Rule by Natural Reason: Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Conceptions of Political

Corruption

Manuhuia Barcham

This paper argues that a new and distinctive model of corruption accompanied the rediscovery and increased availability of a number of classical texts and ideals – particularly those of Cicero and the Roman Jurists – from about the eleventh century CE. This new model of corruption accompanied a renewed emphasis on classical ideals in the theorising of the political, and a subsequent change in the way in which political life was conceived within Europe. Combining the medieval Christian focus on the importance of moral values with the classical emphasis on the value of reason, this tradition merged political and moral reason such that they became conceptually identical and indistinguishable from one another. The polity was thus seen as a Christian community living under laws agreed on through reason, ruled on behalf of the common good by a ruler who was bound and constrained by these same laws. In this new conceptual model corruption was thus perceived largely in terms of the adverse consequences of action occurring without regard to natural reason in contrast to the previous Augustinian approach which had viewed our entire earthly life as corrupt, without possibility of redemption.

The Augustinian Context

Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, an Augustinian approach to the concept of the political as order provided the most influential framework within which political life was discussed and studied within Christian Europe.1 Augustine’s work thus presented a political theory which placed earthly political institutions within the context of Christian theology. In his writings Augustine altered older classical ideas quite radically in his merging of classical political ideals with the concerns of Christian theology. Probably his most radical departure from the classical tradition concerned his rethinking of the role of politics and political institutions in human affairs. Viewing earthly life in the wake of the fall as inherently corrupt, Augustine, in contrast to earlier classical conceptions, viewed politics, and political life, as merely a necessary evil requisite in order for a semblance of order to be achieved in our earthly life. In the work of Augustine the idea of the “good” life achievable here on Earth, so basic to any understanding of classical conceptions of the political or its corruption, was thus dropped from the vocabulary of European political discourse.

Politics, for Augustine then, was concerned merely with preserving external peace and order – not with shaping the moral character of citizens. With humanity seen as inherently sinful and corrupt, laws could thus not make men good as Aristotle and

1 By Augustinian I refer to the Augustinian belief that politics, and political life, was merely a necessary evil requisite in order for a semblance of order to be achieved in earthly life. However, it should be pointed out that Augustine is not the main focus of this paper. Rather, Augustine is discussed in order to both demonstrate how Christian conceptions of the political and its corruption differed from classical antecedents and to indicate where the Medieval distinction between regnum and sacerdotium emerged.

Cicero had claimed. At best, all laws could do was secure civic order.2 The polity was thus merely a coercive institution designed to maintain a minimum of order in a sinful world.

In making this move Augustine modified earlier classical conceptions of the res publica. Arguing that human life was only intelligible through adherence to Christian doctrine and belief in the redemption, Augustine’s City of God was thus comprised of those who loved God to the contempt of the love of self.3 In arguing this, Augustine effectively maintained that Cicero’s commonwealth never had true justice, as true justice could only be found in a commonwealth whose founder and ruler was Christ.4

Rome had thus not been a true Republic as it had been a commonwealth based on pride – not an association of individuals united by a common love of Christ.5 This was an important move as in claiming this Augustine can be seen as advocating a need for political authority while at the same time allowing for the realisation of the existence of a Christian commonwealth – united in love of God – that transcended earthly political institutions. Augustine’s arguments could thus be seen as delegitimating secular political institutions while simultaneously placing them in a subordinate position to the Church.6 It is this Augustinian background then that provided the framework for much political thought in medieval Europe.

Medieval Europe

Medieval Europe consisted of an assortment of secular realms existing in accord with the Catholic Church within the wider rubric of the greater Christian commonwealth (res publica christiana). Europe was thus seen as a single Christian society governed by two powers with different, but complementary roles – the regnum (secular government) dealt with temporal matters and the sacerdotium (ecclesiastical government) dealt with spiritual matters. Within this Christian commonwealth both secular and ecclesiastical rulers were seen as deriving their power from God. During this period secular and ecclesiastical authority were intricately intertwined. However, the church lacked a machinery of government and so the pope had little jurisdictional or coercive power over its dominion. To implement ecclesiastical policies the pope thus depended on the good will and piety of secular rulers. In order to facilitate this, however, the church had become increasingly involved in secular government. Discontent from various quarters within the church with this increased involvement 2 Augustine’s thought differed from the ancients on a number of important points. Probably the most important of these differences for the purposes of this paper was Augustine’s belief that ancient ethics was nothing but part of a “perverse” human fantasy of self-perfection and autonomy. The pursuit of virtūs or eudaimonia, so central a concept to classical political and ethical thought, thus became, in the writings of Augustine and those who followed in his wake, nothing but a form of sinful self-pride. 3 Augustine (1998). The City of God Against the Pagans. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, XIV.9. The City of Men, in contrast, was composed of those who loved self to the contempt of the love of God. 4 Ibid, XIV.9. 5 Augustine (1972). The City of God. London, Penguin, pp. 71-75 and 884-890. 6 While Augustine argued that secular rulers required the Church for spiritual guidance and ecclesiastical authorities required the help of secular rulers in dealing deal with secular affairs he never defined the relationship between the two in terms of a hierarchy. Augustine thus never claimed that the City of God was the Christian Church although later church leaders and thinkers of the Middle Ages read him as arguing just that, identifying the Church as representative of the City of God and secular institutions of government as representative of the City of Men. The result of this conflation was that Augustine’s idea of the two cities was used during the Middle Ages to justify both the subordination of the individual to the state and the church, and of secular authority to religious authority.

by the church in secular affairs led to the initiation by various popes from the tenth century onwards of a number of programs of reform designed to re-focus the church on matters of theology and away from the power-brokering role that the church had increasingly begun to hold.7

One of the consequences of this broad movement of reform over the tenth to twelfth centuries was the emergence of increased levels of tension and conflict between regnum and sacerdotium. As will become clear later in the paper, religious interference in the political came to be seen as a form of corruption because of the belief that these two spheres of human interaction should be distinct. This conflict between regnum and sacerdotium came to a head in the late eleventh and early twelfth century in the form of the investiture controversy when conflict over lay investiture and the accompanying charges of simony (the act of buying or selling ecclesiastical benefices or emoluments) led Pope Gregory VII to declare sacerdotal and secular supremacy over all princely sovereignties. Simony was seen as a form of corruption not because it represented the transfer of funds and favours in exchange for a particular outcome, but rather because it represented the encroachment of temporal affairs into the concerns of ecclesiastical government. King Henry IV of Germany considered Pope Gregory VII’s decree an abridgement of his authority over the episcopacy and an impingement of his rights as King. The resulting controversy only came to an official end in 1122 when Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed at the Concordat of Worms that secular rulers would only invest bishops with the symbols of their temporal possessions and so leave their investment with the symbols of ecclesiastical authority to the ecclesiastical establishment.

Despite its apparent conclusion, however, this controversy had opened up a debate over the relationship between regnum and sacerdotium that was to continue on and off for the greater part of the next five hundred years. The major issue in this debate concerned the extent of the jurisdictional authority of the church. One of the early claims in this debate by supporters of the papacy was the Augustinian derived assertion that the only way to redeem earthly government from being wholly sinful would be the complete submission of earthly princes to the guidance of the papacy.8

In arguing this, the supporters of the papacy utilised the two-swords doctrine in order to support their hierocratic claims that the church exercised ultimate authority over the governance of temporal affairs.9 The continuing conflict between regnum and

7 This refocusing meant that by the eleventh century many practices which had by this time become traditional royal prerogatives began to increasingly be seen as unlawful. In the medieval period, lay authorities – in their capacity as protectors of their local churches – routinely installed newly elected church leaders within their territorial domains. In practice, however, this capacity often meant that the secular leader would subvert the canonical election or appointment process in order to appoint someone favourable to them. Thus, at times church office would be sold to the highest bidder or exchanged for various favours. The reformist popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries considered this a form of simony. 8 See Tierney, B. (1964). The Crisis of Church and State 1050-1300. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, pp. 33-95. 9 The two-swords doctrine concerned the division of Earthly power between temporal and religious authorities. Articulated first by Pope Gelasius I, who claimed that whilst power was to be equally divided amongst these two aspects of the Christian world, true primacy lay with the Church. Robinson, I. S. (1991). Church and Papacy. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought. J. H. Burns. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 288-289. This doctrine was to be the basis of dispute between temporal and religious rulers until the collapse of the Christian Commonwealth in the wake of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion.

sacerdotium over these issues was to have important consequences for the way in which political life was approached and theorised. Underlying these developments was a particular approach to the concept of politics and political life which had emerged out of the confluence of the extant classical, particularly Ciceronian, tradition and the strongly Augustinian influenced Christian tradition.

Political Life and Natural Reason

In the work of John of Salisbury we see a mixing of the Ciceronian republican tradition with Christian doctrine. In his writings, the Christian ruler was limited in the exercise of his power through the use of the Ciceronian notion of the utilitas publica (public good) which John used to elaborate the Christian ministerial idea of rulership. As a public power subject to the rule of law the ruler was thus the Minister of the common good and the servant of equity.10 If the king ruled in accord with the law then he was a just prince. If, however, he broke the law then the ruler ceased to be a monarch, becoming instead merely a tyrant, with the rule of a tyrant being seen as a corrupted form of monarchal rule.11 Thus, although unfamiliar with Aristotle’s Politics, John of Salisbury developed a conception of rule easily identifiable with earlier classical conceptions of rule. John of Salisbury differed, however, from the classical texts when, following the received dogma of the time he argued along hierocratic lines that temporal rulers received their authority through the Church as Kingship was a gift conferred by divine grace.12 One of the key results of this claim was that John of Salisbury made no mention of the possibility of any other form of rule apart from monarchy, and his discussion of government focused almost entirely on the moral character and fortitude of the prince - making explicit the notion that only a good man could be a good ruler.13

This image of the political man – of the ideal ruler – and the virtues that he possessed was a key focus of works of political analysis from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. Writers during this period argued that governing should consist of restraining and moderating men so as to protect them from their own excesses as only a man capable of submitting his own passions to reason could succeed in keeping a kingdom peaceful and united.14 The political and the moral were therefore intricately connected, with the moral quality of rulers impacting directly on the quality of their rule ‘because the lord is like the head of the citizens, and all men desire to have a healthy head, because when the head is sick, men must above all things try to have a governor who will lead to a good end according to law and justice.’15 Of the virtues

10 When talking about the nature of rule in the Policraticus John of Salisbury uses the Latin term principes (leading statesman) rather than the term regis (king) when discussing the character and roles of the ruler. This distinction is an important one for the purposes of this paper. In using this distinction John of Salisbury signaled the continued existence of a distinction within European thought between rule for oneself and rule for the sake of the community. 11 Salisbury, John of (1990). Policraticus. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, VIII.17.12 Ibid, p. 14. For more on the hierocratic interpretation of the Pope as the source of both spiritual and temporal power see Ullmann, W. (1972). A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. London, Methuen, p. 223. 13 Salisbury, John of (1990). Policraticus. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, VI.29. 14 Rome, Giles of (2001). On the Rule of Princes (selected). The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts: Ethics and Political Philosophy. A. McGrade, John Kilcullen and Matthew Kempshall. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Bk 1, 1.2. 15 Latini, B. (1939). The Book of the Treasure (Li Livres dou Tresor). New York, Garland Publishing, III.75.

that leaders should have, prudence – by which was meant rule according to the dictates of natural reason – was the first, and most important, although the virtue of justice was close behind prudence in terms of importance as the good prince must also be the guardian of the laws.16 A man without the correct moral character would corrupt a city by bringing about division and conflict through the promotion of his own welfare rather than the common good. Such a leader would be a corrupted public figure – a tyrant.

Up to the early thirteenth century political analyses thus focused on the virtues and character of the ruler. However, the reintroduction of Aristotle’s political and ethical works in the mid-thirteenth century shifted the focus of political inquiry away from the qualities of the ruler and towards an increased focus on the comparative merits of various regime types. Giles of Rome thus argued in his On the Rule of Princes that monarchy was superior to republican forms of self-government as political rule led to discord and war while monarchical rule resulted in concord and peace.17 The other major consequence of the re-introduction of these Aristotelian works was the recognition that contrary to the received Augustinian view, politics was actually a natural form of human interaction, and in fact could be seen as a good in and of itself. This re-introduction of the classical idea that politics was a good in and of itself should not be seen, however, as a simple refutation of the Augustinian notion of politics.

This relationship between these two traditions of the political or conceptual schema was in fact rather complicated. The re-introduction of ideas from an older conceptual schema did not necessarily lead to their wholesale adoption but rather to a novel form of synthesis where the older ideals were adapted to serve contemporary concerns and interests. One important consequence of this re-introduced Aristotelian corpus was the space it created for the belief in the existence of a form of earthly good – a form of earthly beatitude – without removing the ideal of a final Christian beatitude. This was something which had been explicitly denied to humanity in the Augustinian tradition. This idea of the two-ends of man was to play a vital role in the shaping of political thought within Europe for the next four hundred years, with its influence felt no where more keenly than in the ongoing battle for dominance between regnum and

16 Ibid, II. 70-71.and Rome, Giles of (2001). On the Rule of Princes (selected). The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts: Ethics and Political Philosophy. A. McGrade, John Kilcullen and Matthew Kempshall. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, I, 2.12. These writers also emphasised the importance of charity and of devotion to God in the list of virtues that a prince must possess. This marked a change from earlier purely Ciceronian writing wherein the possession of the political virtues alone was enough for the Prince to gain earthly happiness. The traditional Ciceronian political virtues consisted of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Magnanimity, Liberality, Tameness, Truthfulness, Affability and Pleasantness. 17 Rome, Giles of (2001). On the Rule of Princes (selected). The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts: Ethics and Political Philosophy. A. McGrade, John Kilcullen and Matthew Kempshall. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. III, 2.3.

sacerdotium.18 Among the many who began to explore the various implications of these ideas none was more famous, nor more influential, than St. Thomas of Aquinas.

Earthly Beatitude

Following Aristotle, Aquinas argued that it was humanity’s rational and social capacity that led to political government, not human sin.19 Politics was thus not an activity to be shunned but one that should be embraced as an important aspect of individual and collective moral growth and well-being.20 Aquinas’ Aristotelian influenced writings were central to the renewal in the late thirteenth century of the classical belief that humanity was endowed with certain earthly potentialities that could only be achieved within a human community. Civic life allowed humanity to live together in justice and virtue, thereby providing the medium by which humanity would be able to attain the moral excellence that was humanity’s earthly end.

In order to achieve this earthly end, Aquinas and the scholastics argued that men must practice their political virtues.21 Natural law provided the framework within which the good life could be achieved, as law was ‘an ordinance of reason for the common good made by the authority which has care of the community and promulgated.’22 The ruler was obliged to keep the common good in mind when he legislated, and corrupt governments were those that were directed towards the private good of the ruler rather than the common good of the community.23 A ruler concerned with his own well-being and not for the common good was then, for the scholastics, as for those, such as John of Salisbury, who had preceded them, nothing more than a tyrant. However, unlike earlier medieval authors Aquinas did not place exclusive emphasis on the necessary qualities required for a good ruler, although he did agree that the good ruler was also necessarily a good man.

One of the major consequences of the Aristotelian turn in the writings of Aquinas and the other scholastics was a renewed focus on constitutional form when considering the ends of government. Following Aristotle, Aquinas argued that political regimes dissolve and become corrupt when the citizenry is oppressed by a tyrant or when factions disrupt civic concord and fight over control for the city. Since the political community must above all else be peaceful and unified the best form of government

18 The idea that there existed two-ends for man – a spiritual and a temporal – was eagerly taken up by the apologists for secular rule. The belief that political life was natural and hence occurred independently of the church thus provided a useful device for later writers attempting to undermine arguments that the Church should be dominant over the secular rulers. Thomist thought thus provided the basis for a theory of an autonomous political sphere functioning under its own laws and independently of ecclesiastical authority. While Aquinas himself denied that secular power was derived from the ecclesiastical he nonetheless argued that the church stood behind the function of the temporal polity, acting as a guide for things spiritual. However, while temporal government was subject in matters spiritual to the church, each was supreme in its own respective sphere. 19 Aquinas, T. (1964). Summa Theologiæ. London, Blackfriars with Eyre & Spottiswoode, Ia.XCII:I ad 3 and Ia.XCVI:4 resp. 20 Aquinas, T. (1997). On the Government of Rulers. On the Government Of Rulers. P. o. Lucca. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1.15.6. 21 Aquinas, T. (1964). Summa Theologiæ. London, Blackfriars with Eyre & Spottiswoode, IaIIae.LI:2 resp. 22 Ibid, IaIIae.XC:4 resp. 23 Aquinas, T. (1964). Summa Theologiæ. London, Blackfriars with Eyre & Spottiswoode, IaIIaeXC:2.

was that which most easily secures those ends. For Aquinas then this was monarchy, as government by a multitude was prone to disunity, thus his claim that:

unity or peace is the aim intended by the ruler of any group. Now the per se cause of oneness is itself one, as is clear from the fact that several people cannot bring many matters into a unity and harmony unless they are themselves unified. That which is one of itself, however, can be the cause of unity more readily and effectively than the many conjoined in union. For this reason any group is better governed by one person than by many.24

For Aquinas the best order is achieved in a monarchy where the people actively participate in the election of the ruler.25 Aquinas’ belief in the natural superiority of monarchy should not give the impression that all scholastic authors thought along the same lines (Ptolemy of Lucca instead argued for some form of popular rule).26 One thing all the scholastics did agree on, however, was that peace was best maintained within the community where all were involved in public affairs.27

Good rulers, however, still needed to carry out their duties for love of God and not for personal glory. It is at this point then that the key difference between the classical reading of the Aristotelian need for virtue and the medieval concern for Christian morality becomes apparent. A number of classical virtues were still seen as vices in the Christian tradition and so, despite the adoption of many classical ideals by medieval authors, the pursuit of eudaimonia, so central a concept to classical political and ethical thought, was still perceived as a form of sinful self-pride for medieval scholastic authors. The need for the good ruler or person to cultivate the Christian virtues thus always existed in a form of tension with the Christian perception of self-love as a type of sin. Despite his adoption of many classical ideals, Aquinas’ writing was therefore still conceived within the context of a living Christian tradition, as the scholastic adoption of older classical ideals of the political was only ever at best partial and incomplete.

Discord and Conflict in the Christian Commonwealth

The emergence of scholastic thought in the thirteenth century coincided with the growth of the temporal power of the papacy. Polemical attacks still continued, however, as papacy and empire struggled over the nature of relationship between sacerdotium and regnum. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the key issue dividing papacy and empire had been the emperor’s claim over Italy.28 To the papacy it seemed that if an emperor claimed sovereignty over Rome then the inevitable next step would be the resumption of temporal control of the papacy. This was something the papacy was determined to prevent. This matter was complicated somewhat as from about the tenth century onwards a number of urban communes in Northern Italy had begun to

24 Ibid, Ia.CIII:3 resp. 25 Aquinas calls this type of elected monarchy political rule as opposed to regal rule typical of monarchal forms of government where the people do not participate in public life. 26 Lucca, Ptolemy of (1997). On the Government of Rulers. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2.8 nd 4.1. 27 Aquinas, T. (1997). On the Government of Rulers. On the Government Of Rulers. P. o. Lucca. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1.2 and 1.5. 28 For more on this see Tierney, B. (1964). The Crisis of Church and State 1050-1300. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, pp. 97.115.

resist the claims of the German kings through the establishment of their own republican forms of governments. The establishment of these city-states from such an early date was unprecedented as republican self-government was a form of political life completely at odds with the generally held assumption at that time that all properly constituted political societies must take the form of hereditary God-given lordships, and conflict thus ensued between these states and the Holy Roman Emperor.

During this ongoing struggle with the Empire the major ally of the city-states had been the Papacy. The danger of this alliance for these republican cities, however, was that the Popes might begin to aspire to rule the Northern Italian city-states themselves – and this is precisely what happened. From the early thirteenth century onwards successive Popes began increasingly to dabble in the internal politics of the city-states. The result of this internal meddling was that by the end of the thirteenth century not only was a large part of central Italy under the direct control of the Papacy but the curia also exercised a large degree of influence over many of the major Northern city-states.29 Rediscovered Aristotelian works provided the political vocabulary and conceptual apparatus through which these oppositional ideologies and legitimating claims were constructed. In constructing their arguments these authors utilised a little-before used political concept – that of liberty.30

However, the situation was more complicated for apologists for republican rule than just having to legitimate their independence and continued liberty. The continuing struggle between papacy and empire, as well as the growth of the commercial classes in twelfth and thirteenth century Europe, introduced a number of complicating factors into the mix. Thus issues of faction and civic discord came to be identified by many writers of this period as major threats to the continued existence of these republican city-states. The problem of faction faced by these city-states was thus one of the key issues addressed by the scholastic authors during this period. Faction was viewed as being anathema to the realisation of the goal of liberty, as faction was a form of domination by others – not too dissimilar from tyranny. Faction was, however, especially corrupting on political life due to the problems of discord and divisiveness that inevitably arose from its existence.

Often posed in terms of the ongoing struggle between regnum and sacerdotium a number of these authors argued that the papacy was the root cause of much of the internal discord and factionalism within the Italian city-states. And so, Marsilius of Padua claimed that ‘the singular cause which has hitherto produced civil discord or intranquility in certain states and communities…is the belief, desire and undertaking whereby the Roman bishop and his clerical coterie, in particular, are aiming to seize secular rulerships and to possess excessive temporal wealth.’31 The corruption of the church of which Marsilius writes harks back to an older argument that had been

29 Skinner, Q. (1978). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 9-22. 30 Discussion of liberty and the use of the concept as an ideological foil to the demands of the Emperor are discussed more fully in Skinner and are not discussed here. Skinner, Q. (1978). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 6-12. During these ideological debates liberty came to connote both political independence (from the holy Roman Empire); and republican self-government in the city-states of Northern Italy in the fourteenth century. 31 Padua, Marsiglio of (1956). The Defender of the Peace. New York, Harper & Row, 3.1 see also 2.7.45 and 2.23.

utilised by both sides of the debate over the correct relationship between the regnum and sacerdotium. In their writings apologists for both sides had accused the other of corrupting the proper relationship between the two aspects of Christian government. Marsilius’ arguments about the corrupt nature of the church can be seen as just another example of this form of boundary keeping that saw the intrusion of the ecclesiastical into temporal affairs being perceived as a form of corruption.

Dante Alighieri too in his treatise On Monarchy argued for the independence of the empire from ecclesiastical rule. In arguing this he drew on the same basic assumptions in terms of the ongoing debate between regnum and sacerdotium that Marsilius of Padua and the other opponents of the temporal tyranny of the papacy had utilised. In doing so, Dante placed particular emphasis in his argument on the claim that the two-swords doctrine had been wrongly interpreted, saying that the temporal realm does not owe its existence to the spiritual realm, nor its power (which is its authority), and not even its function in an absolute sense.32 However, while these theorists were predominantly hostile to the papacy they were nonetheless still concerned with the preservation of the Christian commonwealth and the idea of Christendom – though the church should confine its concerns to the immortal souls of the community.33 To do otherwise was to corrupt the correct relationship between temporal and ecclesiastical government.

Popular Rule and the Rise of Podestà

As Quentin Skinner has argued, the most original aspect in the writings of these apologists for the Italian city-states was their assertion that popular rule was itself the best form of government.34 By this, these authors meant that the safest plan to ensure the preservation of peace and so thereby maintain concord within the community would be to vest the power of government in the hands of the people.35 If one hoped to forestall the development of factions or divided jurisdictions then the people must serve as the sole judicial as well as the sole executive authority within their polity.36

These authors argued that if peace and the means to live the good life were to be preserved then the body of the people must thus remain sovereign at all times.37

However, while these various authors were writing to defend and legitimate the particular constitutional forms of the Northern Italian city-states, a change was taking place within many of these republics. Continued strife and factionalism within the Northern Italian city-states in the late thirteenth century eventually led many of them to elect individual leaders, known as podestà, in order to quell the discord and unrest that the continued conflict between factions within the cities was causing. The result

32 Dante (1996). Monarchy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 3.9. 33 Ibid, 3.16. 34 Skinner, Q. (1978). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 61. 35 See Padua, Marsiglio of (1956). The Defender of the Peace. New York, Harper & Row, 1.12.3, Sassoferrato, Bartolus of (1997). Treatise on the Government of a City. Oxford, Oxford University History Faculty, 420 and Lucca, Ptolemy of (1997). On the Government of Rulers. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 4.23. 36 Padua, Marsiglio of (1956). The Defender of the Peace. New York, Harper & Row, 1.12 and 1.17. 37 Sassoferrato, Bartolus of (1997). Treatise on the Government of a City. Oxford, Oxford University History Faculty, pp. 16 and 34. See also Sassoferrato, Bartolus of (1997). Treatise on the Tyrant. Oxford, Oxford University History Faculty and Padua, Marsiglio of (1956). The Defender of the Peace. New York, Harper & Row.

of this continued conflict was that by the early fourteenth century almost all of the Northern Italy city-states had moved away from their original popular forms of government and towards princely rule. One consequence of this move was the emergence of a new body of literature designed to legitimate the emergence of these new princely governments.

While this emergent body of literature celebrated the rise of podestà at the expense of the older forms of popular rule it nonetheless maintained a familial resemblance to the earlier political tracts. The common good, achieved through a pacific harmony within the city, was still seen as the goal of government, and the writers in this new literature also agreed on the necessarily destructive consequences of civic discord within the body politic and the corruption that would ensue if the ruler placed their own interests above those of the commonwealth.38 In fact, it was the continued discord and conflict of factionalism that had convinced many within these city-states that only rule by one could provide peace though the podestà were to rule for the common good and in the interests of peace.39

Peace was thus associated by these authors with good government while discord was equated with tyranny and the associated loss of liberty which that entailed.40 In arguing this these authors followed Aristotle’s classification of temperate and diseased forms of polity wherein a healthy or temperate polity was one in which the common good was pursued by the polity’s leaders and a diseased polity was one in which the regime’s rulers attended to their own interests even at the expense of the common good.41 If the laws of the polity were just – and the rulers were subject to them – then the community would not be afflicted by rebellion and the other diseases of the body-politic such as sedition that arose from injustice. Marsilius of Padua thus argued that the polity would be healthy when all its parts functioned together well and was diseased when this form of harmony was not achieved.42

Political rule then, these theorists argued, was prevented from descending into factionalism and conflict through the rule of virtuous rulers and the right ordering of the various parts of the polity, as ‘just as a building is stable when its parts are well laid down, so also a polity has firmness and perpetuity when all, whether rectors, officials, or subjects, work properly in their own ranks, as the action of their condition requires.’43 Politics then was primarily the art of making good laws that were conducive to the achievement of the common good. Civic harmony and concord were necessary in achieving this end and so the unity of the citizens had to be the final aim of a ruler ‘for if there is a single, corrupt humour which predominates in the whole body, that is bad; but if all the humours were corrupted, and were to struggle against

38 Petrarch, F. (1978). How a Ruler Ought to Rule His State. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. B. G. Kohl, and Ronald G. Witt. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 46 and 55. 39 Skinner, Q. (1978). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 24-26.40 Padua, Marsiglio of (1956). The Defender of the Peace. New York, Harper & Row, 1.3 and 1.5. See also points in Sassoferrato, Bartolus of (1997). Treatise on the Government of a City. Oxford, Oxford University History Faculty. 41 Padua, Marsiglio of (1956). The Defender of the Peace. New York, Harper & Row, 1.8. 42 Ibid, 1.2. 43 Lucca, Ptolemy of (1997). On the Government of Rulers. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 4.23.

each other, that would be the worst. Woe, therefore, to the city with many tyrants who did not aim at a single end.’44

Despite their differences, both sets of authors thus still recognised a clear division between political and tyrannical rule. Political rule was thus rule according to right reason for the common good and not according to the passion’s of the ruler, while a tyrant in contrast was ‘someone who acts tyrannically, that is, his acts tend not towards the common good but to the particular good of the tyrant. For this is ruling unlawfully.’45 A tyrant was thus corrupt because he did not rule according to right reason.

The Emergence of Humanism

In the fourteenth century the debates between the apologists for the rule of the podestà and the supporters of popular rule took a new turn. Across Europe, but particularly within the Italian territories, a renewed focus was being placed on the study of the classical Roman authors – especially those from the late Republican period.46 Two key questions lay at the base of this new humanist body of thought. What was the relationship between the general moral nature of the population of the city as a whole and good government; and how was the ruler of the city to be properly trained so as to possess the correct moral virtues for rule?

Humanists extended the notion of the virtuous leader to include the population of the polity as a whole. They began to argue that only when the population as a whole acted in a virtuous manner could the true ends of earthly government be achieved. The humanist authors therefore placed particular emphasis on the continued participation and interest of the general citizenry in the process of government. To not act as a citizen was to promote the corruption of the republic and so was itself a form of corruption. In this nascent civic humanist tradition then, as for all the earlier authors discussed in this paper, corruption or tyranny (as it was sometimes referred) arose when a private interest displaced or distorted the public interest and so disrupted the concordant nature of political life.

Despite this concern, the humanist literature of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries argued that the general population nonetheless neglected to cultivate virtue and so must look to those who were more noble – those who possessed virtue – to rule them. In this view the ends of earthly government depended on men of ability to lead the state.47 An interesting example of the humanists’ linkage between virtue and good rule is their treatment of the issue of avarice or greed. Combining the teachings of Roman Stoicism with Franciscan asceticism humanist authors such as Petrarch and Salutati argued that external riches did not lead to virtue.48 Petrarch thus argued:

44 Sassoferrato, Bartolus of (1997). Treatise on the Government of a City. Oxford, Oxford University History Faculty, p. 36. 45 Sassoferrato, Bartolus of (1997). Treatise on the Tyrant. Oxford, Oxford University History Faculty, p. 59. 46 Pfeiffer, R. (1976). History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850. Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 3-16. 47 Morosini, D. (1992). Radical Proposals by an Aged Patrician. Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630. D. Chambers, and Brian Pullan with Jennifer Fletcher. Oxford, Blackwell, p. 70. 48 Kohl, B. G. (1978). Poggio Bracciolini: Introduction. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. B. G. Kohl, and Ronald G. Witt. Manchester, Manchester University Press,

all those who love virtue and wish to have a good reputation should avoid and despise the evil of greed. But most of all, princes should avoid greed because they are the leaders of men and in their care has been placed vast sums and much property as well as the state itself. And if they will administer their governments properly, they are certain to consider wealth foul corruption and obtain the treasures that are most prized, namely, an easy and clear conscience and the love of God and their fellow men. Those who follow their own desires will only come to ruin, for they will never satisfy their insatiable desires and they will surely earn the hatred of God and of men.49

With avarice seen as a sin in the Christian moral tradition the virtuous ruler thus ought to avoid excessive greed as to do otherwise was to lead to political corruption.

The avoidance of morally repugnant practices such as avarice was of key importance in the development of the good prince, as the virtue of the city depended upon the virtue of its ruler. Combining the medieval Christian focus on the importance of moral values with the classical emphasis on the value of natural reason the issue of avarice thus demonstrates the way in which political and moral reason were merged in Renaissance conceptions of the political such that they became conceptually identical and indistinguishable from one another. The challenge of politics, then, was not to improve laws or institutions but to improve the moral quality of the ruler. The best way to achieve this was to train them in ‘virtue and eloquence through the prolonged study of the ancient authors.’50

Honour, Glory and Liberty

Like the earlier scholastic authors these humanist authors thus believed that security and peace were among the main values of political life and so were the highest aims of government. However they had different views about how this aim might be achieved.51 The good prince, the scholastics argued, needed merely the possession of the older political virtues combined with an inward devotion to God in order to provide peace and security in his city. The quest for honour and glory would inevitably lead to conflict and discord and so, they argued, should be avoided at all costs. In contrast to this though, the humanists argued like the Romans before them, that glory was achieved through the pursuit of virtue and since the achievement of virtue was at the basis of living the good life the pursuit of glory was entirely compatible with the achievement of good government. In reviving these older Roman ideals these humanist authors also revived the older ideas of virtus and fortuna.52 And, in reviving these twin ideals, the humanists opened the way for an increased sense that human choice played a greater role in the events of the world than had previously been thought. In doing this, the humanists weakened the Christian idea of divine

p. 231. 49 Petrarch, F. Ibid.How a Ruler Ought to Rule His State, p. 63. 50 Petrarch, F. (1978). How a Ruler Ought to Rule His State. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. B. G. Kohl, and Ronald G. Witt. Manchester, Manchester University Press, p. 42. 51 Aquinas, T. (1997). On the Government of Rulers. On the Government Of Rulers. P. o. Lucca. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1.8. 52 Augustine had refuted the existence of the twin goddesses of Virtus and Fortuna through the claim that there existed no conception of fate separate from God’s providence.

providence that had so firmly underpinned previous political thought and writing – though the humanists still wrote firmly within the Christian context of the final salvation and the goal of eternal beatitude.

In their writings the humanist authors also strengthened the linkage between liberty, the leading of a virtuous life and good government developed by the supporters of popular rule in the Northern Italian city-states during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to the humanist authors a person living his life according to reason was morally free and virtuous as the rule of the passions over reason was a form of moral slavery. In a tyranny the ruler, who was himself a slave to his passions, dominated free men like a master dominated bondsmen. In such a society morality would degenerate and civic life would become corrupted. Of the various forms of government available then, they argued, only that which produced maximum liberty would guarantee virtuous activity. Liberty for the humanist authors, as for the earlier apologists for the Italian city-states, was the potentiality to live in freedom within the limits of both custom and law.53

The greatness of cities, and Florence was often used as the example of choice by the early humanists, was thus held to be a direct result of the liberty found within it walls.54 Florence was free from external conquest and free from faction and so was able to speak as one voice – concordant and united. Bruni like other humanist authors thus felt that unity within a city was of the utmost importance. Unity was best promoted when the state alone was the font of honour as this would lead to the creation of an ethic of public service, and hence love of the state, which would be lacking if there were other sources of honour. This notion of the primacy of the state reflected the collapse of feudalism and the disintegration of the conceptual union between regnum and sacerdotium that was occurring in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This process led to the gradual transfer of political power away from these other estates and towards the emergence of an apparatus of government which existed independently from the person of the ruler – the first beginnings of what we in the modern West would later know as the state.55

The Art of Politics and the Art of the State

Machiavelli and Guicciardini both agreed with the earlier humanist writers that the pursuit of the common good and not the pursuit of private interests was the cause of greatness in cities.56 Thus, for Machiavelli, to be a corrupt citizen was to place one’s own ambitions, or the ends of faction, above the common good, as to act in this way

53 Rinuccini, A. (1978). Liberty. Humanism & Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth-Century Florence. R. N. Watkins. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, pp. 193-222. 54 See for example Bruni, L. (1978). Panegyric to the City of Florence. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. B. G. Kohl, and Ronald G. Witt. Manchester, Manchester University Press. 55 Skinner, Q. (1978). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought., 1. and Skinner, Q. (2002). From the State of Princes to the Person of the State. Visions of Politics: Renaissance Virtues. Q. Skinner. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2. See also Hindess, B. (in press). The State. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. T. Bennett, Larry Grossberg and Meaghan Morris. Oxford, Blackwell. 56 See Machiavelli, N. (1989). Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 1, 2.2 and Guicciardini, F. (1994). Dialogue on the Government of Florence. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 87.

was invariably fatal to liberty and hence greatness.57 A corrupt city was, as for the earlier writers, one where laws were disobeyed and people lived only to further their own self-interest. Machiavelli also made the argument, linking arms and liberty, that keeping ‘men-at-arms is a method that is corrupt and not good. The reason is that they are men who make war their profession, and every day they would cause a thousand disorders in the states where they are…So as to this custom of retaining men-at-arms, I do not approve of it, for it is corrupt and can cause serious trouble.’58

The maintenance of a virtuous and free population was thus, for Machiavelli as for the earlier humanist authors, the key to good government as it was believed that it was both impossible for a tyranny to be established when the city was virtuous and impossible for a corrupted people to establish a virtuous government. Thus Machiavelli’s claim ‘that where the matter [the population] is not corrupt, uprisings and other disturbances do no harm. Where it is corrupt well-planned laws are of no use, unless indeed they are prepared by one who with the utmost power can force their observation, so that the matter will become good.’59 Nonetheless, Machiavelli believed that this good government did not always come merely through the existence of good laws or just rule, but was sometimes something that required the employment of force responding to necessity. Machiavelli saw more clearly than other writers of his time the implications of Cicero’s belief that the survival and advancement of a republic should take precedence over all things, even at the expense of conventional virtuous and moral behaviour.60 The problem then, as Machiavelli puts it, is that a good man must become bad in order to achieve the goal that the good man ought to pursue.61 In a corrupt city despotic power is the only way out of the corruption and so government becomes a quest for security.62

Machiavelli’s contemporary Guicciardini was even more pessimistic in his assessment of the hopes for reform of a corrupt city. While like Machiavelli he argued that persuasion on its own would not work, as people within a corrupt city are too accustomed to the type of corrupted life they lead, he nonetheless also thought that trying to find a good man to rescue the constitution by force was also a risky proposition. For Guicciardini, to ensure that the city did not sink again into corruption the “good” man would need to stay in power for a considerable period of time – and

57 By liberty of the body politic Machiavelli meant, following the usage of the early Northern Italian city-state apologists, the capacity of the civic body to pursue its own ends. Machiavelli, N. (1989). Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 1, 1.2. In arguing this, Machiavelli thus endorsed the traditional belief in the pursuit of the common good as a key aspect of good government, arguing that unless each citizen behaves with virtù – which in practice means placing the good of his community above all private ambitions and factional allegiances – then the goal of grandezza (glory) could never be achieved. Skinner, Q. (1990). Machiavelli's Discorsi and the Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican Ideas. Machiavelli and Republicanism. G. Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 138. 58 Machiavelli, N. (1989). The Art of War. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 2, p. 579.59 Machiavelli, N. (1989). Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 1, 1.17. 60 Tuck, R. (1993). Philosophy and Government 1572-1651. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 20. 61 Viroli, M. (1992). From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250-1600. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 175. 62 Machiavelli, N. (1989). The Prince. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 1, p. 66.

would in probability become accustomed to that power and so not want to step aside – thus becoming merely a tyrant – itself a corruption of good government.63

In light of this Guicciardini argued that ruling or reforming a city required the same competence that citizens acquired through the practice of commerce and the administration of their estates. Guicciardini also went further than his contemporary Machiavelli in addressing the way in which rulers in the sixteenth century could maintain their position through bribery and manipulation, and in doing so weakened the previously necessary connection between the private morality of the prince and the quality of his rule.64 Guicciardini thus argued in far more explicit terms than Machiavelli, that politics – by which he meant the restraining of private loyalties and the reinforcing of impersonal attachments such as love for liberty, justice and one’s country – was sometimes not enough to ensure the survival of the city and so the ruler of a republic must sometimes, in extreme circumstances, resort to the ‘art of the state’ – the art of consolidating and creating private loyalties – in order to ensure the survival of the city.65

In saying that there was a reason of states that transcended moral reason Guicciardini should thus be understood as arguing that the language of politics was only appropriate within certain bounds – this being a republic understood as a community of citizens. Guicciardini makes the innovative and truly revolutionary leap that in extreme circumstances governmental reason may actually justify cruelties and injustices. This intellectual leap can be understood better through reference to Mark Phillips’ argument that whereas Machiavelli was motivated in his writings by a concern for liberty, Guicciardini in contrast was more concerned with the achievement of order.66

In the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, then, we see a number of important changes occurring in the way in which the conduct and process of government was theorised in relation to conceptions of corruption. In their writings, the traditional necessary connection between the individual morality of the ruler and the quality of his rule was uncoupled for the first time. This uncoupling in turn led to the emergence of a novel notion of political morality, wherein political morality began to be seen as separate and not necessarily connected to individual morality. Political prudence and virtue were thus no longer seen as necessarily connected aspects of civic life. This was for both these authors, however, something that happened only in an extreme

63 Guicciardini, F. (1994). Dialogue on the Government of Florence. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 139. 64 Machiavelli too argues along this line of thinking in his claim that it is safer at times for a ruler to be feared than be loved. Machiavelli, N. (1989). The Prince. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 1, p. 62. 65 This new art of government was thus born from the introduction of oeconomics (household management) into the discourse of government. The ‘art of the state’ was thus related to commerce, by which sixteenth century writers meant – harking back to the older meaning of economics – as the enlarging of someone’s status and possessions, in contrast to politics which was more closely related to the study of ethics and law based as it was on protecting the common good. Rather than being seen as being contained within scripture the principles of state were seen to lie within the knowledge of the state itself, a knowledge with its own particular rationality. 66 Phillips, M. (1977). Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian's Craft. Manchester, Manchester University Press, p. 85.

state of affairs. Political or civil life, for Machiavelli and Guicciardini, was thus still seen as the opposite of tyranny and corruption.67

The Northern Renaissance and the Reformation

Yet, while Machiavelli and Guicciardini pushed the traditional notion of government to its limit, the majority of thinkers across Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries continued to write their treatises and works within the broad context of the humanist tradition. The private morality of the ruler and the quality of his rule were thus still seen by the majority of writers on government in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as still being necessarily connected – as demonstrated in texts such as Desiderius Erasmus’ Education of a Christian Prince.68 However, as such humanist writers of the Northern Renaissance were composing these last, and greatest, humanistic treatises on good government another intellectual revolution, in addition to that begun by Machiavelli and Guicciardini, was gathering force. This intellectual revolution was set to reshape the political makeup of Europe and irrevocably alter the way in which the political itself in Europe was theorised.

With the publication of his 95 theses in 1517 the young Martin Luther set into action a course of events that was to rock Europe to its very core. Dissatisfied with what he saw as the irredeemable corruption of the Catholic church brought about by its involvement in temporal affairs, Martin Luther and others, such as Jean Calvin, who followed in his wake used their writings to repudiate the temporal jurisdiction of the church. Arguing that the church was nothing more than the community of the faithful and not the institutional structure which had claimed this role, Luther liberated Christians from the claims of the Church to mediate the relationship between God and the individual. In doing this, Luther effectively denied the church any jurisdictional power over temporal affairs. This is not to say that Luther and his intellectual supporters and followers celebrated secular politics. On the contrary the thinkers of the reformation possessed an almost Augustinian distaste for secular politics. Temporal government was for both Luther and Calvin, as for Augustine, merely a remedy for sin – a divinely instituted method of achieving a modicum of peace of earth ‘which holds the Unchristian and the wicked in check and forces them to keep the peace outwardly and be still.’69 Following this neo-Augustinian approach both authors argued that there was no possibility for beatitude in this life – only the hope of eternal redemption. The return to the idea that the polity was merely a coercive institution designed to maintain a minimum of order in a sinful world that the writings of the early Reformation entailed signaled a decisive move away from the neo-classical conception of politics as the means to achieving earthly beatitude that had formed the basis of governmental writings for the last three hundred years.70 67 Machiavelli, N. (1989). Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. A. Gilbert. Durham, Duke University Press. 1, 1.25, 1.55 and 3.8. 68 Erasmus, D. (1997). The Education of a Christian Prince. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 21. 69 Luther, M. (1991). On Secular Authority. On Secular Authority. H. Höpfl. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, I.IV. 70 In line with this neo-Augustinian approach, Luther placed a renewed emphasis on humanity’s fallen nature in his writings – and the division of humanity into two separate communities, The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. For more on this see Luther, M. (1961). The Bondage of the Will. Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. J. Dillenberger. New York, Anchor Books. In arguing that our fallen nature means that all our actions necessarily express this fallen nature Luther thus provided the grounds for a neo-Augustinian rejection of the humanistic impulses towards the

These early Reformation writings had three major consequences for the model of political life discussed in this paper. First, the return to a conception of politics as order – and thereby divorced of all ethical and moral content – helped provide theoretical support for the separation of politics and morality that writers such as Machiavelli and Guicciardini had begun to explore. Second, the repudiation of any need for a specific institutional structure for the Church that these writers espoused meant that the traditional separation of the Christian commonwealth into regnum and sacerdotium was collapsed – thereby leading in effect to the collapse of the very concept of a Christian commonwealth. And finally, the wars of religion that were a direct consequence of the questioning of the Catholic church that the Luther’s writings entailed introduced a period of violence, conflict and instability to Europe unlike anything ever seen before. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries these three factors combined, led many across Europe to the study of the art of the state.

Raison d’État Triumphant

Writing within this context of sectarian conflict and religious war, the writings of Justus Lipsius, Michel de Montaigne, Jean Bodin and others in the late sixteenth century augured in an entirely new conception of politics. In this new conceptual framework the Thomistic unity of public and private morality first put to test in the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini was finally severed. In this new discourse of politics conflict between moral reason and the interests of the state was no longer described as a divergence between reason and the practice of statecraft. Instead it was a conflict between moral reason and reason of state. For these authors, the maintenance of justice was no longer seen as always taking precedence over the preservation of the polity itself. In arguing this, Michel de Montaigne, in his essay Of the Useful and the Honest, even went so far as to argue that

in every government there are necessary offices which are not only base but wicked. Wickedness finds a place there, and is employed in sewing and binding us together; as poison is used for the preservation of our health…we must allow that part to be played by the stoutest and least timorous citizens, who will sacrifice their honour and their conscience; as those others, in ancient times, sacrificed their lives for the good of the country…The public weal requires men to betray, to lie, and to massacre.71

In this new conception of politics, and political life, governmental prudence was no longer seen as right reason acting in accord with justice, instead being seen merely as the capacity to decide what was most appropriate for the preservation of the state. In light of this change, people began to speak of the political prudence of tyrants – something previously unthinkable. This uncoupling of moral reason and political reason was the final death knell for the model of politics discussed in this paper. With its uncoupling the distinction between tyrant and monarch, of key importance to this

celebration of free will that had emerged within the last centuries. In doing so Luther posed the doctrine of original sin against the humanist focus on humanity in the image of God. Arguing that reason was inadequate these early writers of the Reformation returned to the Augustinian argument that eternal salvation was achievable only through the operation of faith alone. 71 Montaigne, M. (1946). The Essays of Montaigne. New York, Random House, p. 388.

model of political life, was collapsed, and without this distinction the model of corruption that had flowed from this model collapsed as well.

Conclusion

A distinctive model of political corruption and so too politics emerged in Europe from the early eleventh century CE. In this model the medieval Christian focus on the importance of moral values was combined with the classical emphasis on the value of reason. The outcome of this synthesis was the emergence of the belief that natural reason provided the principles by which human life ought to proceed. By extension, a life not led in accord with these principles was seen as being necessarily corrupt. The clearest example of this was the use of the notion of prudence. For the authors who wrote within this tradition, prudence thus meant rule according to the dictates of natural reason. Appeal to natural reason led these authors to intuit that only a good man could be a good king as the necessarily all-encompassing nature of natural reason meant that political and moral reason were necessarily identical. A ruler who lacked the requisite moral fortitude was for these authors a corrupt form of ruler – a tyrant – who could not necessarily be trusted to rule in terms of the common good. Political corruption in this model of politics was, therefore, intricately connected to the notion of natural reason. Actions which went against the principles of natural reason – principles that every right-regarding person would be able to intuit – were necessarily corrupt. This model of political life was initially relatively stable as the Christian and classical traditions were initially seen as relatively complementary. The increasing influence, however, of a number of late Roman Republican authors and their focus on issues of honour and glory towards the end of the renaissance, however, began to place this model under a degree of strain. The subsequent separation of church and state in the wake of the Reformation and the concomitant separation of moral reason from political reason in the writings of the raison d’état authors eventually led to the complete collapse of this model of political life and its associated notion of political corruption. The separation of these aspects of human life into distinct categories, each possessing their own intrinsic rationality, necessarily led to the breakdown of this model. The belief that these aspects of human life possessed their own intrinsic rationality effectively denied the possibility for any appeal to the dictates of a natural reason, and so the model of corruption which flowed from this also necessarily collapsed.