‘Congiure contro a uno principe’

Abstract

The final chapter examines the relationship between Machiavelli’s work and fifteenth-century literature on conspiracies. The analysis highlights the role that this humanist literature played in the development of Machiavelli’s complex theorization of conspiracies as a political phenomenon, but it also underlines how, although he was influenced by this background, he also radically departed from it. Machiavelli dealt with this political subject in several sections of his works: in particular in his long chapter Delle congiure in the Discorsi (III, 6), which can be considered a comprehensive treatise on plots; in chapter XIX of Il principe; and in some significant chapters of the Istorie fiorentine, where Machiavelli narrates the conspiracies that took place in Italy in the previous centuries. He was the first author to develop a substantial theorization of political plots and he based it on concrete historical examples drawn from previous narratives and from ancient history. Machiavelli’s analysis of conspiracies shares some key elements with the political perspective underlying fifteenth-century literature on plots: his focus on the figure of the prince as the main target of the conspiracy; the importance assigned to the role of the common people and to the issue of building political consensus; the attention paid to internal enemies and internal matters within the state, rather than to the relationship with foreign political forces; the evolution in the analytical approach regarding tyranny and tyrannicide; the centrality of the notion of crimen laesae maiestatis; the emphasis on the negative political outcome of plots.