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

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Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
and the vogue among Dutch scholars in the early decades of the seventeenth
century to detect a monarchical element in the Dutch body politic, Boxhorn
is remarkably silent on this issue. 227 Neither in the Institutiones politicae nor in
any other work does he detect or speak of a monarchical element in the Dutch
Republic, or in any of its constituent parts, let alone linking such an element
to the office of the stadholder as was common. Indeed, in the Institutiones
politicae Boxhorn hardly ever mentions or refers to the office of stadholder or
the equivalent office of provincial governor, the office out of which the stadholderate
under the Dutch Republic had developed. 228 On the few occasions
that he does, Boxhorn describes a provincial governor as a lower magistrate,
who derives his power and authority from the supreme magistrates he represents
and on whose powers he depends. 229 Thus, just like the stadholder in the
Commentariolus, a provincial governor is a subordinate; at best, as a nobleman
or a patrician sitting on a town council, he is a member of the governing elite.
His subordinate position and dependence hardly qualifies a provincial governor,
nor a stadholder, to fulfil the role of monarch in any form of government
whatsoever. 230 Therefore, Boxhorn can safely assert that in the Dutch Republic
the towns and provinces are administrated in an ‘aristocratic’ way, albeit with
some democratic features. In such a political framework there are at least two
pressing matters: the relations between the aristocratic element and the democratic
element, and the relations among the ‘optimates’, the best, themselves.
227 Following the Polybian ideal, Paulus Merula had declared that the Dutch Republic was a mixture
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Kossmann, Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, p. 33.
228 ‘Stadhouder’ (translated into English as ‘stadholder’) was the Dutch term for the lieutenants
or governors through whom the dukes of Burgundy exercised their rule in the Low Countries in the
fifteenth century. Under the Habsburgs, the stadholders were provincial governors who ‘exercised
virtually all the rights of the ruling prince within their provinces’. These rights included the military
command over the armed forces in their provinces and a say in the election of members of some town
councils. Rowen, The Princes of Orange, pp. 2-5, with quote on p. 3. What is of crucial importance is that
both under the Habsburgs and the Dutch Republic, the power of the provincial governor/stadholder
was conferred by delegation from a higher authority, respectively the ruling Habsburg prince and the
provincial States, to whom the provincial governor/stadholder had to swear obedience.
229 See, for example, Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, I.8.2, p. 96. ‘Sunt autem illorum alii, qui domi,
ut minores Magistratus, aut subalterni, ut Judices, consiliarii, negotiorum publicorum gestores, aut foris
in pace, ut Legati, in bello, ut Militiae Imperatores, aut in provinciis, ut praefecti, & procuratores occupantur,
in quos vim & autoritatem suam transferunt, qui supremum in omnibus Imperium acceperunt,
quibusque ea propter non aliter, ac his, obsequium desertur. Hi enim, si in absentiam majoribus illis
succedunt, & eorum autoritate ac nomine in negotiis publicis occupantur, quoad vim saltem rerum pro
majoribus aestimantur.’ I find it therefore hard to agree with Wolfgang Weber that in the Institutiones
politicae Boxhorn tries to institutionalise or strengthen the position of the stadholder. See Weber, Prudentia
gubernatioria, p. 93.
230 In this case it is interesting to note that in the Institutiones politicae Boxhorn describes the doge
of Venice, with whose office the office of the Dutch stadholder was sometimes compared, as merely the
executor of decisions made by the senate of Venice and as Venice’s commander-in-chief. Ibidem, I.4,
p. 33. ‘Dux Venetus quoque speciem saltem habet Majestatis, quia ea tantùm exequitur, quae Senatus
jussit; Hinc Itali proverbio eum Ducem vinctum & captivum appellant, quòd vix aliquid possit sua
authoritate, & ferè nihil aliud sit, quàm aliis in regionibus Imperator & dux exercitus.’