State craft of machiavelli
- London G.Bell 1960
- 167p.
LIVING from 1469 to 1527, Machiavelli saw what we may regard as the culmination of the Italian Renaissance. He was brought up while the Medici family were masters of Florence --while Lorenzo the Magnificent was gaining for the city a strategic position in Italian politics. He received a gentlemanly education, studied the clas- sics, and learned at any rate to read and write in Latin, without gaining any particular reputation as a man of scholarship. His mentality is essentially that of his time and circle, and it is one of the pur- poses of the following essay to restore him to his context, from which he is too often and too easily divorced. He was twenty-five when the first French invas- ion of Italy took place in 1494, and from this moment Florence entered upon a tumultuous his- tory; for the Medici were driven out and a republic was proclaimed, and Savonarola became a pre- dominant figure in the city for four years. Machia- velli's own chief political experience, however, co- incides with the period of the second French in- vasion, 1499-1512. In 1498 he had been made Secretary of the Ten and besides writing thousands of official letters for this executive council.