Moot Thoughts & Musings

For my medieval ponderings of the day:

My somewhat boring, Italy-centric Renaissance class occasionally has discussion days on primary source books. Today it was Machiavelli's The Prince. First, Machiavelli's prose style is excellent in its efficiency and lucidity, which I find lacking in many of his medieval counterparts, and perhaps this is a quality that situates him easily in the 16th c or maybe it's just Machiavelli. (I really do need to read more.) This particular work gets billed as shocking and revealing. People tread around it like its some kind of revolutionary, avant-garde kind of work. However, I find a text that is none of the above. Indeed, far removed from avant-garde. Perhaps the most daring thing he did was codify in written format what every had known for centuries.

Secondly, it would be an interesting exercise to trace the personification of Fortune from the classical writers to the "renaissance" writers (just can't bear to use the word--even if it does sound cool in British). Perhaps this has already been done. I'm not as familiar with the classical understanding of Fortune, except, perhaps, as given through Boethius. But I would venture that Machiavelli's perception of Fortune is from classical thought, yes, but also bears the medieval trappings of Dame Fortune so prevalent in the courtly love poetry of the 14th century and earlier. (I would also to clarify that Dame Fortune is an entirely different person than a My Lady on the Pedestal of the courtly lit.).

My third thought is more of a philosophical question that has been teasing me for a while. For Machiavelli's prince, can we make the distinction between the appearance of piety and actually being pious (or substitute whatever virtue)? Is the state of being pious in fact the motions of appearing pious?

As a sort of post scriptum to illustrate what inspired this pondering:
I offer this question because I have made the argument about Philip the Good of Burgundy. In 1454 he had made a solemn vow to crusade against the Turks. The pope issued three bulls affirming and supporting this vow. But a crusade was never actually launched. Sure a couple of times some troops were mustered, but no one ever got further than Marseilles in their crusade attempts. What struck me was the absence of anything concerning the fact that the promised crusade never made it. You'd think after a solemn vow and three papal bulls that if someone didn't do what they said they were going to do would be problematic. Yet nothing. (I'd be happy to be shown otherwise!!!) So my observation about the situation was that perhaps it wasn't actually the crusade that was the pious act, rather the making of the vow that was the pious act. The appearance of piety was indeed piety itself.

I consider Burgundy to be a fairly typical example of a European political scenario at this time (and earlier!), and since these are the kinds of governments that Machiavelli is writing about, why should this not be the case? In any case, I do think that it is an interesting political question.