The Prince

What The Prince is about

The Prince is a short handbook on how to gain and keep political power, written by a Florentine diplomat for a ruler of the Medici family. Machiavelli sorts states into types, explains how new principalities are won (by one's own arms, by others' arms, by fortune or by crime) and how they can be held. He argues that a ruler must be ready to act against conventional morality when the safety of the state requires it: to break promises, to use cruelty quickly and decisively rather than bit by bit, and, if he cannot be both, that "it is much safer to be feared than loved". He holds up Cesare Borgia as a model of a new prince, and ends with an appeal for a leader to unite Italy and drive out foreign armies.

Two of his key ideas are virtù, a ruler's energy, skill and boldness, and fortuna, the chance events that he compares to a flooding river that can only be controlled by preparation.

The ban, in full

Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513 but it circulated only in manuscript during his lifetime; it was printed in 1532, five years after his death, with papal permission. Within a generation it had become notorious. In 1559 Pope Paul IV's first Index of Forbidden Books banned all of Machiavelli's works, and they remained on the Index until it was abolished in the twentieth century. Critics, Catholic and Protestant alike, attacked the book as a manual of tyranny and atheism, and the name "Machiavel" became an English byword for a scheming villain, as in Shakespeare's plays.

About Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) served the Florentine Republic for fourteen years as a senior official and diplomat, meeting Cesare Borgia, the king of France and the emperor's court. When the Medici returned to power in 1512 he lost his post; the next year he was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned and tortured, then released to his small farm outside Florence, where he wrote The Prince, hoping to regain office. His longer Discourses on Livy, a study of republics, shows a more republican side, and he also wrote plays and a history of Florence.

Which edition to read

The Prince is in the public domain and short enough to read in an evening. Popular translations include those by Harvey Mansfield (University of Chicago Press), Tim Parks (Penguin) and Peter Bondanella (Oxford World's Classics).

Reception and legacy

The Prince is usually counted as the founding work of modern political science, because it describes politics as it is practised rather than as it should be. Readers still disagree about Machiavelli's intentions: some read it as a sincere guide for rulers, others as satire or as a warning to republics. The word "Machiavellian" is now used for cunning, manipulative behaviour of any kind.

Questions

Why was The Prince banned?

The Church considered its separation of politics from Christian morality dangerous and immoral, and placed all of Machiavelli's works on the Index in 1559.

Is The Prince still banned?

No. More: books banned by the Vatican, the Index of Forbidden Books.