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Political Languages In Later Medieval Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
Certain aspects of both major and minor political writings in later medieval Europe remain intrinsically puzzling. Michael Wilks, in his seminal work on the ‘Problem of Sovereignty’ in this period called the later medieval and early modern epochs an ‘age of confusion’. One problem may be summed up as (1) What difference did Aristotle make? Ullmann argued that Aristotle made it possible to construct a plausible case for ‘the ascending’ (that is, quasi-democratic) view of authority. In that case, as Wilks persistently enquires: Why did defenders of papal monarchy make such free, prolific use of Aristotle?
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 9: The Church and Sovereignty c.590-1918 , 1991 , pp. 313 - 328
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991
References
1 Wilks, Michael, The Problem of Sovereignty in lhe Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar
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5 See esp. Nicholas of Cusa, Opera omnia (Basle, 1565), pp. 825-9 (Epistola ad Rodericum), and Deutsche Reichslagsakten, 16, pp. 421-3. Cf. Sigmund, Paul, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Harvard, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sigmund, Paul, ‘Cusanus’ Concordantia, a re-interpretation’, Political Studies, 10 (1962), pp. 180–97.Google Scholar
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7 See nn. 27-8, 30, 32, 34 below. I am grateful to the seminar of the Department of Political Science and Social Policy at the University of Dundee, especially Paul Spicker, Brian Baxter, and Brian Smith for stimulating my enquiry into this question.
8 Sigmund, P., ‘The influence of Marsilius on fifteenth-century conciliarism’.JHI, 23 (1962), pp. 393–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Black, Council, p. 12.
9 Burns, J. H., ed., Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, 1988), p. 422Google Scholar; Oakley, Francis, ‘On the road from Constance to 1688’, JBS, 1 (1962), pp. 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oakley, Francis, ‘Figgis, Constance and the Divines of Paris’, AHR, 75 (1969), pp. 368–86.Google Scholar
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11 Skinner, Foundations, 1.
12 Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’: History and Theory, 8 (1969), pp. 3–51Google Scholar, and his preface to Foundations, 1; Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language, and Time (London, 1972)Google Scholar, chs 1 and 8, and his ‘The Concept of a Language and the métier d’historien’, in Pagden, Anthony, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modem Europe (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 1. (The title of this article was suggested, presumptuously no doubt, by the title of that book.)
13 ‘Concept’, p.21, Politics, pp.17-18.
14 Pagden, ed.. Languages; Skinner, Foundations, 1.
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16 Pagden’s introd. to languages, pp. 3-6.
17 Codex, 5.59.5.2.
18 Tractatus de regimine civitatis, ed. Quaglione, D. : Pensiero Politico, 9 (1976), pp. 70–93.Google Scholar But see Skinner, , Foundations, 1, pp. 62–5.Google Scholar
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22 Black, Council, pp. 118-93; Krämer, W., Konsens una Reception. Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirclte im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980).Google Scholar
23 Black, Council, pp. 128ff. It was from this source that the notion of authority as minislerium, of course, derived (Matt. 20.25-8, etc.).
24 Ibid., pp. 132-3.
25 Ibid., pp. 128-9.
26 Juan de Segovia, Traclalus de concitiorum el ecclaiae aucloritate (also known as Decern advisamenta). Codices Vat. Lat. MS 4039, fols 192r-232v, at fols 224J-V (written in 1439); and, with minor verbal alterations, Amplificatici disputationis (written between 1450 and 1454) in his Historia gestorum generaiis synodi Basiliensis, ed. Palacky, F. et al. » Monumenta Conciliorum Generalium Secali XV, 3 (Vienna and Basle, 1935), pp. 720–1Google Scholar. Extracts are in Black, A., Monarchy and Community (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 141–4Google Scholar; tr. in Black, Council, pp. 163-4.
27 The relevant passages to compare with Segovia (see n. 26 above) are Locke, John, The Second Treatise of Government, ed.Laslett, Peter, John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1967Google Scholar; student ed with altered pagination, 1988), ch. 8, esp. paras 95-7; ch. 12, esp. paras 149-53; and Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Du Contrat Social, ed. Grimsley, R. (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar, book 1, chs 6—8. Compare especially the following: Segovia, , Historia, Monumenta, 3, pp. 720–1Google Scholar: ‘Si contingat totam illam multitudinem in unum congregari, et asserere vel optare aliquid, econtra autem ipse presidens dicat; quia ipsa Veritas prefertur fictioni, ipsa multi tudo merito superabit. Veritas enim est hanc multitudinem esse multas personas, fictio autem quod ipse presidens, qui unicam personam vere, multas autem esse dicitur representative … Cum ipsa multirudo principaliter adest, et iudicat aliquid sibi esse utile, presidens autem econtra dicit, intelligitur manifeste iam cessare causam quare plus sibi [se. presidenti] quam aliis assentiti debebat, vid. quod credebatur iudicium suum esse conforme ad intentionem omnium.’ Locke, Second Treatise, ch. 3, para. 151: ‘But when he (sc. the single person to whom in some commonwealths is entrusted supreme executive power and “a share in the legislative” (by which Locke presumably means to refer to the position of the English monarch), quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person, without power and without will that has any right to obedience; the members owing no obedience but to the public will of society.’ Rousseau, Du contrat social, iii, 14: ‘Á l’instant que le peuple est légitimement assemblée en corps souverain, toute jurisdiction du Gouvernement cesse, la puissance executive est suspendue… parce qu’où se trouve le représenté il n’y a plus de représentant’
28 Locke, Second Treatise, ch. 8, paras 95,97,99; Rousseau, Du contrai social, 1, ch. 6.
29 Historia, Monumenta, 3, pp. 727-8 and also Monumenta, 2, pp. 272-4 (‘ut… idem saperent idemque vellent);Black, Council, pp. 156-9. Cf. Acts 2.4.
30 In particular, that the sovereign people must act in person and not through representatives: Du contrat social, iii, 15; it is when they confer together in assembly that the consciousness of citizens is raised to a ‘general will’.
31 Historia, Monumenta, 3, pp. 802-3: power belongs to the whole community, ‘tamquam propria passio sive innata virtus, ab ea inseparabilis’, and the giving of power to a ruler or consulate consists of ‘potius transfusionis sive extensionis cuiusdam quam novae generationis’; Black, , Council, pp. 172–5.Google Scholar
32 Du contrai social, ii, 1, and esp. ‘le pouvoir peut bien se transmettre, mais non pas la volonté.’
33 Shklar, J. N., Men and Citizens: a Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar; Grimsley, R., The Philosophy of Rousseau (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar; and especially Cobban, Alfred, Rousseau and the Modem State, 2nd edn (London, 1964), pp. 40,49, 59.Google Scholar
34 I wonder whether the same explanation might be given for Locke’s abrupt transition endorsing majority decision-making when speaking of ‘incorporating’ and then abandoning it: for majority decision-making was built into the (juristic) language of corporate action, but Locke had no desire to put it into his constitutional theory. It just, so to speak, slipped in with corporate terms: see Second Treatise, ch. 8, paras 95-9.
35 Black, , Monarchy, pp. 93–112.Google Scholar
36 For further development of this argument see my forthcoming Political Thought in Europe, 1250-1450.