Monograph · 2018
Machiavelli’s Florentine Republic
Machiavelli’s Florentine Republic reconstructs Machiavelli’s account of the threats facing modern republics from his Florentine Histories, the history of Florence commissioned by the Medici in 1520 and presented to Pope Clement VII in 1525. It argues that Machiavelli narrates the defeat of Florentine republicanism to challenge the leading humanist historians, above all Leonardo Bruni, who had celebrated Florence as a model republic. Against them, Machiavelli portrays a city that wavered between anarchy and princely rule, and reveals that conventional ideas of moral and political virtue were the Medici family’s most effective tools for advancing princely power in a city that wished to be free.
“By far the best book-length treatment in English of Machiavelli’s longest work.”
Contents
- 1
Introduction pp. 1–26
Introduces the Florentine Histories as Machiavelli’s fullest account of what threatens modern republics. Against the humanist picture of Florence as a republic equal in splendor to Rome, Machiavelli tells the story of a city that never secured a free way of life. The chapter previews the book’s four lines of argument: humanist historiography, the legacy of Roman imperialism, Medici virtue, and political culture.
- 2
Another Republicanism pp. 27–58
Shows how Bruni’s History of the Florentine People recast Florentine republicanism as rule by a virtuous ‘true nobility’, lending historical credit to Medici power. Machiavelli rejects this account and, following the earlier chroniclers, recovers republicanism as the people’s struggle to keep the grandi in check through laws and institutions. The chapter closes by arguing that Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School have relayed Bruni’s version of republican history without seeing it as an ideological move.
- 3
Italy after the Inundation pp. 59–91
Reads the Discourses and the Histories together as an account of why modern Italy could not rebuild free political life. Machiavelli traces this weakness to Roman imperialism, which remade its subjects into dependents, so that Rome is both the model for modern republics and the source of their problems. The underlying disease is a habit of the weak submitting to the strong for protection instead of acting together, not Christianity as such.
- 4
The Questionable Virtues of the Medici pp. 92–131
Explains how Machiavelli told the truth about his Medici patrons without offending them. Through what the book calls multivocality, writing that carries different meanings for different readers in the manner of Tacitus, his praise of the Medici also exposes their strategy. Where the old nobility had attacked the republic openly and failed, the Medici co-opted it with a reputation for kindness, generosity, and loyalty, building a vast network of clients.
- 5
Republican Virtue, Reconsidered pp. 132–157
Argues that Machiavelli doubts that traditional virtues serve republican liberty any better than princely power. He is skeptical of the Roman social virtues, especially fides (good faith), because they fostered patronage, ‘sects’, and ‘parties’ that let elites gather power outside the law. This makes Machiavelli an unexpected critic of Roman political culture: Rome fell to the same prosocial virtues that later sustained the Medici party.
- 6
Political Ideas in History pp. 158–170
Draws the book’s threads together into a new picture of Machiavelli for whom good political theory depends on good history-writing. Without it, political ideas become detached from reality and vulnerable to the interests of the powerful.
