Machiavelli’s tone here is difficult to discern. Is he being ironic? For example, his remark that these princes maintain their states “no matter how they proceed and live” could be taken to be a reference to the corruption of priests and prelates, and therefore as the expression of stock-in-trade anticlerical sentiments common in his time and before. On the other hand, is he expressing genuine astonishment? How could it be that “only these principalities are secure and happy”? Do ecclesiastical principalities have “orders” that could somehow be employed by other types of principalities? He will not say: “But since they are ruled by superior causes that no human mind is able to grasp, I shall leave out speaking about them, for since they are exalted and maintained by God, it would be the office of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them.” We have seen Machiavelli worry that he will be held to be presumptuous, in the Dedicatory Letter when he admitted that it might seem presumptuous for him to reason about princes, which of course he goes on to do. We have also seen him say that he will not reason about something and then proceed to do so, notably

when he said that one should not reason about Moses since he was the executor of the things ordered by God, but then promptly go on to reason about Moses. What about in the present case? He will in fact go on to gratify the curiosity of someone who wants to understand how the Church came to have such great temporal power, but he will not dare to reason about its spiritual power. Before turning to his explanation of how the Church acquired

its temporal state, let us pause over the puzzle of ecclesiastical principalities in the plural. If we take Machiavelli to be not simply or solely ironic in his description of these principalities as not needing to defend their states or govern their subjects, then what he says is false, or at least a great exaggeration, for the Church did in fact have to defend its territories and govern its subjects. But perhaps this is just the clue we have been looking for. Could it be the case that he is not speaking about the Church when discussing ecclesiastical principalities?6 The spiritual power of any religion, that is the power it exercises over people’s thoughts and actions through their beliefs, may be Machiavelli’s subject here. What might be just as interesting to Machiavelli as the temporal power of the Church, or even more interesting, is the spiritual power it exercised before it acquired such temporal power. Indeed, if we broaden our horizons beyond the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the period Machiavelli will focus on, and look back centuries or even a millennium or more, we cannot help but be astonished by the power of Christianity in ruling over men and women without any temporal power and sometimes even in conflict with temporal powers. How to explain the astonishing success of its unarmed prophet, who is portrayed throughout churches as Christ the King, sitting in judgment? How to explain the kingdom of true believers, or what Augustine called the “City of God,” stretching across and beyond the boundaries of any temporal state and across time until judgment day? This “principality” does indeed have subjects without governing them in any ordinary manner, and does so despite how its princes proceed and live. In the Discourses on Livy Machiavelli treats Christianity as one “sect” among many. Discoursing on how states and sects require occasional reordering if they are to continue to exist, he writes:

“Our religion” is only one such “sect” in Machiavelli’s analysis, and so ecclesiastical principalities in the plural may be his engagement with the spiritual power exercised by any religion, but principally the one reigning in his time.7