1 Where Aristotle had found the
justification
of
slavery, Seneca found the place of unconquerable freedom ;
the body may belong to a master, the mind cannot be given
into slavery.
slavery, Seneca found the place of unconquerable freedom ;
the body may belong to a master, the mind cannot be given
into slavery.
Thomas Carlyle
glossa quod si deprehenderetur in
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? CHAT. X. ] BONIFACE Vm. AND PHILIP THE FATE. 437
This treatise of John of Paris deals more comprehensively
than any other with the whole question of the Temporal
Power of the Pope, and he emphatically repudiates all the
contentions on which it had been founded. He reasserts the
Gelasian tradition that Christ divided the two powers ; he
brushes aside arguments based on allegorical phrases as based
on a misconception of the place of allegory; he criticises the
historical arguments ; he treats the Donation of Constantine
as invalid and irrelevant to the case of France ; he sets aside
the argument that the Temporal Power only deals with
material things, and should therefore be controlled by the
Spiritual, for he maintains that the Temporal Power also
deals with the concerns of the soul; and he flatly asserts
that the Pope has no more power to depose the king than
the king has to depose the Pope. The king is entitled to
defend himself and his State against the violence of the Pope
by the use of his material power. He is in favour of a con-
stitutional Government for the State, and recommends it
also for the Church; and finally, he is clear that the Pope
can be, in certain cases at least, deposed by a general council.
The work is interesting to the historian, apart from the ques-
tion of its intrinsic merits, for it serves to represent the con-
fident and thorough-going temper in which the French king
and his advisers met the claims of Boniface VIH.
In the course of the conflict between Boniface VHI. and
Philip the Fair, the assertion of the Temporal authority of
the Papacy had been pushed to its furthest point. It may,
indeed, be said that the principles developed by Innocent IV.
and the Canonists who followed him were clear and emphatic ;
that the Temporal Power, properly speaking, belongs to the
Spiritual, and is derived from it; and that Boniface was only
reasserting these principles in the Bull " Unam Sanctam," and
that even Henry of Cremona and Egidius Colonna and James
of Viterbo were only dealing with the same position in detail.
JTo doubt, however, it was the fact that these claims were
now related to an actual and violent dispute between the
King of France and the Papacy which gave them a new
significance. They might hitherto have been regarded as
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? 438
[PABT II.
TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWERS.
matters of merely academic interest, but they had now be-
come of practical importance. As such, they were imme-
diately and unhesitatingly repudiated by the Temporal Power,
as represented by the King of France and by those who spoke
for France.
It is not within the scope of this work to deal with the last
stages of the conflict between Boniface VIII. and Philip the
Fair. It is enough for our purpose to observe that with the
death of Boniface the claim that the Spiritual Power also
possessed the Temporal ceased to have any great practical
meaning. It is, indeed, true that during the earlier part of
the fourteenth century those claims were sometimes expressed
in the most dogmatic terms, but they had no longer the
same significance. 1
We have in this and the previous volumes endeavoured to
give some reasoned account of the principles of the relations
between the Temporal and the Spiritual Powers from the
time of the conversion of Constantine down to the fall of
Boniface VIII. , and have endeavoured to do this in some
relation to the actual circumstances of these centuries. We
have already said, and we should like to repeat it with some
emphasis, that in our judgment these relations and the fre-
quent conflicts between the two Powers had very little intrinsic
relation to the development of the general political principles
of the Middle Ages. These principles, the supremacy of law,
the community as the source of political authority, the limited
authority of the ruler, and the contractual nature of the rela-
tions between the ruler and the community, were not save
incidentally related to the disputes between the two Powers.
This does not, however, mean that these disputes were
unimportant, or that the principle which lay behind them was
insignificant. On the contrary, we should not hesitate to say
that the two principles in which we most clearly recognise the
difference between the ancient world and the modern are, first,
the recognition of the essential equality of men in virtue of
their common powers of reason and morality, and secondly,
1 We hope, however, to de>>l with this in the next volume.
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? ChAP. X. ] BONIFACE VHI. AND PHILIP THE FAIR. 439
the principle which arises out of this, the necessary freedom
of the moral and spiritual life. Men must be free because they
are equal, they are equal and free because the moral and
spiritual personality of one cannot be measured against that
of another, and must not be coerced by it.
It is no doubt true that the Spiritual Power in the Middle
Ages had little sense of the liberty of human personality as
against itself, but at least it did assert the freedom of the
moral and spiritual elements in human society as against
the Temporal Power ; and in doing this the Church prepared
the way for the great movement of the modern world against
its own use of the coercive power of the State.
It is, then, this fact, that the conflicts of the Temporal and
Spiritual Powers in the Middle Ages are forms of the secular
process of the liberation of humanity, which gives them their
significance. It was fortunate for mediseval and modern
society that the Western Church as represented by Pope
Gelasius I. had, as early as the fifth century, formulated in
such clear terms the principle of the autonomy of the two
great Powers. To that principle the Middle Ages were, on
the whole, faithful. It is no doubt true that the translation
of this dualistic principle into the terms of the common life
proved immensely difficult, but the difficulty has no more
been completely overcome by us than by the men of the
Middle Ages.
It was no great wonder if the reforming kings and emperors
sometimes laid violent hands upon those who represented,
but in evil fashion, the Spiritual Power. It was no great
wonder if Hildebrand, in his persistent determination to
secure the reformation and the liberty of the spiritual life,
should have pressed the spiritual authority to a point where
it came into conflict with the equally necessary freedom of
the Temporal Power. Men are but mortal, and they are not
to be over severely blamed if, in the ardent pursuit of some
great end, they sometimes forget the infinite complexity of
life.
It is possible to suggest that Hildebrand and Innocent III.
may have sometimes dreamed of a theocracy, may have at
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? 440
TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWERS. [PAET rr.
least thought of a world directed and, if need be, ruled by
the representative of the Spiritual Power. But, if they did
so, it was but a dream, not necessarily an ignoble dream, but
it had no relation to the actual character of mediseval society,
or to its normal principles. The notion that mediseval society
tended to something like a theocracy is, indeed, not now
maintained by any serious student, but it is to be regretted
that it still lingers in the popular mind. We have said enough,
we hope, to make it clear that if at any time the Spiritual
Power seemed to make the claim to a supreme Temporal
authority, the claim was repudiated; and when, as in the
thirteenth century, a theoretical principle was converted into
something which at least resembled a practical policy, the
Papacy, which seemed to be pursuing such a policy, was
broken, as far as its political power was concerned.
The Middle Ages remained faithful to the Gelasian principle,
that each Power, the Temporal and the Spiritual, derives its
authority from God, and that neither Power has authority
over the other in matters which belong to its own sphere.
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? PAKT III.
THE PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS IN THE POLITICAL THEORY
OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
CHAPTER I.
THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD.
From the first century of the Christian era until the later
years of the eighteenth century, political theory presents itself
to us as dominated in form by the conception that the great
institutions of society, and especially the institution of govern-
ment, were artificial or conventional, not " natural " or primi-
tive. The writers of the seventeenth, and even most of the
writers of the eighteenth, century continually contrast the
original " state of nature " with the conditions of organised
society, which they conceived of as being the result of some
more or less deliberate creation of the human will. This
conception, which was also the normal conception of the
Middle Ages, can be traced back to the Christian Fathers
and the Eoman Jurists, and appears to have come to them
from some at least of the post-Aristotelian philosophers.
Seneca, in one well-known letter,1 attributes it to Posidonius,
and we may infer from the fact that it was common to the
Fathers and to many, at least, of the Jurists, that it was a
generally received opinion in the later centuries of the ancient
world.
1 Seneca, ' Epistles,' jriv. 2.
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? 442 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PAST in.
It is true that in the middle of the thirteenth century St
Thomas Aquinas rediscovered the Aristotelian politics, and
as we have seen in this volume, recognised that the organised
society of the State was a " natural " institution--" natural "
in the sense that it had always formed an integral part of
human life, and was the normal instrument of human progress.
It is, however, also clear that the recovery of the Aristotelian
conception was not permanent, that by the seventeenth cen-
tury it had again given place to the post-Aristotelian, and it
was not till Montesquieu and Eousseau's ' Contrat Social' 1
that the Aristotelian conception really came back to dominate
political theory, as it has done ever since. It would appear
that the post-Aristotelian conception was too firmly fixed in
men's minds to be removed even by the great authority of
St Thomas Aquinas.
The great institutions of human society were then con-
ceived of as being artificial or conventional. It is important
also to understand that this transition from a natural to
a conventional condition of human life was conceived of
as being the result of a great and primitive catastrophe, for
it was the result of the appearance of evil in the world. It
was not only the Christian Fathers, but also Stoics like Posi-
donius and Seneca who thought of man as having been origin-
ally good or at least innocent. The tradition of a Golden Age,
a condition before men fell from their primseval innocence,
was common to some philosophers as well as to the Christian
writers. This is the origin of that curious ambiguity in
mediseval writers regarding the nature of human institutions
which has caused so much confusion to the unwary. For
sometimes these writers speak of government as though it
had a sinful origin, and modern historical critics have not
infrequently misconstrued this, not observing that these
mediseval writers at other times speak of it as a divine institu-
tion. We have endeavoured in the course of this work to
clear up this ambiguity, and we hope that we have said
enough to correct the mistaken interpretation which has been
sometimes imposed upon the words of St Augustine and
1 Cf. especially Rousseau, ' Contrat Social,' i. 8.
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? CHAP, L] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 443
Hildebrand. To the mediseval world, as well as to the Fathers
and to Posidonius, the coercive authority of man over man
was the result of sin ; but it was also a remedy for sin--to
the Christian theologians a divinely appointed remedy--an
institution arising no doubt out of sinful conditions and
desires, but also a means by which the sinful tendencies of
human nature might be restrained and controlled, and by
which the partially perverted nature of man might be directed
to good ends.
This conception that political society and its institutions
are conventional and not " natural " furnished the frame-
work or formal system of political theory in the Middle Ages ;
but there was a much more important difference between the
political theory of Aristotle and that of the Middle Ages.
This is found in the highly developed doctrine of the equality
and freedom of the individual man ; indeed, we are still of
the same mind as we were when, in the first volume, we ven-
tured to say that it is here that we find the real dividing line
between ancient and modern political theory. 1
This is no doubt only one form of that great development
of the conception of the individual personality which under-
lies the whole mediseval and modern conception of human
life, and it is not our part here to attempt to deal with this,
except so far as is necessary for the understanding of the
changes in political theory; but for this purpose we must
deal with the subject, however briefly.
The conception of individual personality and its relations
to society is not indeed a simple thing. When we are modest
and reasonable, we recognise that we can no more define
this to-day in easy terms than men could have done formerly.
We are, indeed, really more conscious of the extreme com-
plexity of these relations than men were in the past. The
freedom of the individual, and the authority of society, these
are principles which we recognise as fundamental, but their
relations to each other we are unable to define. The generous
assertion of the necessary liberty of the individual man by
1 Cf. vol. i. , pp. 6-13.
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? 444 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT III.
John Stuart Mill has a profound truth and value, but it does
not carry us very far. The ideas of authority and of liberty
baffle all attempts at definition, and the historian, at least,
must content himself with tracing some of the stages through
which these ideas have passed, and the successive apprehen-
sion of the significance of each.
It seems reasonable to say that we can recognise that at
certain times one or other of these ideas seems to have
developed more or less rapidly, and to have changed the
conception of human society, and we can recognise such a
period in the centuries between Aristotle and the Christian
era. It may seem too much to say, and yet we do not
wholly overstate the truth if we say, that during these cen-
turies the primitive conception of the group as the funda-
mental unit of human life gave place to the modern con-
ception of the individual as the unit. It would be unbecoming
of the mediseval and modern historian to speak dogmatically
in regard to that which lies in the province of the anthro-
pologist, but it is, as we understand it, true to say that in the
primitive and even the barbarian worlds, the individual was
only very partially recognised. It is the solidarity of the
group which is their characteristic.
We can see this under many forms, above all in the high
degree in which moral responsibility and religion are conceived
of as qualities of the group, of the family, the tribe or even the
state, rather than of the individual. We can perhaps find the
most obvious example of this in the development of the
Hebrew religion. The contrast is familiar to us between the
assumption of the moral and religious responsibility of the
continuous family group, which is expressed in the words of
the Second Commandment: " I, the Lord thy God, am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children," and the indignant repudiation of this by Ezekiel
(xviii. 20), when he says : " The soul that sinneth, it shall
die : the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither
shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. " It is not always,
however, sufficiently observed that this is one expression of
the transition from the group conception of life to the indi-
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? CHAP, l] the inheritance from the ancient world. 445
vidual conception, but the fact is obvious. This is no doubt
earlier than the period of which we are speaking, but it is an
anticipation of what was fully developed in that period.
The development of the individualist idea of life was indeed
not merely rapid, but was exaggerated. When Aristotle says
that the isolated individual is not self -sufficing or that " he
who is unable to live in society, or who has no need, because
he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god,"
we feel the profound truth of his judgment. When Seneca
(' Ad Serenum: Nee injuriam,' &c, viii. ) says that no one
can either injure or benefit the wise man, there is nothing
which the wise man would care to receive; that, just as the
divine order can neither be helped nor injured, so is it with
the wise man ; that the wise man is, except for his mortality,
like to God Himself; we feel that he is immensely over-
stating the self-sufficiency of even the wisest man. Both
Seneca and Ezekiel are immensely overstating their case;
the wisest and best man is not self-sufficient, the children do
still suffer for the evil of the fathers; and yet they are ex-
pressing a new sense of the meaning of personality.
It is, however, with some such considerations in our minds
that we must approach the question of the significance of the
dogmatic assertion of the " natural" equality and freedom
of the individual man, which is asserted by Cicero and Seneca,
by the Eoman Jurists of the ' Digest' and by the Christian
Fathers. 1 It may be doubted whether any change in political
theory has ever been so remarkable as that which is repre-
sented by this dogmatic contradiction of the Aristotelian
conception of the inequality of men. For these writers do
not merely suggest a doubt, they dogmatically contradict.
" Omnes namque natura aequales sumus," said Gregory the
Great, and he was only repeating what he had learned from
the Jurists, while they in their turn were no doubt only
repeating the generally accepted doctrine of the post-Aristo-
telian philosophy. If, however, the contradiction of the
Aristotelian conception was remarkable, the ground alleged
for it is almost more so. Men are alike and equal, because
1 Of. vol. L, ohape. 1, 2, 4, 10.
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? 446 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT m.
they are alike possessed of reason and capable of virtue, says
Cicero.
1 Where Aristotle had found the justification of
slavery, Seneca found the place of unconquerable freedom ;
the body may belong to a master, the mind cannot be given
into slavery. 2 It is only the same principle which Lactantius
expressed when he said that God, who brings forth men,
wished them all to be equal. He made them all for virtue,
and promised them all immortality ; in God's sight no one is
a slave or a master. 3 The Christian writers did not create
this philosophical principle; they were only transposing it
into the terms which belong to the Christian theology. This
new conception was not a discovery of Christianity, but it
was taken up into it, and became the first and fundamental
principle of its conception of human nature.
There are, it is true, some, not perhaps very intelligent
historians, impatient of what they think the exaggerated
importance attached to ideas, who may think that these
conceptions were little more than rhetorical abstractions,
which had little, if any, relation to actual life. In this
case it happens that such an unintelligent scepticism is par-
ticularly unfortunate, for we can find in the Roman law not
only the expression of these principles, but also the parallel
changes in the legal position of the slave. In a well-known
passage of the ' Institutes,' Gaius gives an account of the
legal position of the slaves in the second century, and says
that the slave had been in the absolute power of his master,
but that this was no longer the case, for the law did not now
permit the master to behave with arbitrary violence or cruelty
to his slave,4 and we can trace in the ' Digest' some of the
stages through which the Eoman law came to recognise what
we may call the legal personality of the slave.
We have here the beginnings of that principle which has
gradually become the foundation of the legal aspect of modern
Western civilisation, the principle that all men are equal
before the law, that all men are responsible for their own
actions, because it is assumed that they are all possessed of
1 Cicero, ' De Legibus,' i. 10, 12.
>> Seneca, ' De Beneficiis,' iii. 20.
* Lactantius, ' Div. Inst. ,' v. 15, 16.
? Gaius,' Institutes," i. 52, 53.
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? CHAP. L] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 447
reason. It would be difficult to find a more remarkable
example of the influence of an idea or principle. For though
the law may assume this equality and responsibility as a
simple fact, we are also well aware that behind this apparent
simplicity there lies an immense complexity of indeterminable
elements.
We have so far dealt with the significance of the conception
of equality as related to the development of the idea of per-
sonality ; we must consider a little further the conception of
liberty, not now as personal liberty, but as related to politics.
It was not, we think, a mere accident that Cicero, who
contradicted the Aristotelian conception of the inequality of
human nature, also refused to recognise that an absolute
monarchy or aristocracy, even of the most ideal kind--that
is, the rule of men who far excel the rest of the community
in wisdom and in virtue, and whose energies are directed
wholly to setting forward justice and the good of the whole
community--could be recognised as a good government.
Good, he refuses to call such governments; at the best they
are tolerable, and the reason he gives for this judgment is
highly significant, for there is, he says, under such constitu-
tions something of the nature of slavery. It could not be
said that under such governments the multitude really
possessed liberty. 1
This identification of political liberty with a share in political
power is another illustration of the essentially modern char-
acter of his political thought. We are not here discussing the
final value of this conception in political thought; we shall
have more to say about this matter when, in the next chapter,
we discuss the later phases of the development of mediseval
political theory. But it is fairly clear that behind these words
of Cicero there lies the assumption that it is the equality of
human nature which makes even the best absolute monarchies
or aristocracies unacceptable. It is because all men have
reason, and are capable of directing their lives to the end
of virtue, that we cannot call a man free who is under the
1 Cicero, ' De Republics,' i. 26, 27.
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? 448 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT m.
absolute control, however well meant, of another man. This
judgment is, after all, the same as the judgment of all the
more highly developed political societies of the present day.
To an Englishman, or American, or Frenchman, the idea of
aquiescing in a paternal despotism, even of the most well-
intended or capable ruler or rulers, seems a merely laughable
absurdity, the expression not of intelligence but of immaturity.
We propose, we intend, to govern ourselves, and even the
most seductive promises of efficiency--promises for which
there has been little justification in history--will not induce
us to submit to a master. There is, as Cicero says, something
of the nature of slavery in all such governments ; and it
may, not unreasonably, be said that we are beginning to
understand that it is just here that we find one most im-
portant cause of the industrial difficulties of the modern world.
It is, however, not only in the Ciceronian conception of
government that we find an important expression of this
idea of political freedom. His statement, paradoxically enough,
coincided in time with the disappearance of constitutional
government in the west, but it is only the more interesting
to observe that, in spite of this, the one and only theory of
the source of political authority, which the Eoman Jurists
handed on to the Middle Ages and the modern world, was the
theory that all political authority is derived from the com-
munity itself, is founded upon the consent of the community.
The Eoman emperor was absolute, but this absolutism was
a legal absolutism--that is, it was derived from law, for if
he was absolute, it was because the Eoman people had con-
ferred upon him their own authority. This is the theory, and
the only theory of the Eoman Jurists, from Gaius in the
second century to Justinian himself in the sixth century. 1
Political authority rests not on the superiority of the ruler
to the ruled, not on the principle of inequality, but solely
upon the will of the community ; it belongs to the com-
munity, it is delegated by the community. It rests not at all
upon some supposed delegation of the divine authority to
the ruler; that was nothing but an alien Orientalism, which
1 Cf. vol. U chap. 6.
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? CHAP. I. ] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 449
some of the Christian Fathers, notably Gregory the Great,
imported from a Semitic tradition of the Old Testament.
Aristotle might speak of the ideal monarchy or aristocracy
as absolute, for to him the government of a civilised society
was the expression of the superiority of some men over others ;
even his ideal commonwealth is the rule of a small body of
equal citizens over a great mass of unenfranchised persons.
To the Eoman Jurists political authority resides in the com-
munity, and it is only from it that it can be received.
There is another aspect of the political theory of the ancient
world, not only of the Christian writers, but just as much
of Plato and Aristotle, which the mediseval and modern world
inherited, and that is the principle of the moral purpose and
function of the State.
The description of the nature of the State by Cicero in the
' De Eepublica ' is well known. " Ees publica, res populi,
populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo
congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis
communione sociatus. "1 St Augustine says that Cicero
meant that the State cannot exist without justice; that
where there is no justice there can be no " jus," and therefore
no real " people " ; that when the Government, whether a
tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy, was unjust, there was no
" respublica " at all. This conception of the State is continu-
ally referred to by the writers of the Middle Ages, and it is
combined with the sharp distinction which St Isidore of
Seville made between the king and the tyrant. 2
In all this the post-Aristotelian political theory was carry-
ing on the Aristotelian principle that it is the association of
beings who have the sense of the just and unjust which makes
both the family and the State,3 and the related principle that
the only true forms of government are those which aim at
the common good of the whole community, while those which
pursue the private interest of the ruler are perverted forms. 4
1 Cicero, ' De Republics,' i. 25.
>> St Augustine, 'De Civ. Dei,' xix. 21';
St Isidore of Seville, ' Etym. ,' ix. 3.
VOL. V.
? Aristotle, ' Politics,' i. 2.
? Id. id. , iii. 6.
2F
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? 450 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PART in.
The Christian writers express this principle when they say
that government is a divine institution, as, for instance, St
Paul, in the words, " Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers, for there is no power but of God, and the powers
that be are ordained of God. " This is the accepted principle
of the nature of the State and its authority in all mediseval
writers. The notion that Hildebrand or any other intended
to dispute it is merely a misconception, as we have shown in
detail,1 due to the failure to understand the significance of
that contrast between the natural and the conventional with
which we have dealt.
It is true that this principle was sometimes misunderstood,
and that it was perverted into the absurd doctrine that the
king was in such a sense the representative of God that he
could not be resisted even if his rule were evil and unjust.
This perversion, for which Gregory the Great was mainly
responsible, was, however, little regarded in the Middle Ages.
Its importance belongs to that period in the centuries from
the sixteenth to the eighteenth when the constitutional
principles of the Middle Ages were for the time neglected,
and we do not therefore need to concern ourselves greatly
with it. It was an idea derived from some Semitic traditions
of the Old Testament. 2
The real meaning of St Paul is clear to any one who will
be at pains to look at the way in which he develops the prin-
ciple which he has set out. For he not only says that the
powers that be are ordained by God, but explains the mean-
ing of this saying. " Eulers are not a terror to the good work,
but to the evil," and " He is a minister of God to thee for
good. " St Paul is putting into the terms of religion the
principle that the State with its authority is a divine institu-
tion, because its purpose or function is the maintenance of
righteousness or justice. And this is the sense in which he
was normally understood both by the Christian Fathers and
by the political thinkers of the Middle Ages. St Irenaeus, in
a passage which has been too often overlooked, especially
by those who overstate the influence of St Augustine, explains
1 Cf. vol. iii. , part ii. , chap. 2. * Cf. vol. i. , chap. 13.
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? CHAP. I. ] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 451
the origin and the purpose of government as being indeed a
consequence of the sinful nature of man, but as, also, a
remedy which God has established for man's sin. He has
set men over each other that by this means they might be
compelled to some measure of righteous and just dealing. 1
St Thomas Aquinas, in the middle of the thirteenth century,
maintains that sedition is indeed a mortal sin, but the resist-
ance to an unjust and tyrannical government is not sedition. '
The Christian doctrine of the divine origin and nature of
government was therefore, properly speaking, a statement
under the terms of religion that the end of government was
a moral one--that is, the maintenance of justice.
So far, then, the political ideas which came down from
the ancient world to the mediseval, while they were accepted
by the Christian writers, and expressed by them in terms
appropriate to Christian theology, were not specifically Christian
or greatly modified by Christianity.
There is, however, one important principle of the nature
of human society of which this cannot be said, one great
principle and problem of the mediseval and modern world,
which took its form from Christian principles. This is
the principle which lies behind the great problem of the
relations of Church and State, or as the mediaeval people
would have expressed it, the relation of the Temporal and
Spiritual Powers. This great question, of which the modem
world has no more found a final or complete solution than
the mediseval, was the source of that great conflict of the
Middle Ages in which both the political papacy and the
empire were destroyed. We have explained several times
that in our very clear judgment this great question, although
it is inextricably bound up with the political events of the
Middle Ages, did not, in itself and directly, contribute any-
thing to the development of the other political ideas or in-
stitutions of the Middle Ages, and we think this will presently
again become clear. But in a more general sense, in its rela-
1 Irenseus, ' Adv. Haer. ,' v. 24. logica,' 2, 2, 42, 2.
* St Thomas Aquinas, 'Summa Theo-
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? 452 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT III.
tion to the general principles of human life and its organisa-
tion, no development in history is more significant than this
of the independence of the spiritual life aDd its organisation.
When we consider the question carefully, it is evident that
what we are dealing with is intrinsically the result of that
developed sense of the individual human personality, of which
we have spoken before. There was no question of Church
and State in the earlier times of the ancient world, because
religion was not something which belonged primarily to the
individual, but to the group, the family, or tribe, or nation.
Even among the Hebrews it was not, as most modern scholars
seem to agree, until after the exile that it is possible to speak
of an individual or personal religion,, It is only in the later
prophets, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and in the later Psalms,
that we can find the expression of a personal or individual
relation to God. And among the Western peoples this is
even more obvious. We have learned not to undervalue
the religion of the Greeks, and even of the Romans, but this
religion was not normally a personal thing; the God was
the God of the family or tribe rather than of the individual
man. All this was greatly changed with the new conception
of personality, not that the conception of the social aspect
of religion was lost, but that the individual conception became
immensely important.
The new conception cannot be better expressed than in
the words of Ezekiel, to which we have already referred.
" The soul that sinneth, it shall die: the son shall not bear
the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the
iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of the righteous shall
be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him. " The individual man is responsible to God, and will
be judged, not by the character of the group to which he
belongs, but by his own.
With this great change, it became impossible for the moral
and religious life to accept the authority of the political
society in the matter of religion. We are not here discussing
the question of the possible meaning of national religion,
though it is obvious enough that the conception has become
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? CHAP. I. ] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 453
difficult; what we are concerned with is the sense of the
independence of the spiritual and moral life from the control
of the political authority. The new attitude is admirably
represented in the words which the writer of the Acts of the
Apostles attributes to Peter and John when they were brought
before the Jewish authorities, and were forbidden to teach
in the name of Jesus, " Whether it be right in the sight of
God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye "
(Acts iv. 19).
The relation of the Christians to the Eoman Empire during
the first three centuries was a practical exemplification of
the significance of the new principle. They recognised, indeed,
with St Clement of Eome, that it was from God that the
rulers of the world had received their authority, and that it
was in the name of God that they should submit to them,1
but they could not, and would not, obey them in matters of
religion and conscience. It was this claim which Constantine
recognised in the Edict of Milan, when he proclaimed that
not only the Christians but all other men should have the
right to follow whatever religion they preferred. 2 It is no
doubt true that this recognition did not last, the Theo-
dosian Code shows that in less than a hundred years the
Christian religion had not only become the official religion
of the empire, but that, with the exception of Judaism, it
was the only religion that was tolerated. We cannot, however,
discuss the reasons for this failure. From the point of view of
the practical politicians it may have appeared that the diverg-
ences of religion menaced the unity of the empire; from the
point of view of the historian of civilisation it may seem
that the group system was still too strong, and that the world
had to wait many hundred years before the sense of the
individual and personal responsibility was sufficiently developed
to compel its recognition.
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? CHAT. X. ] BONIFACE Vm. AND PHILIP THE FATE. 437
This treatise of John of Paris deals more comprehensively
than any other with the whole question of the Temporal
Power of the Pope, and he emphatically repudiates all the
contentions on which it had been founded. He reasserts the
Gelasian tradition that Christ divided the two powers ; he
brushes aside arguments based on allegorical phrases as based
on a misconception of the place of allegory; he criticises the
historical arguments ; he treats the Donation of Constantine
as invalid and irrelevant to the case of France ; he sets aside
the argument that the Temporal Power only deals with
material things, and should therefore be controlled by the
Spiritual, for he maintains that the Temporal Power also
deals with the concerns of the soul; and he flatly asserts
that the Pope has no more power to depose the king than
the king has to depose the Pope. The king is entitled to
defend himself and his State against the violence of the Pope
by the use of his material power. He is in favour of a con-
stitutional Government for the State, and recommends it
also for the Church; and finally, he is clear that the Pope
can be, in certain cases at least, deposed by a general council.
The work is interesting to the historian, apart from the ques-
tion of its intrinsic merits, for it serves to represent the con-
fident and thorough-going temper in which the French king
and his advisers met the claims of Boniface VIH.
In the course of the conflict between Boniface VHI. and
Philip the Fair, the assertion of the Temporal authority of
the Papacy had been pushed to its furthest point. It may,
indeed, be said that the principles developed by Innocent IV.
and the Canonists who followed him were clear and emphatic ;
that the Temporal Power, properly speaking, belongs to the
Spiritual, and is derived from it; and that Boniface was only
reasserting these principles in the Bull " Unam Sanctam," and
that even Henry of Cremona and Egidius Colonna and James
of Viterbo were only dealing with the same position in detail.
JTo doubt, however, it was the fact that these claims were
now related to an actual and violent dispute between the
King of France and the Papacy which gave them a new
significance. They might hitherto have been regarded as
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? 438
[PABT II.
TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWERS.
matters of merely academic interest, but they had now be-
come of practical importance. As such, they were imme-
diately and unhesitatingly repudiated by the Temporal Power,
as represented by the King of France and by those who spoke
for France.
It is not within the scope of this work to deal with the last
stages of the conflict between Boniface VIII. and Philip the
Fair. It is enough for our purpose to observe that with the
death of Boniface the claim that the Spiritual Power also
possessed the Temporal ceased to have any great practical
meaning. It is, indeed, true that during the earlier part of
the fourteenth century those claims were sometimes expressed
in the most dogmatic terms, but they had no longer the
same significance. 1
We have in this and the previous volumes endeavoured to
give some reasoned account of the principles of the relations
between the Temporal and the Spiritual Powers from the
time of the conversion of Constantine down to the fall of
Boniface VIII. , and have endeavoured to do this in some
relation to the actual circumstances of these centuries. We
have already said, and we should like to repeat it with some
emphasis, that in our judgment these relations and the fre-
quent conflicts between the two Powers had very little intrinsic
relation to the development of the general political principles
of the Middle Ages. These principles, the supremacy of law,
the community as the source of political authority, the limited
authority of the ruler, and the contractual nature of the rela-
tions between the ruler and the community, were not save
incidentally related to the disputes between the two Powers.
This does not, however, mean that these disputes were
unimportant, or that the principle which lay behind them was
insignificant. On the contrary, we should not hesitate to say
that the two principles in which we most clearly recognise the
difference between the ancient world and the modern are, first,
the recognition of the essential equality of men in virtue of
their common powers of reason and morality, and secondly,
1 We hope, however, to de>>l with this in the next volume.
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? ChAP. X. ] BONIFACE VHI. AND PHILIP THE FAIR. 439
the principle which arises out of this, the necessary freedom
of the moral and spiritual life. Men must be free because they
are equal, they are equal and free because the moral and
spiritual personality of one cannot be measured against that
of another, and must not be coerced by it.
It is no doubt true that the Spiritual Power in the Middle
Ages had little sense of the liberty of human personality as
against itself, but at least it did assert the freedom of the
moral and spiritual elements in human society as against
the Temporal Power ; and in doing this the Church prepared
the way for the great movement of the modern world against
its own use of the coercive power of the State.
It is, then, this fact, that the conflicts of the Temporal and
Spiritual Powers in the Middle Ages are forms of the secular
process of the liberation of humanity, which gives them their
significance. It was fortunate for mediseval and modern
society that the Western Church as represented by Pope
Gelasius I. had, as early as the fifth century, formulated in
such clear terms the principle of the autonomy of the two
great Powers. To that principle the Middle Ages were, on
the whole, faithful. It is no doubt true that the translation
of this dualistic principle into the terms of the common life
proved immensely difficult, but the difficulty has no more
been completely overcome by us than by the men of the
Middle Ages.
It was no great wonder if the reforming kings and emperors
sometimes laid violent hands upon those who represented,
but in evil fashion, the Spiritual Power. It was no great
wonder if Hildebrand, in his persistent determination to
secure the reformation and the liberty of the spiritual life,
should have pressed the spiritual authority to a point where
it came into conflict with the equally necessary freedom of
the Temporal Power. Men are but mortal, and they are not
to be over severely blamed if, in the ardent pursuit of some
great end, they sometimes forget the infinite complexity of
life.
It is possible to suggest that Hildebrand and Innocent III.
may have sometimes dreamed of a theocracy, may have at
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? 440
TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWERS. [PAET rr.
least thought of a world directed and, if need be, ruled by
the representative of the Spiritual Power. But, if they did
so, it was but a dream, not necessarily an ignoble dream, but
it had no relation to the actual character of mediseval society,
or to its normal principles. The notion that mediseval society
tended to something like a theocracy is, indeed, not now
maintained by any serious student, but it is to be regretted
that it still lingers in the popular mind. We have said enough,
we hope, to make it clear that if at any time the Spiritual
Power seemed to make the claim to a supreme Temporal
authority, the claim was repudiated; and when, as in the
thirteenth century, a theoretical principle was converted into
something which at least resembled a practical policy, the
Papacy, which seemed to be pursuing such a policy, was
broken, as far as its political power was concerned.
The Middle Ages remained faithful to the Gelasian principle,
that each Power, the Temporal and the Spiritual, derives its
authority from God, and that neither Power has authority
over the other in matters which belong to its own sphere.
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? PAKT III.
THE PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS IN THE POLITICAL THEORY
OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
CHAPTER I.
THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD.
From the first century of the Christian era until the later
years of the eighteenth century, political theory presents itself
to us as dominated in form by the conception that the great
institutions of society, and especially the institution of govern-
ment, were artificial or conventional, not " natural " or primi-
tive. The writers of the seventeenth, and even most of the
writers of the eighteenth, century continually contrast the
original " state of nature " with the conditions of organised
society, which they conceived of as being the result of some
more or less deliberate creation of the human will. This
conception, which was also the normal conception of the
Middle Ages, can be traced back to the Christian Fathers
and the Eoman Jurists, and appears to have come to them
from some at least of the post-Aristotelian philosophers.
Seneca, in one well-known letter,1 attributes it to Posidonius,
and we may infer from the fact that it was common to the
Fathers and to many, at least, of the Jurists, that it was a
generally received opinion in the later centuries of the ancient
world.
1 Seneca, ' Epistles,' jriv. 2.
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? 442 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PAST in.
It is true that in the middle of the thirteenth century St
Thomas Aquinas rediscovered the Aristotelian politics, and
as we have seen in this volume, recognised that the organised
society of the State was a " natural " institution--" natural "
in the sense that it had always formed an integral part of
human life, and was the normal instrument of human progress.
It is, however, also clear that the recovery of the Aristotelian
conception was not permanent, that by the seventeenth cen-
tury it had again given place to the post-Aristotelian, and it
was not till Montesquieu and Eousseau's ' Contrat Social' 1
that the Aristotelian conception really came back to dominate
political theory, as it has done ever since. It would appear
that the post-Aristotelian conception was too firmly fixed in
men's minds to be removed even by the great authority of
St Thomas Aquinas.
The great institutions of human society were then con-
ceived of as being artificial or conventional. It is important
also to understand that this transition from a natural to
a conventional condition of human life was conceived of
as being the result of a great and primitive catastrophe, for
it was the result of the appearance of evil in the world. It
was not only the Christian Fathers, but also Stoics like Posi-
donius and Seneca who thought of man as having been origin-
ally good or at least innocent. The tradition of a Golden Age,
a condition before men fell from their primseval innocence,
was common to some philosophers as well as to the Christian
writers. This is the origin of that curious ambiguity in
mediseval writers regarding the nature of human institutions
which has caused so much confusion to the unwary. For
sometimes these writers speak of government as though it
had a sinful origin, and modern historical critics have not
infrequently misconstrued this, not observing that these
mediseval writers at other times speak of it as a divine institu-
tion. We have endeavoured in the course of this work to
clear up this ambiguity, and we hope that we have said
enough to correct the mistaken interpretation which has been
sometimes imposed upon the words of St Augustine and
1 Cf. especially Rousseau, ' Contrat Social,' i. 8.
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? CHAP, L] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 443
Hildebrand. To the mediseval world, as well as to the Fathers
and to Posidonius, the coercive authority of man over man
was the result of sin ; but it was also a remedy for sin--to
the Christian theologians a divinely appointed remedy--an
institution arising no doubt out of sinful conditions and
desires, but also a means by which the sinful tendencies of
human nature might be restrained and controlled, and by
which the partially perverted nature of man might be directed
to good ends.
This conception that political society and its institutions
are conventional and not " natural " furnished the frame-
work or formal system of political theory in the Middle Ages ;
but there was a much more important difference between the
political theory of Aristotle and that of the Middle Ages.
This is found in the highly developed doctrine of the equality
and freedom of the individual man ; indeed, we are still of
the same mind as we were when, in the first volume, we ven-
tured to say that it is here that we find the real dividing line
between ancient and modern political theory. 1
This is no doubt only one form of that great development
of the conception of the individual personality which under-
lies the whole mediseval and modern conception of human
life, and it is not our part here to attempt to deal with this,
except so far as is necessary for the understanding of the
changes in political theory; but for this purpose we must
deal with the subject, however briefly.
The conception of individual personality and its relations
to society is not indeed a simple thing. When we are modest
and reasonable, we recognise that we can no more define
this to-day in easy terms than men could have done formerly.
We are, indeed, really more conscious of the extreme com-
plexity of these relations than men were in the past. The
freedom of the individual, and the authority of society, these
are principles which we recognise as fundamental, but their
relations to each other we are unable to define. The generous
assertion of the necessary liberty of the individual man by
1 Cf. vol. i. , pp. 6-13.
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? 444 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT III.
John Stuart Mill has a profound truth and value, but it does
not carry us very far. The ideas of authority and of liberty
baffle all attempts at definition, and the historian, at least,
must content himself with tracing some of the stages through
which these ideas have passed, and the successive apprehen-
sion of the significance of each.
It seems reasonable to say that we can recognise that at
certain times one or other of these ideas seems to have
developed more or less rapidly, and to have changed the
conception of human society, and we can recognise such a
period in the centuries between Aristotle and the Christian
era. It may seem too much to say, and yet we do not
wholly overstate the truth if we say, that during these cen-
turies the primitive conception of the group as the funda-
mental unit of human life gave place to the modern con-
ception of the individual as the unit. It would be unbecoming
of the mediseval and modern historian to speak dogmatically
in regard to that which lies in the province of the anthro-
pologist, but it is, as we understand it, true to say that in the
primitive and even the barbarian worlds, the individual was
only very partially recognised. It is the solidarity of the
group which is their characteristic.
We can see this under many forms, above all in the high
degree in which moral responsibility and religion are conceived
of as qualities of the group, of the family, the tribe or even the
state, rather than of the individual. We can perhaps find the
most obvious example of this in the development of the
Hebrew religion. The contrast is familiar to us between the
assumption of the moral and religious responsibility of the
continuous family group, which is expressed in the words of
the Second Commandment: " I, the Lord thy God, am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children," and the indignant repudiation of this by Ezekiel
(xviii. 20), when he says : " The soul that sinneth, it shall
die : the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither
shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. " It is not always,
however, sufficiently observed that this is one expression of
the transition from the group conception of life to the indi-
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? CHAP, l] the inheritance from the ancient world. 445
vidual conception, but the fact is obvious. This is no doubt
earlier than the period of which we are speaking, but it is an
anticipation of what was fully developed in that period.
The development of the individualist idea of life was indeed
not merely rapid, but was exaggerated. When Aristotle says
that the isolated individual is not self -sufficing or that " he
who is unable to live in society, or who has no need, because
he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god,"
we feel the profound truth of his judgment. When Seneca
(' Ad Serenum: Nee injuriam,' &c, viii. ) says that no one
can either injure or benefit the wise man, there is nothing
which the wise man would care to receive; that, just as the
divine order can neither be helped nor injured, so is it with
the wise man ; that the wise man is, except for his mortality,
like to God Himself; we feel that he is immensely over-
stating the self-sufficiency of even the wisest man. Both
Seneca and Ezekiel are immensely overstating their case;
the wisest and best man is not self-sufficient, the children do
still suffer for the evil of the fathers; and yet they are ex-
pressing a new sense of the meaning of personality.
It is, however, with some such considerations in our minds
that we must approach the question of the significance of the
dogmatic assertion of the " natural" equality and freedom
of the individual man, which is asserted by Cicero and Seneca,
by the Eoman Jurists of the ' Digest' and by the Christian
Fathers. 1 It may be doubted whether any change in political
theory has ever been so remarkable as that which is repre-
sented by this dogmatic contradiction of the Aristotelian
conception of the inequality of men. For these writers do
not merely suggest a doubt, they dogmatically contradict.
" Omnes namque natura aequales sumus," said Gregory the
Great, and he was only repeating what he had learned from
the Jurists, while they in their turn were no doubt only
repeating the generally accepted doctrine of the post-Aristo-
telian philosophy. If, however, the contradiction of the
Aristotelian conception was remarkable, the ground alleged
for it is almost more so. Men are alike and equal, because
1 Of. vol. L, ohape. 1, 2, 4, 10.
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? 446 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT m.
they are alike possessed of reason and capable of virtue, says
Cicero.
1 Where Aristotle had found the justification of
slavery, Seneca found the place of unconquerable freedom ;
the body may belong to a master, the mind cannot be given
into slavery. 2 It is only the same principle which Lactantius
expressed when he said that God, who brings forth men,
wished them all to be equal. He made them all for virtue,
and promised them all immortality ; in God's sight no one is
a slave or a master. 3 The Christian writers did not create
this philosophical principle; they were only transposing it
into the terms which belong to the Christian theology. This
new conception was not a discovery of Christianity, but it
was taken up into it, and became the first and fundamental
principle of its conception of human nature.
There are, it is true, some, not perhaps very intelligent
historians, impatient of what they think the exaggerated
importance attached to ideas, who may think that these
conceptions were little more than rhetorical abstractions,
which had little, if any, relation to actual life. In this
case it happens that such an unintelligent scepticism is par-
ticularly unfortunate, for we can find in the Roman law not
only the expression of these principles, but also the parallel
changes in the legal position of the slave. In a well-known
passage of the ' Institutes,' Gaius gives an account of the
legal position of the slaves in the second century, and says
that the slave had been in the absolute power of his master,
but that this was no longer the case, for the law did not now
permit the master to behave with arbitrary violence or cruelty
to his slave,4 and we can trace in the ' Digest' some of the
stages through which the Eoman law came to recognise what
we may call the legal personality of the slave.
We have here the beginnings of that principle which has
gradually become the foundation of the legal aspect of modern
Western civilisation, the principle that all men are equal
before the law, that all men are responsible for their own
actions, because it is assumed that they are all possessed of
1 Cicero, ' De Legibus,' i. 10, 12.
>> Seneca, ' De Beneficiis,' iii. 20.
* Lactantius, ' Div. Inst. ,' v. 15, 16.
? Gaius,' Institutes," i. 52, 53.
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? CHAP. L] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 447
reason. It would be difficult to find a more remarkable
example of the influence of an idea or principle. For though
the law may assume this equality and responsibility as a
simple fact, we are also well aware that behind this apparent
simplicity there lies an immense complexity of indeterminable
elements.
We have so far dealt with the significance of the conception
of equality as related to the development of the idea of per-
sonality ; we must consider a little further the conception of
liberty, not now as personal liberty, but as related to politics.
It was not, we think, a mere accident that Cicero, who
contradicted the Aristotelian conception of the inequality of
human nature, also refused to recognise that an absolute
monarchy or aristocracy, even of the most ideal kind--that
is, the rule of men who far excel the rest of the community
in wisdom and in virtue, and whose energies are directed
wholly to setting forward justice and the good of the whole
community--could be recognised as a good government.
Good, he refuses to call such governments; at the best they
are tolerable, and the reason he gives for this judgment is
highly significant, for there is, he says, under such constitu-
tions something of the nature of slavery. It could not be
said that under such governments the multitude really
possessed liberty. 1
This identification of political liberty with a share in political
power is another illustration of the essentially modern char-
acter of his political thought. We are not here discussing the
final value of this conception in political thought; we shall
have more to say about this matter when, in the next chapter,
we discuss the later phases of the development of mediseval
political theory. But it is fairly clear that behind these words
of Cicero there lies the assumption that it is the equality of
human nature which makes even the best absolute monarchies
or aristocracies unacceptable. It is because all men have
reason, and are capable of directing their lives to the end
of virtue, that we cannot call a man free who is under the
1 Cicero, ' De Republics,' i. 26, 27.
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? 448 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT m.
absolute control, however well meant, of another man. This
judgment is, after all, the same as the judgment of all the
more highly developed political societies of the present day.
To an Englishman, or American, or Frenchman, the idea of
aquiescing in a paternal despotism, even of the most well-
intended or capable ruler or rulers, seems a merely laughable
absurdity, the expression not of intelligence but of immaturity.
We propose, we intend, to govern ourselves, and even the
most seductive promises of efficiency--promises for which
there has been little justification in history--will not induce
us to submit to a master. There is, as Cicero says, something
of the nature of slavery in all such governments ; and it
may, not unreasonably, be said that we are beginning to
understand that it is just here that we find one most im-
portant cause of the industrial difficulties of the modern world.
It is, however, not only in the Ciceronian conception of
government that we find an important expression of this
idea of political freedom. His statement, paradoxically enough,
coincided in time with the disappearance of constitutional
government in the west, but it is only the more interesting
to observe that, in spite of this, the one and only theory of
the source of political authority, which the Eoman Jurists
handed on to the Middle Ages and the modern world, was the
theory that all political authority is derived from the com-
munity itself, is founded upon the consent of the community.
The Eoman emperor was absolute, but this absolutism was
a legal absolutism--that is, it was derived from law, for if
he was absolute, it was because the Eoman people had con-
ferred upon him their own authority. This is the theory, and
the only theory of the Eoman Jurists, from Gaius in the
second century to Justinian himself in the sixth century. 1
Political authority rests not on the superiority of the ruler
to the ruled, not on the principle of inequality, but solely
upon the will of the community ; it belongs to the com-
munity, it is delegated by the community. It rests not at all
upon some supposed delegation of the divine authority to
the ruler; that was nothing but an alien Orientalism, which
1 Cf. vol. U chap. 6.
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? CHAP. I. ] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 449
some of the Christian Fathers, notably Gregory the Great,
imported from a Semitic tradition of the Old Testament.
Aristotle might speak of the ideal monarchy or aristocracy
as absolute, for to him the government of a civilised society
was the expression of the superiority of some men over others ;
even his ideal commonwealth is the rule of a small body of
equal citizens over a great mass of unenfranchised persons.
To the Eoman Jurists political authority resides in the com-
munity, and it is only from it that it can be received.
There is another aspect of the political theory of the ancient
world, not only of the Christian writers, but just as much
of Plato and Aristotle, which the mediseval and modern world
inherited, and that is the principle of the moral purpose and
function of the State.
The description of the nature of the State by Cicero in the
' De Eepublica ' is well known. " Ees publica, res populi,
populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo
congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis
communione sociatus. "1 St Augustine says that Cicero
meant that the State cannot exist without justice; that
where there is no justice there can be no " jus," and therefore
no real " people " ; that when the Government, whether a
tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy, was unjust, there was no
" respublica " at all. This conception of the State is continu-
ally referred to by the writers of the Middle Ages, and it is
combined with the sharp distinction which St Isidore of
Seville made between the king and the tyrant. 2
In all this the post-Aristotelian political theory was carry-
ing on the Aristotelian principle that it is the association of
beings who have the sense of the just and unjust which makes
both the family and the State,3 and the related principle that
the only true forms of government are those which aim at
the common good of the whole community, while those which
pursue the private interest of the ruler are perverted forms. 4
1 Cicero, ' De Republics,' i. 25.
>> St Augustine, 'De Civ. Dei,' xix. 21';
St Isidore of Seville, ' Etym. ,' ix. 3.
VOL. V.
? Aristotle, ' Politics,' i. 2.
? Id. id. , iii. 6.
2F
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? 450 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PART in.
The Christian writers express this principle when they say
that government is a divine institution, as, for instance, St
Paul, in the words, " Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers, for there is no power but of God, and the powers
that be are ordained of God. " This is the accepted principle
of the nature of the State and its authority in all mediseval
writers. The notion that Hildebrand or any other intended
to dispute it is merely a misconception, as we have shown in
detail,1 due to the failure to understand the significance of
that contrast between the natural and the conventional with
which we have dealt.
It is true that this principle was sometimes misunderstood,
and that it was perverted into the absurd doctrine that the
king was in such a sense the representative of God that he
could not be resisted even if his rule were evil and unjust.
This perversion, for which Gregory the Great was mainly
responsible, was, however, little regarded in the Middle Ages.
Its importance belongs to that period in the centuries from
the sixteenth to the eighteenth when the constitutional
principles of the Middle Ages were for the time neglected,
and we do not therefore need to concern ourselves greatly
with it. It was an idea derived from some Semitic traditions
of the Old Testament. 2
The real meaning of St Paul is clear to any one who will
be at pains to look at the way in which he develops the prin-
ciple which he has set out. For he not only says that the
powers that be are ordained by God, but explains the mean-
ing of this saying. " Eulers are not a terror to the good work,
but to the evil," and " He is a minister of God to thee for
good. " St Paul is putting into the terms of religion the
principle that the State with its authority is a divine institu-
tion, because its purpose or function is the maintenance of
righteousness or justice. And this is the sense in which he
was normally understood both by the Christian Fathers and
by the political thinkers of the Middle Ages. St Irenaeus, in
a passage which has been too often overlooked, especially
by those who overstate the influence of St Augustine, explains
1 Cf. vol. iii. , part ii. , chap. 2. * Cf. vol. i. , chap. 13.
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? CHAP. I. ] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 451
the origin and the purpose of government as being indeed a
consequence of the sinful nature of man, but as, also, a
remedy which God has established for man's sin. He has
set men over each other that by this means they might be
compelled to some measure of righteous and just dealing. 1
St Thomas Aquinas, in the middle of the thirteenth century,
maintains that sedition is indeed a mortal sin, but the resist-
ance to an unjust and tyrannical government is not sedition. '
The Christian doctrine of the divine origin and nature of
government was therefore, properly speaking, a statement
under the terms of religion that the end of government was
a moral one--that is, the maintenance of justice.
So far, then, the political ideas which came down from
the ancient world to the mediseval, while they were accepted
by the Christian writers, and expressed by them in terms
appropriate to Christian theology, were not specifically Christian
or greatly modified by Christianity.
There is, however, one important principle of the nature
of human society of which this cannot be said, one great
principle and problem of the mediseval and modern world,
which took its form from Christian principles. This is
the principle which lies behind the great problem of the
relations of Church and State, or as the mediaeval people
would have expressed it, the relation of the Temporal and
Spiritual Powers. This great question, of which the modem
world has no more found a final or complete solution than
the mediseval, was the source of that great conflict of the
Middle Ages in which both the political papacy and the
empire were destroyed. We have explained several times
that in our very clear judgment this great question, although
it is inextricably bound up with the political events of the
Middle Ages, did not, in itself and directly, contribute any-
thing to the development of the other political ideas or in-
stitutions of the Middle Ages, and we think this will presently
again become clear. But in a more general sense, in its rela-
1 Irenseus, ' Adv. Haer. ,' v. 24. logica,' 2, 2, 42, 2.
* St Thomas Aquinas, 'Summa Theo-
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? 452 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [PABT III.
tion to the general principles of human life and its organisa-
tion, no development in history is more significant than this
of the independence of the spiritual life aDd its organisation.
When we consider the question carefully, it is evident that
what we are dealing with is intrinsically the result of that
developed sense of the individual human personality, of which
we have spoken before. There was no question of Church
and State in the earlier times of the ancient world, because
religion was not something which belonged primarily to the
individual, but to the group, the family, or tribe, or nation.
Even among the Hebrews it was not, as most modern scholars
seem to agree, until after the exile that it is possible to speak
of an individual or personal religion,, It is only in the later
prophets, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and in the later Psalms,
that we can find the expression of a personal or individual
relation to God. And among the Western peoples this is
even more obvious. We have learned not to undervalue
the religion of the Greeks, and even of the Romans, but this
religion was not normally a personal thing; the God was
the God of the family or tribe rather than of the individual
man. All this was greatly changed with the new conception
of personality, not that the conception of the social aspect
of religion was lost, but that the individual conception became
immensely important.
The new conception cannot be better expressed than in
the words of Ezekiel, to which we have already referred.
" The soul that sinneth, it shall die: the son shall not bear
the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the
iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of the righteous shall
be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him. " The individual man is responsible to God, and will
be judged, not by the character of the group to which he
belongs, but by his own.
With this great change, it became impossible for the moral
and religious life to accept the authority of the political
society in the matter of religion. We are not here discussing
the question of the possible meaning of national religion,
though it is obvious enough that the conception has become
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? CHAP. I. ] THE INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. 453
difficult; what we are concerned with is the sense of the
independence of the spiritual and moral life from the control
of the political authority. The new attitude is admirably
represented in the words which the writer of the Acts of the
Apostles attributes to Peter and John when they were brought
before the Jewish authorities, and were forbidden to teach
in the name of Jesus, " Whether it be right in the sight of
God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye "
(Acts iv. 19).
The relation of the Christians to the Eoman Empire during
the first three centuries was a practical exemplification of
the significance of the new principle. They recognised, indeed,
with St Clement of Eome, that it was from God that the
rulers of the world had received their authority, and that it
was in the name of God that they should submit to them,1
but they could not, and would not, obey them in matters of
religion and conscience. It was this claim which Constantine
recognised in the Edict of Milan, when he proclaimed that
not only the Christians but all other men should have the
right to follow whatever religion they preferred. 2 It is no
doubt true that this recognition did not last, the Theo-
dosian Code shows that in less than a hundred years the
Christian religion had not only become the official religion
of the empire, but that, with the exception of Judaism, it
was the only religion that was tolerated. We cannot, however,
discuss the reasons for this failure. From the point of view of
the practical politicians it may have appeared that the diverg-
ences of religion menaced the unity of the empire; from the
point of view of the historian of civilisation it may seem
that the group system was still too strong, and that the world
had to wait many hundred years before the sense of the
individual and personal responsibility was sufficiently developed
to compel its recognition.
