The Summary Cause for the
Stability or Downfall of Human Societies
CHAPTER 6
The meaning of the rule: `a society must often return to its beginning’ if it is to survive.
41. Similarly, our teaching shows how a positive, and even deep meaning can be given to Machiavelli’s well-known observation: `If a sect or republic is to survive for any length of time, it must return frequently to its beginning.’(27) This rule requires the prolongation of the first and second periods in the existence of States, that is, their periods of foundation and legislation, so that States may be renewed before they begin to degenerate. About republics, he says:
| This return to the beginning is brought about by an external accident or by internal prudence. Relative to the former, we see how necessary it was for Rome to be taken by the French so that it could be reborn, regain new life and power, and once again exercise religion and justice, which had begun to degenerate |
And concerning internal accidents:
| These must originate either from a law which frequently reviews matters for the members of the society, or from someone born in the society who by his example and virtuous actions produces the same effect as the law |
This political maxim was already followed in Italy at the time of the republics when noble concepts and sublime virtues, mixed with atrocious vices, shone forth, and later in the Florentine republic.
| Those who governed the state of Florence from 1434 till 1494 relate, in connection with this, how every five years it was necessary to renew the State, which otherwise was difficult to preserve. What they called renewal meant implanting in the people the terror and fear implanted at the founding of the State, when those were struck down who, judged by the way of living at the time, had acted wrongly.(28) |
42. Nor could things be different in the Church, the greatest society of all, which God generally preserves through secondary causes without the constant intervention of miracles. Thus, this most wise society, whose foundation was laid by wisdom itself, always had as its supreme, most faithful guide the rule about returning to antiquity, a rule expressed in these words of Tertullian: `Christian society is grounded entirely in holy antiquity, and its ruinous state cannot be more securely rectified than by consideration of its origin.’(29) Machiavelli notes: `If it had not been taken back to its beginning by St. Francis or St. Dominic’ (or, in my opinion, by some other divine means) `it would have been totally annihilated.’
Notes
(27) Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di T. Livio, bk. 3, c. 1.
(28) Ibid.
(29) Contra Marcionem, bk. 1, c. 13.