The Political Theories of Martin Luther E-Book

Luther Hess Waring

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 307

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

After a description of the Germany of Luther's day, the author enters upon various important topics in political science and endeavors to show by citations from Luther's writings the positions taken by that reformer. His views are not formulated in any connected treatise on the theory of the State but a compilation of detailed expressions exhibit the principles upon which he seemed to act. The author organizes the matter in a final summary, by which it appears that Luther was of the opinion that the State was of divine origin but its form was a matter for human determination. The sovereignty of the State is exclusive, not shared by the Church, and, furthermore, the State is not simply a sword in the interest of the Church. The object of the State is to maintain peace, and its powers should be used in the interest of all, not for the benefit of special classes. It is the duty of the State to educate youth both in secular and religious matters. It should care for the poor, protect the people against monopolies and extortion, and should suppress gambling and immorality. Freedom of conscience, liberty of speech and of the press are inalienable rights of every individual. It is important to know the political views of the man who wrought such changes in religious associations, and the author has performed good service in assembling Luther's expressions, but it is difficult to count him as a contributor to political science.

Leseprobe

The Political Theories Of Martin Luther

LUTHER HESS WARING

The Political Theories of Martin Luther, Luther Hess Waring

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849658212

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.. 1

CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 12

CHAPTER II. THE GERMANY OF LUTHER'S DAY.. 17

CHAPTER III. THE NATURE, NECESSITY, AND ORIGIN OF THE STATE   29

CHAPTER IV. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE.. 41

CHAPTER V. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE.. 51

CHAPTER VI. THE RIGHT OF REFORM AND REVOLUTION.. 65

CHAPTER VII. THE OBJECTS OF THE STATE.. 79

CHAPTER VIII. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE.. 90

CHAPTER IX. LIMITS OF THE STATE.. 112

CHAPTER X. AN ESTIMATE OF LUTHER'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF THE STATE   127

APPENDIX.. 137

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

THIS study was undertaken in the preparation of a thesis on Martin Luther's Political Reforms of Germany in part fulfilment of the work required by the George Washington University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The field proved so inviting and so important that it has led to a work of larger proportions than originally anticipated, and is given to the world in the hope that it may be of service in throwing some additional light on the political theories of the great religious reformer of the sixteenth century and on the credit that belongs to him as a forerunner of the modern theory of the state.

LUTHER HESS WARING.

WASHINGTON, D. C., 1910.

CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 1

ARISTOTLE, in a sense the founder of political science, 2 declares that man is by nature a political animal 3 and that the state is natural and necessary to him. It comes into being for the sake of mere life, but it continues to exist for the sake of the good life. It has no more important function than that of securing intellectual culture and physical training to its youth. Whether the sovereign power reside in one, in the few, or in the many, the true end of the state is the perfection of all its members. Government conducted in the exclusive interest of any part, though a majority of its citizens, is a perversion. The law is superior to the individual man, and its sovereignty is above every form of personal sovereignty.

The ancient state, in general, was everything. It included and interfered with all the relations in life. Without it, the citizen was nothing, and he had no individual freedom. The idea of the state embraced his entire life "in community, in religion and law, morals and art, culture and science." 4 Religion and government, or church and state, were identical, and continued so in theory and generally in fact to the time of Constantine. 5

In the history of Rome there was a time when the word of Caesar was the law and the worship of Caesar was the religion of the world. As Pontifex Maximus he was the high priest of the national religion. He held control of both church and state in his own person. Indeed, in a large sense, he was the state, and he was the church.

Identity of worship, among ancient civilised peoples, constituted the unity of the state. Throughout antiquity the essence of religion was associated with nationality, and the religious community was contained in the political community of the state. 6 This identity of two great institutions so generally distinct in modern life, this fusion and confusion of church and state, arose from the common germ from which they both sprang, i.e., the family. 7

Aristotle wrote: "The care of the public sacrifices of the city belongs, according to religious custom, not to special priests, but to those men who derive their dignity from the hearth, and who in one place are called kings, in another prytanes, and in a third archons." 8 The sacerdotal character of primitive royalty is clearly shown by ancient writers. The-office of king and priest was united in one. "Just as in the family the authority was inherent in the priesthood, and the father, as head of the domestic worship, was at the same time judge and master, so the high priest of the city was at the same time its political chief. . . . From the fact that religion had so great a part in the government, in the courts, and in war, it necessarily followed that the priest was at the same time magistrate, judge, and military chief. . . . This royalty, semi-religious, semi-political, was established in all cities, from their foundation, without effort on the part of the kings, without resistance on the part of the subjects." 9

The Romans gave a more definite form to law, as distinguished from morality, and thus limited the jurisdiction or the sphere of the state. Furthermore, they declared the will of the people to be the source of all law. 10 Great as they were as administrators and lawgivers, they have left us nothing of importance in the history of political theory. 11

With the introduction and early extension of Christianity, whose Founder and early followers were persecuted to the death by various governments of their day, another limitation was placed upon the sphere of the state. The church as an organisation was viewed and kept separate and distinct from the state. 12 "The words of Christ, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' mark a crisis in history, the birth of a new movement which was to assign to each of the two powers, the state as well as the religious community, their separate province." 13 The entire religious life of the community was felt to be essentially independent of the state, although not altogether withdrawn from its care and influence, and the state was limited to the field of politics and law. The dualism of church and state became most marked. 14 The historian Gibbon viewed the church, as it became during Constantine's reign and remained for years after his death, as a republic or state within the state; but it was rather a superordinated genus embracing all the civil functions of the state. For a period of fifteen hundred years, one great question that more than any other in this field of government clamoured for a solution was the relation that properly exists between these two great institutions, the church and the state. "The whole life and character of western Christendom consists of the incessant action and counteraction of church and state. " 15

Galerius, as early as 311 A.D., issued an edict, which also bears the names of Constantine and Licinius, declaring paganism to be the religion of the state, but tolerating Christianity, provided its adherents took no action against the established laws, religion, and government of the state. 16 Two years later, Constantine, Emperor of the West, and Licinius, Master of the East, issued the famous Edict of Milan, 17 granting absolute freedom of worship, giving full and free power to the Christians of exercising their own religion. The same free and unrestricted liberty of worship, according to the dictates of the individual conscience and reason, with a view to peace, was likewise conceded to all others as to their own religion or observance, that each might have the liberty of the worship he preferred. Church property that had been confiscated or sold from the Christian communities was ordered to be at once restored, without consideration. Neander declares that this new law implied the introduction of a universal and unconditional religious freedom and liberty of conscience a thing, in fact, wholly new. 18 In issuing this edict, Constantine expresses the hope that in granting this liberty he may have Heaven's blessing; but there is nothing in the language of the document showing any recognition of the right of the individual to freedom of conscience or liberty of worship. Tertullian, writing in the preceding century, asserted that ' ' the rights of man and the law of nature give everyone' the power of worshipping as he thinks proper; and the religion of one man neither injures nor benefits another. Force is indeed foreign to religion." 19

Constantine's Edict of Toleration of 323 A.D. recognised freedom of conscience and of worship. He summoned church councils to settle questions of religious doctrine, and published their proceedings. He banished dissenting ecclesiastics, prohibited assemblies of heretics, and confiscated their houses of worship. He paid salaries to the Christian clergy from the imperial treasury and bestowed certain judicial functions on bishops. 20 It is asserted that after he made Constantinople his capital, he prohibited immoral forms of pagan worship and their ordinary public forms of sacrifice, but this has not been definitely established.

During Constantine's reign another voice is heard in behalf of religious liberty. Lactantius, tutor to the Emperor's son and a Christian convert, asserted: "Religion cannot be compelled; it is by words rather than wounds that you must bend the will. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion. Our God is the God of all, whether they will it or no; but we do not desire that anyone should be compelled to worship Him. . . . Religion is the one region in which liberty has fixed its domicile and home." 21 In 353 Constantius ordered all heathen temples closed, and declared further: "We will that all abstain from sacrifices: if any be found doing otherwise, let him be slain with the sword." 22

It did not require centuries, after the removal of the seat of imperial government from the Tiber to the Bosporus, for the old Roman Empire, as a unit, to disappear. The Bishop of Rome naturally acquired leadership in the West. He defended that city and its people against the northern barbarians, but he also won these same barbarians to Christianity. The universal temporal dominion of the old empire passed away, both in theory and in fact, but it was superseded by the idea of universal spiritual dominion. As early as the end of the fifth century, Bishop Gelasius (492-496) declared that "the See of St. Peter has the right to decide and judge in all matters concerning the faith; no .one dare criticise its judgment; as the canons determine that persons from all parts of the world can appeal to it, no one, on the other hand, can appeal against it." 23 "It is just at the moment when the Roman Empire is breaking up and disappearing", says Guizot, "that the Christian church gathers itself up and takes its definite form. Political unity perishes, religious unity emerges." 24

The year 754 was a turning point in the relation of church and state in Western and Southern Europe. Pippin, King of the Franks, accepting a proposal of the Pope, overthrew the Lombards, who were pressing the eternal city, and presented Rome and the surrounding territory to the Pope. 25 Twenty years later, his son Charles the Great, better known as Charlemagne, assumed the iron crown and ruled as protector of Rome for a score of years. He was nominally, however, under the power of the Roman Emperor until the close of that century. On Christmas day, in the year 800, the Pope, in St. Peter's at Rome, placed on Charlemagne's head the crown of the Caesars, and he was acclaimed as "Charles Augustus, Emperor, crowned of God."

The capitulary of Charlemagne of 802 has been well termed, in a certain sense, the foundation charter of that Holy Roman Empire that continued for more than a thousand years. 26 Although the ideals and principles there set forth were never fully realised, they nevertheless set forth functions and objects of civil government worthy of note. The Emperor chose the most prudent and the wisest of his nobles to make diligent inquiry and report to him where any provisions were contained in the law otherwise than according to Christian right and justice, that he might better it, and to fully administer law and justice according to the will and the fear of God, whether the matter concerned the church, or the poor, or wards and widows, or the whole people. Where these imperial appointees, with the assistance of the counts of the provinces, found themselves unable to adjust a difficulty or render justice with regard to it, they were directed to refer it, with their reports, to the Emperor's court. All the people of the empire were exhorted to live together according to the precept of God, in a just manner, under just judgment, in mutual charity and perfect peace. Every male citizen, layman and ecclesiastic alike, down to those under twelve years of age, was required to take the oath of allegiance to the Emperor. Charlemagne declared that he himself, after God and His saints, had been constituted the protector and defender of the holy churches of God, of widows, of orphans, and of strangers. He commanded that judges should judge justly, according to the written law, and not according to their own judgment. 27 This first great Emperor of the new regime brought together under his authority and government the territory now included in Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and all of Italy except the southern part. 28

The old had passed away. There was now an Emperor of the West and an Emperor of the East. There was a Church of the West and a Church of the East. For the purposes of this study we turn our attention exclusively to the West. Charlemagne here regulated by his capitularies the administration and discipline of the Church, 29 interfering even in questions of doctrine. He convoked synods, and they in turn acknowledged his ecclesiastical supremacy and presented their decrees for his confirmation. He appointed and deposed bishops. Pope Eugene II and the Romans were compelled to promise that no pope should receive consecration in future until he had taken, before the imperial ambassador, the oath of allegiance to the Emperor as his lord and suzerain.

In this continental contest for supremacy, waged for centuries, between the papal power on the one hand and various civil governments on the other hand, the so-called pseudo-decretals of Isidore 30 exerted a far-reaching influence. Originating probably not in Rome but certainly on behalf of Rome, they were designed to strengthen the hands of the pope against the civil power by aiming to prove that all bishops derive their authority from the Bishop of Rome, who holds his own immediately from Christ. They belong to the late Carlovingian period, 31 and aimed at no less a project than the overthrow of the existing constitution of the church, which everywhere still essentially rested on the authority of the metropolitan. They sought to place the entire church in immediate subjection to the pope of Rome, and to establish a unity of the spiritual power, which would lead to its emancipation from the temporal. 32

Centuries before, St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei had presented the civitas terrena (kingdom or city of the world) in contrast with the civitas Dei (kingdom or city of God); but the Roman canonists transformed his glorious vision of the kingdom of God into that kingdom of the world which he reprobated; and his ideal kingdom of God became a temporal kingdom, with all the accompaniments of conquest, fraud, and violence which, according to the great theologians of the West, naturally belonged to such an organisation. Augustine's ideal city, or kingdom of God, continued for centuries, during the earlier Middle Ages, to attract the attention and delight the heart of the faithful, as they contemplated the visible ecclesiastical Empire of Rome. 33 "No good Catholic Christian doubted that in spiritual things the clergy were the divinely-appointed superiors of the laity, that this power proceeded from the right of the priests to celebrate the sacraments, that the pope was the real possessor of this power, and was far superior to all secular authority. The question, however, as to the pope's power to rule was certainly a subject of controversy. " 34

As early as the year 829, episcopal utterances about church and state asserted the principle universalis sancta ecclesia Dei unum corpus manifeste esse credatur eiusque caput Christus; and from this time forward mankind is commonly presented as one body with a God-willed spiritual and temporal constitution. 35 It was this claim on the part of the Roman Church and its acceptance by the world that forced Emperor Henry IV to Canossa, there to stand for three days outside the palace, barefoot, in the depth of winter, 36 until Pope Gregory VII chose to receive and grudgingly pardon him. This pope declared the clergy independent of the civil power and without its jurisdiction. They were to pay taxes to the church only, and were subject to no authority but that of the pope. Gregory was the first to renew the teaching of St. Augustine that the temporal power is the work of sin and the devil.

He asserted the right of papal appointment of kaisers and kings, and charged all men, whom he had confirmed in regia dignitate, to obey him. The bearer of the keys must judge temporal rulers, but he himself can be judged by none. 37 In the collection of capitularies of Benedictus Levita, the principle is prominently set forth that no constitution in the world is of any force or validity against the decisions of the popes of Rome. Kings acting in opposition to this principle are threatened with divine punishment. 38 One of the documents found among the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, known as the Constantine Donation, 39 purports to be a grant from Constantine to the pope of imperial honours, and of the primacy over Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, as also over all other churches in the world. It makes him the chief judge of the clergy, and tenders him the imperial diadem, granting him dominion over all Italy, including Rome, though under the terms employed Italia sen occidentalium regionum, later popes claimed nothing less than all Western Europe. Though the authenticity of this document was questioned, and occasionally denied, even in the Middle Ages, it was received into various collections of canon law. It was seriously attacked, however, in the fifteenth century and its falseness finally recognised by historians generally. Adrian IV relied on it, according to John of Salisbury, in assenting the right to dispose of Ireland in 1155. In the bull conferring upon Henry II of England the right to conquer Ireland, Adrian says 40: " There is indeed no doubt, as thy Highness doth also acknowledge, that Ireland and all other islands which Christ the Sun of Righteousness has illumined, and which have received the doctrines of the Christian faith, belong to the jurisdiction of St. Peter and of the Holy Roman Church." He gives his assent to the king's petition, and expresses his pleasure that the king, "for the enlargement of the bounds of the church, for the restraint of vice, for the correction of morals and the introduction of virtues, for the advancement of the Christian religion," should enter that island. It is further provided that the rights of the church remain inviolate and entire; and there is reserved to St. Peter and the Holy Roman Church the annual pension of one penny from each and every house on the island.

In the beginning of the following century, at a time when Aragon and Hungary were papal fiefs and the Latin East was entirely subject to the Pope, King John of England, in 1213, after a losing struggle with Pope Innocent, laid his realm at the feet of the Pope's legate, to receive it back as a fief from Rome. In his grant he decrees the concession of the kingdoms of England and Ireland with all their "rights and appurtenances" to God and His holy Apostles, Peter and Paul, and to our mother the Holy Roman Church, and to our Lord Pope Innocent and to his Catholic successors, for the remission of our sins and of those of our whole race, as well for the living as for the dead; and now receiving and holding them, as it were a vassal, from God and the Roman Church, we perform and swear fealty for them to him our aforesaid Lord Pope Innocent, and his Catholic successors and the Roman Church. The concession further declares that the Roman Church shall receive annually, for all the service and customs which ought to be rendered it, saving in all things the penny of St. Peter, a thousand marks sterling, seven hundred namely for the kingdom of England and three hundred for the kingdom of Ireland. The king asserts that the transfer was not induced by force or compelled by fear, but of his own good and spontaneous will and by the common counsel of his barons. 41 Though there was a sense of national shame in later ages over this settlement of the difficulties in which the king and the kingdom were involved, "we see little trace of such a feeling in the contemporary accounts of the time." 42

Having deposed one emperor and claiming the right to appoint his successor, Innocent IV wrote to the German princes in 1246: "We command you, since our beloved son, the Landgrave of Thuringia, is ready to take upon himself the office of emperor, that you proceed to elect him unanimously without delay." 43

There are two writers of this period, of lasting renown, to whom reference must be made, the one a defender of the papal claims and the other an opponent. Thomas Aquinas sought to show that submission to the Roman pontiff is necessary for every human being. He asserted that under the teachings of the New Testament, the king is subject to the priest in so far that if a king prove to be a heretic or a schismatic, the pope has a right to deprive him of all royal authority by releasing his subjects from their allegiance. 44 Aquinas teaches the principle of unity before plurality, and employs the maxim omnis multitude derivatur ab uno. He sees the "prototypes of the state in the world with its one God, in the microcosm of man with its single soul, in the unifying principle which prevails among the powers of the soul, and which prevails also in the natural body and in the animal kingdom." The church has the care of the ultimate end; civil rulers have merely the care of antecedent ends. 45

Dante holds the principle of unity to be the source of all good; and bases his demand for a single rule in every whole on the types of an ordinatio ad unum, as found in the world-whole, among the heavenly bodies, and everywhere on earth. 46 To accomplish the common purposes of the race, nothing but a world empire will suffice. He argued that a universal monarch, with no rival to fear and no further ambition to satisfy, could have no motive for ruling otherwise than wisely and just. He expressly adopted Aristotle's doctrine that the merit of a government must be gauged by its promotion of the welfare of all its subjects. The aim of the rightful commonwealth is liberty, i.e., that men may live for their own sake. Citizens are not for the sake of the consuls; a nation is not for the king. On the contrary, the consuls are for the sake of the citizens and the king is for the sake of the nation. The state is not subordinate to laws, but laws to the state. The monarch is to be deemed the servant of all. 47 The monarch Dante had in mind, it must be noted, is not a world despot, but a ruler set over the princes of various states to keep the peace between them. He puts imperial sovereignty in the place of papal supremacy. 48

Pope Boniface, in 1296, issued the bull Clericis Laicos, in which he declares antiquity teaches us that laymen are in a high degree hostile to the clergy, a fact further established "by the experiences of the present times," referring here to the taxes imposed upon the clergy of France and England by their respective kings. The Pope says they do not have the prudence to consider that all jurisdiction is denied them over the clergy over both the persons and the property of ecclesiastics. He therefore decrees that any prelates or ecclesiastics, monastic or secular, who may pay or agree to pay to laymen any such levies or taxes, under whatever name or pretence, without permission of the Apostolic Chair; and any emperors, kings, princes, barons, or other persons, by whatever name called, wherever situated, who shall impose or receive such payments or take any action concerning them, publicly or secretly, without such permission, shall incur, by the act itself, the sentence of excommunication. Corporations guilty in these matters are placed under the ecclesiastical interdict. Prelates and all ecclesiastics acquiescing in any such demands, herein forbidden, are subject to deposition and excommunication. 49 The King of England obeyed this mandate, but the King of France did not. Thereupon began a conflict that led eventually and indirectly to the Babylonian Captivity.

Towards the close of this struggle between Boniface VIII and Philip, the pope issued another bull, known as the Unam Sanctam, 50 published in 1302, in which he declared that there is neither salvation nor remission of sins outside of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Lord says in John that there is one-fold, one shepherd, and one only. We are told by the word of the Gospel that in this His fold there are two swords a spiritual and a temporal. Surely he who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter wrongly interprets the word of the Lord when He says: "Put up thy sword in its scabbard. " Both swords, the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power of the church, the one, indeed, to be wielded for the church, the other by the church: the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority subject to the spiritual. For when the Apostle says, "There is no power but of God, and the powers that are of God are ordained," they would not be ordained unless sword were under sword and the lesser one, as it were, were led by the other to great deeds. That the spiritual exceeds any earthly power in dignity and nobility we ought the more openly to confess, as spiritual interests excel temporal ones in importance. We see this, too, in the giving of tithes, in the benediction and the sanctification; from the recognition of this power and the control of these same things. For, the truth bearing witness, it is for the spiritual power to establish the earthly power and judge it, if it be not good. The spiritual man judges in all things, but he himself is judged by no one. Indeed, we declare, announce and define that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Alvarius Pelagius, writing from 1330 to 1340, maintained that as the church, which is cosmopolis, can give, by baptism, and take away the right of citizenship, so she has the right to distribute offices among her citizens. The priestly acts of sacerdotal consecration and unction, which first give temporal authority over God's people, must be regarded as approval and confirmation. 51

Pope John XXII, of this same period, claimed the right of looking into the merits of an emperor elect, and of rejecting him if he saw proper. In the case of a disputed election, he asserted the right to administer the government himself until the contest should be settled.51 In connection with this dispute between Louis the Bavarian and the pope one of the last great mediaeval struggles between the empire and the papacy and as a reply to these papal claims, the German princes, assembled in the Imperial Diet held at Frankfort in 1338, passed the famous Licet Juris. 52 In this decree, the electors stoutly and unequivocally declare the independent rights and powers of the Emperor, as over against those of the pope. They thus take issue with the claims and declarations of various popes during the preceding centuries. They maintain that the testimony of both civil and canon law manifestly proves that the imperial dignity and power proceeded from of old directly through the Son of God, and that God openly gave laws to the human race through the emperor and the kings of the world; and since the emperor is made true emperor by the election alone of those to whom it pertains, he does not need the confirmation or approbation of anyone else. He has no superior on earth as to temporal things, and peoples and nations are subject to him. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself ordered men to render unto God the things that are God's and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. We declare, by the counsel and consent of the electors and of the other princes of the empire, that the imperial dignity and power come directly from God alone, and that by the old and approved right and custom of the empire, after any one is chosen emperor or king by the electors of the empire, unanimously or by majority vote, he is at once, in consequence of such election alone, to be considered and regarded by all as the true and lawful king and emperor of the Romans, and he should be obeyed by all the subjects of the empire; and he shall have and be considered and firmly asserted by all to have and to hold the imperial administration and jurisdiction and the plenitude of the imperial power. He does not need the approbation, confirmation, authority, or consent of the Apostolic See or of anyone else. To hold, assert, or act otherwise is declared to be high treason, subject to all its penalties, in addition to the loss of all fiefs, favours, jurisdictions, privileges, and immunities granted or held from the empire. The law further denies and declares false the assertion that the imperial dignity and power come from the pope and that he who is elected emperor is not true emperor or king unless and until he be confirmed and crowned by or through the pope or the Apostolic See.

The electors saw clearly that their claim of the right to elect the emperor was at stake in the pope's claim of the right to depose the emperor. This and the succeeding popes, however, did not abate their claims to universal sovereignty. They were asserted during the exile at Avignon and in the time of the Great Schism. Alexander VI, in the bull Inter C ester a Divines, of May 4, 1493, acting as head of the universe, made over the new world, by legal deed of gift, to Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon; and Pope Leo X, in the bull Pastor Aeternus, of 1516 just the year before Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door at Wittenberg asserted the same claims to universal sovereignty as contained in the Unam Sanctam. 54

Marsilius of Padua, writing in the early part of the fourteenth century, stood practically alone in the Middle Ages in teaching the principle of the complete absorption of church in state. Church property is state property. Church offices are offices of state. The government of the church is a part of the government of the state. Like others, Marsilius reached conclusions from the idea of unity, but in his case this idea was already "transmuting itself into the ' antique-modern ' idea of an all-comprehending internal unity of the state and was proclaiming in advance those principles of the state's absoluteness which would only attain maturity in a then distant future." 55 He denied to the pope any right of examining an election. 56 He would have the temporal laws and magistrates make no difference of persons on the score of position or religious opinion. He clearly distinguished between the executive and the legislative powers of government, and advocated a complete separation of temporal from spiritual authority. Indirectly, he noted the difference between state and government. He denied to the church any coercion of conscience, even in spiritual matters; and suggested the framing of laws by duly elected representatives. 57 It is in his views as to the organisation and powers of political and ecclesiastical societies that he sounds a new note. He draws largely from Aristotle as to the origin and object of civil government. He says, too, that, according to truth and the opinion of Aristotle, the legislator is the people, or the majority of them, commanding or determining that something be done or refrained from in the field of social human action, under pain of some temporal punishment. 58 In the church, as well as in the state, he believes in popular sovereignty. The sovereign ecclesiastical community is identical with the political assembly of the citizens. 59 Indeed the treatise Defensor Pads, in the writing of which Marsilius had an associate, presents a theory of church and state "in many respects out of all relation to the current of mediaeval thought and accords with the full spirit of the Reformation and the Revolution. ... In general, his whole attitude toward the historical development and the dogmatic supports of the Roman church is precisely that which was assumed by the protestants after the Lutheran revolt." 60 The government, according to his view, is established to maintain peace, and the state exists to render a higher life possible. 61 The power of the king proceeds from his election for a people must choose a ruler; and he is in no respect absolute, but subject both to the laws and to the final judgment of the popular will. 62 Denying the pre-eminence of the Roman See, even in spiritual matters, Marsilius suffered excommunication. 63

In the writings of William of Ockham, largely in the form of disputations, it is difficult to discover his own personal views as distinct from those of the persons he introduces into the discussions. The influence of Aristotle, Dante, and Marsilius is in evidence. He makes it the characteristic mark of the royal monarchy that the ruler, though free from all restraint of human law, is nevertheless subject to the law of nature. The general functions of the state are legislation, the maintenance of justice, and the promotion of virtue, but the punishment of offenders is the chief function. 64 The coercive authority must be in the prince. The emperor, and the same is true of any other ruler, is not unlimited in authority, even in temporal matters. He is subject to the provision that his government be just and useful to the people. 65 Ockham goes so far as to hold that, if there were to be but one state for the entire world, with a single head, then this head must be the emperor, and the church can be nothing more than a part of his realm. 66 Marsilius had suggested that the world of Christian believers be so represented that each province or community have delegates according to the "number and quality" of its inhabitants; but Ockham presents the idea of all the believers of a parish or community choosing delegates to an electoral assembly for the diocese or other given district, and delegates to a representative general council could then be chosen by these assemblies. 67 He assumed the right of every people, every community, and every corporation (corpus) to legislate under certain circumstances for itself. 68 Wycliffe and Huss pointedly demanded that the church should not be conceived as a temporal state, but in a more internal manner, as the community of the predestinated. 69

Nicholas of Cusa asserted that it was impossible to improve the church without reforming the empire. He recommended, therefore, the separation and emancipation of civil government. The jurisdiction of spiritual and temporal courts respectively should be clearly defined. He presented a plan for superior courts of justice, whose assessors should be chosen from the nobles, the clergy and citizens, with power to hear appeals from inferior courts, and also to hear and decide cases between princes in the first instance. He recommended annual meetings of the Imperial Diet for the proper development and maintenance of the authority, unity and strength of the realm. This body should settle differences and pass general laws for the empire, which every member should sign, seal, and observe. No ecclesiastic, he contended, should be exempted from their operation. He deemed a standing army a necessity, in order to maintain order and punish the lawless. He suggested that the state might retain for its own use, as determined by the Diet, a percentage of the numerous tolls granted to individuals. 70

He asserted, too, as a principle of divine and natural right, that the acceptance of those to whom it applies is the basis for the validity of every law, and that general consent is the sole source of obligation. Since all men are by nature free, all government, whether in the form of written law or of a ruler's will, springs solely from the consent of the subjects. Since all men are by nature equally endowed with power, the superior position of any one can be due only to the choice and consent of the rest. 71 Nicholas of Cusa advances beyond his predecessors in applying these principles, which were already familiar to writers on morality and private law, to public law. He does not apply his theories, however, to the secular state of his day, as one might expect. The choice of the imperial electors is viewed as the choice of the people, and the Imperial Diet is the council representing the popular consent. 72 There is no suggestion in his writings of the popular choice of particular representatives, based on territory and population. 73

To Machiavelli standing "on the threshold of political science" 74 the state is the highest kind of existence. It is neither a moral nor a legal, but a purely political institution. Utility is the standard of its action. What is injurious to its welfare must be avoided. Like ancient writers, Machiavelli aims at the welfare of the state per se rather than the welfare of its citizens. His "great service was to make political science independent of theology, and to have discovered the distinction between public law (Staatsrecht) and politics (Politik)." 75

Notes:

1 A bibliography of the important works consulted and cited in this study is given in the Appendix.

2 Aristotle: Politics, i., 2, iii., 7, viii., i. Bluntschli: The Theory of the State, p. 35. Dunning: Political Theories Ancient and Medieval, p. 49 et seq. Pollock: An Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics, p. 17 et seq.

3 Politics, i., 2.

4 Bluntschli: The Theory of the State, p. 56.

5 Prall: The State and the Church, p. 151.

6 Geffcken: Church and State, i., 37, 59.

7 Blackie: What does History Teach, p. 68.

8 Aristotle: Politics, vii., 5, n (vi., 8).

9 Coulanges: The Ancient City, pp. 235-237.

10 Bluntschli: The Theory of the State, p. 38.

11 Pollock: An Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics, pp. 31, 33. Cicero asserts that the state is the highest product of human power, and that there is nothing in which human excellence comes nearer the will of the gods than in the founding and maintenance of states. Cicero: De Repub., i., 7. Bluntschli: The Theory of the State, p. 37.

12 Prall: The State and the Church, p. 151.

13 Geffcken: Church and State, i., 60.

14 Bluntschli: The Theory of the State, p. 39..

15 Ranke: History of the Reformation in Germany, i., 4.

16 Innes: Church and State, pp. 21-23. Thatcher: The Ideas that have Influenced Civilization, iv., 17. Geffcken: Church and State, i., 90.