1500 CE

Historians love to shoehorn events into discrete periods of time they call ‘ages’: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modern, and of course, Post Modern, for example. As if everyone wakes up one morning and cries out in unison, “Today a new age has dawned!” 

(Well, something like that did happen in my lifetime…if you’ll allow me to count as ‘one morning’ the decade between the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (8/10/64), which ended one era of American history, and the Fall of Saigon (4/30/75), which began another. But abrupt changes are exceptions to the norm.)    

More often, one day bleeds into another, and another. Sure, things change over time, but not in unison and not in ways that permit precise demarcation. Of course, we can invent demarcations to our hearts content. I’ve done it! Perhaps I just did (above). But that doesn’t make those lines real. 

The year 1500 CE might be another, much neater, exception. A strong case can be made that 1500, give or take, marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. Most historians would set that date much earlier, as early as 1300. They are eager to document the first green shoots of the Renaissance while I am just as eager to preserve the last sere leaves of the Middle Ages. 

We’re both wrong, of course. We’ve allowed our conflicting ideologies to influence our critical judgment. In fact, the Middle Ages had no end and the Renaissance no beginning. It’s all just history! Even so, 1500 was a watershed. 

In fact, the entire last half of the 15th century was an especially volatile time, politically, culturally, and philosophically, in the cradle of the Renaissance, Florence – from the deaths of Fra Angelico (1455), the last great painter of the Middle Ages, and Cosmo de Medici (1464) to the proclamation of a Theocratic Republic by Fra Savonarola (1494) and his subsequent execution (March 1498). 

Two months later, Machiavelli, the great prophet of the Renaissance, became Secretary of the now secularized Florentine Republic (May 1498). Two years later (1500) Leonardo returned to Florence, kicking off the visual eruption we now know as ‘Renaissance Art’. Da Vinci was quickly followed by Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael, Correggio, et al. 

But the greatest achievements of this fraught half century were not in politics or art but in philosophy. The last three great Medieval philosophers wrote, taught, and generally dominated intellectual life in Florence up to 1499. 

Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Fra Savonarola were friends and sometimes allies and they shared some common philosophical perspectives. Consistent with the Middle Ages, their philosophies were theocentric; but steeped in Classical culture, they drew ideas and illustrative material from a much wider spectrum of periods and cultures than most of their predecessors.  

But now fast forward to 1498. In March of that year, Savonarola, the last great philosopher-stateman of the Middle Ages, was executed by the citizens of his city. In May of that same year, Machiavelli, the first ‘great’ philosopher-statesman of the Renaissance assumed the position of Secretary of the Republic.

In a period of less than 60 days, the entire orientation of Western ethics was turned upside down. Savonarola’s career marked the last gasp of ‘right for right’s sake’ morality. Instead, Machiavelli introduced Europe to ‘the ethics of instrumentality’, encapsulated in his famous meme, “The ends justify the means.” 

It is the nature of the historical process to veer ‘from one extreme to another’. If Savonarola went too far, the ‘ethical wasteland’ of the past 500 years seems a tad of an overreaction. 

Somewhat surprisingly, Machiavelli seems to have admired ‘the great Savonarola’, as he called him. ‘Seems’ because Machiavelli’s writing is often ironic, and it is sometimes difficult to determine whether his expressions of exuberant praise for various cultural figures are sincere or facetious. 

His only issue with the friar seems to be the latter’s failure to build a military force capable of defending his cultural revolution. Machiavelli, the anti-Gandhi, thought of ‘non-violent revolution’ as an oxymoron. 

That said, Machiavelli supported militarism only as necessary and only as a means to a better end. In 1508 he wrote a hilarious epic poem describing the chaotic and violent fortunes of the Italian city states from 1494 - 1508. His flair for the absurd presaged the styles of some 20th century authors, e.g. Ionesco and Beckett.

The same ethical ambiguity clouded his political views. He understood that a Republic was the best form of government for Florence, but he believed a Republic could only succeed if it followed a period of tyranny. Freedom and Democracy could only prosper if they were imposed, harshly if necessary: You will be free, you will self-govern, whether you like it or not! 

Buoyed by the prospect of a coercive modern state, Machiavelli willingly built his utopia on a most fragile foundation: “…the people are by nature variable; to convince them of something is easy; to hold them to that conviction is hard. Therefore, a prophet must be ready, when they no longer believe, to make them believe by force.” He cites the careers of Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus in support of this thesis.

We are a long way, historically and philosophically, from Locke, Mill and the founders of American democracy, but I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin's quip in response to a citizen asking, “What sort of government have you given us?” – A republic, if you can keep it! 

Wait, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, at my Marxist-Leninist day camp. A dictatorship (of the proletariat) must precede the withering away of the state and the ultimate triumph of pure communism. Some Marxists even out did Karl. George Sorel, Franz Fannon, and Uncle Joe (Stalin), for example, like Machiavelli, believed that violence was a necessary spiritual purgative if a revolution was to have any hope of lasting success. 

And where did they hear that? From the pens of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety (aka the French Revolutionaries). However brilliant his mind and however benevolent his intent, Machiavelli became Godfather of a pretty unsavory crime family (not the Medici)…to which we all now belong!

Image: Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Detail of Allegory of Good Government, 1338, fresco, Gothic art, Sienese School, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Fondazione Musei Senesi.