With Turkey, one's thoughts turn to Machiavelli (of course)

Earlier in the week there was a review of a new book, Maurizio Virolo's Machiavelli's God. From the review: Viroli develops the thesis that Machiavelli was not an atheist but a believer in a Christian God who loved virtue, rewarded patriotism, and expected people not to be meek and "turn the other cheek" but to defend their liberty....Viroli himself admits that he does not know exactly what Machiavelli personally thought of God: "I am not entirely sure that I have found that God. I still believe, however, that Machiavelli had a God, and that around this God of his he developed a religion of liberty that played an important historical role in Italian political culture.""

Fair enough, but it seems, then, a bit misleading to call Machiavelli a "believer in a Christian God." It would be more accurate (and in a way less anachronistic) that he (helped) redefine(d) Christian religion, and was a believer in the utility of the God of such a redefined (Republican) Christianity. The reviewer, Laurie M. Johnson Bagby, concludes, "Machiavelli did not directly engage the teachings of Christ in the Gospels and explain why they did not mean what they seem to mean. It would be interesting to see if Viroli could find advocates of virile Christianity who did so." The obvious answers are, Hobbes and (for those who think it is perverse to speak of Hobbesian Liberty), especially, Spinoza and Locke, of course!

Finally, according to the review "[Viroli's] examination of Machiavelli's correspondence sheds light on how important the image of God was in his everyday thinking, in a type of writing in which it mattered less how he appeared and where he could be expected to be less careful and more forthright." This strikes me as a silly anachronism. Renaissance private mail could be expected to be opened by spies, worldly and religious powers. Moreover, letter writers assumed that their letters would be shared with (like-minded?) friends and a wider audience. Letters are political documents. (Just read, say, Erasmus' correspondence.)