Publius

“ Over the State God placed the magistrate, who might here be a monarch, an Emperor or King, and there a Syndic or Council, created by the people for the people; but whatever he might be, he was yet a power ordained of God for the good of man and the regulation of society. ”

“ IV.—Those men to whom all our subsequent reasoning is addressed, when they assert that the authority of the Empire depends on the authority of the Church, as the inferior workman depends on the architect, are moved to take this view by many arguments, some of which they draw from Holy Scripture, and some also from the acts of the Supreme Pontiff and of the Emperor himself. ”

“ But when the emperor united in his own person the various functions, civil and military, of the republic—when he was consul, prince of the senate, censor, proconsul-general, commander of the army, and tribune of the people—when he could legally as well as logically say, L'état, c'est moi—the law of majestas applied to his person alone, since he was the only representative of the nobles, the knights, the people, the legions, and the subjects of Rome. ”

“ Finally, at the supreme bar have the princes, the governors and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to learn that not the president, not the grand duke, not the king, not the emperor, is the head of the nation, but the thrice-crowned King of kings, the Great High Priest of God. ”

“ I exult, O ye gallant defenders of our provinces, and boast and always shall boast that your valour has conferred on me, who neither expected nor desired such an honour, the government of the Roman empire, as the fittest [Pg 410] man to discharge its duties. That which was in your hands before an emperor was elected, you have completed beneficially and gloriously, by raising to this summit of honour a man whom you know by experience to have lived from his earliest youth to his present age with honour and integrity. ”

“ Under the Empire, despite the reasoning of many philosophers and lawyers that the Emperor derived from the people his power to make laws and declare the law in any given case, he assumed and was assumed to have derived the power and inspiration solely from the gods. ”

“ It is my belief that after such mighty achievements posterity will not be silent respecting your services to the republic, in every country, if you now, in case of any danger or misfortune, vigorously support with your valour and resolution me whom you have raised to the lofty dignity of emperor. ”

“ For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God,” and elsewhere: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake; whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well,” I. Peter, ii. 13-14. This second explanation of the source of authority in the state, which the phrases used by the Roman jurists occasionally suggest, was accepted by the early Church and transmitted by it through the Middle Ages to modern times. ”

“ No other city, O judges, praises him by public resolution. 14The power of supreme authority has had so much influence with a very few men, not in the cities, that either some most insignificant people of the most miserable and deserted towns were found who would go to Rome without the command of their people or their senate, or on the other hand, those who had been voted as ambassadors against him, and who had received the public evidence to deliver, and the public commission, were detained by force or by fear. ”

“ But you have those maxims constantly in your mouth which the Peripatetics and Stoics profess. In the courts of justice and in the senate you speak of duty, equity, dignity, good faith, uprightness, honourable actions, conduct worthy of power, worthy of the Roman people; you talk of encountering every imaginable danger in the cause of the republic—of dying for one's country. ”

“ The state was absolute, and under the most favorable circumstances, as in the Græco-Roman [Pg 246] civilization, recognized the rights of the citizen, but not those of man; and even the citizen had rights only in so far as the state saw fit to grant them. The logical development of the absorption of all power by the state may be seen in imperial Rome, in which the ruler was at once emperor, supreme pontiff, and God. ”

“ For in a state in which one man is invested with a perpetual domination, especially of the monarchical character, although there be a senate in it, as there was in Rome under the kings, and in Sparta, by the laws of Lycurgus, or even where the people exercise a sort of jurisdiction, as they used in the days of our monarchy, the title of king must still be pre-eminent; nor can such a state avoid being, and being called, a kingdom. ”

“ When we pronounce the word “aristocracy,” which, in Greek, signifies the government of the best men, what can be conceived more excellent? For what can be thought better than the best? But when, on the other hand, the title “king” is mentioned, we begin to imagine a tyrant; as if a king must be necessarily unjust. But we are not speaking of an unjust king when we are examining the true nature of royal authority. To this name of king, therefore, do but attach the idea of a Romulus, a Numa, a Tullus, and perhaps you will be less severe to the monarchical form of constitution. ”

“ We beg of princes and rulers of States, appealing to their statesmanship and earnest solicitude for the people, to weigh Our counsels in the balance of truth and second them with their authority and favor. ”

“ When the images of the Emperor are sent down and brought into a city, its rulers and multitude go out to meet them with carefulness and reverence, not honouring the tablet or the representation moulded in wax, but the standing of the Emperor. ”

“ But it is certain, and we may appeal to the grateful confessions of the first Christians, that the greatest part of those magistrates who exercised in the provinces the authority of the emperor, or of the senate, and to whose hands alone the jurisdiction of life and death was intrusted, behaved like men of polished manners and liberal education, who respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant with the precepts of philosophy. ”

“ We (name) , by the grace of God (title) , (office) of the holy empire. Be it known to all by these presents ... that we have constituted our faithful subjects (names) our true, legal, and special representatives and agents, to treat with our fellow-princes and electors, ecclesiastical and secular, and to agree and decide with them concerning a suitable person to be elected king of the Romans; to be present, deliberate, name, consent to, and elect the king of the Romans and future emperor in our name and for us ”

“ Temporal Monarchy, then, or, as men call it, the Empire, is the government of one prince above all men in time, or in those things and over those things which are measured by time. Three great questions are asked concerning it. First, there is the doubt and the question, is it necessary for the welfare of the world? Secondly, did the Roman people take to itself by right the office of Monarchy? And thirdly, does the authority of Monarchy come from God directly, or only from some other minister or vicar of God? ”

“ As they were engaged in the ordinary occupations of life, their zeal and devotion were seldom animated by a sense of interest, or by the habits of an ecclesiastical character. Confined to their respective temples and cities, they remained without any connection of discipline or government; and whilst they acknowledged the supreme jurisdiction of the senate, of the college of pontiffs, and of the emperor, those civil magistrates contented themselves with the easy task of maintaining in peace and dignity the general worship of mankind. ”

“ Meanwhile he used all his powers to induce the emperor to popularise his rule, and he is said to have caused the insertion of the words “The sovereignty resides in the people; it is the source of power” in the declaration of the council of state. ”

“ Whether the Emperor shall feel well inclined toward us or not, will it not greatly depend upon the manner in which the truth in Christ shall be set forth, and whether by means of the principles and doctrines that shall be shown to belong to it and constitute it, it shall be judged by him to be of hurtful or beneficial tendency? ”

“ In short, if we consider the history of Rome through all the struggles betwixt the people and the senate, we find it no other than a struggle betwixt property which was vested in the senate, and power which lay in the people. ”

“ The executive authority must be vested in some new power to be created and defined for the purpose. The Roman Empire might have been turned back into a republic by a purely negative change. All that was needed was not to appoint an Emperor. ”

“ For as in Rome, when a dictator is proclaimed, all other magistrates lay down their offices, so those over whom Love is lord are free henceforward from all other lords and masters, and pass the rest of their lives dedicate to the god and slaves in his temple. ”

“ The conception of the brotherhood of man goes back to the early Empire, and out of this conception international law, and its counterpart, civil law, have developed. Roman writers recognized the three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and pointed out the importance of dividing the [Pg 167] functions of government between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. From them we have derived our accepted doctrine of popular sovereignty, and to them the theory of the divine right of kings may be traced. ”

“ XXXIV. * * * of it, [24] it may with as much propriety be said that it is a republic and a commonwealth, as it may be said of a kingdom. “And much more,” said Mummius, “for a king being one, is more like a master; but where many good men are at the head of affairs in a republic, nothing can be more happily constituted. But I certainly prefer a kingdom 137to the sway of a democracy; which third and most vicious kind of government remains for you to explain.” ”

“ The consuls maintained, with the greatest energy, that rule which so much conduces to the power of our nobles and great men, that the acts of the commons of the people shall not be binding, unless the authority of the patricians has approved them. ”

“ By the jurisdiction of which key the fullness of my power is so great that, whereas all others are subjects--yea, and emperors themselves, ought to subdue their executions to me: only I am a subject to no creature, no, not to myself; so that my papal majesty ever remaineth undiminished; superior to all men; whom all persons ought to obey, and follow, whom no man must judge or accuse of any crime, no man depose but I myself. ”

“ The haughtiest of the popes, in the proudest period of their absolute ascendancy, never rejected their early title,--"servant of the servants of God." Wherever there is real liberty among the people, whose sovereignty is acknowledged as the source of power, the ruler is a servant of the people and not their tyrant, however great the authority which they delegate to him, which they alone may continue or take away. ”

“ The second authority is the power of National Law, enforcing justice in conduct by due reward and punishment. Power vested necessarily in magistrates capable of administering it with mercy and equity; whose authority, be it of many or few, is again divine, as proceeding from the King of kings, and was acknowledged, throughout civilized Christendom, as the power of the Holy Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, because first throned in Rome ”

“ Every one knows the burst of indignation which the consul, rising in his place, aims at the audacious conspirator who dared to pollute with his presence the temple of the deity, and the most august assembly of the Roman people. ”

“ With this object in view, a series of decrees or capitulars were issued in the name of the Emperor, which enjoined upon all clerics, secular as well as regular, under penalty of suspension deprivation of office, the ability to read and write and the possession of the knowledge requisite for the intelligent performance of the duties of the clerical state. ”

“ This opinion has been established for the conduct of life, by those who have had the direction of public affairs; that the belief might prevail, that one king ruled in heaven, who with his nod, as Homer says, could tumble down Olympus; and that he should be considered as the King and Father of all. Great is the authority for it, and many the witnesses, inasmuch as all have concurred in it. Nations too have agreed, as we find in the decrees of princes, that the regal form of government was most excellent, since they imagine the gods themselves to be under the government of one king. ”

“ The prince rules by the authority of the whole body of citizens. To this body Marsilius gives the name legislator. The elective monarchy is the form of government preferred by Marsilius, whose ideal state thus corresponds in theory with the holy Roman empire. His views on the relation of the state and the church are very different from the views common in the Middle Age. The supreme institution is the state which has established the priesthood or the church to look after the spiritual welfare of its citizens. ”

“ The Roman people for instance was the same, whether under kings, consuls, or emperors. Even indeed under the most absolute form, the people is the same that it was in its independent state, while the king governs it as head of that people, and not of any other. ”