Machiavelli's Discourses on the Religious Life

Machiavelli wrote a treatise with the pious sounding title, exhortation to penitence. But in it he advised a character stically active approach to the spiritual life. He saw the church as a force that divided italy and undermined religion because of its corruption. This makes him sound like a religious reformer like savonarola but his ideas were markedly different from that firebrand preacher.