The best possible use of christianity: The rhetorical stance of Machiavelli's Christian passages

• Autores: Gregory Murry
• Localización: History of political thought, ISSN 0143-781X, Vol. 36, Nº 2, 2015, págs. 262-280
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The author analyses several passages that have been proffered as evidence for Machiavelli's Christianity. The article argues that situated within their rhetorical and historical context, these passages offer slim evidence that Machiavelli's political corpus was deeply influenced by Christianity as it manifested itself in Renaissance Florence. However, Machiavelli's Christian passages also suggest that he was not uniformly anti-Christian, revealing the way in which he rhetorically crafted his arguments about civil religion to urge his largely Christian audience to make the best possible political use of Christianity.