Discussion 7

Machiavelli's Dante & the Sources of Machiavellianism Author(s): Larry I. Peterman Source: Polity, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), pp. 247-272 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234782 Accessed: 15-05-2017 18:17 UTC

REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234782?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Polity

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Machiavelli's Dante & the Sources of Machiavellianism

Larry I. Peterman University of California-Davis

Machiavelli is generally seen as the first "truly modern" political thinker. This article asks how and why he was different and explores Machiavelli's use and occasional abuse of Dante in search of an answer. The author notes that Dante speaks to many of the same thinkers and much of the same experience as Machiavelli, yet his thought does not move in the same direction. A comparison of the two Florentines, he argues, yields insights into how and why Machiavelli remade political philosophy as he did.

Larry I. Peterman is Professor of Political Science at the University of California-Davis. He has published a number of essays dealing with the political thought of Dante and Machiavelli in journals ranging from the American Political Science Review to Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History.

There is widespread agreement that Machiavelli is the first truly modern political thinker, but much less agreement about what constitutes his novelty or about what leads him to abandon prior ways of political thinking.' Despite various attempts to trace his intellectual paternity, we remain uncertain about how his arguments relate to those of his prede- cessors. It follows that we are also uncertain about why he refuses to be bound by the political inheritance left him by classical and medieval thinkers and, ultimately, about his political intention.2

1. For Machiavelli's modernity, see, e.g., Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 199; Isiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli," in Studies on Machiavelli, ed. Myron Gilmore (Florence: Sansoni, 1972); Anthony Parel, "Machiavelli's Method and His Interpreters," in The Political Calculus, ed. Panel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958).

2. See, e.g., J. H. Whitfield, "Savonarola and the Purpose of The Prince, " The Modern Language Review, LXIV (1949); Donald Weinstein, "Machiavelli and

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

248 Machiavelli's Dante

With this in mind, we shall explore both general and specific points of contact between Machiavelli and Dante, who is at least arguably among the many former writers and thinkers from whom Machiavelli explicitly departs in such places as the Prince and the Discourses. We know that Machiavelli admired and studied Dante closely. Yet we also know that he found Dante's thought deficient in ways that touch upon politics, e.g., Dante's failure to recognize that "a man is under no greater obligation than to his country." Thus, Machiavelli's reminiscences about and references to Dante, despite their relative infrequency, are an entrance to

his larger rejection of prior political thought.3 By the same token, they provide access to the foundations of Machiavellianism and, thereby, to the foundations of modern thought.

Savonarola," in Studies on Machiavelli; Felix Gilbert, "The Humanist Concept of the Prince and The Prince of Machiavelli," The Journal of Modern History, XI (1939); Allan Gilbert, Machiavelli's 'Prince' and Its Forerunners (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968). Machiavelli's puzzling relationship to his predecessors is nicely expressed by Leo Strauss. In one place Strauss says that "antitheological passion induced" Machiavelli to produce a new kind of political philosophy. In another place he indicates that a new sense of scientific in- ventiveness is the basis for Machiavelli's criticism of earlier ways of political thought. Thus, we are led to ask whether it was something present in Machiavelli's age or lacking in prior ages, or both, that moved him politically to emulate Columbus. Cf. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd Ed., ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 269; Thoughts, p. 299.

3. Unless otherwise noted, Machiavelli references, in square brackets, will be to the sec- ond edition of the two volume Opere edited by Francesco Flora and Carlo Cordie (Milan: Mondadori, 1968). For Machiavelli's references and allusions to Dante, see, e.g., Prince XV [1.48], hereafter PR.; Discourses I.lviii, II.i, II.xvii [1.217, 231, 274], hereafter DISC; Dialogue on Language, ed. Bartolo Sozzi (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 770b-771a; History of Florence II.xviii [11.81]; "Letter to Vettori," in Allan Gilbert, The Chief Works (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1965), 11.927-31; Golden Ass, in Gilbert, Works, 11.753; Francesco Ercole, "Dante e Machiavelli," Quaderni Di Politica, 2 (1922), 44; Larry Peterman, "Dante and the Setting for Machiavellianism," American Political Science Review, 76 (1982); Peterman, "Machiavelli versus Dante: Language and Politics in the Dialogue on Language,." Interpretation, 10 (1982), 201-21. Cf. DISC. I.xix, xiv [1.147, 192]; Dialogue 772b43-49; Florence VI.xxix [11.314]. The Life of Castruccio Castracani [1.669-73] provides another sort of evidence of Machiavelli's respect for Dante. It con- cludes with a series of "wonderful" sayings for which Castruccio was supposedly re- nowned, most of which arise in Diogenes Laertius. In three cases Castrucci repeats something he hears from others. Only once, in his thirty-third saying, does he repeat advice which he explicitly requested of another. This advice stems from the Inferno. Thus Dante is the only source of information whom Castruccio, Machiavelli's hero, actively pursues. See Strauss, Thoughts, pp. 223-5.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 249

I.

A good place to begin assessing the relationship between Dante and Machiavelli is with their positions on a question that dominated Euro- pean political thought for the better part of a millenium, the status of the Roman Empire, and especially its relation to the well-being of Christian- ity. At the outset, the two agree on the events that bound the history of the Empire, its origins under Augustus and the final serious attempts to revive it during the thirteenth century Franciscan-Dominican religious revitalization.4 They disagree, however, about the character of these events. For Dante, the Empire and Christianity waxed and waned together, thereby demonstrating that the political and religious orders could be attuned and providing a model for future attempts to fashion political-religious harmony. For Machiavelli, on the other hand, the Em- pire and Christianity seem always to have been at odds, with the result that he rejects Dante's proposals for balancing or accommodating politics and religion.

In Dante's version of imperial history, Augustus's "perfect monarchy" is a secular-indeed, the secular-expression of Scripture's "fullness of time." Its claim to such eminence is supported by, among other things, Christ's choice to be born during Augustus's reign, a fact which many medieval thinkers found impressive. For Dante, it follows, Augustan Rome represents the mutual high points of the Empire and of Christianity, the moment when there was perfect peace throughout the world and when the "Son of God [became] mortal for the salvation of men," i.e., the moment when the highest promises of politics and pro- vidence came together.' By the same token, Augustan Rome testifies to the interrelated well-being, at least potentially, of Christianity and the political world. This is part of a greater Dantean argument, shown most clearly in the discussion of the integrated heavenly spheres in the Banquet and in the Divine Comedy, for the correspondence of temporal and ex- tratemporal affairs and, by extension, for the harmony of the secular and the spiritual, or the political and the religious. Indeed, Dante's political and religious goods are sufficiently intertwined to permit him both to employ imperial imagery to describe the heavenly end-to be

4. Cf. Monarchy, ed. Pier Ricci (Milan: Mondadori, 1965), I.xvi. 1-3, hereafter MON.; Paradise XI-XII, references to the Divine Comedy will be to the John Sinclair text and translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961); Art of War II [1.508]; DISC. III.i [1.330]. PR. XV; DISC. I.xliii [1.48, 216].

5. Cf. MON. I.xvi.1-3, II.x.4-9. On the importance to medieval writers of Christ's Roman citizenship, see Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 156.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

250 Machiavelli's Dante

"forever citizens of that Rome of which Christ is Roman"-and to

employ parallel Scriptural imagery to indicate the character of the original empire. As Christ's birth into the register of Augustan Rome demonstrated the perfection of the best regime "in those matters which are subject to time," so too his citizenship in heavenly Rome testifies to its final perfection.6

Such a correspondence also prevails in Dante's description of condi- tions at the time of the Franciscan-Dominican revival. The portion of the Divine Comedy devoted to the saints only indirectly deals with politics, but the Banquet identifies Frederick II, under whom their orders originated and initially flourished, as "the last emperor of the Romans." As the birth of Jesus occurs under and validates the reign of the first of the emperors, so too the penultimate Christian revival occurs under and validates the reign of the last of the historical emperors.7 Conversely, in the wake of Frederick and as the influence of St. Francis and St. Dominic

wanes, the health of both the political and religious worlds deteriorates. Dante likens contemporary Italian politics to life in a brothel and is similarly outspoken on the state of Christianity under the corrupt and in- effectual direction of the Church and Popes of his lifetime. However, he holds out hope for his fellows. The deterioration of politics and the spiritual order may be reversed by a new world monarchy, which repre- sents a secularized version of the respublica Christiana of the Church. Here, a new Emperor-the Divine Comedy's veltro or DX V-together with a Supreme Pontiff will lead men to temporal happiness and eternal life.8 Political and spiritual revitalization are, in short, to occur together. The political and religious orders will be rejoined and the conditions that existed at the time of Augustan Rome will be recreated, or even improved upon.

With this, Dante's arguments come full circle. The final empire rees- tablishes the integration of political and religious well-being that had in- itially been manifested in Augustus's Rome. This harmony between politics and religion has an added feature which must also be noted. It represents an accommodation between the forces of reason and of revel- ation. Philosophy, of which politics is an extension, and theology, of which religion is an extension, will henceforth be able to coexist comfort- ably. In the Monarchy, Dante says the Emperor will use philosophical

6. PURG. XXXII.102. See, also, Kantorowicz, Two Bodies, p. 466; Charles Davis, Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957).

7. Cf. PARA. XI, XII; Convivio, ed. G. Busnelli and G. Vandelli (Florence: Le Mon- nier, 1964), IV.iii.6, hereafter CONV.

8. PURG. VI.76-79; INF. 1.101, PURG. XXXIII.43, MON. III.xv.7-15.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 251

teaching and the exercise of moral and intellectual virtues to lead us to that happiness typified by the "earthly paradise," while the Supreme Pontiff will use spiritual teaching and the exercise of theological virtues to lead us to that happiness typified by the "heavenly paradise." Dante's surface teaching, then, is that the promises of the two ends of our lives will no longer suffer from the tension between the spheres of reason and revelation, or of speculation and practice, which informed so much of classical and medieval political thought.9

Machiavelli's version of imperial history differs significantly from Dante's. For one thing, Machiavelli disapproves of Augustus. The Art of War, for example, says that he bore primary responsibility for disarming the Roman people and, thereby, for leading them into corruption. Thus, Augustus bears responsibility for the eventual collapse of the Empire. Where Dante's Augustus marks the high point of the historical Empire, Machiavelli's Augustus represents both its beginning and the beginning of its end. Augustus is certainly not on Machiavelli's list of great founders. Indeed, he is not mentioned in the Prince, which is curious given his stature as the first Emperor and his importance for earlier writers.10 Machiavelli's low assessment of Augustus, however, does not seem due wholly to his disapproval of something greater than himself. If we couple the argument-with which Machiavelli would have been familiar by way of Dante if no one else-that Augustus was notable for being the ruler under whom Christ chose to be born, with Machiavelli's appraisal of Augustus, we are left with the impression that Christianity comes to life and grows at the same moment that Roman politics begins to deteriorate. Christianity's birth, for which it is hard to blame Augustus, coincides with the beginnings of Imperial political failure.

A similar pattern emerges in Machiavelli's account of the period dur- ing which the later Empire foundered. Although Machiavelli shares Dante's view of the importance of the thirteenth century Franciscan- Dominican revival, he teaches that this second founding of Christianity is concurrent with the failure of Frederick II, and not, as for Dante, with Frederick's success. The revival, Machiavelli says, maintained and main- tains the Christian religion at the same time that Frederick spawns the

9. Cf. MON. I.ii.4-7, III.xv.7-15. See Karl Vossler, Medieval Culture, trans. William Lawton (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1929), I1.180; Pocock, Moment, p. 5; Etienne Gilson, Dante and Philosophy, trans. David Moore (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 199-201; Kantorowicz, Two Bodies, pp. 461ff.

10. I [1.459]. See Strauss, Thoughts, p. 177. Augustus's absence from the list of Roman emperors in PR. XIX calls to mind Christ's absence from the discussion of founders and unarmed prophets in VI.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

252 Machiavelli's Dante

Guelf-Ghibelline factionalism that leads eventually to "the ruin of all Italy." As the birth of Christianity coincides with the beginning of Roman political failure, so too the later Christian revival coincides with the beginning of modern Italy's political failure. This case clarifies the nature of the conflict between Christianity and the Empire. In effect, Christianity attracts men's loyalties, thus weakening the existing political order, but Christian leaders are either too weak or disinclined to fashion a new political order of their own. We are told that St. Francis and St. Dominic strengthened the church and religion by providing a shield for depraved clerical authorities and by teaching men to be obedient to such authorities. Thus their revival strengthened the hand of Frederick's papal

opponents--mainly Innocent III and Innocent IV-who, Machiavelli says, combined love of religion with personal ambition in a way that con- tinually "provoked new dissensions in Italy." This process, whereby the Pontiffs are strong enough to obstruct the unification of Italy by others but do not unify it themselves, continues into Machiavelli's own day. Leo X is most powerful at the same time that Italy is weak and disunited almost beyond repair. Machiavelli's version of the ends of imperial history, then, points to an inverse relationship between political and Christian well-being. Where the Christian religion is strong, he seems to suggest, the political order tends to be weak."

This is not to say that Machiavelli opposes religious and political vital- ity in all cases or contexts. Pre-Christian Rome was characterized by religious and political strength and, according to the exhortatio in the Prince, the Medici might bring about a similar situation in Italy.'2 These points aside, however, it remains that Machiavelli, in contrast to Dante, indicates an historical opposition between the health of Christianity and the strength or virtue of the political. He also questions other facets of Dantean thought. To the degree that Dante's history reflects an order or cosmos in which temporal matters respond to the heavens and politics coexists with divine and speculative affairs, Machiavelli's reversal of Dante's history makes questionable both Dante's unity of heavens and earth and his proposals for harmonizing politics, philosophy, and theology. Indeed, the opposition between religion and politics in Machia- velli's account is associated with a similar opposition between the con- cerns of heaven, philosophy and theology, and the concerns of earth, political science. In that famous passage of the Prince where Machiavelli departs from what "many have written" concerning the methods of

11. Cf. DISC. III.i; Florence I.xxi, xxiii; PR. XI [I.330, II.36-8, 1.38]. 12. The Medici are to succeed, in part, by becoming principe of the church. PR. XXVI

[I.82].

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 253

princes, it is clear that Dante must be counted among the "many." The complaint that such writers are "imagining republics and principates that have never been seen or known to be in truth" is also a criticism of any politics that looks beyond the temporal world for its origins and stan- dards. Any regime, like Dante's, that answers to philosophical and theological ends represents an obstacle to Machiavellian politics. This, I think, begins to suggest the dimensions of Machiavelli's undoing of Dante. In the broadest terms, the Dantean harmony between the earth and the heavens is dissolved, and one cannot look for any guide to action beyond what one can immediately feel." By extension, the accommoda- tions between politics, philosophy, and theology characteristic of Dan- tean thought become empty.

We can now attempt to situate the more immediate divisions between Dante and Machiavelli. First, Dante's assertions that the heavens are in- terdependent and that the secular and divine are unified lead him to ac- cept the permanent temporal influence of providence and fortune. That is, his teaching about the interlocking and unified order of permanent and impermanent things means that providence and fortune, which are active forces in the impermanent world, are parts of a greater unity which no amount of human ingenuity can undo. Thus, his apparent op- timism about balancing all aspects of our lives and, by extension, achiev- ing all that we might desire is tempered by his recognition that pro- vidence and fortune may interfere with our achieving such a balance.14' Things beyond our control sometimes deny us temporal satisfactions and also those goals that, according to the argument for congruence between this world and the next, ought to be as assured as our heavenly satisfac- tions and goals. Where, for example, we might expect temporal happi- ness to be the reward for our acting in accord with the moral and intellec- tual virtues, just as the bliss of the next world is the reward for our acting in accord with the theological virtues, we discover that sometimes the world disappoints us. Virtue often goes unrewarded and, more disturb- ing, vice sometimes is rewarded. In the Banquet, Dante argues that our urge to perfection will be temporally realized in a universal order where we will achieve "that [happiness] for the sake of which we are born." At the same time, he reminds us that there is a want of equity in practical af- fairs, where the "basest churl" may fortuitously come upon wealth

13. PR. XV, XVIII [1.48-49, 57], XXVI, DISC. I.xi. 14. For Dante's purported optimism, see, e.g., Bruno Nardi, Dante e la Cultura

Medievale (Bari: Laterza, 1942), pp. 263-77; Francesco Ercole, II Pensiero Politico Di Dante (Milan: Alpes, 1928), pp. 83, 226; Aldo Vallone, Dante (Milan: Vallardi, 1971), p. 15.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

254 Machiavelli's Dante

denied to better men. Dante himself therefore provides a counterpoint to the proposition that men can achieve the same degree of certainty in practical matters as in intellectual and spiritual matters."I

It is impossible to do justice to Dante's entire argument here. It will, however, be worthwhile to touch upon its outlines inasmuch as they pro- vide a sense of what changes when Machiavelli urges men not to be vic- timized by fortune. The Divine Comedy is our best resource in this respect. In Purgatory, Dante finds himself in the "place set apart for human nature as its nest," i.e., a poetic representation of the Garden of Eden or the Monarchy's earthly paradise. Here he comes upon a mysterious lady, who is generally regarded as a symbol of "the active life in its perfection." She tells Dante about the divine source of the things of this world and about how from diverse virtues there follow diverse

growths, a process which, if understood, would remove men's marvel when "some plant takes root without visible seed." According to the lady, natural things may be traced to divine origins and in the perfect natural order there is no interruption between generation and completion or fulfillment. To this she adds "a corollary as a grace." It was perhaps this, she says, of which the old poets dreamed when they sang on Par- nassus of the "age of gold and its happy state." Thus she joins ancient and Christian ideas of natural perfection, a condition in which the natural order of generation is unobstructed and there is "lasting spring."'' In the Garden of Eden, as in her version of the stories of the poets, the unexpected is banished.

The possibility of such perfection, however, is called into question a few cantos later in Paradise when Dante encounters Charles Martel, the youthful former King of Hungary and heir to the Kingdom of Naples whose life was cut short by the plague in defiance of his contemporaries' belief that he would become a great political leader. In contrast to the mysterious lady's practical perfection, Charles represents failed political expectations and the possibility of the emergence of evil where good is anticipated. As he says to Dante, had the world not "held me but a short time below," much evil "would not have been." As a symbol of the tem- poral failure of just deserts, Charles invites a question that had been left open by the discussion in the Garden of Eden. How is it, Dante asks him with an allusion to the mysterious lady's invisible but perfect seed, "that from sweet seed can come bitter fruit?" The picture of natural perfection offered earlier is marred by Dante's knowledge that natural generation

15. See CONV. I.i.1-2, III.vii.2ff., IV.xi.6-12. xxii.10ff; Larry Peterman, "Dante and Happiness," Medievalia et Humanistica, 10 (1981). Cf. Metaphysics 980a25.

16. PURG. XXVIII. 103ff. (and Sinclair's gloss). Cf. Genesis 11.8-9, PURG. XXI.40ff.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 255

can be obstructed, i.e., that what nature seems to intend does not always come to pass despite the sense that it would be "impossible that nature fail in what is needful." Charles's explanation of this troublesome fact parallels the speech of the mysterious lady in that it consists of a state- ment and a corollary-the only other use of that term in the Divine Com- edy. "Generated nature," he says, "would always take a like course with its generators if divine providence did not overrule." His "corollary" is that "always, if nature meets with fortune unsuited to it, like any kind of seed out of its own region, it goes badly." To this he adds an example, which is simultaneously a gibe at his brothers Louis and Robert, who were unsuited for their temporal roles, and a reminder that religion and politics are alike subject to fortune. The world below, he says, demonstrates that its "track is off the road" when it "wrest(s) to religion one born to gird on the sword, and make(s) a king of one that is fit for sermons." As the proper balance of the world monarchy would ulti- mately rest on a satisfactory division of labor between an Emperor and a Supreme Pontiff, so the practical world suffered when Louis the priest and Robert the king confused their natural roles, i.e., when fortune in- tercepted nature's course. In sum, Charles offers a counterbalance to the perfection and certainty of the earthly paradise. In the world which he has lost and Dante will soon reenter, providence may stand between natural potential and its realization, and fortune can pervert what nature intends."I

That Charles is unclear about where providence ends and fortune begins is not critical for our immediate purpose. More important is that they share in being unforeseeable and unpredictable from our perspec- tive. To borrow from St. Augustine, fortuitous things no less than provi- dential things "are hidden in the will either of the true God or one of His spirits." Insofar as we cannot know where or when they will strike, we cannot achieve absolute assurance in temporal matters and our world falls short of the earthly paradise. The best we can do, apparently, is try to diminish the effect of the unexpected, which is a far cry from controll- ing or vanquishing it. This means, in turn, that the real world, as Dante has it, is bifurcated by the sense of assurance associated with the mysterious lady and the poets of whom she speaks, and by the doubts generated by Charles Martel and exemplified by his and his brothers' ex- periences. In the Monarchy, Dante may begin his discussion of Rome's providential right to rule with a sense of confidence born in his trust of divine authority and reason-of revelation and philosophy-but he

17. PARA. VIII.91ff. The second corollary adds a "cloak" to the first's "grace."

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

256 Machiavelli's Dante

almost immediately tempers this by recalling that Aristotle's Ethics teaches us not to expect the same kind of certainty in all subject matters. This may be said to be Dante's version of the political paradox of medieval Christian-Aristotelianism. The unrelenting Christian search for certitude, which culminates in the ideas of an Augustan "fullness of time," of a philosophically defended universal community of human be- ings, and of an earthly paradise, must be weighed against the limits of certitude "in the matters which are subject to time."'' As a result, Dante's subjects must balance the assurances that ultimately guide them against the fact of practical uncertainty. They live in a condition of cer- titude they identify with religion and philosophy, a certitude foreign to classical thought, yet their politics retains the nervous quality characteristic of classical doctrines.

From Machiavelli's perspective, this situation could hardly have been appealing. For one thing, the interstices between the certain rewards of theology and philosophy and the uncertainties of politics left consider- able room for maneuver for the theologians whose influence he found pernicious. What can be said with more confidence, however, is that Machiavelli's departure from Dante on the integration of the temporal and eternal now begins to pay dividends. By divorcing the two worlds, the one we can "feel" or "see and know" from the one we cannot, he provides a means of escape from all that is not within the bounds of what we can sensibly grasp, including providence and fortune. We are less sub- ject to what is beyond us and thus a way is opened for a new confidence that we can control our fates. It is telling that when in the Prince Machia- velli constrains fortune, he does so in the name of free will." We shall return to this below. For the moment, it is enough to say that Machiavelli reverses Dante in two ways. Not only does he divorce politics from the eternal or imagined, he suggests that the security that had hitherto been available with regard to the extratemporal sphere is to become at least partially available here.

Here again, Machiavelli's teaching on Rome and Christianity is ger- mane. Discourses III.i, which describes the impact of St. Francis and St. Dominic, draws our attention to the political equivalent of their success, the rebirth of Roman vitality and virtue subsequent to Rome's conquest by the Gauls. A few chapters earlier Machiavelli attributes this rebirth to the power of the heavens or of fortune. Initially he treats the terms

18. City of God V.9; MON. I.xvi.8, ii.3, 8; II.i.7-8, ii.7-8. Cf. II.iv.1, v.24, x.4-5, III.vi.7.

19. PR. XVIII, XXV [I1.57, 78-9].

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 257

synonomously but in the end he emphasizes the workings of fortune. He does not characterize the accomplishments of St. Francis and St. Dominic in the same way. Their exemplary lives were sufficient, it seems, to move men irrespective of the workings of chance. The power of religion is manifested outside the sphere of fortune, whereas political ex- cellence or virtue is, if not an expression of fortune, at least coeval with

the beneficence of fortune. In this way, by indicating that one sphere may ignore fortune while the other must build upon it, Machiavelli rein- forces the opposition between Christianity and the political world. By the same token, he offers the opportunity to set fortune aside, at least an ap- preciable part of our lives, an opportunity that had been foreclosed to Dante's world by the interlocking nature of its heavens. Where Dante will not partition temporal matters so as to secure an arena against for-

tune's mischievous potential--recall that Robert the king and Louis the priest were both subject to fortune- Machiavelli can say that fortune rules only half our actions.20

It is a mark of Machiavelli's boldness that one of his examples of someone surmounting fortune is supplied by the religion whose political impact he usually wants to constrain. Bolder yet, he seems to suggest that such religious success may even become a basis for political success. As we learn in the Prince, the ecclesiastical principality, which crushed Venice and before which the King of France trembles, is maintained, like Christianity was maintained earlier by St. Francis and St. Dominic, without regard for chance.21 The principality is sustained by what Machi- avelli calls "superior causes" and is not subject to the same uncertainties as purely secular regimes. With this step, the certitude of religion becomes an avenue to political certitude. Somehow, successful Machia- vellian politics will follow the model of Christianity, whose assurances are such that the religious are freed from fortune's grasp. One of the paradoxes of Machiavelli's teaching is that the certitude identified with the religion whose political influence it decries supplies the basis for a new kind of temporal, and thereby political, certainty. In the Machia- vellian scheme of things, Christianity simultaneously opposes political well-being and provides a clue as to what is required for modern political success, i.e., to attain in politics the kind of certainty that, for Dante,

20. Cf. MON. II.ii.7, Nich. Ethics 1094b24. DISC. III.i, II.xxix [1.327-31, 314-16]. In the last case, fortuna in the title becomes i cieli and fortuna in the body. See Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 282-5, 300. Machiavelli's most famous statement on fortune occurs in PR. XXV. Cf. DISC. 11.29 [1.316], PARA. XXV.67-9.

21. PR. XI [1.36]. Cf. I [1.5].

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

258 Machiavelli's Dante

had been attainable only at the levels of speculation and revelation. Machiavelli reinforces this idea in various ways. For example, Discourses I.xi, which will be treated at greater length below, parallels the Prince's statement on ecclesiastical principalities in that it relates how Numa's in- troduction of religion to Rome led to "good orders" and thereby to "good fortune" and "happy successes." The religion associated with the political strength of pre-imperial Rome and the religion associated with the weakness of post-republican Rome, then, have in common an ability to withstand changes (varia) in fortune.22 For Machiavelli, of course, pagan religion and Christianity are very different. Still, the similar political impacts of Numa's religion and that of the ecclesiastical princi- pality's leads one to wonder about the process whereby something funda- mental to religion becomes fundamental to politics. What we encounter here amounts to more than the instrumental perspective upon religion with which Machiavelli is frequently identified. It is the sense that a quality associated with religion, and most emphatically with Christian- ity, may lead to the freeing of politics from the kind of political uncer- tainty accepted by thinkers like Dante. Thus, where Dante leads us to wonder about the interplay of religious certainty and political uncer- tainty, Machiavelli leads us to consider how religious certainty is trans- formed into political certainty. By the same token, he leads us to wonder about the process whereby Dante's teachings are dislodged and replaced. Here, the Discourses' references to Dante become helpful.

II.

There are two explicit and several tacit references to Dante in the Discourses. Moreover, one may speculate that the whole of Book II ought to be considered in a Dantean context. Although Dante is not men- tioned in its body, its subject matter-Rome's external affairs-and its division into thirty-three chapters both recall Dante. Machiavelli employs the latter device, for instance, to call attention to Dante in the Life of Castruccio Castracani. The question of Machiavelli's devices and numerological tricks aside, however, Book II seems to be an open response to Dante's teaching on the providential basis and mission of Rome. Its theme, as announced in the proem, is how the Romans augmented their empire, and it begins by rebutting the opinion of "many" that the Romans acquired the empire more through the favor of fortune than by virtue. In evidence of the popular opinion, Machiavelli offers the comment of Plutarch, that "most grave writer," that the

22. [I.125-6], PR. XXV [1.79]. Cf. PR. XI.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 259

Romans erected "more temples to Fortune than to any other god." His own position is the opposite of this. Book II tells how Rome's military virtue led to her acquisitions and how her good "modes and orders" maintained them.2

With this, Discourses II, in a way that echoes the Prince XV, places Dante among the "many" whose opinions are to be corrected. Dante's argument that Rome's extension and political success were providential was keyed to his open, even notorious, opposition in the Monarchy, the only Dantean text mentioned in the Discourses, to the idea that the Em- pire rested upon might. Indeed, the parallels between the opening sec- tions of Discourses II and Monarchy II, also the second of three books, reinforce the suspicion that Discourses II is intended as a response to Dante and that, on this issue at least, Dante represents a modern equivalent to Plutarch. In any event, Discourses II replicates the begin- ning of Monarchy II but reverses its point. Where Dante objects to the prominent, but "superficial," opinion that the empire rested "simply upon armed force" rather than providence, Machiavelli objects to the widely held opinion that Rome owed its Empire to fortune rather than military prowess.24

That Machiavelli's "many" attribute to fortune what Dante attributes to providence obscures but does not fundamentally lessen the opposition between the Discourses and the Monarchy. For Machiavelli, as his restatement of Plutarch implies, providence and fortune are indis- tinguishable insofar as their opposition to armed might is concerned. Thus, as previously noted, he treats the two synonomously in recounting how Rome was revitalized after its defeat by the Gauls. For Dante, as Charles Martel demonstrates and as we have also noted previously, the situation is not much different.25 As evidence of the legitimacy of trial by combat, for example, he refers us to Ennius's restatement of a speech by Pyrrhus wherein the gods, and in particular Hera, are considered the final arbiters of disputes settled by the fortunes of war. Dante's gloss on the passage is instructive: "by Hera (Pyrrhus) meant fortune, the cause which we more correctly call divine providence."26 In identifying pagan fortune with Christian providence, Dante may be said to anticipate

23. [1.230-1]. See above, n. 3. 24. MON. II.i.2.

25. II.xxix [I.314, 315]. For medieval recognition of the difficulty of distinguishing the providential from the fortuitous, see, e.g., Maimonides, "Letter on Astrology," trans. Ralph Lerner, in Medieval Political Philosophy, ed. Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), pp. 234-5.

26. CONV. IV.v.1l, PARA. VIII.139, MON. I.ix.8-9.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

260 Machiavelli's Dante

Machiavelli, but Machiavelli reverses him by denying that armed force is subordinate to either and thereby frees arms from the constraints Dante imposes upon them. Dante, who sought to correct an opinion that was previously dominant-he admits to having once held it himself-is, in turn, corrected by Machiavelli's reaffirmation of the original position. In this sense, Discourses II's new direction amounts to a revival of an argu- ment that Dante, and the "many" with whom he is associated, had at- tempted to discredit.27

This line of argument is extended in the central chapter of Book II. As the first chapter refuted a common opinion about the old world, this chapter refutes a "universal opinion" about the modern world. Here, in II.xvii, the "many" are said to hold that artillery has drastically changed human affairs. Had artillery existed during Roman times, their argument goes, the Romans could not have conquered so easily as they did nor been so bold militarily, for artillery has decreased the "employment or display" of virtue and makes it impossible any longer to imitate the an- cient orders. Were the prevailing view on artillery to stand, Machiavelli concludes, war would soon be reduced to the issue of artillery. This posi- tion is unacceptable to Machiavelli. Although he does not take issue with the idea that artillery is a great innovation, he rejects the argument that it has so changed the world that men cannot return to the virtuous old ways.28 Now, it is arguable that artillery stands for more than a technological development in the Discourses.29 But even if this is so, the initial bearing of Machiavelli's argument is that men ought not to be overly impressed by the impact of new things, a mistake of which Dante, in particular, could be accused. Dante, for example, openly associates Florentine moral and political deterioration with the influence of new ways and new peoples and is pessimistic about the likelihood of reform- ing his contemporaries. Despite his proposal of a new temporal order, he does not think it likely that the men of his day can regain the virtues of earlier ages. Machiavelli was well aware of this. Indeed, in the Dialogue on Language, he severely criticizes Dante for his harsh and despairing judgment on his fellows.

Together, therefore, the beginning and middle chapters of Discourses II amount to a response to Dante's evaluation of the ancient world and his criticism of the modern world. While it is debatable whether

Machiavelli expressly had Dante in mind when he composed this book,

27. MON. II.i.2. Cf. CONV. IV.v.1, 6. 28. DISC. II.xvii [I.274-80]. 29. See, e.g., Mansfield, New Modes, p. 238.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 261

Dante certainly fits the unflattering description in its proem of the men who always, but not always reasonably, praise ancient times and accuse present times. More to the point, according to Discourses II, Machiavelli has to replace, in the teaching associated with Dante, both that part per- taining to virtue in the ancient world and that part pertaining to corrup- tion in the modern world. Machiavelli faces a sizable challenge. Having argued that the old world was subject to the same forces as the new and that the new could replicate the qualities of the old, he needs to show, in the face of the opposition of Dante and others, how ancient ways could be restored for modern men."3

III.

Some of the particulars of Machiavelli's attempt, as against Dante's, to combine elements of the ancient and modern world are evident in the two

chapters of the Discourses which explicitly refer to Dante. The first of these is Discourses I.xi., entitled "Of the Religion of the Romans." It begins by linking Roman strength to religious vigor; "never for so many centuries was there such fear of God as in that republic." It concludes with an account of how modern men, irrespective of their degree of civility, might be persuaded to follow "a new order or opinion" that would provide the kind of political security generated by Roman religious fear. In other words, it moves from an account of the religious sources of ancient political well-being to an account of what can be ac- complished in the way of replicating such well-being in the modern world, despite the apparent incommensurability of ancient and modern religion. That Roman strength could be reestablished in some form seems to be a given. As Machiavelli puts it at the end of the chapter, "let no one despair, then, of being able to effect that which has been effected by others; for, as we have said in our preface, men are born and live and die in an order which remains ever the same."

The chapter provides several illuminating examples of what is required if modern men are to effect events successfully according to the ancient pattern. Machiavelli's first example is the salutary political impact of Roman religion supplied by Numa, who reduced a ferocious people to civil obedience by way of religion. His final example is supplied by

30. INF. XVI.73, PURG. XVI.122, PARA. XVI.96ff., XVI.40ff, DIAL. 772b45-773a9. This is not to say that Dante was unqualifiedly opposed to the new. Adduc- ing support from Scripture, for example, the Monarchy (I.i.3-4) will demonstrate "truths no-one else has considered" and present an idea of world monarchy foreign to classical thought.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

262 Machiavelli's Dante

Savonarola, who persuaded Florentines that he spoke with God and thus induced them to have faith or trust in him. This, for Machiavelli, testifies to the possibility that modern men could be persuaded to adopt new and better ways. Taking the first and last examples, then, the fear that underlay ancient religion-Machiavelli says Roman citizens were more afraid of breaking their oaths than of breaking the law-is balanced by the trust engendered by the most famous cleric of Machiavelli's day. In these respects, the argument moves from identifying ancient religion with political strength to identifying modern religion with political potential. Modern men, it would appear, can achieve the political security of an- cient men insofar as the persuasiveness identified with Savonarola can replace the sense of dread identified with the Numa. How this replace- ment, or transformation, is to be managed is not expressly indicated. However, Machiavelli offers a hint by way of Dante. The transition from the qualities that underlay Roman strength to those that underlie modern potential is denoted by what Machiavelli calls a "prudent" saying of Dante. Whereas in Book II Machiavelli may silently indicate Dante's identification with the ideas that must be discarded to make the world

over, in I.xi he expressly employs Dante to show what is required to make the world over.

The context here is an argument that princes alone cannot fill the void created by the disappearance of ancient religion because princely rule lacks continuity. Fear of a prince, as Machiavelli puts it, may replace fear of God, the source of Roman strength, as a guarantor of the well- being of a kingdom but it is untrustworthy because princes are short lived and their virtue is not apt to outlast them. In support, Machiavelli refers to Purgatory 7, with two emendations. He ascribes to Dante what Sordello says about the failed nobles in the Valley of Princes and iden- tifies virtue with what Sordello calls probity."

Rarely does human probity descend through the branches, and this he wills who gives it, that it may be sought from him.

With this, Machiavelli introduces a familiar element in his teaching. In effect, he uses Dante to support his attack on aristocratic or lineal claims to political prominence. According to Dante's Sordello, lineal claims are deficient in a modern context because virtue is a divine gift rather than a

31. PURG. VII.122-4. Machiavelli also changes risurge in the original to discende. The change would seem to point to a changed perception on the status of founders. Cf. DISC. I.xix.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 263

matter of inheritance. This effectively removes one of the principal political alternatives to the arts of persuasion, the subject Machiavelli takes up immediately thereafter. Those who accept the traditional argu- ment that position is a matter of descent need not concern themselves about convincing others to accept or trust them.32 From Machiavelli's purported Dantean perspective, the same set of beliefs on which Savonarola builds forecloses political claims arising in blood ties and inheritance.

In part, then, Machiavelli would reconfigure the modern world by removing the power of the gentiluomini, i.e., the class that represents traditional lineal claims. This also means that he answers Dante's

criticism of the modern world by turning Dante upon himself. What the Divine Comedy says is a sign of political weakness-Sordello's descrip- tion of modern princes is sorrowful-now becomes a source of strength. This kind of turnabout is characteristic of the Discourses. Discourses

I.xxxiii, for example, is a companion piece to I.xi insofar as gentiluomini are concerned. The chapter highlights the political dangers inherent in youth of "noble birth and outstanding virtue," thereby using Aristotle's definition of gentlemen to render objectionable the group on which Aristotle rested hopes for a practically good political order. Machiavelli, in other words, adopts Aristotle's view that "gentlehood," as Dante calls it, is a matter of breeding and character but reverses Aristotle by making

gentlemen obstacles, rather than sources, of political well-being.3 Again, Discourses I.xi is at the center of a series of chapters at whose peripheries Rome is praised because it disregarded blood claims to posi- tion and in which the need for rule other than by lineage is reasserted. In the latter case, Machiavelli embroiders the point made in Discourses I.xi. Unless a man lives a very long time or one virtuous man succeeds another, unlikely by inheritance according to Sordello, states will relapse to a condition of corruption and lose their freedom. Here, too, Machia- velli compares Rome favorably to Sparta-Aristotle's example of a good regime-and Venice because Rome placed responsibility for liberty in the plebs whereas Sparta and Venice placed it in the nobili. This had, among other things, the advantage of making Rome a better setting for political expansion than Sparta or Venice, since the nobility, according to Machiavelli, favor political stability and tranquility above other political

32. See, e.g., DISC I.lv, I.lx, III.xvi, heading and body [1.212-3, 224, 380]; Strauss, Thoughts, p. 217.

33. [I.168]; CONV. IV.iii.6; MON. II.iii.3. See Peterman, "Dante and the Setting," 637-8; Peterman, "Dante and Happiness," 83-4.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

264 Machiavelli's Dante

ends. Secure and confident in their own positions and with regard to foreigners, they do not experience the anxiety that causes regimes led by nongentlemen to strike out in new directions and grow.3" Gentlemen are not merely impervious to the persuasive arts, their political self- assurance makes them defenders of the status quo and obstacles to new ways. In these senses, Machiavelli's attack upon them bears out and develops the alternatives set out in Discourses I.xi. Either something resembling the nervousness and fear, grounded in religion, of Rome must be reintroduced in the world or the tools of Savonarola must be

perfected politically, which in turn means that the confidence heretofore located in an upper class will be relocated in those who can build politically upon Savonarola's model. In either case, or in any combina- tion of the two, the political influence of gentiluomini must be removed. "

In using Dante as he does in Discourses I.xi, Machiavelli obscures the Aristotelian element in Dante's teaching. To be sure, Dante recognizes that blood descent is an unsatisfactory source of privilege in a Christian setting. For example, he clearly identifies the antagonism between belief that all men are descended from a single man and belief that lineage distinguishes men from one another in any essential sense. However, the Christian half of his teaching, expressed in part by Sordello, is mitigated by such things as Hugh Capet's dynastic concern later in the Purgatory. Again, the Banquet's critique of Aristotelian gentilezza, attributed to Frederick II, is balanced by its agreement with Aristotle that fathers pass on their natures to their sons and that agents and patients, which include fathers and sons, are somehow inseparable. The Banquet may also follow Scripture in denigrating inherited wealth but it still ascribes im- portance to the conditions of one's birth and to the impact of breeding insofar as realizing virtue is concerned. Men who must work for their sustenance rather than being born to it, Dante says, will not have the leisure and freedom to develop the habits of virtue.36 Such things are in-

34. I.v, xvii [I1.105-7, 142]. Machiavelli recognizes the inherent strength of hereditary princes. His comments on Marcus Aurelius in PR. XIX [1.61], for example, balance his comments on wholly new princes in PR. VI. Cf. DISC. I.vi [I.108-10] and statements on "hereditary" regimes in PR. I and II.

35. DISC. I.vi [I.111], I.lx [1.224]. 36. CONV. IV.xv.1-3, IV.iii.6, II.viii.6, and Busnelli's gloss, III.x.2. Cf. IV.xi.9-10,

PURG. VII; CONV. IV.xx.7; IV.xxix.8ff. Machiavelli indicates his appreciation of Dante's argument that there is a tension between religion and the idea of lineal descent in the chapters which bound DISC. II, where he approves the Roman policy of making the consulate "the reward of virtue, not blood," (1.224), and lauds the revitalization of Roman religion [1.124, 231-4].

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 265

dicative of the delicate course Dante steers between classical doctrines on

the sower of natural generation and descent and Christian belief in a God who, to recall the opening of the Monarchy, "gives to all liberally and upbraids none." By attributing Sordello's position to Dante, therefore, Machiavelli, at the least, obfuscates the Dantean accommodation be- tween Christian and classical positions.37

This means that Machiavelli emphasizes the religious end of Dante's teaching. His use of Dante points to a world largely moved by religious values. The chapter's ending statement on Savonarolan persuasion rein- forces this point by underscoring an older argument, wherein, as demonstration is the hallmark of philosophy, persuasion is the hallmark of religion. That is, insofar as he associates religion with persuasion, Machiavelli echoes the position of some of his precursors, including, I think, Dante."3 However, whereas those precursors balanced the argu- ment for religious power with an argument for the power of philosophy, Machiavelli does not mention the power of philosophy. Instead, he argues for a modern persuasiveness, and thereby a modern religion, which is doubly powerful in that it operates in the void left by the failure of ancient religion and the absence of philosophy. In short, Machiavelli gives us a world that seems dominated by Christianity and subject to the tools Christianity employs.

Despite the fact that Machiavelli recognizes that Christianity is somehow at odds with the fear-induced valor of the ancient world, this does not mean that he abandons the idea that there is political utility in fear.39 All his readers will recognize that. Moreover, he raises the ques- tion of how one is to combine the fear typical of the ancient world with the persuasive power inherent in the modern Christian context. But before we turn to this question, we must ask a prior one. Why does

37. I.i.6 (my emphasis). In identifying probity with virtue in general, Machiavelli at- tenuates Dante's teaching on virtue. For Dante probity is a particular virtue characteristic of young manhood and the martial life (CONV. IV.xxvi, xxvii.1). See Strauss, Thoughts, pp. 227, 234, 244-5.

38. See, e.g., Alfarabi: "In everything of which philosophy gives an account based on intellectual perception or conception, religion gives an account based on imagination. In everything demonstrated by philosophy, religion employs persuasion" ("Attainment of Happiness," trans. Muhsin Mahdi, in Medieval Political Philosophy, p. 77). For Dante's version of these ideas, see CONV. III.xv.2.

39. On the difference between pagan and Christian valor, see, e.g., Ernst Kantorowicz, "Gods in Uniform," in Kantorowicz, Selected Studies (Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin, 1965), pp. 8-11. From Machiavelli's perspective, Christianity dissipates the fear out of which ancient valor was produced. In the Art of War II [1.508], he speaks of how the Chris- tian religion lessens fear and, thereby, diminishes martial valor.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

266 Machiavelli's Dante

Machiavelli expect that religious persuasion can or will become political persuasion?

Here again, Machiavelli's use of Dante is suggestive. If, in Discourses I.xi, Dante introduces us to the potential inherent in modern persuasion, in Discourses I.liii-the only other explicit reference to Dante in the Discourses-he introduces the "consideration of what it is easy and of what it is hard to persuade a people." In this respect, Discourses I.liii may be said to indicate how the argument of I.xi becomes operational. Where the earlier chapter, for example, reveals the audience for persua- sion-the rude and the uomini civili, the later chapter reveals the most ef- fective means of persuasion."' Basically, Machiavelli teaches that it is easy to persuade the people or multitude to adopt seemingly sure and bold courses, however foolish, and hard to persuade them to adopt seem- ingly hopeless and cowardly courses, however wise. His examples con- trast the lack of persuasive success of those who advocated wise policies with the persuasive success of those who advocated ruinous policies. The examples suggest rules for those who want to be persuasive, e.g., people are apt to respond positively to one they think of as their own. But it is by way of Dante that we learn what ultimately is behind persuasion, and what makes it a potentially powerful political tool.

In Discourses I.liii, Machiavelli cites Dante to support the argument that when the people lack a leader in whom they have faith, they will often seek their own ruin, and that when they have no faith in anyone at all, they will of necessity come to ruin. "Of this proposition," Machiavelli claims, "Dante says in . . . On Monarchy that the people often cries 'long live its death and death to its life.' " This quotation is for the most part faithful to the original, although it appears in the Ban- quet rather than the Monarchy. Machiavelli's use of the passage, however, is at odds with the way Dante intends it. For Machiavelli, the people's cry demonstrates what happens when popular faith fails. For Dante, on the other hand, it illustrates the perils that follow from the blindness "to the light of discernment" characteristic of the le populari persone. It does not represent a failure of confidence so much as a failure of reason. Such failure is attributable particularly to the fact that most people have no opportunity, or are unable, to develop the habit of discernment associated with virtuous behavior. For Dante, men at large

40. I.liii complements I.xi in a number of other ways as well. For example, as a reference to Dante marks I.xi's transition from concern for the permanence of princes to concern about persuasion in principalities or republics, so a reference to Dante marks I.liii's transi- tion from concern for the fragility of popular government to concern for persuasion among republican peoples.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 267

are incapable of independently pursuing virtuous and responsible ends. Employing an old metaphor, he describes their sheeplike behavior as they follow one another to their deaths if but one chooses that course. Dante's people are not ruined because they lack purpose, confidence, or faith but because they tend, in their ignorance, to trust the unworthy. Thus, in the midst of his discussion, Dante borrows from Boethius to make the point that popular glory is vain since it rests upon the opinions of the undiscerning and vulgar.41

It follows that by using Dante to make the point that the people need to have faith in their rulers, the argument in Discourses I.liii replaces Dante's concern for the menace associated with popular lack of discern- ment with concern for the menace associated with popular lack of trust or faith. It also alters Dante's teaching in other ways. Dante's argument for leaders of judgment and justice, like David and Solomon, is now sub- ordinated to an argument which emphasizes the need for popular political faith and for persuasive leaders, a point that Machiavelli rein- forces in the next chapter. This is not to say that Dante fails to recognize the importance of persuasion, nor that Machiavelli disdains the qualities represented by a David or a Solomon.42 Machiavelli simply misuses Dante insofar as Dante becomes part of an argument which appears to place the need for a ruler's persuasiveness on par with his need for virtue and judgment. In place of Dante's argument for political, if not spiritual, rulers on the Aristotelian model, we now have an argument for rulers who can instill confidence or faith on the Savonarolan model. In-

deed, the argument of Discourses I.liii may be said to diminish Aristotle more directly. The Aristotle who takes exception to those who identify ruling ability with rhetoric becomes less imposing as Machiavelli increases the emphasis on ruling persuasiveness and its complement, propaganda.43

Discourses I.liii, then, furthers the argument initiated in I.xi. Whereas in the earlier chapter Dante marks the shift from the Roman to the Chris- tian religion, in the later he points to the political effects of that shift. The same quality which made Savonarola successful in spiritual mat- ters-the ability to inspirefede-is now demonstrated to be most needful in political leaders. Not only has Christian trust replaced ancient fear, Christianity's requirements are now coextensive with politics. Its values are now the values of both the political and spiritual worlds.44 The faith

41. CONV. I.xi.5-10.

42. MON. I.xv.9, III.xv.9-12. 43. Strauss, Thoughts, 173, 297-8. Propaganda is here used in the sense that the Church

employs in its Societies for the Propagation of the Faith. 44. [I.206].

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

268 Machiavelli's Dante

and confidence in the life to come, and the hope, which are the spiritual characteristics of Christian men are qualities that the new Machiavellian leader must inspire in his followers. The successful Machiavellian politi- cian must emulate and improve upon Savonarola, who, to borrow from the Prince, found it easy to persuade his followers but difficult to hold them in that persuasion.45 By way of Machiavelli's Dante we become aware of one of the remarkable paradoxes of Machiavellian thought. The teachings of Machiavelli, Christianity's adversary, are apparently more a function of the strength and appeal of Christianity than those of Christianity's apparent advocates, including Dante. We recall that Dante, trying to accommodate Christianity with Aristotelianism, pro- posed a world order that was in some measure politically independent of religion. A comparison of Machiavelli's Dante with Dante himself, then, leads us to say that Machiavelli departs from Dante because, unlike Dante, he does not resist Christianity's penetration of the political world.

IV.

We can now reformulate the question posed earlier. Given their ap- parently contradictory characters, how does Machiavelli expect to ac- commodate the fear and insecurity characteristic of the Roman world with the faith and certainty needed for modern persuasion? Indeed, the arguments on persuasion in Discourses I.xi and I.liii, with their emphasis on using and instilling fede, appear antithetical to the arguments in Discourses II.i and II.xvii for reinstituting fear-induced military valor. Machiavelli seems to offer us competing stimuli, trust and fearfulness, as the necessary propelling forces for his new politics. The Prince's use of Savonarola to emphasize the importance of holding men to their persua- sion is, for example, immediately followed by the teaching that suc- cessful rulers must be ready to apply force when persuasion fails. Machiavelli employs Dante to remove one of the barriers to ancient fear, the gentiluomini, and to bring out the need for political faith. But in so doing he raises the question, What common political ground is possible for fear and faith?"4

45. PR. VI [19-20]. 46. Dante points to the problematic aspects of Machiavelli's position. As he presents the

case, Christianity provides a kind of "certainty" that arises in the promise of "future glory" and is foreign to ancient thought (see, Peterman, "Dante and the Setting," 632-3). The demand for such certainty extends into temporal matters according to the view that the ways of this world parallel the ways of the heavens. Thus, the tranquility of the next world becomes a model for temporal peace (MON. I.xvi.2, GAL. IV.4). Machiavelli may be said to build upon this position but, to rephrase the point in the text, how can he do so in a world which demands the revival of fear?

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 269

At this point, we may return to the argument on artillery in Discourses II,xvii. As already noted, Machiavelli holds that "universal opinion" overestimates artillery's impact insofar as it believes this new device has destroyed the possibility of old-style valor. Roman armies, Machiavelli says, would have held their own even in the face of this prototypical modern weapon. And, in keeping with the lesson in Book I that there is a sameness in human affairs, Machiavelli would extend this into the present. Properly motivated modern soldiers can withstand artillery without compromising its powerful potential. The contemporary prob- lem is seeing to it that men are not overwhelmed by the violence of modern "instruments of fire." Properly trained and led, they can learn to compensate for their quite understandable fear of artillery. We learn in Discourses II.xvii that offensive-minded armies commanded by those who know how to employ artillery without placing undue faith in it, manned by infantry undeterred by its terrors, and staffed by officers un- dismayed at being within its reach anywhere on the field, can emulate the virtues of old. Common agreement about artillery's impact and common sensitivity to its fearsomeness do not foreclose military behavior con- sistent with that of the virtuous Roman legions. Indeed, artillery's fearsomeness provides an impetus to the reemergence of old-style valor by reintroducing the fear, or a variant of the fear, that animated the legions. At all ranks, artillery increases fear by making the possibility of death more immediate, although it does not threaten armies in the aggre- gate much more than did ancient weapons.47 Artillery's usefulness, in this sense, extends beyond the field. It serves to recreate the fear lost when Christianity, according to Machiavelli's account, set aside uncon- ditional warfare and the equation of defeat with death or slavery. Ar- tillery thereby serves as an antidote to the Christian way of living, which is characterized by dangers that men fear only a little. Consciousness of the terrors of artillery creates an opportunity for reestablishing military virtue on a basis that approximates that of ancient virtue.48

What artillery represents in the Machiavellian scheme of things may also be indicated by the relationship of Discourses II.xvii to I.xi and the final chapter of the Discourses, III.xlix. The artillery chapter stands mid-

47. The violenza delle artiglierie is described at the conclusion of II.xvi [1.273]. Artillery is called instrumenti de'fuochi at the beginning of II.xvii. The other comments in the text are from the body of II.xvii [I.274-80].

48. See above, n. 39. Artillery also erodes the influence of the gentiluomini who repre- sent an obstacle to Machiavelli's new ways and orders. By lessening the effectiveness of fixed fortifications and of defensive warfare, it weakens their defensively oriented regimes. Cf. DISC. II.xviii.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

270 Machiavelli's Dante

way between these other chapters, the sixty-sixth of the 132 chapters which they span. Numerology and its dangers aside, the interesting feature of this set of chapters is that it places Machiavelli's statement on artillery between statements on the interrelationships, religious and political, of confidence and fear. We have already discussed Discourses I.xi and its transition from Roman religion based on fear to Christian religion based on faith and trust. In Discourses III.xlix, on the other hand, Machiavelli outlines the new provisions required to maintain freedom in a modern republic. Here he calls for "wise physicians" to treat "accidents" and recalls the terrifying and terrible acts by which Rome kept its citizens, and particularly its soldiers, in line. Machiavelli's statement on artillery is situated between statements which acknowledge the force of Roman religious fear and of Christian faith and demonstrate the need for a modern political equivalent of medical science and for the prudent use of terror. Religious fear and faith on the one side are balanced, if you will, by confidence-inducing science and fear-inducing statecraft. Conversely, ancient fear and modern faith are balanced on the one side and science and terror on the other. This allows us to speculate as to whether Machiavellian artillery might represent a modern conjunc- tion of fear and trust since it, like medicine, is the product of confidence- inspiring science and, like Rome's "terrible executions," is a source of continuous fear. Certainly, Discourses II.xvii, at the heart of the Discourses's Dantean book, suggests a response to the question posed earlier. Human inventiveness, or science, here borne out in artillery, is at least a provisional source of the combination of fear and confidence needed to power the modern regime.49

This brings us to a final comparison of Dante and Machiavelli and, perhaps, an illustration of the ultimate division between them. Like Machiavelli, Dante views men in this world as permanently subject to fear and suggests that artistry or science may help bring such fear within acceptable bounds. Indeed, in making the latter point, he employs the same metaphors that Machiavelli will make famous. If Machiavelli tells us that virtue identified with prudence or knowledge may operate as a levee to control the potential torrent of malevolent fortune and that such virtue allows men to emulate the fox and avoid snares, the Divine Com- edy relates how fear impels the Flemings to build dikes and how guile relieves the fox's fear of traps. However, we have already seen that Dante does not go so far as Machiavelli to subdue the uncertain and fear-

49. [I1.442-5]. That science can simultaneously induce fear and confidence will be an idea familiar to anyone familiar with contemporary controversies regarding physics and genetics.

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Larry I. Peterman 271

ful. Beyond the things mentioned above, for example, he cautions us that the vengeance of God must always be feared irrespective of our belief that we need only fear what can do us ill. Even for Christians, it would seem, there is no escape from some degree of temporal uncertainty and fear. Despite their urge toward certainty, confusion being the worst punishment they can wish on their enemies, Christians live with an anxi-

ety that neither faith nor artistry can wholly dissipate.50 Dante's self-description in the Divine Comedy is, perhaps, as good a

testimony to this condition as one can find in his works. He is torn be- tween fear that his art cannot do justice to what he sees about him and fear that he would be untrue to his art if he fails to try to do it justice. Again, he is anxious because his fellows will resent what he has to say of them, but is afraid to remain silent lest future men think him a "timid

friend to truth." Here, his reflection on his own condition represents his accommodation between philosophy and practical matters and eternal and temporal matters. He echoes Aristotle in calling attention to his need to balance responsibility to the truth with responsibility to his fellows. On the other hand, his commitment to a beneficial art "that is to God, as it were, as a Grandchild" and the fear which that art creates in him cor-

respond to his portrayal of a God that is alternately a source of hope and fear, of certainty and anxiety." Dante's treatment of the interrelated matters of hope, anxiety, certainty, and fear is, then, part of his confron- tation with the great problem of the Christian-Aristotelian, to provide room for movement between the compulsions of reason and of revela- tion. In Machiavelli's hands, by contrast, the drive for assurance repre- sented by the attempt to control fortune and the revival of fear that ac- companies technological advances are overtly stripped of their intellec- tual and theological extensions. They become instruments whereby the masterful prince, combining the strengths of Numa and Savonarola, will recreate ancient politics in modern circumstances. Machiavellian artillery manifests the possibility of taking political advantage of the characteris- tics of ancient fear and modern faith without the encumbrances of an-

50. CONV. III.xi.9, 15; xii.8, IV.xxx.3; MON. II.v.24, III.vi.7; INF. II.88-9, XIV.17. Cf. INF. XXXI.95, PURG. XIII. 122. Cf. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Muhsin Mahdi, in Medieval Political Philosophy, p. 223.

51. INF. XI.97-108, XXXII.6ff., PARA. XVII.106-20, PURG. XVI.112. Cf. DISC. III.xxi and xxii, where Hannibal's ferocity and use of fear are favorably compared to the methods of Scipio, and the methods of Manlius Torquatus are favorably compared to those of Valerius. Dante also recognizes the political need for fear. At the center of the Comedy (PURG. XVI.112), he has Marco Lombard explain that when the sword, the empire, is joined to the crook, the church, both go badly because "the one does not fear the other."

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

272 Machiavelli's Dante

cient political philosophy or modern theology. Machiavelli's antagonism to theology and his respect for inventiveness-the first pits him against the church, the second against ancient political philosophers-eventuates in a teaching where science replaces the tenuous combination of theology and philosophy one encounters in Dante.

A final note on all this is provided by Machiavelli himself. In Discourses II.xxiii, he quotes Livy in his argument that Rome was suc- cessful because it avoided middle courses in dealing with subject peoples. The quotation stems from Camillus's speech to the Senate concerning treatment of the conquered Latins. In both Machiavelli and Livy, Camillus urges haste while the minds of the Latins were stunned. However, Machiavelli excises a sentence from the original. He does not repeat Camillus's statement that the Senate must also move quickly because it was keeping so many peoples in suspense, torn between hope and fear. It is a measure of Machiavelli's bold new political science that the alternation between fear and hope that Camillus sought to alleviate becomes a source of rather than an obstacle to political health.52 For Dante, this alternation and its accompanying discomfort is mitigated by the possibility of salvation or speculation. For Machiavelli, there seems to be no such escape, unless, looking well forward, it lies in an act of will.

52. [1.296-7]; LIVY VIII.13 ("whatever you decide to do, you must make haste; you are keeping so many peoples in suspense, between hope and fear," in Livy: Rome and Italy, trans. Betty Radice [New York: Penguin, 1982]). On Machiavellian hope and fear, see Strauss's comments on how Machiavelli "explicitly urges all readers to hope, i.e., to aban- don themselves to the passion opposite to fear," while constructing a society wherein men "can be made good and kept good only by such compulsion causing fear as originates in other men" (Thoughts, pp. 215, 249; 232-3).

This content downloaded from 128.193.152.0 on Mon, 15 May 2017 18:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms