Research Analytical Essay at least 8 pages

A Refutation of Garrett Mattingly’s “The Prince: Political Science or Political Satire?”

“I…have composed a little work On Princedoms,” wrote Niccolò Machiavelli to his friend Francesco Vettori in December of 1513, “…And if ever you can find any of my fantasies pleasing, this one should not displease you” (Letters, 142; 10 Dec. 1513). One way or another, Machiavelli delivered in spades. His “fantasy” became the stuff of Florence’s nightmares and Mussolini’s wet dreams. Even Rousseau and Spinoza did not know what to make of it. Machiavelli’s name now lives in infamy. And in 1958, Garrett Mattingly, in an essay that was published in The American Scholar, finally made The Prince appear truly fantastic: The Prince, he argued, was in fact, and has apparently all this time been a mordant satire. But while Mattingly’s essay is superficially persuasive, there is a lot of evidence that invalidates his assertion.

Mattingly quotes Machiavelli as saying, in his Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy – the most thorough expostulation of Machiavelli’s political thought – that “popular rule is always better than the rule of princes” (qtd. in Mattingly 180). “It was chiefly because they widened their boundaries that Machiavelli preferred republics [to principalities]” (180), Mattingly says, and leaves it at that. But in stark contrast to The Discourses, The Prince, the argument seems to go, is essentially a manual on how to consolidate and maintain autocratic authority, and basically constitutes an endorsement of tyranny. Mattingly maintains that Machiavelli was a dyed-in-the-wool republican, and The Prince, with all of its calculated cynicism, can only be a satire because it is so unlike the rest of Machiavelli’s work.

Upon closer inspection, though, Machiavelli’s tone and attitude in The Prince is not especially dissimilar to the tone of his language in The Discourses: “[Any lawgiver] must presuppose that all men are evil and always prone to exercise the malice in their minds whenever opportunity gives them free rein…men never do good except out of necessity” (33; bk. 1, ch. 3). This excerpt alone weakens Mattingly’s claim that the spirit in which The Prince was written – particularly in its mistrust of human behavior in the aggregate – is jarringly dissonant from everything else Machiavelli wrote.

It would be more accurate to say that while Machiavelli believed popular rule (his metonymy for “republic”) was more conducive to a state’s long-term success than a principality, it was only viable when the body politic was healthy, and the laws and institutions of the state were not corrupt (Discourses 71-2; bk. 1, ch. 17). But when the laws and institutions of government are failing, or nonexistent, the state is undergoing an existential crisis during which it needs one man to become the locus of power and effect immediate and drastic change. It is important to note that for all his idealism, Machiavelli’s writing deferred to the realities of the world he lived in. Popular rule in the sense of male suffrage didn’t even exist in Machiavelli’s Florence when that city-state was officially a republic (Gilbert 64). The republic was the ideal state, but it could only be created by a dictator (in the ancient Roman definition of the word):

It would be impossible to try and introduce a republic into lands that are [hostile to civil society]…but were anyone to assume that responsibility, there would be no other way to try to reorganize them than establishing a kingdom there. The reason is that where the material is so corrupted that laws are not an adequate restraint, then some superior force must necessarily be instituted along with them: a royal hand that with absolute and overwhelming power can put a check on the overwhelming ambition and corruption of the powerful [emphasis added]. (Machiavelli, Discourses 141; bk. 1, ch. 55)

Variations of this idea can be found elsewhere in Book 1 of The Discourses: in Chapters 9, 18, and the aforementioned Chapter 17. Such a qualification of Machiavelli’s preference for popular rule is significant because it properly situates The Prince within the context of the rest of his work.

The ruler’s job was to either midwife or resuscitate the republic (the metaphor of the state as a body is a recurring trope in Renaissance humanist literature), after which he was expected to relinquish absolute authority, because while it is best that one man is in control of organizing a republic, it will endure only “when it is left in the care of many and if it is the business of many to maintain it” (50; bk. 1, ch. 9). In arguing that Machiavelli was describing tyranny in everything but name, Mattingly capitalizes (unwittingly or not) on the subtle misconception that since so much of the advice in The Prince is tyrannical in the modern sense, it follows that Machiavelli must have been describing tyranny as he understood it (180-1). But to Machiavelli, a tyrant was someone who sought power for his own gain without ever arranging for the kind of government that would ensure his state’s long-term success:

At the outset of the Discorsi, Machiavelli presents his heroes: the founders of republics and kingdoms as opposed to those who imposed tyrannies; Scipio versus Caesar, Agesilaus, Timoleone, Dion of Syracuse versus Nabis of Sparta and Dionysius; the princes of republics and the emperors who ruled under the laws versus Caligula, Nero and Vitellius. He places in opposition the good princes (‘principi buoni’), or simply the good (‘i buoni’), against wretched and corrupt tyrants…Nothing is as beloved by God, writes Machiavelli in the Discourses florentinarum rerum, as the deeds of those who did good for their country and reformed kingdoms or republics by laws[.] (Viroli, Republicanism 166-7)

Implicit here is the suggestion that princes can and should serve the interests of the countries they rule. The only political imperatives that Machiavelli recognized were the primacy of law and order, the greater good, and the political integrity of the state itself. Broadly speaking, the ruler’s motives decided whether he was a tyrant or not. The other possible distinction was between princes who subordinated themselves to the rule of law and those who ruled entirely by fiat. Regardless of how he classified the different species of prince, in The Discourses Machiavelli did not go out of his way to condemn monarchial authority in and of itself, as Mattingly implies in his essay. According to Machiavelli, that government is best, James Atkinson and David Sices say, “which can best guarantee the state’s existence and longevity” (xxviii). The fact that The Prince is a serviceable manual for establishing a tyranny only serves to explain the book’s notoriety, and distracts one from trying to understand its ultimate purpose. To say that if The Prince is not a satire then it can only be a manual for tyrants is analogous to insisting that if a rifle is not a stage prop then it can only be a murder weapon.

Because Machiavelli only implies in The Prince the ultimate political purpose that he makes explicit in The Discourses, many people assume that the book exists in a moral vacuum. The language Mattingly uses to describe The Prince suggests his belief that if the book is not a satire, then it certainly enjoins its audience to immorality, for no ultimate purpose that Mattingly is aware of. Mattingly’s cursory summarization is grossly reductive even if The Prince is considered by itself apart from The Discourses or Machiavelli’s other writings. The things that are immoral in The Prince concern only struggles for power, not politics according to the humanists of the Quattrocento (Viroli, Republicanism 143-71); it is immoral only in the sense that the outcomes of power struggles do not coincide with moral or immoral behavior, seeing as so many who seek power are overwhelmingly not good. The seizure of control often requires good men to soot their hands:

Reorganizing a city for political life presupposes a good man, but becoming a prince of a republic by violent means presupposes a bad one. For this reason, we find it seldom happens that a good man seeks to become a prince through evil means even though his aim be good[.] (Machiavelli, Discourses 75; bk. 1, ch. 18)

Those who practiced statecraft were expected to be willing to give up certain moral scruples when it came to matters of relations between states, and in matters of the arte dello stato, that is, the art of consolidating one’s status. All of this was supposed to serve a higher purpose, that of the vivere civile, or civil life (Viroli, Republicanism 143-71; Machiavelli 42-50). This is how Machiavelli saw the world, and this is the lens through which his every exhortation to violence and subterfuge should be filtered: statesmen should love their city more than their souls, and should be ready and willing to disregard conventional morality on its behalf (Machiavelli 50-56). As far as his subjects were concerned, Machiavelli admonished the prince to serve the greater good:

A citizen should not hesitate to increase his property for fear it will be taken away from him, or to open a new business for fear of taxes. On the contrary the prince should offer rewards to those who undertake to do these things, and to anybody who thinks of improving in any way his city or his dominion. (Machiavelli, Prince 167; ch. 21)

The despotism Machiavelli prescribed was not arbitrary or self-serving; it is the people to whom the prince is ultimately beholden.

Mattingly dedicates the bulk of his essay to arguing that Cesare Borgia, the notorious ruler who appears frequently in The Prince as an example of cunning and prudence, was regarded by everyone in Italy as such “a notorious and spectacular failure” (181) that his function in the book could only be satirical, and that contrary to what Machiavelli pretended to claim in The Prince, Borgia never managed to pacify the Romagna or earn the loyalty of its people. Furthermore, Machiavelli had to have known this because he spent time with Cesare while serving as Florence’s envoy, and none of his reports at the time came anywhere close to the praise he lavishes on Cesare in The Prince. After Cesare’s death, the Romagna revolted after only a month, showing just how tenuous the duke’s hold on them had been (182-4). This is the substance of Mattingly’s attack on the use of Borgia in The Prince.

The fact of the matter is that contemporary observers did not unanimously dismiss Cesare Borgia as a pathetic failure. The particular skills that Borgia demonstrated and which Machiavelli used anecdotally in The Prince were not unrecognized: Giovio called his assassination of the Orsini “a splendid deception,” and the orator of Ferrara declared to his Venetian listeners that the King of France called it “an action worthy of a Roman” (Villari 301). Even the historian Guicciardini, Niccolò’s friend and a formidable Renaissance intellectual in his own right, who Gilbert says

was not inclined to favor the Borgias…as president of Romagna under Clement VIII…had opportunity to learn the truth. His opinion is that after the election of Julius II, ‘the states of the Romagna stood firm for Cesare…because he had set in authority over those peoples men who had ruled with so much justice and honesty that Cesare was greatly loved by them.’ Since Guicciardini wrote later than Machiavelli, and had no hesitation in differing from him, this may be taken as pretty good evidence. The judgment of Cesare as successful in making himself loved at home is apparently a correct one. (Gilbert 32)

Machiavelli, while serving as Florentine agent in Borgia’s camp, did in fact write approvingly of Borgia’s tirelessness and the impressive inscrutability of his designs (Villari 288-99). Niccolò’s friend Buonaccorsi even informed him that in Florence people accused Machiavelli’s reports of being too admiring of Borgia (Villari 303). After Pope Alexander VI (Cesare’s father) died, and Borgia lost the backing of the papacy, everyone knew that the axe was about to fall (Mattingly 182-3). Machiavelli didn’t deny this. He wrote that Borgia “seemed to be slowly sinking into his grave (Gilbert 32). But Machiavelli also knew that it was because of Borgia’s failure to maneuver the election of a favorable pope. Writes Gilbert, “it was a specific piece of bad judgment, not part of his general policy, that undid [Borgia]…According to Niccolò’s analysis, then, Cesare’s failure was in…a matter that only a ruler in his exceptional circumstances as to the papacy would have to deal with (31). This did not stop Machiavelli from writing to one of his friends, ten years later:

Duke Valentino, whose works I should always imitate if I were a new prince…made Messer Rimirro President in Romagna; that decision made those people united, fearful of his authority, fond of his power, and trustful in it; and all the love they felt for him, which was great, considering his newness, resulted from this decision. (Letters 186; 31 Jan. 1514)

In accusing Borgia of being a “spectacular failure” Mattingly disregards every obstacle Borgia overcame, every complication that conspired against him, and the specific focus of Machiavelli’s piercing gaze. Gilbert argues, in his sublime introduction to his translation of The Prince, that in all probability Machiavelli preferred to use the example of a man who did everything right and was still ground to death by Fortune (32). (The importance of the rise and fall of the Wheel of Fortune in Machiavelli’s worldview is hard to overstate [50-3].) Another less obvious but no less important point was the matter of Machiavelli’s loyalty to historical truth. Even if it was the case that the portrait Machiavelli painted of Borgia was not historically accurate, or was at odds with how most people in Italy perceived Borgia at the time, Machiavelli wrote as an orator, not as a scientist, in any way that modern readers understand the term (Viroli, Machiavelli 1-3; 73-108). To him, the objective truth was subordinate to his rhetorical agenda. In The Prince, Machiavelli distilled Cesare Borgia into a “representative type, and at last came to admire him almost as a creation of his own intellect” (Villari 289). All the evidence seems to suggest that while Machiavelli did not adulate the duke of Romagna, he descried in him qualities perfectly suitable and instructive for a new prince.

In the same letter in which he informs his friend Vettori that he is writing his “little work,” Machiavelli muses whether he can entrust someone to deliver the finished manuscript, or if he should present it in person. He goes on to say: “In addition, there is my wish that our present Medici lords will make use of me, even if they begin by making me roll a stone” (Letters, 144; 10 Dec. 1513). These were not the words of a man writing the kind of book that Mattingly claims The Prince is. Machiavelli’s life and political philosophy were much more complex, by orders of magnitude, than Mattingly would lead his readers to assume. What Mattingly erroneously argues is satire is in fact one facet of a brilliant thinker’s dense, subtle political philosophy. Garrett Mattingly’s interpretation doesn’t do the book justice. Mattingly’s thesis is not merely weakened by the existence of conflicting evidence – it is buried alive by a preponderance of it, and his argument that The Prince is a satire is ultimately unpersuasive.

Works Cited

Atkinson, James B., and David Sices. Introduction. The Sweetness of Power. By Niccolò

Machiavelli. Trans. James B. Atkinson and David Sices. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 2002, Print.

Bock, Gisela, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, eds. Machiavelli and Republicanism. Avon:

Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.

Gilbert, Allan H. Introduction. The Prince and Other Works. 1964 ed. Trans. and ed. Allan H.

Gilbert. New York: Hendricks. Print.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. Trans. and ed. James B.

Atkinson and David Sices. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 2002. Print.

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---. The Prince and Other Works. 1964 ed. Trans. and ed. Allan H. Gilbert. New York:

Hendricks. Print.

Mattingly, Garrett. The Prince: Political Science or Political Satire? 1958. Major Problems in

the History of the Italian Renaissance. Ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Alison Andrews Smith.

Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1995. Print.

Villari, Pasquale. The Life and Times of Machiavelli. 4th ed. Trans. Linda Villari. London, 1878.

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Viroli, Maurizio. Machiavelli. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.