Machiavelli in Love. So he, full of indignation and fury,. In order to give proof of his exalted excellence,. Changed quiver, changed arrow and bow;. Najemy Ultimately ideas will emerge to answer the questions who did Machiavelli love, why did he love them, and how did he benefit from this love.
Given the widely held notion that love precedes marriage, it seems a logical place to being understanding Machiavelli and love is through his relationship with his wife, Marietta Corsini.
However, as Sebastian De Grazia describes in his book Machiavelli in Hell , love before marriage is a relatively modern idea. Marriages in the Renaissance were usually arranged by a marriage broker who matched couples on the basis of family status and dowry.
Very little detail is known about the relationship between Machiavelli and Marietta. Of the more than letters collected and translated in the volume Machiavelli and His Friends , there are no letters written from Machiavelli to Marietta and only one survives from Marietta to Machiavelli.
In this particular letter from Marietta writes that she misses her husband and expresses concern over his health. Marietta says she wishes had more letters from Machiavelli and that she plans to write more herself. Nevertheless, her letters raise a lot of questions about how Machiavelli felt about his wife. It will be noted later that he went out of his way to see his mistresses. Also, in his chapter about Renaissance Epistolary, John Najemy notes that extensive correspondence between husbands and wives was unusual Thus, the lack of letters does not necessarily mean lack of love.
