”Leaving the woods, I go to a spring, and then to one of the spots where I hang my bird nets. In my arms I carry a book: Dante, Petrarch, or one of th”Leaving the woods, I go to a spring, and then to one of the spots where I hang my bird nets. In my arms I carry a book: Dante, Petrarch, or one of those minor poets like Tibullus, Ovid. I read of their amorous passions and their loves and recall my own, and lose myself for a while in these happy thoughts.”
Niccolo Machiavelli lived in an exciting and tumultuous time in Florentine history. The city state was fraught with invasion, regime change, political intrigue, the crazed monk Savonarola, the Medicis, an explosion of art from Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and many other amazing artists. It was an enthralling time to be alive.
What Miles J. Unger did with this book was attempt to bring to life a more vivid image of Machiavelli. He had been cast as the Finger of Satan, as well as credited with being the father of political science. Was he a great philosopher, or was he a man giving credence to the very worst impulses of those trying to hold onto power? Dictators, such as Hitler and Stalin, routinely used his writing to justify their own crimes against humanity.
”All Machiavell’s experience told him that life was unpredictable, and politics--which is merely life played out on a greater stage and for higher stakes--even more so; that well-meaning rulers (like Piero Soderini) might forfeit the confidence of their citizens while ruthless tyrants (like Valentino) could win the loyalty of theirs.”
Valentino was of course Cesare Borgia, the infamous son of Pope Alexander VI, who came down through history as one of the most notorious tyrants. When young, Borgia was a handsome man. Later, after syphilis ravaged his body, he was an object lesson in beauty becoming the beast. His father, always an unrepentant fornicator as a cardinal, continued his wayward ways even as pope. He would have scores of whores brought into the Vatican for epic orgies that would have rivaled any spectacle conceived by the Roman emperors.
Let’s just say that Cesare was raised in an environment conducive to bad behavior. Machiavelli was frequently sent on foreign missions on behalf of Florence to foreign courts, and on one trip he spent a considerable amount of time in the company of Cesare Borgia. He became the basis for his most famous book,The Prince. Now Valentino was only able to stay in power as long as his father was pope, but once Alexander VI died, he was unable to hold onto the kingdom he had carved out for himself. In theory, Valentino may have fit the profile that Machiavelli believed was the best avenue to hold onto power, but in reality his methods were useless without the power of the papacy.
After one of the regime changes in Florence, Machiavelli found himself out of work. He was thrown out of office: ”’Casssaverunt, privaverant et totaliter amoverunt’ (Dismissed, deprived, and totally removed).” A year later, he was brought up on conspiracy charges and tortured. He was subjected to the rope drop where the subjects hands were tied behind his back and he was dropped by a rope tied to his hands that dislocated his shoulders.
This induced excruciating pain.
Machiavelli considered these unfortunate circumstances a character building opportunity. He did not confess to the crimes he was accused of and was released three weeks later. This would be the first of many close shaves he would have up until his death. He was a man blunt in his opinions, which made him enemies that he could ill afford. He saw himself as apolitical and thought that he should be allowed to serve the state no matter who was in charge. He wanted to be the best public servant he could be to his city. He stated how he felt very simply:”I love my city more than my soul.”
It doesn’t matter how smart or useful or experienced you are, as we routinely see in the United States. What is important is whether you have a D or an R after your name, and how well you do in the political system has to do with which party is in power at the time. A man like Machiavelli, who would be honest in his opinions and would base those opinions on historical knowledge, would be invaluable to any government. He had brief flurries of getting back into politics after his dismissal, but he spent the majority of he rest of his life on his family farm writing plays, essays, and books, siring children he could ill afford to feed, and leading a rather free, devious existence in the taverns and bordellos.
The amorous passions he sighed over in the quote that I started this review with were not regarding his wife, but the many lovely whores he had known throughout his life. He certainly still visited the bedsheets of his wife, given the children that kept arriving, but when he thought with nostalgia of the lovely attributes of women, he was remembering the visits he had made to experience the exquisite charms of those women of lost virtue.
Machiavelli loved books almost as much as he loved women. If only he could have propped a book in the cleft of a plump whore’s bottom, he probably would have been as close to heaven as he would ever reach on earth.
How bad can a guy be who loves books that much?
He was not a virtuous role model, but I couldn’t help appreciating his devil may care attitude and his belief that man can only rise so far above his baser instincts. He was well aware that civilization had not tamed the beast in men, but only caged it. If any weakness or deviation was shown by those in power that inspired fear or perceived opportunity, men became a mob of unprincipled creatures. Despite his own personal failings and the uses his bolder ascertains in The Prince have been put to in the name of cruelty, I couldn’t help but like him, or maybe more accurately appreciate him. He was in search of truth through honesty, and that always kept him in the crosshairs of his detractors. It has been decades since I read The Prince, but I remember the good advice in the book on how to be a ruler/manager that didn’t involve the more ruthless elements for which Machiavelli was best known. He was only advocating the more extreme responses in the face of grave danger to an administration.
His books were banned at various times throughout history. He was nearly relegated to the dustbin at numerous times as well, but in the end he was immortalized as the ultimate villain to many, but to scholars he had proven to be an infinite source of delight. He had a quintessential mind that is impossible to ignore.
In 1469 Lorenzo de’ Medici at the tender age of twenty became the “de facto” leader of Florence. His father Piero “The Gouty” died after ruling for only five years. Piero was sickly most of his life suffering excessively from the family health issue of gout and arthritis. He preferred to spend his time reading books and gazing upon the fine objects his father, Cosimo, and he had assembled.
When challenged by a rival family, in an attempted assassination, Piero did prove he’d been paying attention at the knee of his father. He quickly bought all the bread and all the wine in the city of Florence and had it brought to his villa. Hungry bellies make for poor followers and soon the “uprising” was quelled by the instigators simply disbanding to go find food and drink. That is a theme that exists throughout the history of the de’Medici family. They always seems smarter, and a decisive move ahead of their opposition. Until of course the family fortune and the future of the city of Florence come to rest upon the indecisive, brash shoulders of Piero “the Unfortunate”, the first born and heir apparent of Lorenzo.
But that is another story.
The oligarchy that managed Florence, some even who had worked with his grandfather Cosimo, decided to support the young lad. They must have seen something in him that made them believe that not only could they work with him, but that he would keep their commercial interests secure. Now what is interesting about Lorenzo coming to power at such a young age is that Florentines did not consider their sons mature enough for responsibility until they reached the age of thirty-four. Lorenzo is fourteen years short of that glorified age.
It certainly wasn’t because he was handsome.
”Lorenzo’s homeliness was proverbial among Florentines. When Machiavelli was describing to a friend an encounter with a particularly hideous prostitute, he could think of no better insult than to compare her appearance to Lorenzo de’Medici.”
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The artist might have made this TOO MUCH a true likeness?
My question for Machiavelli was she so hideous that she turned him on? One of those critical tidbits lost to history.
His brother Giuliano was more gifted in the martial arts of war and intrigue. Although Lorenzo was the brains of the de’ Medici empire. They might have proved to be one of the most formidable ruling duos if not for the Pazzi Conspiracy. In 1468 on Easter Sunday members of the Pazzi family in league with the Archbishop of Pisa and with the blessing of that bloody bastard Pope Sixtus IV attempted to assassinate the brothers in the Pazzi Chapel during religious services.
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The handsome and athletic Guiliano de’Medici. The sculpture was made by Michelangelo to adorn his tomb.
Giuliano is properly spitted and dies on the floor of the church, but Lorenzo escapes with only a wound to the neck. Imagine what would have happened if Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, but that John had escaped. Once Lorenzo shows the city that he is alive and well it became a blood bath.
What’s that smell? That would be Pazzi’s crapping their pants.
The city mobs tore them to pieces.
”Over the next few days Florence indulged in butchery on a scale not seen in the city for over a century. Ghastly trophies in the form of assorted body parts began to appear outside the Medici palace as if it were the home not of the leader of the most civilized city in the world but the abode of a cannibal king.”
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1479 drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of a hanged Pazzi conspirator Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli
The ones lucky to live were hanged. All the Pazzi males of the family whether they were involved in the conspiracy or not were exiled from the city forever. The Archbishop of Pisa was hanged in his vestments which made an already enraged Pope see red. He excommunicated the de’Medicis and the whole government of Florence and placed an interdict on the whole city.
Trembling in Florence?
More like a big YAWN.
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Sixtus IV, not a complete bastard. He did commission the Sistine Chapel. Still, if he isn’t burning in hell the whole system is broke.
Sixtus then formed a league with the King of Naples. Ferdinand the 1st was batshit crazy. It was rumored that he had his enemies mummified and placed in a room so that he could visit them and remind them of their misdeeds against him. His son Alfonso was several cards short of a full deck as well. What Sixtus didn’t know is that Lorenzo had an ace up his sleeve.
He used to knock boots with Ippolita Sforza the wife of Alfonso and future queen of Naples. Well we don’t know for sure he had carnal knowledge of Ippolita, but we do know they had an enduring friendship built around their love of art and literature. Given the fact that Lorenzo wasn’t exactly pious in regards to the female persuasion and given that Ippolita was married to a raving uneducated lunatic, in a sense, don’t we hope that they dallied.
Lorenzo in a moment of pure bravery or pure foolishness decided to travel to Naples to put an end to Sixtus’s attempt to destabilize the region. He may have counted on Ippolita’s influence and his powers of persuasion more than I would have been comfortable with, but he came back to Florence a hero of diplomacy.
Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts and commissioned many of the famous names of the renaissance era to build sculptures for his garden. Michelangelo lived with him for five years and later built Lorenzo’s tomb. Lorenzo inherited over 200 manuscripts and added more than 800 more to the collection before his death at the tender age of forty-three.
One interesting thing about Florentine politics is they had an unusual way of selecting government officials.
”The nine purses--one for each of the priors and another for the Gonfaloniere--were brought to the great hall and placed in full view of the current government and the assembled citizenry. As the podesta, the chief judicial official of the state, proceeded to draw a name ticket from each of the purses, tension in the hall mounted. The bags contained scores of names: scoundrels and sages, rabid partisans of one faction or another and those with no known political affiliation, all jumbled together, In this strange procedure lay the heart of Florentine democracy. By choosing their officials at random from a large pool of eligible citizens--and by reducing the term of service for the most important offices to a mere two months--Florentines believed they had perfected a democratic system that would best represent the community as a whole.”
Lorenzo had his ways to increase his chances of having the right names coming out of the bag, not that he could totally control it, but he could skew the odds with a few well placed favors. Political parties were banned, but really that is just a matter of semantics because factions still came together either for or against the de’ Medicis.
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A posthumous portrait of Lorenzo by Giorgio Vasari. Vasari captures the anguish of a tortured man overcome with serious health issues.
Lorenzo by his diplomacy, strength of character, and his savvy thinking creating a golden age for Florence that was never repeated. His grandfather died at 77. His father died at 53. Unfortunately Lorenzo only made it to 43. The family problem with gout and arthritis caught up with him early in life. He worked hard and played hard. Even when he had spent the night with a married mistress he was particularly fond of outside the city, he would ride back into the city in time to conduct a normal day of business. I would guess that his rigorous schedule probably brought on the symptoms of his inherited detrimental health faster. Lorenzo handled the difficulties of assuming power very young, of a pope that was working day and night to destroy him, and the constant attempts to undermine his authority by some of the jealous leading families of Florence. He survived assassinations and financial disasters. He never flagged in his determination to find solutions. He earned the title Lorenzo the Magnificent....more
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