Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  “God no! It was just too messy. But here’s what I want to know. It seems to me you might have a little problem with historical objectivity.”

  “There’s no such thing as objectivity.”

  “Well, I’m glad we agree on that, but I had a much more concrete kind of problem in mind. You are writing this thing under the patronage of the Medici, whom you consider to be ‘the enemies of freedom,’ I think the phrase is yours?”

  “And?”

  “How are you going to reconcile your rabid republican sympathies with the interests of your patrons? I mean, I hardly think they expect to be vilified in a work they’re paying you to write?” Guicciardini was delighted by the conundrum he had exposed.

  “Oh, that’s simple,” said Niccolo slyly. “I have complete freedom to begin and end the history wherever I want. I choose to end it just when Lorenzo the Magnificent comes to power.”

  “Splendid, Machiavelli! You are learning something! Finally!” And the talk turned to the broad outlines of Niccolo’s work. While the two of them were thus parsing the history of Florence into manageable and meaningful units, a messenger entered with the morning’s dispatches.”

  “Ah, duty beckons,” said the unflappable Guicciardini, sorting through the pile of mail.

  “Anything for me?” asked Niccolo.

  “Doesn’t look like it.” He began opening letters, giving each a cursory examination and arranging them in piles on the table. Niccolo was carving a pear.

  “Oh, dear,” said Guicciardini, stifling a yawn.

  “What is it?”

  “It seems good Pope Leo has expired.”

  “Cazzus!” Niccolo leapt to his feet, and in his head, thirty thousand demons leapt to life. With the pope dead, the calculus of power in Florence and Italy and all of Europe was suddenly changed! And the relative positions of the kings of France and Spain and the emperor, and—yes!—the Medici—everything was thrown into disarray! Anything was possible! “This changes everything, Guicciardini, don’t you see,” he said excitedly.

  “Yes, I suppose it does,” said the suddenly thoughtful papal governor, stroking his fur collar. “I suppose I might have to find a new job.”

  “Adrian Dedel!” said Giovan Battista della Palla, just back from Rome. Luigi Alamanni and Zanobi Buondelmonte chorused in, “Dedel! Dedel! Dedel!” making comic gobbling sounds in the backs of their throats. Cosimino and Niccolo, the elder statesmen in the group, maintained a degree of reserve, but were obviously enjoying the amusement of their younger compatriots.

  “And he’s decided to keep his own name as pope! Pope Adrian VI!”

  “Hopeless Pope Adrian!” said Luigi. “Pope Leo wanted to be a lion. Pope Julius and Pope Alexander fashioned themselves conquerors and emperors. What does Pope Adrian fashion himself?”

  “A man of God, a humble servant of the church, and a devotee of religious reform.” Everyone howled with laughter. What kind of a pope could this be? They were all talking at once:

  “How many children does he have?”

  “Not a one!”

  “And he’s from Utrecht?” Zanobi pronounced it Ooooooothrecht, mimicking what he considered to be a Dutch pronunciation.

  “A Dutchman as pope! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Someone said the Englishman, Wolsey, wanted to be pope.”

  “A Dutchman! An Englishman! Don’t they know the pope is supposed to be Italian? What will they think of next, a Pope from Poland?”

  “Pope Leo should have been more mindful of his duty and left a son to succeed him!”

  “It’s a sad day when there isn’t even one Italian left with enough money to buy the papacy!”

  “And the Dutchman can’t speak a word of Italian!”

  “His Latin is so bad you can’t understand that either!”

  “What do the Romans say?”

  “They’re incensed. They hate him. No more parades, no more festivities, circuses, processions. The pope wants to be frugal!”

  “A frugal, childless pope! Is this a sign the end is drawing near?”

  “All the poets and musicians and jesters and dwarves who were living in the Vatican apartments have been evicted. He drove them out of there like Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple!”

  “And the whores as well! What a black day for the Holy See!”

  “His advisers have preposterous and unpronounceable names like Vincl and Trinkvoort and Kurtius. All Dutchmen!”

  As the young men fell to composing disrespectful couplets on the outlandish new personalities with whom the pope chose to surround himself, Niccolo edged closer to Cosimino. The little cripple’s breathing was labored, but his eyes were still alive. “And what about our cardinal here, Cosimino? What does he do now that the pope is gone?”

  “I think he’s doing the prudent thing, Niccolo. I think he’s preparing for a gradual transfer of power and the reconstitution of some sort of republican government.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Without the power of the papacy behind him, he has to give ground. You know he’s been here to the gardens several times since you were gone?”

  “I know, Luigi told me.”

  “And he listens with great interest to what we have to say. He asks the boys questions, solicits their advice. He applauds their judgments. He commends what he calls their youthful ardor.”

  “So you think he really intends to make changes?”

  “Let’s face it, Niccolo, he was never as bad as most of his family. He’s been prudent and done the city a lot of good. Instead of lavishing his money—our money—on fantastic palazzi and extravagant architects, he dug that canal to control the Arno in flood times. I think he has the city’s best interests at heart.”

  “And them,” said Niccolo, indicating the cavorting young scholars. “What do they think?”

  “They’re enthusiastic. Luigi, at the cardinal’s request, has submitted a treatise on the restoration of popular and elective government.” Cosimino chuckled, “Although I must say that it bears a strong resemblance, a very strong resemblance, to your work.”

  Cosimino continued, “They want to do great things, Niccolo. They’ve found direction and meaning. They want to accomplish something, build something. And they have you to thank. You’re the one who started them off down that road. You’re the one who pointed the way.”

  Niccolo felt deeply gratified by Cosimino’s observation. He was passing his torch along. They were taking it up. His sons. His spiritual descendants. Dancing and laughing, full of the brash disrespect of youth, but full of passion too, full of commitment and hope. He wished the staid, world-weary Francesco Guicciardini could see them. But would he understand? Could he ever understand?

  Niccolo had gone back to the country for the summer to work on his monumental history of Florence. The weather was mild, and he passed his days easily enough in research and writing. The evenings were cool, and he used to sit outside his little villa to take advantage of the occasional breezes and enjoy the moist, perfumed night air that descended upon the place when the hot sun went down.

  Between the past, which was often painful but stirring too, and the future, which he increasingly regarded as hopeful, he had made a rough peace with the world. Immersed in the cycles of Florentine history that he was charting and explaining, Niccolo had little time to dwell on his own personal losses and tragedies—at least not in his waking hours.

  He liked to sit facing the road, dressed only in light hose and a loose, open, linen shirt, feet propped up magisterially. He often amused himself in trying to guess the origin and destination of travelers who passed. From their muffled, overheard conversations, he could usually identify the language they were speaking or the dialect they were condemned to use if they happened not to be Florentine. From the dark shapes they cut against the moonlit night sky, he could pick out a cleric or a peasant or a dandy or a soldier. Or a Dutchman. The road was full of Dutchmen making their way to Rome to fete the new
pope, who was one of their own. Most were humble pilgrims who would be robbed and fleeced and sent home again when they had been relieved of their money; others were more astute souls—office seekers who were looking to make their fortunes from the happy and unexpected election of Pope Adrian VI.

  One night he heard a heavy tread coming fast from the direction of Florence. Before he could see anything, he could tell that it was someone on foot, which was odd. People in a hurry were always on horseback. Nobody ever ran down the Roman road. Especially at night. He heard whoever it was lose his footing on the dusty road, roll over several times, then regain his feet and start running again. The dark figure was on him almost before he knew it, hurtling straight at him, and if Niccolo had not jumped out of the way, he would have been sent sprawling in the dust.

  “Gesu Cristo! What the hell! What is this? What do you want! Potta del cielo!” and a stream of similar indignities escaped Niccolo’s lips.

  “Magister, it’s me, Zanobi!” the man said between gasps, seemingly having a great deal of trouble getting enough air. Niccolo relaxed when he realized who his unexpected visitor was.

  “I . . . can’t . . . I can’t . . .” he heaved.

  “I know,” said Niccolo indulgently. “Take a minute to catch your breath.”

  Zanobi’s lungs were burning, and his stomach was twisted in a tight knot. He made his way to the corner of the house, and, leaning on it for support, vomited. Niccolo waited while his heaving and riotous breathing quieted down.

  “Zanobi, what are you, crazy?”

  “I just barely got away. I ran all the way from Florence.”

  “That’s seven miles! Why did you run seven miles? And what did you just barely get away from?”

  “Soldiers. They came to arrest me!” He was still breathing with difficulty. “They got Luigi . . . and Jacopo.”

  “Arrest you? What on earth for?” In the moonlight, Niccolo could see that Zanobi’s boyish face, streaked with sweat and dust, was contorted in a grimace of real terror.

  “Niccolo, we . . . we . . .” he hesitated.

  “You what!” Niccolo was alarmed now.

  “We were plotting to kill the Cardinal.”

  “Oh God.”

  Luigi Alamanni endured seven turns of the rack before he confessed to the conspiracy. By that time, both of his arms had pulled free of their sockets. He and Jacopo da Diacceto were both beheaded before daybreak on the seventh of June 1522. In an isolated courtyard, with nobody but their executioner to hear them, the two idealistic young men both affirmed that they had acted, not out of any malice toward the Cardinal, but like Brutus, out of a love of liberty and a hatred of tyranny.

  The coup that they were preparing was discovered when a courier from Giovan Battista della Palla in Rome was intercepted on his way to Luigi Alamanni. The papers he carried included the names of all the coconspirators, who were fourteen in number, all young, all members of the circle that gathered at the Orti Orcellari under the patronage of Cosimino Rucellai and the tutelage of Niccolo Machiavelli.

  In the wake of the arrests, the society that met at the Orti was dispersed. Most of its members were forced into exile. Cosimino Rucellai languished for a few months, his health growing steadily worse, until, robbed of the one delight that had kept him alive for so many years, he died, a broken-hearted man. In Rome, Piero Soderini, who was in touch with the hot-blooded young republicans through Giovan Battista della Palla and who was behind the conspiracy, also died. Zanobi Buondelmonte, with Niccolo’s help, made it to Venice, and from there to France. Talk of instituting republican reforms was no longer heard in Florence. The idea of restoring liberty was abandoned, and the Cardinal de’ Medici, having smoked out his potential enemies, tightened his grip on the city.

  Disillusioned, Niccolo buried himself in the isolation of the country once again, with the full knowledge of his own guilt weighing heavily, impossibly, upon him. He was the one who had inflamed them. He was the one who had fired their imaginations with stories of great and bold deeds, of Brutus and Cassius, of swift strokes of the dagger in defense of liberty. Now two of them were dead—tortured and mutilated before being decapitated; the others had all left the country. This had been the upshot of his preaching and his proselytizing—martyrdom and murder and exile and the destruction of innocent young lives. With that bitter knowledge, it was to his ancients, to the long dead, that he now returned for company.

  In the two years it took Niccolo to complete his history of Florence, he virtually ignored the outside world, although events there did not stand still for lack of his supervision. Only nine months after his assumption of the papal tiara, the well-intentioned but moribund Dutchman, Adrian VI, died. The Romans were so grateful for his demise that they decked the house of his physician with banners and garlands and danced joyously in the street in front of it for many nights.

  After a fiercely contested election and the longest conclave on record, a new pope emerged whose reign was to prove disastrous to himself, to Florence, to Italy, and to the Catholic Church. That pope was none other than Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, first cousin of the late Pope Leo and ruler of Florence on his behalf. Was it with an ironic smile that the merciless Cardinal de’ Medici chose for himself the name Pope Clement VII?

  Beyond Rome, the great powers that hovered over Italy like vultures waiting for the right moment to descend and devour her took heart. In Germany, a new emperor had been elected. The former emperor, Maximilian, had been a weakling with a head full of unlikely dreams. The new emperor was cut from a different bolt of cloth. Charles V was an Austrian grand duke of tremendous ambition who managed to impose some sort of unity on the loosely confederated German states. Through the skillful manipulation of marriage bonds, he added the Netherlands to his dominion and—fatally for Italy—Spain and the kingdom of Naples as well. No longer would the Italian peninsula be menaced by Spain from the south and Germany from the north, no longer could these two powers be played against one another. They were one kingdom now, or rather one empire, one claw with two iron pincers. When Charles V assumed the title Holy Roman emperor, for the first time since Charlemagne, it was not a hollow dream or wishful thinking.

  Only France stood in his way, and Pope Clement eagerly applied to her to protect him from this precocious, threatening, would-be emperor. At the Battle of Pavia in northern Italy, the French army was routed and the French King, Francis I, taken prisoner. Nothing now stood between the Emperor Charles and Rome.

  Had the situation been uncomplicated by other factors, and had Clement been more resolute, he could no doubt have arranged matters with the emperor. He could have bought him off. But there were other factors. There was in Charles’s army a faction that would not be appeased. They were vocal, and they were implacable. And under the leadership of the redoubtable and ferocious Georg von Fundesberg, they were deadly serious.

  Who were these implacable elements? The followers of the seditious monk Martin Luther. Pope Leo had finally excommunicated the tiresome Luther and dismissed him entirely from his mind. But Luther did not go away. He continued to preach and denounce the deplorable conditions to which the church in Rome had been reduced under a long line of unworthy and demented and wicked popes. The church, he claimed, with some reason, was in the hands of the antichrist. And who would liberate her?

  Early in the year 1525, an immense army of Landsknechte, the most feared and respected troops of the German army, were poised to strike that liberating blow. They were sharpening their lances, as von Fundesberg said, “to teach the pope a lesson he would never forget.”

  As the Lutheran grinding wheels shrieked in Germany, Niccolo put the finishing touches on his history of Florence. It was the most complete and provocative work of its kind to date. The spirit of inquiry and analysis that informed it was something entirely new in European historiography. But despite all its merits, Niccolo was having a devil of a time collecting the stipend he was promised for it upon completion. His letters of inquiry to the Signori
a went unanswered. The Cardinal, who had commissioned the work, was now pope and in Rome, being threatened from every conceivable quarter. So, wearily, Niccolo dug up his old contract and made the trip into Florence, hoping the Medici might see fit to make good on one small promise.

  On his way across town, Niccolo stopped at a public fountain, scooped up a handful of cold water, and used it to swallow two of the large, blue pills his doctor had prescribed for his increasingly rebellious digestive system. In addition to the not-infrequent attacks of the stone to which his aging body was now subject, Niccolo’s stomach, always over-sensitive, had become irascible and undependable. He feared for his liver and kidneys as well. Gulping down the pills, which were almost as large as pigeons’ eggs, brought him instant relief. He had an unbounded faith in medical science.

  Even the ranks of a family as prolific as the Medici sometimes wear thin, and even loins as active as theirs sometimes fail to produce a sufficient supply of offspring to run the universal Catholic church, Florence, and the better part of northern Italy as well. Such was the case in 1525, when the only two available Medici—Ippolito and Alessandro, both bastards—were both underage and, even by Medici standards, not yet up to running the city. The cardinal of Cortona, Silvio Passerini, a staunch supporter of Pope Clement, had been made a kind of regent and empowered to act on their behalf. Passerini had been left in Florence by the Medici pope to execute his instructions, and it was with him that Niccolo sought audience in order to discuss his commission.

  He was kept waiting a long time. Not that the time did not pass quickly. There was no dearth of entertainment in the corridors of the Signoria these days. Animated, exciting people in impressive and even outlandish outfits came and went. Niccolo sat on a bench next to his hefty manuscript—eight books, over a thousand pages—and watched. Two boys, both with red hose, both with yellow codpieces, were engaged in a lively round of civettino—little owl. The game required good reflexes, a quick eye, and the ability to feint and parry blows. The object was to slap one’s opponent silly. The movements of the players were limited by the fact that they had to keep within an arm’s length of one another. The loser of the previous round planted his right foot on the ground, his opponent planted his left foot on top of it, and the feinting and the slapping began. Long arms were a distinct advantage in the sport.