The Tears of Sovereignty: Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama

Notes

introduction: the body is burning—sovereignty, image, trope 1. The full title of the work (from the 1613 Coimbra edition by Gomez de Loureyro, carried forward verbatim in the only modern edition) is Defensio fidei Catholicæ apostolicæ adversus Anglicanæ sectæ errores, cum responsione ad apologiam pro juramento fidelitatis, et praæfationem monitoriam serenissimi Jacobi Magnæ Britanniæ Regis (henceforth DF). Citations are to the modern edition: Opera omnia, ed. Charles Berton (Paris: L. Vivès, 1856), vol. 24. 2. Joseph Henry Fichter, S.J., Man of Spain: Francis Suarez (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 300. As Carlos Noreña notes, subsequent to this event, the French Parliament also “ordered in June 1614 the public burning of the Defensio fidei, but Papal intervention succeeded in preventing the execution of a decree that seemed intolerable in a Catholic realm.” Noreña, “Suárez and the Jesuits,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 65, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 286. 3. Fichter, Man of Spain, 299. 4. On the differences between Catholic and Royalist theory, see J. P. Sommerville, “From Suarez to Filmer: A Reappraisal,” The Historical Journal 25 (1982): 525–40. 5. Suárez’s Defense of the Faith was published in 1613 in Coimbra, following the work of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and others, thus making Suárez and “Suárezian thought” late, but “key,” participants in the oath of allegiance controversy. On the historical and conceptual implications of the exchange, see Bernard Bourdin, The TheologicalPolitical Origins of the Modern State: The Controversy between James I of England & Cardinal Bellarmine, trans. Susan Pickford (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Notes 248 Note to page 2 6. Suárez’s Latin reads, “At Vero in Summo Pontifice est hæc potestas tanquam in superiori habente jurisdictionem ad corripiendum reges, etiam supremos, tanquam sibi subditos, ut supra ostensum est. Unde si crimina sint in materia spirituali, ut est crimen hæresis, potest directe illa punire in rege, etiam usque ad depositionem a regno, si pertinacia regis et providentia communis boni Ecclesiæ ita postulant. Si vero vitia sint in materia temporali, quatenus peccata sunt, etiam potest illa corripere per directam potestatem; quatenus vero fuerint temporaliter nociva reipublicæ Christianæ, indirecte saltem poterit ea punier, quatenus tyrannicum regimen temporalis principis semper etiam est saluti animarum perniciosum.” Opera omnia, ed. Charles Berton (Paris: L. Vivès 1856), vol. 24, bk. 6, ch. 4, p. 680. For the published English translation, see Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suárez, S.J., trans. Gwladys L. Williams with Ammi Brown and John Waldron (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944), vol. II, 719. Subsequent references to this text will appear as Selections. While I rely on Williams for most of the English translations, I occasionally modify them, as in this case. I have also consulted the bilingual (Latin-Spanish) editions of books III and VI of the Defensio fidei, published separately as Principatus Politicus and De Iuramento Fidelitatis, by E. Elorduy and L. Pereña, eds., Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Corpus Hispanorum de Pace, vol. II and XIX, 1965 and 1978: 88. On Suárez’s theory of papal deposing power, see Harro Höpfl, “The Papal potestas indirecta,” Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ch. 14, esp. 351. As Höpfl points out, the notion of a “potestas indirecta” is “manifestly not scriptural” (352). Against the older expression, “potestas ex consequenti, by entailment,” the newer term, potestas indirecta, “seems to have crept in without anyone noticing,” and is a product of the specific historical, political, and theoretical conditions of the Reformation . Its purpose was to mediate between two incompatible and extreme positions that emerged out of Reformation and Counter-Reformation polemics in early modern Europe: the first, that the pope has total supremacy over the secular world; the second, that the pope has no authority over this world. As Höpfl points out, it was up to the Jesuits, such as Bellarmine and Suárez, to “produce the Golden Mean” of the potestas indirecta. (350). The distinction between direct and indirect power can be confusing, given that what Suárez refers to as the Pope’s “direct power” has subsequently come to be known as “indirect deposing temporal power”—the papal potestas indirecta. The difference is an important one. As the Notes to pages 2–3 249 constitutional historian J. N. Figgis notes, the...