Intricate Readings: Machiavelli, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas

Machiavelli (as most scholars agree) read Aristotle's Politics. But in which edition? The article argues that Machiavelli used the edition published in Rome in 1492, in which the Latin translation of Aristotle by Leonardo Bruni was accompanied by a commentary traditionally ascibed to Thomas Aquinas (in fact, written by Peter of Auvergne). The article explores the impact of this triple filter (Aristotele, 'Aquinas', Bruni) on Machiavelli's approach to politics.

Before examining the argument in detail, its long-term impact mu The article 'Machiavel' in Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et c a footnote quoting a) a long passage in which the German scholar Hermann Conring (1606-81) argued that Machiavelli had plagiarised Aristotle; and b) a long passage in which the French libertin érudit Gabriel Naudé (1600-53) argued that Machiavelli had plagiarised Thomas Aquinas. Both quotations (Bayle particularly relished the latter) went back to Scioppius's Paedia politices: Naudé had praised the book in his Considérations politiques sur les coups d'état (1639); Conring republished it with a commentary, along with Naudé's Bibliographie politique (1673).5 2.
So far, I have been walking along a well-trodden path. The texts mentioned hitherto have been repeatedly listed and sometimes closely analysed as examples of the enduring, contentious reception of Machiavelli's writings.6 Obviously, both Machiavellianism and its counterpart, anti-Machiavellianism, ought not to be confused with Machiavelli, whose work defies the simplistic stereotypes, for and against, which have so often dominated the subsequent debates about it.
I am very sympathetic to those warnings.7 Moreover, I am receptive to the scholarship generated by them. For a long time scholars have been trying to put Machiavelli back into the historical context which was his own; only in that context can his writings be read and analysed without distortion. And yet, inspired by old Nick (the Elizabethan nickname for the devil), I feel tempted to play the devil's advocate. To what extent is the clear-cut distinction between the reception of a text and the analysis of a text intellectually productive?8 Let me emphasise right away that I strongly object (as I have for many years) to neo-sceptical approaches arguing that all readings are equally permissible. I also object to those versions of reception theory which focus on the history of the different readings of a text, as an alternative, either tacit or explicit, to an effort to reconstruct its meaning. The reception of a work of art (or a novel or a philosoph ical work) is a very valuable field of inquiry, but should not be regarded as an alternative to philology: in fact, both approaches can fruitfully interact, on two grounds. First, and as I have suggested elsewhere, they can interact by developing (and reworking) the well-known distinction between the etic and the emic approaches as advanced by the anthropologist Kenneth Pike: historians start from questionstheir questions-inevitably articulated in the observer's anachronistic language; 8. This seems to be a partial echo of the questions raised by Claude Lefort in his Le travail de l'oeuvre. Machiavel Better, more faithful texts, written in a better Latin, as instruments for a better politics: just what we would expect from a Renaissance edition of Aristotle. But the juxtaposition of Aristotle's text and Thomas Aquinas's commentary-an ancient palace, framed by a medieval building, made accessible by a humanist-generated an underlying tension.
One can see this tension emerging from Agostino Piccolomini's dedicatory letter to friar Ludovico.The letter's conclusion was unequivocal: the 'dreadful and dirty' ('horridum immundumque') manuscript on which the edition was based had to be thoroughly cleaned up. No additions, no omissions introduced by the copyist were to be allowed; nothing unrefined, barbarous or uncooth should appear.28The assumption of an intrinsic convergence between truth and classical Latin paved the way for a rejection (not fully shared, as we have seen, by the editor, friar Ludovico)  Aristotle had remarked that tyranny is 'a compound of both oligarchy and democ racy in their most extreme forms: it is therefore most injurious to its subjects, being made up of two evil forms of government, and having the perversions and As to tyrannies, they are preserved in two quite opposite ways. One of them is the old traditional way in which most tyrants administer their government. Of such arts Periander of Corinth is said to have been the great master, and many similar devices may be gathered from the Persians in the administration of their government. There are firstly the prescrip tions mentioned some distance back, for the preservation of a tyranny, in as far as this is possible; viz. that the tyrant should lop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit; he must not allow common meals, clubs, education, and the like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire either courage or confidence among his subjects; he must prohibit schools or other meetings for discussion, and he must take every means to prevent people from knowing one another (for acquaintance begets mutual confidence).35 (i3i3a35-b7) In Leonardo Bruni's Latin translation (republished, as we have seen, in the 1492 edition of Thomas Aquinas's commentary), the sentence 'There are firstly the prescriptions mentioned some distance back' included one more word-an adjective, identifying those prescriptions as perniciosa, pernicious: 'Sunt autem hec ilia perniciosa quae supra retulimus'.36 Bruni's intervention may seem unproblem atic: after all, Aristotle was listing a series of measures which he clearly considered to be vicious and disruptive. Bruni simply added one touch to reinforce the picture.
About the year 1420, he had defended his own translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, comparing the old translators of Aristotle to those who disfigured the paintings of Apelles, and good translators to faithful copyists. 37 Did Bruni try to prevent a possible misunderstanding-and therefore a distor tion-of Aristotle's remarks? Certainly, the dry paraphrase provided by Thomas Aquinas's continuator, Peter of Auvergne, which Bruni might have seen and which framed his translation of Aristotle in the 1492 Roman edition, showed no trace of moral reprobation. One of the methods for preserving tyranny, the commentary reads, is to murder, to kill (spegnere, as Machiavelli said) the most powerful, the richest and wisest people: 'fuit excellentes in potentia vel divitiis interimere.... Iterum interficere sapientes.. .'.38The second method was more ambiguous, because it implied an imitation of a monarchical government. Here is Aristotle once again: 34·  ... and there is another [method] which proceeds upon an almost opposite prin ... for as one mode of destroying kingly power is to make the office of king m so the salvation of a tyranny is to make it more like the rule of a king. But o tyrant must be careful; he must keep power enough to rule over his subjects, like him or not, for if he once gives this up he gives up his tyranny. ... In th should pretend concern for the public revenues, and not waste money in m of a sort at which the common people get excited when they see their har snatched from them and lavished on courtesans and foreigners and artists.... A appear to be particularly earnest in the service of the gods; for if men think religious and has a reverence for the gods, they are less afraid of suffering in hands, and they are less disposed to conspire against him, because they believe the very gods fighting on his side.39 (i3i4a30-i5a2) Thomas Aquinas's (that is, Peter of Auvergne's) commentary on t page sometimes reads more like an expansion than a literal paraph quote, for example, the passage about the tyrant's attitude towards he says that to preserve tyranny, the tyrant must behave very carefully and matters related to religion and cult, and as different from everyone else as he i than everyone else. And the reason is this: if his subjects regard their prince as pious man, they will not be afraid of receiving evil from him. From a god expects any evil.  (1) 'knowing which form of state is absolutely (simpliciter) the best, and the most desirable'; (2) 'knowing which is the best according to specific circumstances (pro conditione A citizen (civilis homo) must come to the assistance of both: It is therefore appropriate for a politician, as we said, not only to be able to render aid to those constitutions that are written in books but also to the ones that exist in reality. And many have imagined republics and principalities that never have been seen or known to exist in reality.
Scioppius, in his covert apology for those unjustly attacked political thin who his Paedia politices left unnamed, argued that they had followed the ex of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas: they wrote ex hypothesis from a hypoth perspective. To say that a tyrant, in order to preserve his power, must m 58. Thomas Aquinas, Commentaria, 1492 (as in n. In his dedicatory letter to Lorenzo compared himself to landscape pain possibly a reference to Leonardo da of Imola; Leonardo and Machiavelli court.66 Here is Machiavelli: those who draw maps of countries obser from a low position on a plain, and to mountains; in like fashion, he who wishe prince, and he who wishes to understand