Abstract

Thomas Aquinas set out basic structural elements of a new way of understanding political life which enabled him to break apart older medieval traditions regarding political authority as well as all other kinds of authority in terms of hierarchical and monistic patterns of order. He drew upon ideas of Aristotle, Roman law, and Christian moral theology to formulate clear philosophical distinctions between jurisdiction , property right, and sacramental orders, which he applied in turn to analysis of practical political problems, especially the fierce controversy between the university masters and friars that called into question the very structure of church authority. In the church he insisted on a distinction between public juridical powers of government which ultimately inhered in the papacy and priestly powers of administering the sacraments which inhered in holy orders. In the state he recognised a public sphere proper to the prince and governed by his jurisdiction, and a private sphere proper to individual citizens who cared for their own welfare by making use of their property rights and other kinds of private authority. The seeds of a theory of natural rights which gave individual persons a hitherto unknown stake in political authority was perhaps his most original contribution to political philosophy. He propounded a pluralistic conception of authority in both church and state that prefigured the balance and order of authorities in the modern state. He did not himself develop these elements into a coherent political program, but his disciples did, in two different ways. ;John of Paris worked Thomas' ideas, especially his notions that powers of government arise out of society and that property right inheres in individual citizens, to develop a systematic doctrine of constitutional government that established all the essential principles later found in Locke. Herveus Natalis worked essentially the same elements into a theory of corporate sovereignty prefiguring Marsilius of Padua and worthy of Hobbes. Their two theories standing at the fountainhead of western constitutional tradition and capturing from the outset its characteristic virtues and tensions presented prototypes of governmental authority that still retain their influence today