ABSTRACT
Machiavelli’s famous passage on San Giorgio in the Florentine Histories (Book VIII, Chapter 29) has been interpreted in the context of Florentine history in the early sixteenth century; some other authors, less widely known, consider the passage from the perspective of sixteenth-century Genoa. This chapter offers a new interpretation based on (1) a grammatical analysis of words connecting two sentences and the punctuation established in later editions of the Florentine Histories and (2) the history of late fifteenth-century Genoa. My argument is that this repunctuation helps us better understand Machiavelli’s ideas. The chapter argues that, in fact, Machiavelli is saying that San Giorgio’s power can be understood as the result of its competition with the Commune of Genoa. He saw Genoese power as fragmented. In past readings of this passage, the connection between the two sentences was simply not understood, and Machiavelli’s idea is important, because he used the model of San Giorgio to create the concept of a financial corporation with territorial power detached from the Commune (the state). The chapter compares Machiavelli’s views of San Giorgio with those of the Genoese financial experts (cf. Chapter 7) and provides new information on Machiavelli’s presence in Genoa and his contacts with local merchants and humanists.
