Machiavelli, Volume I | Page 4

and licentious. But there is no
bad or even unkind act charged against him. To his honesty and good
faith he very fairly claims that his poverty bears witness. He was a kind,
if uncertain, husband and a devoted father. His letters to his children
are charming. Here is one written soon before his death to his little son
Guido.--'Guido, my darling son, I received a letter of thine and was
delighted with it, particularly because you tell me of your full recovery,
the best news I could have. If God grants life to us both I expect to
make a good man of you, only you must do your fair share yourself.'
Guido is to stick to his books and music, and if the family mule is too
fractious, 'Unbridle him, take off the halter and turn him loose at
Montepulciano. The farm is large, the mule is small, so no harm can
come of it. Tell your mother, with my love, not to be nervous. I shall
surely be home before any trouble comes. Give a kiss to Baccina, Piero,
and Totto: I wish I knew his eyes were getting well. Be happy and
spend as little as you may. Christ have you in his keeping.'--There is
nothing exquisite or divinely delicate in this letter, but there are many

such, and they were not written by a bad man, any more than the
answers they evoke were addressed to one. There is little more save of
a like character that is known of Machiavelli the man. But to judge him
and his work we must have some knowledge of the world in which he
was to move and have his being.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: State of Italy.]
At the beginning of the sixteenth century Italy was rotten to the core. In
the close competition of great wickedness the Vicar of Christ easily
carried off the palm, and the Court of Alexander VI. was probably the
wickedest meeting-place of men that has ever existed upon earth. No
virtue, Christian or Pagan, was there to be found; little art that was not
sensuous or sensual. It seemed as if Bacchus and Venus and Priapus
had come to their own again, and yet Rome had not ceased to call
herself Christian.
[Sidenote: Superstition.]
'Owing to the evil ensample of the Papal Court,' writes Machiavelli,
'Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow infinite troubles
and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so its absence implies
the contrary. To the Church and priests of Rome we owe another even
greater disaster which is the cause of her ruin. I mean that the Church
has maintained, and still maintains Italy divided.' The Papacy is too
weak to unite and rule, but strong enough to prevent others doing so,
and is always ready to call in the foreigner to crush all Italians to the
foreigner's profit, and Guicciardini, a high Papal officer, commenting
on this, adds, 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the Roman
Court, but that more abuse should not be merited, seeing it is an infamy,
and example of all the shames and scandals of the world.' The lesser
clergy, the monks, the nuns followed, with anxious fidelity, the
footsteps of their shepherds. There was hardly a tonsure in Italy which
covered more than thoughts and hopes of lust and avarice. Religion and
morals which God had joined together, were set by man a thousand
leagues asunder. Yet religion still sat upon the alabaster throne of Peter,
and in the filthy straw of the meanest Calabrian confessional. And still
deeper remained a blind devoted superstition. Vitellozzo Vitelli, as
Machiavelli tells us, while being strangled by Cæesar Borgia's assassin,
implored his murderer to procure for him the absolution of that

murderer's father. Gianpaolo Baglioni, who reigned by parricide and
lived in incest, was severely blamed by the Florentines for not killing
Pope Julius II. when the latter was his guest at Perugia. And when
Gabrino Fondato, the tyrant of Cremona, was on the scaffold, his only
regret was that when he had taken his guests, the Pope and Emperor, to
the top of the Cremona tower, four hundred feet high, his nerve failed
him and he did not push them both over. Upon this anarchy of religion,
morals, and conduct breathed suddenly the inspiring breath of Pagan
antiquity which seemed to the Italian mind to find its finest climax in
tyrannicide. There is no better instance than in the plot of the Pazzi at
Florence. Francesco Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini decided to kill
Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in the cathedral at the moment of the
elevation of the Host. They naturally took the priest into their
confidence. They escorted Giuliano to the Duomo, laughing and