Machiavelli and the Protestant Reformation
Luther Employed Machiavelli’s Precepts on the Eve of the Reformation
Feb 23, 2009
If, as Machiavelli teaches, Fortune "shows her potency where there is no well-regulated power to resist her, and her impetus is felt where she knows there are no embankments and dykes built to restrain her" (Machiavelli 80), then the fact that the "traditional route of reforming impulses . . . [in the Church] was blocked" (Hexter 95) on the eve of the Reformation indicates political, ethical-religious, and economic circumstances ripe for upheaval.
Enter: Martin Luther. He embodied the two central themes of the Reformation: "the renovation of the fundamental message of the Gospel and the establishment of a more practical and personal means of presenting it" (Dolan 252). The economics of the period had weakened the Catholic hegemony such that these themes were possible. This is where Machiavelli's ideas become particularly interesting.
Machiavelli's Approach Becomes Useful
Machiavelli writes, in The Prince, that it is nearly impossible for a man to adapt himself to every circumstance "either because he cannot do otherwise than what is in character or because, having always prospered by proceeding one way, he cannot persuade himself to change" (81). If this is true, then it might be logical to ask why Luther was not burned like Savonarola before him.
Similarly, Luther made "an extremely personal experience the center of a new theory of salvation that [was] no longer in harmony with the one traditionally taught by the Church" (Dolan 258-9). Yet, he was able to get the Church's case against him tried in Germany (instead of Rome) by "a group of competent scholars" (265), one of which was the General of the Dominican order, Thomas de Vio, also called Cajetan.
Cajetan hoped "to obtain [Luther's] recantation by paternal exhortations" (265). While this sounds like Gramsci's coercion in which "men do what is expected of them largely, if not wholly, because they are compelled to do so by those who monopolize the means of coercion" (Femia 33), it also seems to exemplify the inability of the Church to affect internal reform.
Luther Resists Coercion
Luther's solution was to "obstinately refuse to make an act of revocation maintaining that he would not do so as long as he was not convinced of his errors on the basis of scriptural proof" (Dolan 265). That this brand of open resistance could be performed without repercussions for Luther is testament to Machiavelli's maxim: "The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers" (80).
It might also be useful to add that one whose personality is already in harmony with the dictates of the historical moment will prosper in that moment. And circumstances did favor Luther. There was strong public outcry which "rebelled at the prospect of condemning a man who for all practical purposes was the outright spokesman of their own grievances against corruption in the church" (Dolan 267).
The majority of German bishops, equally influenced by the times, shared many of Luther's beliefs. Luther was excommunicated on January 3, 1521, making him vulnerable to the death penalty in the Holy Roman Empire, but "he was never officially prosecuted in his own country" (268). Thus, in spite of his impulsiveness (maybe because of it), Luther was able to resist and effectively remove himself from the extant power structure in place around him.
References:
Dolan, John. History of the Reformation: A Conciliatory Assessment of Opposite Views. New York: Desclee, 1965.
Femia, Joseph. Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1981.
Hexter, J.H. The Vision of Politics on the Eve of Reformation: More, Machiavelli, and Seyssel. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince. Trans. George Bull. London: Penguin, 1999.
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