When was machiavelli writing

After returning to Florence in , he witnessed the expulsion of the Medici family, oligarchic despots who had ruled Florence for decades, and the rise of Girolamo Savanorola, a Dominican religious zealot who took control of the region shortly thereafter. Italy at that time became the scene of intense political conflict.

Each of these powers attempted to pursue a strategy of playing the other powers off of one other, but they also engaged in less honorable practices such as blackmail and violence. Because Savanorola criticized the leadership of the Church, Pope Alexander VI cut his reign short by excommunicating him in The next year, at the age of twenty-nine, Machiavelli entered the Florentine government as head of the Second Chancery and secretary to the Council of Ten for War.

In his role as chancellor, he was sent to France on a diplomatic mission in In exchange for a marriage annulment, Louis helped the pope establish his son, Cesare Borgia, as the duke of Romagna. Borgia was a cunning, cruel, and vicious politician, and many people despised him.

Nevertheless, Machiavelli believed Borgia had the traits necessary for any leader who would seek to unify Italy. In , Machiavelli married Marietta di Lodovico Corsini, with whom he had six children. A lifelong patriot and diehard proponent of a unified Italy, Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory. Machiavelli entered the political service of his native Florence by the time he was As defense secretary, he distinguished himself by executing policies that strengthened Florence politically.

He was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured and temporarily exiled. Though released in book form posthumously in , The Prince was first published as a pamphlet in In it, Machiavelli outlined his vision of an ideal leader: an amoral, calculating tyrant for whom the end justifies the means. Machiavelli was never truly welcomed back into politics, and when the Florentine Republic was reestablished in , Machiavelli was an object of great suspicion. He died later that year, embittered and shut out from the Florentine society to which he had devoted his life.

Though Machiavelli has long been associated with the practice of diabolical expediency in the realm of politics that was made famous in The Prince , his actual views were not so extreme. In fact, in such longer and more detailed writings as Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy and History of Florence , he shows himself to be a more principled political moralist. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The Supreme Court issues a momentous ruling that clarified the way that the American legal system handled charges of discrimination.

Although Machiavelli soon lost his position as Secretary, he seems to have believed that he maintained some authority, writing a formal plea on behalf of Piero Soderini, whom he had helped to escape on the eve of the Medici return. Of course, any illusions of influence were dispelled a few months later, in February, , by jail and the strappado. He was experienced, he was at forty-three extremely vigorous, and during his many years of civil service he had shown himself a trustworthy man.

And he desperately needed a job. That spring, still unemployed, he retreated from the city to live with his wife and children on the family farm, near San Casciano, in taunting view of the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria.

It was a sprawling and ramshackle place, and he was sadly out of his element, catching birds and playing cards; his worldly friends sent mocking regards to the chickens. But in the evening, approaching his study, he stripped off his muddy clothes and put on his ambassadorial attire. There seems to have been little besides her family connection to warrant the Machiavellian association. What caused the furor? A philosopher could not hope for a more direct influence on the fate of mankind than by writing such a book; or, practically speaking, for a better advertisement for a royal job.

Like all the celebrated artists of his time and place—and statecraft was one of the Renaissance arts—Machiavelli was in thrall to ancient pagan models. Works that delve beneath the surface of classical forms to get at classical thinking—works of literature, philosophy, politics—require a recognition, at least, of the conflict between pagan and Christian ideals: strength versus humility, earthly life versus the hereafter, the hero versus the saint.

For Machiavelli, the choice was not difficult. And without doubt this common good is observed nowhere but in a republic. The great republic of his own era had failed because the men entrusted with its liberties did not know how to fight for them. He had seen his friend Soderini forfeit Florence by refusing to limit the freedoms ultimately employed against him by his enemies; that is, by trusting that goodness and decency could triumph over the implacable vices and envious designs of men.

Yet he was not a monster, if one considered the question of morals honestly, in terms of the good actually accomplished rather than the reputation created for oneself. Machiavelli asserts that Borgia had thus proved more genuinely merciful than the Florentines, who, guarding their reputation, had allowed the town of Pistoia to be destroyed by factional fighting rather than intervene with their own arms. So is he in fact a moralist?

Or, heaven forbid, a saint? Machiavelli was a very precise writer, continually reworking his manuscripts to achieve a style that is as clear as daylight. But the choice even of a word can amplify a thought in a significant way. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from to , when the Medici were out of power.

He wrote his most renowned work, The Prince Il Principe in Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics.

He even seemed to endorse it in some situations. 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.