13 - Montesquieu and the new republicanism

Summary

Montesquieu did for the latter half of the eighteenth Century what Machiavelli had done for his century, he set the terms in which republicanism was to be discussed. It goes without saying that it was a significantly different republicanism, not so much because of Montesquieu's doubts about Machiavelli's scholarship, but because their aims were not the same. To be sure, like all republicans they shared at least one polemical object, hostility to the Roman Catholic Church, but even here the reasons for their respective hatred were quite different. Machiavelli objected to the papacy's interference in Italian politics, and Christianity's lack of martial spirit. Montesquieu hated the Church for the cruelty of its persecutions, its intolerance, its obstruction of scientific learning and its superstitious practices and prejudices. Paganism did not therefore seem like an attractive alternative to him and he had no more use for political than for theological religiosity. This was thus not an aspect of Roman republicanism that was significant for him, as it certainly was for Machiavelli.

The two authors also had different political enemies, even though republicanism might stand as a reproach to all of them. Machiavelli's contempt was directed at the incompetence of the petty rulers of the Italian city states, while Montesquieu excoriated the absolute monarchy created by Louis xiv. His great fear was not political impotence, but despotism, a regime to which Spain was rapidly descending and to which even France might fall prey.