An imagined gathering
1513 · Florence, Italy
In his study outside Florence, Machiavelli reads his new book to Erasmus, More, and Copernicus and asks whether a prince can be good.
Machiavelli has been dismissed from office, briefly imprisoned, and sent into the country, where he spends his days with woodcutters and his evenings with the ancients. He has written a short book and cannot decide whether to publish it, so he has invited three men whose judgment he trusts.
Erasmus, in Italy on his way back north, is disturbed by the book's coldness; More, who has been turning over the idea of a just commonwealth, argues that the prince should be judged by the good he does; Copernicus, who cares more for the heavens than for politics, asks whether any state can be ruled by reason alone. Machiavelli reads them a chapter and waits. The ravioli, partridge, and broad beans go cold on the table while they argue.
Host: Niccolò Machiavelli
Desiderius Erasmus — The great humanist, uneasy about a politics stripped of Christian ethics.
Thomas More — Lawyer and humanist, already imagining a better commonwealth.
Nicolaus Copernicus — A canon and astronomer, more interested in order in the heavens.
Main
a period dish
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli's short book on how a new ruler should win and hold a state, and why it has been read as both a manual and a warning.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli's pair of forces: the skill and energy of a ruler set against the luck and circumstance no one controls.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli's argument that free states endure only when citizens are armed, engaged, and willing to put the common good first.
Desiderius Erasmus
The humanist program of returning to original texts and languages, and the tools of editing and translation it produced.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.