Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought (Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History) [1 ed.] 9781032380537, 9781032380544, 9781003343257, 1032380535

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Editors and Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought: Past, Present, … and Future? An Essay
2 Medieval Ideas and the Ethics of Listening
Part I: Historiographical Problems
3 The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet: From Medieval Prophet-Philosopher to Renaissance Prophet-Statesman
4 The Scientist of Politics? The Typology of Princedoms in The Prince and Machiavelli’s Ambition as a Theorist of Human Action
5 The Twelve Abuses of the Age: Ethical and Political Theory in Early Medieval Ireland and Its Influence
Part II: Fresh Interpretations
6 The Mirror Compiled: Roger Waltham’s Compendium morale and Cary Nederman’s Medieval English Tradition of Political Thought
7 Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century
8 Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt
Part III: New Debates
9 Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli
10 A Medieval Scholastic Job Description: Diversi sed non adversi
11 Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century: Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham Reconsidered
12 Consent, Power, and the Political Community: Communal versus Individual “Rights” in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Part IV: Responses
13 The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought: A Methodological Afterword
14 Some Reflections on the Future(s) of Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought
Index

Citation preview

“[The authors] have done a wonderful job in collecting a series of exemplary essays on medieval and Renaissance political thought. This book ranges over key methodological debates and salient topics, such as toleration, the common good, the influence of Cicero, and republicanism. It demonstrates new developments in the field and its relevance to an understanding of European and indeed global political thought through critical engagement with Cary Nederman’s voluminous work in this field.” Antony Black, Emeritus Professor in the History of Political Thought, University of Dundee “…this field has been marked by especially active debate and development in recent decades, and at the center of much of this has been Cary Nederman (with whom I have often myself engaged), so it is entirely appropriate for them to focus their book on reactions to his contribution. To this end they have assembled an impressive group of eminent scholars on a wide variety of topics.” James M. Blythe, Professor Emeritus of Medieval European History, University of Memphis

RETHINKING MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE POLITICAL THOUGHT

This collection of essays, written by leading experts, showcases ­h istoriographical problems, fresh interpretations, and new debates in medieval and Renaissance history and political thought. Recent scholarship on medieval and Renaissance political thought is witness to tectonic movements. These involve quiet, yet considerable, re-evaluations of key thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli, as well as the string of lesser known “political thinkers” who wrote in western Europe between Late Antiquity and the Reformation. Taking stock of 30 years of developments, this volume demonstrates the contemporary vibrancy of the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought. By both celebrating and challenging the perspectives of a generation of scholars, notably Cary J. Nederman, it offers refreshing new assessments. The book re-introduces the history of western ­political thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the wider disciplines of History and Political Science. Recent historiographical debates have revolutionized discussion of whether or not there was an “Aristotelian revolution” in the thirteenth century. Thinkers such as Machiavelli and Marsilius of Padua are read in new ways; less well-known texts, such as the Irish On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, offer new perspectives. Further, the collection argues that medieval political ideas contain important lessons for the study of concepts of contemporary interest such as toleration. The volume is an ideal resource for both students and scholars interested in medieval and Renaissance history as well as the history of political thought.

Chris Jones, FSA, FRHistS, is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research explores the history of political thought in the later Middle Ages. His edited books include John of Paris: Beyond Royal and Papal Power (2015). Takashi Shogimen, FRHistS, MAE, is Professor of History at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He has published widely on medieval European and modern Japanese political thought including Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages (2007).

Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History Series Editor: Natasha Hodgson, Nottingham Trent University

This is a brand new series which straddles both medieval and early modern worlds, encouraging readers to examine historical change over time as well as promoting understanding of the historical continuity between events in the past, and to challenge perceptions of periodisation. It aims to meet the demand for conceptual or thematic topics which cross a relatively wide chronological span (any period between c. 500–1750), including a broad geographical scope. Available titles: Religion and Conflict in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds Identities, Communities and Authorities Edited by Natasha Hodgson, Amy Fuller, John McCallum and Nicholas Morton Britain and its Neighbours Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Edited by Dirk H. Steinforth and Charles C. Rozier Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History Edited by Matthew Rowley and Natasha Hodgson Unions and Divisions New Forms of Rule in Medieval and Renaissance Europe Edited by Paul Srodecki, Norbert Kersken and Rimvydas Petrauskas Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought Historiographical Problems, Fresh Interpretations, New Debates Edited by Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.­routledge.com/ Themes-in-Medieval-and-Early-Modern-History/book-series/TMEMH

RETHINKING MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE POLITICAL THOUGHT Historiographical Problems, Fresh Interpretations, New Debates Edited by Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

Designed cover image: Maître des Éthiques d’Aristote, “Prudence and her Four Virtues,” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Nicole Oresme. Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 927, fol. 93v (14521454). The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jones, Chris, 1977– editor. | Sho¯gimen, Takashi, 1967– editor. Title: Rethinking medieval and Renaissance political thought : historiographical problems, fresh interpretations, new debates / edited by Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Themes in medieval and early modern history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022061073 (print) | LCCN 2022061074 (ebook) | Subjects: LCSH: Political science—History—To 1500. | Political science—History—16th century. | Political science—History—17th century. | Philosophy, Medieval. | Philosophy, Renaissance. | Political science—Early works to 1800. Classification: LCC JC111 .R47 2023 (print) | LCC JC111 (ebook) | DDC 320.9/03—dc23/eng/20230131 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022061073 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022061074 ISBN: 978-1-032-38053-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-38054-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-34325-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

Est animi ingenui cui multum debeas eidem plurimum velle debere. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, II.6.2 Any analysis of the past thirty years cannot circumvent the influence of Cary J. Nederman’s contribution to the field of medieval and Renaissance political thought. Whether or not one agrees with all of his conclusions, it is inescapable, as this volume demonstrates, that he has played a key role. In seeking to rehabilitate medieval and Renaissance political thought as sources of intellectual inspiration for our own political imagination, Nederman has probably done more than any other scholar to maintain the vibrancy of the field. It therefore seems particularly appropriate that the present volume offers not only a critical engagement with the latest scholarship in the field but, in particular, with Cary’s contribution to it. And it is for this reason that we respectfully dedicate this volume to him.

CONTENTS

List of Editors and Contributors xv Acknowledgements xix Introduction 1 1 Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought: Past, Present, … and Future? An Essay Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen 2 Medieval Ideas and the Ethics of Listening Clare Monagle

3 26

Part I

Historiographical Problems

35

3 The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet: From Medieval Prophet-Philosopher to Renaissance Prophet-Statesman 37 Gary Remer 4 The Scientist of Politics? The Typology of Princedoms in The Prince and Machiavelli’s Ambition as a Theorist of Human Action Bee Yun

59

xii Contents

5 The Twelve Abuses of the Age: Ethical and Political Theory in Early Medieval Ireland and Its Influence Constant J. Mews

87

Part II

Fresh Interpretations 6 The Mirror Compiled: Roger Waltham’s Compendium morale and Cary Nederman’s Medieval English Tradition of Political Thought Charles F. Briggs

107

109

7 Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century Roberto Lambertini

130

8 Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt Benedetto Fontana

145

Part III

New Debates

165

9 Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli Paul A. Rahe

167

10 A Medieval Scholastic Job Description: Diversi sed non adversi 189 Marcia L. Colish 11 Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century: Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham Reconsidered Takashi Shogimen 12 Consent, Power, and the Political Community: Communal versus Individual “Rights” in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Jason Taliadoros

206

224

Contents  xiii

Part IV

Responses 243 13 The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought: A Methodological Afterword Frédérique Lachaud

245

14 Some Reflections on the Future(s) of Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought Cary J. Nederman

257

Index 267

EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Editors Chris Jones, FSA, FRHistS, is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the

University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research explores the history of political thought in the later Middle Ages. His edited books include John of Paris: Beyond Royal and Papal Power (2015). Takashi Shogimen, FRHistS, MAE, is Professor of History at the U ­ niversity

of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He has published widely on medieval ­European and modern Japanese political thought including Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages (2007).

Contributors Charles F. Briggs, FRHistS, is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of

Vermont, USA. A specialist in the history of intellectual and political culture in later medieval Europe, his recent major publications include The Body Broken: Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 1300–1525, 2nd edn. (Routledge, 2020). Marcia L. Colish is the Frederick B. Artz Professor of History emerita at Oberlin College and Visiting Fellow in History at Yale University, USA. She has published nine books in medieval intellectual history. She is a Fellow and Past President of the Medieval Academy of America.

xvi  Editors and Contributors

Benedetto Fontana is a Professor who teaches the history of political thought

at the City University of New York Baruch College and Graduate Center, USA. His research interests focus on the thought of Antonio Gramsci, Machiavelli, and classical political thought, as well as on the relation between rhetoric and politics. Frédérique Lachaud is Professor of Medieval History at Sorbonne Université,

Paris, France. Her research interests cover political history, with a focus on England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the history of medieval political thought. Her current research focuses on Peter of Cornwall and politics in London around 1200. Roberto Lambertini is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Mac-

erata, Italy. His research explores the history of political thought in the later Middle Ages. His recent publications also explore medieval intellectual history and he has edited recent collections on consent, both in theory and in practice. Constant J. Mews, FAHA, is an Emeritus Professor with the School of Philo-

sophical, Historical, and International Studies at Monash University, Australia, where he was (until 2021) Director of its Centre for Religious Studies. He has published widely on the twelfth century; his current research includes writing from seventh-century Ireland. Clare Monagle  is Associate Professor in the Department of History and ­ rchaeology, Macquarie University, Australia. Educated at Monash and the A Johns Hopkins University, her research interests include medieval intellectual history, gender studies, and the history of feminism. Her published articles ­appear in Viator, The Journal of Religious History, and Signs. Cary J. Nederman is Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University, USA. His research concentrates on the history of western political theory, with a specialization in classical and early European ideas to the seventeenth century. His latest monograph, The Rope and the Chains, continues his interest in Machiavelli’s thought. Paul A. Rahe is the Roger S. Mertz Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s

Hoover Institution and holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage at Hillsdale College, USA where he is Professor of History.

Editors and Contributors  xvii

Gary Remer  is Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, New ­ rleans, USA. His research explores the political thought of Cicero, the influO ence of Ciceronian rhetoric on the political thought of the Renaissance, and early modernity, rhetoric, and political morality, and religious toleration in the Renaissance. Jason Taliadoros is Associate Professor of Law at Deakin University, Australia.

His research explores the history of legal and religious thought in the high Middle Ages. He publishes on lineages of rights, notions of legal pluralism, and extensively on the origins of damages. Bee Yun is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. His recent publications ­include Wege zu Machiavelli: Die Rückkehr des Politischen im Spätmittelalter (2021). He is a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin for 2023-24.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The genesis of this book was an event we organized jointly, From the Crucible: Reconsidering the Medieval Legacy in European Political Thought – Colloquium in Honour of Professor Cary J. Nederman, at St. Margaret’s College, University of Otago, 12–14 February 2017. The colloquium hosted 15 speakers from around the world, several of whom participated in the publication of this book. We would like to express our thanks to Karen Bollermann, Sylvain Piron, Kriston Rennie, and Marco Toste who spoke at the colloquium but were unable to contribute chapters here. The colloquium (and hence, this book) would have been impossible without the financial support from the then Department of History and Art History (now the History Programme) at the University of Otago. We are grateful to Sue Lang, who was the Administrator of the Department at the time, for her efficient and cheerful support. We would also like to thank Rozie MacRae and Adam Clarke at St. Margaret’s College for their help with the smooth running of the colloquium. Had it not been for the heavy involvement of both editors in administrative roles at their respective universities, followed by the global-scale disruptions caused by COVID-19, this book would have appeared much sooner. We are heavily indebted to the patience and unwavering commitments of the contributors. However, precisely because of the long delays in our editorial work, the project evolved into a collection considerably beyond a mere assemblage of orally presented papers. Papers have gone through significant revisions while new contributions from experts who did not speak at the colloquium added fresh perspectives. In some important respects, the present volume is reconceptualized as a project independent from the colloquium in 2017.

xx Acknowledgements

Finally, we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers, whose r­ ecommendations helped us improve not only our first chapter but the book as a whole, and Laura Pilsworth of Routledge for her skilful management of the publication process. Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen November 2022

Introduction

1 MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE POLITICAL THOUGHT Past, Present, … and Future? An Essay Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

Medieval and Renaissance political thought may offer no answers to the pressing political problems of the present day. Yet, does this make its study irrelevant? It may certainly appear that way to the casual observer, whether political scientist or layperson. Medieval political thought, in particular, heavily marked by its connection with Christianity, already appeared a mild embarrassment to many political scientists by the end of the twentieth century. Indeed, as is frequently observed – often with exasperation by scholars of the period – the term “medieval” itself has become a byword for use by “those who want to kick a current problem back into the past.”1 Yet even the historian may approach post-classical, pre-modern political thought with caution: a field that privileges the study of texts written by an educated, predominantly male, Christian elite raises uncomfortable issues in an age of toppling statues and a justified, if sometimes ahistorical, popular concern with the past’s inequalities. And it is beyond doubt that western intellectual history as a whole has, in recent years, fallen prey to those whose argument can be boiled down to an essentially malodorous and socially divisive – but highly tweet-able – assertion that “West is best.”2 Reputable scholars are duly cautious of any association with the implicit bigotry that such superficial, narrow-minded approaches tend to foster. This collection of diverse essays sets out to demonstrate that, despite these obstacles, the field remains in rude health; to outline some important contemporary developments in it; and, above all, to highlight why specialists in medieval and Renaissance studies should engage more actively with a much neglected subfield. Indeed, in this chapter, we wish to go further and propose that the study of medieval and Renaissance political thought can significantly enhance the contribution scholars of western Europe make to a wider, global history of ideas. DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-2

4  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

When it comes to Anglophone countries, in particular, there is a basic correlation between the way in which Political Science, as a discipline, has undergone a rapid evolution and the erosion of medieval political thought, in particular, as a sub-discipline. These days university courses that traverse the space from Plato to NATO in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australasia frequently skip lightly over the interval between Cicero and Grotius. Indeed, departments of Political Science have often embraced International Relations while setting aside methodologies drawn from History and quietly discarding their medievalists.3 It is equally notable that while History departments have welcomed social and cultural historians in recent decades, they often remain wary of Political Science’s diaspora. There is, perhaps, a basic doubt that the latter have much to offer. These are not historians – or so the argument might go if someone thought it worth taking the time to make it – who have anything important to tell us that we do not already know. While often overlooked, the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought has, in recent decades, undergone a series of quiet revolutions that many historians, both medieval and modern, remain essentially unaware of. This book focuses on one particular revolution amongst the many: a revolution in our understanding and interpretation of the long-standing canon of writers that underpins the “traditional” framework for the study of political ideas. When the phrase “the history of political thought” is employed in reference to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance what is often understood, implicitly, is the study of this canon. It begins with the transition from the classical world to the Christian in the thought of Augustine and ends, by way of a stepping stone to modernity, with Machiavelli. The relatively recent addition of Christine de Pizan aside, it is the quintessential collection of “dead white men.”4 As such, there is no escaping the fact that the field has become, and not without reason, distinctly unfashionable. However, this book aims to show that allowing the study of this intellectual legacy to fall into obscurity – or to assume that there is nothing left to say with regard to it – would mean the loss of an important perspective within the wider history of political thought. This is especially important at a time when the study of the “global Middle Ages” is becoming an increasingly significant theme.5 A global approach has, for example, radically revised traditional accounts of the Black Death, contextualizing western Europe and vastly expanding the timeframe and geography in which we discuss the plague’s impact.6 Similarly, revisiting this aspect of the history of political thought can better equip scholars to re-evaluate western political conceptions and systems in a wider, global context. Perhaps as importantly, it also avoids ceding ground – or at least provides a counterpoint – to those who wish to misuse and mischaracterize an intellectual tradition.7 Setting aside the question of where one should draw a line between “medieval” and “Renaissance” (an issue we shall touch upon below), some might question, as J. H. Burns noted three decades ago, whether there even

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  5

was such a thing as political thought in the Christian Middle Ages, a world in which the state was still in the making and the Roman Church dominated the European political landscape.8 It is therefore worth beginning by highlighting that, relatively less visible though it may be, the study of medieval political thought has a century-old tradition that goes back to the classic works of Otto von Gierke, the Carlyle brothers, and Charles McIlwain.9 After World War II, scholarship on medieval political thought expanded considerably in the Anglo-American world under the leadership of Walter Ullmann, Brian Tierney, and Francis Oakley. While from the 1980s, the influence of the Cambridge School promoted (and some might say, privileged) early modern political thought, Quentin Skinner, the school’s doyen, did not fail to recognize the significance of medieval conceptions in his monumental The Foundations of Modern Political Thought.10 In the second half of the twentieth century, medieval political thought secured the status of a recognized field of historical enquiry, which was especially marked by the appearance of a Cambridge History edited by Burns and dedicated to the topic. Since the latter’s appearance, we have seen the publication of a number of studies that offer systematic and/or comprehensive accounts of the field. These include important surveys by Antony Black, Joseph Canning, and Janet Coleman, as well as Francis Oakley’s recent trilogy, The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages.11 At the same time, the series of essays published in the 1988 Cambridge History remain the logical “next step” for many seeking a more in-depth engagement with the world of medieval political ideas. With hindsight, having reached lofty heights under Burns’ direction, it seems scholarly interest in medieval political thought had peaked. This volume is not an attempt to replace Burns, although we do, as a tangential point, note that the Cambridge History now requires significant updating. Our volume is not intended to be comprehensive. Indeed, it is not so much a “companion” or an “introduction,” as a “manifesto.” Here you will find a curated collection of essays that seeks to make a simple point: the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought has not only moved on since the 1980s, it has something important to say to the wider discipline. Significant change has taken various forms in the last three and a half decades. Sometimes this has involved adopting innovative approaches to exploring questions central to our understanding of what “medieval and/or Renaissance political thought” actually is. Perceptive readers would have already noticed that we have been discussing the historiography of medieval and Renaissance political thought mainly from the medieval vantage point. This is not without reason: experts in this field have sought to understand medieval political thought not so much as a selfenclosed entity but as a network of ideas that were bequeathed to future generations. This explains why they were generally not content with a portrayal of medieval political thought on its own. Janet Coleman’s narrative of the history

6  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

of medieval political thought concludes with a substantial chapter on Italian Renaissance political thought. The third volume of Francis Oakley’s aforementioned trilogy treats the historical period from 1300 to 1650 as a whole constituting “the watershed of modern politics.” Antony Black’s study of mutual aid and fraternity, originating in medieval guilds and communes, traced its reception right up to the twentieth century.12 Inclusion of Renaissance political thought within the scope of this volume reflects such a forward-looking perspective in a modest fashion. The study of political concepts has not been neglected. But, adopting an approach whose importance was signalled by Jean Dunbabin in the Cambridge History itself, many historians have moved beyond the traditional “canon” of legal and intellectual sources traditionally associated with the field.13 They have done so in order to establish a broader understanding of the political conceptions that existed in society beyond the lecture theatres of medieval Paris and the law schools of Bologna. For those interested in exploring implicit assumptions about such concepts, chronicles have proved a particularly favoured resource in the last two decades.14 Abandoning even the reassuring certainty of the codex, concepts such as deposition have been considered via sources as seemingly unpromising as genealogical rolls.15 Most recently, Dominique Barthélemy, Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Frédérique Lachaud, and Jean-Marie Moeglin have drawn together a variety of approaches in a significant edited collection on communitas regni. Their book explores whether a concept long acknowledged to be at the heart of late medieval English society had any wider significance beyond the British Isles. Some of their contributors draw on the traditional canon of political thought, an approach perhaps best exemplified by Karl Ubl in his masterly examination of the impact of Aristotelian conceptions of the political community in the thought of Albert the Great and Engelbert of Admont.16 Yet others trace the evolution of ideas via sources ranging from the literary to the bureaucratic, such as Isabelle Guyot-Bachy’s study of the way in which French chroniclers’ presentation of Franco-Flemish conflict evolved.17 These are exciting, new approaches that have much to tell us.18 And examples could easily be multiplied. Just one case study would be the exploration of new perspectives on institutions.19 Although relatively few of these new approaches are associated explicitly with the label “history of political thought,” many are examples of the types of revolutions in the study of political thinking that we alluded to earlier. None, however, take the path that we are choosing to tread in this particular volume. Alongside approaches that have widened the source base for the study of medieval political thought, scholars such as Canning, Jürgen Miethke, and Jacques Krynen have continued to offer new reflections on the “traditional” corpus of texts.20 Likewise, this volume returns us to the texts and thinkers most closely associated with what might be described as a direct engagement with political discourse, rather than those, such as chroniclers, whose engagement

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  7

with political conceptions was usually implicit and whose “political thought” must be recovered through a kind of textual archaeology.21 In returning to the “traditional” canon, readers will be struck, first and foremost, by the way in which it has expanded beyond the set group of theologians and lawyers with whom it is most often associated. Christine de Pizan’s incorporation is, as we note above, a conspicuous instance.22 Christine is not, however, the only new addition: one further example of a new inclusion, one amongst many, is Robert Grosseteste, thirteenth-century bishop of Lincoln and scholastic.23 Since the Burns’ History appeared in the late 1980s, three clear themes have emerged as the focus of new research in the field of “traditional” medieval and Renaissance political thought. The first is the further exploration of a historiographical problem that focuses on the so-called “Aristotelian revolution.” This is significant because the idea that such a revolution took place has become axiomatic for the majority of medieval historians. However, recent debate has revealed a much more nuanced picture. The second theme may be broadly summed up under a title such as “re-evaluations” or “new interpretations”: recent scholarship has fundamentally changed our understanding of the political and moral philosophy of certain key intellectual figures. Yet, as with the debate over the so-called Aristotelian revolution, many historians remain more familiar with “fossilized” understandings of the thought of figures such as Machiavelli or John Quidort of Paris than with new conceptions that have – and continue to – emerge. We offer two examples in this chapter by way of demonstration. Finally, since the appearance of the Burns’ volume, historians of political thought have opened up wholly new terrain and new debates. This third theme has much to say to those interested in topics such as toleration or who are engaged in discussion over periodization, the latter an issue of renewed focus in the wake of a turn towards the “global Middle Ages.”24 All three themes are significant; all three offer the potential for new insights; and all three would, we suggest, benefit studies of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by being better known. Scholarship on medieval political thought in the last half a century has revolved around several key themes such as the canonist contributions to political thought and the revival of Roman law scholarship. Few, if any, would dispute that the place of the Aristotelian tradition in medieval political thought is a classic historiographical problem. And yet it is not commonly found in contemporary introductions to such problems. The debate over whether Rome fell and the exact nature of Viking settlement continue to be popular touch points; the question of whether or not historians should accept Walter U llmann’s argument that there was a revolution in the thirteenth century does not. Ullmann’s thesis, which remains influential, argued that the independence of citizens from the universal rule of the Church emerged as the Aristotelian view of the political community as a natural and autonomous sphere of human activity gained force in medieval political conceptualizations.25 By so claiming, Ullmann

8  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

underlined the historical significance of the “rediscovery of A ristotle”: the translation of Aristotelian writings into Latin in the thirteenth century was, he suggested, fundamental to the development of western political thought. It was the starting point for a revolution that finally broke the stranglehold that had shaped medieval thought since the Early Church Fathers’ profound distrust of the state crystallized in Augustine’s City of God. The debate can be said to have begun when Francis Oakley called into question Ullmann’s whole interpretative framework.26 The lines became particularly blurred when it was noted that those who embraced Aristotle did not always draw the same conclusions: the contrast is, perhaps, at its most striking when the thought of John Quidort is compared with that of the papal hierocrats Giles of Rome and James of Virterbo. The latter have been proclaimed the quintessential exponents of “political Augustinianism,” a phrase coined by Henri-Xavier Arquillière, yet both were as much students of Aristotle as John (Giles perhaps more so).27 Scholars such as Canning have gone on to question the very nature of the so-called “revolution,” raising the importance of other influences, such as Roman law.28 Cary J. Nederman has refuted Ullmann’s essential argument by showing that key ideas of Aristotelian ethics and politics had already been accessible to medieval intellectuals through other intermediary sources such as Cicero and Boethius before Aristotelian texts became available in translation.29 In Nederman’s reading, the “rediscovery of Aristotle” was not so much revolutionary as evolutionary in terms of its impact on medieval political thinking. Downplaying the historical significance of the “rediscovery” of Aristotelian moral and political philosophy on medieval and Renaissance political thought does not imply a facile dismissal of the Aristotelian legacy. Indeed, it has been revealed that the Aristotelian conception of political and moral knowledge as “practical” was widely shared in medieval political writings.30 Meanwhile, the relative de-emphasis on the Aristotelian influence can, more significantly, be complemented by highlighting Cicero’s under-appreciated intellectual legacy. A number of Cicero’s works, unlike Aristotle’s, were known to intellectuals in the Middle Ages. It is increasingly acknowledged that in addition to Augustine and Aristotle, Cicero made distinctive contributions to medieval political theorizing on the origins of the political community, the idea of justice, and rhetorical eloquence in political communication. Nederman’s most recent book epitomizes his reappraisal of the Ciceronian influence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and it is safe to say that the recovery of the Ciceronian tradition in medieval political thought is an extremely significant contribution to a debate that by no means ended in 1988.31 Scholars from Christoph Flüeler to Luca Bianchi have similarly added to our exploration of the question of Aristotle’s reception and legacy.32 Recent research has identified other under-appreciated classical traditions: Joel Kaye, for example, uncovered the Galenic influence in the medieval accounts of equilibrium in political and economic thought 33; Nederman, again, has recently excavated

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  9

the Polybian tradition.34 The re-evaluation of Aristotle’s influence is just one challenge to the staid argument that everything about the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought that needs to be said has been said. Given the radical ways in which the Aristotelian revolution has been contested and the richness of the debate, it is perplexing that it has yet to find its place among the “classic” historiographical problems.35 Recent scholarship also offers important re-evaluations of the political and moral philosophy of some key medieval intellectual figures, as well as introducing us to the political thought of a range of new thinkers to whom little to no attention has been paid. While we will leave introducing the latter to the volume’s contributors, to illustrate our point, we offer two well-known members of the canon here: the twelfth-century English churchman and humanist scholar, John of Salisbury, and the fourteenth-century political theorist and physician Marsilius of Padua. In each case, our intention is not to offer a complete overview of current debates but simply to convey a sense of their vibrancy. While the Ciceronian impulse has been discerned in John’s political and moral writings, such as Policraticus and Metalogicon, his famous metaphor of the body politic in the Policraticus has been reinterpreted from a fresh perspective. Previously, the body politic metaphor in medieval political texts had been viewed as an ideological expression of a rigid, hierarchical society. Yet, the latest research has revealed the diversity of medieval conceptualizations of the body politic’s structure and operation.36 John’s body politic metaphor has been re-interpreted as a representation of a system of interdependence among various members of the body politic.37 The interpretive renewal of John’s metaphorical discussion also resulted in a new interpretation of John’s notoriously elusive account of tyrannicide; John defended the moral permissibility of tyrannicide, contrary to the traditional scepticism.38 And the debate continues: that scepticism remains influential.39 Considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to Marsilius of Padua in the last three decades.40 Traditionally, the interpretive landscape of Marsilius’ political thought was polarized: Marsilius was presented as a republican thinker by, for example, Alan Gewirth, Nicholai Rubinstein, and Quentin Skinner; yet others, notably Jeannine Quillet, saw him as a traditional imperialist.41 Since 1988, Cary Nederman has proposed a third way: a nuanced account of Marsilius’ “secular” and “generic” political theory, which, he suggests, was neither a “revolutionary” departure from the medieval tradition nor a “typical” medieval reverberation of Aristotelian political science.42 Nederman’s interpretation has since been challenged from a critical standpoint by George Garnett. Garnett rehabilitates the traditional imperialist thesis.43 It has also been challenged from a “global” perspective by Vasileios Syros who situates Marsilius in the context of not only the Christian and Graeco-Roman tradition, but also Muslim, Jewish, and Byzantine traditions.44 It would be possible to multiply the above examples. The Dominican theologian John Quidort is another figure whose thought has undergone significant

10  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

re-evaluation in recent years.45 Another important example would be Ptolemy of Lucca, who, as James Blythe draws our attention to, was the earliest theorist to establish the modern use of the term “republic.”46 Scholars of political thought have, however, not only re-examined the thought of such figures; they have also sought to open up new debates and to explore new terrain. The late Brian Tierney’s series of publications, for example, opened up a new vista onto the history of natural rights, revitalizing debates among intellectual historians as well as legal philosophers.47 An original aspect of Marsilius’ political thought is, for example, his vindication of tolerating heretics. Since the 1980s, medievalists, beginning with R. I. Moore’s influential thesis, have often portrayed the late medieval world as a “persecuting society.”48 Nederman’s Worlds of Difference, probably the most influential of his monographs, challenges the orthodox view of the philosophical and historical nexus between liberalism and toleration.49 Re-reading diverse medieval authors ranging from Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury to Nicholas of Cusa and Bartolomé de las Casas has suggested that medieval political thought defended and celebrated human diversity and differences. This highlights something of a paradox: if Moore is correct, and a lack of toleration was fostered by centralizing governments, then the lettered theorists often associated with justifying the expansion of those regimes’ authority seem to have adopted a very different view. This is just one area where the wider field of medieval and Renaissance studies would be enriched through greater engagement with the history of political thought.50 On a similar note, recent developments in the historiography of medieval and Renaissance political thought have had important repercussions for perennial questions concerning when things stop and when they begin, that is the issue of periodization. Brian Tierney, Francis Oakley, and Quentin Skinner presented the history of medieval and early modern political thought as a continuum; Hans Baron and J. G. A. Pocock, by contrast, observed a serious rupture around 1400.51 Recent scholarship suggests the issue is much more complex than this simple dichotomy will allow.52 Exploration of the republican tradition in western political thought, to take another example where lines blur, lays bare the pluralistic nature of that tradition, running through ancient, medieval, and modern periods. The republican tradition was diverse in late medieval and Renaissance thought to the extent that republicanism and the ideals of universal empire were not mutually exclusive. This point is, perhaps, at its clearest in twenty-first century re-assessments of Marsilius, which have begun to balance discussion of Discourse 1 of his Defensor pacis with that of Discourse 2, something that often eluded twentieth-century historians.53 It would be reasonable to ask, though, whether these are not somewhat inward-looking debates, and of little interest to more than a handful of dedicated specialists. We would suggest, they are anything but. They have wider implications for when – and even if – lines should be drawn between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the wider early modern period. Ensuring the complexity of western political

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  11

conceptions are appreciated fully is important at a time when m ­ edievalists, in particular, are increasingly seeking to bring the western tradition as a whole into dialogue with wider, global history. These debates are important if we are to avoid an outdated conception of western political thought. Indeed, one under-appreciated fact worth noting is that leading experts in this field pioneered globalizing the history of political thought. Anthony Parel, who is widely known especially for his scholarship on Machiavelli, was among a small number of scholars who launched a new field of enquiry: comparative political theory. Parel preached serious engagement with non-Western political texts – in his case, Mahatma Gandhi especially – in order to move beyond the horizon of Euro-American political conceptualizations.54 Meanwhile, Francis Oakley wrote a global history of kingship, while Antony Black produced a general survey of Islamic political thought as well as a global history of ancient political thought.55 Cary Nederman also played a significant role in this disciplinary metamorphosis through collaborative projects.56 It is no accident that the impulse to globalize the history of political thought emerged among experts in medieval political thought, for they could not take the modern concept of politics for granted in their scholarly enquiries. The study of political thought before the early modern era cannot be defined narrowly as “theories of the state,” the state being a concept that was only in the making in the Middle Ages. Medieval and Renaissance political thought includes within its scope a diverse range of human communities such as city state, kingdom, empire, and even the Church; ecclesiology is indeed an integral part of the “political” thought of this era. Precisely because they operate on broader and flexible conceptions of politics, historians of political thought in this period find they face no theoretical obstacles when wading into non-western political conceptualizations. One can infer from this that scholarly investigations into the medieval and Renaissance thought-world relativize our modern assumptions radically, thereby emancipating us from the straitjacket of Eurocentric modernity. *** The essays assembled in this collection are chosen to illustrate important aspects of our three key, overlapping themes. The whole is not intended to offer a comprehensive overview. Nevertheless, each contribution is an important example of the way in which studies within the scope of the “traditional” field of medieval and Renaissance political thought are developing. The material assembled here offers challenges to received historiographical wisdom; re-evaluations of thinkers whose ideas we assume we know well; introductions to new and overlooked sources for political ideas; and demonstrates the way in which the study of medieval and Renaissance political thought has a significant contribution to make to ongoing debates over topics such as periodization and toleration.

12  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

Taken as a whole, the collection suggests (some) potential future directions in the field. Together they embody, as we suggest above, something of a manifesto. Before we begin, however, Clare Monagle will draw our attention to the importance of methodological considerations. In what is both a coda and a counterpoint to this introductory chapter, Monagle explores a theme evident throughout this book: the commitment to rigorous practices of contextualization that situate ideas firmly in their place and time. She argues that this collection, taken as a whole, disrupts teleological narratives of political thought in the European tradition. However, Monagle also highlights that the practices of close intertextual and contextual reading have significant limitations: they leave little room for assessing texts in their broader context of social and, in particular, gender hierarchies. Does this undermine an argument to attach more importance to the study of the “traditional” canon? Or can it be considered to underline the importance of our manifesto as a springboard for other approaches? The importance of Monagle’s significant caveat is one we ask the reader to consider throughout. In structuring her reflections, Monagle picks up on a point implicit in our above discussion, Cary Nederman’s important influence in shaping the discipline in the last 30 years. Following on from this, it seems appropriate to begin our section exploring historiographical problems with an example of critical engagement with one of Nederman’s most important hypotheses: his reappraisal of the Aristotelian tradition and the light it sheds on Ciceronian influences. Aristotle considered humans to be political animals: humans associate with each other to form a society naturally. Augustine, by contrast, argued that humans possess a corrupt nature, tainted by original sin, which made it impossible for them to associate peacefully with each other. Thus, political authority was unnatural: it is a necessary evil that is imposed on an imperfect, post-lapsarian world in order to establish peace and order. This creates an ostensibly unbridgeable gulf between the Aristotelian and the Augustinian views of the origin of civil society. One of Nederman’s most influential essays is a 1988 article in which he suggested that this gap might be bridged by Cicero’s idea that humans, who are capable of choosing either to associate or not to associate with each other, are persuaded rationally by speech.57 The Ciceronian emphasis on speech and oratory thus became one of the foci of his investigation into the Ciceronian tradition in European political thought. Entering into this debate, Gary Remer tests the validity of Nederman’s claim that Cicero, not Aristotle, was the source of the commonplace view in medieval political thought that oratory constitutes “the union of wisdom and eloquence,” which serves the common good of the political community. Remer does so by immediately introducing a “global” approach. He examines two Jewish thinkers: Maimonides and Messer Leon. Maimonides operated in a medieval Islamic intellectual context, an environment that was influenced by Aristotle and not

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  13

by Cicero in terms of rhetoric. Messer Leon, by contrast, immersed himself in the intellectual context of the Italian Renaissance where Cicero was a powerful influence. Maimonides’ dearth of interest in the political significance of rhetoric and Messer Leon’s emphasis on oratory, Remer argues, confirms – and indeed bolsters – Nederman’s claim. Bee Yun takes us in a different direction in our second engagement with historiographical debates. Here we consider the problem of method in Niccolò Machiavelli’s political theory, another topic which Nederman has, in this case with Megan Dyer, also pondered. The alleged lack of any system in Machiavelli’s works has been subject to a range of explanations. Here Yun considers the problem from a new perspective by turning to Machiavelli’s motivations in writing. In so doing, the chapter offers a broader discussion of how the problem of method was understood in the Italian Renaissance and, in dialogue with Monagle, raises the issue of presentism, here with a note of caution. On the Twelve Abuses, a seventh-century Irish treatise, belongs, like The Prince, to the literary genre of the “mirror of princes.” In our third historiographical consideration, Constant Mews turns to explore the influence of the biblical tradition on medieval political thought. In so doing, he illustrates the value of expanding beyond the received canon of sources. On the Twelve Abuses also indicates a further trend. The tract is particularly notable as it survived in more than 300 manuscripts. Some practitioners have, in recent years, begun to pay much closer attention to the link between influence and circulation in their assessment of texts.58 Mews reveals the Irish treatise’s central theme: 12 abuses – from the “proud pauper” to the “wicked king” – that are all suffocating justice. He shows that what this text has to say about justice, which is biblically grounded, would continue to have significant influence on ethical and political traditions in the later Middle Ages, alongside traditions influenced by classical authors such as Cicero and Aristotle. Mirrors of princes offered a guidebook to rulers, the most famous example of which is undoubtedly Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum, which bears the deep imprimatur of Aristotelian ideas.59 Charles F. Briggs, however, introduces our second theme, Fresh Interpretations, by focusing our attention on the re-evaluation of a less well-known English work of political advice: Roger Waltham’s Compendium morale ex dictis virtuosis et factis memorabilibus antiquorum proficiencium. Briggs rescues this work from deprecation and oblivion by showing that a series of exempla Waltham recited derived from a wide range of classical, legal, and biblical sources. Waltham employs these to argue for royal rule as a kind of virtuous partnership between the prince and his natural counsellors. Thus, Briggs restores Waltham’s Compendium morale to the “mirror of princes” tradition alongside John of Salisbury’s Policraticus and John of Wales’ Breviloquium. One of the most important concepts in late medieval political thought is the idea of the “common good.” We continue our exploration of our second theme by re-evaluating the way in which late medieval thinkers have approached this

14  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

idea. Matthew Kempshall’s 1999 work examined a variety of discourses on the common good in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; however, his account of early fourteenth-century giants such as Marsilius and William of Ockham was relatively brief.60 Roberto Lambertini revisits this territory by re-examining the way in which not only Marsilius and Ockham but also Augustinus of Ancona approach the concept in order to appreciate the diversity of its use. In light of the idea of the common good, Augustinus defended papal absolutism, while Marsilius and Ockham argued for institutional arrangements that fostered temporal peace and order. Thus, Lambertini aligns himself with Kempshall’s observations, although he also notes divergences between Marsilius and Ockham. Benedetto Fontana, on the other hand, returns us to the best known pre-modern political thinker. Highlighting Machiavelli’s critique of the corruption of Florentine republicanism through an examination of his analysis of the Ciompi, Fontana offers a re-evaluation that opens up new ways of considering this highly original thinker. Fontana argues that Machiavelli’s historical account of the rebellion of disenfranchised workers uncovers a “profound socio-economic and political chasm” in society, thereby revealing the Florentine’s insight into the fragility of republican order. One of the most exciting elements of work undertaken in the field of the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought since the 1980s has involved the way in which its practitioners have sought to open up new terrain and offer new approaches to existing debates. Among the issues of particular relevance to contemporary scholarship that they have drawn attention to are the assumptions made about periodization, and, in particular, the traditional divide drawn between the Middle Ages and the early modern period. In this volume, Paul Rahe engages once again with this debate in relation to the republican tradition by re-reading Machiavelli in close comparison with his contemporaries: Girolamo Savonarola, Desiderius Erasmus, and Baldasar Castiglione. It is worth noting that Nederman’s intervention constituted a “third way” in this already deeply polarized debate. Nederman offered an alternative to both what he observed to be J. G. A. Pocock’s homogenizing portrayal of that tradition and Rahe and others’ rejection of Pocock’s thesis by recognizing a broad unity in the classical republican tradition while appreciating diversity therein. In this chapter, Rahe aims to rescue Machiavelli from historians’ tendency to reduce past thinkers into various traditions, thereby criticizing Pocockian “linguistic contextualism.” Donald Kagan once argued—and Jack Hexter later endorsed—that the single major fault line that divides historians is the distinction between lumpers and splitters. “Lumpers note likenesses; instead of separated, connection. … Splitters,” on the other hand, “like to point out divergences, to perceive differences, to draw distinctions.”61 Rahe is determined here to be a splitter. Marcia Colish and Takashi Shogimen take us into a second debate with considerable relevance to contemporary scholarship, that concerning toleration.

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  15

Colish endorses and bolsters Nederman’s critique of the conventional view of a medieval “persecuting society.” While Nederman highlighted the ways in which medieval intellectuals from Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury to Marsilius of Padua and Nicholas of Cusa embraced human diversity and tolerance of “others,” Colish turns her attention to intra-communal tolerance of diversity among medieval scholastics. Taking the cases of debates on the Eucharist and baptism, she argues that medieval scholastics not only preached but practised tolerance of diversity within orthodox Christian consensus. Tolerance or toleration denotes not only celebratory accommodation of diversity but also the principle of refraining from interfering with an objectionable object. Did this conception of toleration, which liberal thinkers claim is uniquely modern, exist in the Middle Ages? Shogimen tackles this question by examining Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham’s writings on heresy. A comparison of two giants in late medieval political thought reveals that they both defended the “liberal” notion of toleration despite being within distinctively medieval contexts of religious uniformity and a hierarchical social order. Like Nederman, Colish and Shogimen complicate R. I. Moore’s thesis. The nature of medieval toleration is merely one issue in the historiographical debate concerning the continuity between medieval and early modern thought. Jason Taliadoros, with relative emphasis on the question of rights, revisits a debate between Nederman and Brian Tierney rooted in this question of continuity. Nederman’s work on tolerance highlighted continuity by questioning the narrative that a medieval “intolerant” society in Western Europe was superseded by a more “tolerant” society after the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation. However, Nederman also observed aspects of discontinuity; the idea of right (ius) and the relationship between conciliarism and constitutionalism are two key areas in which he sees rupture between medieval and early modern political thought.62 After surveying Nederman’s critique of Tierney’s claim of the conciliar genesis of early modern constitutionalism, Taliadoros reappraises both Tierney’s thesis of the medieval birth of individual (subjective) rights and Nederman’s refutation of it in light of the legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld’s approach to a right. Hohfeld’s understanding of a right underscores the co-existence of duty between the right-holder and the individual subject to that right. Through the prism of the Hohfeldian approach, Taliadoros concludes that the differences between Nederman and Tierney consist in their approaches: Nederman’s understanding of a medieval right is political in that it focuses on the right as the guard against the encroachment of sovereign rule; Tierney’s is not necessarily political in that it refers to individual autonomy and self-determination. Far from having stagnated since the late 1980s, the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought remains an exciting and vibrant field. As these chapters illustrate, key historiographical debates, particularly those concerning the influence of the classical world on later thought, have neither “fossilized”

16  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

nor can be considered to have “concluded.” To draw out this point, we end the volume with two essays both of which respond to the themes raised throughout. Frédérique Lachaud both returns us to the question of methodology and invites us to consider the relationship between political thought and political reality. We are reminded that the contours of political thought evolved. Taking Giles of Rome, the quintessential author of a “mirror of princes,” and his engagement with Aristotle’s Politics by way of example, Lachaud highlights how an interest in theory might reflect the reality of contemporary political concerns. Equally, she reminds us that contemporary theorists engaged infrequently with topics, such as succession or composite monarchy, where we might have expected them to take more interest. Finally, Cary Nederman offers his own thoughts on the opportunities the current state of scholarship on European medieval and Renaissance political thought offers future researchers. He identifies what he considers to be the lacunae and limitations. Some are “technical,” such as the need for more textual editing and translations; others are more “attitudinal,” a reflection that draws us back, once again, to the relationship between the field and presentism. New perspectives and the reinterpretation of old certainties abound. As both Lachaud and Nederman remind us, there remains a good deal that scholars of medieval and Renaissance political thought can tell us via their efforts to reconsider and re-evaluate the “canon.” Such scholarship is making important contributions to critical debates ranging from periodization to toleration, but it is also raising significant, broader questions about methodology and presentism that historians and political scientists would be remiss not to engage with. The history of medieval and Renaissance political thought is important not simply for those interested in the development of the “political” in post-classical, pre-modern Europe, but more generally for the wider disciplines of History and Political Science alike.

Notes 1 As summarized in a recent and ambitious attempt to revise the popular image of the period: Matthew Gabrielle and David M. Perry, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (New York: HarperCollins, 2021), xiv. 2 A striking example of such an approach from Australasia is the Ramsay Centre (https://www.ramsaycentre.org), and the degree programme it sponsors in “western civilization.” See Nick Riemer, “The Ramsay Centre and the Reality of Ideology,” Overland, March 29, 2019, https://overland.org.au/2019/03/ the-ramsay-centre-and-the-reality-of-ideology/. 3 For some discussion of the relationship between IR and History, George Lawson, “The Eternal Divide? History and International Relations,” E-International ­Relations (2013), accessed February 18, 2022, https://www.e-ir.info/2013/05/19/ the-eternal-divide-history-and-international-relations/. 4 See in particular Kate Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (London: Routledge, 2002); and for the context in which Christine’s thought developed: Tracy Adams, Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014).

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  17





18  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen



­









Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  19









20  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

47 Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150–1625 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997). See also idem, Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014). 48 For the classic formulation: R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). 49 Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100-c.1550 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). 50 The debate is summed up in Aberth, Contesting the Middle Ages, 101–05, with a reference to Nederman’s contribution, 130 n. 11, but without wider reflection on the contribution that the history of political thought might make to the debate. 51 Brian Tierney, Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought 1150–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Francis Oakley, The Conciliar Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); idem, The Emergence of Western Political Thought; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought; Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). 52 See Cary J. Nederman, Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), chs. 1, 3. 53 For a notable example of this new approach: Roberto Lambertini, “Marsilius and the Poverty Controversy in Dictio II,” in A Companion to Marsilius of Padua, 229–63. 54 The seminal text is Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith, eds., Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992). The field of comparative political theory has since expanded significantly. Probably the best starting point is: Leigh K. Jenco, Murad Idris, and Megan C. Thomas, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 55 Francis Oakley, Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001; 2nd edn, 2011); idem, The West and Islam: Religion and Political Thought in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); idem, A World History of Ancient Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 56 Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman, eds., Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); Sara R. Jordan and Cary J. Nederman, “The Logic of the History of Ideas and the Study of Comparative Political Theory,” Journal of the History of Ideas 73 (2012): 627–41. 57 Cary J. Nederman, “Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society: the Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 3–26; repr. Nederman, Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits, 3–26. 58 The approach, of course, is by no means new to medieval studies as a whole. For a classic formulation of the link between influence and circulation, in this case with regard to chronicles: Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980), 248–74. Limited manuscript traditions did not necessarily preclude complex texts from circulating but they are likely to have placed at least some restrictions on knowledge of them: “La diffusion orale est impossible à saisir. La seule chose sûre est que, pour les œuvres historiques au moins, elle ne peut pas aller, sans le manuscrit, bien loin.” Ibid., 256. 59 Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275-c.1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Roberto Lambertini, “The Prince in the Mirror of Philosophy. Uses

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  21

of Aristotle in Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum,” in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Âge/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, Ottawa, 17–22 August 1992, eds. B. C. Bazán, E. Andújar, and J. G. Sbrocchi (Ottawa: Publications du Laboratoire de la pensée ancienne et médiévale, Université d’Ottawa, 1995), 1522–34. And see, most recently, the essays in Charles Briggs and Peter Eardley, eds., A Companion to Giles of Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 60 Matthew S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). 61 J. H. Hexter, On Historians: Reappraisals of Some of the Masters of Modern History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 242. 62 Nederman, Lineages of European Political Thought, ch. 7.

Bibliography Aberth, John. Contesting the Middle Ages: Debates that are Changing our Narrative of Medieval History. London: Routledge, 2019. Adams, Tracy. Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014. Ambler, Sophie T. Bishops in the Political Community of England, 1213–1272. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. ———. “On Kingship and Tyranny: Grosseteste’s Memorandum and its Place in the Baronial Reform Movement.” In Thirteenth Century England XIV: Proceedings of the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2011, edited by Janet Burton, Phillipp Schofield, and Björn Weiler, 115–28. Martlesham: Boydell Press, 2013. Arnold, John H. What is Medieval History? 2nd edn. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021. Arquillière, H.-X. L’Augustinisme politique: Essai sur la formation des théories politiques du moyen age, 2nd edn. Paris: Vrin, 1955. Balachandran, G. “History after the Global Turn: Perspectives from Rim and Region.” History Australia 14, no. 1 (2017): 6–12, https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2017.12 86709. Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955. Bianchi, Luca, ed. Christian Readings of Aristotle from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Black, Antony. A World History of Ancient Political Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present. London: Methuen, 1984. Reissued as Guild and State: European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009. ———. Political Thought in Europe 1250–1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ———. The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001/2011. ———. The West and Islam: Religion and Political Thought in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Blythe, James M. The Life & Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca). Turnhout: Brepols, 2009.

22  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

———. The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca). Turnhout: ­Brepols, 2009. Briggs, Charles F. Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275-c.1525. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Briggs, Charles and Peter Eardley, eds. A Companion to Giles of Rome. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Burns, J. H. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350-c.1450, edited by J. H. Burns, 1–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Canning, Joseph. A History of Medieval Political Thought 300–1450, 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 1996/2005. ———. Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296–1417. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ———. “Ideas of the State in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century Commentators on the Roman Law.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society series 5, 33 (1983): 1–27, https://doi.org/10.2307/3678987. Carlyle, R. W. and A. J. Carlyle. A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West. 6 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1903–36. Chazan, Mireille. L’Empire et I’histoire universelle de Sigebert de Gembloux à Jean de Saint-Victor (XIIe-XIVe siècle). Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999. Coleman, Janet. A History of Political Thought: From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Dunbabin, Jean. “Government.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350-c.1450, edited by J. H. Burns, 477–519. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Flüeler, Christoph. Rezeption und Interpretation der Aristotelischen Politica im späten ­Mittelalter, 2 vols. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 1992. Forhan, Kate. The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan. London: Routledge, 2002. Gabrielle, Matthew and David M. Perry. The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe. New York: HarperCollins, 2021. Garnett, George. Marsilius of Padua & the “Truth of History.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Gierke, Otto. Political Theories of the Middle Ages. Translated by F. W. Maitland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900. Green, Monica H., ed. Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death. Leeds: ARC-Humanities Press, 2015. Guenée, Bernard. Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980. Guyot-Bachy, Isabelle. Le Memoriale historiarum de Jean de Saint-Victor. Un historien et sa communauté au début du XIVe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. ———. “Les guerres de Flandre dans le processus de formation de la communitas regni au travers des récits des chroniqueurs français (1214-première moitié du XIVe ­siècle).” In Communitas regni: La “communauté de royaume” de la fin du Xe siècle au début du XIVe siècle (Angleterre, Écosse, France, Empire, Scandinavie), edited by Dominique Barthélemy, Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Frédérique Lachaud, and Jean-Marie Moeglin, 181–96. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2020. Hexter, J. H. On Historians: Reappraisals of Some of the Masters of Modern History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  23

Holmes, Catherine, Jonathan Shepard, Jo van Steenbergen, and Björn Weiler, eds. Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c. 700-c. 1500: A Framework for Comparing Three Spheres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Hymes, Robert and Monica H. Green. New Evidence for the Dating and Impact of the Black Death in Asia, edited by Carol Symes. Leeds: ARC-Humanities Press, 2022. Jenco, Leigh K., Murad Idris, and Megan C. Thomas, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Jones, Chris. Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and its Rulers in Late ­Medieval France. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. ———. “Geoffroi of Courlon and Political Perceptions in Late Medieval France.” Viator 47, no. 1 (2016): 153–89, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.109471. ———, ed. John of Paris: Beyond Royal & Papal Power. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Jones, Chris, Klaus Oschema, and Christoph Mauntel, eds. “A World of Empires. Claiming and Assigning Imperial Authority in the High and Late Middle Ages.” The Medieval History Journal 20, no. 2 (2017), Special Issue. Jordan, Sara R. and Cary J. Nederman. “The Logic of the History of Ideas and the Study of Comparative Political Theory.” Journal of the History of Ideas 73 (2012): 627–41. Kaye, Joel. A History of Balance 1250–1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and its Impact on Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Kempshall, Matthew S. The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Krynen, Jacques. L’empire du roi: Idées et croyances politiques en France XIIIe-XVe siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 1993. Lambertini, Roberto. “Marsilius and the Poverty Controversy in Dictio II.” In A Companion to Marsilius of Padua, edited by Gerson Moreno-Riaño and Cary J. Nederman, 229–63. Leiden: Brill, 2012. ———. “The Prince in the Mirror of Philosophy. Uses of Aristotle in Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum,” In Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Âge/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, Ottawa, 17–22 August 1992, edited by B. C. Bazán, E. Andújar, and J. G. Sbrocchi, 1522–34. Ottawa: Publications du Laboratoire de la pensée ancienne et médiévale, Université d’Ottawa, 1995. Lawson, George. “The Eternal Divide? History and International Relations.” E-International Relations (2013). Accessed February 18, 2022. https://www.e-ir. info/2013/05/19/the-eternal-divide-history-and-international-relations/. Lerner, Robert E. “Review: Chris Jones, ed. John of Paris: Beyond Royal & Papal Power. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.” American Historical Review 121, no. 5 (2016): 1731–32. McIlwain, Charles Howard. The Growth of Political Thought in the West: From the Greeks to the End of the Middle Ages. London: Macmillan, 1932. Miethke, Jürgen. De potestate papae. Die päpstliche Amtskompetenz im Widerstreit der politischen Theorie von Thomas von Aquin bis Wilhelm von Ockham. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Moore, R. I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Moreno-Riaño, Gerson, ed. The World of Marsilius of Padua. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Moreno-Riaño, Gerson and Cary. J. Nederman, eds. A Companion to Marsilius of Padua. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Nederman, Cary J. “A Duty to Kill: John of Salisbury’s Theory of Tyrannicide.” Review of Politics 50 (1988): 365–89.

24  Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen

———. “Cicero Speaks French: Ciceronian Themes in Brunetto Latini, Nicole Oresme and Christine de Pizan.” Quaestiones medii aevi novae 22 (2017): 205–29. ———. Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995. ———. Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. ———. “Machiavelli and the Lingering Mystery of Polybius VI.” In Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy: New Readings, edited by Diogo Pires Aurelio and Andre Santos Campos, 43–59. Leiden: Brill, 2021. ———. Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th-15th Centuries. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. ———. “Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society: The Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought.” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 3–26; reprinted Cary J. Nederman. Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th-15th Centuries. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997, 3–26. ———. “Polybius as Monarchist? Receptions of Histories VI before Machiavelli, c. ­1490-c. 1515.” History of Political Thought 37, no. 3 (2016): 461–79. ———. The Bonds of Humanity: Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and Political Thought, ca. 1100-ca. 1550. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. ———. “The Physiological Significance of the Organic Metaphor in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus.” History of Political Thought 8, no. 2 (1987): 211–23. ———. Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100-c.1550. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Nederman, Cary J., and Mary Elizabeth Sullivan. “The Polybian Moment: The Transformation of Republican Thought from Ptolemy of Lucca to Machiavelli.” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 17, no. 7 (2012): 867–81. Oakley, Francis. “Celestial Hierarchies Revisited: Walter Ullmann’s Vision of Medieval Politics.” Past and Present 60 (1973): 3–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/60.1.3. ———. Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. ———. The Conciliar Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, 3 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010–2015. Parel, Anthony J., and Ronald C. Keith, eds. Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Quillet, Jeannine. La philosophie politique de Marsile de Padoue. Paris: Vrin, 1970. Riemer, Nick. “The Ramsay Centre and the Reality of Ideology.” Overland. Accessed March 29, 2019. https://overland.org.au/2019/03/the-ramsay-centre-and-thereality-of-ideology/. Rouse, Richard H., and Mary A. Rouse. “John of Salisbury and the Doctrine of ­Tyrannicide.” Speculum 42 (1967): 693–709. Sabapathy, John. Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170–1300. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought  25

———. “Robert of Courson’s Systematic Thinking about Early Thirteenth-Century Institutions.” In Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism, edited by Antonia Fitzpatrick and John Sabapathy, 199–216. London: University of London Press, 2020. Scordia, Lydwine. “Les fondements de la communitas regni dans les questions quodlibétiques de la faculté de théologie de Paris à la fin du XIIIe siècle.” In Communitas regni: La “communauté de royaume” de la fin du Xe siècle au début du XIVe siècle (Angleterre, Écosse, France, Empire, Scandinavie), edited by Dominique Barthélemy, Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Frédérique Lachaud, and Jean-Marie Moeglin, 65–82. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2020. Shirota, Maree. “Royal Depositions and the ‘Canterbury Roll’.” Parergon 32, no. 2 (2015): 39–61. Shogimen, Takashi, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Shogimen, Takashi. “Medicine and the Body Politic in Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis.” In A Companion to Marsilius of Padua, edited by Gerson Moreno-Riaño and Cary J. Nederman, 71–115. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53, https://doi.org/10.2307/2504188. ———. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Syros, Vasileios. Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Traditions of Political Thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Tierney, Brian. Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. ———. Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought 1150–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150–1625. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997. Ubl, Karl. “Aristotle and the Empire. Imperium, regnum, and communitas in Albert the Great and Engelbert of Admont.” In Communitas regni: La “communauté de royaume” de la fin du Xe siècle au début du XIVe siècle (Angleterre, Écosse, France, Empire, Scandinavie), edited by Dominique Barthélemy, Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Frédérique Lachaud, and Jean-Marie Moeglin, 83–95. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2020. Ullmann, Walter. A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965. ———. Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen, 1961. Van Laarhofen, Jan. “Thou Shall Not Slay a Tyrant! The So-Called Theory of John of Salisbury.” In The World of John of Salisbury, edited by Michael Wilks, 319–41. Studies in Church History: Subsidia 3. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984. Williams, Madi. Polynesia, 900–1600. Leeds: ARC-Humanities Press, 2021. Wollenberg, Daniel. Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics. Leeds: ARC-Humanities Press, 2018.

2 MEDIEVAL IDEAS AND THE ETHICS OF LISTENING Clare Monagle

Cary J. Nederman’s work has always demonstrated a profound commitment to thinking without teleology. That is, Cary has never been invested in the European Middle Ages as either foundation or as other. He has not devoted himself to proving that, if we look hard enough, we can see the faint outlines of the Hobbesian state in utero in medieval polities. Nor has he argued that the Middle Ages offers forms of creative political otherness that were destroyed by modernity, and which warrant recuperation and/or veneration. As much as is possible, he has taken moments in the history of political thought as he has found them and has explored the intricate set of negotiations made by medieval political thinkers on their own terms. Throughout his career, he has sustained this non-instrumentalizing account of the Middle Ages, working hard and generously to explicate for his readers the knotty textual traditions and local contexts that gave rise to practices of, and concepts in, medieval political thought. Jones and Shogimen have explained in their introduction why the chapters in this collection are important; they have also indicated the important influence of Nederman in fields of political theory and intellectual history over the last 30 years. Some might, however, question the prominence of Nederman’s scholarship in this volume. This short reflective essay will offer a personal engagement but it also picks up on this latter point and considers the book’s approach from the perspective of Nederman’s influence, as well as suggesting some of the limitations of his approach. The chapters in this volume testify to the necessity, and integrity, of reading medieval thought rigorously within its own terms, and avoiding presentism where possible. At the same time, such an approach also means taking medieval thinkers at their words, precluding analysis and investigation into the myriad things that are not made explicit in their enquiries. For example, the medieval DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-3

Medieval Ideas and the Ethics of Listening   27

thinkers discussed in this volume have little, if anything, to say about gender. Yet their projects, actions, and writings are embedded in masculine worlds and supported by the explicit gender hierarchies of medieval European society. My contribution seeks not only to celebrate the type of approach to intellectual history proffered by the essays in this volume but also to recognize what may be occluded when we hold tightly to the script, so to speak. Nederman’s historiographical ethics, it seems to me, are grounded in a commitment to listening, rather than to synthesizing or totalizing. Anyone who has spent time with Cary will know that he presents as a talker, as a lively and playful interlocutor who will not only get the party started but will make sure that everyone has a good time and be around at the end to sort the recycling. On the page, however, he registers first and foremost as a listener, attentive to the myriad concerns and horizons of possibilities that inform the texts with which he engages. In the prefatory remark to his most recent monograph, The Bonds of Humanity: Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and Political Thought, ca. 1100 to ca. 1550, Nederman outlines his approach to listening with an anecdote. He recalls describing his book to a retired employee of the California Department of Transportation, who had then asked him “Why would you want to bother with that?” Nederman’s answer to the question offers as pithy and clear account of his approach to history as possible. He replied: See, that’s what my book is about. A bunch of folks who are trying to figure out where their loyalties lie, who know that they have responsibilities to a lot of others in different ways but don’t necessarily have any easy answers to how those work out. They were just like you and me. By listening to them it can make us think. When Nederman says here that his subjects were just like you and me, he does not mean, of course, that they shared the same responsibilities and anxieties as we do, or that they oriented to the same problems and solutions. He is recognizing, however, that their negotiations and confusions were as complex as our own and were felt as keenly. He is no apologist for the Middle Ages, nor does he seek to condemn. He attempts to hear, and to do so he excavates whispers and clamour, sighs and shouting. This practice has not only given us rich insights into practices of thinking politically in the medieval period, but he has also constituted archives that enable others to listen as well. The chapters in this volume are united by content to some degree, but also in their demonstration of the type of listening that Nederman espouses. Each piece is characterized by a thoughtful openness to intellectual genealogy and complexity, to making good faith attempts to understand historical subjects and their ideas within the complex world of their makings. The writers share the conviction that medieval thinkers thought with their complicated inheritance of classical, biblical, and patristic and legal canons, and that these canons

28  Clare Monagle

no doubt provided the fundamental theoretical foundations of their thinking. But they also recognize that foundations are never entirely stable. Foundations shift, they crumble, they are strengthened by assiduous work, or, they are built over entirely. One of the profound challenges in studying intellectual history is to recognize the authority and charisma held by seemingly static traditions, while at the same time revealing how those traditions are made anew in different historical contexts and in the hands of different historical actors. That is, the political is framed in history, and the political makes history. Each of these essays manages to sit in this temporal and theoretical knottiness. In so doing, whether explicitly or implicitly, they each pay homage to the work of Nederman. Nederman’s approach to medieval political thought, one that recognizes continuity and contingency, has the effect of generating diversity of subject and analysis. Without teleology, the scholar does not need to limit their textual sample to those that satisfy an already written story, such as that of how humanism conquered scholasticism, or how the arrival of the “new” Aristotle in the thirteenth century transformed intellectual life. A number of essays in this volume consider texts, and thinkers, who trouble or elude normative narratives in the history of ideas, and which, for that very reason, have been given short shrift. Other contributors to this volume turn to better-known thinkers, such as Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli, and offer finely grained accounts of aspects of their thinking, in order to reveal previously unexamined moments of complexity and negotiation obtaining in the works of such totemic figures. The point is not, in the case of the former approach, to constitute a new canon. Nor is the point, in the case of the latter approach, to trouble the reputations of canonical figures. Instead, when taken as a whole, the essays in this volume use methods of close historical reading and deep contextualization to examine the mindfulness of medieval and Renaissance authors, their thoughtful attempts to weave order and action out of a diverse intellectual tradition, within a political environment characterized by mixed sovereignties and overlapping jurisdictions. The essays of Constant J. Mews and Marcia Colish both focus on texts that would not usually be considered as normatively political, but which yield reflections on governance, justice, and tolerance when read sensitively. Mews considers On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, a seventh-century treatise from Ireland, which survives in at least 300 manuscript copies. Mews notes that sections of the text also appear in On the Instruction of Princes, a little-studied early fourteenth-century text written for the future Louis X of France. The Twelve Abuses offers an account of justice, and by correlation the nature of a just king, informed by the Old Testament, and citing exempla unfound in patristic sources. Colish’s essay looks at scholastic theology during the thirteenth century, considering the processes by which scholars constituted disagreement and argument as a constitutive part of their intellectual practice. Repudiating the

Medieval Ideas and the Ethics of Listening   29

cliché of scholasticism as an intolerant monolith, Colish suggests that medieval theology depended upon intellectual tolerance of diversity methodologically and ethically. She asks whether, in so doing, scholastic theologians modelled an approach that we can recognize as situational toleration. That is, the schoolmen were not invested in tolerance as an abstract or transcendent concept, as a good for its own sake. They were, however, indebted to tolerance as a technique that they understood to be intellectually and socially generative. Mews and Colish, both highly attentive listeners to the Middle Ages, point out discourses and practices of thought that had significant traction in their own time, and yet which seem to have either died out organically, or been rendered retrograde by historians attached to certain narratives. In the case of the Twelve Abuses, its excerpting in a putative Mirror of Princes advice book makes little sense if we assume the commonplace of the genre, its reliance upon classical and patristic exempla used to educate the Prince as to the specificity and privilege of his role. The Twelve Abuses, however, does not characterize the monarch as distinct from his subjects, instead the text reminds the monarch of his ethical integration into the political community. It is not so much that the Prince should embody justice in an elevated sense, it is that the King’s duty should enforce standards that obtain for every member of the community. The Twelve Abuses makes its subject the health of the body politic, and defines the role of the Prince to be its overseer and its physician, rather than its head. Colish’s theologians likewise evince a commitment to ethical practices that emerge from community and enquiry, rather than dictated from above. While scholastics have long been derogated for an adherence to dogmatic certitude, Colish offers an account of their openness to bounded heterodoxy. That is, she argues that scholastic theologians worked in a generative space of contestation and argument in which they tolerated thought experiments, as long as they were held to sit within the horizon of Christian revelation. Scholasticism may not have recognized the other, in the sense we give toleration today, but it was capable of thinking other, and in that sense practised toleration. Mews and Colish, by listening to the Middle Ages, offer a sense of roads not taken, of traditions that withered. But their essays also suggest that it is historiography itself that has occluded these roads. In our determination to make the Mirror of Princes ultimately Machiavellian, or to correlate scholasticism with the medieval world long lost, perhaps we have missed the expansiveness of particular moments, and the myriad ways the political was negotiated, rather than settled, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And, speaking of Machiavelli, essays in this volume by Benedetto Fontana, Paul Rahe, and Bee Yun suggest that we also need to be wary about subjecting Machiavelli to our own methodological strictures. In different ways, each author challenges contextualist readings of Machiavelli that have emerged from the Cambridge School, and which situate him in terms of the humanist discourses of his world, as well as offering critiques of Nederman’s own accounts of Machiavelli that situate him

30  Clare Monagle

within classical traditions of thought. Fontana, Rahe, and Yun argue instead for the disruptive Machiavelli, the Machiavelli who resides under the adjective Machiavellian. Their Machiavelli is not the nuanced thinker who has been misunderstood in popular culture, the Machiavelli who is taught in universities as part of the incremental story of political theory. Fontana, Rahe, and Yun listen for Machiavelli’s originality. Fontana reads into Machiavelli’s account of the Ciompi rebellion his singular understanding of power as dialectical, as well as his convictions as to the hollowness of the republican language of liberty and “amor di patria.” Similarly, Rahe insists that Machiavelli ought to be understood as a figure of rupture rather than continuity, who breaks fundamentally with humanist ideals of the Prince as the embodiment of moral and intellectual virtue. Rahe suggests, in language that no doubt Nederman would enjoy, that Machiavelli privileges the quality of “moxie” in a leader over all other characteristics. Moxie is neither here nor there morally, it is an aptitude and an appetite. The Machiavelli apprehended by Fontana and Rahe offers a genuinely new, and bald, account of the political. Yun, on the other hand, listens to scholarly anxieties about Machiavelli’s methods and approach. The Prince does not resemble the Mirror of Princes genre, and yet it claims the form’s purpose. Scholars have sought to deduce from The Prince’s generic novelty a method behind the text’s structure, to insist that Machiavelli was guided by a systematic approach that has so far eluded its readers. Yun, however, considers whether the question of method is a salient one, and as do Fontana and Rahe, ponders why it is so vexing to encounter The Prince as decisively itself, as a singular strange product. Each of these scholars presents their Machiavelli in thoughtful dialogue with Nederman, sometimes concurring and sometimes disagreeing. In each case, however, they have listened to both Nederman and Machiavelli in sceptical good faith. Fontana, Rahe, and Yun offer their sense of Machiavellian novelty through their knowledge of the particularities of the Tuscan political context, and by comparing Machiavelli’s words to those of his peers rather than the ancients. The chapters in this volume by Charles Briggs and Gary Remer also testify to the myriad worlds that go into making political thought, and which need to be encountered by the scholar as listener. For example, Briggs offers a discussion of Roger Waltham’s Compendium morale c. 1330, a little-studied work of moral and political advice for clerical bureaucrats. Briggs explicates this work as part of the English tradition in medieval thought, a strain that Nederman has done much to isolate and explore. This tradition, as exemplified by John of Salisbury, not only takes heed of the virtues of the Prince but also focuses on the practical work of good governance and administration. Remer’s essay considers the ideas of Judah ben Jehiel Messer Leon, a fifteenth-century rabbi and humanist from Padua, read within the frameworks of Leon’s foundation in both Jewish and classical thought. Remer uncovers a strong grounding on the part of Leon in Ciceronian rhetorical principles, in which the Hebrew prophet is constituted as

Medieval Ideas and the Ethics of Listening   31

a politician/orator, rather than as a contemplative philosopher as Maimonides had done. As a scholar, Nederman has done a great deal to reveal how different ideals play out within the contours of different polities. In England, he has revealed a consistent concern on the part of medieval thinkers with the mechanisms of good government and the role played by bureaucracies, which eventually morphs into what some have called constitutionalism. On the continent, particularly on the Italian peninsula, he has identified Cicero as the most constitutive classical thinker deployed by humanists and scholastics alike in the making of republics and principalities in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The essays by Briggs and Remer testify to the influence of Nederman in recognizing forms of regional political theory in the Middle Ages, concomitant with his refusal to universalize a particular regional approach as canonical. I have used the chapters in this volume to characterize the different types of listening that Nederman has modelled for us over his career, which we now see modelled in this volume in myriad ways. He has encouraged us to look for the political in the ostensibly non-political text. He has cautioned against relying too restrictively on historiographical trends lest our adherence to a particular method of reading actually impair our capacity to hear. And he has suggested that we listen for regional accents, to think about what it meant during the Middle Ages to theorize the political in France or Italy or England, and how the nature of those polities themselves generated particular questions and answers. Finally, I want to suggest that he has helped us to hear certain words themselves, to pay heed to the linguistic nuance of political theory’s common places, such as the common good, toleration, and rights. The final three chapters I will discuss perform intricate work of listening to crucial terms and understanding what historical meaning they bore at the time of their utterance or their inscription, as well as recognizing when those terms were deployed in ways that transformed their meaning. Roberto Lambertini considers the better-known examples of Marsilius and William of Ockham, who argue that the common good is best served by institutional safeguards against the tyrannical sovereign. Lambertini, however, also considers their contemporary Augustinus of Ancona who uses the idea of the common good to defend papal absolutism. Lambertini troubles any easy assumptions about what the common good meant during the fourteenth century and reveals its discursive malleability. Takashi Shogimen also deals with Marsilius and Ockham, in this instance using their writing on heresy to map their respective boundaries of tolerance. Shogimen finds that in the case of Marsilius we can extract what we might recognize as a liberal sense of tolerance, in as much as his fundamental insistence on peace necessitates the management and acceptance of difference. In Ockham, however, Shogimen locates an emphasis on the primacy of the truth as the highest good, which means that tolerance is intolerable as heresy constitutes an assault on verity itself. Finally, Jason Taliadoros considers diverse accounts of rights traditions

32  Clare Monagle

in the Middle Ages, as well as contrasting historiographical approaches to the concept. Against Brian Tierney, Nederman has consistently argued that medieval rights traditions should not be thought to constitute a nascent constitutionalism, and that there is a fundamental difference between collective rights and those assigned to the individual as a political subject. Taliadoros considers the tension between collective and individual rights by offering a new reading of the Magna Carta. He argues that the charter’s articulation of collective rights implicitly depends upon notions of individual rights and duties. Taken together, Lambertini, Shogimen, and Taliadoros’s essays caution the scholar to define political common places, however legible they seem, within the overall claims made by their speaker at the time of their utterance. In short, these essays constitute a fitting response to Nederman’s contribution to the intellectual history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In their own way, each contributor performs the delicate listening that I have argued constitutes Nederman’s approach and his historiographical ethics. Nederman’s capacity to hear has opened our collective ears to the diversity, dexterity, and contingency of political thinking in the pre-modern European past. Just as crucially, as a rigorous listener he has been able to participate in scholarly argument with his contemporaries in a spirit of genuine intellectual investigation, and in good faith. But the question that this collection begs, and it is one that I hope will result in more generative work in the field in the future, is that of gender. Studying the history of the political thought of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance affords us little opportunity to listen to the voices of women relative to those of men. How can an approach to the past that insists on rigorous practices of listening, one that is avowedly and ethically non-teleological, include those whom the historical record has mostly rendered mute? In my own work, which has focused on reading gender into scholastic theology, I have not been able to sustain an approach that privileges careful listening. Instead, I have attempted to read silence, necessitating a form of explicit presentism that would probably not find good company in this collection. Moreover, I think it is crucial to ask who or what is being silenced, or merely ignored, by a given discourse? The default normative subject of medieval theology, political theory, and philosophy is that of the rational male Christian actor. And, more obviously and more structurally, scholarly literacy in the Middle Ages was almost entirely a monopoly of men, and mostly monastic and clerical men at that. Ideologically and logistically, thinking and writing in the period covered in this volume was concerned with the subjectivity of men (construed as universal) and their political, legal, and educational institutions (which excluded women). None of the chapters in this volume evince interest in this particular context – that of the gendered world of medieval thought and letters – because this context is outside of the methodological purview that I have articulated above. If you are invested in listening as a primary method, then enquiry is limited to the words that have been recorded, the utterances that have survived. I would

Medieval Ideas and the Ethics of Listening   33

suggest that silence can be noisy too, but invariably our attempts to listen to silence will be less forensic and rigorous than the methods deployed in this volume. I think it is an effort still worth making, because we still live in the world made by the thinkers discussed in this volume, and many of us work in institutions that began in their hands. Our inheritance is not just intellectual or institutional, it is gendered. I offer this final point of concern with respect to all of the contributors to this volume in recognition of our shared commitment to dialogue as something that makes all of our work better.

Bibliography Monagle, Clare. “Homo and Vir in Peter Lombard’s Sentences.” In Ordering Emotions in Europe, 1100–1800, edited by Susan Broomhall, 32–47. Leiden: Brill, 2015. ———. Scholastic Affect: Gender, Maternity and the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ———. The Scholastic Project. Kalamazoo, MI: ARC-Humanities Press, 2017. Nederman, Cary J. The Bonds of Humanity: Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and Political Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020.

PART I

Historiographical Problems

3 THE JEWISH REINTERPRETATION OF THE HEBREW PROPHET From Medieval Prophet-Philosopher to Renaissance Prophet-Statesman Gary Remer

Contrary to the widespread assumption that Cicero’s rhetorical ideas “only re-entered the European cultural milieu with the rise of humanist learning after the middle of the fourteenth century,” Cary Nederman contends that the “the Ciceronian conceptions of oratory and orator were a commonplace of scholastic thought” in the Middle Ages “between the twelfth and the early fourteenth centuries.”1 Nederman supports his claim by showing that many of the leading authors of the period cited Cicero in their writings. Moreover, Nederman argues convincingly that Cicero, not Aristotle, provided medieval Latin thinkers with the ideal of the orator who completely embodies the unity of wise reason and eloquent speech—an ideal that influences Ciceronian thinkers like Thierry of Chartres, Brunetto Latini, John of Paris, and Marsilius of Padua. In contrast to Aristotle, who offers a more limited role for rhetoric in politics and whose attitude towards rhetoric is often ambivalent if not negative—at least as read by several medieval Latin writers—Cicero (according to Nederman) is the source of the not uncommon medieval position “that oratory [is] the union of wisdom and eloquence [and] is of the greatest benefit to the whole community.”2 But Nederman has not examined Jewish interpretations of the biblical “Hebrew prophet” in the Middle Ages. My discussion in this chapter of the differences between how the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides (c. 1135– c. 1204) and the Renaissance Jewish humanist Judah ben Jehiel Messer Leon (c. 1420–c. 1498) conceived of the political and rhetorical qualities of the Hebrew prophet have unexpected implications for Nederman’s view of the influence of Cicero’s rhetorical ideas on medieval political thought. Although Maimonides and Messer Leon were both observant Jews— rabbis and communal leaders within the mainstream halakhic tradition—they DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-5

38  Gary Remer

nonetheless differed from each other in their accounts of the biblical prophet. A brief comparison of their intellectual pursuits is suggestive of this difference. Maimonides, born in Cordova, which was then in Muslim Spain, is considered the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period. His Mishneh Torah, a 14-volume work of halakha, i.e., Jewish law, confirmed him as the leading rabbinic authority of his time and, by many accounts, of all time. His philosophic magnum opus, the Moreh Nevukhim or Guide of the Perplexed, heavily shaped by the Neoplatonized Aristotelianism characteristic of medieval Islamic scholarship, established him as the preeminent Jewish philosopher. Messer Leon was born in northern Italy, probably near Padua, and was a respected rabbi and teacher of both religious and secular subjects, the former at his yeshiva, the latter at the University of Padua. Physician and philosopher, he was even knighted by Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor, who bestowed the title “Messer” on him, which ultimately became a permanent part of his name. Although the details of his life remain sketchy, he achieved fame for his Sefer Nofet Tzufim, the Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow, which became the bestknown Jewish work on rhetoric until today. Messer Leon’s devotion to the study and explanation of rhetoric reflects his broader commitment to humanist studies. Maimonides views the prophet as more a philosopher, engaged in the contemplative life, than a public speaker addressing the Israelites, in whole or in part. By contrast, Messer Leon conceives of the prophet as an orator-cumstatesman along the lines envisioned by the classical rhetoricians. This distinction is shaped by their differing intellectual milieus. As a medieval Jewish thinker educated in Muslim Spain (and in later years residing in Morocco and Egypt), Maimonides was influenced primarily by Islamic philosophy, particularly the philosophy of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī. Rhetoric, even Aristotelian rhetoric, is not a primary influence on medieval Islamic/Jewish thought. Thus, as we shall see, Maimonides (in contrast to Messer Leon) largely ignores the importance of rhetoric in prophecy. To the extent that rhetoric appears in Maimonides, most commonly in the form of “imagination,” he diminishes its significance and that of the ideal of the political or communally engaged prophet. Messer Leon, however, was born and educated in the citystates of Renaissance Italy, where the writings of Cicero and Quintilian were almost universally read by the intellectual elites and where Jewish humanists were influenced by the rise of a rhetorical culture. Although they largely continued to pay lip service to Maimonides’s ideal of the contemplative prophet, some of these humanists, most notably Messer Leon, re-imagined the biblical prophet as the perfect orator who anticipates the rhetorical principles developed later by gentile rhetoricians, most notably Cicero and Quintilian. Although Cicero and Quintilian do not stake out identical positions in all rhetorical matters, the two rhetoricians adopt comparable conceptions of rhetoric because of Cicero’s profound influence on Quintilian.3 Therefore, in general, in any broad discussion of Cicero’s or Ciceronian rhetoric in this chapter, both Cicero

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   39

and Quintilian will be included. Messer Leon describes the prophet/orator, using Quintilian’s terms, as a moral man speaking well. Unlike Maimonides and reflecting Cicero’s preference for the vita activa over the vita contemplativa, Messer Leon describes his prophet as fully engaged in the life of the political community. As committed Jews, however, Maimonides and Messer Leon do not defend their viewpoints by pointing to the gentile intellectual traditions in which they were embedded. Rather, they root their distinct conceptions in the biblical accounts of the prophets, which are sufficiently diverse and ambiguous to allow for significantly dissimilar views on the prophet’s role. For example, Maimonides finds ample proof for his conception of the prophet in the biblical account of Moses apprehending God’s “ways” and “seeing” God’s glory and back (Exodus 33:12–34:7) or in Ezekiel’s vision of God’s chariot (Ezekiel 1:4–28)—examples that Maimonides interprets as reflecting heightened intellectual apprehensions of the divine. In contrast, Messer Leon confirms his conception of the prophet in Isaiah’s self-description as one to whom “the Lord God gave … a skilled tongue, to know how to speak timely words to the weary” (Isaiah 50:4). That the Hebrew Bible does not offer a single, univocal representation of the prophet enables Maimonides and Messer Leon, as well as many other Jewish and Christian thinkers through the ages, to justify a range of depictions of the prophet. The study of Maimonides, in the context of medieval Islamic thought, provides the opportunity to evaluate the status and character of rhetoric in a culture that possesses Aristotle’s Rhetoric but, unlike the medieval Latin world, is bereft of Ciceronian rhetoric. As we shall see, the absence of Cicero’s rhetoric from the medieval Islamic intellectual tradition lends additional support to Nederman’s stance that Aristotelian rhetoric alone was unlikely to produce “the ideal of the orator as the man who employs reasoned eloquence in order to speak publicly about matters touching upon the common good.”4 Neither Maimonides nor his philosophical mentor, al-Farabi—both in possession of Aristotle’s Rhetoric—paid much attention to rhetoric per se, let alone to its political significance. Once Jewish scholars came under the influence of Cicero’s rhetoric, as did Messer Leon in the Italian Renaissance, some shifted away from Maimonides’s anti-rhetorical conception of the prophet as the philosopher par excellence. Thus, Messer Leon, who adopts a more robust conception of rhetoric than previous Jewish thinkers, imagines the biblical prophet, mutatis mutandis, along the lines of Cicero’s and Quintilian’s ideal orator.

Maimonides’s Conception of the Prophet as Philosopher Maimonides is generally viewed by other Jewish thinkers as the preeminent exponent of the Jewish understanding of prophecy for the Middle Ages and perhaps for all time.5 But Maimonides, as is widely acknowledged, does not

40  Gary Remer

derive his conception solely from Jewish (i.e., biblical and Talmudic) sources. He makes use of classical Greek and medieval Islamic philosophical sources, primarily ancient Greek sources (specifically Plato and Aristotle) as filtered through medieval Islamic philosophers. For Maimonides, traditional rabbinic and classical/Islamic philosophies were not in conflict. “In Maimonides’ view, philosophy and Jewish law taught the essential truths, and aimed at the same goal. They simply operated on different planes.” Thus, for Maimonides, “Aristotle and his followers were great monotheists who taught the true view of the nature of divine unity.”6 As noted before, the Islamic thinker who is the greatest influence on Maimonides, particularly on his conception of prophecy, is Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan Abu Nasr al-Farabi, referred to hereafter as al-Farabi. Al-Farabi (c. 870–c. 950) was born in Farab, in what is now Uzbekistan, but spent almost his entire life in Baghdad. He was a renowned philosopher who earned the title “the second teacher” after Aristotle for his works in political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and logic. Acknowledging his own debt to al-Farabi, “Maimonides cited him in the Guide more often than any other Islamic thinker.” 7 Al-Farabi’s most profound influence on Maimonides’s conception of prophecy is seen in its intellectualism or philosophical orientation. For al-Farabi, revelation, which for purposes of our discussion will be identified with prophecy, is defined as consistent with philosophy.8 Maimonides echoes al-Farabi’s joining of revelation or prophecy with philosophy. Like al-Farabi, “Maimonides wishes to impress upon his readers … that intellectual perfection is the highest human attainment. It is the perfection characterizing the most elite of individuals, the prophets.”9 Both al-Farabi and Maimonides discern the prophet (or recipient of divine revelation) by his philosophical knowledge. Thus, Maimonides classifies prophets and philosophers as belonging to the “perfect” because of their shared understanding of metaphysics. Maimonides, however, deems the prophet superior to the philosopher because of his ability “to understand metaphysical reality in a more profound, holistic manner.”10 Opposed to the philosophical elite stand the masses, who cannot apprehend metaphysical truths but must be taught verisimilitudes through myths and parables. Before reconfirming the centrality of Maimonides’s intellectualist approach to prophecy, however, we shall first delineate his understanding of imagination and its role in prophecy. Maimonides uses “imagination” generally to include a variety of the internal senses. But what the imagination makes possible, according to Maimonides, is the combination and division of ideas: “We receive impressions from our five senses, and then we may reorganize those impressions in different ways, as when we link the present impression of hunger with the impression of the previous lack of breakfast.” Although imagination clearly includes thought, it is usually taken in medieval philosophy to be more closely related to sense perception and action than to abstract thinking. Thus,

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   41

imagination and reason have different objects: “The former generally has as its object practical action, the sort of action made possible by the sense impressions received and then used in some way”; “[i]magination transforms any kind of representation, whether intellectual, sensory or emotional, into powerful symbols and vivid ideas, which then concern the question of appropriate action.” In contrast, when we use reason to consider abstract ideas, we typically have exclusively theoretical considerations in view.11 According to Maimonides, intellect and imagination are both prerequisites of prophecy. The prophetic process begins with the overflow of the active ­intellect—“[t]he last rung in the hierarchy of transcendent incorporeal beings consisting in pure thought and subordinate to God”12 —which then initiates the imagination; Maimonides makes this clear in his definition of prophecy. While the active intellect provides the prophet perfect knowledge of the theoretical sciences, the imaginative faculty is connected to the future, specifically to the accurate prediction of future events. This prophetic knowledge of the future comes to most prophets, except Moses, through dreams or dreamlike conditions, like visions. (Moses receives his prophecies fully awake and conscious.) Prophecies of the future and veridical dreams—excluding Mosaic prophecy—both derive from the imagination and belong to the same species.13 Imagination enables the prophet not only to prophesy the future but to communicate his prophecies to the common people through “a practical and pictorial ability,” facilitating the teaching of the masses “in the most comprehensible and persuasive manner.”14 Maimonides, however, offers few if any details about the process of prophetic persuasion. Although he focuses on the prophet’s inner compulsion to preach to the people,15 he does not address how the prophet persuades the people by preaching. Maimonides evinces far greater interest in the prophet’s ideas than in his means of communicating these ideas through speech: “[L]anguage for Maimonides may prove to be exceptionally inadequate [at communicating ideas to others] and can do so at best indirectly.”16 In Guide II.37, Maimonides validates the role of the imagination in the act of prophetic teaching of the masses by distinguishing between two categories of philosophers, two types of prophets, and a single group of (non-philosophical, non-prophetic) political rulers. First, Maimonides differentiates between the three main classes mentioned by describing the degree of intellectual overflow or sufficiency in each of these classes: [Y]ou should know that the case in which the intellectual overflow [of the active intellect] overflows only toward the rational faculty and does not overflow at all toward the imaginative faculty … is characteristic of the class of men of science engaged in speculation. If, on the other hand, this overflow reaches both faculties—I mean both the rational and the imaginative—as we … have explained, and if the imaginative faculty is in a state of ultimate perfection owing to its natural disposition, this is

42  Gary Remer

characteristic of the class of prophets. If again the overflow only reaches the imaginative faculty, the defect of the rational faculty deriving either from its original natural disposition or from insufficiency of training, this is characteristic of the class of those who govern cities, while being the legislators, the soothsayers, the augurs, and the dreamers of veridical dreams.17 Although in this selection, Maimonides treats each class as a uniform whole, he soon subdivides the first two classes based on the greater absence or presence of the imagination. With regard to the first class—that is of the men of science—the measure of the overflow that reaches the rational faculty of the individual is sometimes such that it makes him into a man who inquires and is endowed with understanding, who knows and discerns, but is not moved to teach others…. And sometimes the measure of the overflow is such that it moves him of necessity to compose works and to teach. The same holds true for the second class. Sometimes the prophetic revelation that comes to a prophet only renders him perfect and has no other effect. And sometimes the prophetic revelation that comes to him compels him to address a call to the people, teach them, and let his own perfection overflow toward them.18 Although at first glance it may appear that Maimonides’s division between the three classes—(1) philosophers, (2) prophets, and (3) rulers and diviners— suggests that each class is independent of the other two, on closer inspection, the relationship between philosophers and prophets is emphasized, separating these two classes from “the class who govern cities.”19 Maimonides lauds the first two classes as composed of men of understanding who share an “overflow of the intellect,” thus “subtly shift[ing] the emphasis back to the intellectual dimension of prophecy.”20 Maimonides, however, denounces the class of those who govern cities. In this class, “the overflow only reaches the imaginative faculty,” thereby producing in the members of this governing class a “defect of the rational faculty.” Although members of this third, non-rational class sometimes have extraordinary imaginings, dreams, and amazed states, which are like the vision of prophecy so that they think about themselves that they are prophets, … they bring great confusion into speculative matters of great import, true notions being strangely mixed up in their minds with imaginary ones. Thus, Maimonides blames the corrupt condition of this class on “the imaginative faculty” and on the concomitant “weakness of the rational faculty.”21

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   43

Maimonides’s subordination of imagination to reason is mirrored in the lesser status that medieval Islamic philosophers assigned to rhetoric in relation to philosophy. That imagination and rhetoric would be viewed similarly by philosophers (both Muslim and Jewish) of the medieval Islamic world is not surprising. Both imagination and rhetoric are viewed by the philosophers of that world as related to persuasion.22 Thus, not only does Maimonides (as noted above) see the imaginative faculty as involved in effecting persuasion, but so too does his philosophical mentor, al-Farabi, for whom imagination “retains and manipulates images.”23 Although Maimonides implicitly acknowledges the rhetorical function of the imagination as a means of teaching and persuading the common people and was familiar with Aristotle’s Rhetoric, even citing it,24 he does not, to the best of my knowledge, explicitly discuss rhetoric. Al-Farabi and other Islamic philosophers, however, do address the standing of rhetoric. Today, more than a few scholars read Aristotle’s Rhetoric as extolling the art of persuasion (or, as Aristotle defines rhetoric, “an ability in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion”) as not only useful but an inherently good and moral art of speech. By contrast, among medieval Islamic thinkers, Aristotle’s Rhetoric was “studied as part of the logical disciplines preparatory to study of philosophy” with “no diffusion outside philosophical circles.”25 And when evaluated epistemologically by medieval Islamic philosophers, rhetoric is deemed an “inferior logical discipline.”26 For example, al-Farabi explains that according to Aristotle, because rhetoric is used to communicate with the non-philosophical masses, it is directed not to demonstrating the truths of theoretical matters per se, but to conveying these truths in a persuasive (but logically inaccurate) form that is appropriate to the ignorant multitude: The vulgar need not conceive and comprehend [universal truths] as they are. It is enough if they comprehend and intellect them by means of what corresponds to them. For to comprehend them in their essences as they are is extremely hard, except for whoever devotes himself to the theoretical sciences alone.27 Rhetoric is “based upon the assumptions commonly held by common people” and therefore possesses “little theoretical importance”; in contrast, “the speculative disciplines use apodictic logic upon true propositions.” Therefore, when evaluated epistemologically, rhetoric is an “inferior logical discipline” relative to the Aristotelian sciences.28 The relationship of rhetoric to the speculative sciences in al-Farabi finds its parallel in Maimonides’s subordination of political rule to prophecy qua philosophy, i.e., the king to the prophet-philosopher. Although the king possesses broad powers, he stands under the prophet, at least in the hierarchy of “what truly matters,” in that he is dominated by the lower part of his soul relative to the prophet. Maimonides describes the prophet as receiving an emanation

44  Gary Remer

to both the rational and the imaginative faculties, while the ruler receives an ­emanation only to the imaginative faculty. For Maimonides, the rational faculty is superior to the imaginative, and, likewise, the prophet is superior to the king. What sets the rational and prophetic above the imaginative and monarchical is that the former is spiritual and theoretical, the latter material and practical. Like Plato and Aristotle, Maimonides gives precedence to the first group over the second. The rational faculty concerns itself with abstract knowledge of a metaphysical nature, “knowledge of the universal characteristics of objects,”29 and, therefore, the prophet or philosopher, whose knowledge derives from the rational faculty, is made into a man “who inquires and is endowed with understanding, who knows and discerns.”30 The imagination, however, apprehends only that which is individual … as it is apprehended by these senses…. In its apprehension, imagination is in no way able to hold itself aloof from matter…. For this reason there can be no critical examination in the imagination.31 The men who are ruled by imagination—rulers, soothsayers, augurs, and the like—are, as we have already observed, persons of an inferior nature who think they are prophets but who “bring great confusion into speculative matters of great import.” In line with the just-discussed antitheses, Maimonides further differentiates the prophetic from the political. As Abraham Melamed observes: Maimonides … identifies the king with the problematic force in the human soul. Thus, the king is presented as an example of the desire for property, a desire that Maimonides places lowest on the scale of perfections, and one that is presented in the last chapter of the Guide as external to man, not as part of his essence. By contrast, Maimonides attributes the fifth and supreme perfection, the actual imitation of God, to the philosopher-prophet, who is identified with the dominion of the rational soul.32 The prophetic laws—Moses being the only prophet who was a true lawgiver— are divine. The laws that kings “have laid down by following their own thoughts” are man-made and, therefore, of an infinitely lower grade. Nevertheless, even the artificial laws of the king can be salutary. These laws are provided to arrange “the circumstances of people in their relations with one another” and provide for their obtaining “a certain something deemed to be happiness.”33 But even if beneficial, the king’s legislation promotes only earthly perfection. These laws do not touch on our higher being: the perfection of the rational faculty and the advancement of true opinion. Only divine law attends “to the soundness of the circumstances pertaining to the body and also to the soundness of belief.”34

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   45

By the thirteenth century, medieval Jewish philosophy had largely ceased to thrive in the Islamic milieu. Jewish intellectual thought was now to develop, primarily, within the Christian milieu. With the rise of the Italian Renaissance, Jewish thinkers turned their attention once again to the Hebraic prophet, reconceptualizing the prophet with the help of ideas they encountered in the works of Renaissance humanists and the rhetorical works (especially those of Cicero and Quintilian) the humanists disseminated. In the next section, we shift our focus from Maimonides to Judah Messer Leon and his conception of the prophet vis-à-vis that of Maimonides.

Messer Leon’s Conception of the Prophet as Orator-Statesman Judah Messer Leon does not acknowledge any break with Maimonides. Rather, he commends the study of Maimonides’s philosophy to advanced students. Nor does Messer Leon distinguish between Aristotelian rhetoric and the rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian. As Messer Leon suggests, despite the apparent differences between the definitions of rhetoric presented by the classical rhetoricians, these definitions “amount substantially to what the Philosopher [Aristotle] has stated” in his definition of rhetoric. 35 Notwithstanding Messer Leon’s muting of these differences between himself and Maimonides, we shall see his conception of the prophet differs substantially from that of Maimonides. Although within Nofet Tzufim Messer Leon makes use of the rhetorical theories of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, his conception of the prophet is most influenced by the rhetorical views of Cicero and Quintilian. Messer Leon, however, identifies the source of rhetoric as not the classical rhetoric of ancient Greece and Rome, but the Hebrew Bible, specifically prophetic speech. As a traditional Jew who believes that all wisdom is contained in God’s revelation to the Israelites but who is also confronted with the innovative rhetorical insights of pagan authors, Messer Leon seeks to demonstrate that the rhetorical precepts and examples discovered in the Bible predate and are even superior to the rhetoric of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. He bolsters his case for the primacy of biblical rhetoric in Nofet Tzufim by interlarding his own words with citations from Scripture. For example, he introduces his extended discussion of rhetorical figures by stating that though he draws on Aristotle and Cicero for the categories of rhetorical embellishment, [t]he examples of the Figures, however, I have taken from our holy and our beautiful house [Isa. 64:10], from the words of prophecy and the divinely inspired narratives that sit first in the kingdom [Esth. 1:14] of agreeableness and elegance, that are sweeter… than honey [Ps. 19:11], that cannot be gotten for gold.36

46  Gary Remer

For Messer Leon, biblical words occupy the highest rank in the “kingdom of rhetoric.”37 Adverting to Cicero’s orator perfectus, Messer Leon looks to the biblical prophets, not the ancient pagans, for his oratorical ideal: Now since the prophets were highly skilled in rhetoric—as by common consent they are held to be without peer among the orators of the Nations— it follows that all their utterances are pure words … refined [Ps. 12:7].38 Why then, according to Messer Leon, does the world (himself included) look to the classical rhetoricians, not the prophets, to gain knowledge of the art of persuasion? Messer Leon finds the answer in God’s punishment of the Jews’ sinfulness, after the destruction of the First Temple.39 For Messer Leon, not only rhetoric, but every science, every rationally apprehended truth that any treatise may contain, is present in our holy Torah and in the books of those who speak by the Holy Spirit—present, that is, for those who thoroughly understand the subject involved. Therefore, [i]n the days of Prophecy, … we used to learn and know from the holy Torah all the sciences and truths of reason. What other peoples possessed of these sciences and truths was, by comparison with us, very little. But after the Jews were disciplined for their evils—“after the indwelling of the Presence of God departed from our midst because of our many iniquities, when Prophecy and insight ceased, and the science of our men of understanding was hid”—Jews were “no longer able to derive understanding of all scientific developments and attainments from the Torah’s words.” In our own days, Messer Leon concludes, “the matter has come to reverse.”40 The only means of recovering secular knowledge from the Torah is to begin with the writings of the gentile authors and then to reread the Torah to rediscover the knowledge that has been, until now, lost: For when I studied the words of the Torah in the way now common amongst most people, I had no idea that the science of Rhetoric or any part of it was included therein. But once I studied and investigated Rhetoric … out of the treatises written by men of nations other than our own, and afterwards came back to see what is said of her in the Torah and the Holy Scriptures, then … I saw that it is the Torah which was the giver. Between the Torah’s pleasing words and stylistic elegancies—and, indeed, all the statutes and ordinances of Rhetoric which are included within the

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   47

Holy Scriptures—and all of the like that all other nations possess, the difference is so striking that to compare them is like comparing the hyssop … in the wall with the cedar that is in Lebanon [1 Kings 5:13].41 Thus, while Maimonides looks to the Torah for the philosophical secrets of the universe, Messer Leon searches the same corpus for rhetorical truths. And while Maimonides crafts a prophet who is a model philosopher, Messer Leon fashions a prophet who is a supreme orator. What does it mean to argue, as I do here, that the difference between Maimonides’s and Messer Leon’s conceptions of prophecy is that the former is philosophical while the latter is rhetorical, specifically Ciceronian (as opposed to Aristotelian)? I shall delineate these differences, beginning by contrasting Maimonides’s emphasis on the prophet as engaged in the vita contemplativa and Messer Leon’s focus on the prophet as living the vita activa. Although neither Maimonides nor Messer Leon uses this terminology, this dichotomy captures well the difference between their conceptions of the prophet. The roots of this distinction between the two vitae date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, but the difference has been explicated in recent times by Hannah Arendt. For Arendt, the active life is “a life devoted to public-political matters,” which concerns itself with appearances; the contemplative life is devoted to the contemplation of essences and of the eternal.42 As for the classical authors who influenced (directly or indirectly) Maimonides and Messer Leon, Aristotle— certainly as medieval philosophers interpreted the Stagirite—favoured the life of contemplation; Cicero favoured the life of action. Aristotle affirms the superiority of the contemplative life over the active, late in the Nicomachean Ethics, where he writes that this activity [concerned with theoretical knowledge or contemplation] is not only the highest—for intelligence is the highest possession we have in us, and the objects which are the concern of intelligence are the highest objects of knowledge—but also the most continuous. Aristotle then contrasts the active life, “a life guided by the other kind of virtue, [the practical,]” which is only “happy in a secondary sense, since its active exercise is confined to man.”43 Cicero, however, assumes a contrary position. As Cicero writes in De republica, virtue is not some kind of knowledge to be possessed without using it: … virtue consists entirely in its employment; moreover its most important employment is the governance of states and the accomplishment of deeds rather than words of the things that philosophers talk about in their corners.44

48  Gary Remer

The man engaged in the vita activa or political life, for Cicero, is the orator. Thus, Cicero explains in De oratore that the ideal author of public policy and “guide in governing the community” is also the “leader who employs his eloquence in formulating his thoughts in the Senate, before the people, and in public court cases.”45 Maimonides’s prophet manifests the qualities of the vita contemplativa by devoting himself to the pursuit of ideas, particularly theoretical ideas, over words and persuasion. For Maimonides, the prophet is so exceedingly defined by his immersion in the intellectual sphere as opposed to the pragmatic that, as discussed earlier, his prophet can be “perfect” with “no other effect,” i.e., without addressing a call to the people or teaching them.46 Although Maimonides’s public prophet is compelled to address a call to the people because the overflow of the active intellect reaches his imaginative faculty, Maimonides does not discuss the persuasive process as it affects the prophet (how he attains his knowledge) or the people (i.e., how they are persuaded). Both elements of the persuasive process are presented as a mystery.47 What distinguishes the prophet from others is his esoteric knowledge of divine truths, not the adaptation of those truths into parables and myths that he relays to the common people. Maimonides shows scant interest in the means the prophet employs in communicating these exoteric teachings to the hoi polloi. Maimonides does not speak of rhetoric directly, but even if we group him together with medieval Islamic philosophers, like al-Farabi, who do, Aristotelian rhetoric (the only rhetoric of which they were aware) needs to be situated within the larger framework of the medieval Aristotelian Organon, the standard collection of Aristotle’s works on logic, which, as opposed to the modern Organon, included Aristotle’s Rhetoric, as well as his Poetics.48 Viewing rhetoric within the Aristotelian system of logic, the Islamic philosophers situate rhetoric beneath theoretical science. Because it is practical, aiming at the persuasion of the masses, rhetoric begins with the assumptions of the common people and reasons from there. Its conclusions, therefore, are uncertain and, therefore, inferior. The popular assent that it effects is, if not illusory, at least flawed. Its epistemological status is between pure ignorance and the certitude of scientific knowledge. Maimonides’s evaluation of persuasion is similarly shaped by his belief that persuasion is adapted to the limited cognitive abilities of the common people. In contrast to Maimonides’s prophet, Messer Leon’s prophet is associated with the vita activa. As we saw earlier, Messer Leon identifies prophecy with rhetoric and the prophet with the orator. The active life of the prophet, like the life of the Ciceronian orator, is characterized by its attention to speech and persuasion over abstract ideas. He is celebrated for his abilities to effect practical changes in the whole people (both elite and commoners), particularly his capacity to advance justice. Like Cicero and Quintilian, Messer Leon acknowledges that the public speaker should be adequately versed in dialectic—he cites grammar, rhetoric,

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   49

and logic as the subfields of dialectic. But, again like Cicero and Quintilian, Messer Leon maintains that the degree of the speaker’s knowledge of dialectic should be determined by what is necessary to speak persuasively. Thus, concerning rhetoric, “nothing may be missed [1 Sam. 25:21].” Expertise in more esoteric elements of dialectic, however, is unnecessary: The orator need not plumb the depths of logic in all its fine points and subtleties, for it is not absolutely essential to his function that he demonstrate his proposition with as profoundly accurate precision as the professional logician, but it his obligation in this regard to introduce the most perfectly persuasive of arguments, together with examples and commonsense proofs that his audience can easily understand.49 Although Messer Leon offers this advice to orators in general and not specifically prophets, he includes prophets in the general category of orators. Further, as opposed to Maimonides, Messer Leon does not identify metaphysical truths as the prophet’s domain. Instead, Messer Leon identifies the prophet most closely with the practice and pursuit of justice: “Execute justice in the morning, and deliver the oppressed out of the hand of the oppressor” ( Jer. 21:12); “Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zech. 8:16). “These are courses which should be advocated on their own account …, for they are good in themselves. Nearly all the courses counseled by Israel’s prophets are of this kind.”50 Although Messer Leon claims that his rhetorical outlook ultimately stems from the Bible, he obtains his rhetorical principles and precepts most directly from the classical rhetoricians, particularly Cicero and Quintilian. He accepts Quintilian’s view that “what distinguishes and defines the orator” is that the orator is (in the words that Quintilian attributes to Cato the Censor) vir bonus, dicendi peritus, “a good man skilled in speaking.”51 Like Quintilian, Messer Leon argues that “a perfect orator cannot, in the nature of the case, be other than a good and righteous man.” 52 Like Quintilian, Messer Leon focuses on the perfect orator’s persuasiveness and morality. The two qualities go hand in hand: “the most effective speakers in all generations [Ps. 45:18] have been morally sound and good men.”53 Likewise, “it will be true of any good man, well versed in the tongue of them that are taught, that he is a righteous person whose powers of verbal communication are of the most appropriate kinds.”54 Messer Leon finds confirmation of Quintilian’s position in the Bible: “[Solomon] has made it a condition sine qua non that the good speaker must be both wise and ethically sound, the same condition as that pointed out above on the basis of Quintilian’s words.”55 And, for Messer Leon, what is true of the ideal secular orator is even truer of the prophet: “Thus the eminent in Rhetoric were the elect of the nation and its special treasure, in whom all the virtues were very nearly perfect—I mean the prophets, who are without compare.”56

50  Gary Remer

As opposed to Maimonides, who does not delve deeply into the prophet’s method of persuasion, Messer Leon devotes most of Nofet Tzufim to the means of persuasion, the rules of rhetoric, which apply to both secular speaker and prophet. Although Messer Leon concedes that rhetorical skill does not guarantee persuasion—the prophets followed all the rhetorical rules, but sometimes still did not succeed in moving the Israelites to mend their ways57—he implies that the proper use of rhetorical means usually brings about persuasion: “The prophets (upon whom be peace!) have effected persuasion of the Israelite nation on an almost infinite number of matters, some moral, some intellectual.”58 And unlike Maimonides, for whom the perfect prophet can be either intellectually perfect or intellectually perfect and compelled “to address a call to the people,” Messer Leon appears unable to comprehend the existence of a private prophet because the prophet is a species of orator. The most significant rhetorical principle, for the orator (including the prophet), from which the specific rhetorical precepts descend, is the Ciceronian concept “decorum.” As Cicero describes it: “This, indeed, is the form of wisdom that the orator must especially employ—to adapt himself to occasions and persons.”59 Messer Leon cites Isaiah as acknowledging decorum as a Godgranted ability: The Lord God hath given me the tongue of them that are taught, that I should know how to sustain with words him that is weary, etc. [Isa. 50:4]. That is to say, the Lord gave him the language of the most expert practitioners of the rhetorical art, so as to know how to address forceful words at the proper time to one who is weary. It is, indeed, quite as if he had said that the object of this ‘tongue of them that are taught’ is to know how to sustain with words one who is weary, that is, to speak as far as possible, a word in due season [Prov. 15:23] to the weary.60 Decorum also obliges the orator, especially the prophet, to distinguish between how to speak “in the presence of the great” and before the masses—a rule he ascribes to Quintilian, who writes that “counselors should speak in a manner varied to conform with the varying dispositions and ranks of their hearers.” While addressing “princes of the congregation, the elect men of the assembly [Num. 16:2] …, the orator should exercise great care.”61 Before the multitude of the people, it is fitting to establish conviction by means adapted to the multitude, and to use words which, depending on their quality, will normally be accepted. For one and the same word is not equally acceptable both to the completely educated and the ordinary run of the multitude; here, therefore, the speaker needs great astuteness in providing each group with the word that will please it, that it will find agreeable to its taste, and will accept.62

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   51

Note that Messer Leon, in contrast to Maimonides, does not emphasize the difference in the substance of what the prophet teaches to each audience, i.e., esoteric knowledge to the intellectual elite, exoteric teachings to the common people. Instead, Messer Leon concerns himself with accommodating the type of speech spoken to different audiences, what Messer Leon refers to as “the words.” If there are ideas that only the few can comprehend, Messer Leon does not treat these ideas as central to the prophetic calling. Overall, Messer Leon believes that the ideal orator—because his audience is primarily composed of average persons—should “use words of ordinary language, as is set forth in Book III of the Rhetoric; for it is fitting to speak in words that are easy to understand and afford complete comprehension.”63 In line with Quintilian’s definition of the orator (and Messer Leon’s interpretation of Solomon’s words), the ideal orator not only must be persuasive, but must himself be morally perfect. Contrast Messer Leon’s requirement that the prophet (or ideal orator) must attain moral perfection with Maimonides’s requirement that the prophet must achieve theoretical not moral perfection. According to Maimonides, “[e]ven the individual who attains prophecy needs only a ‘pure and moderate human character’ as compared with a ‘perfect and complete human intellect’ [Guide II 36 406: 18–19/371: 9–12].”64 How do Maimonides’s and Messer Leon’s conceptions of the prophet differ concerning political rule? Maimonides draws a clear line between prophecy and political leadership, specifically kingship, with the latter subordinate to the former. For Maimonides, the prophet may or may not address the public, teaching the masses and reprimanding them for their sins. But Maimonides identifies the prophet chiefly by his perfection of rational faculties. The king, however, is distinguished not by reason but by imagination—allied to his capacity to persuade the common people. And while Maimonides sees political leadership as necessary, we rarely see him hold political office in high regard. Messer Leon, however, esteems public oratory, persuasion, and statesmanship. We do not find in Nofet Tzufim Maimonides’s division between the philosophical and prophetic, on the one side, and the political, on the other. Instead, Messer Leon links the prophetic and the political. Rather than honour the prophet qua philosopher, he venerates the prophet qua orator-statesman: Whereas Maimonides and those following him saw in biblical rhetoric a mere concession to the need of addressing the multitude in terms compatible with their mental capacity, rhetoric now took on the character of a noble art indispensable for effective communication on all levels of public life. It was, above all, the figure of the orator that now commanded a new respect.65 And it was the prophet, Messer Leon’s paradigmatic orator, that commanded the greatest respect.

52  Gary Remer

Beginning with Aristotle, the principal exponents of classical rhetoric, including Cicero, have identified three basic categories of speech: deliberative, judicial or forensic, and epideictic or demonstrative.66 The deliberative genus has its origins in the political assembly, where the orator seeks to persuade or dissuade his audience from taking action, like going to war. Judicial oratory is used in the courtroom, where the speaker tries to persuade the jury of his (or his client’s) innocence or guilt. And epideictic oratory is the genre concerned with praise and blame, intended, most often, for ceremonial occasions like funerals. Messer Leon follows the same trifold division in delineating the oratorical genres, with political and prophetic speech assigned to the genus deliberativum. He describes [t]he Deliberative type of speech [as] one in which you find the urging of an authorization or of a prohibition; for one who gives counsel, whether to an individual citizen or to the citizenry as a whole, must necessarily advise either the authorization or the prohibition of some proposed course of action.67 Thus, Messer Leon highlights the deliberative genre as a category of oratory that especially concerns the giving of counsel, whether for or against a proposal. Looking back to the secular roots of political counsel, the type engaged in by speakers in democratic Athens and republican Rome, Messer Leon cites five subject matters: (1) the collection of monies for the State; (2) war and peace; (3) national defence against external enemies; (4) imports and exports; and (5) “the keeping of laws and ordinances.”68 As for prophetic counsel, Messer Leon treats it less as deliberative speech distinct from the political than as speech largely indistinguishable from the political. Referring to the political speech of ancient Greece, he says the topics that “may fittingly be deliberated upon by counsellors and the mass of citizenry is, in the first place, divine matters, such as cults, offerings, sacrifices, and the like.”69 Although these subjects of deliberation are excluded from much political debate today—at least in most advanced western democracies—they were not in pagan antiquity. Messer Leon points out that this type of “political” discourse comprises “[m]ost of what the Prophets urge … as is plain from their words, that is, their counsel, dealing with the Name, be He blessed and exalted, favors the keeping of His commandments, statutes, and laws.” 70 Likewise, Messer Leon lists deliberative causes that “ought to be advocated on their own account, others on account of some extraneous consideration only, and some on account of both together.” 71 Although this division applies to political oratory per se, Messer Leon provides examples for each subdivision from prophetic speech. Asserting that “[n]early all the courses counseled by Israel’s prophets are those that are [good in themselves]”—e.g., Jeremiah’s counsel to execute justice or

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   53

Zechariah’s advice to execute the judgment of truth and peace—prophets, like Jeremiah, also, though less frequently, counselled in favour of a cause that has “some advantage derived from external circumstances.” 72 It should not surprise us, then, that Messer Leon not only fuses political and prophetic counsel, but includes among the “people’s leaders” not only “ judges and officers [Deut. 16:18]” but also prophets—all who “admonish us against transgressing … commandments and laws.” 73 *** Cary Nederman has significantly expanded our understanding of the influence of rhetoric in the Latin Middle Ages. As opposed to the widespread assumption that the medieval scholastics embraced the study of logic but all but ignored rhetoric, venerated Aristotle the philosopher but disregarded or misinterpreted Cicero the orator and politician, Nederman shows us that prominent medieval scholastics like Thierry of Chartres, Brunetto Latini, John of Paris, and Marsilius of Padua affirmed the Ciceronian ideal of wisdom and eloquence; although the Renaissance was a highpoint in the revival of rhetoric, the medieval west could also boast of the impression left by the paradigm of the wise and eloquent orator ruling in the common good. I have endeavoured in this chapter to further bolster Nederman’s position by contrasting two accounts of the biblical prophet, the first, Maimonides’s, shaped by the intellectual milieu of medieval Islam that genuinely subordinated philosophy to oratory, with Messer Leon’s, which developed in a culture well-acquainted with Cicero’s oratorical ideal. What emerges from this comparison is two distinct conceptions of the Hebrew prophet. For Maimonides, the prophet, the primary public orator of the Hebrew Bible, transmogrifies into the philosopher par excellence, consistent with the reverence for the contemplative life promoted in the medieval Islamic world of scholarship and in medieval Jewish philosophy. Because the classical tradition influenced medieval Jewish philosophy via the Muslims, not the Christians—Jewish thought in the Latin Middle Ages was almost exclusively not philosophical—the first serious opportunity to witness the Graeco-Roman influence on Jewish thinkers is the Italian Renaissance. During this period, we find Jewish scholars making use of Cicero, like their Christian counterparts in the Italian Renaissance and, as Nederman demonstrates, in the Latin Middle Ages. Thus, Messer Leon conceives of the Hebrew prophet as reflecting the characteristics and values of Cicero’s ideal orator. For Messer Leon, the biblical prophet does not embody, as he does for Maimonides, the contemplative life, but the active life of the good man speaking well, who is engaged in deliberation with the common people. The gap between Maimonides’s prophet and his popular audience is almost immeasurable. It is the obligation of (some) prophets to teach the people verisimilitudes because ordinary persons cannot comprehend actual truths, which

54  Gary Remer

are beyond their intellectual capacities. Prophetic speech for Maimonides, therefore, is unidirectional—from the prophet to the audience; the audience does not instruct or move the prophet. Political speech, however, is multidirectional. Even in the case of a monarchy but especially in republics and democracies, the speaker’s words are heard and considered by the audience. Although the audience may not formally approve or disapprove of the speaker’s words, it nevertheless reacts to the speaker’s words, which will then affect (in some fashion) the speaker’s future words or actions. Messer Leon describes prophetic/political speech as counsel, which is multidirectional. The audience reacts to the counsel proffered by either accepting or rejecting it. Although the prophet’s audience may reject his counsel and, consequently, may sin, Messer Leon characterizes the audience as deciding whether to accept his argument. Similarly, Messer Leon categorizes prophetic/political speech as deliberative. The English “deliberation” is derived from the Latin verb dēlīberāre. Both English and Latin terms are defined similarly. The Oxford English Dictionary (3rd edn) defines “deliberation” as “the action of deliberating, or weighing a thing in the mind”; the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st edn) defines the infinitive dēlīberāre as “to engage in careful thought (usu. in consultations with others),” to “weigh the pros and cons,” and “to consider (a matter) carefully, ponder, think over.” But for Messer Leon, as for Cicero and Quintilian, where is the deliberation in deliberative oratory? Not in the speech of orators, who refrain from considering the merits of the other side, at least in any genuine sense. Instead, deliberation takes place among the listeners. Thus, the relationship between prophet-statesman and audience is political in the full sense of the term, which requires a give-and-take between governor and governed, speaker and audience.

Notes 1 Cary J. Nederman, “The Union of Wisdom and Eloquence before the Renaissance: The Ciceronian Orator in Medieval Thought,” Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992): 77–79. 2 Ibid., 87. 3 Gary Remer, Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 27–30. 4 Nederman, “Union of Wisdom and Eloquence before the Renaissance,” 77. 5 Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 602. 6 Ibid., 149. 7 T. M. Rudavsky, Maimonides (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 7. “Maimonides could justly be labeled a disciple of his great Islamic predecessor. His reading of Alfarabi influenced his thinking on a host of philosophical issues. Most important, it provided him with the key for what he understood to be the meaning of Judaism.” Kreisel, Prophecy, 150 n. 5. See also Jeffrey Macy, “Prophecy in al-Farabi and Maimonides: The Imaginative and Rational Faculties,” in Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May 1985, eds. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 192; Lawrence Berman, “Maimonides, The Disciple of Alfarabi,” Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): 154–78.

The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   55

























56  Gary Remer



























The Jewish Reinterpretation of the Hebrew Prophet   57

Bibliography Altmann, Alexander. “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures.” In Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David B. Ruderman, 63–84. New York: New York University Press, 1992. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated with an introduction by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Martin Ostwald. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Berman, Lawrence. “Maimonides, The Disciple of Alfarabi.” Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): 154–78. Black, Deborah L. Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990. Cicero. On the Commonwealth, edited by James E. G. Zetzel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ———. On the Ideal Orator. Translated by James M. May and Jakob Wisse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. Orator. Translated by G. L. Hendrickson and H. M. Hubbell. Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939. Davidson, Herbert A. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ———. Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Galston, Miriam. “Philosopher-King v. Prophet.” Israel Oriental Studies 8 (1978): 204–18. Kemal, Salim. The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes: The Aristotelian Reception. London: Routledge, 2003. Kreisel, Howard. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Leaman, Oliver. “Maimonides, Imagination and the Objectivity of Prophecy.” Religion 18 (1988): 69–80, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-721X(88)80019-8. Leon, Judah Messer. The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow. Translated and edited by Isaac Rabinowitz. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Lesley, Arthur M. “A Survey of Medieval Hebrew Rhetoric.” In Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, edited by David R. Blumenthal, 107–33. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984. Macy, Jeffrey. “Prophecy in al-Farabi and Maimonides: The Imaginative and Rational Faculties.” In Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May 1985, edited by Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel, 185–201. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986. Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Melamed, Abraham. The Philosopher-King in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. Nederman, Cary J. “The Union of Wisdom and Eloquence before the Renaissance: The Ciceronian Orator in Medieval Thought.” Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992): 75–95, https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-4181(92)90017-S.

58  Gary Remer

O’Gorman, Ned. “Aristotle’s Phantasia in the Rhetoric: Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of Discourse.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 38 (2005): 16–40. Quintilian. The Orator’s Education. Translated and edited by Donald A. Russell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Remer, Gary. Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Rudavsky, T. M. Maimonides. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

4 THE SCIENTIST OF POLITICS? THE TYPOLOGY OF PRINCEDOMS IN THE PRINCE AND MACHIAVELLI’S AMBITION AS A THEORIST OF HUMAN ACTION Bee Yun

Among the diverse interpretations of Machiavelli created since the nineteenth century, one in particular, “Machiavelli-as-a-scientist,” stands out.1 Indeed, until the mid-twentieth century, and even subsequently, Machiavelli was often viewed as the proponent of a scientific approach to politics. Various scholars and writers endorsed this picture adding their own interpretations. Of course, not all those who did so entirely welcomed the changes that the Florentine allegedly introduced into the western tradition of political thought. They admitted that the scientifization of political culture, which Machiavelli’s thought purportedly both represented and precipitated, was part of a grand-scale cultural transformation of Europe through which an era of significant discoveries was ultimately ushered in. At the same time, scientifization was, for these scholars, synonymous with the de-ethicization of political culture. Views of Machiavelli’s alleged scientificity were thus frequently ambivalent. While debating the scientific character of Machiavelli’s political thought, scholars stressed different aspects, and evaluated them differently. Consequently, Machiavelli-as-ascientist has acquired such diverse meanings that one eminent researcher even felt it necessary to chart in what sense Machiavelli was called a scientist in order to refute the claim with finality.2 This chapter revisits this popular conception of Machiavelli. It discusses what historiographical assumptions initiated and precipitated its birth and growth, and asks if this view of Machiavelli remains tenable and useful for characterizing his thought. This approach is partly motivated by a need to assess the recent discussion of Machiavelli’s method by Megan K. Dyer and Cary J. Nederman. Dyer and Nederman argue that Machiavelli was indeed a scientist, but was not the kind of scientist that he has usually been supposed to be.3 In defining what constitutes scientificity, Dyer and Nederman refer us to Paul Feyerabend, DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-6

60  Bee Yun

whose discussion of the nature of scientific work and progress aims at dissolving the barrier the modern scientific disciplines have built around themselves in order to distinguish “science” from other more traditional forms and genres of knowledge. Dyer and Nederman contend that Machiavelli viewed adaptability and flexibility as the primary political virtues. They find this understanding of political action by Machiavelli resembles the definition of scientific work given by Feyerabend, which denies the popular notion that science progresses by following a set of well-defined, consistent methods.4 Dyer and Nederman thus suggest that nothing is more alien to Machiavelli’s thought than the term “scientific,” at least in the sense the term is commonly defined today. I, myself, have discussed Machiavelli’s highlighting of adaptability and flexibility as a constituent element of his idea of the princely virtue elsewhere. I have pointed out the one-sidedness of labelling his thought “scientific.”5 Machiavelli was extremely sensitive to, and concerned about, the high degree of contingencies inherent in human existence and actions, whose mastery requires the maximum power of altering strategies and tactics according to individual situations. The usefulness of general tips and prescriptions are fundamentally limited in such circumstances. Nevertheless, Machiavelli did not give up the idea wholly that a certain kind of rationality pervades and rules the human world. This optimism is apparent at the beginning of the famous 25th chapter of The Prince, where he discourses on standing against the malice of fortuna, the ancient goddess of chance and luck. As I am well aware, many have believed and now believe human affairs so controlled by fortuna and by God that men with their prudence cannot manage them – yes, more, that men have no recourse against the world’s variations. Such believers, therefore, decide that they need not sweat much over man’s activities but can let chance govern them. This belief has been the more firmly held in our times by reason of the great variations in affairs that we have seen in the past and now see every day beyond all human prediction. Thinking on these variations, I myself now and then incline in some respects to their belief. Nonetheless, in order not to annul our free will, I judge it true that fortuna may be mistress of one half our actions but that even she leaves the other half, or almost, under our control.6 Machiavelli’s idea is clear enough. The world is not entirely at the disposal of chance and luck but is still, at least partly, governed by a certain rationality. By understanding the rationality, one can influence and control the course of an event, as we can prevent flooding by estimating the risk of storm and inundation and constructing dams – an example Machiavelli actually offers in the same chapter to explain how to resist fortuna’s caprice.7 Ultimately, the meaning of writing a handbook on dos and don’ts for a prince may lie here. A world

The Scientist of Politics?  61

utterly subject to contingencies would be like a whirling chaos, leaving no room for human intervention. In such a world, any attempt at theorizing would be futile. However, as Dyer and Nederman also highlight, Machiavelli makes a self-defeating confession at the end of the same chapter: he comments on the fundamental limitedness of human rationality and, recommending the highest level of adaptability, admits this exceeds human nature. In its turn, this does not affect Machiavelli’s belief in the possibility of grasping and conceptualizing what we might term the rules of the game. The result is self-contradictory and paradoxical. As I will contend in this chapter, only by understanding Machiavelli’s self-contradiction and the paradox that arises as a consequence, can one fully understand his ambition in The Prince. My concern here is strictly historical. It is not within the remit of this essay to decide whether Machiavelli deserves the title of “scientist” or not. Such a decision is impossible, not least, because we have no authoritative definition of what constitutes “science.” The understanding of science that underlies “Machiavelli-as-a-scientist” arguments turns out to be naïve. It has become increasingly hard to contend that science progresses on the basis of strictly deductive reasoning and purely empirically won objective data. Concomitantly, the schematic distinction between science and traditional forms and genres of knowledge has been questioned both within and beyond scientific disciplines themselves. This is exemplified by Feyerabend’s scientific anarchism, on which Dyer and Nederman rely. Yet, it would be premature and equally problematic to jump to an alternative concept of science and scientific progress as a new standard for comparison.8 A recent remark by an author in an introductory book on the philosophy of science should be kept in mind: “After all, science is a heterogeneous activity, encompassing a wide range of disciplines and theories. It may be that they share some fixed set of features which define what it is to be a science, but it may not.”9 This chapter’s attempt to summarize the discussions and debates on the relationship between Machiavelli’s thought and method and the spirit of modern science and to reassess the question from a fresh perspective will pursue a different path. Via an overview and reassessment, it will illustrate Machiavelli’s self-contradictory concept of the rationality of the human world and the possibility of its rational government. Through this undertaking, the chapter will also reconsider the transformation of political thinking that took place in the later medieval and Renaissance space and the location of Machiavelli’s political thought in that process. The following discussion is made up of three parts. The first part summarizes the historical formation and development of the portrait of Machiavelli-as-ascientist. It will focus on how the interest in Machiavelli’s allegedly scientific method began and what historical circumstances, questions, and theoretical assumptions helped this picture of Machiavelli proliferate in the later part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century. Certain problems are of

62  Bee Yun

such significance that to understand them requires comprehending their birth. The question of the scientificity of Machiavelli’s thought is just such a problem: mainstream political scientists have built part of their self-understanding, and even a partial justification for their profession, on a certain understanding of Machiavelli. It was from the myth of “scientific methodology” that Dyer and Nederman sought to help free them by showing that Machiavelli was not the person political scientists believed him to be.10 The second part will examine why a picture of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist cannot be sustained in view of Machiavelli’s idea of radical contingencies inherent in human existence and his concomitant scepticism about the possibility of their mastery. In its final part, the chapter will highlight Machiavelli’s rationalist moment, namely his stark belief in the possibility of a rational theory of politics that will enable human intervention in the world. It will analyse the typology of principalities at the beginning of The Prince and uncover the book’s overarching architecture, which has been neglected to date in the literature on Machiavelli’s thought. As will be shown below, this typology is a crystallization of Machiavelli’s aspiration for a rational theory of politics instead of being a casual collection of types of principalities he happened to regard as worthy of mentioning. In concluding, I will ask whether the concept of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist can hold, pointing out that what has appeared to generations of scholars as a step toward a new scientific theory was actually an importation of pragmatic ideas originating in the “real world” concerns of the Middle Ages. Finally, I will end my discussion by interrogating where Machiavelli’s true originality as a political thinker lies.

Birth of a Myth One of the most persistent myths in the European historical discipline is the so-called turn to realism which allegedly took place in the Italian Renaissance. A decisive figure in the propagation of this concept of the Italian Renaissance was Jacob Burckhardt, whose book on the culture of the Italian Renaissance long remained canonical across many countries.11 According to Burckhardt, during the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and in the urban spaces in northern and central Italy, a significant cultural change occurred: all the elements we commonly attribute to the modern age, from individualism, to a secularized view of states and political communities, to interest in vernacular languages and empirical natural science, were born at this time or, at the very least, their foundations were laid decisively. Burckhardt saw in these changes a radical epistemological shift. Living on the edge of the European Enlightenment, Burckhardt had a strong distrust for the medieval corpora of ideas and knowledge at the core of which he saw the tyranny of religious imaginations, metaphysical cosmology and ontology, and ethical commitments deriving from

The Scientist of Politics?  63

them. Such ideas and concepts led to nothing but fantasies and illusions that obstructed humanity’s appreciation of reality. Overcoming such barriers was possible only by establishing a distance from the inherited corpora of knowledge and norms. The will or courage necessary for such a break was found in figures such as merchants, mercenaries, and technicians who were on the margins of medieval society. These latter evaluated every relationship, idea, and knowledge by their validity and usefulness. This pragmatic mentality or attitude brought about a cultural revolution in the aftermath of which the modern age began to take shape. The Burckhardtian concept of the Renaissance dominated research from the late nineteenth century. In Germany in particular, although it was by no means the only case, it inspired countless histories of modern culture, fine arts, philosophy, technology, and literature.12 Nietzsche was only one of many to appropriate Burckhardt’s concept of the Italian Renaissance to reconstruct and criticize the trajectory of western civilization.13 The Burckhardtian concept was also discussed actively in the context of research on “Renaissances” in other parts of Europe.14 Its influence was felt even among Marxist intellectuals. The plot of Berthold Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo (Das Leben von Galileo) is a testimony to its popularity.15 In the play, Galileo falls into dialogue with a theologian, a mathematician, and a philosopher before the Grand Duke of Florence. He endeavours to convince the scholars of his findings in favour of a heliocentric model, saying: “Gentlemen, to believe in the authority of Aristotle is one thing, tangible facts are another.”16 However, the scholars reject any disputation that does not accept Aristotle’s authority as unquestionable truth. One claims that If Aristotle is going to be dragged in the mud – that’s to say, an authority recognized not only by every classical scientist but also by the chief fathers of the church – then any prolonging of this discussion is in my view a waste of time.17 Brecht modelled his dialogue on the Burckhardtian schema. The scholars’ rejection of even thinking about going beyond the boundary drawn by the ancient authorities represents a mentality diametrically opposed to Galileo’s trust in the power of empirical evidence and his willingness to explore the unknown solely on that basis. Burckhardt popularized an opposition between two mentalities. He contrasted medieval culture and Renaissance culture as day and night, the former being almost enslaved by the power of tradition, the teachings of the church, and other ancient authorities. It was a mentality indifferent to and even ignorant of reality. Renaissance culture, on the other hand, was open to what observations and reasoning teach about the world. Indeed, long before Brecht, Galileo had been esteemed as the zeitgeist of the Italian Renaissance along with such names as Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, and Rembrandt.

64  Bee Yun

I summarize the predominance of the Burckhardtian concept to clarify how Machiavelli’s methodological principles became such a “hot topic” for scholars. The intensive interest in his method certainly requires explanation. Not all the methodologies of great political thinkers spark such an interest. Those thinkers whose methods preoccupy scholars usually showed interest themselves in methodological problems and even dedicated intensive discussions to this theme. They include Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx, among others. By contrast, Machiavelli did not demonstrate any similar concern with methodology. At this point, the reader may feel tempted to point to a famous passage from the fifteenth chapter of The Prince, which has been repeatedly cited as manifesting Machiavelli’s methodological principles: I have decided that I must concern myself with the truth of the matter as facts show it rather than with any fanciful notion. Yet many have fancied for themselves republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in reality. For there is such a difference between how men live and how they ought to live.18 Hardly has any passage in The Prince received so much attention and so many comments as this one. Those who believe that Machiavelli introduced a scientific turn into the tradition of political thought in the West have cited and analysed this passage repeatedly. However, it falls short of a manifestation of methodological principles. It denounces popular notions of government and political authority as prisoners of subjective fantasies, declaring that the world is not, in reality, what such fantasies imply. However, the distinction between reality and ideas is so basic to all sorts of human thinking that it is hard to imagine any author denying it. Questioning the soundness of the cognition and the reasoning of one’s adversaries and their ideas belongs to the classical strategies in all kinds of controversies. What this passage contains is hardly more than Machiavelli’s self-appraisal. Setting aside the fact that it was not unusual for a medieval author to declare his intention to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, how far should we accept an author’s estimation of his or her own contribution and its originality as the objective truth? It is doubtful whether Machiavelli intended to offer a clarification of his methodological principles in the above passage. He probably inserted the statement to justify his deviation from the usual teachings on the princely virtues, and to stress how he differed from (and excelled) the humanist group at the Medici court with whom he had to compete for attention and favour. However, what was originally intended to be Machiavelli’s self-assessment came to be read as a manifesto for a methodological revolution when framed by the Burckhardtian concept of the Renaissance.19 Burckhardt himself did not show much interest in Machiavelli’s method. For Burckhardt, Machiavelli was

The Scientist of Politics?  65

primarily an example of the Renaissance mind that mistrusted any ethical ideas that could not prove their usefulness and validity via tangible gains. However, Machiavelli’s thought soon came to be evaluated fully in light of the Burckhardtian concept. Nowhere is this more apparent than Friedrich Meinecke’s appraisal of Machiavelli’s “new scientific method” (die neue wissenschaftliche Methode).20 Discussing Machiavelli’s political theory as a seminal moment in the modern tradition of the theory of the state, Meinecke underlined Machiavelli’s “new principle of method – a principle which was to break fresh ground for so many centuries, and which was so purely empirical and so completely free from presuppositions” (das neue, für Jahrhunderte bahnbrechende methodische Prinzip des voraussetzungslosen Empirismus).21 Meinecke cited the above passage as evidence of Machiavelli’s aspirations for understanding a pure reality uncontaminated by any subjective wishes. Meinecke’s naivety, which accepted Machiavelli’s self-assessment as an objective explanation, appears surprising for a veteran historian of his calibre. It is, however, fully comprehensible in the face of the overwhelming power of the Burckhardtian conception of the Renaissance. The nihilistic conception of politics that was popular in Germany during Meinecke’s time partly accounts for his susceptibility to the Burckhardtian conception.22 Looking back on the experiences of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, a group of self-critical German writers openly attributed their failures to an excess of ideology in the mid-nineteenth century. They proclaimed in the Hobbesian manner that a political vision that does not take people’s pursuit of self-interest and self-preservation seriously was misleading. In their view, the revolutions of the past were doomed from the outset because they were guided by fanciful visions. To these latter, they opposed their own programme, which, they argued, fully considered the immutable and ineradicable rules of human nature and politics. They termed this programme Realpolitik in the sense that it faithfully reflected the reality of politics and considered the real forces behind it.23 However, the immediate relevance of their programme to reality was more a self-proclaimed statement than itself an objective truth. It does not do justice to the leaders of the revolutions to label them as prisoners of groundless fantasies. The antinomy of Realpolitik and idealist politics is fictive. Nevertheless, the concept of Realpolitik successfully made its way into political vocabulary, especially when Germany was unified under the leadership of illiberal Prussia whilst excluding Austria, something which irritated both liberal groups and proponents of the Großdeutsche Lösung. The proponents of Bismarck’s bloodand-iron politics welcomed the concept of Realpolitik; dissatisfied critics used the concept to explain what was unfolding before their eyes. The surge of interest in Machiavelli in late nineteenth-century Germany is greatly indebted to this intellectual milieu. Machiavelli’s defence of even morally dubious policies in the name of the supreme right of the factual was read as the earliest manifesto of the principles of Realpolitik and, as such, as informing the historical roots of the tradition in Europe. The Burckhardtian

66  Bee Yun

cultural-historiographical schema boosted the popularity of this notion. Machiavelli was no isolated genius but a son of his age, an age which discovered the world as it is and laid the foundation for significant scientific discoveries and inventions. Machiavelli was no mere clever man; he was a scientist. He observed and reasoned scientifically as Galileo and other pioneers of the modern sciences in the Renaissance did. Needless to say, the proponents of Realpolitik, who loved to compare their ideas to a scientific approach to the human world and politics, welcomed this anchoring of Machiavelli’s name. Once established, the image of Machiavelli as a scientist reached into every discussion involving him. Meinecke was only one of numerous examples in which this image was given an elaborate theoretical expression. Ernst Cassirer commented in his much-read The Myth of the State on Machiavelli’s method as follows: “Machiavelli’s political science and Galileo’s natural science are based upon a common principle. They start from the axiom of the uniformity and homogeneity of nature. Nature is always the same; all natural events obey the same invariable laws.”24 Elsewhere in the same book, he compares Machiavelli with a chemist who prepares a strong poison without caring about its effects: Machiavelli’s Prince contains many dangerous and poisonous things, but he looks at them with the coolness and indifference of a scientist. He gives his political prescriptions. By whom these prescriptions will be used and whether they will be used for a good or evil purpose is no concern of his.25 Cassirer’s comparison of Machiavelli’s thought with natural science is extensive. This shows the pervasiveness of the image of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist in the first half of the twentieth century. It was not unusual for scholars in other disciplines to take up the identification of Machiavelli with a scientist and to elaborate on it in their own ways. Hans Freyer, an eminent German sociologist and a collaborator with the Nazi regime, wrote in his influential book on Machiavelli: “One generation before Copernicus presented a novel idea of the solar system, and a century before Galilei created the mechanics in terms of a mathematical theory of the movement, Machiavelli has found the natural laws of the political world.”26 Furthermore, we cannot omit a group of Italian writers, who, partly motivated by patriotic zeal, joined the international trend to consecrate Machiavelli as a herald of the coming age of science. Leonardo Olschki, a renowned Italian scholar of the history of science and technology, entitled his booklet Machiavelli the Scientist.27 Much earlier, he had already linked Machiavelli to the ideas and methods of the technicians and engineers of the fifteenth century: The agreement of Machiavelli’s method with that of the learned technicians of the fifteenth century can be recognized already in the kind of questions they ask but foremost in the persistent endeavour to isolate the

The Scientist of Politics?  67

problems on the foundation of facts and to attempt to find out solutions by balancing learned notions and practical experiences.28 The list of authors and teachers who made similar comparisons between Machiavelli’s political thought and the natural sciences could be expanded. What I have described so far demonstrates how Machiavelli came to be enshrined in the pantheon of great Renaissance thinkers and took his place beside da Vinci, Galileo, and other great proponents of modern natural science. Indeed, Machiavelli-as-a-scientist became a most fashionable research topic internationally in the early part of the twentieth century. However, the image of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist is debatable in several respects. Machiavelli-as-a-scientist, as described above, is a construction that largely relies on an analogy inspired by the radical distinction in Machiavelli’s thought between the politically expedient and the morally legitimate. Even an author denying it does not necessarily confuse reality and ideas. Only those who identified political pragmatism as the sole conclusion one can logically derive from the objective observation of reality, condemning all others as misled by epistemological failures, would see a distinct methodology in the distinction. Yet, Machiavelli had no special knowledge or interest in the contemporary natural sciences or in technological issues. After a lengthy discussion concerning Machiavelli’s collaboration with da Vinci over a project to redirect the River Arno, Roger Masters could not establish that Machiavelli had any remarkable interest in such issues, let alone valued them highly.29 Indeed, Machiavelli’s scepticism about contemporary technological developments, even in a field closely related to his profession, is apparent in his lack of appreciation for the progress of military skills, first and foremost in cannon. This is evident in The Art of War. As Masters himself acknowledges, on the battlefield, “the essential factor for Machiavelli is and remains the morale and civic virtues of the soldiers.”30 In this respect, Machiavelli differed from Thomas Hobbes, whose theory of society and the state is frequently associated with contemporary developments in the natural sciences. Even before earning a reputation with his ethical and political theories, Hobbes made his name with his research in mathematics, optics, and natural philosophy. He enumerated his works in these fields as his representative contribution along with his political theories.31 We lack comparable grounds to associate Machiavelli with the natural scientific revolution of the Renaissance. His highlighting of the empirically verifiable alone falls far short of evidence that he shared the spirit of the natural scientific revolution of his time.

Machiavelli: the Scientist of Politics? German scholars such as Herfried Münkler and Peter Schröder are certainly evidence of the ongoing influence of the concept of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist, as are recent Anglophone discussions by Joseph Femia and Masters.32

68  Bee Yun

Nevertheless, the relationship between Machiavelli’s thought and modern science no longer appears in discussion as frequently as it once did.33 The German academy has in fact lost much of its erstwhile influence in the international arena in this area of research into Machiavelli. A heightened concern with morality in politics following the Holocaust diminished interest in an allegedly ethically unconcerned scientific theory of power. Instead, scholars came to be attracted to other aspects of Machiavelli’s thought, namely his contribution to the development of modern republicanism, which has drawn attention increasingly as an ideological resource complementary to, or even as an alternative to, liberalism in recent decades. The discovery of Machiavelli as a republican thinker sparked by the Cambridge School shifted the focus of research more to the Discourses. It took issue with Machiavelli’s relationship with, and debt to, the Graeco-Roman tradition of political thought. The quest for Machiavelli’s scientific gene went out of fashion. Instead, Machiavelli was rediscovered as a bridge from the ancient tradition of republicanism to the modern. There is an important reason to doubt claims that Machiavelli was a scientific thinker. Our discussions on the nature of science have questioned, criticized, and corrected a picture that was prevalent when the concept of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist flourished. I have already noted that the concept of science itself has undergone transformations. Scholars have become more cautious about claims about science relating to objectivity and deduction. Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory or J. D. Bernal’s sociologically guided history of sciences have demonstrated how far scientific research is susceptible to the influences of “human” factors such as values, norms, and the interests of the individuals and the institutions it involves. 34 An erstwhile powerful assumption that human perception can have unmediated access to pure reality has lost ground. Consequently, fewer and fewer scholars believe that science progresses by accumulating objective data and reasoning deductively on that basis. These developments dismantled the naïve reflectionist credo that supported the concept of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist. Human cognition necessarily relies on a set of values, interests, and even, as Hans-Georg Gadamer puts it, prejudices.35 We may follow Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in saying that human experiences are profoundly conditioned by what they can and want to feel, hear, see, and know, while remaining aware of the solipsistic risk inherent in their constructivist argument.36 When the reflectionist epistemology is no longer valid, the core of the concept of Machiavelli-as-a-scientist crumbles. The claim that Machiavelli was guided by his scientific gene and arrived at his political ideas by reflecting the logic of politics like a mirror becomes hard to sustain. Finally, and most importantly, there is an aspect in Machiavelli’s political thought that defies the characterization “scientific.” Despite his call to fight against fortuna’s caprice and malice, Machiavelli is ultimately sceptical about

The Scientist of Politics?  69

the odds in such a struggle. After discussing different strategies for winning the games against fortuna in the 25th chapter, he adds: I conclude then (with fortuna varying and men remaining stubborn in their ways) that men are successful while they are in close harmony with fortuna, and when they are out of harmony, they are unsuccessful. As for me, I believe this: it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortuna is a woman, and it is necessary, in order to keep her under, to cuff and maul her. She more often lets herself be overcome by men using such methods than by those who proceed coldly; therefore, always, like a woman, she is the friend of young men, because they are less cautious, more spirited, and with more boldness master her.37 A reader would immediately recognize Machiavelli’s feeling of frustration as a theoretician here. Fortuna is so fickle that human knowledge cannot reach any certainty regarding her future course. She controls human affairs in such a way that one and the same action may lead to completely different results. The human mind may predict what action will probably trigger this or that process. Based on the prediction, it may prescribe that this or that action will “probably” be the best option. However, there is no room for certainty at all. All theories are doomed to be incomplete from the outset. This is not the sole place where Machiavelli expresses a similar idea about radical contingencies in the human world and the consequent limitation imposed on human intelligence. The same feeling of embarrassment at the lack of discernible order in the world is expressed in the Tercet on fortuna, a poem that is not, as yet, precisely dated.38 He imagines fortuna’s palace. Several wheels are turning there, each of which designates different paths to power, glory, wealth, and other earthly goods. As long as a person remains on the same wheel, a decline is inevitable because fortuna incessantly turns the wheels. So the best way to stay at the top of fortuna’s rotating wheel is to leap constantly from one wheel to another.39 Here, Machiavelli metaphorizes the need for incessant adaptation according to the changing circumstances. However, his conclusion is overtly pessimistic: such ability of adaptation is virtually denied to humans.40 Therefore, “in days gone by few have been successful, and they have died before their wheel reversed itself or in turning carried them down to the bottom.”41 This pessimistic conclusion is in line with Machiavelli’s assessment in The Prince, following a lengthy discussion of the confrontation of the princely virtue with fortuna’s power, that there is no man living so prudent that he knows how to accommodate himself to this condition, both because he cannot deviate from that to which nature disposes him, and also because, always having prospered while walking in one road, he cannot be induced to leave it.42

70  Bee Yun

A more direct and candid statement of Machiavelli’s embarrassment appears in the following remark in a letter of 1506 to Giovan Battista Soderini, which is called Ghiribizzi: We have seen and see every day those I have mentioned, and countless others who could be used as instances, gaining kingdoms and sovereignties or falling, according to circumstances; and a man who was praised while he was gaining is reviled when he is losing; and frequently after long prosperity a man who finally loses does not in any way blame himself but accuses the heavens and the action of the Fates. But the reason why different ways of working are sometimes equally effective and equally damaging I do not know, but I should much like to know.43 His conclusion is equally pessimistic: [C]ertainly anybody wise enough to understand the times and the types of affairs and to adapt himself to them would have always good fortune, or he would protect himself always from bad, and it would come to be true that the wise man would rule the stars and the fates. But because there never are such wise men, since men in the first place are shortsighted and in the second place cannot command their natures, it follows that fortuna varies and commands men and holds them under her yoke.44 This sceptical aspect to Machiavelli’s thought is rarely discussed as a theme in scholarly discourse.45 Dyer and Nederman’s exploration of Machiavelli’s method draws precise attention to it.46 For Machiavelli, the princely virtue lies in finding optimal ways to preserve and increase one’s power amid limitlessly and chaotically changing conditions. Dyer and Nederman see a strong affinity between Machiavelli’s idea of the ideal prince and Feyerabend’s scientist. I exclude discussion of how their comparison may be justified here. Equally, I reserve for a future occasion criticism of their attempt to derive insight into the nature of research on politics from this particular observation and their critique of the worship of numbers and statistics prevalent, under the guise of the scientific method, in current research into politics. My criticism of Dyer and Nederman’s contention at this time is limited solely to noting that they seem to underestimate Machiavelli’s aspirations for a theory of rules determining the effectiveness of political action. Machiavelli’s frustration with the almost unlimited variety of means by which a goal may be achieved, as is visible in Ghiribizzi, certainly suggests a mindset that seeks infallible rules governing actions. Only as a result of such aspirations would an author state that, although he is sometimes inclined to admit fortuna’s complete domination of human affairs, he still believes that half of their fate lies in human hands, as we read in the passage cited above from the beginning of the

The Scientist of Politics?  71

25th chapter of The Prince. In short, Machiavelli believes that free will may have some place in human deliberation and action. As I will discuss below, there are two mutually contradictory ideas at the root of Machiavelli’s thought.47 One is an intense zeal for knowledge of the general and infallible rules determining the success and failure of political undertakings, much as the natural scientist would expect there to be rules governing the physical universe. Such knowledge makes a rational intervention into politics and society possible. The other is a recognition of the lack of regularity in the processes of human affairs when compared to what is observable in the physical world. The unlimited variability of the developments of human affairs significantly limits the possibility of influencing and controlling the flow and result of collective interactions in a society. Machiavelli never succeeded in reconciling these two ideas and permanently agonized over the gap between his aspirations and his understanding of a world fraught with contingencies. And yet, despite the self-contradiction, Machiavelli proceeded in search of a rational theory of politics: in addition to the maxims and prescriptions for a prince to master individual situations and problems, Machiavelli’s aims were embodied in a new conceptual framework in The Prince – a new typology of princedoms.

Machiavelli’s Typology of Princedoms in The Prince All the states, all the dominions that have had or now have authority over men, have been and now are either republics or princedoms. Princedoms are either hereditary, where the family of their ruler have for a long time been princes, or they are new ones. The new ones are either wholly new, as was Milan for Francesco Sforza, or they are like members joined to the hereditary state of the prince who conquers them, as is the Kingdom of Naples for the King of Spain. Dominions gained in this way are either accustomed to living under a prince or are used to being free. And they are gained either with other men’s armies or with one’s own, either through fortune or through strength and wisdom.48 Excluding the republic from the discussion, which is reserved for the Discourses, this typology of princedoms structures Machiavelli’s discussion in The Prince up to the eleventh chapter on ecclesiastical principalities.49 It surprises modern readers for two reasons. First, the guiding principle of categorizing different principalities is unprecedented. In the scholastic and humanist traditions, authors mainly relied on the principle of categorizing forms of government by the location of sovereign power.50 A sexpartite scheme, which originated with Aristotle, had served most frequently as the basic conceptual framework for discussing the merits and faults of different forms of government in scholastic or humanist “mirror of princes” literature since the reintroduction of the Politics in the 1260s and its adoption by Thomas Aquinas in his De regimine principum. This

72  Bee Yun

established three good forms of government – monarchy, aristocracy, and the people’s rule – and three bad forms of government, tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule. No one before and, as far as I know, after Machiavelli had ever attempted to sort the forms of princely rule as he now did. His new typology focused on how a ruler acquired territory, what form of political institution the acquired territory traditionally had, and what power resources a ruler mobilized in the course of its acquisition. Here one quickly gets an impression that Machiavelli’s discussion was organized casually according to where his eyes fell. Apparently, Machiavelli knew the Aristotelian typology of government well. He even used it in a form slightly modified by Polybius in the Discourses, which were written simultaneously with The Prince.51 This suggests that Machiavelli’s employment of unfamiliar categories was the result of some special consideration. A surprising scarcity of scholarly discussion regarding his seemingly inadequate scaffolding is no less surprising than the confusing character of Machiavelli’s typology itself. I believe that this surprising silence has to do with the predominance of the Burckhardtian paradigm, which, as sketched above, elevated unmediated access to reality and distance from inherited theoretical frameworks to the epistemological foundation for the new scientific method. In this context, the disorderly appearance of Machiavelli’s discussion could be excused, justified, and even praised as evidence for the modern character of his thinking. Meinecke claimed: It was certainly impossible, once the moral and religious bond had been severed, which held together the medieval Christian ideal of life, to set up immediately a new worldly system of ideals which would have the same inner unity and compactness. For, to minds freshly released from the restraints of the Middle Ages, so many provinces of life were not opened up simultaneously that it was not possible at once to find a distinctive point of view, from which the secularized world could be grasped and comprehended once again as a harmonious unity.52 With no reliable theoretical framework available, Machiavelli had to proceed on his own, feeling the path forward – so argues Meinecke. Ernst Cassirer similarly affirmed the purported absence of structure in The Prince’s discussion. [I]n our textbooks of the history of modern philosophy, we find no chapter on Machiavelli. That is, in a sense, understandable and justifiable. Machiavelli was no philosopher in the classical or medieval sense of this term. He had no speculative system, not even a system of politics.53 According to Cassirer, this unsystematic character derives from Machiavelli’s departure from the Aristotelian and pseudo-Dionysian cosmology, which

The Scientist of Politics?  73

dominated the scholastic tradition. Machiavelli was not bound by any tradition or authority. He spoke solely from his political experiences.54 At this point, we should pause and consider how far we can agree with those who say that Machiavelli was unsystematic. We exclude the Discourses from this discussion. The latter were written as commentaries on Livy’s work. Only those who have never had a chance to look at medieval and Renaissance commentaries would be surprised that Machiavelli’s discussions look fragmented. Compared with other commentaries written in his age or earlier, the Discourses are not particularly disorderly. Nor do other works, such as The History of Florence or The Art of War, look especially unsystematic. As to The Prince, Machiavelli seems to return to operating within the normal, contemporary parameters after the eleventh chapter. It must be noted that there was no standard form and order of discussion in medieval and Renaissance “mirror of princes” literature. Certainly, there were regular topics such as the creation and goals of political community and government, various forms of rule, and the virtues of the prince and/or citizens. However, authors adjusted the arrangement of topics to suit individual occasions and needs. Although it had become, since Aquinas’s De regimine principum, more or less conventional to begin with the chapters on the nature and forms of government, there was no homogeneity even here. Giles of Rome ordered his discussion in De regimine principum Libri III, which was one of the most successful “mirrors of princes” following its appearance at the end of the thirteenth century, into three parts: part one concerns the government of the body and soul of the ruler; the second, government of the household; the third, government of the state.55 Individual variations were more marked regarding discussion of dos and don’ts for the prince. The four cardinal virtues – justitia, fortitudo, sapientia, and temperantia – remained constant. However, beyond this, authors were more or less free to choose topics of discussion. Depending on the authors’ educational and professional backgrounds, discussion varied greatly. The scholastic “mirrors of princes” frequently sound like a clerical sermon delivered to a layperson. They are driven by motives and ideas from the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the works of Aristotle and Cicero. The humanistic “mirrors of princes” have different tones, ones which show the impact of the ancient tradition. The influences of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia are especially notable, and felt in the “mirrors of princes” by Pontano and Bartolomeo Sacchi (Il Platina).56 Let us accept that Machiavelli’s discussion in The Prince appears to lack structure. This impression primarily relates to the typology of princedoms in the first chapter and their discussion in the following ten chapters. How far can this impression be justified? Is the typology of government in The Prince casually composed to discuss only types of princely rule Machiavelli found deserving of discussion? Or have we failed here, once again, to understand this Florentine? To answer these questions, it is necessary to understand what points Machiavelli wanted to clarify in The Prince. In a famous epistle to his friend Francesco

74  Bee Yun

Vettori (10 December 1513), Machiavelli explains his reasons for writing the book: it is to explain what principalities are; of what kinds there are; and how they are created, preserved, and lost.57 This is not the sole instance on which Machiavelli poured his intellectual energy into the topic of the creation, preservation, and loss of political power. The Polybian theory of the state’s life cycle, which he endorses in the Discourses, equally addresses how a government is born, develops, and finally gives way to another. What Machiavelli intended to accomplish with his typology was to summarize prescriptions and tips for overcoming the significant challenges a ruler is likely to face regarding the preservation and augmentation of power in each phase of the development of princely rule. A closer look at how he distinguishes and classifies princedoms reveals that, with that purpose in mind, Machiavelli constructed his typology and structured his discussion with utmost care. The first distinction Machiavelli draws is between hereditary principalities (Chapter 2) and mixed principalities (Chapter 3), which are a form of new princedom. However, his distinction overshadows the fact that both forms of princedom concern, in reality, the same princes. Mixed principalities arise when hereditary princes annex a foreign territory. The same prince remains the hereditary ruler in his old territory, but becomes a new prince in the acquired territory. Why did Machiavelli choose to classify the same prince into two different categories? The answer is that he intended to discuss the problems of preservation and expansion of a princedom separately. With regard to the completely new principality, Machiavelli pursued the same principle of focusing on the problems and possibilities connected with preserving and expanding power. He stressed the prince faced different problems in the new principality. Machiavelli believed that how power is created determines what challenges and difficulties the prince will face later in the course of endeavouring to keep or increase it. The more a power owes its creation to the assistance of others and chance, the more difficult its preservation and development tend to become. Hereditary rulers already possess their own arms and other necessary infrastructure, although they may receive aid from others in the course of acquiring new territories. New princes do not have such an advantage: their power must first be created to be preserved or expanded. Consequently, the mode of acquisition of power concerns the completely new princes to a much larger degree than the princes of the mixed principalities. By affecting their chances and risks decisively, it may be of the utmost importance for them. Machiavelli organized Chapters 6 and 7 accordingly. Chapter 6 is dedicated to princes who rise to power by their own arms; Chapter 7 deals with princes who relied on assistance from others and/or good luck at least at the initial stage. If the new princedom successfully stabilizes its power, it will evolve along a pattern similar to the old princedom. Machiavelli did not believe it necessary to deal with the risks and challenges involved in the undertakings because he had already discussed them in Chapters 2 and 3.

The Scientist of Politics?  75

Machiavelli did not discuss problems relating to the decline of a princedom in separate chapters. It is ridiculous to teach the prince about the loss of power. The demise of established princely rule results from a failure of defence. The new principality perishes when the prince does not successfully stabilize his power. Both cases are extensively discussed in Chapters 3, 6, and 7. Thus viewed, Machiavelli’s typology meticulously covers and summarizes the major challenges, and the prescriptions for overcoming these, with regard to the creation, development, and demise of a princedom. There may be some minor variations in reality that are not directly addressed here. Yet, the necessary tips may be easily derived from the prescriptions in related chapters. Intermittently, Machiavelli turns to topics relevant specifically to the type of princedom discussed in the immediately preceding chapter. A discussion on the different problems princes need to care about and solve to subjugate the annexed territory, not least depending on its previous form of rule (Chapters 4 and 5), is placed after Chapter 3. Chapter 8, which warns of the excessive use of fraud and violence in creating a new princedom, follows Chapter 7, where Machiavelli discusses Cesare Borgia as a model of a new prince. It is not difficult to understand why he appears to prioritize entirely new principalities over old ones. As many commentators have observed, the topic would be appropriate for the Medici princes, whose urgent questions were how to secure their restored power in Florence. That Machiavelli’s intention was to appeal to the Medici explains Chapter 9 in particular, which deals with the civil princedom. This principality owes its creation neither entirely to the help of others and luck nor fully to one’s own ability. A prince in this type of princedom is partly helped by a favourable situation and partly by his shrewdness in taking advantage of it. Machiavelli specifies this type of princedom as arising from factional struggles, especially between the rich and the poor. No reader of this description would have failed to think about the Medici. It is apparent that Machiavelli made this type of princedom a separate category specifically with the Medici in mind. In the chapter, Machiavelli addresses the actual concern of the Medici by discoursing on the nature, interests, and ways of behaviour of the aristocrats and the people and discussing the know-how to deal with them. Similarly, his insertion of a chapter on ecclesiastical principalities (Chapter 11) can be understood in the same light. There was a growing expectation that the Medici pope Leo X would lead a crusade against foreign powers in Italy. Indeed, Machiavelli referred to this expectation in the final chapter of The Prince calling for a war to liberate Italy from the yoke of foreign powers.58 Without considering Leo’s position as pope, Machiavelli would hardly have felt it expedient to discuss the type of princedoms that he believes are “protected by superior causes, to which the human mind does not reach.” This type of princedom is similar to civil principalities in that they are “gained either by ability or by fortune,” which explains why Machiavelli put the chapter immediately after Chapters 9 and 10, where he

76  Bee Yun

reiterates the need for new princes to create their own power base. However, ecclesiastical principalities are structured differently; unlike civil principalities, they can be maintained “supported by customs grown old in church history.”59 It is apparent that Machiavelli’s typology does not lack consistency. As I note above, he thought that how one acquired power determines the kinds of problems and challenges that one faced. He distinguished different types of princely rule accordingly. No one can take issue with Machiavelli’s decision and stigmatize it as disorderly as the principle is consistently applied. This structure may seem quite idiosyncratic and is certainly difficult to discern when viewed with modern eyes. Living in the age of democracy, which was born out of fierce debates and struggles in the last centuries over who should rule, we tend to suppose almost automatically, and quite anachronistically, that any debates about the merits and faults of forms of government ultimately revolve around deciding where the sovereign power must reside in a given political community. However, the question of where the ultimate decision-making power was located did not possess the same implications and weight for medieval and Renaissance authors as it does for us. Where the highest decision-making power resides was undoubtedly a critical question. The sexpartite system was adopted for this very reason; its Aristotelian origins lent it particular authority. However, a different classification of government could also be adopted according to need. Ptolemy of Lucca offers an exemplary case. In his continuation of Aquinas’s unfinished De regimine principum, Ptolemy adopted a system of classifying government into three categories: regal rule (principatus regalis); political rule (principatus politicus); and despotic rule (principatus despoticus).60 This schema stemmed, ultimately, from Aristotle but its focus differed from the sexpartite model. It was concerned more with the mode of decision-making than with the location of decision-making power. Ptolemy modified his typology from Aristotle’s original usage, characterizing regal rule as a one-sided enforcement of one ruler’s will and identical to despotic rule.61 The purpose of Ptolemy’s typology was to stress the lowly nature of princely power and the need to subjugate it to the guidance of the church.62 According to Ptolemy, the first government in human history was political, based on collective consultation. Regal rule came into the world when avarice later spread, tainting and corrupting the human mind. The principle of political rule survived in the city governments of northern Italy and Germany.63 As a proponent of papal supremacy, Ptolemy attempted to offer theoretical support for the papal cause amid ongoing tensions and clashes with the secular authorities. Attempts have been made to read his discussion of government as questioning who should rule. As a result, scholars have suggested that Ptolemy was one of the earliest protagonists of modern republicanism. They have failed, however, to understand that his typology did not seek to establish to whom sovereign power should be given. Ptolemy’s thought exemplifies the

The Scientist of Politics?  77

way medieval and Renaissance authors approached the question of classifying government. They were no less ready to vary a given schema and even create a new one according to needs than the modern political scientists who feel free to forge new concepts as their research requires. Our discussions so far demonstrate that in The Prince, Machiavelli aimed at a general theory of princely virtue, one that addressed a readership beyond the immediate context of the book’s composition. The Prince was not merely directed at the Medici; it was not written simply to advise them on what to do in a given situation.64 If this had been Machiavelli’s purpose, he might have written a memorandum, as he had done numerous times throughout his diplomatic career, and as several Medici partisans were doing at the time.65 Furthermore, a discussion on the hereditary ruler, a topic which hardly concerned the Medici, could have been left out altogether. *** This chapter has traced the life of a problematic concept, Machiavelli-as-ascientist, exploring its development from birth to a fall into relative obscurity in recent decades despite occasional attempts at resuscitation. It is worth noting that it is a concept that still retains influence outside narrow scholarly circles. Here, I have sought to uncover some of the significant fallacies connected with it. What remains will be disappointing for all parties, whether they are supporters of the concept, its opponents, or those who expect a synthesis. What characterizes Machiavelli’s thought is a contradiction between his aspirations for a theory of princely virtues and his understanding of the human world fraught with all kinds of accidents without any visible order. It is a contradiction unbridgeable and fundamental because the former logically presupposes a world dominated by rules and thus is incompatible with the latter. This contradiction is not due to a logical mistake on Machiavelli’s part. Instead, the paradox of his thought is a product of the long-term transformation of political discourse begun in the fourteenth century, a process which I have discussed extensively elsewhere.66 The belief prevalent among the scholastic writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the human world still imitated the cosmos, even though defective in the face of original sin and perverse human nature, had weakened. Works by such thinkers as John of Paris, Ptolemy of Lucca, Marsilius of Padua, William Ockham, Bartolus Sassoferrato, and Coluccio Salutati show that in later medieval political discourse, the world came to be conceptualized increasingly as chaotic. Even before Machiavelli, the general theory of politics had become more and more complex. At this point, one may be tempted to ask where Machiavelli’s originality as a political thinker lies. Although we do not read authors of the past solely for their originality, this question is more or less inevitable: Machiavelli has been so often and so highly praised for the originality of his thought, and so

78  Bee Yun

many authors have come up with so many different answers to explain that originality, that no one has ever wondered that it took Isaiah Berlin several pages simply to chart different theses on the Florentine’s originality before he submitted his own idea in a 1982 article.67 Much, I am sure, to the dismay of many, I must add that even Machiavelli’s high sensitivity to the discrepancies between “real world” wisdom and ethical teachings is not original. Both in content and in form, his provocative maxims are indebted to a medieval popular wisdom that, due to the ethically oriented standards and codes applied in public discourse, did not come to the fore on the page yet remained vivid and probably quite influential in medieval societies. Even his cynical view of politics is not new, as I have discussed extensively on other occasions.68 Of course, we should not ignore that it was through Machiavelli that certain insights were systematically elaborated into a theory for the first time. The Prince thus born inspired the later development of the genre of literature on statecraft. All things considered, there is little reason to believe that Machiavelli was outstandingly “scientific.” Indeed, whether a thinker is or is not “scientific” may not be the critical issue. The question became important, and was elevated to a principle for evaluating thinkers, only as a result of the specific historiographical context discussed in the first part of this chapter. Our perspectives and our interests have changed. We no longer imagine the Renaissance as Burckhardt did.69 We no longer understand science as he and the following generations did. We no longer picture medieval culture as monotonous, static, and gloomy as they once did.70 We know better than to believe that science was utterly alien to the medieval mentality and saw the light only in the urban spaces of Quattrocento and Cinquecento Italy. In short, we no longer feel it imperative to discuss whether Machiavelli was a scientist or not.

Notes 1 For a summary and overview see Bee Yun, Wege zu Machiavelli: Die Rückkehr des Politischen im Spätmittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 2021), 22–31. 2 Maurizio Viroli, Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–2. 3 Megan K. Dyer and Cary J. Nederman, “Machiavelli against Method: Paul Feyerabend’s Anti-Rationalism and Machiavellian Political ‘Science’,” History of European Ideas 42, no. 3 (2016): 430–45. 4 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, 4th edn. (New York: Verso, 2010). 5 Yun, Wege zu Machiavelli, 218–25. 6 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, ed. and trans. Allan H. Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), 1: 89–90. Gilbert’s translation is used with modifications. In particular, I use fortuna instead of “Fortune” or “fortune,” which some authors, including Gilbert, employ to designate the goddess of chance and luck. When Machiavelli uses the word fortuna in the sense of fortune and misfortune, I translate it as “fortune.” For the original Italian: Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli. Tutte le opere storiche, politiche e letterarie, ed. Alessandro Capata (Rome: Newton Compton Editori, 1998).

The Scientist of Politics?  79











­

80  Bee Yun

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

33 34

35

zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Machiavellismus in Deutschland: Chiffre von Kontingenz, Herrschaft und Empirismus in der Neuzeit, Historische Zeitschrift: Beihefte, N. f., vol. 51, eds. Cornel Zwierlein and Annette Meyer (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010), 215–32; Bernhard Taureck, “Machiavelli bei Nietzsche und den Faschismen. Zwei Erzählungen der Abfolge Machiavelli – Nietzsche – Faschismen,” in ibid., 233–40; Winfried Schulze, “Machiavelli am Anfang des deutschen Sonderwegs. Beobachtungen zur Deutung im späten Historismus bei Friedrich Meinecke und Gerhard Ritter,” in ibid., 241–56; Ralf Walkenhaus, “Die geistig-moralische Krise als Epochensignatur des Dritten Reiches. Die Machiavelli-Studien von Hans Freyer (1938) und René König (1940),” in ibid., 257–80. The term originated in August Ludwig von Rochau, Grundsätze der Realpolitik, ed. and intro. Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Verlag, 1972). On Rochau’s thought: Natascha Doll, Recht, Politik und “Realpolitik” bei August Ludwig von Rochau (1810–1873): Ein wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Politik und Recht im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005). See also: Federico Trocini, L’invenzione della “Realpolitik” e la scoperta della “legge del potere”: August Ludwig von Rochau tra radicalismo e nazional-liberalismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009); John Bew, Realpolitik: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). For the relationship between the popularity of Realpolitik and the surge in interest in Machiavelli: Yun, Wege zu Machiavelli, 23–31. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946), 156. Ibid., 154. Hans Freyer, Machiavelli, 2nd edn. (Weinheim: VCH, 1986), 103 (my translation). Leonardo Olschki, Machiavelli the Scientist (Berkeley, CA: The Gillick Press, 1945). Leonardo Olschki, Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, vol. 1: Die Literatur der Technik und der angewandten Wissenschaften vom Mittelalter zur Renaissance (Heidelberg: Winter, 1919), 305. Roger D. Masters, Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History (New York: The Free Press, 1998). See also idem, Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996). Niccolò Machiavelli, The Art of War, in The Chief Works, 2: 147. Marcus P. Adams, “Hobbes’ Philosophy of Science,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2019 edn., https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/spr2019/entries/hobbes-science/. Herfried Münkler, Machiavelli: Die Begründung des politischen Denkens der Neuzeit aus der Krise der Republik Florenz (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995); Peter Schröder, Niccolò Machiavelli (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2004); Joseph V. Femia, Machiavelli Revisited (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004). Dyer and Nederman, “Machiavelli against Method,” 431. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970); J. D. Bernal, Sciences in History, 4 vols., 3rd edn. (London: Faber and Faber, 2010). I hesitate to attribute this development to Michel Foucault although I am aware that he offered a discussion similar to that of Kuhn, and has often been compared with him. I have some doubts about the soundness of Foucault’s reasoning and argument on this point, especially with regard to his reduction of the production of scientific knowledge principally, or even solely, to anonymous power strategies. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen ­Hermeneutik, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1960); Jürgen Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982), 15–85; KarlOtto Apel, “Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft und die Grundlage der Ethik. Zum Problem einer rationalen Begründung der Ethik im Zeitalter der Wissenschaft,” in idem, Transformation der Philosophie, 5th edn., 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993), 2: 358–435.

The Scientist of Politics?  81













82  Bee Yun



­



The Scientist of Politics?  83

Bibliography Adams, Marcus P. “Hobbes’ Philosophy of Science.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of ­ Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2019 edition. https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/spr2019/entries/hobbes-science/. Aegidius Romanus. De regimine principum libri III. Rome: Bartholomæum Zannettum, 1607. Agassi, Joseph. Popper and his Popular Critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. Cham: Springer, 2004. Albertini, Rudolf von. Das florentinische Staatsbewusstsein im Übergang von der Republik zum Prinzipat. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1955. Apel, Karl-Otto. “Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft und die Grundlage der Ethik. Zum Problem einer rationalen Begründung der Ethik im Zeitalter der Wissenschaft.” In Karl-Otto Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 5th edn., 2 vols., 2: 358–435. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993. Arnold, Klaus. “Das ‘finstere’ Mittelalter. Zur Genese und Phänomenologie eines Fehlurteils.” Saeculum 32, no. 3 (1981): 287–300. Ashman, Keith M., and Philip S. Baringer, eds. After the Science Wars. London/New York: Routledge, 2001. Berlin, Isaiah. “The Originality of Machiavelli.” In Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, edited by Henry Hardy, 25–80. New York: Penguin, 1982. Bernal, J. D. Sciences in History, 3rd edn, 4 vols. London: Faber and Faber, 2010. Bew, John. Realpolitik: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Blythe, James M. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Bouwsma, William J. “The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History.” American Historical Review 84, no. 1 (1979): 1–15. Brecht, Berthold. Life of Galileo. In Collected Plays: Five. Translated by John Willett, edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, 1–105. London: Methuen, 1980. Buée, Jean-Michel. “Les lectures de Machiavel en Allemagne dans la première moitié du XIXème siècle.” In Machiavelli nel XIX e XX secolo, edited by Paolo Carta and Xavier Tabet, 49–66. Padua: Antonio Milani, 2007. Burckhardt, Jacob. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, 11th edn. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1988. Caferro, William. Contesting the Renaissance. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Cassirer, Ernst. The Myth of the State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946. Cau, Maurizio. “Tra potere demoniaco e virtù democratica. Letture machiavelliane nella cultura tedesca tra le due guerre.” In Machiavelli nel XIX e XX secolo, edited by Paolo Carta and Xavier Tabet, 145–84. Padua: Antonio Milani, 2007. Cristofaro, Ernesto De. “Letture di Machiavelli nella cultura di area tedesca tra fine Ottocento e inizio Novecento: Burckhardt, Treitschke, Meinecke.” In Machiavelli nel XIX e XX secolo, edited by Paolo Carta and Xavier Tabet, 125–44. Padua: Antonio Milani, 2007. Doll, Natascha. Recht, Politik und “Realpolitik” bei August Ludwig von Rochau (1810– 1873): Ein wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Politik und Recht im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005. Dyer, Megan K., and Cary J. Nederman. “Machiavelli against Method: Paul Feyerabend’s Anti-Rationalism and Machiavellian Political ‘Science’.” History of European Ideas 42, no. 3 (2016): 430–45. Femia, Joseph V. Machiavelli Revisited. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004.

84  Bee Yun

Ferguson, Wallace K. The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1948. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method, 4th edn. New York: Verso, 2010. Freyer, Hans. Machiavelli, 2nd edn. Weinheim: VCH, 1986. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen ­Hermeneutik, 2 vols. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1960. Goetz, Hans-Werner. Moderne Mediävistik: Stand und Perspektiven der Mittelalterforschung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999. Habermas, Jürgen. Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982. Helbling, Hanno. “Wege deutscher Machiavelli-Interpretation.” In Atti del Convegno internazionale su il pensiero politico di Machiavelli e la sua fortuna nel mondo: Sancasciano, Firenze: 28–29 settembre 1969, 123–31. Florence: Istituto nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1972. Humble, Noreen. “Xenophon and the Instruction of Princes.” In The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon, edited by Michael A. Flower, 416–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Jones, Chris, Conor Kostick, and Klaus Oschema. “Why Should We Care About the Middle Ages? Putting the Case for the Relevance of Studying Medieval Europe.” In Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contribute to Improving our Understanding of the Present, edited by Chris Jones, Conor Kostick, and Klaus Oschema, 1–29. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. In Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, edited and translated by Allan H. Gilbert, 3 vols. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989. ———. Machiavelli. Tutte le opere storiche, politiche e letterarie, edited by Alessandro Capata. Rome: Newton Compton Editori, 1998. ———. Tercets on Fortune. In Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, edited and translated by Allan H. Gilbert, 3 vols. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989. ———. The Art of War. In Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, edited and translated by Allan H. Gilbert, 3 vols. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989. ———. The Prince. In Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, edited and translated by Allan H. Gilbert, 3 vols. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989. Martin, John Jeffries. Myths of Renaissance Individualism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Masters, Roger D. Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History. New York: The Free Press, 1998. ———. Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Basis of Human Understanding, rev. edn. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1992. Meinecke, Friedrich. Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte, edited with an introduction by W. Hofer, 4th edn. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1960. ———. Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’Etat and its Place in Modern History. Translated by Douglas Scott, introduction by Werner Stark. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.

The Scientist of Politics?  85

Münkler, Herfried. Machiavelli: Die Begründung des politischen Denkens der Neuzeit aus der Krise der Republik Florenz. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995. Oexle, Otto Gerhard. “Die Moderne und ihr Mittelalter. Eine folgenreiche Problemgeschichte.” In Mittelalter und Moderne: Entdeckung und Rekonstruktion der mittelalterlichen Welt, edited by Peter Segl, 307–64. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1997. Okasha, Samir. Philosophy of Science, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Olschki, Leonardo. Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, vol. 1: Die Literatur der Technik und der angewandten Wissenschaften vom Mittelalter zur Renaissance. Heidelberg: Winter, 1919. ———. Machiavelli the Scientist. Berkeley, CA: The Gillick Press, 1945. Parsons, Keith, ed. The Science Wars: Debating Scientific Knowledge and Technology. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003. Pitkin, Hanna F. Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, with a new afterword. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Ptolemy of Lucca. De Regimine Principum. In S. Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia, edited by Roberto Busa, S. J. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980. ———. Determinatio compendiosa de iurisdictione imperii, edited by M. Krammer. Hanover/ Leipzig: Hahn, 1909. ———. On the Government of Rulers (De Regimine Principum). Translated by James M. Blythe. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Regent, Nikola. “A ‘Wondrous Echo’: Burckhardt, Renaissance and Nietzsche’s Political Thought.” In Power and Politics: Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought, edited by Herman Siemens and Vasti Roodt, 629–66. New York: De Gruyter, 2008. Reinhardt, Volker. Jacob Burckhardt und die Erfindung der Renaissance: Ein Mythos und seine Geschichte. Bern: Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, 2002. Rochau, August Ludwig von. Grundsätze der Realpolitik, edited with an introduction by Hans-Ulrich Wehler. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Verlag, 1972. Roeck, Bernd. “Säkularisierungstendenzen in der Kultur der Renaissance?: Jacob Burckhardts Modell heute.” In Die Säkularisation im Prozess der Säkularisierung ­Europas, edited by Peter Blickle und Rudolf Schlögl, 127–39. Epfendorf: Bibliotheca Academica Verlag, 2005. Ruehl, Martin A. “‘An Uncanny Re-Awakening’: Nietzsche’s Renascence of the Renaissance out of the Spirit of Jacob Burckhardt.” In Nietzsche on Time and History, edited by Manuel Dries, 231–72. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. ———. The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination, 1860–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Schröder, Peter. Niccolò Machiavelli. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2004. Schulze, Winfried. “Machiavelli am Anfang des deutschen Sonderwegs. Beobachtungen zur Deutung im späten Historismus bei Friedrich Meinecke und Gerhard Ritter.” In Machiavellismus in Deutschland: Chiffre von Kontingenz, Herrschaft und Empirismus in der Neuzeit, Historische Zeitschrift: Beihefte, N. f., vol. 51, edited by Cornel Zwierlein and Annette Meyer, 241–56. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010. Taureck, Bernhard. “Machiavelli bei Nietzsche und den Faschismen. Zwei Erzählungen der Abfolge Machiavelli – Nietzsche – Faschismen.” In Machiavellismus in

86  Bee Yun

Deutschland: Chiffre von Kontingenz, Herrschaft und Empirismus in der Neuzeit, Historische Zeitschrift: Beihefte, N. f., vol. 51, edited by Cornel Zwierlein and Annette Meyer, 233–40. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010. Trocini, Federico. L’invenzione della “Realpolitik” e la scoperta della “legge del potere”: August Ludwig von Rochau tra radicalismo e nazional-liberalismo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009. ———. “Machiavellismus, Realpolitik und Machtpolitik. Der Streit um das Erbe Machiavellis in der deutschen politischen Kultur der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts.” In Machiavellismus in Deutschland: Chiffre von Kontingenz, Herrschaft und Empirismus in der Neuzeit, Historische Zeitschrift: Beihefte, N. f., vol. 51, edited by Cornel Zwierlein and Annette Meyer, 215–32. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010. Viroli, Maurizio. From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics, 1250–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ———. Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Walkenhaus, Ralf. “Die geistig-moralische Krise als Epochensignatur des Dritten Reiches. Die Machiavelli-Studien von Hans Freyer (1938) und René König (1940).” In Machiavellismus in Deutschland: Chiffre von Kontingenz, Herrschaft und Empirismus in der Neuzeit, Historische Zeitschrift: Beihefte, N. f., vol. 51, edited by Cornel Zwierlein and Annette Meyer, 257–80. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010. Woolfson, Jonathan. “Burckhardt’s ambivalent Renaissance.” In Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography, edited by Jonathan Woolfson, 9–26. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Yun, Bee. “A Long and Winding Road to Reforming the Corrupt Republic: Niccolò Machiavelli’s Idea of the One-Man Reformer and his View of the Medici.” History of Political Thought 41, no. 4 (2021): 539–58. ———. “Die Tierepik und der Ort des Politikrealismus im Mittelalter. Machiavelli begegnet dem Fuchs.” In Die Zeit der sprachbegabten Tiere: Ordnung, Varianz und Geschichtlichkeit (in) der Tierepik, edited by Kathrin Lukaschek, Michael Waltenberger, and Maximilian Wick. 289–312. Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 2022. ———. “Ptolemy of Lucca – A Pioneer of Civic Republicanism? A Reassessment,” History of Political Thought 29, no 3 (2008): 417–39. ———. “Ptolemy of Lucca’s Distrust in Politics and the Medieval Discourse on ­Government.” In Trust and Happiness in the History of European Political Thought, edited by László Kontler and Mark Somos, 33–52. Leiden: Brill, 2017. ———. “The Fox atop Fortune’s Wheel: Machiavelli and Medieval Realist Discourse.” Viator 47, no. 2 (2016): 305–30. ———. Wege zu Machiavelli: Die Rückkehr des Politischen im Spätmittelalter. Cologne: Böhlau, 2021. Zimmermann, Albert. “ ‘Finsteres Mittelalter’. Bemerkungen zu einem Schlagwort.” In Die Bibliotheca Amploniana: Ihre Bedeutung im Spannungsfeld von Aristotelismus, Nominalismus und Humanismus, edited by Andreas Speer, 1–15. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1995.

5 THE TWELVE ABUSES OF THE AGE Ethical and Political Theory in Early Medieval Ireland and Its Influence Constant J. Mews

Writing his Life of St. Louis in around 1309, Joinville recalled a sermon preached to the king by a Franciscan preacher. This friar recalled that in his reading the Bible and the books which speak of heathen princes, “he had found among believers and unbelievers alike that never was a kingdom lost or changed from one lordship to another, but by a failure of justice.”1 Was this simply a medieval trope? How does it square with the convention, certainly well-established in thirteenth-century France, that a king could expect his eldest son to inherit the throne, whatever the moral failings of an incumbent ruler? Joinville, I would argue, was making a serious point about the Capetian dynasty, that a ruler could not expect to govern simply by divine right. Yet we need to think carefully about what medieval thinkers understood by the concept of iustitia. Cicero had defined justice in the De inventione as “a habit of mind, preserving the common good, assigning dignity to each person.”2 Yet in the medieval period, another meaning of iustitia was that employed by St. Paul in Romans 3:21–31, where he speaks of the justice of God, manifest in the Law and Prophets but now embodied in Christ. Translators of medieval texts vary according to whether they translate iustitia as justice or righteousness. In this chapter, I argue that iustitia encompassed both social justice and individual justness or righteousness, but was used by authors in different ways, according to their theological perspective. This is a field of research that Cary Nederman has transformed in many ways. With relentless energy, he has uncovered the continuing relevance of a long train of thinkers, from John of Salisbury to Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli, and their place within a broader tradition of political thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.3 On the entire genre of Mirrors of Princes, DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-7

88  Constant J. Mews

he has become an accepted authority.4 Nederman has explained as much to contemporary political theorists as to medievalists how John of Salisbury can offer a valuable alternative to frequently polarized communitarian and libertarian political theory.5 Underpinning his presentation of medieval political thought is a conviction that its originality did not depend on access to translations of Aristotle. Nederman has clearly expounded how Hugh of Saint-Victor, John of Salisbury, and Dominic Gundisalvi all developed new awareness of practical disciplines in the twelfth century without necessarily having access to the texts, like the Politics, that only became widely known in Paris in the 1270s, after Thomas Aquinas got hold of Moerbeke’s translation.6 Certainly, this latter marked a new stage in political thought. Giles of Rome went much further than Thomas in his De regimine principum, written 1277–1280, in response to a request from Philip III for the education of his son, the future Philip IV. Through Nederman’s investigations into Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275–1342), who distanced himself from Giles in his understanding of ecclesiastical power, we can see how Marsilius’s reading of both Aristotle and the Christian tradition led him to argue that no ruler could ever govern without the consent of the people or by disrespecting the rule of law.7 These are thinkers of enduring relevance. There are other texts, however, that also deserve consideration, in particular about justice, well known as one of the four cardinal virtues, alongside prudence, temperance and fortitude. It had been defined in terms of equity by Cicero and Seneca, and within a Christian context by Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and Jerome.8 In particular, the classification of four cardinal virtues was picked up by that fascinating figure from sixth-century Spain, Martin of Braga, whose Formula vitae honestae became widely read between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries as a work of Seneca. Even though Martin was profoundly familiar with John Cassian and the teaching of the desert fathers as mediated by Rufinus of Aquileia, Martin consciously chose to base his understanding of justice, not on Augustine, but on classical tradition: “What is justice other than a tacit convention of nature, established to help many? And what is justice other than our constitution, or rather divine law, and the bond of human society?”9 Martin was a Christian, respected by Isidore of Seville, who explicitly drew on the writings of Seneca and what he calls “the natural law of human intelligence” to create a treatise that would become enormously popular between the twelfth and fifteenth century and would be the foundation for Christine de Pizan’s livre de prudence.10 There is another strand of thinking about iustitia, shaped more by the Bible, that also demands attention. Not everyone in thirteenth-century France would have agreed with the claim of that friar, mentioned by Joinville, who claimed that both the Bible and pagan authors taught that kingdoms could be lost through failures of justice. St. Paul (Rom. 13:1) had proclaimed the need to be subject to the governing authorities because they had been established by God.

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  89

While there is no doubt about the importance of the recovery of classical ideas about justice in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, exemplified, for example, by John of Salisbury, attention needs to be given to justitia as righteousness, shaped more by biblical than classical precedent. This biblical way of thinking about justice is particularly evident in a treatise from seventh-century Ireland, On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, surviving in at least 300 manuscripts from throughout the medieval period.11 Unfortunately, the late Aidan Breen was never able to publish the edition and commentary that he produced within his 1988 PhD thesis.12 I was led to this work in part because its frequently copied ninth chapter on a bad king was included at the end of our earliest surviving manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 412, f. 77v) of another little-known manual for princes, On the Instruction of Princes, written circa 1305–1310 for the education of the future Louis X.13 I have argued elsewhere, with Rina Lahav, that it was written by the same author as wrote the Speculum dominarum for Louis’s mother, Jeanne of Navarre—namely Durand of Champagne, Franciscan confessor first to Jeanne, and after 1305 to Marguerite of Burgundy, the young wife of prince Louis.14 On the Instruction of Princes was written for the young Louis X just as Joinville was completing (at Jeanne’s request) a Life of Philip IV’s grandfather, St Louis. As one might expect, this treatise is much more sophisticated than the chapter of the Twelve Abuses about a bad king. Nonetheless, it manifests the same biblically inspired message that a king needs to live up to ideals of justice, in particular the prophecy of Jeremiah (23:6) of a new David: “And the king shall rule and will be wise and shall deliver judgement and justice on the earth.” While only a dozen copies survive of the original Latin text, many more copies survive of a version translated into French in 1379 by the Carmelite friar, Jean Goleyn.15 This medieval tradition of looking to Jeremiah for advice on justice continues a way of thinking that goes back to the British Isles in the early medieval period.

The De Duodecim abusiuis saeculi On the Twelve Abuses of the Age circulated widely in the medieval period with an attribution either to Cyprian (in all the earliest copies from the ninth and tenth centuries) or to Augustine (more common in later manuscripts). This is a text of astonishing and unrecognized originality, for which there is no precedent in patristic tradition. While one of its chapters, about a bad king, provides a foundation for the genre of Mirrors of Princes, it is about much more than bad kings. It presents 12 abuses, or more accurately abusive expressions, in which each category is seen to fall away from its strict meaning, through which justice is suffocated. These 12 abuses can be broken up, I argue, into seven stages, beginning with a wise man without good works, and climaxing with the notion of a people without law:

90  Constant J. Mews

(1) The wise man without good works (2) The old man without religion (3) The adolescent without obedience (4) The rich man without alms-giving (5) The woman without shame (6) The lord without virtue (7) The contentious Christian (8) The proud pauper (9) The wicked king (10) The negligent bishop (11) Lay-folk without discipline (12) People without law By these twelve abuses justice is suffocated. These are the twelve abuses of the age through which the wheel of the age, if any people are in it, is deceived, and, without the help of justice to prevent this, it is propelled into the darkness of hell by the just judgement of God.16 This list of contents and a summary statement about justice is preserved in the original version of the text, but is unfortunately missing from the versions printed among the works of both Cyprian and Augustine, accessible through the Patrologia Latina. To anyone familiar with classical prose, the phrasing of this summary seems awkward. Nonetheless, I would argue that it belongs to the original text of the Twelve Abuses, summarizing its core theme, namely that iustitia is the foundation of all the virtues and that its absence leads people to hell. This apocalyptic tone makes the Twelve Abuses very different from the Formula vitae honestae of Martin of Braga. Nonetheless, it is just as important for the way it understands justice. The Twelve Abuses has attracted only limited attention, mainly for its ninth chapter in which it spells out what is expected of a king and presents the deleterious effects of any failure to rule justly on the physical prosperity of the kingdom. Julianna Grigg has opened the way to appreciating the significance of its presentation of a just king as needing to govern alongside just bishops, as well as of its final abuse (a people without law), implies that royal authority must be subject to the rule of law.17 The ninth chapter about a bad king would be reproduced in its entirety under the name of Patrick in an Irish collection of canon law from around 700 (the Collectio canonum Hibernensis). Its arguments would be cited by Cathwulf (probably an Anglo-Saxon cleric) in a letter addressed to the young Charlemagne in around 775 and seem to be alluded to by Alcuin.18 In 831, it would be quoted extensively by Jonas bishop of Orléans (c. 760843) in his De institutione regia, a mirror treatise that complements his De institutione laicali, perhaps following its being cited in 829 at the Council of Paris.19 Hincmar of Reims and Sedulius Scotus also made extensive use of the Twelve Abuses in their writing about good government.20 Aelfric would make a translation into Old English in the tenth century.21 Its ninth chapter would continue to be cited in various eleventh-century canonical collections, as well as in Gratian’s Decretum and Abelard’s Sic et Non in the twelfth century.22 Vincent of Beauvais refers to its authority three times in his De morali principis institutione.23 Vincent seized on Cyprian as authority for seeing the rigour

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  91

of iustitia was a foundational virtue for any government.24 Vincent prefaces his quotation from the text by observing “For justice is a general virtue which accompanies all the virtues, belonging to the adornment of the life of a ruler, about whom blessed Cyprian, martyr, speaks in the book About the Twelve Abuses of the World.” Vincent then quotes at length from its ninth chapter about the duties of a king, in which we find a sentence with 12 ethical demands, before a final summary about his religious obligations: The justice of a king is to oppress no-one unjustly through power, to adjudicate between a man and his neighbour without regard for persons, to be a defender of foreigners, orphans and widows, not to exalt the wicked, not to nourish the impudent and actors, to rid the impious from the earth, to defend churches, to nurture the poor with alms, to establish just men in the business of the kingdom, to have the old and wise as sober counsellors, to defer wrath, to defend the country strongly and justly against enemies, in everything to live for God, not to raise the mind in prosperity, to bear all adversity patiently, to hold the catholic faith in God, not to allow his sons to act impiously, to insist on fixed hours for prayer, not to consume food before the appropriate times.25 Many of the 12 elements of this definition cannot be found in any Church Father in relation to kingship prior to the Twelve Abuses. I can find no classical precedent for the simple phrase “to oppress through power” opprimere per potentiam. Cicero had famously defined justice as not doing harm to anyone (a notion picked up by Martin of Braga), but used it as a general term, not as the necessary attribute of a ruler. By contrast, oppression through power is a firmly biblical notion (Lev. 25:46; Dt 21:14; James 2:6). The phrase sine acceptione personarum is used by I Peter 1:17 in relation to God, but hardly ever quoted by the Church Fathers.26 The point about caring for strangers, widows, and orphans is frequently made in Deuteronomy (16:11, 14; 24:17–21; 26:12–13; 27:19), but had not been applied by the Church Fathers to kings. In the Twelve Abuses, care for the stranger, widow, and orphan is identified as the responsibility of the king, picking up Jeremiah’s reminder ( Jer. 22:3) to the king of the key moral injunctions of the Law: “Rescue the man who has been wronged from the hands of his oppressor; do not exploit the stranger, the orphan, the widow; do no violence; shed no innocent blood in this place.” This author shares Jeremiah’s view that a king should serve all social groups, and choose wise heads to help govern.

92  Constant J. Mews

The Twelve Abuses may be the first major text after the De excidio of Gildas to theorize the responsibility of a king so succinctly. The fact that it was thought to have been written by Cyprian or Augustine disguises its evident originality.

The Patristic Legacy on Kingship Neither Ambrose, Augustine, nor Jerome wrote commentaries on any of the four books of Kings (or two of Samuel and two of Kings in modern Bibles), which describe how Saul, David, and Solomon established a degree of unified authority over Israel, prior to its fragmentation into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. While they revered David as a forerunner of Christ, and Solomon as builder of the Temple and author of the three major Wisdom books of the Old Testament (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs), they followed Origen’s allegorical interpretation of David as a forerunner of Christ, and Solomon’s Temple as foreshadowing the Church. They considered Saul, David, and Solomon as fundamentally good rulers, unlike Pharaoh and Herod, archetypal bad rulers. Augustine was only too aware that in practice the kingdoms of this world lacked justice. As he put it in The City of God: “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms.”27 The City of Man was not the City of God. With such a dismissive and cynical attitude towards the state (paralleling his attitude to human nature), Augustine saw no reason to theorize good kingship. In Book 17, he made passing reference to the advent of kingship with Saul, David and Solomon, but interpreted them simply as anticipating “the transformation of priesthood and monarchy by the new and eternal priest-king, who is Christ Jesus.”28 While Augustine commented very briefly on Solomon’s sins leading to lasting division between Judah and Israel, he focused more on the great king’s wisdom than on his political failures.29 Jerome similarly focused more on what Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel prophesied about Christ than about the kind of society that they wished kings to introduce into Israel. This political passivity of the Church Fathers makes the achievement of the British ascetic Gildas in writing his De excidio Britanniae all the more important as a discussion of kingship.30 Gildas reflects on examples of kingship not just from the history of Britain, but about kingship in general. Gildas certainly had access to writings of certain of the Church Fathers (including Jerome and Orosius), but is noticeably unwilling to acknowledge the writings of Augustine. Like Pelagius in his commentary on St. Paul, Gildas was profoundly concerned with the failure of Christians to live up to the example of the iustitia of God, manifest in Christ, the unconquered exemplar of goodness and humility. 31 Gildas never invokes Augustine’s concept of original sin as having continuing influence on human nature, even after baptism, and thus being fully dependent on grace to pursue virtue. Gildas shared with Pelagius a more traditional ascetic perspective, inspired by Origen’s reading of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  93

as translated by Rufinus, that Christians had to follow the exemplum iustitiae expounded by the prophets and fully manifest in Christ.32 This example of justice was not just of personal righteousness, but of justice in relationships within society. The Twelve Abuses shares a sense of justice not just with Gildas, but with Pelagius, who argued, in relation to Ephesians 6:3 about putting on the lorica iustitae, the breastplate of justice, that justice is connected to species of virtues, just like a breastplate to its decorations, instructing the conscience, and thus guiding the belly and sexual desire.33 This definition of Pelagius about justice is explicitly cited by a seventh-century Irish commentator on James—the first such exegete, as the non-Pauline epistles never attracted a commentary from the early Church Fathers.34 While this biblical sense of iustitia as the foundation of the virtues is not the same as that of Seneca or Cicero, it is still a significant ethical principle, developed in its political implications in the Twelve Abuses. The Twelve Abuses shares with Gildas a way of looking at the account of Solomon in the books of Kings in historical rather than allegorical terms. Gildas referred back to the historical precedent for the division of Britain in the biblical account of the fall (excidium) of Israel, when Judah separated from the northern kingdoms.35 Gildas picks up on what III Kings 11:1–11 has to say about how the disastrous behaviour of Solomon after he had built the Temple, ultimately led to the division of the kingdom, and the failure of his offspring to rule. The word Gildas uses for Solomon’s crime, his piaculum, is precisely that which would be picked up in the Twelve Abuses as demonstrating that a failure to rule justly would mean that Solomon’s heirs could not inherit his kingdom. While Gildas quotes from Solomon as a fount of wisdom, he is much more aware than Augustine or Jerome that this king did not always act as God wished. He cites a scriptural passage barely mentioned by any of the Church Fathers, but which would become very important for the Twelve Abuses: “Because you have not kept my covenant and the precepts which I entrusted to you, I shall tear your kingdom and give it to your servant” (III Reg 11:11).36 This refers to the fact that power then passed from Solomon to his servant, Jeroboam, who then revolted against the king. The only “patristic” passage in the library of Latin texts to reproduce this reference is a commentary on the first book of Kings, traditionally attributed to Gregory the Great, but in fact likely to have been composed in the early twelfth century by an Italian monk (Petrus de Cava), possibly drawing on oral teaching of Gregory preserved by Claudius of Turin. 37 Another Scriptural quotation Gildas cites, never quoted by the Fathers, is the opening verse of Wisdom 1:1: “Love justice, you who judge the earth” (Diligite, inquit, iustitiam, qui iudicatis terram). The Twelve Abuses picks up on this way of reading the Bible as about the need for justitia, as interpreted by Gildas. While Gildas does not go as far as John of Salisbury in theorizing that in certain cases, a tyrant might have to be killed, he does provide a template of the behaviour of a bad king, such as is presented in much more succinct and systematic fashion in the Twelve Abuses.

94  Constant J. Mews

The Twelve Abuses and Ideals of Justice The transgressions of Solomon surface as a key theme in several different chapters of the Twelve Abuses. In the first abuse, of a sapiens without good works, he takes the example of Solomon, the ultimate wise man, who could not actually govern with justice. 38 In the sixth abuse, about a lord without virtue, the author returns to the example of Solomon, although here to contrast Solomon’s ability to govern with wisdom to his servant, Jeroboam, who turned to idolatry. 39 This leads him to generalize about the experience of government: “Through these examples it is clearly shown that certain people rise in a higher state to greater perfection, while others descend to what is worse through the pride of domination.”40 Being a virtuous lord requires fortitude to counter adversity. I am doubtful that this remark alludes to the cardinal virtues, as prudence is mentioned only once and temperance not at all. Nonetheless, we can see this author seeking to create a system of applied ethics worthy of our attention. The third occasion on which the crimes of Solomon are introduced occurs at the end of the ninth abuse, on the bad king, immediately following an eloquent account of the effects of bad government on the natural environment as well as on society. It deserves to be quoted at length: Because of this, the tranquillity of the peoples often disturbed and causes of offence stirred up against the kingdom, the fruits of the earth are also diminished, and the service of the peoples is obstructed, many different misfortunes beset the kingdom and hinder its prosperity, the deaths of loved ones and of children bring sorrow. Hostile invasions lay waste the provinces on all sides and cause the slaughter of the beasts of burden and the herds of cattle, the tempests of the air and the disturbed upper atmosphere prevent the fertility of the land and the service of the sea, and sometimes blasts of lightning wither the corn on the ground and the blossoms and young shoots on the trees. But above all the injustice of the king not only darkens the face of his whole realm, but obscures his sons and nephews, so that they do not inherit the kingdom. For the Lord, because of Solomon’s great sin, divided the kingdom of the House of Israel out of the hands of his children, and because of king David’s righteousness he left the lamp of his generation forever burning in Jerusalem. Behold how great a thing is the justice of a good king in this world: it is plainly to be seen and understood. … But let the king know this, that just as among men he is set highest in his throne, so likewise if he does not administer justice, he shall be set in the foremost place of punishment. For as many sinners as he has under him in this present life, so he shall have in a similar way in that punishment to come.41

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  95

The lesson is clear. The sons and nephews of a ruler do not deserve to govern, if a king is ruling unjustly. I would argue that the Twelve Abuses has listened closely to the warnings of Gildas, even if he frames them more succinctly. The Twelve Abuses is not just a Mirror of Princes, but a Mirror for ecclesiastics, as evident from Chapter 10: The tenth step of abuse is a negligent bishop, who seeks to be honoured among men for his high standing, but does not guard the dignity of his office in the sight of God, for whom he is chosen as an ambassador.42 Echoing both Gildas and Isidore, the author examines the literal meaning of episcopus as overseer, deriving from Ezekiel’s image of himself as a watchman (Ezek 33:6–9, 3:17–19), set over the house of Israel. It behoves the bishop therefore to attend diligently to the sins of all over whom he is set in eminence to guard them, and after he has examined those sins, to cause them to be amended, if he can, by word and deed.43 The Twelve Abuses insists that whoever receives someone excommunicated by a catholic authority transgresses against the laws of the holy priesthood into which he was chosen. This detail about the role of the bishop gives us a clue, I would argue, as to the nature of the Twelve Abuses as a text. It provides a set of moral principles for the specific penances, found in Irish penitentials of the seventh century. In particular, I draw attention to the Penitential of Cummian, which differs from earlier such treatises by opening with a sophisticated discussion of 12 modes through which forgiveness is obtained, beginning with baptism and climaxing with martyrdom. Just like the Twelve Abuses, the 12 stages can be grouped into seven: 1) baptism 2) the affect of love (caritas)     4) profusion of tears     5) confession of sins 6) affliction of heart and body     7) amendment of ways 8) intercession of saints     10) conversion and salvation of others 11) pardon and remission of ourselves 12) passion of martyrdom The possibility deserves to be explored that the Twelve Abuses is by the same author as the Penitential attributed to Cummian, abbot and bishop of Clonfert Brennain (Co Galway) in the kingdom of Connacht, active between 630 and his death in 661. I would just explain, however, that in his letter on the date of Easter, written in 632, Cummian draws on an image that also recurs at the end

96  Constant J. Mews

of the Twelve Abuses, derived from Cyprian: that of the Church as a single robe, like that worn by Christ. This emphasis on ecclesiastical unity co-exists in this treatise with insistence that the bishop as prophet should warn and chastise all levels of society, from the proud pauper to the bad king. In a profound sense, the Twelve Abuses provides a carefully argued ethical foundation for a new kind of society that was emerging in the British Isles. We know from law codes being written down in Irish by the late seventh century, for which there is little comparable on the continent at this time, that the multiple Christian kingdoms of Ireland were finding a way to live together in a broader society, in which episcopal authority strove to present itself as independent of the ambitions of subordinate kings. Needless to say, this was not an easy process. It says much, however, that the Twelve Abuses would be appreciated not just in Ireland but in England and the continent in the eighth and ninth centuries, and would continue to be widely read in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The core ethical values it promoted, revolving around the authority of both kings and bishops, provided a framework around which political life could evolve over many centuries. The fact that this text was attributed to Cyprian may itself reflect awareness among educated Irishmen that Augustine was not the only authoritative voice on which to formulate Christian doctrine. Rather than treating the literature of the early middle ages as simply a narrow simplification of the age of the Church Fathers, we should recognize that even in the early medieval period original rethinking was going on about how to implement ideals of justice in a practical way.

The Scholastic Transformation of Mirrors of Princes If we compare the Twelve Abuses to the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, we might well think that a text produced in seventh-century Ireland is a very primitive effort. Its author had access to none of the other traditions of reflection deriving from classical antiquity retrieved by scholars during the time of Charlemagne and beyond. In the Policraticus, John moves beyond the biblical ethics of the Twelve Abuses, founded on iustitia as of divine origin to a more classical notion of justice as one of the four cardinal virtues.44 John was connecting up with that other tradition of ethical thought, expounded by Martin of Braga and inspired by Seneca, which sought to base ethics not on Scripture but on philosophical reflection. He probably thought the Twelve Abuses needed updating. Yet we should not be misled into thinking that the only intellectual traditions available in the twelfth century were those of Augustine and classical antiquity. The Twelve Abuses systematized an ascetic, moralizing tradition embodied by Gildas, who was extremely concerned to give both kings and bishops lessons on political responsibility following the cessation of Roman imperial authority in Britain in the early fifth century.

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  97

Augustine’s vision of justice and the political order was very different. Augustine was always suspicious about developing a political theory based on notions of the common good. One consequence of his protracted debate with Pelagius and his followers between 410 and 430 was that Augustine developed his notion that original sin was not fully removed in baptism, as it had left a stain on the human soul, with its natural tendency to selfishness. Political coercion was thus a consequence of original sin.45 Justice could be re-established only in the City of God, not in the City of Man. Augustine’s caution with regard to Pelagius, a British ascetic, concerned about the failure of a Christian community to live up to the iustitia embodied in Christ would have an influence on medieval political thought that deserves further investigation. While the Twelve Abuses would be studied by Carolingian political theorists, its protestation that justice was being suffocated co-existed alongside a more Augustinian notion that obedience to the established order was necessary because of the sinfulness of human nature. The Twelve Abuses continued to find readers, however. It raised questions about many evident abuses across society. In its way, it promoted a new generation of thinkers, like John of Salisbury or Vincent of Beauvais, to find new ways of addressing an old complaint, the lack of justice in society. What mattered was not just that kings should be reminded to have wise counsellors, and not to oppress strangers, orphans, and widows, while defending their kingdom, but that standards be laid out for the whole of society. When Vincent of Beauvais included the Twelve Abuses within his own treatise addressed to Louis IX, it was evident that he also needed to include classical authors who promoted the same message, without referring to the Bible. In the early fourteenth century, the same concerns stirred a Franciscan friar, Durand of Champagne, to compose the De informatione principum (On the Instruction of Princes) to give more specific advice to a ruler than we find in the Twelve Abuses. Its author found a new way of presenting iustitia—understood as both equity and righteousness—as the defining mark of the rule of a wise king. I have not space here to discuss how this Franciscan author saw himself as providing a conscious alternative to the De regimine principum of Giles of Rome, also composed for the education of a future prince. From a philosophical perspective, this may seem a much more interesting text because of its intellectual debt both to Thomas Aquinas and the authority of Aristotle. As a Franciscan, writing for a privileged audience in the court rather than in the schools, Durand of Champagne turned more to Scripture than to the explicit authority of Aristotle to make his case. Yet Durand’s Mirror of Ladies shows that he had quietly absorbed a good deal of the ethical analysis developed by Thomas Aquinas, and integrated a Thomist understanding of the virtues, vices and passions of the soul into his argument. This Thomist influence is present in the De informatione principum, alongside a more classically Bonaventurean emphasis on the ideal of transcendent wisdom, alongside that of a transcendent iustitia, as a divine attribute needing to be embodied both in a ruler and in society at large.

98  Constant J. Mews

Giles of Rome was also concerned for ideals of justice, but within a framework of respect for the authority of both the monarch and (as we know from his later writing) the papacy. When it came to the great dramas of the confrontation of Philip IV with Boniface VIII in 1303, Durand of Champagne sided with the king. In the tradition of the four cardinal virtues, justice operates alongside prudence, temperance, and fortitude. In this framework, iustitia does not have those resonances of divine iustitia that we find singled out in the prophetic tradition of the Bible, re-asserted in different ways by both St. Paul and St. James. In On the Instruction of Princes, we find the same core message as delivered by that friar who preached to St. Louis, as recalled by Joinville, that no kingdom could ever be lost except through a failure of justice. This was a message that went back to Jeremiah, and had been re-asserted in On the Twelve Abuses of the Age. In the early fourteenth century, a Franciscan friar, Durand of Champagne, was only too aware that there were still many continuing abuses in both secular and ecclesiastical domains. I suspect that Cary Nederman would agree that there is a continuing need to re-write On the Twelve Abuses of the Age for every generation, including our own.

Abbreviations CCCM = Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis CCSL = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CSEL = Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum MGH = Monumenta Germaniae Historica PL = Patrologia Cursus Completus, series Latina, edited by J. P. Migne, 221 vols. Paris: Lethielleux, 1844–64.

Notes 1 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, in Historiens et chroniqueurs du moyen âge: Robert de Clari, Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commynes, ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 11, pp. 218–19: Un des cordliers … dist en son sermon que il avoi leu la Bible et les livres qui parlents des princes mescréans; et disoit qu il ne trouvoit, ne es créans ne es mescréans, que nques royaumes se pedist ne chanjast de seigneuries à autre, mais que par défaute de droit. English trans.: The Life of St Louis, in Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (London: Penguin, 2008), 156 2 Cicero, De inventione, ed. E. Stroebel (Leipzig: Teubner, 1915), 2.53.160, p. 148: “Iustitia est habitus animi communi utilitate conservata suam cuique tribuens dignitatem.” 3 See for example the translations by Cary J. Nederman of John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Marsiglio of Padua, Writings on the Empire: Defensor minor and De translatione Imperii (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  99

4 5 6

7

8 9

10

11

12

13

1993), with numerous subsequent studies, such as John of Salisbury (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005). On themes of continuity, see for example his Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations Along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2009). Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages, 1200–1500, eds. Istvan Bejczy and Cary J. Nederman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). Cary J. Nederman, “Freedom, Community and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval Political Theory,” American Political Science Review 86 (December 1992): 977–86. Cary J. Nederman, “Practical and Productive Knowledge in the Twelfth Century: Extending the Aristotelian Paradigm, c. 1120–c. 1160,” Parergon 31 (2014): 27–45; see also his papers, collected in Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th–15th Centuries (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997). Cary J. Nederman, Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor pacis (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1995) and A Companion to Marsilius of Padua, eds. Gerson Moreno-Riaño and Cary J. Nederman (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Istvan Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages. A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Formula vitae honestae, in Martini episcopi Bracarensis opera omnia, ed. C. W. Barlow (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950), 5, p. 246 (text on 236–50): “Quid est autem iustitia nisi naturae tacita conventio in adiutorium multorum inventa? Et quid est iustitia nisi nostra constitutio, sed divina lex, et vinculum societatis humanae?” On Martin, see Marcia Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 2: 297–301. Formula vitae honestae 1, p. 237: “sed ea magis commonet quae et sine divinarum scripturarum praeceptis naturali tantum humanae intellegentiae lege etiam a laicis recte honesteque viventibus valeant adimpleri.” On the tradition of its text, see Claude Barlow, “The text tradition of the ‘Formula Vitae Honestae’ of St. Martin of Braga” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1935). Ps.-Cyprianus. De xii abusivis saeculi, ed. Siegmund Hellmann, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 34 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1909). The text had been printed previously among the works of Cyprian, PL 4:869B-882B, and of Augustine, PL 40:1086–88. Aidan Breen, “Towards a critical edition of De XII Abusivis: Introductory essays with a provisional edition of the text and accompanied by an English translation” (PhD diss., Trinity College Dublin, 1988); the text [abbreviated here as DDA] is referred to by the page of Breen’s edition, along with the parallel reference the column in PL 4:869B-882B. Its core conclusions are summarized in Breen, “De XII abusiuis: Text and Transmission,” in Ireland and Europe in the early Middle Ages: Texts and Transmissions/Irland und Europa im früheren Mittelalter: Texte und Überlieferung, eds. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), 78–94. See also Breen, “Pseudo-Cyprian De Duodecim Abusivis and the Bible,” in Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien und Mission, eds. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), 230–45 and Breen, “The Evidence of Antique Irish Exegesis in Pseudo-Cyprian, De duodecim abusivis saeculi,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 87, Section C (1987): 71–101. The De informatione principum (on fols. 1–77) was erroneously identified by Montague R. James as by Giles of Rome. James was misled by the initial rubric on fol. 1 Liber de administratione principum. It is followed on fol. 77v by an excerpt from, De XII abusiuis saeculi: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 2: 299.

100  Constant J. Mews







The Twelve Abuses of the Age  101

















102  Constant J. Mews

33

34

35 36

“Propterea enim et ipse oboediens factus est usque ad mortem ut qui oboedientiae eius sequuntur exemplum iusti constituantur ab ipsa iustitia sicut illi inoboedientiae forma sequentes constituti sunt peccatores.” Ps-Jerome [Pelagius], In Eph. 6:3, PL 30, 840A: “Sicut lorica multis circulis vel armillis intexitur, ita et justitia diversis virtutum connectitur speciebus. Monet autem non solum peccatoris conscientiam, sed et ventris continentiam; necnon et ad femorum usque pertingit libidinem coercendam.” Commentarius in epistulas catholicas, ed. R. E. McNally, CCSL 108B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1973), 18: “Iustitia est, id est omnium uirtutum, quia Pilagius loquitur de iustitia dicens, sicut lurica multis armellis texitur, ita iustitia multis uirtutibus ornatur.” This passage is edited by A. Souter, Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul, 3 vols., Texts and Studies IX (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–31), reprinted in Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum 1, 1170-34, 2: 383: “Sicut lorica multis circulis vel armillis intexitur, ita et iustitia diuersis uirtutibus connectur specibus.” See Stephen Joyce, “Gildas and His Prophecy for Britain,” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 9 (2013): 39–59. Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, 39, p. 106: ‘Fecit,’ inquiens, ‘Salomon quod non placuerat coram domino, et non adimplevit ut sequeretur dominum, sicut pater eius’. ‘Dixit dominus ad eum: quia habuisti hoc apud te et non custodisti pactum meum et praecepta mea quae mandavi tibi, disrumpens scindam regnum tuum et dabo illud servo tuo.’

37 Ps-Gregory the Great, In librum primum Regum expositionum libri VI, ed. P. Verbraken, CCSL 144 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963), 49–614; see the introduction by Adalbert de Vogüé to this edition with translation, published as Pierre de Cava, Commentaire sur le premier livre des rois, Sources chrétiennes 482 (Paris: Cerf, 2004). 38 DDA 1, 337 (869C): “Nam et Solomon dum multae sapientiae transgressionem incurrit, totius Ishraheliticae plebis regni dispersionem solius sui merito praestitit.” 39 DDA 6, 376–78 (875AB): Rex Salomon postquam patris sui David sedem obtinuit, Deus illum ultra omnes mortales velut ad innumerosi populi gubernationem sapientiae munere ditavit. E contrario vero Hieroboam, servus Salomonis, postquam regni domus David occupavit partem, ad idolorum cultum decem tribus Israel, quae erant in parte Samariae, diverterat. 40 DDA 6, 378 (875B): “Per quae exempla evidenter ostenditur, quosdam in sublimiori statu ad majorem perfectionem crescere, quosdam vero per supercilium dominationis ad deteriora defluere.” 41 DDA 9, 404 (878BC): Idcirco enim saepe pax populorum rumpitur, et offendicula etiam de regno suscitantur, terrarum quoque fructus diminuuntur, et servitia populorum praepediuntur, multi et varii dolores prosperitatem regni inficiunt, carorum et liberorum mortes tristitiam conferunt, hostium incursus provincias undique vastant, bestiae armentorum et pecorum greges dilacerant: tempestates aeris et hyemis terrarum foecunditatem et maris ministeria prohibent, et aliquando fulminum ictus segetes et arborum flores et pampinos exurunt. Super omnia vero regis injustitia, non solum praesentis imperii faciem offuscat, sed etiam filios suos et nepotes, ne post se regni haereditatem teneant, obscurat. Propter piaculum enim Salomonis, regnum domus Israel Dominus de manibus filiorum ejus dispersit. Et propter justitiam David regis, lucernam de semine ejus semper in Hierusalem reliquit [III Reg. 11:31–35]. Ecce quantum justitia regis saeculo valeat, intuentibus perspicue patet. … Attamen sciat rex quod, sicut in

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  103

throno hominum primus constitutus est, sic et in poenis, si justitiam non fecerit, primatum habiturus est. Omnes namque quoscumque peccatores sub se in praesenti habuit, supra se modo implacabili, in illa poena futura habebit. 42 DDA 10, 410 (879A): “Decimus gradus abusionis est episcopus negligens; qui gradus sui honorem inter homines requirit, sed ministerii sui dignitatem coram Deo, pro quo legatione fungitur, non custodit.” 43 DDA 10, 412 (879B): “Decet ergo episcopus omnium, qui in specula positus est, peccata diligenter attendere, et postquam attenderit, sermone, si potuerit et actu corrigere; si non potuerit, juxta Evangelii regulam, scelerum operarios declinare.” 44 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. C. C. J. Webb (London: Clarendon Press, 1909), 5.3, p. 287. 45 Paul J. Weithman, “Augustine and Aquinas on Original Sin and the Function of Political Authority,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 30, no. 3 (1992): 353–76.

Bibliography Aelfric. Two Ælfric texts. The Twelve Abuses and the Vices and Virtues, an edition and translation of Ælfric’s Old English versions of De duodecim abusivis and De octo vitiis et de duodecim abusivis, edited by Mary Clayton. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. Anonymous. Collectio canonum in V libris, edited by M. Fornasari. CCCM 6. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. ———. Commentarius in epistulas catholicas, edited by R. E. McNally. CCSL 108B. Turnhout: Brepols, 1973. ———. Liber quare, edited by G. P. Götz. CCCM 60. Turnhout: Brepols 1983. ———. On the Twelve Abuses of the Age. In PL 4:869B-882B. ———. On the Twelve Abuses of the Age. In PL 40:1086–88. ———. On the Twelve Abuses of the Age. In Ps.-Cyprianus. De xii abusiuis saeculi, edited by Siegmund Hellmann, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 34. Leipzig: Teubner, 1909. Augustine. Contra aduersarium legis et prophetarum, edited by K.-D. Daur. CCSL 49. Turnhout: Brepols 1985. ———. De civitate Dei, edited by B. Dombart and A. Kalb. CCSL 47. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955. ———. Speculum, edited F. Weihrich. CSEL 12. Vienna: Tempsky, 1887. Barlow, Claude. “The text tradition of the ‘Formula Vitae Honestae’ of St. Martin of Braga.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1935. Bejczy, Istvan. The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages. A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Bejczy, Istvan, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages, 1200–1500. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Breen, Aidan. “De XII abusiuis: Text and Transmission.” In Ireland and Europe in the early Middle Ages: Texts and Transmissions/Irland und Europa im früheren Mittelalter: Texte und Überlieferung, edited by Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter, 78–94. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002. ———. “The Evidence of Antique Irish Exegesis in Pseudo-Cyprian, De duodecim abusivis saeculi.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 87, Section C (1987): 71–101. ———. “Towards a critical edition of De XII Abusivis: Introductory essays with a provisional edition of the text and accompanied by an English translation.” PhD diss., Trinity College Dublin, 1988.

104  Constant J. Mews

Cicero. De inventione, edited by E. Stroebel. Leipzig: Teubner, 1915. Colish, Marcia. The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1985. Garrison, Mary. “Letters to a King and Biblical Exempla: The Examples of Cathuulf and Clement’s Peregrinus.” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 305–28. Gildas. De excidio Britanniae. In The Ruin of Britain, and Other Works, edited by Michael Winterbottom. London: Philimore, 1978. Giraud, Cédric. “Criminosus, falsus testis et sacrilegus. L’affaire Hincmar de Laon ­(858–871).” In La pathologie du pouvoir: vices, crimes et délits des gouvernants: antiquité, moyen âge, époque moderne, edited by P. Gilli, 146–63. Leiden: Brill 2016. https://doi. org/10.1163/9789004307803_009. Gratian. Decretum, edited by A. Friedberg. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879. Grigg, Julianna. “The Just King and De Duodecim Abusivis Saeculi.” Parergon 27 (2010): 27–52. Hincmar of Reims. De divortio Lothario et Theubergae reginae. In MGH, Concilia IV, suppl. I, edited by L. Böhringer. Hannover: Hahn, 1992. James, Montague R. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912. John of Salisbury. Policraticus, edited by C. C. J. Webb. London: Clarendon Press, 1909. ———. Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers. Translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Joinville. Histoire de Saint Louis. In Historiens et chroniqueurs du moyen âge: Robert de Clari, Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commynes, edited by Albert Pauphilet. Paris: ­Gallimard, 1952. ———. The Life of St Louis. In Chronicles of the Crusades. Translated by Caroline Smith. London: Penguin, 2008. Jonas. Instruction des Laïcs. De institutione laicali, edited and translated by A. Dubreucq. Sources Chrétiennes. Paris: Cerf, 2013. ———. Le metier du roi: De institutione regia, edited and translated by A. Dubreucq. Sources Chrétiennes 407. Paris: Cerf, 1995. Joyce, Stephen. “Gildas and His Prophecy for Britain.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 9 (2013): 39–59. ———. The Legacy of Gildas: Constructions of Authority in the Early Medieval West. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2022. Marsiglio of Padua. Writings on the Empire: Defensor minor and De translatione Imperii. Translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Martin of Braga. Formula vitae honestae. In Martini episcopi Bracarensis opera omnia, edited by C. W. Barlow. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950. Meens, Rob. “Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Wellbeing of the Realm.” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 345–57. Merisalo, Outi, S. Hakulinen, L. Karikoski, K. Korhonen, L. Lahdensuu, M. Piippo, and N. van Yzendoorn (Équipe Golein). “Remarques sur la traduction de Jean Golein du De informacione principum.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 95 (1994): 19–30. Mews, Constant J., and Rina Lahav. “Wisdom and Justice in the Court of Jeanne of Navarre and Philip IV: Durand of Champagne, the Speculum dominarum, and the De informatione principum.” Viator 45, no. 3 (2014): 173–200. MGH, Concilia II, edited by A. Werminghof. Hannover: Hahn, 1906–08. ———, Epistolae Carolini Aevi IV, edited by E. Dümmler. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895.

The Twelve Abuses of the Age  105

Moreno-Riaño, Gerson, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. A Companion to Marsilius of Padua. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Nederman, Cary J. Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor pacis. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1995. ———. “Freedom, Community and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval Political Theory.” American Political Science Review 86 (December 1992): 977–86. ———. John of Salisbury. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. ———. Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations Along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2009. ———. Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th–15th Centuries. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. ———. “Practical and Productive Knowledge in the Twelfth Century: Extending the Aristotelian Paradigm, c. 1120–c. 1160.” Parergon 31 (2014): 27–45. Origen. In Epistulam Pauli ad Romanos. In Vetus Latina, Aus der Geschichte der lateinischen Bibel, vols. 16, 33, 34, edited by C. P. Hammond Bammel. Freiburg: Herder, 1990–98. ———. In Psalmos XXXVI–XXXVIII homiliae IX, edited by E. Prinzivalli, H. Crouzel, and L. Brésard. Sources chrétiennes 411. Paris: Cerf, 1995. Peter Abelard, Sic et Non, edited by B. Boyer and R. McKeon. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1976–77. Pierre de Cava. Commentaire sur le premier livre des rois. Translated with an introduction by Adalbert de Vogüé. Sources chrétiennes 482. Paris: Cerf, 2004. Ps-Gregory the Great. In librum primum Regum expositionum libri VI, edited by P. Verbraken. CCSL 144. Turnhout: Brepols, 1963. Ps-Jerome [Pelagius]. In Epistolam Pauli ad Ephesios. In PL 30, 823–41. Sedulius Scotus. De rectoribus christianis 20. In Sedulius Scottus, edited by S. Hellmann. Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1. Munich: Beck, 1906. Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel. In PL 102, 838B-939B. Souter, A. Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul. Texts and Studies IX, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–31. Vincent of Beauvais. An English translation of De morali principis institutione and De duodecim abusivis saeculi. Translated by Priscilla Throop. Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2011. ———. De morali principis institutione, edited by R. J. Schneider. CCCM 137. Turnhout: Brepols, 1995. Weithman, Paul J. “Augustine and Aquinas on Original Sin and the Function of ­Political Authority.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 30, no. 3 (1992): 353–76.

PART II

Fresh Interpretations

6 THE MIRROR COMPILED Roger Waltham’s Compendium morale and Cary Nederman’s Medieval English Tradition of Political Thought1 Charles F. Briggs

Ther bith ij kyndes off kyngdomes, of the wich that on is a lordship callid in laten dominium regale, and that other is callid dominium politicum et regale. And thai diuersen in that the first kynge mey rule his peple bi suche lawes as he makyth hym self. And therfore he mey sett vppon thaim tayles and other imposicions, such as he wol hym self, withowt thair assent. The secounde kynge may not rule his peple bi other lawes than such as thai assenten unto. And therfore he mey sett vpon thaim non imposicions withowt thair owne assent. This diuersite is wel taught bi Seynt Thomas, in his boke wich he wrote ad regem Cipri de regemine principum. But yet it is more openly tredid in a boke callid compendium moralis philosophie, and sumwhat bi Giles in his boke de regemine principum.2

Thus, does Sir John Fortescue begin his famous treatise On the Governance of England (1471), a work which unfavourably compares purely royal lordship (dominium regale), as exemplified by the veritable tyranny exercised by the king of France, with England’s far better, because fairer, freer, and less burdensome, political and royal lordship (dominium politicum et regale). Two of the three authorities which Fortescue calls the reader’s attention to in his introduction, the De regimine principum of Thomas Aquinas and Ptolemy of Lucca, and Giles of Rome’s work of the same name, are as well known to us today as they were to his later fifteenth-century audience.3 Far less familiar is the work Fortescue calls Compendium moralis philosophie. The Governance’s editor, Charles Plummer, identified this work as “the ‘Compendium Morale Rogeri de Waltham’” and went on to provide a brief description of it, as well as a biography of its author, Roger Waltham. According to Plummer, the Compendium morale ex virtuosis dictis et factis exemplaribus antiquorum proficiencium (to use its full title), “is DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-9

110  Charles F. Briggs

not in any real sense a treatise on moral philosophy, but consists of a series of moral disquisitions, especially on the virtues and duties of princes, illustrated by historical examples, and enforced by numberless quotations, especially from 4 Seneca….” ­ As for its author, he was a canon of St. Paul’s, London, who had been a clerk in the household of Bishop Anthony Bek of Durham (d. 1311), had later served as Keeper of the Wardrobe under King Edward II in the early 1320s, and was still active in 1332. Plummer went on to cite a couple of other examples of Fortescue’s use of the Compendium, in his De titulo Edwardi Comitis Marchiae and, perhaps, the De laudibus legum Angliae, before admitting “[i]t is possible that a closer comparison than I have thought it worthwhile to make, might reveal other instances in which Fortescue has taken his references at second-hand from this work.”5 Given Plummer’s less than enthusiastic assessment of the Compendium’s value as a work of moral philosophy and of its impact on Fortescue’s political thought, it is little wonder that later scholars have paid it little attention. Fortescue’s reliance, or lack thereof, on the two treatises De regimine principum for his theory of dominium were argued over by S. B. Chrimes, Felix Gilbert, and J. H. Burns, while other aspects of his thought have recently been explicated by Cary Nederman, as well as by Margaret Kelly, Craig Taylor, and John Watts.6 Nowhere, in this copious literature, except briefly in a few of Chrimes’s notes, however, does the subject of Fortescue’s reliance on Roger Waltham come up.7 Almost as neglected has been the Compendium itself. It has never been edited. Moreover, only two scholarly publications have, as far as I am aware, ever been devoted to this early fourteenth-century text. The first is a privately published doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Chicago in 1935, whose author, William Hotchkiss, had formed a very low opinion of the Compendium. In the preface to his dissertation, a disconsolate Hotchkiss wrote: It was believed that the Compendium morale, which was supposedly a treatise on political theory, or at least on political virtue, would contribute something toward our scanty knowledge of political theory in England in the dim period between the polemists of the Barons’ War and Fortescue … [However] it became clear that the Compendium morale possesses no originality, but is rather a mosaic of passages, some acknowledged, some not, excerpted from a wide range of classical and medieval authors … Its significance for the history of political theory is purely negative. Again, the mutilation of the texts in the process of excerption renders the work almost if not entirely useless to the scholar of classical or medieval text traditions.8 As for the work’s author, Hotchkiss judged him to be “an obscure, almost characterless clerk” of broad but shallow learning, as well as a small-minded, gullible, venal, and hypocritical toady.9 More generous (and even-handed) has

The Mirror Compiled  111

been Frédérique Lachaud’s recent assessment of the Compendium as a text that although admittedly no “grand traité politique,” does nonetheless contribute, along with Thomas Docking’s Deuteronomy commentary and several of William of Pagula’s writings, to “situer les paramètres de la culture politique” and to “la connaissance de la diffusion des thèmes politiques” in late thirteenthand early fourteenth-century England.10 Such limited scholarly response to the Compendium and its influence offers little incentive to devote any more time to the subject. And yet, there is the small but suggestive enticement of Fortescue’s own words: “This diuersite is wel taught bi Seynt Thomas…. But yet it is more openly tredid in a boke callid compendium moralis philosophie, and sumwhat bi Giles….” Was Chrimes right to dismiss Fortescue’s assessment of the Compendium’s relevance to his own ideas as merely showing, “that he was content to regard even nebulous allusion as good authority”?11 There is reason to think not, since Fortescue not only made the assertion that the difference between dominium tantum regale and dominium politicum et regale was more clearly treated by the Compendium, but he also seems to have assumed that his contemporary readership was as familiar with that work as they were with the mirrors of princes of Thomas/Ptolemy and Giles. This certainly agrees with the judgement of the sixteenth-century antiquarian bibliophile John Leland, who, based on the evidence of his 1530s census of books in English monastic, collegiate, and ecclesiastical libraries, said of Waltham, Thus, assuredly, he showed himself to be the man whom learned men clearly proclaimed him to be when, having gathered up abundant and rich rhetorical ornaments from the pleasant fields of ancient authors, he assembled them into a volume called the Compendium morale, a work concerning memorable sayings and deeds, which afterwards proliferated in many copies.12 The evidence of surviving manuscripts and late medieval book ownership confirms Leland’s assessment. Fifteen copies of the Compendium, all of English origin and dated to the later 1300s and 1400s, survive.13 We know as well that during the same time period several clerics and scholars owned copies of the work and were keen to donate them to libraries at England’s two universities.14 And the presence in various libraries of these and other copies was later attested by Leland and his fellow antiquarian John Bale in the middle years of the sixteenth century.15 There is, moreover, proof in the manuscripts that at least some late medieval readers of Waltham’s book of sayings and deeds frequently consulted it and expected others to do so as well. This comes in the form of extensive finding aids that accompany the text in most manuscripts, including elaborate systems of indexing and of cross-referencing between these indexes and copious marginal notes. We are fortunate to know the identity of one of the indexes’ compilers. This was Thomas Graunt (d. 1471), an Oxford

112  Charles F. Briggs

theologian, fellow of Oriel College, and Treasurer of St. Paul’s, London (and thus, like Roger Waltham, a canon there), who compiled an extensive index to the Compendium, which, one assumes, he included in the copy of that work which he donated to his university’s incipient library. Clearly, then, the Compendium had a certain currency among Fortescue’s contemporaries. There is reason therefore to take Fortescue at his word and assume that he not only used the Compendium but also regarded it as a text that provided authoritative support for his own political ideas. And if Fortescue took the Compendium seriously, perhaps we should as well. What follows is an exploratory look at this hitherto neglected author and his contribution to the history of late medieval political thought. After saying something about Waltham’s life and giving a brief description of the Compendium, it will suggest the following propositions. First, that Waltham compiled the Compendium in response to the troubled politics of Edward II’s reign as well as of the early years of his heir, Edward III. Secondly, that Waltham imagined his immediate audience to be not the prince himself, but rather the learned men who served and attended upon the prince; in other words, clerical bureaucrats like himself. Thirdly, that the Compendium was not merely the unoriginal, uninspired, and essentially pointless collection of extracts that Hotchkiss thought it to be, but had, rather, an underlying political message and purpose: i.e., that governing is the responsibility not only of the prince but also of his ministers and officials, and that government must be well-tempered and must respect the laws and customs of the republic and of its citizens; as such it belongs to what Cary Nederman has identified as a distinctly English constitutionalist strain of political thought. And lastly, that Roger’s interest in “the virtuous sayings and exemplary deeds of the ancients” places him in the company of several British and continental writers active in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth century who evinced a classicising or humanist bent.

Roger Waltham and the Compendium morale Nothing is known of Roger Waltham’s early life. On the basis of his surname, he may have been born in Waltham, Essex, or have belonged to one of the Waltham families of north-eastern Lincolnshire or Leicestershire.16 There is no evidence for his having ever attended university, and he certainly never obtained a degree, since he is referred to in surviving documents either as clericus or dominus, and never as magister.17 Waltham nonetheless had a successful clerical career. By 1291, he had likely gained the patronage of Bishop Antony Bek of Durham, since by then he had been provided to prebends in the diocese’s collegiate churches of Bishop Auckland and Chester-le-Street. By 1300, he was named as a member of Bishop Bek’s household, where he evidently proved himself sufficiently worthy to amass, by 1306, additional livings as rector of Longnewton (Durham), prebendary of Darlington, and canon in the cathedral

The Mirror Compiled  113

of St. Paul’s, London. He continued throughout his life to enrich himself on the incomes of several benefices held in plurality, as well as the rents from a number of privately held properties in London. In 1309, Bek made Waltham his chancellor, and by the time of his patron’s death two years later, Waltham appears to have stitched together enough of a network of affinity and patronage in the capital and at its cathedral to propel him to royal service by no later than May 1322, when he was made Keeper of the Wardrobe, an office he held until October of the following year. Also in 1323, Waltham began a project which was to occupy him for the next several years, this being the endowment of a magnificent chantry in St. Paul’s dedicated to St Lawrence. Given Waltham’s close association with Edward II and with one of Edward’s most hated servants, Robert de Baldock, he was fortunate not to fall victim to the reprisals against the king and his adherents in late 1326 and 1327. For the remainder of his life, he occupied himself with affairs at St. Paul’s, where he died sometime between the late 1330s and 1341. Although no certain date can be assigned to the Compendium’s composition, Waltham likely worked on it during his years of relative leisure between the mid-1320s and his death.18 Sometime around 1330, he also commissioned the production of an impressively luxurious miscellany of devotional, patristic, and classical texts, now Glasgow University Libr., MS Hunter 231 (U.3.4). Hunter 231 is notable for the exceptional quality and originality of its illumination, including three magnificent full-page miniatures – one of which depicts the philosophical trinity of Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle – and 13 historiated initials, in four of which Seneca again appears.19 We know that the artist responsible for these illustrations was one Richard of Oxford, since he also happens to have executed the sumptuous illumination programme in the Taymouth Hours (London, British Libr., Yates Thompson MS 13), for which work he received payment from the Wardrobe of Edward III’s queen Philippa in 1331. It is likely that Richard, as well as the anonymous scribe who worked with him on both manuscripts, plied their trade from book-artisan shops in the vicinity of St. Paul’s; moreover, it stands to reason that both Waltham and Queen Philippa hired these book artists at roughly the same time. What cannot be known is whether Waltham maintained ties to the royal court after Edward II’s demise. What is certain, however, is that canonries at St. Paul’s were frequently held by men working in royal administration, and thus presumably Waltham would have continued to be informed about goings-on at court.20 The contents of the Compendium also demonstrate that Waltham had a more than passing interest in the subject of governance and that he believed contemporary politicians needed to heed the lessons conveyed by, as he called them, “the virtuous sayings and exemplary deeds of the beneficial ancients.” As for what he meant by “ancients,” this included not only pagan and early Christian auctores of Greek (a little), and Roman (a lot) antiquity, but also the Bible (here especially the historical and wisdom literature), canon law (by way

114  Charles F. Briggs

of Gratian’s Decretum), and a few snippets of twelfth- and thirteenth-century English history. Nonetheless, the lion’s share of excerpts do come from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Waltham’s reverence for ancient philosophers is also evident in Hunter 231’s illustration programme and in the texts introduced by those illuminations. That Waltham had a special reverence for Seneca is suggested not only by that philosopher’s central position between Plato and Aristotle in the full-page miniature but also by the overwhelming presence of Senecan or pseudo-Senecan material in both Hunter 231 and the Compendium. Thanks to Hotchkiss’s assiduous Quellenforschung, we know that in the Compendium, Waltham quotes the Epistulae morales some 235 times, while also drawing heavily from the Naturales quaestiones, and from several of Seneca’s Moral Essays, especially De beata vita, De beneficiis, De ira, De clementia, and De tranquillitate animi (together amounting to some 150 borrowings). Pseudo-Senecan borrowings are also numerous, especially from the Formula honestae vitae of Martin of Braga. After Seneca and pseudo-Seneca, Waltham’s favourite classical authors are Valerius Maximus (88 extracts) and Cicero (75), followed by Ovid and the Elder Seneca, Sallust, and the late Roman writers Boethius, Frontinus, and Vegetius. The occasional extracts from Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Florus, Aullus Gellius, and the elder and younger Pliny also appear. Although Hotchkiss thought it likely that Waltham accessed some of these classical authors directly, he suspected that his subject more often than not used what he called “short cuts … handbooks of pat quotations, proverbs, poetry, and of selections from revered authors.”21 Taken in a general sense, Hotchkiss was right. But when it came to specifics, he did not have the benefit of later scholarship that would show he was wrong both about Valerius, whom he thought Waltham accessed directly, and about Seneca, whom he thought Waltham got largely via “short cuts.” As for the material from Valerius Maximus, the findings of Jenny Swanson and Albrecht Diem have helped me to determine that Waltham borrowed virtually all this material, as well as most of his other classical quotations from the Breviloquium and Communiloquium of the thirteenth-century Franciscan friar John of Wales (d. c. 1285).22 As for Seneca and pseudo-Seneca, Waltham probably got a few of his extracts by way of John of Wales, and perhaps from Roger Bacon’s Opus maius and Thomas of Ireland’s Manipulus florum (completed 1306). But Waltham likely drew a great deal if not most of his Senecan and pseudo-Senecan material from integral texts, many of which are found in Hunter 231.23 Most intriguing of all, however, are Waltham’s extracts from the Senecan material which does not appear in Hunter 231, this being the entire corpus of 124 Epistulae morales. While manuscripts containing the first 88 letters were fairly common in early fourteenth-century England, this was not the case for letters 89–124. The only compilation available to Waltham containing extracts from the latter set of letters was John of Wales’s Communiloqium, whose scant ten extracts scarcely match Waltham’s 65 borrowings. This leads me to believe that Waltham must have had access to the full text of all 124 letters.24

The Mirror Compiled  115

External evidence provides intriguing hints as to some of the very books (other than Hunter 231) from which Waltham may have taken his extracts. At his death in 1313, London’s bishop, Ralph de Baldock, bequeathed his large personal library to St. Paul’s. Among the books listed in his bequest were several bibles, bible commentaries, and a biblical concordance, a plethora of canon law books, including a glossed volume of the Decretum, a chronicle, a Flores philosophie, Thomas of Ireland’s Manipulus florum, and a Breviloquium et alii tractatus.25 It is possible that the Breviloquium volume also contained a Communiloquium, since these texts frequently are found together in surviving manuscripts.26 As for the Flores philosophie, this could have been any number of florilegia of sayings of philosophers. No one has yet been able to determine if any of these books survive, so any conclusions from this evidence must remain speculative. At the very least, however, the list of Baldock’s books shows the kind of resources that were readily available to Waltham at St. Paul’s. As a genre, medieval compilations are notoriously reticent when it comes to revealing the attitudes and intentions of their compilers; the Compendium presents no exception to this rule. Confronted with the Compendium’s seeming absence of any authorial “character” or “originality,” Hotchkiss relegated Waltham and his compilation to the dustbin of political thought. Since Hotchkiss’s time, however, scholarly studies of the medieval “theory of authorship” and of texts belonging to a broad range of “derivative” genres, including compilations, abridgments, translations, and encyclopaedias, have established the ubiquity, functions, and importance of works previously regarded as being of very limited intellectual value.27 Many such works, including the Compendium, qualify for membership in the large group of “family” and “friends” (as Cary Nederman and I have characterized them) of medieval mirrors of princes literature.28 If in mirrors like the Compendium, the author/compiler expresses precious few of his own words, this does not mean the entire work does not speak with his voice. Rather, he expresses his moral and political message through the words of others, that is, through his choice of sources and extracts, and by the way he organizes those extracts. While parsimonious with his own words, Waltham generously plundered his sources. Thanks to his practice of heaping exemplum upon exemplum and dictum upon dictum, the Compendium is a long work indeed, occupying roughly 200 leaves on average in the manuscripts. It is organized into 13 parts (or, in some manuscripts, 12), which either Waltham or some later scribe called “rubrics” (see Appendix). I have been able to determine that Waltham borrowed the basic frameworks for at least eight of these rubrics (and perhaps more) from portions of the Breviloquium and Communiloquium. So, to give one example, let us look at Compendium, Rubric 2, whose two-part subject is, “Description of the republic and the kinds of men who ought to be appointed to oversee it – namely those who are wise, literate [i.e., learned], and rational; and concerning the education of noble youths.” The first part of the rubric uses Communiloquium, bk. 1, pts

116  Charles F. Briggs

2 and 3, on the prince’s role in the state; and the second part uses Breviloquium, bk. 2, pt. 1, on the prince’s prudence. A sense of how much material Waltham adds to his borrowings from John of Wales can be gleaned from a comparison between two manuscripts of roughly the same size, each containing one of these works. The text of the second part of the Compendium’s Rubric 2 takes up 16 folio sides in Balliol College MS 261 (fols. 12r-19v), whereas the comparable material in the Breviloquium found in Utrecht University Libr. MS 237 (1.H.14) occupies just over 3 folio sides (fols. 9r-10 v). Although Waltham clearly admired John of Wales’s works, he, like the many other late medieval compilers who plundered them, never names his immediate source. However, Waltham also seems to have thought he could expand upon his borrowings from the Breviloquium and Communiloquium, adding copious material which he felt would reinforce the agreeable lessons found in them. According to Jenny Swanson, the Breviloquium and the first book of the Communiloquium have certain affinities with mirror of princes literature, and yet they are addressed not exclusively to princes but rather to all Christian citizens. They tell “ordinary people about the princeps,” she says, rather than advising “the princeps” on what to do “on his own account.” As for the political lessons which John wished to convey, they are: (1) we should admire the virtue of the ancients and seek to emulate their virtue; (2) princes should be especially attentive to these lessons; (3) one should not seek financial gain but rather “the glory and health of the state”; (4) the prince does “not have sole power to make law,” and he is “of, rather than above, the community, and … subject to, rather than outside the law”; (5) “the prince should be humble in himself and obedient and respectful to God and the church”; and (6) the respublica is the product of a “contract between church, king, and people.”29 A glance at the Appendix reveals that the same lessons are evident in the rubric titles of the Compendium. One can see, however, that Waltham adds his own touches. First, at the level of the major divisions of the text, he orders his material differently from the Breviloquium, whose organizing principle is the four cardinal virtues, and the Communiloquium, which is organized according to social groups. After the prologue (i.e., Rubric 1), Rubric 2 opens with a description of the republic and those who govern it. Here Waltham, while never openly challenging the principle of hereditary monarchy, nonetheless puts tremendous emphasis on the elective principal both for princes and for prelates.30 And because those who govern well must also be wise and knowing, Waltham amasses passages advocating that they should receive a proper education when young. The next three rubrics are concerned with justice, looking, first, at how those who govern ought to respect the laws regarding their subjects’ ownership of goods and wealth (Rubric 3) and the status and goods of the Church and clergy (Rubric 4), and, second, at how those who govern must be just in every way (Rubric 5). Rubrics 6 and 7 are chiefly concerned with how the prince and soldiers should wage war. Rubrics 8 through 11 focus on key

The Mirror Compiled  117

attributes of well-tempered rule, including tempered magnificence, patience, perseverance, mercy, and, finally, humility and obedience towards the Church and its prelates. The final two rubrics excoriate the vices of those in government, and remind them that their chief goal is to live virtuously and prepare for a good death. Throughout, Waltham lays particular stress on the idea that governance is something that the prince must do in partnership with those in the upper strata of society, whom he labels at various times ministri, presidentes, prefecti, rectores, episcopi, prelati, and litterati. Moreover, not only princes but all who govern bear equal responsibility for governing well, by which Waltham means upholding justice, respecting customs, and obeying the laws, respecting the persons, rights, and property of subjects and most especially of the Church, and maintaining at all times a virtuous character, marked by prudence, moderation, humility, and mercy.

Roger Waltham, Cary Nederman, and Late Medieval English Political Thought Thus, pace Plummer, Chrimes, and Hotchkiss, Waltham’s Compendium is more than an aimless grab-bag of moral lessons. Rather, it is a work of political advice which responds to a contemporary political context and which deploys exemplary sayings and stories to make the case for a political system which looks very much like the one advocated in several other political tracts from early fourteenth-century England. In a series of publications, Cary Nederman has directed our attention to a number of these treatises of the early decades of the fourteenth century, these being the anonymous Modus tenendi parliamentorum and Speculum justiciariorum (both c. 1300), Walter of Milemete’s De nobilitatibus, sapientiis et prudentiis regum (1326–1327), the two recensions of William of Pagula’s Speculum regis Edwardi III (1331 and 1332), William of Ockham’s An princeps (1338), and Walter Burley’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (c. 1340).31 These treatises express what Nederman has identified as an “English tradition,” characterized by the principle that while “the king must exceed in power all others in his realm,” he must also rule in partnership with the political community, as represented in parliament. In this reciprocal relationship, the political community has “a duty to assist the king actively in ruling the realm,” while the king for his part is expected to delegate “the regular operation of royal rule … to his co-rulers.”32 It should be apparent by now that Waltham’s Compendium also belongs to this English tradition. Nederman has also convincingly argued that most of these early fourteenth-century treatises should be read as interventions responding to specific contemporary political problems: the Speculum justiciariorum (and perhaps also the Modus tenendi parliamentorum) to the absolutist proclivities of Edward I; Milemete’s treatise, to the political upheaval that led to Edward II’s deposition and his son Edward III’s accession to the throne; Pagula’s two versions of his Speculum, to

118  Charles F. Briggs

the abuse of purveyance in the first years of Edward III’s reign; and Ockham’s An princeps, to what he regarded as the Church’s illegitimate resistance to royal taxation during wartime. And though Nederman does not raise this possibility, could it be that Burley was responding at least in part to parliament’s criticisms of Edward III’s high-handed and fiscally irresponsible behaviour in the first three years of the Hundred Years’ War? It makes sense to assume that like his contemporaries, Waltham, too, was responding in a critical and constructive way to the political issues and problems of the recent English past and present. The structure and content of the Compendium certainly suggest that Waltham shared the aversion of his fellow cleric William of Pagula to the royal government’s recent encroachments, in the form of purveyance, on property rights. And, like Walter of Milemete, Waltham brought the perspective of a royal clerk who had direct experience of the workings of government administration to the turbulent political environment of the late 1320s.33 Unlike Milemete, however, Waltham did not address his book of political advice to the king himself. Milemete, it seems, had managed to hitch his wagon to the forces that had removed Edward II, whereas Waltham’s close association with the disastrous regime of Edward II would hardly have endeared him with the circle of Isabella and Mortimer or, one imagines, with the former king’s more capable son. Given Waltham’s evident admiration for prelates and other churchmen who had been protectors of the Church and realm or had corrected errant princes, I speculate that his intended audience was made up of clerks like himself and his former patron Antony Bek, that is, ecclesiastical bureaucrats who believed they had a key role to play in guiding the ship of state. Waltham’s Compendium belongs, as well, to another strain of political thinking with a strongly insular cast to it. This is the classicist, or one could call it humanist, strain that goes back to John of Salisbury and Gerald of Wales and was then revived and popularized by John of Wales and reinforced by fellow members of the group of Beryl Smalley’s “classicising friars,” with the Dominicans Nicholas Trevet (c. 1260–c. 1334), Thomas Waleys (fl. 1318–1349), and Robert Holcot (c. 1290–1349) being first and foremost among them, as well as the secular royal clerk and bishop of Durham Richard de Bury (1287–1345).34 In common with Roger Waltham, these devotees of antiquity turned to the distant past – whether biblical, pagan, or early Christian – and mined from its quarry of authors the worthy sayings and memorable deeds which, they believed, gave the best moral and political advice one could ask for. As Waltham explains (using, of course, the words of his auctores): And therefore, according to the same [Seneca]: Life should be furnished with distinguished examples. And the same, in Epistle 103: Consider how much good examples benefit us: you will know that the presence of great men is no more useful than the memory of them. And the same, in Epistle 59: The ancient poets, who spoke simply and in order that the reason

The Mirror Compiled  119

of a thing might be shown, were accustomed to using comparisons, which I believe are needed to serve as supports for our feebleness, and in order to lead both speaker and audience to the matter at hand. Because, according to Cicero, in De oratore: History is the witness of the times, the light of truth, the life of the memory, the mistress of life, and the past’s messenger.35 On rare occasions, Waltham strays from his honey-gathering in the flowery fields of antiquity and wanders onto the turf of more recent, and mostly English, history. He tells favourable stories about the “virtuous, learned, wise, and just” King Magnus of Norway (r. 1262–80), which had been related to him during the time he had been in Bishop Bek’s service by “a certain clerk who was [Magnus’s] secretary,” and about the “two Catholic kings Louis [IX] in France and Henry [III] in England, who were cousins to one another.”36 As for bad kings, he tells at length “an example native to us English” and kept “in more recent memory” of “John, once king of England,” who, “on account of many grave injuries inflicted on the English Church and its clerics” and “his transgressive demands,” was chastened by “the nobles and people of his kingdom” and the Roman Church.37 What follows is the story of the Interdict and John’s eventual submission to Pope Innocent III. As Chris Given-Wilson points out, it was this story of John’s reign, rather than those of the loss of Normandy or of Magna Carta, that was most remembered in late medieval England. This was because by surrendering his kingdom to Innocent in order that he might then hold it of the pontiff as a fief, John had reduced to subjection what had always been a free and independent realm.38 In keeping with this sentiment, the scribe of Durham, Cathedral Priory Libr., MS B.III.24, has inserted into the tale, in large letters, that “on account of the evils and troubles [King John] had inflicted … the English kingdom was subjected to servitude.”39 In Oxford, Bodleian Libr., MS Fairfax 4 (fol. 23v), one of Fortescue’s contemporaries penned this note in the margin beside the exemplum of King John: “Behold, the author of this work was an Englishman!” (Ecce Actor huius operis Anglicus erat). This note suggests another reason why Fortescue may have mentioned Waltham’s work in the same breath as the venerable treatises of Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome. In terms of being a work of political theory, Waltham’s humble (if capacious) collection of exempla hardly holds a candle to those other two works, and surely Fortescue knew this. But it did have the advantage of being the work of an Englishman (rather than of Italians educated in France!), expressing a distinctly English political point of view, and grounding it in antiquity but also more recent, English, history. I imagine that Fortescue valued Waltham’s Compendium because he recognized its value as a source of the ammunition he needed to make the case for England’s regnum politicum et regale being not only the best form of government but also one that expressed the reason of the ages and bore the fruit of a long historical process.

120  Charles F. Briggs

APPENDIX Roger Waltham, Compendium morale: Rubric Headings40 1. Prologus Compendii moralis ex virtuosis dictis et factis exemplaribus antiquorum proficiencium. Prologue to the Moral Compendium of virtuous sayings and exemplary deeds of the beneficial/profitable ancients. 2 Descripcio rei publice et quales ei prefici debeant, videlicet sapientes, litterati, racionabiles, et de educacione iuvenum nobilium. Description of the republic and the kinds of men who ought to be appointed to oversee it – namely those who are wise, literate, and rational; and concerning the education of noble youths. 3 Quod regentes sint iusti morigerati, generosa non vilia opera exerceant, subditorum bona non capiant in potencia vel diviciis non confidant; exemplo quorundam proficiencium vel deficiencium in premissis. That rulers should be just in compliance with custom, should engage in noble, not vile, works, should not seize forcefully the goods of subjects nor rely on their wealth; with the example of certain men who excelled or fell short in these areas. 4 Quod principes et omnes prefecti timeant Deum, personas ecclesiasticas honorent, ipsos vel eorum bona non destruant; exemplo quorundam principum sic proficiencium et aliorum pro contrario destructorum. That princes and all governors ought to fear God, honour churchmen, and neither destroy them nor their goods; with the example of some princes who did profitably and of others who, on the contrary, were destroyers. 5 De temperato regimine prefectorum et de septem actibus virtuosis quibus respublica temporibus pacificis ordinatim regi debet. Concerning the well-tempered rule of governors, and concerning the seven actions by which the republic ought in an orderly way to be governed. 6 De temperata principis magnificencia et ordinati regiminis, providencia in actibus bellicis, et qualiter bellum sit ordinate, non pompatice, ineundem, et quomodo per malos principes puniuntur delicta populorum et bene contra pomposos milites. On the well-tempered magnificence of the prince and of a well-ordered government; on foresight in acts of war, and how war should be initiated in a well-ordered, not showy, way; and how the faults/crimes of the people are punished by evil princes; and, absolutely, against showy soldiers. 7 Quod necessaria sit severitas debita in militum disciplina et quandoque sit in bellis utilis simulatio; et de malo exemplo fugiencium de acie; de duodecim abusionibus, et qualiter princeps fidem hosti servare, perfidiam hostis spernere, et victis parcere debeat.

The Mirror Compiled  121

8

9

10

11

12

13

That due severity may be necessary in the disciplining of soldiers and sometimes deceit may be useful in battles; and concerning the bad example of those fleeing from the ranks; on the 12 abuses [of the age], and how the prince ought to keep the trust of the enemy, reject the enemy’s treachery, and spare the vanquished. De triplici magnificencia, que consistit in vilitate respuenda, libertate tuenda, veritate dicenda; et de quadruplici paciencia: in sufferencia contumeliarum, perpessione penarum, remissione iniuriarum, et moderacione discipline. On the threefold magnificence, which consists of rejecting meanness, protecting freedom, and speaking truly; and of the fourfold patience: in suffering insults, enduring punishments, forgiving injuries, and moderating discipline. De perseverancia et fortitudine viri virtuosi in prosperis et adversis, et specialiter de perseveranti constantia in tribus: in penis corporalibus, in morte parentum et amicorum, et in rerum ablacione. Concerning the perseverance and fortitude of the virtuous man, whether in prosperity or adversity; and concerning especially the constancy in three things of those who persevere: in bodily suffering, in the death of family members and friends, and in the loss of material possessions. De clementia principum et presidencium; quomodo parcendum sit subditis, quomodo paribus; et specialiter de quadriplici clemencia: compaciendo, perfecte remittendo, miseros relevando, et largiter dando. On the clemency of princes and governors; how subjects, and equals, should be spared; and especially concerning the fourfold clemency: in compassion, in perfect forgiveness, in consolation of the wretched, and in generous giving. De humilitate principum prelatis obediencium et de utili animositate prelatorum principes increpancium et eis resistencium in malis; et bene contra furorem presidencium et taciturnitatem prelatorum. On the humility of princes obeying prelates, and on the useful boldness of prelates rebuking princes and resisting them in evil things; and, certainly, against the fury of governors and the tongue-holding of prelates. Quod presidentes in se et in suis ministris caveant a viciis infrascriptis, maxime contra rei publice magis nocivis, que sunt: superbia, honorum ambitio, avaricia et munerum acceptio, astuta sive invidiosa machinacio, mendacia, amicicie fictio, adulacio, gula, luxuria, lacivie mulierum, inutiles voluptates, et verba contumeliosa. That governors should guard against the following vices, and especially against those which are more harmful to the republic, which are: pride, ambition for offices, avarice and the taking of gifts/bribes, cunning or envious fraud, lying, feigned friendship, flattery, gluttony, luxury, wantonness of women, useless pleasures, and insolent/abusive speech. Qualiter temperandus sit animus, et morigerate vivendum et contra mortem preparandum, et quomodo mors anime et corporis sit timenda et non timenda.

122  Charles F. Briggs

How the mind should be well-tempered and living [should be] rightly done and death prepared for; and how the death of soul and body should be feared and [how they should] not be feared.

Notes 1 For their helpful suggestions and interventions, the author wishes to thank James P. Carley and Frédérique Lachaud, as well as the participants of the conference “From the Crucible: Reconsidering the Medieval Legacy in European Political Thought” and of the Dartmouth Medieval Studies Seminar, where versions of this paper were read in February and May, 2017. 2 Sir John Fortescue, The Governance of England: Otherwise Called The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885), 109. A rendering into modern English can be found in Sir John Fortescue, On the Laws and Governance of England, ed. Shelley Lockwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 3 For recent surveys of the scholarship on Ptolemy of Lucca and Giles of Rome, see James M. Blythe, The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009) and idem, The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); and Charles F. Briggs and Peter S. Eardley, eds., A Companion to Giles of Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2016). On Thomas as the likely author of the first part of De regimine principum (entitled, when on its own, De regno ad regem Cypri) see Blythe, Life and Works, 157–68. 4 Fortescue, Governance, 173–74. 5 Ibid., 98–99, 173–75. 6 Stanley B. Chrimes, “Sir John Fortescue and His Theory of Dominion,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 17 (1934): 117–47 and idem, English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 307–41; Felix Gilbert, “Sir John Fortescue’s ‘Dominium Regale et Politicum’,” Mediaevalia et Humanistica 2 (1944): 88–97; James H. Burns, “Fortescue and the Political Theory of Dominium,” The Historical Journal 28 (1985): 777–97; Margaret R. L. L. Kelly, “Sir John Fortescue and the Political Dominium: The People, the Common Weal, and the King,” in Constitutions and the Classics: Patterns of Constitutional Thought from Fortescue to Bentham, ed. Denis J. Galligan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 51–85; Cary J. Nederman, “Economic Nationalism and the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’: Civic Collectivism and National Wealth in the Thought of John Fortescue,” History of Political Thought 26 (2005): 266–83; Craig Taylor, “Sir John Fortescue and the French Polemical Treatises of the Hundred Years War,” English Historical Review 144, no. 455 (1999): 112–29; John L. Watts, “ ‘A Newe Ffundacion of is Crowne’: Monarchy in the Age of Henry VII,” in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Benjamin Thompson (Stamford, CT: Paul Watkins, 1995), 31–53. 7 Chrimes, “Sir John Fortescue,” 139; Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Anglie, ed. S. B. Chrimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949), 90, 149, 157. 8 William P. Hotchkiss, “An Introduction to the ‘Compendium morale’ of Roger de Waltham” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1935), ii (emphasis added). 9 Ibid., 1–25. 10 Frédérique Lachaud, “Autour des sources de la pensée politique dans l’Angleterre médiévale (XIIIe -début du XIVe siècle): la contribution de Thomas Docking, William de Pagula et Roger de Waltham à la réflexion sur les pouvoirs,” Journal des savants (2015): 25–78, at 77–78. 11 Chrimes, “Sir John Fortescue,” 139.

The Mirror Compiled  123



124  Charles F. Briggs





­









The Mirror Compiled  125







­



126  Charles F. Briggs

Antonii episcopi Dunolmensis . . . hoc referre”: Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College Libr., MS 294/688, fol. 26r (see also in Fortescue, Governance, 174). Et ut exemplum domesticum nobis Anglicis in memoria recensius habeatur fac3 7 tum Iohannis quondam regis Anglie . . . Idem etenim Iohannes post multas et graves iniurias ecclesie Anglicane personis quoque ecclesiasticis irrogatas, cum contra eum peccatis suis exigentibus . . . regni sui nobiles et populares provocarentur et ecclesia Romana ipsum gladio spirituali excommunicacionis et interdicti persequeretur Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College Libr., MS 294/688, fol. 28v. 38 Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), 183. 39 “De rege Anglorum Iohanne pro cuius malis et gravaminibus eidem irrogatis ipse destructus est et regnum Anglorum servituti subiectum”: fol. 124r. 40 This list is based on a comparison of the “rubric” headings in the following manuscripts: Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College Libr., MS 294/688; Durham, Cathedral Priory Libr., MS B.III.24; Oxford, Bodleian Libr., MSS Bodl. 805 and Fairfax 4.

Bibliography Manuscripts Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS lat. qu. 487. Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College, MS 294/688. Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 253. ———, MS 254. Chicago, University Library, MS 103. Durham, Cathedral Priory Library, MS B.III.24. Durham, University Library, MS Cosin V.I.7. London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian B.xxi. ———, Royal MS 7.E.vii. ———, Royal MS 8.G.vi. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 261. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. 805. ———, MS Fairfax 4. ———, Laud Misc. 616. Oxford, Merton College, MS 265. Bale, J. Index Britanniae Scriptorum, edited by R. L. Poole and M. Bateson, introduction by C. Brett and J. P. Carley. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990. Blythe, James M. The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca). Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. ———. The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca). Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Bridges, John Henry, ed. The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, 2 vols. Reprinted Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964. Briggs, Charles F. Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum, c. 1275–c. 1525: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ———. “Moral Philosophy and Wisdom Literature.” In The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol. 1, 800–1558, edited by Rita Copeland, 299–321. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

The Mirror Compiled  127

Briggs, Charles F., and Cary J. Nederman. “Western Medieval Specula, c. 1150–c. 1450.” In A Critical Companion to the “Mirrors for Princes” Literature, edited by Noëlle-Laetitia Perret and Stéphane Péquignot, 160–96. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2023. Briggs, Charles F., and Peter S. Eardley, eds. A Companion to Giles of Rome. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Buck, M. C. “Waltham, Roger (d. 1332x41), administrator.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004/2008. https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/23964. Burns, James H. “Fortescue and the Political Theory of Dominium.” The Historical Journal 28 (1985): 777–97. Carley, James P., ed. The Libraries of King Henry VIII, 2 vols. Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 7. London: The British Library, 2000. Chrimes, Stanley B. English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936. ———. “Sir John Fortescue and His Theory of Dominion.” Transactions of the Royal ­Historical Society 17 (1934): 117–47. Copeland, Rita. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Diem, Albrecht. “A Classicising Friar at Work: John of Wales’ Breviloquium de virtutibus.” In Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt, edited by Alasdair A. MacDonald, Zweder R. W. M. von Martels, and Jan R. Veenstra, 75–102. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009. Emden, A. B. A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. Fortescue, Sir John. De Laudibus Legum Anglie, edited by S. B. Chrimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949. ———. On the Laws and Governance of England, edited by Shelley Lockwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ———. The Governance of England: Otherwise Called The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, edited by Charles Plummer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885. Gilbert, Felix. “Sir John Fortescue’s ‘Dominium Regale et Politicum’.” Mediaevalia et Humanistica 2 (1944): 88–97. Given-Wilson, Chris. Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England. London: Hambledon and London, 2004. Goddu, A. A., and Richard H. Rouse. “Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum.” Speculum 52 (1977): 488–521. Hotchkiss, William P. “An Introduction to the ‘Compendium morale’ of Roger de Waltham.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1935. Kelly, Margaret R. L. L. “Sir John Fortescue and the Political Dominium: The People, the Common Weal, and the King.” In Constitutions and the Classics: Patterns of Constitutional Thought from Fortescue to Bentham, edited by Denis J. Galligan, 51–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Ker, Neil R. “Books at St Paul’s Cathedral before 1313.” In Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, edited by Andrew G. Watson, 209–42. London: Hambledon Press, 1985. Lachaud, Frédérique. “Autour des sources de la pensée politique dans l’Angleterre médiévale (XIIIe-début du XIVe siècle): la contribution de Thomas Docking, William de Pagula et Roger de Waltham à la réflexion sur les pouvoirs.” Journal des Savants (2015): 25–78.

128  Charles F. Briggs

Leedham-Green, E. “A Catalogue of Caius Library, 1569.” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8, no. 1 (1981): 29–41. Leland, John. Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, edited by A. Hall. Oxford, 1709. ———. De rebus Britannicis collectanea, edited by T. Hearne. London, 1770. Michael, Michael A. “A Manuscript Wedding Gift from Philippa of Hainault to Edward III.” The Burlington Magazine 127 (1985): 582–99. Minnis, Alastair J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Nederman, Cary J. “Economic Nationalism and the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’: Civic Collectivism and National Wealth in the Thought of John Fortescue.” History of Political Thought 26 (2005): 266–83. ———. “Kings, Peers, and Parliament: Virtue and Corulership in Walter Burley’s‘Commentarius in VIII Libros Politicorum Aristotelis’.” Albion 24 (1992): 391–407. ———, ed. Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2002. ———. “The Mirror Crack’d: The Speculum Principum as Political and Social Criticism in the Late Middle Ages.” The European Legacy 3 (1998): 18–38. ———. “The Opposite of Love: Royal Virtue, Economic Prosperity, and Popular Discontent in Fourteenth-Century Political Thought.” In Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages, 1200–1500, edited by István P. Bejczy and Cary J. Nederman, 177–99. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Parkes, Malcolm B. “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book.” In Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, edited by J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson, 115–41. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Rouse, Richard H., and Mary A. Rouse. Preachers, Florilegia, and Sermons: Studies on the “Manipulus florum” of Thomas of Ireland. Toronto: PIMS, 1979. ———. “Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudes to the Page.” In Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, edited by R. L. Benson, G. Constable, and C. D. Lanham, 201–25. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. “Face to Face with God: A Pictorial Image of the Beatific Vision.” In England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by W. M. Ormrod, 224–35. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1986. ———. Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols. London: Harvey Miller, 1986. ———. “The Chantry of Roger of Waltham in Old St Paul’s.” In The Medieval English Cathedral: Papers in Honour of Pamela Tudor-Craig, edited by Janet Backhouse, 277–312. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2003. ———. “The Image of the Book-owner in the Fourteenth Century: Three Cases of Self-definition.” In England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton symposium, edited by Nicholas Rogers, 216–48. Stamford: P. Watkins, 1993. Smalley, Beryl. English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960. Smith, Kathryn A. The Taymouth Hours: Stories and the Construction of the Self in Late Medieval England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Swanson, Jenny. John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Taylor, Craig. “Sir John Fortescue and the French Polemical Treatises of the Hundred Years War.” English Historical Review 144, no. 455 (1999): 112–29.

The Mirror Compiled  129

Watts, John L. “ ‘A Newe Ffundacion of is Crowne’: Monarchy in the Age of Henry VII.” In The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Benjamin Thompson, 31–53. Stamford, CT: Paul Watkins, 1995. Willoughby, James. “The Transmission and Circulation of Classical Literature: Libraries and Florilegia.” In The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol. 1, 800–1558, edited by Rita Copeland, 95–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

7 BONUM COMMUNE AND ITS USES IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY Roberto Lambertini

Bonum commune: students of late medieval political thought are well aware of the fact that this phrase can be viewed from two distinct perspectives: on the one hand, the “common good” plays an undeniably important role in political discourse, and is—together with related expressions—near ubiquitous in the sources; on the other, its exact meaning remains ambiguous in those same sources. In 1988, Antony Black could write: “Common good” certainly included the good of individuals. But it also referred to collective goods which would benefit all indiscriminately, such as internal and external peace, and the prosperity of the realm. It meant the promotion of common interests, the integrity of one’s territory and the preservation of common assets.1 The nebulousness of its meaning(s) has a counterpart in the sometimes frustrating difficulty in determining what exactly is meant in a specific text. This is a lways assuming, of course, that the authors themselves had a clear understanding in their minds! To a certain extent, the situation is not all that different from the contemporary situation in today’s political discourse: the decline of dialectical interpretations of the political sphere has contributed to the renewed popularity of “common good,” but, as different groups and political agencies increasingly use it, they have divergent, if not necessarily opposed, views concerning its meaning. Sometimes, one is tempted to dismiss it as an all-purpose rhetorical device devoid of any relevance. Still, there are some attempts—such as that of Dardot and Laval, in their Commun—to free the expression of its ambiguity. Interestingly enough, in their essay on the “revolution” of the twenty-first century, they maintain that DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-10

Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  131

it would be at the same time naïve and thoughtless for contemporary anticapitalist groups and movements to use the concept of “bien commun.” Its historical background, according to Dardot and Laval, shows that it can be used to conceal and justify “archaic forms of domination,” such as that of the Church, by which they mean the Catholic Church.2 By contrast, the economist and Nobel Prize winner Jean Tirole does not refrain from placing the bien commun in the title of one of his books. Writing approximately at the same time as Dardot and Laval, Tirole argues that it is possible to define rationally some features of the common good for present-day human society.3 Scholarship on late medieval political thought has reached its own interesting conclusions regarding the term. More than 15 years ago, Matthew Kempshall was able to reconstruct a debate among scholastic theologians concerning the actual relationship between the common and the individual good, and to show that underneath a shared language of the “common good” deep divisions could be detected.4 Those, for example, who intended the common good as fulfilment of human moral life disagreed with the more “minimalistic” idea according to which the “common good” can be equated with some features of the life in common, such as, most usually, peace. In the latter view, peace is seen as a precondition by which all the parts of the whole can be advantaged. More recently, Joel Kaye claimed that it is possible to distinguish between two basic ways of thinking about the common good that correspond to two different ideas of balance.5 According to Kaye, Albert the Great and Aquinas conceived of the common good in a static way, while Marsilius of Padua interpreted the political community as a self-equalizing whole.6 I must admit that I have some doubts concerning some of the claims contained in Kaye’s otherwise intelligent and interesting book. In this chapter, however, I consider his work as an encouraging sign of the possibility of overcoming, at least in part, the vagueness of the phrase “common good,” and the possibility of differentiating among different approaches to it. While wide ranging in its investigation, when reading Cary Nederman’s Lineages of European Political Thought, one is struck by the fact that interpretation of the “common good” is—surely—not among the issues touched upon often.7 Despite this, when Nederman deals with Marsilius of Padua’s political thought, he makes some perceptive remarks on the relationship that exists between consent and the common good according to the Paduan thinker.8 These remarks are rooted in the pages Nederman devotes to the common good in another book, Community and Consent. In this monograph, Nederman argued that Marsilius subscribes to an idea of the legislative process whereby individual consent and the objective nature of the common good are not in opposition but are both essential to law-making.9 In the following, my aim is to insert Marsilius’s position on common good in slightly wider context. To this purpose, I chose to consider two other wellknown authors writing in approximately in the same years of the Defensor pacis:

132  Roberto Lambertini

Augustinus of Ancona and William of Ockham. I will try to focus on different levels at which one can compare their attitudes to the “common good.” First of all, on the level of terminology; secondly, concerning the meaning that a single author seems to give to the expression; and, finally, the use of the phrase in a given text, that is, the role an appeal to the common good plays in the actual structure and argumentative strategy of a work.

Words Augustinus of Ancona’s Summa de ecclesiastica potestate and Marsilius’s Defensor pacis are almost contemporary, although the possibility of dating the two works with precision is challenging. The completion of Marsilius’s masterpiece is explicitly dated to 24 June 1324.10 To the contrary, to the best of my knowledge, we only possess a terminus ante quem for Augustinus’s Summa: a papal letter dated December 1326 thanks him for a dedicatory copy of the work. Some further evidence, an exchange of letters concerning financial support for Augustinus’s literary activity, has led Jürgen Miethke to think that the Summa had been completed sometime before, in the early twenties of the fourteenth century.11 Eric Saak has suggested a somewhat later date.12 Still, I feel it reasonable to start with the enormous work of the Augustinian friar. It was most probably designed according to the model of Aquinas’s Summa: the treatment is divided into questions that, in turn, are sub-divided into articula, discussed along the standard form of the medieval written questio. The result is an extremely detailed investigation of papal plenitude of power, of its extension, and of its very few limitations (to the point that Augustinus also raises the question of whether the pope could by means of Indulgences free all souls from Purgatory or even Limbo).13 This exaltation of papal power was very much in line with the tradition inaugurated by Giles of Rome some 20 years earlier.14 That Augustinus’s contribution was a great and lasting success is underlined by the fact that there are more than 50 extant manuscripts and several early printed editions of his work.15 The presence of the phrase bonum commune is relatively rare in a huge work that covers more than 600 printed pages. It appears mostly in the maxim “commune bonum est preponendum ad particulare bonum” applied to different questions in a quite similar wording.16 In some passages, Augustinus speaks of “commune bonum totius Ecclesie.”17 He also uses phrases such as “utilitas ecclesiae,” without any effort to make a semantic distinction between “bonum” and “utilitas.”18 Similarly, he writes of “utilitas reipublicae” or “bonum reipublicae,” sometimes referring more directly to the temporal order.19 For example, the Emperor Frederick II is said to have menaced both the “bonum reipublicae” and the “bonum ecclesiasticum.”20 In the Defensor pacis, and in particular in its first discourse, “bonum commune” is never used. As a matter of fact, while exposing Aristotle’s

Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  133

classification of constitutions, Marsilius sticks to the expression used by Aristotle’s Latin translator, William of Moerbeke, “commune conferens.”21 He does not use the rendering bonum commune that had been adopted by the most influential commentators on the Politics, such as Aquinas22 and Peter of Auvergne, 23 with whose work the Paduan philosopher was certainly acquainted. 24 In the following chapters, Marsilius remains mostly consistent with his initial terminological choice, although one reads also “communis utilitas” and “commune commodum.” 25 The plural “communia conferentia” can be found in Discourse 1 as well.26 It seems unlikely to me that this choice of terminology can be merely fortuitous, since Marsilius was acquainted with the widely disseminated translation of “koinon sympheron” as “bonum commune.” He must also have been aware that the political language of the Italian communes, as it was used by the representatives of the governments of the city-states, appealed frequently to the bonum commune in the face of internal strife.27 If, despite this, Marsilius insisted on conferens, this could point to a specific feature of his position. Matthew Kempshall has placed Marsilius in a line of thought that limits the “common good” to temporal peace and order, 28 instead of interpreting it as the “higher end” to which social and political life are ultimately oriented. More recently, comparing the attitudes of Remigio de’ Girolami and Marsilius, E. Igor Mineo has argued that the Paduan philosopher conceives of the “common good” rather in terms of “common goods,” while the Florentine Dominican understood it as a transcendental value. In proposing this distinction, Mineo is admittedly reminiscent of the ongoing debate concerning “common goods” or “commons.” He claims that the language of bonum commune has implications that are incompatible with contemporary tendencies to ground an emancipating political project in the defence of “what is held in common.” On the contrary, Marsilius’s approach, with his emphasis on the material side of the “commune conferens,” could be much more useful to contemporary political debate. 29 If we turn to Ockham’s Dialogus, a work that shows some acquaintance with both treatises we have dealt with so far, we find a different situation. 30 In Part 1 of the Dialogus, finished in all likelihood before 1334, the use of “bonum commune” is rather rare. 31 However, in the third part, which was written later, 32 the expression “bonum commune” is used quite often. Once we read “bonum seu conferens commune,” which is clearly reminiscent of William of Moerbeke’s translation. 33 “Communis utilitas” is also frequent, although less so than “bonum commune,” without any hint of a possibility that the two expressions can have clearly distinguishable meanings. 34 In Part 3 of the Dialogus, one can also find the phrase “utilitas boni communis,”35 as opposed to “detrimentum boni communis.”36 Such phrases do not add much to our understanding, but at least convey the vague impression of the common good as a sort of entity that can be damaged or, to the contrary, that can be increased.

134  Roberto Lambertini

Contexts and Uses The first fruits of the present investigation are rather meagre: every author uses expressions that can be related to the concept of “common good,” while in only two of them do we find the phrase “bonum commune.” “Communis utilitas” is present in all of them; the consistent choice of “commune conferens” is peculiar to Marsilius. A small step further can be taken by focusing on the contexts in which bonum commune and related expressions appear. In the Summa de ecclesiastica potestate the use of the expression concentrates around two main issues: papal resignation and papal heresy. The possibility and conditions of papal resignation, a discussion triggered—as is well known—by Celestine V’s almost unprecedented decision, became one of the starting points for the wider debate on papal power.37 How could it be absent from a treatise that aimed at being a Summa concerning ecclesiastical power? Little wonder that a staunch papalist such as Augustinus is also a supporter of the legitimacy of papal resignation, since, at the time, opposition to this claim came from circles that were in profound disagreement with the papacy and from those sometimes considered heretical.38 At a certain point in his treatment, the Augustinian lector raises the question of whether the pope could issue a decree in which he forbids papal resignation.39 In a work that is engaged in expanding as much as possible the scope of papal power, such questions can be extremely insidious: a negative answer seems to set a limit to the papal fullness of power. In this situation, Augustinus resorts to the bonum commune totius ecclesiae: “such a decree would be contrary to the common good of the whole church.”40 This context shows many analogies with the context of the Summa investigated by Takashi Shogimen41: even though Augustinus’s attitude to papal heresy is indeed ambivalent, he justifies a subversion of the usual procedure concerning fraternal correction in the case of papal heresy by resorting to the “common good,” and more precisely, to the maxim that the common good is to be preferred to the private good (“bonum commune preferendum est cuilibet bono privato”).42 The same principle is also applied in other questions of the Summa, which play a more marginal role. For example, papal power to revoke privileges is justified by appealing to the same maxim: “cum bonum commune sit preferendum cuilibet bono privato.”43 Moreover, an analogy between the relationships that exist between the common good and the partial good on the one hand, and between the pope as dominus omnium and individual lords on the other is one argument put forward in favour of the claim that a servant should obey the pope rather than his own temporal lord.44 Although scattered over several chapters of the first discourse, Marsilius’s use of “commune conferens” and “communis utilitas” is particularly intensive in two contexts. The first is obviously the already mentioned section where the Paduan philosopher expounds his re-interpretation of Aristotle’s classification of constitutions.45 Needless to say, the most interesting part consists

Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  135

in Marsilius’s tacit insertion of the consensus criterion into the Aristotelian framework. A temperate “principate” is defined by two properties: it is exercised for the “common advantage”—as Annabel Brett translates these terms— and in accordance with the will or consent of those subject to it.46 Besides this defining role, Marsilius also appeals to the concept of communis utilitas when it comes to argue in favour of the claim that the universal body of the citizens (or its prevailing part, for that matter) is the proper efficient cause of legislation. He builds on a premise taken from Politics, Book III, “But perhaps what is right … is what is to the advantage of the city or what the citizens have in common.”47 Interpreting this somewhat obscure passage for his own purposes, Marsilius shows that the universal body of the citizens is in the better position for judging whether a given law is, in reality, to the common advantage of the city. Perceptively, Cary Nederman has inserted his brilliant remarks about the Marsilian “common good” into the section of his monograph that comments on this chapter of the Defensor pacis.48 He argues that we do not need to choose between an individualistic and a corporatist interpretation of Marsilius because “objective principles of right and justice … are rendered efficacious only when they are expressly stipulated through the process of individualized consent to law.”49 Marsilius succeeded in giving to his interpretation of the “common good” a constructive role in his political theory. His identification of the universal body of the citizens (or its prevailing part) with the subject that can recognize the common advantage in avoiding the risk of arbitrariness and partiality is an essential component of his institutional machinery. As is well known, Part 3 of Ockham’s Dialogus also contains an exposition of Aristotle’s classification of constitutions. Inserted in Book II of the first treatise, this section, which consists of the Master’s long answer to an explicit request of the Disciple, has been described by Miethke as summing up the basic concepts of Aristotelian politics (Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Politik).50 In this text, bonum commune fulfils the function of criterion for defining a welltempered constitution: according to John Kilcullen’s translation: “Every government is either ordered chiefly to the common good or benefit (i.e. the good of the ruler or rulers and also of the subjects) or not ordered to the common good.”51 Unlike Marsilius, Ockham adopts the opposition commune/proprium as a sufficient criterion for the distinction, without even mentioning consent. An even more significant difference between the two refugees at the court of Ludwig the Bavarian emerges in the contexts in which Ockham appeals to the bonum commune.52 In some passages, in almost the same way that he adopts for distinguishing between well-tempered and flawed constitutions, Ockham uses the common good as a litmus test for establishing whether some action can be considered just or not: for example, King Achab acted unjustly because his appropriation of Naboth’s vineyard was not oriented to the common good53; similarly, the principle that what has pleased the prince has the force of law (“quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem”) does not hold for a decision that is

136  Roberto Lambertini

against the bonum commune.54 In other contexts, as is well known to specialists, Ockham’s bonum commune works as a limit on the validity of a given institutional order. It is not only a matter of setting some limits to the power of some authority, be it the pope or the emperor, but to make even the best solution dependent on the circumstances. Indeed, the latter can change the way in which the “common good” is attainable. For example, Ockham is persuaded that monarchy is the best constitution for the Church; yet, he still deems it possible that, in some situations, the common good of the Christian church is better safeguarded by an aristocratic constitution. On this basis he builds his famous argument in favour of the possibility of a plurality of popes.55 The Venerabilis Inceptor agrees with Aristotle that when some individuals are superior in virtue, they should rule together. Nevertheless, in some cases, a community can be compelled to give up the solution that, in theory, is the most rational because of disadvantages deriving from an aristocratic regime in a given situation.56 In such circumstances, the pursuit of the common good is binding and the virtuous individuals have to comply with it.57 In sum, the bonum commune functions also as a principle that enables Ockham to justify modifications to the best regime in theory, making it dependent on the attainment of its proper end. This double function of the common good also emerges in Ockham’s works in the peculiar relationship connecting the individual and bonum commune. It is by no means a surprise to discover that, for a supporter of the idea of the common good, the individual should have a willingness to serve that good: this holds true for rulers and subjects alike. In his Dialogus, Ockham writes that: It belongs to natural liberty that no one can use free persons for the user’s advantage, but it is not contrary to natural liberty that someone should use free persons reasonably for the sake of the common good, since everyone is obliged to prefer common to private good.58 On the other hand, in Ockham’s Dialogus, the superiority of the common good is not instrumental to the limitation of dissent, but on the contrary, the main stress of the Dialogus lies on the right/duty of every Christian to resist anyone who would menace the common good of the Church. As is well known, the Venerabilis Inceptor advocates the right of resistance for every Christian, even of women and children, when the common good of the Church is in jeopardy. As Takashi Shogimen puts it: “Ockham does not envisage the individual’s service to common good as a matter of consent. It is a matter of contestability.”59 Matthew Kempshall maintains that Ockham’s understanding of “common good” is substantially equated with “peace and tranquillity.”60 According to the distinction that the Oxford historian traced between the authors that identify the common good with a life of virtue and those who support a “minimalist” view, limited to the necessary conditions of a peaceful life in society, Ockham can be placed on the same side as Marsilius. One can add that some of the

Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  137

few features of the common good that emerge in his work do converge with Kempshall’s interpretation: in the Dialogus the dangers menacing the common good are strife and unrest.61 And yet even though they agree on a “minimalist” view of bonum commune, between Marsilius and Ockham there exists a fundamental divergence, not so much at the level of the meaning of the common good, but rather in its use. For the Paduan physician, it is a constructive principle of his political project, since the capacity for its knowledge and enforcement is a prerogative of the whole body of the citizens. For the English Franciscan, it is both a constructive principle and the reason for resistance to a given political order. *** By the first half of the fourteenth century, the “common good” had already become a standard expression of political discourse, one that, its vagueness notwithstanding (or maybe thanks to it), could be used in very different contexts by authors whose political views differed, even if they were not necessarily incompatible. The temptation to dismiss the concept as too hazy, and therefore of no use in attempting to understand what was really at stake in a political theory, is therefore understandable. Still, I have tried to show that by focusing on the role the phrase bonum commune actually plays in a work, some differences can be identified. For example, some authors use it only occasionally and together with other arguments to support certain claims contained in their treatises: this seems to be the case for Augustinus of Ancona, whose main concern is obviously the papal fullness of power, a principle that seemingly solves—in an almost “absolutist” way—all institutional problems. He resorts to the common good when some issues, such as papal resignation or papal heresy, threaten his system with dangerous inconsistencies. In Marsilius and Ockham, the function of the appeal to the common good goes beyond a generic use of the principle of the superiority of the whole to its parts. Albeit with different outcomes, Marsilius and Ockham attach to the common good a key role in their political theories. Their disagreement does not lie so much in the fact that the first speaks consistently of “commune conferens,” while the latter adopts the more widespread bonum commune. It lies in the relationship between political institutions and the common good. For both, rather obviously, the end of any institutional arrangement is the “common good.” However, for the Paduan philosopher, there is one solution that can secure its attainment, while for Ockham it is possible that any solution—because of contingent factors—may not reach this end. Against the backdrop of such remarks, one is tempted to say that the problem in using the “common good” in contemporary political discussion does not lie, as Dardot and Laval seem to fear, in the theological implications the term had when it was coined and made its way into political discussion. Rather, nowadays we—meaning our mainstream Western political culture—neither

138  Roberto Lambertini

credit any institution with the capacity of recognizing the common good and pursuing it in an unbiased way, nor do we believe any more that every person provided with recta ratio can understand what the common good is. Most probably we have become so disenchanted and distrustful that we do not even believe that there is such a thing as recta ratio. This does not imply, however, that our present disbelief is correct.

Notes 1 Antony Black, “The Individual and Society,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 596. 2 Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, Commun. Essai sur la révolution au XXI e siècle (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 31: On voit alors qu’il y aurait beaucoup de légèreté à reprendre aujourd’hui sans précaution la notion théologico-politique de ‘bien commun’. … Loin de pouvoir servir d’emblème à l’émancipation, la notion pourrait bien toujours couvrir et justifier des formes des domination archaïques dans la mesure même où une institution comme l’Église prétend encore détenir …

3 4

5 6

As a matter of fact, it was the neo-Thomism of the last century that focused in particular on the “common good.” For example: Bénédicte Sère, “Aristote et le bien commun au moyen âge: une histoire, une historiographie,” Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques 32 (2010): 277–91, particularly the second part. Jean Tirole, Économie du bien commun (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2016), 14–18. Matthew S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a preliminary outline of his position: Matthew Kempshall, “The Individual Good in Late Thirteenth Century Scholastic Political Thought – Nicomachean Ethics I.2 1094b7–10 and IX.8 1169a11-b2,” in Individuum und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, eds. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996), 493–510. More recently, idem, “The Language of the Common Good in Scholastic Political Thought,” in Il Bene Comune: forme di governo e gerarchie sociali nel basso Medioevo (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2012), 15–34. Joel Kaye, A History of Balance 1250–1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and its Impact on Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 299–344. Ibid., 325: … it is clear that Marsilius’s model of political equalization, even within the well-functioning monarchy, never devolves to the fixed and unidirectional hierarchy of earlier models, in which the ordering authority of the earthly king reflects the ordering authority of the king in heaven.

7 Cary J. Nederman, Lineages of European Political Thought. Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 8 Ibid., 111. 9 Cary J. Nederman, Community and Consent. The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 1995), 88–91.

Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  139

















140  Roberto Lambertini











Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  141



















142  Roberto Lambertini

Again, when the reason ceases the effect should cease, Extra, De appellationibus, Cum cessante. But the common advantage is the reason why one highest pontiff should be over all the faithful. Therefore, if there comes from the rule of one, not common advantage, but common loss, such rule should cease for then. 56 III Dial. 1, b. 2, ch. 17, p. 193: Ad Aristotelem autem qui innuit 7° Politicorum, c. 13°, quod non est iustum aliquos semper principari nisi tantum differant a subditis quantum dii et heroes differunt ab hominibus, respondetur multis modis: uno modo quod hoc est verum si attendatur solummodo meritum et dignitas principantis, non autem si attendatur utilitas boni communis English translation by Kilcullen, William of Ockham. A Letter, 159: And Aristotle’s suggestion in Politics, Book VII, ch. 13, that it is not just for some always to rule unless they differ as much from their subjects as gods and heroes differ from men, is answered in many ways. In one way, that this is true if account is taken only of the merit and worth of the ruler, but not if account is taken of advantage of the common good. 57 III Dial. 1, b. 2, ch. 15, p. 189: … tamen, quando non est possible aut non est utile vel est minus utile, presertim communi bono, quod equalis honor et dignitas equalibus conferatur, tunc absque omni iniusticia, immo iuste, eleccione vel sorte aut quovis alio licito modo aliquis quo ad dignitatem et honores potest similibus et equalibus sibi preferri. Et si alii in hoc turbarentur et ad sedicionem faciendam provocarentur, efficerentur dissimiles et inequales secundum virtutem alteri cui prius equales et similes extiterant, tamquam ambitiosi et invidi, preferentes honorem proprium bono communi English translation by Kilcullen, William of Ockham. A Letter, 155: But when it is not possible or not useful or less useful, especially to the common good, for equal office and rank to be conferred on equals, then, without any injustice, indeed justly, by election or lot or in other permissible way, someone can be promoted in rank and offices over his similar and equals. If others were disturbed by this and were provoked into making a sedition, they would become dissimilar and unequal in virtue to the other to whom they had before been equal and similar, as being ambitious and envious, preferring their own honor to the common good. 58 III Dial. 1, b. 2, ch. 6, p. 177: “Quia ad naturalem libertatem spectat ut nullus possit uti liberis propter voluntatem utentis, sed non est contra natralem libertatem ut quis racionabiliter utatur liberis ad bonum commune, cum quilibet teneatur bonum commune preferre private”; English translation by Kilcullen, William of Ockham. A Letter, 139. 59 Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 259. 60 Kempshall, The Common Good, 360. 61 Compare with, for example, III Dial. 2, b. 1, ch. 13, p. 54: “Quia enim mortales proni sunt ad discordiam et ad querendum que sua sunt, non que sunt boni communis, ex quibus turbacio tranquillitatis et pacis, corrupcio iusticie”; English translation by Kilcullen, William of Ockham. A Letter, 268–69: “For mortals are inclined to conflict and to seeking their own interests and not what belongs to the common good, and hence come disturbance of tranquillity and peace, corruption of justice.”

Bonum commune and its Uses in Political Discourse  143

Bibliography Aegidius Romanus. Giles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical Power: A Medieval Theory of World Government: A Critical Edition and Translation, edited and translated by R. W. Dyson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Augustinus de Ancona. Summa de ecclesiastica potestate. Ex Typograhia Georgij Ferrarii: Rome 1584. Accessed January 31, 2022. https://archive.org/details/ bub_gb_xnVj9YAja8sC/mode/2up. Black, Antony. “The Individual and Society.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450, edited by J. H. Burns, 588–606. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. Commun. Essai sur la révolution au XXI e siècle. Paris: La Découverte, 2014. Dolcini, Carlo. Crisi di poteri e politologia in crisi. Da Sinibaldo Fieschi a Guglielmo d’Ockham. Bologna: Pàtron, 1988. Eastman, John R. Papal Abdication in Later Medieval Thought. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1990. Flüeler, Christoph. Rezeption und Interpretation der Aristotelischen Politica im späten ­Mittelalter, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Grüner, 1992. Gigliotti, Valerio. La tiara deposta. La rinuncia al papato nella storia del diritto e della chiesa. Florence: Olschki, 2014. Kaye, Joel. A History of Balance 1250–1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and its Impact on Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Kempshall, Matthew S. The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. “The Individual Good in Late Thirteenth Century Scholastic Political Thought—Nicomachean Ethics I.2 1094b7–10 and IX.8 1169a11-b2.” In Individuum und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, edited by Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, 493–510. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110824735.493. ———. “The Language of the Common Good in Scholastic Political Thought.” In Il Bene Comune: Forme di Governo e Gerarchie Sociali nel Basso Medioevo, 15–34. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2012. Lambertini, Roberto. “Political Theory in the Making: Theology, Philosophy and Politics at the Court of Lewis the Bavarian.” In Philosophy and Theology in the studia of the Religious Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts, edited by Kent Emery, Jr., William J. Courtenay, and S. M. Metzger, 701–24. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. ———. “Political Thought.” In A Companion to Giles of Rome, edited by Charles F. Briggs and Peter S. Eardley, 255–74. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Marsilius of Padua. Defensor Pacis, edited by Richard Scholz. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1933. Accessed January 31, 2022. https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ fontes_iuris_7/index.htm#page/(III)/mode/1up. ———. The Defender of the Peace. Translated by Annabel Brett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Miethke, Jürgen. Politiktheorie im Mittelalter. Von Thomas von Aquin bis Wilhelm von Ockham. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Mineo, E. Igor. “Caritas e bene commune.” Storica 59 (2014): 7–56. ———. “Cose in comune e bene comune. L’ideologia della comunità in Italia nel tardo medioevo.” In The Languages of Political Society. Western Europe, 14th–17th Centuries, edited by Andrea Gamberini, Jean-Philippe Genet, and Andrea Zorzi, 39–67. Rome: Viella, 2011.

144  Roberto Lambertini

Mineo, E. Igor, Marco Fioravanti, and Luca Nivarra. “Dai beni comuni al comune. Diritto, Stato e storia.” Storia del pensiero politico 5 (2016): 89–114. Nederman, Cary J. Community and Consent. The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 1995. ———. Lineages of European Political Thought. Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Petrus de Alvernia. Scriptum super III-VIII libros Politicorum Aristotelis, edited with an introduction by Lidia Lanza. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2021. Pio, Berardo. “La propaganda politica nel contenzioso tra Bonifacio VIII e i Colonna.” In La propaganda politica nel basso Medioevo, Atti del XXXVIII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 14–17 Settembre 2001, 261–87. Spoleto: CISAM, 2002. Saak, Eric L. High Way to Heaven. The Augustinian Platform between Reform and Reformation, 1292–1524. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Sère, Bénédicte. “Aristote et le bien commun au moyen âge: une histoire, une ­historiographie.” Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques 32 (2010): 277–91. Shogimen, Takashi. Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Thomas Aquinas. Sententia libri Politicorum. In Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII edita, vol. 48. Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1971. Tirole, Jean. Économie du bien commun. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2016. William of Ockham. A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings, edited by A. S. McGrade and John Kilcullen. Translated by John Kilcullen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. De potestate papae et cleri III.1 Dialogus; Die Amtsvollmacht von Papst und Klerus. Translated with an introduction by Jürgen Miethke. Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 2015. ———. Dialogus. Auszüge zur politischen Theorie. Selected and translated with an afterword by Jürgen Miethke. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992. ———. Dialogus, edited and translated by John Kilcullen, George Knysh, Volker Leppin, John Scott, and Jan Ballweg. Last updated April 2015. Accessed January 31, 2022. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/ockdial.html. ———. Dialogus Magistri Guillermi de Ockam. Lyon: Johannes Trechsel, 1494. ———. Dialogus. In Monarchia Sacri Romani imperii, 3 vols., edited by Melchior Goldast, 2: 394–957. Frankfurt/Main, 1614; reprinted Graz, 1960. ———. Dialogus, Part 2; Part 3, Tract 1, edited by John Kilcullen, John Scott, Jan Ballweg, and Volker Leppin. Oxford: The British Academy, 2011. ———. Dialogus, Part 3; Tract 2, edited by Semih Heinen and Karl Ubl. Oxford: The British Academy, 2019. Zorzi, Andrea. “Bien commun et conflits politiques dans l’Italie communale.” In De Bono Communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th–16th c.), edited by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, 267–90. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010.

8 MACHIAVELLI’S REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE IN THE CIOMPI REVOLT1 Benedetto Fontana

Cary J. Nederman has had, and continues to have, a distinguished career in medieval and Renaissance studies. He has published numerous works on various medieval thinkers such as John of Salisbury and Marsilius of Padua, and has made significant contributions on many aspects of medieval and Renaissance thought, such as the reception of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, as well as the role played by rhetoric in political and philosophical thought. His work on Machiavelli is an important and central strand of his voluminous body of research on the history of early modern political thought. What is particularly striking is the focus on conflict, strife, and competition, and the manner in which their character, development, and institutional embodiments lead to political order or to political decay. Especially enlightening is Nederman’s work on the relationship between political conflict and republican order. In particular, his work has identified three major elements within this conflict/republic dynamic. First, the opposition between the people and the great is seen as the organizing principle that undergirds Machiavelli’s understanding of politics, second it uncovers the inverse relationship between political violence and political institutionalization, and lastly, it points to the reciprocal relation between the private/factional good and the public/common good. These three are so closely linked that change in each leads to change in the others. The nature and extent of the conflict between the people and the great reflects the character and scope of political institutionalization. Without structural mechanisms that serve to check and to harness the differing interests of the antagonistic factions, order and stability, whether republican or monarchical, will be undermined, and violence as a political tactic becomes instrumentally rational. Whether addressing the innovating politics of the new prince or discussing the tendencies within a republic toward tyranny and empire, Nederman is DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-11

146  Benedetto Fontana

constantly alert to the contradictory tensions and ambiguous complexities of Machiavelli’s thought. He is especially good at illuminating the continuities and discontinuities within Machiavelli. Machiavelli saw himself as the pioneer and explorer of paths to a new political world hitherto untrodden, yet Nederman insists on the central role ancient thinkers and writers played in helping Machiavelli map out this new territory. The insurrection of the Florentine wool workers expresses and resumes Nederman’s work on Machiavelli: political conflict and political violence, the fragility of republican order, and the people as the ground and background of politics.

Machiavelli and the Revolt of the Ciompi This chapter examines Machiavelli’s reconstruction of a historical conjuncture that underlines the interplay between socio-economic conflict and political order/disorder—namely, his discussion of the Ciompi revolt in the Florentine Histories.2 The rebellion of disenfranchised workers revealed profound socio-economic and political chasms within society, and the workers’ attempt to seize power and to form a government was a defining moment in Florentine politics and history. Commentators from Leonardo Bruni, who attacked it as merely the rebellion of an irrational and illiterate mob, to Marxists, who saw it as an instance of the class struggle and as the prefiguration of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have debated incessantly over its historical consequences and political import. Machiavelli was the first to recognize its revolutionary potential, and refused to dismiss it as the violent venting of the undisciplined, mercurial lower classes. In particular, this chapter examines Machiavelli’s portrayal of the speech of an unknown and presumably representative worker delivered to a private and secret assembly of the Ciompi.3 The revolt, as well as Machiavelli’s representation of an insurrectionary’s oration to assembled workers, embody Machiavelli’s two major preoccupations: the uncovering of the elements of power while offering, at the same time, a trenchant critique of republican politics in Florence. In the manner of Castruccio Castracani and Agathocles of Syracuse, Machiavelli creates in the anonymous wool worker the prototype of the new prince. He is a figure of “obscure and humble condition” who rises to the leadership of the Ciompi.4 Similarly, Machiavelli in the dedication to The Prince describes himself as “one of the people,” who dares to presume to teach princes the methods of rule.5 The wool worker’s oration presents a picture of a reformer and innovator who attempts to introduce a new form of rule, one based on the “friendship of the people”6 —a people, moreover, that has emerged from the “lower depths.” As Machiavelli notes in the life of Castruccio, those who have done “very great things” in this world “have been humble and obscure in their birth and origin.” 7 Machiavelli’s description of the revolt adumbrates his major political and theoretical tropes: the centrality of force,

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  147

the role of the people in the construction and maintenance of a new order, and the struggle between the great and the people as the ground and motive force of politics.

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People In book three, Machiavelli divides Florentine society into three parts: the great, the people, and the plebs. He looks at the revolt of the plebs within the context of the power struggles of these three groups, a context significantly different from that which he sets up in Chapter 9 of The Prince and in Discourses 1.4. Conflict is central in Machiavelli.8 It is axiomatic that conflict is universal and natural; it is inherent in all societies and groups, though it is mediated and conditioned by time and space.9 It assumes several different forms—the political, the social, the economic, and the legal-juridical; and they may occur publicly or privately, and they may take place simultaneously or successively and separately.10 There appear several major antagonistic groups that at various periods embody these conflicts. There is first the struggle between the feudal lords and the people (magnati and popolo). Following the victory of the people and the assertion of communal sovereignty, the people split into the popolo grasso or the grandi and the popolo minuto. The groups involved in conflict Machiavelli calls nobili, popolo, and plebe.11 Sometimes he talks about the discord between the grandi or the nobili and the popolo; at other times he uses the triadic nobili/ popolo/plebe configuration.12 Two opposing conceptions of the people may be discerned. The first, more familiar, is that the term plebe in the most general sense denotes whatever is not-noble, and in contradistinction to the grandi or the nobili. This is a political opposition famously analysed in The Prince and the Discourses. The second is more economic and more social, and it refers to the fragmentation of the people into the popolo minuto, or the plebe minuta, or the moltitudine—here we have such parallel terms as infima plebe,13 not too distant from canaglia.14 This part of the people is opposed to the popolo grasso, that is, the superior, higher strata of the people, the great houses or the case whose socio-economic and political resources enable them to dominate the republican institutions by means of their clients and patronage power. Interpreters have noted a contradiction, or at least an ambivalence, in Machiavelli’s writings regarding the constitution of the people and its role in republican politics.15 In The Prince and in the Discourses, he normally emphasizes the importance of the people in the emergence and maintenance of republican institutions or in the construction of a civil principality. In the Histories, where he discusses the Ciompi, and in certain passages in the Discourses (especially those on religion),16 he seems to take a more critical stance on the role of the people. He appears especially critical of the radical faction of the “infima plebe”17 and its attempt to gain control of the republican organs of government.

148  Benedetto Fontana

Machiavelli locates the Ciompi events within his overall conceptual theme of conflict and strife as the primary elements of political life.18 He describes it as a particularly pivotal event in the history of Florence.19 He sees it as a turning point that provided an opening for the accumulation and concentration of power in the Medici family and its clients. Conspiracy from below sets the stage for conspiracy from above. The sectarian fights among the elite factions provided Salvestro de’ Medici the opportunity to take advantage of the discontent among the Ciompi in 1378.20 In his attempts to reverse the Guelph policy of exiling their enemies from the city, Salvestro managed to use a lawsuit brought against a tanner and a dyer. With the support of nobles from the Alberti, Dini, and Strozzi families, he presented himself before the public as a “champion” of the popolani and an advocate for all the “poor and weak who want to live in peace on what they earn.”21 He further cemented his popularity by resigning his position as Gonfalonier. Meanwhile, and at the same time, Benedetto Alberti was addressing the people assembled below from the balcony of the Palace of the Signoria—a speech that ended with the passionate cry of “Long live the people!”—Salvestro called himself a “knight of the people,” and, renouncing his rank as a noble, he appeared to share power with a former wool worker.22 The popolo minuto seized power through a series of riots and popular demonstrations, and through the occupation of the public spaces of the city, the squares and street. They established a balia, controlled by Michele di Lando, and reformed the republic’s institutions. In August 1378, a more radical faction, claiming to represent the interests of the Popolo di Dio, broke with Salvestro di Medici and Michele di Lando. The divisions within the wool workers enabled the reaction to regain control.23 Beginning on 31 August, a day of blood, fury, and massacre, the popolo grasso and the arti maggiori slowly reasserted their power, and ultimately in 1382, the gains made in the summer of 1378 were completely eliminated, the supporters of the rebellion executed, imprisoned, or exiled.24 In the preamble to Book 3 of the Histories, Machiavelli distils the events he will narrate in subsequent sections into a theoretical and analytical framework: conflict, division, the expulsion of feudal tyrants, the coming of equality and liberty, the triumph of the people (the city over the country), the consequent split of the people into factions and sects (of the city into many cities), the turmoil that created the space for the rise of tyranny, and the possibility for a rebirth of republican liberty. Such a progression calls to mind Plato and Aristotle, as well as Polybius, on the various types of poleis and their transformation: in other words, on revolt, revolution, and conspiracy.25

The Ciompo’s Oration: Political Knowledge and Political Power What engendered the revolt Machiavelli makes quite clear: the “grievance against the wealthy citizens and the chiefs of the guilds, for they were not paid

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  149

for their labor according to what they believed their just deserts.”26 Further, they were excluded from membership in the guilds into which the city was divided. The guilds were “of such power that in a few years [after their institution] they took over the entire government of the city.”27 The guilds themselves, divided into major and minor, were in competition for power, where the former dominated the latter. The lower classes, workers who serviced both kinds of guilds, had no institutional or procedural mechanisms to voice their grievances and resentments, nor had they any political or legal avenues to present their demands and their articulate interests. The “lower class and the vey poorest people … were subject to various guilds according to the nature of their trades,” and thus when they were dissatisfied with their labors or in any way oppressed by their masters, they had nowhere to go for refuge except to the magistrate of the guild that ruled them; yet they believed he did not furnish them proper justice. Of all the guilds, the Wool had most of these labourers, and being the most powerful, “by its business has long given employment and still gives employment to the greater part of the poor and the lower classes.”28 The “poorest of the people” were “very indignant,” felt “fear” due to their previous acts of “arson and robbery,” and thus they assembled “at night many times … discussing events” that had taken place and attempted to assess the “dangers” confronting them as well as the possible opportunity the situation presented. 29 Having established the dependent condition of the workers, at this point, Machiavelli inserts an oration that at first sight appears as a traditional set piece in the manner of classical historians, such as Thucydides, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. Yet precisely because it is spoken through the voice of a fictional character, the speech’s surface conventionality is undermined and exploded. An eloquent and intelligent man of the working class, who is described as “one of the most fiery and of greatest experience,” speaks before the assembled workers. He seems to possess two important qualities Machiavelli deems crucial in a political leader—that is, in a “prince”—namely, passion and reason. He is both fiery and experienced. What does Machiavelli mean by experience? Certainly not the experience all the workers have in common qua workers—expertise and skill in the exercise of their work. It is obviously one of a different kind, the experience necessary to organize and to mobilize the people, to move them to action. For the immediate aim is to find the appropriate words and the ideas plausible and persuasive enough so as to connect both emotionally and politically with the workers. Thus, the very anonymity of this speaker, the seeming humble origins and the seeming roughness, belies the cold calculation and the prudential reasoning exhibited by this

150  Benedetto Fontana

unknown. The contrast cannot be more stark: out of an angry, frustrated, and resentful crowd, most of which is more than likely illiterate, there emerges one who, though of their class, is yet able not only to discipline his emotions, but to focus and to channel the workers’ inexpressible and irrepressible feelings, desires, and fears into a political programme. The question is why does Machiavelli draw up and place such a speech in the mouth of an unknown wool worker. The Ciompo begins his discourse by reminding the workers of the “many evils” they have already committed, and as a result their life and welfare are at risk. Thus, “when nothing else teaches us, necessity teaches us” and it is necessity, as Machiavelli points out elsewhere, that makes men “virtuosi.”30 Since necessity is inherent to the formation of virtù, it must be artificially created where it is lacking. Thus, the need for laws and institutions, which educate and discipline one for political and civil life. 31 Yet the workers exist outside the republican institutions—“when nothing teaches us”—that is, they have not been brought up by and through the republic’s laws. The workers must educate themselves through the necessity that constrains them to change and to reform the established order. For “the citizens meet together, and the Signoria is always with the magistrates,” and therefore “traps are being designed for us and new forces prepared against our lives.” The safest and most prudent course is to move forward and to act even more audaciously. The speaker underlines the workers’ awareness that they are not citizens because they are not guildsmen, and as servants of the latter they have no voice in the administration and affairs of the guild. As such, they are subject to the authority of guild magistrates not chosen by, and responsible to, them. Since the citizens of the republic “meet together” in order to pursue their own interests, the workers should also meet together to formulate their own plans in pursuit of their interests. At the same time, in the same way that the magistrates of the guild are responsible to the membership, so too the magistrates of the republic, the Signoria, are responsible to the citizens. The opposition between citizen-guildsman and worker is the liminal boundary that determines political and legal equality, who is in and who is out, and thus participation in the political life of the republic. The boundary is physically and symbolically demarcated by the time and the place of the meeting together: the citizen-guildsmen by day and the workers by night, the first openly and the second secretly. After underlining the stark differences between their life and that of the commune, the speaker continues to encourage them by again urging the committing of “new transgressions” and “doubling our offenses and multiplying our arson and robbery.” In the process, they should strive to increase “their number and support.” Mass mobilization and popular support is certain to guarantee impunity—“because where many err, nobody is punished, little faults are punished, great and serious ones are rewarded.” This comment echoes

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  151

the tale relating the encounter between Alexander the Great and the pirate whom he has just apprehended. Cicero refers to the anecdote in De republica, as does Augustine in the City of God. Augustine writes: For when [Alexander] had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, ‘What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.’32 And Cicero says: “For when [a pirate] was asked what criminal impulse had led him to make the sea unsafe with a single little ship, he replied, ‘the same impulse which has led you, to make the whole world unsafe.’”33 Cicero is trying to make the argument for natural law, natural right, and natural justice. And Augustine uses the story to undermine and de-legitimize pagan culture and society, most especially the power of Rome. In the same way, the Ciompo is undermining the established normative and religious formulas that underpin the rule of the republican elites. In so doing, he uncovers the centrality of power, force, and violence. Machiavelli directly refers to the story in his “Discorso dell’ordinare lo stato di Firenze alle armi,” in which he says that “everyone who says empire, kingdom, principality, republic; whoever discusses men who command, beginning with the top ranks and descending to the very bottom to the master of a brigantine, says justice and arms.”34 The wedding of justice and arms is a direct reference to Augustine and to the Roman historians. And Machiavelli’s justice is the justice Augustine locates within the civitas terrena, it is not the “true justice” that only a completely Christian order can provide, nor is it the justice of Plato discussed in the Republic, the dikaiosyne or “righteousness” that Socrates seeks. It is the justice of a Polemarchus or a Thrasymachus, where the first bases it on the maxim “help one’s friends and injure one’s enemies,” and the second sees it as the “right of the stronger party.”35 Further: it is significant that in the “Discorso” Machiavelli equates all systems of rule—from empire to republic— and places them under the overall category “men who command”—that is, under the general rubric of power. Whether it be a Medici prince or the master of a ship (or in this case, a plebeian who wants to lead his fellow workers), the rules and methods of power are always applicable. There is such a thing as political knowledge, and ruling requires understanding its uses and abuses. Attaining power and maintaining it presuppose the acquisition of this knowledge. The rich and the powerful are divided and engaged in a struggle for power, which makes them vulnerable such that their dominance is endangered. “Their riches will become ours,” which will further insure the rebels’ victory. And after tantalizing his listeners with the spoils of victory, he assures the workers that the rich and powerful are not naturally and innately superior, that the workers are imbued with a human nature equal to that of the elites. The deference and

152  Benedetto Fontana

sense of inferiority familiar to them are mere conventional norms arising out of long-standing social habits and customary usages; they are social artefacts, products made by men, and thus can be changed by men. The worker asserts a common and equal nature: Do not be frightened by their antiquity of blood which they shame us with, for all men, since they had one and the same beginning, are equally ancient; by nature they are all made in one way. Strip us naked; you will see us all alike; dress us then in their clothes and they in ours; without doubt we shall seem noble and they ignoble, for only poverty and riches make us unequal. There is no natural hierarchy, no transcendent basis for assertions of nobility (either moral or social), no natural, eternal system that enshrines into law differences of any kind other than those derived from power. Two points immediately stand out: the references to “blood” and “clothes.” Clothes and dress reflect, and depend upon, customs and usages, as well as social conventions and social norms and codes of behaviour. At the same time, they are products of material culture and economic activity, and thus expressions of both cultural differences and variations in wealth and economic status. All these produce an ensemble of cultural, moral, intellectual, and political ways of life that together embed groups within particular social and political strata in constant opposition to one another. Thus, the language of dress and clothes, used to assert natural equality and liberty, is a language of power, which is in turn the language of seeming, change (becoming), and appearance. Reality is flux, which changes kaleidoscopically according to the variations in the degrees of power. There are several points to be made from references to equality in the above passage. First, Machiavelli refers to clothes and changes in clothes further in the Histories (3.16), where he describes Michele di Lando, leader of the “lower class,” as “this man, barefoot and wearing little clothing”—a depiction which reinforces the argument from power. “Barefoot and little clothing” when placed alongside “strip us naked” is a not so subtle assertion of equality: a man of the lower classes is asserting equality precisely within the halls of the seat of the republican government—Michele discusses the affairs of state with his “social superiors.” A second instance is found in a letter to Vettori,36 in which Machiavelli narrates his everyday activities at San Casciano. There he tries to engage in the necessary business of farm management, after which he goes “back to the inn” where he “sinks into vulgarity” as he plays card games with the butcher and the miller. At the day’s end, he “enters my study,” and “I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust,” and after donning more stately and regal garments, he enters the “courts of ancient men” with whom he speaks and asks

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  153

them “the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me.” Here too there is a change of dress, which leads to a condition of equality, which in turn leads to discussions and conversations about politics and affairs of state. Taking both instances together there is a reciprocal movement between the grimy, dirty street and the chambers of state, where the first is an actual incursion and the second is metaphorical and symbolic. Both metaphors (the Ciompo and the Vettori letter) are mirror images of each other: one describes movement from the street and everyday work to the halls of power and influence, the other reverses the movement, from symbols of power to nakedness and the natural state. The Vettori letter, when set alongside the ragged condition of the Ciompi, describes a particular relation between the “street” and the “courts,” which underlines the double-ness of Machiavelli’s dedication in The Prince: “to understand well the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand well that of the prince, one must be of the people.” The dedication is a double-edged sword: it warns the ruler that the people’s desires, interests, and fears cannot be dismissed. In addition to the language of clothes and dress, the Ciompo worker employs the language of blood, which equally serves to undermine the legitimacy and authority of the elites. Both languages are closely interwoven. Machiavelli makes several references to “blood.” In them, he attacks the privileges and pretensions of elites who rest their power and their superior culture (“nobility”) on their family lineages. He offers an entirely new basis for the legitimation of rule, one diametrically opposed to the conventional forms of legitimation. As he says in The Art of War, in discussing the manner in which a commander earns respect and legitimacy from his army, Machiavelli emphasizes the importance of virtù, a quality that can neither be inherited nor acquired by mere status, “because neither blood nor authority can bestow it.”37 In Discourses 1.60, Machiavelli employs the imagery of blood in discussing the admission of the plebs to the consulate.38 In the same chapter Machiavelli refers to the saying of the consul Marcus Valerius Corvinus, who became consul at a very young twenty-three39: the consulate is the “praemium virtutis, non sanguinis.”40 Thus, a man of “obscure and humble condition,” certainly more humble than Machiavelli’s, delivers an address to the plebs by making direct reference to the latter’s major political works, The Prince and the Discourses. He outlines their main moral and ethical thrust when he says that neither “conscience” nor “ill fame” should inhibit the workers from acting according to their political and economic interests, “for those who conquer, never because of it come to disgrace.” The result excuses the act, and of conscience we need take “no account.” Both Cesare Borgia and Agathocles, leaders whose virtuous actions are greatly admired by Machiavelli, evinced little regard for ill fame. Agathocles, with no family or social standing, in Machiavelli’s telling, achieved greater success and greater glory, than Cesare, who, though high born, at the end failed to read correctly the political manoeuvres of the Roman papal court.41

154  Benedetto Fontana

Though Machiavelli specifically says that it cannot be called glory to have acted in the manner of Agathocles, yet there is no mistaking the actual sense: by disregarding concerns for ill fame Agathocles attained great fame. There is no need here to rehearse the many interpretations of Machiavelli’s opposition between his understanding of virtù and those of the humanist as well as the Christian.42 Both emphasized the political importance of conforming to either the Christian or the humanist beliefs of the good ruler who ought to pursue justice, right conduct, truth and honesty, as well as fidelity to the ethical and moral precepts enunciated by his predecessors. But what should be underlined is that the code of conduct advocated in the Ciompo speech is directed not at the ruler, as it was conventionally in the mirror of princes tradition, but rather at the people, and not merely the people as defined by membership in the 21 guilds, but the popular masses excluded from this social and political community, the plebs who acted as the servants of both the popolo grasso and the popolo minuto. The Ciompo openly teaches what the elites covertly know and understand. As in The Prince, Chapter 18, the Ciompo openly teaches what Chiron the Centaur had taught secretly to ancient rulers: the arcana imperii that describe the ways and means of rule, such that those who desire to rule—to “command”— become capaces imperii, capable of rule, as Tacitus puts it.43 What is novel, and innovative, is that Machiavelli puts these methods in the mouth of an unknown worker. He is moving from the “first rank and descending down” (in the language of the “Discorso”) to a member of the lower classes, and in both cases, he is demonstrating that the methods of political rule employed by the elites may be translatable and reproducible by the common people. The question of political knowledge emerges immediately at the beginning of The Prince, in the dedication, as well as in the dedication to the Discourses. What remains to be determined is whether the people are indeed capable of this knowledge. Machiavelli’s position is clear in 1.55 of the Discourses, yet 1.14 seems to back away from it. In any case, the linking of political knowledge to the emergence of the popular masses as a force in politics—whether the linkage is rhetorical or manipulative, or indeed whether the people can objectively embody this knowledge, is a perennial and contested topos. The controversy, implicit in the wool worker’s speech, is the magnet around which the entire discourse revolves, and its overarching cornerstone—one which can be traced back not only to Plato, Sallust, and Tacitus, but forward to Hobbes, Tocqueville, Proudhon, and Marx.44 Though the worker openly speaks what the elites already know and practice, this public assertion is nevertheless delivered at night, that is, in secret and unbeknownst to the leaders of the established guilds and of the republican regime. What Machiavelli seems to be doing is to voice the grievances, the motives, the reasons, and the principles that underlie the actions of the workers. The Ciompi, after all, are voiceless, their motivation and justifications mediated

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  155

through the writings of elite chroniclers, who invariably assign evil impulses to the revolt, and who analyse it from moralistic perspectives. The Ciompo says: “If you will observe the way men act, you will see.” The workers, without the means for a formal education (humanistic or otherwise), need simply to observe, and to consult their own experience, to understand the nature of power and the reality of political action. There is a difference between what is said, and what is done, between the word and the deed, and experience teaches that the latter is more reliable in judging the affairs of this world. This is repeated often in Machiavelli’s major works, as can be seen from the beginning sentence of Chapter 18 of The Prince: “how laudable a prince is who keeps his promises and lives with sincerity and not with trickery, everybody knows.” “Nevertheless” experience teaches that princes have done great things by following precisely the opposite of this teaching, so that simulation and dissimulation lead to the attaining and maintaining of power, whereas keeping faith leads to defeat and failure. Hence, the necessity for “trickery” and “violence,” “force” and “fraud” while, at the same time, the “ugliness of their [the guild elite’s] acquisition” is concealed “under the false title of profit they make honorable.”45 “Lack of prudence or great folly” will lead to servitude and poverty. So too will fidelity, honesty, and humility: “faithful servants are always servants, and good men are always poor.” Liberty and power require boldness and unfaithfulness, and those “who do not have,” in order to acquire, must be as “rapacious and fraudulent” as those “who have.” Thus, “we ought to use force when we get a chance.” The above passage is central to Machiavelli’s understanding regarding the founding of states and republics. In the first chapter of the first book of the Discourses Machiavelli discusses the “general principles” underlying the beginnings of cities: how are cities, kingdoms, and republics founded? He points to the processes involved in “acquisition,” which presupposes the taking of territory, which, in turn, presupposes the displacement (or at least the absorption) of already settled inhabitants. What is a state, Augustine asks, if not a great robbery (magnum latrocinium), and what is a robbery, if not a small state (parvum regnum)?46 The acquisition of territory, the acquisition of land, and the acquisition of property in general are thus directly connected to the acquisition of power, especially political power. The founding of cities is permeated with crime and murder: Cain kills Abel, Romulus kills Remus, and Moses orders the Levites to slaughter the worshippers of the golden calf. Cain, the farmer (and therefore one who acquires land and property) is especially relevant: the founder of cities kills Abel, the shepherd, the one without land and without a settled life. In sum, the beginning of settled life involves acquisition, the founding of cities, and the beginning of a civil life, involves violence and fraud. And acquisition, at the beginning, presupposes force, violence, and fraud. In the speech, Machiavelli—through the Ciompo—is saying that what the workers are proposing to do—initiate a conspiracy against the republic, revolt

156  Benedetto Fontana

against the established order—is a new beginning. It is the founding of a new order of things. And as in any founding and beginning force and violence are required, and secrecy and self-defence are necessary before the revolt itself is launched.47 The wool worker ends the speech by underlining the danger and risk that accompany new undertakings and “great things.” He admits that “this plan is daring and dangerous,” but necessity transforms “rashness” into “prudence.” Fear of the opposing party—or, as Sallust puts it, “metus hostilis”48 —should instil the courage and the determination to remedy the injustice of the magistrates and the “avarice of your superiors” by taking up arms and “[becoming] so much superior to them that they will … fear you more than you will them.” It is important to seize the “opportunity that Occasion brings you” because it “is fleeting.” As in Chapter 6 of The Prince, in which the servitude and “scattered” state of their respective peoples provided the opportunity and occasion for Moses, Theseus, Romulus, and Cyrus to establish a new order, so too the slavish and oppressed condition of the workers afford their leaders the opportunity to initiate a new republican regime. At the same time, Machiavelli emphasizes the precarious and dangerous nature of attempting to initiate new modes and orders. For the conspirators and/or revolutionaries face the difficult task of persuading both their followers and their opponents of the possibility of establishing institutions which are not yet in existence, never before seen. In addition, custom, habit, and past usage are powerful forces that buttress the established order. And, significantly, law and “justice” (or rather the judicial apparatus) are powerful instruments—that is, the fear of death—as the speaker puts it, “we see prisons, tortures, prepared”—at the disposal of the established regime. The parallel between the Ciompo’s speech and Marius’ speech in Sallust’s history of the Jugurthine war is a signal that Machiavelli sees the Ciompo worker as a novus homo. Marius, like the Ciompo, has risen from plebeian beginnings to become leader of the popular party in late republican Rome. He is a “leader of the people,” a demagogos, in the original, historical meaning of the word. The people, the demos, constitute the major part of society, and the majority of the people have been historically that part of the populace which is socially and economically—and in contemporary terms—poorer than the minor part. Thus, the demagogos is the leader of the infima plebe, one who attempts to “vindicare plebem in libertatem.”49 Such a politics necessitates an unrelenting antagonism against the ottimati, which is accompanied by a moral and intellectual critique of the prevailing ideological and legitimating structures of the existing order. The meeting of the workers is similar to that held by a Roman republican magistrate when he calls for a contio, a meeting of the people. Marius’ address to the people was intended to undermine the aristocratic party in the senate.50 And the Ciompo’s meeting is, in fact, a counter-contio. It was addressed by a leader who emerged from their own ranks, and who did not possess any legal right or official status to do so; it was held at night and in

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  157

secret: it violated the law forbidding workers to hold meetings; and finally, its purpose was to undermine the established republican regime.

The Ciompi as Speculum Populi and Machiavelli’s Politics The Ciompi revolt encapsulates several major themes Machiavelli stresses throughout his writings. The first is the general and universal prevalence of conflict in society; conflict cannot be eliminated; it is a major characteristic of political action. Second, Machiavelli differentiates between “good” conflict and “bad” conflict, the first kind defined by “vie pubbliche” and the second by “vie private.”51 Third, the Ciompi revolt is narrated by Machiavelli as the second kind, in which the workers resort to extra-legal and extra-constitutional means to pursue narrow economic and group interests. Machiavelli describes the alliance between the lower classes and the popolo minuto, the subsequent split between the plebs and the popolo. The fear of the lower classes compelled the popolo minuto to make an alliance with the aristocratic elites, which ultimately led to the suppression of both the lower and the middle classes. The factional and sectarian divisions among the various classes Machiavelli sees as the use of public power to pursue private and sectarian interest. The struggle among and between the aristocratic elite, the popolo minuto, and the plebs created a space that afforded the Medici the opportunity gradually to infiltrate both the social groups and the political institutions of the republic, which ultimately resulted in the Medici dynasty’s domination of the social and political life of Florence. The byzantine and intricate manoeuvres of the various parties, each pursuing their perceived private good, and each driven by fear of the other, Machiavelli portrays as the necessary political and socio-economic preconditions for the advent of the Medici despotism. In particular, Machiavelli’s portrayal of the trajectory of Michele di Lando’s career as leader of the workers and of the Florentine republic is instructive. Michele, a genuine artisan and member of the working class, made a complete volte-face, deserted his friends, the plebs, joined the popular party, and allowed the plebs to be massacred in the streets and piazze or be sent into exile. In the process, he accepted the symbols and honours of a knighthood. Although less than four years after the rebellion he too was exiled, he nevertheless was able to become a lanaiolo and achieve the status of master and employer. In Chapter 9 of The Prince, Machiavelli sets up his celebrated conflict between the many and the few, the people and great, in which each is defined by what it desires and loves, namely, the first not to be oppressed and dominated, and the second to oppress and to dominate. This irreconcilable struggle within the city leads either to “liberty, principality or license.” Thus, the city is rarely unified; it is a city at war with itself, it is at least two cities locked together in irrepressible strife. Machiavelli counsels those who wish to gain power within the city to base themselves upon the support of the popular masses. The masses

158  Benedetto Fontana

to Machiavelli are both the ground and motive force of politics within the city. Their role is so great, and so consequential, that even if one were to gain power through the support of the grandi, Machiavelli advises an about-face, and to desert the elites and to seek the favour of the people. It is significant that the rise of Michele di Lando and his advent to power follow a political and tactical trajectory diametrically opposed to that counselled in the ninth chapter. Lastly, the speech undercuts Machiavelli’s criticism of the revolt as an instance of the subordination of the public good to particular interests. The Ciompi pursue a narrow, sectarian policy as they attempt to seize power for themselves, refuse to compromise and share it, and exclude their opponents from participating in the governance of the republic. A particularly venomous kind of factional conflict, the workers’ rebellion demonstrated their inability to govern the republic, and its failure was well deserved. It was as tyrannical as the future despotism of the Medici, and as the past domination of Brienne, the duke of Athens. In both cases, the tyrants were able to gain power by flattering and catering to the demands of the lower classes. It is pointed out that in the Ciompo speech, no reference is made to the public good, or to the patria; only the interests of the workers are articulated. Its primary goal is to dominate the republic, and the consequent aim is to reduce the upper classes to subservience. Tyranny from below will lead to tyranny from above. However, a slightly different perspective on the speech shows that the above interpretation is not as clear as it seems at first sight. Machiavelli’s perspective turns out to be much more ambivalent and ambiguous. That the speech of the Ciompo does not refer to the patria, unlike the other major set speeches,52 is not necessarily an indication of Machiavelli’s judgement regarding the political and ethical implications of the revolt. Placing the contents of the speech within the trajectory of Machiavelli’s history of republican republics, especially the sectarian conflicts prior to the Ciompi, a different perspective will emerge. The Ciompo is the only speaker who openly asserts the workers’ class interest without resorting to the language of republican concord and harmony. He does not use such terms as patria and pubblica utilità. The language is not an instrument to veil the underlying struggle for power and advantage. The omission or absence of references to the common good, the public interest, or the general interest of the republic is an indication of a trenchant and bitter attack on the ruling elites. The workers’ faction turns out to be more honest, more direct in its language and in its aims, than that of the nobility (as well as that of the middle classes). In the manner of Thucydides, Machiavelli exposes the corruption of language—especially the language of liberty and “amor di patria.” Throughout the sectarian strife all factions, whether of the popular or the aristocratic party, employed the language and rhetoric of equality and liberty.53 The Ciompo orator, however, employed the language of power, of advantage and acquisition. At the same time, the address unravels the intimate

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  159

connection between speech/language and violence, such that they mutually presuppose one another. In effect, Machiavelli employs the revolt of the Ciompi, especially the address of the unknown wool worker, to uncover the bases of power, and, in so doing, presents a thorough-going critique of Florentine republicanism. At the same time, the speech may be seen as a synecdoche of the arguments presented in The Prince and in the Discourses in which the role of the ­“people”—specifically, the popolo minuto—is given paramount importance in the formation of “new modes and orders.” These latter presuppose the emergence of the people as an active force in history and in politics. The Ciompo worker dissects the power equation, distils it to its fundamental elements— namely, force and persuasion, passionate engagement, and cold calculation. In the process, the speech dramatizes, and expresses in action, Machiavelli’s metaphor of the beast/man in Chiron the Centaur as represented in Chapter 18 of The Prince.

Notes 1 A previous version of this chapter was presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC. I have included the parts dealing with the Ciompo oration in “Machiavelli and the Ciompi: Class Conflict and Republican Politics,” Storia del pensiero politico 8, no. 3 (Sept–Dec 2019). 2 The Italian edition I use is Opere, ed. Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. (Turin: EinaudiGallimard, 1997–2005); the English edition is The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989). 3 Istorie fiorentine (Histories), 3.13 in Opere 3. 4 Il principe (The Prince), Dedication in Opere 1. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., c. 9. 7 La vita di Castruccio Castracani in Opere 3. 8 Discorso sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses), 1.2, 3, 4, 5 in Opere 1. See also The Prince, c. 9, 17, 19. 9 On struggle, see Marco Geuna, “Machiavelli e il ruolo dei conflitti nella vita ­politica,” in Conflitti, eds. A. Arienzo and D. Caruso (Naples: Libreria Dante e Descartes, 2005), 19–57. 10 Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1960); Isaiah Berlin, “The Originality of Machiavelli,” in idem, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 25–79; Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981); idem, “The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives,” in Philosophy in History: Essays in the historiography of philosophy, eds. Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 193–222; and idem, “Machiavelli and the Maintenance of Liberty,” Politics 18 (1983): 3–15. 11 See also Langues et écritures de la république et de la guerre: Études sur Machiavel, eds. A. Fontana, J.-L. Fournel, X. Tabet, and J.-C. Zancarini (Genoa: Name, 2004). 12 Gisela Bock, “Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, eds. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge:

160  Benedetto Fontana

13 14

15

16 17 18

19 20

21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Cambridge University Press, 1993), 184, 188; John M. Najemy, “Machiavelli and History,” Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 4 (Winter, 2014): 1131–64. Histories, 2.37, 3.12, 3.17; The Prince, c. 8; Discourses, 1.13. Emmanuel Barot, “1378 ou l’émergence de la question moderne du subject révolutionnaire,” in La révolte des Ciompi. Un soulèvement prolétarien à Florence au XIVe siècle. Textes de Simone Weil et Nicolas Machiavel (Toulouse: CMDE, 2013), 71–72. Bock, “Civil discord,” 182–83. See also Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); Cary J. Nederman, Machiavelli (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 86–92; John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Yves Winter, “Plebeian Politics: Machiavelli and the Ciompi Uprising,” Political Theory 40, no. 6 (2012): 736–66. Discourses, 1.11–14. Histories, 3.13–18. This topos is something many interpreters have noted. See especially Cary J. Nederman, “Rhetoric, Reason, and Republic: Republicanisms – Ancient, Medieval, and Modern,” in Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 247–69. John M. Najemy, History of Florence: 1200–1575 (Malden, MA: , Blackwell-Wiley, 2006), 156–87. See Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986); Samuel K. Cohn, Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); idem, The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980); Robert Fredona, “Political Conspiracy in Florence, 1340–1382” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2010); and A. Stella, La révolte des Ciompi. Les hommes, les lieux, le travail (Paris: EHESS, 1993). Cited in Mollat, The Poor, 230. Ibid. Niccolò Rodolico, La democrazia fiorentina nel suo tramonto (1378–1382) (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1905). Ibid., 213. Marco Geuna, “Machiavelli e il problema delle congiure,” Rivista storica italiana, 127, no. 2 (2015): 355–410. See also Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 295–314; Catherine Zuckert, Machiavelli’s Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Histories, 3.12. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 3.13. Discourses, 1.1. References in his works to necessity are legion. See Cary J. Nederman, “Machiavelli and Moral Character: Principality, Republic, and the Psychology of Virtù,” History of Political Thought 21, no. 3 (Spring, 2000): 349–64. Augustine, The City of God. Books 4–7, Loeb Classical Library 412 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 4.4. Cicero, De re publica, in On the Republic. On the Laws, Loeb Classical Library 213 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 3.14. Discorso dell’ordinare lo stato di Firenze alle armi, in Opere, ed. Antonio Panella, 2 vols. (Milan and Rome: 1938–39). Plato, Republic. Books 1–5, Loeb Classical Library 237 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 332E, 338D-339B. See Cary J. Nederman, “Giving

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  161

36 37

38 39 40 41

42

43 44

45

46 47

48

Thrasymachus his Due: The Political Argument of Republic I and its Reception,” POLIS: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought 24 (2007): 26–42. “Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori” (December 10, 1513, Florence), in Opere, 2: Lettere. “Ma quello che sopra ogni altra cosa viene lo esercito unito, è la reputazione del capitano; la quale solamente nasce dalla virtù sua, perché né sangue né autorità la dette mai sanza la virtù.” Dell’arte della Guerra, bk. 6, in Opere, 1. See also the distinction Machiavelli makes in The Prince between the hereditary prince and the new prince. We find “sangue del loro signore” (c. 1); “sangue del loro principe” (c. 2); “sangue del loro principe antiquo” (c. 3); “antiquità del sangue,” “sangue del loro antiquo signore” (c. 4); “viltà del suo sangue” (c. 19); “sangue antico” (c. 24). “Ei si vede … come la Republica romana, poiche’ il Consolato venne alla Plebe, concesse quello ai suoi cittadini sanza rispetto di eta’ e di sangue.” Discourses 1.60. See Livy, History of Rome. Books 5–7, Loeb Classical Library 172 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924), 6.35, 42; 7.1. See Discourses, 3.22, 28. Livy, 7.32. The manner by which (and the words used by) Machiavelli to characterize the class origins of Agathocles is interesting: “non solo di privata fortuna, ma di infima e di abietta … tenne sempre vita scellerata … nondimanco accompagnò le sua scelleratezze con tanta virtù di animo e di corpo.” The Prince, c. 7, 8. Nicolai Rubinstein, “Machiavelli and the Florentine Republican Experience,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, 3–16; Quentin Skinner, “Machiavelli’s Discorsi and the pre-humanist origins of republican ideas,” in ibid., 121–42; Maurizio Viroli, “Machiavelli and the republican idea of politics,” in ibid., 143–72; and Gennaro Sasso, Machiavelli e gli antichi e altri saggi, 4 vols. (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1986–97). Tacitus, Histories. Books 1–3, Loeb Classical Library 111 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 1.49. See N. Badaloni, “Natura e società in Machiavelli,” Studi Storici 10 (1969): 675–708. See also Simone Weil, “Un soulèvement prolétarien à Florence au XIV siècle,” La Critique sociale, 11 (March 1934), in Écrits historiques et politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 85–101; J.-C. Zancarini, “La révolte des Ciompi. Machiavel, ses sources et ses lecteurs,” Cahiers philosophiques 97 (April, 2004): 9–22. At this point in the speech we should note the rhetorical and stylistic parallel to Tacitus’ celebrated characterization of the Roman imperium, also voiced through the speech of a subject and subordinate leader: “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace.” Agricola, in Agricola. Germania. Dialogue on Oratory, Loeb Classical Library 35 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 30.5. Tacitus, like Machiavelli, is replete with the rhetoric of paradiastolic re-description. Augustine, City of God, 4.4. The parallels with Aristotle should be noted. Although Aristotle discusses force and violence (bia) under the heading of “wrongdoing” in his Rhetoric (Art of Rhetoric, Loeb Classical Library 193 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020), 1368b32–33), in the Politics he treats force and fraud or deception as dyadic pairs, and discusses them in a neutral, dispassionate analytical manner. He says that “revolutions [such as, for example, the founding of a new order, as in Machiavelli] are effected in two ways, by force [dia bias] and by fraud [d’apatēs]” (Politics, Loeb Classical Library 264 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 1304b7– 12). At the same time, in discussing tyranny, he notes that “any one who obtains power by force [bias] or fraud [apatēs] is at once thought to be a tyrant” (1313a9–10). His language is careful, and striking: “thought to be,” as if to imply that the question is open to multiple and opposing interpretations. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum, in The War with Catiline. The War with Jugurtha, Loeb Classical Library 116 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 41.1–3;

162  Benedetto Fontana

and see Neal Wood, “Sallust’s Theorem: A Comment on ‘Fear’ in Western Political Thought,” History of Political Thought 16, no. 2 (Summer, 1995): 174–89. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthimum, 42.1. 49 50 Ibid., 85.13–20. Marius says: Compare me now, fellow citizens, a ‘new man,’ with those haughty nobles. They scorn my humble birth … I am taunted with my lot in life … For my part, I believe that all men have one and the same nature. See Benedetto Fontana, “Sallust and the politics of Machiavelli,” History of Political Thought 24, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 86–108. 51 See Bock, “Civil discord.” 52 Ibid., 195. 53 A citizen condemns factional strife, and says that still more harmful it is that the movers and originators of these parties with a pious word make their plan and purpose seem honorable; because always, since they are all enemies to liberty, they crush her under the pretense of defending a state of aristocrats or a popular government because the reward they desire from victory is not the glory of having freed the city, but the satisfaction of having conquered the others and usurped their dominion ... Hence they make laws and statutes not for the common benefit but for their own; hence wars, truces, alliances are decided not for the common glory but for the pleasure of the few. (Histories, 3.50) See also, ibid., 4.28.

Bibliography Aristotle. Art of Rhetoric. Loeb Classical Library 193. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. ———. Politics. Loeb Classical Library 264. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932. Augustine. The City of God. Books 4–7. Loeb Classical Library 412. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. Badaloni, N. “Natura e società in Machiavelli.” Studi Storici 10 (1969): 675–708. Barot, Emmanuel. “1378 ou l’émergence de la question moderne du subject révolutionnaire.” In La révolte des Ciompi. Un soulèvement prolétarien à Florence au XIVe siècle. Textes de Simone Weil et Nicolas Machiavel, with a postface by Emmanuel Barot. Toulouse: CMDE, 2013. Berlin, Isaiah. Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. Harmondsworth: ­Penguin, 1982. Bock, Gisela. “Civil discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, edited by Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, 181–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Cicero. De re publica. In On the Republic. On the Laws. Loeb Classical Library 213. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928. Cohn, Samuel K. Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, ­1200–1425. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ———. The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence. New York: Academic Press, 1980. Fontana, A., J.-L. Fournel, X. Tabet, and J.-C. Zancarini, eds. Langues et écritures de la république et de la guerre: Études sur Machiavel. Genoa: Name, 2004.

Machiavelli’s Representation of the People in the Ciompi Revolt  163

Fontana, Benedetto. “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli.” History of Political Thought 24, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 86–108. Fredona, Robert. “Political Conspiracy in Florence, 1340–1382.” PhD diss., Cornell University, 2010. Geuna, Marco. “Machiavelli e il problema delle congiure.” Rivista storica italiana, 127, no. 2 (2015): 355–410. ———. “Machiavelli e il ruolo dei conflitti nella vita politica.” In Conflitti, edited by A. Arienzo and D. Caruso, 19–57. Naples: Libreria Dante e Descartes, 2005. Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century ­Florence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Livy. History of Rome. Books 5–7. Loeb Classical Library 172. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Dell’arte della Guerra. In Opere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. 1. Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005. ———. Discorso dell’ordinare lo stato di Firenze alle armi. In Opere, edited by Antonio Panella, 2 vols. Milan-Rome: 1938–39. ———. Discorso sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. In Opere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. 1. Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005. ———. Il principe. In Opere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. 1. Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005. ———. Istorie fiorentine. In Opere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. 3. Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005. ———. La vita di Castruccio Castracani. In Opere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. 3. Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005. ———. Lettere. In Opere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols. 2. Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005. ———. The Chief Works and Others. Translated by Allan Gilbert. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989. Mansfield, Harvey C. Machiavelli’s Virtue. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. McCormick, John P. Machiavellian Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Mollat, Michel. The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. Najemy, John M. History of Florence: 1200–1575. Malden, MA: Blackwell-Wiley, 2006. ———. “Machiavelli and History.” Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 4 (Winter, 2014): 1131–64. Nederman, Cary J. “Giving Thrasymachus his Due: The Political Argument of Republic I and its Reception.” POLIS: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought 24 (2007): 26–42. ———. Machiavelli. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. ———. “Machiavelli and Moral Character: Principality, Republic, and the Psychology of Virtù.” History of Political Thought 21, no. 3 (Spring, 2000): 349–64. ———. “Rhetoric, Reason, and Republic: Republicanisms—Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.” In Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited by James Hankins, 247–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Plato. Republic. Books 1–5. Loeb Classical Library 237. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

164  Benedetto Fontana

Rodolico, Niccolò. La democrazia fiorentina nel suo tramonto (1378–1382). Bologna: Zanichelli, 1905. Rubinstein, Nicolai. “Machiavelli and the Florentine Republican Experience.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, edited by Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, 3–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum. In The War with Catiline. The War with Jugurtha. Loeb Classical Library 116. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Sasso, Gennaro. Machiavelli e gli antichi e altri saggi, 4 vols. Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1986–97. Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. ———. “Machiavelli and the Maintenance of Liberty.” Politics 18 (1983): 3–15. ———. “Machiavelli’s Discorsi and the pre-humanist origins of republican ideas.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, edited by Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, 121–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. “The idea of negative liberty: Philosophical and historical perspectives.” In Philosophy in History: Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy, edited by Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner, 193–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Stella. A. La révolte des Ciompi. Les hommes, les lieux, le travail. Paris: EHESS, 1993. Tacitus. Agricola. In Agricola. Germania. Dialogue on Oratory. Loeb Classical Library 35. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914. ———. Histories. Books 1–3. Loeb Classical Library 111. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925. Viroli, Maurizio. “Machiavelli and the republican idea of politics.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, edited by Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, 143–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Weil, Simone. “Un soulèvement prolétarien à Florence au XIV siècle.” La critique sociale, 11 (March 1934). Reprinted in Écrits historiques et politiques, 85–101. Paris: Gallimard, 1960. Winter, Yves. “Plebeian Politics: Machiavelli and the Ciompi Uprising.” Political Theory 40, no. 6 (2012): 736–66. Wood, Neal. “Sallust’s Theorem: A Comment on ‘Fear’ in Western Political Thought.” History of Political Thought 16, no. 2 (Summer, 1995): 174–89. Wolin, Sheldon. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1960. Zancarini, J.-C. “La révolte des Ciompi. Machiavel, ses sources et ses lecteurs.” Cahiers philosophiques 97 (April, 2004): 9–22. Zuckert, Catherine. Machiavelli’s Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

PART III

New Debates

9 CLASSICAL REPUBLICANISM IN THE AGE OF MACHIAVELLI Paul A. Rahe

Cary Nederman and I have been sparring with regard to Machiavelli and his Auseinandersetzung with the republicanism of the Greeks and the Romans now for a quarter-century, and neither of us has succeeded in setting the other straight. In this chapter, I make one more attempt at bringing him over to my side – this time by juxtaposing Machiavelli with three of his contemporaries who really did look to the republicanism of classical antiquity for guidance, and I do so by way of mounting a frontal assault on the “linguistic contextualism” that has dominated scholarly discourse in political theory and intellectual history for more than 40 years. For some decades now, it has been the fashion – among political theorists and intellectual historians alike – to argue that the great works of the past must be understood “in context.” If what the advocates of what has come to be called “contextualism” have in mind is that one cannot fully come to grips with one of these works if one does not understand the language in which it was composed, their larger claim would be self-evident. If they added that the authors of such works – even those such as Thucydides and Rousseau who clearly indicated that they were writing for the ages – also had contemporary audiences in mind and framed their works in such a manner as to address the concerns of those among whom they lived, and if, in addition, they asserted that to understand one of these works one would need to attend in some measure to the crises in the author’s own time to which he was responding, they would again be saying the obvious. But, alas, this is not all that the contextualists of the so-called Cambridge School assert. Early in this period, Quentin Skinner began editing what has by now become a distinguished series of volumes for Cambridge University Press under the title Ideas in Context. According to the prospectus that appears in the front-matter DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-13

168  Paul A. Rahe

of each volume, this series exists to promote discussion of “the emergence of intellectual traditions and related new disciplines,” and its aim is to trace “the development of ideas in their concrete contexts.” The contributors to this series will, we are told, set “the procedures, aims and vocabularies that were generated” within these emergent traditions and disciplines “in the context of the alternatives available within the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions,” and they will provide the larger public with “detailed studies of the evolution of such traditions, and their modification by different audiences,” so that “a new picture will form of the development of ideas in their concrete contexts” and “artificial distinctions between the history of philosophy, of the various sciences, of society and politics, and of literature may be seen to dissolve.”1 When applied to professions, academic disciplines, and self-conscious schools of thought, which really do generate their own peculiar procedures and vocabularies, linguistic contextualism of the sort espoused by Skinner and his disciples and practised with great aplomb by J. G. A. Pocock can be an invaluable tool. There are no doubt other angles from which to analyse the evolution of England’s common law, the development of modern sociology, the history of Marxist doctrine, the thinking of the Cambridge Platonists, and the works of those among the Arab philosophers who referred to Alfarabi as “the second teacher.” But few would deny that, in such cases, attending to the peculiar language deployed, to the procedures followed, and to the evolution of both is likely to be fruitful.2 Linguistic contextualism is, I believe, less satisfactory when applied to thinkers of high rank who acknowledge no superintending authority. Figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Harrington, Montesquieu, Jefferson, and Heidegger – to mention thinkers of divers sorts – are perfectly capable of generating their own vocabularies, of establishing their own procedures, and of turning their backs on “the alternatives available within the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions”; and, to this end, they frequently appropriate existing vocabularies and procedures and redeploy them in radically novel ways. To locate these thinkers properly, to understand them fully, one must treat them as if they were systematic thinkers (even when, in their writings, they have directly addressed only a circumscribed subject). In the process, one must distinguish in their thought what is fundamental from what is epiphenomenal, and, while attending to “the alternatives available within the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions,” one must vigorously resist the temptation to force them into a Procrustean bed constituted by that “context.” Before supposing that Aristotle, Machiavelli, Harrington, and Jefferson belong together within a hitherto unnoticed “civic humanist” tradition, for example, one would be well advised to consider whether they share the same teleology, whether they understand the ends of government in the same way, whether they are in agreement concerning political psychology, and whether they have the same thing in mind when they speak of “virtue.”3

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   169

Otherwise, one will be inclined to lump where one should split, as J. G. A. Pocock repeatedly did in The Machiavellian Moment.4 To illustrate what I have in mind, I propose to return to a subject – the proper situation of Niccolò Machiavelli – that Cary Nederman and I have disputed in the past.5 Here I will look more narrowly at Niccolò Machiavelli’s immediate context, glance at “the alternatives available within the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions,” and pose a simple question: Does Machiavelli fit in, or is he an outlier – a revolutionary, who in full consciousness rejects the available alternatives and charts his own course?6 After all, Machiavelli repeatedly and emphatically asserts his originality. In the fifteenth chapter of The Prince, he famously asserts, “I depart from the orders of others,” and he intimates that he does so by going “to the effectual truth of the matter” and by eschewing its “imagination.” In the preface to the first book of his Discourses on Livy, he compares himself with contemporary explorers – with the Genoan Christopher Columbus and with his fellow Florentine Amerigo Vespucci. He asserts that, like them, he has “taken a path as yet untrodden by anyone,” and he claims to have discovered “new modes and orders.” 7 If he did no more than re-articulate and make modest adjustments to one of the “the alternatives available within the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions,” if, as Skinner and Pocock variously argue, Machiavelli is a run-of-the-mill adherent of what they variously describe as the classical republican, neo-classical republican, or civic humanist tradition,8 these passages ought to be regarded as an embarrassment and even a scandal.

Savonarola, Erasmus, and Castiglione There were thinkers of high rank in Machiavelli’s own day who really could be accurately described as civic humanists and neo-classical republicans. One of them – Girolamo Savonarola – was certainly known to him. From his convent at San Marco, he directed affairs in Florence from 1494, when Machiavelli was 25, to 1498, shortly before the future author of The Prince became secretary to the Second Chancery of the Florentine Republic.9 We know that Machiavelli attended at least two of his sermons. The letter recording his observations suggests that he may frequently have been present,10 and there can be no doubt that the man and his achievements caught his interest. For, in both The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, he devoted considerable attention to the relationship between religion and politics and to the Dominican friar’s conduct, accomplishments, and shortcomings.11 Another such figure was Desiderius Erasmus – an almost exact contemporary of Machiavelli and a fellow humanist, who achieved fame quite early in the sixteenth century. From 1506 to 1509, Erasmus resided in Italy. For the most part, he lived in Venice. But, first, he visited Bologna; and in late October or

170  Paul A. Rahe

very early November 1506, as Pope Julius II approached that city with an army, he withdrew for a time to Florence. It is perfectly possible that Erasmus and Machiavelli met. Florence was the great centre for Renaissance humanism, but the number of humanists to be found there was not large. When visitors such as Erasmus came to town, they were apt to meet everyone of learning in the place – including the civil servant already then known far and wide within humanist circles for his endeavour, initiated on 1 January that very year, to establish at Florence a militia organized in accord with ancient Roman norms. For the most part, in the late summer and early fall, Machiavelli was abroad, travelling in the entourage of the Pope, but we know that he slipped off to Florence for a brief visit on 28 October; we know that Erasmus was there a week later; and we know that both were back in Bologna by 11 November for Julius’s triumphal entrance into the city. It is almost certain that, while he was in Florence, Erasmus became acquainted with Niccolò’s cousin, close associate, and fellow humanist Giampiero Machiavelli. Thirteen years later, after Erasmus had ushered his Formation of a Christian Prince and Thomas More’s Utopia into print, this Machiavelli arranged for their republication by Giunti in Florence. In this connection, earlier in 1519, shortly before his return to Florence from a five-year sojourn in Paris, he had paid More a visit in England and he had gone to see Erasmus in Flanders.12 There was also a third figure at this time who fit the pertinent profile. His name was Baldesar Castiglione, and he would in time earn renown as the author of The Book of the Courtier. Machiavelli is apt to have been acquainted with him as well. In the late summer and early fall of 1506, as we have seen, the future author of The Prince accompanied Julius II on his slow progress through the Romagna to Bologna, and he was in the papal entourage in September when Julius paused for a few days in Urbino, where Castiglione was a courtier in service to its duke, Guidobaldo of Montefeltro. It is possible that Castiglione was absent on this occasion – for we know that he left Urbino at some point in that month on an embassy dispatched to England. If the paths traversed by these two humanists did not cross at this time, however, it is, nonetheless, likely that they did so later. For Castiglione returned from England early in 1507 and remained in the service of Guidobaldo and of his successor Francesco Maria delle Rovere, the nephew of Julius II, well into the 1520s; and in this capacity, early on, at a time when Machiavelli was often away from home on diplomatic missions, Castiglione was also frequently out and about.13 All three of these figures achieved great fame. Thanks to the printing press, Savonarola’s sermons appeared in Florence on the day they were delivered, and they were reprinted in Lyon, circulated throughout Europe, and had a considerable impact on figures such as Martin Luther. Erasmus may have been the best-selling author of the age. His Adages went through multiple editions and sold like hot-cakes, and his Formation of a Christian Prince was widely read and influenced the upbringing of princes at European courts for centuries after its

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   171

first appearance. Castiglione’s Courtier was similarly popular. It was translated from Italian into Spanish, French, English, German, Dutch, and Latin; and, between 1528, when it was first ushered into print, and the end of the eighteenth century, it went through more than 150 editions.14 Two of these three men were educated in much the same fashion as Machiavelli, and the third, a scholastic rather than a humanist, had read nearly everything that Machiavelli had – and a great deal in the field of theology that the author of The Prince is not apt ever to have perused. They were all three as deeply interested in public policy and political philosophy as was Machiavelli. They confronted the same world, and all three could properly be described as neo-classical republicans and civic humanists – which is to say, although they approached politics from a prudential as opposed to a doctrinaire perspective and operated in a world in which monarchy was the norm, they displayed a strong preference for institutions conducive to self-government insofar as circumstances allowed, and they did so with an eye to classical norms. The ruminations of all three in this regard are predicated on a set of presumptions – already visible in the lyric poets of archaic Greece 250 years prior to Aristotle – which the peripatetic fully articulated in his Nicomachean Ethics and Politics: to wit, that the distinguishing feature of humankind is the capacity for lógos or rational speech; that this capacity enables human beings to deliberate communally concerning the advantageous; that these deliberations always eventually turn to the just and the good; that this capacity makes human beings by nature political animals; that their potential as such can only be fully realized in a civic community; that its development requires on their part a formation aimed at the inculcation of moral virtue and at the liberation of reason from enslavement to the passions; that, where a people has not been given a proper formation, republican government is neither possible nor desirable; and that, where monarchical government is the norm, everything depends on the moral and intellectual formation afforded the ruler prior to his accession to the throne and on the character of his chief advisors thereafter.15 Savonarola, who was the most outspoken of the three concerning the virtues of republican government, shared all of these presumptions, as had his medieval predecessor and fellow Thomist Ptolemy of Lucca. Thus, for example, in the sermon he delivered in Florence on the Third Sunday of Advent in 1494, he harped on man’s character as “a social animal”; he traced this to man’s possession of reason; and he spoke of monarchy in the manner of Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle, acknowledging that this form of government is “better than any other government, or the very best” when “he who rules the others is good” because it “more easily achieves unity,” and adding that, when the ruler is “wicked, there is no worse government and form of rule.”16 If there is a diversity of governments, he contends, it is due to “the diversity of men and countries,” and one source of that diversity is, precisely as Aristotle had argued, climate. In Italy, “where both the sanguine and the intellectual abound, men

172  Paul A. Rahe

do not remain patiently under a single leader who governs and rules over others and can command and not be commanded.” There, he concludes, “government by the majority is better,” and nowhere is this more true than in Florence. For such a polity to prosper, however, it must be “well regulated.” Otherwise, Savonarola insists, it will succumb to faction. And so he urges the Florentines to “think carefully about the form” of government they should adopt, and he exhorts them “to go to confession and be purified of sins” and to “attend to the common good of the city.” If, he tells them, “you will do this, your city will be glorious because in this way she will be reformed spiritually as well as temporally,” and “Florence will become richer and more powerful than she has ever been.”17 There is, of course, a Christian dimension to the argument Savonarola makes. No one in classical antiquity would have argued that the moral virtue essential for good republican government requires divine grace, and no one would have harped, as he did insistently, on “the vice of sodomy.”18 But the Greeks and the Romans would have confounded piety and patriotism in something like the way that Savonarola does, and they would have understood what he had in mind when he first warned them to “be on guard lest anyone make himself a leader or master of others in the city” and then intimated that, if they wanted to “live in liberty,” they needed to give their government a “good form” blocking the emergence of such a figure. Moreover, they would have had no quarrel with his claim that “true and joyful friendship is necessary for human affairs and preserves the virtues,” and they would have comprehended what he had in mind when he suggested that artisans be qualified for office but otherwise recommended that the constitution of Venice with its balances and checks be taken as a model, arguing that some offices should be conferred by election and others by lot. What Savonarola intimates in his sermon, he spells out in much greater detail in the Treatise on the Rule and Government of the City of Florence that he is thought to have composed in 1498, shortly before his execution. What one sees in his sermons and in his treatise is a marriage of sorts between Athens and Jerusalem.19 When he set out to write on politics, Erasmus was not situated in a self-governing commune, as Savonarola had been in the mid-to-late 1490s; and so, in what was in fact an occasional piece, he had nothing to say with regard to the proper constitution of a republic. If Savonarola’s treatise ought to be compared with Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, Erasmus’ Formation of a Christian Prince bears comparison with the Florentine’s Prince. It belonged to the same genre. It was a mirror of princes. Moreover, it was written for much the same purpose. It was a job application. Just as Machiavelli wanted to be an adviser to one of the younger Medici, so Erasmus hoped to become the chief adviser to Charles of Ghent, the future Holy Roman Emperor. And his job application, like Machiavelli’s, came to naught.20 In Erasmus’ case, it is easy to see why. He begins his treatise with a fierce and long attack on hereditary succession – the principle responsible for Charles’ inheritance of his position as duke of Burgundy and king of Castile. Where

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   173

princes are elected, he argues, attention can be paid to character – which is the only thing that counts. Where they are born to the purple, character is a roll of the dice. Given the human propensity for wickedness, he does not regard this as a reassuring bet. The only hope lies in the moral formation and education of the intellect provided the heir to the throne, which turns the tutor of the young man into the lynchpin of the regime.21 As Erasmus puts it: In the lands where a man is born, not chosen, a prince – which was the norm, according to Aristotle’s testimony, among a number of barbarous nations and is almost everywhere the case in our times – there the chief hope for securing a good prince depends upon his proper formation [institutio], which should be handled with very great care in order that what has been lost with the right to vote is made up for by the care given his education. Not surprisingly, then, Erasmus goes on to observe that “there, where there is no power to select the prince, the man responsible for the future prince’s formation must be chosen with equal care.”22 In effect, as he makes clear, the aim is to produce a philosopher king, whose example will shape the character of the people he rules.23 Erasmus is as willing as Savonarola to rehearse the argument made on behalf of monarchy by Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle. But, like the Dominican friar and his three pagan predecessors, he is acutely aware that it is not all that likely that any actual monarch will fill the bill. His preference for elective monarchy is indicative of his republican sympathies, which are also reflected in his liking for the establishment of constitutional checks on royal power. “If your prince happens to be perfect [absolutus] in all the virtues,” he writes: then monarchy pure and simple is to be preferred. But since I know this would hardly ever happen, although it is a very great matter, much to be desired, if the kingship is given to a man of middling gifts (human things being what they now are), then it would be good for the monarchy to be mixed with aristocracy and democracy so that it is moderated and diluted lest it burst forth into tyranny; and just as the elements mutually come into balance with one another, so let the commonwealth [res publica] come to rest under a mode of governance quite similar. For if the prince is well disposed to the commonwealth, he will realize that under such an arrangement his power is not constrained but buttressed. But if he is not, it is all the more useful that there be something to break and restrain the violence of one man. As one would expect, after appropriating the analyses of classical Sparta and the Roman republic as mixed regimes articulated by Plato and Polybius and

174  Paul A. Rahe

refashioning them to suit his immediate rhetorical purpose,24 Erasmus echoes Xenophon in praising it as “godlike, rather than human, to command free citizens with their consent.”25 What he fears above all else is a king who practices “Circe’s art” and turns all of his subjects “into pigs and asses” by treating “free citizens” as “slaves.”26 To this end, he goes out of his way to deflate the pretensions associated with the claim of divine right. “Let it not escape you,” he tells Charles that everything said in the Gospels or in the letters of the apostles about the obligation to endure masters, obey magistrates, honour kings, and pay tribute pertains to pagan princes, since in that age there were not yet any Christian princes. The faithful were ordered to put up with magistrates bereft of piety lest the communal order be in any way disturbed, provided only that these magistrates discharge their obligations and not command that which is impious. The pagan prince demands honour; Paul orders that honour be bestowed on him. He demands an impost; Paul orders that the impost be paid. He demands tribute; Paul orders that the tribute be handed over. For human beings who are Christian are in no way demeaned by these things, and these princes have a species of authority by right, which is proper to them. Nor are they to be provoked when the opportunity presents itself.27 And he quotes at length the passage at I Samuel 8:11–18 that the English republicans would later cite over and over again in the late 1640s and the 1650s, describing the price that the Israelites will pay for wanting to be like the other nations and to possess a king: This will be the authority by right [ius] accorded the king who shall have command over you. He will take your sons and place them in his chariots; he will make them his cavalrymen and cause them to run in front of his chariots – that he might equip himself with tribunes and centurions, with ploughmen for his fields and reapers for his crops, and with artificers to produce his weapons and chariots. Your daughters also he will turn into perfume-makers, kitchen-maids, and bread-makers for his own use. He will seize your fields as well and your vineyards and the best of your olive groves and hand them over to his servants. Of both your crops and the produce of your vineyards he will take a tithe, and he will hand it over to his eunuchs and those who serve him. Your servants and hand-maids also and the best of your young men as well as your asses he will seize and put to work for himself. From your herds also he will take a tithe, and you yourselves shall be his servants. And, on that day, you will cry out regarding the king you chose for yourselves, and to you the Lord will not listen.28

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   175

The message to future generations is clear. Hereditary monarchy is an evil to be eliminated. In the meantime, education and the formation of character are the only remedies. Erasmus was not alone in his view. Something of the sort may have been the tacit supposition of the humanists of Machiavelli’s day. Baldesar Castiglione intimates the same conclusion. He is merely gentler in its presentation. The Book of the Courtier is a dialogue set at the court of Urbino in early March 1507 – in the immediate aftermath of Julius II’s sojourn there while en route back to Rome from Bologna. Castiglione outlined the book in 1508; and the first three full drafts were produced between 1513 and 1516 – in a span of years that overlapped almost in its entirety the period in which Machiavelli worked on and revised The Prince. 29 The dialogue purports to relate an elegant, playful conversation that took place over a series of evenings in Castiglione’s absence – exploring the question of the character of the perfect courtier. In the first few centuries that followed, it was widely celebrated and even studied as a guidebook to courtly deportment; and other authors treated it as such, publishing summaries that reduced the recommendations of Castiglione’s interlocutors to a set of rules for the gentlemen and ladies of the various European courts. 30 There is, however, much more to the dialogue than this. Although the conversation depicted in it is light-hearted, there is something awkward about it – something insidious, ominous, and dark. For there is an unspoken premise – something that cannot openly be said in front of Guidobaldo’s wife – which suggests on the part of the ideal courtier described a posture of elegant servility. His perfection and that attributed to his counterpart, the perfect lady of the court, consists for the most part in acquiring the qualities most apt to please the prince. Although no one at Urbino would be so impolite as to baldly state the point, one is invited to recognize that the descendants of Europe’s warrior aristocracy have been reduced to the status of well-born, well-turned-out toadies and that in their world, everything turns on the character of the prince into whose service they have entered – which is not apt to be good. 31 It is only in the fourth book – when Ottaviano Fregoso, the future Doge of Genoa, takes up the theme – that there is any hint that the courtier might find a way to retain his dignity.32 In the beginning, Ottaviano pulls no punches. There is, he asserts, only one source of redemption – only one course of action that would justify the supreme effort to please. Ottaviano begins by distinguishing intrinsic goods – such as “temperance, fortitude, health, and all the virtues that bring tranquillity of mind” – from instrumental goods – such as “law, liberality, riches, and other like things.” The perfect courtier, as described by Count Ludovico da Canossa and by Ottaviano’s brother Federico, he categorizes as an instrumental good “worthy of praise

176  Paul A. Rahe

not, however, simply and in himself but in regard to the end to which he is directed.” As he puts it: if by being of noble birth, graceful, charming, an expert in so many exercises the Courtier were to bring forth no other fruit than to be what he is, I should not judge it right for a man to devote so much study and labor to acquiring this perfection of Courtiership as anyone must do who wishes to acquire it. Nay, I should say that many of those accomplishments that have been attributed to him (such as dancing, merrymaking, singing, and playing) were frivolities and vanities and, in many of any rank, deserving of blame rather than praise; for these elegances of dress, devices, mottoes, and other such things as pertain to women and love . . . often serve merely to make spirits effeminate, to corrupt youth, and to lead it to a dissolute life; whence it comes about that the Italian name is reduced to opprobrium, and there are but few who dare, I will not say to die, but even to risk any danger. There can be, he then adds, only one thing that could justify such pursuits – which is that they be directed to a particular, praiseworthy end by the courtier: so to win for himself, by means of the accomplishments ascribed to him by these gentlemen, the favor and mind of the prince whom he serves that he may be able to tell him, and always will tell him, the truth about everything he needs to know, without fear or risk of displeasing him; and that when he sees the mind of his prince inclined to a wrong action, he may dare to oppose him and in a gentle manner avail himself of the favor acquired by his good accomplishments, so as to dissuade him of every evil intent and bring him to the path of virtue.33 With great emphasis, Erasmus in The Formation of a Christian Prince had warned of the danger attendant within monarchy on the flattery practiced by courtiers.34 Ottaviano does the same. Princes, he says, are prone to “ignorance and self-conceit.” The flattery so common in courts merely reinforces this. And, from this: it results that, besides never hearing the truth about anything at all, princes are made drunk by the great license that rule gives; and by a profusion of delights are submerged in pleasures and deceive themselves so and have their minds so corrupted – seeing themselves always obeyed and almost adored with so much reverence and praise, without ever the least contradiction, let alone censure – that from this ignorance they pass to an extreme self-conceit, so that then they become intolerant of any advice or opinion from others.

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   177

Then, allowing themselves to be transported by self-conceit, they become arrogant, and with imperious countenance and stern manner, with pompous dress, gold, and gems, and by letting themselves be seen almost never in public, they think to gain authority among men and to be held almost as gods.35 Like Erasmus, Ottaviano is a barely concealed republican. The exemplary statesmen he mentions were none of them hereditary princes. All were republican magistrates singled out for attention by Plutarch: Cimon of Athens, Scipio and Lucullus of Rome, Epaminondas of Thebes, and even the outlier Agesilaus of Sparta, who was installed on the Eurypontid throne by the votes of his fellow citizens. These men may well have had defects, but they also had virtues with which to compensate for their faults. The same cannot be said, Ottaviano observes, for “the princes of today.” They are so corrupted by evil customs and by ignorance and a false esteem of themselves, and since it is so difficult to show the truth and lead them to virtue, and since men seek to gain their favor by means of lies and flatteries and such vicious ways, the perfect courtier faces an exceedingly difficult task – which he can accomplish only if he has all of the pleasing qualities hitherto, in the first three books of the dialogue, attributed to him. Only, then, by way of “beguiling” the prince “with salutary deception, like shrewd doctors who often spread the edge of the cup with some sweet cordial when they wish to give a bitter-tasting medicine to sick and over-delicate children,” can he succeed.36 Like Savonarola and Erasmus, Ottaviano is ready to concede that “there is no good more universally beneficial than a good prince,” but he adds that there is no “evil more universally pernicious than a bad prince” – and he makes it clear, as we have seen, that bad princes are far more common than good ones.37 The task he assigns the courtier is the task Erasmus assigned the tutor. As his colleague Cesare Gonzaga shrewdly observes, Ottaviano’s perfect courtier is less a courtier than “a good schoolmaster.”38 He must look to the moral and intellectual formation of the prince. And so, like Plato’s Republic, the dialogue turns into a disquisition on education aimed at the production of a philosopher king.39 At the end of this disquisition, however, Ottaviano comes down from the heights, and he makes the same move that Erasmus made in The Formation of a Christian Prince. He pushes in the direction of the mixed regime described by Plato and Polybius. Among the things he proposes that a prince be taught is that he should choose from among his subjects a number of the noblest and wisest gentlemen, with whom to consult on everything, and that he

178  Paul A. Rahe

should act toward them in such a way as to show them all that he wished to know the truth in everything and that he detested all falsehood. And besides such a council of nobles, I should advise that from among the people other men of lower station be chosen who would constitute a popular council to confer with the council of nobles concerning the affairs of the city, both public and private. This polity, he tellingly adds, “would have the form of the three good kinds of government, which are monarchy, optimates, and people.”40

Machiavelli’s Break with the Humanist Consensus If this were a chapter devoted solely to The Book of the Courtier, there would be much more to be said, for the Duchess singles out Ottaviano himself as the perfect courtier and intimates that he himself would, if fortune favoured him, be the perfect prince; Giuliano de Medici, the man for whom Machiavelli’s Prince was originally composed, draws attention to the problematic fact that Ottaviano’s courtier exceeds in virtue his prince; and Ottaviano himself singles out Plato and Aristotle as models for the perfect courtier.41 Given the role that he attributes to “salutary deception,” we are also left to wonder whether, in Ottaviano’s scheme, it is the prince who rules ... or the perfect courtier.42 But I have neither the time nor the space for the further exploration of these themes in this venue. What I can say is this. Although Savonarola, Erasmus, and Castiglione are differently situated, address different audiences, and for these reasons have somewhat different things to say, they speak the same language, they make many of the same arguments, and they agree on the fundamentals – to wit, that it is character that matters most. All three presume that reason tends to be enslaved to the passions. All three presume that, with a proper moral formation, reason can be liberated from the passions. These presumptions they share with the humanist mainstream. But these three take one additional step, following through on the logic implicit in their debt to Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and the other republican writers of the classical age – where other humanists, understandably intent on accommodating the predilections of the princes who employed them, had prudently stopped short.43 Although all three acknowledge that monarchy would be the best of regimes if the monarch were good, they are sharply critical of the monarchies actually in existence in their own times – and the two who directly address the world of the court strongly favour mixed government in a manner suggestive of a preference for republicanism on the Spartan and Roman model. One could, of course, dismiss the writings of these men as quasi-utopian, literary efforts. But there is evidence that the views they articulate were widely – even generally – shared by members of the political class in Machiavelli’s

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   179

Florence. More than 60 years ago, Felix Gilbert came across a treasure trove of precious documents – the protocols of the Consulte e Pratiche held in F lorence in the years of republican government: between 1494 and 1512. These meetings, called by the Gonfaloniere, the Ten of the Balià, or the Council of Eighty, included select Florentines who had been summoned to discuss matters of public importance and proffer advice. The subjects discussed were always practical. Generally, they concerned foreign affairs. Sometimes, however, the focus was domestic. What is striking is that the members of these consultative bodies more often than not spoke the language of Savonarola, Erasmus, and Castiglione. They touched on necessity and fortune. They sometimes contemplated brutal conduct. But in general they thought in Aristotelian and Christian terms.44 Machiavelli was intimately familiar with these discussions. On occasion, in his capacity as a civil servant in the years stretching from 1498 to 1512, he was in attendance at these meetings. In fact, as Gilbert pointed out long ago, some of the notes taken at these gatherings and preserved as protocols in the Florentine archives are in his hand, and even more are in the hand of his close friend and chief assistant Biagio Buonaccorsi. These records were not only there for Machiavelli to consult. He was expected to do so, and this he surely did. For a man in his position had to keep close tabs on elite opinion. It is, then, all the more striking that the outlook Machiavelli evidenced and the language he deployed in the years after he was removed from his post – in, for example, The Prince, in his Discourses on Livy, and in On the Art of War – diverge sharply not only from the outlook and language found in the writings of Savonarola, Erasmus, and Castiglione but also from the outlook displayed and the language employed by the notables in Florence who attended the Consulte e Pratiche.45 Savonarola and the Florentines whom the magistrates of the republic in and after his time consulted were classical republicans of a sort. They were interested in promoting concord and solidarity within the Florentine republic, and they took it for granted that it was the moral character of the people that made republicanism possible. Machiavelli had nothing to say on either subject. Instead, in his Discourses on Livy, he focused his attention on institutions; and, in keeping with his claim to have followed a path hitherto untrodden by anyone, he was the first to assert that, in a republic, a legislator must presume all men rogues and the first to suggest that conflict between the many and the few, when properly channelled, is the best means for sustaining republican government and for making such a polity prosper.46 Erasmus and Castiglione harboured no illusions about the likely character of monarchical government. Like Plato and Aristotle, they could wax rhetorical in praise of government by the one best man. But they both indicated that, in monarchies, one would nearly always have to settle for someone much less impressive, and they made it clear that the worst form of government was a monarchy ruled by a bad man. With this prospect in mind, they both intimated

180  Paul A. Rahe

that mixed government was preferable, and Erasmus followed through on the logic articulated both in his Formation of a Christian Prince and in Castiglione’s Courtier by suggesting that making the prince a republican magistrate by providing for his election would be a marked improvement. If Castiglione’s Ottaviano Fregoso, who would someday himself be an elective prince, balked; if he did not in similar fashion openly challenge the hereditary principle, it was because the demands of dramatic verisimilitude ruled this out: it would have been inconsistent with his status as a gentleman servitor to make such an argument in the presence of the duchess of Urbino and the duke’s presumptive heir. In practice, Erasmus and Castiglione fell back on the one practical expedient that was available: both recommended schooling prospective monarchs in the moral and intellectual virtues, and both intimated that a humanist, informed by the study of classical literature and the Christian faith, might actually rule through a monarch whom he had schooled. The popularity achieved by Erasmus’ treatise and Castiglione’s dialogue tells us much about the ethos of the time. They spoke the language dominant throughout Europe in and for a long time after the Renaissance. Machiavelli did not.47 In The Prince, no less than in his Discourses on Livy, the Florentine was as good as his word. There, too, he ostentatiously departed “from the orders of others,” and he did so in the most radical way possible – first, by dismissing the policies prescribed by the likes of Savonarola, Erasmus, Castiglione, and the attendees at Florence’s Consulte e Pratiche as a product of “imagination” allowed to run amok; and, then, by elucidating as an alternative what he called “the effectual truth of the matter.” Along the way, he repudiated the highmindedness of these men; and, in Chapter 15 of The Prince, he took up the question of moral virtue and vice, parodied the accounts presented by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics and Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, and debunked moral distinctions as such, urging that a prince treat “subjects and friends” in the way that Cicero thought it proper to treat none but public enemies. When he listed the contrasting qualities generally praised and blamed as virtues and vices, he pointedly left out justice and injustice; he oscillated back and forth between listing putative virtues first and vices second and reversing the order; and he concluded the chapter by indicating that he was speaking only of what appeared to be virtues and what appeared to be vices and by intimating that these were nothing more than postures, which a prince should adopt when and as it suited his interests. The only genuine virtue – the only quality that Machiavelli thought a counsellor should teach his prince – was the combination of ruthlessness and cunning, of force and of fraud, that, in the old movies, American gangsters called moxie.48 In sum, when one reads Machiavelli “in context,” he stands out – in sharp contrast with his contemporaries – as an original.49 It is only when one has forgotten the classical and Christian context within which he wrote and when one has resolutely averted one’s gaze from the moral horizon

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   181

within which actual classical thought and practice were articulated that, by a highly selective reading of The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, one can attempt to transmogrify the author of these two seminal works into a moralist and assimilate him to the exponents of imaginary republics and principalities, as scholars even now are wont to do. 50 When reading the secondary literature on Machiavelli, one would be well-advised to remember that it was with the Florentine in mind that Europeans subsequently dubbed Satan “Old Nick.”51

Notes 1 See, for example, Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), iii. I am indebted to James Hankins for making available to me pre-publication copies of the articles and book chapters of his that I cite below. All of these have been reprinted, some in expanded form, in James Hankins, Virtue Politics, Soulcraft, and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). 2 For an exemplary study along such lines, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). One could argue that Pocock is the only genuinely successful practitioner of the method that he and the other adherents of the Cambridge School espouse: see J. G. A. Pocock, “Quentin Skinner: The History of Politics and the Politics of History,” Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 532–50. 3 Paul A. Rahe, “Review of: Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),” The Historical Journal 49, no. 2 ( June, 2006): 635–36. 4 Compare J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975) with Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 5 Compare Cary J. Nederman, “Rhetoric, Reason, and Republic: Republicanisms – Ancient, Medieval, and Modern,” in Renaissance Civic Humanism, 247–69, with Paul A. Rahe, “Situating Machiavelli,” in ibid., 270–308 (esp. 286–303). 6 For a previous endeavour along similar lines, see J. H. Hexter, “The Predatory and the Utopian Vision: Machiavelli and More” and “The Predatory, the Utopian, and the Constitutional Vision: Machiavelli, More, and Claude de Seyssel,” in The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation: More, Machiavelli, and Seyssel (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 178–230. I am grateful to Marcia Colish for reminding me of ­Hexter’s effort. 7 Compare Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, c. 15, in Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1971), 280, with Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, 1 Praefatio, in ibid., 76, which should be read in light of Machiavelli, Il principe, c. 6, in ibid., 264–65. 8 Compare Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 156–218, with Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 1: 113–89, and Machiavelli (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981). 9 The best recent account is Lauro Martines, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 10 Letter to Ricciardo Becchi (March 9, 1498), in Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, 1010–12.

182  Paul A. Rahe





Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   183





­











184  Paul A. Rahe











Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   185

before in the South-Carolina Gazette. Whether the devil’s moniker is so derived is a matter of controversy: compare with Ernst Leisi, “On the Trail of Old Nick,” in The History and the Dialects of English: Festschrift for Eduard Kolb, ed. Andreas Fischer (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1989), 53–57.

Bibliography Albury, W. Randall. Castiglione’s Allegory: Veiled Policy in The Book of the Courtier (1528). Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Aristotle. Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, edited by I. Bywater. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. ———. Aristotelis Politica, edited by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore. New York: Modern Library, 1954. Burke, H. R. “Audience and Intention in Machiavelli’s The Prince and Erasmus’ Education of a Christian Prince.” Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 4 (1984): 84–93. Burke, Peter. The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano. College Station, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995. Butler, Samuel. Hudibras, edited by John Wilders. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Castiglione, Baldesar. Il Libro del Cortegiano, edited by Giulio Preti. Turin: Giulio ­Einaudi, 1960. ———. The Book of the Courtier, edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles S. Singleton. New York: Norton, 2002. Connell, William J. “Machiavelli’s Utopia.” Times Literary Supplement no. 5931 (December 2, 2016): 15–17. Cox, Richard H. “Aristotle and Machiavelli on Liberality.” In The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, edited by Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Soffer, 125–47. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987. Erasmus, Desiderius. Institutio principis christiani. In Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata, edited by O. Herdingin. IV:1. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1969. Fachard, Denis, ed. Consulte e pratiche della Repubblica fiorentina, 1495–1497. Geneva: Droz, 2002. ———, ed. Consulte e pratiche della Repubblica fiorentina, 1498–1505. Geneva: Droz, 1993. ———, ed. Consulte e pratiche: 1505–1512. Geneva: Droz, 1988. Gilbert, Felix. “Florentine Political Assumptions in the Period of Savonarola and Soderini.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20, no. 3/4 ( July–December 1957): 187–214. Hankins, James. “Europe’s First Democrat? Cyriac of Ancona and Book 6 of Polybius.” In For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, edited by Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing, 2 vols. 2: 692–710. Leiden: Brill, 2016. ———. “Machiavelli, Civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue.” Italian Culture 32, no. 2 (September 2014): 98–109. ———, ed. Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “The Virtue Politics of the Italian Humanists.” In Beyond Reception: Renaissance Humanism and the Transformation of Classical Antiquity, edited by Patrick Baker, Johannes Helmrath, and Craig Kallendorf, 95–114. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.

186  Paul A. Rahe

———. Virtue Politics, Soulcraft, and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Herodotus. Herodoti Historiae, edited by Carolus Hude. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908. Hexter, J. H. The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation: More, Machiavelli, and Seyssel. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Isocrates. Isocratis Orationes, edited by Gustav Eduard Benseler and Friedrich Blass. Leipzig: Teubner, 1927. Jardine, Lisa. “Introduction.” In Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, edited by Lisa Jardine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Javitch, Daniel. “Il Cortegiano and the Constraints of Despotism.” In Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles S. Singleton, 319–28. New York: Norton, 2002. ———. Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. Leisi, Ernst. “On the Trail of Old Nick.” In The History and the Dialects of English: Festschrift for Eduard Kolb, edited by Andreas Fischer, 53–57. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1989. Lovett, Frank. “The Path of the Courtier: Castiglione, Machiavelli, and the Loss of Republican Liberty.” Review of Politics 74, no. 4 (October 2012): 589–605. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. In Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, edited by Mario Martelli. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1971. ———. Il principe. In Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, edited by Mario Martelli. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1971. [Mackenzie, John.] “A Letter to the People” (1769). In The Letters of Freeman, etc.: Essays on the Nonimportation Movement in South Carolina, Collected by William Henry Drayton, edited by Robert M. Weir. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1977. Martines, Lauro. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. McCormick, John P. Machiavellian Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Menut, Albert D. “Castiglione and the Nicomachean Ethics.” PMLA 58, no. 2 ( June, 1943): 309–21. Nederman, Cary J. “Polybius as Monarchist? Receptions of Histories VI before Machiavelli.” History of Political Thought 37, no. 3 (2016): 461–79. ———. “Rhetoric, Reason, and Republic: Republicanisms – Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.” In Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited by James Hankin, 247–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Nederman, Cary J., and Mary Elizabeth Sullivan, “The Polybian Moment: The Transformation of Republican Thought from Ptolemy of Lucca to Machiavelli.” The European Legacy 17, no. 7 (2012): 867–81. Orwin, Clifford. “Machiavelli’s Unchristian Charity.” American Political Science Review 72, no. 4 (1978): 1217–28. Pedullà, Gabriel. Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Plato. Laws in Platonis Opera, edited by Ioannes Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–07. ———. Republic in Platonis Opera, edited by Ioannes Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–07.

Classical Republicanism in the Age of Machiavelli   187

Pocock, J. G. A. “Quentin Skinner: The History of Politics and the Politics of History.” Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 532–50. ———. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. ———. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Polybius. Polybii Historiae, edited by Theodor Büttner Wobst. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009. Ptolemy of Lucca. On the Government of Rulers/De regimine principum: With Portions Attributed to Thomas Aquinas, edited and translated by James M. Blythe. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Quondam, Amedeo. “On the Genesis of the Book of the Courtier.” In Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles S. Singleton, 283–95. New York: Norton, 2002. Rahe, Paul A. Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. “Machiavelli and the Modern Tyrant.” In Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, edited by David C. Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Camila Vergara, 207–31. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017. ———. Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution, 2 vols. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. ———. “Review of: Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.” The Historical Journal 49, no. 2 ( June, 2006): 635–36. ———. “Situating Machiavelli.” In Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited by James Hankin, 270–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “The Primacy of Politics in Classical Greece.” The American Historical Review 89, no. 2 (April, 1984): 265–93. Rebhorn, Wayne. “Ottaviano’s Interruption: Book IV and the Problem of Unity in Il Libro del Cortegiano.” MLN 87, no. 1 ( January 1972): 37–59. Ryan, Lawrence V. “Book IV of Castiglione’s Courtier – Climax or Afterthought?” Studies in the Renaissance 19 (1972): 156–79. Savonarola, Girolamo. “Aggeus, Sermon XIII.” In Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola, Religion and Politics, 1490–93, edited and translated by Anne Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. ———. Treatise on the Rule and Government of the City of Florence. In Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola, Religion and Politics, 1490–93, edited and translated by Anne Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. ———. “Machiavelli and the Misunderstanding of Princely Virtù.” In Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, edited by David C. Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Camila Vergara, 139–63. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017. ———. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Strauss, Leo. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936. ———. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958.

188  Paul A. Rahe

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, edited by John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón. Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012. Turchetti, Mario. “Introduction: Erasme et la formation du prince chrétien.” In Erasme de Rotterdam, La Formation du prince chrétien/Institutio principis christiania, edited and translated by Mario Turchetti. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015. Xenophon, Oeconomicus in Xenophontis Opera omnia, edited by E. C. Marchant. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–20. Zuckert, Catherine H. Machiavelli’s Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

10 A MEDIEVAL SCHOLASTIC JOB DESCRIPTION Diversi sed non adversi Marcia L. Colish

One notable achievement of Cary Nederman, part of the ongoing effort to inter the view of the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages, is his work on the continuities between medieval and post-medieval political and legal thought.1 Another salient contribution has been his critique of a quite different argument for medieval continuity, associated primarily with the work of Robert I. Moore, one that accents its darkness: Medieval Europe is pilloried as a persecuting society, increasingly obsessed with defining and policing the borders of mainstream Christianity and with penalizing non-conforming Others, even to the point of inventing heresies and prompting authorial self-censorship.2 Against this view, Nederman and the scholars he has fostered have shown that the tolerance of religious diversity was a medieval reality. While confirming that heresy indeed existed, as well as dissent attacked as heresy, they have documented the multi-directional ways in which members of different religious groups cooperated, as well as the varied social, economic, artistic, intellectual, and political situations that occasioned them. At the same time, Nederman has rightly noted that we should not understand medieval religious tolerance anachronistically; it was situational, not seen as a value in its own right. Nederman’s approach to this subject has had a ripple-effect, reinforcing what has now become a mainstream position.3 Supplementing that position, this chapter treats thinkers who have not usually been placed under the tolerance umbrella, the very scholastics charged by medieval society with formulating mainstream Christianity. Rather than examining their attitude toward dissenting Others, it focuses on their attitude toward each other. These scholastics operated, and regarded each other, as members of the orthodox Christian consensus. Aware that the Christian tradition had never been monolithic, they did not expect or require doctrinal DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-14

190  Marcia L. Colish

uniformity in their colleagues. Within the guild, intellectual disagreement was neither abnormal nor abhorrent. Diversity was the scholastics’ condition of labour, institutionalized at the universities. This scholastic tolerance of theological diversity, even in the case of fundamental doctrines, is a distinctive medieval value, a value not in the modern theological comfort zone. Summed up by the scholastics’ maxim diversi sed non adversi,4 it will be illustrated by examples drawn from their debates on the Eucharist and baptism. Of these two doctrines, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist received far more medieval discussion, reflected as well in the extensive secondary scholarship which the following account will summarize. Major philosophical problems were attached to explaining how Christ was corporally present in the Eucharist. These difficulties were by no means allayed by the decree of Lateran IV in 1215 describing this belief as transubstantiation. Prior to the reception of Aristotle, there was no agreement on what the term substantia denoted. Even after university curricula guaranteed that all scholastic theologians had a command of Aristotle, there was no agreement on which aspect of his thought, or of post-Aristotelian thought, was best harnessed to the task of explaining what transubstantiation actually meant. Roma had locuta but the causa was anything but finita. Albeit with increasing sophistication, the three understandings of the Real Presence that prevailed before 1215 continued to be defended by thinkers who all professed this doctrine but disputed on how to understand it.5 One group argued for coinherence or remanescence. They held that both bread and wine and the resurrected body of Christ are present in the consecrated elements on the altar. The substance of bread and wine has to remain, at least in part, they argued, since that substance is needed to subtend the elements’ perceptible accidents of bread and wine. But how can two corporal entities occupy the same space at the same time? A second group taught that, at the consecration, the bread and wine are annihilated and entirely replaced by the resurrected body of Christ. But if so, in what do the perceptible accidents of bread and wine inhere, since bread and wine themselves no longer exist on the altar? The third group held that the consecration does not annihilate the substance of bread and wine but changes it into the substance of Christ’s resurrected body. This third group wrestled with the same question as those in the annihilation school: How can accidents of bread and wine inhere in an entity that no longer possesses the subtending substance of bread and wine? Exponents of all three arguments crossed over other doctrinal allegiances. In addition to voicing these alternative positions, they disagreed on whether to examine the problem from the perspective of the elements or from that of Christ’s corporal presence on the altar.6 They applied different philosophical rationales to support their answers and to refute their opponents. In Stephen Lahey’s phrase, this topic became “the quantum physics of the age.” 7 In other accounts, the issues joined involved metaphysics and the concept of relation, as

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   191

well as the physics of matter and what individuates material beings. Scholastics picked and chose among Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian principles to defend their desired conclusions. Perhaps most striking are the philosophical innovations to which their Eucharistic debates appealed. One case in point is the doctrine of sine qua non causation. In addition to the four standard Aristotelian causes—formal, material, efficient and final—scholastics added this new cause, deemed to be needed as well in order to make anything happen, an idea they transferred from economic theory to Eucharistic theology.8 For other scholastics, the key to the transubstantiation problem lay in the logic, semantics, and speculative grammar that were the most original and rapidly developing fields of scholastic thought. Thinkers drawing on this resource analysed the semiotics of the celebrant’s formula of consecration, Hoc est enim corpus meum, or even just its first word, Hoc. For some scholars, this latter strategy bespeaks a medieval anticipation of modern speech-act theory avant la lettre.9 Two further remarks on the transubstantiation debates are worth making. The one leading scholastic who stepped over the line and was condemned for denying the Real Presence was John Wycliff. While the judgement against him reflects his radicalization by the outbreak of the Great Schism in 1378 and by political upheavals in his native England, it is now recognized that Wycliff’s position on the Eucharist and the realist metaphysics that undergirds it were largely consistent with what some orthodox scholastics had been saying for some time.10 Finally, the unresolved state of play on the three basic scholastic views of transubstantiation, reproduced by the canon lawyers, did not prevent devotion to the Real Presence in the Eucharist from flourishing in alternate ways in medieval religious culture, percolating up as well as trickling down. We can see this in the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi in 1264, as Dominicans and official liturgists of the church responded to the visionary canoness Juliana of Saint-Cornillon, and as scholastics, prelates, and authors of religious drama gave serious support, or not, to bleeding host miracles.11 These indices of flexibility can be set side by side with the scholastics’ agreement to disagree on transubstantiation. In the magisterial words of Gary Macy, The history of theology at its best is a history of toleration and diversity, and even such disputed issues as the Real Presence have a tradition of more breadth than a narrow reading of post-Reformation theology would lead one to believe.12 We encounter rather different strategies of scholastic argument in our second case study, drawn from disagreements on baptism. The theme flagged here will be the debates on baptism by desire. This controversy was fuelled not by philosophical issues but by conflicting biblical and patristic authorities. Where transubstantiation continued to excite controversy up through the end of the

192  Marcia L. Colish

Middle Ages, the main arguments on baptism by desire were in place by the end of the twelfth century and attracted few new ideas after 1300. Baptism was not an area in which incipient theologians of the later Middle Ages chose to make their mark or to display their command of cutting-edge thought. Still, the debate on baptism by desire has its own drama. It was universally agreed by orthodox Christians that baptism is necessary for salvation. So strong was this conviction that, even in lands under papal interdict, where all other Christian rites were suspended, infant baptism was permitted.13 But, that said, in what did a valid baptism consist? Could one be validly baptized without passing through the font? This topic has not received the attention that medievalists have lavished on the period’s Eucharistic thought and what follows draws largely on this reporter’s own recent research. What kick-started the debates on baptism by desire was a text by Ambrose of Milan, who faced a tricky situation when he had to deliver the funeral oration on Valentinian II in 392. Found dead at the age of 21, whether by suicide or an assassin’s hand, the emperor had been raised by a mother who rejected Nicene Christology. Although Valentinian never intimated his own position, Ambrose confidently asserts that he had embraced the true faith although circumstances had impeded his path to the font. But, happily, Christ himself has declared that Valentinian was baptized by desire; he was granted the grace he had truly desired and requested.14 A second authority to weigh in, and with far less assurance than Ambrose, was Augustine of Hippo. His shifting and inconsistent positions on this topic provided scholastics with one of their favourite ploys: citing the Augustine they agreed with against the Augustine they rejected. In his early works, Augustine supports baptism by desire, so long as a candidate lacks access to the font and does not reject it out of contempt for religion. He bases this concession on two biblical cases, the good thief on the cross received by Christ in person (Luke 23:40–43) and the centurion Cornelius, directly converted and accepted by the Holy Spirit, as St. Peter acknowledges (Acts 10:1–44). In his later anti-Pelagian works, however, Augustine’s insistence on the absolute necessity of ritual baptism inspires him to back off, arguing—with no evidence—that the thief had been baptized before his crucifixion.15 By the end of the fifth century, two incompatible patristic views had been established, with the recipient’s faith and intention received by a benevolent God squaring off against the impossibility of salvation absent the font, whatever the candidate’s intentions and virtues, except for the martyrs’ baptism by blood.16 In the post-patristic period, some theologians and canonists supported baptism by desire, the canonists adding that the Cornelius story had important institutional implications: Even persons truly baptized by desire should present themselves to a priest for ritual confirmation of the fact, as Cornelius had presented himself to St. Peter.17 A new and influential way of framing this issue emerged by the early twelfth century in the school of Anselm of Laon. We

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   193

can distinguish between the sacramentum, the baptismal ritual and its physical medium, and the res sacramenti, the grace it conveys. Both are present in a standard ritual baptism. But some people, like the early Augustinian good thief, can receive the res sacramenti without the sacramentum. As for Cornelius, all that St. Peter did was to apply the sacramentum after the fact; it was not strictly needed and did not alter the status God had already granted to Cornelius.18 Starting with Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux and enlisting a rollcall of scholastics including Hugh of Saint-Victor, Robert Pullen, the followers of Gilbert of Poitiers, the author of the Summa sententiarum, Roland of Bologna, and Peter Lombard and his followers up through Peter the Chanter and Prepositinus of Cremona, Ambrose entered the fray as the industrial-strength authority defending baptism by desire, supplemented by arguments decommissioning the late Augustine’s position. Some of these thinkers enlarged the number of valid reasons why a candidate might not be able to receive the rite.19 Some of them folded another disagreement into the debate, the question of when Christ had instituted ritual baptism, and not always to their own advantage. Did that institution occur at Christ’s own baptism related by all the gospels (Matthew 3:13–16, Mark 1:9–11, Luke 3:21–22, John 1:30–33)? Was ritual baptism already an option when Christ adjured Nicodemus to receive it ( John 3:3–5)? Or only when the resurrected Christ commissioned his apostles (Matthew 28:19)? This third alternative offers the most support to the good thief, but not all his twelfth-century partisans adopt it.20 We also find spirited twelfth-century opponents of baptism by desire, who invoke the anti-Pelagian Augustine, along with institutional considerations and arguments designed to decommission Ambrose. Master Simon (c. 1140/50), urging that ritual baptism was available when Christ told Nicodemus to receive it, adds that the church should be extremely wary of waiving that requirement except for martyrs. True, we can set no limits on God’s saving power. And yes, we should acknowledge Augustine’s early concessions to the good thief and Cornelius. But Simon then cites a new counter-authority, Ezekiel 33:12: No one should trust in his own righteousness rather than the law of the Lord, that is, the law of the church. Prudence counsels that all baptizands confirm their inner intentions by presenting themselves at the font. No one not ritually baptized should be considered a member of the Christian fold. The special graces granted to the good thief and Cornelius set no precedent for current practice; the privileges of individuals do not make a general law.21 Simon’s contemporary, the author of the Sententiae divinitatis (1138/41), takes the negative case still farther. No one, not even the predestined, can be saved without ritual baptism. He treats the martyr exception as historically irrelevant. Baptism by blood worked in the ecclesia primitiva, but nowadays Christians are no longer a persecuted minority. The good thief was indeed granted heavenly glory, but he was sui generis. His privilege was, and is, unique. As biblical history relates, no one else during Christ’s lifetime shared it. Combining literary with

194  Marcia L. Colish

historical criticism, the author turns his guns against Ambrose. Ambrose’s text was a funeral oration, he observes, a genre in which one does not speak ill of the dead. Ambrose’s goal was to console the mourners, not to state a global principle. He should thus be stricken from the list of acceptable authorities.22 That this position made its mark beyond the schools can be seen in the Two Cities of Otto of Freising. Otto concurs with the historical, literary, and institutional positions of these two authors. He concludes that, while all things are possible for God, it is not possible for him, as a sitting bishop, to accept baptism by desire.23 At the turn of the thirteenth century, Alan of Lille sums up the parameters of the debate in a formula that later scholastics adopt. There are three viable baptismal options: fluminis, flaminis, and sanguinis, that is, ritual baptism, baptism by desire, and baptism by blood.24 These options continued to be contested by scholastics, drawing on twelfth-century arguments, although they dropped those based on historical and literary criticism. The main thirteenth-century innovation was to add the idea of permanent baptismal character to the mix. Since scholastics at this time did not agree on whether all baptizands receive it, or even on what it actually is and does, this move did not advance the debate. While, by c. 1300, more scholastics supported baptism by desire than opposed it, by that date, the matter had been effectively put on hold rather than resolved.25 Indeed, there was no official ruling until the Roman Catechism of 1563 asserted the sacramentality of baptism by desire, hedged in by stipulations that speak to the concerns of early modern Catholicism: Candidates must be possessed of perfect reason. They must willingly seek the font, be fully instructed, be informed by true intention, sincere faith, and commitment to embrace the Christian life, and be prevented from receiving the rite through no fault of their own.26 The catechism elides the fact that this baptismal doctrine had ever been in contention, as is also the case with the early modern triumph of the substantial change version of transubstantiation. This narrowing of the Catholic consensus on the sacraments we have examined is, however, a post-medieval development. Even within the limits of the two examples discussed in this chapter, we can appreciate its departure from the medieval scholastics’ toleration of doctrinal diversity. Within the academic guild, this tolerance was more than a mental attitude. It was also a structural reality of medieval university life. In each university faculty, including the high-risk disciplines of theology and canon law, there were several chairs occupied by several masters. Each taught his own interpretation of the same material in opposition to the positions of contemporary colleagues, as well as those of past authorities with whom he disagreed. No authority was too august to be exempt from criticism. This argumentative mode of teaching and scholarship was institutionalized and was normal, both in the classroom and in the scholastics’ public disputations. The debates that framed university teaching and disputation were not free-for-alls. They had acknowledged rules of the road designed to guarantee civility and collegiality.27

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   195

To be sure, the scholastic toleration of theological diversity had limits. ­ rofessional in-fighting and odium philosophicum could and did derail some acaP demic careers, or shifted the action from one academic centre to another. But this was rarely the case. For one thing, scholastic disputations often treated topics that were, at the time, debatable. If his faculty peers judged that an individual’s teachings were too off-beat, the lapse was usually treated as a misdemeanour, easily rectifiable without subsequent effect on his later teaching activity or the continuing influence of his writings. For another, some theologians sought to shift the focus to jurisdictional issues, a ploy designed to finesse the substance of suspect positions. In some high-profile cases, the accused was convicted not of heterodoxy but of contumacy or perjury, for failing to show up when cited to appear at a hearing or for violating his oaths. Given the overall scholastic use of authorities, it is no surprise to find that theologians backstopped positions they were going to defend anyhow with condemnations of the theses in question, while those planning to defend the opposite view criticized and rejected them. It has been argued that the outcome of these developments was simply the elaboration of the mechanisms of academic censorship themselves. But how these mechanisms worked, and who had the authority to exercise them, and over whom, itself generated scholarly debate, both then and by scholars now. However that issue may be resolved, efforts at censorship generally had little effect in redirecting the course of medieval thought.28 We can conclude, then, that for medieval scholastics, the toleration of doctrinal diversity was an acceptable and functional job description and not an abstract ideal. This conclusion reinforces, and expands on, the findings of Cary Nederman, of scholars whose work he has inspired and facilitated, and of other medievalists whose research into the relations between religious groups yields supporting results. The attitude of the scholastic theologians considered in this chapter was not the passive and grudging toleration of Others whose ideas and values, however distasteful, had to be allowed as the unavoidable concomitant of peaceful coexistence. Rather, their toleration of diversity was active and positive. It reflects their understanding of the multiform nature of orthodox Christianity and their conformity with the institutions and procedures of the schools and universities where they studied and where many of them taught. Diversi sed non adversi thus well describes the distinctive contribution of the scholastics to the medieval toleration of diversity.

Notes 1 The seminal work in this area was done by Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927; reprinted New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 193–223, who accents the emergence of lay bureaucrats educated in Roman law, freeing rulers from dependence on clerics. Shifting the focus to canon law has been the work of Brian Tierney, as in his Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge

196  Marcia L. Colish

University Press, 1982) and idem, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014); for broader approaches see Annabel S. Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Cary J. Nederman, Lineages of European Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009); Francis Oakley, The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, 3 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010–15). An excellent historiographical overview is provided by Riccardo Saccenti, Debating Medieval Natural Law (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2016). 2 The seminal work here is that of R. I. Moore, “Heresy as Disease,” in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–13th c.), eds. Willem Lourdoux and Daniël Verhelst (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1976), 1–12; idem, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007); idem, The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (London: Artfile Books, 2012), followed by Michael D. Barbezat, Burning Bodies: Communities, Eschatology, and the Punishment of Heresy in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 37–43, 47–60. On the “invention” of the Catharist heresy see Mark Gregory Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); idem, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). In Cathars in Question, ed. Antonio Sennis (York: York Medieval Press, 2016), papers from a London conference in 2013, Pegg and Moore restate their positions; see Pegg, “The Paradigm of Catharism; or, the Historians’ Illusion,” and Moore, “The Principles at Stake: The Debates of April 2013 in Retrospect,” at 21–54 and 257–73 respectively; but see also Jörg Feuchter, “The Heretici of Languedoc: Local Holy Men and Women or Organized Religious Groups? New Evidence from Inquisitorial, Notarial and Historiographical Sources,” and Peter Biller, “Goodbye to Catharism?” in ibid. at 112–30 and 274–304 respectively, who criticize Pegg and Moore for ignoring or misreading relevant sources. On the “invention” of Waldensianism see Michel Rubellin, “Au temps où Valdès n’était pas hérétique: Hypothèses sur le role de Valdès à Lyon (1170–1183),” in Inventer l’hérésie?: Discourses polémiques et pouvoirs avant l’inquisition, ed. Monique Zerner (Nice: Centre d’Études Médiévales, 1998), 193–217 and the response by Peter Biller, “Goodbye to Waldensianism?” Past & Present 192 (2006): 3–33. Without considering the differences between allegedly constructed heresies and those everyone agrees existed, Thomas A. Fudge, Medieval Religion and Its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 183–228, supports Moore and treats the Hussites as paradigmatic of the unmitigated demonization and brutalization of medieval doctrinal Others. On the real and not merely notional existence of heresies in this period see Christine Caldwell Ames, Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). On authorial self-censorship see Peter Godman, The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Compare with self-censorship as the dissimulation of persons questioned by inquisitors; for a fine summary of that phenomenon see Megan Cassidy-Welch, “ ‘Dixit quod nunquam vidit hereseos’: Dissimulation and Self-Censorship in Thirteenth-Century Inquisitorial Testimonies,” in Veiled Speech: Self-Censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes, eds. Han Baltussen and Peter J. Davies (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 250–68. 3 From his extensive publications in this area see especially Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100–c. 1550 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); idem, “Toleration in Medieval Europe:

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   197

Theoretical Principles and Historical Lessons,” in Bridging the Medieval-Modern Divide: Medieval Themes in the World of the Reformation, ed. James Muldoon (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 45–64; idem, “Modern Toleration through a Medieval Lens: A ‘Judgemental’ View,” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 4 (2016): 1–26. See also his co-edited volumes Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1996) and Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, eds. John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), as well as Nederman’s own essays in both collections, especially “Liberty, Community, and Toleration: Freedom and Function in Medieval Political Thought,” in Difference and Dissent, 17–37, as well as the co-editors’ introductions in ibid., 1–16 and in Beyond the Persecuting Society, 1–10; Religion, Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries: Playing the Heresy Card, eds. Karen Bollermann, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Cary J. Nederman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). On tolerance between Christians and non-Christians see also Alexander Patschovsky, “Toleranz in Mittelalter: Idee und Wirklichkeit,” in Toleranz im Mittelalter, eds. Alexander Patschkovksy and Harald Zimmerman (Sigmaringen: F. Thorbeke, 1998), 391–402; Ivan G. Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultural History of the Jews, ed. David Brale, 2 vols. (New York: Schocken Books, 2006), 2: 147–214, reprinted in idem, Jewish Culture and Society in Medieval France and Germany (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), ch. 1; Joseph Schatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); James T. Palmer, “The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages,” in Christianity and Religious Plurality, eds. Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer, and John Wolffe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), 33–55; Iris Shagrir, The Parable of the Three Rings and the Idea of Religious Tolerance in European Culture (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); on another level see Frances H. Mitilineos, “Partners in Crime: Jewish-Christian Cooperation in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Emotions, Communities, and Difference in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Barbara H. Rosenwein, eds. Maureen C. Miller and Edward Wheatley (London: Routledge, 2017), 104–20. On the relations of Christians and Muslims see Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Hussein Fancy, The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017), especially his last chapter, “Religion and Secularism,” at 146–51 and idem, “Muslim Crusaders: Guzmán el Bueno and the Limits of Secular History,” Al-Masāq 30 (2018): 248–65. An important analysis of the rationale for religious toleration not cited by any of the above is Roland H. Bainton, “The Parable of the Tares as a Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Church History 1 (1932): 76–89. For a sense of the increasing eclipse of the Moore thesis, compare the assessments of his influence in Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R. I. Moore, ed. Michael Frassetto (Leiden: Brill, 2006) and John H. Arnold, “Persecution and Power in Medieval Europe: The Formation of a Persecuting Society, by R. I. Moore,” American Historical Review 23 (2018): 165–74. 4 Henri DeLubac, “À propos de la formule: diversi sed non adversi,” Mélanges Jules Lebreton = Recherches de science religieuse 40 (1952): 27–40; Hubert Silvestre, “Diversi sed non adversi,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 31 (1964): 24–32; Alexander Andrée, “Diversa sed non adversa: Anselm of Laon, Twelfth-Century Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Difference a Letter Makes,” in From Learning to Love: Schools, Pastoral Care, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Joseph Goering (Toronto: PIMS, 2017), 3–28. A major post-medieval perpetuation of the diversity

198  Marcia L. Colish

5

6 7 8

9

10

principle, against the modern grain, is the debate on free will and grace, as noted by Robert J. Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez, Physical Promotion, and the Controversy de Auxiliis Revisited (Leiden: Brill, 2016), who observes, at 18, that there has been neither a consensus nor a definitive ruling from the Catholic magisterium on this topic during the past two millennia, “a decision we still await today.” On the debates during the first half of the twelfth century and the earliest uses of the term transubstantiation see Joseph Goering, “The Invention of Transubstantiation,” Traditio 46 (1991): 147–70 and Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 2: 554–60, 575–77. On the debates from the second half of the twelfth century onward see Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period, c. 1080–c.1220 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); idem, “The ‘Dogma of Transubstantiation’ in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994): 11–41, reprinted in idem, Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 81–120; idem, “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, eds. Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy, and Kristen Van Ausdall (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 365–98, at 370–78. On the Franciscan school in particular see David Burr, “Eucharistic Presence and Conversion in Late Thirteenth-Century Franciscan Thought,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74, no. 3 (1984): 1–113; Marcia L. Colish, “The Eucharist in Early Franciscan Tradition,” in The Summa Halensis: Doctrines and Debates, ed. Lydia Schumacher (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 303–24; giving Dominicans equal time is Marilyn McCord Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); for the widest conspectus of late scholastics see Paul J. J. M. Bakker, La raison et le miracle: Les doctrines eucharistiques, c. 1250-c. 1400. Contribution à l’étude des rapports entre philosophie et théologie, 2 vols. (Nijmegen: Katholiek Universiteit Nijmegen, 1999). For the issue of how the accidents of bread and wine can inhere in the consecrated species see Jörgen Vijgen, The Status of Eucharistic Accidents “sine subiecto,” Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerorders, n.F. 20 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013). For the carryover of the debates into canon law see Ian Christopher Levy, “The Eucharist and Canon Law in the High Middle Ages,” in A Companion to the Eucharist, 399–445 and most recently Thomas M. Izbicki, The Eucharist in Medieval Canon Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), x, 4–5, 19, 21–45. Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories, passim. Stephen E. Lahey, “Late Medieval Eucharistic Theology,” in A Companion to the Eucharist, 499–539; quotation at 539. William J. Courtenay, “The King and the Leaden Coin: The Economic Background of ‘sine qua non’ Causality,” Traditio 28 (1972): 185–209, reprinted in idem, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London: Variorum, 1984), ch. 6; see also Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories, 74–77, 165, 255. Paul J. J. M. Bakker, “Hoc est corpus meum: L’analyse de la formule de consécration chez les théologiens du XIVe et XVe siècle,” in Vestigia, imagines, verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIIth–XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 427–51; idem, La raison et le miracle, passim; Alain de Libera and Irène Rosier-Catach, “L’analyse scotiste de la formule de la consécration eucharistique,” in Vestigia, imagines, verba, 171–201; idem and eadem, “Les enjeux logico-linguistique de l’analyse de la formule de consécration eucharistique au moyen âge,” Cahiers de l’Institut du moyen-âge grec et latin 67 (1997): 33–77; Irène Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace: Signe, rituel, sacré (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004). The now-standard assessment is Ian Christopher Levy, John Wycliff’s Theology of the Eucharist in Its Medieval Context (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2014); see also Lahey, “Late Medieval Eucharistic Theology,” 532–33.

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   199







200  Marcia L. Colish

Debating in Medieval Paris (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015); eadem, “Methods and Tools of Learning,” in A Companion to Twelfth-Century Schools, ed. Cédric Giraud (Leiden: ­ Brill, 2020), 95–112, at 99–105, 109–11. 28 That this is the current consensus appears in William J. Courtenay, “Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities,” Church History 58 (1989): 168–81; Luca Bianchi, Il vescovo e i filosofi: La condanna parigina del 1277 e l’evoluzione dell’aristotelismo scolastico (Bergamo: Lubrina, 1990); idem, Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l’Université de Paris (XIIIe-XIVe siècle) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999), with an excellent treatment of the historiography; for the impact or lack of impact of the much-discussed Paris condemnations of 1277 see idem, “New Perspectives on the Condemnation of 1277 and Its Aftermath,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévale 70 (2003): 206–29 and Edward P. Mahoney, “Reverberations of the Condemnation of 1277 in Later Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy,” in Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris in letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhundert, eds. Jan Aertsen, Kent Emery, and Andreas Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 902–30; John F. Wippel, “The Parisian Condemnations of 1270 and 1277,” in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, eds. Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 65–73. For the positions of Aquinas condemned, the irrelevance of these rulings is confirmed by Pasquale Porro, Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile, trans. Joseph G. Trabbic and Roger W. Nutt (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 394–404. On the mechanisms of censorship and the jurisdiction of the faculty of theology as a corporate body see Gregory S. Moule, Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2016) which criticizes on these issues J. M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); neither scholar comments on the doctrinal coherence, impact, or lack of impact, of the judgements rendered. For a comparison with censure at Oxford see Andrew E. Larsen, The School of Heretics: Academic Condemnation at the University of Oxford, 1277–1404 (Leiden: Brill, 2009) and idem, “Secular Politics and Academic Condemnation at Oxford, 1358–1411,” in Religion, Power, and Resistance, 37–53. From among the case studies of particular doctrines not affected by these condemnations see, for optics, Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology, and the Foundations of Semantics, 1250–1345, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 22 (Leiden, Brill, 1988); see, for angelology, Tiziana Suárez-Nani, “Angels, Space, and Place: Location of Separate Substances according to John Duns Scotus,” and Henrik Wels, “Late Medieval Debates on the Location of Angels: The Condemnation of 1277,” both in Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance, eds. Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 89–111 and 113–27 respectively.

Bibliography Adams, Marilyn McCord. Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Ames, Christine Caldwell. Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Andrée, Alexander. “Diversa sed non adversa: Anselm of Laon, Twelfth-Century Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Difference a Letter Makes.” In From Learning to Love: Schools, Pastoral Care, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Joseph Goering, 3–28. Toronto: PIMS, 2017.

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   201

Arnold, John H. “Persecution and Power in Medieval Europe: The Formation of a ­Persecuting Society, by R. I. Moore.” American Historical Review 23 (2018): 165–74. Bainton, Roland H. “The Parable of the Tares as a Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century.” Church History 1 (1932): 76–89. Bakker, Paul J. J. M. “Hoc est corpus meum: L’analyse de la formule de consécration chez les théologiens du XIVe et XVe siècle.” In Vestigia, imagines, verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIIth–XIVth Century), edited by Costantino Marmo, 427–51. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. ———. La raison et le miracle: Les doctrines eucharistiques, c. 1250-c. 1400. Contribution à I’étude des rapports entre philosophie et théologie, 2 vols. Nijmegen: Katholiek Universiteit Nijmegen, 1999. Barbezat, Michael D. Burning Bodies: Communities, Eschatology, and the Punishment of Heresy in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Bianchi, Luca. Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l’Université de Paris (XIIIe-XIVe siècle). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999. ———. Il vescovo e i filosofi: La condanna parigina del 1277 e L’evoluzione dell’aristotelismo scolastico. Bergamo: Lubrina, 1990. ———. “New Perspectives on the Condemnation of 1277 and Its Aftermath.” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévale 70 (2003): 206–29. Bilby, Mark Glen. As the Bandit I Will Confess You: Luke 23, 39–43 in Early Christian Interpretation. Cahiers de Biblica Patristica 13. Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg, 2013. Biller, Peter. “Goodbye to Catharism?” In Cathars in Question, edited by Antonio Sennis, 274–304. York: York Medieval Press, 2016. ———. “Goodbye to Waldensianism?” Past & Present 192 (2006): 3–33. Bollermann, Karen, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Religion, Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries: Playing the Heresy Card. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Brett, Annabel S. Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Burr, David. “Eucharistic Presence and Conversion in Late Thirteenth-Century Franciscan Thought.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74, no. 3 (1984): 1–113. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Wonderful Blood: Theory and Practice in Medieval Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Cassidy-Welch, Megan. “  ‘Dixit quod nunquam vidit hereseos’: Dissimulation and Self-Censorship in Thirteenth-Century Inquisitorial Testimonies.” In Veiled Speech: Self-Censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes, edited by Han Baltussen and Peter J. Davies, 250–68. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Catlos, Brian A. Muslims of Medieval Christendom, c. 1050–1614. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Clarke, Peter D. Interdict in the Thirteenth Century: A Question of Collective Guilt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Colish, Marcia L. “De obitu Valentiniani: Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, and the Canonization of Ambrose of Milan on Baptism by Desire.” In How the West Was Won: Essays in Literary Imagination, the Canon, and the Christian Middle Ages for Burcht Pranger, edited by Willemien Otten, Arjo Vanderjagt, and Hent de Vries, 329–47. Leiden: Brill, 2010. ——— Faith, Fiction, and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014.

202  Marcia L. Colish

———. Peter Lombard, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994. ———. “The Eucharist in Early Franciscan Tradition.” In The Summa Halensis: Doctrines and Debates, edited by Lydia Schumacher, 303–24. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Courtenay, William J. “Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities.” Church History 58 (1989): 168–81. ———. “The King and the Leaden Coin: The Economic Background of ‘sine qua non’ Causality.” Traditio 28 (1972): 185–209; reprinted in William J. Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought. London: Variorum, 1984. DeLubac, Henri. “À propos de la formule: diversi sed non adversi.” Mélanges Jules Lebreton = Recherches de science religieuse 40 (1952): 27–40. Fancy, Hussein. “Muslim Crusaders: Guzmán el Bueno and the Limits of Secular History.” Al-Masāq 30 (2018): 248–65. ———. The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Feuchter, Jörg. “The Heretici of Languedoc: Local Holy Men and Women or Organized Religious Groups? New Evidence from Inquisitorial, Notarial and Historiographical Sources.” In Cathars in Question, edited by Antonio Sennis, 112–30. York: York Medieval Press, 2016. Frassetto, Michael, ed. Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R. I. Moore. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Fudge, Thomas A. Medieval Religion and Its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Giraud, Cédric. Per verba magistri: Anselme de Laon et son école au XIIe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Godman, Peter. The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Goering, Joseph. “The Invention of Transubstantiation.” Traditio 46 (1991): 147–70. Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927; reprinted New York: Meridian Books, 1957. Izbicki, Thomas M. The Eucharist in Medieval Canon Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Kauf hold, Martin. Gladius Spiritualis: Das päpstliche Interdikt über Deutschland in der Regierungszeit des Bayern (1324–1347). Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1994. Krebbiel, Edward B. Interdict: Its History and Its Operation with Special Attention to the Time of Pope Innocent III. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1909. Lahey, Stephen E. “Late Medieval Eucharistic Theology.” In A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, edited by Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy, and Kristen Van Ausdall, 499–539. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Landgraf, Artur Michael. Dogmengeschichte der Frühscholastik, 4 vols. in 8. Regensburg: Friedrich Pustat, 1952–56. Larsen, Andrew E. “Secular Politics and Academic Condemnation at Oxford, 1358– 1411.” In Religion, Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries: Playing the Heresy Card, edited by Karen Bollermann, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Cary J. Nederman, 37–53. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ———. The School of Heretics: Academic Condemnation at the University of Oxford, 1277– 1404. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Laursen, John Christian, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   203

Levy, Ian Christopher. John Wycliff’s Theology of the Eucharist in Its Medieval Context. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2014. ———. “The Eucharist and Canon Law in the High Middle Ages.” In A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, edited by Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy, and Kristen Van Ausdall, 399–445. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Libera, Alain de, and Irène Rosier-Catach, “L’analyse scotiste de la formule de la consécration eucharistique.” In Vestigia, imagines, verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIIth–XIVth Century), edited by Costantino Marmo, 171–201. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. ———. “Les enjeux logico-linguistique de l’analyse de la formule de consécration eucharistique au moyen âge.” Cahiers de l’Institut du moyen-âge grec et latin 67 (1997): 33–77. Macy, Gary. “Reception of the Eucharist according to the Theologians: A Case of Diversity in the 13th and 14th Centuries.” In Theology and the University, edited by John Apczinski, 15–36. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990; reprinted in Gary Macy, Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist, 36–58. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999. ———. “The ‘Dogma of Transubstantiation’ in the Middle Ages.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994): 11–41; reprinted in Gary Macy, Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist, 81–120. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999. ———. The Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period, c. 1080–c.1220. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. ———. “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages.” In A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, edited by Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy, and Kristen Van Ausdall, 365–98. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Mahoney, Edward P. “Reverberations of the Condemnation of 1277 in Later Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy.” In Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris in letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhundert, edited by Jan Aertsen, Kent Emery, and Andreas Speer, 902–30. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000. Marcus, Ivan G. “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz.” In Cultural History of the Jews, edited by David Brale, 2 vols., 2, 147–214. New York: Schocken Books, 2006; reprinted in Ivan G. Marcus, Jewish Culture and Society in Medieval France and Germany. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Matava, Robert J. Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez, Physical Promotion, and the Controversy de Auxiliis Revisited. Leiden: Brill, 2016. McHugh, John A., and Charles J. Callan, trans. Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests. New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1923. Mitilineos, Frances H. “Partners in Crime: Jewish-Christian Cooperation in Thirteenth-Century England.” In Emotions, Communities, and Difference in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Barbara H. Rosenwein, edited by Maureen C. Miller and Edward Wheatley, 104–20. London: Routledge, 2017. Moore, R. I. “Heresy as Disease.” In The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–13th c.), edited by Willem Lourdoux and Daniël Verhelst, 1–12. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1976. ———. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, 2nd edn. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. ———. “The Principles at Stake: The Debates of April 2013 in Retrospect.” In Cathars in Question, edited by Antonio Sennis, 257–73. York: York Medieval Press, 2016. ———. The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe. London: Artfile Books, 2012.

204  Marcia L. Colish

Moule, Gregory S. Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200–1400. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Nederman, Cary J. “Liberty, Community, and Toleration: Freedom and Function in Medieval Political Thought.” In Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen, 17–37. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1996. ———. Lineages of European Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. ———. “Modern Toleration through a Medieval Lens: A ‘Judgemental’ View.” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 4 (2016): 1–26. ———. “Toleration in Medieval Europe: Theoretical Principles and Historical Lessons.” In Bridging the Medieval-Modern Divide: Medieval Themes in the World of the Reformation, edited by James Muldoon, 45–64. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. ———. Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-c.1550. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Nederman, Cary J., and John Christian Laursen, eds. Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1996. Oakley, Francis. The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, 3 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010–15. Ott, Ludwig. Untersuchungen zur theologischen Briefliteratur der Frühscholastik unter besonderer Berüchsightigungen der Viktorinerkreises. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 34. Münster: Aschendorff, 1937. Palmer, James T. “The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages.” In Christianity and Religious Plurality, edited by Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer, and John Wolffe, 33–55. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015. Patschovsky, Alexander. “Toleranz in Mittelalter: Idee und Wirklichkeit.” In Toleranz im Mittelalter, edited by Alexander Patschkovksy and Harald Zimmerman, 391–402. Sigmaringen: F. Thorbeke, 1998. Pegg, Mark Gregory. A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for ­Christendom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. ———. “The Paradigm of Catharism; or, the Historians’ Illusion.” In Cathars in ­Question, edited by Antonio Sennis, 21–54. York: York Medieval Press, 2016. Porro, Pasquale. Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile. Translated by Joseph G. Trabbic and Roger W. Nutt. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Rodríguez, Pedro, et al., eds. Catechismus Romanus. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice ­Vaticana, 1989. Rosier-Catach, Irène. La parole efficace: Signe, rituel, sacré. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004. Rubellin, Michel. “Au temps où Valdès n’était pas hérétique: Hypothèses sur le role de Valdès à Lyon (1170–1183).” In Inventer l’hérésie?: Discourses polémiques et pouvoirs avant I’inquisition, edited by Monique Zerner, 193–217. Nice: Centre d’Études Médiévales, 1998. Rubin, Miri. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Saccenti, Riccardo. Debating Medieval Natural Law. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2016.

A Medieval Scholastic Job Description   205

Schatzmiller, Joseph. Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Shagrir, Iris. The Parable of the Three Rings and the Idea of Religious Tolerance in European Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Silvestre, Hubert. “Diversi sed non adversi.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 31 (1964): 24–32. Suárez-Nani, Tiziana. “Angels, Space, and Place: Location of Separate Substances according to John Duns Scotus.” In Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance, edited by Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz, 89–111. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Tachau, Katherine H. Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology, and the Foundations of Semantics, 1250–1345. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 22. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Thijssen, J. M. M. H. Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Tierney, Brian. Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Vijgen, Jörgen. The Status of Eucharistic Accidents “sine subiecto.” Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerorders, n.F. 20. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013. Weijers, Olga. A Scholar’s Paradise: Teaching and Debating in Medieval Paris. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. ———. In Search of the Truth: A History of Disputation Techniques from Antiquity to Early Modern Times. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. ———. “Methods and Tools of Learning.” In A Companion to Twelfth-Century Schools, edited by Cédric Giraud, 95–112. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Wels, Henrik. “Late Medieval Debates on the Location of Angels: The Condemnation of 1277.” In Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance, edited by Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz, 113–27. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Wippel, John F. “The Parisian Condemnations of 1270 and 1277.” In A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone, 65–73. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

11 HERESY AND TOLERATION IN THE EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham Reconsidered Takashi Shogimen

Doubtless Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham are counted among the key medieval political thinkers who exercised considerable influence on later generations. Marsilius is arguably the most radical—and, one might say, “secularist”—political thinker in the Latin Middle Ages. The Defensor pacis (1324), which he produced in Paris, proposed a highly original and generic theory of the political community and an extensive critique of the papacy under John XXII. The work invited condemnation by the papacy. Ockham, by contrast, did not develop any system of political thought as Marsilius did. He was primarily engaged in anti-papal polemical activities after he was summoned to the Avignon papacy in 1324 as his academic writings were suspected of heresy. During his sojourn in Avignon, he was asked by Michael of Cesena, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, to scrutinize papal bulls, which condemned the Franciscan doctrine of poverty. The investigation into the bulls led Ockham to conclude that the contemporary pope, John XXII, had fallen into heresy. Both Marsilius and Ockham shared the fate of being in exile at the imperial court in Munich until their deaths in the 1340s. The comparison between the two thinkers has attracted scholarly interest among experts of medieval political thought for over a century. A range of scholars, including James Sullivan, Georges de Lagarde, Jürgen Miethke, A. S. McGrade, Mario Damiata, and Roberto Lambertini, have produced explicitly comparative studies of the two thinkers.1 Despite voluminous scholarly output, however, such comparative examinations never discussed the two thinkers’ views of heresy and toleration. This omission, however, is unsurprising; existing works have typically explored both Marsilius and Ockham in terms of what we today call “political thought” or their contributions to the debate on Franciscan poverty. The issue of heresy is outside the scope of “political thought” while it DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-15

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  207

is too general to be treated in the study of a theological debate specifically on Franciscan poverty. If we view Marsilius and Ockham’s writings as polemical works, however, we can readily appreciate that both thinkers tackled the issue of heresy. Marsilius dealt with the question of the punishment of heretics in Discourse 2 of the Defensor pacis: a topic he returned to several years later in his Defensor minor. Part 1 of Ockham’s gigantic Dialogus constitutes a systematic treatment of heresy and heretics, especially the problems around papal heresy. Just as the problem of heresy has been marginalized in previous scholarship on medieval political thought, so Marsilius’ and Ockham’s accounts of toleration are rarely explored. To be sure, like the majority of medieval political writers, neither Marsilius nor Ockham wrote on the concept of toleration per se; we can only infer seminal ideas that are pertinent to the idea of toleration from their polemical writings. In view of the historiographical tradition on toleration, one cannot overemphasize the significance of Cary J. Nederman’s pioneering exploration into Marsilius’ discussion of heresy and toleration. In his 2000 monograph, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100–c.1550, Nederman examined and excavated a diverse range of medieval accounts of toleration in the writings of John of Salisbury, Marsilius of Padua, and Nicholas of Cusa among others. Nederman’s work in this area successfully challenged the conventional wisdom that medieval Europe contributed little or nothing to the idea of toleration.2 One noticeable omission in the book is William of Ockham’s discussion of toleration, although, to be sure, Nederman discussed Ockham in his more recent work.3 I have examined Ockham’s view of toleration elsewhere4; however, I now propose approaching Ockham from a new angle, one that is different from my previous work as well as Nederman’s. Modern scholarship on toleration, including that of Nederman, has often highlighted the context of diversity and differences in which toleration is typically discussed. Indeed, Nederman approached medieval accounts of toleration in terms of their accommodation or even embracement of “differences.” In medieval philosophical and theological writings, he uncovered positive attitudes towards human differences that were justified on the grounds of the frailties of the human mind and understanding (as conceived, for example, by Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury), or the material needs of the members of the human community (Marsiglio of Padua), or the ordained patterns of socio-cultural development (Nicholas of Cusa, William of Rubruck, and Bartolome da Las Casas).5 But the theoretical understanding of toleration is not monolithic; rather it is very diverse. The concept of toleration itself has invited debates among political theorists and philosophers. Indeed, as I shall portray below, modern liberal political theorists would argue that toleration is about a deliberate and principled

208  Takashi Shogimen

refraining from interfering with what is deemed objectionable, although they would not deny that this conception of toleration is typically predicated on the context of diversity and differences. In my recent work on Ockham and toleration, I examined whether Ockham’s political thought implicates toleration not in the sense of a positive attitude (such as accommodation and embracement) towards diversity and difference but in the sense of a deliberate and principled refraining from interfering with an objectionable object.6 In this chapter, I shall deploy the same perspective on toleration in order to reappraise Marsilius of Padua’s account in comparison to Ockham’s. The aim of this chapter is to show that both Marsilius’ and Ockham’s discussions of heresy are pregnant with the idea of toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with an objectionable object, thereby suggesting that toleration in that sense is not unique to the modern liberal tradition. But I also hope to show that highlighting differences in the two men’s accounts of heresy and toleration places in sharp relief the contrasting aims of the two thinkers’ polemical activities beyond the widely acknowledged differences of their opinions over the questions of Petrine primacy, conciliarism, and the nature of priesthood. More specifically, I shall demonstrate that while Marsilius’ account of heresy and toleration aimed at the preservation of peace and order in the thisworldly public life, Ockham’s account was intended as a vindication of catholic truths from heretical ecclesiastics, potentially at the expense of peace and order in this-worldly life. The choice between peace and truth as the ultimate object of defence profoundly shaped the two thinkers’ discussions. Before I proceed, some further remarks on the idea of toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with an objectionable object may be due. Neither Marsilius nor Ockham discussed the term “toleration” (tolerantia) in their writings. It is therefore impossible to recover their accounts of toleration by means of their use of that term. The approach I propose is to define the “core” elements or components of toleration in order to discern them in their arguments on heresy. In view of the diversity of theoretical, philosophical, and historical accounts of toleration in recent scholarship, it is impossible for us to begin our analysis with a universally accepted definition of toleration. Nonetheless, it is probably safe to maintain that toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with an objectionable object is one of the influential understandings many scholars would subscribe to. Indeed, Andrew Cohen has offered a well-known definition of the contemporary concept of toleration as “an agent’s intentional and principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other (or their behavior, etc.) in situations of diversity, where the agent believes she has the power to interfere.”7 The “core” in this definition is clearly not accommodation of human diversity and difference but rather “intentional and principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other.” Human diversity and the agent’s abilities to interfere may be acknowledged as contexts in which toleration occurs.

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  209

Rainer Forst’s understanding of the “core” of toleration follows a similar line; however, for Forst, an important context in which toleration occurs is not diversity or difference but conflict. In his words, “[T]oleration is an attitude or practice which is only called for within social conflicts of a certain kind.”8 Forst adds that toleration “does not resolve, but merely contains and defuses” the conflict. Toleration is predicated on the idea that “coexistence in disagreement is possible.”9 Forst’s account of toleration underscores the context of “conflict” rather than “diversity.” Thus, in his account, toleration is not accommodation of human diversity but rather deliberate refraining from interfering with a certain conflict. The fact that he viewed “conflict,” not “diversity” or “difference,” as the context in which toleration occurs helps us break down the “core” of toleration into three components. The first component concerns the tolerated, which is not difference but conflict. Thus, Forst discerns, in toleration, what he calls the objection component: the tolerated convictions or practices are negatively evaluated in normative terms. This component is integral to Cohen’s aforementioned definition highlighting that the tolerated object is “an opposed other (or their behavior, etc.)” (my emphasis).10 Without the objection component, one would not talk about toleration but rather about indifference or affirmation; no one would be indifferent, let alone affirmative, to individuals or actions that one evaluates negatively. The second essential component of toleration, according Forst, is the acceptance component, which I would rather call non-interference component: the tolerated object is clearly objectionable yet remains unimpeded in light of “higher-order reasons.”11 The reason for rejecting and condemning the individuals or actions in question is superseded by another consideration of priority that leads the agent to refrain from interfering. In this, the tolerating agent is not “accepting” the tolerated; rather the tolerator is merely refraining from interfering with the tolerated because of a certain rationale. However, the non-interference cannot be limitless; tolerating everything— every objectionable object—would no longer be toleration but acceptance or indifference. Forst therefore argues that toleration necessarily entails limits and should not fall below a certain normative threshold below which one cannot speak of toleration in a meaningful way. Hence, the third component of ­toleration—the rejection component—that sets the limit is essential for the “core” of toleration. These three components—objection, non-interference, and rejection—are inseparably connected with each other, thereby constituting the “core” of the idea of toleration. The absence of anyone of these components would make it impossible to talk about toleration in a meaningful way. In what follows, I shall use this analytical framework to see if Marsilius’s discussion of heresy entails the “core” of toleration before comparing Ockham.

210  Takashi Shogimen

Marsilius Marsilius does not offer any theological discussion of what constitutes heresy or who should be considered heretical. He only writes that a heretic is, like a schismatic and other infidel, someone who “sins against divine law.”12 So Marsilius views heresy simply as a type of violation of divine law. His primary concern revolves around the detection and punishment of heretics. He re-examines and questions the widespread view that “the coercive judgement or restraint” of the crime of heresy, that is, “to recognize, to judge and to correct” heresy, “belongs to a priest.” Marsilius tackles this task first by asserting that “anyone who sins against divine law should be judged, corrected and constrained according to that law.”13 But Marsilius suggests that the judge who has coercive power to constrain the transgressors of divine law is Christ alone. Christ exercises his coercive power to punish the transgressors of divine law only in the next world, not in this world. So what does a priest do in cases of the violation of divine law? Marsilius flatly denies coercive power to the priest; he writes that it belongs to the priest to teach, exhort, reveal in error and reprove delinquents and transgressors, and to terrify them by his judgement of their future damnation and the penalty that will be inflicted upon them at the hands of the coercive judge, sc. Christ, in the world to come.14 So what the priest can do in relation to such “transgressors” such as heretics is detection and pronouncement of heretical crime committed by individuals in question, and warning about future punishment of that crime in the next world, not in this world. Marsilius repeatedly argues that the role of the priests with respect to heretics is analogous to that of physicians with their patients. Physicians can teach what one should do to maintain health, examine patients and offer a diagnosis, and give a “prognosis” thereby giving warnings about the future development of the illness or injuries.15 However, physicians cannot force patients to be treated, for example, by separating patients like lepers from the rest of the community. Likewise, priests can only teach orthodox faith while they reveal and reprove heresy and give warnings about eternal damnation in the next world. Imposing penalties on heretics is not within the jurisdiction of priests. But for Marsilius, divine law is not the only law that regulates human deeds: the members of a human community are also subject to human law; it is human law alone that constrains transgressors with the penalty or punishment laid down for that transgression in that law. So, if human law forbids heretics, for instance, to remain in a particular geographical area, they may be subject to the penalty of expulsion from that area.16 What Marsilius has in mind in terms of the penalty that human law imposes on heretics was excommunication.

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  211

He offers an extensive discussion of excommunication especially in his short ­treatise, Defensor minor. His view may be boiled down as follows: the human legislator possesses the authority to punish heretics by separating them “from the fellowship of believers”: that is, heretics are “shunned especially in connection with domestic or social relations, or cohabitation or conversation concerning those matters which pertain to preservation of the ritual of the faith.”17 So Marsilius asserts that “excommunication, because it indicates deprivation from civil association, is a punishment of human law.” However, what Marsilius calls “penalty or punishment” concerns “person” and/or “property” of the guilty individual and he argued that excommunication “in reality” does not entail any negative impact on the “person” or “property” of such an individual. Excommunication is, according to him, “the avoidance of certain guilty persons, in regard to their company and society in conversation and discussion, especially in these matters which pertain to the Christian faith and divine worship.”18 In a nutshell, excommunication is about “shame and disgrace,” and does not have any impact on the guilty individuals’ “civil comfort and association”; so they could continue freely “purchasing bread, wine, meat, fish, pots, or clothes” from others in the same community.19 In view of this outline of Marsilius’ account of the punishment of heretics, we shall now turn to see if it is possible to extract the “core” of the idea of toleration. First, Marsilius defines heresy loosely as a sin against divine law. The objection component is obvious here. Marsilius acknowledges it is a sin, so he does not condone heresy as something indifferent, let alone acceptable, to a normative judgement. But the way in which the objection component operates in Marsilius is clearly different from its modern counterpart. In the modern discourse on toleration, which presupposes a diverse, pluralistic society, the objection concerns differences, not sins. The objectionable in the modern context include different religious creeds, political claims and moral convictions among others and they are presupposed to be diverse. In medieval Christian society, the objectionable objects Marsilius is concerned about are sins, violations of divine law. Also, in the modern context, the objection may be a private judgement based on the individual’s own normative (religious, moral, or otherwise) evaluation. In Marsilius, by contrast, the objection is publicly inscribed and objectively measured as priests detect and reprove heretical errors in light of their agreed understanding of divine law. Second, Marsilius’ discussion of the punishment of heretics also entails the non-interference component, that is, the restraint of interference with the objectionable object, in that those who sin against divine law escape from penalty or punishment in this world. Heretics are immune from penalties that pertains to their person and/or property because it is outside the scope of divine law. What Forst calls “higher order reason” of non-interference in Marsilius is of course that the ultimate authority that regulates human deeds in this world is the human legislator, not priests, while criminals such as heretics will be subject to

212  Takashi Shogimen

Christ’s punishment in the next world, that is, eternal damnation. But Marsilius is conscious of a possible objection that the penalty for heresy in this world may be “useful and expedient for good morals and for the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of misery in the future world.”20 Marsilius argues in response that allowing priests to exercise coercive power would mean that there would be “several coercive human legislators and governments ruling over several multitude, none of which occupies a subordinate position in the present world, creating a situation which is particularly unbearable for the polity.”21 Marsilius insists on the unity of coercive authority; the plurality of ruling authority is “a cause of perpetual dissension among those faithful to Christ.”22 Third, acceptance is not unconditional or limitless. Even if heresy as a sin against divine law is not subject to penalty in light of that law, it may be punished if human law stipulates as such. I have already discussed the case of excommunication, which may be included in the stipulations of human law. Marsilius clearly tries to downplay the extent of the penalty of excommunication that human law actually imposed on heretics. Furthermore, he even notes that “from the time of Christ up until the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine I, it is generally agreed that heretics were never coerced or separated from the civil community.”23 However, Marsilius leaves open a possibility that heresy may be subject to some sort of penalty in light of human law especially to avoid the situation where heretics “taint the remaining believers”;24 here one can discern the rejection component in Marsilius’ idea of toleration. It should be clear by now that Marsilius’ argument for the latitude for heresy entailed the “core” three components of toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with a conflict. In light of Nederman’s work, I argue that Marsilius’ political thought embraces two notions of toleration: not only a positive attitude towards differences and diversity but also the principle refraining from interference with an objectionable object. The Marsilian account of toleration in both senses is couched in the sharp separation between divine law and human law in terms of penalty and punishment.

Ockham As I mentioned earlier, Ockham discusses the problem of heresy systematically and comprehensively in Part 1 of the Dialogus, which adopted the literary form of a fictional conversation between the Master and the Disciple on a number of ecclesiological and political issues.25 In it, Ockham endeavours to redefine heresy and heretics, thereby seeking to justify dissent from a heretical pope. His treatment of heresy is far more extensive and wide-ranging, forming an interesting contrast with Marsilius, who focused on the question who should punish heretics and how. How does Ockham approach the question of the punishment of heretics? Unlike Marsilius, Ockham handles the issue by relying on a theological

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  213

framework of “fraternal correction.” The situation of fraternal correction is where a believer is viewed to have committed an error by another believer, who attempts to correct it.26 Typically the discourse on fraternal correction addresses three key questions: (1) Does the precept of correction bind every Christian or prelates alone? (2) What is the procedural order of correction? (3) Is every Christian bound by the precept of correction? The third question can be restated as follows: is an inferior bound to correct a superior? The first question concerns the agent of correction; the second is about the due process of correction; and the third question concerns the object of correction.27 The traditional view, as is represented by the early fourteenth-century Franciscan theologian Alexander of Hales, is that prelates alone are officially bound to correct erring believers; other Christians are bound to do so because of their charity. The due process of correction is such that it proceeds from private admonition to official and public condemnation; at the initial stage, prelates would admonish erring believers privately. If the erring believers resist admonition, correction would gradually intensify before resulting in the Church’s official condemnation. Finally, the possibility of an inferior correcting a superior is rejected. It is easy to discern some tacit assumptions in the traditional discourse of toleration. First, the context in which fraternal correction occurs is the hierarchical order within the Church. The line of clear demarcation is drawn between Church officials and lay people, and the churchmen are ranked within the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Second, the due process of fraternal correction that proceeds from private admonition to public condemnation is predicated on two interconnected assumptions: (1) the error of the corrected is tolerated only for a certain period of time (“the time of grace”); and (2) the correction by the corrector is presumed to be theologically sound, while it is not questioned whether the alleged error of the corrected is indeed erroneous. It was commonplace to consider the defining character of a heretic as pertinacity or obstinacy. Pertinacity or obstinacy is, in view of the due process of fraternal correction, nothing other than repeated refusal to accept correction. The corrected is simply expected to recant their errors because it is presumed that the corrected is indeed in error. This explains the reason why the traditional view of fraternal correction rejected the possibility that an inferior corrects the superior. The superior is presumed to have correct knowledge of Christian doctrine. Ockham criticizes this traditional view by questioning whether it is always true that correction by the superior is correctly informed theologically. The problem he observed and tackled was papal heresy, more specifically, the heresy of Pope John XXII; therefore, for him, the tacit assumption of the theological soundness of the superior’s correction was highly dubious. Thus Ockham reformulates the due process of fraternal correction by redefining the legitimacy of correction; the legitimacy of correction clearly does not rest on the official authority of the corrector; the legitimacy only consists in actual demonstration

214  Takashi Shogimen

of the error.28 If the act of correction does not demonstrate manifestly that the alleged error is indeed an error, the correction is not legitimate and therefore not binding. No matter who corrects the alleged error, the corrected are not bound to withdraw their assertion unless it is manifestly shown to the corrected that it contradicts catholic truth.29 From this it can be logically inferred that no one is bound to believe the pope’s doctrinal declaration as long as he does not demonstrate manifestly that his assertion is theologically sound. The reverse side of this is that if the demonstration of error is manifest, the corrected must withdraw the demonstrated error at once.30 Hence, a single refusal to assent to a manifest truth about Christian doctrine would be judged as pertinacious immediately. Thus, latitude towards repeated refusal for a limited time becomes redundant. Ockham’s account is clearly predicated on an assumption that, on the duty of assenting to truth, every believer is equal. Furthermore, what each individual believer can realistically be expected to know about doctrinal truths varies: church officials, such as the pope and bishops, are academically trained in theology and/or canon law, while lay believers are largely illiterate. This constitutes the context of diversity in Ockham’s account of toleration: while every believer is equal in terms of the duty to assent to truths and reject errors, all Christians realistically cannot bear the same duty in terms of what they must know about Christian faith. Ockham elaborates this context of diversity by expounding on the idea of explicit faith. Explicit faith is, according to Ockham, a set of propositions—“catholic truths”—that Christians must believe to be true, depending on their status in the Christian society. Explicit faith defines the content and amount of knowledge of catholic truths one is obliged to have, and the higher rank one occupies in the ecclesiastical order, the more knowledge of Christian faith one is obliged to have. Ockham assumed that what one ought to know according to one’s status in the Christian community is publicly known; therefore, rejecting the truth of a proposition one ought to know correctly should be publicly manifest and judged inexcusable. Therefore, the pope and other high ecclesiastics are expected to have full knowledge of doctrinal sources, including minute details in the Bible, while most laypeople must only know a small number of propositions, such as “Christ was crucified” and the “Christian faith is true.”31 Ockham’s notion of explicit faith defines a normative threshold below which one cannot speak of toleration in a meaningful way. If an illiterate believer commits an error about Christian faith, it is likely that the error is tolerated because such believers are only obliged to know very few propositions about Christian faith. However, the expectation for church officials, such as the pope or bishops, is very high in terms of their knowledge about Christian faith. The normative threshold for toleration is accordingly very high; hence, their doctrinal error about explicit faith—what they are expected to know—is likely to be judged deliberate and hence pertinacious and heretical.

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  215

It may be useful here to view Ockham’s argument in light of the “core”— three components—of toleration. First, the objection component is clearly present since Ockham’s account of fraternal correction revolves around alleged doctrinal errors. But he maintains that the corrected would not be bound to withdraw their error unless it is manifestly demonstrated that their belief was indeed erroneous. Thus the corrector cannot compel the corrected to withdraw the alleged error, thus allowing them to hold the alleged error if the corrector does not successfully demonstrate that it is indeed an error. This constitutes the refraining from interfering with the objectionable object: the non-interference component. Of course, however, one may argue that the non-interference component in Ockham is limited because if the corrector does successfully demonstrate an error to be as such, the non-interference component does not apply. But it is important to note that according to Ockham until it is manifestly demonstrated by legitimate proof, a believer should not be judged as heretical even by the pope, even though that individual unknowingly defends his case as many as one thousand times, provided that he explicitly declares willingness to withdraw the case once it is manifestly shown that it is an error.32 Ockham thus maximizes (or perhaps one might say, exaggerates) the possibility of the suspect’s circumvention of a heresy sentence in the case of committing an error “unknowingly,” namely, an error relating to the matters that do not belong to the suspect’s explicit faith, and here we can observe Ockham underlines the non-interference component. Yet, he also argues that if it is indeed demonstrated manifestly that the alleged error in question is an error, it must be recanted at once. Refusing to withdraw the error even after it has been manifestly demonstrated that is an error is not allowed but is immediately condemned. Here it is readily perceivable that non-interference with the alleged error is not without limits, which we identify as the rejection component. The legitimacy of correction—the actual demonstration of error—sets the limit for toleration. Ockham develops this point by introducing the concept of explicit faith. The actual demonstration of error is publicly recognizable because Ockham presumes that what each believer must know according to their status in the Christian community— the content of explicit faith of a particular believer—is publicly known by the community members; therefore, the rejection of what one must know can be detected publicly and would be deemed to fall below a normative limit of toleration. It is easy enough to discern the “core” or the three components of toleration in Ockham’s account of fraternal correction.

Comparison Like Marsilius, it is legitimate to claim that Ockham develops an account of heresy with significant implications for toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with the objectionable object. However, the ways in which they discuss the punishment of heretics are not remotely similar to each other.

216  Takashi Shogimen

Their arguments for toleration differ from each other on multiple levels, which will, in turn, highlight the fundamental differences between the two thinkers’ approaches to the problem of their day. Furthermore, although it is undeniable that both Marsilius and Ockham advocate for toleration in the sense of deliberate refraining from interfering with an objectionable object, foregrounding some of the assumptions of their discourses of toleration will help us appreciate the distinctively medieval mind-frame in which the two thinkers operate. First, what is tolerated in the accounts of the two men? What is the objectionable object in the objection component of the two thinkers’ ideas of toleration? Ockham reformulates the discourse of fraternal correction, which lays out who would detect heresy and how the detection would lead to condemnation. So, tolerated here are alleged errors that are not demonstrated as errors, let alone heretical errors. Conversely, no sooner than it is established that the alleged error is demonstrated to be indeed an error, the holder of the error would be bound to recant it immediately; otherwise, he or she would be deemed pertinacious and hence condemned as heretical. Marsilius, by contrast, does not frame his account of the punishment of heretics by the discourse of fraternal correction. He problematizes heresy as a sin against divine law, which did not impose any penalty or punishment in this world. Hence, tolerated in Marsilius’ account is heresy, not the alleged error that is not identified as such. Ockham never argues that heresy should be tolerated; he only argues that alleged errors should be tolerated until it is manifestly shown to be errors.33 This is a crucial difference between the two thinkers, highlighting that Marsilius’ toleration is far reaching. Like the two men’s views of the objectionable object, their views of the reason for, and the limit of, non-interference in the non-interference and rejection components, respectively, diverge from each other. For Ockham, the manifest demonstration of an error based on the publicly shared understanding of explicit faith—what every Christian must know according to their status in the ecclesiastical order—determines that toleration of an alleged error is required until it is manifestly shown that it is indeed an error. For Marsilius, by contrast, the toleration of heresy is required because heresy—a sin against divine law— cannot be punished by that law in this world; however, heresy remains open to the possibility of punishment in this world if human law stipulates punishment of heresy. This contrast stems from the difference in the context of the two accounts of heresy. So what is the context in which the two men discussed toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with the objectionable object? One tacit assumption of the discourse of fraternal correction, which shapes Ockham’s account, is that there existed a hierarchical order in the Christian community. Ockham puts a question mark on the relevance of the distinctions between Church officials and other believers and between superior and inferior within the ecclesiastical order with respect to the certitude of understanding about Christian doctrine

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  217

because, for Ockham, no one is infallible in knowing the truth of Christian doctrine and because one must equally assent to the truth and reject the errors regardless the standing within the Christian society. But this dismissal of the relevance of the differences within the hierarchical order does not deny the existence of those differences. On the contrary, the existence of differences in the ecclesiastical order matters to Ockham because that constitutes the basis of his argument that the higher office one occupies within the ecclesiastical order, the more likely one’s doctrinal error would be judged as heretical at once. The ways in which an individual who commits a heretical error is punished depends on the rank he or she occupies within the ecclesiastical order. Marsilius, on the other hand, discusses heresy either as a sin against divine law or as a crime against human law. He does not take into his account the agent who might commit such a sin or a crime with respect to divine or human law respectively. He only considers the action that is subject to legal—divine or human—appraisal and the types of law by which the action was evaluated. Perhaps it is far-fetched to infer from this that Marsilius argues for the equality before the law because a possibility remains wide open for human law to include prescriptions of different treatments of the same criminal action according to the status within the political community; on this, Marsilius remains silent. However, it is worth noting that, unlike the case of Ockham, the distinctions between Church officials and laypeople and between superior and inferior hardly plays any significant role in Marsilius’ account of the punishment of heretics. One remaining point of comparison between the two accounts of toleration concerns the non-interference component: What does interference—and absence thereof—mean to Marsilius and Ockham? This issue has not been sufficiently examined in previous scholarship. It is generally agreed that Marsilius does not attribute coercive power to the priesthood, while Ockham does; however, it has hardly been questioned or examined what they meant by attributing or not attributing coercive power to the priestly office. Marsilius articulates his idea of coercion clearly: in his view, individual A coerces individual B if A imposes penalty on the person and/or property of B for B’s failure to meet A’s precept. A penalty on the person or property of an individual is essential for coercion.34 Marsilius suggests that jurisdictional power could be either coercive or instructional. The spiritual jurisdiction exercised by priests, according to Marsilius, is instructional, and not coercive, because it does not impose any penalty or punishment in this world.35 Marsilius discusses excommunication as a possible form of punishment against heretics in this world; however, as I outlined earlier, he downplays its this-worldly significance as a form of penalty because it is only a matter of “shame and disgrace,”36 and does not disrupt the civil aspect of the life of heretics under excommunication. Marsilius’ notion of penalty is rather limited in scope, since shaming is not conceived as a form of punishment; by excluding “shame and disgrace”

218  Takashi Shogimen

from the scope of punishment, he confines penalty to the corporeal, physical, or economic sphere. Ockham, by contrast, does not define coercion explicitly in his discussion of heresy or toleration. However, he clearly associates coercive jurisdiction with the chance of imposing “reasonable penalty.” He also notes through the words of the Disciple in Part 1 of the Dialogus, that correction could take two forms: correction by public punishment and correction by simple warning.37 The former pertains to the priesthood, while the latter to anyone who has charity. Penalty is indeed a key element to define coercion in the medieval scholastic discourse on fraternal correction. A debated issue around fraternal correction is whether or not fraternal correction by priests is punitive. Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Nicholas Gorran argue that it is, while Albert the Great distinguishes fraternal correction from judicial correction, attributing punitive character only to the latter. Likewise, Durand de Saint Pourçain writes that punitive coercion that accompanied verbal admonition is not fraternal correction but paternal correction.38 Ockham does not engage with this debate on fraternal correction and penalty in any way in the Dialogus. The legitimacy and nature of penalty in doctrinal correction is not a primary concern for Ockham. Rather penalty and punishment emerge as a key issue in Ockham’s discussion of papal government. A. S. McGrade notes rightly that although Ockham does not deny Christ’s use of moderate corporal punishments, he largely views Christ not as a judge but as “a shepherd and liberator.”39 Ockham rejects the view that Christ executes severe physical punishment: “He raised three men from the dead but punished no one, no matter how wicked, with death or mutilation.”40 Ockham attempted to model ecclesiastical rulership on Christ’s actions in this world, not on the Marsilian Christ as the judge in the next world. This Christological difference constitutes an important divergence between the two men’s account of toleration: Marsilius argues for toleration of heresy by viewing Christ as the judge in the next world, thereby attributing the role of this-worldly judge to the human legislator alone. Ockham’s discussion, by contrast, is couched in the redefinition of Christ’s this-worldly role as a non-judgmental shepherd. The implications of the two accounts for the priesthood however are effectively similar: Marsilius flatly rejects coercive power to the priesthood, while Ockham discourages the use of coercive—that is, punitive—power to them. Furthermore, Ockham’s notion of coercion is somewhat broader and more nuanced than Marsilius’. In Part 1 of the Dialogus, Ockham maintains that those who simply disseminate errors but do not disseminate an order that such error should be upheld under threat of penalty do not, by definition, coerce anyone to hold such errors; however, those who disseminate a precept that commands others to subscribe to the error, under threat of punishment, must be responsible for coercing those individuals to hold the error.41 Here Ockham’s account of instructional power is more sophisticated than the Marsilian

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  219

distinction between coercive and instructional power. Ockham argues that even the exercise of instructional power could be coercive if the content of instruction includes a precept with penalties. He observes that the chance that power is exercised coercively—the chance of interference—is greater than Marsilius acknowledges. This is a crucial point for Ockham since he argues that papal heresy is far more dangerous than the heresy of a lay believer because the pope has the coercive—punitive—power to teach and disseminate (heretical) errors. If the error is promulgated with punitive sanction, anyone who speaks about it would “somehow coerce” others. A lay believer’s own error is far less threatening to the Christian community as long as he or she does not coerce anyone to subscribe to the same error. So Ockham conceptualizes coercion more broadly than Marsilius in order to highlight the grave danger of papal heresy. Papal heresy is indeed a grave, public concern for Ockham because the heretical pope can most effectively destroy the orthodox Christian faith simply by his exercise of teaching authority. The preservation of “catholic truths” in the Christian community is the common good Ockham strives to defend. To be sure, Marsilius too warns the risk of papal heresy in the Defensor pacis. He observes that “a certain Roman pope” had fallen into heresy by refusing to recognize the orthodoxy of “the supreme poverty of Christ” and wrote: “if this authority [of doctrinal decision-making] were granted to any bishop alone or to him together solely with his college of clergy, the universal body of the faithful would risk danger of shipwreck in matters of faith.”42 However, Marsilius does not discuss that “danger of shipwreck in matters of faith” any further, probably because his main concerns revolves around civil matters. The danger to Christian faith belongs to the sphere of the other-worldly judgement, unless human law includes prescriptions to the contrary effect. This relatively lukewarm attitude to the danger of papal heresy suggests that for Marsilius, the doctrinal truths such as Ockham’s “catholic truths” constituted a concern of little this-worldly significance. *** We have seen that both Marsilius and Ockham offer an account of heresy that has significant implications for toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering with an objectionable object. Clearly, toleration in this sense is not unique to the modern liberal tradition; it can be readily traced back to late medieval political thinking. However, the contexts in which the discussion of toleration occurs is different from the modern counterpart. The context of religious diversity, within which John Locke conceptualizes his idea of toleration, is of course foreign to both Marsilius and Ockham; their accounts are predicated on a unitary ecclesiastical system. Nederman successfully demonstrated the existence of toleration as a positive accommodation of human diversity and differences, which is obviously predicated on the existence of diversity in medieval

220  Takashi Shogimen

society. The preceding argument, by contrast, has shown that toleration in another sense—the principled refraining from interfering with an objectionable object—also existed in medieval political discourse despite the absence of the context of diversity. Meanwhile, the two thinkers’ accounts of heresy are remarkably dissimilar to each other: the crucial difference between them is that Marsilius recognizes the possibility that heresy is tolerated, while Ockham does not. For Marsilius, heresy could be tolerated as long as human law does not prescribe any punitive measures for it. For Ockham, by contrast, errors, not heresy, can be tolerated as long as it is not demonstrated that they are indeed errors. The community that Ockham envisages is seriously committed to the protection of the truth, while the Marsilian one is not, at least, to the same extent. Ultimately, then, Marsilius wants to restore and preserve peace and order in Latin Christendom, particularly in Italy. Ockham, by contrast, observes that the disruption of peace and order in the Christendom might be inevitable for the preservation and dissemination of orthodox Christian faith.43 If toleration as deliberate refraining from interfering from an objectionable object is, as Rainer Forst claims, to aim at containing and defusing a conflict, what Ockham’s toleration would contain or defuse is only the conflict of doctrinal views between an erring individual and a corrector. Ockham’s toleration does not aim at defusing a conflict in the public order. Peace and order may have to be sacrificed for the defence of the Christian truths. Marsilius’s toleration, by contrast, is intended precisely as a prevention of a conflict in the public order over doctrinal matters. Marsilius is indeed a defensor pacis, while Ockham is a defensor veritatis. The choice between peace and truth in this world shaped the two men’s accounts of heresy and toleration in profoundly contrasting ways. The two paths of toleration envisaged by Marsilius and Ockham perhaps foreshadowed the European experiences of religious wars and consequent religious toleration in the early modern period.

Notes 1 James Sullivan, “Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockham,” American Historical Review 2, no. 3 (April 1897): 409–26; 2, no. 4 ( July 1897): 593–610; Georges de Lagarde, “Marsile de Padoue et Guillaume d’Occam,” Revue des sciences religieuses 17, no. 2 (1937): 168–85; 17, no. 4 (1937): 428–54; idem, “Marsile de Padoue et Guillaume d’Ockham,” Etudes d’histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, 2 vols. (Paris: Sirey, 1965), 1: 593–605; Jürgen Miethke, “Marsilius und Ockham: Publikum und Leser ihrer politischen Schriften im späten Mittelalter,” Medioevo 6 (1980): 543–67; A. S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Mario Damiata, Plenitudo Potestatis e Universitas Civium in Marsilio da Padova (Florence: Edizioni Studi Francescani, 1983), 277–92; Roberto Lambertini, La Povertà Pensata (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 2000).

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  221



222  Takashi Shogimen













Bibliography Alexander of Hales. Quaestiones disputatae. Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1960. Cohen, Andrew Jason. “What Toleration Is.” Ethics 115, no.1 (2004): 68–95. Damiata, Mario. Plenitudo Potestatis e Universitas Civium in Marsilio da Padova. Florence: Edizioni Studi Francescani, 1983. Forst, Rainer. Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Lagarde, Georges de. “Marsile de Padoue et Guillaume d’Occam.” Revue des sciences religieuses 17, no. 2 (1937): 168–85; 17, no. 4 (1937): 428–54. ———. “Marsile de Padoue et Guillaume d’Ockham.” In Etudes d’histoire du droit canonique ­ dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, 2 vols., 1, 593–605. Paris: Sirey, 1965. Lambertini, Roberto. La Povertà Pensata. Modena: Mucchi Editore, 2000.

Heresy and Toleration in the Early Fourteenth Century  223

Laursen, John Christian, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Marsilius of Padua. “Defensor Minor.” In Marsile de Padoue, Oeuvres mineures, edited by Colette Jeudy and Jeannine Quillet. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1979. ———. Defensor pacis, edited by C. W. Previté-Orton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928. ———. Marsiglio of Padua, Defensor minor and De translatione imperii. Translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. The Defender of the Peace. Translated by A. S. Brett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. McGrade, A. S. The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Miethke, Jürgen. “Marsilius und Ockham: Publikum und Leser ihrer politischen Schriften im späten Mittelalter.” Medioevo 6 (1980): 543–67. Nederman, Cary J. “Individual Autonomy.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, edited by Robert Pasnau, 551–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University ­ Press, 2010. ———. “Toleration in Medieval Europe: Theoretical Principles and Historical Lessons.” In Bridging the Medieval-Modern Divide: Medieval Themes in the World of the Reformation, edited by James Muldoon, 45–64. London: Routledge, 2013. ———. Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100–c. 1550. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Nederman, Cary J., and John Christian Laursen, eds. Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. Shogimen, Takashi. “From Disobedience to Toleration: William of Ockham and the Medieval Discourse on Fraternal Correction.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 4 (2001): 599–622. ———. Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ———. “William of Ockham and Medieval Discourses on Toleration.” In Toleration in Comparative Perspective, edited by Vicki A. Spencer, 3–21. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Sullivan, James. “Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockham.” American Historical Review 2, no. 3 (April 1897): 409–26; 2, no. 4 ( July 1897): 593–610. William of Ockham. “Contra Ioannem.” In Guillelmi de Ockham: Opera Politica, vol. 3, edited by H. S. Offler. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956. ———. Dialogus. edited and translated by John Kilcullen, George Knysh, Volker Leppin, John Scott, and Jan Ballweg. Last updated April 2015. Accessed March 7, 2022. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/ockdial.html. ———. Dialogus, Part 2; Part 3, Tract 1, edited by John Kilcullen, John Scott, Jan Ballweg, and Volker Leppin. Oxford: The British Academy, 2011. ———. “Octo quaestiones de potestate papae.” In Guillelmi de Ockham: Opera Politica, vol. 1, edited by H. S. Offler. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974.

12 CONSENT, POWER, AND THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY Communal versus Individual “Rights” in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Jason Taliadoros

The scholarship of Cary J. Nederman has sought to tackle the big issues in the history of political science. One of these big issues is whether—and if so, how—pre-modern medieval governance and political rule resembled modern government in its theory and practice. Although approaching this task through close readings of the works of medieval theologians such as John of Salisbury and Marsilius of Padua, some of Nederman’s most forthright and contested writings have tackled the contrasting opinions of scholars who have privileged canon law sources, such as Brian Tierney. Tierney, a graduate student of Walter Ullmann, is regarded in equal measure as one of the finest and most controversial historians of medieval canon law and ecclesiology. Nederman and Tierney clashed on the topic of the continuity of the notion of conciliarism and constitutionalism between medieval and modern times. It is on the related idea of individual versus communal rights, where the two also differed, that this chapter ventures to provide some comment. I begin by setting out the debates on conciliarism that have engaged Tierney and Nederman since the 1990s, and how this controversy centred on the differences between individual and communal or corporate understandings of entitlement or rights. I then turn to the scholarship of J. C. Holt on notions of rights and liberties in Magna Carta, in which I apply a Hohfeldian analysis to argue for an understanding of individual rights rather than communal ones. Following this, I turn to Nederman’s more recent chapter on “Rights” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy (2012), to assess its contribution to an understanding of these concepts.1 I conclude with some comments on analysing rights in pre-modern contexts.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-16

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  225

Constitutionalism and Conciliarism: Medieval “Rights” as Communal The debate on the origins of constitutionalism centres on whether that concept is a modern one or whether it has antecedents in the pre-modern period. On the genesis of constitutionalism, one school of thought argues for continuity between the two. According to Nederman, the substance of this view is that constitutional principles first arose in and were directly shaped by the ecclesiology of the Latin Middle Ages, in particular, by the conception of the supremacy of the General Council of the church over the pope This view received its seminal statement in J. N. Figgis’s Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius: 1414–1625.2 That a General Council could actually depose legitimately elected popes and appoint its own candidate and could do so on the basis of a theory of conciliar sovereignty represented, according to Figgis, a definitive break with all previous ideas of government and its relation to the community over which it rules.3 In contrast, Nederman has contended “both that conciliarism is more consistent with medieval political thought in general than has been allowed and that there is a decisive break between this medieval approach to government and a distinctively modern framework.”4 Nederman centres his rebuttal of the Figgisite position on evidence of the theory of the General Council propounded by the late medieval theologian Jean Gerson. In establishing the paradigms of his thesis, Nederman uses a number of political theorists’ work to set out four elements that constitute “modern” connotations of constitutionalism; thus, for Nederman, it is necessary to establish the existence of these elements in pre-modern cognates in order to make a compelling argument for continuity. These are: 1 an impersonal conception of government grounded in the office rather than the person of the ruler; 2 limitation of rulers through public control over the offices of state; 3 the guarantee of specific and imprescriptible rights to all persons or citizens; 4 individualized free consent to rulers and their official deeds. Viewed collectively, these principles supplement the rule of law so as to compose the core of modern constitutional theory.5 This is not the place to rehearse Nederman’s arguments, other than to note his conclusion that Gerson was a “constitutionalist” but that his “ecclesiological vision reflects none of the distinctive themes or patterns of thought which we associate with constitutionalism in its specifically modern sense.”6 More

226  Jason Taliadoros

broadly, Nederman has argued that attempts by certain scholars, whom he labels “neo-Figgisites”—most prominent among them Brian Tierney—to argue for a line of continuity between medieval and modern notions of constitutional government and popular sovereignty, are flawed.7 The divide between pre-modern and modern, Nederman observes, is contingent on the shift from communal to individual conceptions of political power or consent. Accordingly, in contrast to Tierney and the so-called “Figgisites,” Nederman states: The act of election was viewed as the deed of the totus popuIus or universitas, that is, the corporate body acting in concert. Yet the actual mechanism through which the whole people or corporation renders its consent might be narrowly constituted or merely formal, as in the selection of the rex Romanum by the imperial electors on behalf of the entire Roman people or the “recognition” of the king by those in attendance at a coronation ceremony. By no stretch of the imagination was the consent implicit in election of an individualised nature; it was instead a “unanimous” act of the entire community, the collectivity speaking with one voice. Similarly, when medieval authors pointed out the structural parallel between election and deposition-that those with the authority to confer power must also have the authority to remove it—they conceived of the entire community acting with a single mind against its government. The idea that individuals as individuals might have legitimate grounds to withdraw political consent would seem very strange to medieval political theorists.8 Such a view of communal understandings of election, indeed of rights, is consistent with longstanding views about medieval entitlements. For instance, Antony Black in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (1988) sets up the stereotypical binary between medieval and modern political thought: We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a communal or even collectivist epoch, in which there was a sense of “the real personality of the group”, “absorption of the individual by the community”, in which—to go back to Burckhardt—“man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family or corporation—only through some general category”. A … study of medieval social language assumes the existence of a “communitarian ethos”. The distinction between modern individualism and medieval collectivism goes back, through Tönnies and Durkheim, to Romanticism and the Enlightenment. The pioneer of the study of medieval political thought, Otto von Gierke (1841–1921), believed that, in towns, guilds and other “chosen groups”, individuals submitted willingly to communal norms and identified themselves morally with the group, in the tradition of the Germanic Genossenschaft (fellowship).9

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  227

Of course, this binary is not so extreme as just depicted. Black observes that “now the picture is changing.”10 He expands on the rise of individualism around 1100: for Peter Brown, this saw the supernatural change from being “the main source of the objectified values of the group” to be the preserve of “intensely personal feeling”11; the Investiture Controversy sparked off a transition from tribalism and social collectivism to a more self-conscious relationship between individual and community12; Morris located the “discovery of the individual in the twelfth century,” due to the value of the individual provided by Christianity and a God who called each man by his name13; economic changes altered feudalism with a money economy and social mobility14; a development of many different kinds of “consciously chosen community,” namely local Church, kingdom, feudal domain, city, village, guild, confraternity, family;15 and the production of divergent views on the individual and society by different intellectual traditions, namely Neoplatonic, Aristotelian and humanist, theological and juristic, realist and nominalist.16

Corporatism and Conciliarism: Medieval Rights as “Individual” Tierney argues for a position at polar opposite to Nederman’s argument on conciliarism, namely that rights were not necessarily communitarian. In fact, he argues, there is evidence to suggest that they were individual in nature, much like modern conceptions of the idea of human rights or even natural rights.17 In a book chapter published in 2011, Tierney assays this topic once again.18 Tierney singles Nederman out for the latter’s subscription to the view of the medieval period as having communal notions of rights, which contrasted with “modern constitutionalism … characterized by individualized free consent to rulers and their official deeds.”19 Tierney instead argues for a continuity between medieval political thought and Lockean individualism by a process of negative argument, disputing three strands of thought that characterize discontinuity. The first strand deals with the potential incompatibility between medieval notions of political society as a product of nature and natural law, on the one hand, and political society as a work of human artifice, on the other. Tierney argues that Locke did not break with medieval ways of thinking by treating the state as an artificial construct that followed a pre-political “state of nature”; rather, Tierney points out, there were several medieval sources that equivocated on whether this state of nature was a primordial condition of humankind or “the perfected society of the polis, the kind of society in which human nature could best flourish.”20 Chief among such sources were commentators on the Decretum of Gratian, who emphasized that this primordial state of affairs contained both natural law and “the rational faculty that showed humans how to escape from that condition and achieve a better way of life.”21 The second strand deals with any possible disjunction between Lockean individual consent and medieval corporate consent. Tierney argues that “Locke’s own doctrine of consent

228  Jason Taliadoros

was not entirely individualistic.”22 Instead it drew on corporation theory that Locke knew from Grotius and Pufendorf. Further, Tierney opines that “[m] edieval corporate consent was individual consent, the consent of individual members who voted as individuals but who concurred, like Locke’s individuals, in accepting majority decisions.”23 I return to this point in the next section of this chapter. The third strand is whether Locke made a break from the past in attributing political power to individuals. In light of the second strand just discussed, Tierney’s response is that Locke did not. Here Tierney examines the early seventeenth-century Tractatus de legibus ac deo legislatore (1612) of Francesco Suarez, who discussed the institution of a government by “a concatenation of voluntary individual acts.”24 Accordingly, Tierney’s account of the origins of modern constitutional thought or constitutionalism differs starkly from Nederman’s. While Tierney in the main argues for continuity between pre-modern and modern modes of thought on the origins of government, based on an individualised conception of rights, Nederman subscribes to a view of discontinuity based on a corporatized notion of rights. In the next section, I outline how a corporatized understanding of rights has dominated scholarship on a very different medieval document, namely Magna Carta. I take issue with that viewpoint. But first I need to explain how scholars have arrived at an understanding of Magna Carta as giving rise to communal rather than individual rights.

Communal Versus Individual Rights in Magna Carta This issue of individual versus communal notions of rights in pre-modern Europe has occupied the minds of many political theorists and other scholars, Nederman and Tierney among them. Yet, somewhat unexpectedly, similar lines of argument have arisen in scholarship on the most iconic of pre-modern English sources—Magna Carta. Despite the great volume of recent scholarship on Magna Carta, James Holt’s classic treatment has dominated scholarly views of that document, contextualizing it as a political accord reached between two warring parties—baronial interests, on the one hand, and a ruthless King John, on the other.25 Yet Holt’s study is nuanced enough to appreciate the intellectual, cultural, and legal predecessors to the provisions in Magna Carta. Holt argues that the Magna Carta was a product of local English customs that arose from local social and political conditions, including individual and municipal charters that granted rights, ad hoc privileges from royal prerogative powers, royal writs, and most importantly the “good old laws” of the Charter of Liberties of Henry I (1100). On the other hand, he also pointed to contemporaneous imperial and customary developments in continental Europe that mirrored some of these changes. Holt argues that the chapters of this document reflected their immediate feudal social and political context, with the result that Magna Carta largely represented the self-interested aspirations of the barons.

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  229

Yet Holt also squarely dealt with the language of rights in Magna Carta. Holt characterizes the fundamental essence of the key provisions of Magna Carta as grants of communal rights, liberties, and entitlements. Holt does not see in the Magna Carta pre-modern cognate notions of natural law and natural rights of the type expounded by Hobbes and Locke in the seventeenth century.26 In this sense, Holt rejects the notion of “individual” rights in Magna Carta. But a closer analysis of Holt’s study on this aspect of Magna Carta reveals that his account does not necessarily provide a sound explanation for this. Further, his discussion of rights, liberties, and law is open to alternative readings when considered in light of fundamental understandings of rights revealed by legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld.27 This requires some explanation. Holt’s account begins with a semantic analysis of the Latin term ius, a problematic word, which in English translates as both “law” and “right.” Holt implicitly acknowledges the objective-subjective distinction highlighted by Villey and Tierney: “Magna Carta fulfilled both senses of the word [ius] for it was at one and the same time a collection of rights and a statement of law.”28 This correlates to the essential dichotomy between an objective right (“it is right” or “it is the law”) and a subjective one (“it is my right”). For the subjective meaning of “right,” Holt states, ius had a “simple traditional meaning; men sought land or castles ‘as their right.’ ”29 In this sense, we might say that ius meant title or, more broadly, an entitlement. Holt provides evidence of this position that ius meant “right” in the sense of an entitlement by reference to Chapter 52 of Magna Carta: “If anyone has been disseised of or kept out of his lands, castles, franchises (libertates) or his right (vel iure suo) by us without lawful judgment,” these must be restored.30 In the same way, the second part of Chapter 63 also contains the command by John that the men of the realm were to hold “all the aforesaid liberties, rights and concessions.”31 By implication, this same characterization would apply to other provisions, such as Chapter 53 (the restoration of wardships or abbey lands in which the lord of the fee says he has a “right”), and Chapter 59 (the king to “act toward Alexander, king of the Scots, concerning the return of his sisters and hostages and concerning his franchises [libertates] and his right [ius suus]).” It would arguably also apply to Chapter 1 which, in its first part, contains a grant by John that the church “shall be free, and … have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.” Thus, Holt arguably recognizes the notion of “subjective” rights, a concept which Tierney and others have traversed and is of principal relevance to this chapter. Holt is less clear on the notion of an “objective” right. For Holt, both “just judgment and custom led in the end to right; indeed their major function was to establish right.”32 Here Holt seems to recognize ius in its objective sense as something that is objectively right or just. Yet, he also recognises ius in its objective sense as a body of laws or “statement of law,” as Glanville understood the ius et consuetudo regni and the iura regni and canonists and civilian

230  Jason Taliadoros

lawyers understood their respective bodies of law.33 Yet, while recognizing the distinction between the two, Magna Carta, was “at one the same time” both “a collection of rights and a statement of law.” To this point, Holt appears to have adopted the dichotomy of ius or iura as either objective or subjective, much like Tierney. From this point onwards, however, Holt’s argument takes a distinctive turn. I now set out the path of reasoning that Holt follows, which leads ultimately to his conclusion that such rights are communal in nature. Holt begins by identifying currents at work on English legal thinking, and which influenced the character of the Magna Carta; in particular, Roman legal influences were pointing to a concept of kingship as “a legally supreme public authority.”34 Specifically, while in the twelfth century royal power was still “personal,” Holt observes that the thirteenth century saw this become an “office.”35 This concept of the “rights of the Crown,” this doctrine of “inalienable sovereignty,” now came to the fore.36 The next development that Holt describes is that these rights of the Crown, identified with the office of the king, become identified with the laws of the realm or of the kingdom—the iura regni or the iura Coronae.37 In turn, these rights and liberties of the realm or the kingdom became identified with the rights and liberties of the barons.38 Yet, despite this, Holt adds “the equation of baronial liberties with the laws and liberties of the kingdom is something they [the chancery clerks drafting the Magna Carta] cannot stomach. They will not accept the opposition [the barons’] claim to act for the regnum.”39 And so, in a veritable sleight of hand, Holt describes a process whereby the clerks drafting the Magna Carta consciously do not grant the liberties and rights to the regnum or to a community. Instead, the grant is to institutions such as the English church, which shall be free and to have its rights and liberties unharmed in Chapter 1, and the city of London will have all its ancient liberties and customs restored under Chapter 13. And Holt notes the liberties granted not to the kingdom but to all the freemen of the kingdom. But, Holt declares, this was no individual grant of rights and liberties. His conclusion instead is that “whatever Magna Carta says about itself, we are faced with rights which, if they are to mean anything, must be held not severally but in common, by a community, whether that community be hundred, shire or kingdom.”40 For Holt, “right and law were equated, for law was now viewed as something to which the community and each one of its members was by rights entitled.”41 What are we to make of this analysis by Holt? Certainly, it is an extraordinary exegesis. Its reasoning is based on a deep familiarity with the sources and the drafting techniques of the chancery clerks. Yet, in what follows I want to question the logic in Holt’s reasoning and suggest a different conclusion to the one he reached. First, I note that Holt’s compulsion to find that, if they are to mean anything, the individually expressed rights and liberties in Magna Carta had to be communal in nature. I take Holt here to mean that, if these rights are to be enforceable,

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  231

they must be held not severally but in common, by a community. Presumably, therefore, a community could enforce the observance of these rights. I want to suggest, however, that, on another analysis, these rights and liberties can still mean something even if expressed individually. It is my contention that, utilizing the approach to legal entitlements adopted by influential legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld, the opposite is axiomatic: rights truly so-called can only be so if they are relational in the sense that they exist between individuals. Rights can only be claimed and enforced against another individual person.42 Even property rights, which appear to give us rights against the world at large, in fact are only rights against each individual person who seeks to interfere with the exclusive possession of our property. Second, Holt himself concedes that a number of provisions in Magna Carta did not fall into this communal understanding of rights or liberties. These were instead to be held “severally, that is individually.” One such example by Holt was the reference in Magna Carta to the “freemen of the realm,” which appears in the second part of Chapter 1 (“We have also granted to all the free men of our realm for ourselves and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written below, to have and hold, them and their heirs from us and our heirs.”) and in Chapter 63 Wherefore we wish and firmly command that . . . the men in our realm are to have and hold all the aforesaid liberties rights and concessions well and peacefully, freely and quietly, fully and completely, for them and their heirs of us and our heirs in all things and places for ever, as is aforesaid. Another example by Holt was Chapter 2 on baronial reliefs.43 A further example by Holt was the provisions allowing widows and minors to hold concessions, in Chapters 4, 5, 7, 8, and 11. I want to take this point a bit further and examine these provisions. In particular, it is instructive to read them on a Hohfeldian analysis. What does a Hohfeldian analysis reveal of these provisions? Briefly, what does a Hohfeld analysis entail? And why would I use it here? In response to the first of these, Hohfeld was a legal theorist writing in the early part of the twentieth century who sought to clarify the meaning of a “right.” He wanted the use of that term to be used precisely and advisedly, and not to conflate a number of legal concepts together. In essence, his “fundamental legal conceptions” separated “claim-rights,” which were truly rights, from privileges or liberties, which were not truly rights. What distinguished a right, truly so-called, from other types of entitlements, Hohfeld argued, was that, in a situation where someone had a claim-right (which was properly speaking a “right”), e.g. to food, that claim-right entailed someone else having a duty to abstain from interfering with that claim-right or to render assistance. In turn, the existence of such a duty meant that a claim right was enforceable. Further, the nature of the claim-right was “relational,” in the sense that each claim-right

232  Jason Taliadoros

was held by a specific person or group of person against another specific person or group of persons. In terms of their usefulness here, although Hohfeld’s ideas and writings are no longer current in contemporary debates on the nature of law and rights,44 his use of this taxonomy to (a) distinguish claim-rights from liberties and privileges and (b) to contrast claim-rights as requiring a duty (what he calls a “jural correlative” of a claim-right) from no-rights as devoid of such a duty (what he calls a “jural opposite” of a claim-right) has not been questioned as a legitimate means of clarifying those terms. In an academic environment where rightstalk has become protean, I consider that Hohfeld’s approach represents a valid taxonomy to talking about understandings of rights, even though it may appear anachronistic as a heuristic for pre-modern ideas.

Chapters 1 and 63 It is necessary to deal separately with the two distinct parts of Chapter 1, the first on the freedom of the English church and the second a grant to “all the free men of the realm . . . all the liberties” set out in the 63 ensuing chapters in the text of the Magna Carta. The first part of Chapter 1 is a confirmation by the king that in perpetuity, the English church “is to be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired,” specifically regarding “freedom of elections.” It is a confirmation, rather than a de novo grant, indicating that such a liberty has been granted previously. Does this satisfy the Hohfeldian analysis? First, is there a duty by the Crown to abstain from interfering with the election of church prelates? Arguably, reducing to writing in a legal document such as a charter the Crown’s confirmation of this prior grant means it is duty-bound to abstain from interfering in elections in the church. Second, can the church enforce this duty on the Crown not to interfere? I suggest that a means of enforcement does exist by the fact that the parties to the Great Charter swore oaths to uphold it and so any breach would be regarded as perjury and anathema—great disincentives not to go against its terms. Further, the “security clause” (Chapter 61),45 provided for the 25 to “distrain and distress” the king if he failed to observe the terms. These enforcement measures between cleric and king satisfy the Hohfeldian relational aspect. The second part of Chapter 1 is a general enacting provision granting to “all the free men of the realm . . . all the liberties” set out in the 62 ensuing chapters in the text of the Magna Carta. On my analysis, this is no claim-right, as there is no duty and it is not enforceable other than in a very general way. It is arguably what Hohfeld calls a “power,” a term denoting the power or ability to change legal relations; by the Crown granting such liberties, the king is thereby altering legal relations rather than enforcing them (and the grantees have correlative “liabilities” to this exercise of power).

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  233

It is worth also noting that the terms ius and libertas are sometimes used interchangeably in Magna Carta. In other words, a libertas could equate to a Hohfeldian claim-right, as in Chapter 1—a libertas was not necessarily a liberty or privilege in the Hohfeldian sense of being the jural opposite of a “duty.”

Chapters 39 and 40 These chapters, separate in the 1215 version of Magna Carta, were later combined in the 1225 version. Chapter 39 famously declares: No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers (per legale judicium parium suorum) or by the law of the land (vel per legem terre). Chapter 40 states: “To no one will we [i.e. the king] sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right (rectum) or justice.” Are these claim-rights in the Hohfeldian sense? The king is arguably under a duty not to proceed to arbitrarily arrest anyone under Chapter 39 or to refuse them justice under Chapter 40 by the nature of their being drafted in the mandatory subjunctive mood. Such protection is enforceable by court procedures (such as the writ of right) or by the other enforcement provisions in Magna Carta such as Chapter 61 discussed above and Chapter 52 (judgement of the 25). Also, arguably these chapters are enforceable directly against the king and so relational in the sense understood by Hohfeld.

Property Provisions: Personal Property (Chapters 28, 30, and 31) and Real Property (Chapters 52, 53, and 59) These provisions protect private property: Chapters 28, 30, and 31 prohibit the taking of chattels, such as grain, horses, and carts, and wood by bailiffs and the like, while Chapters 52, 53, and 59 protect interests in land, castles, and franchises. Chapters 28, 30, and 31 are in the mandatory subjunctive mood and so set out a duty not to interfere with the property rights. In contrast, Chapters 52, 53, and 59 do not explicitly require that the king refrain from acting, thus no duty arises. The duties in Chapters 28, 30, and 31 can be enforced by the Chapter 61 “security clause” as well as by the writs procedure in the common law courts. These obligations are relational in that they are enforceable against an individual, the king.

Exactions Chapters 12, 14, 20, 21, 48, and 55 Chapters 12, 14, 20, and 21 in their general effect prohibit exactions of scutage and aids (knight-service) or amercements (fines for penalties) without the prior

234  Jason Taliadoros

“common counsel of the realm.” These are Hohfeldian claim-rights as against the king or tenant-in-chief to consult their subjects or tenants before imposing any exaction. The language of these chapters is in the subjunctive mood and mandatory; further, Chapters 52 and 61 provide for the enforcement of these duties. Chapters 48 and 55 proscribe evil taxes and fines. These are arguably privileges/liberties under the Hohfeld taxonomy, rather than claim-rights. From this Hohfeldian analysis, it is possible to draw two observations. One is that, rather than deducing that the chapters in Magna Carta, “if they are to mean anything,” point to Holt’s conclusion of communal rights, I would argue that they may represent Hohfeldian individual rights. As discussed above, they resemble claim-rights as defined by Hohfeld. Second is that the adoption of a Hohfeldian analysis allows a clearer semantic delineation of what “right” and “rights” mean for the purposes of jurisprudential or ontological definition in a modern sense so that the search for their pre-modern analogue or analogues can be approached with greater clarity.

Nederman on Rights As we have seen, Nederman has argued for the notion that pre-modern rights were communal in nature; he rejects the arguments of Tierney and other neo-Figgisites that medieval ideas of rights and political sovereignty were individual in nature. It is worth investigating whether that position has changed in his most recent foray into the debate on rights, his chapter on “Rights” for the 2012 The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy. In that essay, Nederman examines three dimensions of rights as they resonated in the political and legal philosophy of the Middle Ages: legal rights, natural rights, and human rights.46 He also takes particular aim at the work of Tierney on the origins of natural rights theory. Nederman’s definition of the first category, legal rights, is uncontroversial: these are the sorts of rights that are “positively granted by statutory law or code, or at least by the force of custom.”47 The second, natural rights, is more controversial; indeed, it was Tierney’s contention that twelfth- and thirteenth-century canonists’ understandings of ius naturale that contained the beginnings of individualized and subjectivized understandings of right and law that we might normally associate with their modern equivalents, a notion with which Nederman fundamentally disagrees.48 Nederman defines natural rights as the “powers, freedoms, and/or competencies” that human beings possess to the extent that they enjoy complete and exclusive dominion over their mental and bodily facilities—and the fruits thereof—in the form of personal property. Thus, a natural rights theory entails a conception of private ownership grounded on the status of the individual subject.

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  235

These rights are “inalienable and imprescriptible” and so, in their “political bearing,” “any government that attempts to suppress them without due process has no claim on the obedience of its citizens.”49 Third, Nederman defines human rights as the rights pertaining to a person “regardless of circumstance (nationality, class, religion) or physical condition (race, gender, age, disability), on the basis of a fundamental and absolute dignity inhering in humanity.”50 He goes on to cite Samuel Moyn’s criteria for human rights, specifically: their generality or independence of legal, political, cultural, or institutional factors in order to stake a claim; their nature as both positive and negative, positive in the sense of being “specifiable” in a positive and definite sense, and “negative” in the sense of connoting the freedom from external domination; and finally the moral obligation on everyone to uphold them.51 Here I pause only to observe the imprecision in language contrary to the Hohfeldian analysis that I have ventured above. Nederman turns to the issue of “whether (or how) medieval thinkers pioneered the idea of natural rights,” focusing on the approaches of Michel Villey and Brian Tierney.52 Tierney’s thesis locates a “subjective” interpretation of ius naturale—suggesting that rights pertain to persons as free individuals who thereby enjoy full control over their bodies and property—in the canon lawyers of the twelfth century, which was distinct from the “objective” interpretation—in the sense of a set of moral duties imposed by God and incumbent on human beings as part of a divinely created order. Nederman concludes that although Tierney is surely correct that medieval authors from Gratian forward expressed the inviolable freedom of individual human beings in the language of ius naturale, this claim in itself does nothing to upset fundamentally the conventional view that part and parcel of natural rights theory is a concomitant political teaching.53 What does Nederman mean by this? He clarifies by citing Quentin Skinner’s observation that “subjective” rights mattered in early modern thought but only insofar as they had direct political consequences for the powers enjoyed by government over individuals.54 He cites Moyn as supporting the same point.55 Tierney’s work, Nederman claims, fails to demonstrate that medieval natural rights had such political overtones.56 Nederman then distinguishes these natural rights from human rights. The former, he argues, consistently with Moyn, are dependent on sovereign power or national self-determination, that is the political order against which they are asserted by citizen or subject populations. The latter, however, do not have regard to such specific, territorially-fixed forms of political order.57 Nederman finds in the Defensor pacis (1324) of Marsilius of Padua the promotion of a notion of duties beyond borders based on a conception of rights that pertains to all human beings, a pre-modern equivalent of human rights.

236  Jason Taliadoros

In a recent review of Tierney’s work, I have concluded that Nederman’s criticisms still hold merit.58 As noted above, Nederman has rightly pointed out that Tierney’s notion of subjective rights do not equate to modern political rights “insofar as these have direct political consequences for the powers enjoyed by government over individuals.”59 Yet Nederman’s approach is clearly concerned with sovereignty and the relationship between rulers and the ruled. The analysis I have adopted here, taking my cue from Hohfeld, is that rights more broadly govern human relationships and can only be such when co-existent with a duty, are enforceable, and exist between individuals. *** What observations can be drawn from this chapter on modern versus pre-modern understandings of individual versus communal rights in the scholarship of Nederman and Tierney? It has taken issue with some of the ideas of the dedicatee of this volume, Cary Nederman, who sees rights as ineluctably linked with political teachings and the political context. On the approach presented here, adopting a Hohfeldian analysis, these differences are explicable in the contrasting approaches to medieval sources. That is to say, whereas Nederman’s approach centres on identifying pre-modern cognates of rights as a bulwark and protection for the individual against the over-reach of sovereign rule, Tierney’s analysis sees in rights the power of the individual to assert autonomy and self-determinism. The former is necessarily political; the latter is not necessarily political. The approach outlined in this chapter, borrowing from legal philosopher Hohfeld, takes yet a different approach. A claim-right so-called by Hohfeld has no political overtones, as Nederman would assert, but neither does it seek the absolute atomistic individualism that Tierney would aver. Instead, the Hohfeldian definition of a right insists on the co-existence of a duty between the right-holder and the person subject to that right. It is a normative analysis. Neither Tierney nor Nederman’s approach to rights is necessarily inconsistent with it; indeed, further interrogation of the sources for the correlative duties associated with the asserted claim-rights may well be a fruitful source of investigation for both. The adapted Hohfeldian approach I have outlined in this chapter provides a possible means for identifying semantic and normative equivalents of legal entitlements in pre-modern sources. The usefulness of such an approach, I think, is that it has the potential to focus debates on rights-talk, which would otherwise have the potential to become protean and divergent. One recent example is the extraordinary work of Samuel Moyn, who situates the beginnings of modern human rights in the 1930s Christian political movements against communism, where rights discourses transcended the pre-modern (communal)—modern (individual) binary to embrace personalism.60 While such divergence from the communal-individual paradigm in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, Moyn’s recourse to personalism opens up yet another discourse by which to identify

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  237

precursors to rights and rights cognates. While the work of Moyn has much to recommend it, in terms of its scope, and mastery of sources, its treatment of the key concepts of rights and human rights demonstrates little of the semantic rigour demanded by Hohfeld.61 Only by clarifying our grounds of terminology and approach can we ultimately aspire to perceive links between our own world and the past with greater precision and clarity.

Notes



238  Jason Taliadoros





















Consent, Power, and the Political Community  239

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

of the Crown: ibid., 99. Riesenberg notes that a general theory of inalienability composed of Roman and canonical elements emerged in the late twelfth century via an interpolation in the Leges Edwardi Confessori: ibid., 100. Riesenberg also observes that Bartolus Sasseferrato formulated a theory of the inalienability of sovereignty in the context of Pope Innocent III declaring by bull that Magna Carta was illegal because its concession to the barons were in prejudice to the pope’s power: ibid., 99. Holt, “Rights and Liberties,” 63. Ibid. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 65. Holt, Magna Carta, 120. On Hohfeld’s assertion that claim-rights must be “relational,” see the analysis and critique in: Matthew H. Kramer, “Rights without Trimmings,” in A Debate over Rights: Philosophical Enquiries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 9, 50–60. Holt, “Rights and Liberties,” 64. For an outline of the contemporary relevance of Hohfeld, see Kit Barker, “Private Law, Analytical Philosophy and the Modern Value of Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld: A Centennial Appraisal,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 38 (2018): 585–612. Also called the “sanctions clause”: Catharine MacMillan, “Introduction,” in Challenges to Authority and the Recognition of Rights: From Magna Carta to Modernity, edited by Catherine MacMillan and Charlotte Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1–17. A trichotomy that he compares with Andrew Vincent, The Politics of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 23–27: Nederman, “Rights,” 644. Nederman, “Rights,” 644. Tierney, Idea of Natural Rights. Nederman, “Rights,” 644. Ibid., 644. Ibid. Ibid., 649. Ibid., 651. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 2: 302–48. The one issue with Nederman accepting this coda of Skinner’s, namely that individual rights, if they are to mean anything, must be related to the “fundamental confrontation . . . between states and citizens,” is that—by Skinner’s account—these “arose only in the course of the constitutional upheavals of the seventeenth century.” Quentin Skinner, “States and Freedom of Citizens,” in States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2003), 11–27, at 11. Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 20–23. Nederman, “Rights,” 651. Ibid., 652. Taliadoros, “Review Essay of Brian Tierney.” Ibid., 280, citing Nederman, “Review of Brian Tierney,” 218; Nederman, Lineages of European Political Thought, 45; Nederman, “Rights,” 651. Samuel Moyn, Christian Human Rights in History (Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press, 2015), 85–88. Moyn, The Last Utopia, which locates the origins for human rights in 1970s Carter-era America, fares no better in terms of its semantic clarity of the key concepts of rights and human rights.

240  Jason Taliadoros

Bibliography Barker, Kit. “Private Law, Analytical Philosophy and the Modern Value of Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld: A Centennial Appraisal.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 38 (2018): 585–612. Black, Antony. “The Individual and Society.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450, edited by J. H. Burns, 588–606. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Brandt, A. von. Geist und Politik in der lübeckischen Geschicte. Lübeck: Verlag Max Schmidt-Römhild, 1954. Breay, Claire, and Julian Harrison, eds. Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy. London: The British Library, 2015. Brown, Peter R. L. Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity. London: Faber & Faber, 1982. Bynum, Carolyn Walker. “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 1–17. Carpenter, David. Magna Carta. London: Penguin, 2015. Figgis, J. N. Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius: 1414–1625. New York: AMS Press, 1978; reprint Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907. Harvey, John. The Gothic World 1100–1600: A Survey of Architecture and Art. London: Batsford, 1950. Holt, J. C. Magna Carta. Revised with a new introduction by George Garnett and John Hudson, 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ———. “Rights and Liberties in Magna Carta.” In Album Helen Maud Cam. Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, 57–69. Louvain: Les Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1960. Kramer, Matthew H. A Debate over Rights: Philosophical Enquiries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. MacMillan, Catharine. “Introduction.” In Challenges to Authority and the Recognition of Rights: From Magna Carta to Modernity, edited by Catherine MacMillan and Charlotte Smith, 1–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Magna Carta Project. Accessed March 25, 2019. http://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/. Magraw, Daniel B., Andrea Martinez, and Roy E. Brownell II, eds. Magna Carta and the Rule of Law. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association, Section of International Law, 2014. Martines, Lauro. Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy. New York: Knopf, 1979. Morris, Colin. The Discovery of the Individual 1050–1200. London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1972. Moyn, Samuel. Christian Human Rights in History. Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press, 2015. ———. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Nederman, Cary J. “Conciliarism and Constitutionalism: Jean Gerson and Medieval Political Thought.” History of European Ideas 12 (1990): 189–209. ———. Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. ———. “Review of: Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights and Rights, Law and ­Infallibility.” American Journal of Legal History 42 (1998): 217–19.

Consent, Power, and the Political Community  241

———. “Rights.” In The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, edited by John Marenbon, 644–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ———. “The Liberty of the Church and the Road to Runnymede: John of Salisbury and the Intellectual Foundations of the Magna Carta.” PS: Political Science & Politics 43, no. 3 (2010): 457–61. Riesenberg, Peter N. Inalienability of Sovereignty in Medieval Political Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Singer, Heinrich, ed. Summa decretorum. Paderborn: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1902. Skinner, Quentin. “States and Freedom of Citizens.” In States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, edited by Quentin Skinner and Bo Stråth, 11–27. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2003. ———. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. “Symposium: After Runnymede: Revising, Reissuing, and Reinterpreting Magna Carta in the Middle Ages.” In William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 25, no. 2 (2016): 403–688. Taliadoros, Jason. “Review Essay of Brian Tierney, Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800.” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 34 (2017): 259–80. Tierney, Brian. “Corporatism, Individualism, and Consent: Locke and Premodern Thought.” In Law as Profession and Practice in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of James A. Brundage, edited by Kenneth Pennington and Melodie Harris Eichbauer, 49–72. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. ———. Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955; reprinted with additional material Leiden: Brill, 1998. ———. Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. The Idea of Natural Rights. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997. Vincent, Andrew. The Politics of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Vincent, Nicholas. “Magna Carta and the English Historical Review: A Review ­Article.” English Historical Review 130, no. 544 (2015): 646–84. ———. Magna Carta: Origins and Legacy. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2015. ———, ed. Magna Carta: The Foundation of Freedom 1215–2015. London: Third Millennium Publishing, 2015. Worcester, Kent, ed. “Symposium: The Meaning and Legacy of the Magna Carta.” In PS: Political Science & Politics 43, no. 3 (2010): 451–86.

PART IV

Responses

13 THE STUDY OF POLITICAL TEXTS AND TEXTS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT A Methodological Afterword Frédérique Lachaud

Although images or buildings may provide substantial information on political programmes and on the perception of power, knowledge of political ideas for the period under consideration is mainly based on texts. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period of a striking extension of writing, with the effect of promoting the connection between artes or studia and power. But producing a written text was a significant action that required time and financial investment as well as high skill. In the field of politics, the rationale for writing was to circulate ideas, to give them status and authority, or to perpetuate their memory. From then on the practice of power would not be dissociated from the use of administrative writing, as well as from the use of writing in the process of legitimizing power. For the opponents of the prince, writing up their claims ensured the ideological legacy of their movement, as was the case with the baronial rebellion of 1215 in England; more generally, for actors who were not centre stage, writing provided the means for political acknowledgement. If numerous writings echo what we would now call conversations about power, it would be artificial to reconstruct a global evolution of political thought using disparate texts that were conceived in different contexts and for different uses. It may therefore be necessary to range texts into some large groups: Firstly texts that were dedicated to reflecting on power and that were created as deliberate constructs, whether in courts or schools. Texts produced in schools usually quote or comment on other, authoritative texts, for instance the works of ancient philosophers, or legal texts.1 The shape of scholastic exercises may have influenced the orientations and formulations of political thought, as suggested by Lidia Lanza about the development of DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-18

246  Frédérique Lachaud

the questio during the period when the Politics of Aristotle was read.2 This raises the question of the birth and status of political philosophy, scientia politica, as a scholastic art. A second group of texts were those written in order to defend a specific political position, to promote a programme of reform, or to attack an opponent using the tools of polemics: these texts were directly performative. A third, loose group brings together texts that belong to various genres, such as historiographical writing, biblical commentary, or literary creation, but which all have in common the fact that they voice ideas about power. Even in the absence of some manifest political reflection, examples of past kings and princes who were to be imitated or rejected gave historical writings a political dimension. Prophecies purported to inform about future events – or current events when they were ex eventu – and included political lessons for the leaders of the day: whether they built on biblical prophecies, on those of Merlin (Geoffrey of Monmouth), or on recent revelations, prophecies aimed at setting political change in motion. So did utopias, such as the depiction of the Brahmins in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus,3 or, in the late twelfth century, letters describing the kingdom of Prester John. When dealing with such texts, a few methodological precautions may be in order. A text drawn up in the heat of controversy did not have the same status as a scholastic exercise – even if controversies may have been the opportunity to turn to, make use of, and highlight, or distort – themes and texts produced in different contexts. One should also be wary of putting on a par a text such as De principis instructione of Gerald of Wales, which hardly circulated, and De regimine principum of Giles of Rome, a best-seller accessible in numerous libraries in the later Middle Ages in the original Latin text or in the many translations and adaptations in the various vernacular languages. Moreover, the terminology of political theory and that of political action were not identical. It was not only a matter of contrast between reflection and action, or between different social and cultural milieux – for instance clerical and lay, although such a distinction may have proven to be increasingly artificial as time went by – or again between Latin and vernacular terminologies. It was a matter of distinction between different semantic fields: for instance, while the expression communitas regni exists in political programmes or in pragmatic texts of the thirteenth century, it is rarely found (Giles of Rome excepted) in the terminology of political theory, where the word universitas usually dominates.4 A number of themes and analogies with strong emotive and therefore performative power were found at the intersection of political theory and political action. The common good for instance was one of the main criteria for distinguishing correct and deviant political regimes, in particular in works

The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought   247

inspired by Aristotle’s Politics. John of Salisbury however was already making use of the common good, under Stoic influence, in order to distinguish kingship from tyranny.5 In public speaking, the common good was so malleable that it may sometimes have seemed devoid of significance. Recent studies on the common good in urban discourse show how this notion constantly took on new meanings, for instance in towns of the Low Countries, with the common good encompassing the control of water, health, and hygiene from the mid-fourteenth century.6 But whatever its actual content, the common good was always a programmatic notion, with the aim of achieving a specific result, in particular a collective aim. It was also more effective than the relatively similar concept of res publica as a means towards the spiritual salvation of the community. The study of textual techniques may help understand the construction of political theory or discourse, in particular when it comes to means of persuasion: men in power – easily corrupted by the practice of power itself – may be persuaded to change their behaviour. Straight talking (parrhesia) contrasted with devices such as the use of some pseudo-authority, in some cases divine authority, as with reports of visions, or “heavenly letters” purported to be sent by Christ or the Virgin.7 Scholastic questions and disputes achieved another form of persuasion. Analogies and metaphors appealed to the imagination of the audience and helped construct a persuasive argument, thus bridging the gap between texts produced in courts or schools and political practice. The prince gardener, the prince captain of a ship, or the body of the res publica were remarkably efficient metaphors. In the Policraticus, John of Salisbury develops all three and in particular the metaphor of the political body in order to convey his moral and political lesson: the interdependency between the parts of the res publica, and the fact that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.8 Later on the metaphor of the body changed in connection with medical knowledge: Cary Nederman and Takashi Shogimen have highlighted the correspondences between the evolution of medical discourse and the changes within the metaphor of the body politic, with the greater place given to the heart.9 In any case, the analogy with nature exerted exceptional power of persuasion, to the point that it may have acquired, as Gianluca Briguglia puts it, the force of rational demonstration.10 The argument of nature was indeed ubiquitous, including animal fables, such as in John of Salisbury’s work (the bees) or in Roger of Waltham’s Compendium morale. What Gerald of Wales wrote in De principis instructione about the naturalness of Capetian kingship, by contrast to Plantagenet tyranny, may suggest that the topos of nature was used by the Capetian court to underpin the quasi-imperial claims of the French monarchy under Philip Augustus. Such metaphors became near-concepts.11 In particular, the metaphor of the body politic outlined the contours of a new political object: while John of Salisbury stressed that the virtues of the citizens could best flourish in the body

248  Frédérique Lachaud

politic when this was harmonious and healthy, the transfiguration of the res publica into a body was equivalent to a form of constitution.

Debates, Contexts, and Places In the absence of contextual information, the analysis of political texts – in particular texts of political theory – may run the risk of tautology. For instance, attempts at resolving the internal contradictions of such a long and complex treatise as the Policraticus may fall into a circular interpretation of the text, while the context of its composition and the aims of John of Salisbury at that stage of his career remain relatively little known. Parts of the Policraticus were probably written outside England, but studying the textual production at Canterbury in greater depth as well as the books kept there under Archbishop Theobald may help renew our understanding of John of Salisbury’s thought; so would a better identification of the political debates with which the Policraticus engaged. The early date of its publication in the reign of Henry II (1159) and the mention of the hopes and concerns about the young king in an addition to the manuscript of Soissons rather than in the body of the text suggest that the abuses denounced by John of Salisbury and in particular his attack on tyranny do not allude to Plantagenet government. Was he voicing concerns about the attitude of Thomas Becket, who was already thought of to succeed Theobald? Was he referring to Stephen of Blois’s reign? Was he castigating the way elites were practising power everywhere in Europe, from Sicily to Scotland?12 Similarly, there is no doubt that John of Salisbury favoured the superiority of spiritual authority, but the Policraticus gives pride of place to the functioning and legitimacy of lay power and on specific points his position about the relationship between regnum and sacerdotium in England in the mid-twelfth century is difficult to grasp. From a wider point of view, the contexts in which political reflection was developed may deserve more consideration. The study of bishops’ courts and of towns in particular may offer new prospects. The existence of book collections, the defence of particular privileges, interactions between institutions and men are so many leads that may be followed in order to understand the political culture of specific centres. In the case of London around 1200, one may suggest that it was the interaction between the textual productions and communities of various institutions – the churches and in particular St Paul’s, the royal administration, and the burgeoning commune – that contributed to forge a political capital for the kingdom. This raises another question, that of the “national” nature of production in the field of political philosophy. John Fortescue for instance stated his preference for English authors, such as Roger of Waltham, as Charles Briggs shows in this volume. The contrast traced by Fortescue between the English and French regimes – a limited monarchy and a “regal” one – is well known. But Fortescue’s writings were polemical and were drawn up at a specific time in the political history of

The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought   249

the French kingdom, that is to say during the reign of Louis XI and the consolidation and expansion of the hold of the Valois monarchy on the kingdom, and of the English kingdom, since Fortescue’s initial aim was to demonstrate the superiority of the English regime to a future-but exiled-king. The question of the legitimacy of a “national” approach to works of political theory cannot be dispensed with, but this may be elaborated by reflecting on the intersection between the semantic field of political practice and that of political philosophy, as suggested above. For instance, Magna Carta, while at centre stage for historians of English legal and political history, is very much back stage in works of political philosophy.

The Contours of Political Thought In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the remit of political thought was different from its modern contours: individual morality and spiritual transgressions were the concern of princes; their own salvation and that of their subjects were inextricably linked. From the second half of the twelfth century, kings were also expected to lead the fight against non-Christians, while regulations hostile to Jews became part of the political weaponry of Western monarchies. To take another example, civility was a cultural and social matter, but it was also political: it was one of the ways for instance the English defined themselves against Gaelic populations.13 The vocabulary used to refer to political structures and activities in medieval texts is another matter for consideration. This is often left aside by historians in favour of terms such as the State. The difficulty raised by the use of “State” is not so much that it does not fit medieval realities – it may highlight usefully the intrusion of power in some sectors of social or economic life for instance, as well as stressing the growth of administrations. But using the term “State” systematically masks the variety of political entities and organizations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – as well as the existence of a curial network above the level of kingdoms and principalities. A more precise analysis of the terminology used in medieval texts (regnum, principatus, dominium, ciuitas, patria, prouincia, imperium, uisnetum, felicitas, bonum commune, imago Dei, societas, communitas, etc.) may offer some valuable insights into the medieval experience of politics, bearing in mind that the terms employed were polysemous and the context of their use could change their meaning.14 For instance, corona may refer to the whole of regal rights; regnum means kingdom, but also political regime and occasionally the assembly of nobles who claimed to represent the kingdom. Some topics were dealt with in political debates as well as in the literature of political thought: taxation and justice were universal concerns, while due process was much discussed in early thirteenth-century England, as well as in political literature. So was the control of officers, and the connected issues of corruption and accountability. Some topics however that were the matter

250  Frédérique Lachaud

of much controversy between the king and his men were not subjected to equivalent treatment in texts of political thought: royal prerogative, privilege, and exceptions in law were rarely considered. This was also the case with what we may call the fabric of politics: oaths, alliances, and assemblies. On another level, tyrannicide attracts the attention of historians but is rarely treated in medieval literature and debates: a notorious case is the defence of the murder of the duke of Orléans by Jean Petit, who used some passages from the Policraticus to argue in favour of tyrannicide in early fifteenth-century France, but this episode was exceptional. When the issue of tyrannicide was raised, this was meant as a warning to current leaders, such as in English chronicles of the late thirteenth century, where the myth of the poisoning of King John was probably meant to deter Edward I from imposing high taxes. On the other hand, some unspectacular themes are often left aside by historians: this is, for instance, the case with the topic of political stability, as distinguished from hierarchy. But such concerns may have been the norm of political life: government was not only a form of domination, it was also seen as the means to ensure peace and promote justice, and to encourage commercial exchanges and prosperity. Finally, some topics were not dealt with in political debates between governments and the elites; neither were they subjected to any reflection by political writers. And yet these blind spots of political thought and discourse were at the heart of the practice of power, as numerous conflicts suggest. Courts for instance were the stage for the agonistic meetings of the elites; it was there that power and riches were redistributed: from an anthropological point of view, they were at the heart of the European power system. Yet the treatment of courts in political texts was generally reduced to attacks against the excesses of curial life and even these lost some of their significance in the later Middle Ages. This was also the case with a topic such as delegation of royal power, at the intersection of law and politics. The near omission of such a topic in political texts and debates may stem from the difficulty of conceptualizing the person of the king. One may argue that this issue is not solved by the theory of the king’s two bodies: medieval kingship was essentially charismatic, the king’s presence was required for a large number of regal functions. Themes such as succession, or multiple rulerships (not a rare occurrence in the European political landscape), were not subjected to much consideration. The political European stage rested on the principles and mechanisms of succession but it is noticeable how little this topic was examined by political thinkers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was usually restricted to the example of Solomon’s sons, or to the figure of the tyrant who will not be succeeded by his descendants: this was done in order to stress the link between virtue and royal succession, since evil power will be punished by God, but it also rested on the pragmatic idea that a tyrant will find it difficult to ensure his own succession. Implicitly, the domination of nature as a model for politics ensured the superiority of hereditary succession over election. Giles of Rome was probably

The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought   251

the first theoretician to build a coherent picture of royal succession, but this did not lead him to a fully-fledged reflection on the consequences of succession rules for the geography and distribution of European powers.

Authorities and Parameters of Political Thought A possible explanation for these shortcomings may be that to a large extent, political thought was still rooted in the practice of producing commentaries on textual authorities. Virtues of princes hold centre stage in texts of political thought, and this reflects the handling of virtues in Scripture and in patristic texts, as well as in the writings of Classical authors. Virtues and the ethical vision of power dominated the model for education offered to the prince by epidictic literature. As Constant Mews shows in this volume about the virtue of justice, however, this does not mean that virtue was not also a requirement for political action. The polysemic meaning of the Bible was explored by commentators but this did not prevent it from providing a number of parameters for reflecting on power or for prescribing governmental norms: the legitimacy of power, the origins of kingship, the king as fountain of justice, and the link between kingship and salvation were usually written about with reference to Scripture, although the choice, use, and interpretation of key passages from the Bible varied.15 While passages from Judges (17:6; 21:25) could be commented on in order to demonstrate the necessity of kingship, for instance in the tract of Hugh of Fleury on the institution of kingship, 1 Samuel 8 (on the origins of kingship) received contrasting interpretations.16 Some political treatises may have started life as commentaries on authorities. In the Policraticus, John of Salisbury quotes extensively from all sorts of texts, and his writing technique is sometimes close to that of exegesis: did parts of his treatise stem from some form of marginal gloss? Some passages of the Policraticus seem to be superimposed on Classical texts, with a destabilizing effect of transparency, but highlighting contrasts or resemblances between ancient and contemporary history enabled John to outline his own political discourse. Perhaps his enthusiastic embrace of the Classics also led him to transgress the norms of political reflection on princes, with what reads as an (albeit ambiguous) eulogy of tyrannicide. The “appropriation” of Aristotle’s Politics as a means to deal with political matters raises other issues.17 The spectacular success of Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum may have been due to the fact that it was seen as an accessus to Aristotle’s ethical and political work. But De regimine principum was also the first medieval text to offer a full panorama and analysis of political regimes in the Latin West. It may be this, as well as the relevance of Giles of Rome’s reflection to contemporary politics that account for the success of his work. His examination of the situation of Italian cities in the light of Aristotle’s Politics has been

252  Frédérique Lachaud

commented on extensively. The sections on monarchy, however, come to life in the light of European politics: Firstly, in the footsteps of Aquinas, Giles posits the regnum (or prouincia) as the best possible political configuration for the achievement of the res publica. One of the reasons for the superiority of the regnum or province is its size: the regnum is superior to the ciuitas since it may best defend the res publica. De regimine principum is usually interpreted as a somewhat biased attempt to defend the model of the French kingdom – although the hypothesis of a text written to order of the Capetian court cannot be proven. But let us take seriously what Giles of Rome writes about the defensive role of the regnum: Europe in the third quarter of the thirteenth century was a place where rival principalities and kingdoms clashed, and war as well as competition between political entities were an essential dimension of the Latin West. Capetian “mirrors of princes” offered an ethical and spiritual framework to government, De regimine principum provided princes with a pragmatic analysis of their power. The second point is regnum as political regime. As Jürgen Miethke has shown, once Giles has demonstrated that his treatise is meant for all men in government, he can carry on with his text from the point of view of kings: the regnum is the perfect achievement of the political system and is incarnated by the king.18 For Karl Ubl and Lars Vinx, Giles and Peter of Auvergne establish a link between absolute monarchy and freedom: it is not the virtue of the monarch, but the natural inferiority of subjects that justify absolute monarchy.19 But if Giles of Rome states his preference for monarchy, for the government of one ruler, he puts so much emphasis on the role of counsellors that in fact this fits the model of mixed monarchy. In any case, what could Giles of Rome have referred to when describing an absolute monarch in the late thirteenth century? In practice, kings did not have the means to govern with their own forces: for coercion, they had to rely on the forces of noble lords and urban militias. More generally power could not be exerted without the allegiance and some degree of consent of populations. *** Most major texts of political theory may be read in modern editions, although they have rarely been translated in full. As for extending the corpus to other categories of texts which offer relevant reflections on some aspects of power, such as scholastic questiones or consilia, or biblical commentaries, this raises practical and methodological difficulties, and necessitates collaboration between different specialists. The contribution of Charles Briggs in this volume also highlights the importance of understanding better the role played by reading aids such as indexes and systems of cross-references, tables of contents, or

The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought   253

compendia. All this suggests that this is still a rich and fruitful path of enquiry, but strewn with obstacles. A final remark concerns periodization. For the later Middle Ages, the inflation in the production of texts and the fact that the context of their production and their use are better known means that they are studied differently from the texts produced before the fourteenth century. A larger body of classical writings was read with new tools and concerns. After the “Aristotelian generation,” new ideas penetrated political thought, while older concepts were left behind. This may have been the case with the domination of nature as a model for politics: the greater abstraction of political power may also have led to a break with conceptions of the social body as immanent in the political regime.20 Could we suggest that this was the real turning point?

Notes 1 Péter Molnár, “De la morale à la science politique. La transformation du miroir des princes au milieu du XIIIe  siècle,” in Paolo Odorico, ed., “L’Éducation au gouvernement et à la vie.” La tradition des “Règles de vie” de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age. Actes du colloque international, Pise, 18 et 19 mars 2005 (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2009), 181–204. 2 Lidia Lanza, “I commenti medievali alla Politica e la riflessione sullo stato in Francia (secoli XIII–XIV),” in Ei autem qui de politia considerat . . . Aristotele nel pensiero politico medievale (Barcelona and Madrid: Fédération internationale des Instituts d’études médiévales, 2013), 115–38. 3 Luca Crisma, “Ubi nulla fit iniustitia: le royaume des Brahmanes dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe-XIIe siècle 250–51 (2020): 105–24. 4 On these points see the contributions collected in Gianluca Briguglia and Thomas Ricklin, eds, Thinking Politics in the Vernacular from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2011) and in Dominique Barthélemy, Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Frédérique Lachaud, and Jean-Marie Moeglin, eds, Communitas regni: La “communauté de royaume” de la fin du Xe siècle au début du XIVe siècle (Angleterre, Écosse, France, Empire, Scandinavie) (Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2019). 5 Cary Nederman, “Freedom, Community and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval Political Theory,” American Political Science Review 86 (1992): 977–86; Irene O’Daly, John of Salisbury and the Medieval Roman Renaissance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018). 6 For instance Janna Coomans, Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 7 See for instance Frédérique Lachaud and Elsa Marguin-Hamon, “Mouvement réformateur et mémoire de Pierre de Wakefield en Angleterre au milieu du XIIIe siècle: l’‘Invective contre le roi Jean’,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 85 (2018): 149–201. 8 Frédérique Lachaud, “Corps du prince, corps de la res publica: écriture métaphorique et construction politique dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury,” Le Corps du prince. Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies 22 (2014): 171–99. 9 Cary J. Nederman, “The Physiological Significance of the Organic Metaphor in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus,” History of Political Thought 8, no. 2 (1987): 211–23;

254  Frédérique Lachaud

10 11

12

13

14 15

16

17 18

19 20

idem, “Body Politics: The Diversification of Organic Metaphors in the later Middle Ages,” Il pensiero politico medievale 2 (2004): 59–87; Takashi Shogimen, “ ‘Head or Heart?’ Revisited: Physiology and Political Thought in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” History of Political Thought 28, no. 2 (2007): 208–29. Gianluca Briguglia, “Langages politiques, modèles et métaphores corporelles. Propositions historiographiques,” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques. Revue électronique du CRH 1 (2008), https://journals.openedition.org/acrh/318. Takashi Shogimen, “Imagining the Body Politic: Metaphor and Political Language in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan,” in Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman, eds, Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia (Lanham, MD and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009), 279–300. Cary Nederman, “The Changing Face of Tyranny: The reign of King Stephen in John of Salisbury’s Political Thought,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 33 (1989): 1–20; Judith Green, “Discourses of Power in early Twelfth-century England: How New were the Ideas of John of Salisbury?” in Christophe Grellard and Frédérique Lachaud, eds, Jean de Salisbury, nouvelles lectures, nouveaux enjeux (Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), 165–83. Robert Rees Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); John Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century. Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000). Compare with Annabel Brett, “Notes on the Translation,” Marsilius of Padua. The Defender of the Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xl–li. For the use of the Bible in the Becket controversy, see Julie Barrau, Bible, lettres et politique: l’Écriture au service des hommes à l’époque de Thomas Becket (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013). For a recent study of the use of the “political” passages of the Bible in Carolingian exegesis, see Caroline Chevalier-Royet, Les Livres des Rois dans l’Empire carolingien. Exégèse et actualité (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021). Philippe Buc, L’Ambiguïté du Livre: prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Âge (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), 246–60; also Yves Sassier, “Deutéronome, royauté et rois bibliques dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury: première et succincte approche,” in Magali Coumert, Marie-Céline Isaïa, Klaus Krönert, and Sumi Shimahara, eds, Rerum gestarum scriptor: histoire et historiographie au Moyen Âge. Mélanges Michel Sot (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Sorbonne, 2012), 387–96. Appropriation is borrowed from Roberto Lambertini and Mario Conetti, Il potere al plurale. Un profilo di storia del pensiero politico medievale (Milan: Editoriale Jouvence, 2019), 110. Jürgen Miethke, “Spätmittelater. Thomas von Aquin, Aegidius Romanus, Marsilius von Padua,” in Christoph Horn and Ada Neschke-Hentschke, eds, Politischer Aristotelismus: Die Rezeption der aristotelischen “Politik” von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzer, 2008), 95–96. Karl Ubl and Lars Vinx, “Zur Transformation der Monarchie von Aristoteles zu Ockham,” Vivarium 40, no. 1 (2002): 41–74. François Daguet, Du politique chez Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 2015), 269–76.

Bibliography Barrau, Julie. Bible, lettres et politique: l’Écriture au service des hommes à l’époque de Thomas Becket. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013. Barthélemy, Dominique, Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Frédérique Lachaud, and Jean-Marie Moeglin, eds. Communitas regni: La “communauté de royaume” de la fin du Xe siècle au

The Study of Political Texts and Texts of Political Thought   255

début du XIVe siècle (Angleterre, Écosse, France, Empire, Scandinavie). Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2020. Brett, Annabel. Marsilius of Padua. The Defender of the Peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Briguglia, Gianluca. “Langages politiques, modèles et métaphores corporelles. ­Propositions historiographiques.” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques. Revue électronique du CRH 1 (2008). https://journals.openedition.org/acrh/318. Briguglia, Gianluca, and Thomas Ricklin, eds. Thinking Politics in the Vernacular from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2011. Buc, Philippe. L’Ambiguïté du Livre: prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Âge. Paris: Beauchesne, 1994. Chevalier-Royet, Caroline. Les Livres des Rois dans l’Empire carolingien. Exégèse et ­actualité. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. Coomans, Janna. Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Crisma, Luca. “Ubi nulla fit iniustitia: le royaume des Brahmanes dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury.” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe-XIIe siècle 250–51 (2020): 105–24. Daguet, François, Du politique chez Thomas d’Aquin. Paris: Vrin, 2015. Davies, Robert Rees. The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Gillingham, John. The English in the Twelfth Century. Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000. Green, Judith. “Discourses of Power in Early Twelfth-century England: How New were the Ideas of John of Salisbury?” In Jean de Salisbury, nouvelles lectures, nouveaux enjeux, edited by Christophe Grellard and Frédérique Lachaud, 165–83. Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018. Lachaud, Frédérique. “Corps du prince, corps de la res publica: écriture métaphorique et construction politique dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury.” Le Corps du prince. Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies 22 (2014): 171–99. Lachaud, Frédérique, and Elsa Marguin-Hamon. “Mouvement réformateur et mémoire de Pierre de Wakefield en Angleterre au milieu du XIIIe siècle: l’‘Invective contre le roi Jean’.” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 85 (2018): 149–201. Lambertini, Roberto, and Mario Conetti. Il potere al plurale. Un profilo di storia del pensiero politico medievale. Milan: Editoriale Jouvence, 2019. Lanza. Lidia. Ei autem qui de politia considerat . . . Aristotele nel pensiero politico medieval. Barcelona and Madrid: Fédération internationale des Instituts d’études médiévales, 2013. Miethke, Jürgen. “Spätmittelater. Thomas von Aquin, Aegidius Romanus, Marsilius von Padua.” In Politischer Aristotelismus: Die Rezeption der aristotelischen “Politik” von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Christoph Horn and Ada NeschkeHentschke, 77–111. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzer, 2008. Molnár, Péter. “De la morale à la science politique. La transformation du miroir des princes au milieu du XIIIe siècle.” In “L’Éducation au gouvernement et à la vie.” La tradition des “Règles de vie” de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age. Actes du colloque international, Pise, 18 et 19 mars 2005, edited by Paolo Odorico, 181–204. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2009.

256  Frédérique Lachaud

Nederman, Cary. “Body Politics: The Diversification of Organic Metaphors in the Later Middle Ages.” Il pensiero politico medievale 2 (2004): 59–87. ———. “Freedom, Community and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval Political Theory.” American Political Science Review 86 (1992): 977–86. ———. “The Changing Face of Tyranny: The Reign of King Stephen in John of Salisbury’s Political Thought.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 33 (1989): 1–20. ———. “The Physiological Significance of the Organic Metaphor in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus.” History of Political Thought 8, no. 2 (1987): 211–23. O’Daly, Irene. John of Salisbury and the Medieval Roman Renaissance. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018. Sassier, Yves. “Deutéronome, royauté et rois bibliques dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury: première et succincte approche.” In Rerum gestarum scriptor: histoire et historiographie au Moyen Âge. Mélanges Michel Sot, edited by Magali Coumert, Marie-Céline Isaïa, Klaus Krönert, and Sumi Shimahara, 387–96. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Sorbonne, 2012. Shogimen, Takashi. “ ‘Head or Heart?’ Revisited: Physiology and Political Thought in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” History of Political Thought 28, no. 2 (2007): 208–29. ———. “Imagining the Body Politic: Metaphor and Political Language in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan.” In Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia, edited by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman, 279–300. Lanham, MD and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009. Ubl, Karl, and Lars Vinx. “Zur Transformation der Monarchie von Aristoteles zu Ockham.” ­ Vivarium 40, no. 1 (2002): 41–74.

14 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE(S) OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE POLITICAL THOUGHT Cary J. Nederman

I started my accidental journey into the study of medieval and Renaissance political theory innocently enough in the late 1970s while an undergraduate student at Columbia University in the City of New York, where, on account of the wide-ranging education I received, I was first exposed to the topic. To be clear, I had no intention when I entered graduate school that the remainder of my intellectual career would be devoted to the investigation of that subject; my initial interests lay elsewhere. Yet, for reasons too complicated to recount here, I wound up over the course of 1982 and 1983 writing a 535-page dissertation on the emergence of ideas of the state in France and England between 1250 and 1350. As may be inferred from the remarks by Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen that introduce this volume, it turned out that my shift in focus occurred at the right time. Attention to the political thought of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, which had largely languished, was coming into its own as a subject worthy of academic enquiry. Quentin Skinner had lately published The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. The work of such scholars as Brian Tierney and Frank Oakley (whatever disagreements I eventually had with them), who argued for significant continuities between medieval and early modern political ideas, had become more widely recognized. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.350–c.1450, which synthesized the state of scholarship on the political thought of the Middle Ages as it stood in the early 1980s, was soon to appear in print,1 with the Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 following three years later. Numerous other developments, some of which I will discuss below, ensued as well. However, I do not desire, except perhaps incidentally, to turn this chapter into a journey through the past (with apologies to Neil Young for my appropriation of that phrase). Rather, congruent with the title of the present volume, I propose to offer what might DOI: 10.4324/9781003343257-19

258  Cary J. Nederman

be considered a précis of the multiple futures that I foresee for the study of medieval and Renaissance political philosophy that are afforded to succeeding generations of scholars. There is still a great deal to be done, indeed the work of many lifetimes. I would like here only to allude to some current lacunae that suggest potential paths worthy of exploration. Permit me to start with the basics, namely, texts. To my everlasting sorrow, I never received proper training in palaeography. By the time I realized the significance of my deficiency, I was not positioned to correct it. For this reason, I deeply appreciate the work done by those with the skills necessary to read and edit manuscripts. Of course, I realize that, at least in North America, the production of critical editions receives little or no academic credit. Yet, there are so many manuscripts that need to be edited. My favourite example is Walter Burley’s commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, one of the manuscripts of which, held by the Bodleian, I once examined with the patient assistance of a well-trained colleague. The endeavours of Constant Mews and his various collaborators, as well as of Lidia Lanza and Marco Toste—to name a few— have performed a huge service to those of us who are paleographically challenged. The investigations by Bill Connell and others of previously unknown manuscripts held in the municipal archives in Florence and elsewhere, and in particular their discoveries about Machiavelli, provide a further instance of the work yet to be done. I think all should agree that the core of advancing enquiry into medieval and Renaissance political thought depends upon the painstaking efforts of such scholars. We need more and we need proper acknowledgement of the value of their contributions. When I first dipped my toes into medieval waters, the availability of complete English translations of texts was virtually nil. Aquinas, yes. Marsilius of Padua’s Defender of Peace had been translated, courtesy of Alan Gewirth, as had John of Paris’s On Royal and Papal Power (twice). And there existed early twentieth-century renderings of sections of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus. That was about it. Then, quite unexpectedly, the dam broke. I could use up hundreds of words citing (and praising) scholars who have unselfishly English-ed previously untranslated political writings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, composed both in Latin and in various vernaculars. Their contributions matter a great deal because they make texts available to a large number of readers who otherwise lack the capacity to access the languages of those times. So the excuse that “I can’t read it” has begun to evaporate. Yet there are so many more writings that merit translation. For instance, Charlie Briggs has long been at work on an English version of Giles of Rome’s On the Rule of Princes, among the most widely disseminated and influential texts of Latin political theory in both the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Likewise, as I discovered recently, many of Machiavelli’s lesser-known writings (dating especially to his years as a Florentine civil administrator) are unavailable outside of Italian editions, while new English versions of the Prince proliferate annually. Do we really need another one?

Some Reflections on the Future(s) of Political Thought  259

Closely related to strictly textual issues is revision of “the canon.” The transformations during the course of my career have been remarkable. When I wrote my own dissertation, Christine de Pizan was unknown to me. Certainly, she was a hidden figure in the Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, as well as late twentieth-century surveys of the period by Arthur Monahan, Antony Black, Joseph Canning, and Janet Coleman. Even in Francis Oakley’s relatively recent three-volume study of Western political theory between 300 and 1650, Christine is an absent presence. Yet in the intervening years, the editorial efforts of scholars such as Kate Forhan, Karen Green, and Mews have brought Christine to the fore. Likewise, in the last 40 years, Nicole Oresme has emerged from the shadows to become a significant figure in medieval political thought, courtesy of the work of Joel Kaye among others. Without knowledge about Ptolemy of Lucca, courtesy especially of Jim Blythe, the very notion of medieval republicanism would seem rather less plausible. A slew of scholars, primarily based in Europe and often in the early or middle parts of their academic careers, have been mining archival material and/or obscure texts published long ago (and thereafter forgotten) to bring insights to bear on the complexities of medieval and Renaissance thought, taking us well beyond the “usual suspects” of Aquinas, Marsilius, Ockham, and Machiavelli. In addition to Toste and Lanza, who I mentioned above, I might point (in no particular order) to Alessandro Mulieri, Anselm Spindler, Jacob Langeloh, Delphine Carron, Frédérique Lachaud, Vasileios Syros, Bee Yun, Jérémie Barthas, Gabriele Pedullà—the list could go on almost indefinitely and I hope those whose names I have not included will take no offence. I also have sought to shed light on several previously under- or unappreciated authors, including Brunetto Latini, William of Pagula, and Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Yet just as with Christine, these thinkers have yet to receive attention in the standard surveys of medieval political ideas, at least those in the English language. (Two fine recent studies in Italian, by Roberto Lambertini and Mario Conetti and by Gianluca Briguglia respectively, constitute exceptions in this general tendency toward the narrow confinement of “the canon.”) Indeed, as several contributions to the present volume reveal, there are many more thinkers whose work deserves attention yet remain obscure. Many reasons may be adduced for these silences—gender bias, composition in the vernacular, lack of access to textual sources among them. My suspicion, however, is that at the top of this list is what I perceive to be a very constrained definition of “the political” based on an essentially scholastic, Aristotelianinflected conception thereof, one that only came to fruition when Aristotle’s Politics hit the streets, so to speak. This is a topic about which I could say far more (and have in fact done so in some of my published works), but that would require much greater space than I have been allotted. On the other hand, the often held, although now widely challenged, view that Aristotle became irrelevant once we reach the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance

260  Cary J. Nederman

must be rejected as well. The line between medieval and early modern periods cannot be sustained, as I shall discuss momentarily. Moreover, I should note a lack of engagement between Anglophone academics and those whose publications, mainly in continental European languages, are to be found in journals or released by presses that tend to be unfamiliar to English-speaking audiences. I have been struck by the fully justified frustration of the latter scholars that their research has been largely overlooked by the former. This is by no means universally true, but it is certainly a common enough phenomenon. (If you don’t believe me, consult the bibliographies in Oakley’s magnum opus to which I referred above.) Yet much of the best scholarship available today on medieval and Renaissance political thought has been written, for instance, in Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. I am always surprised beyond measure, for instance, when I am asked by journals published exclusively in English to review submissions on Machiavelli whose authors do not merely refrain from citing secondary literature in Italian, but who may not even be capable of reading that language, including the original texts. Until scholars who publish almost entirely in English pay greater attention to this research, progress in our field will be stymied. I previously alluded to the problem of excessive periodization. I am under no illusion that, as J. H. Burns remarked in his introduction to The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, the period from the late fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth saw neither innovation nor even the unfolding of what had been implicit or latent, but rather the fuller and faster development of tendencies already explicitly present and manifest in late medieval society.2 A while back, Marcia Colish noted the utter nonsense on which such claims rest.3 Yet, as I argued, the alternative hypothesis of a decisive break between “medieval” and “modern” political thought, associated with Hans Baron and perpetuated (in my view) by James Hankins in his recent book Virtue Politics, is also insupportable.4 The lesson that I have sought to impart throughout my own scholarly endeavours, to state it somewhat bluntly, is: beware of simple solutions to complex problems. This teaching applies as well to the study of the history of political theory in general (and the history of ideas more broadly). “Big answers” almost inevitably lead to the unwarranted exclusion of sources that fail to bolster them. Reading texts carefully—but not looking for coded messages hidden between the lines, as the Straussians would have it—is the proper remedy for the disease of shoddy intellectual practices arising from preconceived frameworks. As the lawyers in my own time and place repeat ad nauseum, “Follow the evidence wherever it leads.” The impression that European medieval and Renaissance political thought was hermetically sealed off from non-Western philosophies also requires

Some Reflections on the Future(s) of Political Thought  261

serious re-evaluation. The efforts of Black, Oakley, Syros, Paul Rahe, and Bettina Koch have moved us in that direction. The most pronounced challenge is perhaps linguistic. Many texts composed in Arabic and Hebrew were in fact translated into Latin only imperfectly. The ability to engage with nonLatinate writings is daunting. Some of these difficulties might be overcome by cross-disciplinary collaboration. Unfortunately, despite its rhetoric to the contrary, the academy shows a lack of support for the conduct of such research. The field of comparative political thought remains in its relative infancy. But the Middle Ages and Renaissance offer fertile ground to till for those who possess the capacity to do so. I frankly acknowledge that I speak of the medieval and Renaissance periods in a peculiarly Western sense. As Shogimen and others have demonstrated, comparative consideration of East and South Asian writings proves highly illuminating. Such elements as medical analogies between the polity and the body or genres like treatises of advice for rulers may be found in divergent cultural traditions globally. Comparison, however, can be tricky. Not merely the knowledge of languages, but also the congruity of concepts, is problematic. In the Western tradition alone, a word that we would ordinarily render as “justice” is equivocal, as one might conclude by simple consideration of Aristotle, Augustine, and Rawls. Once one steps into other discursive realms entirely, the difficulties are multiplied. Yet European medieval and Renaissance thinkers themselves attempted to bridge such gaps. Their efforts to do so demand from us a measure of notice and appreciation. Another example of a line of enquiry that deserves greater attention arises from the relationship between political thought and material culture. Several decades ago, Quentin Skinner produced two substantial papers on Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sienese fresco cycle on the allegory of good government, and Clare Richter Sherman offered Imaging Aristotle, a woefully underappreciated examination of the manuscript illuminations contained in the presentation copy of Oresme’s French translation of Aristotle’s Politics. More recently, Laura Slater published a monumental (to my mind) examination of High and Late medieval art (including architecture, sculpture, and stained glass as well as illuminations) in relation to English political thought. Those of us who are primarily textualists often forget that words during the Middle Ages and Renaissance interacted profoundly with images and physical objects of all sorts. As Karen Bollermann and I have shown, the contents of John of Salisbury’s relic collection, to cite but a single case, reveal a great deal about not merely his life but the worldview that informed his political ideas. This underscores a couple of points on which I have already touched. First, manuscript studies as a field needs to be afforded special support and recognition, in this instance not merely for the work of critical editing but also for the observation and analysis of the production and representation of texts. Second, collaboration becomes ever more crucial. Historians of political thought are unlikely to possess the skills necessary to grasp the subtleties of art and architectural scholarship. There are very few of the

262  Cary J. Nederman

likes of Skinner, Sherman, and Slater competent to engage in such synthesis by themselves. Working “across the aisle,” to use a long-standing phrase in American politics, is likely to bear far more robust yields. Ah, yes, the “c” word—collaboration. I have used it already several times in this chapter. I am fully aware that scholars in the humanities generally are commonly trained in what I call a “monkish” mentality that “real” scholarship is the result of solitary reflection and writing. I am fortunate that my first major publication in 1983 was co-authored with my doctoral supervisor John Brückmann (who indeed—to my knowledge—coined the term “underground tradition,” which I continue to use to this day). In the intervening decades, I have published much of my research in collaboration with colleagues and students. I continue to do so to the present day. The ensuing products have always been fruitful, certainly greater than the sum of their parts. A number of people about whom this is true are represented in the present volume. And it’s not simply a matter of writing together. Co-editing books and book series also constitutes an element of the collaborative process. I would lack a great amount of the knowledge which I have imbibed if I had not been afforded the opportunity to learn from the wisdom of my co-authors. Among the few advantages I enjoy as a humanities scholar in a social science department is that co-authorship does not represent a professional impediment. I know of one medievalist specializing in British literature who, having co-authored many of her publications, was confronted at tenure time with the inability of her institution to comprehend how to “count” her research productivity. Their solution? Split the body of her collaborative writings exactly in half, an act of faux Solomonic wisdom in which the baby did indeed perish. Collaboration makes everyone smarter. I encourage those reading this chapter to discover this for themselves, if they have not already. Finally, I must take respectful exception with the first sentence of the introductory essay by Jones and Shogimen, namely, that “medieval and Renaissance political thought may offer no answers to the pressing political problems of the present day.” The editors do not dispute the “relevance” of the field, but they recast it in indirect terms. By contrast, my view is that in many—albeit no means all—cases, theories originating in the Middle Ages and Renaissance can and should contribute to contemporary political philosophy. As I have been known to say, ideas (or at least some of them) travel in useful ways. If Aristotle or Cicero or Locke or Kant—to name but a few—have found places in contemporary political theory, then why not any number of medieval and Renaissance thinkers? My objection here may stem from the fact that Jones and Shogimen are both properly trained historians, whereas I am a bit of an intellectual mongrel, educated in an interdisciplinary fashion and winding up as a political theorist to boot. In any case, I do believe that I can show some examples in which medieval and Renaissance political ideas resonate with issues of current interest.

Some Reflections on the Future(s) of Political Thought  263

Perhaps the most obvious instance is republicanism, a political theory that has great purchase today, thanks in particular to the work of Skinner, Philip Pettit, and Maurizio Viroli. These authors all look back to Machiavelli’s Discourses as the source of their key definition of freedom as non-domination, a concept that I cannot explicate in detail at the moment for wont of space. They all place Machiavelli at the centre of their influential effort to critique the liberal theory of liberty as “non-interference.” Another case in which ideas deriving from early European thought, in this case from the twelfth through fourteenth century, is tolerance, which surely constitutes a “pressing political problem” in this day and age. The Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel proposed a theory of what he termed “ judgemental toleration,” which he ascribed to Aquinas and employed as a counter to the liberal conception of tolerance, especially as articulated by John Rawls. In my own scholarship, particularly in an article published in Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy a few years ago, I identified and documented the presence of judgemental toleration in political writings from throughout the Middle Ages, including defences of usury, women’s rights, human sacrifice—even heresy and homosexuality. I then proposed that the judgemental position might indeed help to disentangle unresolved theoretical dilemmas about tolerance found in contemporary liberal and democratic schools of political philosophy. I can cite a great many more ways in which, without historical distortion, medieval and Renaissance political thought is capable of making useful contributions to theoretical reflection on some leading philosophical issues of our times. Here again, there are many opportunities available to expand on demonstrating the direct relevance of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to debates in which political philosophers engage today. So, here we are in the years (to crib shamelessly from the title of another Neil Young song). The last five decades have witnessed the dramatic and highly unexpected explosion of interest in medieval and Renaissance European political thought. Yet, as stated in the first paragraph, a great deal more remains to be done. My own plan is to continue my enquiries along the lines of at least some of the topics that I have mentioned, as long as time permits. (Alas, too late to learn palaeography, however.) I hope that I have indicated my deep belief that there are many ways forward, even if the challenges confronting scholars of the Middle Ages and Renaissance do loom large. I am especially heartened that a substantial number of researchers from generations younger than mine are evidently determined to carry on the effort. By no means do the various “futures” I have envisioned constitute the only opportunities for scholarship moving forward. Rather, my intention has been to illustrate just a few promising paths open for investigation and ripe for sustained contributions. I have always maintained that intellectual progress is a dynamic process, often accomplished through criticism, sometimes trenchant, of one’s predecessors and contemporaries. My fondest wish—and I say this in all modesty—is that

264  Cary J. Nederman

elements of my own research are regarded to be of sufficient value that they will be subject to critical evaluation in such fashion that knowledge is furthered. No one has all the answers. But the emergence of new insights and questions is just as important, maybe more so, than the effort to posit definitive solutions.

Notes

Bibliography This bibliography is meant only to provide a few representative illustrations of the current state of study of medieval and Renaissance political thought, concentrating on publications in languages other than English and including mainly scholars who are establishing themselves rather than very senior ones (such as the present author). I have tried to avoid overlap with the references included by Jones and Shogimen in the bibliography at the end of their introductory essay. Bollermann, Karen and Cary J. Nederman. “A Special Collection: John of Salisbury’s Relics of St. Thomas Becket and Other Holy Martyrs.” Mediaevistik: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Medieval Research 26 (2013): 163–81. Briguglia, Gianluca. Il pensiero politico medievale. Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 2018. Burns, J. H., ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.300–c.1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Burns, J. H. with Mark Goldie, eds. The Cambridge History of Political Thought, ­1450–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Carron, Dalphine, et al., eds. Von Natur und Herrschaft: “Natura” und “Dominium” in der politischen Theorie des 13 und 14. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2018. Lachaud, Frédérique. L’Éthique du pouvoir au Moyen Âge: L’office dans la culture politique (Angleterre, vers 1150-vers 1330). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010. Lambertini, Roberto and Mario Conetti. Il potere al plurale: Un profilo di storia del pensiero politico medievale. Milan: Editore Jouvance, 2019. Langeloh, Jacob. Erzähte Argumente: Exempla und historische Argumentation in politischen Traktaten c. 1265–1325. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Lanza, Lidia. Ei autem qui de politia considerata . . . Aristotele nel pensiero politico medieval. Barcelona: FIDEM, 2013. Mulieri, Alessandro. “Against Classical Republicanism: The Averroist Foundations of Marsilius of Padua’s Political Thought.” History of Political Thought 40 (2019): 218–45.

Some Reflections on the Future(s) of Political Thought  265

———. “Machiavelli, Aristotle and the Scholastics: The Origins of Human Society and the Status of Prudence.” Intellectual History Review 31 (2021): 495–517. Nederman, Cary J. Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/ Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. Washington, DC: Catholic University of American Press, 2009. ———. “Medieval Toleration through a Modern Lens: A ‘Judgemental’ View.” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 4 (2016): 1–26. Oakley, Francis. The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, 3 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010–15. Pedullà, Gabriele. Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism. Translated by Patricia Gaborik and Richard Nybakken. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Syros, Vasileios. Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Political Thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Yun, Bee. Wege zu Machiavelli: Die Rückkehr des Politischen im Spätmittelalter. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2021.

INDEX

Abelard, Peter 10, 15, 193, 207; Sic et Non 90 abstract thinking 40–41, 44 Abuˉ Nasr al-Faˉraˉbiˉ 38 Achab, King 135 active life 41, 47–48, 53 adaptability 60, 61, 69 administration 30, 113, 118, 150, 248, 249; administrative writing 245 Aelfric 90 affirmation 209 Agathocles of Syracuse 146, 153–54 Alan of Lille 194 Albert the Great 6, 131, 218 Alberti, Benedetto 148 Alexander of Hales 213 Alexander the Great 151 al-Farabi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan Abu Nasr al-Farabi) 39, 40, 43, 48, 168 Ambrose of Milan 88, 92, 192, 193, 194 “amor di patria” 30, 158 Anselm of Laon 192–93 Aquinas, Thomas 88, 131, 218, 258; De regimine principum 71–72, 73, 97, 109, 110, 111, 119; Summa theologica 132, 180 Arendt, Hannah 47 aristocracy and elites 72, 75, 117, 136, 147, 151–53, 154, 173, 248, 250; descendants 175; methods of political rule reproducible by common people 154; opposition between the people and the

great 14, 145, 146–47, 152–53, 155–58; privileges and pretensions of family lineages 153; see also courtiers Aristotelian revolution 7, 8, 9 Aristotelian tradition 7, 72–73 Aristotle 40, 44, 113, 114, 145, 168, 261; classification of constitutions 132–33, 134–35; on the contemplative life 47; four standard causes 191; influence and legacy 6, 7, 8–9, 12, 13, 53, 63, 72–73, 88, 97, 178, 246–47, 259–60, 262; model for the perfect courtier 178; on monarchy 173; “new” Aristotle, thirteenth century 28; Nicomachean Ethics 47, 171, 180; Organon 48; Poetics 48; Politics 16, 71–72, 76, 88, 117, 132–33, 135, 171, 246–47, 251–52, 258, 259, 261; Rhetoric 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 47, 48, 50, 52; translation of writings 8, 88; on transubstantiation 190–91; typology of government 71, 72, 76, 134–35, 136, 148, 173, 179; views on society 12, 227 arms, and justice 151 Arquillière, Henri-Xavier 8 Augustine 4, 8, 12, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 155, 261; on baptism by desire 192; City of God 8, 92, 151; “political Augustinianism” 8; vision of justice and political order 88, 97, 151 Augustinus of Ancona 14, 31; Summa de ecclesiastica potestate 132, 134, 137 avant la lettre speech-act theory 191

268 Index

Bacon, Roger, Opus maius 114 Baldock, Ralph de 115 Baldock, Robert de 113 Bale, John 111 baptism 15, 92, 95, 97; baptism by blood 192, 193, 194; debates on baptism by desire 191–94; infant baptism 192; necessity for salvation 192, 193; permanent baptismal character 194; ritual baptism 192–93, 194; sacramentum and res sacramenti distinguished 193 Baron, Hans 10 Barthas, Jérémie 259 Barthélemy, Dominique 6 Bek, Antony, Bishop of Durham 110, 112, 113, 118, 119 Berlin, Isaiah 78 Bernal, J. D. 68 Bernard of Clairvaux 193 Bianchi, Luca 8 Bible 13, 73, 87, 88–89, 113, 214, 251; Hebrew Bible 45–47, 49, 51, 53; on kingship 91, 92–93, 174, 251; Old Testament 28; thinking on justice 88–89, 92–93, 98 bishops 90, 95, 96, 194, 219 Bismarck, Otto von 65 Black, Antony 5, 6, 11, 130, 226–27, 259, 261 Black Death 4 Blyth, James (Jim) 10, 259 body politic 9, 29, 247–48; see also political community Boethius 8 Bollerman, Karen 261 Boniface VIII, Pope 98 bonum commune 132–33, 134, 135, 136, 137; see also common good Borgia, Cesare 75, 153 Brecht, Berthold, The Life of Galileo (Das Leben von Galileo) 63 Breen, Aidan 89 Brett, Annabel 135 Breviloquium et alii tractatus 115 Briggs, Charles 13, 30, 31, 109–29, 248, 258 Briguglia, Gianluca 259 Britain: cessation of Roman imperial authority 96; emergence of a broader society 96 Brown, Peter 227 Brückmann, John 262 Bruni, Leonardo 146

Buonaccorsi, Biagio 179 bureaucracies 31 Burkhardt, Jacob 62–66, 72, 78, 226 Burley, Walter, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (c. 1340) 117, 118 Burns, J. H. 4–5, 110, 260 Bury, Richard de 118 Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350–c. 1450 5, 6, 7, 226, 257, 259 Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 5, 6, 7, 226, 257, 260 Cambridge School 5, 29, 68, 167–68 Canning, Joseph 5, 6, 8, 259 canon law 90, 113–14, 115, 191, 194, 214, 224, 235; see also divine law canon of written texts 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 28, 259–60 Canossa, Ludovico da 175–76 Capetian dynasty 87 Carlyle brothers 5 Carron, Delphine 259 Casas, Bartolomé de las 10, 207 Cassian, John 88 Cassirer, Ernst 66, 72–73 Castiglione, Baldesar 14, 170, 178–80; The Book of the Courtier 170, 171, 175–78, 180 Castruccio Castracani 146 Catholic Church 5, 7, 119, 131, 194 Cato the Censor 49 Celestine V 134 censorship, academic 195 ceremonial occasions 51 chance 60 character 51, 117, 145, 171, 173, 175, 178, 179, 213 Charles of Ghent 172–74 Charter of Liberties 228 Chiron the Centaur 154, 159 Chrimes, S. B. 110, 111, 117 Christianity: Christ as a judge or a nonjudgemental shepherd 218; Christ’s coercive power 210; connection to medieval political thought 3, 5, 189; correction of erring believers 213–14; divine grace essential for republican government 172; excommunication 211, 212, 217; hierarchy in Christian community 213, 216–17; ideal of life 72; and Jewish intellectual thought development 45; justice embodied in

Index  269

Christ 87, 97, 151; legacy on kingship 91, 92–93, 154, 174, 251; poverty of Christ 219; theological diversity 189–90, 191, 194–95, 214, 219; tradition 88, 89, 180, 189–90; value of the individual 227; variation in knowledge of doctrinal truth 214, 215, 216–17, 220; see also baptism; Church; Eucharist Christine de Pizan 4, 7, 259; livre de prudence 88 Church 7, 96, 118, 136; Church Fathers 8, 73, 91, 92, 93, 96; see also bishops; Catholic church; English church Cicero 8, 12, 31, 38, 39, 47, 53, 73, 114, 168, 178, 180; conceptions of oratory and orator 12, 37, 47, 48–49, 50, 53; De inventione 87; De oratore 48, 119; De republica 47, 151; definition of justice 87, 88, 91, 93; rhetorical principles 8, 30–31, 37, 38–39, 45, 47 Ciompi rebellion 14, 30, 146–48; Ciompi as Speculum Populi 157–59; divisions within the wool workers 148; oration 148–57 cities: city state 11; governance 42, 76, 172; Machiavelli’s discussion of beginnings 155 civic humanist tradition 168, 169, 171 civil princedom 75–76 civil society 12 classical tradition 8–9, 13, 15–16, 29, 30, 68, 110, 112, 113–14, 118–19, 172, 180–81; ideas about justice 88, 89, 96, 97; and Islamic and Jewish philosophies 40, 53; republicanism 14, 167–68, 169, 179; rhetoric 38, 45, 46, 49, 52 Claudius of Turin 93 clothes and dress 152–53, 177 coercion: coercive power 97, 210, 212, 217–19, 252; political coercion 97; see also force Cohen, Andrew 208 Coleman, Janet 5–6, 259 Colish, Marcia 14–15, 28, 29, 189–206, 260 collaboration by scholars 11, 261, 262 Collectio canonum Hibernensis 90 collective interactions in society 71, 76; rights 32, 225–27, 228–37; see also common good Columbus, Christopher 169 common good 12, 13–14, 31, 39, 87, 97, 130–32, 137–38, 158, 246–47; both

a constructive principle and reason for resistance 136–37; contexts and uses 134–37; reciprocal relationship with private/factional good 136, 145; terminology 132–33 communes 6, 133, 150 communication 8, 48, 51; see also oratory and orator; rhetoric communitarian theory 88, 226, 227 communitas regni 6, 246 comparative political theory 11, 261 conciliarism: and constitutionalism 15, 225–27; and corporatism 227–28 Conetti, Mario 259 conflict 147; toleration 209, 220; see also political conflict Connell, Bill 258 consent 88, 131, 135, 136, 174, 225, 226, 227–28, 252 constitutionalism 31, 32; Aristotle’s classification of constitutions 132–33, 134–35; checks on royal power 173; and conciliarism 15, 225–27; constitution of Venice 172; English constitutionalist thought 112; modern connotations 225–28; origins 225, 228 consultative bodies 177–78, 179 contemplative life 38, 39, 47, 48, 53 context 12, 28, 167–68, 180–81; local contexts 26–28, 30; see also global context contingencies 61, 62, 68–70, 71, 77 Cornelius, centurion 192–93 corporatism, and conciliarism 227–28 Corpus Christi 191 correction of errors 213–17, 218–19, 220 Corvinus, Marcus Valerius 153 counsel see political counsel; prophetic counsel courtiers 170, 171, 175–78 courts 153, 170–71, 175, 176, 247, 250 criminal gangs as petty kingdoms 92 Cummian 95–96 Cyprian 89, 90–91, 92, 96 da Vinci, Leonardo 63, 67 Damiata, Mario 206 Dardot, Pierre and Christian Laval, Commun 130–31, 137 David 92, 94 decision-making power 76 decorum 50 deliberation 54

270 Index

deliberative speech 52, 54 democracies 54, 76 deposition 6 desert fathers 88 despotic power see tyranny dialectic 48–49 Diem, Albrecht 114 diversity and difference 15, 32, 207, 219–20; theological diversity 189–90, 191, 194–95, 214, 219; see also toleration divine law 44, 88; in relation to heretics 210–12, 216, 217 Docking, Thomas 111 Dunbabin, Jean 6 Durand of Champagne 89, 98; De informatione principum 97; Mirror of Ladies 97 Dyer, Megan K. 13, 59–60, 61, 62, 70 Early Church Fathers 8 early modern thought 5, 10, 14, 15, 145, 194, 220, 235, 257, 260 ecclesiastical unity 96 ecclesiology 11 education 116, 155, 173, 177, 180, 251 Edward I 117, 250 Edward II 112, 113, 117, 118 Edward III 112, 113, 117–18; abuse of purveyance during first years of reign 117–18; first three years of Hundred Years’ War 118 elective principle 116, 173, 180, 226 elites see aristocracy and elites empire 10, 11, 145, 151 empiricism 62, 63, 65, 67 Engelbert of Admont 6 English church 119, 230, 232; rights and liberties 230 epideictic speech 52 equality 3, 148, 150, 152–53, 158; equality before the law 217 equity 88 Erasmus, Desiderius 14, 169–70, 178–80; Adages 170; Formation of a Christian Prince 170–71, 172–73, 176, 177, 180 ethics 62–63, 65, 67, 68, 78, 91, 96, 97; based on philosophical reflection 96; emerging from community and enquiry 29; and power 251 Eucharist 15, 192; Real Presence of Christ 190–91 excommunication 211, 212, 217 experience 149, 155 explicit faith 214, 215, 216

factional struggles 75 Femia, Joseph 67 Feyerabend, Paul 59–60, 61, 70 Figgis, J. N., Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius: 1414–1625 225, 226 flexibility 60 Florence: Consulte e Pratiche 179, 180 Florentine wool workers see Ciompi rebellion Flores philosophie 115 Flüeler, Christoph 8 Fontana, Benedetto 14, 29, 30, 145–64 force 146, 151, 155, 156, 159, 180; see also coercion, political Forhan, Kate 259 Forst, Rainer 209, 211, 220 Fortescue, Sir John 119, 248–49; On the Governance of England (1471) 109, 110, 111, 112 fortitude 73, 88, 98, 175 fortuna 60, 68–70 France 31 Franciscan Order 206, 207 Franco-Flemish conflict 6 fraternal correction 213, 215, 216, 218; legitimacy 213–14, 215, 216, 220; by simple warning 210, 218 free will 60, 71 freedom 121, 232, 235, 252, 263 Fregoso, Federico 175–76 Fregoso, Ottaviano 175–78, 180 Freyer, Hans 66 friendship 172 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 68 Galileo 63, 66, 67 Gandhi, Mahatma 11 Garnett, George 9 gender 12, 27, 32–33 genealogical rolls 6 General Council, supremacy over the pope 225 Geoffrey of Monmouth 246 Gerald of Wales 118; De principis instructione 246, 247 Germany 63, 65, 68 Gerson, Jean 225 Gewirth, Alan 9, 258 Gierke, Otto van 5, 226 Gilbert, Felix 110, 179 Gilbert of Poitiers 193 Gildas, De excidio Britanniae 92, 93, 95, 96 Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus) 8, 73, 88, 132, 250–51; De regimine principum

Index  271

13, 16, 88, 97, 98, 109, 110, 111, 119, 246, 251–52, 258 Girolami, Remigio de’ 133 Given-Wilson, Chris 119 Glanville, Ranolf de 229 global context: contribution of medieval and Renaissance political thought 3; Middle Ages 4, 7; of political thought 9, 11, 12–13, 245; treatises of advice for rulers 261; western political conceptions 4, 11 Goleyn, Jean 89 Gonzaga, Cesare 177 Gorran, Nicholas 218 governance 28, 30, 31, 47, 48, 64, 73, 115–17; Aristotle’s good and bad forms of government 71–72, 76; city governments 42, 76, 172; effects of bad government 94–95; England’s regnum politicum et regale 109, 119; Giles of Rome’s three forms 74; personal impact of the experience of governing 94; powers of government over individuals 235, 236; Ptolemy of Lucca’s typology of government 76–77; rational government 61; resemblance of medieval to modern government 224; respect for laws, customs and citizens 112, 116–17, 150, 153; responsibility of political community to assist the king 109, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119; roles of government 250; see also kingship; monarchy; principalities; rulers; sovereignty; states Graeco-Roman influences see classical tradition Gratian, Decretum 90, 114, 115, 227, 235 Graunt, Thomas 111–12 Great Schism, 1378 191 Greece 52 Greek philosophy 40 Green, Karen 259 Gregory the Great 93 Grigg, Julianna 90 Großdeutsche Lösung 65 Grosseteste, Robert 7 Grotius, Hugo 228 Guelphs 148 guilds 6, 149, 150 Gundisalvi, Dominic 88 Guyot-Bachy, Isabelle 6 halakhic tradition 37–38 Hankins, James, Virtue Politics 260

Hebrew Bible 45–47, 49, 51, 53 Hebrew prophet: biblical accounts 39; Maimonides’s conception of the prophet as philosopher 37–38, 39–45, 47–54; Messer Leon’s conception of the prophet as orator-statesman 45–54 Hegel, Friedrich 64 Henry II 248 Henry III 119 Henry of Ghent 218 hereditary succession 71, 74, 77, 87, 93, 94, 95, 116, 172–75, 180, 250–51 heresy 15, 31, 189, 210, 212, 214, 217; papal heresy 134, 137, 206, 219; punishment of heretics 207, 210–14, 215–20; toleration of heretics 10, 31, 189, 206–08, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219–20 Herod 92 Herodotus 171, 173 Hincmar of Reims 90 history, influence of contexts and actors 28 Hobbes, Thomas 64, 65, 67, 154, 168, 229 Hohfeld, Wesley 15, 231–33, 234, 235, 236 Holcot, Robert 118 Holt, James 228–31 Hotchkiss, William 110–11, 112, 114, 115, 117 household government 73 Hugh of Saint-Victor 88, 193 human affairs, variability 71, 77 human nature 61, 65, 70, 77, 97; “a social animal” 171, 172 human rights see under rights humanism 28, 31, 32, 38, 71, 73, 178, 227; civic humanism 168, 169, 171; Machiavelli 29, 30, 64, 154, 155, 169, 170, 178; Messer Leon 30, 37, 38; Renaissance humanism 45, 170, 175, 180; Roger Waltham 112, 118 Hundred Years’ War 118 ideas and reality, distinction between 64, 65, 67, 78 imagination 38, 40–42, 51; related to persuasion 43; religious imaginations 62; subordination to reason 42–43, 51 indifference 209 individual good see private good individualism 15, 62, 226, 227–37 inherited succession see hereditary succession Innocent III, Pope 119 instructional power 217, 218–19 intellect 41; active intellect 41–42, 48

272 Index

intellectual history 28 intellectualism 40, 42, 48 Investiture Controversy 227 Ireland 28, 89; multiple Christian kingdoms evolving into broader society 96 Isaiah 50 Isidore of Seville 88, 95 Islamic thought and scholarship 38, 39, 40, 43, 48, 53 Italian Renaissance 6, 13, 15, 39, 45, 53; turn to realism 62–64 Italy 31, 38, 75, 78 ius or iura 229–30, 233 iustitia see justice James of Viterbo 8 Jeanne of Navarre 89 Jeremiah 89 Jeroboam 93, 94 Jerome 88, 92, 93 Jewish thought 12–13, 30–31, 38, 39, 40, 45, 47, 53; see also Hebrew prophet Jews 249; God’s punishment 47 John, King of England 119, 228, 229, 250 John of Paris (John Quidort) 8, 9–10, 53, 77; On Royal and Papal Power 258 John of Salisbury 9, 10, 15, 30, 37, 87, 88, 89, 93, 97, 118, 145, 207, 224, 247; Metalogicon 9; Policraticus 9, 13, 96, 246–47, 248, 250, 251, 258; relic collection 261 John of Wales 118; Breviloquium 13, 116; Communiloqium 114, 116 John XXII, Pope 206, 213 Joinville, Jean de, Life of St Louis 87, 89, 98 Jonas, bishop of Orléans, De institutia regia 90 Jones, Chris 3–25, 257, 262 judicial speech 52 Juliana of Saint-Cornillon 191 Julius II, Pope 170, 175 jurisdictions 28 justice 8, 28, 29, 49, 87, 88, 233, 249, 250; Augustine’s vision 97, 151; authority of both monarch and papacy 98; biblical thinking 88–89, 92–93, 98; Cicero’s definition 87, 88, 91, 93; common good as a test of justness 135–36; foundation of all the virtues 90, 91, 93; individualized consent to law 135; justice of God embodied in Christ 87, 97, 151; Machiavelli’s justice 151; Martin of Braga’s understanding 88, 91;

natural justice 151; nature of a just king 28, 29, 89, 90, 91–93, 97, 116–17, 154, 178, 251; as one of the cardinal virtues 73, 88, 96, 98; in relationships within society 93, 97; wedding of justice and arms 151; see also On the Twelve Abuses of the Age; righteousness Kaye, Joel 8, 131, 259 Kempshall, Matthew 14, 131, 133, 136, 137 Kilcullen, John 135 kingship 11, 44, 151, 249, 251; achievement of unity 171; authority 90, 96, 174, 177, 230; bad king or prince 89, 90, 93, 94–95, 96, 117, 118, 119, 171, 173, 174, 176–77, 179; distinguished from tyranny 247; education of the heir to the throne 173, 177, 180, 251; global history 11; loss through failures of justice 88, 90, 98; nature of a just king 28, 29, 89, 90, 91–93, 97, 116–17, 154, 178, 251; patristic legacy 92–93; philosopher king 173, 177; political responsibility 96, 116; popular sovereignty 226; power of the king 91, 232, 233, 250; ruling in partnership with political community 13, 91–92, 109, 112, 116, 117, 119, 171, 173, 176, 177–78, 179–80, 252; subordinate to prophet-philosopher 43–44, 51; as supreme public authority 230, 234; see also monarchy; principalities; rulers; sovereignty Koch, Bettina 261 Krynen, Jacques 6 Kuhn, Thomas 68 Lachaud, Frédérique 6, 16, 111, 245–56, 259 Lagarde, Georges de 206 Lahav, Rina 89 Lahey, Stephen 190 Lambertini, Roberto 14, 31, 32, 130–44, 206, 259 land, acquisition 155 Lando, Michele di 148, 152, 157, 158 Langeloh, Jacob 259 language: of “blood” 153; corruption of language 158–59; of dress, clothes and appearance 152; linguistic contextualism 14, 167–68; of power, advantage and acquisition 158–59; publications in English and continental European

Index  273

languages 260; rational speech 171; vernacular languages 62; writings in non-Latinate languages 260 Lanza, Lidia 258, 259 Lateran IV 190 Latini, Brunetto 37, 53, 259 Laval, Christian, Commun (with Pierre Dardot) 130–31, 137 law 175; canon law 90, 113–14, 115, 191, 194, 214, 224, 235; common advantage to the universal body of citizens 135; English common law 168; equality before the law 217; human law in relation to heretics 210–11, 212, 216, 217, 220; individualized consent 135; legal texts 245; natural law 66, 88, 151, 227, 229; Roman law 7, 8, 230; rule of law 88, 90, 225; see also divine law leadership 30, 51 Leland, John 111 Leo X, Pope 75 liberalism 65, 68; and toleration 10, 31 libertarian theory 88 liberty 30, 136, 148, 152, 155, 157, 158, 172, 228, 229, 231, 232–33, 263 listening 27–28, 29, 30, 31, 32–33 Livy 149, 178; see also Machiavelli, Niccolò – Discourses on Livy Locke, John 64, 219, 227–28 logic 48, 49, 53 Lombard, Peter 193 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio 261 Louis IX 97, 119 Louis X 28, 89 Louis XI 249 Machiavelli, Giampiero 170 Machiavelli, Niccolò 4, 7, 11, 13, 28, 29–30, 87, 258; The Art of War 67, 73, 179; civil servant 179; complexities of thought 146; “Discorso dell’ordinare lo stato di Firenze alle armi” 151; Discourses on Livy 71, 73, 74, 147, 153, 154, 155, 159, 169, 179, 180, 181, 263; figure of rupture 30; Florentine Histories 73, 146, 148, 152; Ghiribizzi 70; Nederman’s work 13, 145–47; originality as a political thinker 14, 62, 77–78, 169, 179, 180; principle of opposition between the people and the great 14, 145, 146–47, 152–53, 155–58; representation of the people 147–48; and the revolt of the Ciompi 146–57;

scientific approach to politics 59–62, 64–71, 77–78; self-contradiction 61, 71, 77, 146; Tercet on fortuna 69 Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince 30, 66, 146, 169, 175, 178, 179, 180, 258; distinction between reality and ideas (chapter 15) 64; establishment of a new order 156, 159; on fortuna’s power 60–61, 69, 70–71; inspiration for genre of literature on statecraft 78; moral virtue and vice 180–81; nature of power and reality of political action 155; relationship between religion and politics 169; “the people” 147, 153, 154, 159; “the people” and the great 157–58; typology of princedoms 62, 71–77 Macy, Gary 191 magistrates 150, 156, 174, 177, 180 Magna Carta 32, 228–32, 249; chapters 1 and 63 232–33; chapters 39 and 40 233; property provisions 233; tax provisions 233–34 Magnus, King of Norway 119 Maimonides 12–13, 31, 37–38, 39–45; Mishneh Torah 38; Moreh Nevukhim or Guide of the Perplexed 38, 40, 41–44 manuscript studies 261 Marguerite of Burgundy 89 Marsilius of Padua 9, 14, 28, 31, 37, 53, 77, 87, 88, 131, 145, 224; comparison with William of Ockham 14, 206–07, 215– 19; Defensor minor 207, 211; Defensor pacis 10, 131–33, 134–35, 136–37, 206, 207, 219, 220, 235, 258; exile at the imperial court 206; influence 206; “secular” and “generic” political theory 9; views on heresy 10, 15, 206–07, 208, 210–12, 215–16, 217–20; views on toleration 10, 15, 206, 207, 211–12, 215–20 Martin of Braga, Formula vitae honestae 88, 90, 91, 96, 114 martyrs, baptism by blood 192, 193, 194 Marx, Karl 64, 154 Marxism 146, 168 mass mobilization 150–51 Masters, Roger 67 material culture, relationship to political thought 261–62 Maturana, Humberto 68 Maximus,Valerius 114 McGrade, A. S. 206, 216 McIlwain, Charles 5

274 Index

Medici family 75, 77, 148, 157, 158 Medici, Giuliano de 178 Medici, Salvestro de’ 148 medieval: distinction from Renaissance 4; use of the term 3 medieval political thought: binary between medieval and modern political thought 226–27; continuity with postmedieval political and legal thought 189; contribution to contemporary political philosophy 11–12, 16, 262–63; European engagement with non-Western philosophies 11, 260–61; interaction of words with images and physical objects 261; late medieval England 112, 117–19; Nederman’s approach 16, 26–28, 87–88, 117–18, 189, 257–65; paths for future investigations 16, 257–65; transformation in later medieval and Renaissance 61; see also Renaissance political thought; written texts Meinecke, Friedrich 65, 66, 72 Melamed, Abraham 44 Messer Leon, Judah ben Jehiel 13, 30, 37–38, 45–54; Sefer Nofet Tzufim, the Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow 38, 50 metaphors 9, 247–48 metaphysics 40, 44, 49, 62 Mews, Constant J. 13, 28, 29, 87–105, 251, 258, 259 Michael of Cesena 206 Middle Ages: Christianity 4, 5; divide from early modern period 10, 14, 15, 259, 260; global approach 4, 7; Latin Middle Ages 5, 53, 206, 225; “real world” concerns 62, 66, 72 Miethke, Jürgen 6, 132, 135, 206. 252 Mineo, E. Igor 133 mirror of princes literature 13, 73, 87–88, 95, 111, 116, 154, 172; humanism 71; Machiavelli 29, 30, 71; scholastic transformation 29, 71, 96–98; see also individual titles, e.g. Giles of Rome, De regimine principum mob rule 72 modernity 4, 15, 26; early modern thought 5, 10, 14, 15, 145, 194, 220, 235, 257, 260; Eurocentric 11 Modus tenendi parliamentorum (c. 1300) 117 Moeglin, Jean-Marie 6 Monagle, Clare 12, 13, 26–33 Monahan, Arthur 259

monarchy 54, 72, 92, 136, 145, 171, 173, 176, 178, 179–80, 248–49 Moore, Robert I. 10, 15, 189 morality in politics 68 More, Thomas, Utopia 170 Mosaic prophecy 41 Moyn, Samuel 235, 236–37 Mulieri, Alessandro 259 Münkler, Herfried 67 natural rights 10, 151, 227, 229, 234–35 natural sciences 67, 71; empirical 62, 66 nature 252 Nederman, Cary J. 8–9, 11, 16, 26, 31, 32, 37, 39, 115, 247; accounts of Machiavelli 29–30; The Bonds of Humanity 27; commitment to listening 27, 31, 32; Community and Consent 131, 135; on the continuing relevance of medieval thinkers 26–28, 87–88; on Fortescue 110, 112; on the future(s) of medieval and Renaissance political thought 257–65; on individual versus communal rights 15, 228, 234–36; influence 12, 26, 28, 31, 32, 145; Lineages of European Political Thought 131; Machiavellias-a-scientist 59–60, 61, 62, 70; on Marsilius of Padua 9, 207; on religious tolerance 15, 189, 195, 207–08, 219–20; on resemblance (or not) of medieval to modern government 224, 225–26, 227–28; Worlds of Difference 10, 207 Neoplatonized Aristotelianism 38 Nicholas of Cusa 10, 15, 207 Nicodemus 193 Nietzsche, Friedrich 63 nihilism 65 non-interference 209, 211–12, 215, 216, 217–18, 263 Oakley, Francis 5, 8, 10, 11, 257, 261; The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages 5, 6, 259, 260 objectionability 15, 209, 211, 215, 216–17, 220 Old Testament 28 oligarchy 72 Olschki, Leonardo, Machiavelli the Scientist 66–67 On the Instruction of Princes 28 On the Twelve Abuses of the Age 13, 28, 89–93, 98; and the ideals of justice 94–96, 97, 98; importance of standards

Index  275

for the whole of society 97; moral principles for specific penances 95–96 oratory and orator 37, 39, 47, 48, 49, 50; categories of speech 52; deliberation 54; different audiences 43, 48, 50–51, 53–54; moral perfection of the orator 51 Oresme, Nicole 259 Origen 92–93 original sin 12, 77, 92, 97 Otto of Freising, Two Cities 194 Ovid 114 The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy 234–36 papacy 76, 98; absolutism 14, 31, 137; Avignon 206; knowledge of doctrinal sources 214; legitimacy of correction 214; and Marsilius’ Defensor pacis 206; papal heresy 134, 137, 206, 219; papal resignation 134, 137; plurality of popes 136; power 132, 134, 137; supremacy of the General Council over the pope 225 Parel, Anthony 11 passion 149, 171, 178 peace 14, 31, 49, 53, 130, 131, 133, 136, 208, 220, 250 Pedullà, Gabriele 259 Pelagius 92–93, 97 Penitential of Cummian 95–96 the people: consent of the people 88, 135, 174, 225, 252; and council of nobles 178; faults/crimes 120; as the ground and background of politics 146, 147, 158; Machiavelli’s representation 14, 75, 147–48, 156, 158; moral character 179; opposition between the people and the great 14, 145, 146–47, 152–53, 155–58; people’s rule 72, 146; prophetic persuasion and teaching 41, 42, 48, 50, 53–54; role in construction of a new order 147, 155–57, 159; rule of the philosopher king 173; see also common good performative texts 246 periodization 7, 10, 11, 14, 253, 260 “persecuting society” 10, 15, 189; see also toleration persuasion 12, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 159, 247 pertinacity 213, 214, 216 Peter of Auvergne 133, 252 Peter the Chanter 193 Petrine primacy 208

Petrus de Cava 93 Pettit, Philip 263 Pharaoh 92 Philip III 88 Philip IV, confrontation with Boniface VIII, 1303 98 Philippa, Queen 113 philosophers 10, 38, 39–45, 47, 48, 114, 115, 207, 263 Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius (Pope Pius II) 259 Plato 44, 64, 113, 114, 145, 148, 151, 154, 168, 171, 173, 178; model for the perfect courtier 178; on monarchy 173, 177 Plummer, Charles 109–10, 117 pluralism 10, 211, 212 Plutarch 177 Pocock, J. G. A. 10, 14, 168, 169; The Machiavellian Moment 169 poleis 148 Polemarchus 151 political action: conflict as a major characteristic 157; Machiavelli’s aspiration for a theory of rules 70, 71; requirement for virtue 251; terminology 246; workers’ understanding 149–50, 155 political communication, rhetorical eloquence 8 political community 8, 12, 73; engagement of the Hebrew prophet 39; ethical integration of the monarch 29; ruler in partnership with 13, 91–92, 109, 112, 116, 117, 119, 171, 173, 176, 177–78, 179–80, 252; secularized view 62; see also body politic political conflict 146, 147, 148, 157–58, 179; relationship to republican order 145 political counsel 52–53, 54; five subject matters 52 political institutionalization, inverse relationship to political violence 145 political knowledge 151, 154 Political Science discipline 4 political thought 4, 8, 11–12, 259; authorities and parameters 251–52; comparative political thought 11, 261; contours 16, 249–51; decline in dialectical interpretations 130; dialogue with wider, global history 11; increasing complexity 77; late medieval England 112, 117–19; “national” approach 248–49; relationship to material culture

276 Index

261–62; scientifization of political culture 59; terminology 246; textual techniques 247–48; see also global context; medieval political thought; Renaissance political thought political violence 146, 151, 155, 156; connection between speech/language and violence 159; inverse relationship to political institutionalization 145 Polybius 9, 72, 74, 148, 173, 177, 178 poverty 152, 155; of Christ 219; Franciscan poverty 206, 207 power: acquisition of territory and property 155; aristocracy and elites 147, 148, 250; coercive power 97, 210, 212, 217–19; connection to written texts 245–46; ethical vision 251; fundamental elements 159; gaining by simulation and dissimulation 155; the great, the people and the plebs 147, 148–57, 155, 156, 157, 178; of individuals 228; instructional power 217, 218–19; of the king 91, 232, 233, 250; language of “blood” 153; language of dress, clothes and appearance 152, 177; language of power, advantage and acquisition 158–59; legitimacy 251; Machiavelli’s understanding 30, 70, 74–76, 146, 147, 151, 155; Medici family 148; papal power 132, 134, 137; public power, private and sectarian interest 157; scientific theory 68; workers’ understanding 155 pragmatism 62, 63 prediction 69 Prepositinus of Cremona 193 presentism 13, 16, 26, 32 Prester John 246 priests 92, 95, 192, 218; role in relation to heretics 208, 210, 212, 217, 218 principalities 31, 62, 64, 151; categorizing by location of sovereign power 71, 76; ecclesiastic principalities 75–76; hereditary 71, 74, 77, 87, 93, 94, 95, 116, 172–75, 180, 250–51; princely virtue 13, 30, 60, 64, 69, 70, 73, 77, 110, 116, 153, 173, 177, 251; typology of princedoms in Machiavelli’s The Prince 62, 71–77; see also kingship; mirror of princes literature; monarchy; rulers; sovereignty private good 157, 233, 234; relative to common good 131, 134, 136, 141, 145

property: desire for 44; private property 233; property rights 231, 233 prophecies 246 prophetic counsel 52–53, 54 prophets 41–44; see also Hebrew prophet prudence 73, 88, 98 Ptolemy of Lucca 10, 76–77, 109, 111, 171, 259 public good see common good Pufendorf, Samuel von 228 Pullen, Robert 193 Quidort, John see John of Paris Quillet, Jeannine 9 Quintilian 38, 45, 48–49, 50, 51 Rahe, Paul 14, 29, 30, 167–88, 261 rationality 41–42, 44, 46, 51, 60, 61, 62, 71, 115, 120, 136, 145, 227; see also reason and reasoning Rawls, John 261, 263 reality and ideas, distinction between 64, 65, 67, 78 Realpolitik 65–66 reason and reasoning 37, 41–42, 43–44, 51, 61, 63, 64, 68, 149–50, 171, 178; see also rationality reflection 68, 96, 246, 248, 250, 251, 262 regional political theory 31 religious tolerance 189, 191, 194–95, 219–20 Remer, Gary 12–13, 30, 31, 37–58 Renaissance: Burckhardtian concept 62–66, 72, 78; distinction from medieval 4 Renaissance political thought: contribution to contemporary political philosophy 11–12, 16, 262–63; European engagement with non-Western philosophies 261–61; interaction of words with images and physical objects 261; paths for future investigations 16, 257–65; transformation in later medieval and Renaissance 61; see also medieval political thought; written texts republicanism 76, 263; classical republicanism 14, 167–68, 169, 179; in Florentine politics 14, 146, 179; Machiavelli 68, 145, 146, 147–48, 158, 159, 167; neo-classical republicanism 169, 171–78; in western political thought 10, 30 republics 31, 54, 64, 71, 115, 116, 151; Machiavelli’s understanding of the

Index  277

founding 155; modern use of term “republic” 10; participation in political life 149–51; role of the people 14, 147–51; Roman republic 156, 173–74, 178; rule of the elites 147, 148, 151–53, 154; tendency towards tyranny and empire 145–46 revelation 40, 42, 245 revolutions 65, 148, 156; potential of the revolt of the Ciompi 146, 151 rhetoric: Aristotle 12–13, 37, 39, 43, 45, 47, 48; biblical 45–47, 51; Cicero 8, 13, 30–31, 37, 38–39, 45, 47; Maimonides 12–13, 38, 48, 49, 50; Messer Leon 13, 38, 39, 48–50; Nederman’s work 15, 53, 145; in political communication 8; Quintilian 38–39, 45, 49; in relation to persuasion 43; in relation to philosophy 43, 53; Renaissance revival 53 Richard of Oxford 113 righteousness 87, 89, 93; see also justice rights 15, 31–32; communal 32, 225–27, 228–37; of the Crown 230; enforceability 230–31, 232, 236; human rights 227, 234, 235, 236–37; individual 15, 32, 227–37; legal rights 232–33, 234; in the Magna Carta 228–34; natural 10, 151, 227, 229, 234–35; objective 229–30, 235; subjective 15, 229–30, 235, 236 Roland of Bologna 193 Roman Catechism, 1563 194 Roman law 7, 8, 230 Roman republic 156, 173–74, 178 Romanus, Aegidius see Giles of Rome Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 167 Rubinstein, Nicholai 9 Rufinus of Aquileia 88 rule of law 88, 90, 225 rulers 41–44; acquisition of territory 72, 74, 75; biblical rulers 92; Christian and humanist beliefs of the good ruler 154; of cities 42, 76; consent of the people 88, 135, 174, 225, 252; cultural traditions in treatises of advice 261; despotic rule 76; elites’ methods of political rule reproducible by common people 154; “friendship” of the people 146, 153; government of the body and soul of the ruler 73; “men who command” 151, 172; modern connotations of constitutionalism 225; moral failings 87; political knowledge

151, 154; political rule 76; Ptolemy of Lucca’s typology of government 76–77; regal rule 76; republican elites 147, 148, 151–53, 154; subordinate to prophetphilosophers 43–44; virtuous actions 153, 154; willingness to serve the common good 136; see also governance; kingship; monarchy; principalities; sovereignty; states Saak, Eric 132 Sallust 114, 149, 154, 178; history of the Jugurthine war 156 Salutati, Coluccio 77 salvation 192, 193, 247, 249 Sandel, Michael 263 Sassoferrato, Bartolus 77 Saul 92 Savonarola, Girolamo 14, 169, 170, 178–79; Treatise on the Rule and Government of the City of Florence 172 scepticism 9, 62, 67, 68–69, 70 scholastic theology 28–29, 32 scholasticism 31, 37; and toleration 29 Schröder, Peter 67 science 78; lack of definition 61; Machiavelli-as-a-scientist 59–62, 64–71; nature of scientific work and progress 59–60, 61, 66, 68; objectivity and deduction 68; susceptibility to human influences 68 Scripture 251 Sedulius Scotus 90 self-determination: individual 15; national 235 selfishness 97 Seneca 88, 93, 96, 110, 113, 114, 118; Epistulae morales 114 Seneca the Elder 114 Sententiae divinitatis 193–94 Sforza, Francesco 71 Sherman, Clare Richter, Imagining Aristotle 261 Shogimen, Takashi 3–25, 31, 32, 134, 136, 206–23, 247, 257, 261, 262 silence 32–33 sine qua non causation 191 Skinner, Quentin 5, 9, 10, 167–68, 169, 235, 261, 263; The Foundations of Modern Political Thought 5, 257 Slater, Laura 261 Smalley, Beryl 118 social justice 87

278 Index

society 12, 63, 67, 88, 227, 246; communitas regni 6, 246; conflict in society 14, 146, 157–58; emergence of a broader society 96; hierarchical social order 9, 15, 27, 147, 152, 156; justice in society 93, 97; persecuting society 10, 15, 189; regulation 71, 96; standards for the whole of society 97; “state of nature” versus human artifice 227; see also civil society; common good; diversity and difference socio-economic chasms 146 Socrates 151 Soderini, Giovan Battista 70 Solomon 92, 93, 94 sovereignty 15, 28, 70, 226, 234, 235, 236; communal sovereignty 147; conciliar sovereignty 225; inalienable sovereignty 230; location of sovereign power 71, 76; mixed sovereignty (see kingship – ruling in partnership with political community); tyrannical sovereign 31; see also kingship; monarchy; principalities; rulers Spain, Muslim 38 Sparta 173–74, 178 Speculum dominarum 89 Speculum justiciariorum (c. 1300) 117 Spindler, Anselm 259 Spinoza, Baruch 64 St Paul 87, 88, 92–93 St Paul’s, London 113, 115, 248 states 5, 11, 65; government 73; literature on statecraft 78; Machiavelli’s understanding of the founding 155; Polybian theory of life cycle 74; secularized view 62; use of “State” 249 Sullivan, James 206 Swanson, Jenny 114, 116 Syros,Vasileios 9, 259, 261 Tacitus 154 Taliadoros, Jason 15, 31–32, 224–41 taxation 233–34, 249, 250 temperance 73, 88, 98, 175 territory: acquisition by a ruler 72, 74, 75, 155; territorially-fixed political order 235 texts see written texts theology 28–29; theological diversity 189–90, 191, 194–95 Thierry of Chartres 37, 53 Thomas of Ireland, Manipulus florum 114, 115

Thrasymachus 151 Thucydides 149, 158, 167 Tierney, Brian 5, 10, 15, 32, 224, 226, 227–28, 229, 230, 234, 235, 236, 257 Tirole, Jean 131 toleration 7, 11, 14–15, 28, 31, 206–07, 263; boundaries of tolerance 31; in conflicts 209, 220; definition of the contemporary concept 208; of diversity 10, 29, 31, 195, 207–08, 211, 212, 214; of heretics 10, 31, 189, 206–08, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219–20; judgemental toleration 263; and liberalism 10, 31; Marsilius of Padua 10, 15, 206, 207, 211–12, 215–20; non-interference component 209, 211–12, 215, 216; objection component 209, 211, 215, 216–17, 220; rejection component 209, 212, 215, 216; religious tolerance 189, 191, 194–95, 219–20; and scholasticism 29; situational 29; William of Ockham 206, 207–08, 213–20 Torah 46–47 Toste, Marco 258, 259 traditions 26–28, 29, 63; Aristotelian tradition 7, 72–73; Christian tradition 88, 89, 180, 189–90; Ciceronian tradition 8; civic humanist tradition 168, 169, 171; English tradition 30, 117; halakhic tradition 37–38; Polybian tradition 9; republican tradition 10, 14, 30; rights 31–32; see also classical tradition transubstantiation 190, 191, 194 Trevet, Nicholas 118 truth 31, 40, 47, 48, 53, 64, 208, 214, 219, 220 Tuscan political context 30 Twelve Abuses see On the Twelve Abuses of the Age tyrannicide 9, 93, 250, 251 tyranny 72, 109, 145, 148, 158, 173, 247; tyrannical sovereign 31, 250 Ubl, Karl 6, 252 Ullmann, Walter 5, 7–8, 224 universal empire 10 university life, medieval 194–95 utopias 246 Valentinian II 192 Valerius Maximus 114 values 68 Varela, Francisco 68

Index  279

Vespucci, Amerigo 169 Vettori, Francesco 73–74, 152–53 vices 180 Viking settlement 7 Villey, Michel 229, 235 Vincent of Beauvais 97; De morali principis institutione 90–91 Vinx, Lars 252 violence see political violence Viroli, Maurizio 263 virtue 47, 60, 92, 117, 136, 150, 153, 168, 175; four cardinal virtues 73, 88, 96, 98, 116 (see also fortitude; justice; prudence; temperance); justice as the foundation of all the virtues 90, 91, 93; moral virtue 171, 172, 180; princely virtue 13, 30, 60, 64, 69, 70, 73, 77, 110, 116, 153, 173, 177, 251; prophets 49; soldiers 67; virtuous actions of rulers 153, 154, 250 vita activa 39, 47, 48–49 vita contemplativa 39, 47, 48, 53 Waleys, Thomas 118 Walter of Milemete, De notibilitatibus, sapientiis et prudentiis regum 117, 118 Waltham, Roger 110, 112–13; Compendium morale 13, 247; Hunter 231 113, 114 Waltham, Roger, Compendium morale 30, 109–19; rubric headings 120–22

western intellectual history 3 western political thought see political thought William of Moerbeke 133 William of Ockham 14, 31, 77, 206; An princeps 117, 118; comparison with Marsilius of Padua 206–07, 215–19; defensor veritatis 220; Dialogus 133, 135–37, 207, 212–13, 218–19; exile at the imperial court 206; views on heresy 15, 206–07, 208, 212–20; views on toleration 15, 206, 207–08, 213–20 William of Pagula 111, 259; Speculum regis Edwardi III 117–18 women, silence 32–33 written texts 3, 16, 26–27, 110, 113, 114, 245–48, 249–53, 258; collaboration by scholars 11, 261, 262; debates, contexts and places 248–49; revision of “the canon” 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 27–28, 259–60; terminology 246, 249; topics 249–50; translations 8, 258 Wycliff, John 191 Xenophon 74; Cyropaedia 73 Yun, Bee 13, 29, 30, 59–86, 259