Quote · Dwarkesh Podcast
Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker of all time
Where this was said
During the Renaissance, original ideas had to be couched in antiquity
At 1:48:50 · chapter starts 1:41:39
The Inquisition depended entirely on local government for jails, funding, and arrest power. Liberal dukes could protect heretics and gay scholars. Machiavelli and bisexual artist friends used patronage as a shield.
The Inquisition had no jails, no arrest power, and no funding of its own. Everything depended on the local Duke. If the Duke liked heretics, the Inquisitor couldn't touch them. In Florence, a city of radical Platonists under radical Medici dukes, the Inquisition was nearly toothless.
Ada Palmer described Machiavelli as definitively bisexual, citing his homoerotic and heterosexual poetry and the documented fact that he had both boyfriends and girlfriends throughout his life.
The Inquisition required pre-publication approval for all books. In exchange, it granted printers a monopoly — the first copyright. England saw this, wanted the same mechanism, and copied it. The entire modern copyright system descends from Inquisition censorship licensing.
The first version of authorial copyright emerged from Inquisition censorship licensing: printers who cleared pre-publication review gained monopoly printing rights, which England later imitated.
