Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence on 3 May 1469. We first hear of him playing an active part in the affairs of his native city in 1498, the year in which the regime controlled by Savonarola fell from power. Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican prior of San Marco, whose prophetic sermons had dominated Florentine politics for the previous four years, was arrested for heresy early in April; soon afterwards the city’s ruling council began to dismiss his remaining supporters from their positions in the government. One of those who lost his job as a result was Alessandro Braccesi, the head of the second chancery. At first the post was left unoccupied, but after a delay of several weeks the almost unknown name of Machiavelli was put forward as a possible replacement. He was barely 29 years old, and appears to have had no previous administrative experience. Yet his nomination went through without evident difficulty, and on 19 June he was duly confirmed by the great council as second chancellor of the Florentine republic.
By the time Machiavelli entered the chancery, there was a well-established method of recruitment to its major offices. In addition to giving evidence of diplomatic skills, aspiring officials were expected to display a high degree of competence in the so-called humane disciplines. This concept of the studia humanitatis had been derived from Roman sources, and especially from Cicero, whose pedagogic ideals were revived by the Italian humanists of the fourteenth century and came to exercise a powerful influence on the universities and on the conduct of Italian public life. The humanists were distinguished first of all by their commitment to a particular theory about the proper contents of a ‘truly humane’ education. They expected their students to begin with the mastery of Latin, move on to the practice of rhetoric and the imitation of the finest classical stylists, and complete their studies with a close reading of ancient history and moral philosophy. They also popularized the long-standing belief that this type of training offers the best preparation for political life. As Cicero had repeatedly maintained, these disciplines nurture the values we principally need to acquire in order to serve our country welclass="underline" a willingness to subordinate our private interests to the public good; a desire to fight against corruption and tyranny; and an ambition to reach out for the noblest goals of all, those of honour and glory for our country as well as for ourselves.
1. The Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, where Machiavelli worked in the second chancery from 1498 until 1512.
As the Florentines became increasingly imbued with these beliefs, they began to call on their leading humanists to fill the most prestigious positions in the city government. The practice may be said to have started with the appointment of Coluccio Salutati as chancellor in 1375, and it rapidly became the rule. While Machiavelli was growing up, the first chancellorship was held by Bartolomeo Scala, who retained his professorship at the university throughout his public career and continued to write on typically humanist themes, his main works being a moral treatise and a History of the Florentines. During Machiavelli’s own time in the chancery, the same traditions were impressively upheld by Scala’s successor, Marcello Adriani. He too transferred to the first chancellorship from a chair at the university, and he too continued to publish works of humanist scholarship, including a textbook on the teaching of Latin and a vernacular treatise On the Education of the Florentine Nobility.
The prevalence of these ideals helps to explain how Machiavelli came to be appointed at a relatively early age to a position of considerable responsibility in the administration of the republic. For his family, though neither rich nor highly aristocratic, was closely connected with some of the city’s most exalted humanist circles. Machiavelli’s father, Bernardo, who earned his living as a lawyer, was an enthusiastic student of the humanities. He was on close terms with several distinguished scholars, including Bartolomeo Scala, whose tract of 1483 On Laws and Legal Judgements took the form of a dialogue between himself and ‘my friend and intimate’, Bernardo Machiavelli. Moreover, it is clear from the Diary Bernardo kept between 1474 and 1487 that, throughout the period when his son Niccolò was growing up, Bernardo was engaged in studying several of the leading classical texts on which the renaissance concept of ‘the humanities’ had been founded. He records that he borrowed Cicero’s Philippics in 1477, and his greatest rhetorical work, the De Oratore, in 1480. He also borrowed Cicero’s most important moral treatise, the De Officiis, several times in the 1470s, and in 1476 he even managed to acquire his own copy of Livy’s History — the text which, some forty years later, was to serve as the framework for his son’s Discourses, his longest and most ambitious work of political philosophy.
It is also evident from Bernardo’s Diary that, in spite of the large expense involved — which he anxiously itemized — he was careful to provide his son with an excellent grounding in the studia humanitatis.[1] We first hear of Machiavelli’s education immediately after his seventh birthday, when his father records that ‘my little son Niccolò has started to go to Master Matteo’ for the first stage of his formal schooling, the study of Latin. By the time Machiavelli was 12 he had graduated to the second stage, and had passed into the care of a famous schoolmaster, Paolo da Ronciglione, who taught several of the most illustrious humanists of Machiavelli’s generation. This further step is noted by Bernardo in his Diary for 5 November 1481, when he proudly announces that ‘Niccolò is now writing Latin compositions of his own’ — following the standard humanist method of imitating the best models of classical style. Finally, it seems that — if we can trust the word of Paolo Giovio — Machiavelli may have been sent to complete his education at the university of Florence. Giovio states in his Maxims that Machiavelli ‘received the best part’ of his classical training from Marcello Adriani; and Adriani, as we have seen, occupied a chair at the university for a number of years before his appointment to the first chancellorship.
This humanist background perhaps contains the clue to explaining why Machiavelli suddenly received his governmental post in the summer of 1498. Adriani had taken over as first chancellor earlier in the same year, and it seems plausible to suppose that he remembered Machiavelli’s talents in the humanities and decided to reward them when he was filling the vacancies in the chancery caused by the change of regime. It is probable, therefore, that it was owing to Adriani’s patronage — together perhaps with the influence of Bernardo’s humanist friends — that Machiavelli found himself launched on his public career in the new anti-Savonarolan government.
Machiavelli’s official position involved him in two sorts of duties. The second chancery, set up in 1437, mainly dealt with correspondence relating to the administration of Florence’s own territories. But as head of this section Machiavelli also ranked as one of the six secretaries to the first chancellor, and in this capacity he was shortly assigned the further task of serving the Ten of War, the committee responsible for the foreign and diplomatic relations of the republic. This meant that, in addition to his ordinary office work, he could be called on to travel abroad on behalf of the Ten, acting as secretary to its ambassadors and helping to send home detailed reports on foreign affairs.
1
Bernardo Machiavelli,