The pope up close
In Machiavelli’s Italy, the pope was not only a distant spiritual authority. He was also a territorial ruler with lands, armies, family interests, political allies, and enemies.
From far away, the papacy could look majestic and abstract. A ruler in Denmark or England might encounter the pope through impressive legates, solemn decrees, and decisions about marriages, kingship, or doctrine. From that distance, the office mattered more than the individual man.
In Italy, especially near Rome, the pope looked much less abstract. He was a known person from a known family, with a history, grudges, relatives, debts, and factional ties. Italians might think of him not simply as the vicar of Christ, but as Giuliano della Rovere, Rodrigo Borgia, or another specific political actor whose family had helped or harmed theirs.
The papacy as a territorial power
A map of the Papal States helps learners see that the papacy was not only a spiritual institution but also controlled a central Italian territory, making popes territorial rulers with armies and governors.The papacy ruled central Italian territories known as the Papal States. That meant popes could appoint governors, depose local rulers, launch military campaigns, and redistribute power among families and cities.
This created a dangerous pattern. A pope might overthrow a city’s government to install a relative. The next pope might do the same in more places. Over time, each pope inherited a broader precedent: the pope could knock over political pieces across Italy if he had the will and means.
Because popes were elected rather than hereditary, every new papacy could produce a sudden reversal. The next pope might be chosen by enemies of the last pope and then undo his alliances, punish his clients, promote rival families, and redirect military policy. In a region already full of fragile city-states, this made Italian politics unusually volatile.
Fighting the pope, defending the Church
A factional battle or standoff can make the apparent contradiction clearer: groups could fight forces connected to a pope while still imagining themselves as defending the true Church against a corrupt political actor.Italian politics was shaped by old faction names: Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Originally, these labels had a grand ideological meaning:
- Guelphs supported the pope as the rightful political heir of Roman authority.
- Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman emperor as the rightful temporal ruler.
By Machiavelli’s era, those meanings had often hardened into inherited factional hatred. A family might be Guelph because its enemies were Ghibelline, not because its members were carefully reasoning through medieval theories of empire.
This produced situations that look contradictory only from a distance. A traditionally pro-papal city could fight a pope if that pope came from an anti-papal faction or promoted the city’s enemies. In their own minds, they might be defending the true dignity of the Church against a corrupt individual pope.
So a war against Rome did not always feel like a war against Christianity. It could feel like a war against one dangerous man, his relatives, and his faction.
Wealth made corruption rational
Ada Palmer emphasizes that the papacy’s corruption did not appear all at once. It accumulated over generations.
As the Church received donations, land, and p