Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/229

Rh John of Salisbury, between the king and the tyrant; like John, he postulates for the former an absolute devotion to the duties of his office, and thus exalts him to so ideal a dignity that he is empowered to speak of him as holding the same position in his own domain as God holds over the universe; he stands to his realm (this is more than John would have allowed) as the soul to the body.

But to this supremacy there are two limitations. In the first place while the end of all government is so to order human affairs that men may be the best prepared for eternal happiness, the special responsibility for spiritual concerns resides in the priests, who thus stand in the position of overlords to the civil ruler. The spiritual destiny of man requires a divine law over and above natural or human law. In order, therefore, that the spiritual be kept separate from the earthly, the office of this kingdom is committed not to earthly kings but to the priests, and above all to the chief priest, the successor of Peter, the vicegerent of Christ, the Roman bishop, to whom is due the subjection of all kings of the Christian people, even as to the lord Jesus Christ himself. In the treatise Of the Rule of Princes, which he left a fragment, Aquinas hardly pursues the subject further; but elsewhere he propounds with the utmost decision the hierarchical theory of the church. It is necessary, he says, to have some supreme authority in  matters of faith: this authority resides in the pope, in whom is realised the unity of the church and the presence of the divine government. To him therefore is entrusted the power to control and to revise the ordinances of religion; he has even competence to promulgate a new confession of faith in order to prevent the rise of erroneous beliefs. Those who have any acquaintance with medieval history know how elastic a term 'error' was in the mouth of the pope, and Thomas pronounces that from the  moment of the issue of an authoritative excommunication against a sovereign, he is deprived of the right to rule and his subjects are released from their oath of allegiance. It is of course a statement of the accepted doctrine among