History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 113119

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History of European Ideas

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James Harringtons Machiavellian anti-Machiavellism

Lea Campos Boralevi
University of Florence, Dipartimento di Studi Storici e Geograci, Via S. Gallo, 10 - 50129 Firenze, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Available online 12 March 2011

In the last thirty years historians of republicanism have offered us the image of Harrington as the true
hero of Machiavellism. This paper suggests instead that Harrington adopted Machiavellis method in
political science, but shared only few of his masters values, often referring to those cherished in antiMachiavellian circles, as in the case of the agrarian laws. Indebted to the anti-Machiavellian Petrus
Cunaeuss analysis of the Jewish Jubilee laws, Harrington transformed Cunaeuss specic observations
into a general law of his own political science. This paper emphasizes the originality and modernity of
such science, based on the inextricable interconnectedness between politics and economics. Further, it
argues that this science entails a new, post-Machiavellian theory of liberty and property.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Harrington
Biblical polity
Theocracy
Agrarian laws
Concord
Security of property
Liberty

In the last thirty years, James Harrington has enjoyed a great,

international revival in the studies of the history of political
thought, thanks to the works of two great masters, John Pocock
and Quentin Skinner. Both these scholars put the Machiavellian
Harrington at the core of their historical interpretation, though
emphasizing Aristotles inuence more in the rst case or the
neo-Roman liberty in the second. They have always considered
Harrington as the great hero of Machiavellianism, sometimes as a
synonym of republicanism1. Both Pocock and Skinner have been
strongly inuential not only as authors of books, but also as
successful founders of historical schools. As a result, the
connection between Harrington and Machiavellism, particularly in the current vulgarization, has become a commonplace
which does not need any justication or qualication2. But is it
really so?
Is it not that Harrington, rather than being a dull pupil,
translator and vulgarizer of Machiavelli in Britain was, on the
contrary, an ingeniously autonomous thinker, who took advantage
of the Florentine lesson, and particularly of that new method in
political science, endorsing only few of his masters values?

E-mail address: leampos@uni.it.

The reference is of course to J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, Florentine
Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975) and to Q.
Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998), 236, 467, passim. Visions of
Politics, Vol. II, chapters 6 and 13 (Cambridge, 2002).
2
Among the vast debate raised by these works, I will just mention two critical
voices, such as V. Sullivan, Machiavelli, Hobbes & the Formation of a Liberal
Republicanism in England (Cambridge, 2004) and P.A. Rahe, Machiavellis Liberal
Republican Legacy (Cambridge, 2006).
1

0191-6599/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2011.01.003

Machiavellism, republicanism and humanism

To answer these questions we rst need to dene what we
mean by Machiavellianism. This is certainly not an easy task. I
shall try, however, to make some preliminary remarks, which
hopefully could help us focus on some of the issues at stake.
On the one hand, in the last thirty years, by Machiavellianism
most historians of political thought have meant both the inuence
of Machiavellis original political theory his new political
science and the great repository of republican values
Aristotelian civic humanism and the Roman heritage in the Italian
Comuni with which Machiavellis writings are imbued. The
diffusion of Machiavellis work undoubtedly has been one of the
most powerful means for conveying and spreading both his
political science, and this repository of republicanism throughout
Europe.
Machiavellianism, on the other hand, is, as every man on the
street knows, and the Oxford English Dictionary states, the
employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general
conduct. This denition, which has entered most European
languages, has originated from many anti-Machiavellian writings,
which have circulated for centuries all over Europe, from Innocent
Gentillet in France, or Christopher Marlowe in England, to the
Church of Romes censures.
In Italian and French we have two distinct terms which point
out this semantic difference: machiavelliano/machiavelien for the
rst meaning, and machiavellico/machiavelique for the second. In
English the absence of such distinction makes things even more
confusing.
Besides language cleavages in the different traditions of the
history of political thought, I think that further problems can derive

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L. Campos Boralevi / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 113119

from a simplifying usage of political categories, denoted by isms,

which sometime cover up conceptual hodge-podge.
If, then, by Machiavellianism we mean altogether:
a) the adhesion to Machiavellis political ideas, including his
harshest ones
and
b) the adhesion to humanistic/republican values and tradition
conveyed by Machiavellis works;
and
c) the acceptance of Machiavellis method in political science
and then we dene Machiavellianism as a kind of synonym of
republicanism. We shall be driven to construct a history of political
thought in which, for example
1) it will be very difcult to count Antimachiavellian thinkers (or
self-declared Antimachiavellians, for moral reasons, who
however used Machiavellis method) as belonging to republicanism;
and, on the other side,
2) true Republicans will become notwithstanding the content
and clear statements contained in their writings the
Machiavellians par excellence.
The most remarkable examples of paradoxes produced by a
history of political thought constructed on the basis of such a
denition of Machiavellianism include, among others, two
illustrious victims, i.e.:
1) Spinoza, who, despite referring to the acutissimus Florentinus,
was not an integralist Machiavellian, and therefore t badly in
such history of republicanism3;
2) James Harrington, whose case I will try to discuss in this
paper.
Undoubtedly the Antimachiavellians who stood up against
Machiavellian theories in the sense of Machiavelique did
so for moral reasons, rejecting not so much Machiavellis works
as their sinister caricature which successfully circulated and
pervaded European culture. Many of these Antimachiavellians
were humanists who cherished the same republican values,
derived from the same repository which Machiavelli had drawn
from as well: the study of classical antiquity, of Greek and
Roman philosophers and historians, together with the Bible,
which was considered part of the same prisca sapientia the
Ancient Wisdom, the best guide in morals and politics that
was in turn often accompanied by the proud reference to
medieval statutes, in order to defend liberty and the common
good. I am thinking in particular of the many important political
writers who conceived their works during the French Wars of
Religion, when both Catholics and Huguenots shared a common
well-advertised moral aversion towards Machiavellism (in the
sense of Machiavelique), and yet used Machiavellis work and
method, applied to political science4: e.g. Bodin and his
civilis disciplina, but also some Huguenots works, the great

3
J. Scott, The rapture of motion: James Harringtons republicanism, in: Political
Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. N. Phillipson, Q. Skinner (Cambridge, 1993),
13963; cf. also J. Scott, Englands Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political
Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), 32633.
4
There is an important, still valuable Italian tradition in this eld, which
ourished in the Sixties: cf. C. Vivanti, Lotta politica e pace religiosa in Francia fra
Cinque e Seicento (Turin, 1963); R. De Mattei, Dal premachiavellismo allantimachiavellismo (Florence, 1969); Machiavellismo e Antimachiavellici nel Cinquecento, Atti del
Convegno di Perugia 1969, Il Pensiero politico, 2 (1969) also separately (Florence,
1970); S. Mastellone, Venalita` e machiavellismo in Francia 1572-1610 (Florence,
1972).

Monarchomach tradition, and the school of the so-called mos

gallicus, which was later taken up by the Dutch: many of them
constituted the core of what in this issue is called AntiMachiavellian Machiavellism.
On the other hand, I would like to point out the fact that, although
undoubtedly Machiavellis works conveyed republican and humanistic traditions throughout Europe, many thinkers did not derive
such values from or did not derive them exclusively from this
source, but followed different paths, which characterized the great
wealth of humanism and late humanism in Europe. Thus sometimes
many quotations, which seem to be perfectly Machiavellian
(such as quotations from Cicero) are in fact references to
commonplace loci of this tradition, which do not necessarily, or
exclusively, come from the reading of Machiavelli.
This forces us to reconsider some aspects of the humanistic
tradition in early modern Europe. As I have already stated, it was
an inclusive tradition, which tried to nd a conciliation between the
different sources of the prisca sapientia: Christian revelation and
the biblical stories, and Classical, Greek and Roman, i.e. pagan
tradition, blended in different percentages, as in the case of
Erasmuss or Thomas Mores works and/or in the case of NeoStoicism.
The result was a highly interesting work of syncretism between
classical Greek and Roman thought, combined in different degrees
with Christian ethical messages and Israelite political institutions.
In this inclusive tradition, reference to different political models
was never based on sharp alternatives; rather it was based on shifts
in emphasis.
This inclusiveness which in our current New Age is probably
easier to grasp must have been something very odd for historians
of political thought who lived in the second part of the twentieth
century, characterized by a violent bipolarisation in world politics.
To mention one example, Isaiah Berlins contrapositive presentation of negative and positive liberty in his famous Two Concepts of
Liberty, had certainly a lot to do with the fact that it was delivered
as an inaugural lecture in Oxford in 1958, during the climax of the
Cold War5. Notwithstanding many interesting debates which have
developed in the last decades on the history of republicanism,
humanists would probably consider a combination of Aristotle,
Cicero and Livy quite natural (and would also supplement it with
some Christian/biblical quotations).
Humanistic syncretism and the biblical polity
The Bible in particular constituted a fundamental point of
reference for Republican thinkers: the Jewish Commonwealth or
Respublica Hebraeorum, as they called it had an incomparable
normative value, since it was based on divine laws and institutions,
whose functioning was described in the Holy Scripture.
Undoubtedly, the political and legal institutions of ancient
Israel had continued to exert an enduring inuence on European
culture, from Josephus and Philo, to the patristic literature and
throughout the Middle Ages. However, with humanism and the
Reformation this inuence reached its highest momentum in
European political thought, with a true explosion of such themes in
the Golden Age of the Respublica Hebraeorum literature going from
the 1570s to the 1670s6. In this century the most important
political thinkers used the immense medieval deposits of
Christian and Jewish exegesis, transforming biblical exempla
sacra into an organic political model: Savonarola and Erasmus,
Jean Bodin and Theodore de Beze, Grotius and Selden, Spinoza and
5
I. Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty [1958], in Liberty, ed. H. Hardy (Oxford, 2002),
154.
6
L. Campos Boralevi, Classical Foundational Myths of European republicanism:
The Jewish Commonwealth, in: Republicanism: A shared European Heritage, ed. M.
van Gelderen and Q. Skinner, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), I, 24761.

L. Campos Boralevi / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 113119

Toland, all discussed and referred to the biblical polity as a model7.

The debate over the biblical polity was political, though often using
terms and themes which traditionally belonged to theology.
Therefore it crossed religious, cultural and national borders, and
was not restricted to Calvinistic environments, although it was in
these, as in the United Provinces and in Cromwells English
Commonwealth, it reached its highest inuence.
This debate entailed crucial questions in early modern Europe,
such as excommunications, successions, contracts, usury, family
laws, weights and measures, but also broader subjects such as
civil and religious power, federalism, polyarchy, natural law,
Roman law and common law (often viewed in a comparative
perspective with Jewish law); and also, state and territory,
boundaries, politics and ethics, history and chronology; sovereignty, liberty, property and social justice. And yet, only recently
has the importance of the debate on the biblical polity for the
history of political thought been assessed. Several studies are
being carried out on this subject8.
Due to their humanistic syncretism, the Hebraic political model
was therefore not discussed by political thinkers as opposed to
other classical models, such as Sparta, Athens, Rome, or to
contemporary models such as Venice, but together with them, as
we can see in the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, in Althusiuss Politica
Methodice Digesta, or in Harringtons Oceana9. Exclusive reference
to the Jewish Commonwealth, or explicit preference for it (a
preference which, by the way, in humanistic minds did not mean
opposition) occurred when the issues at stake were not raised by
Greek or Roman or Venetian models, but did arise in the context of
the Jewish commonwealth (for example theocracy, federalism,
Agrarian Law).
This syncretism was noticed by Schama with respect to the
decorations of the new Amsterdam Town Hall, where the images of
the biblical Moses and Aaron and of the Tacitian Claudius Civilis
overlapped and mingled10. This attitude also characterized
Elzeviers famous Petites Republiques series, which presented
the constitutional models of Sparta and Athens, Venice and
7
Besides highly important contributions to this debate contained in broader
works, many specic treatises on this subject were published during the Golden
Age, such as Bonaventure Bertrams De Politia Judaica, tam civili quam ecclesiastica
(Geneva, 1574), Carlo Sigonios De Republica Hebraeorum (Bologna, 1582),
Franciscus Juniuss De politiae Mosis observatione (Leiden, 1593), Petrus Cunaeuss
De Republica Hebraeorum (Leiden, 1617) and Spinozas Tractatus Theologicopoliticus (1670). For a more detailed list, see E. Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, Jewish
Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.,
2010), 1622.
8
After C. Ligotas pioneering article, Lhistoire a` fondement theologique: la
Republique des Hebreux, in: LEcriture Sainte au temps de Spinoza et dans le syste`me
spinoziste, Travaux et documents du Groupe de recherche spinoziste 4 (1992), 14967
and Petrus Cunaeus, De Republica Hebraeorum Of the Commonwealth of the Hebrews,
Book I of Cunaeuss work, ed. and trans. C. Barksdale [London, 1653]), ed. L. Campos
Boralevi (Firenze, 1996), in 1998 D. Quaglioni organized a seminal conference on La
Respublica Hebraeorum nella letteratura politica europea nelleta` moderna at the
University of Trent, whose proceedings were published in Politeia biblica, ed. L.
Campos Boralevi and D. Quaglioni, special issue of Il pensiero politico 3 (2002),
appeared also as a separate book (Florence, 2003). In June 2002 C. Ligota and L.
Campos Boralevi organized an International Colloquium on Moses the Legislator:
the Impact of the Institutions of Ancient Israel on Medieval and Early Modern
Political Thought at the Warburg Institute, UC London.
For more recent studies see Th. Dunkelgrun, Neerlands Israel:" Political
Theology, Christian Hebraism, Biblical Antiquarianism and Historical Myth, in:
Myth in History, History in Myth, ed. L. Cruz, W. Frijhoff (Leiden, 2009); E. Nelson, The
Hebrew Republic and, from a different perspective, Mark Somos, Secularisation and
the Leiden Circle (Leiden, forthcoming).
9
Stefanus Junius Brutus, Vindiciae contra tyrannos, sive, de Principis in Populum,
Populique in Principem, legitima potestate (1579), ed. G. Garnett (Cambridge, 1994); J.
Althusius, Politica, methodice digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata (1614)
ed. C.J. Friedrich (Cambridge, Mass., 1932); J. Harrington, The Commonwealth of
Oceana (1656), in: The Political Works of J. Harrington, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge,
1977).
10
S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the
Golden Age (New York, 1987).

115

Switzerland, Poland and the Etolian League, together with the

Hebrew and the Batavian11.
I have consciously used the term syncretism, because it points
to an enrichment, not to a simple change or, worse, corruption in
the meanings, and because I am strongly convinced that the
inuence of these numerous tracts on the biblical polity enriched
the political discourse in early modern Europe, either with new
meanings and contents of classical terms, or with new terms and
concepts indicating completely different situations.
These questions have been overlooked by those historians
who have concentrated on linguistic analysis, often missing the
different meanings and contents acquired by these classical
terms in early modern times. On the one hand, due to this
syncretism, many biblical issues were expressed in Roman or
Aristotelian terms, for example in the work David published in
Antwerp in 1575 and dedicated by Benedict Arias Montano to
Philippo Catholico Hispaniarum et Regi Optimo et Piissimo
which illustrated Davids superiority over all other kings of
antiquity, presenting biblical episodes of Davids life as exempla
of classical virtues, such as temperantia, clementia, perseverantia and prudentia12. On the other hand, classical, and
particularly Roman terms acquired new and different meanings.
The most famous example is offered by the Roman pactum, and/
or foedus, that acquired the biblical meaning of berith, alliance
(which only in English is rightly translated with a special word,
i.e. covenant).
This syncretism is also one of the main reasons why I prefer to
talk of the biblical polity as political model instead of Judaic
sources in political thought. As a matter of fact, the early
modern works which dealt with the Respublica Hebraeorum as a
political model were all written by Christian authors (Spinoza
being the sole, great exception), from a Christian perspective.
Their use of biblical material, including even Rabbinic commentaries to the Bible, was conditioned by such syncretism and was
instrumental to their engagement with the main political
themes in early modern Europe. In fact it was the Jewish
authors who mostly contributed to shaping the model of the
biblical polity, such as Josephus and Abravanel, by producing a
true work of cultural mediation: they not only used classical
Greek and Roman terms for explaining Jewish institutions, but
also adopted a perspective which for centuries has been
condemned by Jewish orthodoxy.
Theocracy
One of the main sources of this syncretism was indeed Flavius
Josephuss work, whose Antiquitates Judaicae and De bello Judaico
went through dozens of editions in early modern Europe13. The
incredible dimensions of the Flavius Renaissance certainly
had to do with his inexhaustible skill in telling the history of
the Jews, and in presenting the institutions of ancient Israel
in the language of classical political philosophy. His Hellenistic
syncretism was highly appealing to humanists in early modern
Europe.
In his Contra Apionem Josephus explained that Aristotles
classication of the forms of government was not adequate to
11
V. Conti, Consociatio Civitatum. Le repubbliche elzeviriane 1625-1649 (Florence,
1997).
12
B. Arias Montanus, David, hoc est, virtutis exercitatissimae probatum Deo
spectaculum, ex David pastoris, militis, regis, exulis ac Prophetae exemplis (Antwerp,
1575).
13
To mention only one example, the Biblia Magna (Lyons, 1525), had provided its
readers with the Concordantiae to Josephuss Antiquitates Judaicae. See H.
Schreckenberger, Bibliographie zu Flavius Josephus (Leiden, 1968); H. Schreckenberger, Rezeptiongeschichtliche und Textkritische Untersuchungen zu Flavius
Josephus (Leiden, 1977).

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L. Campos Boralevi / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 113119

dene Israels institutions. He thus coined the term Theocratia,

meaning Government by God, which entailed a special combination of politics, ethics, and religion that produced symphonia
(later translated into Latin as concordia). He also depicted Moses,
the biblical prophet, as a classical legislator, a lawgiver, like
Lycurgus or Solon, founding a tradition which was taken up by
many modern authors, from Machiavelli to Spinoza and Toland:
Moses did not make religion a part of virtue, but he saw and he
ordained other virtues to be parts of religion; I mean justice
(Dikaiosyne), and fortitude (Karteria), and temperance (Sophrosyne), and a universal agreement (Symphonia) of the members
of the community (Ton Polito`n) with one another; for all our
actions and studies, and all our words (Logoi), have a reference
to piety towards God14.
The orthodoxy of this very sentence was questioned in 1931 by
the young Arnaldo Momigliano, who considered it as a sign of
Flaviuss irreligiosity, since the typical mark of law in the Jewish
conceptions is its divine origin, whereas Flaviuss Moses the
Legislator seems to have imposed God together with Laws.
According to Momigliano, Josephus has based himself on the raw
material of Jewish religiosity, without having it, and interpreted it
with a Hellenistic mentality15.
Josephuss degree of Jewish orthodoxy is not in question here.
However, it was truly Josephuss Hellenistic syncretism which
Petrus Cunaeus, Professor of Politics in Leiden, found so appealing,
that he appended this very same sentence reproduced in
Elzeviers lavish Greek letters as an epitome at the opening of his
De Republica Hebraeorum, published in Leiden in 161716.
In his Preface, dedicated to the States of Holland and West
Frisia, he summoned this idea of symphonia, by opposing Moses,
the great legislator, to Jeroboam, the ruiner, aptly quoting Sallusts
famous concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur17. Sallusts quotation is also present in the books frontispiece,
in Elzeviers colophon, where it is inscribed as a motto surmounting an eagle18. Cunaeus was an Anti-Machiavellian in the sense
of Antimachiavelique as was his brother-in-law Barlaeus and
most of the early Dutch republicans of the same type19. They
cherished the ethos of the Jewish Commonwealth, where politics
was shaped by ethics and religion in order to avoid internal ghts
and particularly religious wars through an Erastian arrangement.
De Republica Hebraeorum was Cunaeuss chef duvre, since it
brought together in the most productive way his knowledge of
Greek and Latin literary and political sources, his Latin eloquence,
14
Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, Book II, 17: It was published in 1548 in the
Frobenian Latin edition of Josephuss works, edited by Gelenius: Flavii Iosephi de
Antiquitate Iudaeorum contra Apionem Alexandrinum, ad Epaphroditum, Opera
Sigismundi Gelenij restitutus, in Flavii Iosephi Antiquatum Iudaicarum [. . .] (Basel,
1548).
Non enim parte virtutis dei culturam dixit, sed huius partes alias esse perspexit
atque constituit: hoc est fortitudinem, iustitiam & mutuam in omnibus civium
concordiam. Cunctae namque actiones et studia, universique sermones ad divinam
referuntur per omnia pietatem. Non enim hoc inexaminatum aut indenitum
ulterius dereliquit.
In Josephuss line cf. B. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-politicus (1670), V, 11, ed. J.
Israel (Cambridge, 2007), 74: This is why Moses, with his virtue and by divine
command, introduced religion into the commonwealth, so that the people would do
its duty more from devotion than from fear.
15
A. Momigliano, Unapologia del giudaismo: il Contro Apione di Flavio Giuseppe
(1931), in: Terzo Contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Roma,
1966); now in: Id, Essays in Ancient and Modern Judaism, ed. S. Berti (Chicago, 1994).
16
Petrus Cunaeus, De Republica Hebraeorum (Leiden, 1617), 28.
17
Sallust, Bellum Jugurthinum (10, 6).
18
It is interesting to note that the colophon with the eagle surmounted by Sallusts
motto on Concordia became Elzeviers colophon not only for Cunaeuss work, but for
many other books published by Leiden Elzevier.
19
D. van Miert, Humanism in an Age of Science: The Amsterdam Athenaeum in the
Golden Age, 1632-1704 (Leiden, 2009), 2815.

his competence in law and theology, and his knowledge of Hebrew

and Oriental languages: its interpretation of a theocratic, Erastian
and federal respublica Hebraeorum became the model for all
subsequent works on the subject superseding Sigonios
homonymous work.
For Cunaeus, theocracy did not mean government by the
priests as we now understand but Gods government, i.e.
based on the best (divine) laws, which provided for a collective
ethos and assured social harmony (Flaviuss symphonia). The
most important of them were the Agrarian Laws, which provided
for equality in the Israelite/biblical polity. To put it briey,
Cunaeus supplemented Flavius (who did not say much on the
Agrarian Laws) with Maimonidess Mishne` Torah, where he found
the explanation about the Jubilee Laws, prescribed in Leviticus.
He ingeniously named them lex Agraria Hebraeorum, thus
allowing comparison with Greek and Roman Respublicae. This
creative translation was a turning point. He made it into a
decisive argument in favour of the superiority (or the excellency, as they used to say in those times) of the Hebrew
Commonwealth. Besides following Flavius in stating the greatest
antiquity of Mosess laws, Cunaeus argued that the Respublica
Hebraeorum was better than all other commonwealths in the
past, because it was the only one which adopted an effective
agrarian law, thanks to Moses, who
as it became a wise Man, not only to order things at present, but
for the future ages too, brought in a certain Law providing that
the wealth of some might not tend to the oppression of the rest
[. . .]. This was the Agrarian Law [lex agraria]; a Law whereby all
possessors of Land were kept from transferring the full right and
dominion of it unto any other person, by sale or other contract
whatsoever: For, both they that on constraint of poverty had
sold their Land, had a right granted them to redeem it at any
time; and they that did not redeem it, receivd it freely again, by
this Law, at the solemn feast of Jubily20.
This Agrarian Law provided that every fty years the land
originally divided by Joshua among the Tribes should be given
back to its original owners, limiting inequalities, and promoting
social stability, which in Cunaeuss Antimachiavellian view was
the key for duration (a classical criterion for judging whether a
respublica was well-grounded). The Greeks did not have such laws
and even the Romans notwithstanding some efforts failed to
adopt a good agrarian law.
The superiority of the Mosaic Agrarian Law was also bound to
the original division of land in lots, a much better system than the
Roman right of occupatio (upon which quarrels and commotions
among the people must have followed21).
Thus an apparently secondary aspect of Mosaic legislation
Jubilee laws, with their periodical restitution of land to original
possessors, remission of debts and emancipation of slaves
became the cornerstone on which Cunaeus built his argument of
the superiority of the Respublica Hebraeorum for stability and
duration, based on the classical ideal of aequalitas. Theocracy thus
became Gods government entailing aequalitas, founded on a
periodical redistribution of property, allowing those who had lost
their property and/or their liberty to regain them every fty years:
a periodical liberation, which in fact institutionalized the Exodus
Paradigm, based on the line slavery-liberation-covenant-lawliberty-property-civil rights.

20

P. Cunaeus, Commonwealth, 513.

P. Cunaeus, De Republica Hebraeorum, 51: Had every one made that his own,
upon which he rst let his foot, quarrels and commotions among the people must
needs have followed: for so it usually comes to pass; whilst every one seeks to get
and appropriate to himself what was common, Peace is lost.
21

L. Campos Boralevi / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 113119

Conquering and owning the Promised Land logically precedes

the obedience to civil laws, and the obedience to divine laws is the
pre-condition for obtaining the Land. Exactly as the Jewish people
had the right by divine promise to own the Land, the single
families had the right to maintain the property of the allotted land,
and to have it returned in case of loss. But the expropriation or
even worse, the enslavement of citizens made the observance of
divine laws difcult, or impossible, diminishing the liberty of all.
Thus the Jewish Agrarian Laws transformed the Exodus paradigm
a revolutionary, founding paradigm22 into an institutional law.
Exodus afforded liberation from slavery and promised land once
for all, whereas the Agrarian Laws periodically allowed liberation
from slavery and provided land to those who had lost it. The Jubilee
renewed the memory of the Exodus paradigm (slavery-liberationlaw-property-civil rights) and provided for the liberty of all, by
transforming a founding myth into an institutional law, capable of
renewing the social arena without tumults, revolutions or refoundations.
Besides classical stability and duration, these laws provided not
only Josephuss symphonia, but also social justice Cunaeus says
so that the wealth of some might not tend to the oppression of the
rest23.
Harringtons agrarian laws
Cunaeuss De Republica Hebraeorum was widely read all over
Europe, including England. It enjoyed a long-lasting success, with
seven Latin editions, and Dutch, French, and English translations.
Its rst book was translated into English by Clement Barksdale
who also translated most of Grotiuss works with the title Of the
Commonwealth of the Hebrews, in 1653.
In 1656 James Harrington published The Commonwealth of
Oceana, the immortal commonwealth, which was founded on the
two best laws ever given: the Agrarian Laws of Israel and
the electoral system of Venice. This continuity is singled out in
1700 by John Tolands edition of James Harringtons works. On its
frontispiece Moses is depicted as the rst in the line of the great
legislators that include Solon, Confucius, Lycurgus and Numa24.
From Cunaeus, Harrington also took up all the arguments in
favour of the greatest antiquity of Moses and of his laws. But the
crucial point was not the greater antiquity, but a question
of substance, of superior quality, i.e. the laws concerning
property, the Agrarian Laws, which he introduces already in the
Preliminaries:
This kind of law xing the balance [between land property and
power] in lands is called agrarian, and was rst introduced by
God himself, who divided the land of Canaan unto his people by
lots, and is of such virtue that, wherever it hath held, that
government hath not altered, except by consent; as in that
unparalleled example of the people of Israel, when being in
liberty they would needs choose a king. But without an agrarian,
government, whether monarchical, aristocratical, or popular, hath
no long lease25.
According to Harrington,
An equal commonwealth is such an one as is equal both in the
balance or foundation and in the superstructures, that is to say
in her agrarian law and in her rotation.

An equal agrarian is a perpetual law establishing and preserving

the balance of dominion, by such a distribution that no one man
or number of men within the compass of the few or aristocracy
can come to overpower the whole people by their possessions
in lands. As the agrarian answereth unto the foundation, so doth
rotation unto the superstructures. Equal rotation is equal
vicissitude in government [. . .]26.
Rome was an unequal commonwealth and thence it derived its
perpetual strife.
Israel was an equal commonwealth for its Agrarian Law, not for
its rotation, which was imperfect. Venice was an equal commonwealth with a perfect system of rotation. But whereas the
Venetian perfect electoral system was built on a static kind of
social order, the Jewish Agrarian Law allowed a periodical
regeneration, a social rotation which made it very similar to
Harveys model of blood circulation, only substituting blood with
property. Oceanas agrarian is slightly different from the Jewish
one described in Cunaeuss work. It did not entail restitution of
land to the original owners, but prevented excessive inequality by
limiting the growth of properties, so that the largest lawful estate
should yield no more than 2,000 per annum. Social rotation was
supplemented by the ballot, which rotated the people in power,
providing balance and therefore stability and duration to the
immortal Commonwealth.
In the central part of the work, devoted to The Model of the
Commonwealth of Oceana, against the opinion of Machiavelli, and
following Cunaeus, Harrington states that in Rome the ghts
originated by the agrarian question caused the fall of the Republic
and afrms, in the words of Lord Archon, that agrarian law is
fundamental for the States stability, so that
If the greatest security of a commonwealth consist in being
provided with the proper antidote against this poison [strife, i.e.
internal discords], her greatest danger must be from the absence
of an agrarian, which is the whole truth of the Roman example27.
The agrarian law affords such a security that in Israel it helped
to overcome what Harrington signicantly calls the accident of
electing a king:
And the agrarian, notwithstanding the monarchy thus introduced, so faithfully preserved the root of that commonwealth
that is shot oftener forth, and by intervals continued longer than
any other government [. . .]28.
The conclusion is that
A people planted upon an equal agrarian and holding to it, if
they part with their liberty, must do it upon good will, and make
but a bad title of their bounty29.
Some commentators have pointed out that Harrington here
does not share Machiavellis negative views of agrarian laws
(which, for the Florentine Secretary, brought about only tumults in
ancient Rome), nor Machiavellis ideas about internal discord being
the great engine of Romes greatness30.
Indeed Harrington takes a clear stand in favour of what has
been aptly called one of the two conceptual families in
26

J. Harrington, Oceana, 1801.

J. Harrington, Oceana, 107.
28
J. Harrington, Oceana, 2356.
29
J. Harrington, Oceana, 236.
30
J. Scott, Harringtons Rapture of Motion, 13963; Sullivan, Machiavelli, 144
73; most recently E. Nelson, The Hebrew republic, 845, has pointed out the use of
Plutarch in Harringtons interpretation.
27

22

M. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York, 1985).

Cunaeus, Commonwealth, 51.
24
The Oceana of James Harrington, and Other Works, ed. J. Toland (London, 1700).
25
J. Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana [1656] in The Political Works of J.
Harrington, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1977), 164 [my italics].
23

117

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L. Campos Boralevi / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 113119

republicanism: one maintaining the classical idea of concord as

a fundamental requirement for stability and duration, the other,
strictly Machiavellian, afrming the dynamic quality of internal
discord for an expanding state31. Harrington belonged to the
former stream, as did Cunaeus (pupil of Josephus), from whom
he derived not only the suggestion about agrarian laws, but also
his ideas on their role in the history of Rome. Cunaeus was thus
a part of what in this issue is called anti-Machiavellian
Machiavellism.
Is therefore Harrington to be considered an Anti-Machiavellian,
or a Machiavellian with some non-Machiavellian views, or what
else? Is it not that some non-Machiavellian views expressed by
Harrington the Machiavellian put him much closer to those
thinkers whose anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism views are the
subject of this issue?
The point is that Oceana, the immortal commonwealth with its
agrarian laws, is based on a political theory which considers
property, and its balance, as the decisive elements not only,
scientically, for historical explanation, but also, normatively, for
its projected Utopia: an immortal commonwealth, opposed to
Leviathans mortal God.
The relationship between property and political power was
undoubtedly the most innovative idea put forward by Harrington,
and did not come from Machiavelli. But the way in which
Harrington ingeniously transformed Cunaeuss specic observations about the Lex Agraria Hebraeorum into a general law of his
own political science is just as much certainly indebted to
Machiavellis method, as he himself stated:
But the balance as I have laid it down, though unseen by
Machiavel, is that which interpreth him32.
The content of this innovative idea, however, based on the
relationship between politics and economics, takes us a long way
ahead.
This was noticed for example by Achille Loria, a great,
eccentric Italian economist who had developed autonomously
(i.e. independently from Karl Marx) a theory of Historical
Materialism. In The Economical Theory of the Political Constitution,
published in Turin in 1886, he claimed that Harrington was the
rst one to state that political constitution is the result of
economic relationships, determined by the distribution of
property (landed property, of course, he says, since this was
at his time the property)33.
Loria corresponded with all the most important economists of
his time and wrote somewhat bitterly to Engels, who was
defending Marxs memory and reputation. Historical materialism,
Loria afrmed, both in his letters and in his works, internationally
known and translated into French and English, was certainly not
31
M. Geuna, La tradizione repubblicana e i suoi interpreti: famiglie teoriche e
discontinuita` concettuali, Filosoa politica, 12 (1998), 10134.
32
Harrington, Oceana, 166.
33
A. Loria, La teoria economica della costituzione politica (Torino, 1886), 108; Loria
quotes Tolands edition of Harringtons works, and his introduction, wherein Toland
compares Harringtons achievement to the greatest discoveries in the history of
mankind: That Empire follows the Balance of Property, whether lodgd in one, in few,
or in many hands, he was the rst that ever made out; and is a noble Discovery,
wherof the Honor solely belongs to him, as much as the Circulation of Blood, of
Printing, of Guns, of the Compass, or of Optic Glasses, to their several Authors. See J.
Toland, The Life of James Harrington in: The Oceana of James Harrington, XVIII. Cf. J.
Harrington, The Art of Law-giving, III, 1(1659): Seeing it hath been sufciently
proved, that Empire followeth the nature of propriety, that the kind of Empire or
Government dependeth upon the Distribution (except in small Countries) of Land;
and that where the Balance hath not been xed, the kind of nature of the
Government hath been oating: it is good Reason that in the proposition of a
Commonwealth, we begin with xation of the Balance in propriety, 664. Loria also
quotes Harringtons The Prerogative of Popular Government, p. 2901: An agrarian is
a law xing the Balance of Government in such a manner that it cannot alter.

the invention of Marx: without having to go back to Antiquity, it

dates back at least to Harrington34.
A theory of liberty
The question here is not whether Harrington was, or was not, a
forerunner of Marx which, though interesting for the history of
political thought in general, is not relevant to the present
discussion. What interests us is that, though owing much to
Machiavellis method, Harrington elaborated a new idea of liberty,
which was constructed on the basis of its relationship with
property.
If by Machiavellian republicanism we mean a certain conception of liberty, as most historians of political thought have tried to
persuade us in the last thirty years (though presenting in turn
rather different ideas of liberty), then Harringtons ideas on liberty
certainly do not t either into these conceptions, or in those of
Hobbes, as Harrington himself wants to make quite clear to the
readers of Oceana, already in the Preliminaries.
In Chapter XXI of the Leviathan Hobbes had dened the Liberty
of Subjects as absence of constraint, a kind of residual liberty
the silence of law, the actions which the Soveraign hath
praetermitted i.e. the liberty to do all those actions which are
not forbidden by the sovereigns laws. Whoever afrms something
different, says Hobbes, confounds the liberty of the private citizens
with the liberty of the State35. Quite provocatively, he added:
There is written on the turrets of the city of Lucca in great
characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; yet no man can
thence inferre, that a particular man hath more Libertie or
Immunitie from the service of the Commonwealth there, than
in Constantinople. Whether a Commonwealth be Monarchicall,
or Popular, the Freedome is still the same36.
Harringtons answer is well known. He takes up Hobbess
deance, rst quoting thoroughly Hobbess sentence, and then
clearing up what he considers a misunderstanding:

34
A. Loria, La teoria economica, 108. Loria took up the same argument in Le basi
economiche della costituzione sociale (Torino, 1899), which was translated into
French by A. Bouchard (Paris, 1893), and in English by S. Sonnenschein as The
Economic Foundations of Society (London 1899), 3323. It was reviewed by J. Bonar
in The Economic Journal (1894) and by L.M. Keasbey in the Journal of Political
Economy (1899).
On Lorias work cf. B. Croce, Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica (Bari,
1978); E. Bernstein, Cromwell and Communism. Socialism and Democracy in the Great
English Revolution (London, 1963); G.M. Bravo, Marx ed Engels in Italia. La fortuna gli
scritti le relazioni le polemiche (Rome, 1992); R. Faucci, Revisione del marxismo e
teoria economica della proprieta` in Italia, 1888-1900: Achille Loria (e gli altri),
Quaderni orentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno (197677), 587680
and, more recently, P.D. Groenewegen, Marx and Engels contra Achille Loria, in:
Classics and Moderns in Economics: Essays on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Economic Thought, ed. P.D. Groenewegen (London, 2002).
35
Th. Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 21, ed. C.B. Macpherson (London, 1981), 266: The
Libertie, whereof there is so frequent, and honourable mention, in the Histories, and
Philosophy of the Antient Greeks, and Romans, and in the writings, and discourse of
those that from them have received all their learning in the Politiques, is not the
Libertie of Particular men; but the Libertie of the Common-wealth: which is the
same with that, which every man then should have, if there were no Civil Laws, nor
Common-wealth at all.
36
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 21, 266. Hobbes goes on in his provocative way, stating
that it is an easy thing, for men to be deceived by the specious name of Libertie [. . .]
And when the same errour is conrmed by the authority of men in reputation for
their writings in the subject, it is no wonder if it produce sedition, and change of
Government. In these westerne parts of the world, we are made to receive our
opinions [. . .] from Aristotle, Cicero. The conclusion is that [. . .] by reading of these
Greek, and Latine Authors, men from their childhood have gotten a habit (under a
false shew of Liberty), of favouring tumults, and of licentious controlling the actions
of their Soveraigns; [. . .] as I think I may truly say, there was never any thing so
deerly bought, as these Western parts have bought the learning of the Greek and
Latine tongues. (Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 21, 2678).

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119

desire to desert their country. This is consideration of their

interest which is the life and strength of all human actions. For
nowhere else did citizens hold their possessions so securely [. . .].
They held an equal portion of the lands and elds with the
leader, and each one was the perpetual owner of his share. If
anyone was compelled by poverty to sell his estate or eld, he
had to be restored to it again when the Jubilee came around [. . .]
no one could be dispossessed of his allotted property. Nowhere
could poverty be more tolerable, than in a country where it was
a matter of the highest piety to practise charity towards ones
fellow-citizen, so that God their king would continue to look
with favour upon them40.

The mountain hath brought forth, and we have a little

equivocation!
For to say that a Lucchese hath no more liberty or immunity from
the laws of Lucca than a Turk hath from those of Costantinople,
and to say that a Lucchese hath no more liberty or immunity by
the laws of Lucca than a Turk hath by those of Constantinople,
are pretty different speeches.
Harringtons sentence about liberty by the laws and immunity
from the laws has been quoted hundreds of times. Much less
known, and less quoted, is what follows this celebrated sentence,
whereby Harrington constructs his idea of liberty by distinguishing
the different status of property in Lucca and in Constantinople:

[. . .] there was another aspect to this state, a very solid factor

unique to them which must have very much discouraged the
citizens from thinking about defection or ever conceiving a

Security of private property is the crucial issue at stake for

Harrington as well.
But whereas, according to Cunaeus, the Jewish Commonwealth
afforded such security to most of its population (descendants of the
tribes) through reintegration by the Jubilee divine laws, in Oceana
the 2,000 maximum income which created a similar social
structure of diffused property, was xed by a human, republican
law, i.e. one of the two fundamental laws of Oceana, which founded
its liberty.
Harrington explains that the property (dominion) of goods of
fortune produces power also in the sense of affording the means
for subsistence, and therefore lifes conservation and expansion: a
preliminary requirement for regulating the commonwealths
internal and external relationships41. Property, which binds men
to nature, is the keystone on which governments are naturally
founded. An agrarian law which xes the balance of property
makes governments stable, durable, even immortal.
Security of property thus produces liberty, of the whole
commonwealth and of the private persons who are part of it42, in
a sense which is very close to our idea of empowerment. This
was an entirely new idea of liberty, at least when compared with
Machiavellis. The liberty provided by the rotation entailed by
the ballot would be void without an agrarian law to sustain
the empowerment afforded by the properties of private men.
Both the agrarian and the ballot renewed and maintained the
balance of power, avoiding internal strife, revolutions and refoundations for what was intended to be an immortal
commonwealth.
This new idea of liberty was no longer Machiavellian. Applying
Machiavellis method to suggestions originated in an antiMachiavellian environment, Harrington produced a post-Machiavellian theory of liberty and property.

J. Harrington, Oceana, 1701 [my italics].

J. Harrington, The Art of Lawgiving, in: The Political Works, 634: Inheritances,
being thus introduced by the lot, were immovably entailed upon the proprietors
and their heirs forever, by the institution of the jubilee, or the return of lands,
however sold or engaged, once in fty years, unto the ancient proprietor or his
lawful heir.
39
Differing from the socialistic interpretation of E. Nelson, The Hebrew Republic,
5787, who stresses more the redistribution aspect.

B. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, XVII, 25, 224 [my italics].

J. Harrington, Oceana, 163, 230; cf. E. Capozzi, Costituzione, elezione, aristocrazia;
la repubblica naturale di James Harrington (Naples, 1996), 823.
42
J. Harrington, Oceana, 171: by the law [. . .] framed by every private man unto no
other end [. . .] than to protect the liberty of every private man, which by that means
comes to be the liberty of the commonwealth. Cf. E. Capozzi, Costituzione, 837.

The rst [liberty from the laws] may be said of all governments
alike, the second [liberty by the laws] scarce of any two; much
less of these, seeing it is known that whereas the greatest bashaw
is a tenant, as well of his head as of his estate, at the will of his lord,
the meanest Lucchese that hath land is a freeholder of both, and not
to be controlled but by the law; and that framed by every private
man unto no other end (or they may thank themselves) than to
protect the liberty of every private man, which by that means
comes to be the liberty of the commonwealth37.
Property then is not only the foundation of power, but also the
balance of government.
For this reason Harrington, following Cunaeus, admired the
Jewish Agrarian Laws. They provided an insuperable security of
property, as he stated once more in The Art of Lawgiving (1659):
The whole people of Israel, through a popular distribution of the
land of Canaan among themselves by lot, and a xation of such
popular balance, by their agrarian law, or jubilee, entailing the
inheritance of each proprietor upon his heirs forerever, was
locally divided into twelve tribes38.
This security of property, rather than its limitation, was the
most appealing aspect to seventeenth-century political writers39.
Even Spinoza, though critical of the Jewish Commonwealths
absolute normativity, did recognize agrarian laws among its most
remarkable institutions:

37
38

40

41