The King Never Dies(The King's Two Bodies...)

자료: http://books.google.co.kr/books?id=8ItLMTU38rEC,

※ 도서정보:

- The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology

- (공)저: Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, William C. Jordan

- Edition: 7, reprint, illustrated

- 출판사: Princeton University Press, 1997

※ Abstract:

In 1957 Ernst Kantorowicz published a book that would be the guide for generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. In The King's Two Bodies, Kantorowicz traces the historical problem posed by the "King's two bodies"--the body politic and the body natural--back to the Middle Ages and demonstrates, by placing the concept in its proper setting of medieval thought and political theory, how the early-modern Western monarchies gradually began to develop a "political theology." The king's natural body has physical attributes, suffers, and dies, naturally, as do all humans; but the king's other body, the spiritual body, transcends the earthly and serves as a symbol of his office as majesty with the divine right to rule. The notion of the two bodies allowed for the continuity of monarchy even when the monarch died, as summed up in the formulation "The king is dead. Long live the king." Bringing together liturgical works, images, and polemical material,The King's Two Bodiesexplores the long Christian past behind this "political theology." It provides a subtle history of how commonwealths developed symbolic means for establishing their sovereignty and, with such means, began to establish early forms of the nation-state. Kantorowicz fled Nazi Germany in 1938, after refusing to sign a Nazi loyalty oath, and settled in the United States. While teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, he once again refused to sign an oath of allegiance, this one designed to identify Communist Party sympathizers. He resigned as a result of the controversy and moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he remained for the rest of his life, and where he wrote The King's Two Bodies.

※ Memo: (out of Chapter 7. The King Never Dies)

자료: Google books

...

By interpreting the People as an universitas "which never dies" the jurisprudents had arrived at the concept of a perpetuity of both the whole body politic (head and members together) and the constituent members alone. The perpetuity, however, of the "head" alone was of equal great importance, since the head would usually appear as the responsible part and its absence might render the body corporate incomplete or incapable of action. The perpetuation of the head, therefore, created a new set of problems and led to new ficttions.

In the case of the ecclesiastical ^collegia^ the solution was as old as it was--at least, theoretically--simple: on the death of a prelate or other dignitary the property of the individual church as well as the dignity of prelate or abbot were said to lapse either to the hierarchical superior or to the Church universal or to the head of the Church, that is, to Christ or the vicar of Christ.[1] In the last analysis, therefore, Christ would have functioned during the interval, so to speak, as ^interrex^. This was how Innocent IV saw the problem: "Possession and property [of a church...remain] with Christ who lives in eternity, or with the Church--universal or individual--which never dies and is never non-existent."[2] In other words, Church property lapsed to some perpetual entity--either to the eternal head of the Church or to the immortal and "never non-existent" Church itself.

Within the realm of practical law and legal procedure, however, things were more difficult than in theory: it was not feasible that the divine incumbent of vacant dignity (or his vicar on earth) should be summoned, or be held responsible, or be penalized. Hence practical difficulties arose concerning the continuity of the head of a corporate body. Not only did legists and canonists run into trouble resulting in solutions such as the concept of the ^corpora separata^ whereby the head, the members, and the head and members together each formed a separate body and corporate unit,[3] but also the Common Law jurists found the problem of the continuity of the head difficult to solve and often perplexing. The English ^Year books^, especially in the fifteenth century, reflect very clearly the predicaments of the royal judges who were quite willing to accept the corporational doctrine and terminology with regard to the incorporated members, but were far less willing to conceive also of a corporational character of the "head alone." Chief Justice Brian, for example, in a case of the City of Norwich heard in 1482, produced the arguments: "If the mayor dies, the corporation becomes incomplete; and until the community appoints another mayor the corporation is incapacitated."[4] The death of the mayor thus created an interrognum, which rendered the body politic of Norwich incomplete and unfit for legal action ^qua^ corporation. On the other hand, a great jurists such as Littleton, as well as some of his colleagues on the bench, felt very strongly that there was a fundamental structural difference between the body corporate and its head. When, on one occasion, a plaitiff talked about a chapter or commonality "and its successors," Justice Choke, supported by Littleton, declared quite correctly:

The chapter can have no predecessor or successor, because the chapter is perpetual, and every one is in being, and cannot die, any more than a convent or commonality; thus the chapter which was, and the chapter which is existing at present, are the same chapter, and not different: thus the same chapter cannot be a predecessor or successor to itself.[5]

Contrariwise, the judges very naturally all agreed that a dean or mayor, being a mere individual, could and did have predecessors and successors. That is, they were very far from admitting the identity of predecessor and successor, or from applying to those officers, for example, the ^aeternitas^ which Roman Law attributed to the ^princeps^ and which Bartolus appropriately corrected by interpreting it as "the sempiternity of the emperor which, wich regard to his office, ought not have an end."[8] In other words, while one adopted very willingly and without hesitation the content and terminology of the romano-canonical doctrines concerning the ^universitas^ "which never dies," [T] one felt very clearly that the head could and did die, but realized also that the continuity of the "complete" corporation depended on the continuity of the head as well, a continuity vested successively in single persons.

It is obvious that a similar incompleteness with resulting incapacitation of the whole body politic of the ^regnum^ would have been almost intolerable. Interregna, whether long or short, had been a danger even in earlier times; they fitted badly into an age which had developed a relatively complicated machinery of state administration, as was the case in the later Middle Ages. It is noteworthy that the remedies introduced to neutralize the dangers of interregna and to secure the continuity of the royal head began to take shape far earlier in practice than in theory. The theories concerning the king's dynastic continuity, for example, served rather to explain and articulate existing customs than to create new ones, although admittedly it would often be difficult to decide accurately at what stage a developing practice may have been influenced also by the doctrines of jurists.

The perpetuity of the head of the realm and the concept of a rex qui nunquam moritur, a "king that never dies," depended mainly on the interplay of three factors: the perpetuity of the Dynasty, the corporate character of the Crown, and the immortality of the royal Dignity. Those three factors coincided vaguely with the uniterrupted line of royal bodies natural, with the permanency of the body politic represented by the head together with the members, and with the immortality of the office, that is, of the head alone. It has to be stressed, however, that those three components were not always clearly distinguished; they were often interchangeably referred to, and the lack of clarity and discrimination concerning the point of reference was particularly great in late medieval England where finally the jurists arrived at the strange solutions reflected by Plowden.

...

[T] Bracton, it should be stressed, had a sounder perception of the essence of the corporation, its head and its members; ...