{"id":11340,"date":"2021-04-14T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T22:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11340"},"modified":"2021-05-07T15:55:54","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T22:55:54","slug":"machiavelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/14\/machiavelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Machiavelli"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Florentine<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The man who taught rulers how to rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Claudia Roth Pierpont<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
Machiavelli believed that to succeed in life a man must be adaptable.<\/em> Illustration by Lorenzo Mattotti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One method of torture used in Florentine jails during the glorious days of the Renaissance was the\u00a0strappado:<\/em>\u00a0a prisoner was hoisted into the air by a rope attached to his wrists, which had been tied behind his back, and then suddenly dropped toward the floor as many times as it took to get him to confess. Since the procedure usually dislocated the shoulders, tore the muscles, and rendered one or both arms useless, it is remarkable that Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli, after reportedly undergoing six such \u201cdrops,\u201d asked for pen and paper and began to write. Machiavelli had nothing to confess. Although his name had been found on an incriminating list, he had played no part in a failed conspiracy to murder the city\u2019s newly restored Medici rulers. (Some said that it was Giuliano de\u2019 Medici who had been targeted, others that it was his brother Cardinal Giovanni.) He had been imprisoned for almost two weeks when, in February, 1513, in a desperate bid for pardon, he wrote a pair of sonnets addressed to the \u201cMagnificent Giuliano,\u201d mixing pathos with audacity and apparently inextinguishable wit. \u201cI have on my legs, Giuliano, a pair of shackles,\u201d he began, and went on to report that the lice on the walls of his cell were as big as butterflies, and that the noise of keys and padlocks boomed around him like Jove\u2019s thunderbolts. Perhaps worried that the poems would not impress, he announced that the muse he had summoned had hit him in the face rather than render her services to a man who was chained up like a lunatic. To the heir of a family that prided itself on its artistic patronage, he submitted the outraged complaint \u201cThis is the way poets are treated!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker The Florentine The man who taught rulers how to rule. By\u00a0Claudia Roth Pierpont One method of torture used in Florentine jails during the glorious days of the Renaissance was the\u00a0strappado:\u00a0a prisoner was hoisted into the air by a rope attached to his wrists, which had been tied behind his back, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}