# 12. How Important it is to take Account of Religion, and how Italy has been ruined for lack of it, thanks to the Roman Church

Those princes and those republics which desire to remain free from corruption, should above all else maintain incorrupt the ceremonies of their religion and should hold them always in veneration; for there can be no surer indication of the decline of a country than to see divine worship neglected.

This is easy to understand provided one knows on what basis the religion of a man’s homeland is founded, for every religion has the basis of its life rooted in some one of its main institutions. Thus religious life among the gentiles was based on the responses given by oracles and upon a body of soothsayers and diviners. All the rest of its ceremonies, sacrifices and rites depended on these, for it was easy to believe that the god who can predict your future, be it good or evil, could also bring it about. Hence there came to be temples in which the gods were venerated by sacrifices, supplications and ceremonies of all kinds; and also the oracle of Delos, the temple of Jupiter Ammon, and other well-known oracles, which filled the world with wonder and devotion. But when the oracles began to say what was pleasing to the powerful, and this deception was discovered by the people, they became incredulous and inclined to subvert any good institution.

The rulers of a republic or of a kingdom, therefore, should uphold the basic principles of the religion which they practise in, and, if this be done, it will be easy for them to keep their commonwealth religious, and, in consequence, good and united. They should also foster and encourage everything likely to be of help to this end, even though they be convinced that it is quite fallacious. And the more should they do this the greater their prudence and the more they know of natural laws. It was owing to wise men having taken due note of this that belief in miracles arose and that miracles are held in high esteem even by religions that are false; for to whatever they owed their origin, sensible men made much of them, and their authority caused everybody to believe in them.

There were plenty of such miracles in Rome, among them one that happened when Roman soldiers were sacking the city of Veii. Some of them went into the temple of Juno and, addressing her image, said: ‘Do you want to come to Rome?’ To some it seemed that she nodded. To others that she answered. Yes. The reason was that the men were so deeply imbued with religion; for, as Livy points out, on entering the temple, they did not create a disturbance but behaved devoutly and displayed the greatest reverence. Hence it seemed to them that they heard the answer they wanted the goddess to give and had taken for granted when they approached her. Such beliefs and such credulity was studiously fostered and encouraged by Camillus and by the rest of the city’s rulers.

If such a religious spirit had been kept up by the rulers of the Christian commonwealth as was ordained for us by its founder, Christian states and republics would have been much more united and much more happy than they are. Nor if one would form a conjecture as to the causes of its decline can one do better than look at those peoples who live in the immediate neighbourhood of the Church of Rome, which is the head of our religion, and see how there is less religion among them than elsewhere. Indeed, should anyone reflect on our religion as it was when founded, and then see how different the present usage is, he would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that it is approaching either ruin or a scourge.

Many are of opinion that the prosperity of Italian cities is due to the Church of Rome. I disagree, and against this view shall adduce such reasons as are necessary, two of them so potent that, in my opinion, it is impossible to gainsay them. The first is that owing to the bad example set by the Court of Rome, Italy has lost all devotion and all religion. Attendant upon this are innumerable inconveniences and innumerable disorders; for as, where there is religion, it may be taken for granted that all is going well, so, where religion is wanting, one may take for granted the opposite. The first debt which we, Italians, owe to the Church and to priests, therefore, is that we have become irreligious and perverse.

But we owe them a yet greater debt, which is the second cause of our ruin. It is the Church that has kept, and keeps, Italy divided. Now of a truth no country has ever been united and happy unless the whole of it has been under the jurisdiction of one republic or one prince, as has happened to France and Spain. And the reason why Italy is not in the same position, i.e. why there is not one republic or one prince ruling there, is due entirely to the Church. For, though the Church has its headquarters in Italy and has temporal power, neither its power nor its virtue has been sufficiently great for it to be able to usurp power in Italy and become its leader; nor yet, on the other hand, has it been so weak that it could not, when afraid of losing its dominion over things temporal, call upon one of the powers to defend it against an Italian state that had become too powerful. There is abundant evidence of this in times gone by. For instance, with the help of Charles the Great, it drove out the Lombards who had established a sort of kingship over the whole of Italy. So, too, in our own day, it stripped Venice of its power with the help of France, and, later on, drove out the French with the help of the Swiss.11

The Church, then, has neither been able to occupy the whole of Italy, nor has it allowed anyone else to occupy it. Consequently, it has been the cause why Italy has never come under one head, but has been under many princes and signori, by whom such disunion and such weakness has been brought about, that it has now become the prey, not only of barbarian potentates, but of anyone who attacks it. For which our Italians have to thank the Church, and nobody else. Should anyone want to prove the truth of this by actual experience, he would need to have such power that he could send the Roman Court, together with the authority it has in Italy, to dwell in the territories of the Swiss, who are the only people who today, with respect both to religion and to military institutions, live as the ancients did. He would then find that the evil ways of this court would cause before long more disorders in that country than any that any other event at any time whatsoever has been able to bring about.