Redimere l’Italia dai peccati de’ principi

Una lettura politico-militare della “redenzione” nel Principe

Abstract

In The Prince, the words redemption, redeemer, redeem only appear in Chapter 26. In this paper, I will attempt to answer two questions: “why, in the final exhortatio of The Prince, does Machiavelli choose to use this semantic field of redemption, which he never uses anywhere else?” and “how should we interpret this presence of the term redemption in The Prince?”. Machiavelli uses words (sins, redemption) that were part of Savonarola’s prophetic vocabulary. Whoever wants “to become the leader of this redemption”, i.e. the redemption of Italy from “barbarous cruelty and irreverence”, must “above all, as the very foundation of every undertaking, obtain his own weapons”. The task of the “redeemer” of Italy is a politico-military one. The use of the semantic field of redemption therefore functions to distance the politico-military from the theological discourse, as has already been done in Chapter 12, where the “sins” are not those intended by Savonarola, but the “sins of princes”, i.e. “sins” of a military nature. 

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Digital edition for purchase published by Editrice Morcelliana (external link), © 2018 Editrice Morcelliana.
Print edition for purchase published by Editrice Morcelliana (ISSN 2239-6098; ISBN 978-88-372-3175-0; external link), © 2018 Editrice Morcelliana.