Book contents
- Front Matter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Translations, references, and orthography
- Introduction
- 1 The character of the Society of Jesus
- 2 The Society's organisational ideas
- 3 The Society and political matters
- 4 The Church, the Society, and heresy
- 5 The confrontation with reason of state
- 6 Reason of state and religious uniformity
- 7 Jesuit reason of state and fides
- 8 Reason of state, prudence, and the academic curriculum
- 9 The theory of political authority
- 10 Limited government, compacts, and states of nature
- 11 The theory of law
- 12 The common good and individual rights
- 13 Tyrannicide, the Oath of Allegiance controversy, and the assassination of Henri IV
- 14 The papal potestas indirecta
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
5 - The confrontation with reason of state
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Front Matter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Translations, references, and orthography
- Introduction
- 1 The character of the Society of Jesus
- 2 The Society's organisational ideas
- 3 The Society and political matters
- 4 The Church, the Society, and heresy
- 5 The confrontation with reason of state
- 6 Reason of state and religious uniformity
- 7 Jesuit reason of state and fides
- 8 Reason of state, prudence, and the academic curriculum
- 9 The theory of political authority
- 10 Limited government, compacts, and states of nature
- 11 The theory of law
- 12 The common good and individual rights
- 13 Tyrannicide, the Oath of Allegiance controversy, and the assassination of Henri IV
- 14 The papal potestas indirecta
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
Summary
Reason of state seems to have become established as a term of art in the councils of princes at about the time of the Society's foundation. It had originally been an Italian coinage, but circulated readily wherever there was a vernacular equivalent for stato, that is to say in the Romance languages, in English and in Dutch, and more tardily where there was not. It was eventually rendered in colloquial Latin as ratio status. What exactly the term referred to, however, remained highly ambiguous. This was in part because both its components were themselves ambiguous. ‘Reason’ (in all the European variants for ragion and ratio) could mean ‘reflecting about’, a ground or reason for something, or a method or way of doing something, and ‘state’ meant a government or regime, or status, condition, or ‘estate’, notably the status, condition, or ‘estate’ of the prince. Reason of state could therefore mean thinking about or discussing the business of ruling, or the methods or ways of acting, or reasons for acting, that were typical of rulers or regimes. Giovanni Botero was the first to use the term as a book-title, in 1589. By that time it had come to be equated with ‘Machiavellian’ and ‘Machiavellism’, etc., already well-established terms in the vocabulary of political abuse.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jesuit Political ThoughtThe Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540–1630, pp. 84 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004