Machiavelli in Love
had already tried to wound my breast
with his arrows, because he takes
pleasure
in showing contempt for and
inflicting injury on others;
and although those arrows were sharp and fierce,
so much so that a diamond
couldn’t have withstood the blow,
nonetheless they found such a
resistant target
that he had little regard for all
their power.
So he, full of indignation and fury,
In order to give proof of his exalted
excellence,
Changed quiver, changed arrow and
bow;
and he fired one with such violence
that I still grieve over my wounds,
and I confess and acknowledge his power. (Najemy 326)
Whether
or not this is a specific reference to a single love of his own, by writing this poem
Machiavelli is acknowledging the overwhelming power of Cupid’s arrow. Love’s power over Machiavelli and his
dependence on it is evident time and time again throughout many of his writings –
most notably his personal letters. This paper will attempt to dissect five various love
relationships of Machiavelli’s, namely that between Machiavelli and his wife,
Marietta; Machiavelli and his courtesans; Machiavelli and his male family members,
Machiavelli and his friends, and, finally, Machiavelli and Italy. Ultimately ideas will emerge to answer the
questions who did Machiavelli love, why did he love them, and how did he benefit from this
love.
Given the widely held notion that love precedes marriage, it seems a logical place
to being understanding Machiavelli and love is through his relationship with his wife,
Marietta Corsini. However, as Sebastian De
Grazia describes in his book Machiavelli in Hell, love before marriage is a
relatively modern idea. Marriages in the
Renaissance were usually arranged by a marriage broker who matched couples on the basis of
family status and dowry. No doubt Machiavelli
and Marietta’s marriage was no exception. Machiavelli
married Marietta in 1501 when he was 32, and, although his parents were dead, De Grazia
writes “we may be sure that the dowry
and other arrangements were negotiated by members and agents of the Machiavegli and
Corsini families” (124).
Very little detail is known about the
relationship between Machiavelli and Marietta. Of
the more than 300 letters collected and translated in the volume Machiavelli and His
Friends, there are no letters written from Machiavelli to Marietta and only one
survives from Marietta to Machiavelli. In
this particular letter from 1503 Marietta writes that she misses her husband and expresses
concern over his health. She describes their
new son as looking like Machiavelli and writes that “Since he looks like you, he
seems beautiful to me” (Atkinson 93). Marietta
says she wishes had more letters from Machiavelli and that she plans to write more
herself. She ends her letter, “Remember
to come home” (Atkinson 93).
Marietta’s concern for
Machiavelli’s health, her requests for more letters, and her comments about her baby
reminding her of him, all denote an obvious affection for Machiavelli. Nevertheless, her letters raise a lot of questions
about how Machiavelli felt about his wife. For
instance, what kind of wife has to ask for her husband to “remember to come
home”? If love is so powerful that it “wounds” Machiavelli, why isn’t
he voluntarily going home to see his wife (Najemy 326)?
It will be noted later that he went out of his way to see his mistresses.
Another question that arises after
reading Marietta’s letter is, “Why didn’t Machiavelli write her more
often?” It’s obvious that Marietta wanted more letters from her husband, so why
didn’t she get them? One
possibility is that Machiavelli did eventually write more letters, it is just that they
don’t exist anymore. Also, in his
chapter about Renaissance Epistolary, John Najemy notes that extensive correspondence
between husbands and wives was unusual (20-1). Thus,
the lack of letters does not necessarily mean lack of love.
In fact, there are several other letters from family members that suggest
Machiavelli cared for Marietta. For instance,
in a 1527 letter to his son Guido, Machiavelli writes:
Greet Madonna Marietta for me and tell her I have been expecting-and still do-to leave here any day; I have never longed so much to return to Florence as I do now, but there is nothing else I can do. Simply tell her that, whatever she hears, she should be of good cheer, since I shall be there before any danger comes. (Atkinson 413-4)
Although this letter is not directly to his wife, Machiavelli still acknowledges Marietta and her concerns for his safety.
Having quickly exhausted all obvious
sources of information about the relationship between Machiavelli and Marietta, perhaps
more information about Machiavelli’s views on his marriage and marriage in general
can be found through a close examination of the marriages in his plays Mandragola and Clizia.
Interestingly enough, both plays depict dysfunctional marriages void of romantic
love and lust.
First, in Mandragola, Callimaco, a young Florentine,
masterminds a plan to sleep with the most beautiful women in Italy, Lucrezia, who happens
to already be married to a lawyer. However,
sly gentleman that he is, Callimaco successfully manipulates Lucrezia’s husband,
Nicia, to devising a plan to sleep with Lucrezia for one night. Callimaco not only fulfills his goal, but Lucrezia
in turn falls in love with Callimaco and invites him stay in the same house as she and her
husband ( Hale 1-62).
In
Clizia, Nicamaco, who has fallen in love with
his adopted daughter, Clizia, attempts to marry her off to a dunderhead and have them live
next door so he can sleep with his daughter as he pleases.
Although the plan is ultimately thwarted by the arrival of Clizia’s real
father, Nicamaco had wanted to tamper with two marriages: his own and his daughter’s
(Hale 63-120).
Neither one of these plays describes
what could be called a wholesome passionate marriage. The characters have to look outside
their marriage to find love. Given that Machiavelli uses this situation twice, one can
more seriously question if Machiavelli also had no love in his marriage and looked for it
elsewhere.
Another interesting aspect of these
plays is the language in which husbands refer –or are thought to supposed to refer-
to their wives in. It is at once overbearing and pretentious. For instance, in Mandragola, Callimaco tells Nicia, “But I should not pretend to the name of
husband if I couldn’t make my wife so as I wanted” (Hale 26). In Clizia,
Nicomaco constantly refers to his wife, Sofronia, as mad and irrational (Hale 92). Once again, perhaps this is how Machiavelli felt
relationships should be between men and women. Maybe
in his marriage he made the rules and Marietta simply stayed at home waiting for
Machiavelli to tell her what to do next. In
De Grazia’s words, in the Renaissance, “Women are the domesticators of men”
(230) Perhaps Machiavelli loved Marietta only
for the home stability she provided him with. When
he lost his job, she was always there as the passive wife hanging on the husband’s
every word. Maybe Machiavelli only loved
Marietta for her constant companionship and domestic upkeep.
One
caveat before moving on: While these plays may hold Machiavelli’s true
views about marriage, one must be
careful not to infer too much. Consider what
Machiavelli tell’s readers in his
preface to Clizia:
Comedies are written to please and delight the spectators…You have, therefore, to present characters who are ludicrous, slanderous or in love, and the plays that have plenty of these three sort of dialogue will raise plenty of laughs. Those that have none won’t find a smile in the house. (Hale 68)
While there is little evidence that Marietta and Machiavelli had a passionate love affair, there is also not much evidence to prove that they didn’t. Yes, Machiavelli did not brag to his friends about his beautiful wife as he did other women, and, yes, he wrote plays about finding love outside of marriage – but is this enough to assume that Machiavelli did not love Marietta at all?
Sebastian De Gazia suggests that there was love in the marriage, but it was more of
a fraternal love-perhaps like that between brothers.
Obviously Machiavelli had some interest in the marriage because he fathered five
children by Marietta. Also, Machiavelli tried
his best to provide for his family before and after died he died. In his will he left Marietta, “his dear
spouse”, a farm, a farmhouse, and two houses (De Grazia 125). If Machiavelli had truly loved another woman, he
could have given her something in the will because he would already be dead and Marietta
couldn’t kill him for it. It seems that even if Machiavelli found love outside his
marriage-which his plays and the next section suggests-he still could have loved Marietta,
even if it was only for the constancy and domestication she offered him.
In a 1523 letter Francesco Vettori writes Machiavelli, “You would never have
married if you had really known yourself.” (Atkinson 348). What Vettori is no doubt
referring to is Machiavelli’s weakness for women other than his wife. Unlike with his marriage, Machiavelli’s
personal correspondence is just littered with references to various mistresses and
affairs.
The first of Machiavelli’s affairs
we know about took place in 1510. Giovanni
Girolami writes Machiavelli that “Jeanne in Lyons is devoted to you” (Atkinson
207). The next letter in the collection Machiavelli
and His Friends mentions Jeanne again and yet another courtesan named La Riccia.
La Riccia’s name appears in at least six letters. It seems that Machiavelli went to see her on
numerous occasions. De Grazia reports that as Secretary, Machiavelli was accused before
the Eight of committing an act of sodomy with La Riccia (140). Incidentally, the incident did no harm to
Machiavelli’s career and he kept visiting La Riccia-so much so that he writes that
she calls him a “House Pest” (Atkinson 278).
Again, in August 1514, Machiavelli
writes Vettori, “I have met a creature so gracious, so refined, so noble-both in
nature and in circumstance-that never could either my praise or my love for her be as much
as she deserves.” (Atkinson 292-3). At
the present time, Machiavelli is living in Florence with his family. This unnamed mistress
“may have been a friend’s sister whose husband had deserted her to live in
Rome.” (De Grazia 129).
Finally, the last and by far the most significant of Machiavelli’s
extramarital loves was the actress Barbera Raffacani Salutati. It was for Barbera that Machiavelli penned both Clizia and Mandragola. While
there are no letters to or from Barbera in his personal letters, much information about
Barbera can be gathered from letters between Machiavelli and his friends – most
notably Vettori and Guicciardini.
Machiavelli has an overwhelmingly
obvious desire for Barbera. For example, he writes Guicciardini that “Barbera is
there in Rome; if you can do her any service, I commend her to you, for she gives me far
more concern than does the emperor” (Atkinson ).
This is an important statement because politics seemed really to be
Machiavelli’s passion. Shortly after
being expelled from Florence, Machiavelli laments “… I have to talk about
politics. I need to either take a vow of
silence or to discuss this” (Atkinson 225).
Barbera’s feelings for Machiavelli
are also evident in letters to Machiavelli from his friends. Guicciardini writes
Machiavelli in 1525 that Barbera “would season an entire city for you.”(Atkinson
361). In a particularly
fascinating letter, Jacopo di Filippo Falconetti writes Machiavelli, “she did some occasional discourtesies to see
if you love her.” It seems as if Barbera
was testing Machiavelli’s devotion to her by trying to make him jealous. Given that Machiavelli wrote plays for her,
visited when he could and sent friends to check on her, it can be assumed that Machiavelli
was indeed devoted (Atkinson 361).
Having briefly described some of Machiavelli’s steamier relationships, a good
question to explore is, was this lust or love? After
all, casual sex was not unusual in Renaissance Florence (De Grazia 127). Francesco Vettori, a married man, often preached
of the necessity of lust to Machiavelli. In 1515, explaining his boredom, he writes,
“..of necessity one must endeavor to think of pleasant things, but I know of nothing
that give me more delight to think about and to do than fucking.” (Atkinson 311). Did
Machiavelli also view sex as merely a non-emotional extracurricular sport?
There are several indications that
Machiavelli also liked to sleep around for pleasure.
In a most famous letter describing his isolation outside Florence, Machiavelli
writes “...I have neither slept nor fooled around” (Atkinson 265). This suggests
that “fooling around” was a practice he was used to doing. Also, it is worth noting a 1509 letter that
Machiavelli wrote to Guicciardini describing an incident he had with an old woman. Suffering from “conjugal famine”
Machiavelli is tricked into having sex with a disgusting looking hag. Machiavelli takes great care in describing the
woman’s vulgar appearance and concludes,“I’ll be damned if I think I shall
get horny again” (Atkinson 190-1). While
the truthfulness of this letter has been questioned, it really doesn’t matter. The
point is, Machiavelli probably did have casual sex without love. Nevertheless, as will
next be discussed, Machiavelli most certainly did love some women. The biggest indicators of this love are
Machiavelli’s letters on love to Vettori.
Machiavelli and Vettori had a unique
relationship. What started a political union spread to friendship, and arguably love itself. In addition to carrying on a political dialogue,
Vettori fairly consistently wrote Machiavelli asking for advice about a certain woman he
had fallen in love with. Machiavelli, being
the good friend that he was, advised this married man to follow his own example and let go
of his heart and follow love. In February
1514 Machiavelli writes:
And since my own precedent causes you
dismay, remembering what Love’s arrows have done to me, I am obliged to tell you how
I have handled myself with him. As a matter
of fact, I have let him do as he please and I have followed him through hill and dale,
woods and plains; I have discovered that he has granted me more charms than if I had
tormented him. So the, take off the
saddlepacks, remove the bridle, close your eyes, and say “Go ahead, Love, be my
guide, my leader; if things turn out well, may the praise be yours, if they turn out
badly, may the blame be yours-I am your slave”. (Atkinson 277-8)
As
suggested by this quote, Machiavelli sought after love with the reckless abandonment of
Nicamaco in Clizia and Callimaco in Mandragola.
Machiavelli’s passionate writing
about love sharply contrasts his persuasive letters about politics. In a political context, Machiavelli uses fact,
logic, and history to support his opinion. When
writing about love, Machiavelli refers to authors like Ovid and uses a more abstract tone. Examine this 1514 letter written to Vettori:
I ought to tell you, as you did me, how this love began, how Love ensnared me with his nets, where he spread them, and what they were like; you would realize that, spread among the flowers, these were nets of gold woven by Venus, so soft and gentle that even though an insensitive heart could have severed them, nevertheless I declined to do so. (Atkinson 293).
In their respective books, both John
Najemy and Sebastian De Grazia attempt to make some link between Machiavelli’s love
of politics and love of women. This is an
important link because, as suggested earlier, politics was supposedly Machiavelli’s
life. De Grazia contends Machiavelli thought
“Love of woman seems to be a force withdrawing men from politics; if interfered with,
it becomes a danger to civil life” (132). De
Grazia comes to this conclusion based on the chapter in the Discourses called How
a State is Ruined Because of Women. Interestingly enough, if this is true, Machiavelli
didn’t follow his own advice. He
obviously showed no restraint in his affairs and gave love free reign. Machiavelli’s
country love in particular muted his love for politics.
Of this woman Machiavelli wrote, “No longer to I delight in reading about the
deeds of the ancients or in discussing those of the moderns; everything has been
transformed into tender thoughts, for which I thank Venus and all of Cyprus”
(Atkinson 293). In this quote, love appears to be such a powerful influence that it has
overtaken the importance of politics in Machiavelli’s life.
Najemy writes that Machiavelli equates politics and love by strategizing about them both in the same way. Of the quote used earlier giving Machiavelli’s advice to Vettori, Najemy writes it “assumes the necessity of strategy and negotiation in confronting the power of desire.” (298). Najemy explains that the desire of a Prince to maintain control of his land parallels the struggle men have against love. Najemy writes on man and love that “only by relinquishing all attempts at control could he establish limits on Love’s ability to harm him.” ; but he continues that “Similarly, if the desire and the will to control (love) are often self-defeating (either because the object of desire will not let itself be possessed, or because, if possessed, it reduces the possessor to submission), conversely submission might actually be the source of power.” (169). Substituting the word Fortune for love in this sentence reveals a sentence similar to one found in chapter XXV, On Fortune’s Role in Human Affairs and How She can be Dealt With, in The Prince (269). He concludes, “that since Fortune changes and men remain set in their ways, men will succeed when the two are in harmony and fail when they are not in accord.” (162). Again though, Machiavelli did not follow his own advice. He was defeated by love. Accentuating this contradiction is Machiavelli’s closing words in the chapter.
I am certainly convinced of this: that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, in order to keep her down, to beat her and to struggle with her. (Bondanella 162)
Apparently love was too strong for Machiavelli because he let love overtake him. If Machiavelli can’t heed his own advice, then is it possible that really love was more important to him than even politics?
There is no denying that love was a
powerful force for Machiavelli. He
continually surrendered himself to his passions for women throughout his life. But how is
his love for his mistresses different than his love for Marietta? Machiavelli
used ripe and luxurious language to explain his affairs to his friends where as he rarely
made mention of his wife. Furthermore,
Machiavelli’s correspondence expressed a certain kind of hopeless and inability to
resist love. In the case of his mistresses, if love was a power relationship, love had the
power-perhaps a greater power than politics. Contrastingly,
in Machiavelli’s views on marriage, the husband had the power. Machiavelli
obviously loved his mistresses in a different way than Marietta. To Marietta, Machiavelli, the husband, was acting
out a social norm. In the case of his
mistresses, Machiavelli was a slave to love and unable to take the advice he gives to
Princes.
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