Jacques-Bénigne de Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Books VI, VII, and VIII. Patrick J. Riley translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Bossuet here addresses the matter of civic duty, first the duties of subjects toward their prince, then the duties of princes toward God and subjects. He begins with the duties of subjects.
A subject owes the prince the same service he owes to his country because “the whole state is in the person of the prince,” whose will is the will of the whole people, aiming at the public good (VI.i.1). In serving the state, one must act in accordance with the will of the prince; otherwise, you are claiming “a part of the royal authority” (VI.i.2). Unlike you, “the prince knows the whole secret and the whole outcome of [public] affairs. To fail to observe his orders [even] for a moment is to expose everything to chance,” to violate his comprehensive and (it is hoped) rational policy (VI.i.2). Only public enemies aim at separating the interest of the prince from the interest of the state, “flatter[ing] a people in order to separate it from the interests of its king”—the “cruelest of all wars,” since to attack the head is to attack the body (VI.i.3). On the contrary, to preserve the public tranquility, the prince’s life must be loved as a public good, the object of the people’s good wishes. Indeed, “it is a divine punishment for a state, when it changes masters often,” no matter how wicked and reprobate a given prince may be (VI.i.5).
Subjects owe “their complete obedience” to their prince; anything less overthrows the “public order” (VI.ii.1). Disobedience to the prince warrants the death penalty, as tolerance of disobedience would result in the death of the state. Hence Jesus’ command to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. However, the remainder of the command, render unto God that which is God’s, identifies the “one exception” to the rule of obedience: if a command violates the commands of God (VI.ii.2). Among those commands, Bossuet singles out taxation, which supply the public expenses. Do not use religious pretexts to avoid them. Not only God but reason tells us that all members of the state “must contribute to the public necessities which the prince provides,” monies without which “he can neither support nor defend individuals, nor the state itself” (VI.ii.3). You pay a small part of your wealth in order to give the prince “the means of saving everything,” very much including the sometimes substantial wealth you retain (VI.ii.3).
To this obedience with respect to material things, Bossuet adds the moral goods of respect, fidelity, and (again) obedience. The sanctity of the king inheres in his character as a king, which “cannot be effaced by any crime whatsoever that he may commit” (VI.ii.4). Vexed and endangered under the tyranny of Saul, David “knew that it is for God alone to do justice to princes, and that it is for man to respect the prince as long as it pleases God to preserve him” (VI.ii.4). Given the need for public tranquility, a subject must even obey a pagan prince. The early Christians did. “For seven hundred years there was not a single example of disobedience to the emperor on religious pretexts” (VI.ii.5). A subject’s only legitimate recourse is “respectful remonstrances, without mutiny and without mercy,” along with prayers for the prince’s conversion to Christianity (VI.ii.5). God’s failure to answer such prayers only means that He is testing or punishing His children.
What about David and the Maccabees? Did they not justly rebel? It is true that David did finally move militarily against Saul. Yet he was no rebel. Samuel had consecrated David as his successor, and God had chosen him as the future king; persecuted nonetheless, David fled Israel, never engaging in combat, then marched with Saul’s foreign enemy but never himself fought against Israel’s king. As for the Maccabees, their war “was just, for God himself approved it” (VI.iii.2). Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria was attempting to expel the Israelites from their God-given land and indeed to exterminate them and to replace them with Gentiles. Since the preservation of “the race of Abraham” and their occupation of that land until the coming of the Messiah were commanded by God, the Syrian’s war was morally indispensable (VI.iii.2). In this case, and in this case only, “religion would be betrayed and the worship of God destroyed” (VI.iii.2). Judas Maccabaeus rallied the remnant of the Israelites, seeing that “to give up their land was to give up their religion as well” (VI.iii.2). God confirmed his decision, giving the Israelites “so many victories that finally the kings of Syria made peace with them” (VI.iii.2). All subsequent wars against princes waged on religious pretexts have been impermissible, now that the Messiah has come and no territory can rightly be described as sacred, as necessary to God’s plan. God’s plan has entered a new phase, since the advent of Jesus Christ.
This teaching on the duty of subjects to resist their sovereign only under the narrowest of circumstances serves as a link between the duties of subjects and the duties of princes, the topic Bossuet begins to address in Book VII. The duties inherent in rule derive from the purposes of government and the means of achieving those purposes. Government, Bossuet writes, aims at the good and preservation of the state. To preserve the state, it must have a sound regime, which “consists of two things: religion and justice”; “by the one, God is given his due; by the other, men are given what suits them” (VII.i). The state’s preservation also depends on such material resources as arms and riches and on the intellectual resource of prudent counsel. Finally, the preservation of the state requires “precautions which accompany royalty and the remedies which can be brought to bear upon them” (VII.i). No regime, not even the best regime, monarchy, lacks vulnerabilities. The ruler or rulers of each must know themselves and act according to that knowledge. Book VII consists entirely of the first set of duties, the prince’s obligation to uphold and defend religion, “inasmuch as it is the good of nations and of civil society” (VII.ii).
Human beings are ignorant and corrupt. Nonetheless, a few principles of religion have remained among all peoples, albeit these are often confused and misdirected. No people lacks religion, except those who are “absolutely barbaric, without civility and without polity” (VI.ii.1). The pagan idolaters were civilized. If not, “it would follow that there would be no genuine and legitimate authority outside the true religion and the true Church” (VII.ii.3). But not so, and Christ’s command to obey the Roman rulers in all matters properly belonging to them still holds. The law of nations confirms this. For example, “the sanctity of the oath” is “recognized by all nations” because all nations have some sense of divinity, something “greater than oneself” by which he swears, something immutable and therefore reliable, “a power which penetrates the most secret of consciences,” impervious to deception and sure to punish perjury (VII.ii.3). “Men who are not bound in conscience cannot protect one another” (VII.ii.3). Thus, when it comes to oaths, “it is not necessary to swear by the true God; it is enough that each swear by the God he recognizes,” establishing “good faith between men” (VII.3).
In contrast to the false religion, Christianity rests on “sure principles,” making regimes “more stable and solid” (VII.ii.4). The pagan religions were readily refuted by Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, men who, however, failed to provide a “solid foundation” for states on their naturalistic principles (VII.ii.4). True religion has distinctive and perceptible “marks” (VI.iii): antiquity or the ancestral (“from whatever perspective religion is examined, at any time, one will always see one’s ancestors” [VII.iii.1]); but more, the Christhood of Jesus can be seen in His unbroken line of ancestors, His genealogy, which descend from Abraham to David, then from either Nathan or Solomon, depending upon whether one relies on Matthew’s gospel or Luke’s. Jesus, who left no sons except in spirit, instead founded His assembly, His regime, His Church, with its canon law and pontiffs. The importance of this unbroken divinely royal lineage mirrors the importance of the humanly royal lineage of kings; God ordained both.
By contrast, you can know false religions by their innovations, which produce schisms as surely as disobedience to princes does in the ‘secular’ realm. the Bible provides examples of both such faithful sons of God as David and Solomon, and the schismatic, Jeroboam. The founders of false religions distinguish themselves from the Christian Church by giving themselves the name of a human being: Nestorians, Pelagians. They deviate from the origin of the Church in Christ. Moreover, “sound doctrine” is not enough for a solidly-based faith; one must unite with the true Church “everywhere and in all things) VII.iii.6). The ‘bloodline’ of the Church Fathers is no longer physical, but it remains spiritual and readily traced.
Because schismatics are so readily detected, a prince can and should “use his authority to destroy false religions in his state,” even if they were established by previous kings (VII.iii9). In doing so, strictness is permissible but “gentleness is preferable,” as the prince works by “blending severity and condescension according to the circumstances” (VII.iii.10). As “the protector of public tranquility,” the prince has the guardianship of true religion against false religions as a cardinal duty, and “those who do not wish to put up with the prince’s use of strictness in religious matters, on the grounds that religion should be free, are in blasphemous error,” willing to permit “idolatry, Mohammedanism, Judaism, any false religion, blasphemy, even atheism,” making “the gravest crimes” the “least punished” (VII.iii.10). Those most justly persecuted have been “sects which a venomous hatred of the Church, a blasphemous clashing, a spirit of sedition and rebellion, carried to fury, violence, and sacrilege” (VII.iii.10). As per the Biblical injunction, “the prince must exterminate from the face of the earth sorcerers and magicians, who attribute divine power to sorcerers or to demons” (VII.v.15).
The Christian prince will “make God’s law the fundamental law of his realm,” studying it an executing it (VII.iii.12). He will ensure that his people are instructed in God’s law, “reign[ing] only for the good of the people,” whose lives would be threatened by wars caused by religious schisms and whose souls would be injured by them (VII.iii.14).
Statesman readily err in religious matters. Indeed, “there is nothing more bizarre than the judgments of statesmen and politicians concerning religious affairs” (VII.iv.1). “False politics views religion with disdain,” treating it as the realm of “trifles and vain subtleties,” the “imprudent ardor of people intoxicated by vain things” (VII.iv.1). Such disdain often cloaks fear, fear of going “too deeply into such disagreeable subjects” as justice, chastity, and divine judgment (VII.iv.2). Such princes often dismiss Christians as mad, as did Festus, who regarded the Apostle Paul as maddened by “too much study” (VII.iv.3). This error finds encouragement among philosophers, like those who listened to Paul in Athens (some politely, others mockingly), while rejecting Paul’s teaching of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Had they taken him seriously, “it would have been truly necessary to convert, and everyone wanted to think only of curiosity and of his pleasure” (VII.iv.5). In this, they were no better than Pilate, and such men are not unknown in Christian France today: “We are not better than those of whom we have just spoken,” as “religion is no less a game to us than to the infidels” (VII.iv.5). A prince should be on guard against false piety, whether it be the seemingly prudential “external piety” of those who show “zeal in thing that do not harm [their] ambition,” the “selfish piety” who mimic piety in order to satisfy their ambition, or the “misguided piety” of those who scorn religion but allow themselves to be tyrannized by superstition (VII.iv.9-11). Such men may pray, fast, build temples, attend mass regularly, but take no truly substantive Christian actions, actions that bespeak caritas, such as “comforting widows, and the oppressed, and keeping one’s heart free from the contagion of this age” (VII.iv.11).
Religious persecution arose because Christians did not merely discuss but condemned the Roman gods, very much including the deified emperors, whom people “no longer wanted to worship” (VII.iv.6). And when kings have become Christians, they have not so much been mocked as ridiculed. “This jesting spirit must not be allowed to dominate in courts, especially in women, even if they be queens” (VII.iv.7). If tolerated, it may readily infect the king himself, as women often influence the feelings of men. On the contrary, the greatest kings have taken care for the worship of Gods, as seen first of all in Joshua, David, and Solomon—building the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of God, all the while understanding that even the most magnificent things done for God can never rival His greatness. Princes must sanctify feast-days, beginning with the Sabbath, as commanded by the God of Moses. This is the element of a good regime Aristotle calls its Bios tí, its way of life. “It is mainly on the sanctification of feast-days that the worship of God depends—a feeling that would dissipate in the continual occupations of life, if God had not consecrated certain days to think more seriously about it, and to renew in oneself the spirit of religion” (VII.v.3). Religious seriousness will also lead princes to protect priests and to maintain them financially, “one of the main exercises of religion, and the salvation of the whole people,” as seen in the Old Testament, and most particularly in the rule of King David, who saw to it that the priests in their turn followed the law of Moses, reinforcing the right structure of government and rank among them (VII.v.4). He surrounded himself with Levites, members of Israel’s priestly clan—men “inspired by God, and the most celebrated of their order” (VII.v.5). France’s Charlemagne followed David’s example, firmly rejecting the Nestorian heresy upon consulting the pope and several archbishops.
What is the right relationship between the priesthood and the empire? They are independent ruling bodies, the one ruling the ecclesiastical realm, the other the temporal realm, but they are united under the rule of God. In their several realms, they both ‘do God’s work,’ as the saying goes. Kings should restrain themselves from encroaching upon the priesthood. By respecting its integrity, he will find that it will “maintain him against al sorts of enterprises” (VII.v.10). Men of good will generally are “the underpinning of the state” (VII.v.14). Kings must therefore choose their pastors with care; “this is the most important part of their cares, and also the most dangerous, for which they will have to render a great account to God,” since “the whole instruction of the people depends on this” (VII.v.12). Pastors have been charged with “rightly handling the words of truth,” as the Apostle Paul says (VII.v.13). Experience shows that ignorance or disorder in pastors cause evil in the Church; kings who “give more weight to ambition or to favoritism than to merit” will answer to the God who wants pastors worthy of Him (VII.v.13). To avoid this, do not appoint inexperienced men to high Church offices; to assess the character of a candidate, consult “the voice of the public”—even heretics and infidels—who have dealt with him for a long time (VII.v.13). Jesus wants ministers “who will cause [Him] to be obeyed,” since those who obey Jesus obey the king, whose people He has “placed in your care” (VII.v.13). To do less for God is to commit not only a sin but a mortal sin.
Similar respect for the Christian religion must prevail in the prince’s secular actions. He will faithfully observe his oaths, under the judgment of God, maintaining the privileges of churches and the guarantees of treaties. He will obey the oath of office he took upon ascending to the French throne: preserving “true peace” among his subjects; forbidding “all rapacity and iniquity”; ordaining “equity and pity” with every judgment; upholding the holy faith; defending the churches and their ministers, governing and defending the kingdom “according to the justice of your fathers”; and defending the crown of France by refusing to alienate its powers or to convey them to any other man (VII.v.18). To rule this way is to rule with humility. “Take care, then, not to consider your happiness as something attached to your person; if you do not think at the same time that it comes from God, who can equally give it and take it away” (VII.vi.4). Human affairs are not ruled by chance but by divine providence. Neither fortune nor the stars rule the world; “nothing rules save God,” who rules according to His wisdom (VII.vi.5). “Where wisdom is infinite, there is no room for chance” (VI.vi.6). Human beings, their wisdom being decidedly finite, may mull over their speeches and plans all they like, but “the occasion always brings with it something unexpected, such that one always says and does more or less than one had thought” (VII.vi.7). Always remember that “God seems to take pleasure in seeing great kings and proud kings humbled before him,” inasmuch as “their humiliation is all the greater an example to the human race” (VII.vi. 12).
Because kings bear greater work than their subjects, they undertake actions which surpass human weakness to an even greater extent than ordinary men do. Contra Machiavelli “in vain does a king imagine that he is the arbiter of his fate, because he is the arbiter of others” (VII.vi.8). “No power can escape the hands of God” (VII.vi.9). A king thus has “no recourse” other than “abandoning [himself] to God with a full confidence” (VII.vi.9). In doing this, he will foster genuine piety in himself, an active piety that depends upon God for the outcome even as it applies itself to its task with executive energy. God does not give you “wisdom, foresight, liberty” in vain; “he wills that you make use of them” (VII.vi.11). If you fail, repent in humility. Failure may come frequently, as kings are both more subject to temptations and wield more power to make reparations through good works.
Concluding his account of the duties of kings to God, Bossuet reminds his reader that French kings have “particular obligations,” what might be termed duties of Christian patriotism (VII.v.14). “The Gallican Church has been founded by the blood of an infinity of martyrs”—not a fact unique to France (VII.v.14)—. But it was St. Remy—Bossuet carefully gives the French name for St. Remigius—who converted the Frankish king Clovis to Christianity around the turn of the sixth century. In bringing the barbaric Franks into the Church, Remy did important service to God, given the decline of the Roman Empire, which the erstwhile pagan peoples of northern Europe were conquering. And he did it in France, nowhere else. When Clovis’ Merovingian dynasty failed to follow the Christian way of life, as their founder had ordained, “God created another family to reign in France,” the Carolingians, beginning with Pepin in the eighth century (VII.vi.14). “No royal family was ever so beneficent towards the Roman Church,” especially in the persons of Charlemagne and the sainted King Louis, “the holiest king ever seen among the Christians” (VII.vi.14). “The greatest glory of the kings of France comes to them from their faith, and from the constant protection which they have given to the Church” (VII.vi.14).
As stated in Christ’s Great Commandment, love of God must be supplemented by love of neighbor. This comports with Christian patriotism. Justice is the pathway of Christian patriotic love in the conduct of kings. Being the judge of judges as well as the king of kings, God presides over all judgments. Under His authority, kings—who for centuries functioned as much or more as judges than as ‘executives’ or even as war leaders—wield a portion of divinity, but least of all a portion of divine power. “That which principally brings them to merit the name of ‘gods’ is the independence with which they must judge, without respect of persons, and without fearing the great any more than the small” (VIII.i.1). To favor persons over the right is “the root of all injustice” (VIII.i.1). Although royal judgments favoring the rich over the poor occur more often, kings must also avoid favoring the poor, “for one should no more judge through pity than through indulgence or through anger” (VIII.i.1). Judge through reason alone, establishing equality by favoring whoever is the “weakest in the sight of justice” (VIII.i.1), remembering that the people he judges belong to God, not to him.
Justice serves the interest of the king, bringing peace to his kingdom and even empire, as foreigners “want him as a master,” even as Christians want Christ as their master (VIII.i.3). The just king’s court has nothing to do with arbitrary power, obedient as the king is to natural, divine, and human law. The just king remains mindful that he will be judged by God, in this life or in the next. By contrast, arbitrary power permits “no free persons,” reducing subject peoples to slavery from birth to death; under arbitrary power, no one possesses private property and there is no right of inheritance; under it, the prince has the right to dispose of persons and goods as he wishes; under it, there is “no law but his will” (VIII.ii.1).
“Among us, there is no arbitrary government” (VIII.ii.1). The French monarchy is absolute, not arbitrary. By absolute, Bossuet means that the king is independent of all other powers save God’s. But if the French king has no human equals, he nonetheless must obey the laws; his is literally a legitimate rule, “by its very nature the opposite of arbitrary government” (VIII.ii.1). As with Aristotle, true kings are fathers, not masters, except perhaps over the foreigners within the French empire. Monarchy with the rule of law constitutes “perfect liberty” because it is free from anarchy, the worst tyranny (VIII.ii.2). Legal protection of property makes liberty from anarchy not only safe but sweet. It ensures the cultivation of the land, protecting agriculture not only from agriculture but from unproductive communism. Hence God’s punishment of Achab and Jezebel for seizing Naboth’s vineyard in violation of God’s law, “which was also that of the kingdom” (VIII.ii.4).
Legitimate, absolute monarchy requires “the good faith of princes” at all times (VIII.iii.2). The subjects of this regime obey “not only through fear, but also, inviolably through affection” (VIII.iii.2). Better still than good laws are good customs, which issue in fewer violations of law. “Praiseworthy customs” perpetuate the life of the state, making it to come “to be regarded, like the universe, as governed by counsels of an immortal duration” (VIII.iii.3).
What, then, is justice? It is the straight path of equity, of treating citizens equally with respect to the right. Even the pagan Cicero, in his De Officiis, holds that “justice shines brightly by itself,” that “justice does not hide herself” (VIII.iii.5). That is, even pagans have consciences, however little they know God.
To reinforce his just judgments, the prince needs institutional support, establishing tribunals and carefully appointing their members and instructing them in their duties, inasmuch as even a clearly-written law needs judges to apply it, justly and prudently according to the circumstances seen in each case that comes before him. Accordingly, Moses established judges under the prince, saw to it that they were “wise and honorable” men, and reserved “the most difficult matters to the prince himself” (VIII.iii.6). This tribunal, the Sanhedrin, remained as much under the eyes of the king as the king remained under the eyes of God.
Three virtues accompany justice, according to “the learned and pious” Chancellor Gerson, as cited by Bossuet. They are constancy, prudence, and clemency. A judge achieves constancy by following the law. In applying the law to cases, he needs prudence, the ability “to know how to recognize the true and the false, in the facts which are presented” in court (VIII.iv.1). And the circumstances of the case may suggest that justice be “relaxed” or moderated, tolerating and pardoning weakness (VIII.iv.1). One reason for absolute, if not arbitrary, monarchic rule is the need for justice enforced firmly, prudently, and clemently. With emphasis on firmness, however, because “men are naturally wolves to one another,” and a just firmness is the only guard against their predation (VIII.iv.2). It is indeed “a kind of combat to render justice” (VIII.iv.3).
How shall the judge become prudent? God shows how in Genesis 18, which recounts His investigation of Sodom and Gomorrah. Since God is all-knowing, He hardly needed to investigate the two evil cities, but he did so in order to instruct human rulers by His example. God says He wants to know what is happening there, showing rulers “the desire they should have to know the factual truths which they must judge” (VIII.iv.4). Second, God says that he has heard the cries of the oppressed, teaching rulers “that their ears must always be open, always attentive, always ready to hear what is going on”—to listen carefully to testimony, as judges now say (VIII.iv.4). Third, the judge must “base his judgment only on certain knowledge” (VIII.iv.4). In hearing testimony, he must reject ‘hearsay evidence.’ “Ordinary reports and noises should excite the prince; but he should yield only to known truth,” searching it out for himself (VIII.iv.4). This isn’t easy to do, as “too many people are interested in not knowing truth in its entirety,” surrounding themselves with those who “spare each other, so to speak,” preferring not to reveal “those nagging truths which they do not wish to know” (VIII.iv.4). God says He will “go down” to the evil cities; as the royal judge, do not hesitate to descend from your throne, an act often requisite to ascending to the truth.
Prudence thus provides the buckle linking firmness with clemency, needed by both in order to keep them in their proper places. Clemency is the Christlike virtue par excellence, “temper[ing] the strictures which justice demands,” but it needs prudence to prevent it from drifting into mere sentiment (VIII.iv.5). Clemency is “the joy of the human race,” (VIII.iv.5) and “the glory of a reign” (giving the Israelite kings a good reputation among the nations, even among enemy nations) (VIII.iv.6). Clemency brings happiness to the judge who spares a man’s life while showing him mindful of his own weaknesses, which he shares with all men. It bespeaks greatness, as “a prince never shows himself so great before his enemies, as when he treats them with generosity and clemency” on the day of his victory over them (VIII.iv.9). Still, in acts of clemency, a prince should “leave some element of punishment, out of reverence for the law and as an example”—punishing wrongdoers but limiting the duration of the punishment, for example (VIII.iv.10). Just as men of stern temperament must bridle their inclination to punish severely, “men of good will, who are naturally given to indulgence, must watch themselves more closely than other men” (VIII.iv.11). Especially when a man has committed multiple crimes, having accustomed or habituated himself to committing them, the judge should imitate God: “the just severity which God so visibly reveals in the holy books, when crimes have multiplied and have reached a certain excess, should be in some way a model for princes in the governance of human affairs” (VIII.iv.12).
Bossuet concludes his discussion of duty with an enumeration of the obstacles to justice. They are: material gifts and “praise and flattery” (VIII.v.1); prejudice (“the kind of folly which keeps us from reasoning”) (VIII.v.2); laziness and haste; piety and strictness (“the zeal to discover wrong often makes one do wrong to him that has done none”) (VIII.v.4); anger (“a passion most unworthy of a prince”) (VIII.v.5); cabals and squabbles; wars and negligence (“too occupied by war, whose action is so lively, one thinks not at all of justice”) (VIII.iv.7). Piety and strictness (what Americans call ‘puritanical’ characteristics, the impulse to hunt witches to kill) sits central to the list.
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