Introduction: Machiavelli's The Prince in the Sixteenth Century

     The Price was written during Machiavelli’s exile from Florence, consequence of suspected treason against the Medici family. The Prince is considered to have been an attempt for Machiavelli to prove his loyalty to Lorenzo di Medici, to whom it is dedicated, and his family in hopes they would revoked his banishment from Florence. The text was first distributed in 1513 under the title, Of Principalities, to the Medici, and was officially published years later in 1532 under its known title, with permission from the Pope Medici Clement VII. Since its beginning. The Prince has been considered a widely controversial text: notable for being in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic ethical and political doctrines of the sixteenth century, including the rumor that Machiavelli held early republican values.

     Both the Catholic and Protestant churches condemned The Prince. It was even banned in Elizabethan England by Cardinal Reginald Pole of the Catholic Church. The Prince was banned by a successive Pope in 1559, who included The Prince in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Each believed Machiavelli was politically corrupt and promoted amoral values in his writing.

     In Italy the powers of the political and religious worlds competed, a principality focuses heavily on ensuring the absolute power of a ruling prince, and in the case of the Medici, a hereditary family continuing their rule. This desire directly impacted the Vatican, at a time when political and religious power competed with each other for superiority.

     The Prince in the Seventeenth Century is an online exhibit which follows the history of republication of The Prince post-ban in the seventeenth century by contrasting three texts from successive decades against one another. By comparing these texts, the enduring influence of The Prince is revealed to change between its publication in the early sixteenth century, its explosion of popularity post-ban, and its contemporary significance. In specific, the exhibit will follow Catholic influence on the text: the successive forms of censorship which The Prince endured, and the significance of this history today.