Doubt, History, and Politics in the Philosophy of Pietro Pomponazzi

In the first half of the seventeenth century, many leading intellectuals, including Marin Mersenne and Tommaso Campanella, linked Pietro Pomponazzi and Niccolò Machiavelli together for their alleged promotion of religious imposture as a tool for political control. During the twentieth century, scholars writing on the libertine tradition repeated the assessments of seventeenth-century authors. Yet, apart from the question of imposture, similarities can be found in Pomponazzi’s and Machiavelli’s views regarding cosmology, nature, prodigies, astrology, fate, and fortune, even if there is no clear evidence that they had read each other works. Furthermore, what is well known for Machiavelli, that the study of ancient historians was key to his political philosophy, is also true for Pomponazzi’s interpretation of Aristotelian thought as found in the De incantationibus, which is filled with citations and interpretations of Plutarch, Livy, Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, interspersed among citations of medieval thinkers and classical poets. These citations, however, are not mere dressing intended to showcase the author’s erudition; rather they are key to the epistemological foundations of the work. Historical writings provide the experience that underpins philosophical theories as well as providing probabilistic proofs of the existence of phenomena that must be explained, or the quia, to use the scholastic term. As such, just as historical texts help explain the methods of rulers and princedoms that will be successful over cycles of time for Machiavelli, the study of history demonstrates the necessity of the development of religious law and its connections to cosmological cycles and wondrous apparitions for Pomponazzi.