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

Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
commonwealth is divided hold on to ‘pieces of the majestas’, giving these
commonwealths a ‘blended’ form of command. 76 In most European kingdoms,
for example, king and parliament, where the nobles of the realm have
a seat, share judicial powers. 77
The acceptation that more than one estate could hold on to ‘pieces of the
majestas’ aligns Boxhorn closer to Aristotle than to Bodin. The great Stagirite
also recognises a ‘supreme’ or ‘sovereign power’ (to kyrion), namely the
‘government’ (politeuma) of a state which he equates with the ‘constitution’
(politeia) of a state, that is, ‘the arrangement of magistracies in a state especially
of the highest of all’. 78 According to Aristotle, all constitutions have at
least three elements; a deliberative element, a judicial element, and an element
that concerns itself with the distribution of offices. As a direct consequence
every sovereign power has at least three elements. Of these three elements,
‘the deliberative element has the authority in matters of war and peace, in
making and unmaking alliances; it passes laws, inflicts death, exile, confiscation,
elects magistrates and audits their accounts’. These powers can be
distributed to one person, several persons or to all persons, or amongst different
social classes (e.g. the rich and the poor). 79 In the long run this Aristotelian
concept of divisible sovereign power would lose out to Bodin’s concept
of indivisible sovereignty, which was theoretically more attractive. The
Aristotelian concept, however, was more applicable than Bodin’s concept for
76 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, II.2, pp. 260-61. ‘Quinimo in eodem statu aliquando est omnium
quasi formarum colluvies & species, per quam fit, ut aliquid Principis, aliquid optimatum, aliquid
populi inter eosdem esse videatur, quas Resp. mixtas Politici solent appellare. Ego, ut plerasque Resp.
confusi plerumque esse imperii scio … Cavendum tamen, ne simultates inter partes oriantur. Exitium
enim Reip. fruitur, ubi inter habentes partes Majestatis discordiae oriuntur.’
77 Ibidem, I.5, p. 57. ‘Secundo modo restringitur, quando potentia partim legibus partim Imperantium
arbitrio permittitur. Atque haec libertatis ratio in plerisque Europae regnis obtinet, praecipuè
autem in Gallia, ubi aliquid commissum legibus ad tuendam libertatem, aliquid etiam regibus, ad
tuendam Majestatem. Parlamentum apud illos est supremum de rebus judicium, in quo optimates de
reipubl. rebus omnibus ex legibus consultant: sed id celebrari nisi à Rege indictum, non potest, & quicquid
ab illis constitutum, Rex approbare debet.’ For Bodin and his vision on the mixed constitution, see
Julian H. Franklin, “Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution: Bodin and His Critics”, in Burns (ed.), The
Cambridge History of Political Thought, pp. 298-309.
78 Aristotle, Politics, 1278b1 [III:6] and 1289a1 [IV:1]. See also ibidem, 1279a1 [III:7], p. 71. ‘The
words constitution and government have the same meaning, and the government, which is the supreme
authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many.’
79 Ibidem, 1297b1-1298a1 [IV:14], p. 112. ‘All constitutions have three elements … There is one
element which deliberates about public affairs; secondly that concerned with the magistracies – the
questions being, what they should be, over what they should exercise authority, and what should be the
mode of electing to them; and thirdly that which has judicial power. The deliberative element has the
authority in matters of war and peace, in making and unmaking alliances; it passes laws, inflicts death,
exile, confiscation, elects magistrates and audits their accounts. These powers must be assigned either
all to all the citizens or all to some of them (for example to one or more magistracies, or different causes
to different magistracies), or some of them to all, and others of them only to some.’ For the distribution
of these powers between different social classes, see Aristotle’s discussion of the ‘polity’ in Politics,
1294a1ff [IV:9].
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