The Church and the Empire | Page 3

the State of God, embracing both heaven and earth, with God as at once the source, the guide and the ultimate goal. Now this Universe contains numerous parts, one of which is composed of mankind; and the destiny of mankind is identified with that of Christendom. Hence it follows that mankind may be described as the Commonwealth of the Human Race; and unity under one law and one government is essential to the attainment of the divine purpose.
[Sidenote: Duality of organisation.]
But this very unity of the whole Universe gives a double aspect to the life of mankind, which has to be spent in this world with a view to its continuation in the next. Thus God has appointed two separate Orders, each complete in its own sphere, the one concerned with the arrangement of affairs for this life, the other charged with the preparation of mankind for the life to come.
[Sidenote: Relations of Church and State.]
But this dualism of allegiance was in direct conflict with the idea of unity. The two separate Orders were distinguished as Sacerdotium and Regnum or _Imperium_; and the need felt by mediaeval thinkers for reconciling these two in the higher unity of the Civitas Dei began speculations on the relation between the ecclesiastical and the secular spheres.
[Sidenote: Theory of Church party.]
The champions of the former found a reconciliation of the two spheres to consist in the absorption of the secular by the ecclesiastical. The one community into which, by the admission of all, united mankind was gathered, must needs be the Church of God. Of this Christ is the Head. But in order to realise this unity on earth Christ has appointed a representative, the Pope, who is therefore the head of both spheres in this world. But along with this unity it must be allowed that God has sanctioned the separate existence of the secular no less than that of the ecclesiastical dominion. This separation, however, according to the advocates of papal power, did not affect the deposit of authority, but affected merely the manner of its exercise. Spiritual and temporal power in this world alike belonged to the representative of Christ.
[Sidenote: Sinful origin of State.]
But the bolder advocates of ecclesiastical power were ready to explain away the divine sanction of temporal authority. Actually existing states have often originated in violence. Thus the State in its earthly origin may be regarded as the work of human nature as affected by the Fall of Man: like sin itself, it is permitted by God. Consequently it needs the sanction of the Church in order to remove the taint. Hence, at best, the temporal power is subject to the ecclesiastical: it is merely a means for working out the higher purpose entrusted to the Church. Pope Gregory VII goes farther still in depreciation of the temporal power. He declares roundly that it is the work of sin and the devil. "Who does not know," he writes, "that kings and dukes have derived their power from those who, ignoring God, in their blind desire and intolerable presumption have aspired to rule over their equals, that is, men, by pride, plunder, perfidy, murder, in short by every kind of wickedness, at the instigation of the prince of this world, namely, the devil?" But in this he is only re-echoing the teaching of St. Augustine; and he is followed, among other representative writers, by John of Salisbury, the secretary and champion of Thomas Becket, and by Pope Innocent III. To all three there is an instructive contrast between a power divinely conferred and one that has at the best been wrested from God by human importunity.
[Sidenote: Illustration of relations.]
There are two illustrations of the relation between the spiritual and secular powers very common among papal writers. Gregory VII, at the beginning of his reign, compares them to the two eyes in a man's head. But he soon substitutes for this symbol of theoretical equality a comparison to the sun and moon, or to the soul and body, whereby he claims for the spiritual authority, as represented by the soul or the sun, the operative and illuminating power in the world, without and apart from which the temporal authority has no efficacy and scarcely any existence. An illustration equally common, but susceptible of more diverse interpretation, was drawn from the two swords offered to our Lord by His disciples just before the betrayal. It was St. Bernard who, taking up the idea of previous writers that these represented the sword of the flesh and the sword of the spirit respectively, first claimed that they both belonged to the Church, but that, while the latter was wielded immediately by St. Peter's successor, the injunction to the Apostle to put up in its sheath the sword of the flesh which he had drawn