The notion of a constitutional right of resistance first
emerges from the French Religious Wars (1562-1598) but most notably after the
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 when perhaps 10,000 Protestants were
chopped to pieces by Catholic mobs in as many as a dozen cities
across France.[1] The pope gave Mass in honour of the Catholic achievement,
and France’s wily regent Catherine de’ Medici forever sealed her reputation. French
Protestants (known as Huguenots) were forced to develop theories of resistance
which can also be found in John Locke, a century later, leading some to think of
his Two Treatises of Government as the
“classic text” in this radical Calvinist tradition.[2]
Selected below are excerpts from two texts: François Hotman’s
Francogallia (1573) and Theodore Beza’s
Right of Magistrates (1574). Looking to Francogallia we see the clear influence of Cicero (long the detractor of Julius Caesar) and of St. Augustine, with an appeal to
moderation – and representative intermediaries – hidden in the concept of the
Trinity: “three marks of tyranny”, “Assembly of the Three Estates”, “three
simple types …”, “a third component”, “mixture of three elements”. Resistance is not about popular revolution; rather
it is guided by representative institutions, where a “triple form of
commonwealth” is shared in the interest of “balance and fairness”.[3]
Looking to Beza’s Right
of Magistrates, we see the emergence of a “political theory of revolution”[4]
that recognizes popular sovereignty, only as guided by lower magistrates or legislators,
while restricting any individual person or the people considered as a whole from taking
initiative.[5] These
notions are carried forward in Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos (1579), (see my blog).
Huguenot resistance theory is also significant to today’s readers
because it carves out notions of a “public space”, something which the Genevan tradition
in Calvinism (which one finds in the Conservative Party of Canada) has great trouble recognizing (again, see my blog). Needless to say, Huguenot resistance theory - and its historic context - has great relevance to the bloodbaths in today's Syria.
François Hotman, Francogallia (1573)
Chapter X: The form in which the kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.
Chapter X: The form in which the kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.
Now that these matters
have been briefly taken up, we should next explain the form in which the
kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.
We have already shown that the people reserved to itself supreme power
not only to make but also to remove a king.
This is clearly the form of rule that our Gauls had before they were
subjected to the power of the Romans, since the people, as Caesar says, had no
less dominion and power over the king than the king had over the people. But it is likely that our Franks derived this
form of constitution not from the Gauls but from their fellow Germans, of whom
Tacitus, in his book on the customs of the Germans, writes: “The power of their
kings was not unlimited and free.” …[6]
The constitution of
this kingdom then is the one which the ancient philosophers – including Plato
and Aristotle, whom Polybius followed – declared to be the best and most
excellent, a constitution, namely, which is a blend and mixture of all three
simple types: the royal, the aristocratic, and the popular; which is the form
of commonwealth that that Cicero rated above all the others in his On the
Commonwealth. For since royal and popular dominion are antithetical by nature,
a third component should be introduced which is between them and common to them
both, and this is the nobility, or leading men, who approach royal dignity by
the antiquity and splendour of their race and yet, because of their vassalage
or, more colloquially, subjection, are not too distant from the commoners. For, together with the commoners, they
acknowledge one and the same person as magistrate of the entire people. This noble moderation in a commonwealth has
been praised by Cicero in a striking passage based on Plato’s Republic, and because of its unusual elegance we
shall repeat it here: “With lutes and
pipes and with singing and voices a certain adjustment of distinct sounds is
needed which, if altered or discordant, is unbearable to trained ears; and this
attunement, achieved by moderation of very dissimilar voices, creates harmony
and congruence. Similarly, the highest,
lowest and intermediate orders of a commonwealth join, like sounds, in a consensus
of highly dissimilar elements, when the principle of moderation is
applied. And what musicians call harmony
in singing is called concord in a commonwealth, and it is the best and
strongest bond of safety, which, without justice, cannot possibly exist.” (On the Commonwealth, II, xlii, 69). …[7]
In view of all of
this, and since this, I say, has always been the practice of all peoples and
nations that have known royal and not tyrannical power, it is completely evident
that this splendid liberty of holding public councils is part of the common law
of peoples, and that kings who scheme to suppress this sacred liberty are
violators of the law of peoples and enemies of human society, and are to be
regarded not as kings but tyrants.[8] ….
Appendix to the Third
Edition of Francogallia, 1586
Chapter XXV: The king of France does not have unlimited dominion in his kingdom but is circumscribed by settled and specific law.
Chapter XXV: The king of France does not have unlimited dominion in his kingdom but is circumscribed by settled and specific law.
It has been
sufficiently demonstrated, we believe, that the kings of France have not been
granted unmeasured and unlimited power by their countrymen and cannot be
considered absolute. It has been shown,
rather, that they our bound by definite laws and compacts, the first and most
important of which is that they must hold the authority of the public council
sacred and inviolate and call it into solemn session in their presence as often
as the public interest demands. But
since the laws to which the king is bound are very numerous, we shall expound
only those which none will question unless he has lost his reason or has become
an enemy to his country, parents, and children.[9]
…
Theodore Beza, Right of Magistrates (1574)
Chapter VII. What remedies are available if a tyrant
prevents the states from meeting?
This is my opinion,
then, on the rights of subjects of various degrees against a sovereign who has
become a notorious tyrant. But there is
still another question of no slight difficulty.
What is to be done if tyranny has become so entrenched that action by
the Estates is difficult to obtain owing to the connivance, fear, or wickedness
of the majority of the leaders? To private persons, who have not been
authorized either by the lesser magistrates or by the more sober part of the
Estates (about which I shall speak directly), my answer is that they have no
other remedy but penitence and patience joined with prayers, which God will not
disdain and without which any other remedy, no matter how lawful it may be,
involves the danger of God’s curse. But
this does not prevent private persons from going to the lesser magistrates and
asking them to do their duty. And when
the lesser magistrates, or the more sober part of them, enlist the aid of
private persons, the duty of the latter to God and to their country is clear
from what has gone before. As for the
lesser magistrates, it is for them to join together and press for a convocation
of the Estates, while defending themselves against flagrant tyranny insofar as
they can and to the extent they should.
Finally, it is the duty of each estate to seek a common and lawful
assembly – one in which the wicked will not obstruct the good, nor the cowardly
hold back the zealous, nor the majority restrain the men of better
judgement. Moreover, I say that, in an
emergency like this, it is the obligation of private citizens to follow the
lesser magistrates, which is the duty of the subject, and that it is even
permissible for the more sober part of them to seek aid from foreigners, if
need be, especially from friends and allies of the kingdom.[10]
[1] Robert
M. Kingdon “Calvinism and resistance theory” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, ed. J.H.
Burns with Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 207.
[2] Quentin
Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. II: The Age
of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 239. See John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke. An Historical Account of the
Argument of the Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
[3]
Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the
Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought, ed. James E.G. Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), p. 46.
[4]
Skinner, Foundations, p. 338.
[5] Ibid., pp. 338,339. Emphasis in the original.
[6] Julian
H. Franklin, ed. and tr. Constitutionalism
and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beta,&
Mornay (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 65.
[7] Ibid., pp. 66,67.
[8] Ibid., p. 70.
[9] Ibid., p. 90.
[10] Ibid., pp. 129,130.
