http://hdl.handle.net/11299/211486
In addition, Grendler, mentioned above, has recently published two books about Jesuit education: (1) The Jesuits and Italian Universities 1548-1773 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2017) and (2) Jesuit Schools and Universities in Europe 1548-1773 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019).
Now, Boucheron characterizes the Renaissance in Italy as "an over-investment in the cultural production industry" (page 117). But an over-investment compared to what? Boucheron's wording "an over-investment" seems to indicate a comparative judgment on his part, but he does not tell us what he is comparing "the cultural production industry" of the Renaissance in Italy with with, for example, the investment in "the cultural production industry" in the Renaissance in France?
In any event, Boucheron reports that young Niccolo's father Bernardo Machiavelli was "a doctor of law" who kept meticulous written records of "the minute facts of family life" (page 28). Boucheron also says, "Gutenberg's invention, only a few years old when Bernardo took up his pen [to record "the minute facts of family life"], was becoming more and more widespread" (page 29). The Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s. Boucheron says, "Bernardo inventoried thirty books, some of which he bought at a very steep price. In order to afford Livy's History of Rome, he contracted with the publisher to draw up an index of its 'towns, mountains, and rivers,' a task that cost him nine months of work" (page 29; also see page 32).
As Ong likes to point out in his publications, unlike hand-written manuscript copies, printed books printed exactly the same text of the same page in the print run, thereby favoring the compilation of indexes. Of course, you could compile an index of a hand-written manuscript copy of, say, Livy's History of Rome, but chances are that your index of that one manuscript copy would not work well with all the other manuscript copies of the same work.
Now, Boucheron says, "In the first century BCE, the Latin poet Lucretius [94 BCE c.55 BCE]" published "his De rerum natura, or On the Nature of Things" page 31). Boucheron says that it was rediscovered "in 1417 by the humanist Poggio Bracciolini" (page 33). Boucheron also says that "Lucretius' materialist poetry, in which Greek epicurean philosophy is set to Roman music, was considered a handbook of atheism in modern times. . . . Machiavelli read this book. He not only read it but also recopied it. Laboriously, he transcribed the Latin poem. Because [printed] books were rare at the time ["possibly 1497," says Boucheron; "Machiavelli was not yet thirty"], those who loved them paid a hefty price for them, putting in the time to write them out, with aching backs and bleary eyes" (page 32).
For the record, I hold the non-materialist philosophical position and so did Ong. For an accessible discussion of the non-materialist philosophical position, see the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler's book Intellect: Mind Over Matter (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, 1990).
But Bourcheron also says, "He [Machiavelli] is first and foremost a man of action, always doing battle, a man for whom describing the world and giving a clear-eyed account of it is to make progress toward transforming it" (page 15).
In Boucheron's chapter "Reading Machiavelli" (pages 147-153), mentioned above, Boucheron says that "the so-called national edition issued by Salerno Editrice, Rome, starting in 2000, . . . notably includes much of Machiavelli's diplomatic writing and his chancery correspondence before the Medici coup d'etat in 1512. The publication of this enormous mass of texts, Legazioni, Commissarie, Scritti di governo (1498-1515), 7 vols. (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2001-2012), has revolutionized our understanding of Machiavelli in his primary role as a man of action" (page 147).
Boucheron says, "From 1498 to 1512, for fifteen years, Florence's secretary of the chancery [Machiavelli] composed thousands of dispatches, reports, and diplomatic letters destined for every part of Europe" (page 51). Boucheron informs us that "the common language of [diplomatic] negotiation . . . at the time was Italian" (page 52).
Now, Boucheron's Chapter 13 is titled "To Conquer and Preserve" (pages 69-71). In it, he says, "The book of Machiavelli's commonly known as The Prince is actually called De principatibus, or 'Of Principalities'" (page 69). Subsequently, he says, "De principatibus: the book announces itself as a typology" (page 69). However, he also says, "Starting in the fifteenth chapter, there is a change of plan, a reversal of perspective: Machiavelli explores the virtues that make a prince the unscrupulous virtuoso of his own self-preservation. His treatise takes on another dimension, brilliant and provocative. This explains why, when it was first published, posthumously, in 1532, his Roman editor, Antonio Blado, gave it a more catchy title, in Italian: Il principe, the prince" (page 70).
Fascinating wording here: the unscrupulous virtuoso of his own self-preservation.
Boucheron's Chapter 2 is titled "Machiavellianism" (pages 19-21). In it, he says, "Orwellian, Kafkaesque, Sadistic. Machiavellian. Having one's name identify a collective anxiety is a dubious honor" (page 19).
Now, in Tim Parks' "Introduction" to his 2009 translation of Niccolo Machiavelli's Italian classic known as The Prince for the Penguin Classics edition (pages vii-xxx), Parks claims that "the 'murderous Machiavel . . . gets more than 400 mentions in Elizabethan drama, thus making the Florentine's name synonymous with the idea of villainy for centuries to come" (page xxvi). Parks mentions as examples "Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Webster's Flamineo in The White Devil, [and] Shakespeare's Iago" (page xxvi). But Boucheron does not spell out this history for us.
In any event, the American Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt has gathered together Shakespeare's portrayal of tyrants in his book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018).
Incidentally, the illustration on page 68 of Boucheron's 2020 book is the cover of Tim Parks' 2009 English translation of Machiavelli's The Prince for the Penguin Classics edition.
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