Between Friends Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli

Home , Brunetto Latini, Francesco Guicciardini

JOHN M. NAJEMY Between Friends

Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513-1515

PRINCETON LEGACY LIBRARY

c."Between friends

DISCOURSES OF POWER AND DESIRE IN THE MACHIAVELLI-VETTORI LETTERS OF 1513-1515

John M. Najemy

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS • PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, Wesr Sussex All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Najemy, John M., 1943- Between friends : discourses of power and desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori letters of 1513-1515 / John M. Najemy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-03262-9 z. Machiavelli, Niccolo, 1469-1527-Correspondence. 2. Vettori, Francesco, 1474-1539-Correspondence. 3. Italy-Intellectual life-1268-1559. DG738.14.M2A4 1993 320.1'092-dc20 93-9737 CIP This book has been composed in Garamond typeface Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines fur permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources

Printed in the United States of America

IO 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Princeton Legacy Library edition 2019 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-65522-2 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-691-65664-9 To the memory of

Hans Baron (1900-1988) and

Edward P. Morris (1924-1989)

?f CONTENTS ?f

Prefac e ix

Abbreviations xiii

INTRODUCTION : The Letters in Machiavelli Studies 3

CHAPTE R ONE : Renaissance Epistolarity 18 The Social Worlds of Florentin e Lette r Writing 19 Petrarc h and the Ancient s 25 Humanist s and Their Lette r Collection s 30 Letter s and Literatur e 33 Manual s and Theor y 42

CHAPTE R TWO: Contexts Personal and Political 58 The Secretary and His Letter s 58 Francesc o Vettori 71 Friendshi p and Politic s in the Republic' s Crisis 82

CHAPTE R THREE : "Formerly Secretary" 95 "Discorsi et concetti " in Exile 95 "A spirited maker of beginnings" 117

CHAPTE R FOUR : Speaking like Romans 136 "Some of it we just imagine" 136 "Natural e affection e ο passione" 152 The Swiss and "the sweetness of domination " 156 The Inventio n of Redemptiv e Virtu 167

CHAPTE R FIVE: The Princ e "Addressed" to Francesco Vettori 176 What Text Did Vettori See? 177 "Verita effettuale" and "Imaginazione " 185 Securit y and Power 197 Intelligibility , Power, Love 201

CHAPTE R SIX: Geta and the "Antiqui Huomini" (The Lette r of 10 Decembe r 1513) 215 "Sed fatis trahimur " 215 Maestr o Get a and His New "Scienza" 221 "Tucto mi transferisco in loro" 2 30 Vlll CONTENTS

CHAPTER SEVEN: "A Ridiculous Metamorphosis" 241 "What kinds of writers could not be criticized?" 241 "As worthy of being recited to a prince as anything I have heard this year" 253 Desire in the Text 271 CHAPTER EIGHT: "After a Thousand Years" 277 "These princes are men like you and me" 277 "To me alone Troy remains" 287 "To enlist you again in the old game" 295

CHAPTER NINE: Poetry and Politics 313 Corydon in San Casciano 313 Metamorphosis in the Text 319 EPILOGUE: The Poets of the Discourses 335

Index 351 * PREFACE #

HE ESSAY offered in these pages combines a reading of Machiavelli's correspondence with Francesco Vettori in 1513-15 with an attempt to set this famous epistolary dialogue in the context of Ma- chiavelli's emergence and transformation as a writer and political Ttheorist. Some potential readers may wonder about the decision to devote this much attention to several dozen reasonably well known and much- published letters, especially as I have no discoveries to report from the archives or manuscripts. Machiavelli specialists have labored with skill and patience to improve the accuracy of the texts, to clarify the dating of the letters, and to identify the references or allusions to persons, events, and texts. And some of the letters, most notably that of 10 December 1513, have received a considerable amount of critical analysis and interpretation. \et, despite all this work and the illuminating treatments of specific passages, individual letters, and particular themes, the correspondence as a whole has by and large eluded interpretation. The chief purposes of this essay will be, first, to show why and in what sense the Machiavelli-Vettori letters of 1513-15 can be thought of—indeed, how Machiavelli and Vettori themselves gradually came to think of them—as a whole that invites interpretation, and, second, to suggest how a reading of the letters can contribute to the larger project of interpreting Machiavelli's major works. Various reasons can be adduced to account for the lack of comprehensive treatments of this correspondence. First and perhaps most obvious is that these letters do not constitute a single text in the ordinary sense of the term. Machiavelli and Vettori had almost certainly exchanged letters on occasion before 1513 (as a 1510 letter from Vettori suggests), and in the 1520s they again wrote to each other fairly regularly. In a correspondence whose limits extend to almost two decades, there is at first glance nothing self-evident about why a particular two-year phase can or should be treated as a discrete unit. Another reason has to do not merely with the fact of two authors, but with the (understandably) very different assumptions and expectations with which almost all readers approach them. Everyone knows Machiavelli (in one fashion or another), while only specialists in Italian Renaissance history and literature have even heard of Francesco Vettori, and even many of these know him only as Machiavelli's friend and correspondent. To many this has seemed a joint authorship of such obvious inequality that there has been little incentive to take Vettori and his letters seriously, or even to consider the possibility that Machiavelli did so. A further purpose of these pages will be to show how insufficient attention to Vettori's letters severely restricts χ PREFACE the understandin g not only of Machiavelli' s letters but of certain crucia l aspects of The Prince as well. Still anothe r reason for the persistenc e of limited and fragmente d readings of the letters lies in one of their most frequentl y acknowledge d but least- studied features: the curiou s unpredictabilit y with which they alternat e between "serious" discussions of politica l and diplomati c issues and "frivolous" bante r on love and the foibles of eros. Machiavell i and Vettori did not explain or justify these disruption s and change s of direction , and the resultin g range of moods , themes , and language has left man y reader s with the uncom - fortable feeling that the two discorsi have little or nothin g to do with each other . Despit e a few noteworth y attempt s to uncove r possible connection s between the letters on politics and those on love, the general tendenc y has been to prefer one them e to the other . Predictabl y enough , historian s have devoted most of their attentio n to the politica l letters, while literary critics have explored the connection s between the letters on love and Machiavelli' s plays. Each set of letters has been used to illuminat e different major works, and this too has inhibite d the inclinatio n to ask why Machiavell i and Vettori interrupte d their discussions of politics to engage in an apparentl y whim- sical exchange on love, then returne d to politics and yet again to love. The dynami c of this alternatio n and the ways in which Machiavell i and Vettori contribute d to it will be a principa l focus of my analysis of the letters. It may also be the case that , with one or two notabl e exceptions , even Machiavelli' s letters have suffered, by assumed or implicit compariso n with the "major" works, from a certain tendenc y to relegate letters to a secondar y (and sometime s lower) status in the hierarch y of literary genres.' As the first chapte r will attemp t to show, one form of this attitud e of condescensio n toward letters, particularl y influentia l in the Renaissanc e itself, derives from a classical topo s accordin g to which letters are and should be nothin g more

1 Recently , however, the history of letter writing and the study of epistolarit y have emerged asfields o f significant critical inquiry. For an introductio n to epistolarit y in the cultur e of the Middl e Ages and the Renaissance , see Giles Constable , Letters and Letter Col- lections, fasc. 17 of Typologie des sources du moyen age occidental (Turnhout : Brepols, 1976). On epistolarit y in early moder n and moder n literature , see Janet Gurki n Altman, Epistolarity, Approaches to a Form (Columbus , Ohio: Ohio Universit y Press, 1982); also the volume L'epistolarite a travers les siecles: Geste de communication etlou d'ecriture, papers of the 1987 con- ference at the Centr e Culture l Internationa l de Cerisy La Salle organized by Mireille Bossis and Charle s A. Porte r (Stuttgart : Fran z Steiner Verlag, 1990); and,for epistolarit y in Italian culture , La correspondence [edition, functions, significations], vol. 1, Actes du colloque franco- italien, Aix-en-Provence , Octobe r 1983 (Aix-en-Provence : Centr e Aixois de Recherche s Italiennes , 1984), and vol. 2, Actes du colloque international , Aix-en-Provence , Octobe r 1984 (Aix-en-Provence : Centr e Aixois de Recherche s Italiennes , 1985). An importan t contributio n to the critical understandin g of epistolarit y in Renaissanc e humanis m is the very recent book (which appeare d after I complete d the present essay) by Nanc y S. Struever, Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance (Chicago : Universit y of Chicago Press, 1992), esp. chapter s 1 and 2. PREFACE XI than written familiar speech—the setting down in writing, in Cicero's famous version of the topos, of "whatever comes to your mouth [quod in buccam venerit]." The popularity of this convention in humanist epistolography makes it certain that Machiavelli knew of it, and it seems more than likely that he meant to allude to it in the great letter of 10 December 1513 when he told Vettori that The Prince was the notation ("io ho notato") of what he found useful in the conversation ("conversatione") of the ancients, written down for the benefit of those who had not been present at the occasion. But, as I will also suggest, Machiavelli must have been aware as well of the critique to which this traditional notion of epistolarity had been sub- jected by a number of prominent humanists from Petrarch to Poliziano and Erasmus. The plan of this book is thus as follows: after an introduction to the main lines of inquiry and interpretation in scholarship on the Machiavelli-Vettori letters and a brief preliminary description (and defense) of my own approach and method, the first chapter examines some of the literary and theoretical dilemmas that stood behind the enormous popularity of letter writing in the Renaissance—the relationship of writing and speech; the status of language in relation to thought, intention, voice, and persuasion; and the connection between these questions and the humanist emphases on dialogue, friendship, and politics. The second chapter supplies the more immediate background of the Machiavelli-Vettori correspondence, not only in the history of their friendship and of their association in political life, but also in the actual letter-writing practices that were Machiavelli's daily work in the chancery for over fourteen years, and in which Vettori too had some experience. Indeed, one of the overarching arguments of the sub- sequent chapters on the correspondence is that Francesco Vettori quite stra- tegically made use of the epistolary genre and the potential offered by its unresolved dilemmas to encourage Machiavelli to rethink the assumptions about language and writing that he brought to the practice of political discourse both in the letters of 1513 and in The Prince—assumptions that had important connections to those fourteen years of daily letter writing. In this way, Vettori led Machiavelli to confront some of the critical issues concerning language and discourse embedded in the practices and paradoxes of humanist epistolography.

The origins of this project go back to an essay, never published but cited in one or two places (and entitled, with an allusion to Machiavelli's medi- tation on Dante's poet exile of Paradiso 17, "Per miei carmi: Machiavelli's Discourses of Exile"), that I wrote years ago as a faculty fellow at Cornell's Society for the Humanities. I thank the Society for providing me with the freedom in which to steal time away from my official project of that year in order to read and think about Machiavelli's letters in the fertile and happy Xll PREFACE company of a remarkable group of fellows and friends. The essay was my contribution to the in-house seminar among the fellows and formed part of the offerings at the seminar's festive last meeting. I thank this long- dispersed band of friends for the good year we spent together, and for their generous and animated responses to pages they have no doubt long since forgotten. Only some years later did I think to attempt a more serious and expanded version of that original essay written for pleasure and friends. I so decided, in part because of encouraging and critical responses to the essay from a number of excellent readers including Salvatore Camporeale, Laurel Car- rington, Werner Gundersheimer, Lynn Gunzberg, Dale Kent, Claudia Laz- zaro, Anthony Molho, Jennifer Rondeau, Elissa Weaver, and especially Quentin Skinner and Ted Morris, who persuaded me that there was much more one could do with these rich texts. None of them, of course, should be held accountable for the use I have made of their advice. In the course of writing I received generous help and valuable suggestions from Albert Ascoli, Laura De Angelis, Filippo Grazzini, Rachel Jacoff, Dennis Looney, Paolo Pirillo, and Antonio and Marina Reina. I am especially grateful to Myra Best for many illuminating conversations about Machiavelli, for her detailed critical reading of the draft version of chapters 3 through 8, and her assistance in numerous aspects of the project, and to Robert Black, Alison Brown, William Connell, and Michael Kammen for their kindness in carefully reading and copiously commenting on the manuscript. Each saved me from numerous errors and infelicities and helped in the solution of textual and historical questions. I am also happy to thank Lauren Osborne for the warm and efficient welcome my manuscript received at Princeton University Press, and Gavin Lewis for expert and learned copyediting that improved it in innumerable ways. Finally, to Patricia Pelley, who helped me think through many a puzzle, listened patiently to more than a few confused hypotheses, and read sections of the draft with her customary but uncom- monly sharp insight, I offer my warmest thanks. I dedicate this essay to the memory of two unforgettable and much- missed friends to whom I had particularly looked forward to presenting these pages. The pleasure I feel in concluding this book is not a little diminished by the impossibility of talking it over with each of them.

Ithaca and Florence 1992 ?f ABBREVIATIONS ?f

Chief Works Niccolo Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1965; reprint ed., 1989) Devonshire Jones, Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, Francesco Vettori Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: Athlone Press of the University of London, 1972) Guicciardini, Storia Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d'ltalia (libri d'ltalia XI—XX), ed. Emanuella Scarano; Opere, vol. 3 (Turin: UTET, 1981) Legazioni e commissarie Niccolo Machiavelli, Legazioni e commissarie, ed. Sergio Bertelli, 3 vols. (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964) Lettere Niccolo Machiavelli, Lettere {Opere di Niccolo Machiavelli, vol. 3), ed. Franco Gaeta (Turin: UTET, 1984) Lettere a FV Niccolo Machiavelli, Lettere a Francesco Vettori e a Francesco Guicciardini, ed. Giorgio Inglese (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989) Opere Niccolo Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971) Ridolfi, Vita di NM Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Niccold Machiavelli, 7th ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1978) Sasso, NM: storia del suo Gennaro Sasso, Niccolo Machiavelli: storia del pensiero politico suo pensiero politico, 2d rev. ed. (Bologna: II Mulino, 1980) Scritti di governo Niccolo Machiavelli, Legazioni, commissarie, scritti di governo, ed. Fredi Chiappelli and Jean-Jacques Marchand, 4 vols. (Scrittori d'ltalia, vols. 249, 256, 271, 272) (Rome and Bari: G. Laterza, 1971-85) Tommasini, La vita e gli Oreste Tommasini, La vita e gli scritti di scritti di NM Niccolo Machiavelli, 2 vols. (Rome, Turin, and Florence: Ermanno Loescher, 1883— 1911) Vettori, Scritti storici e Francesco Vettori, Scritti storici epolitici, ed. politici Enrico Niccolini (Bari: G. Laterza, 1972) ''Between friends

* INTRODUCTION ?f Hoe Letters in Machiavelli Studies

ITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS, the Machiavelli-Vettori letters have usually been read in the way Vettori, as we shall see, predicted that Italy would be used by the Swiss: as the target of occa- sional raids, plundered for rich spoils, and then abandoned for wmore familia r and safer heights nearby. Just as he thought the Swiss would be content to extract what they wanted from Italy but would never take hold of it directly, forays into the correspondence, and indeed mostly into Ma- chiavelli's letters, have yielded significant rewards but have tended to treat the letters as accessories to other stories and as opportunities to support (more rarely to revise) interpretations forged elsewhere and for other purposes.1 Machiavelli's most important biographers have contributed significantly to the recovery and publication of the letters, from Villari and Tommasini in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Ridolfi in more recent times. They have also used the letters extensively to establish the facts of Machiavelli's life, to refine and debate matters of chronology, and to suggest this or that component of the inner man, his private thoughts and feelings.2 But this approach to the letters has not led to close readings or to much

1 The exceptions referred to at the beginning of this paragraph include two monographs, one on the whole of Machiavelli's correspondence, the other on the correspondence with Vettori: respectively, O. Ferrara, The Private Correspondence ofNiccolo Machiavelli (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1929); and Alfredo Moretti, Corrispondenza di Niccolo Ma- chiavelli con Francesco Vettori dal 1513 al 1515 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1948). Neither volume meets current critical or historiographical standards. 2 Pasquale Villari's Nkcolo Machiavelli e i suoi tempi was first published in three volumes in Florence by Le Monnier in 1877-82 and reissued twice more by the author in enlarged and revised editions (Milan: Hoepli, 1895-97 and 1912-14); see especially the third edition of 1912—14, in which the Machiavelli-Vettori correspondence is discussed on pp. 212—32. (The fourth, posthumous edition of 1927, edited by Michele Scherillo in only two volumes, lacks the documentaty appendix.) The first edition was translated into English by Linda Villari in a "popular edition" (of 1058 pages in two volumes!) as The Life and Times of Niccolo Machiavelli (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898); the correspondence with Vettori receives a general overview on pp. 43—58 of the second volume. Oreste Tommasini examined the correspondence in La vitaegli scritti di NM, 2:71-88. Roberto Ridolfi follows the letters in his authoritative account of Machiavelli's life in chapters 13-15 of his Vita di NM. In the English translation by Cecil Grayson of Ridolfi's second edition (Rome: A. Belardetti, 1954), The Life of Niccolo Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), the correspondence is treated also in chapters 13-15, on pp. 139-62. 4 INTRODUCTION interest in the dialogue. Historian s of politica l though t have used the letters somewhat more selectively and with greater focus to locate the origins or to trace the developmen t of the politica l ideas that found their way into the major works. In particular , Machiavelli' s letters of April and August 1513, which immediatel y preced e the compositio n of The Prince, have proved to be a rich mine for this sort of analysis. The most extensive and valuable treatment s of the letters for this purpos e are those of Federic o Chabod , Gennar o Sasso, and Ugo Dotti. 3 Discussion s of more specific problem s of datin g and interpretatio n of the major works have also made crucia l use of some of the letters. 4 A few of the 1513 letters have been assigned importan t and even decisive roles in reconstruction s of an assumed center , essence, or totalit y of Ma- chiavelli and his "thought. " Two letters in particula r have helped to forge the moder n image (or some of the more influentia l moder n images) of Ma- chiavelli. The first is that of 9 April 1513, in which, facing the prospec t of life without work in politics, Machiavell i tells Vettori that "Fortun e has determine d that , not knowing how to talk either about the silk business or the wool business or about profits and losses, I must talk about politics, and I must either take a vow of silence or talk about that. " The second is the even more famous letter of ι ο Decembe r 15131η which he offers Vettori a moving accoun t of his life in exile at Sant'Andre a in Percussin a and of his evening colloquie s with the ancients , culminatin g in the news of the composition of the "little work" on princedoms . These indeed have becom e canonica l texts, scarcely less importan t (and rightly so) in establishin g the

3 For Chabod , see especially the 1927 essay, "Sulla composizion e de Ί 1 Principe ' di Nic - colo Machiavelli, " in the posthumou s collectio n of his writings on Machiavelli , Scritti su Machiavelli (Turin : Einaudi , 1964; reprinted. , 1980), pp. 137-93. Sasso concentrate s his attentio n on the 1513 letters in chapte r 5 ("Genes i e struttur a del 'Principe'" ) of his ΝΛί.- storta del sua pensiero politico, pp. 293-335. Ugo Dott i devotes considerabl e critica l attentio n to the correspondence , and for similar purposes, in his Niccolb Machiavelli: la fenomenologia delpotere (Milan : Feltrinelli , 1980), esp. pp. 17-52, 100-106. "It would be impossible to give even a representativ e list of such studies. Of particula r interest and value are the contribution s of Han s Baron and J. H. Whitfield. See Baron' s analysis of problem s surroundin g the datin g of The Prince and the Discourses in "Machiavell i the Republica n Citizen and Author of The Prince," first published in the English Historical Review 76 (1961): 217-53, and n°w reprinte d and revised in Baron' s In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols. (Princeton , N.J. : Princeto n Universit y Press, 1988), 2:101-51, esp. 134-42; and his posthumousl y published essay, "The Principe and the Puzzle of the Dat e of Chapte r 26,"Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21 (1991): 83-102. See also Whitfield's analysis of the letters of August 1513, in "An Essay on The Prince, " prefixed to the facsimile edition of the Char - lecote Manuscrip t of II Principe (Wakefield, England : S.R. Publishers , Ltd.; Paris and The Hague : Mouton , 1969). A. Londo n Fell also makes extensive use of the Machiavelli-Vettor i letters in his provocative reinterpretatio n of Machiavelli' s politica l ideas and relationshi p to the Medic i in Pre-modern 'Machiavellism,' forthcomin g (Ne w York: Praeger , 1993) as book 1 of volume 5 of his series on the Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State. THE LETTERS IN MACHIAVELLI STUDIES 5 general framework for reading and understanding Machiavelli than, say, the opening lines of chapter 15 of The Prince where Machiavelli tells his readers that he, unlike those who have written about republics and principalities they have only imagined, will pursue something he calls the "verita effettuale." Like this celebrated passage, the letters of 9 April and 10 December 1513 both turn on the question of whether, how, and to whom Machiavelli would talk and write about politics. But if the crucial passages are read in isolation from their respective full texts, and if each letter is similarly read in isolation, removed from the dialogue of the ongoing correspondence between Machiavelli and Vettori, as they often are, they can be made to yield meanings compatible with any number of larger interpretations of Machia- velli. In the case of these two letters, a particularly appealing reading holds that in them we have the Machiavelli who, within months of his ordeal and disgrace, was quickly and confidently forging the terms of his new vocation as a political theorist. This tendency to fragment both individual letters and the epistolary dialogue of which they are parts has limited and impoverished critical readings in several ways. The first danger is that smart readers who know what they are looking for will usually find it. Since, in many cases, the purpose of forays into the correspondence is to confirm or refine interpretations of other texts, or to find the origins of ideas that Machiavelli would develop more fully in the major works, this method usually focuses attention, sometimes exclusively so, on passages in the letters that achieve this purpose and typically ignores the rest. It also creates, or reinforces, the presumption of a fundamental unity or consistency in Machiavelli's "thought," or of a pro- gressive unfolding of his ideas, at least within the limits of a particular perspective on Machiavelli. Students of his political thought have read the letters of the spring and summer of 1513, about Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Leo and the Swiss, as a sort of testing ground from which many of Machiavelli's theories emerged and found their way into The Prince. The discovery of anticipations or confirmations of these ideas in the letters has contributed to the perception that Machiavelli came to the writing of The Prince (and, according to some, to the Discourses as well) with the funda- mentals of his thought and method already worked out and ready for elaboration along solidly established lines.5 Literary historians and critics have been more interested in the letters on

'Just as an example, see Gennaro Sasso's comment on the relationship of Machiavelli's letter of 29 April 1513 to The Prince: "If, as seems quite probable, The Prince was written between July and December of 1513, the letter of 29 April shows clearly that at that date not only the fundamental concepts [of The Prince] but also its structure and plan had already been found"; NM: Storia del suo pensiero politico, pp. 314-15 (my translation). In chapter 3 I will try to suggest how a reading of the entire letter (in both draft and final versions) renders such a conclusion at the very least problematic. 6 INTRODUCTION love of early 1514, devoting particular attention to their levels of literary experimentation and inventiveness in order to illuminate the important connections between this comic phase of the correspondence and Machiavelli's plays, Mandragola and Clizia.6 The discovery of lexical, stylistic, and the- matic continuities between these letters and the plays has enriched per- spectives on Machiavelli's literary vocation, his humanist training, and his debt to Tuscan vernacular traditions. Some of the best of this work has come from Giulio Ferroni and Ezio Raimondi.7 From this angle, for some critics at least, Vettori has become a more intriguing figure: a participant in his own right and on his own terms in that world of literary playfulness that included, as Gian Mario Anselmi puts it, the "other Machiavelli."8 Vettori was no stranger to the literature of amorous follies, deceits, inversions, and traps, the burle and beffe, pranks and laughter, obscenities and carnivalesque parodies that had deep roots in the Florentine vernacular tradition and which were apparently among the favorite diversions of chancery officials as well. Vettori's own Viaggio in Alamagna is a notable contribution to this tradition, and the letters on love of early 1514 can now be seen as a self- conscious collaboration in an enterprise whose artistic conventions and living history were fully evident to both Machiavelli and Vettori.9 By and large, the historians and students of political theory have ignored the letters on love, while the literary critics have rarely touched the letters

6 For a useful review of recent scholarship and criticism on the so-called literary works, including the letters, see Daria Perocco, "Rassegna di studi sulle opere letterarie di Ma- chiavelli (1969-1986)," Lettere itahane 39 (1987): 544-79. 7See especially Ferroni's "Le 'cose vane' nelle lettere del Machiavelli," La Rassegna della letteratura italiana 76 (1972): 215-64. Ferroni has investigated the relationship between the letters and the plays in "Mutazione" e "Riscontro" net teatro di Machiavelli (Rome: Bulzoni, 1972), pp. 19-137. Raimondi has pursued a similar inquiry in "II teatro del Machiavelli," Studi stand 10 (1969): 749—98; reprinted as "II segretario a teatro" in Raimondi's Politka e commedia (Bologna: II Mulino, 1972), pp. 173-233. His already classic essay, "II sasso del politico," although not about the letters on love and in fact on a famous "political" passage in the great letter of 10 December 1513, shows how much literary analysis can uncover in the correspondence; originally published in Strumenti critici 5 (1970): 86-91, it is reprinted in Politica e commedia, pp. 165-72. Georges Ulysse has approached the "literary" letters with an interest in what they reveal of the origins and early evidence of Machiavelli's talent for the kind of storytelling exemplified by Belfagor, but never, according to Ulysse, developed to the extent that certain letters seemed to promise; see his "Machiavel conteur inacheve: Notes sur la correspondance," in La correspondance [edition, functions, signification], vol. 1, Actes du colloque franco-italien, Aix-en-Provence, Octobre 1983 (Aix-en-Provence: Centre Aixois de Recherches Italiennes, 1984), pp. 49-80. 8Gian Mario Anselmi, "L'altro Machiavelli," in G. M. Anselmi and Paolo Fazion, Ma- chiavelli, I'Asino e le bestie (Bologna: CLUEB, 1984), pp. 9-23. See also Bruno Basile's attempt to locate some of Machiavelli's letters in the tradition of the comic-grotesque, in "Grotteschi machiavellian!," Convivium 34 (1966): 576-83. 9Particularly important in this regard is Raimondi's essay, "II teatro del Machiavelli," cited above in note 7. THE LETTERS IN MACHIAVELLI STUDIES 7 on politics, even as both use the letters to consolidate the image of the Machiavelli that interests them. A few critics have tried to bridge the gulf and deal with the question of how the letters on love can or should be related to the political letters and the later writings on politics. Giorgio Barberi Squarotti sees in the letters what he believes to be Machiavelli's consistent and rigorous separation of the "sublime" of intellectual contemplation and the inferior "comic" sphere of actual experience and everyday reality—a distinction that, according to Barberi Squarotti, operates as much in the realm of love as in politics.10 Other attempts to make some sense of the coexistence of the two discorsi in the correspondence have typically sought to identify the convergences between the political theories, on the one hand, and notions of power, success, and conquest in love, or domestic life, on the other. The assumption in such a procedure seems to be that Machiavelli must have thought that if certain modes of conduct—modi di procedure— can enhance the chances of success for a prince, a lawgiver, or a republic, then similar or even identical modes, or ones based on common, underlying premises, ought to do the same for husbands, wives, and lovers." To read Machiavelli in this way is not necessarily wrong, but to apply this assumption to the full range of contacts between Machiavelli's political ideas and what he wrote, usually in a comic vein, about love requires one to accept the presupposition that by 1513 or 1514 he had actually defined and elaborated such prescriptive guidelines for political and private life with enough confidence to assert or imply their reciprocity. And to extend these convergences beyond the correspondence with Vettori to the major works of later years requires the further assumption that, once he had established such prescriptive modi diprocedere, they remained essentially stable and per- manent features of his thought. On the basis of these or similar assump-

10Giorgio Barberi Squarotti, "II Machiavelli fra il 'sublime' della contemplazione intel- lettuale e il 'comico' della prassi," Lettere italiane 21 (1969): 129-54, reprinted as "Nar- razione e sublimazione: le lettere del Machiavelli," in his Machiavelli 0 la scelta della letteratura (Rome: Bulzoni, 1987), pp. 63-95. See also Barberi Squarotti's La forma tragica del "Prin- cipe" e altrt saggi sul Machiavelli (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1966), especially the first essay, "L'aspirazione al tragico nelle 'Lettere' e nella 'Favola,'" and its treatment of the letters on pp. 1-27. "Ferroni in "Le 'cose vane'" does not deal directly with the political letters, but he implies that they are linked to the comic letters by a common "anthropology" and similar notions of flexibility and adaptability as the keys to success in the two spheres. Mark Hul- liung, in chapter 4 of his Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 99-129, esp. pp. 108-16, discusses the letters together with the plays. Ac- cording to Hulliung, Machiavelli "can admire the excesses of a young man in love because tomorrow that same youth will vent those same passions on the battlefield. After all, loving and fighting are activities so similar that the lover and the soldier have much in common. . . . Those hours that are not devoted to the conquest of enemies are naturally spent on the conquest of women, because a spirited citizen must always find outlets for his pred- atory instincts" (pp. 110-11). 8 INTRODUCTION tions, some readers have wandered through the letters in search of passages that reflect, crystallize, or illustrate what they take to be Machiavelli's "anthropology" or general "theory" of human nature or behavior. This approach treats the letters as a set of controlled exemplifications or anticipations of ideas worked out more fully in the major works. The problems and losses involved in using the letters in the ways outlined above are several. The first is that the letters are subordinated and made to serve other agendas defined by texts that (with the partial exception of The Prince, written at the end of the first year of the correspondence) had not yet come into being. Secondly, this sort of reading misses the significant element of uncertainty and even confusion in Machiavelli during these two years. His letters of 1513 (not unlike The Prince, I will argue) are filled with swerves and inconsistencies, inventions and projections, leaps and contra- dictions, whose cumulative effect conveys the impression of a good deal of doubt and hesitation in the face of certain dilemmas.12 To notice and study this aspect of his writing is in no sense, in my intention, to diminish these texts; it is, again in my intention, a way of establishing some contact with their complexity and richness. The third weakness in the usual approaches to the letters is that Vettori's voice is either slighted or ignored, to the point where the very existence of a dialogue is minimized or forgotten.13 For some, mostly among the historians and political philosophers, Vettori survives as no more than the convenient foil against which the full power and origi- nality of Machiavelli's thought can be measured. For still others, Vettori was actually a negative factor, since it was he who first introduced the al- leged frivolities into the correspondence late in 1513, just after Machiavelli asked his opinion of a first draft of a portion of The Prince. Some readers, perhaps experiencing a measure of discomfort over the new direction the correspondence took, have reproached Vettori for his failure to understand or unwillingness to recognize the great event of which he had the privilege to be the first (or actually the second, after Filippo Casavecchia) to be informed.H

12 In saying this, and in informing the reader that much of what follows will focus on Machiavelli's doubts and dilemmas, I wish to say how much I am indebted to Hanna Fenichel Pitkin's reading of Machiavelli in the first half (parts 1-3) of Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought ofNiccolb Machiavelli (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Although I will be dealing with a different set of "tensions and ambiguities" from those discussed by Pitkin, my reading of the letters will (try at least to) follow the spirit of what Pitkin says on p. 4 about her book and about Machiavelli: ". . . the focus of this book is the very difficulty of interpreting Machiavelli; it seeks to understand the tensions and ambiguities in the texts that give rise to, or at least permit, so diverse an array of readings. . . . The fundamental tensions in Machiavelli's thought lie . . . within each of them, and indeed within all his writings." 13 With the notable exceptions of Ferroni and Raimondi, mentioned above. 14This seems, more or less, Ridolfi's attitude; Vita di NM, pp. 241-42, 246. THE IETTERS IN MACH1AVELLI STUDIES 9 In fact, a close reading of the letters reveals that Vettori was an important punto di riferimento for Machiavelli, personally, politically, and intellectually. He was a source of judgment and approval that mattered a great deal, a compelling adversary in their exchanges on politics and diplomacy, and, most of all, a discerning, sympathetic, but critical reader of Machiavelli's letters. Throughout the spring and summer of 1513 Vettori resisted Ma- chiavelli's ideas and conclusions about the big political and military questions of the moment, and in the process he raised even more basic questions about the nature and limits of political discourse itself. His skeptical and critical response frustrated Machiavelli and posed a challenge that the latter did not ignore. On the contrary, it elicited from him a range of counter- responses in which he defended his views, sometimes by disagreeing directly with Vettori and sometimes by appropriating things Vettori had written to him, turning them to his own purposes, and neutralizing their threat in new arguments that moved in directions not altogether consistent with the ones he had set out to defend. Machiavelli's reaction, even when he disagreed completely with Vettori, was one of sustained engagement with nearly every- thing Vettori wrote to him. This is as true of the letters on love as it is of those on politics, perhaps more so, and, until the very end of the correspondence, it is striking how often Machiavelli followed Vettori's lead into particular problems, themes, and styles, although not, of course, to the same conclusions. His disagreements with Vettori occurred within the framework of this mimetic rivalry, a complex process of appropriation, re- sistance, and absorption through which Machiavelli finally came to terms with doubts and tensions that he had not been able to acknowledge as his own. In a word, he needed an interlocutor in order to hear himself. Vettori and Machiavelli knew each other well enough to sustain this kind of dialogue. From the outset, the dynamic of their exchange displays a com- bination of intimate familiarity and unresolved tension, of the sort that can only happen between friends. They had much in common: political experience, friends, literary interests, a similar education (perhaps even the same teacher), the fateful events of 1511—12 that brought down the republic and restored the Medici to Florence, and an old habit, as Vettori would call it, of endless talk about politics. Their letters presuppose the familiarity of a friendship with a long history. They knew a lot about each other's lives, temperaments, reading habits, and private pleasures and sorrows, and they could refer or allude to any aspect of these without lengthy explanation or great detail, sometimes indirectly or cryptically, often by means of a joke, an aside, or a literary quotation. This dimension of their correspondence can easily be missed or misinterpreted if individual letters or passages are read in isolation from the whole network of such references and allusions. Only close attention to the recurrences, responses, and linkages, but equally to the disruptions, detours and silences, within this field of tense familiarity can bring us into the dialogue. ΙΟ INTRODUCTION For this reason I have decided to present the correspondenc e as a collab- orative text, as I believe Machiavell i and Vettori themselves came to see it— one in which the order of things, indeed the cumulativ e order of things, is crucia l to interpretation . This mean s that I will read each letter in the progressively more comple x contex t of previous letters, which is to say, as a story. Respectin g the order of the letters will allow us to see that the story that gradually emerges is about how the two men read and wrote their collaborativ e text. At every step it will be necessary to look back at earlier letters—as they did—to see how things written and understoo d in certain ways at one point came to be remembere d and interprete d differently at later points . It is precisely Machiavelli' s emergin g awareness of this process—of the way the meanin g of what they wrote to each othe r was trans- formed by time and by subsequen t writing, the process by which each new letter change d the whole of which it was a part—that may be the best reason for presentin g the letters in this way. What makes of this correspondenc e a "whole" and provides the under - lying connectio n between the letters on politics and those on love is, I think , their sustained attentio n to the problem of interpretatio n and of how "dis- corso" happens . At the same time, precisely because their "varieta" (as Ma- chiavelli will call the alternatio n between politics and love) problematize s the project of interpretation , the letters seem constantl y to be calling into question the whole of which they are parts, and thus the very process by which interpretatio n seeks to generat e wholes: henc e it is a correspondenc e with more than its share of false starts, interruptions , and apparen t dead ends. And yet it kept moving, and, with Vettori's urging, for Machiavell i it becam e an unfoldin g of the problem of discourse itself—in particular , of the latent tension s of his attempt s at politica l discourse, and above all those deeply embedde d in The Prince, the embattle d book framed on both sides by correspondenc e with Vettori. The letters tell—and are—the story of how, with Vettori's help, Machiavell i becam e aware of those tensions .

Only a handfu l of Machiavelli' s letters to Vettori survive in autographs. 15 Most of the known letters, and man y of Vettori's letters to Machiavelli , were

" To the best of my knowledge, autograph s of four of the 1513—15 letters to Vettori have been discovered: 1) the draft (Bibliotec a Nazional e di Firenze , Carte Machiavelli, I, 55) and final version (Librar y of Congress, John Boyd Thache r Collection ) of the letter of 29 April 1513, both published by R. Ridolfi, "Per un'edizion e critica dell'epistolari o machiavelliano : la lettera al Vettori del 29 aprile 1513," La Bibliofilm 68 (1966): 31-50; 2) the undate d letter, possibly of early 1514 (but see chapte r 8, note 2, for a different view on the datin g of this text), containin g the brief assessment of Lorenz o de' Medici' s comportmen t amon g the Florentine s (Archivio di Stato di Firenze , Carte Strozziane, II, 86, c. 32Γ); 3) the letter of 10 Decembe r 1514 (Bibliotec a Apostolica Vaticana, Codd. Capponiani 107 [2], ff. 207Γ- 2i2v), edited by Jean-Jacque s Marchand , "Contribut i all'Epistolari o machiavelliano : la lettera al Vettori del 10 dicembr e 1514 nel testo originat e inedito, " La Btbliofilia 72 (1970): THE LETTERS IN MACHIAVELLI STUDIES II

preserved thank s to the patien t work of Machiavelli' s grandson , Giulian o de' Ricci, who in the 1570s copied the originals, togethe r with othe r Ma- chiavelli letters and texts, as part of a project , never realized, for an approved edition of his grandfather' s works unde r the auspices of the Congregatio n of the Index , create d in 1571 for the purpos e of issuing expurgated edition s of the works of author s condemne d by the original Inde x of banne d books. 16 Ricci gathere d these transcription s into a single volume, now locate d in the Biblioteca Nazional e in Florenc e and known as the Apografo Ricci.17 By way of introducin g the correspondenc e with Vettori, Ricci note s that he first came across Machiavelli' s letter to Vettori "on the truce made in the year 1513 between the king of Franc e and the king of Spain. " Then , as he searche d for the letter in which Vettori asked Machiavell i to write his views on this subject, "there fell into my hand s man y letters of his [i.e., Vettori], all of which, because they seem to me not only attractiv e and elegant but also full of informatio n about events that occurre d in those times, and not simply narrated , but discussed in depth and with excellent judgment , I have decided to copy, and to insert, in their prope r order , Machiavelli' s answers, whenever I find them , which will be few in numbe r because he kept no copyboo k of them [mi sono resoluto a registrarle tutt e per ordin e inserendov i le risposte del Machiavello , dove le troverro , che sarann o poch e perch e non se ne salvava registro]." 18 By "registro" Ricci mean t some kind of book in which copies might have been entere d in order , and certainl y there is no evidence that Machiavell i kept such a register. But in fact the Apografo contain s no fewer than twenty of Machiavelli' s twenty-thre e known letters to Vettori between Marc h 1513 and Januar y 1515. Moreover , from reference s in the extant letters it seems that no more than two or possibly

289-302; and 4) the second of the two letters Machiavell i wrote to Vettori on 20 Decembe r 1514 (no w in the Hyde Collectio n in Somerville, N.J.) . For informatio n on these and othe r Machiavell i autographs , see Paolo Ghiglieri , La grafia del Machiavelli studiata negli autograft (Florence : Leo S. Olschki, 1969), pp. 6-7, nn. 2-4, and, for the complet e list of autograp h letters, includin g the chancer y letters, pp. 337-56. In his 1969 edition of Machiavelli' s correspondence , Sergio Bertelli include s a very useful checklist of the manuscript s (whethe r autograph s or copies) and earliest editions ; Niccol o Machiavelli , Epistolario (Milan : Giovann i Salerno , 1969; reprin t ed., Verona: Valdonega, 1982), pp. 511-40. 16On Giulian o de' Ricci and the failed publicatio n project , see Sergio Bertelli, "Appunti e osservazioni in margin e all'edizion e di un nuovo epistolari o machiavelliano, " II pensiero politico 2 (1969): 536-79, esp. pp. 538-39. On the Inde x and the Congregation , see Luigi Firpo , "The Flowerin g and Witherin g of Speculativ e Philosophy—Italia n Philosoph y and the Counte r Reformation : The Condemnatio n of Francesc o Patrizi, " in The Late Italian Re- naissance, ed. Eric Cochran e (Ne w York: Harpe r and Row, 1970), pp. 266-84, esP· pp. 266-68. "Ms. Palatino , Ε. B. 15, 10. The content s of the Apografo Ricci are analyzed in detail by Oreste Tommasin i in the first volume of La vita e g/i scritti di NM, pp. 617-64. 18Ibid., p. 633. 12 INTRODUCTION three of Machiavelli's letters to Vettori in these years have been lost altogether. How else would Ricci, who was working from Machiavelli's papers, have been able to find and copy so many of his grandfather's letters to Vettori unless Machiavelli did indeed keep copies for himself? At one point in the correspondence, Vettori remarks that he was not in the habit of keeping copies of the letters he wrote to Machiavelli,19 whereas there are indications that Machiavelli did copy and keep at least some of his own to Vettori.20 Ricci's assertion that Machiavelli kept no register of his letters imme- diately precedes a curious claim about the character of the letters: "I do not want to fail to mention that these letters are written from one friend to the other, without any ornateness of language, and without putting into them any elaborate effort, but simply thrown down as things came to their mind [scritte dall'uno amico all'altro, senza alcuno ornamento di parole, et senza mettervi alcuno studio, ma solo tirate giu, secondo che veniva loro alia mente]."21 Written from one friend to the other they were indeed, but the rest of Ricci's comment on their style could hardly be more wrong. As Bertelli has pointed out,22 Ricci is here employing a cliche used by many writers to introduce their letter collections as something like leisuretime writing into which they put little effort. As we have seen, the origins of this topos, which enjoyed so much popularity in the fifteenth century, go back to Cicero whose advice to Atticus to write "whatever comes into your mouth" seems almost paraphrased in Giuliano de' Ricci's assertion that Machiavelli and Vettori wrote their letters "secondo che veniva loro alia mente." The idea that Machiavelli kept no register and, by implication, had little concern for the preservation of his letters would seem to be part and parcel of this old convention about writing letters off the top of one's head. The odd aspect of Ricci's Apografo is that, while it has nearly all of Ma- chiavelli's letters to Vettori, it contains only nine of Vettori's eighteen extant letters to Machiavelli between March 1513 and January 1515, the other nine having survived in copies that Ricci either did not see or decided not to transcribe. He says that he knows that they wrote many letters during this time about their loves, pleasures, and pranks, but that he never saw these letters and therefore could not copy them. But he also acknowledges that he omitted to copy certain portions of Vettori's letters that deal with such themes, preferring to preserve only those parts "that concern statecraft

19 FV to NM, 5 August 1513: "If I kept copies of the letters I write, my dear friend, as soon as I received yours, I would have rushed to check the copy [of my own letter]"; Opere, p. 1145b (my translation). 20The autograph of the letter of 10 December 1514 (see above, note 15), is a fair copy that, according to Marchand and Giorgio Inglese, Machiavelli may have made for himself after sending the original to Vettori; see Lettere a FV, p. 266, preliminary note. 21Tommasini, La vita e gli scrim di NM, 1:633. 22S. Bertelli, "Appunti e osservazioni," p. 538. THE LETTERS IN MACHIAVELLI STUDIES 13 and important business [dove si tratta di stati et di maneggi d'importanza]."23 That kind of editing, as far as one can tell, Ricci inflicted on only one letter (16 May 1514), but all the remaining letters in which Vettori wrote about "innamoramenti," "piacevolezze," or "burle" are missing in the Apografo. Since Ricci was working from Machiavelli's papers, it stands to reason that he should have found among them all or most of the letters from Vettori. The fact that he transcribed only half of Vettori's letters, and that the ones he did copy all deal with political matters, strongly suggests that he deliberately omitted those whose subject matter did not fit his own (and the Index's) priorities. In sum, the evidence from the Apografo makes it seem likely that Ma- chiavelli did keep a nearly complete file of the letters that he and Vettori wrote to each other over these years. This is not to imply that Machiavelli collected the letters with an eye to anything like publication, but only that he considered the letters of these years important enough to keep them together and ensure their survival. That he may have felt this way about the correspondence with Vettori is further suggested by the relatively small number of Machiavelli's letters that have survived and the large proportion of them represented by the letters to Vettori. The most recent and largest edition of Machiavelli's correspondence (excluding, of course, the official dispatches) contains 83 letters written by Machiavelli and 252 addressed to him by his correspondents, from which we may infer that Ricci was indeed correct in saying that Machiavelli generally did not keep copies of his own letters. But of Machiavelli's 83 surviving letters, no fewer than 29 (35 per- cent of the total) are those written to Vettori, more by far than to any other individual, and 22 of them—more than a quarter of all his extant letters— are the ones he wrote to Vettori in 1513-15.24 It is difficult to imagine that they did not have some special place in his "scrittoio." Should we consider it a private correspondence? Obviously, it was not a public correspondence in the sense in which so many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanists and writers prepared their letters for circulation either in manuscript or print. But Machiavelli and Vettori were not the only ones to see each other's letters. At Vettori's suggestion, Machiavelli wrote some letters—but only certain ones—with the specific understanding

23Tommasini, La vita e gli scrttti di NM, 1:638: "Passarono infra questi tempi tra il Vettori, et il Machiavello molte lettere appartenenti a loro innamoramenti, et a loro piacevolezze et burle, le quali non mi essendo capitate alle mam, non sono state da me registrate, come anco ho lassato di registrare qualche parte delle lettere da me copiate, dove il Vettori tratta di simili intrattenimenti, e solo ho scritto quella parte, dove si tratta di stati e di maneggi d'importanza." 24 My count is based on Gaeta's 1984 edition, Lettere. The second largest group to an individual is formed by the seventeen letters to Francesco Guicciardini, and the third by the twelve letters Machiavelli wrote to his nephew Giovanni Vernacci. For no other correspondent are there more than four extant letters. 14 INTRODUCTION that Vettori would try to bring them to the attention of the Medici and other highly placed persons in Rome. Vettori, on the other hand, evidently did not want his letters shown about in Florence, and Machiavelli had to assure him on one occasion that he had been a "good caretaker [buono mas- saio]" of his letters. But, even in providing this assurance, he did not hesi- tate to mention that he had shown Vettori's letters to their friend Filippo Casavecchia and to Vettori's brother Paolo.25 On balance, their correspondence was more private than it was public, certainly in the sense that it was only with each other's permission that others were allowed to see some of the letters. Yet, for reasons that will emerge in due course, it was Vettori who was more anxious to keep things private and just between the two of them, and Machiavelli who often nourished hopes that the words he wrote to Vettori would find their way (or open the way for other words to get) to third parties.

Finally, a word about the editions. Bertelli has described the "fortuna edi- toriale" of Machiavelli's correspondence, from the eighteenth century, when selections of the letters first began to be printed, through the many nineteenth-century collections, including the landmark 1883 edition of Edoardo Alvisi, the important additions to the corpus made by Villari, and Tommasini's analysis of the Apografo Ricci.26 In the last thirty or so years, much new critical work has been done. Interest in Machiavelli's correspondence revived with the appearance in 1961 of the volume edited by Franco Gaeta in the Feltrinelli series of Machiavelli's Opere.27 This edition, however, essentially reproduced Alvisi's and added a few letters that had been discovered in the intervening decades and which increased the total from 229 (in Alvisi) to 238. The Gaeta/Feltrinelli edition made Machiavelli's letters accessible for the first time in a convenient format to a wide readership, and it is still commonly cited. But it is not a critical edition,28 and it is now superseded, with respect both to textual accuracy and the discovery of new letters (mostly written to Machiavelli). In the 1960s many letters came to light thanks to the work of Roberto Ridolfi and Sergio Bertelli.29 Bertelli subsequently integrated much of this new material into an edition of his own, which first appeared in 1969,30 but which did not win the approval

"NMtoFV, 10 December \^\y,Opere, p. 1159a; Latere, p. 42 3; Lettere a FV, p. 192. MBertelli, "Appunti e osservazioni," pp. 541-51. "Niccolo Machiavelli, Lettere, ed. Franco Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961). 28See the comments by R. Ridolfi, "Per un'edizione critica dell'epistolario machiavelliano," and Ghiglieri, La grafia del Machiavelli, pp. 5-6, n. 1. 29S. Bertelli, "Carteggi machiavelliani," Clio 2 (1966): 201-65; a'so Bertelli, "Appunti e osservazioni," pp. 554-79. See also R. Ridolfi, "Le carte del Machiavelli," La Bibliofilia 71 (1969): 1-23; and Ridolfi, "Contributi all'Epistolario machiavelliano: la lettera del Vet- tori del 16 aprile 1523 nel testo originale inedito," La Bibliofilia 71 (1969): 259-64. 3"Machiavelli, Epistolario, cited above in note 15. THE LETTERS IN MACHIAVELLI STUDIES 15 of authoritative critics, in great part because of faulty transcriptions and questionable editing.31 In 1971 Mario Martelli published a new edition of the letters, in the Sansoni volume of Machiavelli's complete works, based on careful verifica- tion against the autographs (and, for the letters, against the copies in the Apografo Ricci) and with sometimes substantial corrections of earlier transcriptions. Where he was able to consult autographs, Martelli's method was one of "absolute respect" for the orthography as he found it, with all its peculiarities (to the modern eye) and inconsistencies.32 In terms of textual accuracy, Martelli's edition must be considered the best, and, with a couple of exceptions,33 I will depend on it for quotations from the letters (which will admittedly confront the reader on occasion with what may seem to be erroneous quotations: e.g., "persequutione," "conpare," or "voglo"). How- ever, Martelli was unable (for reasons of space and the general editorial policy of the series in which his edition appeared) to provide even minimal ap- paratus or notes. His edition exists, as it were, in a complete vacuum, without identification of correspondents, of persons or events referred to, or of quotations from (or allusions to) literary works. Nor does this edition help the reader with understanding and interpreting idiomatic expressions, or deciphering the meanings of terms no longer common in modern Italian (or even in modern Tuscan) or that were used in the sixteenth century with different senses or overtones from those they now carry: a loss all the more regrettable in that probably no one better than Martelli could supply this kind of linguistic and interpretive commentary. Happily, two more editions have appeared in recent years that go a long way toward meeting these needs. In 1984 Franco Gaeta's second edition of the letters (which so thoroughly revises the 1961 Feltrinelli volume as to constitute a new edition) was issued by UTET as volume 3 of the Opere di Niccolo Machiavelli.34 With a few exceptions (including still more newly discovered letters, which brought the total to 335),35 Gaeta used the texts as prepared by Martelli, except that he generally (but not consistently) mod-

51 Mario Martelli, "Memento su un'edizione dell'epistolario machiavelliano," La Bibliofilm 73 (1971): 61-79. See also Ridolfi, Vita di NM, p. 411. "Opere, pp. 1009-1256. The letters number 325 plus the draft copy of the letter of 29 April 1513, published as an appendix. Martelli explains his criteria for textual editing on pp. xlviii—lx. 33 One is the letter of 10 December 1514, for which Marchand's edition is to be preferred; see above, n. 15. Another is Machiavelli's letter of 16 April 1514, for which Inglese (in LettereaFV) provides both the final version and the draft, which had been omitted in earlier editions; see chapter 8. 34 Cited here as Lettere. 35 A particularly noteworthy addition is Machiavelli's letter of early 1508 to Piero So- derini, discovered and edited by G. Hurlimann, "Une lettre 'privee' de Machiavelli a Piero Soderini," La Bibliofilm 74 (1972): 179-84. ι6 INTRODUCTIO N ernized the spelling for the purpos e of renderin g the texts more accessible to nonspecialists . The significant contributio n of this volume, however, con- sists in the notes, which are especially useful for identifyin g persons, places, and events, quotation s or paraphrase s of literary works, and, in Machiavelli' s letters, the point s at which comparison s deserve to be made with passages in the major works. Gaet a is somewhat less helpful with the linguistic and idiomati c puzzles, 36 and it is in this area that the most recen t publicatio n of Machiavelli' s correspondenc e makes its own most significant contribu - tion: Giorgi o Inglese's pocketboo k edition , published by Rizzoli in the Biblioteca Universal e series, of the letters Machiavell i exchanged with Fran - cesco Vettori and Francesc o Guicciardini. 37 Inglese has considerabl y ampli- fied (compare d with Gaeta ) the commentar y in the notes, although , of course, he has done so for "only" the eighty or so letters that Machiavell i sent to or received from Vettori and Guicciardini , and not for the entir e correspondence . Martelli , Gaeta , and Inglese each offer things that the other s do not, and, for this reason and also for the convenienc e of reader s who may not have access to one or more of these editions , all three will be cited in the chapter s that follow: Martell i and Inglese for the texts, Gaet a and Inglese for commentar y and problem s of interpretation . The translation s of Ma- chiavelli's letters are generally my own, althoug h in some instance s I have borrowed words or phrases from the translation s of Allan Gilbert . Reader s who wish to consult Gilbert' s translation s can do so either in the second of his three volumes of Machiavell i translations, 38 or in the separate volume of letters. 39 Gilber t translate d a large selection of Machiavelli' s letters (sixty- four of them , to be exact, includin g all those he wrote to Vettori in 1513—

56 As pointe d out by Filipp o Grazzin i in his useful review in Lettere italiane 36 (1984): 605-9. See also the importan t and detailed review by Giorgi o Inglese, in La Bibliofilm 86 (1984): 271-80. 57 Lettere a FV. Inglese has for the most part reproduced , with minima l correction s and variations , the texts as edited by Martelli . The exception s are the letters of 16 April 1514 and 10 Decembe r 1514 (for which he uses Marchand' s edition) . Also worthy of note is an edition that came to my attentio n after I had complete d final revisions, and whose findings I have thus been unable to incorporat e into my own analysis: Giovann i Bardazzi' s publicatio n with introductio n and commentar y of a selection of the letters in Niccol o Machiavelli , Died lettere private (Rome : Salerno , 1992). Seven of the ten letters include d in this edition are amon g those Machiavell i wrote to Vettori in 1513-15: 10 Decembe r 1513; 5 Januar y 1514; 4 and 25 Februar y 1514; 10 June 1514; 3 August 1514; and 31 Januar y 1515. "Chief Works, 2:883-1011; the letters of 1513-15 to Vettori are on pp. 898-963. 39 The Letters of Machiavelli, tr. Allan Gilber t (Chicago : Universit y of Chicago Press, 1961; reprin t ed., 1988). The 1988 reprin t is not a revised edition and thus does not take into accoun t any of the recen t critica l work on Machiavelli' s letters. In fact, Gilbert' s translations , obviously done in the 1950s before even the appearanc e of Gaeta' s first edition , are based on the 1883 Alvisi edition . THE LETTERS IN MACHIAVELLI STUDIES 17 15), but not those of his correspondents. It is, therefore, unfortunately not possible to follow the dialogue between Machiavelli and Vettori from Gil- bert's translations. To the best of my knowledge, Francesco Vettori's letters to Machiavelli have not been translated into English, and the English ren- derings of passages from Vettori's letters are therefore my own.40 40 As I also learned after finishing this book, Vettori's letters will soon be available in English in a volume being prepared by James B. Atkinson and David Sices, "Compare mio can": Letters from and to Niccold Machiavelli, forthcomingfro m Northern Illinois University Press. It will offer translations, with extensive notes, of the letters in Gaeta's 1984 edition. if CHAPTER ONE if ^Renaissance Epistohrity

HREE DISTINCT TRADITIONS of epistolography converge in Ma- chiavelli's letters. The most common of the three was the practice of private, vernacular letter writing in which the educated middle and upper classes of the Italian cities, and of Florence in particular, Tengaged routinely and prolifically: the everyday utilitarian letters that are now the lifeblood of social and family history and of prosopographical studies of politics and patronage in Renaissance Italy. Somewhat more restricted, but widely acclaimed, was the professional art of diplomatic and official letter writing that began to acquire prominence and prestige in the thirteenth century, chiefly through the work of chancellors and secretaries who wrote letters for princes and city governments, and which found an especially important home in the Florentine chancery. The third major tradition of epistolography was humanist letter writing: the composition of letters in Latin, usually but not necessarily sent to actual recipients, and generally intended for circulation and even publication in carefully arranged collections. These three categories should not be understood, of course, as watertight compartments. Private, vernacular letters could sometimes share the literary elegance or pretensions of humanist letters, and the same was certainly true of many of the diplomatic letters written by humanist chancellors. Hu- manist letters, like private, vernacular letters, often dealt with personal matters and were normally addressed to friends. About some of the letters of Lorenzo de' Medici, for example, it might be difficult to say whether they belong in the first or third of these categories. But for the most part the differences were clear enough, and to a considerable extent it was context and function that made the distinctions clear. Letters in the first category have generally survived in collections of family papers; the diplomatic letters became and remain part of the official archives of the communal governments; and most of the humanist letters come to us in the collections prepared by the humanists themselves. Machiavelli's and Vettori's letters cannot be said to belong unambigu- ously to any of these epistolary traditions, precisely because they share features of all three. Some of what Machiavelli and Vettori wrote to each other in 1513—15 seems to emerge from the standard letter writing practices of literate Florentines who wrote to their friends, relatives, and patrons to ask favors, convey news, and confirm ties of friendship and clientage. The letters RENAISSANCE EPISTOLARITY 19 in which they discussed and debated the complex international political scene of these years are reminiscent in many places of the dispatches, or awisi, that they both wrote from the diplomatic missions and legations with which they were entrusted. Still others evoke and respond to humanist models, thus raising issues whose fullest elaboration is to be found in the world of humanist epistolography. A reading of the Machiavelli-Vettori correspondence will require some orientation, supplied by this and the next chapter, in each of these three kinds of letter writing.

THE SOCIAL WORLDS OF FLORENTINE LETTER WRITING

Florentines (and other Tuscans) wrote letters to each other in huge numbers. Merchants, especially those engaged in long-distance trade, conducted much of their business through letters to partners, branch managers, or family members back home. From fifty years of activity as a merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini left an archive containing the astounding total of 140,000 letters, 11,000 of them private letters and the remainder business correspondence.1 Even if he never missed a day for a half-century, this means that Datini wrote an average of almost eight letters per day, and four pieces of private correspondence each week. While other personal and family archives do not approach the magnitude of the Datini papers, there is no reason to think that the daily and weekly rhythm of his letter writing was especially unusual. The merchant, Dino Compagni advised, should know how to "scriver bello,"2 and, while this certainly alludes above all to the keeping of account books, no one would have thought that it did not also refer to letter writing. Fifteenth-century merchants and bankers continued to write letters in great numbers, and in the case of the Medici, to cite only the most famous example, letters have survived in sufficient quantity to become the backbone of modern investigations of the history of their bank.3 Trade and business were only one of the contexts in which Florentines penned large numbers of private letters. Politics was another, and the same collection of Medici papers in the Florentine State Archives that has yielded so much epistolary evidence for economic history has also proved to be a rich mine for studies of the Medici regime. Dale Kent's fundamental work

'Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato (Jonathan Cape, 1957; rev. ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 8. Christian Bee estimates the number of letters at 125,000, in Les marchands icrivatns: affaires et humanism a Florence, 13J3-1434 (Paris: Mouton, 1967), p. 113. 2 Quoted in Origo, The Merchant of Prato, p. 105, from Compagni's Song on Worthy Conduct. 3 See Raymond de Roover, The Rue and Decline of the Medici Bank, 139J—1494 (first published 1963; reprint ed., New York: W W. Norton, 1966), passim, and p. 391 for comments on the nature and importance of the letters used in the book. 20 CHAPTER ONE on their rise to power, and on the network of patronage that created and sustained that power, is heavily based on the hundreds of extant letters written to the Medici in the years 1426-34 by friends and clients offering loyalty and seeking favors, assistance, and indications of good will.4 The important study in which Anthony Molho illuminates the nature of Cosimo de' Medici's power over several decades similarly takes a comprehensive look at the "more than 1,230 extant letters addressed to him" in order to outline the different categories of requests for favors and influence.5 And many other studies of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florentine politics make significant (if somewhat less programatically conceptual) use of private letters.6 Florentines also regularly wrote letters in domestic and family contexts: to report news from abroad or convey it to family members away from Flor- ence; to offer congratulations, condolences, advice, admonition, or encour- agement; to conduct negotiations over marriages, dowries, property, and investments; to resolve disputes and quarrels; to convey and elicit expressions of friendship, obligation, and loyalty; and for scores of other more specific purposes.7 What is remarkable about these everyday domestic letters is not so much their purposes and functions, which strike the modern reader (or at least those who remember a time when family members still wrote letters) as reasonably familiar, but the very fact that they have survived in collections formed, in most cases, by the writers themselves or their de- scendants. In the case of the letters that Datini and his wife Margherita wrote to each other, Iris Origo considers the fact that they were written at all more remarkable than their preservation, chiefly because so few letters

4 See Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 33-37, 83-104, and passim. Kent counts "over a thousand" letters and documents in the Medici archive for these years. They include "official exchanges in which the Medici took part as incumbents of various government posts," "letters addressed by members of the family to one another," and "those exchanged between the Medici and their amici." Letters in this last category, according to Kent, "help us most to reconstruct the composition of their party, to outline its essential structure, and to understand the benefits and obligations accruing to its members"; ibid., pp. 33-34. Letters, in short, are for Kent the key to understanding the nature of Medicean power and leadership. Not all political historians of Florence agree on the value of the letters for this purpose; see the reservations expressed by J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512-1530 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 12. 5 Anthony Molho, "Cosimo de' Medici: Pater Patriae or Padrino?," Stanford Italian Review 1 (1979): 5-33, and 28-29 for the analysis of the letters to Cosimo. 6See, for example, Paula C. Clarke, The Sodertnt and the Medici: Power and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Oxiacd: Clarendon Press, 1991); and H. C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence, 1502-1519 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 'One of the best known collections of letters written within a family context is the epistoUrio of Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonnafiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. C. Guasti (Florence: Sansoni, 1877; reprint ed., Florence: Licosa Reprints, 1972). RENAISSANCE EPISTOLARITY 21 exchanged by husbands and wives have survived from the fourteenth century.8 But for the whole of the massive Datini letter collection, both the business letters and the private correspondence, surely the reverse must be true: it is the effort to preserve and collect such a mountain of letters, either in having the originals returned to him by his branch managers or by mak- ing copies or perhaps both, that seems the really astonishing aspect of the story of Datini's archive. By the fifteenth century the careful collection and safekeeping of letters, together with other important business or private papers, became a regular practice among upper-class Florentine families. The collection of Medici papers in the Florentine State Archives began as a family archive,9 and many other family archives have survived, some still in private hands and others now in the State Archives.10 That we have so many of their private letters is due more than anything else to the fact that the Florentines took them so seriously. Yet another context in which letter writing assumed particular importance, and one especially relevant for a reading of the Machiavelli-Vettori correspondence, was friendship. Two skilled and subtle readers of the private letters of Renaissance Florentines, F. W. Kent and Richard Trexler, have recently emphasized the extent to which letters can reveal some of the tensions and underlying codes that structured this society's notion and experience of friendship. F. W. Kent, in presenting a selection of the letters of the merchant Bartolommeo Cederni, has observed that "Not only in formal treatises but in their letters and diaries, Florentines invoked amicizia, friendship, as an emotional ideal (hard to attain to be sure) and as a means of getting things done between allies. They were keenly aware of the tension between the two conceptions, between the 'instrumental' and the idealistic sides of friendship." According to Kent, the close study of the letter collections of ordinary Florentines like Cederni yields a picture of Florentine society "rather different from that drawn by the quantitative or institutional historians who, on the whole, have been wary of using the splendid private correspondence produced by the Florentines, preferring more austere, 'harder', evidence, save to illustrate particular points." Kent calls attention to the "abundance of quick, idiomatic Quattrocento Florentine speech" in the Cederni collection as a feature that distinguishes these private letters from both humanist letter writing and formal letters of recommendation.

"Origo, The Merchant of Prato, p. 10. 'See Nicolai Rubinstein, "Introduzione all'edizione delle Lettere" in Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, vol. i, ed. Riccardo Fubini (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Giunti-Barbera, 1977), pp. vi-vii. 10On the important Guicciardini archive, see Roberto Ridolfi, L'Archivio delta famiglia Gukciardini (Florence: Olschki, 1931); and the "Note on Guicciardini's Papers" in Ridolfi's The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, tr. Cecil Grayson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 279. 22 CHAPTER ΟΝΕ Claimin g that in private letters "we can hear the voices of people talking, " Kent says of the Cedern i letters that they "leave the reader in little doubt " about who "his 'real' friends were, and why. They were his faithful correspondent s and associates." 11 In the chapter s that follow I will attemp t to show how the Machiavelli-Vettor i correspondenc e engages, reenacts , and problematize s this notion , so characteristi c of private fifteenth-century epistolarit y (and of much of the best work on it), of letters as written speech transmittin g and preserving the voices of absent friends. Richar d Trexler has explored the tension s and social codes of Florentin e friendship in the letters of Francesc o Datin i and the notar y Lapo Mazzei, 12 from a perspective that stresses "the great importanc e of social ritual, of utility, and of coercio n to any civic relationship . But rathe r than arguing that sentimen t was a secondar y elemen t in definin g this relationship, " Trex- ler insists "that sentimen t and society, internalit y and externality , conten t and form were in a dialectica l relationshi p to each other . Ther e was no sincerity without form and no form without sincerity. " The Datini-Mazze i letters enact and consolidat e a "quasi-formal, " almost contractua l bond of friendship : "the rhetorica l elemen t in the letters was an attemp t to bridge" the difference s of occupation , social standing , and wealth throug h "ritu- alized emotions. " Trexler conclude s that "The inability to escape the social code permeate s the correspondence, " and that "The ritual of gifts and ser- vices, of language and mandator y epistolar y salutations , appear s in this light as a foundatio n of civil conversation." 13 Trexler's analysis of the Datini-Mazze i correspondenc e alerts us to the rhetorica l complexit y of even private letters in a society in which friendship was structure d by such codes and conventions. 14 The relevance of this for a readin g of the Machiavelli-Vettor i letters is not that they wrote letters accordin g to the same codes and convention s that governed Datini' s and Maz- zei's correspondence . In the case of Machiavell i and Vettori a different kind

11F. W. Kent , Bartolommeo Cederni and His Friends: Letters to an Obscure Florentine, intro - ductor y essay by F. W. Kent and texts edited by Gin o Cort i with F. W. Kent (Florence : Leo S. Olschki and the Istitut o Nazional e di Studi sul Rinascimento , Quadern i di "Rinasci- mento, " 1991), pp. 10-12. Anthon y Molh o had previously offered a sample of Cederni' s letters to illustrate the natur e of both friendship and patronag e in fifteenth-century Florence ; see "Cosimo de' Medici : Pater Patriae or Padrtrmi," pp. 24-25. "The letters of Datin i and Mazze i are published in Lapo Mazzei , Lettere di un notaro a un mercante del secoh XIV, con altre lettere e document!, ed. C. Guasti , 2 vols. (Florence : Le Monnier , 1880). 13 Richar d C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ne w Yotk: Academic Press, 1980), pp. 131-58; quote d passages from pp. 132-36 and 157. 14 Dale Kent' s forthcomin g book on the vocabulary of power and patronag e in Medicea n Florence , section s of which she has kindly allowed me to see in draft, will make an importan t contributio n to the ways in which "the language and form of letters define the terms" of friendship and patronage . RENAISSANCE EPISTOLARITY 23 of friendship entailed different codes and, perhaps because of their awareness of humanist ideas and debates about letter writing, a somewhat freer use of epistolary conventions. But their letters, no less than those of Datini and Mazzei, were "formal" in the sense that rhetorical forms—of language, friendship, and politics—conditioned much of what they wrote to each other and how they wrote it. If there can be no forms without authoritative models, and if even Lapo Mazzei looked to Cicero and Jerome for the kind of rhetorical models he needed in the writing of letters,15 it should not surprise us that the letters of Machiavelli and Vettori were immersed in the rhetorical and literary traditions of ancient and humanist epistolarity. From this perspective the wide gulf that some see between private, domestic letter writing and the humanist epistolary tradition may not be unbridgeable. In fact, the Machiavelli-Vettori correspondence may itself constitute one of the bridges between these two epistolary worlds.

The epistolary tradition that had the most direct and visible influence on Machiavelli was the prestigious professional art of diplomatic and political letter writing practiced by the secretaries and chancellors of governments for several centuries before Machiavelli became second chancellor of the Flor- entine republic. The most famous of these early chancellors, the ones who raised the ars dictaminis to new literary levels with the introduction of the high rhetorical style, were Pier della Vigna, Frederick II's chancellor at the imperial Hohenstaufen court, and Brunetto Latini, chancellor of the Flor- entine primopopolo between 1250 and 1260 and thereafter a writer and political theorist of considerable importance for the development of republican thought. The fame that these two thirteenth-century chancellors achieved is of course partly due to the dramatic disasters of their political lives. Pier della Vigna was accused of treason and died a suicide in prison; and Brunetto Latini spent years in exile after the collapse of the primo popolo at the hands of the Hohenstaufen-led Ghibellines in 1260. Dante secured their repu- tations when he created from their stories two of the most memorable char- acters of the Inferno, but the very possibility of that kind of fame attests to the prestige already associated with official letter writing by the thirteenth century.16 The Florentine chancery continued to be one of the chief institutional homes of this tradition of public letter writing, and especially so in the late

15Trexler, Public Life, p. 136; see also Christian Bee's reading of the letters, and his assessment of Mazzei's literary culture, in Les marchands ecrivains, pp. 113—30. 16 For the early development of public letter writing, see Jerrold E. Seigel, Rhetoric and Phiksophy in Renaissance Humanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 200- 225; and Ronald G. Witt, Coluccto Salutati and his Public Letters (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1976), esp. pp. 23-41. On Brunetto Latini, see Charles T. Davis, Dante's Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), pp. 166—97.