from the Northern Lights
St. Augustine, the Limits
of Moral Action, and Politics -Part 3
by John von Heyking
John von Heyking is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge. He is an author and editor and has edited Vols 7 and 8 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. His biographical notice is found here. The following is taken from his book Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, which is available here from the Publisher. This excerpt is taken from chapter 4 of the book, "Ordo Amoris and Political Prudence" and appears here with permission. It appears in three parts.
Moral Reasoning in Extreme Circumstances
§3. The Possibility of Tyrannicide and Rebellion (concluded)
Augustine's distinction between virtue and officeholder is seen in the fact that he actually treats politics in personalist terms; he refers to each human being, rather than the city's institutions and physical attributes, as the primary element or seed of a city (CD 4.3 ; EnP 9.8). The dictator's power (imperium) was conferred upon citizens, almost always private citizens, by the constitutional form of lex curiata, and the most common and most general function he had was to be the dictatura rei gerundae causa, literally, "the dictatorship for getting things done."
For instance, early in Augustine's career he explicitly regarded such a power as just: "would it not also be right, provided some honest man of great ability was found at the time, to strip these [corrupt] people of the power to elect public officials and to subject them to the rule of a few good men, or even to that of one man?" (DLA 1.6.14). Augustine's recognition of this power is seen in his observation that Cincinnatus was entrusted with Rome's security because of his extreme poverty (Ep. 104; CD 3.17, 5.18). In the case of Hortensius, he notes that instituting a dictator was a "measure commonly adopted in times of gravest peril" (CD 3.17). Thus a Roman, upon reading the above passage, would have heard the gerens publicae potestatis as "the bearer of the public power." He would have understood it as the power conferred to a virtuous human being who would be called in on a particular occasion to save the republic.
Indeed, Augustine's term persona plays a central role in his theory of virtue; one's personhood is realized only when one is fully conscious of oneself as the image of God. The term persona means, literally, "sound through," and derives from the masks used in Etruscan religious rites, possibly related to the worship of Persephone.29 In legal terminology, it signifies the fundamental category of a bearer of rights.30 Augustine uses it and its verbal form to signify proclamation and related activities: "For all things signified seem somehow to sustain the persona of the things that they signify" (CD 18.48).31 He continues:
"[T]hus it is said by the Apostle, 'The rock was Christ,' since the rock of which this was said at any rate (utique) signified Christ" (ibid.). Persona as the primary signifier is also the meaning of the title given by a later editor to a chapter on the prophecies of Hannah, who is said to personify the Church (persona gerens ecclesiam) (CD 17.4).
The language of persona as gerens is identical to Augustine's description above of a persona gerens publicae potestatis (CD 1.21). Cicero, also distinguishing between virtue and office, used persona similarly. Cicero signifies this representative power when he proclaims in his speech against consuls Lucius Piso and Lucius Philippus: "O immortal gods! what a task it is to sustain the person of a leader in the republic!"32 In his speech against Marcus Lucullus and Publius Servilius, from whose clutches and jaws (manibus ac faucibus) he states that he himself snatched (eripui) the republic, Cicero argues that they would have faltered before the solemn pronouncements of the "men who by their dignity upheld the persona of the Roman people."33
This way of speaking of persona was reflected in Roman understandings of the emperor. As Charles Cochrane observes, the emperor "emerged as the supreme embodiment of Roman virtue, speaking and acting not merely for but also as the sovereign people whom he professed to 'represent.' "34 Cicero understood the human being "bearing the public persona" to earn his role by his dignity or virtue and by his ability to represent the public good. Therefore, he did not restrict the powers of the persona to the office of the emperor, as his reference to himself saving Rome indicates.35
This meaning of persona, which includes but transcends its legal meaning, is consistent with Augustine's usage of potestas, which is included in his definition of the persona gerens publicae potestatis. Potestas was a Roman republican legal term with a broad meaning covering the person who holds either physical ability (facultas) or right (ius) or both. According to Berger, "it generally indicates the power of a magistrate whether he is vested with imperium or not."
Since imperium was the official power of the higher magistrates under the republic and of the emperor under the empire, this means that one could have potestas to act in the public good without necessarily holding office. Publica is a general term that is not reducible to legalistic structure. As a Roman jurisprudential term, publicus meant "in the interest of the Roman people," which, as we have seen, extended to the work of the dictator, and opposes that which is privatus.
Augustine uses publicus in a wider sense when he speaks of God's public law (leges publicae), which opposes an individual's private law (leges privatum) that constitutes rebellion against God (83Q 79.1; see also CD 1.17). Further, Augustine's metaphor of the hand that holds the sword, and his reference to criminals in the passage under consideration, invokes the Roman legal concept of the ius gladii, the power to punish criminals, which the emperor alone held (though he could delegate it).35 Augustine shifts this to include also people without offices when he states that this power is given to the person (ad personam) commanded by a law or by God (CD 1.21).
These considerations indicate that the persona gerens publicae potestatis includes but is not restricted to bearers of political offices. Augustine's understanding of the component words signifies a more general meaning than the specifically legal, and indicates that Augustine would also include a virtuous individual acting as a dictator.
Having established that the one who serves as the sword for another may include someone who is not a political officeholder, we turn to consider the grounds of rebellion. Rebellion is just when rulers force the citizens to commit unjust or impious deeds, or when they fail to provide for their citizens' material well-being:
"As for this mortal life, which ends after a few days' course, what does it matter under whose rule a man lives, being so soon to die, provided that the rulers do not force him to commit impious and unjust acts (si illi qui imperant ad impia et iniqua non cogant)?" (CD 5.17).
This passage is often cited as an example of Augustine's political passivism and otherworldliness because it seems to diminish the importance of mortal life.37 However, it only compares mortal life to the infinite good of immortal life, and does not deny that mortal and political life possess their own goods. Furthermore, as Burnell observes, the passage is written in the subjunctive, which indicates that Augustine treats this problem as hypothetical. Contrary to advocating passivism to tyranny, Augustine leaves grounds for resistance against unjust rulers who force impious and unjust acts. An examination of related texts specifies what kind of acts entail, and necessitate, rebellion.
Augustine's violent language in this passage contrasts with his admonitions, referred to above, that Christians should welcome martyrdom when persecuted:
[T]he heavenly city . . . knew only one God to be worshiped and believed with faithful piety that He is to be served with that service which in Greek is called latreia, and should be rendered only to God. Because of this, it has come to pass that the heavenly city could not have common laws of religion (religionis leges . . . communes) with the earthly city, and on this point must dissent and become a tiresome burden (dissentire haberet necesse atque oneri esse) to those who thought differently, and must undergo their anger and hatred and persecutions, except that at length it repelled the hostile intent of its adversaries with fear of its own numbers and with evidence of the ever-present divine aid (nisi cum animos adverantium aliquando terrore suae multitudinis et semper divino adiutorio propulsaret). (CD 19.17)
This violent language contrasts with the message of the passage, in which Augustine calls for the oppressed to suffer persecutions by a tyrant who forces them to worship falsely, up to the point where their numbers and "evidence of divine aid" (explained below) "repel" the tyrant. This passage is consistent with the one seen above where Augustine advocates martyrdom to shame tyrants into changing laws (CD 8.19), since their being repelled may take the form of feelings of shame at seeing a major part of his population rejecting his rule.38 However, this passage comes closer to allowing rebellion than either CD 8.19 or his Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, where Augustine claims that martyrs will be praised by their oppressors.
In the passage under consideration here, martyrs do not actively rebel, but their martyrdom can make it exceedingly difficult for a tyrant to govern a country. But is this merely to beg the question? Is Augustine using martyrdom merely to provoke the tyrant to create more martyrs (as the Donatists tried to provoke Roman authorities to do to them)? Do martyrdoms not further provoke violent resistance by non-Christians not bound by scriptural injunctions? Augustine does not appear to consider these questions, but his argument for martyrdom seems to create the conditions in which rebellion constitutes a threat to political rule. If he is indeed making this argument, and this is doubtful, then he would have martyrs treat non-Christians instrumentally by having them do their political bidding.
Augustine elsewhere allows more explicitly for rebellion. He treats Cacus, the monster in Virgil's Aeneid as a political analogy (CD 19.12).39 That this is an analogy of the drama of a rebelling body politic can be seen from the many political terms Augustine uses to describe Cacus's lonely existence in his kingdom (regnum), his cave. The analogy exemplifies a community in stasis, as images of rebellion and civil war abound in the passage. Cacus's internal strife symbolizes revolution by a population lacking material necessities for living, and as the result of destroyed political goods such as comity and friendship. Augustine introduces Cacus (whose name is derived from the Greek "evil [kakos]") to show that even the most savage and unsociable being strives for its own peace:
"[A]ll that he desired was peace unmolested by any man's violence or fear of it. In a word, he longed to be at peace with his own body; and so far as he succeeded in this, all was well with him." However, his "mortality" rebelled against its ruler, "and in order to pacify with all possible speed his mortal nature when it rebelled against him through its impoverishment, and incited hunger to wage rebellion and sedition that aimed to sever and eject his soul from his body, he ravished, slew and devoured" (CD 19.12).40
The organizing principle, reason, was ejected by the body's parts. Augustine adds:
And yet, cruel and savage though he was, he was providing by his cruelly and savagery for the peace of his life and safety; so if he had been willing to keep the peace with other men as he was content to keep it in his cave and with himself, he would not be called bad or a monster or a semi-man. Or if the ugliness of his body and his belching of murky flames frightened off human companions, perhaps it was not through lust for harm but through the necessity of keeping alive (sed vivendi necessitate) that he was fierce, (ibid.)
Burnell argues that "the whole sequence of events . . . originates in necessities involved in staying alive (vivendi necessitate)."41
Rebellion is justified and necessary when the people are prevented from securing their mortal needs. As the extreme nature of the example indicates, they would have to be facing massive oppression and flagrant injustices.
Cacus's mortal problems were actually the result of his being unsociable: "[I]f he had been willing to keep the peace with other men as he was content to keep it in his cave and with himself, he would not be called bad or a monster or a semi-man." Augustine introduces Cacus as having "no wife to exchange fond words with him, no little children to play with, none to command when they were bigger, no friends to give him the enjoyment of conversation (conloquio) . . . although he gave to none, but took what he chose from anyone he chose whenever he could" (CD 19.12).
Rebellion of the parts against Cacus's body politic was symptomatic of his deeper rebellion against his social nature that, at the very least, would have helped him to satisfy his mortal needs more efficiently. His lusts, savagery, and desires preceded the hunger of his mortality. This example indicates that Augustine thought rebellion justified and necessary when a tyrant destroys political and social life in such a way that civil friendships and associations are seriously prevented from developing. His description of Cacus also reflects historical examples of revolution where the desperate citizenry finally rebel when they become deprived of their mortal needs after having long suffered the destruction of political life by their rulers.
Just rebellion requires "fear of [a people's] own numbers and . . . evidence of the ever-present divine aid" (CD 19.17). The first condition indicates that resistance must be sufficiently widespread and must possess the means to constitute a threat. This means that in addition to a just cause, rebellion must have sufficiently widespread support to have an effective claim to represent the common good. Large numbers would constitute a threat to a tyrant's grip on power.
The paradigmatic case of large numbers of people with divine aid resisting a tyrant is Israel's situation in Egypt. The "Egyptians marveled at the great increase of that people, and feared it (terrerent)" despite the Egyptians' policy of killing every male child (CD 16.43; Exod. 1.7). The Israelites fled Egypt rather than rebel, but they nevertheless terrified the Egyptian powers. As with the discussion of martyrdom above, there is little difference between threatening the authority of political power and actively rebelling against it. Conversely, Augustine's requirement for large numbers indicates that escape from tyranny and then martyrdom are required when small numbers are involved. 
[This is the last of 3 parts. Part 1 may be read HERE.]
NOTES
(for fuller citations see the bibliography in Professor von Heyking's book)
29. Mary T. Clark, "Augustine on Person: Divine and Human," 100-107. For example, Augustine points out that Adam and Eve, each of whom carried their own persons (personam suam quisque portabat), were fully self-conscious of themselves as images of God (DT 12.12.18). See also Augustine, "Reply to Faustus the Manichaean," in Writings against the Manichaeans and against the Donatists, 23.8.
30. Gaius, The "Institutes" Gaius, ed. Francis de Zulueta, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946-1953), 1.8-9; Justinian, Justinian's "Institutes," 1.3. Barry Nicholas, An Introduction to Roman Law, 60. See also A. Berger, "Encyclopedic Dictionary," 628-29.
31. [CD as used here stands for De Civitate Dei; in English: The City of God—ed] "Quoniam omnia significantia videntur quodam modo earum rerum quas significant sustinere personas." The term persona is carried over from the theater where it signifies the actors' masks (CD 6.7). He uses it also to signify proclaiming, to signify the Word of God through various prophets or testimonies (CD 2.2, 2.28, 17.4, 20.20, 21.14, 22.8): Virgil poetically sketching the person of Christ (CD 10.27); the voice of nature proclaiming its truth (CD 18.2); what books generally report (CD 18.8); what pagan sacrilegious songs resound (CD 6.6); and dramatic voice, as when he speaks of Cicero speaking in another's person (CD 5.9; see also CD 11.15, 17.12, 17.18).
32. "O di immortales! quam magnum est personam in re publica tueri principis!" (Cicero, Philippics 8.29). He also calls them "first men of the city (principes civitatis)" (8.28).
33. "|Q]ui sua dignitate personam populi Romani" (Cicero, De Domo Sua, in Pro Archia. Post Reditum in Senatu. Post Reditum Ad Quirites. De Domo Sua. De Haruspicum Responsis. Pro cm. Plancio, trans. N. H. Watts [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923], 52.133).
34. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 127.
35. Cicero makes a similar statement in De Officiis concerning the human being dedicated to the public good, although he does not use the term persona: "But those whom nature has endowed with the capacity of administering affairs (rerum gerendarum) should put aside all hesitation, enter the race for public office and take a hand in directing the republic (gerenda res publica)" (1.21.72; see also 1.25.85). Cicero presents Scipio in De Re Publica as the model statesman whose virtue makes his soul the source of justice in the polity (see Walter Nicgorski, "Cicero's Focus: From the Best Regime to the Model Statesman," 242-43).
36. A. Berger, "Encyclopedic Dictionary," 640 (potestas), 494 (imperium), 661 (publicus), 529 (ius gladii) (see also Hp. 153.6.16).
37. For example, see Markus, Saeculum, 70-71. For the opposite view, see Burnell, "Status of Politics," 20.
38. As seen in Chapter 3, Nero lacked all shame (CD 5.19).
39. Virgil, The Aeneid 8.190-305. See Burnell, "Problem of Service," 186-88.
40. "|E]t ut suam mortalitatem adversum se ex indigentia rebellantem ac seditionem famis ad dissociandam atque excludendam de corpore animam concitantem quanta posset festinatione pacaret, rapiebat necabat vorabat."
41. Burnell, "Problem of Service," 187.
