Conclusion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Gatti
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
John Milton ◽  
European Society ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli

This concluding chapter reflects on the historical foundation on which the modern discourse of liberty and toleration is based. It looks back to “the long sixteenth century,” the period between 1500 and approximately 1650—specifically between the time of Niccolò Machiavelli and John Milton—during which the principal concepts and themes concerning liberty in the modern world began to emerge against a background of unprecedented violence and oppression. At this time a series of dramatic crises that altered the map of European society and culture, bringing about changes so radical and lasting that all the values that had guided the previous centuries had to be recast in entirely different and unfamiliar molds.

In Search of a Lost Archipelago

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Michel De Montaigne ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines different visions of moderation in the history of French political thought. It first considers the reluctance to theorize about moderation, in part because moderation has often been understood as a vague virtue. It then discusses moderation in the classical and Christian traditions, focusing on the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, followed by an analysis of the writings of sixteenth-century political thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Claude de Seyssel, Louis Le Roy, Étienne Pasquier, Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, and French moralists such as La Bruyère and François de La Rochefoucauld. It also describes the transformation of moderation from a predominantly ethical concept into a prominent political virtue. Finally, it explores the views of authors such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on fanaticism in relation to moderation.

Roman Colonies and the Distribution of Land before Sigonio

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-47
Author(s):  
William Stenhouse
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Carlo Sigonio ◽  
Humanist Tradition ◽  
Colonial Policies ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Made In

This chapter examines the work of Renaissance historians of Roman colonization before Carlo Sigonio, from Andrea Fiocchi to Niccolò Machiavelli and Onofrio Panvinio. It shows that these earlier scholars, by thinking about Roman colonialism against the backdrop of Hapsburg power in Europe and in the New World, explored the idea of an empire that could be understood not just in terms of power but also in terms of territory, geographical control, and the practical administration of conquered land. Analysing the gradual rediscovery of the ancient Roman empire and its institutions in the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century, this chapter assesses the most significant advances that Sigonio made in respect to this humanist tradition. Sigonio added a crucial piece of evidence to the discourse on Roman colonial policies and linked historical discussions of agrarian laws and policy to historical accounts of the establishment of colonies.

Niccolo Machiavelli

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Western World ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
History Of ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
The Stability

As he suggests in a justly famous letter written to a friend in 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli (b. 1469–d. 1527) lived most fully when he communed in thought with the great ancient writers on the greatest deeds of Antiquity—and in succeeding centuries he continued to live on in the thoughts and through the writings of such great thinkers as Spinoza and Tocqueville; Marlowe and Shakespeare, Fichte and Nietzsche, not to mention indirectly in the deeds of Cromwell, Robespierre, Mazzini, and Lenin. Machiavelli comes to us wrapped in this diverse and contested tradition but also and more immediately in the garb of contemporary scholarship, where diversity and contestation abound, as well. One thing all scholarly parties can agree on is that the Florentine was vastly important—be it as a preeminent expression of the cyclonic intellectual activity of a time we now call the Renaissance, as the restorer of classical republican ideals, the founder of the modern world, the apostle of power politics, or the father of modern revolutionary thought. Born at a time of relative stability for Italy due in no small part to the successful machinations of Florence’s Medici rulers, Machiavelli’s young adulthood saw the stability vanish with the invasion of Italy by the French and the expulsion from Florence of the Medici. By 1498 he found himself serving the republican government of Florence that, in 1512, was itself brought down, leading to Machiavelli’s political banishment and to the writing of the works that would cause him to be counted among the greatest figures of the Renaissance and of the intellectual history of the Western world.

Outsiders of Hagnopolis: unbelief, fear, and religion in Thomas More's Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (Number 207) (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Ismael del Olmo
Keyword(s):  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Divine Retribution ◽  
Eternal Punishment

This paper deals with unbelief and its relationship with fear and religion in Thomas More's Utopia. It stresses the fact that Epicurean and radical Aristotelian theses challenged Christian notions about immortality, Providence, and divine Judgement. The examples of Niccolò Machiavelli and Pietro Pomponazzi, contemporaries of More, are set to show a heterodox connection between these theses and the notion of fear of eternal punishment. More's account of the Utopian religion, on the contrary, distinguishes between human fear and religious fear. This distinction enables him to highlight the threat to spiritual and civic life posed by those who deny the soul and divine retribution.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI: 1527-1927

1927 ◽  
Vol 8 (87) ◽  
pp. 335-346
Author(s):  
Henry Bugeja
Keyword(s):  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Renaissance Italy

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The One

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.

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