1G0xxeB

1 4 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2have been aware that it was precisely charismatic figures of this type, andnot the corrupt church hierarchy, that represented his main enemies. For itwas through them that the evangelical “utopia,” with all its political consequences,lived on. Even more interesting is the fact that cunning and brutalpopes, described in the Prince, such as Alexander Borgia, act in ways that arecompletely opposed to the spirit of the Gospel and yet completely consistentwith Machiavelli’s principles, or, better said, with his lack of principles. Infact, whereas Jesus advises his followers to act in accordance with what theclergy says, not with what it does (Matt. 23:2–3), Machiavelli, “lowering thestandards,” advises his followers to do not what the clergy preaches but whatthe clergy does. And while it is legitimate to wonder whether Machiavellihimself became an atheist because he was scandalized by the practice of thechurch prelates, it is certain that Machiavelli’s moral theory has been shapedby that practice which it confirmed. The problem is not the immoral natureof the actions of the church hierarchy, but the fact that those actions are notdirected towards the edification of the new society that Machiavelli wants toconstruct, and likewise, the fact that they are publicly perceived as immoral;in principle, because they contrast with an unrealistic moral foundation. Buteven this constitutive problem, inherited from Christ, could be overcome, ifonly those immoral actions would be well concealed. Along these lines, inchapter 18 of the Prince, Machiavelli insists that while it is necessary for aprince to be immoral, it is likewise necessary to be perceived as moral and,above all, as “religious.” Interestingly enough, Machiavelli’s example of “agreat pretender and dissembler,” who, although profoundly immoral, alwaysfound people to be deceived, is Pope Alexander Borgia, whose success wasowed to the fact that, like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, he “well knew”that “the vulgar are taken in by the appearance and the outcome of a thing,and in the world there is no one but the vulgar.” 92 So what if Machiavelli’sobjectives were to coincide with those of the church hierarchy, and what if thechurch hierarchy would be able to save the appearances and inspire withinthe people, by a noble delusion, those dispositions necessary for the realizationof Machiavelli’s project? What if it were proved that Machiavelli’s newsocial order, like any social order, would be in need, as the Discourses seemto suggest, of a religion, because atheism, as all the major conservative thinkershave stressed, is socially untenable? And what if the only alternative tothe utopian and therefore anarchical Christianity of the Gospel would be aCatholicism which, while acting in Christ’s name, managed to completely92Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 18.