Ancient theology, prophetology and civil religion in Machiavelli’s Discourses

Abstract

Much of the secondary literature about machiavellian religion is circumscribed to Christian and Roman religions, omitting from consideration the Florentine and Italian reception of other non-Christian monotheisms (be they pagan or semitic), the reception of Arabic and Jewish medieval political philosophy (viz. prophetology), as well as the new Platonism brought to Renaissance Italy by the so-called «diaspora» of Byzantine philosophers. If one takes into account these other contexts, then it becomes increasingly harder not to acknowledge that the culture of Ficino’s, Savonarola’s and Machiavelli’s Florence was deeply affected by knowledge of what is called «ancient theology» as well as of Jewish and Arabic «prophetology, especially by the Alfarabi´s works. In this text, I argue that the conjunction of «ancient theology» and «prophetology», which took place in Florence in the decades prior to the start of Machiavelli’s writing career, sheds new light on his conception of civil religion, that is articulated by a retrieval of the model of the Hebrew Republic and of Mosaic prophecy.