Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Patrick Riley translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Books I-II.
Bossuet dedicated his book, which he never quite got round to finishing, to Louis, eldest son of Louis XIV, heir apparent to the throne. If Bossuet never finished the book (published in 1709, completed by a nephew, it appeared five years after his death), Monseigneur le Dauphin never began his reign, predeceasing his long-lived father by four years. This may have been just as well. Le Monseigneur was a bit of a dullard, intimidated by his formidable sire and overwhelmed by Bossuet’s tutoring, which began in 1670, when the lad was nine years old. That he ever read the book is unlikely, and as things turned out he didn’t need to.
In his epistle dedicatory, Bossuet observes that God, being the King of kings, has the authority “to instruct them and to rule them as his ministers.” He does this primarily through His Scripture, and indeed the future Bishop of Meaux, a Gallican Catholic to the core, draws his lessons from the Bible, filtering little through traditional Church theologians. It is conceivable that he intended to leave as little room for Protestant criticism as possible. Scripture is “better than other histories” in showing “the original principles which formed empires” by revealing the goodness and badness of the human heart, what sustains and overthrows kingdoms, what religion can do to establish kingdoms and what impiety can do to destroy them.” Scripture even shows “the natural character of the other virtues and vices” (emphasis added), those that do not have direct implications for politics. That is, the Bible reveals not only God’s commands, revelation, but teaches its readers about human nature, which very often does not heed those commands.
Politics is nonetheless Bossuet’s topic. In ancient Israel, “one sees the government of a people whose legislator was God himself; the abuses which he reprimanded and the laws which he established—which comprise the finest and justest polity that ever was.” Unlike the laws of Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Egypt, the laws of Israel contain the highest “wisdom,” truly divine wisdom. “There was never a finer state constitution” or regime “than that under which you will see the people of God.” In sharp contrast to Machiavelli, who regards the laws of Israel as the laws of Moses, equating Moses with Solon, Lycurgus, and other regime founders, Bossuet regards Moses and Joseph as having been “inspired by God.”
Nor does Bossuet neglect the revelations of the New Testament. “Jesus Christ will teach you, by himself and by his apostles, all that can make states happy; his Gospel renders men more fit to be good citizens on earth”—this, in direct contradiction to Machiavelli’s accusation—and “teaches them by that means to render themselves worthy of becoming citizens of heaven” (emphasis added). This suggests that contra most Protestant teachings, works count toward your salvation. That may be dubious theologically, but it might have a salubrious effect upon the mind of a young and reportedly sluggish student. By so teaching, Bossuet counters both Machiavellian atheism and Protestant fideism by insisting that works make Christians both capable of defending themselves and well-prepared for the life that awaits them after death.
In sum, God, “by whom kings reign, forgets nothing that may teach them to reign well.” Kings therefore “cannot be too attentive to the rules upon which they will be judged by an eternal and irrevocable sentence.” Those like Machiavelli in the past and Voltaire in the future “who believe that piety enfeebles politics will be confounded.”
Bossuet devotes the first of his ten main sections or “books” to a discussion of the basic principles of human society. First, man is made to live in society; he is a ‘social animal.’ Second, this human society “gives birth to civil society,” to states, peoples, and nations (I.ii); the social animals realize their potential as ‘political animals’ by virtue of their natural sociality. Third, to form nations and unite the people, government is necessary. Fourth, government perfects itself by establishing laws. Fifth, among these laws are the laws of nations, customs and practices shared by all sovereign nations, by “the general society of mankind,” across political boundaries (I.v). And finally, the countries so established deserve the love of their citizens, patriotism.
With respect to human sociality, Bossuet derives his claim from six propositions or premises. Men have but one and the same end and one and the same object, God (I.i.1). This in turn implies that the love of God obliges us to love one another “because we must all love the same God, who is our common father”; “his unity is our bond” (I.i.2). That is, “we should love in each other the image of God”; the two obligations are “alike” (I.i.2). (Bossuet goes so far as to claim that even beasts will be required to give account before God for the human blood they have shed.) From these first two propositions, it follows that all men are brothers, the only creatures made in God’s image; all others are made according to their “kind” (I.i.3), by which Genesis apparently means what we call ‘species.’ Although Bossuet doesn’t remark it, this is the basis for man’s rule over the animals and over the Garden generally. Since Woman was drawn from the body of Man, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” as Man acknowledges, marriage gives divine and civil sanction to the understanding that two have become “one flesh” (I.i.3). The brotherhood of man also makes friendship possible. “God forbid that kings should believe themselves exempt from this law, or that they should imagine that it diminishes the respect which is due to them” (I.i.3). Such false belief, such forgetting of human fraternity, their common, innate divine image, provoked God to destroy almost all of mankind in the Flood. To this day, murderers rightly suffer capital punishment for violating the law of human brotherhood.
Further, no man is a stranger, a foreigner, to another man, despite the differences among nations. There can even be a good Samaritan, wicked though so many Samaritans were held to be. Each man ought to take care of other men, out of divinely commanded agape or caritas, the love the English Bible denotes as compassion or fellow-feeling. Finally, not only compassion, a form of selflessness, obligates men to help one another; so does self-interest, as “strength is multiplied by society, and by mutual assistance.” (I.i.6). “God, having willed to establish society, has established that each one shall find in it his well-being, and remain attached to it through that interest,” each understanding his God-given talents as complementary to the talents of other and as making him a good part of the whole (I.i.6). One sees this in the Christian regime itself: “Jesus Christ, in forming his Church, established unity on this foundation, and shows us what are the principles of human society” (I.i.6).
“We see, then, human society supported upon these irreversible foundations; one same God, one same object, one same end, one common origin, one same blood, one same interest, one mutual want, alike for the affairs, as for the enjoyments of life” (I.i.6). Nothing could be further from the teachings of Machiavelli and Hobbes.
Human sociality results in civil society. Although God Himself was the bond of Eden’s two-person civil society, in disobeying God, separating himself from Him, Adam sowed division into his own family, resulting in the murder of Abel by Cain. “The whole of the human race was divided” into the children of Seth, children of God, and the children of Cain, “the children of men” (I.ii.1). Bossuet means that disobedience to God liberates the passions which, being “insatiable,” sets the children of men against the children of God and against one another (I.ii.1). This makes it impossible to trust, to find safety in, men.
This division in turn divided humanity into many nations. Each nation has its own ruling passion or passions. God further divided the children of men by imposing different languages upon them, punishing the passion of pride as seen in the Tower of Babel. This notwithstanding, the earth human beings inhabit together serves as a bond amongst men, a weaker bond than godliness but a bond, nonetheless. Each nation loves the land on which they dwell, “a sentiment natural to all people,” very much including the Israelites who happily returned to the Promised Land after their captivity in Babylon (I.ii.3). Love of a particular spot on earth is a universal human sentiment. Bossuet thus tacitly endorses the Peace of Westphalia, part of the law of nations.
Government is necessary to form nations and unite the people. Because the impassioned children of men divide into factions, even within the same nation, only the authority of government puts a bridle on the passions and on the violence the passions cause. The “authority and subordination” of the several “powers” within the kingdom restrains human licentiousness (I.iii.2). It is by the authority of government—legitimate government, government itself restrained by sound laws—that social and political union can be made to prevail over impassioned factitiousness. In Israel, when the nation went into battle “as one man”; “behold, such is the unity of a people, when each one renouncing his own will, transfers and reunites it to that of the prince and the magistrate” (I.iii.3). In this, Bossuet argues like a Christian Hobbes, teaching that under such a regulated government each individual renounces the right of occupying by force what he finds usable or pleasurable. Since God initially gave the earth to all humanity, “indiscriminately,” “no one has a particular right to any thing whatever, and every thing is the prey of all”—Hobbes’s war of all against all (I.iii.4). Not so under a regulated government, where the sovereign magistrate distributes the property; “in general all rights should come from the public authority” (I.iii.4). The Christian Leviathan dispenses rights; the laws of nature and of nature’s God ordain human sociality and civism but not property rights. This power of government is good because it is by the government that each individual becomes stronger, his person and property secured by the government. In turn, the sovereign magistrate rightly has at his disposal “all the strength of the nation, which submits to, and obeys him” (I.iii.5). Despite the individual sacrifices this entails, “the people gain” from it because they have “all the strength of the nation reunited to assist them” (I.iii.5). Reunited: Bossuet understands lawful government to heal, at least to a substantial degree, the consequences of Adam’s disobedience, even if it cannot lift the curse of Adam pronounced by God.
As with Hobbes, the regime Bossuet advocates to accomplish this is monarchy. “In the person of the prince [the individual] has an invincible defender” because the prince’s self- interest “in guaranteeing by force every other individual” requires the defeat of “any other force than his own,” a force or combination of forces which would threaten his own authority and indeed his life (I.iii.5). “Thus the sovereign is the natural enemy of all violence,” so long as he rules as a legitimate prince, abiding by the laws of Scripture (including the protection of “widows, orphans, wards even infants in the cradle”), of civil society and of nations (I.iii.5). The worst enemy of humanity is anarchy, as “when there is no master, every one is master; where every one is master, every one is a slave” (I.iii.5).
Finally, a well-designed government perpetuates itself, making the state “immortal” or at least long-lasting. “The prince dies, but authority is immortal” (I.iii). A good government is a stable government, and a stable government provides for the orderly transfer of authority from one generation of rulers to the next—a lesson understood, famously, in the United States by the young Abraham Lincoln.
Law is obviously indispensable to Bossuet’s conception of monarchy. The laws must be joined to the government to perfect it. “It is not sufficient that the prince or the sovereign magistrate should regulate cases as they occur, according to circumstances”—necessary as such attention must be, as Aristotle appreciates; “it is necessary that they should establish general rules of conduct, in order that the government may be constant and uniform” (I.iv.1). Legal first principles must be fixed, and “the first of all laws” is the “law of nature, that is to say…right reason and…natural equity” (I.iv.2). As Paul the Apostle acknowledges, even the Gentiles get this right, as we see in how they “show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts within themselves accusing them, or else defending them” (I.iv.2). The laws that reinforce public order themselves should be orderly, founded upon the principles of fearing God, keeping His commandments, and doing unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Where does the prince fit it? He explains the character of the laws, observing that unlike men, the law has no interest and no passion. “In the laws are collected the purest light of reason,” rewarding the law-abiding and punishing those who do unto others what they would never want done to themselves (I.iv.4). God pronounced His judgement on Babylon: “She had spared nobody, spare her not: she has made others suffer, let her suffer” (I.iv.5). With respect to rewards, the same principle applies: “Whoever serves the public or individuals, the public and individuals ought to serve him” (I.iv.5).
Civil laws derive from “a covenant and solemn treaty,” a social contract not among the people, simply, as in Hobbes and Locke, but among the people “by the authority of princes” (I.iv.6). Bossuet makes himself clear: “We do not mean by this that the authority of the laws depends upon the consent and acquiescence of the people; but only that the prince who by his character has no other interest than that of the public, is assisted by the experience of past heads of the nation, and supported by the experience of past centuries” (I.iv.6). In Israel, the ‘prince’ was of course God Himself, who used Moses as His mediator—needing, as the Creator, no need of human consent. “The covenant” between God and the Israelites “has a double effect: it unites the people to God, and it unites the people in themselves,” something the people themselves, being impassioned sons of men, could not do by themselves (I.iv). Such union could never have been accomplished if it “had not been originally made in the presence of a superior power, such as that of God, the natural protector of human society, and the inevitable avenger of every contravention of the law” (I.iv.7). That is “why all nations have been desirous to give to their laws a divine origin; and those which did not have it, pretended to have it” (I.iv.7).
As Aristotle (and Lincoln) also insist, it is impossible to change fundamental laws and even dangerous to change, “without necessity,” laws which are not fundamental (I.iv.8). “We lose a veneration for the laws when we see them often changing”; a nation who falls into that habit becomes dizzy, falls (I.iv.8). Bossuet here points to the people of Samaria, “who, having overset order, forgot the law, established a religion, and an arbitrary law,” thereby sacrificing the very “name of a people” (I.iv.8).
Beyond and above the law, the division of property in civil society and the division of territory among nations should not “alter the general society of mankind” (I.v.1). Moses himself reminded God’s chosen people that even as God was their common father and earth their common mother, “the nurse of all men,” foreigners must be respected, not arbitrarily injured (I.v.1). “He recommends particularly, in judgments, the stranger and the fatherless, honoring in all the society of mankind” (I.v.1). “We must not then imagine that the limits which separate the lands of individuals, and of states, are made to cause division in mankind; but only that they should not attempt anything against each other, and that each one should respect the peace of the other,” leaving to sit under his own vine and fig tree, unafraid. The law of nations ordains such “common principles of society and concord” as commerce, fidelity to treaties, and the inviolability of ambassadors in peace and war alike (I.v.1). “Nations that do not know these laws of society are inhuman and barbarous, enemies of all justice and of mankind; to them Scripture applies this odious charge, ‘without affection, without fidelity'” (I.v.1). The Biblical law of love rules international politics, although Bossuet cautions that charity begins at home. “As we cannot serve all men, we ought to attach ourselves principally to serve those who place, time, and other similar circumstances unite to us in a particular manner, as by a sort of destiny” (I.v.1).
In the sixth and final article of Book I, Bossuet discusses the love of country. Self-love, love of family and of friends all reunite in that love. “This is why the seditious, who do not love their country and bring division into it, are the execration of mankind” (I.vi.1). More, we should be “ready to sacrifice for our country,” “even without hesitation expose our lives” for it, there being “no more joy for a good citizen when his country is ruined” (I.vi.1). His examples, drawn from Old Testament accounts of Israelite valor, nonetheless (and contra Machiavelli) apply to Christians today because they are now the people of God, and should follow the example of the first people of God. Bossuet goes so far as to maintain that “Jesus Christ established, by his doctrine and by his example, the love that citizens ought to have for their country,” fulfilling the duties of charity to all men, the duties of “a good son toward his parents,” and “those of a good citizen, recognizing himself ‘sent to the sheep that are lost in the house of Israel'” (I.vi.2). His fellow Jews acknowledged this, cheering Him as he entered Jerusalem; even as he was tortured to death on the Cross, he told the women nearby not to weep for Him but for themselves and their children. He lived his life as “an exact observer of the laws and praiseworthy customs of his country,” even allowing Himself to be crucified, never interfering with the authority of magistrates, “faithful and affectionate, to the end to his ungrateful country, and to his cruel fellow citizens” (I.vi.2). In shedding his blood for humanity, but “with a particular regard for his nation,” Jesus “willed that the love of country should find a place” in the world (I.vi.2).
His disciples followed His example. Despite a century of “pitiless persecution” by the Romans, “never were there better citizens, nor any more useful to their country, nor who served more willingly in their armies, provided that they were not to become idolators” (I.vi.3). And, as Tertullian observed, despite this persecution, no Roman emperor ever died at the hands of a Christian.
Bossuet concludes Book I by saying that human society may be considered in both of two ways: as “one great family” under the fatherhood of God or as divided into nations, “peoples composed of many particular families, having each their rights” (I.vi.3). Seen through the latter prism, civil societies protect human life, affording citizens peace. Love of mankind, yes, but also love of “the civil society of which he forms a part” obligates every Christian as well as all other human beings (I.vi.3).
In the Second Book, Bossuet argues that the best regime is hereditary monarchy. Nature itself has its King, whose “absolute empire” has “for its original title and foundation the Creation” (II.i.1). Having “drawn everything out of nothingness,” everything is rightly “in his hand” (II.i.1). More specifically, the Bible reveals that God has “visibly exercised a personal authority over men” as their “sole king” by such acts as favoring Abel’s sacrifice over Cain’s, his judgment of Cain, and by His reservation of vengeance for such crimes to Himself alone—all “functions of public power” (II.i.2). More, God “publicly exercised a sovereign empire over his people in the desert,” acting as the Israelites’ king, legislator, and leader (II.i.2). And “it is he who established kings” from Saul through Samuel (II.i.2). “This is why the throne of the kings of Israel is called the throne of God” (II.i.2).
Human societies rightly follow this structure, beginning with the family, “the model and principle of cities and of the whole of human societies” (II.i.3). Unlike Aristotle, who finds in the reciprocal rule of husband and wife the nucleus of political life, Bossuet locates political life in the strictly patriarchal family—a small monarchy. “The first idea of command and of human authority has come to us from paternal authority” (II.i.3).
Aristotle takes his bearings from the polis or ‘city-state,’ arguing that families united to form such cities because individual families could not thrive without assistance from other families. Bossuet regards the ancient cities with suspicion, along with the kind of politics found there. The founder of the first city, Cain, not only “violated human fraternity by a murder” but “was the first to withdraw himself” from paternal rule (II.i.3). Most men lived not in cities but in the countryside, “having for the law the will of their parents and the ancient customs”; this was the way of life seen in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (II.i.3). Abraham, for example, was not a king but a pastoral patriarch.
Kingship derived from that model, established either by popular consent or by arms, by the “right of conquest” (II.i.4). In the first instance, “men who…saw the image of a kingdom in the union of several families under the leadership of a common father, and who had found gentleness in that life, brought themselves easily to create societies of families under kings who took the place of fathers” (II.i.4). In the second instance, pioneered by Nimrod, child of cursed Ham and mighty hunter before the LORD, an “ambitious and violent disposition soon spread rapidly among men,” leading to the establishment of “unjust and tyrannical” empires (II.i.4).
Bossuet thus follows Aristotle in distinguishing good monarchic regimes from bad ones. He acknowledges regimes other than monarchy, particularly democracy and aristocracy, both of which he calls “republics,” following Cicero’s broad, literal definition of a republic as a ‘public thing,’ any regime ruled by more than one person. The Israelites for a time had “a kind of republic, but one which had God for its king” (II.i.6). When they called for a human monarch, God was displeased by the affront, but granted the request. Monarchy is, after all, “the most common, the most ancient, and also the most natural form of government” (II.i.7). Ancient Greek cities, Rome, and such modern Switzerland, Netherlands, and “even Venice, which prides itself on having been a republic since its origin,” in fact began as monarchies (II.i.7). “Men are all born subjects”—subject to one God and to one natural father—and “the paternal empire, which accustoms them to obey, accustoms them at the same time to have only one leader” (II.i.7). Monarchy is not only the most natural but also the most durable, and strongest regime, the one “most opposed to division, which is the essential evil in states” (II.i.8). Military necessity inclines all states to monarchy, inasmuch as “military government needs to be exercised by one person alone” (II.i.8).
Among the several good monarchies, hereditary monarchy is best, the one closest to the patriarchal family. “It is the natural order that the son succeed his father,” “the order that best rolls on by itself,” the regime that lends itself least of all to faction and anarchy (II.i.10). [1] Monarchy also designates as the political authorities those “who are most interested in their”—that is, the royal family’s—own “preservation”; the king loves ‘his own’ and, animated by that love, rules in order to defend his country (II.i.10). As “the most natural object of public veneration,” monarchy is the regime best able to maintain its dignity in the eyes of the people (II.i.10). “The jealousy that one naturally feels against those whom one sees above him here turns into love and respect; the great themselves obey without repugnance a house which has always looked masterly, and which one knows will never be equaled by any other house” (II.i.11).
What if a people have established a republican regime? Should it be changed to a monarchy? Not necessarily. There being “no form of government whatsoever, nor any human institution, which does not have its disadvantages,” it is better not to disturb a decent regime (II.i.12). Bossuet cites the Apostle Paul’s adjuration to remain subject to higher powers, although he qualifies it by saying that “God takes under his protection all legitimate governments, in whatever form they are established” (II.i.12).
As to monarchies or other regimes founded by conquest, even they can be made legitimate. For example, Jacob conquered land from the Amorites, an enemy of Israel and therefore an enemy of God. That is, conquest in a just war legitimates rule, monarchic or otherwise. However, the conquering nation can only make its right of conquest “incontestable” if it follows its battlefield victory with “peaceable possession” following a peace treaty, “a friendly coming to terms” (II.ii.2). “Thus one sees that this right of conquest, which begins with force, transforms itself as it were into common and natural right by the consent of peoples, and by peaceable possession,” a consent seen in “the tacit acquiescence of subject peoples, whom one accustoms to obedience by honorable treatment” (II.ii.2). “God is a God of peace, who wants tranquility in public affairs” (II.i.12).
Bossuet concludes the Second Book by announcing that, since God has commanded no particular regime for the human race, people should follow the government established in their country. Since monarchy is the regime established in France, and since he is writing for the benefit of the Dauphin and his fellow Frenchmen, he shall henceforth “turn all the instruction which we draw from Scripture toward the kind of government under which we live” (II. Conclusion). The Third, Fourth, and Fifth books address the nature of royal authority.
Note
- Bossuet deprecates the custom of allowing women to inherit the crown. “The dignity of reigning houses seems to be insufficiently sustained in the person of a woman, who after all is oblige to recognize a master when she marries” (II.i.11).
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