The History of Freedom, and Other EssaysActon, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
Philosophy
The History of Freedom, and Other Essays
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History; History -- Philosophy; Liberty -- History
advised by his Roman censors to mix a little Catholic salt in his
Machiavellism, and to suppress a seeming protest against the universal
hatred for a writer _qui misera qua non manu hodie vapulat_. One of the
ablest but most contentious of the Jesuits, Raynaud, pursued his memory
with a story like that with which Tronchin improved the death of
Voltaire: "Exitus impiissimi nebulonis metuendus est eius aemulatoribus,
nam blasphemans evomuit reprobum spiritum."
In spite of this notorious disfavour, he has been associated with the
excesses of the religious wars. The daughter of the man to whom he
addressed _The Prince_ was Catharine of Medici, and she was reported to
have taught her children "surtout des traictz de cet athee Machiavel."
Boucher asserted that Henry III. carried him in his pocket: "qui
perpetuus ei in sacculo atque manibus est"; and Montaigne confirms the
story when he says: "Et dict on, de ce temps, que Machiavel est encores
ailleurs en credit." The pertinently appropriate quotation by which the
Queen sanctified her murderous resolve was supplied, not by her father's
rejected and discredited monitor, but by a bishop at the Council of
Trent, whose sermons had just been published: "Bisogna esser severo et
acuto, non bisogna esser clemente; e crudelta l' esser pietoso, e pieta
l' esser crudele." And the argument was afterwards embodied in the
_Controversies_ of Bellarmin: "Haereticis obstinatis beneficium est,
quod de hac vita tollantur, nam quo diutius vivunt, eo plures errores
excogitant; plures pervertunt, et majorem sibi damnationem acquirunt."
The divines who held these doctrines received them through their own
channels straight from the Middle Ages. The germ theory, that the wages
of heresy is death, was so expanded as to include the rebel, the
usurper, the heterodox or rebellious town, and it continued to develop
long after the time of Machiavelli. At first it had been doubtful
whether a small number of culprits justified the demolition of a city:
"Videtur quod si aliqui haeretici sunt in civitate potest exuri tota
civitas." Under Gregory XIII. the right is asserted unequivocally:
"Civitas ista potest igne destrui, quando in ea plures sunt haeretici."
In case of sedition, fire is a less suitable agent: "Propter rebellionem
civitas quandoque supponitur aratro et possunt singuli decapitari." As
to heretics the view was: "Ut hostes latronesque occidi possunt etiamsi
sunt clerici." A king, if he was judged a usurper, was handed over to
extinction: "Licite potest a quolibet de populo occidi, pro libertate
populi, quando non est recursus ad superiorem, a quo possit iustitia
fieri." Or, in the words of the scrupulous Soto: "Tunc quisque ius habet
ipsum extinguendi." To the end of the seventeenth century theologians
taught: "Occidatur, seu occidendus proscribatur, quando non alitur
potest haberi tranquillitas Reipublicae."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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