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(1) The view which in the sixteenth century was
formed about Machiavelli's prescriptions for human
behavior can be summarized in the simple formula that
he was considered to be a teacher of evil. His message
was that being evil was more useful and efficient than
being good. One might deceive, lie, commit crimes,
even murder, if this helped to achieve success. As an
advocate of such evil doctrines Machiavelli moved
close to the Devil.

An identification of Machiavelli with Satan was
made early in the sixteenth century by Reginald Pole
in his Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V (1539),
and the acceptance of this view is reflected in the
widespread belief that “Old Nick,” the name given to
the Devil, was an abbreviation of Machiavelli's first
name (actually the name “Old Nick” for the Devil is
older than the sixteenth century). The French held the
same view about those who regarded Machiavelli as
their Évangile (“Gospel”):

Machiavellian doctrines were the instruments by
means of which the Devil exerted his influence in the
world. Huguenots saw the Satanic character of
Machiavelli's advice in the actions of their enemies;
they considered the Guises as faithful pupils of
Machiavelli. The first systematic attack against
Machiavelli—Innocent Gentillet's Discours sur les
moyens de bien gouverner... contre Nicolas Machiavel
Florentin (1576)—was composed by a Huguenot and
dedicated to the Duc d'Alençon who was in sharp
opposition to his mother, Catherine de'Medici. She was
said to have Machiavelli's works at her bedside, and
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew was viewed as a
plot inspired by a study of Machiavelli.

There were particular reasons for the rise of an
ardent anti-Machiavellism among Protestants and in
Northern Europe. Machiavelli was an Italian, and as
such, his ideas were assumed to guide the behavior of
two kinds of people who were regarded with distrust
and hatred north of the Alps: Italians and Jesuits. The
activities and resources of Italian merchants and bank-
ers had given them influence and power at the courts
and among the ruling groups of most European coun-
tries. Their reputation as leaders in art and scholarship
made them much sought after for prominent positions
in chancelleries and universities. Papal legates played
a determining role in the ecclesiastical affairs of Cath-
olic countries; they were mostly Italians and often
brought Italians with them in their suites, and among
them, Jesuits. The dominant position of these Italian
foreigners naturally aroused the enmity of the natives.
Italians were held responsible for misgovernment and

corruption, for diverting the rulers from their tradi-
tional honest ways of government. It was this anti-
Italianism which also fed anti-Machiavellism.

In France, from 1559 to 1574, during fifteen politi-
cally crucial years, the Queen Mother, Catherine of
Medici, exerted decisive political influence. She showed
a great preference for Italians and things Italian, and
opposition to her policy was reinforced by strong
anti-Italian feelings. Catherine's policy was wavering
and tortuous and although this might have been due
to weakness rather than to calculation, the impression
which she gave was that of deceitfulness and unrelia-
bility. Her policy confirmed the equation of Machia-
vellism and Italianism. François Hotman, the most
powerful voice among French anti-Catholic polemi-
cists, identified in a quite crude way Italy, Catherine
de'Medici, canon law, and Machiavelli. In England the
religious content of the political struggles made the
Papacy, and the Jesuits as the Papacy's most effective
defenders, the chief target of attack, and Machiavellism
and Jesuitism were frequently seen as identical. Even
English Catholics regarded the Jesuits as ambitious
Italian foreigners who wanted to rule the Church
and—to quote from an English Catholic pamphlet of
1601—whose “holy exercise” was “but a meere
Machivilean device of pollicie.”

Because Machiavelli's doctrines were seen as em-
bodied in personalities with particular characteristics,
the author of these doctrines also acquired personal
features and became a recognizable individual. As such
Machiavelli entered literature and became the proto-
type of a character which in different forms has ap-
peared in drama and in novels. The imaginative crea-
tion of a Machiavelli figure has significance in the
history of literature, but the existence of such a con-
crete image of Machiavelli has also reinforced interest
in political Machiavellism and its impact.

Machiavelli's entry on the literary scene took place
in the Tudor and Stuart period. In Christopher Mar-
lowe's Jew of Malta (ca. 1589) Machiavelli himself
comes on the stage as Prologue. His words enunciate
in a simplified manner basic features of Machiavelli's
political ideas: “Might first made kings, and laws were
then most sure,/when like the Dracos they were writ
in blood.” These notions, however, were only appli-
cations of a more general philosophy; Marlowe's
Machiavelli is a man who disregards moral bonds in
every sphere of life: “I count religion but a childish
toy/and hold there is no sin but ignorance.” Marlowe's
contemporaries and successors quickly recognized the
dramatic possibilities inherent in the Machiavellian
figure. The literature on this topic is extended and it
might be enough here to indicate Shakespeare's use
of the Machiavellian prototype. The figure in Shake
speare's oeuvre that is clearly conceived as a personifi-
cation of Machiavellian doctrines is Richard III.
Shakespeare acknowledged the Machiavellian aspects
of his concept of this king openly in the words which
in Henry VI (Part III, Act III, Scene ii, lines 182-95)
he put into the mouth of the young Duke of Glou-
cester:

Richard III is an amoral human being rather than a
purposeful politician. Nevertheless, his Machiavellian
activities have politics as their center. Shakespeare has
created another Machiavellian figure, however, whose
evilness is purely personal and has nothing to do with
politics: Iago in Othello. Iago lies, deceives, intrigues,
conspires to reach his own personal ends. By his devil-
ish acts he forces others who stand morally far above
him into his nets and destroys them. In Othello's words
Iago is a “demi-devil” who has “ensnar'd my soul and
body.”

Iago demonstrates that the name of Machiavellism
could be affixed to any kind of evilness as long as it
was evilness on a grand scale. The Machiavellian
looked only after his own interests and desires and was
willing to lie and to deceive, to use crooked means,
in order to obtain them. He concealed his true inten-
tions and masked them behind words of piety or good-
will. He liked to work in the dark and without others
knowing it he maneuvered them into doing his bidding.

Because in its broadest sense Machiavellism is as-
sumed to be synonymous with amorality and evilness
in general, every class and profession can have
Machiavellians. Since Machiavelli made his appearance
on the Elizabethan stage literature has been full of
figures who are Machiavellists or have some Machia-
vellian flavor. Certainly figures from the ruling
group—court favorites, diplomats, ministers—are most
easily presented as Machiavellists. Marinelli in G. E.
Lessing's Emilia Galotti (1772) is probably the best-
known figure of a Machiavellian courtier in dramatic
literature. But persons with Machiavellian behavior are
to be found also in novels or plays that describe the

life of the middle classes or of the bourgeoisie. A
favorite figure in eighteenth-century literature is the
intriguing evil kin who tries to ruin the naive honest
hero. There is in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749)
Master Blifil “whose affections are solily placed on one
single person [himself] whose interest and indulgence
alone they consider on every occasion.” There is Joseph
Surface in Sheridan's School for Scandal (1777) who
has the “policy” not to deviate “from the direct road
of wrong.” Admittedly all these figures are variations
on the theme of hypocrisy.

But the eighteenth-century notion of Machiavellism
patterned the qualities and actions which writers as-
signed to the hypocrites of their creation. The eight-
eenth century was a moralist century, however, and
usually the honest hero triumphed over his sly antago-
nist; in this respect the Machiavellism of eighteenth-
century writers is somewhat defective. There is one
thoroughly Machiavellian eighteenth-century novel,
however—Choderlos de Laclos' Liaisons dangereuses
(1782)—which depicts a world in which goodness and
morality unavoidably succumb to the powers of vice,
deceit, and egoism. The struggle for domination be-
tween men and women which forms the content of
this novel is conducted with strategies, ruses, moves,
and countermoves like the conflicts of politics and war.
It should be added that Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Le
Rouge et le Noir (1831) is in this tradition. Stendhal
actually mentions the Machiavellism of his hero and
uses quotations from Machiavelli for chapter headings.
Nevertheless, Julien Sorel is an exception in the nine-
teenth century; pronouncedly Machiavellian characters
are becoming rare.

Heroes in the novels by George Meredith (The
Egoist, 1879) or Henryk Sienkiewicz (Without Dogma,
1891) are egoists out of weakness, out of fear of life,
not out of strength. In the nineteenth century the belief
which gave to Machiavellism its attraction and fasci-
nation—namely, that behind evil there was a demonic
strength which made evil an equal rival to good—
disappeared. The maintenance of evil was not in the
plan of providence but right measures would progres-
sively remove it. Goethe's Faust (pub. 1808) might be
taken as a sign of the change which took place with
the nineteenth century. For actually in Goethe's Faust
God is the Machiavellian. He robs the Devil of Faust's
soul by a trick; as a force die stets das Böse will und
stets das Gute schafft (“which wills evil and yet does
good”; I, line 1335) the Devil is an instrument of the
divine will. In Hegelian terms nothing is entirely nega-
tive because even what might appear so is only a List
der Vernunft (“the cunning of reason”). Such a unifying
and reconciling conception of the process of world
history is incompatible with Machiavellism which, at
least as a doctrine bearing on all aspects of human
behavior, draws its power from the belief in the inerad-
icability of evil.