members and Ho see that no citizen suffers want. To these
points we only advert in order to show that in them, just as
in the optional or variable character assigned to the ultimate
form of government, a churchman like Thomas Aquinas
approaches nearer to the opinions of modern times than
the generality of those who defended the claims of the
emperor as against the pope, by a theory of the necessary,
the indefeasible, the divine, basis of the imperial dignity.[1]
With this idea Thomas had of necessity no concern. The empire might be held to have expired with Frederick the Second; and if Thomas wrote his book Of the Rule of Princes before the year 1266, it was at a time when the title of king of the Romans was disputed by two candidates neither of whom possessed, one of whom hardly aspired to, the shadow of real power. No emperor was again crowned until thirty years after Aquinas death; and he was naturally led to the inference that the empire was absorbed into, or reunited with, the mother-church: it has not ceased, he said, but is changed from the temporal to the spiritual.[2] It is indeed evident that his view of the
- ↑ It is needless to say that Aquinas has rudimentary notions of political economy (see the pas- sages given by Dr Baumann, pp. 93 sqq. and the whole section, pp. 190-203) and repudiates the very thought of religious toleration: 2 Secund. x. 11, 12, xi. Opp. 11(2) 30 sqq., xxxix. 4 f. 101 (Baumann 185-189). Yet in both these particulars he shows insight and sound sense. See for example the objections he raises against the forcible baptism of the children of unbelievers, Qu. x. 12 f. 31 (Baumann 185 sq.).
- ↑ The coming of Antichrist, it was believed, would be heralded by a discessio, a departure from the faith and a secession from the Roman empire of part of its subjects. Sed quomodo est hoc? asks saint Thomas; quia iamdiu gentes recess^runt a Romano imperio, et tamen necdum venit Antichristus. Dicendum est quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in spirituale, ut dicit Leo papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo dicendum est quod discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a ternporali sed a spirituali, id est a fide catholica Romanae ecclesiae: Expos, in 2 ad Thess. ii. opp. 10. 172 E. Cf. J. Bryce, The holy Roman Empire 114 n. 2. A curious gloss was given at an earlier time, during the contest concerning investitures, by Bonizo bishop of Sutri, namely, that the empire spoken of in the prophecy was the eastern; the western had already long been annihilated in consequence of the vices of its rulers, See Dollinger, Das Kaiserthurn Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger, in the Miinchner historische Jahrbuch fur 1865 pp. 387 sqq. [translated in Addresses on historical and literary Subjects, pp. 73-180; 1894.]
