NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR: BODIN, GRÉGOIRE, LIPSIUS AND MONTAIGNE (uncorrected proofs)

NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR: BODIN, GRÉGOIRE, LIPSIUS AND MONTAIGNE Daniel Schwartz1,2 Introduction As Mikael Hörnqvist has remarked, Renaissance moral philosophy must be understood in close connection to the casuistical moral approach.3 Casuistry concerns the moral analysis of controversial cases that present reasons, both moral and prudential, supporting opposite courses of action. The job of the casuist is to carefully dissect the relevant elements of the case and propose a solution. Casuistry is dynamic, each controversy evolving along its own path. In this article I retrace the itinerary of a controversy within what we may call ‘civic casuistry’, that is, a case which concerns the duties and permissions of the citizen. The question was a commonplace among humanists: whether in a situation of civil war citizens are permitted or perhaps even required to join one of the parties, even if they did not consider any of the parties to be advancing a just cause. The occasion to discuss this case was usually furnished by a law attributed to Solon, the legendary Athenian legislator, that prescribes: ‘If someone, when the city is facing strife, does not place his arms at the disposal of either side, he shall become atimos and shall have no share in the city.’ Atimia refers to the state of being deprived of at least some of a citizen’s rights.4 Solon’s law and its implications for civic conduct were standardly addressed by Renaissance legal writers writing on sedition and other political crimes. The mainstream view among legal and political writers at that time advocated citizens’ neutrality, with only a few voices daring to challenge that view. These included Jean de Bodin, Justus Lipsius and Michel de Montaigne (the Lipsius and Montaigne partly reacting to Pierre Grégoire’s criticism of Bodin). In the fifteen year span from 1576 to 1591, each of them published works containing a discussion of partisanship with reference to Solon’s law. 1 Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Department of IR, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Email: daniel.schwartz3@mail.huji.ac.il 2 I would like to thank Yftah Elazar for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper, Alexander Yakobson for fruitful conversations about Roman civil wars and Jan Waszink for facilitating access to translations of Lipsius’ works, as well as Elizabeth Miles for her help in editing this article. 3 Mikael Hörnqvist, ‘Exempla, Prudence and Casuistry in Renaissance Political Discourse’, in (Un)masking the Realities of Power: Justus Lipsius and the Dynamics of Political Writing in Early Modern Europe, ed. Erik De Bom, Marijke Janssens, Toon Van Houdt and Jan Papy (Leiden, 2010), p. 37. 4 This literature is surveyed in Delfim F. Leão and P.J. Rhodes, The Laws of Solon (London and New York, 2015), p. 64. HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. ????. No. ?. ????????? 2 D. SCHWARTZ These discussions acquaint us with a little-studied aspect of these authors’ political thought. While they are often presented as raison d’état proponents, that general label obscures the part of their wisdom which was not solely focused on establishing optimal constitutional designs for the polis or giving advice to the prince: that of giving practical advice to the publicly spirited citizen. In addition, these discussions may be seen as belonging to an overlooked stage in the long and difficult struggle by political parties to become legitimate actors.5 While these authors decried factions and partialities as noxious, they did not think that partisanship as such was necessarily reprehensible. Finally, civil wars are still with us and citizens do often find themselves in situations structurally similar to those discussed by these authors. The advice these authors give still has relevance for thinking about the predicament of these citizens today. I Solon’s Law Modern scholars note that Solon’s law is rather puzzling.6 Influential nineteenthcentury jurist Francis Lieber shared this impression. He wrote that this is one ‘of those many laws which express a principle or theory, and may be repeated for centuries, but of which a man acquainted with the practical part of civil liberty cannot easily see the operation’.7 Cicero’s and Plutarch’s approach to this law were no less dismissive.8 Later attempts to make sense of Solon’s law followed the lead of rationales found in ancient sources, such as the Athenian Constitution.9 The most popular rationale among interpreters was Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights, where he adds a non-Solonian source of support: the Roman philosopher Favorinus of Arelate (Arles) (c. 80–160 AD). According to Gellius, Favorinus thought that the course recommended by Solon — that of taking sides — 5 On the long struggle for party legitimacy see Piero Ignazi, Party and Democracy: The Uneven Road to Party Legitimacy (Oxford, 2017). 6 See Leão and Rhodes, Laws of Solon, p. 63. 7 Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics (Philadelphia and London, 1876), Vol. 2, p. 264. 8 Cicero, Letters to Atticus, trans. E.O. Windstedt (London and Cambridge MA, 1913), Vol. 2, X. 1, p. 274; Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives, ed. Bernadotte Perrin (London and Cambridge MA, 1949), Vol. 1; Plutarch, Solon, 20.1, p. 457; Plutarch, On the Delays of Divine Vengeance, in Moralia, ed. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson (London and Cambridge MA, 1968), Vol. 7, 550c. 9 Aristotle, Athenian Constitution: Eudemian Ethics, Virtues and Vices, trans. H. Rackham (London and Cambridge MA, 1935), 8.5, p. 31; Aulus Gellius, The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, ed. John C. Rolfe (London and New York, 1927), II. 12, I, p. 156; Plutarch, Solon, 20.1, p. 457. NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 3 ought to be adopted also with brothers, or with friends, who are at odds; that is, that those who are neutral and kindly disposed towards both parties, if they have had little influence in bringing about a reconciliation because they have not made their friendly feelings evident, should then take sides, some one and some the other, and through this manifestation of devotion pave the way for restoring harmony.10 But, Favorinus continued, ‘most of the friends of both parties make a merit of abandoning the two disputants, leaving them to the mercies of ill-disposed or greedy advisers, who, animated by hatred or by avarice, add fuel to their strife and inflame their passions’.11 For Favorinus concern for one’s integrity and moral purity sometimes conflicts with one’s duties of friendship. The sixteenth century political writers surveyed below were interested in the conflict between personal integrity and moral purity on the one hand and one’s duty towards the political community on the other. II Bodin: The Strategic Partisan as the Tamer of the Mad Crowd Jean Bodin devoted a chapter of his Six Livres de la République, published in 1576, to ‘of civil wars and sedition’.12 After a lengthy moral condemnation of seccessiones ac discordias, and factions in general, Bodin addresses Solon’s law against neutrality which, in his interpretation, forces citizens to pick a side even if they believe both factions to be bad and vicious.13 Bodin primarily addresses the law qua law, that is, not in terms of its being a codification of pre-legal duties but in terms of the effects that the law will have on the political conduct of citizens. He begins by delimiting the circumstances in which joining a party one disagrees with, for strategic reasons alone, may make sense. First, Bodin claims, the duty of joining a faction applies only when factional strife occurs in aristocratic and democratic regimes.14 In such situations, the ruling group is split and there is no one left with sufficient power to impose order. Citizens then find themselves at the mercy of two parties. In a monarchical regime, the king (if he retains sufficient force) is capable of protecting subjects against the predations of the factions. Second, connectedly, Bodin makes it clear that the taking of sides becomes permissible or obligatory only in situations in which the factions have already 10 11 12 13 14 Gellius, Attic Nights, II. 12, I, p. 156. Ibid. Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République, lib. 4, ch. 7 (Paris, 1576), pp. 495–515. Ibid., p. 511. Ibid., pp. 496, 511. 4 D. SCHWARTZ grown beyond the point at which their suppression by the authorities is still practicable.15 Third, Bodin distinguishes between those parties that in principle one may join for strategic reasons and those one may not. One may strategically join factions ‘which do not concern the state’, by which he means parties that are opposed to each other but are not primarily interested in overthrowing the ruler. The example he gives is that of the Blues and Greens during the rule of the Byzantine emperor Justinian.16 These factions began as groups of fans of different chariot race teams, from which they adopted their colours, but they increasingly came to be associated with political and religious sympathies and social class differences. The enmity between these factions often gave rise to politically destabilizing riots. By contrast, Bodin thought, one may not join factions whose main purpose it is to overthrow the legitimate ruler. Joining factions of the former type was not considered to constitute the political offence of lèse-majesté in the legal literature of the time. As many Renaissance jurists argued, when one faction takes over the government and another faction fights against that faction, this fighting is not considered to be lèse-majesté, because the new power-owners have no maiestas.17 Bodin summarizes the reasons why many thought Solon’s law to be unjust. For one, the law runs contrary to the praiseworthy modesty of the peace-loving subject. The thought seems to be that, no longer a law-abiding citizen, the partisan engages in audacious political conduct, overconfident about his capacity to make a difference for the good. Solon’s law also does violence to citizens’ conscience by forcing them to choose one of two sides even when they believe both sides lack sufficient reason for their actions or even are evil and vicious. The law might compel citizens to perpetrate parricide or fratricide, given that a person’s father or brother may well be fighting for the other side. It can also be seen as forcing citizens to join those they believe have deviated from the true path.18 However, Bodin also points out a very important positive effect of Solon’s law: it makes warmongers pay the cost of the wars they incite. He writes that often times the more subtle and deceitful sort [of men] set the rest at dissension and debate so that they may themselves fish better in troubled waters and make a bridge for them to pass over to seize upon other men’s goods 15 Ibid. Ibid., p. 497. See Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford, 1976). 17 Tiberius Decius, Tractatus Criminalis (Venice, 1590), Vol. 2, lib. 7, p. 113B, n. 11, citing Giovanni Pietro D’Ancharano, Consilia sive iuris responsa Petri Ancharani: summa fide ac diligentia elaborata (Venice, 1565), cons. 287, p. 151 (there are pagination errors, 151 is followed by 141 and 159 is followed by 150). Angelo Arentinus, De maleficiis, cum additionibus D. Augusti Ariminensis, ‘et hai tradito la tu patria’ (Lyon, 1550), p. 402. 18 Bodin, République, lib. 4, ch. 7, p. 496. 16 NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 5 and honors, imitating therein the priests of Mars, who the ancients named ‘fire bearers’, who, having orderly performed their solemn execrations, cast fire brands between both armies standing ready ranged and so stir them up to battle but yet retired themselves in safety out of the melee and danger.19 By making everyone a potential victim of the civil war, Solon’s law disincentivizes opportunistic war instigators from inducing conflict. The law internalizes some of the externalities of individual political conduct, therefore reducing the incidence of civil wars. For Bodin it makes sense to force not only the instigators but also good and wise persons to join one of the sides. This is because, as Gellius thought, their reputation and authority may moderate a faction’s conduct.20 ‘The fools scratch each other if the wise do not get involved.’21 For this reason it is better to have good citizens within the factions than outside them. Note that Solon’s law generates its positive effect regardless of whether people join a just or an unjust side. In fact, following Bodin’s rationale, the more good citizens join the side more prone to commit injustice the better, because the good will then moderate those who are most in need of it. Bodin does not think that the ‘good and wise’ person’s duty to join one of the parties is only legal. ‘In popular regimes where the sovereignty rests on divided factions who do not recognize magistrates except insofar as they are subject to the power of the party’, it is very necessary that the ‘wiser’ enter the fray to ‘accommodate themselves to the humor of the people’. They should join one of the parties to work a moderating effect. So according to Bodin, even absent Solonian legislation, is it necessary that this sub-class of citizens enter the fray. Taking sides is not just permitted but encouraged. Bodin explains how these leading citizens should go about moderating the partisans. Bodin compares the moderating partisan to a musician who, by slowly reducing the tempo of the music, causes dancers in the grip of a frenzy to slow down. Bodin’s strategic partisan is a moderator of the mad (and perhaps maddening) crowd. He pretends initially to share in the passions of the crowd, just enough to gain their trust before he carefully works to cool them down. Note that, while on the face of it, Bodin is embracing Favorinus’ explanation of Solon’s law insofar as the goal is to moderate the people one sides with, the method is very different. While Favorinus recommended using persuasion and wise counsel to achieve this end, Bodin recommends manipulation and deception. Bodin’s own political conduct in some way exemplified his advice. In the context of the French Wars of Religion, Bodin is sometimes considered to be 19 Translation based on Richard Knolles’ translation of Bodin’s The Six Bookes of a Commonweale (London, 1606), lib. 4, ch. 7, p. 540. 20 Bodin, République, lib. 4, ch. 7, p. 507. 21 ‘[L]e fols se batront sans relasche si les sages ne s’en mesent’, ibid., p. 511. 6 D. SCHWARTZ a politique. This loose category comprised many different types of intellectuals and jurists.22 The politiques considered themselves moderates in religious terms (they were sometimes accused of being atheists) and saw it as their mission to build a cross-confessional intellectual elite that could bring about a compromise between the religious camps.23 Modern scholars regard the politiques as ‘a tiers-parti, a party of “Catholic moderates” who occupied a middle ground between militant Huguenots and intransigent Catholics’.24 Biographers of Bodin have therefore found it a puzzle that in 1589 he decided to join the radical Catholic League which fought not only against the Huguenots but also against Henry III.25 As a ligueur, Bodin demanded justice and protection for twenty-five royalist prisoners ‘who had almost been lynched by rioters’.26 These and other actions by Bodin led the ligueurs to regard him with suspicion to the extent that in 1590 he was briefly arrested and had his house searched by League officials and some of his books burned at his doorstep.27 The fact of his arrest and the burning of his books exemplifies the challenges faced by the strategic partisan in performing his delicate task: in order to be able to moderate other partisans, they must perceive him as a fellow partisan. On the other hand, his calls for restraint may gradually dent their seeing him as a fellow partisan. If you go too far in attempting to moderate your comrades, you will lose the authority that allows you to moderate them. Beyond a certain point, calls for restraint will undermine the strategic partisan’s authority and not only diminish the effectiveness of these calls but also jeopardize his position within the organization, and potentially his very life. The strategic partisan may end up executed as a traitor. III Grégoire’s Critique: The Pretension of the Strategic Partisan Bodin’s legitimation of partisanship, even if constrained to delimited circumstances, proved to be quite controversial. Not only did it go against the standard view among jurists, who saw partisanship as sedition, but also against 22 Edmond M. Beame, ‘The Politiques and the Historians’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 54 (1993), p. 356. 23 Jan Waszink in Justus Lipsius, Politica, ed., trans. and intro. Jan Waszink (Assen, 2004), Politica, pp. 40–2. Mario Salvatore Turchetti, ‘Middle Parties in France during the Wars of Religion’, in Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555–1585, ed. Philip Benedict, Guido Marnet, Henk van Nierop and Marc Venard (Amsterdam, 1999), pp. 165–84. 24 Beame, ‘The Politiques and the Historians’, p. 355. 25 Paul Lawrence Rose, ‘The Politique and the Prophet: Bodin and the Catholic League 1589–1594’, The Historical Journal, 21 (1978), p. 783. 26 Ibid., p. 787. 27 Ibid., pp. 785, 793. NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 7 the view of fellow humanists. One important critic was Pierre Grégoire (Tholosanus), a professor of law who was close to the Catholic League.28 Grégoire published his massive Twenty-Six Books on the Republic (1596) some twenty years after Bodin’s Six Books on Politics. There Grégoire attacks Bodin on the matter of civil war. His premise, taken from the large body of legal literature on political crimes, is that civil war is always seditious and detrimental to the republic.29 To emphasize the criminal nature of civil war he quotes the Roman jurist Ulpianus’ view that parties in a civil war are not legally ‘enemies’ (hostes). Combatants in a civil war should be considered common criminals, since they fight without legitimate authority. A prudent man must actually be quite stupid, Grégoire wrote, to join a faction only to become coerced by those who are moved by ‘pertinacity, obstinacy, ambition, maliciousness, rebelliousness, and fraudulency’ rather than by justice.30 These partisans cause harm to the republic while becoming accomplices in malice, foolishness and conspiracies whose evilness and audacity are increased by their joining — the more so when they join the side the cause of which is not theirs. Grégoire wrote that it is not up to private men to settle disputes or attempt reconciliations between lords contending for domination, especially if they are not subjects, vassals, clients31 or otherwise under the command of a leader of the faction. Nor is it their job to judge the aims of the factions and their justice. Because a private person lacks knowledge about the real intentions of the faction leaders, he must choose neutrality. Joining one of the sides involves bearing arms against the verdict of one’s own conscience and against one’s father or brother who may be fighting on the other side. Finally, private men will be better able to act as mediators if they refrain from taking sides. These criticisms of Bodin, published in 1596, could not have reached Montaigne and Bodin who died before. However, Grégoire voiced similar criticisms much earlier, in Syntagma Iuris Universi, published in 1582.32 There, commenting on Solon’s law, Grégoire remarks on the private man who joins a faction: This [namely, joining one of the parties] is irrational and ineffective. This person who cannot coerce [the evil people], how is it that he becomes the 28 On Grégoire see Sophie Nicholls, ‘Pierre Grégoire’, in Luc Foisneau, Dictionnaire des philosophes français du XVIIe siècle: acteurs et réseaux du savoir en France entre 1601 et 1700 (Paris, 2015), pp. 829–32. 29 Pierre Grégoire, De republica, libri sex et viginti (Lyon, 1596), Vol. 2, book 22, ch. 4, p. 382 30 Ibid., p. 383. 31 See Sharon Kettering, ‘Clientage during the French Wars of Religion’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 20 (1989), pp. 221–39. 32 Pierre Grégoire, Syntagma iuris universi (Lyon, 1582), Vol. 3, lib. 35, c. 6, n. 25, p. 642. 8 D. SCHWARTZ doer and follower of the evil people that he seeks to correct, all of a sudden becoming bad together with the multitude, he who was good? Consequently, how will his enemies [namely, those whome he joined in order to moderate them] trust him, who they see supporting diverse and opposite parties?33 The claim is that the strategic partisan deludes himself in thinking that he will have any effect on his coreligionists. Grégoire blames Bodin mainly for the absurd pretension of the private citizen who believes he can make a difference by joining one of the sides. This citizen will not gain the partisans’ trust, because his manoeuvring is too transparent to be effective. IV Lipsius: The Publicly Reluctant Partisan Two thinkers who read Bodin and developed their own thoughts on partisanship in civil war in conversation with him were Montaigne and Lipsius, who had great intellectual appreciation for each other. Montaigne discussed partisanship in the third book of his Essais, published in 1588, one year before Lipsius’ Politica (he was sent a complimentary copy).34 Lipsius and Montaigne seem to have developed their accounts of the legitimacy of partisanship independently of each other. In the sixth book of Politica, published in 1589, Justus Lipsius finds occasion to discuss how ‘a good man should conduct himself in time of civil war, whether he should join one of the sides’.35 Whether or not Lipsius came across Grégoire’s criticism, his argument for partisanship seems to have been devised to escape Grégoire’s objections. Lipsius does this, first, by restricting the duty of partisanship to men in public positions. Second, he presents the possible moderating influence these men might have on other partisans as just one among many mutually supporting reasons justifying his partisanship. Bodin’s core claim about the moderating role of the strategic partisan, the claim that drew most of Grégoire’s criticism, was peripheral to Lipsius. Lipsius had earlier discussed the correct attitude of private citizens facing ‘public evils’ resulting from civil war in one his most important works, the 33 Ibid. ‘Caeterum haec ratio nec sibi constat, nec quiquam efficit. Qui enim non potest coercere, cur se authorem et sectatorem mali, quod corrigere voluit, reddet et repente cum multitudine ex bono improbus fiet. De[h]inc, quomodo fident adversarii ei quem diversas et adversarias fovere partes vident.’ 34 Waszink in Lipsius, Politica, p. 114. I am using the edition of Montaigne’s Essais by Verdun Louis Saulnier and Pierre Villey (Paris, 1965), published alongside the original Bordeaux edition at ‘Montaigne Project’ at https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/ projects/montaigne/ 35 Lipsius, Politica, p. 699. NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 9 dialogue On Constancy.36 There he argued against fleeing one’s country in times of turmoil. However he says little about whether the citizen should actually join one of the sides. He addresses this question in Politica, opening the discussion with a pro et contra section in which he presents not only reasons for and against partisanship but also exemplars — historical figures whose deeds recommend each of these courses of action. Among the reasons against partisanship, Lipsius acknowledges that in civil wars both sides are usually in the wrong. He cites the standard quotation from Tacitus that the weapons of civil strife ‘could not be either forged or wielded with clean hands’ and refers to Sallust’s view that, under the pretence of fighting for the common good, the leaders of factions really fight to increase their own power.37 This, he says, means that the good and peaceful man will opt for inactivity because, if he takes arms, he will necessarily advance the bad ends of a faction. Not only that but, as Cicero says, the good man will then preside over the horrors and cruelty that characterize civil wars. The standard exempla of neutrality are Quintus Hortensius, who boasted of never having taken part in a civil war, and Asinius Pollio, who refused to join Octavian in the Battle of Actium. Lipsius then provides reasons and an exemplum in favour of partisanship. One reason, taken from one of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, is that ‘just as the bull follows the herd, so he [the good and wise man] must follow the group of good men, or those who are called thus’.38 He then uses Solon’s law to point to the existence of a duty of partisanship. The exemplum is Cato — who Lipsius believed to be wiser than Hercules and Ulysses — joining Pompey against Caesar. Lipsius goes on to provide his own answer to the question of whether there is a duty to join a side, which aims to reconcile the opposite views by extracting the truth that is contained in each. He does so by distinguishing between the public and the private citizen. If the good man is already active in politics and has some governing position, he says, it would be wrong for him to leave when political life becomes unstable. That person should act according to Solon’s law. ‘[H]e must do as cattle do, which, when they are dispersed, follow the herd of their own sort.’39 36 Justus Lipsius’ On Constancy, ed. John Sellars, trans. Sir John Stradling (Exeter, 2006), lib. 1, chs 7 and 8. 37 Tacitus, The Annals, trans. John Jackson (London and New York, 1931), Book 1.9, p. 260: ‘According to some filial duty and the needs of a country, which at the time had no room for law, had driven him to the weapons of civil strife — weapons which could not be either forged or wielded with clean hands.’ 38 Lipsius, Politica, p. 701, citing Cicero, Atticus, 7.7, p. 48. 39 Lipsius, Politica, p. 703. 10 D. SCHWARTZ According to Lipsius, nothing can justify the person at the helm of the ship leaving when the state is in chaos. Citing Cicero, he claims that staying at one’s post is a matter of upholding one’s honour, acting in the interest of the state, and ‘pursuing the objective of his office by his entire way of life’. The implication is that the only way for this person to stay at the helm is to take a side. There seems to be no possibility to further the common interest and the objective of his office from the sidelines. For Lipsius, the paradigmatic case of the wise and experienced man faced with the question of whether to be neutral or partial is Cicero himself. In the seventy-three letters to his friend Atticus that have survived, Cicero candidly shared his hesitation about whether to join Pompey against Caesar or to remain neutral.40 Good men and those who are reputed to be good, says Lipsius, quoting Cicero, should join those who are said to be good so as not to be perceived as disagreeing with those who are genuinely good or, as Lipsius’ editor Waszink aptly translates, they ‘should [rather] perish with those who are called good, than seem to disagree with the good’.41 Indeed, we know that Cicero grew increasingly less confident of the righteousness of Pompey’s side, suspecting that Pompey, no less than Julius Caesar, harboured despotic ambitions, and that Pompey and his followers were planning cruel reprisals even against people who remained neutral (such as Atticus, his friend). For Lipsius, neutrality is a risky option because not joining the side one is assumed to belong to tends to send the wrong signal. In a situation of civil war, a public man’s not choosing the side he is expected to join may signal lack of support for those who ‘are really good’. It is not so much that the public man is incapable of being and appearing neutral, but that this option involves a risk that he cannot afford. Lipsius concludes that the wise man should join the party reputed (by others) as good but that to do so following this rule, again quoting a letter by Cicero: ‘a wise and good citizen begins to participate in a civil war only against his will, and does not gladly seek its extremities’.42 The second clause of this sentence may be read as recommending either self-restraint or the restraint of others or both. The same ambivalence can be found in Lipsius’ exclamation: ‘If you direct your counsels towards peace, if in the very heat of war you moderate your wrath and your victory, what a man and citizen you are!’ We can read this as praising not just self-restraint but the restraint of the other partisans if we understand moderation not to refer to a personal character trait but rather to the nature of the orders given by a person in a position of 40 P.A. Brunt, ‘Cicero’s Officium in the Civil War’, Journal of Roman Studies, 76 (1986), p. 22. 41 Cicero, Atticus, 8.1, p. 101. 42 Here I am using Waszink’s translation of the passage as quoted by Lipsius. NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 11 command. Note that the phrasing seems to indicate that this moderation is supererogatory and only present in particularly praiseworthy partisans. According to Lipsius, the person who is not politically engaged or has no political experience should refrain from joining any side. A person with little political experience will not be able to give much good counsel or moderate his chosen side. Moreover, such a person has no public honour to maintain. This person should instead retire to some peaceful region — however, with the caveat that he should do so in a way that will not be construed as a sign of support for the worse of the two sides.43 Lipsius presents Atticus as an example of the political attitude that private individuals should adopt. Although he belonged to the patrician party, he did not take part in the strife, believing that those who did take part had no more control over themselves and their fate than those on stormy seas.44 Did Lipsius exemplify his approach to neutrality and partiality in his conduct during the Dutch Revolt, which he saw — along with his contemporaries — as a civil war? It is hard to tell. First, he did not fall roundly within the category of either private or political man. As Nicolette Mout shows, Lipsius presented himself as a detached scholar fleeing war in search of calm to pursue his intellectual endeavours. Yet, at the same time he involved himself in the affairs of his country by writing political letters to various nobles, letters that he did not mind becoming public.45 Lipsius fled Catholic Louvain for Lutheran Jena, eventually taking a post in calmer Calvinist Leiden where he stayed for thirteen years. However, he then returned to Louvain in the South, reconverted to Catholicism and ardently defended the cause of Philip II. In retrospect, Lipsius though about his time at Leiden as time spent ‘living with the enemy’.46 Perhaps, though, Lipsius was never really on either side. Indeed, Wasznik classes Lipsius with a group of Dutch religious and political moderates paralleling the French politiques, of whom Bodin was one.47 In the end, with his 43 Lipsius, Politica, p. 703. Ibid., p. 705, citing Cornelius Nepos’ biography of Atticus. Cornelius Nepos, Three Lives: Alcibiades, Dion, Atticus, ed. and trans. R. Roebuck (Bristol and Oak Park, 1987), 6.1, p. 42. 45 Nicolette Mout, ‘Justus Lipsius between War and Peace: His Public Letter on Spanish Foreign Policy and the Respective Merits of War, Peace or Truce (1595)’, in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alistair Duke, ed. Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer (Boston and Leiden, 2007), pp. 141–62; and James Tracy, ‘Princely Auctoritas or the Freedom of Europe: Justus Lipsius on a Netherlands Political Dilemma’, Journal of Early Modern History, 45 (2007), pp. 303–29. 46 Mout, ‘Justus Lipsius’, p. 151. 47 See Wasznik, ‘Virtuous Deception: The Politica and the Wars in the Low Countries and France, 1559–1589’, in Iustius Lipsius Europae Lumen et Columen: Proceed44 12 D. SCHWARTZ return to the Catholic South, it might be said that Lipsius followed ‘his own herd’ but that he did so unenthusiastically.48 As a politique of the Low Countries, Lipsius may have thought that his civic duty was to act as a moderating presence within the Catholic camp.49 V Montaigne Like Bodin and Lipsius, Montaigne defended the permissibility and even the duty to take sides in a civil war. However, while for Bodin the main justification of partisanship was the moderation of other partisans, Montaigne emphasized self-moderation over moderation of others. For Montaigne, what makes it permissible to join one of the sides is your capacity to conduct yourself equitably and restrainedly, rather than your ability to cause others to do so. In addition, for Montaigne the duty to take sides applies not only to public men, as Lipsius thought, but also to private men, even though the latter might be excused from discharging the duty. While Bodin and Lipsius thought that many weighty reasons militated against the permissibility of joining one of the sides in a civil war, Montaigne did not consider or present such reasons. For him, the main moral obstacle to joining one of the sides consisted in the risk of loss of moderation, the possibility of becoming infected by the fear and anger of the masses, and failing to distinguish self-interest from real just cause. Montaigne was confident, however, that the sober man would be able to avoid these risks. Montaigne’s sinewy reflection on partisanship and neutrality seems initially to favour neutrality. He declares that, ‘if necessary’, he would do as the proverbial old woman did by offering a candle to both St Michael and the dragon — that is, to be on good terms with both the good and the bad sides. He mentions Atticus, who, ‘holding to the just side and the losing side, escaped by his moderation in that universal shipwreck of the world amid so many revolutions and divisions’. Read closely, however, this passage does not praise neutrality. Montaigne’s point is that to be in a position in which one must choose sides and therefore court danger is unfortunate and is to be avoided for as long as possible. As we see in the rest of the text, sometimes the circumstances are such that taking sides is required. In such circumstances failing to take sides is reprehensible. Just after his reference to Atticus, Montaigne notes: ‘For private men like him it is easier; and in this sort of task I think one may be justified in lacking the ings of the International Colloquium, ed. G. Tournoy, J. de Landtsheer and J. Papy (Leuven, 1999), pp. 260–5. 48 Waszink in Lipsius, Politica, pp. 40–2. 49 On Lipsius’ life, ibid., pp. 15–24. NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 13 ambition to put oneself forward without being asked.’50 However, ‘to keep oneself wavering and half-and-half, to keep’s one’s allegiance motionless and without inclination in one’s country’s troubles and civil dissensions [divisions publiques], I consider neither handsome nor honorable’. Yet private persons are relatively excused if they stay neutral. ‘But not to involve oneself, for a man who has neither responsibility nor express command that pressess him, I find that more excusable (and nevertheless I am not using this excuse for myself) than to keep out of foreign wars . . .’. Indirectly referring to Solon’s law, Montaigne continues, ‘even though according to our laws, no one need be involved in them who does not want to be’. So even if there is no legal fault in the neutrality of the private person, such neutrality is at most excusable. While neutrality as to foreign affairs (presumably neutrality on the part of the head of state) could be understandable, ‘it would be a sort of treason [for a public man] to do this in our own domestic affairs, in which one must necessarily take sides by deliberate plan’.51 According to Montaigne, a public man taking sides in a civil war is capable of conducting himself in the heat of battle moderately and restrainedly (which will also often allow him to remain relatively unscathed). Montaigne gives the example of Louis Lannoy, Sire de Morvilliers, a Protestant who took charge of the defence of Rouen from Catholic forces in 1562. Morvilliers moderated the troops of the defenders.52 He eventually resigned his command in protest of a treaty between the Huguenot Prince de Condé and Queen Elizabeth that resigned Le Havre and Dieppe to the British in exchange for military support. Morvilliers’ patriotism earned him the respect of fellow French Catholics. Montaigne’s reflection on partisanship and neutrality belongs to a chapter titled ‘On the Useful and the Honorable’. His point is that honour and usefulness need not conflict. Morvilliers acted honourably by joining one of the sides and, because he acted with moderation, this path turned out well for him insofar as he lived to tell the tale. According to Montaigne, the partisan’s moderation, that is, his avoidance of hatred and anger, derives from conceiving of his duties as duties of justice ‘by reason alone’. Montaigne stresses that not everything that a man calls his ‘duty’ should be so regarded. We should especially not mistake for a duty an ‘inner bitterness and asperity that is born of private interest and passions’. Referring to seditious uprisers, he writes that ‘it is not the cause that inflames them, it is their self-interest’.53 The key to morally acceptable partisanship is 50 Montaigne, Essais, Bk. 3, ch. 1, p. 793, I am using the translation by Donald M. Frame, The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford, 1958), p. 601. 51 Ibid. 52 See Léon Duranville, Rouen: ville forte, supplément à l’Essai sur l’histoire de la Côte Sainte-Catherine et des fortifications de la ville de Rouen (Rouen, 1867), p. 43. 53 Montaigne, Essais, Bk. 3, ch. 1, p. 793. 14 D. SCHWARTZ moderation, and to be moderate one must act out of a sense of a duty of justice uncontaminated by passion. The confusion of one’s self-interest as public interest destroys moderation. Partisans on opposite sides may both act from a sense of public duty and do so moderately (as Montaigne acknowledged by using the Protestant Morvilliers as an exemplum). It is no easy question whether Montaigne exemplified his view in his own public life. There is a vast scholarly literature on Montaigne’s role in the French religious wars.54 Let us just note here that Montaigne was a moderate Catholic loyal to Henry III and that he tried to mediate between Henri of Navarre (later Henry III) and the Catholic League.55 The particulars of Montaigne’s involvement in the French Wars of Religion are beyond the scope of this paper. VI An Appreciation of the Controversy Lipsius’ and Montaigne’s views can be construed as diverging responses to Grégoire’s objection to Bodin’s view on the duty of strategic partisanship in a situation of civil war. Lipsius seems to concede to Grégoire’s charge that Bodin is too liberal in his allowance of partisanship. As a consequence, he restricts this permission to office holders (as opposed to merely ‘wise and good men’). Moreover, he also seems to concede that Bodin’s view on the moderating influence of the strategic partisan is inflated and therefore downplays the justification of partisanship based on such purported influence. Instead, Lipsius emphasizes the view that it is impossible for a public person to discharge his duty to the country from the sidelines. Montaigne does not restrict permissible partisanship to office holders alone. Instead, in a move that seems to share Grégoire’s doubts about the ability of the strategic partisan to moderate his fellow partisans, he refashions the sort of moderation that enables partisanship. It is not moderation of others but moderation in one’s own acts that makes strategic partisanship permissible. For Montaigne, this moderation depends on one’s acting out of a duty of justice. The background assumption is that in a civil war, such as the one that Montaigne lived through, it is possible for the causes of both sides to meet the standards of plausibility that would allow decent people to endorse either contrary cause in good faith. That is, contrary to Bodin’s view according to which one may join either of the sides, believing both to be irrational and therefore in need of paternalistic moderation, for Montaigne partisanship is only permissible if one sees the partisan causes as capable in principle of being grounded in justice. 54 For this literature see Mark Greenglass, ‘Montaigne and the Wars of Religion’ and Alain Legros, ‘Montaigne on Faith and Religion’, both in Oxford Companion to Montaigne, ed. Phillippe Desan (Oxford, 2016), pp. 133–58, 525–44, respectively. 55 Greenglass, ‘Montaigne and the Wars of Religion’, pp. 133–7. NEUTRALITY AND PARTISANSHIP IN CIVIL WAR 15 For Bodin, the irrationality of the partisans calls for the partisanship of the reasonable, moderating person. For Montaigne, by contrast, it is the fact that the other partisans need not be acting unreasonably that enables partisanship. In other words, the view is not that the decent man can preserve his virtue by insulating himself from the vices of his fellow partisans (which seems to be partly Lipsius’ view) but rather that despite the vices and lack of moderation of most of his fellow partisans, the cause they pursue is capable of being pursued in the spirit of justice. The partisan’s cause is the source of the sense of justice that brings moderation to his action. There is the assumption that the causes of both sides in a civil war may be seen by reasonable and virtuous men as just. It is the recognition of this fact that allows Montaigne not only to be indulgent towards partisanship but to see partisanship as a positive exercise of the virtue of justice and an expression of patriotism. In the end, Montaigne’s sceptical spirit opens the way for his legitimation of partisanship. If we take a few steps back from the texts, we can discern a distinct itinerary from Bodin to Montaigne, marked by a sense of progression and argumentative depuration. By looking at the views of these authors as contributions to a dynamic casuistical controversy, we can recover a fuller understanding of the thoughts of each author, not as idiosyncratic voices, but as interventions in a dialogue with other partners that, despite their differences, shared some common presuppositions. Daniel Schwartz HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM