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ABSTRACT
Machiavelli’s antipathy toward institutionalized Christianity has been very well documented, but less attention has been afforded to whether there might be some version of Christianity of which he would have approved. In the present paper, we investigate Machiavelli’s misgivings about Christianity by inquiring into the role that he assigned to prayer, through which Christian “ideology” was operationalized. To our knowledge, nowhere in the large body of Machiavelli literature has anyone investigated systematically one such device for transmitting doctrinal principles into everyday practices. We contend that Machiavelli’s formulation of prayer is consistently transactional and in line with pagan worship, especially as it was practised by Roman religion. We conclude that Machiavelli was not un-Christian, but that his formulation of prayer reveals one element of his criticism of the earthly church that he believed was complicit in twisting Christianity’s potential for promoting commitment to love of country and civic liberty.
Notes
1 For Machiavelli’s involvement in these events, see Lee, Machiavelli, 317–26.
2 An overview of the League and its activities may be found in Shaw and Mallet, The Italian Wars, 1494–1559, especially 196–213.
3 The extent to which this threat was taken seriously is reflected in the bribe paid by the Florentines later in 1509 to Maximilian in order assure his “protection” of the city. In fact, Machiavelli was assigned to deliver the second installment. See Lee, Machiavelli, 326–8.
4 This letter was unknown until it was published by Luzzati and Sbrilli, “Massimiliano d’Ausburgo e la politici Firenza in una lettera di Niccolò Machiavelli ad Alemanno Salviati,” 825–54. An English translation may be found in Atkinson and Sices, Machiavelli and His Friends, 426–9.
5 Atkinson and Sices, Machiavelli and His Friends, 186–7.
6 Ibid., 187.
7 Why Machiavelli even favored Salviati as his correspondent in the first place remains a mystery. Machiavelli’s biographers dispute the rapport between the two men. Some consider that their relationship was lukewarm at best, virulently spiteful at worst. White, Machiavelli, offers this scathing appraisal: “On the surface Salviati’s reply appears to be a perfectly measured letter [ … ] However, on closer analysis it becomes apparent that Salviati’s response positively drips with sarcasm and thinly disguised bile” (151). Capponi, An Unlikely Prince, describes Salviati’s letter as “a masterpiece of malice”; “Salviati’s message may be summed up in one brief sentence: ‘Keep to your place, you arrogant, ignorant, and misbelieving sycophant’” (159, 160). Black, “Machiavelli, Servant of the Florentine Republic,” concurs: Machiavelli’s “egotism was thereby rendered hardly the more palpable, as is clear from Salviati’s reply, which is itself laden with irony and sarcasm” (98). Adopting a somewhat more measured tone, Butters, “Machiavelli and the Medici,” regards the letter as “a gesture toward Alamanno Salviati” that “met with no success” (66). Others posit a more benign interpretation of the exchange. According to Vivanti, Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and Salviati had “a cordial relationship” and a “lasting friendly rapport,” a sign of which was the “joke” in the letter (55–6). Likewise, Lee, Machiavelli, thinks that the letter indicates Salviati had “softened”—there was “a thaw in their relations” (314 and note 49).
8 Boyle, “Machiavelli and the Politics of Grace,” S237. We need not document the vast number of scholars who would subscribe to some version of Boyle’s succinct judgment. This view goes back at least as far as Cardinal Reginald Pole’s remark that “I found this type of book [the Prince] to be written by an enemy of the human race. It explains every means whereby religion, justice and any inclination toward virtue could be destroyed.” Pole’s condemnation of Machiavelli as a paradigm of “Satan’s Progeny” (and the defence of Machiavelli by his fellow Florentines) may be found in Kraye, The Cambridge Translations, 274–5.
9 In the twenty-first century alone, and without claiming to be comprehensive, we have identified: Vasoli, “Machiavelli, la religion ‘civile’ degli Antiche e le ‘armi’”; Maddox, “The Secular Reformation and the Influence of Machiavelli”; Lynch, “Machiavelli on Reading the Bible Judiciously”; Cutinelli-Rèdina, “Église et religion chez Machiavel”; Zmora, “A World Without Saving Grace: Glory and Immortality in Machiavelli”; Barbuto, “Discorsi I.XI.16-24”; Brucker, “Niccolò Machiavelli, His Lineage, and the Tuscan Church”; McCormick, “Prophetic Statebuilding: Machiavelli and the Passion of the Duke”; Scichilone, “La cultura cristiana in Machiavelli e Machiavelli nella cultura Cristiana”; Scichilone, Terra incognite; Vatter, “Machiavelli and the Republican Concept of Providence”; Frosini, “La ‘prospettiva’ del prudente”; Berns, “Prophetic Efficacy”; Frosini, “Prophecy, Education, and Necessity”; Montag, “Una Mero Escutore: Moses, Fortuna and Occasione in the Prince”; Murry, “The Best Possible Use of Christianity”; Parsons, Machiavelli’s Gospel; Cutinelli-Rèdina, “La religion”; Connell, “Some Observations on the Matter of Machiavelli and Religion”; Viroli, “Realism and Prophecy in Machiavelli and in Italian Political Culture”; Granada, “Maquiavelo y Moses”; Menchaca-Bagnulo, “Humility and Humanity”; Raimondi, “‘Usi a vivere liberi’: Connell, “On Machiavelli, St. Francis and the Pursuit of Happiness”; Villegas, “Los nuevos órdenes de Moisés y los Grandes”; Marco Geuna, “Machiavelli, la ‘varizone delle sette,’ e la critica al cristianesimo.”
10 de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell; Nederman, “Amazing Grace.”
11 Viroli, Machiavelli’s God.
12 See Bejczy and Nederman, Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages.
13 Gilbert, Machiavelli, 66. Further references to the writings contained in this volume will be embedded in the text, designated by the title and chapter of the work followed by a citation from it (abbreviated CW) and the page number(s). For the sake of brevity, Machiavelli’s major works will be cited as follows: P = The Prince, D = Discourses of the First Decade of Titus Livy, HF = The History of Florence, L = Legations. On occasion, translations may be modified slightly in line with Machiavelli, Opere.
14 Brown, “Philosophy and Religion in Machiavelli,” 166.
15 Machiavelli may also have blamed the lords of the church for doing so in order to manipulate the faithful into submitting to their corrupt machinations (think of Alexander VI and Julius II). That is not, however, our concern here.
16 De Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, 216, 225–7, 368.
17 Paxton, “Birth and Death”; Clark, Compelling God; Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. See also Cook’s commentary on Smith, p. 563. Thanks to Stephen Menn for drawing our attention to Smith’s magisterial and underappreciated work.
18 Homer, Iliad, ll. 25–55.
19 Kinghardt, “Prayer Formularies for Public Recitation,” 1–52, especially 14–18. See also Hahn, “Performing the Sacred: Prayers and Hymns”.
20 Livy, The Early History of Rome, Books I-V, 3.7.
21 Ibid., 5.20–1.
22 Ibid., 5.21.
23 Ibid., 10.14–22.
24 Hahn, “Performing the Sacred,” 247.
25 Barakat, Al-Mujtama‘ al-‘Arabi fi al-Qarn al-‘Ishrin, 426–7.
26 Stumpf, “Petitionary Prayer,” 81.
27 Stumpf, “Petitionary Prayer,” especially 81–5.
28 Paxton, “Birth and Death,” 383.
29 Angenendt, “Sacrifice, Gifts, and Prayers in Latin Christianity,” 464–5.
30 Ibid., 467.
31 Ibid., 465.
32 See Trinkaus, “The Problem of Free Will in the Renaissance and the Reformation.”
33 Clark, Compelling God, 57.
34 Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, 10.19.
35 Ibid., 17.11.
36 Giardini, “Unceasing Prayer,” especially 297–8, concerning Augustine.
37 Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, 19.23 (italics ours). Notwithstanding Augustine’s bitter disagreements with the pagan philosopher Porphyry on numerous issues, he is here endorsing the view of the latter about life as a prayer to the Father, purifying ourselves by inquiry into God and divinizing ourself by imitation of God. Our thanks to Stephen Menn for this observation.
38 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III.83. 2 (emphasis ours).
39 Specifically, Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.19.7, I.19.8, I.22.2, I.22.4, I.115.6, I.116.
40 Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Job, 117.
41 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II.83.2.
42 In Tusiani, Lust and Liberty, 34.
43 Quotations from the Legations are based on Machiavelli, Opere, vol. 2.
44 Machiavelli’s “Exhortation to Penitence” has been analysed by Norton, “Machiavelli’s Road to Paradise”; Ciliotta-Rubery, “A Question of Piety”; Bausi, Machiavelli.
45 There is a homily to God’s greatness along the lines of Augustine and Aquinas, but it is stuck as an aside in the middle of the “Exhortation,” as though a digression.
46 Atkinson and Sices, Machiavelli and His Friends, 336.
47 Pacini, “Per una Riletturra della ‘1’Esortasione dall Penitenza’ di Niccolò Machiavlli.”
48 The leading proponent of this interpretation is Cutinelli-Rendina, Chiesa e Religione in Machiavelli. She summarizes her position in her entry on “Esortazione alla penitenza” in Enciclopedia Machiavelliana.
49 Connell, “On Machiavelli, St. Francis and the Pursuit of Happiness,” 54.
50 Machiavelli, “Allocution Made to a Magistrate,” 525.
51 Most notably by Parel, The Machiavellian Cosmos.
52 Viroli, Redeeming the Prince.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Cary J. Nederman
Cary J. Nederman is professor of political science at Texas A&M University. He previously taught at York University and the University of Alberta in Canada and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, as well as at Siena College and the University of Arizona in the United States. His research concentrates on the history of Western political theory, with a specialization in classical Greco-Roman and early European ideas, up to the seventeenth century. He has also published in the field of comparative political thought. Nederman is the author or editor of over 25 volumes and has published in excess of 100 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. His latest books are Thomas Becket: An Intimate Portrait (Paulist Press, 2020) and The Bonds of Humanity: Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and Political Thought, c.1100–c.1550 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020). His next book, entitled The Rope and the Chains, continues his interest in Machiavelli’s thought. Since 2014, he has served as the President of the Board of Directors of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Nelly Lahoud
Nelly Lahoud is a senior fellow in New America’s International Security program. Dr Lahoud’s research has focused on the evolution and ideology of al-Qa'ida (AQ) and the “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL). She has also published on women’s role in AQ and ISIS and the use of anashid (a capella) by these two groups in their media output. She holds a Ph.D. from the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. She was a postdoctoral scholar at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, UK; Rockefeller Fellow in Islamic studies at the Library of Congress; and research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. Her previous appointments include associate professor at the Department of Social Sciences and senior associate at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; and assistant professor of political theory, including Islamic political thought, at Goucher College. Lahoud is fluent in Arabic and French.