# Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Chapter VIII

CHAPTER VIII.
THE HIERARCHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE STATE.
Among the facts which make the eleventh century a turning-point in the history of society,—whether we look to the intellectual movement or to the consolidation of the feudal system, to the arousing of a national force in France and England under stress of northern invaders, or to the restoration of the imperial or the ecclesiastical dignity;—among the incidents in this general change, none was attended with such wide-reaching consequences as the new position claimed for the catholic church. It might seem as though, just at the moment when nations were beginning to realise their strength and to some extent acquiring even an individual consciousness, the church intervened and sought to merge them all in one confused mass, subject and submissive to her will. Yet evidently the churchmen were only doing their duty when they felt and confessed that the work of repairing society belonged of right to them; nor could they discover any secret for the efficiency of the church's action more natural than a lofty assertion of her right to control the secular state and make her counsels the guide of the world. The enunciation of this policy opened a new channel of thought and discussion quite independent of that stream of which we have observed the rise in the foregoing chapters: from it flowed a literature appropriated to the exposition of the theory of politics, and in special of the relations of church and state. It is not our purpose here to examine ​in any detail the hierarchical scheme which is identified with the person and history of the archdeacon Hildebrand, the pope Gregory the Seventh; but there are some general considerations with regard to it which it is important to bear in mind, in order to understand the conditions under which men wrote.
Whether or not we approve the methods by which Gregory laid anew the foundations of the papal power, it would be idle to dispute the essential nobility of the conception, which ultimately rested on the necessity of reforming the church as preliminary to the reformation of the world. It was plain that society could not be purified by an instrument as corrupt as itself; and such had been the condition of the church, at least until the middle of the eleventh century. The crying evil was that it was becoming more and more a part of the state, the clergy entering more and more into the enjoyments, the luxury, the profligacy, of civil life. Reform, it was felt, must begin by severing this alliance and constituting the clergy as a class, a caste, by themselves, to offer a pattern of purity and self-devotedness to the laity. To us possibly, with the experience of eight centuries, it may appear that such a scheme was destined by its very nature to fail of its true objects, and that the character of the clergy and their spiritual and moral influence would have been better secured by placing them, with the intrinsic power of their office, not over but among the people. In fact there was perhaps no surer means towards the degradation of an ​order than to absolve it from social restraints and to enforce upon it a special code of morals which not all desired to keep and which many, if not most, found it easy to elude. At the same time the preponderant balance of church authority was precise against the toleration of a married clergy, and this part of the reform was rightly defended as a recurrence to patristic, if not to primitive, usage. Moreover the sharper the distinction, the separation, between clergy and laity, the more readily could the former be applied as an external and consolidated force against the disorders of civil society. On general grounds it is perfectly clear that if the church was to exercise that sway which all Christians agreed it ought to exercise, over the consciences of men, it must be as free as possible from those ties which bound it to the secular state; if, for instance, the churchman had to look to his king for preferment, he was not likely to be as vigilant or as courageous in the carrying out of his duty as if he depended solely upon his spiritual chief. The isolation and independence of the clergy being then postulated, it was but a step further to assert their superiority, their right of controlling the state. Gregory had a search made in the papal archives and found what he believed to be irrefragable evidence of the feudal dependence of the different kingdoms on the Roman see. Civil power,—so he wrote to bishop ​Herman of Metz,—was the invention of worldly men, ignorant of God and prompted by the devil; it needed not only the assistance but the authorisation of the church.
Viewing the new policy in its first rudiments, we cannot fail to detect an inevitable source of weakness, so far as its essential aims were concerned. It made demands on the clergy (and a fortiori on the pope, for whom was claimed a virtual omnipotence on earth) which could hardly be satisfied in a far higher stage of civilisation. In a word it was theoretical, ideal, visionary. As soon as it was brought into the sphere of practice, so soon as the church entered into conflict with the state, it became evident that the unworldliness assumed in the church only existed in so far that she had no material forces to rely upon; although the weapon of excommunication which she wielded was in fact more powerful than any forces that the secular state possessed. If the clergy were free from civil control, society on the other hand had little or no protection against their license. To make the high ecclesiastical officers proudly independent of the sovereign was to introduce the influence of the Roman see into every court, and to put canonical obedience in danger of becoming a matter of common politics. If ecclesiastical property was released from civil obligation, the church was as much as before subject to the cares and the temptations of wealth. The spiritual basis of the hierarchical pretensions in fact at once broke down on trial. The pope by aspiring to universal dominion, fell to the position of a sovereign among sovereigns; he became a disturbing influence in the political system of Europe, and the most religious of men were constantly troubled to reconcile their duty towards their ​country with what they believed to be their duty towards God.
The Hildebrandine policy thus contained within it the seeds of danger alike to society and to the church itself. But, over and above these intrinsic defects, the idea of a catholic church was confronted and menaced by another idea that did not yield to it in the magnificence and universality of its pretensions. The circumstances of the time brought the pope into peculiar relations with Italy and Germany, the inheritors of the title and traditions of Roman empire. Hitherto the emperor had been understood to represent on earth the unity and order of the divine government, holding in the secular estate a rank equal, and often very far superior, to that occupied by the pope in the spiritual. He was the vicegerent of God; that title had not yet been appropriated by the papacy. With such a doctrine Gregory would have nothing to do; his attitude with respect to it was unequivocally, defiantly revolutionary. He treated civil government at lame as a human institution so deeply polluted by its sinful origin,—Cain and Nimrod, it was commonly explained, were its first founders,—as to be by itself helpless and criminal. Between the two opposing principles no compromise, no lasting peace was possible. But the points on which we would dwell are not so much the broad issues raised in the interminable controversy, as the incidental consequences that were drawn from them. There are few facts more striking than the readiness with which the church admitted any form of civil government that would listen to her claims. Theoretically she had no preference for monarchical institutions; rather, it should seem, she was inclined to promote a democratic system. Granted only the superiority of the ecclesiastical power, there was no concession she would not make in favour of popular rights: and her advocates speak, now with the voice of 'revolution-whigs,' of the official character of kingship; now with the earnestness of Cromwell's independents, of the necessity, the duty, of ​tyrannicide. Those passages of the New Testament which have been held to bespeak a divine right for kings are completely ignored, and the hierarchical pamphleteers, almost without exception, draw their lessons from the theocratic, or rather sacerdotal, teaching of the Hebrew scriptures or from the commonplaces of classical history.
A most interesting example of this method is to be found in a work written by Manegold, a priest of Lautenbach in Alsatia, in defence of Gregory. King, he says, is not a name of nature but a title of office: nor does the people exalt him so high above itself in order to give him the free power of playing the tyrant against it, but to defend him from the tyranny of others. So soon as he begins to act the tyrant, is it not plain that he falls from the dignity granted to him and the people is free from his dominion? since it is evident that he has first broken that contract by virtue of which he was appointed. If one should engage a man for a fair wage to tend swine, and he find means not to tend but to steal or slay them, would not one remove him from his charge? It is impossible to express the theory of 'social contract' more clearly than Manegold does: since, he says, no one can create himself emperor or king, the people elevates a certain one person over itself to this end that he govern and rule it according to the principle of righteous government; but if in any wise he transgresses the contract by virtue of which he is chosen, he absolves the people from the obligation of submission, because he has first broken faith ​with it. But the writer was in fact going far beyond what his party required: for certainly nothing could have been more distasteful to Gregory the Seventh and his followers than to give subjects a general right of deposing their sovereigns. All that the pope maintained was that they should be ready to rise in arms against them at the bidding of the head of the church. Individual or popular liberty was the last thing Gregory wished to establish; absolute obedience was as much a part of his theory as it was of the imperialists: the only question was to whom, as the supreme lord, it was due.
It was not however until a considerably later date that the upholders of the independence of the civil state ventured to frame a counter-theory for their action. For the present they were content to rely on the established usage of the Latin church and on the formal recognition by Nicholas the Second of the emperor's right to ratify the election of the pope. If they be held to have had the better of the argument, they limited themselves to the temporary demands of controversy. The first attempt to look apart from surrounding conditions and to produce a coherent system which should aspire to the character of a philosophy of politics came from the other side. When John of Salisbury applied himself to this subject in three books of his Policraticus there is nothing to remind us that the contest between Frederick Barbarossa and Hadrian the Fourth was just then ripening to a declaration of hostilities, or that the author himself was alienated from royal favour on account of his attachment to the policy of saint Thomas Becket. His treatment bears no reference to contemporary forms of government. His examples are those of the Old Testament or of the ancient Roman empire; there is not a trace even of the terminology of feudalism. John may now and then allude incidentally to modern customs, but it is only by way of ​illustration. The terms he employs for the officers of government and for the military organization are all foreign to feudal times and almost entirely classical. His authorities for military affairs are Frontinus, Vegetius, and the rest; his general scheme of the state is drawn from the Institutio Traiani ascribed to Plutarch. There is no sign in it even of an order of nobility. All temporary matters John passes by, in order to attain what appear to him to be the eternal principles of civil right. Like the hierarchical doctrine which he expounds, his theory is entirely ideal, and bears almost an ironical complexion if we think of applying it to any monarchy of his own or indeed of any time.
John starts from the notion of equity as the perfect adjustment of things,—rerum convenientia,—of which there are on earth two interpreters, the law and the civil ruler. Having by a previous definition excluded all bad kings, under the common name of 'tyrants,' from the field of his discussion, he is the more free to elevate the ideal grandeur of kingship. When, he says, we speak of the prince as released from the bands of the law, it is not that he has license to do wrong, but forasmuch as he ought to be moved not by fear of punishment but by the love of justice to observe equity, to further the advantage of the commonwealth, and in all things to choose the good of others before his private will. But who would speak of the prince's will in public matters? whereas he has no leave to will aught therein, save that which is counselled by law or equity, or determined by the consideration of general utility. In such concerns his will ought to possess the validity of judgement, and most rightly in them, according to the maxim of jurists, his pleasure hath the force of law; because his sentence differs not from the mind of equity. Without this understood condition the maxim is false. The king therefore is ​so far independent of the law that his rank is coördinate with it: he stands on an equal level as an exponent of eternal right. Thus he can be described as an image of the divine majesty on earth. . . . All power is of the lord God: . . . the power of the prince is therefore in such wise of God that it is still his, though it be exercised through the hand of a deputy.
We might think John of Salisbury to be the most fervent of imperialists; yet in fact his exaltation of the nobility of kingship is but a means towards the erection of a higher dignity still for the spiritual power. For the king's authority is only mediately derived from God. The sword, the symbol of worldly power, the prince receives from the hand of the church. He is therefore the servant of the priesthood, merely exercising in its stead functions which it is too sacred to perform itself. Vain, says John, is the authority of all laws except it bear the image of the divine law; and useless is the decree of a prince unless it be conformable to the discipline of the church. Yet here too the theory is purely ideal; John's conception of a state is that it depends upon the absolute principles of righteousness, and it was inevitable in his surroundings that he should identify these principles with the actual church of Christ, which stood as the symbol of them. No man was more outspoken in exposing the vices and abuses with which it was attended. This unsparing denunciation was indeed usual with the heartiest upholders of church rights in the middle ages; and it tells strongly for their honesty and candour. But still there was no other institution in existence to which one could point as in origin dependent, and dependent solely, on principles higher than the common worldly rules of conduct. Accordingly John devotes the major part of his description to a commentary on that passage expounding the duties of kingship which forms so remarkable a feature in the book of Deuteronomy. Thus far John's theory is just the conventional one which had been handed down through generations of churchmen. In principle it shows hardly ​any advance or development from that simple little manual which Jonas, bishop of Orleans, had compiled more than three centuries earlier for the instruction of Pippin, king of Aquitaine. Jonas indeed is less ambitious and contents himself for the most part with stringing together extracts from the Bible and the fathers; but John of Salisbury's classical erudition did not lead him at all to modify the main point, of the supremacy of the church over the world. Both writers alike find their best examples in Deuteronomy.
The Bible however furnishes but scanty materials for determining more minutely the mutual relation of the several elements of the state, and John has recourse to a late Roman treatise, the Institutio Traiani already referred to, from which he draws the following simile. The state, he says, has been likened to a living organism of which the soul is represented by religion, the head by the prince, and the other members by the various efficient classes of society. The hands are the soldiery, the feet the husbandmen and working people; the belly is the administration of finance, always inclined to surfeit and bring disorder upon the rest of the body; and the heart is the senate. John does not here enforce the principle, upon which indeed he has previously laid sufficient stress, of the subordination of the temporal state to the spiritual. He portrays religion as the 'soul' of government for the obvious reason that its care is for the interests of the soul; and if he recurs to the high estimation in which the priesthood ought to be held, it is simply as a corollary from the reverence due to things in which ​they minister. There is no question here of the political duties of the church. It does not therefore concern us to linger over the long didactic exposition which John writes upon the supposed text of Plutarch, and of which our only complaint is that it takes no account, except by way of illustration, of any of the facts and conditions of medieval polity. The classical ground-work gives a sort of individuality to John's treatment. He writes like an inferior Roman moralist of the silver age; but few would trouble themselves with his delineation were it not for the incidental allusions to, and observations respecting, contemporary or recent history.
There is one particular in which John's system is distinguished from that of almost every other political writer of the middle ages. It has already been noticed that John guards his theory of kingship by a careful distinction so as to exclude tyrants from all its privileges. Though he does not commit himself to the 'contract' notion which we have found in Manegold, it is clear that the ethical proviso which John requires, amounts in practice to the same thing and allows a large enough field for the exercise of popular opinion. But John extends the application of this check on misrule in a remarkable way. He inculcates with peculiar energy the duty not only of deposing but of slaying tyrants. He wrote a book, now lost, On the End of Tyrants, devoted as it seems to this special subject, to which he a more than once recurs in the Policraticits. Tyrannicide is not only lawful, it is obligatory; we may resort to any means to effect this object except poison, ​which is not justified by example and is abhorrent from English customs. With this single exception any act overt or covert is allowable against the tyrant. He is an enemy of the state and therefore those moral restrictions which bind society have no force in our dealings with him. We may flatter him, or employ any art, in order to lure him on to his destruction.
It need not be pointed out how accurately John had learned the historical lessons of the Old Testament. All through the controversial literature relating to church and state, the hierarchical party, as we have said, like the English puritans of a later age, rely on the precedents furnished by Hebrew history, and pass by, or explain spiritually, those passages of the Christian Scriptures which insist with such emphasis on the universal duty of obedience to the temporal ruler. The doctrine that the powers that be are ordained of God was held only with the reservation that God acted through the instrumentality of the church. Christianity in fact hardly influenced their political doctrine, except in so far as it considered life on earth as merely the preparation for another life hereafter, the 'road,' via, according to the expressive and constantly recurring phrase, that leads to the eternal 'home,' patria. Hence a new goal was set to human aspirations, and the nature of the civil state lost in worth by comparison of the supreme interests which lay beyond its cognisance. Nor did John of Salisbury at all reädjust or discriminate the various factors in this ​ mixed tradition of Hebrew and Christian ideas. He enriched it by proofs and lessons from classical history, but the stuff of his system remained the same as that current in the common speech of churchmen. It needed another classical influence to be brought to bear upon politics to raise them from a medley of empirical axioms to something approaching the character of a philosophical theory. This influence was found in the thirteenth century in the Politics of Aristotle: its first exponent is the greatest and profoundest teacher of the middle ages, saint Thomas Aquinas.
The Rule of Princes to which Aquinas devoted a special treatise, appears to him by no means a necessary form of government. Under the guidance of Aristotle, he approaches the subject with an entire absence of prejudice for it or any other form. The supreme power, he says, may be confided to many, to few, or to one; and each of these arrangements may be good or bad. He raises a presumption on quite general grounds that the unity of society—and this is the main object of government—is best secured by its subjection to a single ruler; but an aristocracy or a government by the people itself he allows to be equally legitimate, though not so well adapted to the necessities of the state. It is not the form but the character of the constitution that makes it good or bad. As monarchy is the most perfect form, so on the other hand its opposite, tyranny, is the most corrupt and abominable. Aquinas distinguishes, as minutely as ​John of Salisbury, between the king and the tyrant; like John, he postulates for the former an absolute devotion to the duties of his office, and thus exalts him to so ideal a dignity that he is empowered to speak of him asholding the same position in his own domain as God holds over the universe; he stands to his realm (this is more than John would have allowed) as the soul to the body.
But to this supremacy there are two limitations. In the first place while the end of all government is so to order human affairs that men may be the best prepared for eternal happiness, the special responsibility for spiritual concerns resides in the priests, who thus stand in the position of overlords to the civil ruler. The spiritual destiny of man requires a divine law over and above natural or human law.In order, therefore, that the spiritual be kept separate from the earthly, the office of this kingdom is committed not to earthly kings but to the priests, and above all to the chief priest, the successor of Peter, the vicegerent of Christ, the Roman bishop, to whom is due the subjection of all kings of the Christian people, even as to the lord Jesus Christ himself. In the treatise Of the Rule of Princes, which he left a fragment, Aquinas hardly pursues the subject further; but elsewhere he propounds with the utmost decision the hierarchical theory of the church.It is necessary, he says, to have some supreme authority in matters of faith: this authority resides in the pope, in whom is realised the unity of the church and the presence of the divine government. To him therefore is entrusted the power to control and to revise the ordinances of religion;he has even competence to promulgate a new confession of faith in order to prevent the rise of erroneous beliefs. Those who have any acquaintance with medieval history know how elastic a term 'error' was in the mouth of the pope, andThomas pronounces that from the moment of the issue of an authoritative excommunication against a sovereign, he is deprived of the right to rule and his subjects are released from their oath of allegiance. It is of course a statement of the accepted doctrine among ​ hierarchical party, and need not be further discussed; especially since Aquinas places by its side another check upon misrule the more interesting because of its approximation to modern ways of thought.
This second limitation upon royal power is that of the popular will. But let it be understood from the outset that the philosopher has no dream of looking to the capricious action of individual patriots as the instrument for setting things right; such is not his idea of maintaining order. Tyrannicide in the common sense he altogether repudiates. It is more seemly, he says, to proceed to the overthrow of tyrants not according to the personal presumption of one, but on public authority. If the community has the right of electing its prince, it has also the right of deposing him; no oath of fealty, even though sworn in perpetuity, can stand in its way. If the prince be himself subject to a superior power, let the people invoke his aid; but if there be no earthly authority to appeal to, they can only trust to God and to patience. Aquinas therefore allows no redress for misgovernment unless the redress sought be in conformity with law; he tempers the freedom of Old Testament examples by the rule of the New, Be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. Yet he is so little satisfied with this conclusion that, while he the advantage of hereditary monarchy in special circumstances, he strongly commends the elective form as a general rule, evidently because each new election gives an opportunity for placing restraints upon the royal power. Besides, as has appeared, an elected sovereign is legally subvertible. But Aquinas has no scheme to propound as to how the royal power is to be limited: we are indeed told to contrive such a method of government as to leave the ruler no opportunity for violent measures; but our philosopher gives no hint about the best means of arranging this, and insists mainly on the necessity for the community to choose their ruler wisely at the outset. The prince, too, he explains, will find it ​to his own interest to moderate his actions in obedience to the popular will; otherwise he runs a risk of exciting his subjects to rebellion. His own prudence is thus the principal check on his conduct.
Aquinas however only allows the title of king, in the strict sense of the word, to those who hold an absolute government, not in deference to the laws but according to virtue. It is John of Salisbury's notion in another shape. He placed the king in a position external to law, because his acts were to be guided by the principles of eternal right; Aquinas substitutes the word 'virtue,' but the idea is the same: neither discusses the possibility of the two forces, of the law and the royal authority, coming into collision; or more accurately, they have already provided for the contingency by a definition of kingship which such conflict ipso facto changes into tyranny. The king, in Aquinas' view, has to supplement the deficiencies of law by following the rule, or unwritten law, of his own will and his own reason. In opposition to this kingship which may be broadly distinguished in modern phrase as the theoretical imperial conception, Thomas places the improper, what he terms the Lacedemonian, order. Such a king, he says, is bound to reign according to the laws and therefore is not lord over all. On the other hand the less absolute he is, the more likely is his government to last, because there is the less chance of his stirring up illwill among his subjects. Yet even here we have to qualify the statement according to special circumstances. For instance, in an advanced state of general civilisation, there is always a certain number of citizens possessing the governing spirit, who may therefore be expected to dispute the prince's authority, however much it be limited by prescription; whereas in a ruder state of society an absolute monarch has the better expectation of the permanent enjoyment of power, because there, the moral standard being in the average so low, it is easier for one man to stand out among his fellows with the special qualifications of kingship.
​If Aquinas is evidently embarrassed in his attempt to combine the free politics which he read in the Greek examples with the existing specimens of monarchy in his own time, a difficulty which comes out curiously when finds himself compelled to restrict citizenship to the soldiery and officers of government, he makes amends by the clear and philosophic conception he forms of the nature of the state and of the sovereign's ideal relation to it. He rejects the popular 'spiritual' view which from Gregory the Seventh to Wycliffe regarded civil association as a consequence of the fall of man. Without the fall, he says, there would have been no slavery; but man's social instincts are an essential part of his constitution. He cannot live alone as the beasts, nor is he like them provided with, or capable of supplying, the necessaries of life. He subsists by association and cooperation, and out of this need arises the necessity for a state, to unite and control individual action. The unity of society expressed in the formation of the state is given effect to in the person of the ruler. Following out this idea of the state as an organised unity, representing humanity in all its properties and therefore having not only an economical but also a moral aim, Aquinas is able to arrive at some political results which are remarkably accordant with modern theories. Foremost among these is his distinct preference for nationality, involving community of manners and customs, as the basis of a state, a principle which helps him to the conclusion that small states are a priori better than large ones. Nor can we omit to note the emphasis with which Thomas maintains that it is the duty of the state to provide for the education of all its ​ members and Ho see that no citizen suffers want. To these
points we only advert in order to show that in them, just as in the optional or variable character assigned to the ultimate form of government, a churchman like Thomas Aquinas approaches nearer to the opinions of modern times than the generality of those who defended the claims of the emperor as against the pope, by a theory of the necessary, the indefeasible, the divine, basis of the imperial dignity.
With this idea Thomas had of necessity no concern. The empire might be held to have expired with Frederick the Second; and if Thomas wrote his book Of the Rule of Princes before the year 1266, it was at a time when the title of king of the Romans was disputed by two candidates neither of whom possessed, one of whom hardly aspired to, the shadow of real power. No emperor was again crowned until thirty years after Aquinas death; and he was naturally led to the inference that the empire was absorbed into, or reunited with, the mother-church: it has not ceased, he said, but is changed from the temporal to the spiritual. It is indeed evident that his view of the ​unique position of the church was one that could admit no rival to her in the secular state. But on the other hand the express preference which Thomas displays for nationality as the basis of the state, shows that he had learned, what the civilians remained ignorant of, that the world had outgrown the imperial conception; which notwithstanding still survived, always less and less of a reality, for upwards of five hundred years. Aquinas wrote in fact on the eve of a revolution in the history of European politics, not the less momentous because its results were defined in no external changes of government, dynasty, or frontier, were almost impalpable to contemporaries, and left all parties for the time as clamorous, as assertive, as before.
This change may be regarded in three sections. First, the opposition between the church and the empire be came broadened into a general opposition between the church and the civil government of each individual kingdom. The consolidation of the French and English monarchies had raised up two forces with which it was far harder for the pope to grapple, than it had been, at all events in recent times, in the case of the empire. For apart from the fact that these powers were growing in solidity and in national feeling, while the German was declining, they had had no tradition which made them coördinate with the apostolic see, and which there fore might appear as a standing menace to the latter; they were in one sense beneath its dignity, and therefore all the freer to expand at their own will and to defy the intrusion of papal claims. The assertion of a national consciousness found imitators, and in Rome itself there were fitful and abortive endeavours (those of Arnold of Brescia in the twelfth, and of Rienzi in the fourteenth, century are notorious) to dissociate the city from the curia and to justify the lineage of the people by an idle claim to elect or to supersede the emperor. In the second place, when the empire did revive, it was but a shadow of its old self. The title of emperor, or of king of the ​ Romans (for the higher style was by no means regularly added), became insensibly a mere ornamental adjunct to a principality which had only a real existence, it might be, in Bavaria, in Austria, or in Bohemia: at best its holder was but a German sovereign, and each attempt to achieve the higher distinction of the empire, and to supplement the crown of Aix by those of Milan and Arles and Rome, ended in increasingly disastrous failure. It was exactly this period of decline that produced a literature in which the imperial idea was developed and glorified to a splendour unthought of hitherto. No less exaggerated are the claims now put forward for its rival. For in the third place, while the vitality of the empire was diminishing, the church was making rapid steps towards occupying the prerogatives left unclaimed or unrealised by it. As early as the middle of the twelfth century an anxious observer had remarked that men spoke more of the Roman curia than of the Roman church. It was becoming a state among states while it aspired to be the supreme state that commanded and united all inferiors. Innocent the Third had made in his person the 'vicegerent of Peter' into the 'vicegerent of Christ'; and with Innocent the papacy reached its zenith. Nor did it for a long time exhibit any symptoms of decline. The conqueror of the empire fell beneath the defiance of the French king Philip the Fair, or more truly beneath the irresistible opposition of a strong national spirit in the kingdoms of Europe. The universal authority of Rome became confined within the narrow territory of Avignon: the means by which it was exerted became more and more secular, diplomatic, mercantile; and its spiritual efficiency was so far impaired that the loyallest servants of the catholic church could stand forth as the stoutest champions against the policy of the papacy, just because that policy was seen to be the surest means towards the destruction of the church.
It is not a little remarkable that the secret of the reformation, namely, the incompatibility of the claims ​of the church with the rights of the different nations that formed it, should have been so early discovered. But it was inevitable that, once the discovery was made, once the standard was raised against the encroachments (for so they were bitterly felt) of the papacy, the crusade should be extended to the abuses or deficiencies which were too obvious within the constitutional or dogmatic fabric of the church itself; and the heresies of Wycliffe or Huss were a natural outcome of the resistance provoked by Boniface the Eighth or John the Twenty-Second. It is not our purpose to follow the history to these issues: it is only necessary to observe that they were involved essentially in the conflict caused by the widened claims of the church. The political results of this conflict will come before us in the following chapter, but to make its precise conditions clear we have preliminarily to educe from the writings of the papal party the precise figure which the conception of the church took in their minds.
The time when Gregory the Ninth consolidated the canon law is well known to cöincide with a general failure of historical insight and historical veracity, which operated well-nigh as strongly upon the actors in the events of this period as upon its chroniclers. Fictions were everywhere accepted as truth and used recklessly to explain existing facts; and among these fictions two had a diffusion and influence which it is difficult to overestimate. One of these, the Donation, by virtue of which Constantine was alleged to have abdicated his imperial authority in Italy (it was afterwards said, in all parts of the west) in favour of the successor of saint Peter, had been used ​as early as the middle of the eleventh century as a
weapon against the German claim. But by this time it had been discovered to prove too much, and Innocent the Fourth had to explain that the terms of this notable
document were inaccurate: Constantine could not have granted to the papacy that which it possessed by the irrefragable gift of Christ; he could only have restored that which had been violently usurped from its legitimate owner. Such was the view which found special favour among the churchmen of the fourteenth century, like Augustin Trionfo and Alvaro Pelayo. Still whether it were a donation or an act of restitution, few (if any) questioned the reality of the fact or suspected the impudence of the fraud; and it exercised as much the wits of jurists and of those who were opposed to the temporal aggrandisement of the church, as it did of the defenders of that power.
The second fiction to which we have referred is that of the Translation of the Empire, which, though previously
suggested by one or two controversialists, was not put des Grossen into an authentic form until the famous decree, Venerabilem, of Innocent the Third. It gained a sudden and lasting publicity from the moment that it was included in Gregory the Ninth's collection of Decretals, and hence forward it was the shield behind which the popes fought; it entered into all polemics and all history-books down to and beyond the close of the middle ages. The problem was to explain how it came about that Charles the Great ​ obtained the imperial crown; how, in other words, the empire was transferred from the Greeks to the Franks. That this Translation was a reality no one thought of doubting, t The empire of Charles was no mere resuscitation of the extinct and forgotten empire of the west; it was the continuation of that universal empire, whose seat Constantine had established at Byzantium, but whose existence there was now held to have terminated by the succession of a woman, the empress Irene: the throne of her predecessor, Constantine the Sixth, remained unoccupied. The empire therefore went back to its rightful seat, and its title devolved upon Charles. His Lombard kingdom, added to the greatness of his Frankish domain, qualified him, without a competitor, for a supremacy to which he was called by the will of the Roman people, expressed through their spokesman, pope Leo the Third. Such was the conception admitted without dispute for centuries after the decisive event of the middle ages had taken place. The only differences in its statement concern the relative shares of the emperor, the pope, and the Roman people in the transaction. It was well understood to be a sudden prompting of divine inspiration, the vehicle of which was necessarily the pope; but all accounts alike recognise the confirmation of the Roman people, and the Frankish records narrate that the pope completed the ceremony of coronation by adoring the emperor; thus recognising the sanctity of his person in a manner which is highly significant when we remember the ideas held of the relative positions of pope and emperor in later ages.
It is plain that any view which did not attribute the whole validity of the Translation to the official act of Leo the Third could not find favour with the new school of ecclesiastical politicians. In the contest concerning ​investitures the difficulty of the common notion was already perceived. Bonizo bishop of Sutri cut the knot by denying that the empire had ever passed into the hands of the Franks; it pertained still to the inheritance of the Greeks: the German claim was fictitious. Still its existence under the Franconian or the Suabian emperors was too pressing a reality to be explained away; and the extreme view taken by imperialists, that Charles's elevation was simply obtained by right of conquest, was naturally enough balanced by an equal exaggeration on the other side, which saw in the event of the year 800, nothing less than a supreme example of the power inherent in the successor of saint Peter to displace and create empires. In such fashion it came about that Innocent the Third was able to state this audacious falsification of history as a cardinal fact in the relations of the church to the world. No discovery could have been more momentous. What the pope had given he could take away. By the death of the emperor the jurisdiction of the empire reverted into the hands of the pope; and it lay in his power to decide when the vacancy should be terminated. If there was a double election it was for him to say which was the legitimate candidate; without his sanction the title of either remained null. The pope, in other words, had the right of controlling not the coronation of the emperor (that by universal consent rested with him), but the actual appointment of the king of Germany: and this advance took place just at a time when the emperor was gradually subsiding into something like a national German sovereign, and when the Avignonese pope had already sunk into a virtual dependent of the king of France. Never could the universality of the pretension be less justified, and never could the political character of the papacy be less disguised.
Perhaps the work that extols the papal prerogative to its highest pitch is the treatise Of the Power of the Pope ​ by Augustin Trionfo, dedicated to that same pontiff, John the Twenty-Second, who put forward the claims to which we have just adverted. The substance of Trionfo's view is that the pope is in all respects the representative and plenipotentiary vicegerent of God. If he says, adoration is reserved for God alone, worship belongs to the pope, equal to that due to the saints, greater than that to the angels, in proportion to the universality of his prerogative. The spiritual and temporal sway, symbolised by the two swords of Scripture, pertains so inseparably to the successor of saint Peter, by whom the one part of it is committed to secular princes to administer, that d even if he be personally a bad man, his power is none the less of God. Neither the emperor nor the laity have any right in his election; nor can any one depose him. f A general council may indeed declare his deposition in the event of his falling into heresy; but then it is not the sentence of the council that is operative against him, but ethe act of heresy, by virtue of which he ceases ipso facto to be pope. Except in this single instance he calls for universal and unquestioning obedience. ^From his will there is no appeal, not even to the judgement of God; for the utterance of the pope is identical with God's. An appeal to God is there fore worse than futile, it convicts the appellant of rebellion against the divine government of the universe.
Being thus raised high above all earthly conditions, it is evident that the authority of the papacy altogether transcends that of the empire. The pope, says Trionfo, has the right not only of deposing the emperor but also of choosing one at his own discretion, supposing that there is a want of unanimity or other defect in the election, that the object of his choice is marked out by pre-eminent merit, or that the head of the church is able ​by this exercise of his prerogative to secure her peace or the overthrow of her spiritual enemies. He may thus in case of necessity deprive the established electors of their privilege and transfer it to whom he will, he may change the constitution of the empire; just as indeed he may transfer or change any other temporal government, being the representative on earth of the supreme Arbiter of kingdoms. The existence of the civil state is only justified by the presiding presence of the priesthood, and this authorisation obtains in the west by that Donation which restored its entire empire to the pope not only in sovereignty but in actual and immediate government, so that all the constitutions of its kingdoms are subject to his ordinance; all the worldly possessions of kings depend from him: the emperor himself can issue no law without his concurrence. His is the final court of appeal of the world. Such in brief outline is the matured statement of the relation of the pope to the temporal power, a statement which in no way exaggerated the pretensions avowed in the papal curia. Growing out of a confusion of ancient, and a disdain of the lessons of modern, history it aptly reflects the spirit of a time when the church had become immersed in the cares and interests, which she affected to control, of common worldly politics.
* ↑ In this and the following chapter I am largely indebted to the references contained in two very compendious tracts by professor Emil Friedberg of Leipzig entitled, Die mittelalterlichen Lehren über das Verhältniss von Staat und Kirche; 1874. [A collection of the treatises which were written during this long controversy will be found in the Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, published in the Monumenta Germaniae historica in three volumes, 1891-1897.]
* ↑ In the opinion of cardinal Hergenröther, Katholische Kirche und christlicher Staat in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung 234 &c., 2nd ed., Freiburg 1876, Gregory did little more than carry into effect principles for which his predecessors had failed to find opportunity. [A luminous survey of more recent works on the subject is given by Dr. J. P. Whitney in the English historical Review, 34. 129-151; 1919.]
* ↑ John bishop of Lübeck at the council of Basle in 1434 made a proposition to the delegates 'ut sacerdotibus Christi nuptias restituerent: ... inutiliter uxores esse praereptas sacerdotibus; vix inter mille unum reperiri continentem presbyterum, omnes aut concu-
* ↑ It is curious that Manegold in the treatise cited below, p. 203 n. 7, dwells upon the disadvantage to the people of royal patronage because kingdoms being extensive and including various nationalities, it might and did happen that persons were appointed to preferments in a district the very language of which they did not understand. See Hartwig Floto, Kaiser Heinrich der Vierte 2. 302, Stuttgart 1856. It is unnecessary to allude to the practices in regard to foreign preferments which resulted from papal patronage.
* ↑ Quis nesciat reges et duces ab iis habuisse principium qui, Deum ignorantes, superbia, rapinis, perfidia, homicidiis, postremo universis pene sceleribus, mundi principe diabolo videlicet agitante, super pares, scilicet homines, dominari caeca cupidine et intolerabili praesumptione affectaverunt?—Reg. viii. 21 Jaffé, Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 2. 457.
* ↑ The agreement has been often remarked. Sir Robert Filmer says of the doctrine that mankind is naturally at liberty to choose its government. 'This tenet was first hatched in the schools, and hath been fostered by all succeeding papists for good divinity. The divines also of the reformed churches have entertained it, and the common people everywhere tenderly embrace it,' &c. Then with reference to the 'perillous conclusion' drawn from this maxim, namely, that the people have power to 'punish or deprive' their sovereign, he adds, 'Cardinal Bellarmine and Calvine both look asquint this way:' Patriarcha i. 1 pp. 2 sqq.; 1680.
* ↑ It is preserved in a single manuscript at Carlsruhe, and has not, so far as I am aware, been printed. Extracts are given by Floto: see his account of the work, vol. 2. 299-303. [It has since been published in the Libelli de lite 1. 308-430.]
* ↑ It does not fall within my plan to go through the controversial literature of this time. A list of references will be found in Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit 3. 1049, 1104; 1865.
* ↑ Compare his reference to the corruption practised by sheriffs and by 'iustitiis quae, ut vulgari nostro utar, recte dicuntur errantes,' Policrat. v. 16. vol. 1. 352. Other notices of recent history are very interesting; see book vi. 6 vol. 2. 18 sqq., 18 pp. 47 sqq., &c.
* ↑ The treatise to which dom d'Achery prefixed the title De institutione regia (Spicilegium 1. 323, ed. 1723) is a sort of special supplement to the bishop's three books De institutione laicali, his 'Holy Living,' we may say, printed ibid., pp. 258-323. I do not assert John of Salisbury's indebtedness to the book, for there is no evidence of the degree of popularity it enjoyed. The editors of it mention only two manuscripts, one at Rome, the other at Orleans, p. 324.
* ↑ I cannot therefore agree with Dr Sigmund Riezler, Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwig des Baiers 136, 1874, that the use of the Old Testament forms a peculiar characteristic of the Policraticus.
* ↑ I make this remark in order to guard against an inference which may naturally be drawn from Dr. Schaarschmidt's state- ment, p. 163, also Dr. Riezler's, l.c.,—that John explains the soul of the state as 'the priesthood.' His words are: 'Ea vero quae cultum religionis in nobis instituunt et informant et . . . Dei cerimonias tradunt, vicem animae in corpora rei publicae obtinent. Illos vero,' it is true he adds, 'qui religionis cultui praesunt, quasi animam corporis suspicere et venerari oportet. Quis enim sanctitatis ministros Dei ipsius vicarios esse ambigit?' Lib. v. 2 vol. 1. 282. But the reference to old Roman usages which immediately follows is sufficient to persuade us that he is speaking only of the priest as supreme in his own, that is, in the spiritual, field.
* ↑ It is a most curious coïncidence that another Johannes Parvus, Jean Petit, made this doctrine conspicuous in relation to the murder of the duke of Orleans in 1407. His arguments are identical: see M. Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation 1. 372-376; 1882. The position was condemned in a general way by the council of Constance, 1415-1416.
* ↑ Thomas Aquinas, whose writings indeed stand apart from controversy, inverts this position. In the Old Testament, he says, where men looked only for temporary promises, the priests were subject to the king; but the New elevates the priesthood higher because in it men are directed to eternal goods: De regimine principum i. 14 Opp. 17. 166, ed. Venice 1593 folio; with the volumes and folios of which the edition of Antwerp 1612 agrees.
* ↑ The four books De regimine principum which held their ground as the accepted textbook of political philosophy until the opening of modern history, are only in part the work of saint Thomas. His treatise is a fragment which breaks off in the course of the second book, and the remainder is the production in all probability of his disciple Ptolemy of Lucca: See Quétif and Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, 1. 543; Paris 1719. With the help however of some others of Thomas's writings, and in particular of his commentary on Aristotle's Politics, we are enabled to fill up the most important gaps in his treatment of the subject and to gain a nearly complete view of his political theory. Dr. J. J. Baumann's Staatslehre des h. Thomas von Aquino 5 sq. (1873) contains a serviceable collection (in German) of the passages in Thomas's works, bearing upon the subject of polity.
* ↑ k
* ↑ l
* ↑ m
* ↑ n
* ↑ o
* ↑ In the Secunda secundae x. 10 fol. 30, he says 'Dominium vel praelatio introducta est [ed. sunt] ex iure humano: distinctio autem fidelium et infidelium est ex iure divino. Ius autem divinum quod est ex gratia, non tollit ius humanum quod est ex naturali ratione.'
* ↑ Neither in Aquinas nor inJohn of Paris, whose views on this point agree with his (see his treatise De potestate regia et papali iii, M. Goldast, Monarchia s. Romani Imperii 2. 111, Frankfurt 1614 folio), do I find any notice of the advantage of a common language.
* ↑ It is needless to say that Aquinas has rudimentary notions of political economy (see the pas- sages given by Dr Baumann, pp. 93 sqq. and the whole section, pp. 190-203) and repudiates the very thought of religious toleration: 2 Secund. x. 11, 12, xi. Opp. 11(2) 30 sqq., xxxix. 4 f. 101 (Baumann 185-189). Yet in both these particulars he shows insight and sound sense. See for example the objections he raises against the forcible baptism of the children of unbelievers, Qu. x. 12 f. 31 (Baumann 185 sq.).
* ↑ The coming of Antichrist, it was believed, would be heralded by a discessio, a departure from the faith and a secession from the Roman empire of part of its subjects. Sed quomodo est hoc? asks saint Thomas; quia iamdiu gentes recess^runt a Romano imperio, et tamen necdum venit Antichristus. Dicendum est quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in spirituale, ut dicit Leo papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo dicendum est quod discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a ternporali sed a spirituali, id est a fide catholica Romanae ecclesiae: Expos, in 2 ad Thess. ii. opp. 10. 172 E. Cf. J. Bryce, The holy Roman Empire 114 n. 2. A curious gloss was given at an earlier time, during the contest concerning investitures, by Bonizo bishop of Sutri, namely, that the empire spoken of in the prophecy was the eastern; the western had already long been annihilated in consequence of the vices of its rulers, See Dollinger, Das Kaiserthurn Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger, in the Miinchner historische Jahrbuch fur 1865 pp. 387 sqq. [translated in Addresses on historical and literary Subjects, pp. 73-180; 1894.]
* ↑ m
* ↑ Thus Augustin Trionfo: Ad papam pertinet immediate imperii plena iurisdictio. Postquam enim Constantinus cessit imperio occidentali, nulla sibi reservatione facta, in civitate Romana, in partibus Italiae, et in omnibus occidentalibus regionibus, plenum ius totius imperii est acquisitum summis pontificibus, non solum superioris dominationis, verum etiam immediatae administrationis, ut ex ipsis tota dependeat imperialis iurisdictio, quantum ad electionem et quantum ad confirmationem: ita ut extunc nullus de iure potuerit se intromittere de regimine occidentalis imperii absque expressa auctoritate et mandato sedis apostolicae, nisi usurpative et tyrannice: De potest. eccl. xxxviii. 1 p. 224.
* ↑ The document is most likely as old as the years 752-774; see Dollinger, Papst-Fabeln pp. 67 sqq., 7276; and compare Bryce, pp. 42 sq.
* ↑ Non solum pontificalem sed regalem [Christus] constituit principatum beato Petro eiusque successoribus, terreni simul ac coelestis imperil commissis habenis, quod in pluralitate clavium com- petenter innuitur: Epist. ap. F. von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen 4. 120 n., ed. 2, 1841.
* ↑ Si inveniatur quandoque ali quos imperatores dedisse aliqua temporalia summis pontificibus, sicut Constantinus dedit Silvestro, hoc non est intelligendum eos dare quod suum est, sed restituere quod iniuste et tyrrannice ablatum est: Aug. Trionfo, i. 1 p. 3; cf. qu. xxxvii. 1-5 pp. 219223. See also Alvaro Pelayo, De planctu ecclesiae i. 43, Ulm 1474 folio; and on the other side, John of Paris, De potest. reg. et pap. xvj, Goldast 2. 130.
* ↑ It was common to seek the inception of the scheme in the policy of Hadrian the First (see Alvaro Pelayo i. 41) or even to throw it back to the time of Stephen the Second. The latter view owed its popularity to Bernard of Parma's gloss on the Decretals (see Doiiinger, Kaiserthum Karls des Grossen 398) and was accepted by Martinus Polomisand acrowd of later chroniclers (ib. pp. 400-412).
* ↑ Compare Frederick the First's famous Roman oration reported by Otto of Freising, De gest. Frid. ii. 21 Pertz 20. 405.
* ↑ This position is not often favoured by the earlier writers on the subject. Thomas Aquinas (Baumann pp. 128 sq.) insists with as much force as Dante, De Monarchia i. 14, that a good ruler (or a good citizen) and a good man are convertible terms; and one would hardly apply a lower standard to the governor of the church.
* ↑ Thus also Aegidius Colonna (Aegidius Romanus) in an unpublished work De ecclesiastica potestate, from which extracts are given by Charles Jourdain in the Journal général de l'Instruction publique et des Cultes, 27. 122 sq., 130-133; 1858. 'Patet,' he says, 'quod omnia temporalia sunt sub dominio ecclesiae collata, et si non de facto, quoniam multi forte huic iuri rebellantur, de iure tamen et ex debito temporalia summo pontifici sunt subiecta, a quo iure et a quo debito nullatenus possunt absolvi:' Lib. ii. 4 (p. 131 n. 1). It is curious that this Aegidius should have long been regarded as the author of a certain Quaestio disputata in utramque partem pro et contra pontificiam potestatem, printed by Goldast, vol. 2. 96-107, and strongly hostile to the papal claims. The error is corrected by Jourdain, ubi supra, and by Dr. Riezler, pp. 139 sqq.