122.d.6) with manuscript notes—mainly linguistic—by Thorius. 26 Balthazar Ayala, a Spanish jurist based in Antwerp, incorporated, without acknowledgement, great tracts of the Discorsi in his De iure et officiis bellicis (Douai, 1582; 2nd edn., Antwerp, 1597). There is a modern text, ed. J. Westlake and trans. John Pawlry Bate (Washington, DC, 1912). On Ayala, see below, Ch. 15. 27 On Mariana and Machiavelli, see Guenter Lewy, Constitutionalism and Statecraft during the Golden Age of Spain: A Study of the Political Philosophy of Juan de Mariana, S.J. (Geneva, 1960), 95–101. 28 Puigdome`nech, Maquiavelo en Espan˜a, 58–61, 113–17. See also Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, no. 172. 29 See Pio Paschini, ‘Letterati ed indice nella riforma Cattolica in Italia’, in Cinquecento Romano e riforma Cattolica (Rome, 1958), 239–73 (esp. 252–8); Bertelli

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

177

Pauline Index, but before the Tridentine—the well-known jurisconsult and litte´rateur Girolamo Muzio wrote several letters to the Duke of Urbino—whom he described as a student and admirer of Machiavelli—explaining that he, Muzio, had been working on the texts of the Discorsi and the Arte della guerra, revising passages which denoted a lack of reverence towards God and, in general, removing anything which might be construed as hostile to ‘i frati’. The revised versions were certainly received in Trent for there is a letter from Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga referring to copies of the Discorsi and Arte della guerra which had been forwarded by the Duke of Urbino. Gonzaga notes that ‘that which was scandalous and against our religion has been removed’, and makes a parallel with the similar work done to clean up Boccaccio. He adds that the revisions are worth considering for the honour of the Florentine language and, more realistically, because there are those who will prefer to hold on to the books anyway and read them rather than take heed of the prohibition. None the less, the scheme failed and Machiavelli’s works were again condemned in toto in 1564. Muzio seems to have given up, but the battle was not over for, in February 1572, Eustachio Locatelli, Bishop of Reggio, wrote that he had been looking into Machiavelli’s career and could find nothing against him. He was therefore suggesting another examination of his works so that, as had been done with Boccaccio, the language might be suitably amended and the world could have the labours of this ‘valentuomo’. This project was supported by two surviving nephews of Machiavelli, Giuliano de’ Ricci and another Niccolo`, who wrote that such a writer should be restored to the world: Nor do we judge the enterprise to be difficult, because there is not much left to do, beyond removing those few places where the Pontiffs are spoken of with too much licence, which we impute more to the quality of those times than to the evil spirit of the writer who, in all his actions, showed himself always pious and observant of religion.30 and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, no. 134. More particularly on the attempted expurgation of the Istorie fiorentine, see Peter Godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton, 1998), 303–33. 30 Paschini, ‘Letterati’, 257.

178

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Easy or difficult, the work of expurgation dragged on. Locatelli died in October 1575, but the two nephews continued their work of emendation, which was acknowledged in 1578 by Pier Vettori, who also praised their ancestor as a man ‘of great wit and very practised in the affairs of the world’. However, this scheme, too, was eventually abandoned when Giuliano and Niccolo` refused to accept a proposal that the work might go forward for publication under a name other than that of their famous ancestor. And so Machiavelli remained firmly lodged amongst those authors ‘quorum libri et scripta omnia prohibentur’. There is, none the less, considerable evidence for an enduring preoccupation with the thoughts of Machiavelli, and for a continuing first-hand knowledge of his work, amongst Italians—though not always in Italy. Open praise was, of course, very rarely accorded the forbidden author: but this did happen in Dionigi Atanagi’s short treatise on the excellence of history, which acknowledged Machiavelli’s achievement in both enlarging the scope of historical writing and making it more eloquent. It is true that Atanagi’s work was published in 1559, but it was reprinted in the following year as a supplement to Giovio’s Istorie.31 Thirty years later, Michele Poccianti’s Catalogus scriptorum Florentinorum (1589) included a very brief biography of Machiavelli based upon Giovio, which, like its tainted source, alluded to Machiavelli’s lack of classical learning while praising his acuity of intellect and fine literary style.32 Significantly, though, Poccianti also pointed out that there is much that is inimical to Christianity in Machiavelli’s writings—which was why he had been condemned by the Council of Trent. Italians residing elsewhere in Europe felt less inhibited. Giovanni Michele Bruto, for example, a refugee from Medicean Florence, published a history of his native city at Lyon in 1562. It was, in part, conceived as a riposte to Giovio’s attacks on the 31 Dionigi Atanagi, Ragionamento de la eccelentia ed perfettion de la historia (Venice, 1559), fo. 10r–v; ‘Supplimento di Girolamo Ruscelli nell’Istorie di Monsignor Giovio’, in Paolo Giovio, Istorie (Venice, 1560), 79. 32 Michele Poccianti, Catalogus scriptorum Florentinorum, omnis generis (Florence, 1589), 137. Machiavelli’s name occurs twice in Poccianti’s index, once under poets and once under historians (sigs. M1v, M3v).

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

179

Florentines and Bruto made considerable use of Machiavelli’s work, freely acknowledging his predecessor’s intelligence and fine style, while criticizing and correcting his carelessness; and the substance of Bruto’s praise of Machiavelli was reprinted by Federigo Alberti in 1566 at Lyon as part of his own Defence of the Florentines against the false calumniations of Giovio.33 Just as frank about their admiration for Machiavelli were three other expatriate Italian defenders of his reputation, all of whom wrote in response to Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel. Two of these, Paolo Mini and Matteo Toscano, published their works in France, the former again at Lyon, the latter at Paris.34 The third, Alberico Gentili, was a Protestant exile in England who—albeit an illustrious jurist and pioneering international lawyer—is today chiefly remembered for the short chapter in his De legationibus, in which he expressed his immense admiration for Machiavelli’s republicanism and ‘remarkable insight’.35 Very different was the situation in Italy itself where a relationship with, or use of, Machiavelli’s work was generally cloaked either by circumlocution or silence: and it is not always easy to determine whether such caution was designed to avoid criticism or conceal plagiarism. Francesco Sansovino, for example, in his treatment of the affairs of France and Germany (1561), mentioned ‘Vincenzo Lupono’ and ‘Thomaso Auths’ (that is Vincent de la Loupe and Philipp Ludwig Authaeus) in his list of sources, but scrupulously failed to acknowledge the pages of material he had filched from Machiavelli’s Ritratti.36 Remigio Nannini, too, who had happily cited and named Machiavelli in his Orationi militari of 1557, retained these citations in later editions, but no longer 33 Ioannis Michaeli Bruti Florentinae historiae libri octo priores (Lyon, 1562). On Bruto, see William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (1968), 171–82. Federigo Alberti’s Le difese de’ Fiorentini contra le false calunnie del Giovio (Lyon, 1566) is primarily a translation of the ‘Proemio’ of Bruto’s Historiae. 34 Paolo Mini, Difesa della citta` di Firenze contra le calunnie & maledicentie de maligni (Lyon, 1577); Giovanni Matteo Toscano, Peplus Italiae (Paris, 1578). See Mattei (1969), 228–9, 232–3. 35 On Gentili, see below, Ch. 10. 36 Francesco Sansovino, Del governo de i regni et delle republiche (Venice, 1561), fos. 20v–25, 26v–28v. Sansovino’s list of those sources he is prepared to acknowledge is at sig. *4v.

180

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

identified their author. Similarly, in his Considerazioni civili, first published in 1582, Nannini discussed various political issues concerning Venice and took into account the views of Machiavelli, whom he described as a writer ‘certo, onorato e grave’, but identified only as ‘l’Autore de’ Discorsi sopra Tito Livio’.37 Corbinelli, too, identified material as deriving from ‘l’autore de Discorsi’; Ammirato, who often used the same formula, also favoured ‘alcuno’; and Canoniero settled for ‘un certo autore’, and even the minimalist ‘quidam’.38 It is, however, in treatises dealing with the art of war that we may most readily see the extent to which Italian writers remained conversant not only with Machiavelli’s politico-military ideas but also—judging by the exactitude of their citations—with the actual texts which were supposedly forbidden them. Very occasionally, an author even had the temerity (or absent-mindedness) to name Machiavelli directly as a source. Bernardino Bombini (1566), who often cited Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra and Discorsi with approval and with accurate references to the text, generally identified the author simply as ‘il Maestro di guerra fiorentino’ but, at one point, actually named the forbidden author—though whether through amnesia or defiance is unclear.39 By contrast, Francesco Ferretti (1568), condemning Italian military ineptitude, calmly explained that the reasons for this condition had been analysed ‘prudamente dal Machiavello’ in his Arte della guerra and especially towards the end of Book VII.40 Most writers were less bold; and evasion or suppression remained the norm. As early as 1564, Girolamo Maggi—citing both the Discorsi and Il Principe, and refuting Machiavelli’s arguments on fortresses point by point—referred only to ‘Il Secretario Fiorentino’. Furthermore, like Porcacchi, he not only claimed that it was many years since he had read this author’s books but he also prefaced an accurate quotation with an exculpatory ‘si io ben mi 37 See Mattei (1969), 142–5, 256–8. 38 See below, Ch. 17. 39 Bernardino Bombini, Discorsi intorno al governo della guerra et governo domestico (Naples, 1566); 2nd edn. (Venice, 1583). On Bombini, see Bozza, 41–2; Persico, Scrittori politici napoletani, 224–8; Mattei (1969), 298–9. 40 Francesco Ferretti, Della osservanza militare (Venice, 1568), 51–2. The passage is repeated unaltered in the edition of 1576.

THE INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

181

ricordo’.41 Cosimo Bartoli (1569), whose criticisms of Machiavelli reveal first-hand knowledge of the Discorsi, circumvented the censors by attributing such material to the ‘istorico fiorentino’ or ‘nostro istoriografo fiorentino’; and three decades later, Achille Tarducci (1597), while repeatedly providing precise marginal references to the Discorsi and the Arte della guerra, only acknowledged their author as ‘il Segretario’. In post-Tridentine Italy, owning up to a knowledge of Machiavelli’s work was regarded as something best avoided and there were, inevitably, many military writers who considered it prudent not to admit their debt to Machiavelli at all. An early instance of this is Centorio degli Hortensii (1558–62), who often formulated his arguments as answers to propositions with which he disagreed but never revealed that several of these were derived from Machiavelli. Equally silent about their use of the banned bogyman were Aureliano Cicuta (1566), Francesco Bocchi (1573), Pier’ Maria Contarini (1601) and, most striking of all, Lorenzo Capelloni (1576) and Imperiale Cinuzzi (1604), who incorporated or adapted large tracts of Machiavelli’s Discorsi into their own works while giving the impression that the words and ideas were their own.42 Yet the dodges and prevarications were as patchily ineffectual as the prohibitions themselves. In 1574 (when Porcacchi had been so coy about referring to Machiavelli) another historian, Orlando Malavolti, in his Dall’Historia di Siena, had occasion to quote the Istorie fiorentine, I. 5, on the early history of Italy and named Machiavelli, whom he praised as a ‘scrittore elegantissme e letterato’. In later editions, Machiavelli’s name was suppressed, and Malavolti gave his source merely as ‘another writer to whom at present it is not permitted to give name’ (altro Scrittore al quale non e` lecito al presente dar Nome). As a reference to the papal prohibition, this could scarcely be more explicit. Yet on the very next page Machiavelli is twice referred to by name, and twice again on the page after that. Nor is that all. In the ‘Tavola della prima parte’, under the letter N, ‘Nicolo` Machiavelli’ stands unashamed with a 41 Girolamo Maggi and Giacomo Castriotto, Della fortificatione della citta (Venice, 1564), fos. 13v–16v. 42 See these authors in my Index.

182

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

reference to the very page where his name has been suppressed as well as to one where it has not.43 Even more remarkable is Paolo Paruta, whose Discorsi politici are largely built upon a direct confrontation and refutation of Machiavelli’s arguments, which are generally left unidentified. But not invariably. Discussing the unhappy fate of Venice after its success at the battle of Ghiaradada and the way this had revealed the state’s inherent weaknesses, Paruta remarks that he has found these things written in some authors, though chiefly argued by ‘Nicholas Machiavel, a name which hath formerly been very famous for the curiosity of the matter which he took upon him to write on in his discourses, but it is now so condemned to perpetual oblivion by the holy Apostolick Sea, as it is not lawful to name him’. But he has just done so and, like many other Italians, he has read him, too.44 The Indexes certainly made life more difficult for writers, printers, and booksellers:45 but Machiavellian erudition did not wither and die. 43 Orlando Malavolti, Dell’Historia di Siena (Siena, 1574), 19–20; Historia de’ fatti e guerre de’ Sanesi (Venice, 1599), fos. 4–5. 44 Paolo Paruta, Discorsi Politici, (Venice, 1599), II. 3. My quotation is from the translation, Politick Discourses; Written in Italian by Paolo Paruta, A Noble Venetian, Cavalier and Procurator of St. Mark . . . Rendered into English by the Right Honorable, Henry Earl of Monmouth (1657), 131. On Paruta, see Mattei, 145–7; and also see below, Ch. 15. 45 For a clear, well-documented study of the ways in which the Index and the Inquisition affected the book trade, and of the ways in which prohibited authors (including Machiavelli) were made available, see Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press.

7 Machiavelli’s Keenest Readers: The Early Translators A particularly mysterious feature of the history of ideas is the way in which the obvious is often ignored. Much, for example, has been written about an allegedly general hostility towards Machiavelli in the sixteenth century, despite the paucity of evidence both in quantity and quality. Conversely, much has been made of Machiavelli’s pervasive ‘influence’ on the basis of a few famous men who refer to him briefly and for whom he was by no means a central source. Yet comparatively little has been said about his keenest, most vociferous, and most effective proselytizers. Machiavelli’s opinions were disseminated throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries far less by the efforts of commentators or theorists than by the numerous editions of his own writings both in their original Italian and in translations or adaptations. In the century following Machiavelli’s death, there were at least 158 editions, issues, or versions of his four major works, of which well over half appeared after the first published papal Index of Prohibited Books of 1559. And, in France especially, his works were made readily available in translations—with thirty French issues of Il Principe, thirty-five of the Discorsi, five of the Arte della guerra, and five of the Istorie fiorentine—of which barely a handful were issued before the papal ban. These are astonishing statistics for any sixteenth-century author and they do not take into account material which has survived only in manuscript. Jacques Gohory’s translation of the Discorsi, the first book of which appeared in 1544, was to remain the vehicle through which most Frenchmen, until late in the seventeenth century, came to know that text. Jean Charrier’s Art de la guerre also remained popular

184

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

throughout the same period: although, initially, Fourquevaux’s adaptation of Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra was even better known. Gaspard d’Auvergne’s Le Prince, from its first publication in 1553, remained the standard French version of Machiavelli’s most popular book for more than a century, and was generally reprinted along with Gohory and frequently also with Charrier. Moreover, since Innocent Gentillet, Machiavelli’s principal opponent in the sixteenth century, based his interpretation upon a reading of Gohory and D’Auvergne, and since he was frequently misled by their choice of language, it is evident that—in a very real sense—the most influential study of Machiavelli was accomplished by these translators. The same holds true, if to a lesser extent, in England, where Peter Whitehorne’s Arte of Warre, thrice issued in Elizabeth I’s reign, remained the only Machiavellian work available in print and in the vernacular until the publication of Bedingfield’s History of Florence in 1595. The translators are, in many ways, the key to our understanding of Machiavelli’s reception. Not only were their efforts instrumental in keeping his ideas in circulation after the cessation of native Italian editions; but their enthusiastic assessments of Machiavelli’s worth, constantly reprinted along with their translations, were far more widely circulated than any of the hostile criticisms. Yet, like so many of the writers with whom we are concerned, they are mostly obscure men whose own brief comments are often the principal remaining source for their lives and opinions. Consider, for example, the three early translators of the Arte della guerra. In 1536 the printer Miguel de Eguya of Alcala` published a work entitled Tratado de re militari. It is dedicated to Diego de Vargas de Carvajal: but the author’s name appears neither on the title page nor in the privilege. However, at the beginning of Book II, he is revealed as ‘el capitan Diego de Salazar’—a soldier about whom we know nothing except that he was also a scholar and poet.1 The only other works we have of his are a translation of 1 Diego de Salazar, Tratado de re militari (Alcala`, 1536), fo. 10. Another edition was published by Roger Velpius (Brussels, 1590). See Gerber, iii. 13–15; Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, nos. 27, 188. The 1590 edition, issued under royal licence, is especially interesting in that the authorities failed to recognize that they were, in fact, promoting a book by the wholly forbidden Machiavelli. They were not the only ones to be deceived for, nearly a century later, Sir James Turner

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

185

Appian’s Roman History, which was also published by Eguya in 1536; verses for the Spanish version of Boccaccio’s Laberinto de amor in 1546; and more verse for the Spanish translation of Sannazaro’s Arcadia in 1547.2 The Tratado is cast in the form of a dialogue between ‘el Gran capitan’, Gonzalo Ferna´ndez de Co´rdova, and Don Pedro Manrique de Lara, Duke of Najara—both of whom had died in 1515. But the work is, none the less, a rendering of Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra. Machiavelli’s protagonist, Fabrizio Colonna, is replaced by Gonzalo, while all the other parts are combined in the person of the Duke. There is little to note in the text itself which, though abridging many of Machiavelli’s linking passages, remains fairly close to the original. Even so personal a touch as the opening of Machiavelli’s first book—the observation that he cannot recall Cosimo Rucellai without tears—is appropriated by Salazar, who is overwhelmed by a similar emotion when he thinks about ‘el Gran capitan’. More interesting is Salazar’s ‘Prologo’: a faithful translation of the ‘Proemio’ of the Arte della guerra up to the point where Machiavelli laments the corruption of modern military behaviour which has led men to hate it and to avoid those engaged in it. Machiavelli goes on to claim that it is still not impossible to restore ancient virtu` so that, despite his own lack of professional practice, he has undertaken to write of these matters. Salazar, however, after the observation that men now avoid soldiers, continues thus: But judging that it would be impossible to prise modern warriors from the common usage, I have decided (because it seems that the time I have served in the wars has not left me ignorant of the things necessary for the military art) to collect from the ancient ordinances that which I have found written, and from the modern that which I have experienced; to compile the present treatise imitating many authors ancient and modern, (a critic especially hostile to what he regarded as Machiavelli’s armchair incompetence) wrote in his Pallas Armata (1683), 160: ‘I have heard that Gonsalvo di Corduba (who by his gallant Conduct recover’d the Kingdom of Naples from the French for the House of Aragon) wrote in Spanish, Trattado de re militari; if it be extant, it must be well worth the perusal, as the work of one who by his great actions had acquir’d to himself the Title of Il Gran Capitano, the Great Captain.’ If only he had known the truth! 2 See Pedro Salva´ y Mallen, Cata´logo de la Biblioteca de Salva´ (Valencia, 1872; repr. Barcelona, 1963), nos. 962, 1537, 2669, 2778.

186

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

following more than the others the opinion of Machiavelli (because he follows Vegetius and is almost like the interpeter of the other authors); and to write in our Castilian language this dialogue between the Great Captain and the Duke of Najara, in which is treated and discussed all the things necessary for war.3

Salazar has generally been dismissed as a plagiarist whose work has no independent value. In mitigation one can say that he does have the merit of recognizing the Arte della guerra as itself primarily a reworking of ancient texts; and that he accords his source rather more acknowledgement than Machiavelli vouchsafes his. It was ten years before another translator published a version of the Arte della guerra. This was in 1546 when Jean Charrier—‘natif d’Apt en Provence’, and Secretary to Jean Bernard, President of the Parlement of Paris—offered his French rendering of Machiavelli’s work, together with that of Onosander’s account of the duties of a general, to Henri the Dauphin.4 The offering was, presumably, received since we know that Henri possessed the copy which is still preserved in the Re´serve of the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France.5 In his dedication, Charrier observes that, since the decline of the Golden Age, rulers have been constrained to take up arms for the exercise of their majesty and for the defence of their people. Human ambition is such that it is impossible to hold anything in one hand without a stick in the other to retain it. 3 ‘Mas juzgando por lo que he visto que seria impossibile apartar a los presentes guerreros de la comun usanc¸a he deliberado (porque no parezca que el tiempo que yo he militado se me ha pasado ignorando las cosas necessarias a la milicia) colegir de las ordenes antiguas parte de lo que he hallado escripto: y de las modernas parte de lo que he esperimentado: y copilar el presente tratado imitando a muchos autores antiguos y modernos, siguiendo mas que a los otros el parecer de Machavelo: porque imita el a Vejecio y casi como interprete de los otros autores, escrevir en nuestra Castellana lengua este dialogo entre el Gran capitan y el duque de Najara: en el qual se tratan y disputan todas las cosas necessarias a la guerra.’ 4 L’art de la guerre compose´ par Nicolas Machiavelli, Citoien et Secretaire de Florence. L’estat aussi et charge d’un Lieutenant General d’armee, par Onosander ancien philosophe Platonique . . . Le tout traduict en vulgaire franc¸ois par Jehan Charrier natif d’Apt en Provence (Paris, 1546). See Gerber, iii. 28–30. 5 BNF Re´serve, R.523. See Ernest Quentin-Bauchart, La Bibliothe`que de Fontainebleau, no. 190, pp. 117–18. Charrier’s translation of Contarini, Des magistratz et republique de Venise compose´ par Gaspar Contarini gentilhomme Venetien, et depuis traduict de Latin en vulgaire Franc¸ois par Jehan Charrier (Paris, 1544), is dedicated to the Constable.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

187

Without arms no city can avoid the yoke of servitude. This observation leads into a long paean to war, especially remarking that warlike ancients had conquered and remained free, whereas those devoted only to the arts of peace had been subjugated. Modern armies, Charrier laments, do not conform to the ancient models but have become disordered and rebellious; and this is why he is offering his two translations, from Machiavelli and Onosander, as the ‘ointments and cataplasms which will cure the old ulcers and ills in our armies so long corrupted’. In these works the Dauphin will find the correct method for attack, defence, march, encampment, and siege, and will thus recognize both the cause of the present malady, the location of the poison, and its precise remedy. In an address to his reader, Charrier explains the style and structure of his translation of the Arte della guerra; and he begs forgiveness for having divided Machiavelli’s book into chapters ‘contre l’ordre de ses dialogues’. But he has acted thus for a good purpose. When a work is lengthy and without pause from beginning to end it engenders boredom, particularly in those unaccustomed to long reading and who love brevity. Division, moreover, while helping the memory and understanding, gives greater pleasure. Thus wise men have developed a method of breaking up a text into subjects, and have applied this to the books of Aristotle, Vitruvius, Pliny, and many others who wrote in a ‘style continu et sans division’. Charrier has himself preferred to consider the comfort of his reader rather than timidly follow his author. And, in much the same spirit, he has not followed his source word for word. There are differences between his own and the original language, and he believes that in translation it is more important to represent faithfully the intention of writers ‘que de s’amuser au langaige nu des paroles’.6 However, he requests that, should readers find that he has either cut up the text excessively 6 L’art de la guerre, ‘Charrier au Lecteur’, sig. a.6v. Cf. Charrier’s argument for chapter divisions with an almost similar statement in Bosca’s introductory remarks for his Spanish translation of Castiglione, Libro llamado el cortesano (Salamanca, 1540), sig. a.1v: ‘El auctor no dividio estos libros por capitulos. Mas agora pareciendo algunos que leer un libro desde el principio hasta el fin: fin aver donde pare o repose el espiritu: trae consigo un cansancio o hastio: se acordo enesta impression de dividir cada uno de los quatro libros por sus capitulos para mas descanso del lector: come por el progresso del parescera.’

188

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

or, on the other hand, run parts together, they would attribute this to the imperfection which afflicts every human endeavour. As a matter of fact, Charrier’s division of the text into chapters affords a considerable gain in clarity over the original: though it also emphasizes Machiavelli’s debt to Vegetius, which had been noticed by Salazar but is not specifically referred to by Charrier. Another noteworthy feature of Charrier’s edition is the evident embarrassment he felt at his own ignorance concerning Machiavelli. He assures his reader that, though it is customary to provide a biography of the author at the beginning of a work, he has decided against this procedure partly because it is not long since Machiavelli died and his writings are very recent, and partly because those who wish to know more about him could find plenty of people to satisfy their curiosity.7 This, unfortunately, we cannot do with regard either to Charrier or to the third of these early military enthusiasts, Peter Whitehorne, who Englished the Arte della guerra for his Elizabethan contemporaries. Whitehorne was, according to his own testimony, a student and ‘felow of Graies Inne’: but this cannot be corroborated from the records of that institution.8 In 1549 to 1550 he was in Italy, as we know from Sir Thomas Hoby—later himself to gain fame with a translation of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano—who tells us that he made his acquaintance there.9 Soon afterwards Whitehorne must have begun his career as a soldier, for in his Preface, written in July 1560, he tells us that about ten years previously he had served in the wars of the Emperor Charles V ‘against the Mores and certain Turkes beyng in Barberie, at the siege and winnyng of Calibbia, Monesterio and Africa’. The campaigns here mentioned must be those which opened in September 1550 in response to renewed activity by the Barbary pirates. The bombardment of Monastir is well documented, but the rest of Whitehorne’s allusion is obscure. It was during these ‘continuall broiles and unquietnesse’ that he 7 L’art de la guerre, sig. b.4v 8 The Arte of Warre written first in Italian by Nicholas Machiavell and set forthe in Englishe by Peter Whitehorne student at Graies Inne (London, 1560). At the end of Book VII Whitehorne refers to himself as ‘felow of Graise Inne’. 9 Thomas Hoby, A Booke of the Travaile and Lief of me, Thomas Hoby, ed. Edgar Powell, Camden Miscellany, 10 (1902), 19, 21, 25, 64, 61.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

189

had first translated the Arte della guerra of the ‘famous and excellente Nicholas Machiavell’; and it is this work which he is now offering to his illustrious dedicatee Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Whitehorne’s opinion of the military art in general is as elevated as that of Charrier and is expressed in similar terms; while his estimate of Machiavelli as a theorist is even more laudatory. Nothing is more ‘profitable, necessary, or more honourable, then the knowledge of service in warre, and dedes of armes’ because, due to worldly ambition, it is impossible for any ‘realme or dominion, long to continue free in quietnesse and savegarde, where the defence of the sweard is not alwaies in a readinesse’. That such liberty cannot be maintained where men neglect ‘warlike skilfulness’ is evident from the history of the ancients, and especially of the Romans who, so long as they cultivated ‘marciall feates’, prospered and increased but who, through long peace and devotion to ‘pleasure and delicatenesse’, fell suddenly into decay and utter ruin. Whitehorne can think of no better way to further the common utility than by setting forth something which would contribute to the defence of his native land. He has, accordingly, again perused his old translation of the Arte della guerra; and, since his own knowledge had been ‘marveilously holpen and increased’ by that work, he now wished to communicate it to his compatriots so that they might ‘no lesse in knowledge of warres become incomperable, then in prowes also and exercise of the same, altogether invincible’. His presumption in dedicating it to the Queen herself is justified because the ‘whole charge and furniture of warlike counsailes and preparacions’ is determined by rulers and thus, ‘under the passeport and safeconduite of your highnes moste noble name’, this foreign book would win better credit. Whitehorne boldly affirms that of many straungers, whiche from forrein countreis, have here tofore in this your Majesties realme arrived, there is none in comparison to bee preferred, before this worthie Florentine and Italian, who havyng frely without any gaine of exchaunge (as after some acquaintaunce and familiaritie will better appeare) brought with hym moste riche, rare and plentifull Treasure, shall deserve I trust of all good Englishe hartes, most lovingly and frendly to be intertained, embraced and cherished.

190

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Like many another author, Whitehorne apologizes for his literary style. The ‘grosse fasion’ of the ‘newe Englishe apparell’ with which he has clothed the original is more suitable to the camp than ‘in nice termes attired to the Carpet, and in course clothyng rather putte foorthe to battaile, then in any brave shewe prepared to the bankette’. His purpose, however, is to profit the interested warrior, not to delight the ears of the ‘fine Rethorician or daintie curious scholemanne’; and he humbly beseeches the Queen to accept this, the ‘first fruictes of a poore souldiours studie’. As a matter of fact, Whitehorne’s soldierly style is singularly effective for his appointed task. The taut muscularity of his English idiom matches that of the Italian original; and the flexibility both of his language and syntax enables him to follow his source with a literal accuracy denied to all subsequent translators. Whitehorne has never been given his due. He was the first translator of an entire work by Machiavelli into English and remains, in several respects, the best.10 Nor was his knowledge of Machiavelli limited to his chosen principal text. The Arte of Warre was first issued in 1560 and then reissued in 1573 and 1588: and to each edition was appended the translator’s Certain Waies for the orderyng of Souldiers in battelray, which he clearly regarded as a supplement to Machiavelli.11 He accordingly supplies miscellaneous information—much of it derived from very recent technical authorities such as Tartaglia and Zanchi12—on a variety of topics including fortification, the fabrication of gunpowder, saltpetre, and fireworks, and methods of signalling. In the midst of this largely pragmatic assemblage of materials, Whitehorne feels obliged to discuss the value of artillery and to test the assertion that the Romans would have fared ill against modern weaponry. And here he simply translates—unaltered and unacknowledged—the whole 10 Whitehorne is the first translator of Machiavelli into English if we except the passages incorporated by Richard Moryson, William Thomas, and George Rainsford into their works. 11 Peter Whitehorne, Certain Waies for the orderyng of souldiers in battelray, and settyng of battailes, after divers fashions, with their maner of marchyng . . . with other thynges apertaining to the warres. This work has a title page and foliation separate from the Machiavelli translation, and is dated Apr. 1562 on the colophon. 12 For Whitehorne’s use of Tartaglia and Zanchi, see J. R. Hale, Renaissance War Studies (London, 1983), 260–1, 452.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

191

of the relevant chapter of the Discorsi (II. 17).13 Then, at the end of his work, he assures his readers that: the most verteous lyfe, and government of Alexander Severus Emperour of Rome, with manie other Princes, and Comon weales, coulde not, being necligent in this kynde of studie and practis therof, save or defende theim selves, from moste shamefull endes, and miserable deathes: wherin fortune was not to be blamed, but only their folly and ignoraunce, for having never thoughte in tyme of tranquillity and pease, that it could chaunge into adversitie and trouble: the which is a comon faulte of men, not to make accompte in fayre weather of the tempest to come.14

This passage ingeniously combines an example culled from the nineteenth chapter of Il Principe with the harsh condemnation of modern pusillanimity and lack of foresight from the twenty-fourth chapter of the same work. Whitehorne certainly knew Machiavelli well: but it is also apparent that he gave some attention to Charrier’s version of the Arte della guerra and had taken advantage of the chapters into which that had been divided. Unlike his French predecessor, Whitehorne does not divide the text; but he does preface his translation with a list of ‘Certain principall thinges, contained in this woorke of Machiavel’, which, in effect, comprises an analytic table of contents. The headings are, with a number of additions, subtractions, and variants, incorporated as marginal notes throughout the printed text and, though much more numerous and precise, they do correspond to many of Charrier’s chapter headings.15 Whitehorne’s reading of 13 Whitehorne, Certain Waies, fos. 34v–38. Whitehorne entitles the chapter ‘How much the artillerie ought to be estemed of the armies now adayes, and whether the same opinion of them which is had universally, be trew’, which is a literal translation of Machiavelli’s chapter heading. 14 Ibid., fos. 49v–50. 15 For example, Whitehorne’s ‘Why a good man ought not to exercise warfare as his arte’ corresponds to Charrier’s ‘Comment un homme de bien ne doit point suivre les armes pour en faire mestier’; his ‘Oute of what Countrie is best to chuse Souldiers to make a good election’ to Charrier’s ‘De quel pays il fault lever des gens pour en faire une vraye election’; his ‘How to provid againste soche inconveniences as souldiours maie cause’ to Charrier’s ‘De pourveoir aux inconveniens que peuvent faire les gens qui suivent les armees’, and so on. There is one unusual marginal gloss in Book VI where Whitehorne illustrates Machiavelli by referring to recent English history, noting: ‘A policie that Alexander Magnus used to be assured of all Tracia, which Philip Kynge of Spaine did practise to be asured of England when he wente to sainct Quintens’.

192

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

Charrier is also suggested, if not confirmed, by his only other published work. This was a translation which appeared in 1563, allegedly from the Italian text by Fabio Cotta, of Onosander’s Generall Captaine—the very work chosen by Charrier to complement his own translation of the Arte della guerra. Here, once more, Whitehorne is refurbishing a production which he had ‘longe agon’ translated out of the Italian tongue for his ‘owne exercise’ and for the great delight he has always had in studying the art of war. Again he is concerned with the ‘common utilitie’ of his countrymen but, on this occasion, he makes his offering to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. His Preface expresses a consistent view of the profit which accrues to those states which have chiefly delighted in ‘warlike discipline’; and there is a Machiavellian ring to his recognition of the way in which men have risen from ‘vile and abject fortune’ to fame and renown by exercise of military aptitude. By such ‘science’, Whitehorne continues, foreign lands are subjugated, native lands are defended, and good laws ‘there establyshed, are quietly executed upon offenders, without rebellious disturbaunce’. The successes enjoyed by the Turks are proof of this because none of their opponents resemble or imitate antiquity to the same degree. This Whitehorne had himself witnessed when he had spent some time in Constantinople and had studied the ‘Marshiall affayres and doinges’ of the Turks—an episode which, like the rest of Whitehorne’s activities, remains shrouded in mystery.16

j acque s de vi nti mi lle Nor do we move from darkness into light when we turn to the earliest translators of Il Principe. If we except, for the moment, the Latin edition of 1560, there are three texts thus far known to survive: all are in French; and only the first is by somebody of wide repute among his contemporaries. This translator was Jacques de Vintimille—a Greek whose illustrious family had 16 Onosandro Platonico, of the Generall Captaine, and of his office, translated out of Greke into Italyan, by Fabio Cotta, a Romayne: and out of Italian into Englyshe, by Peter Whytehorne (London, 1563), sigs. a.2–4.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

193

been driven from their estates in Liguria and had taken refuge at Rhodes.17 The father had been killed at the siege of 1522 but Jacques, still a child, had the good fortune to be offered patronage by Georges de Vauzelles, a friend of his father. Jacques was educated first at Lyon and then at the University of Pavia; subsequently travelled in Spain, Africa, and Italy; served with the armies of France; and finally returned to Lyon where—equipped with a variety of languages, both classical and modern, and with a knowledge of jurisprudence, mathematics, music, architecture, and painting—he quickly took his place amidst a circle of savants and poets including Du Choul, Sce`ve, Marot, Voulte´, and Pontus de Tyard. He was asked by Franc¸ois Ier to prepare a translation of Xenophon’s Cyropedie, which was published by Groulleau in 1547; followed this with a translation of Herodian which appeared in 1554; may have contributed to the French verse edition of Theages in 1564; and finally published a Latin poem in 1572 to celebrate the defeat of the Turks. Vintimille’s versatility may be further deduced from his contributing designs for the decoration of the Chateau d’Anet.18 Already by 1546 this Castiglionesque all-rounder had given attention to Machiavelli for, in that year, he dedicated his French translation of Il Principe to the Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency, who was also the recipient of Gohory’s Premier livre des Discours and, incidentally, of Charrier’s Republique de Venise. According to Vintimille’s brief autobiography he also offered a translation of the Arte della guerra to the Constable: but this has not thus far come to light. In his dedication of Le Prince, Vintimille admits to some trepidation for he is, as he explains, himself a foreigner originating from the remotest part of Greece. He fears rebuke for his temerity in now working with three languages—Italian, French, and Latin—all of which differ from his native tongue; but a certain M. Rambouillet,19 to whom he had 17 On Vintimille, see Ludovic de Vauzelles, Vie de Jacques, comte de Vintimille, conseiller au parlement de Bourgogne, litte´rateur et savant du seizie`me sie`cle, d’apre`s des documents ine´dits (Orle´ans, 1865). E´mile Louis Jean Legrand, Bibliographie helle´nique (Leroux, 1885–1906), gives a list of Vintimille’s works. 18 Yates, The French Academies, 41, 138; Vauzelles, Vie de Jacques, 60. 19 Probably Jacques d’Angenne II, Seigneur de Rambouillet, who died in 1568. See Louis Moreri, Le Grand Dictionnaire historique, ou le me´lange curieux de l’histoire sacre´e et profane (Paris, 1759), under ANGENNES.

194

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

long been obliged, had commanded that he should expose himself to the Constable’s judgement with his translation. This Vintimille now did. And the copy has remained in manuscript ever since.20

guillaume cappel Far better known are the labours of two Frenchmen, Guillaume Cappel and Gaspard d’Auvergne, who published independent translations of Il Principe in 1553. Cappel, born in 1530, was a member of a distinguished literary and professional family. He became a doctor and, almost fifty years after his Machiavellian venture, published a memorandum on dietary during time of plague, and edited various cases for his famous colleague Jean Fernel.21 Cappel’s father, Jacques, was a lawyer who became Avocat du Roi au Parlement de Paris and concerns us only because, in 1535, he made a speech praising Franc¸ois Ier for his religious zeal: observing that the ancient states had prospered despite the fact that their religion was false, and that they ‘lived in error and darkness’, because they believed it to be true and held it in reverence. This oration by Jacques Cappel, writes Innocent Gentillet, who records the occasion, ‘had truly a little of Machiavell his doctrine, to say that a false religion was cause that the Paynims prospered’.22 20 Chantilly, Muse´e Conde´ MS 693: Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavel, citoyen et secre´taire de Florence, traduict en franc¸oys, MDXLVI, par Jacques de Vintemille. See H. d’Orle´ans, Chantilly: Le Cabinet des Livres. Manuscrits (Paris, 1900), i, no. 315, pp. 254–5. Vintimille was clearly concerned about the value of translation in general and about his own skills in particular. Cf. his Advertissement et remonstrance aux censeurs de la langue franc¸oise which is appended to the 1580 edition of the Herodian. A century later, an apologist for Machiavelli, Louis Machon, doubted the existence of Vintimille’s translation. Machon did know of D’Auvergne—but thought that his work had been a translation of the Discorsi. See BNF MS fr. 19046, p. 82. 21 On Cappel, see the entry in Nouvelle biographie universelle. 22 Gentillet, Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintentir en bonne paix un Royeaume ou autre Principaute´. Divisez en trois parties: assavoir, du Conseil, de la Religion & Police que doit tenir un Prince. Contre Nicolas Machiavel Florentin (Geneva, 1576), 242; A Discourse upon the meanes of wel-governing and maintaining in good peace, a kingdom or other principalitie. Divided into three parts, namely The Counsell, the Religion, and the Policie, which a Prince ought to hold and follow.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

195

It is not likely that Jacques knew much, if anything, about Machiavelli: but young Guillaume certainly did. His Le Prince, which was published at Paris by Charles Estienne, the King’s printer, was dedicated to Jean Bertrand, Lord Privy Seal; and it was accompanied with poems of praise by Jean Dorat, Marc-Antoine de Muret, E´tienne Jodelle, and Remy Belleau—all members of the Ple´iade with whom, it seems, Cappel was on more than nodding terms. The translation itself is very literal and sinewy. Yet, apart from the single issue of Gohory’s version, which is almost entirely based upon Cappel’s work, this excellent translation was never reprinted.23 Cappel’s Preface, addressed to his dedicatee, is a statement of considerable interest as a mid-century interpretation of Machiavelli’s text. It opens with the customary servilities and excuses for offering something which really belongs to another. However, the translator has always believed that nothing better becomes human nature than profiting others, so binding the community of men more powerfully than could nature herself. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who, in their books—‘like shops of wisdom’—treated that knowledge which, reminding us of its origin, brings us nearer to God. Without such knowledge man would know little more than his name and form: with it he is constrained to employ Reason, ‘which is the mark of our excellence’. Man, driven by necessity, does not recognize where his own good really lies; but knowledge brings him closer to that goal for which God fashioned him. There are, naturally, diverse human aims but, just as the more worthy the goal the more worthy the man who pursues it, so ‘la politique’ is the very summit of that philosophy which is the Queen of our life. It is the goal of goals—‘la fin des fins’—which appraises all those who participate in the active life better than they are able to appraise themselves. Without political science, all other forms of knowledge, which are but handmaids or ornaments of ‘nostre grande Dame’, count for nothing. She stands in relation to them Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine, trans. Simon Patericke (1602), 135. Louis Machon, 78, alludes to this oration. 23 Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavelle secretaire et citoien de Florence. Traduit d’Italien en Franc¸ois Par Guillaume Cappel (Paris, 1553). See Gerber, iii. 33–4; Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, no. 102.

196

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

as the architect or master of a ship stands in relation to workmen or sailors, for the people can never carry on their work diligently if they are exposed as prey either to the tumult of the multitude or to the tyranny of the great (‘la mutinerie de la commune ou la tirannie des plus gros’). On the other hand, when the republic is well governed by magistrates, ‘the souls of its body’—through arms in time of war and through laws in time of peace—the whole state flourishes, and the handling of affairs conforms to that of ‘this mighty divine providence’ in the theatre of the universe. It is providence which brought men together and led them away from savagery to civilized society. Man is by nature gregarious but, more than any other animal, he is ungrateful to his governor, so that it is the lot of princes to sow good works and to reap a bad name for doing it: ‘de sorte que le propre des Princes est de semer bonnes oeuvres, pour recueillir mauvais bruict’. This ‘science’, says Cappel—if it may be so termed, and not rather a ‘Caballe’ handed down from father to son—was invented through necessity or was, perhaps, bestowed by heaven upon some divine spirit. As its use is so necessary, so knowledge of it is most honourable. This is a highly elevated view of political knowledge. ‘La politique’ is likened to Divine Providence. It is, indeed, God-given. And it is at this unlikely point that Machiavelli comes upon the scene. Cappel rebukes that majority of authors who have written more for show than for practical utility (‘plus pour la monstre que pour le prouffit’), indulging rather in wishful thinking than in describing a republic. If they had concerned themselves with what is feasible instead of setting up governments of which they are both lords and subjects, they might have acquired some reputation amongst princes rather than the hollow admiration of the sophists. Neither their eloquence nor all human learning can persuade a prince to consent to his own ruin, which would surely come about if anyone had followed their advice amidst so many who did not—‘si quelcun eust suivi leur institution entre tant qui ne la suivoient point’—a fundamental Machiavellism expressed in the fifteenth chapter of Il Principe and repeated (as we shall see) by D’Auvergne in the preface to his own translation. Machiavelli is a very different kind of writer. He discusses everything according to the manner of his own time, which, Cappel

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

197

observes, is almost the same as that of contemporary France—‘qui est quasi la nostre’—a remark unlikely to commend itself to the ranks of Italophobes who were already gathering strength. Nevertheless, in Cappel’s view, Machiavelli’s approach is correct, for the true goal both of political writers and of rulers is to conserve and augment the state. Furthermore, Machiavelli had a complete, healthy, and unbiased judgement; a sound method (‘bon moien de proceder’); a style appropriate to his subject; a knowledge of history; and an assurance which derives from experience. He reprimands faults with severity; resolves difficulties with wisdom; and seeks out the causes of change. In short, writes Cappel— adapting a phrase from the historian Justin, which was itself used by Machiavelli in Il Principe—he lacks nothing to be a prince, save the power and name: ‘il ne luy deffaut rien pour estre Prince que la puissance et nom du Prince’.24 Indeed, in Cappel’s opinion, Machiavelli’s thoroughness has left nothing for his successors either to add to or subtract from his work, so that those who hold opinions contrary to his own simply do not hold good opinions. Cappel lays great stress on the thoroughness of Machiavelli’s work because he is aware that there are some who accuse the author of fashioning too rigorous a prince. Such people, he retorts, seem too rigorous themselves, for one can excuse Machiavelli by the example of the good doctor who pays less attention to the corrupt taste of an invalid than to the cure, and who applies to bad illnesses stronger medicines. So will the prince, continues Cappel—changing his metaphor—like a musician extend the rigour of his justice to create a harmonious accord with the sweetness of his humanity. This notion of the need for strong medicines is reminiscent of the remarks with which Bernardo di Giunta prefaced his edition of Il Principe in 1532; and it had already been used by Nifo in 1523 to introduce his own adaptation of Machiavelli’s works. For obvious reasons, even admirers considered Il Principe powerful medicine. It is, therefore, noteworthy that Cappel explicitly declines to refute those who asserted that Machiavelli was without religion. These 24 Machiavelli, in Il Principe, 6, discusses Hiero of Syracuse, saying that he lacked nothing to reign but a kingdom. His source is Justin, XXIII. 4. Cf. Nifo, De regnandi peritia, III. 6.

198

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

folk, he believes, are more concerned with broadcasting their own opinions than with learning from others, seeing that they advance such an enormity without any reason that one can find in the book: ‘veu qu’ilz mettent en avant une chose si enorme sans aucune occasion, qu’on puisse apercevoir en ce livre’. This must be a reply to a gibe by Paolo Giovio which asserted that Machiavelli was a ‘mocker and an atheist’.25 But it remains a strange reading of the central chapters of Il Principe, which deliberately challenge the efficacy of traditional Christian morality in a violent, immoral world. For the rest, Cappel concludes, Machiavelli has dealt so well with every part of politics that he has already acquired as much praise in all of them as every other writer has for each single aspect. It is the general opinion that of all books this one is the best, not only because it is the most recently published, but because the matter and form of monarchical government is the most excellent: ‘Des livres duquel toutesfois au jugement d’un chacun. cetuy-cy est le mieux faict tant pour estre le dernier compose´ que d’autant que le subject & forme de Republique en monarchie est la plus excellente.’ This judgement may be proved by the example of France, which has never, in Cappel’s opinion, been better governed than at present—though he does not explain why, in that case, such strong medicines are now required.

g a s p a r d d’a u v e r g n e A somewhat similar view of Il Principe was advanced by its other French translator in 1553.26 This was Gaspard d’Auvergne, who remains a thoroughly obscure figure although he, too, like Cappel, was on friendly terms with members of the Ple´iade and was able to elicit a eulogistic liminary verse for his version of Il Principe from Marc-Antoine de Muret. According to a brief manuscript biography by Jean Falco, D’Auvergne was born in Limoges; had a good 25 Giovio, Elogia (1546), 194. 26 Le Prince de Nicolas Macchiavelli, trans. Gaspard d’Auvergne (Poitiers, 1553). See Gerber, iii. 30–3; Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, no. 103.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

199

education both in the law and the classical authors; and spent some time travelling in Germany and Italy before returning to his native land and settling down as a lawyer in the duchy of Chaˆtellerault, where he died in 1569 as a result of an operation for the stone.27 D’Auvergne offered his translation to ‘James d’Ammilton, duc de Chastelheraut, comte d’Araines, tuteur unique de la roine d’Escosse, gouverneur et seconde personne dudit royaume’. James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran, had been chosen Regent and Governor of Scotland in December 1542 after the death of James V, when the Princess Mary was only a couple of weeks old. In the following March his appointment was confirmed and he was declared the second person in the realm; and it was in July 1548 that France granted him the duchy of Chaˆtellerault.28 D’Auvergne considers ‘this little work’ to be marvellously appropriate to so great a man of affairs as his dedicatee. The original author, he writes, deals with nothing other than the acquisition and maintaining of ‘his own’ in which he discerns the whole aim of that prince depicted for us: not wishing to follow in this the method of those who have written before him on a similar subject: who have delineated in their writings I know not what princely perfection inimitable to all human beings, given the fragile condition of human nature. On the contrary, this writer has wished to match the form of his precepts only to that which is subject to experience and the most common sort of action which wise princes have employed intending, as I have said, to conserve and augment their domain: considering it to be singularly inept to point out a road where no one goes, to avoid that which is trodden by the whole world.29

D’Auvergne himself recognizes that there are difficulties in thus facing up to the harsh realities of terrestrial affairs and, unlike Cappel, he acknowledges not only that Machiavelli’s language seems to be a little too free—‘un peu trop licentieux’—but 27 Gaspardi Arverni Elogium by Jean Falco, in BNF MS fr. 23045, fos. 91–2. 28 On Hamilton’s vacillating and ineffectual career, see the article by Robert Dunlop in DNB. Marcus Merriman, in his article on Hamilton in the new DNB, is a good deal more charitable. But I remain unconvinced that Hamilton was much better than a vacillating bungler. 29 Le Prince, trans. D’Auvergne, sigs. p.2v–3r.

200

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

also that he has not ‘followed the most virtuous route’ in having authorized ‘in some places that which has an appearance of vice’. This is, however, excused on the grounds that Machiavelli, ‘wishing to keep to the nature of his subject, and pursue the ends he proposed’, could scarcely have spoken otherwise. It is difficult, without the express favour of God, for a prince to maintain himself and avoid the inconveniences to which he is prone—amongst such powerful and ambitious neighbours, and such evil and faithless subjects—if he wishes ‘never to relax the bridle from the severity of the rules of conscience’. It is the law of the world, naturally vicious, that one cannot prosper for long, even in sovereign dignity, ‘without knowing how to make use of vice in necessity and—when the occasion is at an end—knowing how to return immediately to the path of virtue’. Saintly folk, D’Auvergne argues, have often demonstrated for us the quality of this world by their desire to divorce themselves from that commerce with men and with mundane affairs which they deem wholly repugnant to the integrity of the evangelical life. Nevertheless, this notion of withdrawal would be extraordinarily pernicious were it to be adopted by everyone: for natural necessity constrains us to live one with another in a politic society ‘approved by the Scriptures’. We have had to invent laws for governing these mixed bodies of which there are as many varieties as there are kingdoms and communities. Yet they all have some logic founded on the appearance of divine law: ‘quelque raison fondee sur la semblance de la loy divine’. They differ from this divine law in many respects: but the nearer they approach it the more perfect they may be considered—for who can better provide the means by which to govern created beings than the creator Himself. Just as he has kept to himself his opinions concerning his sovereignty, as inscrutable secrets, from his creatures, so one must not be astonished if the manner employed by princes, God’s lieutenants in this world, to command men are most often not understood by their subjects, and seem sometimes far beyond common and ordinary laws (‘semble quelquefois exorbitantes des loix communes et ordinaires’). For which I can offer no other reason save that I believe that God has permitted a certain privilege to kings, given the weighty charge they have to bear in ruling a body composed of infinite people. To this the commandment of the Apostle

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

201

well conforms, saying that we have no choice but to obey our princes even when they appear evil and impious.30

From all this, says D’Auvergne, we may silently (‘taisiblement’) infer that it is sometimes licit for our monarchs, according to their affairs, to range beyond the limits of virtue in order to right this wicked and corrupt world which is subject to them. In doing this their power is still approved by God: a paradox which is so analysed and discussed by our author, yet so ill-sounding at first acquaintance, that I thought it necessary to make use of this preface to ensure that your Majesty might be less offended when he encounters this bold, new discourse the reading of which I, nevertheless, hope will prove pleasurable as much for his manner of proceeding (not hitherto used by any similar author) as for his teaching which is entirely appropriate to the present time—revealing, as it does, the deceits and wickedness of men.

D’Auvergne’s special pleading is, in many ways, extraordinary. In the first place, he appears to have been acutely conscious that his translation was likely to arouse the ire of conventional readers. Next, in order to exculpate Machiavelli’s embarrassing political morality, he proceeds simply to paraphrase the very argument from the fifteenth chapter of Il Principe most likely to give offence. He then glosses this argument (based on the necessities imposed by an evil world) by pressing into service a traditional commonplace of Christian political thought which was heavily exploited throughout the sixteenth century: that kings must be obeyed because, as God’s terrestrial lieutenants, their behaviour is beyond the comprehension of common wits. Thus St Paul the Apostle is called upon to testify as a character witness for Niccolo` Machiavelli. And it is as well to remember two things about this curious justification for the Florentine’s topsy-turvy ethic. First, it was included in all subsequent editions of D’Auvergne’s translation, which, despite its pleonastic flabbiness and general inferiority to Cappel’s version, enjoyed some twenty printings up to the mid-seventeenth century. Secondly, as a result of this popularity, it must have reached a far wider audience than any of the writings against Machiavelli.31 30 Le Prince, trans. D’Auvergne, sig.
.4. 31 The printing history of D’Auvergne’s translation is most readily traced in Innocenti and Bertelli.

202

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

jacque s gohory There were only two vernacular translations of Machiavelli’s Discorsi published in the sixteenth century. One of these, in Spanish, was by Juan Lorenzo Otevanti of Valladolid, who has otherwise left no record for posterity.32 The other was by Jacques Gohory, and this vied in popularity with D’Auvergne’s Prince—indeed for much of its history it was issued with D’Auvergne in a composite volume of French renderings of Machiavelli. Gohory is the best documented of all Machiavelli’s early translators, and his interest in the Florentine’s writings continued throughout the vicissitudes of nearly three stormy decades of French history and despite a host of conflicting claims upon his energies. For Gohory, like so many sixteenth-century writers, pursued a bewildering multiplicity of interests. He was born about 1520 and died in March 1576, having shown proficiency not only as a translator but also as an editor, poet, lawyer, doctor, alchemist, magician, and historian.33 He was especially absorbed by the problems of Paracelsian medicine; published an important Compendium on this complex topic, complete with notes and a biography and catalogue of Paracelsus himself; and, at the very end of his life, engaged in an alchemical 32 Discursos de Nicolao Machiaveli. Dirigidos al muy alto y poderoso Sen˜or don Philippe Principe de Espan˜a nuestro Sen˜or (Medina del Campo, 1552). This version, dedicated to the Prince of Spain, Philip, son of Charles V, came with a privilege, dated 15 Mar. 1550, from the Emperor himself. It was reprinted in 1555, again addressed to Philip, who was, by this time, King of England and of Naples as well as Prince of Spain: but thereafter the text seems to have fallen victim to the rigour of the Spanish Inquisition; and both editions are of the utmost rarity. See Gerber, iii. 4, 115–16; Innocenti and Bertelli, Secolo XVI, nos. 101, 116; and especially Puigdome`nech, Maquiavelo en Espan˜a, 97–111. 33 On Gohory see E. T. Hamy, ‘Un Pre´curseur de Guy de la Brosse: Jacques Gohory et le Lycium Philosophal de Saint-Marceau-le`s-Paris (1571–1576)’, Nouvelles Archives du Muse´um d’Histoire Naturelle, 4th ser., 1 (Paris, 1899); Enea Balmas, ‘Jacques Gohory traduttore del Machiavelli (con documenti inediti)’, Studi Machiavelliani (Verona, 1972), 1–52. See also the pioneering articles by W. F. Bowen, ‘ ‘‘L’histoire de la terre neuve du Peru’’: A translation by Jacques Gohory’ and ‘The Earliest Treatise on Tobacco’, Isis, 28 (1938), 330–63; ‘Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Machiavelli’, Italica, 27 (1950), 313–20; Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, v. 636– 40; D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London, 1958), 96–106.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

203

controversy with Alexandre de la Tourette. But his interests ranged even wider. He wrote a general study of the magical and divinatory arts; an excellent textbook on viniculture; and the earliest known treatise devoted entirely to tobacco. He translated not only Machiavelli but also Livy; a history of Peru; and Levinus Lemnius’s De occultis naturae miraculis. He wrote prefaces for the treatise on lute-playing by his friend Adrien le Roy and for various musical publications by Orlando di Lasso. And, in addition to all this, he found time to translate three books of the Amadis de Gaule, and to edit or comment upon La fontaine perilleuse and the Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d’Or: all of which he interpreted as alchemical allegories. Gohory was also very well connected. He claimed to be closely related to Emile Perrot, ‘Conseiller au Parlement’, and to Claude Fauchet, ‘President de la cour de la monnaie’; and he worked for a time both in England and in Rome with Odet de Selve, the French ambassador. He knew a flock of academic, artistic, and literary figures including the physicians Fernel, Pare´, Chapelain, Chastellan, and the royal doctors Botal and Renault Vigor. He was acquainted with the writers Joachim du Bellay, Olivier de Magny, Charles Fontaine, Estienne Tabourot, Jean Dorat, Remy Belleau, Jean-Antoine de Baı¨f, Jodelle, Muret, Denisot, Martin, Nicolas Herberay des Essarts, and Pasquier. Several of these authors provided liminary verses for Cappel’s translation of Il Principe, and it appears that Cappel, whom we know to have moved in similar circles, was also a friend of Gohory and a frequent visitor to his home—though he may have outstayed his welcome.34 According to his own testimony Gohory became the central figure of an informal academy, the ‘Lycium philosophal de SaintMarceau-le`s-Paris’, which used to meet to conduct alchemical experiments, perform music, and play bowls and ninepins. There was, none the less, a tetchy side to Gohory’s character, for he frequently signed himself Solitarius or le Solitaire; employed the motto Envie d’envie en vie, to indicate the jealousy endured by writers; and, towards the end of his life, ranted against the 34 See below, p. 211.

204

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

‘abominable ingratitude’ of those literary courtiers who barred him access to the royal family—though they did not prevent his being commissioned to complete Paulus Aemilius’s history of France at a salary of 500 livres a year.

g o h o r y : m a c h i a v e l l i’ s g reat publicist It was on 12 April 1544 that Denys Janot completed his printing of Gohory’s translation of the first book of Machiavelli’s Discorsi. This was Gohory’s first published work, though he must simultaneously have been preparing a translation of the opening book of Livy’s first Decade. He presented the manuscript of the latter text to an unknown prince (probably Anne de Montmorency) on 6 August 1544:35 but it did not get into print until 1548, when it was published at Paris by Gilles Corrozet.36 On 28 September 1548 Estienne Groulleau reprinted the first book of Gohory’s Discours, together with the two remaining books; and in 1559 there were three further issues of the complete translation. Yet it was not until the next issue of the text by Le Mangnier in 1571 that Gohory’s name actually appears on the title page and in the preliminaries; and his name is similarly acknowledged in the only issue of his alleged translation of Il Principe published by Le Mangnier in the same year. All these issues constitute what may be termed ‘authentic’ printings of Gohory’s Machiavelli translations: that is editions in which the translator himself was probably involved.37 But there were, in addition, a long series of pirated issues which not only suppressed Gohory’s name but coupled his Discours with D’Auvergne’s Le Prince in a composite volume. This series was 35 Bibliothe`que de l’Institut, MS 677. The name of the dedicatee is missing from the MS but was almost certainly Montmorency. See the Preface du Traducteur in the 1548 printing of the Livy, sig. a.2, where Gohory claims to have done the translation more to obey the command of the Constable than in the hope of doing it well or obtaining honour. He also dedicated his L’histoire de la terre neuve de Peru` en l’Inde Occidentale (Paris, 1545) to Anne de Montmorency. 36 Le premier livre de la premiere decade de Tite Live de Padoue, des histoires depuis la ville fonde´e, traduit de Latin en Franc¸ois par Jacques Gohori Parisien (Paris, 1548). 37 Innocenti and Bertelli, Secolo XVI, nos. 65 (Janot, 1544); 75 (Groulleau, 1548); 76 (Janot, 1548); 127 (Groulleau, 1559); 148 (Mangnier, 1571).

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

205

initiated by Marnef and Cavellat in 1571 and was continued by a variety of publishers well into the seventeenth century.38 The various editions of Gohory’s Machiavelli were accompanied by laudatory verses by divers hands and by a number of liminary letters in which Gohory dedicates his work, explains his method and purpose, and provides his estimate of Machiavelli’s worth— the whole series culminating in the Vie de Nicolas Machiavel, which precedes his Prince of 1571. Much of this is highly ingenious, for Gohory was an adroit flatterer of great men; and, though it takes us beyond the chronological limits of this chapter, the material merits consideration here not only to clarify Gohory’s position, but also to show the nature of what must be regarded as the best-informed critical comment on Machiavelli circulating in France up to the time of the St Bartholomew massacre. Apart from Gohory’s own observations, the most interesting preliminary—which accompanies every edition of the Discours— is the verse by the noted author Nicolas Herberay des Essars, addressed in all issues prior to 1571 ‘au traducteur des discours de Necolas Macchiavelli’, and referring to the translator as ‘Trescher amy’. It is only in the Le Mangnier printing of 1571 that this verse is addressed openly ‘a` Iaq. Gohory’, and the relevant line is revised as ‘Cher Gohory’. Herberay opens by saying that since, amongst wise men, the translator has the reputation of writing French as well or better than any other contemporary, he begs him—both for his own advancement and for the delight of illustrious minds—to finish this work which will completely reveal Titus Livy to them: Puis que tu as le bruit entre les sages D’avoir escrit en Franc¸ois proprement, Autant ou plus qu’autre ait fait de nos aages: Je te suppli’ pour ton avancement Trescher amy, et le contentement Des clairs esprits, paracheve cest oeuvre, Par qui du tout Tite Live on descoeuvre. 38 Innocenti and Bertelli, Secolo XVI, nos. 150, 151, 159, 164, 165, 175, 196; Secolo XVII, nos. 3, 8, 16, 16c, 29, 32, 33, 36, 45.

206

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

And, continues Herberay, if heaven grants Gohory sufficiently long life, then he should go further and, writing night and day, make Livy live again as much in French as in good Latin. Making due allowance for liminary hyperbole, this does suggest that the young Gohory already enjoyed some reputation for stylistic facility and felicity amongst a literary coterie; that Machiavelli’s Discorsi were thought to provide valuable insights into the work of Livy; and that Gohory’s current translation of the Roman historian was itself eagerly anticipated. Gohory himself remarks, in the dedication of his Livy manuscript, that he was working day and night to ‘polish and shape’ his spirit and his pen. In fact, he never completed this translation although, twenty-five years later, he did publish a Latin edition of all forty-five extant books of Livy’s Roman History, with learned commentaries by a host of authorities ancient and modern, and his own Animadversiones on the first three books.39 In these Animadversiones, a brief reference to his work on Machiavelli occurs in a note to a passage in Livy III. 20: ‘Nor was there, as yet, that disregard of the Gods, which now prevails in the present age, nor did everyone adapt oaths and laws according to his own interpretation’—a passage cited in Latin by Machiavelli in Discorsi, I. 13.40 Gohory mentions that he had, in his youth, translated Machiavelli’s commmentaries on Livy, and that he had shown him to be not an interpreter of words, like grammarians, but rather a practical teacher who revealed the true fruit that may be had of history, providing patterns to be adapted according to our customs for daily use, ‘just as Livy advises in the preface of the work’.41 Gohory had made a similar point concerning Livy himself when, in the Preface to his original translation of the first part of the Decades, he had praised the Roman as the greatest of all historians as much for the ‘profound sense of his discourse as for the gravity 39 Titi Livii Patavini Historiae Romanae ab urbe condita, libri xlv. quotquot ad nostram aetatem pervenerunt, cum commentariis omnium interpretetum ad explicationem locorum difficilium, e` regione insertis (Paris, 1573). 40 ‘Nondum haec, quae nunc tenet saeculum, negligentia Deum venerat, nec interpretando sibi quisque jusjurandum et leges aptas faciebat.’ 41 Gohory, Animadversiones, fo. 34.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

207

and sweetness of his style’; adding that his work deals with the most important issues ‘de plus utile exemple’. If those who have the management of states would conform to these lessons and would follow this republic which, by its good government, ruled the world, then the waging of wars would be better conducted, and the rule of cities better established.42 It none the less remains apparent that, however valuable the exemplars contained in Livy, skilled exegesis is needed to reveal their practical application; and Gohory is deeply impressed by the way in which Machiavelli interprets his Roman source for the benefit of modern readers. In the letter ‘au lecteur’ which precedes Le premier livre des discours in 1544, Gohory praises Machiavelli, whom he describes metaphorically as a ‘Florentine merchant’ and as a completely sincere man with good wares to offer each and every one. He only sells gross, and his merchandise is neither painted nor decked out; but, with a word, he reveals things in clear daylight to whoever wishes to see. Gohory is sure that he will be well received by the French who, once they get acquainted with him, ‘would not wish for anything in the world not to know him’. Machiavelli has written on many matters such as the history of Florence, the prince, and the art of war: but here in the Discorsi he ‘will recount to you everything good that he has ever said’. Rome is his preoccupation: ‘its majesty, its empire, its excellent government in peacetime, its virtue and unrivalled prowess in war’. Do you know, Gohory asks his reader, Machiavelli’s manner of proceeding? First, in few words, he gives you the excellence of the Roman history as Titus Livy has described it: then on this basis he vigorously debates the deep problems from one side and the other; and finally resolves them with some profound political paradox. And, in doing this, he completely lays bare the secrets of this great government which conquered and subjected the world. But, when the matter requires it, he speaks also of the Egyptians, Greeks, Turks, French, Germans, Spaniards, English, and often of the Italian seigniories, expounding the perfections and 42 Livy (1548), sigs. a.2–3: ‘Auquel si ceulx se conformoient qui ont le maniment des estatz, et vouloient ensuivre ceste republique qui par son bon gouvernement a commande´ au monde, le fait des guerres seroit mieux conduit et la police des Citez mieux establie.’

208

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

imperfections of all these famous kingdoms and republics: all this in such a way that these discourses are a true mirror of universal history which may greatly serve for the instruction of all manner of people.43

Gohory concludes his letter with an assurance that, if the reader gives this first attempt a good welcome, two other books (that is the rest of Machiavelli’s Discorsi) would follow. Four years later they did; and Gohory provided another preface. This time he claimed that Machiavelli should be no less prized by his contemporaries than Tacitus, Sallust, and even Titus Livy himself, for, without Machiavelli, we could collect little fruit from these writers and would not know to what use they should be put. ‘Thus all these historians avail us little without the aid of Machiavelli, nor all the bounty of good things to one who does not understand how to employ them’.44 Gohory’s conviction that Machiavelli was the essential interpreter of the greatest Roman historian was part of his generally exalted estimate of the Florentine’s worth. In the dedicatory epistle to Gabriel le Veneur, Bishop of Evreux—which preceded the 1544 edition of the Premier livre des discours to which it properly applies, and which accompanied every subsequent edition but one of the complete translation—Gohory explains his purpose in undertaking his great task.45 He had long wished to make some suitable gift to the Bishop but, being too young and tender to produce anything worthy, he had discovered that a Florentine, Machiavelli by name, could provide him with credit, ‘being one of the richest and most opulent in Europe in the merchandise with which he deals’. Gohory is confident that Le Veneur will be happy with the exchange when he gets to know this man who is ‘esteemed by everyone as sincere, loyal, and more solvent than I’. Anyone who would suggest that Machiavelli believed that one should not offer worldly princes such works of the spirit (‘teles oeuvres d’esprit’) 43 Le premier livre des discours (1544), sig. a˜.4. 44 Le Second livre des Discours (1548), sig. aˆ.2r–v. Cf. Gentillet for the opposite view that Machiavelli was a very poor interpreter of Livy. See below, Ch. 9, p. 304. 45 Le premier livre des discours (1544), sigs. a˜.2v–3v. Gohory also dedicated his De usu et mysteriis Notarum liber (Paris, 1550) to Le Veneur, whom he there calls his ‘Moecenas’ at sig. aˆ.4.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

209

wrongs the author, who fully understood that we owe such rulers the first fruits of our profit (which were formerly presented to God whose lieutenants they are) since it is to them ‘that the Muses and Letters owe their existence, just as earthly plants live on celestial heat and dew’. Virtue, Gohory continues, in order to gain advantage must, with all its might, pursue the favour and alliance of Fortune for fear that it might otherwise remain like a ghost without flesh and bone—‘de peur qu’elle ne demeure comme un phantosme sans chair et os’. In an extended eulogy of Virtue and Fortune, Gohory draws a striking contrast between ideals and their practical application. Virtue and Fortune are the two mistresses of the entire course of human life, and their union provides a soul for the body. If certain folk are more content with a collection of salutations and fine appearances than with facts, then sentence may be passed against them. The Muse to whom Gohory is wedded is of a different opinion—that of Plato, Aristotle, and Archimedes, her ancient husbands. Of these remarkable men, one remained with Dionysius the tyrant, another with Alexander the Great, and the third with Hiero: and today, regarding the spiritual monuments they have bequeathed to us, we can say, ‘O happy beings to have found such support for your virtue, without which your great reputation would have been interred with your bodies’. This is what happened to all those who preferred unfortunate virtue to virtuous fortune—‘Ainsi en est il pris a` tous ceux qui ont prefere´ la vertu infortunee a` la vertueuse fortune’—and who thought that they could fly without wings or achieve marvels by sheer effort of will destitute of all power. ‘But if they praise fortitude, liberality, and temperance in the man who has not advanced beyond the limits of a mere wish to struggle, to give, and to abstain from sensuality, I would dearly like to know if, in all their practices, they would thus patiently accept the mere intention as the effect.’ Gohory now ingeniously turns this discussion of the efficacy of Virtue allied with Fortune into an elaborate compliment to his dedicatee. Seeing that the Italian Machiavelli may have been presented to ‘I know not whom without reputation, dignity, and power’, then the French Machiavelli would in this case surpass him since he is received by a hand ‘sacred, magnificent, and

210

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

honourable’ which would not deny to one who belongs to it the benediction it bestows on strangers. Such benediction could, simply by its favour, augment the mind and industry of a young artificer and serve as protection and safeguard for his first work. This work is, of course, Gohory’s translation of Machiavelli’s Discorsi, which he is sure the Bishop of Evreux will love and hold precious, not so much for its language, which is ‘simple et commun’, as for the profound secrets of its doctrine which conforms to the Bishop’s own singular prudence. Moreover, Gohory continues—with an astonishing gloss on Machiavelli—this Discours is most appropriate to the Bishop’s dignity since in this first book ‘he deals fully with religion and, even if he does speak of arms, he maintains that Rome owes more to divine Numa than to bellicose Romulus’. In 1571, when Gohory revised and reissued his translation of the Discorsi, Gabriel le Veneur was (though still alive) for some reason no longer deemed the most appropriate dedicatee: although the letter addressed to him continued to be printed by the pirates. For the authentic edition published by Robert le Mangnier, Gohory supplied a new dedication to a member of a powerful Cremonese commercial family, Giovanni Francesco Affaitati, Baron of Ghistelles, in which he praises Machiavelli as the most gracious spirit that had appeared in the world for centuries—‘le plus gentil esprit qui soit apparu au monde depuis les derniers siecles’.46 In the course of this dedication Gohory also discusses Il Principe, which he considers a book not only worthy to be read but rather to be known entirely by heart. As for the Istorie fiorentine? Well, his relative, Miles Perrot, Maıˆtre des Comptes—in his time one of the most learned men in the kingdom in divers languages and sciences—kept this text closer to hand than his Livy or Tacitus and ‘he told me that he considered that, since it is better accommodated to the humour of our times, there is more profit in reading 46 Discours (1571), sig. aˆ.2v. This point was subsequently taken up by La Popelinie`re in 1599 in a manuscript note headed ‘Le Contre-Machiavel’ (BNF MS fr. 20787, fo. 19) where he writes: ‘Latheisme sans doute fut le premier fondement des opinions bigarres et par consequent de malheur de Machiavel. Car envie´ des uns pour la beaute´ de son gentil esprit et net jugement en plusieurs choses: hay de plusieurs pour louverte profession de lAtheisme et en fin bani du pais au quel il attendoit plus de faveurs.’ See also below, Ch. 10, p. 356.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

211

it than in the great ancient historians so far removed from our customs, fashions, and present usage’.47 It was also in 1571 that Gohory published what he claimed as his own translation of Il Principe, prefaced by a dedication to Giovanfrancesco Caraffa (to whom he subsequently offered his treatise on tobacco), and by a Vie de Nicolas Machiavel.48 Gohory, in his letter to Affaitati, had poured scorn on the previous French translations published by ‘two different people’. One of these, he says—presumably D’Auvergne—was very inaccurate and a long way from the original. Moreover, reports that this person was intending to plagiarize the Discours had finally prompted Gohory to put his name to that work despite his preference for anonymity.49 The second translator was evidently the youthful Cappel, who had been Gohory’s ‘familier et domestique’ and who had never set foot within a hundred leagues of Italy. This was probably true. But Gohory does not point out that, at the time of his own Premier livre des discours, when he was himself only 24, he had not trodden Italian soil either. Nor does Gohory, incensed at the impending plagiarism of his own work, admit that his version of Il Principe follows that of Cappel almost verbatim, with merely orthographic changes and only the most trifling textual variants. Addressing himself to Caraffa, Gohory offers a dubious compliment by noting that a member of that illustrious family had been amongst the first to offer himself to Charles VIII when, as Machiavelli had remarked, that monarch had conquered Naples ‘with chalk’ (‘col gesso’)!50 Gohory does not, he says, intend to praise ‘our Machiavel’—who is sufficiently lauded by his own works— other than to state openly that he better described for us the secrets of the Microcosm in all its diverse humours, passions, and ‘fantaisies’ than Pliny had managed in his ‘histoire naturelle de tout le grand monde’.51 Man by his reason is able to frustrate celestial 47 Discours (1571), sig. aˆ.4. 48 Le prince de Nicolas Machiavel . . . avec la vie de l’auteur mesme (Paris, 1571). See Gerber, iii. 35–6. 49 Discours (1571), sig. aˆ.3v This accusation is repeated in the letter to Caraffa. 50 That is merely by making a chalk mark on the houses where his soldiers were to be billeted. The phrase is in Il Principe, 12, and is also in Commynes, Me´moires, VII. 14, who attributes it to Pope Alexander VI. 51 Le Prince (1571), sig. aˆ.4.

212

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

influences and exert his free will; and there is no author in any language who tells us how this may be achieved more effectively than does Machiavelli, although his works—founded as they are entirely upon human wisdom—must be handled with discretion.52 This enthusiastic tone is continued in the biography which immediately follows.53 Machiavelli, says his translator, was born in Florence, the capital of Tuscany, which produced the clearest and most subtle spirits in the whole of Italy—just as Italy itself produces such spirits above every other nation.54 The Italians go abroad in the world bearing only pen and ink and, armed thus, they manage all the finances of Europe under the title of bankers. And in a few years, by industry, vigilance, and new inventions, they emerge from the countries whither they have been transported, ‘riches a` milliers’—a compliment subsequently turned inside out by one of Gohory’s most attentive readers, Innocent Gentillet.55 Machiavelli, however, preferred the goods and ornaments of the spirit, ‘sacred and incorruptible’, to those of temporal fortune; and Gohory goes far beyond D’Auvergne—who had only called upon St Paul to speak up for Machiavelli—by citing ‘l’exemple de l’evangelique Marie qui eleut le meilleur party de vie qui jamais ne luy peut estre tollu’. This paragon of virtue, so Gohory informs us, came from a middle-class, bourgeois family of no great wealth; and he was never supported by contemporary princes such as Clement VII to whom he dedicated his Istorie fiorentine, or Lorenzo de’ Medici to 52 ‘Voire est escrit que le sage domine sur les astres. Or de tous les auteurs que j’ay veu aux diverses langues, j’estime qu’il ne s’en trouvera point qui ayt basty comme un art de l’anatomie interieure des meurs humaines: ainsi qu’il vous apparoistra (Monseigneur) et a` tous ceux qui par vostre moyen jouiront de la lecture de ces livres. Vray est qu’il les faut manier avec discretion comme euvres totalement fonde´es sur la sapience humaine: quoy que quelqu’un ayt ose´ bien hardiment affermer le contraire.’ 53 Gohory’s La vie de Nicolas Machiavel is reprinted as an appendix to Balmas’s article cited above, n. 33. 54 Cf. Henri Estienne?, Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et deportements de Catherine de Medicis (n.p., 1575), 6: ‘Catherine de Me´dicis est Italienne et Florentine. Entre les nations, l’Italie emporte le prix de finesse et de subtilite´; en Italie, la Toscane; en Toscane, la ville de Florence.’ 55 Le Prince (1571), sig. aˆ.1v. On Gentillet’s treatment of this idea, see below, Ch. 9, p. 293.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

213

whom he offered Il Principe. Of the ‘fort beaux livres’ bequeathed to us by Machiavelli, Gohory begins with the Discorsi—full of ‘traitz hardiz de Religion, de police, de guerre’—which he had long ago translated and has now diligently revised. The Istorie fiorentine, too, is full of ‘bons enseignemens’ and examples of worldly affairs which are nowadays esteemed by men of good judgement to be of greater utility in the management and conduct of our affairs than Thucydides, Appian, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, and all the other ancient historians. Machiavelli deals with things conformable and appropriate to us, whereas the Greeks and the Romans were very different and are difficult to adapt to our usage. The Arte della guerra, in Gohory’s opinion, in no way defers to the other works in every grace and subtlety; and it, too, is better able to serve modern military practice than its antecedents such as Vegetius, Valturius, or Frontinus, since their entire equipment and discipline is different from our own. Il Principe, in which Machiavelli described all the parts required of a ruler ‘tendant a` Monarchie’, is regarded by Gohory as a secret appeal to Charles V, on the basis of a belief that the Emperor is the contemporary monarch referred to ‘en un passage’—a peculiar misinterpretation of the final chapter of the book with its messianic exhortation for the salvation of Italy from the hands of foreign invaders. Gohory goes on to reveal his comprehensive familiarity with Machiavelli’s works by alluding to other ‘jolys petitz traittez’—the life of Castruccio Castracani, the account of the murders at Sinigaglia, and the summary of the affairs of France and Germany— before concluding with a moral lesson drawn from the fate which had befallen his chosen author. Machiavelli, so excellent in spirit and doctrine that his equal has not been seen on earth for centuries, provides a fine example of the ignorance, avarice, and ingratitude of many princes who consume their wealth in ostentation, luxury, and delights (‘pompes, bobans, et delices’) without honouring or rewarding the virtue of the elegant pens of which they make use, perhaps even after the death of the authors, as a toy and pastime when other recreations fail them.56 56 Le Prince (1571), sig. aˆ.7r–v.

214

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

This may well be genuine indignation at the misfortunes endured by Machiavelli in his lifetime: but it sounds, also, a personal note since we know that, for some reason, Gohory felt both neglected and ill-used by the ungrateful princes of his own time.57 Gohory, it is clear, was a difficult character whose sense of grievance and fear of impending plagiarism did not prevent his appropriating Cappel’s work as his own. Nor did it prevent his unacknowledged copying from Arnoul de Fe´ron in the manuscript De rebus gestis francorum, which he intended as a continuation of the chronicles of Paulus Aemilius.58 Nevertheless, whatever misgivings may arise about Gohory’s scholarly integrity, there can be little doubt concerning the high seriousness with which he—like Cappel and D’Auvergne—regarded the work of translation. Indeed, nothing less could be expected of one who was so well acquainted with the most active literary circles of his day and, perforce, with the prevailing attitude towards translation as a means of enriching both the French language and, more significantly, French knowledge and culture.59 Already in August 1544, in the dedication of the manuscript translation of Livy, Gohory was drawing attention to the roughness (‘rudesse’) of the French language which could only inadequately furnish words for these ancient matters, so strange, new, and unknown to it. Four years later, addressing himself to his readers, Gohory introduced the printed edition of the same work by acknowledging his own temerity and ignorance in undertaking to comprehend the ‘haut sens’ of ancient authors and in attempting 57 This is evident in the Preface to Book XIII of his De rebus gestis Francorum, BNF MS lat. 5972, fos. 2v–3v. The work is addressed to Christophe de Thou and the manuscript was owned by Jacques-Auguste de Thou. See L. G. O. F. de Brequigny, ‘Notice de l’histoire de Charles VIII et de Louis XII par J. Gohory’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits, 7, pt. 2 (Paris, 1804), 16–39. 58 See Brequigny, and Louis Lacour’s article on Gohory in the Nouvelle biographie universelle, xxi. 85. Brequigny, p. 39, draws attention to the ‘me´pris’ affected by Gohory towards an author whom he never ceased to copy verbatim. 59 There is a considerable literature on the theory and practice of translation in Renaissance France although, apart from studies dealing with specific authors, the main focus of attention has been on translation from classical sources rather than on contemporary historical and political works. See, for example, Glyn P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and their Humanist Antecedents (Geneva, 1984).

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

215

to convey the natural grace of their rich language in his poor, sterile native tongue.60 In fact, he is only doing it to obey the command of the Constable of France rather than in any hope that he might accomplish it well or gain honour thereby; and he proceeds to praise the gravity and sweetness of Livy’s prose and to suggest some of the linguistic and stylistic difficulties confronting the translator who seeks to convey its qualities. Again in 1548, Gohory faced up to a similar problem when he began the second book of his version of Machiavelli’s Discorsi with a ‘Preface du Traducteur aux lecteurs’, in which he provides a fuller discussion of the topic.61 He has decided to take Quintilian’s advice and is, therefore, opening his literary career with a translation, since he is not as yet capable of inventing anything of his own worthy to be exposed to the light.62 He has chosen Machiavelli because, though an author absolutely necessary for an understanding of Livy, he is not so holy and august that faults committed in rendering him into French could be regarded as sacrilege or le`semajeste´. Gohory admits to having adopted two different modes of translation when dealing with Machiavelli. In the first book of the Discorsi he has, in various places, been quite free whereas, in the second and third books, he is somewhat more slavish and scrupulous—‘un peu plus serf et supersticieux’—and he has done this in order to demonstrate that he can manage both types. Each is open to criticism, but he does not fear the envious; his own conscience will be his judge; and he bears, like Themistocles, the device envie d’envie en vie.63 The French language, he concedes, is not as yet well regulated, and even its orthography is disordered. Some writers wish, therefore, to bring old words back into use, while others seek to enrich 60 Le premier livre de la premiere decade de Tite Live (1548), sig. aˆ.2. 61 Discours (1548), Book II, sigs. aˆ.2–3. Gohory’s longest discussion of the problems of translation is, perhaps, in the Amadis. But there his preoccupations are rather different. 62 Although the parallel is not exact, it is possible that Gohory is thinking here about Quintilian, Institutes, X. 5, which deals with the value of translation and paraphrasing. 63 I cannot trace the use of this device by Themistocles, who was, however, very much concerned with envy. See Alan Wardman, Plutarch’s Lives (London, 1974), 69–78.

216

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

their tongue by stealing from vernaculars such as Italian and Spanish: but Gohory, like Plato, believes that we should not waste our time in such vain fastidiousness concerning words.64 Rather we should direct our spirits with fine discourses drawn from the very foundations of those sciences which are so beneficial to life. We should take Machiavelli as our example who, in his Discorsi, had employed a very simple language, enriched by rare and profound matter. Indeed, this is the very reason why Gohory fears that Machiavelli’s work may be ill received by the French, who seem to do nothing but sniff at the flowers of knowledge decked out in hats and nosegays, and do not use beneficial herbs in their nourishment or medicine. However, Gohory has done his best, and he offers the second and third books of the Discorsi to the public at the same time as his imperfect rendering of Livy, Machiavelli’s master. He regrets the lack of polish evident in his writings, but pleads that ‘ceste servitude ambulatoire’ of the court has not provided him with the leisure to revise his work eight times—as Thucydides managed with his history. In any case, Gohory’s concern is with the common good, not his own particular reputation; and he trusts that the flaws in his style may be outweighed by the excellence of his content.

gohory: the translator in action Gohory’s energy is beyond dispute. But how—after all the praise, promises, and puffs—does he actually discharge his obligations as a translator? He admits that the second and third books of his Discours are more literal and precise than his first. Yet this is disingenuous. There is, in fact, a vast difference in precision for (whereas the later books generally convey Machiavelli’s meaning effectively, accurately, and with reasonable economy) Book I is not merely, as Gohory would have it, somewhat free in places. It is often wildly irresponsible.65 64 Possibly Gohory is here thinking of the Cratylus, which had, in fact, been published by Gourmont at Paris in 1527 in a Greek text. 65 All my references in the following notes are to the Le Mangnier 1571 edition of Gohory’s Discours (British Library press mark 9041.aaa.14).

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

217

In this first book, words, phrases, sentences, and even entire paragraphs from Machiavelli’s text are omitted. Sometimes these are simply passages where Machiavelli repeats an idea for emphasis (I. 25).66 Sometimes Gohory alters the effect of a passage by leaving out or altering odd words (I. 37).67 Or he will achieve a similar result by compressing phrases, as at the end of I. 44. In this last case, though the sense of Machiavelli’s statement on the fatuity of declaring one’s evil intentions is retained, its force is needlessly dissipated: ‘Pensez qu’il seroit bon veoir un homme qui viendroit demander a` un autre son espee pour l’en tuer luy mesme?’68 Sometimes the omission is more serious and may suppress an important idea. Machiavelli, for example, having discussed the Roman institution of short-term dictatorships, ends chapter 34 with a quotation, ‘let the consul ensure that the republic takes no harm’ (Videat Consul ne Respublica quid detrimenti capiat), and then observes that Rome’s neighbours, by seeking to crush her, made her take measures which enabled her not only to defend herself but also, ‘with more force, more counsel, and more authority’, to take the offensive against them. But all this is ignored by Gohory, who limply concludes with the Latin quotation.69 More striking still is Gohory’s treatment of the crucial twelfth chapter on the importance of religion and how Italy has been ruined by the Papacy.70 He blots his copybook immediately by altering the title of the chapter, which had placed responsibility for Italy’s degradation upon the Church of Rome: Di quanta importanza sia tenere conto della religione, e come la Italia, per esserne mancata mediante la chiesa romana, e` rovinata. Gohory’s rendering of this— Que c’est que ne tenir compte de la religion et ne l’entretenir en son poinct. Et comme l’Italia en est perdue—emasculates Machiavelli’s intentions. Moreover he opens the chapter by loosely paraphrasing, here as elsewhere, both of Machiavelli’s first two characteristic uses of the 66 Mazzoni and Casella, 93a; Discours, fo. 53. 67 Cf. the opening sentences in Mazzoni and Casella, 105b–106a with Discours, fo. 68. 68 Mazzoni and Casella, 115a; Discours, fo. 80v. 69 Ibid., 104a; Discours, fo. 66. The quotation represents the words used when the Romans invested a consul with dictatorial authority. They are given in Livy, III. iv, but Machiavelli slightly misquotes them. 70 Mazzoni and Casella, 78a–79b; Discours, fos. 31v–33v.

218

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

word ‘incorrotte’, and deteriorates as he progresses. The ruin and flail (‘rovino e flagello’) which Machiavelli predicts must shortly result from the decline of Christianity, becomes ‘quelque grande punition divine’. Those who, according to Machiavelli, mistakenly attribute the prosperity (‘ben essere’) of the Italian cities to the Church of Rome become, in Gohory’s version, people who say that their very lives depend on the Holy See: ‘plusieurs d’Italie, qui dient qu’elle ne tient sa vie d’autre que du sainct siege apostolic’. Machiavelli goes on to reject any notion that the Papacy has been beneficial to Italy, on the basis of two reasons which he deems irrefutable. The first is that, through the evil examples of the court of Rome, Italy has lost all devotion to religion. This brings in its train infinite inconveniences and disorders because, just as where there is religion one may presuppose everything good, so where religion is lacking one may presuppose the contrary. Therefore, says Machiavelli, the Italians owe to the Church and the priests this first debt: that they have become without religion and are evil. But they owe the Papacy an even greater debt: and this is the second cause of their ruin. The Church has kept, and still keeps, Italy divided. Gohory, in his version, weakens the whole of this passage by reducing Machiavelli’s precise and bitter attack on the Roman curia and its priests into a mild and generalized rebuke that they haven’t kept to the tenets of the primitive Church—‘ceux qui en telles dignitez se sont oubliez et n’ont garde´ comme ils devoient les statutz, canons et saincts decrets de la primitive Eglise’—before passing on to a loose paraphrase of the accusation that the Church has kept Italy divided. Gohory, like many sixteenth-century translators, loved to multiply epithets; and this, though a failing common to all three books of his Discours, is especially marked in the first. Thus, while many Machiavellian essentials are pruned away in one direction, inessentials are energetically added elsewhere: a process which not only covers Machiavelli’s muscular style with a layer of fat, but can also modify his meaning. An example of this is in I. 3 where the original text cites the saying that hunger and poverty make men industrious, and laws make them good: ‘si dice che la fame e la poverta` fa gli uomini industriosi, e le leggi gli fanno buoni’. Gohory sensibly renders ‘industriosi’ by ‘ingenieux et actifs’; but, by adding that it is good

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

219

laws which make men worthy (‘les bonnes loix rendent les gens de bien’), he introduces a distinction not only lacking in Machiavelli but also uncharacteristic of him.71 Then, in the following chapter (I. 4), occurs one of Machiavelli’s most fundamental statements on the importance of military virtu`. Where there is good military organization, he says, it follows that there is good order, and rarely will it come about that there should not also be good fortune: ‘dove e` buona milizia, conviene che sia buono ordine, e rade volte anco occorre che non vi sia buona fortuna’. Gohory, on the other hand, by writing that ‘le faict des armes ne se peut conduire sans bon ordre et police: et la police commune´ment est celle qui amene la bonne fortune’, gives primacy to good order and ‘police’ rather than to arms. This is precisely what Machiavelli did not mean.72 Equally enfeebling, if less wilfully inaccurate, is Gohory’s reading of another important Machiavellism in I. 9. Because, writes Machiavelli, men are more prone to evil than to good—‘perche`, sendo gli uomini piu` proni al male che al bene’—it is possible that a prince’s successor may use ambitiously something which the prince himself had used virtuously. Gohory breaks this sentence in two; puts the misuse of authority first; and ends, ‘Telle est l’imperfection naturelle des hommes’: thus conveying trite moral resignation concerning the human condition, rather than the dynamic malignancy diagnosed by Machiavelli.73 A similar reshuffling of phrases, together with more luxuriant pleonasm, may be seen in I. 11, where Machiavelli, considering the problem of establishing a republic in his own time, states that this would more easily be accomplished amongst mountain people in areas where there is no civilization at all than amongst those accustomed to live in towns where civilization is corrupt—‘chi volesse ne’ presenti tempi fare una republica piu` facilita` troverrebbe negli uomini montanari, dove non e` alcuna civilita`, che in quelli che sono usi a vivere nelle cittadi, dove la civilita` e` corrotta’. This process is likened by Machiavelli to the way in which a sculptor can more easily carve a fine statue from unworked marble 71 Mazzoni and Casella, 63a; Discours, fo. 10. 72 Ibid. 63b; Discours, fo. 11. Cf. Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel, III. 31, where Gohory’s error is followed. 73 Mazzoni and Casella, 73a; Discours, fo. 24.

220

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

than from a piece already badly hacked about by somebody else. Gohory emphasizes the figure of the sculptor by placing it first: ‘aujourd’huy qui voudroit faire de mesme, faudroit qu’il fist comme l’imagier’. He makes the useful marble not merely ‘rozzo’ but ‘rude et non poly’; makes the useless marble not only ‘male abbozzato’ but ‘deja mal taille´e et esbauche´e’; and transforms Machiavelli’s uncultured mountain dwellers into savages, living in woods, deserts, and mountains, who know neither good nor bad: ‘gens sauvages, demourans es boys, desertz ou montaignes, qui ne sc¸avent ne mal ne bien’. He then ends this section with an ambiguous sentence—‘car avec ses fines gens de ville il perdroit son sens’—which, while conveying a sense of the insurmountable subtlety of the city-slickers, loses the important Machiavellian connotation of ‘corrotta’. Gohory here masks the original intention by allowing what had been a purely illustrative metaphor to assume primary importance.74 In general, it is difficult to discern any consistent logic determining Gohory’s alteration or expansion of passages. For example, Machiavelli ends I. 14—on the Roman use of divination from the entrails of dead beasts—with a terse summary to the effect that this divinatory mode had no other purpose than to make soldiers go confidently into battle: a confidence almost always resulting in victory—‘dalla quale confidenza quasi sempre nasce la vittoria’. This method, he adds, was used not only by the Romans but also by foreigners whose practice will be illustrated in his next chapter. Gohory drops the final sentence linking the two chapters, and replaces Machiavelli’s succinct conclusion with a long-winded free paraphrase which adds neither to the meaning nor to the effect of the passage: Now you must know that the Romans very well understood the value of such merchandise: but they made use of it solely for the purpose that their soldiers, when it was necessary to go into action, should have no doubt but should regard the matter completely assured as if God had told them expressly. Also one saw that, with this opinion and confidence, they performed miracles and nothing was impossible for them.75 74 Mazzoni and Casella, 77a; Discours, fo. 30v. 75 Ibid. 82a; Discours, fo. 37: ‘Or devez vous sc¸avoir que les Romains cognoissent assez qu’en valoit la marchandise: mais ils en usoient seulement a` ce que leurs gend’armes quand il faudroit mettre la main a` l’oeuvre ne doubtassent

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

221

Again, at the end of I. 23, Machiavelli gives an extremely spare account of the Swiss failure in 1515 to prevent Franc¸ois Ier’s expedition into Italy, by blocking the mountain passes. Gohory, by contrast, is verbose. He qualifies every phrase; doubles epithets; and adds figures. Those who hoped to keep Franc¸ois out of Italy had relied on the Swiss, but ‘peu valut leur astuce’. The statement that the King entered through another, unknown pass is embroidered so that Franc¸ois is guided by ‘les villains du paı¨s’ through a winding route which no one suspected: ‘conduict par un chemin egare´ dont nul ne se doubtoit’. Not only is Franc¸ois in Italy and upon the Swiss before they anticipated him, but he himself brought the first news of his arrival: ‘en sorte qu’il porta luy mesme en Italie les premieres nouvelles de sa venue’. In Machiavelli, Franc¸ois’s opponents are frightened and retreat to Milan while all the people of Lombardy, who had mistakenly assumed that the French would be held in the mountains, now defect to the invaders. Gohory’s countryside is ‘estonne´ et confus’ by the entry which had not been expected in such a fashion; and the Swiss become ‘guardians of the snow’ who have awaited the French and who—having learned what had happened, and how he whom they hoped to have by the beard was now at their back—retreat to Milan, tail between legs: ‘Les beaux gardeurs de neige: cependant avoient au dos celluy qu’ils esperoient en barbe, tous esperduz se retirent a` Milan la queue entre les jambes.’76 Examples such as these may seem insignificant—and they are, indeed, sometimes quite trifling—but they are constant and, cumulatively, they alter the whole tone of the original text. This effect may be illustrated by a few further typical examples of Gohory’s method in this first book. Machiavelli begins I. 39 with a general statement that it may be easily understood, by those who de rien, mais tinssent la chose toute asseure´e comme si Dieu les leur eussent dit de leurs bouches [this phrase is botched and is corrected in the edition of 1586, p. 91, to ‘‘comme si Dieu leur eust dist de sa bouche’’]. Aussi voyoit on que avec ceste opinion et confiance ilz faisoient merveilles et rien ne leur estoit impossible.’ Although this passage does not occur in Machiavelli, it is echoed by Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel (1576), 184–5, who thinks he is referring to the Discorsi. 76 Mazzoni and Casella, 92b; Discours, fo. 51v.

222

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

consider both current and ancient affairs, how in all cities and in all peoples there remain the same desires and humours as there have always been: ‘E’ si conosce facilmente per chi considera le cose presenti e le antiche, come in tutte le citta` ed in tutti i popoli sono quegli medesimi desiderii e quelli medesimi omori, e come vi furono sempre.’ Gohory ignores the ‘facilmente’; renders ‘antiche’ by ‘passees’; omits ‘tutte le citta`’; renders ‘tutti i popoli’ by ‘de tout temps les gens’; and augments ‘desiderii’ and ‘omori’ with ‘affections’. He then proceeds to compress Machiavelli’s assertion that it is easy for one who diligently examines past affairs to foresee the future in every republic—‘e` facil cosa, a chi esamina con diligenza le cose passate, prevedere in ogni republica le future’—into a general statement that it is ‘aise´ par la cognoissance de l’histoire prevoir les choses advenir’. He translates the next idea faithfully— that it is possible to apply the remedies employed in the past or, if remedies have not been used, to invent new ones based on the similarity of circumstances—but decides arbitrarily to alter the last sentence in Machiavelli’s paragraph. This explained that, because these considerations are neglected or not understood by those who read (or, if they are understood, are not noted by those who govern), it comes about that there are always the same scandals at all times: ‘perche` queste considerazioni sono neglette, o non intese da chi legge, o, se le sono intese, non sono conosciute da chi governa; ne se´guita che sempre sono i medesimi scandoli in ogni tempo’. Gohory renders this as follows: ‘Voila` d’ou vient que tousjours adviennent les malheurs, qui autrefois sont advenuz, parce que ceux qui ont le maniement des affaires ne tiennent compte de l’histoire, et s’ils en lisent n’entendent pas le sens moral et mystique.’ Thus he not only reverses the original order which, in itself, slightly modifies the sense and considerably diminishes the effectiveness of the point, but he also glosses the failure to understand what is being read as a failure to comprehend its ‘moral and mystical [or secret] sense’. This is well in accord with Gohory’s allegorical predilections, but is certainly an illegitimate extension of Machiavelli’s original intentions.77 77 Mazzoni and Casella, 109a–b; Discours, fo. 72r–v.

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

223

The conclusion of I. 49 is another instance where a combination of pleonasm, compression, omission, and a reversing of Machiavelli’s order, completely distorts the original point. Machiavelli is stating the difficulties of maintaining liberty; and his last sentence is a summary of his position. Seeing that even in Rome—governed by a constitution of its own making (‘ordinata da se medesima’) and devised by so many prudent men—there arose every day new reasons for which it was necessary to provide new ordinances to support its liberty (‘nuovi ordini in favore del viver libero’), it is no wonder that in other cities which had more disorderly beginnings there should arise such difficulties that they are never able to reconstitute themselves. Gohory breaks this into two sentences, putting first the insoluble problems of ill-founded cities, with which Machiavelli had dramatically concluded. He then completely misses the point of Rome’s continual introduction of new institutions, by compressing the material until it becomes almost meaningless—‘puis que nous voyons Rome si empeschee a` vivre’—and proceeds to smudge Machiavelli’s precise reference to the wise men who drew up Rome’s constitution, with a plethora of redundant synonyms: ‘laquelle est toutesfois venue au monde franche et libre, et a este´ allaictee, seuree et nourrie par tant de sages et notables personnes’.78 A final example (I. 10) must suffice to illustrate the imprecision and flatulence of this first book of Gohory’s Discours. Here, even Machiavelli’s chapter heading, ‘That the founders of a republic or a kingdom are as praiseworthy as those who found a tyranny are worthy of vituperation’ (Quanto sono laudabili i fondatori d’una republica o d’uno regno, tanto quelli d’una tirannide sono vituperabili), was originally ignored by Gohory and replaced by a different title, ‘What sort of mirror may history provide for kings and all manner of people’ (De quel miroir peult servir l’histoire aux Roys & a` toutes manieres de gens.79 This change was required to introduce the first two and a half sentences of Gohory’s text, which are an addition to the original. Whereas Machiavelli immediately addresses himself 78 Ibid. 120b; Discours, fo. 88v. 79 Mazzoni and Casella, 74a. I have quoted this from Gerber, ii. 25–7, which reproduces the text of 1544.

224

PART I. EARLY READERSHIP

to his principal task by stating that of all praiseworthy men those are most lauded who have been the heads or founders of republics, Gohory only reaches this point after an insertion to the effect that in all history, kings, princes, knights, lords, and ladies find their image, virtuous or vicious, portrayed to the life without the loss of a single detail; and it would be as well were they to take as much trouble to look upon this as they devote to admiring their corporeal beauties, which pass so soon. In this spiritual mirror, clearer and purer than crystal, they would see everything which must be considered beautiful or ugly.80 It is only at this point that Gohory, at last, picks up the beginning of Machiavelli’s chapter—‘intra tutti gli uomini laudati’—and continues thereafter with approximate fidelity. He cannot, however, resist adding (in order to share Machiavelli’s praise of ‘gli uomini litterati’) those who have employed their lives not only in letters but also in the ‘profound contemplation of nature and her secrets’. He replaces Machiavelli’s simple construction (‘per lo contrario’), to introduce blameworthy men, with the other side of his introductory ‘miroir’—‘l’autre coste´ du miroir’—in order to keep his metaphor going. And finally, to round off his remodelled chapter, Gohory adds a concluding sentence of his own to demonstrate how useful the study of history is to all types of men whether they be captains, simple soldiers, men of letters, or common artisans. It is, perhaps, indicative of the disingenuousness later to be encountered in his treatment of Cappel’s work that, in 1548, when Gohory came to revise the translation of the first book of his Discours, although he deleted his original title to this tenth chapter and replaced it with something much closer to Machiavelli— Autant que sont louables les fondateurs des Republicques et Royeaumes, autant estre a` blasmer ceux de la tyrannie—he did not see fit to make 80 ‘En l’histoire grecque, latine, barbare quelle qu’elle soit, les Roys, princes, chevaliers, seigneurs, dames y trouvent leur image vertueuse ou vicieuse pourtraicte au vif sans qu’il y en ait un seul traict perdu. Ce seroit bien faict a` eux s’ilz prenoient autant de peine a` s’y regarder souvent (pour cognoistre, tant les dons & graces, que les taches et seingz de leur arme [sic] immortelle) comme ilz font a` se mirer et parer curieusement leurs beautez corporelles qui si tost passent. En ce beau miroir spirituel plus cler et pur que cristal, ilz verroient a` l’oeil tout ce qui doibt estre juge´ bel ou laid.’

M A CH I A VE L L I ’ S K E E N E S T R E A D E R S

225

more than the most trifling alterations in the text itself, nor to delete his own inappropriate additions. Whatever their felicities and infelicities, achievements and limitations, the zeal of these early translators was impressive. It was also unambiguously laudatory, and their editions are of major significance in the history of Machiavelli’s reception because, for the majority of readers in France and in England, their words and turns of phrase were regarded as the authentic voice of Machiavelli himself. After the publication of Gohory’s completed text of the Discours in 1548, there was a gap of eleven years before the work was again issued, with three variant versions early in 1559. Another gap ensued—this time of twelve years—before the Discours was again published, now accompanied by Le Prince and Gohory’s biography of its author. For the intellectual historian these are stirring events, but for contemporaries the year 1571 was more remarkable in France for the reconciliation between Charles IX and Admiral Coligny the Huguenot leader, and for the negotiations concerning the marriage between Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, which was intended to heal, once and for all, the wounds of civil discord. A year later, though, the political situation in France was to take a very different turn, as a result of which Machiavelli’s reputation was so called into question that, in some quarters at least, ‘le plus gentil esprit’ degenerated into ‘un puant athe´iste’.

This page intentionally left blank

PART II

The Rhetoric of Hate

This page intentionally left blank

8 In Praise of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre On Monday, 18 August 1572, after protracted negotiations, the Protestant Henri de Navarre was married to Marguerite, youngest sister of the French King Charles IX, at Notre Dame de Paris. The city was thronged with Huguenots, all intent on enjoying the wedding festivities which would, it was hoped, usher in a new age of religious concord. However, on Friday the 22nd, Admiral Coligny, the Huguenots’ leader, was severely wounded by an arquebus shot; and on Sunday the 24th, Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the Admiral was murdered as he lay in his lodgings, and the bells rang out signalling a general massacre of the Huguenots in Paris, which was soon answered by further massacres elsewhere in France. The extent of the atrocities and the question of their premeditation or spontaneity have provided matter for continuing debate among historians; and the Saint Bartholomew has passed into the mythology of European history. It has become the classic instance of political duplicity and an awesome example of cold-blooded extremism terminating in unbridled mob hysteria. The truth of the matter is of no concern here. It suffices that the massacre happened: because it spawned a pullulating mass of polemical literature bubbling with theories, prejudices, and phobias which together furnish an essential context for the study of Machiavelli’s reception.1 Amidst this ideological maelstrom, not only were 1 On the literature, see Henri Hauser, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, iii (Paris, 1912), 233–56; Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 1572–1576 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Robert O. Lindsay and John Neu, French Political Pamphlets 1547–1648: A Catalog of Major Collections in

230

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Machiavelli’s works read and pondered, but they were also smashed into pieces so that several distorted fragments of his ideas were separated—once and for all—from anything that the author himself had originally written. As we have already noted, just over a year prior to the mass murders, the royal privilege had been accorded to Robert le Mangnier for the publication in Paris of a revised version of Gohory’s Les discours de Machiavel together with his Le Prince and the Vie de Machiavel; while, at about the same time, there was a reissue of D’Auvergne’s Le Prince together with a pirated version of Gohory’s Discours. It is scarcely likely that these publications had much to do with subsequent events. Nevertheless, the increased availability of Machiavelli’s writings in France, together with the Italianate nature of a French court dominated by the Florentine Catherine de’ Medici, suggested to at least one Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, that there was a connection between extremist theory and practice. And, being a man of letters, his anxiety to demonstrate this connection was inspired not simply by the bloody massacre itself but also, and more decisively, by the exultant, even ecstatic, literary justifications of it. Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel, whatever its imperfections, was the most extensive and systematic study of Machiavelli undertaken in the sixteenth century, and certainly the most influential. It is important, therefore, to understand why Gentillet wrote; and this cannot be done without first getting to grips with the literature which provoked him. And here there is no short cut. The structure, rhythm, and tone of pro-massacre polemic is clear enough to anybody who has the time, and takes the trouble, to read it all. The difficulty lies in conveying such things to modern readers for whom ‘political ideas’ might seem to have a greater claim upon their attention than immoderate language and extremAmerican Libraries (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969); Myriam Yardeni, La conscience nationale en France pendant les guerres de religion, 1559–1598 (Louvain and Paris, 1971); and especially the Catalogue de l’histoire de France (Bibliothe`que Impe´riale, De´partement des Imprime´s, Paris, 1855; repr. 1968) which gives the fullest lists of the relevant material. I provide the BNF press marks and the names of publishers in the notes to this and the two following chapters because the material is not always easy to locate and identify.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

231

ist imagery. Yet, the truth of the matter is that the significance of this material resides less in the arguments marshalled by its authors than in the fanaticism expressed in hysterical language and imagery. Argumentation arose out of fear and fanaticism, not vice versa. Writers felt impelled (either consciously or unconsciously) to cover extreme views with the garb of reasoned argument; to seek ad hoc justifications for prejudices; and to represent bloodlust as a virtuous response to troublous times. Their aim was to whip up resentment and anger, in order to legitimate widespread acts of brutality. Their manner was deliberately rhetorical. But the rhetoric was not that God-given, sweet, and pleasant ‘instrument of our understanding and key of conceptions’ beloved of the teachers of ‘Wysedome and Eloquence: the onelye ornamentes whereby mannes lyfe is bewtifyed’.2 It was nothing less than a rhetoric of hate and, unless we somehow come to terms with this, we will understand little.3 The polemic of the religious wars in France was not written by rational political philosophers, coolly assessing problems of toleration, the nature of the constitution, contractual theory, and similar abstractions. These writers plunged their pens into wells filled with blood and venom; and this chapter is an attempt to convey something at least of their style and fury and, in doing that, to set the scene for Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel.

the massacre as a catholic triumph Historians have, in general, been properly shocked by the Saint Bartholomew. They have expressed moral indignation, and have assumed that—on the whole—contemporary Europe would have felt the same abhorrence. But this is an error. Contemporary Protestant Europe was, of course, deeply distressed; and some Catholics, too, regarded both the treachery and the violence with horror. It is, none the less, clear that there was a good deal of rejoicing at the elimination of so many Huguenots. This is shown by private 2 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (London, 1577), sig. A.2. 3 I used the term ‘A Rhetoric of Hate’ in a brief study of ‘Political Polemic in Late Sixteenth-Century France’, in Keith Cameron (ed.), Montaigne and his Age (Exeter, 1981), 1–13.

232

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

letters exchanged at the time and by public celebrations and thanksgiving, especially at Rome, where the Pope not only had a commemorative medal struck but also commissioned Vasari to depict the massacre in a series of frescoes in the Sala Regia of the Vatican palace. These paintings became so notorious that, forty years after the massacre, they could be cited in a Paul’s Cross sermon as evidence of congenital papal bloodlust. If the Pope cannot have his enemies slain in his presence, ‘he will see it in picture, as the massacre of Paris on S. Bartholomewes night was pictured in the Popes Pallace to entertaine his holy eye with pleasure’.4 Even more indicative of enthusiasm for the massacres was the spate of apologetic literature which immediately poured from the presses. Such justificatory pamphleteering is customarily dismissed as ‘propaganda’ by historians who thereby imply that it was not possible for people to write honestly in defence of the atrocities. But this notion of an army of reluctant conscripts does not bear scrutiny. In the first place—given the embittered and extreme attitudes adopted by both Catholics and Reformers throughout the century, and the frequent persecutions, tortures, civil slayings, and open wars which characterized their relations— it is not difficult to understand why, to many observers, the mass murders of August 1572 would have been welcomed as a healthy purging of polluted elements from within the body of Christendom. Secondly, the view that apologists had to be coerced is scarcely tenable the moment note is taken of the exultant language in which most of their work is couched. It is not difficult to force writers to produce arguments, however specious, to justify extreme deeds. It is extremely difficult to compel in them a deep sense of joy, satisfaction, and triumph. It was the triumphal aspect of the massacre which absorbed the attention of Nicolas Favier, ‘Conseiller dudit Sieur, et general de ses Monnoyes’, who promptly prepared two designs for commemorative medals to be struck in 4 Thomas Adams, The Gallants Burden. A Sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 29 of March . . . 1612, sig. D.4v. Roman attitudes are documented in a brief but informative pamphlet by D. Hay Fleming, Illustrations of Antichrist’s Rejoicing over the Massacre of St Bartholomew (Edinburgh, 1912). On the paintings, see Philipp P. Fehl, ‘Vasari’s ‘‘Extirpation of the Huguenots’’: The Challenge of Pity and Fear’, Gazette des beaux arts, 84 (1974), 257–84.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

233

gold and silver.5 It was God, says Favier, who had revealed the Huguenot conspiracy and provided the means to snuff it out in just twenty-four hours—‘something which had not been possible for human forces in ten years and in four pitched battles’. The Admiral, having been wounded by an arquebus shot, was plotting vengeance in a conspiracy against the King, the Queen Mother, the King’s brothers, and other princes: but the plot had been discovered and prevented by the prompt execution of the principal conspirator and his accomplices. Favier was pleased that his designs had been acceptable to the King but, recognizing that such medals would only reach a limited number of princes and potentates, he was also anxious to set forth their meaning in writing.6 Claiming that he is emulating the ancient monarchs who used medals as witnesses to posterity, he describes his designs in detail. The first was to depict Charles, crowned and enthroned, sceptre in one hand, bare sword in the other; environed with the palm of victory; and with corpses of the rebels strewn at his feet. Virtue triumphs over the rebels, that is to say the enemies, conspirators, and authors of abominable sedition—VIRTUS IN REBELLES, seu perduelles, coniuratos hostes, aut nefarine seditionis authores. The obverse of this medal was to show the arms of France between two columns (the King’s device) with the motto pietas excitavit justitiam: ‘c’est a` dire que la Piete´ envers Dieu et la vraye Religion a esmeu le glaive de la justice Royalle contre les rebelles’. Above each column was an olive garland symbolizing peace obtained by the subjugation of rebels; while around the entire device were two laurel branches signifying triumph. Nor was this all the meaning which Favier had squeezed onto the obverse. The middle letter T of excitavit was exactly over the crown surmounting the arms of France; and this, said, Favier, 5 Lb33.310. Nicolas Favier, Figure et exposition des pourtraictz et dictons contenuz es medailles de la conspiration des Rebelles en France opprimee et estaincte par le Roy Tres-Chrestien Charles IX. Le 24. Iour d’Aoust 1572 (Paris: I. Dallier, 1572). 6 Ibid., sig. A.3: ‘J’ay considere´, Sire, que d’autant que ce nombre de pieces ne peult estre departi qu’en peu de mains de Princes et Potentats tant estrangers que de vostre Royaulme, qu’il estoit convenable, soit pour en faire entendre a` eux la signifiance, que pour aussi estandre a` tous peuples et siecles en suyvans la cognoissance d’un acte si memorable de le rediger par escript et s’il vous plaist le mettre en lumie`re publicque.’

234

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

indicated the cross of Christ, and was likewise the final letter of the Hebrews just as we hope that this blow will be the end of the new sect. It has also been worn as a badge in the hats of good Catholics and true subjects of the King ‘as Ezechiel saw it marked by the angel on the foreheads of the faithful’.7 The second ‘medaille a` l’antique’ was more straightforward. It showed the King’s effigy with his arms and ‘dicton Franc¸ois, Charles IX. R.D.F. Dompteur des Rebelles le vingtquatriesme Aoust 1572’. The obverse depicted Hercules clad in lion’s skin—his ‘Massue ferree’ in one hand, and a torch in the other—defeating the hydra with many heads. This indicated that the rebels, despite the loss of their leaders, had renewed war thrice, and had been plotting a fourth campaign when they had finally been exterminated. The medallic form was much in vogue. It typified the Renaissance ideal of multum in parvo; and Favier had contrived to say most of what needed to be said on behalf of the massacre within the confines of his two medals. The greater part of the literature defending the Saint Bartholomew was really an amplification of the basic ideas contained therein; and, as we shall see, Gentillet summarized his own reply to these ideas in an emblem which was perhaps intended to challenge Favier’s first medal.8 The first official statement on the events of 24 August 1572 was the Declaration du Roy, sur la mort de l’Admiral, ses adherans & complices, which baldly declared that the King wished his subjects to know exactly why the Admiral and his accomplices had been put to death by royal command.9 His reasons were ‘to obviate and prevent the execution of a sinister and detestable conspiracy’ organized by the Huguenots against the blood royal; and this idea, that the Admiral and his adherents had been involved in a dangerous conspiracy, was sedulously promulgated by Charles’s apologists 7 Lb33.310. Nicolas Favier, Figure et exposition des pourtraictz et dictons, sig. A.4r–v. 8 See below, Ch. 9, pp. 310–11. 9 Lb33.341.b. Declaracion du Roy, de la cause et occasion de la mort de l’Admiral et autres ses adhe´rens et complices, dernie`rement advenue en ceste ville de Paris le XXIIII. Jour du pre´sent moys d’Aoust. M.D.LXXII (Paris: I. Dallier, 1572). Another edition was issued by Michel Jove at Lyon. The text was reprinted in L. Cimber and F. Danjou, Archives curieuses de l’histoire de France depuis Louis XI jusqu’a` Louis XVIII (Paris, 1835) 1st ser., vii. 162–4.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

235

and—though as sedulously denied by the Huguenots themselves—it served, at least, as a reasonable justification for the massacre. Much harder for the Huguenots to stomach were the gleeful tones of much Catholic writing of this period. The news of the massacres in France was received with public demonstrations of joy at Rome; and exultation characterizes Marc-Antoine de Muret’s oration delivered before Pope Gregory XIII in December 1572.10 The miseries endured by France in recent years were known everywhere, says Muret, as was the piety of the King of France and the success he had enjoyed in restoring things to their ancient estate. Nevertheless, the author believes that it is still worth elaborating on these matters, and he begins by relating how poison had already been spreading through the veins and entrails of France in the time of Henri II, whose untimely death—like that of his son, Franc¸ois II—had prevented any remedy. By the time that Charles IX came to the throne, the venom was everywhere and, just as the force of water held back by a dyke is especially violent once that rampart has been breached, so the violent men of France had burst the barriers of the laws and the authority of kings, running through the kingdom and, under guise of a supreme piety, taking exorbitant licence and confounding all things both human and divine by their murders and burnings: ‘tirans une licence exorbitante du milieu d’une souveraine piete´, et confondans toutes choses divines et humaines par leurs meurtres et bruslemens’. Charles IX came to the throne like a young Hercules facing a multitude of hellish serpents who sought to destroy both his life and the true religion. They had taken advantage of the King’s youth to trample underfoot the authority of the law, and had caused untold misery to France. Muret’s hair stands on end when he has to record what has happened ‘apres que ces pestes et furies infernales ont este´ envoyees par l’ennemy du genre humain’: temples have been ruined; altars have run with the blood of priests; virgins have been ravaged; and towns sacked. This was the state of France which had always defended the Church, propagated Christianity, and so often saved 10 Lb33.319. Oraison prononce´e devant le pape Gre´goire XIII, Par M. Antoine de Muret, I.C. touchant l’heureux et admirable succe`s de Charles IX. Tres-Chrestien Roy de France, en la punition des chefs des He´retiques rebelles (Paris: J. Ruelle, 1573). Another French edition was issued at Lyon by B. Rigaud; and there was a Latin edition issued at Rome by the heirs of A. Blado.

236

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Rome itself. These ‘endiablez’ had attempted to rob France of the obedience due to God and King and then, having failed in this, they sought to destroy the unity of the Catholic Church by offering the King new territories in return for his deserting the Holy See. But Charles was not to be distracted from righteousness by the pretext of utility. From his infancy he had been adorned with Piety and Justice—virtues which truly served for his device—and he had tried to win over these evil men by gentle methods. But, in the end, he had regretfully to resort to extremes and to do violence ‘to his own entrails’ like those who, having vainly tried all other remedies to cure poisoned limbs, burn and amputate them lest they infect the rest of their bodies.11 The King was victorious in the ensuing war and, wishing to lead his enemies back to the path of righteousness, he gave them a generous peace. Vain clemency! These people were so used to massacres that they again plotted against his life and estate, but the conspiracy was discovered, ‘divinement’, just as it was to be put into effect, and it rebounded upon the heads of the abominable traitors: Oh memorable night which, by the ruin of a few seditious people, has delivered the King from the peril of death and the kingdom from a perpetual fear of civil wars! I believe that on that night the stars shone with more than their accustomed clarity, and that the Seine was abnormally swollen in order to wash away the corpses more swiftly and discharge them into the sea.12

And what a happy day, cries Muret, so full of joy and gaiety when the news was brought to His Holiness. Could there have been a

11 Lb33.319. Oraison prononce´e devant le pape, sigs. A.3–4v. Cf. Lb33.308. De la religion catholique et foy chrestienne des roys de France. Oeuvre par lequel est monstre´e la devotion , et l’affection desdictz Roys envers les choses sainctes: et la punition par eux faicte des heretiques et des rebelles (Paris: P. Luillier, 1572), sig. H.1r–v. 12 Muret, Oraison prononce´e devant le pape, sig. B.1v: ‘O nuict memorable, laquelle par la ruine de peu de seditieux a delivre´ le Roy du peril de la mort presente, et le Royaume d’une perpetuelle crainte de guerres civiles! J’estime qu’en icelle les estoilles rendoient plus grande clairte´ que de coustume, et que la Seine s’enfla outre son ordinaire pour chasser plus vistement ses corps et les descharger en mer.’

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

237

happier beginning to his pontificate than to see, in the very first months, the dissipation of such pernicious shadows? Muret’s laudation of the massacre was heard by the Pope, whose Secretary, Antoine Buccapadulius, replied briefly, stressing that Charles IX had confirmed his title of Tres-chrestien by the discomfiture and abolition of the heretical enemies of Jesus Christ.13 And it was to this theme that Muret returned less than two years later, again at Rome, when called upon to pronounce the funeral oration for the same Charles IX.14 Once more, he depicted France torn by civil wars and sedition; and again he dwelt on the new age of peace which was being inaugurated by the young king when death had suddenly ended his good works. Charles, said Muret, had spent his entire life trying to preserve the integrity of the Christian religion threatened by ‘this filthy and infamous race of lost and desperate men’ who hid their deceit under the name of Truth which was newly fallen from the heavens and revealed to them alone. These creatures had attempted to overthrow the royal authority and remove France from its allegiance to the Roman Church: but the King, though a mere youth, would rather have been hacked into pieces than allow such a schism, and had spent his reign amidst ceaseless war, fighting for his life and state. In view of these tremendous efforts, says Muret, even had his ancestors not handed down the title of Tres-chrestien, Charles would have earned it for himself and for his own successors.15 d u ha i l l a n a n d p i b r a c It was generally (though not unanimously) accepted by apologists for the massacre that the deed had been dire—one of those extre`mes advocated by Muret where gentle remedies had failed.16 This point 13 Ibid., sigs. B.3v–4. 14 Lb33.377. Oraison funebre faicte a` Rome, aux obseques de Tres-Chrestien Roy de France Charles IX. Par Marc-Antoine de Muret . . . Traduicte en Franc¸ois, et mise a` coste´ du Latin, par M. Jean le Frere de Laval (Paris: N. Chesneau, 1574). 15 A similar assessment of Charles IX’s achievements against the heretics was later offered by Giovanni Botero, La prima parte de’ prencipi Christiani (Turin, 1601), 118. 16 See e.g. Lb33.347. Sommaire Discours des Causes de tous les troubles de ce royaume, procedentes des impostures et coniurations des heretiques et des rebelles.

238

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

was argued in several pamphlets, but especially in two officially inspired publications, both issued anonymously: the Discours sur les causes de tous les troubles de ce royaume (which has been attributed to Du Haillan), and Pibrac’s notorious letter addressed to Stanislaus Elvidius (that is Joachim Camerarius). The Discours was evidently regarded as an authoritative justification for the events of August, for it was published thrice in 1572.17 It tells how, for thirteen years, France has been troubled by civil wars arising principally through the diversity of two religions which could not possibly coexist within the state: especially when one of them, the Reformed Church, uses piety and a zeal for the common good as a cloak for attempts against the lives of princes, and against liberty and tranquillity. Those who were unable to penetrate behind fair words were easily duped by the Huguenots, whose behaviour, none the less, made manifest the hollowness of their concern with the glory of God and with public peace. The word of God, says the author, cannot be planted by force of arms. Nor can public repose be conserved by civil wars. It is as much as to say that, to preserve a healthy body, one should feed it poison or that, to preserve snow, it should be put before the fire (sigs. A.2–4). Despite the leniency of Franc¸ois II, who put an end to heretic-burning, and despite the peaceful negotiations of the Queen Mother during the minority of Charles IX, the rebels had repeatedly taken up arms, ruined towns, stolen the King’s finances, invited in foreigners, violated churches, massacred the clergy, and murdered Catholics—and all under the dual pretext of religion and public peace. They were full of complaints against the modifications of the Edict of Pacification of 1563; they made a great wailing (‘une grande querimonie’) that the honours and offices were given to people of low condition and Ensemble le fidelle et loyal devoir des Catholiques envers le Roy (Paris: P. L’Huillier, 1573), fo. 38. 17 Lb33.309. Discours sur les causes de l’Execution faicte e`s personnes de ceux qui avoient conjure´ contre le Roy et son Estat (Lyon: M. Jove, 1572). Further references are given in the text. According to Hauser, Les Sources, 241, the attribution to Du Haillan is based on a manuscript note appended to an edition in Dijon. On Bernard de Girard, Seigneur du Haillan, see Paul Bonnefon, ‘L’Historien du Haillan’, Revue d’histoire litte´raire de la France, 15 (1908), 642–96; 22 (1915), 453–92. The life of Du Haillan in Bayle’s Dictionnaire is characteristically wild but informative.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

239

quality; they reviled the Italians; attacked the King’s council; insisted that account be rendered of the finances since Charles’s accession; and demanded the convocation of the Estates to remedy the evils which had befallen France (sigs. B.2v–3). The fact of the matter, says Du Haillan, is that these people were interested neither in God nor in France. They wished merely to establish their own religion by force of arms. Thrice they had risen in rebellion; and thrice the King had shown clemency. Yet the Huguenots now plotted against the lives of the King and royal family, and sowed dissension in France—all inventions fashioned in the shop of the Admiral (‘forgees en la boutique de l’Admiral’), who, seeing that peace would not serve his ends, continually sought to stir his followers to active sedition. The Admiral even tried to get Charles to betray the King of Spain by sending help to the rebels in Flanders. It is no wonder that such a man, who had given offence to so many people, should have been shot by an arquebusier. Yet, despite all this, the King had been gravely concerned at that crime, attempted to discover and to punish the culprit, and visited the Admiral, making hourly enquiries concerning his health. But the Admiral grew increasingly bitter, ‘par sa blessure avoit d’avantage ulcere´ son courage et ses desseins’; his speech was full of menace; and he condemned the King’s concern as counterfeit (sigs. C.2v–3v). On the Saturday evening, the pamphlet continues, there had been a secret council of the Huguenots, who resolved to kill Charles and make the Admiral master of the kingdom: but the crime was so barbarous that some of the conspirators confessed the matter to the King, who at last saw that it was necessary to apply ‘un prompt, souverein et rigoureux remede’ to the imminent plot which was now unequivocally revealed. In such matters concerning the life and state of princes, and where no doubt remains, it is necessary to proceed without delay to execution and punishment without tarrying for further information or judicial procedures (sig. D.1).18 Accordingly, the King, Queen Mother, royal family, 18 ‘Car en matiere d’advertissemens qui concernent la vie, ou l’Estat des Princes, de´s qu’on est asseurement adverty, il faut venir a l’execution et punition, devant que venir aux informations, procedures et jugemens, ce qui ne se fait en autres matieres d’advertissemens, ausquelles les jugemens precedent les

240

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

and their chief counsellors decided to inflict a ‘punition exemplaire’. The executions began at dawn on the Sunday morning and were accomplished with such ‘felicite´, diligence, et celerite´’ that by 7.00 in the morning, the Admiral, his chiefs, and the other conspirators were dead. It was a judgement of God. Had the conspiracy not been discovered for another hour the situation would have been beyond remedy: but God had inspired the King’s heart to administer an immediate antidote. It was surely remarkable that the heretics and rebels, despite their customary suspicion, had not the slightest inkling of what was in store for them. Obviously divine intervention had shut their ears, spirits, and eyes, rendering them insensible to the just retribution advancing upon them. God had chosen the King to be the minister of his wrath, and had given him both the will and the means to exterminate the Huguenots: ‘for if ever an enterprise was promptly, happily, and boldly carried out, this was it’. The good Catholic people of Paris could not restrain themselves from killing many Huguenots and pillaging their homes, thereby showing their love for the King: but one ‘must excuse the people’s fury moved by a laudable zeal which is difficult to restrain once it has been stirred up’. Paris, says the Discours, was always an example for the other towns of France, which followed suit in executing the Huguenots. Then on Monday the 26th the King and various dignitaries met in the Court of the Parlement, declared that everything had been done at the royal command, and briefly explained the necessity (sig. D.2r–v). Towards the end of 1572, Guy de Faur, seigneur de Pibrac— judge, diplomat, administrator, and poet—completed a treatise which was published in the following year at Lyon and Paris in both Latin and French versions.19 Pibrac may have been one of the executions, mais en celles cy, les executions doyvent marcher les premieres, quand la conjuration est manifeste, puis les jugemens font leur devoir et eclarcissent ce qui a este´ faict.’ 19 Lb33.322 and 323. Ornatissimi cuiusdam viri de rebus gallicis, ad Stanislaum Elvidium epistola (Paris: F. Morel, 1573). There was a French translation, Traduction d’une Epistre latine d’un excellent personnage de ce Royaume faicte par forme de Discours sur aucunes choses depuis peu de temps advenues en France (Paris: F. Morel, 1573). For a modern edition see L’Apologie de la Saint Barthe´lemy, ed. Alban Cabos (Paris, 1922); and for a detailed discussion of Pibrac’s treatise, its significance for Henri de Valois’s Polish venture, and for differences between the Latin

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

241

less happy defenders of the massacre. Certainly he was regarded as such by Hubert Languet, who wrote, in a letter to Sir Philip Sidney, ‘you seem to me somewhat too hard on Pibrac’: adding that he ‘is a man of such genius, learning, and eloquence, that I do not believe his equal is to be found in France’. Indeed, says Languet, he had even denounced the bloodshed in a speech delivered before the Parlement of Paris in the presence of the King himself and had subsequently been compelled to save his life by the very letter which Sidney so severely condemns.20 Nevertheless, having been present in Paris during the massacre and having been forced to take refuge in the English embassy, Sidney was not likely to favour a pamphlet which offered an apology for Charles IX’s actions seemingly more measured and plausible, more theoretical and less tendentious, than many of its companions. Like the majority of Catholic apologists, Pibrac stresses the king’s repeated, though ill-appreciated, clemency towards the ceaselessly seditious Huguenots: but he provides a particularly full discussion of the problems posed by intransigent malefactors. Even when the Huguenots’ intentions were patent, says Pibrac, the King remained reluctant to act against them, though the elder statesmen believed that in very dangerous illnesses, it is necessary to employ extreme remedies. The King, his mother, and his brothers, all agreed that such an ‘execution soudaine’ had been merited by their enemies: but they still wished to follow the processes of the law, for Charles was concerned not merely with his life but with his good name, and was troubled by the possible reactions of other nations were he to act precipitately. One of the ‘vieillards’ argued that it would be impossible to avoid a fourth civil war were the King to attempt to take prisoners and bring them to trial, and he warned that in wishing to spare his avowed enemies the King might unintentionally act cruelly towards his fatherland and betray his loyal subjects. All equitable men would, in fact, consider that to take the requisite action against the rebels was and French texts, see Alban Cabos, Guy de Faur de Pibrac, un magistrat poe`te au XVIe sie`cle (Paris, Auch, 1922), 195–247. 20 The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. Steuart A. Pears (1845, repr. 1971), 87–8.

242

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

praiseworthy according to both human and divine law: and the counsellor declared that he did not lack examples to the point—if the issue required long discourse rather than prompt execution. His peroration concluded with a dramatic appeal for the King to save himself, the Queen Mother, all those present, and France itself.21 Pibrac elaborates on the exigencies imposed by extreme danger. Despite the wishes of the royal family that the law should be followed, their advisers had stressed the need for swift action, fearing that, while the normal processes were being instituted, the King would find himself surprised and caught up in the toils of the conspiracy. Just as the Roman Senate had dealt with Lentulus, Cethegus, and their accomplices without waiting for the normal legal processes, so should France act now. Whatever was lawful for a consul in a republic must surely be admissable for a king in his kingdom? What need to allege examples when the law is certain and evident? France uses Roman law, and it is patent that, for the public interest, one can inflict prompt punishment— especially when the matter is of such extremity that the laws are, in effect, irrelevant. Expediency rather than legal subtlety is requisite for, as one Roman had put it, amidst arms the laws have no voice at all. If you are ambushed by brigands, then all means of saving your life may be regarded as good, legitimate, and honest (pp. 38–9). The King, writes Pibrac, was deeply disturbed but accepted the advice since it seemed the most expedient and consonant with the laws both human and divine—though he stressed that only proscribed conspirators should be touched and that there should be no popular tumult lest the innocent should suffer with the guilty. It is regrettable that, in the event, several conspirators escaped unscathed while other folk, who had not conspired, were slain, for the people were so enraged at the threat to the King’s life that they got out of hand. It was, of course, all against the King’s own edict; and no one was more upset than Charles himself, whose clemency and gentleness were innate. He had only donned the mask of severity under extreme necessity, and once that necessity had passed he immediately doffed this uncharacteristic raiment 21 Traduction d’une Epistre, 22–5. Further references are given in the text.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

243

(p. 50). The times were troublous, but Pibrac saw only good resulting from the massacre. After so many schisms and religious dissensions, he felt that the hearts of Frenchmen had never been more united than at the present time for the King had restored peace to France—a deed ‘semblable a` Dieu mesme’. Yet even now there were some who considered the King’s good qualities nothing but ‘une ruse, une cautelle, un fraude, et une malice’. Base ingratitude! Do we not live in an age which is enemy to the virtues? (p. 44). Muret, Du Haillan, and Pibrac represent the official position on the massacre which was alleged to have resulted from the preceding years of civil strife in which Coligny and the Huguenots were consistently the aggressors and were, as consistently, forgiven by a clement king. The massacre was only undertaken with the utmost reluctance by Charles, who had to be persuaded that France itself was in danger of imminent destruction before he would resort to extreme measures—‘ceste juste execution’, as the historian Belleforest was soon to describe it.22 The view was not implausible. The sanguinary events of Saint Bartholomew’s Day have tended to overshadow the atrocities perpetrated by both sides in the preceding years. The Huguenots’ own record for good citizenship, tolerance, and humanity was scarcely better than that of their persecutors. To many sixteenth-century observers, the Huguenots were rebels; two religions could not coexist; and the Huguenots were the usurpers, not the Catholics. popular polemics: the rhetoric of hate However, this official stance could easily shade off into something rather different, as is evident in the welter of popular polemics circulating after the massacre. Here there is a predominantly gleeful tone which makes the alleged Huguenot conspiracy almost redundant as a factor in the Saint Bartholomew. To argue that the killings were a regrettable necessity, in which the innocent suffered for the guilty, was one thing. To exult over it, is another. What, for 22 Franc¸ois de Belleforest, Les chroniques et annales de France (Paris, 1573), fos. 529v–30. This work was begun by Nicole Gilles, continued by Denis Sauvage, and augmented by Belleforest, who was responsible for the whole section on Charles IX. Belleforest’s dedicatory letter is addressed to Nicolas de Bauffremont and is dated 14 Dec. 1572.

244

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

example, were the Huguenots to make of a poetaster such as Claude Nouvellet, who praised Charles for having erected his crown on the twin columns of Piety and Justice; enthused over the hymns that were being sung to celebrate the fine day when the King had avenged ‘la Divinite´ outrage´e’; and even has God express the view that Charles should finish what he has already begun.23 Or what were they to make of Legier du Chesne, who hailed Charles as a triumphant ‘David Franc¸ois’, and urged him not to desist from his good work which was still only beginning? Charles was to tread underfoot the leeches which are bloated with French blood; and he was no longer to tolerate the Calvinist plague which, like a serpent, was belching forth its poison. If one leaves a single caterpillar on a branch, it will soon produce a swarm which will eat between the very roots of the trees, destroying their fruit. Similarly, healthy people quickly expel a leper from their midst. Should we not, therefore, expel the Calvinist who is far more dangerous than any leper? And Du Chesne concludes with an appeal that the King should give these Huguenots to the executioner to be drowned en masse.24 More exultant still is the Allegresse chrestienne de l’heureux succes des guerres de ce royaume, arguing that the rebels had been punished according to divine justice and that it was right for the King to pursue those who had violated religion. Like many other pamphlets of the period it sees the strife as originating in Henri II’s death, which had opened a Pandora’s box of troubles compelling the King, from his youngest days, ‘to play a game which was by no means for children’. The Queen Mother, as usual in Catholic literature, is highly praised for her work in guiding the young monarch; while, conversely, the ills which affect France have come from the swamp of Calvin. It was God Himself who had at last decided to punish the heretics by inspiring the King to main23 Lb33.309.d. Claude Nouvellet, Ode trionfale au roy, sus l’equitable justice que sa majeste´ feit des rebelles, la veille et jour de sainct Loys (Paris: R. Granjon, 1572), sigs. A.3v–4. ‘Si a` mon vouloir il se range, / Ce que j’ay promis, il aura. / Mais que premier il extermine / L’erreur qui sa France ruı¨ne, / Ainsi qu’il a ja commence´.’ 24 Lb33.309.b. Legier du Chesne, Exhortation au Roy, pour vertueusement poursuivre ce que sagement il a commence´ contre les Huguenots, avec les Epitaphes de Gaspar de Colligny etc. (Paris: G. Buon, 1572), sigs. A.4–B.1v.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

245

tain France in its ancient faith and to uproot the heretic vermin. The author acknowledges that some politiques may say that it is not for the King to punish heretics: but there is an abundance of examples proving that kings must act to preserve religion. Was not Achab’s family exterminated by Jehu? Did not Josias command that not a life should be spared of the unfaithful? And may we not compare Charles IX to Charlemagne and to Charles Martel, who killed 325,000 Saracens? The author then addresses that most constant city of Paris which has now been rewarded by God with the glory, praise, and honour of the wonderful victory over the ‘rebelle moqueur’, and he rejoices in the sight of the Huguenots stretched out dead or drowned in the river. These enemies of the true Christian faith had thought to give the Catholics vespers ‘a` la Sicilienne’: but, by matins, the whole plot had rebounded on their own heads, though the author piously claims that Catholics would prefer the conversion of a single heretic to the death of 500 or even of a ‘million’. The work ends with a thanksgiving and a prayer that God will preserve the royal family, and that Justice and Piety will rule France and maintain the law, ‘Pour n’y servir qu’UN DIEU, UNE EGLISE, ET UN ROY.25 The idea of grim necessity was, as we have seen, very much the official line on the massacre: but it was more strikingly expressed by Franc¸ois de Chantelouve in his Tragedie de feu Gaspard de Colligny (1575), which glosses over the massacre itself and concentrates on the events which determined its fateful course.26 The tone of the work is evident from the moment when Coligny takes the stage, mouthing a volley of expletives and imprecations, coupling 25 Lb33.309.e. Allegresse chrestienne de l’heureux succes des guerres de ce royaume (Paris: Michel de Roigny, 1572), sigs. B.2v–C.3. This is the same poem as that printed by Roigny (but with different title page, pagination, and setting) as Discours sur les occurrences des Guerres intestines de ce royaume, et de la justice de Dieu contre les rebelles au Roy, et comme de droit divin est licite a` sa majeste´ punir ses subjets, pour la Religion viole´e. 26 Lb33.325.a. Franc¸ois de Chantelouve, La Tragedie du feu Gaspard de Colligny jadis admiral de France, contenant ce qui advint a` Paris le 24. d’Aoust 1572, avec le nom des personnages (n.p., 1575). On this play, see Charles Mazouer, ‘Chantelouve et le Saint-Barthelemy: ‘‘La Tragedie de feu Gaspard de Colligny’’ (1575)’, in Les E´crivains et la politique dans le sud-ouest de la France autour des anne´es 1580 (Bordeaux, 1982), 129–42.

246

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

the dreaded names of Satan and Calvin, and alluding to his own brothers who are now grilling nicely in the fires of Hell. O Mort, oˆ rage, oˆ fer, oˆ Furies! Courez, accablez-moi soubz vos fureurs aigries; O Satan, oˆ Calvin! Ouvre-moi les Enfers, Ou` mes freres et toi grillent de feux divers.

The Admiral makes no bones about it: he wishes to be king; he recognizes no law; and he even feigns zeal for the Reformed Church to deceive his enemies. In all this he is abetted by Montgommery, who boasts that, having already killed one king (that is Henri II), he is now intent upon killing another.27 ‘Le Peuple Franc¸ois’ then tell us how the clement and liberal King has received nothing but base ingratitude; and we are shown Charles and his Council debating the matter of persistent rebellion, and deciding to make one last attempt at obtaining the peace so vital to France—this time by proposing a marriage alliance. The Huguenots are delighted at the opportunity of seizing this ‘prince idiot’, making Coligny King of France, and killing off the followers of the Guises. In the third act of the Tragedie, we meet Mercury receiving his orders from Jupiter and it becomes clear that the entire sequence of events is being planned in Olympus. The very arquebus shot which wounds the Admiral was conceived by Jupiter so that the Huguenots would have a ‘couleur’ to kill the King. Coligny is to be ensnared by heaven, and is duly shot; and the Huguenots lament a situation in which their leader has been outwitted by the King, whose visits to the wounded man they interpret as a mere ruse ‘ypocrisant sa mine’. The final act of the Tragedie opens with the King protesting his innocence of complicity in the shooting. An informer suddenly reveals the plot to kill Charles, who consults his Council and is told that extreme dangers demand extreme solutions—the unfailing 27 Montgommery killed Henri II in the famous Paris tournament of 1559. See C. D. O’Malley and J. B. de C. M. Saunders, ‘The ‘‘Relation’’ of Andreas Vesalius on the Death of Henry II of France’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 3 (1948), 197–213.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

247

advice, they say, of the most expert surgeons—and, in the present peril, the King must anticipate the enemy and make their assassination plot rebound against them. Charles is appalled and argues vehemently that monarchs are expected to uphold the virtues. But each of his objections is overcome by the Council: justice is more acceptable to God than mercy; to chastise evildoers is a greater virtue than to pardon one’s enemies: and finally, when Charles urges that the blood of his subjects must be dear to a king, he is given an irresistible answer. The blood of the fatherland is yet more dear.28 So, at last, Charles is convinced. He orders that the Huguenots should be punished, and the Tragedie ends very suddenly. A messenger reports the massacre to ‘Le Peuple’; the villains are defeated; and all is now well with France. That it was not merely necessary for the King to punish the Huguenots but was his bounden duty, was argued trenchantly in a short pamphlet issued at Lyon by Benoist Rigaud shortly after the massacre. This was the Brieve Remonstrance sur la mort de l’Admiral, et ses adherans, au Peuple Franc¸ois, which carries the grim subtitle, Il n’y a point de paix aux meschans, dit le Seigneur. Isaiae 48 & 57. The anonymous author demonstrates, to foreign princes and to others, the just causes for the killings. Although the King has explained that he was principally moved by the Admiral’s conspiracy, the Huguenots are accusing him of violating the peace. Yet really it was the other way around. Following the advice of Calvin and Be`ze, who had preached that their adherents should take up arms against their ruler, they have plotted against the blood royal. This was normal, for they were always trying to overturn political order; and at this very moment the Prince of Orange, using religion as his pretext, was trying to break from the service of his natural prince in the Low Countries. France had been prospering ever since the healing of the old factions between Orle´ans and Burgundy, until these people had started the troubles again—just as all the troubles in Germany, including the Turkish threat, were their responsibility! The Book of Kings (17 and 18) demonstrates that France was being punished for having pardoned its own ‘Syriens et Amelicites’ 28 Tragedie, 46. ‘Mais bien plus cher son sang aussi de sa patrie / Qui vengeance, vengeance a` sa Majeste´ crie.’

248

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

and for having let them live among the faithful; and the pamphlet gives other examples of divine retribution incurred by forgiving those deserving of punishment. Saul, who had been told not to spare any Amelecite, had suffered for his disobedience; and just as God’s vengeance fell on Agag for the evils he had caused the Hebrews, so had it befallen the Admiral who had caused innumerable ills to France. There was no faith to be kept with the faithless, and no peace with evildoers; and the author emphasizes that the most heinous of all the Admiral’s crimes was to have committed le`se-majeste´ which, according to Ulpian, is akin to sacrilege. The standard example of David’s refusal to harm Saul is pressed into service to highlight, by stark contrast, the misdeeds of the Admiral who had taken arms against his King and had invited foreigners into France; while a host of German, classical, and French examples demonstrate how kings have always meted out the most severe punishment to rebels. The author apostrophizes the people of France who have seen how the rebels have tried to seize the kingdom. They must be punished immediately, openly, and without tarrying for due legal methods. Urgent dangers require urgent remedies; long-winded processes are useless; and it is important to make an example of the leaders so that the lesser people will shrink back from their follies. Moses was the first of the prophets to take up the knife to kill those who turned the Israelites away from God, and, ever since, his actions have been imitated by kings. The Church of God cannot be divided, and the King was right to have the Admiral and his adherents put to death.29

dissimulation and politic religion The opinion that the Huguenots had been conspiring against the King, and that this had been merely the culmination of more than a decade of insurrection, was advanced in the greater number of Catholic pamphlets which depicted the Huguenots as archetypal hypocrites (as the Jesuits were later to be branded by their Prot29 Lb33.530. Brieve Remonstrance sur la mort de l’Admiral, et ses adherans. Au Peuple Franc¸ois (Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1572), sigs. C.1–4v.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

249

estant enemies) who used religion and other ideals as the conscious instrument of a purely temporal policy. While continually asserting that they were the King’s servants and that they were acting in his defence, the Huguenots were really seeking to subvert the kingdom—an accusation most strikingly presented in the Sommaire Discours of 1573. It contains the usual catalogue of Huguenot crimes, but the main burthen of the work is that people wishing to execute any evil enterprise always cover it with some fine and specious pretext to dupe simple folk who only regard externals. Foremost among matters requiring such cover are conspiracies against the persons and estates of princes, when conspirators cloak their pernicious intentions with beautiful garments—most commonly the shadows of a false religion and of a public good. Led by Coligny, the Huguenots have consistently and consciously employed these simulated virtues as cover for their attempts at subverting the state and true religion.30 These accusations were repeatedly hurled at the Huguenots. The twin virtues to which they lay claim are degraded into ‘mauvais et dangereux pretextes’—a mere mantle to hide their malicious crimes, mask their ambition, and deceive the ignorant multitude.31 As Jean Le Bon, physician to the Cardinal of Lorraine, wrote: the Huguenots were originally few in number but, like a snowball which grows as it is rolled, they have gathered up thieves, desperadoes, and all those who wish to live off the work of others. They have, moreover, invited foreigners into France—and all allegedly in defence of the Evangile, that ‘beau et large manteau’.32 Even Coligny’s adherence to the reformed religion was generally deemed a fraud adopted in order to surprise the King: ‘Ainsi 30 Lb33.347. Sommaire Discours des Causes de tous les troubles de ce royaume, procedentes des impostures et conjurations des heretiques et des rebelles. Ensemble le fidelle et loyal devoir des Catholiques envers le Roy (Paris: P. L’Huillier, 1573), esp. fos. 2–3v. There was another issue of this work by Mesnier and Delacourt at Poitiers in the same year. 31 See e.g. Lb33.313.b. Discours contre les Huguenotz, auquel est contenue et de´clare´e la source de leur damnable religion (Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1573), sig. 4. This pamphlet was also issued in Paris by H. de Marnef. 32 Lb33.355. Jean Le Bon, Le tumulte de Bassigni, appaise et esteinct par l’auctorite´, conseil, et vigilance de Monseigneur le Cardinal de Lorraine. Etc. (Paris: D. Du Pre´, 1573), sig. B.3r–v. This text was reprinted in Cimber and Danjou, 1st ser., viii.

250

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

ypochrisant je suis traistre a` toute l’heure, / Ainsi le vieux Regnard, toujours Regnard demeure.’33 His words are full of dissimulation; he humbles himself while beguiling the King with lies and sleights; his mouth speaks marvels, but his heart conceives unparallelled injuries;34 and he has caused the deaths of a million people, while his poison and ambition have remained hidden beneath the painted show of religion.35 An anonymous broadsheet of 1572, the Advertissement du Peuple de Paris aux Passans, is especially eloquent on Huguenot fraud. It analyses and lists the principal components of the Admiral’s overweening ambition: deceiving the King by trickery; doing nothing while seeming to do everything; nursing revenge under a benign expression; fawning upon enemies while wearing a painted visage; and beguiling, while secretly betraying, his friends. The Admiral and his brothers have perpetrated every kind of crime. Beneath their ‘masque feint’ they have deceived even the wisest folk; fashioned a new world; embraced the perjuror with their ruses; laid France open to its enemies; turned everything to mockery; soiled the sepulchres of the dead with their sacrilegious hands; and pretended to be cold while burning within their very souls with the fire of ambition. This was the subtle web woven at court till, at last, God inspired Charles, through the sage advice of his mother, to punish the monsters. They themselves had desecrated tombs: but now, unburied, their own stinking carcasses tumble about on the waters and serve only as fish-bait or carrion.36 Perhaps the most interesting of those works attacking the Huguenot leaders as dissimulators using religion for purely 33 Chantelouve, Tragedie, 6. 34 Lb33.336.e. Cantique general des Catholiques, sur la mort de Gaspard de Colligny iadis Admiral de France, advenue a` Paris, le XXIIIJ jour d’Aoust (Paris: P. Godec, 1572). 35 I.S.P., Discours sur la mort de Gaspart de Coligny, qui fut Admiral de France et de ses complices, le jour sainct Berthelemy Vingt quatriesme jour d’Aoust (Paris: M. Martin, ?1572), sig. C.1. 36 Lb33.309.f; Re´s.Ye.85. Advertissement du Peuple de Paris aux Passans: ‘Immortelz ennemis de l’honneur des tombeaux, / Et sans tombeaux aussi, vos charognes puantes / Roulent dessus les eaux, et ne servent errantes / Que d’amorce aux poissons et de gorge aux corbeaux.’

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

251

political ends was the Lettre de Pierre Charpentier. It was also potentially the most damaging, because Charpentier was himself a Protestant of sorts and thus, apparently, writing with inside knowledge. Certainly his Lettre was considered good copy and was issued twice in 1572, once in Latin and once in French, and again in a French edition during the following year.37 It also elicited a violent reply from its addressee, the noted Professor of Greek at Geneva, Franc¸ois Portes, who was deeply incensed— partly, perhaps, by embarrassment at having the obnoxious letter addressed to him; partly by his personal dislike for the author; and partly by the dangerous arguments contained in the pamphlet. For Charpentier was an extreme apologist for the massacre. It was, in his view, a well-merited punishment for years of civil disobedience where secret sedition had been masked by the public pretext of religion; and Charpentier, like the Catholic writers, dwells on the royal clemency which had tolerated the Huguenots, allowed them to hold synods, and given them liberties without even demanding reciprocal benefits for Catholics in Germany or England. The peace had been violated not by the King but rather by ‘nostre propre vice’, and, though the majority of Protestants, were innocent, they had to suffer for the sedition of the Cause— extremists who stirred up dissension with inflammatory preaching and whose impiety was made manifest by their dreadful reading of ‘poetes lascifs et de Rabelais’. Those who supported the Cause execrated the Valois and were open enemies to France, intending to set up a new kingdom ‘en la barbe du Roy’. Naturally, this could not be tolerated indefinitely, especially since the Huguenot extremists not only satisfied their jaded palates with pornographic literature but also accumulated wealth to support unworthy people in magnificence. Charpentier especially notes the case of an impoverished Gascon, ‘un homme de neant et moindre’, who quickly became rich in the service of the Cause simply because he promised 37 Lb33.314–315. Lettre de Pierre Charpentier Jurisconsulte addresse´e a` Franc¸ois Portes Candiois par laquelle il monstre que les persecutions des Eglises de France sont advenues, non par faulte de ceux qui faisoient profession de la Religion, mais de ceux qui nourrissoient les factions, et conspirations, qu’on appelle la Cause (n.p, 1572). For bibliographical details, see Hauser, Les Sources, 247–8. On Charpentier and Portes, see also Kingdon, Myths, 112–18.

252

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

to carry out any homicide they desired. There was a whole army of such ruffians, quick with their hands (‘prompts a` la main’) and ready to undertake any evil deed; and when Charpentier had asked what the Cause hoped to gain from such monsters, he was told simply ‘pour faire un beau coup’. Knowing that Charpentier intended to reveal their plots, they had attempted to assassinate him and he had, for a time, been frightened into silence. Under cover of religion the Cause sought war to destroy France itself: plotting to kill the King and preaching that even slight injuries should be avenged with blood and cruelty. Charpentier was opposed to all this. In his view Christians should live under the law; the Protestants should never oppose the King; and they should keep within the limits of the Edict of Pacification. Events had shown what happens when Christians act in a contrary fashion. The Huguenots have suffered for their sedition, and nobody feels pity because they got what they deserved. Persecution has come through our sins, says Charpentier, citing the words used by St Cyprian of the Christians persecuted by Decius. Consider the catalogue of Huguenot crimes. They had tried to create enmity between the King and his brother, the Duc d’Anjou; they had sowed calumnies against the King, Queen Mother, and the Council; and, when Charpentier had protested that it was ruinous to calumniate princes, he was told openly that the Cause intended to kill Charles. In times past, rulers such as Herod, Titus, and Licinius persecuted innocent Christians merely through false suspicions. What fate then must befall those who have openly plotted against the Catholics? It was terrible that innocents had suffered for the sins of the guilty but the Cause had been justly punished by the massacre. Even now their remnants, instead of begging forgiveness, were reforming themselves, like some serpent, to continue their mischiefs under their customary pretext of religion. The ancient Christians, when persecuted, had employed prayers, modesty, and patience, but the good shepherd of the Cause—who carries atheism engraved on his heart and Jesus Christ ‘au front’—does not think to imitate these holy exemplars, but is again trying to raise support from Germany, England, and Switzerland for further enterprises. And Charpentier concludes with a fervent wish that these extremists may be rejected by the greater number of Protestants who, with

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

253

their faith purged of this contagion, might again make open profession of their beliefs.

the massacre as a premeditated stroke of genius The majority of Catholic apologists were of the view that Charles IX had been reluctant to countenance the massacre and only did so when years of Huguenot insurrection and duplicity were about to culminate in an assassination plot. There was, however, another school of thought which is hinted at in Jean-Antoine de Baı¨f ’s valedictory verses, Complainte sur le trespas du feu roy Charles IX, where the poet explained that—although the King had been a wonderful fellow, frank, open, and generous—he had known how to dissimulate, especially when dealing with two-faced enemies who would not let him behave normally.38 In other words Charles had contrived to deceive the deceivers. He had lured them into a trap, and then deliberately destroyed them. This was a view of the massacre accepted almost immediately, and with considerable enthusiasm, by several Italian commentators. A brief narrative, written at Lyon only a few days after the events and quickly published both at Rome and Florence, makes this position clear. It opens with an account of all that had happened in France to chastise this evil Huguenot generation, and declares it a true judgement of God. The whole affair began with the shooting of the Admiral; and the anonymous author tells how the prudent King had offered the injured Huguenot leader kind words and comfort while hiding his true intentions. The Admiral and other leaders were then killed; and the King subsequently addressed his parlement with ‘belle e ornate parole’, explaining 38 Lb33.371.a; Ye.1940. Jean-Antoine de Baı¨f, Complaincte sur le trespas du feu roy Charles IX (Paris: F. Morel, 1574), sigs. A.4v–B.1. ‘Comme de hauts discours capable, / Ainsi te montrois admirable / En responses: ferme a` parler: / Et tout ouvert et debonaire: / Toutefois en un grand affaire / Tu sc¸avois bien dissimuler. / Aussi ton regne enceint de troubles, / Par les cueurs de tes hommes doubles, / Sans foy, du vray bien e´garez, / Ne te permit d’une ame ouverte, / User de ta fac¸on aperte, / Vers des esprits tant bigarrez.’

254

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

that the effusion of blood had been entirely according to his will, and that he had adopted this method because he had judged it impossible to proceed in any other way. There follows a general account of the massacre in various places throughout France, and the author notes the King’s alleged joy, which could ‘scarcely have been greater’.39 A similar point was made in another contemporary pamphlet issued at Rome. This praises Charles IX’s decision to use the marriage festivities at Paris to punish the Huguenot leaders for their assassination plot against him. The King, in order thoroughly to ensnare the Admiral, arranged that his enemy should have the greatest honour in all the jousts and tourneys, and it was during the festivities that there occurred the arquebus incident in which the Admiral was wounded. Charles, under the pretence of looking after Coligny’s interests and doing everything for his better security, in fact arranged that his own guards should have control of the house, the entrances to the street, and the square. When everything was ready, the Admiral was slain and hurled from his window and the people were raised in alarm and given licence to kill all the Huguenots. It was a great success and the author proudly records that—without a single Catholic casualty—five or six thousand Protestants had been slain and their houses ransacked, yielding infinite riches of gold, silver, and jewellery which had been pillaged from the churches. On the Tuesday the King claimed responsibility for the massacre. And the author hopes that, with God’s help, Charles’s actions might result in France being entirely freed from the Huguenot plague.40 The reductio ad absurdum of this view of the massacre as a premeditated masterstroke is to be found in a notorious discourse, 39 Lb33.427. Intiera relatione della morte dall’Ammiraglio & altri capi suoi complici. Con la mortalita degli Ugonoti, per ordine di sua Maesta Christianissima fatta in Parigi, Lione, & altri luoghi del Regno di Francia (Rome: gli Heredi di A. Blado, 1572), sigs. A.2, B.2. Another version of this text—Copia di una lettera venuta nuovamente da Lione. Nella quale si contiene il gran successo della morte del’Ammiraglio—was published in Florence but without the name of the printer (BL 9200.bbb.10). 40 Lb33.307. Ragguaglio degli Ordini, et Modi tenuti dalla Maiesta Christianissima nella distruttione della setta degli Ugonotti, Con la Morte dell’Ammiraglio, et altre particolarita non piu intese (Rome: gli Heredi di A. Blado, n.d.), sigs. A.2v–4.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

255

Lo stratagema di Carlo IX Re di Francia contro gli Ugonotti rebelli di Dio et suoi, written by Camillo Capilupi, a papal secretary, and printed (after a wide circulation in manuscript and many vicissitudes) early in 1574.41 The Capilupi were well known in their own time as dignitaries of the Church, diplomats, and men of letters: but their fame has survived principally in Camillo’s Lo stratagema and, to a lesser extent, in a volume of the collected Latin verse by five of the family. To the latter volume, Camillo and his brothers Alfonso and Ippolito contributed epigrams, odes, and other verse; while another brother, Laelio, and his nephew Julio added not only epigrams and the like but also the Vergilian centos upon which their own tenuous reputations have since rested.42 At the time of the massacre, Camillo had been in Rome with Pope Gregory XIII and was still there when the news reached the papal court on 3 September. Two days later Camillo wrote to his brother Alessandro, who was representing the Mantuan court at Madrid, telling him of the joy at Rome, where Te Deum laudamus had been sung. The deed was considered to be of the utmost 41 Camillo Capilupi, Lo stratagema di Carlo IX Re di Francia contro gli Ugonotti rebelli di Dio et suoi (Rome: gli Heredi di A. Blado, 1574). Later in 1574 another edition, accompanied by a French translation, was published by the Genevan printer Jacob Stoer. On the bilingual edition, see below, n. 50. Modern commentators have been misled by the fact that the dedicatory letter addressed by Camillo to his brother Alfonso is dated 18 Sept. 1572 in the Rome edition and 22 Oct. 1572 in the Genevan. However, the whole of the following year was spent trying to find a suitable printer. See Giovanni Battista Intra, ‘Di Camillo Capilupi e de’ suoi scritti’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 20 (1893), 693–735. See also Catalogo de’ codici manoscritti della famiglia Capilupi di Mantova illustrato dall’Abate Don Giovanni Andres (Mantua, 1797), 297–8 on manuscripts with autograph corrections. As well as the dating of the dedicatory letter, there are numerous differences between the two printed versions—but they do not affect the issue here. Between Apr. and June 1574, there are several references to Lo stratagema in The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, 57, 60, 70, 77–8. Languet was anxious to have ‘a copy or two’, but learns from Sidney that the book was not printed owing to objections at Rome by the French ambassador—‘the stupid Frenchman thought his master was being insulted instead of praised’. Languet does eventually receive the work and ponders on how the use of the word ‘stratagem’ has changed. Once it meant a ‘wise counsel’ used by a commander for the preservation of his own men or the overthrow of the enemy: ‘but now-a-days, after your Italian school, we give to vices the names of virtues, and are not ashamed to call falsehood, treachery and cruelty, by the names of wisdom and magnanimity’. 42 See Octave Delepierre, Tableau de la litte´rature du Centon (London, 1874–5).

256

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

importance for Christendom and it was hoped that it would extinguish all suspicions (arising from the events in Flanders) which had existed between the kings of France and Spain. Another two days passed and Camillo, having obtained further details, again wrote to Alessandro. The news had been confirmed and thanks had been given to God for such a happy success. The Cardinal of Lorraine, ‘con viso molto allegro’, had imparted the good news to the other cardinals and had praised the King of France and the Queen Mother, whereupon many other cardinals spoke in similar fashion, dwelling upon the evil character of the Admiral and his followers, and expounding the evils they had inflicted upon France. Among those who spoke was a Frenchman whose comparison between the Queen Mother and Judith, and between the Admiral and Holofernes, gave his audience great pleasure. Subsequently the news was made public; solemn ceremonies were held; bonfires and festivals were arranged; and there was a procession and three masses praying that this beginning should have a happy end for God’s glory and for the increase of the Church. Camillo went on to report that more than 10,000 men and women, and twenty-seven principal leaders, had been killed. But what really impressed him was the skill with which the King collected together as many Huguenots as possible in order to exterminate them. He had been speaking to people in the know, and discovered how the King and his mother had deceived the Admiral over the marriage negotiations by forging the papal dispensation which had not really been forthcoming from the Holy See; how they had dissimulated the absence of the Duke of Guise, who had, in fact, been ready to re-enter Paris with his armed men at the appointed time; and how the Admiral had been duped by the armed guards allegedly positioned for his own better protection. In short, said Capilupi, all historians would have to write of the King’s deeds; and the court of Rome rejoiced at the recovery of France.43 So excited was Camillo by the massacre, that he determined to write a detailed account of the whole affair to celebrate Charles IX’s political brilliance. Few people had better access to the most intimate sources: he could read the reports of the nuncio, Salviati; 43 Intra, ‘Di Camillo Capilupi’, 703–5.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

257

he would know the notices sent from Paris to the Cardinal of Lorraine, with whom he was on familiar terms; he was able to discuss the affair at length with the ambassador sent from France to explain everything to the Pope; he had the reports of the courtiers of the Duke of Nevers, among whom were some of his Mantuan friends; and his own uncle, Ippolito, enjoyed the confidence of the most elevated personages at the papal court.44 He set to work with a will, and by 22 October 1572 his treatise was complete and, within a short while, was circulating freely at Rome and elsewhere. The work is addressed by the author to his brother, Alfonso, and in the dedicatory letter he explains how he is recording the deeds of Charles IX, who has restored France to its former health; and how he has taken great pains to establish the truth by collecting evidence from reliable witnesses. He will begin from the time of the last peace and will proceed in orderly fashion with everything that developed thereafter. The Huguenots, despite their having been defeated in four battles, still multiplied like a hydra’s head. Charles IX, seeing the impossibility of exterminating them in this way, and seeing his kingdom in ruins, decided to obtain by art what he had failed to gain by military force, and came up with an idea so profound and so much beyond his years that it could only have been inspired by God. In 1570, against all advice, Charles again gave peace to the rebels. The Huguenots were allowed to serve in office and follow their false religion; while their German troops were paid off by the King himself. Everything was sweetness and moderation, though the King was strengthened in his resolution to ensnare his enemies by the knowledge that they were themselves plotting against the lives of the entire blood royal in order to take over the kingdom. The proposal of a marriage between the King’s sister and Henri de Navarre gave Charles his opportunity to catch the Huguenots in their own toils, though there were two difficulties to be overcome. One was the reluctance of the Papacy to grant the necessary dispensation for marriage with a heretic despite constant assurances that everything was being done for the aggrandizement of the 44 Ibid. 706.

258

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Catholic faith, ‘as one would understand from the results’. The other difficulty was posed by the suspicions of the prospective bridegroom’s mother, a cunning lady, who refused to countenance festivities in a rabid Catholic stronghold such as Paris. However, Capilupi observes with engaging simplicity, it pleased God by His eternal providence and marvellous wisdom to offer an opportune remedy to both obstacles, for the Queen of Navarre died suddenly, leaving her son under the domination of the Admiral, who had been won over by Charles; and the Pope died, too. So God facilitated all things for the chastisement of the heretics. The King, assured by his theologians that there were good precedents for the requisite dispensation, now hoped for a more complaisant Pontiff and pushed ahead with the marriage plans, while, in the meantime, the Cardinal of Lorraine who was privy to the King’s scheme left for Rome in order not to arouse the jealousy of the Admiral, who continued to be beguiled with the King’s fair speeches. Indeed, the Huguenot leader thought Charles a mere pleasure-lover and quite without the subtlety to deceive an old man experienced in worldly affairs. So Coligny, entirely taken up with his own plots, pressed the King to join a Protestant league to aid William of Orange against Spain; and Charles, pretending to heed this suggestion, came to terms with the heretic powers. Naturally, says Capilupi, the King had no intention of waging war against Spain; but he played his role so well that he fooled not only the Huguenots but even true and loyal Catholics. The deception was exquisitely conceived and, to add a touch of verisimilitude, the Queen Mother pretended to discover and condemn the enterprise against Spain; while Charles so successfully pretended to be bitterly upset at this exposure that the Huguenots attributed his behaviour to weakness rather than artifice. Having asked the new Pope for the dispensation, the King despatched Montmorency to England because he feared lest the Marshal—who was an astute man and a councillor—might discover the design. He also set about raising an army under Filippo Strozzi, while convincing the Admiral that the force was for use against the King of Spain in the Low Countries. At the same time, Charles, by ‘a very beautiful stratagem’, pretended that his mother could not be swayed over war with Spain and that he himself could

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

259

not trust Catholic leaders to fight a Catholic power, so that many Huguenot principals were persuaded to come to court to lend their weight to the King’s case. Similarly, the Admiral, seeing the King still doubtful about the enterprise, encouraged him with information about the numbers and disposition of his own forces. The marriage negotiations came to a head when news arrived of the crushing defeat of a Huguenot army under Genlis in the Low Countries. The Admiral was more insistent than ever that the marriage should be concluded; and the King himself could not imagine a better opportunity to dispatch ‘so many birds at one blow’. He pretended that neither the Queen Mother nor the bride would proceed without the papal dispensation and that he was, therefore, arranging for a letter to be forged (as though from his ambassador in Rome) to the effect that the Cardinal of Lorraine had elicited the dispensation which was on its way. Thus the marriage could take place before anyone was the wiser. The Admiral accepted the plan, while the King (who knew that he could not obtain the dispensation without disclosing his secret designs, and hoped that the end would justify his sin) decided to counterfeit the letter and presented it to his mother who, fully aware of the scheme, pretended to be convinced and thereby duped the brideto-be. The marriage accordingly took place on 18 August. The Admiral was again seduced when Charles feigned concern at the attitude of the Guises and wished to have arquebusiers in attendance. Coligny agreed, and the king arranged his men in various places throughout the city so that nobody could tell just how many there were at hand. It was at this time, says Capilupi, that the King discovered further details of the Admiral’s own plot to murder the royal family and to set up Conde´ as a puppet king to be removed when convenient. So Charles decided that the time had come to punish these diabolical schemes and had arranged for a certain ‘Morevel’ [Maurevert], a bravo very handy with the arquebus, to shoot the Admiral. This marksman had been employed once before for the same job, but Capilupi does not tell us how he slipped up. The fact of the matter, in Capilupi’s view, was that Coligny’s death had been reserved for an hour more propitious to Christendom and this hour was now almost at hand as Morevel, armed with an arquebus charged with three poisoned balls, was

260

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

ensconced in a room overlooking the Louvre. Coligny appeared; Morevel fired; and the leader of the Huguenots—less a right thumb and a portion of elbow—fell to the ground, whence he was carried to his lodgings and placed in the care of his surgeons. Not unnaturally, the victim complained to the King who, evincing deep concern and under pretext of catching the culprit, closed the gates of Paris and raised the whole city in arms. Urging the Huguenots that they would be safer if concentrated together in one area, Charles persuaded them to lodge in the same quarter as their leader, ‘to ensnare them more easily so that not one should escape’. Coligny was well guarded by the King’s own men; Anjou and the Duke of Guise arranged to kill him during the following night; and the King, by a ‘singular artifice’, pretended to dismiss the Guises from Paris though, in fact, neither they nor their soldiers went outside the city. Charles now held a council of war; the trap was sprung; and, as Capilupi says, the King and his adherents took no rest throughout that night. The massacre is described in detail by Capilupi, who sees the hand of God in the fact that so many heretics were slain for the loss of only one Catholic. He notes, too, the extraordinary wealth revealed by the sacking of the Huguenots’ homes—all of it accumulated by their despoiling of churches during more than eleven years. The Admiral offered particularly significant booty for, apart from his hoard of treasure, the Catholics discovered a medal with his bust on one side and, on the other, the word extermine with the letters r.l.p., indicating ‘le Roy, Lorraine, Papaute´’. The massacre was carried on remorselessly because the King had made up his mind, ‘entirely to tear out this pernicious seed from his realm’; and, as the news spread to other cities throughout France, so did the killing. At Lyon, for example, things were managed so prudently that the Huguenots were captured without fuss—‘like poor sheep’—and put to death without exception. Capilupi reckons that about 25,000 had been slain altogether; describes both the public thanksgiving on Tuesday, 26 August, and the King’s explanation of the massacre to his parlement; and tells, with relish, how the common people flocked to see the Admiral’s remains ignominiously exhibited on the public gibbet at Montfaucon, and how his principal followers were cast onto the city’s dunghill.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

261

The Stratagema continues with the restoration of order in Paris, and the institution of normal legal processes not only against the few surviving Huguenots but also against those who had been slain. They were all declared rebels, deprived of office, and had their goods confiscated. Next Charles gave his attention to restoring friendly relations with the Papacy and Spain, who had both been deeply concerned by his feigned alliance with the Huguenots; and ambassadors were sent to explain everything in detail. Catholic forces triumphed in the Low Countries, and Capilupi is convinced that Charles IX had saved Christendom for, had Coligny’s evil design succeeded, both France and Flanders would have fallen prey to the heretics. As it turned out, inspired by God, Charles had delivered Spain from imminent peril and had even saved Italy from the Turkish threat by uniting Christendom; while, within his own realm, he could now concentrate upon reaffirming Catholicism as the only religion. France has been purged of its disorders by strong medicine. One would think that, after all this, Capilupi had sufficiently stressed that the entire massacre had been premeditated: but he was so anxious that his readers should miss nothing of the plot’s subtleties that he ended his work with an affirmation that the greatness of the deed must be carefully weighed in order to appreciate fully the virtu` of the King, his mother and councillors in having taken a ‘noble and generous’ course of action, their dexterity in managing it, their artifice in dissimulating it, their prudence in keeping it secret, and finally their boldness and courage in carrying it out. Capilupi was especially concerned that people might believe reports that the massacre had not been premeditated at all! It was even being alleged that it had been done on the spur of the moment under pressure of circumstances, and that the plan had been merely to kill the Admiral rather than to have a general massacre of the Huguenots. All these rumours were repudiated by Capilupi, who offered detailed evidence to justify his confidence in the King’s cunning.45 Indeed, he protests, if he were to give every 45 The most important of Capilupi’s proofs were: (1) the report of Cardinal Sainte-Croix to Pius V, more than four years previously, that the King and Queen

262

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

proof that the massacre had been premeditated, he would merely bore the reader. Nevertheless, the ruse could not be passed over, for its equal in subtlety, acuity, and wit may not be found in all the histories ancient or modern. This is really the climax of the Stratagema, though Capilupi ends anticlimactically and inconsistently with ‘proofs’ that God had lent a hand in the success of the plot. These are anticlimactic because he has already established his principal point concerning premeditation, and inconsistent because, in order to establish God’s involvement, he has to stress that the King’s design could never have been kept secret without Divine intervention. After all, says Capilupi, the King himself nearly gave the whole game away by inadvertent references to the coming massacre: but luckily God stopped the Huguenots’ ears, just as he blinded their eyes when the King was organizing his troops for the kill. Charles Le´nient, the nineteenth-century historian, writing of Capilupi, characterized him as a ‘naive admirer of Machiavelli’, and describes the Stratagema as the ‘innocent panegyric of perjury, assassination and treachery, without restriction, without false shame; the imperturbable calm of immorality erected into a system; in short, the most crushing witness against the House of Valois issuing from the hand of a friend’.46 Le´nient’s characterization of the book is exact: but there is absolutely no evidence for his first assumption. We do not know whether or not Capilupi had ever read Machiavelli let alone admired him; and there is nothing in the Stratagema to suggest any Machiavellian learning on the part of its author. It is, of course—in its enthusiastic dwelling on premeditated political homicide, and on the efficacy of a combination of Mother wished to trap the Admiral and his adherents, and execute on them ‘a carnage and butchery memorable for ever’; (2) letters from the Queen Mother to the same Pope, assuring him that the King wished to exterminate the Huguenots but that his method could not be communicated to others; (3) the fact that she had revealed her intentions to the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Correro—as Capilupi had himself read in Correro’s report to the Senate; (4) the King and his mother had asked for special prayers to be said for the success of a great design— revealing not so much their piety but rather that they had long entertained the scheme; (5) the questions asked by the Cardinal of Lorraine, when he heard of the massacre, showed that he already knew all about it. 46 Charles Le´nient, La Satire en France ou la litte´rature militante au xvie sie`cle (Paris, 1866), 318.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

263

fraud and force—reminiscent of Machiavelli’s treatment of Cesare Borgia’s trapping and murdering of his captains at Sinigaglia. But there is no reason to suppose that this provided a model for Capilupi, whose detailed narrative seems to express a purely personal glee and malice. None the less, the book is valuable in providing part of the context within which anti-Machiavellism was soon to develop. So, too, is the early history of its distribution and publication.47 According to Capilupi’s own testimony, his book was so enthusiastically received that more than 300 manuscript copies were hastily transcribed and circulated. Indeed, the labour of preparing sufficient texts to meet the demand resulted in the author’s friends urging him to have it printed and, since publication in Rome might have seemed too obviously partisan, it was deemed better to seek licence for printing in a free republic. A copy was, accordingly, carried by a certain Giulio Romano to Venice in the hope that the Senate would countenance publication by Gabriel Giolito. However, Capilupi had reckoned without the meticulousness of the Venetian Signoria, who were by no means as enthusiastic about the massacre as were the Romans. In any case, since the French court was strenuously arguing that the whole affair had been an urgent response to a dire situation, the Venetians suggested that the content of Capilupi’s work (and even its title) seemed prejudicial to the French royal family. Nor would they permit citation from Correro’s reports, for their ambassadorial relazioni must remain secret. Licence to publish was, therefore, refused.48 Giulio Romano did not know what to do, despite assurances from Capilupi, who wrote on 24 March 1573 that the work had been seen by many significant persons such as the Cardinal of Lorraine, the French ambassador, and, indeed, several members of the French court including the Duke of Nevers, who had not only been delighted with the text but had also supplied fresh 47 For what follows, on Capilupi’s publication problems, see Intra, ‘Di Camillo Capilupi’, 706–18. 48 As a matter of fact, the relazione read to the Venetian Senate on 11 Nov. 1572 already reported that the Paris wedding was a deliberate trap set for Coligny and the Huguenots. See Eugenio Alberi, Relazione degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 1st ser., iv. 274–310.

264

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

material. Nobody, says Capilupi, had found fault with his title and he could not understand why the Venetians found it displeasing— since the whole work celebrated a deed undertaken for the glory of God. It is true, he adds, that he had not been aware of the prohibition concerning Correro’s report but, as for the information cited from it, he had heard the same story elsewhere and had merely named Correro ‘to give more authority to my writing’. He would never have published such a matter during the course of negotiations but surely, since the deed was now accomplished, it was necessary to make everything known lest it be defrauded of honour; and, in short, he finds the Venetian Senate incomprehensible. Still the Signoria remained unmoved. They did not want trouble, and Capilupi’s book looked like nothing else. It could stir up passions; give offence to the King of France; and would certainly anger the Protestant nations with whom Venice had to deal. And so the matter dragged on until 28 September 1573, when the rejected author decided to make one more appeal. This time he wrote a long and earnest letter directly to the Signoria: protesting that he wished to have his book printed not for any personal desire of fame, but simply because it was being demanded by so many people that he could not cope with the labour. Only the Venetians had found fault; and, Capilupi added plaintively, if he could not prevail upon them to give licence for printing, at least they might return his manuscript. The Venetians remained adamant. Whether or not they returned Capilupi’s script, they certainly would not publish it and, in the end, it was issued by Blado at Rome in 1574 at the instigation of Gianfrancesco Ferrari, a poeticule hanger-on of the Capilupi, who argued that the text merited publication to ensure that the French King’s glorious achievement should not be robbed of due honour and that the efforts of the worthy author should not remain buried in oblivion.49 Later in the same year, a Huguenot had a parallel—though not identical—desire to give Capilupi’s masterpiece the widest possible circulation, and a bilingual text 49 Lo stratagema (Rome, 1574), sigs. A.ii, D.iiv: Ferrari’s introductory letter ‘Alli cortesi lettori’ and his concluding poem in praise of Camillo.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

265

was published by Jacob Stoer at Geneva for the edification of Protestant Europe.50 The Stratagema was left largely to condemn itself, but a subtle Avertissement was provided to nudge readers in the right direction. Passions, said the author, had led many to exceed the bounds of truth both in condemning and excusing the massacre. He was, therefore, publishing Capilupi’s text both in its original language and in French translation—for its author was well known, and ‘all Rome is witness to this writing’ which is in the hands of anybody who desired it. It had even been on the point of publication when the Cardinal of Lorraine, originally an enthusiastic admirer, had decided to prevent its appearance. Its author’s intention was notorious and conforms to the habits of his nation and religion in holding that there is no more laudable virtue than skilful dissimulation, especially when concealing a matter of revenge. As for the accuracy of Capilupi’s history? Well, is there any place on earth where the secrets of this tragedy were better known than in Rome? It was Divine Providence that there should exist so irreproachable a witness of an act which had been so resolutely hidden. Capilupi’s only falsehood concerns the Huguenot conspiracy which had been invented after the massacre to provide a specious justification; and the editor refers sarcastically to Pibrac’s ‘belle epistre’ and to other Catholic apologists, each of whom tells a different story. This falsehood apart, the Stratagema lays bare the dreadful truth of the Saint Bartholomew. Let the reader therefore receive this description of the lamentable tragedy and thereby recognize just what Satan can achieve when he puts his agents into action. 50 The French translation has a separate title page, Le stratageme, ou la ruse de Charles IX, Roy de France, contre les Huguenots rebelles a` Dieu et a` luy. Escrit par le Seigneur Camille Capilupi, et envoye´ de Rome au Seigneur Alphonse Capilupi. Traduit en Franc¸ois de la copie Italienne (Geneva: Jacob Stoer, 1574). On this edition, see Paul Chaix, Alain Dufour, and Gustave Moeckli, Les Livres imprime´s a` Gene`ve de 1500 a` 1600, 2nd edn. (Geneva, 1966), 80. The French text was reprinted in Cimber and Danjou, Archives curieuses, 1st ser., vii. 401–71: but Cimber does not include the description of the celebrations at Rome which was appended to the Stoer edition (pp. 84–7 of the Italian text and pp. 109–14 of the French). Stoer, it is worth noting, was also the printer responsible for the first Latin edition of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel in 1577—see Chaix, Dufour, and Moeckli, 89.

266

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Despite the utility to the Huguenot cause of views such as Capilupi’s, at least one French Catholic writer was prepared not only to accept that the massacre had been premeditated, and that it was admirable for that very reason, but also to justify at considerable length Charles IX’s right to use every kind of weapon, including fraud, against his enemies. Arnaud Sorbin, preacher to Charles IX and subsequently to Henri III and Henri IV, was among the most violently partisan royalists in an age of violent polemic. It was he who pronounced the funeral oration for Charles IX at Notre Dame on 22 July 1574; he who wrote a circumstantial treatise on the King’s death; and it was he who quickly published a eulogistic biography of his late master.51 In this last work, Sorbin suggests that the massacre had been premeditated in the service of God and had been carried out with such prudence that everyone admired the way in which the King’s ‘froidure exterieure’ had concealed a heart so full of ardour. Indeed, says Sorbin, the whole thing was so thoroughly dissimulated that the King himself had remarked that his very hat had not known what he was going to do.52 More important than this brief history is Sorbin’s Le vray Resveille-matin, which comprises a full-length justification—in answer to the Huguenot Reveille-matin—of the methods employed by Charles IX.53 In this work (which is prefaced significantly by a Hymne a` la louenge de saint Barthelemy, Apostre de Jesus Christ) Sorbin argues that kings, when constrained by the necessity of conserving their states, must use the authority vested in them by God to chastise and even to slay rebels. The foundation of Huguenot malice, he says, is the justice executed on Saint Bartholomew’s 51 Arnaud Sorbin, Histoire contenant un abrege´ de la vie, moeurs et vertus du roy Charles IX (Paris: G. Chaudiere, 1574). 52 Ibid., fos. 37v–38. Cf. Machiavelli, Arte della guerra, Lib. VI (Mazzoni and Casella, p. 348b), who refers to Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius as saying that if his shirt knew what he was going to do the next day he would burn it. This story about Metellus is from Frontinus, Stratagems, I. i. 12; and it also appears in Valerius Maximus, VII. iv. 5. 53 Arnaud Sorbin, Le vray Resveille-matin pour la deffense de la majeste´ de Charles IX (n.p., 1574). Further references are given in the text. A second edition was published at Paris by G. Chaudiere in the following year under the title, Le vray Resveille-matin des calvinistes et publicains franc¸ois, ou` est amplement discouru de l’auctorite´ des princes et du devoir des subjects. For the original Huguenot pamphlet, see below, pp. 279–80.

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

267

Day and he has, therefore, devoted the third book of his Vray Resveille-matin to discovering who is permitted to punish malefactors by subtlety and craft; who are the fitting victims of such chastisement; and when such deeds should take place. The basic issue is this: when force will not achieve one’s object, may ‘l’astuce et la cautele’ have their place? Sorbin refers to Lysander’s famous dictum that one may use the garb of the fox when that of the lion will not suffice: but, since such a profane source is insufficient, the Word of God itself is cited to show that, when defending the state, legitimate authority may use every kind of trick to punish its enemies (fos. 68v–72v). Sorbin stresses, against the Huguenots, that it is one thing to resist a ‘tyran invadeur’ and quite another to rebel against ‘le Prince possesseur’; and he continues with what the ancient jurisconsults called Bonum dolum—a ‘good fraud’—which magistrates could use against outlaws and with even greater reason against ‘les perturbateurs du repos public’. Legitimate authority, in a just cause, may use deceits as well as open war, and Sorbin declares that while the Huguenots have no such authority over the King, the latter certainly does have that authority over the Huguenots. It is the King’s responsibility to thwart extremists and hold his subjects in obedience, and all means to this end are permissible. Sorbin now raises the crucial question. How far should faith be kept with one’s enemies? It was on this point that the author of the Reveille-matin and other Huguenots based their attacks on Charles IX who, they alleged, had broken the treaties he had made with their leaders. But for Sorbin there is no duty whatever for superior powers to keep faith with heretics. There is no ‘proportion’ between a King and his subjects, and agreements cannot be made where the terms are prejudicial to God, the Church, or to the public utility, or where they have been exacted by force of arms. Furthermore, adds Sorbin, the heretics have practised every kind of deceit, first upon Charles IX and now upon Henri III, so that all agreements with them have been nullified. They misrepresent the late King and his mother as cruel, bloody, and perfidious tyrants but, in fact, the Huguenots themselves, by their own crimes and treason, merited punishment whether inflicted openly or by treachery. In any case, when used by authority, such deceit is

268

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

better described as prudence. The Huguenots’ deeds cried out for vengeance and Charles IX’s handling of the situation is recognized by Catholics and true Frenchmen as wisdom, prudence, true magnanimity, and mercy. No unbiased judge could fail to appreciate the King’s prudence in bringing so holy an enterprise to completion; and posterity would judge whether or not the King had a just cause (fos. 77v–79). Sorbin continues with a telling comparison between the Huguenots’ use of the Scriptures as applied to themselves or to their enemies and, goaded beyond endurance by their sanctimonious self-righteousness, he is here at his most effective. When they invade the King’s lands and cities, they claim to be chastising the Amorites, Jebusites, and Canaanites: when the King acts against them, he and his supporters are labelled Pharoahs, Holofernes, or Nebuchadnezzars. When they violate churches, they are despoiling Egypt: if the Catholics, on the King’s authority, seize Huguenot property, they cry out against the sacrilegious robbers of the goods of the children of God. Their incests are marriages; while Catholic marriages are termed ‘les plus desbordez et lubriques du monde’. They never see themselves as rebels when they act against the King: though the King and his party are called rebels for punishing them. Their murders are works of mercy: but even Catholics’ good deeds are called impieties. They are permitted to wage treacherous war against the King; while if he, using the authority vested in him by God, ventures to censure them, he is abused as a tyrant (fo. 79v). So Sorbin returns to his main question—may legitimate rulers deceive rebels?—and his answer is unequivocal. The Huguenots have plainly revealed their intention to create a state within a state and Charles was fully justified in executing ‘prudemment’ that justice which he could not effect openly without putting his faithful servants and his state into grave peril (fo. 106v). Sorbin’s exposure of the tawdriness of the Huguenot position is marked by a certain shrewdness so that it comes as something of a shock to find that his final section—concerned principally with the duties of a king towards his subjects and with the qualities of a good prince—is conventional and intellectually flabby. He draws upon Agapetus’ precepts for the Emperor Justinian and then moves on to Aristeas’s answers to Ptolomaeus Philadelphus’

T H E S T B A R T H O L O M E W ’ S D A Y M A S S AC R E

269

seventy-two questions.54 We are back to the Speculum principis tradition to such an extent that, when Sorbin discusses the way in which princes should revere the truth which is loved by God, he writes as follows: If Machiavelli and his disciples (how far Christians, I know not) had weighed this question and its answer they would, with difficulty, have praised lies, dissimulations, and deceits, and other such tricks whereby they try to poison the generous spirits of good princes, to make them degenerate both from their nature and from the path of good and virtuous princes such as Ptolemy. But God will destroy the false and the liars, with all their lies and deceits.55

A sentiment such as this comes as no surprise within the context of traditional princely morality. But it is extraordinary that this royalist preacher, who so eloquently justifies both the deception and the violence of the Saint Bartholomew massacre, should so loosely associate the name of Machiavelli with political dissimulation which, only at this point in his argument, he wholly deplores. At the same time, the superficiality of this reference highlights the fact that the pro-massacre polemicists (even Sorbin himself ) did not, in fact, do what modern historians would expect them to have done. Despite the constant emphasis on the rebels’ bloody vengefulness, on their habitual combination of ‘force and fraud’, on their use of religion as an instrument of policy, and on their simulation of virtue as a cloak for the subversion of the state—all moral and political crimes which would eventually come to be labelled Machiavellian—there was virtually no systematic association between Machiavelli and Huguenot hypocrisy.56 Yet it was this polemic 54 Agapetus’ De officio regis ad Iustinianum Caesarem was composed in 527 and was first published in 1509. The pseudo-epigraphic letter attributed to Aristeas, De interpretatione septuagintaduorum interpretum, was first published in 1474. 55 Le vray Resveille-matin, fos. 128v–129r: ‘Si Macchiavel, et ses sectateurs (je ne sc¸ay combien Chrestiens) avoient pese´ ceste question, et sa response, malaise´ement pourroient ils louer les mensonges, dissimulations et feintises, et autres semblables tours, dont ils taschent d’empoissoner les ames genereuses des bons Princes, pour les faire degenerer, et de leur naturel, et de la trace des bons et vertueux Princes comme estoit Ptolome´e. Or Dieu ruinera les faux et mensongers avec tous leurs mensonges, et toutes leurs feintises.’ 56 One Italian, Tomasso Sassetti, commenting on the Huguenots shortly before the massacre, even went so far as to claim that the Admiral and his followers had

270

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

which encouraged Innocent Gentillet to see the figure of Machiavelli standing at the elbows both of the perpetrators of the massacre and of their apologists. And it was Innocent Gentillet who gave form and substance to the bogeyman who was soon to haunt popular imagination and literature.57 not studied Machiavelli properly, for they should have known that injuries done to the ‘grandi’ are never forgotten and are always avenged at the earliest opportunity—an allusion to Il Principe, 7. Ludovico da Diaceto, the Florentine banker with whom Sassetti was travelling, believed that the Huguenots were too powerful for this to happen: but the massacre soon came about. See John Tedeschi, ‘Tomasso Sassetti’s Account of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre’, in Alfred Soman (ed.), The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew: Reappraisals and Documents (The Hague, 1974), 105, 149. 57 Revisionist historians have sought to belittle Gentillet’s importance in the history of Machiavellism. I believe that the revisionist view needs revising and will attempt this task in the next chapter.

9 Innocent Gentillet and Machiavelli’s ‘Maximes tyranniques’ This king for a baite and allurement abused the mariage of his owne sister, and in a manner besprinkled hir wedding robe with blood. Which dishonour and indignitie no posteritie of al ages can forget.1

Posterity was to be allowed no lapse of memory. Indeed, the literary effusions of the Huguenots, who hastened to challenge the massacre and its defenders, have fared far better with the passage of time than those of their adversaries: though not through any intrinsic superiority. Intellectually as well as physically, opponents of the Saint Bartholomew had been driven on the defensive by pre-emptive accusations of duplicity, violence, and conspiracy; and much of their energy was consumed in unconvincing protestations of innocence. Nevertheless, the savage glee and pride in premeditated atrocity expressed by many Catholic pamphleteers gave an opening for hitting back: an opportunity most fully exploited by Innocent Gentillet, though he was not the only Huguenot to perceive some connection between Italian political vice and advice (especially as exemplified by Machiavelli), the Florentine Queen Mother, and the bloody practices of a degenerate court. On the other hand it is important not to fall into the trap whereby a few passing references make denunciation of Machiavelli ‘current’ in France at this time.2 Just how current was ‘current’? 1 A true and plaine report of the furious outrages of Fraunce (1573), p. lxviii. This text is an English translation of the De furoribus Gallicis. See below, n. 3. 2 Discours contre Machiavel: A New Edition of the Original French Text with Selected Variant Readings, ed. A. D’Andrea and Pamela Stewart (Florence, 1974), p. xiv n. 9. Does one example make an idea current? Already in 1566, Bodin had

272

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

absences and appearances Machiavelli does not, for example, appear in the De furoribus Gallicis. This work, published under the name of Ernestus Varamundus but now generally recognized as the work of Franc¸ois Hotman, was issued within three or four months of the Saint Bartholomew, and was the first and perhaps most striking of the anti-massacre pamphlets.3 It was quickly translated into French, German, and English (A True and Plaine Report), and was used by later writers, who found it a storehouse of valuable polemic. Its author felt that the recent atrocities in France were a disgrace to the nation, and might be better obliterated from human memory were it not for the fact that court flatterers and certain hired rascals had been setting forth lies as truth and scattering little books in all directions. He would, therefore, describe exactly what had happened from his own experience and from eyewitness reports. The history of France from 1561 is briefly sketched in, stressing the evil roles played by the Guises and by Catherine de’ Medici. The marriage between Henri de Navarre and the King’s sister was supposed to inaugurate a new age of peace; but it was, instead, the occasion for bloodshed and cruelty covered with a veil of hypocrisy. After Coligny had been wounded by the arquebus shot, the King had proposed to preserve him ‘as the ball of his eye’ (p. xlviii). In fact, the Admiral was butchered, and his death was the signal for a general massacre when every street in Paris was ‘strawed with human carcases’ (p. lix). The De furoribus is especially severe on the travesty of justice which ensued. Captured Huguenots were condemned by picked judges and publicly executed. Cavaignes and Briquemaut were tortured before being condemned by a ‘shadowed form of law’. A straw figure of the Admiral was hanged with them ‘after a written that Machiavelli’s sayings were on everybody’s lips. But he does not suggest that they are being denounced. The implication is rather to the contrary. For the passage, see below, n. 50. 3 Lb33 :311: De furoribus Gallicis, horrenda et indigna amirallij Castillionei, nobilium atque illustrium virorum caede . . . vera et simplex narratio ([Basle], 1573). On the question of authorship and editions, see Hauser, Sources, iii. 248–9; Kingdon, Myths, 15–16, 118–19.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

273

preposterous order of lawe’ whereby he was first slain and then tried (pp. lxxvii–lxxxi). Fugitives, lured by promises of pardon, were promptly imprisoned, tortured, and put to death. The author is explicit in his condemnation of the court, and says that the whole outrage was thought by many to have been the fruit of the ‘cursed life’ of the courtiers whose whoremongering, ‘loose lewdnesse’, blasphemy, and swearing had spread from the King downwards to infect every level of society. Life at court was marked by such sexual licence that it was scarcely ‘convenient for noble yong Ladies chastitie’. And if there come any pandor or bawde oute of Italie, or any Scholemaster of shameful and filthie lust, he winneth in short time marvelous favour and credit. And such a multitude is there begonne to be of Italians, commonly throughout all Fraunce, specially in the court, since the administration of the realme was committed to the Queene mother, that many doe commonly call it Fraunce-Italian, and some terme it a Colonie, and some a common sincke of Italie. (p. xxxix)

There are many telling thrusts at the Italians. Why, for example, did the Queen of Navarre die so opportunely during the tortuous marriage negotiations? Was she murdered? The autopsy could find no evidence, but it was later revealed that she had been poisoned with a ‘venomed smell of a pair of perfumed gloves, dressed by one Renat the Kings Apothicarie, an Italian’. The venom was so subtle that it could not be detected by the physicians ‘which did not open the head nor loked into the brayne’ (p. xxxv).4 And why was the worst massacre at Lyon? The author does not tell us, but leaves us to draw our own inference from his story that, when the corpses were piled up, the people of Lyon, ‘specially the Italians, of whom by reason of the marte there is great store in the town, satisfied their eyes a while, and did such spites as they could to these heaps of carcases, and so exercised their cruelty not upon the living only, 4 I wonder whether this report inspired Wood—physician to Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury—in his attempt on the life of his master. Encouraged by the Earl’s brother Edward, Wood tried to eliminate the Earl by presenting him with a pair of poisoned gloves. The incompetent physician was sentenced to imprisonment and the loss of his ears, as ‘a most palpable Machivilian’. See John Hawarde, Les reportes del cases in camera stellata, 1593–1609, ed. W. P. Baildon (1894), 13–19.

274

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

but also upon the dead’ (p. lxxxiv).5 Similarly, it had to be a ‘certain Italian of Gonzagues band’ who cut off the Admiral’s head and sent it, ‘preserved with spices to Rome to the Pope and the Cardinal of Lorraine’ (p. lvii). Yes indeed! For the author of the De furoribus Gallicis, the Italians were up to every fiendish trick though not, apparently, under instructions from Machiavelli. Even the Italians are absent from Pierre Burin’s interesting reply to Pibrac: the Response a une Epistre, commenceant, Seigneur Eluide.6 Burin claims to be a zealous Catholic who cannot but condemn the way in which the enemies of his faith have been oppressed, and the way in which these murders have been publicly defended. God must surely take vengeance for such horrible carnage? Burin admits that, in schools, in order to practise eloquence, youngsters are encouraged to attempt such paradoxical tasks as to write in praise of folly; but he can scarcely credit that anyone would defend the bestial cruelty which has dishonoured France, or seriously claim that it is condoned by worthy and virtuous men. One rhetorical figure especially angers Burin. Pibrac had said that in the massacre ‘some’ committed acts worthy of reprehension. This is ‘Appetissement’ (Meiosis), for Pibrac should more properly have written that the very devils of hell had broken their chains and committed ‘par sanglante malice des maux innumerables dignes de toutes les peines infernales’. Burin fears that he may himself fall into the same fallacy, because there are no words sufficient to express the horror of these inhuman deeds. He further accuses Pibrac of employing this figure from the very outset for, by admitting and condemning part of the evil, he had prepared the way to argue that all the rest was not evil at all, and condones it by referring to a supposed Huguenot conspiracy revealed by three anonymous informers. But what real evidence was there for such a conspiracy, and how would it have operated? Who were these informers, and 5 Cf. Lb33 :325, Discours du massacre de ceux de la R.P.R. fait a` Lyon par les Catholiques le 28 aoust 1572 et jours suivans (n.p., 1574), for similar remarks concerning the Italians. Also common to the two texts is the story of the apothecaries who rendered down the human fat for medicines. 6 Lb33 :324: Response a une Epistre, commenceant, Seigneur Eluide, ou est traitte´ des massacres faits en France, en l’an M.D.LXII. Par Pierre Burin, a` Messire Guillaume Papon (Basle: M. Cousin, 1574). For Pibrac’s original text, see above, pp. 240–3.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

275

why were they not named? Burin can save Pibrac the trouble. One was called ‘M. de Chimaire’, another ‘M. Hippocentaure’, and the last ‘M. Ventivole’. And why not a fourth—‘M. de Nugivende’. As for the conspiracy itself: who was supposed to have organized it? Was it the Admiral lying in bed with both hands crippled by the arquebus shot? Were the informers rewarded? Pibrac does not tell us: ‘a` delateurs de vent payement de fume´e’. The whole story is rubbish, and yet it is alleged as the reason why the kingdom flowed with rivers of blood: ‘sur meschant fondement, meschant edifice’. There never had been a Huguenot conspiracy until after the dreadful event, for it had been invented to palliate the most cruel massacre since the creation of the world. Burin concludes by taking up two fundamental issues raised by Pibrac’s defence of the massacre: and they are, I believe, two of the truly fundamental issues in the entire controversy. Pibrac had said that, as a result of the massacre, the kingdom had never been so united—as though, writes Burin in astonishment, massacres are desirable. Moreover, Pibrac maintained that necessity had demanded summary executions: but it could never be right to execute men without due process or without even giving them a hearing; and, in any case, how could such arguments justify the wholesale slaughter of people by the thousand?7 Another prompt riposte to a pro-massacre text was Franc¸ois Portes’s reply to Pierre Charpentier.8 This, too, was without Italophobia, though it did include one of Machiavelli’s cherished appearances. Portes was bursting with wrath, and he precedes and punctuates his refutation with a violent personal attack on the renegade Protestant. He does not accuse Charpentier of having bad breath or body odour, but gives the impression that he might have done so had he thought of it. Charpentier’s demerits are legion: he has incurred bad debts; behaved scurvily to his servants; ill-treated his wife; abandoned his faith; betrayed his co-religionists for lucre; shown himself to be an ignorant sot; and deliberately 7 Ibid. 10, 21, 26, 34, 41–3. 8 Lb33 :316: Ad Petri Carpentarii causidici virulentam epistolam, responsio Francisci Porti, Cretensis, pro causariorum quos vocat innocentia (n.p., 1573); French trans. Response de Franc¸ois Portus Candiot, aux lettres diffamatoires de Pierre Carpentier Advocat, pour l’innocence des fideles serviteurs de Dieu (n.p., 1574).

276

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

falsified historical sources.9 His badly written letter is nothing but a malicious invective against good, innocent people; while his detailed account of the Cause—a vast and complex Huguenot conspiracy—is shown to be a tissue of lies invented to justify the massacre. Portes also elaborates on two other major issues: the massacre of Christians by the emperors, with special reference to Charpentier’s misinterpretation of St Cyprian’s comments on Decius; and Charpentier’s calumnies against Geneva as a sink of sedition and vice. Portes notes with pride that, far from encouraging a reading of poets ‘lascifs’ and the scabrous works of Rabelais, Calvin had expressly condemned them publicly both in speech and in writing.10 What about the ‘current’ denunciations of Machiavelli? Strangely, he is merely mentioned en passant during a discussion of the importance of religion to princes. Once people have conceived a bad opinion of their ruler’s religion, they will obey him only under constraint, and will frequently fail him completely. This is a ‘belle reigle de Diocletian’ which Charpentier has sung in the ears of kings who consider religion to be nothing more than a certain ‘police exterieure’, holding men under some obligation. It is thus that the ‘meschant Florentin Machiavel’ fashions his prince. All this, says Portes, is absurd since we are talking about the true religion; and can there be anything more impious than following a leader who is himself on the wrong path?11 Exit Machiavelli. That is scarcely a reference to feast upon: but there is even less sustenance elsewhere. The Discours du massacre . . . a` Lyon, for example, repeats the atrocity stories of the De furoribus—the choicest corpses are rendered down for their fat, while insults are heaped upon the dead—and in all this the Italians are, once again, especially blameworthy. But Machiavelli is not mentioned.12 9 Portes might have added yet another crime to Charpentier’s tally. According to De Thou, Charpentier was an enemy of Ramus and had, in fact, been responsible for Ramus’s murder. See Jacques-Auguste De Thou, Histoire universelle, vi. 409–10. For other, more recondite, examples of Charpentier’s dirty work, see Thorndike, History of Magic, v. 556; vi. 450. 10 Response de Franc¸ois Portus, 51–63. 11 Ibid. 29. 12 Discours du massacre de ceux de la R.P.R. See esp. pp. 44–5.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

277

Le siege de Danfronc vituperates Catherine de’ Medici, who so loves virtue that she persecutes it even in her own children. The author explodes at the way in which Montgommery was sacrificed simply at the command of a woman—not merely foreign, but Italian! Yet he, too, does not appear to have heard of Machiavelli.13 Two volumes of verse by various hands—recording their authors’ disgust at the murder of the Admiral, the massacres, the iniquitous Florentine Queen Mother, and the foreigners who were polluting France14—include an inspired anagram on carolus maximilianus rex franciae which becomes carnifex maximus larva asinocleri (‘greatest executioner, mask of the assinine clergy’) but offer nothing for the collector of Machiavelliana.15 Nor do two well-known works, sometimes attributed to Wolfgang Prisbach and Joachim Camerarius, written in response to the defenders of the Saint Bartholomew.16 And what of the famous Discours merveilleux de la vie . . . de Catherine de Medicis? This could scarcely be more rabidly antagonistic to Italians in general, to Florentines in particular, and to Catherine most of all.17 She is up to every kind of 13 Lb33 :368: Le siege de Danfronc, avec les occasions d’icellui, et de la captivite´ de tres-vertueux, et magnanime seigneur Gabriel, Conte de Montgommeri. Ensemble la mort d’icellui (n.p., 1574). See esp. 27–9. 14 Lb33 :318b: Illustrium aliquot Germanorum carminum liber, de immanissima christianorum laniena ab impius . . . Galliae tyrannis (Vilna, 1573); and Lb33 :336a: Epicedia illustri heroi Gaspari Colignio, Colignii comiti, Castilionis domino, magno Galliarum thalassiarchae . . . variis linguis a doctis piisque poetis decantata (Geneva, 1573). 15 Illustrium . . . carminum liber, 39. The anagram is not strictly translatable but it combines the words great executioner with spectre (or mask) of asinine clergy. 16 Lb33 :321: Wolffgang Prisbach, Responsio ad orationem habitam nuper in Concilio Helvetiorum, pro defensione caedium et latrociniorum quae in Gallia commissa sunt (La Rochelle, 1573) is a reply to an oration delivered by Pomponne de Bellie`vre, French ambassador to the Swiss, in defence of the massacres, and is sometimes attributed to The´odore de Be`ze. Lb33 :322: Joachim Camerarius the Elder, Ornatissimi cujusdam viri de rebus Gallicis, ad Stanislaus Elvidium epistola, et ad hunc de iisdem rebus gallicis responsio (Paris: F. Morel, 1573). On these two pamphlets see Kingdon, Myths, 93–4, 110–11. 17 Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et deportemens de Catherine de Medecis, Reyne mere (n.p., 1575). This pamphlet, like so many other similar works published anonymously at this period, has been attributed to a variety of authors. Until recently the leading contender has been Henri Estienne, whose authorship was accepted by Kingdon, Myths, 255–6. Cf. Estienne’s Apologie pour Herodote (Geneva, 1566), which was already bitterly anti-Italian and brought its author

278

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

deceit, violence, and cruelty; and she was responsible for the massacre at Paris, though she has attempted to pass the blame on to others whom she manipulates as executors of her vengeance.18 This was a trick learnt from her ‘Marchiavelli’ (sic): but seemingly the only one, since the rest of this frothing catalogue of Florentine iniquities (which makes extensive use of Guicciardini as a source for anti-Medici polemic) does not mention the ‘current’ villain; while the interpolation of a parenthetical allusion to him in the second and third French editions of the Discours merveilleux in 1576 and 1578 serves only to emphasize his absence from the original text.19 I do not wish to labour the point, but Portes has an apposite methodological caution for all historians of ideas when he chastises Charpentier’s ignorance of the very authors whom he cited simply on the basis of having leafed through the indices and abridgements of their books.20 Plus c¸a change.21 much grief. On Estienne’s attitude towards the Italians, see L. Sozzi, ‘La Pole´mique anti-italienne dans l’oeuvre narrative d’Henri Estienne’, in Henri Estienne, Cahiers, V. L. Saulnier, VI (Paris, 1988), 97–111. It must be noted, however, that Nicole Cazauran, in her critical edition of the Discours merveilleux (Geneva, 1995), 31–54, carefully reviews the evidence concerning both early editions of the work and attributes authorship, albeit guardedly, to Simon Goulart rather than Estienne. Her edition, pp. 55–109, also includes a valuable ‘Inventaire bibliographique’ compiled by Brigitte Moreau. The fulminations evidently pleased Catherine enormously. According to Pierre de L’Estoile, Me´moires-Journaux de Pierre de l’Estoile, ed. G. Brunet, A. Champollion, et al. (Paris, 1875–83), i. 27–8, she had the book read out to her and, screaming with laughter, declared that if the authors had got in touch with her beforehand she could have told them things they did not know or had forgotten. 18 Discours merveilleux (1575), 90. The English translation, A mervaylous discourse upon the lyfe, of Katherine de Medicis (1575), 114, is slightly different: ‘This is suche a practise as she hath perfectly learned of her Machiavellistes.’ 19 The second and third editions of the Discours merveilleux are described as plus correcte, mieux disposee que la premiere, et augmentee de quelques particularitez. The interpolation comes at pp. vi–vii. The passage remarks on the little concern shown by Florentines over their conscience, and how they wish to seem religious without actually being so. In 1576 there is a tiny parenthesis, ‘comme aussi Machiavel l’un de leurs premiers politiques le conseille a` son Prince’. This hardly constitutes the ‘Machiavellism’ referred to by J. H. M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1975), 189. 20 Portes, Response, 10, 43–4. 21 This technique of extrapolating from a few isolated examples has produced distorted results in relation to Machiavelli’s reception in France. For such distortion in practice, see Donald R. Kelley, ‘Murd’rous Machiavel in France:

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

279

As a matter of fact, the only important anti-massacre tract, prior to Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel, specifically linking Machiavelli to the dark deeds of Saint Bartholomew’s Day was the first of the two dialogues which together comprise the publication best known now as the Reveille-matin des franc¸ois—a work which went through several versions and vicissitudes. It originally appeared in 1573 in a Latin text published at Heidelberg and, more or less simultaneously, in a French version published at La Rochelle; and the author, according to one’s taste, was either Be`ze, Hotman, Hugues Donneau, Nicolas Barnaud, someone else, or a permutation of several of them.22 The 140-odd pages of this work—in addition to materials culled from the De furoribus, much anti-Italianism, and a discussion of Ronsard’s and Pibrac’s justifications of the massacre—include five references to Machiavelli. In the last of these, the author condemns the carnal subterfuges and worldly prudence of the Catholic politicians, and warns them that before God neither the ‘maximes de Machiavel’ nor those of his disciples have any value. This is the earliest specific reference to Machiavelli’s maxims that I have thus far located and, together with the other allusions in the text, it suggests that the Florentine’s work was already being fragmented in the manner soon to be systematized by Gentillet.23 Indeed, there are some distinct pre-echoes of the Contre-Machiavel in the Reveille-matin. There is nothing more miserable, says its author, than triumph in civil war where the victor is as enfeebled as the vanquished and is left prey to his neighbours: ‘que partant l’opinion de Machiavelli (que le conseil du Roy sembloit suyvre, A Post Mortem’, Political Science Quarterly, 68 (1970), 545–59; Edmond M. Beame, ‘The Use and Abuse of Machiavelli: The Sixteenth-Century French Adaptation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 43 (1982), 33–54. On the most influential mistreatment of selected French sources (comprised by the seemingly heavily documented studies of Machiavelli’s reception in France by Anna Maria Battista), see above, p. 9 and below, p. 346 n. 49. 22 For summary information on the editions of this work, see Hauser, Sources, 249–51 and, for a fuller discussion, Kingdon, Myths, 70–87, 258. 23 Reveille-matin (1574), 141–2. Citations in the text are from this edition. Cf. Margue´rite de Valois, Me´moires, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1858), 18, where she accuses Le Guast of following ‘tels beaux preceptes machiavelistes’. However, although this allusion is entered under 1569, the work was certainly written after 1582, and probably long after.

280

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

tenant ses sujets desunis) estoit une pernicieuse heresie en matiere d’estat’ (p. 21). Elsewhere, the Reveille-matin tells how the Queen Mother broke the edicts of peace and ruined the Huguenots, ‘avec la peau du lion, ou avec la peau du regnard’. Moreover, she had educated her son, the King, to swear, blaspheme, perjure himself, and whore; to dissimulate his faith, religion, and his thoughts; to be ‘maistre de son visage’; and, above all, to love the sight of blood—beginning with that of beasts and ending with that of his subjects. Beware! The King has been persuaded by the doctrine of Machiavelli to permit no other religion than that on which his state has been founded—‘de laquelle voire de ses faux miracles, il faut qu’il monstre faire compte’ (p. 37).24 Then in a discussion of princely perfidy, we encounter specific reference to ‘the eighteenth chapter of the Machiavelli’s Book of the Prince’ and the fact that the King’s ‘schoolmasters’—with as scant regard for his conscience as for his reputation—make additions and glosses even more dangerous than the text itself (p. 40).25 And finally, of the dealings of Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX with the Huguenots, the author remarks that they practised one of Machiavelli’s ‘lessons’, which is to observe faith only when it is advantageous to do so.26 The second dialogue of the Reveille-matin is no more pleasantly disposed towards the Florentines (‘these buggers of Italians’); repeatedly refers to Charles IX as a tyrant; and argues that the massacre was part of a deliberate plan to exterminate the Huguenots. Nevertheless, Machiavelli has again disappeared. He was not, it seems, quite ‘current’ enough to take the centre of this particular stage, though his moment was not long delayed.27 24 This criticism of a state religion was central to the reformers’ attitude— when they were not themselves in authority and thus able to impose their own religion on others. 25 This passage is used by Goulart, Me´moires de l’estat de France sous Charles IX (Meidelbourg, 1578), i, fo. 255v. 26 Ibid., fo. 107. 27 There are other pre-Gentillet, hostile references to Machiavelli which, though trivial, should be noted lest it be thought that I am suppressing evidence. Le Chevalier Poncet, L’Antipharmaque (Paris, 1575), has much to say against the St Bartholomew massacres and includes a passing reference (p. 54) to ‘Aretin pour tourmenter l’ame et Machiavel pour tourmenter les corps’. The pairing of

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

281

gentillet prepares for battle Innocent Gentillet, a refugee Huguenot lawyer who fled from Toulouse to Geneva at the news of the Paris massacre, announced his intention of combatting the ‘Machiavellistes’ in a Remonstrance addressed to Henri III towards the end of 1574.28 Here, once again, the villainous Italians hold sway, fomenting civil war, and relishing the spectacle of Frenchmen killing each other, just as the ancient Romans used to revel in gladiatorial combats. Gentillet ironically refrains from saying anything against the Pope, who ‘could not do evil, speak evil, nor think evil’ but merely encouraged celebratory bonfires and processions at Rome when he heard news of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. If these internecine wars continue they will give great pleasure and pastime to the foreigners, ‘and perhaps great profit also’, but they will prove the total ruin of France.29 A prerequisite for establishing peace, Gentillet argued, was to banish Machiavelli perpetually from France, for he was the greatest liar and impostor that had ever been.30 The ancient Romans, Greeks, and more recently the French, as well as every other wellordered monarchy or republic, governed themselves in a fashion completely contrary to his teaching; and the disciples who had Machiavelli and Aretino was to become quite common, and we see it in Gentillet’s Remonstrance au Roy Henri III (see below, n. 29), though Poncet’s division of their immoral labour (spirit and body) remains odd. The enticingly named Epistre aux delicats machiavelistes qui ne peuvent trouver bonne la prinse des armes contre la tyrannie des perturbateurs de l’estat du royaume de France (n.p., 1575) is disappointing because the only reference to Machiavelli is in the title. Pierre Fabre, Response au cruel et pernicieux conseil de Pierre Carpentier tendant a` fin d’empescher la paix (n.p., 1575), 81–2, criticizes Henri III for beginning his reign violently rather than with grace and sweetness, and blames his counsellors who are addicted to the ‘advice of Machiavelli who prefers the rigour and cruelty of a prince to all gentleness and humanity’. This is an interesting observation but is the only reference to Machiavelli in a text of 114 pages. 28 Lb34 :92: Remonstrance au roy Henri III sur le faict des deux edicts donnez a` Lyon, l’un du x. de Septembre, et l’autre du xiii. d’Octobre, touchant la necessite´ de paix et les moyens de la faire (Frankfurt am Main, 1574)—first recognized as the work of Gentillet by Jacques Le Long. The text was reprinted in 1576 by G. Jason at Aygenstain, and this is the edition to which I refer. 29 Remonstrance au Roy Henri III (1576 edn.), 78–9. 30 The following paragraph is based on Remonstrance au Roy Henri III (1576 edn.), 130–2.

282

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

introduced his precepts into France had been the cause of the civil dissension and calamities which afflicted the kingdom. Perhaps, says Gentillet, Machiavelli’s precepts are suited to his own nation: for he teaches that religion is to be used for no other purpose than to hold people in superstitious fear and obedience—a method whereby the Turks are held in such thrall that they are prepared to kill themselves should their prince so command and thus take a short cut to Paradise. Furthermore, Machiavelli teaches that a prince should show an honest countenance to everybody, to promise much, but to observe his word only when it is to his advantage. From this the master’s disciples infer that it is useful for the King’s estate to ruin or exterminate this or that great family. But, says Gentillet, let us suppose that this is done. They do not advise what may follow after such crimes. The principal issue for Gentillet is this: those who have introduced into France the practice of Machiavelli’s precepts have not considered that the French are by nature a very different nation. The Frenchman is naturally religious and loves piety. He does not take pleasure in betraying his promises, nor in making light of his honour and reputation, nor in shedding blood without feeling (‘ny a` respandre le sang a` froit’). If the Italians have these fine gifts, let them keep them along with the advice of this ‘gentil docteur’ who, with his ‘compagnon’ Aretino, was the greatest atheist ever—as the writings of both men manifestly demonstrate.31 Gentillet hopes that their disciples will not defile the French nation with their abominable vices; and he will reserve for another more suitable occasion a much fuller discussion of these ‘messieurs les Machiavellistes’. He will then demonstrate that all their ‘suffisance’ is nothing but pure bestiality and ignorance, accompanied by an evil heart and malice; that they never read the good Greek, Latin, and French historians; or, if they do read them, then they understand them no better than ‘High German’—Gentillet’s equivalent of Double Dutch. On 18 September 1575, the King’s youngest brother, the Duke of Alenc¸on—who was at that time the Protestants’ great 31 Cf. Contre-Machiavel (1576), 212, where Gentillet places Machiavelli in the very first rank of ‘atheistes et impies aupres d’Aretin son compagnon’. And see below, p. 369.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

283

hope—issued a De´claration at Dreux. This was published in December ‘par les soins du jurisconsulte dauphinois Innocent Gentillet’, with a detailed exposition of its principal contents apparently by Gentillet himself. Again the ‘foreigners’ are berated for coupling Catholicism with atheism, for despising piety, and for giving currency to an evil and damnable book by ‘un Machiavel Italien’—full of contempt for Christianity—which they have caused to be translated and printed in France so that even ordinary folk may be infected with their poison.32 The envenomed writing was already in everybody’s hands; but Gentillet, as we know, had not been idle; and by October 1575 he appears to have completed his promised masterpiece. On the 21st of that month the council of Geneva noted that the text had been seen by Be`ze, and they duly granted permission for printing.33 The book must have been published around the beginning of March 1576, for its dedication to the Duke of Alenc¸on is dated the 1st of that month, and the work was already being referred to a few weeks later, though it bore neither the name of its author nor the place of publication. It was entitled Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en bonne paix un Royeaume ou autre principaute´. Divisez en trois parties: assavoir, du Conseil, de la Religion, & Police, que doit tenir un Prince. Contre Nicolas Machiavel Florentin; and it was sufficiently well received to warrant a further six French-language editions within the next four years, together with one German and two Latin translations within the same period.34 The Contre-Machiavel has come in for much critical abuse. It has been castigated as methodologically naive and unfair, and as being intemperate and unreasonable. It was also, for a long time, regarded as the principal stimulus for the stereotyped Machiavel figure which emerged in the later sixteenth century and, consequently, as the ultimate source for subsequent denigration of 32 Brieve remonstrance a la noblesse de France sur le faict de la Declaration de Monseigneur le Duc d’Alenc¸on, faicte le 18 de Septembre 1575 (Aygenstein, 1576), 149. 33 Pamela Stewart, Innocent Gentillet e la sua polemica antimachiavellica (Florence, 1969), 12. 34 For full bibliographical details, see D’Andrea and Stewart. The first French edition, it should be noted, was edited (misprints and all) by C. Edward Rathe´ as Anti-Machiavel. E´dition de 1576 (Geneva, 1968).

284

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Machiavelli.35 Later criticism dealt even more harshly with Gentillet who, while remaining fatuous, was denied the distinction of having had any influence at all.36 And although this extreme view has, in its turn, been modified, Gentillet has been kept firmly in place as a Huguenot of little brain whose sole significance is that he dared write against one of the great men of the Renaissance.37 Nevertheless, however much critics may carp, the ContreMachiavel remains the first known work devoted to a full-scale study of Machiavelli. It was, moreover, the only attempt in the sixteenth century to examine not only the content of Machiavelli’s political writings but also, and more illuminatingly, the methods employed therein. Of moderate ability Gentillet may have been— conventional, literal-minded, stolid, unimaginative, and even, from time to time, stupid—but (sadly for the Machiavelaters) the dull Huguenot is the only sixteenth-century political theorist of whom it may be said unequivocally that his thinking was shaped principally by a reading of Machiavelli. Despite his lack of brilliance, Gentillet set himself an extremely difficult and complex task; and, on the whole, he accomplished it— even when viewed from a modern critical standpoint—moderately well. From a sixteenth-century standpoint, his achievement must have seemed far more impressive, as is evidenced by the wide success of his book and the reputation it long enjoyed as a convincing expose´ both of Machiavelli’s doctrines and of the corrupt political state which must inevitably result from their practice.

35 This was the thesis of Edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar, 1897). Meyer’s argument rests upon a number of misconceptions and errors and has been easily refuted: although, in fact, he may have got something like the right answer for the wrong reasons. 36 Irving Ribner, ‘The Significance of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel’, Modern Language Quarterly, 10 (1949), 153–7. The argument was repeated, with added errors, by Raab, English Face of Machiavelli, 56–7. A more sophisticated treatment is to be found in two articles by N. W. Bawcutt: ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’, English Miscellany, 20 (1969), 53–74; ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, in S. Schoenbaum (ed.), Renaissance Drama, ns 3 (1970), 3–49. 37 An isolated attempt to take Gentillet seriously is Victoria Kahn, ‘Reading Machiavelli: Innocent Gentillet’s Discourse on Method’, Political Theory, 22 (1994), 539–60, which, unfortunately, places exaggerated stress on ‘rhetorical’ method and none at all on the rhetorical context of the Contre-Machiavel.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

285

g e n t i l l e t ’s i n t e n t i on s The aims of the Contre-Machiavel were complex. A critical reading may readily identify several different strands to the argument, but it is evident that they were conceived simultaneously and executed concurrently, and that their interdependence was both intellectual and emotional. These aims are largely set out in the Preface to the first book, though this is by no means a full statement either of Gentillet’s purposes or of what he actually does in the course of his very long work. On the other hand, it must be conceded that there is a greater relationship between what the author says that he is going to do and what he actually does than was often the case in contemporary historical and political writing. He is not, he stresses, setting out to write a comprehensive treatise on the ‘Politicke Art’: but my intent and purpose is onely to shew, That Nicholas Machiavell, not long agoe a Secretarie of the Florentine commonweale (which is now a Dutchie) understood nothing or little in this Politicke science whereof we speake: and that he hath taken Maximes and rules altogether wicked, and hath builded upon them, not a Politicke, but a Tyrannical science. Behold here then the end and scope which I have proposed unto myself, that is, to confute the doctrine of Machiavell, & not exactly to handle the Politicke science; although I hope to touche some good points thereof in some places, when occasion shall offer itselfe.38

In Gentillet’s opinion there are two fundamental reasons for Machiavelli’s incompetence. In the first place, he had no knowledge of real affairs—his experience being limited to the petty squabbles of Italian potentates, and the shifts and expedients of the citizens of Florence.39 Secondly, Machiavelli had scarcely any knowledge of histories; while those few which he does allege are 38 Contre-Machiavel (1576), 3; (1602), sig. A.2. Citations in the text refer to these two editions. 39 The idea that Machiavelli was a small-town nobody had an obvious appeal to citizens of a great nation state, and it is used to nice effect by Antoine de Laval, Desseins des professions nobles et publiques, contenans plusieurs traite´s divers et rares (Paris, 1613), fo. 339v, when he attacks Machiavelli’s advocacy of atheism, avarice, cruelty, and perjury—added to which ‘he speaks of these little princes of which Italy was full in his time, and who could see from their windows the four corners of their states’.

286

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

handled badly. Gentillet’s challenge is therefore aimed at the very bases of Machiavelli’s political discussion; and he promises to make these charges stick in the course of his own work. In his first Preface, Gentillet also makes the striking assumption which underlies, and indeed provoked, his entire enterprise. He believes that Machiavelli’s doctrines are at the root of France’s present degradation, which has culminated not only in the Saint Bartholomew massacre but also in the glee of its perverted admirers. Doubtless, courtiers who deal with affairs of state will think it strange that he should find fault with their ‘great doctor Machiavell’ whose books they call the ‘courtiers’ Alcoran’—they have them in such great esteem. Yet, until the death of Henri II, Machiavelli had not even been spoken of in France and the kingdom had been ruled in the traditional French manner. It was only subsequently that government has been carried out according to the rules of Machiavelli, who is considered the wisest person in the world and the most cunning in affairs of state: and his books held dearest and most precious by our Italian and Italionized courtiers, as if they were the booke of Sibilla, whereunto the Paynims had their recourse when they would deliberate upon any great affaire concerning the common wealth, or as the Turkes hould deare and precious their Mahumets Alcaron, as wee have said above. (p. 8; 1602, sig. A.3v)

Gentillet is not surprised that the old modes of government have been abandoned, because now all principal offices are held by Italians who, doubtless, share their master’s contempt for French political customs. This, though bad enough, might have been supported in silence were it not for the fact that Machiavelli’s teaching hath changed the good and ancient government of France into a kind of Florentine government, whereupon we see with our eies, the totall ruine of all France: It infallibly followeth (if God by his grace doe not remedie it soone) that now it should be time, if ever, to lay hand to the work, to remit and bring France againe unto the government of our ancestors. (ibid.)

This political reformation is essential, and Gentillet appeals to the princes and nobility to consider their duty. How can they stand aside and watch their country contaminated and defiled with the

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

287

‘contempt of God, with perfidie, with sodomie, tyrannie, crueltie, thefts, strange usuries, and other detestable vices, which strangers sowe here’? Jurisconsults rightly maintain that a person who allows another, ‘unto whom he oweth nourishment’, to starve to death is himself a murderer: And shall you not be culpable before God, of so many massacres, murders, and desolations of your poor France, if you give it not succours, seeing you have the meanes, and that you are obliged thereunto by right of nature? Shall you not be condemned and attainted of impietie, Athisme, and tyrannie, if you drive not out of France, Machiavell and his government? (pp. 9–10; 1602, sig. A4)

France is now governed according to those Machiavellian principles which it is Gentillet’s purpose to lay bare; and, if anyone doubts his assertion of contemporary French corruption, then a consideration of the ‘effects which we see with our eyes, and the provisions and executions of the affairs which are put in practise’ will take the doubter straight back to Machiavelli’s maxims so that ‘from the Maxims to the effect, and from the effects to the Maxims men may clearly know that France is at this day governed by the doctrine of Machiavell’. Are they not Machiavellists, ‘Italians or Italianized’, who handle the seals of France, issue edicts, send dispatches within and without the kingdom, and hold the best and most lucrative offices? Moreover—and this is crucial for Gentillet—it is notorious that, for the last fifteen years, Machiavelli’s books have become as ‘familiar and ordinarie in the hands of the courtiers, as the breviary in the hands of the village curate’; and he sarcastically thanks those who have made two or three different translations of the work of this ‘stinking atheist’, the better to poison the French nation (p. 185; 1602, p. 100). First Machiavelli; then Machiavellists; and finally corruption. That is the historical sequence assumed, and demonstrated, by Gentillet, who completes this as a circular structure by explicitly identifying Machiavelli’s own purpose as the establishing of tyranny, and by arguing that the present condition of France results from the deliberate practice of such tyranny. This, in turn, demands a further demonstration. Since the application of Machiavelli’s principles results in corruption, then Gentillet feels obliged

288

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

to elucidate the precise nature of that corruption, the superior conditions which had formerly prevailed in France, and the reasons for that superiority. In other words, although Gentillet denies that he is writing a treatise on the ‘politicke art’, he is obliged to highlight the inutility of Machiavelli’s doctrines by showing the positive utility of an alternative set of precepts. The difference, he argues, between the ancient government of France and modern degradation is manifest. Formerly, the kingdom, free of civil discord, had been maintained in peace and prosperity. Now Italian domination has suppressed the ancient laws; civil war has ensued; the people are ‘destroyed and eaten’; and commerce has decayed to nothing. All of this is deemed self-evident: but it is none the less vital for Gentillet to demonstrate the superiority of the past. He therefore announces his intention that, after every single maxim derived from Machiavelli, he will prove by examples that ‘our ancient Frenchmen guided and governed themselves by good reason and wisdom, clean contrary from the way of Machiavelli’s precepts’ (p. 12; 1602, sig. A4v). These then are Gentillet’s explicit aims: to refute Machiavelli’s false tyrannical doctrines; to show how they have corrupted fair France; and to show how states should be governed. But, stated thus, these aims conceal the passionate core of the ContreMachiavel and, in any case, imply further intentions on the part of the author. Despite all the positive political advice offered by Gentillet in the course of his work, his claim not to be writing a political treatise is largely valid for he is, primarily, a polemicist. His principal target is not really Machiavelli at all. It is, rather, contemporary depravity; and every citation and every historical parallel, both ancient and modern, contains either explicitly or implicitly a reproof to the French court. It is this which provides much of the latent force and energy of the Contre-Machiavel and which must—at least for its contemporary readers—have supported the vast repetitious structure of historical citation. The conception, though not the execution, of the book was very similar to the anti-Machiavellian section of Pole’s Apologia ad Carolum Quintum. In 1539 it was the Catholic who had been in exile and whose co-religionists had suffered cruelty, privation, and death. Pole, like Gentillet, had experienced political repression

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

289

which he could only characterize as tyrannical; and, like Gentillet, he was convinced that this tyranny was a practical application of Machiavelli’s precepts. To put it the other way round—and perhaps more exactly—each polemicist believed that, in Machiavelli’s writings, he had discovered the theoretical enunciation of the principles upon which a specific tyranny had been built. Both authors attacked the theory and its practice; and both have been remembered more for Machiavelli’s sake than for the tyrants they opposed. Yet in both cases the tyrants were the real objects of disgust. Their use, real or imaginary, of Machiavelli was simply the stick with which it seemed appropriate to beat them. As an exiled Huguenot, Gentillet was naturally obsessed by the recent atrocities, by the rejoicing which followed them, and by the relentless anti-Huguenot accusations which form the basis for the apologetics. He felt compelled to argue the case for his coreligionists and to show that the charges levelled against them by the defenders of the Saint Bartholomew—accusations based upon a show of conventional morality—were, in fact, themselves nothing but a hypocritical veil hiding the true villains of contemporary France. For the effete sycophancy of contemporary poets Gentillet has nothing but scorn and, though he does not identify either work or author, it is evident that Ronsard’s Le tombeau du feu Roy treschrestien Charles neufiesme had proved an especial irritant.40 The flattery and lies of such scribblers were designed to ‘hooke in some abbotship or priorship, or some other such gift in recompence for their adulations’. Poets, he admits, are entitled to greater licence in eulogy than either the orator or the historian: but gross hyperbole redounds more to the discredit than to the honour of the recipient. Consider, for instance, the epitaphs printed in Paris shortly after the death of Charles IX. Here the poets said that the King, in shedding the blood of so many rebels, overthrew more monsters than did Hercules. They said that, like Samson who pulled down the pillars of the house upon himself, so died the King when justice, piety and religion died with him. They said that France 40 Ronsard’s Tombeau du feu Roy . . . Charles neufiesme was published by Fre´de´ric Morel in Paris shortly after the King’s death. It is reprinted in Ronsard, Œuvres comple`tes, ed. Gustave Cohen (Paris, 1950), ii. 474–9.

290

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

had been his stepmother; that he was wonderfully skilled in all the arts and crafts; that his brother succeeded him as Castor to Pollux, as one God to another; that he died a martyr of Jesus Christ; and that he should be ‘invocated as a Saint’.41 What rubbish! If these poets had taken the trouble to read the classical eulogists they would have seen that, although Virgil and Ovid had praised Augustus, it had been for his peace, justice, and his expansion of Rome’s empire. They had never mentioned the civil wars in which he had triumphed for, as Plutarch remarks, ‘they are piteous triumphs which are made upon civile bloud’. Gentillet ridicules the extravagant language of the toadies, but particularly pounces upon the conceit that piety and justice had died with the late King. In so saying do they not ‘plainely blame the kingdome at this present of impietye and injustice? as if justice were not now so good, nor religion in so good estate, as in the time of the dead king; or as if they were or could bee made worse’. But, on the contrary, everyone can see that justice and religion remain in France as they were before the King died, and that they are now ‘so well governed, as they cannot waxe worse’ (pp. 85–8; 1602, pp. 42–3). There are, however, more serious perverters of truth and apologists for evil than these poets. There are, for example, degenerate jurisconsults who not only excuse massacres but even promote them against all law, divine and human. And what of the Machiavellian magistrates who make process of law against men whom they have already slain? (pp. 60, 616; 1602, pp. 26–7, 361). Tyrants customarily cloak their wilful, arbitrary murders under some ‘apparent colour’, laying false accusations and blame against those whom they wish to kill, sometimes before and sometimes after the crime: 41 The following are the lines from Ronsard’s Tombeau du feu Roy . . . Charles neufiesme which gave offence to Gentillet. On Hercules: ‘Il se vit au berceau des serpens assailli / Comme un jeune Hercules, dont il rompit la force.’ On the death of justice, piety, and religion: ‘L’honneur et la vertu, la justice et la foy / Et la religion sont mortes avecq’ toy’. On France as Charles’s stepmother: ‘La France, a` son bon Prince une marastre terre, / Ou` depuis la mammelle il n’a vescu qu’en guerre.’ On Charles’s many talents: ‘Son esprit magazin de toutes sortes d’arts’. On Castor and God: ‘Resjouys toy la`-haut et sereines ta face, / Dequoy Castor, ton frere, est regnant en ta place, / Qui par succession est maistre de ton lieu: / Un Dieu doit heritier a` l’Empire d’un Dieu.’ However, Ronsard mentions neither Samson, nor Charles’s invocation as a saint.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

291

and there are none at this day, which cannot exemplifie this position with many late and fresh examples in our time. For the massacres of Paris, executed on S. Bartholomewes day, and the execution after, made of captaine Briquemaud, of Maistre Arnand of Carignes, of contie Mongomery, and of the lord of Monbrun, and other like, were all coloured with false imputations, by the Messers Machiavellists, and by the wicked judges their slaves, as every one knoweth. (p. 383; 1602, p. 221)

These creatures argue, along with their God Machiavelli, that cruelty for a good end is not reprehensible. But there never has been a murder or iniquity which was not covered with some goodly pretext by its perpetrators. Thus some affirm that their deeds are founded upon good reason and equity; that justice would have done no less than they had executed; and that their actions thus constituted an abbreviation of the usual process which would have taken too long. And why should these ‘abbreviators of justice’ feel shame, asks Gentillet, since the law is nowadays practised but as a ‘palliation or couverture, for all assassiments, murders, and vengeances?’ Some veil their murders with a different end—that is the public good—saying that their massacres are committed to avoid a greater evil which would have been perpetrated by their victims. Then there are others who make a ‘covering of peace and tranquilitie’, claiming that their murders are executed to establish peace and bring an end to troubles. Nevertheless, whatever the deceits and excuses, ‘the worke always shewes who was the workeman’. In the end they will outsmart themselves with their colours, ‘like the deceitfull painting of harlots’; so that, although they might beguile folk for a while, yet in the end they will ‘be always known for Foxes’. Furthermore, if princes permit men to commit murders under the colour of good intentions, then they break the order of justice and turn everything upside down. Murders and massacres never remain long unpunished. ‘And in our time’, cries Gentillet, ‘we see examples enough, and I beleeve we shall see more, in such as the hand of God hath not yet touched’ (p. 396; 1602, pp. 228–9). This foul web of duplicity and violence is not, in Gentillet’s opinion, indigenous to France. It comes instead from Italy: and he misses no opportunity for an attack upon these pestilent foreigners. Degenerate Italian, or Italianized, courtiers appear throughout the

292

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Contre-Machiavel as those very practitioners of Machiavellian principles who now govern by his evil books and recognize no other political wisdom (pp. 236, 277; 1602, pp. 132, 157). They have usurped authority, contaminate everything, grasp power, and advance only their own countrymen or certain ‘bastardlie and degenerous Frenchmen, which are fashioned, both to their humour and their fashions, and which may serve them as slaves and most vile ministers of their trecheries, cruelties, rapines, and other vices’ (pp. 138–9; 1602, p. 74). They nourish the partialities and divisions, especially between Catholics and Huguenots, which have destroyed France. However, Gentillet is at pains to point out, it would be a mistake to suppose that diversity of religion had caused the troubles, because this might have been resolved by preaching, disputation, and conferences. It was only when men came to ‘arms and massacres’, and attempted to enforce beliefs, that partialities arose. This was the real aim of the foreigners, ‘that thereby they might plant in France the government of Machiavel’. If only civil dissension had remained amongst the ‘Florentines and other Italians who doe love them and find them good, so that the French men had beene without them’ (pp. 224, 542–3, 554–5; 1602, pp. 124, 317, 324). Unfortunately, the only citizens who have been prepared to speak out against the foreigners are those very Huguenots now persecuted as ‘bad French subjects’ but who are, in fact, ‘at this day as good Frenchmen as ever were the ancestours, but they are not good Italians, neither meane to be subject under the yoke of strangers, no more than their ancestors’ (p. 57; 1602, p. 25).42 Italians are steeped in every vice. They are disloyal, perfidious, and cowardly. They dissemble, flatter, and change sides whenever they deem it profitable—‘resembling harlots which love every man, yet love no person’—and ceaselessly run hither and thither like spinning tops (pp. 131–2, 287–8, 508; 1602, pp. 68, 163–4, 296). It is no wonder that simple, honest Frenchmen who speak openly and expose their hearts are easily trapped in the nets of 42 Gentillet later cites the imposition of outlandish new taxes invented by the Italians against which only his co-religionists dared open their mouths to ‘complain of these horseleeches and blood-suckers’. See (1576), 173; (1602), 93.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

293

intrigue cast by these Machiavellists who never let a word fall from their mouths without premeditating its meaning, which is, in any case, ‘ordinarily contrarie to that which you thinke’ (p. 430; 1602, p. 251). Their intent is to impose a ‘Turkish servitude’. They are greedy, mercenary usurers who pillage France with new and arbitrary taxation which does not find its way to the Crown. Worse still, even their nobles handle trade and merchandise more commonly than the arms proper to their rank, and do not scorn to be reputed ‘mechanique’—provided that they can make money (pp. 173, 565, 567, and esp. 526; 1602, pp. 93, 331–2, 307). But worst of all is their implacable cruelty, lust for revenge, and sheer murderousness: and indeed, there is nothing wherein they take greater delectation, pleasure, and contentment, than to execute a vengeance; insomuch as, whensoever they can have their enemie at their pleasure, to be revenged upon him, they murder him after some strange & barbarous fashion, and in murdering him, they put him in remembrance of the offence done unto them, with many reprochfull words and injuries to torment the soule and the body together; and sometimes they wash their hands and their mouthes with his blood, and force him with hope of his life to give himselfe to the divell; and so they seeke in slaying the bodie to damne the soule, if they could. (p. 311; 1602, pp. 177–8)

Gentillet devoutly hopes that, infected though they are by other Italian vices, the French may yet escape this bloodthirstiness: though elsewhere he accuses the ‘Italianized courtiers’ of already grounding their advice to slay and massacre all such as they hate, upon the saying that the dead man makes no war; and he associates this sentiment with the massacre of Vassy in 1562 and with the Saint Bartholomew itself (pp. 467–8; 1602, pp. 271–2). The Italians, he laconically remarks, have always had a strong inclination to massacre Frenchmen. Their classic depravity had been known as the Sicilian Vespers: and it was in imitation of this that they had ‘complotted and executed not in Sicilie (but in France itself ) and through all the best townes of the kingdome, the horrible and generall massacre of the yeare 1572, which will ever bleed, and whereof their hands and swords are yet bloodie’ (p. 125; 1602, pp. 65–6). And, says Gentillet, they have incessantly boasted

294

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

of this exploit, calling it the Matines parisiennes (the very phrase which occurs towards the end of Capilupi’s Lo Stratagema).43 In short, as far as Gentillet is concerned, the Italians have corrupted the French both in mind and body. Even venereal disease was imported from Italy at the time of Charles VIII’s Neapolitan campaign. And of whom have the Frenchmen learned ‘atheisme, sodomie, treacherie, crueltie, usurie, and such other vices, but of Machiavell and them of his nation’. Thus may the Italians well brag that they have avenged the wars that the French formerly waged in their land (pp. 308–9; 1602, p. 176). This last brief but pregnant lament may perhaps remind the modern reader of the heartfelt cry with which Machiavelli had ended Il Principe, demanding a saviour who would free his land from the barbarians who stank in every Italian’s nostrils. The relationship is, I believe, deliberate. Gentillet, though criticizing Machiavelli for describing the French as ignorant, barbarous, covetous, and disloyal, does not refer specifically to the closing pages of Il Principe (p. 9; 1602, sig. A.4). He does, however, echo their rousing sentiment in his appeals to his own countrymen. To encourage spiritual and political regeneration was perhaps Gentillet’s fundamental purpose in writing his Contre-Machiavel. He touches upon it in his first preface when challenging the French nobility to do their duty. They were not born, he says, simply to help in the destruction of their native land, or to stand aside coldly watching foreigners contaminate it with every filthy vice. In the penultimate paragraph of the entire work, Gentillet again asks the French nobility to consider well the points he has made against Machiavelli: for so may they know how wicked, impious and detestable the doctrine of that most filthie Atheist is, who hath left out no kind of wickednesse to build a tyrannie accomplished of all abhominable vices. They which know this, I beleeve will couragiouslie employ themselves to drive and banish from France, Machiavell and all his writings, and all such as maintaine and follow his doctrine and practise it in France, to the ruine and desolation of the kingdome, and of the poor people. (p. 637; 1602, p. 374) 43 Cf. also Allegresse chrestienne (L33 :309e), sig. C.1v.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

295

Gentillet regards the old French nobility and its chivalric traditions, together with all other traditional French values—moral, political, and legal—as immeasurably superior to the Italianate policies which have now almost destroyed them. His task is both to vindicate French civilization and to arouse his countrymen before it is too late. The French nation was once held in awe by foreigners. Where is that generosity of spirit now? Once Frenchmen had made other nations tremble: now they are forced to ‘take the yoke’ in their own country. Once they had been reputed frank, liberal, and far from all servitude: now their stupidity, carelessness, and cowardice has made them slaves to the most ‘dastardlie and cowardly nation of Christendome’. Once they had overwhelmed huge Italian armies in battle: now they suffer themselves to be overcome by a small number of Italians armed with but spindle, distaff, pen, and inkhorn. Are Frenchmen to remain thus bewitched? Can they not see that by secret means these foreigners overthrow and encompass the deaths by ‘treasons, poysonings and injustice’ first of one and then another of the greatest men in France; and that their sole purpose is to destroy the nobility and all worthiness? (pp. 139–40; 1602, p. 74).44 ‘Be sleepie no longer’, cries Gentillet, ‘for it is time to awake, and to thinke what we have to doe.’ France must not simply stand by as one great house after another falls to the ground. The disorders are already too deeply established and Frenchmen have too long tarried in providing for themselves and making a stand against the designs and machinations of these foreigners. Let us then stir up in our selves the generositie and vertue of our valiant great grandfathers, and shew that we are come from the race of those good and noble Frenchmen our ancestors, which in old time past have brought under their subjection so many strange nations, and which so many times have vanquished the Italian race, which would make us now serve. Let us 44 Cf. Gentillet’s Brieve remonstrance a la noblesse de France, 162: ‘ces Italiens s’en viennent en France, sans rien y apporter qu’un escritoire et une main de papiers, et de ce chastal ils accumulent incontinent grands deniers par leurs banques, puis font banqueroutte et emportent tout faisans comme les sauterelles, qui s’en vont apres avoir tout brotte´’. Gohory had noted the same phenomenon of Italian success, though from a very different viewpoint.

296

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

not leave off, for a sort of degenerate Frenchmen, adherents to the pernitious purposes of that race, to maintaine and conserve the honors and reputation of loyaltie, integritie, and valiancie of our French nation, which those bastardlie Italians have contaminated and soiled by their cruelties, massacres and perfidies. Wee want nothing but courage to effect all this: for these Messiers would not stand one whit, if they once knew that it were in good earnest and with good accord, that the Frenchmen would send them to exercise their tyrannies in their owne countrey, and force them to make account of such as they have committed in France. (p. 140; 1602, pp. 74–5)45

This is the stirring conclusion Gentillet provides for the first part of his Contre-Machiavel. It is difficult to believe that these words could have been written without conscious, if tacit, reference to the conclusion of Il Principe: and written, moreover, by somebody who had read Machiavelli’s work with attention.

g e n t i l l e t’ s g eneral method Gentillet, despite the accusations of his modern critics, had read Machiavelli’s work (or what he considered to be Machiavelli’s work) with attention. It was not, however, the kind of attention now in vogue. He did not count the number of times Machiavelli employed this or that word. He did not read the texts in order to demonstrate their relation to classical and humanistic sources. He was not concerned to discover biographical evidence. Nor did he provide a critical appraisal of all Machiavelli’s writings, giving due weight to their historical context and to the particular problems which the author had faced. These were rarely the concerns of sixteenth-century readers. They were especially not the concern of those engaged in life-and-death polemic. I am not suggesting that 45 Cf. the end of the Brieve remonstrance a la noblesse de France, 218–23, which is a call to the great leaders of France to answer Alenc¸on’s appeal against the tyranny and usurpation of the foreigners: ‘Et si nous ne le faisons, nous serons reputez a` la posterite´ des lasches, desloyeaux et traistres a` celle qui nous a enfantez et nourris, et qui nous a fait voir la premiere lumiere du soleil. La race nostre qui viendra apres nous, auroit juste cause de blasmer et denigrer nostre memoire et reputation, si par nostre pusillanimite´ et couardise nous la laissons tomber en esclave servitude de ceux qui ne tendent a` autre but.’

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

297

Gentillet’s work was unbiased, coherent, and wholly just to Machiavelli, or that it was executed without mistakes, inconsistencies, and many manifest absurdities. I am suggesting that his approach is not as dishonest or foolish as is often assumed. Within the context of sixteenth-century polemical evaluation of any adversary’s arguments, the violent circumstances of its genesis, the passions involved, and the speed with which it was produced— the Contre-Machiavel is by no means contemptible. That Gentillet went about his self-appointed task with high seriousness is shown by the method he adopted in attempting his refutation, and by the theoretical discussion of that method which prefaces the entire enterprise. This is the very heart of the ContreMachiavel and, with only one exception, has it been accorded more than a cursory glance by those who—quick to take offence on behalf of their culture hero—have nevertheless abused Gentillet for that very method.46 Villari criticized him for ‘reducing Machiavelli’s special maxims to maxims of morality in general’, so that he ‘found it easy to charge him with immorality and iniquity’. The erudite Burd, noting that Gentillet’s approach was to head each of his chapters with a maxim ‘purporting to be drawn from Machiavelli’s writings and to contain an impartial representation of his doctrine’, further observed that there are few writers to whom ‘such a method of treatment would not be fatal; but it is especially unfair in this case’—because the selection is made from only two of Machiavelli’s works, Il Principe and the Discorsi. Charles Benoist angrily denounced the ‘pole´miste qui n’a d’innocent que son pre´nom, Innocent Gentillet’ whose distortion of Machiavelli’s maxims constitute a ‘chef d’oeuvre de traduction-trahison’. J. H. Whitfield, lamenting that the bulk of Tommasini’s magnum opus has militated against its having exercised much influence, suggested that it is simpler ‘to write in the manner of Gentillet about Machiavelli: to cull the wicked maxims in a short and inaccurate excursus at the outset of a book, then trace to his immoral influence all that is rotten in the state of a nation’. In an incoherent and slovenly passage, Prezzolini described the Contre-Machiavel as ‘large in format but poor in essence’, and attacked Gentillet as ‘long-winded 46 The exception is Victoria Kahn in ‘Reading Machiavelli’.

298

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

and a falsifier’ who ‘quotes fragments of Machiavelli out of their original context, puts together two passages giving a completely different meaning, and he also invents’. Short shrift is also accorded the Contre-Machiavel by Quentin Skinner, usually a model of sobriety, who states that Gentillet’s main aim is to ‘denounce the wicked ‘‘maxims’’ which he claims—often highly tendentiously—to have culled from The Prince and the Discourses’. And even Pamela Stewart, who has devoted a book to Gentillet’s life and work, ignores his method and instead demonstrates—with inevitable ease—that he often misrepresents or misunderstands Machiavelli, or is simply inaccurate.47 In attempting to assess Gentillet’s worth, there are two important truths to be faced at the outset. One is that, as far as the sixteenth century (and beyond) was concerned, the statement of political (and many other) views in the form of maxims, aphorisms, apophthegmata, and related forms of stylistic concision was both desirable and normal. Thus, to delimit a subject under aphoristic heads in order to marshal criticism and replication was a wholly admirable procedure: and it had not been systematically applied to Machiavelli prior to the appearance of the Contre-Machiavel. Secondly, Machiavelli adored aphorisms and maxims, and much of Il Principe and the Discorsi is little else but a stringing together of a wide selection of such gnomic utterances. That it is possible to build some sort of system from these fragments is evident. Historians of political thought have been doing it for centuries. But Machiavelli himself did not. He preferred to issue a stream of striking sayings which he would then embroider, illustrate, and play with. His contemporaries did the same in their collections of adagia and emblems; and although Machiavelli did not use so obviously a formalistic structure—aphorism, explication, and motto—he was not far away from it, as anyone can see by reading the titles and closing sentences of each chapter of the Discorsi. The fact remains that Machiavelli has never been—and can 47 P. Villari, The Life and Times of Niccolo` Machiavelli (n.d.), ii. 195; L. A. Burd, introduction to Il Principe (Oxford, 1891), 53–4; C. Benoist, Le Machiavellisme (Paris, 1936), iii. 22, 31; J. H. Whitfield, Machiavelli (Oxford, 1947), 6; Prezzolini, Machiavelli, 200–1; Q. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978), ii. 308.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

299

never be—left to speak for himself. His writings have to be explicated, glossed, and arranged in patterns for each generation of readers. Pieces from one part of a text have to be cobbled to pieces from another in order to fulfil the demands of the systematizers. Nor is this extraordinary. Machiavelli, for all his immense literary flair, still wrote in a sixteenth-century manner. Maxims, aphorisms, and bons mots, from the brilliant to the banal, flowed freely from his pen. And Innocent Gentillet, precisely because of his lack of flair, still read in a sixteenth-century manner so that maxims and aphorisms, for good or ill, leapt insistently to his eye and blinded him to everything else. He was a typical Renaissance reader and was so effective in systematizing this approach to Machiavelli that similar work was not freshly undertaken for another fifty years.48 The Contre-Machiavel opens with a discussion of the role of maxims in political thought. The section says nothing very profound, but it is none the less important for several reasons: first, because such views underlay a great part of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century political writing; then because such specifically methodological analysis of maxims, however primitive it may be, is rare in this period; and third, because this analysis is the foundation upon which the entire refutation of Machiavelli is erected. Aristotle and other philosophers, says Gentillet, teach us, and ‘experience confirmeth it unto us’, that there are two ways to achieve knowledge.49 One is when, from causes and maxims, men come to know effects and consequences. The other is the contrary when, by the effects and consequences, we come to know causes and maxims. Thus, when we see the ‘earth waxe greene and trees gather leaves’, we know that the Sun (which is the cause) approaches nearer; and we conceive the maxim that the Sun gives strength to the earth ‘to bring forth fruit’. Conversely, once we understand the maxim we would expect the earth to bear fruit when the Sun approaches. Mathematicians, as Gentillet points out, 48 I am thinking here of David Hume’s Apologia Basilica (Paris, 1626). See below, Ch. 13. On the habit of reading primarily to locate aphorisms, see below, Ch. 17. 49 Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric, I. 2; Prior Analytics, II. 23, 24; Posterior Analytics, I. 1; Topics, I. 1. xii.

300

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

proceed from maxims: those ‘common sentences’ regarded as selfevidently true by the sense and judgement of all men. The other method, from the observation of effects to causes, and from particularities to general maxims, is proper to the sciences such as natural and moral philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, and politics—although, in practice, these sciences make use of both methods, as can be seen in the ‘Politicke Art’. From the particular effects of a civil government men may comprehend maxims and rules: and vice versa. Thus, when we see an evilly functioning polity, or a good administration, we can grasp the correspondingly bad or good rules for government. Conversely, we may comprehend the evil or good effects which must follow from the application of evil or good maxims. There is, however, a caveat. Political maxims may well be of service in the running of a state: but they are not as certain as the maxims of mathematicians, and may prove extremely dangerous if men cannot apply them to changing circumstances but, instead, accommodate circumstances to the maxims. ‘For the circumstances, dependancies, consequences, and the antecedents of every affaire and particular businesse, are all for the most part divers and contrarie.’ It thus comes about that, although two situations appear similar, yet men must not ‘conduct and determine them by one same rule or Maxime, because of the diversitie and difference of accidents and circumstances’ (p. 2; 1602, sigs. A.1v–2). Experience teaches us that a certain action may be good on one occasion but harmful on another; and that what is suitable for one nation may prove unsuitable for another. It is vital, therefore, that men engaged in public affairs must not only know the rules of politics, but must also be wise, quick and sharp in judgement, able to weigh up every aspect of a problem, and prudently adapt the maxims, ‘yea, and sometimes to force and bend them to serve to the present affaire’. Wisdom of this kind is extremely rare because, in order for a man successfully to handle weighty business, three qualities are essential: he must be naturally endowed with sound judgement; he must be wise, temperate, dispassionate, unbiased, and devoted only to the public weal; and he must be thoroughly versed in a variety of practical affairs, which is only possible for those who have ‘handled or seen them handled’, or who have by

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

301

‘great and attentive reading of choise histories’ developed a firm and practised judgement.50 This is the point at which Gentillet begins his attack on Machiavelli. Not everybody is suited to the management of public affairs. Nor should it be imagined that everybody who speaks or writes on these matters really knows what he is talking about. Gentillet himself would not dream of treating political science a` fond: but Machiavelli did so presume, and he validated this presumption on the basis of his knowledge both of affairs and of histories. Gentillet does not cite Machiavelli on this issue, though his implication is clear. Machiavelli had claimed special authority in Il Principe when he offered its dedicatee the benefit of his knowledge of great men’s actions ‘learnt from a long experience in modern affairs and a continual reading of the ancients’. He said something similar in the dedication of the Discorsi, the content of which he described as ‘all that I know, and all that I have learnt from long practical experience and a continual reading of the affairs of the world’. He claimed to derive rules for political behaviour from this combination of first-hand and vicarious experience; and this is why Gentillet is determined to show that Machiavelli’s firsthand experience was trivial and limited to the disgusting needs of petty Italian tyrants, and that his vicarious experience in histories was equally at fault. Bodin had hinted at a similar weakness ten years earlier in his Methodus:51 but Gentillet adds an extra dimension to his attack. The conclusions that Machiavelli drew from his two inadequate repositories of information were inept because he also lacked the other necessary quality of the political thinker— that is a ‘firm and solid natural judgement’. Machiavelli had, no doubt disingenuously, confessed as much in the Preface to the 50 Cf. Jean Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris, 1566), ch. 4, opening section. See the trans. by Beatrice Reynolds, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History (New York, 1945), 43–4: ‘Machiavelli also wrote many things about government—the first, I think, for about 1,200 years after barbarism had overwhelmed everything. [His sayings] are on the lips of everyone, and there is no doubt but that he would have written more fully and effectively and with a greater regard for truth, if he had combined a knowledge of the writings of ancient philosophers and historians with experience. Jovius reports that he lacked this qualification, and the work speaks for itself.’ 51 Bodin, Methodus, trans. Reynolds, 153.

302

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

First Book of the Discorsi, when he wrote that his efforts might prove defective and of slight utility due to his ‘poor intellect, scant experience of current affairs, and feeble knowledge of antiquity’. Gentillet was merely being scrupulously true to the letter of his sources. In a later, augmented edition of the Contre-Machiavel, Gentillet added material from the Arte della guerra and the Istorie fiorentine; but in the first edition (which was the basis for all but two of the subsequent issues) he refers only to Il Principe, which he regards as Machiavelli’s principal treatise replete with pre´ceptes tyranniques, and the Discorsi, which he describes simply as ‘commentaries on the other book’ (p. 5).52 From these two works he has extracted and collected together the material which he considers to be Machiavelli’s own; has summarized this under certain maxims; and organized these into three groups. He has done this in order to bring together each subject in one place so that he might better examine it because Machiavelli ‘hath not handled every matter in one same place, but a little heere, and a little there, enterlacing and mixing some good things amongst them’—a technique used by poisoners ‘which never cast lumpes of poyson upon an heape, least it bee perceived, but doe most subtillie incorporate it as they can, with some other delicate and daintie morsells’. If, says Gentillet, he had followed Machiavelli’s own order, it would have been necessary to treat any one point several times over, confusedly and not comprehensively. He has, accordingly, reduced the greater part of Machiavelli’s doctrines to maxims; has added the arguments by which these maxims were sustained by their author; and has provided references to the relevant passages in Machiavelli’s work so that those who so desire may verify the fidelity with 52 ‘Outre ledit livre intitule´ Le Prince ou De la Principaute´, Machiavel a aussi escrit des Discours sur la premie`re Decade de Tite Live, divisez en trois livres, qui servent comme de commentaires a` l’autre livre de la principaute´’. The translation (1602), sig. A.2v, is very clumsy here. Later, Gentillet came to know both the Arte della guerra and the Istorie fiorentine, and incorporated much new material from these two works in a revised edition of the Contre-Machiavel which was published at Lausanne in 1585 and reprinted at Leyden in 1609. D’Andrea and Stewart, p. lix, consider that this edition is so altered and revised that it could be ‘regarded as a different book’. There is much truth in this view, and I treat the work separately below, Ch. 12.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

303

which he has attributed to Machiavelli only that material which is properly his, and has not omitted any reasons which might support Machiavelli’s case. Gentillet’s strategy is to demonstrate and confute the results of his adversary’s threefold imperfection. Machiavelli’s superficial conception of modern political affairs is to be met not by reference to ‘small potentates and tyrannizers borne in one night like toadstooles (as Machiavell dooth)’, but by the great and notable examples of the Kings of France (p. 12; 1602, sig. A.4v). The inadequacies of Machiavelli’s classical citations are to be countered by Gentillet’s own references to the emperors, princes, captains, and Senate of ancient Rome, which will confirm his modern examples: since these two monarchies (France and Rome) together provide the true model worthy to be imitated by every prince. Finally, Machiavelli’s feebleness of judgement is to be countered by Gentillet’s own superior comprehension. This last is a tacit assumption throughout the Contre-Machiavel and is largely unfounded for, while Gentillet’s dialectic is, perhaps, not markedly worse than Machiavelli’s, it is certainly no better.

gentillet ’ s h i s t o r i c a l a r g u m e n t Fundamental to Gentillet’s refutation of Machiavelli is a determined and consistent appeal to historical example, and a refusal to cite the authority either of the Bible or of moral philosophers and theologians. Machiavelli had argued on the basis of real and vicarious experience. Gentillet will do no less. Machiavelli and his atheistical followers could all too easily be destroyed by an appeal to Holy Writ which would, however, be unnecessarily polluted in the process. So, instead, they will be assailed with their own arms—human reason and secular writings—which, in truth, serve only to confirm Christianity against the impious.53 Gentillet 53 Gentillet was evidently fond of this notion of taking on adversaries at their own game. In the dedicatory epistle to his Apologie or defence for the Christians of Fraunce which are of the evangelicall or reformed religion (1579), he proves the righteousness of the reformed religion not only from the Scriptures but also from the Canons: ‘I geve them yet this advantage further, that I enter the listes against

304

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

adheres to this resolve despite the fact that some of Machiavelli’s absurdities are, in his view, so manifest that the ‘most rusticall idiots of the world’ could see through them; while a single passage of Scripture would prove them wrong (pp. 185–6, 247, 439; 1602, pp. 101, 139, 256). To demonstrate, for example, the fatuity and impiety of Machiavelli’s advice that cruelty which ‘tendeth to a good end is not to be reprehended’, one need cite only St Paul: ‘But I have alreadie said in another place, that I will not imploy the sacred armour of the holy scripture, to fight against this profane and wicked Atheist’ (pp. 396–7; 1602, p. 229). There is a certain grim justice in the historical technique employed by Gentillet to slay his adversary. His opinion of Machiavelli’s historical knowledge in general and the use to which it is put in the Discorsi is not high: Through all which discourses hee disperseth heere and there a few words out of Titus Livius, neither rehearsing the whole deede, nor hystorie of the matter, for which hee fisheth these words, and applyeth them preposterously, after his owne fantasie, for the most part forcing them to serve to confirme some absurde and strange thing. He also mixeth heerewith examples of small and pettie Potentates of Italy, happening in his time, or a little before, which are not worth the recitall, but are lesse worthie to bee proposed for imitation: Yet heerein is hee to bee excused, in that hee knew no better, for if hee had knowne better, I doubt not but would have brought them to light, to have adorned his writings, and to have made them more authentike and receivable. (pp. 5–6; 1602, sigs. A.2v–3)54

This is not an especially unfair or inaccurate view of Machiavelli’s wilful treatment of historical sources, which was quite uncritical and which thus allowed citation, from any place and any time, of examples which seemed to serve the argument. Quentin Skinner has suggested that some modern criticism of Machiavelli’s methodological assumptions displays a certain insensitivity since it ‘ignores the fact that Machiavelli repeatedly them with their owne weapons, which they take to be most for their own defence, and most hurtfull to us, that is to wit, the Canons, made or authorised by the very Popes themselves.’ 54 Gentillet’s view on Machiavelli’s selective misuse of Livy is very much that of Guicciardini in his Considerazioni. Cf. above, Ch. 3.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

305

qualified his supposed historical ‘‘rules’’ ’.55 But it is no less insensitive to ignore the fact that a gulf commonly exists between a writer’s caveat and its application. Machiavelli does occasionally (though not repeatedly) qualify the value of his historical evidence: but this does not prevent him from incessantly writing as though his particular examples have a universal validity quite divorced from changing contexts. Nor does it prevent him from consistently ignoring the fact that his examples are susceptible to a contrary interpretation: something which his acute contemporary, Guicciardini, was quick to point out. The whole edifice of his thought is, after all, built upon an unshakeable conviction that history is compounded of the deeds of men; that men have and ‘always have had, the same passions’; and that, therefore, the same effects recur, may be analysed, and afford one-for-one lessons. And surely not even a modern apologist would deny that Machiavelli rarely (if ever) questions the validity of the second-hand historiography he ransacks for his ‘evidence’. Livy’s Decades and similar compilations are, for Machiavelli, not merely writings about history but history itself. They have the force of revealed truth for him. He never stops to consider whether they might be submitted to assessment by collation, contrast, or the weighing of different types of evidence. Nor is it satisfactory to say, as did J. W. Allen, that ‘criticism of historical tradition or critical examination of historical evidence was little known or understood at the time’.56 There was, in fact, already a tradition of painstaking, if imperfect, accumulation of materials for the reconstruction of the classical past: though Renaissance products of this unglamorous antiquarian labour had as little appeal to Machiavelli as they have for most modern scholars. On the other hand, with regard to historical method, Allen was correct to point out, first, the severe limitations of any attempt to use the generalizations of secondary historical writing as a basis for immutable political laws; and secondly, that Machiavelli made very little real use of history since his conclusions were not, in fact, derived from his reading. 55 Skinner, Foundations, i. 169–70. 56 J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928), 486.

306

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Machiavelli simply found in classical and historical writings what had already been determined by his conclusions. It is true that, in this procedure, he differed little from most Renaissance readers. Gentillet’s own handling of historical evidence is possibly even more defective. It is certainly more clumsy. But it is not, on this account, reasonable to denounce the content of Gentillet’s attack on Machiavelli’s abuse of history. His own incompetence does not legitimize—much less does it deify—that of his famous predecessor. ‘In every science’, wrote Gentillet, ‘it seemeth to be the best (that men may well employ their time, which is deare and short) to read few bookes, to make good choise of them, and well to understand them’ (p. 206; 1602, p. 113). The Contre-Machiavel suggests that its author closely adhered to his own advice—at least within the limits imposed by his own ‘understanding’. He states that he has chosen the best and most authentic historians, and especially those who had written about events of their own time, and about affairs in which they had been participants. Among Latin writers he mentions Sallust, Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion, Herodian, Lampridius, Capitolinus, Josephus, and Livy; among the Greeks, Thucydides and Xenophon; and for French history, Froissart, Monstrelet, Paulus Aemilius, Commynes, du Bellay, and the Annales. In later editions of the Contre-Machiavel, an appended bibliography lists forty-three Greek, Latin, and French authors, ‘out of whom is extracted the Hystories and other things alledged in theese Discourses against Machiavell’.57 But, in fact, Gentillet leaned particularly heavily on only two sources, one each for Roman and French history. Livy is, naturally, his principal ancient: partly because it was necessary to demonstrate that Machiavelli had read this text ‘evilly’ and thus in no way provided that essential exegesis recommended by Gohory; and partly because for Gentillet, as for his opponent, the Decades of Livy were Roman history and not simply a generalized summary of it (pp. 439, 546; 1602, pp. 256, 319).58 For French history, Gentillet refers mainly 57 This list is given in the Latin translation of 1578 and included in the English translation (1602), sig. A.1. 58 For Gohory’s different view, see above, Ch. 7.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

307

to Philippe de Commynes, Louis XI’s Chamberlain—a man whose understanding of the government of a great kingdom was superior, in Gentillet’s estimation, to Machiavelli’s comprehension of the running even of a small ‘castleship’ (p. 13).59 How then are these ‘authentic’ histories manipulated in order to refute Machiavelli? Quite simply, they are pillaged for examples to illustrate that, on every occasion where a Machiavellian maxim is practised, disaster ensues; whereas whenever rulers eschew evil ways and follow the contrary path of conventional moral rectitude, then happy results inevitably accrue. Good princes have always been loved, have reigned long and peacefully, and have been ‘firm and assured in their estates’ (pp. 414, 529; 1602, pp. 240, 309). Tyrants, on the other hand, who govern by cruelty, always perish nastily, as is well depicted in stage plays where such rulers—‘which knit cordes, fasten gallowes in some prominent places, whet swords and daggers, and temper poisons’—in the end swallow down that very poison, stab their own bosoms, or hang themselves to the cheers and jeers of the onlooking world. Nor are such dramas mere poetic fictions, for ‘hystories are full of such tragicall ends of tyrants’. It is, moreover, a general rule ‘which hath seldome any exceptions’ that murderers are always murdered. Similarly, breach of faith almost invariably results in the ‘total destruction and ruin of the perfidious and disloyall person’ (pp. 348–9, 398, 453; 1602, pp. 200, 230, 264). The entire thrust of Gentillet’s argument is historical. Examples from the past, recent and remote, are amassed like knights in a cavalry charge where superior weight and numbers may overwhelm the opposition. Gentillet has two bands of warriors, highly contrasted but equally suitable for his purposes. First are all the ‘good’ emperors: Augustus Caesar, Vespasian, Trajan, Adrian, the Antonines, Alexander Severus, Constantine the Great, and Theodosius. Serving alongside these classical figures, and even more valuable, are the ‘ancient Kings of France: the great Clovis, the generous Charlemaigne, the good Saint Lewis, Philip August the conqueror, Charles le Sage, Charles the seventh, the victorious 59 ‘une simple chastellenie’ not ‘a simple towne’ as in (1602), sig. A.5. Cf. Bodin, Methodus, trans. Reynolds, 54, 56.

308

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Lewis the twelfth, father of the people, Francis the great restorer of letters, Henry the second, le Debonaire’. These are the rulers whom a prince must imitate. But Gentillet is just as well served by those evil rulers whose example princes must shun: such as Agathocles a potters sonne and usurper of the Sicilian tyrannie; or Oliver de Ferme, a barbarous and most cruell souldiour, who massacred his own parents & friends, to usurpe the tyrannie of the place of his nativitie; or that Caesar Borgia the popes bastard, full of all disloyaltie, crueltie, inconstancie, and other vices, and farre from all Royall vertues, which Machiavell proposeth for patternes to be imitated of princes. (p. 509; 1602, p. 297)

This second group is augmented elsewhere by the ‘bad’ emperors such as Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Bassianus Caracalla, Maximinus, and Heliogabalus, together with miscellaneous tyrants such as Denis of Sicily, and—head and shoulders above the rest in epic villainy—the mighty Hannibal who is very much a Livian monster of perfidy and cruelty throughout the Contre-Machiavel. Does Machiavelli dare to argue the success of cruelty on the basis of the career of the Emperor Severus? Then Gentillet will sweep him aside: first by showing that Severus was punished by God, who caused him to die of grief; and secondly by hurling his warriors into battle, for a single example avails nothing ‘against a million of others contrary: for men must make law of that which happeneth most often, and in many examples, not of that which seldome happeneth’ (p. 362; 1602, p. 208).60 Does Machiavelli cite the fates of Pertinax and Alexander to maintain that princes may be hated as much for their virtues as for their vices? Then Gentillet will show first that Machiavelli has misinterpreted his examples and secondly that, even if these be allowed, then his own forces are greater for such examples are exceptions and defailances of the rule, which notwithstandinge doe not cease to remaine alwaies true and certaine, no more nor no lesse, as philosophers say, that that rule is certaine and true, That the 60 In the augmented editions (1585 and 1609), III. 28, when refuting Machiavelli’s treatment of conspiracies in the Istorie fiorentine, Gentillet reinforces this point, stressing that a single example cited by Machiavelli does not constitute a general rule.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

309

Summer is hoter than Winter, although there be some daies in Winter more hot than there be other some daies in Summer. (pp. 418–19; 1602, p. 243)

Does Machiavelli uphold parsimony with the examples of Julius II and Ferdinand of Spain? Gentillet snaps his fingers in scorn. Neither illustration actually justifies Machiavelli’s position: and, even supposing that Machiavelli were accurate here, Gentillet can show that covetousness has always been pernicious to princes, while liberality without profusion has always been profitable. Against Machiavelli’s two ‘obscure’ instances, Gentillet can send cohorts both virtuous and vicious ‘which are farre more illustrious and notable’: Galba, Pertinax, Maurice, Phocas, Perseus of Macedon, Marcus Crassus, Vespasian, Louis XI, Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, Domitian, Commodus, Bassianus, Alexander the Great, Sulla, Augustus Caesar, Marcus Antoninus, Franc¸ois Ier, Trajan, and Charlemagne (pp. 511–27; 1602, pp. 298–308). Machiavelli is ridden down and trampled underfoot. Only very occasionally does Gentillet show mercy in battle as when, arguing against the simulation of virtues advocated in the eighteenth chapter of Il Principe, he decides that it would be an endless task to furnish all the relevant historical examples, and so limits himself merely to the most memorable for ‘in a notorious and evident thing, there is no need to insist more amply’ (p. 500; 1602, p. 291). Accordingly he lets Machiavelli, and his readers, off after only twenty-nine pages, and barely fifty assorted examples good and bad. These historical assaults are crude, repetitious, and prolix. Yet to Gentillet, and to the many readers whom he impressed, they must have seemed the most effective method of refuting an author whose appeal was largely to similar exemplars. Nor, despite his naivety, is Gentillet wholly ridiculous. Certainly he was sadly amiss in his conviction that good is always rewarded and evil always punished. Nevertheless, as he argued against Machiavelli’s penetrating gibe at model princedoms and republics, the philosophers who write about them never claim that they really exist. Their intention is ‘but to propose a patterne of imitation for monarchs, and government of commonweales: For when a man will propose a patterne to imitate, hee must forme it the most perfect, and make it the best hee can: and after, every man which

310

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

giveth himselfe to imitate it, must come as nigh it as he can, some more nigh, others lesse.’ This is reminiscent of the terms in which Baldassare Castiglione excuses his attempt to describe the perfect courtier. If, says Castiglione, he errs, it is in company with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, who conceived the perfect commonwealth, king, and orator. His ideal courtier is but a mark such as archers shoot at; so that, if nobody hits the centre, the prize goes to the man who shoots nearest (p. 529; 1602, p. 309).61 It is unlikely that Gentillet was deliberately echoing Castiglione: but it is ironic that he should employ a similar defence of the ideal, since Castiglione was another Italian—polished to the point of slipperiness— whose subtleties were, arguably, responsible for the corruption of far more courtiers than Machiavelli’s straightforward and transparent pragmatism. The organization of Gentillet’s attack on Machiavelli is very simple. He has selected fifty tenets from Il Principe and the Discorsi, and arranged them under three heads, Council, Religion, and Policy—a scheme set forth in a vignette on the title page of the first edition, showing the Crown of France supported by three columns, with an unfurled label inscribed consilium pietas politeia coronam firmant.62 The distribution of chapters is very uneven, as is the space devoted to individual maxims. The first section contains 61 Cf. Castiglione, Libro del Cortegiano, ‘Lettera dedicatoria’, 3; Lib. II, 38; Lib. IV, 42. Cf. also Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, preface, 18–20, where the orator’s essential qualities are such ‘as perhaps no man ever was’. But Quintilian says that we are, nevertheless, to aim at perfection because those who ‘strive to gain the summit’ will get higher than those who simply despair and give up. 62 On this device, see Euge´nie Droz, ‘Fauces adresses typographiques’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 23 (1961), 574–83, where the three columns are interpreted as the three divisions of the Contre-Machiavel, Counsel, Religion, and Policy. D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. xxi–xxii, offer another, rather far-fetched interpretation of the device, as representing ‘the Salic law, the law of the Estates General, and the law of the inalienability of territories belonging to the crown’, which are discussed in the Contre-Machiavel (1576), 47–8. However, in the Brieve remonstrance a la noblesse de France, 208–10, Gentillet had already written that all the principal laws of the kingdom which uphold Religion, Justice, and ‘la Police’ were being violated and trodden underfoot since the foreigners had taken over the government of France: ‘De maniere que ces trois colonnes, estans des-emparees des bonnes loix qui les maintiennent, approcheroyent de leur ruine evidente, si Dieu n’y pourvoyoit: et icelles venans a tomber, le Royeaume par mesme moyen tomberoit par terre.’ It is also possible that Gentillet had in mind a riposte to

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

311

only three chapters concerning the extent to which princes should take advice, and from whom such advice should be sought or avoided. The ten maxims of the second part comprise an attack on Machiavelli’s view of religion as a political arm, together with a defence of Christianity against paganism, and some anti-papal polemic. The final part, with thirty-seven maxims, is by far the most comprehensive and, according to Gentillet’s own summary, covers peace, war, faith, promises, oaths, clemency, cruelty, liberality, parsimony, constancy, deceit, justice, and other ‘virtues and vices, considerable in publike and politike persons’.63 This tripartite approach to French politics was conventional: but it does seem likely that Gentillet also had in mind Charles IX’s two columns (pietas and justicia) which had featured in the literature celebrating the Saint Bartholomew massacre, and to which Gentillet himself made oblique allusion when castigating the fulsome epitaphs for the late monarch. Each of Gentillet’s Machiavellian maxims is presented as a chapter heading, and is offered as a concise summary of Machiavelli’s thought rather than as a direct quotation—though there remains a strong implication that they represent Machiavelli’s own words. The maxim is next expanded by detailed reference to the relevant passages which are alleged to support the general statement. Then follows Gentillet’s own comment on the inevitable practical effects of such doctrine, together with the crucial historical refutation which is very loosely strung together. Finally, the closing sentences of each chapter generally incorporate some counter-maxim.64 The whole procedure is reminiscent of Gohory’s analysis of Machiavelli’s own method in the Discorsi where, said Nicolas Favier’s medal which celebrated the Saint Bartholomew massacre by depicting Charles IX’s column device. See above, Ch. 8. 63 Contre-Machiavel, Book III, Preface: (1576), 251; (1602), 142. 64 For example, the first maxim of all—‘le bon conseil d’un prince doit proceder de sa prudence mesme, autrement il ne peut estre bien conseille´’— ends, fifty pages later, ‘que le prince qui se gouvernera par le conseil des gens sages, entiers et idoines, prospera en tout bien: et celuy qui se gouvernera par sa teste se ruinera soy mesme’. Discussion of the maxim (II. 2) ‘Le prince doit soustenir ce qui est faux en la religion, pourveu que cela tourne en faveur d’icelle’, ends violently thus: ‘c’est chose damnable et detestable de soustenir le mensonge et faussete´ en toute chose, et singulierement en la religion: car c’est suivre la

312

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Gohory, he first expounds, ‘in few words some specific issue of Roman history according to Titus Livy’s description; then, in lively fashion, argues the matter profoundly from one side and then the other, in order at last to resolve it in some lofty political paradox’.65 Whether or not Gentillet consciously noted that observation on method, he can see no system in Machiavelli’s work other than that dictated by its primary purpose, which is to instruct rulers in the art of tyranny.66 It is this which gives Machiavelli’s writings such little homogeneity as they possess for, in Gentillet’s opinion, a good deal of Machiavelli’s ‘tyrannical science’ is derived directly from the fourteenth-century jurist Bartolus de Sassoferrato— though it is applied all topsy-turvy, ‘seeking that men should hold it for good, whereas Bartolus speaketh of it as of a damnable thing, which men ought to repulse and shun with all their power’ (pp. 251–4; 1602, pp. 142–3). In order to expose Machiavelli’s plagiaristic perversion, Gentillet summarizes Bartolus on tyranny, beginning with the oftrepeated bipartite division into evil usurpers and evil legitimate princes, before going on to the ten types of action which characterize tyranny: encompassing the death of powerful and excellent subjects so that they cannot rise against the tyrant; persecuting the ‘good and wise’ lest they should discover his vices to the people; religion du diable, qui est le pere des mensonges’. The first maxim of Book II, on religion—‘un prince sur toutes choses doit appeter d’estre estime´ devot, bien qu’il ne le soit pas’—ends up with an observation which might have come straight out of Il Principe: men are by nature more inclined to evil than to good and, if they see their Prince behaving as Machiavelli suggests, they will automatically follow him: ‘voila donc la consequence de ceste malheureuse et detestable doctrine de ce meschant atheiste, qui est d’amener tout un peuple a` mespris et moquerie de Dieu, de religion, et de toutes choses sainctes: et lascher la bride a` tous vices et desbordemens, pour parvenir a` une perfection de meschancete´’. And the maxim ‘Le prince ne se doit fier en l’amitie´ des hommes’ (III. 10) is sententiously answered with a French rendition of Euripides: ‘Prosperite´ rec¸oit amis bons et mauvais: / Adversite´ les bons, qui ne faillent jamais.’ 65 Gohory, Le premier livre des discours, sigs. a.4v–5 (address ‘au lecteur’): ‘en peu de parolles la singularite´ de l’histoire Romaine selon que Tite Live l’a descripte, puis sur icelle il debat les profondes matieres vivement d’une part et d’autre, pour enfin se resoudre en quelque haut paradoxe politique’. 66 Contre-Machiavel (1576), 3, 533, 540–1, 594; (1602), sig. A.2, 311, 316, 348.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

313

abolishing studies and good letters so that wisdom is suppressed; prohibiting honest assemblies for fear of revolt; employing spies, ‘fearing men speake evill of his evill actions’; maintaining divisions amongst his subjects, so that they cannot unite against him; keeping subjects so poor that they can barely scrape a living and can ‘machinate nothing against him’; maintaining war to ‘effeeblish’ his people, destroy studies, and make himself strong for his own purposes; trusting foreigners rather than natives; and, lastly, favouring one party rather than another amongst his divided people. Bartolus had concluded that to such tyrants no obedience is due, and they should be deposed. Now, demands Gentillet, is there a single point in all this which Machiavelli does not seek to apply to his prince? ‘All these tenne kinds of tyrannical actions, set down by Bartolus, are they not so many Maximes of Machiavell his doctrine taught to a prince?’ Who could doubt that Machiavelli’s intention was to fashion a real tyrant and that he had plundered Bartolus for this doctrine, which he has, of course, greatly augmented and enriched? Gentillet was neither the first nor the last critic to discern that much of what is most striking about Machiavelli’s thinking is merely an adaptation of earlier systematic analyses of tyranny. Bartolus’s De tyrannia was itself dependent on what Aristotle had said on this subject in the Politics: and, in fact, those who accused Machiavelli of plagiarism usually identified his victim as Aristotle. This had been the opinion of Bernardo Segni in 1549; it had been elaborated by Louis le Roy, whose commentary on the Politics was published in 1568; and the insight was repeated—or at least repeatedly experienced—by many later writers.67 Since Machiavelli employed the Speculum principum form in order to shock readers by the deliberate perversion of its hallowed catalogue of princely virtues, and since in Il Principe he did indeed suggest that tyrannical behaviour was the only answer to total political corruption, it is scarcely surprising that attentive readers, familiar with earlier authoritative statements on tyranny, should recognize a family resemblance. Yet, curiously, the most striking echo of Bartolus in Machiavelli is not mentioned by Gentillet in the 67 See Procacci (1965), esp. 45–75.

314

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

chapter where it would have been most apposite: Crueltie which tendeth to a good end, is not to be reprehended (p. 393; 1602, p. 227). Gentillet takes Machiavelli to task for approving the sanguinary deeds of Romulus, and uses this example to establish his general rule that murderers are always murdered. He does not notice—or affects not to notice—an observation made by Bartolus when reviewing Plutarch’s definitions of tyranny. The very first point related to the murder of the nobility ‘and even brothers’: deeds described by Plutarch as tyrannical. ‘This is true’, says Bartolus, ‘unless it be for a just cause, as Romulus did to Remus.’68 Was this too close, for Gentillet’s comfort, to Machiavelli, who had argued that effects justify deeds and that, when the result is good, ‘as was the case with Romulus, then it will always excuse the deed’?69 Was it not easier for Gentillet to draw a clear distinction between the great Dr Bartolus, who was one of the ‘excellentest Lawyers of his time, and for one such is yet acknowledged’, and this beastly Machiavelli, ‘a simple burne-paper-scribe of the towne-house of Florence’ (pp. 253–4; 1602, p. 143)?

gentillet ’ s reading of machiavelli and his refutation In several respects Gentillet was an archetypal critic of Machiavelli: he saw only what he was looking for; did not understand everything that he found; and exaggerated much that he did understand. He has, however, not gone unpunished. In their turn, critics of Gentillet have treated him in similar fashion, especially by concentrating attention on the many occasions when 68 Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Tractatus de tyrannia, cap. viii: ‘Primum excellentes, et etiam fratres perimere est actus Tyrannicus; verum est, nisi ex iusta causa, ut fecit Romulus de Remo.’ The first writer to elaborate on this gloss by Bartolus on Plutarch, within the context of a discussion of Livy, was Antonio Ciccarelli, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio (Rome, 1598), 23. Ciccarelli is here, as elsewhere, certainly thinking of Machiavelli—but he does not name him. On Bartolus, see Ephraim Emerton, Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (Cambridge, Mass., 1925), which includes a translation of the De Tyrannia. On Ciccarelli, see below, Ch. 13. 69 Machiavelli, Discorsi, I. 19.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

315

he gets Machiavelli wrong. Certainly, any attempt to evaluate the Contre-Machiavel must recognize its many weaknesses: especially the muddle-headedness which not only leads Gentillet to refute things which Machiavelli never said, but even inadvertently to agree with things that he did say.70 Such sillinesses are so patent that they are scarcely worth dwelling upon and it is, I think, more worthwhile to consider a quite different aspect of Gentillet’s achievement. To what extent had he read his chosen texts; and how far did he get them right? Gentillet was a zealous reader. Yet, in one sense, he did not read Machiavelli at all; for he is the first in a long line of critics to base his study on translations from the Italian. This procedure has certain drawbacks. Quite apart from any subtle changes of tone and emphasis, translators’ mistakes or idiosyncracies go unrecognized by the critic; and Gentillet, like many others, is thereby betrayed into errors of judgement. This is not to argue that, had he read Il Principe and the Discorsi in Italian, he would have interpreted Machiavelli in a fundamentally different fashion. But to be dependent on translators is to walk on crutches which may sometimes, of their own volition, march in directions not intended by the original author; and there can be no doubt that Gentillet’s crutches frequently carried him up wrong alleys. Some of his more notorious misinterpretations were, in fact, not his own fault. Gentillet’s handling of his Machiavellian texts may be studied with precision in the expansions following each of the maxims which constitute his chapter headings. Altogether, these expansions comprise approximately 10,500 words in which Gentillet seeks to explain, in what he deems to be Machiavelli’s own terms, both the implications of each maxim and the evidence upon which it is based. He also provides marginal references to the relevant chapters in Il Principe and the Discorsi so that, although these are sometimes incorrectly given or are omitted, it is possible in almost every case to identify the passages cited or paraphrased. Gentillet used either an early edition of 70 The prime example of Gentillet’s occasional lapse into agreeing with Machiavelli while trying to refute him is in his discussion of the maxim ‘A Prince which feareth his subjects, ought to build fortresses in his countrey, to hold them in obedience’ (III. 33).

316

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

D’Auvergne’s Prince together with the 1571 Le Mangnier printing of Gohory’s Discours; or, as seems more likely, he used one of the pirated editions by Marnef and Cavellat (1571 or 1572) which combined the two translations in a single volume. The two sources are treated rather differently by Gentillet, who usually followed D’Auvergne’s words and phrases quite closely, but adapted Gohory with greater freedom and with more frequent resort to paraphrase—although with both authors Gentillet resorts to much cobbling together of passages which were not originally contiguous.71 Nevertheless, as far as he was concerned, these translations constituted the authentic voice of Niccolo` Machiavelli; and the fact that they were not resulted in many misconceptions. Some of these are merely matters of detail. Others have serious interpretative consequences. The polemical purpose of Gentillet’s enterprise determined that he should seek evidence for his own beliefs rather than seek to elucidate Machiavelli’s texts, and this resulted in two principal modes of misinterpretation: an excessively selective treatment of Machiavelli’s words, manifested in the maxims and their expositions; or simple incomprehension, revealed in the refutations. Yet there is, I think, only one occasion when Gentillet himself falsifies a crucial Machiavellian word as it had filtered down to him through the translators (p. 121; 1602, p. 63).72 The remainder of his verbal perversions are based upon the errors or stylistic vagaries of his French sources and, since these generate some of the misinterpretations for which Gentillet has been castigated, they are worth consideration. This is partly to ensure that the Contre-Machiavel is not blamed for anything other than its own shortcomings; and

71 A good example of such cobbling together of widely separated phrases and even sentences may be seen in Gentillet’s expansion of the maxim ‘L’homme est heureux tant que fortune s’accorde a` la complexion et humeur d’iceluy’ (ContreMachiavel, II. 10)—based upon D’Auvergne’s translation of Il Principe, 25. 72 This is in Maxim II. 1: ‘Le prince ne se doit fier aux estrangers.’ Machiavelli’s original maxim (Discorsi, II. 31) is ‘Quanto sia pericoloso credere agli sbanditi’—that is, the danger of trusting exiles or those who have been banished. Gohory renders the word correctly as ‘bannis’. But Gentillet ignores this and employs instead the word ‘estrangers’ (that is ‘foreigners’), which enables him to introduce a sustained diatribe against the Italians in France.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

317

partly to demonstrate the ways in which ideas may be distorted by faulty translation and then perpetuated by unsuspecting critics. Minor but revealing idiosyncracies deriving from D’Auvergne occur, for example, in Contre-Machiavel, III. 7, where the maxim A Prince ought to propounde unto himself, to imitate Cesar Borgia, is amplified on the basis of the seventh chapter of Il Principe. Machiavelli tells how Cesare’s cruel agent, Ramiro d’Orco, having served his purpose in quelling the Romagna, is brutally sacrificed by his employer as a sop to the populace. One morning, in Cesena, Cesare caused Ramiro to be ‘mettere in duoi pezzi’ (literally, ‘laid out in two pieces’) in the piazza, with a piece of wood and a bloody knife at the side. This phrase was rendered precisely by Cappel in his version of the text (‘il feir trencher en deux messir Remi d’Orque’) , whereas D’Auvergne writes that Ramiro’s head was cut off (‘il luy feit un beau matin couper la teste’): and it is the latter version which Gentillet follows (‘un beau matin il vous fit trancher la teste publiquement a Messir Remiro’). Later, at the end of the same exposition, Gentillet—writing of the collapse of Cesare’s plans on the death of his father, and the election of Pope Julius II—makes the remarkable observation that, seeing fortune turn her back on him, Cesare fell ill and died. Of course, he did nothing of the sort. The error is further embroidered when Cesare is made to say, on his deathbed, that he had thought of every inconvenience which could happen to him except death, but that he had never thought that he would have to die so soon : ‘et estant au lict de mort, il dit qu’il avoit pense´ et pourveu a` tous inconveniens qui luy pouvoyent advenir fors qu’a` la mort: mais qu’il n’eust jamais pense´ devoir si tost mourir’. All of this is wrong. What Il Principe says is that, on the day Julius II was elected, Cesare had told Machiavelli that he had thought of everything which might happen on the death of his father [Pope Alexander VI]: except that he had never thought that, when that did occur, he would himself be at death’s door. The culprit is D’Auvergne, who translates the crucial omission in Cesare’s planning, ‘excepte´ qu’il n’avoit jamais estime´, voire sur le poinct de la mort, devoit si tost mourir’. This is ambiguous save only in the respect that it leaves no doubt concerning Gentillet’s dependence. Two further, more serious, instances must suffice with regard to Gentillet’s unfortunate use of D’Auvergne. Machiavelli, in the

318

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

nineteenth chapter of Il Principe, commenting on the failure of the emperor Pertinax despite his benevolent rule, had noted that hatred may be acquired as much by good deeds as by bad. This, as translated by D’Auvergne—‘la malveillance s’acquiert aussi bien entre les hommes par la vertu que le vice’—elevates a precise observation on human behaviour into a moral generalization; and it is in this form that it finds its way into the Contre-Machiavel as the sixteenth maxim of Book III: Un prince peut aussi bien estre hay pour sa vertu que pour son vice, which is expounded by Gentillet in D’Auvergne’s words, and then attacked on the grounds that Machiavelli makes no distinction between virtue and vice. It is certainly true that the simulation of virtue together with an ability to act, when necessary, contrary to all accepted virtues, is a matter at the very heart of the upside-down morality of Il Principe. In one of the eight maxims drawn by Gentillet from the eighteenth chapter of that text, the dread doctrine is set out: Le prince doit avoir l’esprit dextrement habitue´ a` estre cruel, inhumain et desloyal, pour se savoir monstrer tel quand il est de besoin (III. 23). In his exposition, Gentillet explains that Machiavelli had recommended not merely the appearance but even the reality of various virtues, provided that the prince had a spirit (or mind) sufficiently flexible and well-practised so that he knew, if need be, how to act completely contrary (‘il faut que le prince ait son esprit si doctile et dextrement habitue´, qu’il sache faire tout le contraire au besoin’). There follows a brief but vigorous rejection of the acquisition of such an ‘habitude’ through frequent exercise. This is tangential to Machiavelli’s argument, but arises from D’Auvergne’s translation of Machiavelli’s ‘stare edificato con l’animo’ (‘to be so framed in mind’) as ‘ton esprit soit si ductible et dextrement habitue´’. Though not especially inaccurate, this rendering has resonances of habit, use, and practice which are lacking in the original but readily impressed themselves on Gentillet’s imagination, already teeming with the dark, plotting royal schemers who had perpetrated the massacres of 1572. Gentillet’s use of Gohory’s Discours, though even freer than his handling of D’Auvergne, may be established with equal certainty, and its effects are interpretatively no less marked, ranging from purely figurative embroidery of Machiavelli’s style to serious

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

319

distortions of his thought. Only occasionally does Gentillet indulge in lengthy verbatim transcription from Gohory; but one example, in the penultimate chapter of the Contre-Machiavel, based upon Machiavelli’s Discorsi, I. 55, will suffice to show Gentillet’s debt. I have italicized the words taken directly from Gohory. Les ligues et cantons d’Allemagne (dit Machiavel) vivent fort paisiblement et a` leur ayse, dautant qu’ils gardent esgalite´ entre eux, et ne souffrent qu’il y ait des gentilshommes en leur pays. Et ce peu qu’il y en a, ils les hayssent tellement, que quand quelques uns tombent d’aventure en leurs mains, ils les mettent a` mort, sans en prendre nul a` mercy: disans que ce sont eux qui gastent tout, et qui tiennent escolle de meschancete´. J’appelle (dit il) gentilshommes ceux qui vivent de leur revenu, sans s’adonner a` aucun mestier. Ce sont gens fort dangereux en une contree, et sur tout les hauts justiciers, qui tiennent chasteaux et forteresses, et qui ont nombre de vassaux et sujets qui leur doyvent foy et hommage. Le royeaume de Naples, la terre de Rome, la Romagne, la Lombardie, sont pleines de telle maniere de gens, et sont cause qu’on n’y a jamais peu dresser estat politique car ils sont ennemis formels de l’estat civil des republiques.

The dependence is highlighted by the perpetuation of one of the translator’s additions to the original Italian text. According to Machiavelli, the virtuous Germans kill any gentlemen who fall into their hands, ‘as the sources of corruption and the reason for every evil example’ (‘come principii di corruttele e cagione d’ogni scandolo’). In Gohory, the Germans kill the gentlemen, ‘saying that it is they who spoil everything, and hold the school of wickedness’ (‘disans que sont eux qui gastent tout et tiennent l’escole de meschancete´’); and this little non-Machiavellian flourish, along with all the rest, finds its way into Gentillet’s exposition of Machiavelli’s alleged words. A similar instance occurs when Gentillet is attacking Machiavelli’s attitude towards pagan religions. Machiavelli had discussed the way in which these ancient faiths, based upon oracles and auguries, had kept people devout until they realized that rites had been manipulated according to the wishes of the potentates. Men then lost faith and were inclined to disturb every good institution (‘atti a perturbare ogni ordine buono’). Gohory heavily adorns this passage. In his version, once the deception has been discovered, not only are the oracles abandoned, but people come to

320

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

believe neither in God nor the Devil; they make no further conscience of anything; and are ready to break, burst, and spoil everything, like unchained slaves: Si tost qu’il vint a` faillir et que la tromperie et faucete´ fut descouverte, et qu’on conneut qu’ils respondaient a` l’appetit des grans seigneurs et de quiconque fournissoit a` l’apoinctement, lors on les laissa la` et vint on a` ne croire ne Dieu ne diable, en tel estat que les gens ne faisoient plus conscience de rien, estoient prests a` tout rompre, briser, gaster, comme serfz dechenez.

None of this is in Machiavelli: but it all finds its way into Gentillet, who deduces, from this translation, the fifth maxim of Book II, Quand on delaissa la religion payenne, le monde devint tout corrompu, et vint a` ne croire plus ny Dieu ny diable; and he elaborates this in words which obviously derive from Gohory—‘Et devindrent les hommes meschans a` outrance, prests et voulontaires a` tout rompre, briser et gaster, comme esclaves deschainez, sans plus faire conscience de rien.’ Gentillet was incensed not only by Machiavelli’s attitude towards Christianity but also by his seeming lack of respect for the Hebrew leader, Moses. The notion that Moses’s success derived from his military virtu` is specifically rejected in the ContreMachiavel, II. 7, where D’Auvergne’s faulty translation of the sixth chapter of Il Principe was the real source of irritation. But in the very next maxim, Gohory is the agent provocateur when Gentillet takes issue with Machiavelli’s alleged misrepresentation of Moses as a ‘brigand et usurpateur’ of other people’s lands without title or right: Moyse usurpa la Judee, comme les Goths usurperent partie de l’Empire romain. The coloured word ‘usurp’ is, however, not in the Italian text of the Discorsi, II. 8, upon which the statement is based. Machiavelli was here discussing people who are driven by necessity from their own land; invade other people’s territories; kill the inhabitants; take possession of their goods (‘possegono i loro beni’); and change the name of the country. This is what Moses did. So, too, did those people who took over the Roman Empire— place names being changed in Italy by the new occupiers (‘nuovi occupatori’). It is Gohory who translates possegono by usurpent, and occupatori by usurpateurs. Gentillet has been reprimanded for this:

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

321

but he is merely leaning upon his crutches.73 It must, however, be conceded that Machiavelli’s sense is not badly rendered by the word usurp, and that Gentillet would certainly have been as outraged by Machiavelli’s original language at this point as by the more explicitly emotive translation of Gohory. Gohory’s Machiavelli here incurred Gentillet’s wrath by the use of a highly charged word. In the following instance it is an image peculiar to Gohory which stirred Gentillet’s imagination and elicited a spirited refutation. Contre-Machiavel, III. 29, concerns the man who, having always enjoyed a good reputation, wishes to become wicked to gain his purpose. He must, in such circumstances, colour the change in his behaviour with some apparent reason (‘doit coulorer son changement de quelque raison apparente’). This derives from the Discorsi, I. 41, where Machiavelli censures Appius Claudius for changing too rapidly from extreme virtue to extreme vice. Gohory, as is his wont in the first book of his Discours, renders the whole chapter very freely; and, having listed the various polarities of Appius’ behaviour, adds that the Roman was seen to change his garment so easily and pass from black to white (‘voire de tourner si legerement sa robe et passer du noir au blanc’). This image is seized upon by Gentillet in his exposition of the maxim, though he reverses the colours, ‘tournant sa robe comme de blanc en noir’; and he elaborates, in his refutation, this ‘comparison made by Machiavelli between the changing of manners and the changing of colours’. It is not Gentillet’s fault that Machiavelli never made this comparison. Nor did Machiavelli use the highly coloured word ‘seditions’ to qualify the opposition between the Roman plebs and the Senate, which, he claimed in the Discorsi, I. 4, made that republic free and powerful. He took issue with those who maintained that Rome was so disorderly that, had not good fortune and military virtu` compensated for such defects, its condition would have been inferior to that of other republics. On the contrary, argued Machiavelli, those who blame the tumults between the nobles and the plebs are blaming the primary cause of Rome’s retention of liberty. Gentillet joins battle with this chapter in Contre-Machiavel, III. 31, where he 73 Pamela Stewart, Innocent Gentillet, 55, 70.

322

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

sets forth, as a Machiavellian maxim, that Seditions et dissentions civiles sont utiles, et ne sont a` blasmer. Modern criticism has remarked the way in which the introduction of the word seditions distorts Machiavelli’s meaning and leads Gentillet into a refutation of something which Machiavelli neither said nor meant. As Pamela Stewart puts it, the expression adopted by Gentillet is ‘troppo generica e troppo forte’.74 Gentillet, both in his maxim and in its exposition, completely alters Machiavelli’s position. He asserts that Machiavelli had maintained that seditions and dissensions are ‘bonnes et utiles’, and had been the cause of Rome’s greatness; and he completely ignores the point that the beneficial tensions noted by Machiavelli are specifically those between the nobles and the plebs. The malformation of the idea is patent. But it does not arise from Gentillet’s bad faith. The source is Gohory’s Discours, where the marginal annotation accompanying the first sentence of the relevant chapter is striking and unequivocal: Seditions cause de bien a` Rome. We have previously encountered Gohory’s mistranslation of another sentence from the same chapter, concerning the primacy of good military order: a mistake which Gentillet naturally follows. But Gohory continues that those who condemn the seditions of Rome blame the very thing which had been the cause of her liberty: ‘Je dy que ceux qui blasment si fort les seditions de Rome, reprennent a` mon avis ce qui a este´ cause de sa liberte´.’ Machiavelli had, in fact, written much more specifically: ‘Io dico che coloro che dannono i tumulti intra i Nobili e la Plebe, mi pare che biassimino quelle cose che furono prima cause del tenere libera Roma.’ Certainly, Gohory does subsequently refer to the ‘Seigneurs’ and to the ‘Commun’: but he has already provided sufficient misinformation to engage the wrathful mind of the Huguenot determined to uncover the rotten roots of sedition and dissension in contemporary France.

the gentillet effect This expose´ of French degradation was intended by Gentillet to be his principal achievement but, on the whole, it has met with little 74 Pamela Stewart, Innocent Gentillet, 58.

G E N T IL L E T A N D M A C H I A V E L L I

323

critical sympathy. Historians no more regard Machiavelli as the determining factor in the massacre of Huguenots, or as the source of corruption in late-Valois France, than they consider Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel to comprise an accurate summary of Machiavelli’s political thought. Indeed, they do not even consider Gentillet to have been instrumental in encouraging that colloquial use of Machiavelli’s name as a term of opprobrium which became increasingly widespread in the closing decades of the sixteenth century. However, the argument advanced as proof of Gentillet’s insignificance is curious. First, it is asserted that accusations of atheism and political immorality were already being levelled at Machiavelli well before the appearance of the Contre-Machiavel; second, that Machiavelli’s books, either in the original Italian or in translations, were readily available to readers without Gentillet’s interpretative mediation; and thus, it is argued, the Contre-Machiavel was irrelevant. Nevertheless, while the premisses may be true, the conclusion is a non sequitur. Both the scale of vulgar, uninformed antipathy towards Machiavelli, and the nature of the language in which it was expressed, changed markedly after the appearance of Gentillet’s book and it still has to be determined whether or not this is mere coincidence—a problem which I shall examine in the next chapter. But, in any case, it is a form of intellectual suicide for scholars to suggest that the availability of a literary source obviates all desire for exegesis. To argue Gentillet’s irrelevance on such a basis is futile. Libraries are full of books explicating the works of authors perfectly able to explain themselves. Generations of academics have built careers on the foundation of single volumes containing, for example, the works of Shakespeare, Montaigne, or Machiavelli himself. Books engender books and, just as ingenious readers feel impelled to blazon forth their personal insights, so other readers enjoy the secondary literature, either to confirm their own prejudices, to enjoy the stimulus of disagreement, or perhaps to have their perceptions sharpened or enlarged. Often, too, it seems easier to have information predigested than to tease out meanings for oneself. With regard to Machiavelli, Gentillet’s work would have seemed a convenient, systematic treatment of difficult and unsystematic material. Everything appeared to be there—key notions,

324

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

selected, categorized, summarized, and then refuted. Gentillet delivered to his readers a problematic author rendered down to a series of striking, easily quoted aphorisms; and between 1576 and 1655, there were twenty-four editions of the Contre-Machiavel in French, Latin, German, Dutch, and English. Whatever inferences we may draw from this statistic—contemporary indifference is not one of them. Moreover, the popularity of the Contre-Machiavel resulted in a remarkable paradox which has not, I believe, ever been commented upon.75 As we have seen, Gentillet’s chosen method of debate meant that he was himself publishing large chunks of Machiavelli in French and—making all due allowance for sixteenth-century taste—it is not unlikely that any reader, comparing their vigorous naughtiness with the laborious moralizing of the historical refutations, would be tempted to delve deeper into the writings of the exciting ‘puant athe´iste’. And that this is not merely an unhistorical gloss of my own is evident if we glance at the publishing history of these works. The Contre-Machiavel first appeared in 1576 and was followed by seven further editions or variant issues between 1577 and 1584. This may seem impressive until we note that, in the same period, there were seven issues of Le Prince, eight of the Discours, and two of the Histoire florentine. In 1585 there was a single issue of an enlarged edition of the Contre-Machiavel: but in 1586 there were four issues of both Le Prince and the Discours, with a considerable further Machiavellian flurry of at least thirteen issues (in various languages) around the turn of the century. The Contre-Machiavel appeared again in a single issue in 1609: but within six years there were another seventeen versions of the French translations of Machiavelli.76 It is, of course, impossible to draw infallible conclusions from such bare publishing statistics: but it does seem that, whatever else Gentillet achieved, he unwittingly encouraged the publication and distribution of his hated enemy’s books. 75 Although I have now alluded to it in my article, ‘ ‘‘Le plus gentil esprit qui soit apparu au monde depuis les derniers sie`cles’’: The Popularity of Machiavelli in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Pauline Smith and Trevor Peach (eds.), Renaissance Reflections: Essays in Memory of C. A. Mayer (Paris, 2002), 195–212. 76 D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. xvii–l; Bertelli and Innocenti, 59–80.

10 In the Wake of Gentillet: The Evolution of the ‘Machiavel’ Stereotype in France and England a s wift critical response The first edition of Gentillet’s masterpiece had been published anonymously in Geneva; and the earliest response came, appropriately, from the Italian community there. Not only had their Florentine compatriot Machiavelli been attacked (which probably did not bother them unduly) but their whole nation had been scorned and reviled. Gentillet had generously acknowledged the possibility that there were, among the Italians, some virtuous people: ‘for there is not so bad a ground, which amongst diverse and sundrie evill plants, bringeth not out some good’. Indeed, he continued, a virtuous Italian was to be especially praised ‘because they are rare, and for that it is no triviall and common thing in Italie to be a vertuous and good man’. None of this was calculated to warm the hearts of the Genevan Italians, who complained so bitterly and vociferously that Gentillet decided to publish (again anonymously) a Declaration, ostensibly ‘pour satisfaire aux plaintifs d’aucuns Italiens’.1 He claimed that it had never been his intention to attack those amongst the Italians 1 Declaration de l’Auteur des Discours contre Machiavel, pour satisfaire aux plaintifs d’aucuns Italiens (n.p., n.d.). This was published separately, shortly after the appearance of the first edition of the Discours, and was then included at the end of several subsequent editions. On this see Droz, ‘Fauces adresses typographiques’. My discussion and quotations are based on the ‘Troisiesme edition’ (1579), 631–6.

326

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

who were decent fellows (gens de bien), but simply to refute the detestable, poisonous, and corrupting doctrines of Machiavelli. However, because those ideas had come from Italy and were ‘notoriously practised in our France by the Italians who are in authority there’, he had been obliged to write about certain vices which had for a long time been rife in Italy. Nevertheless, there were several reasons why decent Italians should not take offence. After all, he had declared in his Preface that such ‘gens de bien’ did exist, both in and out of Italy, and that they themselves detested Machiavelli. Secondly, he observed with admirable tact, he had not undertaken to write generally about the vices of the Italian nation, but only about some of them. Thirdly, and no less tactfully, he pointed out that he had said nothing about Italian vices beyond those directly relevant to his discussion of Machiavelli, and had never digressed to other depravities. Nor had he ever used a ‘cynical or biting’ manner but rather had written as ‘softly and as modestly as the subject permitted’—despite the extreme difficulty of writing about ‘villainous and filthy’ matters in gentle terms, and that language must inevitably be appropriate to its subject matter. Finally, everyone must realize that ‘all nations have their vices, some more, some less’, and they should not be hidden away but rather exposed and detested so that they may not take root. ‘Wherefore, for all these reasons’, Gentillet proclaims triumphantly, ‘decent Italians should not take it amiss that I have touched upon some of the vices of their nation.’ One might well feel that Gentillet’s studied tactlessness could go no further: but, once launched, he knew not when to stop. There were, he supposed, some who took it ill that he had said, in his Discours, that ‘gens de bien’ were rare in Italy; yet he was sure that if you actually asked them whether this assertion were true, they would agree. Moreover, their own historians bore this out— ‘Sabellicus, Volterannus, Jovianus Pontanus, Paul Jove’, and even Machiavelli himself—in comparison with whom his own words were mild indeed. Finally, in a grand peroration, Gentillet drew a parallel between Greece and Italy. In the former, not only had many valiant captains flourished in ancient times but, later, ‘the pure doctrine of the Gospel had first been preached and planted by the Apostles’. None the less, the Greeks had become polluted by all

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

327

sorts of vices and errors and, having incurred God’s wrath, had fallen prey to the Turks and were now in the most miserable, servile, and detestable condition. Similarly, Italy had once been the most flourishing empire in the world and, thereafter, the true fountain and support of Christianity. But what had happened to all those excellent graces with which God had adorned that nation? Everything had changed into quite contrary vices, and they have been punished accordingly. All that Gentillet was doing, as a loyal Frenchman, was to demonstrate to his own people the source of their current evils. It is not surprising that this maladroit attempt to placate the Italians in Geneva failed miserably, but far worse for Gentillet was the fact that, despite the cloak of anonymity, his identity had somehow leaked out, with the result that an irate Italian reader named Francesco Lamberto beat him up in the street and thus earned a tiny footnote in history.2 Unfortunately, little else about the impact of the Contre-Machiavel is as uncomplicated as Lamberto’s forthright critical appraisal; and the subject is so vaporous that it can only be approached via a methodological digression.

hostile references to machiavelli b e f o r e ge n t i l l e t During the 1950s, the military historian Alfred Burne wrote a series of books on medieval and early modern battles, in which he sought to resolve the problems arising from inadequate contemporary sources by taking into account the factors which together constituted ‘Inherent Military Probability’. Such ‘probability’ was based upon a professional knowledge of military practice applied to matters such as terrain and other physical determinants which could be established with reasonable confidence.3 Although open to criticism, this approach has yielded 2 On this episode, see Droz, ‘Fauces adresses’; C. Edward Rathe´, ‘Innocent Gentillet and the First Anti-Machiavel’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 27 (1965), 186–225; D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. liv–lviii. 3 Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred H. Burne, The Battlefields of England (1950); More Battlefields of England (1952); The Crecy War (1955); The Agincourt War

328

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

valuable insights and might usefully be adapted by historians of ideas: for there are issues where documentary evidence is equivocal but where intellectual and political contexts clearly indicate that some interpretations are more likely than others.4 A problem of this kind is posed by a feature of Machiavelli’s reception which has long attracted attention. During the closing decades of the sixteenth century, Machiavelli’s name, and such derivative forms as Machiavellism, Machiavellist, Machiavellian, Machiavellique, and a very Machiavel, became synonymous with various evils and were increasingly used as terms of abuse, especially in France and England. Yet their rapid dissemination and multiplication are difficult to explain, and their significance even more so. For nearly a hundred years after Robert von Mohl published his massive history of political thought (1855–8), there was general acceptance of his dictum that Gentillet’s ContreMachiavel constituted the ‘arsenal’ from which Machiavelli’s enemies took their weapons.5 Scholars were later also influenced (though less convinced) by Edward Meyer’s thesis that practically all the popular denigration of Machiavelli in England, together with the ubiquity of the Machiavel figure in Elizabethan literature, derived from the same source.6 However, from the middle of the twentieth century, there developed a contra-Contre-Machiavel movement seeking to establish that, since evidence for hostility towards Machiavelli may be found long prior to the book’s appearance, Gentillet’s work cannot be regarded as the principal source (1956). Although Burne never provided a full theoretical discussion of his concept of Inherent Military Probability, all the constituent elements were set out in his The Art of War on Land (1944). 4 The most outspoken recent attack on Burne’s approach to military history is Michael K. Jones, ‘The Battle of Verneuil (17 August 1424): Towards a History of Courage’, War in History, 9 (2002), 375–411. Many of Jones’s criticisms are well founded, but his enthusiasm for Verbruggen’s notion, that we can discover the attitudes of medieval soldiers during combat, is excessive and the results are certainly no less conjectural than Burne’s own. 5 Robert von Mohl, Die Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften (Erlangen, 1855–8), iii. 549. A similar view concerning Gentillet’s influence in the 16th c. was advanced by Mohl’s contemporary Paul Alexandre Rene´ Janet, Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique dans l’antiquite´ et les temps modernes (Paris, 1858). 6 Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

329

for vulgar anti-Machiavellian sentiments. This is patently a non sequitur: but such pre-Gentillet antagonism is still worth examining. Despite Machiavelli’s popularity—indeed, partly because of it—there were inevitably some early readers who found his challenging opinions and trenchant language deeply disturbing. The observations not only of clerics such as Pole, Osorio, Catharino, and Giovio, but also of men such as Giunta, Busini, and Ascham, make this clear. However, as far as we know, it was not until 1565 that a derivative of his name was used to characterize morally dubious behaviour when, in the course of the ping-pong battle of words which began with Bishop John Jewel’s so-called ‘Challenge Sermon’, it was Thomas Harding’s turn to publish a Confutation of Jewel’s Apologia ecclesiae anglicanae.7 Attacking Jewel and the English Church for their encouragement of ‘carnal libertie and licentious lyving’, Harding explains that it is precisely this which has attracted evil men to the Reformation: What makes so many malepart prentises, pleasant courtiers, discoursing parlament machiavellists, and all other what so ever fleshwormes, Marchantes, idle artificers, to inbrace your gospell, rather than the graver and devouter sort of men which be weaned from the pleasure of this life: but that it was plausible to the world and pleasant to the flesh, from which that kind of man is most hardly drawen?8

Evidently, in this context, Harding intended the word ‘machiavellists’ to convey something unpleasant; and it is just possible that its association with ‘discoursing’ and ‘parlament’ had some political resonance.9 In 1550, Richard Moryson, a writer sympathetic to Machiavelli, had already used the word ‘Machiavellist’, to indicate 7 There were, in fact, a series of parallel controversies, comprising Answers, Replies, Rejoinders, and Defences, which ran the dreary course common to religious debate, enlivened solely by refreshing bursts of scurrility. For a detailed account of the ‘Great Controversy’ sparked off by Jewel, see A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose 1559–1582 (London and Glasgow, 1950), 59–118. For a convenient summary of the Jewel–Harding material, see Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (1978), 1–6. 8 Thomas Harding, A Confutation of a Booke intituled an Apologie of the Church of England (Antwerp, 1565), fo. 134v. 9 This was suggested by Gasquet (1974), 128–9, though I rather doubt it.

330

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

political realism, but with no implication of moral impropriety.10 It seems unlikely that Harding’s reference, fifteen years later, could have been the first time that Machiavelli’s name had been employed in a hostile fashion, and Harding must have expected his readers to derive some meaning from his allusion: but whether or not he had anything specific in mind cannot now be determined. When Jewel responded once again, with his Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande, he cited this passage from Harding—in the prolix reiteration of an adversary’s words customary in this kind of controversy—and fell furiously upon the ‘flesh-worms’. But he made no comment on the ‘Machiavellists’.11 As a term of abuse the word seemingly conveyed nothing to him and, elsewhere in the Defence, he happily refers to Machiavelli as a helpful antipapal historian in a manner reminiscent of Charles du Moulin, Mathias Flacius Illyricus, and John Bale.12 At one point he even uses Machiavelli as a stick with which to beat Reginald Pole. Replying to allegations that Protestants teach people to rebel against their princes, Jewel declares that, on the contrary, this is something encouraged by the Papacy and, amongst several examples, he refers to Reginald Pole’s ‘imagined oration to Charles the emperor, calling back his majesty from the Turk, to leave all other affairs, and to bend his banners against England’. He then continues: ‘Nicolas Machiavel, in his Italian history saith, that the bishops of Rome themselves, through their ambition and cruelty, have raised such deadly discord and bloody wars between christian princes, as few the like have been seen in Christendom these many years.’13 10 See above, Ch. 3. 11 Jewel, Defence of the Apology, in Works, ed. John Ayre (Parker Society, 1845– 50), iii. 603–6. 12 See above, Ch. 1. 13 Jewel, Works, iii. 171. The Pole allusion is to the Oratio ad Caesarem towards the end of Book III of the Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione. The Machiavelli allusion is to the Istorie fiorentine, I. ix, which, however, refers specifically to the ruinous wars in Italy. Later in the Defence (Works, iv. 679), Jewel again refers to Machiavelli. Considering the dangers posed by papal legates at the courts of princes, Jewel writes, ‘as Machiavel saith: there hath been few wars or commotions inflamed these many late years but by the mean and whispering of these legates’. I do not know any passage where Machiavelli specifically refers to the papal legates.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

331

Apart from the fact that Harding was himself a religious turncoat and had been described by Lady Jane Grey as a ‘deformed imp of the devil’ and a ‘stinking and filthy kennel of Satan’,14 what makes his reference to ‘Machiavellists’ especially curious is its isolation from the only other contemporary sources showing a similar kind of disapproval. It has often been remarked that, in Scotland during the late 1560s and beyond, there were several references to Machiavelli using his name to indicate political cunning and unscrupulousness. But why this should have happened is yet another mystery. Mario Praz suggested that ‘given the close relations between Scotland and France, we would find it natural that the Machiavelli legend, hatched in France under the rule of Catherine de’Medici, should have first found its way to Scotland and the Scottish Reformers’. However—leaving aside the question-begging ‘Machiavelli legend’—this still does not explain why such references occur in Scottish Catholic (as well as Protestant) writing; nor why they should antedate anything of the same kind surviving in French sources.15 We know that, in 1553, Gaspard d’Auvergne’s translation of Il Principe had been offered to James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran: but Arran proved a politician of such refulgent fatuity that even his many enemies did not think to associate him with Machiavellian doctrines. That distinction was first accorded in Scotland to William Maitland of Lethington, whose devotion to his native land, unerring insight into the self-righteousness of both Catholics and Protestants, and ceaseless but unavailing attempts to preserve Mary Queen of Scots from the consequences of her own stupidity, 14 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. S. R. Cattley and G. Townsend (1837– 41), vi. 418. 15 Mario Praz, ‘The Politic Brain: Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, originally a lecture to the British Academy (1928), revised and republished in The Flaming Heart (New York, 1958). The observation cited is at p. 94. See also Satirical Poems of the Time of the Reformation, ed. J. Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, 1891–3), nos. IX, XXII, XXX, XLV; The Works of William Fowler, ed. H. W. Meikle, J. Craigie, and J. Purves (The Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1914–40), iii, pp. xciii–c. The indefatigable Horrocks, p. 121 ff. noted the majority of the hostile Scottish references to Machiavelli. Bawcutt, ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’, 56–7, adds another pamphlet, Ane Discourse Touching the Estait Present in October Anno Domini 1571 (Saint Andrews, 1572), which criticizes Maitland as one who is ‘scholit’ in his ‘Maister Macheauillis principallis’.

332

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

inevitably earned him the hatred of religious zealots. It is nevertheless noteworthy that denunciations of Maitland as a ‘faulse Machyvilian’ who tempted the Queen with ‘poisoned words’, and as ‘a scurvie Schollar of Machiavellus lair inventing wiles anointed kings to thrall’, should occur not in the diatribes of the erudite but in the scrofulous pages of balladers. Where, one wonders, did such people pick up the allusion? By contrast, when George Buchanan wrote a short treatise against Maitland in 1570 he did not use the contemptuous term. His work is entitled Chamaeleon, identifying that creature’s ability to assume a variety of colours with the constantly changing political hues adopted by Maitland, who ‘coverit himself with the Cloik of Religioun sa lang as it could serve’.16 This would have been a perfect opportunity to label the villain as a Machiavellian, but Buchanan—who in the following year was to berate ‘Machiavill Mockers of all Religioun and Vertew’17—did not take it. Yet, ironically, Maitland may well have had some acquaintance with Machiavelli’s work. In a letter to the Earl of Sussex in 1570, defending himself against the charge of gross inconsistency, he argues the necessity of adapting oneself to changing circumstances, and refers to ‘a good author, one who in his time was no prentice in the politic science, being from his youth brought up in that trade’.18 It is difficult to imagine who, apart from Machiavelli, that ‘good author’ could have been. There were others, though, for whom Machiavelli was very far from seeming a ‘good author’. One of the most peculiar Scottish political effusions of this period is a manuscript which circulated after the murder of the Regent, James Stuart, Earl of Moray in January 1570. Claiming to be the report of a conversation between 16 Chamaeleon, printed at the end of Buchanan, Opera (Edinburgh, 1715), i, separate pagination, p. 14. 17 Ane Admonition direct to the trew Lordis, Mantenaris of the Kingis Graces Authoritie (which is printed immediately before the Chamaeleon in the Opera, i, separately paginated, p. 2). This single adjectival use is, I think, the only occurrence of Machiavelli’s name in the entire length and breadth of Buchanan’s vast corpus. 18 PRO, State Papers Scottish, XIX, No. 51, fo. 8. Cited by Horrocks, 125–6. The need to ‘varie with tyme’ had been discussed on the basis of Machiavelli’s observations by William Thomas.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

333

the Regent himself, John Knox, and five other Protestant extremists, it was, in fact, a wholly fictitious concoction by Lethington’s younger brother, Thomas. It includes a statement that ‘Matcheivell is ane ewill buike, and I wold it had bene brunt’, and denounces ‘Matchiavellistis and thir bustard lordis’, and the ‘jolie wittis and polytick braines’ who are ‘Matchvellis discipilis’: but it is difficult to assess the value of this almost surrealist text in which the narrator claims not only to have been sleeping in the room where the meeting took place—‘sa weill hid that na man could perceave ma’—but also that he was provided with a convenient hole through which he could see the conspirators’ countenances and what they did.19 It does, none the less, confirm that Machiavelli was known in Scotland at this time and could be relied upon to induce a shudder of disapproval. Another leading contemporary Scottish political figure who may have had some first-hand knowledge of Machiavelli was John Leslie, Bishop of Ross and one of Mary’s staunchest supporters. A short manuscript treatise, written in 1569 and sometimes attributed to Leslie, attacks those who conspired against the Scottish Queen. It asserts that their claim to be ‘setting forward’ religion is merely a device extracted ‘out of Macivell of his discourse on Titus Livius’ where usurpers are advised to maintain some religion, even though this be feigned, in order to seduce the people.20 The passage could derive from the Discorsi, I. 11, where Machiavelli discusses Numa Pompilius and his pretended conversations with a nymph. The citation is not precise, but it is the kind of inattentive reading which might be expected of a cleric who elsewhere declared that he was ‘not of the college of fine witted clerks of Machiavel’s school’ who are never contented with the present estate but are always trying to 19 Various versions of this Copie of ane Adverteisment sent from the court to a freind of my lord have been printed. See Bannatyne Miscellany, ed. Sir Walter Scott and David Laing, i (Edinburgh, 1827), 37–50; Memorials and Transactions in Scotland, A.D.MDLXIX–MDLXXIII. By Richard Bannatyne, secretary to John Knox, ed. R. Pitcairn (Edinburgh, 1836), 5–13; The History of the Kirk of Scotland. By Mr. David Calderwood, ed. T. Thomson, ii (1843), 515–25. 20 Cal. S.P. Scotland, iii. 27: Ane brieiff declaratioun of the wikit and ungodlie proceedingis of certane inveterat conspiratoris aganis the quenis majestie. The attribution to Leslie was suggested by Horrocks (1908), 127, and has been tentatively accepted by Gasquet.

334

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

alter commonwealths and ‘depriving and setting up of princes at their pleasure’.21 Nor does Leslie display a more exact knowledge of Machiavelli in either of the two editions of his Defence of the honour of Marie, quene of Scotlande. In the first he denounces the Earl of Moray’s ‘machiavells practizes’;22 and in the second he condemns not only ‘Machiavelian practisers’ who encourage rival claimants to the Scottish throne, but also their ‘Machiavellian policie’ of spreading infamous rumours—something which, in 23 fact, Machiavelli himself wholly deplored. Leslie evidently enjoyed the word Machiavellian and it crops up more interestingly in another work attributed to him, A treatise of treasons, where he denounces the ‘lawless faction of machiavellian libertines’ set up by a new ‘pretended’ religion, and castigates Elizabeth’s ministers, William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, as a pair of ‘plain Machiavellians’ or ‘Machiavel Catilines’ who are bent on turning Christian England into a ‘Machiavellian State and Regiment’.24 What he means by this kind of state is set out in a passage which, though well known since J. W. Horrocks first drew attention to it, is still worth citing as evidence of how far 21 Cal. S.P. Scotland, iii. 813: letter dated 22 June 1571 from Leslie to Queen Elizabeth. 22 A defence of the honour of the right highe, mightye and noble princesse Marie, quene of Scotlande (Rheims, 1569), fo. 38. A fragment of another version of this edition is listed in STC (2nd edn.), no. 15504. 23 A treatise concerning the defence of the honour of Marie of Scotlande (Louvain, 1571), sigs. **1r
v, *4. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I. 8, bitterly attacks ‘le calunnie’. 24 A treatise of treasons against Queen Elizabeth and the Croune of England, divided into two Partes (Louvain, 1572), Preface and fos. 83, 85–7. The references to Machiavelli were first noted by Horrocks, 129–31, who attributed the work to Leslie. Leslie’s authorship was accepted by A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 310–17, 444–7. Southern also discusses the French translation, L’Innocence de la Tresillustre, tres-chaste, et de´bonnaire Princesse, Madame Marie Royne d’Ecosse, and argues that it was probably prepared by Leslie himself and not, as is sometimes assumed, by Franc¸ois de Belleforest. STC (2nd edn.), no. 7601, remains equivocal about Leslie’s authorship. See also P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations (New Haven and London, 1969), ii, no. 598. Cecil, as we know, was in the running for a copy of the Discorsi as early as 1551. See above, Ch. 1. In Jan. 1564 he was described by Cardinal Granvelle to Don Diego Guzman da Silva as being a new man and acting in accordance with the ‘discourse’ of Machiavelli: ‘hombre nuevo en los negocios, y que los lleva por discurso de Maciavello’. See Correspondence de Philippe II sur les affaires des PaysBas, ed. L. P. Gachard, ii (1851), pp. v–vi.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

335

hostility towards Machiavelli could go prior to Gentillet’s textbased denunciation. For Leslie, a Machiavellian state is one where religion is secondary to ‘civil Policie’ and is framed to serve a secular government. It is a state, unfettered by any rules of religious faith, where ‘both by word and example of the rulers’ the ruled are taught to alter their religion with every change of prince, and where religion is a mere outward pretence: ‘now one now another, they force not greatly which, so that at hart there be none at all’. Since, in this kind of polity, there is no belief in an afterlife, there is nothing either to restrain men from vice or to lead them to virtue. Instead, they are free to slaunder, to belie, to forswear, to accuse, to corrupt, to oppresse, to robbe, to invade, to depose, to imprison, to murther, and to commit every outrage, never so barbarous, that promiseth to advance the present Policie in hand, without scruple, feare, or conscience of hel or heaven, of God, or Divel. And where no restraint, nor allurement is left in the heart of man, to bridle him from evil, nor to invite him to good: but for vain fame only and fear of lay laws that reach no further than this body and life. (sig. a.5r–v)

It has been argued that this passage is evidence of a genuine, informed response to Machiavelli’s view of religion as a mere instrument of policy—a vision of the ‘spectre of the Secular State’.25 Certainly, a mind sufficiently overheated by religious fanaticism could torture such ideas from both Il Principe, with its transvaluation of all conventional moral values, and from the Discorsi, with its praise of pagan religious ceremonies. Moreover, since, as a young man, Leslie had studied in Paris and Poitiers from 1549 to 1554, he would have been able to read, then or later, those very translations of Machiavelli (by Gohory and D’Auvergne) which were to fuel Gentillet’s wrath. But whether or not the ‘secular’ state, indifferent to religious ‘truths’, was really more reprehensible than the bigotted ‘religious’ state is another matter.26 25 Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli, 60–1; Gasquet, 120–2. 26 Just as one might question whether this Christian view of human nature (so base that only the promise of reward and threats of punishment in some putative afterlife can make it behave responsibly) is not more cynical than any alternative. Cf. Pietro Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, trans. William Henry Hay II, in E. Cassirer, P. O. Kristeller, J. H. Randall (eds.), The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1948), 360 ff.

336

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

What upset both Papists and extremist Protestants in Elizabethan England (and elsewhere) was that, while the members of each sect felt oppressed, they also considered that their opposite numbers were not being persecuted rigorously enough; and one or two polemicists felt that this failure to practise Christian intolerance somehow derived from Machiavelli. In the Second Admonition to the Parliament (another work published in 1572), a spokesman for the advanced reformers—who were smarting under governmental severity no less than the Catholics—attacked the ‘politique Machevils of Englande’ who mistakenly thought that they could evade God’s wrath. Immediately, John Whitgift, who believed that the author of this work was Thomas Cartwright, demanded to know who was meant by these ‘Machevils’, since the reformers ‘envy all men of great authority, wit, and policy’.27 Perplexed piety in the face of religious tolerance received further expression in 1572 when Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury—writing to Lord Burghley about the ‘neutral’ policy in which ‘the papist is favoured as is the true protestant’—helplessly lamented that ‘this Machiavel government is strange to me, for it bringeth forth strange fruits’.28

g entillet and i nhe re nt hi stori cal probability So, even prior to the St Bartholomew massacre, there were people for whom Machiavelli’s name already carried sinister connotations, especially with regard to religious indifference. It is odd, though, that in France—where Politique rejection of religious extremism was more systematically propounded than in England or Scotland, 27 Second Admonition to the Parliament (1572), sig. A.2v; The Works of John Whitgift, ed. John Ayre (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1851–3), iii. 508–9. The exchanges continued in a Replye to an answere (which is certainly by Cartwright); a Defence of the Aunswere by Whitgift, and so on. Horrocks, 175–99, discusses Puritan responses to the Elizabethan Church Settlement and, as usual, misses few relevant passages. See also Bawcutt, ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’, 55–6. 28 Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. T. T. Perowne (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1853), 391. In a later letter to Burghley, Parker again mentions ‘Machiavel governance’ (ibid. 414).

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

337

and where Il Principe, the Discorsi, and the Arte della guerra were readily available in printed translations—Machiavelli’s name was not yet pressed into service as a term of opprobrium. In fact, as we have seen, this scarcely occurred until the publication of the Reveille-matin des franc¸ois in 1573 and Gentillet’s Remonstrance au Henri III in the following year—and even then it was by no means common.29 Yet within fifteen years this tiny trickle of antipathy had swollen to a flood of ill-informed invective; and, by the end of the sixteenth century, the mechanical use of Machiavelli’s name, both in England and France, had become so commonplace and so divorced from the writings of the man himself that examples are scarcely worth noting. There can be no definitive explanation for this rapid development: but there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence to suggest that the most important factor was the ContreMachiavel.30 That the nature of this evidence should be circumstantial is inevitable. References to the Contre-Machiavel, the use of identifiable fragments from it, and allusions which may be second-hand (or still more remote), are generally made en passant and are rarely the main burden of an argument: although, of course, selecting them out could make them appear so. None the less, certain facts are inescapable. The vulgarization and distortion of Machiavelli’s name developed with astonishing speed after Gentillet’s attack and it is possible to produce several instances where the Contre-Machiavel was unequivocally responsible for such distortion. But the most compelling argument for Gentillet’s relevance is provided by what I would term the Inherent Historical Probability suggested by the political and ideological terrain of late sixteenth-century Europe. It is true that the Contre-Machiavel neither displaced Machiavelli’s own writings nor equalled their immense popularity, but a complex of interrelated forces and ideas ensured that the work 29 For some French sources which predate the Contre-Machiavel, but are later than Gentillet’s Remonstrance, see Portes (1574), 29; Poncet, L’Antipharmaque (1575); Epistre aux delicats machiavelistes (1575); Pierre Fabre, Response au . . . Charpentier (1575). 30 Within an exclusively French context, and using an approach very different from my own, Jean Balsamo has similarly reaffirmed the importance of Gentillet’s work. See his study, ‘ ‘‘Le plus meschant d’entre eux ne voudroit pas estre Roy’’: La Boe´tie et Machiavel’, Montaigne Studies, 11 (1999), esp. 9–16.

338

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

could not fail to make an impact. In the first place, Italians were unpopular everywhere—except perhaps in Italy itself—and Gentillet’s expose´ of their manifold sins, along with those of an exciting arch-villain, Machiavelli, could scarcely have been timed more felicitously. Secondly, the Contre-Machiavel comprised the most detailed and circumstantial critical exposition of Machiavelli’s ideas available in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and thus provided that hermeneutic key to primary sources which readers so often demand. Thirdly, it comforted worried readers with the assurance that Machiavelli was a small-town upstart who lacked both learning and experience and was, therefore, wholly unqualified to give political advice to anybody. Fourthly, it offered a seemingly coherent demonstration of all the weaknesses in Machiavelli’s dialectic and, since Machiavelli’s writings were circulating widely, this was itself likely to command attention. Fifthly, it associated those writings directly, and plausibly, with a major political outrage—that is as both the inspiration for the St Bartholomew massacres and as the political thesaurus ransacked in order to justify them—and it is unlikely that the continuing arguments which raged over the atrocities would have ignored the longest and most systematic indictment of Valois culpability. Sixthly, it identified Machiavelli with a spectacularly unpopular regime dominated by an Italian Queen Mother and by Italian or Italianate courtiers; and—since there was already powerful hostility to Italian practices in both France and England, and since this was the period of bitterly contentious negotiations for an AngloFrench marriage alliance—this furnished a fertile compost for hatred to flourish. Seventhly, Gentillet was in perfect accord with contemporary reading habits when he reduced Machiavellism to a series of maxims, whose shocking nature was an added attraction. Thus, for those who believed his account to be a selfsufficient and accurate description of Machiavelli’s ideas, he was creating a ready-made villain. For polemicists who desired insults, arguments, and exemplars, he was not simply providing an ‘arsenal of weapons’ against Machiavelli (as Mohl thought), but one which could be used against any foe whatsoever. And for those who might be led on to explore Machiavelli for themselves, he was at the very

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

339

least creating a predisposition to hostility. Once let loose, ideas, and prejudices in particular, gather a momentum of their own. The closing decades of the sixteenth century witnessed a series of major politico-religious conflicts—interspersed by, and overlapping with, many minor ones—which spawned wave after wave of polemic. The times were ripe for an all-purpose bogeyman symbolizing every kind of political and religious corruption. And here, like some pantomime demon king hurtling through a trapdoor, Gentillet’s Machiavel obligingly burst upon the European stage. In France there were the accusations and counter-accusations arising from the St Bartholomew massacres, and the virulent verbal exchanges prompted by the murders of the Guises and the assassination of Henri III. In England, arguments about the proposed French marriage were followed first by the Marprelate controversy and then by the Archpriest and Oath of Allegiance controversies. And there was much else besides. It was not simply that Catholic rulers were at odds with Protestant subjects, that Protestant rulers struggled both with Catholics and extremist reformers, or that Calvinists believed that everybody was wrong but themselves. Even within ostensibly homogeneous religious groups there were deep and deadly divisions. The mindless and destructive selfrighteousness of all this might seem incomprehensible were it not for the fact that, in our own time, similar attitudes threaten to engulf us. There was a constant round of repression, prosecution, persecution, rebellion, civil war, massacre, revenge, and perfidy. All of it was justified by appeals to the religious truth which each group regarded as its sole prerogative; and anybody who dared adopt a relativist and tolerant stance was condemned as having no religion at all. ‘Scribbling [l’escrivaillerie] seemeth to be a Symthome or passion of an irregular and licentious age’, wrote Florio, freely translating from Montaigne’s essay ‘De la vanite´’. ‘When writ we ever so much as we have done since our intestine troubles? or when filled the Romans so many volumes, as in the times of their ruine?’31 It was natural that the authors of such 31 ‘L’escrivaillerie semble estre quelque simptome d’un siecle desborde´. Quand escrivismes nous tant que depuis que nous sommes en trouble? quand les Romains tant que lors de leur ruyne?’ Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey, revised

340

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

‘escrivaillerie’ should berate their enemies for sedition, cruelty, avarice, atheism, feigned piety, oath-breaking, reliance on force and fraud, promoting poverty, fomenting of factions, and animosity towards the Christian faith—the very crimes described in the Contre-Machiavel as rooted in the ‘maximes’ of Machiavelli whose books constituted ‘l’Alcoran des courtisans’ and comprised ‘non une science politique mais tyrannique’.32 t h e ‘m a x i m e s t y r a n n i q u e s’ and french polemic In France, the idea that Machiavelli was the principal repository of evil political aphorisms spread with astonishing rapidity and— while it would be naive to suggest that Gentillet was the direct inspiration for every subsequent occasion when an author denounced Machiavelli’s wicked maxims, precepts, or rules—a family resemblance is frequently evident. Only a few months after the first edition of the Contre-Machiavel had appeared, Jean Bodin—in the Preface to his Re´publique—lamented that Machiavelli was now in vogue among the courtiers of tyrants; denounced him as an atheist (citing Paolo Giovio on this point); and alluded sarcastically to ‘les belles reigles de Macciavel’, which proposed impiety and injustice as the two foundations of the state. In Bodin’s view, those who had seriously pondered affairs of state regarded Machiavelli’s knowledge of political science as superficial. Genuine political science did not reside in ‘tyrannical tricks’ gathered from all the corners of Italy; and Bodin condemns the ‘sweet poison’ contained in Il Principe, where Cesare Borgia is lauded as a model for princes despite the fact that, for all his cunning, he came to a sticky end. Here the tone of Bodin’s discussion of Machiavelli is not only different from the often-critical but unheated judgement expressed ten years earlier in his Methodus, but it is also at odds with the use V.-L. Saulnier (Paris, 1965), 946; The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne done into English by John Florio, with an Introduction by Thomas Seccombe (1908), 224. 32 The alternative ‘l’Evangile des courtisans’ was used by Catholics when denouncing what they perceived as Huguenot dependence on Machiavelli’s works.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

341

of Machiavelli elsewhere in the Re´publique. Whether or not Bodin had yet read Gentillet remains an open question, but prefaces are usually the last part of a book to be written, and the whole section is redolent of the Contre-Machiavel.33 It is suggestive to contrast the swelling fury aroused by the alleged maxims of Machiavelli with the reception accorded to the authentic aphorisms of another Florentine, Francesco Guicciardini, whose Ricordi were published in Paris in 1576. Guicciardini’s observations are more cynical than anything penned by Machiavelli; they expose the machinations of courtiers in a way that should have provoked howls of outrage among all Italophobes; and both the Italian edition and French translation were prepared by Jacopo Corbinelli, himself a Florentine, notorious as a Machiavellian scholar and henchman of Henri III—although, astonishingly, he is also one of the earliest recorded enthusiasts for Gentillet’s work.34 Corbinelli even used the Discorsi (without the author’s name) to gloss the Ricordi! Yet we hear few complaints about Guicciardini or the ways in which his pernicious maxims might have perverted the bluff old French nobility. It is true that his worldly sentences were 33 Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la re´publique (Paris, 1576), ‘Preface de l’autheur’, sig. aˆ.2v. The work appeared in Aug. 1576, that is five months after the first edition of the Contre-Machiavel. It is ironic that Bodin’s Preface is addressed to Pibrac, one of the most subtle apologists for the St Bartholomew massacre in which Bodin had nearly perished. G. Cardascia, ‘Machiavel et Jean Bodin’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, iii (1943), 129–67, is still a valuable study, but does not consider the parallel with Gentillet. 34 It was probably Corbinelli who is referred to by the anonymous author of Contre les fausses allegations que les plus qu’Architofels, Conseillers Cabinalistes, proposent pour excuser Henry le meurtrier de l’assassinat par luy perfidement commis en la personne du tresillustre Duc de Guyse (n.p., 1589), 32. When describing how Henri III is imbued with ‘la religion de Machiavel’, the author claims that this is the result of having heard, in his privy chamber, ‘the readings of a blotchy old man thoroughly steeped in atheism’ (les lectures d’un vieillard bazanne´ conroye´ en l’Atheisme). We know that Corbinelli had in his possession (and had annotated) a copy of the Discorsi. See on this, G. Cardascia, ‘Un lecteur de Machiavel a` la Cour de France’, Humanisme et Renaissance, 5 (1938) 446–52; and Procacci (1965), 183– 91. This makes it all the more remarkable that, in Sept. 1577, Corbinelli should have written to his friend Giovan Vincenzo Pinelli enthusing over the ContreMachiavel. See R. Calderini de Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli et les e´rudits franc¸ais d’apre`s la correspondance ine´dite Corbinelli-Pinelli (Milan, 1914), 175 n. 1; P. Simoncelli, La Lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra Accademici e fuorusciti fiorentini (Florence, 1984), 122–3.

342

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

directed at courtiers not princes, and that they came out too late to be associated with the St Bartholomew massacres: but, most significantly, they had provoked no emotive Contre-Guicciardini.35 There are texts where the impact of Gentillet’s methodical denunciation of Machiavelli’s ‘maximes tyranniques’ is obvious. The earliest example (published in the latter part of 1576) is the Remonstrance d’un bon Catholique franc¸ois—although this particular ‘bon Catholique’ is clearly nothing of the sort.36 He dislikes the Clergy for their excessive wealth; deplores the massacre of the Huguenots, which has ruined France; and points to the example of Germany and England where toleration of opposing religions has led to concord.37 The King, he argues, is well obeyed in time of peace whereas the opposite is true in time of war. Those, therefore, who nourish wars inevitably promote disobedience and its evil consequences. The nobility must be on their guard against this and must not allow themselves to be persuaded by these ‘wicked foreign Machiavellists’ who do nothing but foment civil war. ‘We have been only too much abused by their villainous maxims’, exclaims the author, who proceeds to give some examples:38 A prince who under constraint uses gentleness towards his subjects hastens his ruin.39 A prince who would maintain partialities among his subjects will be better obeyed.40 The way to render subjects obedient is to 35 Usually, references to Guicciardini concern his role as a historian. Nicolas Vignier, however, sees him as one of an unholy trinity of Italian writers who sanction immoral political behaviour. Praising the kings of France who have always detested treachery, disloyalty, perfidy, and all sorts of deceits and evil simulations, such as are favoured in Italy and Spain, he adds that ‘such things Machiavelli calls virtues in his Prince, Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio call prudence in Frederick King of Naples, Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, and in several Popes of their nation’. See Nicolas Vignier, De la noblesse, anciennete´, remarques, & merites d’honneur de la troisiesme maison de France (Paris, 1587), 183–4. 36 Remonstrance d’un bon Catholique franc¸ois aux trois estats de France, Qui s’assembleront a` Blois, suivant les lettres de sa Majeste´ du VI. d’Aoust, presente anne´e M.D.LXXVI (n.p., 1576). 37 Ibid. 40–1, 62. 38 Ibid. 74–5. 39 ‘Un Prince qui par contrainte usera de douceur envers ses sujets avancera sa ruine.’ Cf. Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel, III. 20. 40 ‘Un prince qui maintiendra partialitez entre ses sujets se sera mieux obeı¨.’ Cf. Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel, III. 15 and 30.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

343

make them poor; better a kingdom ruined than lost.41 And they wallow in these fine maxims to make us kill and ruin one another.

These precepts, like the belief that the Machiavellists in France are foreigners and that the French nobility must be on their guard against them, derive from the Contre-Machiavel.42 And so, too, does the categorization of Machiavellism simply as a collection of amoral political maxims. It sometimes happened that works, affected by Gentillet, gained wide circulation in their own right, and then the effect was rather like the ever-expanding ripples caused by a stone thrown into a pond. A case in point is the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, generally attributed to Philippe du Plessis Mornay but published pseudonymously, as the work of ‘Stephanus Junius Brutus’, in 1579 and issued two years later in a French translation.43 The Preface, addressed to faithful Christian princes, is dated 1 January 1577 and—declaring itself to be by ‘Cono Superantius’—is written as though by someone other than the author. It has been suggested that this Preface may be the work of Gentillet himself, and it certainly has a familiar ring.44 The ‘questions’ propounded by Stephanus Junius Brutus are ‘contrary to the bad practices, perni41 ‘Le moyen de rendre les sujets obeissans, c’est de les faire pauvres.’ Cf. Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel, III. 32. I have not located a specific source for the phrase ‘Mieux vaut un Royeaume ruine´ que perdu’—although the idea itself follows easily from that of keeping subjects poor. 42 Sometimes a passing hostile reference to Machiavelli (while not directly attributable to a knowledge of Gentillet) still suggests the atmosphere of the Contre-Machiavel. See, for example, Jean de Le´ry, Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil (La Rochelle, 1578), which blames the present sickness of France on a variety of evil influences, notably Italians, Papists, usurers, atheists, Epicureans, Rabelaisian mockers who hold God in contempt, and ‘Machiavel et ses disciples, desquels la France, pour son malheur, est maintenant remplie’. 43 Stephanus Junius Brutus (Philippe du Plessis-Mornay), Vindiciae contra tyrannos (Edinburgh [Basle], 1579). For the still-inconclusive debate on authorship, see Stephanus Junius Brutus, the Celt. Vindiciae contra tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over a prince, ed. and tr. by George Garnett (Cambridge, 1994), pp. lv–lxxvi. 44 See Salvo Mastellone, Venalita` e Machiavellismo in Francia (1572–1610) (Florence, 1972), 58–60. Garnett, p. lxvi, rejects this idea as being based solely on the anti-Machiavellian tone of the Preface. But, while I would not press for Gentillet’s identification with Superantius, there is a good deal more to be said in its favour than Mastellone suggested or that Garnett acknowledges.

344

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

cious councils, and false, pestiferous maxims’ of Nicolas Machiavel Florentin and are likely to upset those people who take such precepts as their guide in the management of affairs of state. The perfect image of the government of kingdoms is like a ‘chaste, true and holy matron’ whereas that of these Machiavellistes is a form of administration, ‘bastard, painted, wanton, and evil’. Brutus and the author of the Preface (if, indeed, they are different) have for two years pondered the miseries of France and looked into their ‘origins, causes, and development’ and have concluded that, amongst other things: the books of Machiavelli have sharpened the spirits of certain persons to find ways to trouble the state, helping themselves with the authority of those who govern. Machiavelli has established the foundations of tyranny in his books, as is apparent to us from his precepts and detestable teachings which are sown hither and thither.

The Machiavellists and their writings are the cause of the state’s being divided by civil dissensions and partialities, and it is Brutus’s purpose to expose their wicked practices. That we are here in the groundswell of the Contre-Machiavel, especially with regard to Machiavelli’s supposed advocacy of partialities and discord, is confirmed by the fact that this Preface offers an outline of the method whereby Machiavelli’s doctrine will be refuted. Gentillet, it will be recalled, specifically refused to rely on scriptural evidence because he felt that this would give him too easy a victory.45 Brutus, however, has no such qualms and, as the Preface points out, he makes use of all legitimate weapons: ‘the holy Scriptures, moral and political philosophy, the laws and customs of peoples, and the examples furnished by historians’. On the other hand, the discussion of political maxims in the Contre-Machiavel has a relationship to the Preface of the Vindiciae, which explains to philosophers and disputants that Brutus follows the procedure of geometers who prove their case more clearly and more certainly by advancing from effects and consequences to ‘the causes and maxims or rules’, and thereby mount by degrees to the 45 Garnett does not consider the question of a relationship between Gentillet and the Vindiciae.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

345

summit of their argument. This methodological puff notwithstanding, the argument of the Vindiciae is specious and the work itself—although allegedly conceived as a riposte to the pestiferous and divisive doctrines of Machiavelli—is, in effect, a justification of rebellion and tyrannicide, so extreme that it legitimizes assassination by a single, self-righteous fanatic.46 How this would eliminate civil dissensions and partialities is obscure: but that did not prevent the issue of many further editions of the book. The Latin versions, in particular, are ideological (if not bibliographical) curiosities for not only are they accompanied by other writings contra Machiavellum but they are usually printed as an appendix to Teglio’s Latin translation of Il Principe—a tactic akin to, and as ineffectual as, the printing of government health warnings on packets of cigarettes, encouraging people to smoke themselves to death. Two other works which reveal the impress of the ContreMachiavel are Le secret des finances de France, published in 1581 under the name ‘Nicolas Froumenteau’, and Le miroir des Franc¸oys, which appeared in the following year under the name of Nicolas Montaud—though both are almost certainly the work of Nicolas Barnaud. The former reports a financial debate in which the King’s representative, Beranque, is accused of drawing his argument from the ‘l’Alcoran de Machiavel’, whence he, and those like him, seek to ruin ‘ceste pauvre France’. The text is also reminiscent of Gentillet in its references to the ‘accursed precepts, maxims, and institutions of Machiavelli’; its abuse of Italian userers, ‘that is to say our Machiavellists’; and its denunciation of the way in which the Third Estate is manipulated by ‘vostre cabale Machiavellitique’.47 Le miroir des Franc¸oys similarly denounces the Italians as the cause of all the ‘corruptions, usuries, and misdeeds springing out in the kingdom’, and laments that currently, instead of reading the works of Guicciardini, who wrote with gravity and 46 Of course, this is not how it is stated in the Vindiciae but (stripped of the customary quibbles about oppressive tyrants as distinct from usurping tyrants, and about divinely inspired action, and given the problem of who can finally decide such issues) this is what it comes down to. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I. 58, had himself argued that there is no remedy for a bad prince but the sword. 47 Le secret des finances de France en trois livres (n.p., 1581), 415–25.

346

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

truth, people follow the ‘maximes corrompues’ of Machiavelli— based upon the career of the bastard Cesare Borgia.48 After Barnaud, there is a lull in the attack on corrupt Machiavellian maxims: but, with the series of polemical explosions in 1589 and thereafter, the idea becomes commonplace.49 We have the ‘preceptes de Machiavel’;50 ‘une belle maxime de ces Machiavelistes’;51 ‘le pernicieux conseil de Machiavel’, ‘deux preceptes sortis de mesme escolle, deux regles generalles en matiere d’estat forgees en mesme boutique’.52 We have the ‘pernicieuses lec¸ons de l’Ateiste Machiavel’; and the ‘blasphemes detestables des Machiavelistes’ who mask themselves with any religion in order to rule.53 We have a monstrous ruler, Henri III, who has studied ‘en l’escole de Machiavel Florentin’;54 who follows ‘la maxime de son bon 48 Le miroir des Franc¸oys, l’estat et maniement des affaires de France (n.p., 1582), 409–10. Another work by Barnaud, Le cabinet du roy de France dans lequel il y a trois perles precieuses (n.p., 1581, 1582), attacks the degeneracy and profligacy of the French court, pointing out that the King of France owes vast sums of money (debts run up by his ‘mignons’) and has had recourse to the ‘inventions’ of the ‘nouveau Tyran de Florence’—that is usury, borrowing money at ‘cent pour cent pour l’interest’ (p. 298). 49 See Anna Maria Battista, ‘Sull’antimachiavellismo francese del secolo XVI’, Storia e Politica, 1 (1962), 412–47, for a number of such references: although the inferences drawn from the material are often strained and do not support the conclusions offered. 50 Contre les fausses allegations que les plus qu’Architofels etc. (1589), 19, refers to the ‘preceptes de Machiavel’. Response aux justifications pretendues par Henri de Valois sur les meurtres et assassinats du feu messeigneurs le Cardinal et Duc de Guise (Paris, 1589), 18, mentions the ‘preceptes de Macchiavel’ with reference to the murder of the Guises and Henri III’s excuses; Response aux justifications pretendues par Henri de Valois sur les meurtres et assassinats du feu messeigneurs le Cardinal et Duc de Guise (Paris, 1589), 18, contrasts Machiavelli’s precepts with those of the Catholic religion. 51 Le faux visage decouvert du fin Renard de la France (Paris, 1589), 17: ‘Une belle maxime de ces Machiavelistes, qui luy servira d’echapatoire et de souverain antidot, que le prince n’est oblige´ a` garder ses promesses.’ 52 Les Causes qui ont contrainct les Catholiques a` prendre les armes (1589), 8–9. 53 De l’excommunication, et censures ecclesiastiques, encourues par Henry de Valois, pour l’assassinat commis e`s personnes de messieurs le Cardinal et Duc de Guyse (Paris. 1589), 55; Advertissement au Roy, ou sont deduictes les raisons d’estat, pour lesquelles il ne luy est pas bienseant de changer de religion (n.p., 1589), 3–4. 54 Les considerations sur le meurdre commis en la personne de feu Monsieur le Duc de Guise (Paris, 1589), 6. This text goes on to describe what purport to be key ideas in Machiavelli’s Prince as studied by Henri III: that the prince must pretend to be devout although he is not; must seem to be an ‘homme de bien’, while he is

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

347

pedagogue Machiavel’ concerning the need to adopt first the clothing of the fox and then that of the lion;55 who is himself an atheist at heart, in accord with ‘le precepte de Machael [sic] son grand pedagogue’;56 and who has been taught ‘la maxime de Machiavel’ that it shows great dexterity in a prince, when he sees himself hated by his subjects, to throw all the blame for past faults on to those who serve and counsel him.57 This King has profited from reading ‘a book composed by the atheist Machiavelli, treating the manner of ruling with full licence, and managing a republic according to his own appetite’. ‘Taking his most impious maxims for the truth in as much as they represented the inclination of his own heart’, Henri has studied to put them into practice.58 We have Machiavelli’s nothing of the sort, in order to gain favour among his people; and must not worry about perjuring himself, provided that this works to his advantage. Machiavelli’s work, it is said, proposes as an example for the prince Alexander Borgia, ‘qui fut le plus scelerat du monde, et le plus abandonne´ a vices, lequel usoit de sermens execrables et abominables pour affronter ceux a` qu’il avoit affaire’. 55 Le martire des deux freres contenant au vray toutes les particularitez (n.p., 1589), 9. 56 Discours, en forme d’oraison funebre, sur le massacre et parricide, de Messeigneurs le Duc, et Cardinal de Guyse (Paris, 1589), 20. The pamphlet goes on to complain that Henri has pardoned those who have published books against the Catholic Church ‘pour la deffence de son Machiavelliste estat’ while punishing others who have refuted such scandalous works. 57 Memoires de Messire Philippe Hurault, Comte de Cheverny, Chancelier de France, in Michaud and Poujoulat, Nouvelle Collection des Me´moires pour servir a` l’histoire de France, 1st ser., 10 (Paris, 1838), 494. This could derive directly from Il Principe, 7; but is more likely to have come via Contre-Machiavel, III. 34. 58 Les meurs humeurs et comportemens de Henry de Valois representez au vray depuis sa naissance (Paris, 1589), 10–12. The extent of Henri III’s knowledge of Machiavelli, especially as gained through his studies with Corbinelli, is unclear: but there is some circumstantial evidence relating to 1573, the year following the St Bartholomew and preceding his accession to the throne of France. In the Me´moires ine´dits de Michel de la Huguerye, ed. A. de Ruble (Paris, 1877–80), i. 200, there is an account of Henri’s visit to the Landgrave of Hesse at Fach, in the course of his journey to Poland late in 1573. Apparently the Landgrave, who was very learned, had some strong things to say about what had happened in Paris, and Henri ‘defended himself with the arguments of Machiavelli’. At this the Landgrave became so angry that his voice could be heard outside in the street, saying that not much account could be made of someone who placed reliance upon the said Machiavelli—wholly contrary to the laws of Christianity. Then, seeing that Henri uttered not another word, the Landgrave changed the subject. Henri’s Machiavellian studies were still the subject of comment nearly a century later when Jacques de Callie`res, Histoire du mareschal de Matignon (Paris, 1661), 147,

348

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

‘regles et conseils’ dismissed as ‘presques inutiles’;59 his ‘reigles perniceuses’ practised by Henri III;60 and the French nobles behaving according to the ‘maximes de leur maistre Machiavel’, whom they regard as their God and who make nothing more of Justice, Faith, and Religion than a mere show to deceive ‘les simples et les idiots’.61 We have ‘libertins et politiques’ who, having studied ‘la Philosophie de Machiavel’, declare that, in order to rule well, it is necessary to encourage civil war, to divide a country into two parties, and to fish in troubled waters—which is a tyranny rather than a true government.62 We have Charles IX’s sinister henchman, Le Guast: a man born to do evil; whose spirit was filled with a thousand ‘tyranniques maximes’, such as never to love or trust anyone other than oneself, ‘et autres beaux preceptes machiavelistes’.63 And we have ‘weedy little men’ (hommeles) who take the writings of Livy or Plutarch as their Gospel, and consider the glosses of Machiavelli as ‘maximes irrefragables’.64 Little of this material (and there is a great deal more of the same kind) suggests any serious reading of Machiavelli. What it does suggest is either a generalized response to Gentillet’s aphoristic bogeyman or an identifiable textual dependence upon the ContreMachiavel.65 Of the latter type, two further examples will suffice. remarked on how Henri—in his dealings with the Guises—‘fit son Breviere des ouvrages de Machiavel, et sa science de la Politique de Polybe et de Corbinelli’, from whom he learnt to dissimulate his resentment and to satisfy his malice. 59 Dialogue du Royeaume au quel est discouru des vices et des vertus des roys (Paris, 1589), 37. 60 L’estrange amitie´ d’Edouard second Roy d’Angleterre a` l’endroit de Pierre de Gaverston (n.p., n.d), 13–14. 61 Mirouer Catholique, representant les moyens pour retenir le peuple de la Bretagne au s. party de l’Union (n.p., 1590), 13. 62 Jean de la Mothe, Le reveil matin et mot du guet des bons catholiques (Douai, 1591), 22. This idea comes from Gentillet, III. 15, 30, 31. 63 Me´moires de Marguerite de Valois, 18. 64 Labyrinthe Royal de l’Hercule gaulois triomphant (Avignon, n.d.), 98. 65 There are occasions when such dependence, though almost certain, remains unprovable. For example, De Thou, describing the conduct of the Duke of Nemours at Lyon in 1593, says that he had nothing in his mouth other than ‘le he´ros de Machiavel’, and that, in public government, he followed the ‘maximes pernicieuses de ce Politique’: that is, to appear religious without so being; to make great promises and to keep them when our interest does not oblige us to violate them; and to break them when it brings us great advantages. See Jacques-Auguste

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

349

In his Le theatre de France, Raynssant Deviezmaison not only cites from Machiavelli’s ‘doctrine’, ‘escholle’, and ‘maximes’, in words taken directly from Gentillet, but he even quotes ‘une maxime de Machiavel en sa troisiesme partie’: ‘Un tyran vertueux pour maintenir sa tyrannie doit entretenir partialitez entre ses subjets, et tuer les amateurs du bien public.’66 This is indeed taken verbatim from a ‘troisiesme partie’, but the book in question is the Contre-Machiavel: an error soon to be repeated, with more far-reaching consequences by the Jesuit Antonio Possevino. Deviezmaison also cites ‘une des maximes de Machiavel’—‘la guerre est juste qui est necessaire, et les armes raisonables quand on ne peut avoir esperance d’ailleurs’—which is taken verbatim from the Contre-Machiavel, III. 1. Another author who used Gentillet without acknowledgement was the Catholic polemicist Jean Boucher. In a violent diatribe against Henri de Navarre’s politically expedient conversion to Catholicism, he denounced Machiavelli as the ‘grand Docteur des atheistes’ whose followers maintain, among other ‘axiomes’, the detestable impiety that it is sufficient for a Prince to seem religious without actually being so, and that it is ruinous not to combine the lion and the fox: ‘that is to say, perfidy and cruelty together’. Naturally, he castigates Machiavelli’s alleged recommendation of the example of Alexander VI, whose treachery brought him to a miserable end; but, de Thou, Histoire universelle, XII. 52–3. A much later example—Claude Boitet’s Le Prince des Princes, ou l’art de regner (Paris, 1632)—shows how Gentillet’s work continued to influence moralistic writers trying to combat Machiavellism with a set of Christian precepts. Boitet, in his Livre second, explains how government is like a ship exposed to tempests, at the mercy of the winds and of pirates. Nevertheless, he intends to provide some guidelines amidst all these difficulties and, he says (p. 252), he will consider three principal matters: ‘le conseil d’un prince, l’estat de la religion, et la police tant civile que militaire’. These are the three divisions of the Contre-Machiavel: but Boitet is, in fact, unable to avoid being compromised by an indirect knowledge of Machiavelli. See below, Ch. 13. 66 O. Raynssant Deviezmaison, Le theatre de France, auquel est contenu la resolution sur chacun doubte, qui a retenu la Noblesse de se joindre a` l’Union Catholique (Paris, 1589), reissued with additional preliminary material in 1591. See fos. 6, 7v, 12v, 38; and cf. Contre-Machiavel, III. 15. Deviezmaison also cites ‘une des maximes de Machiavel’—‘la guerre est juste qui est necessaire, et les armes raisonables quand on ne peut avoir esperance d’ailleurs’—which is taken directly from the Contre-Machiavel, III. 1.

350

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

ironically, his most obvious borrowing from the Huguenot comes in a comparison between Calvin and Machiavelli, who are, he believes, both of the same spirit. Just listen, he exclaims, to what ‘the gentle Secretary, and great man of State, says’—and there follows an unmistakeable transcription of Gentillet’s expansion of the Contre-Machiavel, III. 18.67 Inevitably, Gentillet’s aphorizations of Machiavellian doctrines were absorbed into the general thesaurus of political argument where they continued to exist independently. In many cases it is impossible to determine whether a familiar notion derives either directly or indirectly from Gentillet; whether it comes from a reading of Machiavelli himself, but refracted through the steamy atmosphere generated by the Contre-Machiavel; or whether it is a personal response which owes nothing to Gentillet, but has been conceived by a mind similarly hostile to political and religious unorthodoxy and similarly disturbed by the troublous times. Thus it is difficult to pin down the relationship between Gentillet and a writer such as Franc¸ois de Gravelle, whose Politiques royales was published in 1596. It is dedicated to Henri IV and includes several conventional allusions to Machiavelli and to Machiavellists, whose advocacy of a merely simulated good faith and integrity is blamed for the evils which have recently afflicted France. ‘Le discours de Machiavel’ is addressed to a tyrant, says Gravelle, as we can see from its ‘preceptes’ lifted and distorted from the fifth book of Aristotle’s Politics, and from Machiavelli’s exemplar, Cesare Borgia—the most ‘disloyal and abominable little tyrant ever endured by Italy’—who inevitably came to a bad end. The introduction of tyrannical behaviour under pretext of religion is, of course, blamed upon the ‘citoyens et compatriotes de Machiavel’, whose disciples are true atheists. They recommend the use of force without justice, a procedure which can only result in malice and deception. Without fear of God, they advocate doing anything which seems convenient to them—even ‘quelque beau coup a` faire comme des vespres Siciliennes’. They propound a maxim that one need not keep faith with heretics, under which name they include all those whom they wish to deceive. And they 67 Jean Boucher, Sermon de la simule´e conversion et nullite´ de la pretendue absolution de Henry de Bourbon (Paris, 1594), 15–16, 18–19, 43–4.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

351

attempt to persuade the King that taking counsel diminishes the royal authority.68 The accusations seem precise enough, and most of them may be found in the Contre-Machiavel.69 Yet they are substantially the same insults which had been heaped upon political enemies ever since the Saint Bartholomew and which, as we have seen, were initially only rarely linked with Machiavelli. That they become so quickly and so frequently associated with his name after the appearance of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel may, of course, be merely coincidental: but inherent historical probability suggests otherwise. None the less, constant repetition of the equation—Machiavelli equals all political evils—resulted in a total loss of specificity not only in relation to Machiavelli’s own writings but also in relation to Gentillet’s interpretation of them. Gentillet had read Machiavelli’s works, had thought about them, and had grappled with the problems they posed: but this is something which may be said of few other French polemicists during the wars of religion. For writers such as Gravelle, Machiavelli’s name was a convenient short-hand symbol of disapprobation, and the more frequent the symbol’s use the more it betokened ignorance and lax thinking.70 Apart from a 68 Politiques royales, de Franc¸ois de Gravelle, sieur de Fourneaux & d’Arpentigny (Lyons, 1596), 25–7, 110–11, 123, 212–14, 222, 399–400. 69 Gentillet, oddly, does not associate Machiavelli’s tyrant with the analysis of tyranny in Aristotle’s Politics, although he does allege that Machiavelli gets his material on tyranny from Bartolus, who did, of course, derive his material from Aristotle. On the other hand, the recognition of a strong relationship between Machiavelli’s prince and Aristotle’s tyrant had become commonplace. On ‘Machiavelli Aristotelico’, see Procacci (1965), 45–75. 70 A great many examples relate, of course, to the systematic use of political deceit and feigned religion which had become inextricably tied to Machiavelli’s name and which inspired fervid asseverations from the righteous. The author of the Double d’une lettre envoiee a` un certain personnage contenant le discours de ce qui se passa au Cabinet du Roy de Navarre (Frankfurt am Main, 1585), explains (p. 54) that just as God is truth itself, so his image, the Prince, must always be ‘tresveritable’; and just as the sun cannot hide itself in shade, so is it impossible for the Prince (being exposed in so great a theatre) to use dissimulation. And, the author continues, if he had to dispute this matter against Machiavelli, he could very easily prove to him that ‘la plus seure finesse que puisse pratiquer un Prince, est de n’user jamais de finesse’. The jurist Louis le Caron (Charondas), in his De la tranquillite´ d’esprit (Paris, 1588), 66, attacks those who issue from ‘l’escholle des Atheistes, Libertains, ou Machiavelistes’ and maintain that to have peace and tranquillity in any state, it is necessary only to feign ‘exterieurement et par

352

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

veneer of argumentation and citation, most of this material is little removed from the indiscriminate invective into which it quickly degenerated—especially in the turmoil surrounding the end of Henri III’s reign.71

criticism of gentillet in s i x t e e n t h - c e n t u r y f r a nc e The most striking feature of the reception of the Contre-Machiavel in France is that, despite the frequency with which it was plundered by polemicists, there survives little serious comment on the text itself—a situation which, albeit on a smaller scale, parallels Machiavelli’s own fate in the sixteenth century. Apart from prefatory remarks by translators, I know of only four authors— Pasquier, La Noue, Montaigne, and La Popelinie`re—who offer anything approximating to a critical judgement on Gentillet; and, in each case, their comments are brief and incidental. In a letter addressed to Monsieur Chandon and first published in 1586, Estienne Pasquier, lawyer and man of letters, had occasion to criticize Machiavelli’s recommendation that wickedness [la Sceleratesse] should be used by a prince in order to gain and maintain power. We know that, scattered about Pasquier’s oeuvre, there is evidence of first-hand acquaintance with Machiavelli’s writings: but it amounts to very little and is, on the whole, concerned with morally reprehensible behaviour.72 However, the letter to Chandon is more interesting for, in it, Pasquier expresses particular vexation at the false inferences drawn by Machiavelli from Livy, despite the fact that there was ‘never a man more nourished in the reading of apparence, qu’on ayt grande devotion a` la religion, et dans le coeur n’en apprehender aucune’. But Le Caron believes quite the opposite and declares that such people are full of disquiet and miseries. 71 For a very good evocation of this atmosphere, see Keith Cameron, Henri III: A Maligned or Malignant King? (Aspects of the Satirical Iconography of Henri de Valois) (Exeter, 1978). 72 For the letter to Chandon, see Les Œuvres d’Estienne Pasquier (Amsterdam, 1723), cols. 231–8. For some references to Machiavelli, see Pasquier’s Les Recherches de la France, ed. Marie-Madeleine Fragonard and Franc¸ois Roudart (Paris, 1996), i. 712; ii. 998–9, 1042–3, 1156, 1305, 1348.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

353

Titus Livy than he, witness the three books of discourses which he made on the first Decade’. Machiavelli’s observations are perverse and, what is worse, in Il Principe he offers as his prime exemplar for princely behaviour the abominable Cesare Borgia, whose botched attempt to poison his enemies resulted in the death of his own father, Pope Alexander VI. Men should recognize the crimes of evil rulers and the virtues of the good, and should not have before them this ‘unhappy author who I see is cherished and honoured by all courtiers whose condition is such that, just as they are born to be slaves, so they think of nothing else but to make others slaves, too’. All of this could easily have been derived from Gentillet, but it appears that Chandon must previously have declared his own approval of ‘l’autheur de l’Antimachiavel’, because Pasquier replies that there are ‘extremitez’ in both Machiavelli and his opponent. Where the latter ‘conforms to justice and to public order, I am willingly with him’, says Pasquier, ‘but if by erroneous propositions he wishes to excite subjects against their sovereign magistrate, then I condemn him utterly’.73 Gentillet made a better impression on the Huguenot military leader Franc¸ois de la Noue, who, in his Discours politiques et militaires (1587), reflected upon his own earlier enthusiastic reading of Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Il Principe, which, he freely confessed, had greatly delighted him for, in these works, Machiavelli ‘intreateth of high and goodly politike and martial affaires, which many Gentlemen are desirous to learne, as matters meete for their professions’. However, La Noue’s pleasure in reading these works lasted only as long as he remained ‘blinded with the glosse’ of Machiavelli’s reasons. But after I did with more ripe judgement throughly examine them, I found under the fayre shew many hidden errors, leading those that 73 Eighty years later, Charles Sorel, in his La bibliothe`que franc¸oise (Paris, 1664), 60, expressed similar reservations: advising that anyone who was curious to read ‘le Livre de Machiavel dont les opinions sont dangereuses’ should do so with circumspection. And he added that one could afterwards read a book which is usually called ‘l’Anti-Machiavel ’, although it has no other title than ‘Discours d’Estat contre Machiavel ’. None the less, one should be very careful when reading the works of this ‘Contradicteur’ because, being a Huguenot, he had not written according to true Christian and Catholic politics.

354

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

walke in them into the paths of dishonour and domage. But if any man doubt of my sayings, I would wish him to reade a booke intituled Antimachiavellus, the author whereof I know not, and there shall he see that I am not altogether deceived.74

Evidently, La Noue considered the Contre-Machiavel a wholly convincing refutation of Machiavelli; and this view was shared, up to a point, by Michel de Montaigne. However, Montaigne approached the issue from a very different angle since, for him, a far more fundamental issue was involved. Reflecting upon the uncertainty of political opinions, and noting how they are ‘open to all motions, and to contestation’, he referred especially to the example of Machiavelli and his unnamed opponents, among whom we may presume would have been Innocent Gentillet. The Discorsi, said Montaigne, ‘were very solid for the subject’, yet it had been ‘very easie to impugne them, and those that have done, have left no less facilitie to impugne theirs’.75 Has the history of political thought ever been more succinctly cut down to size? A decade later, at the very end of the sixteenth century, another and more specific assessment of the Contre-Machiavel was offered by Lancelot Voisin, Seigneur de la Popelinie`re. The seventh book of his L’histoire des histoires is devoted to a catalogue of Italian historians, among whom Machiavelli makes a dishonourable appearance. Yes, Voisin admitted, one could not deny that he was ‘un homme judicieux’: but he misjudged human actions and his opinions were so extravagant that he loosened the very bonds of honour and faith which hold human society together. Indeed, Machiavelli’s attitude towards religion was in itself sufficient reason that his books should be publicly burnt; and princes and magistrates were very ill-advised to allow such dangerous lessons to be learned by the young. Once faith and true amity is banished from the state, nothing is left but private quarrels and these, in their turn, are the 74 Franc¸ois de la Noue, Discours politiques et militaires (Basle, 1587), 77–8, 159–60; ed. F. E. Sutcliffe (Geneva, 1967), 83–4, 160–1. I quote from the translation by Edward Aggas, The politicke and militarie discourses of the Lord de la Noue (1587), sig. G.4. 75 Montaigne, Essais, II. 17, ‘De la pre´somption’. I cite Florio’s translation. For Montaigne’s acquaintance with Gentillet, see Pierre Villey, Les Sources et l’e´volution des Essais de Montaigne (Paris, 1933), i. 149–50.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

355

source of public quarrels, which have proved the ruin of so many republics. Christian magistrates had actually been conniving at such damaging writings but, at that point, there arose among the French people, ‘un gentil esprit’ to refute the errors and impieties which he thought had become too commonly in favour. This can only be a reference to Gentillet, and it was with regret that Voisin (a Huguenot, like La Noue and Gentillet himself ) had to admit that this well-intentioned champion met with little success for he had built his case on nothing other than authorities and inappropriate examples, and was unprovided with ‘nimble arguments’ (vives raisons): the true arms with which to call the world to combat: And so the poor author did not know how to gain any recompense for such pains in the defence of the State, Religion, and Duty, other than injuries and menaces instead of the honours and other worthy rewards which such a well-intentioned and laborious work merited.76

A clue to this dissatisfaction with Gentillet may, perhaps, be found in a manuscript fragment by Voisin preserved at the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France.77 This chaotic little scribbling is headed ‘Le Contre-Machiavel’ but—beyond that title and a reference to Machiavelli’s ‘Maximes’ (which are decribed as fine on the surface but unable to withstand close scrutiny)—there is no suggestion that Gentillet is involved. The importance of the text lies in Voisin’s unconventional explanation of how Machiavelli came to write as he did. In order to understand a man’s purpose, says Voisin, it is necessary to know his nature and life, just as we best 76 ‘Le pauvre Autheur n’a sceu tirer pour recompense de tant de peines a` defendre l’Estat, la Religion et le devoir de tout ensemble: qu’injures et menaces au lieu des honneurs et autres dignes salaires que meritoit un tant affectionne´ et laborieux travail.’ For the whole of the passage discussed, see Lancelot Voisin, Sieur de la Popelinie`re, L’histoire des histoires avec l’ide´e de l’histoire accomplie. Plus le dessein de l’histoire nouvelle des Franc¸ois (Paris, 1599), 404–6; repr. (Paris, 1989), i. 330–1. 77 BNF fr. 20787, fo. 19r–v. This folio presents several problems to an unwary reader, not least the fact that it has been misbound back to front so that the heading and first paragraphs appear on what is, apparently, the second page. The manuscript was referred to by Donald R. Kelley, ‘History as a Calling’, in A. Molho and John Tedeschi (eds.), Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron (DeKalb, Ill., 1971), 778, where he describes it as a ‘conventional Calvinist ‘‘Anti Machiavel’’ ’. It is not.

356

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

know a tree by its fruit. Thus we must recognize that the foundations of Machiavelli’s ‘opinions bigarres’—and, in consequence, his misfortune—were Atheism and his dissatisfaction with the rulers of his time. Although he was admired by some for the beauty of his ‘gentil esprit’ and clear judgement in many things, he was hated by others for his open profession of atheism and was, in the end, banished from the land whence he expected most favour. Thus he conceived a contempt for his own people on account of the feeble judgement and other imperfections which he noted in them; and eventually he had the courage not only to comment in private against such ill-governed states, but also to make their faults known to all who took pleasure in reading the writings he bequeathed to posterity. If this really does represent Voisin’s considered, personal opinion of the evolution of Machiavelli’s ideas, then it becomes easier to see how Gentillet’s morally conventional refutation, so lacking in historical context, would have seemed inadequate.78

gentillet in england Evidence for the impact of the Contre-Machiavel in England, though less in quantity, is similar in kind to the evidence for France.79 Occasionally it is specific; sometimes it is discernible only in verbal or thematic echoes; but most frequently it can only to be guessed at, because traces of Gentillet’s influence were obscured by the zest with which English poets, playwrights, and pamphleteers seized on the name of Machiavelli—‘the great

78 Many years earlier Voisin, in his L’histoire de France (La Rochelle, 1581), ii, fo. 59v, had discussed dissimulation and deceit and had recognized that all princes and states were involved in this ‘and gained great advantage by practising the maxims of the Florentine secretary’. 79 Much of the relevant material is to be found heaped up in Edward Meyer’s Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar, 1897) and augmented, with far greater awareness of historical contexts, in J. W. Horrocks’s thesis. There are also some additional references in two articles by N. W. Bawcutt, ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’ and ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, and in Gasquet (1974).

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

357

muster master of Hell’80—to gain a cheap effect. It is very rare for anyone to be as obliging as John Stradling, who provides a marginal reference, ‘Antimachiavel ’, to identify a book of which he particularly approved: ‘being by the Author therof very learnedly handled, and having a notable Subjette, to wit, matter of pollicie and governmente in peace and warre’.81 A further snare for future historians was laid in 1576 when William Blandie’s translation of Osorio’s De nobilitate appeared, some thirty-four years after the first Latin edition. Osorio’s attack on Machiavelli was limited in scope, but his disgust at the assertion that Christianity had effeminated the faithful, and that it compared badly with pagan religions, anticipated a similar point made in the Contre-Machiavel, II. 3, and must have aroused the sympathy of many a pious reader. The earliest connection between Gentillet and England was tangential but important. In 1577 at Geneva, the Calvinist minister Lambert Daneau published anonymously a Latin translation of the Contre-Machiavel prefaced with a dedicatory letter to two young English gentlemen, Francis Hastings and Edward Bacon; and in the following year the translation was reissued with the epistle slightly amended.82 Neither of the dedicatees was particularly 80 Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the divell (1592), in The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow (1904–10), i. 183. Nashe refers to ‘Nicolao Malevolo’: but there is little doubt as to his meaning. Elsewhere, in Summers last will and Testament (1600), in Works, iii. 277, Nashe wrote, ‘the arte of murther Machiavel hath pend’. Nashe, as a matter of fact, did know something about Machiavelli but could never resist the literary effects of such nonsense. 81 Stradling makes this remark in the dedication of his translation of Justus Lipsius, Two bookes of constancie (1595). He later composed an epigram attacking Machiavelli’s poisonous precepts, Joannis Stradlingi epigrammatum libri quatuor (1607), Lib. II: ‘Principis ingenium praeceptis imbuis: istis ‘‘Mundi huius princeps’’ te prius imbuerat’ (‘With precepts you infect the prince’s nature: with them, the Prince of this World had first infected you’). On Stradling, see Glanmor Williams, ‘Sir John Stradling of St. Donats’, Glamorgan Historian, 9 (1973), 11–28. 82 Commentarium de regno aut quovis principatu recte & tranquille administrando, libri tres (Geneva, 1577); reissued with revisions in 1578. On Daneau as translator of the Contre-Machiavel, the two versions of the dedication, and the dedicatees themselves, see D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. lxi–lxv. Daneau, in the editions of his Politicorum aphorismorum silva (Leiden, 1591), 9, and in the Politices Christianae libri septem (?Geneva, 1596), sigs. g.2–5, attacks Machiavelli’s ‘precepts’, and refers to the Contre-Machiavel, again as an anonymous work which confutes the Florentine’s ‘political rules’. On Daneau’s aphorisms, and on other compilers of

358

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

significant, although both came from distinguished families, were Puritan in sympathy, and are known to have spent time in Geneva.83 Daneau’s letter is an impassioned warning to England to beware the deadly danger which, having already engulfed France, now threatens her; and he explains how the current situation has arisen. Christian morality, long undermined by scoffers such as Rabelais and Agrippa, has now been subjected to open assault by Machiavelli, ‘a most pernitious writer’, with the result that faith has been taken from princes, authority and majesty from the laws, liberty from the people, and peace and concord from everybody. In order to infect France with this deadly Italian poison, Satan sent foreigners who so promoted their ‘Machiavellian bookes’ that now no one has any reputation in the French court, ‘which hath not Machiavels writings at the fingers ends, and that both in the Italian and French tongues, and can apply his precepts to all purposes, as the oracles of Apollo’. France is ‘swimming in blood and disfigured by subversion’, whereas England has been spared this terrible fate by a Queen who has preserved ‘wholesome unitie’ throughout the realm: not by guile, perfidy, and other Machiavellian villainies, but by true virtues such as Clemency, Justice, and Faith. Thus far Machiavelli’s infectious doctrine has not ‘breathed nor penetrated the intrails of most happy England’; and, should such an unhappy eventuality arise, Daneau has tried to provide an antidote:

condensed wisdom (such as Gregorius Richter and Waramundus de Erenbergk) who made use of Gentillet , see below, Ch. 17. 83 There is nothing to show that the dedicatees learned anything from Daneau’s labours and when, two decades later, Francis Hastings became embroiled in controversy with the Catholics he attacked the Spaniards as the true Machiavellians and denounced their ‘Machiavellian counsellors’ who had long before sought to gain absolute power over England by marrying Philip of Spain to Mary Tudor. Hastings then took on the famous Jesuit Robert Parsons, whom he vaguely described as a ‘Machivilian witted Romanist’ depraving God’s blessings with his ‘Machevilian wit and false interpretations’. None of this abuse required acquaintance either with Machiavelli or Gentillet. See Hastings’s pamphlets, A watch-word to all religious, and true hearted English-men (1598), 92–4; An apologie or defence of the Watch-word, against the Ward-word (1600), sigs. A4v, 5.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

359

For when I thought it meete and right (especially in such a confused disorder of matters and times) to impart as well to our French men, as to other nations these discourses, first written by a man of most singular learning and wisedome, I willingly undertooke this labour, which I have performed to the uttermost of my power, and now I wholy refer my selfe and my travaile, to serve for the benefit of publicke utilitie.84

Daneau’s letter, on its first appearance, was dated ‘Kalends Augusti. Anno 1577’, and when, in 1602, Simon Patericke published his English translation of the Contre-Machiavel, he prefaced it with a translation of the same dedicatory epistle, dated as in the original. Unfortunately, Edward Meyer, in his pioneering study of Machiavelli and the Elizabethan drama, assumed that the whole translation had been executed at that earlier date and that it had somehow circulated in manuscript for some twenty-five years, poisoning English minds and engendering the Machiavel stereotype. This error has long since been exploded but is, in any case, irrelevant. It was not abnormal for educated Englishmen to read material in Latin, French, or Italian; and we know that some, at least, became familiar either with the Contre-Machiavel itself or with ideas deriving from it long before Patericke’s translation appeared. The first English example of hostility towards Machiavelli based upon the Contre-Machiavel occurs in a sermon preached at St Paul’s Cross in 1578, appropriately on St Bartholomew’s Day, by John Stockwood, who is now mainly remembered as an 84 This quotation is from Patericke’s English translation, A Discourse upon the meanes of wel-governing and maintaining in good peace, a kingdom or other principalitie. Divided into three parts, namely The Counsell, the Religion, and the Policie, which a Prince ought to hold and follow. Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine. Translated into English by Simon Patericke (1602), sigs. g.3–4v. In 1580 there appeared a German translation, by the pastor Georg Nigrinus, of Daneau’s Latin version of the Contre-Machiavel, including versions of Gentillet’s letter to Alenc¸on and Daneau’s epistle to Hastings and Bacon. It also has a dedicatory letter to Johann Ludwig of Nassau in which Nigrinus points out that, although Machiavelli’s own writings are little known in Germany, his precepts have been introduced and spread abroad by counsellors and courtiers at the instigation of Satan. Now Germans may read this book where Machiavelli’s evil precepts are exposed in the same way that a doctor may describe a poison in order that it may be remedied. On this edition, see D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv, lxv– lxvii.

360

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

industrious translator of Latin texts written by Continental reformers such as Be`ze and Daneau himself. Stockwood, who was evidently in a bad mood because the English preferred plays to sermons, was quick to seize upon the perils posed by that ‘unpure Atheiste Machiavel’ who was not ashamed to teach that princes need ‘make no accounte of godlynesse and true religion, but onely to make an outwarde shewe of it: that (sayth he) is ynough, albeit in mynde they abhorre it’. Even more horrible was Machiavelli’s assertion that Christians’ religion ‘casteth them down into too much humilitie, abateth al courage and towardnesse, and maketh them fit to be wronged and spoiled’, whereas the religion of the Gentiles makes them ‘of stout courage, and emboldneth them manly to atchive great matters’. All this comes directly from the first three maxims of the second book of the Contre-Machiavel; and the derivation becomes clearer when Stockwood goes on to condemn the poison and filth spewed out by ‘this malaperte and pelting Town-cleark of Florence’, and to exclaim against the way in which this ‘vile beaste in many courtes of other nations be the only Court booke, nay the Alcoran and God of Courtiers, whose divellish precepts they put in dayly ure, learning to be godlesse’.85 Stockwood did not specify the French court as one of those where this ‘vile beast’ held sway, although the idea must have been in his mind. Feelings in England against the current negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth I and Franc¸ois de Valois, Duke of Alenc¸on and youngest son of Catherine de’ Medici, were already running dangerously high—and in dangerously high places, too. Both Leicester and Walsingham were bitterly opposed to the French match and this encouraged the egregious Gabriel Harvey (who certainly knew and admired Machiavelli’s work) to assume the mantle of Gentillet and not merely to satirize the hated policy, heap scorn on the Italians, mock the Machiavellism of the Medicean French court, allude to the St Bartholomew massacre, and call Machiavelli to testify against his own doctrine, but to do all this in a volume of Latin 85 John Stockwood, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse on Barthelmew day, being the 24. of August 1578 (1578), 23–4, 59–61. Stockwood’s second point, concerning Christian humility, occurs in Osorio’s De nobilitate Christiana, as does a characterization of Machiavelli as a ‘malepert, saucye, and wicked writer’. But both these points, along with the other accusations (not in Osorio), are made by Gentillet.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

361

verses which he had the effrontery to dedicate to the Queen herself. Luckily for Harvey, his anti-Medici satire was so heavily veiled, and couched in a Latin so convoluted and pun-packed, that nobody understood it and nothing untoward happened to him.86 In the following year, however, John Stubbes, a Puritan lawyer, was less fortunate when he published his Discoverie of a gaping gulf.87 This notorious book, written in plain and unambiguous English, is a violent polemic against the marriage negotiations; and Stubbes made so thorough a job of it that the work was promptly prohibited and he himself put on trial, found guilty of sedition, and punished by the amputation of his right hand. The Discoverie berates the ‘strange Christianity’ of some contemporaries who, neglecting the Word of God, ‘do beat their brains in other books of wicked, vile atheists and set before them the example of Italian practices’. Like Gentillet, Stubbes believes that the French have contracted ‘this sickness of the mind’, along with venereal disease of the body, from the Italians; but, worse still, they are now seeking to infect England and are helped in this by some of our own countrymen.88 Only evil can result from the French marriage. Alenc¸on may well have been dedicatee of the Contre-Machiavel, but Stubbes despised him as ‘a good son of Rome, that anti-Christian mother city’, and as an emissary of France, ‘a den of idolatry, a kingdom of darkness, confessing Belial and serving Baal’. The French court is described as ‘that most Christian court where Machiavelli is their New Testament and atheism is their religion’. Apologists for the marriage are dismissed as ‘discoursers that use the word of God with as little conscience as they do Machiavelli, picking out of both indifferently what may serve their turns’. The dangers arising from marriage with a ‘wicked race’ are exemplified by ‘the match of France with the Italian Athaliah’ and the resultant ‘furies in that land’, especially after the marriage between 86 For Harvey’s Machiavellism, see below, Ch. 13. 87 The discoverie of a gaping gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by an other French mariage (1579). There is a modern-spelling edition of the text, with letters, relevant documentation, and a valuable introduction by Lloyd E. Berry (Folger Shakespeare Library: Charlottesville, Va., 1968). 88 Discoverie, sig. A.2. On the Italian corruption of both body and mind, cf. Contre-Machiavel, III. 5.

362

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre. The atrocities of St Bartholomew are briefly, but powerfully, evoked: for the memory of them should be quite sufficient, in Stubbes’s view, to deter any Protestant from expecting good from such a union. Certainly, Alenc¸on would never speak of visiting England unless ‘he had some extraordinary purpose and some Italian quintessence of mischief meant to be compassed against the Church of Christ’. It is impossible to say categorically whether or not Stubbes had been reading Gentillet, but he was certainly sympathetic to the Continental Reformers and was familiar with the French language, having translated, or been involved in translating, works by The´odore de Be`ze. Individually, most of his anti-Italian/antiMachiavelli/anti-French court ideas could have been gathered piecemeal from other sources: but there is one further criticism of Machiavelli which suggests that Stubbes found all these themes bound together within the covers of the Contre-Machiavel. Discussing the dangerous policy of bringing a foreign prince into England, Stubbes points out the folly of those who suppose that, because Philip of Spain was got rid of after he had married Mary, it would be possible to do the same with Alenc¸on: and this absurd manner of reasoning is very Machiavellian logic, by particular examples thus to govern kingdoms and to set down general rules for his prince, whereas particulars should be warranted by generals. But their master wrested his ungracious wit ever to the maintenance of a present state, and these foolish scholars put forth their gross conceits to the overthrow of this present in hope of I wot not future commonwealth of their own head.89

The discussion of method in the Preface to the first part of the Contre-Machiavel was unique for its time; and, although Stubbes’s remarks are not identical with Gentillet’s, their similarity makes a relationship seem likely.90 89 Discoverie, sig. C.8. Cf. Fitzherbert, The first part of a treatise concerning policy and religion (1615), 345: ‘For precepts are to be deduced of things that are most frequent, and ordinary (Which breede an experience) and not of things more rare , or seldome seene, which are commonly casual, and to be referred to chance.’ 90 For another 16th-c. refutation of Machiavelli on methodological grounds, in Philippe Canaye’s L’Organe of 1589, see below, Ch. 17.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

363

Much the same may be said of what is, without doubt, the bestknown appearance of Machiavelli in Tudor England, when the monster of iniquity enters as the Prologue to Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. Albeit the world thinke Machevill is dead, Yet was his soule but flowne beyond the Alpes; And now the Guize is dead, is come from France, To view this Land and frolicke with his friends.

Inevitably, since this is an Elizabethan play and since Marlowe has been canonized as a great author, a considerable quantity of ink has been expended on the thirty-five lines of Machevill’s speech and the hilarious violence which ensues. The play itself is unique: a bizarre black comedy; wildly inventive, witty, and full of moral ambiguities and bad-taste jokes; with a ‘Machiavellian’ anti-hero, Barabas, so inept and transparent in his fiendish machinations and murders, and so lacking in self-control, that he is outwitted at every turn by the lying, cheating, ruthless, and opportunist Christian hypocrite, Farneze. Barabas ends his life literally in the soup; while Farneze, who has proved himself an infinitely more successful hatcher of plots, sanctimoniously utters the play’s concluding couplet: So march away, and let due praise be given Neither to Fate nor Fortune, but to heaven.

Marlowe depicts neither the triumph of good over evil, nor of evil over good, but rather of the more consummate evil over the less consummate. But, although it is perfectly possible that he may have had some first-hand acquaintance with Machiavelli’s work, there is nothing in the play or Prologue to demonstrate it. The main ideas set out in Machevill ’s speech—the migration of the poisonous doctrines from Italy to France and thence to England, the infection of the Papacy, the contempt for religion, the recognition that might is political right, the view that tyrants should dominate their subjects from a ‘strong built Citadell’, and, above all, the emphasis on usury—are all characteristic of Gentillet’s

364

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

view of Machiavelli, but whether derived directly or indirectly therefrom it is impossible to say.91 There are other instances where the relationship to Gentillet is similarly inexplicit but even more obvious. In A Treatise against Traitors the author, Samuel Cottesford, takes issue with ‘a most divelish conclusion of Machiavill (to whom our age I feare, is overmuch addicted)’. The devilish conclusion comes from ‘his booke intituled Machiavilli princeps’ and concerns the choosing of counsellors, the dangers arising from seeking advice from too many, and the need to spurn flatterers. The material appears to come directly from Il Principe, 23, but Cottesford gives himself away by referring to ‘another of his [Machiavelli’s] speculative contemplations for the avoiding of flatterers’ in which he ‘saith that Princes shall proclaime by publicke Edict, that no one of his freendes or counsellers shall perswade him to anything, neither conferre with him of any matter, unless it be of that whereof he himselfe shall offer voluntarilye to speake’. The whole section is, in fact, a conflation of the Latin translation of the first two maxims of Contre-Machiavel, Book I, together with Gentillet’s ‘Machiavellian’ expansions thereof.92 Similarly, it is likely that the Latin version of the ContreMachiavel was a decisive influence on Thomas Bowes when he came to write the two epistles (one dedicatory, the other ‘to the Reader’) which preface his translation of the second part of La Primaudaye’s French academie.93 For Bowes, ‘that monster 91 The emphasis on usury is provided by Machevill ’s allusion to Barabas’s pleasure at seeing ‘how full his bags are cramb’d, which mony was not got without my meanes’—together with a reference, later in the play (IV. i. 54) to his lending money at interest, ‘A hundred for a hundred’, which is an accusation made by Gentillet against the Italians. 92 Samuel Cottesford, A Treatise against Traitors (1591), sigs. A.7v–8. Bawcutt, ‘Elizabethan Allusions’, 61–2, thought that the material derived from a Latin version of Il Principe, but it really comes from the Latin translation of Gentillet, where there are several extra phrases not in Machiavelli’s original text—especially the reference to proclaiming by ‘publicke Edict’, forbidding friends of counsellors to initiate a discussion, which is a literal rendering of the Latin, ‘edicere . . . amicis & consiliariis’. 93 Pierre de la Primaudaye, translated T. B[owes], The second part of the French academie (1594), sigs. A.4–B.4. For the various editions of this translation, see STC, nos. 15233–41.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

365

Machiavel’ was the source of the atheism which he believed was so spread abroad throughout Christendom ‘that the whole course of men’s lives almost everywhere, is nothing else but a continual practice of his preceptes’. And these precepts, as summarized by Bowes, prove to be merely a selection of maxims from the second book (‘De la Religion’) of the Contre-Machiavel.94 The spread of atheism was also the concern of William Covell in his Polimanteia of 1595.95 He regarded the attacks by Puritan extremists on established religion as partly responsible for this development although, in his view, the teaching of Machiavelli was more fundamental. But what, in fact, was this view worth? ‘Profane Machiavel’ had obtained credit amongst the greatest statesmen in Europe, and Covell puts into the mouth of Religion a speech which not only summarizes this sorry state of affairs but also, quite inadvertently, encapsulates the hazards of trying to track the movement of ideas. According to Religion, Atheism has persuaded the world that she is dead. The pernicious counsels of Machiavelli are listed, and they are all familiar to us. Princes should rely wholly upon their own wisdom; should seem religious in appearance but with no intention of embracing the truth; should prefer paganism to Christianity; and should ascribe felicity to fortune and not to virtue or true religion. Counsels such as these, with others of similar impurity, have been presented by that ‘profane Atheist’ and have no sooner been imbibed by some European states than their ruin has ensued. One might assume that, since all the material in Religion’s speech is redolent of the ContreMachiavel, Covell must have been reading this work, especially since Gentillet (under the guise of ‘Anonymos’) appears in a marginal list of authors who are said to have exposed Machiavelli’s errors: Catharino, Molanus, Botero, Anonymos, Petrus Coretus, 94 The maxims are from the Contre-Machiavel, II. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. I think that the Latin version was used because Bowes’s imagery has two echoes of Daneau’s dedicatory letter. First, he says that ‘Machiavel first beganne to budde’ in Florence, whence he had subsequently ‘spreadde abroade his deadly branches of atheism’; and second, when he writes about ‘this bad fellowe whose works are no less accounted of among his followers then were Apollo’s Oracles among the Heathen’. 95 William Covell, Polimanteia, or the meanes lawfull and unlawfull to judge of the fall of a common-wealth (1595), sigs. Y.3–Bb.4v.

366

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Possevino, ‘and learned Puritans’.96 Unfortunately, that list does not represent wide reading on the part of Covell but is, instead, a shameless theft from Antonio Possevino’s Judicium—as are Covell’s four Machiavellian maxims. The interesting feature of this is that Possevino had no knowledge of Machiavelli other than what he had gleaned from the Latin version of the Contre-Machiavel—so that Covell had not only not read Machiavelli, he had not even read Gentillet.97 On the other hand, it was perfectly possible for people to read both Gentillet and Machiavelli:98 and a number of writers evidently did so, including two who admired the latter and despised his Huguenot adversary. The first adverse English reference to Gentillet crops up in the letter ‘al benigno lettore’, prefacing an Italian edition of the Discorsi dated 28 January 1584 and issued as the work of a Palermo press, ‘gli heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli’. In fact, there was no such press. The book, along with its preface, was the work of the daring London printer John Wolfe whose remarkable career—from young rebel against the printing establishment to ruthless and persecuting member of that same establishment— earned him first a reprimand for his ‘Machiavellian devices’, and subsequently the nickname Machivill.99 Wolfe makes no bones about greatly admiring Machiavelli’s sharpness of intellect and the novelty of his methods for drawing useful lessons from the reading of history. He freely admits that, like so many others, he had been prepared to accept an entirely negative assessment of this author unread and merely on the basis of other people’s opinions. Luckily, a few years back, he had encountered a ‘man, very wise and profound in political affairs’, who had encouraged him to read 96 The list is given in Polimanteia, sig. Bb3v. The ultimate sources for Covell’s maxims are Contre-Machiavel, I. 1; II. 1, 3, 10. 97 On Possevino see below, Ch. 11. 98 It was certainly possible to own both authors, as did a Cambridge reader named Bradshaw who, in 1583, spent 1s. 4d. on a copy of the ‘Discourse of Machiavel’; an unspecified sum on ‘Machiavelli Princeps’; and 1s. on ‘Antimachiavellus’. See Robert Jahn, ‘Letters and Booklists of Thomas Chard (or Chare) of London (1583–4)’, The Library, 4th ser., 4 (1924), 210–37, items 128, 129, 138. 99 There is a considerable literature on John Wolfe, on which see above, Ch. 6 n. 22. See also Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State, 86–110, which is a very clear and succinct account of Wolfe’s career although, as usual, I cannot accept the author’s general conclusions about a Machiavellian arcana.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

367

Machiavelli for himself and, Wolfe enthuses, ‘I have learned more in one day about the governments of the world, than I have achieved in the rest of my life, from all the histories I have read’. As he observes, there are few copies of Machiavelli’s works to be found and, more to the point—although he does not say so—since printers in Italy were forbidden to produce these books, there would probably be a lucrative market for ‘Italian’ editions. Furthermore, he continues, he was spurred on to carry out this enterprise by the slanders against Machiavelli’s works, and especially by his having recently read the writings of somebody he dubs ‘that Momus’—but who can only be Gentillet. Whoever, says Wolfe, ‘without prejudice’ (senza passione)’ perfectly examines the one and the other, will find Machiavelli worthy of eternal memory, while his enemy and all his followers—who are very powerful in injuries, insults, and false accusations—are ‘scarcely worthy to serve as purveyors of sausages and pilchards’ (a pena degni di servire a questi venditori di salciccie, e di sardelle).100 It is likely that Wolfe’s enthusiasm for Machiavelli and contempt for Gentillet had been stirred by his close acquaintance and business dealings with the illustrious Italian jurist and pioneer of international law Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), who was probably the ‘very wise man’ referred to in the printer’s letter ‘al benigno lettore’. Gentili’s family had been obliged to flee Italy for their religious beliefs and, in 1580, Alberico was welcomed in England, where he quickly established himself both in Oxford as a teacher and in London as a practising lawyer. He was also a productive author, and several of his books—including the De iure belli, upon which his fame now chiefly rests—were printed by John Wolfe. In 1583, the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, was implicated in the Throgmorton Plot against Elizabeth, and Gentili was consulted by the government on how best to deal with the situation. He was evidently fascinated by the topic, choosing it as the subject of an Oxford disputation in 1584, and then expanding it into the De legationibus—dealing with matters of law, policy, and expediency 100 I discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli, sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (‘In Palermo, Apresso gli heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli a xxviij. di Gennaio 1584’): ‘Lo stampatore al benigno lettore’, sigs. *2–4.

368

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

in relation to ambassadors—which was printed in the following year, not by Wolfe but by Thomas Vautrollier. In the course of this work, Gentili considers the skills necessary for an ambassador and, while believing that a knowledge of history is essential, he declares that it must be combined with ‘that branch of philosophy that deals with morals and politics’. This is the ‘soul of history’ for it explains the causes of words, deeds, and issues, and brings historical knowledge within the field of ‘well-defined and useful practical experience’. It is at this critical point—the practical application of historical study—that Gentili shows that he has read both Machiavelli and Gentillet, and has come to a very firm conclusion as to their relative merits: Nor in this connection shall I hesitate to speak of the most distinguished of his class, and to set up as a model for imitation Machiavelli and his precious Observations on Livy. The fact that some claim that he was a man of no learning and of criminal tendencies makes no difference to me. It is his remarkable insight that I praise; I do not defend his impiety or his lack of integrity, if he actually had such faults. And yet if I, reviewing the book issued against him, take into consideration his position, if I give a just estimate of his purpose in writing, and if I choose to reinforce his words by a sounder interpretation, I do not see why I can not free from such charges the reputation of this man who has now passed away. He was not understood by the person who wrote against him and he has been calumniated in many ways. There is no doubt that Machiavelli is a man who deserves our commiseration in the highest degree.101

Gentili then goes on to make a remarkable claim that Machiavelli ‘was a eulogist of democracy, and its most spirited champion’—a notion which has had its advocates ever since and which looms large in modern Machiavelli studies. Here, however, it is sufficient to note two things: first, the rejection of Gentillet as a writer who simply did not understand the works he was criticizing; and second, the fact that this negative view of Gentillet was extremely rare. Franc¸ois de la Noue, for example, whose Discours politiques et militaires appeared in an English translation by Edward Aggas in 101 Alberico Gentili, De legationibus libri tres, trans. Gordon L. Laing (New York, 1924), ii. 155–6.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

369

1587, had—as we have seen—found Machiavelli impressive and convincing until his eyes were opened by Gentillet’s critique. A year later, the Aristotelian Oxford philosopher John Case published his Sphaera Civitatis, a dropsical exposition of Aristotle’s Politics, which helped promote the critical stance of the ContreMachiavel amongst an academic audience. Inevitably when dealing with Politics V. 10–11, Case was obliged to discuss tyrannies, and he entangles his readers in distinctions between Aristotle’s virtuous treatment of tyranny on the one hand, and the Italian’s perversions on the other. Case had read both Machiavelli and Gentillet: but it is through the distorting lens of the latter that he views the former.102 Another writer who knew something of both Machiavelli and Gentillet was Richard Harvey, brother of the much more famous Gabriel. Gabriel was certainly familiar with Machiavelli’s works; and Richard was similarly knowledgeable if his Theologicall discourse of the Lamb of God (1590) is anything to go by. This diatribe, written in the midst of the Marprelate controversy, comprises a general attack on both sides of the pamphlet war, seasoned with some violent abuse of Thomas Nashe, the satirist who constantly penetrated beneath Gabriel’s thin skin.103 Like Gentillet, Richard Harvey intends to refute Machiavelli on the basis of his own works. Also like Gentillet, Harvey, while conceding that Italy was once ‘the true mirrour of virtue and manhood’, fears that it has more recently raised ‘infinite Atheists’ of whom Cesare Borgia, Aretino, and Machiavelli (‘this unchristian master of policie’) are the most prominent.104 The last-named is not afraid ‘in a heathenish and tyrannical spirit, L.2 of warly art, in the person of Fabricio, to accuse the gospel of Christ, and humilitie of the lamb of Gode, for the decay of the most flourishing and prosperous estate of the Roman Empire’. Yet, in fact, Rome fell ‘by its owne idleness and 102 John Case, Sphaera Civitatis (Oxford, 1588), and editions at Frankfurt in 1589 and 1593. On Case, see Bawcutt, ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, 11–12, 15, 20–2, 30, 32, 36–7; Charles B. Schmitt, ‘John Case and Machiavelli’, in S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus (eds.), Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore (Florence, 1978), 231–40. 103 Richard Harvey, A theologicall discourse of the Lamb of God and his enemies (1590). On the background to this text, see G. R. Hibbard, Thomas Nashe: A Critical Introduction (1962), 180–6. 104 Harvey’s refutation of Machiavelli is in Theologicall discourse, 94–9.

370

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

follie’, as Machiavelli ‘himself confesseth L.7 ’. Machiavelli’s terrible accusation, Harvey continues, is in many men’s hands and, worse still, in many men’s hearts: Howbeit, the same is learnedly confuted, not only by a religious French Protestant [that is Gentillet] whose commentaries are extant, written ex professo, against Machiavelli and his antichristian ground of government, but also by no vile papist, much read and named among students, I mean Osorius in his Nobilitate Christiana L.3.

Harvey goes on to summarize very briefly the gist of Osorio’s argument for Christian valour, but wisely omits the discussion of military virtues (the necessity for war, and the use of extreme action in politics when under constraint) which had led his predecessor into such difficulties. Instead he stresses how: that secretary of hell, not only of Florence, is forced to confesse in some places L.I disc.c.11 upon Livy and elsewhere, but most emphatically in his proeme to L. Philipp Strozza, by vehement and zealous interrogation: In whom ought there to be more feare of God, then in a warriour, which everyday committing himselfe to infinite perils hath most neede of his helpe? A right Italian sentence, a notable word, a fit preserve against the other venims which this spider gathered out of old philosophers and heathen authors.

Harvey’s attack on Machiavelli has several obvious points of interest: his acceptance of Gentillet’s view of Italy as the source of modern atheism; his respect for Gentillet’s refutation; his use of Osorio; and his precise reference to the Discorsi (although this could have been taken from Gentillet’s marginal note in the Contre-Machiavel II. 9, rather than from the original source). However, he also makes three allusions to a work rarely cited by non-military authors—the Arte della guerra—and his quotation is taken from Peter Whitehorne’s popular translation, the third edition of which had appeared only a couple of years previously.105 An even more unusual example of familiarity with both Machiavelli and Gentillet is to be found in the work of Simon Harward—a divine and preacher with a ‘rambling head’—whose citations, from 105 The relevant ‘vehement interrogation’ in Whitehorne’s version of ‘The Proheme of Nicholas Machiavell . . . upon his booke of the Arte of Warre’ reads: ‘In whom ought there to bee more feare of GOD, then in him, which every daie commityng himself to infinite perilles, hath moste neede of his helpe?’

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

371

Il Principe in Italian and from the Contre-Machiavel in French, were first noticed by N. W. Bawcutt.106 In The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour (1592), written to encourage English troops fighting on behalf of Protestantism, Harward describes Gentillet as ‘The Frenchman that hath answered all the Maximes gathered out of the workes of Machiavel’, and goes on to cite accurately from the Contre-Machiavel, III. 1, though on an issue with which he happens to disagree.107 Four years later, Harward published his Encheiridion morale—a collection of aphorisms, describing the four cardinal virtues, from ‘the most famous Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French orators and poets’.108 At one point Harward cites an Italian proverb to the effect that you should offer a helping hand to an enemy who is up to his waist in water, but should tread on his head when he is already immersed up to his chin. He then observes that Machiavelli’s impious advice in the eighteenth chapter of Il Principe is the same kind of thing, and quotes two passages which, while demonstrating his acquaintance with the Italian text, display a lack of judgement since neither citation is relevant to the offensive Italian proverb.

the machiavel stereotype Neither Machiavelli nor Gentillet represented Harward’s primary concerns; and this is true of most of the authors, both French and English, cited in this chapter. I have assembled the material, not in order to suggest that there was any kind of school stimulated by Gentillet but simply to demonstrate a general awareness of the main substance of his critique of Machiavelli: that the Florentine was an atheist; that his foul anti-Christian doctrines had been expressed in a series of maxims; that these ideas, like a disease emanating from a plague-infested city, had been carried abroad by 106 Anthony a` Wood in Athenae oxoniensis, ed. P. Bliss, ii. 29; Bawcutt, ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’, 63–4. 107 Simon Harward, The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour (1592), sig. F3. Bawcutt suggested that this was the first quotation, by an English author, from Gentillet in the original French. 108 Simon Harward, Encheiridion morale (1596), 41.

372

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Italian courtiers and had corrupted France; and that the contagion was in danger of spreading (or already had spread) to England. All the authors I have referred to either had direct knowledge of the Contre-Machiavel, were aware of some of the maxims attributed by Gentillet to Machiavelli, or were at least familiar with Gentillet’s basic thesis that Machiavellism consisted of a series of tyrannical maxims.109 With this background in mind, it is easier to recognize the rapid evolution of the Machiavel stereotype as a phenomenon which does, in the main, stem from Gentillet’s concentrated assault on Machiavelli rather than from the scattered shots fired by earlier critics. The escrivaillerie, denounced by Montaigne, became increasingly frenetic after the Saint Bartholomew and exploded towards the end of the 1580s with the Marprelate and other controversies in England, and the outrage following the murders of the Guises and Henri III in France. Amidst this welter of contumely, Machiavelli’s name was finally debased and emptied of all meaning other than as a synonym for any perceived moral and 109 Evidence that the spread of this stereotypical view was often based on Gentillet, rather than on first-hand knowledge of Machiavelli, is discussed below, Ch. 11. But, en passant, two examples are worth citing here. In the dedicatory letter prefixed by Joannes Leunclavius [Johann Lo¨wenklau] to his edition of Belisario Aquaviva di Aragona’s De principium liberis educandis (Basle, 1578), sigs. *2r–v, *4, he describes Machiavelli as one who has written de Principe and commentaries on peace and war. Leunclavius acknowledges that Machiavelli—whom he describes as an archivist of the Florentine republic—was acutely intelligent, but condemns him as a deplorable and most pestilential master of depravity: Nicolaus quidam Machiavellus, Florentinae reipublicae tabularius, acuti quidem ingenii vir, sed intestabilis, & pestilentissimus improbitatis magister; and goes on to list the nefaria axiomata and nefandas & execribiles illas Machiavelli regulas— which are all reminiscent of Gentillet’s Machiavellian maxims. Equally derivative are the tiny handful of Machiavellian allusions buried in the 1,063 pages of a work formerly attributed to Guillaume Rose, Bishop of Senlis, but now thought to be by William Rainolds: De iusta reipublica Christiana (Paris, 1590); and another edition (Antwerp, 1592). Despite his antipathy towards Calvin, whom he regards as a pupil of Machiavelli, Rainolds is not averse to borrowing from the Huguenot Gentillet. In fact, his knowledge of the impius Machiavellus goes no further than the Contre-Machiavel—as is obvious from his belief that he is quoting (at fo. 459) Machiavelli’s own words, when, in fact, they are taken verbatim from the ContreMachiavel, Maxims III, 18, 23: Principi pejerare fallere, & dissimulare, sine ulla dubitatione licet; and Princeps ingenium versatile & arte usuque factum in saevitiam & perfidiam habere debet, ut re ipsa talem se praestet quoties expedierit.

THE ‘MACHIAVEL’ STEREOTYPE

373

political evil. Anna Maria Battista noted many such references for France, and Edward Meyer painstakingly collected several hundred examples from English sources, particularly the drama. But even these are merely the tip of a very substantial rubbish-heap, and it would be fruitless to pile up further repetitious examples of opprobrious words and slogans.110 Such substitution for thought and knowledge by cliche´ and ignorance is familiar to us from the abuses of our own contemporary newspapers, radio, television, film, and misinformation technology. The real difficulty lies in assessing the effect of mass hysteria upon any serious attempt to face up to controversial issues. How far did the widespread abuse of Machiavelli’s name influence the way in which he was read by those who attempted to study his works seriously? I doubt that this is a question which can be satisfactorily answered: but it will, none the less, be addressed in the following three chapters, where it will also become clear that the effects of Gentillet’s work extended beyond helping to create a vague atmosphere of uninformed antipathy. The Jesuits and other Catholic opponents of Machiavelli found the Huguenot’s Contre-Machiavel a valuable compendium of arguments; and their writings undoubtedly added weight, if not substance, to the attack on Machiavelli. 110 One example, though, is too succulent to be passed over in silence. This is the Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis (Antwerp, 1587)—an illustrated account of the persecution of Catholics by Protestants in Europe. Perhaps conceived as a response to John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, which had recorded the sufferings of English Protestants under Mary Tudor, the Theatrum crudelitatum was the work of Richard Rowlands, an English Catholic of Dutch extraction, who moved to Antwerp and resumed his paternal name of Verstegen, by which he is best known. The Latin text of 1587 was followed by a French translation (Antwerp, 1588) and several further editions, all with powerful woodcuts depicting the tortures inflicted upon the Catholic faithful. The final section is devoted to ‘L’Inquisition Angloise’ and to descriptions of the ‘Cruautez Machiavelliques’ carried out in England and Ireland by the Protestant Calvinists, under the rule of Elizabeth ‘a` present Regnante’. These English atrocities are depicted in eight plates, each headed ‘Persecutions contre les Catholiques par les Protestants Machiavellistes en Angleterre’.

11 More Machiavellian than Machiavel: The Jesuits and the Context of Donne’s Conclave In 1611, when John Donne published Ignatius His Conclave, the Society of Jesus had been going strong for more than seventy years; and the literature concerning its virtues and vices, achievements and crimes, had swollen to a monstrous bulk. Indeed, eight years earlier Thomas Bell—whose ‘doleful knell’ was subsequently tolled by the Jesuit Robert Parsons—had already complained that the works produced merely in one area of controversy, relating to the activities of the Society in England alone, were so numerous that ‘to read all the said books is a labour both tedious and painefull. To buy them is too chargeable for manie. To understand them, as they are confusely published, is a thing not easie for the greater part.’1 I cannot, like Bell, confidently promise that the ‘defect herein, my annotations and compendious observations will supplie’: but I hope that an examination of Donne’s Conclave within what might be termed its penumbra of ideas may not only help towards our understanding of the pamphlet itself but may also illuminate the nature of contemporary attitudes towards Machiavelli and the farreaching, but often implicit effects, of Gentillet’s work. As far as clarifying the precise points of the controversy touched upon by Donne, and the numerous texts cited in the course of his This chapter is a revised and augmented version of my article ‘More Machiavellian than Machiavel: A Study of the Context of Donne’s Conclave’, in A. J. Smith (ed.), John Donne: Essays in Celebration (1972), 349–84. 1 Thomas Bell, The anatomie of popish tyrannie (1603), sig. B4r–v.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

375

work, are concerned there is little which could be added to the thorough annotations of Father Healy in his erudite edition.2 However, satirical pamphlets of a semi-popular kind make their effect not solely by such precise references. Their impact must also depend, in large part, upon a more general atmosphere of controversy within which an allusion—or even a word—might alert a reader to countless other, similar ideas. And this was certainly the case with the Conclave. The immediate context of Donne’s work was the paper war provoked, in May 1606, by the Oath of Allegiance imposed on the Roman Catholic community in England. The Oath was largely inspired by the hostility and fear aroused by the Gunpowder Plot, and Catholics were required to swear that the Pope had no authority to depose the King, or to interfere with his affairs in any way whatsoever; that they would remain loyal whatever attempts were encouraged by the Pope against the King; and that they did ‘abhor detest and abjure as impious and hereticall this damnable Doctrine and Position, that Princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the Pope may be deposed or murthered by their Subjectes or any other whosoever’.3 English Catholics were somewhat taxed by the situation. Their Archpriest, George Blackwell, was inclined to regard the Oath as a ‘civil’ document; advised that it should be taken: and himself set an example to that effect, which was followed by many of his co-religionists. On the other hand, Pope Paul V issued two breves forbidding the taking of the Oath, and subsequently engaged Robert Bellarmine, his ‘grand-master of controversies’,4 to set out the Jesuit position, which was to regard the Oath as no merely civil act, to recognize that it called into question the foundations of the Catholic faith, and to urge that it be utterly refused. Everybody who was anybody in the world of religious controversy joined in the fray, and volumes poured from the presses both in England and on the Continent, defending the Crown’s right to impose such an oath, and defending those 2 John Donne, Ignatius His Conclave, ed. T. S. Healy (Oxford, 1969). All references are to this edition, cited as ‘Healy’. 3 Act 3. Jac, c. 4. ix. 4 David Owen, Herod and Pilate reconciled: or, the Concord of Papist and Puritan . . . for the Coercion, Deposition, and Killing of Kings (Cambridge, 1610), 38.

376

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Catholics who accepted it: or attacking the whole affair root and branch. Among the first group were two works by King James himself, the Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus, and its later reworked form, An apologie . . . together with a Premonition; while outstanding on the Jesuit side were the Responsio and Apologia, in which Bellarmine sought to crush his royal adversary. Healy has shown that the arguments touched upon in Donne’s Conclave were intimately related to the whole Oath of Allegiance controversy in general, and to these four works in particular; and his general conclusion, that the pamphlet was devised as a ‘satirical mockery of Bellarmine’s two works against James’, is wholly convincing.5 However, a problem remains. How does this ‘satirical mockery’ really function? To understand this it is necessary to consider a wider context of controversy than that relating merely to the Oath of Allegiance. And here ‘Machiavel’ provides a clue.

innovation and innovators Controversialists have always relished the opportunity to take an opponent’s own words and use them against him. The technique was much favoured in the early seventeenth century by enemies of the Catholic cause who delighted in collecting, tabulating, and commenting upon damaging maxims drawn from the writings of Jesuits and Seculars. As one triumphant Protestant inscribed on the flyleaf of his copy of The Jesuites Catechisme: ‘Whin knaves fall out, the truth is discovered and honest men come into their own. Here is an unnaturall combat papist against papist.’6 Thomas Bell was but one of many who undertook to read the work of Catholic adversaries, draw out their principal points of contention, and enable readers to comprehend them with a minimum of labour and cost. Indeed, Bell was so impressed by one of his own efforts that he was convinced that his enemies dare not even name the work: ‘their hearts pant so often as they remember it’.7 5 Healy, p. xxvi. The controversy is summarized at pp. xix–xxix. 6 Estienne Pasquier, The Jesuites Catechisme (n.p., 1602). The copy referred to is in the British Library, press mark 860.I.4. 7 Thomas Bell, The Popes funerall (1605), sig. D2v.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

377

Donne’s Conclave is, I think, to be regarded partly as a work within this genre: that is, as a confutation of one’s enemies who are seen to condemn themselves out of their own mouths. However, instead of the customary tedious apparatus—generally set out in a profusion of typefaces, where points are cited paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and even phrase by phrase, before being laboriously refuted—Donne has conceived a far more striking method. In an ‘Extasie’, the author’s soul wanders through the heavens; then it suddenly arrives in Hell, and proceeds to a secret place where Lucifer, accompanied by only a few great innovators, is enthroned. Boniface III and Mahomet contend for the ‘highest roome’, although it is clear that the latter is no match for his papal adversary, and has to be content ‘to sit (as yet hee doth) at the Popes feet’.8 Apparently the gates of this inner sanctum are opened but ‘once in an Age’, when all the contenders for admission come forward to plead their causes. The author’s soul has arrived at just the right moment, and he recognizes the first challenger as Copernicus, who impresses Lucifer, until Ignatius Loyola—who is already firmly ensconced—destroys his argument. This sets the pattern for the rest of the work. One after another the claimants come forward; and one after another each has his claim torn to pieces by Ignatius, who finally hurls Pope Boniface from his place next to Lucifer and occupies it himself. Donne’s vision of Hell is simply a means of bringing together all the standard accusations against the Jesuits within the compass of one small pamphlet; and the matter is very ingeniously handled. Apart from Machiavel, there are five principal aspirants whose pretensions are crushed by Loyola—and not one is allowed by Donne either to make out more than a token case for himself, or to occupy Ignatius much time in refutation. Only Machiavel makes a real speech on his own behalf, and Ignatius’s answer occupies just over a third of the entire pamphlet. The reason for this is patent: Machiavel is the only innovator who comes near to challenging Ignatius within the specific terms of innovation as defined in the Conclave. And one cannot begin to understand the Conclave

8 Healy, 9–13. Further references in text are to this edition.

378

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

without considering precisely what Donne means by innovation and innovators. The greater part of the vision is taken up with a contest for admission to Lucifer’s secret place; and this admission depends entirely upon the extent to which a claimant can prove, or Ignatius can disprove, his right to be regarded as an innovator. Throughout the sixteenth century innovation and novelties had carried religious connotations—and invariably bad ones. In January 1536, when the English Reformers were getting out of hand, and when ardent preachers were moving on from attacking the Pope to more fundamental religious issues, Thomas Cromwell had sent a letter to the Bishops pointing out that the people should not be charged with ‘overmuch novelties’ which could breed ‘contention, division and contrariety of opinion in the unlearned multitude’.9 Such attempts to suppress novelties became a commonplace; and novelties simply became equated with views other than one’s own—the latter, by contrast, being regarded as long-established and hallowed by custom. It was such fear of change in any order, once established, which led Nashe to cite Machiavelli—‘a pollitick not much affected to any Religion’—as one who had exposed just ‘howe odious and how dangerous innovations of Religion are’; which led Richard Cosin to accuse factions within the reformed Church of mistaking ‘seditious innovation for lawfull reformation’, and to argue that it was a poison which would endanger both Church and Commonwealth; and, more specifically concerning the Jesuits, which led Anthony Copley to write that the Society had grown so haughty that ‘wheresoever in all Christendome it sets footing it straight seeks to innovate all, and to captivate as well the Laitie as the Cleargie to her hommage’.10 Thinking of this kind resulted in continual battling as to which Church was the more truly primitive, that of Rome or that of England, and induced controversialists such as Bell to set before the eyes of his readers ‘as cleerly as in a glasse of Cristall, the original and daily excrements 9 LP x. 46; printed in Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. N. Pocock (Oxford, 1865), 394–5. 10 Thomas Nashe, The Returne of the renowned Cavaliero Pasquill of England (1589), in Works, ed. McKerrow, i. 79; Richard Cosin, Conspiracie for pretended reformation: viz. Presbyterial discipline (1592), sig. B2; Anthony Copley, Another letter of Mr. A. C. to his dis-jesuited kinsman (1602), 21.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

379

of Popery, and that it is not the Old but the New Religion’.11 New very clearly equalled illegitimate and unauthorized; and innovation was, therefore, unequivocally a bad thing. Something of these conventional attitudes are to be discerned in the Conclave. In particular, the question of the original state of the Church occurs when Ignatius is considering Lucifer’s proposal that he should go to establish his own Church on the Moon. Recalling that a woman governs there, Ignatius points out that those who have attempted any religious innovation have always profited from that sex. The only exception he can call to mind is Elizabeth of England; and even she was not free from all innovation, ‘for the ancient Religion was so much worne out, that to reduce that to the former dignity, and so to renew it, was a kinde of Innovation’. On the other hand, Ignatius hastily corrects himself, he dare not recognize this sort of thing as truly innovatory, lest he should thereby ‘confesse that Luther and many others which live in banishment in Heaven farre from us, might have a title to this place, as such Innovators’ (pp. 83–7). Elsewhere, on three occasions, Donne speaks of innovation in a more purely political sense: that is, as a revolution following a power struggle in Hell itself. Machiavel, prior to his own speech, considers the possibility of undermining Jesuitical influence by making Lucifer suspect that ‘Ignatius, by winning to his side, politique men, exercised in civill businesses, might attempt some innovation in that kingdome’; and subsequently Lucifer does indeed come to fear such a takeover bid and the introduction of innovations into Hell (pp. 25, 65, 71). However, such political interpretations of innovation are only incidental to the purpose of the Conclave. For the most part, Donne offers a highly idiosyncratic and circumscribed view of the matter, although his very first statement of the theme seems straightforward enough: only those have access to Lucifer’s secret place who have ‘so attempted any innovation in this life, that they gave an affront to all antiquitie, and induced doubts, and anxieties, and scruples, and after, a libertie of beleeving what they would; at length established opinions, directly contrary to all established

11 Thomas Bell, The tryall of the new religion (1608), sig. B1.

380

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

before’ (p. 9). This suggests that innovation is to be equated with intellectual revolution and subversion of established beliefs. But the idea is quickly qualified by the short, sharp contest between Boniface III, who had ‘expelled an old Religion’, and Mahomet, who had founded a new one. Mahomet is overmatched because he had ‘attributed something to the old Testament’; whereas Boniface had destroyed the entire monarchical system established in the Old Testament and had ‘prepared Popes a way, to tread upon the neckes of Princes’. Moreover, Mahomet compares unfavourably because, since his time, his followers have lived in ‘idle concord’; whereas the successors of Boniface ‘have ever beene fruitfull in bringing forth new sinnes, and new pardons, and idolatries, and Kingkillings’. Thus, though both Turks and Papists daily come to Hell in droves, the latter have the more ready access to the innermost room, ‘reserved for especiall Innovators’ (pp. 11–13). Already innovation is assuming a rather unusual meaning, which is further defined when Donne points out that not only those who have innovated in matters directly concerning the soul attempt to gain access to the room but also those who have done so ‘either in the Arts, or in conversation, or in anything which exerciseth the faculties of the soule, and may so provoke to quarrelsome and brawling controversies: For so the truth be lost, it is no matter how’ (p. 13).12 Here, innovation is limited to the promoting of dissension and, above all, to the destruction of truth—which is a long way from merely upsetting established opinion. This is further emphasized by Ignatius when dealing with Copernicus’s claim based on having ‘turned the whole frame of the world’. How, asks Ignatius, has this theory affected men’s beliefs concerning God? What advantage is it to Lucifer whether the earth moves or stands still? Moreover—and this is a vital point—Copernicus’s right to entrance is derogated because his opinions ‘may very well be true’. Thus, if these astronomical questions give anyone the right to enter 12 Cf. Owen, Herod and Pilate, 42. Owen (having shown how, from the same example of Chilperic, the Papists argue for the Pope’s power to depose, and the Puritans argue for the people’s power to do likewise) writes: ‘Men cannot say (as it is in the proverbe) nimium altercando veritas amittitur, seeing that in this opposition the truth is not lost, but divided among them.’

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

381

Lucifer’s room, the Jesuit mathematician Clavius—who had opposed Copernicus ‘and the truth’, and had caused ‘contentions, and schoole-combats in this cause’—had the better claim. Finally, Ignatius tells Copernicus that he must content himself with a less exalted place, with other philosophers, and not aspire ‘to this place reserved onely for Antichristian Heroes’ (pp. 17–19). This last would seem a very curious qualification for recognition as a great innovator; but it is, in fact, the sine qua non of the whole satire, and is even further stressed when Machiavel comes on the scene to acknowledge that ‘entrance into this place may be decreed to none but to Innovators, and to onely such of them as have dealt in Christian businesse; and of them also, to those only which have had the fortune to doe much harme’ (p. 29). Antichristian subversion of the truth, fomenting of discord, gratuitous harm—these are the criteria by which innovators are to be judged at the portals of Lucifer’s inner sanctum. And it is obvious that, given such criteria, neither Copernicus with his heavenly motions, Paracelsus with his uncertain medical experiments, Aretine with his pornographic pictures, Columbus with his geographical discoveries, nor Nerius with his sermons on the Saints, was likely to cause a stir in Hell, nor to present Ignatius with opposition much sterner than the motley crew of those who had ‘but invented new attire for woemen’, or had invented porcelain dishes, spectacles, quintains, stirrups, and Caviari. But Machiavelli could; and did. He came armed with excellent credentials: described by Pole as the ‘finger of Satan’; by Cosin as an ‘imp’ of Satan; and by Covell as ‘polluted Machiavel’, fashioned by Satan as an instrument to disgrace religion. Richard Harvey had even recommended him as ‘that secretary of hell, not only of Florence’.13 And his relevance can be comprehended not so much within the context of the Oath of Allegiance controversy which was the immediate occasion for the Conclave, but within the context of contemporary anti-Machiavelli literature and its relation to the far greater mass of anti-Jesuit polemic. 13 Reginald Pole, Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, I. 137; Cosin, Conspiracie, sig. B2; William Covell, Religions speech to Englandes children, in Polimanteia, sigs. Y3–Bb4v; Richard Harvey, A Theologicall discourse, 97.

382

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

donne ’ s ma c h i a v e l ; a n d m a c h i a v e l l i Machiavel makes his appearance immediately after the discomfiture of Copernicus and Paracelsus; and, having observed how Ignatius has taken upon himself the ‘office of kings Atturney’ to destroy their case, he first prepares some ‘venemous darts, out of his Italian Arsenal ’ to cast against the foe. However, in view of the latter’s evident authority, Machiavel deems it more prudent to ‘sweeten and mollifie’ him—a tactic which would have the advantage of making Lucifer fear that his lieutenant might himself ‘attempt some innovation in that Kingdome’. Therefore, Machiavel addresses himself both to the ‘Dread Emperour’ and to his ‘watchfull and diligent Genius, father Ignatius’. He flatters their ‘stupendious wisedome’ and government; parodies the Trinity by likening Lucifer, Ignatius, and the Pope to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and goes on to praise the ‘sonnes of Ignatius’ for having created a ‘new art of Equivocation’, and for having reintroduced the language of the Tower of Babel, whereby people have again been brought to misunderstanding. Compared with the work of the Jesuits, Machiavel admits, his own achievements are but childish. Nevertheless, he hopes that one honour will not be denied him: that he has ‘brought in an Alphabet, and provided certaine Elements, and was some kind of schoolmaister in preparing them a way to higher undertakings’. Machiavel is ashamed that he should have to sue for admittance in the company of such creatures as Copernicus and Paracelsus, although the latter is the more endurable, and the more likely to enjoy the Jesuits’ favour in that he was practised in the ‘butcheries and mangling of men’: for I my selfe went alwaies that way of bloud, and therefore I did ever preferre the sacrifices of the Gentiles and of the Jewes, which were performed with effusion of bloud (whereby not only the people, but the Priests also were animated to bold enterprises) before the soft and wanton sacrifices of Christians. If I might have my choyce, I should rather have wished, that the Romane Church had taken the Bread, then the Wine, from the people, since in the wine there is some colour, to imagine and represent blood. (pp. 28–9)

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

383

This, Machiavel feels, should be a special attraction since Ignatius himself, having begun as a soldier, went on to wage spiritual war against the Church, and had even opened ways ‘into Kings chambers’ for his executioners. Though others outside the Society of Jesus might be involved in king-killing, Machiavel believes that the foundation and ‘nourishment’ of the doctrine is peculiar to Ignatius. Now, since only anti-Christian innovators, who have had the ‘fortune to doe much harme’, are allowed into Lucifer’s room, Machiavel insists that, after the Jesuits, his own claim must be regarded as the best: since I did not onely teach those wayes, by which thorough perfidiousnesse and dissembling of Religion, a man might possesse, and usurpe upon the liberty of free Commonwealths; but also did arme and furnish the people with my instructions, how when they were under this oppression, they might safeliest conspire, and remove a tyrant, or revenge themselves of their Prince, and redeeme their former losses; so that from both sides, both from Prince and People, I brought an abundant harvest, and a noble encrease to this kingdome. (pp. 29–31)

This is an interesting speech which poses several interpretative problems. Only two earlier English Machiavels have survived— Gabriel Harvey’s epigram, Machiavellus ipse loquitur; and Marlowe’s Prologue to the Jew of Malta—and neither of these had much to do with Machiavelli. What of Donne’s Machiavel? That Donne had some acquaintance with Machiavelli is apparent from his Pseudo-martyr, published in the year prior to the Conclave. There he discusses papal claims to jurisdiction outside Rome, and writes that, ‘as an Author which lived in profession of that Religion, informs us’, the citizens of Rome itself were always prepared to defend themselves against papal usurpations: ‘and this, at that time when England under Henry the second, and the remoter parts trembled at him, who trembled at his owne neighbours, and Subjects, as he pretended’. A marginal note cites Machiavelli’s Florentine History: ‘f. 34. Edit. Picen. An. 1587’. This is, in fact, the edition printed in London, with the false Piacenza imprint, by John ‘Machiavel’ Wolfe; and, since the reference is accurately given, we may, in this instance, presume

384

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

first-hand knowledge on Donne’s part.14 Unfortunately, one can travel no further in this direction. Father Healy, suggesting that Donne was ‘no victim of the ‘‘myth of Gentillet’’ ’ and that he had not taken his knowledge of Machiavelli ‘from his critics, Catholic or Protestant’, adds that the original texts were easily available to Donne ‘in Italian, even in English printings’ (p. xxxii). But what does Donne’s Machiavel really amount to? He reveals cunning in attempting to create a rift between Lucifer and Ignatius. He claims to have provided elements for the Jesuits’ evil doctrines and practices, and emphasizes his preference for the ‘way of bloud’ through an unfavourable comparison between Christian and pagan sacrifice. He boasts that he has taught how, by dissembling religion, a man might usurp a commonwealth; and how, conversely, people might conspire to overthrow princes. Now it is certainly true that these few simple propositions could have been drawn from an uncritical reading of Machiavelli’s own writings; but it is obvious that Donne need not have read a single word by Machiavelli himself in order to write what he has written in the Conclave. Donne’s Machiavel expresses all the sentiments popular opinion would, at that time, have expected of him. And here once again it must be stressed that Gentillet’s importance in moulding such opinion was no ‘myth’.

gentillet and some jesuits There are several things which must be borne in mind when considering the extent of Gentillet’s relevance here. First, that up to and including the year 1611, his Contre-Machiavel had proved very popular and that an English translation, first published in 1602, had been reissued in 1608. Secondly, as we have seen, there is ample evidence to show that Gentillet’s systematization of Machiavelli did, in fact, become accepted by many of those who had occasion to discuss affairs of state (and especially the relationship 14 John Donne, Pseudo-martyr. Wherein out of certaine propositions this conclusion is evicted. That those of the Romane religion ought to take the oath of allegeance (1610), sig. B.4v.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

385

between policy and religion) as what Machiavelli had himself written; and this despite the availability in print of Machiavelli’s own writings. But, in addition to these general relevancies, there are two further factors which make Gentillet especially pertinent to a consideration of Donne’s Conclave. The seventh maxim of the third part of Gentillet’s Discours concerns Machiavelli’s advice that a prince should model himself on Cesare Borgia, but the greater part of the ensuing refutation consists of a tirade against the abuses of papal power. This, in itself, is unremarkable: but the chapter ends with a curious expansion of a Latin verse by George Buchanan, who, says Gentillet, ‘toucheth the white’ by pointing out that the worldly conquests by land and sea of the ancient Romans were as nothing compared with the ‘moderne dominators of Rome’. The first bishops of Rome, by their good and holy life, gained heaven and paradise; but the more recent have valiantly conquered hell and have made themselves masters and peaceable possessors thereof, notwithstanding all the forces and resistance of Pluto and all his sequell, which would not suffer, that Popes should dominier in hell, but would only receive them as his vassales: But the chance hath happened contrarie; for the Pope is at this day, and hath beene long time, a peacable dominator and lord of hell, and Pluto is no more but his vassale, and the simple executioner of his commandements, and as it were gaoler of the Popes prisons.

Do you imagine, continues Gentillet, that Pluto dare disobey a single word of the ‘Pope his soveraigne’? On the contrary, it is certain that he ‘durst not once grunt nor contradict him in anything’, but does everything he can to maintain his friendship and do him all the service he can. The parallel with the Conclave is striking, although there is no direct evidence to link Gentillet’s little jeu d’esprit, or Buchanan’s verse, with Donne’s vision of hell.15 On the other hand there can be no doubt about the final reason for Gentillet’s relevance. 15 Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel (1576), 344–5; (1602), 198. Buchanan’s verse, Fratres fraterrimi, XVII, is in Georgii Buchanani Scoti Poematum pars altera (Edinburgh, 1714), 22. For a later use of a similar conceit, see Cromwell’s Complaint of Injustice: or, His Dispute with Pope Alexander the Sixth, for precedency in Hell (1681).

386

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Among the most bitter, and most often published, late sixteenth-century attacks on Machiavelli were those by Antonio Possevino and Pedro de Ribadeneira; while the fullest native English denunciation of the Florentine was published early in the seventeenth century by Thomas Fitzherbert. This has a twofold interest. In the first place, Possevino had never read Machiavelli, but summarized and condemned his doctrines solely on the basis of what Gentillet had written; Ribadeneira, though citing Machiavelli thrice, derived many of his opinions very obviously, but without acknowledgement, from Possevino; and Fitzherbert derived many of his opinions, just as obviously, and also without acknowledgement, from Ribadeneira. In the second place, all three were Jesuits. In 1592 there appeared the first edition of a work which grimly serves to demonstrate the influence which crass, but self-confident, ignorance may exert upon the history of ideas.16 Published under the name of the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, this Judicium is a collection of attacks on authors deemed dangerous to Christianity because they were heretical, because they elevated the secular state over the Church, or because they subverted conventional views of political morality.17 Thus La Noue, Bodin, Du Plessis Mornay, and Machiavelli are all bitterly denounced, although the treatment accorded to each is unequal in length and uneven in kind. Possevino augments his own diatribes with relevant fulminations from 16 Antonio Possevino, Cautio de iis, quae scripsit tum Machiavellus, tum is, qui adversus eum scripsit Antimachiavellum, qui nomen haud adscripsit, in his Judicium de Nuae militis Galli scriptis etc. (Rome, 1592). A version of this Cautio was included in Possevino’s Bibliotheca selecta (Rome, 1593) of which there were several subsequent editions. Nearly a century later there was an Italian version of the Cautio alone: Discorso contra l’impieta, & perniciosissimi consigli del Machiavello ch’egli per sparger il suo veleno diede a’ prencipi, et contrapositione dell’ottimo libro del perfetto governo de’ prencipi scritto da s. Tomaso d’Aquino al re di Cipro (Venice, 1685). 17 The Judicium comprises the following sections: Theorema e cautio on La Noue; Consideratio e cautio on Bodin’s books; Judicium e cautio on Du Plessis Mornay; Cautio against Machiavelli and ‘eum scripsit Antimachiavellum’; an extract from Osorio; a list of writings against Machiavelli; a treatise, in its entirety, by Pierre Coret against La Noue; and finally Possevino’s Judicium on the Confessions of St Augustine, and other matters. For the view that G. B. Strozzi was responsible for this work and that Possevino merely supervised its preparation, see Silvio A. Barbi, Un accademico mecenate e poeta, Giovan Battista Strozzi il giovane (Florence, 1900), 43.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

387

other writers, including a long extract against Machiavelli from Osorio’s De nobilitate christiana. There is also inserted, after the material from Osorio, a brief list of ‘others’ who had written against Machiavelli—Catharinus, Molanus,18 and Botero—concluding with a reference to the ‘very recently’ published treatise by Petrus Coretus, which is then printed in its entirety although, apart from a passing sneer at a mysterious ‘Michaelem Machiavellum’, it is wholly devoted to La Noue.19 With regard to Machiavelli, Possevino was in a difficult position because, while desperate to denounce so infamous an atheist, he had never read any of his works. So trifling a hindrance was, however, easily circumvented: and Possevino confidently provides a summary of Machiavelli’s ‘pestilential counsel’. A prince acting on Machiavelli’s advice would, according to Possevino, ignore all counsel and rely wholly upon his own prudence; would parade piety and religion, though he has neither; would approve and confirm anything false in religion, if it served his purpose; would prefer pagan religion to Christianity; and would count as nothing the doctors of the Church. The Machiavellian Prince thinks ill of the Roman Catholic Church; believes that the authority and laws of Moses depended on force and arms not on faith and God; and attributes success to fortune and chance, not to virtue and religion. All this, says Possevino, is contained in the ‘first two books de Principe’. But there is more to come, it seems, from Book III, where Machiavelli declares that a war is just when it is necessary; that a Prince must make peace impossible by committing outrageous injuries upon his adversaries, and should, in conquered territories, establish colonies, drive out the native inhabitants, and destroy those who have suffered loss. He may also 18 On Molanus, see below, Ch. 13. 19 Petrus Coretus (Pierre Coret), a Belgian cleric, published the Defensio veritatis adversus assertiones Catholicae fidei repugnantes, libro domini de la Noue De politicis & militaribus rebus, aspersas (Antwerp, 1591). Coret later published an attack on Bodin, the Anti-Politicus (Douai, 1599). His reference to ‘Michaelem Machiavellum’ occurs in a discussion of oaths and perjury, when he rejects Machiavelli’s lion/fox metaphor. This eloquent error was not missed by Mattei (1969), 238 n. 1. Possevino’s inclusion of Coret’s work at the end of his list of antiMachiavelli writings misled William Covell—another critic of Machiavelli who had never read a word written by his victim.

388

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

take revenge on his enemies by corrupting their provinces with evil manners. It is folly to think that new benefits will erase the memory of old injuries. Furthermore, the Prince should model himself upon some tyrant; care nothing about earning a reputation for cruelty, if this serves to keep his subjects in obedience; accept that it is better to be feared than loved; put no trust in friendship; and, should he wish to punish somebody, devise some specious pretext for so doing. He must cloak himself with the nature of both the lion and the fox; must exercise cruelty at one blow but, by contrast, give benefits gradually; and, finally, should maintain factions among his subjects, and drive away those who love the public weal. To anyone familiar with Gentillet, Possevino’s own vulpine procedure is obvious. His summary is based, without acknowledgement, upon twenty-two chapter headings drawn from Daneau’s anonymous Latin translation of the anonymous Contre-Machiavel.20 He even follows the order of their appearance in Gentillet’s work and, worse still, is so slovenly a reader that he betrays himself not only by declaring that Machiavelli’s Il Principe was divided into three books (as, of course, is the Contre-Machiavel ) but also by failing to recognize that half of the maxims he deplores derive from the Discorsi—something he should have grasped from the marginal references provided in his source.21 The irony is that Gentillet’s uncompromising Calvinism and wholesale criticism of the Papacy (which, he claimed, had been rightly condemned by Machiavelli but for the wrong reasons) made him no less obnoxious to Possevino than Machiavelli himself would have been. The antidote was as venomous as the poison itself and it was, in fact, not long before Gentillet joined Machiavelli in the Index of Prohibited Books.22 20 The maxims are taken seriatim from the Contre-Machiavel as follows: I. 1; II. 1–4, 6, 7, 10; III. 1–12, 14, 15. 21 Possevino, Cautio, 158, refers to the ‘first two books’ of Il Principe; and then provides a marginal reference to ‘lib. 3’ at 161. Procacci (1965), 280, notes that Hermann Conring—in the introduction to his Latin translation, Nicolai Machiavelli Princeps (Helmestadt, 1660), 8–9—was the first to notice Possevino’s blunder. 22 Possevino, Cautio, 162–3, discusses the book Anti-machiavellum. He says that it was published at Geneva, but with the author’s name concealed; and, although he approves of the way in which the anonymous author attacks Machiavelli with examples drawn from ancient history, he deplores his assault on the

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

389

This is really all there is to Possevino’s Machiavelli. Yet the ramshackle compilation was enthusiastically taken up and republished not only independently but even as an appendix to Latin editions of Il Principe.23 More important, just three years later, Ribadeneira—friend and biographer of Loyola, hagiographer, and vituperative historian of the English Reformation—was able to expand Possevino’s Machiavellian maxims into an immense work rivalling Gentillet’s own Discours in magnitude and far surpassing it in prolix religiosity.24 Introducing his Tratado de la religion y virtudes to the Christian Reader, Ribadeneira writes that, though Machiavelli had devoted himself to the study of politics, he was an impious and godless fellow whose doctrines, like water flowing from an Catholic Church—which, he feels, exceeds even Machiavelli’s blasphemy. Indeed, heretics use antidotes not to relieve but rather to insinuate and hide poisons. The Annotatio librorum prohibitorum (Alessandria, 1580) had already included ‘Liber inscriptus, De Regno, & quovis alio principatu contra Nicholaum Machiavellum’; and the Index of Rome (1596) condemned Gentillet’s ‘opera omnia’. See Index de Rome 1590, 1593, 1596, ed. J. M. Bujanda (1994), 590, 750. 23 Material from Possevino was added to the Oberursel edition (1600) of Teglio’s Latin translation of Machiavelli, Princeps; and then again in later editions of Teglio in 1608, 1622, 1643, 1648, 1695. On these, see Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVII, nos. 2, 10, 24, 41, 48, 96. For examples of Possevino’s continuing influence, see Mattei (1969), 239–48. For an enjoyable late Elizabethan denunciation of Possevino as a shameless liar and forger, see Matthew Sutcliffe, A Challenge concerning the Romish Church . . . thereunto also is annexed an answere unto certeine vaine, and frivolous exceptions taken to his former challenge (1602), 119, 230. 24 Pedro de Ribadeneira, Tratado de la religion y virtudes que deve tener el Principe Christiano para governar sus Estados. Contra lo que Nicolas Machiavelo y los politicos deste tiempo ensenan (Madrid, 1595). There were other Spanish versions: (Antwerp, 1597); (Madrid, 1601). It was included in Obras del Padre Pedro de Ribadeneyra, agora de nuevo revistas y acrecentadas (Madrid, 1605); and reprinted therefrom by Don Vicente de la Fuente in his edition Obras escogidas de Padre Pedro de Rivadeneira (Madrid, 1868). There were several translations: into Latin (Antwerp, 1603), (Cologne, 1604), Mainz (1603), (Mainz, 1604); into Italian (Genoa, 1598), (Brescia, 1599); into French (Douai, 1610). An abridged modern English translation by George Albert Moore was issued in a composite volume, Practical Politics by Giovanni Botero: Religion and the Virtues of the Christian Prince Against Machiavelli by Pedro Ribadeneyra (Washington, DC, 1946). Ribadeneira is discussed by Robert Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 1990), 111–35; and by Truman, Spanish Treatises on Government, 277–314. Both these studies are valuable, but both (especially Bireley) accord Ribadeneira a respect he does not merit.

390

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

infected fountain, were like to poison all those who drank thereof. Ribadeneira then enunciates what he considers to be the principal points of Machiavelli’s political theory by summarizing a selection of Possevino’s selection of Gentillet’s chapter headings. Furthermore, Ribadeneira argues, there are other authors similar to Machiavelli, who take as their oracle Tacitus’ account of the very worst of the pagan emperors, Tiberius; and he specifically condemns Bodin, La Noue, and Du Plessis Mornay—all of whom had been adversely judged, also in association with Machiavelli, by Possevino.25 Throughout the two books into which his work is divided, Ribadeneira sets out what he regards as the true criteria for a Christian prince; and these prove to be little different from the old catalogue of princely virtues familiar to every student of the genre de regimine principum. In particular, the Jesuit contrasts two methods of government. One, advocated by the ‘politici’, and founded merely on human prudence, is false and diabolical. It accommodates religion to the state; and assumes not only that God has no concern for human affairs but also that the world is governed by the malice and cunning of mortal men. On the other hand, the true mode of government derives from God Himself; accommodates the state to religion; and recognizes that divine providence watches over good rulers and punishes the bad (sig. þþ7r–v). All this could have come from almost any medieval treatise on kingship; but Ribadeneira’s aim is principally to establish that proper care for religion means the destruction of heresy since it is impossible, he says, that true Catholics can ever come to terms with the heretics, who must be completely extirpated as the prime cause of revolutions, the fall of states, and the death of princes (pp. 180–93). In his second book Ribadeneira discusses the virtues—justice, wise choice of advisers, clemency, liberality, prudence, and all the rest—which his Christian prince must possess. In this context, the classic advocacy of simulated virtue—‘the 25 Ribadeneira, Tratado, ‘Al Cristiano y piadoso lector’: (1595), sigs. þþ3–6. Further references are given in the text. Ribadeneira uses, and rearranges, fourteen of Possevino’s twenty-two maxims. The maxims, in the order adopted by Ribadeneira, derive originally from the Contre-Machiavel, II. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10; I. 1; III. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

391

words of Machiavelli, come from hell, to destroy religion’—are cited from the eighteenth chapter of Il Principe, ‘translated faithfully from the Italian language into our Castilian’, and then refuted at considerable length. Inevitably, Ribadeneira is led to a consideration of Christian fortitude and to the dreaded Machiavellian maxims which had angered Gentillet, Possevino, and (before them) Osorio: that Christianity had corrupted pagan fortitude by demanding patience rather than activity, by forgoing blood sacrifice, and by emphasizing humility, abjection, and poverty, rather than human valour (pp. 468–89). Here, again, a passage is ‘translated faithfully from the Italian into the Castilian’—this time from the Discorsi, II. 2. In his refutation, Ribadeneira shows an acquaintance not only with Possevino, but possibly with Gentillet himself and, more especially, with Osorio’s De nobilitate christiana, the first important published attack on Machiavelli, which is heavily paraphrased in this section of the Tratado.26 There is little acuity of thought, no originality, and a real but severely limited knowledge of Machiavelli in Ribadeneira’s work. Nevertheless, the Spanish Jesuit was a historian of European reputation; and, up to the appearance of Donne’s Conclave, his Tratado de la religion y virtudes had been 26 There are also similarities between Ribadeneira’s work and the De justa reipublicae Christianae in Reges Impios auctoritate (Paris, 1590)—probably by William Rainolds but published under the name G. Guilelmus Rossaeus. These may be nothing more than the pabulum of religious and political polemic in the late 16th c., but they are still worthy of note. The De justa reipublicae Christianae declares that the massacre of Huguenots in 1572 was just and honest; that Henri III was a ‘cancer et pestis’, and that his murderer, Clement, was ‘innocentissimus et praeclarissimus juvenis’; that Henri’s courtiers were atheists and Machiavellists; that heretic monarchs were, by definition, tyrants; and that regicide is bad, whereas tyrannicide is good. Catholics and heretics alike believe in this last dictum but, although it is really quite easy to distinguish between real tyrants (whose killing is favoured by God) and virtuous rulers (whose killing is not), heretics are so stupid that they think that good kings are tyrants. Amidst all this froth, Machiavelli is condemned (but only en passant) for comparing Christianity unfavourably with pagan religion and for prescribing the rule that it is, without doubt, legitimate for princes to break their oaths, to deceive, and to dissimulate. Correct marginal references to the Discorsi, II. 2, and Il Principe, 18, are given, but both these and the Machiavellian dicta derive from Gentillet—another irony since Rainolds (if he is the author) asserts that Calvinists are disciples of Machiavelli. See De justa reipublicae Christianae, fos. 24v, 96v, 89v–90, 92v, 227r–v, 383–429v, 459r–v, 482v, 490v.

392

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

through three Spanish, four Latin, one French, and two Italian editions. And at least one Englishman had read the work with close attention. In 1606 there appeared the First part of a treatise concerning policy and religion by the English Jesuit controversialist Thomas Fitzherbert. In 1610 the Second part appeared; and in the same year a Latin treatise, substantially similar in argument to his English works, was published by Fitzherbert at Rome.27 In these books Fitzherbert, like Ribadeneira, was concerned to demonstrate the fallaciousness of Machiavelli’s doctrines, both on religious and utilitarian grounds; and, like Ribadeneira, he sought to implicate Protestants as heretics and Machiavellians. These tasks had been in Fitzherbert’s mind as early as 1602 when, in his Defence of the Catholyke cause, he had argued that Protestants, following the ‘absurd and pestilent doctrin of Machiavel’, had sought to strengthen Elizabeth’s position by rigour, cruelty, and injustice; whereas reason and experience taught that it is the Christian virtues which preserve princes, so that ‘these most cruel and bloody devises of our persecutours, are not only impious, but also foolish in that very point wherein they will have them seeme most wyse’.28 His three long works of 1606 and 1610 constitute an immense expansion of these ideas. Human affairs are so complex and variable that it is beyond the wit of man to devise any system of politics capable of meeting every possible contingency; but, of all political doctrines, those of Machiavelli are the most ruinous to princes and to states alike.29 Fidelity is especially praised by Fitzherbert as the basis of successful government; and, naturally, Machiavelli’s advice concerning 27 Thomas Fitzherbert, The first part of a treatise concerning policy and religion, wherein the infirmitie of humaine wit is amply declared (Douai, 1606); The second part of a treatise etc. (n.p., 1610). Each of these then went into a second edition (Douai, 1615)—issued in facsimile by the Scolar Press in 1974 as part of their series English Recusant Literature—and there were further editions at London in 1652 and 1696. The Latin version is entitled An sit Utilitas in Scelere: vel de Infelicitate Principis Macchiavelliani, contra Machiavellum in politicos ejus sectatores (Rome, 1610). 28 Thomas Fitzherbert, A defence of the Catholyke cause (Antwerp, 1602), fo. 32. 29 Policy and religion, I (1606), 51; An sit Utilitas, 60.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

393

the efficacy of deceit comes in for heavy criticism: though this leads Fitzherbert into the difficulty faced by virtually every writer on princely virtue. There are inevitably occasions when rulers, bearing the heavy responsibility of their subjects’ welfare, cannot afford to be honest with their sworn enemies. What then are they to do? The answer had generally been to draw a hairline distinction between dissimulation and simulation: between white lies and nasty falsehoods. Ribadeneira had himself devoted a chapter to this knotty problem, and had come up with a crass distinction: between lying without cause and without profit (which, not unreasonably, he deemed always bad) and merely giving people to understand one thing when another is meant—and this only when necessity and utility require it! In the Spaniard’s opinion, the latter cause is justifiable; though he wisely refrains from trying to clarify what he means by necessity and utility.30 Fitzherbert was equally taxed over this matter, and largely borrows from Ribadeneira in order to reach his conclusion that there is a great difference to be noted ‘betwixt telling a lye, and concealing the truth’. Simulation, ‘or fiction’, is never lawful; but dissimulation ‘is both lawful and commendable, yea and some tymes so necessary in princes, that it may wel and truly be sayd; Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare’.31 Fitzherbert discusses, point by point, what he considers to be the principal tenets of the Machiavellist: to practise extremity in both virtue and vice; to foment factions; to divide and rule; never to trust those to whom offence has been given; to destroy all those likely to trouble the state; to take Cesare Borgia as a model for political action; and to regard Christianity unfavourably in comparison with the pagan religions.32 He claims to have obtained a faculty to read Machiavelli’s works which were on the Index 30 Ribadeneira, Tratado (1595), 283–92. 31 Policy and religion, I (1606), 342–8. On dissimulation in general, see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), especially ch. 8 on ‘Casuistry, Mental Reservation, and Dr. Navarrus’, 153–85; and Jean-Pierre Cavaille´, Dis/simulations . . . Religion, morale et politique au XVIIe sie`cle (Paris, 2002). 32 Fitzherbert’s refutation of Machiavelli’s view of Christianity is in Policy and religion, II (1610), 345–57.

394

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

of Prohibited Books and therefore not normally available for consultation;33 but he never cites a text directly; his summaries of Machiavelli’s assumed positions are redolent of Gentillet; and the detail of his refutation is largely derived from Ribadeneira, whose very words are frequently pressed into service. Moreover, like Ribadeneira, and like Gentillet before him, Fitzherbert sees in history irrefutable evidence of Machiavelli’s incapacity in practical politics. Had Machiavelli and other contemporary ‘politikes’ been the first inventors of such notions, and had these never been put to the test, then, says Fitzherbert, there might have been some excuse for believing in their efficacy. But they have been practised by all tyrants; and they have almost invariably proved ruinous.34 I am not suggesting a simple, unilinear relationship between Gentillet, Possevino, Ribadeneira, and Fitzherbert. Ribadeneira’s work, though singularly obtuse, is extensive and learned, and draws upon a range of material far greater than was possible in Possevino’s slim pamphlet; while Fitzherbert, similarly, draws on material not employed by his Spanish colleague. There were, in addition, many other writers at this period condemning Machiavelli generally en passant, and generally without showing any firsthand knowledge of his writings—despite their availability. None the less, the three Jesuits are especially important in that their hostility towards Machiavelli goes beyond mere passing allusion. Possevino and, more notably, Ribadeneira and Fitzherbert were specifically concerned to combat a Machiavelli who bears strong evidence of Gentillet’s paternity; Possevino was popular in the period prior to the appearance of Donne’s Conclave; Ribadeneira was more popular still; and Fitzherbert was an Englishman whose books against Machiavelli appeared just prior to Donne’s own controversial works. Moreover, for Fitzherbert, Machiavelli— despite the staleness of his maxims—is an innovator almost within 33 An sit Utilitas, sig. þ3. On the benefits of the Index, see Robert Parsons, The Warn-word to Sir Francis Hastinges Wast-word (Antwerp, 1602), Part II (The second encounter about Falshood and Lying), fos. 67v–68. Parsons argues that Catholics are forbidden works such as ‘the Turks Alcaron it self, Machevile and Bodin tending to Atheisme, and baudy Boccace, with the most pestilent English Pallace of Pleasure’: all of which poison those not protected by the Index. 34 Policy and religion, I (1606), 384.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

395

the terms of reference subsequently specified by Donne. Machiavelli, he writes, to make good his new doctrin (which was devised, no dout by the divel for the destruction of men, and common welths) not onlie impugneth, the Christian religion, Which he him selfe professed, but also frameth another morall philosophy, then hath hetherto bene heard of in this world, all tending to the establishment of an inhumane barbarous, and tirannicall pollicy.35

It is possible that Donne had heard neither of Possevino’s Judicium nor of any of Fitzherbert’s three anti-Machiavelli treatises. It is likewise possible that he had not heard of Ribadeneira’s treatise on the virtues of a Christian prince, despite its numerous editions, and despite the fact that he used others of Ribadeneira’s writings in the course of his own controversial works. Such things are possible: but they are not very likely. In any case, to debate the question of Donne’s knowledge of these books would be to confine oneself merely to the possible intention of the Conclave; whereas if one considers probable effect, rather than possible intention, then it is obvious that many of Donne’s readers could well have known these current Jesuit anti-Machiavelli writings. Not to take them into account is to divest the Conclave of some of its choicest ironies. Donne’s Machiavel finds himself face to face not merely with Jesuits in general, but with the very father of all Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola; and this Machiavel, too, is torn to pieces by his irate antagonist. Like Fitzherbert, Donne’s Ignatius scorns Machiavel’s claims to originality, and tells him that his precepts are so stale and obsolete that Serarius had even called Herod, ‘who lived so long before Machivell, a Machiavellian’.36 Like Possevino’s Machiavelli, and those of Ribadeneira and Fitzherbert, Donne’s Machiavel is taken to task: for daring to extol the ‘way of bloud’; for comparing Christianity adversely with paganism; for advocating the dissembling of religion for political purposes; and for showing princes 35 Policy and religion, II (1610), 357. 36 Healy, 55. An even better example, from the Protestant side, is Thomas Bell, The anatomie of popish tyrannie, 72, where he exposes Parsons as a bastard, a drunkard, and as an incestuous, seditious traitor: ‘being thus qualified with supernaturall gifts, and extraordinarie graces proceeding from Beelzebub that notable Machivell’.

396

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

how to usurp power. But here everything has been turned upside down. Jesuit scholars may write their highly moral books against Machiavelli; but they fool nobody. Here in Hell the truth is revealed. Machiavel is rejected not because he is evil but because he is not evil enough. Ignatius is too clever and too wicked for him. Donne’s Conclave is the apotheosis of a cliche´ of controversy: the Jesuit is more Machiavellian than Machiavelli.

mo re machi ave lli an than m achi avelli The first Jesuit mission to England had arrived in June 1580, and, less than seven months later, a Proclamation issued for their arrest accused them of deceiving and abusing simple folk under the ‘color of a holy name’; of entering the kingdom to corrupt and pervert the Queen’s subjects in ‘matter of conscience and religion’; of drawing them from their ‘loyalty and duty of obedience’; and of provoking them to ‘attempt somewhat to the disturbance of the present quiet’.37 A Proclamation of the following year put the finishing touches to the picture, when it accused the Jesuits not merely of ‘stirring up of rebellion within their natural countries’ but also of the ‘endangering of her majesty’s most royal person’.38 These, substantially, were to remain the principal elements of the Jesuits’ character reference, both official and popular: they were renegades who, under a pretended religion, sought to subvert the state, and even threatened the person of the sovereign. It was in vain that a Jesuit such as Campion protested that he was concerned with religion and nothing more. How could this be possible? demanded William Charke, voicing the incredulity of many. In England, religion and policy were one life and one spirit; and anybody taking away one inevitably procured the death of the other. No Jesuit could come to alter religion, ‘but he must attempt the change of the state, to the lamentable destruction of the lande’. Nor was it possible to reinstate papal authority, ‘but he must take awaye 37 Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, ii, no. 655 (p. 483): Proclamation of 10 Jan. 1581. 38 Ibid., no. 660 (489): Proclamation of 1 Apr. 1582.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

397

from her royall Maiestie, her just supreme soveraintie, and deprive her at one clappe of the authoritie shee hath over all persons and ordinances’. The Jesuit may say that matters of policy appertain not to his vocation, ‘yet it is so sayde onely to cover his purpose, which is to the contrary’.39 It was normal for one party to accuse its opponents of using religion for political ends. Indeed, as we have seen in French polemics of the late sixteenth century, this was the most common form of abuse. In England, too, the accusation was hurled by Anglicans at Catholics and Puritans; by Puritans at Anglicans and Catholics; and by Jesuits both at Protestants of all persuasions and at fellow Catholics less extreme than themselves—and it was frequently associated with a charge of Machiavellism. This was nothing new. As early as the mid-1560s Roger Ascham had heaped abuse on those Italianate Englishmen who counted the Christian mysteries as mere fables to serve civil policy, and had pointed out that such creatures were prepared to countenance either Papistry or Protestantism; whichever better served their turn. Nevertheless, he thought that they most commonly associated themselves with the ‘worst Papistes’ with whom they shared three fundamental opinions: open contempt of God’s word; a ‘secret securitie of sinne’; and a ‘bloodie desire to have all taken away, by sword or burning, that be not of their faction’. Anybody, said Ascham, who cared to read ‘with indifferent judgement Pygius and Machiavel, two indifferent Patriarches of thies two Religions’, would know that he was speaking the truth.40 These were strong words, often repeated, and with greater frequency towards the end of the century as the religious controversies grew increasingly complex and bitter. Most vindictive, perhaps, of all the controversies was the internecine struggle between Jesuit extremists and Catholic moderates. The Jesuits in England were immediately recognized as proponents of political revolution, seeking to restore Catholicism by subversion and force. They enjoyed some early success in stirring 39 William Charke, An answere to a seditious pamphlet by a Jesuite (1580), sig. C.2. Cf. Meredith Hanmer, The great bragge and challenge of M. Champion a jesuite (1581), fos. 17v–18. 40 Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (1570), fos. 28v–29.

398

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

their co-religionists; but the execution of Mary Queen of Scots gave pause to many Catholics, who began to wonder whether it might not be advantageous to come to terms with the establishment. Those Catholics who did seek toleration within the Anglican system were attacked for subordinating their religious duty to matters of secondary importance (either public interest or private commodity) and were dubbed ‘Politici in schola Mahiavelliana [sic]’.41 On the other hand, the Jesuits were regarded by their more patriotic co-religionists from a viewpoint similar to that of the government itself, and were condemned for seeking to overthrow Elizabeth by raising a Spanish claimant to the throne. With such goings-on, the moderates felt, how was it possible for Catholicism ever to be tolerated in England? A work such as Parsons’s A conference about the next succession, advancing the claims of the Spanish Infanta, sent patriotic Catholics into transports of wrath; and Parsons’s pious refutation of Machiavelli’s alleged dictum, that religion and piety hinder wise government, cut little ice.42 The constant accusations of being arch-politicians worried the Society, and in 1596 Thomas Wright complained of the difficulties faced by the Jesuits in convincing critics that they did not seek to promote foreign invasion, and that they did not seek to procure Elizabeth’s death. He wrote to the Jesuit Garnet, urging him to resist ‘any such Machiavelian treasons’, and to let the Queen know that ambition, covetousness, and pretence were ‘far from us, whose vocation is religion, and not suppressing of princes’; for, if she could not be convinced, Wright feared ‘lest all our priests be rather put to death for matters of state than religion’. The Jesuits, he says, in their last general congregation had decreed that, under pain of mortal sin, they should not deal in any affairs concerning the state.43 But the Jesuits could swear what they liked. Their opponents were not going to believe them, and, as Wright suspected, they 41 Thomas Stapleton, Oratio Academica: an Politici horum temporum in numero Christianorum sint habendi? (Munich, 1608), 28. Horrocks (1908), 157–8, showed that this work must have been written in 1589 or 1590. 42 Robert Parsons, A conference about the next succession to the crowne of Ingland (Antwerp, 1594), 41. 43 See Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the year 1581 till her death (1754), 359–60.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

399

deemed the decree ‘rather a cover of craft and policy than a sincere rule and law’. Anger concerning Jesuitical activities, real and alleged, boiled up in the controversy over the appointment of an Archpriest to direct the Catholic mission in England.44 Was it not singular, demanded one Catholic writer, Anthony Copley, that the Jesuits sought not only to rule over the secular clergy but also to bring ‘armes and conquest into the Catholicke church’, thus managing affairs of state ‘more machiavelianlie then Machivell himselfe?’ The Jesuits, he said, used the sacrament of confession to probe into a man’s private conscience to see whether he was apt to serve their seditious turns: ‘could Machiavell himselfe have beene so prophane?’ Indeed, since they were capable of such sacrilege, it was no wonder that they scorned to come an ace behind ‘either Machiavell or his Maister’ in any other matter against either religion or morality. As for believing their protestations of honesty: how was it possible? They were the masters of deceit, and Copley would be ashamed to weary his reader with all that he knows concerning their ‘lying legierdemaines’ consisting of: infinite querks & quiddits; as mentall evasions in their speech, interpretative colloguings, halfe fac’d tearmes, tergiversations, tentative speeches, whole and demie-dublings, the vulpecular-fawne, detraction with sighes, buttes, and the shrugge, circular calumniations, holding it lawfull to be forsworne in too manie cases, intercepting, rasing, and forgerie of letters, and such like.45

Accusations such as these were commonplace: but one particular cluster of polemics may serve to distil the essence of this controversy. They are all, either wholly or in part, the work of William Watson (secular priest, bitter antagonist of all Jesuits but especially of the much-execrated Parsons, whom he accused of writing more spitefully than ‘Don Lucifer the wittiest fiend in hell’);46 and they are noteworthy for their identification of Jesuitism with a 44 See T. G. Law, A historical sketch of the conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars in the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1889). 45 Anthony Copley, An answere to a letter of a Jesuited gentleman by his cosin, maister A.C. (1601), 79, 87–8, 92–3. 46 William Watson, A decacordon of ten quodlibeticall questions concerning religion and state (1602), 247.

400

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Gentillet-type Machiavellism. In ‘The Epistle to the Reader’, prefixed to Bagshaw’s Sparing discoverie, Watson denounces the Jesuits, who have become corrupted since their original foundation. Through their ‘haughtie-aspiring-towring-wits’ and their ‘prowde-ambitious-mounting-thoughts’ they are due for a ‘Luciferian fall’. The ‘Jesuiticall ghosts’ are wicked spirits who, ‘transforming themselves into angels of light’, lead more souls to Hell than the ugliest fiends acting under their own colours. Watson says that he could set forth a ‘triple alphabet intire of Machivilian practises used by the Jesuites’, setting down their ‘rules atheall in order of their platforme layd for a perpetuity of their intended government despoticon, and mock-weale publick oligarchicall’; and, in the text of the work which follows, Bagshaw (or Watson himself ) rails against their conception of religion as a mere political device upheld by human wisdom and ‘sleights of wit’. They are the men ‘that by Machivels rules are raysed up to mayntayne it by equivocation, detractions, dissimulation, ambition, contention for superioritie, stirring up of strife, setting kingdomes against kingdomes, raising of rebellions, murthering of princes, and by we know not how many stratagems of Sathan, comming out of hell, and tending to confusion’.47 These same ‘rules’ are likewise denounced in another work introduced by Watson—Thomas Bluet’s Important considerations—which protests that true Catholics wish to acknowledge that they really are the Queen’s subjects ‘without all Jesuiticall equivocation’; and warns against ‘novelties and Jesuitisme’ which are nothing but a ‘very vizard of most deepe hypocrisie’. The Jesuits, following their Spanish founder Loyola, ‘being altogether Hispaniated, and transported into those humours’, seek to establish a Spanish monarchy, and to this end they are ready to practise every mischief which they can devise, or learn in the ‘very schoole of Machiavellisme’.48 47 William Watson, A sparing discoverie of our English Jesuits (1601), sigs. a1v–2, 6–7, et al. It has been suggested that only the Preface is by Watson and that the main text may be by Christopher Bagshaw. 48 William Watson and Thomas Bluet, Important considerations which ought to move all true catholikes to acknowledge that the proceedings of Her Majesty have bene mild (1601), 3, 8, 37, 39, 42.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

401

The most striking work in this group is Watson’s own Decacordon of ten quodlibeticall questions, where his conventional views of Jesuitism and Machiavellism converge to give us a perfect focus for Donne’s Conclave. Within the pages of the Decacordon the Jesuits commit every one of their familiar crimes: they use religion as a mere ‘Atheall devise’; they practise equivocation and sedition; they set kings against kings, and states against states; and they murder princes. Can such creatures be called religious? ‘No, no’, cries Watson: ‘their course of life doth shew what their study is: and that how-so-ever they boast of their perfections, holinesse, meditations, and exercises . . . yet their platforme is heathenish, tyrannicall, Sathanicall, and able to set Aretine, Lucian, Machiavell, yea and Don Lucifer in a sort to school as impossible for him by all the art he hath to besot men as they do’ (pp. 61–2). Neither the foul fiend himself, nor all the infernal furies, nor the Devil with all his art, could have deceived people as the Jesuits have done while yet preserving their own seeming innocence. Was there anybody who could take precedence over the Jesuits in matters of policy and prudence? Well, says Watson, it all depends on what you mean by prudence. In true policy, which is derived from Christian prudence, there are many superior to the Jesuits; but take pollicie as it is now a dayes taken by common phrase of speech, in the subject wherein it is inherent: as we say that a right Polititian is a very Machiavell, a very Machiavell is an upright Atheist, and an upright Atheist, is a downeright dastardly coward, void of all religion, reason, or honestie: so by consequent it may be said, that in politicall government or Machivilean pollicie none goeth beyond the Jesuits at this day. (p. 64)

For the Jesuits, Politia is but a ‘nose of waxe’ which may be turned in any direction a man pleases, for it is always pliable and ‘fit to receive all impression: fresh and faire, or foule and filthie’. And in this kind of policy—‘slie, craftie, dissembling wilinesse, with a relation to Atheisme or to non religion’—then the Jesuits do ‘farre passe Machiavell, and I verily thinke any whomsoever of and in this age’ (p. 109).49 49 For further ‘Machiavellian’ references, see Watson, A decacordon, 59, 69, 70–3, 84, 91, 244, 247, 314–15.

402

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

king-killing In 1602, the French historian Estienne Pasquier crowned a lifetime’s antagonism towards the Jesuits with a treatise which was immediately translated into English by William Watson and published in London as the Jesuites Catechisme.50 Like Watson, Pasquier identifies Jesuitism with Machiavellism, and even devotes a chapter to ‘Ignace his Machiavellismes, used to set his Sect afloate’ (fos. 63v–65), where he compares the disruptive influences of Luther, Calvin, and Loyola. Luther merely made ‘uproare’ in Germany, and Calvin only troubled France; but Loyola ‘hath made a pudder’ not only in Spain and the Spanish dominions, but in many other nations, too. Moreover, he had achieved this distinction without writing a word, but had simply feigned heavenly inspiration, like Minos, Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius, and Sertorius. These, writes Pasquier, are the ‘Machiavellismes of which the old world was delivered before Machiavell was borne’; just as, at the present time, there are a great many ‘Machiavells’ who have ‘never read his bookes’. ‘I think’, Pasquier continues, ‘the same devises glided through the soule of this great Ignace.’ The very vows taken by the Jesuits contained ‘heresie and Machiavellisme’ (fos. 99–100v); their deceit and hypocrisy proved them to be ‘brave schollers of Machiavell’; and, in their handling of affairs of state, and especially in their ‘murthers and killings’ of kings and princes, they had ‘intermingled’ a lesson from Machiavelli’s Prince—in the ‘chapter of wickedness’ (fo. 132). And Pasquier devotes several chapters to proving that, whatever the Jesuits may say to the contrary, they have specialized in king-killing, and have learnt to kill, or cause to be killed, ‘all such as stand not to their opinions’.51 This was the most constant and most serious of all the charges levelled against the Jesuits at this period. Already, as we have seen, in 1582 an English Proclamation had expressed fears for the safety 50 Estienne Pasquier, Le catechisme des Jesuites; ou examen de leur doctrine (Paris, 1602). The English translation of the same year is attributed to Watson in STC, no. 19449. 51 For further references, see Pasquier, The Jesuites Catechisme, fos. 132, 148–159v, 210v, 232.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

403

of Queen Elizabeth; and subsequent events, and the interpretation thereof, served to heighten alarm. The Jesuits were thought to have been implicated in the murder of William of Orange in 1584; while the assassination of Henri III of France in 1589—‘a murder written in Tymes forehead by the pen of aeternitie to astonish all posteritie’52—offered even more striking evidence to contemporaries that the Jesuits were the protagonists of a veritable doctrine of kingkilling. Henri’s character as an unmitigated tyrant was advanced by his Catholic detractors as sufficient justification for his slaying; and it was in these terms that Ribadeneira had condoned the act, denouncing the King as a detestable Machiavellist, and euphemizing the assassin as a poor, simple, and young religious.53 Even more startling was the stand taken by another Spanish Jesuit, Juan de Mariana, who devoted a chapter of his De rege to the defence both of the revolt against Henri III and of the assassination itself, and went on to enunciate more general principles concerning the right of subjects to depose and slay not only usurpers but even legitimate rulers who had degenerated into tyrants.54 Mariana was not alone in his views on the derivation of regal authority from the commonweal, his emphasis on the duties as well as the rights of kings, and his extreme solution to the problems posed by tyranny. There were other Catholic political theorists holding similar views; and, of course, there also existed a strong tradition of anti-Catholic political writing which placed great emphasis on contractual theory and on the dire consequences for rulers who violated their vows.55 Indeed, for some observers, the more violent views of Catholic and 52 William Covell, Polimanteia, sig. F.4. 53 Ribadeneira, Tratado (1595), 90. Cf. Fitzherbert, Policy and religion, I (1606), 338. On this issue, Adrian Behotte, Response a` l’anticoton de point en point (Paris, 1611), 9–12, defended Ribadeneira who, after all, had been writing against ‘l’impie Machiavel’; had not approved of the assassination of kings; and merely commented that, when tyrants are assassinated, it is a judgement of God. The passage in Ribadeneira was later singled out by David Hume of Godscroft in Le contr’assassin, ou response a` l’apologie des Jesuites (n.p., 1612), 37–8, where there is a slashing attack on Ribadeneira’s use of the phrase ‘un pauvre, simple, et jeune religieux’ to describe a foul murderer, and on the way in which the Jesuit described Henri III as a ‘machiaveliste’, in order to justify the assassination. 54 Juan de Mariana, De rege et regis institutione libri III (Toledo, 1599), chs. 6, 7. 55 On the evolution of these doctrines, see J. H. M. Salmon, The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought (Oxford, 1959).

404

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Protestant alike were indistinguishable, and such hostility is well summarized in a small treatise, published in 1610, by David Owen, illustrating the concord between religious extremists on the doctrine of king-killing. Such opinions have spread like a ‘gangrene’; and daily the kings of Christendom are crucified, like Christ, between two thieves—Papist and Puritan—‘which have prepared this deadly poison for Princes whom they, in their own irreligious and traiterous hearts, shall condemn for tyrannie’.56 Nevertheless, in popular opinion, the Society of Jesus had almost exclusive rights to theories of political murder. Even before the accession of Henri de Navarre, Catholic pamphleteers had denounced him as a tyrant intent on filling the kingdom with ‘heretiques Machiavellistes et Athees’;57 and his career as King of France was punctuated by attempts on his life, commonly attributed to the encouragement of the Jesuits.58 In England, too, where the Queen was similarly subject to threats and plots, feeling against the Society of Jesus ran high. The Bull of Pope Pius V against Elizabeth was an especial irritant and led writers such as John Hull—yet another antagonist of Parsons, whom he describes as a ‘Machivillian Turkish practiser’—to regard the Society as a progeny issuing from a ‘murdering Spanish souldier Ignatius de Laoila’, and as traitors who laid their ‘bloody hands upon the Lords annointed’.59 The situation was further aggravated, early in James I’s reign, by the Gunpowder Plot, which was interpreted as the diabolical fruit of a league between Satan and the Jesuits— ‘or rather Jubusites and Satanical Seminaries’.60 This conspiracy was the immediate occasion for the drafting of the Oath of Allegiance, which resulted in those further tensions between moderate Catholics and Jesuit extremists, briefly alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, together with a reiteration of the whole complex of 56 David Owen, Herod and Pilate, 56. 57 Advis aux princes, seigneurs, gentilshommes, et autres Catholiques de France (Paris, 1589), 18. 58 See Roland Mousnier, The Assassination of Henry IV, trans. Joan Spencer (1973), 45–9, 55, 105, 112, 215–26, 300–15. 59 John Hull, The unmasking of the politique atheist (1602), sig. A4r–v, 53–4. 60 The Araignement and Execution of the Late Traytors (1606): passage cited, from the text reprinted in Lord Somers, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, ed. Walter Scott (1809–15), ii. 115.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

405

abuse and counter-abuse, already evident in the last decade of the sixteenth century. The Society of Jesus was branded as a collection of ruthless villains who would kill anybody who stood in their way. The paranoid Thomas Bell even claimed to have irrefutable personal evidence for this. The Jesuits had been trying to silence him for his writings against their ‘rotten Poperie’: but, as so often, their pamphleteers cloaked themselves in anonymity. His latest adversary, who might well have been some ‘bloody cut throate’, had promised to provide Bell with a winding sheet for his ‘blacke Funerall’. Furthermore, Bell had received a ‘friendly letter (but without name)’, containing a silver packet; but the circumstances were so suspicious that neither he nor others ‘durst open the Packet’; as having apparent inducements to suspect ‘Poyson, Pestilence, or other like infection Diabolicall’.61 This was the way the Jesuits went about to eliminate their enemies! The last straw came on 14 May 1610, when the assassin Ravaillac struck down Henri IV. The uproar was colossal, and the Jesuits were regarded as instigators of the crime despite the murdered king’s well-known regard for the Society. So violent were the denunciations that Pierre Coton, one of Henri’s Jesuit confessors, felt obliged to issue a letter condemning the murder and attempting to show that the doctrine of tyrannicide and the murder of princes, far from being maintained by the Jesuits, had been peculiar to Mariana, who had been condemned by the Society itself. This defence was in vain, and provoked angry accusations that it was a mere colour to hide Jesuitical glee.62 In England, Coton’s 61 Thomas Bell, The catholique triumph (1610), 418. Cf. A discoverie of the most secret and subtile practices of the Jesuites. Translated out of French (1610), sig. C.2, which claims that the Jesuits employ ‘certaine murtherers and poysoners, to poyson the Principall Doctors of the Churches as well Lutherans as Calvinists’. 62 Pierre Coton, Lettre Declaratoire de la doctrine des Peres Jesuites conforme aux decrets du Concile de Constance (Paris, 1610). T. Owen, A Letter of a Catholicke man beyond the seas, written to a friend in England: including another of Peter Coton Priest, of the Society of Jesus, to the Queene Regent of France (n.p., 1610), which gives an English translation of Coton’s letter and adds an exculpation of the Jesuits from all imputations of the doctrine of king-killing—declaring, on the contrary (at p. 41), ‘Rebellious doctrine proper unto Protestants and condemned by Catholicks’. See also Anticoton, ou refutation de la lettre declaratoire de pere Coton (n.p., 1610); trans. as Anti-Coton, or a refutation of Cotton’s Letter Declaratorie (1610). The British Library copy of the French Anticoton (press mark 1192.g.9 [1]) is bound with

406

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

letter was published; but it was swiftly followed by an English translation of the Decree of the Sorbonne against tyrannicide, and of the Paris Parlement’s sentence that Mariana’s work should be publicly burnt. A ‘Preamble’ to the translations argues that the majority of men are desirous of ‘novelties’, and that the Jesuits cunningly exploit this desire in order to engineer their dastardly plots. When the Oath of Allegiance was made and confirmed by Act of Parliament it was likely that ‘all the Recusants in England would willingly have taken it, as sundry of them began, had not the Jesuits opposed themselves, and procured the Pope to command the contrary’. As a result of this interference, even the moderate Catholics have refused the Oath because it describes the doctrine of deposing, or killing princes, as heretical. But, the author demands, why should this doctrine not be regarded as heretical? And he bitterly points out that such ‘false, lewd and traiterous’ opinions have been openly published by the Jesuits, and most especially by the iniquitous Mariana. In a postlude, a second author hastens to supply one point omitted from the ‘Preamble’. Ravaillac, who gave the accursed stroke which ‘hath made all France to bleed’, had confessed that he had long deliberated the question of assassination before he could resolve that it was lawful to kill the King; but ‘falling upon that booke of Mariana, he found his conscience (as he said) cleard of all scruple in that point’. Thus, whoever it was who put the knife into the assassin’s hand, it was evident that its ‘metall had been tempered in the forge of the Jesuits’, and that it was their books ‘gave edge unto it’.63 other pamphlets which include manuscript notes on the Contre-Machiavel (Leiden, 1609). 63 The copie of a late decree of the Sorbonne at Paris, for the condemning of that impious and haereticall opinion, touching the murthering of princes: Generally maintained by the Jesuites. And amongst the rest, of late by Joannes Mariana, a Spaniard (1610), sigs. B.1–2, B.3, E.3, E.4v. Two years later came the principal work against Coton, Le contr’assassin, ou response a` l’apologie des Jesuites (n.p., 1612). The author of this work has generally been identified as the historian, David Hume of Godscroft, whose Apologia Basilica we shall meet in a later chapter. However, the Contr’assassin, along with another polemic, L’assassinat du Roy (Paris, 1615), has recently been assigned to another David Hume (of Duras) by Paul J. McGinnis and Arthur H. Williamson (eds. and tr.), The British Union: A Critical Edition and Translation of David Hume of Godscroft’s De Unione Britannicae (Aldershot, 2002), Introduction, 50–1. Unfortunately, no sources are given for

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

407

donne ’ s ignatius For John Donne—writing so soon after the assassination of Henri IV, amidst an increasing flood of anti-Jesuit invective, and within the context not only of the Oath of Allegiance controversy, but also of those longer-standing traditions described above—it was the doctrine of political revolution, to be accomplished by any means, which gave the Jesuits pre-eminence amongst evildoers. Father Healy has suggested that regicide provides the ‘unifying theme’ of the Conclave,64 but this is not exactly so. The unifying theme of the work is implicit in its very structure. Ignatius is, within the special limits of innovation enunciated by Donne, too powerful for a series of contestants; and he is too powerful not merely because of the Jesuits’ special distinction with regard to king-killing. Rather it is because the Jesuits are the arch-enemies of monarchies, and because they are prepared to enforce age-old papal claims against foreign states, by all means, fair or foul. King-killing is their most extreme shift—and is regarded as peculiarly theirs—but it is only one of a series of iniquities in their armoury. It is the rigorous application of these criteria which enables Donne’s Ignatius so easily to demolish rival claims to a coveted seat within Lucifer’s inner sanctum. Copernicus, for instance—who has put his hopes in the reorganization of the heavens and the added lustre thereby given to Lucifer’s namesake, the Morning Star—is sharply corrected by Ignatius. What honour, asks Ignatius, is to be derived from the star this reattribution. The Contr’assassin is a vigorous polemic which insists both that Mariana should be taken as the touchstone of Jesuitical attitudes towards assassination; that he was not the only Jesuit to advocate king-killing; and that, in any case, the Jesuits’ repudiation of his views is merely a matter of policy. Hume (whichever one it is) points out that, although the Jesuits pretend to be the most devout of all Christians, if one penetrates to the interior of their secret maxims, one can see that—under the colours of the Catholic faith, they practice the ‘precepts of the Abbe´ Trithemius, Cornelius Agrippa, Aladin Arsacide, and Machiavel the Florentine’ (pp. 2–3)—a strange list of villains. Elsewhere, he cites their maxim, Jesuita omnis homo, that is to say a man who accommodates himself to everything: ‘homme Turc, homme Juif, Machiaveliste, Anabaptiste, Payen, Chrestien, selon que ses affaires le portent’ (p. 238). On Hume, see below, Ch. 13. 64 Healy, p. xxxviii. Further references are given in the text.

408

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

Lucifer, which is merely Venus? If one were going to have regard to namesakes then surely the work of Lucifer the ‘Calaritan Bishop’ must be recognized as far more valuable, because ‘he was the first that opposed the dignity of Princes’. Paracelsus is even more severely rebuked. His followers ‘abuse and prophane’ the precious minerals which belong to Lucifer himself. Their ‘physicke’ wastes resources which would be better employed by Lucifer’s brother and colleague, the Pope: gold and precious stones, to ‘baite and ensnare the Princes of the earth’; iron to make engines of war; minerals for poisons; and the elements of gunpowder to ‘demolish and overthrow Kings and Kingdoms, and Courts and seates of Justice’ (pp. 17, 23–5). Later, when Lucifer himself tentatively advances the claims of Nerius, he does so principally on the grounds that the Oratorian Friars have ‘used a more free, open, and hard fashion against Princes’, and have better provided for direct papal jurisdiction than have Jesuits such as Bellarmine, whose complexities are beyond ordinary men’s understanding. Ignatius’s reply is withering. What kingdom, he demands, have the followers of Nerius ever ‘cut up into an Anatomy’? If mere scholarly writings are to be deemed sufficient for entrance into this room reserved for innovators, then Reformers such as Beza and Calvin might equally well have qualified. However, their purpose was not to ‘extirpate Monarchies’; nor have their disciples ever ‘done any thing upon the person of his soveraigne’. A few Oratorians have followed the Jesuit example of disturbing the peace of some states; but since they have performed ‘nothing with their hands’, they can scarcely ever aspire to this ‘secret and sacred Chamber’. Lucifer intends to counter this argument by suggesting that, perchance, all those whose hands had been ‘imbrued in the bowels of Princes’ have not necessarily been armed by the Jesuits— an answer, Donne is quick to stress, which would have been made by Lucifer as ‘Father of lies’, in which capacity he might say anything—but he thinks better of it, and refrains from advancing Nerius’s slender claim against Ignatius and his bristling followers (pp. 75–9). Even Machiavelli cannot match Ignatius in such matters; though Donne does his best for the Florentine, who argues that he has armed the people against princely oppression, and shown them

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

409

how to conspire against, and even overthrow, tyrants. This is the final point of Machiavel’s speech; but it does not, I think, represent a recognition on Donne’s part of any truly republican element in Machiavelli’s own writing, as Healy suggests (p. xxxiii). In so far as it represents anything more than an attempt by Donne’s Machiavel to vie with the Jesuits, it may be compared with a minority view of Il Principe, which was first tentatively advanced in the 1530s, when Reginald Pole had reported that some Florentines were defending Machiavelli as a lover of liberty who had written Il Principe to overthrow the Medici, who must inevitably be ruined when following his precepts. Pole’s work remained unpublished until 1744; but its interest lies in the suggestion that contemporaries were already seeking a hidden meaning in Machiavelli. The idea was repeated by Matteo Toscano in 1578, and, more important, by Alberico Gentili in his De legationibus of 1585, where he wrote that Machiavelli was a ‘eulogist of democracy and its most spirited champion’, and that, as the supreme enemy of tyranny, Machiavelli had devised Il Principe not to instruct tyrants but to expose them to the ‘suffering nations’. Fitzherbert, in his Policy and religion, though totally unconvinced by such a theory, cites some of Machiavelli’s own countrymen who confess that Il Principe is contrary to true reason of state, and assert that the author himself knew this but (desiring the downfall of the Medici) ‘published his pestilent doctrin, hoping that they wold embrace it and ruine theym selves by the practise therof, wherby the state of Florence might return to the ould Democracy’.65 Despite this tenuous tradition, it was difficult to identify Machiavelli with the monarchomachs; though it is true that he had devoted a long chapter of the Discorsi to conspiracies, which had been recognized as ‘fort bonne instruction tant pour les princes que pour les sujets’.66 Some interpreters went further. The idea, for example, of using religion as a cloak to win a people’s allegiance 65 Pole, Apologia, 151–2; Matteo Toscano, Peplus Italiae (Paris, 1578); A. Gentilis, De legationibus libri tres (1585), 109, and trans. G. J. Laing (Classics of International Law, New York, 1924), 156; Fitzherbert, Policy and religion, I (1606), 412. 66 Hierosme de Chomedy, L’Histoire de la conjuration de Catilin (Paris, 1575), sig. A.3v. The chapter is Discorsi, III. 6.

410

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

in plots against their princes was regarded by John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, as ‘extractit out of the Discourses’; and he also thought that the ‘fyne witted clerkis of Machivellis scoole’ are never content with the present state, but ‘employ thair braynes for altering of commoun wealthes and depriving and setting up of Princes at thair plesour’.67 For Bishop Thomas Morton, even the theory that people might, in their primitive state, have lived without kings, tasted ‘too much of Machiavellisme’;68 and Pasquier, as we have seen, suggested that the doctrine of king-killing had been developed by the Jesuits from Machiavelli’s Il Principe. But these views, and especially the last, were scattered reflections, and were not generally taken up. Machiavelli was certainly identified with political murder, but generally at a different level. The Machiavellian prince might, it seemed, murder his opponents; but the merely Machiavellian opponent rarely murdered his prince. In popular estimation you needed to be something more than a Machiavellian to do that. You had, in short, to be a Jesuit. Donne’s Machiavel advances his claim as a deposer of princes without much conviction; and, like the rest of his arguments, it is relentlessly brushed aside, or rather totally disregarded, by Ignatius, whose speech in answer to Machiavel forms the core of the Conclave. Lucifer had been impressed by the Florentine, and was considering the possibility of using him as a counterpoise to Ignatius; but the latter is more subtle than the devil himself and sees through this stratagem. His first concern, therefore, is to castigate Machiavel for even daring to think that he might entrap Lucifer by flattery; especially when he had attributed ‘so much to his own wit’ that he never once acknowledged the Devil, nor even believed in the Devil’s existence. It had to be conceded that Machiavel had not believed in God either—nor in any other religion—and might on that account be deemed worthy of entrance. On the other hand, the very sincerity of Machiavel’s unbelief constituted a drawback; for, since he ‘beleeved that those things which hee affirmed were true, hee must not be rancked with them, which having beene 67 Cal. SP Scotland, iii. 27 and 813. See above, Ch. 10. 68 Thomas Morton, A full satisfaction concerning a double Romish iniquitie, hainous rebellion and more than heathenish equivocation (1606), 28.

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

411

sufficiently instructed of the true God, and beleeving him to be so, doe yet fight against him in his enemies armie’. The Jesuits, Ignatius acknowledges, themselves speak ill of the Devil, but this is done ‘out of a secret covenant’ and out of ‘Mysteries’ which may not be revealed to a mere catechumen of their ‘Synagogue’.69 Machiavel is also indicted for the great injuries which he has inflicted on the Bishop of Rome. These injuries, in the topsy-turvy world of the Conclave, consist of ‘weake praising’. The feeble sins attributed by Machiavel to the Papacy cannot do justice to what are, in fact, truly colossal iniquities—a circumstance which enables Donne, through Ignatius’s mouth, to catalogue some choice papal peccancies, culminating in the story of the alleged rape committed on the venerable Bishop of Fano by Pier Luigi, son of Pope Paul III. In the face of such crimes, this ‘pratling fellow Machiavell doth but treacherously, and dishonestly prevaricate and betraie the cause’ if he considers it sufficient for papal dignity to accord them sins ‘common to all the world’. The characteristic and really noteworthy crimes of the Papacy are the ‘transferring of Empires, the ruine of Kingdomes, the Excommunications, and depositions of Kings, and devastations by fire and sword’; and it was precisely these which the Jesuits had encouraged and attempted to justify by distorting the ‘Canons and Histories’ (pp. 37–43). At last, having dwelt on Machiavelli’s failure even to recognize the true state of affairs in Hell and on earth, Ignatius moves on to examine the things which ‘this man, who pretends to exceed all Auncient and Moderne States-men’ boasts about. And here Ignatius is even more scathing. That the matters which have been ‘shoveld together’ by Machiavel are of no consequence is evident from the way in which they have been universally condemned and nowhere defended. Not, Ignatius hastens to add, that this would necessarily make his doctrine any the worse; but it does mean that it is ‘the lesse artificially caried’ and, therefore, the less able to achieve its desired ends. The Jesuits, by contrast, are subtle and effective, using historical and theological evidence in whatever way 69 Healy, 33–5. The problem posed by this section—that is the degree to which sincere atheists might be deemed less sinful than perverse believers—is illuminated in Anthony Raspa, ‘Theology and Poetry in Donne’s ‘‘Conclave’’ ’, Journal of English Literary History, 32 (1965), 478–89.

412

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

best suits the needs of the moment. They can lull a kingdom, such as Britain, with their ‘Opium’ into believing that there is no danger of a deposition; and then, when the time is ripe, they will reinterpret their sources ‘to awake that state out of her Lethargy, either with her owne heat, intestine warre, or by some Medicine drawne from other places’. The security of princes is at the mercy of the Jesuits’ interpretation of the Canons, and may be ‘diminished, revoked, and anulled’ as the Society wishes. The Jesuits, unlike other religious orders, have rules which might be ‘applyed to times and to new occasions’; and, unlike Machiavel, whose ‘Mine’ has been perceived by the enemy, their own flexibility and cunning have enabled them to receive the Church ‘as a ship’, and to ‘freely saile in the deep sea’. It is not that Machiavelli’s work contains nothing of value. It is simply that the Jesuits do not require his advice. In particular, the business of dissembling, in which he glories, is as old as Plato and ‘other fashioners of Common-wealths’, and the Church Fathers themselves had allowed the liberty of lying. In any case, the Jesuits had gone beyond this ‘free lying’ with another less suspicious doctrine: ‘which is Mentall Reservation, and Mixt propositions’ (pp. 47–55). Machiavel is clearly not in the same class as Ignatius, who now delivers the final blow which will destroy his rival once and for all. Machiavel’s books have all been conceived for the sole purpose of ruining the Roman Church, removing people’s liberty, destroying ‘all civility and re-publique’, and reducing all states to monarchies. In truth, everywhere Kings have either withdrawn from allegiance to the Church or have damaged its power in some way. On the other hand, to the Jesuits the very name Monarch is ‘hatefull and execrable’; and, having done its utmost to undermine royal power, their Society has been termed the Sword of the Roman Church, as a name most apt for the ‘Jesuites Assassinates, and King-killings’. This is the greatest glory of the Society. They are prepared to murder kings ‘voluntarily, for nothing, and every where’; and their art of divination far exceeds in subtlety that of the ancient Romans, in that ‘wee consider not the entrails of Beasts, but the entrails of souls, in confessions, and the entrails of Princes, in treasons; whose hearts wee do not beleeve to be with us, till we see them’. In view of

J E S U I T S AN D D O N N E ’ S C O N C L A V E

413

all this it would be better for ‘this pratling Secretary’ to hold his tongue, rest content that his work has enjoyed some temporary reputation, and recognize that he cannot compare with the Jesuits, whose achievements are world-wide. Indeed, in Ignatius’s estimation, poor Machiavel cannot aspire to anything higher than an honourable place ‘amongst the Gentiles’. This is the final thrust at Machiavel’s own claim to have merited recognition as an innovator who has ‘dealt in Christian businesse’; for, as Ignatius remarks, ‘in all times in the Romane Church there have bene Friers which have farr exceeded Machiavel ’ (pp. 55–63). So, in his vision, Donne sees Machiavel ‘often put forward, and often thrust back, and at last vanish’. The only serious contender for a place in the inner sanctum has been vanquished; and Ignatius, having quickly disposed of the other aspirants, turns his attention to the principal seat next to Lucifer’s own throne. Boniface is in possession. But not for long; and Donne’s last vision, before his soul returns to its body, is of the Pope being hurled down by Ignatius with eager assistance from Lucifer, who fears that otherwise ‘his owne seate might bee endangered’. If the Devil himself is so terrified of Ignatius, what chance could mere mortals stand—even if they be as cunning and as evil as Machiavel himself ? Overmatched by Ignatius, in dialectic as in villainy, Donne’s Machiavel simply fades away. But what, in the process, has happened to Niccolo` Machiavelli, historian, military authority, and political thinker? Has he not also evaporated amidst the wit and ambiguities of satire? We have grown so used to academic assurances that everybody was horrified by Machiavelli that it requires an effort to appreciate that, although the impact of any satire upon contemporaries is difficult to assess, the only way to take the Conclave seriously is as comedy. That Donne’s intention was to pillory the Jesuits (and that Machiavelli is used solely to give point to the mockery) is obvious; but, by making his villains so grotesque and idiosyncratic, Donne tames them. They become absurd rather than terrible—and this is especially the case with Machiavel, who is so hopelessly out of his depth in Hell. Doubtless, the Jesuits would have been mortally offended by the infernal buffoonery; but Machiavelli was himself a humourist and

414

PART II. THE RHETORIC OF HATE

would probably have enjoyed the Conclave. He might, however, have been irritated by the fact that even the acute John Donne was content merely to use him as a symbol for ineffectual and transparent political chicanery, and that the satire depends for its effect precisely upon the fact that ‘Machiavel’ had, by this time, become a stereotype villain and not even a particularly dangerous one.

PART III

Adaptation, Attack, Defence

This page intentionally left blank

12 Gentillet’s Final Assault: The ‘Contre-Machiavel’ of 1585 For unwary modern readers—surfeited by literary appraisal and reappraisal, but unfamiliar with Renaissance indifference to such matters—a perplexing feature of the early reception of Machiavelli must be its failure to produce much in the way of serious critical assessment. Single aspects of his work, such as historical technique, military theory, his attitude towards colonies, and even his skill as a writer, were sometimes evaluated; while instances where Machiavellian material was adopted, adapted, or distorted, were commonplace. Yet, Guicciardini and Schwendi excepted, only Gentillet has left us an attempt—albeit primitive and prejudiced—to treat Machiavelli’s ideas methodically and to test them against historical evidence. In the first edition of the ContreMachiavel Gentillet had drawn solely upon Il Principe and the Discorsi: but it seems that a subsequent discovery of the Arte della guerra and the Istorie fiorentine must have convinced him that there was scope for extending his attack. On 31 May 1585, the Genevan Registres du Conseil note a request by Innocent Gentillet to reprint his book against Machiavelli, ‘avec la revision qu’il y a faicte’. The request was granted on 15 July and, later in the year, the book itself appeared with a title page not only asserting that it was the ‘Derniere edition corrigee & augmentee de plus de la moitie´’, but also naming the hitherto anonymous author as ‘President Gentillet’. This was, in fact, the last French edition published in the author’s lifetime, and the text certainly fulfils his claim to have increased it by approximately 50 per cent.1 1 On this edition, and on the reprints published in 1609 and 1620, see ContreMachiavel, ed. D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. xxxiv–xxxv, xl, xlii, lix–lxi. I have not

418

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

The Contre-Machiavel of 1585 is augmented with twenty-three new maxims (fifteen from the Arte della guerra and eight from the Istorie fiorentine) and is thus the only sixteenth-century treatise which, ostensibly at least, criticizes Machiavelli on the basis of all four of his principal writings.2 Unhappily, Gentillet’s own mental horizons have dwindled rather than expanded. He uses the new material merely to reiterate or reinforce the arguments he had advanced a decade earlier; and he is even less aware of Machiavelli’s aims as a military writer or historian than he had been of the purpose of Il Principe and the Discorsi. Worse still, he tries to make his new version relevant to the changed situation of the 1580s, when Huguenot fears were centred on the Guises, the Catholic League, and Spain, rather than on Italianized courtiers; and there is a consistent toning down of the rabid anti-Italian eloquence which had energized the first edition.3 This may have seemed a bright idea, but it proves to have been a disaster. The force originally generated by Gentillet’s fury over the St Bartholomew massacres is completely dissipated by these revisions. The rhetoric of hate is enfeebled when the entire cast of villains is replaced by new characters unrelated to the plot.

been able to consult the unique copy of the 1585 edition at Grenoble but have, instead, used the edition of 1609 at the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France which, according to D’Andrea and Stewart, uses the same typographical material. Like all scholars prior to the bibliographical labours of D’Andrea and Stewart, C. Edward Rathe´ was not aware of the 1585 edition and the circumstances of its publication, so that in the introduction to his Anti-Machiavel: Edition de 1576 (Geneva, 1968), 2, he considered the augmentations of the 1609 version to be spurious. The wide-ranging Mattei (1969), 279–92, was similarly unaware of the 1585 edition of the Contre-Machiavel, and considered the edition of 1609 to be by someone other than Gentillet. Mattei discusses all the additional material deriving from the Arte della guerra, but cites Gentillet’s expansions as though they are the maxims themselves. For convenience, I list all the additional maxims and the Machiavellian sources on which they are based in the Appendix to this chapter. 2 Excluding, that is, the lists given in bibliographical and biographical dictionaries such as Gesner and Boissard. It is depressing to reflect that even modern criticism from the mid-20th c. onward—which runs to a vast number of items— has been overwhelmingly concerned with Il Principe and the Discorsi, while the central importance of the Arte della guerra has been brushed aside. 3 The altered tone and revisions are remarked upon by D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. lix–lx.

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

419

The arguments are now stale, stereotyped, and frequently inapposite. It may well be that Gentillet’s handling of the additional sources is not more obtuse than his treatment of Il Principe and the Discorsi, but it certainly seems so: for his sole concern has been to find further examples of the detested ‘maximes tyranniques’, regardless of context and even of sense. As in the earlier editions, each maxim is followed by an expansion based on Machiavelli’s own words (as provided in the available French translations), before being subjected to a dogged refutation. The maxims themselves are rather approximate citations from Charrier’s Art de la guerre and Brinon’s Histoire de Florence;4 the expansions, especially those based upon Brinon, are looser still; and the refutations are in Gentillet’s most laborious and moralistic mode. The net result is that the Contre-Machiavel—already an overweight, but intermittently mordant, book—has been blown up into a toothless monster of prolixity. The new material is not spread evenly: three maxims are added to Book I (‘le Conseil’); two to Book II (‘la Religion’); and eighteen to Book III (‘la Police’). There are, moreover, some curious excrescences. A maxim, declaring that man prospers as long as fortune is in accord with his nature and humour, had incurred the wrath of Gentillet in the first edition of the Contre-Machiavel (1576, II. 10) and had led him to conclude that ‘certaine it is that the haps which men call of Fortune, procede from God’. At this point, in order to ‘crown’ the second book of his new edition and to convince readers of Machiavelli’s impiety, Gentillet adds a ‘little discourse’—‘little that is according to its subject, but otherwise somewhat longish’— against ‘Atheists, Pagans, and other enemies of our Christian religion’, which rambles on for another forty-three pages. An even worse example of redundancy is Gentillet’s treatment of a maxim (II. 11), roughly derived from the Istorie fiorentine, to the effect that ‘after the Emperor Theodosius, civil discords brought about in Italy a change of government, laws, religion, language, customs, and names’. This, itself, is an imprecise version of an original Machiavellian sentence: but the expansion occupies nearly 4 Histoire de Florence de Nicolas Machiavel . . . traduict d’Italien en Franc¸ois. Par le Seigneur de Brinon (Paris, 1577).

420

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

two pages, freely paraphrasing and summarizing several paragraphs of the Istorie fiorentine, before swelling out into a ninetyfive page diatribe (with citations from forty-six sources) merely to expose what Gentillet has taken to be an error of chronology in Machiavelli’s text.5 The flabbiness of Gentillet’s thinking is everywhere apparent, but especially in the way in which he uses the Arte della guerra. Few of the so-called maxims hacked out of this latter source deal with military issues, or, rather, they are not treated as such but serve simply as pretexts for attacking Machiavelli on familiar moral or Christian grounds. Thus the idea that well-regulated kingdoms never give absolute power to their rulers except in time of war (I. 3) is rejected as advice best calculated to invite a prince to love war and fly from peace;6 and a suggestion that, in order to enforce obedience, a military leader, whose men are too anxious to give battle at an inopportune time, should sacrifice some to the enemy (III. 11), provokes a sententious declaration that good military leaders love their soldiers and do not expose them to unnecessary dangers.7 Gentillet’s innate gift for misinterpretation is stimulated by the ambiguities of the dialogue form in which the Arte della guerra is cast. Matters of opinion or debate may thus be depicted as Machiavellian aphorisms even though they run completely counter to Machiavelli’s beliefs. An instance of this arises when one of the interlocutors, Cosimo Rucellai, replies to an accusation that his grandfather would have done better to imitate the austerity of the 5 Gentillet argues that the change of religion in the Roman Empire occurred in the reign of Constantine and not in the time of Arcadius and Honorius—a subject which, he acknowledges, has ‘made my pen fly rather a long way’ (le suject amplement beau a fait voler ma plume bien loing). 6 In his refutation, Gentillet cites Bartolus on suitable modes of government and notes that, according to Machiavelli, the Florentines were unable to settle in any of the major forms of government because they were naturally inclined to partialities, and ‘leurs espritz trop fretillans a` nouveautez’. For this point, he gives a marginal note to ‘Machiav. Hist. liv. 2, 3 & 4’: but the observation is more precisely matched in Book IV. 27 (Mazzoni and Casella, 492a). 7 Equally self-righteous and inaccurate is Gentillet’s treatment of III. 38, which he rejects as a ruse composed of perfidy, simulation, and cruelty, which would not, in any case, work. On the other hand, Gentillet rejects III. 39 as similarly perfidious but especially pernicious precisely because it does work.

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

421

ancients rather than their luxury. Cosimo argues that the times in which his forbear lived were so corrupt that anyone leading an ascetic life would have been mocked and ridiculed. This incidental remark is seized upon by Gentillet as proof of Machiavelli’s belief that—because people mock anyone who attempts to break with the corruption of their own times—it is then ‘an honourable thing to follow the common error and the abuses and corruptions which are in vogue’. It is hard to conceive a more breathtaking travesty of Machiavelli’s views. But such a feat is not beyond Gentillet’s powers, as we can see in his treatment of another maxim: ‘In a well-regulated kingdom or republic subjects are never permitted to become accustomed to the art of war, because those who do are true ministers of tyranny’ (III. 4). What, in fact, Machiavelli is specifically discussing at this point in the Arte della guerra is the danger arising from men whose lives are bound wholly by warfare and who know nothing of the arts of peace. One might deem this unexceptionable, and Gentillet himself admits that it has an appearance of virtue. He knows, none the less, that this is merely illusory and that, in reality, Machiavelli is upholding tyranny for, as Plato points out, tyrants try to prevent their subjects from studying military discipline because it is a skill serving to maintain people in liberty and guaranteeing them ‘against oppression both internal and external’. That the need for a citizen (rather than a professional or mercenary) army is the main theme of the Arte della guerra and, perhaps, of all Machiavelli’s writings, has either eluded Gentillet or is wilfully ignored by him. He is also afflicted by a form of myopia arising from his intense patriotism. This provokes him into an angry response towards anything which may be interpreted, either directly or indirectly, as a slur on France. In the first book of the Arte della guerra, for example, Fabrizio Colonna (Machiavelli’s mouthpiece) declares that he would raise cavalry as a militia rather than as in France, where the gendarmerie is ‘dangerous and insolent, as is ours’. Then, at the end of the second book, Fabrizio condemns the Italian habit of allowing four horses to each man-at-arms, especially in view of the fact that the Germans, and the Romans before them, managed with only one. Gentillet conflates these two observations into a single maxim and its expansion (III. 5), which he refutes on the

422

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

grounds that the French system (akin to the Italian) is more practical since a cavalryman would be useless once his single horse had been killed. He also declares that every nation has its own military customs and that the French have achieved great things by concentrating on cavalry, although, he hastens to add, his compatriots are also excellent foot soldiers. His ire is aroused, too, by an observation that ‘the Kingdom where cavalry is more valued than the infantry will always be weak and exposed to ruin’ (III. 6). This he reads as a blatant attack on France and refutes it on the grounds that, in the recent civil wars there, cavalry has achieved great feats in battles where it has broken the opposing infantry. In any case, Gentillet shrugs, ‘it is a waste of paper and ink to amuse oneself refuting such absurdities’.8 Repetitions of themes already treated in 1576 sometimes entangle Gentillet in very strange arguments. Christian military prowess was always a favourite topic among anti-Machiavellians, and Gentillet had said a great deal in praise of his co-religionists’ readiness to kill each other. Now a fresh opportunity was presented by a maxim drawn from the Arte della guerra: ‘the necessity for selfdefence having been taken from military men by the Christian religion, military virtue has, in consequence, also been withdrawn from them’ (II. 4) It is easy, says Gentillet, to refute this since Christians are compelled by necessity to wage war against the Turk. In any case, even when waging war against other Christians, the fear of losing honour, liberty, life, and goods encourages selfdefence, so that those who find themselves in battles, assaults, and other conflicts risk their lives just as much as pagans did in their wars. In fact, thanks to cannons, arquebuses, and pistols, Christian wars are even more murderous than those of the ancients, who did not have such weapons. And here Gentillet wildly affirms that the attacks on the Roman Empire by the Goths and Visigoths (who called themselves Christians) were worse than the deeds of the pagans because, had these people not been enemies of letters, we 8 This does not prevent Gentillet from bridling at a maxim to the effect that regions under ‘many and divers signories’ produce more men of valour in war than areas less divided (III. 8). This is naturally rejected by Gentillet, who defends the capacity of monarchies, and especially France, to produce great men in abundance.

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

423

would have had the whole works of authors such as Livy, Tacitus, Trogus, and Sallust, instead of mere fragments.9 What is the score? Pagans 0, Christians 2 (bloodshed and barbarism)? But I doubt that this is really the result that Gentillet intended. Another favourite theme—indeed the central theme of the original Contre-Machiavel—is recalled but transmogrified by an observation ripped out of context from the Arte della guerra: ‘To ensure that governors of places or provinces do not commit disorders therein, it is necessary that no one has authority or government in a place where he was born; and that governors are frequently changed from one place to another’ (III. 13). This practical advice on military government is represented by Gentillet as a general doctrine tending to give authority to foreigners; and he complacently points out that he has already sufficiently exposed this evil. What he does not acknowledge, though, is that it was originally (but is no longer) associated with Italians at the French court. Gentillet’s use of additional material is ineffectual in all respects save one; and this exception may be found in a series of chapters in his Third Book where he mounts an attack on Machiavelli’s tendency either to build a case upon the basis of merely one or two examples, or to make false distinctions. The accusations do not always hit the mark: but they are close enough to constitute what amounts to an almost intelligent criticism. A case in point is a maxim derived from the Arte della guerra where Fabrizio indicates the dangers of providing fortifications with places for retreat since these tempt defenders to fight less obstinately than they would if constrained to hold their ground (III. 32). Noting that Machiavelli 9 Gentillet’s views on literature are confused. He finds himself in difficulties when considering a maxim (III. 10) to the effect that the valour of military men cannot be corrupted by a more ‘honneste’ idleness than letters; and that idleness cannot establish itself in well-governed cities with a greater and more dangerous deceit than by those means. Naturally, this offends Gentillet, who regards the maxim as mingling ‘la barbarie et l’ignorance avec la tyrannie’ for, if you drive out letters, you establish ignorance of laws divine and human. On the other hand, he concedes, good things may be ill used and he attacks the ways in which eloquence and dialectic have been employed to advocate things which are untrue, illicit, and unjust. And, as in the first edition of the Contre-Machiavel, he declares that in a well-governed state ‘Poe¨mes lubriques et lascifs’, which corrupt the young and promote vice, would be banned.

424

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

here refers only to Cesare Borgia’s overrunning of Forlı` in 1499, Gentillet argues that a single instance is insufficient to prove a case—especially when one may cite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Again, dealing with the maxim that ‘Between those who aspire to the same grandeur an alliance may well be made, but not friendship’ (III. 22), he sneers that ‘our Florentine according to his custom, always bases his maxims upon one or two examples’, and the ‘malotru exemple’ is refuted with several others both ancient and modern.10 Similarly, the maxim that ‘great men deem it shameful to lose by trickery, but not to gain’ (III. 32) is exemplified for Machiavelli by Francesco Sforza, who made promises to the people of Pavia without any intention of observing them. The notion that princes can always find people whom they can deceive has, says Gentillet, already been sufficiently refuted in his previous chapter; and he will add only that Machiavelli is again making a general rule from a single instance while, in any case, Francesco Sforza cannot be ranked amongst the ‘grands personnages’. The inadequacy of Machiavelli’s evidence is certainly open to criticism; but sometimes, when pressing the argument, Gentillet gets himself into some very awkward positions, as in his treatment of a maxim (III. 28) from the Istorie fiorentine. ‘Conspiracies’, so the maxim runs, ‘most often bring about the ruin of those who make them; while eventually causing the downfall of those against whom they were aimed.’ The expansion of this statement is based on the assassination of Galeazzo Sforza of Milan in 1476 as narrated in the Istorie fiorentine; and Gentillet—asserting that Machiavelli uses this example both to reassure tyrants and to frighten tyrannicides—opposes him with a series of conspiracies which have succeeded without danger to the assassins. One must, he argues, make a rule of that which happens more not less frequently. This is reasonable enough: but Gentillet has assumed the role of an apologist for tyrannicide; and this was treacherous ground in contemporary Europe, and especially in France. 10 Machiavelli’s remark is prompted by the rivalry in Bologna between the Canneschi and the Bentivogli. Despite family alliances, this ancient enmity culminated in 1445 with armed riots and assassinations.

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

425

More equivocal is the position Gentillet assumes when confronting other notions derived from a tendentious reading of the Istorie fiorentine. Machiavelli, reflecting on the history of his own city, had contemplated the impossibility of maintaining any republic entirely free from internal dissensions. Accordingly he had argued that factions headed by a public benefactor were more likely to be helpful to the state than those headed by men who seek their own interests. For Gentillet this results in a maxim to the effect that dissension caused by factions ‘made by public means’ are profitable, whereas those ‘made by private means’ are not (III. 48). Obviously, by posing the issue in this way, he is able to argue that the distinction is unrealistic. Unfortunately, he enlarges upon this by maintaining that all partialities are good if they have a good end (that is the public good), and that all are bad when they have a bad end. Very similar is the treatment accorded to the idea that those who promote war are either moved by the desire to enrich themselves or to impoverish their enemies (III. 2). According to Gentillet, everything depends on one’s intentions. Something which may appear good in itself is bad if done for a bad end while, on the contrary, things which are by nature evil may appear good (and may indeed be so) when pursued for a good end, like poisons which may be used therapeutically.11 Gentillet’s treatment of both maxims is dubious. Perhaps he had been reading too much Machiavelli? Certainly, for a self-proclaimed upholder of conventional morality and Christian virtue, the confusion over ends and means is as infelicitous as his inadvertent defence of tyrannicide and sanguinary Christianity. As a critic of other writers’ dialectic, Gentillet’s own credentials had been poor in 1576 but were far worse in 1585. His proneness to tear statements out of context, to build arguments upon selective misinterpretation, and to contradict himself has become more serious. The kinds of fatuity which I have already illustrated are encapsulated in one particular maxim (III. 7) where, combining two separate observations from the Arte della guerra, Gentillet wholly disregards both their context and the way in which they 11 The idea of poisons which need to be identified or which may be used therapeutically is well known in Machiavellian literature.

426

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

were qualified by Machiavelli. ‘The Prince’, runs the maxim, ‘must be served by soldiers who are neither entirely volunteers nor entirely forced; and they ought to be chosen from temperate lands.’ The distinction, says Gentillet, is ‘une pure reverie’. In the first place, Machiavelli’s belief that voluntary recruitment must result in few soldiers is wholly refuted by the experience of France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and other territories. Secondly, it is ridiculous of Machiavelli to say that warm climates produce men who are prudent but lack courage, whereas cold climates do the opposite—because, in Gentillet’s opinion, there is no relationship between climate and the way people fight.12 But then, having made his case, he proceeds to destroy it. Machiavelli’s suggestion (that men from warm climates are more prudent than those from cold) is rejected, not on the grounds that climate is irrelevant, but because the opposite is true. ‘Great heat’, Gentillet sagely observes, ‘dries up the brain [la grande chaleur deseche le cerveau] and consumes the humour which nourishes it’ so that, as a consequence, heat makes the brain less suitable for those functions which relate to prudence. Physiologically ingenious this may be: but it runs counter to Gentillet’s repudiation of the relevance of climate. He seems, here and elsewhere, unable either to read Machiavelli accurately or to follow the thread of his own discourse. Ill-conceived, badly researched, and sloppily argued, the ContreMachiavel of 1585 exposes and emphasizes the many flaws not of Machiavelli but of Gentillet himself. Yet, it is an unconscious irony which constitutes the most devastating weakness of all—although not until the reprinting of the revised edition in 1609, twenty years after the author’s death. It will be recalled that Gentillet’s fundamental objection to Machiavelli’s status as a political and military authority had been the fact that the ‘Secretarie or common Notarie 12 In his recommendation of men from temperate climes, Machiavelli is (without acknowledgement) drawing on Vegetius, De re militari, I. 4: but immediately points out that such a rule could only be followed by a prince who had the entire world at his command and could recruit from any area he wished. It is more practicable for the prince to select men from his own dominions and to remember that training will make good soldiers in any country and that industry may supply what is lacking in nature. Gentillet actually cites this in his expansion—‘Vray est que l’exercice fait par tout de bons soldats. Car la` ou` nature manque l’industrie supplee’—but typically chooses to ignore it in his refutation.

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

427

of the Common-weale of Florence’ had no experience whatsoever either as a counsellor at the centre of public affairs or as a military commander on the field of battle. In 1576 this had not prevented Gentillet from discussing matters both of counsel and of warfare— with due apologies—while rebuking Machiavelli’s temerity in having done the same thing. In 1585 he persists in this selfcontradictory mode: berating Machiavelli for having ‘in his time wished to meddle in military affairs and matters of state, and to be historian and secretary all together’ (I. 2);13 and sneering at Machiavelli’s suggestions for arming light cavalry, which demonstrate ‘that he did not know what he was talking about; and it would have been better for his honour if, in all sciences other than tyranny, he had religiously observed silence, in imitation of the Persians’ (III. 9).14 Even when aware that he might be exceeding the bounds of his own competence, Gentillet cannot resist a thrust at Machiavelli’s lack of expertise. Thus, in the course of refuting Machiavelli’s views on fortresses (III. 12), he pulls himself up short and, in order not to ‘fall into the fault of our Florentine secretary, who fashions a warrior as if he were a lackey of Scipio or Hannibal’, he leaves the dispute to those experienced in the military art. In 1609, the crooked Genevan printer Jacob Stoer reprinted the 1585 edition of the Contre-Machiavel, using the same typographical material but with a false Leyden imprint, and adding a preliminary letter ‘Au lecteur debonnaire’.15 This letter is worth attention because, as a feat of incomprehension and selfdestruction, it is remarkable even when judged by the most stringent standards of incompetence. Within the space of a few pages, it reduces to rubble the entire massive structure which had been 13 This maxim concerns the type of advisers a prince should have about him— ‘neither too much lovers of war nor of peace’. Gentillet advocates a council of experts consisting of jurisconsults (by some strange chance, his own profession), captains, and historians. He asserts, without warrant, that Machiavelli would have preferred a council made up of people like himself: yet a single Machiavellist in the council of a prince could do more harm in one year than fifty ‘gens de bien’ could put right in ten. 14 ‘Tellement qu’il monstre bien qu’il ne sc¸ait ce qu’il dit: et eust mieux faict pour son honneur, si en toutes autres sciences que de la Tyrannie, il eust religieusement honnore´ le Silence, a` l’imitation des Perses.’ 15 See Droz, ‘Fauces adresses typographiques’, 582; D’Andrea and Stewart, p. xl.

428

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

erected by Gentillet upon the foundation of Machiavelli’s alleged ignorance of practical affairs.16 Is it seemly, asks the well-meaning but hapless epistoler, for ‘un homme de longue robe’, accustomed to wielding a pen, to discuss affairs of state and treat of princes’ duty in times of peace or war? After all, it is the business of captains to make themselves heard in matters belonging to their military profession. Counsellors, too, are most beneficial to the state when they provide solid instruction for the future. But what if such men have neither the time nor the will to set down their knowledge in books? What if a military leader would rather carry arms for ten years than shut himself up for ten days in his study in order to write? What if a wise senator prefers to pronounce his mature advice in a ‘lively voice for the good of several provinces rather than in a work exposed to the censures of the audacious vulgar’? Surely, in such cases, men who may be of lesser rank but who have the ability to render service to others should not be inhibited from doing so? Admittedly the difficulty seems greater when a man of this sort has never done anything but turn over the leaves of books, ‘like Phormio who sought to hold forth on the exploits of war before Hannibal’. And this is the central issue. What are readers to think: either when they cast an eye over Nicholas Machiavelli, Secretary of Florence, or remember that the Antimachiavel (that is to say the author of the present ‘discourses of peace and war’) was a peaceable man, a lover of wide reading in all good writers, adroit with a pen, but not at all in playing with knives, and who has entered the councils of princes only via the door of books.

What! Do philosophers devoted to study presume to write about public affairs—especially those who have ‘never seen at close quarters enemies armed at all pieces, nor armies marching to combat, and have never had any relevant commission’. Well, why not? ‘If so be that they are grounded not on the aptness of their minds, or on the hilts of swords, but on the teaching of wise men’.17 16 The letter is printed at sigs. }.2–5. 17 Contre-Machiavel (1609), sigs. }.2v–3: ‘Et c’est ce qui vient en pensee a` plusieurs, soit qu’ils jettent l’oeil sur Nicolas Machiavel Secretaire de Florence; soit qu’ils se ramentoyuent que l’Antimachiavel, c’est a` dire l’auteur des presens

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

429

As for the Contre-Machiavel: the epistoler emphasizes that the ‘author of the three books that we offer you has contributed nothing of his own but the order and assembling’; and the maxims, responses, sentences, and examples are all borrowed from men so acceptable that the most valiant and learned of the world would not disdain to embrace them. Many of these men have been found in councils, have handled great affairs, or commanded in wars. They have, in short, ‘in their times worthily fenced both with pens and with swords’. They have seen, heard, spoken, and performed. More than that (and this is the principal matter), they have judiciously noted the causes of things, have revealed the foundation of councils, and explained events. After all, the ‘lecteur debonnaire’ is reminded, Alexander of Macedon, great in war, had as his military adviser the poet Homer. Our author (that is, of the Contre-Machiavel ) has read the Greek and Roman histories, and others too; and historians, ancient and modern, tell us about all the wars that have ever been, right up to the present century. Furthermore, in their digressions they tell us many useful things about the management of affairs not only in peace but also in war. Our author has studied historians diligently, ‘sweetening, by polyhistoric exercise, the labours of the study of civil law’. Perhaps he has not been either a great councillor or a general: but he has scrupulously followed the detailed accounts of those who were, and has valuable things to say. Men, both of ‘longue et courte robe’, read with profit and pleasure the histories of Polybius, Thucydides, Titus Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch, and others who have come since. Infinite useful discourses have been published. These belong in their rank. And, as they have been worthily collected and printed many times before, in divers languages, I hope that this new edition, augmented by more than half by the author, will prove yet more discours de paix et de guerre, a este´ homme paisible, ami de lecture diverse de tous bons auteurs, adroit a` manier la plume, non point a` jouer des cousteaux, et qui n’est entre´ que par la porte des livres es conseils des Princes. Et quoy, dira-on, ces philosophez attachez a` l’estude osent-ils bien parler des affaires publics? sur tout eux qui n’ont jamais veu de pres des ennemis equippez de toutes pieces, ni des armees marchans au combat, et qui n’eurent onques commission qui s’y rapportast. Pourquoy non? moyennant que fondez non sur l’habilite´ de leurs esprits, ou sur des gardes d’espees, mais sur les enseignemens des sages.’

430

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

praiseworthy than all the preceding ones. For nothing has been added beyond an exquisite judgement, in order to leave out nothing for the solid refutation of the maxims of Machiavelli.18

And here, with a final promise to bring out other pieces ‘no less agreeable and profitable’, the author of the letter ‘Au lecteur debonnaire’ blithely passes on his way, heedless of the ruin he has wrought upon Gentillet’s cherished masterpiece. 18 Contre-Machiavel (1609), sigs. }.4v–5: ‘Infinis discours ont este´ publie´s qui ont eu leur usage: ceux ci demeurent en leur rang: et comme ils ont este´ dignement recueillis et imprimez ci devant plusieurs fois, en diverses langues: j’espere que ceste nouvelle edition augmentee plus de moitie´ par l’auteur se rendra plus recommendable encore que toutes les precedentes. Car il n’a rien adjouste´, que d’un jugement exquis, afin de ne laisser rien en arriere pour la solide refutation des maximes de Machiavel.’

APPENDIX MAXIMS ADDED TO GENTILLET’S CONTRE-MACHIAVEL IN 1585 book i I. 2. ‘Un Roy ne doit avoir pre´s de soy gens trop amateurs ny de paix ny de guerre.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, Lib. I (Mazzoni and Casella, 274a–b). I. 3. ‘Les Royaumes bien reglez ne donnent jamais puissance absolue¨ a` leurs Roys sinon a` la guerre.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, Lib. I (Mazzoni and Casella, 272a–b). I. 6. ‘La Republique qui est agite´e par discorde d’entre les plus grands de la cite´, voulans reduire les moindres en servitude, et le populaire voulant user de trop de liberte´, a besoin qu’il s’esleve quelque bon, sage, et puissant citoyen, qui establisse bonnes loix, pour appaiser les humeurs d’entre les grans et le populaire, et les lier tellement qu’ils ne se puissent mal faire. Les bonnes loix estans establies, la Republique sera lors vrayment libre, et son Estat ferme, et n’aura plus besoin de la vertu d’un homme pour le maintenir.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, IV. 1 (Mazzoni and Casella, 472a).

b o ok i i II. 4. ‘La necessite´ de se defendre ayant este´ ostee aux gens de guerre par la Religion Chrestienne, la vertu militaire par consequent leur a aussi este´ ostee.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, II (Mazzoni and Casella, 302a). II. 11. ‘Les discordes civiles, apres l’Empereur Theodose, amenerent en Italie changement d’Estat. Et le changement de gouvernement, loix, coustumes, maniere de vivre, Religion, langage, habits, et noms.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, I. 5 (Mazzoni and Casella, 383b–384a).

432

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

book iii III. 2. ‘Toujours a este´ et est raisonnable que le but de ceux qui meuvent une guerre, soit ou de s’enrichir, ou d’appauvrir leurs ennemis.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, VI. 1 ((Mazzoni and Casella, 530a). III. 4. ‘En un Royaume ou en une Republique bien reglee, on ne permet jamais aux subjectz d’user de la guerre par art: car ceux qui en usent sont vrais ministres de Tyrannie.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, I (Mazzoni and Casella, 270a). III. 5. ‘N’est bon de tenir gens d’armes d’ordonnances a` la maniere de France: ains comme faisoyent les anciens Romains.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, I (Mazzoni and Casella, 274a, 303a). III. 6. ‘Le Royaume ou` la cavalerie sera plus estimee que l’infanterie, sera tousjours foible et expose´ en ruine.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, II ((Mazzoni and Casella, 288a). III. 7. ‘Le prince se doit servir de soldats qui ne soyent ny du tout volontaires, ny du tout forcez: et les doit eslire de pays tempere´.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, I (Mazzoni and Casella, 275a, 277a). III. 8. ‘Les Regions submises a` plusieurs et diverses seigneuries, produisent plus de gens vaillans a` la guerre que celles qui sont submises a` peu.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, II (Mazzoni and Casella, 301b). III. 9. ‘Chevaux legers doivent estre Arbalestiers, avec quelque peu d’arquebusiers par dedans.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, II (Mazzoni and Casella, 303a). III. 10. ‘La valeur des gens de guerre ne se peut corrompre avec plus honneste oysivete´, que par celle des lettres. Et ne peut l’oysivete´ se nicher dans les citez bien reglees, avec plus grande et dangereuse tromperie, que par le moyen d’icelles.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, V. (Mazzoni and Casella, 499a). III. 11. ‘Le chef d’armee voyant ses gens de guerre trop encouragez au combat en temps importun, doit donner en proye une partie d’iceux a` l’ennemy, pour estre obey du reste.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, IV (Mazzoni and Casella, 325b). III. 12. ‘N’y a rien plus perilleux pour faire perdre une forteresse, que quand il y a moyen en icelle de se pouvoir retrencher.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, VII (Mazzoni and Casella, 354b). III. 13. ‘Pour eviter que les gouverneurs des places ou provinces ne commetent desordre en icelles, faut que nul n’ait authorite´ ny gouvernement au lieu ou` il a naturelle convenance; et que les gouverneurs soyent souvent changez d’un gouvernement en autre.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, I (Mazzoni and Casella, 282b).

G E N T IL L E T ’ S FI N AL A S S AU L T

433

III. 22. ‘Entre ceux qui aspirent a` mesme grandeur se peut bien faire alliance, amitie´ non.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, VI. 9 (Mazzoni and Casella, 536b). III. 28. ‘Le plus souvent les conjurations oppriment subitement ceux qui les font: Et a` la longue ceux aussi contre qui elles se font.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, VIII. 1 (Mazzoni and Casella, 590b). The expansion of this maxim is, however, based on the assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan in 1476, as narrated in Istorie fiorentine, VII. 34. III. 32. ‘Les grands reputent a` honte de perdre, non d’acquerir par tromperie.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, VII. 17 (Mazzoni and Casella, 541b– 542a). III. 38. ‘Le Prince qui se veut asseurer d’un peuple, la foy duquel il a pour suspecte, luy doit communiquer quelque dessein simule´, et luy demander aide pour l’executer. Et sous ce pretexte il pourra a` l’improviste mettre ce peuple sous sa devotion.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, VI (Mazzoni and Casella, 348b). III. 39. ‘Le Prince voulant executer quelque chose utile a` soy, et dommageable a` son peuple, le doit tromper de telle fac¸on, que chacun particulier croye que le faict ne luy tombe en rien, afin que l’un ne subvienne a` l’autre.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, VI (Mazzoni and Casella, 347b–348a). III. 48. ‘La division par sectes faictes par voye publique est profitable: mais non par sectes faictes par voye privee.’ Cf. Istorie fiorentine, VII. 1 (Mazzoni and Casella, 562b). III. 55. ‘Celuy qui se voudra departir de la corruptelle et commune usance du siecle ou` il est ne´, en sera diffame´ et vilipende´.’ Cf. Arte della guerra, I (Mazzoni and Casella, 268b).

13 From Sublime to Ridiculous: Some Serious Readers of Machiavelli Henricus Cuyckius (Henri van Cuyck) is not now a name to conjure with: and it is doubtful that he ever was. Living out his life in the Low Countries as a scholar and cleric, he taught moral philosophy at Louvain and rose from service as Vicar General of the Archbishop of Malines to the Deanship of Saint Pierre at Louvain, and ended his days as Bishop of Ruremonde. Such fame as he has enjoyed is largely due to his Speculum concubinariorum sacerdotum whose naughty title, as Crevenna sadly noted, masks a work ‘tre`s-orthodoxe’.1 However, another of his effusions, the Panegyricae orationes duae (1595), is of particular interest to us and may serve as an introductory parable for this chapter.2 The first of these two orations concerns books to be shunned and proscribed, and includes a violent diatribe against impure heretical writings by Calvin and others; against Rabelais, who holds neither God nor man in reverence and despises everything both human and divine; against the Protestant poet Cle´ment Marot and romances such as Amadis de Gaule; and against Bodin, whose intermingling of reason and error repels even the Calvinists. Every day the presses bring forth ‘amatory, incestuous, and obscene books’ which should be prohibited in any well-ordered republic; and, from this 1 Speculum concubinariorum sacerdotum, monachorum ac clericorum (Cologne, 1599); Pietro Antonio Crevenna, Catalogue raisonne´ de la collection des livres de M. Pierre Antoine Crevenna (Amsterdam, 1775–6), vi, additions, p. 22—cited in Jacques-Charles Brunet, Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres, 5th edn. (Paris, 1860–80), ii, col. 458. 2 Henricus Cuyckius, Panegyricae orationes duae. Prior de vitandis et a Republica proscribendis libris perniciosis. Posterior adversus politicos (Louvain, 1595).

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

435

filth, Machiavelli is singled out for especially harsh treatment.3 His works, we are informed, were included in the first class of authors condemned by the Tridentine fathers; and he wrote a book, ‘de Republica’, in the Tuscan language—subsequently translated into Latin and German at Frankfurt and Basle (sic)4—in which he orders a Prince to be like the centaur, part human and part beast, and to combine the guile of the fox with the violence of the lion. Cuyckius then goes on to quote, from Il Principe, the passage which declares that, while it is not necessary for the Prince to have the virtues (faith, piety, humanity, religion, and integrity), he must be able to simulate them and to vary his behaviour according to the winds of fortune. Much of this, Cuyckius observes, is simply a distortion of Cicero; and he cites the relevant passage from the De officiis to prove his point. Such detailed information, while not wholly accurate, suggests not only an acquaintance with Machiavelli’s text but also some enquiry into its dissemination and sources. Or so one might think. Unfortunately, everything that Cuyckius writes about Machiavelli is taken (and botched) from the work of an earlier Netherlandish scholar, Joannes Molanus (Jan van der Meulen), who had preceded Cuyckius as Dean of Saint Pierre and, more significantly, had served as papal and royal censor of books.5 Molanus had died young in 1585, and several of his works were edited posthumously by Cuyckius, who also did him the honour of a brief eulogy.6 One of the last of his books to be issued in his lifetime was the De fide haereticis servando (1584)—a vigorous examination of how far (if at all) faith was to be kept with heretics, rebels, and tyrants—and, in the course of this, Molanus devoted several pages to a denunciation 3 Ibid., fos. 25–7. 4 Ibid., fo. 25v: ‘De Machiavello, in primam damnatorum autorum classem a PP. Tridentibus rejecto quid attexam? Scripsit ille de Repub. librum lingua Thusca; qui a Francofurtensibus postea & Basiliensibus in Latinum et Alemanicum sermonem transfusus est.’ See below, n. 8. 5 His epitaph styled him ‘sacrae theologiae professor apostolicus ac regius librorum censor’. See Louis Moreri, Le grand Dictionnaire historique, 20th edn. (Paris, 1759), vii. 600. Molanus is similarly styled on the title page of his De fide haereticis servanda. 6 This eulogy prefaces Cuyckius’s edition of Molanus, Medicorum ecclesiasticum diarium (Louvain, 1598).

436

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

of Machiavelli’s ‘impious book’, de Principe.7 Here, quoted more accurately and at greater length than in Cuyckius, are the passages from Il Principe, 18, on the centaur, force and fraud, lion and fox, the perils of practising conventional virtues, the advantages of merely feigning them, and the need to trim one’s behaviour according to the winds of fortune. Molanus cited from Cicero’s De officiis to reveal how Machiavelli had distorted his source. He also provided a precise marginal reference to the Tridentine censors’ condemnation of Machiavelli (‘Litera N, classe 1’); and noted a Latin translation of Il Principe issued at Basle and a German version issued at Frankfurt. Unlike Cuyckius, he assigned each language to the correct town but, unfortunately, misled his plagiarist by mistaking the German translation of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel for an edition of Il Principe.8 For good measure, Molanus also quoted from Catharino’s early attack on the pernicious influence of Machiavelli, and referred to Paolo Giovio’s dubious biographical sketch. Molanus, then, must have read at least one chapter of Machiavelli for himself, and done some elementary research on his text. Or so one might think. Yet, once again, this proves to be illusory. Molanus, as a censor himself, could refer authoritatively to the Tridentine Index and was aware of two recent, heretically printed texts with Machiavelli’s name somewhere on the title page, although only one was actually by him. But Molanus’s quotation from Il Principe, along with the material from Cicero, was taken verbatim from Catharino, whose work, though referred to, was not identified as the source for these 7 Joannes Molanus, D. Joannis Molani sacrae theologiae Lovanii Professoris, Pontifici et Regii librorum censoris, libri quinque. De fide haereticis servanda. De fide rebellibus servanda. De fide et juramento quae a tyranno exiguntur (Cologne, 1584), 5–8, 23. 8 The Latin version of Il Principe would have been Silvestro Teglio’s translation, probably in the last of the editions published at Basle by Peter Perna (1560, 1570, 1580). There is no record of a 16th-c. German translation of Il Principe published at Frankfurt or anywhere else. The work alluded to by Molanus is, in fact, Nigrinus’s German translation of the Contre-Machiavel, printed by Georg Rabe at Frankfurt in 1580: Regentenkunst, oder Fuerstenspiegel. Gru¨ndtliche erkla¨rung, welcher massen ein Ko¨nigreich und jedes Fu¨rstentumb rechtmessig und ru¨hsam koenne und solle bestellt und verwaltet werden. On this edition, see D’Andrea and Stewart, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv, lxv–lxvii. Curiously, Bertelli and Innocenti, Secolo XVI, no. 169, list this as ‘Testo di Il principe e commento’.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

437

passages.9 Thus we have Cuyckius revealed as one more of those moralists whose conscience allowed them to damn an author unread, on the unacknowledged basis of a colleague’s work; while Molanus was better only in so far as he was a more accurate plagiarist and possessed a little inside information, albeit garbled. And Catharino, who was the only one of the three to have seen a Machiavelli text, was interested in just one chapter of Il Principe. The point of this story is not to expose lax literary morality, but rather to highlight the problems facing anyone who attempts to trace the readership of Machiavelli in the later decades of the sixteenth century and beyond. Both Cuyckius and Molanus exemplify the deceptive genealogy of criticism but tell us nothing about the serious study of Machiavelli, while Catharino takes us back in time more than forty years and, from a critical point of view, gets us only slightly further. For an unwary historian, second-hand or even third-hand knowledge may easily be taken as first-hand; and hearsay and prejudice may be misconstrued as independent thought. Nor is this simply a matter of detectable plagiarism. Much that appears to indicate direct Machiavelli learning may simply have filtered, indirectly as well as directly, into the general reservoir of sixteenth-century thought—partly because, as was the case with his military thinking, many of Machiavelli’s classical sources themselves became widely known; or because his aphoristic style was so suited to the reading habits of his age that his striking formulations, both idealogical and verbal, increasingly assumed a life of their own. There are other problems, too. Often, material which strikes a modern reader as Machiavellian proves to be the offspring of other traditions, originally independent but so ramulose and so entangled with Machiavellism as to defy simple categorization.10 Machiavelli’s ideas, accurately transmitted or not, also became diluted and diffused—a tendency particularly marked in two 9 On Catharinus, see above Ch. 6. 10 I am, in particular, thinking here of the immense vogue for the study of Tacitus and its possible relationship with Machiavellism—interestingly, but too neatly, set out by Giuseppe Toffanin, Machiavelli e il ‘Tacitismo’: La ‘Politica storica’ al tempo della controriforma (Padua, 1921); 2nd edn. (Naples, 1972).

438

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

groups of writers concerned, in very different ways, with the relationship between religion and affairs of state. On the one hand, there were the pious who regarded Machiavelli as no more than a symbol of anti-Christian iniquity and who rarely demonstrated any serious engagement with his writings. On the other hand, there were the writers on Ragione di stato who, while inevitably going over ground already covered by Machiavelli, only intermittently referred to him with any degree of specificity. Of the latter school, Meinecke wrote that ‘there are real catacombs here of forgotten literature by mediocrities’.11 But that comment, while not unfair, might even more aptly be applied to the dismal and voluminous writings of the self-righteously religious who, as Mattei observed, ‘did not hesitate to legitimize, even to encourage, the inexorable persecution and extermination of heretics and infidels, ad majorem Dei gloriam, that is to say in defence of the profit of religion and the Church’.12 Within these groups, and elsewhere, there were many writers (especially in Italy, where the Papal Index of Prohibited Books was generally, if unevenly, enforced) who drew upon Machiavelli when writing on military and politico-historical issues but would either refer to him by a circumlocutionary construction such as ‘il secretario fiorentino’, or avoid acknowledging him at all. Even the Protestant-hating, Jesuit-hating German scholar Caspar Schoppe—who made great efforts to have the papal ban on Machiavelli rescinded and was the author of an elaborate manuscript Apologia for Machiavelli—still avoided the provocative name when he published his Paedia Politices in 1623, although it was, as far as we know, the first general defence of Machiavelli’s political ideas to find its way into print.13 There are several examples of this evasive procedure among the military treatises and aphoristic collections to be discussed in later chapters: but something rather different, yet quintessentially 11 Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’e´tat and its Place in Modern History, trans. Douglas Scott (1957), 67 n. 1. 12 Mattei (1969), 259. 13 Mario D’Addio, Il pensiero politico di Gaspare Scioppio e il machiavellismo del seicento (Milan, 1962) is a massive study of Schoppe. There is a discussion of the Paedia Politices at pp. 499–534.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

439

Machiavellian, is worth mentioning here. This is the Discorsi sopra Tito Livio published in 1598 by Antonio Ciccarelli of Foligno. Ciccarelli did not approve of Machiavelli and did not name him; but his work was to some extent conceived as a response to Machiavelli’s own Discorsi and, in commenting on Roman history, Ciccarelli had often to deal with issues which had been raised by his predecessor.14 However, he refers to Machiavelli only as ‘altri’ or ‘alcuni’—some say this, some say that, and some say the other—and his reticence is understandable since he was a censor officially engaged in the revision of doubtful literature and had been responsible for the gelded version of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (1584).15 In his dedicatory letter, Ciccarelli explains that his commentary on Livy differs from that of the ‘altri’ in many ways, but principally because the latter had eschewed philosophy, had limited comment to Livy’s first Decade, and had aimed at forming a tyranny, ‘sometimes giving very impious precepts’. By contrast, claims Ciccarelli, his own work is animated by a philosophical spirit, deals with the third as well as the first of Livy’s Decades, is concerned with forming good states, and offers Christian and pious teaching. Happily, the book is less dull than this preliminary blurb suggests, and Ciccarelli proves to be an intelligent, learned, judicious, and, in some respects, even an independent thinker.16 In our age of the great Machiavelli industry it is important to remember that disapprobation is not necessarily a sign of ignorance and foolishness. It is also possible for a writer to disagree with Machiavelli on one issue while citing him, or even accepting his more extreme views, elsewhere. Franc¸ois Grimaudet, for example—although denying that it is sufficient for a Prince merely to appear religious ‘exterieurement’, and arguing that a Prince who is without God ‘en l’interieur’ will become a tyrant and an oppressor of his people— was perfectly happy to use Machiavelli as an anti-papal historian. 14 Machiavelli and Ciccarelli are bracketed together in Gaspar Facius, Politica Liviana (Altenburg, 1617), 4. 15 Il cortigiano del conte Baldassarre Castiglione. Rivedutoe corretto da Antonio Ciccarelli (Venice, 1584). There were further Venetian editions in 1593 and 1599. 16 Mattei (1969), 181–200, provides an excellent, concise discussion of Ciccarelli’s work and its relationship with Machiavelli’s Discorsi, together with bibliographical and biographical information.

440

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

In another work, Grimaudet was clearly at one with Machiavelli concerning the need for varying with circumstances and, in times of great danger, being able not only to dissimulate but also to abandon those rules of behaviour which are deemed virtuous in times of peace; and he even condones using bad means to achieve good ends, and acknowledges that there are times when good deeds may ruin a state.17 Total disapprobation inspired David Hume of Godscroft, a Scot with French connections, to write the most meticulous early modern work devoted specifically to Machiavelli. We have already briefly encountered Hume—poet, controversialist, and historian—as the putative author of the Contr’assassin (1612) in which Pierre Coton and the Jesuit doctrine of king-killing are roundly denounced. In the course of that polemic there are a couple of hostile ‘Machiavel’ references which suggest no knowledge whatever of Machiavelli’s writings.18 Fourteen years later, however, Hume published a remarkable analytical work (this time undoubtedly his own), the Apologia Basilica, seu Machiavelli ingenium examinatum in libro quem inscripsit Principem, which is exactly what its title proclaims it to be—an examination of Il Principe for the purpose of establishing that Machiavelli’s cleverness (often conceded even by his enemies) was simply non-existent.19 Even judging Machiavelli by his own yardstick of practical utility, says Hume, it becomes obvious that his advice is worse than useless. The idea is similar to that which animated Cardinal Pole nearly a century earlier, and it had been taken up by Gentillet, and later by Hume’s contemporary Thomas Fitzherbert. But, more interestingly, it is also Hume’s intention to demonstrate that Machiavelli frequently confutes himself, and to this end he works methodically through Il Principe, 17 Grimaudet, De la puissance royalle & Sacerdotale (n.p., 1579), 56, 98; Les opuscules politiques (Paris, 1580), fos. 34v–35, 36, 43v–44, 74r–v, 75v–76. Grimaudet also notes (fo. 74r–v) that Machiavelli’s advice on dealing with newly acquired territories is derived from Aristotle. 18 See above, Ch. 11. 19 Apologia Basilica, seu Machiavelli ingenium examinatum in libro quem inscripsit Principem (Paris, 1626). The book is fairly rare and it is, therefore, unfortunate that the British Library’s copy looks as though somebody has stubbed out a fiercely burning Burmese cheroot on the title page, thus mutilating the Preface and first forty pages.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

441

chapter by chapter, not only commenting on its words, phrases, arguments, and general assumptions, but also juxtaposing contradictory material from the Discorsi.20 The whole critique is accomplished by Hume with a minuteness and textual exactitude vastly beyond the scope of earlier anti-Machiavellians, and it seems extraordinary that (as far as I know) only one scholar, John Wesley Horrocks, has ever given the Apologia Basilica serious attention: and his discussion has never been published.21 It must be admitted that the book’s seriatim procedure is laborious and makes brief summary almost impossible but, in addition to his exposure of contradictions, Hume’s attention to detail enables him to make a number of telling general methodological, stylistic, and even bibliographical points about Il Principe. One feature of his study is his knowledge of the original Italian texts. He frequently quotes Il Principe and the Discorsi in both Italian and Latin, and sometimes notes where Silvestro Teglio’s Latin version of Il Principe omits key sentences, as in chapter 18 on how far princes are to keep faith (p. 126). He even on occasion makes textual comparisons between different editions as, for example, when he corrects a misreading in Wolfe’s pseudo-Palermo edition of Il Principe by reference to one of the Venetian editions of 1537 (p. 88–9).22 He draws attention to Machiavelli’s stylistic extremism in which paradoxes are uttered simply to make the author seem smart (Paradoxa eum loqui juvat: ut acutus videatur): noting, for example, the assertion in chapter 14 that, in time of peace, a prince should concern himself with war more than in time of war (p. 79). Like Gentillet, Stubbes, and Fitzherbert before him, he seizes on Machiavelli’s habit of erecting a general rule on the basis of a single example 20 The technique of closely analysing Il Principe chapter by chapter was later used by Hermann Conring in his Animadversiones politicae in Nicolai Machiavelli librum de Principe (Helmstadt, 1661)—a commentary keyed (page by page, line by line) into his Latin translation of Il Principe published in the previous year. 21 Horrocks (1908), 235–50. I am preparing an article on the Apologia, providing an analysis of the text and due recognition of Horrocks’s perceptiveness. 22 Hume is commenting on the opening sentence of Il Principe, 16 (on liberality and parsimony), and he notes that in 1584 the reading is ‘dico, come sarebbe bene esser tenuto liberale, nondimeno la Liberalita usata in modo, che tu sei Temuto, ti offende’; and he asks how liberality may be used so that it makes one feared (Temuto)? The correct reading in 1537 repeats the word tenuto.

442

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

(pp. 65, 155).23 Machiavelli’s exaggerations, too, are enthusiastically cited. His insistence that a prince, in order to learn about warfare, should read nothing but histories leads Hume to ask why books on the art of war itself are not mentioned and to demand whether his own age is so degenerate and effete that it must always follow in the footsteps of the ancients? Is the prince not to learn about machines and mechanics? (pp. 79–80). This is all very modern and up to date; but it is a pity that the only military author actually named by Hume should be Vegetius. Inevitably, Hume devotes a good deal of space to Machiavelli’s central chapters on topsy-turvy virtues (Il Principe, 15–19), and he pinpoints their fundamental weakness, which is the way in which conventional terminology is repeatedly twisted and distorted. In effect, these chapters are nothing more than a rhetorical trick. Thus when Machiavelli is allegedly discussing liberality, he gives the name to something which, as described in Il Principe, is really prodigality—and Seneca, Cicero, and Aristotle had all set out the same arguments long before (pp. 92–5). Similarly, when, in Il Principe, chapter 17, Machiavelli is supposed to be discussing clemency and cruelty, he deliberately confuses clemency with licence, and cruelty with justice, so that he is really commending and condemning qualities under the wrong names (pp. 106–21). Above all, the Apologia Basilica is concerned with the exposing of inconsistencies. When, for example, Machiavelli commends parsimony on the grounds that it enables a Prince to have the means to defend himself, Hume remarks that without men money can effect nothing, whereas without money men can often achieve a great deal: and he quotes Machiavelli against himself by referring to the argument in the Discorsi, II. 10, that money does not constitute the sinews of war. Similarly, Machiavelli’s recommendation of force and fraud can be contradicted by what he says in the Discorsi, III. 40, where he limits the use of fraud to war and even then rejects perfidy (p. 138).24 The acuteness of Hume’s reading may be seen when he is dealing with the confused 23 Cf. Stubbes, Discoverie of a gaping gulf (1579), sig. C.8; Fitzherbert, The first part of a treatise concerning policy and religion (1615), 345. See above, Ch. 10. 24 The reference to the Discorsi is wrongly given as ‘lib. 3. cap 10. cui titulum fecit [Come usare le fraude ne maneggiare la guerra, e` cosa gloriosa]’.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

443

treatment of Fortuna in Il Principe, chapter 25, where Machiavelli makes a curious concession to free will, stating that Fortuna controls about half of our actions but leaves the rest under human control. This, naturally, offends Hume, who believes that everything depends on Divine Providence, and he alludes to the Discorsi, II. 29, to show that Machiavelli himself appears to believe in the overall control of the Heavens (pp. 219–25). The process, whereby Machiavelli is shown to confute himself, culminates in the last chapter of the Apologia Basilica, which is divided into three principal sections: first, a microscopic analysis of the Discorsi, III. 5, to illustrate the nature of true prudence; second, a similar examination of the Discorsi, I. 10, to reveal true glory; and last, a collection of ‘little flowers’ (Flosculi) by way of a recapitulation (per Anacephalaeosin) listing fifty-four fundamentals of Machiavellian doctrine and forty precepts, followed by their antitheses, consisting of seventy-three fundamentals and fifty-nine precepts (pp. 235–58). The Apologia Basilica is an imposing work, and Horrocks, in his assessment, praised Hume’s careful comparisons both between Il Principe and the Discorsi, and between different passages within Il Principe itself. But he also pointed out that, in order to demonstrate that Machiavelli was wholly without intelligence, Hume becomes hypercritical and carping. Certainly, for every shrewd point that Hume makes, there are several banalities. The constant reiteration of Machiavelli’s alleged stupidity becomes wearisome and unconvincing. And at no point does Hume face up to the fact that, notwithstanding his own conventional praise of conventional virtues, rulers continued to behave in the fashion described by Machiavelli. Thus, despite the undoubted mastery of Machiavelli’s texts displayed throughout the Apologia Basilica, it remains a monument of pedantry and literalness, and it seems to have been ignored by its contemporaries as it has been by posterity.

dilution, diffusion, confusion The wide variety of responses to Machiavelli, and the different ways in which he was read, render most neat generalizations

444

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

suspect; and, faced with these difficulties, I have chosen in the rest of this book to pursue several lines of enquiry in several different ways. More precisely, in this chapter and the next, I shall draw attention (and often no more than that) to a small selection of what I term serious readers of Machiavelli: taking serious to indicate at the very least some first-hand acquaintance with his writings.25 Then, in the three chapters which comprise Part IV, I shall examine a number of important areas where Machiavelli’s relevance has often been exaggerated or misunderstood. This is a somewhat paradoxical procedure, but it helps to clarify the different ways in which Machiavelli was read with regard to purpose, intensity, and knowledge. And these prove to be more diversified than the familiar simple registration of approval or disapproval on such issues as upside-down ethics, Christianity as a politic religion, and the separation of public from private morality. We know that Machiavelli’s works remained available to anybody who wished to consult them.26 There were various French, Latin, and English versions circulating in print, along with Wolfe’s spurious Italian imprints, and a number of manuscript translations, especially in England.27 It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that, 25 One writer whose knowledge of Machiavelli must have been comprehensive but who is not susceptible to critical discussion is the great translator and lexicographer John Florio. The list of ‘Authors and Books that have been read of purpose’ for his invaluable Italian–English dictionaries, A worlde of wordes (1598) and the enlarged Queen Anna’s new world of words (1611), includes ‘Tutte L’opere di Nicolo Macchiavelli’. Much more tantalizing than this, though, is the inclusion of ‘Nicole Florentin’ among the Latin authors cited by the medical authority Laurent Joubert for his study of laughter. See Joubert’s Traite´ du ris, contenant son essence, ses causes et mervelheus effais (Paris, 1579), sig. eˆ.6. Joubert (p. 191) also refers to Fracastoro ‘et avant luy Nicole Florentino, tous deux personages consume´s an savoir’. 26 This was a matter of concern for French anti-Machiavellians such as Hotman, who complained that, while Machiavelli was being suppressed in Italy, editors such as Stupanus and printers such as Perna were issuing his ‘impious and accursed books’. See Franc¸ois Hotman’s letter dated 25 Dec. 1580 (to Rudolph Walther) in his Epistolae (Amsterdam, 1700), 138–9. 27 For English translations, see Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’: An Elizabethan Translation, ed. Hardin Craig (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944). This apart, Tudor and Stuart manuscript translations of Machiavelli have not been given anything like the attention they deserve. The pioneering work of Napoleone Orsini was important but has borne little fruit. See Orsini, ‘Machiavelli’s Discourses, a MS translation of 1599’, Times Literary Supplement, 10, 17, 24 Oct. 1936; ‘Le

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

445

while the Machiavel stereotype was spreading throughout Europe, there would still have been many readers with real knowledge of what Machiavelli actually wrote.28 We know, too, that some of these readers were themselves writers and thinkers of major significance, although it has to be said that the greater the reader the slighter was the impact of Machiavelli—a fundamental problem to which I have already alluded.29 If one examines the copious productions of Bodin, Montaigne, Raleigh, and Bacon, then evidence both for their first-hand acquaintance with Machiavelli’s work and for their having taken his ideas seriously is undeniable. That evidence has often been assembled and commented upon; yet the impact of Machiavelli upon these writers cannot be regarded as other than modest when considered as a proportion of the sum total of their encyclopedic learning and the scope of their investigations into human behaviour (social, political, and personal). Bodin borrowed material when it suited his purpose.30 Montaigne found some of Machiavelli’s insights stimulating.31 And both traduzioni elisabettiane inedite di Machiavelli’, in Studi sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra, con alcuni testi inglesi inediti (Florence, 1937), 3–47; ‘Elizabethan MS translations of Machiavelli’s Prince’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1 (1937), 166–9. There is a useful table of Tudor translations in Gasquet (1974), 429–34. It is disappointing that the translation of the Discorsi by John Levytt (dated 7 Sept. 1599) in British Library, Add. MS 41162, has never been published in any form—let alone in a fully annotated edition. In France, perhaps because vernacular versions of Machiavelli’s works remained available in print, manuscript translations were less important: but BNF fr. 19018 is a late 16th-c. Histoire de Florence, de Nicolas Machiavel, traduite en franc¸ais par Louveau, which the translator undertook to avoid enforced inactivity. He had been looking for something worthwhile to translate from Tuscan into French and he had found this work: and, if the common saying is true—‘que la consolation des miserables est d’avoir des compagnons en ses miseres’—then there is plenty to console the modern Frenchman in this history of the afflictions of Florence (fos. 1–2). 28 Many such readers will be discussed in the rest of this book, but it should be noted that there is a mass of disconnected and fragmentary evidence where writers reveal a knowledge of Machiavelli in short notes or treatises, and cite odd examples and passages from his work as it suits their immediate purpose. 29 See above, Introduction. 30 See G. Cardascia, ‘Machiavel et Jean Bodin’, Bibliothe`que d’humanisme et Renaissance, 3 (1938), 129–67; H. Weber, ‘Bodin et Machiavel’, Actes du Colloque ‘Jean Bodin’ (Angers, 1985), 231–40; Diego Quaglioni, ‘Il machiavellismo di Jean Bodin’, Il Pensiero politico, 22 (1989), 198–207. 31 See Nicole Tre`ves, ‘Beyond l’utile et l’honneste: Or Some Pioneering Aspects of Machiavelli and Montaigne’, Bulletin de la socie´te´ des amis de Montaigne,

446

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Raleigh and Bacon were not only in sympathy with Machiavelli’s attempt to face up to the sordid realities of political life, but were also able to use several of his observations to sharpen their own analysis of specific contemporary issues.32 However, while it is valuable to seek out, collect, and annotate such allusions or resonances, it is misleading to go beyond that by suggesting that these men were specialist Machiavellians. In order to find readers whose encounter with the ‘Florentine Secretary’ was more decisive in the formation of their own ideas, we must often (though not exclusively) mingle with less lofty spirits ranging from eccentrics to conformists, pragmatists to pedants, originals to plagiarists, the moderately obscure to the wholly forgotten. We must be prepared to rub shoulders not only with the sublime but also with the ridiculous—and this brings me to Gabriel Harvey and Barnabe Barnes.

a pa i r o f e c c e n t r i c s There are some people whose impracticality, prickly disposition, preposterous behaviour, and delusions of grandeur make them uncomfortable colleagues, but who seem quite engaging when contemplated from a safe historical distance. Two Elizabethan 6th ser., nos. 15–16 (1983), 45–60; Malcolm C. Smith, ‘A Source of Montaigne’s Uncertainty’, Bibliothe`que d’humanisme et Renaissance, 50 (1988), 206–11; M. Dal Corso, ‘Montaigne e il Principe di Machiavelli: i primi contatti’, in E. Kanceff (ed.), Montaigne e l’Italia (Geneva, 1991), 145–56; M. Tetel, Pre´sences italiennes dans les ‘Essais’ de Montaigne (Paris, 1992), 75–96. Generally lost sight of, but characteristically provocative and stimulating, is J. H. Whitfield, ‘Machiavelli Guicciardini Montaigne’, Italian Studies, 28 (1973), 31–47. For the judgement of a late 17th-c. critic that Montaigne’s poison was worse than Machiavelli’s, see Mathurin Dre´ano, La Renomme´e de Montaigne en France au XVIII e sie`cle 1677–1802 (Angers, 1952), 72–3. 32 For Raleigh’s knowledge and use of Machiavelli, see Pierre Lefranc, Sir Walter Raleigh, e´crivain: l’œuvre et les ide´es (Paris, 1968), 68–70, 222–53, 614–35; Gasquet (1974), 371–90. For Bacon and Machiavelli, see Napoleone Orsini, Bacone e Machiavelli (Genoa, 1936); Vincent Luciani, ‘Bacon and Machiavelli’, Italica, 24 (1947), 26–40. However, in 1908, Horrocks (although misled by the Cabinet Council and Maxims of State) had already spotted most of the important Machiavellian allusions in the works of both Raleigh and Bacon.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

447

students of Machiavelli—Gabriel Harvey and Barnabe Barnes— were men of this kind. They were well acquainted one with the other, and both moved in the circle of John ‘Machiavel’ Wolfe, who printed some of their works—indeed Harvey once described himself as ‘a Sheepe in Wolfes printe’.33 And both were on friendly terms with another Wolfe associate, John Thorius, who translated the Machiavellian Counsellor of Bartolome Felippe. Gabriel Harvey was the older, more famous, and—as a drinking companion—by far the less dangerous. His detailed knowledge of, and admiration for, Machiavelli is something which remained unknown, buried amidst his manuscripts and marginalia, until unearthed centuries later by scholarly editors; and there is something sad about this undeniably ingenious and erudite, but increasingly embittered, academic—fully conversant with all the major works of Machiavelli, ‘the great founder and master of pollicies’—secretly annotating the books in his library with bold observations, trying to convince himself that he was a superman.34 Unfortunately, Harvey’s ambitions were blocked by his own acute sense of social inferiority, mocked by his modest practical achievements, and thwarted by the rejection of those whose favour he sought— especially dreary and jealous academics who found his adventurous notions unpalatable. Similarly, his posthumous reputation has been clouded by the drubbing he received in his wordy brawl with Thomas Nashe, whose fluency—greatly facilitated by a journalistic disregard for the truth—has won modern critical approval.35 33 Gabriel Harvey, Foure letters, and certaine sonnets (1592), sig. H.2v. 34 Harvey’s interest in, and knowledge of, Machiavelli has been too frequently commented upon to warrant detailed discussion here. References may be found in his Letter Book, ed. E. J. L. Scott (Camden Society, 1884), 79, 134, 135, 174; Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1913), 84, 90, 94, 96, 118, 119, 121, 122, 147–50, 153, 156, 183, 195, 201, 209 n., 221 n. The fullest treatment is by Stern, Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library. Stern reconstructs Harvey’s library and gives a systematic account of his habit of annotating his books. 35 For details of this acrimonious dispute, see Hibbard, Thomas Nashe: A Critical Introduction, 180–232; Stern, Gabriel Harvey, passim. Typically, Nashe is happy to exploit the most extreme type of Machiavel bogeyman when it suits his purpose, although he had some knowledge of Machiavelli’s work and was prepared to exploit that, too.

448

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

It was Harvey’s great misfortune to be too clever by half, and a striking instance of this has already been mentioned in connection with the English reception of Gentillet. Harvey chose to make a public demonstration of his Machiavellian cunning by bitterly attacking a Machiavel figure in an elaborate set of Latin verses, celebrating the visit of Elizabeth I to Audley End in July 1578; and it is necessary now to examine aspects of this work, Gratulationum Valdinensium libri quatuor, a little more closely. The volume is dedicated as a whole to the Queen although, in fact, this applies only to the first book. The second book has a separate dedication to the Earl of Leicester, the third to Lord Burghley, and the fourth to the Earl of Oxford, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir Philip Sidney. Throughout, Harvey sails close to the political wind, covertly denouncing the proposed marriage alliance between the Queen and Alenc¸on even in the Epilogus of the first book which, though specifically aimed at the Queen, satirizes the Italians by heaping fulsome praise upon their alleged excesses. Far more extreme material is, however, contained in the second book dedicated to Leicester, the Protestants’ great hope, who is lauded as one who is ‘in all true virtue preeminent’ and who now ‘with ready hand grasps his destiny’. All the people hope that he will enjoy ‘kingly honours’ and wear a crown upon his head; and, while nobody knows the purposes of the Gods, everyone prays that Leicester will eventually be the royal consort. Here Harvey’s enthusiasm was especially disastrous because, besides the possibility of antagonizing the Queen, he was (albeit unwittingly) embarrassing his patron, who was already secretly married. Moreover, Harvey swings alarmingly from Queen to Earl and back again when bestowing his adulations. Elizabeth’s welcome at Saffron Walden is contrasted with what might have been the reception accorded to a Machiavellian prince: ‘Our sovereign has been shaped to a different mould; with eye serene, not terrible, she views her people.’ But it would be a very different story with the Machiavellian ruler: ‘Not in this way would your citizens behave, O cruel Machiavelli, at the coming of your Prince, your Fox or Lion or Boar: no pleasure we take in your awesome ceremonial, nor in your barbaric,

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

449

Turkish-type savagery and slaughter.’36 Elizabeth, like Scipio, inspires love; and, lest the point of the whole exercise be lost, Harvey stresses that ‘a second Scipio we have among our Lords’, and makes great play with Leicester’s well-known badge, the ‘Bear, happy beyond measure’ [Faelix Ursa nimis]. In short, Machiavelli is wasting his time trying to contaminate England, whose white cliffs cannot abide his bloodshed and violence. At this point, Harvey introduces a wholly original touch by arranging for the sinister Florentine Secretary to condemn himself out of his own mouth. Headed Epigramma in effigiem Machiavelli. Machiavellus ipse loquitur, the poem is worth quoting in its entirety: You ask, who am I? King of kings: the supreme power of all the world rests wholly upon my finger. None is King who is not versed in Machiavellian doctrine: and do not think that you have wisdom if you are not versed in it. The rest are mere shadows, smoke, jokes, and mockery. I speak only of kingships and of sceptres. Children, ancient crones, and wretched old men may prefer peace; I talk only of camps and of wars. The people’s love is nothing; beggarly Virtue is less than nothing. Words I leave to others, it is notable deeds that I perform. Look into my eyes: rage dwells within them. One hand wields a stone, the other a sword. Within my mouth poisons lurk. My breath, this way and that, is charged with a thousand venoms. My brow is iron, my feelings worthy of the God of Hell. My device is, and always was, It is a delight to go to the top: Either Caesar or Nothing.37 That man [Cesare Borgia] was our disciple. Nothing ordinary pleases me: only the heights I ponder. Milk is food for children: blood is what I feed upon. The mob a thousand deaths may die, so long as I can grasp the sceptre. I care nothing for either blood or slaughter. Let abject minds go to utter ruin, let them be thrust down to Hell. I alone am wise, alive, and triumph. As for the rest, who does not know? Deceit is for me the greatest virtue, and the next is Force; other gods I know not. 36 Gratulationum Valdinensium libri quatuor (1578), 7–8: ‘Nostra aliam ad formam Princeps fabricata, sereno, / Non Tragico populos aspicit ore, suos. / Haud ita gestirent cives, veniente Tyranno, / Vulpe, Leone, Apro, trux Machavelle, tuo. / Terribilis tua pompa nimis, non Barbara nobis, / Turcica non rabies, non laniena placet.’ 37 Aut nihil aut Caesar was notorious as the device of Cesare Borgia and had been mocked by Porcacchi in his edition of Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia (1574), fo. 147, and by Gentillet, Contre-Machiavel (1576), 326.

450

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Contemplate the kingly monuments of my invention, and henceforth you will not ask again, Who was Machiavelli?38

This is the first time that a fictitious Machiavel figure had delivered a speech in England (if not in English) and its relationship to Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel is evident enough. But Harvey’s echoing of Gentillet is creative rather than slavish and, in this respect, is similar to the relationship borne by Marlowe’s Machevil (in The Jew of Malta) to Harvey’s own invention.39 More interesting is the fact that we now know that, while Harvey was outdoing in eloquence the Contre-Machiavel, he had already been—and was to remain—one of the most assiduous readers of Machiavelli in Elizabethan England. The whole thing is an elaborate pose to mask his diatribe against the marriage negotiations; and Harvey develops this even further by satirizing the French court of Catherine de’ Medici in a Medicaeorum Hymnus. Cosimo, Leo X, Clement VII, and ‘one and all the Medici’ sing in concert and heap fulsome praise upon the assumed excesses of Italians. From all this, Florence emerges as a sink of iniquity where Machiavelli is venerated as a God: So come along and worship him, all you robbers, merchants, tyrants severe, wandering advocates and purchasable lawyers, all you false38 Gratulationum Valdinensium, 8–9: ‘Quaeris, ego qui sim? Rex Regum: totius orbis / Imperium digito nititur omne meo / Nemo regat, qui non Machavellica dogmata callet: / Nec sapuisse putes qui minus ista sapit. / Caetera sunt umbrae, fumi, ludibria, risus, / Regna ego sola loquor, sceptra ego sola loquor, / Pacem optent pueri, vetulaeque, senesque miselli, / Castra ego sola loquor, bella ego sola loquor. / Plebis amor nihil est; nihilo minus, Indiga Virtus: / Verbo ego linquo aliis; facta ego mira patro. / Ecce oculos: Furor iis habitat: manus altera saxum; / Altra ensem torquet: toxica in ore latent. / Spiritus hinc, atque hinc perfusus mille venenis: / Ferrea frons, Orci pectora digna Deo. / Emblema est, semperque fuit: Juvat ire per altum: / Aut nihil, aut Caesar; noster Alumnus erat. / Nil mediocre placet: sublimia sola voluto: / Lac pueris cibus est: sanguine vescor ego. / Mille neces obeat vulgus, modo sceptra capessam; / Non flocci cruor est, non laniena mihi. / Dispereant abjectae animae; trudantur ad Orcum: / Solus ego sapio, vivo, triumpho mihi. / Caetera quis nescit? Fraus est mea maxima Virtus: / Proxima, Vis: alios non ego nosco Deos. / Ingenii monumenta mei Regalia volve: / Nec posthac quares; Quis Machavellus erat.’ 39 Contrast Meyer’s view, that Harvey’s Machiavelli figure was the source for Marlowe’s, with Bawcutt’s view that it was not. See Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama, 22–3; Bawcutt, ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, 4–6. The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in between: i.e. there is a creative relationship rather than a straightforward imitative one.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

451

swearers and old sly-boots, men two-faced like Janus, twisters, and cruel promise-breaking nobles, all you turncoats and slithery customers, crooks like Theodore and Diagoras,40 ruthless Sultans and dreadful Scythians, you savage Centaurs and giants, serpent-armed, hundred-eyed Arguses and hundred-handed Gyges, you merciless Moslems and monstrous Saracens—Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon, Tartarus, Avernus, Charon, all the lot, the powers of Hell—and all of you who throw God from his Heaven, and Right and Good from the earth: come along and bow down to this god.41

Machiavelli himself replies to this hymn, praising Fraud as a goddess by whose aid he has enjoyed divine honours among kings. ‘Ye mortals’, he exclaims, ‘burn the books of all other men: over kings and all your kingdome I alone bear sway.’ Thus he spoke: but Pallas ‘exempted the kingdom of Britain’. Good news for Britain and, of course, for Harvey’s hopes that the French marriage would come to nothing! T. H. Jameson long ago drew attention to Harvey’s love of irony and made clear that ‘the secret of the Gratulationes is a double irony’ which blatantly takes advantage of the current hostility to Machiavelli while simultaneously burlesquing it. But there is no evidence that anybody understood what Harvey was getting at. The complicated Latin jokes proved futile. And this, as Jameson justly remarked, was Harvey’s glaring weakness and why he ‘failed to do a deed commensurate with his dreams or his appetites’. He was simply too ‘suttle’.42 40 Theodore and Diagoras were two ancient philosophers who denied the existence of God: but the allusion seems deliberately abstruse. 41 Gratulationum Valdinensium, 10–11: ‘Hunc fures, mercatores, rigidique Tyranni, / Causidicique vagi, Juridicique leves; / Perjuri, veteratores, Janique bifrontes, / Perfidi, & immanes, faedifragique Duces. / Vertumni, Protei, Theodori, Diagoraeque, / Soldanique truces, horribilesque Scythae. / Centaurique feri, serpentigerique Gygantes, / Centoculique Argi, centimanique Gyges. / Crudeles Mahometigenae, saracenica Monstra, / Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon, Tartare, Averne, Charon. / Quique Deum e coelis, e terra fasque, bonumque / Tollitis, hunc omnes, hunc colitote Deum.’ 42 Thomas Hugh Jameson, ‘The ‘‘Machiavellianism’’ of Gabriel Harvey’, PMLA, 56 (1941), 645–56. This is an exemplary article and, unfortunately, the only published fruit of Jameson’s Yale University dissertation, ‘The Gratulationes Valdinenses of Gabriel Harvey’ (1938). I have not seen this dissertation, but it is used with due acknowledgement by Stern in her book on Gabriel Harvey.

452

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

By contrast, subtlety is not something that one would readily associate with Barnabe Barnes—Bishop’s son, poet, dramatist, Machiavellist, and poisoner.43 Assessments of his status as a sonneteer range (as is so frequently the case with minor poets) from laudation to damnation. He was, as Mark Eccles put it, ‘something of a critic’s tennis ball, tossed first too high, then volleyed back and forth, and now and then smashed to earth’.44 But that is of no consequence here. What concerns us is his knowledge and treatment of Machiavelli; and to this must be added the question of his personal morality. Eccles, in his masterly researches into Barnabe Barnes’s misadventures, located a copy of Wolfe’s pseudo-Palermo edition of Il Principe with the poet’s signature boldly inscribed on the title page. And that Barnes actually read the volume, along with other works by Machiavelli, is readily seen in his own writings: especially in his Foure Bookes of Offices (1606), a work which also suggests a parallel with the anti-Machiavellian humbuggery of Harvey’s Gratulationes. The Offices is dedicated to King James I and, in a rambling discourse about allegorical animals symbolizing majesty, Barnes is moved to expostulate: Vile is that wretched analogie, which the corrupt Florentine Secretarie Nicolo Machiavelli servant to Duke Petro di Medici, did in his puddle of princely policies produce betwixt a true Prince and a mixt monster; resembling him (by the example of Achilles who was instructed by Chyron the Centaure) unto a lion and fox, importing his strength and caution in all affaires: whereas it is wel knowen, how no true Prince can aptly be compared to that unsavory curre, if the very royal minde (which amply possesseth every just King) bee respected.45

43 The best account of Barnes’s extraordinary career is still Mark Eccles, ‘Barnabe Barnes’, in Charles J. Sisson (ed.), Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 165–241. Edward Meyer, in 1897, was the first critic to pay attention to Barnes’s Machiavellian knowledge, and in 1908 J. W. Horrocks took the investigation further. 44 Eccles, ‘Barnabe Barnes’, 239. More than seventy years on, this remains the case. 45 Barnabe Barnes, Foure Bookes of Offices: enabling privat persons for the speciall service of all good princes and policies (1606), sig. A.i. Further references are given in the text.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

453

The lion/fox idea, in association with Machiavelli, was by this time utterly commonplace, but Barnes self-consciously provides an accurate Italian marginal reference, ‘Il Prencipe cap. 18 comme se debbe osservar la fede’. There are other passages which sufficiently demonstrate that Barnes had read both Il Principe and the Discorsi, and that his handling of the sources was imaginative rather than servile. Sometimes his observations even seem tangential to Machiavelli’s own words: something particularly apparent in his moralistic denunciation of ‘one ambitious rule which the Machiavellian politics have taught to colour their wickedness’. This rule is that ‘if men will violate justice, the violation therof ought to proceed from the hopes or fruition of soveraignetie, which may depend theron; in all other things (saving in matters of Empire) let a man declare pietie’ (p. 110). Barnes refers here to Il Principe, 17: but his specific point occurs neither in that chapter nor in any of the others which propound a topsy-turvy morality. Barnes’s ‘ambitious rule’—which he piously rejects as ‘base and vulgar’—is akin to, but not precisely, what Machiavelli wrote. Again, when writing about the merits of liberality, Barnes explains that a reputation for this quality is commendable in a prince, ‘which some cunning and curious writers would have out of the purses of others’. He gives the marginal reference, ‘Nicolo Macc. il pren. Cap. 16, De liberalita & misera &c’, and is fully in accord with Machiavelli, but prefers to interpret the text rather than repeat it. When faced with a choice between liberality and parsimony, a wise prince should affect the latter. This would (in Barnes’s view) not only make him rich, powerful, and feared by foreigners, but would also please his subjects: ‘for that in sparing his treasurie, the subjects livings are likewise spared: which forbearance they willingly tearme an honest and vertuous liberalitie’ (p. 12). The sentiment is very much in the spirit of Machiavelli: but it is neither translation nor paraphrase. Much the same treatment is given to material from the seventh chapter of Il Principe. Considering the ways in which evil men, bent on mischief, ‘dive into the natures, humors, and inclinations of noble yong gentlemen, liberally and prodigally disposed’, and then tempt them with whores, horses, dogs, and anything else that takes their fancy, Barnes notes how Cesare

454

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Borgia (‘whom Nicolas Machiavell remembreth on like termes’) dealt with the Orsini and Baglioni by winning over their adherents (p. 106). What Machiavelli actually wrote was that Cesare gained the allegiance of these gentleman with financial and administrative rewards: but Barnes’s sexual baits and sporting allurements are much more colourful. Barnes also makes use of the Discorsi, another of the Italian books printed by John Wolfe. Two of his references (to the ‘short and sharp wars’ waged by the Romans, and to an incident concerning the Oddi and Baglioni factions in Perugia) are perfectly straightforward (pp. 174–5).46 So, too, is his discussion of the relative merits of mercenaries and native troops, which could have come from any of Machiavelli’s works or, indeed, from a host of other sources. But Barnes has the Discorsi very much in mind when considering the ways in which an empire is to be conserved or augmented: ‘points which have been formerly noted by the politicke Florentine Secretarie to Petro de Medici ’. In the ordering of precepts, Barnes follows a passage in the Discorsi (II. 19) fairly closely but is unable to resist translation by amplification which, qualitatively, results in both gains and losses. Machiavelli expresses his meaning in fifty-five words, while Barnes needs twice that number to cover the same ground: but there is something to be said for harming the enemy by ‘forraging and havocking upon their harvest and husbandrie’ rather than merely ‘con le scorrerie’.47 46 Cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, II. 6, III. 14. 47 Machiavelli, Discorsi, II. 19 (Mazzoni and Casella, 169b), reads: ‘e crederebbono che lo accrescere la citta` sua di abitatori, farsi compagni e non sudditi, mandare colonie e guardare i paesi acquistati, fare capitale delle prede, domare il nimico con le scorrerie e con le giornate e non con le ossidioni, tener ricco il publico, povero il privato, mantenere con sommo studio gli esercizi militari’. Barnes, Offices, 172, reads: ‘to conserve and augment th’empire which he would have had him have sought for, consist in manning of the strong cities with souldiers, borne in the same provinces, in conciliating the friendship and societies of neighbours, in planting colonies for defence upon the skirt of their newly subdued provinces, in the spoiles of enemies, in forraging and havocking upon their harvest and husbandrie, in choosing rather to draw them together for battell in Campe, then to besiege them within their cities, in studious respect of the common cause and profit onely, in th’instructing and disciplining of souldiers in the knowledge and use of armes’.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

455

Barnes continues discussion of the augmentation of empire with the most striking of his adaptations from Machiavelli. He admits that, sometimes, such increase of territories may come about by God’s providence. On the other hand, there are princes who, ‘under counterfeit pretext’ and with an ‘unsatiate avarice’, force men to defend their lands: and the reason why so fewe free people and States are in comparison of former times, and such a defect of true lovers and of valiant champions of liberties in comparison of former ages (as a wily Commonwealths man hath noted) is that people in hope of beatitude, and towards the fruition of a second comfortable life, devise in these days how to tollerate and not to revenge injuries: as if that no salvation can come from above, but by keeping of their swordes and armes rustely sheathed and cased, when a vehement necessitie doth importune the contrarie; whilst they sottishly nuzzling themselves in sluggish securitie, utterly condemne the lawfull meanes and courses of warre, restoring that needfully by force of swords, which no law nor charmes of persuasive words can accomplish. (pp. 172–3)

This is a very free version of one of the most notorious passages in the Discorsi; and the extraordinary thing about it is that, despite the fact that Machiavelli’s contempt for Christian pusillanimity had enraged generations of commentators, Barnes was willing, in a work dedicated to King James I, to endorse its sentiments. Indeed, he does more than endorse the hostile view of Christianity. In describing eternal salvation as ‘a second comfortable life’, and denouncing Christian pacifists as ‘sottishly nuzzling themselves in sluggish securitie’, he employs language that far outsneers Machiavelli and makes one curious about Barnes’s real beliefs—if he had any.48 The Foure Bookes of Offices was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 3 February 1606. A year later, on 2 February 1607, Barnes’s melodrama The Divils Charter was ‘plaied before the Kings Majestie’.49 The piece was revised by its author before publication, 48 Horrocks (1908), 267, observed that Barnes’s handling of the theme stood alone in the literature of the period for its accurate discussion of the passage from the Discorsi. But I would go further, for Barnes’s language suggests a good deal more animosity towards Christianity than does Machiavelli’s. 49 The Divils Charter: a Tragaedie conteining the Life and Death of Pope Alexander the sixt (1607); ed. R. B. McKerrow, in W. Bang, Materialen zur Kunde des a¨lteren Englischen Dramas, 6 (Louvain, Leipzig, and London, 1904).

456

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

but there is no reason to suppose that the surviving text is fundamentally different from what was performed at court: which means that King and courtiers would have been treated to the delights adumbrated by Prologus. Gracious spectators doe not heere expect, Visions of pleasure, amorous discourse: Our subject is of bloud and Tragedie, Murther, foule incest, and Hypocrisie. Behold the Strumpet of proud Babylon, Her Cup with fornication foaming full Of Gods high wrath and vengeance for that evill, Which was imposd upon her by the Divill.

Comprehensive though this programme of depravities may sound, Barnes easily fulfilled it and even augmented the promised attractions with a liberal admixture of sodomy and black magic. King James may have enjoyed the show on several counts, but critics have paid it only scant and contemptuous attention. It is true, perhaps, that the best that can be said of The Divils Charter is that it is a very bad play indeed. Yet it has a goodly number of succulent speeches: especially from the assassin, ‘Frescobaldy a ruffaine’, who boasts of the ‘three or foure score broken pates’ he has received ‘in the Burdelliaes and in other such houses of naturall recreation and agility’; from the sin-drenched Alexander VI, who lusts after the handsome young Astor Manfredi and prays for ‘fruition of those amorous pits, / Where blinded Cupid close in ambush sits’; and, of course, from the incestuous fratricide, Cesare Borgia, who hails Saturn as his natal deity, ‘propitious patron of assassinates / Of murthers, Paracides, and massacres’. In many ways, The Divils Charter is a remarkable creation: sired by The Jew of Malta out of Doctor Faustus, and with a bloodline extending far back, beyond the histories of Guicciardini and the politics of Machiavelli, to the excesses of Senecan tragedy. Where Marlowe merely uses Machiavel as his prologue and then drops him altogether, Barnes has his Francis Guicchiardine appear as a chorus throughout the play to provide both moral comment and historical narrative. Where Marlowe offers nothing by way of direct know-

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

457

ledge of Machiavelli, Barnes displays not only first-hand reading of the Discorsi but also an easy familiarity with Fenton’s Historie of Guicciardin.50 And where Marlowe’s Faustus uses his pact with Mephistophilis to achieve nothing beyond a few childish conjuring tricks and a sapless glimpse of Helen of Troy, Barnes’s diabolical Roderigo Borgia gets himself elected as Pope Alexander VI, violates a few youths, commits incest with his only daughter, and poisons six cardinals before the devils claim his soul. There is a great deal of poisoning, and talk about poisoning, in The Divils Charter. Lucrezia is murdered by means of a phial of envenomed cosmetic; Astor and Philippo are sedated with drugged wine before being finished off with poisonous asps, ‘fed fat and plump with proud Egiptian slime’; the assassin Baglioni dies after drinking from a bottle containing a potion, prepared by the apothecary Brandino Rotsi, and already successfully tested at various strengths upon three condemned criminals; and, of course, Pope Alexander himself is fatally poisoned by mistakenly gulping down the wine with which he had intended to add another couple of Cardinals to his score. The irony of all this is that, early in 1598, Barnes had himself been hired as an assassin and had tried his hand at poisoning. The upshot was a prosecution carried out by no less an eminence than Edward Coke, Attorney General for the Queen, who described Barnes as a traveller in foreign parts where, ‘throughe the corrupcion and wicked disposicion of his owne mynde chieflie framed him self to learne and intertayne the vices 50 Barnes’s handling of Fenton’s translation is carefully documented by McKerrow in his notes. However, McKerrow, annotating Act IV, Scene iv (in which Cesare Borgia lays siege to Forlı` and has a long argument with the heroic defender Caterina Sforza), refers to the very short account by Guicciardini of Cesare Borgia’s attack on Forlı` when he forced Caterina Sforza to yield the town. This occurred in 1501: but the episode shown in the play relates to a siege of Forlı` ten years earlier—which had nothing to do with Cesare, and is described in terms similar to those used in The Divils Charter by Machiavelli, Discorsi, III. 6 (Mazzoni and Casella, 209a–b. Eccles, ‘Barnabe Barnes’, 238, was the first to note this use of Machiavelli. But McKerrow was quite right (note to lines 2385 ff.) when he observed that Cesare’s character in this scene ‘is curiously at variance with that which he exhibits in the rest of the play’. And he is also right to note that ‘the whole scene is somewhat of an excrescence upon the plot’.

458

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

and abuses of other nations’. ‘Excessive drynkinge’ is one of these vices but, far worse, ‘he is growen moste expert and coninge in the mynistringe of poysons’. He then took a mortal dislike to one John Browne, who had refused to share in his ‘unreasonable maner of drynkinge’, and prepared a ‘taynted and venomed’ lemon which would kill ‘either by the eating therof or smellinge thereunto’. Browne unwittingly made a present of the lemon to a friend who, though only sniffing at it once or twice, had since been tormented with ‘exceeding great and strange pains in the head’. The lemon having failed, Barnes then purchased some mercury sublimate, ‘which he knewe to be verye like to suger and yeat a stronge and forcyble poyson’; invited Browne to drink with him; and surreptitiously mixed the poison into a cup of wine. Browne drank some of this, immediately felt very ill and, his suspicions aroused, pressed Barnes to taste the wine for himself: an invitation which, not surprisingly, was at first refused. Eventually Barnes was constrained to drink from the poisoned cup but ‘reserved the most parte . . . in his cheekes, and torninge his back to the said Browne did privelye spytt owte the same wyne again’. The whole episode—including Barnes’s ridiculous attempt at a defence, his flight from justice, and the proof that he was, in fact, acting as a hired assassin—was long ago reconstructed by Mark Eccles, and it is impossible here to do justice to his hilarious expose´ of the poet’s incompetence.51 But Barnes’s farcical futility is relevant to our own enquiries. First, it shows that, in The Divils Charter, he was (like Harvey) ‘compensating in literature what was denied him in life’, and it makes the play seem more ludicrous than ever. Second, it casts a lurid light on his personal morality, so that it is impossible to take his repugnance at the doctrines of the ‘corrupt Florentine Secretarie’ as anything other than the conventional disclaimer of a dedicated self-seeker. Pious platitudes come ill from the pen of a man prepared to serve as a hired agent of death, however maladroitly he may have performed his task. That Barnabe Barnes was a serious reader of Machiavelli is not open to doubt. How far we should take him seriously is quite another matter. 51 Eccles, ‘Barnabe Barnes’, 175–217.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

459

indirect machiavellism In their published works, neither Harvey nor Barnes—despite their impeccable credentials as students of Machiavelli—contributed anything to the spread of his ideas. There were, however, other writers whose use of Machiavelli was unacknowledged but extensive, and whose books served as concealed conduits enabling the Florentine poison (in varying degrees of concentration) to flow unnoticed into the future.52 One of the more unusual of these tacit Machiavellians was the Ligurian author Lorenzo Capelloni, whose biography of Andrea Doria went through several editions in the 1560s,53 and whose orations were well known to contemporaries, especially via the anthologies compiled by the industrious Francesco Sansovino.54 In 1576 Capelloni published his Ragionamenti varii—a collection of 121 political and military maxims each illustrated by examples drawn principally from sixteenth-century Italian history.55 The book seemed innocent enough and it was accordingly approved by the papal censors: but what these gentlemen failed to recognize was that at least a third of the work was based upon themes arising from, or suggested by, Machiavelli’s forbidden writings. Capelloni’s technique was deceptively straightforward. He would state a maxim as a chapter heading and proceed immediately to historical instances, each of which is dated in the margin. He sometimes uses exemplars familiar to us from Il Principe and the Discorsi, but the greater part of his material is posterior to Machiavelli and, unlike many Machiavellians, Capelloni never cites the master verbatim or refers to him by some easily decipherable circumlocution. Yet many of his themes are obviously stimulated by, if not dependent upon, Machiavelli’s approach to 52 This ‘Machiavelli effect’ is especially noticeable in matters concerning the art of war, which form the subject of my next two chapters. This matter of Machiavelli’s indirect influence is touched upon by Mattei (1969), 256–60. 53 La vita e gesti di Andrea D’Oria di Lorenzo Capelloni (Venice, 1562); other edns. (Venice, 1565 and 1569). 54 See Francesco Sansovino, Diverse orationi volgarmente scritte da molti huomini illustri (Venice, 1561) and other edns. (1562, 1569, 1575, 1584). 55 Ragionamenti varii di Lorenzo Capelloni, sopra essempii: con accidenti misti, seguiti, et occorsi non mai veduti in luce (Genoa, 1576). Mattei (1969), 258–9, comments briefly on this text.

460

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

politics and it is strange that they did not raise at least some doubt in the minds of the censors.56 Capelloni observes, for example, that many men born to lowly estate have risen to greatness and political power by means of arms, while others have achieved the greatest dignities in Christendom by means of letters; and he notes the perils arising from offences given by one magnate to another, especially when the injured party rises to greater power than the offender. He explains that it is dangerous for a ruler to offend a neighbour by seeking aid from a foreign and powerful prince who can overcome both of them, as happened when Ludovico il Moro called Charles VIII of France into Italy. He complains that it is the Italians’ own fault that their land has become subject to foreign princes; and, like Machiavelli, alludes to the dangers of trying to oppose an army which has already proved victorious.57 Bad princes, he says, have committed deeds which seem evil but have proved useful and good for the greatness of the Papal State, as is evidenced by the careers of Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia; and he approves of cunning, especially when it is acute and used at an appropriate time. Like Machiavelli he condemns the ‘middle way’; asserts that a land is best defended by men, not by fortress walls, however great these may be (ch. 50); and praises the art of simulation, especially in matters of arms and warfare (ch. 42). It is true that he regards money as the nerve of war—something specifically rejected by Machiavelli—but he agrees on several other issues: that a people’s natural desire to maintain their liberty makes them prompt and courageous in defending themselves against attack; that a military enterprise is doomed if an army has too many commanders; that it is a mistake to defend mountain passes against an invading army, as the Italians found to their cost in 1515 when trying to prevent Franc¸ois Ier from crossing the Alps; and that great swiftness [la prestezza] is something to be generally admired, and especially in military actions (chs. 59, 60). With regard to fortresses, 56 But cf. below, Epilogue, for the much more extraordinary licence given to Picchi’s Avvertimenti politici (1641). 57 Ragionamenti varii di Lorenzo Capelloni, I. 10. Further references are given in the text.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

461

Capelloni is as sceptical as Machiavelli, declaring that, unless one also has an army in the field to oppose the enemy, such strongholds are not as advantageous as those who build them promise (ch. 81). He is also doubtful about the extent to which princes should keep their promises. Sometimes circumstances make them regret such good faith; and certainly it is not to be credited that a prince who has voluntarily broken a truce will keep a promise extorted by necessity (chs. 90, 100). The entire volume of Ragionamenti is characterized by its lack of any theoretical or speculative comment. The author’s personal views are demonstrated tangentially rather than directly; and his cynicism is implicit rather than explicit. Everything reads as flat reportage, and the overall impression is of a moral neutrality. Yet this somewhat subdued production was sufficiently well received to warrant two further Italian editions and two editions of a French translation.58 Such modest popularity was as nothing, though, in comparison with that enjoyed by another partially crypto-Machiavellian work, De la Sagesse (1601), by Pierre Charron, friend, disciple, and systematizer of Montaigne the unsystematizable. Like Machiavelli, Charron aroused admiration, contempt, fury, and condemnation (in 1605 he, too, was awarded the posthumous accolade of inclusion in the Index of Prohibited Books), but by the end of the century De la Sagesse had been through at least fifteen Frenchlanguage editions and seven editions of Samson Lennard’s English translation.59 It would be pointless here to attempt any critical evaluation of a work which now seems so intellectually alien, with its divisions and subdivisions, uncommitted pros and contras—often within the space of a single short chapter—and its selfconfessedly derivative, but anonymous, amassing of other writers’ 58 Ragionamenti . . . sopra varii essempii civili & militari (Milan, 1610); Varii ragionamenti historici e politici (Milan, 1623). The French translations by Pierre de Larivey: Les divers discours de Laurent Capelloni sur plusieurs exemples et accidens, meslez, suivis et advenus (Troyes, 1595); another edn., Livres et divers discours d’estat. Traduict d’Italien en Franc¸ois (Orle´ans, 1622). 59 This is a goodly number: but it is salutary to remember that it is still only about a third of the total of unadulterated issues of Machiavelli’s own works in the same period. In addition to Lennard’s translation, there was another English version by George Stanhope in 1697.

462

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

words, phrases, and sentences.60 A case has been made for Charron’s method and even for his originality.61 But it is difficult, when comparing his work with the collections of aphorisms popular at the time, not to see it simply as another such agglomeration, though without even the saving grace of an index or an apparatus precisely identifying the various authors pillaged. Only a relatively minor proportion of the work concerns practical politics, and here, for once, Charron acknowledges a debt: ‘this matter is excellently handled by Lipsius, according as he thought good: the marrow of his booke is heere: I have not taken, nor wholly followed his method, nor his order . . . I have likewise left somewhat of his, and added something of my owne, and other mens’.62 What concerns us is that one of those other men proves to have been Machiavelli, whose name, however, appears only once when Charron, writing about conspiracies, tries to distance himself from the tainted author: ‘Machiavell setteth downe at large, how a man should frame and order, and conduct a conspiracie; wee, how it may be broken, hindered, prevented’ (p. 407). In Book 3 of De la Sagesse, the first four chapters are devoted to various aspects of political prudence, and it is here—especially in his discussion of justice—that Charron’s reading of Machiavelli (though concealed) is most evident, and his morality (though paraded) is most dubious. He introduces the subject by piously 60 There is a considerable literature on Charron but, for some orientation, see Rene´e Kogel, Pierre Charron (Geneva, 1972); Vittorio Dini and Domenico Taranto (eds.), La saggezza moderna: temi e problemi dell’opera di Pierre Charron (Naples and Rome, 1987); Michel Adam, E´tudes sur Pierre Charron (Bordeaux, 1991). Less pertinent than one might hope are Jean Dagens, ‘Le Machiave´lisme de Pierre Charron’, in Studies aangeboden ann Prof. Ge´rard Brom (Utrecht, 1962), 56–64; and Anna Maria Battista, Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino: Montaigne e Charron (Milan, 1966). 61 For a concise, informative, but too sympathetic account of this method, see Jean Lafond, ‘Le Centon et son usage dans la litte´rature morale et politique’, in Jean Lafond and Andre´ Stegmann (eds.), L’Automne de la Renaissance 1580–1630 (Paris, 1981), 117–28. 62 Of Wisdome (1612), 354. Further references are given in the text. Years later, Pierre Le Moyne, De l’art de regner (Paris, 1665), sig. oˆ.1v, dismissed Lipsius’s work as ‘un ouvrage de marquetrie’ composed of sentences from Greek and Latin authors which are held together only by tiny threads of particles (in the grammatical sense)—‘qui se tiennent les unes aux autres, que par les filets des particules’.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

463

stressing that rulers must ignore such worldly advice as the axiom ‘all is good and just that serveth their turnes’, and that they must always remember that those who have most power to break the law should take the most pains to observe it. This sounds righteous enough, except that Charron goes on to say that the justice, virtue, and probity of a sovereign ‘goeth after another maner than that of private men’ because his immense responsibilities give him greater licence: ‘for which cause it is fit to march with a pase, which seemeth to others uneasie and irregular, but yet is necessariee and lawfull for him’. He must sometimes step away from the path of virtue and, mingling prudence with justice, ‘cover himself with the skin of the Lion, if that of the Foxe serve not the turne’. Of course, quibbles Charron, the ruler should only do this on three conditions: when it is necessary for the good of the state, since ‘to procure the good of the Common-weale is but to do his dutie’; for defence and not offence; and to shield himself from deceits and wicked enterprises. It is lawful by ‘subtiltie to prevent subtiltie, and among foxes to counterfet the foxe’, and important to remember that ‘alwaies to deale simplie and plainly with such people, and to follow the streight line of pure reason and equitie, were many times to betray the State, and to undo it’ (pp. 357–8). Charron’s technique of strategic vacillation is even more exposed when he moves on to the ‘discretion’ with which a ruler has to employ his ruses. It is never permissable to abandon virtue and honour and follow vice and dishonesty, for there is no middle way between these two extremes: ‘And therefore away with all injustice, treacherie, treason, and disloyaltie’ (p. 359). So indignant is Charron at this point that he curses the doctrine of those who would give rulers free rein in all things: but he promptly qualifies this by explaining that it is sometimes necessary that the ruler should ‘mix profit with honestie, and that he enter into composition with both’. He should never turn his back on honesty, ‘but yet sometimes go about and coast it, employing therein his skill and cunning, which is good, honest and lawfull’. This is slippery stuff, and more is to follow for, when Charron now proceeds to the issue of dissimulation, he says that it is vicious in private persons, but ‘very necessarie in Princes, who otherwise could not know how to reigne, or well to commaund’. Indeed, not only must they

464

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

frequently dissemble in war with their enemies but they must also dissemble in peace with their subjects—although, Charron adds a quantitive moral qualification that, in the latter case, it should be ‘more sparinglie’. Still the fact remains that, in his view, simple and open men are not really fit for command and frequently betray both themselves and their state: But yet he [the ruler] must play this parte with arte and dexteritie, and to the purpose, neither so openly nor so simplie as that it may be discerned. For to what purpose doest thou hide and cover thy selfe, if a man may see thee obliquely or sideways? Wilie deceipts and cunning subtilties, are no more deceits and subtilties when they are knowne and vented out. A Prince then the better to cover his arte, must make profession of loving simplicitie, must make much of free and open minded men, as being enemies to dissimulation; and in matters of lesse importance he must proceed openly, to the end he may be taken for such as he semeth. (p. 360)

Various examples of different types of ‘close and covert meanes’, equivocations, and subtleties (all of which have been approved by many great and wise men) are then noted by Charron, who argues that, in times of necessity and danger to the state, there is little or no fault in employing such tricks. None the less, a doubt remains about other situations ‘because they have a smell of much injustice in them’; and Charron explains that he has chosen the word ‘much’ rather than ‘wholly’ because, mingled with their injustice, are ‘some grains of justice’. The difficulty is that, while anything wholly unjust is reproved by everybody—even by the wicked ‘at leastwise in word and shew, if not in earnest and deede’—mingled actions are more problematic. There are so many reasons and authorities on one side and the other ‘that a man hardly knoweth how to resolve himselfe’. All the procedures described by Charron, together with his comments on them, reveal a political morality of egregious pliancy. For example, he recommends capital punishment, without form of justice, for somebody who menaces the state and deserves death but who cannot ‘without trouble and danger be enterprised and repressed by an ordinarie course’. In such an action nothing is violated but the form: ‘and the prince’, demands Charron rhetorically, ‘is he not above formes?’ (p. 362). Everything seems in the

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

465

end to depend on whether dirty deeds ‘succeed well and happily’, and on how dangerous the issues are for, ‘in confused and desperate affaires a prince must not follow that which may be well spoken of, but that which is necessary to be executed’. On the other hand, princes who find themselves obliged to employ stratagems should do so with great ‘unwillingnesse and griefe of mind, acknowledging that it is an infelicity and a disfavour from heaven’. Charron concludes his discussion of the virtue of justice by explaining that the reason for his having dwelt so long on the issue is because it poses so many doubts and difficulties (p. 363). The reason for my dwelling on it is because it lays bare the way in which Charron flirts with Machiavellian naughtiness, twisting and turning, qualifying and defining, and mingling the constraints of necessity with the restraints of conventional morality. A similar, though less laboured, moralization of Machiavelli is evident elsewhere in these chapters of De la Sagesse. Discussing liberality, for example, Charron is careful to stress the dangers that accrue when it is practised without measure, and he argues that pleasing things should be done little by little, ‘that a man may have time to taste them’, whereas unpleasant and cruel deeds should be executed speedily. On the issue of raising revenue, he cites with approval the axiom ‘that all is just that is necessarie’; and, when considering armed power, he observes that it is an error to believe that one can long govern a state without arms, for ‘there is never any suretie betweene the weake and the strong’. Severity, too, is ‘better, more wholsome, assured, durable, than common lenitie’. The people are more moved to obedience by force and fear of punishment than by mildness which ‘ingendreth contempt’ although, once again, this severity must be tempered with some moderation ‘to the end that the rigour towards a few might hold the whole world in fear’ (pp. 366, 373, 376, 380–1). Charron’s uneasy union of ethics and raison d’e´tat reached something of a climax in Claude Boitet’s Le Prince des Princes (1632)—if one may use so exciting a word for so somniferous a production. Boitet’s purpose is to explicate the art of ruling, and to this end he devotes the seventeen chapters of his Book 1 to all the various skills and studies necessary to form a good prince: languages, sciences, history, philosophy, cosmography, and so on,

466

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

culminating in the military art. Book 2 is largely concerned with ‘la Politique’, and the first chapter sets out the tremendous complexities of political life, how the people are unpredictable and fickle, and how the state is like a ship exposed to tempests. However, Boitet proposes to provide some guidelines and he follows Gentillet’s tripartite division of ‘le conseil d’un Prince, l’estat de la religion, et la police tant civile que militaire’.63 Especially interesting is a chapter entitled ‘Que les raisons d’estat ne repugnent point a` la Religion’ which explains that, although there are some authorities who hold that religion is contrary to reason of state, their opinion arises from a false impression in which religion is seen rather as a means to hold people in obedience than to instruct them in the service of God. It is not necessary here, says Boitet, to establish the maxims of Machiavelli. His impiety does not consider Heaven at all, ‘but makes religion serve the state which is awarded the crown, to the prejudice of religion which is the mother of piety and the daughter of God’.64 Boitet then considers the case of the ‘Politique’, first putting the argument that it is impossible to retain the purity of religion in affairs of state, and then refuting it. Is the Prince exempt from the law? No, answers Boitet. Is the love of his subjects more advantageous to the Prince than cruelty? Yes, but there should nevertheless be a judicious admixture of fear. Should one execute ‘coups d’estat’, and should stratagems be used? Here, says Boitet, we have the ‘masterpiece of the Politique and the quintessence of his maxims’; this is a ‘spring which moves a great machine, and the key which opens and shuts the outcome of a long process’.65 Like Charron, Boitet is very equivocal on this point but eventually accepts that stratagems may be employed. And what of outright 63 Claude Boitet, Le Prince des Princes, ou l’art de regner, contenant son instruction aux sciences & a` la politique. Contre les Orateurs de ce temps (Paris, 1632). On Boitet’s relationship to Gentillet, see above, Ch. 9. 64 Boitet, Le Prince des Princes, 284: ‘Il ne faut pas icy establir les maximes de Machiavel, son impiete´ ne regarde point le Ciel, elle fait servir la religion, a` l’Estat, et luy donne la Couronne au prejudice de celle qui est la mere de la piete´ et la fille de Dieu.’ 65 Ibid. 313: ‘C’est icy un chef-d’oeuvre de la Politique et la quintessence de ses maximes: c’est un ressort qui faict mouvoir une grande machine, et la clef qui ouvre et qui ferme des consequences d’une longue suite.’

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

467

fraud and trickery in a state? Here again Boitet vacillates between both sides of the argument. Just as ‘coups d’estat’ are permitted for reasons of security, and stratagems are glorious in a military commander, so one may argue that it is not forbidden to use fraud against enemies: ‘reason must here hold the balance, and conscience must regulate actions’.66 As with Charron, the issue resolves itself into a question of political imperatives. Just as it is not forbidden to kill in order to save one’s life, so one may say that it is permitted in the extremities of necessity to equivocate the rules of virtue for the sake of the state and to the prejudice of its enemies. There is no need for further citation. Le Prince des Princes has no intrinsic merit, but it testifies to the pervasive image of the Machiavel moralise´ created by Charron. Despite all the quibbling and posturing morality, Machiavelli still remains recognizable: and that, in its way, is a triumph. But it is still a relief to turn from such feebleness to a reader of Machiavelli who, while never naming his master, really knew what Il Principe and the Discorsi were about and was not afraid to use them to justify substantive political action of the utmost severity.

a tacit disciple of machiavelli Despite Machiavelli’s popularity in the sixteenth century, and despite the number of writers who referred to his works, surprisingly few treatises used his writings in order to address specific political issues; and it is, perhaps, even more surprising that, of these, one should have been by a Welshman and two by Englishmen. William Thomas and George Rainsford have been discussed in an earlier chapter. They wrote in the middle decades of the century and, in both cases, their Machiavellian works remained in manuscript and (with the possible exception of the two rulers for 66 Ibid. 317: ‘Comme les coups d’estat sont permis pour s’asseurer, comme les stratagemes sont glorieux a` un Capitaine, de mesme on pourroit dire qu’il n’est pas defendu d’employer la fraude contre ses ennemis. La raison doit tenir icy la balance, la conscience doit regler ses actions.’

468

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

whom they were intended) unknown to their contemporaries.67 But the third of these British students of Machiavelli committed himself to print, and on a subject of considerable concern to Elizabethan Englishmen. In 1594, Joseph Barnes, Printer to the University of Oxford, published Solon his follie, or a politique Discourse touching the Reformation of common-weales conquered, declined or corrupted. It is the only surviving book by Richard Beacon, a lawyer who had been appointed the Queen’s Attorney for the province of Munster in 1586 but surrendered the office in December 1591 after five years of disagreement, recrimination, and abuse.68 Released from burdensome duties, he brooded over his nasty experiences and, heavily influenced by a close study of Machiavelli, came to a number of dire conclusions concerning the measures necessary to reduce Ireland to peace, which he set forth in 114 violent and energetically argued pages.69 67 It seems likely that Thomas’s writings did, at least, find their way into Edward VI’s hands; there is nothing to show that Philip II even glanced at Rainsford’s effusions. 68 This section on Beacon is based upon my article ‘A Machiavellian Solution to the Irish Problem: Richard Beacon’s Solon His Follie (1594)’, in Edward Chaney and Peter Mack (eds.), England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp (Woodbridge, 1990), 153–64, where full annotation, including a table listing Beacon’s use of Machiavellian material, may be found. Since the appearance of that article, Solon his follie has been edited, with an introduction and notes, by Clare Carroll and Vincent Carey (Binghamton, NY, 1996). The editors have identified some of the ‘ancient’ characters with Beacon’s contemporaries, and have sketched in the political background. But they do not pursue (nor, in my view, give adequate weight to) Beacon’s Machiavellism. 69 It is not surprising that the Irish problem aroused some Machiavellian resonances in the minds of some of those Elizabethans who were rash enough to suggest solutions to it. Naturally, the idea of establishing colonies was in the forefront of their thoughts and so, too, was a tendency towards political extremism. In a treatise written about 1588–9, but which remained unpublished for 300 years, Sir William Herbert advocated the establishing of large, well-fortified, strictly regulated colonies on the Roman model, and recommended that, should these fail, the indigenous population should be exterminated: and he cites Machiavelli (‘Acutissime et perspicacissime Italus’) to this effect. See Herbert’s Croftus, sive De Hibernia liber, ed. W. E. Buckley (Roxburghe Club, 1887), 35, 41; and D. B. Quinn, ‘Renaissance Influences in English Colonization’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 26 (1976), 73–94 at 84–5. Quinn also drew attention to similarly Machiavellian views expressed by Matthew Sutcliffe in his The practice, proceedings, and lawes of armes (1595). More famous than these is Edmund Spenser’s A View of the State of Ireland, written about 1595 but not

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

469

The treatise is cast in the form of a dialogue set in ancient Greece, where Solon and his friend Epimenides discuss the problems faced by Athens in its relations with the turbulent subject state Salamina. Athens is, in fact, England; and Salamina is Ireland—peopled by ancients sporting such classical names as O’Neale, O’Brian, O’Rourke, FitzGerald, and Desmond. But the text is far more complicated than this simple allegory might suggest. A special, spicy flavour is imparted to Solon by Beacon’s political philosophy, for all his ideas concerning the difficulties faced by any state seeking to absorb a neighbour are based upon Machiavelli’s Discorsi and, to a much slighter extent, Il Principe, both of which he quotes and paraphrases from Latin versions. The result is a strange, multi-tiered, historical structure. First there are the Greek examples suggested by the setting of the dialogue itself: and these are based principally upon Plutarch’s Lives in North’s translation, which had been published in 1579. Then there are illustrations drawn from Roman history: again often derived from North’s Plutarch, but considerably augmented by material taken from Machiavelli’s observations on Livy and, occasionally, from Livy himself. Thirdly, there are a number of biblical references which occur when Beacon discusses the portents and predictions of imminent political doom. However, all these ancients are balanced by modern parallels consisting principally of Italian material from Machiavelli, with a few additions from Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia as Englished by Fenton in 1579. There are, too, several clusters of material taken from Bodin’s Re´publique in one of its available Latin translations. And finally—equal in bulk and importance to Machiavelli—there is the most modern layer of evidence, provided by detailed allusion to Irish affairs based on Beacon’s own knowledge of recent history and of the relevant Tudor legislation. The whole mixture is a good, if unconscious, application of Machiavelli’s own method—that is a systematic comparison of what the author has read and what he has experienced—though published until 1633. Machiavellian influences in this work are clear, though less striking than in Solon, and there is one direct reference to Machiavelli by name. For a discussion of Spenser, Machiavelli, and Ireland, see Gasquet (1974), 343–53. None of these authors approach Beacon’s detailed knowledge of Machiavelli.

470

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

the interplay of Greeks, Romans, Italians, and Irish sometimes stretches Beacon’s ingenuity to breaking point, and beyond. In places the text becomes congested and surreal. We read, for example, of the dangers which arose for Athens when it constituted Thomas FitzGerald Lieutenant of Salamina and he ‘did eftsoons revile that famous citie of Athens, and his lawfull soveraign’; moved rebellions against them; addressed letters to the ‘Bishop of Rome, & the Emperour, for the invading of Salamina’; and, amongst many others, put to death the Archbishop of Dublin, the ‘primate of Salamina’. The heaping up of examples sometimes results in bewildering juxtapositions as, for instance, when Beacon’s countrymen are exhorted, as Athenians: let us with the noble Romaines refuse the money of Spurius Cassius, Ne libertatem vendere ea pretio videamur; let us not give credit to his flattering orators the Jesuits, which bribed by Polycarphon laboure the destruction of Athens; let us not be infamous with the Neapolitanes for unconstancie; let us not be led this day to affect the French, and tomorrow with a new insinuation of Ferdinando. (Solon, 25, 99)

Historical allegory of this kind is neither orderly nor consistent although, paradoxically, confusion is minimized by Beacon’s other literary weaknesses. Despite several attempts at defining his terms, and at organizing his material according to these divisions, Beacon cannot avoid repeating himself. Moreover, he never succeeds in differentiating between his two protagonists, who remain throughout mere mouthpieces for his own opinions. Thus, despite its anachronisms—or rather its anarchochronisms—the argument of Solon his follie remains clear, and Beacon’s extreme views on how to deal with Ireland emerge forcefully and unambiguously. His purpose is to consider how to reform subject states which have become corrupt; and he defines the reformation of a commonweal as ‘nothing else but a happy restitution unto his first perfection’. Such a process may be nothing more than the correction of ‘particular mischiefs and inconveniences’, which can be accomplished by ‘profitable lawes’, properly administered and executed. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to undertake a thorough reformation of the whole body politic, its ancient laws, customs, and government: and this requires sterner measures.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

471

There are many different kinds of state but, in general, those which had ‘their first institution and foundation good’ may—provided that they are not too corrupt—not only be restored to their first perfection by wise legislation, but may even have their happy condition prolonged and augmented. Such was the commonwealth of Rome, ‘whose first institution and foundation was so well laid by Romulus and Numa’ (p. 67). On the other hand, there are commonwealths so declined from their first institution that it is no longer possible to reform them simply by legislation. Even Rome itself eventually sank into this pitiable condition which is, in fact, the present state of Ireland: and the latter can no more be reformed by the laws against captainship, coynye and livery, ‘or any other new lawe whatsoever’ than could Rome by the law ‘Sumptuari ambitus and such like’. In such circumstances, a ‘subtile writer’—and here Beacon is referring to Machiavelli—when discussing general and absolute reformation, had said that he ‘which shall attempt the same, must alter and chaunge all the ancient lawes and customes’ (pp. 19–20).70 And this, says Solon, evidently expressing Beacon’s strong personal conviction, ‘we there sometimes imployed in that service, were daily taught, rather by experience then by any learned or deep discourse that may be made therof ’ (pp. 20–1). Beacon acknowledges that it may sometimes be useful to retain a shadow of former laws and customs—as the Romans had done after the expulsion of their kings—for it persuades people that nothing substantial has been taken away or diminished. None the less, a thoroughgoing procedure is more relevant to present needs; and Ireland requires ‘an universal reformation’ along the lines pursued by King David—an allusion which Beacon derives from Machiavelli, not the Scriptures. Generally, politicians err in the handling of subject peoples by instituting only a partial reformation; and Beacon exemplifies this by the incompetence of the Florentines when suppressing the rebellion of Arezzo. They had dismissed some of the enemy leaders and banished others: but they neither resumed possession of the lands, nor destroyed the principal city; and thus they lost the opportunity of confirming their authority. Such half-hearted measures ‘hath never as yet beene 70 Cf. Discorsi, I. 18.

472

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

founde happy and prosperous’. Yet it is precisely this feeble middle course which has been consistently pursued in Ireland where it has, just as consistently, failed (pp. 47–9).71 For Beacon, as for Machiavelli, corruption arises largely through the development of factions and internal discord which—again like Machiavelli—he believes to be of two kinds. On the one hand, once the Romans had degenerated through ‘peace, rest and security’, they could never ‘give an end unto their contentions, then raised for profitte and gaine’. This was the ‘final declination, not ad sanitatem but ad interitum’; and then there was only one possible solution— that is a ‘succession of severe magistrates’. Just as wild olive and fig trees can be trained, by a skilful husbandman, to become fruitful, so can a commonweal—‘overgrowne with a generall corruption of manners, and thereby become savage, barbarous, and barren’—be made obedient and profitable ‘by the continuall pruning and addressing of a skilful magistrate’ (pp. 52–3).72 In conditions of extreme political corruption, mild courses of government are futile and, as an instance of this, Beacon cites one of Machiavelli’s favourite targets, Piero Soderini, whose mildness and patience had remained profitable as long as the times themselves continued gentle. However, once an iron age had set in, ‘the same then required a greater severity than could be found in Peter Soderin’, who could not adapt his nature to suit the times, so that ‘he did not only overthrow himself, but did also perish his whole countrie’ (pp. 59–60).73 Machiavelli had stressed that, in dire circumstances, politicians must be ready to use both fraud and force. And Beacon agrees. Indeed, he makes Solon point out that the use of ‘faire promises and sweete wordes’ is, in the case of a public magistrate, ‘rightlie tearmed pollicie, but in private persons the same is not unjustly condemned by the name of deceite’. Whereupon, Epimenides promptly rejoins: ‘we have remembred the same, not as condemners, but as approvers of the fact, and therefore needelesse you have justified yourselfe therein’ (p. 12). The value of force for the politician is equally obvious. Whenever a thorough going reformation of a state is under way, says 71 Cf. Discorsi, I. 25, 26; II. 23. 73 Cf. ibid., III. 3, 30.

72 Cf. ibid., I. 4, 37; II. 3; III. 1, 22.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

473

Beacon, there will always be people plotting the overthrow of the ‘great and profitable actions’ of those attempting to put it into practice, and the problem that this poses is elucidated by one of Machiavelli’s most characteristic arguments—the uselessness of an unarmed prophet. Even Moses, before he could establish the laws delivered to him by God, ‘founde it necessarie, with forces to remove such, as being pricked forwarde with envie, did oppose themselves against his intended reformation’. By contrast, Savonarola, who lacked sufficient forces, ‘was soone oppressed by the envie of others, and fayled of his intended reformation, as it may appeare by his sermons, Contra sapientes huius mundi’ (p. 41).74 Beacon also cites Lycurgus as a leader who nearly came to grief, and was lucky to lose nothing more than one eye, through contending with persuasion rather than with force; and Soderini again appears as someone who tried to overcome his enemies by deploying benefits, justice, and honesty, ‘forgetting that which now is everie where in experience’—that such methods can never reconcile the envious and malicious (p. 42).75 Force may be required to effect any kind of political reformation: but it is absolutely essential when such reformation is attempted in a state ‘gained by the sword and conquered, as also corrupted in manners’—‘all which Salamina may well witness unto the worlde’. The governors of Munster had made every effort to proclaim the laws against coynye, livery, and other extortions; and the benefits which would have accrued from all this were patent. Yet it was of no avail; and Warham St Leger, then provincial governor, had to use his forces to suppress ‘the Butlers and Garoldines, which then on every side did arise’. It was not that England lacked the requisite ‘magistrates of rare and excellent virtues’, capable of carrying out effective campaigns in ‘difficult warres’. The weakness had been elsewhere. Good administrators are not sufficient. They must have the support of their government at home, and they must not be passed over the moment a crisis has ended. This was the great error of the 74 There is a curious discrepancy between this accurate Latin rendition of Machiavelli’s original Italian and the version by Stupanus—which otherwise appears to be Beacon’s source. See my ‘Machiavellian Solution’, 158 n. 9. 75 Cf. Discorsi, III. 4, 30.

474

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Florentines who, abandoning Antonio Giacomini as soon as they thought that they could do without him against the Pisans, thereby blundered into humiliation. Similarly, in Beacon’s opinion, England had lost an opportunity in the time of Lord Gray, but it now has another chance by committing the reformation of Ireland into the hands of Sir William Russell: ‘as unto another Jacomine, by whose rare skill and knowledge in militarie discipline the Pisans have and will be forced at the last to obey the Florentines’ (p. 44).76 Beacon disapproves of the way England has treated its representatives in Ireland: and it is this critical attitude towards government policy which prompts him to wrap up his ideas in the form of a dialogue where one of the protagonists is a character famous for uttering warlike counsel under cover of madness. Indeed, Beacon applies this fiction to himself in his dedication to Queen Elizabeth, when he apologizes for the inadequacy of his presentation of such weighty matters, and expresses the hope that her ‘accustomed clemency will impute this to Solon his folie and lunacie, which now for his boldnes craveth pardon, rather then commendation’ (sig. }.4v). There are many pitfalls in the governing of a subject state, and any one of them may result in ruin. Several have bedevilled the peace and prosperity of Ireland, which is especially difficult to govern because it has different laws, customs, religion, and language, all of which promote ‘disobedience and savage life’. The local nobility, for example, had been allowed to increase in power until they became a law unto themselves, rebelling against their sovereign and oppressing the commonalty (pp. 75–9). Equally disastrous had been the faulty execution of good laws. Greedy self-interested officials, ‘more studious with Savonarola in making profitable lawes, then faithfull observers thereof ’, had brought English government into disrepute.77 Such men could never persuade the multitude to accept their rule and remain quiet and contented. Beacon debates these problems in purely Machiavellian terms, arguing in favour both of a large number of 76 Cf. Discorsi, III. 16. 77 It is amusing to note that Beacon was himself accused of extortionate attempts to fill his own ‘pilling’ purse and of appointing as constables throughout the country men who had been thieves, rebels, and murderers, ‘such as for the most part as if one rake hell, he shall scarce find worse’. See Cal. S.P. Ireland; 1588–92, no. 78.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS

475

independent magistrates and of gaining the support of the multitude against the old nobility whose obedience is neither ‘readily wonne nor so easily kept’ (pp. 79–81).78 It is also important that loyal subjects be defended against enemies and rebels, and that they are adequately rewarded for service to the state, because failure to take heed of merit is often the cause of discontent. This had been one of the reasons for the defeat of the French in Italy, as Epimenides points out in choice phrases culled from Guicciardini: though elsewhere, under the influence of Machiavelli (Il Principe, 3), Beacon is less enthusiastic about advancing subject people to offices and dignities. Another reason for dangerous discontent—also derived from Guicciardini—is the depredation practised by troops. This time, though, Beacon finds the answers in the writings of Jean Bodin (whose name, like those of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, is never mentioned) and in the ‘militarie workes’ of another ‘learned and skilfull writer’ who is identified as ‘Dr Sutclief ’—both of whom recommend strict discipline and regular pay (pp. 85–91).79 Finally, Beacon returns to the fundamental problem, in words which have the ring of unhappy experience: ‘If Princes, Kings, and States, shall not publikely grace, countenaunce, and support all governoures and Magistrates by them placed for reformation of any province or nation during the time of their governement, the subjects shal take thereby occasion of rebelling.’ Worse still, if the magistrates and officers are not given support, the whole business of reformation must fail, and the ‘common-weale it selfe may not long continue’ (pp. 91–2). Beacon’s principal suggestions for an effective English policy in Ireland are gathered together in his final chapter, where he wields scissors and paste with reckless bravura.80 There are eight techniques to be employed, the first of which—good and profitable laws strictly applied by a governor with dictatorial authority—comes from Machiavelli’s Discorsi; while the second, readiness for war, is adapted from Plutarch’s life of Themistocles. The third and 78 Cf. Discorsi, I. 40, 45, 49; Il Principe, 19. 79 Solon, 85–91. Cf. Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, II. iv; tr. Fenton (1579), 89; Bodin, De republica (1586), 657, 669–70; Matthew Sutcliffe, The practise, proceedings, and lawes of armes (1593), ch. 2, pp. 16–28. 80 For this medley of sources, see my ‘Machiavellian Solution’, 161.

476

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

fourth—confederations and subjects well trained in military discipline (not noticeably different from the second)—again come from the Discorsi. The fifth, the securing of strongholds, is illustrated with an example from Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia; and the sixth, the taking of hostages in the fashion of Porsenna, could come from either Plutarch or Livy. The seventh is to disarm the natives: and here Beacon picks out relevant passages from Il Principe and the Discorsi. He then develops a parenthetical argument concerning the dangers of encouraging factions as a means of controlling subject peoples— which he illustrates from Guicciardini, Machiavelli’s Discorsi, and Irish experience—before moving on to his last and most important suggestion. Of all policies, the establishing of colonies is, in Beacon’s opinion, ‘the most beneficiall for containing of a nation conquered in their duty and obedience’. And here (apart from a short, but pregnant, paraphrase of Machiavelli’s view that colonies are an economical way of holding subject states, and a passing reference to Pericles, drawn from Plutarch) Beacon leans heavily on his knowledge of Ireland and upon generous citation from an anonymous ‘learned writer’ and from a ‘man of great understanding’, both of whom, in fact, prove to be Jean Bodin. Yet, even here, an extra convolution is provided, unconsciously, by the fact that Bodin’s views on the immense superiority of colonies over garrisons are, themselves, ultimately derived from Machiavelli. All of this may help towards the ‘happy restitution’ of a declined commonwealth: and by ‘happy’, says Epimenides, he means when it has been accomplished without bloodshed, tyranny, or cruelty. However, at this point, he gives a Machiavellian twist to a Ciceronian tail. Where ‘sanandi medicina may not prevaile’, he says, ‘there execandi is rightly used’ (p. 113).81 And the reader is left in no doubt that, for Beacon, Ireland is a case not for curative pills, potions, and ointments, but for brutal and extensive amputation.82 81 Solon, 113; Cf. Cicero, Letters to Atticus, II. 1: ‘tamen non minus esset probanda medicina, quae sanaret vitiosas partes rei publicae, quam quae exsecaret’. 82 For more surgical metaphors in relation to Irish affairs, see the unpublished treatise The discoverye and Recoverye of Ireland with the Authors Apologye by that tumultuous personality, Thomas Lee—British Library, Add. MS 33743, especially fos. 52 ff.

14 Writers on the Art of War The war epidemic which afflicted Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was accompanied by a marked increase in the publication of military books—ranging from up-to-date, practical, technical manuals to treatises on classical military institutions and procedures—and it is remarkable that, despite all the changes in organization, weaponry, and fortification since Machiavelli’s time, the military observations which filled his works continued to provide nourishment for many authors concerned with the art of war. All his books remained available; and intermediary sources, too, such as Fourquevaux’s Instructions sur le faict de la guerre and Diego de Salazar’s Tratado de re militari, were still being reprinted in the closing decades of the sixteenth century, as were the classical sources which formed the basis of Machiavelli’s thinking.1 Before addressing the hotchpotch of ideas which resulted from all this, it will be useful in this chapter to consider a few writers—a priest, two soldiers, and a scholar—who, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, clearly knew Machiavelli’s writings at first hand and took him seriously as a military authority.

a priest Machiavelli’s trenchancy and pugnacity inspired many strange responses: Nifo’s Aristotelized Il Principe; Salazar’s hispanicized, and 1 The fourth, and last, French edition of Fourquevaux’s Instructions was published in Paris, under the title Discipline militaire, in 1592; an English translation had appeared in 1589; and a German translation was published in Mo¨mpelgard in 1594. Diego de Salazar’s Tratado de re militari was reprinted in Brussels in 1590.

478

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Fourquevaux’s gallicized, Arte della guerra; Beacon’s hibernicized Il Principe and Discorsi; and (a treat reserved for the end of this book) even an alphabetized Il Principe. But one of the most futile displays of genuine Machiavellian knowledge appeared early in 1610 when the Parisian printer Jean de la Haye issued an Italian text, entitled Aforismi politici e militari, compiled by a certain Fra Matteo Baccellini, who dedicated it, on 1 January, to ‘Sigismondo Miscovschi Marchese de Mirova e gran Marisciale del Regno di Polonia’.2 In his dedicatory letter to Miskovski, Baccellini explains how he had spent many months, ‘years perhaps’, reducing into aphorisms and propositions the art of war and military discipline, written in times past by a ‘common writer’ in the form of a dialogue which, not unjustly, Baccellini regards as a ‘very tedious mode’.3 The common writer is, of course, Machiavelli; the tedious dialogue is the Arte della guerra; and Baccellini has a good deal more to say about this source in the letter ‘Ai Cortesi Lettori’ which follows the dedication. The argument of that dialogue, Baccellini assures his readers, had been treated with such judgement and carried out with so many examples from the ancients, ‘whom I esteem’, that no other writer has up to now reached this level and few will attain to it in the future. Nor is this merely a personal view, because ‘infinite fine spirits who, both by reading books and by practical experience, merit more than moderate praise, have been of this opinion before me’. Outstanding among these admirers is no less a figure than the Emperor Charles V who, ‘the first time that the book was presented to him, had it translated into his native tongue, and always kept it by his bedside at night’.4 This garbled account of Charles V’s 2 Matteo Baccellini, Aforismi politici e militari ne’ quali si mostra come il Principe, e la Republica s’ha` da governare con la militia. E l’arte di creare un essercito, d’armarlo, essercitarlo, alloggiarlo, e condurlo alla giornata. Il modo di edificare Terre, e Fortezze, come si ponno espugnare, e difendere nuovamente posti in luce (Paris, 1610). I have not located a copy of this work in the United Kingdom and I must thank the Biblioteca della Fondazione Luigi Firpo, Centro di studi sul pensiero politico, in Turin for supplying a microfilm of their copy, and my Torinese friend Giorgio Dondi for arranging this and for sending me the microfilm. 3 Aforismi, sig. a˜.2r–v: ‘La onde havendo io in molti mesi, e forse anni, ridotta in Aforismi, & in Propositioni l’arte della guerra, e della disciplina militare, scritta gia` in forma di Dialogo, foggia assai tediosa, da un volgare scrittore’. 4 Ibid., sig. a˜.5: ‘Ne` sono io di si fatto patere autore, perche infiniti belli ingegni, li quali, e per lettura di libri, e per pratica de cose, meritano lode piu`

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

479

enthusiasm for Machiavelli mixes tradition and fact, and gets them both wrong. Charles V had certainly declared an interest in the Discorsi and may have initiated the Spanish translation by Otevanti. He is also said, by Francesco Sansovino, not only to have admired Il Principe as well as the Discorsi and caused them to be translated into his own language, but also to have admired Polybius for ‘the rules of warfare’. Baccellini may simply have forgotten about Polybius and assumed that the book of military rules was Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra. Despite his enthusiasm, Baccellini again complains that the original Dialogo was very difficult to read, wherefore ‘to satisfy the importunate prayers of several princes and knights, in order that the book might more easily be perceived, I have reduced it into 474 [sic] aphorisms, all of which were contained in a tedious dialogue of seven books’. While facilitating the reader’s task, Baccellini has also assured the conscience of Christian readers: having, he says, exerted myself to purge the work of every contagious impiety, in conformity with the sacred decrees of the Council of Trent, as is seen in Aphorism 116, where I have reduced to a good sentiment that proposition which was somewhat suspect and scandalous; just as, in many other places, I have cut out that which I have deemed pernicious. (sig. a˜5v)

Baccellini is anxious to persuade his readers that there is nothing strange in the fact that he, a priest, should undertake to correct a book dealing with political and military matters. Indeed, if the matter be regarded ‘with eye void of rancour’, it will be seen that there is nobody more suitable for accomplishing this task than a priest—and so much the more when he has knowledge of revealed science and divine theology. Baccellini goes further, for, he says, if the political books of the past and present centuries would have been written by, or had passed through the hands of men who feared God, they would not be full of such scandalous errors and ‘in them, the world would have drunk less of the ruinous poison of Atheism under colour of reason of state and political subtleties’.5 che mediocre, prima di me sono stati di questa opinione. Anzi che Carlo quinto Imperatore, ne tenne tanto conto, che la prima volta, che gli fu` presentato, lo fece tradurre nella sua lingua nativa, e lo teneva la notte sempre al capezzale.’ 5 Ibid. sigs. a˜.5v–6r: ‘Anzi, che se I libri politici nel passato, e nel presente secolo fussero stati scritti, o` fussero passati per le mani di persone timorate di Dio,

480

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Who, he demands, knows better than priests how to establish and govern states? Just look at Moses, ‘who is admired by the politici themselves as the very Idea and form of an excellent statesman and of a bold captain’. Yet he was a priest! This, in Baccellini’s view, is true of the greater part of valiant men, and he cites Gilbert Ge´ne´brard’s commentary on Psalm 93 to prove his point.6 All this is as clear as the sun in the Holy Scriptures. At God’s command, Moses not only instituted the Israelite state but he also chose the soldiers and led the army into battle against the enemy. Furthermore, girded with the sword, he punished the idolaters who had injured God by their worship of the golden calf; and it is well known that the Israelite armies were, for a long time, commanded and advised by priests. Similarly, the pagans themselves never went into battle without first having their priests make sacrifices. In fact, says Baccellini, any consul who ignored this rite was punished by the Senate, ‘as happened to Papirius and to Appius’. This entire passage is interesting not only because it touches upon material familiar to all readers of Machiavelli— Moses as an armed prophet (Il Principe, 6), and the manipulation of auguries by Roman commanders to encourage their troops (Discorsi, I. 14)—but also because, in both cases and unlike other Christian commentators, Baccellini seems to approve. Given his knowledge of the Arte della guerra, it does seem likely that he knew the other works: but there are no verbal echoes, and he manages to misinterpret the story of Papirius and Appius.7 non si vederebbono pieni di tanti scandalosi errori, e meno il mondo haverebbe bevuto in essi il veleno essitiale dell’Ateismo, sotto colore di Ragione di stato, e di avvedimenti politici.’ 6 Aforismi, sig. a˜.6: ‘E chi seppe giamai meglio formare e reggere le Republiche che i sacerdoti? Specchiatevi in Moise, il quale da i politici medesimi e` ammirato, come Idea e forma d’un ottimo politico, e d’un Capitano strenuo, e pure egli era sacerdote, come la maggior parte de’ valenti huomini dimostrano, & in particolare il dottissimo Genebrardo intorno a` quel luogo del salmo novanta tre.’ The work referred to is Gilbert Ge´ne´brard, Archbishop of Aix, Psalmi Davidis, calendario hebraeo, syro, graeco-latino, argumentis et commentariis genuinum eorum sensum, hebraismosque locupletius quam antea aperientibus (Paris, 1577 and later edns.). 7 Machiavelli makes it clear that Appius was condemned for his flagrant disregard of the auspices and for the ensuing defeat, whereas Papirius was honoured for his adroitness and victory.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

481

Baccellini’s difficulties in trying to Christianize the Arte della guerra are very evident when he arrives at Aphorism 116—singled out, in the letter to the readers, as especially demanding (and receiving) the decontamination process. It is based on a passage late in the second book of the Arte della guerra, where Machiavelli tries to explain why the military virtu` of the ancients has long since vanished. The argument is one of Machiavelli’s poorest.8 First, he says that the Roman hegemony destroyed the virtu` which had formerly been generated by the rivalry of many states, and had thus left nothing apart from the warlike qualities of Rome itself. Then, when Rome itself became corrupt, everything fell apart. This should, logically, have meant a rebirth of virtu` but, says Machiavelli, such a process takes time. He then adds a further argument which had already been advanced in the Discorsi, that Christianity was to blame because it imposes less necessity for men to defend themselves. Formerly wars had been devastating and wholly ruinous; but now, thanks to the Christian faith, the fear of war has decreased with the result that men are less bothered to value and maintain military discipline. Given the frequency and brutality of internecine Christian wars, Machiavelli’s suggestion is nonsensical and had aroused the wrath of several simplistic defenders of the faith, anxious to demonstrate that Christians could be every bit as bloodthirsty as pagans. A typical example of this muddled thinking was Innocent Gentillet, whose clumsy refutation in the 1585 edition of the Contre-Machiavel led to a disastrous, selfcontradictory encomium of godly violence. Baccellini similarly falls victim both to his own and to Machiavelli’s incompetence by trying simultaneously to retain as much of the Arte della guerra’s argument as possible while praising Christian military virtu`. He agrees that the lack of military virtu` in modern times as compared with the ancients is largely due to the Christian religion (e` in gran parte il rispetto della religione Christiana). But then he gets into difficulties. In these happier times, he says, God has, ‘through his immense piety’ and by the laws of grace, moderated the ferocity of men in such a way that they will not wage war other than against the 8 Mazzoni and Casella, 300b–302a. For a criticism of Machiavelli’s argument, see Anglo (1969), 138–41.

482

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

enemies of the faith. And if, sometimes, ‘by diabolical suggestion’, wars do occur between the faithful, they may still be just if fought for reasonable causes and an honest end, and are ended swiftly, through the labour of Christian princes and, in particular, of the most high Roman Pontiff, whose authority, guided by the Holy Spirit, is feared and revered as supreme by true believers. And he, with paternal zeal, intervenes and assuages the tumults.9

After this masterly piece of question-begging, Baccellini returns, more or less, to Machiavelli’s own words: ‘thus there is not imposed on men such necessity to defend themselves, as came about in ancient times’ (cosı` non e` imposta tanta necessita` di difendersi, come anticamente accadeva).10 He then proceeds, with only slight variations in tense and vocabulary, to transcribe Machiavelli’s views on the extreme severity of ancient wars (which had resulted in military expertise) and the comparatively tame modern hostilities which inspired little fear and, therefore, encouraged scant respect for soldierly skills—an especially obtuse failure, on Bacellini’s part, to note what had been happening in France, the Baltic, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Bohemia during his own lifetime. What does it all mean?11 Does Baccellini regard Machiavelli’s remarks as a slur on Christian valour? Does he view Christians favourably because they do wage wars? Does he admire them when they fight among themselves for a ‘just’ cause? Does he not admire them if, induced ‘by diabolical suggestion’, they fight unjustly? Does he agree with Machiavelli that Christians do indeed lack 9 Aforismi, 53–4. 10 Ibid. 54. Cf. Arte della guerra, 3, in Mazzoni and Casella, 302a: ‘perche, il modo del vivere d’oggi, rispetto alla cristiana religione, non impone quella necessita` al difendersi che anticamente era’. 11 We get no clue to the Christianization process from Aphorism 335, based upon a passage in the Arte della guerra, 6 (Mazzoni and Casella, 350b) where Machiavelli points out the difficulties faced by the ancient military captains who had had to contend with omens and auguries and had cunningly interpreted them in order to suit their own purposes. In our time, says Machiavelli, this sort of thing cannot happen since men are not now so superstitious ‘because our religion has completely removed such opinions’. However, should such fears occur, then Machiavelli believes that we should imitate the practices of the ancients. All of this is faithfully transcribed by Baccellini without alteration or comment.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

483

military virtu`? It is impossible, in his treatment of Aphorism 116, to discover precisely how Baccellini’s Christianization of Machiavelli was intended to work; and this sense of aimlessness is typical of his entire collection of Aforismi politici e militari. He simply works his way through the Arte della guerra, more or less seriatim, from early in Book I to the very end of Book VII, using material drawn solely from the principal speaker, Fabrizio Colonna, and ignoring the speeches of everybody else in the original dialogue. This is reasonable enough since these other characters are mere stooges. On the other hand, Fabrizio’s own observations are themselves subjected to rearrangement and frequent cuts, some of which (Machiavelli’s famous mock battle in Book III, for example) are dictated by the need to exclude any kind of narrative. Other omissions, however, are quite arbitrary and seem motivated solely by a feeling that the work should be kept within bounds. Apart from alteration of tenses, random replacement of Machiavelli’s original words with close synonyms, and a shuttling backwards and forwards between the second and third books of the Arte della guerra (Aphorisms 146 to 153), there is little attempt to personalize the text;12 while of original thinking there is no evidence at all. Just occasionally, as when omitting Machiavelli’s description of the scoppietto (arquebus) as a ‘new and necessary instrument’, Baccellini recognizes that things have changed in the ninety years since the Arte della guerra was first published.13 But, for the most part, not only is he indifferent to the fact that his masterpiece is a

12 The major displacement of material occurs where Baccellini is dealing with the opening sections of the Arte della guerra, 3. He cuts all the material comparing the Roman, Greek, and Swiss methods of drawing up an army, along with the introductory sections of Machiavelli’s proposed combination of the various systems (Mazzoni and Casella, 305a–306b); arbitrarily resumes the Arte della guerra up to the mock battle which is completely cut (Mazzoni and Casella, 309a–310a), and then resumes with Fabrizio’s explanations of the way in which his army had functioned. 13 Arte della guerra, 2 (Mazzoni and Casella, 291a): ‘lo scoppietto, istrumento nuovo, come voi sapete, e necessario’. Lo scoppietto could be any hand-held firearm, but Machiavelli is obviously thinking of the arquebus. Peter Whitehorne translates the phrase as ‘harkabus, a new instrument (as you know) verie necessarie’; and Fourquevaux adapts the passage as ‘La Harquebuze a este´ trouvee de peu d’ans en c¸a, et est tresbonne.’

484

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

maimed version of an archaic military text, but he is also unaware that much of what he reproduces is, in fact, undiluted Vegetius.14 However, Baccellini saves his most thoughtless reproduction of Machiavelli’s words and sentiments for the conclusion of his own book (Aphorisms 475, 476). He is evidently much taken with Machiavelli’s stirring peroration in which the Italian princes of the early sixteenth century were exhorted to follow the methods set out in the Arte della guerra. The first ruler who should do so, exclaimed Machiavelli, would make himself master of the province: just as Philip of Macedon, having based his military organization upon that of Epaminondas and trained his forces (while the rest of Greece wasted their time in idleness and reciting plays), was able to possess the entire state and leave such a foundation that his son became prince of the whole world. All of this is faithfully transcribed by Baccellini in his penultimate aphorism (475) before rounding off his work by cobbling together two disparate sentences from the end of the Arte della guerra: first Machiavelli’s challenge that, whoever ‘despises these studies, if he be a Prince, despises his Princedom, if he be a Citizen, his City’; and secondly, Machiavelli’s quintessentially Renaissance exhortation that the province (and here, Baccellini specifically refers, as Machiavelli did not, to ‘I Principi di Toscana’) seemed destined to resuscitate dead things such as poetry, painting, and sculpture—and, by implication, the art of war. Baccellini’s Aforismi militari would merit attention even if it offered nothing more than the curious spectacle of an early seventeenth-century Italian priest creating a book by cutting and pasting passages from the Arte della guerra, persuading a French printer to issue the fragmented Italian text in Paris, and then being accorded the posthumous accolade of a second edition in Italy.15 But the work is not merely an oddity. For one thing, it is an excellent example both of the craze for aphorization which afflicted 14 Machiavelli’s debt to the ancient authorities, and especially to Vegetius, needs no further stressing here. But it is worth noting Baccellini’s Aforismi, 435– 63, which reproduce (with a few trivial omissions and some juggling of the order) Machiavelli’s own ‘general rules’ (Arte della guerra, 7) which derive, unacknowledged, from Vegetius, III. 26. 15 The work was given its second edition in 1620 by the Venetian printer Giovanni Battista Ciotti, who had earlier published the more soldierly works of Achille Tarducci, which are discussed immediately below.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

485

contemporary Europe and the ease with which the process could be applied to Machiavelli’s works. For another, it reveals the moral problem posed for pious readers of Machiavelli and the ways in which this could be circumvented. While not naming Machiavelli, Baccellini refers specifically to the fact that his source is a banned author hostile to Christianity but, though condemned by the Council of Trent, still worth knowing for the matchless military wisdom he had included in his dialogue, however ‘tediosa’ that might be. Yet there are only two passages in the Arte della guerra where Christianity is actually mentioned and, while Baccellini is anxious to mitigate observations which he deems irreligious, he does not know how to deal with them. He could easily have solved the difficulty merely by omitting the troublesome sentences, as he omitted so many others which did not fit into his scheme of things. That he chose to wrestle with the problem suggests that, like other pious critics, he deemed Machiavelli’s allegations concerning Christian lack of virtu` too challenging and too important to ignore; and, like those other critics—trying simultaneously to defend ‘just’ modern wars, to praise Moses as both warrior and priest, and to extol Christian pacifism while vaunting Christian valour on the field of battle—he found himself caught in the toils of inextricable contradictions.

a soldier Rather different as a reader of Machiavelli—in formation, perception, and in purpose—was Achille Tarducci, a member of a military family hailing from Corinaldo, just a few kilometres west of Sinigaglia, which had been the scene of Cesare Borgia’s notorious settling of old scores.16 As a youth Achille had been attracted to philosophy and mathematics, and this latter interest proved useful when he pursued a military career: serving against the Turks in 16 Very little is known about Tarducci and most of that little has to be drawn from information provided in his own works. See Carlo Promis, ‘Gl’ingegneri militari della Marca d’Ancona che operarono e scrissero dall’anno MDL all’anno MDCL’, Miscellanea di Storia d’Italia edita per cura dell Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria, 6 (1865), 296–308; and Mattei (1969), 303–6.

486

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

1595 and 1597 as an artillery commander and specialist in fortification for Sigismund Bathory, the brilliant but deranged prince of Transylvania, and for Gian Francesco Aldobrandini, supreme commander of the Italian forces in Hungary. Like many other soldiers of his time, Tarducci was smitten by a literary urge and, in his treatise, Il Turco vincibile in Ungaria, he set forth the methods whereby, in his view, a war of aggression might be successfully waged against the Turks.17 This work, first published in 1597 and reissued in 1600, was based partly upon the author’s practical experiences as a soldier and partly upon his knowledge of theoretical military books, including Machiavelli’s Discorsi, which Tarducci evidently considered still relevant to contemporary warfare. Like so many other Italian writers who found it necessary to refer to Machiavelli at this period, Tarducci either avoids acknowledgement completely or cites his source as ‘Il Segretario’ (a disguise about as discreet and effective as a dark-haired man wearing false ginger mustachios), although, on one occasion at least, he so far forgets himself as to name Machiavelli as the inventor of a battle array based upon Roman usage.18 Tarducci’s Machiavellism goes beyond a mere facility in marshalling apt quotations, but he does not impress as an original thinker able to adapt old ideas to new situations. His general sympathy with ‘Il Segretario’ is revealed in a very long opening discussion devoted first to the various kinds of prudence demonstrated by the Turks—astutia e arte which are laudable, and inganno maligno or fraud which is not—and then to their Forza, which comprises absolute authority, obedience, vast wealth, and a novel military discipline.19 Inganno, not good fortune, has been the basis of Turkish success, and Tarducci refers to ‘il 17 Il Turco vincibile in Ungaria con mediocri aiuti di Germania. Discorso appresentato ai tre supremi capitani dell’essercito confederato contra Il Turco (Ferrara: V. Baldini, 1597). Further references are given in the text. The second issue of 1600 was also by Baldini at Ferrara. Mattei (1969), 304 n. 1, notes a Latin translation published in Germany in 1601, as part of a collection of military works devoted to the problem of defeating the Turks. 18 Il Turco vincibile, 138: ‘Intorno la grossezza delle battaglie, non sendomi parso proporre un ordinanza molto simile alla romana (piu` forsi che l’inventato dal Macchiavelli, come in altra occasione potrei mostrare) e giudicato meglio per le sudette ragioni’. 19 Ibid. 1–63.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

487

Segretario ne’ suoi discorsi’ as his authority for saying that ‘nobody has ever risen from a very low estate to very great power solely by force without fraud’, although fraud on its own may sometimes succeed (pp. 31–2).20 Throughout Il Turco vincibile in Ungaria, issues arise where Tarducci believes, sometimes mistakenly, that Machiavelli provides the decisive argument. For example, when considering the tactics of Fabius Maximus, he agrees with the favourable judgement advanced in the Discorsi and cites this with approval (pp. 71–2);21 and, when confronting the oft-debated question as to what constitutes the nerve of war, Tarducci bases his own view— that this is to be found in men not money—on Machiavelli, who is again referred to as authoritative (pp. 73–4).22 Like ‘Il Segretario’, he thinks that all terrestrial things have a limited life through being subject to infinite alterations; and he accepts Machiavelli’s observation that, if an excellent prince is followed by a worthless successor, the state may survive provided that another capable ruler immediately follows; whereas, when one worthless prince is followed by another, the state must inevitably collapse (pp. 76–8).23 More interesting, because indicative of lax thinking, is the way in which Tarducci, when discussing the comparative merits of offensive and defensive war, obviously bases himself on the rather noncommittal discussion of the problem in the Discorsi. Then later, in a chapter dealing with a related topic—whether it is better to await an enemy’s attack or to go immediately on the offensive—Tarducci unwisely relies on a particularly poor argument advanced by Machiavelli in the Discorsi, III. 45, where the contrasting examples of the Roman consuls Decius and Fabius are alleged to demonstrate the wisdom of restraining one’s impetuosity but, in fact, prove no such thing (pp. 96–7, 153–5).24 20 ‘nissuno mai, da molto bassa, ad assai gran potenza e` venuto con la sola forza senza la frode, ma bene con la frode senza la forza, come nota il Secretario ne’ suoi discorsi’. The marginal reference to li. 2.c. 13 is correct. 21 Cf. Discorsi, III. 10. 22 Cf. Ibid., II. 10. 23 Cf. Ibid., III. 1; I. 19. 24 Cf. Ibid., II. 12 (although this reference is not provided by Tarducci), and Discorsi, III. 45. On Machiavelli’s non sequitur, in the latter chapter, see Anglo (1969), 256.

488

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

Tarducci is on firmer ground when he cites and paraphrases Fabrizio’s dictum that the ability to gain victory on the field of battle is the most necessary and honourable part of war, for not only does such victory negate all other errors but, conversely, a leader who lacks this skill can never bring a war to a satisfactory conclusion (pp. 103–4).25 Sound, too, is an observation loosely derived from the Arte della guerra on the impossibility of rallying an entire army which is suddenly driven to take flight (pp. 119–20).26 And it is impossible to take exception to observations on the unpredictability of Fortune, though it is scarcely necessary to adduce Machiavelli to establish so trite a notion (p. 171).27 There are, however, issues with wider political or military implications where Tarducci concurs with Machiavelli. An example of this is the method whereby territorial acquisitions may be secured in order to enrich, rather than impoverish, the conqueror. He does not specifically cite Machiavelli on this, but obviously shares with the Discorsi a preference for the Roman method of establishing colonies. Furthermore, pointing out that the Turks have used this practice against their enemies, Tarducci argues that Christian states should do the same in retaliation (pp. 124–7).28 He also follows Machiavelli closely when weighing the relative merits of infantry and cavalry. He has no doubts about the advantages of the former and refers specifically to both the Discorsi—repeating Machiavelli’s example of Carmignuola’s success against the Swiss, when he ordered his cavalry to dismount—and the Arte della guerra, where the superiority of infantry is argued at greater length (pp. 128–31).29 Then, having established this position, Tarducci moves on naturally to assess the rival systems of the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion and, although there are no specific allusions to Machiavelli here, the discussion is obviously influenced by the opening of the fourth book of the Arte della guerra, which offers a long comparative 25 Here he cites and paraphrases from the Arte della guerra, 1 (Mazzoni and Casella, 274b–275a) 26 Cf. Arte della guerra, 4 (Mazzoni and Casella, 322b). 27 Here Tarducci refers to the Discorsi, II. 29. 28 Cf. Discorsi, II. 6, 19. 29 Cf. Ibid., II. 18, and Arte della guerra, 2 (although Tarducci wrongly gives a marginal reference to Segre. de Ar. milit. lib 4).

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

489

treatment of the principal ancient and modern methods of drawing up an army for battle (pp. 131–5).30 There is, however, one matter on which Tarducci manages to break free. In a chapter devoted to the use and merits of different kinds of weaponry—a discussion similar to that in the Arte della guerra—Tarducci shows an enthusiasm for the pike which was not shared by his great predecessor. In Machiavelli’s opinion the pike was a weapon which, though effective in the hands of the Swiss, had proved vulnerable to swordsmen protected with shields. Tarducci, on the other hand, esteems it as the most noble of arms and the ‘nerve of armies on the battlefield’ (pp. 142–53).31 This modest assertion of individuality is carried over into another work, Delle macchine, ordinanze et quartieri antichi e moderni, which appeared in 1601 and where Tarducci again expresses his high regard for the pike.32 Beyond that, his military prejudices remain similar to those of Machiavelli, although he no longer gives specific references, as he had in Il Turco vincibile in Ungaria, and he does use the word machiavellista to indicate unscrupulous political behaviour.33 None the less, it is easy to see the indelible impression of Il Segretario in Tarducci’s examination of modern weapons, his decisive rejection of any suggestion that they may have outmoded ancient military practices, and his conviction that infantry remain the nerve of the army. Moreover, he says, no battles have been won or lost by artillery; and, for a practising artillery expert, his views on the inefficacy of heavy guns on the battlefield are astonishingly Machiavellian, that is to say archaic.34 As we shall see, Tarducci was by no means alone in accepting and repeating Machiavelli’s 30 Cf. Arte della guerra, 3 (Mazzoni and Casella, 304a–308a). For other discussions of the same topic, see below, Ch. 15. 31 Machiavelli’s views are set out at length in the Arte della guerra and, more succinctly in Il Principe, 26. 32 Delle macchine, ordinanze et quartieri antichi e moderni. Come quelli da questi possino essere imitati senza punto alterare la soldatesca dei nostri tempi, discorsi (Venice, 1600–1). Added to this work is a second part, with a separate title page, Successo delle fattioni occorse nell’Ongaria vivino a Vacia nel M.D.XCVII. Et la battaglia fatta in Transilvania contra il Valacco nel 1600 dal Signor Giorgio Basta Generale dell’armi in Ungaria per sua Maesta` Cesarea (Venice, 1601). Tarducci’s praise of the pike is at 13 of Delle macchine. 33 Delle macchine, 110; Successo delle fattioni, 35–6. 34 Delle macchine, 1–2, 25–6, 42–4, 88.

490

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

views on modern weaponry: but there were other writers who, despite recognizing evolution as well as continuity in the art of war, similarly remained in thrall to Machiavelli and were even more willing to pretend that his words were their own.

another soldier An etched portrait at the beginning of the first edition of Captain Imperiale Cinuzzi’s La vera militar disciplina (1604) shows the author at the age of 48: mild in expression, thinning hair worn long at the back and sides, and with a criss-cross scar on the left side of his forehead as the only visible manifestation of a martial past.35 The second edition, published in 1620, shows Cinuzzi at the age of 63—haggard, close-cropped, cynical, and with the crisscross scar now mysteriously translated to the right side of his forehead.36 More substantial discrepancies between the two editions, both of omission and addition, may be found; but, from our point of view, La vera militar disciplina remained what it had been initially—further evidence that, despite all attempts at suppression, there were still Italians attentively reading Machiavelli because they thought his ideas remained relevant, particularly to the art of war. As with Tarducci, we are largely dependent on Cinuzzi himself for such little information as we have concerning his life. Born in Siena around 1556, he came from a noble family and studied both philosophy and law before moving on to pursue a military career under the protection of Alessandro Farnese, the illustrious commander of the Spanish army. He rose rapidly in the service to reach 35 La vera militar disciplina antica e moderna del Capitano Imperiale Cinuzzi Senese (Siena: Salvestro Marchetti, 1604). My references are to this edition and it is to be noted that each of the three books which make up Cinuzzi’s work has a separate pagination. 36 Della disciplina militare antica e moderna . . . Di nuovo ampliata di molte invenzioni militari e del vero modo di pacificare con parole qual si voglia nimicizia (Siena: Bonetti, 1620). The 1620 edition omits a number of passages and examples, while adding a section concerning honour and the reconciliation of parties involved in a duel. Incidentally, the errant scar is not a result of the plate being reversed.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

491

the rank of ‘Capitano di archibusieri’ of the Italian infantry; saw action in Flanders and France under the guidance of Farnese, Camillo Capizuchi, and Silvio Piccolomini; moved on to Transylvania and Hungary; and then, after twelve years’ campaigning, became Castellan of the Fortezza di Belvedere in Florence. Finally, he returned to Siena where, having abandoned his career as a soldier and official in order to devote himself to study, he became a member of the famous literary society, the Accademia degli Intronati.37 La vera militar disciplina is a massive work which, despite the fact that it nowhere refers to Machiavelli either by name or by circumlocution, draws heavily upon the Discorsi and to a lesser extent upon Il Principe—but only occasionally suggests knowledge of the Arte della guerra. The frequency and nature of the quotations or paraphrases from these forbidden texts leave no doubt not only that Cinuzzi considered them almost canonical but also that he had them before him as he wrote. Like Machiavelli, he believes that the Romans represent military perfection: but he recognizes that since their time there have been changes in arms, policies, and military actions, and especially in the way in which modern armies are made up of people suddenly called from their homes and who do not, therefore, understand the ‘buoni ordini militari’. It is to provide such knowledge that his present book has been undertaken and, again like Machiavelli, he is convinced that serviceable wisdom can be derived only from a combination of practical experience and a wide reading in both ancient and modern literature. His years of active military service speak for themselves; but, with this, he has combined a diligent study of history based upon Roman and other classical writers, together with such modern authors as have provided ‘buoni ordini’. Thus Cinuzzi feels that his own work synthesizes the theory and practice of the art of war, and he is 37 There is a short entry on Cinuzzi by V. Lettere in the DBI, xxv. 649–50, which refers to an 18th-c. manuscript in the Biblioteca degli Intronati di Siena and to an article by G. Bargilli, ‘Il capitano Imperiale Cinuzzi e la opera sua’, Rivista militare italiana, 44 (1899), 321–34. I have not yet been able to see either of these; but there is nothing in Lettere’s summary to indicate that they are important. Most of the details of Cinuzzi’s military service are given in the Proemio to La vera militar disciplina.

492

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

determined to discuss everything down to the smallest detail: although, in order to deal fully with underlying principles, he regrets that he has been obliged to devote a great deal of space answering others who have written on this subject before him.38 As a soldier of wide practical experience, Cinuzzi is ready to adopt several of Machiavelli’s fundamental assertions on the importance of the art of war. He agrees that sound military institutions and practices are the basis of the state and enable it to withstand every tempest, because ‘where there are good arms there are good laws’.39 He repeats, with obvious approval, the comparative survey in Il Principe of the different kinds of troops available to rulers (mercenaries, auxiliaries, and one’s own); closely follows Il Principe in asserting that warfare is the activity most proper to princes and that there is no proportion between the armed and the unarmed; and remarks that the practice of hunting is valuable in developing a prince’s military skills.40 Good military discipline can only be attained by combining the perfect practice of ancients and moderns, and it is essential to bring this about because everything—peace, religion, liberty, justice, and other virtues— depends upon the art of war. Princes are esteemed and feared for their military capacity. By such aptitude, men have risen from private estate to the highest ranks of honour and felicity, as we read of Sertorius and Marius among the ancients, and Scanderberg, Sforza, and Alviano in modern times. New soldiers can be made strong, victorious, and even invincible through military discipline; and conversely, veterans, if out of training, may lose everything. And, with a fervour reminiscent of (and probably inspired by) Machiavelli’s outburst in the last chapter of Il Principe, Cinuzzi laments that the Italians would never have endured the suffering which has been their lot had they retained martial

38 La vera militar disciplina, Proemio, pp. 1–3. 39 Ibid., I. 17, pp. 39–40; I. 21, 57. Cf. Discorsi, I. 4. 40 Ibid., I. 18, 19, pp. 40–56. Cf. Il Principe, 12, 14; Discorsi, I. 21. Later, La vera militar disciplina, II. 7, pp. 21–6, Cinuzzi returns to the advantages of hunting as military training: though here he is concerned especially with knowledge of terrain and this time he uses the Discorsi, III. 39—following the same argument from Xenophon’s life of Cyrus and Livy’s account of Publius Decius.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

493

discipline—‘the true nerve of an army, and the truest foundation of victories’.41 Cinuzzi’s absorption of Machiavellian learning is patent. When, for example, he discusses the nature of a just war he concludes that this comes down to whether or not it is fought per necessita`—in order to recover one’s own territories, to defend oneself against injuries, to uphold honour or religion, or to abase evil men or infidels—a definition offering scope wide enough for any wouldbe belligerent. He also elaborates Machiavelli’s well-known argument (itself based on Cicero) in Il Principe on the two ways of waging war: that is either by means of laws and reason or by violence and force. ‘The first’, according to Cinuzzi, ‘is proper only to men, the second to men and beasts’, and he admits that it is sometimes necessary to use both. In the same chapter he jumps to another Machiavellian work by narrowing the theme of necessity in order to consider the impossibility of avoiding battle if one’s enemy is determined to have it; and here, on the three ways of trying to avoid conflict and the dangers which arise from them, Cinuzzi bases himself entirely upon Machiavelli’s treatment of the subject in the Discorsi.42 Similarly, he takes another chapter of the Discorsi to provide the basis for a discussion of the two principal reasons for waging war. War may be undertaken to increase territory, to retain it, or regain it, as was the case with the Romans and Alexander the Great (Machiavelli’s examples), and with the King of Spain in Flanders—an example added by Cinuzzi in order to bring matters up to date. The other reason for going to war is when an entire people is driven by famine or some other dire cause to seek a new province in order to take over the territory; and this is the most 41 La vera militar disciplina, I. Proemio and I. 2, pp. 1–7. Elsewhere (I. 19, pp. 50–2) Cinuzzi raises the question as to why the Italians, who are individually apt for war, are now such poor soldiers and, like Machiavelli before him, he blames the pusillanimity of their ruling princes who fear military capacity in their people and despise so glorious an art. The chapter is reminiscent of Il Principe, 26, and the closing pages of the Arte della guerra, but is not directly copied from them. 42 La vera militar disciplina, I. 6, pp. 11–15. Cf. Il Principe, 18; Discorsi, III. 10. Cinuzzi is also prepared to tread on other dangerous ground as when (II. 23, pp. 51–2) he deals with the acquisition of reputation by a general either through being feared or loved by his troops and, following Machiavelli’s advice to princes (as illustrated by the generals Hannibal and Scipio in Il Principe, 17) he comes down firmly in favour of the primacy of fear.

494

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

cruel because it resolves itself into a matter of life and death.43 One thing is as clear to Cinuzzi as it was to Machiavelli: to fight a war without hope of some tangible gain is simply madness; and the Romans, as always, offer the best model. Their wars were short and crushing and, once victorious, their normal procedure was to establish colonies in order to stabilize and secure the conquered territories.44 Cinuzzi’s work reveals a mind of similar stamp to that of Tarducci and, indeed, to many others who found Machiavelli’s debating topics and aphorisms irresistible but difficult either to personalize or to modify according to changing circumstances.45 Sometimes, while following his source closely, Cinuzzi offers several additional examples to reinforce a particular theme, such as the advantages of having a single commander rather than many;46 the importance of discovering an enemy’s plans;47 or the relative merits of aggression or defence on the field of battle.48 Occasionally he alters a formulation in an effort to make better sense, such as when he deals with Machiavelli’s conundrum on whether one may have more trust in a good general with a weak army or a good army with a weak leader. Cinuzzi transforms this into the rival merits of a good general with a new army or good soldiers with a new general, but is scarcely more effective.49 Even rarer is a treatment of a theme 43 La vera militar disciplina, I. 8, pp. 16–18. Cf. Discorsi, II. 8. 44 Ibid. I. 11, pp. 22–5. Cf. Discorsi, II. 6. 45 A good example of the continuing attraction of Machiavelli’s debating-topic approach is Du Praissac, Les questions militaires (Paris, 1614), where several familiar themes occur, sometimes with a new twist: is it better to invade an enemy’s territory or await his attack; is it better to be harsh or severe towards an enemy; does good or ill success in war depend on the capacity of the general; should an army remain silent or engage the enemy with battle cries and loud noise; should one remove all means of retreat from one’s own troops while leaving a retreat open to the enemy; is artillery more useful to the besiegers or the besieged; what are the relative merits of infantry, cavalry, and artillery? There were several editions and revisions of Du Praissac’s Questions and Les discours militaires, and their bibliography is knotty. An English version by John Cruso was published in London in 1639. 46 La vera militar disciplina, II. 1, pp. 1–3. Cf. Discorsi, III. 15. 47 Ibid., II. 3, pp. 6–9. Cf. Discorsi, III. 18. 48 Ibid., II. 82, 177–9. Cf. Discorsi, III. 45. 49 Ibid., I. 20, pp. 56–7. Cf. Discorsi, III. 13. Cinuzzi’s formulation is, of course, equally artificial—especially since he still repeats the material in the Discorsi.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

495

straight from the Discorsi, where Cinuzzi is inspired by Machiavelli but does not copy him slavishly—such as the question of whether one should remove all hope of safety from one’s troops, or those of the enemy.50 For much of the time, however, Cinuzzi—like Fra Baccellini, if rather more imaginatively—contents himself with cosmetic syntactical and verbal changes to Machiavelli’s text; and this sometimes leads him into difficulties. This is very much the case when he considers the role played by Fortune in the gaining of a military reputation. He finds something seemingly pertinent in Il Principe, but is confused (as well he might be) by Machiavelli’s ambiguities, and is reduced to arguing, without conviction, that Fortune plays no part in the winning of wars, which is something requiring prudence, acute judgement, diligence, and promptitude in execution. Yet he goes on first to repeat Machiavelli’s simile that Fortune may act like a flood sweeping all before it, and then to adopt Machiavelli’s other simile that Fortune, like a woman, needs to be knocked about a bit. Thus Fortune may sometimes be controllable or uncontrollable: which is true but hardly worth saying.51 More straightforwardly, when discussing whether it is better to invade an enemy’s territory or wait for him to attack yours, Cinuzzi simply repeats—like Tarducci before him—the appropriate chapter of the Discorsi, complete with the examples of Croesus, Tamiris, Hannibal, Antiochus, and Ferrante King of Naples, together with the Machiavellian distinction between armed people such as the Romans or Swiss and unarmed people such as the Carthaginians.52 Similarly, he is content to paraphrase Machiavelli’s own words on many other topics familiar to sixteenth-century readers of the Discorsi: the problem of making alliances with those whose reputation is greater than their real strength;53 the relative merits of cavalry and infantry;54 the way in which the Romans punished 50 Ibid., II. 111, pp. 220–1. Cf. Discorsi, III. 12. 51 Ibid., II. 18, pp. 45–6. Cf. Il Principe, 25. On the unsatisfactory nature of these Machiavellian metaphors, see Anglo (1969), 223–6. 52 La vera militar disciplina, I. 12, pp. 26–31. Cf. Discorsi, II. 12. 53 Ibid., I. 32, pp. 96–103. Cf. Discorsi, II. 11. 54 Ibid., I. 41, pp. 118–24. Cf. Discorsi, II. 18. Like Tarducci, Cinuzzi bases his remarks on the relative merits of cavalry and infantry on this chapter of the Discorsi, including the example of Carmignuola.

496

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

crimes despite the perpetrators’ previous good service;55 the use of fraud in war;56 the value of a general’s encouraging his troops;57 the importance of taking advantage of time and opportunity;58 how a general must concern himself with all occurrences good or bad and be quick to take action;59 the advantages and disadvantages of skirmishes before a battle;60 and the effects of new inventions and tricks in battles.61 It would be wrong to give the impression that Cinuzzi has nothing to say on non-Machiavellian topics. Indeed, quite the reverse is true. A great part of La vera militar disciplina, and especially Book III, deals with matters of military detail never examined by Machiavelli.62 None the less, of the many topics which are common to both authors, there is only one major issue—the comparative destructive power of ancient and modern weaponry—where Cinuzzi adopts an independent stance; and even then he wobbles and fails to emancipate himself completely. Unlike Machiavelli, he seems heavily committed to the view that modern firearms, great and small, are far superior to anything available to earlier armies. He declares that:

55 56 57 58 59

La vera militar disciplina, I. 48, pp. 144–8. Cf. Discorsi, I. 24. Ibid., II. 4, pp. 9–15. Cf. Discorsi, III. 40. Ibid., II. 5, pp. 16–18. Cf. Discorsi, III. 38. Ibid., II. 6, pp. 18–21. Cf. Discorsi, III. 9; Il Principe, 25. Ibid., II. 43, pp. 94 ff. In this chapter Cinuzzi also transcribes Machiavelli’s observations on the way in which maladies, in their early stages, are difficult to diagnose but easy to cure whereas, later, they are easily diagnosed but difficult to cure. Cf. Discorsi, I. 17, 18, 55. 60 Ibid., II. 87, pp. 185–8. Cf. Discorsi, III. 37. 61 Ibid., II. 108, pp. 219–20. Cf. Discorsi, III. 14. 62 Book 3 opens with several idealistic chapters devoted to the qualities essential in a soldier who is supposed to be religious, chaste, ambitious to rise in the service, obedient, and free from every invidious passion. He must be a paragon of the virtues: abstemious, careful of his equipment, honourable, and faithful to his word. He must not swear, blaspheme, boast, or stir up mutinies. He must be in constant training; able to swim, wrestle, run, jump, and ride; know how to act in every military situation; and be able to handle every weapon that he carries. Then, having created this notional perfect soldier, Cinuzzi works his way systematically through every kind of soldiery and every rank—arquebusier, musketeer, pikeman, corporal, sergeant, colonel, captain, drummer, quartermaster, barber, chaplain, doctor, and so on, from bottom to top of the military establishment.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

497

in whatever war, both offensive and defensive, the dreadful and diabolical martial instrument of artillery is most necessary, because—after good soldiers, well-trained, armed and paid, it is the second nerve and bulwark of war itself. Because today, when the military art has arrived at the summit of perfection, it is the instrument which, with its noise, lightning, thunder-bolts, and splintering, is more to be feared than any other and is of the greatest force.

He goes on to assert that, because it is like a weapon from the heavens, modern artillery excels all ancient war engines not only on account of its frightful flashing and thundering but also ‘per l’effetto’.63 This point is stressed in a later chapter, on the dangers faced by modern soldiers as compared with the ancients, where Cinuzzi, again differing from Machiavelli, argues that modern artillery has greatly increased the risks of death and injury; and his principal evidence is taken from first-hand experiences in the Low Countries.64 In view of all this it is surprising to read what Cinuzzi later says about the placing of artillery on the battlefield. First, he loosely adopts from the Arte della guerra the idea that heavy artillery is severely limited: ‘which commonly in battles do not fire more than once, or twice, or thrice at the most’; and he then repeats Machiavelli’s exhortation on the urgent need to capture the opposing guns as quickly as possible. This, given the alleged uselessness of artillery, was a blatant non sequitur.65 But Cinuzzi does not see it. 63 La vera militar disciplina, I. 27, pp. 77–85; I. 36, p. 110: ‘In qualsivoglia guerra, sı` offensiva, e sı` defensiva e` necessarissimo . . . il martiale strumento, tremendo e diabolico dell’artigliaria; Perche doppo i buon soldati bene esercitati, armati, e ben pagati e` il secondo nervo propugnacol di essa guerra: peroche hoggi, che la militia e` venuta in colmo di perfettione, e` strumento col suo tonare, lampeggiare, fulminare, e sprezzare via piu` d’ogno altro tremendo, e di grandissima forza, e dove arriva, cessando tutti gli altri stromenti e macchine dell’antica militia: il quale tanto piu` avanza gli strumenti antichi, quanto piu` e` simile alle armi che vengono del cielo: peroche qual cosa ha piu` sembianza del folgore, cosi per lo splendore del fuoco, e per strepito del tuono, e per l’effetto; che fa, che questo strumento?’ Elsewhere, Cinuzzi, I. 30, 89–90, says that nowadays—after good soldiers and good officers—money is the ‘second nerve of war’, especially for an army in the field. 64 La vera militar disciplina, I. 53, pp. 188–97. 65 Ibid., II. 101, p. 214. Cinuzzi’s remarks derive from the model battle in the Arte della guerra, 3, where Fabrizio explains why his guns fired only once; that it is essential to overrun the enemy’s guns as quickly as possible; and that, if they

498

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

a sc h o l a r Despite the fact that Machiavelli’s views on warfare were much repeated throughout the sixteenth century, they only occasionally led to independent and fruitful comment. The majority of readers were content to use his words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even entire chapters, as though they expressed their own ideas so perfectly that they could not be improved upon. Even experienced soldiers, like Tarducci and Cinuzzi, found it difficult to advance beyond largely uncritical repetition; and, on the rare occasions when they succeeded in challenging Machiavelli’s authority, it was only to stumble into self-contradiction and inconsistency. For an independent appraisal, a mind more analytical and less hemmed in by convention was required. While the silliest response to Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra came from an Italian priest, its most attentive reader was a French antiquary, Blaise de Vigene`re.66 After an active diplomatic career in the service of the Nevers family, Vigene`re settled down in Paris in 1570 to prepare a series of translations and commentaries elucidating, for his concitoyens, a number of Latin and Greek authors—Caesar, Chalcondylas, Livy, Onosander, and Philostratus; and it is in the commentary on his own translation of Onosander, L’art militaire d’Onosender (sic), that he makes consistent but critical use of Machiavelli along with a wide range of other military authorities, ancient and modern.67 He died in 1596 and the Onosender was published posthumously in decide to defend their artillery, they must place their own troops in front of it and therefore cannot fire again. 66 The standard survey of Vigene`re’s life and work is still Denyse Me´tral, Blaise de Vigene`re, arche´ologue et critique d’art (1523–1596) (Paris, 1939); but, for further analytical comment, see Marc Fumaroli, ‘Blaise de Vigene`re: sa doctrine d’apre`s ses pre´faces’, in Jean Lafond and Andre´ Stegmann (eds.), L’Automne de la Renaissance (1981), 31–51; Margaret M. McGowan, The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France (2000), 107–21; and a forthcoming article by McGowan, ‘Interpreting the Past: The Commentaries of Blaise de Vigene`re and ‘‘l’Enrichissement de nostre parler’’ ’, in David Cowling (ed.), Conceptions of Europe in Renaissance France. 67 L’art militaire d’Onosender, autheur Grec. Ou il traicte de l’office et devoir d’un bon chef de guerre. Mis en langue Franc¸oise et Illustre´ d’Anotations par B. De Vigene`re Bourbonnois (Paris, 1605). Further references are given in the text. Me´tral, Blaise de Vigene`re, 62, believes that the Onosender is ‘one of Vigene`re’s best’ works.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

499

1605 by Abel L’Angelier, who offered it to Maximilian de Be´thune as one who, ‘holding that State happy which in times of peace thinks of war’, was ensuring that the arsenals of France were fully stocked for the security of the nation, the sustenance of its friends, and the terror of its enemies. The book itself, though massive, has a simple structure: each of the forty-two short chapters of the original Greek text is given in translation, and then swamped by the translator’s annotations, which reveal, only too clearly, his command of the pertinent military and historical literature. Quite by chance, the printer’s concluding signature reference is ‘ZZZZzzzz.iv’ and thus suggests the somnolence induced by Vigene`re’s leisurely amplitude—although the author defends his method on the grounds that ‘the ways of the military art are so entangled one with another, that one is obliged to proceed by digressions’ (fo. 520v). Certainly his parade of erudition was intended less to impress for its own sake than to make ancient warfare comprehensible to his contemporaries (‘nostre principalle intention’; fo. 528); and his textual memory and powers of recall, reinforced by keen observation, enabled him to lay bare the interrelationship between texts widely separated by space and time. Thus he recognized not only that the Instructions sur le faict de la guerre was not by Du Bellay but also that, far from being an independent authority, it was largely based upon the Arte della guerra; and he was also the first critic to point out that Machiavelli’s work, in turn, owed an immense debt to Vegetius.68 Vigene`re’s general aims and views are set out at the beginning of his ‘Anotation’ on Onosander’s Preface and, like so many Renaissance writers on the art of war, his stance is uncertain. He claims that he intends to place before his readers what the ancient Greeks and Romans have left us in their writings; and he stresses that the nature of warfare has not been fixed, ‘but has varied according to the diversity of time, people, places, and opportunities’. Not only did Roman military practice differ from that of the Macedonians or the Persians, but it did not itself remain static. It, too, changed over time, as may be seen in the ‘progress of their histories’. Nevertheless, 68 It should be noted, though, that Vigene`re’s knowledge of the Arte della guerra was through Charrier’s French translation. See below, n. 69.

500

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

in any discipline one cannot go wrong if one always follows the method of an excellent master, ‘as, without contradiction, the Romans have been in matters of arms above all others’. Moreover, while not altering their ‘principal maxims’, they did adapt their usages according to changing circumstances until, eventually, even they went into decline. Similarly, the French, Germans, Italians, and Spanish have altered their military practices over time, and were not the same ‘before the invention of artillery, arquebuses, pistols, and similar spitfires’ as they have been since. All this sounds reasonable and relativist. Yet, almost immediately, Vigene`re qualifies his view that warfare has changed by repeating—like Machiavelli and all the other classically based scholars—that ‘the principal maxims remain for ever’, and that, since the Romans have excelled beyond all others, the best thing is to conform to them. As far as modern warfare is concerned, he is prepared to leave it to those who profess it more than he does now (a` ceste heure) although he can say, with Onosander, that he has in his youth followed many camps and armies in France and elsewhere, and has ‘both given and received blows’. Still, he is leaving all that aside to come to his present main profession, which consists of books and fine letters, ‘conjoined nevertheless with some use and experience of arms’. This wavering discourse is an uneasy preliminary to what Vigene`re really believes and finally gets around to saying. Contemporary wars are disorderly and are ‘a chaos and confusion of a hideous, detestable whirlpool of pillaging, theft, extortion, assassination, violence, sacrilege, blasphemy, and other such impieties, rather than an exercise and occupation of generous hearts’. Modern warfare has nothing in common with that of the ancients: and Vigene`re will ignore it and keep to the order and good discipline of antiquity, deducing the most notable precepts and illustrating them with relevant examples, ‘one of which is of far greater efficacy in impressing anything on our understanding than a thousand bare maxims’. These matters conjoined form a ‘perfect instruction’ which, to the best of his poor ability, he will set out ‘before the eyes of our nation, to lead it back to the right road of a praiseworthy and legitimate military discipline’, so that civil war may give way to campaigns abroad, ‘the true and unique means of our entire salvation’ (fos. 4–6).

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

501

With regard to Machiavelli, Vigene`re is both knowledgeable and judicious. He shows close acquaintance with Il Principe, the Discorsi, and the Arte della guerra—although the last of these is certainly via Jean Charrier’s translation of 1546.69 While always ready to point out some deficiency or plagiarism in Machiavelli’s work, he is equally prepared to acknowledge an apposite example, acute observation, or intelligent discussion, sometimes merely with a marginal reference, but sometimes with generous praise. Moreover, while fully aware of (and cautious about) Machiavelli’s drastic challenges to conventional morality, he also recognizes the inanity of the Machiavel stereotype which they had generated. In the sixteenth century such an even-handed approach, though not unique, is certainly unusual. When dealing with notions of justice, for example, Vigene`re refers with seemingly conventional disapprobation to Machiavelli, who ‘shores up all his discourses, and builds them upon certain little ruses which he calls human wisdom and prudence’. Then, paraphrasing the topsy-turvy treatment of the virtues in Il Principe, 18, he goes on at such length that he feels obliged to exculpate himself by reminding his readers that all this comes from Machiavelli and is no way his own (fos. 79–80). On the other hand, in a long comparative discussion of different types of troops, he explicitly relies on Machiavelli’s authority to illustrate the disadvantages of ‘forces estrangeres’ as compared with native soldiers. He refers to the Discorsi, I. 21 (for the Roman example of Tullus and the modern example of Henry VIII), and continues with a long quotation from the Discorsi, I. 43, acknowledging Machiavelli by name because ‘nous ne voulons rien desrober de personne’. He then summarizes the argument of Discorsi, II. 20, saying that all this, or nearly all, ‘Machiavelli writes, very wisely [ fort sagement] in his discourses on Titus Livy’. Still on the subject of the hazards of employing mercenaries, Vigene`re shifts his attention to Il Principe, referring to chapter 7 and more particularly to chapter 12, which is 69 Vigene`re’s reliance on Charrier’s L’art de la guerre is revealed by the way he refers not only to the individual books of Machiavelli’s work, but also to chapter numbers. Machiavelli’s original Italian text has no such subdivisions, and it is Charrier who breaks it up into chapters. See Onosender, fos. 108v–109, 120, 171v, 310v–311, 335r–v, 342, 374v–375v, 383v–386, 494v, 590.

502

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

cited at length and alleged to be full of ancient and modern examples. ‘A more ancient and authentic source’, the historian Polybius, is now called in evidence: but it is typical of Vigene`re’s historical sense that, when describing the cunning policy of Hiero towards Rome and Carthage, he feels it necessary to stress that he is quoting word for word, ‘not Machiavelli but Polybius himself in his first book’. And even more striking is his comment on modern rulers who adopt the notion that, in order to have their subjects obedient, pliable, and vulnerable to heavy taxation, they should keep them ‘unarmed and pusillanimous’. This idea , he notes, may have been borrowed from Machiavelli: to whom is attributed everything in politics today that depends on deceit and human malice, as if more than four thousand years before he was born there had not been those just as witty, crafty, and cunning as he, and that all that he has said and written had not been touched upon by brains as subtle and distilled as his.

Indeed, as Vigene`re scrupulously notes, Machiavelli had specifically rejected the theory that a ruler should keep his people unarmed, and had recommended quite the opposite. Those who put this mistaken maxim into practice do not proceed a little further and see the ‘other point touched upon by the same Machiavelli and which, before him and without him, has never ceased to be most certain and true’: that a generous and brave prince must have greater concern for the security of his state than for the gathering of taxes (fos. 164v–169v).70 Given the modern obsession with Machiavelli’s political morality and the widespread assumption that intelligent sixteenthcentury readers were similarly concerned, it is worthwhile to see how Vigene`re tackles the subject of frauds and deceits: especially since it is clear that he is aware of vulgar, ill-informed opinion. On the dangers involved in dealing with states more powerful than one’s own, he recommends that one should always bear in mind the maxim ‘that leagues and alliances made between princes are of little certitude or duration’, and one should distrust those who offer 70 In the Discorsi, II. 20, Machiavelli notes that depriving the people of arms, in order to despoil them, offers only a temporary advantage to the ruler, who would do infinitely better to strengthen his state with its own arms.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

503

their aid too easily and without being asked. He goes on to suggest that there are those who maintain that it is praiseworthy to practice in war: ‘this saying of Captain Chabrias, That where the skin of the lion does not suffice, one must cover this with that of the fox: that is, if force is lacking, apply cunning and trickery. Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat? says the poet’.71 Developing his treatment of fraud in time of war, Vigene`re urges extreme caution concerning alliances with close neighbours, for arrangements of this kind are very dangerous, and a prince should always try—if he can do it underhand and cunningly—to keep such neighbours divided. Then comes an especially revealing observation. Concerning the morality of this advice, Vigene`re admits that ‘it is true that this does not fit well with Christian beliefs; rather it is said a little machiavellistically, as one speaks nowadays [my italics]’ (fo. 271r–v).72 Nevertheless, the reader must understand the recommendation properly: that is in the sense that we must guard against those who try to destroy our state, ‘for it is permitted to defend yourself by the same artifices with which you are attacked’ (fo. 273). No less equivocal is a comment on Onosander’s thirty-fifth chapter, which deals with keeping one’s word even with traitors. Here Vigene`re broadens the discussion to include the question of whether one is obliged to keep faith with one’s enemies, and he refers both to the Discorsi, III. 42 and to Il Principe, 18. This is difficult terrain, and Vigene`re is distinctly uncomfortable. As an intelligent and realistic commentator, he cannot avoid acknowledging that Machiavelli’s views on ‘the covert dissimulation of princes might pass muster when it is a question of some public good of great importance with regard to worldly affairs’; but he tries to cover himself by insisting that ‘one must not at all mix the work of God with that of the world, nor measure one with the other’. And he demands how it is possible ‘for one to be faithful towards men 71 This is a curious reference because the lion and fox metaphor is given here in the form attributed by Plutarch to Lysander—not to Chabrias—and it is also familiar from Machiavelli’s use in Il Principe, 18. Vigene`re, Onosender, fo. 456, again attributes the saying to Chabrias. The Dolus an virtus aphorism was a famous Virgilian tag, Aeneid, II. 390. See below, Ch. 16. 72 ‘Cecy de vray ne ressent pas bien son Christianisme; ains est dit un peu macchiavellistement, comme l’on parle pour le jourd’huy.’

504

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

who cannot be faithful towards God’ (fos. 610v–614). This is a nod in the direction of conventional piety: but it still leaves Machiavelli firmly in command when it comes to worldly affairs. This clash, between Vigene`re the political realist and Vigene`re the conventional Christian, surfaces in other parts of the Onosender as, for example, when he insists that there are frauds and frauds— ‘il faut distinguer les fraudes’—and draws the line at encompassing the murder of a rival prince ‘by means of his subjects, or poisoning him, or betraying him in any other unhappy manner’ (fos. 300 ff.). He believes that soldiers’ souls are more important than their bodies and that it is, therefore, necessary to have a chaplain; for ‘war without religion is rather a barbarous, brutal, and disorderly brigandage than a legitimate and generous hostility’ (fos. 184v– 185). Yet elsewhere he calmly points out that, although among the many reasons for going to war there is nothing stronger than the cause of religion, this is also a fine and favourable pretext, ‘a cloak, ample and wide, under which may be covered many perverse and impious intentions’ (fo. 266v). There are several occasions in the Onosender where Machiavelli is openly praised because, as Vigene`re declares, no one should be denied his due. For example, Machiavelli is acknowledged for his ‘fort beau discours’ on Fortune and its effects (fo. 37v);73 and again, when considering the Roman use of infantry and cavalry, Vigene`re admits that Machiavelli ‘does not discuss this badly’ in the Discorsi, II. 18, where many examples ancient and modern are adduced, although alternative arguments may be found in La Noue (fo. 156). On the other hand, with regard to the advantages of taking war into an enemy’s territory, so that it is ravaged by all the evils of combat, Vigene`re remarks that, although there are numerous examples from Greek and Roman history, he is content to refer to the Discorsi, II. 12, where Machiavelli has discussed both sides of the problem ‘assez bien’ and adduced many instances (fos. 252v–254). Another ‘beau discours’ by Machiavelli concerns the dangers of committing the whole of one’s fortune on the issue of a single battle between only a part of one’s forces (fo. 572r–v);74 while, 73 Here he refers specifically to the Discorsi, II. 29. 74 Vigene`re here refers specifically to the Discorsi, I. 23.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

505

commenting on Onosander’s chapter on saccaging and pillaging after a victory, Vigene`re notes Machiavelli’s relevant remarks ‘au 5. liv de son art militaire, chapit. 6’, which are taken from the ancients, ‘mais succinctement’ (fo. 590). Again, when discussing Onosander’s chapter on sieges and assaults on towns and fortified places, Vigene`re, like Machiavelli, stresses the Romans’ reluctance to build fortresses; endorses the view that the best support of any prince is the love of his subjects; and cites the Discorsi, II. 24, where Machiavelli alleges some ‘beaux exemplaires modernes’ of the inutility of fortified places. For the tricks which may be used to deceive those who defend a besieged town, Vigene`re refers to the Discorsi, III. 48, citing with approval Machiavelli’s maxim that, every time one sees the enemy do something extraordinary, one should suspect some fraud concealed beneath it (fo. 651). Vigene`re’s use of Machiavelli goes well beyond the citation of specific arguments and examples for, like every other sixteenthcentury military writer working within the bookish, classical tradition, his approach has been influenced by Machiavelli’s reduction of the art of war to a number of set debating topics. We have already mentioned his treatment of offensive and defensive tactics; the relative advantages and disadvantages of invading an enemy or awaiting his attack; the dangers of risking one’s entire fortune on only part of one’s army; and the merits or otherwise of fortresses. But there are other issues where Vigene`re follows paths well worn by his Florentine predecessor. Is it better, Machiavelli had asked, to place one’s confidence in a good general with a weak army or a good army with a weak general? The disjunction was so artificial that later writers constantly fiddled about with it trying, like Cinuzzi, to make it less intractable. Vigene`re, however, recognizing that the real issue here is the relative importance of troops and commanders, does not alter the formulation and, after a long discussion, is content to acknowledge that ‘Machiavelli deals with the greater part of this in his discourse on Titus Livy’ (fos. 51v– 53v).75 Another much-debated topic is whether or not money is the nerve of war; and here Vigene`re refers to Machiavelli’s treatment of the problem, accepting that wealth is important for purchasing 75 Cf. Discorsi, III. 13.

506

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

military wherewithal, but concluding that it is simplistic to think that one can achieve anything without adequate forces and that to rely solely on wealth is dangerous (fos. 257v–262).76 The behaviour of different types of troops in battle also worried military theorists; and French writers in particular agonized over Livy’s famous remark that the Gauls are men at the beginning of a battle and less than women at the end. Vigene`re is naturally circumspect and refers to the discussion of this passage in the Discorsi, III. 36, where Machiavelli had listed three sorts of soldiery: those who, like the Romans, display both impetuosity and discretion; others, like the French, whose impetuosity soon gives way to loss of strength and discretion after the first attack; and finally those who, having neither impetuosity nor order, are entirely useless. This last contemptible species is exemplified by the Italians—and Vigene`re, summarizing the material and presumably anxious to offend neither his fellow countrymen nor any prospective Italian readers, emphasizes that ‘it is Machiavelli who says all this, not me’ (fo. 402r–v).77 Vigene`re’s eye for textual interdependence, borrowing, or downright plagiarism is very keen, and even the hallowed authority of Vegetius does not escape his censure. He points out, for instance, that with regard to the names of the various parts and officers of the Roman legion Vegetius had merely borrowed from Modestus’ treatise, written about a hundred years earlier, and had done nothing beyond amplifying it. Nor was he impressed by Vegetius’ lack of originality when dealing with river crossings and with the orders of battle for cavalry, because most of the material was taken from Frontinus, whose examples, in fact, afford much greater enlightenment (fos. 179v, 305v, 534). Vigene`re, however, is more concerned with Vegetius as an unacknowledged source for the Arte della guerra; and his frequent 76 Vigene`re refers to the Discorsi, II. 10. 77 For other examples of well-worn themes, see ibid., fo. 53v on commanders being left to do things at their own discretion (the marginal note is to Discorsi, I. 33 when it should be II. 33); fos. 57v–59 (Discorsi III. 24), on the effects of Rome’s prolongation of commands; fos. 56v–57v (Discorsi, I. 31), on Rome’s treatment of failed generals, where Vigene`re argues that the Romans were more severe than Machiavelli allows, and he cites Livy to make his point.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

507

references to Machiavelli’s borrowings are especially remarkable because they antedate L. Arthur Burd’s famous study on this subject by three centuries.78 No less prescient are Vigene`re’s acid comments on his beˆte noire, the author of the Instructions. The identity of this writer has been established by modern scholarship as Raymond de Beccarie, Sieur de Fourquevaux. This Vigene`re did not know. What he did know was that the author was certainly not Guillaume du Bellay, Sieur de Langey; and he did recognize that the Instructions was in large part simply an adaptation of Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra. References to the genealogical tree stemming from Vegetius, through Machiavelli, and on to the Instructions, occur throughout the Onosender: but one of the most telling is in Vigene`re’s discussion of the payment of soldiers by the Romans. He quotes from Vegetius, and then points out that both Machiavelli in his Arte della guerra and ‘le suppose´ Langey livre 2. chapitre 5’ merely skimmed off this material from Vegetius, without saying whence they had borrowed it. Such behaviour Vigene`re proudly eschews. He prefers to go directly to the original source, putting it as best he can into the vernacular, and then discoursing upon it so that it comes from his ‘own forge’, without disguise. ‘These moderns’, he adds, ‘most of the time spoil and pervert everything, and in the end give only sound in place of flour or, to say better, skimmed milk.’79 He then 78 L. Arthur Burd, ‘Le fonti letterarie di Machiavelli nell’Arte della guerra’, Atti della Reale accademia dei Lincei, 5th ser., 4 (1896), pt. 1, 187–261. 79 Onosender, fos. 108v–109: ‘ces modernes la plus part du temps gastent et pervertissent tout, et ne donnent en fin que du son en lieu de farine, ou pour mieux dire du lait escreme´’. Vigene`re makes the same point elsewhere in the Onosender. For example, at fo. 335r–v, on Roman encampments, their location, and the need to provide for the troops’ health, he notes both the dependence of Vegetius on earlier authors and the way in which ‘le suppose´ autheur du Langey’, II. 7, and Machiavelli in the Arte della guerra, 6, had copied ‘word for word’ from Vegetius. He would not deign to follow their style and, when citing good ancient authors, he gives them due acknowledgement and quotes them directly. At fos. 374v–375v, on military training, Vigene`re makes much use of Vegetius, II. 27, and then reprimands both Machiavelli, ‘livre 2. chap. 6 de son art militaire’ and ‘le Langey suppose´’ who is nothing but ‘son singe et imitateur’. Not only do they take everything good from Vegetius and pretend that it is their own invention, but the scant disguise that they use actually corrupts, and completely alters, the original. Again, at fo. 520v, Vigene`re cites great passages from Vegetius ‘in their natural form’ rather than disguise them and spoil them like Machiavelli and

508

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

explains why he calls the author of the Instructions ‘le suppose´ Langey’. It is because the work is so poor, flat, and sterile that it could not come from a person such as the real Langey. The whole thing is almost entirely cribbed from Machiavelli, who himself did nothing other than ferret through good ancient authors. In any case, says Vigene`re crushingly, quoting a sentence from the Instructions praising ‘monseigneur de Langey’ as a vigilant commander with a perfect knowledge of letters and arms, Langey would never have written about himself in such a manner (fos. 108v–109).80 In Vigene`re’s opinion, Machiavelli is a plagiarist; his ‘monkey’, the pseudo Langey, is thus a plagiarist of a plagiarist; and both of them mess up the original ancient sources which are, themselves, not invariably satisfactory. The figures given by Vegetius, for example, when dealing with the size of the Roman legion and its components, do not tally, so that Machiavelli, ‘le Langey’, and other moderns make rough guesses, altering the source according to their fantasy (fo. 135v). Then, in the course of a long discussion of native troops, especially in France, Vigene`re points out that the first chapter of the Instructions is mostly taken from the Arte della guerra, and he repeats that the author throughout his work does nothing but follow in Machiavelli’s footsteps (fo. 171v). Similarly, on the organization of soldiers into files (and files into battalions), he jeers that on this topic ‘blood and water has been sweated by the moderns’, referring specifically to Machiavelli and, after him, ‘he who has borrowed the name of M. de Langey’ (fos. 310v–311). Further censure comes in a comparison between the encampments of the Swiss, Germans, French, and Turks. Writing of Machiavelli’s suggestions in the Arte della guerra, 6, Vigene`re dismisses them as ‘an imaginary discourse, practicable on paper with a pencil or pen, rather than easy or proper to put into practice: and similarly his monkey and imitator, le Langey’.81 Langey—‘I understand always the suppose´ who did a great wrong to this valiant person by borrowing his name of which he is not worthy.’ 80 Vigene`re gives this reference as from Instructions, II. 4: but it is in fact from III. 4, fo. 104v. 81 For further examples of Vigene`re’s observations on Machiavelli’s borrowings from the ancients, and the pseudo-Langey’s borrowings from Machiavelli, see ibid., fos. 120v, 205v, 310v–311, 383v–386, 412r–v, 453v–454v, 494v.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

509

A more fundamental criticism of Machiavelli, the ‘Pseudelangey’, and other modern authors, is that—when dealing with encampments—they fail to recognize the vast differences between the Romans and modern warfare; and Vigene`re attacks them for proposing the instant adoption of ancient practices. Progress can only be made gradually by choosing things which one can use and can fit into place; and it is only possible to make such adaptations over a great period of time. Many things have changed, particularly since the invention of gunpowder, which has forced us to adopt new methods (fos. 342, 344r–v). Moreover, Vigene`re is not impressed by the lack of realism shown by authors, ancient as well as modern, too prone to theorize about military matters. Thus, commenting on orders of battle, he declares that he will not take the role of a marshal or sergeant major, or give material from Aelian on the different ways of drawing up troops: ‘nor represent the hypotyposes and prosopopoeias of battles such as are feigned by Machiavelli, le Langey, and others, resembling games like chess’. Some theorists draw schemes on parchment and paper with a pencil and compasses: but Vigene`re thinks that descriptions of battle arrays could go on to infinity, because of differences in arms defensive and offensive, people, time, place, and numbers. Unceasing change makes it very difficult to prescribe precepts and maxims, and things depend more on first-hand experience. He will, therefore, confine himself to giving examples from sound authors such as Polybius, Livy, Caesar, and Plutarch (fo. 511).82 In other words, Vigene`re prefers historical descriptions, narratives, and analyses of real combat to wholly theoretical speculation. There are two fundamental but unresolved tensions in Vigene`re’s thinking which give the Onosender an unusual quality. In the first place, he is suspicious of facile rule-making: yet, like Machiavelli, he feels that it ought to be possible to derive military precepts 82 Later, at fo. 538r–v, Vigene`re deliberately refrains from giving all the figures—square, lozenge, round, oval, semi-circle or moon, triangle, corner, scissors, saw, and others—with which Aelian amused himself in his Greek treatise on battle order, ‘and, in imitation of him, a great number of Italian painters, architects, engineers, mathematicians, jurisconsults, doctors, academics, and in sum all those who make profession of the arts and sciences, as if war depended crudely on a fantastic imagination and not on long practice and special experience in this craft’.

510

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

from a comparative study of past and present usages. Secondly, he believes that wars have changed so much that one cannot use the ancients as a model for present practice; but, again like Machiavelli, he still believes that the Romans offer the best model for contemporary leaders. Unease about laying down rules is evident in his discussion of an army’s composition, the different types of troops, and their proportion one to another. He cannot resist alluding to the modern Italians who strive to bring all manner of exercises under the rules of an art and method: such as fortifying places, fighting, skirmishing, fencing, riding horses, dancing, vaulting, and such like; for which one must render them hearty thanks, because before one proceeded with one’s eyes closed, and went on one’s merry way in a badly made fashion. (fo. 311r–v)83

The words are admiring; but is there perhaps a touch of irony in the tone? Elsewhere he asks rhetorically whether, since modern war has so little affinity with the ancient Romans, it is even possible to derive rules from their practice; and he replies that, although details may vary and be dissimilar, ‘the maxims do not cease to remain firm and always the same’. In support of this, he quotes at enormous length from Vegetius, whose views, on matters such as military training, he considers still relevant despite all the changes in warfare (fos. 375v–376). Again, having given several more lengthy quotations from Vegetius and Frontinus to illustrate various battle techniques, Vigene`re admits that one may ask what all these examples are for, since there is such scant similarity between ancient and modern warfare. Certainly there are now few battles such as the ancients fought, and armies very rarely meet head on. Yet, he persists, one may still learn from the past; and in any case, 83 ‘Les Italiens modernes, qui se sont parforcez d’amener toutes manieres d’exercices sous les reigles d’un art et methode: comme de fortifier les places, de combatre, escarmoucher, escrimer, picquer les chevaux, baller, danser, voltiger, et autres semblables, dont on leur doibt bien rendre graces, et sc¸avoir bon gre´; car au paravant on n’y procedoit qu’a` clos yeux, et a` la baulde par rottine, et un mal-faconne´ usage’. It is, however, true that Vigene`re greatly admired Italian art, culture, and scholarship; and when, for example, he writes on river crossings (fos. 309–10), he observes that there are infinite examples to be found in Giovio, Guicciardini, and other modern Italians, ‘more scrupulous of their histories than we are’.

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

511

these examples elucidate Roman history, ‘which is my main purpose’ (fos. 517–528 ff.).84 Despite a veneration for the Roman past akin to that of Machiavelli, and despite a similar conviction that lessons may be learnt by juxtaposing ancient and modern experiences, Vigene`re had to face a different problem. Unlike Machiavelli, he was living in an age when it was no longer possible for any intelligent and experienced observer to brush aside fire power as a contemptible irrelevance. Yet this is precisely what Vigene`re’s emotional regard for the Romans prompted him to do. His confusion is laid bare even in a detail such as the Roman method of keeping a reserve in the rear of the battle. He cites Vegetius, but honesty compels him to admit that ‘all of this is overturned by the ‘arquebuouzerie de maintenant’ which has made it scarcely possible for us to follow these ancient traditions. ‘Nevertheless’, he adds rather pathetically, ‘it is no bad thing to know about them.’ The tension between recognition of the realities of contemporary warfare and admiration for the Roman past becomes glaringly apparent in the later stages of the Onosender when, expatiating upon Onosander’s nine-page chapter on sieges and assaults of towns and fortresses, Vigene`re indulges himself with 200 pages of annotation, nearly half of which is taken up with a technical treatise on modern artillery (fos. 675v–723v). The material for this massive excursus had been gathered by Vigene`re for an ‘onomastique, or great dictionary of the French Monarchy of all the arts and crafts which are practised there at the present day’. Unfortunately, the means to complete this work have not been forthcoming from the higher authorities; he has received scant thanks for his labour; and the costs of producing the book are beyond his power, ‘even though it would not come to 2,000 e´cus’. This collection of infinite things would be of great importance to posterity but, with the passage of time, it will be lost like so much else which has not been secured against oblivion by means of writing. And so we have this section on artillery: evidence of a ‘waste not/want not’ attitude 84 He then goes on to give a number of modern examples from the 15th and 16th cc. and provides (at fo. 530v) a marginal reference to the Discorsi, II. 18, on modern Italian concentration on cavalry.

512

PART III. ADAPTATION, ATTACK, DEFENCE

common amongst scholars then as now. Much of what Vigene`re has to say is of a technical nature but in no way superior to what was already available in gunnery manuals. His historical observations are more problematic and highlight his dilemma. Having mentioned the attribution of the invention of gunpowder to Berthold Schwarz, Ramon Lull, and Roger Bacon, and having discussed the far earlier use of gunpowder by the Chinese, Vigene`re remarks that in the West, until about 1530, the military use of firepower had been rather like a toy for women and children. Then, in the wars between Franc¸ois Ier and the Emperor Charles V, things started to change: although they still did not reach perfection for another twelve or fifteen years, in the reign of Henri II. Previously firearms had served more to make a show and frighten simple people than to have much effect in war. The equipment was poor, clumsy, heavy, and a waste of gunpowder; more likely to strike terror into the hearts of those who fired the primitive weapons than those at whom they were aimed: ‘more bragging threats than real deeds’ (plutost piaffeuses menaces que reelles executions). Since that time, however, there had been great technological advances in the design, manufacture, and handling of all firearms; and Vigene`re is especially impressed by the efficacy of heavy artillery which is now so powerful that ‘if the best of those places which were fortified fifty or sixty years ago was exposed to the least of the batteries which have come along thirty years since, one must think that in a very little space of time it would find itself reduced to powder’ (fo. 679). It is at this point that several interrelated questions present themselves to Vigene`re. Is artillery more advantageous or harmful to those who attack a fortress or defend it? Is the killing done by arquebuses and pistols in battle as great as the terror they bring with them? And would the Roman and other ancient armies have been as successful as they once were, had they to face modern firepower? The questions will be familiar to every reader of Machiavelli’s Discorsi, II. 17, where all three issues are confronted. And Vigene`re’s answers are no less familiar, because—despite the passage of nearly eighty years, and despite all the advances made in that period and duly recorded in the Onosender—they are the same as Machiavelli’s. Besiegers still do better than the besieged; the

WRITERS ON THE ART OF WAR

513

effect of guns is still less than their noise; and the discipline and valour of the Romans still prevail. The reasons given by Vigene`re for these conclusions are the same as those given in the Discorsi, and they are expressed in the same terms and often in the same words. There is no acknowledgement: but in this, the most up-todate section of the Onosender, Vigene`re the scholar, critic, and exposer of plagiarisms, shows that even he is unable to shake off the dead hand of Niccolo` Machiavelli. He finds it difficult to think beyond the boundaries established by Machiavelli and, when confronted with a major issue like the use of firepower, he even finds it impossible to modify the argument and the language of his predecessor. These limitations are disappointing in a man of such critical acumen as Vigene`re: but in this he resembles many other bookish military writers of the Renaissance, as will become apparent in the next chapter.

This page intentionally left blank

PART IV

Machiavelli and Non-Machiavelli

This page intentionally left blank

15 Paradoxes on the Reception of Machiavelli’s Military Thinking Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a peppery old warrior, Sir John Smythe, referred one of his military discourses to the judgement of soldiers, scorning the opinion of ‘any that will onely bring a pound of old Antiquity usages and Customes, to waigh downe an ounce of true reason and fresh experience’. Smythe despised the ‘meny that bee greate Readers of the warrs, than practitioners of the same’, who would do everything in Roman fashion in the belief that this would enable modern armies to achieve similar conquests: Which reading warriors and booke Military men doe not waigh the great Change that tyme hath made and experience found out in all materiall affayres, in such sort, that if it were possible to renew the same againe, yet should it not now worke the like effect against us that it did then against some of those against whom they then warred.1

Smythe may have prided himself on not being a thousand years out of date: but he has himself been described as ‘about fifty years behind the times’, both in his championship of the longbow against contemporary firearms and in his method of embattling troops.2 He did not record his opinion of Machiavelli—one particular ‘reading warrior’ whom he himself had certainly read—but he may have found himself uncomfortably torn between the Florentine’s simultaneous zeal for Roman ways and contempt for handguns. Moreover, Smythe’s declining years were spent in 1 BL Harleian MS 4685, fos. 2v, 19r–v. 2 See Maurice J. D. Cockle, A Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642 (1900; repr. 1957), 51.

518

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

controversy with two other military writers: one of whom was, like himself, an experienced soldier and shared his exasperation with bookish worship of the ancients, but (unlike Smythe) admired firearms; the other of whom shared his distrust of modern weaponry, but was purely a theoretician and admired the Romans.3 The history of the art of war in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is replete with such paradoxes; and the role of Machiavelli within that history epitomizes them. There were many sixteenth-century readers—such as Agrippa, Mutoni, and Whitehorne—who shared Bernardino Bombini’s opinion that Machiavelli was ‘il Fiorentino maestro di guerra’4— a view which was to be most extravagantly expressed by Charles Chappelain who, half a century later, addressing his French edition of Machiavelli’s work to Maximilien Be´thune, the celebrated Duke of Sully, assured the dedicatee that: Just as the arms of great captains were formerly hung on the walls of temples with eulogies where one saw the name of him who made the offering, so this book is raised on the summit of the temple of your glory, with the inscription of the name of its author who is Machiavelli.5

On the other hand, there were many who must have relished Bandello’s story of Machiavelli’s failure on the parade ground. This armchair incompetence had been especially castigated by Innocent Gentillet, who expressed astonishment at Machiavelli’s ‘exceeding great pride and rashnesse’ in daring to hold forth about military matters, and to ‘prescribe precepts and rules unto them which are of that profession, seeing hee had nothing but by hearesay, and was himselfe but a simple Secretharie or Towne-clarke,

3 For Smythe’s controversies with Humfrey Barwick and Thomas Digges, see below, pp. 543, 563. 4 Bernardino Bombini, Discorsi intorno al governo della guerra (Naples, 1556), fo. 51v. See also Mattei (1969), 298–9. 5 L’art de la guerre de N. Machiavelle, trans. Charles Chappelain (Paris, 1614): ‘Tout ainsi que les Armes des grands Capitaines estoient jadis appendues es murailles des Temples avec des Eloges ou` se voyoit le nom de celuy qui en faisoit l’offrande, De mesme ce livre s’esleve au sommet du Temple de vostre gloire avec l’inscription du nom de son autheur, qui est Machiavelle.’ For this edition, see Gerber, iii. 43; Bertelli and Innocenti, 89–90.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

519

which is a trade as far different from the profession of warre, as an harquebush differs from a pen and inckhorne’.6 The views of modern scholars on Machiavelli’s merits as a theoretician of warfare have been no less divergent. The irrelation between Machiavelli’s theories and the development of military tactics and organization during the sixteenth century was harshly dwelt upon by Sir Charles Oman, who wrote: He [Machiavelli] thought that artillery was going to continue negligible, that the day of cavalry in battle was quite over, that infantry was going to continue in huge units, like the legion, and that the pike was destined to be put out of action by short weapons for close combat, like the sword of the ancient Roman or of the Spanish footmen of Gonsalvo de Cordova. In every case his forecast was hopelessly erroneous.7

Other critics have disputed this assessment, and have seen Machiavelli as ‘the first military thinker of modern Europe’; have described his Arte della guerra as ‘the first classic of modern military science’; and have even insisted that modern military thinking constitutes ‘a logical continuation of the enquiry which he started’.8 6 Gentillet (1576), 7. I quote here the English version (1602), sig. A.3r–v. Cf. the diametrically opposed view expressed by the editor of the Leiden edition of the Contre-Machiavel (1609). See above, Ch. 12. Brantoˆme, like Gentillet, was critical of Machiavelli, whom he regarded as an armchair soldier. See Œuvres comple`tes de Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantoˆme, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1873), iii. 213. For a defence of philosophers’ writing about warfare, see the opening chapters of Francesco Patrizi’s Paralleli militari (Rome, 1594, 1595); and an important essay—‘Reading and Discourse, are requisite to make a souldier perfect in the Arte militarie, howe great soever his knowledge may be, which by long experience and much practise of Armes hath gayned’—prefixed to Sir Clement Edmondes, Observations upon the five first bookes of Caesars Commentaries (1600), 1–7. Barnabe Barnes, Four Bookes of Offices (1606), 53, similarly argues that a month’s reading in Livy, Plutarch, Diodorus, Thucydides, Polybius, Dion, and ‘some few more’ will teach more—and without bloodshed—than many years of service, ‘and the slaughters of Myriads of souldiors, could expresse’. 7 Sir Charles Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1937), 94. 8 See Felix Gilbert, ‘Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War’, in E. M. Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, 1944), 3–25, for an extreme example of this kind of Machiavelatry in which Gilbert assumes most of what he should be proving. See also Neal Wood’s introduction to his edition of Farneworth’s translation of The Art of War (Indianapolis, New York, and Kansas City, 1965).

520

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

However, the problems posed by Machiavelli’s views on warfare, and by their reception in the sixteenth century, are considerably more complex than either his admirers or critics have been prepared to acknowledge. In any case, to concentrate upon the work of one author—and to insist on his being of such surpassing greatness that it is unnecessary to cast more than a cursory glance either at his antecedents or his successors—is to reduce the study of intellectual history to its most elementary and least rewarding constituents. The reception (and non-reception) of Machiavelli’s ideas on war is worth investigating not because it may, or may not, shed light on one writer, but because it can help illuminate sixteenth-century attitudes and habits of thought.9 The place of Machiavelli in the history of the art of war in the sixteenth century is by no means clear. The originality of Machiavelli’s opinions has generally been assumed by his modern worshippers. Yet it is difficult, in the light of C. C. Bayley’s work on the Florentine militia, to regard Machiavelli as anything other than a traditional military platitudinist.10 His views on the intimate relationship between war and politics, his conviction that the Roman legion was the best model for a modern army, his belief that military training would inculcate not merely martial but also civic virtues, and his general technique of cobbling together classical authorities—all link him firmly not only to his immediate predecessors in this field but also to Vegetius himself. Indeed, given the ideological stance of that late Roman authority who so despised mercenaries and was so confident about the effects of systematic exercises, it is little wonder that Machiavelli made extensive use of the De re militari. Even Machiavelli’s preference for infantry as against cavalry—which has been selected as one of his major innovations—had been anticipated both by Vegetius and by his medieval readers.11 It is not that there is nothing of significance in Machiavelli’s writings on war. It is rather that there is 9 In general, those authors who have written on the reception of Machiavelli have said little about the Arte della guerra. There are, however, many useful observations in Procacci (1965); and, more especially, in Mattei (1969). 10 C. C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The ‘De Militia’ of Leonardo Bruni (Toronto, 1961). 11 See, in particular, Christine de Pisan, Le livre des faits d’armes, I. xxiii–xxvi.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

521

little which may not already be found in the classical tradition within which he operates. Apart from the unwarranted assumption of originality, Machiavelli’s admirers beg two other questions. If, as they assert, Machiavelli set in train developments which resulted in modern attitudes towards war, then they are assuming that his ideas are in some way related to modern military theory. Similarly, they are assuming that Machiavelli’s military theory was, in some way, related to subsequent military practice. Yet neither of these propositions is self-evident; and, as we have seen, the second has been specifically rejected by at least one authority on Renaissance warfare. We need, therefore, to test these assumptions and to accept, reject, or refine them.

machiavelli and the classical tradition That Machiavelli was regarded, in some circles, as a significant military theorist is evident both from the admiring references of several of his compatriots, and from the numerous printings and adaptations of his Arte della guerra. There were twelve Italian editions of this work between 1521 and 1554; another Italian edition was published in London in 1587; Charrier’s French translation appeared in 1546; Whitehorne’s English version was issued thrice (in 1560, 1573, and 1588); and the Spanish plagiarism by Diego de Salazar was published in 1536 and reissued in 1590.12 In addition to these, the Instructions sur le faict de la guerre was largely based on the Arte della guerra (though made relevant to the military institutions of Franc¸ois Ier) and proved, after its first publication in 1548, to be one of the most popular modern works in its field. It was reprinted thrice more in French, once in Spanish, once in English, once in German, and—irony of ironies—twice in Italian translations.13 12 See Sydney Anglo, ‘Machiavelli as a Military Authority: Some Early Sources’, in Peter Denley and Caroline Elam (eds.), Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein (London, 1988), 321–34; Mattei (1969), 296–300. 13 See The ‘Instructions sur le Faict de la Guerre’ of Raymond de Becarie de Pavie Sieur de Fourquevaux, ed. G. Dickinson (London, 1954); Cockle, Bibliography, nos. 41, 515.

522

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Thus the views expressed by Machiavelli in his Arte della guerra were readily accessible throughout the century. This is also true of the military opinions set forth in the Discorsi, which are largely congruent, though without evidence of the close reading of Vegetius which characterizes the Arte della guerra. However, in a sense, the problem for historians trying to discern Machiavelli’s influence is here only beginning. A good deal of the text of the Arte della guerra is adapted from, and even reproduces verbatim, the classical writings of Vegetius, Frontinus, and Polybius; and Machiavelli’s general approach to warfare derives from these authorities, who themselves represent only part of the classical military tradition.14 And here we have our first paradox. The very texts employed by Machiavelli for his reconstruction of the ancient military arts were circulating—in new editions and translations—as freely as were his own modern writings. It was as easy to read Vegetius on the Roman legion, or Frontinus on stratagems, or Polybius on encampments, as it was to read Machiavelli’s synthesis of their views. There is nothing strange about that. As I have already remarked, concerning the popularity of Gentillet, the availability of a primary source does not preclude readers’ interest either in derivatives or in secondary literature. A problem arises, however, in that it is often impossible, when we read something which resembles Machiavelli, to be certain that it is necessarily derived from (or is even inspired by) his work. The difficulty is rendered even more inextricable by the fact that Fourquevaux’s Instructions—which reproduced, in large part, Machiavelli’s reproduction of the ancients—was cited throughout the sixteenth century as an independent source.15 An illustration of these difficulties is the chapter devoted by Louis Le Roy to the art of war in Book 11 of his popular De la vicissitude des choses (1575).16 A substantial part of this section looks 14 See Burd, ‘Le fonti letterarie di Machiavelli’. 15 Although, as we have seen, Blaise de Vigene`re castigated the author of the Instructions as Machiavelli’s ‘singe et imitateur’. 16 Louis Le Roy, De la vicissitude ou variete des choses en l’univers (Paris, 1575). This text was reissued in 1576, 1577, 1579, 1583, and 1584. In addition there was an Italian translation published in 1585 and reprinted in 1592, and an English version which appeared in 1594. The text of 1575 has been published by Fayard

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

523

like a French version of the Arte della guerra; and, in 1969, it was interpreted as such by Rodolfo de Mattei.17 Yet, even in long passages which seem to reproduce the Arte della guerra, Le Roy’s comparative treatment of ancient and modern military matters includes phrases and sentences which are not to be found in Machiavelli. Moreover, Le Roy identifies certain details concerning the military equipment and practices of the ancients as deriving from Polybius or Vegetius; and these identifications, while accurate, were never acknowledged by Machiavelli. What has happened is that Le Roy is neither translating from the Arte della guerra nor using Charrier’s French version, but is basing his discussion on Fourquevaux’s Instructions, which was itself a heavily augmented adaptation of Machiavelli’s work. It is, in fact, Fourquevaux who had recognized passages in Machiavelli’s text as deriving from Polybius and Vegetius, and it was also Fourquevaux who proves to have been the source for the various additions which embellish this section of De la vicissitude.18 Another factor which has constantly to be borne in mind when trying to track down the sources of warlike utterance is that one of the most popular literary-military genres of the Renaissance was the commentary upon some classical authority; and there were numerous works, elucidating Caesar, Aelian, Onosander, Polyaenus, and so on, trying both to reconstruct the ancient military arts and relate them to the exigencies of modern warfare. Machiavelli was not the first writer to see, in the ancients, a sovereign remedy for corrupt modern practices. Nor was he the last. Author after author insisted upon the continuing relevance of the classical military authorities, despite all the changes which had taken place since the era of Rome’s greatness. In 1560, for example, Vincenzo (Paris, n.d.) in their series Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en langue Franc¸aise, and the relevant section in this modern edition is at pp. 383–95. 17 Mattei (1969), 269–79. However, four years earlier, Procacci, 161–2, had spotted the relationship between Le Roy and the Instructions. 18 Le Roy dodges about amongst the early chapters of Fourquevaux’s work to produce a patchwork which, nevertheless, reads smoothly enough. The principal passages used by Le Roy are to be found in Fourquevaux (1548 edn., reproduced in facsimile by G. Dickinson, 1954), fos. 11–13v, 16r–v, 20, 28–9. Curiously, elsewhere in his works, Le Roy borrows the odd passage from both Il Principe and the Discorsi. On this see Procacci (1969), 50–64.

524

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Dini prefaced his suggestively titled Discorso sopra il primo libro de la terza Deca di Tito Livio with an assertion that not only all professors of the military art, but also all who have considered human actions ‘in universo’, concede that the greatest war within human memory was that fought in Italy by Hannibal. He therefore considers it useful to discuss ‘in modo di discorso’ the progress of that encounter, and begins by expressing his stupefaction at the way in which the undertaking of war in his own day is left entirely to chance. Even more stupefying is the fact that—although he has proposed to various generals and princes that everything ought to be done to discover the method whereby wars and battles might be won, and how states might be conquered or defended—he has ‘up to now, always found their ears deaf ’. Nor has Dini ever found satisfaction from those who write or talk about war. They always tell him that the ancient times have passed and that the arguments he derives from his studies would not work in practice. ‘It is not worth my while’, says Dini, ‘to reply that the reasons for actions are immutable, although the methods for their execution and the means employed can vary.’19 Princes and their generals may have turned a deaf ear to Dini, but his belief was shared by many lettered men. John Sadler, introducing his English translation of Vegetius in 1572, expressed a similar conviction when he argued that, although modern wars might appear different from those in the past—partly because of 19 Discorsi di M. Vincentio Dini sopra il primo libro de la terza Deca di Tito Livio (Rome, 1560), fo. 2r–v: ‘havendo io alcuna volta proposto ad alcuno Generale d’eserciti et ad alcuni Principi, che si doverebbe fare ogni cosa per trovare il modo et la ragione di vincere una guerra, et in particolare poi d’una giornata, o di debellare o difendere uno stato, o di altri simili fattioni; ho` trovato (sin qui) sempre gl’orecchi loro sordi; et da altri poi co quali ne ho col scrivere tentato adito, o a bocca havutone pure qualche ragionamento, riportatone pochissima esistimatione, non che sodisfattione alcuna; et havutone per riposta, che hoggidi non e` piu quel tempo antico, dal quale io presuppongo che le ragioni e ’l modo guerreggiare cavar’si debbano; et che le mie imaginationi fatte per via de gli studij, non riescano poi in esperienza; senza altrimenti cercare d’intendere, se io al tutto senza qualche gusto d’esperienza parlo: o volere piu oltre udire (non che esperimentare) se quel’che io proponessi loro potesse mandarsi a effetto. Ne mi e` valso il replicare, che le ragioni de le attioni sono immutabili, se bene i modi del’esecutioni et i mezzi variar’si possano; et che l’udire et il considerare le ragioni, et li esempi con che io giustificavo et accompuagnavo l’opinioni mie’.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

525

the great number of ‘engines and other feates’ then used but since become obsolete, and partly because of the many devices subsequently invented—yet Vegetius is still relevant. His reader could not only see, ‘as it were in a glasse’, how the Romans had conquered the world, but could also gather ‘the best and chiefest pointes of all their knowledge’ to employ as ‘occasion may serve and tyme requyre’.20 Three years later Jean de la Madeleyne, ‘Advocat en la Court de Parlement de Paris, Seigneur de Cheuremont’, addressed himself to the problem of maintaining peace and, recognizing the importance of war in this context, excused himself from detailed discussion of technicalities by asserting that he based himself on Vegetius and infinite other authors who had written on the subject: ‘de quoy nous nous reposerons sur Vegece et autres infinis autheurs qui en ont amplement escrit’. Like Vegetius and myriad others, he stressed that military strength comes not from numbers but from good discipline and that, in this respect, the ancient Romans ‘served their posterity as a true mirror and example of all virtue and courage’.21 Perhaps the most elaborate attempt to relate the study of past and present military systems was the series of volumes planned and executed by the Venetian publisher Gabriel Giolito with a team of scholars led by Tomaso Porcacchi.22 Between 1557 and 1570, Giolito published a Collana historica consisting of translations of thirteen Greek historians who provided ample military lessons from antiquity. In addition, since it was a troublesome and timeconsuming business for men of action to excavate these lessons, a parallel series of modern works was also issued, in which authors ranged freely not only over Greek but also over Roman and more recent martial experience. The scheme was ambitious and the scholarship of its contributors was considerable: but their conviction that military practice is best learnt from the ancients trapped 20 The Foure bookes of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, trans. John Sadler (1572), sig. C*.1v. 21 Jean de la Madeleyne, Discours de l’estat et office d’un bon roy, prince ou monarque, pour bien & heureusement regner sur la terre, & pour garder & maintenir ses subjectz en paix union & obeissance (Paris, 1575), fos. 62v, 64v. 22 See J. R. Hale, ‘Printing and Military Culture’, in Renaissance War Studies, 440–3.

526

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

them within the same straitjacket that had confined Machiavelli. Only Orazio Toscanella’s Gioie historiche showed a more sophisticated realization that, if classical institutions were to provide a truly practical model, then it would be necessary to reconstruct them as precisely as possible: and, strangely, Toscanella’s work was dropped from Giolito’s series.23 It was this perception of historical precision as a prerequisite for modern utility which had informed the vast labours of Flavio Biondo in the mid-fifteenth century: but the painstaking historical techniques necessary for such a task were not readily acquired or easily deployed.24 The historiography of the reconstruction of the Greek and Roman armies has, I believe, yet to be written: but it is clearly important for our understanding of the paradox whereby generation after generation of scholars—Machiavelli included— looked to the Roman army for military perfection, yet were unable to comprehend how that army really functioned at different times and in differing conditions. It was only gradually that the ancient military arts were accurately reconstructed by scholars in France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands; and, while Vegetius remained prominent as a source of information, he was no longer the only source—or even the most important.25 Faults and limitations were being discovered in what 23 Orazio Toscanella, Gioie historiche, aggiunte alla prima (seconda) parte delle Vite di Plutarco (Venice, 1567). See Hale, ‘Printing and Military Culture’, 443. 24 See Bayley, War and Society, 219–25. 25 For some examples of such scholarship, see Guillaume du Choul, Discours sur la castrametation et discipline militaire des romains (Lyon, 1557); Francesco Serdonati, De’ fatti d’arme de’ Romani libri tre (Venice, 1572); Joannes Rosinus, Romanorum antiquitatum libri decem ex variis Scriptoribus summa fide singularique diligentia collecti (Basle, 1583); Blaise de Vigene`re, Les Decades de Tite Live (Paris, 1583); Francesco Patrizi, La militia romana di Polibio, Livio e Dionigi Alicarnaseo (Ferrara, 1583); id., Paralleli militari (Rome, 1594–5); Henricus Ranzovius, Commentarius bellicus, libris sex distinctus praecepta, consilia, et strategemata etc. (Frankfurt am Main, 1595); Alberico Gentili, De armis Romanis libri duo (Hanover, 1599); Blaise de Vigene`re, L’art militaire d’Onosender (Paris, 1605). There is a growing literature on the extent, and limitations, of Vegetius’ influence in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. For some examples, see The Earliest English Translation of Vegetius’ De Re militari, ed. Geoffrey Lester (Heidelberg, 1988); Christopher Allmand, ‘The Fifteenth-Century English Version of Vegetius’ De Re Militari’ in Matthew Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France (Stamford, Conn., 1998), 30–45; Philippe Richardot,

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

527

had once been deemed canonical. When, for example, Francesco Patrizi the philosopher was describing the physical qualities requisite in recruits, he noted that Vegetius took his precepts from other writers and that, in any case, neither Vegetius nor any modern author has warned us against two great defects—shortsightedness and deafness. These are grave drawbacks in a soldier since ‘the latter cannot hear commands especially amidst the tumult of battle, and the former cannot see dangers’. Which shows that even an armchair soldier could be afflicted with a sudden attack of common sense.26 Another scholar, Joannes Rosinus, prefaced his discussion of the Roman army with an account of the classical authorities in which he stressed both the importance and the shortcomings of Vegetius.27 But his strictures were principally linguistic, not historical; and a far more damaging attack on the once impregnable status of Vegetius (and certainly a much more influential one) was in the most famous of all scholarly reconstructions, Justus Lipsius’s De militia romana, which first appeared in 1596. Lipsius was not wholly hostile to Vegetius, whose work he cited frequently both in the De militia romana and even more frequently in his PoliorceticVn, which deals at length with siege warfare and, therefore, with Vegetius’ beloved siege engines. But Lipsius did find it necessary to correct a good many details in Vegetius’ account of the Roman army and, for his own reconstruction, he thought it better to rely on the testimony of Polybius, ‘for Vegetius has nothing unadulterated, and mixes and confuses the institutions and habits of his own and earlier times’.28 This summary judgement was immediately taken up by other scholars and, while not really all that Lipsius had to say about Vegetius, it was like a little wedge driven under the Ve´gece et la culture militaire au Moyen Age (Paris, 1998); M. Reeve, ‘The Transmission of Vegetius’s Epitoma Rei Militaris’, Aevum, 74 (2000), 243–354. 26 Patrizi, Paralleli (1594), 147. 27 Ranzovius, Commentarius; Rosinus, Romanorum antiquitatum libri decem (1583), Lib. X, ‘De Militia’, preface. 28 Justus Lipsius, De militia romana libri quinque, Commentarius ad Polybium, in Opera omnia (Antwerp, 1637), iii. 12a. Cf. Claude de Saumaise, De re militari Romanorum (Antwerp, 1657), ch. 1, for an interesting recognition that the Roman art of war was itself not homogeneous.

528

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

feet of a mighty statue; and it toppled the De re militari from its pedestal.29 Vegetius has been described as an ‘immense bridge uniting antiquity with modern times’; and, in a sense, Machiavelli himself is merely one arch of that bridge.30 His account of the Roman army in the Arte della guerra was a popular one; but to understand this popularity it must be set within its proper context—and that is neither the serious study of ancient armies nor of modern warfare, but rather the enduring contrast between modern military corruption and ancient military virtue. It was precisely this feature of Vegetius’ work which would have constituted its greatest attraction for Machiavelli: but Machiavelli’s humanist predecessors had said it all before; and their literary predecessors had said it before them. ‘Today the military discipline which Vegetius and many others taught has completely disappeared, and has deformed itself into depravity and the appearance of buffoonery.’ A familiar sentiment: though written neither by a disheartened fifteenth-century Italian nor by an admiring follower of Machiavelli, but by the cleric Peter of Blois in the twelfth century.31 None the less, while it would be unrealistic to see the influence of Machiavelli in all later sixteenth-century Italian military jeremiads, in several instances it is unmistakable. Cicuta’s praise of Roman military training and its contrast with the corruption of modern youth, and especially of the Italians, is based upon Machiavelli’s modification of Vegetius. This is evident from his description of the Swiss and the Germans: ‘nation barbare, 29 Lipsius himself did not go unchallenged and Vegetius was still to enjoy one last triumph (and in some ways his greatest) when Johann Jacobi von Wallhausen declared in his De la milice romaine (Frankfurt am Main, 1616) that Lipsius was ignorant of military practice and had failed to appreciate the true merits of Vegetius. See Sydney Anglo, ‘Vegetius’s ‘‘De re militari’’: The Triumph of Mediocrity’, Antiquaries Journal, 82 (2002), 247–67. 30 Jose´ Almirante, Bibliografı´a militar de Espan˜a (Madrid, 1876), 882. This is cited in Cockle, Bibliography, 16. It is interesting to note that, shortly after Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra appeared, Tizzone Gaetano di Pori’s translation of Vegetius was published (Venice, 1524). 31 Peter of Blois, Epistola, XCIV, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 207, col. 294: ‘Militaris hodie disciplina, quam Vegetius Renatus ac plerique alij docuerunt, prorsus evanuit, et se in quamdam delinquendi libertatem, et scurrilitatis speciem deformavit.’

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

529

osservano anchor tuttavia la vera antica militar disciplina’. Similarly, Cicuta’s conviction that the infantry were the ‘nervo dell’essercita’ was a classical commonplace, but illustrated by examples drawn from Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra and Discorsi.32 Ferretti, despite his avowed concern to write about war using only examples within his own experience, cites the Arte della guerra, and especially its closing pages, as a judicious account of the military degradation of modern Italy.33 Even Francesco Bocchi (who was not always well disposed towards Machiavelli), in a work seeking to establish the primacy amongst ancient military commanders, not only uses the Istorie fiorentine to help illustrate the reasons for the decay of Italian valour, but even quotes those very lines from Petrarch with which Machiavelli had ended Il Principe on an heroic note of defiant optimism: Che l’antico valore Negli italici cuor non e` ancor morto.34

war, moral fibre, and christian ethics Another aspect of the reception of Machiavelli’s military thinking which would benefit from sharper definition is the belief that training for war is necessary for a nation’s well-being: and, related to this, the extent to which there existed a special morality of warfare. That writers specifically concerned with military matters should insist on the importance of their subject is hardly surprising. But the terms in which they eulogize it are noteworthy. These generally derive from the classical tradition, but are sometimes directly dependent upon Machiavelli’s own words. The author of the Institution de la discipline militaire (1559) was being thoroughly conventional when he informed his reader that, if honours nurture the arts, then there is no science which can so excite its students 32 Aureliano Cicuta (alias Alfonso Adriano), Della disciplina militare del capitano Alfonso Adriano Libri III (Venice, 1566), 188–9, 194–8, 205. 33 Francesco Ferretti, Della osservanza militare (Venice, 1568), Lib. II, 51–2. 34 Francesco Bocchi, Discorso. A chi de’ maggiori guerrieri, che infino a questo tempo sono stati, si dee la maggioranza attribuire (Florence, 1573), 43–5. For Bocchi’s hostility towards Machiavelli, see Mattei (1969), 163–79.

530

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

and enthusiasts as the art of war: ‘for it alone can assure princes in their states, see them raised in the sovereign degree of honour and power, communicate part of this glory to men of virtue, and fully provide them with honour and riches’.35 Similarly, Jean de la Madeleyne was merely extolling military discipline in the fashion of Vegetius when he wrote that ‘military discipline is the true foundation and sustenance of public power, without which arms can neither be conducted nor in any way sustained’; and when he added that, once such discipline is abandoned or broken, ‘there is lacking all order and all policy’.36 On the other hand, Peter Whitehorne, translator of the Arte della guerra, concludes his own military treatise, Certain waies for the orderyng of souldiers in battelray, by reminding his readers that even virtuous princes such as Alexander Severus came to grief through neglecting military affairs and failing to prepare for adversity in times of peace.37 His sentiment is much the same as that of La Madeleyne: but this time it is taken directly from the twenty-fourth chapter of Il Principe. Similarly, Thomas Digges, addressing his Stratioticos (1579) to the Earl of Leicester, dwells on the way in which empires have flourished where the military arts have been encouraged, but have fallen into ruin where—as in contemporary Europe—they have been neglected; and he emphasizes the importance of his subject by using Machiavelli’s metaphor of a rich palace in need of a roof to protect it from the wind and the rain.38

35 Institution de la discipline militaire au royeaume de France (Lyon, 1559), sig. A.4v: ‘qui puisse tant exciter ses studieux et amateurs, que cette cy: car elle seule peut assurer les Princes en leur estat, voire les eslever en souverain degre´ d’honneur et puissance: communiquer aussi a` gens de vertu une partie de cette gloire, et les pourveoir amplement d’honneur et richesses’. 36 Jean de la Madeleyne, Discours, fo. 63v: ‘Et premierement nous dirons que la discipline militaire est le vray fondement et soustenement de la force publique, sans laquelle les armes ne se peuvent conduire n’y aulcunement subsister: laquelle estant une fois delaissee et enfrainte, default tout ordre et toute police.’ 37 Peter Whitehorne, Certain waies for the orderyng of souldiers in battelray, & settyng of battailes, after divers fashions, with their maner of marchyng (1562), sigs. N.1v–2. 38 Thomas Digges, An Arithmeticall Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos (1579), ‘The Epistle Dedicatorie’, sig. A.2v. Cf. Machiavelli, Arte della guerra, ‘proemio’, Mazzoni and Casella, 265b.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

531

A crucial aspect of the generally felt need for nations to be prepared for war is revealed in Osorio’s De nobilitate christiana (1542). As we have seen, this work seeks to refute Machiavelli’s condemnation of the Christian ethic of non-resistance and, in the process, paradoxically recognizes a dual morality—quietist in private life and bellicose in public.39 Osorio pinpoints the dilemma faced by all thinkers wishing to advocate a life of virtue in a naughty world. The problem was hoary with antiquity, and intellects more subtle than either Machiavelli or Osorio had already accommodated the need for aggression to the pacific idealism of Christianity. St Augustine had provided the just war with the flexible pattern which had been followed throughout the Middle Ages: and his work had been given fresh impetus—and further potentialities of the doctrine had been realized—by Aquinas.40 Within this web of sophistry, war was primarily to be regarded as a means of gaining peace. This was perfectly in accord with Vegetius but, as F. H. Russell has neatly expressed the matter with regard to Augustine, ‘to treat evangelical precepts in this way was to revalue them politically such that warfare now became necessary rather than inherently sinful’.41 The concept of a divinely inspired war could be indefinitely extended and, by some strange chance, the people with whom one wished to quarrel generally proved to be either heretics or infidels—in which case, love of one’s enemies was a justification for killing them!42 To write (as one modern authority on the Renaissance has done) that, for such thinkers, ‘war was seen as an 39 Jeronimo Osorio, De nobilitate christiana (Lisbon, 1542), fos. 112v–113v. The entire section of Osorio’s work relating to the defence of war was cited (from Blandie’s English translation) with approval by Barnaby Rich in his significantly titled Allarme to England, foreshewing what perilles are procured, where the people live without regarde of Martiall lawe (1578), sigs. A.4–B.2. Rich, introducing this material, writes: ‘but something the better to satisfie such as in their opinions are so precise, to thinke that no warrres, howe so ever it bee attempted, may bee eyther good or godly: I will therefore here recyte the wordes of that learned and excellent man Hieronymus Osorius’. 40 See F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975). See also S. Windass, Christianity versus Violence: A Social and Historical Study of War and Christianity (1964). 41 Russell, The Just War, 17. 42 Ibid. 260 n. 8.

532

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

instrument of higher ethical purposes’ is to display an ingenuousness—in the face of medieval ingenuity—that almost defies belief.43 Christians wishing to justify military aggression in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had more than a thousand years of sophisticated hair-splitting upon which to draw, and there was little they could add. They continued to extol war against infidels and heretics who, thanks to the Reformation, comprised just about everybody; they continued to ransack the Scriptures for precedents; and, above all, they continued to expound the positive virtue of smiting one’s enemies.44 Bishop Osorio is a good example of such conventional thinking. Imperiale Cinuzzi is another. He argued that, though war is violent, it was waged by princes to preserve the peace of their people and the repose of their state, to maintain the sanctity of the human race, and to punish evildoers. War, says Cinuzzi, maintains the laws inviolate and, as justice kills malefactors and uses rigour, so war employs fire, rapine, and death to arrive at tranquillity. This could almost be St Augustine speaking: but Cinuzzi was writing in 1604, and prided himself on his twelve years’ service as soldier and officer in Flanders, France, Transylvania, and Hungary.45 War was necessary. War was unavoidable. Was it possible, then, to preserve the ethical norms in conditions of violence? This problem, too, was an old one and had occupied the attention of generations of Christian thinkers, especially lawyers, both civil and canon. More topically, within the context of Florentine pacifism in 1528, Bartolommeo Cavalcanti, seeking to encourage the citizens, had specified so many laudable qualities for the ideal soldier that, in John Hale’s words, ‘he became hardly distinguishable from the 43 Gilbert, ‘Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War’, 22. 44 See, for example, the arguments deployed in the following: Fabio Benvoglienti, Discorso . . . per qual cagione per la religione non si fatta guerra fra’ Gentili, & perche si faccia tra Christiani (Florence, 1570); Cosimo Filiarchi, Trattato della guerra, et dell’unione de’ principi Christiani contra i Turchi (Venice, 1572), 39–47; the ‘Epistle dedicatorie’ of Sir John Smythe, Instructions, observations, and orders mylitarie (London, 1595); Gentillet, Discours (Leiden, 1609), II. 4, pp. 272–5; the Discours de la guerre addresse´ a` tous Chrestiens faisans profession des armes. Par un Gentilhomme Franc¸ois (Paris, 1615); and in William Gouge, The dignitie of chivalrie; set forth in a sermon preached before the Artillery Company of London, Iune xiij. 1626 (London, 1626) which takes as its text ‘The Lord is a Man of Warre’. 45 Imperiale Cinuzzi, La vera militar disciplina (Siena, 1604), 15–16.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

533

ideal man’.46 Machiavelli himself had suggested the same sort of thing in a series of rhetorical questions in the ‘Proemio’ to his Arte della guerra—a passage whose emotion is well captured in Peter Whitehorne’s translation: And if in what so ever other orders of Cities and Kyngdomes, there hath been used al diligence for to maintain men faithfull, peaceable, and full of the feare of God, in the service of warre, it was doubled: for in what man ought the countrie to seeke greater faith, then in him, who must promise to die for the same? In whom ought there to bee more love of peace, then in him, whiche onely by the warre maie be hurte? In whome ought there to bee more feare of God, then in him, which every daie committyng himself to infinite perilles, hath moste neede of his helpe?47

This was paraphrased with care and approval by Digges in his Stratioticos.48 But, given sufficient perversity and ignorance, the same passage could be cited against Machiavelli, as was the case with Richard Harvey in 1590. Harvey attacks the Arte della guerra where—he asserts inaccurately on the basis of Osorio’s misinterpretation—the Gospel of Christ had been held responsible for the decay of the Roman Empire. He omits the discussion of military virtue, which had got Osorio into difficulties, and refutes Machiavelli, ‘that secretary of hell, not only of Florence’, who had been forced to confess both in the Discorsi and ‘most emphatically in his proem to L. Philip Strozzi, by vehement and zealous interrogation: in whom ought there to be more feare of God, than in a warrior, who every day committing himself to infinite perils hath most need of his help?’49

46 J. R. Hale, ‘War and Public Opinion in Renaissance Italy’, in Renaissance War Studies, 365. 47 Arte della guerra, ‘Proemio’. Mazzoni and Casella, 265a. Cf. Digges in the following note. 48 Digges, Stratioticos, sig. a.1v: ‘For who ought to be a greater lover of Peace than he? who chiefelie in Warres is to endure Payne, Perill, Hunger, Cold, and infinite other diseases. Who ought to be more faythfull to hys Prince, and Countrey, than he? whose Oth and profession is to Sacrifice himselfe for the same. In whome ought there to be a greater love and feare of God than in him? that everie day committing himselfe to a thousande dangers and hazardes of life, hathe most neede of his ayde and helpe.’ 49 Richard Harvey, A theologicall discourse (1590), 94–9.

534

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Nevertheless, it was—and always had been—extremely difficult to maintain conventional moral norms when preaching the necessity of armed conflict because, as Pietro Monte had declared in 1509, war is by its very nature a cruel business.50 Fourquevaux, like most other military thinkers, recognized this moral dilemma when he introduced his Instructions with a thoroughly conventional Christian definition of the just war together with a clear-cut distinction between patience in the face of injuries (rightly enjoined upon the Apostles and all those who have to preach), and the proper use of armed force by princes and all those who have the responsibility of government.51 Again and again we find writers, even the most conventional, recognizing what can only be described as a dual morality, and extending, as did Machiavelli himself, the medieval precept, necessity has no law.52 The use of cruelty in war, for example, was the subject of an entire chapter in Garimberto’s Il Capitano Generale (1556). Gabriel Symeoni uses the occasion when Caesar cut off the hands of those who had long resisted him, to demonstrate the utility of striking terror into the hearts of one’s enemies. And Jacques Hurault, on the basis of his reading of Machiavelli, recommends to Henri III (perhaps unnecessarily) the utility of cruelty.53 The problem is thrown into high relief when we consider attitudes towards deceit. The use of fraud and stratagems was discussed by practically every writer who touched upon military matters; and medieval thinkers had to come to terms with reality in this as in so much else.54 The issue was already stale when it had been earnestly debated in the fourteenth century by Giovanni da Legnano, whose opinions were closely followed and spread abroad 50 Pietro Monte, Exercitiorum atque artis militaris collectanea (Milan, 1509), sig. g.7: ‘Bellum quidem de propria eius natura res crudelis est’. 51 Fourquevaux, Instructions, fos. 1–3v. 52 On necessitas legem non habet, see Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought. 53 Girolamo Garimberto, Il Capitano Generale (Venice, 1556), 285–90; Symeoni, Cesar renouvelle´ (1558), fos. 50v–51; Jacques Hurault, Des offices d’estat, avec un sommaire des stratagemes (Paris, 1588), fos. 228–231v. 54 Some suggestive references on the general background to the political problem of keeping promises are to be found in Mattei (1969), 15–42. See also A. H. Gilbert’s commentary on chapter 18 of Il Principe in Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ and its Forerunners (Durham, NC, 1938; repr. New York, 1968), 118–39.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

535

by the popular Honore´ Bonet.55 Their answer had been couched in equivocal terms: but a late sixteenth-century writer such as Balthazar Ayala, although stressing that moral rectitude is always best, is able to cite St Augustine, Ulpian, the Digest, and the Decretals to support the validity of fraud in warfare. He also cites Virgil—Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat (‘when dealing with a foe, who asks whether a deed is craft or virtue?’)—to the same effect, as do many other writers from every kind of background, such as Gentili, Contarini, Zuccolo, and even Grotius.56 Lipsius quotes this line to emphasize his own belief that all means are legitimate when employed to overthrow one’s enemies: a position which sounds daringly modern, until one recalls that decretists had assumed the same thing four hundred years earlier.57 The use of fraud in warfare had been fully justified by Christian theorists; and the requisite techniques could be found partly in the Scriptures and, more comprehensively, in the work of classical authors such as Frontinus and the ancient historians.58 A Renaissance military specialist such as Bernardino Rocca was simply following a well-trodden path when he devoted a whole work to Imprese, stratagemi, et errori militari (1566) in which he argued not only that men had overcome brute beasts by the use of art, cunning, and reason, but also that it was licit to employ these faculties against other men. He concedes that human beings are not naturally evil, but fears that sensuality may overcome the very intellect 55 Giovanni da Legnano, Tractatus de bello, de represaliis, et de duello, ed. T. E. Holland (Washington, DC, 1917), ch. 62; Honore´ Bonet, The Tree of Battles, ed. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1949), IV. 49. 56 Balthazar Ayala, De jure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari Libri III (1582), ed. J. Westlake (Washington, DC, 1912), I. 8; Alberico Gentili, De iure belli libri tres, ed. T. E. Holland (Oxford, 1877), II. 3; Pier’ Maria Contarini, Corso di guerra (Venice, 1601), fo. 32v; Ludovico Zuccolo, Considerationi politiche e morali sopra cento oracoli d’illustri personaggi antichi (Venice, 1621), 77–80; Hugo Grotius, De iure belli et pacis libri tres (Paris, 1625) III. i. 6. 57 Justus Lipsius, Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (Antwerp, 1589), V. 17. 58 Sextus Julius Frontinus, Strategemata, written in the late first century ad, was known throughout the Middle Ages and was first printed at Rome in 1487 by Eucharius Silber. Thereafter, usually in conjunction with other ancient military authorities, it was frequently reissued throughout the 16th and 17th cc. both in Latin and in vernacular translations. See Cockle, no. 3.

536

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

which has properly earned man the rule of the universe. Thus, because man is diverted from the true course of reason and falls prey to evil behaviour, Rocca cannot see ‘by what route one may more worthily achieve one’s end than by that of fraud and deceits’. And, he continues, although ‘fraud and deceit may be against justice and Christian humanity: nevertheless, to use them against the enemy is not something for which one must render account at the tribunal of worldly justice nor at the court of honour’.59 Is it any wonder, then, that zealous Christians such as Osorio could take offence at the way in which Machiavelli had impugned the military effectiveness of their faith? Christians could lie and cheat, and could trap and slaughter their enemies with consciences at least as clean as their pagan antecedents. Machiavelli’s opinion on this matter, says Botero, was no less inept than false. And no wonder since, in Botero’s view, God was closely involved in war and merited a chapter entitled Deum stratagematum inventorem esse.60 Perhaps the most suggestive exposition of the dual morality imposed by military necessity is to be found in a passage by Sir Richard Moryson: There is a tyme for all thynges, as Salomon wisely writeth. Whan tyme requyred peace, we talked lyttell of warre. Newe ocasyons bryng matters, not thought uppon, in place. Tyme maketh evyl thynges not only comparable with good, but good also. Whan tyme is to pull downe, it is very folye to buylde. Whanne tyme byddeth slee, it is nothinge so good, to heale the diseased as to kyll them that be not sycke. Whan tyme byddeth 59 Bernardino Rocca, Imprese, stratagemi, et errori militari, ed. T. Porcacchi (Venice, 1566), 2–3. ‘Ma perche egli si devia dal vero corso della ragione, et si da` in preda del mal oprare, non sa` giudicare per qual strada piu lodevolmente si possi condur al suo fine, che per quella della fraude, et de gli inganni . . . avenga che la fraude et l’inganno siano contra la giustitia, et l’humanita` Christiana, nondimeno usarle contra i nemici non e` cosa da renderne conto al tribunale della giustitia del mondo ne al foro dell’honore.’ Rocca’s work was translated into French by La Popelinie`re as Des entreprises et ruses de guerre: et des fautes qui par fois surviennent e´s progrez et executions d’icelles (Paris, 1571). Some years earlier, an anonymous French manuscript, Maximes et brief advis pour le maniement de la guerre (BNF fr. 589, fo. 1v), had explained that one must fight an enemy with the help of every ‘ruse de guerre’: and if one cannot safely act like a lion, then one must show oneself to be a fox—taking advantage of the terrain, and using surprises and stratagems. 60 Giovanni Botero, De regia sapientia libri tres (Milan, 1583), I. 8, 12.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

537

spende, sparynge is great waste. Love is lewdeness, whan time biddeth hate. Peace is to be refused, when tyme forceth men to warre.

This striking sentiment occurs in the dedicatory letter addressed to King Henry VIII by Moryson in his English translation of Frontinus.61 We know that Moryson was a student of Machiavelli: but he justifies ethical relativity by reference to the Scriptures, that is to the opening verses of Ecclesiastes 3. And this is the point. War was the one field where a view of necessity, which has come to be regarded as typically Machiavellian, could be readily accepted: but it was also a field where there were striking classical, patristic, and scholastic antecedents, and even biblical analogues. Machiavelli was easily assimilable because those concerned with warfare were either prepared to be—or already had been—convinced.

military maxims Machiavelli was readily assimilable for two other very good sixteenth-century reasons. In the first place, Renaissance readers adored apophthegms and, no less than the medieval jurists, they also loved hypothetical debating points. Machiavelli provided some fertile examples of both; and his political thought tended, as the century progressed, to be reduced to a short series of maxims or stylized topoi—a tendency nowhere more marked than in relation to his views on warfare. The second reason for his ready assimilation is even more basic. The topics he raised were all old friends. Writers could debate them with scarcely any need to activate their intellects. Several of these issues were repeatedly discussed: and a brief consideration of the more popular among them reveals the difficulties posed by facile assumptions of Machiavelli’s originality and influence. It is, in fact, frequently difficult to know whether we are encountering Machiavellian influence at all. For example, a fundamental theme recurrent throughout Machiavelli’s work is his condemnation of mercenary troops and his advocacy of a native militia: a 61 Richard Moryson, The Stratagemes, Sleyghtes, and policies of warre gathered togyther by S. Julius Frontinus (London, 1539), sigs. a.6v–7.

538

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

notion which appears in every one of his major writings. It also occurs regularly in subsequent texts. But is this evidence of Machiavelli’s influence? The problem is made clear in David Hume’s early seventeenth-century refutation of Machiavelli. Hume acknowledges the dangers incident to the use of mercenaries and auxiliaries, but can see no special acuteness in Machiavelli’s remarks upon this topic.62 And why should he? Vegetius had advocated reliance upon native rather than mercenary troops, and had lamented the decline of the Roman army in this respect; Isocrates had similarly castigated the Athenians, who had come to depend upon foreigners; while Polybius, analysing the differences between the Roman and Carthaginian armies, had concluded that the superiority of the former was due to their reliance upon native troops, whereas the Carthaginians were dependent upon mercenaries.63 Largely on the basis of Vegetius’ views in the De re militari, the same question had been thoroughly debated from the thirteenth century onwards and had occupied the attention of chivalric authors such as Christine de Pisan, as well as the host of fifteenth-century humanists whose views were merely repeated by Machiavelli.64 It is similarly difficult to assess Machiavellian influence on another important issue: the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion. This topic had been discussed in the Arte della guerra where, while arguing that the Roman formation was superior to that of the Macedonians, Machiavelli attempted to devise a modern system incorporating the virtues of both.65 His suggestions were attacked in trenchant 62 David Hume, Apologia Basilica (1626), 76. 63 Vegetius, I. 28; Isocrates, De pace, 46–7; Polybius, VI. 52. 64 C. C. Bayley is fundamental on this question. For Christine de Pisan, see Le livre des faits d’armes, I. 8. The conventionality of such scepticism concerning the effectiveness of mercenaries is clear from its occurrence in the wholly unoriginal De republica of Tito Livio de’ Frulovisi. See Opera hactenus inedita T. Livii de Frulovisiis de Ferraria, ed. C. W. Previte´-Orton (Cambridge, 1932), 342–3. 65 Machiavelli, Arte della guerra, 3 (Mazzoni and Casella, 304a–306a). Concerning Machiavelli’s method, Sir James Turner, Pallas armata (London, 1683), 161, observes that he ‘presents the world with a Milice of his own, the birth of his own brain, a hodg podg of some of the Ancient, and some of the Modern Militia, with a mixture of many of his own inventions’. Turner then systematically pulls Machiavelli’s suggestions to pieces before concluding, ‘I know not whether

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

539

terms as early as 1559 by the anonymous author of the Institution de la discipline militaire, who gives a general account of the Greek, Macedonian, and Roman military formations: maintaining that the phalanx is superior in its proper place (large, flat, open spaces), but that the legion was more adaptable. He even goes so far as to suggest that the Romans owed success more to the strength and skill of their troops than to any virtues inherent in their battle array. In particular, he stresses that Roman victories over cavalry had been largely due to the immobility of the opposing mounted forces. The Romans had thus been able to defeat Tigranes: but, he adds significantly, they would not have been so effective against modern cavalry. And he concludes: By the matters aforesaid, I think it quite clear that Machiavelli’s teaching does not have the stability of the Macedonian phalanx; because he makes it of only seven ranks of pikemen, and with intervals—which we have shown to be contrary to the whole nature of the phalanx. Nor (in this infirmity of humankind and extreme senility of nature) can it have the strength of the Roman formation. Nor could it in any way withstand our contemporary cavalry. And now that all these battalions have been united into one, with pikes, halberds, arquebuses, shields (all confusedly intermingled), this diversity would have no discipline whatsoever but would be a barbarous confusion without any connection—exposed to the least shock of a powerful enemy which it could resist no better than the similar Italian system was able to resist the Swiss array at the battle of Fornovo.66 I shall more cry up the lowliness of spirit of those great Statesmen who are pleased to descend from their high Spheres to learn their Politicks from Machiavell, or commend the generosity of those Captains who disdain to stoop so low as to receive their Lessons of the Military Art from the Town Clerk of Florence.’ 66 Institution de la discipline militaire au royaume de France (Lyon, 1559), 64–9: ‘Par lesquelles choses susdictes je pense estre assez apparent, que l’instruction de Machiavelle n’a la fermete´ de la phalange Macedonique; parce qu’il la faict seulement de sept renges de piquiers, et avecques intervalles: lesquelz nous avons demonstre´ estre contraires du tout a` la nature de la phalange: et ne peut avoir la vertu de la bataille Romaine, en cette debilitation du genre humain, et extreme vieillesse de nature: ne pourroit aucunement soustenir la cavalerie de maintenant. Et ores que toutes ces batailles fussent unies en une; de picques, hallebardes, harquebouzes, pavois (lesquels harnois seroient tous pesle-mesle) cette diversite´ n’auroit aucune discipline: mais seroit une confusion barbare, sans aucune liaison estant expose´ au moindre heurt d’un puissant ennemy: le quel elle ne soustiendroit, non plus que pareille instruction Italienne feit le bataillon des Souisses en la journe´e de Fornove.’

540

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Despite the justice of this criticism, Machiavelli’s discussion of the merits of phalanx and legion was closely followed by several writers, including Fourquevaux, Louis Le Roy, Botero, Patrizi, Frachetta, Digges, and Tarducci.67 On the other hand, Paruta discussed the matter as if at a tangent from Machiavelli, and was firmly convinced that the phalanx system of Alexander the Great would have vanquished the Roman legionary armies—a position similar to that later adopted by Louis de Montgommery, and by Bingham in his notes to Aelian.68 But here again, although from our modern standpoint Machiavelli might seem to have been the central focus of argument for later writers, he was, in fact, not the most important source of the debate. His own views were derived directly from Livy’s examination of the comparative merits of the Greek and Roman armies. Polybius’ long, detailed, and acute comparison of these rival military systems was widely disseminated in the latter half of the sixteenth century; while Plutarch’s observations on this same theme were even better known. Finally, Aelian’s analysis of the phalanx was a trusted companion of all Renaissance military writers and, in the end, may have been of greater relevance to the modern army than Machiavelli’s martial cocktail.69 There were other topics for which Machiavelli served as an intermediary between the ancients and their Renaissance imitators. Is it better, he wondered, to invade an enemy or to await his invasion? Is it better to take the initiative in battle, or to let the enemy’s force exhaust itself before launching one’s own counter-attack? 67 Instructions, fos. 28–35; Le Roy, De la vicissitude (1575), fos. 102v–103; Giovanni Botero, Della ragion di stato (Venice, 1589), IX. 6; Francesco Patrizi, Paralleli (1594–5), Part II. 23, 415–28; Achille Tarducci, Il Turco vincibile (Ferrara, 1597), 131–5; Girolamo Frachetta, Il prencipe (Venice, 1599), II. 12, 13; Thomas and Dudley Digges, Four Paradoxes, or politique Discourses (1604), Paradox II. An interesting variation on this theme is in Lelio Brancaccio, Il Brancatio, della vera disciplina, et arte militare. Sopra i Commentari di Cesare (Venice, 1582), ‘Prefatione’, 3–16, where the author, without referring to Machiavelli, agrees that the Roman military formations were superior not only to the Greek and Macedonian but also to their modern followers such as the Swiss and German. He attacks the pike but, more a modernist than Machiavelli, he argues that the development of portable firearms has changed warfare fundamentally. 68 Paolo Paruta, Discorsi politici (Venice, 1599), I. 2; Louis de Montgommery, La milice franc¸oise, reduite a` l’ancien ordre et discipline militaire des legions (Paris, 1610), 100 ff.; John Bingham, The Tacticks of Aelian (1616), 85–91. 69 Livy, VIII. 8, IX. 19; Polybius, XVIII. 28–32; Plutarch, Flaminius.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

541

Machiavelli examined the first, more general question, by means of a series of historical examples which led him to the conclusion that a ruler whose subjects are well armed and organized for war should stay at home and let the enemy invade, whereas one whose people are ill-prepared should always try to wage war outside his own territory. As so often with Machiavelli, the alternatives are falsely conceived and it is difficult to see how poor troops would be likely to achieve success wherever they fought. Even more badly argued is the question concerning the initiation of a battle. Basing his brief discussion upon a single example in which the Romans fought the combined forces of Samnites and Tuscans, Machiavelli contrasts the failure of the aggressive Roman consul Decius with the success of his less impetuous colleague Fabius, and concludes that the latter’s procedure is ‘more secure and more worthy of imitation’. This is, however, a non sequitur since Fabius’ triumph could more properly be attributed to Decius’ having previously weakened the enemy. A few years later, when Machiavelli returned to this problem in the Arte della guerra, he repeated the same unsatisfactory contrast between Decius and Fabius, although he cited other examples and reached a less clear-cut conclusion.70 With regard to choosing the time and place for either war or battle, both Frontinus and Vegetius had provided a range of possibilities; and historians offered countless examples of widely divergent experience. Could guidelines be established? The problem had occupied the attention even of such typically medieval and pacific theoreticians of warfare as Giovanni da Legnano and Honore´ Bonet in the fourteenth century, when they had been constrained by moral arguments to opt for defensive war. A generation later, however, that spirited lady Christine de Pisan had encouraged her readers to take the offensive, ‘for much better it is to hurt anothers lande than to suffre his owne to be dommaged’.71 70 Machiavelli, Discorsi, II. 12; III. 45 (Mazzoni and Casella, 154–6, 259); Arte della guerra, 4 (Mazzoni and Casella, 224a–226). The question had been discussed by the ancients: Herodotus, for example, favouring attack whereas Frontinus and Vegetius favoured defence. 71 Giovanni da Legnano, xxvii; Honore´ Bonet, III. 5; Christine de Pisan, I. 18. I quote Christine from Caxton’s English version, ed. A. T. P. Byles (E.E.T.S., 1932), 61.

542

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

The debate continued, but later writers tended, either explicitly or tacitly, to use Machiavelli as a point of reference and, like him, they had little to say that was relevant to military practice. Choosing when to attack or defend was really a matter for common sense and the weighing of constantly shifting circumstances. Guicciardini recognized this and qualified Machiavelli’s generalizations by pointing out that many instances could be found on both sides, and ‘many considerations which have been omitted by the author’: a position later assumed by Ammirato, who delighted in pointing out that Machiavelli’s examples could easily be turned upside down to establish an opposite argument.72 Paruta managed to introduce a welcome breath of intelligence into his discussion of Hannibal’s invasion of Italy and of the Roman wars in Spain, Sicily, Macedonia, and Greece; and Montaigne, in a characteristically tangential reference, hinted at the psychological implications of the problem.73 But these were exceptional. Generally, discussion remained within the established, strict confines. Fourquevaux, Ayala, Bodin, Lottini, Botero, Hurault, and many others all examined the issue without saying very much; and writers for the most part either considered Machiavelli’s chapter in the Discorsi (II. 12) to be authoritative, as did Vigene`re or, like Louis Deimier, cited the same ‘subtile recherche et jugement’ solely in order to refute it.74 72 Guicciardini, Considerazioni, trans. Grayson, 110. On this point in Ammirato, see Rodolfo de Mattei, Il pensiero politico di Scipione Ammirato con discorsi inediti (Milan, 1963), 78–79. Neither Guicciardini nor Ammirato takes into account Machiavelli’s more qualified treatment of the issue in the Arte della guerra. 73 Paruta, Discorsi politici, I. 6; Montaigne, Essais, I. 47. 74 For representative examples of this debate see the following: Fourquevaux, Instructions, fos. 54v–55v; Ayala, De iure, II. 8; Bodin, Re´publique, V. 5; Giovanni Francesco Lottini, Avvedimenti civili (Florence, 1574), 216; Botero, Della ragion di stato (Venice, 1589), VI. 7, IX. 21; Hurault, Des offices d’estat (Paris, 1588); Matthew Sutcliffe, The practice, proceedings, and lawes of armes (1593), 96–103; Louis Deimier, Maximes d’estat militaires et politiques, traduites de l’Italien de I. Botero Benese et augmente´es d’annotations (Paris, 1606), 686–700. Vigene`re, Onosender, fos. 252v–254v, discussing the issue of offensive or defensive war, says that on this issue he is content to cite ‘le discours qu’en fait Mach. liv. 2. chap. 12. lequel vaut mieux mouvoir la guerre e´s pays de son ennemy, ou l’attendre dans ses limites. Il dispute assez bien cela en l’une et l’autre des deux parties, comme estant de vray fort problematique; et en ammeine plusieurs exemples.’

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

543

However, on one occasion at least, the general theme was made specific in time and place. In the aftermath of the Spanish Armada, Englishmen pondered how best to deal with an invading army; and battle was joined between Thomas Digges and Sir John Smythe over a hypothetical hostile army let loose in Kent. Digges appended his views to the second edition of Stratioticos.75 Smythe’s reply was never published, but it must have achieved some circulation since it survives in a number of manuscript versions.76 Neither argument is remarkable: but Smythe’s defence of biding time, rather than falling immediately upon the invaders, is interesting. Preparation, order, and skill in handling weapons, he argues, can make even cowards valiant, for ‘as one saith, the feirce and disordered men bee much weaker, then the fearefull and ordered, for that order expelleth feare from men, and disorder abateth feirceness’. This is an almost verbatim quotation from Peter Whitehorne’s translation of Machiavelli’s Vegetian sentiment in the Arte della guerra: ‘gli uomini feroci e disordinati sono molto piu` deboli che i timidi e ordinati; perche` l’ordine caccia dagli uomini il timore, il disordine scema la ferocia’.77 None the less, it is difficult to see why such careful preparation might not be as conducive to aggressive as to delaying tactics. Another classical topos to which Machiavelli gave fresh impetus was that summarized in a saying attributed to the Athenian general Chabrias: ‘An army of deer commanded by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions commanded by a deer.’78 Machiavelli does not mention Chabrias; reformulates this apophthegm into one of his choicest inanities (‘Whether one may trust more in a good captain who has a feeble army, or a feeble captain with a good army’); and then proceeds to wander around in a mental maze from which he finally extricates himself by deciding in favour of a good 75 See Cockle, 43 n. 3. 76 See especially BL Harleian MSS 132 and 4685. 77 Harleian MS 4685, fo. 22v; Machiavelli, Arte della guerra, 2 (Mazzoni and Casella, 292a); trans. Whitehorne, 77. Cf. Vegetius, De re militari, I. i, which explains how the Romans gained their victories over brave and numerically superior adversaries by means of their skill and training. 78 The saying is attributed to Chabrias in Plutarch, Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata. See Les œuvres morales et meslees de Plutarque, trans. J. Amyot (Paris, 1575), i. 534.

544

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

general with favourable opportunities as against an arrogant army with a turbulent leader.79 This conclusion is as incontrovertible as saying that a fit, well-trained, experienced heavyweight boxer is likely to defeat a sickly, untrained, novice flyweight. It is also as enlightening. So unpromising was Machiavelli’s treatment that only a few later writers struggled with the problem as he had formulated it. Others altered the terms of the debate. Lucinge and Cinuzzi considered the rival merits of a new army with an experienced general, and an experienced army with a new general. But Girardi, using his common sense, hacked through Machiavelli’s senseless disjunction and simply stated that, in war, one needs both good captains and good soldiers.80 The portentous utterance of platitudes characterizes the tradition of military writing to which Machiavelli subscribed and to which he contributed so dynamically. There were, however, two topics to which he gave an especially personal twist and which, therefore, provide a valuable indication both of the extent and the limits of his military influence. One of these was his treatment of the old adage that money is the sinews of war.81 In a famous chapter 79 Machiavelli, Discorsi, III. 13 (Mazzoni and Casella, 221a–222a). On this wandering argument, see Anglo (1969), 263. 80 Rene´ de Lucinge, De la naissance, duree, et cheute des estats (Paris, 1588), fos. 48v–53; Imperiale Cinuzzi, La vera militar disciplina (1604), i. 56–7; Antonio Girardi, Discorso intorno alle cose della guerra (Venice, 1558), fo. 5. See also Hurault, Des offices (1588), fos. 231v–233; Ascanio Centorio degli Hortensii, Il primo (-quinto) discorso sopra l’ufficio d’un Capitano generale di essercito (Venice, 1558–62), iv. 12–19; Pier’ Maria Contarini, Corso di guerra (Venice, 1601), fo. 1, where his entire work is prefaced with two Latin tags (Ingenium superat vires and Melior est exercitus Cervorum duce Leone, Quam exercitus Leonum duce Cervo); Sir Robert Dallington, Aphorismes civill and militarie (London, 1613), V. 33, 333–5; Louis Deimier, Maximes d’estat (1606), 647, where the aphorism, concerning an army of deer led by a lion, is attributed to Homer. The topic is discussed, quite independently of Machiavelli, by Nifo in his De regnandi peritia, II. ix, where he cites a proverb to the effect that an army of sheep led by a lion is superior to an army of lions led by a sheep. From Nifo, the idea is boiled down by Rosello, Ritratto (1552), fo. 75, to a statement that an army of sheep is valiant ‘provided that it has a lion for captain’. 81 The origins of this adage are obscure and, although the idea occurs in several classical texts, it is not expressed in precisely the form cited by Machiavelli. The discussion of this point in The Discourses of Niccolo Machiavelli, trans. Walker, ii. 106–7, is uncharacteristically slight and overlooks several analogues. See, for some examples, Diogenes Laertius, Bion, IV. 48; Cicero, Philippicae, no. V, sec. 2;

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

545

of the Discorsi, he issued his challenge: ‘Moneys are not the sinews of war, as is commonly believed.’ He subsequently modified this in the Arte della guerra, where it forms a striking addition to a series of general maxims adapted from Vegetius: ‘Men, yron, money and bread be the strengthe of the warre, but of these fower, the first twoo be moste necessarie: because men and yron, finde money and breade: but breade and money fynde not men and yron.’82 In general, it was the more extreme statement in the Discorsi which was taken up: and it was largely Machiavelli’s own fault that few of his numerous commentators understood the meaning behind his defiant aphorism, which is simply a reaffirmation of his conviction that, without native troops, no state can wage war successfully. One after another, his successors debated this question with stern seriousness. Guicciardini, pointing out that whoever had invented the saying that money was the sinews of war had not meant to be taken literally, thereby demonstrated his own literalness.83 Bartoli, who did not wish to contradict ‘nostro istoriografo’ (that is Machiavelli), felt obliged to point out that various things were necessary in war in addition to men and money: above all, ‘a good general: prudent, wily, judicious, spirited, sagacious, quick to respond to necessity’.84 Better still is Gentillet’s discussion where the Huguenot polemicist, attacking Machiavelli’s suggestion in Il Principe that princes should be parsimonious rather than liberal, actually finds himself in agreement with his hated enemy, though without realizing it: And although commonly, money is thought to be the sinewes of war, yet are they not so necessarily required, that without money warre cannot bee made. I will not here alledge the poor Hugonet souldiors, which most Plutarch, Agis and Cleomenes, ch. 27, sec. 1; Thucydides, VI. 34; Libanius, Orations, no. 46; Procopius, De bello Gothorum, Lib. III; Acominatus Nicetas, In Manuele Comneno, Lib. I. 82 Machiavelli, Discorsi, II. 10 (Mazzoni and Casella, 152a–153b); Arte della guerra, 7 (Mazzoni and Casella, 363b; trans. Whitehorne, 224). 83 Francesco Guicciardini, Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli etc., in Scritti politici e Ricordi, ed. R. Palmarocchi (Bari, 1933), 50–l. See also Girardi, Discorso (1558), fos. 3v–4, 25v for another early defence of the traditional opinion. 84 ‘Uno buono generale prudente, accorto, giudicioso, animoso, sagace, presto al bisogno’—Cosimo Bartoli, Discorsi historici universali (Venice, 1569), 85, cited in Mattei (1969), 135 n. 2.

546

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

commonly warred without wages: but I will onely alledge the militarie estate which was in the Roman empire in the Emperour Valentinians time, and since.

He goes on to argue that proper management of military organization is the true desideratum, and that ‘money makes not a prince puissant’.85 In an annotation to the 1589 French edition of Bishop Francesco Patrizi’s De l’institution de la republique, Machiavelli’s Discorsi are cited for the opinion that money is not the sinews of war: but the annotator goes on: Let him maintain whatever argument he likes: whether in peace or in war, money are the sinews of a republic for supporting it according to the situations which present themselves—provided always that other requisites are not lacking, such as unity of the citizens, virtue, observation of the laws and ordinances, and other necessary things.86

Lipsius, resting his opinion entirely upon classical authority, was in full agreement with this sentiment; and another Tacitist, Canoniero, specifically refuted Machiavelli on this point. But there were others, such as Patrizi, Cinuzzi, Vigene`re, Tarducci, and Bacon, who accepted Machiavelli’s argument in the Discorsi and who, furthermore, understood his underlying meaning.87 By the early 85 Contre-Machiavel, III. 26: (1576), 525–6; (1602), 307. Elsewhere, though, Gentillet (III. 32) attacks Machiavelli’s ‘foolish subtiltie’ (that is the argument that money is not the sinews of war), and asserts that, even if we accept that good soldiers are the sinews of war ‘yet these sinewes cannot stirre, nor bee brought to any great actions, without clapping upon the cataplasme of money’: (1576), 562–3; (1602), 329. 86 Francesco Patrizi (Bishop of Gaeta), De l’institution de la republique augmentee de moytie d’annotations tirees de tous les autheurs qui en ont traicte, trans. Jacques Tigeou (Paris, 1589), fos. 202v–203: ‘Or qu’il soustienne telle partie qu’il voudra, si est ce, que soit en paix, soit en guerre, les deniers sont les ners d’une Republique pour le maintenir selon les affaires qui se presenteront, pour veu toutefois que les autres choses requises n’y manquent point, comme l’union des citoyens, la vertu, l’observation des loix et ordonnances, et autres choses necessaires.’ Cf. William Fulbecke, The Pandectes of the law of Nations (1602), fo. 68, who also refutes Machiavelli irrelevantly on the grounds that money is the strength and sinew of the state. 87 Lipsius, Polit., IV. 9, V. 6; P. A. Canoniero, Dell’introduzione alla politica, alla ragion di stato et alla pratica del buon governo (Antwerp, 1614), ch. 486, pp. 486–9. See also Matthew Sutcliffe, The practice, proceedings, and lawes of

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

547

seventeenth century Machiavelli had become the locus classicus for the view that money was not the sinews of war, while Bartoli and Ammirato, in particular, were regarded as standard representatives of the opposite viewpoint.88 It is worth remarking, however, that Machiavelli’s revised statement in the Arte della guerra received little attention; and few writers incorporated it into their series of precepts for military commanders.89 Machiavelli’s other facelift for a wrinkled old topos was his manner of treating fortresses and his belief that, on the whole, they were useless. This theme had been enunciated in Il Principe, 20, and then elaborated in the Discorsi (II. 24) where the example of the Romans was cited as conclusive evidence that fortresses were both unnecessary and harmful. In at least two significant contributions to the literature of military architecture—Cataneo’s I quattro primi libri di architettura, and Maggi and Castriotto’s Della fortificatione della citta`—Machiavelli’s opinions are set out at length, before being accepted in the former and rejected in the latter.90 Generally, however, Machiavelli’s contentions concerning fortresses are commented upon as part of a political rather than purely military discussion.91 Guicciardini, for example, took him armes (1593), 16–18; Francesco Patrizi, Paralleli (1594–5), i. 103–6; Achille Tarducci, Il Turco vincibile (1597), 73–4; Mario Savorgnano, Arte militare terrestre e maritima (Venice, 1599), 34–5; Cinuzzi, La vera militar disciplina (1604), i. 89–94; Francis Bacon, Of the true greatness of the Kingdom of Britain, in Works, ed. J. Spedding (1857–74), vii. 55–6. 88 For a useful discussion of the arguments (and authorities) for and against, see Jacobus Bornitius, De numis in repub. percutiendis & conservandis libri duo. Ex systemate politico de prompti (Hanover, 1608), 38–9. 89 Two writers who did take heed of Machiavelli’s revision were Giles Clayton and Lodovico Zuccolo. See Giles Clayton, The approoved order of martiall discipline (1591), 76. Clayton’s list of ‘Certaine Rules of Armes’, which includes Machiavelli’s revised aphorism, is adapted from the lists in the Arte della guerra (Mazzoni and Casella, 362a–363b) and Vegetius, III. 26. Cf. Zuccolo, Consideratione politiche e morali (Venice, 1621), Oracolo LXXXVIII, ‘Che la guerra ricerca a` dismisura huomini, danari, arme, munitioni, e vittovaglie’. 90 Pietro Cataneo, I quattro primi libri di architettura (Venice, 1554), fos. 18v–19, 25r–v; Girolamo Maggi and Giacomo Castriotto, Della fortificatione della v citta` (Venice, 1564), fos. 13 –16v. On the debate concerning fortresses, see Hale, ‘To Fortify or Not to Fortify’, War Studies, 189–209. 91 See e.g. Centorio (1558–62), 62–71; Lottini (1575), ch. 25, pp. 17–18; Capelloni (1576), 131–3; Gentili, De iure belli, III. 21; Savorgnano (1599), 225–56.

548

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

to task for his uncritical worship of the Romans, and demonstrated that Machiavelli’s premisses and conclusions were too extreme: his usual criticism of Machiavelli’s work.92 Gentillet, also true to form, reduces the already aphoristic Machiavelli to an even more extreme aphorism: A Prince which feareth his subjects, ought to build fortresses in his countrey, to hold them in obedience. Machiavelli does, indeed, make this comment—though only as an observation, not as a recommended course of action. For Gentillet, it is all part of Machiavelli’s complete course in tyranny, and he argues that such citadels have caused infinite evils including the decline of trade and the abuse of citizens by an arrogant soldiery: For this construction of Citadels, is an apparent shew, that the prince trusteth not his subjects, but especially, when they are builded any other where, than in the limits and borders of kingdomes and countries against strangers. When the subjects know that their prince distrusteth them, they also esteeme, that hee loveth them not. And when the subject is not beloved of his prince, he cannot also love him, and not loving him, hee obeyes him not, but as constrained, and in the end will get his head out of the yoke, as soone as there will fall out a fit occasion. Here is the profite of Citadels.93

Only two comments are required here. First, that this was precisely what Machiavelli himself had argued: ‘pero` la miglior fortezza che sia, e` non essere odiato dal popolo’. And second, that Seneca had got there well before either Machiavelli or Gentillet.94 The year 1576 saw the publication not only of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel but also of Bodin’s La re´publique, in which the discussion of military matters is built entirely upon the foundation of two principal Machiavellian quaestiones: whether fortresses are useful, and whether subjects should be armed and trained for war. With tedious thoroughness, Bodin—so well characterized by J. W. Allen as ‘in the highest degree, a bore’—sets forth all the possible arguments for and against these propositions before arriving at a guarded approval of fortresses and a rather less qualified 92 Guicciardini, Considerazioni, 57–9. 93 Contre-Machiavel, III. 33: (1576), 593–6; (1602), 347–9. 94 Machiavelli, Il Principe, 20 (Mazzoni and Casella, 43a); Seneca, De clementia, I. xix. 6.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

549

enthusiasm for regular military training of a prince’s subjects. Bodin does not mention Machiavelli in this context, though he makes good use of the Discorsi and of Machiavelli’s classical antecedents in the course of his discussion.95 Similarly, Patrizi fails to mention Machiavelli, but was clearly convinced by his arguments against fortresses and writes of them in terms which would have warmed the cockles of Machiavelli’s heart. Italian princes, says Patrizi, believe that fortresses are the unique means of preserving their states; but, in fact, they are as useless for defensive war as they are for offensive or preventive war; and he goes on to specify the enormous numbers lost between 1541 and 1588.96 A somewhat different argument was used by Paolo Paruta. In his discourse on Whether Citadels and Strong Holds, much used by our modern princes, be commodious, and of true safety to a State, or no?, he offers a judicious and sane evaluation of the problem; and arrives at a largely favourable view of fortifications, marked by an appreciation of the technical advances in the field, and a recognition of the fact that, though fortresses may be lost through negligence, this by no means implies that the fortresses themselves are at fault. This is clearly a refutation of Machiavelli’s false logic: but, as was the case with Ammirato’s similar refutation, Machiavelli is not named.97 Another late sixteenth-century writer on this issue did name Machiavelli as an adversary, and sought to destroy his case on the basis of military experience. This was Rene´ de Lucinge, who considered Machiavelli’s arguments to be as feeble and as easily broken as a cobweb: ‘si fresles, et debiles, quelles se brisent aussi 95 Jean Bodin, Re´publique, V. 5. For Allen’s comment, see his A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928), 404. 96 F. Patrizi, Paralleli (1594), Part I, Lib. V, ch. 8, pp. 96–100. 97 Paolo Paruta, Discorsi politici (1599), II. 8, pp. 540–77; Scipione Ammirato, Discorsi sopra C. Tacito (Florence, 1594), Lib. III, Disc. iv. It is interesting to note that, in Laurent Meillet’s French version of Ammirato’s work (Discours politiques et militaires sur Corneille Tacite), Machiavelli is frequently referred to by name in this and in other parts of the work. Another author who points out that the dangers arising from fortifications are due more to incompetence and ignorance than to intrinsic weaknesses is Giovanni Francesco Fiammelli, Il principe difeso (Rome, 1604), 99. Fiammelli (p. 2) describes himself as ‘Matematico esperto delle cose di guerra, la quale ho essercitato molti anni servendo per Ingegnere il non mai a` bastanza lodato Alessandro Farnese Duca di Parma ne paesi bassi’, and his book is intended to demonstrate how useful to Christians is the perfect art of fortification.

550

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

aise´ment que les toiles d’Aragne’. The experience of the greatest soldiers of modern times, he says, makes one laugh at Machiavelli’s opinion; and Lucinge jeers at the bad grace with which his opponent always argues an extreme case and avoids the middle way: ‘Voyez la mauvaise grace qu’il a, cheminant ainsi qu’il faict par les extremitez, sans garder le milieu, qui seroit necessaire en ses propositions.’ This was precisely Guicciardini’s criticism half a century earlier, and it gained currency partly through direct knowledge of Lucinge’s work, which circulated both in French and English, and more especially because his chapter on this issue was abstracted, translated into Italian, and published in the very popular Tesoro politico, whence it was retranslated into French as an anonymous discourse.98 Very little of this material—and what I have cited could be multiplied a hundredfold—has any practical relationship to military action. Such discussion concerns itself primarily with the moral or political implications of various problems which had already been treated by Machiavelli in the same spirit. Or, if it does deal with warfare, it is at a superficial and generalized level. The repetition and debating of these chestnuts only occasionally raised itself to the level achieved by Machiavelli, whose immense literary gifts enabled him to utter banalities with an air of inspired fervour. Of course mercenary troops could be terribly unreliable. So, too, could an ill-trained native militia. What was needed were well-trained, reliable, committed professionals. Of course poor generals with good armies and good generals with poor armies were unsatisfactory. But how much penetration is required to reach the conclusion that good generals with good armies would do better? That effete nations could splash money about to scant military purpose was self-evident. So, too, was the likelihood that nations would prosper if they were both hardy and financially sound. Who could deny that phalanx and legion alike had merits and demerits? As much could be said of the heroic but undisciplined cavalry charge which had once been in vogue. Success depended on terrain, troops, leadership, and the quality of the opposition. 98 Lucinge, De la naissance des estats, fos. 21–22v; Tesoro politico, parte seconda (Milan, 1601), 53; Tresor politique (Paris, 1611), 412–13.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

551

This kind of vapidity was more inspiring (and has remained more inspiring) to scholars and political writers, or to those engaged in compiling impressionistic discourses on the art of war, than to those whose primary concerns were military and practical. Thus we find such topoi cropping up in Bodin, Botero, Lipsius, and Gentillet. We find them boiled down, tenderized, strained through Lipsius, and finally served up with a garnish of moral platitude by Charron. And we can still find them, even more insipidly thinned down, in a work of such moral rectitude as Boitet’s Le Prince des Princes (1632).99 By Boitet’s time these themes had become mere habits of political expression: so that it is more instructive to glance at an earlier example of this unmilitary treatment of military matters. In 1582, at Douai, Balthazar Ayala, Jurisconsult and Judge Advocate General of the Royal Army in the Low Countries, published his De iure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari, which he dedicated to no less a personage than Alessandro Farnese, Lieutenant Governor and Captain General of Philip II in the Low Countries. In his dedicatory letter, Ayala paraphrases and adapts the preface to the first two books of Machiavelli’s Discorsi which, as a loyal Spanish subject, he really should not be reading. Ayala wishes to apply his legal and historical studies to discover how the Romans attained the heights of military glory, and to describe the men involved and the military discipline employed: The result will show that men’s qualities are the same now as formerly and that the chances and occurrences which befall us from day to day are the same as befell men formerly; so that it will not be difficult for one who ponders with diligence on things of old and examines them with judicious deliberation to employ the past—appropriate task for a wise man—in judging the present, in foretelling the future, and in educing from old examples remedies fit (because of the similarity of the circumstances) for modern ills.

After this Machiavellian introduction it comes as no surprise to find that a substantial number of Ayala’s themes derive from the Discorsi: that there should be one head of an army and no more; whether kindness or cruelty is the more advantageous quality in a 99 See above, Ch. 13.

552

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

general; the dangers of factions and of delay in warfare, ‘especially when what is wanted is action rather than words’; that king and state should admit of no derogation of their sovereignty; that it is a mistake to think that an enemy can be tamed by moderation and kindness; whether it is better to await an enemy or attack him first; that it is not prudent to attack a state torn by civil dissension merely in reliance on that fact; that troops should be placed so that fighting is absolutely necessary for them, whereas the enemy should have means of escape. All this, and more, is drawn by Ayala from the classical tradition—but via Machiavelli whose very words are (of course) cited unacknowledged, and illustrated with additional ancient examples chosen by Ayala himself.100

relevance and i rrelevance Yet no commanders actually intending to wage war would have gained much practical advantage from Ayala. Nor would they have gained much more from Machiavelli’s Discorsi or even from his Arte della guerra. Despite the frequency with which those works were cited, either directly or from some intermediary source, they were irrelevant to the practical evolution of the art of war. This was due less to Machiavelli’s armchair incompetence than to the weakness diagnosed by Guicciardini and most laconically expressed by the English firearms enthusiast Humfrey Barwick. Answering those who constantly extolled the virtues of classical armies, Barwick asks: ‘shall we refuse the cannon and fall to the ram again?’101 This was a fundamental question involving far more than simply a difference of opinion concerning weaponry. Both medieval and Renaissance military theory had been erected upon classical foundations: that is upon an interpretation of writings originally conceived as a record and statement of military systems from a totally different age and of totally different societies.

100 Balthazar Ayala, De jure, dedicatory letter and the whole of Book II. 101 Humfrey Barwick, A breefe discourse, concerning the force and effect of all manuall weapons of fire (1594?), sig. A.4.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

553

That such procedures were open to challenge was recognized even by the great throng of writers who felt that progress in the art of war could only be made by taking a giant step backwards. Such theorists felt obliged to justify both their admiration for the ancients and their method of studying the past in order to improve the present. Like Machiavelli, they all felt that the virtu` of the Romans and the vices of their contemporaries were ‘as clear as the sun’; and they usually argued—reasonably enough—that the ancients had gained extraordinary victories on the field of battle, whereas modern armies (and particularly those active in Italy) seemed incapable of doing anything right. Indeed, towards the end of the sixteenth century, Francesco Patrizi, who was a sympathetic reader of Machiavelli, argued that Italy was a dreadful example of what happened to a province when the mestiere of war had been lost. Since the invasion of Charles VIII, he writes, there had not been a single house let alone state which had not suffered overthrow, misery, and death: ‘and this for no other reason than that the Italians know less about war than those who come from beyond the mountains to beat them in their own home’. Italian warriors, from great captains down to the common soldiers, not only think that they know all about warfare, but even manage to convince princes and republics that this is truly the case. Yet, the moment they come to the proof of battle, they are thrashed. They have lost every engagement and, Patrizi adds sarcastically, they have therein committed no more than 220 mortal errors. Their next recourse is to take refuge behind their fortifications, as though they had to be preserved like some precious treasure. And even that has done them no good whatsoever.102 This had been the universal refrain in Italy from the fourteenth century onwards. Everything had become corrupt, and nothing remained of the ‘vera militia’ save its name.103 The Italians were degenerate. Little remained of the old Roman stock. Now they were ‘nati di sangue bastardo et composti di varie misture’; went to war overburdened with impedimenta both material and human; 102 Patrizi, Paralleli (1594), sigs. þ2–3. 103 Lauro Gorgieri, Trattato della guerra, del soldato, del castellano, e come ha da essere uno general di esercito (Pesaro, 1555), prefatory letter by H.-M. Muzio, sig. A.2r–v.

554

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

and had developed a taste for fair foods and fine wines. It was all in stark contrast to the healthy hardships endured by the tough Roman legionaries who, unlike lily-livered contemporaries, had cheerfully slain their enemies in quantities.104 Why, grumbled Centorio, were modern battles so much less bloody than in the good old days?105 Admiration for the past was deeply ingrained. So, too, were the exemplars, the habits of thought, and the language of the GrecoRoman tradition. Pier’ Maria Contarini was another typical writer who despised modern Italians for their neglect of infantry, for their wars in which blood was ‘raro’, and killing ‘rarissime’, and for their military operations which were ridiculous spectacle and pomp rather than real conflict. Letters, said Contarini, had been the ruin of the Italians, who had claimed that professions such as philosophy and the law were more noble than arms, although they were, in fact, servile by comparison.106 No doubt Contarini meant every word of this: but his Corso di guerra which followed was nothing but a me´lange of conventional Latin tags, Italian sententiae, and historical exemplars both ancient and modern.107 Even writers determined to strike out in new directions found it difficult to break with their classical heritage. For example, in 1521 (that is the year of the first edition of Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra), there appeared Battista della Valle’s military textbook which, for some time, vied with Machiavelli’s treatise in popularity. It opens with a statement of the author’s intention to write on the basis of experience rather than of received authority. He acknowledges that there have been many famous writers on science, the military art, and the duel, who have composed useful works very worthy of remembrance, ‘in lofty style, and with neat, elegant and polished words’, but he feels that their work has been composed ‘solely by authority and imitation of other authors’. He, by contrast, has practised military exercises from his youth and can assert that he has ‘not written anything in my little book other than what I have tried through long experience’. This is a fine, 104 105 106 107

Antonio Girardi, Discorso (1558), fos. 18v–22v. Centorio, Discorsi (1559–68), Part V, p. 93. Pier’ Maria Contarini, Corso di guerra (1601), fo. 2v. Cf. above, n. 80.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

555

pragmatic sentiment. Yet, as Promis long ago pointed out, even where Della Valle writes on artillery and engineering—which one might have imagined would be the most modern aspects of his work—he depends heavily upon the customary classical authorities.108 We find a similar situation more than fifty years later in Thomas Procter’s Of the knowledge and conducte of warres (1578), which is introduced by a eulogy of the art of war and of the many valuable books written thereupon—although Procter regrets that there is little available in English for the ordinary reader. Only Vegetius and Machiavelli have been well translated: which aucthours being bothe expert in warres, and also verye learned, their industrie herein is of so much the more commendation, as those two qualityes are rare, and seldome mete together . . . Yet for that the saide Machiavel is deamed sumwhat diffuse in his treatyse, his opinions also not altogether agreeinge with all mens judgementes, nor reachinge to many matters mete for the state of our English warres: And Vegetius being a writer, when warres weare used in an other course, then they are nowe a dayes: Yt is therefore wished more to be done in this behalfe.109

Another fine sentiment: but Procter, like Della Valle, cannot emancipate himself from the ancients; and his text is largely 108 Battista della Valle, Vallo: libro continente appertenentie ad capitanii (Naples, 1521). I have not seen this first edition, and my quotation is from the second edn. (Venice, 1524), sig. Ar–v: ‘Quantunque molti famosi scriptori de scientia, e arte Militare e de Duello scripto habbiano opere molte utile e de memoria dignissime con altiloquo stilo, et terse elegante, et limate parole composte, nientedimeno la loro compositione e` stata solamente per authorita, et imitatione de altri authori, et non per propria exercitatione. Ma io el quale da mei teneri, et giovenil anni in gli exerciti de larme me son io exercitato non ho scripto altro in questo mio libretto exepto quello che per longa experientia ho experto.’ There is no adequate study of Della Valle: but for some information, see Carlo Promis, Dell’arte dell’ingegnere e dell’artigliere in Italia dalla sua origine sino al principio del XVI secolo: memorie storiche (Turin, 1841), 61; Mariano d’Ayala, Bibliografia militare-Italiana antica e moderna (Turin, 1854), 96; Max Ja¨hns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften (Munich, 1889–91), i. 704; Cockle, no. 765; F. L. Taylor, The Art of War in Italy 1494–1529 (Cambridge, 1921), 162–4. It is sad that, with regard to military bibliography and the history of military theory (as opposed to military organization), it is still necessary to refer to such elderly literature. 109 Thomas Procter, Of the knowledge and conducte of warres (1578), ‘The Preface’.

556

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

derived from Vegetius and from other classically inspired authors including Machiavelli himself. Even the distinguished astronomer and mathematician Thomas Digges, who was one of the first English writers seriously to apply a knowledge of mathematics to military affairs—and who might, on that account, be considered a modernist—finds it impossible to deviate either from Machiavelli or from Machiavelli’s classical sources. War is different from ancient times, said Digges, and we must modify ancient customs to suit modern needs: not because modern techniques are too advanced, but because the superiority of the ancients is so marked that their practices cannot possibly be emulated by corrupt contemporaries.110 Nevertheless, there were writers who shared Barwick’s scepticism concerning the relevance of the ancients: and Digges, despite his reverence for the Romans, provides a clue. The increasing interest of mathematicians in the art of war was both a symptom and a cause of change. It was a symptom because it reflected an awareness of increasing technological complexity both in weaponry and in fortification. It was a cause because the application of mathematics furthered technological advance; and, at the same time, the abstraction whereby men and materials alike became the subject of equations and mathematical tables eroded the human aspirations of old-fashioned writers on war, as apotheosized in Machiavelli’s belief that military discipline inculcated civic virtue. The idea was growing that the vast combination of virtues traditionally deemed essential for the successful commander might be replaced by a purely technical expertise; and, increasingly, military textbooks were enhanced by tables, charts, and calculations which, though not invariably useful, were a clear indication of the way warfare was changing.111

110 Digges, Stratioticos, 177. On Digges, see Francis R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of English Scientific Writings from 1500 to 1645 (Baltimore, 1937). For similar views on ancient and modern armies, see Frachetta, Prencipe (1599), 239 ff. 111 For a salutary caveat on the practical utility of much of this material, see The Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. John X. Evans (Oxford, 1972), Introduction, pp. lxxviii–lxxxii.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

557

One of the most important figures in these developments was Girolamo Cataneo, who contrived—within the brief space of the preliminaries of his Tavole brevissime (1563)—to combine the God of Battles, human ingenuity, and an arithmeticized Vegetius. Warfare, he assured his dedicatee, was recognized by all worthy men as the most important preservative of life; and whoever behaves himself honourably therein: representeth nothing more then the true image of the most great and omnipotent God: Because among the most high titles attributed (according to his will) to his most devine Majestie in the old and holie law he hath alwayes bene content to be reverenced and called by the name of the God of hostes.

Cataneo then addressed his reader, explaining that he had composed his book: To the ende that everie meane witte, may understand all that which I, by the space of thirtie yeares and more, have observed from wise captaines, prooved by experience in person, and learned aswel by the warres, as by the Mathematicall discipline: Whereby ech one may know how at neede, valiantlie to resist the unset of the enemie, and that for the most times, not so much by force, as by policie.

And, in the following year, Cataneo applied his mathematical skills to the art of fortification.112 The belief that mathematical dexterity could provide a short cut to military success was most strikingly expressed in the Institution de l’ordre militaire (1584) by the Lyonnais mathematician Pierre Savonne. This work, too, provides a modern slant on the old Vegetian theme that a well-ordered small army must invariably triumph over an ill-ordered large army. Everything now depends upon arithmetic, an art ‘plus divin qu’humain’; and Philibert du Bois, in his preliminary verses addressed to the author, rhapsodizes about the techniques which now enable the most dull-witted 112 Girolamo Cataneo, Tavole brevissime per sapere con prestezza quante file vanno a` formare una giustissima battaglia (Brescia, 1563), sig. a˜.3. My quotation is from the English translation, Most briefe tables etc. (1574) which, somewhat ironically, was issued with editions of Whitehorne’s Arte of warre (see STC, nos. 4790, 4791, 17165, 17166). See also Cataneo’s Opera nuova di fortificare, offendere et difendere: et far alloggiamenti campali, secondo l’uso di guerra (Brescia, 1564), fo. 2.

558

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

military man to get his troops into battle array. By the rules of this mathematical art even the most wretched soldier will, without too much trouble, seem a good captain.113 The tables of Cataneo, Savonne, and other military arithmeticians sought to apply their inhuman mathematical rules to the organization of human beings in time of war. At the same time, Cataneo himself and a host of other authors were engaged in purely technical researches which, however bizarre they may sometimes have been—like the eccentric ballistics of Niccolo` Tartaglia—were likewise helping to revolutionize the art of war.114 From the late fifteenth century there had been an increasing interest in gunnery and in its application on the field of battle; and, related to this, was the rapidly developing art of fortification. Machiavelli had recognized, albeit grudgingly, the relationship between artillery and architecture; but he could see no future for firearms on the battlefield, and did not consider that the very connection between cannons and fortification was, of itself, going to alter the nature of field battles. As we have seen, one major criticism levelled against Machiavelli as a military theorist has been his failure to appreciate the significance of the new weaponry. He devotes a chapter of the Discorsi (II. 17) to the problem How greatly should artillery be esteemed by armies at the present time; and whether that opinion of it, universally held, is true. The ‘universally held’ opinion is that modern weaponry has outmoded military usage so 113 ‘Si bravement, mon SAVONNE / Si tost, si facilemant / Le plus lourd entandement / Des forts enfans de Bellone / Enseigne de bien ranger / Un bel escadron leger, / Que sans prandre trop de paine / Le plus malotru Soudart / Paroistra bon Capitaine / Par les regles de son art.’ See Pierre Savonne, Instruction de l’ordre militaire. Traitant de bataillons carrez d’hommes (Lyon, 1583), 8–9. Cf. Giovanni Francesco Fiammelli, Il principe difeso (1604), 2, 127–8, who maintains that a knowledge of mathematics is not only useful but necessary for the ‘perfetto guerriero’. 114 On Tartaglia’s Nova scientia (Venice, 1537) and Quesiti e Inventioni diverse (Venice, 1546), see Stillman Drake and I. E. Drabkin, Mechanics in SixteenthCentury Italy: Selections from Tartaglia, Benedetti, Guido Ubaldo, and Galileo (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969), esp. 16–26, 63–143, 400–1. See also Cockle, nos. 38, 658, 660. For an important and stimulating examination of the relation between changing technology and the art of war, see Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Baltimore and London, 1997).

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

559

that war will before long be reduced to a matter of artillery: ‘talche la guerra si ridurra` col tempo in su le artiglierie’. This view Machiavelli rejects absolutely. Without the ancient virtu` artillery can avail nothing against a determined opponent. He returns to the problem in the Arte della guerra where, in his illustrative battle, the artillery can fire only once before being overcome by Machiavelli’s model army; and even that single discharge passes harmlessly overhead through the impossibility of getting the guns to fire at the correct trajectory. Again he raises the question of the relevance of ancient military usage, which he defends on the dubious ground that, since nothing more effective has been found to deal with modern artillery, one might as well follow the well-tried methods of the past.115 I have pointed out elsewhere the incoherence of Machiavelli’s arguments in this matter; and I believe that the most apt comment remains Humfrey Barwick’s sneer at the famous mock encounter: ‘it is a sport to hear how he does by himself fight a battle in words’.116 None the less, that incoherence and ‘sport’ did not prevent Machiavelli’s dicta on firearms from becoming yet another topos for later writers. Some were content merely to repeat or paraphrase what Machiavelli had already written. Girardi, for example, was convinced that, when it came to real battles, the sword would achieve more than the arquebus.117 Symeoni and Garimberto both posed the Machiavellian question concerning the effectiveness of ancient virtu` in the face of modern technological developments; and both believed that it would have emerged triumphant.118 Their view was shared by Patrizi, who confessed that he was moved to laughter by artillery enthusiasts claiming that Alexander, Caesar, and all the Greeks and Romans would have been blasted off the battlefield by modern cannon. He retorted that their good battle order would have resulted in the 115 Machiavelli, Arte della guerra, 3 (Mazzoni and Casella, 309a–312b). 116 Anglo (1969), 148–51; Barwick, Breefe discourse, fo. 30v. For a hagiographic assessment of Machiavelli’s ‘battle’, see Gilbert, ‘The Renaissance of the Art of War’, 16–18. 117 A. Girardi, Discorso (1558), fo. 6: ‘nella giornate piu si trovano, che muoiono di spade, che di achibusi’. 118 Symeoni, Cesar renouvelle´, fos. 32–34v; Garimberto. Il Capitano Generale (1556), 118–31.

560

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

artillery being even less effective against them than it was against modern troops. He considers the negative aspects of heavy guns and argues that, for the armies that employ them, they are more a hindrance than a help due to the difficulty, slowness, and expense of transporting them. Indeed, the delay they impose on the march ‘has many times taken away some fine opportunities for doing well’.119 In Patrizi’s estimate, modern missile weapons, both heavy cannon and arquebus, are virtually useless. And, when it comes to the crucial question as to which weapon has killed most men, Patrizi agrees with Girardi that the sword wins hands down and he demonstrates—with a glee reminiscent of Machiavelli’s at the sanguinary battles of Castruccio Castracani—how many people have been slain in combat by good, old-fashioned cold steel.120 That Patrizi should specifically defend the value of theoretical, historically orientated military writing is to be expected for, like Machiavelli, he was a word warrior.121 But other sorts of men were saying similar things. Peter Whitehorne, for instance, also discussed the value of artillery and how the Romans might have fared against it; and he resolved the question by translating the whole of the relevant chapter of the Discorsi (II. 17)—and this despite the fact that he was himself an experienced soldier and had just devoted several chapters to some very practical remarks on gunnery.122 The mathematician Digges comments on the same issue, and combines several passages from Machiavelli to express his own opinion. To hear some soldiers speak, scoffs Digges, you would think that artillery had so altered war that the Roman ordinances were ‘meere Toyes’: As though the Heavens and Elementes had chaunged their Nature, or Men and Weapons so altered, as no humaine reason might attaine to 119 F. Patrizi, Paralleli (1594), Part I, Lib. V, ch. 9, pp. 100–3: ‘quanto allo incontro, sono gli impedimenti, et li danni a gli esserciti, che la conducono, la difficolta, la tardanza, e la spesa del tirarlasi dietro? che la tardanza sola in marciando, moltissime fiate ha tolto di belle occasioni di far bene.’ 120 Ibid., Part II, Lib. III, chs. 4–5, p. 40. 121 Montaigne, too, expressed delight at having conversed with an Italian who despised artillery, esteemed what Machiavelli had written on this subject, and adopted his opinions. See Montaigne, Journal de voyage, ed. F. Rigolot (Paris, 1992), 186. 122 Whitehorne, Certaine wayes, fos. 34v–38.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

561

consider the difference. Or as though the Roman orders for the field (a very few excepted) were not more convenient, more serviceable, and more Invincible, (all alterations considered) even in these our dayes, than they were for that age wherein they were used and practised.123

Twenty years later, Girolamo Frachetta, another writer who discusses warfare on the unacknowledged basis of Machiavelli, assures his Prencipe that artillery is of little consequence in battle because it can only fire once, or twice at most.124 This kind of statement was dubious enough when Machiavelli, blinded by the sun of Roman greatness, failed to heed the lessons of battles such as Cerignola, Ravenna, Novara, and Marignano. Uncritical repetition in 1599 seems almost mindless.125 We are here nudging against the very limits of the military tradition within which Machiavelli and those like him were writing. It was bound by maxims, tied by topoi, and fettered by the very chains which had constrained Machiavelli—a disjunctive approach to practical issues where everything had to be good or bad, right or wrong, all or nothing. It was not that such writers were foolish to harp on the value of strict discipline. But to stress this required neither percipience nor originality, for it had been an article of faith among military writers from classical antiquity. The problem was how to inculcate discipline: and that posed immense practical difficulties. Similarly, it was not unreasonable to point out the flaws of modern missile weaponry and the perils of excessive reliance upon fortifications: but the weaknesses diagnosed here were frequently due not to intrinsic demerits but rather to that failure of discipline already noted as the principal military malady of modern times. Bemoaning the lack of virtu` induced by artillery and fortresses did 123 Digges, Stratioticos, sig. A.4r. Cf. John Bingham, The art of embattailing an army. Or the second part of Aelians Tacticks (1629), sig. A.4, where he writes: ‘As for them that hold, that great Ordnance will not admit any of these ancient formes in our dayes, I hold that for a dreame, and not worthy the answering.’ 124 Frachetta, Il prencipe (1599), 237–8. 125 It seems especially absurd when compared with a short military treatise written a century earlier which—although opening conventionally with an exhortation that one must have a ‘bonne et Juste querelle’ when going to war—states that the capture of one’s artillery is like losing half the battle: ‘Et ordonner Lartillerie daller a la plus graunt seurete que lon pourra car si elle estoit prinse se seroit une demye bataille perdue.’ See BNF fr. 1245, fo. 4v.

562

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

nothing to advance military effectiveness. Once technological developments have taken place, it is fatuous to argue that they should never have happened. Renaissance princes and their military advisers would no more un-invent cannonry and new architectural skills than their modern counterparts will un-invent nuclear power and rocket technology. The oft-repeated question as to the hypothetical result of a conflict between the expert Roman legionaries and an ill-disciplined modern army, hampered rather than aided by its new technology, was an empty formulation. What should have been asked was how those Roman troops would have succeeded against a modern army equally disciplined but with all the new guns and walls at its command? How might Caesar’s men have fared against a force such as that amassed by Gustavus Adolphus at Lu¨tzen? Not—one might venture—too well. At the very end of the sixteenth century, Cesare Campana compiled an Arte militare from the writings of a famous literary condottiere, Mario Savorgnano, who had died in 1574. The work is largely an analysis, with diagrammatic pictures, of battles ancient and modern; but it argues that artillery could rarely be deployed to maximum advantage because of the difficulties generally imposed by terrain; and that those who put more trust in guns than in their infantrymen were likely to prove vulnerable against troops with superior morale. However, this was not an argument not to make the best possible use of guns. Such weapons might, in their cumbrousness and limited efficacy, seem comparable to the ancients’ use of elephants: but, as Savorgnano himself admitted, ‘ben son meno ambigue degli elefanti’. Guns could inflict damage at a distance.126 The projectile power of an elephant is insignificant. Granted that guns were not, as one supporter claimed, the ‘fondamento e nervo principale della guerra’,127 it still could not be denied that firearms were changing warfare, however much the Renaissance moralist might lament the fact, and however much modern scholarship may stress their comparative inefficiency. Heavy cannon had already made an impact on siege techniques and fortifications long before the end of the fifteenth century; and 126 Savorgnano, Arte militare (1599), 264. 127 Giovanni Francesco Fiammelli, Il principe difeso (1604), 171.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

563

experimentation, research, and development continued ceaselessly thereafter. Smaller firearms were being used effectively from entrenched positions, in combination with heavy cavalry charges, in the late fifteenth century. And however primitive, cumbersome, and inaccurate firearms remained throughout the sixteenth century (and it is as easy now to underestimate as to overestimate their capacity), they became popular and quickly ousted the older missile weapons—despite a desperate rearguard action fought by advocates of the bow well into the seventeenth century.128 Some of the more articulate gunners were not happy with the lowly status accorded their brethren. What did it matter, snapped Gabriello Busca, that the ancients excluded those who managed their machines from the number of soldiery? Modern warfare was different, as was exemplified by the French whose kings, from the time of Charles VIII onwards, had honoured ‘i canonieri’ and ‘tutti gli officiali’, and had accorded them ‘grandi e honorati privileggi’.129 Nor was it only artillery specialists who took a stand against neoclassical criticism. Centorio degli Hortensii, for example, was an avid admirer of the Romans. He despised modern battles for their comparative lack of bloodshed, and was an enthusiastic advocate of war as being more able than peace to lead men to the heights of true glory. Yet even Centorio was uncertain about artillery. It was, he felt, the worst of all the infinite mortal inventions for war. No walls, bastions, or towers, however immense, could resist its violence. Indeed, its continuous battering could bring down mountains and flatten the earth itself. It was, he exclaims, an instrument more diabolical than human, which imitates the thunder and lightning of Heaven: ‘Instromento veramente (se tanto pero` mi sia lecito di dire) piu diabolico, che humano, et imitatore de tuoni, e de fulgori del Cielo’. Its use ought to be 128 See J. R. Hale’s Introduction to his edition of Sir John Smythe, Certain discourses military (Ithaca, NY, 1964), pp. xli–lvi, for a concise account of the bow vs. arquebus controversy in England. See also Bow versus Gun, ed. E. G. Heath (East Ardley, Wakefield, 1973), which introduces and reprints Smythe’s Certain discourses and Barwick’s Breefe discourse; and The Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. Evans, Introduction, pp. xcv–xcviii. 129 Gabriello Busca, Instruttione de’ bombardieri (Turin, 1598). My reference is to the letter, addressed to an anonymous friend, with which Busca concludes his work. On Busca, see the article in the DBI.

564

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

prohibited among Christians or at least limited to war against the Infidel. Yet, despite all this, Centorio conceded that artillery had become one of the most important elements in every army, and the commander had to consider how to make the best use of it.130 Much more suggestive of a new realism was the deliberately anti-doctrinaire, flexible approach to battle organization which characterizes the Discorsi militari (1583) of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. While accepting the primacy of infantry, Francesco Maria argued that an army is like a human body which can only function properly when in possession of all its organs and limbs. He accepted that artillery could not give an army automatic victory, but was equally critical of the notion that it was entirely useless. It needed to be used at the right time and in the appropriate manner; and just as cavalry and infantry had to be blended in due proportion, so had artillery, swords, pikes, and arquebuses. For Francesco Maria, the need to maintain balance and flexibility was paramount so that, paradoxically, his golden rule was not always to follow the same rule: ‘questa regola e` verissima che buon regola e`, non servare sempre la stessa regola’.131 It was certainly difficult to lay down hard and fast rules for military engagements, although theorists constantly tried to do it. As the sixteenth century progressed so warfare became increasingly complex, and generalizations are rendered unsatisfactory by the diversity of armed conflict in different places, at different times, under different physical conditions, and between different groups of adversaries. Especially perplexing for the orderlyminded were the messy siege campaigns in the Low Countries: and we are here teetering on the brink of an intellectual abyss—the so-called ‘military revolution’ of early modern Europe. Various theories have been proposed in an attempt to render the material more navigable if not less intractable. It has been argued that the introduction of the handgun brought about considerable changes simply through its initial inefficiency which, coupled with its 130 Ascanio Centorio degli Hortensii, Discorsi di guerra (1558–68), V. 4, pp. 51–61; V. 8, pp. 86–98; V. 12, pp. 122–31. 131 Discorsi militari dell’eccellentissimo sig. Francesco Maria della Rovere Duca d’Urbino (1583), fos. 3, 18v, 31v–32r. Francesco Maria’s view that the army was like a human body was quoted in Savorgnano, Arte militare, 27.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

565

popularity (due to the comparatively low level of training, strength, and fitness required by the new weaponry), resulted in a serious decline of firepower which was then remedied by employing the new missile weapons en masse.132 When this development was combined with the huge squares of pikemen used so effectively by the Swiss and the Germans, the end result was the massive Spanish formation known as the tercio—vast in numbers, slow in attack, but of great durability in defence.133 This, the argument continues, in conjunction with the increasing elaboration and strength of fortification, induced the defensive mentality which dominated military thinking in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and which was so lamented by scholars, thirsting for blood in the comfort of their studies. Something of the stalemate occasioned by the parallel development of artillery and fortresses had been anticipated by Girolamo Ruscelli in a letter appended to Zanchi’s Del modo de fortificar le citta` in 1554. Ruscelli extolled his own age as having excelled the ancients in many arts, and not least in that of military architecture. Archimedes was all very well; but there could be no doubt that his inventions would have availed little against modern artillery. Yet 132 Evidence for diminished firepower is hypothetical because demonstrations of the bow’s superiority over the arquebus remain suspect. Doubtless, a fit archer, shooting at a fixed target at a level trajectory, could loose off many more accurate shots within a given time than could the arquebusier. But he was rarely shooting at a fixed target; to achieve distance he had to fire upwards; and it is not certain that the effect of falling arrows on heavily armoured cavalrymen would have been as devastating as Smythe, Harleian MS 4685, fo. 12, asserted. Smythe argues that the bow is ‘first in the ffeild against horsemen, though it bee shot at the highest randome, onely with the waight of the fall, it galleth both horse and man, and though the wound be not mortall, yet both horse and man are thereby made unserviceable then and long after, yf so bee they escape death.’ 133 Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution: 1560–1660 (Belfast, n.d.), repr. in his Essays on Swedish History (1967). See also Geoffrey Parker, ‘The ‘‘Military Revolution’ 1560–1660—a Myth?’, Journal of Modern History, 48 (1976), 195–214, repr. in his Spain and the Netherlands 1559–1659 (1979); and his The Military Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), 6–44. See also Hall, Weapons and Warfare, 176–9. For a succinct account of the historical debate, as it had developed a decade ago, see David Parrott, ‘The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe’, History Today, 42 (Dec. 1992), 21–7; but there is more material, and a superbly sceptical examination of the practical limits of classical scholarship, in Parrott’s Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624–1642 (2001), 24–38.

566

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

God always provides men with remedies for the evils which they themselves create. Ruscelli does not know whether it was some malign celestial influence or some diabolical spirit which had introduced ‘this most pernicious ruin of artillery into the world, to compete with the thunderbolt’. But he is certain that nobody would have been able to live or sleep securely anywhere had not the great goodness of God inspired human wit to devise modern techniques of fortification to cope with this ‘infernal scourge’.134 By the end of the sixteenth century the balance between besieged and besiegers, and between massed formations bent on defence, had become so even that it was diagnosed by the shrewd Paolo Paruta as the very reason why modern commanders, however brave and however experienced they might be, could not hope to emulate the wonderful martial achievements of the ancients. The strength and numerosity of fortresses were such that no army dared advance without first subduing them; and this, inevitably, led to slow and indecisive campaigns. Similarly, firearms made armies slower of movement and reluctant to risk pitched battles. The English essayist Sir William Cornwallis pithily summarized the situation, for good or ill: ‘thus hath artillery put the auncient Romain and Graecian Histories out of fashion in many things’.135 But had it? machiavelli and historical reconstruction Many historians of the art of war—whatever their stance with regard to the ‘military revolution’—have agreed that the reforms encouraged by Maurits of Nassau, between 1590 and 1609, were rich in implications for ‘modern’ warfare. Yet, if they are correct in this, then we are again confronted by paradoxes. From the reconstruction of his library, we know many of the military books Maurits owned and, perhaps, even read.136 Rather surprisingly, 134 Giovambattista de’ Zanchi, Del modo di fortificar le citta` (Venice, 1554), 60–1.

135 Paruta, Discorsi, II. 6, pp. 499–524; Sir William Cornwallis, Essayes (London, 1600–1), sig. Ff.4v. 136 For a study of Maurits’s library, see J. P. Puype and A. A.Wiekart, Van Maurits naar Munster: Tactiek en triomf van het Staatse leger (Delft, 1998), 16–52.

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

567

although he owned a French translation of the Discorsi (1579), he did not possess Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra. But he did have Fourquevaux’s adaptation of it along with a good selection of treatises in Italian and French by many of those bookish military theoreticians who might be described as either Machiavelliderivatives or Machiavelli-analogues. He also owned an impressive array of ancient military and historical authors, including many key figures—Aelian, Livy, Polybius, Polyaenus, and the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI—together with relevant exegetical works such as Patrizi’s comparison between Polybius, Livy, and Dionysius Halicarnassus; and his Paralleli between ancient and modern armies. And, of course, there were several works by Justus Lipsius, including his commentary on Polybius, the De militia romana, which, it has been argued, strongly influenced Maurits.137 We know, too, that in a letter dated 8 December 1594 William Louis of Nassau wrote to his cousin Maurits about an idea he claims to have derived from Aelian. This was the countermarch which, said William Louis, could be adapted to produce a continuous hail of fire from row after row of musketeers.138 The idea, it has been maintained, was so adapted and the constant drill necessary for its successful application became famous throughout Europe. At last, with the creation of a wholly modern military system, the long debate over how best to combine ancient and modern techniques had been resolved. In Louis de Montgommery’s La milice franc¸oise of 1610, it is noted that, while the Turks believed that their janissaries followed the ancient discipline of the Macedonians, this was even more true of ‘La discipline de Hollande’, which had the same weapons, battle arrays, manoeuvres, and even the same terms as in Aelian; and, says Mongommery, ‘I have filled this book with the conformities between the discipline of Holland and the ancient phalanx of the Macedonians’.139 137 On Lipsius and Maurits, see Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, 1982). 138 See Parker, Military Revolution (1988), 21–2. 139 Louis de Montgommery, La milice franc¸oise (Paris, 1610), 100 ff.: ‘La discipline de Hollande en approche d’avantage, tant pour les armes que pour l’ordre des bataillons et la maniere de combatre: car ils ont des chefs de file comme les Macedoniens: ils portent la longue picque: ils usent des mesmes formalite´s, de

568

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

From the standpoint of the classical revivalists, the issue was even more forcefully stated by John Bingham in the preface to his English translation of Aelian in 1616: Howbeit the practise of Aelian’s precepts hath long lien wrapped up in darknes, and buried (as it were) in the ruines of time, untill it was revived, & restored to light not long since in the united provinces of the lowCountreis, which Countries at this day are the Schoole of war, whither the most Martiall spirits of Europe resort to lay downe the Apprentiship of their service in Armes, and it was revived by the direction of that Heroicall Prince Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, Governour, and Generall of the said Countries, a Prince borne and bred up in Armes, and . . . for skill, experience, judgement, and military literature comparable to the greatest Generals, that ever were.

Several years later, when Bingham completed the second volume of his Aelian, he defended his continuing interest in an ancient author on the grounds that, although battles were rare in modern warfare whereas sieges were common: This manner will not last alwayes, nor is there any Conqueste to be made without Battailes. He that is master of the field, may dispose of his affaires as he listeth . . . Neither can any man be Master of the field without Battaile, in ordering whereof, that Generall that is most skilfull seldome misseth of winning the day: experience of former times cleares this.140

In fact, such changes were already taking place on the Continent, and new methods of combining shock and missile tactics, together with new standards of military organization and technology, were radically altering the nature of warfare. Thus, if we accept the importance of Aelian (as assumed by Montgommery and Bingham), it could be argued that the effective combination of modern missile weaponry with close combat and increased mobility, achieved by Maurits’s military heirs in the seventeenth century, tourner marcher faire front qu’ils souloient faire, et mesmes des termes, comme nous voyons en la discipline d’Aelianus.’ He gives examples of similarities, and continues: ‘J’emplirois ce livre des conformitez de la discipline de Hollande avec l’ancienne Phalange des Macedoniens.’ 140 John Bingham, The Tacticks of Aelian or art of embattailing an army after the Grecian manner (1616), sig. A.2r–v; Thev Art of embattailing an army, or the second part of Aelians Tacticks (1629), sig. A.3 .

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

569

was inspired by those very ancients who had been such an embarrassment and humiliation to earlier military theorists. This is, however, altogether too facile and leaves far too much unexplained, including some crucial practical questions. As many critics have pointed out, Maurits was as disinclined to venture pitched battle as were his contemporaries; and there is much to be said for the view that his successes were due less to superior skill than to the scaling down of operations by his Spanish adversaries, their failure to put an adequate army against him, and their inferiority at sea. From the standpoint of our own concern with classical scholarship and bookish military theory, there is, moreover, a fundamental question to be addressed. How far could historical reconstruction really be translated into practice? It is true that Maurits’s organization for the army in the field broke away from the massive formations which had been dominant and that this necessitated constant drilling. Yet, as far as drill itself was concerned, Spanish methods had themselves long proved successful, and it is difficult to see why it was necessary to read what Aelian had to say about countermarches before anyone could come up with a way of producing rolling fire. The manoeuvre itself is neither complex nor significantly different from the Spanish system whereby musketeers fired and then retired to reload while the next row of musketeers advanced to fire in their turn. Even Maurits’s library raises doubts about the effectiveness of his military research, for there is a striking gap in his collection. Of the fifty or more Spanish military books on organization, discipline, gunnery, fortification, and so on which appeared in the sixteenth century (many of them generated by the wars in Flanders), Maurits owned just one, an Italian version of Luis Collado’s artillery manual.141 It is difficult to know whether there is more to this than a deep-rooted antipathy to all things Iberian: but neither Vegetius nor Frontinus, who both urged the necessity of knowing an enemy’s designs, would have approved.

141 Luys Collado, Pratica manuale di Artiglieria. Dal Sr. Luigi Collado (Venice, 1586).

570

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

I wonder, too, about the famed influence said to have been exerted by Justus Lipsius upon Maurits. Could any practical military man have derived profit from Lipsius’s De militia romana? The work, without doubt, displays hydropic erudition. It also reveals extraordinary ignorance concerning modern warfare, and an alarming credulity with regard to classical sources. How much confidence can one have in a scholar who solemnly assesses poetic evidence that the ancient slingers could hurl leaden bullets with such violence that they melted en route to their target?142 Indeed, how much confidence can one have in any Renaissance discussion of ancient military formations, when they are all based upon inadequate and anachronistic classical sources; and when they all presuppose flat terrain and troops geometrically arranged in patterns which could be altered according to a beautifully synchronized choreography? Are the classical foundations of the reforms initiated by Maurits and his cousins (and subsequently put into practice by Gustavus Adolfus) illusory? Humanistic froth? Does the long debate about ancient and modern military formations tell us far more about the intellectual habits of the learned than about Renaissance military activity? I am inclined to think that it does. As Sir John Hale once put it, with his customary precision and succinctness, ‘Just as no army was composed by the book, no battle was fought by it.’ So, in conclusion, I again pose the question: how may one relate Machiavelli to any of this? Inspiration from the classical authorities was certainly sought and found in his Arte della guerra and Discorsi. But it came even more effectively from those classical authorities themselves, or from the superior scholarship of post-Machiavelli classical commentators. Certainly more important than these archaisms was the continually growing body of factual material which was becoming available to military theorists and activists alike, in the shape of descriptions of battles, campaigns, and wars.143 Here, 142 De militia romana, in Iusti Lipsi opera omnia (Antwerp, 1637), iii. 224a–b. 143 Some of these works are encyclopedic in scope and evidently designed for rapid reference. A good example is the vast collection of battle narratives from all times and all nations—beginning with Nino against Zoroastra and ending with Christians against Turks on 7 Oct. 1571—in the two volumes produced by Giovanni Carlo Saraceni, I fatti d’arme famosi (Venice, 1600). According to its

M A C H I A VE L L I ’ S M I L IT A R Y T H IN K I N G

571

too, classical inspiration was not lacking: but, inevitably, the weight of modern examples came to exceed that of the ancient; discussion became more analytical and less like the literary set-pieces favoured by Machiavelli and his humanist antecedents; and the process was aided by the development of diagrammatic representations of a scope beyond anything found in the Arte della guerra or in the editions of Aelian, which had introduced this kind of pictorial clarification.144 Above all, technical and mathematical treatises poured from the presses of Europe, helping to document the constantly evolving experiments both in offensive weaponry and modes of defence. Real warfare had started to change before Machiavelli; it changed during his lifetime; it continued to change after his death; and it developed along lines very different from those recommended in the Arte della guerra. Nobody but the wildest members of Machiavelli’s fan club would suggest that he was responsible either for the reassertion of an offensive mentality during the seventeenth century; the effective combination of heavy artillery, small arms, infantry, and cavalry; or the vast standing armies and permanent military administrations which slowly came into being. All these stand at a vast distance from the small-town humanism of the Arte della guerra. Machiavelli enjoyed the esteem of many theorists throughout the sixteenth century; his military topoi were repeatedly worked over; and his writings on war were reissued, in French, German, and Latin translations, well into the seventeenth century. But this is the ultimate paradox. In the history of bookish military thinking, Machiavelli occupies a prominent place. In the history of warfare, both ‘theoricke and practike’, he was an irrelevance. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa was, perhaps, both more prophetic compiler, this work is especially necessary for all princes, captains, soldiers, and those who have public responsibilities. 144 On the early development of such diagrams, see J. R. Hale, ‘A Humanistic Visual Aid: The Military Diagram in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Studies, 2 (1988), 280–98. For some later examples of the way in which the genre could develop, see Aurelio Cicuta, Della disciplina militare (1566); Cesare d’Evoli, Delle ordinanze et battaglie (Rome, 1586); Aliprando Capriolo, Ritratti di cento capitani illustri intagliati da Alip. Cap. Con i lor fatti in guerra da lui brevamente scritti (Rome, 1596); Mario Savorgnano, Arte militari (Venice, 1599).

572

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

and more perceptive than he himself realized when, in his attack upon the art of war, he passed this judgement on Machiavelli and similar writers: ‘Hi artis doctores, sed speculativi, non tam periculosi ut sunt practici’—‘these searching teachers of Arte, are not so perilouse as the practisers’.145 145 Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, De incertitudine & vanitate scientiarum declamatio (Cologne, 1530), sig. r.6v; Of the vanitie of artes and sciences, Englished by Ja. San[ford] (1569), fo. 126v.

16 Systematic Immorality: The Courtier’s Art ‘Machiavellisme: subtill policie, cunning roguerie’. This is how Randle Cotgrave defined the word ‘Machiavellisme’ in his great Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues.1 By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Machiavelli’s name had been transformed from a proper to a common, and thoroughly improper, noun; and, as we have seen, his reputation had become so malodorous that, in Donne’s Ignatius his Conclave, published in the same year as Cotgrave’s Dictionarie, Loyola uses it to destroy Machiavel’s case for entry into Lucifer’s inner sanctum. It is not so much that Machiavel had not caused harmful innovations, but rather that everybody recognized him as a thoroughly bad lot and, as Cotgrave makes clear, his name had become synonymous not merely with political duplicity but rather with ‘cunning roguery’ in general. Indeed, by far the greater number of references to his name are of this kind. He came to personify the worldly-wise man who aims to succeed by any means, and this use of his name as a generalized term of opprobrium was so widespread that it is scarcely worth noting examples. That they have virtually nothing to do with what Machiavelli wrote, or how he himself behaved during his public career, is evident. He had become a mere figure of speech. Yet the metaphor is worth assaying. This chapter is a greatly expanded version of my lecture The Courtier’s Art: Systematic Immorality in the Renaissance (Swansea, 1983). 1 A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Compiled by Randle Cotgrave (1611; repr. Columbia, SC, 1950). Cotgrave’s next word is ‘Machiavellizer’, which he defines thus: To Machiavellize it; to practise Machiavellisme.

574

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

We have already observed that various extremist doctrines—the enthusiasm for deceit in writings on the art of war; the gleeful panegyrics of duplicity and mass murder by Capilupi and others; the ad hoc pragmatism of the Huguenots; the late sixteenthcentury advocacy of political assassination; the tergivization and equivocation of the Jesuits; and, in general, the complete severance of public morality from conventionally accepted norms of decency—owe nothing to Machiavelli, despite their common identification with his name. But what of another ugly literary phenomenon: the use of evil means in the pursuance of personal advancement? In the early decades of the seventeenth century, a little collection of aphorisms, the Avvertimenti politici utilissimi per la corte, allegedly by a certain Count Verrua, was circulating in manuscript and ultimately found its way into print in an exceedingly rare volume under the name of a different author, and with both place and date omitted to deepen its obscurity.2 The aphorisms themselves are, however, not at all obscure, for they advise a courtier on the best ways to succeed in his particular world, whose corruptness the author recognizes but chooses to ignore 2 The printed book, with eighty-four aphorisms, is entitled Avvertimenti del Cardinal Commendone per un cortigiano and concludes (pp. 59–63) with Delli Segnale da quali si conosce l’huomo prudente. This volume is in the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France (*E.3502) where it is catalogued under the name of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone. Commendone (1524–84) was a significant ecclesiastical diplomat and, on one occasion, even a likely candidate for election to the Papacy though not, perhaps, so likely a candidate for the authorship of anticlerical aphorisms. His career is set forth in Antonio Maria Graziani, De vita J. F. Commendoni, cardinalis, libri IV (Paris, 1669). The Avvertimenti (with eighty-two aphorisms) was edited by Domenico Carutti, ‘Avvertimenti politici per quelli che vogliono entrare in corte’, Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria, Miscellanea, 1 (1862), 321–71, where the author is putatively (though not certainly) identified as Filiberto Gerardo Scaglia, conte di Verrua, and where the editor assigns the work, on internal evidence, to the very last years of the 16th c. or the opening years of the 17th. Carutti does not refer to the printed version of his text or its attribution to Commendone, but lists seven manuscripts in Italian libraries and two in Paris. There are many other manuscript versions of the aphorisms, including BL Royal 14.A.XVIII, fos. 196–215; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ital.g.1 (formerly Western 31088); and several at the BNF (MS. fr. Supple´ment 725; MSS it. 424, fos. 119–91; 708; 635, fos. 134–57; 683, fos. 1–29). All my references are to the 17th-c. printed Avvertimenti in the BNF, which differs from, and is fuller than, the version printed by Carutti.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

575

(no. XVII).3 They warn the courtier to serve only those masters who can advance his career; and to learn by ‘subterranean methods’ the prince’s vices without letting this spying become apparent (no. VII).4 Shameless adulation is perilous and must be shunned; but moderate and covert flattery is most useful because everyone loves to hear himself praised (no. VIII). How, though, should one go about this profitable task? The Avvertimenti provide full instructions. Watch the prince closely; choose your time and place; and then gratify his ears with compliments which are especially effective if they contain at least some element of truth. A cunning master, whose wiles can only be penetrated with great effort, is very dangerous; and it is vital not to reveal that you understand his guile. Give an impression of admiring his wit or some other virtue; seek to delude the artful with artifice; imitate his cunning—but with such ‘delicacy that you are not discovered’ (no. IX).5 Though your master be full of vices, seek to palliate them with words, ‘because all vices have some adjacent virtue’, and this practice will please the prince (no. XI).6 Simulation is the soul of the court, and if you yourself are given to certain vices, it is a good trick to execrate them when occasion presents itself, because one can scarcely credit the force that words exert with men (no. XV). It is extremely useful, indeed necessary, to be on friendly terms with the Jesuits—though whether or not you believe in their virtue is a matter of choice. That it is advantageous to speak well of them in public, even if it turns your stomach, is evidenced by princes who take account of them either through love or fear (no. XXXVII).7 It is also profitable to show yourself to be pious, zealous for reform, 3 Here Verrua assures his reader that he writes for his own discipline and memory, and to expose the infamous art of the contemporary court, which is something most unworthy of a gentleman and a Christian. 4 ‘Procura per vie sotterranee d’intendere le vitii del padrone, per far giuditio della sua natura; ma guardati come dal fuoco di non farti scoprire che tu cerchi, o` che tu voglia sapere i suoi vitii, perche e` impossibile che non rovini.’ 5 ‘Fatto questo, cerca di deludere l’arte con l’arte, imitando il suo artificio, ma` con tale delicatura, che non sia scoperto.’ 6 ‘e se qualcuna e` vitiosa, cerca di honestarla con vocaboli, perche tutti i vitii hanno vicino le virtu`, e questo piacera` sommamente al padrone’. 7 ‘Pero` vestiti della pelle loro, e tornera` a` gran conto dirne bene in publico, se bene il facci ancora contro stomaco; nel che habbi per essempio li Prencipi, i quali ne tengono conto, o` per amore o` per timore.’

576

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

and generally religious: and even if you are not moved to behave thus by your true beliefs you should at least be moved by utility (no. XXXIX). The depravity of our natures and customs makes it very difficult for the rules of the court to accord with Christianity (no. LV). Indeed, the greater number of princes use religion as a simple pretext and recognize no other idol than their own interest (no. LXX). In any case, religion has largely been corrupted by the ineptitude, ostentation, and ambition of the priests, many of whom ‘make sermons during the day, and spend the night with their concubines’.8 Yet, despite all their hypocrisy (and worse), it is very important to speak well of them, ‘or at least not to speak ill’; and he who cannot moderate his language should keep silent (che non si puo` temperare, taccia) (no. LXXXIV). Consider next the following jottings from the notebook of an early seventeenth-century English aspirant to worldly honours.9 The author is unknown, but his observations are worth citing at some length, both for their mordant wit and for the insights they provide into the courtier’s art: Love no man but thyself, or if any man, do it for thyselfe. Trust no man, so shalt thou never be deceived. Be riche in promise to all, though in performance to fewe. Make no difference between an honest Servant and unhonest, but make both serve thy turne. Dissemble with every body, but be not seene to dissemble. Though you gett nothinge yet be still (if you can) in the princes eare, it will be in steade of a Revenue unto you. Whatsoever your Adversary saithe; howe true so ever it be, oppose it because he said it. Whatsoever you do against him, pretend the Princes good, and comon wealth, by this slie course you shall sooner cutt his throate. Those that depend upon him, Crosse them in their suites, disgrace them with wordes, with lookes. Kindle emulacion betweene them. If they be of the same profession, breede discontentment to shake the knott of them asunder. Discover the plotts of the chiefe and either by crushing them, or disgracing them, make them quite forsaken. When you thus 8 ‘molti fanno il sermone il giorno e la notte vanno con la concubina’. 9 BL Add. MS 22601, fos. 18v–20.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

577

have topte the braunches one after another, then watche at the time to strike at the roote. If any man will have justice at your handes, lett him buye it, serve not the Common wealth for noughte. By no means take bribes your self, let that be done by some trustie man. The Offices of the Crowne, of the warres, of the Lawe, and of the Churche, will bring in a reasonable harvest. Be not overfonde of vertue, it hath hurte many of his doating lovers, onely carry an opinion of it. But above all thinges be not too religious. At that rocke many have been made shipwracke: If it will serve thy turne heare the Protestant for the Puritane, and the Puritan for the Papiste. This art hath ever byn gainefull, being rightly used. In times of action gather unto you Men of the Sworde, use them as Phisitions when you neede them: Give them their fees but when you use them. The Preachers heare them, it is a good Custome; it is time well spent, make profit of their devision. The Marchaunts handle as sponges, when they are full wringe them: To be able to do this, there be manie artes required. If any Man be very forward and valiant, suppress him: Theis times may not beare a stirring spirite. A body crazed with the Goute, it is dangerous to have it ruled with a quick silvered spurre. Subditiorum virtutes regibus formidilosae [sic]

Doubtless, in popular parlance, such hard-boiled cynicisms would be dubbed ‘Machiavellian’. But to what traditions do they really belong? Is there an extreme form of Machiavellism, a systematic immorality, which has nothing to do with Machiavelli’s works or even with their interpretation? I believe that there is. A far more sinister trend is involved here—not only more extreme and less politically responsible than Machiavellism but cloaked, withal, in the fair garments of conventional virtue, affability, and civility. What, I wonder, might have happened had Baldassare Castiglione, with his Libro del Cortegiano and its European reputation as his credentials, presented himself as a candidate for admission to the unhallowed centre of iniquity? How would his achievements have withstood cross-examination by Lucifer’s right-hand Jesuit?

578

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

c a s t i gl i o n e ’s h armful innovation As an innovator Castiglione might, at first, seem sorely taxed by Ignatius’s demands. What is Il Cortegiano but an elegant amalgam of medieval and Renaissance commonplaces? It is certainly not a structured account of the perfect courtier but is rather, under the specious guise of reported conversation, a mere collection of miniature treatises—each in itself inadequate and derivative—on a variety of well-worn debating topics. It discusses the nature of true nobility, which was a theme already hackneyed among the ancients; while Castiglione’s inclination to favour nobility of birth rather than that of virtue and ability might even have seemed oldfashioned as the sixteenth century progressed. His advocacy of a wide-ranging education, balancing intellectual pursuits with physical exercise, and the extension of this ideal into the universal man of manifold expertise, was itself a repetition of educational ideals widely popularized in the fifteenth century. He adds nothing new to these attitudes, nor does he contribute anything fresh in his examination of eloquence and literary language, which is but a summary of Italian critical theories. His protagonists also discuss jokes at great length: but this is only a copy of Cicero and Quintilian and, as an analysis of humour, is inferior to the De sermone written by Pontanus at the very end of the fifteenth century. Castiglione’s debate concerning arms and letters is even less original, for there were few humanists who had not pronounced on the relative merits of book-learning and military skill and concluded, like Il Cortegiano, that the best thing is to combine both. People had said this before Castiglione; and they continued to say it, with monotonous regularity, long after him. And the same is true of the last and most striking irrelevance in Il Cortegiano: the oration on the contemplation of beauty leading to an ecstatic vision of Divine Love. This takes as its starting point a combination of three favourite themes: whether old men may properly be lovers; whether sight is the noblest of the senses; and whether beauty can ever be comprehended without vision. Questions such as these were already to be found in Andreas Capellanus’s Tractatus de amore in the twelfth century, were not new even then, and had been repeated ad nauseam in debates on love ever since. The whole

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

579

artificial nonsense had been philosophized and elevated to an empyrean of the absurd by Neoplatonists such as Ficino, and then vulgarized by Bembo in Gli Asolani, whence it had made its way into Il Cortegiano.10 Castiglione may thus be regarded as a vulgarizer of vulgarizations. Even his famous grazia and sprezzatura—that studied nonchalance and hard-won ease—have their own rhetorical antecedents. The simulated spontaneity of Castiglione’s courtier is clearly derived from the cultivated oratorical effortlessness advocated by Quintilian who, like Castiglione, had recognized that the line between calculated naturalness and affectation was a very faint one.11 Rhetoric could always degenerate into extravagance, and in the Renaissance there were even preachers who affected such natural gestures as coughs ‘for something which added Grace and Gravity to their Discourse’—men such as the famous Olivier Maillard, who ‘Marked the Places and Paragraphs of his Discourse with a Hem, hem, hem, where he had a designe to coughe upon it’.12 This practice was subsequently satirized by Rabelais, who wrote a whole paroxysm of coughs and splutters into the oration of the sophist Janotus de Bragmardo: ‘Hem, hem, aifuhash . . . Hem, hem, hem haikkash . . . Hem, hashchehhawksash qzrchremhemhash.’13 Some of Castiglione’s tricks are scarcely more elevated and, like ‘coughing eloquence’, attracted the attention of satirists. None of this material might be expected long to withstand the critical scrutiny of Donne’s Ignatius. Yet, in some ways, Castiglione’s merits as an innovator were enhanced rather than diminished by the eclecticism of his perfect courtier. While it is true that most of the spare parts from which he constructs his ideal were 10 For a fuller discussion of these points, see my article ‘The Courtier: The Renaissance and Changing Ideals’, in A. G. Dickens (ed.), The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty 1400–1800 (1977), 32–53. 11 Quintilian, De oratore, VII. 18, 23; XI. 47; XII. 79–80. 12 Michel le Faucheur, Traite´ de l’action de l’orateur ou de la prononciation et du geste (Paris, 1676), 81–2; trans. as An Essay upon the Action of an Orator; as to his Pronunciation and Gesture (London, n.d.), 72. For a different interpretation of Maillard’s ‘fameux Hem hem hem’, see his Œuvres, ed. A. de la Borderie (Nantes, 1877), 64 n. 12. 13 Rabelais, Gargantua, 19. I quote these coughs in Urquhart’s English translation. The original French coughs read, less expectorantly, ‘Ehen, hen, hen . . . hen, hen, hasch . . . hen, hen, ehen, hasch . . . Hen, hach, hach, grenhenhasch.’

580

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

familiar, the totality was incontestably something very different from any courtly antecedent. Hitherto, the courtier had, with very rare exceptions, been depicted as an aggregate of conventional vices. Courts had been hell on earth; and those condemned to strive for place therein were doomed to discomfort, envy, and hardship. The perverted prerequisites for even transient success were flattery, lies, and skulduggery; and failure always remained their ultimate destiny. Now the courtier, created by Castiglione, was the apotheosis of dilettantism. He was a scaled-down version of the omnicompetent Renaissance prince: warrior, philosopher, linguist, historian, poet, musician, dancer, fencer, jouster, scholar, and lover. In nothing was he to be too expert. His hands were to be soiled neither with effort nor with an obvious professionalism. He was to do everything with ease and grace; and his hallmark was to be that sprezzatura—vastly extended beyond the limits of its rhetorical forebears—which was to remain an ideal of gentlemanly behaviour well into the twentieth century and which, perhaps, has not yet entirely vanished in the twenty-first. Castiglione’s claims as an innovator are not immediately apparent: but his sinisterness is even less so. What harm had he perpetrated? His reputation seems, at first examination, to have been as sweet as Machiavelli’s was stenchful, although Il Cortegiano did ultimately join Machiavelli’s works on the Papal Index of Prohibited Books in 1590 and was thereafter published in Italy only in editions with the word Fortune deleted from several passages and with jokes against clerics carefully revised.14 Despite such inquisitorial puerility, generations of readers have considered Il Cortegiano a ‘golden book’, and it was overwhelmingly popular throughout the sixteenth century. From its first publication in 1528 through to 1619 it appeared in at least 110 different editions including some sixty Italian versions, seventeen French translations, sixteen Spanish, thirteen Latin, four English, and two German.15 It was, without doubt, the most widely reproduced 14 See below, n. 71. 15 For the early bibliographical history of Il Cortegiano, see the list of editions appended to the translation by L. E. Opdyke, The Book of the Courtier (New York, 1901), 419–21; and the slightly amended list in Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Cambridge, 1995).

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

581

courtly text of the Renaissance. Even a well-known work such as Guevara’s The Favoured Courtier, which attempted unsatisfactorily to reconcile bitter contempt for court life with a recognition of its necessity, could not compete. Guevara’s Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier, which did muster more French editions than Il Cortegiano, was completely hostile to courtiers and sets up an impossible rustic existence as a measure of modern degeneracy. But, although Guevara’s sententious writings were much admired, they offered no alternative positive view of the perfect courtier, and they created nothing.16 The only significant rival to Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, in terms of publication, was Guazzo’s Civil Conversation: though this was not strictly concerned with courtiers at all, but rather with the lower levels of gentility. It mustered no more than half as many editions as Il Cortegiano; while, unlike Castiglione, Guazzo’s reputation, despite modern attempts at resuscitation, once it had plunged was never to rise again.17 Castiglione, on the other hand, has rarely lacked either admirers or emulators. In the sixteenth century, even authors who despised almost everything Italian made an exception in the case of Castiglione. Ascham, for example, who regarded Italy as a polluted sink of vice which was infecting the whole of Europe, praised Castiglione for teaching how to join learning with ‘comely exercises’; believed that Il Cortegiano ‘advisedly read and diligently followed, but one year at home in England, would do a gentleman more good . . . than three years travel abroad spent in Italy’; and marvelled that the book was not more studied in the court than it was, ‘seeing that it is so well translated into English by a worthy gentleman, Sir Thomas 16 On Guevara, see Pilar Consejo, Antonio de Guevara: un ensayista espan˜ol del siglo XVI (Madrid, 1985); Le re´veille-matin des courtisans ou moyens le´gitimes pour parvenir a` la faveur et pour s’y maintenir, ed. Nathalie Peyrebonne (Paris, 1999). An old but useful brief introduction to Guevara is in The Diall of Princes: by Don Anthony de Guevara. Translated by Sir Thomas North. Being Select Passages now set forth with an Introduction and a Bibliography by K. N. Colvile (1919). As Colvile justly wrote: ‘Few literary reputations have been so blown upon as Don Anthony of Guevara’s.’ 17 On Guazzo, see John Leon Lievsay, Stefano Guazzo and the English Renaissance 1575–1675 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1961); Daniel Javitch, ‘Rival Arts of Conduct in Elizabethan England: Guazzo’s Civile Conversation and Castiglione’s Courtier’, Yearbook of Italian Studies, 1 (1971), 178–98.

582

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Hobby’.18 Sir Philip Sidney—though he advised his younger brother to watch out for the ‘tyrannous oppression’ and ‘servile yielding’ of Italians who were generally full of ‘counterfeit learning’—was himself regarded by Nashe as the very embodiment of Castiglione’s ideal.19 James Cleland who, in 1607, advised his ‘young noble man’ not to tarry in Italy, where one could hardly escape the ‘pleasures and diverse allurements to sin’, was still confidently recommending Castiglione as ‘very necessary and profitable for young gentlemen abiding in the court’.20 Here we have, perhaps, a clue to covert nastiness: those pregnant words ‘necessary and profitable’. Long ago, in his study of the Machiavellian section of Pole’s Apologia, Paul Van Dyke argued that the text recommended by Thomas Cromwell, as offering sound advice to those who would counsel princes, was not in fact Machiavelli’s Il Principe, as Pole believed, but Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano.21 Van Dyke suggested this not merely because, at the time of the supposed discussion, Il Cortegiano was in print whereas Il Principe was not; but also because he felt that Castiglione’s book more precisely fitted the subject matter under discussion than did Machiavelli’s. The entire episode is dubious: but the fact that it was possible to argue sensibly in favour of substituting Castiglione’s much-praised book for Machiavelli’s much-execrated one, is suggestive of implications in Il Cortegiano very different from those traditionally inferred from it. I believe that Castiglione exerted an equivocal moral influence which, when combined with other developing sixteenth-century trends, resulted in the systematic immorality already alluded to, and which far exceeded in cynicism anything directly derived from Machiavelli. Grazia, sprezzatura, and the purposes for which they are employed, together constitute the wormy core of Il Cortegiano. One of the accusations commonly levelled against self-conscious 18 Ascham, The Scholemaster (1570), in The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. Giles (1864), iii. 141. For Ascham’s most hostile discussion of Italian vice, see pp. 156–67. 19 The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. Pears, 195–8; Thomas Nashe, The Anatomie of Absurditie, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. McKerrow, i. 7. 20 James Cleland, The Institution of a young noble man (Oxford, 1607), 153, 266. 21 See above, Ch. 4.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

583

literary style was that it sought to influence the minds of an audience with carefully contrived and artificially wrought effects. In this way stylistic considerations could acquire moral overtones: rhetoric was dishonest; it misrepresented the truth in order to persuade; it was a ‘crafty and secret method’; and its procedures were ‘deceits’. Castiglione analyses and defends such devices, for he wishes his courtier to be furnished with eloquence. But he goes much further than this, for he so extends and elaborates the artifices of rhetoric that they embrace the very life of the courtier. The relationship between literary matter and manner (res and litterae) becomes transfigured into the relationship between what a man really is and how he seems.22 Il Cortegiano is replete with devices whereby the courtier might advantageously display his manifold skills. The issue is first raised during a recommendation of discreet self-praise: ‘speaking such things after a sorte, that it may appeare that they are not rehearsed to that end; but that they come so to purpose that he can not refraine telling them, and alwaies seeming to flee his owne prayse, tell the truth’.23 This counterfeit spontaneity is expressed through two qualities, grazia and sprezzatura. Indeed, grazia is so frequently employed to qualify the perfect courtier’s actions that one of Castiglione’s characters requests an explanation of the word, which is ‘put for a sauce to everything’, together with instruction on how this priceless faculty might be acquired. He is informed that it can only be gained by close study with the acknowledged masters of each individual skill, for the courtier must steal his grace from those who already possess it: ‘even as the Bee in greene medowes fleeth alwaies about the grasse, choosing out flowers’ (I. 26). The quality is difficult to describe, 22 The locus classicus for the debate concerning philosophy and rhetoric, matter and manner, res et litterae was the exchange of correspondence between Ermolao Barbaro and Pico della Mirandola towards the end of the 15th c., on which see Quirinus Breen, ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the Conflict of Philosophy and Rhetoric’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 13 (1952), 384–426. More generally on the dishonesty of rhetoric, see Margaret M. McGowan, Montaigne’s Deceits (1974). 23 Il Cortegiano, I. 18. My quotations are from Hoby’s translation, which is both colourful and revealing of 16th-c. English attitudes. However, my references are to the traditionally accepted chapter divisions of the Italian text as given in Il Cortegiano, ed. Vittorio Cian (Florence, 1894).

584

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

though there is one universal rule which helps define it: the courtier must, above all else, avoid affectation, and must employ in his every action a certain sprezzatura—‘to speake a new word’. Every deed should be performed seemingly without conscious thought. Onerous tasks are to be accomplished with deceptive ease and, because onlookers will know their real difficulty, the achievement will seem all the more noteworthy. Conversely, evident strain renders any feat less striking: ‘therefore that may bee saide to be a verie arte, that appeareth not to be arte, neither ought a man to put more diligence in any thing than in covering it: for in case it be open, it looseth credite cleane and maketh a man little set by’. On the other hand, nonchalance should never be so studied that it thereby fails in its purpose, which is to conceal art. It is, for example, as bad to be slipshod and careless in dress as it is for the courtier to carry his head carefully for fear of ruffling his hair, or to keep ‘in the bottom of his cappe a looking glas, and a combe in his sleeve, and to have alwaies at his heeles up and downe the streetes a Page with a Spunge and a Brush’ (I. 26, 27). The purpose of nonchalance is to make every action appear natural. This is the fountain of all grace; and it affords an additional advantage since it makes even the slightest attainment seem better than it really is. Castiglione’s courtier is engaged in a constant act of selfcreation. He is always aware of an audience, admiring, criticizing, and judging him; and he is expected to fashion himself like a work of art. Just as skilled painters ‘with a shadow make the lights of high places to appeare, and so with light make low the shadowes of plaines’, so the courtier must make a unity of all his good qualities and arrange them to maximum effect. He must weigh every word and deed, ‘the place where it is done, in presence of whom, in what time, the cause why he doth it, his age, his profession, the end wherto it tendeth, and the meanes that may bring him to it’. In war, the courtier must separate himself from the multitude, so that his bold feats may be performed ‘in the sight of noble men’ and, if possible, before the very eyes of his prince—for it is meet to gain some advantage from deeds well done (II. 7, 8).24 Similarly, in the 24 Cf. Luigi da Porto, Lettere storiche, ed. B. Bressan (Florence, 1857), 214. Here, in a letter dated Sept. 1510, da Porto writes that it is more praiseworthy to

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

585

tilt-yard the courtier must look magnificent to ‘draw unto him the eyes of the lookers on as the adamant doth iron’. In athletic pursuits, or in skills such as music, he must avoid the least sign of effort; for, however expert he may be, he should appear to devote scant time to such matters. Let him ‘dissemble the studies and paines that a man must needes take in all things that are well done’; and let him also pretend that he ‘esteemeth but little in himself that qualitie, but in doing it excellently well, make it much esteemed of other men’ (II. 8, 12). Reputation is of paramount importance so that, when the courtier is required to venture where he is unknown, he must help himself with wit and art so that he is preceded by a good opinion of his merits. This engenders confidence in a man’s worthiness and may the more easily be maintained and increased. Particularly valuable in the process of impressing people is the art of conversation; and it is suggested that when the courtier is required to speak on some topic he should, whenever possible, prepare himself in advance while pretending ‘the whole to be done ex tempore, and at the first sight’—a ruse formerly recommended by Quintilian to persuade a judge who ‘admires more and distrusts less that which he regards as not having been preconcerted to mislead him’ (II. 32, 38).25 On the other hand, when obliged to deal with matters where his knowledge is modest, the courtier should touch upon them in such a way that his auditors may believe that he ‘hath a great deal more cunning therein than he uttereth’ (II. 38). Only total ignorance is to be confessed—and then merely to avoid the embarrassment of subsequent exposure. The greatest effect of all is achieved by those who conceal their best ability by professing a lesser; and then, when opportunity arises, they can astonish everybody, who will naturally think them even better in their declared speciality. This particular stratagem is challenged as a deceit; and, although it is defended as ‘rather an ornament’, Castiglione stipulates that it should not pass ‘bounds’ and that the courtier should govern himself ‘alwaies with a certaine honest meane’ (II. 41). Vice for engage in combats of 100 against 100 than in 1,000 against 1,000, because in a small number it is possible for each individual’s virtu` to be seen. 25 Cf. Quintilian, XI. 47.

586

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Castiglione—as for Aristotle and, perhaps more relevantly, for Quintilian—is rooted in extremes. But his constant caveats concerning affectation not only reveal his uneasiness at the dangers inherent in the pursuit of sprezzatura but also demonstrate the impossibility of the task he is setting his courtier. Stress on appearances is one of Il Cortegiano’s most striking features. Stress on the art of pleasing is another. Castiglione’s courtier is both dissimulator and consummate toady. He must be agreeable to ‘great men, gentlemen, and ladies’; ‘plyable to be conversant with so many’; and, taking note of the differences between one man and another, ‘every day alter fashion and manner according to the disposition of them he is conversant withall’. He must ingratiate himself with authority; and his relationship with his ruler, despite two attempts by Castiglione at clarifying the problem, remains unhealthily ambiguous. Book II suggests that the courtier is to serve his prince with devotion, and ‘in his will, manners and fashions to bee altogether plyable to please him’. One interlocutor promptly exclaims that there are plenty such courtiers nowadays, ‘for (me thinke) in few words ye have painted us out a joly flatterer’. This is staunchly denied because ‘to purchase favour at great mens handes, there is no better way than to deserve it’ (II. 17, 18, 20). But the argument runs into difficulties when confronted by the unworthy demands of a wicked ruler. Castiglione is evasive and, though he suggests the possibility of abandoning the service of a prince who commands ‘dishonest and shameful matters’, he also justifies obedience on the grounds that many things appear good which are, in truth, evil; while many seem evil yet are, notwithstanding, good. It is, for example, ‘lawful for a man sometime in his Lords service, to kill not one man alone, but ten thousand, and to doe many other thinges, which if a man waigh them not as he ought, will appeare ill, and yet are not so in deede’ (II. 23).26 He is also very cautious when considering the question of carrying out a prince’s commission. What should be done if it appears possible to achieve better results either by differing from, or exceeding, the original instructions? It is a dangerous matter for a courtier to swerve from the command of his superiors, ‘trusting more in his own judgement than in theirs, whom of reason he ought to obey’. 26 Cf. Il Cortegiano, IV. 47.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

587

Certainly where the prince is rigorous, ‘as many such there are’, it is prudent to obey his commission to the letter (II. 24). Castiglione returns to the problem of service, more insistently, in Book IV, where he anticipates criticism of his courtier’s accomplishments by accepting that these alone would not make for perfection. Were they an end in themselves they would merit not praise but discommendation; for dancing, singing, and similar refinements belong to the entertainment of women and render men effeminate. Castiglione even anticipates a subsequent development by lamenting that such degeneracy has already brought the name of Italy into disrepute: ‘onde nascono poi questi effetti, che ’l nome italiano e` ridotto in opprobrio’. Nevertheless, when courtly capacities are directed to a good end, they merit ‘infinite praise’. And what is this ‘good end’? It is to gain the favour of the prince so that the courtier will be able to speak honestly to him, ‘without fear or perill’; to dissuade him from vice; and to ‘set him in the way of vertue’. Just as music, sports, pastimes, and all the rest are the ‘floure of Courtlinesse’, so directing the prince towards goodness and away from evil is the ‘fruite of it’ (IV. 4, 5). It is the business of a good courtier to know the nature and inclination of his prince; and so, according to necessity and opportunity, he must gain favour ‘by those waies that make him a sure entrie, and afterwarde bend him to vertue’ (IV. 47). This laudable purpose is intrinsically plausible. It is less so within the context of Il Cortegiano. As one interlocutor remarks early in Book IV, it is a matter ‘whereof hetherto nothing hath beene spoken’ (IV. 5); and it sits uneasily with preceding statements concerning the courtier’s ends, especially in Book III, where it had been argued that all comely exercises arise from a desire to please the ladies. Who learns to dance for any other reason? Who practises music or writes verse but for this purpose? ‘Judge you how many most noble Poemes we had beene without both in Greek and Latin had women beene smally regarded of poets.’ Noble birth; skill in arms; expertise in letters and in music; eloquence both of speech and behaviour—all constitute an ‘instrument to obtaine the good will of women’ (III. 52, 53, 59). What then is the perfect courtier’s real business? Is it to ingratiate himself with his paramour in order to obtain her favours—which

588

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

seems to be the loftiest flight of his ambition in the first three books of Il Cortegiano? Or is it to ingratiate himself with his prince in order to counsel virtue—which is the afterthought with which the final book begins before it, too, returns to the theme of love, human and paganly divine? There can be no definitive answer to such questions concerning Castiglione’s inner purposes, because Il Cortegiano is but a dazzlingly polished exterior. The author certainly sensed the potential danger of his ideal and attempted to remedy offensive affectation by reiterated warnings against the vice latent in extremes, and by repeated recommendations of the golden mean. He advocates pliancy and obedience when dealing with princes; but he cautions against flattery, and equivocates uncomfortably over whether or not the courtier should abandon a wicked ruler. He wishes his courtier to be noble by birth; but recognizes the solid claims of virtue to the title of true nobility. He stipulates that his courtier must be handsome, well formed, and properly apparelled; but inveighs against effeminacy of dress and narcissistic beauty care. He will have his courtier eloquent; but he condemns affectation of speech. He will, above all, have his courtier ever aware of his own effectiveness; yet he will not have him seem so. And, despite all Castiglione’s caveats, the nonchalance relentlessly asserts itself as too premeditated. This perfect courtier has to try too hard to appear not to be trying. What happens once his sprezzatura has been recognized as a device? Can it ever again convince? And what is the result of this triumph of manner over matter?

anti-courtiers The hypertrophy of the art of ingratiation by seeming rather than being, which characterizes Il Cortegiano, in one sense adds force to the attacks of anti-court moralists who had, throughout the Middle Ages, criticized the adulation practised by place-seekers, and continued their hostility beyond the Renaissance.27 Courtiers 27 See Claus Uhlig, Hofkritik im England des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Berlin, 1973); Pauline Smith, The Anti-Courtier Trend in Sixteenth-Century French Literature (Geneva, 1966).

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

589

remained a byword for corruption. Emblematists enjoyed depicting them as carrion feeding on corpses; as mice gnawing a crown; or as sumptuously clad nobles imprisoned in the stocks.28 Guevara exposed the duplicity and dangers of court where there are many that will ‘doff their bonnette to you, that gladly would see your head off by the shoulders; and such there be that makes reverence unto you that would have his leg broken to see you dead and carried to your grave’. He castigated courtiers whose ‘bowells and intrails are so damnable’ and their hearts so crooked that the new courtier will think that they are offering good advice as they go about to deceive him and lead him to disaster. Guevara, too, perpetuated a long tradition of sneering at the courtly sponger who, arriving late to gatecrash a banquet, and finding the table full, ‘rather than fail, will sit of half a buttock’; and he reported that he had himself once witnessed three such spongers precariously balanced on one stool.29 Giuseppe Horologgi, in his treatise on deceit, criticized courtiers for their concern with appearances rather than truth.30 Lucio Paolo Rosello (soon to plagiarize Agostino Nifo) rebuked them for having infinite faces, and all of them counterfeit.31 In England, Haly Heron advised his young prote´ge´ John Kay to avoid court if he could, but if not then he was to beware, for at court the ‘wayes are pleasant’, the entertainment sweet, but the fellowship ‘doubtfull’. He added that some say that the ‘common sicknesse of the court is to surfeyt in the bankets of dissembling’; and he warned against ridiculous braggarts—one, for instance, who ‘beares the countenance of a Lion’ but whose courage is ‘not worth a Leeke’. This wily fellow ‘shewes everye man his sword, which hath bin the death of so many frogs in Ireland’.32 Jeers such as these remained commonplace. Sir Thomas Overbury (eventually himself a murder victim due to courtly intrigue and scandal) encapsulated this widespread contempt in one of his 28 29 30 31

Anglo, ‘The Courtier’, 44, 49. Antonio de Guevara, The diall of princes (1568), Lib. IV, fos. 122v, 125v. Giuseppe Horologgi, L’Inganno (Venice, 1562), 19 ff. Due dialoghi di messer Pauolo Rosello. Uno, in cui si tratta il modo di conoscere, et di far la scelta d’un servitore, e de l’ufficio suo. L’altro de la vita de cortegiani, intitolato la patientia (Venice, 1549), fo. 16v. 32 Haly Heron, A newe discourse of morall philosophie, entituled the Kayes of Counsaile (1579), sigs. Aiiv–iiiv and p. 49.

590

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

colourful Characters. The surest mark of the courtier, wrote Overbury, is that he is to be found only about princes. ‘He smells; and putteth away much of his judgement about the situation of his clothes.’ He follows ‘nothing but inconstancy, admires nothing but beauty, honours nothing but fortune. Loves nothing.’33 Maurice de la Porte, with equal concision, summarized French anti-court feeling in his Epithetes of 1571 when he provided fifty-seven adjectives or synonyms for the words Courtisan or Courtiseur: all of them pejorative. He acknowledged that the word derived from Courtois and had originally indicated that those who inhabited the courts of kings and princes were gracious and civil: but, however honourable its etymology, it had become so infame that, to describe a man who is ‘vicious to a superlative degree, one calls him Courtisan’.34

philibert de vienne These are typical voices from a mighty chorus of complaint which continued unabated throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries despite the popularity and influence of Il Cortegiano. For the most part, the attacks are conventional in form and content. But one critic demands particular attention. In 1547, a certain Philibert de Vienne, ‘Avocat en la Court de Parlement a` Paris’, published a little treatise, Le philosophe de court (translated into English in 1575). His hostile view of the court and its denizens is traditional; but his onslaught is effectively cast in the form of a Lucianic satire, lavishly praising the object of his contempt—in this case the behaviour of modern courtiers—and jeering at those 33 The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knight (1856), 52–3. 34 Maurice de la Porte, Les epithe`tes (Paris, 1571), fos. 70v–71. His words for Courtisan are ‘Aveugle, sourd, muet, brave, menteur, dameret, variable, effronte´, gourmand, harpie, ambitieux, impudent, ruse´, hypocrite, pipeur, voluptueux, ingrat, superbe, esponge de Cour, flateur ou afflateur, masque´, ranteur, blondissant, importun, facecieux, dissimule´ ou dissimulateur, curialiste, vieil singe, trompeur, damoiselet, attife´, mondain, gaillard, fin ou feint, musque´, bouffon, pompeux, mignon de Cour, parfume´, affronteur, babillard, pare´, mesdisant, acreste´, desloyal, peigne´, dorlote´, lascif, desguise´, moqueur, affame´ de benefices, eshonte´, damoyseau, langageur, farde´’. It is worth noting that this comprehensive thesaurus of abuse does not include ‘Machiavelliste’.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

591

who do not conform to the new, morally distorted norms.35 In his Prologue, Philibert makes a sharp distinction between the philosophy of the ancients and that now current, ‘disguised and masked, grounded onely on mans opinions and not on Nature’.36 Clearly, writing about this new philosophy posed great difficulties and he stresses that he has only been able to do so by adopting the manner of Democritus (that is the laughing philosopher) and employing jokes: ‘je n’ay peu que je n’aye fait le Democrite et use´ de faceties’.37 Again, in his opening chapter, Philibert condemns the greater part of mankind as ‘evill, perverse, and subject to their appetites and foolish affections’, and he demonstrates how easy it is, when pursuing worldly ends, to accustom oneself to malpractices: ‘for so soone as the small sparks of vertue be extinguished in us, and that we abandon or leave to folow the fashion of the court, we shall become expert masters in evil: so apt and capable we are to learne it’. Moreover, practising evil so changes our nature that we come to believe that whatever pleases us must be good. The most ‘allowed and embraced’ mode of conduct is now life at court. This is the modern philosophy which Philibert intends to treat because ‘they that know it and can use it, are counted wise men and philosophers’; and he defines it as a ‘certaine and sound judgement, howe to live according to the good grace and fashion of the court’.38 Success in Philibert’s court is achieved by a dilettantism whose Castiglionesque derivation is everywhere apparent, but especially in the constant mockery of the idea of a golden mean between vices, 35 Philibert de Vienne, Le philosophe de court (Lyon: J. de Tournes, 1547); another edn. (Paris: E. Groulleau, 1548); trans. George North, The Philosopher of the Court (1575). There is a valuable critical edition with introduction, notes, and glossary by Pauline Smith, Le Philosophe de Court (Geneva, 1990). See also C. A. Mayer, ‘L’Honneˆte Homme, Molie`re and Philibert de Vienne’s Philosophe de court’, Modern Language Review, 46 (1951), 196–217; D. Javitch, ‘The Philosopher of the Court: A French Satire Misunderstood’, Comparative Literature, 23 (1971), 97–124; Pauline Smith, The Anti-Courtier Trend, 138–47. 36 Philibert de Vienne (1575), sig. B5v; (1990), 64. 37 Philibert (1547), 12; (1990), 65 and, for a gloss, 20; Mayer, ‘L’Honneˆte Homme’, 206–7. Note that, at this point, the English version reads, ‘in writing wherof I have played Democrates, and applyed the whole too a pleasant conclusion’, which is not only wrong but virtually meaningless. See Javitch, ‘A French Satire Misunderstood’, 110. 38 Philibert (1575), 10–13; (1990), 80–1.

592

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

and the heavy emphasis on seeming rather than being. The ancient philosophers would have us embrace virtue not for honour but for its own sake, and they enjoined ‘Nosce te ipsum’. We on the other hand must ‘see and know the worlde’—a knowledge acquired by perversion of the very virtues (Wisdom, Justice, Magnanimity, and Temperance) advocated by Cicero in the De officiis. Thus Prudence, or Wisdom, is reduced to the knowledge of all the arts and liberal sciences which enable us to become effective courtiers: to play on a variety of musical instruments; to dance ‘al maner of daunces’; to compose ‘devices, Posies, plesaunt purposes, Songs, Sonets, and ballats, or amorous Lamentacions, in prose, verse, or ryme, very pitifull and in Tragicall manner’.39 Above all, the courtier requires ‘to have some pretie sprinckled judgement in the commonplaces and practises of all the liberal sciences, chopt up in hotchpot togither’, but only sufficient to make apt conversation; while, in order to win confidence among one’s auditors, ‘it shall not be amiss to enterlace our discourses with certain sudden lies and inventions of our own forging’. It is also useful to have a smattering of various languages, ‘to the end that in all these several tongues, we may salute, rejoyce, wonder at, exclayme upon, disdayne, skorne, and floute whom we will’. Similarly valuable to the courtier is skill in fencing, tennis, dancing, and ‘other sportes of exercise’, along with some understanding of affairs of state, ‘as of wars, of practises, of marchandise, and how we may honestlye robbe, deceyve, and make our best profit’. Those courtiers who, on the contrary, are ignorant of such matters ‘and will not endever themselves to have some smack or smell in every one of them, are beasts, dolts, and calves’.40 In general, the courtier must take care to pursue the path of virtue which is the mean between vices: on the one hand, temerity, rashness, and a failure to observe the appropriateness of time and place; and, on the other, ‘curiositie’ or excessive concern with irrelevant and unprofitable learning. Justice receives an equally utilitarian interpretation when, having prepared the way with a legal and moral definition, Philibert assures us that the justice of the court is something very different. 39 Philibert (1575), 29; (1990), 92, 96–9. 40 Ibid., 30–1; (1990), 99–101.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

593

We should not, for example, injure anybody ‘if the injury be not covered or hild over with some shew, or likelihood of reason’; and we are invited to condemn as an idiot any man who, having ‘apt occasion to deceyve or beguile his companion and mate by any honest meane’, fails to do it. Courtly philosophy, by contrast, deems it ‘tollerable to beguile, filch, and cogge, and do the worst we can’, provided that neither ‘lawe, Judge, nor justice’ can catch hold of us for it. The ancients demanded loyalty in word and deed. We keep faith only so far as the law can enforce it; and Philibert cites the common proverb that the ‘promise of a Gentleman is holy water of the Court’.41 Reputation is what the courtier now especially desires and rightly covets; and the humility extolled by the sages is ‘directly repugnant and contrary to our courtly vertue’.42 Liberality and Magnanimity are next turned topsy-turvy and, like the other virtues, are only valuable when serving to advance the courtier’s career. Philibert warns against being liberal with another man’s belongings—but only if this cannot be cloaked with some show of reason: ‘for the semblances and apparaunces of all things cunningly couched, are the principall supporters of our Philosophie: for suche as we seeme, such are we judged here’.43 For those dealing with their superiors, Philibert has some passing words of advice which are again reminiscent of Il Cortegiano. Bowing and scraping is efficacious only if practised as a mean between vices. It must not be too little lest we seem arrogant, proud, or ignorant; nor should it be so much that we are unmasked as sycophants. None the less, when giving counsel it is important not always to observe the truth, but rather to follow the ‘appetite and pleasure’ of those whom we advise. The two extremes of liberality are prodigality and covetousness; and, although it is better to err on the side of the former, our ‘profit and necessity’ set clear limits. Similar practical limits are suggested when considering the importance of Magnanimity, that greatness of heart which enables those who possess it to remain steadfast in the face of adversity. 41 For some remarks on this proverb, ‘Promesse de Gentilhomme, Eaubeniste de Court’, see Pauline Smith’s edn. (1990), 120 n. 191. 42 Philibert (1575), 47–51; (1990), 117–20. 43 Ibid., 56–7; (1990), 125.

594

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Honour and good reputation are the courtier’s goal so that—while there is nothing wrong with reverencing our parents, entertaining our friends, loving God, and hating the Devil—if any of these hinder or diminish our honour ‘we should leave them and not regard them’. That man is ‘not Magnifycall that preferreth the slender pleasure of such small tryfling things, to the great value and ryches of honour’.44 The last virtue to be considered is Temperance, and it is introduced as ‘moderation of perturbation’, ‘measurable mildnesse’, and a ‘meane in all things’. There is, however, a crucial courtly qualification. The modest man is ‘he that pleaseth every man, who taketh nothing in malice or displeasure, and frames his quietnesse to all purposes’.45 Nothing is gained by inflexibility; and Philibert shows the power of Temperance by enlarging upon the ‘good Grace’, called by Cicero decorum generale, arising from it. He praises the union of his four virtues regulated by ‘Temporance or Modestie’, and condemns ‘our lustie youthes’ who mistake affectation for good grace, and show themselves ignorant of the virtues ‘whereof that good grace springeth’. In fact, nothing leads more directly to the perfection of honour. It all sounds convincing, if rather platitudinous. And then, suddenly, Philibert confounds our expectations by revealing the practical application of honour and reputation. These seemingly conventional virtues are merely devices for achieving a high credit rating: ‘for that you may see our Gentlemen to have more honour and reputation among Citizens and Marchants, and content them better with their borrowing persuasions, than any of these rude and rustickes can do with giftes’.46 Grace is even further distorted by Philibert in the final apotheosis of the courtier’s art—that is dissembling. The true philosopher of the court dissembles in order to advance himself by pleasing everybody; and again Il Cortegiano is echoed in an allusion to love ‘which is a place where our vertue and good grace are most allowed and best proved’, and where guile is especially effective.47 Sometimes we dissemble to blind the world and to ‘shadowe our 44 45 46 47

Philibert (1575), 81–2; (1990), 128, 145. Ibid., 91; (1990), 153–4. Ibid., 96; (1990), 156–8. Ibid., 99; (1990), 160–1.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

595

hote affections with colde regarde and countenances’. To be open and simple is ‘meete for beastes and ydiotes’. The French used to be like that: ‘yet now (God be thanked) they have pretily learned to live. One should not, therefore, blame that facilitie of Spirite . . . which makes man according to pleasure of others, to chaunge and transform himself.’ To behave thus will earn the courtier a reputation for wisdom, win him honour, and render him ‘free of reprehension everywhere’. For to speak the truth, how may anyone have knowledge of invisible and secret matters, if not by the ‘exterior appearances that be presented to some one of our senses?’48 The good courtier is never rigid and headstrong. He does everything upon due consideration in order to please; and Philibert’s sole proviso on all this is that it must be carried out with prudence. It must seem natural. This Castiglionesque modification is then underscored by a final exhortation to ‘mark the Italian his civility and courtesy’, which consists in an ability to avoid any appearance of rashness and in behaving soberly, as though he ‘tasted the sap and substance of our best virtue, which proceeds of Prudence’. He is so circumspect in evildoing that he commonly escapes undetected; while, if it becomes necessary to play the magnifico, then ‘God knows how he will do his endeavour’. The Italians imitate magnanimity better than anyone else in the world. They ‘blush or bash at nothing’. If you think suddenly to surprise them, ‘with a shrink of their shoulder they shake it off, and make a good appearance’; while if you try to make them laugh, ‘they will not change countenance’. They cover, hide, and repress their feelings with great patience and dissimulation. They are, concludes Philibert, ‘borne and bred in their country Courtiers’.49 Philibert’s satire is barbed, brilliant, but never obscure. It is acknowledged by the author at the outset; and it is further stressed in a Conclusion which unequivocally condemns this worldly philosophy—not just because it is morally reprehensible, but also because those who practise it in order to gain worldly advancement are themselves frequently deceived. Daniel Javitch, in a perceptive 48 Ibid., 100–1, 105; (1990), 162–3, 165. 49 Ibid., 110–12; (1990), 170–1.

596

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

discussion of the Philosophe de Court, suggests that Philibert’s satire was not directed specifically at Il Cortegiano but rather at a code of politeness which ‘conflates Castiglione’s doctrine with pragmatic tenets whereby reputation, favor, and ultimately power become the sole criteria for human action’; and he adds that Le Philosophe is ‘as much a satirical reaction to Machiavelli’s Principe as to the Cortegiano’.50 With this view I cannot agree. It is true that it was possible for a writer such as Gentillet to conflate Italian courtly values with Machiavelli: but here we are concerned with French attitudes some thirty years earlier and, in my view, Philibert’s target was solely Castiglione and the enthusiastic reception that Il Cortegiano had already enjoyed in France. Jacques Colin’s French translation, first published in 1537, had by 1546 appeared in another five editions: whereas, up to that time, only Charrier’s Art de la guerre and the first book of Gohory’s Discours represented published French translations of Machiavelli’s work. There is, moreover, so little distance between the advice given in Il Cortegiano—concerning dilettantism, grazia, sprezzatura, and the avoidance of extremes—and the travesty perpetrated in Le Philosophe, that the relationship is incontrovertible. Machiavelli’s purely tangential relevance to the printing history of Philibert’s text is also suggestive. In 1548, a second edition of Le Philosophe was published at Paris by Estienne Groulleau with a concluding poem by a certain ‘petit Angevin’ who assures a ‘Parisian friend’ that he will find plenty to laugh at in the little treatise. The interest of this poem is twofold. In the first place, it demonstrates contemporary recognition of Philibert’s work as satire. Secondly, the same ‘Angevin’ reappears, again in 1548, and again as the author of verse attached to one of Groulleau’s productions: though this time he introduces, and praises, the third book of Gohory’s translation of Machiavelli’s Discorsi.51 If to this we add a tiny stock of coincidences—that, in the previous year, Groulleau had published Xenophon’s La Cyropedie translated by Jacques de 50 Javitch, ‘A French Satire Misunderstood’, 106. 51 Le troisiesme livre des Discours (Paris, 1548), sig. K.4v: ‘Sonnet de l’Angevin aux Lecteurs’.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

597

Vintimille; that, in 1546, Vintimille had executed a French translation of Il Principe which remains in manuscript;52 that the ‘petit Angevin’ proves to have been Jean Maugin, a minor poet, who was also one of Groulleau’s authors;53 that Maugin, in the preface to one of his own translations, refers to the work of Herberay;54 and that this Nicolas Herberay des Essarts, who similarly published translations with Groulleau, likewise wrote liminary verses for Gohory’s Discours and was himself an owner of the Discorsi55— then we confirm an impression that Groulleau’s circle was not hostile to Machiavelli. Finally, and much more significantly, nowhere in the text of Le Philosophe do Machiavelli’s political prescriptions come under Philibert’s attack. There is good reason, therefore, not to identify Machiavelli as even a partial target of the satire. A more fruitful field of speculation is offered by Javitch’s observation that, when in 1575 George North published his English translation of Philibert’s treatise, there was scarcely any awareness that the original text had been satirical. Instead, it was offered as perfectly serious advice on how to succeed at court. North dedicated his work to Christopher Hatton, who would, he said, find in it ‘both floures and fruite . . . of courtlie philosophie’, and might, North hoped, spread the ‘gladsome beames’ of his ‘favourable and well-liking cheere’ upon it so that other gentlemen courtiers would more readily accept it.56 We do not know how either Hatton or these other gentlemen responded: but one especially avid reader and place-seeker, Gabriel Harvey, set ‘Philibertes Philosopher of the Corte’ at the head of a series of courtly guides (including Della Casa’s Galateo and Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano) for young 52 Muse´e Conde´ MS 693: Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavel, citoyen et secre´taire de Florence. 53 Maugin edited a French translation of L’Histoire de Palmerin d’Olive traduict jadis par un Auteur incertain de Castillan en Franc¸oys for Groulleau in 1553 (although it had earlier been printed by Marnef in 1546). 54 Maugin refers to Herberay in Le Premier Livre de Palmerin d’Olive (Marnef: Paris, 1546), sig. aˆ.2v. 55 On Herberay’s verses, see above, Ch. 7. For his ownership of the Discorsi, see A. H. Schutz, Vernacular Books in Parisian Private Libraries (Chapel Hill, NC, 1955), 56, 80 (Inventory no. 107). 56 North’s dedication to the Philosopher of the Court (1575), sigs. A.2v–3v.

598

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

careerists.57 Why was Philibert so misconstrued by his able translator and by the one Elizabethan reader who recorded an opinion? Javitch suggests fundamental differences between the French and English courts: and the existence of these cannot be doubted. Yet the problem is more complicated than this and is best illuminated, I think, not so much by seeking an explanation for, but rather by considering the vast implications of, such a misunderstanding. Philibert had jeered at the art of pleasing in which the gentleman courtier had to be ‘plyant like waxe, redie to receive any honest or frendly impression, for if it be needful to laugh, he rejoyceth: if to be sad, he lowreth: if to be angry, he frowneth: if to feed, he eateth: if to fast, he pyneth’. This courtier is prepared to do ‘whatsoever it be, according to the humours and complexions of his felowship and courtly company, although his affections are clean contrary’.58 There is much force in Philibert’s jest: but we may find similar justification for time-serving pliancy elsewhere, and in disturbing contexts. Guevara, for example, writes that ‘it helpeth much to consider wherein the prince taketh chief delight’; and, once this taste has been observed, the courtier must give himself ‘wholy to love that the prince loveth, and to follow that that he followeth’. Thus the courtier may count himself happy ‘if he can frame himself to comend that that the prince alloweth, and likewise to disallow of that the prince misliketh’. Even when, as is likely, the courtier finds himself opposed to the prince’s view, ‘he may well think and believe to himself what he liketh best, but in no case to utter that he thinketh, nor to make any countenance to the contrary’.59 This, too, might be interpreted as satire, especially in view of Guevara’s general hostility to the court. But, within its context, the passage does give an impression of serious intention and it was read in this way by the English translator in 1568. There is, however, no doubt concerning the seriousness of exactly similar counsel offered a few years later by George Puttenham, whose concern for courtly strategies within the context of 57 Gabriel Harvey, Letter Book, ed. Scott, 78–9. Cf. a modern misinterpretation in V.-L.Saulnier, Maurice Sce`ve (Paris, 1948), 323–4. 58 Philibert (1575), 108–9; (1990), 168. 59 Guevara, The diall of princes now newly revised with a fourth book entituled The favoured courtier, trans. Sir. Thomas North (1568), fo. 118v.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

599

poetic devices (which are his principal interest) aptly illustrates the continuing relationship between rhetoric and rhetorical behaviour. Puttenham recommends that the English courtier be ‘apt and accommodate’ in the prince’s ‘commendable delights’: as if the prince be given to hauking, hunting, riding of horses, or playing upon instruments, or any like exercise, the servitour to be the like: and in their other appetites wherein the prince would seeme an example of vertue, and would not mislike to be egalled by others: in such cases it is decent their servitours studie to be like them by imitation, as in wearing their haire long or short, or in this or that sort of apparrell, such excepted as be only fitte for princes and none els, which were undecent for a meaner person to imitate or counterfet.60

The fundamental difficulty facing satirical critics of courtly ethics was that, as they themselves frequently acknowledged, the necessary qualities for prospering at court were precisely those they felt obliged to mock. Castiglione’s courtliness was an ideal of extreme fragility: but the alternative moralistic pattern was— because of its unrealism—scarcely less frangible. Under the exigencies of practical politics courtiers would often find themselves driven to dissimulate their real feelings; to simulate false; and to flatter, fawn, cajole, and bribe. Castiglione’s original statement on how to succeed at court continued to compel not merely because it depicted an attractive ideal. It also enshrined an unhappy truth. Temporal success is usually obtained by sedulously cultivating the good opinion of those who already enjoy it. worldly wisdom for courtiers The crooked road to material prosperity offended anti-court writers, who often maintained that the only effective way to 60 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), III, ch. 4. On the general relationship between poetic and courtly devices, see D. Javitch, Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England (Princeton, 1978), especially his second chapter, which is largely devoted to Puttenham. In 1530, Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke named the Governour, II. 14, had condemned this kind of imitative behaviour whereby courtiers strove to ‘be accepted in to the more familiar acquaintance’ of their master. H. H. S. Croft, in his edition of Elyot’s work (1883), ii. 176–7 n. a, drew attention to the parallel with Puttenham.

600

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

avoid courtly corruption was to avoid court—counsel scarcely helpful to men already enmeshed in earthly affairs. Indeed, the medieval traditionalist Chartier and the Renaissance humanist Guevara, who both waxed eloquent on this theme, had each followed a courtly career and enjoyed court patronage. As Francesco Guicciardini remarked in an early version of his Ricordi: Give no credit to those who prate of loving quiet, and of being weary of Ambition, and of having forsaken Affairs, for they think almost the contrary in their hearts, and if they be reduced to a private and quiet life, it is either through rage, or through necessity, or through folly. We see example of this every day; for let but any, the least loophole of greatness be opened to them, and these men will forsake the quiet they chant so loudly; and rush upon it as headlong, as fire does on dry wood.61

Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano was published for the first time in 1528, with Venetian and Florentine editions appearing in the spring and autumn respectively, and a further three editions followed within the next two years. It was thus possible, and even likely, that one of these was at Guicciardini’s elbow when he added the following observation to his final revision of the Ricordi in 1530: When I was young I despised music, dancing, singing, and such frivolities. Also I despised fine writing, horsemanship, the art of dressing well, and all things which seem to be more ornamental than essential to man. But later I regretted it, for although it is a mistake to waste too much time on them, and therefore perhaps to educate the young in them for fear they go astray, nevertheless my experience has been that such adornments and the ability to do everything well add dignity and reputation even to the best qualified. So one may say that those who lack these skills lack something of value. Apart from that, the possession of such accomplishments opens the way to the favour of princes, and for those who abound in them it may be the beginning or cause of immense profit and promotion, since the world and its princes are not made as they should be but as they are.62 61 Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, Version A: printed in Piu consigli et avvertimenti di M. Fr. Guicciardini, ed. Jacopo Corbinelli (Paris, 1576), no. 84, and translated by Emma Martin. See below, n. 65. 62 Ricordi, Version C. 179. This translation is from the version by Margaret Grayson in the edition by Cecil Grayson, Francesco Guicciardini: Selected Writings (1965), 45. Cf. Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, IV. 5.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

601

When a hard-headed paragon of political acuity extols the practical advantages of ‘frivolities’ and things ‘ornamental’, it is time to take heed. Inspired directly by Castiglione or not, Guicciardini’s courtly aphorism clearly expresses a similar view of how best to curry princely favour. And the history of the Ricordi casts further light into those gloomy recesses of the Renaissance mind where satire on self-seeking could be confused with right and proper behaviour. The Ricordi are essentially private meditations upon public activities, and the care with which Guicciardini revised, pruned, and augmented them leaves no doubt as to the seriousness of their content.63 It is, therefore, noteworthy that it was not only in his Castiglionesque advocacy of dilettantism that Guicciardini touched upon the arts of the courtier. Repeatedly he noted careerist techniques: exercising care in speech; avoiding all unnecessary displeasing acts; using pleasant words; dissimulating one’s own displeasure; making influential friends; keeping within the prince’s view; recognizing the perils of princely favour; shunning the reputation of being suspicious while, none the less, not being too trusting; keeping secrets; finding the right approach for the conduct of one’s affairs; choosing the time for making unavoidable enemies, and knowing how best to attack them.64 These observations laid bare the realities of early sixteenth-century political life, and their explicit cynicism was not intended for mass contemporary scrutiny. It was not until 1576 that a version of the Ricordi was put into print, edited by that interesting Florentine at the court of Catherine de’ Medici, Jacopo Corbinelli.65 This version was 63 The various recensions of Guicciardini’s work are carefully studied and tabulated by R. Spongano, Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi: edizione critica (Florence, 1951). A useful compact version of the Ricordi is the second edn. by M. Fubini and E. Barelli (Milan, 1977). For a fine critical appraisal of the text, see Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini (1977), 38–80, 184–7. For the history of the Ricordi and its diffusion throughout Europe, see V. Luciani, Francesco Guicciardini e la fortuna dell’opera sua (Florence, 1949) which is superior to the original English version, Francesco Guicciardini and his European Reputation (New York, 1936). Also valuable is Napoleone Orsini, ‘I ‘‘Ricordi’’ del Guicciardini nell’Inghilterra Elisabettiana’, in his Studi sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra (Florence, 1937), 77–99. 64 Ricordi, Version C. 7, 25, 26, 86, 90, 94, 133, 158, 184, 186, 198, 217. 65 Corbinelli’s Piu consigli et avvertimenti (1576) was immediately translated into French and published by Robert le Mangnier as Plusieurs advis et conseils de

602

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

immediately issued in a French translation and, within the same year, was already being cited elsewhere.66 Soon, other versions of Guicciardini’s maxims were being published, translated, and adapted throughout Europe.67 What had once been the personal reflexions of an acute intelligence upon the inner workings of the politics of his own period became the public property of another era. And this transition, from the secrecy of a private notebook to the publicity of print and popular acclaim, tells us something about the degree to which overt self-seeking had become socially acceptable in the late sixteenth century. In England, in 1576, Philibert’s Philosophe was misconstrued as sound advice for courtiers. In France, during the following year, the anonymous translator of Corbinelli’s edition of the Ricordi dedicated his work to Monsieur de Chantecler, who would, he hoped, consult with Corbinelli as to whether or not his French text was worth publishing. He himself felt that it should be printed, because the knowledge contained therein was meet for all those devoted to affairs: But I do not wish to advise anyone to model himself on the precepts of several who have in this matter introduced a new type of Philosophy that they wish us to learn. For they inflame men’s hearts with an insatiable lust for degree; and the ways they teach, in order to achieve this, are flatteries, disloyalties, dissimulations, and infidelities. In brief, it seems that— leaving aside the great and laudable actions of those who were, in ancient times, experienced in the government of republics—they have laboured Franc¸ois Guicciardin, tant pour les affaires d’estat que prive´es. Traduits d’Italien en Franc¸oys. Avec quarante et deux articles concernant ce mesme subject (Paris, 1576). Corbinelli’s edition was the basis for Emma Martin’s translation, The Maxims of F. Guicciardini (1845). On Corbinelli, see R. Calderini De Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli et les e´rudits franc¸ais, d’apre`s la correspondence ine´dite Corbinelli-Pinelli (1556–1587) (Milan, 1914); Procacci (1965), 173–91; Jean Balsamo, ‘Note sur Jacopo Corbinelli’, Bulletin de l’Association d’E´tude sur l’Humanisme, la Re´forme et la Renaissance (France du Centre et du Sud-Est), 19 (1984), 48–54. See also below, Ch. 17. 66 Pierre de Dampmartin, Amiable accusation et charitable excuse, des maus et evenemens de la France (Paris, 1576), fos. 50v–51, refers to one of Guicciardini’s ‘conseils’ which declares that private men, ignorant of affairs of state, are not in a position to praise or blame their princes. This is a translation of Corbinelli’s Plusieurs advis, no. 118. 67 See Luciani, Francesco Guicciardini and his European Reputation.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

603

to gather together the most evil deeds in order to offer them for imitation by those who desire a like splendour: and that this is nothing else but to be a great personage in public administration by whatever means, foul or fair, that may serve.68

This notion of the ruthless pursuit of success is thought by the author to be current in his own day; and he evidently considered Guicciardini’s aphorisms to be something very different from such evil precepts. Yet what, in fact, did readers find in the Ricordi edited by Corbinelli—a man praised by the French translator as one ‘who loved virtue’? They were, in the first place, constantly reminded that selfinterest is a much more common human motivation than conscience (no. 136). All men are naturally virtuous, ‘where they derive not pleasure nor benefit from vice’; but worldly corruption—and especially selfishness—inclines them to evil. Even lofty spirits desire greatness of degree and superiority for ‘in no other thing can we more resemble God’ (nos. 9, 82). Friends must be cultivated because they may be useful; enemies should not be made ‘without purpose and frivolously’ (sans propos et de gayete´ de cueur); wealth is to be coveted because, in this iniquitous world, it is necessary for reputation; while virtuous actions are also advantageous because they ‘spread a good name and opinion of thee, which, in many times and chances, shall be of incredible use’ (nos. 95, 96, 103, 129, 147). Everything should be accomplished so that one does not ‘come off the loser’; and for those who follow court life it is crucial to keep continually in the sight of the prince so that, when occasion arises, they may be employed in his business: ‘and whomsoever doth lose a beginning, though it be small, doth often lose the introduction and admittance to great things’. With regard to colleagues, the politic reader is advised to count more certainly upon ‘one who hath need of thee, or that hath a common interest in the thing, than upon one whom thou hast benefitted’. Benefits are not remembered. Men act through hope of gain (nos. 130, 135, 138). In order to operate within this morass of self-interest, various ruses are recommended throughout the Ricordi. It is, for instance, a 68 Plusieurs advis, fo. 2r–v.

604

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

good thing to deny something that you wish secretly to bring about because, even when people are certain of your involvement, a bold denial will cast doubts in their minds (no. 27).69 Tricks which serve rulers may also serve private individuals. A prince who wishes to cozen a rival by means of an ambassador should first deceive the ambassador, who will then act and speak more convincingly than if he knew the truth: ‘and the same maxim is good for every man who would persuade falsely through the means of another’. Especially helpful to the dissimulator is a reputation for frankness and honesty, which enables him to employ deceit in matters of importance with more likelihood of being credited. Personal dissatisfaction is to be dissembled, because the offender is quickly alienated by manifest displeasure, whereas he might still be useful if ‘through shewing thou hadst an ill opinion of him, though hadst not driven him away’. It is also profitable not to make difficulties when friends seek assistance: for one gains more by being ‘liberal of hopes and proffers . . . though no performance follow’. When one desires a favour from people, it is a sound principle to talk in such a way that they will deem themselves ‘the heads and authors of the thing whereof thou hast need’, for vanity will lead them to countenance things which they might otherwise have discountenanced. Judicious self-praise, too, is no discommendation in the Ricordi, because it is ‘incredible how much Reputation and Opinion which men have of thy greatness will avail thee; for with this rumour alone, they will run after thee, and thou never have to prove it’.70 Sycophancy is the shortest route to favour: ‘if a man desire to be loved by those who are greater than himself, he must shew himself full of regard and reverence toward them, and therein be rather abounding than scanty’. There is nothing more offensive to a superior than a seeming lack of obedience, regard, and reverence 69 This genial notion was adapted by Remigio Nannini, Considerationi civili sopra l’historie de F. Guicciardini (Venice, 1582), as his first aphorism: ‘Ch’il negar con efficacia di far una cosa che tu faccia, mette il cervello a partito a chi crede il contrario.’ 70 Plusieurs advis, nos. 59, 92, 94, 100, 107, 131. On this matter of establishing a reputation, cf. Il Cortegiano, II. 32, which advises a courtier (visiting a place where he is not known) to ‘procure that there goe first a good opinion of him, before he come in person . . . because that fame, which seemeth to arise of the judgements of many, engendreth a certain assured confidence of a mans worthinesse’.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

605

‘which he doth judge his due’. Conversely, with regard to injuries received from those whose lofty position renders revenge impossible, the only course is to ‘bear and dissemble’ (de l’endurer et dissimuler). Flattery and fair words—the ‘superficials of benevolence’—may seem of less avail than deeds; yet it is astonishing to what extent ‘caresses and gentleness of speech’ (les caresses et l’humanite´ de parolles) may gain approbation. Every man assesses himself higher than his true worth (nos. 73, 91, 97). Guicciardini furnishes a glimpse of the naked, pragmatic flesh concealed beneath the sumptuous raiment of Castiglione’s courtier; and he proposes similarly ambiguous ends for his diverse behavioural stratagems. The good citizen, says Guicciardini, should be familiar with a tyrant, not only for his own safety but also for the good of his country because, ‘acting thus, he hath opportunity, through his counsel and actions, to countenance the good, and to discountenance the evil; and none but fools will condemn him; for great damage would be to the City and to themselves, if the Tyrant had none but evil Counsellors about him’. This is akin to the ends propounded for courtiers in the last book of Il Cortegiano. Regretfully, however, Guicciardini also points out that ‘experience doth shew that masters make little account of their servants’ but, instead, cast them aside for the slightest advantage or merest whim. ‘I commend those servants’, Guicciardini continues, ‘who taking example from their masters, make more account of their own interests than of theirs [that is the princes]’ (nos. 52, 144). It is true that he qualifies this extremism by adding, ‘I counsel that this be saving all honour and fidelity’. But just how little honour and fidelity might be salvaged in courts where princes followed the precepts of the Ricordi and Il Cortegiano, ‘experience doth shew’.

systematic immorality: lorenzo ducci ’s ‘ arte a ulica ’ Castiglione had many imitators in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and, although none of these posed a significant challenge to his ideal, Il Cortegiano was increasingly subject to ecclesiastic censure

606

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

in Italy—less for its dubious morality than for its levity at the expense of clerics.71 Expurgated versions appeared: but even these dried up in 1606, and well over a century was to pass before another Italian edition was published. In France, Bonfon’s Paris edition of 1592 was the last prior to 1690; and Adams’s London edition of Clarke’s Latin translation in 1612 was the last English issue until 1713. Finally, two Latin editions at Strasburg, one in 1619 and the other in 1693, mark the end of one period of intense Castiglione publication and the beginning of another altogether more sparse era. What, if anything, replaced Il Cortegiano as a vade mecum for courtiers? One genre which became increasingly popular towards the end of the sixteenth century was the collection of aphorisms designed to meet the requirements of a specific profession. In this respect courtiers were well served, and collections devised for their benefit usually included a version of Guicciardini’s Ricordi together with similarly gritty materials deriving from Tacitus, who had been extolled by Guicciardini as an invaluable guide in the prudent management of one’s affairs.72 Closely related to these shapeless heaps of bons mots—but more important—were books which dexterously fused Castiglione’s Ciceronian slipperiness with a Tacitean explicitness. And here the Elizabethan misapprehension of Philibert’s Le Philosophe suggests another important verity which should be familiar to all those who have endured the rapid fluctuations of educational fashion in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. This year’s absurdity may become next year’s normalcy. We have already observed this phenomenon by comparing Philibert’s satire on flexibility and emulation with Puttenham’s recognition that it is useful to ape one’s masters. But even this comparison seems pallid when—with Philibert’s Lucianic shafts in mind—we turn to some of the text books which began to displace Il Cortegiano as manuals for courtly climbers. 71 On the censorship of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano and the preparation of expurgated versions, see Vittorio Cian, ‘Un episodio della storia della censura in Italia nel secolo XVI: l’edizione spurgata del Cortegiano’, Archivio storico Lombardo, 14 (1887), 661–727; Jose´ Guidi, ‘Re´formulation de l’ide´ologie aristocratique au 16e sie`cle: les diffe´rentes re´dactions et la fortune du Courtisan’, Centre de recherches sur la Renaissance italienne, 11 (1983), 121–84. 72 Guicciardini, Ricordi, Version C. 18.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

607

Many of these essays in court literature were thoroughly conventional: but others are of an arresting strangeness, and none to a greater degree than Lorenzo Ducci’s Arte aulica, which, as its title page boasts, teaches the courtier how to behave in order to gain his prince’s favour. The original Italian text was first published in 1601. Six years later it reappeared in a sinewy English translation by Edward Blount; and then in 1615 it was reprinted in Italian at the instigation of Paolo Martinelli, who added to the title page that the work was ‘fondata sopra Cornelio Tacito’.73 Ducci was certainly a noted student of Tacitus, but his technique in this work was simply to regard all Sejanus’ dirty tricks as models for imitation. The tone of the Arte aulica is of such chilling cynicism that it might be interpreted as merely echoing the most malicious passages in Philibert’s satire, were it not for the fact that the author himself, his English translator, and his admiring Italian editor were all clearly in earnest. Blount dedicated his version to the Herbert brothers—William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery—whose patronage he sought. ‘This small treatise’, he wrote, ‘hapning to speake English at this time; how I know not, but by a kind of fate, should seem destined to your protection; who from your owne practise in Court can cleereliest judge of his arte.’74 Martinelli dedicated his edition to Federico Ubaldo Gioseffe Feltrio della Rovere, Prince of Urbino, saying that he had decided to reprint Ducci’s book partly because he 73 Arte aulica di Lorenzo Ducci, nella quale s’insegna il modo che deve tenere il Cortegiano per divenir possessore della gratia del suo Principe (Ferrara, 1601); Ars aulica or the Courtiers arte (1607); Arte aulica Del Signor Lorenzo Ducci. Opera fondata sopra Cornelio Tacito, ed. Paolo Martinelli (Viterbo, 1615). Ducci also wrote a Trattato della nobilta` nel quale si mostra che cosa ella sia, e quali le sue spetie (Ferrara, 1603); and an Arte Historica (Ferrara, 1604). Apart from references in Uhlig, Hofkritik im England, there is little on Ducci’s remarkable analysis of courtiership, although there are some characteristically trenchant remarks on Ducci in Ferrari, Corso su gli scrittori politici italiani, 481–4, where it is pointed out that Ducci’s courtier’s merit resides ‘nell’eccessiva flessibilta` della spina dorsale’. For Ducci’s views on history, see Toffanin, Machiavelli e il ‘Tacitismo’, 174–7; Massimo Petrocchi, ‘Storia e filososfia secondo Lor. Ducci’, in L’uomo e la storia e altri saggi e svaghi (Bologna, 1944), 17–21. Incidentally, Ducci’s Arte aulica is listed in the bibliography of works used by John Florio in Queen Anna’s New World of Words (1611). 74 Ducci (1607), sig. A.4r–v. In fact the ‘incomparable brothers’ were singularly lacking in the arts of ingratiation, and their careers at court were marked by their unpopularity. Further references in the text are to this edition.

608

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

knew how the world desired it, and partly because he had found it greatly to his own taste, ‘not only for its charm and curiosity, but also for its being based on the prince of political writers Cornelius Tacitus’. Now each reader would be able to enjoy it and draw from it ‘that utility which he desires’.75 Ducci saw his own task as that of discovering whether it is possible, ‘by the way of certeine principles’, to establish precepts for the ‘instruction and institution of a woorthy courtier’ (sig. A.8r--v ). He does not set out to demonstrate courtly virtues for— as he remarks with studied ambiguity—he presupposes the courtier ‘already to have that habit, which the court requireth’. He purposes rather to teach the methods necessary for the courtier ‘to run the course of his service with happinesse’. He believes that ‘methodical knowledge’ is the guiding star whereby a man may ‘furrow the deepest seas of unknowen discipline; and haply far from the dangerous rocks of reasonable censures, arrive at the Port of true and commendable doctrine’.76 As was the case with the courtiers depicted by the emblematists, Ducci’s courtier submits his neck voluntarily to the yoke of servitude. His end is, blatantly, ‘his own profit’ and, since this cannot be encompassed other than by the ‘love and favour of his prince’, the courtier must diligently offer such service as will gain his object. His ‘ends or scopes’ are three: ‘that is, his proper interest, and this is that which chiefly he endevoureth; then the favour of the prince, as the cause of the first end; and then, the service of the prince, as the efficient cause of that favour’. The courtiers own, or proper, interest is the ‘good which can be obtained from an other’, and is solely concerned with profit (riches and abundance of material possessions) and with honours, which are ‘degrees, dignities, power, wealth, and the reputation which springs from them’ (pp. 9–10, 17). Ducci absolutely excludes from his conception of honour the practice of traditional 75 Ducci (1615), sig. a.2: ‘havendola letta con molto mio gusto non solo per la sua vaghezza e curiosita`, come per esser tutta fondata sopra il principe de’ Scrittori Politici Cornelio Tacito ordinai, che a` mie spese fosse ristampata, accio` ogn’uno goder la potesse, a col piacere della sua lettura cavarne quell’utilita` che desidera’. 76 ‘Ducci to the Noble Courtiers’—prefatory letter dated from the Castle of Ferrara, 19 Jan. 1601.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

609

virtues for, in his view, these may be employed as well outside the court as within and, therefore, have no special relevance to the courtier’s situation—a view consistent with (and perhaps borrowed from) that expressed much earlier by Nifo in his own typically amoral treatise De re aulica, where he had noted that many authors had written on courtiers but dealt with inessential matters, and where he had drawn a sharp distinction between the good man and the good courtier.77 For Ducci, the courtier, like other men, knows no limit to his ambition—he desires a ‘profit without end and honour in the highest degree that may be obtained’—so he must accordingly serve only those who have the power and the will to advance him. Princes vary in their generosity, and the ‘illiberal, niggardly, and absolute not beneficiall, are unworthy of life, since they live unprofitably in this human society’ (p. 23). Ducci advises his courtier to conceal the ‘endeavour of his proper commodities’ under the ‘apparent desire of the prince’s service’. This is the highway to remuneration; while the ‘excellent Master of the Courtiers’ is Tacitus, whose treatment of Sejanus comprises the most explicit statement of this aspect of courtly advancement. Beauty of body, learning, wealth, nobility, and all similar qualities are important only to the extent to which they may be exercised on behalf of the prince to gain his goodwill. Nevertheless, service is not unlimited, and it must never involve the courtier in the loss of his own life or possessions. Of his two interrelated ends, indubitably his own profit is ‘chiefest and superior; the prince’s service the lesser’ (pp. 25, 33, 40, 64). Ducci’s courtier is a dedicated climber, insinuating himself into the ‘confines of other men’s offices’ so that, by well-serving, ‘favour is augmented’, and he may in the end aspire to control every office through his own hirelings. Affairs are ‘so little pleasing 77 De re aulica ad Phausinam libri duo, per Augustinum Niphum Medicem (Naples, 1534). There is an interesting comparison between Nifo and Castiglione in Ercole Bottari, Baldassare Castiglione e il suo libro del Cortegiano (Pisa, 1874), 70–9, which is marred not by the author’s view that Nifo’s courtier was concerned only with self-advancement (which is true), but by his opinion that Castiglione’s courtier was not so concerned (which is untrue). On Nifo’s argument that the moral virtues have no relevance to the good courtier, see Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady (1956), 215–17.

610

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

unto princes’ that they generally prefer to leave the whole charge to some employee. To achieve this position, the courtier must master not only his own job, but must strive also to please his master in all things—again the logical conclusion of Castiglione’s versatility and art of seeming without necessarily being. Many petty services which appear almost unworthy of consideration, ‘only accomplished with an effective shew, have been the beginnings of special rewards and incredible favours’. Ducci’s sole qualification of this is also Castiglionesque. The courtier must avoid ‘curious and open affectation’ which might earn him the reputation of a dissimulator and incur his prince’s hatred or scorn. While avoiding abject servility, the courtier must be willing to perform difficult and unpleasant tasks which are especially rewarding when undertaken before the prince makes his intentions clear— the skilful courtier ‘diving (as it were) into his mind’, and thus making an ‘encounter with his pleasure’ (pp. 81, 84, 86, 87, 91). Moreover, the courtier must constantly attend upon the prince in order to keep himself in view, to snap up any piece of business which cannot be done by the proper officer, and to observe the prince’s nature (p. 98).78 Just as the tailor must know cloth, the smith iron, the mason marble, and the physician the functioning of the human body, so the courtier must have a perfect knowledge of his master, ‘in order to induce and gently wrest into the prince’s mind a love and liking of him’. To gain this precise knowledge, Ducci suggests that both the art of physiognomy and the study of a man’s language may be useful: ‘from the phrase of speech and metaphors that are used, the nature of him that frameth them may be perceived’. On the other hand, these arts are too much grounded on generalities, and an astute courtier may learn more from the master’s actions because, though princes may dissemble their true purposes, there has never been ‘so excellent a dissembler,which hath not been discovered and unmasked by him who familiarly shall deal with him’. In this matter, the courtier’s problem is 78 Cf. Guicciardini, Ricordi, Version C. 94: ‘chi sta in corte de’ principi e aspira a essere adoperato da loro, stia quanto puo` loro innanzi agli occhi, perche´ nascono spesso faccende che, vedenoti, si ricorda di te e spesso le commette a te; le quali, se non ti vedessi, commetterebbe a un altro’.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

611

simply to avoid revealing himself as a spy (pp. 100, 103, 105, 109–10). For Castiglione, ‘plyancy to please’ had been an important aspect of the courtier’s art. For old-fashioned Elyot, it had been a form of flattery and an object of scorn. Philibert had mocked it; Guevara had equivocated over it; and Puttenham had given it a guarded recommendation. Ducci, typically, is more methodical as he, too, faces up to the crucial question. How does the courtier accommodate himself to his prince’s humour? There is little difficulty where the ruler is open and frank. One simply does whatever he favours. If he is warlike, the courtier is warlike; if he delights in knowledge, the courtier professes learning and letters; if he is religious, the courtier, too, must appear devout. People love what is like themselves, ‘because self-love . . . is the root of all other loves’. If, on the other hand, the prince is a dissembler, then the courtier must be circumspect and is probably best advised to ‘conform himself in some part to the coloured effect and fashion’ (pp. 115–16). Ducci, like Castiglione, has much to say about the art of speaking well: but, again, it is as though Il Cortegiano were being refracted through a distorting lens. Facility of speech is especially important for the courtier. It enables him to please the prince; to win patronage for his minions (‘the ability and power to pleasure others’); and, above all, to ‘dive and sound into the deepest thoughts and affections of his lord, and to shew in himself a disposition and nature pliable and conformable thereunto’ (p. 121). Speech should fit the nature of the prince and should not, therefore, be too clever where the ruler himself cares only for mediocrities. A distinction is made between conference concerning affairs of state and speech for entertainment; and, unlike those who think it possible to establish rules for humorous discourse, Ducci considers that to be jovial and witty is a gift of nature, ‘which receiveth little help by art, howbeit many have attempted to give precepts of urbanity and merriment’ (p. 145).79 The ability to speak eloquently is likewise brought ‘from the mother’s womb’: though, in this case, it may be improved by study. 79 Cf. Castiglione and Nifo, both of whom attempt to systematize humour— with dismal results.

612

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Flattery, a constant target for moralists, is regarded by Ducci as the best way to secure favour and as absolutely necessary ‘to whomsoever serveth’ (pp. 154–5).80 Of course, abject sycophancy is not recommended because it undermines the ‘credit’ and ‘honest reputation’ sought by the aspiring courtier, who must, none the less, master the art of adulation, which Ducci defines as ‘an honour, which either deservedly or undeservedly is given by the inferior unto the superior, to the end to please him for his own benefit or interest’ (pp. 156–7).81 Without doubt, the most effective praise is that bestowed on whatever the prince himself deems most important and satisfying. But it must be done with conviction because, once the courtier’s praise is suspect, then the whole point of the exercise is lost. A little light reproof from time to time is, therefore, recommended by Ducci as helping the adulator’s credit with his master; and this device is particularly effective when it reprehends an excess of virtue rather than the presence of a real vice. Laudation best succeeds when legitimate; but where true merit is deficient then the courtier must have recourse to flattery which ‘consisteth in a little amplifying or enlarging, and is not altogether disjoined from perfect commendations’. If, however, there is no merit at all to work on, then ‘it is lawful to help yourself with that kind which makes an attribute of some good parts where none are’ (pp. 170–1). Through skill in speech, Ducci’s courtier may win his way into the prince’s confidence and aspire to serve him in special private purposes, ‘and such particularly are the excesses or extremes of some affection’, such as ambition, covetousness, wrath or the desire for revenge, and—most effective of all—illicit love, which can seldom be satisfied without some action ‘disrobing the prince 80 Cf. Nifo, De re aulica, I. v, where it is argued that the courtier cannot properly perform his office without flattery and compliance. Attacks on flattery are legion, but a fine example is in Anthony Rush, A president for a prince (1566), sig. F.2, where the ruler is warned not to ‘count those faithfull friends which do prosecute with praise al his travailes and talkes (as do Gnathonical and snockfeasting Parasites, with man pleasers, scrape sleves, and trim time slaves, of the whiche great surplusage there is in all Realmes) but rather those whiche with modest maner rebuke and restraine their inscient errours’. 81 Cf. F. R. Bryson, The Point of Honour in Sixteenth-Century Italy: An Aspect of the Life of a Gentleman (Chicago, 1933), 8–10.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

613

of decency and decorum’. Here the courtier must be at his most subtle: interpreting every hint from his master; heedful that the human mind is ‘so full of lurking corners’ that one can never be sure of another’s innermost thoughts; and wary lest the prince’s innuendoes are merely designed to ‘feel his pulse’ or ‘bring him to the crucible of his trial’. One thing is certain: the courtier will be required to play some evil part in the prince’s designs, and Ducci reminds his pupils that virtue is all very well but service demands the execution of extraordinary things. No evil is so monstrous that it may not be ‘washed away by the greatness of the benefits which by the prince’s favour are many times obtained’ (pp. 186–7, 194). There are yet other modes of ingratiation; and Ducci reviews the comparative merits of cultivating the ruler’s family, friends, and favoured servants. The last group offer special advantages, but are the most difficult to manipulate since they are themselves striving to hold their own place and must never suspect that the new courtier regards them merely as a ‘scaling ladder’. Ducci’s aspirant must, therefore, ensure that his progress is ‘gnomon-shadow like, invisible in his motion’. Even when favour has been acquired, he must be vigilant in its retention: never growing lukewarm in his service; never appearing publicly as anything other than an honest, upright man; never diminishing in respect and reverence for his master; and always remembering that familiarity with his prince is a privilege not a due, ‘to the end that he may use it, not that he should ’ (pp. 218–19, 234). The courtier should never make enemies gratuitously although, as Ducci acknowledges, it is impossible to avoid envy because the mean between not appearing powerful enough to retain reputation on the one hand, and appearing too great and ostentatious on the other, is terribly elusive. Rivals may be won over with benefits or hope. But, if you do advance others, it is vital that they should be neither noble, rich, nor excellent in any science, art, or quality— for such men may forget you once they have gained their place. In any case, malignity can sometimes not be overcome by bribery, and it then becomes necessary for the courtier ‘to extinguish or supplant his adversary’. Simulate friendship with him, counsels Ducci, while plotting his downfall. The suggestion (which Ducci himself raises) of encompassing a rival’s death is piously shunned.

614

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Evil deeds are inhumane, unfitting for worthy men, and—as Ducci adds thoughtfully—insecure. None the less, where the enemy is implacable, there is no remedy but to remove him from the court, bearing in mind that, ‘howbeit the courtier be not by himself to perform any bad offices, he may pass them notwithstanding by means of his adherents’. Finally, Ducci reminds his readers that all this advice merely constitutes a ‘conjectural art’ which may fail absolutely. If it does, then the courtier has no alternative but to abandon his prince. This is a grievous step, but unavoidable once it becomes clear that the coveted ends cannot be achieved in that particular service (pp. 257–60, 267–88).82 e ustache du re f uge : w e i g h i n g a dv a n t a g e s a n d d i s a d v a n t a g e s Ducci’s book never achieved the success merited by its bracing cynicism. Its values were, however, widely disseminated throughout the seventeenth century: for they were read, inwardly digested, and then discreetly regurgitated by Eustache du Refuge, whose Traicte´ de la cour, first published at Paris in 1617, achieved great popularity.83 This treatise moderates Ducci’s extremism in two ways—by displaying an occasional concern for conventional morality, and by employing a heavier classical apparatus—both of which serve to anaesthetize a reader’s sensibilities.84 John Reynolds, 82 In a final chapter, Ducci briefly discusses the problems facing the courtier in Rome, where he will be confronted by the court of the Pope himself along with the courts of the individual cardinals. It is an anticlimax and is omitted as an irrelevance by Edward Blount in his English translation. 83 Almost nothing is known about the author. Indeed, his only modern editor (albeit of only half the original work) does not even believe that Du Refuge was the author. See A Practical Guide for Ambitious Politicians or Walsingham’s Manual, ed. Gordon Tullock (Columbia, SC, 1961), pp. xii–xv. This is of little consequence here. What is of consequence is the nature of the text itself and its popularity. 84 Du Refuge’s references are principally, though not exclusively, to Tacitus and Seneca. In Book I there are eight citations from Tacitus and fifteen from Seneca; while in Book II there are fifty-three from Tacitus and, again, fifteen from Seneca. The reason for this distribution is that Book I is largely philosophical and psychological (being mainly concerned with the passions); whereas Book II is practical and, therefore, illustrated by historical examples.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

615

the first English translator, was himself so far desensitized that he dedicated his version to Prince Charles (the future Charles I) with an assurance that Du Refuge intended to ‘shew what Courtiers are, what they should bee, and not how Great, but how Good they are bound to make themselves in their conduction, both to their prince and Countrie’.85 The treatise, Reynolds continued, had conferred immortality upon its author for the ‘weaving and contexture of matter, so great variety of Heads, so curiously anatomised, and so concisely and accutely both commented and cymented’. The courtier had been depicted therein, in so lively a shape and depainted . . . in such rich colours, that when we find a Commonwealth so governed and reformd, as that of Plato; an Orator so fluent and capable, as that of Cicero; or a Captaine so Valliant and Ingenious as that of Zenophon; then it is possible for us to meete with the courtier of Monsieur de Refuges, difficultly before. (I, sig. (a)1r--v ).86

After all this, it is a surprise to find that Du Refuge is still concerned with the same egocentric, time-serving creatures by now familiar to us: men who are driven to court only by ambition or ‘fraughted with a desire to eraise their owne fortunes’. Like Ducci, Du Refuge accepts that it is impossible to prescribe ‘infallible and certain rules’; but, since affairs at court are not entirely governed by fortune, it is possible to improve oneself by employing appropriate skills. The subject is complex and confused, but Du Refuge will follow ‘some order and Decorum’ by first speaking of the qualities most necessary in a courtier, and then of their practice—gaining reputation and favour, maintaining success, and preventing fall and disgrace (I, pp. 1–3, 5). 85 A Treatise of the Court or Instructions for Courtiers. Digested into Two Books. Written in French by the Noble and Learned Iuris-Consull Monsr Denys [sic] de Refuges, Councellor of Estate, and many tymes Ambassador in foraigne Parts for the two last French Kings his Masters. Done into English by John Reynolds (London, 1622), I, sig. A.2r–v. Further references in the text are to this edition. Reynolds’s translation is faithful and piquant, and I do not share Tullock’s unfavourable view of it. My quotations and references are, therefore, to Reynolds’s edition. 86 Cf. Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, Lettera Dedicatoria: ‘Others say, because it is so hard a matter and (in a maner) unpossible to finde out a man of such perfection, as I would have the courtier to be, it is but superfluous to write it: for it is a vain thing to teach that can not be learned. To these men I answere, I am content to err with Plato, Xenophon, and M. Tullius.’

616

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Courtiers must have ‘decency and gracefulness’. Their speech must be clear and unaffected, and their countenance pleasing but without the ‘least shadow of ridiculous postures or smiles’. They must be modest while following ‘that which is generally applauded’; their apparel must be fashionable but not extreme, neither ‘too much affecting the new nor being wedded to the old’; and the models for their imitation are those already reputed wise and graceful. Affability is another desideratum. We must know how to salute and receive men and, ‘in a word, by exteriour demonstration of affection’, assure them of our good will as, with ‘alluring gestures and compliments’, we give them confidence to speak freely. Not only are we enjoined to satisfy men’s conceit; we must also display a pleasing countenance to entice and ‘allure them to haunt and frequent our company’.87 The respect and honour we receive from a great man is both agreeable in itself and because ‘his countenance and favour purchaseth us more credit in those who are present’. Jests are useful, but only when made with respect to persons, time, and place; and the same is true of compliments which, having their ‘mediocrities’ and extremes, must be used with ‘Art and Discretion’ (I, pp. 7, 8, 10–15). Good deeds are advantageous because they are the ‘cyment of humane society, and the fetters and manacles (saies an Antient) wherewith we may inchaine and captivate others’. This is particularly true at court, where interest is the ‘twist or courd that conjoins and combines so many people one to another’. According to philosophy, such acts should be neither mercenary nor executed in the hope of reciprocal offices. In court, however, ‘there are none performed or given otherwise’. Yet we must strive to make the recipients believe that what we do is done freely; otherwise they are no more beholden to us than to a usurer, ‘who lends forth his money, to receive it again with interest’. The issue is further complicated by the need for courtiers to have an active and nimble 87 It is worth comparing Du Refuge on affability with the advice sent by Sir Henry Sidney to his son Philip in 1566 when the future model courtier was aged 12: ‘Be curteese of Gesture, and affable to all Men, with Diversitee of Reverence, accordinge to the Dignitie of the Person. Ther ys nothinge that wynneth so much with so lytell Cost.’ See Sidney Papers: Letters and Memorials of State, ed. Arthur Collins (1746), i. 8.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

617

wit, because this, unhappily, predisposes them to evil rather than to virtue: because heat thrusts them on violently to vice, and forgeth them many subtle inventions to compasse their desires and designes. Hence it is that Fortune generally proves propitious to the wicked, sith they be more Imaginative than the Vertuous: sharper in their inventions, and more inconsiderate, and less staied in their executions: al things through the swiftnesse and vivacitie of their indevours (for the most part) happily succeed and answer their desires. (I, pp. 20–2, 31)

Good and evil, in courtly terms, are qualities widely removed from the opinion of philosophers or ordinary people. They are relative only to the particular attitude of the person whose will ‘we would understand and know to the end that according thereunto we may rule and order our selves in that we have to do’. Friendship, which is pursued to further our interests, is cultivated by manipulating whatever most stirs affection in the chosen person: profit to the covetous man; honour to the ambitious; voluptuousness and pleasure to the young—‘every one measuring his interest according to his necessity, and his necessitie according to his desire’. Du Refuge has much to say about men’s passions, the weaknesses arising from them, and the ways in which they might be exploited. But, to be successful, the courtier must first master his own feelings, for such mastery will confer upon him the leisure to spy out the place, time, occasions, and advantages to consummate his designs: ‘yea we must fawne, bow, and easily deferre, according to the occasion, always walking as it were with the bridle in our hand’. Nor should we lose heart if we find ‘the doore shut one way’; but we must ‘without torment or affliction seeke out and open another passage’ (I, pp. 50, 60, 92). Morality is thus reduced to the weighing of advantages and disadvantages. If the ‘profits exceede the prejudices’ in number, weight, quality, and importance, we judge a matter to be good. If not, then we reject it as evil. This is the method of appraisal which must be applied consistently at court, where having both the friends and the capacity to gain reputation may still not be enough. We must ask ourselves whether we are disposed to flatter not only great men but also their very grooms; to wait upon some porter after he has ‘a long time made us to stay to number the Nayles of

618

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

the Gate or Doore’; to suffer scandal and calumny; to tolerate injuries; to accommodate ourselves to other men’s pleasures or passions. It is ‘with this price and coyne that this Merchandise of the court is purchased and bought’ (I, pp. 100–1, 106). Flattery is the indispensable tool for courtiers, who may be forced to imitate the vices as well as the virtues of those with whom they have to deal. They must be ‘conformable and flexible’ to every humour and fashion, while never revealing the constraints under which they operate (I, p. 124). To great men must be yielded all the honour they desire, ‘making shew as if we much respected and esteemed them’. We must frequent those who are ‘Officious’— that is hold positions of authority—but must shun the ‘Inofficious’ (I, pp. 135–6).88 Ideally, honour should take first place in all our actions: but in matters of necessity—which ‘according to the old proverbe hath no law’—it is only to be considered (along with profit) after assurance, security, and facility. An honourable end to an action ‘amends and bettereth the forme that wee have observed in attaining thereunto’. But, for Du Refuge, good is equated with honour, profit, or pleasure, and all are defined solely in terms of material gain. He is equally worldly when discussing justice, which, in court circles, is determined by customs frequently opposed to laws and ordinances. Our chosen honourable and just ends must be pursued upon mature deliberation when we dissemble, defer, ‘obey necessity’, and reduce ourselves to do ‘that which we can, being not able to perform what we would’ (I, pp. 145, 150–1). Du Refuge devotes considerable attention to the techniques of persuasion, and is much exercised by lying, which he condemns as a social evil. This is one of the rare instances where traditional morality gets the better of him although, even here, he quibblingly allows those lies which wrong no man and ‘yet may profit some’ (I, p. 164). A more acceptable weapon in the courtier’s armoury is ‘Reservedness’, which, in part, consists of silence cloaking resentment at injuries received. It thus not only facilitates revenge but 88 A similar idea was expressed by Damon Runyon, ‘A Very Honourable Guy’, in Furthermore (1938), 38, when he explains why he does not cultivate the acquaintance of Feet Samuels: ‘In the first place Feet Samuels is generally broke, and there is no percentage in hanging around brokers. The way I look at it, you are not going to get anything off a guy who has not got anything.’

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

619

also avoids further injuries which might be incurred were our vengefulness suspected. There is also a ‘Reservedness’ in speech, consisting of subtleties, ambiguities, and evasions; and we may furthermore ‘reserve ourselves’ in exterior shows to conceal our passions. Conversely, just as this reserve is part of an active wit, so, too, is the ability to penetrate similar devices when practised by others. We must pierce the thoughts of those with whom we converse, for ‘the means also that serve to maintaine friendship, serve likewise to make him lie open and disclose himself, who relyes and trust in us’. Our own designs, however, must always be covered with an ‘affable and pleasing countenance’ (I, pp. 171–2). Dexterity of wit is the next object of Du Refuge’s scrutiny, and he contrasts the clumsiness of those who, like ‘unskilful Chirurgeons’, render wounds incurable, and the adroitness of accomplished courtiers who make difficult matters appear easy and pleasant. Such courtiers are likened to wise surgeons who ‘sweeten the wound with lenitive and coole oyntments’ and who, if they must amputate, ‘first so allure and provoke the Patient to sleepe, as hee feeles no paine’. Numerous tricks of discourse are available for such purposes, including ways in which we may ‘dissemble or conceale some truth very honestly’, and cope with that most ‘ticklish’ point in conversation—refusing the request of a friend without giving offence (I, pp. 173, 175).89 Four vital qualities of courtiership conclude the first book of the Traicte´ de la cour. Patience is required to support injuries, errors, and imperfections; to keep oneself before the eye of the prince in order to be chosen for some business, however small, on his behalf; and to see a task through to the finish. Humility is no less necessary at court, which is normally filled with vain, ambitious people who, having nothing commendable themselves, ‘seek those outward crouches and exterior submissions’. One should be humble, too, in advertising one’s own abilities: though here, as in all else, we must use ‘mediocritie’ according to person and occasion, for 89 On this kind of ‘honesty’, probably the most sophisticated treatise is Torquato Accetto, Della dissimulazione onesta (1641), ed. Benedetto Croce (Bari, 1928). There is a very full, recent study of the literature of simulation by JeanPierre Cavaille´, Dis/simulations (2002).

620

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

we must not permit ourselves to be ‘too much depressed and disparaged, but still hold and detaine our Humilitie within the lists and bounds of Courtesie’. Humility should be balanced with a third quality, boldness, which itself must be accompanied with discretion and modesty. And finally the courtier must have ‘Sufficiency or Capacitie’ so that, since the court comprises every type of man and encompasses every sort of business, he must be versed in all things, and ‘make himself necessary to many, and thereby to purchase himself more friends and reputation’. If such versatility is beyond our capacities, then we must become whatever is most esteemed at our particular court: ‘martialists’ with a bellicose master; ecclesiastics with a pious ruler; ‘Phisitions’ with an old and sickly prince; lawyers with the peaceable and just; ‘Excheckers’ who know how to raise money with a covetous, prodigal, or poor prince; or scholars with a learned one. ‘Let this suffice’, says Du Refuge, ‘concerning the parts and perfections necessary in a courtier, and let us now see how he must use and imploy them in his Cariage and Conduction, expressed in the second Booke’ (I, pp. 183, 186, 188). The aims of those who frequent court are varied. Some seek profit, ambition, and rank; others desire to command, tyrannize, or oppress; but only rarely are there any sincerely dedicated to their master’s affairs. A courtier’s entire effort is directed at procuring the prince’s favour; and Du Refuge, like Ducci, maintains that this is best achieved through employment in ‘extraordinary Commissions’, and in the private affairs of the ruler. Courtiers must, therefore, study the qualities both of the prince himself and of every confidant, domestic, nobleman, and officer who may either help or hinder; and they must remember that although princes try to hide their true humour, this may yet be discovered by assiduous observation. Whoever will be loved by princes must, moreover, conform himself to their inclinations and passions, which may involve exceeding the bounds of reason and good judgement, and thereby result in the corruption even of the ‘most chaste and vertuous’. In short, he who would lead an innocent life must banish himself from court. This is the traditional counsel of anti-courtiers: though Du Refuge echoes Castiglione and Guicciardini in suggesting that it may be possible for an honest man to survive at court, in

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

621

order to further the good of his country, counteract bad advisers, and mitigate the evils of a tyrant or voluptuary. On the other hand, since the court is compounded more of evil than of good, such a task would be beyond most men’s capabilities. In any case, flattery must be employed—‘thereby to worke and skrew our selves into our prince’s favour’—and, as Ducci had previously recommended, it should never be obvious, and might profitably be interlarded with some outward appearance of freedom to give the compliments an air of authenticity (II, pp. 2, 5, 9, 10, 14, 17, 20, 22–3). Giving advice is a hazardous occupation, and Du Refuge enjoins that every care be taken to discover what the prince wishes to hear. If, however, this cannot be determined, then it is necessary to equivocate—especially in ‘unlawfull matters’—and this can be an unhealthy policy when the prince is an enemy to delays (II, pp. 28–9). Du Refuge recognizes the problems confronting an honest courtier who is commanded to execute some wicked design, but admits that this is often the most effective way to princely favour (II, pp. 34–8, 180–4).90 He also discusses the cultivation of friends, ranging from the ruler’s domestic servants to the greatest officers of the land; the avoidance of enemies, with special reference to the dissembling of injuries received; and the subtle shifts which may win over adversaries. The reasons for loss of favour are carefully analysed and illustrated by classical examples, particularly the relationship between Sejanus and Tiberius; and, in general, the methods for eluding disgrace, expounded by Du Refuge, effectively nullify those promptings of conscience and zeal for the public weal which occasionally disturb the even flow of his cynicism. It is indiscretion to reprove the actions of one’s prince, to complain too boldly of him, to abuse his private inclination, to oppose those who are more favoured in court than we are, or to give counsel in any matter the ‘issue whereof is doubtful and dangerous’ (II, pp. 112, 114–17, 124). As for the myriad ways in which a courtier may come to grief 90 Du Refuge does, however, point out the dangers incurred by a courtier in carrying out unpopular policies since the prince is always powerful enough to defend himself from hatred and envy and sacrifice his servant as a scapegoat, ‘as Caesar Borgia made use thereof to free himselfe from the Crueltie which he had caused Remiro de Orco to commit’ (p. 181).

622

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

(through his own errors, by the machinations of his enemies, or through the prince himself ), the ‘wholesomest counsell’ Du Refuge can offer is that the courtier ‘stoops as low as he can to his Master’; thinks more of the prince than of himself; does nothing through ostentation; avoids exciting envy; gives the honour of any triumph to the prince; and watches out for enemies and competitors. It is also important to try to make real friends, although, unfortunately, this last technique is especially difficult because at court ‘every one rejoyceth . . . to depresse or ducke his Companion’. Finally, it is imperative to recognize the early symptoms of a prince’s displeasure without revealing that we have done so, for it may thus be possible to leave some ‘gappe and backe doore open to reenter into his favour’. None the less, amid the vicissitudes of court life, even this recourse may fail, and the highly favoured courtier must be prepared to ‘strike sayle’ when it becomes evident that he can no longer prosper. It is far more honourable, says Du Refuge, to ‘descend silently and peacefully by the staires and doore, then to stay till we are enforced out of windowe; and farre more shamefull to be banished, then orderly of our selves to take leave of the Court, under some honest pretext and cullour’ (II, pp. 162, 164, 171, 188).

baltazar graciÆn: courtly cynicism distilled Up to 1672 there were at least fourteen editions of Du Refuge’s Traicte´ de la cour in France, where it replaced Il Cortegiano as the principal manual for courtly behaviour.91 In 1621 it was translated into Italian by Girolamo Canini, a noted student of Tacitus, Guicciardini, and political aphorisms; and the following year saw the appearance of Reynolds’s English version. There were several Latin translations; a German version in 1664; and a Latin rendering of the second part alone which was subsequently retranslated into French as an anonymous work. Moreover, the second part was 91 One modest challenger to Du Refuge’s supremacy was Nicolas Faret’s L’honneˆte homme, ou l’Art de plaire a` la Cour (Paris, 1630): but this only enjoyed ten editions up to 1681, and the work itself is an extended exercise in insipidity. On Faret, see Maurice Magendie, La Politesse mondaine et les the´ories de l’honneˆtete´, en France, au XVIIe sie`cle, de 1600 a` 1660 (Paris, 1925), 355–69.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

623

translated into English as Arcana Aulica, in which guise it was reissued eight times up to 1728, and was also unwittingly translated back into French, again as an anonymous work, in 1695 and 1716. Thus the Traicte´ de la cour remained in circulation for over a century. However, in the later decades of its career, it was supplanted both in popularity and in authoritativeness by Baltazar Gracia´n’s Ora´culo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, which was first published at Huesca in 1647, went on to achieve astonishing vogue throughout Europe, and has remained in print ever since.92 Gracia´n’s work has no plan, but is simply a collection of 300 aphorisms for practising courtiers. They are mostly cynical and written with a concise elegance, mordant wit, and linguistic virtuosity which renders translation difficult—though this did not deter the intrepid Amelot de la Houssaye, whose French rendition of 1684, L’Homme de Cour, was reprinted fourteen times up to 1716 and was itself the intermediary for a host of English, Italian, German, and Dutch versions. The work’s powerful magnetism is further attested by a number of independent Italian and German translations and by the ultimate intellectual accolade of a translation by Arthur Schopenhauer, whose own lack of worldly success makes for a delicious irony.93 What was it that readers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries found so congenial? The Oracle’s deliberate formlessness, and the way in which one aphorism will advise a courtier to be on his guard against some stratagem recommended in another, make adequate summary impossible. But the flavour of the text is easily conveyed. There are aphorisms on keeping people in suspense; making them dependent; avoiding jealousy; and 92 In many ways the most informative, and certainly the most convenient, of the many editions of Gracia´n’s Ora´culo is that prepared by L. B. Walton for the Everyman’s Library (1962), which has a valuable introduction, notes, and bibliography, and provides parallel Spanish and English texts. My citations are from Walton’s Edition and I list them in the order in which they are discussed in my text. 93 Balthasar Gracia´ns Hand-Orakel und Kunst der Weltklugheit, aus dessen Werken gezogen von Don Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa und aus dem spanischen Original treu und sorgfa¨ltig u¨bersetzt von Arthur Schopenhauer (Leipzig, 1861). Cf. the enthusiasm of the learned but inept Gabriel Harvey for Machiavelli’s most extreme aphorisms.

624

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

provoking confusion, since life is ‘a manoeuvre against the malice of men’ (nos. 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 94, 95). There is advice on how to play on people’s weaknesses (‘the key to the will of one’s fellows’); how to conceal one’s own; keeping in with the right folk; and making the best use both of friends and enemies (nos. 26, 126, 31, 158, 84). Gracia´n tells how to keep silent; how to take hints; when to refuse a request; when to bide one’s time; and how to control the passions, for the ‘emotions are breaches in the defences of the mind’ (nos. 33, 70, 37, 55, 69, 98, 179, 222). He has much to say on adaptability, evasiveness, and the need to act as a ‘discreet Proteus’; and he recommends the ‘holy cunning’ of achieving our ends by initially furthering somebody else’s, while elsewhere warning that this device may be used against us (nos. 58, 73, 77, 288, 144, 193). Gracia´n extols the virtue of keeping ‘a cool head during fits of rage’; of executing everything pleasant ourselves, and everything unpleasant through intermediaries; of taking advantage of another’s needs which, if they develop into a craving, constitute ‘the most effective of thumbscrews’; and of learning when to contradict, since ‘an affected doubt is curiosity’s most subtle picklock’. The courtier is exhorted to avoid the reputation of cunning by letting his ‘greatest skill reside in concealing what is regarded as deceit’. True knowledge is ‘knowing how to live’, and this involves intermingling the guile of the serpent with the candour of the dove, and using sweet words in that ‘great art’, which is to ‘know how to sell air’. We must never be dragged down by other people’s misfortunes, and must recognize the man ‘who is stuck in the mud’. But we ourselves must know when it is time for us to retire from the fray (nos. 155, 187, 189, 213, 219, 232, 267, 285, 110). For Gracia´n, having real capacities is important: but appearances are more important still. It is, therefore, necessary for the courtier to refine and polish his natural aptitudes. ‘Gracious deportment is the adornment of life’, for it provides the best way to attain ‘every worthy end’. Ability must be displayed with care. ‘Extremes should be found in the talent, and moderation in the manner of revealing it’; and the more numerous the gifts the ‘less affectation should there be’. On the other hand, attainments should never be hidden under a bushel. The courtier must always behave as though he has an audience, and must remember that a ‘good

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

625

exterior is the best witness to interior perfection’. When great talent is combined with the ability to display it, then it is regarded as prodigious (nos. 12, 14, 85 (cf. 93), 123, 297, 130, 277). But above all other attributes—greasing every wheel of courtly commerce—is the quality el despejo. This is that ease of manner which Castiglione had described as sprezzatura and which Amelot de la Houssaye, in 1684, evocatively translated as le je-ne-sais-quoi. Charm is the life of natural endowments, the breath of speech, the soul of action, the adornment of adornments themselves. Other gifts are a natural embellishment; but charm is the adornment of perfection itself. It is appreciated even in discourse. It is, in the main, a gift; it owes least to study and even rises above discipline; it is more than ease of deportment, and is superior to gallantry; it implies a natural manner and adds the finishing touch [to everything]; without it all beauty is lifeless, and all grace disgrace; it surpasses courage, discretion, prudence, sovereignty itself. It provides a polite and speedy means to the achievement of one’s ends, and an urbane way out of every tight corner. (no. 127)

With the courtly aphorisms of a mid-seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit we may appear to have wandered far from our starting point. It is, however, not difficult to retrace our steps. Gracia´n’s Oracle, Du Refuge’s Traicte´ de la cour, Ducci’s Arte aulica, the notes of that anonymous English misanthrope, Count Verrua’s Avvertimenti: they are all Castiglione’s art of pleasing, fermented with Tacitean yeast and then distilled to a potent cynical spirit. Or, to put it more bluntly, they are all Il Cortegiano gone bad. There is a similar emphasis on effective modes of discourse, ranging from gravity to jest. There is a similar array of courtly stratagems. There is similar attention paid to fine proportion, the avoidance of evident extremes, and the pursuit of the golden mean, or at least its semblance. There is similar concern for conveying an air of ease, grace, and naturalness even when stretched to the limits of one’s capacities. There is similar stress on maintaining appearances and on seeming rather than being. All the tricks, devices, postures, and effectivenesses have similar ends: self-advancement, material success, reputation, place, and profit. And finally, the sophisticated yet overt egoism of the later theorists was—like Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano—neither conceived nor received as some awful warning

626

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

against the evils of court life. It was regarded, as it was intended, as sensible, practical advice on how to make friends and influence people in the highest places.94 This, in truth, was the triumph of Castiglionesque manner over matter. The arts of sycophancy and dissimulation had become respectable and had no need of a mask in order to appear in public. In the British Library, there reposes a treatise—justly neglected and unpublished—A Discourse of Court and Courtiers, dedicated in 1633 to James Duke of Lennox. Its author, Edward Payton, selfdeprecatingly informs his dedicatee that offering advice to somebody already so expert is ‘like the pissing of the Wrenne in the sea of your experience’; and goes on to declare his intention to portray the courtier ‘in orient colours of humane and Devine Abilities’, and to decipher both the ‘lawful and Machiavillian Polityes. The one to be eschewed, and the other to be followed’.95 This syntactical ambiguity, though possibly unintentional, is felicitous. Without doubt, Payton is disgusted by the subterfuges of courtiers whose motto, he says, is ‘Qui nescit dissimulare nescit vivere; by which they stawke to their Designes’. They flatter their prince so that they may, like ivy, ‘cleave closer to his effections’; they humour him in vice; and they make virtue itself appear ugly and deformed. 94 The courtly philosophy, vulgarized for mass consumption, still flourishes. More people than ever wish to know How to Make Friends and Influence People: and Dale Carnegie’s book (1937) with that very title was a 20th-c. best-seller, along with such works as Napoleon Hill’s How to Sell your Way through Life (1946), which was not merely about sales technique but rather ‘a philosophy of victorious living’. Recognizably Castiglioneque, the strategies advocated in these works are encapsulated in Carnegie’s dictum that ‘the man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses’. More significantly, sales techniques have been drafted into political practice so that public relations specialists are at least as powerful as their ostensible employers, the politicians and big companies. It is impossible here to pursue these issues, but their nature and, in particular, the ethical problems inherent in the profession of political manipulator, were starkly set forth in Stanley Kelley’s prophetic study, Professional Public Relations and Political Power (Baltimore, 1956). And matters have vastly deteriorated since then. 95 BL Harleian MS 3364. There is an inferior version of the text in Harleian MS 4018. The dedication is exceptionally fulsome and emetic. It is also amusing to note that Payton, who advocates a ‘grave and solid Rhetorike void of Tautologies which are resembled to flies about a Candle that hinder the clearnes of the light and understanding of the matter’ (fo. 62v), himself writes in a kind of debased Urquhartese.

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

627

To advance themselves they are prepared to ‘play the pandarus’ and prostitute their own marriage bed; and they study their master’s disposition ‘even to the center of his Soule; making their actions perpendicular to his inclination; that soe they may hitt the white of their ambition’. They change their religion to suit the needs of the moment: for they care neither for the glory of God, the honour of the prince, nor the good of the kingdom. They apply themselves only to ‘swymme the faster to the Cock boate of their aspyring thoughtes’; and their reading is, significantly, ‘Tacitus, Guichardine, Thucydides and other to marke the plotte of such as are of the same batche, with Sejanus leaving nothing unattempted for their riseing to satisfie their satyrlike appetites’. They read just so much philosophy ‘as to make an Atheist; and yet too little to make them runne to the supreame cause’. And they hold the ‘machiavilian position inviolable’, that private men cannot rise from lowliness without the ‘engine of fraude and the mallett of force’ (fos. 26r–v, 31r–v).96 The efficacy of fraud and force is, of course, a well-known Machiavellism. But, as we have seen, neither the practice nor the theoretical enunciation of the courtly behaviour denounced by Payton has anything to do with Machiavelli. Payton attacks a Machiavel stereotype which he combines with traditional anticourt sentiments.97 Yet he himself, in his inconsistent and illthought-out way, advocates techniques for prince-pleasing the morality of which is as dubious as the behaviour he condemns. His perfect courtier must be healthy, good-looking, well proportioned, well educated, and skilful at dancing, riding, feats of arms, and music. He must also have eloquence, audacity, temperance, prudence, fortitude, silence, wisdom, discretion, wariness, and affability. He must be a ‘perfect Philosopher, stout Disputant, a well-versed Historian, and skilful in the lawes municipal, and customs of the realm’ (fos. 12v–13). This catalogue of accomplishments 96 One is inevitably reminded of Machiavelli’s Il Principe on the use of force and fraud in the rise of figures such as Agathocles. 97 Even Gentillet, who did know something about Machiavelli, fell into this trap. Cf. Henri Estienne, Deux Dialogues du nouveau langage Franc¸ois italianize´, et autrement desguize´, principalement entre les courtisans de ce temps (Geneva, 1578), 443.

628

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

is familiar. But so, too, are other aspects of Payton’s courtier. He goes to court to build a fortune, following the example of those who are carried up ‘upon the screwes of their own sufficiencies or mounted upon the Frames of princes favours’. He will change behaviour ‘according to the Chamelion times’, and will accommodate himself to the character of the prince whose good inclination is the ‘hindge on which Honour depends and which turns the door of Fortune’. He will be like the eagle, ready to espy every opportunity to ‘shew himself applyable to his masters commaundes’. He will know how to keep the secrets of the court, but will use them for his ‘particular advantage’. And he will be a ‘great dissembler’; for he that ‘knoweth not how to put on that vizard is not fit to live in courts of princes’ (fos. 11v–12v, 13v). Payton piously dismisses dissimulation as the bane of sincerity, and recommends its use only with those who are ‘perfect in that Art’. None the less, the courtier is to be as ‘suttle as the cunning Serpent, and yet as untainted as the harmless Dove’. It is shortly after this equivocal passage that Payton assails the secret plots of the ‘Machiavellists’, and goes on to abuse the ‘putrefied judgement’ of court statists who ‘arrive their understanding at the port of Machiavillian policies’ and will eschew no ‘Machiavilian policie’ nor sordid action to satisfy their wicked desires (fos. 19, 25v). Here we are back not only with Cotgrave and the opprobrious label Machiavellisme affixed to all ‘subtill policie’ and ‘cunning roguerie’, but also with the Castiglionesque art of ingratiation. That Payton should have been so confused; that Philibert de Vienne’s jest could have been taken in earnest; that Ducci could be deemed a prudent counsellor; that Du Refuge was read as an advocate of the ‘Good’ courtier; that his Traicte´ was immensely popular; and that Gracia´n’s Oracle could become even more so: all this helps answer the questions with which this chapter began. First, there undoubtedly existed a literature which was (as their adversaries said of the Jesuits) more Machiavellian than Machiavelli. It did not, like Machiavelli, treat of how to gain and maintain a state. Instead it revealed how to gain and maintain favour. It was more cynical and outspoken than anything penned by Machiavelli; and its immorality was not only more blatant, it was also more fundamental. Secondly, had Castiglione presented himself before

SYST EMATIC IMM ORALITY

629

Donne’s Ignatian Conclave, he might well have gained admittance where Machiavelli had failed for, unlike his rival, Castiglione had ‘wrought artificially’. Wide approbation, emulation, and a largely unperceived but general corruption of manners constituted the achievement of Baldassare Castiglione, who had so well ‘concealed his mine’ that, even when the pollution was detected, it was promptly laid at Machiavelli’s door. How could Ignatius gainsay such consummate duplicity?

17 Systematic Fragmentation: The Vogue of the Political Aphorism Life is short, the Art is long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgement difficult. The physician must be ready, not only to do his duty himself, but also to secure the co-operation of the patient, of the attendants and of externals.1

Compare this, the first of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, with the last of the Plusieurs advis appended to the French translation of Guicciardini’s Ricordi in 1576. This explains that in former times, the sick, after they had been cured, used to go to give thanks at the Temple of Aesculapius and to write down the type of illness which had afflicted them, the remedies whereby they had felt relieved, and how they had recovered their health. It was from these memoirs that Hippocrates had composed his Aphorisms. ‘Thus collecting from histories that which has contributed to the felicity, greatness, and good government of a state or of a prince, one can draw forth propositions and maxims of great fruit and utility for the management of affairs.’2 An early version of the first section of this chapter appeared as ‘Aphorismes politiques: E´volution d’une fragmentation syste´matise´e’, in Jean Lafond and Andre´ Stegmann (eds.), L’Automne de la Renaissance 1580–1630 (Paris, 1981), 271–9. 1 Hippocrates, with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones (Loeb Library, 1923–31), iv. 98–9. 2 Plusieurs advis et conseils de Franc¸ois Guicciardini, tant pour les affaires d’estat que prive´es. Traduits d’Italien en Franc¸ois. Avec quarante et deux articles concernant ce mesme subiect (Paris, 1576), fo. 45: ‘Les malades, apre`s qu’ils estoyent gue´ris, avoyent anciennement de coustume de s’en aller rendre graces au temple d’Aesculapius, et mettre par escrit l’espe`ce de maladie qui les avoit de´tenus, et les reme`des dont il s’estoyent sentis allegez, et comme ils avoyent recouvert sante´. De ses petits me´moires Hippocrates composa ses Aphorismes. Ainsi recueillant des histoires ce qui a servi a` la fe´licite´, grandeur, et bon gouvernement d’un estat, ou d’un Prince, on peut tirer des propositions et maximes de grand fruict et utilite´ au maniement des affaires.’

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

631

I begin with this juxtaposition partly because the opening words constitute the first of all aphorisms; partly because Guicciardini’s Ricordi are the most famous of all Renaissance political maxims and were constantly reissued and augmented: but, most important, because that juxtaposition raises several fundamental issues. It relates medical to political advice. It relates the aphorism to the whole notion of scientific investigation and methodology. It relates a literary form to real life. And it relates precept to action. To say that the men of the Renaissance loved commonplaces is, itself, a commonplace; while to say that men in all places and at all times have enjoyed witty, pithy, striking sayings is, perhaps, almost axiomatic. The ancients revelled in such sententiae and, according to Quintilian, this delight eventually debased their literary style.3 In our own day we are depressingly familiar with political slogans and advertising catchphrases. Yet never was an age so addicted to the taste for multum in parvo as was the Renaissance. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in particular, were obsessed with all artistic forms which seemed able to compress the most meaning within the smallest compass. Visually this found expression in the vogue for emblem books, in which images were regarded as hieroglyphs of revealed truth. In literature the regard for aphoristic utterance was expressed through the study of classical inscriptions; the construction of epigrams; the constant quest for new aphorisms; and a mania for collecting, tabulating, and expounding the old. What exactly was meant by an aphorism? Renaissance authors do not define the term adequately for us; but we know that, even in classical literature, there had already been attempts made to distinguish between a variety of pithy sayings.4 Axioms were sometimes regarded as universal and self-evident truths. The aphorism was a general truth (but derived from observation and experience). Maxims were the laws governing a certain limited topic. Proverbs were truths which had passed into general usage. Sententiae were witty and striking sayings. And commonplaces were arguments or passages applicable to many cases: ‘universal Lines of Argument . . . that apply equally to questions of right conduct, natural science, and 3 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII. v. 2, 13, 14.

4 Ibid. 3–25.

632

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

politics’, as Aristotle put it.5 However, in many ways such distinctions were artificial and had been summarily dismissed by Quintilian. Axioms, after all, frequently began life as mere aphorisms, as we can see from the way in which observations in Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, the Scriptures, the Fathers, civil lawyers, canonists, and theologians became sanctified with age and accepted as authoritative, self-evident truths of absolute validity. Certainly, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, authors were unsure of the precise limits of the aphorism and tended to define it by offering a cluster of synonyms: ‘An Aphorisme, or principle in an art: Theorema: Maxima, aphorismus axioma, principium, pronunciatum, proloquium, effatum’.6 But the locus classicus of the theory of the striking saying remained Quintilian’s discussion of sententiae, which had exposed two eternally problematic aspects of the aphorism: a witty expression could be used for purely stylistic effect; or it could, as the summation of an argument, acquire the status of a general truth. Theoretically, there was no reason why style and content should not be complementary (a synthesis of litterae and res). But, in practice, the effect of the aphorism on Renaissance thought was frequently deleterious, because an unquestioning belief in the autonomous value of the pithy saying led to the stylistic (and ultimately intellectual) abuses already diagnosed by Quintilian in the first century ad. The problems posed by this delight in concise wisdom are immensely complex and, for the most part, beyond the scope of the present enquiry. However, in order to gain further light on the reception of Machiavelli, it is necessary to examine briefly the aphoristic modes popular in Renaissance political literature—not so much with regard to their content, but rather with regard to the ways in which political aphorisms were generated. Associated with this is the question of how readers, seeking political doctrine, tended to approach a text. And what were the intellectual consequences of such reading habits? Primary aphoristic utterance is, of course, the natural use of an original striking expression in order to enforce, summarize, or 5 Aristotle, Rhetorica, I. 2, 1358a10–15. 6 Riders Dictionarie corrected and augmented by Francis Holyoke (1606).

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

633

clarify an argument. This was, and remains, a normal rhetorical practice. Nevertheless, some writers are clearly more gifted than others in this respect, and become recognized as such: St Ambrose and Erasmus; Xenophon, Plutarch, and Tacitus; Commynes, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini. These authors are all examples of natural aphoristic aptitude. Nevertheless, even in such able practitioners of the sententious art, the dangers of the device are apparent. As Quintilian had observed, the initial impact of the sententia might conceal an intrinsic emptiness: ‘the speaker who is always hunting for striking thoughts, must necessarily produce many that are trifling, vapid, and impertinent; for he can make no proper distinction where he is overwhelmed with numbers’ (VIII. v. 30). Frequently, aphorisms made their effect by verbal virtuosity and aesthetic charm rather than by profundity or wisdom. As Dr Johnson pithily put it: ‘In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.’7 Moreover, a style primarily composed of striking sentences is self-defeating. Far from clarifying an argument, it tends to obscure it. ‘He that hath a long journey to walk in that pace’, wrote John Hoskins, ‘is like a horse that over-reacheth and yet goes slow.’8 However, a worse effect of the taste for aphorisms is that a belief in the autonomous merit of any concisely expressed idea could result in a parasitic style of thinking and writing which merely permutes other men’s words. We may see this tendency even in the more creative lovers of maxims: and the practice degenerated in the sixteenth century, which ended in an orgy of compilation. Erasmus had advised scholars to read for content rather than style.9 Yet style and content are really inseparable, and one might easily be mistaken for the other. Furthermore, Renaissance notions of content were very different from our own. It is rare to find a sixteenth-century reader seriously considering the intellectual and 7 Samuel Johnson, ‘On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers’, in Works (1787), x. 286. 8 John Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, ed. H. H. Hudson (Princeton, 1935), 38–40. Cf. Quintilian, VIII. v. 26–31. 9 Brian Vickers, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge, 1968), 77; R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1958), 268–75, 297–301.

634

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

political context of a book; or to find him searching for a consistent attitude throughout an author’s work; or to find him weighing an author’s verbal idiosyncracies in order to elucidate an inner, rather than an apparent, meaning. The ways of the Renaissance reader were quite otherwise: and we find them succinctly set forth by an early seventeenth-century Scot, James Cleland, who advised young gentlemen how to read books for maximum profit. They should constantly write their annotations in the margins and then, when finished, they should go back to the beginning and write the words of your author into a Book of Common-places, if the author be methodical. But if his work be a Rapsodie, without any coherence of the parts thereof, as critical and law books are, copy out your observations in your reading . . . Albeit this councel appear somewhat painful, yet the profit thereof is able to recompense the pain a thousand fold. For thereafter when yee shall have use of these Maxims, either in state matters, Policy, or any particular affair, they are in readiness.10

The results of such reading habits survive in the well-filled margins of many a Renaissance printed book, and in the crammed notebooks wherein diligent scholars had dutifully copied choice sayings.11 Their labours were often immense. Fra Bartolommeo da San Concordio, for example, struggled for years to bring together ‘some two thousand passages from perhaps one hundred and twenty ancient writers, scattered about in more than three hundred works’, put them in order, and translate them faithfully into 10 James Cleland, The Institution of a young noble man (Oxford, 1607), 160. For some detailed instructions on reading and note-taking in a letter (18 Oct. 1580) from Sir Philip Sidney to his brother Robert, see The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. Pears, 199–202. On the limitations of commonplace books, see Francis Quarles, Enchyridion (1641), Century I, no. 78: ‘Use Commonplace Bookes, or Collections, as Indexes to light thee to the Authors, lest thou be abus’d: Hee that takes learning upon trust, makes him a faire Cupbord with anothers Plate. He is an ill advis’d purchaser, whose title depends more on Witnesses than Evidences.’ Having warned of the pitfalls of commonplaces, Quarles promptly tumbles in himself. 11 Two works which are very informative on commonplace literature—but unfortunately not in relation either to politics or the art of war—are Francis Goyet, Le Sublime du ‘lieu commun’: L’invention rhe´torique dans l’Antiquite´ et a` la Renaissance (Paris, 1996); Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996).

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

635

Tuscan. Then his manuscripts remained buried in the ‘most profound shadows’ until Orazio Lombardelli came to the rescue by editing the entire valueless corpus for publication in Florence in 1585.12 Similar heaps of erudition have remained in well-merited oblivion in the manuscript collections of major libraries throughout the world: but one remarkable instance of diligence and survival may stand as a monument to this mode of reading. This is the series of collections once ascribed to Sir Francis Bacon but actually the work of a moderately successful MP, Sir William Drake who, between 1626 and 1645, filled in his own hand some fifteen substantial volumes—and, in the following decade, caused a secretary to fill another twenty-two volumes—with sententious material culled from a considerable variety of classical, European, and English political and historical sources.13 The habit of seeking wisdom under the heads of commonplaces resulted very early in great encyclopedias of sententiae, of which the Polianthea of Domenico Nani Mirabelli is a daunting example. This was first published in 1503, and subsequently went through a further nineteen editions, each larger than its predecessor, until it culminated in a text of three thousand columns, in microscopic print, covering subjects arranged alphabetically from a description of the letter A to Zonae—each consisting of Definitio et etymologia, loci biblici, Patrum Sententiae, Apophthegmata, Similitudines, Exempla biblica, Profana exempla, Hieroglyphica, Emblema, and Fabulae.14 Dexterity in the manipulation of compendia such as these was, doubtless, the basis of many a reputation for erudition.15 12 Bartolommeo da San Concordio, Gli ammaestramenti antichi, ed. O. Lombardelli (Florence, 1585). 13 See Stuart Clark, ‘Wisdom Literature of the Seventeenth Century: A Guide to the ‘‘Bacon-Tottel’’ Commonplace Books’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 6 (1976), 291–305; 7 (1977), 46–73. 14 Domenico Nani Mirabelli, Polianthea, hoc est opus suavissimus floribus celebriorum sententiarum exornatum (Turin, 1503). The last edition was published by Pierre Ravaud at Lyon in 1648. For a brief but useful guide to such compendia, see Giorgio Tonelli, A Short-Title List of Subject Dictionaries of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries as Aids to the History of Ideas (1971). 15 Analogous to this kind of erudition is Ben Jonson’s skilful manipulation of emblematic encyclopedias. And it would be interesting to know how many reputations for patristic knowledge have been built upon the indexes to Migne’s Patrologiae.

636

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Initially less ambitious were the specialized collections relating to politics. These ranged from original works, such as Guicciardini’s Ricordi; through more eclectic gatherings of political florilegia, such as Sansovino’s Propositioni overo considerationi in materia di cose di stato; to the pedantic ponderosity of Frachetta’s Il Seminario de’ governi di stato et di guerra, with its proud total of nearly eight thousand maxims drawn from nineteen authors. And, as we shall see, there were even more diligent editors going about the same business in the seventeenth century. A paradox faced by the collector of aphorisms was that pithy sayings, allegedly crammed with meaning, rarely seemed selfsufficient. There was always a compulsion to demonstrate one’s own parasitic ingenuity by discoursing upon their content—a process familiar to us in the work of emblematists, who were never satisfied with the visual image alone. The nut had to be cracked open so that the kernel of truth could be extracted in a text which both amplified and exemplified its meaning. Exactly the same process was employed by aphorists—especially those concerned with political affairs— and many of them, such as Daneau, Frachetta, and Spontone, provided copious explanatory discourses of their own for each sententia, or for each group of sententiae. The strange way in which this process could develop may be exemplified by the treatment accorded to Guicciardini. The great historian would examine events or personalities, and would derive from these some striking, original statement. Subsequently, readers drew further aphorisms from Guicciardini’s historical text. Either way, each aphorism would then become a selfsufficient statement quite divorced from its original context, and could be extracted and placed together with other material similarly abstracted. Yet these, in their turn, seemed to require explanation and historical exemplification: a method which may be seen at work in Sir Robert Dallington’s Aphorismes civill and militarie (1613).16 Dallington was a keen student of history, and especially of Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia. He accordingly compiled a compen16 Sir Robert Dallington, Aphorismes civill and militarie: amplified with authorities, and exemplified with historie, out of the first quarterne of Fr. Guicciardine (1613). The work was translated into French by Le Sieur de Mouchembert as Essais politiques et militaires (enrichis de diverses maximes et remarques tire´es des anciens auteurs) (Paris, 1627).

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

637

dious series of 247 political observations drawn from history for the enlightenment of Henry, Prince of Wales, whose early death turned the volume into a kind of aphoristic memorial. Each observation is followed by a group of relevant aphorisms both ancient and modern, in which material drawn from Guicciardini is prominent.17 And then the whole group is shown in practice within an historical context based upon episodes from the Storia d’Italia.18 With Dallington the aphoristic process has moved in a complete circle. However, so simple a geometric figure would be inadequate to describe the method adopted by Girolamo Canini in his Aforismi politici (1625).19 Canini, who was a diligent translator (counting Tacitus, Montaigne, and Du Refuge among his victims), prefaces the Aforismi with a short discourse addressed to his readers, in which he explains not only how history may be studied profitably, but also why he has drawn aphorisms only from the first book of Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia, and why he has presented them separated from the original text. The fact is, he says, that this one book is replete with memorable occurrences and important actions, both public and private, finely expressed and reduced to universal principles. Prudence may be gained in two ways: either by experience, which is a firm but slow method; or, on the other hand, it may be gained by reading. The latter method has the advantage of great abundance of examples and speed of acquisition, and is especially rewarding when the book is by Guicciardini, who is not only the most perceptive historian Italy has ever produced but is the most apposite of historians ancient and modern.20 Canini’s publisher then addressed the same readers, reinforcing the signal merits of the very first book of Guicciardini’s Storia 17 Among the many other authors, ancient and modern, culled by Dallington, Machiavelli figures frequently as a respectable source—with twenty-five references to the Discorsi and five to Il Principe. 18 With regard to Guicciardini, it is also worth noting the much more elementary A briefe collection or epitome of all the notable things in the hystorie of Guicchiardine (1591). 19 Girolamo Canini, Aforismi politici cavati dalla storia di Franc. Guicciardini (Venice, 1625). On Canini, see Bozza, Scrittori politici italiani dal 1550 al 1650, 151–2; and the article in the DBI. 20 Canini, Aforismi politici, sig. A.4r–v.

638

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

d’Italia, and arguing that Canini’s discourse serves as an indication of the abundance of his aphorisms—not built on air or the imagination, but rather on what has really occurred in the most remarkable epoch of modern times.21 Then come 429 pages of aphorisms comprising 1,181 paragraphs, each introduced by a word or very brief phrase (three words at most), from Guicciardini, which is then briefly augmented with a paraphrase of the appropriate context (that is the original sentence) of the Storia. These are nearly always followed by a note providing cross-references to other aphorisms and to parallel materials in Tacitus. It thus takes Canini nine paragraphs to expound Guicciardini’s first two sentences; and he continues in this vein relentlessly to the end. The sense of fragmentation is overwhelming, though Canini evidently felt that he was thereby paying just tribute to the richness of his source. Another important aspect of the reciprocal needs of aphorism and exegesis is the use of a striking saying to summarize an argument. In such a case it would constitute a pre´cis of the text as, for example, in the Avvedimenti civili of Giovanno Francesco Lottini (1575), where each observation is summarized in the first sentence, which is, therefore, itself an aphorism.22 Even more interesting in this respect are the various editions of the popular Hypomneses politicae (a Latin rendering of Guicciardini’s Ricordi) in which each of the Ricordi—already pithy and pungent—is provided with an even more compressed title.23 A good example of this is the observation ‘He who says the ‘‘people’’ really says a ‘‘madman’’, because it is a monster full of confusion and errors, and its vain opinions are as far from the truth as (according to

21 Canini, Aforismi politici, sig. C.3. 22 Giovanni Francesco Lottini, Avvedimenti civili, di M. Giovan Francesco Lottini di Volterra, Ne’ quali si contengono molti ammaestramenti utili, cosı` per la vita politica, come per le consulte, e per li governi de gli stati (Venice, 1575). On Lottini, see Bozza, Scrittori politici, 46–8. 23 Hypomneses politicae Domini Francisci Guicciardini, Nobilis Florentini, & historiae sui temporis scriptoris excellentissimi: recens ex Italico Latinae factae. Quibus subjunctae sententiae selectiores ex historia Italica eiusdem autoris descriptae (Strasburg, 1599). This is an augmented translation of the version of the Avvertimenti (including the Preface) edited by Francesco Sansovino in his Propositioni di cose di stato (Venice, 1583).

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

639

Ptolemy) Spain is from India’—which becomes simply ‘Populus erroribus obnoxius’.24 Analogous to this habit of generating political aphorisms out of other aphorisms is the development of the marginal note in historical works. Such annotations frequently do more than merely summarize adjacent material in the text, for they may also draw general conclusions in the form of independent observations. This technique is especially noteworthy in the later sixteenth-century editions of Chomedy’s French translation of Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia, where the text is augmented by marginal ‘Observations politiques, militaires et morales du Sieur de la Noue’, which themselves constitute a virtually independent repertory of political maxims.25 Consideration of this edition, moreover, leads us to a final formal aspect of the almost accidental creation of maxims and aphorisms. Each bulky volume of Chomedy’s translation is followed by two Gnomologies: the first ‘representant quelques maximes et sentences notables contenues en ce volume de l’histoire de Guichardin’; the second ‘contenant les sentences plus remarquables recueillies des Maximes, Morales, politiques et militaires, descrites es marges de l’histoire’. In this way, the development of the detailed subject index (a tradition long hallowed in legal literature for the speedy retrieval of information) could frequently transform a text not originally conceived as a collection of aphorisms into precisely such a collection.26 The process of dismantling texts into unrelated pieces may be seen in the habit of so editing an author’s work that its aphorisms are highlighted. Pierre Matthieu, for example, prepared his biography of Louis XI on the basis of Commynes: ‘I acknowledge that I have taken the principal parts of this building from Philippe de 24 Hypomneses politicae, no. 93. 25 Histoire des guerres d’Italie. Compose´e par M. Franc¸ois Guichardin Gentilhomme Florentin, & traduite d’Italien en Franc¸ois, par Hierosme Chomedy Parisien. Nouvelle e´dition, diligemment reveue & corrige´e, a` laquelle ont este´ adjouste´es les observations politiques, militaires & morales du Sieur de la Noue (Geneva, 1593). For example, when Guicciardini is commenting on the French inability to pay their troops, La Noue observes: ‘Si les nerfs sont trop faibles le corps demeure inutile: ainsi sans argent les exploits de guerres s’avancent peu’ (vol. i, fo. 95v). 26 See Archer Taylor, General Subject Indexes since 1548 (Philadelphia, 1966).

640

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Commines: but the order, proportion, architecture, and ornaments are mine.’27 But his publisher was not satisfied and therefore printed the text with copious marginal comment and aphoristic observations; added a substantial collection of ‘Maximes, jugemens et observations politiques de Philippes de Commines’, with each choice sentence keyed to the appropriate part of Matthieu’s history; and completed the structure with a ‘Table des principales Matie`res, sentences et observations’. Even more extreme is Tommaso Porcacchi’s popular edition of Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia, which opens with ‘una Raccolta di tutte le Sententie sparse per l’Opera’. Page references are provided; and the first word of each sententia is printed in the text itself in block capitals to facilitate the reader’s search—to enable him, that is, to find his aphorism without having to trouble about the historical context which originally occasioned it.28 Porcacchi does, at least, leave his historian intact. But, given the historical premisses generally accepted throughout the sixteenth century, it was not unreasonable for some scholars to assume that—since the purpose of historical study is to deduce general rules for the man of action—one need concern oneself solely with those rules. Just as the empty husk of a fly is cast by the spider from its web, so the aphorist might dispose of the historian whom he has sucked dry of nutriment. The procedure was never described so baldly: but it was widely practised and there were, after all, good classical precedents for this. As Marc’Antonio Gandino pointed out in the dedication to his translation of Frontinus, history is like a universal theatre of the past in which we may see before our eyes all acts, good and bad, prudent and foolish, brave and abject. All examples are there for both civil and military life but, unfortunately, the men most fit for such affairs are usually too busy to search through the multiplicity of materials. They simply do not 27 Pierre Matthieu, Louis XI. Histoire de Louis XI, Roy de France (Paris, 1610), sig. C.iiir–v: ‘J’advoue d’avoir tire´ de Philippes de Commines les principales pieces de ce batiment. Mais l’ordre, la taille, l’architecture, les ornemens sont de moy.’ 28 La historia d’Italia di M. Francesco Guicciardini, ed. Tommaso Porcacchi (Venice, 1574). Cf. Lodovico Dolce’s edition of Castiglione’s Il libro del Cortegiano (Venice, 1556) which, as the editor explains (sig. *.2r–v), he has enhanced with marginal comments and a new table so that each reader may, with ease, locate whatever he likes.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

641

have the time. And this is where the aphorist comes in—for, says Gandino, Frontinus was but one of several ancient authors who reduced the military art to precepts under brief heads for all occasions.29 It was on similar grounds that the popular Sansovino defended his own extraction of precepts from histories (especially from Guicciardini); for his efforts were intended to ‘suck out of all these particular things, the sap, the sweet, and the marrow’, in order to relieve great persons of ‘the tediousness of reading and toyling themselves’.30 Guicciardini, with the passage of time, tended to be reduced to a mere agglomeration of maxims; and much the same sort of thing happened to other authors. Paolo Giovio’s historical works were dismantled into 541 Avvertimenti.31 Innocent Gentillet handled Machiavelli in similar fashion. Bornitius dealt thus with Bodin.32 But the fate of these writers was as nothing in comparison with the treatment meted out to Tacitus, who was dissected and discoursed upon by a host of academic anatomists and indexers whose titanic labours often, and mercifully, remain unpublished.33 Two of those who did make the journey into print may be taken as typical examples of systematic fragmentation and the zeal with which it was pursued as an end in itself. Girolamo Frachetta was proud of 29 Marc’Antonio Gandino, Stratagemi militari di Sesto Giulio Frontino (Venice, 1574), sigs. a.2–3v. 30 Francesco Sansovino, The quintesence of wit, being a corrant comfort of conceits, trans. R. Hichcock (1590), ‘Epistle to the Emperor Rudolph’ and ‘Author to the Reader’. 31 BL Add. MS 8809, fos. 1v–45, entitled Avvertimenti, overo propositioni universali cavate delle Istorie del Giovio. 32 Jacobus Bornitius, Consilia Johannis Bodini Galli, & Fausti Longiani Itali, De Principe recte instituendo. Cum Praeceptis etc. (Erfurt, 1603). 33 It must, however, be conceded that some of these compilations are extremely interesting, especially for their easy accommodation of Tacitus and Machiavelli. A striking example is the multi-volume Ricordi politici compiled by Lelio Marretti, preserved at the BNF MS it. 235–237. Another copy, which I have not seen, is at the Magliabecchiana. Marretti divides his work into three parts (Prencipe; Huomini grande, prudenti, cose grandi; Guerra e Capitano), and, as Toffanin noted, he seems to have commented on Tacitus with Machiavelli’s Discorsi close to hand. See Toffanin, Machiavelli e il ‘Tacitismo’, 153–7. BL Add. MS 8807 is a copy of the second part of Marretti’s collection: the Huomini grande, prudenti, cose grandi. For a number of other manuscript collections of this kind, see Ferrari, Corso su gli scrittori politici italiani, 335–47.

642

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

the fact that his Seminario (1613) contained some 8,000 maxims and universal propositions of which no fewer than 1,312 examples were derived from Tacitus.34 Fabio Frezza, however, in his Massime, regole, et precetti (1614), having paid tribute to the personal encouragement he had received from Frachetta, claims that he had taken—‘if I am not mistaken’—all the maxims and advice that could possibly be drawn from Tacitus who, among political writers, is estimated by everyone as ‘il piu` Politico’.35 And he had, indeed, squeezed from Tacitus 1,591 maxims, many of them quite painfully obvious. It is not especially rewarding to learn—even on Tacitus’ authority—that the crowd is credulous by nature; that soldiers lose their vigour and ferocity through debauchery; that it is a great disadvantage to fight in a ‘tristo’ place known to the enemy but not to oneself; that a handsome and magnanimous prince is pleasing to his people; or that the virtu` of the captain gives great encouragement and confidence to his soldiers.36

aphorisms and politics What was the purpose of this kind of activity, and what did it achieve? The tendency to anatomize authors was inextricably related to the tendency to reduce whole areas of knowledge and enquiry to collections of maxims culled, in their turn, from the relevant authorities. There were distinguished precedents for this technique, notably in the fields of medicine and law: but we find its application to politics (and to such related topics as war, courtiership, and counsel) developing into a veritable industry in the late 34 Girolamo Frachetta, Il Seminario de’ governi di stato, et di guerra (Venice, 1613). See Bozza, Scrittori politici, 121–2. 35 Fabio Frezza, Massime, regole, et precetti, di stato e di guerra (Venice, 1614); 2nd edn. (Naples, 1616). See Bozza, Scrittori politici, 122–3. Frezza writes: ‘ho, ad imitation sua, cavata (s’io non erro) tutte le Massime, et tutti gli Avertimenti, o` per poco tutti, che si possono cavar a Cornelio Tacito, stimato da ogn’uno tra` scrittori Politici, il piu` Politico’ (2nd edn.), sig. A.3v. This second edition is interesting not so much for the fact that it has new material from Velleius Paterculus and Quintus Curtius but for the addition of marginal identification of the sources—which had been requested by readers of the first edition. See ‘All Lettore Secondo Avertimento’. 36 Frezza, Massime (1616), 299, 301, 44, 54, 174.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

643

sixteenth century—despite the fact that the practical limitations of political maxims had been recognized even by Gentillet, who dealt in them.37 Much ingenuity, and the greater part of many a compiler’s meagre originality, was expended on the organization of his material: which was, perhaps, inevitable since the content itself was largely common property. Frezza stolidly works his way seriatim through Tacitus. Frachetta arranges his aphorisms under sensible topics and consigns the recalcitrant remnant to a concluding section: ‘Massime, che non hanno luogo certo’. Settala uses his aphorisms as chapter headings, each followed by a discourse principally upon Aristotle; Zuccolo expounds one hundred ancient Oracoli; and Valeriano Castiglione divides his into separate Ragione di stato.38 Elias Reusner fills 736 pages with the most commonplace commonplaces arranged as Flores; Canini takes single words from Guicciardini as his starting point; Canoniero organizes his aphorisms within an exposition of Hippocrates; and Eugenio Raimondi gathers his materials into a vast disorderly heap with no underlying scheme whatever, and where even the allegedly alphabetical table proves chaotic.39 Could political activity really be based upon aphorisms derived from the record of past deeds, however these were arranged? Philippe Canaye—lawyer, diplomat, and editor of La Noue’s Discours politiques et militaires—could see serious difficulties confronting those who wished to set forth general rules which would correspond to differing circumstances. The greater part of the maxims of politicians, said Canaye, are derived from examples, just as the axioms of philosophers are collected by inductions. Moreover, these political maxims are merely contingent and 37 See above, Ch. 9. 38 Lodovico Settala, Della ragione di stato libri sette (Milan, 1627); Lodovico Zuccolo, Considerationi politiche e morali sopra cento oracoli d’illustri personaggi antichi (Venice, 1621); Valeriano Castiglione, Statista regnante (Lyon, 1628). On these authors, see Bozza, Scrittori politici, 137–8, 160–1, 154–6; Ferrari, Corso, 292–3; and, on Zuccolo in particular, Convegno di studi in onore di Ludovico Zuccolo nel quarto centenario della nascita` (Faenza, 15–16 Mar. 1969). 39 Elias Reusner, Historici summi, Hortulus Historico-Politicus Coronas Sex ex floribus variis variegatas complectens etc. (Hesse-Nassau, 1618); Eugenio Raimondi, Il novissimo passatempo, politico, istorico, & economico (Venice, 1639). On Raimondi, see Bozza, Scrittori politici, 156–7, 183; Ferrari, Corso, 497. On Canoniero, see below, pp. 648–9.

644

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

subject to many importunities, if one does not take especial heed of all circumstances in order finally to pin down the general maxim as tightly as possible. ‘This is why fine historians are diligent in paying attention to the slightest particularities, because the least is sufficient to alter an entire discourse.’40 This view of the exactitude required of an historian must underlie Canaye’s contempt for Machiavelli’s simplistic historical method, and his belief that anyone with his own book in hand could easily demonstrate Machiavelli’s ‘ignorance and perverse judgement’.41 The question remains: what political figure, confronted by some intractable practical problem, was likely to thumb his way through any of the many repositories of political wisdom in order to locate an appropriate and helpful sententia? This difficulty had been understood by that first-class activist and thinker Francesco Guicciardini, who, recognizing the complexity and infinite variety of real life, had advocated the absorption rather than the mere consultation of aphoristic literature: ‘Re-read often and consider these axioms well, for they are simpler to know and understand than to put into practice—this is made easier by acquiring such familiarity with them that they are always fresh in one’s mind.’42 On the other hand, many writers did seriously believe that it was possible to say something valuable about politics simply by accumulating aphoristic fragments. A clue to the significance of this belief is provided by our starting point, Hippocrates. Consider, for a moment, the Discorsi published by Filippo Cavriana in 1600. The work treats of affairs of state and court. But its author had, in fact, 40 Philippe Canaye, Seigneur de Fresnes, L’Organe c’est a` dire l’instrument du discours (Lyon, 1589), 263: ‘Toutesfois la plus part des Maximes des politiques sont tirees des exemples, comme les Axiomes des Philosophes se colligent par les inductions. Aussi ces Maximes politiques ne sont que contingentes, et sont subjectes a` beaucoup d’instances, si on ne prend garde soigneusement a` toutes les circonstances, pour abstraindre le plus qu’il est possible la maxime generale a` la conclusion. C’est pourquoy les braves historiens sont diligents a` remarquer jusques aux moindres particularite´s: pource que la moindre est suffisante pour changer tout un discours.’ 41 Ibid. 190: ‘Si les discours de Machiavel estoyent bastis de ceste fac¸on [that is according to Canaye’s method] il ne seroit pas si aise´ de monstrer en plusieurs endroits son ignorance et pervers jugement, comme il est a` quiconque a en main l’Organe Analytique, et en sc¸ait bien user.’ 42 Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, Version C.9; trans. Grayson, 8.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

645

studied medicine at Pisa, and defends himself against those who would attack him for constantly establishing propositions on affairs of state by referring to Hippocrates, whom he uses as a shield. Such criticism shows that they do not believe that virtuous human actions are the same as those of nature into which no other writer has penetrated more profoundly ‘with the light of his genius’. Moreover, continues Cavriana, were his aphorisms applied by politicians to public government, they would be recognized as a ‘most faithful guide to human life’.43 The Spanish philosopher Baltasar de Alamos y Barrientos adopted a very similar position, arguing that just as Hippocrates, and the doctors who followed him, formed the principles of their science from a consideration of particular examples of disease, so it was possible to discover in Tacitus the principles whereby maladies of state might be treated and cured.44 Views such as those of Cavriana and Alamos y Barrientos on the relationship between medical and political precepts are clear, though generalized; and a more specific theoretical enunciation of this idea was made by Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon’s heavily aphoristic style has been the subject of much critical comment. It is now generally agreed that his constant use of the aphorism was motivated less by stylistic than by intellectual considerations, though his various statements on this matter do not represent a thoroughly consistent attitude.45 Sometimes, as in A Collection of Apophthegms, he describes pithy sayings as ‘mucrones verborum, pointed speeches’, and seems to regard them as mere stylistic adornments which may be sprinkled according to taste: 43 Filippo Cavriana, Discorsi sopra i primi cinque libri di Cornelio Tacito (Florence, 1600), sigs. *.3v–4v: ‘E chi mi lacerera`, perche habbia provato le propositioni di materia di stato col testimonio d’Hippocrate, di cui mi sono in ogni occasione dove ho potuto aiutato, e fatto scudo. Dara` segno di non credere, che le attioni vertuose degl’huomini siano a quelle della natura simiglianti; nelle quali non v’e` Scrittore alcuno, che v’habbia col lume del suo ingegno piu` vivamente, e piu` al profondo penetrato, di lui. E se gli Aforismi del medesimo, fossero applicati degl’huomini politici al reggimento del publico, sarebbono veramente conosciuti, e stimati un fedelissimo Itinerario della vita humana.’ Cavriana declares elsewhere (p. 13) that maladies arise in states not otherwise than they develop in human bodies, and they are cured by wise politicians in the same way that those of the body are cured by expert physicians. 44 See F. E. Sutcliffe, Politique et culture (Paris, 1973), 70–1. 45 Vickers, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose, 71–2.

646

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

‘They serve to be interlaced in continued speech. They serve to be recited upon occasion of themselves.’ He does, however, add that ‘they serve if you take out the kernel of them, and make them your own’.46 Elsewhere, in his History of Life and Death—which opens with the significant words, ‘That ‘‘Life is short and Art long’’ is an old proverb and complaint’—he praises Hippocrates as a man of wisdom as well as learning, ‘much given to experiments and observation, not striving after words or methods, but picking out the very nerves of science and setting them forth’.47 Here we are moving towards a more ambitious view of the potential power of the aphorism as a stimulus both to further thought and even to action. Bacon is more explicit in the Preface to his Maxims of the Law, where he defends his refusal to digest the rules ‘into a certain method or order’ on the grounds that this ‘delivering of knowledge in distinct and disjoined aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more free to turn and toss, and to make use of that which is so delivered to more several purposes and applications’. This, he adds, was the course adopted by the ancients, ‘as may be seen by the parables of Solomon, and by the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the moral verses of Theognis and Phocylides’.48 In the Advancement of Learning, Bacon writes of apophthegms that they do not serve merely to give pleasure and to enrich a discourse but that they also have practical value in civil life. Moreover, in his view, ‘knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth: but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be farther polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance’.49 The most far-reaching statement of this theme occurs in Book VI. ii of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, where Bacon dramatically contrasts the limitations of methodical discourse with the freedom and variety of aphoristic exposition: methodical delivery is fit to win consent or belief, but of little use to give directions for practice; for it carries a kind of demonstration in circle, one 46 Francis Bacon, The Works, ed. Spedding, v. 217, 254. 47 Historia Vitae et Mortis: Longaevitas et brevitas vitae in homine, para. 19. Ibid. 254.

48 Maxims of the Law, ibid. vii. 321. 49 The Advancement of Learning, I; ibid. iii. 292.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

647

part illuminating another, and therefore more satisfies the understanding; but as actions in common life are dispersed, and not arranged in order, dispersed directions do best for them. Lastly, aphorisms, representing only portions and as it were fragments of knowledge, invite others to contribute and add something in their turn; whereas methodical delivery, carrying the show of a total, makes men careless, as if they were already at the end.50

Such an anti-systematic (or as Brian Vickers has described it, ‘presystematic’) approach to scientific writing may seem as admirably suited to the vicissitudes of political affairs as it was to the mass of information concerning natural phenomena that Bacon was accumulating as the prelude to a more methodical discourse.51 He himself made constant use of this technique in his writings on law, natural sciences, and politics. None the less, despite his extraordinary combination of erudition, imagination, and literary mastery, the success he achieved in any of these fields was strictly limited. In the hands of lesser men confidence in the value of the aphorism resulted, paradoxically, in the closed methodical exposition criticized by Bacon, rather than in the open-ended and fruitful suggestiveness for which he had hoped. For most lovers of pithy utterance in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries aphorisms constituted authoritative statements which had merely to be collected together as a treasury of received wisdom into which one might dip at will. The aphorism, in short, became not a stimulus to thought but rather a specious substitute for it. And nowhere was this development more striking than in the heaping up of political maxims, allegedly for practical purposes. Much-admired savants, such as Lipsius, built political treatises entirely from the fragments of other men’s thoughts.52 And, even while such compilations grew ever larger, their authors continued to assert their utility for the man of affairs, too busy to excavate for himself the vital truths buried in the mass of 50 De Augmentis Scientiarum, VI. ii; ibid. iv. 451. This is a slightly expanded version of the same argument in the Advancement of Learning, I; ibid. iii. 405. 51 For a discussion of Bacon’s pre-systematic use of the aphorism, see Vickers, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose, 60–95; Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge, 1974), 176 ff., 207–10. 52 Lipsius’s work was later characterized as mere ‘marqueterie’. See above, p. 462 n. 62.

648

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

histories.53 In 1613, Robert Dallington introduced his Aphorismes civill and militarie by pointing out that it was especially ‘plentifull in Authorities’ because ‘to reade many and great volumes few yong men have the will, no Prince hath the leisure’.54 Similarly, when in 1617 Frachetta published a revised edition of his Seminario, he anticipated that readers might criticize him for not having discoursed at greater length upon the material he had assembled, and replied that his Seminario was devised for princes and their counsellors who are all too occupied with ‘gravissimi affari’ to be bothered with more ample discourses. In any case, we must suppose that such people understand this kind of material and it would be a waste of time to burden them with words. Furthermore, Frachetta continued, he had always prided himself on having a nature ‘more Laconic than Asiatic’, better pleased with ‘matter sparing of words than words sparing of matter’ (amando meglio le cose scarse di parole, che le parole scarse di cose).55 He then proceeded to testify to his ‘natura Laconica’ in 796 closely printed large quarto pages. Yet even emptiness is relative. Its magnitude depends on the amount of space devoted to saying nothing. Thus Frachetta seems compact when compared with Pietro Andrea Canoniero’s masterpiece, the Interpretationes (1618) of Hippocrates’s Aphorisms.56 Canoniero, like Cavriana, starts from the assumption that Medicine and Politics are sister sciences, and he develops a long and detailed analogy between the human body and the body politic in the 242 pages which constitute the Prolegomena to the first of his three volumes. Then, at last, he begins the work proper with a discourse upon Hippocrates’ first Aphorism: Vita brevis ars vero longa. Aphoristic learning, Canoniero maintains, is easily committed to memory so that the doctor instructed in this way is quickly able to treat disease. Similarly, many have composed aphorisms, axiomata, and ‘hypomneses politicas’ to help princes, courtiers, and administrators—men to whom brevity and speed are of the utmost import53 The idea of saving the precious time of princes and other active men is strikingly expressed in the Preface to Erasmus’s Apophthegmata. 54 Dallington, Aphorismes (1613), sig. A.4r–v. 55 Girolamo Frachetta, Il Seminario, 2nd edn. (Venice, 1617), sig. a.3. 56 Pietro Andrea Canoniero, In septem Aphorismorum Hippocratis libros, medicinae, politicae, morales, ac theologicae Interpretationes (Antwerp, 1618), 247.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

649

ance. In practical affairs, opportunities must be grasped immediately because, once lost, they may never recur. Thus, while it is true that books on politics are abundant, they are generally prolix, and therefore no prince can govern effectively without knowledge of political aphorisms which, like their medical counterparts, condense much wisdom within a tiny space, thereby facilitating the understanding of affairs in a way not possible in any other form of instruction.57 This admirer of condensed wisdom then spends 569 large pages in elaborating upon Hippocrates’ first aphorism, before devoting a further 1,300 pages to the rest. His discussion is based upon a minute examination of more than 800 theologians, philosophers, astrologers and mathematicians, political and military writers, historians, medical authorities, lawyers, and poets—who have all been ransacked for political and moral precepts. Whereas writers such as Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Montaigne had used aphorisms both to summarize arguments and (in the fashion admired by Bacon) to stimulate further thought, their own writings were subsequently dissected and reassembled to form new structures. The whole process is reminiscent of the vogue for Virgilian centos in which new poems were created by shuffling fragments of the master’s original work. Canoniero’s Interpretationes is the fruit of truly massive erudition, vast energy, methodical reading, and highly ingenious organization. But it contains scarcely an original observation on its chosen themes; and its prodigious bulk contrasts strangely with the brevity and force of its constituent fragments. Compilations such as this represent the triumph of systematic fragmentation. Hippocrates, confronted by Canoniero’s labour of love, might well have been driven to paraphrase his own most famous dictum: An aphorism is short: collections of aphorisms are long indeed.

machiavelli aphorized What was the effect of such habits upon the reading of Machiavelli? Methodologically speaking, he was treated no differently 57 Ibid. 243–7.

650

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

from other writers, and his striking phrases were taken out of context and employed either to summarize or to introduce an argument. That students sought and found in his writings maxims for their notebooks, fuel for their polemics, and material for further speculation is—in view of Machiavelli’s fondness for aphoristic self-expression—scarcely surprising. What is surprising, within this context of the aphorization of authors, is the extent to which Machiavelli is not encountered. In this respect, his reception shows three striking features. The first is that, in comparison with several classical writers, such as Tacitus, Livy, and Plutarch, or with his near contemporaries, Guicciardini and Commynes, he is very much a minor figure. The second is that, with few exceptions, aphorismfanciers were concerned only with a fragment of his work. The third is that, even of that fragment, by far the greater proportion concerned the art of war. As we have already seen, military debating topics with a Machiavellian resonance—either direct, indirect, or coincidental—recurred throughout the late sixteenth century and beyond. But, such matters excepted, those readers who were at all concerned with Machiavelli were principally arrested by those passages in Il Principe which challenged the morality conventionally expected of political leaders, or by passages in the Discorsi (especially those concerning religion in general and Christianity in particular) which held similar moral implications. In one sense, we all read books in a selective fashion, retaining general impressions and recording only especially effective passages which may then be used in our own work to illustrate and clarify an argument. The problem posed by much sixteenthcentury reading of Machiavelli is partly that the selection was excessively limited; partly that this was then generally assumed to represent his entire thinking, historical and political; and, finally, that this representation itself came to symbolize a particular approach to political activity—ruthless, amoral, and autonomous. A tendency to heed only the summary, aphoristic aspects of Machiavelli’s work was apparent in his earliest readers. Even an admirer such as William Thomas has left clear evidence that it was the way in which the Discorsi reduced political activity to a number of concisely expressed debating issues which especially appealed to him. This tendency was inevitably more marked in the first hostile

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

651

critics, Pole, Osorio and Catharino, who were already abstracting a few immoral Machiavellian, or (as in Ascham’s case) pseudoMachiavellian, propositions and refuting them as though they constituted the totality of Machiavelli’s political thought.58 Nevertheless, it was not until Machiavelli became identified with the St Bartholomew massacre that this process gathered momentum. In 1573, the Reveille-Matin refers both to Machiavelli’s ‘lec¸ons’ and ‘maximes’. Bodin, in 1576, condemns Machiavelli’s ‘reigles’; and in the same year Gentillet made the first and most dedicated attempt to impose order on Machiavelli’s various writings by concentrating upon his adversary’s aphoristic technique. Indeed he could discover nothing in Machiavelli but disjointed maxims: and all of them were wicked. Thereafter, this approach (or rather a simplification of this approach) became normal in France amongst those polemicists who felt moved to mention Machiavelli. They characterize his thoughts in terms of maxims, axioms, rules, precepts, and lessons; but generally reveal little knowledge of (and absolutely no interest in) the original source of these apophthegmatic enormities.59 58 Roger Ascham, in his A Report and Discourse of the affaires & state of Germany (1570?), written in the early 1550s, has some remarkable views on Machiavelli: ‘Lo such be these Machiavel’s heads, who think no man have so much wit as he should, except he do more mischief than he need.’ See The Whole Works, ed. Giles, iii. 58–9. And cf. ibid. 68. 59 See above, Ch. 10. This approach is still apparent in Claude Vaure, L’estat chrestien, ou maximes politiques tirees de l’Escriture; contre les faulses raisons d’estat, des libertins politiques de ce siecle (Paris, 1626). Vaure argues (sigs. aˆ.2v–3) that the political maxims introduced by Machiavelli and his followers are not infallibles, since they are collected from ‘des Autheurs idolatres’ whose irregular and bloody rules must have no place in Christian hearts. Machiavelli was a libertine who had injected his poison by means of the pen, and had been received with open arms by every sort of heretic and atheist. Vaure’s task is to refute these false reasons of state by drawing upon the abundant political maxims provided by the Holy Scriptures: and this he proceeds to do in over 500 pages of conventional tedium. Much more interesting is a disorderly manuscript collection of political aphorisms preserved at the BNF, MS fr. 2523–5. The compilation is undated, although it does refer to the ‘Possedez de Loudon’. At fo. 193 of the first volume there is the heading ‘Machiavel et Anti-Machiavel’; at fo. 194 is the heading ‘Sciences’ followed by various maxims based upon Gentillet’s introductory remarks; and at fo. 195 there begin the ‘Maximes de Machiavel Et les contraires de L’Antimachiavel’. However, the maxims comprise the complete set of those given in the Contre-Machiavel; while the responses are, in fact, Gentillet’s refutations, which are themselves reduced to maxims.

652

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Transferring our attention from polemic to erudition leads, naturally, to greater knowledge and interest: though still considerably less than has generally been assumed. Machiavelli continued to be much published outside Italy after the papal prohibitions; but he never attracted the devoted editorial attention accorded to classical authors or to Commynes and Guicciardini. The marginal annotations of the French and Latin versions of his writings in the sixteenth century are largely confined to the simplest and briefest indication of the adjacent contents—although, occasionally, a terse moral judgement is offered. For example, at the end of Robert Mallard’s Rouen edition of Le Prince (1586) the reader’s attention is drawn to three annotations inserted by the censors at places which had to be read ‘with discretion and judgement’.60 These are in chapter 3, where the need to kill off one’s opponents is noted as Crudele Turcorum consilium; in chapter 13, where Hiero’s chopping up of his mercenary captains is condemned as Crudele factum; and in chapter 18, when the advantages of merely seeming virtuous are described as Consilium alienum a Christiana religione: although this is immediately qualified by an acknowledgement that not keeping a promise is often recognized as not being against faith and charity if some reasonable cause arises, such as a new and unforeseen circumstance.61 It was not until 1613–14, when the Parisian printer Charles Chappelain issued revised French translations of Il Principe, Discorsi, and Arte della guerra, that we encounter Machiavelli ‘illustrez de maximes politiques en marge’—although these, too, are extremely unsatisfactory. They rarely highlight (as in editions of Guicciardini) the author’s bons mots, but instead purport to summarize and distil the content of his argument. Yet they are frequently at odds with the sense of the text itself. Who would recognize the deliberately shocking exaltation of Cesare Borgia’s dark deeds in the seventh chapter of Il Principe from marginal maxims explaining that we are about to read ‘examples of those 60 Le Prince (Rouen: Robert Mallard, 1586), 172. The annotations are there listed as at pp. 16, 94, 117 (this last should read 116). 61 Ibid. 116: ‘Consilium alienum a Christiana religione, saepius tamen contingit non servare promissum non esse contra fidem & charitatem ut puta si superveniat causa rationabilis non implendi nempe novus causus impremeditatus.’

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

653

whom fortune has raised to high degrees and dignities’; that ‘if a building is not raised upon solid foundations, it is in danger of being ruined’; or that ‘honesty and courtesy make the Prince loved and cherished’? Nor is it illuminating to read that poor leaders ‘amuse themselves by burdening their subjects with new taxes rather than govern and prescribe good laws for them’; that ‘once one has escaped from a danger one must try not to fall into it again straight away’; that ‘the Prince who wishes to secure himself in his state, must immediately remove the means which could harm him’; or that ‘hatred of subjects for their Prince is very harmful to him’.62 Similarly, turning to Chappelain’s edition of the Discorsi, who would anticipate Machiavelli’s trenchant dismissal of Christianity as a political religion from marginal comments such as these? ‘Faith promised to God must never be violated.’ ‘Evils which follow neglect of the fear of God.’ ‘Religion is the mainstay and support of kingdoms.’ ‘Contempt for religion is the ruin of republics.’ ‘The results of superstition are dangerous.’63 These and the other annotations printed by Chappelain convey neither the sense nor the force of Machiavelli’s argument. Indeed they have a contrary effect. Yet they were the Maximes Politiques which, with only minor variants, continued to be inscribed ‘en marge’ in numerous French editions of Machiavelli’s works throughout the seventeenth century.64 Polemicists twisted or ignored Machiavelli. Editors covered his naughty parts with an exegetical fig leaf. Did the pure aphorizers 62 Le Prince (Paris: Chappelain, Paris, 1614), ch. 7: ‘Exemples de ceux que la fortune ou la vertu ont eleve´z a` des hauts degrez de dignitez’; ‘Si un bastiment n’est appuye´ sur de solides fondemens, il est en danger d’estre ruine´’; ‘Honnestete´ et la courtoisie font aimer et cherir le Prince’; ‘C’est l’ordinaire des pauvres chefs de s’amuser plutost a` fouler leurs sujets, par de nouveaux imposts, que les policer et leur prescrire de bonnes loix’; ‘Lors qu’on s’est une fois eschappe´ d’un danger, on doit tascher de n’y retomber derechef ’; ‘Le prince qui veut s’asseurer en son Estat, doit tout a` fait oster les moyens qui luy peuvent causer du prejudice’; ‘La hayne que les sujets portent a` leur prince luy est grandement prejudiciable’. 63 Discours (Paris: Chappelain, 1614), a selection from the marginal comments on I. 12, 13, 14: ‘La foy promise a` Dieu ne doit jamais estre viole´e’; ‘Maux qui s’ensuyvent du mepris de la crainte de Dieu’; ‘La Religion est l’appuy et le soustien des Royeaumes’; ‘Le mepris de la Religion est la perte des Re´publiques’; ‘Les effets de la superstition sont dangereux’. 64 For details of these editions, see Bertelli and Innocenti and Gerber.

654

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

do better? We might suppose that the style, content, and range of Machiavelli’s work would lead to his being plundered by the collectors of concisely expressed political wisdom who flourished increasingly at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As we are constantly, and properly, reminded by his modern admirers, there is a great deal in Machiavelli which has nothing to do with the extremisms so readily identified with his name. Yet the evidence for his work being used in the construction of aphoristic edifices is neither imposing nor consistent. The earliest instance I have thus far come across of a writer extracting isolated sentences from Machiavelli is in the ‘ornati et arguti motti’ appended by Marco Cadamosto to Niccolo` Liburnio’s Elegantissime sentenze et aurei detti of 1543.65 Liburnio’s ‘golden sayings’ are drawn entirely from Greek and Latin authors, whose names are scrupulously indicated for each item. Cadamosto, on the other hand, drew his material from unspecified books containing ‘acute and very fine moral sayings’—flowers which now, not only for his own delight but also for the common utility, he brought together in a garland. The sentences are arranged under various heads which are frequently and increasingly irrelevant; while their ‘moral’ qualities may not always be obvious to minds now inured to Machiavelli’s malodorous reputation. To learn, under Sapientia, that men sooner forget the death of their brothers and fathers than the theft of their possessions is, perhaps, only to be reminded via Il Principe (ch. 18) that human nature is venal; while to be told, under Fortuna, that she favours the bold rather than the punctilious, because she is a woman and must therefore be knocked about a bit, is noteworthy only because the observation is drawn from Il Principe (ch. 25). Similarly, under Principi, there is nothing (apart from their evident derivation from Il Principe) to cause us to raise much eyebrow at sentences which inform us that people willingly change their lords in the hope of better; that the first thing a king must do is to abstain from the money and possessions of his subjects; that he who becomes a prince through his own virtu` 65 Elegantissime sentenze et aurei detti de diversi eccellentissimi antiqui savi cosi Greci, come Latini, Raccolti de M. Nicolo Liburnio: aggiuntovi molti ornati et arguti motti de piu boni authori, in volgar tradotti da M. Marco Cadamosto da Lodi (Venice, 1543). On Cadamosto, see the article in the DBI.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

655

acquires his state with difficulty but holds it with ease; that a prince must have two fears, one from within with regard to his subjects, the other from outside with regard to powerful foreigners; that a prince must esteem the nobles but not make himself hated by the people; and that he has to contend with the ambition of the former and the insolence of the latter. Nor, were we ignorant of its Machiavellian paternity, would we pause over the sentence which says that a prince who has a strong city, and does not make himself hated, cannot be assaulted—and that, if he were, the attacker would have to retire with shame. On the other hand, the assertion that a prince wishing to maintain his state is forced to be not good, is arresting. So, too, is the notion that a prince who cannot use the virtue of liberality without danger should not care about being deemed miserly because, in time, he will be esteemed liberal. Nevertheless, even these are less remarkable than the assertion that ‘it is necessary for a prince, wishing to maintain himself, to learn to be not good, and to use this, or not use this, according to necessity’; or that it is ‘better for a prince to be feared by his subjects rather than loved’. There are indeed poisonous blossoms in Cadamosto’s withered little garland; but there is nothing to suggest that he was aware of anything untoward (fos. 41–3). He mingles these fragments of Machiavelli with sentences of a perfectly conventional morality—even including advice that ‘one must be, and not seek to seem, good’ (fo. 52). His intentions are haphazard, and their execution modestly unintelligent. He has certainly browsed through Il Principe: but his reading of it scarcely makes him a student of Machiavelli. Evidence of serious interest in Machiavelli is similarly lacking in later aphoristic compilations. It is not that those who pasted them together were unaware of Machiavelli’s existence, or even that he was considered too improper to be exploited. Many were acquainted with his writings; and authors who entertained moral scruples—or, more likely, who feared that their readers or censors might—easily circumvented the problem by referring to their risque´ source as a ‘certain author’.66 This, for example, was 66 Sometimes even this disguise was felt to be unnecessary, as in the anonymous manuscript BL Add. MS 12038 (item 1) Discorso militare al Signor Francesco

656

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Canoniero’s solution. In his Quaestiones, he explains that he employs the word ‘quidam’ to indicate those writers who may not be named: although he does slip in an allusion to Machiavelli as ‘impius politicus’, on the way.67 In his Dell’introduzione alla politica, Canoniero uses the formula ‘un certo Autore’ when arguing against Machiavelli on the roles of money and fortune in war; and in the Interpretationes, he uses ‘quidam’ when citing Machiavelli’s Discorsi.68 Four of the six chapters of the Discorsi used by Canoniero—in connection with warfare, the indecision of weak states, renovations, and the importance of adaptability—are given almost in their entirety.69 However, anyone waxing excited at a possible sniff of ‘influence’ would do well to remember that Canoniero refers to several other authors in the same anonymous manner; and that his eight quotations from Machiavelli, substantial though they are, do not outweigh his use of another 832 named authorities, many of whom occur more frequently in the course of his 1,857 closely printed pages. Scipione Ammirato, who really was interested in Machiavelli, contrived to incorporate a considerable quantity of detailed agreement and disagreement in his Discorsi sopra C. Tacito by similar cirmumlocutions, including ‘alcuno’, ‘altri’, ‘L’autor de’ Discorsi’, ‘l’autor presupposto’, and ‘evvi chi fa un Discorso’.70 Similarly, another knowledgeable Italian, Jacopo Serdonati, which opens with a short section of sententiae from famous authors— Vegetius, Plutarch, Herodotus, Polybius, Xenophon, Sallust, Livy, Homer, Tacitus, Guicciardini, Giovio, and Thucidydes. Prominent among this celebrated throng was Machiavelli, who is cited at fos. 2v, 3v, 3v–4v. 67 Pietro Andrea Canoniero, Quaestiones ac Discursus in duos primos libros Annalium C. Cornelii Taciti, 2nd edn. (Frankfurt am Main, 1610), 19. 68 Pietro Andrea Canoniero, Dell’introduzione alla politica, alla ragione di stato, et alla pratica del buon governo (Antwerp, 1614); In septem Aphorismorum Hippocratis libros . . . Interpretationes (1618). On Canoniero, see Mattei (1969), 260–1; Bozza, Scrittori politici, 108–9, 123. 69 These are noted by Mattei (1969), 261 n. 3. 70 On Ammirato and Machiavelli, see Mattei, Il pensiero politico di Scipione Ammirato, 63–117; and esp. 64 n. 6 for Ammirato’s various circumlocutions. Another zealous Tacitist, Giorgio Pagliari del Bosco, disliked Machiavelli and, in his Osservationi sopra i primi cinque libri de gli Annali di Cornelio Tacito (Milan, 1612) refers to him as ‘Discorsivo’. This point was noted by Amelot de la Houssaye, Tacite avec des notes politiques et historiques (The Hague, 1692), i, pp. viii–x—part of his remarkable introductory ‘Critique de divers auteurs modernes, qui ont traduit ou commente´ les Œuvres de Tacite’.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

657

Corbinelli, used the formula ‘l’autore de Discorsi’ when providing twenty-three precise references to that work in the annotations of his important edition of Guicciardini’s Ricordi.71 Corbinelli thus glosses Guicciardini’s aphorisms with aphorisms from Machiavelli, as well as from Tacitus, Thucydides, and the Storia d’Italia of Guicciardini himself. This fruit of Corbinelli’s labour was dedicated to Catherine de’ Medici in 1576; and it is difficult to understand this avoidance of Machiavelli’s name, which was scarcely necessary within that particular courtly context. Certainly, the translator Yves de Brinon had no qualms when, in the following year, he offered his French version of Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine to Catherine.72 Another interesting aphorist was Girolamo Frachetta, whom we have already met. In his Seminario, he refers to only three modern authors: Guicciardini, with 644 maxims; Commynes, with 511; and Guillaume du Bellay, with sixty. Yet elsewhere, in his Prencipe (1599), he had shown himself perfectly well acquainted with Machiavelli, whose views, principally on matters relating to war, are heavily exploited though nowhere acknowledged even by a marginal ‘quidam’.73 By contrast, in the same year, Ciro Spontone devoted several chapters of his Governo di stato to an explicit refutation of ‘il perfido’, ‘scismatico’, and ‘malvagio’ Machiavelli. Spontone was here principally concerned with a vindication of Christianity and of the Papacy against Machiavelli’s slanders; and he summarizes Machiavelli’s doctrines on the basis of the challenging core of Il Principe—cruelty keeps subjects in obedience; faith, clemency, liberality, and all the other virtues are pernicious in government; princes may perjure themselves, and should be feared—but he refrains from going into details because he does not wish to horrify his reader: ‘perche non s’inhorridisca il lettore’.74 71 Piu consigli et avvertimenti di M. Fr. Guicciardini, ed. Jacopo Corbinelli (Paris, 1576). On Corbinelli’s knowledge of the Discorsi, see Cardascia, ‘Un lecteur de Machiavel’. See also above, Ch. 16, n. 65. 72 Histoire de Florence de Nicolas Machiavel citoien & Secretaire de ladite ville etc. (Paris, 1577). 73 Girolamo Frachetta, Il Prencipe . . . nel quale si considera il Prencipe, & quanto al governo dello stato, e quanto al maneggio della guerra (Venice, 1599). 74 Ciro Spontone, Dodici libri del governo di stato (Venice, 1599), 12–28, 45–6, 57, 63–5, 178, 222–7.

658

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Pens did not tremble in the hands of aphorists outside Italy when obliged to form the name Machiavelli. Hippolytus a Collibus, in his collection Princeps, makes six specific (but morally noncommittal) references to Il Principe and the Discorsi, and shows no embarrassment when identifying their author.75 Joannes a Chokier, who was once—so he says—a pupil of Lipsius, compiled a Thesaurus politicorum aphorismorum which quotes copiously from Aristotle, Tacitus, Commynes, Guicciardini, Bodin, Ammirato, Botero, Matthieu, and most other authors susceptible to aphorization. There are several references to Machiavelli and similar authors of ‘damnable memory’: but these are not cited in order to renew their ‘pestiferous doctrine’ but rather to eradicate it; and Chokier even-handedly draws upon Ribadeneira and Lipsius to refute Machiavelli.76 Even less rewarding for the Machiavellist is the immense augmented edition of Gregorius Richter’s collection of 440 political aphorisms, each comprising numerous further aphorisms and exempla. Bodin, Pierre Gregoire, Daneau, Philip Camerarius, Guicciardini, and many others are represented here: but there is only one unadulterated allusion to Machiavelli in 884 pages.77 From Gentillet, on the other hand, Richter amasses more than forty separate discussions—some quite substantial—and only a couple of these concern Machiavelli. Gentillet is not cited because he refuted Machiavelli but simply because he constituted yet another storehouse of political aphorisms which could be easily plundered. In similar fashion, Waramundus de Ehrenbergk—a friend of Alberico Gentili, and a fierce critic of Bodin—cites 75 Hippolytus a Collibus, Princeps. Eiusdem de nobilitate positiones LXII. Editio altera, priore emendatior, auctior. Seorsum accessit Palatinus, sive Aulicus, eodem Auctore. Nunc primum in lucem editus (Hanover, 1595), 7–8, citing ‘Machiav. in Pr. cap. 8’; p. 16, citing simply ‘Machiavellus’ (in fact, Il Principe, 8); p. 40, citing ‘Mach. lib. 1. Discursu. cap. 24’ (in fact, Il Principe, 2); p. 51, citing ‘Machiavellus cap. 18 & passim’; p. 104, citing ‘N. Machiavell. libr. 2. Cap. 20’; pp. 144–5, citing ‘Machiavellus lib. 2. comment. in Liv. cap. 24’. 76 Joannes a Chokier, Thesaurus politicorum aphorismorum, in quo principum, consiliariorum, aulicorum institutio proprie continetur (Mainz, 1613), sigs. **2v, 23– 4, 30, 112, 141, 143–4, 151, 213, 214, 245. Chokier’s reference to Lipsius’s having once been his teacher is at p. 249 (misprinted as p. 149). 77 Gregorius Richter, Editio nova axiomatum politicorum, accessione CLXXIIII novarum regularum, multarumque sententiarum & exemplorum aucta & locupletata (Goerlitz, 1604), 151.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

659

Machiavelli once (against the Papacy), and elsewhere uses Gentillet as a general political source.78 And in one of the editions of that chaotic collection of collections for counsellors and courtiers, the Speculi Aulicarum, there is a passing reference to Machiavelli and ‘Antimachiavellus’ by Johannes ab Affelen; while the Baron Jaroslaus a Smirziz cites Discorsi, I. 9 as his source for the aphorism that a good result always justifies the deed, and that it is the man who employs violence to do evil rather than good who is reprehensible.79 The major purveyors of pre-packed political wisdom at the end of the sixteenth century and in the early decades of the seventeenth, such as Gruter, Frezza, Cavriana, and Alamos y Barrientos, were not concerned with Machiavelli at all.80 They based their studies on Tacitus. And they did this not through any sinister intention to hide a proscribed author under an almost respectable antique cloak, but simply because they admired Tacitus’ brevity and acuity.81 There were, from time to time, references to Machiavelli but in general these were concerned to challenge such timedishonoured immoral maxims as his statement that princes should be feared not loved, that religion should be used to cover dubious actions, or that princes should keep their word only when it is to their advantage. Some writers, it is true, could occasionally spring a surprise, as when Federigo Bonaventura attacked the Discorsi (I. 5) for its false opinion concerning Sparta’s fall. But elsewhere, on the few occasions when Bonaventura mentions Machiavelli, it is only 78 Waramundus de Ehrenbergk, Verisimilia theologica, iuridica ac politica: de regni subsidiis ac oneribus subditorum (Frankfurt am Main, 1606). Ehrenbergk cites Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine (p. 15); mentions ‘Abericus Gentilis amicus noster’ (p. 50); and refers to Antimachiavellus (pp. 4, 147). 79 Joannes ab Affelen, Vir politicus, in Speculi Aulicarum atque politicarum observationes (Cologne, 1610), 444 (misnumbered 454); Jaroslaus a Smirziz, De consiliariis Florilegium Politicum, in the same collection, p. 478, where he writes, ‘Bonus eventus factum semper excusat: neque is qui bene faciendi, sed is, qui malefaciendi causa vim infert, reprehensione dignus est.’ 80 Jan Gruter, Iani Gruteri varii discursus; sive prolixiores commentarii ad aliquot insigniora loca Taciti (Heidelberg, 1604–5); Baltasar de Alamos y Barrientos, Tacito Espan˜ol illustrado con Aforismos (Madrid, 1614). For Frezza and Cavriana, see above, nn. 35, 43. 81 Toffanin, Machiavelli e il ‘Tacitismo’, argued that the obsession with Tacitus (evident from the late 16th c. into the 17th) was at least in part a kind of surrogate Machiavellism. The idea is interesting but has a shaky basis in the texts themselves.

660

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

to make conventional hits at the moral depravities of that ‘Autor riprovato’.82 One could go on accumulating references such as these, but they are not worth the effort. I have devoted this much attention to them not because I believe that they have much positive value in the history of Machiavelli’s reception, but because it is important to recognize the magnitude of the general indifference. Machiavellian ore may certainly be excavated from the aphorists: but the prospector has to search very hard and delve very deep into their superficialities in order to gain a scanty yield. One of the very few compilers to devote several pages to a general discussion of Machiavelli is Lambert Daneau—and he does so only to explain why he is not including anything from Machiavelli in the main body of his collection. In 1591 Daneau published his Politicorum aphorismorum silva, which had been gathered, he says, from the best Greek and Latin authors; though he does include one significant modern, Philippe Commynes. It is a modest work in which each author’s aphorisms are given separately, book by book.83 Five years later Daneau issued his Politices Christianae in seven books, each of which opens with chapters discussing and delimiting its chosen theme, and continues with two groups of aphorisms (one from the Scriptures, the other from profane sources) which are themselves further subdivided into topics.84 The Politices is a greatly expanded and much more ambitious work than the Silva, but both are prefaced by a substantially similar letter to the Reader, explaining the nature and purpose of the publication.85 Daneau asks his reader not to be astonished that he has selected political aphorisms from only a few historians, 82 Federigo Bonaventura, Della ragion di stato e della prudenza politica libri quatro (Urbino, 1623), 160–1, discusses the reasons for Sparta’s fall and refutes Machiavelli on the basis of arguments derived from Aristotle, Plato, and Plutarch. Similarly, on pp. 553–4 he uses Aristotle to belittle Machiavelli’s views on the mutation of the forms of republics. Elsewhere, he rejects Machiavelli’s view that man is fundamentally evil (pp. 615–16) and his advocacy of simulated religion (p. 625). For information on Bonaventura, see Bozza, Scrittori politici, 145–6; Mattei (1969), 147–9. 83 Lambert Daneau, Politicorum aphorismorum silva (Leiden, 1591). 84 Lambert Daneau, Politices Christianae libri septem (?Geneva, 1596). 85 The differences between the two letters are slight but interesting, especially the addition to Politices Christianae, at sig. }.4, where Daneau refers to the antiMachiavelli revelations in La Noue and Lipsius (‘vir mihi amicissimus’).

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

661

while omitting some of the most admired ancient authors such as Dionysius Halicarnassus, Diodorus Siculus, Appianus, Julius Caesar, Justinus, Orosius, and even Demosthenes. The material which could have been gathered from these sources would either have confirmed his own selection, or else would deal with very specific instances, whereas his purpose is to give general precepts for the good government of a republic. Among the rest, he has omitted the entire writings of Machiavelli, despite the fact that many current rulers approve and follow them.86 He has done this partly because Machiavelli’s political rules have long since been beautifully confuted by a very eloquent and erudite anonymous author (clearly a reference to Gentillet), and partly because such precepts lead to disaster and ruin. This is exemplified by the fate of Cesare Borgia, who was taken by Machiavelli as the very pattern for his perfect prince. Yet what, in truth, happened? Something quite different from anything which might have been anticipated by lovers of Machiavelli’s writings. Borgia, through infinite crimes, gained the trifling Duchy of Urbino; but he held it for scarcely a few years before being driven from Italy. He had been shunned by human company—a wretched exile in the kitchens of the King of Aragon; a lurking beggar, fed on slops and rancid scraps as if in the most filthy and polluted prison—until at length he died, despised by all men. This was the terrible end of one Machiavellian prince. No less dreadful was the fate of Daneau’s other example, Lodovico Sforza, who lay buried in the Castle of Loches, along with his Machiavellian precepts. Thus does God take revenge upon those who invent political precepts against all the laws of equity, moderation, virtue, and humanity itself. Machiavellian aphorisms have no place in Daneau’s collection. How could it be otherwise for the man who, as seems likely, undertook the massive task of rendering Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel into Latin, and who was convinced that France had been poisoned by ‘that infectious Machiavellian doctrine’?87 86 Politices Christianae, at sig. }.2v: ‘Caeterum Machiavelli scripta omnia hic negleximus, quae tamen perplurimi ex iis, qui ad Reipublicae gubernacula hodie sedent, probant, et sequuntur.’ 87 On Daneau as the probable translator, see D’Andrea and Stewart, p. lxiii.

662

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

Quite at the opposite extreme from Daneau was the Venetian ‘poligrafo’ Francesco Sansovino. Whereas Daneau explicitly excluded all Machiavelli’s writings from his collection, Sansovino’s Concetti politici silently but freely plundered all four of Machiavelli’s major works. Moreover, although Sansovino provides a list of the thirty-six classical and modern writers from whom he has gathered his conceits, Machiavelli (his most fertile source) is not among them. Studious readers would, he acknowledges, doubtless have wished him to place the author’s name after each extract, but: for that it was not my meaning when I first begun this worke, to publish the same, I did not remember in that my studie to use the foresaide diligence. Therefore if any one will serve his turn with these conceites, he maye saye: to give force to his reason, by alleadging some of these or such like woords, as wise men say, as antiquitie have written, as prudent men declare, and such other manner of speeches.88

This is the quidam technique with a vengeance. Any worldly-wise reader wishing to ‘serve his turn’ with Sansovino’s Concetti would find much cynical, hard-edged pragmatism.89 Most of the observations culled from Guicciardini’s Ricordi and Storia d’Italia are of this kind, as are many of those from Machiavelli; but especially striking is the incorporation of several aphorisms from the ‘shocking’ core of Il Principe (that is from chs. 15–19), where the conventional Speculum principum morality was deliberately turned upside down. Sansovino notes that men who abandon a practical course of action in order to pursue what they ‘ought to do’ are ruined rather than preserved amongst the multitude of evil men; that princes should be parsimonious rather than liberal; and that they should never be disturbed by a reputation for cruelty if they can thus maintain their subjects in fidelity and concord. ‘It is altogether impossible’, writes Sansovino, ‘for a new prince to avoide the name of cruell, for newe states are ful of perrilles’ (nos. 556–60). The prince is also told that it is better to be 88 Francesco Sansovino, The quintesence of wit, trans. R. Hichcock (1590), sig. B.2v. Further references are given in the text. 89 See Vincent Luciani, ‘Sansovino’s Concetti politici and their Debt to Guicciardini’, PMLA, 65 (1950), 1181–95; and his ‘Sansovino’s Concetti politici and their Debt to Machiavelli’, PMLA, 67 (1952), 823–44.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

663

feared than loved; that cruelty is necessary when leading an army which can only thus be ‘holden together united’; and that he must act both as the fox and the lion (nos. 562–3, 565). The new prince is informed that he cannot observe all those things by which men are accounted good: being often times driven to necessities, to maintain his state, to wincke against his promised faith, against charitie, against humanitie and against such like vertues. And therefore it is necessary he have a mind ready to turn it selfe, according as the windes and the varying of fortune dooth commaund: but he ought not to departe from that which is good (if he be able) but to knowe how to enter into that which is evill, when he is enforced. (no. 566)

Advice in like vein is offered to the prince who wishes to maintain his state. He, too, is frequently constrained ‘not to be good’, for when the people, soldiers, or great personages on whom he relies are corrupted then it is ‘requisite that he follow their humours and that he satisfie them: and then his good woorkes are his enemies’ (no. 570). Even more drastic is Sansovino’s incorporation of the speech which Machiavelli had put into the mouth of a Florentine demagogue addressing a mob of workers during the tumults of 1378. The icy extremism of this oration from the Istorie fiorentine makes it perhaps the most sombre and terrible passage in all Machiavelli’s writings.90 The perverted morality of Il Principe is here expressed by an individual who, driven to desperation, seeks to show his fellow insurrectionists how they might evade the consequences of their violence while simultaneously plundering the wealthy. From this speech Sansovino draws three aphorisms which, divorced from their context and from each other, develop implications widely divergent from their source (nos. 696–8). The first—originally an exhortation to do the utmost evil so that individual punishment may no longer be feasible—becomes a simple observation upon what may happen in times of extremity when, amidst general evildoing, ‘great and greevous’ faults are rewarded while trifling peccancies are punished, since universal injuries are better 90 Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, III. 13. See Anglo (1969), 211–15.

664

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

tolerated than the particular. The third aphorism, which in Machiavelli had been a stirring call to action, becomes an innocuous comment on the virtues of audacity in times of peril. But the second, which began life as a vicious indictment of the haves who batten and fatten on the have-nots, and as a call to violence as the only available way to avoid impending doom, becomes in Sansovino’s fragmentation an uneasy ambiguity whereby an indictment of those who achieve worldly success may also be read as a statement on the propriety of filthy means in a filthy world. For the most parte al those that attaine to riches and great power, either with fraude, either with force, doo attaine unto the same. And after they have either with violence or with deceite usurped those thinges, to hide the filthynes of their getting they doe make honest the same under a false tytle of gaine. And those that through lack of prudence, or through folly, doo shun and flie these meanes are alwaies overwhelmed in slaverye and povertie. For that faithfull servants are alwaies conserved, and good men alwaies are poore, and none there be that at any time do issue out of servitude, but those that be unfaithfull and shameless-hardye and forth of povertie but those that are ravenous and fraudulent: for nature hath placed all the fortune of men in the midst of them, the which are subjects and exposed more to rapine then to industrie, and more to the wicked then to the good. Heerof it proceedes, that men eate one another, and he that may least goes to the worst. (no. 697)

On the other hand, running through the Concetti there are a number of perfectly conventional moral statements. The affairs of princes accord with their behaviour, says one aphorism. Thus, if they have ‘small discretion and lesse estimation’, they fall into ruin, whereas the virtuous will flourish: ‘for God doth prosper alwaies the good, and the most part doth throwe downe headlong those that be wicked’. Nothing is more unworthy for a king and for his commonwealth than ‘to want and faile in faith’; while nothing is more proper, convenient, and necessary to a prince than to be ‘just, liberall and benigne, for it appertaines to their power and greatnes’. They must be mindful of the oppressed and afflicted, for they are the ‘lively images of God’. Evil princes are merely obeyed, but the good are both obeyed and loved. In this way the virtuous prince can easily accomplish the most difficult undertakings, whereas even light enterprises pose difficulties for tyrants ‘through their

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

665

pernitious naughtines’. Moreover, although the ‘mightely wicked’ generally score over those who are merely moderately wicked, or even moderately good, it is reassuring to learn that the ‘very mightye good person doth overcome the very evill person’ (nos. 12, 22, 171, 179, 254).91 Here we are back in the world of the Speculum principum and of Gentillet: with the virtues rewarded and the vices punished. These are strange companions for the aphorisms from Guicciardini and Machiavelli; but the juxtaposition illustrates the general aimlessness of Sansovino’s collection. The effect of the Concetti politici is one of haphazard note-taking; and this is most evident in the numerous contradictions amongst the aphorisms on war. One of these maintains that, in ‘actions of armes, the condition and partie is farre better of him that stayes and expectes to be assaulted, then of him that dooth goe about to assault another’. But elsewhere we are told that wars at home ‘are more difficille and perrillous’ than those waged abroad, for defence is easier at a distance than ‘at home by our owne doores’; and this sentiment is repeated later when Sansovino writes, ‘of the two, offensive warres is better than the defensive’ (nos. 214, 271, 787). On one occasion Sansovino cites Machiavelli to the effect that ‘Men, Iron, Money and Bread are Sinewes of the warres’ and that, of these, men and iron are the more necessary. Elsewhere he writes that money ‘without doubt is the nourishment of an army’; and he cites with approval the King of Sparta, who ‘did call it the sinewes of warre’ (nos. 359, 404). Sansovino is even more confused over the question of neutrality, which is dealt with in a loose cluster of nine aphorisms on whether or not to take sides in a war. He begins by explaining that neutrality is ‘most hurtfull and full of perrilles: for she offends both the parties’; and he continues by stressing that the security and tranquillity of neutrality is illusory. Yet, three aphorisms further on, he writes of the ‘neuter’ that everybody ‘dooth goe about to inbrace him’; they all desire him for a friend, and he can thus ‘enjoy great securitie’; whereas were he to declare himself and make one of the other princes his manifest enemy, he would thrust himself into 91 Cf. also no. 713 on the woes which inevitably follow breaking of oaths and treaties.

666

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

‘expresse perrilles’. This is promptly repeated in an aphorism based on the axiom that men remember injuries more than benefits, so that taking sides earns less help from the ally than damage from the declared enemy. A few passages later we are told that when princes are at war, the ruler who remains ‘neuter’ may grow rich while the others become weak and that, though it is difficult to remain neutral, it is the best course in doubtful cases. This advice is immediately followed by a caution that the prince who refuses to take sides in a war is viewed with suspicion by both parties so that the victor ‘makes a pray of the neuter’. Then comes a succinct statement of the advantages of declaring oneself: if your ally wins, you share the victory; if he loses, he remains your friend and may do better in the future; and, if neither wins, you have still gained a friend. Finally, three passages later, Sansovino rejects the rule which maintains that by remaining neutral you can strengthen yourself, because the victor usually gains so much credit and so many followers that he is more likely to damage than to fear you (nos. 384–5, 388–9, 400). Sansovino impresses neither by intelligence nor discrimination. It has been suggested that, taken together, the 186 concetti derived from Machiavelli by Sansovino constitute ‘just about as good a cross-section of Machiavelli’s political thought as it is possible to convey in maxim form’.92 This may or may not be true: but they are so mixed up with reflections from Guicciardini and other writers, and their tone is so modified—partly by Sansovino’s adaptation, partly by contradictory aphorisms, and partly by the juxtaposition of conventional moralization—that it is difficult to take the compilation seriously outside the confines of its own limited genre. It has almost nothing to do with systematic political thought for it is, as Sansovino himself admits to his readers, a purely random collection of pithy sentences which he had been unable to arrange ‘under firme and infallible titles’ for their ‘commodities’. In the end, having failed to solve the problem of organization, he had settled for an index which would enable those who sought information to locate at least something relevant to their purpose. Thus, as a statement of a particular political theory 92 Luciani, ‘Sansovino’s Concetti politici and . . . Machiavelli’, 839.

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

667

(Machiavelli’s or anybody else’s) Sansovino’s Concetti are scarcely more coherent and hardly less neutral than a dictionary of quotations. Where there is something for everybody, the totality must be representative of nobody.93 From Sansovino it is but a short step to one other late sixteenthcentury notebook which will repay attention. When, in 1658, John Milton published The Cabinet-Council as a posthumous treatise by Sir Walter Raleigh, he provided a focus of interest for generations of culture historians, who viewed the text as prime evidence for Raleigh’s knowledge of Machiavelli. It is now known that this collection of aphorisms was put together in the last decade of the sixteenth century by a certain T. B., and that Raleigh had nothing to do with the matter.94 Interest in the Cabinet-Council has, accordingly, waned: though the work has neither less nor more importance than hitherto. That importance resides solely in its exemplification of the way in which such notebooks were composed, not in any revelation of profound thinking on Machiavelli— nor, indeed, revelation of much thinking at all. The CabinetCouncil is simply a late version of a compilation still surviving in at least nine variant manuscripts. The best of these are much superior to Milton’s edition, which incorporates numerous mistranscriptions and textual alterations; frequently garbles the attribution of aphorisms to classical authorities; and, moreover, omits a large number of passages from the closing section. The work (which I have studied in British Library Add. MS 27320) is properly entitled Observations Political and Civil, and its purpose is set out in a dedicatory epistle to Sir Roger North, Treasurer of the Household, and in an ‘Argument’—both of which are omitted from the printed version. The dedication 93 The same may be said of any deliberately non-committal collection. A good example is Henry Wright, The first part of the disquisition of truth, concerning political affairs (1616). Wright’s use of Machiavelli was first commented upon by Horrocks (1908). Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli, 91–4, exaggerates the intellectual merit of Wright’s compilation precisely because he does not acknowledge that it is merely a compilation and not, as he writes, a ‘manual of political instruction’. 94 The Cabinet-Council: containing the cheif Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State discabinated . . . By the ever renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton, Esq. (1658); Ernest E. Strathmann, ‘A Note on the Ralegh Canon’, Times Literary Supplement, 13 Apr. 1956, p. 288; Lefranc, Sir Walter Raleigh, 67–78.

668

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

informs North that the compiler is ‘nowe by age overtaken’; but, wishing to live in his lord’s memory, he is offering these ‘fewe notes’ which he has observed while ‘in readinge of diverse histories’. He knows that the result of his effort is unworthy, yet it might ‘percase square withe those occations your Lordschippe shall heareafter have in hand’.95 T. B. would not, of course, venture to advise one who was so greatly experienced in both civil and military affairs: yet he would account his labours well rewarded were his lordship to find anything therein agreeable to his ‘fancie’. The Argument borrows from Machiavelli’s Discorsi the notion that people neither read nor learn from the ancients, despite the fact that understanding the past could guide us to knowledge of the future; and the compiler tells us frankly what his method has been: I have heare without method or precise order and not unlike to hime that gathereth stones, tymber, iron, and other stuffe for a builder, collected to geather certen authorities, maximes and examples to be applied, dispozed and squared unto suche accidentes, as thaffaires of tyme and proceeding of men shall give occasion. (fo. 2v)

All that T. B. promises is a series of unconnected sententiae. And this is precisely what he delivers. He has, it is true, sought to impose some order on his material by grouping it very loosely under various heads. The definition of commonwealths; their different forms; councils and counsellers; officers, commissioners, and magistrates; and widely divergent aspects of justice, treasure, and war—these come under the first twenty-eight subheadings of MS 27320 (divided into twenty-four chapters in the CabinetCouncil), and they comprise about two-fifths of the total work. The remainder of the collection is divided into just two groups, entitled respectively Observations confirmed by reasons and experiences, and Observations confirmed by examples (fos. 50–89v, 90–124). Many years ago, the Cabinet-Council was analysed by Nadja Kempner, whose study—despite its attribution of the work to Raleigh, and its absence of information on the manuscripts— remains valuable for its careful exposition both of the sources for the aphorisms published by Milton, and of their distribution.96 95 BL Add. MS 27320, fo. 1. 96 Nadja Kempner, Raleghs Staatstheoretische Schriften: Die Einfu¨hrung des Machiavellismus in England (Leipzig, 1928).

SYSTEMATIC FRAGMENTATION

669

The order of the work is straightforward, for T. B. has left his notes largely as he must have collected them. They are grouped according to their original sources: beginning with Bodin’s Re´publique; continuing with Machiavelli’s Il Principe; back again for a second sequence from the Re´publique; then a cluster from an unidentified text; followed by a long series of seriatim notes from Lipsius’s Politicorum libri sex. The sequence of aphorisms ‘confirmed by reasons and experiences’ is based on Sansovino’s Concetti, whence more than 130 individual passages are drawn—the majority deriving ultimately from Machiavelli’s Il Principe and Discorsi, with a few others from the Arte della guerra and the Istorie fiorentine, and a small number originating in Guicciardini’s Ricordi. The final section of T. B.’s Observations, those ‘confirmed by examples’, is drawn seriatim from Machiavelli’s Discorsi (seventy-two aphorisms in the Cabinet-Council; 106 aphorisms in MS 27320); followed by another group of sententiae from Bodin’s Re´publique. Given such an arrangement, a sense of order is inevitably absent from T. B.’s work. Its tone is variable, reflecting that of its sources. Where Lipsius, for example, is the mainstay, each aphorism concludes with a Latin tag accompanied by the name of its author. Elsewhere such tags are absent. In the penultimate section, based on Sansovino, not only classical exemplars but all proper names are absent, because Sansovino had eschewed particular examples in his attempt to distil the truthful essence from the the pulp of history. By contrast, the concluding series of aphorisms from Machiavelli and Bodin are again full of their historical examples, classical and modern. Intellectual discrimination is also variably exercised— though at no point is it a marked feature of the Observations. Where Sansovino, for instance, contradicts himself concerning neutrality, T. B. heedlessly follows. Where Sansovino says something effective based on Machiavelli, T. B. copies him. But, in the very next group of notes, T. B. may also copy the original Machiavelli passage as though it were saying something different. The text merits attention but not, I think, critical appraisal. It really is just what its author says of it: sentences ‘without method or precise order’.

670

P A R T I V . M A CH I AV E L L I , N O N - M A C H I A V E L L I

What is the intellectual significance of random sentences in a Renaissance notebook? How are we to assess the effect such fragments may have had on the copyist’s mind? Is it possible to trace their impact on his life or his written work? In the case of T. B., his continuing anonymity renders the task impossible. But even if we apply this test to Sansovino, we achieve lamentable results. He was an industrious scholar. He executed fifteen translations, forty-five collections and editions, and eleven original works.97 We know that he had an extensive acquaintance with all four of Machiavelli’s major writings.98 Yet, with regard to any discernible effect that his knowledge of Machiavelli might have exerted on his own thinking, Sansovino need scarcely have bothered. The mere taking of notes and their accidental preservation have a severely limited value to the intellectual historian. The notebooks of some few students would, without doubt, prove suggestive; but the majority of such scribblings would not repay close scrutiny. And, although we may feel obliged to the diligence of Aristotle’s pupils, I would venture that several hundred Machiavelli editions and translations, from the sixteenth century to the present day, render all attempts at reconstructing that master’s oeuvre from scattered sentences in old commonplace books entirely superfluous. None the less, were such an essay in reconstruction necessary, I should recommend as a starting point one work which may stand as the reductio of the whole process of aphorization. It is not, however, a reductio ad absurdum. Ingenuity and ambidexterity raise it far above most other miscellanies of fragmented political thought. And it is to this that we now turn for the conclusion of this book. 97 Paul F. Grendler, Critics of the Italian World 1530–1560 (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969), 67–8. 98 Sansovino was also familiar with minor works by Machiavelli—disingenuously incorporating two of them into his Governo de i regni et delle republiche (Venice, 1561). He lists his sources at sig. *4v, noting that his statements on France derive from ‘Vincenzo Lupono’ (Vincent de la Loupe), and on Germany from ‘Thomaso Auths’ (Philipp Ludwig Authaeus). However, although there is some introductory material from La Loupe and Authaeus, in each case it precedes verbatim transcriptions of Machiavelli: in the first case of the Ritratto di cose di Francia; and secondly of the Ritratto delle cose della Magna.

Epilogue il principe i n a l p h a b e t i c a l o r d e r In 1641 the Florentine printers Massi and Landi published the Avvertimenti politici collected, some years previously, by a highly obscure author, Giovanni Maria Pichi of San Sepolcro.1 The work was dedicated by the printers to Giovanni Battista Gondi, Secretary of State to the Grand Duke of Tuscany: but Pichi had addressed himself to the ‘Curiosi e sottili Ingegni’ in a short introductory letter as curious and subtle as the intellects for whom it was intended. He admits that the political and military doctrines which are to follow are not his own but have been carefully gathered from a certain author whom the reader may have heard named for his excellent sayings, but has perhaps not seen; or, if seen and read, then perhaps the ‘recondite secrets of his sentences’ have not been reflected upon. Pichi does not dedicate these reflections to princes who imbibe such ideas when they are scarcely out of swaddling clothes; nor to magnates and gentlemen whose true Reason of State is to obey and to serve with fidelity the prince whom God has given them. Nor does he dedicate the work to private citizens, because it is better for them to study domestic economy, agriculture, and mercantile matters. Instead, he offers the book to one who takes delight in discourses on past and present events, and in the reading of ancient truths and modern histories. He promises that, if the work is well received, he will undertake a larger and more singular labour.2 Unfortunately, that further 1 Giovanni Maria Pichi, Avvertimenti politici raccolti da Gio. Maria Pichi da Citta` di San Sepolcro (Florence, 1641). 2 Ibid., sig. A.3r–v. ‘Questi Ammaestramenti Politici, e Avvertimenti Militari, Lettore non son miei, ma sı` bene cavati da quelche Autore, che tu per la sua

672

EPI LOG UE

labour never saw the light, and Pichi’s Avvertimenti politici remains his sole gift to a posterity so lacking in subtlety and curiosity that it has never recognized the true nature of his enterprise. For Pichi’s text is simply Machiavelli’s Il Principe broken down into aphorisms and rearranged under eighty-four headings in alphabetical order, beginning with Acquistare and ending with Viveri.3 The only extraneous matters among the aphorisms occur under Castruccio and Uguccione dalla Fagiuola, which derive from Machiavelli’s Vita di Castruccio Castracani. The text is accompanied by marginal comments which sometimes revise a detail in Machiavelli. Under Congiure, for example—having given the aphorism based on Il Principe, 19, that conspiracies are rarely successful because of the need for confederates—Pichi cites the fate of Eccellenza del dire haverai sentito nominare, ma forse non visto, e se veduto, e letto non fatto reflessione ne’ reconditi segreti delle sue sentenze. Non gli dedico a Principi perche quegli appena usciti delle fascie gustano il sapore di queste Dottrine. Non a Grandi, e Gentil Huomini, perche la vera loro Ragione di Stato, e` obbedire, e servire con fedelta` il Principe, che Dio gli ha` dato. Non a Privati, perche meglio e` per loro lo studio delle Casalinghe, Economie, dell’Agricoltura, e mercantili esercizi. A te lo dono, che ne discorsi de passati e presenti avvenimenti, e della lettura de le vere antiche, e moderne Historie ti diletti; e se vedro` che me n’habbia grado, presto ti donero`, simile a queste, maggiore, e piu` curiosa fatica. Vale.’ 3 The list of headings (‘Materia di che si tratta’), at fo. 4r–v, shows precisely what Pichi considered to be the significant themes of Il Principe and Castruccio Castracani. They are as follows: ‘Acquistare, Acquisti, Alemagna, Amicizie, Arditi, Arme, Armi proprie, Armi mercennarie, Armi ausiliarie, Armi miste, Assedio, Avversita`, Azzioni, Baroni di Roma, Benefizi, Caccia, Capitano, Capitani mercennari, Carlo Ottavo, Cavalleria, Castruccio, Cervelli, Citta`, Citta` acquistate per mantenerle, Cittadini, Chiesa, Congiure, Crudelta`, Deliberazioni, Difficulta`, Disordini, Divisioni, Eserciti, Fanteria, Fiorentini, Fortezze, Fortuna, Franzesi, Gente d’arme, Grandi, Guelfi e Ghibellini, Guerra, Huomini, Imperadori Romani, Ingiurie, Italia, Italiani, Leggi, Liberalita`, Monarchia del Turco, Ministri, Militia, Moltitudine, Munizioni, Nimicizie, Occasioni, Offese, Ordini, Principe nuovo, Principe ereditario, Principe assediato, Principe ecclesiastico, Principe civile, Principi Italiani, Partito, Popolo, Plebe, Provincie, Prudenza, Re di Francia, Re di Spagna, Republiche, Stati, Soldano, Soldati, Sudditi, Tempo, Traditori, Torri, Venetiani, Vicini, Uguccione dalla Fagiuola, Vittorie, Viveri’. Pichi’s alphabetical approach may be compared with BNF fr. 19922: ‘Recueil des principaux pointz et maximes d’Estat, traite´ par Maquiavel, en son Livre intitule´ Le Prince’. This is an early 17th-c., free translation of most of the maxims and aphorisms in Il Principe, excluding the final chapter and with Machiavelli’s historical examples both reduced and heavily cut. It is thus a collection of the rules without the arguments and is wholly without moral judgements.

EPILOGUE

673

the French king Henri IV to the effect that when, on the contrary, the conspiracy is undertaken by an individual, it can be successful (p. 54).4 As a matter of fact, Machiavelli himself had made the point that it is impossible for any prince to avoid the attack of a really dedicated assassin, and Pichi again refers to Henri IV’s death, at the hands of ‘Francesco Ravagliacco’, to illustrate this (p. 56). Sometimes the glosses serve to provide a contemporary tone to the aphorisms, as when praising, under Acquisti, the long rule of the Medici family; referring to the siege of La Rochelle under Armi proprie and Capitano; or, under Guerra, citing the example of Wallenstein as one who rose from the rank of private citizen to princely authority. Occasionally, Pichi’s conscience taps him gently, and his marginal comments assume a moral tone. For example, where, under Acquisti, he asserts the necessity of both Force and Fraud (describing how Agathocles, Oliverotto da Fermo, and Cesare Borgia acquired their territories by ‘scelleratezza’, killing all the leading and richest citizens), the comment is ‘Reprehensible, and he who acquires states by such means loses them miserably’ (pp. 18–19).5 Or again, where, under Principe nuovo, Pichi describes the technique of creating ‘con astuzia’ enemies in order to gain reputation by overcoming them, the terse indictment is, ‘Precetto periculose e ingiusto’ (p. 83). On the other hand, most of Machiavelli’s extremisms pass without comment. How does one master a Citta` Acquistata? Either by killing the inhabitants or by going to live there (p. 53). How does one judge Crudelta`? By its effects. It is good when done all at one time through necessity to secure oneself, and then not insisted upon; and it is bad if done ‘little by little’, and without cessation. Those who occupy a state use cruelty well ‘all at once’; and it is valuable for holding an army united (p. 56). What is war and how is it justified? It is the only object of princes; it not only maintains them, but also enables men to rise to power from private station; and it is just when necessary (pp. 65–6). What of human nature? To elucidate this, Pichi assembles six pages of Machiavelli’s 4 ‘Fu` pur effetuata quella contro Enrico Quarto, e contro altri da un solo.’ 5 ‘Vituperabile, e chi per tal mezzo acquisto` stati quelli perde` miseramente.’

674

EPI LOG UE

hardest-boiled cynicisms concerning human despicability including the advice that people must either be killed or cajoled—because they may avenge light injuries, but cannot do the same for heavy offences. And we are reminded that men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony (pp. 66–72). Is liberality laudable? No. It is more often blameworthy in a prince (p. 75). Should the ‘new’ prince be pious? No. This is not always possible. Should he be loved or feared? He should try to be both: but if he cannot manage this, then it is better to be feared (p. 83). As is to be expected, the largest group of aphorisms concern various types of Principe: and Pichi has no difficulty filling six pages for his first entry under Principe nuovo since, of course, this had been the subject of Machiavelli’s work. Ingenuity was, however, required for the longest section—eighteen pages on Principe ereditario, to whom Machiavelli had devoted only one tiny chapter which serves as Pichi’s introduction to this subject (pp. 86–104). Thereafter, Machiavelli’s advice to the new prince had to be bent in order to serve the purposes of the hereditary rulers of Pichi’s own day. From Il Principe, 2, he moves on to chapter 14 in order to recommend constant practice in the art of war, hunting in peacetime, reading histories, and imitating great examples: as Alexander imitated Achilles; Caesar, Alexander; and Scipio, Cyrus. There follows a wily adaptation of the pivotal chapter 15 of Il Principe, concerning conventional virtue and vice. The prince must avoid all vices which might result in the loss of his state. He should be neither liberal nor miserly; generous, not rapacious; pious, not cruel; faithful, not a breaker of oaths; neither effeminate nor pusillanimous; not too fierce and bold; neither completely proud nor completely humane; chaste, not lascivious; sincere and astute; neither inflexible nor facile; serious, not volatile; religious, not unbelieving. It all sounds like a gentle moralization of Machiavelli: but there is a sting in the tail. Everything depends on knowing the time and the place for such behaviour. There are vices which seem virtues, and virtues which seem vices. The prince has to look after himself: ‘Custodisca il suo ben essere’ (pp. 90–1). Pichi next moves on to Il Principe, 16 for aphorisms on liberality; and to chapter 17 for the correct use of cruelty, especially as

EPILOGUE

675

exemplified by Hannibal. He then selects a variety of passages to illustrate the requisites for success—noting the feebleness of law without force, the value of being both lion and fox, the ease with which one may find reasons to break harmful promises, and the need to know how to simulate and dissimulate—but with no comment on their dubiety when viewed from the standpoint of conventional princely probity. Further aphorisms from the later chapters of Il Principe follow, culminating in a passionate military appeal adapted from chapter 24, in which Machiavelli had explained why the Italian princes of his day had lost their states. The dispossessed prince of the mid-seventeenth century is advised, like his predecessors, not to blame fortune but rather to recognize his own cowardice; and Pichi points out the feebleness of merely waiting for the people to be so wearied by the conqueror’s insolence that they recall their own ruler. You should never cast yourself down in the expectation that someone else will pick you up again—as had happened, says a marginal note, ‘to a prince of our times’—for either this does not happen or, if it does, then it is insecure (p. 103). That defence is vile which depends upon somebody else’s strength; whereas those defences are certain, true, durable, and good, which depend upon one’s own resources and virtu`. Pichi rounds off this artificially concocted section on the hereditary prince with a few maxims concerning the importance of proceeding in concord with the times, before moving on to the Principe assediato, Principe ecclesiastico, and Principe civile, which are rearrangements of appropriate passages from Il Principe (chs. 9, 11) (pp. 104–9). Far more interesting is the way in which he concludes his aphorisms on princes. Under Principi Italiani are three laconic exhortations: princes should present a united front against foreign invaders; they should be content with their territorial possessions; and they should wage war in person (‘Devono esser tutti uniti, accio` forestieri non entrino armati in Italia, e nessuno di loro occupi piu` stato di quello che s’habbia. Progressano armati in persona’). These are accompanied by an even more laconic marginal annotation. It reads simply, Nota (pp. 109–10). This last exhortation, to take note of an exhortation to the Italian princes, affords a clue to the purpose of the Avvertimenti politici.

676

EPI LOG UE

Machiavelli’s principal themes are all here, expressed largely in his own words. Yet while Pichi’s editorial comment is brief, it is also suggestive. Italy, after more than a century of foreign domination, is even more degraded than in Machiavelli’s own time. But why? Under Italiani, Pichi echoes his master to the effect that their countrymen are superior in intelligence and military skill to all other nations. They should not allow themselves to be infested by the barbarians for, as the poet says. Virtu contr’il furore Prendera` l’arme, e fia il combatter corto: Che l’antico valore Negli italici cuor non e` ancor morto.

Machiavelli had intensified the patriotic fervour of Petrarch’s verse by employing it in Il Principe. The deliberate lack of structure (apart from the alphabetical order) in Pichi’s Avvertimenti obscures the anti-barbarian excitement of the words: but a marginal comment brings the matter up to date. Italian soldiers are still better than anybody else, as is evidenced in Flanders and the present wars in Germany: ‘soldati Italiani esercitati meglio d’ogn’altra nazione, testimonio la Fiandra, e le presenti Guerre d’Alemagna’ (p. 74). Elsewhere, under Fanteria, we learn a little more about this. Pichi here comments on the French, the Swiss, and the Spanish in terms directly drawn from the final chapter of Il Principe: but his marginal comment tells us pointedly that these troops are no longer the force they had been in days gone by: ‘Non piu` in quella estimazione ne di quella bravura che ne passati tempi’ (pp. 58–9). Is there a message in all this? I think that there is. If we turn forward again to Italia, we find, in words taken from Machiavelli, that this land has been ruined by mercenary and auxiliary arms, and that its divisions have caused it to be ravaged by the barbarians. Italy has no other remedy to free itself from the invaders than the ‘dominio de Medici’. This is a very free development of hints from the messianic concluding chapter of Il Principe. But it is further clarified by the marginal annotation, which explains that the ‘rule of the House of Medici has kept their most happy states free not only from the invasions of war but has also relieved them from

EPILOGUE

677

every other calamity of famine and plague’ (p. 71).6 This must refer to the reign of Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1609 to 1621, when—more through good Fortuna than Virtu`—his dominions enjoyed peace, security, and abundance. Affairs deteriorated during the regency which followed his death, and they did not improve when Ferdinand II assumed power in 1627 at the age of 17. It is probable that the reference to relief from famine and plague concerns the young Grand Duke’s actions when, three years after his accession, he acquitted himself well in the frightful pestilence of 1630.7 It would not have been unreasonable to entertain high hopes of his capacities, though they were not subsequently realized. Pichi’s Avvertimenti was evidently submitted for examination at about this time for, on 11 September 1633, the Reverend M. Benedetto Fioretti wrote that he had read the book and found in it nothing repugnant to the Christian faith and to good custom. A licence was accordingly issued by Vincenzio Rabatta, Vicar General of Florence. Similarly, on 20 September, Girolamo Rosati, ‘Protonotario Apostolico, e Consultore del Santo Offizio in Fiorenza’, testified that he, too, had read Pichi’s text and had found nothing reprehensible therein; and, on this basis, licence was also accorded by F. Clemente, Inquisitor General of Florence (p. 126). Thus the censors solemnly licensed a comprehensive version of the most execrated book by the most execrated of all proscribed authors, together with a contemporary adaptation of his appeal to the Medici to develop their military strength in order that they might expel the barbarians. It is possible that the reverend gentlemen did not read Pichi’s book at all. Or perhaps they read it in a perfunctory manner? Or perhaps Machiavelli’s sentences—which are usually assumed to have excited moral indignation—did not seem in the least extraordinary when divorced from their author’s sinister name? Certainly, there is no evidence to suggest that other 6 ‘Il dominio della Serenissima Casa de Medici ha` tenuti liberi i suoi felicissimi stati non solo da incursione e Guerre, ma sollevati da ogni altra calamita` di fame e peste.’ 7 Cf. Pichi’s comment (at p. 87) under Principe Ereditario: ‘Mira lo Stato di Firenze, se non havesse hauto il suo Principe in tempo di peste, e fame. L’altro Citta` versate da questi accidenti quasi desolate.’

678

EPI LOG UE

readers were more perceptive or deeply moved than the censors. Pichi was not, as far as one can tell, encouraged to complete the promised expansion of this work. He was not reprinted. He was not refuted. He was, in fact, completely ignored until Giuseppe Ferrari (who referred at least once to almost every Italian political treatise) accorded him a passing, but uncomprehending, nod in the Corso su gli scrittori politici italiani—saying that Pichi reproduces ‘I piu` abbominevoli consigli della vecchia politica’—but without noticing that these councils are, in fact, unadulterated Machiavelli.8 Even Tommaso Bozza, who missed little, did not include Pichi in his bibliography of early Italian political writers. Yet, in so far as the technique of aphorization has ever been applied to Machiavelli, Pichi’s Avvertimenti politici is the most systematic of all fragmentations. But nobody noticed; and nobody cared.9 The indifference of the ‘Curiosi e sottili Ingegni’ to Pichi’s short book may seem a negative end to my own rather longer one: but, of course, it is not really the end at all. How could it be? From Pichi’s time to the present, people have continued to read Machiavelli, argue about him, and seize upon such of his ideas as seem relevant to their own needs; and it was only slowly that these responses developed into what we now regard as normal. Machiavelli’s regard for ‘il popolo’ and for republican Rome made him a democrat to democrats; his taste for extreme measures made him an apostle of autocracy; his Tuscan emotionalism made him a heroic prophet of the Risorgimento; and all this, in turn, generated the literary and historical criticism which is now a mighty industry. The search for antecedents, meanings, parallels, and subtleties becomes ever more intense; and it is difficult to approach Machiavelli’s works without having first to struggle through shelves-full of exegetical comment—much of it as acidulous and partisan as the hectic debates of the past. However, the fact that Machiavelli has enjoyed, or suffered, nearly four hundred years of readership since Pichi is not the 8 Ferrari, Corso, 497. 9 I first tried to draw attention to Pichi in an article, ‘Machiavelli and the Aphorizers’, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 1/3 (Oct. 1983), 19–30—but without awakening any interest.

EPILOGUE

679

principal reason for my having reached, like Dr Johnson at the end of Rasselas, a ‘conclusion in which nothing is concluded’. I feel that anyone who has arrived at this Epilogue (excluding those who have cheated by turning to it first) should know what the book has been about and what it has attempted. To provide a digest would be a task analogous to the competition in Monty Python’s Flying Circus when hapless contestants were given thirty seconds to summarize Marcel Proust. Nevertheless, there are some generalizations which I can offer with regard to the first century of Machiavelli’s reception. One is that early readers rarely agonized about what he ‘meant’. As far as they were concerned, they knew what he meant—and this depended on their context, not Machiavelli’s; and upon their use of language, not his. Reactions ranged from the overt indignation of the pious, the tacit approval of realists and cynics, the enthusiasm (often concealed) of militarists, and—as I have tried to show—the indifference of the indifferent. It is also evident that his works were used in ways wholly alien to what is now deemed appropriate: or perhaps it would be better to say that modern approaches to Machiavelli would have seemed incomprehensible to his early readers. Moreover, for all the clamour about his treatment of Christian morality, it was his thinking about armies and warfare which encouraged the most widespread response throughout the period we have been discussing; and— despite the frequent misunderstandings of those who utilized his military ideas—I think that this would have pleased Machiavelli enormously. I hope, too, that the unsatisfactoriness of attempts to make the past comprehensible by keeping it tidy has become clearer as this book has progressed. Neatness in the history of ideas is a short cut to falsification; and it is especially suspect when an attempt is made to create a scale of acceptation based upon how nearly a reader was able to ‘swallow Machiavelli whole’—as though people were not (and are not) inclined to hold contradictory views, or adopt contradictory stances, simultaneously. Yet every day we see politicians expressing ideals which they cannot hope to put into practice, and assuming postures of probity which conceal dishonesty or incompetence. We see, too, personal obsessions where the rectitude of one’s own opinion—be it religious fervour, civil liberty, or some

680

EPI LOG UE

other cause—becomes a moral imperative rendering it necessary to deprive dissenters of their liberties and even their lives. It is naive to make acceptance of either a wholly secular or wholly religious morality into a shibboleth whereby one may identify Machiavelli’s true followers. It is also a misunderstanding of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when zeal for ‘Christian values’ encouraged the righteous not only to practice the very violence and duplicity which they deplored in Il Principe, but also to gloat over them. There is nothing strange about the way in which many early readers of Machiavelli were impressed by one aspect of his work, while taking exception to others. People still regularly absorb conflicting ideas from a variety of sources which may appeal to different aspects of one and the same personality. Nobody is obliged to accept everything that a writer sets down on paper at an equal evaluation. Machiavelli himself was inconsistent, ambiguous, and emotional. So, too, were his readers, and—in order not to misrepresent them—their flaws, idiosyncrasies, enthusiasms, hatreds, and stupidities, as well as their perceptions and insights, have to be taken into account. And this is what I have tried to do in this book.

BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography is confined to manuscripts and printed sources referred to in the text and notes. The entries under Gentillet, Guicciardini, and Machiavelli are listed in chronological rather than alphabetical order.

i. manuscripts and annotated books Chantilly, Muse´e Conde´ MS 693. Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavel, citoyen et secre´taire de Florence, traduict en franc¸oys, MDXLVI, par Jacques de Vintemille.

London, British Library Department of Manuscripts Add. MS 8807. Lelio Marretti, Ricordi politici. Add. MS 8809, fos. 1–45. Avvertimenti, overo propositioni universali cavate delle Istorie del Giovio. Add. MS 12038 (Item 1). Discorso militare al Signor Francesco Serdonati. Add. MS 22601, fos. 18–20. A series of worldly aphorisms. Add. MS 27320. Observations Political and Civil. Add. MS 33743. Thomas Lee’s The discoverye and Recoverye of Ireland with the Authors Apologye. Add. MS 41162. John Levytt’s translation of the Discorsi. Cottonian MS Galba B. x, fo. 92 (calendared in LP, xv. 356). Cottonian MS Titus B. II, fos. 96–102 (printed in Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser., ii. 187–95). Cottonian MS Vespasian D. XVIII, fos. 2–46. William Thomas’s political discourses. All five discourses were printed in John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), II. ii, pp. 365–91, but are better consulted in Abraham D’Aubant, The Works of William Thomas (1774), 131–92. Egerton MS 837. William Thomas’s translation of Sacrobosco. Harleian MS 132. Sir John Smythe’s reply to Thomas Digges. Harleian MS 3364. Edward Payton, A Discourse of Court and Courtiers.

682

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harleian MS 4018. Edward Payton, A Discourse of Court and Courtiers. Harleian MS 4685. Sir John Smythe’s reply to Thomas Digges. Royal MS 14. A. XVIII, fos. 196–215. Verrua, Avvertimenti politici. Royal MS 17. C. X. William Thomas’s translation of Barbaro. Sloane MS 1813. Fragment of itinerary of Edward Unton.

Department of Printed Books Press mark 521.d.2. Johannes Spithovius, presentation letter in Osorio, De nobilitate (Florence, 1552). Press mark 523.d.30. William Lambard’s copy of Le Prince, trans. Guillaume Cappel (Paris, 1553). Press mark 534.m.4. Sir Henry Sidney’s copy of L’art de la guerre, trans. Charrier (Paris, 1546). Press mark 860.I.4. Inscription in Pasquier’s The Jesuites Catechisme (1602). Press mark 1192.g.9. Various pamphlets with manuscript notes from the Contre-Machiavel (Leiden, 1609). Press mark C.27.d.2. Grollier’s copy of Il Principe (Venice, 1540). Press mark C.27.d.3. Grollier’s copy of the Historie fiorentine (Venice, 1540). Press mark C.122.d.6. John Thorius’s manuscript notes in Bartolome Felippe, Tractado del conseio y de los consejeros de los Principes . . . Segunda impression (Turin [John Wolfe, London], 1589].

London, Public Record Office State Papers Scottish, XIX, No. 51, fo. 8.

Hatfield House MS 273–3. Certayne selected chapters translated oute of Nicholas Machiavell his 3 bookes of dyscourses upon the firste decade of Livie.

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ital.g.1 (formerly Western 31088). Verrua, Avvertimenti politici.

Paris, Bibliothe`que de l’Institut MS 677. Gohory’s translation of Livy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

683

Paris, Bibliothe`que Nationale de France MS fr. 589. Maximes et brief advis pour le maniement de la guerre. MS fr. 643. Coignet, Instructions des princes a` garder la foy. MS fr. 644. Coignet, Instructions a` la noblesse de France pour garder la foy. MS fr. 1245. ‘Sensuit lordre et ce que Ung prince ou chef de guerre doit faire qui veult conquester ung pays et passer a travers maugre ses ennemyz’. MS fr. 2523. Miscellaneous collection of political aphorisms. MS fr. 19018. Histoire de Florence de Nicolas Machiavel, traduite en franc¸ois par Louveau. MS fr. 19046–7. Louis Machon’s Apologie pour Machiavel. MS fr. 19922. ‘Recueil des principaux pointz et maximes d’Estat, traite´ par Maquiavel, en son Livre intitule´ Le Prince’. MS fr. 20787, fo. 19. La Popelinie`re, note headed ‘Le Contre-Machiavel’. MS fr. 23045, fos. 91–2. Gaspardi Arverni Elogium by Jean Falco. MS fr. Supple´ment 725. Verrua, Avvertimenti politici. MS it. 235–7. Lelio Marretti, Ricordi politici. MS it. 424, fos. 119–91. Verrua, Avvertimenti politici. MS it. 635, fos. 134–57. Verrua, Avvertimenti politici. MS it. 683, fos. 1–29. Verrua, Avvertimenti politici. MS it. 708. Verrua, Avvertimenti politici. MS lat. 5972. Gohory, De rebus gestis Francorum.

ii. printed primary sources Unless otherwise stated, place of publication is London. Accetto, Torquato, Della dissimulazione onesta (1641), ed. Benedetto Croce (Bari, 1928). Adams, Thomas, The Gallants Burden. A Sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 29 of March . . . 1612 (1612). Advertissement au Roy, ou sont deduictes les raisons d’estat, pour lesquelles il ne luy est pas bienseant de changer de religion (n.p., 1589). Advertissement du Peuple de Paris aux Passans (Paris, 1572). Advis aux princes, seigneurs, gentilshommes, et autres Catholiques de France (Paris, 1589). Aelianus Tacticus, see Bingham. Affelen, Joannes ab, Vir politicus, in Speculi Aulicarum atque politicarum observationes (Cologne, 1610).

684

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agapetus, Diaconus, De officio regis ad Iustinianum Caesarem (Venice, 1509). Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, De incertitudine & vanitate scientiarum declamatio (Antwerp, 1530); another edn. (Cologne, 1531). —— Of the vanitie of artes and sciences, Englished by Ja. San[ford] (1569). Alamos y Barrientos, Baltasar, Tacito Espan˜ol illustrado con Aforismos (Madrid, 1614). Alberi, Eugenio, Relazione degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato (Florence, 1839–63). Alberti, Federigo, Le difese de’ Fiorentini contra le false calunnie del Giovio (Lyon, 1566). Alciatus, Andreas, Cornelius Tacitus exacta cura recognitus et emendatus (Venice, 1534). Allegresse chrestienne de l’heureux succes des guerres de ce royaume (Paris, 1572); also printed as Discours sur les occurrences des Guerres intestines de ce royaume, et de la justice de Dieu contre les rebelles au Roy, et comme de droit divin est licite a` sa majeste´ punir ses subjets, pour la Religion viole´e. Amelot de la Houssaye, Abraham Nicholas, Tacite avec des notes politiques et historiques (The Hague, 1692). Ammirato, Scipione, Discorsi sopra C. Tacito (Florence, 1594). —— Discours politiques et militaires sur Corneille Tacite, trans. Laurent Melliet (Lyon, 1619). Ample discours sur l’usurpation . . . faicte par le Roy de Navarre (n.p., n.d.). See De la puissance du roys. Ane Discourse Touching the Estait Present in October Anno Domini 1571 (Saint Andrews, 1572). Annotatio librorum prohibitorum (Alessandria, 1580). Anticoton, ou refutation de la lettre declaratoire de pere Coton (n.p., 1610); trans. as Anti-Coton, or a refutation of Cotton’s Letter Declaratorie (1610). Aquaviva di Aragona, Belisario, De principum liberis educandis, trans. Johannes Leunclavius (Basle, 1578). The Araignement and Execution of the Late Traytors (1606). Aristeas, De interpretatione septuagintaduorum interpretum (Naples, 1474). Aristotle, L’Ethica d’Aristotele tradotta in lingua vulgare fiorentina, trans. Bernardo Segni (Florence, 1550). —— Trattato dei governi di Aristotele tradotto di greco in lingua vulgare fiorentina, trans. Bernardo Segni (Florence, 1549). Ascham, Roger, A Report and Discourse of the affaires and state of Germany (1570?).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

685

—— The Scholemaster (1570). —— The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A. Giles (1864). Atanagi, Dionigi, Ragionamento de la eccelentia et perfettion de la historia (Venice, 1559). Ayala, Balthazar, De iure et officiis bellicis (Douai, 1582; 2nd edn., Antwerp, 1597); ed. J. Westlake as De jure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari Libri III (1582) (Washington, DC, 1912). Baccellini, Matteo, Aforismi politici e militari ne’ quali si mostra come il Principe, e la Republica s’ha` da governare con la militia. E l’arte di creare un essercito, d’armarlo, essercitarlo, alloggiarlo, e condurlo alla giornata. Il modo di edificare Terre, e Fortezze, come si ponno espugnare, e difendere nuovamente posti in luce (Paris, 1610); 2nd edn. (Venice, 1620). Bacon, Sir Francis, The Works, ed. James Spedding (1857–74). Ba I¨ f, Jean-Antoine de, Complaincte sur le trespas du feu roy Charles IX (Paris, 1574). Bale, John, Kynge Johan, ed. Barry B. Adams (San Marino, Calif., 1969). —— Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam vocant: Catalogus (Basle, 1557). Bandello, Matteo, La prima parte de le novelle (Lucca, 1554). Barbaro, Giosofat, Travels to Tana and Persia . . . tr. from the Italian by William Thomas, ed. Lord Stanley of Alderley (Hakluyt Society, 1873). Barnaud, Nicolas, Le cabinet du roy de France dans lequel il y a trois perles precieuses (n.p., 1581, 1582). —— Le miroir des Franc¸oys, l’estat et maniement des affaires de France (n.p., 1582). —— Le secret des finances de France en trois livres (n.p., 1581). Barnes, Barnabe, The Divils Charter: a Tragaedie conteining the Life and Death of pope Alexander the sixt (1607); ed. R. B. McKerrow, in W. Bang, Materialen zur Kunde des a¨lteren Englischen Dramas, 6 (Louvain, Leipzig, and London, 1904). —— Four Bookes of Offices: enabling privat persons for the speciall service of all good princes and policies (1606). Bartoli, Cosimo, Discorsi historici universali (Venice, 1569). Bartolus de Sasoferrato, Tractatus de tyrannia, trans. Ephraim Emerton, in Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (Cambridge, Mass., 1925). Barwick, Humfrey, A breefe discourse, concerning the force and effect of all manuall weapons of fire, and the disability of the Long Bowe or Archery, in respect of others of greater force now in use (1594?); facsimile repr. in E. G. Heath, Bow versus Gun (East Ardley, Wakefield, 1973).

686

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bayle, Pierre, The Dictionary Historical and Critical (1737). Beacon, Richard, Solon his follie, or a politique discourse, touching the reformation of common-weales (1594); ed. Clare Carroll and Vincent Carey (Binghamton, NY, 1996). Beccarie, Raymond de, see Fourquevaux. Behotte, Adrian, Response a` l’anticoton de point en point. Pour la defence de la doctrine et innocence des Peres Jesuites (Paris, 1611). Bell, Thomas, The anatomie of popish tyrannie (1603). —— The catholique triumph (1610). —— The Popes funerall (1605). —— The tryall of the new religion (1608). Belleforest, Fran c¸ ois de (ed.), Les chroniques et annales de France (Paris, 1573). Benvoglienti, Fabio, Discorso . . . per qual cagione per la religione non si fatta guerra fra’ Gentili, & perche si faccia tra Christiani. Con alcune cose ad esaltatione della fede cattolica, & depressione de gl’heretici (Florence, 1570). Bingham, John, The Tacticks of Aelian or art of embattailing an army after the Grecian manner (1616). —— The Art of embattailing an army, or the second part of Aelians Tacticks (1629). Biondo, Michel Angelo, Angitia cortigiana (Rome, 1540). —— Angoscia, la prima furia del mondo (Venice, 1542). Birch, Thomas, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the year 1581 till her death (1754). Boccalini, Traiano, De’ ragguagli di Parnaso. Centuria prima (Venice, 1612). Bocchi, Francesco, Discorso. A chi de’ maggiori guerrieri, che infino a questo tempo sono stati, si dee la maggioranza attribuire (Florence, 1573). Bodin, Jean, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris, 1566); trans. Beatrice Reynolds as Method for the Easy Comprehension of History (New York, 1945). —— Les six livres de la re´publique (Paris, 1576). Boissard, Jean-Jacques, Icones quinquaginta virorum illustrium, Part III (Frankfurt am Main, 1598). Boitet, Claude, Le Prince des Princes, ou l’art de regner, contenant son instruction aux sciences & a` la politique. Contre les orateurs de ce temps (Paris, 1632). Bombini, Bernardino, Discorsi intorno al governo della guerra et governo domestico (Naples, 1566); 2nd edn. (Venice, 1583).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

687

Bonaventura, Federigo, Della ragion di stato e della prudenza politica libri quatro (Urbino, 1623). Bonet, HonorØ, The Tree of Battles, ed. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1949). Bornitius, Jacobus, Consilia Johannis Bodini Galli, & Fausti Longiani Itali, De Principe recte instituendo. Cum Praeceptis etc. (Erfurt, 1603). —— De numis in repub. percutiendis & conservandis libri duo. Ex systemate politico de prompti (Hanover, 1608). Botero, Giovanni, De regia sapientia libri tres (Milan, 1583). —— Della ragione di stato (Venice, 1589). —— La prima parte de’ prencipi Christiani (Turin, 1601). Boucher, Jean, Sermon de la simule´e conversion et nullite´ de la pretendue absolution de Henry de Bourbon (Paris, 1594). Brancaccio, Lelio, Il Brancatio, della vera disciplina, et arte militare. Sopra i Commentari di Cesare (Venice, 1582). Brant oˆ me, Œuvres comple`tes de Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantoˆme, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1873). Brieve Remonstrance sur la mort de l’Admiral, et ses adherans. Au Peuple Franc¸ois (Lyon, 1572). Brucioli, Antonio, Dialogi (Venice, 1526); ed. Aldo Landi (Naples, 1982); trans. Traian Paradin, De l’office d’un cappitaine (Poitiers, 1551). Bruto, Giovanni Michele, Ioannis Michaeli Bruti Florentinae historiae libri octo priores (Lyon, 1562). Brutus, Stephanus Junius, Vindiciae contra tyrannos: sive, De principis in populum, populique in principem, legitima potestate (Edinburgh [Basle], 1579); ed. and trans. George Garnett as Stephanus Junius Brutus, the Celt. Vindiciae contra tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over a prince (Cambridge, 1994). Buchanan, George, Ane Admonition direct to the trew Lordis, Mantenaris of the Kingis Graces Authoritie, printed immediately before the Chamaeleon in the Opera, i. —— Chamaeleon, printed at the end of Opera, i. —— Opera omnia (Edinburgh, 1715). —— Poematum pars altera (Edinburgh, 1714). Burin, Pierre, Response a une Epistre, commenceant, Seigneur Eluide, ou est traitte´ des massacres faits en France, en l’an M.D.LXXII. Par Pierre Burin, a` Messire Guillaume Papon (Basle: M. Cousin, 1574). Burnet, Gilbert, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. N. Pocock (Oxford, 1865). Busca, Gabriello, Instruttione de’ bombardieri (Turin, 1598).

688

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Busini, G. B., Lettere di G. B. Busini a Benedetto Varchi, ed. G. Milanesi (Florence, 1861). The Cabinet-Council: containing the cheif Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State discabinated . . . By the ever renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton, Esq. (1658). Cadamosto, Marco, Elegantissime sentenze et aurei detti de diversi eccellentissimi antiqui savi cosi Greci, come Latini, Raccolti de M. Nicolo Liburnio: aggiuntovi molti ornati et arguti motti de piu boni authori, in volgar tradotti da M. Marco Cadamosto da Lodi (Venice, 1543). Calepinus, Ambrosius, Dictionarium ex optimis quibusque authoribus (Strasburg, 1510). CalliŁres, Jacques de, Histoire du mareschal de Matignon (Paris, 1661). Calmo, Andrea, La potione, comedia facetissima et dilettevole, in diverse lingue ridotta (Venice, 1552). Camerarius, Joachim (the Elder), Ornatissimi cujusdam viri de rebus Gallicis, ad Stanislaum Elvidium epistola, et ad hunc de iisdem rebus gallicis responsio (Paris: F. Morel, 1573). Canaye, Philippe, L’Organe cest a` dire l’instrument du discours, divise´ en deux parties, sc¸avoir est, l’analytique, Pour discourir veritablement, et la dialectique, Pour discours probablement. Le tout puise´ de l’Organe d’Aristote (Paris, 1589). Canini, Girolamo, Aforismi politici cavati dalla storia di Franc. Guicciardini (Venice, 1625). Canoniero, Pietro Andrea, Dell’introduzione alla politica, alla ragione di stato, et alla pratica del buon governo (Antwerp, 1614). —— In septem Aphorismorum Hippocratis libros, medicinae, politicae, morales, ac theologicae Interpretationes (Antwerp, 1618). —— Quaestiones ac Discursus in duos primos libros Annalium C. Cornelii Taciti, 2nd edn. (Frankfurt am Main, 1610). Cantique general des Catholiques, sur la mort de Gaspard de Colligny iadis Admiral de France, advenue a` Paris, le XXIIIJ jour d’Aoust (Paris, 1572). Capelloni, Lorenzo, Les divers discours de Laurent Capelloni sur plusieurs exemples et accidens, meslez, suivis et advenus, trans. Pierre de Larivey (Troyes, 1595); another edn., Livres et divers discours d’estat. Traduict d’Italien en Franc¸ois (Orle´ans, 1622). —— Ragionamenti varii di Lorenzo Capelloni, sopra essempii: con accidenti misti, seguiti, et occorsi non mai veduti in luce (Genoa, 1576); 2nd edn., Ragionamenti . . . Sopra varii essempi civili & militari (Milan, 1610); 3rd edn., Varii ragionamenti historici, e politici (Milan, 1623). —— La vita e gesti di Andrea D’Oria di Lorenzo Capelloni (Venice, 1562).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

689

Capilupi, Camillo, Lo stratagema di Carlo IX Re di Francia contro gli Ugonotti rebelli di Dio et suoi (Rome, 1574); repr. with French translation with a separate title page, Le stratageme, ou la ruse de Charles IX, Roy de France, contre les Huguenots rebelles a` Dieu et a` luy. Escrit par le Seigneur Camille Capilupi, et envoye´ de Rome au Seigneur Alphonse Capilupi. Traduit en Franc¸ois de la copie Italienne (Geneva, 1574). Capriolo, Aliprando, Ritratti di cento capitani illustri intagliati da Alip. Cap. Con i lor fatti in guerra da lui brevamente scritti (Rome, 1596). Carnegie, Dale, How to Make Friends and Influence People (New York, 1937). Caro, Annibal, Lettere familiari, ed. Aulo Greco (Florence, 1957–61). Case, John, Sphaera Civitatis (Oxford, 1588), and editions at Frankfurt in 1589 and 1593. Castiglione, Baldassare, The Book of the Courtier, trans. L. E. Opdyke (New York, 1901). —— Il cortegiano del conte Baldassarre Castiglione. Riveduto e corretto da Antonio Ciccarelli (Venice, 1584). —— Il Libro del cortegiano (Venice, 1528); ed. Vittorio Cian (Florence, 1894). —— Il libro del Cortegiano, ed. Ludovico Dolce (Venice, 1556). —— Libro llamado el cortesano, trans. Juan Boscan (Salamanca, 1540). Castiglione, Valeriano, Statista regnante di don Valeriano Castiglione milanese monaco cassinense (Lyon, 1628). Catalogo de’ codici manoscritti della famiglia Capilupi di Mantova illustrato dall’Abate Don Giovanni Andres (Mantua, 1797). Cataneo, Girolamo, Opera nuova di fortificare, offendere et difendere: et far alloggiamenti campali, secondo l’uso di guerra (Brescia, 1564). —— Tavole brevissime per sapere con prestezza quante file vanno a` formare una giustissima battaglia (Brescia, 1563); English trans., Most briefe tables etc. (1574). Cataneo, Pietro, I quattro primi libri di architettura (Venice, 1554). Catharinus, see Politi. Les Causes qui ont contrainct les Catholiques a` prendre les armes (1589). Cavriana, Filippo, Discorsi sopra i primi cinque libri di Cornelio Tacito (Florence, 1600). Centorio degli Hortensii, Ascanio, Discorsi di guerra, pts. 1–3 (Venice, 1568). —— Il primo (– quinto) discorso sopra l’ufficio d’un capitano generale di essercito (Venice, 1558–62).

690

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chantelouve, Fran c¸ ois de, La Tragedie du feu Gaspard de Colligny jadis admiral de France, contenant ce qui advint a` Paris le 24. d’Aoust 1572, avec le nom des personnages (n.p., 1575). Charke, William, An answere to a seditious pamphlet by a Jesuite (1580). Charron, Pierre, De la sagesse livres trois (Bordeaux, 1601); trans. Samson Lennard as Of wisdome three bookes written in French (1606). Charpentier, Pierre, Lettre de Pierre Charpentier Jurisconsulte addresse´e a` Franc¸ois Portes Candiois par laquelle il monstre que les persecutions des Eglises de France sont advenues, non par faulte de ceux qui faisoient profession de la Religion, mais de ceux qui nourrissoient les factions, et conspirations, qu’on appelle la Cause (n.p., 1572). Chokier, Joannes a, Thesaurus politicorum aphorismorum, in quo principum, consiliariorum, aulicorum institutio proprie continetur (Mainz, 1613). Chomedy, Hierosme de, L’Histoire de la conjuration de Catilin (Paris, 1575). Christine de Pisan, Le livre des faits d’armes et de chevalerie; trans. William Caxton as The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyvalrye, ed. A. T. P. Byles (EETS, 1932). Ciccarelli, Antonio, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio (Rome, 1598). Cicuta, Aureliano (alias Alfonso Adriano), Della disciplina militare del capitano Alfonso Adriano Libri III (Venice, 1566). Cimber, L., and Danjou, F., Archives curieuses de l’histoire de France depuis Louis XI jusqu’a` Louis XVIII (Paris, 1835). Cinuzzi, Imperiale, Della disciplina militare antica e moderna . . . Di nuovo ampliata di molte invenzioni militari e del vero modo di pacificare con parole qual si voglia nimicizia (Siena, 1620). —— La vera militar disciplina antica e moderna (Siena, 1604). Clayton, Giles, The approoved order of martiall discipline (1591). Cleland, James, The Institution of a young noble man (Oxford, 1607). Coignet, Matthieu, Instruction aux princes pour garder la foy promise (Paris, 1584); trans. Sir E. Hoby as Politique discourses upon trueth and lying (1586). Collado, Luis, Pratica manuale di Artiglieria (Venice, 1586). Collibus, Hippolytus a, Princeps. Eiusdem de nobilitate positiones LXII. Editio altera, priore emendatior, auctior. Seorsum accessit Palatinus, sive Aulicus, eodem Auctore. Nunc primum in lucem editus (Hanau, 1595). Commendone, Giovanni Francesco, see Verrua. Commynes, Philippe de, Les memoires sur les principaux faicts de Louis onzie´me et de Charles huictie`me (Paris, 1552).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

691

Conring, Hermann, Animadversiones politicae in Nicolai Machiavelli librum de Principe (Helmestadt, 1661). See also Machiavelli, Princeps. Les considerations sur le meurdre commis en la personne de feu Monsieur le Duc de Guise (Paris, 1589). Contarini, Gasparo, Des magistratz et republique de Venise compose´ par Gaspar Contarini gentilhomme Venetien, et depuis traduict de Latin en vulgaire Franc¸ois par Jehan Charrier (Paris, 1544). Contarini, Pier’ Maria, Corso di guerra et partiti di guerreggiare e combattere (Venice, 1601). Contre les fausses allegations que les plus qu’Architofels, Conseillers Cabinalistes, proposent pour excuser Henry le meurtrier de l’assassinat par luy perfidement commis en la personne du tresillustre Duc de Guyse (n.p., 1589). The copie of a late decree of the Sorbonne at Paris, for the condemning of that impious and haereticall opinion, touching the murthering of princes: Generally maintained by the Jesuites. And amongst the rest, of late by Joannes Maraiana, a Spaniard (1610). Copley, Anthony, An answere to a letter of a Jesuited gentleman by his cosin, maister A. C. (1601). —— Another letter of Mr. A. C. to his dis-jesuited kinsman (1602). Coretus, Petrus, Anti-Politicus, seu Adversus praecipua doctrinae politicorum capita, qua fallaci tranquillitatis praetextu religionis libertatem et impunitatem haeresum in Rempublicam inducere et ecclesiasticum ordinem civili potestati subjicere conantur, liber unus (Douai, 1599). —— Defensio veritatis adversus assertiones Catholicae fidei repugnantes, libro domini de la Noue De politicis & militaribus rebus, aspersas (Antwerp, 1591). See also Possevino, Judicium. Cornwallis, Sir William, Essayes (1600–1). Correspondence de Philippe II sur les affaires des Pays-Bas, ed. L. P. Gachard (1851). Cosin, Richard, Conspiracie for pretended reformation: viz. Presbyterial discipline (1592). Cotgrave, Randle, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Compiled by Randle Cotgrave (1611); repr. Columbia, SC, 1950. Coton, Pierre, Lettre Declaratoire de la doctrine des Peres Jesuites conforme aux decrets du Concile de Constance (Paris, 1610). Cottesford, Samuel, A Treatise against Traitors (1591). Covell, William, Polimanteia, or, the meanes lawfull and unlawfull to judge of the fall of a common-wealth (Cambridge, 1595). Cromwell’s Complaint of Injustice: or, His Dispute with Pope Alexander the Sixth, for precedency in Hell (1681).

692

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cuyckius, Henricus, Panegyricae orationes due. Prior de vitandis et e Republica proscribendis libris perniciosis. Posterior adversus politicos (Louvain, 1595). —— Speculum concubinariorum sacerdotum, monachorum ac clericorum (Cologne, 1599). Dallington, Sir Robert, Aphorismes civill and militarie: amplified with authorities, and exemplified with historie, out of the first quarterne of Fr. Guicciardine (1613). —— Essais politiques et militaires (enrichis de diverses maximes et remarques tire´es des anciens auteurs), trans. Le Sieur de Mouchembert (Paris, 1627). Dampmartin, Pierre de, Amiable accusation et charitable excuse, des maus et evenemens de la France (Paris, 1576). Daneau, Lambert, Commentarium de regno aut quovis principatu recte & tranquille administrando, libri tres (Geneva, 1577); reissued with revisions in 1578. —— Politices Christianae libri septem (?Geneva, 1596). —— Politicorum aphorismorum silva (Leiden, 1591). Davila, Enrico Caterino, Historia delle guerre civili di Francia (1755). De furoribus Gallicis, horrenda et indigna amirallij Castillionei, nobilium atque illustrium virorum caede . . . vera et simplex narratio ([Basle], 1573); English trans. as A true and plaine report of the furious outrages of Fraunce (1573). De la puissance des roys, contre l’usurpation du titre & qualite´ de Roy de France, faicte par le Roy de Navarre: et de l’asseurance que peuvent avoir en luy des Catholiques (Paris, 1589). De la religion catholique et foy chrestienne des roys de France. Oeuvre par lequel est monstre´e la devotion, et affection desdictz Roys envers les choses sainctes: et la punition par eux faicte des heretiques et des rebelles (Paris, 1572). De l’excommunication, et censures ecclesiastiques, encourues par Henry de Valois, pour l’assassinat commis e`s personnes de messieurs le Cardinal et Duc de Guyse (Paris, 1589). De Thou, Jacques-Auguste, Histoire universelle (1734). Declaracion du Roy, de la cause et occasion de la mort de l’Admiral et autres ses adhe´rens et complices, dernie`rement advenue en ceste ville de Paris le XXIIII. Jour du pre´sent moys d’Aoust. M.D.LXXII (Paris, 1572). Another edition was issued by Michel Jove at Lyon. Deimier, Louis, Maximes d’estat militaires et politiques, traduites de l’Italien de I. Botero Benese et augmente´es d’annotations (Paris, 1606).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

693

Deviezmaison, O. Raynssant, Le theatre de France, auquel est contenu la resolution sur chacun doubte, qui a retenu la Noblesse de se joindre a` l’Union Catholique (Paris, 1589); reissued with additional preliminary material in 1591. Dialogue du Royeaume au quel est discouru des vices et des vertus des roys (Paris, 1589). Diaz de Gamez, Gutierre, Le Victorial. Chronique de Don Pedro Nin˜o Comte de Buelna par Gutierre Diaz de Gamez son Alferez, 1379–1449, trans. and ed. Comte A. de Circourt and Comte de Puymaigre (Paris, 1867). Digges, Thomas, An Arithmeticall Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos (1579). —— and Digges, Dudley, Four Paradoxes, or politique Discourses (1604). Dini, Vincentio, Discorsi di M. Vincentio Dini sopra il primo libro de la terza Deca di Tito Livio (Rome, 1560). Discours contre les Huguenotz, auquel est contenue et de´clare´e la source de leur damnable religion (Lyon, 1573). Discours de la guerre addresse´ a` tous Chrestiens faisans profession des armes. Par un Gentilhomme Franc¸ois (Paris, 1615). Discours du massacre de ceux de la R.P.R. fait a` Lyon par les Catholiques le 28 aoust 1572 (n.p., 1574). Discours, en forme d’oraison funebre, sur le massacre et parricide, de Messeigneurs le Duc, et Cardinal de Guyse (Paris, 1589). Discours sur les causes de l’Execution faicte e`s personnes de ceux qui avoient conjure´ contre le Roy et son Estat (Lyon, 1572). A discoverie of the most secret and subtile practices of the Jesuites. Translated out of French (1610). Domenichi, Lodovico, La nobilta` delle donne (Venice, 1549). Doni, Antonio Francesco, La libraria del Doni, nella quale sono scritti tutti gl’autori vulgari (Venice, 1550). —— I marmi (Venice, 1552). —— La Seconda Libraria del Doni (Venice, 1551). Donne, John, Conclave Ignati: sive eius in nuperis inferni comitiis inthronisatio (1611); trans. as Ignatius His Conclave (1611); ed. T. S. Healy (Oxford, 1969). —— Pseudo-martyr. Wherein out of certaine propositions this conclusion is evicted. That those of the Romane religion ought to take the oath of allegeance (1610). Double d’une lettre envoiee a un certain personnage contenante le discours de ce qui se passa au Cabinet du Roy de Navarre, et en sa presence: lors que

694

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Monsieur le Duc d’Espernon fut vers luy en l’an 1584 (Frankfurt am Main, 1585). Drake, Stillman, and Drabkin, I. E., Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Selections from Tartaglia, Benedetti, Guido Ubaldo, and Galileo (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969). Du Chesne, Legier, Exhortation au Roy, pour vertueusement poursuivre ce que sagement il a commence´ contre les Huguenots, avec les Epitaphes de Gaspar de Colligny etc. (Paris, 1572). Du Choul, Guillaume, Discours sur la castrametation et discipline militaire des romains (Lyon, 1557). Du Moulin, Charles, Abus des petites dates, reservations, preventions, annates, et autres usurpations & exactions de la Cour de Rome, contre les Edictz & ordonnnances des Roys de France (Lyon, 1564). —— Commentarius ad edictum Henrici secundi contra parvas datas & abusus curiae Romanae (Paris, 1552). Du Plessis Mornay, Philippe [?], Vindiciae contra tyrannos (Edinburgh [Basle]), 1579). Du Praissac, Sieur The arte of warre, or military discourses, trans. John Cruso (Cambridge, 1639). —— Les questions militaires par le Sieur du Praissac (Paris, 1614). Du Refuge, Eustache, A Practical Guide for Ambitious Politicians or Walsingham’s Manual, ed. Gordon Tullock (Columbia, SC, 1961). —— Traicte´ de la cour. Ou instruction des courtisans. Derniere edition, Reveue & augmente´e suyvant la copie de l’Autheur (Paris, 1622). —— A Treatise of the Court or Instructions for Courtiers. Digested into Two Books. Written in French by the Noble and Learned Iuris-Consull Mons Denys [sic] de Refuges, Councellor of Estate, and many tymes Ambassador in foraigne Parts for the two last French Kings his Masters, trans. John Reynolds (1622). Ducci, Lorenzo, Ars aulica or the Courtiers arte, trans. Edward Blount (1607). —— Arte aulica Del Signor Lorenzo Ducci. Opera fondata sopra Cornelio Tacito, ed. Paolo Martinelli (Viterbo, 1615). —— Arte aulica di Lorenzo Ducci, nella quale s’insegna il modo che deve tenere il Cortegiano per divenir possessore della gratia del suo Principe (Ferrara, 1601). —— Arte Historica (Ferrara, 1604). —— Trattato della nobilta` nel quale si mostra che cosa ella sia, e quali le sue spetie (Ferrara, 1603). Dupin, Louis Ellies, Histoire de l’e´glise et des auteurs ecclesiastiques du seizie`me sie`cle (Paris, 1701–3).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

695

Edmondes, Sir Clement, Observations upon the five first bookes of Caesars Commentaries (1600). Ehrenbergk, Waramundus de, Verisimilia theologica, iuridica ac politica: de regni subsidiis ac oneribus subditorum (Frankfurt am Main, 1606). Ellis, Henry, Original Letters Illustrative of English History (1824–46). Elyot, Sir Thomas, The Boke named the Governour (1531); ed. H. H. S. Croft (1883). Epicedia illustri heroi Gaspari Colignio, Colignii comiti, Castilionis domino, magno Galliarum thalassiarchae . . . variis linguis a doctis piisque poetis decantata (Geneva, 1573). Epistre aux delicats machiavelistes qui ne peuvent trouver bonne la prinse des armes contre la tyrannie des perturbateurs de l’estat du royaume de France (n.p., 1575). Erasmus, Desiderius, Apophthegmatum, sive scite dictorum libri sex (Lyon, 1531). —— Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen, H. M. Allen, and H. W. Garrod (Oxford, 1906–58). Estienne, Henri, Apologie pour Herodote (Geneva, 1566). —— De la conformite´ des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes (Paris, 1566). —— Deux Dialogues du nouveau langage Franc¸ois italianize´, et autrement desguize´, principalement entre les courtisans de ce temps (Geneva, 1578). —— Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et deportemens de Catherine de Medecis, Reyne mere (n.p., 1575); 2nd edn. (n.p., 1576); 3rd edn. (n.p., 1578). Ed. Nicole Cazauran (Geneva, 1995). Eng. trans. A mervaylous discourse upon the lyfe, of Katherine de Medicis (1575). L’estrange amitie´ d’Edouard second Roy d’Angleterre a` l’endroit de Pierre de Gaverston (n.p., n.d). Evoli, Cesare d’, Delle ordinanze et battaglie (Rome, 1586). Fabre, Pierre, Response au cruel et pernicieux conseil de Pierre Carpentier tendant a` fin d’empescher la paix (n.p., 1575). Facius, Caspar, Politica Liviana (Altenburg, 1617). Faret, Nicolas, L’honneˆte homme, ou l’Art de plaire a` la Cour (Paris, 1630). Faur, Guy de, Seigneur de Pibrac, L’Apologie de la Saint Barthe´lemy, ed. Alban Cabos (Paris, 1922). —— Ornatissimi cuiusdam viri de rebus gallicis, ad Stanislaum Elvidium epistola (Paris, 1573). See Camerarius for a reply to this letter.

696

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Faur, Guy de, Seigneur de Pibrac, Traduction d’une Epistre latine d’un excellent personnage de ce Royaume faicte par forme de Discours sur aucunes choses depuis peu de temps advenues en France (Paris, 1573). Le faux visage decouvert du fin Renard de la France (Paris, 1589). Favier, Nicolas, Figure et exposition des pourtraictz et dictons contenuz es medailles de la conspiration des Rebelles en France opprimee et estaincte par le Roy Tres-Chrestien Charles IX. Le 24. Iour d’Aoust 1572 (Paris, 1572). Felippe, Bartolome, The Counseller: a treatise of counsels and counsellers of princes, written in Spanish by B. Phillip. Englished by I[ohn] T[horius] (1589). —— Tractado del conseio y de los consejeros de los Principes (Coimbra, 1584). Ferretti, Francesco, Della osservanza militare (Venice, 1568); 2nd edn. (Venice, 1576). Fiammelli, Giovanni Francesco, Il principe difeso (Rome, 1604). Filiarchi, Cosimo, Trattato della guerra, et dell’unione de’ principi Christiani contra i Turchi (Venice, 1572). Fitzherbert, Thomas, An sit Utilitas in Scelere: vel de Infelicitate Principis Macchiavelliani, contra Machiavellum in politicos ejus sectatores (Rome, 1610). —— A defence of the Catholyke cause (Antwerp, 1602). —— The first part of a treatise concerning policy and religion, wherein the infirmitie of humaine wit is amply declared (Douai, 1606). —— Policy and religion (Douai, 1615); facs. repr. (Ilkley and London, 1974). —— The second part of a treatise concerning policy and religion (Douai, 1610). Flacius Illyricus, Mathias, Catalogus testium veritatis, qui ante nostrum aetatem reclamarunt Papae (Basle, 1556). —— Catalogus (Basle, 1562). Florio, John, Queen Anna’s new world of words, or dictionarie newly much augmented (1611). —— A worlde of wordes, or most copious dictionarie in Italian and English (1596). Fourquevaux, Raymond de Beccarie, Sieur de, Instructions sur le faict de la guerre (Paris, 1548); 4th edn., Discipline militaire . . . comprise en trois livres (Lyon, 1592); Spanish trans. by Gracian de Alderate (1567); English trans. by Paul Ive (1589); German trans. by Ulrich Budryn (Mo¨mpelgard, 1594). Eng. edn. by G. Dickinson as The ‘Instructions sur le faict de la guerre’ of Raymond de Beccarie Sieur de Fourquevaux (1954).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

697

Fowler, William, The Works of William Fowler, ed. H. W. Meikle, J. Craigie, and J. Purves (The Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1914–40). Fox Morcillo, Sebastian, De regni regisque institutione libri III (Antwerp, 1556). Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments, ed. S. R. Cattley and G. Townsend (1837–41). Frachetta, Girolamo, Il Prencipe . . . nel quale si considera il Prencipe, & quanto al governo dello stato, e quanto al maneggio della guerra (Venice, 1599). —— Il Seminario de’ governi di stato, et di guerra (Venice, 1613); 2nd edn. (Venice, 1617). Frata et Montalbano, Marco de la, Discorsi de principii della nobilta, ed. L. P. Rosello (Venice, 1551). Frezza, Fabio, Massime, regole, et precetti, di stato e di guerra (Venice, 1614); 2nd edn. (Naples, 1616). Frontinus, Sextus Julius, Strategemata (Rome, 1487). See also Gandino and Moryson. Froumenteau, Nicolas, see Barnaud. Frulovisi, Tito Livio de’, Opera hactenus inedita T. Livii de Frulovisiis de Ferraria, ed. C. W. Previte´-Orton (Cambridge, 1932). Fulbecke, William, The pandectes of the law of nations (1602). Furi o´ Ceriol, Fadrique, El concejo y consejeros del prencipe (Antwerp, 1559). —— A very briefe and profitable treatise declaring howe many counsells a prince ought to have, trans. John Blundevill (1589). Gandino, Marc’Antonio, Stratagemi militari di Sesto Giulio Frontino (Venice, 1574). Gardiner, Stephen, see Rainsford. Garimberto, Girolamo, Il Capitano Generale (Venice, 1556). Garzoni, Tommaso, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, e nobili et ignobili nuovamente formata e poste in luce (Venice, 1576). GØnØbrard, Gilbert, Psalmi Davidis, calendario hebraeo, syro, graecolatino, argumentis et commentariis genuinum eorum sensum, hebraismosque locupletius quam antea aperientibus (Paris, 1577). Gentili, Alberico, De armis Romanis libri duo (Hanover, 1599). —— De iure belli commentationes tres (1589). —— De iure belli libri tres, ed. T. E. Holland (Oxford, 1877). —— De legationibus libri tres (1585). Trans. G. J. Laing (Classics of International Law, New York, 1924).

698

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gentillet, Innocent —— Apologie or defence for the Christians of Fraunce which are of the evangelicall or reformed religion (1579). —— Brieve remonstrance a la noblesse de France sur le faict de la Declaration de Monseigneur le Duc d’Alenc¸on, faicte le 18 de Septembre 1575 (Aygenstein, 1576). —— Remonstrance au roy Henri III sur le faict des deux edicts donnez a` Lyon, l’un du x. de Septembre, et l’autre du xiii. d’Octobre, touchant la necessite´ de paix et les moyens de la faire (Frankfurt am Main, 1574); repr. Aygenstain, 1576.

contre-machiavel —— Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en bonne paix un Royeaume ou autre Principaute´. Divisez en trois parties: assavoir, du Conseil, de la Religion & Police que doit tenir un Prince. Contre Nicolas Machiavel Florentin (Geneva, 1576). —— Declaration de l’Auteur des Discours contre Machiavel, pour satisfaire aux plaintifs d’aucuns Italiens (n.p., n.d.). —— Commentariorum de regno aut quovis principatu recte & tranquille administrando, libri tres, trans. Lambert Daneau (Geneva, 1577). —— Regentenkunst, oder Fuerstenspiegel. Gru¨ndtliche erkla¨rung, welcher massen ein Ko¨nigreich und jedes Fu¨rstentumb rechtmessig und ru¨hsam koenne und solle bestellt und verwaltet werden, trans. Georg Nigrinus (Frankfurt am Main, 1580). —— Discours d’estat sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en bonne paix un Royaume etc. (Lausanne, 1585); repr. (Leiden, 1609). —— A Discourse upon the meanes of wel-governing and maintaining in good peace, a kingdom or other principalitie. Divided into three parts, namely The Counsell, the Religion, and the Policie, which a Prince ought to hold and follow. Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine, trans. Simon Patericke (1602); 2nd edn. (1608). —— Anti-Machiavel. Edition de 1576, ed. C. Edward Rathe´ (Geneva, 1968). —— Discours contre Machiavel: A New Edition of the Original French Text with Selected Variant Readings, ed. A. D’Andrea and Pamela Stewart (Florence, 1974). Gesner, Conrad, Appendix Bibliothecae Conradi Gesner (Zurich, 1555). —— Bibliotheca, ed. Johan Jacob Frisius (Zurich, 1583).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

699

—— Bibliotheca instituta a C. Gesnero, in epitomen redacta & locupletata per I. Simlerum (Zurich, 1574). —— Bibliotheca Universalis (Zurich, 1545). —— Pandectarum sive Partitionum universalium . . . libri xxi (Zurich, 1548). Giannotti, Donato, ‘Lettere inedite’, ed. L. A. Ferrai, in Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 4th ser., 3 (1884–5). —— Libro de la republica de Vinitiani (Rome, 1540). —— Republica fiorentina: A Critical Edition and Introduction by Giovanni Silvano (Geneva, 1990). Giovio, Paolo, Elogia veris clarorum virorum imaginibus apposita (Venice, 1546). —— Le iscrittioni poste sotto le vere imagini de gli uomini famosi, le quali a` Como si veggiono, trans. H. Orio (Florence, 1552). —— Istorie (Venice, 1560). Girardi, Antonio, Discorso intorno alle cose della guerra, con una oratione della pace (Venice, 1558). Giunta, Bernardo di, Dedicatory letter ‘Al molto reverendo Monsignore Messer Giovanni Gaddi, Cherico della Camera Appostolica, et padron suo osservandissimo’, in Il principe di Niccolo Machiavelli (Florence, 1532). Gohory, Jacques, Animadversiones in his edn., Titi Livii Patavini Historiae Romanae ab urbe condita, libri xlv. quotquot ad nostram aetatem pervenerunt, cum commentariis omnium interpretetum ad explicationem locorum difficilium, e` regione insertis (Paris, 1573). —— De usu et mysteriis Notarum liber (Paris, 1550). —— L’histoire de la terre neuve de Peru` en l’Inde Occidentale (Paris, 1545). —— (trans.), Le premier livre de la premiere decade de Tite Live de Padoue, des histoires depuis la ville fonde´e, traduit de Latin en Franc¸ois par Jacques Gohori Parisien (Paris, 1548). Goulart, Simon, Me´moires de l’estat de France sous Charles IX (Meidelbourg, 1578). Gorgieri, Lauro, Trattato della guerra, del soldato, del castellano, e come ha da essere uno general di esercito (Pesaro, 1555). Gouge, William, The dignitie of chivalrie; set forth in a sermon preached before the Artillery Company of London, Iune xiij. 1626 (1626). GraciÆn, Baltazar, Ora´culo Manual y Arte de Prudencia (Huesca, 1647); ed. and trans. L. B. Walton as The Oracle. A manual of the art of discretion (1962); trans. Amelot de la Houssaye as L’Homme de Cour (Paris, 1684); trans. Arthur Schopenhauer as Balthasar Gracia´ns HandOrakel und Kunst der Weltklugheit, aus dessen Werken gezogen von Don

700

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa und aus dem spanischen Original treu und sorgfa¨ltig u¨bersetzt von Arthur Schopenhauer (Leipzig, 1861). Gravelle, Fran c¸ ois de, Politiques royales, de Franc¸ois de Gravelle, sieur de Fourneaux & d’Arpentigny (Lyon, 1596). Graziani, Antonio Maria, De vita J. F. Commendoni, cardinalis, libri IV (Paris, 1669). Gregoire, Pierre, In Molineum pro pontifice maximo, cardinalibus, episcopis, totoque ordine sacro: defensio (Paris, 1553). Grimaudet, Fran c¸ ois, De la puissance royalle & sacerdotale. Opuscule politique (n.p., 1579). —— Les opuscules politiques (Paris, 1580). Grotius, Hugo, De iure belli et pacis libri tres (Paris, 1625). Gruter, Jan, Iani Gruteri varii discursus; sive prolixiores commentarii ad aliquot insigniora loca Taciti (Heidelberg, 1604–5). Guevara, Antonio de, The Diall of Princes: by Don Anthony de Guevara. Translated by Sir Thomas North. Being Select Passages now set forth with an Introduction and a Bibliography by K. N. Colvile (1919). —— The diall of princes now newly revised with a fourth book entituled The favoured courtier, trans. Sir Thomas North (1568). —— Le re´veille-matin des courtisans ou moyens le´gitimes pour parvenir a` la faveur et pour s’y maintenir, ed. Nathalie Peyrebonne (Paris, 1999).

Guicciardini, Francesco —— Le cose fiorentine, ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1945). —— Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Cecil and Margaret Grayson (1965).

considerazioni —— Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, ed. G. Canestrini, in Guicciardini, Opere inedite illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini e publicate per cura dei Conti Piero e Luigi Guicciardini, i (Florence, 1857), 3–79. —— ed. Roberto Palmarocchi, Scritti politici e ricordi, in Guicciardini Opere, viii (Bari, 1933), 1–65. —— Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Cecil and Margaret Grayson (1965), 57–124.

ricordi —— Piu consigli et avvertimenti di M. Fr. Guicciardini, ed. Jacopo Corbinelli (Paris, 1576); French trans. as Plusieurs advis et conseils de Franc¸ois Guicciardini, tant pour les affaires d’estat que prive´es. Traduits d’Italien en

BIBLIOGRAPHY

701

Franc¸oys. Avec quarante et deux articles concernant ce mesme subject (Paris, 1576). —— A briefe collection or epitome of all the notable things in the hystorie of Guicchiardine (1591). —— Ricordi, trans. Emma Martin, The Maxims of F. Guicciardini (1845). —— Ricordi, trans. Margaret Grayson, in Selected Writings, ed. Grayson and Grayson, 1–36. —— Ricordi, ed. R. Spongano as Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi: edizione critica (Florence, 1951); ed. M. Fubini and E. Barelli (Milan, 1977).

storia d’italia —— La Historia d’Italia di M. Francesco Guicciardini Gentil’huomo Fiorentino, divisa in venti libri. Riscontrata con tutti gli altri historici & auttori, che dell’istesse cose habbiano scritto e ornata in margine con l’Annotationi de’ riscontri da T. Porcacchi (Venice, 1574). —— The historie of Guicciardin, conteining the warres of Italie, trans. G. Fenton (1579). —— Histoire des guerres d’Italie. Compose´e par M. Franc¸ois Guichardin Gentilhomme Florentin, & traduite d’Italien en Franc¸ois, par Hierosme Chomedy Parisien. Nouvelle e´dition, diligemment reveue & corrige´e, a` laquelle ont este´ adjouste´es les observations politiques, militaires & morales du Sieur de la Noue, trans. H. Chomedy (Geneva, 1593). —— Hypomneses politicae Domini Francisci Guicciardini, Nobilis Florentini, & historiae sui temporis scriptoris excellentissimi: recens ex Italico Latinae factae. Quibus subjunctae sententiae selectiores ex historia Italica eiusdem autoris descriptae (Strasburg, 1599). Hanmer, Meredith, The great bragge and challenge of M. Champion a jesuite (1581). Harding, Thomas, A Confutation of a Booke intituled an Apologie of the Church of England (Antwerp, 1565). Harvey, Gabriel, Foure letters, and certaine sonnets (1592). —— Gratulationum Valdinensium libri quatuor (1578). —— Letter Book, ed. E. J. L. Scott (1884). —— Marginalia, ed. G. C. M. Smith (Stratford-on-Avon, 1913). Harvey, Richard, A theologicall discourse of the Lamb of God and his enemies (1590). Harward, Simon, Encheiridion morale (1596). —— The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour (1592). Hastings, Francis, An apologie or defence of the Watch-word, against the Ward-word (1600).

702

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hastings, Francis, A watch-word to all religious, and true hearted English-men (1598). Hawarde, John, Les reportes del cases in camera stellata, 1593–1609, ed. W. P. Baildon (1894). The Hellish and horribble Councell, practised and used by the Jesuites—in their private Consultations—when they would have a man to murther a King (1610). Herbert, Sir William, Croftus, sive De Hibernia liber, ed. W. E. Buckley (Roxburghe Club, 1887). Heron, Haly, A newe discourse of morall philosophie, entituled the Kayes of Counsaile (1579). Hill, Napoleon, How to Sell your Way through Life (Marple, 1946). Hippocrates, Hippocrates, with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones (Loeb Library, 1923–31). L’Histoire de Palmerin d’Olive traduict jadis par un Auteur incertain de Castillan en Franc¸oys, ed. Jean Maugin (Paris, 1553). La historia dela morte del duca Valentino (Venice, 1507?). Hoby, Thomas, A Booke of the Travaile and Lief of me, Thomas Hoby, ed. Edgar Powell, in Camden Miscellany, 10 (1902). Horologgi, Giuseppe, L’Inganno (Venice, 1562). Hoskins, John, Directions for Speech and Style, ed. H. H. Hudson (Princeton, 1935). Hotman, Fran c¸ ois, Epistolae (Amsterdam, 1700). Hughes, P. L., and Larkin, J. F., Tudor Royal Proclamations (New Haven and London, 1969). Hull, John, The unmasking of the politique atheist (1602). Hume of godscroft, David, Apologia Basilica, seu machiavelli ingenium examinatum, in libro quem inscripsit Principem (Paris, 1626). —— L’assassinat du Roy, ou maximes du vieil de la Montagne Vaticane (n.p., 1615). —— The British Union: A Critical Edition and Translation of David Hume of Godscroft’s De Unione Britannicae, ed. and trans. Paul J. McGinnis and Arthur H. Williamson (Aldershot, 2002). —— Le Contr’assassin, ou response a` l’apologie des Jesuites (n.p., 1612). Hurault, Jacques, Des offices d’estat, avec un sommaire des stratagemes (Paris, 1588). Hurault, Philippe, Memoires de Messire Philippe Hurault, Comte de Cheverny, Chancelier de France, in Michaud and Poujoulat, Nouvelle Collection des Me´moires pour servir a` l’histoire de France, 1st ser., 10 (Paris, 1838).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

703

Illustrium aliquot Germanorum carminum liber, de immanissima christianorum laniena ab impius . . . Galliae tyrannis (Vilna, 1573). Index de l’Inquisition espagnole (1583, 1584), ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1993). Index de l’Inquisition portugaise, 1547, 1551, 1561, 1564, 1581, ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1995). Index de Rome 1557, 1559, 1564: Les premiers index romains et l’index du Concile de Trente, ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1990). Index de Rome 1590, 1593, 1596, ed. J. M. de Bujanda (Quebec, 1994). Institution de la discipline militaire au royeaume de France (Lyon, 1559). Intiera relatione della morte dall’Ammiraglio & altri capi suoi complici. Con la mortalita degli Ugonoti, per ordine di sua Maesta Christianissima fatta in Parigi, Lione, & altri luoghi del Regno di Francia (Rome, 1572). Another version of this text, Copia di una lettera venuta nuovamente da Lione. Nella quale si contiene il gran successo della morte del’Ammiraglio, was published in Florence but without the printer’s name. Isocrates, De pace. Jewel, John, Works, ed. John Ayre (Parker Society, 1845–50). Johnson, Samuel, ‘On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers’, in Works (1787), x. Joubert, Laurent, Traite´ du ris, contenant son essance, ses causes, et mervelheus effais, curieusement recerche´s, raisonne´s et observe´s, par M. Laur. Joubert, Conselier et Medecin ordinaire du Roy et du Roy de Navarre (Paris, 1579). La Croix du Maine, Sieur de, Premier volume de la Bibliotheque de Sieur de la Croix-du-Maine (Paris, 1584). La Huguerye, Michel de, Me´moires ine´dits, ed. A. de Ruble (Paris, 1877–80). La Madeleyne, Jean de, Discours de l’estat et office d’un bon roy, prince ou monarque, pour bien & heureusement regner sur la terre, & pour garder & maintenir ses subjectz en paix union & obeissance (Paris, 1575). La Mothe, Jean de, Le reveil matin et mot du guet des bons catholiques (Douai, 1591). La Mothe FØnØlon, Bertrand de Salignac de, Correspondance diplomatique, ed. A. Teulet (Paris and London, 1838–40). La Noue, Fran c¸ ois de, Discours politiques et militaires (Basle, 1587). —— Discours politiques et militaires, ed. F. E. Sutcliffe (Geneva, 1967). —— The politicke and militarie discourses of the Lord de la Noue, trans. Edward Aggas (1587). La PerriŁre, Guillaume de, Le miroir politique (Lyon, 1555). La Porte, Maurice de, Les epithe`tes (Paris, 1571).

704

BIBLIOGRAPHY

La Primaudaye, Pierre de, The second part of the French academie, trans. T. B[owes] (1594). Labyrinthe Royal de l’Hercule gaulois triomphant (Avignon, [1600]). Le lachrimevoli lamentationi del duca Valentino, figliuolo che fu di Papa Alessandro sesto (Venice, 1543). Laval, Antoine de, Desseins de professions nobles et publiques, contenans plusieurs traite´s divers et rares . . . De nouveau reveu, corrige´ et augmente´ des problemes politiques, avec une table bien particuliere pour tout le cors de l’oeuvre (Paris, 1613). Le Bon, Jean, Le tumulte de Bassigni, appaise et esteinct par l’auctorite´, conseil, et vigilance de Monseigneur le Cardinal de Lorraine (Paris, 1573); repr. in Cimber and Danjou, 1st ser., viii. Le Caron, Louis (Charondas), De la tranquillite´ d’esprit, livre singulier (Paris, 1588). Le Faucheur, Michel, Traite´ de l’action de l’orateur ou de la prononciation et du geste (Paris, 1676); English trans. as An Essay upon the Action of an Orator; as to his Pronunciation and Gesture (n.d.). Le Loyer, Pierre, IIII. Livres des Spectres ou apparitions (Angers, 1586); English trans. as Treatise of Specters or straunge sights (1605). Le Moyne, Pierre, De l’art de regner (Paris, 1665). Le Roy, Louis, De la vicissitude ou variete des choses en l’univers (Paris, 1575). —— La vicissitudine o` mutabile varieta` delle cose, trans. H. Cato (Venice, 1585). Legnano, Giovanni da, Tractatus de bello, de represaliis, et de duello, ed. T. E. Holland (Washington, DC, 1917). LØry, Jean de, Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre de Bresil (La Rochelle, 1578). Leslie, John [?], Ane brieiff declaratioun of the wikit and ungodlie proceedingis of certane inveterat conspiratoris aganis the quenis majestie, in Cal. S.P. Scotland, iii. 27. —— A defence of the honour of the right highe, mightye and noble princesse Marie, quene of Scotlande (Rheims, 1569). —— [?] L’Innocence de la Tresillustre, tres-chaste, et de´bonnaire Princesse, Madame Marie Royne d’Ecosse (n.p., n.d.) —— A treatise concerning the defence of the honour of Marie of Scotlande (Louvain, 1571). —— A treatise of treasons against Queen Elizabeth and the Croune of England, divided into two Partes (Louvain, 1572). L’Estoile, Pierre de, Me´moires-Journaux de Pierre de l’Estoile, ed. G. Brunet, A. Champollion, et al. (Paris, 1875–83).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

705

Leunclavius, Johannes, see Aquaviva di Aragona. Liburnio, Nicolo, see Cadamosto. Lipsius, Justus, De militia romana libri quinque, Commentarius ad Polybium, in Opera omnia, iii (Antwerp, 1637). —— Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (Antwerp, 1589). —— Two bookes of constancie, trans. John Stradling (1595). Lottini, Giovanni Francesco, Avvedimenti civili, di M. Giovan Francesco Lottini di Volterra, Ne’ quali si contengono molti ammaestramenti utili, cosı` per la vita politica, come per le consulte, e per li governi de gli stati (Venice, 1575). Lucinge, RenØ de, De la naissance, duree, et cheute des estats (Paris, 1588); trans. John Finet as The beginning, continuance and decay of estates (1606).

Machiavelli, Niccol o` —— Operette satiriche, ed. L. F. Benedetto (Turin, 1920). —— Tutte le opere storiche e letterarie di Niccolo` Machiavelli, ed. Guido Mazzoni and Mario Casella (Florence, 1929).

arte della guerra —— Libro della arte della guerra di Niccolo Machiavegli cittadino et segretario fiorentino (Florence, 1521). —— L’art de la guerre compose´ par Nicolas Machiavelli, Citoien et Secretaire de Florence. L’estat et charge d’un Lieutenant General d’armee, par Onosander ancien philosophe Platonique . . . Le tout traduict en vulgaire franc¸ois par Jehan Charrier natif d’Apt en Provence, trans. Jean Charrier (Paris, 1546). —— The Arte of Warre written first in Italian by Nicholas Machiavell and set forthe in Englishe by Peter Whitehorne student at Graies Inne, trans. Peter Whitehorne (London, 1560). —— L’art de la guerre de N. Machiavelle, trans. Charles Chappelain (Paris, 1614). —— Arte della guerra e scritti politici minori, ed. Sergio Bertelli (Milan, 1961). —— The Art of War, ed. Neal Wood, trans. Ellis Farneworth (Indianapolis, New York, and Kansas City, 1965).

i discorsi —— Discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli cittadino et segretario fiorentino (Rome, 1531).

706

BIBLIOGRAPHY

—— Le premier livre des discours de l’estat de paix et de guerre, de messire Nicolas Macchiavegli Secretaire & citoyen Florentin, sur la premiere decade de Tite Live, traduict d’Italien en Franc¸oys [by Jacques Gohory] (Paris, 1544). —— Le Second livre des Discours de l’estat de paix et de guerre etc. [published together with Le troisiesme livre des Discours] [trans. Jacques Gohory] (Paris, 1548). —— I discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli, sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (‘In Palermo, Apresso gli heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli a xxviij. di Gennaio 1584’ [John Wolfe, London]). —— Discursos de Nicolao Machiaveli. Dirigidos al muy alto y poderoso Sen˜or don Philippe Principe de Espan˜a nuestro Sen˜or, trans. Juan Lorenzo Otevanti (Medina del Campo, 1552). —— Les discours, trans. Jacques Gohory (Paris, 1571). —— Discours (Paris: Chappelain, 1614). —— The Discourses of Niccolo` Machiavelli, trans. L. J. Walker (1950).

istorie fiorentine —— Historie di Nicolo Machiavegli cittadino et segretario fiorentino (Rome, 1532). —— The Florentine historie, trans. T. B. [Edingfield] (1595). —— Histoire de Florence de Nicolas Machiavel citoien & Secretaire de ladite ville. Nouvellement traduict d’Italien en Franc¸ois. Par le Seigneur de Brinon, Gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du Roy (Paris, 1577).

il principe —— Il principe di Niccholo Machiavello (Rome, 1532). —— Il principe di Niccolo Machiavelli (Florence, 1532). —— Le Prince, trans. Gaspard d’Auvergne (Poitiers, 1553). —— Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavelle secretaire et citoien de Florence. Traduit d’Italien en Franc¸ois Par Guillaume Cappel (Paris, 1553). —— De Principe libellus, trans. Silvestro Teglio (Basle, 1560). —— Le Prince . . . Traduit d’Italien en Franc¸ois avec la vie de l’autheur mesme, par Iaq. Gohory Parisien (Paris, 1571). —— Le Prince (Rouen: Robert Mallard, 1586). —— Le Prince (Paris: Chappelain, Paris, 1614). —— Princeps Aliaque Nonnulla ex Italico Latine nunc demum partim versa, partim infinitis locis sensus melioris ergo castigata, trans. and ed. Hermann Conring (Helmestad, 1660). —— Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’: An Elizabethan Translation, ed. Hardin Craig (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

707

Maggi, Girolamo, and Castriotto, Giacomo, Della fortificatione delle citta (Venice, 1564). Maillard, Olivier, Œuvres, ed. A. de La Borderie (Nantes, 1877). Maitland, Thomas, Copie of ane Adverteisment sent from the court to a freind of my lord. Versions in Bannatyne Miscellany, ed. Sir Walter Scott and David Laing, 1 (Edinburgh, 1827), 37–50; Memorials and Transactions in Scotland, A.D.MDLXIX–MDLXXIII. By Richard Bannatyne, secretary to John Knox, ed. R. Pitcairn (Edinburgh, 1836), 5–13; The History of the Kirk of Scotland. By Mr. David Calderwood, ed. T. Thomson (1843), ii. 515–25. Malavolti, Orlando, Dell’Historia di Siena (Siena, 1574). —— Historia de’ fatti e guerre de’ Sanesi (Venice, 1599). Marguerite de Valois, Me´moires de Marguerite de Valois, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1858). Mariana, Juan de, De rege et regis institutione libri III (Toledo, 1599). Marlowe, Christopher, The famous tragedy of the rich Jew of Malta (1633). —— The tragicall history of D. Faustus (1601). Le martire des deux freres contenant au vray toutes les particularitez (n.p., 1589). Matthieu, Pierre, Louis XI. Histoire de Louis XI, Roy de France (Paris, 1610). Maxims of State, see The Prince, or Maxims of State. Les meurs humeurs et comportemens de Henry de Valois representez au vray depuis sa naissance (Paris, 1589). Migne, Jacques Paul, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina (Paris, 1841–64). Mini, Paolo, Difesa della citta` di Firenze contra le calunnie & maledicentie de maligni (Lyon, 1577). Mirouer Catholique, representant les moyens pour retenir le peuple de la Bretagne au s. party de l’Union (n.p., 1590). Molanus, Joannes, Libri quinque. De fide haereticis servanda, tres. De fide rebellibus servanda, liber unus, qui est quartus. Item unicus de fide iuramento, quae a Tyranno exiguntur, qui est quintus. Cum triplici Indice, Capitum, Scripturarum, ac Rerum (Cologne, 1584). —— Medicorum ecclesiasticum diarium (Louvain, 1598). Montaigne, Michel de, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey, rev. V.-L. Saulnier (Paris, 1965). Trans. by John Florio as The essayes, or morall, politike and militarie discourses (1603). —— The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne done into English by John Florio, with an Introduction by Thomas Seccombe (1908).

708

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Montaigne, Michel de, Journal de voyage, ed. F. Rigolot (Paris, 1992). Montaud, Nicolas de, see Barnaud. Monte, Pietro, Exercitiorum atque artis militaris collectanea (Milan, 1509). Montgommery, Louis de, La milice franc¸oise, reduite a` l’ancien ordre et discipline militaire des legions: telle et comme la souloyent observer les anciens Franc¸ois, a` l’imitation des Romains, et des Mace´doniens. Dernie`re e´dition revue et augmente´e par l’auteur (Paris, 1610). More, Thomas, Utopia, trans. Ralph Robinson (1551). —— Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter, in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, iv (New Haven and London, 1965). Moreri, Louis, Le grand Dictionnaire historique, 20th edn. (Paris, 1759). Morton, Thomas, A full satisfaction concerning a double Romish iniquitie, hainous rebellion and more than heathenish aequivocation (1606). Moryson, Richard, Apomaxis calumniarum, convitiorumque (1537). —— An Invective ayenste the great and detestable vice, treason, wherein the secrete practises, and trayterous workinges of theym, that suffrid of late are disclosed (1539). —— A remedy for sedition (1536). —— The Stratagemes, Sleyghtes, and policies of warre gathered togyther by S. Julius Frontinus (1539). Muret, Marc-Antoine de, Oraison funebre faicte a` Rome, aux obseques du Tres-Chrestien Roy de France Charles IX. Par Marc-Antoine de Muret . . . Traduicte en Franc¸ois, et mise a` coste´ du Latin, par M. Jean le Frere de Laval (Paris, 1574). —— Oraison prononce´e devant le pape Gre´goire XIII, Par M. Antoine de Muret, I.C. touchant l’heureux et admirable succe`s de Charles IX. TresChrestien Roy de France, en la punition des chefs des He´retiques rebelles (Paris, 1573). Another French edn. was issued at Lyon by R. Rigaud; and there was a Latin edn. issued at Rome by the heirs of A. Blado. Mutoni, Nicol
, see Polyaenus. Nani Mirabelli, Domenico, Polianthea, hoc est opus suavissimus floribus celebriorum sententiarum exornatum (Turin, 1503); last edn. published by Pierre Ravaud (Lyon, 1648). Nannini, Remigio, Considerationi civili sopra l’historie de F. Guicciardini (Venice, 1582). Nashe, Thomas, Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the divell (1592). —— A pleasant comedie, called Summers last will and Testament (1600). —— The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow (1904–10). Nestor, Jean, Histoire des hommes illustres de la maison de Medici (Paris, 1564).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

709

Nifo, Agostino, Augustini Niphi de Medicis philosophi suessani libellus de rege et tyranno (Naples, 1526). —— Augustini Niphi de regnandi peritia ad Carolum V. Imperatorem Caesarem semper augustum (Naples, 1523). Trans. and ed. S. Pernet-Beau with intro. by Paul Larivaille as Une ree´criture du Prince de Machiavel: Le De regnandi peritia de Agostino Nifo (Paris, 1987). —— Augustini Niphi Suessani Opuscula Politica: cum G. Naudaei de eodem auctore judicio, ed. Gabriel Naude´ (Paris, 1645). —— Il cortigiano, trans. F. Baldelli (Genoa, 1560). —— De armorum literarumque comparatione commentariolus (Naples, 1526). —— De figuris stellarum helionoris praeclari libri duo (Naples, 1526). —— De re aulica ad Phausinam libri duo, per Augustinum Niphum Medicem (Naples, 1534). —— Euthici Augustini Niphi Philotei Suessani de nostrarum calamitatum causis liber (Venice, 1505). —— Libellus de his quae ab optimis principibus agenda sunt (Florence, 1521). Nouvellet, Claude, Ode trionfale au roy, sus l’equitable justice que sa majeste´ feit des rebelles, la veille et jour de sainct Loys (Paris, 1572). Oh read over D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy worke (1588). Onosander, De optimo imperatore eiusque officio, trans. N. Sagundinus (Rome, 1494). —— Onosandro Platonico, of the Generall Captaine, and of his office, translated out of Greke into Italyan, by Fabio Cotta, a Romayne: and out of Italian into Englyshe, by Peter Whytehorne (1563). Onosander, see also Vigene`re. Osorio da Fonseca, Jeronimo, De nobilitate civili libri II. De nobilitate christiana libri III (Lisbon, 1542); (Florence, 1552); (Basle, 1571); (Basle 1573); (London, 1576); (London, 1580); (Basle, 1584); (London, 1589); (Antwerp, 1595); (Cologne 1595). —— De regis institutione et disciplina Libri VIII ad Serenissimum et Invictissimum Portugaliae Regem Sebastianum (Lisbon, 1571). —— The five bookes of the famous . . . H. Osorius, contaynynge a discourse of civill and christian nobilitie, trans. William Blandie (1576). —— L’instruction et nourriture du prince, trans. Pierre Brisson (Paris, 1583). —— Opera Omnia (Rome, 1592). Overbury, Sir Thomas, The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knight (1856).

710

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Owen, David, Herod and Pilate reconciled: or, the Concord of Papist and Puritan . . . for the Coercion, Deposition, and Killing of Kings (Cambridge, 1610). Owen, T., A Letter of a Catholicke man beyond the seas, written to a friend in England: including another of Peter Coton Priest, of the Society of Jesus, to the Queene Regent of France (n.p., 1610). P., I. S., Discours sur la mort de Gaspart de Coligny, qui fut Admiral de France et de ses complices, le jour sainct Berthelemy Vingt quatriesme jour d’Aoust (Paris, ?1572). Pagliari del Bosco, Giorgio, Osservationi sopra i primi cinque libri de gli Annali di Cornelio Tacito (Milan, 1612). Parker, Matthew, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. T. T. Perowne (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1853). Parsons, Robert, A conference about the next succession to the crowne of Ingland (Antwerp, 1594). —— The Warn-word to Sir Francis Hastinges Wast-word (Antwerp, 1602). Paruta, Paolo, Discorsi Politici (Venice, 1599). —— Politick Discourses; Written in Italian by Paolo Paruta, A Noble Venetian, Cavalier and Procurator of St. Mark, trans. Henry Earl of Monmouth (1657). Pasquier, Estienne, Le catechisme des Jesuites; ou examen de leur doctrine (Paris, 1602). —— The Jesuites Catechisme. Or examination of their doctrine, trans. William Watson (1602). —— Les Œuvres d’Estienne Pasquier (Amsterdam, 1723). —— Les Recherches de la France, ed. Marie-Madeleine Fragonard and Franc¸ois Roudart (Paris, 1996). Patrizi, Francesco (Bishop of Gaeta), De institutione reipublicae (Paris, 1518). —— De l’institution de la republique augmentee de moytie d’annotations tirees de tous les autheurs qui en ont traicte, trans. Jacques Tigeou (Paris, 1589). Patrizi, Francesco, La militia romana di Polibio, Livio e Dionigi Alicarnaseo (Ferrara, 1583). —— Paralleli militari (Rome, 1594–5). Peacham, Henry, The Garden of Eloquence (1577). Pedrosa, Francisco de?, Arte y supplimento Re militar (Naples, 1541). Peter of Blois, Epistola, in Migne, Pat. Latina, 207. Pichi, Giovanni Maria, Avvertimenti politici raccolti da Gio. Maria Pichi da Citta` di San Sepolcro (Florence, 1641). Plutarch, Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata, in Les œuvres morales et meslees de Plutarque, trans. J. Amyot (Paris, 1575).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

711

Poccianti, Michele, Catalogus scriptorum Florentinorum, omnis generis (Florence, 1589). Pole, Reginald, Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V. Caesarem super quatuor libris a se scriptis de unitate ecclesiae, in Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis et aliorum ad ipsum collectio, ed. A. M. Quirini (Brescia, 1744–57). —— De summo pontifice (Louvain, 1569). —— De unitate, trans. Joseph G. Dwyer, Pole’s Defense of the Unity of the Church (Westminster, Md., 1965). Politi, Lanceloto (Ambrosius Catharinus), De libris Christiano detestandis, & a Christianismo penitus eliminandis and Quam execrandi Macchiavelli discursus & institutio sui Principis, in Disputatio pro veritate immaculatae conceptionis (Rome, 1552); facs. repr. (Ridgewood, NJ, 1964). Polyaenus, Stratagemi dell’arte della guerra, di Polieno Macedonio, Dalla Greca nella volgar lingua Italiana, tradotti da M. Nicolo Mutoni (Venice, 1552). Pomponazzi, Pietro, De immortalitate animae (Bologna, 1516), trans. William Henry Hay II, ‘On the Immortality of the Soul’, in E. Cassirer, P. O. Kristeller, and J. H. Randall (eds.), The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1948). Poncet, Le Chevalier, L’Antipharmaque (Paris, 1575). Portes, Fran C¸ ois, Ad Petri Carpentarii causidici virulentam epistolam, responsio Francisci Porti, Cretensis, pro causariorum quos vocat innocentia (n.p., 1573); French trans. Response de Franc¸ois Portus Candiot, aux lettres diffamatoires de Pierre Carpentier Advocat, pour l’innocence des fideles serviteurs de Dieu (n.p., 1574). Porto, Luigi da, Lettere storiche, ed. B. Bressan (Florence, 1857). Possevino, Antonio, Bibliotheca selecta qua agitur de ratione studiorum in historia (Rome, 1593). —— Cautio de iis, quae scripsit tum Machiavellus, tum is, qui adversus eum scripsit Antimachiavellum, qui nomen haud adscripsit, in his Judicium, de Nuae militis Galli scriptis. —— Discorso contra l’impieta, & perniciosissimi consigli del Machiavello ch’egli per sparger il suo veleno diede a’ prencipi, et contrapositione dell’ottimo libro del perfetto governo de’ prencipi scritto da s. Tomaso d’Aquino al re di Cipro (Venice, 1685). —— Judicium de Nuae militis Galli, I. Bodini, P. Mornaei, N. Machiavelli & Antimachiavelli scriptis (Rome, 1592). —— Judicium, de Nuae militis Galli, Ioannis Bodini, Philippi Mornaei, & Nicolai Machiavelli quibusdam scriptis quorum Catalogum inversa

712

BIBLIOGRAPHY

pagina indicabit. Item Defensio veritatis adversus assertiones Catholicae fidei repugnantes eiusdem Nuae libris aspersas, auctore Petro Coreto Tornaci Canonico. Item eiusdem Antonij Possevini de Confessione Augustana, ac num admittendi sint haeretici ad colloquium publicum de fide, De Desiderio Erasmo, & secta Picardica iudicium, etc. (Lyon, 1593). Le Premier Livre de Palmerin d’Olive, ed. Jean Maugin (Paris, 1546). The Prince, or Maxims of State written by Sir Walter Rawley and presented to Prince Henry (1642). Prisbach, Wolfgang, Responsio ad orationem habitam nuper in Concilio Helvetiorum, pro defensione caedium et latrociniorum quae in Gallia commissa sunt (La Rochelle, 1573). Procter, Thomas, Of the knowledge and conducte of warres (1578). Puttenham, George, The Arte of English Poesie (1589). Quarles, Francis, Enchyridion (1641). Ragguaglio degli Ordini, et Modi tenuti dalla Maiesta Christianissima nella distruttione della setta degli Ugonotti, Con la Morte dell’Ammiraglio, et altre particolarita non piu intese (Rome, n.d.). Raimondi, Eugenio, Il novissimo passatempo, politico, istorico, & economico (Venice, 1639). Rainolds, William, see Rossaeus. Rainsford, George, Ritratto d’Ingliterra, ed. P. S. Donaldson in the Camden Miscellany, 27 (1979). —— ?, A Machiavellian Treatise by Stephen Gardiner, ed. P. S. Donaldson (Cambridge, 1975). Ranzovius, Henricus, Commentarius bellicus, libris sex distinctus praecepta, consilia, et strategemata etc. (Frankfurt am Main, 1595). Remonstrance d’un bon Catholique franc¸ois aux trois estats de France, Qui s’assembleront a` Blois, suivant les lettres de sa Majeste´ du VI. d’Aoust, presente anne´e M.D.LXXVI (n.p., 1576). Response aux justifications pretendues par Henri de Valois sur les meurtres et assassinats du feu messeigneurs le Cardinal et Duc de Guise (Paris, 1589). Reusner, Elias, Historici summi, Hortulus Historico-Politicus Coronas Sex ex floribus variis variegatas complectens etc. (Hesse-Nassau, 1618). Ribadeneira, Pedro de, Practical Politics by Giovanni Botero: Religion and the Virtues of the Christian Prince against Machiavelli by Pedro Ribadeneyra, trans. George Albert Moore (Washington, DC, 1946). —— Tratado de la religion y virtudes que deve tener el Principe Christiano para governar y conservar sus Estados. Contra lo que Nicolas Machiavelo y los politicos deste tiempo ensenan (Madrid, 1595).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

713

Rich, Barnaby, Allarme to England, foreshewing what perilles are procured, where the people live without regarde of Martiall lawe (1578). Richter, Gregorius, Editio nova axiomatum politicorum, accessione CLXXIIII novarum regularum, multarumque sententiarum & exemplorum aucta & locupletata (Goerlitz, 1604). Rider, John, Riders Dictionarie corrected and augmented by Francis Holyoke (1606). Rocca, Bernardino, Des entreprises et ruses de guerre: et des fautes qui par fois surviennent e´s progrez et executions d’icelles, trans. La Popelinie`re (Paris, 1571). —— Imprese, stratagemi, et errori militari, ed. T. Porcacchi (Venice, 1566). Ronsard, Pierre de, Tombeau du feu Roy . . . Charles neufiesme (Paris, 1574); repr. in Ronsard, Œuvres comple`tes, ed. Gustave Cohen (Paris, 1950), ii. 474–9. Rosello, Lucio Paolo, Due dialoghi di messer Pauolo Rosello. Uno, in cui si tratta il modo di conoscere, et di far la scelta d’un servitore, e de l’ufficio suo. L’altro de la vita de cortegiani, intitolato la patientia (Venice, 1549). —— Il ritratto del vero governo del prencipe dall’esempio vivo del gran Cosimo de’ Medici composto da Lucio Paolo Rosello Padoano, con due orationi d’Isocrate conformi all’istessa materia, tradotte dal medesimo di Greco in volgare Italiano (Venice, 1552). Rosinus, Joannes, Romanorum antiquitatum libri decem ex variis Scriptoribus summa fide singularique diligentia collecti (Basle, 1583). Rossaeus, G. Guilelmus, pseud. [William Rainolds], De iusta reipublicae Christianae in reges impios et haereticos auctoritate: justissimaque catholicorum ad Henricum navarraeum et quemcunque haereticorum a regno Galliae repellendum confoederatione liber (Paris, 1590); another edn. (Antwerp, 1592). Rossant, AndrØ, Les Meurs Humeurs et Comportemens de Henry de Valois representez au vray depuis sa Naissance (Paris, 1589). Rovere, Francesco Maria della, Discorsi militari dell’eccellentissimo Sig. Francesco Maria della Rovere Duca d’Urbino (1583). Runyon, Damon, Furthermore (1938). Ruscelli, Girolamo, Delle comedie elette novamente raccolte insieme, con le correttioni & annotationi di Girolamo Ruscelli, Libro primo (Venice, 1554). —— ‘Supplimento di Girolamo Ruscelli nell’Istorie di Monsignor Giovio’, in Paolo Giovio, Istorie (Venice, 1560). Rush, Anthony, A president for a prince (1566).

714

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Salazar, Diego de, Tratado de re militari (Alcala`, 1536); another edn. (Brussels, 1590). Sampson, Richard, Oratio qua docet, hortatur, admonet omnes potissimum Anglos, regiae dignitati cum primis ut obediant etc. (1535?). San Concordio, Bartolommeo da, Gli ammaestramenti antichi, ed. O. Lombardelli (Florence, 1585). Sansovino, Francesco, Del governo de i regni et delle republiche cosi antiche come moderne (Venice, 1561). —— Concetti politici (Venice, 1578). —— Diverse orationi volgarmente scritte da molti huomini illustri de tempi nostri (Venice, 1561) and other edns. (1562, 1569, 1575, 1584). —— Il simolacro di Carlo quinto imperadore (Venice, 1567). —— (ed.), Propositioni overo considerationi in materia di cose di stato (Venice, 1583); trans. R. Hichcock as The quintesence of wit, being a corrant comfort of conceits (1590). Saraceni, Giovanni Carlo, I fatti d’arme famosi successi tra tutte le nationi del mondo, da che prima ben cominciato a guerreggiare sino ad hora; cavati con ogni diligenza da tutti gli historici, e con ogni verita` raccontati da M. Gio. Carlo Saraceni (Venice, 1600). Sassetti, Tomasso, Brieve Raccontamento del gran macello fatto nella citta` di Parigi, ed. John Tedeschi (1974): see under Tedeschi. Satirical Poems of the Time of the Reformation, ed. J. Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, 1891–3). Saumaise, Claude de, De re militari Romanorum (Antwerp, 1657). Savonne, Pierre, Instruction de l’ordre militaire. Traitant de bataillons carrez d’hommes (Lyon, 1583). Savorgnano, Mario, Arte militare terrestre e maritima (Venice, 1599). Schoppe, Caspar, Paedia Politices (Rome, 1623). Second Admonition to the Parliament (1572). Segni, Bernardo, see Aristotle. Serdonati, Francesco, De’ fatti d’arme de’ Romani libri tre (Venice, 1572). Settala, Lodovico, Della ragione di stato libri sette (Milan, 1627). Sidney, Sir Philip, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. Steuart A. Pears (1845, repr. 1971). Sidney Papers: Letters and Memorials of State, ed. Arthur Collins (1746). Le siege de Danfronc, avec les occasions d’icellui, et de la captivite´ de tresvertueux, et magnanime seigneur Gabriel, Conte de Montgommeri. Ensemble la mort d’icellui (n.p., 1574). Sigonio, Carlo, Historiarum de regno Italiae libri XV (Venice, 1574). Smirziz, Jaroslaus A., De consiliariis Florilegium Politicum, in Speculi Aulicarum atque politicarum observationes (Cologne, 1610).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

715

Smythe, Sir John, Certain discourses, written by sir J. Smythe, knight: concerning the formes and effects of divers sorts of weapons, and other matters militarie (1590); ed. J. R. Hale as Certain discourses military (Ithaca, NY, 1964); facs. repr. with intro. by E. G. Heath (East Ardsley, Wakefield, 1973). —— Instructions, observations, and orders mylitarie (1595). Somers, Lord, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, ed. Walter Scott (1809–15). Sommaire Discours des Causes de tous les troubles de ce royaume, procedentes des impostures et conjurations des heretiques et des rebelles. Ensemble le fidelle et loyal devoir des Catholiques envers le Roy (Paris, 1573). There was another issue of this work by Mesnier and Delacourt (Poitiers, 1573). Sorbin, Arnaud, Histoire contenant un abrege´ de la vie, moeurs et vertus du roy Charles IX (Paris, 1574). —— Le vray Resveille-matin pour la deffense de la majeste´ de Charles IX (n.p., 1574); 2nd edn. published as Le vray Resveille-matin des calvinistes et publicains franc¸ois, ou` est amplement discouru de l’auctorite´ des princes et du devoir des subjects (Paris, 1575). Sorel, Charles, La Bibliothe`que franc¸oise (Paris, 1664). Speculi Aulicarum atque politicarum observationes (Cologne, 1610). Spenser, Edmund, A view of the state of Ireland, written dialogue-wise betweene Eudoxus and Irenaeus, in Sir James Ware, The Historie of Ireland (1633); ed. W. L. Renwick as A View of the Present State of Ireland (Oxford, 1970). Spontone, Ciro, Dodici libri del governo di stato (Venice, 1599). Stapleton, Thomas, Oratio Academica: an Politici horum temporum in numero Christianorum sint habendi? (Munich, 1608). Statutes of the Realm (1810–28). Stockwood, John, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse on Barthelmew day, being the 24. of August 1578 (1578). Stradling, John, Joannis Stradlingi epigrammatum libri quatuor (1607). Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1820–40). Stubbes, John, The discoverie of a gaping gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by an other French mariage (1579); ed. Lloyd E. Berry (Charlottesville, Va., 1968). Sutcliffe, Matthew, A Challenge concerning the Romish Church, her doctrine and practises . . . Thereunto also is annexed an answere to certeine vaine and frivolous exceptions, taken to his former challenge (1602). —— The practice, proceedings, and lawes of armes (1593).

716

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Suarez de Figueroa, Christoval, Plaza universal de todas ciencias y artes (Madrid, 1615). Symeoni, Gabriel, Cesar renouvelle´. Par les observations militaires (Paris, 1558). Tarducci, Achille, Delle macchine, ordinanze et quartieri antichi e moderni. Come quelli da questi possino essere imitati senza punto alterare la soldatesca dei nostri tempi, discorsi (Venice, 1600–1). Added to this work is a second part, with a separate title page, Successo delle fattioni occorse nell’Ongaria vivino a Vacia nel M.D.XCVII. Et la battaglia fatta in Transilvania contra il Valacco nel 1600 dal Signor Giorgio Basta Generale dell’armi in Ungaria per sua Maesta` Cesarea (Venice, 1601). —— Il Turco vincibile in Ungaria con mediocri aiuti di Germania. Discorso appresentato ai tre supremi capitani dell’essercito confederato contro Il Turco (Ferrara: V. Baldini, 1597). Tartaglia, Niccol
, Nova scientia (Venice, 1537). —— Quesiti e Inventioni diverse (Venice, 1546). —— see also Drake and Drabkin. Tesoro politico. Parte seconda (Milan, 1601). Thomas, William, The historie of Italie, a booke excedying profitable to be redde: because it intreateth of the astate of many and divers common weales (1549); 2nd edn. (1561). —— Il Pellegrino Inglese n’el quale si defende l’innocente, & la sincera vita de’l pio & religioso re d’Inghilterra Henrico ottavo (n.p., 1552); English trans., ed. J. A. Froude, as The Pilgrim (1861). —— Principal rules of the Italian grammer, with a dictionarie (1550); other edns. (1562, 1567). —— The Works of William Thomas, ed. Abraham D’Aubant (1774). —— see also Barbaro. Toscanella, Orazio, Gioie historiche, aggiunte alla prima (seconda) parte delle Vite di Plutarco (Venice, 1567). Toscano, Matteo, Peplus Italiae (Paris, 1578). Tresor politique (Paris, 1611). Turner, Sir James, Pallas armata. Military Essayes of the Ancient Grecian, Roman, and Modern Art of War (1683); facs. repr. (New York, 1968). The Unton Inventories, relating to Wadley and Faringdon in the years 1596 and 1620, with a memoir of the family of Unton, ed. J. G. Nichols (1841). Valle, Battista della, Vallo. Du faict de la guerre et art militaire . . . Le tout nouvellement ordonne´ et augmente´ (Lyon, 1554). —— Vallo: libro continente appertenentie ad capitanii (Naples, 1521); 2nd edn. (Venice, 1524).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

717

—— Vallo. Livre contenant les appertenances aux capitaines pour retenir et fortifier une cite´ (Lyon, 1529). Vaure, Claude, L’estat chrestien, ou maximes politiques, tirees de l’Escriture; contre les faulses raisons d’estat des libertins politiques de ce siecle (Paris, 1626). Vegetius, Flavius Renatus, The Earliest English Translation of Vegetius’ De Re militari, ed. Geoffrey Lester (Heidelberg, 1988). —— The Foure bookes of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, trans. John Sadler (1572). —— Vegetio de larte militare ne la commune lingua, trans. Tizzone Gaetano di Posi (Venice, 1524). Verrua, Filiberto Gerardo Scaglia, Conte di, Avvertimenti del Cardinal Commendone per un cortigiano (n.p., n.d.): copy used, BNF press mark *E.3502. —— ‘Avvertimenti politici per quelli che vogliono entrare in corte’, ed. Domenico Carutti, in Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria, Miscellanea, 1 (1862), 321–71. Verstegen, Richard (Richard Rowlands), Theatre des cruautez des heretiques de nostre temps. Traduit du Latin en Franc¸ois (Antwerp, 1588). —— Theatrum crudelitatem haereticorum nostri temporis (Antwerp, 1587). Vienne, Philibert de, Le philosophe de court (Lyons, 1547); another edn. (Paris, 1548). —— Le Philosophe de Court, ed. Pauline Smith (Geneva, 1990). —— The Philosopher of the Court, trans. George North (1575). VigenŁre, Blaise de, L’art militaire d’Onosender, autheur Grec. Ou il traicte de l’office et devoir d’un bon chef de guerre. Mis en langue Franc¸oise et Illustre´ d’Annotations par B. De Vigene`re Bourbonnois (Paris, 1605). —— Les Decades de Tite Live (Paris, 1583). VigniŁr, Nicolas, De la noblesse, anciennete´, remarques, & merites d’honneur de la troisiesme maison de France (Paris, 1587). Vindiciae contra tyrannos, see Brutus. Vintimille, Jacques de, Advertissement et remonstrance aux censeurs de la langue franc¸oise, appended to Vintimille’s trans., L’histoire d’He´rodian (Paris, 1580). Voisin, Lancelot, Sieur de la Popelini E`re, L’histoire de France (La Rochelle, 1581). —— L’histoire des histoires avec l’ide´e de l’histoire accomplie. Plus le dessein de l’histoire nouvelle des Franc¸ois (Paris, 1599); repr. (Paris, 1989). Wallhausen, Johann Jacobi von, De la milice romaine (Frankfurt am Main, 1616).

718

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walther, Rudolph, An hundred, threescore and fiftene homelyes or sermons uppon the Actes of the apostles, trans. John Bridges (1572). Watson, William, A decacordon of ten quodlibeticall questions concerning religion and state (1602). —— A sparing discoverie of our English Jesuits (1601). —— and Bluet, Thomas, Important considerations which ought to move all true catholikes to acknowledge that the proceedings of Her Majesty have bene mild (1601). Whitehorne, Peter, Certain Waies for the orderyng of souldiers in battelray, and settyng of battailes, after divers fashions, with their maner of marchyng . . . with other thynges apertaining to the warres (1562). Whitgift, John, The Works of John Whitgift, ed. John Ayre (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1851–3). Williams, Sir Roger, The Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. John X. Evans (Oxford, 1972). Wright, Henry, The first part of the disquisition of truth, concerning political affairs (1616). Zanchi, Giovambattista de’, Del modo di fortificar le citta` (Venice, 1554). Zuccolo, Lodovico, Considerationi politiche e morali sopra cento oracoli d’illustri personaggi antichi (Venice, 1621).

iii. secondary works Adair, E. R., ‘William Thomas: A Forgotten Clerk of the Privy Council’, in R. W. Seton Watson (ed.), Tudor Studies (1924), 133–60. Adam, Michel, E´tudes sur Pierre Charron (Bordeaux, 1991). Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928). Allmand, Christopher, ‘The Fifteenth-Century English Version of Vegetius’ De Re Militari’, in Matthew Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France (Stamford, Conn., 1998), 30–45. Almirante, Jos E´ , Bibliografı´a militar de Espan˜a (Madrid, 1876). Anglo, Sydney, ‘Aphorismes politiques: E´volution d’une fragmentation syste´matise´e’, in Jean Lafond and Andre´ Stegmann (eds.), L’Automne de la Renaissance 1580–1630 (Paris, 1981), 271–9.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

719

—— ‘The Courtier: The Renaissance and Changing Ideals’, in A. G. Dickens (ed.), The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty 1400–1800 (1977), 32–53. —— The Courtier’s Art: Systematic Immorality in the Renaissance (Swansea, 1983). —— ‘Crypto-Machiavellism in Early Tudor England: The Problem of the Ragionamento dell’advenimento delli Inglesi, et Normanni in Britannia’, Renaissance and Reformation, ns 2 (1978), 182–93. —— Machiavelli: A Dissection (1969). —— ‘Machiavelli and the Aphorizers’, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 1/iii (Oct. 1983), 19–30. —— ‘Machiavelli as a Military Authority: Some Early Sources’, in Peter Denley and Caroline Elam (eds.), Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein (1988), 321–34. —— ‘A Machiavellian Solution to the Irish Problem: Richard Beacon’s Solon His Follie (1594)’, in Edward Chaney and Peter Mack (eds.), England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp (Woodbridge, 1990), 153–64. —— ‘More Machiavellian than Machiavel: A Study of the Context of Donne’s Conclave’, in A. J. Smith (ed.), John Donne: Essays in Celebration (1972), 349–84. —— ‘ ‘‘Our Extremest Shift is to Work by Policy’’: William Thomas and Early Tudor Machiavellism’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1984), 31–50. —— ‘ ‘‘Le plus gentil esprit qui soit apparu au monde depuis les derniers sie`cles’’: The Popularity of Machiavelli in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Pauline Smith and Trevor Peach (eds.), Renaissance Reflections: Essays in Memory of C. A. Mayer (Paris, 2002), 195–212. —— ‘Political Polemic in Late Sixteenth-Century France’, in Keith Cameron (ed.), Montaigne and his Age (Exeter, 1981), 1–13. —— ‘Vegetius’s ‘‘De re militari’’: The Triumph of Mediocrity’, Antiquaries Journal, 82 (2002), 247–67. Ayala, Mariano d’, Bibliografia militare-Italiana antica e moderna (Turin, 1854). Baillet, Lina, ‘Schwendi, lecteur de Machiavel’, Revue d’Alsace, 112 (1986), 119–97. Bainton, R. H., Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace (Nashville, Tenn., 1960). Baker, T. F. T., ‘William Thomas’, in S. T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558 (1982), 439–43.

720

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Balmas, Enea, ‘Jacques Gohory traduttore del Machiavelli (con documenti inediti)’, in Studi Machiavelliani (Verona, 1972), 1–51. Balsamo, Jean, ‘La France et sa relation a` l’Italie au xvi e sie`cle e (bibliographie 1985–1994)’, Nouvelle revue du XVI sie`cle, 13 (1995), 267–89. —— ‘Note sur Jacopo Corbinelli’, Bulletin de l’Association d’E´tude sur l’Humanisme, la Re´forme et la Renaissance (France du Centre et du Sud-Est), 19 (1984), 48–54. —— ‘ ‘‘Le plus meschant d’entre eux ne voudroit pas estre Roy’’: La Boe´tie et Machiavel’, Montaigne Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum, 11 (1999), 5–27. Barbi, Silvio A., Un accademico mecenate e poeta, Giovan Battista Strozzi il giovane (Florence, 1900). Battista, Anna Maria, Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino: Montaigne e Charron (Milan, 1966). —— ‘Sull’antimachiavellismo francese del secolo XVI’, Storia e Politica, 1 (1962), 412–47. Bawcutt, N. W., ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, in S. Schoenbaum (ed.), Renaissance Drama, ns 3 (1970), 3–49. —— ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’, English Miscellany, 20 (1969), 53–74. Bayley, C. C., War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The ‘De Militia’ of Leonardo Bruni (Toronto, 1961). Beame, Edmond M., ‘The Use and Abuse of Machiavelli: The Sixteenth-Century French Adaptation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 43 (1982), 33–54. Bell, Aubrey F. G., ‘The Humanist Jeronymo de Osorio’, Revue hispanique, 73 (1928), 525–56. Benoist, Charles, Le Machiavellisme (Paris, 1936). Berkowitz, David Sandler, Humanist Scholarship and Public Order: Two Tracts against the Pilgrimage of Grace by Sir Richard Morison (1984). Bertelli, Sergio, and Innocenti, Piero, Bibliografia Machiavelliana (Verona, 1979). Birely, Robert, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 1990). Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1958). Bondanella, Peter, Francesco Guicciardini (Boston, 1976). Bonnefon, Paul, ‘L’Historien du Haillan’, Revue d’histoire litte´raire de la France, 15 (1908), 642–96; 22 (1915), 453–92.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

721

Bottari, Ercole, Baldassare Castiglione e il suo libro del Cortegiano (Pisa, 1874). Bourdon, LØon, ‘Jeronimo Osorio et les humanistes anglais’, in L’Humanisme portugais et l’Europe. Actes du XXI e colloque international d’e´tudes humanistes. Tours 3–13 Juillet 1978 (Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Centre culturel Portugais: Paris, 1984), 263–333. Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (1968). Bowen, W. F., ‘ ‘‘L’histoire de la terre neuve du Peru’’: A translation by Jacques Gohory’ and ‘The Earliest Treatise on Tobacco’, Isis, 28 (1938), 330–63. —— ‘Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Machiavelli’, Italica, 27 (1950), 313–20. Bozza, Tommaso, Scrittori politici italiani dal 1550 al 1650: saggio di bibliografia (Rome, 1949). Breen, Quirinus, ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the Conflict of Philosophy and Rhetoric’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 13 (1952), 384–426. Brequigny, L. G. O. F. de, ‘Notice de l’histoire de Charles VIII et de Louis XII par J. Gohory’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits, 7, pt. 2 (Paris, 1804), 16–39. Brown, Clifford M., Our Accustomed Discourse on the Antique: Cesare Gonzaga and Gerolamo Garimberto. Two Renaissance Collectors of Greco-Roman Art (New York and London, 1993). Brunet, Jacques-Charles, Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres, 5th edn. (Paris, 1860–80). Bruni, Roberto L., and Zancani, Diego, Antonio Cornazzano: la tradizione testuale (Florence, 1992). —— ——‘Antonio Cornazzano: le opere a stampa’, La Bibliofilia, 86 (1984), 1–61. Bryson, F. R., The Point of Honour in Sixteenth-Century Italy: An Aspect of the Life of a Gentleman (Chicago, 1933). Burd, L. Arthur, ‘Le fonti letterarie di Machiavelli nell’Arte della Guerra’, in Atti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, 5th ser., 4 (1896), pt. 1, 187–261. —— introduction to his edition of Il Principe (Oxford, 1891). Burke, Peter, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Cambridge, 1995). Burne, Alfred H., The Agincourt War (1956). —— The Art of War on Land (1944).

722

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burne, Alfred H., The Battlefields of England (1950). —— The Crecy War (1955). —— More Battlefields of England (1952). Cabos, Alban, Guy de Faur de Pibrac, un magistrat poe`te au XVI e sie`cle (Paris and Auch, 1922), 195–247. Calderini de Marchi, R., Jacopo Corbinelli et les e´rudits franc¸ais d’apre`s la correspondance ine´dite Corbinelli-Pinelli (Milan, 1914). Cameron, Keith, Henri III: A Maligned or Malignant King? (Aspects of the Satirical Iconography of Henri de Valois) (Exeter, 1978). Cantarino, Elena, ‘Tratadistas politico-morales de los siglos XVI y XVII (Apuntes sobre el estado actual de la investigacio´n)’, El Basilisco, 21 (1996), 4–7. Cardascia, G., ‘Un lecteur de Machiavel a` la Cour de France’, Humanisme et Renaissance, 5 (1938), 446–52. —— ‘Machiavel et Jean Bodin’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 3 (1943), 129–67. Carlson, A. J., ‘Mundus Muliebris: The World of Women Reviled and Defended ca.195 B.C. and 1551 A.D. and Other Things’, SixteenthCentury Journal, 24 (1993), 541–60. Catalogue de l’histoire de France (Bibliothe`que Impe´riale, De´partement des Imprime´s, Paris, 1855; repr. 1968). Cavaill E´ , Jean-Pierre, Dis/simulations: Jules-Ce´sar Vanini, Franc¸ois La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naude´, Louis Machon et Torquato Accetto. Religion, morale et politique au XVII e sie`cle (Paris, 2002). Chaix, Paul, Dufour, Alain, and Moeckli, Gustave, Les Livres imprime´s a` Gene`ve de 1500 a` 1600, 2nd edn. (Geneva, 1966). Cian, Vittorio, ‘Un episodio della storia della censura in Italia nel secolo XVI: l’edizione spurgata del Cortegiano’, Archivio storico Lombardo, 14 (1887), 661–727. Clark, Stuart, ‘Wisdom Literature of the Seventeenth Century: A Guide to the ‘‘Bacon-Tottel’’ Commonplace Books’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 6 (1976), 291–305; 7 (1977), 46–73. Cockle, Maurice J. D., A Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642 (1900; repr. 1957). Consejo, Pilar, Antonio de Guevara: un ensayista espan˜ol del siglo XVI (Madrid, 1985). Constant, Gustave, La Re´forme en Angleterre (Paris, 1930). Convegno di studi in onore di Ludovico Zuccolo nel quarto centenario della nascita` (Faenza, 15–16 Mar. 1969). Crevenna, Pietro Antonio, Catalogue raisonne´ de la collection des livres de M. Pierre Antoine Crevenna (Amsterdam, 1775–6).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

723

D’Addio, Mario, Il pensiero politico di Gasparo Scippio et il Macchiavellismo del Seicento secolo (Milan, 1962). Dagens, Jean, ‘Le Machiave´lisme de Pierre Charron’, in Studies aangeboden aan Prof. Ge´rard Brom (Utrecht, 1962), 56–64. Dal Corso, M., ‘Montaigne e il Principe di Machiavelli: i primi contatti’, in E. Kanceff (ed.), Montaigne e l’Italia (Geneva, 1991), 145–56. Del Col, Andrea, ‘Lucio Paolo Rosello e la vita religiosa veneziana verso la meta` del secolo XVI’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 32 (1978), 422–59. Delepierre, Octave, Tableau de la litte´rature du Centon (1874–5). Delisle, LØopold Victor, Chantilly: Le Cabinet des Livres. Imprime´s ante´rieurs au milieu du XVI e sie`cle (Paris, 1905). Dini, Vittorio, and Taranto, Domenico (eds.), La saggezza moderna: temi e problemi dell’opera di Pierre Charron (Naples and Rome, 1987). Dionisotti, Carlo, Machiavellerie: storia e fortuna di Machiavelli (Turin, 1980). Donaldson, Peter S., Machiavelli and Mystery of State (Cambridge, 1988). D’OrlØans, H., Chantilly: Le Cabinet des Livres. Manuscrits (Paris, 1900). DrØano, Mathurin, La Renomme´e de Montaigne en France au XVIII e sie`cle 1677–1802 (Angers, 1952). Droz, EugØnie, ‘Fauces adresses typographiques’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 23 (1961), 574–83. Eccles, Mark, ‘Barnabe Barnes’, in Charles J. Sisson (ed.), Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 165–241. Elton, G. R., Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972). —— ‘The Political Creed of Thomas Cromwell’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 6 (1956), 69–92. Emerton, Ephraim, Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (Cambridge, Mass., 1925). Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti (Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 1929– ). Faria, Francisco Leite de, ‘As muitas edic¸o˜es das obras de Dom Jero´nimo Oso´rio’, Rivista da Biblioteca Nacional (Lisbon), 1 (1981), 116–35. Fehl, Philipp P., ‘Vasari’s ‘‘Extirpation of the Huguenots’’: The Challenge of Pity and Fear’, Gazette des beaux arts, 84 (1974), 257–84.

724

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fenlon, Dermot, review of Donaldson’s edn. of the Ragionamento, in Historical Journal, 19 (1976), 1019–23. Ferrari, Giuseppe, Corso su gli scrittori politici italiani: nuova edizione completa (Milan, 1929). Ferrari, Luigi, Onomasticon: repertorio biobibliografico degli scrittori italiani dal 1501 al 1850 (Padua, 1947). Fiorentino, Francesco, ‘Del Principe di N. Machiavelli e di un libro di A. Nifo’, Giornale di filosofia e lettere, scienze e politiche, ns 1 (1879), 94–114. Fleming, D. Hay, Illustrations of Antichrist’s Rejoicing over the Massacre of St Bartholomew (Edinburgh, 1912). Frauenholz, Eugen von (ed.), Der erste deutsche Verku¨nder der allgemeinen Wehrpflicht (Hamburg, 1939). Fumaroli, Marc, ‘Blaise de Vigene`re: sa doctrine d’apre`s ses pre´faces’, in Jean Lafond and Andre´ Stegmann (eds.), L’Automne de la Renaissance, 1580–1630 (Paris, 1981), 31–51. Gasquet, E´mile, Le Courant machiave´lien dans la pense´e et la litte´rature anglaises du XVI e sie`cle (Montreal, Paris, and Brussels, 1974). —— ‘Machiavelli’s Discourses: A Forgotten English Translation’, Notes and Queries, ns 5/4 (Apr. 1958), 144–5. Gerber, Adolf, ‘All of the Five Fictitious Italian Editions of Writings of Machiavelli and Three of Those of Pietro Aretino’, Modern Language Notes, 22 (1907), 2–6, 129–35, 201–6. ¨ bersetzungen —— Niccolo` Machiavelli: Die Handschriften, Ausgaben und U seiner Werke im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Gotha and Munich, 1912–13). Gilbert, A. H., Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ and its Forerunners (Durham, NC, 1938; repr. New York, 1968). Gilbert, Felix, ‘Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War’, in E. M. Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, 1944), 3–25. —— ‘The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought’, in Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (1968), 490–500. Godman, Peter, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton, 1998). Goyet, Francis, Le Sublime du ‘lieu commun’: L’invention rhe´torique dans l’Antiquite´ et a` la Renaissance (Paris, 1996). Grendler, Paul F., Critics of the Italian World 1530–1560 (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969). —— The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540–1605 (Princeton, 1977).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

725

Greyerz, Kaspar von, ‘Lazarus von Schwendi (1522–1583) and Late Humanism at Basel’, in Manfred P. Fleischer (ed.), The Harvest of Humanism in Central Europe: Essays in Honour of Lewis W. Spitz (St Louis, Mo., 1992), 179–95. Guidi, JosØ, ‘Re´formulation de l’ide´ologie aristocratique au 16 e sie`cle: les diffe´rentes re´dactions et la fortune du Courtisan’, Centre de recherches sur la Renaissance italienne, 11 (1983), 121–84. Hale, J. R., ‘A Humanistic Visual Aid: The Military Diagram in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Studies, 2 (1988), 280–98. —— ‘Printing and Military Culture’, Medievalia et Humanistica, ns 8 (1977), 21–62; repr. in his Renaissance War Studies, 429–70. —— Renaissance War Studies (1983). —— ‘To Fortify or Not to Fortify? Machiavelli’s Contribution to a Renaissance Debate’, in H. C. Davis, J. M. Hatwell, D. G. Rees, and G. W. Slowey (eds.), Essays in Honour of John Humphreys Whitfield (1975), 99–119; repr. in his Renaissance War Studies, 189–209. —— ‘War and Public Opinion in Renaissance Italy’, in E. F. Jacob (ed.), Italian Renaissance Studies (1960), 94–122; repr. in his Renaissance War Studies, 359–88. Hall, Bert S., Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Baltimore and London, 1997). Hamy, E. T., ‘Un Pre´curseur de Guy de la Brosse: Jacques Gohory et le Lycium Philosophal de Saint-Marceau-le`s-Paris (1571–1576)’, Nouvelles Archives du Muse´um d’Histoire Naturelle, 4th ser., 1 (Paris, 1899). Hauser, Henri, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, iii (Paris, 1912). Hibbard, G. R., Thomas Nashe: A Critical Introduction (1962). Hoppe, Harry R., ‘John Wolfe, Printer and Publisher (1579–1601)’, The Library, 4th ser., 14 (1933), 241–88. Horrocks, John Wesley, ‘Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion’ (D.Litt. thesis, University of London, 1908). Intra, Giovanni Battista, ‘Di Camillo Capilupi e de’ suoi scritti’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 20 (1893), 693–735. Jahn, Robert, ‘Letters and Booklists of Thomas Chard (or Chare) of London (1583–4)’, The Library, 4th ser., 4 (1924), 210–37. Jhns, Max, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften vornehmlich in Deutschland (Munich, 1889–91). Jameson, T. H., ‘The ‘‘Machiavellianism’’ of Gabriel Harvey’, PMLA 56 (1941), 645–56. Janet, Paul Alexandre RenØ, Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique dans l’antiquite´ et les temps modernes (Paris, 1858). Jardine, Lisa, Francis Bacon and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge, 1974).

726

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Javitch, Daniel, ‘The Philosopher of the Court: A French Satire Misunderstood’, Comparative Literature, 23 (1971), 97–124. —— Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England (Princeton, 1978). —— ‘Rival Arts of Conduct in Elizabethan England: Guazzo’s Civile Conversation and Castiglione’s Courtier’, Yearbook of Italian Studies, 1 (1971), 178–98. Johnson, Francis R., Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of English Scientific Writings from 1500 to 1645 (Baltimore, 1937). Jones, Michael K., ‘The Battle of Verneuil (17 August 1424): Towards a History of Courage’, War in History, 9 (2002), 375–411. Kahn, Victoria, ‘Reading Machiavelli: Innocent Gentillet’s Discourse on Method’, Political Theory, 22 (1994), 539–60. Kelley, Donald R., ‘History as a Calling’, in A. Molho and John Tedeschi (eds.), Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron (DeKalb, Ill., 1971). —— ‘Murd’rous Machiavel in France: A Post Mortem’, Political Science Quarterly, 68 (1970), 545–59. Kelley, Stanley, Professional Public Relations and Political Power (Baltimore, 1956). Kempner, Nadja, Raleghs Staatstheoretische Schriften: Die Einfu¨hrung des Machiavellismus in England (Leipzig, 1928). Kelso, Ruth, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaisance (Urbana, Ill., 1956). —— The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1929). Kingdon, Robert M., Myths about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 1572–1576 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). Kogel, RenØe, Pierre Charron (Geneva, 1972). Knig, Johann, Lazarus von Schwendi, Ro¨misch Kaiserlicher Majesta¨t Rat und Feldoberst, 1522–1585 (Schwendi, 1934). Lafond, Jean, ‘Le Centon et son usage dans la litte´rature morale et politique’, in Jean Lafond and Andre´ Stegmann (eds.), L’Automne de la Renaissance 1580–1630 (Paris, 1981), 117–28. Laven, Peter J., ‘The Life and Writings of William Thomas’ (MA thesis, University of London, 1954). Law, Thomas Graves, A Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1889). Le Long, Jacques, Bibliothe`que historique de la France (Paris, 1768–78). Lefranc, Pierre, Sir Walter Raleigh, e´crivain: l’œuvre et les ide´es (Paris, 1968). Legrand, E´mile Louis Jean, Bibliographie helle´nique (Leroux, 1885– 1906).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

727

LØnient, Charles, La Satire en France ou la litte´rature militante au xvi e sie`cle (Paris, 1866). Lewy, Guenter, Constitutionalism and Statecraft during the Golden Age of Spain: A Study of the Political Philosophy of Juan de Mariana, S.J. (Geneva, 1960). Lievsay, John Leon, Stefano Guazzo and the English Renaissance 1575– 1675 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1961). Lindsay, Robert O., and Neu, John, French Political Pamphlets 1547– 1648: A Catalog of Major Collections in American Libraries (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1969). Luciani, Vincent, ‘Bacon and Machiavelli’, Italica, 24 (1947), 26–40. —— Francesco Guicciardini and his European Reputation (New York, 1936), which is superseded by the Italian trans., Francesco Guicciardini e la fortuna dell’opera sua (Florence, 1949). —— ‘Sansovino’s Concetti politici and their Debt to Guicciardini’, PMLA 65 (1950), 1181–95. —— ‘Sansovino’s Concetti politici and their Debt to Machiavelli’, PMLA 67 (1952), 823–44. Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England 1327–1534 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). M’Crie, Thomas, History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy in the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh and London, 1832). McCuaig, William, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton, 1989). McFarlane, I. D., Buchanan (1981). McGowan, Margaret M., ‘Interpreting the Past: The Commentaries of Blaise de Vigene`re and ‘‘l’enrichissement de nostre parler’’ ’ in David Cowling (ed.), Conceptions of Europe in Renaissance France (forthcoming). —— Montaigne’s Deceits (1974). —— The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France (2000). Magendie, Maurice, La Politesse mondaine et les the´ories de l’honneˆtete´, en France, au XVII e sie`cle, de 1600 a` 1660 (Paris, 1925). Mahoney, Edward P., Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance: Nicoletta Vernia and Agostino Nifo (Aldershot, 2000). Mastellone, Salvo, Venalita` e Machiavellismo in Francia (1572–1610) (Florence, 1972). Mattei, Rodolfo de, Dal premachiavellismo all’antimachiavellismo (Florence, 1969). —— Il pensiero politico di Scipione Ammirato con discorsi inediti (Milan, 1963).

728

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mayer, C. A., ‘L’Honneˆte Homme, Molie`re and Philibert de Vienne’s Philosophe de Court’, Modern Language Review, 46 (1951), 196–217. Mazouer, Charles, ‘Chantelouve et la Saint-Barthe´lemy: ‘‘La Tragedie de feu Gaspard de Colligny’’ (1575)’, in Les E´crivains et la politique dans le sud-ouest de la France autour des anne´es 1580. (Actes du Colloque de Bordeaux 6–7 Novembre 1981) (Bordeaux, 1982), 129–42. Meinecke, Friedrich, Die Idee der Staatsra¨son in der neueren Geschichte (Munich and Berlin, 1929); trans. Douglas Scott as Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’e´tat and its Place in Modern History (1957). Menendez Pelayo, Marcelino, Histo´ria de los heterodoxos espan˜ola, ed. D. Enrique Sanchez Reyes (Santander, 1946–8). MØtral, Denyse, Blaise de Vigene`re, arche´ologue et critique d’art (1523– 1596) (Paris, 1939). Meyer, Edward, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar, 1897). Milward, Peter, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (1978). —— Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (1978). Mohl, Robert von, Die Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften (Erlangen, 1855–8). Monarca, Gennaro, Agostino Nifo vita ed opere: traccia per una riscoperta (n.p., 1975). Moreri, Louis, Le Grand Dictionnaire historique, ou le me´lange curieux de l’histoire sacre´e et profane (Paris, 1759). Morris, Christopher, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker (1953). Moss, Ann, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996). Mousnier, Roland, L’Assassinat d’Henri IV, 14 Mai 1610 (Paris, 1964), trans. Joan Spencer as The Assassination of Henry IV (1973). Norton, Glyn P., The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and their Humanist Antecedents (Geneva, 1984). Nourrisson, Jean FØlix, Machiavel: l’histoire du Machiave´lisme et de Machiavel (Paris, 1875). Nouvelle biographie universelle (Paris, 1852–6). Oestreich, Gerhard, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, 1982). O’Malley, C. D., and Saunders, J. B. de C. M., ‘The ‘‘Relation’’ of Andreas Vesalius on the Death of Henry II of France’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 3 (1948), 197–213.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

729

Oman, Sir Charles, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (1937). Orsini, Napoleone, Bacone e Machiavelli (Genoa, 1936). —— ‘Elizabethan Manuscript Translations of Machiavelli’s Prince’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1 (1937), 166–9. —— ‘Machiavelli’s Discourses, a MS Translation of 1599’, Times Literary Supplement, 10, 17, 24 Oct. 1936. —— ‘I ‘‘Ricordi’’ del Guicciardini nell’Inghilterra Elisabettiana’, in Studi sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra, 77–99. —— Studi sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra, con alcuni testi inglesi inediti (Florence, 1937). —— ‘Le traduzioni elisabettiane inedite di Machiavelli’, in Studi sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra, 3–47. Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution (Cambridge, 1988). —— ‘The ‘‘Military Revolution’’ 1560–1660—a Myth?’, Journal of Modern History, 48 (1976), 195–214, repr. in his Spain and the Netherlands 1559–1659 (1979). Parks, George B., The English Traveller to Italy (Rome, 1954). Parrott, David, ‘The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe’, History Today, 42 (Dec. 1992), 21–7. —— Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624– 1642 (Cambridge, 2001). Paschini, Pio, ‘Letterati ed indice nella riforma Cattolica in Italia’, in Cinquecento Romano e riforma Cattolica (Rome, 1958), 239–73. Persico, Tommaso, Gli scrittori politici napoletani dal 1400 al 1700 (Naples, 1912). Petrocchi, Massimo, ‘Storia e filosofia secondo Lor. Ducci’, in L’uomo e la storia e altri saggi e svaghi (Bologna, 1944), 17–21. Phillips, Mark, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian’s Craft (Toronto, 1977). Post, Gaines, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100–1322 (Princeton, 1964). Praz, Mario, ‘The Politic Brain: Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, originally a lecture to the British Academy (1928), revised and republished in The Flaming Heart (New York, 1958), 90–145. Prezzolini, Giuseppe, Machiavelli (New York, 1967). Procacci, Giuliano, Machiavelli nella cultura Europea dell’eta` moderna (Rome, 1995). —— Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli (Rome, 1965). Promis, Carlo, Dell’arte dell’ingegnere e dell’artigliere in Italia dalla sua origine sino al principio del XVI secolo: memorie storiche (Turin, 1841).

730

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Promis, Carlo, ‘Gl’ingegneri militari della Marca d’Ancona che operarono e scrissero dall’anno MDL all’anno MDCL’, Miscellanea di Storia d’Italia edita per cura della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria, 6 (1865), 296–308. PuigdomŁnech, Helena, Maquiavelo en Espan˜a (Madrid, 1988). Putnam, G. H., The Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence upon the Production and Distribution of Literature (New York, 1906). Puype, J. P, and Wiekart, A. A., Van Maurits naar Munster: Tactiek en triomf van het Staatse leger (Delft, 1998). Quaglioni, D., ‘Il machiavellismo di Jean Bodin’, Il Pensiero politico, 22 (1989), 198–207. Quentin-Bauchart, Ernest, La Bibliothe`que de Fontainebleau et les livres des derniers Valois a` la Bibliothe`que Nationale (1515–1589) (Paris, 1891). Quinn, D. B., ‘Renaissance Influences in English Colonization’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 26 (1976), 73–94. Raab, Felix, The English Face of Machiavelli (1964). Raspa, Anthony, ‘Theology and Poetry in Donne’s ‘‘Conclave’’ ’, Journal of English Literary History, 32 (1965), 478–89. RathØ, C. Edward, ‘Innocent Gentillet and the First Anti-Machiavel ’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 27 (1965), 186–225. Reeve, M., ‘The Transmission of Vegetius’s Epitoma Rei Militaris’, Aevum, 74 (2000), 243–354. Renucci, Toussant, Un aventurier des lettres au XVI e sie`cle (Paris, 1943). Reusch, Franz Heinrich, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Tu¨bingen, 1886). Ribner, Irving, ‘The Significance of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel’, Modern Language Quarterly, 10 (1949), 153–7. Richardot, Philippe, Ve´gece et la culture militaire au Moyen Age (Paris, 1998). Ridolfi, Roberto, The Life of Francesco Guicciardini (1967). —— The Life of Niccolo` Machiavelli (1963). —— ‘Sommario della vita di Donato Giannotti’, in Opuscoli (Florence, 1942). Rigobon, Patrizio, ‘Le traduzioni spagnole de ‘‘Il Principe’’ di Niccolo` Machiavelli: appunti per un storia’, Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 25 (1986), 143–62. Roberts, Michael, The Military Revolution: 1560–1660 (Belfast, n.d.), repr. in his Essays on Swedish History (1967).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

731

Romier, Lucien, Les Origines politiques des guerres de religion (Paris, 1913). Russell, F. H., The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975). Ryan, L. V., ‘The Haddon–Osorio Controversy (1563–1583), Church History, 22 (1953), 142–54. —— Roger Ascham (Stanford, Calif., 1963). Salmon, J. H. M., The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought (Oxford, 1959). —— Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (1975). SalvÆ y Mallen, Pedro, Cata´logo de la Biblioteca de Salva´ (Valencia, 1872; repr. Barcelona, 1963). Sarton, George, ‘Aristotle and Phyllis’, Isis, 14, pt. 1, no. 43 (May, 1930). Saulnier, V.-L., Maurice Sce`ve (Paris, 1948). Schmitt, Charles B., ‘John Case and Machiavelli’, in S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus (eds.), Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore (Florence, 1978), 231–40. Schutz, A. H., Vernacular Books in Parisian Private Libraries of the Sixteenth Century According to the Notarial Inventories (Chapel Hill, NC, 1955). Sellers, Harry, ‘Italian Books Printed in England before 1640’, The Library, 4th ser., 5 (1924), 105–28. Settembrini, Luigi, Lezioni di letteratura italiana, 2nd edn. (Naples, 1870). Simoncelli, P., La lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra Accademici e fuorusciti fiorentini (Florence, 1984). Skinner, Quentin, Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978). Smith, Malcolm C., ‘A Source of Montaigne’s Uncertainty’, Bibliothe`que d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 50 (1988), 202–11. Smith, Pauline, The Anti-Courtier Trend in Sixteenth-Century French Literature (Geneva, 1966). Soares, Nair de NazarØ Castro, O Prı´ncipe Ideal no Se´colo XVI e a Obra de D. Jero´nimo Oso´rio (Coimbra, 1994). Southern, A. C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose 1559–1582 (London and Glasgow, 1950). Sozzi, L., ‘La Pole´mique anti-italienne dans l’oeuvre narrative d’Henri Estienne’, in Henri Estienne, Cahiers, V. L. Saulnier, VI (Paris, 1988), 97–111. Starn, Randolph, ‘Additions to the Correspondence of Donato Giannotti’, Rinascimento, 15 (1964), 101–21.

732

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Starn, Randolph, ‘ ‘‘Ante Machiavel’’: Machiavelli and Giannotti’, in Myron P. Gilmore (ed.), Studies on Machiavelli (Florence, 1972), 287–93. Stern, Virginia F., Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library (Oxford, 1979). Stevenson, Burton, Stevenson’s Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases (1949). —— Stevenson’s Book of Quotations Classical and Modern, 3rd edn. (1937). Stewart, Pamela, Innocent Gentillet e la sua polemica antimachiavellica (Florence, 1969). Strathmann, Ernest E., ‘A Note on the Ralegh Canon’, Times Literary Supplement, 13 Apr. 1956, p. 288. Sutcliffe, F. E., Politique et culture (Paris, 1973). Taylor, Archer, General Subject Indexes since 1548 (Philadelphia, 1966). Taylor, F. L., The Art of War in Italy 1494–1529 (Cambridge, 1921). Tedeschi, John, ‘Tomasso Sassetti’s Account of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre’, in Alfred Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Reappraisals and Documents (The Hague, 1974). Tejada, Francisco Elias de, ‘Las doctrinas polı´ticas de Jero´nimo Oso´rio’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho espan˜ol, 16 (1945), 341–88. Tenison, E. M., Elizabethan England (Royal Leamington Spa, 1933–61). Tetel, M., Pre´sences italiennes dans les ‘Essais’ de Montaigne (Paris, 1992). Thorndike, Lynn, History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923– 58). Toffanin, Giuseppe, Machiavelli e il ‘Tacitismo’: La ‘Politica storica’ al tempo della controriforma (Padua, 1921); 2nd edn. (Naples, 1972). Tommasini, Oreste, La vita e gli scritti di Niccolo` Machiavelli nella loro relazione col machiavellismo (Rome, 1883–1911). Tonelli, Giorgio, A Short-Title List of Subject Dictionaries of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries as Aids to the History of Ideas (1971). Treves, Nicole, ‘Beyond l’utile et l’honneste: Or Some Pioneering Aspects of Machiavelli and Montaigne’, Bulletin de la socie´te´ des amis de Montaigne, 6th ser., nos. 15–16 (1983), 45–60. Truman, Ronald W., Spanish Treatises on Government, Society and Religion in the Time of Philip II: The ‘de regimine principum’ and Associated Traditions (Leiden, 1999).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

733

Tuozzi, P., ‘Agostino Nifo e le sue opere’, Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di scienze, lettere e arti di Padova, ns 20 (1904), 63–86. Uhlig, Claus, Hofkritik im England des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Berlin, 1973). Van Dyke, Paul, ‘Reginald Pole and Thomas Cromwell: An Examination of the Apologia ad Carolum Quintum’, American Historical Review, 9 (1903–4), 696–724; repr. in his Renascence Portraits (1906), 377–418. Vauzelles, Ludovic de, Vie de Jacques, comte de Vintimille, conseiller au parlement de Bourgogne, litte´rateur et savant du seizie`me sie`cle, d’apre`s des documents ine´dits (Orle´ans, 1865). Vickers, Brian, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge, 1968). Villari, Pasquale, Niccolo` Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, 2nd edn. (Milan, 1895–7); trans. Linda Villari, The Life and Times of Niccolo` Machiavelli (n.d.). Villey, Pierre, Les Sources et l’e´volution des Essais de Montaigne (Paris, 1933). Walker, D. P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (1958). Wardman, Alan, Plutarch’s Lives (1974). Weber, H., ‘Bodin et Machiavel’, Actes du Colloque ‘Jean Bodin’ (Angers, 1985), 231–40. Whitfield, J. H., Machiavelli (Oxford, 1947). —— ‘Machiavelli Guicciardini Montaigne’, Italian Studies, 28 (1973), 31–47. Williams, Glanmor, ‘Sir John Stradling of St. Donats’, Glamorgan Historian, 9 (1973), 11–28. Windass, S., Christianity versus Violence: A Social and Historical Study of War and Christianity (1964). Wood, Anthony , Athenae Oxoniensis, ed. P. Bliss (1813–20). Woodfield, D. B., Surreptitious Printing in England, 1550–1640 (New York, 1973). Yardeni, Myriam, La conscience nationale en France pendant les guerres de religion, 1559–1598 (Louvain and Paris, 1971). Yates, Frances A., The French Academies (1947). Zagorin, Perez, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). Zancani, Diego, ‘Antonio Cornazzano’s ‘‘De l’integrita` de la militare arte’’ ’, in S. Anglo (ed.), Chivalry in the Renaissance (Woodbridge, 1990), 13–24.

734

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Zeeveld, W. Gordon, Foundations of Tudor Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948). Zimmermann, T. C. Price, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton, 1995).

INDEX Abraham 155 Accademia degli Intronati, Siena 491 Accetto, Torquato 619 n. 89 Achab 245 Achaeans 72–3 Achilles 67, 452, 674 Acominatus Nicetas 544 n. 81 Adair, E. R. 102–3 Adams, Thomas, sermon at Paul’s Cross 232 Adrian, Emperor 307 Advertissement au Roy 346 n. 53 Advertissement du peuple 250 Aelian 31, 509, 523, 540, 567, 568, 569 Aeneas 71 Aesculapius 630 Aesop 53, 78 affability, Nifo on the political use of 71–2 Affaitati, Giovanni Francesco, baron of Ghistelles, dedicatee of Gohory’s Discours 210, 211 affectation 584, 586, 588 Affelen, Joannes ab, aphorisms of 659 Agag 248 Agapetus 268 Agathocles 51, 308, 627 n. 96, 673 Agnadello, battle of 73 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius 31, 41, 358, 406 n. 63, 518 on armchair military theorists 571–2 Agrippina 125 n. 16 Alamos y Barrientos, Baltazar de 645, 659 Albergati, Fabio 132 n. 22 Alberti, Federigo, defends Machiavelli against Giovio 179 Aldana, Marco Antonio de 176 Aldobrandini, Gian Francesco 486

Alenc¸on, Duke of: dedicatee of Contre-Machiavel 282–3, 361 as suitor to Queen Elizabeth I 360–2, 448 Alexander, Emperor 308 Alexander III, Pope 100 Alexander VI, Pope 170, 171, 211 n. 50, 317, 349, 353, 460 in Barnes’s Divils Charter 456–7 Alexander the Great 56, 71, 140, 161, 209, 309, 429, 493, 540, 559, 674 Alexander Severus, Emperor 67, 191, 307 Allegresse chrestienne 244–5 Allen, J. W. 305, 548 alliances, problems of 495, 503 Almirante, Jose´ 528 Alphonso I, King of Portugal 155 Alphonso of Aragon 62 Alviano, Bartolomeo (Venetian general) 492 Amadis de Gaule 203, 434 Amelecites 248 Ammirato, Scipione 658 on fortresses 549 on money as the sinews of war 547 on offensive or defensive war 542 refers to Machiavelli by circumlocutions 180, 656 Amorites 268 Ane Discourse Touching the Estait Present 331 n. 18 Anet, chaˆteau d’ 193 Anicetus 125 n. 16 Anjou, Duke of, see Henri III, King of France Anti-Coton 405 n. 62 Antiochus 72, 96, 495 Antonines, the 307 Antoninus, Emperor 309

736

I ND EX

aphorisms 630–70 for courtiers 606 definitions of 631–2 explications of 636–9 indexes of 639–40 marginal annotations and 639 medical and political 644–5 military, 510, 537–52; see also debating topics, military and moral; maxims political, purpose of 642–9; collections of 642–5, 647–9 and Machiavelli 649–70, 671–8 reading to locate 633–5 Renaissance delight in 484–5, 537, 631 see also Baccellini; Canini; Canoniero; Daneau; Gentillet; Gracia´n; maxims; Pichi Apollonius 67–8 apophthegmata, see aphorisms; maxims Appian (Appianus) 185, 213, 661 Appius Claudius, the Decemvir 321 Appius Claudius Pulcher 480 Aquaviva di Aragona, Belisario 372 n. 109 Aquinas, St Thomas 159, 531 Aragon, monarchs of 57 Arcadius, Emperor 420 n. 5 Archimedes 209 Archpriest controversy 339, 399–401 Ardinghelli, Pietro, papal secretary 49 Aretino, Pietro 174 n. 22 as atheist 280 n. 27, 282, 369 in Donne’s Conclave 381 Aristeas 268 Aristophanes 56 Aristotle 36, 159, 187, 209, 299, 586, 658, 660 n. 82, 670 aphorisms of 632 as courtier 140 Ethics 28, 62 Machiavelli and 28, 369, 440 n.17, 442 Nicomachean Ethics 24 Nifo’s use of 69, 74, 79 Politics 28, 313, 350, 351, 369 on war and peace 53, 55

armies, see artillery; auxiliary troops; cavalry; debating topics arms and letters 81, 160–2, 428–30, 554, 578 Arraignement and Execution 404 Arsacide, Aladin 406 n. 63 art of war, theory and practice of 491–2, 517–21, 552–72; see also warfare artillery 40–1, 96, 190–1, 422, 511–13 and fortification 558–60, 565–6 importance of 561 n. 125 inefficacy of 489–90 the sinews of war 497 see also debating topics Ascham, Roger 155, 329, 397, 581–2, 651 misreading of Machiavelli 651 and Osorio 143–4 Assyrians 148 Atanagi, Dionigi, writer on historiography 8, 36 admirer of Machiavelli 28–9, 178 atheism 128, 479; see also Aretino; Machiavelli; Rabelais Athenians 79, 148 Athens 74 Augustus Caesar, Emperor 169, 290, 307, 309 Authaeus, Philip Ludvig 179, 670 n. 98 auxiliary troops 58; see also debating topics avaritia 62 Averroes 42 Avignon 116 axioms, see aphorisms Ayala, Balthazar, Spanish jurist, knowledge of the Discorsi 176, 535, 542, 551 B., T., Observations Political and Civil, published as the CabinetCouncil 667–70 use of Bodin, Lipsius, Guicciardini in 669 use of Machiavelli in 668–9 use of Sansovino in 669–70 Baccellini, Fra Matteo 11, 12

I ND EX Aforismi of 478–85, 495 reduces the Arte della guerra to aphorisms 479 Bacon, Edward 357 Bacon, Sir Francis 8, 445, 546, 635, 649 aphoristic style of 645–7 Bacon, Nicholas 334 Bacon, Roger 512 Baglioni, family of 454 Bagshaw, Christopher, anti-Jesuit polemicist 400 Baı¨f, Jean-Antoine de 203, 253 Baillet, Lina 90, 95 Baldus 76 Bale, John 25–6, 98, 330 Kynge Johan 130 Balsamo, Jean 337 n. 30 Bandello, Matteo 30, 518 Barbaro, Ermolao 583 n. 22 Barbaro, Giosafat 108 Barbary pirates 188 Barnaud, Nicolas: Le cabinet of 346 n. 48 Le miroir des Franc¸ois of 345–6 putative author of the Reveillematin 279 Le secret des finances of 345–6 Barnes, Barnabe 12, 171 n. 13, 447, 452–8, 459, 519 n. 6 Divils Charter of 455–7, 458 Offices of 452–5 and poisoning 457–8 Barnes, Joseph, printer 468 Bartoli, Cosimo 181 on money as the sinews of war 545, 547 Bartolus de Sassoferrato 76, 126 n. 18, 420 n. 6 on tyranny 312–14 Barwick, Humfrey, military writer 518 n. 3, 556, 563 n. 128 on firearms 552 on Machiavelli 559 Basilhe, Pierre 20 Bathory, Sigismund 486 Battista, Anna Maria 9, 346 n. 49, 373 battles, diagrammatic representations of 571

737

Bawcutt, N. W. 331 n. 15 Bayle, Pierre 27 n. 30 Bayley, C. C. 520 Beacon, Richard 11, 12, 478 Solon his follie and Machiavelli 468–76 Beckett, Thomas 117 Bedford, Francis, Earl of 23 Bedingfield, T., translator of Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine 33, 184 Beelzebub, as a Machiavel 395 n. 36 Behotte, Adrian 403 n. 53 Bell, Aubrey 163 Bell, Thomas, anti-Jesuit polemicist 374, 376, 378–9, 395 n. 36, 405 Bellacci, Pandolfo 165 n. 4 Bellarmine, Robert 375–6, 408 Belleau, Re´my 195 Belleforest, Franc¸ois de 243 n. 22 Bellie`vre, Pomponne de 277 n. 16 Bembo, Pietro 579 Benoist, Charles, on Gentillet 297 Bentivogli of Bologna 66, 424 n. 10 Bentivoglio, Giovanni 51 Benvoglienti, Fabio 532 n. 44 Beranque 345 Bernard, Jean (president of the Parlement of Paris) 186 Bertelli, Sergio 18 n. 1, 32 n. 48 Bertrand, Jean (Lord Privy Seal) 195 Be´thune, Maximilien de (Duke of Sully) 499, 518 Be`ze (Beza), The´odore de 247, 279, 283, 360, 362, 408 Bicocca, battle of 40 Bingham, John 540, 561 n. 123, 568 on Aelian 568 Biondo, Flavio 526 Biondo, Michel Angelo 46 n. 11 Blackwell, George, archpriest 375 Blado, Antonio, printer 117, 168, 172 Blado, heirs of Antonio 264 Blandie, William, translator of Osorio 155, 357, 531 n. 39 Blount, Edward, translator of Ducci 607, 614 n. 82

738

I ND EX

Bluet, Thomas, anti-Jesuit polemicist 400 Boccaccio 21, 169, 177, 185, 394 n. 33 Boccalini, Traiano 29 n. 38, 46 n. 13 Bocchi, Francesco 181, 529 Bodin, Jean 8, 341, 445, 469, 542, 551, 651, 658 attacked by Cuyckius 434; by Possevino 386; by Ribadeneira 390 on Machiavelli’s weakness as a historian 301; as a political scientist 340–1 reliance on Machiavelli for military matters 548–9 reduced to aphorisms by Bornitius 641 used by Beacon 475, 476 see also B., T. Boissard, Jean-Jacques 418 n. 2 Boitet, Claude 465–7, 551 influenced by Gentillet 348 n. 65 Boleyn, Anne 117 Bombini, Bernardino, military writer 8, 180, 518 Bonaventura, Federigo, writer on ragione di stato, rejects Machiavelli 659–60 Bonet, Honore´ 541, 535 Boniface III, Pope, in Donne’s Conclave 377, 380, 413 Borgia, Cesare 166 n. 7, 308, 340, 346, 350, 353, 369, 385, 393, 424, 460, 652–3, 673 in Barnes’s Divils Charter 456 in Barnes’s Offices 453–4 his device, Aut nihil aut Caesar, mocked 449 discussed by Nifo 51, 56, 58–60, 64 La Historia dela morte 60 n. 31 Le lachrimevoli lamentatione 60 n. 31 miserable end of 171, 661 and murders at Sinigaglia 164 n. 1, 263, 485 and Ramiro d’Orco 317, 621 n. 90 Bornitius, Jacobus 547 n. 88, 641 Bosca´n, Juan, on translating Castiglione 187 n. 6

Botal (French royal doctor) 203 Botero, Giovanni 237 n. 15, 365, 387, 542, 536, 540, 551, 658 Bottari, Ercole 609 n. 77 Boucher, Jean, Catholic polemicist, use of Gentillet 349–50 bow vs. gun, controversy on 563 Bowes, Thomas, use of Gentillet 364–5 Bozza, Tommaso 678 Brancaccio, Lelio, military writer 540 n. 67 Brantoˆme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de 519 n. 6 Bridges, John, Bishop of Oxford, on the Discorsi 23–4 Bridgettines, execution of 118 Brieve Remonstrance 247–8 Brinon, seigneur de, translator of the Istorie fiorentine 419, 657 Briquemaut 272, 291 Browne, Sir Anthony 103 Browne, John, Barnes’s attempt to poison 458 Brucioli, Antonio 33, 41, 47 n. 15 Bruto, Giovanni Michele, historian, defends Machiavelli 178–9 Brutus, Stephanus Junius, Vindiciae 343–5 Buccapadulius, Antoine (papal secretary) 237 Buchanan, George 23, 385 Ane Admonition 332 Chamaeleon 332 Bujanda, J. M. de 172 n. 17 Buonaccorsi, Biaggio 24, 165 Burd, L. Arthur 165 n. 3, 297, 507 Burghley, Lord, see Cecil Burin, Pierre, reply to Pibrac 274–5 Burne, H. Alfred, and ‘Inherent Military Probability’ 327–8 Busca, Gabriello, military writer 563 Busini, Giovanni Battista 165–6, 329 Cabinet-Council, attributed to Raleigh 667, 668; see also under B., T. Cadamosto, Marco, aphorizes Machiavelli 8, 29, 654–5

I ND EX Calepinus 55 Caligula, Emperor 78, 308, 309 Calisthenes 140 Callie`res, Jacques de 347 n. 58 Calmo, Andrea 28 Calvin, Jean 246, 247, 276, 402, 408, 434 associated with Machiavelli 350 as pupil of Machiavelli 372 n.109 Calvus, orator 55 Cambyses 64 Camerarius, Joachim (Stanislaus Elvidius) 238, 277 Camerarius, Philip 658 Campana, Cesare 562 Campion, Edmund 396 Canaanites 268 Canaye, Philippe de, on maxims and Machiavelli’s method 362 n. 90, 643–4 Canini, Girolamo: Aforismi politici 637–8, 643 praise of Guicciardini 637–8 translation of Du Refuge 622 Canneschi, of Bologna 424 n. 10 Canoniero, Pietro Andrea, collector of aphorisms 180, 546, 643, 648–9 citations from Machiavelli 656 Cantique general 250 Canute 113 Capelloni, Lorenzo: Raggionamenti 181, 547 n. 91 use of Machiavelli in 459–61 Capilupi, Alessandro 255–6 Capilupi, Alfonso 255, 257 Capilupi, Camillo: and Machiavelli 262–3 Lo stratagema 255–65, 294, 574; French translation of 264–5; problems over publication of 263–5 Capilupi, family 255 Capilupi, Giulio 255 Capilupi, Ippolito 255, 257 Capilupi, Laelio 255 Capitolinus, Julius 306 Capizuchi, Camillo 491

739

Cappel, Guillaume: elevated view of Machiavelli 196–8; of political science 195–6 translator of Il Principe 20, 94, 199, 201, 203, 211, 214, 224 Cappel, Jacques 194 Capriolo, Aliprando, military writer 571 n. 144 Caracalla, Emperor 308, 309 Caraffa, Giovanfrancesco 211 Cardona, Juan Bautista, Bishop of Vic 176 Carmignuola, mercenary captain 488 Carnegie, Dale 626 n. 94 Caro, Annibal 29 n. 38 Carthaginians: breaking of treaties 158 reliance on mercenaries 495, 538 Carthusians, executions of 118 Cartwright, Thomas 336 Case, John, Sphaera civitatis, knowledge of Machiavelli and Gentillet 369 Castiglione, Baldassare 45, 105, 310, 628–9 Il Cortegiano 18, 136 n. 27, 139–41, 187 n. 6, 188, 577–88, 597, 600, 625; censorship of 439, 605–6; corrupting influence of 310, 582–8; expurgated edition of 580; popularity of 580–2; proscribed 580 as innovator 579–80 Castiglione, Valeriano, writer on ragione di stato 643 Castor and Pollux 290 Castriotto, Jacomo, writer on fortification 547 Castruccio Castracani 213, 560 in Pichi’s Avvertimenti politici 672 Cataneo, Girolamo, mathematician and military writer 557 Cataneo, Pietro, writer on fortification, knowledge of Machiavelli 35–6, 547 Catharino, Ambrogio (Lanceloto Politi) 166, 172, 173, 329, 365, 387, 651 attack on Machiavelli 167–71, 436–7

740

I ND EX

Catherine of Aragon 116 Catholic League 418 Catiline 57 Cato the Censor 160 Causes qui ont contrainct les Catholiques, Les 346 Cavaignes, Arnaud de (Carignes) 272, 291 Cavalcanti, Bartolommeo 164 n. 1, 532 cavalry 39, 427, 511 n. 84, 550 ancient and modern 421–2, 539 see also debating topics Cavriana, Filippo, on aphorisms 644–5, 659 Cazauran, Nicole 277 n. 17 Cecil, William (Lord Burghley) 20, 102 n. 32, 155, 334, 336, 448 censorship 459–60; see also under Castiglione, Baldassare; Machiavelli, Niccolo` Centorio degli Hortensii, Ascanio, military writer 37–8, 181, 544, 547 n. 91, 554, 563 centos, Virgilian 255, 649 Cerignola, battle of 561 Cesena 59, 317 Chabrias, military maxim of 503, 543–4 Chalcondylas 498 Chandon, monsieur 352–3 Chantecler, monsieur de 602 Chantelouve, Franc¸ois de, Tragedie du feu Gaspard de Colligny 245–7 Chapelain, physician 203 Chappelain, Charles, printer: elevated view of Machiavelli 518 marginal annotations to Machiavelli’s works 652–3 Charke, William, anti-Jesuit polemicist 396 Charlemagne 26, 155, 245, 307, 309 Charles V, King of France 211, 307 Charles VIII, King of France 211, 460, 563 Charles IX, King of France 229, 235–7, 238–40, 280, 288–90, 348 commemorative medals 233–4 device of 310

and St Bartholomew massacre 244–70, 266–9 see also Sorbin Charles V, Emperor 17, 96, 108, 115, 117, 118, 128, 134, 188, 512 admiration for Machiavelli 18–19, 143, 174, 202 n. 32, 478–9 dedicatee of Nifo’s De regnandi peritia 43–4, 47–8, 49, 70, 78 as Machiavelli’s saviour of Italy 213 Charles, Prince (future Charles 1, King of England) 615 Charles Martel 155, 245 Charpentier, Pierre, apologist for St Bartholomew massacre, Lettre 251–3, 278; see also Portes Charrier, Jean, translator: of the Arte della guerra 8, 19, 32, 183–4, 186–8, 191, 192, 419, 499 n. 68, 521, 523, 596 of Gasparo Contarini’s Des Magistratz et re´publique de Venise 186 n. 5, 193 of Onosander 186 Charron, Pierre, De la Sagesse: use of Machiavelli in 461–5, 551 use of Lipsius in 462 Chartier, Alain 600 Chastellan, physician 203 Chaˆtellerault 199 Chauderon, Jean 20 Chilon (one of the seven sages of ancient Greece) 75 Chiron, the centaur 67, 170, 435, 436, 452 Chokier, Johannes a, aphorisms of 658 Chomedy, Hierosme: Conjuration de Catilin 409 translator of Guicciardini’s Storia 639 Christ, and Christian violence 151 Christians: fortitude of 146–53 martyrs 153 pusillanimity of 455, 481 religion of, compared with paganism 419 warfare of 153–5, 422–3, 481–3, 485

I ND EX Christine de Pisan 152, 520 n. 11, 538, 541 Ciccarelli, Antonio, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio: on Bartolus 314 n. 68 opposed to Machiavelli 439 Cicero 310, 442, 476, 493, 544 n. 81, 578, 594, 615 De Officiis 62–3, 69, 170, 435, 436, 592 Pro Murena 174 n. 20 William Thomas and 106, 107 Cicuta, Aureliano, military writer 181, 528–9, 571 n. 144 Cinuzzi, Imperiale, military writer 11, 12, 181, 498, 532, 544, 546 career of 490–1 and Machiavelli 490–7 Ciotti, Giovanni Battista, printer 484 n. 15 Clavius, Jesuit mathematician 381 Clayton, Giles, military writer 547 n. 89 Cleland, James 582 on reading 634 Clement VII, Pope 26, 97, 212 Clement, assassin 391 n. 26, 403 Clemente, F., inquisitor general 677 Clovis, King of France 307 Cochlaeus, Johann 100 Coignet, Matthieu 43 n. 4, 166 n. 7 Coke, Edward, attorney general 457–8 Coligny, Gaspard II de, Admiral of France 239–40, 258, 275 in Chantelouve’s Tragedie 245–7 as dissimulator 249–50 wounding and murder of 229, 233, 259–60, 272 Colin, Jacques, translator of Il Cortegiano 596 Collado, Luis, writer on artillery 569 Collibus Hippolytus a, aphorisms of 658 Colmar 90 colonies 476, 488, 494 Colonna, Fabrizio 62 in the Arte della guerra 185, 369, 421, 423, 483, 488, 497 n. 65 Colonna, Prospero 42, 54, 56, 57, 62

741

Columbus, in Donne’s Conclave 381 Commendone, Giovanni Francesco, see Verrua commentaries on ancient texts, popularity of 523 Commodus, Emperor 72, 78, 308, 309 commonplaces 633–5; see also aphorisms Commynes, Philippe de 106, 211 n. 50, 306, 652 aphorisms of 633, 639–40, 650, 657, 658, 660 Gentillet’s enthusiasm for 307 Conde´, prince de 259 Conio, Alberigo da 53 Cono Superantius, preface to the Vindiciae 343–5 Conring, Hermann: analysis of Il Principe 441 n. 20 translation of Il Principe 155, 388 n. 21 Considerations sur le meurdre, Les 346–7 conspiracies 424, 462, 672–3 Constantine the Great, Emperor 155, 307, 420 n. 5 Constantinople 192 Contarini, Gasparo 186 n. 5, 193 Contarini, Pier’ Maria, military writer, Corso di guerra 181, 535, 544 n. 80, 554 Contre les fausses allegations 341 n. 34, 346 Copernicus, in Donne’s Conclave 377, 380–1, 407–8 Copley, Anthony 378, 399 Corbinelli, Jacopo 180 editor of Guicciardini’s Ricordi 341, 601–5, 656–7 Henri III’s instructor in Machiavellism 24, 341, 347 n. 58 interest in Gentillet 341 Coretus, Petrus 365, 387 Corinaldo 485 Cornazzano, Antonio, military writer 31–2 Cornwallis, Sir William 566 Correro, Giovanni 261 n. 45, 263–4

742

I ND EX

Corrozet, Giles, printer 204 Cosin, Richard 378, 381 Cotgrave, Randle 3, 573, 628 Coton, Pierre 405–6 Cotta, Fabio, translator of Onosander 192 Cottesford, Samuel, and Gentillet 364 Council of Trent 167, 168, 172, 178, 479, 485 counsellors of princes 74–5, 427 n. 13, 428 court of France, degeneracy of 273 courtiers: attacks on 138–9, 291–2, 580, 581, 588–99 cynicism of 608–9, 623–5 perverted morality of 17–18 purpose of 587–8 worldly advice to 574–7 Covell, William 403 n. 52 use of Gentillet 365, 381, 387 n. 19 Crevenna, Pietro Antonio 434 Croesus 495 Cromwell, Thomas 97–8, 378, 582 as disciple of Machiavelli 128–36 in Pole’s Apologia 121–6, 141–2 visits to Italy of 134 cruelty and clemency, see debating topics; political morality and immorality Cruso, John, military writer 494 n. 45 Cuyckius, Henricus (Henri van Cuyck) 434, 435–7 Cyrus 57, 62, 74, 492 n. 40, 674 Dallington, Robert, Aphorismes 544 n. 80, 636–7, 648 Dampmartin, Pierre de 602 n. 66 D’Andrea, A. 302 n. 52 Daneau, Lambert 360, 388, 636, 658 excludes Machiavelli from his collections of aphorisms 660–1 Latin translation of the ContreMachiavel 357–9 Daniel, prophet 93 Darius 161 D’Auvergne, Gaspard, translator of Il Principe 173, 184, 194, 196, 212, 214, 331, 335

elevated view of Machiavelli 201 Le Prince 198–201; Gentillet’s use of 316–18; Gohory’s criticism of 211; reissued with Gohory’s Discours 202, 230 David, King of Israel 92, 151, 248, 471 Davila, Enrico Caterino 24 De furoribus Gallicis 271–4 De l’excommunication 346 De regimine principum, see Speculum principum tradition De Thou, Christophe 214 n. 57 De Thou, Jacques-Auguste 82, 214 n. 57, 276 n. 9, 348 n. 65 on Schwendi 90 debating topics, military and moral: artillery, useless or otherwise 34, 40–1, 512–13, 559–60 cruelty and clemency 34, 39, 63–7, 81, 113–14, 314, 442, 662–3, 673–4 fortresses, advantages and disadvantages of 35–6, 81, 87–8, 423–4, 427, 460–1, 505, 511, 547–50 good generals and weak armies 53, 494, 505, 543–4, 550 infantry and cavalry 39, 421–2, 488, 494 n. 45, 495, 504, 539 love and fear 63–7, 81, 113–14, 131–2, 466, 493 n. 42 mercenaries, auxiliaries or native troops 58, 81, 91, 96–7, 421, 454, 501–2, 537–8, 550, 676 money as sinews of war 34, 61, 442, 460, 487, 505–6, 544–7, 550, 665 mountain passes, whether or not to defend 34, 460 neutrality, dangers of 70, 72–4, 665–6 parsimony and liberality 61–3, 81, 442, 662 phalanx or legion 38, 488–9, 538–40, 550, 567–8 war, defensive or offensive 34, 39, 96, 487, 494, 495, 504, 540–3, 552, 665 Deborah 153

I ND EX Decius, Emperor 252, 276 Decius, Publius (consul) 487, 541 Declaracion du Roy 234–5 Deimier, Louis 542, 544 n. 80 Del Bene, Baccio 24 Delisle, Le´opold 19 n. 5 Della Casa, Giovanni, Galateo 597 Della Rovere, Federico Ubaldo Gioseffe Feltrio, Prince of Urbino 607 Della Rovere, Francesco Maria (Duke of Urbino) 564 Della Valle, Battista, military writer 31–2, 554–5 Demetrius Phalerius 79 Democritus 591 Demosthenes 77, 661 Denis of Syracuse, see Dionysius Denisot, Nicolas 203 Deviezmaison, Raynssant 349 Diaceto, Ludovico de 269 n. 56 Dialogue du Royaume 348 dialogue form, unsatisfactory nature of 141, 156, 420–1, 478–9, 485 Dido 64 Digges, Thomas, mathematician and military writer 518 n. 3, 540 dispute with Smythe 543 uses Machiavelli 530, 533, 556, 560–1 Dini, Vincenzo, Discorso sopra Livio 523–4 Diocletian, Emperor 56, 276 Diodorus Siculus 52, 519 n. 6, 661 Diogenes Laertius 544 n. 81 Dion 306, 519 n. 6 Dionisotti, Carlo 43 n. 3 Dionysius Halicarnassus 567, 661 Dionysius the elder, tyrant of Syracuse 308 Dionysius the younger, tyrant of Syracuse 57, 71, 209 Discorso militare (BL Add. MS 12038) 655 n. 66 Discours contre les Huguenotz 249 Discours de la guerre 532 n. 44 Discours du massacre . . . a` Lyon 274 n. 5, 276 Discours en forme d’oraison funebre 347

743

Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis 277–8 authorship of 277 n. 17 Discours sur la mort de Gaspard de Coligny 250 dissimulation and simulation 269–70, 435, 436, 463–4, 466–7, 486–7, 503–4, 575–6, 594–5, 604, 618–19, 628, 675 Dolce, Lodovico 640 n. 28 Domenichi, Lodovico 28, 47 n. 15 Domitian, Emperor 309 Donaldson, Peter 110–12, 115 n. 2, 116 n. 3, 126 n. 18, 136 n. 28 Dondi, Giorgio 478 n. 2 Doni, Antonio Francesco 21 Donne, John: Ignatius His Conclave 12, 374–414, 573, 629 Pseudo-martyr 383–4 Donneau, Hugues 279 Dorat, Jean 23, 195, 203 D’Orco, Ramiro, see Ramiro d’Orco Doria, Andrea 459 Double d’une lettre 351 n. 70 Drake, Sir William, commonplace books of 635 Dreux, De´claration at 283 Du Bellay, Guillaume, sieur de Langey 31–2, 499, 657, 507; see also Fourquevaux Du Bellay, Joachim 23, 203 Du Bellay, Martin 306 Du Bois, Philibert 557–8 Du Chesne, Legier 244 Du Choul, Guillaume, antiquary, Discours sur la castrametation, use of Machiavelli in 34, 36, 31, 193, 526 n. 25 Du Haillan, Bernard de Girard, seigneur, defence of the St Bartholomew massacre 238–40 Du Moulin, Charles, cites Machiavelli 26–7, 330 Du Plessis Mornay, Philippe 386, 390 Du Praissac, military writer 494 n. 45 Du Prat, Antoine 20 Du Refuge, Eustache, Traicte´ de la cour 614–23, 625, 628, 637

744

I ND EX

Ducci, Lorenzo, Arte aulica 141, 607–14, 615, 625, 628 and Castiglione 610–11 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 360, 448–9, 530 Eccles, Mark 452, 458 Edict of Pacification (1563) 238, 252 Edmondes, Clement, on the military value of reading 519 n. 6 Edward III, King of England 107 Edward VI, King of England 104, 108 Eguya, Miguel de, printer 184 Ehrenbergk, Waramundus de, aphorisms of 398, 658–9 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 155, 358, 379, 404, 449 dedicatee of Beacon’s Solon his follie 474; of Whitehorne’s Arte of Warre 189 and the French marriage 360–2, 448 Elyot, Sir Thomas 599 n. 60 emblem books 631 emblematists, attacks on courtiers 589 Emmanuel of Portugal 155 empire, augmentation of 455 encampments, see Vigene`re Epaminondas 484 Epicedia illustri heroi Gaspari Colignio 277 epigrams 631 Epistre aux delicats machiavelistes 279 n. 27 Erasmus, aphorisms of 633 Ercole I, Duke of Ferrara 57 Estienne, Charles, printer 195 Estienne, Henri 26 n. 27, 277 n. 17, 627 n. 97 Estrange amitie´, L’ 348 Euclid 20 Euripides 71, 171 n. 13 Evoli, Cesare d’, military writer 571 n. 144 Exeter, Henry Courtenay, Marquis of 118 Fabius Maximus Cunctator 487 Fabius Maximus Rullianus 541

Fabre, Pierre 279 n. 27 Facius, Gaspard, associates Machiavelli and Ciccarelli 439 n. 14 factions 425, 472, 476, 552 Falco, Jean, biographer of D’Auvergne 198–9 Fano, Bishop of 411 Faret, Nicolas 622 n. 91 Farnese, Alessandro 490, 549 n. 97, 551 Fauchet, Claude 203 Faux visage, Le 346 Favier, Nicolas, on medals for St Bartholomew massacre 232–4, 310 n. 62 Federigo, King of Naples 342 n. 35 Felippe, Bartolome, Tractado del conseio, knowledge of Machiavelli in 175 n. 25, 447 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey, translator of Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia 457 Ferdinand (Ferrante), King of Naples 71, 495 Ferdinand of Aragon (the Catholic) 56, 61, 68, 70, 155, 309 Ferna´ndez de Cordova, Gonzalo, ‘El Gran capitan’ 43, 185 Fernel, Jean 194, 203 Fe´ron, Arnoul de 214 Ferrari, Gianfrancesco 264 Ferrari, Giuseppe 678 Ferretti, Francesco, military writer 180, 529 Fiammelli, Giovanni Francesco, military writer 549 n. 97 Ficino, Marsilio 579 Figueroa, Christoval Suarez de 174 n. 20 Filiarchi, Cosimo 532 n. 44 Fioretti, Benedetto, censor 677 firearms 422, 496–7, 500, 509, 511–13, 558–66 Fisher, John (Cardinal) 116, 118 Fitzgerald, Thomas 470 Fitzherbert, Thomas, critic of Machiavelli: An sit Utilitas 391 n. 27 A defence 392 n 28

I ND EX Policy and Religion 132 n. 22, 362 n. 89, 392–5, 409, 440, 441 Flacius Illyricus, Mathias, cites the Istorie fiorentine 26, 98, 330 Flanders, wars in 676 flattery and flatterers 45, 76–7, 137–40, 575, 586, 588, 604–5, 611–12, 617–18, 621 Florence 26–7, 73 and Antonio Giacomini 474 and Arezzo 471–2 described by William Thomas 103–4 fortezza di Belvedere in 491 and Pistoia 64 praise of 212 Florio, John 339, 444 n. 25, 607 n. 73 Folch de Cardona, Antonio, Duke of Sessa 176 Fontaine, Charles 203 Fontaine Perilleuse, La 203 force and fraud 127–8, 318, 442, 472–3, 486–7, 493, 503, 627, 673 bonum dolum (a good fraud) 267 see also political morality Forlı` 424 Fornovo, battle of 539 fortresses, see debating topics fortune (Fortuna) 57–60, 92–3, 209, 419, 443, 488, 495, 504, 580 favours the wicked 617 Fourquevaux, Raymond de Beccarie, seigneur de 41 n.73, 184, 477, 521, 522, 523, 534, 540, 542 Instructions, authorship of 31–2, 499, 507; based on the Arte della guerra 522, 523, 567 see also Vigene`re Fox Morcilla, Sebastia´n 175 n. 25 Frachetta, Girolamo: Il prencipe 540, 556 n. 110, 561 Il Seminario 636, 641–2, 643, 648, 657, 658 knowledge of Machiavelli 657 France: army of 426 corrupted by Italians 291–6, 358, 423 courtiers of, satirized 450

745

degenerate jurisconsults of 290–1 military practice of 500 virtues of, contrasted with Italian vices 281–2, 288 Franc¸ois Ier, King of France 19, 193, 194, 221, 308, 309, 460, 512 Franc¸ois II, King of France 235, 238 Frata et Montalbano, Marco de la 82 fraud, see force and fraud, political morality Frezza, Fabio, aphorizes Tacitus 642, 643, 659 Froissart 106, 306 Frontinus, Stratagems 31, 33, 98, 213, 506, 510, 522, 535, 536–7, 541, 569, 640–1 Froumenteau, Nicolas, see Barnaud Fulbecke, William 546 n. 86 Furio´ Ceriol, Fadrique, El concejo, knowledge of Il Principe in 175 n. 25 Gaddi, Giovanni 80, 166 Galba, Emperor 309 Galen, aphorisms of 632 Gandino, Marc’Antonio, translator of Frontinus 640–1 Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, putative author of Rainsford’s Ragionamento 109–11 Garimberto, Girolamo 8, 534 Il Capitano Generale, use of Machiavelli in 38–41, 559 Garnet, Henry 398 Garnett, George 343 n. 43 Garzoni, Tommaso 174 n. 20 Gasquet, E´mile 102, 173 n. 19, 329 n. 9, 444 n. 27 Gauls, and Druids 152 in battle 506 gendarmerie 421–2 Ge´ne´brard, Gilbert, Archbishop of Aix 480 Geneva: calumnies against 276 Italians in 325, 327 Registres du Conseil of 283, 417 Genlis, Huguenot commander 259

746

I ND EX

Genoa 56, 103 Gentili, Alberico 526 n. 25, 535, 547 n. 91, 658 De legationibus, Machiavelli as republican enemy of tyranny in 132 n. 22, 179, 367–8, 409 Gentillet, Innocent 11, 126 n. 18, 194, 270, 271, 350, 351, 440, 441, 551, 665 Apologie 303 n. 53 Brieve remonstrance 295 n. 44, 296 n. 45 Contre-Machiavel (revised editions, 1585, 1609) 12, 302, 417–33, 532 n. 44 discovers the Arte della Guerra and Istorie Fiorentine 417–18 maxims appended to 431–3 poor method of 425–6 soldiers and climate discussed in 426 Contre-Machiavel (1576) 283–324 aims of 285–96 appeal to historical example 303–10 attack on French jurisconsults 290–1; on Italians 291–6; on Machiavelli as historian 304; on Machiavelli’s method 88 n. 5, 301–3, 423–4; on Ronsard 289–90 classical historians in 306–7 compared with Pole’s work 142 debt to Gohory and D’Auvergne 91, 184, 212, 220 n. 75, 311–12, 335 dependence on translations 315–22 Discorsi regarded as commentary on Il Principe in 302 emblem of 234, 310–11 England, impact in 356–71 on factions 425 France, criticism in 352–6 and Gabriel Harvey 448, 450

historical method discussed in 297–303 historical method of, defective 306 Il Principe (ch. 26) echoed in 294–6 Il Principe regarded as full of ‘pre´ceptes tyranniques’ in 302 influence of 337–73 influence on: Boitet 466; Ribadeneira and Fitzherbert 390, 391, 394 Italian reaction to 325–7 Italy as the cause of French corruption in 286–8 and the Jesuits 384–96 Machiavelli, inadvertent agreement with 545–6, 548 on Machiavelli’s incompetence 285–6; method 88 n. 5, 423–4; military incompetence 518; selective misuse of Livy 304 on Machiavellism of French court 596, 627 n. 97 and Marlowe 363–4 maxims, their role discussed in 299–300, 344–5, 643 on ‘maximes tyranniques’ 340–52, 419, 641, 651 modern criticism of 283–4, 323–4, 328–9 opponents of 179, 353, 354, 368, placed on the Index 388 polemical context of 229–80 popularity of 9, 324, 522 praised by Daneau 661; by Richard Harvey 370; by La Noue 354; by Stradling 357 qualities and limitations of 284 and the Reveille-matin 279 as a source of aphorisms 658, 659 structure of 302–3, 310–13 translations of: English 359; German 359 n. 84, 436 n. 8; Latin 357–9

I ND EX De´claration at Dreux, his contribution to 283 Declaration de l’Auteur 325–7 Remonstrance au Roy Henri III 281, 337 Gerber, Adolf 18 n. 1 Germans, military practice of 426, 500, 528–9, 565 virtues of 319 Gesner, Conrad 22–3, 31, 41, 418 n. 2 Ghiaradada, battle of 182 Ghislieri, Michele 172 Giacomini, Antonio 474 Giannotti, Donato 25, 31, 41 Gideon 155 Gilbert, Felix, machiavelatry of 519 n. 8, 531–2 Giolito, Gabriel, printer 263, 525 Giovio, Paolo 104, 173, 178, 326, 329, 342 n. 35, 510 n. 83 biography of Machiavelli 31, 166–7, 198, 340, 436 cited by Bodin 301 n. 50 biography of Nifo 45 historical works reduced to aphorisms 641 Girardi, Antonio, military writer 8, 37, 544, 545 n. 83, 554, 559, 560 Giunta, Bernardo di, printer 80, 82, 166, 197, 329 Godefroy de Bouillon 155 Gohory, Jacques: Animadversiones on Livy 206 career and works of 202–4 De rebus gestis francorum 214 influence on Gentillet 311–12, 316–22 opinion of Arte della guerra 213; of Istorie fiorentine 213 plagiarizes Cappel’s translation of Il Principe 195, 204, 211–12 translation of the Discorsi by 20, 202–25, 230, 306, 335, 596; ‘authentic’ editions of 204; pirated editions of 204–5; importance of 183–4; presented to Anne de Montmorency 19, 193; Schwendi annotates text of 90;

747

strengths and deficiencies of 216–25 translation, views on 214–16 translation of Livy by 205–8 Vie de Machiavel by 205, 211–14 Gondi, Giovanni Battista 671 Gonzaga, Ercole, Cardinal 177 Gorgieri, Lauro, military writer 553 Gotha 91 Goths, attacks on the Roman Empire 422 Gouffier, Claude, Duke of Roannez 20 Gouge, William 532 n. 44 Goulart, Simon 277 n. 17 Gracia´n, Baltazar: Ora´culo 623–5, 628 sprezzatura in 624–5 Granvelle, Cardinal 109, 334 n. 24 Gravelle, Franc¸ois de, Politiques royales, conventional attacks on Machiavelli 350–1 Gray, Lord 474 grazia, in Il Cortegiano 579, 582–4 satirized by Philibert de Vienne 594–5 Greeks, degeneracy of modern 326–7 Gregoire, Pierre 27 n. 30, 658 Gregory III, Pope 100 Gregory V, Pope 100 Gregory VII, Pope 274 Gregory XIII, Pope 235, 255 and St Bartholomew massacre 232 Grey, Lady Jane 331 Grimaudet, Franc¸ois, knowledge and use of Machiavelli 439–40 Grimmenstein 91 Grolier, Jean 19 Grotius, Hugo 535 Groulleau, Estienne, printer 193, 204, 596 Gruter, Jan 659 Gualther, Rudolf 23 Guazzo, Stefano 581 Guevara, Antonio de, hostility to courtiers 581, 589, 598, 600 Guicciardini, Francesco 11, 41 n. 73, 104, 622, 627, 650 aphorisms of 633, 636–41, 644, 649, 652, 658, 665

748

I ND EX

Guicciardini, Francesco (cont) praised by Canini 637–8 Considerazioni 34–5, 85–90, 106, 114, 304 n. 54, 305, 417 on attack or defence 542 on fortresses 87–8, 547–8, 550 on historical method 88 on Machiavelli’s false dichotomies 87 on money as the sinews of war 545 omissions from 86 on the Romans 87–8, 552 his political immorality denounced by Vignier 342 n. 35 as Prologus in the Divils Charter 456 Ricordi 600–5, 630–1, 636, 662 on courtly accomplishments 600–1 cynicism of 603–5, 610 n. 78 glossed by Corbinelli, using Machiavelli 341–2, 657 see also Hypomneses politicae Storia d’ Italia 164, 345–6, 278, 475, 476, 510 n. 83, 636–8, 662 translated by Fenton 469 see also B., T. Guidacci, Giovanbattista 29 n. 38 Guise, family 246, 272, 418 assassination of the Duke and Cardinal 9, 339, 372 Guise, Henri de Lorraine, Duke of 256, 260; see also Lorraine, Charles de (Cardinal) gun versus bow, controversy 563 gunpowder, used by Chinese 512 Gunpowder plot 375, 404 Gustavus Adolphus 562, 570 Guzman da Silva, Don Diego 334 n. 24 Haddon, Walter 144 Hale, Sir John 532–3, 563 n. 128, 570 Hall, Bert S. 558 n. 114 Hamilcar 67 Hamilton, James (regent of Scotland) 199, 331 Hannibal 63, 67, 96, 427, 428, 493 n. 42, 495, 524, 542

cruelty of 65 Gentillet’s view of 308 Harding, Thomas, controversy with Jewel 329–31 Harvey, Gabriel 12, 447, 459 Gratulationum Valdinensium libri 448–51, 452; Machiavellus in 383, 449–50 knowledge of Machiavelli 360–1, 369, 447, 623 n. 93 and Marlowe 450 and the Philosophe de Court 597–8 on William Thomas 104 Harvey, Richard 381 knowledge of Machiavelli and Gentillet 369–70, 381, 533 Harward, Simon, knowledge of Machiavelli and Gentillet 370–1 Hastings, Francis 357, 358 n. 83 Hatton, Sir Christopher 448, 597 Healy, T. S. 375, 376 Hebrews and war 155 Heliogabalus, Emperor 308 Henri II, King of France 19, 235, 246, 286, 308, 512 dedicatee (when Dauphin) of Charrier’s L’art de la guerre 186 Henri III, King of France (formerly Duke of Anjou) 252, 260, 280 n. 27, 352, 534 assassination of 9, 339, 372, 391 n. 26, 403 palace academy of 24 as student of Machiavelli 24, 341, 346–8 as victim of the Huguenots 267–8 Henri IV, King of France (formerly Henri de Navarre) 349, 350, 404 assassination of 405, 407, 673 marriage of 229, 257, 272, 362 Henri de Navarre, see Henri IV Henry II, King of England 383 Henry VI, King of England 113 Henry VIII, King of England 6, 99, 107, 116, 117, 118, 134, 501 the divorce question 116, 124, 131 as Machiavelli’s disciple 128–36 in Pole’s Apologia 119–36, 141–2

I ND EX Henry, Prince of Wales 637 Herberay, Nicolas de, seigneur Des Essarts 203 on Gohory’s Livy 205–6 writes liminary verses for Gohory’s Discours 20, 597 Herbert, Philip, Earl of Montgomery 607 Herbert, Sir William, and Ireland 468 n. 69 Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke 607 Hercules 71, 157, 234, 289 Herod 252 as a Machiavellian 395 n. 36 Herodian 193, 194 n. 20, 306 Herodotus 68, 541 Heron, Haly, on the degeneracy of court life 589 Hesiod 74 Hesse, landgrave of 347 n. 58 Hiero of Syracuse 57, 197 n. 24, 209, 502 Hieroclytus 57 Hill, Napoleon 626 n. 94 Hippocrates, Aphorisms of 630, 632, 643, 644–5, 648–9 Hoby, Sir Thomas 188 Holofernes 256, 268 Homer 79, 429 Honorius, Emperor 420 n. 5 Horace 52 Horologgi, Giuseppe 589 Horrocks, John Wesley, pioneering work on Tudor reception of Machiavelli v–vi, 100 n. 26, 102 n. 33, 104 n. 41, 331 n. 15, 333 n. 20, 334, 336 n. 27, 398 n. 41, 441, 443, 446 n. 32, 455 n. 48 Hoskins, John, on aphorisms 633 Hotman, Franc¸ois 272, 279, 444 n. 26; see also De furoribus Gallicis Howard, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk 192 Huguenots: alleged conspiracy of 251–3, 257, 274–6 crimes imputed to 232–4, 235–6, 238–9

749

politic religion of 248–53, 268–9 pragmatism of 574 Hull, John 404 Hume of Godscroft, David 12, 299 n. 48 Apologia Basilica of 440–3; on mercenaries 538; on Machiavelli’s selfcontradictions 442–3 Contr’ Assassin of 403 n. 53, 406 n. 63, 440 hunting, as military training 37, 53–4, 492, 674 Hurault, Jacques 534, 542, 544 n. 80 Hurault, Philippe, comte de Cheverny 347 Hypomneses politicae 638–9 Illustrium aliquot Germanorum carminum liber 277 Indexes of prohibited books 11, 17–18, 33, 164–5, 393–4, 435, 436, 438 effect in Italy 174, 176–82 effect in Spain 174–6 Index (1557) 164–5, 172 Index (1559) 6, 164–5, 172–3, 183 Index (1564) 165 n. 3, 169 n. 11, 172 Index (1590) 580 Index (1605) 461 Index (Portugal, 1583) 174 n. 20 Index (Spain, 1583) 176 Index (Spain: 1583 and 1584) 174 n. 20 Index (Spanish Cathologus of 1559) 174 infantry, as the sinews of war 529; see also debating topics influence, ideas concerning 7–10, 679 Ingolstadt, Emperor’s camp at 96 Innocenti, Piero 18 n. 1 innovation and innovators 378–81, 394–5 inscriptions 631 Institution de la discipline militaire 38, 41 n.73, 339, 529–30 Intiera relatione 253–4 Iphicrates 162

750

I ND EX

Ireland, English policy towards 468 n. 69 legislation concerning 471 see also Beacon; Herbert; Spenser; Sutcliffe Isocrates 79, 81, 538 Israelites 248 Italians: condemnations of: in the De furoribus 273–4; in the ContreMachiavel 291–6, 325–7; in the Remonstrance au roy Henri III 281–2; in the Reveillematin 279–80 cruelty and blood lust of 293 degeneracy of 327, 553–4, 587 general unpopularity of 338 in Geneva 325–7 military corruption of 506, 528, 529; practice of 500 praised by Gohory 212 propensity of, for devising rules and method 510 satirized by Gabriel Harvey 448; by Philibert de Vienne 595 usury of 293, 345 James I, King of England 376, 404, 455, 456 James Stuart, Earl of Moray 332, 334 James V, King of Scotland 199 James, Duke of Lennox 626 Jameson, T. H. 451 Janet, Alexandre Rene´ 328 n. 5 Janot, Denys, printer 204 Javitch, Daniel 595–6, 597–8, 599 n. 60 Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, murder of 258, 273 Jebusites 268 Jehu 245 Jephtha 155 Jesuits 374, 377, 574, 575 controversy with moderate Catholics 397–9 doctrine of tyrannicide 402–6, 412–13 hypocrisy of 248–9

and Machiavelli 12, 377–9, 381–4, 386–96, 399–401, 402–3, 410–14 mission to England of (1580) 396 see also Bell; Donne; Pasquier; Watson Jewel, John, Bishop, controversy with Harding 329–30 Jodelle, Estienne 195, 203 Johann Ludwig of Nassau 359 n. 84 John III, King of Portugal 155 Johnson, Samuel 679 on aphorisms 633 jokes 578, 611, 616 Jonson, Ben 635 n. 15 Josephus 306 Joshua 155 Josias 245 Joubert, Laurent, on laughter 444 n. 25 Judith 256 Julius II, Pope, 59, 61, 309 Julius Caesar 152, 170, 171 n. 13, 498, 509, 523, 559, 661 cruelty of 534 as exemplar 34, 150, 674 Garimberto on 38–9 in Nifo 56, 57, 63, 69 Jupiter 246, 317 Justice: criminal prosecution of the dead 290–1 satirized by Philibert de Vienne 592–3 Justin 57, 197 Justinian 268 Justinus 661 Kaiser, Joachim 1 Kay, John 589 Kelley, Stanley 626 n. 94 Kempner, Nadja 668 Koran 286 Krompach, Nicolaus 173 La Haye, Jean de 478 La Houssaye, Amelot de: on Tacitus 656 n. 70 translation of Gracia´n 623, 625

I ND EX La Huguerye, Michel de 347 n. 58 La Loupe, Vincent de 179, 670 n. 98 La Madeleyne, Jean de, military writer 525, 530 La Mothe, Jean de 348 La Noue, Franc¸ois de 352, 504, 643, 660 n. 85 denounced by Possevino 386–7; by Ribadeneira 390 on Machiavelli and Gentillet 353–4, 368–9 political maxims of 639 La Perrie`re, Guillaume 28 La Popelinie`re, Lancelot Voisin, seigneur de 352, 536 n. 59 on Gentillet 354–6 on Machiavelli’s atheism 210 n. 46 La Porte, Maurice de 590 La Primaudaye, Pierre de 364 La Rochelle, siege of 673 La Tourette, Alexandre de 203 Labyrinthe Royal 348 Lambard, William 20 Lamberto, Francesco, beats up Gentillet 327 Lampridius 306 L’Angelier, Abel, printer 499 Languet, Hubert 255 n. 41 Larivey, Pierre de 461 n. 58 Lasso, Orlando di 203 Latomus, Joannes 45 laughter 45 n. 9, 444 n. 25 Lautrec, Odet de 54 Laval, Antoine de, sneers at Machiavelli 285 n. 39 Laven, Peter J. 102 n. 33, 104 n. 41 Le Bon, Jean, physician 249 Le Caron, Louis (Charondas) 351 n. 70 Le Faucheur, Michel 579 Le Guast 279 n. 23, 348 Le Loyer, Pierre 166 n. 7 Le Mangnier, Robert, printer 204, 210, 230 Le Moyne, Pierre, poor opinion of Lipsius 462 n. 62, 647 n. 52 Le Roy, Adrien 203 Le Roy, Louis 540

751

derives his military ideas from Fourquevaux 522–3 Le Veneur, Gabriel (Bishop of Evreux), dedicatee of Gohory’s Discours 208–10 Lee, Thomas 476 Legh, John 117 n. 6 legion versus phalanx, see debating topics Legnano, Giovanni da 534, 541 Lemnius, Levinus 203 Le´nient, Charles 262 Lennard, Samson, translator of Charron 461 Leo VI, Emperor 567 Leo X, Pope 43, 45, 51 Leonardi, Giovan Giacopo, military writer 31 Le´ry, Jean de 343 n. 42 Leslie, John, Bishop of Ross: A treatise of treasons 334–5 Defence 334 knowledge of Machiavelli 333–5, 410 L’Estoile, Pierre de 277 n. 17 letters (literature): lubricity of 423 n. 9 source of corruption 423 n. 9 see also arms and letters Leunclavius, Joannes 372 n. 109 Levytt, John, translator of the Discorsi 444 n. 27 Libanius 544 n. 81 liberality, satirized in Vienne 593 liberty, best defended by arms 455 Liburnio, Niccolo` 654 Licinius 252 Ligi, Paolo, military writer 36 Liguria 193 lion and fox metaphor 127, 159, 170, 267, 280, 347, 349, 435, 436, 452–3, 463, 503, 536 n. 59, 663, 675 Lipsius, Justus 551, 658, 660 n. 85 and fraud 535 ignorance of military affairs 570 and Maurits of Nassau 567, 570 on money as the sinews of war 546 and political aphorisms 647

752

I ND EX

Lipsius, Justus (cont) used by Charron 462 and Vegetius 527–8 see also B., T. Livio de’ Frulovisi, Tito 538 n. 64 Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d’Or 203 Livy 93 n. 14, 106, 107, 210, 213, 333, 348, 423, 429, 476, 492 n. 40, 498, 509, 519 n. 6, 567, 650 on avaritia and luxuria 62, 78 commented on, by Ciccarelli 439; by Dini 523–4 on the Gauls 506 on the Greek and Roman armies 540 Machiavelli’s misuse of 88, 305–6, 352–3 translated and edited by Gohory 203, 205–8, 214–16 Llanthomas (Breconshire) 102 Locatelli, Eustachio, Bishop of Reggio 177–8 Lombardelli, Orazio 635 Lorraine, Charles de (Cardinal) 256, 257, 258, 259, 261 n. 45, 263, 265, 274 Lottini, Giovanni Francesco, Avvedimenti civili 36, 542, 547 n. 91, 638 Louis IX, King of France 307 Louis XI, King of France 309, 639 Louis XII, King of France 53, 56, 61, 73, 308 Louvain 434 Louveau, translation of Istorie fiorentine 444 n. 27 love, divine and profane 578–9 love and fear, see debating topics Loyola, Ignatius 389, 400, 402, 404 in Donne’s Conclave 377, 379, 381, 382–4, 395–6, 407–13, 573 Luciani, Vincent 666 Lucianic satire 590–1 Lucifer 123 in Donne’s Conclave 377, 379, 380–1, 382–4, 407–10, 413, 573 Lucifer Caralitanus, Bishop of Cagliari 408

Lucinge, Rene´ de 544, 549–50 Lucretius 24 Luigi, Piero 411 Luiz, Prince of Portugal 144, 155 Lull, Ramon 512 Luther, Martin 379, 402 Lu¨tzen, battle of 562 luxuria 62 Lycurgus 402, 473 lying, see dissimulation and simulation Lyon, massacre at (1572) 260, 273–4 Lysander 157, 159, 267, 503 n. 71 McCuaig, William 98 n. 21 Macedonian phalanx 539 Macedonians 148, 499 Machevil in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta 450 Machiavel stereotype 501, 626–9 Machiavel, in Donne’s Conclave 377, 379, 380–1, 382–4, 395–6, 408–14 Machiavelli, Niccol
as anti-papal historian 173, 330, 411, 439 aphorisms: created by 633 derived from 649–70 love of 298–9 use of 649 see also debating topics as atheist 167, 169–70, 198, 210 n. 46, 282 n. 31, 287, 294, 323, 346, 349, 356, 360, 365, 369, 371, 387, 394 n. 33, 401 attitude to Livy 305–6 cant use of his name (Machiavel, machiavellistes, machiavellique, etc.) 269, 291, 328–36, 337–73, 573–4, 626–7 censorship of 165, 174, 176–8 circumlocutory references to (Secretario Fiorentino, alcuno, altri, l’autore de Discorsi, istorico fiorentino, nostro istoriografo fiorentino, quidam, un certo autore) 164–5, 180–2, 438–9, 459, 486, 655–7, 662 classical authorities, dependence on 520

I ND EX and conspiracies 409–10 as the courtiers’ ‘Alcoran’ 286, 340, 345, 360 cruelty, advocacy of 673, 674–5 enthusiasm for 189, 195–8, 211–16 as eulogist of democracy 368 expurgated editions, projects for: in Italy 176–8, in Spain 176 false dichotomies in 87 as ‘finger of Satan’ 126–8, 381 and Germany 95 heretics compared with 169 hostility to Christianity 93–5 marginal annotations to 652–3 maxims of 279, 287; see also under Gentillet method of 88, 207–8, 423–4, 441–2 criticism of, see Canaye; Gentillet; Guicciardini; Hume; Stubbes military aphorisms of 34–6, 479–85, 537–52, 650 as military authority: modern views of 519–21 Renaissance views of 30–41, 180–1, 185–6, 187, 189, 213, 477–513, 518, 521–2, 528–9, 530, 537, 540–2, 544–9, 551–2, 559–61, 571, 650, 679 military theory, debt to predecessors 520–1 modern research industry on 678–9 and pagan religion 93–5 paganism and Christianity 146–7, 391 political dissimulation 269–70, 393 political morality 199–201 and political poisons 166, 167, 168–9, 197, 283, 340, 661 popularity of 2–3, 6, 32–3, 85, 146, 183, 324 praised as interpreter of Livy 207–8 readership of 437–8, 445–6, 679–80 reception, problems relating to 3–10 reputation in Scotland of 331–5 satirized by Gabriel Harvey 448–51 selective reading of 650

753

Machiavelli, individual works Arte della guerra 2, 6, 19, 21, 22–3, 25, 32–3, 38–41, 47, 151–2, 418, 478–85, 488–9, 491, 497, 498–9, 506–9, 521–3, 528, 529, 530, 533, 538–40, 541, 543, 545, 547, 552, 567, 570, 571, 652, 669 Asino d’oro 21 Belphagor 21 Clizia 17, 21, 22 n. 19 Decennale Primo 164 n. 1 Descrizione del modo 213 Discorsi 2, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 28, 37, 38–41, 55, 64 n. 36, 118, 103–9, 109–14, 353, 444 n. 27, 486–8, 493–6, 501–6, 511 n. 84, 513, 540–2, 543–4, 545, 546, 547, 551–2, 554, 555, 558–9, 560, 570, 637 n. 17, 650, 652–3, 656, 658, 659, 668, 669 Istorie fiorentine 2, 6, 20, 21, 25, 26–7, 29, 97–8, 100, 117, 162–3, 210–11, 419–20, 657, 659 n. 78, 663–4 Mandragola 17, 21 Principe 2, 6, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 37, 43–84, 106–7, 109–14, 132, 134–6, 150–1, 353, 409, 492, 493, 501–2, 503, 530, 545, 547, 548–9, 637 n. 17, 650, 652–3, 654–5, 656, 657, 658, 662–3, 669, 672–8, 680 Ritratti 179 Ritratto delle cose della Magna 213 Ritratto di cose di Francia 112, 213 Vita di Castruccio Castracani 213, 672 Machiavelli, Niccolo` di Bernardo (Machiavelli’s nephew) 177–8 Machiavellus, see Gabriel Harvey Machon, Louis 194 n. 20 McKerrow, R. B. 457 n. 50 Maggi, Girolamo (writer on fortification), knowledge of Machiavelli 35–36, 180–1, 547

754

I ND EX

magistrates, frequent changes of 423 magnanimity, satirized by Philibert de Vienne 593–4 Magny, Olivier de 203 Mahomet, in Donne’s Conclave 377, 380 Maillard, Olivier, ‘coughing eloquence’ of 579 Maitland, Thomas 333 Maitland of Lethington, William, as a Machiavellian 331–2 Malavolti, Orlando, historian of Siena, praises Machiavelli 181–2 Malines, Archbishop of 434 Mallard, Robert, printer, annotations to Le Prince 652 Manlius Capitolinus 100 n. 26 Manrique de Lara, Don Pedro, Duke of Najara 185 Marcus Crassus 309 Marguerite de Valois 279 n. 23 marriage to Henri de Navarre 229, 257, 272, 362 Mariana, Juan de 176 advocacy of tyrannicide 403, 406 Marignano, battle of 40, 561 Marius, Gaius 492 Marlowe, Christopher 383 Dr Faustus 456–7 The Jew of Malta 363–4, 456 Marnef and Cavallat, printers 205, 316 Marot, Cle´ment 193, 434 Marprelate controversy 23, 339, 369, 372 Marrani (the Moors in Granada) 70 Marretti, Lelio, reduces Tacitus to aphorisms 641 n. 33 Martin, Jean 203 Martinelli, Paolo, editor of Ducci’s Arte aulica 607 Martire des deux freres, Le 347 Mary, Queen of Scots 199, 331–2, 333, 398 Mary Tudor, Queen of England 108–9, 358 n. 83, 362 Massi and Landi, printers 671 Mastellone, Salvo 342 n. 44 Mattei, Rodolfo de 5, 417 n. 1

Matthieu, Pierre 639–40, 658 Maugin, Jean 597 Maurevert, an assassin 259–60 Maurice, Emperor 309 Maurits of Nassau: and military reform, 567, 568–9, 570 library of 566–7, 569 Maximinus, Emperor 308 maxims 298–302; see also aphorisms medals, for St Bartholomew massacre, see Favier Medici, Catherine de’ 166 n. 7, 238, 252, 259, 267, 331, 338, 450, 601, 657 and the St Bartholomew massacre 230, 244, 271, 272, 277–8, 280 Medici, Cosimo de’ 56, 104 Medici, Cosimo I, Duke of Florence 81 Medici, Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany 677 Medici, family, praised by Pichi 673 Medici, Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany 677 Medici, Francesco de’ 80 Medici, Giovanni de’ (delle Bande nere) 28, 30, 40 n. 72 Medici, Lorenzo de’ 51, 71, 104 Medici, Lorenzo di Piero de’ 212–13 Meillet, Laurent 549 n. 97 Mendoza, Spanish ambassador in England 367 Mephistophilis, in Marlowe’s Faustus 457 mercenaries, see debating topics Mercury, in Chantelouve’s Tragedie 246 Metellus Pius 266 n. 52 Meurs . . . de Henry de Valois, Les 347 Meyer, Edward 328, 373, 452 n. 43 Milan, described by Thomas 103 military books, increased publication of 477 diagrams 571 institutions, the basis of the State 492 ‘military revolution’ 564–72

I ND EX militia (native troops), see debating topics Milton, John 667, 668 Mini, Paolo, responds to Gentillet 179 Minos 402 Miroir des Franc¸ois, Le, see Barnaud Mirouer Catholique 348 Miskovski, Sigismondo, dedicatee of Baccellini’s Aforismi 478 Modestus 506 Mohl, Robert von 328, 338 Molanus, Joannes ( Jan van de Meulen): attack on Machiavelli 436–7 De fide 365, 387, 435–7 Mombrun, seigneur de 291 Monarca, Gennaro 44 n. 6 Monastir, bombardment of 188 money, as sinews of war, see debating topics Monstrelet, Enguerrand de 306 Montaigne, Michel de 8, 323, 461, 637 on ‘l’escrivaillerie’, 339, 372 on Gentillet 352, 354 on Machiavelli 445, 560 n. 21 on offensive or defensive war 542 use of aphorisms 649 Montaud, Nicolas, see Barnaud Monte, Pietro 534 Montgommery, comte de 246, 277, 291 Montgommery, Louis de, military writer 540, 567–8 Montmorency, Anne de (Constable of France) 19, 193, 204, 215 Montmorency, Franc¸ois de, ambassador in England 258 Monty Python’s Flying Circus 679 More, Sir Thomas 116, 100 n. 26, 118 Utopia of 138–9 Moreau, Brigitte 277 n.17 Morel, Jean, supposed translation of the Arte della guerra 22–3 Moreri, Louis 27 n. 30 Morton, Thomas, Bishop 410 Moryson, Richard 114, 118, 190 n. 10, 329–30, 536–7 Apomaxis calumniarum 100

755

Invective 101, 118 knowledge of Machiavelli 98–102 A remedy for sedition 100 Stratagemes of Frontinus 98, 99–100, 536–7 Moses 57, 151 as armed prophet 248, 320–1, 473, 480, 485 Mouchembert, le sieur de 636 n. 16 Munster 468, 473 Muret, Marc-Antoine de 195, 198, 203 orations in Rome 235–7 Mutius Scaevola 67 Mutoni, Niccolo`, translator of Polyaenus 31, 37, 518 knowledge of Machiavelli 37 Muzio, Girolamo 177 Nani Mirabelli, Domenico, Polyanthea of 635 Nannini, Remigio 29, 179–80 Naples 56, 64, 103 Nashe, Thomas 357, 369, 378, 447, 582 Nebuchadnezzar 268 Nerius, in Donne’s Conclave 381, 408 Nero, Emperor 63, 78, 101, 125, 125 n. 16, 308, 309 Nestor, Jean 28 neutrality, dangers of, see debating topics Nevers, Duke of 257, 263 Neville, Sir Edward 118 Nicholas II, Pope 100 Nicocles, King of Cyprus 81 Niecollucci, Amadio (pseudonym of Machiavelli) 174 Nifo, Agostino 11, 12 n. 4, 33, 41, 197, 477, 544 n. 80, 589 career of 42–3 cynicism of 79 De armorum literarumquae comparatione 81 n. 52 De immortalitate animae 45 De intellectu 44 De nostrarum calamitatum 59 De re aulica 45, 77, 609, 612 n. 80

756

I ND EX

Nifo, Agostino (cont) De regnandi peritia 43–4, 47–84, 111, 143; on ‘honorable methods’ of government 78–9; on Cesare Borgia 58–60; on cruelty and clemency 63–4; on hunting 53–4; on liberality 61–3; on love and fear 64–8; on mercenaries and native troops 52–3, 58; on warfare 52–5 Libellus de rege et tyranno 42–3, 47, 79 n. 49 lubricity of 46, 78 modern hostility towards 43–4, 46–7 see also Rosello Nigrinus, Georg, translation of ContreMachiavel 359 n. 84, 436 n. 8 nobility, true 578, 588 North, George, translation of Philosophe de Court 597 North, Sir Roger 667 North, Thomas 469 Nouvellet, Claude 244 Novara, battle of 561 Numa Pompilius 50, 71, 92, 210, 333, 402, 71 Oath of allegiance controversy 339, 375–6, 381, 404–5, 407 Ochino, Bernardino 102 Oddi, family of 454 Oderint dum metuant 65 Oliverotto da Fermo 51, 60, 308, 673 Olympiads 53 Olympus 246 Onosander 31, 186, 187, 192, 498, 500, 523; see also Charrier; Vigene`re; Whitehorne Oporinus, Johann, printer 26 Oratorians 408 Orosius 661 Orsini, family 454 Orsini, Napoleone 444 n. 27 Orsini, Virginio 62 Osorio da Fonseca, Jeronimo 11, 17, 94, 166, 173, 329, 651

career and reputation of 144–5 De nobilitate christiana 143–4, 145, 357; cited by Possevino 387; cited by Ribadeneira 391; cited by Rich 531 n. 39; cited by Richard Harvey 370; on Christian warfare 146–53, 531–2, 536; reference to Il Principe in 145–6; refutation of Discorsi in 146–53; translated by Blandie 155, 357, 531 n. 39 De Regis institutione 156–63; discussion of warfare in 160–3; use of Istorie fiorentine in 162–3; use of Il Principe in 159 letter to Queen Elizabeth 144 and Machiavelli 143–63 ostracism, Greek use of 64 Otevanti, Juan Lorenzo, translator of the Discorsi 8, 174, 202, 479 Overbury, Sir Thomas 589–90 Ovid 56, 168, 290 De arte amandi 169 Owen, David, hostility to both Catholic and Protestant extremists 375 n. 4, 380 n. 12, 404 Owen, T. 405 n. 62 Oxford, Earl of (Robert de Vere) 448 Paget, Lord 143 Pagliari del Bosco, Giorgio 656 n. 70 Pallas 451 Papacy (Church of Rome) and irreligion, Schwendi on 93 Papirius 480 Paracelsus 202 in Donne’s Conclave 381, 408 Pare´, Ambroise 203 Paris, as exemplar for the St Bartholomew massacre 240, 245 Parker, Henry, Baron Morley, on Machiavelli 97–8 Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury 336 Parlement (of France) 66 Parsons, Robert ( Jesuit) 358 n. 83, 374, 394 n. 33, 395 n. 36, 398, 399, 404

I ND EX Paruta, Paolo: on ancient and modern warfare 566 on fortresses 549 on Machiavelli 182 on offensive or defensive warfare 542 on the phalanx 540 Pasquier, Estienne 203 criticizes Machiavelli 352–3, 410 The Jesuites Catechisme 376, 402, 410 Paterculus, Velleius 642 n. 38 Patericke, Simon, translation of Contre-Machiavel 359 Patrizi, Francesco, military writer 519 n. 6, 526 n. 25, 527, 540, 549, 567 on artillery 559–60 on Italian military decadence 553 on money as the sinews of war 546 Patrizi, Francesco, Bishop of Gaeta 546 Paul III, Pope 411 Paul IV, Pope (Gian Pietro Carafa) 172 Paul V, Pope 375 Paul’s Cross, sermons at 23, 232, 359 Paulus Aemilius 204, 214, 306 Pavia, Francesco Sforza and 424 Payton, Edward, A Discourse of Court and Courtiers 626–8 and the Machiavel stereotype 627 peace, dangers of 162 Pelhrzimow, Nicolaus de 173 Pericles 150, 476 Perna, Peter, printer 175, 444 n. 26 Perrault, Emile 203 Perrot, Miles, admirer of the Istorie fiorentine 210–11 Perseus of Macedon 309 Persians 148, 427, 499 and lying 68 Pertinax, Emperor 308, 309, 318 Peru, Gohory’s history of 203 Perugia 454 Peter of Blois, on military decadence 528 Petrarch 106, 168–9, 529 Petre, Sir William 143

757

Petrucci, Pandolfo 51 phalanx versus legion, see debating topics Pharoah 268 Philip II, King (formerly Prince) of Spain 191 n. 15, 358 n. 83, 362, 493, 551 dedicatee of Rainsford’s Ragionamento 109–13; of Otevanti’s translation of the Discorsi 174, 202 n. 32, 493 Philip of Macedon 71, 484 Philipomenes, Prince of the Achaeans 54 Philippe Auguste, King of France 307 Phillips, Mark 86 n. 3, 88 Philostratus 498 Phocas 309 Phocylides, moral verses of 646 Phormio 428 Piagnoni (followers of Savonarola) 166 Pibrac, Guy de Faur, seigneur de: defence of the St Bartholomew massacre 238, 240–3, 279, 341 n. 33 see also Burin Piccolomini, Sylvio 491 Pichi, Giovanni Maria 11 Avvertimenti politici: as Il Principe in alphabetical order 671–3; on conspiracies 672–3; on contemporary infantry 676; on contemporary Italians 676–7; on cruelty 673–4; exhortation to the princes of Italy 675–6; on force and fraud 673; on hereditary princes 674–5; on human nature 673–4; on mercenaries 676; on new princes 674; on political morality 674–5 Pickering, Sir William 20 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 583 n. 22 Pighius, Albertus 397 pike, Tarducci’s enthusiasm for the 489 Pilgrimage of Grace 100 Pinelli, Giovan Vincenzo 341 n. 34

758

I ND EX

Pistoia 64 Pius V, Pope 261 n. 45, 404 plagiarism 46–7, 80–4 anachronistic modern notions of 47 Platina, Bartholomaeus 46 n. 13 Plato 128, 209, 216, 310, 421, 615, 660 n. 82 aphorisms of 632 on hunting and warfare 54 Republic 125 Theages 193 Ple´iade, the 195, 198 Pliny the Elder 68, 187, 211 Plutarch 348, 429, 475, 476, 503 n. 71, 509, 519 n. 6, 543 n. 78, 650, 660 n. 82 aphorisms of 633 on civil war 290 on money as the sinews of war 544 n. 81 North’s translation of 469 on phalanx and legion 540 on tyranny 314 n. 68 Poccianti, Michele, biography of Machiavelli 178 Pole, Geoffrey 117 Pole, Sir Henry, Lord Montagu 117–18 Pole, Lady Margaret 117–18 Pole, Reginald 11, 98, 114, 155, 166, 172 n. 16, 173, 329, 330, 440, 651 Apologia 17, 101, 115, 118–42, 143, 288, 381, 409, 582; relation of, with the De unitate 118–20 De unitate 116–17, 118–19, 134 –6 oration on peace 37 wishes to suppress the Istorie fiorentine 117 Politi, Lanceloto, see Catharino politic religion 71, 92–3, 127–9, 137, 248–53, 268–9, 319–20, 333, 335, 351 n. 70, 360, 390, 396–7, 401, 409–10, 466, 504, 576, 577, 650 political corruption, remedies for 472 political morality and immorality 67–9, 157–60, 170, 199–201, 267–9, 280, 281–2, 314, 335, 346–8, 350–1, 354–5, 387–8, 392–4, 425, 435, 436, 440, 442,

444, 453–4, 461, 462–5, 472–3, 501, 502–4, 574, 650, 657, 662–4, 673–4, 679–80 political poisons and medicines 48, 78, 166, 197, 283, 388–90, 425, 459 political polemic and political ideas 9, 12, 229–31 Politiques, role of, in France 336–7 Polyaenus, Stratagemi 37, 523, 567 Polybius 31, 33, 429, 502, 509, 519 n. 6, 522, 523, 567 challenged by Du Choul 34 Charles V’s supposed admiration for 18–19, 479 comparison of Greek and Roman military systems 540 Henri III’s study of 24, 347 n. 58 Lipsius’ regard for 527 on the superiority of native troops 538 Pomponazzi, Pietro, and Nifo 42, 45 Poncet, le chevalier 280 n. 27 Pontanus, Joannes Jovianus 326, 578 Pontus de Tyard 193 Porcacchi, Tommaso 525 disingenuous use of Machiavelli 164–5, 180–1 edits Guicciardini’s Storia 164, 640 mocks Cesare Borgia 449 n. 37 Porcia, Jacopo di, military writer 31 Pori, Tizzone Gaetano di, translation of Vegetius 528 n. 30 Porsenna, Lars 476 Portenarius, plagiarizes Nifo 47 n. 15 Portes, Franc¸ois 9 n. 3, 251, 278 reply to Charpentier 275–6 Porto, Luigi da 584 n. 24 Portugal, letters cause the decline of 160 Possevino, Antonio, Cautio and Judicium 386–9, 394, 395 cites Osorio against Machiavelli 150, 155 ignorance of 386 relies on Gentillet for his knowledge of Machiavelli 349, 366, 386–8 used by Ribadeneira 390 Praz, Mario 331 Prezzolini, Giuseppe 297–8

I ND EX princes, reputation of 69–78 mutability in deliberations 75–6 printing press, Catharino on its dangers 169 Prisbach, Wolfgang 277 Procacci, Giuliano 5, 44, 70 Procopius 544 n. 81 Procter, Thomas, military writer 555 prodigalitas 62 Promis, Carlo 555 Proust, Marcel 679 proverbs, see aphorisms Ptolomaeus Ceraunus 67 Ptolomaeus Philadelphus 268–9 Publius Decius 492 n. 40 Puttenham, George 598–9, 606 Pyrrhus 57 Quarles, Francis, on commonplace books 634 n. 10 Quintilian 215, 310 n. 61, 578, 579, 585, 586 on sententiae 631–3 Quintus Curtius 77, 642 n. 38 Quiroga, Gaspar de (Inquisitor General) 174 n. 20 Raab, Felix 173 n. 19, 667 n. 91 Rabatta, Vincenzio, censor 677 Rabe, Georg, printer 436 n. 8 Rabelais, Franc¸ois: condemned for lubricity and atheistical mockery 251, 276, 358, 434 mocks rhetorical affectations 579 Ragguaglio degli Ordini 254 Raimondi, Eugenio 643 Rainolds, William (Guillaume Rose) 372 n. 109, 391 n. 26 Rainsford, George, Ragionamento 11, 82, 190 n. 10, 467–8 Ragionamento and Machiavelli 109–14 Ritratto d’Ingliterra 112 Raleigh, Sir Walter, knowledge of Machiavelli 445–6 misattribution of the Cabinet-Council to 667

759

Rambouillet, Jacques d’Angennes II, seigneur de 193–4 Ramiro d’Orco, Cesare Borgia’s agent, varying accounts of his execution 59–60, 317, 621 n. 90 Ramus (Pierre de la Rame´e), murder of 276 n. 9 Ranzovius, Henricus 526 n. 25 Rathe´, C. Edward 417 n. 1 Ravaillac, Franc¸ois, assassin 405, 406, 673 Ravenna, battle of 40, 561 Recueil des maximes d’Estat (BNF MS fr. 19922) 672 n. 3 Regulus 69 religion, see politic religion Remonstrance au roy Henri III 281–2 Remonstrance d’un bon catholique 342–3 Renat, apothecary and poisoner 273 reputation: Castiglione on advantages of, to courtiers 585–6 Nifo on princes and 69–78 res and litterae (matter and manner) 583–5, 588 Response aux justifications 346 n. 50 Reusner, Elias 643 Reveille-matin 267, 279–80, 337, 651; see also Sorbin Reynolds, John, translation of Du Refuge 614–15, 622 rhetoric, satirized by Rabelais 579 Rhodes 193 Ribadeneira, Pedro de 176, 658 Tratado de la religion: attacks Machiavelli 389–92, 392–5; defends the assassination of Henri III 403; use of Possevino 386, 390; used by Fitzherbert 392–5 Ricasoli, G. B. 24 Ricci, Giuliano de 177–8 Rich, Barnabe, uses Osorio 531 n. 39 Richard II, King of England 113 Richter, Gregorius, aphorisms of 658 Ridolfi, Roberto 30 n. 41, 89 Rigaud, Benoist, defends the St Bartholomew massacre 247

760

I ND EX

Rocca, Bernardino, military writer 535–6 Romano, Giulio (Capilupi’s agent) 263 Romans: as an armed nation 495 military institutions of 491 military practice of 499 military supremacy of 500, 510, 524, 525, 526, 553–4, 556 political health linked to military health 189 public games of 53–4 use of auguries 480, 482 n. 11; of colonies 488, 494; of divination 220 war, reasons for waging 493 wars short and decisive 41 Rome: constitution of 223 described by William Thomas 103 empire of 93, 148–9, 422 foundation of 471 Romulus 57, 210, 471 Ronsard, Pierre de 23, 279 attacked by Gentillet 289–90 Rosati, Girolamo, censor 677 Rose, Guillaume, Bishop of Senlis, see Rainolds Rosello, Lucio Paolo: Il ritratto del vero governo plagiarizes Nifo 11, 80–4, 111, 544 n. 80 Due dialoghi attacks courtiers 589 Rosinus, Joannes, criticizes Vegetius 526 n. 25, 527 Rossant, Andre´, on Machiavelli as an anti-tyrant 132 n. 22 Rowlandes, Richard (Verstegen) 373 n. 110 Rucellai, Cosimo 185, 420–1 Rufus, Raimondus 27 Runyon, Damon 618 n. 88 Ruscelli, Girolamo: on fortification 565–6 on Machiavelli’s style 21–2 Rush, Anthony, on flattery 612 n. 80 Russell, F. H. 531 Russell, Sir William, Lord Deputy of Ireland 474

Sabellicus, Marcus Antonius 326 Sacraments, debate concerning 99 Sacrobosco, De sphaera, translated by Thomas 108 Sadler, John, translator of Vegetius 524–5 Saffron Walden, welcome of Elizabeth I to 448 St Ambrose, aphorisms of 633 St Augustine 531, 532, 535 St Bartholomew massacre 9, 11, 12, 229–70, 339, 362, 651 as Catholic triumph 231–7 Gentillet and the 286, 291, 293, 338, 418 joy at Rome 255–6, 281 pamphlets condemning 271–9; praising 232–70, 391 n. 26 premeditation of 261–2, 266–8 and the study of Machiavelli 229–30 see also Capilupi; Charpentier; Du Haillan; Favier; Pibrac; Portes; Sorbin St Cyprian 252, 276 St Dominic 94–5 St Francis 94–5 Saint German, Christopher 26 St Leger, Warham 473 Sainte-Croix, Cardinal 261 n. 45 Salazar, Diego de, military writer 8, 41 n. 73, 188 plagiarizes the Arte della guerra 32, 174 n. 20, 184–6, 477, 521 Sallust 208, 213, 306, 423 Salviati, Giovanni (Cardinal), praises the Arte della guerra 33, 41 Salviati, papal nuncio 256 Samnites 541 Sampson, Richard, Bishop of Chichester 116, 119, 135 Samson 289 San Concordio, Bartolommeo da, aphorisms of 634–5 Sanchez 155 Sannazaro, Jacopo 185

I ND EX Sansovino, Francesco: Concetti politici, extensive but haphazard use of Machiavelli and Guicciardini in 662–7 Del governo de i regni, tacit use of Machiavelli’s Ritratti 179 Diverse orationi, anthologizes orations from Capelloni 459 Il simolacro, on Charles V’s interest in Machiavelli 18–19, 478–9 Propositioni 636; defends the collection of aphorisms 641; political aphorisms 636 see also B., T. Saraceni, Giovanni Carlo, military writer 570 n. 143 Sassetti, Tomasso 269 n. 56 Satan: associated with Calvin 246; with Machiavelli 381 league of, with the Jesuits 404 and the spread of Machiavelli’s precepts 359 n. 84 Saturn and the golden age 50 Saul, King of Israel 248 Saumaise, Claude de, on Roman warfare 527 n. 28 Savonarola, Girolamo 166, 474 as unarmed prophet 473 Savonne, Pierre, military mathematician 557–8 Savorgnano, Mario, military writer 547 n. 91, 564 n. 131 on artillery 562 and military diagrams 571 n. 144 Scanderberg 492 Sce`ve, Maurice 193 Schmalkaldic League 95–6 Schopenauer, Arthur, translation of Gracia´n 623 Schoppe, Caspar (Gaspare Scioppio), defends Machiavelli 438 Schwarz, Berthold 512 Schwendi, Lazarus von 11, 114, 417 annotations on Machiavelli’s Discorsi 90–7 Scipio 63, 65, 427, 449, 493 n. 42, 674 Scotland, early references to Machiavelli in 331–5

761

Sebastian, King of Portugal 144, 156 Second Admonition to the Parliament 336 Secret des finances, Le, see Barnaud Segni, Bernardo, on Machiavelli and Aristotle 28 Sejanus 607, 609, 621, 627 Selve, Odet de 203 Seneca 442, 614 n. 84 De clementia 548 Senecan tragedy 456 Sensuit l’ordre (BNF MS fr. 1245), on the importance of artillery 561 n. 125 sententiae, see aphorisms Serarius, Nicolas, Jesuit 395 Serdonati, Francesco, military writer 526 n. 25 Sertorius 69, 402, 492 Severus, Alexander, Emperor 530 Seymour, Edward, Duke of Somerset 101–2 Sforza, Francesco 53, 58–9, 342 n. 35, 424, 492 Sforza, Francesco, successors of 79 n. 49 Sforza, Galeazzo 67, 424 Sforza, Ludovico (Il Moro) 56, 73, 460 miserable fate of 39, 53, 661 Shakespeare industry 323 Sicilian vespers 293 Sidney, Sir Henry 616 n. 87 Sidney, Sir Philip 255 n. 41, 448, 582, 616 n. 87 on reading and note-taking 634 n. 10 Sidney, Robert 634 n. 10 Siege de Danfronc, Le 277 Siena, Accademia degli Intronati 491 Sigonio, Carlo 98 Sinigaglia, Cesare Borgia’s murders at 263, 485 Skinner, Quentin 298, 304–5 Smirziz, Jaroslaus a, aphorisms of 659 Smythe, Sir John, military writer 517–18, 532 n. 44, 543, 563 n. 128 Snow, C. P. 2

762

I ND EX

Socrates 75, 128 Soderini, Piero 472, 473 Solomon, parables of 646 Solon, legislator: in Beacon’s Solon his follie 469 policy of neutrality 74 Sommaire Discours 249 Sorbin, Arnaud: attack on Machiavelli 269–70 Le Vray Resveille-matin 266–9 Sorbonne 406 Sorel, Charles 353 n. 73 Spain: armada of 543 army of 426 military books in 569 military formation of 565, 569 military practice of 500 Machiavellism in 28, 184–6, 174, 175–6 Protestant league against 258 Sparta 148, 149 reasons for fall of 660 n. 82 Speculi aulicarum 659 Speculum principum tradition 124, 269, 313, 662, 664–5 Spenser, Edmund, on Ireland 468 n. 69 Spithovius, Johannes 155 n. 21 Spontone, Ciro 636 refutes Machiavelli 657 sprezzatura in Castiglione 579, 580, 582–4 in Gracia´n 624–5 Stanhope, George, translator of Charron 461 n. 59 Stapleton, Thomas 398 n. 41 Stewart, Pamela 298, 302 n. 52, 322 Stockwood, John, attacks Machiavelli in sermon at St Paul’s Cross 359–60 Stoer, Jacob, printer 265, 427 Strabo 79 Stradling, John, admirer of Gentillet 357 stratagems, see warfare Strozzi, Filippo 258 Strozzi, Lorenzo di Filippo 22, 533

Stubbes, John, Discoverie of a gaping gulf 361–2 on Machiavelli’s method 362, 441 Stupanus, Johannes Nicolaus, translator and editor, Latin version of the Discorsi 444 n. 26, 473 n. 74 Suetonius 306 Sulla 56, 64, 65, 309 Sussex, Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of 332 Sutcliffe, Matthew 475, 546 n. 87 denounces Possevino as a liar and forger 389 n. 23 on Ireland 468 n. 69 Swiss 53, 221, 488, 495, 528–9, 539 army of 426 military formation of 565 military sports of 54 Sybils, the 286 Symeoni, Gabriel, antiquary 41 Cesar renouvelle´: ancient armies versus modern in 559; cruelty recommended in 534; Machiavellian resonances in 34, 36 Tabourot, Estienne 203 Tacitus 208, 210, 213, 306, 390, 429, 622, 627, 633, 637 aphorisms of 638, 641–2, 643, 645, 650, 657, 658, 659 Ducci and 607, 608, 609 Du Refuge and 614 n. 84 Guicciardini’s praise of 606 Henri III’s reading of 24 and Machiavelli 641 n. 33, 659 and Machiavellism 437 n. 10 on prodigality and liberality 61–2 Talbot, Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury 273 n. 4 Tamiris 495 Tarducci, Achille 12, 181, 494, 495 n. 54, 498, 540, 546 career of 485–6 Delle machine 489–90; enthusiasm for the pike 489; on artillery 489–90 Il Turco vincibile 486–9; on colonies 488; on infantry and

I ND EX cavalry 488; on offensive and defensive war 487; on phalanx versus legion 488–9 and Machiavelli 485–90 Tartaglia, Niccolo`, mathematician 190, 558 Teglio, Silvestro, Latin translation of Il Principe 155, 175, 345, 389 n. 23, 436 n. 8, 441 temperance, satirized by Philibert de Vienne 594 tercio, Spanish military formation 565 Tesoro politico 550 Theages, platonic dialogue 193 Themistocles 150, 215, 475 Theodosius, Emperor 155, 307, 419 Theognis, moral verses of 646 Theseus 57 Thomas, William 11, 114, 190 n. 10, 467–8, 650 advises Edward VI 104–8 on the coinage 105 Historie of Italie 103–4, 107 Italian Grammer 103 and Machiavelli 102–9 Il Pellegrino 103 Thorius, John 175 n. 25, 447 Thorndike, Lynn 44 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas 101–2 Throgmorton plot 367 Thucydides 213, 216, 306, 429, 519 n. 6, 544 n. 81, 627, 657 Tiberius, Emperor 390, 621 Titus, Emperor 252 Toledo 118 Tommasini, Oreste 297 Toscanella, Oratio 526 Toscano, Matteo, Peplus Italiae, Machiavelli as enemy of tyranny in 132 n. 22, 179, 409 Totila, King of the Ostrogoths 27 Trajan, Emperor 307, 309 translation 315–22 Gohory on 214–16 limitations of 91 translators of Machiavelli, see Bedingfield; Cappel; Charrier; D’Auvergne; Gohory;

763

Levytt; Otevanti; Stupanus; Teglio; Vintimille; Whitehorne Trithemius 406 n. 63 Trogus 423 Truman, Ronald W. 175 n. 25 Tullus Hostilius 501 Tunstall, Cuthbert 143 Turks 158, 192, 193, 327, 380, 422, 485–6, 488 Turmeda, Anselmo 28 Turne`be 23 Turner, Sir James, on Machiavelli’s military incompetence 184 n. 1, 538 n. 64 tyrannicide 383, 391 n. 26, 312–14, 402–6, 412–13, 424–5, 574 tyranny and tyrants 55, 68, 78–9, 287–8, 307, 312–14, 369, 439, 605 Uguccione dalla Fagiuola, in Pichi’s Avvertimenti 672 Ulpian 248, 535 Unton, Edward 21 usury, Italian 293 Utenhove, Charles 23 Vacca, Antonio, on Machiavelli as a military authority 31, 41 Valdes, Fernando de (Inquisitor General) 174, 176 Valturio (Valturius), Roberto, military writer 31, 32, 213 Van Dyke, Paul 136 n. 27, 582 Varamundus, Ernestus 272; see also Hotman Varchi, Benedetto 29 n. 38, 165 Vargas de Carvagal, Diego de, dedicatee of Salazar’s Tratado 184 Vasari, Giorgio, paintings of St Bartholomew massacre 232 Vassy, massacre of 293 Vaure, Claude, attack on Machiavelli 651 n. 59 Vautrollier, Thomas, printer 368 Vauzelles, Georges de 193 Vegetius, De re militari 31, 213, 442, 484, 530, 541, 557, 569

764

I ND EX

Vegetius, De re militari (cont) advocates native rather than mercenary troops 538 on ancient and modern military virtue 528 authority challenged 526–8 Machiavelli’s debt to 188, 426 n. 12, 522; recognized by De Fouquevaux 523; by Salazar 186; by Vigene`re 499 military maxims 545 Modestus’s use of, recognized by Vigene`re 506 praised but recognized as outmoded 555 praised by Wallhausen 528 n. 29 translated by Sadler 524–5 used by Brucioli 33; by Garimberto 39; by Procter 555–6; by Vigene`re, 510, 511 Venice and Venetians 56, 73, 103 alliance with France 72–3 attitude towards Capilupi 263–4 Verbruggen, J. F. 328 n. 4 Verrua, Filiberto Gerardo Scaglia, conte di, Avvertimenti 574–6, 625 Vespasian, Emperor 307, 309 Vettori, Pier 178 Vickers, Brian 645, 647 Vienne, Philibert de, Philosophe de Court 590–8, 628 Castiglione mocked in 591–2 human nature in 591 misunderstood 598, 602, 606 virtues satirized by 592–4 Vigene`re, Blaise de 11, 12, 526 n. 25, 542, 546 L’art militaire 498–513; on the author of the Instructions as ‘Machiavelli’s monkey’ 507 n. 79, 508; on encampments 508–9; on the false attribution of the Instructions to Du Bellay 507–8; on Machiavelli’s use of Vegetius 506–8; method of 499; on political deceits 502–4; praises

Machiavelli 504–5; purpose of 499–500; reliance on Charrier’s translation 499 n. 68, 501; on Vegetius, Machiavelli, and the Instructions 507–9; on vulgar notions about Machiavelli 502 career of 498, 500 knowledge of Machiavelli’s works 501 Onomastique 511 Vignier, Nicolas 342 n. 35 Vigor, Renault 203 Villani, Matteo 28 Villari, Pasquale 89, 297 Vindiciae contra tyrannos, see Brutus; Cono Superantius Vintimille, Jacques de: lost translation of the Arte della guerra 193 translation of Il Principe 8, 192–4, 596–7 translation of Xenophon 193 Virgil 64, 290, 503 n. 71, 535 Virgilio, Marcello 167 Visigoths 422 Vitelli, Vitelozzo 54 Vitellius, Emperor 78, 309 Vitruvius 187 Vogelsperger, Sebastien 91 Volterannus, Raphael 326 Voulte´, Jean 193 Walker, Leslie J. 92 n. 13 Wallenstein 673 Wallhausen, Johann Jacobi von 528 n. 29 Walsingham, Sir Francis 360 warfare: ancient and modern 509–10, 523 aphorisms on 665–6 battle arrays 509 Christianity and 40; see also Christians cruelty in 39, 534, 551–2 defensive or offensive, see debating topics diversity of 499–500 fraud and stratagems in 40, 534–7

I ND EX just 481–2, 493, 531–2, 534 Machiavelli as a military authority 30–41 mathematics and 556–8 moral fibre 529–32 Nifo on 52–5 purpose of 493 special morality of 532–7 technology and 556–66 theory and practice 509 n. 82, 517–18, 519 n. 6 use of religion in 40 victory in battle 488 see also art of war, theory and practice of ; artillery; cavalry; debating topics; infantry Watson, William, anti-Jesuit polemicist 399–401, 402 weaponry, ancient and modern 496 Whitehorne Peter: translation of the Arte della guerra (The Arte of Warre) 33, 41 n. 73, 184, 188–92, 518, 521, 560; adapts Charrier’s chapter headings 191–2; cited by R. Harvey 370, 533, by Smythe 543; dedicated to Elizabeth I 189–90 Certain Waies for the orderyng of souldiers 530, 560; knowledge of the Discorsi and Il Principe

765

in 190–1; use of Tartaglia and Zanchi in 190 translation of Onosander 192 Whitfield, J. H., on Gentillet 297 Whitgift, John 336 William Louis of Nassau 567 William of Orange 247, 258, 403 William the Conqueror 113 Williams, Sir Roger, military writer 563 n. 128 witchcraft and demonology 121 Wolfe, John, printer 174, 175 n. 25, 366–7, 441, 444, 447, 452, 454 Wolsey, Thomas 121, 123 women, courtiers’ behaviour towards 587–8 Wood, physician, and poisoned gloves 273 n. 4 Wright, Henry 667 n. 91 Wright, Thomas 398 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 109 Xenocrates 31 Xenophon 31, 193, 306, 310, 492 n. 40, 596, 615 aphorisms of 633 Zanchi, Giovambattista de’, writer on fortification 190, 565–6 Zuccolo, Lodovico 547 n. 89, 535, 643