Thomism and medieval Christianity
Thomism and medieval Christianity
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| Freedom of Religion | Philosophical Origins | Freedom of religion, as one understands it today, is a relatively modern concept that arose from the work of Enlightenment philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, despite its relative modernity, theoretical arguments related to freedom of religion in its most simplified sense (i.e., the right to accept or deny faith in any sense) have existed for centuries. Medieval Europeans did not enjoy freedom in choosing or refusing religion, as ecclesiastical structures were employed and amended to bolster political systems. Symbiotic relationships between church and state were a key characteristic of Medieval Europe and were seen to be a natural continuation of their respective roles in society. In analyzing the extent to which freedom of religion was respected or restricted in the Medieval period, one cannot expect to find evidence for the clear pro or contra argument in texts and sources. One can, however, apply modern logic and understanding of what freedom of religion constitutes to theoretically comprehend how Medieval theologians would have viewed and treated freedom of religion. By analyzing the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively, one can see the theoretical beginnings of freedom of religion as a natural right to be enjoyed by all peoples.
Thomism refers to the teachings and beliefs of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a prominent Catholic theologian and philosopher whose works were heavily influenced by classical Greek and Roman thought. Much of Thomas’ work is based on a reconciliation of faith and reason to obtain true knowledge of the world and, if employed properly, of God. Freedom of religion was a nonexistent concept during the period Aquinas lived through. Despite this, one can see that spiritual arguments of the 13th century were focused on personal interpretation versus the organizational doctrine of Christianity. His magnum opus, Summa Theologica, is a systematic theological tome of what Aquinas believed to be the sum of all known learning. He employs Aristotelian logic processes to explain the relationship between God and man and how man can use faith and reason to understand God's natural world and workings. It is important to note that while Aquinas forms his arguments for a Christian audience, he does offer insight into broader faith-centered topics, like how to define heresy and man’s right to a free conscience. To Aquinas, heresy was something that only Christians could commit, as “heresy is the species of unbelief that belongs to those who profess the Faith of Christ but corrupt its dogmas” (Summa Theologica II-II, q. 11, a. 1). Those who are not Christian cannot be heretics, based on the definition of heresy being inherent to the Christian faith. Aquinas explains further that “it is irrelevant to the corruption of the Christian Faith if someone holds a false opinion in matters that do not belong to the Faith, e.g., in geometrical matters or others of this sort, which cannot in any way pertain to the Faith. Rather, it is relevant only when someone has a false opinion with respect to the things that belong to the Faith” (ST II-II, q. 11, a. 2). Therefore, through omission, Aquinas acknowledges that peoples of other faiths are not contrary (or heretical) to Christianity, but rather believers of something else entirely. This is not to be confused with unbelief, which according to Aquinas, is a sin since that implies unbelievers are completely “without faith” (ST II-II, q. 10, a. 1). If we can infer from the Summa that only Christians are capable of heresy, where does that leave Thomist views of freedom of religion? As established earlier, freedom of religion in our modern sense was not understood in the same way by Medieval Europeans. However, it is important to establish that Aquinas believed in a moral order that “is prior to and superior to the legal order; and this moral order is what he calls the ‘natural law’" (Thiry, 174). Humans can't act contrary to this human or natural law, as Aquinas “conceived of human beings as… possessing natural liberty in terms of self-mastery, or natural dominium” (Cornish, 559). In synthesizing Aquinas’ arguments, he “contended that all human beings, Christian or not, had a moral obligation to follow even an erroneous conscience. This principle applied to everyone never previously exposed to the Christian message… [however] it did not apply… to Christian defectors—heretics and apostates—who… should be punished” (Little). Therefore, we can conclude that while not a proponent of freedom of religion per se, Saint Thomas Aquinas did believe in the idea of a free conscience that man was obliged to follow, so long as he was not committing Christian heresy or living with an absence of faith. Several decades after Aquinas’ death and prompted by the actions of the insurgent French King Philip, Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull, Unam Sanctam, or “One Holy.” In the theoretical context of the extent of freedom of religion in Medieval Europe, this declaration put square limitations on the operational ability of political capabilities when challenged by spiritual controls. While the Unam Sanctam changed little for the average European Christian, it marks a turning point in the way in which organized religion interacted with temporal structures. Boniface explained that: "We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords‘ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard ‘[Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest" (Papal Encyclicals Online). Here for the first time in Christian history, the pope ordained that the political and temporal “sword” should be squarely subordinated and at the mercy of the Catholic church. In concluding his bull, Boniface stated, "Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff" (Papal Encyclicals Online). Every human creature, regardless of race, creed, location, or language, was now to be governed by the spiritual (and political through subjugation) sword of the pope in Rome. While this bull was issued after Thomas Aquinas lived, this document would prove to be an instrumental point of contention for neo-Thomists in the late-Medieval period when the question of freedom of religion ceased to be purely theoretical and began to have practical implications due to the colonization of the New World.
Drawing on Thomist beliefs in freedom of conscience and the superiority of human (or natural) law to temporal powers, Vitoria was a staunch advocate for respecting the inherent humanity of those that the Spanish encountered in the New World. Vitoria “treated [the] law as made by ‘reason and enlightenment’, not just the will. Natural law, derived from eternal law by reason, was binding on all humanity; its principles applied to mutable situations and different peoples. God was the indirect cause of human laws, which were binding on the conscience of individuals” (Izbicki et al., 2019). So, despite the different faiths of the Spaniards and indigenous Americans, human law was omnirelevant in neo-Thomist philosophy. The second part of Vitoria’s theoretical argument focuses on the limitations of the Pope as the head of Christendom and the spiritual and temporal controls available to him. Vitoria’s arguments were set directly against what was laid out in the Unam Sanctum of 1302; he argued that the Pope did not enjoy infallible temporal and spiritual power over non-Christians. Vitoria was keen to point out that “…the Pope 'has no temporal power over the Indians or over other unbelievers’” … because “Christ had no temporal power, and so neither can his representative [i.e., the Pope] on earth’” (Ruston, 11). Unlike the two-sword metaphor used to explain the powers available to the Pope in the early 14th century, Vitoria draws the line to exclude “unbelievers” and removes them from the Pope’s jurisdiction. Here again, we see the vital importance of man’s free conscience and the role of natural law in rudimentary accounts of freedom of religion. However, Vitoria did not believe that temporal power was superior to spiritual, just that Christian laws from the Pope did not bind all humanity equally (Izbicki et al., 2019). Vitoria was a Christian and a contemporary of Saint Thomas Aquinas by two and a half centuries. Still, he was able to remove personal religiosity from his political and social opinions in a way that did not become conventional until much later in history. Vitoria took Thomist beliefs of human law and free will one step further than Aquinas in his practical arguments related to the protections indigenous Americans should enjoy in the face of the Spanish conquistadors exploring the New World. The arguments presented by Saint Thomas and Francisco de Vitoria have surprisingly modern applications in examining their theoretical applications to contemporary understandings of human rights and freedoms. As expressed earlier, because it would be impossible to draw a straight conclusion to support or contradict how they viewed freedom of religion within the social, political, and religious climates of Medieval Europe, we must analyze their works from a theoretical perspective. Suppose we can take the (neo-)Thomist emphases on the importance of free conscience as the primary basis of freedom of religion and man’s right to have a clear conscience. In that case, we can conclude “that when a government seeks to delimit the range of free behavior so that religious beliefs and practices regarding God are excluded or suppressed, the state necessarily acts against the very structure of deliberative human freedom itself, with respect to both its deepest initial inclinations and its ultimate transcendent horizon" (White, 1159). While Thomas and Vitoria would not have shared our contemporary understanding of freedom of religion, their appreciation for the necessity of free conscience over that of ecclesiastical or political restrictions translates well to modern arguments for freedom of religion as a natural and inalienable right to be enjoyed by everyone. REFERENCES Aquinas, Thomas. New English Translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Summa Theologica). Translated by Alfred Freddoso. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2023. https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm. Cornish, Paul J. “Marriage, Slavery, and Natural Rights in the Political Thought of Aquinas.” The Review of Politics 60, no. 3 (1998): 545–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1407988. Gundacker, Jay, and Noah Rosenblum. “Historical Context of Thomas Aquinas.” Historical Context of Thomas Aquinas; The Core Curriculum. Accessed June 20, 2023. https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/historical-context-thomas-aquinas. Izbicki, Thomas and Matthias Kaufmann, "School of Salamanca", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/school-salamanca/>. Keys, Mary M. “Aquinas’s Two Pedagogies: A Reconsideration of the Relation between Law and Moral Virtue.” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 3 (2001): 519–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/2669236. Little, David. “Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Medieval Period (476 – 1453 CE).” Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Accessed June 20, 2023. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/christianity-and-religious-freedom-in-the-medieval-period-476-1453-ce. O’Neill, Taylor Patrick. “Self-Destruction and the Sin of Heresy.” Church Life Journal, November 26, 2020. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/to-choose-where-there-is-no-choice-self-destruction-and-the-sin-of-heresy/. Pagden, Anthony. “Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe’s Imperial Legacy.” Political Theory 31, no. 2 (2003): 171–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3595699. Pope Boniface VIII. “Unam Sanctam (1302).” Unam Sanctam One God, One Faith, One Spiritual Authority, April 27, 2017. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm. Ruston, Roger. “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216-1999: IV—Francisco Vitoria: The Rights of Enemies and Strangers.” New Blackfriars 80, no. 935 (1999): 4–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43250200. Sarmiento, Edward. “HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE THOUGHT OF VITORIA.” Blackfriars 27, no. 319 (1946): 378–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43701441. Thiry, L. “The Ethical Theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Interpretations and Misinterpretations.” The Journal of Religion 50, no. 2 (1970): 169–85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1201784. White, Thomas Joseph. “The Right to Religious Freedom: Thomistic Principles of Nature and Grace.” Nova et Vetera 13, no. 4 (2015): 1149–84. https://www.academia.edu/27787560/The_Right_to_Religious_Freedom_Thomistic_Principles_of_Nature_and_Grace. |