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This paper will discuss the significance of Cosimo de’ Medici’s introduction into Florentine political life of the “ancient theology” for Machiavelli’s thinking about the modern state.

The paper argues that “ancient theology” was a discourse intended to question the hegemony of Christianity and import into the political language the ideas of Hellenistic kingship. The argument is that Machiavelli exploited some radical consequences that can be drawn from Ficino’s attempt to Platonize Christianity and gave them a radical republican form. The paper discusses in particular Machiavelli’s little-known epic poem The Golden Ass, which reveals his reception of the ancient theology.

Miguel Vatter is Professor of Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne. He has published extensively on political theory, philosophy and intellectual history from Machiavelli to the present, including a recent multi-volume project on Jewish and Christian political theologies. To focus on his most recent work, Vatter’s Republic of the Living: Biopolitics and the Critique of Civil Society (Fordham UP, 2014) is praised as “a thrilling intervention into thinking about human life” by James Martel (San Francisco State); Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt (Oxford UP, 2021) is called “essential reading” by Wendy Brown (Berkeley) and Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt (Oxford UP 2022) is described as an “erudite and comprehensive work” by Judith Butler (Berkeley). In 2024/5, Miguel Vatter is Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Lancaster University.