GUICCIARDINI & MACHIAVELLI, FIORENTINI STATESMEN

Niccolò Machiavelli

Today, Jordi Santanyí and his friends have decided to return to Ponte Vecchio to spend the day on the side of the river Arno reading and learning more things about Niccolò di Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini, two Tuscan statesmen well-known by their contributions to Diplomacy, Policy, History, Philosophy, Humanism and Literature.

We are living hard times in Europe where extreme-right ideas are rising and intolerance and racism are growing up without any strong actions from the governments to stop them. We must learn about our closer History and Europe knows very well the disastrous consequences of ignoring fascism.

The Grandma thinks that reading Guicciardini, and especially Machiavelli, can help us to understand how policy works nowadays, not very different from some centuries ago. Power wants more power and it is a decision of the population to decide how much power must have the governments. She thinks that power to the people, to the 99%.

Before talking about these two great statesmen, The Grandma has studied a new chapter of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 3).

More information: Word Formation 2

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469-21 June 1527) was a Tuscan diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, writer, playwright and poet of the Renaissance period.

He has often been called the father of modern political science. For many years he was a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned by Italian scholars. He was secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his best-known work The Prince (Il Principe) in 1513, having been exiled from city affairs.

Niccolò Machiavelli

Machiavellianism is widely used as a negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in The Prince. Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and the killing of innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. He even encouraged it in some situations. The book gained notoriety due to claims that it teaches evil recommendations to tyrants to help them maintain their power.

The term Machiavellian is often associated with political deceit, deviousness, and realpolitik. On the other hand, many commentators, such as Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, have argued that Machiavelli was actually a republican, even when writing The Prince, and his writings were an inspiration to Enlightenment proponents of modern democratic political philosophy. In one place, for example, he noted his admiration for the selfless Roman dictator Cincinnatus.

More information: MentalFloss

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Tuscany, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli. The Machiavelli family is believed to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months and who formed the government, or Signoria; but he was never a full citizen of Florence because of the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time even under the republican regime.

Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era in which popes waged acquisitive wars against Italian city-states, and people and cities often fell from power as France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire battled for regional influence and control.

Machiavelli is sometimes seen as the prototype of a modern empirical scientist, building generalizations from experience and historical facts, and emphasizing the uselessness of theorizing with the imagination.

Il Principe by Niccolò Machiavelli

Machiavelli is generally seen as being critical of Christianity as it existed in his time, specifically its effect upon politics, and also everyday life. In his opinion, Christianity, along with the teleological Aristotelianism that the church had come to accept, allowed practical decisions to be guided too much by imaginary ideals and encouraged people to lazily leave events up to providence or, as he would put it, chance, luck or fortune.

Machiavelli's use of the words virtù and prudenza was unusual for his time, implying a spirited and immodest ambition. Famously, Machiavelli argued that virtue and prudence can help a man control more of his future, in the place of allowing fortune to do so.

 Download The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Despite the classical precedents, which Machiavelli was not the only one to promote in his time, Machiavelli's realism and willingness to argue that good ends justify bad things, is seen as a critical stimulus towards some of the most important theories of modern politics. 

Machiavelli is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. Although he privately circulated The Prince among friends, the only theoretical work to be printed in his lifetime was The Art of War, which was about military science.

Since the 16th century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled by its apparently neutral acceptance, or even positive encouragement, of the immorality of powerful men, described especially in The Prince but also in his other works.

The 20th-century Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci drew great inspiration from Machiavelli's writings on ethics, morals, and how they relate to the State and revolution in his writings on Passive Revolution, and how a society can be manipulated by controlling popular notions of morality.

Francesco Guicciardini (6 March 1483-22 May 1540) was born 6 March 1483 in Florence, now Italy. He was an Tuscan historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance.

In his masterpiece, The History of Italy, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.

Guicciardini was the third of eleven children of Piero di Iacopo Guicciardini and Simona di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi. The Guicciardini were well-established members of the Florentine oligarchy as well as supporters of the Medici. 

Francesco Guicciardini's Storia d' Italia, 1851

Influential in Florentine politics, Guicciardini's ancestors had held the highest posts of honor in the state for many generations, as may be seen in his own genealogical Ricordi autobiografici e di famiglia.

Piero Guicciardini had studied with the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who stood as his son's godfather. Like his father, Francesco received a fine humanist education and studied the classics, learning both Latin and a little Greek. The boy was sent by his father to study law at the Universities of Ferrara and Padua, where he stayed until the year 1505.

At 23, he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to teach legal studies at the Florentine Studio.

Having distinguished himself in the practice of law, Guicciardini was entrusted by the Florentine Signoria with an embassy to the court of the King of Aragon, Ferdinand the Catholic, in 1512. He had doubts about accepting the position because it came with so little profit and would disrupt his law practice and take him away from the city.

However, Francesco's father convinced him of the court’s prestige and the honour of having been chosen at so young an age. No one could remember at Florence that such a young man had ever been chosen for such an embassy, he wrote in his diary. Thus Guicciardini started his career as a diplomat and statesman.

More information: Britannica

In 1513, Giovanni de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, became Pope Leo X and brought Florence under papal control, which provided opportunities for Florentines to enter papal service, as did Francesco in 1515. Leo X made him governor of Reggio in 1516 and Modena in 1517. This was the beginning of a long career for Guicciardini in papal administration, first under Leo X and then under his successor, Clement VII.

The political turmoil in Italy was continuously intensifying. As hostilities between King Francis I of France and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, escalated, the Pope remained undecided over which side to back and so sought Guicciardini's advice.

Guicciardini advised an alliance with France and urged Clement to conclude the League of Cognac in 1526, which led to war with Charles V. Later that year, as the forces of Charles V threatened to attack, Clement made Guicciardini lieutenant-general of the papal army. Guicciardini was powerless to influence the commander of papal forces, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, to take action. 

Francesco Guicciardini

Like many Florentine aristocrats of his day, Guicciardini believed in a mixed republican government based on the model of the Venetian constitution; despite working so often and closely with the Medici, he viewed their rule as tyrannical.

Guicciardini was still able to reconcile his republican ideals and his support of the Medici: The equality of men under a popular government is by no means contradicted if one citizen enjoys greater reputation than another, provided it proceed from the love and reverence of all, and can be withheld by the people at their pleasure. Indeed, without such supports, republics can hardly last.

Shortly after the Sack of Rome, Guicciardini returned to Florence, but by 1527, the Medici had been expelled from the city, and a republic had been re-established by the extreme anti-Medici Arrabiati faction. Because of his close ties to the Medici, Guicciardini was held suspect in his native city.

In March 1530, as a result of his service to the Medici, Guicciardini was declared a rebel and had his property confiscated.

In 1531, Guicciardini was assigned the governorship of Bologna, the most important city in the northern Papal States by Clement VII. Guicciardini resigned after Clement's death in 1534 and returned to Florence, where he was enlisted as advisor to Alessandro de Medici, whose position as duke had become less secure following the death of the pope.

Then, Guicciardini allied himself with Cosimo de' Medici, who was just 17 and new to the Florentine political system. Guicciardini supported Cosimo as duke of Florence; nevertheless, Cosimo dismissed him shortly after rising to power.

Guicciardini retired to his villa in Arcetri, where he spent his last years working on the Storia d'Italia. He died in 1540 without male heirs.

The first method for estimating the intelligence 

of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Niccolo Machiavelli