Niccolo Machiavelli - Works
May 21st, 2007 by Bauman
” Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind…” (Printing and the Mind of Man).
Almost immediately upon its 1532 first appearance in print, The Prince exerted a formidable and far-reaching influence. Henry VIII’s agent Thomas Cromwell obtained a manuscript copy only a few years after the first publication. The works of Shakespeare and Marlowe abound with references to the author, and while Machiavelli’s seemingly amoral stance earned him a villainous reputation in Elizabethan England, his keen and practical analysis was admired by important enlightenment figures such as Bacon, Rousseau and Hume.
But The Prince was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559 - in the “banned absolutely” category - and did not appear in a printed English translation until the Episcopal censorship broke down in 1640, when it was published in a small-format volume that is now exceedingly scarce. “By 1643 censorship was again firmly in place in England, and it would be over twenty years before another edition of The Prince would appear in English” (Books that Changed the World, 26).
In 1675 John Starkey published the first collected edition in English of Machiavelli’s complete writings, which includes, in addition to his controversial masterpiece, his Discourses on Livy, The History of Florence, The Art of War, his analyses of the states of Germany and France, and his Letter in Vindication of Himself and His Writings. We are pleased to offer a copy of this scarce and handsome folio volume, bound in contemporary calf.
I appriciate the printing information, but why was it censored in the first place? examples?
Thanks for your question. From our research, Machiavelli brought to light the double-dealing, hypocritical world of politics in a serious, rather than satirical, treatise. According to Machiavelli, moral principles must yield entirely to the requisites of each unique political circumstance. Therefore, it is imperative that the Prince be willing to do anything necessary to maintain power. However, Machiavelli asserts strongly that above all, the Prince must not be hated, yet the Prince should gain from being feared rather than loved. In addition, his observations on the behavior of the rich and powerful led him to the conclusion that humanity is basically corrupt, and that men and women will, when given the chance, always turn toward evil and self-gratification. This interpretation was different from the doctrine of original sin. For Machiavelli, the claim that humanity is ruthless, blindly abandoning itself to lust for pleasures, power, and profit was a plain, observable fact.
The Papacy, being the major political power in Machiavelli’s time, naturally took offense at these ideas—not taking kindly to the separation of morality from politics, nor to the corrupt nature of power. In 1559 the Church placed The Prince, and all of Machiavelli’s other works, on the Index Prohibitorum, in the “banned absolutely†category. The Prince stayed there through all the new editions of the Index right up to its discontinuation in 1966.