In the middle ages 125

confer feudal possessions ; they make themselves the

judges of the election of the German Emperors;

they receive the homage of the great of the earth;

those smitten with excommunication tremble with

fear.

This political supremacy was far from being

pleasing to all the secular princes. History is

filled with the record of their resistance ; and every-

one knows the reply which Philip Augustus made

to the legates of Innocent III: "The Pope has no

right to interfere in the affairs which take place be-

tween kings. "^'^ But even when rising against the

Popes, kings respected the Papacy. We see this

clearly when Innocent protested against the divorce

by Philip Augustus of his first queen, excommuni-

cated the king, and obliged him to take back his

lawful wife. Although in various other cases he

abused his authority, this act of the Pope, in con-

demning the violation of the moral law by a great

king, is one of the noblest instances of the exercise

of his theocratic power. Likewise, he was respected

when he intervened to prevent wars which he held

to be unjust, and when he resorted to arbitration in

order to put an end to dispute. Over the society

of states as well as that of individuals he exercised

supreme authority. "Each king has his kingdom,"

wrote Innocent III, "but Peter has the pre-emi-

•"•B Paul Janet, Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports

avec la morale, Paris, 1887, vol. I, p. 350.

126 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

nence over all, inasmuch as he is the vicar of Him

who governs the earth and all that is therein.""

After this statement of historical facts, it seems

superfluous to point out that the liumana universi-

tas of the thirteenth century did not constitute a

society of nations in the modern sense of the term.

It could not be more than a society of the Euro-

pea7i states as they then existed, each more or less

unformed and including heterogeneous races and

diverse languages. ^^

Augustine has left to us this fine definition of

peace: it is order which gives us tranquillity, pax

omnium 7'erum tranquilitas ordinis."^ Once every-

thing is in place, and each thing is as it ought to

be, a grateful repose hovers over all. The whole

thirteenth century is under the influence of this

formula. All the human sciences, present and to

come, have their place marked out in the classifica-

tion of knowledge; all the problems of philosophy

had engaged them, and they had been worked out

and co-ordinated in the dominating scholastic phi-

losophy; all that art could endow with beauty was

reassembled in the cathedrals; all the great social

factors wliich enter into the life of a state were

combined in equilibrium ; and the theorists dreamed

of a universal society of mankind. Everybody be-

lieved, and believed with conviction, that the world

37 Rocquain, op. cit., p. 358.

38 Compare below eh. XI.

39 De Civitate Dei, Lib. XIX, cap. 13.