Lehal Library

xv Introduction Naples. At this point Lorenzo il Magnifico had been dead for two years and the Medici regime was led by his incom- petent son, Piero. So abject was Piero’s capitulation to Charles, so spineless his decision simply to surrender the city’s dependent territories, that the Florentines rebelled against him. The Medici regime collapsed and very soon the preacher who had been prophesying this disaster was made gonfaloniere, first minister, this time on a yearly, rather than a ­two-­monthly, basis. Girolamo Savonarola ruled Florence from 1494 to 1498, during which time the city passed from being one of the centres of Renaissance Humanism to a ­book-­burning, fun- damentalist theocracy. Realizing that Savonarola’s claim to be God’s prophet was a far greater threat to its authority than any Humanism, scepticism or eclecticism, the Church in Rome did everything possible to bring about his downfall and in 1498, having lost much of his support in Florence, the preacher was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake. It was shortly after these dramatic events that Nic- colò Machiavelli succeeded in getting himself elected to the important positions of Secretary of the Second Chan- cery (one of two key state departments in Florence) and, soon afterwards, Secretary of the Ten of War, a committee that dealt with foreign relations and war preparations. Machiavelli was ­twenty-­eight. We have no idea how he arrived at such appointments at this early age. There is no record of any special experience that would warrant such confidence in his abilities. But within months he was xvi