Morality and opportunism

When, in the fourth book of The Cortegiano, Castiglione proposes a meticulous discussion of the reference principles of political action and government, rather than reasoning in an abstract manner, he projected into the model his meditations developed starting from concrete cases that he had witnessed: Cesare Borgia and Guidubaldo di Montefeltro, Francesco and Federico Gonzaga, Francesco Maria Della Rovere and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Francesco I and Carlo V. The cynical opportunistic and ambiguous nature of power had revealed itself to him, during his life, in all its crude evidence, in repeated circumstances, and nonetheless he didn’t give in and consent to a practice that was as degrading as it was diffused. Already in the letter to Henry VII he gave great evidence to this concept: the morality of the prince rotates around his ability to refute the feudal and warring code to rise to the rank of an ethically superior civilisation. He never ceases to decry the reduction of political life to a savage fight for power: as it leads to brutal degradation, that, in the name of private interests, sets men against each other and eliminates every possibility of peace.

Form the De officiis of Cicero Castiglione takes and relaunches the recommendation for moderation and clemency as the mark of a noble and generous man, that demonstrates a conciliatory spirit, quick to look beyond offences. The prince, contrary to false belief, must not concentrate solely on maintaining power, because this, inevitably, will lead him to underhand and disloyal behaviour; a man of government, according to Baldassarre, must first of all aim at the complete fulfilment of his humanity. The teachings of Giovanni Pontano emerge in The Cortegiano and in the other pages dedicated by Castiglione to political theory. Pontano had already called on the prince to always preserve a conciliatory spirit, never obstinate, never irritable: capable of respect for the enemy and of conceding grace and pity to the vanquished, as an extreme form of vindication of his own superiority.