![]() ![]() In Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli initially saw a conjunction of virtù (ability or skill) and fortuna (good fortune). This exile from politics, so painful to him, also stimulated his creativity: all his major writings come from this time.Īlong with Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, The Prince was de rigueur reading for every educated European during the 16th century. After being tortured, he retired to his estate and wrote his most famous work in 1513. With the return of the Medici, Machiavelli was forced out of office. He went on diplomatic missions, and therefore encountered Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, who provided the original model for The Prince. ![]() Often considered the father of modern political science, Machiavelli had extensive experience in government service as an elected official of Florence’s Second Chancery, a role he filled from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici family was out of power. ![]() Or rather he saw the necessary next phase of history to be a return to the classical past: the renaissance, or rebirth, of Italy by a kind of revolution back to a pre-papal Rome. A Florentine like Dante, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) stands on the frontier between the Renaissance and modernity. ![]()
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