Machiavelli remains in shadows in Celenza’s biography

In his new book, Christopher Celenza aims to paint a portrait of Machiavelli for the generalist reader.

Detail from portrait of Niccolo Machiavelli by Santi di Tito.

Not many people have had an adjective describing a character trait coined from their name, even fewer one that has been widely used for more than 400 years.

Yet almost immediately following publication of The Prince in England in 1584, Machiavellian became a byword for cunning and unscrupulous pragmatism in politics.

We find Shakespeare putting this boast into the mouth of Richard III in Henry VI Part 3: ‘‘I can add colours to the chameleon, / Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, / And set the murderous Machiavel to school.’’

In English the grimness of the adjective, early on often spelt machiavillian, was helped by its similarity to villain, but other languages felt just as strongly about the Florentine author: machiavellico in Italian, machiavelique in French and machiavellistisch in German.

So who was Niccolo Machiavelli and what exactly did he write that caused such an instant and enduring scandal throughout Europe? In this new book Christopher Celenza, a professor in classics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, aims to paint a portrait for the generalist reader through a discussion of his major texts, including The Prince, The Discourses and that delightful play La Mandragola.

Born in Florence in 1469, Machiavelli was trained in the studia humanitatis, those fundamental ingredients for the rebirth of culture we call the Renaissance: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy, all studied through the medium of Latin and its classical authors.

It was thanks to this learning that Machiavelli, aged 29, began his career as a Florentine ambassador: first at the French court, then with brutal dictator Cesare Borgia, and ­finally the papacy in Rome.

As Celenza reminds us, this was a turbulent political period. Unlike neighbouring France, Spain and the Hapsburg Empire to the north, all of which were under strong centralised governments, Italy was at best a geographical term for a collection of warring city states, now fiercely independent, now under the sway of powerful foreign alliances. Fortune’s wheel turned fast and many were crushed as each new leader took the stage. These included a number of popes, whose earthly preoccupations might surprise us today. Julius II, for example, who features prominently in The Prince, lost no time, once elected, in forming an army to conquer Perugia and Bologna.

In 1512 fortune also abandoned Machiavelli. Julius II had formed an alliance with the Spanish to drive the French out of Italy. The Florentine republic, a French ally, capitulated. The Medici family was reinstalled. Soon afterwards Machiavelli, accused of conspiring against the Medici, was imprisoned and tortured. On his release he was forced to live on his small estate outside of Florence, where, despite repeated attempts to return to an active political life, he would remain until his death in 1527 at age 58.

Exile turned Machiavelli to literary pursuits. As Celenza notes, ‘‘few works command such fascination as The Prince’’. Strange indeed then that it should take the genre, popular at the time, of advice manual for the successful ruler. Such guides tended to follow classical models and emphasise the need for virtus: a term taken from Roman moralists Cicero and Seneca to ­encompass wisdom, justice, courage and ­temperance.

Machiavelli’s contemporaries coupled this idea with a Christian perspective that emphasised the spiritual dangers of allowing the ends to justify the means. Machiavelli’s novelty was to state that if a ruler wishes to obtain his goals he will not always find it rational to be moral. One should certainly strive to be just, but one must also be willing to adapt one’s behaviour to suit the winds of fortune.

If, as Machiavelli states, men are nothing but ‘‘ungrateful, fickle feigners and dissemblers, avoiders of danger and eager for gain’’, then a successful ruler will sometimes need to be immoral. And on the question of the prince’s accountability to God? Nothing.

Celenza’s discussion of The Prince gives the reader a fair overview of the major themes. Unfortunately it rarely carries Machiavelli out of the shadows of his work and into the realm of biography.

A challenge for any biographer is to bring the cultural and political landscape of Renaissance Florence to life, but we hardly move beyond phrases such as ‘‘The world was fundamentally different then, and Machiavelli’s gift was his ability to see that world as it was’’. One suspects that in seeking to write an accessible book, Celenza has misjudged his audience.

The result is a reminiscent of another political trait (one Machiavelli lacked), a capacity to speak without saying anything of substance.

Francis Bacon famously said, Machiavelli’s only fault was ‘‘to write what men do, not what they ought to do’’. The irony is that while he was certainly a pragmatist he also had an idealistic streak to his character. In a famous letter he describes the role of his beloved classical ­authors:

In the evening I return home and enter my study. At the door I take off my work clothes, covered in dust and dirt, and I put on clothing to appear before a king. And thus I enter the ancient courts of men who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savour. I talk openly with them, and ask them to explain their actions, and they, out of kindness, respond. Four hours will easily pass by in this manner. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened by death. I live entirely through them.

This vignette, so characteristic of Renaissance humanism, is hard to fit with Shakespeare’s murderous Machiavel.

Commenting on the above letter, Celenza writes, ‘‘We sense a Machiavelli at home in different environments, who needs the give and take of vigorous human interaction.’’

Simon West is a poet and Italianist. His most recent book is The Yellow Gum’s Conversion.

Machiavelli: A Portrait

By Christopher S. Celenza

Harvard University Press, 256pp, $49.95 (HB)