Abstract
The predominance of an Augustinian account of degenerative corruption in learned Medieval discourse traced corrupt, corrupting or corrupted phenomena to the corruption of human nature after The Fall. This does not mean that contemporaries were unable to address forms of public office corruption, whether in the form of simoniacal purchase of Church offices or the use of gifts to curry judicial favour. Nonetheless, the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe ensured that the Augustinian connotation of the spiritual and physical decay of the human body powerfully shaped Medieval discourse on corruption, such that instances of public office corruption were interpreted as the inevitable consequence of the corruption of human nature.1
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Notes
V. Groebner (2002) Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages, RE. Selwyn (trans.) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 76–7. The symmetry of metaphors could be matched also in the punishments demanded for corrupt officials. Those who ‘skinned’ (or fleeced) the poor in office should themselves be skinned or ‘flayed’, thus making ‘… that which is interior and invisible… visible,… peeling back the skin will reveal the true nature of lawbreakers’ (pp. 81–2).
Dante Alighieri (1970) The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Vol. 1: Italian Text and Translation, C.S. Singleton (trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press), Canto XI, 19–60, pp. 111–13. Here, Dante speaks of fraud as an offence peculiar to human beings, unknown among other animals.
Ibid., Cantos XXI and XXII, pp. 214 and 226, respectively. This definition of ‘barratry’ (baratti) is taken from Dante Alighieri (1970) The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Vol. 2: Commentary, C.S. Singleton (trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 368. The term ‘bribery’ came into wide use much later, but by the sixteenth century was consistently associated with the crime of ‘barratry’. See, for example, these definitions: ‘barratrie’ (Blount: ‘simony’), ‘barattiere’ (Florio: ‘a briber, a bribe taker’), ‘baratterie’ (Thomas: ‘the bry-bour’), ‘barrataria’ (Blount: ‘signifying corruption or bribery’), ‘baratteria’ (Thomas: ‘bryberie’; Florio: ‘bribing’), ‘barattóre’ (Florio: ‘a corrupt lawyer, one that giveth and taketh bribes’) and ‘barattáre’ (Florio: ‘to bribe’).
References from: W. Thomas (1550) Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer (London);
J. Florio (1611) Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of theltalian and English Tongues (London: Melch. Bradwood);
T. Blount (1656) Glossographia: or A Dictionary (London: Tho. Newcomb).
C. Kleinhenz (1989) ‘Deceivers Deceived: Devilish Doubletalk in Inferno 21–23’, QUADERNI d’italianistica X (1–2), 141.
R.H. Lansing (1981) ‘Dante’s Concept of Violence and the Chain of Being’, Dante Studies99, 69.
R Alfie (2011) ‘Diabolic Flatulence: A Note on Inferno 21: 139’, Forum Italkum 45 (2), 419–23.
J. Ferrante (1984) The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), Chapter 3.
N. Oresme (1956) [c. 1355] De Moneta in The De Moneta of Nicholas Oresme and English Mint Documents, C. Johnson (trans.) (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons), p. 20. The term ‘corruptum’ appears in Oresme’s Latin text in a quotation from Cassiodorus; it is translated here as ‘fraud’.
Ibid., p. 47. See also C.J. Nederman (2000) ‘Community and the Rise of Commercial Society: Political Economy and Political Theory in Nicholas Oresme’s De Moneta’, History of Political Thought 21 (1), 12.
I. Krug (2006) ‘Wartime Corruption and Complaints of the English Peasantry’ in N. Christie and M. Yazigi (eds) Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities: Warfare in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill), pp. 177–80.
C.J. Nederman (2001) ‘The Monarch and the Marketplace: Economic Policy and Royal Finance in William of Pagula’s’ Speculum regis Edwardi IIP, History of Political Economy 33 (1), 54.
William of Pagula (2002) [1330–35] Speculum Regis Edwardi III in C.J. Nederman (ed., trans.) Political Thought in Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), Recension A, § 5–6 and 17, pp. 78–9, 88; Recension B, Ch. 2, § 5, pp. 108–9.
Walter of Milemete (2002) [1327] On the Nobility, Wisdom, and Prudence of Kings in Nederman, Political Thought in Fourteenth-Century England, Ch. 12, p. 47. Nederman explains that next to nothing is known of Walter’s biographical details (p. 19).
This and the following information in this paragraph is taken from P. Spufford (2002) Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London: Thames and Hudson), pp. 12–59.
There is a considerable literature on Medieval ‘states’. For example, see G. Chittolini (1995) ‘The “Private”, the “Public”, the State’, The Journal of Modern History, Supplement: The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–1600 67, S34–S61. On the growing separation of the monarch’s person from the increasingly professionalised royal bureaucracy in the thirteenth century,
see D. Carter (2004) ‘The English Royal Chancery in the Thirteenth Century’ in A. Jobson (ed.) English Government in the Thirteenth Century (London: Boydell Press), pp. 49–70.
W.C. Jordan (2009) ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Thirteenth-Century Europe’, Journal of Medieval History 35, 207.
G. Dodd (2011) ‘Corruption in the Fourteenth-Century English State’, International Journal of Public Administration 34 (11), 724; Chittolini, ‘The “Private” ‘, S45.
Policraticus, p. 50; Policraticus I-IV, p. 258. On John’s imagery of ‘hierarchical order’ and its antecedents, see T. Struve (1984) ‘The Importance of the Organism in the Political Theory of John of Salisbury’ in M. Wilks (ed.) The World of John of Salisbury (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 309, 304–5.
Policraticus, p. 50; Baraz, Medieval Cruelty, pp. 17–18. If corruption lay in the tyrannous ‘head’ of the body politic, Shogimen argues that Medieval writers were prepared to follow Cicero in recommending metaphorical ‘decapitation’ (Shogimen, ‘Treating the Body Politic’, 88–96). For examples of metaphorical ‘decapitation’ and ‘amputation’, see Cicero (1991) On Duties, M.T. Griffin and E.M. Atkins (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 111; Policraticus, pp. 205–9; Dow speaks of Christine de Pizan’s image of the ruler, as both the ‘focus and the emblem of the good order of the community’, embodying in his ‘morality’ and his ‘mortality’ the ‘coherence and frailty of the political community’ (T.L.L. Dow (2005) ‘Christine de Pizan and the Body Politic’ in K. Green and C.J. Mews (eds) Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), p. 231).
W.D. McCready (1973) ‘Papal Plenitudo Potestatis and the Source of Temporal Authority in Late Medieval Papal Hierocratic Theory’, Speculum 48(4), 656; Tierney, Conciliar Theory, p. 171.
J.H. Burns (1992) Lordship, Kingship, and Empire: The Idea of Monarchy, 1400–1525 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 25–6.
Also, G. Danbolt (1998) ‘Visual Images of Papal Power: The Legitimation of Papal Power in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ in A. Ellenius (ed.) Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 155. The termplenitudopotestatis has a complex history and did not always entail absolute papal power until the thirteenth century (Tierney, Conciliar Theory, pp. 141–9).
J. Canning (1996) A History of Medieval Political Thought 300–1450 (London: Routledge), pp. 118–19; Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, pp. 103–4, 129–34.
C. Condren (1984) ‘Rhetoric, Historiography and Political Theory: Some Aspects of the Poverty Controversy Reconsidered’, Journal of Religious History 13, p 21–8.
Mäkinen, Property Rights, pp. 44–53; E Maiolo (2007) Medieval Sovereignty: Marsilius of Padua and Bartolus of Saxoferrato (Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers), pp. 156–8.
This literature is critically reviewed in V. Syros (2010) ‘Review Article: Linguistic Contextualism and Medieval Political Thought: Quentin Skinner on Marsilius of Padua’, History of Political Thought XXXI (4), 693–5.
Marsilius of Padua (2005) The Defender of the Peace, A. Brett (trans., ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), I, xii, 3, pp. 66–7. The idea of the ‘prevailing part’ of the citizen-body (see Brett’s introduction to Marsilius (2005) Defender, pp. xxiii-xiv) refers to that smaller part of the citizen body that might be delegated to deliberate on and make laws in accordance with the customs of particular polities, possibly in consultation with the citizen body as a whole (Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xvii, 7, p. 340).
Ibid., I, xii, 8, p. 71; and I, ix, 8, p. 48. In the following discussion, we rely primarily on this 2005 Cambridge English translation. Brett translates Marsilius’ ‘viciatorum’ as ‘flawed’, but Alan Gewirth had earlier translated the same term as ‘diseased’, which seems consistent with Marsilius’ medical terminology. See Marsilius (1956) The Defender of the Peace, A. Gewirth (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 31, 33.
Because of these variations in translation, we will supplement Brett’s 2005 Cambridge translation with occasional references to Gewirth’s 1956 Columbia translation, as well as specific Latin terms and phrases taken from the définitive modern Latin edition by Richard Scholz (Marsilius von Padua (1933) Defensor Pads, R. Scholz (trans.) (Hannover: Hansche Buchhandlung), Vol. I, p. 45 (hereafter Marsilius, Defensor)).
Ibid., II, xxx, 1, p. 415. A similar interpretation can be found in B. Koch (2012) ‘Marsilius of Padua on Church and State’ in G. Moreno-Riano and C.J. Nederman (eds) A Companion to Marsilius of Padua (Leiden: Brill), pp. 144–8. We are gratelul to Dr Koch for supplying a copy of her paper, and for commenting on an earlier version of this chapter.
Dante Alighieri (1996/2007) [1314?] Monarchy, P. Shaw (trans., ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Bk II, p. 60; Bk III, pp. 71 and 91–2.
C.J. Nederman (1995) Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pads (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), p. 36.
Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xv, 5, p. 91; Marsilius (1956) Defender, p. 63. The following information is drawn from Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xv, 5–14, pp. 91–7. On the origin of blood and the role of the heart and its heat in Aristotelian and Galenic medical theories,
see W. Ullmann (1946) ‘A Medieval Document on Papal Theories of Government’, English Historical Review 61(240), 193;
R. B. Todd (1977) ‘Galenic Medical Ideas in the Greek Aristotelian Commentators’, Symbolae Osloenses 52, 117–34.
The soul itsell could be viewed as a microcosm or ‘kingdom’, rightly ordered when reason informs the will, badly ordered when the senses dominate the will (R.J. Teske S.J. (1994) ‘The Will as King over the Powers of the Soul: Uses and Sources of an Image in the Thirteenth Century’, Vivarium 32(1), 63, 65).
A. Black (1992) Political Thought in Europe 1250–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 61.
Moreno-Riano argues that ‘Marsilius is virtually silent regarding the issue of political tyranny or what one may call corrupted regimes’. He preferred instead to focus on the corruption caused by the church (G. Moreno-Riano (2008) ‘Marsilius of Padua’s Forgotten Discourse’, History of Political Thought 29 (3), 455).
Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, I, 2, pp. 4–5. Also, J. Canning (1999) ‘The Role of Power in the Political Thought of Marsilius of Padua’, History of Political Thought 20 (1), 26.
C.J. Nederman (2000) ‘The Expanding Body Politic: Christine de Pizan and the Medieval Roots of Political Economy’ in E. Hicks (éd.) Au Champ Des Escriptures: IIP Colloque International sur Christine de Pizan (Paris: Honoré Champion), p. 2; Nederman, ‘The Monarch and the Marketplace’, 59.
According to Munro, Medieval ‘theologians and jurists regarded interest on a loan as a sin not only against charity but also a sin against commutative justice and natural law, and thus a mortal sin’. (J.H. Munro (2003) ‘The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution: Usury, Rentes, and Negotiability’, The International History Review 25 (3), 510).
See also R.W. Southern (1970) Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin), pp. 281–3, 288–90; Rubin, TheHollow Crown, pp. 197–8.
J. Fortescue (1997) [c.1471] The Governance of England in S. Lockwood (ed.) On the Laws and Governance of England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 93; see also pp. 99–100.
F. Petrarch (1978) [1373] How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State in B.J. Kohl and R.G. Witt (eds) The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), p. 53. Written to and for his then-patron, Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara, Lord of Padua, Petrarch’s contribution to the mirror-for-princes genre warned his prince to pursue the holy and virtuous path which he said, in an echo of the Bible, was a ‘wealth’ that ‘moths and rust cannot corrupt’. In pursuing this path, the prince ought to take special care to shun the greedy advice of ‘courtiers’ who urge the prince to ‘pillage’ his people (pp. 61–2).
See, for example, P. Hohti (2010) ‘“Conspicuous” Consumption and Popular Consumers: Material Culture and Social Status in Sixteenth-Century Siena’, Renaissance Studies 24 (5), 654–70;
T.K. Rabb (2006) The Last Days of the Renaissance and the March to Modernity (New York: Basic Books), pp. 64–8;
J. Brotton (2002) Renaissance Bazaar: Trom the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 46–8, 150–1;
L. Jardine (1996) Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan), pp. 327–8. On the complicated Medieval origins of these views in Italy,
see L. Martines (2002) Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy (London: Pimlico), pp. 79–86.
H. Baron (1938) ‘Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Humanistic Thought’, Speculum 13 (1), 11, 18.
Ibid., 20–36. See also W.J. Connell (2000) ‘The Republican Idea’ in J. Hankins (ed.) Renaissance Civic Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 20.
See H. Baron [1938] ‘The Memory of Cicero’s Roman Civic Spirit in the Medieval Centuries and in the Florentine Renaissance’ in H. Baron (1988) In Search of Plorentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, Vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 94–133. See also Baron, ‘Brum’s Histories as an Expression of Modern Thought’ in Baron, In Search ofPlorentine Civic Humanism, Vol. I, pp. 68–93; and Black, Political Thought, p. 130. Further discussion of ‘civic humanism’ as an ideology can be found in H. Baron (1966) ‘Leonardo Bruni: “Professional Rhetorician” or “Civic Humanist”?’ Past and Present 36, 35. For an early critique, see J. Seigel (1966) ‘ “Civic” Humanism or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni’, Past and Present 34, 23–5. On Brum’s ‘new departure’ in humanist political thought, see The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds) (1988) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 419–22.
L. Bruni, Panegyric to the City of Plorence [1403–04] in Kohl and Witt (eds) (1978) The Earthly Republic, pp. 151, 154–5. Bruni amplified this connection with Roman virtue in his later History of the Plorentine People (2001) [1442] J. Hankins (ed., trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Vol. 1, Bk 1, 37–39, pp. 49–53.
As King illustrates, however, Venetian humanists were as inclined as those of Florence to associate classical virtues with their republic (M.L. King (1986) Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 99, 131–2, 137–40). 99. Bruni, Panegyric, p. 158 (the quotes in the following sentences come from this page also).
M. Sanudo (2004) [1493] Praise of the City of Venice in D. Chambers and B. Pullan (eds) Venice: A Documentary History 1450–1630 (Toronto: Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts, University of Toronto), pp. 18–20.
M. Jurdjevic (2001) ‘Virtue, Commerce and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (4), 727, 742. On Hans Baron’s appreciation of wealth and wealth creation in the origins of Florentine humanism,
see H. Baron [1939] ‘Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth’, p. 27, and ‘A Sociological Interpretation of the Early Florentine Renaissance’ in H. Baron (1988) In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Vol. II, pp. 40–54.
Also, C.J. Nederman (2003) ‘Commercial Society and Republican Government in the Latin Middle Ages: The Economic Dimensions of Brunetto Latini’s Republicanism’, Political Theory 31(5), 658–9.
P. Bracciolini [1428] ‘On Avarice’, B.J. Kohl and E.B. Welles (trans.) in Kohl and Witt (eds) The Earthly Republic, pp. 246, 253–5.
For the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540), the ossified, dense and abstract knowledge produced by Medieval scholasticism was itself in a state of corruption resulting from the corruption of human nature by pride, and was an example of the longer process of corruption manifested in human history since the Fall. See I. Bejczy (2003) ‘ “Historiapraestat omnibus disciplinis” : Juan Luis Vives on History and Historical Study’, Renaissance Studies 17 (1), 80–1.
Machiavelli (1988) The Florentine Histories, L.F. Banfield and H.C. Mansfield (trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press), Bk V, Ch. 8, p. 194. Here, Machiavelli spoke through the figure of Rinaldo degli Albizzi who represented a faction of Florentines exiled by the establishment of Cosimo de Medici’s regime, seeking to induce the Duke of Milan to attack Florence.
Bracciolini, ‘On Avarice’, p. 271. Poggio criticises the corrupt practices of the church on page 273. Nederman reads Poggio as envisaging ‘a sort of mutuality’ between the ‘avarice present in a state and that present in its ruler’, whereby the avaricious ruler will encourage avarice among citizens in order to supply revenue through taxation (C.J. Nederman (2009) ‘Avarice as Princely Virtue? The Later Medieval Backdrop to Poggio Bracciolini and Machiavelli’ in C.J. Nederman, N. van Deusen and E.A. Matter (eds) Mind Matters: Studies of Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual History in Honour of Marcia Colish (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), p. 260).
Ibid., pp. 172–92; G. Contarini (1599) [1545] The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, L. Lewkenor (trans.) (London: John Windet), p. 15.
N. Machiavelli (1996) [1512–17] Discourses on Livy, H.C. Mansfield and N. Tarcov (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), Bk I, Ch. 5–6, pp. 20–2.
D.E. Queller with ER. Swietek (1977) Two Studies on Venetian Government (Geneva: Librairie Droz), p. 102;
R. Finlay (1980) Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 199–222. Finlay argues that Venetians were able to distinguish, perhaps only in theoretical terms, between acceptable and open electioneering, what was later termed broglio honesto, and outright corruption in the form of selling votes, which became so flagrant and well organised in the early 1500s that groups of poorer patricians, the so-called ‘Switzers’, who held voting rights for the Great Council would sell their votes en bloc or extort bribes in exchange for them.
See also M. Jurdjevic (2004) ‘Trust in Renaissance Electoral Polities’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (4), 609–10.
E. Horodowich (2005) ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Lite and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies 19 (1), 41; Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 22. The term itsell seemed to derive from the name of the piazza del broglio, the orchard beside the Doge’s palace where the patrician’s promenade first began.
M. O’Connell (2009) Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 97.
Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 221–2. Robert Davis has argued that Venetian factional feuds certainly did occur alongside the broglio, and occasionally impinged upon it. The sell-promotion of the great patrician families through the broglio, however, served to prevent existing factions from dominating the state (R.C. Davis (1994) The War of the Tists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 89–90, 156–7).
D.S. Chambers (1997) ‘Merit and Money: The Procurators of St Mark and Their Commissioni, 1443–1605’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 60, 38. Contarini described the Procurators as men who were appointed on the basis of long records of honest and diligent public service, exemplifying their ‘uncorrupted vertue’ (Contarini, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, p. 122).
A.L. Brandolini (2009) [1490–94] Republics and Kingdoms Compared, J. Hankins (ed., trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Bk II, 9, pp. 97–9.
Bruni had earlier identified corruption in the avarice of governors who used their power to prey upon trade in order to profit from commercial transactions they were supposed to protect and foster (Bruni, History of the Plorentine People, Vol. I, Bk I, 43, p. 57). See also his account of Giano della Bella’s speech in 1292 against the corruption of the laws in Florence and the need to restrain the ‘powerful’ who imposed ‘servitude’ on the people by force and ‘favoritism’ (Vol. I, Bk IV, 27–33, pp. 361–71). Machiavelli, by contrast, allowed for the possibility that only by extraordinary means, employed by a ‘single, powerful individual’, might corruption be halted. J.M. Najemy (1982) ‘Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History’, Renaissance Quarterly 35 (4), 560.
R. Newhauser (2000) The Early History of Greed. The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 31–41, 116–22. These two themes were clearly part of the wider Florentine political scene. In their respective diaries, Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati, both merchants and office holders in the Republic, attested to the frequency with which the Pope and other rulers sought to manipulate Florence’s factions by ‘suborn[ing] …them with gifts’, offices or payments (Pitti in 1413).
They also noted the ‘insatiable appetite’ and ‘ambition’ for wealth and glory that tempted them to ‘influence’ elections and appointment to office (Dati in 1412) (B. Pitti and G. Dati (1967) Two Memoirs of Renaissance Plorence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati, G. Brucker (ed.), J. Martines (trans.) (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press), pp. 97, 125–6).
Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 114, 177. Pocock argues that Machiavelli’s thought was an affirmation of a ‘basically Aristotelian republicanism’ (p. 316), lor which he attempted to provide a new foundation in a new arrangement of political orders (ordini). In The Prince, Machiavelli refers to corruption, albeit ileetingly, as a constant feature of the political world that the wise prince must not only plan lor but also be prepared to manipulate and use. Thus, the prince must be prepared to ‘indulge’ the ‘proclivities’ of those among his ‘necessary’ supporters who are ‘corrupt’ (N. Machiavelli (1988) [1532] The Prince, Q. Skinner and R. Price (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 68).
Ibid., pp. 211–12. See also R Gilbert (1951) ‘On Machiavelli’s Idea of Virtu’, Renaissance News 4 (4), 53–5;
N. Wood (1967) ‘Machiavelli’s Concept of Virtù Reconsidered’, Political Studies XV (2), 159–72;
I. Hannalord (1972) ‘Machiavelli’s Concept of Virtù in The Prince and the Discourses Reconsidered’, Political Studies XX (2), 185–9.
The key claim here, especially disputed in its application to later American thought, was that this republican tradition was essentially anti-commercial. See, lor instance, J. Appleby (1992) Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
For a more balanced critical assessment of Pocock’s claims, see M. Jacob (2010) ‘Was the Eighteenth Century Republican Essentially Anticapitalist?’ Republics of Letters 2 (1), 12–20.
J.G.A. Pocock (2010) ‘The Atlantic Republican Tradition: The Republic of the Seven Provinces’, Republics of Letters 2 (1), 9, 4.
Ibid., 8. Nederman has recently pointed out that while several critics have attacked Pocock’s emphasis on commercial ‘corruption’ in Florentine Renaissance humanism, they have often ‘caricatured’ the Medieval humanist tradition as ‘anti-materialist’ (C.J. Nederman (2009) Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations Along the Medieval/Modern Divide Prom John of Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press) pp. 157–8).
Jean-Claude Waquet comes to this conclusion on the basis of his study of the Monte in Florence and other Italian cities at a later period (Waquet, Corruption, p. 50). On the early history of the Monte, see C.B. Menning (1989) ‘Loans and Favours, Kin and Clients: Cosimo de’ Medici and the Monte di Pieta’, The Journal of Modern History 61 (3), 490–3.
Machiavelli, Tlorentine Histories, III, 15, p. 126. Menning has also noted Machiavelli’s lack of interest in the Monte (C.B. Menning (1992) ‘The Monte’s “Monte”: The Early Supporters of Florence’s Monte di Pieta’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (4), 664).
The Casa di San Giorgio became the dominant mechanism lor managing the republic’s debts and a precursor of later European banking experiments (M. Fratianni (2006) ‘Government Debt, Reputation and Creditors’ Protections: The Tale olSan Giorgio’, Review of Pinance 10, 487–506).
E. Benner (2009) Machiavelli’s Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 202–3.
H.E Pitkin (1984) Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccold Machiavelli (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 273–4; Machiavelli, Discourses, III, 1, pp. 397–8; II, 5. In his Florentine Histories (V, 8, p. 194), Machiavelli spoke of ‘curing’ the ‘body’ of Florence from the greatest ‘disease’ in republics. Employment of corporeal imagery was a familiar trope in Venetian humanism as well; see King, Venetian Humanism, p. 152.
A. Parel (1992) The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 48. In Galenic medical theory, the four humors were black and yellow bile, blood and phlegm.
On Galen and the theory of the humors, see R. French (2003) Medicine before Science: The Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 42–63.
D. Germino (1962) ‘Machiavelli’s Thoughts on the Psyche and Society’ in A. Parel (ed.) The Political Calculus: Essays on Machiavelli’s Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 67–8. For Machiavelli’s discussions of political ‘humors’, see Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. 9.
Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, Bk VII, Ch. 11–12, pp. 288–9 (the following quotes are taken from these pages). See also Machiavelli (1962) Opere VII, Istorie Florentine, a cura di Franco Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore), p. 470; Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, III, 25, p. 139.
A. Parel (1990) ‘Machiavelli’s Use of Umori in The Prince, QUADERNI d’italianistica XI (1), 93.
Ibid., I, 17, p. 47. According to Vatter, Machiavellian corruption consisted in neither the indolent populace nor the tyrannical prince, rather, both were products of the corrupting desire to ‘give form’ to (necessarily) ‘formless freedom’ in a new ordering of the polity. If this was Machiavelli’s intention, however, it is hard to see why he thought some political forms were more resistant to corruption than others were, or why a militia would be at all worthwhile (M.E. Vatter (2000) Between Form and Event. Machiavelli’s Theory of Political Freedom (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), pp. 122–3).
N. Machiavelli (1965) [1521] The Art of War, E. Farneworth (trans.) (New York: Da Capo), Bk I, p. 10; II, p. 60; also see the Preface, p. 4. For the Italian,
see Machiavelli (1961) Opere II, Arte Delia Guerra e Scritti Politici Minori, a cura di Sergio Bertelli (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore), p. 326. Machiavelli also recounts the story of Fabius Maximus’ accusation that Scipio maintained lax discipline among his troops, calling him ‘a corrupter of the Roman army’ (Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 60).
Ibid., I, pp. 16, 28, 34; VII, pp. 202–5. As Rahe points out, Machiavelli argued that ancient virtue was sustained in part by the terror of ancient warfare and the prospect of enslavement after defeat. This terror had been largely removed by the softening effect of Christianity, and in this sense, religion is represented as having a corrupting influence (P.A. Rahe (2008) Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 92. On Machiavelli’s association of Christianity and corruption, see also C. Lynch (2010) ‘The Ordine Nuovo of Machiavelli’s Arte Delia Guerra: Reforming Ancient Matter’, History of Political Thought 31 (3), 419. Colish presents a different view, arguing that ‘[g]ood laws no less than good arms depend on religion’, and that ‘Christianity, if properly used, could promote desirable political and military goals’
(M.L. Colish (1999) ‘Republicanism, Religion, and Machiavelli’s Savonarolan Moment’, Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (4), 606–8).
Also B. Fontana (1999) ‘Love of Country and Love of God: The Political Uses of Religion in Machiavelli’, Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (4), 654–6.
C. Zuckert (2010) ‘The Life of Castruccio Castracani: Machiavelli as Literary Artist, Historian, Teacher and Philosopher’, History of Political Thought 31 (4), 588. On the masculine imagery of virtù, see T. Fitzpatrick (1994/95) ‘Liberty, Corruption and Seduction in the Republican Imagination’, Connotations 4 (1–2), 47.
Machiavelli, Art, III, p. 93. On the individual and collective nature of virtù, see Q. Skinner (1978) Poundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 176; and Wood (1967) ‘Virtù Reconsidered’, 170–2.
S.M. Shumer (1979) ‘Machiavelli: Republican Politics and Its Corruption’, Political Theory 7 (1), 10.
The significance of this speech has not, to our knowledge, received much attention. An exception to this observation is S. Bagge (2007) ‘Actors and Structures in Machiavelli’s Istorie Florentine’, Quaderini d’italianistica XXVIII (2), 60–1.
D. Morosini (2004) ‘Radical proposals (c. 1500) by an aged patrician’, in D. Chambers and B. Pullan (eds) Venice: A Documentary History 1450–1630 (Toronto: Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts, University of Toronto), p. 70.
Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, VII, 1, p. 276. Najemy argues that this discussion is used by Machiavelli to frame Cosimo de Medici’s rise to power as partly based on and produced by corruption (Najemy, ‘Machiavelli and the Medici’, 569–72). According to Ianziti, this image of Medician corruption contrasts with Leonardo Brum’s earlier effort to counter the depiction of the Medici as ‘corrupt money-grubbers’, by ‘presenting… [them] as paragons of civic virtue’ (G. Ianziti (2008) ‘Leonardo Bruni, the Medici, and the Florentine Histories’, Journal of the History of Ideas 69 (1), 8.
B. Fontana (2003) ‘Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli’, History of Political Thought XXIV (1), 106–8.
H.C. Mansfield (1996) ‘Introduction’ in Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, p. xxxii.
Machiavelli, Art, I, p. 12; Machiavelli, Arte Delia Guerra, p. 342; M. Jurdjevic (2007) ‘Machiavelli’s Hybrid Republicanism’, English Historical Review CXXII (499), 1243–4.
H.C. Mansfield (1966) Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 31. See, for example, Machiavelli, Art, Preface, p. 3; Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 64.
Machiavelli, Art, II, pp. 78–9, 81; Machiavelli, Arte Delia Guerra, p. 394. Wood suggests a connection here between Machiavelli and Seneca, for whom otium, or leisurely inactivity and listlessness, was opposed to ‘energetic, purposeful conduct’ (N. Wood (1968) ‘Some Common Aspects of the Thought of Seneca and Machiavelli’, Renaissance Quarterly 21 (1), 15).
In contrast to this, on the role of love in Machiavelli, see H. Patapan (2006) Machiavelli in Love: The Modern Politics of Love and Pear (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books).
As Walzer pointed out, the decline of metaphors and symbols was not only a story of destruction but also the creation of new metaphors (M. Walzer (1967) ‘On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought’, Political Science Quarterly 82 (2), 198).
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Buchan, B., Hill, L. (2014). From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perils of Public Office in Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought. In: An Intellectual History of Political Corruption. Political Corruption and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316615_4
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