Machiavelli: How Machiavellian Was He?

In The Prince, Machiavelli can both discern the nature of princes and understand the nature of the people. Using this double vision, he simultaneously warns the Medici of the dangers to their rule while informing the people as to the weakness of their regime. Contrary to most opinions that Machiavelli wrote The Prince in order to gain employment with the Medici, or to provide amoral, if not immoral, reality-based advice to princes, his actual purpose was to warn the Medici not to become tyrants and to instruct the people as to just what tyranny looked like, with, most probably, the goal of undermining the Medici.

Jo Ann Moran Cruz is Professor of History emerita, Georgetown University, and author of five books and more than thirty articles, including a recent article on Machiavelli’s The Prince in The Journal of Political Thought. She has presented previously for Renesan on medieval women and the Black Death.