ABSTRACT
It was the 28th of May 1498 when the council unexpectedly designated as second Chancellor the young Niccolò Machiavelli, barely five days after the execution of Savonarola. 1 Biographers have not up to now realized that it was the fall of the ‘unarmed prophet’ that opened this career to Machiavelli. It was another lesson for him to add to the teachings of modern times. Indeed, in this connection it is not without significance that when his appointment had gone through the Council of Eighty on the 15th of June and they passed it on to be debated, according to the law, in the Great Council, Niccolò had as his rivals Francesco Gaddi, 2 teacher of rhetoric at the University, Andrea di Romolo a notary, and that Francesco di ser Barone notorious for having manipulated the record of the martyr’s trials. 3 It was truly a miracle that two mediocre people of long experience in the Chanceries, and a proved scoundrel with his part in that peaceful revolution to recommend him, should all three have been passed over in favour of a young man of no reputation, very little experience, and brilliant intellect. Thus on the 19th of June Machiavelli was elected head of the second chancery. 4
