Machiavelli’s Ambiguous Praise of Paganism

This chapter argues that Niccolò Machiavelli considers the Roman leaders' use of pagan religion to maintain popular support as pernicious. It enabled the leaders of the people to put this religion to a very different purpose. The successive innovations of aspiring tyrants strengthened such appeals and eventuated in the destruction of the republic. Christianity transcends the methods of Caesar and the Gracchi in a critical way. Christ's followers pique the passions of the people not merely with lands that many Romans have not seen, but with domains beyond human experience. This appeal to transcendence trumped all the benefits the city of Rome could offer. When the Roman people accepted the imported doctrine, they no longer needed to devote themselves to the earthly city to receive their rewards, and thus “civil life” was utterly transcended in Rome. Therefore, only when the critical element of a promise of divine provision was added to the familiar litany of private benefits did the line of ingenious aspiring tyrants, who wished to transcend civil life, achieve its goal.

The Foundation for Tyranny in Rome

This chapter takes a look at Niccolò Machiavelli's treatment of Christianity as it entered Rome. By anticipating the coming of Christianity, he suggests that its attraction was merely a deepening of the appeals made with increasing and regrettable success during the period of Rome's decline. He states that Caesar was Rome's first tyrant and goes on to suggest that Caesar was actually outdone by Christ, in the same way that Caesar outdid the Gracchi. And although the Roman people so readily accepted Christ's alluring appeal, Machiavelli will not censure them. He places the blame for the success of Christianity in Rome instead on the constitution of that city which was unnecessarily vulnerable to the machinations of these aspiring tyrants; ancient Rome, in his view, was itself responsible for the favorable reception Christianity received there.