Critically examine Machiavelli’s views on religion and politics. (2018, 15 Marks)
Niccolò Machiavelli wrote when the papacy of Alexander VI and Julius II was an Italian territorial power waging wars. He treats religion as a political fact, not a truth: he condemns the Church, values religion, and subordinates both to the state — a coherent realism whose instrumentalism carries costs he underrated.
Politics Freed from Theology
- The prince answers to necessity, not divine or natural law. He must “learn how not to be good” (The Prince, Chapter XV) when survival requires; paralysing Christian scruples are set aside.
- Legitimacy follows results: the multitude judges by appearances and outcomes, so a ruler who keeps subjects secure and prosperous is rarely asked how.
Religion as an Instrument of Rule
- In the Discourses on Livy (I.11–15), Numa Pompilius did more for Rome than Romulus by using religion to make oaths binding and armies obedient; where religion exists, arms are easily introduced.
- The Prince (Chapter XVIII) lists piety among the qualities a ruler must seem to possess, and none is more necessary to appear to have. Ferdinand of Aragon’s expulsion of the Marranos is admired as “pious cruelty” (Chapter XXI).
- Religion serves the state, never the reverse.
The Case Against the Church
- Discourses I.12: the Roman Church’s example made Italians irreligious and wicked and keeps Italy divided — too weak to unite it, strong enough to stop others, ready to call in foreign armies.
- Discourses II.2: Christianity, read “according to idleness”, exalts humility and contemplation, leaving the world weak and prey to the wicked, whereas pagan religion honoured worldly glory.
- Girolamo Savonarola fell as an “unarmed prophet” (Chapter VI): faith alone cannot govern.
Critical Assessment
- Strengths: the diagnosis of papal temporal power was accurate — Italian unification in 1870 required ending it — and religion as social cement anticipates Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s civil religion (The Social Contract, 1762).
- Leo Strauss (Thoughts on Machiavelli, 1958) reads a deliberate anti-theological project, making him a “teacher of evil”. Sebastian de Grazia (Machiavelli in Hell, 1989) and Maurizio Viroli (Machiavelli’s God, 2010) counter that his Christian vocabulary is sincere and that he sought a reformed, civic Christianity.
- Instrumentalism is self-defeating: faith exposed as a tool loses its force, “pious cruelty” licenses persecution, and civil religion presumes one faith, unsuited to plural societies.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi inverted him: “those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means” — religion as ethical restraint on power, not its tool.
- India refuses Machiavelli’s instrument. Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 makes appeals to religion a corrupt practice, and a seven-judge bench in Abhiram Singh v. C. D. Commachen (2017) read it broadly; S. R. Bommai (1994) made secularism basic structure.
Conclusion
Machiavelli was right that a Church wielding temporal power corrupts both faith and state, and his separation of political authority from ecclesiastical control is enduring. His error was to treat belief as raw material for what later became reason of state: modern democracies keep the separation and reject the manipulation.