Alexander the Sixth#
Summary#
Pope Alexander VI emerges in Machiavelli’s Prince as a master of deception and political manipulation who demonstrated how a pope with both money and arms could prevail. Through his son Cesare Borgia (Duke Valentino), Alexander worked to aggrandize his family’s power, though his efforts ultimately contributed to the Church’s temporal greatness. Machiavelli presents him as the exemplar of strategic faithlessness: Alexander did nothing but deceive men, never thought of doing otherwise, affirmed things with great oaths yet observed them less, and nevertheless always succeeded because he understood mankind’s susceptibility to deception.