Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I THE ROMAN PRINCEPS
- PART II THE ROMAN THEORY AND THE FORMATION OF THE RENAISSANCE PRINCEPS
- PART III THE HUMANIST PRINCEPS IN THE TRECENTO
- PART IV THE HUMANIST PRINCEPS FROM THE QUATTROCENTO TO THE HIGH RENAISSANCE
- PART V THE MACHIAVELLIAN ATTACK
- 6 The strategy
- 7 The battle
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
7 - The battle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I THE ROMAN PRINCEPS
- PART II THE ROMAN THEORY AND THE FORMATION OF THE RENAISSANCE PRINCEPS
- PART III THE HUMANIST PRINCEPS IN THE TRECENTO
- PART IV THE HUMANIST PRINCEPS FROM THE QUATTROCENTO TO THE HIGH RENAISSANCE
- PART V THE MACHIAVELLIAN ATTACK
- 6 The strategy
- 7 The battle
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
Summary
Machiavelli brings over one and a half millennia of monarchical encroachment upon republican territory to a categorical halt in the opening sentence of his first chapter:
All the states, all the dominions that have held and hold command over men have been, and are, either republics or principalities.
Machiavelli divides, and his division demolishes the cherished claim of the Roman theory of monarchy that the Roman res publica had been saved by the institution of a prince at its head. The single most potent ideological weapon which monarchies had wielded since the thirteenth century in advancing the argument for princely rule on the Italian peninsula is thereby snapped in two. As far as Machiavelli's theory in De principatibus is concerned, whatever else a prince may rule, it is never said to be a republic and whatever else a prince may be, he is certainly not its mind. A pivotal part of the case which had been put forward for hundreds of years against neo-classical republicanism has been dismissed by means of a definition. Machiavelli has begun to generate a controversial typology of states which will usher in a new political grammar.
The definition proceeds, but Machiavelli delays revealing the differentia which he has used to divide states which are called republics from those which he is naming as principalities. Instead he starts to subdivide the states called principalities. In so doing he begins to clarify the defining property of the principality:
And principalities are either hereditary – where their master's blood has been their prince for a long time – or they are new.
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- Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince , pp. 260 - 311Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007