Our first step in studying the acts of tyranny in the sixteenth century is to sketch briefly the reception or recovery of the ancient texts of Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon about the forms of government.
Moving past early-modern times, Barker mentions only Locke and Burke “for the measure of some affiliation.” On first reading, this “affiliation” seems much too brief, even cavalier; but on reflection, Barker offers an insight into the English political experience.
And to be sure, through the church fathers, Plato and Aristotle remained present across the centuries, particularly through Augustine’s works. But as Elizabeth Eisenstein observed: “Any history of Western Philosophy must make some allowance for the migration of manuscripts (must place the works of Aristotle after those of Augustine, and certain dialogues of Plato after both, for instance) when accounting for the views of medieval school men.”1
The same is true for the great texts of political philosophy, and for the period down to 1475.2 The point is that since Plato’s works were recovered after Aristotle’s, they will be briefly presented after Aristotle’s.
The Recovery of Aristotle’s Politics
My sketch of the stronger trend in reception, translation, and diffusion of the Politics, and the Ethics in the later Middle Ages must begin with Albertus Magnus (1206–1280),3 a learned and energetic Dominican who strove to assemble copies of Aristotle’s works wherever he could find them, including Arabic Spain. It would probably be his translation of the Politics that Thomas Aquinas would read in order to make his lengthy and influential commentary, including on tyranny. Albertus was not the only one who simply added endings to turn Greek words into Latin ones, but he forged ahead despite recognizing that he did not fully comprehend the text.4 His reliance on a translation by Avicinna is evident in the phrasing, but Albertus nonetheless provided a helpful tool for future translators and commentators. There has been some question about whether Thomas Aquinas already had Albertus’s translation at his disposal when he developed his oeuvre, or whether it was the other way around.5
In Moerbeke, near Ghent, a scholar named William completed a translation of the Ethics and the Politics by around 1270. Copies seem to have circulated widely among learned-elite groups, as did a translation by Robert Grossteste.
Thus the best translator devotes himself in his translation with his whole mind and soul and will to the original author, and consciously tries to duplicate his figures, colors, and rhythms, all the features of his speech.7
To the north, what could be called a second Carolingian Renaissance took place during the reign of the French king Charles V, “the Wise” (1364–1389).8 Well-educated as princes went, and himself a reader at a time when most princes were being read to, Charles V commissioned several translations into the vernacular, “in order that his counselors and others might read them.” He had the Moerbeke Latin translation to read, but it was difficult. To the king, horsemanship or devotional books seemed insufficient if he was to be a good ruler. Augustine’s City of God, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, and Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics therefore were translated into French, with Nicole Oresme translating the Aristotle. A great illustrated presentation copy survives: it shows the king reading, seated in a monumental reading-seat surrounded by books and wearing a crown and a robe with fleurs-de-lis.9
As part of the context for this study of the acts of tyranny, the personal/individual history of relations with princes will be noted. Oresme was a secrétaire du roi, not a very high post in the royal administration but certainly honorable. Charles V also made him dean of the cathedral chapter of Rouen, and then wrote the canons to inform them that Oresme would be residing principally in Paris while working on translations. As a royal servant, Oresme supported the king and would do just about any intellectual labor that needed doing. Charles sent him to Avignon in 1363 to preach to the pope, an indication that Oresme not only knew the ancient rhetorical texts about translation, but also could speak before a public that was used to hearing eloquent sermons. Finances and currency puzzled the king, so Oresme wrote a pioneering work on the value of precious metals. The king seemed intrigued by astrology, so Oresme researched and wrote about the movements of the stars.
The translations of the Ethics and the Politics from Latin into French took Oresme about four years (1370–74). Instead of simply mentioning Cicero on the problems of translation, Oresme quoted him to the effect that “weighty works are most agreeable when written in the language of one’s country.”10 Patriotic sentiment had grown during the Hundred Years’ War, and Oresme stands on the frontier of pride about the French language, a “language noble et commun à genz de grand engin et de bonne prudence.”11
Susan Babbit characterizes Oresme’s translation of Aristotle as a translation, not a paraphrase: “It is one of remarkable unity and precision of expression.” Instead of dressing up Greek words when he could not express the thought in French, Oresme created new French words that often were quite easily understood thanks to their contexts. Estimates range from 450 to 1000 new words added to French in this way, and it seems that most of these neologisms have survived. True, the structure of many sentences remained that of Latin periods, but these sentences capture the correct meaning.12
Oresme made an index of what he called the “fors mos de Politique qui ne sont pas en commun parler.”13 I find it particularly intriguing that he would consider his new words, moving from Latin into French, to be somehow stronger than well-known words. All this was for the “common good,” an Aristotelian tag! The word tyran had come into French long before. Oresme kept revising his translation, perhaps even as artists and calligraphers arrived on the scene and created magnificent folio copies of his work.
Charles would decree that the high office of chancellor was to be elective, not appointive, a remarkable indication of the immediate consequences of Oresme’s translation. Did Charles conclude, after reading the Politics, that he had too much power and was bordering on tyranny? All the power in the hands of one, was, of course, tyranny, not kingship. He had his royal councilors, and he of course had great powers and wealth in the church, so there would seem to be little risk of his becoming tyrannical.
The illustration (or illumination) brings us back to the one, the few, and the many. Claire Richter Sherman’s analysis of them reveals quite a profound interpretation-depiction of the Politics. One wonders whether Oresme played a role in configuring the illustrations.
The illustrations of tyranny in the great illustrated manuscripts of Oresme’s translation of the Politics depict a king in the center. He is labeled: “Tyrant.” To his right, someone is being beheaded; someone else is having his breast pierced by hot pinchers. An assistant wields a bellows to intensify the heat of the fire. The tyrant bears a sword, and a bag of money is slung over his arm. The principal artist was Jean de Sy.14
In addition to commentaries on his texts, Oresme wrote what he calls “instructions.” In one, he captures Aristotle’s distinction between kingship and a non-royal individual who wielded powers and ruled in pursuit of the common good. Community belongs to those who live in it, not to the king; and any attempt to take everything or to tax excessively is tyrannical. Furthermore, “that the taking of profit from alteration of the coinage injures the whole royal succession.”15 The alteration of the coinage must be in the interest of all who live in the kingdom, not at all like the natural increase from harvesting grain.
And making a profit from altering the coinage is an “unnatural act,” an injustice.
As we shall soon discover, it will not be the works in the mirror-of-princes genre that contain the most detailed and profound commentary on tyranny. Oresme, in his treatise De Moneta, frequently employs the term “tyranny” to describe political actions, a shift or an extension from the person as tyrant to actions that are tyrannical, be they, or be they not ordered by a tyrant. After beginning with the “difference between kingship and tyranny, is that a tyrant loves and pursues his own good rather than the common advantage of his subjects.”16
For Oresme, the money circulating in a kingdom is like grain sown in a field: as Ovid says, both are part of Nature. Indeed, (referring to Aristotle), he asserts that tyranny does not last long, because it is “unnatural”17—an Aristotelian tag.18
The Recovery of Xenophon
Xenophon’s Hiero was first published in 1516 by the Giunti family of Florence.
The Recovery of Plato
The reception or recovery of Platonic texts took place largely in Florence, under the aegis of the Medicis. Greeks, some of them learned and some of them not, were recruited to teach whatever Greek they knew. A particularly bright and sensitive eighteen-year-old named Marcilio Ficino received support and favor as he tackled a translation of Plato into Latin. He completed this task in 1477, and various parts of the work were printed before 1500.
As early as 1494, the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius published his first work with Greek characters. Erasmus worked for some time in Aldus’s atelier between 1506 and 1509. Easy to read, aesthetically elegant, and monumental in size, Aristotle’s works appeared between 1495 and 1498. Then in 1513, the works of Plato were published in two folio volumes of 502 and 439 pages.19 They were dedicated to Pope Leon X.20 The sorting-out of the Platonic from the neo-Platonic texts does not concern us here.21
The number of specific references to Plato’s works varies among our authors of the five mirrors of princes. Seyssel has none in his Grand’ Monarchie de France, nor does Machiavelli in the Prince or Budé in his Institution; but Budé’s editor finds Platonic resonances when it comes to Budé’s concept of absolutism.22 The very close intellectual relations between More and Erasmus centered at least in part on their interest in Plato. Erasmus cites him several times in his Education of the Christian Prince, while the author of the Republic is present even in the framing by the author of Utopia.
Christine de Pizan
Before leaving Charles V’s learned circle, we must mention the most brilliant and truly literary writer of all: Christine de Pizan (1364–c1430), poet, writer of romances, and moral and political philosopher. Born in Venice but raised in Paris, Christine took up, or, to be more accurate, created, what can only be called the role of the woman professional writer. Left with two children after her husband’s death, and having access to courtly circles, she wrote several very well-received works that were copied out in magnificent folio-sized manuscripts,23 for which she received gratifications.24 The Book of the Body Politic (1404–1407) presents an organic society not unlike John of Salisbury’s, with a king (head) who rules for the welfare of all and who is divinely sanctioned.
Is the body politic endowed with the duty to act to eliminate the tyrant, as in John of Salisbury? Only specialists in Christine’s entire oeuvre can answer this question. There are many Aristotelian resonances: for example, tyrannies are of short duration. But there is also originality, an important example being God’s punishment of tyrants while they are still in power. The tyrant will have “bitter ailments of the inner parts” of his body and “stinking worm-filled sores.”25 Cruel and unjust, tyrants inflict punishment on themselves. Christine deplores the deposition of King Richard II of England.
It is the subjects’ love for their king that makes him stronger than any fortress he might build.26 In Christina’s work there is an astute observer of the political, and this might well be the case, because she was living through a period of wars between England and France, and at a time of popular uprisings in France (the revolt of the Cabochiens).
Mirrors of Princes
Writing about Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince, J.H. Hexter remarked that it is a “work whose literary flair alone distinguishes it from the wretched and dreary norm of the species, De Regimine principum, of which it is a member.”27 Written for the education of princes (less frequently for princesses), Fürstenspiegels have many characteristics in common, notably a discussion of childhood health, a review of morals, and, sometimes, historical examples. Their authors draw on the collective wisdom that is found in commonplaces, not on original thought, though in later centuries there are counsels about the natural sciences, mathematics, and governance.28
An answer to Hexter’s critique is that, like many other types of texts, reading the mirrors of princes requires special techniques. Francis Goyet’s introduction to his Sublime du “lieu commun” (Paris, 1996) is highly recommended. Put briefly, the more one knows about commonplaces, the more interesting they are to read. What is not included in a list of virtues or arguments can be as revealing as the commonplaces that are carefully selected and contextualized by the author. Noting absences and presences within the text, and outside it, can be a particularly rewarding experience for the cultural historian. Typically written just prior to setting up the household of an infant prince, the mirrors often are a bid for appointment as tutor to the prince, an appointment usually made by the infant’s governor with some consulting of the royal parents. The mirrors are often written out with extreme care on parchment or illuminated pages. On one of the first pages there often is a portrait of the author, kneeling before the king, who is seated in majesty, that is, under a canopy. Many of these presentation copies have survived; it will be noted where the presentation copies pointed out here are to be found.
A second harvest of mirrors of princes usually appeared about the time of the prince’s majority, a time when his reign might begin. The authors also kept their eyes on others in the immediate household, for example the confessor, the physician, and the fencing instructor, any of whom might have a say in the prince’s education and therefore might blackball a candidate for the office of tutor. Being appointed to a princely household provided an opportunity to benefit from intimacy, or at least from what appeared to be intimacy with the prince, and, it was to be hoped, with the councilors who determined policy.
After all, prior to serving (and influencing) the tyrant Dionysius of Sicily, and being on intimate terms with him, Plato was disgraced. Aristotle tutored Alexander. Seneca had held a similar office (service) at Nero’s court. The key word is “service,” not “servitude,” that is, the descent into slavery.
A native of Savoy, Seyssel enjoyed high rank, first in the state as the high administrative officer in a conquered country, Milan, and later as a bishop. He lost none of his connections at the court of Francis I, with its numerous Savoyards.
Budé’s frame of mind was that of a Parisian parlementaire. His interest in scholarship did not impede him from conveying a certain elite presence as a scholar who was charged with the task of keeping the royal library in order and secure. Were borrowers of high rank already a threat to the collection? Yes. They could borrow at will and not return books or manuscripts. Budé pressed hard for the founding of a new school centered on the teaching of ancient languages. It would become the Collège de France.
Erasmus accepted an appointment as councilor to the future Charles I of Spain, later elected Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles was merely duke of Burgundy; but the post was more honorable (and somewhat more remunerative) than powerful. Never possessing much money, he would accept a teaching post for a while, and then would travel onward.
Henry VIII first pressed Thomas More to accept a minor royal office, which More eventually did; and rather shortly afterward the king appointed him chancellor, a very high-ranking post with real power, not only over policy but over the royal administration in general. Henry’s separation from the Roman Catholic Church, and the rise of the indelicate Thomas Cromwell, would bring about More’s trial and execution for treason. More’s life might have turned out otherwise, as a tutor to a royal child for a considerable period of time, if he had been a mere tutor to a royal child.
Machiavelli’s career as a diplomat and administrator for the Florentine government did not continue, owing to clashes between a young city republic, which Machiavelli supported, and the returning Medicis, who forced him into disgrace. He first thought of dedicating the Prince (the real title is On Principalities) to Guiliano, the Medici prince who died, and whose demise caused Machiavelli to appeal for intimacy and influence with Lorenzo de Medici, not the great Lorenzo but a minor one who died in 1519 and who, during the life of Pope Leo X (d. 1521), never controlled the vast Medici networks of “friends” and relations.
Forms of Government Depicted in Siena
While the more direct of the immediate sources seem obscure, there is an arresting depiction of tyranny on the walls of the Sala dei Nove in the town hall of Siena. It dates from 1338–1340. Seated in majesty, Nimrod (?) holds a mysterious mace. Horns protrude from the tyrant’s cowl; and Tyranny has long canine teeth. Tyranny’s eyes, if not crossed, are not well focused. He holds a sheep with a scorpion’s tail. At his feet is a black, long-horned animal who looks up at him. His attendants depict armor-making (for war), assault, murder, cruelty, treason, fraud, furor, division. Erasmus provides a word-picture of a monster in his Education of the Christian Prince, which will be compared with the Siena painting later.29
A reading of Machiavelli’s Prince, Claude de Seyssel’s Grand’ Monarchie de France, Budé’s Institut du Prince, and Thomas More’s Utopia will be our first general aim.
Of this group, Machiavelli is the only one who could not read ancient Greek. Thus it would be possible, with great effort, to analyze errors of transcription, ancient and contemporary, and to determine just which manuscript stem or which early printed editions of Plato and Aristotle each man read. However, to do so exceeds the time that remains for this elderly scholar. With the arrival of printing, just what was included in editions titled “opera omnia”? With tongue in cheek, Sir Ernest Barker proposed that the Aristotelian legacy could be summed up in one word: “Constitutionalism.” This is followed by an assertion that “Aristotle taught St. Thomas: through St. Thomas he also taught Richard Hooker…”30