Seeing Machiavelli through Villari
Villari's explains his choice of Machiavelli as a subject worthy of study in the preface to the work, arguing that
This project will examine some of the factors which influenced Villari as he wrote his ground-breaking biography. Among these were the new approaches toward Modern History adopted by scholars and politicians in England, the personal connections between supporters of Italian unification and British intellectual elites, and the political actions undertaken by Villari at the same moment he was researching and writing his work on Machiavelli."The Middle Ages had no idea of the modern State, of which the Renaissance laid the first stone, no idea of the science of politics. Theoretically, the Middle Ages admitted no difference between the conduct of the individual and of public life...The Renaissance, on the contrary, recognized, and even exaggerated this difference; Machiavelli tried to formulate it scientifically, and, by force of his new method founded political science." English edition, London: T.Fisher Unwin, 1892, vii.