Ada Palmer: commitment

Transcript context

…e willing to fight for it. People were willing to go to the streets, wave their banners, and say “libertas” for the republic. Because they were invested in it, Machiavelli observes, they sustained it. But eventually, one particular Medici—I’m not saying names because they all have the same names over and over, and it’s really confusing—comes to power quite young and weak. He’s basically 20 when he’s suddenly in charge of a very precarious republic. Right then, the French are invading Italy, and he’s scared. He botches the diplomacy with France and falls into disrepute, and the city takes the opportunity to kick him out. The subsequent regimes, which are an independent republic again, are the ones for which Machiavelli works. He was part of the regime that ruled while they were in exile. When they returned, they viewed him as an enemy. He didn’t actively organize to resist them, but his name was found on a list of potential people that an anti-Medicean resistance movement had intended to recruit. He is arrested, tortured, exiled, and in exile writes The Prince. He dedicates it to the very family that exiled him because they now control Florence, and he will only work for Florence. He doesn’t want his manual of the great secrets of statecraft to be in the hands of anybody but his homeland, so that it will defend his homeland. When Florence exiles you, they tell you, “Go to this place and wait, and if you’re good, we’ll invite you back.” Florence has been doing this for ages because Florence actually used this as the core of its diplomatic corps. When you have no nobility, you can’t have ambassadors in the full-on noble ambassador sense. There’s nobody in the city of sufficient rank to go talk to the kings, to play chess with the sultan, and do all the things you have to do to be a proper ambassador. What Florence did instead is exile people and say, “Okay, we’re exiling you. You go to Bruges. Be our contact in Bruges. You go to London. Be our contact in London. Be good. Send us letters informing us what’s going on. When we have diplomatic needs to talk to the king, we’re going to send letters to you, and you’re going to forward them. If you’re good, you get to come back.” So being in exile is sort of being on probation, but also being entrusted with state matters. That’s not quite what they did with Machiavelli. With Machiavelli, they banished him to a hamlet in the middle of the Tuscan countryside near nothing important and said, “Go sit in the country and rot, and if you’re good, we’ll invite you back.” What everyone expects is that Machiavelli will break that promise and leave. Because he’s a well-known statesman, a scholar, a playwright, and a historian, and there are dozens of cardinals in Rome and other cities that would love to employ him. Kings of England love employing Florentines to work for them as secretaries. Kings of Naples love employing Florentines to work for them as secretaries. He might go get a job tutoring the daughters of the Duke of Milan, the way Francesco Filelfo did when he was kicked out of Florence for opposing the Medici. lorentines to work for them as secretaries. He might go get a job tutoring the daughters of the Duke of Milan, the way Francesco Filelfo did when he was kicked out of Florence for opposing the Medici. There are lots of places it’s expected an exiled Florentine intellectual will go where he will have the ear of power and be able to exert influence. He will be a mover and shaker at the court of Milan or Naples or England. Instead, when they say to Machiavelli, “Sit in the country and rot, this is a test,” he passes the test and sits in the country faithfully and rots. If he had wanted to go be an intellectual power broker, the correct move is to run off to Rome and say, “I will give up the chance to go home the way Dante did, but I will be a Florentine in exile, and I will write important things. I will live at the house of wealthy men who will support me and give me the ear of power, and I will exert my influence in that way.” He does not do that. He stays in the country and he rots, and he continues writing letters home saying, “I will serve you or nothing. Bring me home to serve my country.” That is a weird thing to do, and not normal for the many other Florentine intellectuals who experienced similar banishments in the same period. How do we know that he wasn’t just trying to get back into power?…

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