Andrew Hui at The Public Domain Review: Sant’Andrea in Percussina lies about ten kilometers south of Florence, nestled in the proverbially beautiful Tuscan landscape, surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, cypress trees, wild rosemary patches, and soft rolling hills. Outside the hustle and bustle of the city, there is peace and quiet, but also a lively cross section of the working class: farmers, millers, innkeepers, hunters, masons, and carpenters.
In the summer of 1513, a disgraced forty-four-year-old man repairs to these sylvan surrounds. A tavern, as well as a few scattered farms, had been in the family’s possession for years, and the modest rent from these properties had supported them for some time. His father, Bernardo, never rich but always eager for learning, owned a modest library, and sent his son to study under the famed pedagogue, Paolo da Ronciglione. At the age of twenty-nine, with no administrative experience and virtually unknown, Bernardo’s son was catapulted to be the second chancellor of the Republic and the secretary to the Council of Ten, Florence’s ministry for diplomatic affairs. For fourteen years, in the upper echelon of society, in the thick of action, he hobnobbed with the great and the good. Now he is alone, in the periphery.
This, of course, is Niccolò Machiavelli. 1513 was a precipitous year for him. The republican regime that had ruled for eighteen years had collapsed; his patron, Piero Soderini, had fled into exile; the Medici make a triumphant return. The previous year, Machiavelli was formally dismissed from his lofty post. Shortly thereafter, Machiavelli is tried for conspiracy, tortured, and imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of attempting to assassinate Giovanni de’ Medici. A month later, Giovanni becomes Pope Leo X. Celebration erupts, and a general amnesty is granted. Machiavelli is released and exiled to his family farm.
On December 10, he writes a letter that is well known to students of the classical tradition. As with all his works, the circumstances surrounding its composition are thick with subtexts. Between 1513 and 1515, he and his close friend Francesco Vettori exchange some forty letters.2 Vettori was five years younger than Machiavelli and a leading member of the Florentine elite, which he was not. In early 1513, Vettori is appointed ambassador to Rome, and Machiavelli repeatedly urges him to use his influence “so that I may begin to receive some employment from our lord the pope.”3
In an earlier letter dated November 23, Vettori tries to convince Machiavelli to go to Rome. He lists all the wonderful things that happen in a typical day: he spends his afternoons at leisure, in the garden or horseback riding in the countryside; in the evenings, he wines and dines at home, or he goes out; at night, he reads: “I’ve managed to get a lot of history books, especially those of the Romans. . . . With them I pass the time, and I think about what kind of emperors poor Rome, which used to make the world tremble, has endured, and that it’s no wonder that [Rome] has also put up with two popes of the sort that recent ones have been [Julius II and Alexander VI].”4
When Machiavelli responds, the letter, as scholars have demonstrated, is an almost point-by-point reply to Vettori’s letter.5 A less charitable reading would say that he is “trolling” Vettori. One is in the very center of power, the other at the margins. In his response, Machiavelli describes a typical day: In the morning, he likes to trap birds, or cut down trees, killing time with the woodsmen, who always have some petty disputes with someone or another. Afterward, alone, sitting by a spring or in his aviary, he reads recent authors such as Dante and Petrarch, or the old poets such as Tibullus or Ovid. He likes their amorous tales, and — just to put in a little brag — he says they remind him of his own. At midday, he goes to the local inn, eats, and gossips with the innkeeper, butcher, miller, and furnace tenders. They play card games. Someone cheats. Again, no shortage of snark and petty disputes.
More here.
