Alexander VI

Rodrigo Borgia — Pope Alexander VI — who bought the papacy, fathered Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia (and others), used papal power to advance his family's political ambitions, and whose pontificate became the symbol of Renaissance papal corruption and the argument for church reform.

Represents for Machiavelli the pure political actor who uses religious authority as a political instrument — Alexander kept promises when it was convenient and broke them when it wasn't, made and unmade alliances as interest required — demonstrating that the papacy could be a secular political power indistinguishable from any other.