Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

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introduction

introducing Machiavelli in tudor and stuart england

alessandra Petrina and alessandro arienzo

come hither son, and learn thy Fathers lore,it is not now as hath been heretofore:For in my Youth no Man would read to methat now in age i can deliver thee.1

thus begins a late seventeenth-century poem, Machiavil’s Advice to his Son, parodying the early modern vogue for educational treatises and babees books by proposing, in Machiavelli’s name, advice on being crafty, unscrupulous, greedy and ambitious. the poem, as can be seen from these few lines, has no literary merit; but, given its late date of publication, it can be set here, at the end of the first, powerful wave of the European vogue for Machiavelli, as symbolizing and summing up some of the recurrent traits of the english reaction to the Florentine’s writings, as well as its loss of focus in the generic attribution of evil traits to a ‘Machiavil’, without any attention to what the writer had actually proposed in his books of political theory. texts such as Machiavil’s Advice to his Son or the earlier Unmasking of a Feminine Machiavel (composed by thomas andrewe and printed in 1604) represent extreme cases of a generalized attitude that saw in Machiavelli a modern, possibly lay version of the vice of medieval drama. But it would be a mistake to consider this attitude exclusive, or even predominant, in the english intellectual world.

niccolò Machiavelli was considered, in early modern england, mainly a political writer, and this in spite of the early dissemination of his military treatise The Art of War, and of the (more muted) presence of his historical works: whether the reaction to his writings was founded on well-informed study or simply based on rumour, he was seen mainly as the author of The Prince and Discourses, two complex and often contradictory books which appeared to conceal a secret lore, applicable both to the private individual and the state. he was no inventor of a new theory or doctrine, but simply the propagandist of what had been kept hidden thus far. he had opened Pandora’s box: as he says to his son in the quotation above, none had dared tell him, when he was a child, what he now would tell his son. In the fictional situation created by the poem, Machiavelli therefore passes

1 Machiavil’s Advice to his Son (london: Burrel, 1681), p. 1.



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Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England2

on to his son, and implicitly to future generations, what has always been (even if imperfectly) known.

the english reaction to Machiavelli is similar to the wider european response in that it often forgets the writer’s biography, his individual personality, sometimes even his writings in the creation of a figure transcending time and historical circumstances, a devil or an evil spirit bringing contagion to the world: what Machiavil’s Advice to his Son seems to imply is that the whole world has lost its childlike innocence thanks to Machiavelli’s revelations, and has been brought a step nearer to disenchanted old age. this is part of the paradox around which is built the english (and, by extension, the european) response to the writer: on the one hand, he transcends in popular and cultural imagination his own life and works to become the symbol of a new era, appearing on the elizabethan stage as a recognizable persona for libertinism, political craft, greed, vice; on the other, he is read, translated, annotated and commented on, but, it would seem, only partly and imperfectly understood, so that his influence on the intellectual life of the country becomes very difficult to assess. Besides, his non-political works appear to enjoy a circulation of their own, often a separate life from his best-known works. interest in Machiavelli is evident in all spheres of english intellectual life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the responses are often contradictory: english Machiavellianism is a far from systematic effort, and its very articulateness and diversity may be at the basis of its extraordinarily long life. this is also the paradox this book intends to explore, by taking into consideration english philosophers, historians and dramatists who struggled to make sense of the Machiavelli demon and of the import of his writings.

this book therefore analyses the political and literary issues hanging upon the circulation of Machiavelli’s works in england. taking into consideration a number of Machiavelli’s political works, and marking, through the different readings, the passage from elizabethan to Jacobean to republican attitudes. in a way, the Florentine writer becomes a litmus test: the reactions his works triggered allow us to gauge the role of theories of statecraft in two of the most turbulent centuries of english history. a form of continuity is suggested between the fragmented and often isolated reactions occurring during the reign of henry viii and the more systematic response during the stuart era, the commonwealth and the early years of the restoration. the volume highlights how topics and ideas stemming from Machiavelli’s books created a multifaceted corpus of themes in early modern England, which strongly influenced contemporary political debate.

The first part discusses early reactions to Machiavelli’s works, focusing on authors such as reginald Pole and William thomas, depicting their complex interaction with Machiavelli as political theorist and historian. in the second part, different features of the reading of Machiavelli in tudor literary and political culture are discussed, moving well beyond the traditional image of the Machiavellian tyrant or of the evil Machiavel. Machiavelli’s historiography and republicanism and their influences on Tudor culture are discussed with reference to topical authors such as Walter raleigh, alberico gentili and Philip sidney; his role in contemporary dramatic writing, especially as concerns christopher



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Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England 3

Marlowe and William shakespeare, is also taken into consideration. the last section explores Machiavelli’s influence on English political culture in early Stuart and revolutionary decades, focusing on political prudence and virtue, monarchical and republican statecraft, policy and reason of state and discussing writers such as llodovick lloyd, Francis Bacon, henry Parker, anthony ascham, Marchamont nedham, James harrington and thomas hobbes. overall, Machiavelli’s image in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century england is put into perspective: the chapters analyse his role and influence within courtly, derogatory and prudential politics, as well as the importance of his ideological proposal in the traditions of monarchy, republicanism and parliamentarianism.

traditionally, the beginning of critical interest in the early english response to Machiavelli is edward Meyer’s Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama, published in 1897.2 Meyer’s pioneering work was an infinitely painstaking account of allusions, references and (more rarely) direct quotations from the Florentine’s works, as they appeared in elizabethan and Jacobean drama. it established beyond doubt the major role played by Machiavelli in english culture but it also helped to suggest a strong link with one literary genre, namely drama, possibly to the exclusion of everything else; more dangerously, it also appeared to imply that, since english translations of Discourses and The Prince only appeared in print respectively in 1636 and 1640, elizabethan and Jacobean acquaintance with these works was only second-hand, filtered through the battle of books then raging in europe, and particularly through innocent gentillet’s attack upon the Machiavellian doctrine as expounded in The Prince.3

later criticism has helped to correct this view, and the chapters in the present volume are indebted not only to Meyer, but to the fundamental and wide-ranging contributions of Mario Praz, Felix raab, robert Bireley, victoria Kahn and sydney anglo,4 among many others, as shown by the Bibliography. the dates of publication of the three last-mentioned studies, in particular, show the great scholarly interest in the topic in the last two decades, an interest that spans

2 edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar: Felber, 1897).3 (Anti-Machiavel. Edition de 1586) Innocent Gentillet. Discours sur les Moyens de

bien gouverner et maintenir en bon paix vn Royaume ou autre Principauté. Divisez en trois parties: asauoir, du Conseil, de la Religion & Police que doit tenir un Prince. Contre Nicolas Machiauel, Florentin. A Treshaut & Tres-illustre Prince François Duc d’Alençon, fils & frere de Roy (Paris, 1576), ed. c. edward rathé (geneva: librairie droz, 1968).

4 Mario Praz, ‘Machiavelli and the elizabethans’, Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): pp. 3–51; Felix raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 (london: routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); robert Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (chapel hill: university of north carolina Press, 1990); victoria Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1994); sydney anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (oxford: oxford university Press, 2005).



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philosophy, cultural history, literary criticism and the history of book circulation. In the intersection of these different disciplines we can set significant facts and establish working hypotheses in our exploration of english Machiavellianism.

Paleography and the study of the circulations of manuscripts and printed books takes pride of place here, as it has allowed us to establish beyond doubt that Machiavelli’s influence on sixteenth-century English thought and writing was due in some measure to a direct knowledge of his works, whether in the original italian or in translation. We have acquired proof of ownership of Machiavelli’s works in latin, French and even in english, and it has been possible, as concerns The Prince, to trace the web of vernacular translation throughout europe, as shown in the recent collection of essays edited by roberto de Pol;5 while sergio Bertelli and Piero innocenti’s invaluable Bibliografia Machiavelliana6 provides a guide to the proliferation of printed texts throughout europe, the work of John Wesley horrocks,7 napoleone orsini,8 hardin craig9 and, more recently, sydney anglo10 and alessandra Petrina11 has offered an overview of a significant manuscript circulation, particularly as concerns the controversial political works. the thread is taken up here by the contributions of alessandra Petrina and diego Pirillo. the former goes back to the earliest circulation of The Prince, shortly after its early scribal publication, interlacing intellectual history and close reading in a critical proposal that presents elements of absolute novelty. the latter takes us to the late sixteenth century, analysing the contribution offered to the circulation of Machiavelli’s works by enterprising printers such as John Wolfe, who in 1584

5 roberto de Pol (ed.), The First Translations of Machiavelli’s Prince: From the Sixteenth to the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (amsterdam, new York: rodopi, 2010).

6 sergio Bertelli and Piero innocenti, Bibliografia Machiavelliana (verona: edizioni valdonega, 1979).

7 John Wesley horrocks, ‘Machiavelli in tudor Political opinion and discussion’ (dlitt dissertation, university of london, 1908).

8 napoleone orsini, Bacone e Machiavelli (Genoa: Emiliano degli Orfini, 1936); ‘elizabethan Manuscript translations of Machiavelli’s Prince’, Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937): pp. 166–9; Studii sul rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra con alcuni testi inglesi inediti (Florence: sansoni, 1937); ‘nuove ricerche intorno al machiavellismo nel rinascimento inglese i: machiavellismo e polemiche politiche nel manoscritto harleiano 967’, Rinascita 1 (1938): pp. 92–101; ‘nuove ricerche sul machiavellismo nel rinascimento inglese ii: appunti inediti dalle “storie” del Machiavelli e del guicciardini’, Rinascita 6 (1939): pp. 299–304.

9 hardin craig (ed.), Machiavelli’s The Prince: An Elizabethan Translation. edited with an introduction and notes from a Manuscript in the collection of Mr Jules Furthman (chapel hill: university of carolina Press, 1944).

10 see the already mentioned Machiavelli – The First Century, and the less recent Machiavelli: A Dissection (london: gollancz, 1969).

11 Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince (Farnham: ashgate, 2009).



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issued surreptitious editions of Discourses and The Prince, and by the community of italian refugees in london. in both cases, one of the results is to offer new insights into the european dimension of a writer that, at least as concerns The Prince, would seem almost exclusively concerned with very local politics.

such a supranational dimension was quickly perceived by readers shortly after Machiavelli’s death: allusions to The Prince in early tudor england are present as early as 1539, and though one traditional critical stance has been to consider Machiavelli’s influence in sixteenth-century England as starting from Christopher Marlowe’s early works, two diametrically opposed evaluations of this controversial work belong to the reign of henry viii, and are indeed directly linked to the policy of the King: in his Apologia ad Carolum Quintum cardinal reginald Pole refers to the book as ‘scriptum ab hoste humani generis […] satanae digito scriptum’;12 on the other hand, in a letter dated 13 February 1539 which accompanied the gift of an italian copy of the Florentine History, henry Parker, lord Morley, urged thomas cromwell to read both this book and The Prince, adding a short description of both, and noting how The Prince in particular was ‘surely a good thing for your lordship and for our sovereign lord in council’.13 the two reactions spring from an attentive and detailed knowledge of Machiavelli’s works: both Pole and Parker were scrupulous readers and excellent linguists, and their knowledge of The Prince is evident if we examine their writings, as Petrina shows. their diametrically opposite reactions thus become symptoms of an interesting phenomenon: though they remain isolated instances, they help us to gauge the extent to which Machiavelli’s works, then as now, could be used by their readers, variously interpreted to suit different ideological purposes or opposite political manoeuvres.

Maria grazia dongu analyses William thomas’s indebtedness with Machiavelli’s historical writings, adding a further element to a survey of early tudor Machiavellianism, and forcefully suggesting the far from straightforward path traced by the Florentine writer in england. once again, the Florentine History underlined Machiavelli’s interest in the local, in the past and present of his own, rather small country; thomas’s History of Italy and Discourses were among the early texts presenting a contemporary vision of italy to an english audience, news from a foreign country that was becoming, more and more, part of the early modern english imagination. Many scholars have highlighted the importance of William thomas as a go-between, who studied the italian language and culture and endeavoured to convey it to his own country. english culture was enriched

12 ‘Written by an enemy of mankind […] written by the finger of Satan’. Apologia reginaldi Poli ad carolum v. caesarem, in Epistularium Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis Et aliorum ad ipsum Collection. Pars i (Brixiae: excudebat Joannes-Maria rizzardi, 1744), pp. 66–171. the quotation appears on pp. 136–7.

13 the letter is printed as item 285 in James gairdner and r.h. Brodie (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. XIV, part 1 (london: eyre and spottiswoode, 1864), p. 111. see also anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century, p. 97.



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thanks to the imitation of new genres that thomas attempted in his Grammar, a reworking of alunno, acharisio and Bembo’s well-known discourses on the italian language. in his History of Italy and in his Discourses, as shown by dongu, he was certainly drawing on the best examples of italian historiography and on the essay on factual politics, first created by Machiavelli. Thanks to Thomas, key words in Machiavelli’s political thought were brought to england.

such responses were still sporadic, and the reign of Mary tudor appears to have obliterated all traces of Machiavelli in england, if only temporarily. only with elizabeth’s ascent to the throne did the Florentine’s works enjoy a widespread circulation, and the english response became in consequence much more articulate and wide-ranging. The first complete work of Machiavelli to be translated into english appears to have been The Art of War, published in 1560 in Peter Whitehorne’s translation and dedicated to the Queen,14 but there is little doubt that other works, especially the most controversial ones, were read and discussed, whether in Latin (the first Latin version of The Prince also appeared in 1560, and enjoyed immediate and international success),15 in French or in italian, a language the english scholarly and aristocratic community was approaching with more and more interest.

though literary criticism has been concerned to a great extent with the twin giants christopher Marlowe and William shakespeare, in recent years there has been more and more interest in the exploration of minor writers, such as the already mentioned William thomas or the author of The Quintesence of Wit. recent works by John roe, tim spiekerman, catherine Minshull or Joseph Khoury have updated our perception of Machiavelli’s presence in works such as Richard II, Henry V, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta;16 but at the same time our elizabethan library has grown immeasurably, thanks to manuscript discoveries as well as to the resources put at our disposal by all-encompassing databases such as Early English Books Online (EEBO). this means that we are now able to appreciate the contribution to

14 The Arte of Warre. Certain Waies for the ordering of Souldiers in battelray, & settyng of battailes, after diuers fashions, with their maner of marchyng: And also fygures of certaine new plattes for fortificacion of townes: And more ouer, howe to make Saltpeter, Gumpoulder, and diuers sortes of Fireworkes or wilde Fyre, with other thynges apertaining to the warres. Gathered and set foorthe by Peter Whitehorne (london: ihon Kingston for nicolas englande, 1560).

15 Nicolai Machiavelli reip. florentinae a secretis, ad Laurentium Medicem de Principe libellus: nostro quidem seculo apprimé vtilis & necessarius, non modò ad principatum adipiscendum, sed & regendum & conseruandum: Nunc primum ex Italico in Latinum sermonem uersus per Syluestrum Telium Fulginatem (Basileae: apud Petrum Pernam, 1560).

16 John roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli (cambridge: Brewer, 2002); tim spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (albany: state university of new York Press, 2001); catherine Minshull, ‘Marlowe’s “sound Machevil”’, Renaissance Drama 13 (1982): pp. 35–53; Joseph Khoury, ‘Marlowe’s tamburlaine: idealized Machiavellian Prince’, in Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, ed. Patricia vilches and gerald seaman (leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 329–56.



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early modern intellectual life offered by pamphlets, sermons, anonymous works and other allegedly ‘minor’ literature, as well as the interaction between different genres. the implications for literary and intellectual history are obvious, since we are now beginning to see elizabethan literature no longer as a succession of isolated peaks, but as a network of interrelated forces. this is the hypothesis valentina lepri works on in her analysis of The Quintesence of Wit, a collection of maxims printed in london towards the end of the sixteenth century. the production and popularity of several editions of political maxims played an influential part in the circulation and assimilation of Machiavelli’s thought in english culture in the late sixteenth century. the anthologies were subject to intensive editing: the maxims were frequently selected, or even censured, and elsewhere provided with glosses. To an even more significant degree, Machiavelli’s thought was contaminated by the maxims of other classical and modern authors. By reconstructing the genesis of the text and the many sources behind it, lepri offers a pivotal contribution to our understanding of a popular perception of Machiavelli: a gnomic author, quickly entered into the rostrum of auctoritates of classical tradition, along with his own sources – tacitus, livy, Polybius. at the same time, it is interesting to observe how, through the printing of these heterogeneous collections of political maxims, in italian and in translation, numerous fragments taken from Machiavelli’s works were juxtaposed with a similar quantity of aphorisms extrapolated from the works of another famous Florentine historian: Francesco guicciardini.

setting lepri’s contribution side to side with ioannis evrigenis’s work on sir Walter raleigh’s Machiavelli means offering the reader a variegated spectrum of responses. in the case of raleigh we are given a completely different challenge: here is no anonymous compiler, but a well-known writer, politician, courtier and explorer; besides, raleigh’s canon is as yet an undecided issue, and his attitude towards the Florentine writer is very difficult to define. Evrigenis copes with this thorny question by identifying some recurring political themes in raleigh’s works and discussing them against the background of Machiavelli’s theory. By focusing in particular on the History of The World, evrigenis sheds welcome light on the question of reason of state and its relation to what is expounded in The Prince. interestingly, evrigenis’s contribution becomes then strongly related to the chapters in the third part of the volume, by marking in raleigh’s works the emergence of a reaction to Machiavelli in terms of political theory – a trend that is certainly minor in elizabethan literature, but will be of major import in the seventeenth century.

the central chapters of the book turn to the Marlovian–shakespearean question, but rather than treading old ground they explore lesser-known texts, or offer new insights with the help of contemporary literature. enrico stanic’s analysis of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta eschews the received doctrine of the identification of the Jew of the play with the Machiavel of the Prologue in order to concentrate on another, less obvious but certainly more successful villain, the christian Ferneze – such a Machiavellian villain that he seems to escape even critical attention. stanic’s study is helped by a prima manu reading of The Prince and his



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comparison of this text with chosen passages from The Jew of Malta, a practice which helps him to identify a number of close analogies and to hypothesize a second, less evident layer of meaning in Marlowe’s tragedy of the Jew. as in the case of the relevance of Machiavelli’s doctrine in christopher Marlowe’s play, where truly Machiavellian elements are represented, William shakespeare himself offers a positive reading of Machiavelli at a time when most writers still vilified the italian writer; thus in King John the Bastard employs Machiavellian thinking, albeit subversively, to stabilize the state, not to cause chaos. this is conny loder’s hypothesis, in a chapter exploring this allegedly minor play and once more using Machiavelli’s Prince as the main treatise of political theory against which to test this play. loder charts the changes made to the character of the Bastard in the passage from the play that predated shakespeare’s, the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John, and identifies surprising echoes of Chapter 26 of The Prince in the conclusion of King John.

rosanna camerlingo’s chapter deals with a shakespearean play that is both more famous and more explicitly Machiavellian, Henry V. here, however, there is a third writer at play: alberico gentili, an italian refugee and oxford jurist. in his De Iure Belli, gentili, building from the Machiavellian doctrine, elaborates on the concept of just law in the new scenario of sixteenth-century europe, just as shakespeare does in the theatrical context of the hundred Years’ War. despite the fact that anti-Machiavellianism became more violent in late sixteenth-century england, and more explicit in popular literary genres such as drama, Machiavelli enjoyed a growing popularity in elizabethan intellectual life. in 1584 John Wolfe had published The Discourses in italian in london together with The Prince,17 and announced the successive publishing of several other Machiavellian works, such as The Art of War and the Florentine Histories, which appeared in london in the following years. Pietro Perna, the printer of the latin version of The Prince, had positioned himself against the black legend diffused in huguenot and calvinist circles, which had transformed Machiavelli into the counsellor of tyrants. the same opinion was shared by alberico gentili who, in De legationibus, a tract on the perfect ambassador, suggested a careful reading of The Discourses. Machiavelli was not a counsellor of tyrants so much as a defender of democracy and of republican values, who with his works had intended to unmask the tricks of the arcana imperii. as the conspicuous traces of his work in Henry V show, gentili’s ideas were spread out and helped to shape the identity of england as one of the most powerful european nations, opening the way for the debate of the following century.

17 I Discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli, sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio. Con due Tauole, l’una de capitoli, & l’altra delle cose principali: & con le stesse parole di Tito Liuio a luoghi loro, ridotte nella volgar Lingua. Nouellamente emmendati, & con somma cura ristampati (Palermo: appresso gli heredi d’antoniello degli antonielli, 1584); Il prencipe di Nicolo Machiavelli. Al Magnifico Lorenzo di Piero de Medici. Con alcune altre operette, i titoli delle quali trouerai nella seguente facciata (Palermo: appresso gli heredi d’antoniello degli antonielli, 1584).



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england’s increasing relevance on the european stage during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and its extended influence among Protestant communities, counteracted by the growing financial difficulties of the Crown, mark the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century.18 in the early years of his english reign, James i tried to legitimize his rule, affirming explicitly the divine derivation of his power, thus raising a growing concern over his intentions of limiting instead of preserving traditional liberties. as his successor, charles i attempted a thorough process of state-building in order to face the growing political and religious instability, the deficiencies of the army and the weakness of the fiscal state. His plea for necessity and reason of state marks the beginning of the political, juridical and religious struggles that led to the revolution. thus, the passage from tudor to stuart was no mere change of dynasty, but the beginning of a deep transformation in english political theory, within which Machiavellian influences played a relevant role that cannot be limited to the response to The Prince, and in which the uses of themes and references to the Florentine writer were combined with the influences exercised by other political writers such as lipsius, Botero, grotius and hobbes. indeed, much of the philosophical discussion on political theory was still concerned with the grounds, limits and aims of royal kingship rather than with policy, and Machiavelli contributed primarily to a new approach to statecraft (both royalist and republican) and policy. Thus his influence should be evaluated carefully in a description of the thematic lines characterizing stuart political cultures.

a relevant issue was indeed the idea of policy, described by napoleone orsini as the Machiavellian theme in england,19 and placed even by Felix raab at the core of English Machiavellianism in its conflicting and shifting relation with religion.20 Machiavellianism has been sometimes equated with reason of state within the wider influence exercised by French and Italian writers, mainly Bodin and Botero. the aim of alessandro arienzo’s contribution is to shed light on the differences and analogies in the concept of reason of state in England in the first decades of the seventeenth century, an issue with strong but not exclusive references to Machiavelli. Focusing on policy and on the idea of prerogative, as well as on their relation, may contribute to put in its proper place, and somehow to clarify, the contribution of Machiavelli to the debate on political prudence in the early stuart decades. this may also shed light on a notion of reason of state closely referring to the juridical concept of prerogative rather than to policy. in the last part of his contribution, dedicated to henry Parker’s parliamentary raison d’état, arienzo argues that, once the idea of a common interest of the nation assembled

18 see Jonathan scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-century English Political Instability in European Context (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000); Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550–1700 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000).

19 napoleone orsini, ‘“Policy”: or the language of elizabethan Machiavellianism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): pp. 122–34.

20 raab, pp. 78–101.



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in a representative institution emerged in england, a new reason of the sovereign state took the place of the old Machiavellian policy.

this leads us to the emergence, during the civil wars, of a theory of de facto power among republicans and parliamentary supporters, in which Machiavelli played a significant role, together with Grotius. This point is taken up by Marco Barducci, who highlights originally english political issues, developed within a broader european context. More particularly, Barducci deals with the works of anthony ascham, Marchamont nedham and James harrington, exploring the influence exercised on their theories by both Machiavelli and Grotius. His contribution focuses on Machiavellianism and republicanism in english political thought from 1649 to 1660, examining how the three english political writers confronted the issues of the state’s stability in the context of the post-1649 search for constitutional and religious settlement. Machiavelli’s analysis of change and stability was combined with grotius’s and hobbes’s theories of war and state order; Barducci’s point is that both Machiavelli’s ideas on change and stability and Renaissance republicanism influenced the English political debate of the late 1650s concerning the survival of the republic and the restoration of the monarchy.

the last contribution focuses on the theme of religion in Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, describing how the Florentine reflection on religion and politics could be debated and rejected in the search for a stable and absolute sovereignty. a number of recent works have been dedicated to the complex issue of the relation between thomas hobbes and Machiavelli, highlighting for instance the much discussed attribution of the Three Discourses as proposed in 1995 by arlene W. saxonhouse and noel B. reynolds.21 in his contribution Fabio raimondi deals with the ideological role of religion in Machiavelli and in thomas hobbes’s theory of the commonwealth, arguing that in both writers religion is a social link that structures and keeps together the various parts of the city and of the commonwealth. in fact, neither could exist without religion, because neither rationality nor violence alone is sufficient for a government to function. The difference between Machiavelli’s and hobbes’s concepts of religion lies, rather, in their purpose: while for Machiavelli religion has the aim of supporting the good order of a city promoting political innovation through conflicts, Hobbes, on the contrary, supports the hypothesis that religion must maintain the status quo.

Significantly, Jacob Soll’s epilogue poses, in fact, a further, unanswerable question on the uniqueness of england in the Machiavellian debate. there is no point at which a discussion on Machiavelli’s role in english political thought

21 arlene W. saxonhouse, ‘hobbes and the Horae Subsecivae’, Polity 13 (1981), pp. 541–67; noel B. reynolds and arlene W. saxonhouse (eds), Thomas Hobbes: Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Works of the Young Hobbes (chicago, london: university of chicago Press, 1995). on hobbes and Machiavelli see also noel Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’ War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes (oxford: clarendon Press, 2007); daniela coli, Hobbes, Roma e Machiavelli nell’Inghilterra degli Stuart (Florence, le lettere, 2009).



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might be said to conclude, but the interaction of Machiavellian and hobbesian philosophy certainly marks the end of a particularly fraught moment in the political debate, and shows to a modern reader the progress of the reception of Machiavelli in England in the first century and a half of the Florentine’s afterlife. The Tudor bogey has by now disappeared – to find its place once more, perhaps, in twenty-first-century popular fiction; but by the end of the seventeenth century Machiavelli has definitely become part of an ongoing political debate, entered the english vocabulary and left an indelible mark in english intellectual life.

Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

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Transcript of Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England