Keeping Kings in Check 59
ing in his personal capacity as an individual and not as the incumbent of the
Holy See.
It is apparent, from the experiences of Boniface VIII and other pontiff s,
that the actual infl uence of the papacy at any given time was heavily depen-
dent on local circumstances and power confi gurations. Apart from the
empire and the papacy, though, there was a third universalist force, which
purported to constrain the conduct of wayward rulers— and, incidentally, of
ordinary people, too. Th at was natural law. It was certainly less visible than
either empire or papacy. It sported no purple robes or scepters or tiara. It did
not pretend to possess any enforcement power. To many, it existed only in
the vaporous outpourings of scholars. For the development of international
law, however, it had a greater impact than either the imperial throne or the
chair of St. Peter.
Natural Law— and Its Auxiliaries
Between natural law and the Christian religion, there was a certain wari-
ness. To contend that natural law was an adjunct of the Christian faith is
very wide of the mark. Natural- law thought long preceded the advent of
Christianity and was, in its inception, wholly a product of classical (i.e., Greek
and Roman) civilization. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this
point. Natural law was not religious either in content or origin, nor did the
Christian faith have any privileged status within it. It was a law for the entire
world at large, transcending the enormous diversity of the various human
societies. At the same time, it is true that only Western Eu ro pe an civiliza-
tion devised such a body of thought. Indeed, natural law deserves to rank
highly among the most distinctive features of Western civilization. What
should be carefully appreciated, though, is that, even if the origin of natural-
law thought was thoroughly and distinctively Western, the content of the
law was held to be applicable worldwide. Natural law, in short, was a radically
cosmopolitan, universalist corpus of thought.
In this important respect, Eu ro pe an civilization was sharply diff erent
from other societies. China had no such conception of natural law in the
sense of a body of law applicable equally to all societies. Th e Chinese view
was that China’s own society was innately superior to all others, and hence