IV
“Every association,” according to Aristotle, “seems
to involve justice of some kind and friendship as well”
(Nicomachean Ethics VIII, i). Thus, holding the city-
state in the highest esteem, Aristotle saw its roots in
ethical conceptions—justice and loyalty. Indeed, it can
be contended with much reason that during the cen-
turies of feudal history in Europe, when often there
was no tribal or racial solidarity to weld men together,
men were saved from complete political anarchy by
the feeling of loyalty to the person of the Emperor
(C. H. McIlwain, Growth of Political Thought in the
West [1932], p. 142). Feudalism with its customs and
practices of homage and fealty, and its theory of the
feudal contract between lord and vassal, established
itself not only on the feelings of personal loyalty, but
also on the Hebraic and Stoic notion that society flows
out of a convenant—and a convenant, even between God
and his people, is worthless if the parties are not com-
mitted loyally to fulfill its terms.
In the Middle Ages, when people at times suffered
oppression from an evil ruler, a distinction was made
between loyalty to his sacred office and loyalty to his
person. God, it was said, commanded only the former
when the ruler violated his part of the bargain. From
this the conclusion was sometimes drawn that loyalty
to the king's sacred office did not stand in the way
of resistance to the tyranny of the evil ruler.
Chapter 61 of the Magna Carta provides a definite
procedure to be followed by the king when barons
charge him with delinquency toward anyone or trans
gression of any article concerning the peace or security.
The conclusion that was drawn from this chapter is
that when the king does not adhere to his part of the
feudal contract, rebellion against him would be legal.
This was a logical consequence of the distinction
between the man and the office: loyalty to the latter
does not necessarily mean loyalty also to the former.
This distinction made it easier for medieval thinkers
to move away from the position of Augustine that the
evil ruler is sent by God as a punishment for sins, and
that it was, therefore, one's duty loyally to submit to
him (De civitate Dei, Book 5, Chs. 19-21). The distinc-
tion between the man and the office naturally led to
the distinction between the true king and the tyrant,
and to the idea, as we see it—e.g., in Magna Carta—of
the right of resistance, and the idea of authority based
on covenant or contract, and the right to withdraw
allegiance or loyalty when there is a serious breach.
In John of Salisbury there is praise of tyrannicide, and
of the assassin as the agent of a just, watchful, and
avenging God (Policraticus, Book VIII). Thomas
Aquinas, while stressing that rulership must be limited
and must move only within lawful confines, disavows
tyrannicide; but he holds that the people as a whole
have a right to resist. While he condemns sedition, he
denies that justifiable resistance to tyranny is sedition
(De reginiore principum, Book I, Ch. 6. Summa Theo-
logica, 2 a, 2 ae, q. 42, q. 104).
If there is a single dominant theme that one can
detect running through all the controversies in medie-
val writings, it is that the state must serve moral ends
and help fulfill God's purposes for man—personal sal-
vation; that there is a common good, to which the ruler
must contribute; that the power of the ruler is derived
from God; that the power of the ruler is limited by
law; that transgression of the lawful limits makes a
ruler into a lawless tyrant. Though thinkers may differ
as to what may lawfully or morally be done in the
face of tyranny, the implication was seen by many that
the subject's political loyalty is a conditional one, at
least with respect to the man as distinguished from
the office. In this way medieval thought synthesized
the Hebraic-Hellenic-Hellenistic inheritance: there is
accommodation of loyalty to the human community,
to God, and to the soul. While there was, of course,
substantial disagreement as to the meaning of these
terms, there was, nonetheless, basic agreement on the
need to transcend loyalty to the state in order to be
loyal to God and to the soul accountable to God. The
political government of the world must, therefore, be
seen under the head of the moral and the divine gov-
ernment of the world, and loyalty must be considered
within a philosophy of history which takes into account
politics, morals, and religion.
