In the foregoing, then, we have identified what has already been the singular cause of civil discord or intranquillity in certain realms and communities, and will go on to be so in all the others if it is not prevented; and this is the thinking, desire and effort with which the Roman bishop and his company of clergy set their sights singularly upon secular principates and on the superfluous possession of temporal goods. The bishop just recalled is trying to claim for himself even the supreme one of all such principates on the basis of the plenitude of power granted him in particular (as he asserts) by Christ in the person of Saint Peter, as we said in the last chapter of the first discourse and as was not inappropriately reiterated in many chapters of the second; when in fact no principate or coercive judgement over anyone in this world – let alone the supreme one of all – belongs to him or to any other priest or cleric, as such, either in common or individually. We demonstrated this by sure human means in chapters 12, 13 and 15 of the first discourse, and confirmed it by the testimonies of eternal truth in chapters 4 and 5 of the second, as well as the expositions of the saints its interpreters and of many approved doctors of the same. After that, in chapters 6 and 7 of the second discourse, we identified through Scripture and sure reasoning the nature, magnitude and extent of the power of priests or bishops. We further showed in chapter 23 of the same discourse that the plenitude of power which they – and especially the Roman bishop – had assumed does not belong either to all of them or to any one of them, either in common or individually. In this way, then, the roots of that singular malignity referred to many times in the words of the proem seem to have been sufficiently cut out from under it.

Before we begin to discuss what we have proposed, however, we shall distinguish between the meanings of the terms we shall be using in our main questions, in case their multiplicity leads to ambiguity and this involution of opinions that we want to open up. For as it says in Refutations I: ‘Those who are ignorant of the force of words misreason both when they engage in disputation themselves, and when they listen to others.’ Now the terms or expressions for which we want to distinguish between multiple meanings are these: ‘church’, ‘judge’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘temporal’; and the reason is, that as a result of our proposed inquiry we want to know whether it belongs to the Roman or any other bishop or priest, deacon, or college of those who are called ‘churchmen’ to be a coercive judge of temporal things or spiritual things or both, or whether they are not in fact such judges in respect of either.

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Pursuing this aim, then, let us say that this term ‘church’ is a word stemming from Greek usage, and signified among them – at least in what has come down to us – a gathering of a people contained under one single government. This is the sense in which Aristotle understood it when he said, Politics II chapter 7: ‘All participate in the church.’ Among the Latins, however, this word in common and widespread parlance means, in one of its significations, the temple or house in which the faithful worship God as a community and most often pray to him. For this is the way the Apostle talked about the church in I Corinthians 11: ‘What? Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God?’ Here the gloss according to Augustine says: ‘“despise ye the church of God”, i.e. the house of prayer’, and adds a little further on: ‘Everyday usage has resulted in the fact that “to go into or take refuge in a church” is not said except of someone who has gone into or taken refuge in the place itself or within its walls.’

Now that we have come this far, however, a question arises which is both very difficult and very necessary to consider. For we said in chapter 15 of the first discourse, and recalled it to some extent at the end of chapter 8 of this one, that the human legislator, either in itself or through the princely part, is the active cause of the institution of all the parts or offices of the city. In addition to this, we remember that we said, in the last chapter of the first discourse, that the priesthood or priestly office of the new law was first instituted by Christ alone. At the same time, however, we demonstrated in chapters 4, 11, 13 and 14 of this discourse that he abdicated all secular principate and all dominion of temporal things, and in chapters 12 and 13 of the first discourse that he was not a human legislator either. Therefore we seem to have said that it is not the same man who establishes every part of the city and who is the human legislator or the prince; and as a result someone will raise a justified doubt over who does have the authority the institute the priesthood, especially in communities of the faithful, since the things we have said so far appear to conflict with each other.

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Setting out to remove this apparent contradiction, then, we shall first of all recollect what we said in chapters 6 and 7 of the first discourse, viz. that the causes of any office of the city are different according to whether the offices denote dispositions of the soul or parts of the city instituted for the sufficiencies that can be had from them; and this is to be noted for the priesthood analogously with the other offices of the city. For insofar as the priesthood denotes a certain disposition of the soul, which the learned doctors of Holy Scripture call a ‘character’, its immediate efficient cause, or its essential maker, is God, who imprints this character on the soul (although together with a certain prior human ministration as if by way of preparation).

From among our intended purposes, it remains now to make plain the origin and beginnings from which coercive jurisdiction has come into the hands of certain bishops or priests, along with power over all secondary forms of priestly institution (which we called non-essential) and the power of distributing all the temporal goods of the church; and also how it comes about that the Roman pope ascribes to himself supreme power over such things. As a consequence of this we shall also say who it is who has the rightful power to interpret doubtful senses of Scripture, and to give and command them to the faithful to believe and to observe. Assuming first, then, from what we determined in chapters 15 and 17 of the first discourse and chapters 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10 of this, that no coercive jurisdiction over anyone in this world belongs to any bishop or priest or minister of the church as such; next, as was adequately demonstrated in chapters 15, 16 and 17 of this discourse, that no bishop or priest is subject, by the immediate ordinance of Christ, to any other bishop or priest in respect of any sacerdotal power that we have spoken of, essential or non-essential; and also what we have just said, in the previous chapter, concerning the distribution of the temporal goods of the church: assuming all this, the solution to our questions may be sufficiently plain to those who will inspect the matter. But we shall nonetheless proceed to resolve them all individually, more for the sake of the slowness of those who are less well-versed in such things.

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In attempting to answer the proposed questions, then, we will need to consider first of all the extent to which these developments have progressed as a matter of fact, along with their origins; then, how far the things that have happened in this way were or ought to have been in conformity with divine and human law and with right reason, and also what things have happened contrary to and at odds with these; so that finally wemay be able recognise those things that are in conformity with them and should accordingly be approved and observed, and those that are at odds with them and should licitly be detested and rejected as harmful to this world and the quiet of the faithful.

Now that we have come this far, we need to say something of the efficient cause of the laws which we can demonstrate. For I do not here intend to identify the mode of institution that can come about, or has already existed, through the work of God or his immediate mouthpiece without any human decision – such as we have said was the institution of the Mosaic laws (even with respect to the commands of civil actions that it contains for the status of the present world); but only of that mode of establishing laws and principates which results directly from a decision of the human mind.

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Let us make a start on this subject and say that it is the province of any citizen to discover the law taken quasi-materially and in its third signification, viz. as the science of what is just and advantageous: even if this kind of inquiry can more appropriately be undertaken and more adequately completed through the observations of those who have the possibility of leisure – elders and those experienced in action, who are called ‘the prudent’ – than through the cogitations of mechanical workers who must concentrate on their labours in order to acquire the necessities of life. But the cognisance or true discovery of what is just and advantageous (and their contraries) is not law in its last and proper signification, in which it is the measure of human acts, unless either a coercive command has been given in respect of its observation, or it has been delivered by means of such a command from that on the authority of which transgressors can and should be constrained. It is therefore appropriate for us to make clear what individual or individuals have the authority to give such a command and to constrain those who transgress it: and this is to inquire into the legislator or lawmaker.

With these preliminaries in place, we resume our propositions in order to bring them to a conclusion. We first want to show that it is expedient and necessary to define any doubtful meanings or senses of Holy Scripture which have already arisen or will arise as soon as they do so, especially in the matter of articles of faith, commands and prohibitions. For that without which the unity of the faith would not be safeguarded, and error and schism would occur among Christian faithful in respect of the faith, is expedient or indeed necessary. But this is the determination of the doubtful and sometimes contrary opinions of various doctors on the subject of divine law; since in this matter, divergences or sometimes antagonisms of opinions would lead to divergent followings, schisms and errors – as is narrated in the Codex of Isidore we mentioned before, in the chapter entitled ‘Here begins the preface to the Nicene council.’ For a certain Alexandrian priest called Arius had said that Christ was the son of God in such a way that he considered him to exist purely as a created being and consequently unequal and inferior to God the father. When this error was spread abroad, a large number of Christians succumbed, and it would have been even greater and remained in its error if the true sense of Scripture in this matter had not been defined over and against the false. So, also, certain individuals put forward unsound opinions against the holy spirit and about the unity and plurality of person and essence in Christ; and the first four synods – of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon – were summoned and gathered for the purpose of separating these false opinions from the true, reproving and condemning them. For Christ prophesied that there would be these controversies among the doctors of the Christian church, true or counterfeit faithful, in Luke 21, and the Apostle too in I Timothy 4 and II Timothy 3. I omit the passages because of their familiarity and in order to keep the discussion short.

With this much now determined, it follows that we should say something of the modes of bringing about or instituting the princely part. For it will be from the better or worse nature of these modes (since it is from this nature that they result to the civil regime as actions) that we must infer the active cause by which both they, and through them the princely part, result more profitably to the polity.

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Now because our concern in this book is with the causes and actions by which the princely part should be created in most circumstances, we wish to set down beforehand a mode and a cause through which this part has before now been created – even if infrequently – so that we may be able to distinguish this mode or action and its immediate cause from the modes or actions and their immediate causes through which this part should regularly and in most circumstances be created, and which we can also confirm by human demonstration; for there is no certain grasp of the former to be had through demonstration. This mode or action and its immediate cause, by which the princely part and other parts of the city (especially the priestly) have before now been formed, was the divine will, commanding it through the determinate mouthpiece of a particular individual creature, or perhaps through itself alone. In this way it established the principate of the people of Israel in the person of Moses and of various other judges after him, and the priesthood too in the person of Aaron and his successors. On the subject of this cause and its free action, to explain or say why it acts or has acted in this way or that way and not the other – we can say nothing of this through demonstration, but hold it by simple belief without reasoning.

At this point we must say something of the efficient cause of the princely part. This will be to show by demonstration who has the authority to elect it, and consequently to establish the other parts of the city. For enough has been said concerning the institution of a non-elected princely part in chapter 11 of this discourse, section 5. Let us begin, however, by first deciding what kind of a man it is appropriate to elect or promote to the office of prince; for this will give us a surer transition to the authority that effects his election or institution.

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Now the inner dispositions of the perfect future prince are two in number, though they are not essentially separate: viz. prudence and moral virtue, especially justice. The one, sc. prudence, is to direct his intelligence in exercising his office; hence Politics III, chapter 2: ‘Prudence alone is the virtue peculiar to the prince; it seems appropriate that the others are common to subjects and princes.’ The other disposition is that by which his sentiments are upright, sc. moral virtue, and of these most especially justice. Hence Aristotle says, Ethics IV, in the treatise on justice: ‘The prince is the guardian of the just.’

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Prudence, then, is necessary to the future prince, because it gives him a great capacity for his proper work, viz. the judgement of what is advantageous and just in civil terms. For in those human civil actions where either the action itself, or its manner, is not decided by law, it is prudence that guides the prince both in judging and in executing, the deed or its manner or both: where without prudence he would make a mistake. For (as in Sallust's Catiline) if Cicero as consul had punished Catiline's accomplices – powerful Roman citizens who had conspired against the republic, and were therefore liable to the death penalty – according to the law and in the habitual time, place and manner, it is likely that civil war would have arisen as a result; and this would have caused the polity to disintegrate because of the sedition stirred up among the people by the said conspirators against the consul and others in the position of prince.

It remains for us to find out how, and in what matters, the Roman bishops have so far used and go on using the plenitude of power which they have assumed for themselves, beyond the boundaries of the church. But we shall begin by reminding ourselves of the ritual of the early church and its development from its origin and head, which is Christ, and from the holy apostles who first promoted it. For he, sc. Christ, came into the world to institute and also to exercise the office of priest or pastor of souls. For being the legislator of the law of eternal salvation, he prescribed under that same law the ritual and practice of the sacraments, as well as commands and counsels for those things that must be believed, done and avoided in order to merit, either simply speaking or eminently, the happy or blessed life. He abdicated and explicitly renounced any judgement of civil acts or office of principate in this world, and he commanded or counselled all the apostles and his and their other successors in the above-mentioned office to abdicate it likewise; expressing himself and likewise his apostles subject by divine ordinance to the judgement or coercive power of those who hold principate in this world. They themselves expressed themselves subject in this way as much in deed as in word, as was plainly shown from Scripture, as well as the expositions and authorities of the saints and doctors, in chapters 4 and 5 of this discourse, and in some way clarified by human reasoning in chapters 8 and 9 of the same. Christ exercised instead the powers we spoke of in chapters 6, 7, 15 and 16 of this discourse, and granted them to the apostles to exercise along with those who succeeded them in their person. Again, he observed supreme poverty and he taught, commanded or counselled the apostles and their successors to observe it, according to what we recalled and made clear in chapters 12, 13 and 14 of this discourse.

In this way, then, the Roman bishops have so far used and carry on using the said plenitude of power, steadily to the worse as they go on. However, they do this to a greater extent against the Roman prince and principate: for one thing, because they are more able to practise this iniquity of theirs (sc. of subjecting the principate to themselves) against him because of the discord which these so-called ‘pastors’ or ‘holy fathers’ have so far fomented, and continue to foment, both between the inhabitants themselves and towards their prince; and for another, because once they have subjected this principate to themselves (so they think) the way will be open for them easily to subjugate all other realms. And this is even though they are more fully and singularly obliged to the Roman prince and principate on account of the benefactions they have received, as is well-known to everyone.

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Truly (in case what we say is unfamiliar to anyone and needs us to voice it) these Roman bishops, smitten with covetousness or avarice, pride and ambition, worse than wicked because of their ingratitude, seek with all means to prevent the creation and elevation of the Roman prince; seeking ultimately to dissolve his principate, or trying to transfer it to another form more subject to themselves, so that the excesses they have perpetrated against the empire should not be corrected through the power of the said prince and so that they themselves should not be deservedly disciplined as a result. But although they place obstacles on all sides to the above-mentioned prince with the intention we have said, this is nevertheless under a cunning pretence, saying that they do this in order to defend the ‘rights of the bride of Christ’, viz. the church – even if this sophistic piety is laughable, because it is not temporal goods or lust for them, nor ambition for jurisdiction or principate, which is the bride of Christ, nor did Christ ever join this to himself in matrimony; on the contrary he explicitly repudiated it as foreign to him, as shown from divine Scripture in chapters 4 and 5 and 13 and 14 of this discourse.

Now a city, according to Aristotle in Politics I, chapter 1, is: ‘a perfect community possessing every limit of self-sufficiency, as it is consequent to say, having thus come about for the sake of living, but existing for the sake of living well’. Now in saying, ‘having come about for the sake of living, but existing for the sake of living well’, Aristotle signifies its final and perfect cause, for those who live a civil life do not just live – which beasts or slaves do – but live well, sc. having leisure for the liberal activities that result from the virtues both of the practical and of the theoretical soul.

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Since the city has been defined in this way as being for the sake of living and living well, that being its end, we should first discuss living itself and its modes. For this is, as we have said, that for the sake of which the city was established, as well as the necessary condition of all those things that take place and are brought about by human communication within it. Let us then lay this down as the fundamental principle of everything that we must demonstrate, a principle naturally held and believed and freely conceded by all: sc. that all men not deficient or otherwise impeded naturally desire a sufficient life, and by the same token shun and avoid those things that are harmful to them. Indeed, this principle is not only granted for man, but also for every kind of animal according to Cicero, On Duties I, chapter 3, where he says: ‘From the beginning nature has assigned to every kind of animate being the tendency to preserve itself, its life and body, and to reject anything that seems likely to harm it, seeking and procuring everything necessary for life’. This moreover anyone can gather plainly by inference from the senses.

We now reply to the remaining objections adduced from Scripture in chapter 3 of this discourse, which might seem capable of persuading someone that the Roman pope or any other bishop is a coercive judge, in the third signification, over all clergy or over all others indiscriminately, without being instituted by the human legislator but being instead directly ordained by God. One should say firstly, in reply to the objection that was taken from Matthew 16, when Christ said to Saint Peter: ‘I shall give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven etc.’, that Christ in these words did not give Saint Peter or any other apostle any power apart from that of binding and loosing men from their sins, as Saint Bernard explicitly says To Eugenius, On Consideration, Book I, chapter 5, which we quoted above in chapter 5 of this discourse, section 2, and which we also discussed in detail in chapters 6 and 7 of this discourse; nor any plenitude of power otherwise than as was stated in chapter 23 of this discourse. Hence on the basis of these words, neither the Roman nor any other bishop or priest receives, in the person of an apostle or apostles, coercive authority or jurisdiction in this world over any cleric or layperson. For it was said: ‘I shall give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ differentiating this from worldly kingdom. For Christ signified by his example that each apostle and successor of the apostles, bishop or priest, is excluded from this kind of government, when he said in Luke 12: ‘Man, who hath made me judge?’ (viz. of earthly things). And the same thing from the other words quoted previously in chapters 4 and 5 of this discourse.

We should reply in the same or similar fashion to the authorities taken from the canon, Matthew 18 and John 20, when Christ said to the apostles: ‘Whomsoever ye shall bind on earth etc.’, and: ‘Whose soever sins ye remit etc.’

Since we have determined from the previous discussion, by authorities of canonic scripture as much as by certain other clear quasi-political arguments, that no coercive jurisdiction over anyone in this world belongs to any bishop or priest or other cleric, we now want to make this clearer by manifest signs and testimonies. One obvious sign is that we do not read that Christ or any of his apostles ever or anywhere instituted anyone as a judge or as their vicar for the purpose of carrying out such government or judgement. But it does not seem likely that either he or his apostles could have been ignorant or neglectful of something so necessary to human life together. If they had recognised it as part of their office, and if they had wanted it to belong to their successors, the bishops or priests, they would have handed down some command or counsel concerning this matter. They did hand down the form and procedure for instituting spiritual ministers, bishops, priests and deacons, and we can know well enough that this is part of their office from the opinion of the Apostle in I Timothy 3 and Titus 1, and it is also apparent in many other places in Scripture.

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But Christ separated the office of priests or bishops from that of princes, even though he could himself, if he had wanted, have exercised both the status of a prince and the office of a priest, and could have ordained that the apostles should do likewise. But it was not his will to do this: on the contrary, he, who arranged all things in a way that was better simply speaking, willed that it would be more appropriate for these offices to be distinct both in their individual human subject and in their rationale. For Christ had come to teach humility and contempt of this world, as the way to meriting eternal salvation; and therefore, so that hemight teach humility and the contempt of this world or temporal things more by example than by words, he entered into this world in the utmost humility and contempt of temporal things.

In the first of his letters, in the passage just set down, Cassiodorus gave expression to the advantages and fruits of the tranquillity or peace of civil regimes, in order that he might – by using these, as the best fruits, to explain the greatest of all human goods, viz. the sufficiency of this life, which none can achieve without peace and tranquillity – inspire the wills of men to be at peace with each other, and hence tranquillity. His pronouncement was in harmony with the view of the blessed Job, when he said in chapter 22: ‘be at peace: thereby the best fruits shall come unto thee.’ It was because of this that Christ, the son of God, decreed that peace should be the sign and messenger of his birth, when he willed that the heavenly host should sing in one and the same pronouncement: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.’ And for the same reason over and over again he wished peace upon his disciples. So John: ‘came Jesus and stood in the midst of the disciples, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.’ Warning these same disciples to preserve peace between themselves, he said in Mark: ‘have peace one with another.’ And he did not merely teach them to have it among themselves, but to wish it upon others – hence Matthew: ‘And when ye come into an house, salute it, saying: Peace unto this house.’ This, again, was the inheritance which he left to his disciples by testament, when the time of his passion and death had come, when he said in John 14: ‘Peace I leave you, my peace I give unto you.’

It follows from this to show how and in what matters the Roman bishops have so far used, still do use, and very likely will go on using (unless they are stopped) these modes of plenary power that they have assumed to themselves: and firstly in appointing church officials and in distributing benefices or temporal goods, both to ecclesiastical ministers and to other poor persons, for whose sake also (as said in chapter 14 of this discourse) the temporal goods of the church have been granted and were established for distribution in this way by ministers of the church. Thereafter it will be for us to show how they have so far used, still do use, and will in future use these plenary powers vis-á-vis those who live a civil life, princes as much as subjects.

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Through the activity that has up until now been permitted the Roman bishops, and still is, in accordance with this plenitude of power, they have infected and – if onemay be allowed to say so – corrupted the entiremystical body of Christ. For they have narrowed, corrupted and finally almost wholly extinguished election, which is the preferable and indeed the only secure means of instituting any official in a way that is good, simply speaking: even though it was by election that the apostles together with themultitude of the faithful effected the institution of deacons, as we find in Acts 6. First they narrowed it by reassigning to the clergy alone what used to take place, and should take place, through the universal multitude of the faithful, as shown in chapter 17 of this discourse. Then they corrupted it, both by this narrowing and by transferring the authority to elect a bishop to certain young men whom they call ‘canons’, inexpert and inexperienced in divine law, excluding the priests of the province (unless perhaps it by chance occurs – which is rare and happens in very few cases – that the same person is both priest and canon); and by limiting the authority to make the election to one single church or temple of clergy in a province, when it ought to be done at least through all the clergy of the province, and especially the priests whose duty it is to be learned doctors of divine law, as we showed above.

It follows from our previous discussion that we should say something of the other causes of the offices or parts of the city. And we shall speak first of the material and formal causes, and then inquire into their motive cause. Now in things that are brought to completion by the human mind, the material exists in actuality prior to the form, and therefore let us speak first of the material cause. And let us say that insofar as ‘offices’ denotes dispositions of the soul, the material that is specific to the different offices is the men who have a tendency from their generation or birth to different arts or disciplines. For nature never fails in necessities, and takes even more care for what is more noble, such as is (among corruptible things) the human race. And since it is from this race, once it has been perfected through the various arts or disciplines, that the city must be constituted as from its material, together with the distinct parts within it that are necessary to attain the sufficient life (as shown in chapters 4 and 5 of this discourse); therefore she herself initiated this differentiation in human generation, producing some who have in their native dispositions a suitability and tendency towards agriculture, others towards soldiering, others to other kinds of crafts and disciplines – but always different people to different pursuits. Neither did she incline just one individual to an art or discipline of any specific type, but several to the same type of craft or discipline, as the needs of sufficiency demanded. Therefore she produced some who were suited to practical reasoning, since the judicial and deliberative part within the city should be constituted out of prudent men, and some who were suited rather to strength and boldness, since it is from such as these that it is appropriate for the military to be constituted.