MACHIAVELLI, Niccolò.

Historie di Nicolo Macchiavelli . . . Nuovamente ammendate, & con somma diligenza ristampate, con licenza de superiori.

‘In Piacenza appresso gli heredi di Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari’ [but London, John Wolfe], 1587. 12mo (135 x 75 mm), pp. [xii], 559, [9]; early limp vellum, soiled. A surreptitious London printing of Machiavelli’s history of Florence. Its publisher, John Wolfe, issued several other of Machiavelli’s works under false imprints. He was notorious for his Machiavellianism and, having been a vigorous opponent of the privileges enjoyed by the Stationers’ Company, subsequently joined the Company and played a prominent part in its affairs, not least in seeking out illicit printers (a contemporary account of his raid on the printing establishment of Thomas Waldegrave, a former associate, refers to ‘John Wolfe, alias Machivill, beadle of the Stationers and most tormenting executioner of Waldegrave’s goods’). Wolfe’s expertise in clandestine printing was enlisted in the service of established authority and he pioneered the use of false imprints for foreign propaganda purposes. See Donaldson, ‘John Wolfe, Machiavelli, and the republican arcana’, in Machiavelli and mystery of state pp. 86–110).Wolfe ‘published Machiavelli surreptitiously and achieved a reputation for Machiavellianism in his own political activities. One cannot make the kind of separation Woodfield [Surreptitious printing in England] does between his “commercial” use of false imprints (including the Machiavelli editions) and the “political” use of the same technique, which Woodfield believes began at Lord Burghley’s suggestion in 1588. It is logical, rather, to see in Wolfe’s propaganda work for the government a further indication that Wolfe had always been keenly aware of the political implications and possibilities of his craft, especially in regard to its capacity to generate texts that were other than they seemed to be. It would be close to the truth to say that for Machiavelli himself, the production of such texts was synonymous with the exercise of political power: to regard the surreptitious printing of Machiavelli by a rebel printer within a year of his reception into the printing establishment as an act with no political significance is to miss an important dimension of Renaissance political discourse. Machiavelli’s influence was not solely a matter of the reception of doctrines and concepts; it is felt also in new patterns in the transmission of political texts, in a transposition from the domain of action to the domain of printing and publication, of Machiavelli’s emphasis upon secrecy, dissimulation, and the effacement of the traces of power’ (Donaldson p. 104).In 1520 Machiavelli at last obtained the patronage of the Medicean court and was formally commissioned to write the history of Florence. ‘The composition of the History of Florence occupied Machiavelli almost for the rest of his life. It is his longest and most leisured work, as well as being the one in which he follows the literary prescriptions of his favourite classical authorities with the greatest care . . . . [It is] organized around the theme of decline and fall. Book I describes the collapse of the Roman empire in the west and the coming of the barbarians to Italy. The end of Book I and the beginning of Book II relate how “new cities and new dominions born among the Roman ruins showed such virtú” that “they freed Italy and defended her from the barbarians”. But after this brief period of modest success, Machiavelli presents the rest of his narrative . . . as a history of progressive corruption and collapse. The nadir is reached in 1494, when the ultimate humiliation occurred: Italy “put herself back into slavery” under the barbarians she had originally succeeded in driving out. The overriding theme of the History of Florence is corruption. Machiavelli describes how its malign influence seized hold of Florence, strangled its liberty, and finally brought it to tyranny and disgrace. As in the Discourses – which he follows closely – he sees two principal areas in which the spirit of corruption is prone to arise, and after drawing a distinction between them in the preface he employs it to organize the whole of his account. First there is a perennial danger of corruption in the handling of “external” policies, the main symptom of which will be a tendency for military affairs to be conducted with increasing indecision and cowardice. And secondly, there is a similar danger in relation to “the things done at home”, where the growth of corruption will mainly be reflected in the form of “civil strife and internal hostilities” . . . ’ (Skinner, Machiavelli pp. 88–94). ‘On the few occasions Machiavelli raises his argument to the theoretical and ideological levels of the Prince and the Discourses, it is merely to rehearse his usual juxtaposition of ancient Rome, that timeless key to political success, and modern Florence, the sorrowful city of wasted opportunities. The Florence of Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine is indeed a tired old city, a humble ass unfit to run with the horses, and most definitely not the stuff of which glorious empires are made’ (Hörnqvist, Machiavelli and empire p. 288).Bertelli & Innocenti XVI/178; STC 17161; Woodfield 33.

• GBP 2,000.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: T2077

• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)