By the turn of the 16th century, the Italian Renaissance had produced writers such as Danté, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Castiglione, each with ideas rooted in the revival of the classics Greeks and Romans. , location of Christian traditions, idealistic views of women and individualism. From these authors spread the growth of the humanist movement which encompassed the entirety of the Italian renaissance of arts and literature. One of many skeptics, including Lorenzo Valla, who had challenged the Catholic Church fifty years earlier by proving the falsity of the Donation of Constantine, Niccolò Machiavelli projected his ideas of fraud into 16th-century Italian society by suggesting that leaders could only maintain power through propaganda. , as demonstrated by the success of Ferdinand of Aragon in Spain around 1490. Today, the term Machiavellian refers to duplicity in politics or personal advancement. Unlike most 16th-century philosophers, Machiavelli wrote from the perspective of an anti-humanist; he not only criticized the classics and the Catholic Church, but also encouraged the deceptive use of religion and hated humanist concepts of freedom, peace and individualism.1Born in 1469 in an economically limited family under the leadership of Bernardo di Niccolò di Buoninsegna and Bartolomea. de'Nelli, Bernardo Machiavelli's Niccolò was exposed in his youth to numerous works dealing with law and classical texts, which he consequently learned to reject even before entering Florentine politics.2 A self-taught intellectual like his Father Bernardo, Machiavelli began studying Latin at age seven. Although he learned the language well from his young adulthood, he quickly refused to write his treatises...... middle of paper...... Background, 2013. Web. October 27, 2013. .Lynch, Christopher. “War and Foreign Affairs in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories.” The Politics Review: Academic OneFile, 2012. Web. October 27, 2013. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Trans. 1532. New York: SoHo, 2011. “St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre” print. Britannica Online: Britannica Online, nd Web. October 27, 2013. .Nauert, Charles G., Jr. Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print. Ridolfi, Roberto. The life of Nicholas Machiavelli. Trans. Cecile Grayson. 1954. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Print. Starn, Randolph. “Borgia, Caesar (c. 1475-1507). » Encyclopedia Americana: Grolier Online, 2013. Web. October 20. 2013. .