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The Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos: A Chapter in the Struggle for Religious Freedom in France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
One of the most significant documents in the literature of the Continental Reformation is that bearing the title The Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants. Its significance rests upon a basis of historical importance far exceeding that of its inclusion in the body of Huguenot writings which illumines the religious life of sixteenth and seventeenth century France. It is important because, as Mr. Harold Laski indicates, it is “a brilliant summary of ideas already adumbrated by the Huguenot party,” and it “surpassed all other essays of the time in the vigor and lucidity with which it restates these ideas.” It is a work which is regarded as embodying the best Huguenot thinking, and it records a memorable protest against tyranny that has renewed poignancy at every crisis in the age-long struggle for human freedom. It asked, and in its own fashion answered, questions having wide political significance because of the inextricable union of political with religious problems of the time.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1940
References
1 See Laski's Introduction in his reprint of Languet, A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants (London, 1924)Google Scholar. (This is reprinted from the translation published in London by Robert Baldwin in 1689.)
2 The literary history of this document is a remarkable one and bears convincing witness to the importance attached to it in its own time and at frequent intervals in subsequent history. Supplementing the usual encyclopaedia articles, an excellent discussion of this subject is found in Laski's valuable Introduction and in the Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster.
3 Foster, Herbert D., Collected Papers (privately printed, 1929).Google Scholar
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12 No doubt a theocracy was intended, but this is not a practical form of government, since the sovereignty of God must be administered by human agents.
13 E. g., Juan de Mariana in De Rege et Regis Institutione (1599)Google Scholar where the argument for popular sovereignty is carried much farther than in Protestant writing, with a view to limiting the state to human authority.
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25 Ibid.