Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/245

Rh the medieval mind reveal themselves. To it only the two extremes are possible, absolute obedience to the sovereign or absolute obedience in all things to the church. When the supporters of the latter speak of civil rights they appear as though their single wish was to carry out what we should call a constitutional system; it is only when their correlative doctrine about the prerogative of the church is known, that we see how far they are removed from modern ideas: and in the same way it is regularly their opponents who are the defenders of pure, unrestrained absolutism, however much they may engage our approval when they argue against the temporal pretensions of the spiritualty with all the attendant inconveniences of ecclesiastical exemptions and privileges, and urge a far-reaching reform of the entire church-system, a return to primitive purity and primitive simplicity.

But it would be an error to suppose that the views of the French publicists, on the relations of church and state, of which du Bois is perhaps the earliest exponent, correspond in more than the object of their common attack with those of the imperial partisans. In the Enquiry touching the Power of the Pope, also probably the work of du Bois, we have a clear statement of the distinction between the relations of a kingdom like France to the pope, and those of the empire. The pope, he says,