Now that we have distinguished the meanings of the terms around which much of our inquiry is centred, we can approach our principal purpose with greater sureness. Let us first, then, bring in the authorities of Holy Scripture which might make someone think that the Roman bishop who is called the pope is the supreme judge (even in the third signification of judge and judgement) over all bishops or priests and other ecclesiastical ministers of the world, and also over all princes, communities, collective bodies and individual persons of this world, whatever their condition.

2

Let us set down as the first of these authorities the passage of Scripture found in Matthew 16, in which Christ, addressing Saint Peter, says: ‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ For it is from this passage that certain Roman bishops have assumed for themselves the authority of supreme jurisdiction just mentioned. For by the keys that Christ granted to Peter, they want it to be understood that plenitude of power over the entire government of humanity was handed to them. Just as Christ had this plenitude over all kings and princes, so he granted it to Saint Peter and his successors in the episcopal see of Rome as the general vicars of Christ in this world.

3

The second passage of Scripture in support of the same point is taken from the words of Christ in Matthew 11, when he said: ‘All things are delivered unto me of my Father;’ and again in Matthew 28 when he said: ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and earth.’ Since, therefore, Saint Peter and his successors in the episcopal see of Rome were and are the vicars of Christ – as these people say – it seems then that all power or plenitude of power has been granted to these same individuals, and in consequence the authority of any jurisdiction whatsoever.

We said earlier that it belongs to the legislator to bring to account or completely to change principates, just as it does to institute them. On this subject someone will quite rightly raise a doubt, viz. as to whether it is expedient for princes to be corrected through a judicial process and coercive power; and if it is, whether this ought to take place for any kind of excess, or only for some of them and not for others. Again, to whom it belongs to pass such judgements upon them and to carry out the execution of these judgements by coercive power: since it was earlier said that it belongs only to princes to pass civil sentences and to constrain those who transgress the law with coercive power.

2

Let us for our part say that the prince, through his action according to the law and through the authority that has been given him, is the standard and the measure of any civil act whatsoever, in the manner of the heart in an animal (as was sufficiently demonstrated in chapter 15 of this discourse). And if the prince took on no other form than the law, his authority, and the desire of acting in accordance with it, he would never commit any undue action or one that was subject to being corrected or measured by anything else. In this way he himself as much as his action would be the measure of every civil act on the part of others, while he himself would never be measured by others: just like a well-formed heart in an animal. For because the heart does not take on any form through which it would be inclined to an action contrary to that which arises from its natural virtue and heat, it always naturally performs its appropriate action and never the contrary. Because of this it regulates and measures, through its influence or action, the other parts of the animal in such a way that it is not itself regulated by them in any way and receives no influence from them either.

We gave some indication earlier, but must now show with greater certitude, that the institution and differentiation of the parts of the city comes about through some motive cause, which we called the legislator; and that this same legislator institutes, differentiates and separates these parts in the manner of nature in an animal: sc. by first forming or establishing a single part in the city – which in chapter 5 of this discourse we called the princely or judicial – and through this the others, as we shall make clearer in chapter 15 of this discourse. It is therefore appropriate for us to say something first concerning the nature of that single part. For since it is the first of all the rest (as will become apparent from what follows), a prior elucidation of its range of efficacy is the appropriate way for us to set about demonstrating the institution and active differentiation of the other parts of the city.

2

Now there are two generic kinds of princely part or principate, the one well-tempered and the other flawed. Together with Aristotle, Politics III, chapter 5, I call that kind ‘well-tempered’ in which what dominates exercises the function of prince for the common advantage in accordance with the will of those subject; ‘flawed’, that in which this is lacking. Each of these generic kinds subdivides into three types: the first (sc. the tempered) into royal monarchy, aristocracy, and polity; the second (sc. the flawed) into the three opposing species of tyrannical monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. And each of these specific types has, again, its own variants; but it is not part of the business in hand to discuss these in any more detail. For Aristotle said enough on the subject of them in books III and IV of his Politics.

3

However, in order to have a fuller notion of the specific types, which is in some sense necessary in order for what follows to be clear, we shall describe each of the said species of principate in accordance with Aristotle's understanding.

At this point, however, we should say something of the unity of that which exercises the function of prince or the principate. Let us make a start on this subject and say that in a single city or a single realm there should be only one single principate; or if there are several, in number or in species – as seems expedient in great cities, and most of all in a realm taken in its first sense – then there should be among them one in number that is supreme over all, to which and through which the rest are reduced and regulated, and any errors that arise in them corrected.

2

Now it is only this principate, sc. the supreme, that I say must necessarily be one in number, and not several, if the realm or city is to be rightly ordered. And I say the same of that which exercises the function of prince: a prince that is one in number, not in respect of human subject but in respect of office. For there is a type of supreme and well-tempered principate that is one in number and where more than one man exercises the function of prince, as in an aristocracy and a polity (of which we spoke in chapter 8 of this discourse). These several individuals do indeed form a principate that is one in number in respect of function, because of the numerical unity of whatever action, judgement or sentence or command issues from them; for no such action can issue from any one of these individuals by himself, but only from their common decree and consent or that of their prevailing part, according to the laws that have been established in these matters. And because of the numerical unity of the action that issues from them in this way, the principate is and is said to be one in number, whether it is ruled by one man or several.

Now all coercive jurisdiction concerns voluntary human acts in respect of some law or custom, either insofar as these acts are capable of being ordained to the end of this world, sc. the sufficiency of worldly life, or to the end of the world to come, which we call eternal life or glory. In order to highlight further the distinction between the judges (or those who ought to judge) of these actions, and in accordance with which laws, by what judgement, and how, let us discuss in some fashion the differences between the acts themselves. For to determine these will be no small help towards the solution of the previous doubts.

2

Let us say, then, that of human actions that proceed from thought and desire, some proceed apart from the empire of the mind, and some as a result of the empire of the human mind. Among the first are the thoughts, desires, delights and pleasures which come from us and in us without an imperative or command on the part of the intellect or the appetite being made with regard to them: such are the thoughts and affections we find ourselveswithwhenwe are woken from sleep, or which have been otherwise produced in us without an imperative of ourmind. But these are followed by certain thoughts, assents and affections towards either continuing the previous acts or questioning and understanding some of them (as in the action which happens through recollection). These are and are called ‘imperatives of the mind’ or ‘commands’, firstly because they happen or are elicited as a result of our empire, and also because certain others, like pursuit or avoidance, are elicited by them.

3

The difference between these ‘commanded’ and ‘non-commanded’ acts stems from what we said before: that we do not have full liberty or empire over non-commanded acts as to whether they happen or not, whereas according to the Christian religion, power over commanded acts lies in us.

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.

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.’

3

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.

2

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.

2

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.