Niccolò Machiavelli as Machiavelli had himself done, despite also explaining how they could sometimes work). This became the theme of much future political discourse in Europe during the 17th century. This includes the Catholic Counter Reformation writers summarised by Bireley: Giovanni Botero, Justus Lipsius, Carlo Scribani, Adam Contzen, Pedro de Ribadeneira, and Diego Saavedra Fajardo. These authors criticized Machiavelli, but also followed him in many ways. They accepted the need for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a need for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they emphasized economic progress much more than
Classical republicanism as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, and their ideas became the essential core of classical republicanism. The ideology of republicanism blossomed during the Italian Renaissance, most notably in Florence, when a number of authors looked back to the classical period and used its examples to formulate ideas about ideal governance. One of the first to reintroduce classical republicanism was Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) in his later reflections. It has been argued that Machiavelli was not a classical republican, since he described mostly medieval political relations. Indeed, Machiavelli's innovation, addition, or transformation of classical republicanism more likely marks a turning point, and the