hist121 forum 6

Department standards require that your initial post be at least 250 words long each week. You must respond to at least three of your classmates’ initial posts (threads under your own post are not eligible for credit). Each of your peer responses must be at least 125 words long. Short posts will not be eligible for full credit. Your initial posts are due by 11:55 pm ET on Thursday night. Your peer responses are due by 11:55 pm ET on Sunday night. Late work will be graded in accordance with department policy, as follows:

• Work posted or submitted after the assignment due date will be reduced by 10% of the potential total score possible for each day late up to a total of five days, including forum posts/replies, quizzes, and assignments. Beginning on the sixth day late through the end of the course, late work, including forum posts/replies, quizzes, and assignments, will be accepted with a grade reduction of 50% of the potential total score earned.

Please choose one of the following questions to answer in your initial post. When responding to your classmates, you must respond to at least one person who chose a different question than you did. If all of your posts address the same question, you will not receive credit for one of your peer responses.

1. Obviously and rightfully, the first thoughts that come to mind concerning the Black Death are negative. There was, however, a “silver lining.” What were the positive impacts of the Black Death? In terms of history as a whole, do the pros outweigh the cons? Be sure to look beyond the enormously high mortality rate in order to consider the event as objectively as possible.

2. One of the common themes of the Renaissance was humanism. Choose one of the pieces of art linked below and explain its relationship to Renaissance humanism. Be detailed. Be sure to discuss specific details from your chosen artwork and from the textbook’s explanation of humanism.

• Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1485, panel, Uffizi Gallery, reproduced from Wikimedia Commons, accessed 8 November 2017,
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• Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1495-1498, gesso, pitch, and mastic, Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, reproduced from Wikimedia Commons, accessed 8 November 2017,
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• Albrecht Dürer, Saint Jerome, 1521, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, reproduced from Wikimedia Commons, accessed 8 November 2017,
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• Michelangelo, The Deluge (Detail from the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel), 1508-1509, fresco, Sistine Chapel, reproduced from Wikimedia Commons, accessed 8 November 2017,
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• Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509, fresco, Vatican museums, reproduced from Wikimedia Commons, accessed 8 November 2017,
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3. The textbook describes Niccòlo Machiavelli’s advice for leaders as encouraging “amoral political behavior, freed from the constraints of Christianity” (173). Consider the excerpt below from Machiavelli’s The Prince. Were his suggestions “amoral” or did they simply fit with Renaissance humanism? Use specific examples from the excerpt and / or from history to support your conclusions.

Taking others of the qualities I enumerated above, I say that a prince must want to have a reputation for compassion rather than for cruelty: nonetheless, he must be careful that he does not make bad use of compassion. Cesare Borgia was accounted cruel; nevertheless, this cruelty of his reformed the Romagna, brought it unity, and restored order and obedience. On reflection, it will be seen that there was more compassion in Cesare than in the Florentine people, who, to escape being called cruel, allowed Pistoia to be devastated. So a prince must not worry if he incurs reproach for his cruelty so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal. By making an example or two he will prove more compassionate than those who, being too compassionate, allow disorders which lead to murder and rapine. These nearly always harm the whole community, whereas executions ordered by a prince only affect individuals. A new prince, of all rulers, finds it impossible to avoid a reputation for cruelty, because of the abundant dangers inherent in a newly won state. . . .

Nonetheless, a prince must be slow to take action, and must watch that he does not come to be afraid of his own shadow; his behaviour must be tempered by humanity and prudence so that over-confidence does not make him rash or excessive distrust make him unbearable.

From this arises the following question: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both. One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours. They would shed their blood for you, risk their property, their lives, their children, so long, as I said above, as danger is remote; but when you are in danger they turn against you. Any prince who has come to depend entirely on promises and has taken no other precautions ensures his own ruin; friendship which is bought with money and not with greatness and nobility of mind is paid for, but it does not last and it yields nothing. Men worry less about doing an injury to one who makes himself loved than to one who makes himself feared. The bond of love is one which men, wretched creatures that they are, break when it is to their advantage to do so; but fear is strengthened by a dread of punishment which is always effective.

The prince must nonetheless make himself feared in such a way that, if he is not loved, at least he escapes being hated. For fear is quite compatible with an absence of hatred; and the prince can always avoid hatred if he abstains from the property of his subjects and citizens and from their women. If, even so, it proves necessary to execute someone, this is to be done only when there is proper justification and manifest reason for it. But above all a prince must abstain from the property of others; because men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. It is always possible to find pretexts for confiscating someone’s property; and a prince who starts to live by rapine always finds pretexts for seizing what belongs to others. On the other hand, pretexts for executing someone are harder to find and they are less easily sustained.¹

Notes

1. Niccòlo Machiavelli, The Prince (London: Penguin Books, 1981), 95-97.

Bibliography

Machiavelli, Niccòlo. The Prince. London: Penguin Books, 1981.

 

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