Religious Tolerance vs. Political Power: Machiavelli's Impact

Religious Conflict and the Rise of Tolerance

Both the Catholic and Huguenot sides insisted on old medieval ideas. For Catholics, a Protestant monarch was a heretic and a Catholic usurper of a throne. The theory and practice of regicide is rooted in the theory of John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas. But the most interesting reflections giving rise to the conflict are those of the authors of a moderate party and the conciliators, Les Politiques, among whom were La Boetie, Michel de l'Hopital, and Bodin, who understood that religious pluralism is a necessity if you want to restore social peace, thus inaugurating the path of religious tolerance.

Machiavelli and Anti-Machiavellianism

Niccolo Machiavelli developed his work in Renaissance Florence. The republics merchants knew their cultural and artistic peak at the time it began its economic decline. In the hinge of the 15th and 16th centuries, France and Spain were battling for control of Italy. Machiavelli was under influences and very different concerns of the authors. His atmosphere, which strives in the recovery of the classical legacy in which there is a civic and republican political culture inherited from the previous two centuries, very different from the Western feudal acquis in which the threat of loss of independence depends on Florence. No wonder that his work differs both from that of other authors analyzed. His two most important political works are The Prince and Discourses on Livy.

Machiavelli is the creator of a new method of studying policy: the inductive method, in which the maximum for the government are achieved through the study of past politics or observation of this.

Success in politics is, for Machiavelli, the successful use of power. Its uniqueness lies in its departure from historical fatalism. The prince's success depends on its ability to adapt to changes or unforeseen threats. Machiavelli offers the prince his modern technique. He considers the state as an organizational structure governed by its own rules of operation, which is justified by its success.

He is not an apostle of immorality. The state is justified by its success, and the ruling will be judged by this standard by their subjects. With regard to religion, Machiavelli is not an enemy of it. Quite the contrary, he integrates it as one element to consider in government. Machiavelli shows his support for the republican model of ancient Rome.

Finally, a further characteristic of modernity is the importance of people in the State's government. Popularity is one of the minor allies of the prince. Early on, the work of Machiavelli had detractors due to his challenge of anti-morality and anti-Christianity. His detractors were from both Catholicism and Reformed Churches.