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.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Patrick Riley translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Books III-V.

 

In these books, Bossuet addresses the “nature and properties of royal authority,” identifying its four principal characteristics: it is sacred; it is paternal; it is absolute; and it is subject to reason (III.i). 

The sanctity of royal authority derives from God’s establishment of kings as His ministers; God reigns through them, “His lieutenants on earth” (III.ii.1). This “All power comes from God”; “He governs all peoples, and gives them, all of them, their kings; though he governs Israel in a more particular and announced fashion” (III.ii.1). Accordingly, kings’ persons are sacred; it is sacrilege to “attempt anything against them” (III.ii.1). This is why they are called “Christs,” having been anointed by God to rule. And it follows from this that subjects must obey the king not because they fear his punishment but out of conscientiousness. By anointing them, establishing them as kings, “God has put something divine into kings” in addition to the divine spirit he breathed into man, uniquely among His creations (III.ii.2). This “second majesty,” flowing from God’s primary majesty, renders even bad kings, even infidel kings, sacred.

Conversely, the gift of sanctity entails moral responsibility. “Kings should respect their own power, and use it only for the public good” (III.ii.4). “Their power coming from on high…they must not believe that they are the owners of it, to use it as they please: rather they must use it with fear and restraint, as something which comes to them from God, and for which God will ask an accounting of them” (III.ii.4). Using their God-given power for evil should be a thought that makes them tremble. They must govern their subjects as God governs kings and subjects alike, in “a way that is noble, disinterested, beneficent—in a word, divine” (III.ii.4).

In describing the household, Aristotle distinguishes parental rule from both masterly and political rule. Masters rule their slaves for the good of the masters; husbands and wives rule one another reciprocally; parents rule their children for the good of the children. This is how Bossuet understands the paternal rule of kings. Kings are great, but only because they are good. God, who is good, “places an image of his greatness in kings” in order to oblige them to imitate His goodness (III.iii.1). Having placed His divine image into all human beings, God “has not established between them so many distinctions as to make (on one side) the proud and (on the other) slaves and wretches” (III.iii.1). God has not established kings as masters. On the contrary, “He made the great only to protect the small; he gave his power to kings only to procure the public good, and for the support of the people” (III.iii.1). [1] The prince is not born for himself but for the public, as when God authorized Moses to lead His people while stipulating that Moses “forget himself” (III.iii.2). God “wanted him to know that he did not work for himself, that he was made for others,” and indeed Moses “died without the slightest earthly reward” (III.iii.2). We don’t even know what became of Moses’ family. “He was a public person born for the good of the universe; but that is also true greatness” (III.iii.2).

Therefore, the prince must provide for his people’s needs, acting as their shepherd—a point upon which both Homer and the Bible are agreed. “Be among them as one of them” (III.iii.3). Your greatness is no cause for pride, as you are made of the same flesh; do not suppose, as the rulers in Plato’s Republic pretend, that you are “made of other metal than your subjects” (III.iii.3). Agapic or charitable love looks to the good of all, working to supply whatever may be “lacking to the people of the state” the prince rules (III.iii.3). The last should be first; his weakest subjects have greater need than the great. “Nothing is so royal as to be the help of him who has none” (III.iii.4), as seen in the graciousness of the King of kings. It is the tyrant, “the bad prince,” who “think[s] only of himself,” and “the Holy Spirit demands an accounting from him” (III.iii.5). In this, Scripture pronounces more forcefully what Aristotle teaches: that the king rules for the good of the ruled. The prince who willfully fails to work for the people’s good will be punished by God as surely as the designedly evil tyrant. Libido dominandi is a sin, but so is sloth, the vice of “those useless servants who do not make the most of the talent [God] has placed in their hand” (III.iii.6). One may suspect that Bossuet has his student, Monseigneur le Dauphin, particularly in mind. The prince’s beneficence must not waver even if his people feel no gratitude for his efforts on their behalf. “No one was ever so ungrateful to Moses as the Jewish people,” even as “none was ever so good to the Jewish people as Moses” (III.iii.7). The prince may resent this, but he should never act on that resentment, instead exercising clemency, enjoying “the sweetness of taming his anger” with those who shrug off his best work (III.iii.8). He should even show clemency to outright criminals, sparing human blood. “There is nothing that agrees less with the protector of the life and well-being of the whole people, than cruel and violent men,” who will find God as “pitiless” in His judgment of them as they have been toward others (III.iii.10). On the contrary, good princes risk their lives in order to protect their people, preserving that safety out of love for them. “The prince should be fearsome only to the evil” (III.iii.12). 

Such mildness in rule, such courage, justice, and moderation, enable the prince to exercise reason, prudence. Moses, for example, “never failed to listen to the people,” to seek to understand them (III.iii.12). This in turn will incline his people to love him. Contra Machiavelli, “princes are made to be loved,” and “nothing is easier than for him to make himself loved passionately” by them (III.iii.13). The prince who instead makes himself hated, to be “viewed not as a man, but as a ferocious beast,” risks being hunted down and killed, like any dangerous predator (III.iii.14). The wise prince even restrains himself from verbal abuse of his subjects, “restrain[ing] his language, whose wounds are often no less dangerous” to him than the physical wounds he inflicts (III.iii.15). Mockery out of the prince’s mouth evinces pride, even as he should tolerate no “scandal-mongering and outrageous raillery” from his courtiers (III.iii.15).

Royal authority is absolute, but absolute rule is not arbitrary rule. It is true that the prince need account to no one for what he commands, that no subject has the right to demand an explanation for his actions. That is because without such absolute authority “he can do no good nor suppress evil; his power must be such that no one can hope to escape him; and, in fine, the sole defense of individuals against the public power must be their innocence” (IV.i.1). The prince is the supreme judge of his people; “no one has the right to review after him” (IV.i.2). “One must obey princes as if they were justice itself, without which there is neither order nor justice in affairs”; indeed, princes “are gods, and share in some way in divine independence,” subject only to the judgment of the King of kings (IV.i.2). Disobedience merits death, as it threatens the “public peace and human society” (IV.i.2). “The prince can correct himself when he knows that he has done badly, but against his authority there can be no remedy except his authority” (IV.i.2). 

He and he alone is entitled to wield absolute coercive force for the purpose of maintaining right order. “In the state only the prince should be armed, otherwise everything is in confusion, and the state falls back into anarchy” (IV.i.3). This principle of sovereign exclusivity applies not only to arms but to the general care of the people, including public works, decrees and ordinances, and honors. No public assembly may be convened “except by his authority” (IV.i.3). Bossuet cites Scripture: “No man may serve two masters” (IV.i.3). And since kings are ordained by God, obeying both God and king is not obeying two masters. Only the king is “above small interests”; only the king’s personal greatness is identical to the national interest (IV.i.3).

This does not mean that the king must not obey the laws. He is not entitled to rule arbitrarily. Tellingly, however, kings “are not subject to the penalties of the laws” (IV.i.4). While the people must fear the prince, the prince must only fear doing evil, which Bossuet, again tellingly, defines as refusal to obey the commands of the priest (IV.i.6).

The prince must never fear the people, for “if the prince fears the people, all is lost” (IV.i.6). The prince also must never fear the great, the aristocrats, usually the most dangerous challengers to his rule. “The public peace obliges kings to keep everyone in a state of fear—the great still more than ordinary individuals, because it is from the side of the great that the greatest troubles come” (IV.i.7). And the prince must hold firm against his own council and his favorites “when they want to make him serve their individual interests” (IV.i.10) All this notwithstanding, “one owes no obedience to kings, against God” (IV.i.8). Does this mean that the people, the great, the councilors and favorites too, must obey the commands of the priest?

Softness, irresolution, and “false firmness” cause princes to fail (IV.ii.1). “Only a firm and resolute will” can command effectively, as “it is only in virtue of acting ceaselessly that one assures the success of [the prince’s] plans” (IV.ii.1). Stubbornness is false firmness, the hardness of Pharaoh. Such princes are ruled by their passion. “He who lets himself go at the beginning,” he who loses command of his own passions, “will finally wind up with a foot on his throat,” as “he who wants never to bend, breaks all at once” (IV.ii.2). Self-government is prior to all other forms: “The first of all empires is the one that one has over his desires”; “this is the source and the foundation of all authority” (IV.ii.3). Just as the prince must rule in part by fear, he must never allow himself to be ruled by it, as “it is the greatest of all weaknesses, to fear appearing weak” (IV.ii.3). The fear of appearing weak leads to stubbornness or false firmness, in turn leading to ruin. Contra Machiavelli, the prince should fear none but God, eternal in being, anger, power, and memory.

Fear God, but also govern by reason. As the title of Book V announces, “royal authority is subject to reason,” as well as to God. Although “all men are capable of understanding,” it is “principally you”—the prince—upon whom “reposes the whole nation, you who should be the soul and intelligence of the state, whom must be found the first reason for all its movements: the less it is necessary for you to justify yourself to others, the more you must have justification and intelligence within yourself” (V.i.1). Bossuet does not mean theoretical reasoning but prudential reasoning, and his example is Solomon, who prayed to God for wisdom, and rightly so: “wisdom is the sole grace that a prince should ask of God” (V.i.1). Wisdom alone “draws all other goods” to kings (V.i.1).

Upon prudence or practical wisdom, in addition to courage, Bossuet’s much-recommended virtue of firmness depends. Such wisdom enables the king to see a steady course and to maintain himself on it. Prudence prevents both stubbornness and irresolution. The people under his rule take notice. Under the wise prince, “wars succeed; peace is established; justice reigns; the laws govern; religion flourishes, commerce and navigation enrich the country; the earth itself seems to produce its fruits more willingly” (V.i.3). By these fruits the people know him and love him. By them, his foreign enemies respect and fear him.

What is political wisdom? It consists first of understanding the laws, then of the prudence which enables the prince to apply the laws, and of the “broadened knowledge” which understands “the difficulties and minutiae of public affairs”—of matters the laws do not cover, specific and often extreme circumstances such as often occur in wartime (V.i.6). Bossuet is quick to affirm that “God alone gives all this,” since He is the only truly wise being (V.i.6). Still, while “it is true that God gives it…he alone gives it to those who look for it” (V.i.7). Wisdom “is good, she is accessible: but one must love her, and work to possess her” (V.i.7). This work will not consist primarily of book-learning, Bossuet modestly observes. The prince’s “main book is the world; his study is to be attentive to what goes on in front of him, in order to profit from it” (V.i.8). Of all books, “above all let him read the Gospel, and let him meditate on it”—the first of all laws (V.i.8). After that, Deuteronomy, wherein he will learn “the great principles of justice” (V.i.9). The good prince is an homme sérieux who “ceaselessly meditate[s] on the law” (V.i.9).

As to that broadened knowledge, the prince must assess the circumstances in which he rules. “All things depend on time,” and “the science of time is thus the true science of [public] affairs, and the true work of a wise man,” the one who ‘times’ his actions, often long meditated, for maximum effect (V.i.11). The wise prince also knows men. It is “his most important business to know what to make of men, and what they are fit for,” regardless of their “earthly stations” (V.i.12). “One should pay no attention to social status: the truth always preserves its natural authority in any mouth whatsoever” (V.i.13). In this, “the prince who chooses badly is punished by his own choice” (V.i.12). Still, “of all the men the prince must know, the one it is most important for him to know is himself,” to “know what he is fit for” (V.i.13) (emphasis added). For this, find “a faithful friend” who will know your faults and tell you what they are (V.i.13). “The wise man views all those who prudently reveal his faults as men sent by God to enlighten him” (V.i.13).

Knowledge beyond knowledge of the laws also includes what we now call ‘intelligence’: accurate information about what is happening within and outside the kingdom. “Under an able and well-informed prince, no one dares to do evil. One believes him always present, and ever the diviner of thoughts.” (V.i.14). The prince must know how both to speak appropriately, choosing the right time and occasion, and also “how to keep quiet” (V.i.16). “Secrecy in deliberation is an imitation of the deep and impenetrable wisdom of God,” and “knowing how to keep quiet is the mark of wisdom” (V.i.16).

“It is not enough for the prince to see,” however; “he must foresee” (V.i.17). He exercises precaution, “which keeps bad fortune from taking us unprepared,” giving thought to the small things upon which great things depend (V.i.17). The greatest foresight consists of consideration of posterity: “You will die, but your state must be immortal” (V.i.17). 

Finally, the prince must be a teacher. Himself “possessed of reason,” he should impart it first of all to his ministers, personally instructing them in the laws, and then to his people, who can only obey laws they know (V.i.18). Deliberation upon what laws, and what policies, should be enacted is rightly held in secret but laws once enacted must be public. This distinguishes absolute authority from arbitrary rule. 

Very well, then, if the prince must know so much, how will he learn? Bossuet next addresses the issue of the prince’s education. “The first means of knowing the truth which the prince has, is to love it ardently and to show that he loves it: then it will come to him from all sides, because everyone will know that it gives him pleasure to be told it” (V.ii.1). Many princes instead fill their hearts “with error and flattery,” but attitude of jesting Pilate scarcely serves themselves or their states (V.ii.1). Love of learning will issue in careful attention, as the wise prince will know that “it is vain that one has the truth before his eyes: if he does not open them, he does not see it” (V.ii.2). Men disguise themselves; only thoughtful attention can unmask them. To do so, “the surest course is to observe everything, but to believe only in works” (V.ii.2).

While guarding himself against manipulation, the prince should give his counselors “full freedom” to speak; King David “was always listening, and entering into the thoughts of others, not at all obsessed with his own” (V.ii.3). Princes who are self-obsessed become “intractable, cruel, and furious” (V.ii.3). In choosing his counselors, the prince should choose only a few, as “secrecy is the soul of a counsel” and “the number of those who are capable of such a charge are rare,” loyalty being even rarer than prudence (V.ii.4). How to recognize such true friends? “There is no surer tie of friendship than the fear of God,” who is Himself the best counselor (V.ii.4). At the same time, while restricting the number of counselors, keep your circle of informants wide, diverse, so you won’t be ‘captured’ by your royal council. With all, “beware of false reports”; their number may be reduced by punishing liars (V.ii.6).

Since “time confirms good counsels,” consult your own experience and the histories that tell you of experiences undergone by earlier kings (V.ii.7). “Pay no attention to those vain and limitless arguments which are not grounded in experience” (V.ii.7). Over-subtle arguments are the stuff of deception, and they often signal evil intent. Saul exhibited “pernicious subtlety” in his attempt to ruin David; David exhibited true wisdom in taking precautions against his machinations (V.ii.10).

Perhaps above all, decide for yourself. “One must, then, first of all, know how to decide” (V.ii.8). Consult counselors, inquire broadly, consult personal and historical experience, but deliberate on all of these before deciding. Do not get lost in deliberation, however, as “men of great deliberation and great theories” who do nothing “lose everything” (V.ii.8). You will never achieve certainty in political affairs; prudential wisdom isn’t the same thing as mathematical wisdom.

The necessary limitations of human knowledge drive some princes to “strange and superstitious consultations” with “soothsayers and astrologers” (V.iii.1). Don’t let France become the next Babylon, that “mother of astrologers” (V.iii.1). Do not fear eclipses, comets, planetary motions or the horoscopes devised in accordance with them. “All these things—which rest on nothing better than pompous words—are at bottom reveries which frauds sell at a high price to the ignorant” (V.iii.1). God “hands over to seduction those who look for it” (V.iii.2). Better to consult God through prayer, humbly asking Him for wisdom, never pretending that your reputation as ‘a wise king’ ultimately comes from any other source. And after doing so, remember that “whoever consults God for wisdom must on his side do all that he can” to increase and to use that wisdom, to gather information and to act upon it (V.iii.3).

Bossuet concludes this suite of three books by describing royal authority in one word: majesty. Majesty is anything but pomp, “that external show which dazzles the vulgar” (V.iv.1). “Majesty is the image of the greatness of God in a prince” (V.iv.1). He represents the whole state and the will of all the people, “hold[ing] the whole kingdom in position just as God holds the whole world” (V.iv.1). Remove him, and it is as if God removed Himself from the rule of the world: “all lapses into confusion” (V.iv.1). “Nothing is more majestic than all-embracing goodness, and there is no greater debasement of majesty than the misery of the people caused by some prince” (V.iv.1). Exercise your power boldly but with humility, knowing that however powerful you may be, you remain a sinner, mortal, answerable finally to God.

The Aristotelian moral virtues of magnanimity and magnificence form part of true majesty, as “with the highest greatness are associated the highest virtues” (V.iv.2). In contrast, “base thoughts” animated by the small-souled passions of vengeance and resentment debase the prince who yields to them (V.iv.2). The great-souled man accepts ingratitude with equanimity, praise when it is just; Bossuet’s example of this kind of man is King David, a prince “moved only by truth,” most of the time (V.iv.2). “To magnanimity corresponds magnificence, which joins great expenditures with great plans,” as did Solomon’s Temple (V.iv.2). Walking into a cathedral in Europe, experiencing the enlargement of soul that goes with the vault of the building, the light filtering through the stained glass, the carefully wrought carvings, affirms the truth of Bossuet’s bond between the architecture of a building and the architecture of the soul.

In considering Bossuet’s divine-right absolutism, one sees how difficult it must be to bring it off. The balance between royal authority and prudence, humility and magnanimity, strikes one as a rare achievement. It is easy to see how later thinkers and political men designed republican institutions to provide a more reliable sense of balance to their countries.

 

 

 

Note

1. Charles de Gaulle described “the man of character” in the same way: see The Edge of the Sword, Gerard Hopkins translation, New York: Criterion Books, 1960. 

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

1. 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).