How far is it true to say that Machiavelli developed a new political science?

Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic.

He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, poetry, and some of the most well-known personal correspondence in the Italian language. His position in the regime of Florence as Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence lasted from 1498 to 1512, the period in which the de’ Medici were not in power. The period when most of his well-known writing was done was after this, when they recovered power, and Machiavelli was removed from all functions.

Machiavellism is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct,” deriving from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote I Principle (The Prince) and other works. “Machiavellian” as a word became very popular in the late 16th century in English, though “Machiavellianism” itself is first cited by the OED from 1626.

The word has a similar use in modern psychology. Machiavellianism was seen as a foreign plague infecting English politics, originating in Italy, and having already infected France. It was in this context that the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572 in Paris came to be seen as a product of Machiavellianism, a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet, who published his Discourse contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years.

Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli’s “books held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italianized courtiers”. In France, and so “at the root of France’s present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St. Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers”. In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after, until Gentillet’s own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism.

The English playwright Christopher Marlowe was an enthusiastic proponent of this view. In The Jew of Malta “Machievel” in person speaks the Prologue, claiming to not be dead, but to have possessed the soul of Guise, “And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France/to view this land, and frolic with his friends”.

His last play, The Massacre at Paris (1593) takes the massacre, and the following years, as its subject, with the Duke of Guise and Catherine de’ Medici both depicted as Machiavellian plotters, bent on evil from the start. The Anti-Machiavel is an 18th century essays by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and patron of Voltaire, rebutting The Prince, and Machiavellianism. It was first published in September 1740, a few months after Frederick became king, and is one,of many such works.

Machiavelli’s ideas had a profound impact on political leaders throughout the modern west, helped- by the new technology of the printing press. During the first generations after Machiavelli, his main influence was in non-Republican governments. Pole reported that the Prince was spoken of highly by Thomas Cromwell in England and had influenced Henry VIII in his turn towards Protestantism, and in his tactics, for example during the Pilgrimage of Grace.

A copy was also possessed by the Catholic king and Emperor Charles V. In France, after an initially mixed reaction, Machiavelli came to be associated with Catherine de Medici and the Bartholomewls Day Massacre. As Bireley reports, in the 16th century, Catholic writers “associated Machiavelli with the Protestants, whereas Protestant authors saw him as Italian and Catholic”. J, fact, he was apparently influencing both Catholic and Protestant kings.

One of the most important early works dedicated to criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, was that of the Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, whose work commonly referred to as Discourse against Machiavelli or Anti Machiavel was published in Geneva in 1576. He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were the “Koran of the courtiers”, that “he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavelli’s writings at the fingers ends”.

Another theme of Gentillet was more in the spirit of Machiavelli himself: he questioned the effectiveness of immoral strategies (just as Machiavelli had himself done, despite also explaining how they could sometimes work). This became the theme of much future political discourse in Europe during the 17th century. This includes the Catholic Counter Reformation writers summarised by Bireley: Giovanni Botero, Justus Lipsius, Carlo Scribani, Adam Contzen, Pedro de Ribadeneira, and Diego Saavedra Fajardo. These authors criticized Machiavelli, but also followed him in many ways.

They accepted the need for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a need for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they emphasized economic progress much more than the riskier ventures of war.

These authors tended to cite Tacitus as their source for realist political advice, rather than Machiavelli, and this pretense came to be known as “Tacitism”. “Black tacitism” was in support of princely rule, but “red tacitism” arguing the case for republics, more in the original spirit of Machiavelli himself, became increasingly important.