Counter-reformation diplomacy behind Francisco Suárez's constitutionalist theory
| Autor | Wim Decock |
| Páginas | 69-92 |
Page 69
(Recibido: Febrero 7 de 2009. Aprobado: Marzo 30 de 2009)
In his Treatise* on commerce and contracts, Tomas de Mercado (ca. 1530-1579) warned merchants not to embark upon a business trip to the Americas all too frequently, certainly not from the end of October till the end of December, for hurricanes and storms would definitely punish their insatiable desire to make money all across the year and regardless of natural constraints. What is more, Mercado even wondered if risking one's life in order to go to Florida or Campeche was lawful before the court of conscience at all. He criticized the recklessness of many a merchant crossing the Ocean all too frequently in order to make more money, thereby neglecting the natural rhythm of the seasons.1 Academics can hardly been said to be driven by an insatiable desire to make money, so we do not take Mercado's warning to apply to the European scholars who crossed the Atlantic to attend this first meeting of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Historia del Derecho. What it does mean to indicate, though, is how life has changed compared to almost five centuries ago, and how careful we should be as a result in interpreting the flourishing of constitutionalist and natural rights doctrines in legal and moral philosophy of the 16th centuryPage 70Spanish Golden Age. Even so, the natural law rhetoric being used today seems not to have lost anything of the ambivalence it possessed from its very origins. This paper will argue that constitutionalism as it was famously expounded by the Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) fundamentally is not to be regarded as a spontaneous withdrawal from the Church out of worldly policies. On the contrary, stressing its natural and contractual origins, Suárez's secularizing account of political power was geared towards breaking the mounting ambitions of secular state power.
It proves helpful in gaining a better understanding of early modern political thought to briefly point out some very basic features of the political doctrine of the early middle ages that inevitably underlie future controversies.2 According to early medieval doctrine, life on earth and the political society was all about a preparation of life in heaven. In the Augustinian tradition, there is no separate and distinct human or political life governed by rules of its own.3 On the contrary, the existence of a political organization and authority is explained by Augustine (354-430) in entirely religious terms. Because of the thoroughly sinful nature of man, man is constantly breaking the rules of good social behavior, creating chaos and violence, and violating the moral precepts contained in the Bible. Therefore, God has ordained wordly power with the divine task of punishing crime and making people choose the path leading to heaven. Political authority, then, is divine, as to its origins as well as to its end. An important change in this early medieval paradigm of political thought was brought about in the 13th century. After Aristotle's political and ethical works hadPage 71been made available to the Latin West through the translations made by Robert de Grosseteste and William of Moerbeke, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) attempted to reconcile Aristotelianism with Christian Revelation in his famous Summa Theologiae. This led to a rather secularized account of political society. Political power was now being seen as the result of a purely human and natural process, independent of any divine plan. For Aristotle had convincingly demonstrated in his Politics how political communities naturally come about as different families and tribes unite in order to exchange goods and services between them for the mere reason that natural needs to survive drive them to do so.4 In addition, nature has given some people the natural gift of leading other people, whereas other people are naturally inclined to obey a ruler. In this manner, a natural hierarchy between members of the same society comes into being, which at the same time guarantees the self-sufficiency and harmony of the community. God is entirely absent in this secular version of the origins of political society, yet he remains present too in that everything on earth is also determined by a natural end to which it evolves. Nature, essence and end are all the same in the Aristotelian so-called teleologic vision of nature. Therefore, men are called to create a community of which the final task is to develop the real and distinctive features of a human being. According to Aristotle, the distinctive feature of a human being is his reason. Consequently, the final aim of a political community should be to enable its citizens to reason and debate about the way they should behave morally and socially, and to contemplate the highest and most perfect Being man can think of, which is God, of course. Needless to say, it was quite easy for Thomas to maintain that this God was the God of the Gospel, of course.
These Medieval doctrines re-emerged in slightly different forms in the political debates ensuing from the discoveries of the New World and from the rise of Protestantism in the early 16th century. By re-stating the so-called via antiqua doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, the Counter-Reformation intellectuals tried to uproot the heretical political doctrines of the Lutherans and some humanists. Luther (1483-1546) had revived the Augustinian concept of the divine origins and legitimation of political power.5 Since Luther defended a very pessimistic view of the post-lapsarian nature of man, he thought God had ordained political power with the divine task of punishing man's vices and re-directing man to God. Political power had to rest on grace and God, for human reason and nature were far too corrupt to be able to construct a political society of their own. In the same vain, the humanist philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490-1573) argued that true and legitimatePage 72political power could only rest on divine choice.6 Therefore, the Indians could not claim to be legitimate and genuine rulers of their lands, thus Sepulveda. For they did not know God. The Indians did not possess knowledge of the Christian Faith, and therefore could not possibly be said to have been ordained legitimate rulers of the New world. They lacked divine support. Their power was merely based on corrupt nature. Moreover, Sepúlveda thought the Indians were a shining example of Aristotle's category of people that were naturally inferior because they lacked sufficient reason. Consequently, Sepúlveda concluded that it was proper to see the Spanish conquest as an instance of a just war against illegitimate rulers.
The humanitarian disaster ensuing from Sepúlveda's reasoning, as well as its protestant touch urged the counter-reformation theologians to develop another model of political society. A model which would enable them, first to attack the claims made by heretics like Luther, and secondly, to reinforce their own power over the behaviour of the people (over Indians as well as over Spanish merchants profiting from the trade between Europe and the Indies). The « Thomists » of the second half of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century based their political theory on the optimistic belief in the capacities of man and human nature.7 To Jesuits like Francisco Suárez, for instance, it is obvious that man's reason is able to supply him with the moral foundations of a stable political society.8 The point is, however, that it was the Counter-Reformation theologians who claimed to uncover and explain these moral and reasonable foundations of political life. Now let us see how so-called modern concepts like constitutionalism, social contract, and the state of nature were developed in Suárez's political doctrine in response to the heretical views of Luther, James I, Sepulveda, and their likes.
Page 73
In 1606, after a gunpowder plot set up by the catholics had almost succeeded in killing him, James I Stuart forced his subjects in Scotland and England to swear an oath of allegiance stating that both the supreme spiritual and temporal power exclusively belonged to him.9 It is this very blasphemous event which according to Suárez himself caused him to write his Defensio fidei catholicae (1613), containing his theories about the natural origins of political power and his doctrine of Church-State relationships.10 Though Suárez did approve of a so-called civil oath (¡uramentum civile), in which a King made his subjects swear obedience in merely worldly affairs, he berated the claim made first by Henry VIII Tudor, and later reinforced by Elisabeth I Tudor and James I Stuart that in spiritual matters, too, citizens were subject to the secular authorities. He rejected this kind of spiritual oath (iuramentum sacrum) mixed up with the civil oath in more or less explicit terms (¡uramentum mixtum dare et aperte seu palliatum) as a novel duty entirely incompatible with safe and traditional catholic doctrine.11 For it placed the secular King striving for absolute power on the same level as the Pope. The scope of Suárez's work, then, will be...
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