• 1 Pier Paolo Portinaro, Le mani su Machiavelli. Una critica dell’ “Italian Theory”, Rome, Donzelli, 2 (...)
• 2 Regarding this philosophical trend see in particular the two monographic issues of Diacritics, 39 a (...)
• 3 Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge Mass./London, Harvard University Press, 162-3; on t (...)
• 4 On the role of Spinoza in Machiavelli’s recent re-readings, see Banu Bargu, “Machiavelli after Alth (...)
• 5 See It Eric Kammer, Frédéric Rondeau and Sylvano Santini, “Actualité de la multitude. Entretien ave (...)
• 6 John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, VIII e Id.(...)
• 7 On this reading see Ryan Balot and Stephen Trochimchuk, “The Many and the Few: On Machiavelli’s Dem (...)
• 8 John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli, op. cit., p. 111.
• 9 Ibid., p. 22 and 32.
• 10 Ibid., p. 208: “the body of citizens, institutionally empowered to deliberate and decide for themse (...)

1In a recent book, Pier Paolo Portinaro stated, “the people, the plebs, the multitude, riots and constituent power are now concepts which cannot be avoided in any interpretation [of Machiavelli]”1. This tendency of Machiavellian criticism can be traced back to two distinct intellectual traditions. Regarding the first, which Portinaro identifies with the “patchwork” of the Italian Theory, we can find the main reference to this in Antonio Negri2. In a series of texts published over two decades from the beginning of the 1990s onwards, Negri identifies in Machiavelli, the theorist of tumults, the origin of the project of the multitude as “constituent power”3. In this interpretation, the concept of “multitude” has a strong evocative and genealogical potential because it allows a continuity between Machiavelli, Spinoza the “advocate of the multitude”4, and the multitudes spontaneously mobilized in current times against globalized capitalism5. The second interpretation is a variant of the Cambridge school of intellectual history. In two recent contributions, John McCormick has proposed Machiavelli in a “fundamentally populist [...] and anti-elitist”6 key. In McCormick’s reading, Machiavelli is more Democratic than Republican, at least not in the sense that this term has assumed for John Pocock and Quentin Skinner and other scholars associated with this historiographical movement7. Again, the reference to Machiavelli has a founding value: to replace Rousseau as a heroic figure in the history of modern democracy and to provide contemporary democratic theory with a more solid model because it is older, more in keeping with the Roman Republican example and, above all, more radical8. Also in this case, Machiavelli becomes crucial thanks to a reading of his writings that enhances the role of the multitude. McCormick uses this term as a synonym of “people” (common people), in turn understood as “class”9 and as “body of citizens” with constituent power10.

• 11 Ibid., p. 163; Id., Machiavellian Democracy, op. cit., p. 74.
• 12 John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli, op. cit., p. 52-53.
• 13 See William Mazzarella, “The Myth of the Multitude, or, Who’s Afraid of the Crowd?”, Critical Inqui (...)
• 14 Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured. Opinion, Truth and the People, Cambridge Mass., Harvard Unive (...)
• 15 Barack Obama, I’m the real populist, not Trump, https://www.politico.com/video/2016/06/obama-im-the (...)

2Although with different assumptions, Machiavelli’s workerist and populist interpretation share some common traits. For both interpretations, the multitude (i.e. “the people”) is above all an ethical community, a whole repository of values of equality, social justice and spontaneous prudence11. The multitude is also a whole conceived against something or someone, according to a binary logic (multitude vs. capital for Negri; people vs. elites for McCormick)12. Finally, “multitude” or “people”, even though they are found in Machiavelli’s lexicon, are used in both cases in light of the meanings that these terms assume in contemporary intellectual debate. “Multitude” is, as is well known, a key term on the post-liberal political horizon: in opposition to the regressive notion of “crowd”, “multitude” is synonymous with the vital energy that arises autonomously from a collective13. The progressive meaning of “populism”, which may seem suspicious to a European reader, is instead comprehensible in the light of the American experience and, in particular, of the distinction between “good” and “bad” populism14, which allows, among other things, Obama’s famous “populist” claim to be explained: “I’m the real populist, not Trump”15.

• 17 See Emanuele Cutinelli-Rendina, Machiavelli, Rome/Bari, Laterza, 1999, p. 63; Sandro Landi, Lo sgua (...)
• 18 John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli, op. cit., p. 162-168.

5Suggested by a passage of Lucretius, probably reread in the light of the ethnographic accounts of populations recently discovered in the West17, this description of prehistoric humanity allows one to see how a group, without any superior or external intervention, but from a fund of common perceptions, is able to produce shared institutions and values. Machiavelli distinguishes different phases of this prehistory, three to be precise: an initial phase, prior to society, in which there are only individuals “scattered like the beasts”; an intermediate phase, in which the multitude is formed (“they drew together”), and a phase in which the multitude establishes a leadership (“made him their head and obeyed him”). If we try to read this passage from an workerist or populist perspective, there is no doubt that Machiavelli attributes to the multitude a “constitutive” power; but it is also true that once constituted, the multitude, in order to survive (“in order the better to be able to defend themselves”), conceives some form of authority18. In other words, the historical evolution of human aggregations shows, according to Machiavelli, two different types of multitude, depending on whether or not it is ordered by a hierarchical principle.

• 19 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 254.
• 20 Ibid., p. 251.
• 21 Ibid., p. 219.

6As we have said, “multitude” is a term often used by Machiavelli: if we exclude public and private letters, we count 110 occurrences of this term, especially in the Discourses and the Florentine Histories. On first analysis, Machiavelli uses “multitude” much less than “people” (more than 600 occurrences) or “plebs” (200 occurrences), which in some cases may be synonymous. The meanings that Machiavelli attributes to “multitude” are mainly two. First, “multitude” indicates a group that is inscribed in an institutional dynamic. This type of multitude is clearly identified in Discourses I, 58, (“disciplined by laws”), and opposed to another kind of multitude: the “undisciplined” multitude (sciolta)19. The “undisciplined” or “disorganized” multitude appears in Discourses I, 57 (“there is nothing more formidable than the masses disorganized and without a head”20). The question of the presence or absence of leadership is addressed in Discourses I, 44 in relation to the early Roman plebs, unable to provide themselves with a leader: “a crowd is useless without a Head”, Machiavelli remarks21. Machiavelli dwells some forty times – notably in the Florentine Histories – on the multitude sciolta, otherwise known as “crowd” (turba), i.e. disorderly rabble of individuals, almost always characterized by a violent inclination (“the fury of the multitude”, “the anger of this multitude”, “an outraged multitude”, “an excited multitude”).

• 22 Livy, in fourteen volumes, Books II, transl. B.O. Foster, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press (...)

7If we now reread the passage from Discourse I, 2, in the light of these occurrences, it appears that for Machiavelli the multitude is a form of human aggregation that knows two different modes of existence: one inherent, the other irreducible to institutions. Even if the latter is anterior, in the historical development of societies, it does not disappear, but constitutes a kind of double always ready to manifest itself. In distinguishing the two faces of the same collective actor, Machiavelli probably refers to Livy: in the first book of the Roman History, the process by which a disorganized multitude can aggregate and, thanks to laws, give birth to a people (“coalescere in populi unius”) is described22. However, there is a reference, undoubtedly more relevant, in Saint Thomas.

• 23 See Alexander V. Marey, “From People to Community: A Description of the Social Order by Thomas Aqui (...)
• 24 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, tomus primus, pars prima: I-LXXIV, Paris, Bloud et Barral, 1880, (...)
• 25 Paolo Grossi, L’ordine giuridico medieval, Roma/Bari, Laterza, 1995, p. 81-2.
• 26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, op. cit., p. 266: “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut dictum est, una (...)
• 27 On the preeminence of the collective end in Thomist ideology, as a source of authority and law, see (...)

8“People” (populus) and “multitude” (multitudo) are very frequent terms in the lexicon of Thomas Aquinas²³, but only in one case are they synonymous. In Summa Theologica (I, quaestio 31, 2), St. Thomas defines the people as “multitude of individuals included under a certain order” (multitudo hominum sub aliquo ordinem comprehensorum24. This “insightful definition”25, has the merit of reminding us that only an “ordained multitude” is a people. In fact, in another passage from Summa (II, quaestio 108, 2), St. Thomas opposes the “ordered” multitude to a “disordered” (confusa) multitude26. A “disordered” multitude, i.e. the non-people, is, in the first place, a multitude without a leading principle or hierarchical structure. in this sense, belonging to the people is not for St. Thomas a question of social status: even if it is inferior (vilis populus), a class of citizens (ordo) is the people because it is ordered, that is, regulated according to a logic that foresees the pre-eminence of a collective end27. To be or not to be a people is an essentially political question. St. Thomas therefore poses the problem of the possible coexistence, within the same community, of two different conformations of a group, because the “people”, ultimately, is only a potentiality of the multitude.

• 28 See Gianluca Briguglia, Marsilio da Padova, Rome, Carocci, 2013.
• 29 Marsilio da Padova, Defensor pacis, Frankfurt, Vechelus, 1592, p. 55.
• 30 See James M. Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages, Princeton, Pri (...)
• 31 Marsilio da Padova, Defensor pacis, op. cit., p. 55.

9The political treatises that come after St. Thomas give a discordant interpretation of this founding distinction. In this regard, it is important to take into account the analysis of the multitude of Marsilius of Padua. As is well known, in 1324 Marsilio completed the Defensor Pacis in Paris, a text which, despite the rapid condemnation of the Church, was widespread in Europe28. Marsilio dedicated the first speech in his treatise to political regimes and in particular to the question of popular sovereignty. Used as a synonym for the people, the multitude, in the Thomistic sense, is assimilated by Marsilio to the most important part (valentior pars) of the population of the city29. Unlike other commentators of Aristotle, Marsilio opted for a broad definition of this category. For example, Pierre d’Auvergne (Quæstiones super libros Politicorum, 1296-1301), on the basis of St. Thomas, distinguishes two types of multitudes (prima multitudo/secunda multitudo): a “bestial multitude” (multitudo bestialis), that is “a multitude of misguided people, insensitive to persuasion”, which constitutes the necessary basis of tyranny (nato subesse principatu dispotico), and an ordered multitude (multitudo bene ordinata), composed of “wise men”, necessarily a minority, worthy instead of governing30. Marsilio reverses this relationship. In fact, Marsilio identifies the valentior pars with the majority of the city’s population (maiorum multitudo), which also includes the most humble classes useful to its functioning (vulgus)31.

• 32 See this text in Diego Quaglioni, Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano: il “De tyranno” di Bart (...)
• 33 See Daniel Lee, Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought, Oxford, Oxford Universi (...)
• 34 Aristote, The Politics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1946, p. 123.
• 35 Marsilio da Padova, Defensor pacis, op. cit., p. 57: “verum horum omnium congregata multitudo disce (...)
• 36 See Vasileios Syros, Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Traditions of P (...)
• 37 Andrea Zorzi, “Politica e giustizia a Firenze al tempo degli ordinamenti antimagnatizi”, in Vanna A (...)
• 38 Ennio I. Mineo, “Preminenza e distinzione in Italia tra XIV e XV secolo. Alcuni problemi”, in Jean- (...)
• 39 See Christiane Klapisch Zuber, “La construction de l’identité sociale. Les magnats dans la Florence (...)

10In comparative terms, this extensive interpretation of the “ordered multitude” remains an isolated case. For example, Bartolo da Sassoferrato, in his De regimine civitatis (1355 ca.) states that the best form of government is that in which sovereignty resides in the people (regimen ad populum)32. Bartolo, however, distinguishes between sovereignty in the name of the people and a government of the people, that is, the regime that Aristotle calls “democracy”, where the multitude, pursuing equality, oppresses the rich and powerful citizens (Politics, III, 13, 1284a19-23)33. Marsilio, instead, bases his position on another passage of Politics (III, 11, 1281b5-10), according to which “each of them by himself may not be of good quality”, if gathered together, possess a capacity of judgement superior to that of a few excellent34. According to Marsilio, this group (congregata multitudo), of which he does not specify the social or institutional nature, is autonomously able to know the truth and to pursue justice35. It is very likely that Marsilio interprets Aristotle and St. Thomas in the light of the constitutional evolution of some large cities (Florence, Bologna, and Perugia)36. In particular, in Florence, with the promulgation in 1293 of the Ordinamenti di giustizia, which excluded members of noble families (magnates) from the city government, the “people” identified with the ruling class37. As recent historiography has highlighted, in this context, the “people”, “tends to assume a more political and factional than social character”38: more than class, the “people” is a relative condition, an “anthropological place”, in which, according to regime variations, individual and collective identities are recomposed39. The contribution of recent historiography to the understanding of this ambiguous category has thus been decisive but generally ignored by Machiavellian scholarship.

• 40 On Machiavelli and St. Thomas, see Carlo Ginzburg, “Intricate Readings: Machiavelli, Aristotle, Tho (...)

11If we now return, for the last time, to the above-quoted passage from Discourses (I, 2), we can observe that the foundational “people”/multitude distinction remains operative: indeed, what Machiavelli describes is essentially the genesis of an “ordered” multitude which is only so in the presence of a hierarchical principle. In this sense, this text constitutes an “archaeology” of the people as an institutionalised multitude, but also a kind of anamnesis of a previous but still effective configuration of the multitude, i.e. the “disordered” multitude. To summarize in part: from the workerist or populist perspective, the multitude or the people constitute in Machiavelli an indivisible whole. However, if we stick to the texts, we can easily come to another conclusion: for Machiavelli, for whom the Thomistic distinction between ordered and disordered multitudes continues to have a meaning40, there is not one, but two multitudes. One can also add that these two multitudes, although contiguous, constitute two distinct political subjects. The splitting of the narrative in Discourse I, 2 indeed highlights two possible parallel investigations: the first concerns, precisely, the “people”, i.e. the multitude as an institutional collective experience, seen through the cyclical variation of forms of government; the second is concerned with the nature of the “disordered” multitude, i.e. the primordial and often spontaneous forms of human aggregation.

• 41 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. William K. Marriot, London/New York, J.M. Dent/E.P. Dutton, (...)
• 42 John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy, op. cit., pp. 12-14, 23-26.
• 43 See Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in Tumult: The “Discourses on Livy” and the Origins of Political (...)
• 44 For example, see Giovanni G. Balestrieri, “Grandi e popolo”, Enciclopedia Machiavelliana, 2014 (htt (...)
• 45 See John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli, op. cit., p. 98.

12Machiavelli’s analysis on these two different ways of the multitude develops over a long period and uses different forms of writing. In the light of this distinction, it is possible to reread some of the texts that found populist canon and, above all, to give a sense to Machiavellian occurrences of the multitude that are too different from the canon and therefore generally ignored. Machiavelli is interested in the multitude as an institutional actor, notably in the first chapters of the Discourses (I, 2-8), in the Discursus florentinarum rerum and in the Florentine Histories. In the populist exegesis, the people, which according to Machiavelli is one of the “humours” of the city41 is, without hesitation, identified with a social class42. This class is complementary to another collective subject: the Senate, in the case of Rome, synonymous with “nobles” or “great” (Grandi) in the case of Florence, generically qualified as “elites” in the populist lexicon. The characteristic dynamic of these two actors is conflictual, since Rome and Florence are, by essence, turbulent republics43. Without risk of simplification, it is possible to affirm that Machiavellian criticism has so far been interested in the “people” only because it participates in this dynamic44. In the populist interpretation, this dynamic necessarily leads to the setting up of institutions whose aim is the safeguarding of the people’s freedom and the democratic control of the elites45.

• 46 See R. Balot and S. Trochimchuk, “The Many and the Few: On Machiavelli’s Democratic Moment”, The Re (...)
• 47 See Yves Winter, Machiavelli and the orders of violence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 201 (...)

13I do not wish to dwell on these theses, which have already been discussed46. I would, however, like to point out that in this exegesis, the “non-people”, i.e. the “disordered multitude”, gathered for a spectacle or a riot, necessarily follows (with a surplus of hýbris), the same conflictual and anti-elitist logic as the institutional people47. Certainly, between these two modes of being of a group, there may be a continuity of intentions and desires. Indeed, one of the innovative elements of the Machiavellian analysis of the multitude is that not only can these two modes coexist within the same political organism, but that the same individuals can, according to the context, be “people” or “non-people”. The analysis of this second multitude, which is frequent not only in the Florentine Histories, but also in the Discourses and the Art of War, highlights a complex and contradictory collective behaviour.

• 48 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, op. cit., p. 144: “inasmuch as men judge more by the eye than by t (...)
• 49 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 227-8: “After 1494 when those who had been princes in (...)
• 50 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, op. cit., p. 144 (Chapter 18).
• 51 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 286.
• 52 See Quentin Skinner, The Foundation of Modern Political Thought, I, The Renaissance, Cambridge, Cam (...)
• 53 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 238.

14What characterises Machiavelli’s analysis of the “disordered” multitude is, first and foremost, the desire to explore this collective actor as a psychic entity, that is, as a “community of perception”. This specific mode of the multitude emerges in various places, for example in the Prince (Chapter 18), where those who are far from the place of power are, regardless of their status, defined by default, according to their inability to penetrate the appearance of things48. In the Discourses (I, 47), this cognitive bias acts as a dividing line between two categories of citizens: those who are outside the place of power (the “market place”) and those who, due to the unforeseen events of the electoral system, are in a position to exercise it (the “palace”). Machiavelli observes that in both cases they are the same individuals (“popular”): those who develop a polemical discourse against the ruling class in public contradict them when, abruptly, they are part of it49. No Machiavellian text preserves better the memory of the relative character of individual and collective statutes in this political universe. To be “people” or “non-people” is mainly to be in a place, a transitory condition that makes individuals more or less subject to a defect of perception (“for acquaintance with things in detail has removed the wrong impression that had been taken for granted when only general considerations were taken into account”). Moreover, it should not be underestimated that, in the perspective of the prince, this collective bias can constitute a political resource, since the minority still capable of correctly grasping reality voluntarily condemns itself to silence and submission (“and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them”)50. In addition, it is in a cognitive key that the multitude (“many”) can be considered in the same chapter of the Prince, as a synonym of “vulgar” (vulgo): “and in the world there are only the vulgar”. Compared to Aristotle or to Marsilio of Padua, Machiavelli’s position towards the wisdom of a group is much more ambiguous. The flamboyant affirmation of the superiority of the judgment of the multitude, present notably in the Discourses (I, 58),51 is often used to justify republican, even populist theses,52 but it is far from being an absolute rule. The anthropology of error, as a typically popular experience, seems constantly to invalidate it, as, for example, in the Discourses I, 53, where it is written that “misled by the false appearance of advantage, [the multitude] often seeks its own ruin”53.

• 54 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signes, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, p. 345. On this reading, see Tierry Ménissie (...)
• 55 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 149; on this chapter, see John M. Najemy, “Papirius a (...)
• 56 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 151.
• 57 Ibid., p. 141: “Nor in fact there ever a legislator who, in introducing extraordinary laws to a peo (...)
• 58 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 140.
• 59 Ibid., p. 142.

15Secondly, Machiavelli is interested in how a multitude constructs and shares beliefs, images and narratives over time. The aim of what we can call a “phenomenology of the multitude” is to shed light on the deep reasons for the tacit and ephemeral pact that is the basis of consensus and subordination. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed out in some penetrating notes, for Machiavelli “there is no absolutely founded power, there is only a crystallization of the opinion”54. From this point of view, war and religion constitute two privileged fields of study: in both cases, vast multitudes attest to an astonishing capacity for belief and submission. In both military and religious multitudes, fear and cunning are sometimes necessary to impose belief and obedience. For example, the manipulation of signs and omens, in order to bring up a multitude before a battle, is described in Discourses I, 14 about the consul Spurius Papirius55. In the next chapter, Machiavelli pays particular attention to the sophisticated ritual (“spectacle”) carried out, according to Livy, by the Samnites in such a way as to upset the soldiers, “with curses and terrible incantations” and thus brutally update, through a collective oath, the pact that binds the multitude to its rulers and gods56. In both episodes, these extraordinary remedies are exceptions that confirm the rule of a tacit agreement between the multitude and its leaders. This agreement is based on a shared religious imagery. Authority finds in religion its main source of legitimation (Discourses, I, 11)57; however, no authority can force a multitude to believe enduringly. Machiavelli’s analysis of the phenomenon of collective belief shows, in various places, a deep link with the techniques of persuasion: for example, Numa, wanting to introduce new institutions in Rome, “pretended to have private conferences with a nymph”58; the Florentine people “were persuaded, by Friar Girolamo Savonarola that he had converse with God”59.

• 60 Ibid., p. 143.
• 61 See Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d’État, Paris, Éditions de Paris, 1988 ( (...)
• 62 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 143.
• 63 On this point, see Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Glencoe, Free Press, p. 131.
• 64 Niccolò Machiavelli, Art of War, Ellis Farneworth trans., New York, Da Capo, 1965, p. 175.
• 65 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 143.
• 66 Ibid., p. 144.

16Although apparently similar to the “noble lie” (Plato, Republic, V, 459), the persuasion Machiavelli observes in religious and military contexts differs from it because it always implies an interaction between two parties: the minority of those who persuade (variously defined as “wise men”, or connoisseurs “of natural things”)60 and the multitude composed of those who let themselves be persuaded. This relationship is not reduced to an unscrupulous minority capable of activating the devotion of a passive multitude by resorting to visibly false images and stories. From this point of view, it is necessary to remember that Machiavelli is not Gabriel Naudé and his notion of persuasion is more complex than that attributed to him by his libertine and neo-libertine interpreters61. This notion takes into account the fact that religiosity is a socially uneven phenomenon: if it is legitimate to doubt the religiosity of the elites (who must, as we read in Discourses I, 12, “foster and encourage everything likely to be of help” religion, “even though they be convinced that it is quite fallacious”)62, it is certain that the only effective and assessable religiosity is that of the multitude63. From a cognitive point of view, this common devotional heritage is manifested in the capacity of a group to interpret signs and to discover the manipulations to which it is subjected. In the Art of War (Book VI), Machiavelli highlights the conflict of interpretation between the mass of soldiers who ominously (sinistramente) interpret different types of signs (lightning, eclipses, earthquakes, accidental events) and their leaders who find themselves having to “interpret it for their own purpose and advantage”64, that is to say, to propose, of these same signs, a divergent reading, but nevertheless consistent with the beliefs of the multitude. In Discourses (I, 12), the multitude shows itself capable of recognizing, behind the voice of the oracles, the ventriloquism of the elites (“when the oracles began to say what was pleasing to the powerful, and that this deception was discovered by the people, they became incredulous and inclined to subvert any good institution”65. The instrumental use of religion is therefore dangerous, because the authority it manipulates, if unmasked, is subjected to the same process of disenchantment suffered by the divinity. Difficult to manipulate, belief is a collective phenomenon which occurs spontaneously and often by autosuggestion. In the same chapter, some Roman soldiers, who burst into the temple of Juno at Veii, saw what corresponded to their expectations (“it seemed to them that they heard the answer they wanted the goddess to give”66. In this case, the attitude of the chiefs towards this supposed miracle is exemplary: “such beliefs and such credulity was studiously fostered and encouraged by Camillus and by the rest of city’s rulers”. The authority, therefore, far from manipulating, limits itself to authorizing and disclosing a fact that, although imaginary, is effective, that is, in conformity with the experience of the multitude and, in the final analysis, with the truth that is proper to it.

• 67 Andrea Cattani, Opus de intellectu et de causis mirabilium effectuum, Florence; we consult the spec (...)
• 68 Cattani, Opus de intellectu, 69: “incantamentum est oratio vehementi affectione in subsidio incanta (...)

17The collective imagination is a determining factor in the Machiavellian definition of the multitude. Machiavelli seems to deepen this dimension thanks in particular to a little-known text, the Opus de intellectu et de causis mirabilium effectuum by the Imola physician Andrea Cattani (or Cattaneo), published in Florence in all probability between 1504 and 1507 with a dedication to the gonfaloniere of the Florentine Republic Piero Soderini67. Through a series of clinical cases, this author highlights the psychic dimension of persuasion considered as a set of curative techniques that use both the word (incantatio) and sight (fascinatio). In both cases, Cattani takes into account, on the one hand, the intention to persuade and, on the other, the disposition to be persuaded: an ambiguous relationship made of trust, domination, and subordination68.

• 69 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, op. cit., p. 158.

18Reciprocity is at the root of the Machiavellian notion of collective persuasion. The enigma of a consenting multitude is set out in chapter 17 of the first book of the Discourses. Seduced by the demagogy of Mario and then of Caesar, the people of Rome decided to voluntarily renounce their freedom: “this was due to the corruption with which the Marian faction had impregnated the populace. For, when Caesar became the head of this faction, he so successfully blinded the masses (moltitudine) that they were unaware of the yoke which themselves had placed on their necks”69. To “blind” a multitude, that is to say, to fascinate them. Cattani’s medical model probably allows Machiavelli to probe this aspect of collective behaviour and connects it with contemporary environments and debates.

• 70 See Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Univ (...)
• 71 Avicenna latinus, liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, trans. Suzanne Van Riet, Leuven, Brill, (...)
• 72 See Francesco Piro, “Sull’antropologia dei rudes prima di Vico. Immaginazione, credulità, passional (...)
• 73 Cattani, Opus de intellectu, 33: “hic est ille homo quem prophetam vocamus, cuius offitium est univ (...)
• 74 See Sandro Landi, Lo sguardo, op. cit., p. 251.

19The Machiavellian analysis of the “disordered multitude” thus seems to intersect with the tradition, of medical origin, on the powers and weaknesses of the imagination. In this sense, this analysis is not isolated but is part of a broader context that needs to be highlighted. The theoretical framework used to interpret psychic phenomena is given mainly by Avicenna, whose Canon forms the basis of medical teaching in Italy in the Middle Ages and in modern times70. Avicenna discusses the imagination in Book IV of the Liber de Anima in relation to the healing process: the belief (dispositio) that the patient conceives about his or her own state of health is often the most effective tool available to the physician71. On a different scale, the relationship the prophet establishes with a multitude of believers is also psychosomatic in nature. It is for this reason that Avicenna recognizes in prophetic revelation the foundation of political life72. In his teaching at the University (Studium) of Florence, Andrea Cattani treats of the power of the prophets and the prodigious effects of the imagination73; Machiavelli most probably makes use of the Opus de intellectu to give a sense to the case, extraordinary par excellence, of Savonarola74.

• 75 See Vittoria Perrone Compagni, “Pietro Pomponazzi”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 84, 2015, (...)
• 76 Pietro Pomponazzi, De naturalium effectuum causis sive de incantationibus, Basel, Ex officina Henri (...)
• 77 On the misunderstandings and anachronisms at the origin of the libertine reception of Pomponazzi, s (...)
• 78 Pietro Pomponazzi, De incantationibus, op. cit., p. 54.

20In 1506, Cattani moved to Bologna where, for twenty years, he was a professor of medicine. His colleague Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) took up some of his suggestions in the De incantationibus (1520), which is probably the most successful attempt to give an explanation to the totality of the miracles that feed the collective imagination75. From a formal point of view, Pomponazzi’s book, whose manuscript was completed in 1520, is a treatise on physics and medicine in line with the doctrine of Aristotle, but its political dimension, although implicit and underestimated today, is decisive. In fact, the De incantationibus leads to a redefinition of the multitude (multitudo hominum, rudes homines, vulgus). Even if one guesses that the identity of this category is not without link with the material conditions of the individuals who constitute it, its status is essentially psychic. The multitude is at first simply defined in negative, as the whole of those who ignore the true cause of the things (“vulgares et qui rerum causa non cognoscunt”)76. To this first characteristic is added credulity (credulitas), a word that Pomponazzi uses with a degree of complexity greater than that of his libertine readers77. For example, in a passage dedicated to miraculous healings, he explains that the power to heal occurs most often among the common people and the ignorant “who are the most credulous and have the most faith78. We can thus guess that credulity is not a purely negative or passive quality, but rather that it constitutes the psychic state that allows, thanks to an imagination free of any hindrance, to produce apparently prodigious effects: “what is the importance of faith and imagination, as much on the part of the agent as on the part of the patient, we can realize it enough”. Credulity is thus the shared condition necessary for the promise of healing, as Avicenna maintains, to be realized.

• 79 For a contextualization of vis imaginativa, see Tonino Griffero, Immagini attive. Breve storia dell (...)
• 80 Pietro Pomponazzi, De incantationibus, op. cit., p. 100. On this miracle, see Guido Giglioni, “Il c (...)
• 81 Pietro Pomponazzi, De incantationibus, op. cit., p. 236-240.
• 82 Ibid., p. 253.

21Pomponazzi returns several times to the poetic power of the imagination (vis imaginativa), as a hidden but effective cause79. He is convinced that this power belongs in a privileged way not only to individuals from the people but also to the people as a crowd. The miraculous appearance of St. Celestine to the people of L’Aquila around 1520 fits into this typology. After a heavy rainfall, the people of the city decided to address their patron saint together with fervour. Not only did the rain suddenly stop, but when the clouds cleared, the image of Celestine appeared publicly: an unquestionable prodigy, according to Pomponazzi, because it happened “not in secret, not to two or three people, but to the whole people (ab universo populo)”80. Pomponazzi proposes at least two explanations. The first is that imagination is a contagious phenomenon: like vapors (vapores), mental images, which are transmitted and imprinted from one body to another, can have “imprinted in the air the same image with which each one was imbued”81. The second is that the imagination works on the basis of a common imagination: in this case, the vision of the saint is properly a collective hallucination, a phenomenon of autosuggestion that meets the expectations of the inhabitants of L’Aquila. In fact, as Pomponazzi points out, if the same prodigy had occurred in Bologna, it is likely that the celestial image would have been that of St. Petronius, the patron saint of the city82. The “miracle” of Veii described by Machiavelli seems to be based on the same principle: a group considers credible an experience that conforms to its own desires and to a shared imagination.

• 83 Ibid., p. 53.
• 84 Ibid., p. 243.

23The political implications of this redefinition of the multitude are no less important. Indeed, Pomponazzi contributes to rethinking the relationship between the majority and the minority, the many and the few. If we follow Thomistic categories, the valentior pars, the most valiant part of the community, corresponds in his text to the minority that holds the knowledge of true causes. These elite, defined as “philosophers”, is anthropologically distinct from the rest of the population: “the philosophers, the only gods on earth (Dii terrestres) and as different from other men in any condition (ordinis sive conditionis) as real men from men in painting”83. The gap that separates these two categories of men is thus insurmountable: Pomponazzi insists on several occasions on the need not to reveal the secrets of nature to the multitude (arcana non sunt vulgaribus comunicanda) which believes only in what it sees84.

• 85 Ibid., p. 284.
• 86 Ibid., p. 48.
• 87 Ibid., p. 283.
• 88 Ibid., p. 192.

24At the same time, Pomponazzi also identifies another minority distinct from the multitude: that of the “enchanters” (precantarores). This is undoubtedly the most problematic category, the one that alone justified the writing of De incantationibus. What is common to the different types of enchanters is the power to communicate and persuade through spells, both verbal (carmina) and visual (fascinationes). The term Pomponazzi uses in this connection is virtus, a property that some unusual individuals share with animals and even with minerals such as magnetized iron, which has the power (virtus) to attract other irons85. The precantator is thus someone capable of exerting, literally, a magnetic influence on his environment. It is his intentions that vary. Pomponazzi includes in the category of enchanters men and women of the people who, because of their fundamental credulity, possess the gift of spontaneously performing cures; magicians who officiate in public squares and make use of fraud; the thaumaturgic kings of France86; prophets who found new religions and new states (legum conditores)87. Like Cattani and Machiavelli, Pomponazzi thinks that these prodigies – whatever their origin and purpose – become effective thanks to the consent of the people, a people-patient, therefore, who by their disposition, voluntarily allow themselves to be convinced, making the enchantment not only possible but irreversible88.

• 89 Ibid., p. 204-205.

25Thus, if the elite composed of philosophers remains irremediably separated from the people, often even victim of prejudices and persecutions89, the minority of enchanters, by its communicative virtues, is potentially a public object of love and veneration. Pomponazzi’s collective psychology, just as it identifies a political object in the collective imagination, makes it possible to imagine a structure of subjection based on the model of the doctor-patient relationship. In this case, medicine not only provides the lexicon and the metaphors to think the body politic, but it provides, through the psychosomatic model of enchantment, a scheme of vertical power, based on the charisma of a thaumaturgical leader and the voluntary subjection of the multitude.

• 90 See John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli, op. cit., p. 52.
• 91 Jean Balsamo, “Le plus meschant d’entre eux ne voudroit pas estre Roy. La Boétie et Machiavel”, Mon (...)
• 92 Karl. R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London/New York, (...)

26The thread of the duplicity of the multitude leads, at the beginning of the 16th century, to a new perception of this collective actor. A multitude conceived by Machiavelli and Pomponazzi as a “disordered” part of the political body, linked by a principle of psychic unity and by a common background of beliefs and skills. Only a few conclusive considerations remain to be made at this point that I would like to dedicate to the various possible uses of this term. I started from the “multitude” of the workerist lexicon, synonymous of “people” in the “populist” lexicon, as the key word of a new interpretation of Machiavelli. In this radical exegesis, the answer is always included in the premises of a clearly ideological nature and historiography has a role to play only when it is consistent with those same premises90. A tautological exegesis, therefore, that is resolved in controversies, questionable genealogies of ideas and that seems to repeat endlessly the ventriloquism experiment of Innocent Gentillet, the first, as Jean Balsamo has finely observed, to have interpreted Machiavelli’s texts “making them say what would confound his opponents”91. As Popper wrote, “it is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory, if we look for confirmations”92. That an influential part of Machiavellian criticism today is engaged in the construction of a new orthodoxy that is in fact impermeable to the principle of refutation and increasingly self-referential, is an indication of the growing disconnection of this field of study from the social sciences.

• 93 Christian Borch, The Politics of Crowds. An alternative history of sociology, Cambridge, Cambridge (...)
• 94 See Stefano Visentin, “‘O jugo que por si mesmo è colocado em suo pescoço’. Maquiavel e a servidão (...)
• 95 Étienne de La Boétie, De la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un, Paris, Gallimard, 1993, p. 79-80 : “G (...)

27In contrast, the “multitude” approach that I have developed here is aimed at bringing the Machiavellian analysis of this collective subject back into the history of social sciences. The categories and vocabulary of the actors of the time highlight a complexity of meanings that the current use of the term has partly lost. From this obliterated perception of the “multitude”, it is possible to question again Machiavelli but also the texts and authors with whom he probably came into direct or indirect contact. The hypothesis that I followed is that Machiavelli, when he observes the “disordered” multitude, i.e. the “non-people”, actually participates in a wider epistemic turning point, which concerns the emergence, in the early 1500s, of a psychology aimed at the study of human aggregates of vast dimensions. Completely refutable, this hypothesis allows, however, consideration of a new chronology of the crowd as an object of analysis of the social sciences. The historiographical cliché according to which crowds imposed themselves at the end of the nineteenth century, at the same time as the transformation of the industrial society⁹³, deserves, in my opinion, to be revised. Lastly, this epistemic shift has a political implication because, as we have seen, it makes it possible to conceive of a new configuration of the relationship between the governors and the governed. The discovery of the multitude as a psychic unity accompanies a process of polarization of the political community and the emergence of a model of government that we can define “medical-political”, because it is based on the promise of healing and the necessary, tacit agreement between enchanters and enchanted multitudes. A model that Etienne de la Boétie, one of the earliest readers of Machiavelli and probably Pomponazzi94, would exemplify in the formula of “voluntary servitude”: “not constrained by a greater multitude than they, but simply, it would seem, delighted and charmed by the name of one man alone”95.