Florence n’est pas Rome, les États-Unis non plus : John P. McCormick et le Discursus florentinarum rerum

Abstract

After the return to power of Medicis in Florence in 1512, Niccolò Machiavelli never stopped being interested in Florentine political life, fuelled by his hope to have the opportunity to help his city again. The present paper is a study of the Discursus florentinarum rerum after Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici asked Machiavelli to think about institutional reforms which were needed in Florence, following the death of Lorenzo II de’ Medici in 1519. John P. McCormick attaches the utmost importance to this text, considering that it demonstrates Machiavelli’s democratic commitment: in his proposal for rebuilding a republic in Florence, in favour of the people, Machiavelli would reinvent the tribunes of the plebs in Ancient Rome in his proposal to institute the Florentine provosts (proposti). He would support the people by assigning them a specific institution to defend themselves again “the great” (grandi). This measure should inspire us to address the problem of oligarchic dimension of contemporary democracies. For our part, we will demonstrate that such a reading and such use of the Discursus are highly debatable, on the one hand insisting on the concept of “order” (ordine), and on the other hand, underlining the problem of finding ways to update Machiavelli’s reflection, taking better account of differences in historical context.

Keywords

• Machiavelli
• John P. McCormick
• Discursus florentinarum rerum
• provosts
• democracy