A philosopher who deeply influenced Western history, Machiavelli was, as well, involved in the affairs of his time. This paper aims to analyze the pragmatic context of Machiavelli’s production, for instance, his political exile from Florence. In order to draw the lines of this “praxis,” contemporary biographies, letters of Machiavelli and, of course, the books (The Prince, Discourses, History of Florence) are revisited and reread in each other’s light. This approach allows one to appreciate more the “revolutionary” and “anticlerical” dimensions of Machiavelli’s philosophy.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Allard, G., (2025), "Un homme politique désœoeuvré: Machiavel, historien et penseur politique", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Allard, Gérald. "Un homme politique désœoeuvré: Machiavel, historien et penseur politique." Renaissance and Reformation 36 (4): 2020. 65-84. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v36i4.8662. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.