Regimes

Medieval thinkers discussed a variety of governmental arrangements as means for achieving the aims just outlined.

Monarchy: Papal, Imperial, Royal

Of all medieval monarchies, that of the papacy was most elaborately defended, both in the canon law and commentaries thereon and in a series of more systematic works by fourteenth - and fifteenth-century authors: Giles of Rome, James of Viterbo, Augustine of Ancona, and John Torque-mada. Papal apologists - hierocrats or curialists - did not seek to abolish lay structures of government in favor of direct papal administration, but the plenitudo potestatis claimed for the pope included superiority over all human law and ultimate jurisdiction over all other rulers, clerical or lay.

The critics of unrestricted papal power defended other regimes as complements to or replacements for papal authority. The favored candidate for Dante Alighieri, Mar-silius of Padua (at times), and William of Ockham was the Roman Empire. The Empire’s legitimacy at the time of Christ was important to all three of these thinkers. For Dante the final aim of imperial rule was fulfillment of humanity’s intellectual potential in a global civilization. Marsilius and Ockham assigned more modest aims to temporal government, but for Marsilius the achievement of communal tranquillity required that all coercive power be vested in a single civil government or principate. This entailed that in a Christian community the civil ruler’s ecclesiastical authority would be as great as that exercised by emperors in any earlier century. As against Marsilius’ monism, Ockham presented the argument that the best regime was compatible with the existence of jurisdictions independent of the supreme secular authority.

Other critics of curialism, such as John of Paris and John Wyclif, were oriented toward royal regimes. John of Paris, like Ockham, was a dualist. Wyclif gave the civil ruler an important negative religious function, that of compelling Christian clergy to live modestly, following the example of Christ and his apostles.

Kingship was also commended by authors who believed in at least the moral subordination of civil to spiritual authority. In John of Salisbury’s organic model of society, the princely head is an earthly image of the divine majesty, while yet being a minister of the priestly soul of the community. In the treatise Thomas Aquinas wrote for the king of Cyprus, kings are responsible for the moral well-being of their subjects, but for salvation it is necessary that every individual be subject to the Roman pontiff. In Giles of Rome’s treatise on kingship, the king is to be the source of law and an inspiring model of personal virtue for all his subjects, but Giles’ On Ecclesiastical Power is an emphatic declaration of papal supremacy.

Republicanism

Ptolemy of Lucca considered a ‘‘political’’ or republican government the only one fit for a virtuous people. Marsil-ius of Padua proposed discussion involving the whole citizenry as the best way to produce satisfactory laws and viable government. Constitutionalist ideas were developed with regard to the church in the conciliar movement ofthe late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Mixed Constitution

Serious consideration was given by late medieval Aristotelians to the mixed constitution of Politics 1297a6 (Blythe 1992). Traditional emphasis on the rule of law made by a representative body gave England a government that could be expounded by John Fortescue as both royal and political.

The Variability of Legitimate Regimes

Many authors, including Thomas Aquinas, held that different secular regimes were appropriate for different peoples and circumstances. Ptolemy of Lucca strongly favored a republican regime for a freedom-loving people but thought monarchy, which he equated with despotism, necessary in most cases. Marsilius of Padua held that the broadly participatory deliberative process mentioned above could result in the citizenry’s establishing any of a number of types of government. In the circumstances of his day he was prepared to delegate even the community’s own proper function as supreme human legislator to a single individual, the Roman emperor. William of Ockham developed the position that monarchy was ordinarily the best regime for both temporal affairs and the church, but that circumstances might occasionally require other forms of government - and that although the papal headship ofthe church had been instituted by Christ it was nevertheless beneficial (expediens) for the community of the faithful to have power to change the church’s government from monarchic to aristocratic, at least temporarily.

Resistance

Tyranny was regularly deplored by medieval authors and tyrannicide occasionally deemed licit. In most secular contexts, power was sufficiently diffused to allow some party to claim authority on behalf of the community to correct a faulty ruler. William of Ockham used the biblical idea of ‘‘fraternal correction’’ as a basis for resistance to what he regarded as heresy on the part of John XXII. There was also, however, a tradition holding that bad rulers were divine punishment for the sins of the people.