8
Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, Book VIII, Chapter 29, made famous the idea that the Commune of Genoa and the Casa di San Giorgio were conflicting institutions. Antiquarians and polemicists discussed the passage in Genoa, and pamphleteers translated it into English in seventeenth-century England. The passage thus experienced a widespread circulation, almost independent of the fortunes of the Florentine Histories as a whole. Machiavelli’s perspective on Genoa was unique compared to that of other observers of his time, particularly those of the authors of the two memorials we saw in the previous chapter. Aside from the fact that he is a more famous figure than those authors, his commentary differs from theirs because he lived in Florence rather than in Genoa, and he looked at San Giorgio’s history some decades after they did. Some of the concepts Machiavelli drew on in his text echoed these two earlier memorials. As no sources documenting any link survive, it is difficult to say how Machiavelli developed his ideas on San Giorgio. It is possible that he simply shared some of the views of the members of the Officium Monetae.
As the following pages illustrate, an idea of San Giorgio’s power emerged from documents written by Florentine ambassadors during the war for Lunigiana’s territories in the 1480s. It is possible that Machiavelli developed some of his ideas about Genoa’s political situation from these papers and that he formulated his ideas from on-site learning in Genoa.
8.1. Machiavelli Encountering Genoese Merchants
Scarcely any studies have considered Machiavelli’s journeys to Genoa and his contacts with the Genoese; however, the documentation of that period illuminates a series of personal interactions that raise many questions. Whom did he know among the Genoese?
Two Genoese trips taken by Machiavelli have been documented, the first in June 1511 and the second in April 1518. On the first, Machiavelli went to Genoa from Monaco (on the Riviera), while for the second he traveled to the city owing to a specific assignment he had received in Florence. This second trip to Genoa is his shortest commission. A group of Florentine merchants asked Machiavelli to recover their credits from a Genoese merchant, Davide Lomellini. Probably because the trip was not undertaken for important political reasons, it has not attracted the attention of scholars.1 While in 1513 Machiavelli declared that he does “not know how to reason either about the guild of silk or about the guild of wool, either about profits or about losses,” in 1518 he was commissioned to meet with merchants and traders to deal with silk, wool, and financial losses—these being the businesses and the misfortunes of Davide Lomellini, a Genoese trader in debt to Florentine merchants.2 In the following years, Machiavelli also met with traders in Lucca (1520) and Venice (1525).
It is likely that Machiavelli gleaned information about San Giorgio, and consequently developed his analysis of it, from one of his two trips to Genoa, both of which occurred prior to the writing of Florentine Histories. In 1518, Florentine merchants Mariotto de’ Bardi, Iacopo Altoviti, Carlo di Nicolò Strozzi, Antonio Martelli, and Niccolò Salvetti accused Davide Lomellini of having defrauded them and asked Machiavelli to retrieve their credits in Genoa. Machiavelli stated that he would go there to prove that Davide Lomellini had stolen the Florentines’ money and that was the reason Machiavelli wanted “to speak with the doge.”3
Machiavelli met Davide Lomellini in the Ligurian city in 1518, but it was not the first time that he had dealt with him. Davide Lomellini had many connections with various Florentine merchants and had traveled often to Florence, where his name was well known. His presence in Florence was documented at least twice, in 1496 and in 1500.4 In his history of Florence, Iacopo Nardi quoted Davide Lomellini’s sagacious remark on Leo X’s pontificate. Lomellini said that the Florentines were happy about the 1513 papal election of their fellow citizen, Leo X, but they ought to learn from the Genoese experience, as, according to Lomellini, the Genoese had long known that a pope could damage his native city rather than help it.5 Lomellini was probably referring to one of the fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Genoese popes (Nicholas V, Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, and Julius II). Machiavelli himself knew Davide Lomellini’s name, because in February 1499, when the former had been secretary of the Office of the Dieci di Libertà for a year, he wrote an order to the Florentine soldiers at Vico Pisano who had seized a ship that was transporting Lomellini’s goods. Machiavelli wrote that Davide Lomellini’s property should be immediately returned to him, since he had been guaranteed safe conduct by the Florentines.6 The soldiers had taken the goods because at that time Florence was at war with Pisa; Lomellini was trading with Pisan merchants, with whom he had strong ties. Two years earlier, in 1497, he acted as godfather to the son of a Pisan merchant family, the Roncioni.7 The Commune of Genoa helped Pisa in its war against Florence, unlike Lucca or Siena, which it had helped only informally during their wars with Florence. The Commune of Genoa often used merchants such as Alessandro Negroni or Davide Grillo, who pretended to trade while really acting as political agents. Instead of dealing in trade goods, they bought men-at-arms or weapons for the Commune of Genoa.8 Davide Lomellini was in contact with some of these intermediaries from Genoa and Pisa. He also had strong ties with Florentine institutions. In 1496 he received various Florentine ambassadors in Genoa, according to a Genoese tradition called rolli that granted the honor of receiving foreign dignitaries to the most influential families.9
These activities and relationships show the depth of Davide Lomellini’s network across the peninsula. Machiavelli not only knew Davide Lomellini’s name by 1497, but also certainly met him in 1511, when he passed through Genoa on his way back from Monaco to Florence. In the very same days, Davide, writing to his friend in Pisa, Girolamo Roncioni, mentioned that he had left various letters for him with a Florentine friend who accompanied “messer Machiavelli” on his trip from Genoa to Florence.10 Seven years later, in 1518, Machiavelli again met Davide Lomellini during his commission to retrieve the credits of the Florentine merchants. During this trip, Machiavelli spent time with Lomellini and his brother-in-law Giacomo Centurione so that he could resolve the conflict. Lomellini proposed giving fabrics to his creditors instead of money and asked that they pay him for those clothes. The Florentine merchants considered this proposal a payment made of dreams (un paghamento di sogni)—that is, a bad deal, since they had asked Machiavelli to obtain reimbursement in the form of cash.11 If money could not be obtained, they asked that the governor, Ottaviano Fregoso, remove Lomellini’s passage of safe conduct, so that they could pursue him in Genoa. We do not know whether Machiavelli was successful in returning the Florentines’ credit or whether Davide Lomellini managed to pay in cloth. We do know that when Machiavelli was in Genoa, he received a letter from Florence. Its author is unknown, but it may have been written by one of the merchants he was working for. The letter contained a reference to one of his works, The Ass or The Mandragola, which the letter’s author had shown to Marcello Virgilio Adriani, a former colleague of Machiavelli in the chancery, while Machiavelli was in Genoa. The letter stated that one of Machiavelli’s contacts in Genoa was “El Casone,” a friar who, as noted in the letter, Machiavelli and the author of the letter liked. It is not known who the friar was, what his role in Genoa was, and whether he could have helped Machiavelli. The author of the letter also suggested that Machiavelli visit Simone de Amandorla.12
Simone de Amandorla was an artisan who had played a significant role during the 1507 people’s revolt against the nobles and against French dominion. He participated in an expedition in the western Riviera to Monaco, which the populares who had seized Genoa wanted to take over from the Grimaldi family. He also held office as protettore in San Giorgio, as a member of the artisans, when the leaders of the revolt controlled San Giorgio.13
Giovanni Negroni’s letter, written on June 7, 1511, documents Machiavelli’s visit to Genoa that year. It contains interesting information on Machiavelli’s milieu there, mentioning that a certain Alessandro Salvago had departed Genoa for France with the French governor and had left some letters for Machiavelli that Giovanni Negroni was going to send to him.14 The connection between Machiavelli and Salvago has never been explored.
Alessandro Salvago was a chronicler from Genoa who was part of the French court and whose activity is documented around the 1510s. His works and life have not been studied. He wrote in French and Frenchized his Genoese name to Alexandre Sauvaige. We cannot be completely sure that the person mentioned in the letter to Machiavelli was this chronicler, but since it mentioned that Alessandro Salvago was accompanying the French governor, it is likely. The French governor Francois de Rochechouart was a manuscript collector, now well known for owning an illuminated volume of the work of Livy.15 Salvago celebrated the governor in his works the Etiquette des temps (1511) and the Chroniques de Gênes (1507), written in French.16 The latter focused on Rochechouart’s military enterprises during the conquest of Genoa in 1507. In the months that followed the conquest, a number of works telling the story and depicting the battles of the French army were produced.17 These included written and illuminated manuscripts, flugschriften, medals, and so on. Within a few days of Machiavelli’s visit to Genoa, Salvago wrote L’Ethiquette des temps.
Giovanni Negroni hoped that Machiavelli would recommend him to the Florentine Republic.18 It is not known when Machiavelli met Giovanni Negroni or how long he knew him. He could have met him only a few days before June 7 (when Negroni’s letter is dated), or much earlier. Giovanni Negroni had studied law and probably lived in Lucca, which might have allowed for a meeting at a previous date. The tone of the letter written on June 7 (which began with “Messer my Nicolao, like my honorable brother”), gives the impression that they shared a deeper acquaintance than could have been built in the few days of Machiavelli’s June 1511 Genoese trip. There were many opportunities for them to have met prior to that visit. Giovanni Negroni’s family had many businesses in Pisa, and one of his cousins, Alessandro, acted as intermediary between Genoa and Pisa during the war with Pisa around 1500. The Negroni family, Alessandro in particular, had contacts with Davide Lomellini and the Roncioni family in Pisa.
Considering these elements, we can hypothesize that Machiavelli was already in contact with Davide Lomellini and his merchant networks in Lucca and Florence. It is also possible that Machiavelli knew many of the Genoese with material interests in Tuscany, including the Negroni. This experience of Genoa and its major players could have given Machiavelli sufficient knowledge to write the passage on San Giorgio in the Florentine Histories.
8.2. Florentine Histories, VIII, 29
Book VIII, Chapter 29, of the Florentine Histories is an excursus on Genoese history embedded in the story of the Florentine war against the Genoese. Beginning in 1484, the two cities fought for control of the city of Sarzana in Lunigiana.19 Machiavelli interrupts his description of the war with an analysis of Genoese history, starting from the late fourteenth century and continuing until the early sixteenth century. He also discusses Genoese history in Book V, Chapter 6, of the Florentine Histories. It is also a short excursus, detached from the rest of the narrative. In it, Machiavelli explains Genoa’s factional dynamics. He recounts that the Genoese doge was usually a member of the powerful Adorno or Fregoso families, who “fought over the principate.”20 The Adorno and the Fregoso families had continuous conflicts; the winner sent the other faction into exile, and often the excluded family sought recourse to an external power, which in turn often subdued the whole Genoese community.
Machiavelli’s excursus in Book VIII, Chapter 29, of the Florentine Histories is longer than this discussion of factions in Book V, Chapter 6. In addition to outlining the factions in Genoa, Book VIII, Chapter 29, offers a short history of the Casa di San Giorgio, which Machiavelli calls “San Giorgio.” Machiavelli starts the passage by underlining San Giorgio’s and Genoa’s importance: “But since one must mention San Giorgio and the Genoese many times, it does not seem unfitting for me to set forth the orders and modes of that city, as it is one of the principal cities of Italy.”21 The previous statement contains a reference to San Giorgio, in which it is said that the powerful Agostino Fregoso had donated the town of Sarzana—in the area of Lunigiana and part of his possessions—to San Giorgio to avoid war with Florence, which had wanted to take the town.22 News that San Giorgio had taken Sarzana circulated in 1484 in the Florentine chancery. This information came from Rome, as the new pope, Innocent VIII, served as an intermediary between the Florentines and the Genoese. Letters that arrived in Florence from Genoa showed that two powers were at play in the war of Sarzana: the Commune and the doge, and San Giorgio. The tension that existed between the two powers was evident even in Rome, where the pope wanted two ambassadors at his court, one from San Giorgio and the other representing the Commune. Even though the Florentine ambassadors made a distinction between the ambassadors of San Giorgio and the Commune, as well as between the political actions of the two institutions, Machiavelli’s clear and vivid picture of the tension between the two institutions is unprecedented.
Certain similarities exist between the ambassador’s papers and Machiavelli’s passage. These similarities are especially clear if we focus on the lines that contain the first mention of San Giorgio in the Florentine Histories and a letter written by Guidantonio Vespucci, Florentine ambassador in Rome:23
|
Florentine Histories |
ASF, Dieci di Balia, Responsive, 32, fol. 182r. Relazione di Guidantonio Vespucci |
|
[Agostino Fregoso] non gli parendo potere con le sue private forze sostenere tanta guerra, donò quella terra [Sarzana] a San Giorgio (Istorie fiorentine, VIII, 29, 3) |
Augustino, diffidandosi di potere con le sue forze difendere Serezana, la donò a sancto Giorgio. |
|
Hence, as it did not appear to Agostino Fregoso, who had seized Sarzana, that he could sustain such a war with his private forces, he gave that town to San Giorgio (trans. 351) |
Agostino, as it did not appear to him that he could with his private forces sustain Sarzana, donated it to San Giorgio. |
Machiavelli had entered the Florentine chancellery just over ten years after the beginning of the war at Sarzana, and he may have seen the Florentine ambassador’s papers from previous years. In a recent series of works, Francesca Klein has indicated the possible connection between Machiavelli’s historical work and the Florentine ambassador’s papers written during the Sarzana war. According to Klein, Agostino Vespucci, a secretary at the Florentine chancery, could have provided Machiavelli with sources for the writing of the Florentine Histories. Agostino had changed his family name from Nettucci to Vespucci and was close to the ambassador, Guidantonio Vespucci, who played a significant role during the diplomatic negotiations related to the Sarzana war.24 Two Florentine chancellery registers (dating from the period 1483–86) containing the ambassadors’ papers on the Sarzana war also contain marginal notes, which Klein has attributed to Agostino Vespucci.25 They appear to be comments written by someone interested in preparing a review of the papers. It is very likely that Machiavelli saw at least one of these registers, since one contains a letter addressed to him: because neither the date (1508) nor the topic of the letter have anything to do with the date or subjects of the register, we can hypothesize that that letter ended up in the volume when Machiavelli consulted it.26 This series of connections may indicate that Machiavelli was interested in the Sarzana war.27
Regardless of whether Machiavelli saw the ambassadors’ records, the Sarzana war is relevant to his analysis of San Giorgio’s power, as an analysis of the sequence of passages on Genoa and San Giorgio between chapters 28 and 29 in Book VIII shows. The excursus on Genoa in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories (Chapter 29) proceeds from the earlier lines dealing with the war between the Florentines and the Genoese (Chapter 28). As noted, this war arose as a contest over one of the territorial acquisitions of San Giorgio: Sarzana. This subject, San Giorgio’s territorial power, is central in Machiavelli’s lines.
The commentary in Book VIII, Chapter 29, proposes to establish the “orders and the ways” of Genoa and starts with an analysis of San Giorgio’s foundation.
Since the Genoese had made peace with the Venetians, after the very important war that had taken place between them many years ago, their republic had been unable to repay those citizens who had loaned a great sum of money, and it had granted them the income from the customs and declared that each should share according to his credit in the receipts of the principal sum until they had been entirely satisfied by the Commune; and so that the creditors could meet together, the palace that is above the customhouse was assigned to them.28
According to Machiavelli, San Giorgio was founded in 1381—that is, at the end of the Chioggia war between Genoa and Venice. The Chioggia war had led to an increase in the public debt and the necessity to find a warranty for the loans granted by various Genoese citizens. Even though the peace agreements went on for years, we know that Marshal Boucicaut initiated the process that led to the foundation of San Giorgio during the time that the French controlled Genoa (1396–1409). Thus, San Giorgio’s founding must not have occurred in 1381, but in the following years. In what follows, Machiavelli describes one of the most relevant characteristics of San Giorgio: the aggregation of its creditors—that is, the formation of a consortium of persons who, because of their credits, joined together and formed an institutional body. Machiavelli describes San Giorgio’s formation through two main processes: the formation of a government and the division of credit into various shares (loca).
These creditors thus ordered among themselves a mode of government, making a council of a hundred of themselves to deliberate public affairs and a magistracy of eight citizens as head of all to execute them; they divided their credits into parts, which they called “places” (loca); and they entitled their whole body after San Giorgio.29
The last phrase of the paragraph, “they entitled their whole body after San Giorgio,” refers to the whole system of credit, the loca of San Giorgio. In the following lines, Machiavelli describes the continuous indebtedness of the Commune, which gave San Giorgio territories as security for loans.
When their government was thus apportioned, new needs occurred to the Commune of the city; so it had recourse for new assistance to San Giorgio, which, being rich and well administered, could be of service to the Commune. And in the bargain, as the Commune had first granted the customs receipts to San Giorgio, it began as a pledge of the money it had had, to grant San Giorgio some of its towns. And the thing had gone so far, arising from the needs of the Commune and the services of San Giorgio, that the Commune had put under the administration of San Giorgio the greater part of the towns and city subject to the empire of Genoa, which San Giorgio governs and defends and each year by public suffrage sends them its rectors without the Commune’s being involved in it in any degree.30
In the prior passage, Machiavelli combined historical episodes that took place at various times, compressing the chronology of many events and years into a single moment. His excursus began around 1486—that is, from the Sarzana war—but his reference to “the greater part of the towns and cities” (maggior parte delle terre e città) belonging to San Giorgio probably referred to the 1510s or 1520s, the period in which he was writing. During the second half of the fifteenth century, San Giorgio had acquired the Lunigiana, Corsica, Caffa on the Black Sea, and Famagusta in Cyprus. Between 1512 and 1515, under the government of Ottaviano Fregoso, San Giorgio acquired other towns and lands in Liguria, including Pieve di Teco and the Arroscia Valley, Ventimiglia and Levanto. One could say that San Giorgio had gained the majority of its territories by the beginning of the sixteenth century, rather than in the middle of the previous century. That does not necessarily mean that Machiavelli was referring in this section to his contemporary situation. As we will see, the passage contained other information that referred to the fifteenth century. A flagrant example of a typical Machiavellian practice—that of mixing together various moments into the same lines—occurs in this excursus on San Giorgio in the Florentine Histories. According to Machiavelli, the territorial acquisition signaled the apex of a political transformation:
From this it arose that the citizens took away their love from the Commune, as something tyrannical, and placed it in San Giorgio, as a party well and equitably administered; and from this arose easy and frequent changes of state and the fact that the Genoese obey sometimes one of their own citizens and sometimes a foreigner, because not San Giorgio but the Commune changes its government.31
These lines represent one of the most complex parts of Machiavelli’s thoughts on San Giorgio, and they shaped the reception and fortunes of the institutional model over the following centuries. However, the passage is relatively unstudied, possibly because of its complexity. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that manuscripts written at the beginning of the sixteenth century, including Machiavelli’s works, had no punctuation. All punctuation was introduced by modern editions, and that punctuation shapes our contemporary interpretation.32
In some Italian editions of the Florentine Histories prior to the national Italian edition of 2011, the sentence that started with “onde ne nasce” (and from this arose) was separated from the previous one by a semicolon. It appears this way in the English edition as well.33 This punctuation interrupts the link between the two sentences. It seems, however, more reasonable to consider the two sentences as more closely connected. The colon, present in the 2011 edition, rather than the semicolon makes that connection stronger. If “onde ne” refers to the previous sentence, then the “easy and frequent changes of state” are a consequence of the shift of the citizens’ love from the Commune to San Giorgio. Otherwise, the connecting word “onde”—translated as “from this” in English—would not have a clear meaning. If we do not accept the colon and the resulting strong link between the two sentences, I see only two possibilities for their interpretation. The first is that the sentence that starts with “and from this arose” should be connected not to the previous sentence, but to the prior one or the entire previous paragraph, which states that the Commune’s indebtedness led to the rising territorial power of San Giorgio: “And the thing had gone so far … that the Commune had put under the administration of San Giorgio the greater part of the towns and cities … without the Commune’s being involved in it in any degree.” Read this way, the meaning of the lines would not seem different from the way it is interpreted when the lines are connected with a colon: San Giorgio’s power would originate from the people removing their love from the Commune and giving it to San Giorgio itself. The second possibility, contrary to the grammar, would be that “from this” (onde ne) does not have any clear meaning and should be read simply as “and.” Not only is this last hypothesis against logic, but a close analysis of all the connections of “onde ne” in the entire corpus of Machiavelli’s published works proves that it always refers to the immediately preceding sentence.34 Furthermore, as will be explained in (§ 10.2. English Bank Founders and Machiavelli), an English commentator on Machiavelli’s passage at the end of the seventeenth century felt the need to explain the nexus “onde ne,” which he translated as “whence,” clarifying that it was referring to the previous sentence. This is an example of how the nexus between the two sentences was considered important.
Assuming that the two sentences are connected, Machiavelli meant that the presence of San Giorgio in Genoa led to a fractured government, which had been constituted by the Commune of Genoa until the moment when San Giorgio acquired the territories. At the same time, the presence of the two powers in Genoa offered the citizens a way to avoid focusing on factional conflicts:
Thus, when the Fregosi and Adorni fought over the principate, since they were fighting over the state of the Commune, the greater part of the citizens drew aside and left it as prey to the winner. Nor does the company of San Giorgio do otherwise when someone has taken over the state than make him swear to observe its laws, which have not been altered up to these times, because San Giorgio has arms, money, and government, and one cannot alter the laws without danger of a certain and dangerous rebellion.35
Here Machiavelli mentions two issues: the laws of the Casa di San Giorgio and the sworn obedience to them in the fifteenth century by those who had “taken over the state.” Both the Adorno and Fregoso doges and the external dominion—such as the French in 1499—often recognized San Giorgio’s powers and rights.36 Within this positive reading of the history of San Giorgio, an institution whose very existence weakened Genoese government, Machiavelli concludes with praise for San Giorgio:
An example truly rare, never found by the philosophers in all the republics they have imagined and seen: to see within the same circle, among the same citizens, liberty and tyranny, civil life and corrupt life, justice and license, because that order alone keeps the city full of its ancient and venerable customs. And if it should happen—which in time it surely will—that San Giorgio should take over the whole city, that would be a republic more memorable than the Venetian.37
The case of Genoa was an unparalleled example that could not be found even in an imagined republic. The words “imagined republics” are also found in The Prince’s famous passage (Chapter 15, 1). Machiavelli wrote, “molti si sono immaginate repubbliche e principati che non si sono mai visti né conosciuti essere in vero,” which can be understood to mean, “many have imagined republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen” and that his goal in writing The Prince was to “dietro alla verità effettuale,” to unveil the reality.38
In the next sentence, Machiavelli used a series of opposed words (liberty and tyranny, civil life and corrupt life, justice and license). In these paired oppositions, the positive term refers to San Giorgio, while the negative one refers to the Commune, both coexisting within the same circle of walls within the city of Genoa. The praise for San Giorgio is present also in the subsequent clause, which mentions ancient and venerable customs. In Genoa, according to Machiavelli, San Giorgio acted as the order that, independently of the Commune, kept the customs.
Scholars who have analyzed this section on San Giorgio, including Felix Gilbert (1905–1991) and Carlo Dionisotti (1908–1998), have considered it in relation to the two more famous cases, those of Florence and Venice. Felix Gilbert’s analysis focuses on the Venetian perspective, which appears as a short comparison only at the end of Machiavelli’s text. According to Gilbert, Machiavelli, in mentioning the curious case of San Giorgio and comparing it with that of Venice, was aiming to make Venetian history generally incomparable, something curious and “unworthy of imitation.”39
Dionisotti engaged in a polemic discussion with Gilbert, analyzing the whole passage not from the Venetian but from the Florentine perspective. For Dionisotti, Genoa was a point of comparison for Florence, a commercial city that needed to improve its government. Furthermore, according to Dionisotti, the end of the passage, with the reference to a better republic than any imagined ones, could refer to the future Machiavelli envisaged for Florence.
Besides the polemic with Gilbert and the polarization of their debate between the Venetian and the Florentine perspectives, another point in Dionisotti’s analysis is worth mentioning. Dionisotti explained that the passage on San Giorgio is “famous, but … inevitably the scholar of Machiavelli always finds himself rereading it as if to remind himself that it exists, that it is what it is, since it appears marvelous.”40 My impression is that Dionisotti was pointing to an unsolved tension, a node, in the passage—that is, ultimately, to something that seemed paradoxical.
Thanks to the most recent studies on Machiavelli and the Florentine public debt, it is possible to better address this tension. Jérémie Barthas has studied Machiavelli’s view of the Florentine public debt in relation to the question of the militia or armi proprie (mass conscription).41 According to Barthas, Machiavelli saw the Florentine financial system (the Monte), which was based on floating indebtment—that is, the short-term credit provided to the Commune by a few investors who obtained a high return that created a private accumulation of resources and weakened the Republic—as a problem, and would have reformed the military system as a solution.
In accordance with this view, but moving from the Florentine to the Genoese context, one might wonder whether it is possible to read the entire Machiavellian excursus on San Giorgio as a criticism of the Genoese communal debt. In this reading, San Giorgio’s acquiring of territories would be evidence of a public debt that was devouring the Commune of Genoa and its territory. If we adopt this perspective, there are two issues that we must address. First, we should concede the possibility that Book VIII, Chapter 29, of the Florentine Histories is an ironic analysis of San Giorgio’s system and history. Second, we should ascertain that Machiavelli’s thoughts on the Florentine debt are similar to his view on the Genoese debt. Given Machiavelli’s dislike of Venice, we could read the sentence that envisaged Genoa becoming more memorable than Venice as the harshest possible criticism of San Giorgio.42 In Machiavelli’s analysis and his forecast that Genoa could become better than Venice, one could then recognize a paradoxical thought, one that points to a model of the most corrupt corporation.
Some of the ideas presented here proceed from the grammatical connection “onde ne” (translatable as “whence” or “from this”). It is this connection between the two sentences—one that explains the shift of the citizens’ love and one that points out the weakness of the government—that creates the possibility of a paradoxical thought for Machiavelli’s readers.
If a paradoxical perspective doesn’t explain the whole passage, how can we account for its complexity? I propose that Machiavelli aimed to show the weakness of the Genoese double power (San Giorgio and the Commune): he highlighted the importance of San Giorgio as a better-organized power than the Commune and, finally, suggested the possibility that San Giorgio could undermine the Commune’s power. Taking into account Machiavelli’s words on the Genoese and the Florentine systems of debt, it is most likely that Machiavelli did not think of the two systems in the same way. My hypothesis is that the apparent contradiction between Machiavelli’s negative view of the Florentine financial system and a positive evaluation of San Giorgio makes sense when one looks at his views on the Genoese commune.
A very consolidated tradition of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Genoa is present in Machiavelli’s passage. According to many contemporary observers, Genoa was the worst example of an ongoing and unproductive conflict between the factions, and Machiavelli seems to be echoing a similar perspective: “the citizens took away their love from the Commune, as something tyrannical”; “the Fregosi and Adorni fought over the principate, since they were fighting over the state of the Commune”; “the greater part of the citizens drew aside and left it as prey to the winner”; and finally in the three binary couples of concepts, liberty/tyranny, civil life/corrupt life, justice/license—referring to San Giorgio/the Commune. San Giorgio has also been described as the “party well and equitably administered”—that is, as a symbol of good government.
As we saw in Chapter 3, scholars have identified differences between San Giorgio and the Commune of Genoa. For example, San Giorgio did not have a single authority, while the doge administered the Commune. It is also possible that the passage referred to the offices of San Giorgio—which were better paid than those of the Commune (as we saw in § 7.4)—or to its territorial administration. As discussed earlier (Chapters 4–6), San Giorgio’s sixteenth-century territorial acquisitions included many that had belonged to the Commune of Genoa. The Commune’s lack of financial resources was not the only reason for these acquisitions. Documents from the chancellery explained the process as an effort at ending factional quarrels. This reasoning was also behind San Giorgio’s domination of territories closer to Genoa such as those in Lunigiana (Pietrasanta and Sarzana). In these dominions, San Giorgio’s opposition to the parties of the Commune (Adorno and Fregoso) lasted from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century.43 Florentine Histories, VIII, 29, thus tells the story of Genoa and the Commune’s debt in accordance with San Giorgio’s fifteenth- and sixteenth-century rise to power and prominence. This could be why Machiavelli wrote that San Giorgio was better administered than the Commune.
Assuming Barthas’s analysis of Machiavelli as a fierce but indirect opponent of the Florentine financial system, one might wonder if Machiavelli’s view of San Giorgio included a financial perspective. Machiavelli, however, focused on the political and territorial analysis of Genoa and San Giorgio and didn’t incorporate an analysis of the Genoese militia system (mass conscription), which is so crucial to better understanding his position on the Florentine public debt. To understand how much Machiavelli ignored the financial Genoese perspective, one can also consider the various tropes on San Giorgio—which, as we have seen, were highly consistent at Machiavelli’s time. Some Genoese believed that San Giorgio could assist orphans and widows; or, like Ottaviano Fregoso, that it made Genoa different from other states such as Lombardy, whose richness relied on land and not on the sea (§ 3.6. Land and Sea). There is no trace of these ideas in Machiavelli’s passage. In sum, it doesn’t seem that the same view is possible for both Florence and Genoa, at least not in terms of the public debt or more specifically from the perspective of financial and political consequences of the military system.
Machiavelli’s final statement in Florentine Histories, VIII, 29—that San Giorgio could take over the whole city of Genoa—was not completely novel at the time. The idea resembles Spinetta Fregoso’s fifteenth-century political projects, described earlier, as well as the phrase—“to set up a state of San Zorzo”—that appeared in the secret council of Francesco Sforza. The second written memorial analyzed previously, ascribed to the Officium Monetae of Genoa, presents a similar concept, as it stated that San Giorgio wanted “to take over the whole government of Genoa.” After San Giorgio gained control of the Republic’s best territories—Caffa, Famagosta, Pietrasanta, and Corsica—this memorial stated, “it tr[ied] to take control over all the rest.” There is, however, a primary difference between this memorial and Florentine Histories, VIII, 29. The memorial explains the Genoese government’s weakness as a consequence of the power division (San Giorgio as opposed to the Commune), thus considering San Giorgio a corrupting power. Florentine Histories, VIII, 29, reflects on San Giorgio as a positive force considering the inner factional divisions of that city. In that specific context, Machiavelli stated that at least San Giorgio was not corrupt.
8.3. Late Genoese Debate
Machiavelli’s excursus on San Giorgio was used and discussed before the 1532 publication of Florentine Histories. As Rodolfo Savelli has noted, in 1531 the Florentine Donato Giannotti, in the Repubblica Fiorentina, and Agostino Giustiniani, the bishop of Nebbio in Corsica, in the lesser-known Dialogo nominato Corsica, had already replicated and discussed some of Machiavelli’s ideas. Giannotti was aware of Machiavelli’s ideas, having read Machiavelli’s work before its publication, when “Machiavelli was writing it.”44 When Giustiniani read it is unknown. The references to Machiavelli’s excursus on San Giorgio within Giannotti’s and Giustiniani’s texts are similar: both contain praise for the Genoese Andrea Doria and refer to the Genoese political reform of 1528. This political reform undermined the power of two main factional families, the Adorno and Fregoso, transforming the old institutions of alberghi—a cluster of families which had jurisdictional powers and rights in specific parts of the city—into political and electoral groups.45
Since Giannotti and Giustiniani both referred to Andrea Doria’s reform, it is possible that Machiavelli’s passage circulated among them in early manuscript form at the same time. Giannotti was very familiar with Machiavelli’s work, and it is likely that he recommended Florentine Histories, VIII, 29, to Giustiniani. Other possible hypotheses are that Giustiniani showed the text to Giannotti, or that they came into contact with it independently. Another possibility still is that another—still unknown—text mediated between the two; or, lastly, that not only the works of Giannotti and Giustiniani but also that of Machiavelli were based on a previous and still unknown text. Regardless, Giustiniani’s text does not differ from Machiavelli’s excursus, except that Giustiniani thoroughly evaluates the situation of the Genoese Republic in 1528. He was likely more aware of the political dynamics in Genoa. Not only was Giustiniani among the most educated scholars in the city, but as bishop of Nebbio in Corsica, he knew San Giorgio’s territorial power and policy. That is why he considered Machiavelli’s perspective on San Giorgio valid only until 1528. According to him, only prior to that date was it possible to maintain that “tyrants”—that is, the Adorno and Fregoso families—had ruled the Genoese Commune. Once the 1528 reform was in place, it was San Giorgio that needed political reform.46 In addition, Rodolfo Savelli has shown how Giustiniani criticized San Giorgio only for its political and territorial action in Corsica, stating that the problem was San Giorgio’s governors. Thus, Giustiniani had a specific criticism and proposed a local reform of San Giorgio. However, we can discern a more radical criticism of San Giorgio if we look at Giustiniani’s passage on the relations between the Commune and San Giorgio. There he wrote:
Almost two communities or signories have been created in our city, and one is administered and governed by the Palace [the Commune] and the other by the Office [San Giorgio]. That community that belongs to the whole city, or in other words, the community in which the entire Genoese populus has a stake, as we said, is that which governs the Palace or rather the signory. The other community belongs only to those persons who own shares in it, and it governs the Magnifico Officio [San Giorgio].47
The passage shows, on the one hand, the Commune’s (the signory’s) new inclusive privileges after 1528 and, on the other hand, San Giorgio’s exclusive structure. It was governed only by those who owned shares of the debt (the so-called locatari). Giustiniani was thus differentiating between a government that included—at least theoretically—all male citizens, and one that was open only to the few. Even though Giustiniani was simply updating Machiavelli’s excursus on San Giorgio following the Commune’s 1528 reform against the influential power of the Adorno and the Fregoso, he ended up radically criticizing San Giorgio. The reader of his passage could not miss that he was declaring San Giorgio to be an oligarchic institution, open only to those who owned shares. The Genoese Republic coincides in this text with something like the modern concept of the “public,” while San Giorgio coincides with that of the “private.”
Giannotti’s text is much shorter than Giustiniani’s text and does not consider Genoese political dynamics, except for a reference to Andrea Doria’s political action. Writing in his Della Repubblica Fiorentina about the humors (political sentiments) within the city and the ways the parties could be satisfied, Giannotti states:
It is not possible to satisfy the factional parties’ desire; otherwise, one would have to introduce a kingdom within a city, a state of the few, and a government of many. This [scheme] is not imaginable or doable in any place except in Genoa, where, before Andrea Doria, who, to his great glory, had given liberty to Genoa, it was possible to see a tyranny and a republic.48
Here Giannotti is using the tripartite model of power derived from Aristotle. The “government of many” is probably a reference to the Republic, while with the phrase “a state of the few” he is addressing the factional system of the Adorno and Fregoso families. However, it is unclear why he thought that in Genoa there was a “kingdom,” and it is also unclear to what this term refers. Furthermore, it is unclear why in the following sentence he mentions only two forms of government—a republic and a tyranny—although this terminology echoes Machiavelli’s sequence of opposed words, “la libertà e la tirannide, la vita civile e la corrotta, la giustizia e la licenzia.” Noting only two types of government here diverges from the first part of the paragraph.
To resolve this divergence, we might read Giannotti’s passage in closer connection to the Florentine Histories, VIII, 29, and alongside Giustiniani’s passage, particularly where these texts point to San Giorgio as a closed community compared to the Commune of Genoa. If we adopt this perspective, then the kingdom Giannotti mentioned could be San Giorgio, and within this scheme it facilitates the existence of the Republic and the government of the few (tyranny).
Later, in his Annali, Giustiniani referred again to Machiavelli’s passage on San Giorgio, and his view remained the same as that he expressed in the Dialogo nominato Corsica.
During the late sixteenth and the first decades of the following century, references to Machiavelli’s text were widespread, with authors such as Paolo Interiano, Uberto Foglietta, Goffredo Lomellini, Pietro Bizzarri, Andrea Spinola, and Raffaele Della Torre commenting on it with an almost dogged persistence. One of the most interesting references to Machiavelli’s writings on San Giorgio is an anonymous text from the end of the sixteenth century, which contains rich information on the history of Genoa.
Rodolfo Savelli has analyzed in depth the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debate on the division, or lack thereof, of governmental power in Genoa and has showed the influences of a Tacitean cultural milieu on that debate.49 The majority of the texts from the period rejected the idea that San Giorgio was an autonomous power like the Commune. A harsh criticism of Machiavelli’s view is found in a dialogue called Sogno sopra la Republica di Genova veduto nella morte di Agostino Pinello ridotto in dialogo, written in early 1567.50
One of the most detailed texts on San Giorgio’s power, an anonymous 1597 report, presents a radical criticism of the rich along with a thorough analysis of Machiavelli’s passage on San Giorgio in the Florentine Histories. The report, a detailed analysis of Genoa’s political and economic institutions, has been attributed to both Doge Matteo Senarega and a Tuscan agent, Giacomo Mancini.51 Around a fifth of the report’s content is dedicated to San Giorgio. It describes the total value and the total number of San Giorgio’s loca, its acquired territories, and the system of the gabelle.52 It mentions Machiavelli and the Florentine Histories, VIII, 29, directly (c. 1v): “Some politicians have wanted, with this mention of San Giorgio, to show to the entire world the strange miracles of two republics within the same circle of walls.”53 The report refutes Machiavelli over three chapters. The first two, Delle tasse (IL) and Quello che sia da notare intorno alle tasse (L), criticize the rich merchants and the institution they ruled: San Giorgio. To the author, the merchants’ main goal was to loan money to the Republic to weaken the res publica. He maintains that while some citizens had donated money to funds to reduce the amount of the Commune’s debt, step by step San Giorgio’s governors closed these funds to keep the entire Commune’s debt high. According to this report, two facts showed that the system was problematic: San Giorgio’s territorial acquisition and its inefficient system of donations. The first was a way to give control of the territories not only to local rich people, but also to foreigners, who could also hold San Giorgio’s loca. The report then analyzed donations to San Giorgio. There were many kinds of moltiplichi that had originally aimed to eradicate the Commune’s debts. However, even though sometimes an individual donated money to San Giorgio with the goal of eradicating the debt (the compere), the report claimed that San Giorgio’s leaders had neglected this purpose and—despite the will of the donors—the money had been used for current expenses.54
The report criticizes first the investors and second San Giorgio, which in its view should have been eliminated.55 Only this paragraph is critical, however, and the author dedicates an entire additional chapter to San Giorgio (LXVII), entitled “That San Giorgio is not a Second Republic,” which is intended to undermine Machiavelli’s argument.56 The report’s anonymous author offers a good deal of evidence to support his argument. San Giorgio and the Republic had a “consonance and proportion” of magistrates. The author refers here to the electoral system, which stated that a person who became a protettore of San Giorgio could not hold other offices in the Commune except those of the dogeship, the anziani, and the procuratori. The report continues by mentioning that the Republic had created San Giorgio and always had the greater power since the latter always required the anziani’s confirmation. Moreover, San Giorgio’s laws were titled “the laws of the Compere of San Giorgio of the most excellent Republic of Genoa” and that meant that San Giorgio was a part of the Republic. It continues by adding that the authority of San Giorgio was forced to respect the contracts of the Republic, most likely contracts such as those related to the gabelle and the acquisition of territory. The report adds that the respect for the contracts came from the fact that the men of the Republic were the same as those “interested in the Compere of San Giorgio.” If the contracts had been different—for example, if they had been signed only by one person, perhaps a poor prince—the entire financial capital of San Giorgio would have been at risk, since the individual who had signed, this hypothetical poor prince, would have found it difficult not to take advantage of his position and take the capital for himself. Citizens who held San Giorgio’s offices and those of the Republic had an interest in keeping both institutions healthy. The report’s final piece of evidence that San Giorgio was simply a part of a wider institution was that it did not possess a criminal magistrate, except for its creditors.57
In the following decades in Genoa, other authors used Machiavelli’s passage to analyze San Giorgio’s power. The majority criticized the idea that San Giorgio could be a competitor of the Republic. In 1637, Raffaele Della Torre used Machiavelli’s idea in a report written in defense of San Giorgio. San Giorgio’s protettori had condemned someone and wanted to force him to apply to an external magistrate, the sindicatori. Della Torre wrote that the Republic and San Giorgio were “two republics” with different magistrates, laws, and ministers. San Giorgio’s authority could be compared to an ecclesiastical jurisdiction. However, in a text written a little later for the protettori of San Giorgio, Delle materie del Finale, Della Torre changed his argument: San Giorgio and the Republic were two different parts, but they were in balance because they had different interests. The relationship between the two institutions was that of a debtor and a creditor, and this was why the collaboration worked. San Giorgio was a “machine” that maintained the public, that is the Republic.58 This argument is similar to that in the anonymous report of 1597. Della Torre mentions that Machiavelli’s mistake was that he “confused economics with politics,” and it was the effort to avoid such confusion that lead the old protettori of San Giorgio to return the territories to the Republic in 1562, because the government of economics should not be confused with the government of politics.59 It seems that both these texts, particularly the report of 1597, were motivated by the impulse to show that there were not two sovereign powers in Genoa, but only one. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Genoa was defining its sovereign power in relation to the other political powers of the Italian peninsula. This is evident when we look at the ritual practices that were then established in Genoa, including the coronation of the Virgin Mary, who was considered in that period to be Genoa’s queen. This practice was intended to elevate the rank of the Republic of Genoa to the same level as that of the other states in the Italian peninsula.60
8.4. Anachronistic References to Machiavelli
The relationship between San Giorgio and the Commune changed over time. Some texts that appeared after 1562 and in the following decades—when San Giorgio had returned its territories to the Republic—criticized Machiavelli’s passage and misunderstood its historical context. This misunderstanding is particularly evident in Raffaele Della Torre’s Delle materie del Finale, which criticized Machiavelli’s ideas of the two powers through his argument that San Giorgio had given back its territories to the Republic and thus Genoese power was unified.61 Della Torre had a tendency, typical of other authors of his time, to elide the chronology by failing to distinguish between the time periods under consideration and to use authors unmoored from their historical contexts. As noted previously, Machiavelli’s perspective does not go beyond the initial years of the sixteenth century—or at the latest to the first few years of that century. His ideas were nourished by a history that was quite different from that which the Genoese polemicists saw in the following century. They wrote during a period when San Giorgio taking possession of the Commune (at that time the Republic) of Genoa was no longer a threat. Some present-day scholars have embraced a similar kind of chronological shift. Carlo Bitossi studied San Giorgio’s offices and those of the Republic during the late sixteenth century, with a prosopographical analysis of the offices. He looked at Machiavelli’s text from a new and simplified perspective, trying to verify its historical reality by asking whether San Giorgio and the Commune (the Republic) represented two different and opposed powers. His conclusion was that the people who populated San Giorgio’s offices and those of the Commune were the same and thus that two separate powers could not have existed.62 Bitossi studied the late sixteenth century and did not focus on the previous decades and centuries. Using Bitossi’s approach, one could ask whether two separate powers existed in Genoa in the period when Machiavelli wrote the Florentine Histories, especially since the two memorials analyzed earlier (Chapter 7) and Machiavelli’s text were certain on this point. If we assume that the persons in San Giorgio and the Commune were the same, one way to address these texts would be simply to dismiss their perspective entirely and label them as incorrect.
As we saw in Chapter 2, there were differences among the powerful families that made up the offices of San Giorgio and those of the Commune. Within the Commune, the Sauli were not among the most powerful families, while within San Giorgio the same was true for the Fieschi. Moreover, the percentage of overlap among all the people who held positions of power in the two institutions was low. These differences indicate that there was some separation between the power of the Commune and the power of San Giorgio.
However, Carlo Bitossi’s objection is still relevant, since these data do show some overlap between the two institutions. But there is another way to respond to his objection. We do not need to postulate the existence of two different groups of people within two different organizations to imagine a conflict or a divergence between those organizations’ aims. We can imagine the same network of families occupying positions of power in two organizations at the same time and using them for different purposes and actions. The aims of San Giorgio and the Commune could have formed a kind of political hydra, even though they were governed by the same people or the same families.
Furthermore, it is also possible to respond to the prior objection from a micro-historical perspective, by focusing on the period around the 1460s and examining the behavior of the people who were part of both organizations. It is likely that around the 1460s a faction existed in San Giorgio, that of the boteschi, which had specific goals and projects to achieve those goals. According to contemporary observers (the two memorials), this group was interested in hegemonizing San Giorgio’s power against the Commune and against the creditors. At least in that period a real separation existed between the two organizations. Its lasting influence—either actually or in memory—could have informed later views of San Giorgio, including Machiavelli’s.
The following chapters are dedicated to perspectives on Dutch, English, and French corporations. In a manner different from the internal debate in Genoa and the territories of the Commune—which was centered on indivisible power—Machiavelli’s excursus led polemicists and thinkers in other countries to analyze the relationship between the financial power of institutions such as banks and corporations and that of the state. To follow the influences of San Giorgio’s fame, as it was created by Machiavelli, we need to look far away in both space and time.
Notes
1. Pasquale Villari stated that he published a letter for Machiavelli in Genoa, even though “it is not of any importance.” Pasquale Villari, Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, vol. 3, 2nd edition (Milano: Hoepli, 1895–1896), 403, note. The first trip (1511) is known thanks to the work of Sergio Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” Clio 2, 2–3 (1966): 201–265. For the exact chronology, see note 10.
2. Letter of April 9, 1513, to Francesco Vettori, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, ed. and trans. James B. Atkinson and David Sices (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 225.
3. Machiavelli said he wanted “parlare al doge.” Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere storiche, ed. Alessandro Montevecchi and Carlo Varotti, vol. 2 (Roma: Salerno, 2010), 34.
4. Laura Alidori Battaglia, “David Lomellini collezionista di classici: Cinque manoscritti per una nuova figura di committente e una nota su enchiridi manoscritti,” Rara volumina 1–2 (2011): 17–27, at 21. In addition to that, there is proof that David Lomellini was in Florence in 1497: see ASG, Cancellieri di San Giorgio, 86, letter of January 21, 1497.
5. Iacopo Nardi, Istoria della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli, vol. 2 (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1858), 2.
6. Niccolò Machiavelli, Legazioni. Commissarie. Scritti di governo, dir. Jean-Jacques Marchand, vol. 7 (Roma: Salerno, 2002), I, 148, 2002–2011.
7. Michele Luzzati, Una guerra di popolo. Lettere private del tempo dell’assedio di Pisa (1494–1509) (Pisa: Pacini, 1973), 295.
8. Taviani, Superba discordia, 50–52.
9. On June 26, 1500, Gherardo Buonconti, who had been sent to Genoa from Pisa, writing to the ambassador in Pisa, Roncioni, in Portovenere, mentioned David Lomellini, who along with Alessandro Negroni noted the news from Pisa. At least at this time, Lomellini was connected with individuals who took part in the war with Pisa: Roncioni, Negroni, and Buonconti; see Luzzati, Una guerra di popolo, 269, and for his hosting the Florentine ambassadors, see 295.
10. Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” 256 and note, has hypothesized that Machiavelli passed through Genoa before he went to Monaco. It seems more likely, as Michele Luzzatti has maintained, that Machiavelli went to Genoa on his way back to Florence; see Luzzati, Una guerra di popolo, 295. Machiavelli was in Genoa between May 28 and June 7 because the agreement with the Grimaldi, lords of Monaco, was signed on May 27, and on June 7 David Lomellino wrote to Girolamo Roncioni that the letters addressed to him had been given to “a Florentine who left with messer Niccolò Machiavelli” (un fiorentino che si partì con messer Niccolò Machiavelli); see Luzzati, Una guerra di popolo, 299.
11. Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” 256. The research in Genoese archives Davide Gambino (for the notarial archive for the 1518) and I (for the Diversorum Comunis Januae) have conducted to trace Machiavelli’s presence in Genoa hasn’t brought any results yet.
12. The letter is signed “Francesco de …” and reads, “Sono stato chon messere e mostrogli el vostro ischritto. Lui in su Dioschorido e va vivendo alla giornata da valente uomo”; see Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” 259. The letter may be referring to Marcello Virgilio Adriani.
13. On the revolt, see Taviani, Superba discordia. On Simone de Amandorla, see the index (see also under Simone Amigdala, the same person).
14. From the Giovanni Negroni’s letter to Machiavelli, it is possible to infer that the governor left on June 12. The letter also says that Alessandro Salvago departed with the governor and that he had left some letters for Machiavelli. Since Machiavelli was in Genoa during the previous days (but not before June 7), it is likely that he met Salvago and that the letters were a way to continue a dialogue that took place between them in that period. Giovanni Negroni’s letter is in Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” 256–257.
15. Brigitte Roux, Les dialogues de Salmon et Charles VI: Images du pouvoir et enjeux politiques (Geneve: Droz, 1998), 136 and note.
16. Paul Durrieu, “Les écrits en français d’un historien génois: au temps de Louis XII (Alessandro Salvago),” Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France 51 (1914): 102–116. An analysis of Salvago’s works within the context of the political events of 1506–07 is in Nicole Hochner, Louis XII: les dérèglements de l’image royale (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2006). See the index.
17. Hochner, Louis XII; Taviani, Superba discordia, 222–237.
18. Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” 259.
19. See here Part II § 4.3.
20. For the quotations of the Istorie fiorentine, I use the Italian national edition, Machiavelli, Opere storiche, and will follow its division in books, chapters, and segments. For a translation in English of the same work, I refer to Banfield and Mansfield, Florentine Histories, cited here as ‘trans.’ For the sentence that the Adorno and Fregoso “fought over the principate,” see Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 32 (trans. 352).
21. Istorie fiorentine, VIII, 29, 4 (trans. 351).
22. Bertelli, “Carteggi machiavelliani,” 259.
23. In a conversation, Arturo Pacini brought my attention to the text by Guidantonio Vespucci and its resemblance to Machiavelli’s passage. I wish to thank him for that. The translation of Guidantonio Vespucci’s passage is my own.
24. On this hypothesis, see Francesca Klein, “Machiavelli segretario,” in La via al Principe: Niccolò Machiavelli da Firenze a San Casciano ed. Silvia Alessandri, Francesca de Luca, Francesco Martelli and Francesca Tropea (Rimini: Imago, 2013), 111–128. Francesca Klein, “Note in margine a/di Agostino Vespucci, cancelliere nella repubblica soderiniana. Una Storia prima delle Istorie?,” Il laboratorio del Rinascimento: Studi di storia e cultura per Riccardo Fubini, ed. Lorenzo Tanzini (Florence: Le Lettere, 2015), 209–236. Francesca Klein, “La cancelleria degli Otto di pratica all’indomani della riforma del 1488: osservazioni da un copiario di missive,” in Consorterie politiche e mutamenti istituzionali in età laurenziana (catalogo della mostra del 1992), ed. Maria Augusta Morelli Timpanaro, Rosalia Manno Tolu and Paolo Viti (Milan: Silvana, 1992), 92–94.
25. The two registers are in ASF, Otto di Pratica. Legazioni e Commissarie, 3 and 4. See Klein, “Note in margine a/di Agostino Vespucci,” 215.
26. Klein, “La cancelleria degli Otto di pratica,” 94.
27. However, this hypothesis is complicated by the fact that some marginalia written by Agostino Vespucci in a well-known codex—now preserved in Heidelberg—refer to the commission in 1503 for an historical work by Machiavelli, many years before the writing of the Florentine Histories. This work has been connected to another work of Machiavelli, the Decennale. Klein, “Machiavelli segretario,” 103, and Riccardo Fubini, “Pier Soderini gonfaloniere perpetuo di Firenze committente del Machiavelli e di Leonardo da Vinci: A proposito delle note di Agostino Vespucci alle ad Familiares di Cicerone,” Humanistica 9, 3 (2014): 49–64, at 207–218 and 212–214. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Gerard González Germain has criticized Klein’s hypothesis that Vespucci is the author of the marginalia, “Per lo studio degli ambienti culturali intorno a Machiavelli cancelliere: nuovi dati su agostino vespucci,” Aevum (September–December 2015), 89, 3, 561–583, 577–581. Future studies may clarify the relationships between Agostino Vespucci’s marginalia, Machiavelli’s notes for the historical work (called Carte Machiavelli), and the Banfield and Mansfield, Florentine Histories.
28. Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 5 (trans. 351).
29. Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 6 (trans. 351).
30. Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 7–8 (trans. 352).
31. Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 9 (trans. 352).
32. I thank Jérémie Barthas for encouraging me to pay attention to this aspect.
33. The colon is used in three editions, those by Plinio Carli, Mario Martelli, and in the Italian national edition by Alessandro Montevecchi and Carlo Varotti. See Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. Plinio Carli (Firenze, Sansoni: 1927), 208; Niccolò Machiavelli, “Istorie Fiorentine,” in Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Firenze: Sansoni, 1971), 2130; Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 9. The semicolon is used in the three editions by Giovanni Battista Nicolini, Guido Mazzoni and Carlo Casella, and Corrado Vivanti. See Niccolò Machiavelli, Le ‘Istorie fiorentine’ diligentemente riscontrate sulle migliori edizioni, ed. Giovanni Battista Nicolini (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1857), 419; Guido Mazzoni and Mario Casella (eds.), Tutte le opere storiche di Niccolò Machiavelli (Firenze: Giunti Barbera, 1929), 614; Corrado Vivanti, Istorie fiorentine (Torino: Einaudi, 2005), 720. The semicolon is also present in the English edition of Banfield and Mansfield, Florentine Histories, where “onde ne” is translated as “and from this” (352), which marks the link between the phrases more than prior editions, which used “whence.” On the older editions, see the next pages.
34. Dario Brancato analyzed the connection “onde ne” in the entire corpus of Machiavelli’s texts and found that all introduce a sentence that refers to the previous one. This research has not been published and I wish to thank him for making it available to me.
35. Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 10–11 (trans. 352).
36. See here Part I § 3.3.
37. Istorie fiorentine VIII, 29, 12 (trans. 352).
38. Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere II, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Torino: Einaudi, 1999), 159.
39. “Non qualcosa degno di imitazione” (English translation is mine); see Felix Gilbert, “Machiavellli e Venezia,” in Machiavelli e il suo tempo, ed. Felix Gilbert (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), 319–334, at 326–327. According to Dionisotti, the “polemic sting” which Gilbert has found “did not sting.” Carlo Dionisotti, Machiavellerie (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), 408.
40. Dionisotti, Machiavellerie, 407–409, at 407.
41. From the same author, the most important work on this subject is his L’argent n’est pas le nerf de la guerre. See also Jérémie Barthas, “Le moment savonarolien: Dette publique et Grand Conseil. Sur le rôle et l’importance de la dette publique dans les difficultés de l’État florentin à la fin du XVe siècle,” in La dette publique dans l’histoire, ed. Jean Andreau, Gérard Béaur and Jean-Yves Grenier (Paris: Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique, 2006), 63–84; Jérémie Barthas, “Machiavelli From the Ten to the Nine: A Hypothesis Based on the Financial History of Early Modern Florence,” in From Florence to the Mediterranean and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Anthony Molho, ed. Diogo Ramada Curto, Eric R. Dursteler, Julius Kirshner and Francesca Trivellato (Firenze: Olschki, 2009), 147–164; Jérémie Barthas, “Machiavelli, Public Debt, and the Origin of Political Economy: An Introduction,” The Radical Machiavelli (2014): 273–305; Jérémie Barthas, “Machiavelli, the Republic, and the Financial Crisis,” in Liberty and Conflict: Machiavelli on Politics and Power, ed. David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati and Camila Vergara (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2017), 257–279; Jérémie Barthas, “Denaro,” in Enciclopedia Machiavelliana, ed. Gennaro Sasso, Giorgio Inglese and Emanuele Cutinelli-Rendinà, vol. 3 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Treccani), 403–408.
42. On the role of Venice in Machiavelli, see Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in tumulto: Conquista, cittadinanza e conflitto nei “Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio” (Rome: Bulzoni, 2011); Pedullà, Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins (Rome: Bulzoni, 2011), 554–563. See also, Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), revised edition, 158 and the following pages.
43. See here Part III § 6.2 and 6.3.
44. Donato Giannotti, Lettere italiane (1526–1571), ed. Furio Diaz, vol. 2 (Milano: Marzorati, 1974), 34–35.
45. Edoardo Grendi referred to the Alberghi as a “demo-topographic” cluster of people; see Grendi, “Profilo storico degli alberghi genovesi,” 241–302.
46. Agostino Giustiniani, “Dialogo nominato Corsica,” in Sources de l’histoire de la Corse. Textes et documents 2, ed. Antoine M. Graziani (Ajaccio: A. Piazzolla, 1993), 252. As Rodolfo Savelli has pointed out, Giustiniani, in his dedication to Andrea Doria, is even more explicit on this point. Rodolfo Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio. Cultura giuspolitica e dibattito istituzionale a Genova nel Cinque-Seicento,” in Finanze e ragion di Stato in Italia e in Germania nella prima età moderna, ed. Aldo De Maddalena and Hermann Kellenbenz (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984).
47. Giustiniani, “Dialogo nominato Corsica,” 244.
48. “A’ desideri di queste parti semplicemente non si può satisfare, perché bisogneria introdurre in una città uno regno, uno stato di pochi, ed un governo di molti: il che non si può immaginare, non che metter in atto, salvo che in Genova; dove, innanzi che messer Andrea Doria le avesse, con grandissima gloria sua, renduto la libertà, si vedeva una repubblica ed una tirannide.” Donato Giannotti, Lettere italiane (1526–1571), ed. Furio Diaz, vol. 2 (Milano: Marzorati, 1974), 197.
49. Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 249–321.
50. BCB, ms. VII.5.50.
51. Rodolfo Savelli discussed the authorship of the 1597 report. See Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 317, note.
52. The report used the budgets of the Republic (see Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 318, note 204) and provided information on San Giorgio such as the number and the value of the loca, the value of the gabelle, etc.; see BCB, ms. VII.5.50, fol. 32r–33v.
53. BCB, ms. VII.5.50, fol. 29r. “Alcuni politici hanno con l’occasione di San Georgio voluto dare ad intendere al mondo strani miracoli di due Republiche dentro di un meddesimo giro di mura.”
54. BCB, ms. VII.5.50, fol. 27v: “Vedesi in San Georgio, ove non solo a poco a poco hanno vendute le entrate publice, ma essendo statti lasciati molte volte multiplichi per ricomperarle e farle tornare in progresso di tempo alla republica, non hanno quelli che governano lasciati mai crescerli tanto che se ne sii ricomperata una sola cabella.”
55. “L’uffitio di San Georgio si può annullare.” BCB, ms. VII.5.50, fol. 35r.
56. Rodolfo Savelli interpreted the critical perspective of the 1597 Report on San Giorgio in a wider way, including Chapter LXVII and particularly the passage (which will be analyzed later) on the possible bad behavior of a prince. Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 320.
57. ASG, Ms. 129, fol. 35r–v.
58. Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 310–312.
59. Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 312 and note 190.
60. For a bibliography on this subject, see Julia Zunckel, “Tra Bodin e la Madonna. La valenza della corte di Roma nel sistema politico genovese. Riflessioni sull’anello mancante,” in Libertà e domînio. Il sistema politico genovese: le relazioni esterne e il controllo del territorio, ed. Matthias Schnettger and Carlo Taviani (Rome: Viella, 2011), 145–192.
61. Savelli, “Tra Machiavelli e S. Giorgio,” 312.
62. Bitossi, “Il governo della Repubblica e della Casa di San Giorgio.”