1. Historical background 2. Cultures and beliefs in 15th-century Italy 3. Social change and power struggles 4. The Florentine Renaissance
1. Historical background
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a Renaissance diplomat, philosopher, historian, writer and poet. He was born and died in Florence, and shared his city's destiny during the years of great change that were the Italian Wars.
Detail of a view of Florence circa 1490 (the star indicates the Machiavelli house)1.
Machiavelli's birth and death can be linked to two major events: in 1469, Lorenzo de' Medici, known as 'the Magnificent', became the de facto ruler of Florence, crowning his family's success in the then flourishing banking sector. The year 1527 remains famous for the sack of Rome by the armies of Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain.
Italy did not then exist as a sovereign, unified territory. Several city-states ruled over smaller towns and vast regions essential to their resources (in Italian, the contado), vying for territory and influence, and resisting attempts by foreigners to gain a foothold in the peninsula. A map of the powers of Europe in 1469 would show the Spanish kingdoms to the west (Castile and Aragon, soon to be united by marriage), the Kingdom of France to the north-west, the Holy Roman Empire to the north, and the Ottoman Empire to the east, a threat since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Florence was at a crossroads of cultures, and of commercial and political appetites.
Political map of Europe circa 1469 (the star indicates the city of Florence)2.
2. Cultures and beliefs in 15th-century Italy
Although Italy did not exist as a nation3, the unification of the peninsula was achieved in the past by the Romans, a memory that was still very much alive. Roman culture is omnipresent: in buildings and ruins, in laws and customs, in religion, literature and philosophy. And, of course, the language: while people in different parts of Italy spoke various Italian dialects, mastery of Latin was compulsory for matters of state and religion, dividing society along educational/social lines.
The traces left by the Romans were so vivid that when a prince toyed with the idea of conquering the whole country, the idea of following in the footsteps of the Romans was never far off. But the question immediately arises: do they want to follow in the footsteps of the Roman Republic or the Empire? Since the Romans had experienced both forms of government and their consequences, Italians in the medieval and Renaissance periods took a position in relation to this heritage. The answer given is not simply relative to ambition, but stems from a sense of identity linked to local mentalities and political traditions.
A second key cultural factor in the development of the Italian Renaissance was the power of the Catholic Church, which once again had its seat – the Holy See – in the "Eternal City"4. From Rome, the popes managed and profited from vast territories known as the Papal States. But far more influential than this temporal power (≡ concerned with the world where humans live and die) was the spiritual power of the Church (≡ concerned with eternity and the Word of God). The Pope, as Christ's representative on Earth, had the power to forgive sinners, crown emperors and dissolve marriages, but also political or commercial contracts. He therefore not only played a part in the legitimacy of sovereigns, but also acted as an arbiter and, more often than not, a player in all power struggles. As the Great Western Schism showed, this power had not escaped the attention of the kings and princes of Europe, who tried not to let the Church get in the way of their own ambitions.
The fact remains that Christian beliefs, inspired by sacred texts and disseminated by cults and institutions, had a major influence on the people of the Renaissance and beyond: to live according to the Ten Commandments5, to lead a virtuous life6 and devoid of vices7, and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, in the hope that God would grant them eternal life at Judgement Day.
A third cultural influence is that of the ancient world: the world before the Christian era. Although they were Christians, the people of the Italian Renaissance worshipped ancient gods from ancient Greece, Rome and elsewhere, to whom they entrusted not the salvation of their souls, but matters relating to material life and daily activities. An example of this custom is the belief in the Roman goddess Fortuna (identified with the Greek goddess Tyche), from whom derives the concept used and reinvented by Machiavelli. Fortuna was often depicted spinning a wheel, the movement of which determined the circumstances favourable or unfavourable to each individual's actions. For an enterprise to succeed, one needs to find the "right moment"; and conversely, the best-prepared enterprises can fail if the moment is not right. Blind to social status, Fortuna was also seen as an expression of cosmic justice.
Fortuna, blindfolded, spins the wheel8.
The Wheel of Fortune was closely linked to astrology, inherited from the Chaldeans and Egyptians. Indeed, astrology was considered to be the science of timing: an attempt to make sense of the world by observing the cyclical movements of the stars. If we look at the tensions that existed between the different beliefs of the time, we can see that astrology may have been both a means of counteracting the transcendence of the Christian faith (God is omnipotent and decides upon everything, whereas the stars have an influence that can be overcome) and of mitigating its internal contradictions (God is absolute good and cannot be held responsible for evil in this world, whereas the stars can be). Nevertheless, it was in practical life that astrology found its main use, which explains why monarchs and members of the nobility – as well as many popes – had their own private astrologer. In this respect, it is essential to note that astrology goes beyond superstition. Not only because many of the astronomers of the time, such as Johannes Kepler, were also astrologers, but because astrology offered a vision of a world in which, following the teachings of the Ancients, events could be anticipated, thus stabilising the unpredictability of fate within such a matrix
Finally, Greek philosophies made a major comeback on the European cultural scene from the 11ème century onwards. Thanks to the Arab-Muslim world and its brilliant translators and philosophers, the Greek tradition was not lost with the fall of the Roman Empire. Through this route, many texts, ideas and techniques, as well as new discoveries, gradually penetrated Europe (take the example of Arabic numerals9, and in particular 0, which the Arabs had borrowed from the Indians and which the Greeks did not know). As a result of the Christian Crusades (which ended towards the end of the 13th century) and the Muslim states of the Iberian Peninsula (known as Al-Andalus until the end of the 15th century), the two cultures had several opportunities to meet. But rivalry was intense, and Christians often rejected knowledge from Muslims because the latter did not share their beliefs. In time, however, Aristotle's writings were read again in Europe.
Plato's dialogues reached Italy by another route, the one that linked Venice to the Byzantine Empire. Through diplomatic missions or commercial journeys, the Italians brought back the first scrolls of Plato's texts, scrolls that remained illegible because knowledge of the Greek language had meanwhile been lost in the peninsula. Italy had to wait until Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453 for the Byzantine scholars capable of teaching it to emigrate westwards. Probably the most famous Italian translator of the Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino made all of Plato's works accessible to Latin readers, as well as several treatises by the Neo-Platonists and the Hermetic tradition. With the help of Cosimo de' Medici, he founded a new Academy in Florence, modelled on the one that Plato had created in Athens. Ficino was also Lorenzo de' Medici's tutor.
3. Social change and power struggles
Since the time of the Crusades, another social class has gradually become the driving force behind the changes to come: merchants. Increasingly globalised thanks to new land and sea routes, they quickly became irreplaceable.
In the Middle East, the Venetians had trading posts in Alexandria, Baghdad and Jerusalem since the 11th century, but they lost them during the Arab conquest which ended with the siege of Acre in 1291. In the east, the Genoese and Venetians established trading posts as far as the Black Sea, and new land routes were opened up to the Far East. In the west, sea and land routes soon enabled merchants and bankers from Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Florence and other smaller towns to do business in France, Germany, Spain, Flanders, England and Scotland. All this commercial activity facilitated the transmission of information, opinions and stories, and, as mentioned above, of knowledge and techniques. The same was true of viruses: one hypothesis is that the bubonic plague – also known as the Black Death – arrived in Europe via the Silk Road and then spread rapidly across the continent following the trade routes. The epidemic peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351, killing between 30% and 60% of the entire European population.
For merchants, doing business abroad always involved major risks: losing a ship and its precious cargo at sea, or being robbed on the way home. This was how nascent capitalism developed: to share the costs of these expeditions, insurance policies and joint ventures were invented. To reinforce this system, new currencies were created in the second half of the 13th century, first in Florence (the gold florin) and Genoa, then in Milan and Venice, which soon became the reference currencies throughout Europe. The Italian bankers10 prospered rapidly and opened branches in other countries, soon lending money to kings, princes, dukes and popes, to fuel their wars. Bankers also lent money to each other and/or competed with each other. They were intensely involved in public life, driven by their personal ambitions and served in this way by a family-centred organisation (cf. the Medici in Florence, the Fuggers in Bavaria).
Thanks to the wealth generated by trade and banking, Italian city-states grew and gained in autonomy. The early 13th century saw the emergence of communes, independent towns governed locally and reigning over an area of political and economic power known as a contado. As they grew and became more powerful, some became republics (generally governed by various councils to which a variable proportion of the wealthiest members of the population had access), while others became principalities, in a complex interplay of power between the nobility, the papacy, the rising merchant class and the people.
Let us take closer look at just how closely intertwined the various city-states in the north of the peninsula were. On the map above, showing the areas of political influence in 1499 (a year after Machiavelli became Secretary of the Second Chancellery of the Republic of Florence), we can see the importance of the Republic of Venice to the east, the Duchy of Milan to the north, the small Republic of Siena and the Papal States to the south, and the Kingdom of Naples, in the hands of the Kingdom of Aragon, to the south.
Political map of the Italian peninsula in 149911.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, borders were constantly changing and were never physically marked, except by natural elements (rivers, mountains, etc.). A vassal city could become independent of its lord in the aftermath of a period of unrest. Take the example of Pisa, an important city in Machiavelli's life: Pisa had fallen into the hands of Florence in 1406, but regained its independence in 1494, when the King of France, Charles VIII, crossed its territory to invade the Kingdom of Naples. This independence was short-lived, however, as the Florentines recaptured Pisa in 1509 (with the militia that Machiavelli had organised). This was not just a question of prestige or resources: Pisa was synonymous with access to the sea and, whereas Florentine merchants had been forced to pay for the services of Venetian or Genoese shipowners, with Pisa they could develop their own fleet.
As Machiavelli wrote, every city-state wanted to “maintain” itself and, for that reason, in seeking its own expansion, also sought to ensure that the others did not become too powerful. What the Italian city-states were looking for in the 15th and 16th centuries was a sophisticated balance of power across the peninsula that would work to their advantage. This would happen temporarily around Florence during the years of Lorenzo de'Medici's reign. His grandfather, Cosimo the Elder, had been the architect of this fragile balance, using financial and political means to create a complex situation of alliances and debts12. However, when Lorenzo died in 1492, the balance was upset and the arrival of Charles VIII in 1494 marked the start of the period of conflict known as the Italian Wars, which lasted until 1559.
4. The Florentine Renaissance
The term used to describe the period from the end of the 14th century to the end of the 16th century, "the Renaissance" (Italian: il Rinascimento), raises many questions. Why was it (as translated from the French) a rebirth, and for whom? How did we come to call it that?
The Renaissance is usually considered as a bridge between the medieval and modern periods; but it is clear that the medieval period can in turn be seen as a bridge between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance, just as the so-called modern period will one day be seen as a bridge with what follows.
The Renaissance has also been called the end of the Dark Ages. The latter expression was coined by Francesco Petrarca, a Florentine poet and scholar of the 14th century, who wanted to unite his own Christian culture with the heritage of Roman civilisation, the greatest that had ever existed in his eyes: wasn't this age "dark" precisely because Petrarca criticised it and wanted change? The “Dark Ages” notion was still popularised by historians in the 19th century (at a time when Italy's project for national unity was in a critical phase), but has been fought against ever since. While it is true that most of the philosophical, artistic and literary works of the Greeks and Romans were "lost" to the countries of Western Europe after the sack of Rome in 410, the writings of Aristotle and many Muslim scientists and philosophers reached Italy and other European countries well before the 14th century.
The image of "ten centuries of ruins and superstition" ends up being nothing else than a cliché. From the 12th century onwards, in the newly created universities (Bologna in 1088, Paris in 1150, Oxford in 1167), scholastic philosophy13 developed and reached its apogee in the 13th and 14th centuries. Gothic art appeared at the end of the 12th century and flourished throughout Europe until the end of the 15th. So what changed between these two "eras"? What changed between Gothic art, where the dominant affects were linked to piety, fear and hope, and Renaissance art, from the middle of the 15th century onwards in Florence, where beauty, freedom and harmony became dominant in both the arts and philosophy? The quick answer is: Plato replaced Aristotle, merchants took the place of priests, and the relationship between God and human beings was reversed in favour of the latter.
The development of humanism (a term coined at the end of the 18th to express the idea that knowledge begin with humans and the human sciences, rather than with God and theology) is at least as old as Protagoras, famous for his sentence "human is the measure of all things". Yet what took place as early as the 13th century, in Florence14, was a fundamental change in the Christian mentality, in the relationship between humans and God, in particular through a change in the relationship between men and women.
When Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), author of the Divina Commedia, made the woman he loved an intercessor between himself and the divine, he sublimated human love and created new values. Picking up on this gesture, as well as on Dante's style of writing – the Dolce stil novo – Petrarca (1304-1374) wrote his Canzoniere for the woman he loved, before embarking on a long quest to find lost manuscripts from Greek and Roman antiquity. Just as Dante had chosen Virgil as his guide in the circles of the afterlife, Petrarca wanted to return to antiquity. It was both a return to values centered on human relationships, and an attempt to distance himself from the rigidity of Christianity in order to open up a new area of thought15.
Since Dante's attitude towards human love as a path to the divine was similar to Plato's (for example, in Phaedrus or The Symposium), when the latter's dialogues were rediscovered by Byzantine scholars in the mid-1500s the association of these two traditions – Christian humanism and Platonism – became somewhat inevitable. Of course, in Plato, it is not the love of women but the love of men that is considered "divine madness", but Florentine society – nurtured by the spirit of the Commune and its love of freedom – was known for its permissiveness towards male homosexuality. On the other hand, the Christian figures of the New Testament (Mary and Mary Magdalene in particular) allowed women to be valued in a very different way to what had happened in Greece. Society was still patriarchal, but the cultural orientation had changed. If an idealised woman (rather than a real woman) could take the place previously held by priests and angels and act as a bridge to the divine, it also could mean that life here on earth was increasingly becoming part of the spiritual life.
Let's go back to the word "Renaissance". In 1569, as the Medici were preparing to become Grand Dukes of Tuscany, a man in their service, Gorgio Vasari, coined the word Rinascita in his book Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. The book by Vasari, himself a painter and architect, has since been regarded as one of the first Art History opuses. Yet in this context, when Vasari called for the rebirth of ancient culture and virtues in Florence, it was of course a political act in support of the city's then undisputed masters. The "Renaissance" can therefore be understood as the coming to power of the new merchant class, the banking class, which was ostentatiously generous towards the arts and culture because it could use them to support and contribute to its own ideology, make its mark on the world and be recognised by future generations for such achievements.
By becoming a patron of the arts, sponsoring the painters Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi and Donatello, the architects Michelozzo Michelozzi and Filippo Brunelleschi, the Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino, financing the completion of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, and building churches, convents and libraries, Cosimo the Elder united his prestige and personal success with those of Florence.
Santa Maria del Fiore, with its dome designed by Brunelleschi.
It was his grandson, Lorenzo, who gave full rein to this policy. But in his wake, "magnificence" declined, partly due to poor management of state finances, demonstrating the extent to which the Renaissance was also linked to conditions of peace and prosperity.
Niccolò Machiavelli was born at the beginning of the "reign" of Lorenzo de'Medici, into an old Florentine family, but poor and without status. His father, a doctor of law, gave him a humanist education. Machiavelli benefited from the atmosphere of the Renaissance... And throughout his life, he followed the ups and downs of life in Florence, its outbursts, its downfalls and its disasters.
Notes
1. Detail of the Veduta della catena (1887), by F. & R. Petrini. Link to google arts&culture.↑
2. "L'histoire de l'Europe : année par année", Cottereau Youtube channel, 2018. ↑
3. The unification of Italy, known as the Risorgimento, took place in the second half of the 19th century and was completed in 1871 when the Papal States were taken out of the hands of the Church and Rome was designated as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.↑
4. From 1378 to 1417, a period known as the Great Western Schism, the Church was split in two, with two different popes, one living in Avignon (France), the other in Rome. The split stemmed from the decline in the power of the Church: faced with social changes in European societies, Rome tried to seize temporal power (=possession of land, armies, etc.), an aspiration that was stopped by Philip IV, King of France, who had other interests. The latter decided to increase taxes on the French clergy, which the Church did not accept. Over the following decades, the conflict would lead to the election of a French pope, not because of disagreement over religion itself, but because of economic and political interests. The Church's temporal and spiritual powers whetted the appetites of all kings and princes. At the height of the crisis, Christianity experienced two or even three popes at the same time. The situation was finally resolved at the Council of Constance in 1414: the Church's institutions were internationalised and a single pope was elected, Martin V, who would be reinstated in Rome three years later.↑
5. Also known as the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments are, in the Old Testament (which was originally the sacred text of the Hebrews before becoming the first book of the Christian Bible, followed by the New Testament), the ten laws given by God directly to Moses: [I am the Lord your God], 1. you shall have no other gods before me, 2. you shall not make for yourself any graven image, 3. you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, 4. you shall remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, 5. you shall honour your father and your mother, 6. you shall not make any graven image for yourself. you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, 4. you shall remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, 5. you shall honour your father and your mother, 6. you shall not commit murder, 7. you shall not commit adultery, 8. you shall not steal, 9. you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour, 10. you shall not covet your neighbour, you shall not commit adultery. ↑
6. The four cardinal virtues, inspired by Plato's Republic and incorporated into Christian morality by Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo, are prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. Catholics have added the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity.↑
7. The seven deadly sins, which date back to the Desert Fathers (a group of Christian hermits who lived from the 3rd to 4th centuries AD), are: pride, greed, anger, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.↑
8. Image taken from : Jehan Boccaccio (Giovanni Boccaccio), Le Livre des Cas des nobles hommes, published between 1401 and 1500 Gallica.↑
9. The Pisan merchant and mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci was one of the first Europeans to use Arabic numerals, following his travels in 1198.↑
10. The word "bank" comes from the Italian banca, meaning bench: benches were used as improvised offices and exchange counters by Florence's bankers at the time.↑
11. Wikimedia commons↑.
12. Surprisingly, Machiavelli did not analyse this issue at all in The Prince. When, for example, the Medici bank lent money to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan from 1460 to 1476, it acquired decisive power over the prince and his city; or when a powerful banker lent money to his own city and was elected to government shortly afterwards.↑
13. Combining Aristotelian and Christian texts and influences, the best-known figures of Scholasticism are Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Duns Scotus (1265-1308) and William of Ockham (1287-1347).↑
14. The fact that these events took place in Florence is significant in another respect: the special attention the city paid to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and to the Annunciation, the biblical story of how the archangel Gabriel came to tell Mary that she was carrying the son of God in her womb. Not only was the first day of the Florentine calendar set for 25 March, the day of the Annunciation, but representations of this scene could be seen all over the city. In the 15th century, when Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) theorised the conical perspective, the tradition of painting the Annunciations entered a new and rich period, and with it a questioning of the place occupied by Mary, the major female figure in the Christian mindset. And beyond this question, there is another, called the mystery of the Incarnation: how could God become man, in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ? The synthesis of the human and the divine, while an essential element of the Christian faith, suddenly seemed more important than the fear of the Last Judgement.↑
15. Several other poets and scholars took part in this movement. Let us mention two of them. Guido Cavalcanti (1258-1300), a close friend of Dante, wrote poems inspired by courtly love that Cavalcanti integrated into the more popular, urban world of the Tuscan commune. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), who corresponded with Petrarca, is famous for his Decameron, a collection of 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men who took refuge in a villa outside Florence at the time of the Black Death. An essential element of the change they brought about was that Dante, Cavalcanti, Petrarca and Boccaccio all wrote in the Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin, transforming the relationship of the people to literature and greatly favouring the formation of the Italian language spoken today.↑