Girolamo Frachetta (1558-1620)

Il Prencipe di Girolamo Frachetta Nel quale si considera il Prencipe & quanto al governo dello Stato, & quanto al maneggio della Guerra. Distinto in due libri. ... In Roma, Ad instanza di Bernardino Beccari. Stampato per Nicolo Mutij, 1597

First edition. Girolamo Frachetta was a philosopher and political writer; born in Rovigo, he was a pupil of Francesco Piccolomini, from whom “he assimilated a Platonizing Aristotelianism and above all the conception of a politics guided by ethical principles and the highest good (but also by Tridentine dictates), and based on prudence. ...” (Baldini, translated). Frachetta served Luigi D'Este, Scipione Gonzaga, and the Spanish embassy in Rome, but later, banished from the Papal Sate, moved to Naples, where he acted on behalf of Francesco Maria II Della Rovere, duke of Urbino. “... Sessa [Antonio Fernández de Córdoba y Cardona, 5th Duke of Sessa (1550-1606), Spanish ambassador in Rome] continued to insist that he [Frachetta] be granted a second pension in Rome and in November 1596 he even commissioned a work dealing with the sovereign's actions in government  and on his effective knowledge of the problems of his state. Thus was born Il prencipe, written in just seven months - as the extensive dedication to Sessa specified - and published in Rome (B. Beccari) at the end of 1597. F. reproduced the scheme already proposed in the "Idea" of his "Seminario de' governi" [previously publised], dividing the treaty into two books, dedicated respectively to the "government of the state" and the "handling of war", opposing Machiavelli right from the beginning and theorising a model of a prudent prince, guided by profit and honesty at the same time, but always in full respect of morality and religion. The work consecrated F. as a prestigious political writer in the eyes of the Spaniards, to whom all his subsequent publications will be dedicated.” (Baldini, translated).

& Francesca Chiarelli Girolamo Frachetta In: The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature; Enzo Baldini, Frachetta, Girolamo In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.