Notes
Notes
←1
Aristotle, Hist. Anim. I, 1: 488a 7; Eth. Nic. I, 5; 1097b 11; ibid. IX, 9: 1169b 18; Pol. I, 2: 1253a 3. The Aristotelian formula is always that man is a political animal. Unless special reasons suggested to Aquinas the exact textual reproduction of this Aristotelian principle, he generally prefers to say that man is a social animal (Seneca, De Beneficiis, VII, 1, 7). The combination social and political animal is also found in Summa I-II, 72, 4; In Periherm. I, 2.
←2
The source of the teaching in 5-7 is not the Aristotelian Politics but Avicenna, De Anima V, 1; cf. Appendix 1. See also In Eth. prol. 4 (Appendix 2) where St. Thomas, follows more closely the Aristotelian doctrine of Pol. I, 2: 1252b 30-125 a 1 (see Appendix 3), no longer believes the Avicennian reasoning to capable of demonstrating the conclusion that man is a political animal. Avicenna’s argument is used by Aquinas in 4 Sent., 26, 1, 1; Quod VII, 17; CG III, 85 and ibid. 128, 129, 136, 147; Summa I-II, 95, 1.
←3
The classification of constitutions in 11-12 is owed to Aristotle, Pol. III, 7: 1279a 27 ff. The basis of number, however, on which this classification rests, is found inadequate by Aristotle himself ibid. 1279b 38. In later texts, St. Thomas gradually abandoned it; see In Eth. VIII, 10 (Appendix 4); Summa I-II, 95, 4; ibid., 105, 1; II-II, 50, 1, arg. 1; ibid., 61 2; In Pol. III, 6 (Appendix 5). St. Thomas ends up, just as Aristotle did, with a list of constitutions in which each finds its essential characteristic in a certain qualification on account of which political power is awarded: in monarchy and aristocracy, power is given on account of virtue, in oligarchy on account of riches, in democracy on account of liberty.
←4
Aristotle, Pol. I, 2: 1252b 9-30; In Pol. I, 1 (Appendix 3). The Aristotelian doctrine is here adapted to mediaeval realities in almost the same fashion as in some other earlier writings of Aquinas: In Matth. XII, 2; In Ioan. XIV, 1, 3; In I Cor. XI, 4 (p. 333a); In Hebr. XI, 3 (p. 414a). In the later writings, Aquinas (a) more clearly emphasizes the fact that the Aristotelian city seeks the satisfaction of not only the material but also the moral needs of man: In Eth. prol. (Appendix 2); Summa I-II, 90, 2; cf. infra 106. Moreover (b) he treats cities and kingdoms not as specifically different communities each having its own essential characteristics, but as formally equal and only materially, i.e., historically different realizations of the same idea of “perfect community”. Proof of this is the use of the combination city or kingdom in Summa II-II, 47, 11; ibid. 50, 1; ibid. 3.
←5
In Latin vicus. This is neither here nor In Pol. I, 1 (Appendix 3) the Aristotelian clan-village but the street of the mediaeval town, called vicus (v.g. Vicus Straminis). In each street, St. Thomas says In Pol. (Appendix 3), “one craft is exercised, in one the weaver’s, in another the smith’s.” Modern towns still preserve the memory of this mediaeval arrangement in street names such as Shoemaker Row, Cordwainer Street, Comerslane, Butter Row etc.
←6
The word is of Roman imperial origin; cf. St. Isidore, Etymologiae XIV, 3, 19. It is also used in mediaeval Canon Law; see Gratian’s Decretum c. 2 C. VI, p. 3: an ecclesiastical province is a territory where there are ten or eleven cities, one king... one metropolitan... In St. Albert’s cosmography (De Nat. Locorum III, 1 ff: IX, 566 ff) Italy “is a province” but it also “contains several provinces”, viz., Calabria, Apulia, Romana, Emilia, Tuscia, Lombardia. Likewise, Spain is a province and “has several provinces and kingdoms.” See St. Thomas’ use of the word in 2 Sent., 10, 1, 3 ad 3; 4 Sent., 24, 111, 2 sol. 3; Sumna II-II, 40, 1. Nothing is very definite about this notion except that, at any rate, a province is part of a greater and more comprehensive whole. The word is therefore characteristic of a properly mediaeval type of political thinking which still retains the memory of the Roman Empire. It was soon to be cast out of the political vocabulary.
←7
Aristotle Eth. Nic. III, 5: 1112b 14 (Latin text). In Eth. III, 8: 474; CG III, 146; In Matth. XII, 2. In thus tracing back to Aristotle the idea that peace is the chief social good, St. Thomas was misled by the fact that the Latin text of the Ethics translated the Greek EUNOMIA (good laws well obeyed) by peace.
←8
Although there is no doubt about the fact that Pol. I. c. is the source of this, yet the text cannot be shown to depend literally on this source. A disturbing feature of this paraphrase is that the author makes it a point of the tyrant’s policy to “forbid marriage”. No trace of such a prohibition is to be found in Aristotle’s account or its mediaeval version. St. Thomas is usually very accurate even in the most trifling details of his quotations.
←9
Cf. Summa I-II, 105, 1. Carlyle (V, 94) correctly observes that, if these remarks had been completed, it would have been under terms similar to those on which in the Summa, i.e., a mixed constitution is recommended.
←10
A similar problem is discussed in 2 Sent., 44, 11, 2 (Appendix 6) and Summa II-II, 42, 2 ad 3; cf. also Summa II-II, 64, 3. For the history of this problem see Carlyle I, 147 ff, 161 ff, 111, 115 ff. The considerations of the present chapter should also be read against the background of the history of the Italian Communes in the XIIIth century; see Cambridge Med. Hist. VI, 179 ff.
←11
Valerius Maximus VI, 2, Ext. 2 (Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale III, 73).
←12
Eusmus, Chronicorum Lib. II.
←13
Flavius Iosephus, De Bello Iud. II, 80 ff, 93, 111. Archelaus, however, was not exiled to Lugdunum (Lyons) by Tiberius, but to “Vienna (Vienne), a town in Gaul” by Augustus (Josephus, op. cit. 111; Eusebius, Chronicorum Lib. I. St. Thomas was probably misled by the Glossa Ordinaria In Matth. ii, 22. The above statement, however is somewhat puzzling in view of what Aquinas has said in Catena Aurea, In Matth. II, 10, and in the commentary to St. Matthew, II, 4.
←14
Livy XXII, 39, 20. The immediate source of this “sentence” is perhaps one of the many “Florilegia” which were so popular in the Middle Ages.
←15
This methodical principle should not be considered as St. Thomas’ last word in the matter. The method of the Summa II-II, 47, 10-12 (on governmental prudence) is distinctly different. See M.-C. CHENU, Bull. Thom. VI, 576, n. 2.
←16
Cf. Aristotle, Phys. VIII, 2: 252b 26; St. Gregory, Homil. in Evang. II, 29. On the history of this notion which is found “in two different streams of thought”, viz. the Neoplatonic and the Aristotelian systems, see Muller-Thym 14 ff. “On the rare occasions where St. Thomas uses[this] formula (In Phys. VIII, 4; Summa I, 96, 2 et al.), he wishes it to be taken rather in the sense in which the providence exercised by reason over the members of the body and the use of the faculties is likened to the providence which God exercises in the world.” If the idea of the microcosm is extended to mean that God is in the world as the soul is in the body, then the soul would no longer be the form of the body in the Aristotelian and Thomistic sense; rather it would be a detached substance in its own right. See Summa I-II, 17, 8 in 2 and ad 2; ibid. 110, 1 ad 2.
←17
Aristotle, Pol. I, 2: 1252b 30; ibid. III, 9: 1280b 33. The source of what follows is again Aristotle, Pol. III, 9: 1280a 25-1281a 10. Especially derived from the Stagirite are (a) the definition of “good life” which is “virtuous life” (1280b 5-10), (b) the remark about slaves and animals (1280a 32), (c) the remark that the exchange of material goods does not make a society, i.e., a state (1280a 25, b 23: Aristotle’s criticism of Plato.)
←18
Populus Christianus, i.e., the institutional unity of all Christians, whose head is the Pope “holding the apex of both powers, spiritual and temporal”: 2 Sent., 44, exp. text. (Appendix 8).All-important in Aquinas’ political thought, this notion was for the first time criticized by the Dominican John of Paris, A.D. 1302; see CG 4, 76 (Appendix 7) and John of Paris’ corrections of this text (loc. cit.).
←19
Ps.-Cyril of Alexandria: [Romano Pontifici] primates mundi tamquam ipsi Domino Iesu Christo obediunt. The text is quoted in C. Impugn. 3 (IV, 29); 4 Sent., 24, III, 2 sol. 2; Cf. Errores Graecorum 2. The Liber Thesaurorum from which this authority was drawn is a compilation of texts of the Greek Fathers, made by Aquinas’ contemporary and confrère Bonacursius (Script. O.P. I, 156, 159). In regard to the doctrine cf. 2 Sent., 44, exp. text. (Appendix 8); 4 Sent. 37, exp. text.; CG IV, 76 (Appendix 7); Summa II-II, 60, 6 ad 3. Best interpretation of this passage: Gilson, Dante 183 ff, 206 ff; Id., La philosophie au MA 570 ff.
←20
Aristotle, Physics VII, 3: 246b 4. In Phys. VII, 5, 3; Summa I-II, 49, 2 ad 1. “Long before Aristotle, probably before Hippocrates, it was held that, corresponding to the four elements, fire, air, water, earth, and the four qualities, hot, cold, moist, dry, are the four humors of the body, viz., blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These three sets of elements, qualities and humors could then be brought, by permutation and combination, into a complex system of arrangements, based upon the following scheme: hot + moist = blood; hot + dry = yellow bile; cold + moist = phlegm; cold + dry = black bile, the different combinations giving the qualitative aspects of disease, and, by the same token, of the physiologic action of drugs. The whole arrangement made up the ‘humoral pathology’ which regarded health and disease as the proper adjustment or imbalance respectively of the different components mentioned, and the scheme was further elaborated by Galen and the Arabian physicians, in that remedies and their compounds were classified in numerical scales according to the ‘degree’ or relative proportions of their several qualities.” Garrison 77.
←21
St. Albert relates the same fact in De Natura Locorum II, 3: IX, 563.
←22
Pol. VI, 4: 1318b 9-15. William of Moerbeka translated this passage thus: optimus enim polmius, qui terrae cultivus est . . . ubi vivit multitudo ab agricultura vel pascuis ... Non vacans, ut non saepe congregationes faciat. Propterea . . . aliena non concupiscunt, sed delectabilius est ipsis laborare quam politizare et principari (Susemihl 466 f.) St. Thomas misunderstood the words congregationes facere which he took to mean “the crowding and dwelling of the people within the walls of the town,” while Aristotle speaks of civic assemblies.
←23
St. Thomas refers to Pol. V, 13: 1297a 17 ff, 20. Manifestly the translation of the word timae by pretium made it impossible for him to understand this Aristotelian teaching. The word timocracy is derived from timema, i.e., valuation of property (in Latin census). Timocracy thus is the rule of those who are equals, in virtue of coming up to a certain moderate property qualification. Aquinas is quite aware of the insufficiency of his commentary on timocracy, forin none of his other writings does he make use of this notion.
←24
See however Summa II-II, 42, 2 arg. 3 and ad 3; ibid. 64, 3.