Book review: The Garments of Court and Palace

by Philip Bobbitt
Grove Press
3 stars
Colin Burrow

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince was written in 1513, during a period of crisis for both Machiavelli and Italy. In 1512 the Medici family had been restored to power in Florence, and Machiavelli was ousted from his position as secretary to the chancery.

He was suspected of conspiracy and tortured. But behind this personal crisis loomed a vast and continuing turmoil for the Italian city states, which throughout the 16th century struggled to defend their autonomy against military action by France, Spain and the Holy Roman empire.

The Prince was dedicated to the syphilitic Lorenzo de' Medici. It gave advice on how a new kind of prince might win and preserve a state. He should train up a citizen army rather than rely on paid mercenaries. He should be willing to break treaties and to respond unscrupulously to unscrupulous enemies. He should react to threats with rapid and decisive acts of violence, and he should not be afraid to be feared rather than loved by his citizens.

His virtu, his manly power, should be deployed to master Fortune, who is a woman, and therefore should be beaten. The final chapter presents this ideal prince as the potential liberator of Italy.

The Prince was not printed until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. It rapidly became the most controversial political treatise ever written, and in 1559 it was placed on the index of books prohibited by the Catholic Church.

The controversies about The Prince have not abated during the five centuries since its composition, but they have been refined.