Henry Viii Expansion Of Power

Machiavelli’s The Prince offers a model of how to effectively rise and maintain a position of power. As his model is based on the successes of previous leaders in Europe, Charlemagne’s reign uses similar aspects of Machiavelli’s outline. Henry VIII’s reign of England has particular elements of Machiavelli’s model in terms of how he maintained and grew his power by expelling the Catholic Church’s influence in England. Comparing who was a more successful ruler is arbitrary in the sense that both Charlemagne and Henry VIII had reigns that expanded their power and were not overthrown by the people they governed. However, in comparing their reigns by how much they embody Machiavelli’s model of effective rule, Charlemagne’s expansion of power through

Because of this, Henry VIII’s reign is relevant to what The Prince is written in response to which is rulership in the Renaissance. While, Henry VIII’s reign does not embody the parts of The Prince that involve military matters after Machiavelli’s lifetime, he does follow Machiavelli’s ideas of expanding power by expelling The Catholic Church’s influence in England. He also dominated Parliament to accomplish this thus asserting his authority over church and state. While The Prince is primarily a secular text, chapter XI focuses primarily only how to rule a church governed state. While Machiavelli uses sarcasm to describe the people of these principalities, its impotence to note that he also compliments certain practices of the church. For example he says, “Pope Julius came afterwards and found the Church strong, possessing all the Romagna, the barons of Rome reduced to impotence, and, through the chastisements Alexander, the factions wiped out; he also found the way open to accumulate money in a manner such as had never been practiced before Alexander's time” as a way of complimenting the Church’s use of acquiring wealth for their strategic advantage (53). Henry VIII just prior to England’s reformation, used Parliament to pass laws that limited the Catholic Church’s influence in England by limiting the money they received from their

While Charlemagne adheres to The Prince’s ideas of proper soldiers for military, he also tries to reinstate a new order in his conquest, and is adored, rather than feared by his men. Likewise Henry VIII expands Machiavelli’s model by expelling the Catholic Church through one of their major attributes as identified in The Prince. His dominion over Parliament and keeping the “old order” shows the embodiment of these aspects to Machiavelli’s model of effective rule. Lastly, while it is arbitrary to argue who was the better ruler, Henry VIII certainly corresponds to Machiavelli’s model more so than