20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Nicolae Mavrocordat’s notes to Niccolo Machiavelli 165Description of the States of France and Germany”. The third volumeincludes “Speeches on the First Decade of Tit Liviu”. The three volumesare in Italian. The annotations are in Italian, Greek and Latin.The ninth chapter of “The Prince”, having as title “On the CivilPrincipate” has been minutely noted and underlined. Stating that the civilprincipate “is created either by the will of the people, or by the will of thepowerful” 1 , Machiavelli analyses the relation between the prince and thepeople, between the prince and the noblemen. According to Machiavelli,society is structured in “categories of people” or “social strata”: noblemen,people and soldiers. He analyses the prince’s attitude towardsthese socialstrata. The prince has to please the people. A hostile people make the princeunsafe. A hostile people can abandon the prince. Hostile noblemen can bothabandon or rise in rebellion against him. Furthermore, while a prince cannot change the people, he can have different noblemen as ministers, whomhe can reward or fire.Although he came to power helped neither by the people, nor by thenoblemen (he was appointed by the Sublime Porte), the first Phanariotprince realized the fact that he needs the support of the people and of thenoblemen. He exempted some noblemen in office and some ex-officials(mazils). He also disburdened the peasants, decreasing some taxes: the“vădrăritul” from 4 bani the measure (vadra) of wine to 2 bani, and heabolished the tax on land (“pogonăritul”). He put under severe religiouscurses the princes who would reinforce those taxes in the following period(the so-called “Patriarch Letters”). 2 Conflicting personality, NicolaeMavrocordat didn’t respect these decisions on a permanent basis, havinga fluctuating behavior towards the boyards (noblemen). Whereas at thebeginning of his reign he governed with kindness and benevolence, he laterincurred their hatred, by countless taxes and by the contempt for the highnobility (he replaced the high boyards with low boyards in various offices),as related by Mitrofan Grigoras, priest and historian, contemporaneouswith Nicolae Mavrocordat 3 .In his “Recommendations” for his son Constantin, Nicolae Mavrocordatwrote that the prince has to know the merits and the shortcomings of thelocal noblemen, in order to avoid the latter. The prince has to stay awayfrom greedy, treacherous, untested, ignorant, proud, vindictive or untrue1Machiavelli, N. 1960, Principele, Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică: 39.2Cronica Ghiculeştilor (Istoria Moldovei între anii 1695-1754), 1965, Bucureşti:Editura Academiei, 187.3Ştrempel, G. 2005, Cronicarii greci despre români, Mitrofan Grigoras, MagazinIstoric, nr. 4.