Augustinisme
Augustinisme
Augustinisme
Political Augustinism
The idea that a current of political thinking based on Augustine’s “City of God” dominated
the medieval understanding of ecclesiastic and secular power may appear eccentric today, and the
case in point, Henri-Xavier Arquillière’s theory about ‛political Augustinism’ that he formulated
in his eponymous “L’augustinisme politique”1 has been frankly dismissed as a ‛red herring’ and an
‛intellectual phantasy’ by one of its late-twentieth century interpreters. 2 It became, however, an
influential paradigm that French historical approaches of medieval political theory and institu -
tions used for decades.3 It also had some repercussions in the wider field of intellectual history so
that in one of his early papers in Spanish, Ernesto Laclau could identify in this alleged ‛political
Augustinism’ “perhaps the purest manifestation of the historical-universal conception of the
Middle Ages,” against which the rising bourgeoisie later opposed its own Enlightenment ideo-
logy.4
Henri-Xavier Arquillière (1883–1956), a bishop, protonotary apostolic and the dean of the
theological faculty in Paris from 1943, was mainly preoccupied in his works by the history of
ideas of the Church–state relationship. His theological thesis deals with Lamennais and the Gal-
licanism, he wrote a study on the origins of the theory of the two swords and his book about
‛political Augustinism’ may be considered as a preparatory work for his more substantial mono-
graph on pope Gregory VII, the most prominent and fervent advocate of papal supremacy. He also
edited a series at the Vrin publishing house under the title “L’Église et l’état au Moyen Âge” (‛The
Church and the state in the Middle Ages’) that reflects the range of problems he was interested in
his own works; among its volumes, there are studies on the “De institutione regia” of Jonas of Or -
léans, Álvaro Pelayo, a fourteenth-century Franciscan theorist of papal power, the political doc-
1 H.-X. Arquillière, L’augustinisme politique: Essai sur la formation des théories politiques du Moyen-Âge (Paris: J.
Vrin, 1955).
2 Wayne Hankey, “Dionysius dixit, Les divinitatis est ultima per media reducere”: Aquinas, hierocracy and the “au-
gustinisme politique,” 119–50, in Ilario Tolomio ed., Tommaso D’Aquino: proposte nuove di letture: Festscrift Antonio
Tognolo (Padova: Antenore, 1992); available from http://classics.dal.ca/Faculty%20and%20Staff/DIONDIX1.php; ac-
cessed 27 December 2010.
3 Blaise Dufal, Séparer l'Église et l'État: L'augustinisme politique selon Arquillière, L’Atelier du Centre de recherches
historiques, 2008:1, available from http://acrh.revues.org/index313.html; accessed 27 December 2010.
4 Ernesto Laclau, Nota sobre la historia de mentalidades, Desarrollo Económico, 1963:½:303.
trine and action of Saint Agobard, the conception of papacy in the works of pope Alexander III
and the Dominican theologian John of Paris.
The first edition of “L’augustinisme politique” was published in 1933 and it was followed by a
second one in 1955. To the latter, Arquillière added a long preface, but instead of reacting to the
critics he received, he rather took the opportunity to give an outline of the book and to link the
development of the ideas he presented to the political doctrines of pope Gregory VII formulated
in his letter to Hermann of Metz in 1080. By ‛political Augustinism’ he means a tendency towards
absorbing the natural into the supernatural order and by blurring the distinction between natural
law and Christian justice, subordinating the secular to the ecclesiastic power. This line of thought
has its purported roots in Augustine’s “City of God,” as an extension of its central theme, the ab-
sorption of nature into grace. Later clerics, as Augustine became the most prestigious thinker in
the Middle Ages and in connection with the disintegration of the Roman Empire and the rise of
the barbarian kingdoms, would have distorted the original Augustinian thoughts and made the
thus created ‛political Augustinism’ the legitimizing doctrine of the Church’s ambitions for secu -
lar power. The doctrine has its elaborated version in the letter of pope Gregory VII that synthes-
ises a number of separate threads of tradition.
In order to prove the validity of his theory, Arquillière follows chronologically the develop-
ment of Christian ideas about political life from the outset. The two politically relevant quotes in
the Gospels, Christ’s answers to Caiaphas (“My kingdom is not from this world” 5) and to Pilate
(“You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” 6) entirely contradict
the later development as Arquillière presents it, by radically separating the realms of the heavenly
and the political. We should find the first move toward the later pseudo-Augustinian theory in the
thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: “Let everyone be subject to the governing author -
ities for there is no authority except that which God has established.” 7 Although it still sounds
more like a call for an apolitical stance than the grounding of a Christian political theory, it incor-
porates the important element that every power derives from providence, which later provided
scriptural basis for claims of divine legitimation from the part of worldly authorities. Arquillière
was even able to find a passage in Augustine’s “Exposition on the 75 th Psalm” where he elaborates
on this theme, arguing that “every power ordained in the world may have honour” with the reser-
vation that Christians should not yield to the orders of their rulers in religious matters.
Otherwise, Arquillière’s statement that Augustine created his own doctrine of the state, be it
a rudimentary one, does not appear to be fully supported by the evidence he puts forward. Strik-
ingly, however, the German scholar Ernst Bernheim, who studied Augustine’s impact on medieval
5 John 18:36.
6 John 19:11.
7 Romans 13:1.
political concepts and especially on Gregory VII four decades before him, attributed to the bishop
of Hippo a more coherent conception of politics than Arquillière himself. 8 According to Arquil-
lière, the full-fledged intellectual construct Augustine is credited with by Bernheim in fact belongs
to those later ‛political Augustinists’ who extended, but also warped his political ideas. He dwells
at length on Augustine’s theory of justice (‛iustitia’), adopted from Pauline theology (and trans-
lated into English as ‛righteousness,’ ‛justice’ or ‛judgment’). To his mind, the central concept of
the segment of Augustine’s thinking relevant to politics is ‛justice,’ in its primary meaning the ex-
ercise and realisation of the harmonious order between God and the individual, contrary to
Bernheim, whose interpretation of Augustine’s political legacy revolves around the concepts of
order (‛ordo’) and peace (‛pax’), that is the submission to God’s will in faith.
From some statements in the “City of God” – and this is the most controversial part of his in -
terpretation – Arquillière concludes that Augustine accepted the existence of an intermediary
sphere between the City of God and the City of Evil, a sphere that is governed by natural rights
and whose inhabitants can excel in imperfect, natural virtues. In book XIX, chapter 21, Augustine
approved of the possibility of a God-fearing, but inner-worldy people (‛populus’). He argued that
in the sense that Cicero gives to the term, “an assemblage associated by a common acknowledge-
ment of right and a community of interest,” Romans had never constituted a real ‛populus,’ as the
Roman concept of right cannot be reconciled with the Christian notion of justice. Instead of
Cicero’s definition, he proposed a new one: “an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together
by a common agreement as to the objects of their love,” that would embrace the Romans as well. 9
Apparently, Arquillière draws far-reaching conclusions from the fact that Augustine finally al-
lowed the Romans to form a people. He pleads that Augustine was in fact not so inimical to the
Roman Empire and its institutions than it would follow from the ‛City of God,’ where his dispar -
aging view of them fits into a wider plan.
The sublime concept of peace also has its counterpart in this intermediary realm of a well-
governed state. This ‛peace of Babylon’ can, according to chapter 17 in book XIX, exist among the
pagans as well. It is surely inferior to real peace, nevertheless, it is “not to be lightly esteemed”
(book XIX, chapter 26) and in its pilgrim state, that is, as long as earth and heaven commingle, the
heavenly city itself has to make advantage of it.
Arquillière culls together some of that the church fathers’ scattered observations of a political
nature, emphasizing that they regularly had only a passing interest in political matters. He con -
centrates on the ecclesiology of Saint Ambrose and his “De officiis ministrorum” where he con-
nected the ancient virtue of ‛iustitia’ that he found in Cicero’s “De re publica” to the Paulian
8 Ernst Bernheim, Politische Begriffe des Mittelalters im Lichte der Anschauungen Augustins, Deutsche Zeitschrift
für Geschichtswissenschaft, 1896:1–23.
9 I quote Augustine’s text in Marcus Dods’s translation.
concept of righteousness. Among the others, he briefly presents the reflections of the early
Church on the imperial cult, Tertullian’s reasons in his “Apologeticum” for why the Roman Em-
pire should be maintained, Hosius of Corduba’s letter to Constantine in which he dissuaded the
emperor from interfering with doctrinal issues beyond reasonable measure, the adamant Lucifer
of Cagliari who admonished the emperor for being too lax with the Arian heretics and Saint John
Chrysostom’s famous dictum: “the king rules over the bodies, the priest over the souls.”
When tracing the medieval development of political ideas, Arquillière never fails to point out
the passages where any of the texts he analyses refers to Augustine, but most of these references
are unfortunately either off the main line of argument of the texts, or do not concern the relation -
ship between Church and state, and therefore fall short of proving the existence of any tradition
of political theory founded on Augustinian doctrines or relying on his authority. Such is the case
of pope Nicholas I, who indeed distorted Augustine’s concept of peace, but the new meaning he
attributed to it does not relate to papacy as Arquillière suggests. 10 It is not so much remarkable
that a medieval political treatise quotes the greatest church father; the quotations from Augustine
of Giles of Paris that Arquillière adduces in his book on Gregory VII are trivial and wide of the
mark.11 It seems to me that the only single reference of those Arquillière comes up with that is
truly to the point is the one pope Gregory IV makes in his letter to the bishops supporting the in-
competent and weak Louis the Pious: “We say that they [the Christian emperors] are happy if
they rule justly” (City of God V, 24).
The innovations in politics of the early medieval period that Arquillière describes to us are to
some extent interconnected and make up a line of development, but not connected to Augustine
to a degree that would justify his label of ‛political Augustinism.’ At the end of the fifth century,
Pope Gelasius I laid down the principle of two powers governing the people, the papacy and the
kings. He seems to have invented the very influential idea that earthly rulers hold responsibility
for their subjects to God at the Last Judgement. It was in the writings of Saint Gregory the Great
that the concept of natural law as the basis of state power became blurred. Originally an imperial
magistrate and versed in Roman law, he treated the Byzantine emperor with high reverence, but
placed himself as a pope above the rulers of the newly created barbarian kingdoms. The relation-
ship between the pope and the kings turned to something of a tutelage, with the former guiding,
teaching and sometimes commanding the latter. Gregory taught that the primeval form of author-
ity was that of the parents and that authority became all the more important in the current sinful
state of humanity. The task of the princes is to keep the rightful on the right track and to amend
the evil. This is what Arquillière calls the ‛ministerial concept’ of secular power: the prince is use -
10 Arquillière, L’augustinisme politique, 194–6.
11 Dominique Greine, L’augustinisme politique, Itinéraires augustiniens Nr. 32 (July 2004): Guerre et Paix; available
from http://www.assomption.org/Ressources/ItinerairesAugustiniens/IA32/Greine.htm; accessed 27 December
2010.
ful for the Church as the instrument of God, because he has the force to bind his subjects to obed -
ience, to promote good and to refrain evil. His subjects are not allowed to resist him, even if he is
unworthy of power; most often by the way, Gregory adds, the subjects get the ruler they deserve.
Gregory’s famous contemporary, Isidore of Seville maintained a conception of politics similar to
his.
Arquillière also touches on the political developments that were formative in the making of
his ‛political Augustinism.’ The coronation and unction of the Frank kings by the Church meant
that the kings received their power not only by providence, but also through the intermediary of
the Church. An outstanding role in the merging of the secular and ecclesiastic powers had the
emperor Charlemagne, by creating the largest and most powerful state of the Early Middle Ages.
This concentration of power is exemplified by Arquillière in the institution of the ‛missi:’ the im-
perial supervisors, always working in pairs of a count and a bishop. When his successor, Louis the
Pious proved too week to maintain his state, the concentrated power he brought into existence
did not disintegrate, but was taken over first by the bishops and then by the pope. Later kings
could not challenge the secular power of the Church, Arquillière argues, because there was no
longer a solid notion of the state and the political sphere was not clearly distinct from the reli -
gious. The theoretical framework that pope Gregory VII later epitomized in his letter to Hermann
of Metz was already in place and even the political opponents of papal supremacy, such as Jonas
of Orléans, used the same stock of arguments and did not deny the supremacy of the pope. How
much this kind of political thinking had to do with Augustine, is an altogether different matter.
Arquillière’s book received a devastating critique from Henri Lubac. 12 Lubac attacked on two
fronts. On the one hand, he established that a hierocratic, theocratic political doctrine has no basis
in Augustine’s work. Augustine clearly distinguished his heavenly city from the Church and his
earthly city from the state. The alleged political Augustinists were in fact more influenced by Di-
onysius and later by Aristotle than by Augustine. In this sense, ‛political Augustinism’ has simply
never existed. His second objection concerns Arquillière’ Thomism. Arquillière held that Aquinas,
in separating nature from grace, created the possibility for a new paradigm of politics that separ-
ated state and Church. Relying on earlier historical research, Lubac proved that Aquinas never did
so, and the separation of nature and grace itself belonged to the scholastics of the Renaissance era.
By the same token, Étienne Gilson, though also a Thomist, implicitly rejected the idea that any
kind of political doctrine can be read into the “City of God,” in his ‛Introduction à l’étude de Saint
Augustin.’13 All the same, the book exerted a lasting impact on French intellectual life, and the
validity and heuristic value of its central tenet only became widely contested after a revival of the
12 Henri Lubac, Augustinisme politique?, in Théologies d’occasion, 255–308 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1984), cited in
Hankey, “Dionysius dixit...”.
13 Paris: Vrin, 1943, cited in Greine, L’augustinisme politique.
study of Augustine in the 1940s and 1950s, largely stimulated by the challenge of Arquillière’s
book, and notably in the work of Henri-Irénée Marrou and Yves Congar.
As Hankey and Dufal point out, Arquillière and his neo-Thomist friends wanted an ecclesi-
ology based on scholasticism that is adjustable to the separation of Church and the modern na-
tion-state. Under the concept of ‛Augustinisme’ they lumped together all the supposedly alien ele-
ments in Aquinas’s thinking that seemed incompatible with the autonomous sphere of the state.
They wanted to historicise the medieval image of the Church, exposing it as a radical ecclesiolo-
gical strand that had its justification in its time, but is external to the core of Christian teaching
and totally out-dated in the condition of modernity. It is telling that one of Arquillière’s disciples,
the Jesuit Joseph Lecler went so far as to oppose the alleged intolerance of the Middle Ages when
no distinction was drawn between State and Church to the relative tolerance of the Counter-Re-
formation age (under the influence of Aquinas’s theology), when state and church constituted dis-
tinct domains. Finally, their historical construct can be interpreted as a reaction against the tradi -
tionalist usage of the “City of God” by the contemporary French Extreme Right.