Medieval Political Philosophy - John of Paris

John of Paris, also called John the Deaf or John Quidort, French Jean de Paris, Jean le Sourd, or Jean Quidort, medieval Latin Johannes de Soardis (born c. 1255, Paris, France—died Sept. 22, 1306, Bordeaux, Gascony [France]) Dominican monk, philosopher, and theologian who advanced important ideas concerning papal authority and the separation of church and state and who held controversial views on the nature of the Eucharist.

A lecturer at the University of Paris and the author of several works defending the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas, he was condemned in 1286 for some of his theological propositions but cleared himself by further explanation.

In De potestate regia et papali (c. 1302; “On Royal and Papal Powers”), he held that church and state both derived power from God but were independent of each other, the church serving spiritual ends and the state serving secular ends. The pope could intervene in secular matters only if the moral or theological order was involved. John also held that since the pope was elected by men, he could be removed by men for good reason. De potestate, directed against the extreme papal claims of Pope Boniface VIII, was a valuable contribution to theology.

In his eucharistic doctrines expressed in Determinatio (1304), John suggested an alternative to transubstantiation, namely, the proposition that the Person of Christ somehow enters into a kind of hypostatic, or essential, union with the material elements. John’s heterodoxy was censured, and he was sentenced to perpetual silence; he died before his appeal to Pope Clement V could be decided.

John of Paris reasserts the traditional distinction between ownership and rulership. The fact that a ruler adjudicates property disputes does not make him supreme owner. A community (a state, or the Church, or particular communities) acquires property only from individuals, and the head of the community is the administrator of the community's property, not its owner. This is true also of the Pope, who does not have unrestricted power over Church property, still less over the properties of lay people (pp. 96–105).[80] John's assumption that original appropriation is by individuals, and his remark that individuals acquire property by “labour and industry” (pp. 86, 103), have led to suggestions that he anticipated Locke's theory of property. However, John indicates that individuals acquire property under human law (pp. 148, 154, 225–6) which is the view traditional among medieval theologians, following Augustine . Property is acquired under human law, but it is acquired by individuals, not directly by rulers.

As for rulership, John argues that the Pope cannot be the supreme temporal ruler because the spiritual and temporal powers should be held by different persons. John gives the traditional reasons , emphasizing the argument that the priest should be exclusively devoted to spiritual affairs (pp. 117–8). The temporal power is not established by, or in any way caused by, the spiritual power. Both come from God, but neither comes through the other. The spiritual is in some sense superior, but not as being the cause of the temporal power (pp. 93, 192). The basis of the distinction between the two powers is not subject matter or ends, but means. Each power is limited to its own appropriate means of action; the secular power uses natural means, the Church uses supernatural means (pp. 142–61). This is very much like Thomas Aquinas's picture of two powers leading mankind toward the goals of human life in ordered hierarchy, one using natural means and the other supernatural. Thomas infers from the fact that the Church is concerned with the highest end the conclusion that the Pope ought to direct the secular ruler . John explicitly rejects this line of argument. Teaching is a spiritual function, but in a household the teacher does not direct the physician. The physician exercises a higher art than the pharmacist, but, though the physician guides the pharmacist, he cannot give authoritative directions or dismiss the pharmacist. Such officials in a great household do not direct one another, but are all under the direction of the head of the family. Similarly both Pope and prince derive their authority from God, who sets the limits of their power, and he has not subordinated one to the other (pp. 182, 184–6, 93).