HKB
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Often appears with: venetians and lombardy · strategy and the aims of war · spain in italy · satirical dialogue · salvation by faith · romagna under lords · revolution and the fall of states · political legitimacy and consent · pico della mirandola · papal hypocrisy · lying for faith · louis xii errors
Usually: censure (3) · argument (2) · detachment (2) · dialogue (1) · narrative (1) · crisis of belief (1) · injustice endured (1) · rivalry (1) · the fall of the great (1) · irony (1)
“States that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature which are born and grow rapidly, cannot leave their foundations and correspondencies fixed in such a way that the first storm will not overthrow them.” Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince · insight
“The multitude, who always take their colour from their ruler, were filled by Timasitheus with a religious awe.” Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius · insight
Machiavelli details Louis XII’s campaigns: Venetian ambition brought him into Italy, but his errors included weakening minor powers, aggrandizing the Church via Alexander, bringing in Spain, not settling, and not sending colonies.
[4] Charles VIII, King of France, born 1470, died 1498. King Louis was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there—seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles—he was forced to accept tho…
He contrasts Francesco Sforza’s able rise and stable rule in Milan with Cesare Borgia’s unstable state gained through Alexander VI, stressing that later foundations determine durability despite measures taken.
a new prince than the example of his actions; and if his dispositions were of no avail, that was not his fault, but the extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune. Alexander the Sixth, in wishing to aggrandize the duke, his son, had many immediate and prospective difficulties. Firstly, he did not see his way to make him master of any state that was not a state of the Church; and if he was willing to rob the Chur…
Machiavelli argues that a prince must not blame the people: their crimes reflect the ruler’s own negligence or wickedness, illustrated by Romagna under Pope Alexander VI’s displaced lords.
Let no prince complain of the faults committed by a people under his control; since these must be ascribed either to his negligence, or to his being himself blemished by similar defects. And were any one to consider what peoples in our own times have been most given to robbery and other like offences, he would find that they have only copied their rulers, who have themselves been of a like nature. Romagna, before tho…
Continuing the satire, Alexander VI laughs at Pico’s logic and says he is saved by faith alone, while the dialogue ends with a sharp critique that such faith involves lying.
Alexander fell on his sofa by dint of laughing. "I believe all that like you," he said, "for I know well that only by faith can I be saved, and that I shall not be saved by my works." "Ah! Holy Father," said Pic, "you have need of neither works nor faith; that is good for poor profane people like us; but you who are vice-god can believe and do all you want to. You have the keys of heaven; and without a doubt St. Pe…