 As the sovereign state was occupying the European continent, piece by piece, in early modern times, eventually forming the system that came to occupy the globe, contemporary political philosophers embraced this form of polity and described what made it legitimate. They were not originators of the concept, for even during medieval times, philosophers like Dante and Marsilius of Padua advocated a separation of temporal and religious powers that would be achieved through a transfer of prerogatives into temporal ruler’s hands. Then, in early modern times, there were two roughly contemporary philosophers who did not write explicitly or consciously of sovereignty, yet whose ideas amounted in substance to important developments of the concept. Machiavelli observed the politics of city states in his Renaissance Italy and described what a prince had to do to promote a flourishing republic in terms that conferred on him supreme authority within his territory. Manifestly, he was not to be bound by natural law, canon law, Gospel precepts, or any of the norms or authorities that obligated members of Christendom. Rather, he would have to be prepared “not to be good,” and to be ready to perform evil, not because evil was no longer evil, but because it was sometimes necessary to further an end that was central for Machiavelli, an end that amounts to the unifying idea of his thought: the strength and well-ordering of the state. The obligation of the prince was raison d’état. He was supreme within the state’s territory and responsible for the well being of this singular, unitary body.