ABSTRACT: Dating The Prince: Beginnings and Endings,

by William J. Connell
One of the subtle ways in which modern scholarship has attempted
to excuse the harsh messages of The Prince has been to say that the
work was never completed to its authors satisfaction. Thus some
have argued that The Prince contains passages that Machiavelli may
well have rethought if given more time or not pressed for a job.
Others have hypothesized that what we have is a still unpolished
draft. New archival evidence permits us to date the presentation of
The Prince to Lorenzo de Medici the Younger in Florence in MayJune 1515. Formal composition of the book must have begun and
been largely finished in 1513, but a number of additions in 1515
show Machiavelli making final touches to his work before
presenting it. Since important elements of The Prince were
anticipated in earlier writings, especially the Ghiribizzi of 1506, it is
impossible to avoid the conclusion that The Prince reflected many
years of thought. At the time of its presentation in 1515 Machiavelli
surely considered the work complete.

Castello Sonnino, formerly Machiavelli, Montespertoli, Italy.

[Photo: Wikimedia Commons]

The Review of Politics 75 (2013), 497514.

University of Notre Dame
doi:10.1017/S0034670513000557

Dating The Prince: Beginnings and Endings

William J. Connell

Lets begin by presenting some newly discovered documents concerning

Niccol Machiavelli. The biographical detail may at rst appear overwhelming, but the light these documents shed on the chronology of Machiavellis
composition of The Prince helps to answer some old questions concerning
the character of Machiavellis little treatise. The new documents date from
the year 1515. They were drawn up at a time of nancial difculty and profound personal disappointment in the life of the former Florentine secretary
and second chancellor. In 1512 Machiavelli had been red from the chancery
of the Florentine Republic. In 1513 he had been arrested on a probably false
charge of conspiracy, tortured (although he gave no confession), and then
unexpectedly freed in a general amnesty following the election of a
Florentine, Giovanni de Medici, as Pope Leo X. In 1515, at the time these
documents were drawn up, Machiavelli was still out of favor. But he was
also putting into prose the theoretical work that established the extraordinary
reputation still associated with him today.
On 3 July 1515 there took place a small family meeting in Florence involving several members of the Machiavelli, including Niccol, the former
Secretary. We know about the meeting from three notarial acts, hitherto
unknown to scholars, that were drawn up in the course of the meeting.1
Those present included the brothers Niccol and Totto, and Battista di
Buoninsegna Machiavelli, the grandson of their grandfathers brother, with
whom the two brothers had a close rapport.2 A more distant relative, a

William J. Connell is Professor and La Motta Chair, Department of History, Seton

Hall University, South Orange, NJ 07079 (william.connell@shu.edu).
They are preserved in Archivio di Stato di Firenze (henceforth ASF), Notarile
antecosimiano (henceforth NA) 1233, fol. 322rv, and will be published in full transcriptions in another context. I am especially grateful to Tommaso Casini for his assistance with this article.
2
Battista di Buoninsegna, Niccols second cousin, was the eldest of two Machiavelli
boys who, after the death of their father, were looked after by Bernardo, the father of
Niccol and Totto, together with their mother. See Bernardo Machiavelli, Libro di
ricordi, ed. Cesare Olschki (Florence: Le Monnier, 1954), 9697 et passim. He is also
mentioned in Thomas Kuehn, Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 105.
1

497

498

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

priest, Prior Battista di Filippo Machiavelli, who was mentioned in the rst act
but not present, joined them later in time to take part in drawing up the
second and third of the documents. A notary from the archbishops curia
was also present, as were two witnesses who belonged to the politically
and socially important Guicciardini and Federighi families.3 The meeting
was held in the home of Niccols younger brother, Totto, in the parish of
Santa Felicita, just across the Ponte Vecchio from the center of Florence. It
was appropriate that they should have met in Tottos house, since his was
the future that was being decided.
The rst of the three documents states that Prior Battista, who had not yet
arrived, proposed to resign his principal ecclesiastical benece, the Priory of
SantAndrea, which was in Montespertoli, a small town south of Florence,
with which the Machiavelli family had historical connections that dated at
least to the fourteenth century. The document accordingly assigned for the
next six months the presentation rightthe right of presenting to the archbishop a new holder of the beneceto a family member, the absent
Lorenzo Machiavelli, once the priory became vacant.4 The priory in
Montespertoli was a reasonably well-endowed church whose patronage
was shared by the Machiavelli with the Captains of the Guelph Party.5 In
fact the Machiavelli family possessed patronage rights to a network of
about a dozen rural churches and oratories outside of Florence. It has been
suggested that Niccol did not take a particular interest in these beneces,
possibly as a consequence of a lack of religious feeling.6 Yet documentation
uncovered more recently has shown that for nearly two decades it was
Niccol who took the lead role in preserving the familys rights over these
churches and in managing appointments to the beneces. As we shall see,

Battista Guicciardini is mentioned in Machiavellis famous letter of 10 December

1513 to Francesco Vettori (Niccol Machiavelli, Lettere, ed. Franco Gaeta, in Opere,
vol. 3 [Turin: UTET, 1984], 425). The second witness, Carlo Federighi, is otherwise
unknown, but he happened to be the subject of a bronze portrait medal done by
Niccol Fiorentino in 1498 now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
4
ASF, NA 1233, fol. 322rv.
5
Luigi Santoni, Raccolta di notizie storiche riguardanti le chiese dellarci-diocesi di Firenze
(Florence: Mazzoni, 1847), 34950. The Machiavelli held two-thirds of the patronage
right and the Captains of the Guelf Party one-third. Unlike the English priory,
which serves a monastic function, the Italian prioria is a simple church that has satellites or other churches subordinate to it.
6
The Machiavelli beneces were described in Gene Brucker, Niccol Machiavelli,
His Lineage, and the Tuscan Church, I Tatti Studies, no. 13 (2010): 7789, who associated Niccols apparent lack of interest in them with his critical attitude toward the
Church. The evidence that Niccol was instead quite active begins with the two
letters of 1497 concerning the benece of S. Maria a Fagna (Machiavelli, Lettere, 63
65). For a tour of the churches around Montespertoli where the Machiavelli held
patronage rights I am most grateful to Giulio Cesare Bucci.

DATING THE PRINCE

499

the intention in this case had been that Niccols brother, Totto, would receive
the Priory from Battista.
But then Prior Battista arrived at Tottos house. A change of plan is evident
in the two further documents that were drawn up that day. First of all, it was
decided that Prior Battista would not have to relinquish his priory. Instead it
was agreed that a different benece would be assigned to Totto, not by Prior
Battista but by Battistas son, Giampiero Machiavelli, who also happened to
be a priest.
It was, to be sure, irregular for a priest, in this case Prior Battista
Machiavelli, to have fathered a sonand yet Battista had two of them.7 It
was also irregular for a priests son, in this case Giampiero Machiavelli, to
serve as a priest. But with a certain frequency these were things that happened in the Church in the decades before and after 1500. Dispensations,
moreover, were obtainable.
Giampiero, the holder of the benece that was now designated for Totto,
had been living in France after leaving Florence in October 1513. At the
time of his departure he had made his father, Prior Battista, his procurator
with full power over his affairs.8 Since the rst document had stated that
Battista intended to resign his own benece, but after he arrived it was
agreed that Giampiero would resign his benece, it seems quite possible
that it was Giampieros assent that made the change possible. Battista, in
other words, would have arrived at the meeting with word from France
that his son was willing to resign the church. The benece that Giampiero
was to resign happened to be the parish church at SantAndrea in
Percussina. The Machiavelli had patronage rights there that they shared
with the parishioners. SantAndrea in Percussina was where Niccol
Machiavellis family farm was locatedthe farm described in Machiavellis
famous letter to Francesco Vettori of 10 December 1513, where Machiavelli
wrote much of The Prince. Prior Battista had himself been the rector there
from at least 1493 down to 1504, when, with the connivance of Niccol, he
had arranged to have the church passed to Giampiero, thus circumventing
the rule that strictly forbade the passing of an ecclesiastical benece from

That Messer Giampiero Machiavelli was the son of Prior Battista di Filippo di Piero
Machiavelli is established above all in ASF, NA 1233, fol. 322v: locaverunt et concesserunt venerando viro domino Baptiste Philippi de Machiavellis priori Sancti Andree
de Montespertulo presenti et conducenti etc., pro se et domino Iohanne Petro et
Alexandro fratribus et liis Baptiste Philippi de Machiavellis. See also ASF, NA
1237, fol. 56v, a compromissum between Giampiero and Alessandro, brothers and
sons of Battista, dated 20 April 1520. Armando F. Verde, Lo Studio orentino, 1473
1503: Ricerche e documenti, 6 vols. in 9 (Florence and Pistoia, 19732010), III:2, p. 849,
mistakenly supposed that Giampiero was the son of Battista di Buoninsegna (see
note 2 above).
8
ASF, NA 1232, fol. 338r (13 October 1513).

500

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

father to son.9 In the second of these three documents of 3 June, Prior Battista,
exercising his powers as procurator, transferred to Niccol Machiavelli the
ability to resign the benece of SantAndrea in Percussina on Giampieros
behalf.10
The church at SantAndrea in Percussina was hardly a prize benece. The
run-down state of the property is evident in the report of an episcopal visitation of 1514: Everything is in bad condition. The lamp before the body of
Christ was not lit. The house of the priest is in ruins, and the churchs condition is deplorable. We are informed that Niccol Machiavelli is the renter
of all [the churchs property].11 The report stated that the church served
one hundred souls (anime) and its income was valued at thirty gold
orins per annumnot a large sum. With the rector Giampiero absent in
France, and with Niccol, the chief tenant, in nancial straits and possibly
in arrears with his rent, it is not surprising that the episcopal visitor found
the church in deplorable condition. The participants in the meeting of 3
July were surely aware of this troubled situation.
After more discussion a third document was drawn up. The witnesses to
the rst two documents were no longer present. It was perhaps convenient
for Niccol and Totto that such patrician friends as Battista Guicciardini
and Carlo Federighi were no longer present, since the third document
involved a socially embarrassing concession. New witnessesa tailor and a
rag-dealerwere called in from the neighborhood so that the notarial act
could be formalized.
The subject of the days third agreement was a ruined castle or castellaccio
that stood next to Battistas priory at Montespertoli.12 More than a century
earlier, in a testament dated 1393, the last castellano had transferred the
Verde, Lo Studio, IV:3, p. 1246, places (the future Prior) Battista di Filippo in the
benece in 1493. For the transferral of the benece to Giampiero in 1504, see Archivio
arcivescovile di Firenze (henceforth AAF), Atti beneciali (henceforth AB) 9, fols.
179v180r. For the prohibition under canon law that the Machiavelli dodged, see c. 3,
X, De liis presbyterorum ordinandis vel non, 1, 17: Non potest lius sacerdotis ecclesiae paternae praeesse. Vanna Arrighi, Machiavelli, Totto, in Dizionario biograco
degli italiani, no. 67 (2006): 106, erred in thinking that Prior Battista was still the
rector in 1515.
10
ASF, NA 1233, fol. 322v, although he had previously been rector down to 1504 (see
the following note).
11
AAF, Visite Pastorali (henceforth VP) 004-1, fol. 69r (26 October 1514): Omnia
[canc.: bene] male se habebant. Lampas non erat accensa ante corpus Christi. Domus
tota ruinosa. Et ecclesia male se habebat. Relatum est Nicolaum de Malchiavellis
tenere ad afctum omnia. Gene Brucker (see his Niccol Machiavelli, 77) kindly
shared a photocopy of the original.
12
For the locations of the castle and the priory and a seventeenth-century dispute
over the land owned by each, see Giulio Cesare Bucci, La misteriosa Rocca o
Castellaccio dei Machiavelli a Montespertoli (Florence: Edizioni IT.COMM, 2006). The
later dispute had its origin in the transaction of 1515 described here.
9

DATING THE PRINCE

501

ownership of the castle to two Machiavelli brothers living in Florence, one of

whom was Niccols great-grandfather.13 In the intervening years various
Machiavelli had ceded their shares of the castle to other members of the
family, chiey through the repudiation of debt-laden inheritances. By 1515
the sole owners of the castle were two pairs of brothers: Niccol and Totto
on the one hand, and Battista di Buoninsegna (not to be confused with
Prior Battista) and his brother Messer Piero, on the other.14 Even as a ruin,
the castle must have been a source of pride. Sold out of the family in the
seventeenth century, it eventually became the home of Sidney Sonnino, a
two-time prime minister of the early twentieth century, whose family built
a new castle on the site that incorporated some of the existing structure.
(See photograph.) Today the Castello Sonnino produces some very ne
wines.
What was agreed upon in the third document was that Niccol and Totto,
with the additional consent of Battista di Buoninsegna and his absent brother,
would lease the castle at Montespertoli to Prior Battista and his two sons,
Messer Giampiero and Alessandro, at no cost, save for two pounds of
white wax that was to be provided each year in acknowledgment of the
lease.15 Although the initial lease was for ve years, later documents
inform us that the castle remained in the hands of Prior Battista and his
heirs for several decades, until the death of Alessandro, the priors second
son, who left his estate to Niccols children.16 Possession of an old castle,
even a ruined one, conferred a great deal of social prestige. It is unlikely
that Niccol Machiavelli would have ceded the castle gratis, as was done
now, to a priest and his two illegitimate sons, without a pressing motive.
Clearly a favor from Prior Battista was anticipated.
What that favor was becomes clear in two documents drawn up on the following day, on 4 July 1515, in the archbishops curia.17 These inform us that
Prior Battista, as his sons procurator, resigned the church at SantAndrea in
Percussina and that Battista di Buoninsegna, acting on behalf of the

13

See ASF, Carte strozziane, ser. 1, 118, in which a copy of the 1393 testament is
inserted along with the records of a dispute of 1428. A summary of the same testament
appears in the ricordanze kept by Ristoro Machiavelli now in the Biblioteca
Marucelliana di Firenze, with the relevant passage quoted in Catherine Atkinson,
Debts, Dowries, Donkeys: The Diary of Niccol Machiavellis Father, Messer Bernardo, in
Quattrocento Florence (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2002), 35n37.
14
The ownership and leasing of the castle is traced reasonably accurately in the
seventeenth-century genealogical tree published at the back of the rst edition of
Bernardo Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, ed. Cesare Olschki (Florence: Le Monnier,
1954). The genealogy was omitted in the recent (2007) reprint of this book.
15
ASF, NA 1233, fols. 322v323r.
16
As stated in the genealogical tree (see note 14 above), next to the ve sons of
Niccol di Bernardo: Questi furno eredi di Alexandro di Batista.
17
AAF, AB 11, fols. 105r106r; and ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 4 July 1515.

502

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Machiavelli patrons, presented the same church to his cousin Totto. The
upshot of the two days of family negotiations was that in exchange for the
free lease of the castle, Totto was to become the rector at the church next to
his brothers house. It had been decided that Totto would become a country
priest.
For Totto this represented a signicant and disappointing reversal. His
initial career plans had not involved the priesthood. Younger than Niccol
by six years, Totto had received a humanistic education under some of the
same teachers as his brother. Then Totto had dedicated himself to commerce.
It is true that at some point prior to 1510 Totto took minor orders. As a formal
matter, this enabled him to accept certain beneces and it left open various
ecclesiastical options.18 But minor orders also involved little commitment.
They made a career in the church a possibility, on short notice, should it
become necessary. Thus it was as a form of insurance that Niccol and
Totto arranged in 1502 for their sixteen-year-old nephew Giovanni
Vernacci, the son of their late sister Primavera, to take minor orders in
Venice. Giovanni became a merchant, however, and there is no indication
that he was interested in an ecclesiastical career.19
Still, after several of Tottos commercial ventures in the eastern
Mediterranean failed, he seems to have altered his career plans.20 In 1510,
he arranged the conrmation in Rome of the minor orders that he had
taken previously, together with his title as a cleric, although he was not a
priest.21 Totto may have sought the conrmation of his status in order to
protect himself from the scandal then affecting his Niccol in Florence regarding the possible illegitimacy of their father, Bernardo. Two years later, in
15121513, it must have been hard for Totto when Niccol lost his job and
Letters from (the future Prior) Battista of 9 November 1503 and from Totto of 21
November 1503 (in Machiavelli, Lettere, 17273, 180) that regard a series of rich beneces in Tuscany have sometimes been read (e.g., Brucker, Niccol Machiavelli, 86) as
indicating Tottos interest in them, but this is debatable. The unnamed holder of the
listed beneces (det danni 64 in 1503) was Niccol Pandolni, bishop of Pistoia,
who was a Medici client. He had been awarded the beneces by the exiled
Giovanni de Medici (but with regress) in order to evade the republics attempted
sequestration of the income.
19
Machiavelli, Lettere, 157, where nostro nipote is Giovanni Vernacci. For the interest his uncles took in him, see ibid., 101. One of these Vernacci in-laws was a priest,
Luca Battista Vernacci, who had held the benece at SantAndrea in Percussina in
1480 or 1481; see Brucker, Niccol Machiavelli, 81 (although not simply a local
cleric).
20
Arrighi, Machiavelli, Totto, 106.
21
ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 5 January 1510, drawn up in Rome, conrms
Tottos minor orders as a clericus, but the document does not involve his ordination
as a priest, as stated in Brucker, Niccol Machiavelli, 86, who followed Oreste
Tommasini, La vita e gli scritti di Niccol Machiavelli, 2 vols. in 3 (Rome: Loescher,
18831911), 1:476.
18

DATING THE PRINCE

503

was then arrested. However the election of Giovanni de Medici as Pope Leo X
in March 1513 appears to have been propitious for Totto, who, together with
his brother, is likely to have known Giovanni de Medici from their boyhood
in pre-1494 Florence, before Giovanni was exiled with the Medici family.
Niccol was freed from prison as a result of the papal election, and even as
he attempted to win some kind of government appointment for himself via
friends in Rome, he also campaigned vigorously for Tottos appointment as
one of the popes familiares.22 The idea, advanced in letter after letter to
Francesco Vettori, was for Totto to receive a position in the papal court
with the possibility of advancement. But that was not what was on offer for
Totto in July 1515.
A position as a prete di contado was frowned upon by Florentines who were
well-off. In 1477, for instance, Giovanni Tornabuoni had asked for Lorenzo
de Medicis help in securing a rich benece for a nephew so that he wont
have to be a country priest.23 Now, in early July 1515, it was clear that
Tottos hopes for a post in the Roman curia had come to naught. Instead of
moving to Rome, Totto would have to become a simple country clericand
in the poor church at the farm of his own family. Totto delayed his ordination
as a priestthe sacerdotal ordination that was required of a church rector
until he was granted a privilege by Pope Leo, on 28 January 1516, permitting
him to become a pluralist, by holding more than one benece, if others were
presented to him.24 Finally, on 2 March 1516, Totto took sacerdotal orders,
taking the customary vows that included celibacy.25 He must have felt helpless when, two months later, on 28 April 1516, Pope Leo assigned to
SantAndreas former rectorGiampiero Machiavelli, who was still in
Francean annual pension of eight gold ducats that were to be subtracted
from the churchs meager revenues.26
The documents presented above tell us that the Machiavelli brothers were
facing a major crisis in the summer of 1515. To be sure, the concession at no
cost of the old castle in Montespertoli was mostly a symbolic matter. But
Tottos decision to become a country priest was an irrevocable one. It is true
that ve years later, after his brother Niccol was restored to the good
22
Niccol Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, 13 March 1513, in Lettere, 361: Voi
sapete in che grado si truova messer Totto nostro. Io lo raccomando a voi et a
Pagolo [Vettori] generalmente. Desidera solo, lui et io, questo particulare: di essere
posto in tra i familiari del papa, e scritto nel suo rotolo, et averne la patente; di che
vi preghiamo.
23
Brucker, Niccol Machiavelli, 82, citing Verde, Lo Studio, III:1, pp. 55455: che
non abbia essere prete di contado.
24
ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 28 January 1516, cited by Arrighi, Machiavelli,
Totto, 1067.
25
Tottos priestly ordination is recorded in ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 2 March
1516, cited by Arrighi, Machiavelli, Totto, 1067.
26
ASF, NA 1235, fols. 167v168r.

504

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

graces of the Medici, Totto found other opportunities for advancement.27 But
in July 1515 Totto could not have known that that would be the case.
The difculty the two brothers faced explains the anguish evident in the
only letters from Niccol that survive from the second half of 1515. To put
them in perspective, earlier in 1515, on 31 January, Niccol had been ecstatic
about what seemed a likely appointment with Giuliano de Medici, thanks to
some assistance from Francesco Vettoris brother Paolo.28 But after months of
silence, the next letter that we have from Niccol is only a very brief note of 18
August, addressed to his nephew Giovanni Vernacci, who was then working
in the wool trade at Pera, near Istanbul. The tone is completely different from
that of the hopeful letter of January:
Carissimo Giovanni. Se io non ti ho scritto per lo addietro, non voglio che
tu ne accusi n me, n altri, ma solamente i tempi, i quali sono di sorte che
mi hanno fatto sdimenticare di me medesimo.
Dearest Giovanni, If I have not written to you earlier, I do not want you
to blame either me or anyone else, but only the times; they have been
and still areof such a sort that they have made me forget even myself.29

As Hugo Jaeckel once observed of this letter, these are the words of a man
still suffering from shock.30
The August letter was followed in November by an even darker letter,
again to Vernacci:
Carissimo Giovanni. . La fortuna non mi ha lasciato altro che i parenti e
gli amici, et io ne fo capitale, e massime di quelli che pi mi attengono,
come sei tu, dal quale io spero, quando la fortuna ti inviasse a qualche faccenda onorevole, che tu renderesti il cambio a miei gliuoli de portamenti miei verso di te.
In 1520 he became familiare, domestico and continuo commensale of Cardinal
Giovanni Salviati, and he is recorded as doing administrative work in the Florentine
Studio at Pisa at that time (Arrighi, Machiavelli, Totto, 106).
28
Machiavelli, Lettere, 48891.
29
Machiavelli, Lettere, 492, here following the English translation in Machiavelli and
His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, trans. James B. Atkinson and David Sices
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 314.
30
Hugo Jaeckel, What Is Machiavelli Exhorting in His Exhortatio? The
Extraordinaries, in Niccol Machiavelli: Politico storico letterato, ed. Jean-Jacques
Marchand (Rome: Salerno, 1996), 83. Jaeckels attempt to read The Prince with a
view to Machiavellis alleged cheering on of Francis Is invasion runs into the obstacle
of Leo Xs hostility to the French. Corrado Vivanti, Intorno a Machiavelli, in his
Incontri con la storia: Politica, cultura e societ nellEuropa moderna, ed. Miguel Gotor
and Gabriele Pedull (Formello: Edizioni SEAM, 2001), 121, notes that it is unlikely
that someone hoping for service with the Medici would have wanted to demonstrate
the popes errors in such a fashion. What Jaeckel calls The Extraordinaries of chapter
26 more likely refer to the return of the Medici to Florence and to Leos subsequent
election.
27

DATING THE PRINCE

505

Dearest Giovanni. . Fortune has left me nothing but my family and

my friends I trust that, should Fortune send some honorable business
affairs your way, you will do unto my children as I have done unto you.31

It appears from the correspondence as though there was a great disappointment that befell Machiavelli between the end of January and the middle of
August in 1515. Our new documents, which are from early July, indeed
show the brothers relying only on a small number of family and
friends. They would appear to be related to this disappointment. We
dont have a letter that says what Machiavellis disappointment might have
been. But Machiavellis ring in 1512 and his arrest and subsequent release
in 1513 were several years in the past. What new event or events might
have pushed the two brothers to the extremes outlined in these new documents? There is a good likelihood that the difculty the brothers now faced
were the diminished expectations that resulted from the failure of
Machiavellis dedication of The Prince to Lorenzo de Medici the Younger.
***
Long ago it was pointed out by Gennaro Sasso that the arguments advanced by
scholars concerning the dating of Machiavellis composition of The Prince and
Discourses were often related to the hypotheses these same scholars had proposed concerning Machiavellis purpose in writing his treatise.32 What
Machiavelli meant to do or to show in The Prince has been a matter of contention
almost from the time the small book rst began to circulate. Some have said that
Machiavelli was secretly advancing an antimonarchical, republican thesis in
The Prince. Others have said that the book offers forthright advice for rulers.
Some have characterized The Prince as an exception in Machiavellis oeuvre,
while others think it is part and parcel of his thought. The early negative reception of The Prince in many quarters, even while the work was still in manuscript,
seems to have led Machiavelli himself to muddy the waters since late in his life
he is reported to have excused the work to friends as having been written with a
secretly democratic or anti-Medicean agenda.33 Given these disagreements,
many scholars have imagined, not unreasonably, that Machiavellis intentions
might more satisfactorily be discovered if it could be established to a more
precise degree when, and under what circumstances, Machiavelli composed
The Prince. Thus some scholars have said that the work was composed in a
brief time and rushed, and that therefore it contains regrettable lapses. Others
have argued that it was laboriously reworked and remained more or less a
work in progressand therefore contains regrettable lapses. Others have
31

Machiavelli, Lettere, 492; Machiavelli and His Friends, 315.

Gennaro Sasso, Niccol Machiavelli: Storia del suo pensiero politico, rev. ed. (Bologna:
Il Mulino, 1980), 31420.
33
As in the remarks attributed to Machiavelli by his friends who discussed The Prince
with Cardinal Pole, and in the anecdote preserved by Riccardo Riccardi.
32

506

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

maintained that it is a perfected rhetorical gem: The Prince, they think, corresponds well with the authors aims, and it contains no serious aws. By now
so much has been written on the dating of The Prince that Paul Larivaille recently
called it a rompicapo, or puzzle, awaiting its Rosetta Stone.34 Yet, as the
analogy suggests, this does not mean that progress is impossible. As will be
shown, the new evidence that has been presented helps better to establish an
end date for the works composition. But to understand the extent to which
The Prince should be seen as a considered and nished work of prose it will
be of use, rst, to review what is known concerning the works beginnings.
Machiavellis famous letter to Vettori dated 10 December 1513 and written
from Florencenot from the farm he describes, as is commonly supposed
announces that he has written and is revising and adding to a work on principalities (de principatibus).35 Machiavelli almost certainly began writing his
treatise in 1513, in the period between his release from prison on 13 March
and the letter to Vettori of 10 December. The notion that The Prince was
hastily written in 1513, in extreme circumstances, with precise aims, and
after apparently little reection, was advanced most notably by Federico
Chabod. He doesnt say it outright, but it seems clear that Chabod was
looking for a way to excuse what he found morally objectionable in The
Prince.36 The idea was further developed by Hans Baron to excuse as an aberration what Baron thought only a eeting endorsement of princely rule,
written in a time of dire necessity, in a career otherwise dedicated to republican ideals.37 Supposedly the work was a hasty exercise, the moral implications of which were not completely thought through by its author. But
these views can be dismissed in a fairly denitive way as a consequence of
Jean-Jacques Marchands discovery of the autograph draft of Machiavellis
remarkable draft letter to Giovanni Battista Soderini of September 1506,
known as the Ghiribizzi, or Caprices for Soderini.38 Previously known

34
Paul Larivaille, In attesa della Stele di Rosetta: Appunti sulla cronistoria di un
rompicapo machiavelliano, Filologia e critica 34, no. 2 (2009): 261.
35
Machiavelli, Lettere, 42328. On the text of the letter and on Machiavellis circumstances in 1513, see William J. Connell, New Light on Machiavellis Letter to Vettori,
10 December 1513, in Europa e Italia: Studi in onore di Giorgio Chittolini / Europe and
Italy: Studies in Honour of Giorgio Chittolini (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011),
93127.
36
Federico Chabod, Del Principe di Niccol Machiavelli (1925), in Scritti su
Machiavelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), 29135, and Chabod, Sulla composizione de Il
Principe di Niccol Machiavelli (1927), in Scritti, 13793.
37
Hans Baron, Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince, in In
Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern
Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 2: 10151.
38
Marchand brought the autograph to the attention of Roberto Ridol, who published it. See Roberto Ridol and Paolo Ghiglieri, I Ghiribizzi al Soderini, La
Bibliolia 72, no. 1 (1970): 5374.

DATING THE PRINCE

507

from a poor transcription made by Machiavellis grandson Giuliano de Ricci,

the Ghiribizzi had been ascribed to 15121513 and thought to be addressed to
Pier Soderini, the former Florentine head of state. The Ghiribizzi anticipate
many of the ideas later to be found in The Prince that concern matters
ranging from fortications to Fortuna, so that dating the draft to 1506
makes clear Machiavellis long-standing engagement with the issues he was
treating in 1513 in The Prince. As Roberto Ridol put it:
Lanticipazione dei Ghiribizzi dallinverno 15121513 al settembre del 1506
porta un grosso scompiglio nella biograa del Machavelli e nella storia del
suo pensiero: forse la maggiore novit che vi si sia veduta da pi di un
secolo a questa parte. Concetti che gi stupivano per la precocit loro rispetto al Principe e ai Discorsi vengono in tal modo retrodatati di addiritura
sei anni.
The redating of the Ghiribizzi from the winter of 15121513 to September
1506 results in a huge overhaul for Machiavellis biography and the
history of his thought. It is perhaps the greatest discovery that has been
seen in this eld for more than a century. Concepts that [in 15121513]
were already considered early anticipations of The Prince and Discourses
now have to be dated six years earlier.39

It is worth noting, too, that the Ghiribizzi were addressed to the nephew of
Florences own quasi prince, or principe civile: Pier Soderini, the republics
Life Standard-Bearer was a head of state who was childless, with the result
that the children of his late older brother Paolantonio received special consideration, both in Florence and abroad. This gives the draft letter philosophical and pedagogical dimensions that are consonant with the dedication of The
Prince to Lorenzo de Medici the Younger and the earlier planned dedication
to Giuliano de Medici. Moreover, Machiavellis substantial insertions on the
draftwhich is brimming over with corrections, marginal scribblings, and
added sections, indicate that he worked at it over some period of time.
Since he preserved this particular draft, although he did not generally keep
minutes or copies of his letters, the possibility that Machiavelli may have
referred to the Ghiribizzi when he was later writing The Prince in 1513
cannot be excluded. To call the Ghiribizzi a rst sketch of the later work
seems not inaccurate.
Still, our rst denite evidence that Machiavelli was specically writing the
work titled De principatibus is from December 1513. At what point he began
writing The Prince is not clear. With good reason most scholars think the
book was at least begun by late August of 1513, although, as has already
been stated, many of the books ideas had been percolating in Machiavellis
mind since at least 1506. Most importantly, the idea that the treatise was
written in unthinking haste is now impossible of acceptance. But did he
ever consider it nished?
39

Roberto Ridol, Vita di Niccol Machiavelli, 7th ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1978), 478.

508

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Another way of defending a text that engenders difculties is to say that it

remained in some respects unnished. Such would appear to be the defense
implicit in the arguments offered over several decades by Mario Martelli.
According to Martelli, although the book was begun in 1513, it only
entered a nal draft phase in the last months of 1518, when Machiavelli allegedly turned it from a technical work into an aggressive treatise stating the political program for a coup dtat that was being planned by Lorenzo the
Younger.40 For Martelli The Prince was still an open work (opera aperta). In
1518, he argued, unnished and still up in the air, [the book] was corrected
and patched up (possibly not by the author alone) so that it could be given out
to the public. And even so it was not published until after 1532, ve years
after the authors death. Thus, for Martelli, The Prince remained to the end a
work that was never completed to its authors satisfaction.41
Martellis position has not won much support. It has been objected that the
work did circulate rather widely in manuscript and that the early manuscripts
offer a fairly consistent text. And the early readers of The Prince in manuscript,
beginning in 1516not 1518 as Martelli would have itseem to agree on the
passages that interested them. Finally, although Machiavelli is reported to
have defended The Prince in several ways, he is never said to have complained
that it was unnishedthat it was ripped untimely from his hands.
But when was it nished? The rst known reading of The Prince by a contemporary of Machiavellis can be dated in the rst months of 1516. At that
time Francesco Guicciardini was writing his Discorso del modo di assicurare lo
stato ai Medici, a work that engages The Prince on a series of points that are
immediately recognizable.42 So The Prince was almost certainly completed
by 1516, and probably, as we shall see, somewhat earlier. But how much
earlier? Some scholars, most notably Gennaro Sasso and Giorgio Inglese,
have been persuaded by rhetorical and stylistic considerations that The
Prince is a tightly unied and coherent work completed in its entirety by
the summer of 1514. There is indeed good reason to think that the work
was in most respects complete by then.43 But, meanwhile, evidence has also
Mario Martelli, Da Poliziano a Machiavelli: Sullepigramma dellOccasione e
sulloccasione, Interpres 2 (1979): 23054. Larivaille, In attesa, offers the best
account of the development of Martellis theory.
41
Mario Martelli, Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccol Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno
Editrice, 1997), 1819.
42
Brian Richardson, The Prince and Its Early Readers, in Niccol Machiavellis The
Prince: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Martin Coyle (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1995), 25; Larivailles (In attesa) suggested terminus a quo of
between June 1516 and 8 October 1516 is undermined by the evidence of the
Guicciardinian Discorsoevidence that he himself admits.
43
Connell, New Light, 103 and 12023, suggests that elements found in chapters
19 and 25 of The Prince are already found in Machiavellis letter to Vettori of 10
December 1513. Robert Black, Notes on the Date and Genesis of Machiavellis
40

DATING THE PRINCE

509

been mounting to the effect that Machiavelli must have made minor revisions
in the rst half of 1515.
In an article that was published posthumously, Hans Baron noted that in
chapter 26 of The Prince, Machiavelli follows a remark concerning tante
guerre fatte nei passati venti anni (so many wars that have been waged in
the past twenty years) with a list of battles that begins with the battle of
Fornovo on the Taro, which was fought on 6 July 1495.44 Twenty years after
1495 puts us in July 1515. Some ambiguity remains, however, since the reference to guerre, as Sasso once correctly noted, could also indicate the initial
French invasion of 1494 and thus indicate Sassos preferred date of 1514.
Passages that can be more securely called alterations appear in remarks in
chapters 3 and 16 relating to Louis XII of France. An intervention in chapter 3
that suggests a date was rst noted in my own English translation of The
Prince, published in 2005. When Machiavelli discusses the cinque errori
(the ve mistakes) made by Louis XII of France in his invasion of Italy, he
writes Even these errors could not have harmed him, if he had lived. The
phrase if he had lived (vivendo lui) surely refers to the death of Louis,
who expired during the night of 31 December 1514 and 1 January 1515, so
surely the passage must have been inserted after that date.45 As Martelli
already pointed out in a study of chapter 3 published in 1981, there are
several paragraphs regarding Louiss policies in Italy that appear slightly
out of order from a logical and stylistic perspective. They suggest that the
author returned to his text and intervened in a second moment without
having reread the existing text.46 Robert Black in a recent article accepts
that vivendo lui is a later insertion, and he points, too, to the deletion in
certain manuscripts of the word presente appearing in the phrase el re di
Francia presente of chapter 16. Since there was no effort in the manuscripts
to eliminate the word presente from a similar mention, also in chapter 16, of
Ferdinand of Spain (el re di Spagna presente) and since Ferdinand died
on 23 January 1516, Black correctly concludes that the two alterations regarding Louis (the insertion of vivendo lui and the elimination of presente) must

De principatibus, in Europa e Italia, 31, writes: It is clear that Machiavellis efforts to ll

out the text did not extend beyond the spring of 1514.
44
Hans Baron, The Principe and the Puzzle of the Date of Chapter 26, Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21, no. 1 (1991): 83102. Why Baron never published
the article is not clear. Possibly he realized that if it were recognized that Machiavelli
was working seriously on The Prince in 1515, two years after the famous letter to
Vettori, it would undermine his prior argument (see note 26 above) that The Prince represented a temporary deviation for the otherwise republican Machiavelli.
45
William J. Connell, introduction to The Prince with Related Documents, ed. Connell
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005), 19, 33n32, 49n26.
46
Mario Martelli, La struttura deformata: Sulla diacronia del cap. III del Principe,
Studi di lologia italiana, no. 39 (1981): 77120.

510

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

have been made between 1 January 1515 and 23 January 1516.47 But the
events of that year were dramatic for Florence and for Italy. It was also the
time, most scholars believe, when Machiavelli was busily writing his
Discourses on Livy, which he referenced in chapters 2 and 8. If at all possible,
one would like to be able to further narrow the range of the period within
which The Prince was put in nal form.
The reference to Louiss death in chapter 3 is the last item mentioned in The
Prince that can be assigned a solid date. Not all will agree, however. Recently
Robert Black reprised an idea of Federico Chabodan idea that Chabod
himself later retractedconcerning a passage in chapter 14, when
Machiavelli writes that Francesco Sforza, because he was armed, from
being a private man became duke of Milan; his sons, because they ed the
hardships of arms, from being dukes became private men (Francesco
Sforza, per essere armato, di privato divent duca di Milano; e gliuoli, per
fuggire e disagi delle arme, di duchi diventorono privati). Black, following
Chabods original view, reads gliuoli here not in its direct sense as sons,
which is the accepted reading, but instead as descendants. He then reads
the passage as one in which Machiavelli refers to recent events concerning
the Sforza dynasty: in August 1512, at the Congress of Mantua,
Massimiliano Sforza, the grandson of Francesco Sforza, was awarded the
Duchy of Milan; and on 1213 September 1515, after the Battle of
Marignano, Massimiliano lost the Duchy. According to Black, Machiavellis
passage could only have been written after Massimiliano was defeated at
Marignano. He thus dates the nal version of The Prince between the
period shortly after Marignano in September 1515 and the death of
Ferdinand of Spain on 23 January 1516.
But dating the completion of The Prince after Marignano brings with it new
difculties. To begin with, as Hans Baron pointed out, Machiavelli does not
mention Marignano in The Prince: neither in the twenty-year list of
battles in chapter 26, nor elsewhere.48 Marignano, moreover, seen from a
broader perspective, was a decisive battle and an afrmation of French
power. As Carlo Dionisotti points out, had the tremendous French victory
at Marignano already occurred, Machiavellis exhortation to liberate Italy
from the barbarians would have appeared ridiculous.49 A more secure
reading of the passage concerning the gliuoli of Francesco Sforza avoids
these difculties and perhaps even explains why Chabod retracted the suggestion that Black has made his own. If we read gliuoli in its primary
sense, as referring not to Francesco Sforzas grandson Massimiliano, but to
his real sons, Galeazzo Maria, Ludovico, and Ascanio, Machiavellis
message becomes quite clear. It was Galeazzo Maria who chose to abandon

Black, Notes on the Date, 3334.

Baron, The Principe.
49
Carlo Dionisotti, Machiavelleria ultima, Rivista storica italiana, no. 107 (1995): 2223.
47
48

DATING THE PRINCE

511

the military lifestyle of his condottiere father, Francesco, becoming instead a

corrupt devotee of luxury while earning the reputation that led to his assassination as a tyrant. Massimiliano, on the other hand, was raised in exile in
Flanders, at the imperial court, and was never in a position from which he
could choose to abandon the armed way of life of his grandfather.50
Galeazzo Marias brothers, Ludovico and Ascanio, are, moreover, nicely captured by Machiavellis use of the plural gliuoli, since these two sons of
Francesco were bound closely together, rst in the loss of Milan in
September 1499, then in their brief recovery of the city in February 1500,
and nally in their denitive loss of it in April 1500.51 At this point, it
seems only logical to accept that the plural gliuoli does not refer to
Francescos grandson Massimilianoand to embrace, for the reasons
already stated, the hypothesis of Baron and Dionisotti that The Prince must
have been nished prior to the Battle of Marignano in September 1515.
A preliminary range of dates during which The Prince must have been put
into nal form has now been established on the basis of internal textual evidence. The work must have been completed between 1 January 1515 (the
death of Louis XII) and 13 September 1515 (the Battle of Marignano). But it
may be possible even further to narrow the suggested period if we look
beyond the text to the evidence concerning the treatises dedication.
Machiavellis famous letter to Vettori of 10 December 1513 indicated that he
was intending to dedicate The Prince to Giuliano de Medici. Moreover, as
already noted, on 31 January 1515, Machiavelli wrote a letter to Francesco
Vettori concerning the likelihood that he would be appointed to a position
with Giuliano de Medici in what he anticipated would be the government
of a principality in north-central Italy. Machiavelli was still hoping for a position with Giuliano. So it is unlikely, as Dionisotti pointed out, that
Machiavelli had already at that date changed the works dedication,
naming Giulianos nephew, Lorenzo the Younger.52 Thus the hope for a position with Giuliano remained alive at least until 14 February 1515, the date of
a letter from Pietro Ardinghelli to Giuliano de Medici. It was a letter that forwarded instructions from Cardinal Giulio de Medici prohibiting Giuliano
from employing Niccol Machiavelli.53 Whether or how the veto was communicated to Machiavelli is not known. But until that point it would not
have made sense for Machiavelli to be dedicating a work on princely rule
50

My thanks to Marcello Simonetta for a suggestion to this effect.

For the way in which these events brought the brothers together, see Marco
Pellegrini, Ascanio Maria Sforza. La parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del rinascimento, 2 vols. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 2002), 2: 764, who
writes: La solidariet fraterna con il Moro e con loperazione dinastica da lui [i.e.
Ascanio] compiuta scatt nel cardinale proprio nel momento della catastrofe che
piomb addosso a entrambi, dopo una vita di innite contese.
52
Dionisotti, Machiavelleria ultima, 2425.
53
Published in Tommasini, Vita e scritti, II:2, pp. 106465.
51

512

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

to Lorenzo while hoping for employment with Giuliano. In all likelihood it

was Paolo Vettori or his brother Francesco who communicated to
Machiavelli the fact that he would not be receiving a post with Giuliano. In
the period 15141515 the two brothers, both working mostly in Rome, had
in almost opportunistic fashion divided between them the sources of
Medici patronage. Paolo, who was one of those who had initiated the coup
that led to the ight of Pier Soderini and the return of the Medici to
Florence, had attached himself to the popes brother Giuliano. Meanwhile
Francesco, while serving as Florentine ambassador in Rome, had become a
trusted companion of the popes nephew, Lorenzo the Younger.54 The fact
that The Prince as we now have it is dedicated to Lorenzo is our surest indication that Machiavelli was in some way informed that a post with
Giuliano would not be forthcoming and that his best chance for employment
lay with Lorenzo the Younger. Another consequence seems to have been an
audience with Lorenzo where he could present his work.
That there was actually an audience with Lorenzo in which Machiavelli
presented the young prince with the nal version of his treatise nds reasonable conrmation in an anecdote written down late in the sixteenth century
by the Florentine Riccardo Riccardi. The passage reads as follows:
Niccol Machiavelli presented to [Lorenzo di] Piero de Medici his book
on The Prince. And it counted against him that he happened to give it to
him at the same time that a brace of hunting dogs was given to him,
whereupon Lorenzo gave greater thanks and responded in a friendlier
way to the man who had given him the dogs than to Machiavelli.
Hence Machiavelli went away offended. And he had occasion to say,
among his friends, that he was not the kind of man to make conspiracies
against princes, but that, all the same, if [the Medici] observed his methods
[in The Prince], they would see that conspiracies resulted from it, as if he
meant to say that his book would get him his revenge.

The anecdote, which was rst published by Edoardo Alvisi in 1883, is sometimes challenged as apocryphal.55 To be sure, its author, Riccardo Riccardi,
who lived from 1558 to 1612, was writing long after Machiavellis death.
But Riccardi was a Florentine with connections. And the fact that the anecdote
is known only from Riccardis Ricordi lessens the chance that it was merely
invented to be shopped around for literary purposes. The second part of
the anecdote (And he had occasion to say, among his friends) is somewhat similar to Reginald Poles remarks of 1539, based also on comments
from Machiavellis friends, which suggests that some of the same friends
54

Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant
(London: Athlone, 1972), 103: Of the two Vettori brothers, it was Paolo who was on
good terms with Giuliano.
55
Niccol Machiavelli, Lettere familiari, ed. Edoardo Alvisi (Florence: Sansoni, 1883),
p. XIV.

DATING THE PRINCE

513

were the source of Riccardis anecdote. Both Pole and Riccardi agree in presenting a Machiavelli who retailed the story that he wrote The Prince with a
view to making the Medici more tyrannical and unpopular, hoping that that
would lead to their overthrow. It was and is an unlikely explanation, but
the audacity and the implicit humor are characteristic of the Florentine
secretary.
What is more important for our present purpose, however, is that the
Riccardi anecdote would seem to conrm that there was an actual presentation to Lorenzo, which moreover would have been customary, thus
marking a date at which the treatise was nalized in its present form. The
anecdote is true to what we know of Lorenzo the Younger, whose mother,
Alfonsina, complained in a letter that the young man was more interested
in hunting than in nding a wife.56 If there had been no such presentation,
Machiavelli had close friends, like Francesco Guicciardini, who survived
him by many years, and who would have been in a position to deny it.
The presentation to Lorenzo of the nalized text of The Prince would have
occurred most naturally in the period soon after Lorenzos return to Florence,
in the company of Francesco Vettori, on 15 May 1515.57 Lorenzo, who had
been absent in Rome, was now returning with the express mission of organizing the Florentine military. Francesco Vettori, moreover, was advising
Lorenzo on the militia, which was precisely Machiavellis area of expertise.
It would have been logical at this point to have introduced to Lorenzo the
former chancellor of the Nine of Militia.
Let us return now to the archival documents that were mentioned at the
outset. It seems clear that the family meeting that resulted in Tottos assuming
a career as an ecclesiastic had been called with the intention of stabilizing the
nancial and social position of the two Machiavelli brothers. The hopes that
Niccol had had for himself and his brother in January 1515 were not to be
realized. Niccols employment with the Medici was no longer on the
tableand neither was Tottos. The Prince, considered as a job application,
had failed. These new notarial documents, like the letters to his nephew
Vernacci, show that for Machiavelli it was a time for saving what could be
saved, relying only on his closest family and friends. Given the straitened circumstances of the Machiavelli brothers, Prior Battista had indicated that he
was willing to resign to Totto his priory at Montespertoli. But it is likely
that word had also been sent to Giampiero in Paris. So, when Battista
arrived at the meeting on 3 July, he brought the news that Giampiero

56

Gaetano Pieraccini, La stirpe de Medici di Cafaggiolo: Saggio di ricerche sulla trasmissione ereditaria dei caratteri biologici (1924; repr., Florence: Nardini, 1986), 1: 22526.
57
Hilde Reinhard, Lorenzo von Medici, Herzog von Urbino, 14921515: Ein biographischer Versuch unter besonderer Bercksichtigung der Vermittlerrole Lorenzos zwischen
Leo X. und Franz I. von Frankreich im Jahre 1515 (Freiburg i. B.: Jos. Waibel, 1935), 48.

514

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

would cede to Totto the church of SantAndrea in Percussina where Totto

could become a country priest.
Let me conclude. The Prince was not a hastily composed work. It was a
deeply considered work that should be seen as originating in ideas that
Machiavelli rst attempted to put down in writing in 1506. In 1513 and
1514 Machiavelli reformulated these ideas in the context of a treatise de principatibus that he hoped would win him employment with Giuliano de
Medici. He made small revisions to the work in the rst half of 1515, when
the dedicatee was changed from Giuliano de Medici to Lorenzo the
Younger. The Prince is not a work that has come down to us in an incomplete
or unsatisfactory form. It must have been complete to the satisfaction of the
author, insofar as an author can ever be satised, at the time of its presentation to Lorenzo the Younger. To be sure, Machiavelli would later regret
his work, but that is not the same thing as leaving it unnished. And,
nally, the presentation of The Princethe meeting between Machiavelli
and his dedicateeshould now be dated sometime between Lorenzos
arrival in Florence on 15 May 1515 and the unhappy family meeting that
took place in the house of Totto Machiavelli in Florence on 3 July 1515.