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Vickie B. Sullivan - Machiavellis Three Romes: Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics Reformed

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Machiavellis Three Romes: Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics Reformed
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Vickie B Sullivan
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Cornell University Press
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Books / Religion
Year:
2020
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Machiavellis ambiguous treatment of religion has fueled a contentious and long-standing debate among scholars. Whereas some insist that Machiavelli is a Christian, others maintain he is a pagan. Sullivan mediates between these divergent views by arguing that he is neither but that he utilizes elements of both understandings arrayed in a wholly new way. In this illuminating study, Sullivan shows Machiavellis thought to be a highly original response to what he understood to be the crisis of his times.

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VICKIE B. SULLIVAN

MACHIAVELLIS THREE ROMES

RELIGION, HUMAN LIBERTY, AND POLITICS REFORMED

Northern Illinois University Press an imprint of

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The first debt that I incurred in the preparation of this book is to Catherine and Michael Zuckert, who introduced me to Machiavellis political works in a course devoted to his thought that they taught at Carleton College. From my seminar paper, through my dissertation, to the manuscript of this book, they have been most generous readers, helping a student to make arguments with which they have not always agreed. Only now do I feel as though I have answered to my own satisfaction the questions they raised in that undergraduate class.

Anything of value in this interpretation has been profoundly influenced by Nathan Tarcovs work on Machiavelli and by Joseph Cropseys extraordinary example of intellectual probity and clarity of vision in the study and teaching of political philosophy.

John Scott, Carol Fiedler, and George Greene read and commented on all or portions of the manuscript at various stages. Grace Burton listened patiently to my theories and offered excellent advice. Skidmore College provided me with a sabbatical for the completion of this project, and the students at Skidmore, whose in-defatigable questioning in two seminars I taught on Machiavelli, helped me to refine my arguments.

The suggestions of the two readers for Northern Illinois University Press have improved the manuscript. Polity allowed me to reprint material in chapters 5 and 7 that originally appeared in an article.

Finally, I thank my husband, Daniel, whose critical eye and dialectical skills aided me and whose patience and good humor sustained me.

NOTE ON TEXTS CITED

Unless otherwise referenced translations of Machiavelli cited in this book are indicated by the following abbreviations:

AW	The Art of War, from vol. 2 of Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989). Book number is cited first, followed by page number.
CW	Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989).
D	Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Book number is cited first, followed by chapter and paragraph number.
FH	Florentine Histories, trans. Laura Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). Book number is cited first, followed by chapter number and, sometimes, page number.
P	The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Chapter is indicated first, followed by page number.
O	For Machiavellis works in Italian, reference is to Machiavelli: Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971).

INTRODUCTION

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.Shakespeare

Three Romes are to be found in the pages of Niccol Machiavellis political thought. At times each distinct Rome exists in a state of war with the others, as each, informed by its own divergent worldview, threatens to vanquish its rivals; at other times they coexist in surprising harmony. The first Rome is the one familiar to the Florentine from his experience as a secretary of his republic and then as a disreputable, tortured, but ever astute exile from government. This is the Rome of the Christian dispensationthe one in place immediately before the Reformation that was guided first by the machinations of Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia, both of whom sought to capitalize on the invasion of the French, then by the cry of Fuori i Barbari of impetuous Pope Julius II, and finally by the patronage of a Medici man of the cloth, Pope Leo.

The second Rome is that which Machiavelli transfers to his own pages from those of his beloved historian, Titus Livy. So different from the Rome of Machiavellis own age, it is the one in which the men of the most aggressive republic ever known competed for the worldly prizes of honor and renown as they subjected other peoples to Roman authority. By retelling in his own time the feats of heroism of these ancients, Machiavelli participates in their pagan pursuit of glory by assuring that they continue to receive the reward of perpetual remembrance to which their lives, and sometimes their deaths, were dedicated.

The third Rome is that of Machiavellis imagination. Ultimately what motivates his search for this new land is his concern for human liberty and his recognition that neither ancient nor modern Rome can be considered an adequate guardian of it. Indeed, his new Rome will allow human liberty to flourish for the first time. Although the view that Machiavelli is the discoverer of a third Rome is unique in the scholarship, the association of Machiavellis political thoughtparticularly that contained in the Discourseswith liberty is not. Quentin Skinner, for instance, offers the view held by many scholars that the basic value in the Discourses is that of liberty.

Although it is true, as Sebastian de Grazia reminds us, that sprinkled throughout Machiavellis writings, like poppies in a field of chick peas, are many references to God, I argue that it cannot be concluded that these references add up to the tidy sum of Machiavellis firm intellectual basis in Christianity. As I shall demonstrate in part 1, just behind this orthodox veneer lies a forceful criticism of not only the clergy, but also Christianity itselfa reaction to what Machiavelli sees as the deleterious effect that the Church and its doctrines have had on the practice of politics. An examination of passages drawn primarily from the Florentine Histories, The Prince, and the Discourses reveals that he regards the clergy as a particularly pernicious type of nobility, which derives its vitality from draining political actors of theirs. Machiavelli repeatedly presents his readers with the spectacle of seemingly mighty rulers humbled before the shepherds of the Christian flock.

In addition, in a more subdued manner, Machiavelli indicates that Christian doctrines themselves have enfeebled human beings. Without entering into the elaborate theological debates of the Middle Ages, Machiavelli objects categorically to the manner in which Christianity exerts a type of rule over human beings that reduces all politics to fundamental weakness. According to Machiavelli, adherence to the Christian notions of such politically important conceptions as cruelty, humility, and human virtue produces disastrous political results. Indeed, so politically enervating does he find Christian beliefs that after he describes and denounces in vehement terms the effects of the tiranno virtuoso (D 2.2; O 148), he treats in the same chapter the harmful effects that Christianity has had on political life. The effects of each are remarkably similar. The virtuous tyrant cannot bestow honor on any of his subjects for their earthly accomplishments, and neither does the Christian religion:

Our religion has glorified humble and contemplative more than active men. It has then placed the highest good in humility, abjectness, and contempt of things human; the [ancient religion] placed it in greatness of spirit [

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