Art
Consider Holbein’s Ambassadors as a portrait
showing the power of instrumental knowledge, and the split between the
moral language for the vanitas skull and the web of conflicting but
engaging interests brought together by the ambassadors. Consider also
images from Renaissance Perspectives. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
changes the traditional motto Ne plus ultra (don’t go beyond
limits) to Plus ultra (move always on). Portraits show the
individuality of a Pietro Aretino, a Baldassare Castiglione, a Florentine
youth or Pope Paul III. Consider the civic images of David and the
condotierre Bartolomeao Coleoni, the influences radiating from a
Florentine Venus
or Mary, from a Venetian Venus or Mary. Inhabit buildings
in particular settings. Now consider how a partial perspective may be more
convincing than an idealization, how a particular viewpoint emphasizing
present perspectives, perhaps a close-up, may serve an individual better
than a universal abstraction. Man, the measure
of all things appears anew
in Vesalius’ new take on vanitas: his spirit fades leaving fleshless
skeleton, but his freshening insight grows generation by generation.
Good Rulers
Machiavelli distinguishes between two uses of
“good”
to distinguish between professions of ideal morality and actual
practices of successful princes ruling in particular times and places. The
good, functioning as a noun, refers to God’s will, and to all that
implements God’s will. Good, functioning as an adjective, however, is
relative: a good bomb kills more people than a bad bomb. Machiavelli
considers a good Prince to be one who can maintain power by repelling
invaders and who can establish sufficient respect to quiet internal
rebellion.
Virtue
Virtue appears as a key term in Machiavelli.
Among shifting contexts, ingenuity serves as a fruitful synonym. To turn
back attacks by invading armies and to earn sufficient respect to quiet
rebellions from within, the prince should have the power of lions and the
cleverness of foxes. Such conjunction of temperaments is anything but
usual. Machiavelli dismisses contemporary accounts of ideal princes as
possessing all virtues by stating the obvious fact that no such ideal is
observable in the Italy of his day.
A generation earlier Lorenzo Valla had
shown the deed of Constantine, establishing temporal powers for the Pope,
to be a forgery. The language of the deed included numerous terms and
constructions in Latin not in use until centuries later. Valla argued also
that a ruler with the ambition and proficiency to conquer and build an
empire would not have the temperament to give it all away to be good.
Centuries of war marked disputed authority contested by the Popes and the
Holy Roman Emperor. Consider the Florentine flags, the Guelf red lily on
white ground competing with the Ghibelline white lily on red ground of
warring Florentine factions. But in Machiavelli’s time the few surviving
leaders of mercenary troops who rose to power appeared as living testimony
to a new, renaissance temperament, where inheritance diminishes as a
power, where those who can rule rise to rule.
Rulers, Subjects, and Territories
Machiavelli takes self-interest to be evident
in principalities, where a ruling class and a subject class live. Rulers
will seek privileges for themselves, their families and their associates
at the expense of subjects. Subjects will allow such privilege as the
price for protection and productive work. Among rulers, princes rule
relatively small territories, while kings, emperors and sultans rule
relatively large areas. Before Machiavelli five powers had divided Italy:
Florence, Venice, Milan, Rome and Naples. Whenever one would gain
substantially in power, temporary confederations of others would oppose
further expansion. A different power then gaining ascendancy, a new
confederation would arise in opposition. How such powers ebbed and flowed
is a matter of considerable interests to Machiavelli. His city, Florence,
and its rival, Venice, were republics, a form of government very unusual
in Italy. Florence and Venice operated in distinctively differing ways,
with customs and values frequently opposed. The ingenious and
self-sufficient Florentines, adept at book learning and invention,
competed with subtle Venetians, merchants equally at home with Christian
European and Muslim Ottoman. Othello’s Iago, a Venetian passed over for
the Florentine Cassio, demonstrates his contempt for Florentine intellect.
Audiences, appreciating Iago as a Venetian standard bearer, see the
subtleties of his observations and actions as Venetian to the core. But
English audiences alternatively see his actions as the work of the devil.
Machiavelli considers the artificial separation of ideal virtue from
shrewd stagecraft a disservice to Italian interests. He emphasizes Papal
Rome, newly enriched with the selling of offices and indulgences, and
newly armed, as intent on seizing temporal control of expanding territory.
Alexander VI served not only as the God’s Prince, but also in the field as
a military commander. In Milan, rulers newly established through military
prowess replaced hereditary custom with individual ability. Naples, a
hereditary fiefdom of Spain, seeking royal alliances through marriages,
served as a point of entry for foreign invasions.
Foreign Alliances and Invasions
Machiavelli accepted the relative stability of
endemic wars in Italy as a practical compromise, less than ideal, but more
than wishful thinking. Understanding the circumstances in which Italian
princes lived and acted is a necessary precondition for later adapting his
approach to other times, places and situations. A famous claim by
Machiavelli is that love is less necessary than fear to a prince. Having
both would be ideal (and may for a time in unusual circumstances be
possible). Respect, Machiavelli argues, is essential for ruling, and
respect is not a product of equality. But wars involving foreign invasions
superior in numbers and in financing, overwhelmed Italian powers. His
attempt to elevate an Italian prince to preeminence through The Prince
stems neither from ideal claims nor from cynicism, but from the
deterioration of Italian powers under the influence of invading forces
from France and Spain. With advances in navigation, with enormous
increases in military funds available from credit, with advances in
weapons, The King of France, the Spanish Holy Roman Emperor and the
Ottoman Sultan periodically tempted Italian rulers to alliances with the
offer of soldiers or parts of territories gained. The Papacy and Venice
profited from such alliances initially, but were unable to limit the
growing influence of such powers. Today’s ally would likely be tomorrow’s
enemy.
Alexander VI and Caesare Borgia
The sale of offices and the collection of
monies from indulgences raised extraordinary funds, and the new exercise
of temporal power over territories near Rome led Alexander to support
foreign invasions to remove enemies and to control increasing territory
from foreign alliances. The Pope’s ingenuity in fund-raising, his
establishment of a massive standing army, and his alliances with foreign
powers for particular territorial expansion were unprecedented. But the
previous detent involving five Italian spheres of influence was powerless
to resist the invasions of King and Emperor. Machiavelli’s account of
Alexander continues to raise controversy. But Machiavelli is less
approving or disapproving of his character and actions than exploring and
developing his story as suited to the times in which he lived and ruled.
The account of Alexander’s natural son Caesare
Borgia in the Romagna exemplifies Machiavelli’s approach to history. He
begins not with principles, but with a commonly accepted description of
land and society. Weak rulers assaulted and robbed subjects. Their
weakness was not an absence of power, but the exercise of power without
consideration of long-term consequences. At the mercy of such rulers, more
and more people in the Romagna themselves took to violence and robbery.
Caesare Borgia drives out current rulers, and places in power a good
governor, Ramiro de Orca, a cruel and able man. His governor is not
ideally good (no human being is), is not seen as good for all situations
by Caesare Borgia, and will soon, by his very success in limiting assault
and robbery, lose office and life. An able governor in part because he is
cruel, a letter of the law practitioner of justice, he is favored by his
subjects when assaults and robbery are diminishing. But his cruelty
(impartial but strict) in peaceable times increasingly offends the very
citizens who had earlier praised him as their liberator. In the town
square at Cesena citizens find him cut in half. The governor, to whom
Caesare Borgia had accorded the fullest authority (but the fullest
authority still subordinates him to Caesare Borgia), appears now to a
liberated citizenry, happy to be free of cruelty, but fully aware that the
man who has liberated them is capable of any cruelty instrumental in
gaining enduring power. The Italian terms describe the citizens as
satisfied and stupefied. Satisfaction arises from the perceived freedom
from cruel rulership, but stupefaction (the term in Italian use describes
the animal fatally stunned by the slaughter-house butcher) from the
suppressed awareness of Caesare Borgia as the author of this show of
power.
Stagecraft in Machiavelli and Shakespeare
Machiavelli would agree with Shakespeare’s
provocative line, “All the world’s a stage.” He would further recognize
that many different plays appear on the world stage, each more or less
suited to current, and shifting circumstances, and each potentially in
conflict with others. As the standard bearer (the
ensign) of Venice, Iago has exemplifies the subtle Venetian. Othello’s
frequent identification of Iago as honest Iago carries an ambiguity. Iago
is to be insightful, to be virtuous. But his insight and his virtue depend
on a very Machiavllian (and Venetian) practice of weaving a web from
divergent particulars. Othello abounds in opportunities to
appreciate how well Iago, nothing if not critical, can see the
self-deceptions of others, not least of all in the trust he is accorded by
those who expect his character to be realistic towards others and
idealistic towards themselves. Elizabethan audiences would recognize Iago
as a Machiavel, a devlish imposter sinful to the core. But Elizabethan
successes, notably in staging events, identify Machiavels, in different
circumstances, as subtle builders of new worlds. And the audiences who
condemn Iago appreciate his function As essential to their entertainment.
Praise then as now at times for the story of should coexis with
material rewards for stories of is.
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