Dating The Prince: Beginnings and Endings

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 author’s 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 May-June 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]

Dating The Prince: Beginnings and Endings

William J. Connell

Let’s begin by presenting some newly discovered documents concerningNiccolò Machiavelli. The biographical detail may at first appear overwhelm-ing, but the light these documents shed on the chronology of Machiavelli’scomposition of The Prince helps to answer some old questions concerningthe character of Machiavelli’s little treatise. The new documents date fromthe year 1515. They were drawn up at a time of financial difficulty and pro-found personal disappointment in the life of the former Florentine secretaryand second chancellor. In 1512 Machiavelli had been fired from the chanceryof the Florentine Republic. In 1513 he had been arrested on a probably falsecharge of conspiracy, tortured (although he gave no confession), and thenunexpectedly freed in a general amnesty following the election of aFlorentine, Giovanni de’ Medici, as Pope Leo X. In 1515, at the time thesedocuments were drawn up, Machiavelli was still out of favor. But he wasalso putting into prose the theoretical work that established the extraordinaryreputation still associated with him today.On 3 July 1515 there took place a small family meeting in Florence invol-

ving several members of the Machiavelli, including Niccolò, the formerSecretary. We know about the meeting from three notarial acts, hithertounknown to scholars, that were drawn up in the course of the meeting.1

Those present included the brothers Niccolò and Totto, and Battista diBuoninsegna Machiavelli, the grandson of their grandfather’s brother, withwhom 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, SetonHall University, South Orange, NJ 07079 ([email protected]).

1They are preserved in Archivio di Stato di Firenze (henceforth “ASF”), Notarileantecosimiano (henceforth “NA”) 1233, fol. 322r–v, and will be published in full tran-scriptions in another context. I am especially grateful to Tommaso Casini for his assist-ance with this article.

2Battista di Buoninsegna, Niccolò’s second cousin, was the eldest of twoMachiavelliboys who, after the death of their father, were looked after by Bernardo, the father ofNiccolò and Totto, together with their mother. See Bernardo Machiavelli, Libro diricordi, ed. Cesare Olschki (Florence: Le Monnier, 1954), 96–97 et passim. He is alsomentioned in Thomas Kuehn, Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 105.

The Review of Politics 75 (2013), 497–514.© University of Notre Damedoi:10.1017/S0034670513000557

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priest, Prior Battista di FilippoMachiavelli, who wasmentioned in the first actbut not present, joined them later in time to take part in drawing up thesecond and third of the documents. A notary from the archbishop’s curiawas also present, as were two witnesses who belonged to the politicallyand socially important Guicciardini and Federighi families.3 The meetingwas held in the home of Niccolò’s younger brother, Totto, in the parish ofSanta Felicita, just across the Ponte Vecchio from the center of Florence. Itwas appropriate that they should have met in Totto’s house, since his wasthe future that was being decided.The first of the three documents states that Prior Battista, who had not yet

arrived, proposed to resign his principal ecclesiastical benefice, the Priory ofSant’Andrea, which was in Montespertoli, a small town south of Florence,with which the Machiavelli family had historical connections that dated atleast to the fourteenth century. The document accordingly assigned for thenext six months the presentation right—the right of presenting to the arch-bishop a new holder of the benefice—to a family member, the absentLorenzo Machiavelli, once the priory became vacant.4 The priory inMontespertoli was a reasonably well-endowed church whose patronagewas shared by the Machiavelli with the Captains of the Guelph Party.5 Infact the Machiavelli family possessed patronage rights to a network ofabout a dozen rural churches and oratories outside of Florence. It has beensuggested that Niccolò did not take a particular interest in these benefices,possibly as a consequence of a lack of religious feeling.6 Yet documentationuncovered more recently has shown that for nearly two decades it wasNiccolò who took the lead role in preserving the family’s rights over thesechurches and in managing appointments to the benefices. As we shall see,

3Battista Guicciardini is mentioned in Machiavelli’s famous letter of 10 December1513 to Francesco Vettori (Niccolò Machiavelli, Lettere, ed. Franco Gaeta, in Opere,vol. 3 [Turin: UTET, 1984], 425). The second witness, Carlo Federighi, is otherwiseunknown, but he happened to be the subject of a bronze portrait medal done byNiccolò Fiorentino in 1498 now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

4ASF, NA 1233, fol. 322r–v.5Luigi Santoni, Raccolta di notizie storiche riguardanti le chiese dell’arci-diocesi di Firenze

(Florence: Mazzoni, 1847), 349–50. The Machiavelli held two-thirds of the patronageright 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 satel-lites or other churches subordinate to it.

6The Machiavelli benefices were described in Gene Brucker, “Niccolò Machiavelli,His Lineage, and the Tuscan Church,” I Tatti Studies, no. 13 (2010): 77–89, who associ-ated Niccolò’s apparent lack of interest in them with his critical attitude toward theChurch. The evidence that Niccolò was instead quite active begins with the twoletters of 1497 concerning the benefice of S. Maria a Fagna (Machiavelli, Lettere, 63–65). For a tour of the churches around Montespertoli where the Machiavelli heldpatronage rights I am most grateful to Giulio Cesare Bucci.

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the intention in this case had been that Niccolò’s brother, Totto, would receivethe Priory from Battista.But then Prior Battista arrived at Totto’s house. A change of plan is evident

in the two further documents that were drawn up that day. First of all, it wasdecided that Prior Battista would not have to relinquish his priory. Instead itwas agreed that a different benefice would be assigned to Totto, not by PriorBattista but by Battista’s son, Giampiero Machiavelli, who also happened tobe a priest.It was, to be sure, irregular for a priest, in this case Prior Battista

Machiavelli, to have fathered a son—and yet Battista had two of them.7 Itwas also irregular for a priest’s son, in this case Giampiero Machiavelli, toserve as a priest. But with a certain frequency these were things that hap-pened in the Church in the decades before and after 1500. Dispensations,moreover, were obtainable.Giampiero, the holder of the benefice that was now designated for Totto,

had been living in France after leaving Florence in October 1513. At thetime of his departure he had made his father, Prior Battista, his procuratorwith full power over his affairs.8 Since the first document had stated thatBattista intended to resign his own benefice, but after he arrived it wasagreed that Giampiero would resign his benefice, it seems quite possiblethat it was Giampiero’s assent that made the change possible. Battista, inother words, would have arrived at the meeting with word from Francethat his son was willing to resign the church. The benefice that Giampierowas to resign happened to be the parish church at Sant’Andrea inPercussina. The Machiavelli had patronage rights there that they sharedwith the parishioners. Sant’Andrea in Percussina was where NiccolòMachiavelli’s family farm was located—the farm described in Machiavelli’sfamous letter to Francesco Vettori of 10 December 1513, where Machiavelliwrote much of The Prince. Prior Battista had himself been the rector therefrom at least 1493 down to 1504, when, with the connivance of Niccolò, hehad arranged to have the church passed to Giampiero, thus circumventingthe rule that strictly forbade the passing of an ecclesiastical benefice from

7That Messer Giampiero Machiavelli was the son of Prior Battista di Filippo di PieroMachiavelli is established above all in ASF, NA 1233, fol. 322v: “locaverunt et conces-serunt venerando viro domino Baptiste Philippi de Machiavellis priori Sancti Andreede Montespertulo presenti et conducenti etc., pro se et domino Iohanne Petro etAlexandro fratribus et filiis Baptiste Philippi de Machiavellis.” See also ASF, NA1237, fol. 56v, a compromissum between Giampiero and Alessandro, brothers andsons of Battista, dated 20 April 1520. Armando F. Verde, Lo Studio fiorentino, 1473–1503: Ricerche e documenti, 6 vols. in 9 (Florence and Pistoia, 1973–2010), III:2, p. 849,mistakenly supposed that Giampiero was the son of Battista di Buoninsegna (seenote 2 above).

8ASF, NA 1232, fol. 338r (13 October 1513).

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father to son.9 In the second of these three documents of 3 June, Prior Battista,exercising his powers as procurator, transferred to Niccolò Machiavelli theability to resign the benefice of Sant’Andrea in Percussina on Giampiero’sbehalf.10

The church at Sant’Andrea in Percussina was hardly a prize benefice. Therun-down state of the property is evident in the report of an episcopal visita-tion of 1514: “Everything is in bad condition. The lamp before the body ofChrist was not lit. The house of the priest is in ruins, and the church’s con-dition is deplorable. We are informed that Niccolò Machiavelli is the renterof all [the church’s property].”11 The report stated that the church servedone hundred “souls” (anime) and its income was valued at thirty goldflorins per annum—not a large sum. With the rector Giampiero absent inFrance, and with Niccolò, the chief tenant, in financial straits and possiblyin arrears with his rent, it is not surprising that the episcopal visitor foundthe church in “deplorable” condition. The participants in the meeting of 3July were surely aware of this troubled situation.After more discussion a third document was drawn up. The witnesses to

the first two documents were no longer present. It was perhaps convenientfor Niccolò and Totto that such patrician friends as Battista Guicciardiniand Carlo Federighi were no longer present, since the third documentinvolved a socially embarrassing concession. New witnesses—a tailor and arag-dealer—were called in from the neighborhood so that the notarial actcould be formalized.The subject of the day’s third agreement was a ruined castle or castellaccio

that stood next to Battista’s priory at Montespertoli.12 More than a centuryearlier, in a testament dated 1393, the last castellano had transferred the

9Verde, Lo Studio, IV:3, p. 1246, places (the future “Prior”) Battista di Filippo in thebenefice in 1493. For the transferral of the benefice to Giampiero in 1504, see Archivioarcivescovile di Firenze (henceforth “AAF”), Atti beneficiali (henceforth “AB”) 9, fols.179v–180r. For the prohibition under canon law that the Machiavelli dodged, see c. 3,X, De filiis presbyterorum ordinandis vel non, 1, 17: “Non potest filius sacerdotis eccle-siae paternae praeesse.” Vanna Arrighi, “Machiavelli, Totto,” in Dizionario biograficodegli italiani, no. 67 (2006): 106, erred in thinking that Prior Battista was still therector in 1515.

10ASF, NA 1233, fol. 322v, although he had previously been rector down to 1504 (seethe following note).

11AAF, Visite Pastorali (henceforth “VP”) 004-1, fol. 69r (26 October 1514): “Omnia[canc.: bene] male se habebant. Lampas non erat accensa ante corpus Christi. Domustota ruinosa. Et ecclesia male se habebat. Relatum est Nicolaum de Malchiavellistenere ad affictum omnia.” Gene Brucker (see his “Niccolò Machiavelli,” 77) kindlyshared a photocopy of the original.

12For the locations of the castle and the priory and a seventeenth-century disputeover the land owned by each, see Giulio Cesare Bucci, La misteriosa Rocca oCastellaccio dei Machiavelli a Montespertoli (Florence: Edizioni IT.COMM, 2006). Thelater dispute had its origin in the transaction of 1515 described here.


ownership of the castle to two Machiavelli brothers living in Florence, one ofwhom was Niccolò’s great-grandfather.13 In the intervening years variousMachiavelli had ceded their shares of the castle to other members of thefamily, chiefly through the repudiation of debt-laden inheritances. By 1515the sole owners of the castle were two pairs of brothers: Niccolò and Tottoon the one hand, and Battista di Buoninsegna (not to be confused withPrior 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 theseventeenth century, it eventually became the home of Sidney Sonnino, atwo-time prime minister of the early twentieth century, whose family builta new castle on the site that incorporated some of the existing structure.(See photograph.) Today the “Castello Sonnino” produces some very finewines.What was agreed upon in the third document was that Niccolò 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 ofwhite wax that was to be provided each year in acknowledgment of thelease.15 Although the initial lease was for five years, later documentsinform us that the castle remained in the hands of Prior Battista and hisheirs for several decades, until the death of Alessandro, the prior’s secondson, who left his estate to Niccolò’s children.16 Possession of an old castle,even a ruined one, conferred a great deal of social prestige. It is unlikelythat Niccolò Machiavelli would have ceded the castle gratis, as was donenow, 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 fol-

lowing day, on 4 July 1515, in the archbishop’s curia.17 These inform us thatPrior Battista, as his son’s procurator, resigned the church at Sant’Andrea inPercussina and that Battista di Buoninsegna, acting on behalf of the

13See ASF, Carte strozziane, ser. 1, 118, in which a copy of the 1393 testament isinserted along with the records of a dispute of 1428. A summary of the same testamentappears in the ricordanze kept by Ristoro Machiavelli now in the BibliotecaMarucelliana di Firenze, with the relevant passage quoted in Catherine Atkinson,Debts, Dowries, Donkeys: The Diary of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Father, Messer Bernardo, inQuattrocento Florence (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2002), 35n37.

14The ownership and leasing of the castle is traced reasonably accurately in theseventeenth-century genealogical tree published at the back of the first edition ofBernardo Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, ed. Cesare Olschki (Florence: Le Monnier,1954). The genealogy was omitted in the recent (2007) reprint of this book.

15ASF, NA 1233, fols. 322v–323r.16As stated in the genealogical tree (see note 14 above), next to the five sons of

Niccolò di Bernardo: “Questi furno eredi di Alexandro di Batista.”17AAF, AB 11, fols. 105r–106r; and ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 4 July 1515.


Machiavelli patrons, presented the same church to his cousin Totto. Theupshot of the two days of family negotiations was that in exchange for thefree lease of the castle, Totto was to become the rector at the church next tohis brother’s house. It had been decided that Totto would become a countrypriest.For Totto this represented a significant and disappointing reversal. His

initial career plans had not involved the priesthood. Younger than Niccolòby six years, Totto had received a humanistic education under some of thesame 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 formalmatter, this enabled him to accept certain benefices and it left open variousecclesiastical options.18 But minor orders also involved little commitment.They made a career in the church a possibility, on short notice, should itbecome necessary. Thus it was as a form of insurance that Niccolò andTotto arranged in 1502 for their sixteen-year-old nephew GiovanniVernacci, the son of their late sister Primavera, to take minor orders inVenice. Giovanni became a merchant, however, and there is no indicationthat he was interested in an ecclesiastical career.19

Still, after several of Totto’s commercial ventures in the easternMediterranean failed, he seems to have altered his career plans.20 In 1510,he arranged the confirmation in Rome of the minor orders that he hadtaken previously, together with his title as a “cleric,” although he was not apriest.21 Totto may have sought the confirmation of his status in order toprotect himself from the scandal then affecting his Niccolò in Florence regard-ing the possible illegitimacy of their father, Bernardo. Two years later, in1512–1513, it must have been hard for Totto when Niccolò lost his job and

18Letters from (the future “Prior”) Battista of 9 November 1503 and from Totto of 21November 1503 (in Machiavelli, Lettere, 172–73, 180) that regard a series of rich bene-fices in Tuscany have sometimes been read (e.g., Brucker, “Niccolò Machiavelli,” 86) asindicating Totto’s interest in them, but this is debatable. The unnamed holder of thelisted benefices (“d’età d’anni 64” in 1503) was Niccolò Pandolfini, bishop of Pistoia,who was a Medici client. He had been awarded the benefices by the exiledGiovanni de’ Medici (but with regress) in order to evade the republic’s attemptedsequestration of the income.

19Machiavelli, Lettere, 157, where “nostro nipote” is Giovanni Vernacci. For the inter-est his uncles took in him, see ibid., 101. One of these Vernacci in-laws was a priest,Luca Battista Vernacci, who had held the benefice at Sant’Andrea in Percussina in1480 or 1481; see Brucker, “Niccolò Machiavelli,” 81 (although not simply “a localcleric”).

20Arrighi, “Machiavelli, Totto,” 106.21ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 5 January 1510, drawn up in Rome, confirms

Totto’s minor orders as a “clericus,” but the document does not involve his ordinationas a priest, as stated in Brucker, “Niccolò Machiavelli,” 86, who followed OresteTommasini, La vita e gli scritti di Niccolò Machiavelli, 2 vols. in 3 (Rome: Loescher,1883–1911), 1:476.


was then arrested. However the election of Giovanni de’Medici as Pope Leo Xin March 1513 appears to have been propitious for Totto, who, together withhis brother, is likely to have known Giovanni de’ Medici from their boyhoodin pre-1494 Florence, before Giovanni was exiled with the Medici family.Niccolò was freed from prison as a result of the papal election, and even ashe attempted to win some kind of government appointment for himself viafriends in Rome, he also campaigned vigorously for Totto’s appointment asone of the pope’s familiares.22 The idea, advanced in letter after letter toFrancesco Vettori, was for Totto to receive a position in the papal courtwith the possibility of advancement. But that was not what was on offer forTotto in July 1515.A position as a prete di contadowas frowned upon by Florentines who were

well-off. In 1477, for instance, Giovanni Tornabuoni had asked for Lorenzode’ Medici’s help in securing a rich benefice for a nephew so that “he won’thave to be a country priest.”23 Now, in early July 1515, it was clear thatTotto’s hopes for a post in the Roman curia had come to naught. Instead ofmoving to Rome, Totto would have to become a simple country cleric—andin the poor church at the farm of his own family. Totto delayed his ordinationas a priest—the sacerdotal ordination that was required of a church rector—until he was granted a privilege by Pope Leo, on 28 January 1516, permittinghim to become a “pluralist,” by holdingmore than one benefice, if others werepresented to him.24 Finally, on 2 March 1516, Totto took sacerdotal orders,taking the customary vows that included celibacy.25 He must have felt help-less when, two months later, on 28 April 1516, Pope Leo assigned toSant’Andrea’s former rector—Giampiero Machiavelli, who was still inFrance—an annual pension of eight gold ducats that were to be subtractedfrom the church’s meager revenues.26

The documents presented above tell us that the Machiavelli brothers werefacing a major crisis in the summer of 1515. To be sure, the concession at nocost of the old castle in Montespertoli was mostly a symbolic matter. ButTotto’s decision to become a country priest was an irrevocable one. It is truethat five years later, after his brother Niccolò was restored to the good

22Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, 13 March 1513, in Lettere, 361: “Voisapete in che grado si truova messer Totto nostro. Io lo raccomando a voi et aPagolo [Vettori] generalmente. Desidera solo, lui et io, questo particulare: di essereposto in tra i familiari del papa, e scritto nel suo rotolo, et averne la patente; di chevi preghiamo.”

23Brucker, “Niccolò Machiavelli,” 82, citing Verde, Lo Studio, III:1, pp. 554–55: “chenon abbia essere prete di contado.”

24ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 28 January 1516, cited by Arrighi, “Machiavelli,Totto,” 106–7.

25Totto’s priestly ordination is recorded in ASF, Diplomatico, Ricci, normali, 2 March1516, cited by Arrighi, “Machiavelli, Totto,” 106–7.

26ASF, NA 1235, fols. 167v–168r.


graces of the Medici, Totto found other opportunities for advancement.27 Butin July 1515 Totto could not have known that that would be the case.The difficulty the two brothers faced explains the anguish evident in the

only letters from Niccolò that survive from the second half of 1515. To putthem in perspective, earlier in 1515, on 31 January, Niccolò had been ecstaticabout what seemed a likely appointment with Giuliano de’ Medici, thanks tosome assistance from Francesco Vettori’s brother Paolo.28 But after months ofsilence, the next letter that we have fromNiccolò is only a very brief note of 18August, addressed to his nephew Giovanni Vernacci, who was then workingin the wool trade at Pera, near Istanbul. The tone is completely different fromthat of the hopeful letter of January:

Carissimo Giovanni. Se io non ti ho scritto per lo addietro, non voglio chetu ne accusi né me, né altri, ma solamente i tempi, i quali sono di sorte chemi hanno fatto sdimenticare di me medesimo.

Dearest Giovanni, If I have not written to you earlier, I do not want youto blame either me or anyone else, but only the times; they have been—and still are—of 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 manstill 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 egli amici, et io ne fo capitale, e massime di quelli che più mi attengono,come sei tu, dal quale io spero, quando la fortuna ti inviasse a qualche fac-cenda onorevole, che tu renderesti il cambio a’ miei figliuoli de’ porta-menti miei verso di te.

27In 1520 he became “familiare, domestico and continuo commensale” of CardinalGiovanni Salviati, and he is recorded as doing administrative work in the FlorentineStudio at Pisa at that time (Arrighi, “Machiavelli, Totto,” 106).

28Machiavelli, Lettere, 488–91.29Machiavelli, 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.

30Hugo Jaeckel, “What Is Machiavelli Exhorting in His Exhortatio? TheExtraordinaries,” in Niccolò Machiavelli: Politico storico letterato, ed. Jean-JacquesMarchand (Rome: Salerno, 1996), 83. Jaeckel’s attempt to read The Prince with aview to Machiavelli’s alleged cheering on of Francis I’s invasion runs into the obstacleof Leo X’s hostility to the French. Corrado Vivanti, “Intorno a Machiavelli,” in hisIncontri con la storia: Politica, cultura e società nell’Europa moderna, ed. Miguel Gotorand Gabriele Pedullà (Formello: Edizioni SEAM, 2001), 121, notes that it is unlikelythat someone hoping for service with the Medici would have wanted to demonstratethe pope’s errors in such a fashion. What Jaeckel calls “The Extraordinaries” of chapter26 more likely refer to the return of the Medici to Florence and to Leo’s subsequentelection.


Dearest Giovanni. …. Fortune has left me nothing but my family andmy friends … I trust that, should Fortune send some honorable businessaffairs 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 disappoint-ment that befell Machiavelli between the end of January and the middle ofAugust in 1515. Our new documents, which are from early July, indeedshow the brothers relying only on a small number of “family” and“friends.” They would appear to be related to this disappointment. Wedon’t have a letter that says what Machiavelli’s disappointment might havebeen. But Machiavelli’s firing in 1512 and his arrest and subsequent releasein 1513 were several years in the past. What new event or events mighthave pushed the two brothers to the extremes outlined in these new docu-ments? There is a good likelihood that the difficulty the brothers now facedwere the diminished expectations that resulted from the failure ofMachiavelli’s dedication of The Prince to Lorenzo de’ Medici the Younger.

* * *Long ago it was pointed out by Gennaro Sasso that the arguments advanced byscholars concerning the dating of Machiavelli’s composition of The Prince andDiscourses were often related to the hypotheses these same scholars had pro-posed concerning Machiavelli’s purpose in writing his treatise.32 WhatMachiavelli meant to do or to show in The Prince has been amatter of contentionalmost from the time the small book first began to circulate. Some have said thatMachiavelli was secretly advancing an antimonarchical, “republican” thesis inThe Prince. Others have said that the book offers forthright advice for rulers.Some have characterized The Prince as an exception in Machiavelli’s oeuvre,while others think it is part and parcel of his thought. The early negative recep-tion 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 lifehe is reported to have excused the work to friends as having been written with asecretly democratic or anti-Medicean agenda.33 Given these disagreements,many scholars have imagined, not unreasonably, that Machiavelli’s intentionsmight more satisfactorily be discovered if it could be established to a moreprecise degree when, and under what circumstances, Machiavelli composedThe Prince. Thus some scholars have said that the work was composed in abrief time and rushed, and that therefore it contains regrettable lapses. Othershave argued that it was laboriously reworked and remained more or less awork in progress—and therefore contains regrettable lapses. Others have

31Machiavelli, Lettere, 492; Machiavelli and His Friends, 315.32Gennaro Sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli: Storia del suo pensiero politico, rev. ed. (Bologna:

Il Mulino, 1980), 314–20.33As in the remarks attributed toMachiavelli by his friends who discussed The Prince

with Cardinal Pole, and in the anecdote preserved by Riccardo Riccardi.


maintained that it is a perfected rhetorical gem: The Prince, they think, corre-sponds well with the author’s aims, and it contains no serious flaws. By nowsomuch has beenwritten on the dating of The Prince that Paul Larivaille recentlycalled it a “rompicapo,” or puzzle, “awaiting its Rosetta Stone.”34 Yet, as theanalogy suggests, this does not mean that progress is impossible. As will beshown, the new evidence that has been presented helps better to establish anend date for the work’s composition. But to understand the extent to whichThe Prince should be seen as a considered and “finished” work of prose it willbe of use, first, to review what is known concerning the work’s beginnings.Machiavelli’s famous letter to Vettori dated 10 December 1513 and written

from Florence—not from the farm he describes, as is commonly supposed—announces that he has written and is revising and adding to a work “on prin-cipalities” (de principatibus).35 Machiavelli almost certainly began writing histreatise in 1513, in the period between his release from prison on 13 Marchand the letter to Vettori of 10 December. The notion that The Prince washastily written in 1513, in extreme circumstances, with precise aims, andafter apparently little reflection, was advanced most notably by FedericoChabod. He doesn’t say it outright, but it seems clear that Chabod waslooking for a way to excuse what he found morally objectionable in ThePrince.36 The idea was further developed by Hans Baron to excuse as an aber-ration what Baron thought only a fleeting endorsement of princely rule,written in a time of dire necessity, in a career otherwise dedicated to republi-can ideals.37 Supposedly the work was a hasty exercise, the moral impli-cations of which were not completely thought through by its author. Butthese views can be dismissed in a fairly definitive way as a consequence ofJean-Jacques Marchand’s discovery of the autograph draft of Machiavelli’sremarkable draft letter to Giovanni Battista Soderini of September 1506,known as the Ghiribizzi, or “Caprices for Soderini.”38 Previously known

34Paul Larivaille, “In attesa della Stele di Rosetta: Appunti sulla cronistoria di unrompicapo machiavelliano,” Filologia e critica 34, no. 2 (2009): 261.

35Machiavelli, Lettere, 423–28. On the text of the letter and on Machiavelli’s circum-stances in 1513, see William J. Connell, “New Light on Machiavelli’s Letter to Vettori,10 December 1513,” in Europa e Italia: Studi in onore di Giorgio Chittolini / Europe andItaly: Studies in Honour of Giorgio Chittolini (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011),93–127.

36Federico Chabod, “Del Principe di Niccolò Machiavelli” (1925), in Scritti suMachiavelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), 29–135, and Chabod, “Sulla composizione de IlPrincipe di Niccolò Machiavelli” (1927), in Scritti, 137–93.

37Hans Baron, “Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince,” in InSearch of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to ModernThought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 2: 101–51.

38Marchand brought the autograph to the attention of Roberto Ridolfi, who pub-lished it. See Roberto Ridolfi and Paolo Ghiglieri, “I Ghiribizzi al Soderini,” LaBibliofilia 72, no. 1 (1970): 53–74.


from a poor transcription made by Machiavelli’s grandson Giuliano de’ Ricci,the Ghiribizzi had been ascribed to 1512–1513 and thought to be addressed toPier Soderini, the former Florentine head of state. The Ghiribizzi anticipatemany of the ideas later to be found in The Prince that concern mattersranging from fortifications to Fortuna, so that dating the draft to 1506makes clear Machiavelli’s long-standing engagement with the issues he wastreating in 1513 in The Prince. As Roberto Ridolfi put it:

L’anticipazione dei Ghiribizzi dall’inverno 1512–1513 al settembre del 1506porta un grosso scompiglio nella biografia del Machavelli e nella storia delsuo pensiero: è forse la maggiore novità che vi si sia veduta da più di unsecolo a questa parte. Concetti che già stupivano per la precocità loro ris-petto al Principe e aiDiscorsi vengono in tal modo retrodatati di addiriturasei anni.

The redating of theGhiribizzi from the winter of 1512–1513 to September1506 results in a huge overhaul for Machiavelli’s biography and thehistory of his thought. It is perhaps the greatest discovery that has beenseen in this field for more than a century. Concepts that [in 1512–1513]were already considered early anticipations of The Prince and Discoursesnow have to be dated six years earlier.39

It is worth noting, too, that the Ghiribizzi were addressed to the nephew ofFlorence’s own quasi prince, or principe civile: Pier Soderini, the republic’sLife Standard-Bearer was a head of state who was childless, with the resultthat the children of his late older brother Paolantonio received special con-sideration, both in Florence and abroad. This gives the draft letter philosophi-cal and pedagogical dimensions that are consonant with the dedication of ThePrince to Lorenzo de’ Medici the Younger and the earlier planned dedicationto Giuliano de’ Medici. Moreover, Machiavelli’s substantial insertions on thedraft—which is brimming over with corrections, marginal scribblings, andadded sections, indicate that he worked at it over some period of time.Since he preserved this particular draft, although he did not generally keepminutes or copies of his letters, the possibility that Machiavelli may havereferred to the Ghiribizzi when he was later writing The Prince in 1513cannot be excluded. To call the Ghiribizzi a first sketch of the later workseems not inaccurate.Still, our first definite evidence that Machiavelli was specifically writing the

work titled De principatibus is from December 1513. At what point he beganwriting The Prince is not clear. With good reason most scholars think thebook was at least begun by late August of 1513, although, as has alreadybeen stated, many of the book’s ideas had been percolating in Machiavelli’smind since at least 1506. Most importantly, the idea that the treatise waswritten in unthinking haste is now impossible of acceptance. But did heever consider it “finished”?

39Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Niccolò Machiavelli, 7th ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1978), 478.


Another way of defending a text that engenders difficulties is to say that itremained in some respects unfinished. Such would appear to be the defenseimplicit in the arguments offered over several decades by Mario Martelli.According to Martelli, although the book was begun in 1513, it onlyentered a final draft phase in the last months of 1518, when Machiavelli alleg-edly turned it from a technical work into an aggressive treatise stating the pol-itical program for a coup d’état that was being planned by Lorenzo theYounger.40 For Martelli The Prince was still an “open work” (opera aperta). In1518, he argued, “unfinished and still ‘up in the air,’ [the book] was correctedand patched up (possibly not by the author alone) so that it could be given outto the public.” And even so it was not published until after 1532, five yearsafter the author’s death. Thus, for Martelli, The Prince remained to the end awork that was never completed to its author’s satisfaction.41

Martelli’s position has not won much support. It has been objected that thework did circulate rather widely in manuscript and that the early manuscriptsoffer a fairly consistent text. And the early readers of The Prince in manuscript,beginning in 1516—not 1518 as Martelli would have it—seem to agree on thepassages that interested them. Finally, although Machiavelli is reported tohave defended The Prince in several ways, he is never said to have complainedthat it was unfinished—that it was ripped untimely from his hands.But when was it finished? The first known reading of The Prince by a con-

temporary of Machiavelli’s can be dated in the first months of 1516. At thattime Francesco Guicciardini was writing his Discorso del modo di assicurare lostato ai Medici, a work that engages The Prince on a series of points that areimmediately recognizable.42 So The Prince was almost certainly completedby 1516, and probably, as we shall see, somewhat earlier. But how muchearlier? Some scholars, most notably Gennaro Sasso and Giorgio Inglese,have been persuaded by rhetorical and stylistic considerations that ThePrince is a tightly unified and coherent work completed in its entirety bythe summer of 1514. There is indeed good reason to think that the workwas in most respects complete by then.43 But, meanwhile, evidence has also

40Mario Martelli, “Da Poliziano a Machiavelli: Sull’epigramma dell’Occasione esull’occasione,” Interpres 2 (1979): 230–54. Larivaille, “In attesa,” offers the bestaccount of the development of Martelli’s theory.

41Mario Martelli, Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Machiavelli (Rome: SalernoEditrice, 1997), 18–19.

42Brian Richardson, “The Prince and Its Early Readers,” in Niccolò Machiavelli’s “ThePrince”: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Martin Coyle (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1995), 25; Larivaille’s (“In attesa”) suggested terminus a quo ofbetween June 1516 and 8 October 1516 is undermined by the evidence of theGuicciardinian Discorso—evidence that he himself admits.

43Connell, “New Light,” 103 and 120–23, suggests that elements found in chapters19 and 25 of The Prince are already found in Machiavelli’s letter to Vettori of 10December 1513. Robert Black, “Notes on the Date and Genesis of Machiavelli’s


been mounting to the effect that Machiavelli must have made minor revisionsin the first 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 “tanteguerre fatte nei passati venti anni” (so many wars that have been waged inthe past twenty years) with a list of battles that begins with the battle ofFornovo on the Taro, which was fought on 6 July 1495.44 Twenty years after1495 puts us in July 1515. Some ambiguity remains, however, since the refer-ence to guerre, as Sasso once correctly noted, could also indicate the initialFrench invasion of 1494 and thus indicate Sasso’s 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 3that suggests a date was first noted in my own English translation of ThePrince, published in 2005. When Machiavelli discusses the “cinque errori”(the five mistakes) made by Louis XII of France in his invasion of Italy, hewrites “Even these errors could not have harmed him, if he had lived.” Thephrase “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, sosurely the passage must have been inserted after that date.45 As Martellialready pointed out in a study of chapter 3 published in 1981, there areseveral paragraphs regarding Louis’s policies in Italy that appear slightlyout of order from a logical and stylistic perspective. They suggest that theauthor returned to his text and intervened in a second moment withouthaving reread the existing text.46 Robert Black in a recent article acceptsthat vivendo lui is a later insertion, and he points, too, to the deletion incertain manuscripts of the word presente appearing in the phrase “el re diFrancia presente” of chapter 16. Since there was no effort in the manuscriptsto eliminate the word presente from a similar mention, also in chapter 16, ofFerdinand of Spain (“el re di Spagna presente”) and since Ferdinand diedon 23 January 1516, Black correctly concludes that the two alterations regard-ing Louis (the insertion of vivendo lui and the elimination of presente) must

De principatibus,” in Europa e Italia, 31, writes: “It is clear that Machiavelli’s efforts to fillout the text did not extend beyond the spring of 1514.”

44Hans Baron, “The Principe and the Puzzle of the Date of Chapter 26,” Journal ofMedieval and Renaissance Studies 21, no. 1 (1991): 83–102. Why Baron never publishedthe article is not clear. Possibly he realized that if it were recognized that Machiavelliwas working seriously on The Prince in 1515, two years after the famous letter toVettori, it would undermine his prior argument (see note 26 above) that The Prince rep-resented a temporary deviation for the otherwise republican Machiavelli.

45William J. Connell, introduction to The Prince with Related Documents, ed. Connell(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 19, 33n32, 49n26.

46Mario Martelli, “La struttura deformata: Sulla diacronia del cap. III del Principe,”Studi di filologia italiana, no. 39 (1981): 77–120.


have been made between 1 January 1515 and 23 January 1516.47 But theevents of that year were dramatic for Florence and for Italy. It was also thetime, most scholars believe, when Machiavelli was busily writing hisDiscourses 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 withinwhich The Prince was put in final form.The reference to Louis’s death in chapter 3 is the last item mentioned in The

Prince that can be assigned a solid date. Not all will agree, however. RecentlyRobert Black reprised an idea of Federico Chabod—an idea that Chabodhimself later retracted—concerning a passage in chapter 14, whenMachiavelli writes that “Francesco Sforza, because he was armed, frombeing a private man became duke of Milan; his sons, because they fled thehardships of arms, from being dukes became private men” (FrancescoSforza, per essere armato, di privato diventò duca di Milano; e’ figliuoli, perfuggire e’ disagi delle arme, di duchi diventorono privati). Black, followingChabod’s original view, reads figliuoli here not in its direct sense as “sons,”which is the accepted reading, but instead as “descendants.” He then readsthe passage as one in which Machiavelli refers to recent events concerningthe Sforza dynasty: in August 1512, at the Congress of Mantua,Massimiliano Sforza, the grandson of Francesco Sforza, was awarded theDuchy of Milan; and on 12–13 September 1515, after the Battle ofMarignano, Massimiliano lost the Duchy. According to Black, Machiavelli’spassage could only have been written after Massimiliano was defeated atMarignano. He thus dates the final version of The Prince between theperiod shortly after Marignano in September 1515 and the death ofFerdinand of Spain on 23 January 1516.But dating the completion of The Prince after Marignano brings with it new

difficulties. To begin with, as Hans Baron pointed out, Machiavelli does notmention Marignano in The Prince: neither in the “twenty-year” list ofbattles in chapter 26, nor elsewhere.48 Marignano, moreover, seen from abroader perspective, was a decisive battle and an affirmation of Frenchpower. As Carlo Dionisotti points out, had the tremendous French victoryat Marignano already occurred, Machiavelli’s exhortation to liberate Italyfrom the barbarians would have appeared ridiculous.49 A more securereading of the passage concerning the figliuoli of Francesco Sforza avoidsthese difficulties and perhaps even explains why Chabod retracted the sug-gestion that Black has made his own. If we read figliuoli in its primarysense, as referring not to Francesco Sforza’s grandson Massimiliano, but tohis real “sons,” Galeazzo Maria, Ludovico, and Ascanio, Machiavelli’smessage becomes quite clear. It was Galeazzo Maria who chose to abandon

47Black, “Notes on the Date,” 33–34.48Baron, “The Principe.”49Carlo Dionisotti, “Machiavelleria ultima,”Rivista storica italiana, no. 107 (1995): 22–23.


the military lifestyle of his condottiere father, Francesco, becoming instead acorrupt devotee of luxury while earning the reputation that led to his assas-sination as a tyrant. Massimiliano, on the other hand, was raised in exile inFlanders, at the imperial court, and was never in a position from which hecould choose to abandon the armed way of life of his grandfather.50

Galeazzo Maria’s brothers, Ludovico and Ascanio, are, moreover, nicely cap-tured by Machiavelli’s use of the plural figliuoli, since these two sons ofFrancesco were bound closely together, first in the loss of Milan inSeptember 1499, then in their brief recovery of the city in February 1500,and finally in their definitive loss of it in April 1500.51 At this point, itseems only logical to accept that the plural figliuoli does not refer toFrancesco’s grandson Massimiliano—and to embrace, for the reasonsalready stated, the hypothesis of Baron and Dionisotti that The Prince musthave been finished prior to the Battle of Marignano in September 1515.A preliminary range of dates during which The Prince must have been put

into final form has now been established on the basis of internal textual evi-dence. The work must have been completed between 1 January 1515 (thedeath of Louis XII) and 13 September 1515 (the Battle of Marignano). But itmay be possible even further to narrow the suggested period if we lookbeyond the text to the evidence concerning the treatise’s dedication.Machiavelli’s famous letter to Vettori of 10 December 1513 indicated that he

was intending to dedicate The Prince to Giuliano de’ Medici. Moreover, asalready noted, on 31 January 1515, Machiavelli wrote a letter to FrancescoVettori concerning the likelihood that he would be appointed to a positionwith Giuliano de’ Medici in what he anticipated would be the governmentof a principality in north-central Italy. Machiavelli was still hoping for a pos-ition with Giuliano. So it is unlikely, as Dionisotti pointed out, thatMachiavelli had already at that date changed the work’s dedication,naming Giuliano’s nephew, Lorenzo the Younger.52 Thus the hope for a pos-ition with Giuliano remained alive at least until 14 February 1515, the date ofa letter from Pietro Ardinghelli to Giuliano de’Medici. It was a letter that for-warded instructions from Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici prohibiting Giulianofrom employing Niccolò Machiavelli.53 Whether or how the veto was com-municated to Machiavelli is not known. But until that point it would nothave made sense for Machiavelli to be dedicating a work on princely rule

50My thanks to Marcello Simonetta for a suggestion to this effect.51For the way in which these events brought the brothers together, see Marco

Pellegrini, Ascanio Maria Sforza. La parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del rinasci-mento, 2 vols. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 2002), 2: 764, whowrites: “La solidarietà fraterna con il Moro e con l’operazione dinastica da lui [i.e.Ascanio] compiuta scattò nel cardinale proprio nel momento della catastrofe chepiombò addosso a entrambi, dopo una vita di infinite contese.”

52Dionisotti, “Machiavelleria ultima,” 24–25.53Published in Tommasini, Vita e scritti, II:2, pp. 1064–65.


to Lorenzo while hoping for employment with Giuliano. In all likelihood itwas Paolo Vettori or his brother Francesco who communicated toMachiavelli the fact that he would not be receiving a post with Giuliano. Inthe period 1514–1515 the two brothers, both working mostly in Rome, hadin almost opportunistic fashion divided between them the sources ofMedici patronage. Paolo, who was one of those who had initiated the coupthat led to the flight of Pier Soderini and the return of the Medici toFlorence, had attached himself to the pope’s brother Giuliano. MeanwhileFrancesco, while serving as Florentine ambassador in Rome, had become atrusted companion of the pope’s nephew, Lorenzo the Younger.54 The factthat The Prince as we now have it is dedicated to Lorenzo is our surest indi-cation that Machiavelli was in some way informed that a post withGiuliano would not be forthcoming and that his best chance for employmentlay with Lorenzo the Younger. Another consequence seems to have been anaudience 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 final version of his treatise finds reason-able confirmation in an anecdote written down late in the sixteenth centuryby the Florentine Riccardo Riccardi. The passage reads as follows:

Niccolò Machiavelli presented to [Lorenzo di] Piero de’ Medici his bookon The Prince. And it counted against him that he happened to give it tohim at the same time that a brace of hunting dogs was given to him,whereupon Lorenzo gave greater thanks and responded in a friendlierway 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 conspiraciesagainst princes, but that, all the same, if [theMedici] observed his methods[in The Prince], they would see that conspiracies resulted from it, as if hemeant to say that his book would get him his revenge.

The anecdote, which was first published by Edoardo Alvisi in 1883, is some-times challenged as apocryphal.55 To be sure, its author, Riccardo Riccardi,who lived from 1558 to 1612, was writing long after Machiavelli’s death.But Riccardi was a Florentine with connections. And the fact that the anecdoteis known only from Riccardi’s Ricordi lessens the chance that it was merelyinvented to be shopped around for literary purposes. The second part ofthe anecdote (“And he had occasion to say, among his friends…”) is some-what similar to Reginald Pole’s remarks of 1539, based also on commentsfrom Machiavelli’s friends, which suggests that some of the same friends

54Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant(London: Athlone, 1972), 103: “Of the two Vettori brothers, it was Paolo who was ongood terms with Giuliano.”

55Niccolò Machiavelli, Lettere familiari, ed. Edoardo Alvisi (Florence: Sansoni, 1883),p. XIV.


were the source of Riccardi’s anecdote. Both Pole and Riccardi agree in pre-senting a Machiavelli who retailed the story that he wrote The Prince with aview to making the Medici more tyrannical and unpopular, hoping that thatwould lead to their overthrow. It was and is an unlikely explanation, butthe audacity and the implicit humor are characteristic of the Florentinesecretary.What is more important for our present purpose, however, is that the

Riccardi anecdote would seem to confirm that there was an actual presen-tation to Lorenzo, which moreover would have been customary, thusmarking a date at which the treatise was finalized in its present form. Theanecdote is true to what we know of Lorenzo the Younger, whose mother,Alfonsina, complained in a letter that the young man was more interestedin hunting than in finding a wife.56 If there had been no such presentation,Machiavelli had close friends, like Francesco Guicciardini, who survivedhim by many years, and who would have been in a position to deny it.The presentation to Lorenzo of the finalized text of The Prince would have

occurred most naturally in the period soon after Lorenzo’s return to Florence,in the company of Francesco Vettori, on 15 May 1515.57 Lorenzo, who hadbeen absent in Rome, was now returning with the express mission of organiz-ing the Florentine military. Francesco Vettori, moreover, was advisingLorenzo on the militia, which was precisely Machiavelli’s area of expertise.It would have been logical at this point to have introduced to Lorenzo theformer 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 Totto’s assuminga career as an ecclesiastic had been called with the intention of stabilizing thefinancial and social position of the two Machiavelli brothers. The hopes thatNiccolò had had for himself and his brother in January 1515 were not to berealized. Niccolò’s employment with the Medici was no longer on thetable—and neither was Totto’s. The Prince, considered as a job application,had failed. These new notarial documents, like the letters to his nephewVernacci, show that for Machiavelli it was a time for saving what could besaved, relying only on his closest family and friends. Given the straitened cir-cumstances of the Machiavelli brothers, Prior Battista had indicated that hewas willing to resign to Totto his priory at Montespertoli. But it is likelythat word had also been sent to Giampiero in Paris. So, when Battistaarrived at the meeting on 3 July, he brought the news that Giampiero

56Gaetano Pieraccini, La stirpe de’ Medici di Cafaggiolo: Saggio di ricerche sulla trasmis-sione ereditaria dei caratteri biologici (1924; repr., Florence: Nardini, 1986), 1: 225–26.

57Hilde Reinhard, Lorenzo von Medici, Herzog von Urbino, 1492–1515: Ein biogra-phischer Versuch unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Vermittlerrole Lorenzos zwischenLeo X. und Franz I. von Frankreich im Jahre 1515 (Freiburg i. B.: Jos. Waibel, 1935), 48.


would cede to Totto the church of Sant’Andrea in Percussina where Tottocould 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 thatMachiavelli first attempted to put down in writing in 1506. In 1513 and1514 Machiavelli reformulated these ideas in the context of a treatise de prin-cipatibus that he hoped would win him employment with Giuliano de’Medici. He made small revisions to the work in the first half of 1515, whenthe dedicatee was changed from Giuliano de’ Medici to Lorenzo theYounger. The Prince is not a work that has come down to us in an incompleteor unsatisfactory form. It must have been complete to the satisfaction of theauthor, insofar as an author can ever be satisfied, at the time of its presen-tation to Lorenzo the Younger. To be sure, Machiavelli would later regrethis work, but that is not the same thing as leaving it unfinished. And,finally, the presentation of The Prince—the meeting between Machiavelliand his dedicatee—should now be dated sometime between Lorenzo’sarrival in Florence on 15 May 1515 and the unhappy family meeting thattook place in the house of Totto Machiavelli in Florence on 3 July 1515.


Dating The Prince: Beginnings and Endings

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