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Machiavelli and Soderini

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Sergio Bertelli
Sergio Bertelli*
Affiliation:
Università Degli Studi Di Perugia
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Extract

Machiavelli, like Christ, came into history only in his thirties. His youth is virtually unknown to us, until today. We find only a few facts in his father's Ricordi, which covers the period 1474-87; there we learn that at the age of seven Niccolò studied the ‘donatello’ (the short edition of the late-classical grammar of Donatus), first with Master Matteo, near S. Trinità bridge, then, from March 1477, with Battista di Filippo da Poppi, who taught in the church of St. Benedict. At ten, he went to live with Master Piero Maria, to study the Abacus (a short arithmetical treatise) and ‘librettine,’ the elementary calculating system. Lastly, in November 1481, Niccolò began to study Latin, under Pagolo da Ronciglione's direction. And that is all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 1975 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1975

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References

1 Machiavelli, Bernardo, Libro di Ricordi, ed. Olschki, C. (Firenze, 1954).Google Scholar

2 See Rubinstein, N., ‘The Beginning of Niccolo Machiavelli's Career in the Florentine Chancery,’ Italian Studies, 11 (1956), 72ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Machiavelli, N., Epistolario, ed. Bertelli, S. (Milano, 1969), no. 183.Google Scholar

4 Maffei, D., Il giovane Machiavelli banchiere con Berto Berti a Roma (Firenze, 1973)Google Scholar, has now discovered that Niccolò Machiavelli was the secretary of a Florentine merchant and banker in Rome in the years 1489-1495. But this Niccolò became an orphan in November 1495 and was not of legal age in March 1496. Is he really the famous Machiavelli?

5 Rubinstein, p. 74.

6 Giovio, P., Elogia doctorum virorum (Antverpiae, 1557), pp. 192–193.Google Scholar

7 Epistolario, no. 3.

8 It is the Vatican manuscript Rossiano 884. That it belongs to Machiavelli has been demonstrated by Bertelli, S. and Gaeta, F., ‘Noterelle machiavelliane. Un codice di Lucrezio e di Terenzio,’ Riuista Storica Italiana, 73 (1961), 544–555.Google Scholar

9 P. Cortesi, De Cardinalatu, in Castro Cortesio 1510, fol. xcvi.

10 Dispatch of the Milanese ambassador Francesco Franchini to the duke, Januari 5, 1497, in Archivio di Stato, Milan, Potenze estere, Bologna, and printed in Dall'Onda, P. D. Pasolini, Caterina Sforza (Roma, 1893), III, 266 Google Scholar: ‘… li haviva facto intendere desyderare starsene qualche tempo absente da Fiorenza per fugire molte noye et fastidii di quella patria, forse per non contentarse di quello presente governo populare.’

11 On her, see Eck, J. G., De Alexandra Scala Commentatio (Lipsiae, 1769).Google Scholar

12 Scala, B., De legibus et iudiciis, ed. Borghi, L., Bibliofilia, 42 (1940), 256–282.Google Scholar The dialogue was written in February 1483. The original is in Biblioteca Comunale, Siena, cod. G.vii.46

13 See ‘Noterelle machiavelliane,’ pp. 550-551. Lucretius was no stranger in Machiavelli's family. A relative of Niccolò, Giovan Pietro Machiavelli, was interested in publishing a paraphrase of De rerum natura, jointly with the Florentine Raffaele Franco and the Averroist Guido Postumo Silvestri. The book was printed in Bologna by Giovanni Antonio Platonide de Benedetti, in 1504, and dedicated to Tommaso Soderini, nephew of Piero, the Gonfalonier of Florence.

14 Maffei, p. 46, and, before him, Varanini, G., ‘Un intervento di Pietro Dolfin in favore del Machiavelli’ Lettere Italiane, 14 (1962), 190–192.Google Scholar

15 See above, n. 5

16 Epistolario, no. 9.

17 Archivio di Stato, Florence (ASF), Signori, Carteggio, Missive 52, fol. 178: May 9, 1501. But see also the relation of the meeting in the dispatch of the Ten of War, May 12, in ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Legazioni e Commissarìe, Missive 15, fol. 11v.

18 Guicciardini, F., The History of Florence, tr. Domandi, M. (New York, 1970), p. 196 Google Scholar: “ … the people had gone so far as to paint blocks and gallows on Piero Soderini's house.’

19 Guicciardini, , History, pp. 194–195.Google Scholar

20 For the meeting see in Parenti's Chronicle, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, II.II.132, fols. 91v-92. Capponi's project is printed in appendix in Bertelli, S., ‘Constitutional reforms in Renaissance Florence,’ The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 3 (1973), 161–164.Google Scholar

21 Buonaccorsi, B., Diario de’ successi più importanti seguiti in Italia et particolarmente in Fiorenza dall'anno 1498 in sino all'anno 1512 … (Fiorenza, Giunti, 1568), p. 62.Google Scholar

22 The conquest was so speedy, that the Florentine Ten of War wrote to their ambassadors in Milan and in France that the news of the ‘death’ of the duke of Urbino arrived before the news of his ‘illness’: ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Legazioni e Commissarìe, Missive 26, fol. 17V, dispatches of June 27, 1502.

23 Machiavelli, N., Legazioni e Commissarìe, ed. Bertelli, S. (Milan, 1964), pp. 262–263.Google Scholar

24 Legazioni e commissarìe, p. 306.

25 See the dispatches written from Blois and from Paris by the same Soderini and by Luca degli Albizzi, in February and March 1502, in Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Ginori Conti 28.

26 Legazioni e Commissarie, p. 275.

27 ASF, Consulte e Pratiche 67, fols. 40ff., meeting of July 6, 1502.

28 Villari, P., La storia di Girolamo Savonarola (Firenze, 1930), II, Appendix, p. clv.Google Scholar

29 Guicciardini, , History, p. 229.Google Scholar

30 Only two months before, without any permission, of his own will, he joined, as Florentine ambassador in Milan, the King of France at Asti, while two ambassadors were sent to the King directly from Florence: Francesco Gualterotti and Luigi della Stufa. It was the third time that Piero met King Louis. See his dispatches from Asti, July 12, 1502, ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Responsive 68, fols. 69-69v, and Guicciardini, , History, p. 218.Google Scholar

31 I must observe that Allan H. Gilbert, following many of Machiavelli's works in print, wrongly translates ‘were not so strong,’ reading the Italian pronominal particle né as a negative particle né, which entirely changes the purpose of the Decemnale as a whole.

32 Guicciardini, , History, p. 212.Google Scholar

33 Epistolario, no. 90.

34 Epistolario, no. 109.

35 In De rerum primordiis the nomination in May 1503 of Francesco Soderini as cardinal is recorded, and we must presume that Leoni's poem was offered to the Gonfalonier no later, because no other recent incident is henceforth recorded.

36 See my ‘Petrus Soderinus Patriae Parens,’ Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 31 (1969), 107.

37 See above, n. 13.

38 ASF, Consulte e Pratiche 67, fol. 83v.

39 The Florentine Lords wrote their thanks to Caesar on June 7, 1503: ASF, Signori, Carteggio, Missive, Registri I Cancelleria 54, fol. 159V.

40 Guicciardini, , History, pp. 247–248.Google Scholar

41 Letters of December 4, 1502, in Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, N.A. 1004 (Filza Bargagli), fol. 28; and of December 14, 1502, BNF, Ginori Conti 23, fol. 21.

42 The cardinal's letter to his brother Piero, March 4, 1505/6 in BNF, Carte Machiavelli IV, n. 13.

43 B. Cerretani, Chronicle, in BNF, II.III.76, fol. 316.