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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Francesco sansovino's Concetti politici are a collection of 805 maxims which first appeared in 1578 and which were subsequently republished in modified form in 1583, 1588, 1598, and 1608, together with Guicciardini's Avvertimenti and Lottini's Avvedimenti civili. To the first edition, but not to any of those following, the author prefaced a list of 36 authorities from whose works he presumably drew all or nearly all of his concetti. The list includes the name of Guicciardini to whom, as we have demonstrated in a previous study, Sansovino was indebted for some 123 reflections. Yet it does not contain the name of Machiavelli, from whose writings, however, Sansovino did not scruple to borrow even more extensively. This omission is not difficult to explain in view of the Catholic attitude toward the author of the Principe, particularly after the Council of Trent and the publication of the Index. Although scholars have long been aware that Sansovino derived many of his concetti from Machiavelli, they have simply confined themselves to statements to that effect without every attempting to determine the precise extent of Sansovino's indebtedness. It is the purpose of the present paper to assess this debt.
1 The full title of the 1578 edition is Concetti politici di M. Francesco Sansovino, raccolti dagli Scritti di diuersi Auttori Greci, Latini, & Volgari, à benefitio & commodo di coloro che attendono à gouerni delle Republiche, & de Principati, in ogni occasione cosi di Guerra, come di Pace (Venice: Giouanni Antonio Bertano, 1578). It is this edition that was translated into English by Robert Hitchcock in 1590 under the title of Quintessence of Wit. As for the 1583 edition of the Concetti and the three others based upon it, they are entitled Propositioni, overo Considerationi in materia di cose di Stato, sotto titolo di Auuertimenti, Auuedimenti Ciuili, et Concetti Politici, di M. Francesco Guicciardini, M. Gio. Francesco Lottini, M. Francesco Sansouino. Di nuouo posti insieme, ampliati, et corretti.... (Venice: Altobello Salicato, 1583). Although the editio princeps contains 805 concetti, the 1583 text comprises 804.
2 V. Luciani, “Sansovino's Concetti politici and Their Debt to Guicciardini,” PMLA, lxv (1950), 1181-95. The number 123, however, should be increased to 125, for since the publication of this article we have discovered two more concetti that are drawn from Guicciardini: No. 29, borrowed almost verbatim from the Storia d'Italia (Book xii), and No. 152, a free version of avvertimento 47 (1582 ed.). The latter does not reappear in the 1583 edition of the Concetti so that the total of the avvertimenti discarded becomes 19 instead of 18.
3 See N. H. Thomson, “Preface” to his translation, Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1890), p. xvi; E. N. S. Thompson, The Seventeenth-Century English Essay (Iowa Univ. Press, 1927), p. 27; N. Kempner, Raleghs staatstheoretische Schriften: die Einführung des Machiavellismus in England (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1928), pp. 86-122. Kempner is the only one of the three to give figures. She traces 58 of the reflections in Ch. xxv of Ralegh's Cabinet-Council to concetti that Sansovino drew from Machiavelli, but it was not of course within the scope of her study to consider the many borrowings that Ralegh did not utilize.
4 Of the 142 chapters, 126 contain from less than one page to about four pages of an ordinary octavo volume. All the others, except the long chapter Delle congiure (Discorsi III.6), range from four to seven pages.
5 See concetto 459 in Table 1 of the Appendix.
6 Among the historical examples omitted are that of Raugia in concetto 377, that of the Spartans and the Venetians in No. 474, that of Appius Claudius in No. 482, and that of Caius Sulpicius in No. 522. Other types of changes made by Sansovino are amply illustrated by the concetti collated below with the Discorsi and other works of Machiavelli.
7 Tutte le opere di Nicolo Machiavelli ... divise in V. parti et di nvovo con somma accvratezza ristampate, 2 vols. (1550, n.p. and no name of publisher). Vol. I: 1) I Discorsi, 2)Il Principe and some minor opusucles, and 3) Dell'Arte dellaguerra. Vol. ii: 1) Le 1 storie florentine and 2) L'Asino d'oro, La Mandragola, etc. The five sections are all separately paginated.
8 Tutte le opere storiche e letterarie di Niccolò Machiavelli, ed. G. Mazzoni and M. Casella (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1929).
9 Throughout this study the Roman numeral after Discorsi indicates the book, whereas the Arabic numeral refers to the chapter.
10 In the 1578 edition of Sansovino's raccolta there are, among others, two concetti numbered 441, 478, 479, and 567 respectively.
11 See note 2, above.
12 This is also rendered advisable by the fact that the editions of 1583, 1588, and 1598 are all accessible in the U.S., whereas the editio princeps is not. For the present paper we have been able to consult all editions except the one of 1608.
13 The exceptions are concetti 150, 460, and 564. See Table 2 in the Appendix.
14 An example of the contrary is No. 567 (no. 1) : “Vn Principe dee cercar sempre di uiuere & di mantener lo sta to. & i mezzi saranno sempre giudicati honoreuoli, & da ciascuno lodati. perche il uolgo uà preso con quello che pare, & con l'auenimento delle cose. Et nel mondo non è se non uolgo. & i pochi hanno luogo, quando gli assai non hanno doue a ppoggiarsi.” The italicized portions of this almost verbatim borrowing are found without change in the 1550 edition of Il Principe, but in the modern editions (e.g., Mazzoni and Casella ed., p. 35) they become respectively “vincere” and “li pochi non ci hanno luogo quando li assai hanno dove appoggiarsi.”
15 No. 240 replaces “essa” with “casa” and “quei” with “quelli,” alters the position of “prima,” and makes two changes in punctuation. Otherwise it is identical with No. 695.
16 This same maxim is found in Latin in Il Principe, Ch. xxvi and in I Discorsi iii.12.
17 Among the reflections omitted are the following: “La moltitudine è piu savia e più costante che uno principe” (Discorsi i.58) ; “La nostra religione ... ha dipoi posto il sommo bene nella umiltà, abiezione, e nel dispregio delle cose umane: quell'altra [i.e., the religion of the pagans] lo poneva nella grandezza dello animo, nella fortezza del corpo, ed in tutte le altre cose atte a fare gli uomini fortissimi” (ii.2) ; “A volere che una setta o una republica viva lungamente, è necessario ritirarla spesso verso il suo principio” (iii.1). It is quite possible that Sansovino did not include such reflections because he could not sanction them.
18 See N. Kempner, Thompson, and Luciani (notes 2 and 3, above).
19 There are two concetti numbered 375 in the 1583 edition.