Machiavelli’s Prince: Traditions, Text and Translations by Nicola Gardini & Martin L. McLaughlin

Author:Nicola Gardini & Martin L. McLaughlin [Gardini, Nicola & McLaughlin, Martin L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788867288434
Goodreads: 40120384
Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice
Published: 2017-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

Eugenio Refini

“Sufficienti e fedeli”: Aristotelian and Biblical Patterns in The Prince, Chapter XXII

In chapter XXII of The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli discusses one of the most controversial topics relevant to the administration of the state, that is the way in which a ruler should choose his advisers (“la elezione de’ ministri”).409 Needless to say, the relation between the prince and his collaborators has been a matter of debate in both philosophy and literature throughout the ages. Crucial to the management of political power, the minister’s business is a very risky one: often the target of envious colleagues and political enemies, the prince’s favourite holds a double-edged position which – notwithstanding successful ventures – can easily take a turn for the worse. The fate of Pier della Vigna, secretary of Frederick II, stands out in Dante’s Inferno, canto XIII, as an emblematic example of the perilous nature of the minister’s office. However, rather than expressing the human empathy that informs Dante’s portrayal of a tragic figure such as Pier della Vigna’s, Machiavelli’s discussion in chapter XXII of The Prince focuses on the very practical side of the question: the ruler needs good advisers; if – for whatever reason – his advisers fail, this means that the ruler did not choose them well; hence the need to provide good advice to the ruler himself on how to choose his advisers.

What might look like a paradoxical argument is the result of a subtle reworking and combination of sources by means of which Machiavelli at once challenges the Aristotelian notion of the “self-sufficient ruler” and states the inescapable importance of ministers to the effective management of the state. In this essay, after a brief introduction, with references to key passages from other sections of the work, I will focus on Machiavelli’s use of words such as the adjective sufficiente (capable) and the verb discernere (to discern). By looking, in particular, at the interplay of Aristotelian and Biblical echoes that these words imply, I will show how Machiavelli applies them to the minister rather than the ruler. Also, I will propose as a possible new source for Machiavelli’s argument in this chapter a late-thirteenth-century vernacular translation of Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum. What, eventually, this chapter intends to point out is that Machiavelli’s originality in discussing a topic as debatable as the relation between princes and ministers does not lie in the sources themselves, but in the way in which they are reused. Furthermore, my analysis of chapter XXII will highlight the productive interaction of both Latin and vernacular texts in Machiavelli’s rethinking of the classical tradition. For this purpose, not only will I recall some of the models that the thinker might have used, but I will also focus on their wider contexts. By doing so, the cluster of possible sources will not be a mere list, but a lens through which to reconsider the profound motives informing the author’s project.

The vernacular rubric that opens chapter XXII (“De’ secretari ch’e’ principi hanno appresso di

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