From Dante to Hooker
A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West. By R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle. Vol. VI. Political Theory from 1300 to 1600. (Blackwood. 30s.) IN this conch' ling volume of his massive work, Dr. Carlyle, covering three centuries in roughly chronological' order, follows the main conceptions of the middle ages down to 1600. It seems a far- cry from Dante to Richard Hooker, but Dr. Carlyle shows—and this is one of his chief services— how close the greatest thinkers of the sixteenth century were to the fundamental principles • of the middle ages. - These principles had their roots in the supremacy of justice, that is Jaw, distinct from arbitrary will. The Assizes of Jerusalem and Cyprus gave them form when they declared that "neither lady nor lord is-ruler save of right . . . they are never rulers to do wrong." -Writer after writer echoed them, from Hinentar of Rheims to John of Salisbury, from St. Thomas Aquinas to Nicholas of Cusa. The notions that law is the expression of the will of the conununity, that the king is under law, and that his subjects may resist injustice are of the essence of mediaeval thought: They draw fresh strength from the contentions of the sixteenth century, from the revolts of Pro- testants and Catholic Leaguers in Germany and France and
Scotland.. Under -the shadow of the despotisms they die hard in the balanced arguments of Calvin or Althusitis or Hooker. This continuity between the middle ages and the sixteenth century has been obscured by the revival of the cult of absolute monarchy in Bodin or L'Hopital, the dogma of Divine Right in the 'early works of Luther or in James VI and I. Leviathaw is- rising from the troubled sixteenth-eenturY sea' but, though he does not "speak soft words," he does not yet command the whole of the horizon.
Dr. Carlyle points out that Luther and his like were innova- tors, foreign to the main stream of tradition, who took their inspiration partly from a literal interpretation of a few texts in the Bible, partly from the revived and partial study of the Roman Law. The great ecclesiastical writers of the middle ages (Gregory the Great and Wycliffe are exceptions) held strongly that -the temporal power, although of God, derived immedi- ately from popular consent. It was for Luther, writing a hysterical diatribe against the "murderous and robbing" peasants .of Swabia in 1525, to shout that the "Christian subject has no right (against the unjust Prince) but suffering, suffering and the Cross, the Cross." The mediaeval civilians, though they held the Prince to be the legislator by popular delegation and differed as to the people's right to legislate upon their own account, generally agreed that Princes must keep contracts and are hound by law. Cujas, the greatest of the sixteenth-century jurists, held with them. It was for later French or Scots defenders of the royal power, like L'Hopital or Barclay, to assert the absolute authority of the sovereign in all circumstances ; it -was for Bodin to derive the sovereign's power from. force. Yet even Luther, writing after 1530, justified resistance to the Emperor in the name of Jaw'. Even Bodin declared that " regnum legibus oportet (quantum fieri potent) non principis arbitrio ac voluntate, gubernari." Even Machiavelli held that Tarquin was ex- pelled, not because Sextus violated Lucretia, but because, although a king, he broke the laws of Rome.
There is a grandeur in the obstinate faith men kept in justice and the rule of law, while the immediate choice for most of Europe lay between mere anarchy and virtual des- potism. . The imperturbable schoolmen argued and concluded while.Rome literally burned. Like them, Dr. Carlyle prefers to turn away from the political and personal background which would put much of his matter into true perspective. Ile is no doubt right in looking to the written word for men's declared beliefs, but he is less convincing when he deals with practice or with life. It is not hard to prove by instances that representative institutions still survived in sixteenth- century France or Spain ; it is less easy to prove that they were lively, or healthy. The men whose books he quotes might never have existed in the flesh, except for Dante ; it surely is-a fact of some importance that Aeneas Sylvius was a careerist or that Calvin was an exile.
Dr. Carlyle has dedicated this volume to the memory of his brother and collaborator, Sir R. W. Carlyle, but for whose lamented death in 1934 there would have been a section on the relations of the Temporal and Spiritual powers. Subject to this considerable limitation, Dr. Carlyle's survey, with its many very full quotations, will be of permanent value both to scholars and to less ambitious students.
IGOR VINOGRADOFF.
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