59 Facts About Machiavelli

Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel, was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance.

Machiavelli is best known for his political treatise The Prince, written in about 1513 but not published until 1532.

Machiavelli has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.

Machiavelli worked as secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power.

Machiavelli's name came to evoke unscrupulous acts of the sort he advised most famously in his work, The Prince.

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Machiavelli claimed that his experience and reading of history showed him that politics have always been played with deception, treachery, and crime.

Machiavelli notably said that a ruler who is establishing a kingdom or a republic, and is criticized for his deeds, including violence, should be excused when the intention and the result is beneficial to him.

Machiavelli's Prince has had controversy surrounding it since it was released.

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolo Machiavelli and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli.

The Machiavelli family is believed to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months and who formed the government, or Signoria; he was never, though, a full citizen of Florence because of the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time even under the republican regime.

Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era in which popes waged acquisitive wars against Italian city-states, and people and cities often fell from power as France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire battled for regional influence and control.

Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin, by his teacher, Paolo da Ronciglione.

Shortly after the execution of Savonarola, Machiavelli was appointed to an office of the second chancery, a medieval writing office that put Machiavelli in charge of the production of official Florentine government documents.

At the start of the 16th century, Machiavelli conceived of a militia for Florence, and he then began recruiting and creating it.

Machiavelli distrusted mercenaries, and instead staffed his army with citizens, a policy that was to be repeatedly successful.

The Florentine city-state and the republic were dissolved, and Machiavelli was deprived of office and banished from the city for a year.

Machiavelli then retired to his farm estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, near San Casciano in Val di Pesa, where he devoted himself to studying and writing his political treatises.

Machiavelli visited places in France, Germany, and Italy where he had represented the Florentine republic.

Machiavelli was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence.

Machiavelli suggests that the social benefits of stability and security can be achieved in the face of moral corruption.

Machiavelli believed that public and private morality had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well.

Machiavelli believed that, for a ruler, it was better to be widely feared than to be greatly loved; a loved ruler retains authority by obligation, while a feared leader rules by fear of punishment.

In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model by which a prince should orient himself.

However, Mansfield states that this is the result of Machiavelli's seeing grave and serious things as humorous because they are "manipulable by men", and sees them as grave because they "answer human necessities".

For example, Machiavelli has noted that to save a republic from corruption, it is necessary to return it to a "kingly state" using violent means.

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Commentators disagree about how much the two works agree with each other, as Machiavelli frequently refers to leaders of republics as "princes".

Machiavelli had a wide range of influences is in itself not controversial.

One of the major innovations Gilbert noted was that Machiavelli focused upon the "deliberate purpose of dealing with a new ruler who will need to establish himself in defiance of custom".

In Machiavelli we find comedies, parodies, and satires but nothing reminding of tragedy.

Machiavelli is sometimes seen as the prototype of a modern empirical scientist, building generalizations from experience and historical facts, and emphasizing the uselessness of theorizing with the imagination.

Machiavelli undertook to describe simply what rulers actually did and thus anticipated what was later called the scientific spirit in which questions of good and bad are ignored, and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens.

Machiavelli felt that his early schooling along the lines of a traditional classical education was essentially useless for the purpose of understanding politics.

Machiavelli denies the classical opinion that living virtuously always leads to happiness.

That Machiavelli strove for realism is not doubted, but for four centuries scholars have debated how best to describe his morality.

Leo Strauss declared himself inclined toward the traditional view that Machiavelli was self-consciously a "teacher of evil, " since he counsels the princes to avoid the values of justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and love of their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear, and deception.

German philosopher Ernst Cassirer held that Machiavelli simply adopts the stance of a political scientist—a Galileo of politics—in distinguishing between the "facts" of political life and the "values" of moral judgment.

Machiavelli is generally seen as being critical of Christianity as it existed in his time, specifically its effect upon politics, and everyday life.

Famously, Machiavelli argued that virtue and prudence can help a man control more of his future, in the place of allowing fortune to do so.

Machiavelli was apparently a materialist who objected to explanations involving formal and final causation, or teleology.

Strauss concludes his 1958 book Thoughts on Machiavelli by proposing that this promotion of progress leads directly to the advent of new technologies being invented in both good and bad governments.

Mansfield however argues that Machiavelli's own aims have not been shared by those he influenced.

Machiavelli's ideas had a profound impact on political leaders throughout the modern west, helped by the new technology of the printing press.

Machiavelli accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were the "Koran of the courtiers", that "he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel's writings at the fingers ends".

Importance of Machiavelli's influence is notable in many important figures in this endeavor, for example Bodin, Francis Bacon, Algernon Sidney, Harrington, John Milton, Spinoza, Rousseau, Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Smith.

Scholars have argued that Machiavelli was a major indirect and direct influence upon the political thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States due to his overwhelming favoritism of republicanism and the republican type of government.

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Machiavelli accepted Machiavelli's belief that all societies were subject to cyclical periods of growth and decay.

Machiavelli is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death.

Machiavelli's works are sometimes even said to have contributed to the modern negative connotations of the words politics and politician, and it is sometimes thought that it is because of him that Old Nick became an English term for the Devil.

Niccolo Machiavelli plays a vital role in the young adult book series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott.

Machiavelli is immortal, and is working in national security for the French government.

Machiavelli is one of the main characters in The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, mostly referred to as "Niccolo 'il Macchia", and the central protagonist in the 2012 novel The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis.

Machiavelli has been featured as a supporting character in The Tudors, Borgia and The Borgias, and the 1981 BBC mini series The Borgias.

Machiavelli appears in the popular historical video games Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, in which he is portrayed as a member of the secret society of Assassins.

Highly fictionalised version of Machiavelli appears in the BBC children's TV series Leonardo, in which he is "Mac", a black streetwise hustler who is best friends with fellow teenagers Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, and Lorenzo di Medici.

Machiavelli is played by Damian Lewis in the 2013 BBC radio play The Prince written by Jonathan Myerson.

Machiavelli then tells him how Machiavelli's philosophy, including his famous advice about how it is preferable for a leader to be feared rather than loved if he cannot be both, have made him a successful mob boss.

Machiavelli appears as a young Florentine spy in the third season of Medici, where he is portrayed by Vincenzo Crea.

Machiavelli is addressed as "Nico" in all appearances except the season finale, where he reveals his full name.

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli translated classical works, and was a playwright, a poet, and a novelist .