[2] In another place (Op.  Ined. vol. i. p. 104) Guicciardini describes the rule of priests as founded on violence of two sorts; ’perche ci sforzano con le armi temporali e con le spirituali.’  It may be well to collect the chief passages in Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides those already quoted, which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian politics.  The most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the Istoria d’ Italia (Edn.  Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30).  Next may be placed the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine (lib. i. cap. 9-25).  The eleventh chapter of the Principe gives a short sketch of the growth of the temporal power, so framed as to be acceptable to the Medici, but steeped in the most acid irony.  See, in particular, the sentence ’Costoro solo hanno stati e non li difendono, hanno sudditi e non li governano,’ etc.

    [3] See the dispatch quoted by Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, vol.
    vii. p. 7, note.

    [4] Op.  Ined.  Ricordi No. 28.  Compare Ariosto, Satire i.
    208-27.

    [5] Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the
    Medicean Popes.  See back, p. 206.

These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like Savonarola.  Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion.  In one passage of the Discorsi he even pronounces his opinion that the Christian faith compared with the creeds of antiquity, had enfeebled national spirit.[1] Privately, moreover, he was himself stained with the moral corruption which he publicly condemned.  Guicciardini, again, in the passage before us, openly avows his egotism.  Keen-sighted as they were in theory, these politicians suffered in their own lives from that gangrene which had penetrated the upper classes of Italy to the marrow.  Their patriotism and their desire for righteousness were not strong enough to make them relinquish the pleasure and the profit they derived from the existing state of things.  Nor had they the energy or the opportunity to institute a thorough revolution.  Italy, as Machiavelli pointed out in another passage of the Discorsi, had become too prematurely decrepit for reinvigorating changes;[2] and the splendid appeal with which the Principe is closed must even to its author have sounded like a flourish of rhetorical trumpets.

[1] Discorsi, ii. 2, iii. 1.  These chapters breathe the bitterest contempt for Christianity, the most undisguised hatred for its historical development, the intensest rancor against Catholic ecclesiastics.

    [2] Discorsi, i. 55.