Seeing as this conception of Machiavellian otium involves intentional and conscious strategies, the concept of ‘retreat’ was of key importance for our project: the polysemy of this term, which — in similarity to the Roman notion of otium — has military and political as well as social, intellectual, and cultural connotations, opened up new approaches for the analysis of Machiavellian texts post res perditas. Just as in early modern military thinking, retreat is not to be put on the same level as defeat but calls for a change of strategy and tactics which is carried out by a deliberate movement in space and time: while it allows escape from a hopeless or dangerous situation, it paves the way for new and maybe even more effective interventions on military and political battlefields in the future.

By taking advantage of the extraordinary editorial work and the groundbreaking discoveries related to the recent publication of the three respective volumes of the letters in the Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, we focused on Machiavelli’s epistolary writing. Shifting between carteggio and at least certain aspects of an epistolario and, hence, between functional and literary writing, the correspondence after 1512 is at the same time a product and an enactment and maybe even a generator of otiose leisure. It is beyond question that the letters Machiavelli writes to former colleagues, friends, and potential patrons follow pragmatic intentions. The former secretary aims at a quick return to political office and, hence, he writes letters as well as treatises, comedies, and dialogues in order to overcome his situation of forced leisure. Nevertheless, the very same texts also seem to explore and enable different and sometimes unusual forms of political action, thereby exposing otium and leisure as important resources not only for individuals, but also for communities and institutions. Thus, the study of Machiavellian otium provides important insights into interactions of the public and the private spheres. Moreover, it might reveal a microphysique du pouvoir of apparent inactivity which puts the long-familiar claims of autonomy and self-sufficient sovereignty of political players in the modern world – as often embodied by the Machiavellian figure of the principe nuovo and its interpretations – into perspective.

This website displays the results of our philological analysis of Machiavelli’s letters between 1512 and 1527. It is our ambition to document and quantify the relevance of the research questions of the CRC 1015 Otium for Machiavelli scholarship. The research presented here was conducted between 2019 and 2021 within a subproject of the CRC at the University of Freiburg. It is a result of interdisciplinary team work and brings together philological, historical, and editorial approaches (Judith Frömmer, Andrea Guidi, and Christian Feichtinger) as well as the expertise from the field of political sciences and intellectual history (Stefano Saracino). It is based upon a selection of ca. 75 texts chosen from a corpus of ca. 130 letters written after Machiavelli’s dismissal in 1512, which seemed of particular pertinence to our inquiry of the different forms of otium and leisure exposed by and in Machiavelli’s epistolary writing post res perditas. Yet, in order to get an adequate understanding of ‘otiose’ (in contrast to professional) letter writing we included some sample letters from Machiavelli’s diplomatic missions, which, most interestingly, sometimes disclose moments of leisure and otiose dreaming.

Accordingly, we hope that this website will not only be useful for professional researchers, but also allow for different, maybe even otium-oriented uses by offering new ways to experience Machiavellian letter writing and its complex networks between persons, texts, ideas and, last but not least, different historical realities. It is part of a work in progress and we will continue to add material and publish the results of our research. Through this website we invite you to enter the world of Machiavellian otium.