historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
these characters differ wildly in time and place, it becomes very hard to proscribe
rules that hold any universal meaning. What some consider a virtue,
others find wholly repulsive, and vice versa. Here the famous case of the Persian
king Vonones provides the example. 34
As Boxhorn is not tired to repeat over and over again, what works in one
country does not automatically work in another, or can even be counterproductive.
35 To find out what does sort the right effect in this or that country, an
analysis of the local circumstances, the people’s character and the commonwealth’s
institutions is necessary. It is here where politics meets history, and
where the two merge as it were into what Hans Blom has called a ‘historicoinstitutionally
tinged “policy science”’. 36 The theoretical side of politics, then,
says what should be done in theory; the practical side of politics, however, tells
what policy is most likely to succeed in this or that circumstance or country,
and thus what policy should be adapted in practice, for what ultimately counts
in politics is actual success. 37 In the end, practice holds sway over theory.
The nature of man and the birth of the commonwealth
Crucial for a correct comprehension of Boxhorn’s political thought is a clear
insight into his perception of man’s nature and into the understanding of man’s
relationship to his fellow men and society at large that Boxhorn deduces from
this perception. 38 To begin with, Boxhorn believes that all men were by nature
34 Ibidem. Grown up in Rome, Vonones had acquired virtues to which the Persians were not accustomed
and thus considered as bad. Therefore, they had cast him out of their kingdom. Boxhorn quotes
here Tacitus, The Annals, II.2.4, p. 42. ‘Yet he was readily accessible and had a forthcoming affability,
virtues, unknown to the Partians but novel as vices. And, because his forms of crookedness and honesty
were alien to their own behavior, there was equal hatred for both.’ In contrast, Zeno, whom the Romans
had made king of Armenia, but who was, as son of the Pontic king Polemon, a foreigner, had won the
goodwill of the Armenians, ‘because from his earliest infancy he had emulated the customs and style of
the Armenians’. Tacitus, The Annals, II.56.2, p. 69.
35 To prove his point, Boxhorn comes up with a range of historical examples. An interesting example
is that of the Inquisition. Officially called into existence in the fifteenth century to battle the Jews and the
Moors in the kingdom of Castille who simulated that they were christians, the Inquisition also proved
its value in keeping the kingdom of Napels subservient to Spanish rule. However, when the Spaniards
introduced the Inquisition in the Netherlands they made a grave error, because ‘the Dutch people were
born in freedom and to life free’. For this reason the Inquisition was rightly called a form of tyranny. Boxhorn,
Institutiones politicae, I.1, p. 3. ‘Ex hac quoque ingeniorum & circumstantiarum diversitate illud est,
quod una eademque res saepè alio atque alio nomine, prout usurpata fuit, nominetur. E.g. Inquisitioni
Hispanicae quidam Tyrannidem, quidam prudentiam inesse existimant, & utrumque verum. Nam, quia
eâ usi Hispanio in Belgarum gente in libertate & ad libertatem natâ, meritò Tyrannidem dixerunt.’
36 Blom, “Political Science in the Golden Age”, pp. 58-59.
37 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, I.1, p. 5. This becomes clear from the example of Tiberius, who
refused to take tough measures against excessive luxury, because he was afraid he could not enforce
them. Boxhorn quotes here Tacitus, The Annals, III.52.3.
38 All scholars who until thus far have delved into Boxhorn’s political thought have paid hardly, if
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