Timo Laine’s Journal

How to say it while not saying it: Machiavelli and the Medici

8 March 2010

It is nothing new that Machiavelli did not like the Medici. After all, on a personal level the Medici had him tortured, and on a more general level the Medici represented dictatorship, while Machiavelli was a republican. However, Machiavelli often found himself having to align himself with the Medici anyway. It is quite interesting to see how he does it.

This is what he writes about the Medici family in the dedicatory letter to the Florentine Histories (from the Banfield-Mansfield translation):

And if under those remarkable deeds of theirs was hidden an ambition contrary to the common utility, as some say, I who do not know it am not bound to write about it; for in all my narrations I have never wished to conceal an indecent deed with a decent cause, or to obscure a praiseworthy deed as if it were done for a contrary end.

The letter and the whole work is addressed to Pope Clement VII, a member of the Medici family. In what he says Machiavelli manages to do several things.

• First, he makes the point that some people are saying essentially that the Medici are tyrants. Of course, if these people were not worth listening to, Machiavelli would not even mention them. This means that Machiavelli is saying that what they say is reasonable.
• Second, Machiavelli saves himself by saying that he does not know about such things. He does not try to disprove the accusations against the Medici. What he is saying is only the trivial truth that in the end nobody knows precisely the thoughts and the intentions of others. Therefore Machiavelli can claim not to know what the Medici want, because for one thing in a trivial sense he really cannot know, and for another thing nobody can accuse Machiavelli of anti-Medici thoughts, because only he himself knows what he thinks. Machiavelli pretends to be unaware of the fact that to know what someone thinks you only need to look at how he acts. Machiavelli acts like a republican, and the Medici act like tyrants.
• Finally, Machiavelli seemingly becomes an accomplice to the pope. When he writes that because he does not know about the tyrannical intentions of the Medici, he is not bound to write about them, he assures the pope that the work is free from anti-Medici opinions. In this sense, he participates in promulgating the Medici view of history. Whether all this is in line with the actual content of the Florentine Histories is of course another matter.

In chapter XIX of The Prince, Machiavelli offers this simple advice (from the Mansfield translation):

And one of the most powerful remedies that a prince has against conspiracies is not to be hated by the people generally.

Unless you put this advice in context, the anti-Medici message is not clear. What is important to know is that while Machiavelli was writing The Prince, everybody in Florence still remembered the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici. It must have had been the most memorable political event of the past fifty years, and any general mention of conspiracy would obviously have brought it to mind. It does not matter much what the motives behind the conspiracy were, but probably there was a bit of everything, resentment for the tyranny and desire for power.

Machiavelli knew that people still remembered the conspiracy well, so he also knew he did not have to mention it at all to make people think about it. Any observation about conspiracies was probably automatically compared to this particular conspiracy. This enabled Machiavelli to say almost explicitly that the people generally hated the Medici—while not saying it.

In his Discourses on Livy (III 6), Machiavelli does return to the topic, ascribing a purely egoistic motive for the conspiracy, instead of popular resentment. However, this does not seem a sincere analysis, particularly because it is an exception to his general rule that conspiracies are fueled by popular hate. To justify it, he would have to show that the general rule does not apply. He does not even try to show that. Thus it is justified to conclude that whatever egoistic motive the Pazzi may have had, without popular resentment there would have been no conspiracy.

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