ITALY
Huffington Post
Paul Schwarzman
There is strong circumstantial evidence that Niccolò Machiavelli – history’s most cunning writer about power – may have plotted to obliterate the Roman Catholic Church and its governing Cardinals to purge it of the corruption of that epoch. The repercussions of those events definitively changed the mission of the Church to what it is today.
Machiavelli may have precipitated the Sack Of Rome in 1527, in which tens of thousands of Romans were butchered. Ironically — in a brilliant strategic PR shift by the Church government — the horrors of the Sack allowed the Church to survive and thrive. Now, with Pope Benedict XVI’s possible repudiation of his election by the Cardinals, he may have seeded doubt to their claim to be the infallible voice of God, and with it, shaken their pillar in the Church. In his actions, the Pope may have achieved the very goal of Machiavelli 500 years later.
Let’s consider the background history of how we arrived here.
Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat and author of The Prince that became the handbook for despots from Napoleon through Hitler to Mao. It specifies how to apply acts of cruelty to achieve and maintain power at any cost. It is a page-turner, with Machiavelli serving as eye witness to Cesare Borgia — the son of Pope Alexander VI and role model for The Prince — who galloped with death squads and proudly garroted a general in the diplomat’s presence.
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