Few writers have inspired the kind of personal hatred that Machiavelli has throughout the centuries, and few works have been as vilified—or as popular—as The Prince. Machiavelli has been condemned as a defender of tyranny, a godless promoter of immorality, and a self-serving manipulator. Today, almost 500 years after The Prince was written, the dictionary still defines "Machiavellian" as "of, like, or characterized by the political principles and methods of expediency, craftiness, and duplicity set forth in Machiavelli's book, The Prince; crafty, deceitful, and so on." One popular, though untrue, story holds that "Old Nick," a slang term for the Devil, is derived from Machiavelli's first name, Niccolò.
Machiavelli's reputation as a diabolical figure began almost immediately after publication of The Prince. In 1559, not only The Prince but all of Machiavelli's works were placed on the Catholic church's "Index of Prohibited Books," presumably because of Machiavelli's perceived offenses against Christian ethics. Machiavelli has often been accused of being an atheist or even actively anti-Christian. His thinly veiled contempt for the papacy and the political ambitions of the Catholic church is evident in The Prince, and in the Discourses, he states that Christian piety robs its adherents of the energy necessary for the creation of a good society. Much of The Prince denies or even negates the moral basis of government that Christian thinkers insisted upon. The medieval Christian notion that good government is ordained by God for the promotion of virtue and the protection of the faithful against evil is distinctly absent from the world of The Prince. Perhaps more importantly, the quality that Machiavelli values most highly, virtù, is not a moral quality at all. Infamous criminals such as Agathocles or outrageously cruel rulers like Severus can still possess virtù. Debate continues as to whether Machiavelli can be called a Christian thinker or whether he adheres to some other standard of morality, such as those of the pagan Classical authors whose work he draws on. Some critics have proposed that Machiavelli simply substitutes an entirely new moral standard, one that is centered on the state, rather than on God or on pagan ethics.
