WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

end, therefore, requires a particular metaphorical use of the sword’s disciplinary end for the
purposes of worship and not simply a demand for the ethical living of its individual rulers.
With this in mind, Clement’s reading of Augustine is impeccable. To properly extend the
Christian “cultus,” the state must put its form of subjection—the sword—itself into subjection; it
must make its sword not the agent of death but the bringer of life. In the words of Isaiah 2:4, the
epitome of proper worship to God will occur when nations “conflabunt gladios suos in vomeres
et lanceas suas in falces” ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and lances into pruning
hooks.’ 45 In Clement’s play of language, the metaphorical sword of the state becomes the tiller of
Christian worship. Only the sword disseminates the “cultus” of Christianity (in the metaphoric
sense of cultivation) via the state apparatus of conquest.
Just as the metaphor of cultivation implies the gathering of fruits, the use of the Christian
“cultus” by the State nessarily implies its militant amplification “adquirendi populi gubernatio et
directio fructuosa” ‘for the government and fruitful direction of the acquired people.’ For
Clement, Augustine makes clear that the state’s swords are the plowshares by which the fruits of
the Christian kingdom are to be disseminated. Clement’s polemic is nothing short of poetic as it
unites two metaphoric readings of the word “cultus” to answer the main question brought about
by Clement’s previous lapses in logic. Namely, if secular powers—as Clement admits that
France and Spain already do—carry the defense and not the amplification of the faith founded in
the spiritual union of believers, in the Church, why establish a sovereign for the militant
propagation and “directio fructuosa” ‘fruitful direction’ of spiritual institution? In using a biblical
directive metaphorically when applied to a metaphoric institution like the State or the Church,
Clement’s discourse elegantly responds to this question in two ways. It answers his
argumentative foes implicitly, saying that Christianity is by nature propagative and, therefore,
45 Ibid.
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