D
READ
THE
A
RMS
W
ITH
W
HICH
L
OVE
IS
A
RMED
Char Roone Miller
George Mason University
March 14, 2006
The first was this: the lordship of love is good since he diverts the mind of his faithful
from all evil things. The next was this: the lordship of love is evil, because the more
fidelity his faithful one bears him, the more grave and pitiful are the tribulations he must
endure.
Dante, Vita Nuova, XIII
And I am showing you further a more extraordinary way. If I speak in the tongues of
humans and angelic beings but do not have love. I have become a resounding gong or a
reverberating cymbal.
Paul, Corinthians I.12.31-13.1
“He who makes no test, Love,” wrote Niccolo Machiavelli in a song to Amore
that he used in both of his most important plays—the Mandragola and Clizia—“of your
great power, hopes in vain ever to bear true witness to what might be the highest worth of
heaven.” Machiavelli is known as a lot of things but seldom as a philosopher of love; but
love and the emotions of human attraction and rejection play a large part in all of his
writings as they do in many accounts of identity. “Nor does he know,” continued
Machiavelli concerning the person who makes no such test, how, “at the same time, one
can live and die, how one can pursue harm and flee from good, how one can love oneself
less than others . . . nor does he know how men and gods alike dread the arms with which
you are armed” (19). Machiavelli promoted the nation-state (with an amazing system of
checks and balances) as the location of political identity, action and power—the very
objective of Il Principe as expressed in the final chapter was to unify the abstract nation
of Italy—but he was also quite attentive to the political life of the city that occurs at the
level of face to face contact. Even Il Principe evidences a great deal of attention to the
ways in which the prince is loved, liked and hated by his subjects (piu amato, benevoluto,
1
Page 1 of 30 
Convention