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Machiavelli's ambiguous treatment of religion has fueled a contentious and long-standing debate among scholars. Whereas some insist that Machiavelli is a Christian, others maintain he is a pagan. Sullivan mediates between these divergent views by arguing that he is neither but that he utilizes elements of both understandings arrayed in a wholly new way. In this illuminating study, Sullivan shows Machiavelli's thought to be a highly original response to what he understood to be the crisis of his times.
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Reviews
"Sullivan's reading of the texts is isolated from their cultural and linguistic context (even when her argument depends on understanding exactly what particular words might have meant to Machiavelli).... It is also isolated from much of the richest and best modern scholarship on Machiavelli; Sullivan's bibliography is curiously limited to works in English, when in fact most of the serious work on
American Historical Review
"She advances the novel proposition that Machiavelli is the enemy of all religion.... an important new study, cogently argued and beautifully written."
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
"Vickie Sullivan's book is an important and useful contribution to this literature. It combines meticulous scholarship with provocative and insightful analysis. While issuing directly from this literature, and thus in a sense the intellectual heir of these debates, it attempts to overcome their dualistic character by presenting an alternative and original interpretation."
American Political Science Review