priestly class necessary to ‘the state of this world’ (huius saeculi statu)
not politically but because of its cultivation of those virtues and correc-
tion of those vices which ‘the legislator cannot regulate by human law’.)
To defend the peace against ecclesiastical interference there needs to be
a further and strong ‘governing part’ at the head of the polity. Yet it is
notable that the regime Marsilius recommends (and seems to present as
the pattern of the empire) is a political one, for his pars principansis
elected and rules by the consent of the ‘legislator’ which is the whole
community speaking through its ‘weightier part’.^29
Ptolemy of Lucca and the leading jurist, Bartolus of Sassoferrato,^30 in
his De regimine civitatis, seem clear that the political interchange of a
city-state would not work among large multitudes, and it is significant
that the most continuous discussion of regimen regaleis found among
writers in the great kingdom of France: their bias to this form is surely
a reflection of the actual strength of the French monarchy as much as
the conclusion of an autonomous tradition of political thought. The
kingdom of France was marked by its stream of royal legislation, and
the question for Aristotelians was whether these laws could properly be
made by the king’s will alone or needed the consent of the community.
Were the royal will and reason sufficient justification for the laws which
Aquinas knew that kings must make for the development of their
communities, or did they need popular consent? He seems to have
believed that the best form of human law was the lexmade by the king
with the consent of aristocrats and plebs together, but he taught that a
ruler must certainly have unfettered power to dispense from human law
in case of necessity. Was it perhaps better to be ruled by the will of
the best king than by the best laws? These were questions which must
have had a peculiar resonance in France, particularly at the time of
Philip IV’s uncompromising claim to defend ‘the needs of the church
and ecclesiastical persons and the peaceful state of the whole kingdom
of France’ against the bulls of Pope Boniface VIII.^31
Giles of Rome, who wrote for the future Philip IV the earliest and
apparently most read of the treatises De regimine principum, opts
for the best king precisely because he can will the best laws, if he is
properly educated and duly consults his councillors. Giles recognized
The common good 261(^29) Marsilius of Padua, The Defensor Pacis, ed. Previté-Orton, esp. 19, 64–74, 492; cf.
Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of the Peace, tr. with an introduction by A. Gewirth (New
York: Columbia UP, 1956), discourse I, caps. 5, 15, 19, and discourse III; Blythe, Ideal
Government, 161, 170–1, 193–201.
(^30) On Bartolus see now M. Ryan, ‘Bartolus of Sassoferrato and Free Cities’, TRHS,6th ser.
10 (2000).
(^31) Blythe, Ideal Government, 43, 108; Aquinas, STI, q. 81, a.3 ad 2, I–II, q. 97; the De
regno, ed. and tr. D’Entreves and Dawson, 80–3; J. H. Denton, ‘Philip the Fair and the
Ecclesiastical Assemblies of 1294–1295’, TAmPhilSoc, 81, part 1 (1991), 35, 38, 67, 70, 74.