The Secular Reformation and the Influence of Machiavelli

Abstract

That Macchiavelli (1469-1527) and Luther (1483-1546) were contemporaries is seldom remarked in modern political theory, although John Neville Figgis did make Luther an accomplice to Macchiavelli's aggrandizement of the secular prince. From quite different motives, both set out to deconstruct the political authority of the Church of Rome and both adopted an appeal to antiquity over the head, as it were, of the medieval Christian establishment. Yet, while Luther's authority derived from pristine Christian writings and the unmediated working of the spirit, Macchiavelli, wishing to bypass Christianity altogether, had recourse to classical, mainly Latin, texts, and to the antique record of the political actions of wise men.