The Semitic Roots of Globalism
www.nimrodderosario.com
The Semitic Roots of Globalism
Bruno Cariou
note: the following text is not properly arranged owing to the length of the work.
The Phoenician roots of democracy in Greece
"The Secret History of Democracy explores the idea that democracy is a much older concept than
is generally acknowledged. Above all, it seeks to establish that democracy originated in Phoenicia
and the Greek colonies of Asia before developing in Athens in the classical period. The thesis
suffers from the same major flaw as almost all studies of the origin and development of
democracy.
the history of this system of government: he assumes that demokratia has characteristics identical to
those of democracy as it developed from the "Renaissance" onwards in Europe.
Europe, i.e. in both cases it is a political system in which power is exercised by the people, by all citizens,
without (wanting to and having the intellectual honesty to) hold any power over them.
It should be borne in mind that, while demokratia and democracy can indeed be defined in the same
way, the terms 'people' and 'citizen' do not have the same meaning in either case. To be a citizen of
Athens, you had to be male, free, the son of an Athenian father (from t h e time of Pericles' reforms
in 451 BC, the son of a father with Athenian citizenship and an Athenian mother, herself the
daughter of an Athenian citizen, both of whom were married legitimately), and you had to have
made its ephebia. Only the politai enjoyed political rights and were part of the body politic (dèmos).
The astoi, i.e. women and those who were not politai, had civil rights as members of the same
community of blood, could take part in the life of the polis, but had no decision-making power. As a
result, the modern concept of "citizenship" is, like all representations born of democratic superstition,
a vulgar, grotesque parody, and the same is true of the concept of "citizenship".
This is even true of the modern notion of 'the people', which refers to the pejorative sense of
'multitude' or 'little people' that the term 'demos' took on in classical times, when assemblies were
mainly composed of people of low extraction (see Marie-Joséphine Werlings, Le dèmos avant la
démocratie: Mots, concepts, réalités historiques, 2010, PUPO). However, originally, "dèmos
To return to the thesis of the authors of "The Secret History of Democracy", i.e. the theory that Greek
political institutions were formatively influenced by Phoenician institutional concepts, this is not the
case. To return to the thesis of the authors of "The Secret History of Democracy", i.e. the theory that
Greek political institutions were formatively influenced by the institutional concepts of the Phoenicians, it
is as follows
would only be tenable if it were established that the "citizen" and the "people" were for the
Phoenicians w h a t they are for modern democrats. Now, even if the Jewish conception of the
"chosen people" is
We do not know what the concept of 'citizen' and the notion of 'people' were among the Phoenicians
and, more generally, among the Semitic peoples. We are publishing the second chapter of the first
part of 'The Secret History of Democracy' in the event that further research is required.
would establish a correspondence between the 'citizen' and the 'people' as they were conceived by the
Phoenicians and as they are conceived by modern democrats (*).
Most analyses of the origins of democracy accept that the democratic idea and democratic
institutions came into being fully formed in Athens, following the reforms of Clisthenes, at the end of
the sixth century BC (Dunn, 1992). This chapter explores the political and cultural environment of the
eastern Mediterranean cities immediately prior to the Athenian reforms. It responds to the concerns
expressed by Simon Hornblower: "The Phoenicians [...] were the first to [...
had something comparable to the self-regulating city-state, or polis, and the possibility [exists] that
some of the Greek political organisations we most admire had Phoenician origins. Scientific study in
this area, however, has barely begun". (Hornblower, 1992, p. 2) If the least that can be said is that
work in this field (Bernal, 2001 [1990]) has not
This chapter aims to examine the available evidence on the deeper origins of democratic ideas and
institutions. It examines whether the Phoenician cities
had their own form of democratic government before Athens, and if Phoenician trade in the Greek
sphere of influence contributed to the formation of the intellectual milieu that gave rise to the
Athenian model, particularly via the city-states that Eric Robinson has defined as "the
first democracies" (Robinson, 1997).
Unfortunately, the Phoenicians had no talent for making paper. The papyri on which they wrote their
economic, diplomatic and political history in their phonetic alphabet have mostly rotted away; the
"archives of the Phoenicians" described by Flavius Josephus have long since been lost (Josephus, 75, I).
The sciences - genetic, forensic, archaeological and linguistic - still have a long way to go before we can
form a precise and reliable idea of Phoenician political culture; but new works, like old ones, deserve
rigorous examination. The time has come to synthesise all the evidence available on the constitutions
of the Phoenician states and on the Phoenician contribution to the democratic experiments conducted
by the Greeks before the invention of the word demokratia and the institutionalisation of democracy
in Athens.
The eternal question of how to determine what is and what is not a democracy does not go away.
cannot fail to arise in this examination. If Athenian practices are the ones used to d e f i n e
democracy, the systems of government that preceded them can hardly lay claim to the status of
democracy.
status of democracy, simply because these systems are different from the Athenian system. In
keeping with this distinction, some authors classify pre-Athenian models as primitive democracies, or
proto-democracies, while Robinson distinguishes between democracy, which constitutes a "rigorously
defined system" of participation and equality, and the system of
But then Athens can hardly be an ideal model of democracy from our point of view, as we live two and
a half millennia later. (Robinson, 1997 p. 11-2) But then Athens can hardly be a model of ideal
democracy from our point of view, as we live two and a half millennia later: it excluded women and
slaves, while the latter's heavy workload gave male citizens time to participate in political life; it was
militaristic, prone, because of its imperialist tendencies, to attack other city-states; it was
authoritarian, quick to fall into the
tyranny and capable of executing those who criticised him, even when, like Socrates, they had served
the city well. But, for all its faults, the Athenian system was the government of the people: it was based
on the sovereignty of the citizens, who, meeting in an assembly of equals, spoke and acted in the name
of the people.
voted freely and made binding laws. In this chapter, we will seek to identify a
We will do this by examining the evidence we have for the existence of democratic mechanisms among
the Phoenicians and analysing the impact they had on each of the city-states of archaic Greece that
contributed to the development of democracy.
Phoenicia - a developing democracy
Phoenician civilisation was founded on city-states such as Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, Byblos, Beirut and Ugarit
on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, around what is now Lebanon. Between 1550 and around
300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime and trading civilisation.
The Phoenicians were an adventurous people, whose representatives may have reached the British
Isles and even the Baltic, and probably circumnavigated Africa more than two millennia before Vasco
da Gama (Herodotus, IV, 10). The Phoenicians certainly built up a trading network from the Far East to
t h e Atlantic, and along the way they founded Carthage, which was to challenge the might of Rome.
Their trade was based on wood, wine, olive oil, iron, glass and purple, which they produced
themselves, as well as products from Damascus and other places along the caravan routes further east,
or from Egypt and the West, on the other side of the Mediterranean (Ezekiel 27; Gore, 2004, pp. 34-6;
Markoe, 2005, pp. 109-20).
The Phoenicians were present in the Levant as early as the third millennium BC. Genetically and
linguistically, they were related to the Canaanites and, culturally, they had much in common with
ancient Israel (Gore, 2004; p. 48). The alphabet that the Phoenicians introduced along their trade
routes came from Sinai via Israel, with whom they were close partners.
trade: it was they who, in exchange for grain, supplied Solomon with the wood and craftsmen he
needed to build the Temple (Logan, 2004, p. 36-42; I Kings, 5-7). More importantly, the Phoenicians
were exposed to the change in politics that Israel had brought about: the state no longer depended on
the king's relationship with God, but on the people's participation in the covenant. As explained in the
previous chapter, the Mosaic law meant that the ruler was constrained as much as the people by
God's law. The law demanded that the monarchy be limited, that the social structure be egalitarian,
and that the people be involved in the covenant.
citizens could themselves choose magistrates capable of leading the people in times of unrest (Buber,
1967; Finer, 1997, p. 238-44; Wolf, 1947). So, while the Phoenicians were clearly innovators in the
fields of manufacturing, trade and alphabetic writing, what is at issue here is the impact of Mosaic
ideas on innovations in the political institutions of the Phoenicians.
Phoenicians.
The Phoenician contribution to the development of democracy has been a controversial issue for over
twenty years. Their city-states were mainly monarchical and their kings had civic and commercial
functions as well as ritual and religious responsibilities. The success of the Phoenicians can be gauged
by the way in which their cities became cultural and political powers throughout the Mediterranean.
The wealth and power of the Phoenician kings can be seen in the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the
Istanbul Archaeological M u s e u m . The rise of the Phoenician cities depended to a large extent on
the kings' ability to
coordinate the activities of independent sailors, who needed to have a degree of autonomy to
trade throughout the known world, far from the influence of their kings. These merchants
were the biblical "merchant princes" and we will see below that they were officially responsible f o r
assisting kings in the complex management of their cities and that, as a result, they acquired a certain
amount of power (Isaiah 23.8). It is interesting to know whether the power they had by virtue of the
advisory functions they exercised with a few oligarchs extended to assemblies of citizens who led the
fierce debate that would enable certain Phoenician cities to apply for recognition as democracies.
The debate on the Phoenician contribution to democracy was fuelled by Martin Bernal's Black
Athena, whose speculative linguistic approach led him to highlight the possible 'Afro-Asiatic' roots o f
classical Greek society (Bernal, 1991 [1987], 1991, 2006). His thesis, which sought to establish the
contribution of Phoenician politics to the development of the Greek city-state, is based to a large extent
on some of the most subtle arguments of Marxist theory: according to Bernal, it is in
Phoenicia saw the transition from the "Asiatic mode of production", led by the monarch, to an "Asiatic mode
of production" led by the monarch.
slave society where the overcapacity of slave production gave their citizen owners time to participate
in democracy (Bernal, 2001 [1990]). But Bernal's evidence from primary sources is thin, so his
arguments are far from convincing. Nonetheless, his work has prompted an almost endless stream of
scholarly work linking Greece to the Roman Empire.
(Aubert, 2001; Burkert, 1992; Goody, 1996; Morris,
1992; West, 1997). She drew attention to other primary sources relating to the constitutions of
Phoenician cities and revealed that, while Phoenician cities were for the most part in the hands of
powerful monarchs, there were periods when constitutional provisions were not
monarchy. These periods deserve a closer look.
The oldest available documents concerning Phoenician politics are to be found among the
Amarna letters - Egyptian clay tablets containing numerous diplomatic reports from the middle of the
fourteenth century BC (Moran, 1992). The tablets were found on the site of the Egyptian capital built
by Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who emphasised monotheism and
sought to abolish the Egyptian pantheon. The Egyptian state was powerful in the Levant at this time,
although its power was contested. The Amarna letters speak of the work of various Egyptian vassals
faced with the task of ensuring the cohesion of Phoenician cities in the face of Hittite attacks and
insurrections inspired by the Hittites (Cohen and Westbrook, 2000).
Amarna's letters contain references to the advice of the elders, or magnates, whom the kings
These local councils consulted on important affairs of state and could even thwart the will o f a king
(Moran, 1992, p. 243). Moreover, these councils acted in their own right - for example, "Irquata and his
elders" wrote to the pharaoh to pledge allegiance, without making any reference to the local ruler
(ibid., p. 172). There are also examples of larger assemblies, where "the citizens of Tunip" and "the
people of Gubla (Byblos)" address Egyptian officials directly - indicating that they had a more or less
"republican" organisation and deliberative institutions that could represent the will of the people
(ibid., pp. 130-1, p. 332). The most democratic period is clearly the one when "the men of Arwad"
exchange oaths of rebellion with Zimredda of Sidon against the pharaoh (ibid., p. 236). Bernal is right
to point out that these documents prove that "the people and not the king are sovereign" (Bernal,
2001 [1990], pp. 356-7). Furthermore, an Egyptian official reveals that deliberations within and
between cities were frequent, when he expresses his
concern about the concerted opposition he arouses: "my towns are threatening me (and) they have all
banded together against me". (Moran, 1992, p. 138). All in all, Bernal's argument based on the Amarna
letters is convincing, especially as Flinders Petrie asserted over a century ago that municipalities
existed in Phoenicia in the fourteenth century BC (Petrie, 1898; p. 139). The Amarna letters therefore
allow us to conclude that certain Phoenician municipalities were governed periodically by sovereign
assemblies with deliberative functions and that citizen participation and therefore democratic activity
is evident in the first period of Phoenician city-states.
The other important primary source relating to the existence of a constitution in a Phoenician city is
the report of Ounamon (Goedicke, 1975). This report dates from the beginning of the eleventh
century BC, around 250 years after the Amarna letters were written, and confirms that there were
municipal forums.
were always very numerous in the Phoenician city of Byblos. He recounts the journey made by an
Egyptian priest to Byblos to fetch the wood needed to build a sacred boat.
Egyptian influence in the Phoenician cities had clearly declined since the time of the
Amarna's letters, giving way to powerful monarchies. Ounamon met Zakarbaal, the king of Byblos,
who managed all aspects of the transaction with the Egyptian and played a central role in the city's
religious life. In matters of government, Zakarbaal is advised by "his assembly" - in
In this case, she advises him to extradite Unamon to another country to face charges of theft
(Goedicke, 1975, p. 123). This assembly is probably different from the council which Ezekiel says was
composed of "[t]he elders of Guebal (Byblos) and its wise men." (Ezekiel, 27, 9) The hieroglyph of
the assembly inunamon's report initially resisted translation, but has now been translated as mw'd,
which is close to the Hebrew word mo'ed, generally translated as "assembly".
(Wilson, 1945, p. 245). The mo'ed is, for example, the assembly, or council, of two hundred and fifty
men of "renown" who "assembled against Moses and Aaron", his brother, after they had ordered the
stoning of a man who was gathering wood on the Sabbath (Numbers 16.2-3). unamon's report
establishes that the word "assembly" existed in Phoenician, even though it had been borrowed from
Hebrew. Whether the text is examined philologically or not, it is clear that the assembly of
Zakarbaal was something more than an elitist oligarchic council and it is therefore possible that
Byblos had a bicameral regime at this time.
The more important commerce became, the more the king's power was restricted by a wealthy
merchant middle class eager to influence public affairs: "after Hiram in the tenth century, [the kings of
Tyre] are no longer imposing figures". (Drews, 1979, p. 47; see also Markoe, 2005, p. 105) In the
course of their long history, the Phoenician cities fell successively under the rule of the
Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and, later, Persians and Macedonians. As a result of invasions and
internal strife, the king's power diminished, while that of the people increased.
The councils of elders exercised their authority during these periods of invasion and upheaval.
Even more important for the examination of the evolution of Greek political institutions in the
In the second half of this chapter, we learn from the seventh-century treaty between Assarhaddon of
Assyria and Baal of Tyre that Tyre's council of elders governed alongside the monarch. It was decided
that the Assyrian governor would work "in collaboration with you (Baal) and the elders of your
country."
(Aubert, 2001, p. 146; Markoe, 2005, p. 101)
In the following century, it is clear that power was not exercised solely by the king and the merchant
princes. Josephus noted in the first century AD that, after Nebuchadnezzar II's siege of Tyre
(585-572 BC), the city was without a monarchy for seven years and was administered for short periods
by suffetes (or magistrates).
"After him [Ithobaal] judges were instituted, who held their offices, Eknibal, son of Baslekh, for two
months; Chelbès, son of Abdée, ten months; the high priest Abbar three months; the judges Myttynos
and Gerastrate, sons of Abdélime, six years, after which Balator reigned one year." (Flavius Josephus,
Against Apion, I.21)
It is very likely that the magistrates were elected by the assembly and even Sandro Bondi, who is
otherwise reluctant to see democratic structures in the Phoenician constitutions, admits that Tyre was
at that time "a republic ruled by elected magistrates". (Bondi, 2001, p. 153).
The Tyrian colony of Carthage was also governed by suffetes, with the support of the senate and the king.
the assembly of the people (Markoe, 2005, p. 103-4). Carthage flourished from before 800 BC until
146 B C , when, after three wars against Rome (the Punic Wars), it finally fell under its control. Since
Carthage reached the height of its power during the Greek classical period and subsequently played a
very important role in Roman foreign policy, we know much more about Carthaginian constitutional
arrangements than we do about those of the early Phoenician cities (see for example, "Carthaginian
Constitution").
For example, Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC]; Herodotus, 1996 [idem] [460 BC]; or Polybius, 1889 [idem] [150
BC]). The Carthaginian constitution required two suffetes, who were elected annually and governed
assisted by the senate of elders. When the suffetes and the senate could not agree unanimously, the
popular assembly was asked to decide the matter. Well
Aristotle led the way in describing the Carthaginian system as an "oligarchy", he admitted that
formal and informal control mechanisms ensured the effectiveness and longevity of the constitution
(Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC] 1272b-1273b). These control mechanisms consisted essentially of elections,
trade guilds, municipal assemblies and the deference accorded to citizens as supreme arbiters of
political decisions, indicating equality and participation close to democratic standards. The Greek
historian Polybius
(200-118 BC) suggests that it was because of Carthage's democratic regime that it fell under the
domination of Rome:
"Among the Carthaginians, it was the people who dominated deliberations; among the Romans, it was
the senate. There, the opinions of the multitude were taken; here, the most skilful citizens were
consulted..."
(Polybius, Histories, VI, 51)
There is irrefutable evidence that the people eclipsed the monarchy towards the end of the Phoenician
period. Later Roman sources - such as Arrien (86-160 AD) - go so far as to suggest that the "inhabitants"
of Sidon, or "the people of Sidon", were those who made peace with the Phoenicians.
Alexander the Great (Arrien, 1893 [English edition] [145 AD], II, 15, 1970 [English edition] [145 A D ], 81).
Quinte-Curce (first or early second century AD) relates that Straton, king of
Sidon submitted to Alexander in 333 BC, "rather by the will of the inhabitants than by his own will".
(Quinte-Curce, IV, 1, 16). When the Greeks sought to replace their king, the citizens appointed to
succeed him all refused to take up the post and entrusted it to a member of the royal family whose
honesty had reduced him to poverty. This was a sign that the people were convinced o f their
democratic right to speak out and participate in the political life of the city. While
As Alexander's army approached Tyre, it was joined by "representatives" sent by "the republic" or "the
community" (Arrien, 1893 [AD 145], II, 15, 1970 [AD 145], 81; Bondi, 2001, p. 154). Alexander wished to
offer a sacrifice in the temple
of the Tyrian Heracles, but when his ambassadors informed the city, it was "the people" who passed a
decree refusing him entry - which subsequently led to the destruction of Tyre by Alexander's armies
(Arrien, 1893 [145 AD], II, 15).
This historical overview shows that the Phoenician cities were first ruled by powerful kings, then by
weak kings and finally by rulers who were no longer even kings.
kings. It is also clear that, from the fifteenth century to the fourth BC, the rulers were advised by
councils and assemblies which gradually enabled the people to increase their power. It is impossible to
know to what extent these institutions represented the people and to what extent their deliberations
were free and unconstrained, but, on the whole, we can conclude from the few cases which concern
the people that Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, at least, were something more than an autocracy or an
oligarchy, something much closer to a democracy.
Phoenician influence on the new Greek city-states
In Homer's Iliad, Phoenician craftsmanship is synonymous with excellence: when Hector orders
her to offer her most beautiful dress as a sacrifice to the goddess Minerva, Hecuba chooses one
embroidered by Sidonian women (Homer, 1950 [700 BC], 338-51); the prize offered by Achilles to
the winner of the running event at the funeral games in honour of Patroclus is a crater.
imported from Sidon by the Phoenicians (Homer, 1950 [700 BC], 760-65). These references allow us to
conclude that the Phoenicians exerted a great influence in the Greek sphere in the eighth century BC,
when Homer would have written the Iliad, if not as early as the twelfth century BC, during which the
Trojan War probably took place.
There is incontrovertible archaeological evidence of Phoenician influence in Rhodes from 800 BC
onwards (Lipinski, 2004, pp. 145-146). As they spread throughout the Aegean, the
The Phoenicians brought with them not only goods from the Assyrian, Babylonian and Israelite
worlds, but also ideas, myths and knowledge. The Phoenicians generally established
enclaves of craftsmen in indigenous communities where technical skills were poorly
developed". (Drews, 1979, p. 46). It is highly probable that the transmission of these new
technical skills depended on the Phoenician alphabet, which had just been developed and which
Herodotus considered to have stimulated the creation of the Greek alphabet (Herodotus, 460 BC, V.
60). It is also likely that it was in the workshops of these enclaves that the scientific method, which
was then in gestation, emerged, to be crystallised and refined, in the form of philosophy, by
Greeks of Phoenician origin such as Thales of Miletus (Herodotus, I. 170, II, 81).
The transmission of these ideas did not happen overnight; Greece emerged from its "Dark Ages" over
generations, in stages, under the impetus of a series of ideas drawn from various sources, in particular
the Phoenicians. As these ideas came together, they
caused a cultural awakening in Greece, which led to the Classical era and the birth of the
"(Gore, 2004; p. 37; Solmsen, 1975). A number of developments took place in Greece between 800
and 500 BC. The overthrow of tribal kings, l o n g - d i s t a n c e maritime trade, intensive
agriculture, mining and manufacturing, the introduction of new techniques and technologies, the
scientific approach, improvements in mathematics and the monetary system "created a layer of
agrarian landowners whose new-found wealth and their ability to make a living" (Solmsen, 1975).
The power it acquired surpassed that of all the equivalent powers in the city" (Anderson, 1974). The
rise of this new class prompted various city-states to experiment with new political forms. The idea of
democratic government was central to the Greek revival.
If democracy has come to be regarded as fundamentally Greek (and therefore Western), an
examination of the democratic experiments in the Phoenician city-states raises the question of
whether these experiments also found their way into the Greek sphere of influence, where they were
developed further,
systematised and finally named. Indications of a Phoenician influence on Greek cities can be seen in
those that were the first to adopt democracy. While there were centres of Phoenician influence where
democracy did not flourish (Miletus was a tyranny, in
The sixteen sites listed by Eric Robinson in his book on popular governments prior to Athens
nevertheless reveal numerous examples of Phoenician influence (Robinson, 1997).
Chios is a case in point. The island is considered to be one of the first cities to have adopted
democracy, thanks to an inscription on a stone in a wall along a road near the village of Tholopotami,
in the south of the island. The inscription, discovered in 1907 and today
in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (Meiggs and Lewis, 1988, p. 14), is dated to the mid
The inscription dates from the sixth century BC, between 570 and 550, i.e. after the reforms of Solon
but well before those of Clisthenes in Athens (Jeffery, 1956, p. 160). The inscription, which is not
complete, lays down laws on the responsibility of magistrates: judicial decisions must be made in
accordance with the law.
"Judges will be punished if they accept a bribe and their decisions will be appealed.
can be put to the test at the monthly meetings of the people's council (Jeffery, 1956, p. 162; Robinson,
1997, p. 90-1). The people's council (boule demosie) was made up of fifty elected representatives from
each tribe and at least three tribes are known: "the Chalazoi, the Totteidai,
the Klytides" (Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 196). The People's Council was thus
made up of at least one hundred and fifty citizens. On the other hand, the inscription suggests the
existence of an assembly of all the people with even greater powers, but as the inscription is
incomplete, we do not know exactly what the purpose of the assembly was. There does not seem to be
any other confirmation, either textual or archaeological, of democracy in Chios at such an early date.
Aristotle mentions the overthrow of the authoritarian oligarchs at Chios, but provides no date and no
outline of the subsequent constitution (Aristotle, 1306b3-5, 1981).
Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that the Chios constitution stone has given rise to so
much controversy over its dating and the democratic nature of the constitution.
(Jeffery, 1956, p. 160) There is also the question of whether or not the stone comes from Chios. Russell
Meiggs and David Lewis (1988, p. 17) point out that the red trachyte on which the constitution is
inscribed is not common on the island of Chios, whereas it is abundant in the vicinity of Erythrae.
Similarly, Ove Hansen points out that the two references in the stone to the goddess Hestia are
incongruous, since there is no proof that this goddess was worshipped in Chios, whereas there is
abundant evidence that she was worshipped in Erythrae (Hansen, 1985, p. 276). However, as the
texts show that the people of Erythrae overthrew the oligarch who ruled there as an autocrat
(Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC] 1305b18-23), if the stone did indeed come from Erythrae, it would suffice to
transpose the argument that a democracy existed in Chios to Erythrae.
What is important in this respect is whether there is any evidence that the Phoenicians exerted any
influence on any of these cities, and research shows that the fundamental institutions and the
The symbols of both cities bear the imprint of Phoenicia. From the eighth century BC, the
The symbol of the city-state of Chios was the sphinx, in the particular form of a winged female figure with
the body of a lion, which originated in Phoenicia (Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 18).
Typical Chios amphorae, marked with the figure of a sphinx, were used to transport
wine to ports on the Aegean and Black Seas from at least 640 BC.
(Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 156-8, p. 218). The Phoenician influence is also
evident at Erythrae. Although the site has not yet been located, Pausanias reported in the second
century AD that one of the two temples at Erythrae was "the sanctuary of Heracles", which was
famous for its age and that the statue of the god came from Tyre in Phoenicia (Pausanias, 100 AD, VII.
5. 5). Whether
of Chios or Erythrae, there is clear evidence that the Phoenicians exerted an influence there at a time
before these two cities experimented with democracy.
Further work on the sixteen sites of the early democracies listed by Robinson provides both
archaeological and textual evidence that many of them were subject to Phoenician influence
(Robinson, 1997). Phoenician trade routes, well established from the Archaic period onwards,
extended all around the Greek sphere of influence, from Thassos in the north of the Aegean to Sicily in
the west. From the mid-eighth century BC, there is archaeological evidence of Phoenician influence in
the city-states in the eastern Aegean that first adopted democratic government, such as Kos and Samos
(Lipinski, 2004, p. 155). There is also evidence of a Phoenician presence further west in the Aegean on
the island of Evia, where Chalcis, its capital, was one of the first democracies, and on Naxos, which was
a democracy in the second half of the sixth century BC (Lipinski, 2004, p. 147);
Robinson, 1997, p. 91, p. 117-18). There is also evidence of the presence of Phoenician merchants in
mainland Greece during the Archaic period, in Argos, a city that also features on Robinson's list:
"The most learned Persians in the history of their country attribute the cause of this enmity to the
Phoenicians. They say that when the Phoenicians came from the shores of the Erythraean Sea to the coasts
of our own, they
undertook long sea voyages as soon as they had settled in the country they still inhabit today, and
transported goods from Egypt and Assyria to various regions, including Argos. This city then surpassed
all those in the country now known as Greece. They add that when the Phoenicians landed there, they
began to sell their wares". (Herodotus, 460 BC, I, 1)
There is further textual evidence of Phoenician influence in Elis, on the west coast of the Peloponnese,
which was also one of the first cities to adopt democracy; its territory included Olympia. Pausanias
gives us the following account:
"The Thasians, Phoenicians by origin, whose ancestors had set sail from Tyre and the rest of the Phoenician
Phoenicia with Thasos, son of Agenor, to go in search of Europa; the Thasians, I say, dedicated at
Olympia a statue of Heracles, which is entirely of bronze as is its pedestal; it is ten cubits high. Heracles
holds his club in one hand and his bow in the other. I heard at Thasius that they worshipped the same
Heracles as the Tyrians, but that afterwards, having already become Greeks, they thought they should
also worship Heracles, son of Amphitryon. (Pausanias, 100 AD. :
V.25.12)
To sail to the cities mentioned above, the Phoenicians would have had to pass Cnidus and Megara,
then not far from Elis, in order to reach Achaia and Ambracia, all of which are among the world's
most important cities.
the first cities to adopt democracy. The west coast of Greece is not far from two Achaian colonies
where democracy took root very early on: Metapontum and Crotone, in southern Italy. It was easy to
travel from these cities to Sicily and Carthage, to join the Phoenician trade routes along North Africa.
The African route passed through Cyrene, another of the cities mentioned by Robinson.
The Phoenicians originally had a number of trading posts around Sicily; they consolidated those in the
north-west of the island when various Greek cities began to colonise the island.
the fertile river valleys of the south-east (Markoe, 2005, p. 232-4). The Phoenicians, and later the
Carthaginians, continued to maintain good relations with the Phoenicians, at least until the battle of
Himera in 480 BC.
with the Greek part of the island, which included cities such as Syracuse and Acragas, which were early
adopters of democracy. It is clear from the above that many of the city-states that
Robinson considers that primitive democracies had close relations with the Phoenicians. It is therefore
reasonable to conclude that the contributions of the Phoenicians were far from limited to trade
goods, religious statuary and the alphabet; it is very likely that the Phoenicians introduced to Greece
ideas of non-monarchical forms of government and habits of collective decision-making.
Although not mentioned by Robinson, an interesting case is that of Sparta, where the Phoenician
influence on the formation of democratic institutions is visible. While those who view democracy from
an Athenocentric perspective relegate the traditional enemy of Athens to t h e rank of autocracy and
oligarchy, a number of contemporary authors consider that early Sparta was governed by a
constitution that "stipulated that a Spartan popular assembly should meet at regular intervals [...]
around 600 BC [...] well before Athens". [well before Athens" (Hornblower, 1992, p. 1). It also seems
likely that "Spartan systems, like those of the Carthaginians, followed Phoenician prototypes." (Drews,
1979, p. 47) The Spartan constitution is often attributed to a mythical figure, Lycurgus, who is credited
with institutionalising eunomia, or good order, through a series of "myths".
good laws (Forrest, 1980, p. 64). Lycurgus or not, W. G. Forrest dates the Spartan constitution to the
In the first half of the seventh century BC, the Spartan system of dual kingship was moderated by the
expansion of the gerousia, a council of elders, and by the election of new members by the Spartans.
a popular assembly (Forrest, 1980, p. 59). The existence of commercial relations between Phoenicia
and Sparta at this time is shown by the fact that Phoenician methods of extracting the dye secreted by
molluscs were used at the Spartan port of Gytheum and that sculptures in ivory and
Phoenician terracotta masks were found at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta (Culican, 1975, p.
55-64; Fitzhardinge, 1980). Over the course of the next century, the assembly assumed greater
powers, bypassing the elders and electing its own magistrates every year, the ephors, who presided
over civil affairs, directed foreign policy and came to wield power over the people.
executive (Forrest, 1980, p. 77). Aristotle was one of the first commentators to point out the
similarities between the Spartan and Carthaginian constitutions (Politics, 1273a). It is unlikely that, at that
time
It is far more plausible that both the Spartans and the Carthaginians were influenced by the Phoenician
experience. It is highly probable that the Phoenicians introduced the ideas of popular government into
the Spartan sphere of influence, where, in a period of
change, they found fertile soil.
Finally, there is the case of Athens itself. Although Phoenician influence is attested to in Athens
through trade and tax agreements, coins and various artistic motifs, there is little evidence to
suggest that the Phoenicians had a direct influence on Athens' institutions.
Athenian politics (Markoe, 2005, p. 52, p. 124, p. 219-20). However, the Athenians of the fifth
By the end of the 19th century BC, the Athenians were surrounded by city-states influenced by the
Phoenicians, who were experimenting with a new form of government. The Athenians could not help
but be influenced by these developments when they decided to devise the system of government they
came to call demokratia.
Conclusion
The considerations that have just been developed show that the Phoenician cities made a significant
contribution to the development of the Phoenician culture.
important democratic experiments throughout their history, from 1500 to 300 BC, particularly in Tyre
in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. They have also established that
The Phoenicians played an important and even fundamental role in the Greek city-states which
adopted democracy before Athens. The Phoenicians' contribution to the Greek world was not just
commercial; they also passed on their experience of democracy to the Greeks and, no doubt in Sparta
and very probably in other cities, had a formative influence on the development of democratic political
institutions. The reforms of Clisthenes in 508 BC.
were essential for formalising democracy, by making citizens equal members of a set of interdependent
institutions subject to regular meetings and an assembly
But these ideas and institutional forms had already been put to the test in Phoenicia and in a series of
Greek city-states. One point that emerges clearly from our examination is that, before democracy
became an idea, not to say an ideology, it was a practical exercise of political will on the part of the
people. This chapter does not claim that the Phoenicians 'invented' democracy, nor does it seek to
detract from Athens' contribution to the development of democracy. The Athenian contribution to the
development of democracy cannot be underestimated, but this chapter establishes that the Athenian
contribution was based on powerful ideas that were already circulating among Greeks who had
contact with the Phoenicians. It is therefore established that
the history of popular government by active citizens is longer and deeper than is generally accepted.
Stephen Stockwell, The Secret History of Democracy, "Before Athens: Early Popular Government in
Phoenicia and Greek City-States", 2011, pp. 35-48, translated from the English by J. B.
A collection of quotes on democracy can be found at Julius Evola, Contre la démocratie, https://ladissidence.
org/2014/12/27/julius-evola-contre-la-democratie/ ; René Guénon, De la démocratie,
https://la-dissidence.org/2013/07/15/rene-guenon-de-la-democratie/ ; Collectif, La démocratie de
masse : une fausse démocratie,
h t t p s : / / w e b . a r c h i v e . o r g / w e b / 2 0 1 7 0 5 1 7 0 3 0 0 1 1 /
h t t p : / / w w w . v o x n r . c o m / c c / d t _ a u t r e s / E k k p Z p l u A
A L c W P t cNA.shtml.
On Semitic influences in the formation of Greek civilisation, see Samuel Kurinsky, The Babylonian
Origin of Greek Science,
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp016_science.htm; on philosophy, Martin L. West, Early
Greek Philosophy and the Orient, and Walter Burkert, The Prehistory of Pre-Socratic Philosophy in
an Orientalising Context,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/la-prehistoire-de-la-philosophiepresocratique-
dans-un-contexte-orientalisant/ and B. K., La liberté, un concept d'esclaves,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-3/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-4/; on
mythology, Robert Brown, Semitic influence in Hellenic mythology; on literature, Martin L. West, The
East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth; more generally, Walter Burkert,
The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age and
Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture.
(*) What is indisputable, however, is that, as we have shown at
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-3/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-4/, that it
was the philosophers, many of them metagheists, who, through their writings, set out to empty
the racial meaning of the terms "people" and "citizen". [Editor's note]
The Semitic roots of globalism
The other apostates I have mentioned, many of whom are now forgotten, as well as almost all the anti-
Christians of previous centuries, illustrate the operation that can be called the law of cultural residues.
In all civilised societies, when we find that a belief established since
If a long-held and generally accepted belief is unbelievable, good minds abandon it, but they
commonly retain the derivative beliefs that were originally deduced from, and depend on, the belief
they have rejected. So it is that the modern enemies of Christianity have rejected mythology, but
indiscriminately retained faith in the social and ethical superstitions derived from it - a faith which they
strangely claim to be rational but which they retain with religious fervour.
They laugh at the stupid story of Adam and his spare rib, but they still believe in a "human race"
descended from a single pair of ancestors and therefore in a "brotherhood of man". They talk about
"humanity", giving the term a mystical, honeyed meaning that they don't really understand.
They do not use any other term, such as "all marsupials" or "all ungulates". They prattle on about
"human rights", although a moment's reflection should suffice to show that, in the absence o f a
decree from a supernatural monarch, there can be no rights other than those which the citizens of a
stable and homogeneous society have, by convention or tradition, established for themselves; and
whereas
citizens can show kindness to strangers, slaves and dogs, but such beings obviously have no rights.
They do not believe that a third of a god was incarnated in the most sordid region of the world in order
to associate with illiterate beggars, to harangue the rabble of a barbaric "race" and to magically exalt
the ignorant and vulgar in order to make "the wisdom of this world foolishness in the sight of God"
(Corinthians 3:19), so that "the last may be first, and the first last."
(Matthew 20:16) - they don't believe that, but they cling to the morbid hatred of superiority that
makes Christians love everything that is weak, inferior, irrational, vile, deformed and degenerate.
They prattle on about the "sacredness of human life" - especially in its vilest forms - without realising
that it takes a creator god to make something sacred. And they get agitated
frantically for a universal "equality" that can only be achieved by reducing all human beings to the
lowest level, obviously unaware that they are merely echoing the aspiration often expressed by
Christians to become sheep (the stupidest of mammals) herded by a good shepherd, which is implicit
in all the stories of the New Testament, a l t h o u g h expressed bluntly in another gospel, which
mentions Jesus as promising that after he has tortured and slaughtered the most civilised people in the
world, there will be a resurrection, and his sheep will rise from their graves, all the same age, all the
same sex, all the same stature, and
all with indistinguishable characteristics, so that they can be identical to the bees in a swarm (*).
Although the "liberal" and Marxist cults have doctrinal differences as great as those which separate
Lutherans from Baptists, they are fundamentally the same superstition, and whether or not we should
call them religion depends on whether we restrict the word to belief in supernatural persons or extend
it to include all forms of blind faith based on a belief in the supernatural.
on emotional exaltation rather than on observed facts and reason. When these 'atheist' cults
When people "shout" their hatred of "fascists" and "nazis", they must obviously believe that these
people are "fascists" and "nazis".
evil are possessed by the devil and should therefore be converted or exterminated in order to promote
holiness and love. And when they see 'racists', who ungodly substitute facts and reason for unthinking
faith in approved fairy tales, their desire to root out evil is as great as that of the Christian mob who
dragged the all-too-righteous and intelligent Hypatia out of her
and lovingly used oyster shells to rip out her flesh while she was still alive.
With very few exceptions, the anti-Christians, probably unconsciously, have preserved in their 'spirit'
much of Christian doctrine, and have even revived the most poisonous elements of the primitive
Bolshevism of antiquity, which had been attenuated or kept in abeyance by the established Churches
in the great age of Christendom [The rest of the text shows that this is not really the case]. And today,
avowed atheists do not think it strange that, on all social issues, they essentially agree with the howling
dervishes and evangelical shamans who, subsidised with copious publicity by the organised Jewry that
control television and other means of communication, are avid participants in the current effort t o
reduce Americans to complete imbeciles through all kinds of irrational deceptions.
Revilo Oliver, America's Decline
(*) The Greek text of the Gospel in question was published by Konstantin von Tischendorf in his
Apocalypses apocryphae (1866; reprinted by Olms, 1966); see p. 78.
The Gnostics seized upon the notion of a "heavenly Jerusalem" as a prey, an image symbolising the
future of humanity completely redeemed. Then, by way of comparison, they came to emphasise the
very assembly of participants in this heavenly Jerusalem, in other words
the Ecclesia, the Church ("assembly" in the etymological sense). It was Jesus himself who referred to this
He always speaks of it in terms that emphasise the femininity of this assembly of the elect. Paul takes
up the image and the name, and defines it as "our mother", which explains and justifies the wellknown
expression, used indiscriminately afterwards: "our holy mother".
the Church". This is not in the least an institutional Church with its hierarchies, its rules and even its
aberrations, which are rightly debatable, but the assembly, the community, the "communion of saints"
[which corresponds to "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus". (Galatians 3:28)]. And, in all traditions, this
community is represented by the image of a woman, who is both mother and child,
wife or lover, sister and daughter. So it is with Isis, Cybele and a character who has become a romance,
such as the Queen of Guinevere, who, before representing her own individuality, remains the
permanent embodiment of the social and quasi-mystical group of which she is the absolute centre.
It is easy to see how this concept of an assembly of elected representatives, a sort of wife and mother to the
Christ, along with his daughter, slowly became identified with the concrete figure of Miriâm, mother of
Jesus, but also mother of all men. And if Miriâm is the mother of all men, being
perfectly historical or perfectly historicised (as you will, the result being
This is why it acquired very early on, thanks to skilful censorship, the essential characteristics of a
"new" art.
devolved in the past to the Great Universal Goddess, mother of all gods and all men.
Jean Markale, The great goddess
Part One: Community through the Church
Community of the early Church
It is well known that for nineteen consecutive centuries, Christianity has always taught and practised
the community of goods. This was the very form of the primitive Church of Jerusalem from its very
beginnings. According to the Acts of the Apostles, "All who believed were one, and had all things in
common. And they distributed them to everyone according to his need. The whole multitude of
believers was one heart and one soul, and no one considered the things he enjoyed as his own, but
everything among them was common. That is why there were no poor people among them, for
everyone who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of what they had sold and laid it
at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to everyone according to his need. Joseph, for example,
was nicknamed Barnabas by the apostles,
that is to say, a son of consolation, a Levite and a Cypriot by nationality, who had a field, sold it, brought
the price and laid it at the feet of the Apostles".
This Barnabas, one of the seventy-two disciples of Jesus Christ, "a man full of the Holy Spirit and steadfast in
the faith" according to the Acts of the Apostles, a companion of Paul who evangelised Syria and Asia Minor,
expressed himself in this way in his Epistle: "Put all" your possessions in common with your brothers, and let
nothing be taken away from you.
For if you are in society for incorruptible things, how much more must you be in it for
corruptible things?
Thus the community of goods was the very constitution of the primitive Church. Eight thousand men, without
Barely five years later James, speaking to Paul, says, according to the Greek text, that in this Church of
Jerusalem alone there were several times ten thousand. We are not talking here," says Salvian, "about
a handful of Christians. Their small number could have weakened the authority of their example. We
are talking about a considerable multitude of people, and we can judge from what is recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles, that at the very beginning of Christianity, eight thousand men, in two days, joined
the new Church, not counting children and women. How many then
Doesn't every day increase the number of the faithful living in community?
In her revelations, Sister Anne-Catherine Emmerich gives curious details about this primitive community
which, already organized only fifteen days after the resurrection [of Jesus Christ], was composed o f
innumerable faithful from all countries, even the most distant, and formed, from the beginning, a
whole city inside and outside Jerusalem. Lazarus and Quadratus and everyone else who had anything
gave him all their possessions. Peter spoke of the rules to be observed in the new community. None of
the faithful," he said, "was to have more than the other, and they were all to share together.
Everything was in absolute community: goods, work, food, prayer, soul and life; everything was done in
the most perfect order, and everything was distributed according to the needs and abilities of each
person. The slightest infraction of this community was punishable by death, as we see for example in
the Acts of the Apostles (5, 1-11).
The ruin of Jerusalem and Judea, by scattering the members of this primitive community of goods,
does not seem, however, to have destroyed it. According to Barnabas and the author of the Epistle to
Diognetus, it was still in existence at the end of the first century. At that time, the papal see was
occupied by Clement
I, a disciple of Peter and Paul. Around 96, he wrote to the Corinthians: "Brothers, the common life is
obligatory for all men, and first of all for those who wish to serve God in a blameless manner and
imitate the example of the apostles and their disciples. For the use of all things in this
world must be common to all men. It was iniquity that made one man say, 'This is mine,' and another
say, 'This belongs to me. This is the cause of discord among mortals.
This primitive community of goods still existed in the second century, according to Justin and Lucian; in
the third century, according to Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian and Tertullian who says: "Having
all one
If we have the same soul and the same spirit, we also have the same good; everything is common among
us".
and finally in the fourth century, according to Lactantius and Arnobius. Without taking these
testimonies in a rigorous material sense, the fact is that the community of goods was perpetuated not
only in these first four centuries, but right up to the present day.
Aspirations towards the re-establishment of the primitive community
Referring to this primitive community of goods, Abbé Fleury exclaimed: "Here then is an example
of this equality of goods, of this common life that the legislators and philosophers of the time had in mind.
It was to achieve this that Minos, from the earliest times of Greece, had established communal meals in
Crete. It was to achieve this that Minos, in the earliest days of Greece, established communal meals in
Crete. The disciples of Pythagoras pooled their possessions and
They formed an inseparable society known in Greek as coinobion (common life), from which came the
Cenobites (living in common). Finally, Plato had taken this idea of community to extremes, wanting to
do away even with the distinction between families. They saw that, to make a perfect society, it was
necessary to do away with yours and mine and all private interests".
"The source of this communion of goods among the Christians of Jerusalem was charity, which made
them all brothers and united them as in a single family, where all the children are nourished by the same
love.
They had always before their eyes the commandment to love one another, which Jesus Christ had
repeated so often, especially on the eve of his passion. They always had before their eyes the
commandment to love one another, which Jesus Christ had repeated so many times, especially on the
eve of his passion, to the point of saying that his disciples would be recognised by this mark. But what
obliged them to sell their inheritances and reduce everything to money
This was the Saviour's command to renounce all that one possesses. They wanted to practise it, not
only in terms of the disposition of the heart, to which the obligation of this precept reduces, but also in
terms of the attitude of the heart, to which the obligation of this precept reduces, to which the
obligation of this precept reduces.
If you want to be perfect, go, sell everything you have and come and follow me". Chrysostom, so long
afterwards, is not afraid to propose this way of life as an inimitable example and as a means of
converting all infidels. It is to be believed that these saints of Jerusalem worked with their hands,
following the example of Jesus Christ and the apostles".
Chrysostom is constantly calling on all Christians and all people to make this a reality.
community; he endeavours to put it into practice immediately, right in the heart of the capital.
of the empire, in Constantinople, of which he was patriarch. Only exile and death, which soon struck
Chrysostom, prevented the realisation of this project, the thought and goal of his entire life.
The ownership of everything belongs to God
If we ask the Bible what the doctrine of the Jews and Christians is about property, it tells us that the
ownership and sovereign domain of all that is and all that can be belongs to God alone, and that man
must never have more than the use or usufruct of it. Her doctrine to
There is not the slightest variation in this respect, and throughout its many books, the Bible
invariably repeats the same thing.
Exodus - "Obey my voice exactly and keep my covenant, says God. All the earth is mine
".
Leviticus - "For the land is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners in it, to whom I praise it".
Deuteronomy - "You see that heaven, the heaven of heavens, the earth and everything on earth
belong to the Lord your God".
Psalms. - The earth is the Lord's with all that it contains, the universe and all that dwells in it is his".
"For the earth is mine and all that is in it".
Prophets - "The earth is mine".
Paul - "The earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord.
Since Moses, who himself received this idea from the patriarchs, the property, the sovereign domain of
all things belongs to Yahweh alone, and man must never have more than the use or usufruct of them.
This is the
This is the doctrine of the Church, proclaimed by popes, councils, fathers, doctors and theologians, and
which, in the Middle Ages, found its way into public law. "Beloved brothers
Augustine, we read in the divine Scriptures that God says: "Gold and silver are mine, not yours, O rich
men of the earth". For," adds Gregory of Nyssa, "everything truly belongs to God, our common Father,
and we are all brothers. Therefore, since we are brothers and united by the bonds o f blood and
nature, it would be better and more just for us all to possess equally the common inheritance".
John Chrysostom, who calls property "the citadel of all evils", never ceases to proclaim the
community of goods, as an application of this fundamental principle that the earth and all that it
contains belong to God (De beneficentio, vol. II, p. 245).
Jewish community
... under the Law of Moses... the community... is triune...
Its first... conception applies to the tribe of Levi, invested with the functions of the priesthood, of
the teaching and preservation of the law and traditions: it is the absolute community through
to the exclusion of all ownership, whether collective or individual. In laying down the great
fundamental principle that "the earth is God's with all that it contains", Moses, far from concluding
from this, as did the religious legislators of India and Egypt, that the priests, as ministers of God, must
On the contrary, he excludes them from all possession and gives them no share in the promised land,
because they must remain in the integrity of the absolute community by renouncing everything. You
shall possess nothing," says the Lord, "in the promised land.
land of the children of Israel, and you shall have no part with them. I am your portion and your
inheritance among the children of Israel". (Numbers 1, XVIII, 20) Ministers of God, they are by that
very fact the servants of all, and live only on the tithe and part of the offerings deposited in the
temple. "The Levites shall possess nothing else," says the Lord (Numbers 1:XVIII, 23). From time
immemorial, no doubt, in India and elsewhere, those who devoted themselves to the perfection of
life
But Moses was the only one who made this self-emptying a social institution, a condition of the
priestly ministry.
The second form of Jewish community is mainly represented by the Essenes and the Therapists. It is
the complete community of goods, work, prayer, food, soul and spirit.
of life, perfection of the natural community, and reminiscent of the free and philosophical
community... Direct heirs of the primitive and patriarchal traditions, they [the Essenes] went back to
the time of Moses and Aaron and came from the priests who had carried the Ark of the Covenant. They
received a
There was a regular organisation in the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah, who were in contact with
them. The schools of the ancient prophets were part of their community. At first, they spread
throughout the
promised land, in an area forty-eight leagues long and thirty-six leagues wide.
then on the banks of the Jordan and as far as Egypt. They lived mainly around*Mount Horeb and
Mount Carmel, where Elijah had stayed. The Maccabees were also among them... They shared
everything, goods, work, food and life.
There were two kinds of Essenes, some who lived in celibacy and contemplation, and who for
For this reason they were called Theoretici or contemplators, and the others were called Practici or
workers, who married, used marriage with extreme moderation, and led with their wives and children
a life similar in many respects to those of the first.
A branch of the Essenes, established mainly near Alexandria in Egypt, received the name of
Therapists, i.e. Servants of God. They renounced their possessions, says Philo, and worked to cure
diseases of the soul. They lived mainly near Lake Moeris, and each had, within a short distance of the
other, his own house.
They lived with extreme frugality and set an example of every virtue. They lived extremely frugally and
set an example of all virtues. They prayed in common: the women attended the instructions given on the
Sabbath, but were separated from the men by a wall.
a wall three or four cubits high. They were also admitted to the common table, with the men on the
right and the women on the left. Eusebius, Jerome, Sozomen, Cassian, Nicephorus, among the elders ;
Baronius, Petau, Godeau, Father de Montfaucon, Father Alexandre, Father Helyot, Baillet and other
moderns show that the Therapists were Jews who were converted to Christianity by Mark and other
preachers of the Gospel. They formed the first nucleus of the monastic communities.
After the priestly community of absolute self-denial, imposed on the tribe of Levi, and the community
of goods, work and life of the Essenes and Therapists, came the sharing community. This last form,
obviously the most imperfect, was no more than a rudimentary means of ensuring and preserving the
common good.
to maintain equality. In those remote times, we did not yet know how to divide the wealth evenly.
In Judea, the land was divided equally between all families, not as property, but as a simple
possession or usufruct of the common domain. In Judea, for example, the land was divided equally
among all the families, not as property, but as a simple possession or usufruct of the common
domain, of which man had only the use and of which God remained the lord.
the sole and absolute owner. To perpetuate this primitive equality for ever, Moses first instituted the
sabbatical year and the jubilee.
In each sabbatical year, which occurred every seven years, all debts were forgiven and all bondage
ceased. At the jubilee, which occurred every forty-nine years, not only were a l l debts forgiven, all
easements ceased and all agricultural work was stopped, as in the sabbatical year; but all transfers of
possessions were null and void, and all goods alienated or sold returned to their former owners. After
having repeated in Leviticus (25:8-12) the prescriptions concerning the sabbatical year... [Yahweh] adds:
"You shall also number seven weeks of years, that is, seven times seven, which together make forty-nine.
Then you shall sound the trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month throughout your land on the
day of reconciliation. And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty
for all the inhabitants of the earth, because it is the jubilee". After various other prescriptions always
relating to the jubilee, [Yahweh] continues: "The land also shall not be sold to
You are strangers who cultivate it for me. (25:23) In addition, the legislation of Moses contained a host
of prescriptions, the most minute and detailed, all aimed at maintaining the principle of equality.
Monastic community
... the primitive community of Jerusalem, summing up that of Moses, was now, forever, the starting
point for all its subsequent progress and all its possible developments. It had laid down the
fundamental principle: absolute communion of all moral, intellectual and physical goods, community
of work and life, of spiritual and material nourishment, of soul and body... All that r e m a i n e d was
to develop and apply these principles in all their forms... This has been the work of Christianity for the
last nineteen centuries, and especially that of the monastic communities.
... the Romans commanded by Titus, son of Vespasian, invaded Judea and took Jerusalem,
burned down its temple and led the Jews into captivity, among whom the Christians were confused
and who were completely expelled from Palestine under Adrian in 134. However, ten years before the
After the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, a community similar to the first had been founded in Egypt by
Mark, the first bishop of Alexandria. This movement soon took off in leaps and bounds.
Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia, Persia, Ethiopia, India, the whole of the East,
then successively Dalmatia, Italy, Gaul and the whole of the West, there arose an immense application
of the community of goods by the monastic and coenobilic orders, which merely continued, developing
and generalising it, the principle established in the primitive Church of Jerusalem. From then until the
present day, that is to say for eighteen hundred and sixty-six consecutive years, millions and millions of
individuals of every sex, every condition, every age, every language, every people, spread throughout
the whole of Christendom, have never ceased to live under this system of community of property.
community, to be its living, practical, exemplary preaching, and to pursue the idea of property of any
kind with a rigour that our contemporary communists have not even suspected.
As Cassian shows in his Conferences, and as Basil and Benedict formally declare in their Rules, the
Cenobites in no way set out to establish a way of life apart and different from that of other
Christians, but simply to continue the tradition of the primitive and apostolic Church,
This is why Benedict only calls his rule a "small beginning of the Christian life", and in several places
this rule assumes that a religious can leave the cloister and enter the world.
It is indubitable," says Tillemont (Expositions des doctrines chrétiennes, t. II, p. 393), "that the true
religious took as their model the first church of Jerusalem. Augustine expresses himself in the same
way. Cassian, who had studied the origins of monastic life with such care, also traces it back to the
first faithful of Jerusalem.
Moreover, the cenobites were not priests in the first place and did not even have priests of their own
order; they had priests from outside who celebrated the holy sacrifice for them. They were all simple
laymen".
because," says Abbé Fleury, "at the beginning, the clergy was thought to be incompatible with
monastic life". It was not until 383 that Pope Sirice called monks to the monastery. However, in the
seventh century they were still so far from being all clerics that a Council of Rome, held in 601, decided
that any monk who had passed to
the ecclesiastical state could no longer remain in his monastery. It was only in the 9th century that
they were considered part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But far from still being priests, they were
below the minor orders. Already in 1039, a distinction was made between lay brothers and sisters; and
even in the fifteenth century and since, we have seen religious orders composed exclusively of lay
people, and which did not receive priests, such as the Poor Volunteers founded in 1370. Finally, the
third orders, known as the Franciscans and Dominicans, have included, since the thirteenth century, a
number of lay brothers and sisters.
countless lay people, married men and women, who are directly linked to the monastic institutes.
This [cenobitic] thought... says to men: you are unhappy, divided, enemies, guilty, as a result of the
division you have made for yourselves of the goods of the earth; give up possessing anything of your
own, "for the earth is the Lord's with all that it contains"; let the use of all things be
It says to them: you are divided on the outside because you are divided on the inside; you have
external property, the source of all social misery, because you have internal property, the source of all
misery.
Put love, divine and universal charity in the place of selfishness and pride.
Finally, she said to them: property has its first origin in sin and the corruption of degenerate flesh, just
as community has its origin in the sanctification of man and virtue.
The religious orders, which took so many different forms, were so numerous that their simple nomenclature
They gradually developed all aspects of the organisation of this community and thus prepared for its
universal application; finally, they enveloped and penetrated civil society on all sides so as to deposit in
it the principles of the common good.
all the fundamental principles that were to make the realisation of this community throughout the
world inevitable. This is the nineteenth-century mould into which God threw humanity, so that it
would emerge communist for ever.
Eliminating the "vice" of ownership
The first principle of monastic life is that everything belongs to everyone and that no one should own
anything, not even the smallest object. But this is only the external and material fact o f ownership;
we must go back to its source. This is what monastic action did. It did not limit itself to
He not only preached and realised the visible community, but made it penetrate to the very depths of
human consciousness. Perfectly aware that any fact whose cause is not radically destroyed soon
revives of its own accord more powerful than ever, and wishing to achieve the annihilation, not only
temporary but perpetual, of property, it attacked the very principle of this "vice". Not unaware,
moreover, that any external institution, such as that of the community, can only be founded and
perpetuated insofar as it is the free, spontaneous, living manifestation of an inner state of the human
soul that necessarily leads to it, it set out to extirpate from the mind, the will and the heart of man all
desire, all love, all idea of property, whatever it may be. This is the radical work it has been pursuing
and carrying out for nineteen centuries; this is the aim of this elective institution,
republican, communist, governed by a constitution freely accepted by all and called the Rule.
The Church recognises four main rules under which almost all religious orders fall: that of Basil, which
reigns throughout the East; that of Augustine; that of Benedict, which dominated the West until the
13th century; and that of Francis of Assisi.
Basil's rule, which soon became the rule of all Eastern monks, is expressed thus: "Let everything be
common to all, and let no one have anything of his own, neither clothing, nor shoes, nor anything
that belongs to others.
the use of the body. It even adds that it is impossible to obtain the kingdom of heaven without
renouncing everything we possess on earth.
Augustine's rule also prescribes absolute community, and goes into the most minute detail in this
regard. It adds that, since everything is in common, if anyone appropriates anything or hides anything
given to him, he is guilty of theft from the community. In his first sermon on common life, in which he
gives an account to the assembled people of the community which he
Augustine said: "This is how we live; no one in our society is allowed to have anything of his own". He
then recounted how each member of his community had stripped himself of everything he possessed,
and instructed the people to give nothing except to the whole community and not to any one of its
members in particular.
members. Finally, he announced that he would impose the severest penalties on anyone who dared to
keep anything of his own. We can see from the details of this speech that the monks, and even the
clergy and bishops, wore the same vestments as the laity at the time, and that, basically, the monastic
institute still only intended to continue the primitive Church of Jerusalem, which included all the
faithful with their
families, married men and women, and children.
Benedict's rule is no less explicit than the previous ones. Property," it says, "is the most essential vice"
to be eradicated from the community. One must "own nothing, not even a book,
tablets, a stylus for writing, absolutely nothing", nihil omnino. It is not just the fact of ownership, but
the feeling that gives rise to it, that "is the most essential vice to be rooted out" of
the human soul.
As for the rule of Francis of Assisi... it goes much further still, by abolishing all
property, even collective property like any particular property, and thus constituting the fundamental
principle of the universal, absolute community.
Moreover, all the founders and reformers of monastic orders, Lorenzo Justinian, Gerson and a host of
others speak the same language as Basil, Augustine, Benedict and Francis of Assisi; and these rules
are confirmed by the Council of Trent which, in its XXVth session, formally forbids "to own, or even in
the name of the monastery, any property, movable or immovable, by whatever title they may have
acquired it and of whatever nature it may be". Now, it should be noted that these prescriptions of the
monastic rules are not like civil laws, which prescribe only the material fact and the nature of the
property.
only require external obedience; they command the inner self, compel the conscience; and, by
forbidding any kind of property, forbid at the same time all desire, all love, all
thought of property of any kind. This abdication of all ownership thus becomes faith,
a religion, a cult. The saints call her the mother and guardian of all the other virtues. Francis of Assisi
called her his mistress, as did the Rule of the Franciscans, and celebrated his glorious hymen with her.
Ignatius, in his Constitutions, recommends that we love her as a good mother, b e c a u s e it is she
who gives birth to and preserves in souls all the other virtues.
John Chrysostom, seeking to explain why the Christians of the early Church were so full of zeal and zealotry
of fervour, and those of his time, on the contrary, so lukewarm and lax, shows that this is due to the
fact that the first Christians renounced all their possessions, while the others remained laden with
riches.
Thomas Aquinas and a host of other Doctors teach that those who have thus renounced their own
possession of anything, whether canonised or not, will, like the Apostles, be seated before the tribunal
of God on the day of judgement, to judge all the world with Jesus Christ; and Gregory extols the
greatness of this prerogative.
M. Olier, founder and first superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice
It is not only to religious, but to all Christians, that the Church imposes the duty of eradicating from
their hearts, souls and minds "the abominable vice of property". This is the goal of the whole Christian
life, which prescribes this disappropriation in the spiritual order as well as in the material order.
All that we call asceticism, mysticism, the spiritual life or other similar names, consists in this teaching
of the saints which is found not only in the great centuries of Christianity, but in every time and place.
In the seventeenth century, M. Olier, founder and first superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in
Paris, developed this thought at length in his Introduction à la vie et aux vertus chrétiennes. After
admirably explaining the nature
of this rigorous duty of every Christian, he stigmatises in the following terms
terms "the evil of property" and the comparative moral results of property and its negation, which he
calls "self-denial".
The landlord is in every way the opposite of the Christian, property the opposite of Christianity, and
the radical extirpation of every kind of property is the supreme ideal of moral perfection for every
man, as it is for everyone collectively, or for society as a whole. Complete abolition of
This is the Christian life, the spiritual or divine life within us, the law of Christianity for individuals and
for nations. For "there is nothing more contrary to Christianity than property,
Adam made himself, by sin, the owner and father o f all sin, and property is a horrible monster and a
terrible sea of all sin".
Abolition of property, even collective property
Community and collective property could still have been confused, which are very different things. The
Papacy, after having excommunicated and denied burial to a poor monk who had kept three reals to
buy a tunic, had to officially proclaim, through thirty
the abolition of all collective and individual property.
This formidable problem of ownership, publicly debated for three centuries by the
Christianity as a whole, was resolved in the sense of a radical, universal and absolute community. And it
was.
"The love of poverty makes us kings", said Bernard of Clairvaux. It is indeed through
The monks became kings of the world and the peoples of the world became truly sovereign. In his
speech in the presence of Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus called the monks "philosophers", because they
possessed nothing in this world.
The first solitaries, ascetics and cenobites, following to the letter the words of Christ: "Whoever does
not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple", had no other rule than the absolute
abdication of all kinds of property. Later, the monasteries spread everywhere, living on the same principles.
This meant that if the individual possessed nothing of his own, the monastery or order possessed it as
a body. Now, in order to achieve absolute community, it was necessary to abolish even this collective
property, as had already been done.
abolish all individual property. This is what Francis of Assisi did. He founded the Franciscan order,
which, five centuries later, after losing countless monasteries, still numbered, at the beginning of the
20th century, more than 100,000 monks and nuns.
In the 18th century, there were more than one hundred and fifteen thousand religious men and nearly
thirty thousand religious women. After having taught his disciples, by word and example, this
unrestricted renunciation of all possession, Francis prescribed it with the utmost rigour in his Rule,
which states: "The brothers shall have nothing of their own, neither house, nor place, nor anything
else," forbids all kinds of property, both collective and individual, and forbids like a plague all handling
of money, either by oneself or by any other person.
and does everything it can to ensure that the property cannot intrude under any pretext whatsoever.
Well then! This rule, examined by the cardinals, was approved in 1210 by Pope Innocent III as being the
very expression of the Gospel; in 1215, by the Fourth General Council of the Church in Rome.
Latran, and solemnly confirmed by Pope Honorius III in his bulls of 11 June 1219 and 29 June 1220.
November 1223. Gregory IX again confirmed this denial of all property, even collective property, in
two new bulls, one dated 21 August 1231, addressed to all prelates, and the other dated 23 August
1231, addressed to the archbishops of Tours and Rouen and to the bishop of Paris. Innocent IV
approved the same doctrine in 1245. Pope Alexander IV was even more favourable to the religious
mendicants and their principle of absolute community. Barely five days after his coronation, on 31
December 1254, he revoked Innocent IV's bull Etsi animarum of the previous 21 November, because it
restricted the privileges of the mendicants.
Franciscans and Dominicans, in whose favour he issued more than forty consecutive bulls. He
vigorously supported the latter against the University of Paris with his great bull Quasi lignum vitae of
14 April 1255, and that Cunctis processibus of 17 June 1256.
In the same year, 1256, Guillaume de Saint-Amour, doctor and regent of theology in Paris, published
a book entitled Des Périls des derniers temps, directed against the Franciscans and Dominicans.
particularly against the latter. He fought with the greatest violence against their theory of absolute
community and the negation of all property, even collective property, claiming that this was neither
the doctrine nor the practice of Jesus Christ. So what did the Pope do when the matter was referred
to him? Having had the work examined by four cardinals, on their report he issued his sentence in the
form of a bull, dated 5 October 1256, in which he condemned this book as iniquitous, criminal and
execrable, ordering anyone who had it to burn it within eight days, on pain of excommunication, with
a ban on
approve or support it in any way. This condemnation was pronounced publicly in
The Pope deprived Guillaume de Saint-Amour of his doctorate and of all benefits and dignities, forbade
all trade with him and rejected his appeal.
On the following 15 November, Alexander IV again praised the absolute community of Franciscans and
Dominicans in his bull Parisius peritia, and in 1257 published seven more bulls both in favour of these
religious and against Guillaume de Saint-Amour, in addition to various letters on the same subjects.
In compliance with the papal bulls and the oath of the representatives of the University, Thomas
Aquinas, whose doctorate had been delayed for two years, was finally received in Paris on 23 October
1257, and published
At the time, he was writing the apology for the Friars Minor and Preachers that he had delivered to the
Pope at Anagni a year earlier. This work is entitled: Contre ceux qui attaquent la religion, c'est-à-dire
l'institution monastique, and in it the Angelic Doctor responds in detail and with great accuracy to all
the reasons or authorities alleged by Guillaume de Saint-Amour. The latter claimed that it is not
permissible for one who has property to deprive himself of it completely without providing for his
subsistence, either by
entering a community or proposing to live by his work. Thomas shows that this renews the errors of
Jovinian and Vigilance, who criticised the practice of monastic life. This
It is not only in habitual poverty, he says, that the perfection of the Gospel consists, that is to say, in the
interior detachment from the goods of which we remain possessors, but in poverty
This perfection does not require that we collectively possess anything. He reminds us that the most
perfect monks renounced all
He cites the example of Jesus Christ himself and of several saints, and proves the absurdity and injustice
of the criticisms levelled at Franciscan and Dominican religious.
After Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Bishop of Regensburg, and a host of others, Bonaventure, the
Seraphic Doctor, also wrote several treatises in which he used more or less the same proofs as Thomas
Aquinas to refute all the objections to the abolition of collective ownership.
Abolition of all property, even collective property. It must extend to civil society.
Finally, on 14 August 1279, the bull Exiit qui seminat appeared, in which Nicholas III refuted at length
the objections that had been raised against the principles of the Franciscans, and resolved the
difficulties that many had found in practising their rule. It establishes the following principles:
1° Absolute community or the abdication of all property, not only individual but collective, "is
meritorious and holy".
2° Jesus Christ "taught it by word and confirmed it by example, and the first founders of
the Church, drawing it from its very source, and passing it on by the examples of their teaching and their
lives".
3° If Christ possessed anything with his Apostles, it was to "condescend to the imperfections of the
infirm, the weak, the imperfect."
4° The way of perfection he teaches is the abdication of all property; the other is t h e infirmity and
imperfection of human flesh to which he condescended out of pure charity.
5° Confident in divine Providence, in human brotherhood and in their work, "triple means of
to live, those who thus abdicate the ownership of everything are not homicidal of themselves or
tempters of God".
6° Moreover "extreme necessity to provide for the sustenance of nature, is of natural civil law, exempt
from all law".
7° "The abdication of all property does not imply the renunciation of the de facto use of the things
necessary for life".
These fundamental principles give rise to a whole world of consequences, of which we will limit
ourselves to mentioning the following:
1° This abdication of all ownership being able to be made in common by a company, some
A whole nation, however numerous, could therefore implement it in its constitution, with everyone
freely adhering to it.
2° Every Christian who is to strive to imitate Christ, his type and model, must strive with all his might
for this suppression of all property, as for the perfection which the Apostles and the Church gave him
set an example.
3° For the same reasons, every Christian society must pursue its realisation, as the fulfilment of the
divine ideal assigned as the supreme goal to the perfection of humanity.
4° Mere de facto use, which still remains to man after the abolition of all property, does not imply any
infringement of the absolute community, because not constituting a right, it obliges him who has
consumed a product to recreate its equivalent through his work. Hence the rule of justice in the
community.
These, among others, are the rigorous consequences of the principles laid down by the papacy since
Innocent III, developed by Nicholas III and confirmed by his successors. They were first developed by Martin
IV, then by Nicholas IV, who further extended the privileges already granted to the Franciscans, mainly
in his bulls of 6 May and 30 April 1288. The principles of this famous constitution were
reproduced, confirmed and applied by Celestine V in 1294; by Boniface VIII in 1299, in several bulls in
favour of the Friars Minor; by Clement V in his decretal Exivi deparadiso, promulgated at the third and
last session of the General Council of Vienna, on 6 May 1312; by John XXII, in his innumerable bulls,
principally that Quorumdam exigit published on 13 April 1317 and the year
In the following pages, he recalls the constitutions of Nicholas IV and Clement V, the Santa Romana
constitution of late 1317, the Gloriosam ecclesiam constitution of 23 January 1318 and the others that
we will cite below.
Certainly, in no other case and on no other question has the Holy See pronounced itself in such a
reiterated, complete and persevering manner, by the authority of so many popes and in such a
succession of consecutive declarations over more than a century. It is worth repeating the words of
Augustine, so often quoted today: "Rome has spoken, the cause is finished".
But this was not yet enough, and the Papacy was increasingly showing that this was not the case.
Community, proclaimed by the Church, must extend to the temporal order as well as the spiritual
order, to civil society as well as religious society. This is strikingly apparent in these complex
discussions, whose forgotten form sometimes obscures their immense scope, and in these struggles
between the Church and the Church.
The many passionate events of this illustrious period make for epic drama. Without going into this
long maze, let's at least mention a few of the main points of this moving scene where
six centuries ago, the great issues of human destiny were at stake.
In his bull Ausculta, fili of 5 December 1301, Boniface VIII reminded Philip the Fair that temporal
kingdoms and their rulers were, like individuals, subject to Christian law. In his famous decretal Unam
sanctam of 18 November 1302, deliberated at a council in Borne, he declared that there were no two
principles, two laws, one for the spiritual order and the other for the temporal order, but only one law,
the Gospel; only one head, Jesus Christ; that all power comes from God and that the distinction of the
two swords is only that of a double function serving the same cause, one for eternity, the other for
time; that human and temporal power, instituted, ordered, judged by the Christian law, of which it
must not be the only one, is not the only one; that all power comes from God and that the distinction
of the two swords is only that of a double function serving the same cause, one for eternity, the other
for time; that human and temporal power, instituted, ordered, judged by the Christian law, of which it
must not be the only one, is not the only one.
This w a s a decree that the universal community, practised for fourteen centuries by religious society,
should be extended to civil society. This was already decreeing the extension to civil society of the
universal community practised for fourteen centuries by religious society.
John XXII simply applied these principles. Louis of Bavaria attacked, condemned and deposed the Pope,
established the bishops and, arguing that all property had been abdicated, [thus taking the Church at
its own game] claimed the goods of the Church as his domain. It was then that John XXII promulgated,
in
1328, his bull Quia vir reprobus, which, because of its length and importance, is a veritable book. In it,
he justified his three previous constitutions, which had been condemned by order of Louis on 18 April
of the same year, and
establishes the principle that Jesus Christ, as King and Lord of the universe, has the ownership and sovereignty
of the universe.
of all temporal things. He proves this by the prophecies and the passages of Holy Scripture, which
represent Christ as King of kings, Lord of lords, to whom belongs the empire over all the nations of the
earth, whose reign will have no end and to whom all power has been given in heaven and on earth. He
shows that when he said to Pilate: "My kingdom is not from here", he was saying: "My kingdom is not
from here".
declares that he does not derive his power from the world, but from God, to whom everything belongs. This
This was the doctrine of the most famous theologians, as well as of the papacy. Alvar Pelage, a famous
doctor of the Franciscan order, established in his Treatise on the Complaints of the Church that Jesus
Christ is the only pontiff, king and lord of all, and that the whole earth is his,
with everything it contains.
Now, since the kingdom of Jesus Christ was founded on absolute community, which has been perpetuated
for nineteen consecutive centuries, both temporal and spiritual society must be established on this
basis.
principle, on this universal law extending to everything, because everything is his. Everything comes
under this community, since Christ alone has the ownership and sovereign domain of all things.
The absolute community
Absolute community is the divine right and must extend to everything, to temporal society as well as
to spiritual society: this is the immense result achieved by this solemn debate of several centuries, and
by the decisions of more than a hundred papal bulls.
In this memorable discussion, which lasted for three centuries, the Papacy approved and proclaimed
"the complete abdication of all property, both in common and in private, as meritorious and holy,
being that which Christ taught by word and confirmed by his example, that which the first founders of
the Church, as they had drawn it from the very source, transmitted by the examples of
their doctrine and their life, this abdication of all ownership leaving only a simple de facto use".
Consequently, the Holy See, confirming the rule of the Friars Minor, decided that the ownership of
their goods belonged to the Church as a whole, of which the Pope was the representative, or rather to
Christ, to God alone, no man being the owner. This is what Roman law calls res nullius, res
sacroe et religiosa et sancta, quod enim divini juris est, id nullius in bonis est. This religious and
sacrosanct thing is nobody's thing, because what is of divine right belongs, as a possession, to
nobody.
In principle, this definition applies to all communities, but in particular to
religious communities. Each of its members having made a vow of poverty or renunciation of all
property, all the goods of these communities are by right the religious and sacrosanct thing which is
nobody's thing: it is the divine right of the principle of the community. We can therefore and must
consider all the monastic communities that have succeeded one another, since the primitive Church of
Jerusalem to this day, as a single community whose common goods are the patrimony of God,
administered by the Church. The usufruct of this divine patrimony is undoubtedly used by the various
particular communities according to the needs of their functions and the distribution of work, but in
principle the fund remains one, indivisible and inalienable.
Every generation, this community counts its members in the millions. During the Middle Ages, it alone
possessed all the archives, monuments, products and treasures of the arts, letters and sciences, and
performed all the high social functions, all the principal works o f education, agriculture and industry,
and all the great offices of politics and Christianity.
And yet! This immense community, nineteen centuries old, is still only a part of the Catholic
community. In fact, in addition to the incalculable assets of the monastic orders, the Church
still possessed such considerable assets that this dual ownership combined to form the bulk of all social
wealth. An example will suffice. It has been calculated that at the end of the seventeenth century, the
Church still owned twelve million acres of land in the twenty-two provinces of the Kingdom of Castile,
worth 161 million reals, while the laity owned no more than sixty-one million acres, worth 817 million
reals. Thus the fifth part of the
land, as well as a much larger portion of movable property, was in the hands of the clergy, whose
revenues still amounted to 150 million francs in 1817.
Now the Church proclaimed all the goods, whether movable or immovable, of this colossal community
to be the property of God alone, a common patrimony, undivided and inalienable, of which the holders
must have only t h e use or usufruct. In fact," says Fleury, "ecclesiastical goods, being consecrated to
God, are sacred, and the Church has the right to use them.
Ownership belongs to no one, and the beneficiary has only the administration". The usufruct of this
divine patrimony was allocated to the satisfaction of all the moral, intellectual and physical needs of
humanity, worship, education, instruction, foundation, maintenance and development of schools,
colleges, universities, sick homes, hospitals, hospices, asylums and retreats of all kinds, care of the sick,
the infirm, the abandoned, orphans, children and the elderly, subsistence of the clergy and a large part
of the population, hospitality, relief and assistance of all kinds to all.
As we can see, the community does not need to be made, it is made. It was established in the world
with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem, never to disappear again. Since then, it has been perpetuated
without interruption in monastic communities, and now covers the whole face of the earth.
Founded at first by the goods and offerings of the first faithful placed in common, it was constituted
by the goods of the Church, the property of God alone, an undivided and inalienable patrimony,
which has embraced the greater part of all social wealth, and which has a right of claim to the
immense wealth of the Church.
It has been robbed of billions of dollars' worth of possessions, especially since the sixteenth century
and the French Revolution.
This community is not just national, it is [international] like the Church, and embraces not just the
whole of Europe, a whole continent, but the whole universe in all its areas, from
from the equator to the poles. Contemporary with humanity through its tradition and origins, it has
existed in its Christian form for nineteen consecutive centuries, and has already contained within its
bosom millions and millions of men, who have bequeathed its future developments to the future. It has
withstood all persecutions, all violence, all seductions, all catastrophes; still standing.
on its indestructible rock, it has survived the flood of peoples, the fall of empires, the disappearance of
entire nations and the cataclysms of a thousand and one revolutions.
Teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church
Is that enough? No. Property still existed within temporal society. It had to be destroyed even in this
last refuge. Since the Church had no special mission in this area, it at least tried to do something about it.
to hasten the hour of this transformation. Through the mouths of her Fathers and Doctors, she gave
voice to the energetic accents of which we are about to hear a few echoes. This teaching has
necessarily
the very character of the spiritual order to which it belongs. He demands community in the name of
charity and divine justice, much more than in that of written law and human justice. He urges and
implores every man to renounce all that he possesses, to strip himself of his goods in order to give
them to others.
He could not demand this community in the name of the State, but he nevertheless pursued its
realisation with incredible fervour.
Let's face it, he often went much further. For example, we saw this passage in which the Pope
Clement says: "Brothers, the common life is obligatory for all men. For the use of all things in this
world must be common to all. It was iniquity that made one man say, 'This is mine,' and another,
'This is mine. Hence the division between mortals". These words of a
are reproduced in the Body of Canon Law, along with various similar passages
Ambrose, Augustine and other doctors. The eighth rule of Basil also says that one cannot obtain
the kingdom of heaven without renouncing all that one possesses on earth, which would amount to
nothing less, as Fr. Combefis remarks, than damning every owner. [If], since the Council of Gangres in
Paphlagonia, against the Eustachians, in the year 342, until the encyclicals of Pius IX, of 29 November
1846, 8 December 1849 and 1864, the Church has always condemned communism [, it has never done
anything but
condemn communism imposed on society exclusively by force or the absolute autocracy of the state]...
[With accents reminiscent of the curses of Isaiah and foreshadowing the curses of Marx, the
fathers and doctors of the Church utter curses against the rich]. Basil... urges the peoples of the world
to achieve a universal community of goods, housing, food and life, in imitation of the primitive Church
of Jerusalem and as an application of the original community of the Church of Jerusalem.
instead of "making common things their own and possessing alone what belongs to all". Gregory of
Nyssa... pursued with his most energetic efforts the establishment of community for all, and called
"inhuman tyrants, cruel barbarians, ferocious beasts, those who have made themselves masters of the
common inheritance to the exclusion of others". Astère, bishop of Amasie, in the Mount, and famous in
the East for his preaching, fought against property and the inequality of conditions in their entirety.
source, greed, avarice or the love of possessing. Ambrose repeats incessantly and in every possible way
forms: "The Lord our God willed that the earth should belong to all men in common, and that its fruits
should be for the use of all. You take for yourself in particular what has been given in common to the
It was greed that introduced the division of goods. It was greed that introduced the division of goods.
property is usurpation, and almsgiving is restitution "which the rich man must make to the poor man
for the share of the common goods which he has taken from him". And he concludes by saying:
"Declare common to all, the goods of nature which produce the fruits of the earth for the use of all.
Nothing could reproduce the frightening portraits he [Chrysostom] paints of the rich, the miser,
anyone possessed by the love o f property. He accuses them of committing every crime, of being
more wicked than the devils and of possessing what belongs to others. He is," he says, "a carnivorous
animal, a ferocious beast worse than the
ferocious beasts; it slits throats, tears apart and devours everything it meets. Like hell, it engulfs
everything; it is the declared enemy of humanity".
With Cyprian, Basil, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, Astereus, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa and all the others
He teaches that it is theft to misappropriate for one's own benefit the common good that belongs to the
poor, to everyone.
Isidore of Damietta also proclaimed community in these terms: "You have acquired goods by fair
industry; but you hold them unjustly. Make them common, t h e n , and they will truly be yours".
Augustine expresses himself in the same way. It is right," he says, "that we should all be in community of
goods and services.
of trials as well as in community of spirit, hope and love". After developing the same theories as John
Chrysostom, he continues: "It is because individual property exists that there are also lawsuits,
enmities, discord, wars, riots, dissensions, scandals, sins, iniquities, homicides... Where do all these
scourges come from? From property alone".
This complete abdication of all personal property, demanded of everyone, necessarily leads to
universal community, and the poor here become everyone, enriched by this general disappropriation.
It is sacrilege," he adds, "to keep what belongs to the poor", to everyone. Now, everything belongs to
them, because he says to the rich man: "What you possess is not yours"; and he proclaims these
terrible maxims:
"All riches are the fruit of iniquity, because they are the spoils of others; every rich person is a
despoiler or the heir of a despoiler.
[Jesus Christ] had said: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven". The apostle James, in his turn, accuses the rich of having dishonoured
the august name of Christ, of having condemned and killed the righteous, and tells them to weep, to
cry out and howl at the sight of the treasure of wrath they are storing up for the last days. Salvian,
whose authority was so great in the Church that he was called the master of bishops, comments on
these last words. After having drawn a frightful picture of the crimes he reproaches the rich for, he
expresses himself as follows: "He [James] does not say to the rich man: you will be tortured because
you are a murderer; you will be tortured because you are an adulterer; but he says to him: you will be
tortured simply because you are rich.
[We must not think that they [these testimonies] sum up everything that the Fathers and Doctors of
the Church have said or written on this subject. Far from it. We could have quoted an innumerable
multitude
other similar texts, often even more explicit, stronger and more forceful; whole volumes have been
filled with them, and we have done no more than pick and choose. We have stopped at the seventh
century, because it was necessarily necessary to limit ourselves, and because it is moreover in
those
the sources and basis of Christian tradition. But we could have unrolled the rings of this living and
unbroken chain from century to century, and so to speak from hour to hour, from then until now. A
few examples will suffice:
Where there is no community of goods," says Peter Damien, "spirits are divided; but when goods are
possessed in common, the spirits of all are united in a common will. "Where goods are divided, there
can undoubtedly be no unity of souls.
community and greed division".
"Live as a community", cried Pierre de Blois.
"Everything is held in common by natural law", according to Gratien.
This principle was proclaimed and developed by Thomas Aquinas, who added: "A perfectly
established community is a true city".
It is explained in all its details by Bonaventure who, after showing this community of goods applied to
temporal society, sums it up in these words: "The life of community is very holy; much more, it is the
angelic life".
The Church. - The Trinity. Incarnation. Communion of saints.
A constant doctrine and universal practice of the Church, community sums up the whole of Christianity.
The Church," says Saint Ambrose, "is the community of all in all, which is the very law and form of
justice. It prays in common, works in common, is tested in common. Justice consists in self-denial in
order to be worthy of Christ". It represents the absolute community, as one and indivisible, but at the
same time triune, in the image of the divine Trinity, and revealed under three aspects: - Community in
God; - Community or communion between God and man; - Community of all men among themselves
through their communion with God; and consequently, community of all the goods of God.
the soul and the body, as a manifestation of the communion of man with God and of all men with each
other.
God can be defined, in the words of Epiphanius, as "community with equality". This is the meaning of
the dogma of the divine Trinity. The community of nature or essence (omousios) with the co-equality of
persons (cooequales), that is the definition of this dogma according to all the symbols of the Fathers,
the Councils and the Popes. Now, this "community with equality" is the type on which human society
must be moulded. The union of the divine persons," says Bossuet, "has been given to us as the model
f o r our own. 0 God! Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I recognise myself in everything and everywhere,
made in your image, in your likeness.
in the image of the Trinity, in accordance with the words: "Let us make man in our image and likeness".
since the very union you want to establish in us is the imperfect image of your perfect unity. 0 Charity!
you must grow and multiply to infinity in the faithful, since the model of union and unity you want to
establish in us is the imperfect image of your perfect unity.
The communication that is proposed to you is a model whose perfection you can never attain. All you
can do is always grow by imitating him, by communicating more and more all that we have to our
brothers and sisters: light, instruction, advice, correction, when necessary, love, tenderness, virtue,
for example.
edification, good example, mutual support, and all the more so, goods, riches, sustenance, and
everything down to the bread we eat".
But for the divine community to become the model for the [earthly community], God and humanity
must be indissolubly united and placed in communion. Hence the dogma of the Incarnation,
second face of the community. The divine Word became man "so that we might become partakers of
the divine nature", says Peter, and so that the two natures, human and divine, might be in
communion.
This communion between God and man, in Christ, takes place through charity.
Descended from God into humanity, through the Incarnation and charity, this community with equality
is the foundation of the community of men among themselves, an essential and fundamental dogma
of Christianity, an article of faith in the Apostles' Creed, which gives it the name of the Communion of
Saints. Jesus Christ himself proclaims this community everywhere, especially in his last prayer after the
Last Supper. Paul in
develops the thought incessantly in all his Epistles: "We are all one body and members of one
another", he says.
... this community must extend not only to all men now existing on this globe, but to all those who
have passed through it, as well as to all those who are still here.
Now, the communion of saints or the communion of men among themselves, through their
communion with God, has as its external manifestation the community of all visible or material goods,
which is the expression of the community of all invisible or spiritual goods.
Part Two: Community through State
Two sides to the community problem
The universal advent of the community being the supreme and definitive goal which God proposed
for himself in the world [...] he willed that everything should contribute to it at the same time, Now, in
the [Judeo-Christian] world, there are only two great living forces: that of [...] the Church, which is the
divine order of revelation, of faith, of the Church and of the Church itself.
and that of temporal power, of human society or the State, which is the order of grace.
nature, examination and reason. The first teaches in the name of duty, self-sacrifice and
charity; the second commands in the name of law, reciprocity and justice. The first is addressed to
the individual, to the personality itself, to exhort and persuade it; the second is imposed on the
whole.
This is the only way we can ensure that the community as a whole is governed by an impersonal law to
which all must submit,
The first speaks to the conscience, the heart, the soul and the spirit, and its precepts and advice are not
the same as those of the second.
The second orders and governs external acts and visible facts by laws that are binding on everyone.
In the first part above, we have seen the Church not only preach, but also bring about the community [...]
which has been perpetuated without interruption for nineteen centuries: this is the "spirit-man". In this
second part, we shall show the State preparing, developing and organising the conditions and elements of
the temporal and obligatory community over the last six thousand years: this is the "body-man".
". In the third part that follows, we will explain how the Church and the State must unite for the
universal and definitive fulfilment of the integral community...
Achieving universal community [implied giving] property and sovereignty a t the same time and
indivisibly to everyone.
The first task was quite simply to remake the whole world, morally and materially [...] Thus, for
example, in order to give property and sovereignty simultaneously to everyone, it was first necessary
to make everyone [free]. [Christianity] first transformed
slavery into serfdom, then serfdom into freedom. Finally, universal suffrage, proclaimed in 1792 and
fully applied since 1848, made every man who became free a representative of sovereignty, residing in
each and every one of them. After nineteen hundred years, this colossal work is only now coming to an
end, as the last vestiges of slavery disappear from the soil of the United States [...] Twelve centuries of
energetic and persevering effort were barely enough; they freed women and children [...] The equality
of all men was proclaimed, along with their freedom, and their
universal brotherhood, the threefold fundamental basis of the community that has been steadily building
up for nineteen centuries.
But this was still, so to speak, only the surface of the Christian work. It built man and humanity from
s c r a t c h only to achieve community. [In traditional white civilisations, the State had by definition
been the transcendent unifying principle and the natural organ of a racial and ethnic community. In
contrast, the Christian State was intended to be a community
universal, or rather internationalist, i.e. the anti-community par excellence: a parody of community] In order
to found the [international] community, it was necessary to constitute a power which, placed above all the
limits of States, of all the frontiers of nations, would extend over the universe,
embraced the whole world and was the homeland of humanity. This power [was called] the Church,
from a word which means assembly, ecumenical council of nations, permanent congress of humanity.
And the Church founded... this [international] community [...] which, perpetuating itself through all
places and all centuries, is the living mould on which temporal society has only to model itself, the type
[...] that
the State has only to follow, the form [...] which it has only to assume, through its indissoluble union
with the Church, in order to complete the definitive realisation of the community.
To achieve this, the State itself had to place sovereignty, and hence property, its essential attribute, in
the hands of all. This immense task [...] required no less than nineteen centuries of effort and is not
yet completely finished. Let us briefly retrace its main phases.
The social evolution of sovereignty and ownership
The Christian era saw exactly the same development of sovereignty and property as we saw in [Semitic
Rome]. Only here it was not the priesthood that first possessed property as a particular body and a
class apart, but an aristocracy that we shall see constituted under the name of feudalism. Penetrated
by the Christian spirit, the priesthood posits that "the earth belongs to God with all that it contains",
and deduces from this, as an application, this immense universal community whose gigantic picture we
sketched in the first part of this work. He went further, and sought to introduce this community into
the State through the generalised institution of undivided and inalienable patrimony.
The property of Caesar or the Roman people passed into the hands of the new barbarian conquerors.
Their chiefs, whether Franks, Germans, Goths or Lombards, divided up the conquered land and gave it
as a reward to their warriors who had served well or fought well in the war. For this reason, this salary
was called beneficium, benefit, advantage or profit. But [because of] the spirit of community
maintained by the Church, this was not the appropriation of land, and these benefits, being in principle
always removable, thus left the soil of Christendom and all t h a t it bore in... community. Later, it is
true, the holders of these benefices came to own them.
make them life annuities. The principle of community had not yet been completely broken.
[Fortunately] they went further and ended up making them hereditary. However, this was not without
a struggle, and it took centuries. In fact, the heredity of benefices, which began to be introduced into
France as early as 587 by the Treaty of Andelot, was so far from being established that it was not even
completely established.
three centuries later, in 877, when the Edict of Kiersy sur Oise extended it to the government of the
provinces of
the Carlovingian Empire. It did not spread to the rest of Europe until much later. It was not brought to
Italy by Emperor Conrad II until around 1030. The benefices then took the name of fiefs, first
mentioned in a charter of Charles the Fat in 884. However, the definitive appropriation of land had not
yet been achieved. In addition to perpetual fiefs, there were
For a long time, these were still temporary fiefs and others were simply life fiefs. The name of benefice
was always applied to land or income allocated to ecclesiastical services, and these benefices
continued until 1789. All the functions, at first elective and life-long, only became
with the heredity of the crown itself under the Capets. Feudalism, whose power
It was not until the accession of Hugues Capet in 987 that the feudal community finally triumphed. The
feudal community only came into being after ten centuries of social community. But this was also the
beginning of the struggle between royal power and feudalism.
According to the law we have already mentioned, full ownership implies full sovereignty, and vice
versa. As the owner of the land, each feudal lord also became the owner of civil, military and judicial
power. Sovereign in his domains, he governed,
administered, ordered and distributed taxes, dispensed justice, raised and commanded armies - in
short, exercised all the prerogatives of sovereignty. Hugues Capet and his successors were only really
kings in their own domains. Like all other countries, France was no more than a large fiefdom, a sort of
confederation of lords bound by a hierarchy of reciprocal duties and rights that constituted the
suzerain lords and the vassals or feudatories. No doubt the
The number of fiefs, their nature and their mutual dependence varied infinitely. But since the essence
of the fief always lay in indivision and inalienability, at least within certain limits, it was still a kind of
community, and the federation of these particular communities formed the general community.
The royal power, representing and personifying the unity of these diverse communities, tended to
naturally to bring them back to him and merge them into a vast national community. This was his
work. Louis VI began it, and it became widespread through the emancipation of the communes. Philip
Augustus, Saint Louis and Philip the Fair continued and extended this work, bringing into the royal
domain a large number of "communes".
of fiefdoms. Their successors, even more powerful, made it prevail. Finally, Louis XI and later
Richelieu dealt feudalism its final blows.
The general community absorbed all the particular communities into itself, the sovereignty of
everything passed into the hands of the monarchy, and the ownership of everything passed into it, by
virtue of this fundamental law that we are constantly observing. Everywhere the monarchy proclaims
and applies this doctrine.
At the beginning of the 14th century, Marsilio of Padua and John of Jandun supported the proposition
that "all temporal goods are subject to the emperor, and that he can take them as his own". At the end
of the same century, in England, Richard II proclaimed himself "master of the property of his subjects".
In his treatise on the Franc-Alleu, Galland dogmatically established: "That the king is the universal lord
of
all the lands in his kingdom". The principle that the sovereign has the direct universal domain of all
property was laid down in the Marillac Code under Louis XIII in 1629. Louis XIV formulated it with more
of energy in an edict of August 1692. It was so much in keeping with political tradition that the
Sorbonne, when consulted about a tax by the king, replied: "that the property of his subjects was his
own". In his instructions to the dauphin, Louis XIV himself set out this theory of property in these
terms:
"Everything within our States, whatever its nature, belongs to us in the same way. You must be well
persuaded that kings are absolute lords and naturally have the
to have full and free disposal of all goods owned, whether by members of the Church or by seculars, to
use them in all things as wise stewards".
Three years later a book was published under the title: Testament politique de M. de Louvois. It reads
as follows: "All your subjects, whoever they may be, owe you their person, their property, their blood,
without having the right to claim anything. By sacrificing everything they have to you, they are doing
their duty and giving you nothing, since everything is yours. This theory [of Mosaic origin] was
reproduced in the eighteenth century by M. de
Paulmy.
Thus it is the sovereign, it is the State, that is the absolute master of everything, men and things, the
supreme owner of all property; "everything within the territory, of whatever nature, belongs to him in
the same way, everything is his. He is the absolute lord, and naturally has full and free disposal of all
possessed goods". Now that the people had become this sovereign, this Louis XIV, everything belonged
to him, and therefore everything belonged to everyone. This is what the Revolution proclaimed,
repeating in its turn, "I am the State", and simply applying the very theories of Louis XIV for the benefit
of all citizens.
Man," says Mirabeau, "cannot have an exclusive right to any object in nature; for what belongs equally
to all does not really belong to anyone. There is no part of the soil, no spontaneous production of the
earth that one man has been able to appropriate to the exclusion of another... The land on which he
has deployed his industry returns to the general domain, and once again becomes common to all men.
This is what the true principles of things teach us...".
On 22 April 1793, Boissel shouted from the rostrum of the Jacobins: "The rights of citizens consist in
the enjoyment and usufruct of the goods of the earth, our common mother".
Finally, on 21 Floréal Year V, seventeen thousand men rose up in Paris to support the realisation of the
doctrines summarised in the Manifesto of the Equals: "The agrarian law or division of the countryside
was the instant wish of a few unprincipled soldiers, of a few peoples driven by instinct rather than
reason. We are tending towards something more sublime and more equitable: the common good or
the community of goods. No more individual ownership of land; land belongs to no one. We
We want communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth: the fruits belong to everyone.
"
This is the final word in the immense social evolution that took nineteen centuries to pass into the
hands of everyone this sovereignty, the right of all to everything, necessarily implying community.
Now, the sovereignty of all, proclaimed today in a large part of Europe and the whole world, has as
its strict consequence the universal community of goods, of which it is only the principle and the
source.
Community in the modern age
From the first day of the Christian era to this very hour, humanity... has been constantly moving
towards a single goal to which everything converges, and that goal is the complete and definitive
realisation of the universal community.
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it worked actively towards its realisation, partially
achieved it, and, prematurely believing that the time had come, it rose up at the end of this period
with Anabaptism, stirred up almost the whole of Europe, and, after fifteen years of struggle,
recognised that the material force to be found in the world was not enough.
to which it has claimed its triumph is not the true path to its final fulfilment; and while it has left
useful foundations that have been perpetuated to the present day, it is resuming its work through
the
peaceful ways. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, it moved from ideas to facts, from sects
to the public mind, from parties to society as a whole, becoming more precise as it became more
widespread, developing right up to their very origins.
It was at the heart of the English revolution of 1648, inspired and crowned that of 1789 in France,
and is today the only question of the entire world. The nineteenth century
The end of the twentieth century was to bring about its definitive realisation. Forgetting liberty in
order to absorb everything i n t o unity, ignoring the Church in order to expect everything from the
State, it was cured of this vice by the scaffold of 24 February 1797, which, by guillotining Babeuf,
decapitated this error and thereby made it inevitable.
the universal advent of community.
From the outset, the modern era has had two faces, responding to the two terms of the problem
posed by the pre-Christian world. Until then, the priesthood and the empire had been
confused and united in the same hands; the Caesars were both emperors and sovereign pontiffs
religion and the city, the cult and the State, the gods and the fatherland were one and the same thing;
religious law was at the same time civil and political law... in a word, there was only one society, one
undivided community, whether it remained more specifically religious, as in the East, in India and
Persia, or whether it was more specifically political, as in the West, in Greece and Rome... From its very
beginnings, religion and the city were one and the same thing.
On the contrary, by its very appearance, Christianity established two perfectly distinct orders, spiritual
power and temporal power, the Church and the State, the priesthood and the empire,
["Do you think that I have appeared to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. Luke
12:51]
Now, these two powers, these two orders so profoundly distinct, although coexisting simultaneously
and even connecting at all points, represent precisely the two terms of the problem of the
universal community. The State, on the other hand, the expression of the social action of all, operates,
not individually and freely on each individual, but collectively and obligatorily on all: it is the temporal
power organised to create, dispose of and coordinate all the material conditions, without which the
universal community is impossible, since all individual attempts cannot
result only in the formation of particular bodies, and not in the common organisation of society as a
whole.
We have already seen the work of the Church. Not content with embracing the whole human race...
this [international] community constantly teaches it, by practical example even more than by words,
absolute community. Through the slow but uninterrupted work of nearly two thousand years, it has
brought the spirit, the tradition, the tendencies and all the aspirations to the very heart of humanity,
to the very bowels of civil society. It has enveloped that society on all sides in a
a vast network of institutions which, in the most diverse forms, are already preparing and partially
realising the community. See :
In its monasteries, under the name of lay brothers and lay sisters, it has lay people o f both sexes,
subject to the regime of community;
It had monastic communities made up entirely of lay people, such as the Brothers of the Common Life,
who spread throughout the Netherlands, France and Germany, and the Poor Volunteers, who spread
throughout Germany and France, worked in various trades, were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters,
blacksmiths, etc., served the sick, buried the dead, got up at night to pray and owned nothing;
It attached to the monastic communities an immense multitude of lay people, in the third orders of
Francis, Dominic, Augustine and a host of others;
It has countless congregations of simple faithful;
It had its secular teaching, school, university, scientific, literary, artistic and other communities;
In the Middle Ages and since, it has covered the soil of France and the whole of Christendom with
agricultural associations or compaings living in community of goods, food, work and life, which we will
discuss later;
It had and still has, in part, its countless confraternities or lay communities, dating back to its cradle
and continuing uninterrupted to the present day. They can be found in Constantinople as early as 336
AD and were mentioned by Theodosius and Justinian. That of the Paradolani, founded at the beginning
of the 5th century, is the most famous.
century, is mentioned in the Theodosian Code. From early on, Gaul and Ireland had a large number of
Confraternities, Conferences and Collects, as can be seen from the fifteenth canon of Nantes, held
around 659. In the second half of the 8th century they were called
Gildoniae, Gilda and they were approved by the capitularies of Charlemagne. Later, they embraced all
professions, all useful works, merchants, craftsmen, pontiffs or
pontists building bridges, others establishing roads, others architects, masons, building
the buildings, town halls, hospices, church builders whose inspired genius created these... basilicas,
these cathedrals... which have been called "epic poems in stone". These are free communities,
which the government then transformed into the guilds of tradesmen, merchants and craftsmen that
Louis Blanc so magnificently praised.
As we can see, the secular world, civil and temporal society, was and still is penetrated, hemmed in,
enveloped entirely in the narrow meshes of this immense network which links it to the [international]
community, preparing the way for its realisation within it. At the same time as Christianity was being
born, there appeared an even deeper and more universal invasion [than that of the Germanic peoples,
and] whose action continued into modern times. It was all those Gnostic, Manichean, Pelagian,
Waldensian, Albigensian and other sects who, bringing to the new world the Eastern, Pythagorean and
Platonic tradition of the community of goods, gradually infiltrated minds, customs, institutions and
practices, and through eighteen centuries of incessant work, made it the obligatory principle and goal
of all modern society. Let's recall just the main ones.
Community in the first five centuries of the Christian era
Christianity was still in its infancy, and the Apostles had barely begun to evangelise the whole of Europe.
It was no longer just free community, as in the Church, but compulsory community, as in the State. It
was Gnosticism that first preached it, renewing the Platonic theory. Simon, called "the great virtue of
God
"He founded the first of these sects, which continued until the beginning of the fifth century. After the
Simonians and Nicolaitans, of whom John speaks in his Apocalypse, Carpocrates established another sect
of Gnostics in the second century, called Carpocratians by his name, who pursued the same goal and
proclaimed the sharing of all goods.
In his book entitled On Justice, Epiphanius, son of Carpocrates, defines the justice of God as a
community with equality, and teaches that nature itself, like the divine law, wants community in all
things, community of land, goods and life, and that human laws are a means to this end,
by inverting the legitimate order through the institution of property, produced sin through their
opposition to the powerful instincts that God has deposited deep within souls. The Carpocratians
perpetuated themselves
for a long time, mainly in Egypt and on the island of Samos. A Gnostic inscription was found in
Cyrenaica, which reads: "The community of all goods is the source of divine justice".
The Apotactics, whose name means "renouncers", also appeared in the second century. They were so
called because they renounced all property, declared this renunciation to be absolutely compulsory
and considered anyone who possessed anything to be reprobate. They were also called Apostolic,
because they imitated the example of the Apostles and the first faithful, and imposed this imitation on
all Christians. They spread throughout Cilicia and Pamphylia. For a long time at least, they seem to
have been considered orthodox Catholics, and had virgins and martyrs under the persecution of
Diocletian in the fourth century. However, they later shared the doctrines of the Encratites, a sect
which arose around the year 151 and whose leader was Tatian, a disciple of Justin...
In the third and subsequent centuries, the philosophical schools, the Neopythagoreans and
Neoplatonists, Plotinus, Porphyry and Jamblicus, also pursued with great zeal the establishment of a
republic organised on the principle of the community of goods and following the model laid down by
Plato. Plotinus urgently sought permission from the Emperor Gallian, who honoured him with a special
favour, to establish a community in a ruined town in Campania.
The third century also saw the emergence of a considerable sect which, in various forms, has
continued almost to the present day and which also aimed to achieve the community of goods.
Manichaeism, which took its name from Manès, who was born in 240 and flayed alive in 282. He
proclaimed this principle: "Everything belongs to everyone. Property, which comes from the Spirit of
Evil, must be abolished. There must be neither poor n o r rich; no one has the right to own a field, a
house, or money, nec domos, nec
agros, nec pecuniam ullam possidendam. We must destroy all hierarchies of rank, abolish all
distinctions between princes and subjects, magistrates and subordinates; for all this is founded and
instituted by the principle of evil...". First appearing in Persia, the Manichaeans spread throughout
Mesopotamia, India, China and the whole of the East, penetrating Egypt and Africa, where they
counted Augustine among their many followers. They spread to Spain in the fourth century, to Italy in
the tenth, t o France, mainly in Languedoc and Provence, to Germany and England in the eleventh,
and finally to the whole of Europe. For more than two hundred years, from 285 to 491, they were
subject to the most severe laws,
Persecuted, banished, robbed and put to death, they continued to multiply. In 841, the empress
Theodora had over a hundred thousand of them tortured to death and others searched for them. They
swung over
They fought against them, built strongholds and, defeated in a major battle towards the end of the 9th
century, retreated to Bulgaria and Lombardy. In 1022, Robert II, King of France, condemned to the
flames a crowd of people who had taken to the streets.
rushed into the flames with great joy. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were counted in
their millions, and merged with the innumerable sects we shall soon be talking about, known as the
Bulgarians, Albanians, Cathars, Begards, Patarins, Brabançons, Cottereaux and Albigensians,
Henricians, Petrobrussians, Poplicans, etc. They were the first seeds of the Wiclefites in England and
the Hussites in Germany, and survived long after them. Be that as it may, public and certain action
always embraces more than their thousand consecutive years.
Alongside them, in the fourth century, we find the Eustachians, who proclaim that one cannot save
oneself without completely renouncing all kinds of property, and make this renunciation a rigorous duty,
and
leave all their possessions as incompatible with the hope of salvation. At the end of the fifth century, in
Persia, under the reign of Kobad, father of Chosrou or Chosroës, Mazdec taught that there should be
no property in the world.
that God is the sole owner of everything, that he created the universe so that everything would be
held in common by all the children of Adam, and that everyone has the same right to it; that it is not
permitted to say: 'This is mine'; that no one has any right whatsoever to possess anything; that it is not
permitted for one person to have more property than another; that everything must be held in
common. All things," he said, "both
Whether animate or inanimate, belonging to God, it is impious for a man to want to appropriate what
belongs to his Creator and what, in this capacity, must remain for the use of all". These doctrines had
won over an innumerable number of followers, and the king himself, Kobad, converted to them; but he
was then overthrown from the throne, on which his brother was raised, and Mazdec, banished like
him, perished in torments with his main adherents, a few years later, during the reign and by the
orders of Chosrou.
During this first period, which we have just briefly summarised, the community established its
tradition, which it drew on three main sources. Firstly, it was inspired by the example of the primitive
The Church of Jerusalem, of which the Apostolics or Apotactics and the Eustachians represent the
absolute community as rigorously obligatory for all. It then continues and renews in all forms, assimilating
the communist doctrine of the East and Asia that the Manichean, Gnostic and Carpocratic sects
propagate and popularise on all sides. Finally, through Plotinus, Porphyry, Jamblicus and the
philosophical schools of the Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, it took up the community of
Pythagoras and Plato and gave it new life by transforming it.
Summing up all the great earlier currents of humanity, all the tradition of Eastern and Western
antiquity, it fertilised them with the breath of the Christian spirit, and from the 5th century onwards,
t h e principle of community was proclaimed, not only in the name of tradition, but also in the name
of reason and freedom. This was the work of Pelagianism.
Pelagians
As is almost always the case, it was a monk who took the initiative. Pelagius, from the convent of
Bangor in Wales (Great Britain), came to Rome in 405 and, basing himself on the Gospel, fought
against inequality, preached equality and the community of goods, and gathered together a very large
number of disciples in Italy, France and Italy.
Sicily, Africa, Gaul, England and the East. Together with Celestius, another Scottish monk, Rullin and a
host of others, he organised a vast propaganda campaign using apostles who
travelled throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, founding a model community at its centre. He travelled to
Africa
in 409, then to the East. Prosecuted, he was absolved by a council of fourteen bishops, held in Lydda or
Diospolis in Palestine. Pope Zozimus even wrote in his favour to the bishops of Africa, but then, in
agreement with the council assembled at Carthage in 418 and others, he proscribed his doctrines on
grace and original sin, but in no way those on community. Eighteen Italian bishops refused to
subscribe to this decree, and one of them, Julian, bishop of Eclane, now Avellino, in Campania, wrote
several works in defence of Pelagianism. The emperors Honorius and Theodosius condemned
Pelagius and Celestius to exile, and their followers to confiscation of their property.
Nevertheless, the Pelagians continued to exert immense influence, driving people into the deserts
and founding many communities there. According to them, renouncing all
property is a law of salvation, wealth is a sin, a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he
renounces all his possessions, and he is unworthy of being placed among the righteous as long as he
keeps them, even though he would otherwise comply with all the precepts of religion. Augustine sums
up their
doctrine on this subject: "Rich people can only be baptised after renouncing all kinds of
They are excluded from the kingdom of God. Moreover, the Pelagians themselves summed up their
principles of the community of goods in a book entitled On Wealth, attributed to Pope Sixtus III,
quoted in the Great Library of the Fathers.
Albigensian, Waldensian, Apostolic, Bonaventure.
Before going any further, let us first note a crucial fact. There are two perfectly distinct phases in the
development of community in the modern era. From the birth of Christianity to the thirteenth century,
it mainly took a religious and dogmatic form; mixed with theological and moral doctrines, most often
rejected by the Church, it remained at the level of a sect, a party, without having any general effect on
populations alien to school discussions. On the contrary, from
From the thirteenth century to the present day, it has increasingly become a social and political
movement that stirs up and enthralls the masses, as can already be seen in the history of the
Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Apostolics, the Lollards, the Hussites, the Jacquerie and the
Anabaptists. The action of the sects was undoubtedly mixed up and confused for a long time to come,
but the action of the people became more and more predominant and the theological aspect was
erased more and more until it disappeared completely, only to be replaced by the theological aspect.
the social question.
Having established this fact, let us resume the succinct summary of this great incessant work. We shall
not speak of the Islamism founded in the sixth century by Mohammed, but confine ourselves to
pointing out, in passing, that in all Muslim countries individual property is hardly more than the
exception, and common possession,
the general fact. In Christianity, from the fifth to the eleventh century, it was above all the free
community that was built up by the Church and the monastic orders, as we have shown in chapters VII
to XI of the first part. Nevertheless, during this period, the community
It is difficult to follow its various ramifications because it is shrouded in mystery. Although it is difficult
to follow its various ramifications because of the mystery with which it is shrouded, we can at least see
its tradition being perpetuated without interruption in the Manichaean sects, which gave rise to most
of those we are going to talk about, and whose adherents King Robert had burnt in 1022. But far from
stopping the irresistible aspiration of the human race, these torments gave it a new impetus. In fact,
from the beginning of the eleventh century to the fourteenth, the idea of community exploded
throughout Christendom, not just as a simple tradition, a Christian tendency or a fundamental fact of
reason and freedom, but as an obligatory application of the law.
Catholic dogma, as a revelation of the Spirit of God and the supreme goal of human philosophy.
Historians grow weary of counting the numberless sects that appear at the same time.
often mingling and merging, multiplying endlessly, perpetuating themselves through all kinds of
They mark the point at which this immense movement went from being dogmatic and religious to
social and political.
So as not to tire our readers, we won't talk about Fratricelles, Frérots, Spirituels or Croyants,
Apostles, Begards, Picards, Lombards, Transmontans, Turlupins, and so many others who, under a
thousand different names, concluded that the community was often the most absolute.
Let's just say a few words about the Albigensians, who are more directly related to the Manichaeans and
by them go back as far as the third century. There were six million of them in France alone, and in the
south of the country they formed the majority of the population. It was a formidable protest against
property ownership.
Their doctrines tended towards communism. In his Histoire des Cathares ou Albigeois, M. Schmidt
shows that they "considered the love, or rather the possession, of earthly goods as a mortal sin, and
therefore strictly forbidden. These goods, they said, were the rust of the soul and distracted the eyes
from the higher destination; from this naturally followed the law of absolute poverty, imposed on the
members of the sect", and the community. They claimed," says one of the most violent opponents of
communism, "that all things should be equal and common to all. They were not so much a particular
sect as an innumerable crowd of sects confounded under this general domination. So they were still called
Cathars, i.e. pure, Bons-Hommes, because of their simple, regular and peaceful exterior, Pifres, Patarins,
Publicains or Poplicains, Passagers, or the names of their various leaders,
Petrobrussians, Henricians, Arnaudists, Esperonians, etc. They withstood eighteen years of war, sixty
years of missions, inquisition, atrocious massacres, nameless tortures, crusades and
incredible efforts throughout Christendom; and when they were supposed to have been wiped out by
being burnt alive in multitudes, they spread from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and the
substance of their doctrines was secretly brought back from Syria by the famous order of the Templars,
and was then transmitted to Freemasonry, from which emerged the
communism today. Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached against them in 1147, gave them this back
testimony: "Their morals are blameless; they oppress no one, they wrong no one; their faces are
mortified and downcast by fasting; they do not eat their bread like
lazy, and they work for a living".
Almost at the same time, an even more directly communist sect arose, which caused a stir in France
and Italy, especially during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which has continued to this
d a y . These were the Vaudois, whose origins Basnage traces back to Claude of Turin in 823, others to
Pierre Valdo, a merchant from Lyon, who preached around 1173, and some to another Valdo, who
predated the one from Lyon by more than a century. Whatever the case, their founder, convinced that
renunciation of all property was essential to salvation, distributed all his possessions, embraced
evangelical poverty and
preached this doctrine, calling on all men to achieve the community of goods. According to him,"
says Ernest Merson, "Christians being brothers, earthly possessions should be held in common, so
that everyone could enjoy them equally". He soon had countless disciples, and this
The sect made rapid progress, especially among the common people. They lived in poverty and
walked barefoot or in sandals; so they were first called Pauvres de Lyon, Léonistes, Insabatès or
Ensabotés, and Runcaires because they slept in hedges and under bushes. All authors celebrate the
Reynier himself, who as Inquisitor led the most relentless prosecutions against them, does justice to
the sanctity of their lives. There were some differences between them, particularly between those
from Italy and those from France. The latter, in particular, did not want to possess anything at all and
considered all possession of temporal goods to be illegitimate. According to historians, their aim was
the complete realisation of evangelical equality in a society without nobles or the rich.
In his Histoire de Lyon, Claude Rubis shows that they wanted community of property. Bossuet
adds: "their doctrines concluded that everything should be held in common". The Gospel, they said,
forbids war, the death penalty, levies and even the pursuit of reparation for a wrong. We must
that all, priests and laymen alike, imitate the Apostles and the first faithful living in community, that
like them they possess nothing of their own and earn their living by work. They pushed the
rigour of these principles that they claimed that priests and ministers of the Church who do not
embrace this abdication of all property are no longer true disciples of Jesus Christ and no longer have
the right to be called priests.
They added that any layman practising this voluntary renunciation had a more real and legitimate
power than these priests to fulfil these functions and to preach the Gospel. In 1207, a number of
Waldensians, who had returned to the Church, founded the Order of Poor Catholics, which in 1256
joined the
Augustine's hermits. The others continued from the 12th to the 16th century in the valleys of Dauphiné
and Piedmont, and spread to several parts of Europe, notably Bohemia and Calabria. In
In 1536, some of them joined the Calvinists. They were exterminated,
as had been done three centuries earlier against the Albigensians; four thousand were massacred in
one fell swoop and their villages reduced to ashes.
The twelfth century also saw the appearance of the Apostolic sect, which, using their own name,
renewed the doctrine of the Apotactics of the second century and, like them, proclaimed the negation
of property, considering anyone who possessed anything to be reprobate. Their leader was called
Pontius. They were cracked down on and burned, but their numbers became so great that armies had
to be raised to wipe them out in France.
Another branch of the Apostolics, who also proscribed all forms of property ownership and made a
great stir in the thirteenth century, was founded in 1246 by Gérard Ségarelle, who was born in Parma
and burnt alive in that city in 1300. On his death, his disciple Dulcin or Doucin, born in Novara, became
the leader of these Apostolics, who took from him the name of Dulcinists. They strongly proclaimed
that everything should be common among Christians and that those who refused could be forced to do
so. They became so powerful that in 1290 they preached
They in turn raised an army, and the result was a war that lasted more than two years, with much
bloodshed on both sides.
The Church, for its part, had been working since its first day to build temporal society on this
community, free from all error. Its saints, its monks, its most famous doctors, in
were relentless in their pursuit of this goal. In the 13th century, for example, Bonaventure published a
number of works with this aim. In one, entitled Apologie des pauvres, he deals with the question of
particularly from the point of view of religious orders; but in another entitled De la Pauvreté du Christ
against Guillaume de Saint-Amour, he lays down the principles in a general way, applying them to all
men of whom Christ, he says, is the divine model. From this point of view, as from the first, he denies
all property, whether collective or individual, as being "the source and root of all evils".
Lollards, Wicleflites, Jacquerie, Hussites, Bohemian Brethren, etc.
After thirteen centuries of incessant effort, the Christian world had at last laid down [its own] formula
of the civil community, [as opposed to the racial and therefore organic nature of the polis]... The latter
was confined to the limits of a state or a small republic; that embraced within its bosom the whole of
humankind...
the whole human race. The [pre-Christian white] conception excluded slaves and often other classes...
the Christian conception calls into it, without distinction of rank, all men who have become equal and
brothers...
Bonaventure clearly established this formula of the civil community, just as Francis of Assisi had
completely established that of the religious community... This formula gradually penetrated the heart,
the soul and spirit of the people. From this day on, it will no longer be just sectarians, parties that
It is the mass, society itself, which is shaking, and which, through uninterrupted work over six
centuries, is preparing all the elements, all the conditions necessary for the universal realisation of this
community.
The first of these movements was the Lollards, named after Walter Lollard, born in England towards
the end of the 13th century, who dogmatised in Germany in 1315 and was burnt in Cologne in 1322.
They spread throughout Germany, mainly to Austria and Bohemia,
They penetrated Flanders and England, and later joined forces with the Wiclefites on the one hand and
prepared the way for the Hussites on the other. There were eighty thousand of them in Germany
alone, where, according to one Catholic author, they were burnt to the ground, which only increased
their numbers.
According to the Vaudois, Lollard drew his doctrines from them; according to others, the Lollards were
linked to the Fratricelles or Bégards: all these sects professed community.
It was above all in England that, united with the Wiclefites, they stirred up the working classes and
almost toppled the property-owning society of the time from top to bottom. Born in 1324, two years
after Walter Lollard's execution, and dying in 1385, Wiclef, principal of Canterbury College and benefactor
of the parish of
Lutterworth shared the doctrines of Marsilio of Padua and John Jandun, who, as we have seen,
concluded that community should be achieved exclusively through the State. One of his propositions
was that "God cannot give a man, for himself and his heirs, a civil estate in perpetuity". Mr Sudre
himself admits that his views bear a striking resemblance to those of the Albigensians, Waldenses and
Lollards. His disciple John Bail, priest of Maidstone, Wat Tyler and a host of others,
preached equality and the abolition of all hierarchies. At their voice, the entire people rose up, the
peasants swept into London, where two hundred thousand Lollards and Wiclefites entered victorious
on 13 June 1381, forcing the king to capitulate. But this vast uprising, whose dramatic picture has been
described by Walsingham, Knygton and Froissart, was suppressed by ordinary means: Wat Tyler was
murdered in an interview, the amnesty was violated, the entire population was handed over to be
tortured, and people were taken to
across England to rob the tortured of the honours of a clandestine burial.
This communist movement had long since broken out in France, with extreme violence, and was
revealed there principally by the famous Jacquerie (1358) where the people, personified under the
name of Jacques Bonhomme, attempted a revolution against property by armed force which was
merely the
prelude to others even more serious and more general. It was stopped by iron and fire; and the
Jacques, pursued to excess, had their throats slit everywhere. The slaughter," says Frédéric Morin,
"was so widespread that agriculture ran out of hands.
Momentarily suppressed in France and England, the movement continued in Belgium, France and Germany.
Germany and everywhere else. In the first half of the 14th century, especially in Brussels, the Brothers
of the Free Spirit appeared, which in the following century gave rise to the Men of Intelligence,
continued in 1411 and perpetuated until the middle of the 18th century, as attested by Father Heylen,
historian of the Kempen. In Germany, this movement, which was more involved in religious issues, was
They were famous for their victories, feared by the most powerful princes, had entire kingdoms at
their disposal and waged a thirty-year war against a hundred thousand crusaders. Their first leaders,
John Huss, a disciple of Wiclef and author of the book On the Reign of the People, and Jerome of
Prague, were burnt alive at the Council of Constance in 1415 and
1416, and their carefully collected ashes were thrown into the Rhine. Unable to defeat the
The Hussites were lured into barns and burnt in the middle of the night (1434). In 1457, the remnants
of the Hussites, united under the name of the Brothers of Unity or Bohemian Brothers, established
themselves in Bohemia as an absolute community of goods, work, food and life, under the direction of
the parish priest Michel.
Bradacz, and maintained their religious beliefs there until 1621: they were also called Picards and
Vaudois. In the eighteenth century, the Moravian Brethren emerged and their community has
continued to this day.
Anabaptism
After fifteen centuries of preparation, the doctrine of the community of goods, formulated by one
cardinal and sanctioned by another, had already penetrated people's minds so widely and so deeply
that it attempted to be put into practice immediately in part of Europe. This vast movement at once
invaded the whole of Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, then spread to Poland, England, the
rest of the world and later as far as America, triumphed for a long time on a host of points, and driven
back by brute force, pursued with the death penalty, despite the atrocious tortures inflicted on its
leaders, did not cease to perpetuate itself for three and a half centuries, and to this day still has
innumerable supporters in Germany, the United States, Holland, Alsace and elsewhere. This is what
has come to be known as Anabaptism.
From beginning to end, he preached absolute community. His symbol in this respect
perfectly explicit. The third article of his profession of faith, drawn up at Zolicorne in 1525, reads: "
Any sect where the community of goods is not established between the faithful is an assembly.
imperfect, who have strayed from the law of charity which is the soul of Christianity". His second
profession of faith, formulated in 1529, says the same thing; and the third, drawn up in 1530, which
can be regarded as the "first profession of faith", says the same thing.
as its definitive symbol, expresses itself as follows in its second article: "Any society that does not hold
its goods in common is an unholy society and unworthy of the name of Christian". Anabaptism began
by proclaiming the sovereignty of all, from which necessarily follows the right of all to everything, a formula
that was even used in the Anabaptist movement.
of the absolute community. God's elect," said Nicolas Storck, "who have become as many kings on
earth, will constitute the empire to which heaven promises the sovereignty of the universe. He
immediately drew the communist conclusion; and Thomas Münzer, addressing the assembled people,
exclaimed: "We
We are all brothers and we have only one common father in Adam. What is the origin of this
difference in rank and property that tyranny has introduced between us and the great of the world?
Why
Why should we groan in poverty, why should we be burdened with work while they swim in delights?
Are we not entitled to the equality of goods, which by their very nature are made to be shared?
shared, without distinction, between all men? The earth is a common heritage, in which we have a
share that is taken from us. When did we give up our share of our father's inheritance? Let them show
us the contract we have signed! Give us back, you rich of the world, you greedy usurpers, the goods
you so unjustly withhold from us! It is not only as men that we are entitled to an equal distribution of
the benefits of wealth, it is also as Christians. At the birth of religion, did we not see the Apostles taking
into account only the needs of each believer, in the distribution of the goods brought to their feet? Will
we never see those happy times again! And you, the unfortunate flock of Jesus Christ, will you always
groan under oppression?
That's what the Anabaptists kept saying. Their origins have been traced back to the Bohemian Hussites
as early as 1503. What is certain is that they were already numerous in 1521. Banished from
Wittemberg in 1522, they triumphed the following year at Alstedt, in Thuringia, where Münzer, from
the pulpit,
exclaimed: "The Almighty expects all peoples to share their goods in common. Yes, my brothers, to
have nothing of one's own is the spirit of primitive Christianity". This community became a reality
Soon, not only in Alstedt, but also in Mulhausen, the imperial town and capital of Thuringia, where
Münzer, the supreme dispenser of common property (1524), prepared to start a propaganda war. In
response to his voice and that of Phiffer, Stork, Metzler and a thousand others, the peasants of
Thuringia, Swabia and Franconia rose up and formed two armies, one of ten thousand and the other of
forty thousand men. All the powers combined their forces against them, and the Anabaptists were
defeated in several encounters, notably on 15 May 1525 at Frankenhausen, where seven and a half
thousand of their number remained on the battlefield and most of the others were taken prisoner.
Mùnzer was tortured, beheaded and his head stuck on a spike in the middle of the countryside. Phiffer
also suffered the ultimate torture. The Anabaptists nevertheless continued their war, not only in
Swabia, Thuringia and Franconia, but also on the banks of the Rhine, in Alsace and Lorraine, and their
main army, commanded by Goetz of Berlichingen, put up stubborn resistance for two years, from 1525
to 1527. It is estimated that over a hundred thousand people perished in this terrible "peasant war".
Despite their successive defeats, despite the death penalty imposed on them and renewed by the
Diet o f Speyer in 1529, the Anabaptists, far from disappearing, only spread further. They spread to
Switzerland, Germany and Poland. In this first country, where they had penetrated as early as
1523, two years later they drew up the Zolicone profession of faith, which states in principle that
magistrates are useless in a society of true believers, and that it is not permitted for a Christian to
become a magistrate; that the only punishments to be employed in Christianity are those of
excommunication; that Christians are not allowed to stand trial, take an oath in court, or take part in
military service". They made rapid progress, but after various struggles, edicts ordered them to be
drowned, they were put to death, and the waters of the Rhine, the lakes and the torrents of
Switzerland swallowed whole bands of these unfortunate people (1528-1529).
Proscribed from Switzerland, expelled from Strasbourg, punished everywhere with the death penalty,
the Anabaptists were not put down and spread throughout Lower Germany, particularly in Westphalia,
Friesland, Silesia, Bohemia, the Netherlands, the neighbouring provinces, the banks of the Rhine and
Poland. They continued to make immense progress in Germany. One of their most ardent apostles,
Melchior
Hoffmann, nicknamed Elijah, gathered a large number of proselytes in Friesland and was imprisoned
when he tried again to establish the community in Strasbourg. Another, even more popular, John
Mathias, nicknamed Enoch, went to Amsterdam where he exerted considerable influence, chose
twelve apostles who went to evangelise everywhere, and played a major role in the publication of a
famous book which became the religious, social and political manifesto of the Anabaptists. In this
book, entitled On the Restoration, they proclaimed the ancient and universal tradition of the millennia
and recalled that before the day of the last judgement there would be a temporal reign of Jesus Christ
on earth, which would embrace all the states of the old and new worlds in a single republic made up
entirely of true Christians,
living in absolute community of goods, possessing nothing of their own, and thus applying Christianity
in its primitive purity. In this universal community, whose regenerated members will be raised to a
higher degree of perfection and holiness, magistrates will be created and deposed.
by the people. There will reign perfect equality and common happiness; there, no more dominators, no
more princes, no more great ones, no more taxes, tithes, or corvée, no more armies, prisons, judges...
no more crimes, no more trials. It was this reign of Christ that the Anabaptists had come to prepare,
this new Jerusalem that they had come to inaugurate.
After several attempts, supported by the masses of the people, they took control of Munster, the
capital of Westphalia, on the first Friday of Lent in 1534, and established the community there.
property. Everyone gave everything they had, gold, silver, jewels, furniture and possessions of all kinds;
everything was pooled together; housing was shared out...
At the end of December 1534, Jean de Leyde [, leader of the Anabaptists in the city of Münster] sent from
new, emissaries to proclaim everywhere the reign of God, the advent of the new Jerusalem and the
universal community, to stir up Friesland, Holland and all the Rhine provinces, to create a diversion and
unblock Munster. Various serious uprisings took place first in Leiden, near
Bolswaert, in Groningen; but the skilful captain, Jean de Gelen, one of these emissaries, saw his first
bands exterminated by the government of Friesland. He took refuge in Amsterdam where the
Anabaptists, very
Many of them were constantly subjected to bloody executions, hanged, beheaded and drowned. 11
resolved to take the town, and with the support of Wesel and Deventer, two of the most important
towns in the
On 10 May 1535, he took control of Holland for a short while, but when he was repulsed, he was
shot with an arquebus and all his followers were killed or taken prisoner. Then all those who were
convinced or accused o f Anabaptism suffered atrocious, indescribable torments...
Münster, no longer hoping for any help, nonetheless rejected the overtures of the Landgrave of Hesse
and the bishop's offers of capitulation, and suffered the worst of the famine.
terrible. But betrayed by an enemy soldier whom the Anabaptists had taken in, and who brought the
Episcopal army within its walls, the town was taken on 25 June 1535 after a desperate t w o - h o u r
struggle. The Anabaptists were butchered horribly. All the men who were not put to the sword were
handed over to the executioner. The town was pillaged and ransacked; the women were handed over
to the troops, but as they bravely defended their honour, they themselves were sent to the execution.
Jean de
Leyden, seized alive, was carried with two Anabaptist leaders through the whole of Germany as a
laughing stock. After being made a spectacle of in this way, he was taken back to Munster, tied to
a post on a huge scaffold in the main square, and there, for more than an hour, the executioners,
armed with
After these atrocious tortures, endured with rare fearlessness, they opened his entrails. This was on 22
January 1536. His companions also showed the greatest courage. Their bodies, enclosed in iron cages,
were hung from the top of the tower of the
These bones remained there for the following centuries, in order to teach the world by what evangelical
means ownership is maintained.
The Moravian Brethren, Mennonites, etc.
After fifteen years of struggle, successive defeats, and pursued by so many bloody executions and
appalling tortures, Anabaptism, still standing, only merged into a host of different sects. The first was
the Moravian Brethren, founded in 1527 by two disciples of Stork,
Hutter and Gabriel Scherding, who took in Anabaptists banished from Germany, Switzerland and Poland.
All the roads," says M. Sudre, "were covered with emigrants who, having sold their heritage, left their
native soil to go and populate these fledgling colonies". The second article in their symbol
I believe that all societies which do not share their goods in common should be considered impious,
and that a Christian should possess nothing in particular". Indeed, the community of goods was put
into practice in all its rigour. A bursar, changed every year, collected the income of each member.
An archimandrite governed the community, both reporting to the supreme leader. Meals were taken
in common and the food was the same for everyone. The settlers' clothes and the furniture in their
homes were uniform, and children brought up in the same community were given the same food.
together. Agricultural work was combined with that of industry. The only punishments allowed w e r e
extraordinary work, public penance and "expulsion to the century", the greatest of all punishments.
is to fall back under the owner regime.
This... society, known as "the Promised Land", which brought together up to seventy thousand men all
living in community, enjoyed the greatest prosperity, despite persecution, exile and the death of
Hutter, who was tortured by order of Ferdinand of Austria. Gabriel founded de
numerous colonies in Silesia. This republic," says Bergier, "formed a society of excellent farmers,
industrious, sober, peaceful and very regulated in their morals". Not all historians mention
with the highest praise and the deepest admiration. We find them again a century later, in 1620; and
the Moravians, their descendants, have continued to this day in various states of Germany and in
several surrounding regions.
A second branch of Anabaptists, established in 1536 by a Catholic priest, Simon Menno, took the name
of Mennonites from him and spread throughout Friesland, Westphalia, Gelderland, Holland and
Brabant,
England, where they were called Baptists, and sent colonies to the United States, where they still have
seventy thousand members and more than two hundred churches. The Dumplers, a German sect
descended from the Anabaptists, practise communion in a town in Pennsylvania, built by them and
called Euphrates.
Other Anabaptists, widespread in England, played a part in the revolution of 1648, constituted the
most radical portion of the republican party and pursued the establishment of the reign of Christ,
absolute liberty and the complete transformation of society. They were called, in allusion to
their prophetic hopes, the men of the Fifth Monarchy. They were led by Harrison, [the Jew] Hewson,
Overton and many other officers of the parliamentary army, and their influence prevented Cromwell
from taking the crown. Later persecuted, they continued in
North America, Holland and even England, and gave rise to a large number of different sects,
including the Quakers.
Boni, Guillaume Postel, etc., Campanella (Cité du Soleil)
Established by Anabaptism, repressed but not defeated, the community became more than ever the
goal that humanity pursued with all its efforts. While the Jesuits were realising it in [the] Republic of
the
Paraguay, writers followed one another relentlessly to develop and propagate it everywhere.
doctrine. They saw it as the coming of the reign of God on earth, the holy republic of Christ. This is how
Guillaume Postel, Isidore Isolanis, Fialin, Bonjour and a thousand others saw it.
In 1552, seventeen years after the death of Thomas Morus, Doni published his book Les mondes
celestial, terrestrial, etc. A madman, representing present-day society, finds himself in the presence
of a wise man, an apostle of the community, who shows him that everything must be common to all.
He draws up a plan of this community where everyone is perfectly free, "doing nothing other than
what he wishes, each being equal in eating and dressing, and having as much in his house as the
other", and each child being brought up according to the inclination of his mind".
Guillaume Postel, one of the most learned men of his century, professor of mathematics and oriental
languages at the Collège de France from the time it was founded, devoted himself especially to the
religious side of the question. His book De orbis concordia is a first and very remarkable attempt to
synthesise a l l beliefs into a single one, Christianity, which contains them all, and to bring, in this
In this way, the universal communion of souls produced by reason and philosophy, all institutions to a
common and universal institution, uniting divine right and human right in the moral and social law of
charity, the definitive goal of all the facts of history, of all the tendencies of civilisation, of all t h e
efforts of humanity.
Around 1576, Jean Bodin, Montesquieu's precursor, wrote his book De la République, which M. Louis
Reybaud places alongside Thomas Morus's Livre d'or, in the midst of the troubles of the League.
But one man above all continued the work of Bonaventure and the Chancellor of England. This man,
whose glory filled the world, was received on 9 February 1635 by the King of France, Louis XIII, who,
with his head uncovered, went to meet him, embraced him twice, gave him the most solemn welcome,
saw him again and told him: "I am the King of France!
wrote several times. This man, in contact with the Grand Duke Ferdinand III and other princes, loved
and protected by Cardinal Richelieu, linked with Peiresc, Gassendi, Galileo and the greatest celebrities
of his time, admired by all the scholars, who was considered a prophet and whose works were
approved by the Sorbonne, was... a monk... His name was Campanella. Born on 5 September 1568 at
Stegnano, near Stilo, in Calabria, he revealed prodigious faculties from childhood. An admirer o f
Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Telesio, whose icy forehead he kissed in his coffin, he became a
Dominican at the age of eighteen. Dreaming of a new era, he travelled all over Italy and one of the
Medici, Ferdinand I, Duke of
Tuscany, tried in vain to fix him in his States.
One day, at the head of three hundred monks, Augustinians, Dominicans and Cordeliers, he called on the
people to the
freedom and attempted to free his homeland from the yoke of the Spanish. The year was 1599.
Surrendered by a traitor, chained t o a galley, thrown into a dungeon, a "damp and foul pit", locked
up successively in
Fifty prisons, subjected seven times to the most atrocious torture, the last of which lasted forty hours,
tearing his body to shreds and breaking his bones, without being able to get a single syllable out of
him, put on trial fifteen times, from the depths of his dungeon, he filled Europe with the noise of his
name, and his works were read everywhere, in France, Italy, England and Germany. The popes kept
asking for his freedom, and Urban VIII finally obtained it after five years of negotiations. Released on
45 May 1626 from the prison where he had spent twenty-seven years, he was called to Rome by the
Sovereign Pontiff, who welcomed him most affectionately and showered him with protection. He
remained there until October 1634, but was pursued by the
He lived, surrounded by admiration and respect, in the Dominican convent in the rue Saint Honoré,
where he died on 21 May 1639.
Campanella believed he had been "sent by God to reform kingdoms and give new systems for the
government of society". This vocation was real, but his system is nothing other than the eternal
Catholic tradition of the community. He developed it in The City of the Sun, published around 1630 and
part of one of his prodigious number of works. "It is a vision, a divination of the future state of
humanity", says Cléophas Dareste.
The citizens of the City of the Sun "worship God in the Trinity. They say that God is the sovereign
Power, from which proceeds the sovereign Science, which is also God, and that from both of them
comes from Love, which is power and science together". Not only do they believe in God, from whom
everything comes, in the immortality of souls and in the rewards and punishments of the other life,
but they profess Christianity "which will one day reign over the whole world, when the abuses that
corrupt it have disappeared, as the most illustrious theologians teach and hope". They see all events
in history and in the world as providential means used by God "for the purpose of uniting all nations
under one law" [...] The disturbance that exists in the world demonstrates to them the fall
original. They know the close solidarity that binds not only the members of families and the
They are therefore working to neutralise evil and extend good, by worshipping God, following religion
and practising the precept of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. "Praise and glory
to God in all ages
".
They see in the marvellous discoveries and inventions of modern times "the clear signs and
instruments of the reunion of the whole world in the same fold", and they expect new prophets, the
renewal of government, laws, the arts and the whole social order, the total renewal of the world and
the complete and universal triumph of Christianity. They know "the mystical relations
between things on earth and things beyond our globe; and yet they believe in man's free will".
The community thus rests on five fundamental foundations: religion, morality, science, progress and
freedom. All social functions are divided into three orders, an image of the Divine Trinity and a symbol
of freedom.
manifestation of man's three faculties: feeling, intelligence and activity. These three orders,
artists, scholars and manual workers, the expression of the beautiful, the true and the useful, that is to
say of the moral, intellectual and physical life, are represented by three ministers, or triumvirs, named
Love, Wisdom and Power, the three faces of the indivisible unity of the community, presided over by a
leader called the "God".
Philosopher or Metaphysician. Under these triumvirs, all social functions were organised into
divisions, decuries and centuries, and regulated in councils and public assemblies. "All magistrates
may
be changed by the will of the people". Election, competition and the order of merit determine any
hierarchy. The principal chief is elected by all, and must be the most capable man in the community,
possessing all the sciences to the most eminent degree; as soon as a more worthy man emerges, he is
elected in his place. The triumvirs who assist him must have a thorough knowledge of the arts they
direct, but at the same time be versed in philosophy, history and the physical sciences. "After the
Metaphysician, who
presides, like an architect, over all work, and who would be ashamed to know nothing of what it is
given t o man to be able to learn, after him, I say, Wisdom has under her command the heads of
each branch of science"; Love directs education, and Power all the work of strength. As we can see,
Campanella assigns the sciences, the humanities and the fine arts a predominant and, so to speak,
exclusive role.
The city is divided up, oriented, scientifically organised, and all its monuments and walls feature
representations and paintings of all the sciences, which children learn at play and with marvellous
speed. "Everything is shared by all, but the distribution is regulated by the magistrates. The sciences
and the pleasures of life are shared in such a way that no one is able to enjoy them.
think of appropriating others to the detriment of their fellow citizens". They destroy the spirit of
property, thus rendering selfishness purposeless, and all that remains is love of the community.
"Everything they need is given to them by the community. Nothing necessary is denied to anyone.
Friendship is made known by the services they render each other in sickness, in the study of science,
where they help each other with their mutual enlightenment, care and praise, and by giving each other
their necessities". They called themselves brothers.
Miscellaneous writings
It was not enough for Christianity to have founded and perpetuated the community to the ends of
the other hemisphere [in Paraguay]; it had to universalise its application to the w h o l e of temporal
society. The further he progressed, the more he redoubled his efforts to achieve this goal, pursued
relentlessly especially since Saint Bonaventure, and with which everyone associated, Catholics,
Protestants and philosophers alike. We do not pretend to list here all the writings that were more or
less directly aimed at this goal at the time, and we will simply cite the titles of a few of them.
James Harrington, an English publicist who was born in 1611 and died in 1677, published L'Oceana in
1656, which M. Louis Reybaud, in his Études sur les Réformateurs (Studies on the Reformers), ranks
first among the communist writings, after those of Thomas Morus and Campanella.
In his Treatise on War and Peace, published in 1625 and dedicated to Louis XIII, Grotius acknowledges
that God established the community of goods, that this community of the earth would still exist if vices
had not broken the bond of fraternal friendship, and that it always remains a right.
In his book De Cive (On the Citizen), Hobbes says: "There is no legitimate property; men are equal by
nature; she has given everyone the right to everything; and inequality is the effect of wickedness. Who
assigned ranks and properties to each individual? Why are some opulent, others mediocre or
destitute? Why masters, servants and slaves? By the wickedness o f men!
In his work on Civil Government, Locke exclaimed: "Fraud, bad faith, and avarice have produced
that inequality of fortunes which is the misfortune of the human race, by heaping on one side all
the vices with riches, and on the other all the evils with misery. The philosopher must
therefore consider the use of money to be one of the most disastrous inventions of human industry
".
In his philosophical treatise on natural laws, Cumberland notes that God made the earth
that all have a right to its goods, and that morality is based on fraternity, equality and the common
good of all.
In his Droit de la nature et des gens, Puffendorf proclaims natural equality and community
It recognises that property is a human institution, and that the present inequality of fortune is an
injustice which leads to other inequalities, through the insolence of the rich and the cowardice of the
poor.
[...]
But let us pass over a host of other writings, such as Hall's Other World, Nicolas de Munster's Land of
Peace, Jordano Bruno's Rout of the Triumphant Beast, and let us say a word about the three most
illustrious Catholic geniuses of the seventeenth century.
The great Pascal stigmatised ownership as usurpation: "This dog is mine,
said these poor children; this is my place in the sun, this is the image of the usurpation of the whole
earth". He then proclaims the community, which he defines perfectly in passages from which
Villegardelle has given extracts, and sums it up by saying: "The multitude that is not reduced to unity is
confusion; unity that is not multitude is tyranny".
Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, has the same tendencies. In Article 5 of Book 1 of his Politique sacrée, he
uses the text of the Mosaic law to set out and fully demonstrate, as a "consequence of the general
principles of humanity", the proposition that "the division of goods among men alters neither the
general society of the human race nor fraternal assistance". He goes further and develops the
principles of community at length, as can be seen from the fragments quoted in the History of Ideas
governments. Without governments," he says, "the earth and all goods would be as common among the
people as they are among themselves.
According to the primitive law of nature, no one has a particular right to a n y t h i n g ; everything
belongs to everyone, and it is from civil government that property is born.
Fénelon, the austere and pious Archbishop of Cambrai, loudly proclaimed the egalitarian community
as the type and ideal of society. Wanting to paint a picture of a model nation, he describes in his
brilliant pages the happiness of the inhabitants of Betica who, with no government, no laws, no judges,
no prisons, and living in profound peace, ignore even the name of property. They live," he says, "all
together without dividing the land... All property is held in common... They have no interest in...".
They are all free and equal. There is no distinction between them". The essence of these ideas can be
found, not
not only in his Télémaque, but in all his works, particularly his Fables, his Dialogues des morts and his
Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté. In his Essai philosophique sur le gouvernement
civil, after defining charity, he adds: "If all men had followed this great law of charity, there would be
no need for positive laws or magistrates. All t h e goods of the earth would have been common.
God says to all men: "Grow and multiply and fill the earth". He gives them all, indiscriminately, all the
herbs and all the woods on it.
grow".
As for the other writings which directly preach the community or present imagined pictures of it, they
are almost innumerable, and we shall limit ourselves to mentioning here, as a simple indication : - the
History of the Severambes, published in Brussels in 1677 and reprinted in 1716, which develops an
organisation of the community reminiscent of Campanella's City of the Sun and gives a plan of the
common city similar to that later adopted by Morelly; - the Memoirs of Gaudence of Lucca, which also
offer many analogies with the City of the Sun; -the Republic of Philosophers (or the Ajaoiens),
attributed to Fontenelle; - the Cessarès, published in London in 1764, and analysed in the Encyclopédie
méthodique; - the Histoire naturelle et civile des Galligènes, published in 1770, which is similar to
Diderot's Supplément au voyage deBougainville and recalls the Incas of
Marmontel; - Pechméja's Télèphe, imitated from Télémaque; - Terrasson's Séthos; - Florian's Numa; -
Rétif de la Bretonne's Découverte australe; - the République des Abeilles; - the Miroir
d'or de Vieland; - le Catéchisme de Boisset; - le Monde de Mercure; - les Voyages de Cyrus; - le
Nouveau Gulliver, and a multitude of others.
Morelly (Nature Code)
From the time we have now reached, that is to say towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the
movement which is taking France, Europe and the whole of Christendom towards the complete
realisation of the universal community, is accelerating and accelerating in a prodigious way. It was
sweeping up in its irresistible current all elite minds, regardless of the diversity of their religious,
philosophical, moral and political beliefs. The whole of society is shaken to prepare for the fulfilment of
its supreme ideal. This impetuous torrent, while overflowing on its banks, is
digs a deep bed in the bowels of humanity; and the human spirit, by probing to the heart of the
problem, brings forth a new focus of light.
An obscure teacher from Vitry-le-Français, Morelly, had the glory of giving the main impetus to this great
movement. Saint Bonaventure, after all the Fathers of the Church and the monks, had sketched out the
religious philosophy of the community, showing how it raises men to the divine ideal and makes them live
in God, detaching them from the love and worries of earthly goods. Morelly, in his turn, set out the moral
philosophy of the community, proving that it alone places us in a divine ideal.
a social environment conducive to the exercise of all virtues, the elimination of all vices, and in
complete harmony with all the needs and tendencies of our nature.
It is hard to believe the extent to which the thought of men who preached the community, such as
Thomas Morus and Campanella, has been distorted and disfigured. But it is above all with regard to
Morelly that this falsification has been taken the furthest. It is therefore important to discuss it in some
detail.
His father had written a number of books that have remained almost unknown, principally L'Essai sur
l'esprit humain (1743) and L'Essai sur le coeur humain (1745). Some bibliophiles attribute them to the
son. Be that as it may, in 1751 he published a work entitled Le Prince, etc., explaining "the system of
wise government", and in 1753 another entitled Le Naufrage des Iles flottantes, ou la Basiliade,
histoire d'un peuple vivant en communauté, ending with the following summary: Le monde est la
patrie de l'humanité, les biens de la nature doivent être communs à tous les hommes qui se
partageaient en groupes de familles pour en tirer le meilleur parti possible. In response to some of
the criticisms levelled at the Basiliade, in 1755 he published his famous Code de la
nature, the only one of his writings with which we will concern ourselves, because in it he develops, by
condensing it, all his thought. Morelly is simply continuing, from the point of view of society, the work
of all time
pursued, from the point of view of the individual, by the Church, its Fathers, its Doctors, its mystics, its
monks. Like them, he wants to extirpate the vice of appropriation, greed and avarice, the source and
principle of all the others; but whereas they attack it at its living source, the human soul, he destroys it
at its very object, which is property, "The only vice I know of in the universe," he says, "is Avarice; All
the others, whatever name we give them, are only tones, degrees of this one; it is the Proteus, the
Mercury, the base, the vehicle of all the vices. Analyse vanity and fatuity,
pride, ambition, deceit, hypocrisy, villainy; break down most of our sophistical virtues in the same way,
and they all boil down to that subtle and pernicious element, the desire to have: you will find it at the
very heart of disinterestedness. Now, could this universal plague, the particular interest, this slow
fever, this ethisis of all society have taken hold where it would never have found itself, no?
only food, but the slightest dangerous ferment? I don't think anyone will dispute the obviousness o f
the proposition that where there is no property, there can be none of its pernicious consequences.
Relying on both revelation and nature, he first shows that Christianity has done nothing else through
its dogmas, which proclaim the "natural equality of all men", by
the establishment of absolute community in the primitive Church of Jerusalem and in the monastic
orders. "All this conduct tended visibly to remind men of the true laws of nature. Thus Christianity, if
we consider it only as a human institution, is the most perfect.
But in a temporal society based on property and individual interest, "the power
The Church lacked the legislative power" to universalise "that community of the goods of nature, that
reciprocity of help, that equality of condition, which is the true spirit of Christianity".
What has been done in the religious and spiritual order must also be done in the civil and temporal
order, because nature only confirms the teachings of revelation. Bossuet says: "When God formed the
womb of man, he first put goodness there". Morelly, starting from this principle, shows that
benevolence is the very condition of happiness for everyone. It precedes every other feeling, every
It raises us to the notion of God, gives us an idea of the Divinity that is truly worthy of the
greatness of its purpose, perfects our faculties and gives them their true direction, their right
use, their complete harmony. The nature of the infinitely good Being that it reveals to us and that
the
The spectacle of the universe only increases, and is only altered as benevolence withers. Thus
"charity perfects the faculties of the mind through the feelings of the heart".
We can see how Morelly posits, under the name of beneficence, the same law that Christianity
proclaims under that of charity, nature and revelation having but one language. "It is the fundamental
and universal principle around which everything revolves; it is the centre from which everything
revolves.
all our faculties, so that its alteration distorts all the feelings of the heart, all the emotions of the mind, all
the emotions of the heart.
It produces idolatry, superstition, all the vices, all the plagues, all the crimes. Now, this community of
souls is reflected in the community of goods and life, a consequence of the community of nature and
consanguinity. So we find the community at the origin of humanity and of all nations.
Mably
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably was born in Grenoble on 14 March 1709. His father was a member of the
Dauphiné parliament and he was Condillac's elder brother. He studied with the Jesuits, entered the
seminary of Saint Sulpice under the protection of Cardinal de Tencin, who was related to his family,
and received the sub-diaconate.
Renouncing all the dignities of the Church to which he could easily have attained, he began his career in the
Church.
career as a philosopher and historian on the practical side, by fulfilling the highest functions of a
statesman under the name of Cardinal de Tencin, who had become a minister and for whom he was in
reality fulfilling the role of minister.
charge. He gave it up to devote himself exclusively to study and, according to his biographers, knew
everything by heart,
Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Titus Livius; absorbed for forty years in intellectual work, he
left it only once to go to Poland, when that unfortunate country came to see him.
to ask him and J.J. Rousseau for a constitution. He refused the highest positions; he was offered in vain
to be appointed tutor to the Dauphin, son of Louis XV; and no amount of urging could persuade him to
allow himself to be admitted to the Académie française. He died in 1785 at the age of seventy-five, on
the eve of the
convocation of the Estates-General that he so earnestly desired. This is the man who devoted his life to
fighting property and propagating the principles of the community in all its forms, in all its forms.
We will limit ourselves to citing the doubts raised by economists about
l'ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés published in 1768, the Traité de la législation ou Principes des lois,
published in 1776 and the Traité des droits et des devoirs du citoyen. One volume would barely suffice
to summarise the ideas of this great writer, from whom we can only give the following extracts.
Like Thomas Morus, Morelly and all the others, he paints an appalling picture of the countless miseries
and scourges produced in all times and places by the system of property ownership. "The
society," he says, "has almost everywhere offered nothing but a collection of oppressors and oppressed. A
thousand
Cruel revolutions have already changed the face of the earth a thousand times, and wiped out the
greatest empires; and yet so many repeated experiments have not even been able to "enlighten us. "In
the
On the contrary, a so-called philosophy that takes what is done senselessly in the world as the rule of
w h a t should be done, has come to the aid of our prejudices, and has given them an air of reason.
to perpetuate their empire". These charlatans have flattered our passions and our whims, instead of
establishing society on the basis of fraternity, solidarity, reciprocity of services and the principles o f
community and equality that lie deep in the human heart and towards which all our faculties tend.
In our proprietary society, "the superfluity of some gives birth to the misery of others... And the laws
that tolerate a few immense fortunes are the cause of all the evils that history portrays. It is in equality
of conditions that we must seek to preserve our social qualities and our happiness. Equality must
produce all good, because it unites men, elevates their souls, and makes them happy.
Inequality produces all evils, b e c a u s e it degrades them, humiliates them, and sows division and
hatred among them. If I establish equal citizens, who consider in men only their virtues and talents,
emulation will remain within fair bounds. Destroy this equality and emulation will immediately turn to
envy and jealousy, b e c a u s e it will no longer have an honest end in view. The legislator will only go
to unnecessary trouble if all his attention is not first given to establishing equality in the wealth and
status of citizens. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that inequality of wealth and
condition decomposes,
so to speak, and alters the natural feelings of his heart".
Pauperism and "beggary disgrace Europe today as slavery once disgraced the republics of the Greeks
and Romans. All the rights of humanity are violated". The horrors of war bloodied and devastated the
world. The rich punish theft "because they can be stolen from, and approve conquests because they
themselves are the thieves of nations".
"Open any history and you will see that all peoples have been tormented by this inequality of fortune.
Citizens, proud of their wealth, have scorned the idea that men condemned to work for a living are
their equals; immediately you see the birth of unjust and tyrannical governments, biased and
oppressive laws, and, to put it briefly, a host of calamities...
under which people groan. This is the picture presented by the history of all nations; I defy you to go
back to the first source of this disorder, and not find it in the
land ownership... "
[...]
Look at the countless texts of the Fathers against property, against the rich and the wealthy; they all
tend towards community, they all want, like Saint Paul, "equality". Nature herself tells us: "You are all
my children, and I love you all equally; I have given you the same...".
The whole earth is the heritage of each one of you; you were equal when you came out of my hands,
why did you grow weary of your condition?... Where will you find a principle of inequality? Did she
establish a special patrimony for each of you? Did she set boundaries in the fields? Did it not create
rich and poor? Had she favoured certain races with particular benefits, as we see that in order to establish
the empire of man over animals, she endowed us with several superior qualities... Who can deny that,
on leaving the hands of nature, we did not find ourselves in the most perfect condition?
equality? Did she not give all men the same organs, the same needs, the same reason? Didn't the
goods she had spread over the earth belong to them in common?
[...]
I would like to "establish a republic where all are equal, all are rich, all are poor, all are free, all are brothers,
our first law would be to own nothing. We would carry the fruits of our labours in public shops; this
would be the treasure of the State and the heritage of every citizen. Every year, the fathers of the
family would elect the bursars responsible for distributing the necessities of life.
each individual, to assign him the work that the community would require of him.
"I know all that property inspires in the ardour and taste for work; but if, in our corruption, we know
only this spring capable of moving us, let us not deceive ourselves to the point of believing that nothing
can make up for it. Do men have only one passion? If I knew how to stir it up, wouldn't the love of
glory and esteem become as active as avarice, which has none of its disadvantages? Can you not see
the human race becoming ennobled under this legislation and effortlessly finding a happiness that our
greed, our pride and our sought-after sluggishness do not give us?
useless promises. It was up to men to realise this chimera of a golden age. We would not have on our
heads this burden of useless laws with which all peoples are burdened today.
Tired of the tiring and senseless spectacle presented by Europe... my soul opens up to sweet hopes
".
[...]
These are, very briefly, the main ideas of Mably, who demonstrates them through history, proclaims
the divinity of Catholicism from which they originate, preaches the alliance of religion and philosophy,
and banishes atheists from the republic. In the last three books of his Treatise on Legislation he sets
out the practical means of achieving community, one of which is to abolish the right of the individual to
own property.
to test, to impose heavy taxes and to restrict inheritance and succession rights so that
that society as a whole, inheriting in place of individuals, would eventually become the sole owner of
everything.
Dom Hisoard, La propriété et la communauté des biens depuis l'antiquité jusqu'à nos jours, vol. 1,
Berche et Tralin, 1869, revised and annotated by B. K.
The Phoenician roots of democracy in Greece
"The Secret History of Democracy explores the idea that democracy is a much older concept than
is generally acknowledged. Above all, it seeks to establish that democracy originated in Phoenicia
and the Greek colonies of Asia before developing in Athens in the classical period. The thesis
suffers from the same major flaw as almost all studies of the origin and development of
democracy.
the history of this system of government: he assumes that demokratia has characteristics identical to
those of democracy as it developed from the "Renaissance" onwards in Europe.
Europe, i.e. in both cases it is a political system in which power is exercised by the people, by all citizens,
without (wanting to and having the intellectual honesty to) hold any power over them.
It should be borne in mind that, while demokratia and democracy can indeed be defined in the same
way, the terms 'people' and 'citizen' do not have the same meaning in either case. To be a citizen of
Athens, you had to be male, free, the son of an Athenian father (from t h e time of Pericles' reforms
in 451 BC, the son of a father with Athenian citizenship and an Athenian mother, herself the
daughter of an Athenian citizen, both of whom were married legitimately), and you had to have
made its ephebia. Only the politai enjoyed political rights and were part of the body politic (dèmos).
The astoi, i.e. women and those who were not politai, had civil rights as members of the same
community of blood, could take part in the life of the polis, but had no decision-making power. As a
result, the modern concept of "citizenship" is, like all representations born of democratic superstition,
a vulgar, grotesque parody, and the same is true of the concept of "citizenship".
This is even true of the modern notion of 'the people', which refers to the pejorative sense of
'multitude' or 'little people' that the term 'demos' took on in classical times, when assemblies were
mainly composed of people of low extraction (see Marie-Joséphine Werlings, Le dèmos avant la
démocratie: Mots, concepts, réalités historiques, 2010, PUPO). However, originally, "dèmos
To return to the thesis of the authors of "The Secret History of Democracy", i.e. the theory that Greek
political institutions were formatively influenced by Phoenician institutional concepts, this is not the
case. To return to the thesis of the authors of "The Secret History of Democracy", i.e. the theory that
Greek political institutions were formatively influenced by the institutional concepts of the Phoenicians, it
is as follows
would only be tenable if it were established that the "citizen" and the "people" were for the
Phoenicians w h a t they are for modern democrats. Now, even if the Jewish conception of the
"chosen people" is
We do not know what the concept of 'citizen' and the notion of 'people' were among the Phoenicians
and, more generally, among the Semitic peoples. We are publishing the second chapter of the first
part of 'The Secret History of Democracy' in the event that further research is required.
would establish a correspondence between the 'citizen' and the 'people' as they were conceived by the
Phoenicians and as they are conceived by modern democrats (*).
Most analyses of the origins of democracy accept that the democratic idea and democratic
institutions came into being fully formed in Athens, following the reforms of Clisthenes, at the end of
the sixth century BC (Dunn, 1992). This chapter explores the political and cultural environment of the
eastern Mediterranean cities immediately prior to the Athenian reforms. It responds to the concerns
expressed by Simon Hornblower: "The Phoenicians [...] were the first to [...
had something comparable to the self-regulating city-state, or polis, and the possibility [exists] that
some of the Greek political organisations we most admire had Phoenician origins. Scientific study in
this area, however, has barely begun". (Hornblower, 1992, p. 2) If the least that can be said is that
work in this field (Bernal, 2001 [1990]) has not
This chapter aims to examine the available evidence on the deeper origins of democratic ideas and
institutions. It examines whether the Phoenician cities
had their own form of democratic government before Athens, and if Phoenician trade in the Greek
sphere of influence contributed to the formation of the intellectual milieu that gave rise to the
Athenian model, particularly via the city-states that Eric Robinson has defined as "the
first democracies" (Robinson, 1997).
Unfortunately, the Phoenicians had no talent for making paper. The papyri on which they wrote their
economic, diplomatic and political history in their phonetic alphabet have mostly rotted away; the
"archives of the Phoenicians" described by Flavius Josephus have long since been lost (Josephus, 75, I).
The sciences - genetic, forensic, archaeological and linguistic - still have a long way to go before we can
form a precise and reliable idea of Phoenician political culture; but new works, like old ones, deserve
rigorous examination. The time has come to synthesise all the evidence available on the constitutions
of the Phoenician states and on the Phoenician contribution to the democratic experiments conducted
by the Greeks before the invention of the word demokratia and the institutionalisation of democracy
in Athens.
The eternal question of how to determine what is and what is not a democracy does not go away.
cannot fail to arise in this examination. If Athenian practices are the ones used to d e f i n e
democracy, the systems of government that preceded them can hardly lay claim to the status of
democracy.
status of democracy, simply because these systems are different from the Athenian system. In
keeping with this distinction, some authors classify pre-Athenian models as primitive democracies, or
proto-democracies, while Robinson distinguishes between democracy, which constitutes a "rigorously
defined system" of participation and equality, and the system of
But then Athens can hardly be an ideal model of democracy from our point of view, as we live two and
a half millennia later. (Robinson, 1997 p. 11-2) But then Athens can hardly be a model of ideal
democracy from our point of view, as we live two and a half millennia later: it excluded women and
slaves, while the latter's heavy workload gave male citizens time to participate in political life; it was
militaristic, prone, because of its imperialist tendencies, to attack other city-states; it was
authoritarian, quick to fall into the
tyranny and capable of executing those who criticised him, even when, like Socrates, they had served
the city well. But, for all its faults, the Athenian system was the government of the people: it was based
on the sovereignty of the citizens, who, meeting in an assembly of equals, spoke and acted in the name
of the people.
voted freely and made binding laws. In this chapter, we will seek to identify a
We will do this by examining the evidence we have for the existence of democratic mechanisms among
the Phoenicians and analysing the impact they had on each of the city-states of archaic Greece that
contributed to the development of democracy.
Phoenicia - a developing democracy
Phoenician civilisation was founded on city-states such as Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, Byblos, Beirut and Ugarit
on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, around what is now Lebanon. Between 1550 and around
300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime and trading civilisation.
The Phoenicians were an adventurous people, whose representatives may have reached the British
Isles and even the Baltic, and probably circumnavigated Africa more than two millennia before Vasco
da Gama (Herodotus, IV, 10). The Phoenicians certainly built up a trading network from the Far East to
t h e Atlantic, and along the way they founded Carthage, which was to challenge the might of Rome.
Their trade was based on wood, wine, olive oil, iron, glass and purple, which they produced
themselves, as well as products from Damascus and other places along the caravan routes further east,
or from Egypt and the West, on the other side of the Mediterranean (Ezekiel 27; Gore, 2004, pp. 34-6;
Markoe, 2005, pp. 109-20).
The Phoenicians were present in the Levant as early as the third millennium BC. Genetically and
linguistically, they were related to the Canaanites and, culturally, they had much in common with
ancient Israel (Gore, 2004; p. 48). The alphabet that the Phoenicians introduced along their trade
routes came from Sinai via Israel, with whom they were close partners.
trade: it was they who, in exchange for grain, supplied Solomon with the wood and craftsmen he
needed to build the Temple (Logan, 2004, p. 36-42; I Kings, 5-7). More importantly, the Phoenicians
were exposed to the change in politics that Israel had brought about: the state no longer depended on
the king's relationship with God, but on the people's participation in the covenant. As explained in the
previous chapter, the Mosaic law meant that the ruler was constrained as much as the people by
God's law. The law demanded that the monarchy be limited, that the social structure be egalitarian,
and that the people be involved in the covenant.
citizens could themselves choose magistrates capable of leading the people in times of unrest (Buber,
1967; Finer, 1997, p. 238-44; Wolf, 1947). So, while the Phoenicians were clearly innovators in the
fields of manufacturing, trade and alphabetic writing, what is at issue here is the impact of Mosaic
ideas on innovations in the political institutions of the Phoenicians.
Phoenicians.
The Phoenician contribution to the development of democracy has been a controversial issue for over
twenty years. Their city-states were mainly monarchical and their kings had civic and commercial
functions as well as ritual and religious responsibilities. The success of the Phoenicians can be gauged
by the way in which their cities became cultural and political powers throughout the Mediterranean.
The wealth and power of the Phoenician kings can be seen in the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the
Istanbul Archaeological M u s e u m . The rise of the Phoenician cities depended to a large extent on
the kings' ability to
coordinate the activities of independent sailors, who needed to have a degree of autonomy to
trade throughout the known world, far from the influence of their kings. These merchants
were the biblical "merchant princes" and we will see below that they were officially responsible f o r
assisting kings in the complex management of their cities and that, as a result, they acquired a certain
amount of power (Isaiah 23.8). It is interesting to know whether the power they had by virtue of the
advisory functions they exercised with a few oligarchs extended to assemblies of citizens who led the
fierce debate that would enable certain Phoenician cities to apply for recognition as democracies.
The debate on the Phoenician contribution to democracy was fuelled by Martin Bernal's Black
Athena, whose speculative linguistic approach led him to highlight the possible 'Afro-Asiatic' roots o f
classical Greek society (Bernal, 1991 [1987], 1991, 2006). His thesis, which sought to establish the
contribution of Phoenician politics to the development of the Greek city-state, is based to a large extent
on some of the most subtle arguments of Marxist theory: according to Bernal, it is in
Phoenicia saw the transition from the "Asiatic mode of production", led by the monarch, to an "Asiatic mode
of production" led by the monarch.
slave society where the overcapacity of slave production gave their citizen owners time to participate
in democracy (Bernal, 2001 [1990]). But Bernal's evidence from primary sources is thin, so his
arguments are far from convincing. Nonetheless, his work has prompted an almost endless stream of
scholarly work linking Greece to the Roman Empire.
(Aubert, 2001; Burkert, 1992; Goody, 1996; Morris,
1992; West, 1997). She drew attention to other primary sources relating to the constitutions of
Phoenician cities and revealed that, while Phoenician cities were for the most part in the hands of
powerful monarchs, there were periods when constitutional provisions were not
monarchy. These periods deserve a closer look.
The oldest available documents concerning Phoenician politics are to be found among the
Amarna letters - Egyptian clay tablets containing numerous diplomatic reports from the middle of the
fourteenth century BC (Moran, 1992). The tablets were found on the site of the Egyptian capital built
by Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who emphasised monotheism and
sought to abolish the Egyptian pantheon. The Egyptian state was powerful in the Levant at this time,
although its power was contested. The Amarna letters speak of the work of various Egyptian vassals
faced with the task of ensuring the cohesion of Phoenician cities in the face of Hittite attacks and
insurrections inspired by the Hittites (Cohen and Westbrook, 2000).
Amarna's letters contain references to the advice of the elders, or magnates, whom the kings
These local councils consulted on important affairs of state and could even thwart the will o f a king
(Moran, 1992, p. 243). Moreover, these councils acted in their own right - for example, "Irquata and his
elders" wrote to the pharaoh to pledge allegiance, without making any reference to the local ruler
(ibid., p. 172). There are also examples of larger assemblies, where "the citizens of Tunip" and "the
people of Gubla (Byblos)" address Egyptian officials directly - indicating that they had a more or less
"republican" organisation and deliberative institutions that could represent the will of the people
(ibid., pp. 130-1, p. 332). The most democratic period is clearly the one when "the men of Arwad"
exchange oaths of rebellion with Zimredda of Sidon against the pharaoh (ibid., p. 236). Bernal is right
to point out that these documents prove that "the people and not the king are sovereign" (Bernal,
2001 [1990], pp. 356-7). Furthermore, an Egyptian official reveals that deliberations within and
between cities were frequent, when he expresses his
concern about the concerted opposition he arouses: "my towns are threatening me (and) they have all
banded together against me". (Moran, 1992, p. 138). All in all, Bernal's argument based on the Amarna
letters is convincing, especially as Flinders Petrie asserted over a century ago that municipalities
existed in Phoenicia in the fourteenth century BC (Petrie, 1898; p. 139). The Amarna letters therefore
allow us to conclude that certain Phoenician municipalities were governed periodically by sovereign
assemblies with deliberative functions and that citizen participation and therefore democratic activity
is evident in the first period of Phoenician city-states.
The other important primary source relating to the existence of a constitution in a Phoenician city is
the report of Ounamon (Goedicke, 1975). This report dates from the beginning of the eleventh
century BC, around 250 years after the Amarna letters were written, and confirms that there were
municipal forums.
were always very numerous in the Phoenician city of Byblos. He recounts the journey made by an
Egyptian priest to Byblos to fetch the wood needed to build a sacred boat.
Egyptian influence in the Phoenician cities had clearly declined since the time of the
Amarna's letters, giving way to powerful monarchies. Ounamon met Zakarbaal, the king of Byblos,
who managed all aspects of the transaction with the Egyptian and played a central role in the city's
religious life. In matters of government, Zakarbaal is advised by "his assembly" - in
In this case, she advises him to extradite Unamon to another country to face charges of theft
(Goedicke, 1975, p. 123). This assembly is probably different from the council which Ezekiel says was
composed of "[t]he elders of Guebal (Byblos) and its wise men." (Ezekiel, 27, 9) The hieroglyph of
the assembly inunamon's report initially resisted translation, but has now been translated as mw'd,
which is close to the Hebrew word mo'ed, generally translated as "assembly".
(Wilson, 1945, p. 245). The mo'ed is, for example, the assembly, or council, of two hundred and fifty
men of "renown" who "assembled against Moses and Aaron", his brother, after they had ordered the
stoning of a man who was gathering wood on the Sabbath (Numbers 16.2-3). unamon's report
establishes that the word "assembly" existed in Phoenician, even though it had been borrowed from
Hebrew. Whether the text is examined philologically or not, it is clear that the assembly of
Zakarbaal was something more than an elitist oligarchic council and it is therefore possible that
Byblos had a bicameral regime at this time.
The more important commerce became, the more the king's power was restricted by a wealthy
merchant middle class eager to influence public affairs: "after Hiram in the tenth century, [the kings of
Tyre] are no longer imposing figures". (Drews, 1979, p. 47; see also Markoe, 2005, p. 105) In the
course of their long history, the Phoenician cities fell successively under the rule of the
Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and, later, Persians and Macedonians. As a result of invasions and
internal strife, the king's power diminished, while that of the people increased.
The councils of elders exercised their authority during these periods of invasion and upheaval.
Even more important for the examination of the evolution of Greek political institutions in the
In the second half of this chapter, we learn from the seventh-century treaty between Assarhaddon of
Assyria and Baal of Tyre that Tyre's council of elders governed alongside the monarch. It was decided
that the Assyrian governor would work "in collaboration with you (Baal) and the elders of your
country."
(Aubert, 2001, p. 146; Markoe, 2005, p. 101)
In the following century, it is clear that power was not exercised solely by the king and the merchant
princes. Josephus noted in the first century AD that, after Nebuchadnezzar II's siege of Tyre
(585-572 BC), the city was without a monarchy for seven years and was administered for short periods
by suffetes (or magistrates).
"After him [Ithobaal] judges were instituted, who held their offices, Eknibal, son of Baslekh, for two
months; Chelbès, son of Abdée, ten months; the high priest Abbar three months; the judges Myttynos
and Gerastrate, sons of Abdélime, six years, after which Balator reigned one year." (Flavius Josephus,
Against Apion, I.21)
It is very likely that the magistrates were elected by the assembly and even Sandro Bondi, who is
otherwise reluctant to see democratic structures in the Phoenician constitutions, admits that Tyre was
at that time "a republic ruled by elected magistrates". (Bondi, 2001, p. 153).
The Tyrian colony of Carthage was also governed by suffetes, with the support of the senate and the king.
the assembly of the people (Markoe, 2005, p. 103-4). Carthage flourished from before 800 BC until
146 B C , when, after three wars against Rome (the Punic Wars), it finally fell under its control. Since
Carthage reached the height of its power during the Greek classical period and subsequently played a
very important role in Roman foreign policy, we know much more about Carthaginian constitutional
arrangements than we do about those of the early Phoenician cities (see for example, "Carthaginian
Constitution").
For example, Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC]; Herodotus, 1996 [idem] [460 BC]; or Polybius, 1889 [idem] [150
BC]). The Carthaginian constitution required two suffetes, who were elected annually and governed
assisted by the senate of elders. When the suffetes and the senate could not agree unanimously, the
popular assembly was asked to decide the matter. Well
Aristotle led the way in describing the Carthaginian system as an "oligarchy", he admitted that
formal and informal control mechanisms ensured the effectiveness and longevity of the constitution
(Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC] 1272b-1273b). These control mechanisms consisted essentially of elections,
trade guilds, municipal assemblies and the deference accorded to citizens as supreme arbiters of
political decisions, indicating equality and participation close to democratic standards. The Greek
historian Polybius
(200-118 BC) suggests that it was because of Carthage's democratic regime that it fell under the
domination of Rome:
"Among the Carthaginians, it was the people who dominated deliberations; among the Romans, it was
the senate. There, the opinions of the multitude were taken; here, the most skilful citizens were
consulted..."
(Polybius, Histories, VI, 51)
There is irrefutable evidence that the people eclipsed the monarchy towards the end of the Phoenician
period. Later Roman sources - such as Arrien (86-160 AD) - go so far as to suggest that the "inhabitants"
of Sidon, or "the people of Sidon", were those who made peace with the Phoenicians.
Alexander the Great (Arrien, 1893 [English edition] [145 AD], II, 15, 1970 [English edition] [145 A D ], 81).
Quinte-Curce (first or early second century AD) relates that Straton, king of
Sidon submitted to Alexander in 333 BC, "rather by the will of the inhabitants than by his own will".
(Quinte-Curce, IV, 1, 16). When the Greeks sought to replace their king, the citizens appointed to
succeed him all refused to take up the post and entrusted it to a member of the royal family whose
honesty had reduced him to poverty. This was a sign that the people were convinced o f their
democratic right to speak out and participate in the political life of the city. While
As Alexander's army approached Tyre, it was joined by "representatives" sent by "the republic" or "the
community" (Arrien, 1893 [AD 145], II, 15, 1970 [AD 145], 81; Bondi, 2001, p. 154). Alexander wished to
offer a sacrifice in the temple
of the Tyrian Heracles, but when his ambassadors informed the city, it was "the people" who passed a
decree refusing him entry - which subsequently led to the destruction of Tyre by Alexander's armies
(Arrien, 1893 [145 AD], II, 15).
This historical overview shows that the Phoenician cities were first ruled by powerful kings, then by
weak kings and finally by rulers who were no longer even kings.
kings. It is also clear that, from the fifteenth century to the fourth BC, the rulers were advised by
councils and assemblies which gradually enabled the people to increase their power. It is impossible to
know to what extent these institutions represented the people and to what extent their deliberations
were free and unconstrained, but, on the whole, we can conclude from the few cases which concern
the people that Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, at least, were something more than an autocracy or an
oligarchy, something much closer to a democracy.
Phoenician influence on the new Greek city-states
In Homer's Iliad, Phoenician craftsmanship is synonymous with excellence: when Hector orders
her to offer her most beautiful dress as a sacrifice to the goddess Minerva, Hecuba chooses one
embroidered by Sidonian women (Homer, 1950 [700 BC], 338-51); the prize offered by Achilles to
the winner of the running event at the funeral games in honour of Patroclus is a crater.
imported from Sidon by the Phoenicians (Homer, 1950 [700 BC], 760-65). These references allow us to
conclude that the Phoenicians exerted a great influence in the Greek sphere in the eighth century BC,
when Homer would have written the Iliad, if not as early as the twelfth century BC, during which the
Trojan War probably took place.
There is incontrovertible archaeological evidence of Phoenician influence in Rhodes from 800 BC
onwards (Lipinski, 2004, pp. 145-146). As they spread throughout the Aegean, the
The Phoenicians brought with them not only goods from the Assyrian, Babylonian and Israelite
worlds, but also ideas, myths and knowledge. The Phoenicians generally established
enclaves of craftsmen in indigenous communities where technical skills were poorly
developed". (Drews, 1979, p. 46). It is highly probable that the transmission of these new
technical skills depended on the Phoenician alphabet, which had just been developed and which
Herodotus considered to have stimulated the creation of the Greek alphabet (Herodotus, 460 BC, V.
60). It is also likely that it was in the workshops of these enclaves that the scientific method, which
was then in gestation, emerged, to be crystallised and refined, in the form of philosophy, by
Greeks of Phoenician origin such as Thales of Miletus (Herodotus, I. 170, II, 81).
The transmission of these ideas did not happen overnight; Greece emerged from its "Dark Ages" over
generations, in stages, under the impetus of a series of ideas drawn from various sources, in particular
the Phoenicians. As these ideas came together, they
caused a cultural awakening in Greece, which led to the Classical era and the birth of the
"(Gore, 2004; p. 37; Solmsen, 1975). A number of developments took place in Greece between 800
and 500 BC. The overthrow of tribal kings, l o n g - d i s t a n c e maritime trade, intensive
agriculture, mining and manufacturing, the introduction of new techniques and technologies, the
scientific approach, improvements in mathematics and the monetary system "created a layer of
agrarian landowners whose new-found wealth and their ability to make a living" (Solmsen, 1975).
The power it acquired surpassed that of all the equivalent powers in the city" (Anderson, 1974). The
rise of this new class prompted various city-states to experiment with new political forms. The idea of
democratic government was central to the Greek revival.
If democracy has come to be regarded as fundamentally Greek (and therefore Western), an
examination of the democratic experiments in the Phoenician city-states raises the question of
whether these experiments also found their way into the Greek sphere of influence, where they were
developed further,
systematised and finally named. Indications of a Phoenician influence on Greek cities can be seen in
those that were the first to adopt democracy. While there were centres of Phoenician influence where
democracy did not flourish (Miletus was a tyranny, in
The sixteen sites listed by Eric Robinson in his book on popular governments prior to Athens
nevertheless reveal numerous examples of Phoenician influence (Robinson, 1997).
Chios is a case in point. The island is considered to be one of the first cities to have adopted
democracy, thanks to an inscription on a stone in a wall along a road near the village of Tholopotami,
in the south of the island. The inscription, discovered in 1907 and today
in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (Meiggs and Lewis, 1988, p. 14), is dated to the mid
The inscription dates from the sixth century BC, between 570 and 550, i.e. after the reforms of Solon
but well before those of Clisthenes in Athens (Jeffery, 1956, p. 160). The inscription, which is not
complete, lays down laws on the responsibility of magistrates: judicial decisions must be made in
accordance with the law.
"Judges will be punished if they accept a bribe and their decisions will be appealed.
can be put to the test at the monthly meetings of the people's council (Jeffery, 1956, p. 162; Robinson,
1997, p. 90-1). The people's council (boule demosie) was made up of fifty elected representatives from
each tribe and at least three tribes are known: "the Chalazoi, the Totteidai,
the Klytides" (Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 196). The People's Council was thus
made up of at least one hundred and fifty citizens. On the other hand, the inscription suggests the
existence of an assembly of all the people with even greater powers, but as the inscription is
incomplete, we do not know exactly what the purpose of the assembly was. There does not seem to be
any other confirmation, either textual or archaeological, of democracy in Chios at such an early date.
Aristotle mentions the overthrow of the authoritarian oligarchs at Chios, but provides no date and no
outline of the subsequent constitution (Aristotle, 1306b3-5, 1981).
Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that the Chios constitution stone has given rise to so
much controversy over its dating and the democratic nature of the constitution.
(Jeffery, 1956, p. 160) There is also the question of whether or not the stone comes from Chios. Russell
Meiggs and David Lewis (1988, p. 17) point out that the red trachyte on which the constitution is
inscribed is not common on the island of Chios, whereas it is abundant in the vicinity of Erythrae.
Similarly, Ove Hansen points out that the two references in the stone to the goddess Hestia are
incongruous, since there is no proof that this goddess was worshipped in Chios, whereas there is
abundant evidence that she was worshipped in Erythrae (Hansen, 1985, p. 276). However, as the
texts show that the people of Erythrae overthrew the oligarch who ruled there as an autocrat
(Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC] 1305b18-23), if the stone did indeed come from Erythrae, it would suffice to
transpose the argument that a democracy existed in Chios to Erythrae.
What is important in this respect is whether there is any evidence that the Phoenicians exerted any
influence on any of these cities, and research shows that the fundamental institutions and the
The symbols of both cities bear the imprint of Phoenicia. From the eighth century BC, the
The symbol of the city-state of Chios was the sphinx, in the particular form of a winged female figure with
the body of a lion, which originated in Phoenicia (Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 18).
Typical Chios amphorae, marked with the figure of a sphinx, were used to transport
wine to ports on the Aegean and Black Seas from at least 640 BC.
(Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 156-8, p. 218). The Phoenician influence is also
evident at Erythrae. Although the site has not yet been located, Pausanias reported in the second
century AD that one of the two temples at Erythrae was "the sanctuary of Heracles", which was
famous for its age and that the statue of the god came from Tyre in Phoenicia (Pausanias, 100 AD, VII.
5. 5). Whether
of Chios or Erythrae, there is clear evidence that the Phoenicians exerted an influence there at a time
before these two cities experimented with democracy.
Further work on the sixteen sites of the early democracies listed by Robinson provides both
archaeological and textual evidence that many of them were subject to Phoenician influence
(Robinson, 1997). Phoenician trade routes, well established from the Archaic period onwards,
extended all around the Greek sphere of influence, from Thassos in the north of the Aegean to Sicily in
the west. From the mid-eighth century BC, there is archaeological evidence of Phoenician influence in
the city-states in the eastern Aegean that first adopted democratic government, such as Kos and Samos
(Lipinski, 2004, p. 155). There is also evidence of a Phoenician presence further west in the Aegean on
the island of Evia, where Chalcis, its capital, was one of the first democracies, and on Naxos, which was
a democracy in the second half of the sixth century BC (Lipinski, 2004, p. 147);
Robinson, 1997, p. 91, p. 117-18). There is also evidence of the presence of Phoenician merchants in
mainland Greece during the Archaic period, in Argos, a city that also features on Robinson's list:
"The most learned Persians in the history of their country attribute the cause of this enmity to the
Phoenicians. They say that when the Phoenicians came from the shores of the Erythraean Sea to the coasts
of our own, they
undertook long sea voyages as soon as they had settled in the country they still inhabit today, and
transported goods from Egypt and Assyria to various regions, including Argos. This city then surpassed
all those in the country now known as Greece. They add that when the Phoenicians landed there, they
began to sell their wares". (Herodotus, 460 BC, I, 1)
There is further textual evidence of Phoenician influence in Elis, on the west coast of the Peloponnese,
which was also one of the first cities to adopt democracy; its territory included Olympia. Pausanias
gives us the following account:
"The Thasians, Phoenicians by origin, whose ancestors had set sail from Tyre and the rest of the Phoenician
Phoenicia with Thasos, son of Agenor, to go in search of Europa; the Thasians, I say, dedicated at
Olympia a statue of Heracles, which is entirely of bronze as is its pedestal; it is ten cubits high. Heracles
holds his club in one hand and his bow in the other. I heard at Thasius that they worshipped the same
Heracles as the Tyrians, but that afterwards, having already become Greeks, they thought they should
also worship Heracles, son of Amphitryon. (Pausanias, 100 AD. :
V.25.12)
To sail to the cities mentioned above, the Phoenicians would have had to pass Cnidus and Megara,
then not far from Elis, in order to reach Achaia and Ambracia, all of which are among the world's
most important cities.
the first cities to adopt democracy. The west coast of Greece is not far from two Achaian colonies
where democracy took root very early on: Metapontum and Crotone, in southern Italy. It was easy to
travel from these cities to Sicily and Carthage, to join the Phoenician trade routes along North Africa.
The African route passed through Cyrene, another of the cities mentioned by Robinson.
The Phoenicians originally had a number of trading posts around Sicily; they consolidated those in the
north-west of the island when various Greek cities began to colonise the island.
the fertile river valleys of the south-east (Markoe, 2005, p. 232-4). The Phoenicians, and later the
Carthaginians, continued to maintain good relations with the Phoenicians, at least until the battle of
Himera in 480 BC.
with the Greek part of the island, which included cities such as Syracuse and Acragas, which were early
adopters of democracy. It is clear from the above that many of the city-states that
Robinson considers that primitive democracies had close relations with the Phoenicians. It is therefore
reasonable to conclude that the contributions of the Phoenicians were far from limited to trade
goods, religious statuary and the alphabet; it is very likely that the Phoenicians introduced to Greece
ideas of non-monarchical forms of government and habits of collective decision-making.
Although not mentioned by Robinson, an interesting case is that of Sparta, where the Phoenician
influence on the formation of democratic institutions is visible. While those who view democracy from
an Athenocentric perspective relegate the traditional enemy of Athens to t h e rank of autocracy and
oligarchy, a number of contemporary authors consider that early Sparta was governed by a
constitution that "stipulated that a Spartan popular assembly should meet at regular intervals [...]
around 600 BC [...] well before Athens". [well before Athens" (Hornblower, 1992, p. 1). It also seems
likely that "Spartan systems, like those of the Carthaginians, followed Phoenician prototypes." (Drews,
1979, p. 47) The Spartan constitution is often attributed to a mythical figure, Lycurgus, who is credited
with institutionalising eunomia, or good order, through a series of "myths".
good laws (Forrest, 1980, p. 64). Lycurgus or not, W. G. Forrest dates the Spartan constitution to the
In the first half of the seventh century BC, the Spartan system of dual kingship was moderated by the
expansion of the gerousia, a council of elders, and by the election of new members by the Spartans.
a popular assembly (Forrest, 1980, p. 59). The existence of commercial relations between Phoenicia
and Sparta at this time is shown by the fact that Phoenician methods of extracting the dye secreted by
molluscs were used at the Spartan port of Gytheum and that sculptures in ivory and
Phoenician terracotta masks were found at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta (Culican, 1975, p.
55-64; Fitzhardinge, 1980). Over the course of the next century, the assembly assumed greater
powers, bypassing the elders and electing its own magistrates every year, the ephors, who presided
over civil affairs, directed foreign policy and came to wield power over the people.
executive (Forrest, 1980, p. 77). Aristotle was one of the first commentators to point out the
similarities between the Spartan and Carthaginian constitutions (Politics, 1273a). It is unlikely that, at that
time
It is far more plausible that both the Spartans and the Carthaginians were influenced by the Phoenician
experience. It is highly probable that the Phoenicians introduced the ideas of popular government into
the Spartan sphere of influence, where, in a period of
change, they found fertile soil.
Finally, there is the case of Athens itself. Although Phoenician influence is attested to in Athens
through trade and tax agreements, coins and various artistic motifs, there is little evidence to
suggest that the Phoenicians had a direct influence on Athens' institutions.
Athenian politics (Markoe, 2005, p. 52, p. 124, p. 219-20). However, the Athenians of the fifth
By the end of the 19th century BC, the Athenians were surrounded by city-states influenced by the
Phoenicians, who were experimenting with a new form of government. The Athenians could not help
but be influenced by these developments when they decided to devise the system of government they
came to call demokratia.
Conclusion
The considerations that have just been developed show that the Phoenician cities made a significant
contribution to the development of the Phoenician culture.
important democratic experiments throughout their history, from 1500 to 300 BC, particularly in Tyre
in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. They have also established that
The Phoenicians played an important and even fundamental role in the Greek city-states which
adopted democracy before Athens. The Phoenicians' contribution to the Greek world was not just
commercial; they also passed on their experience of democracy to the Greeks and, no doubt in Sparta
and very probably in other cities, had a formative influence on the development of democratic political
institutions. The reforms of Clisthenes in 508 BC.
were essential for formalising democracy, by making citizens equal members of a set of interdependent
institutions subject to regular meetings and an assembly
But these ideas and institutional forms had already been put to the test in Phoenicia and in a series of
Greek city-states. One point that emerges clearly from our examination is that, before democracy
became an idea, not to say an ideology, it was a practical exercise of political will on the part of the
people. This chapter does not claim that the Phoenicians 'invented' democracy, nor does it seek to
detract from Athens' contribution to the development of democracy. The Athenian contribution to the
development of democracy cannot be underestimated, but this chapter establishes that the Athenian
contribution was based on powerful ideas that were already circulating among Greeks who had
contact with the Phoenicians. It is therefore established that
the history of popular government by active citizens is longer and deeper than is generally accepted.
Stephen Stockwell, The Secret History of Democracy, "Before Athens: Early Popular Government in
Phoenicia and Greek City-States", 2011, pp. 35-48, translated from the English by J. B.
A collection of quotes on democracy can be found at Julius Evola, Contre la démocratie, https://ladissidence.
org/2014/12/27/julius-evola-contre-la-democratie/ ; René Guénon, De la démocratie,
https://la-dissidence.org/2013/07/15/rene-guenon-de-la-democratie/ ; Collectif, La démocratie de
masse : une fausse démocratie,
h t t p s : / / w e b . a r c h i v e . o r g / w e b / 2 0 1 7 0 5 1 7 0 3 0 0 1 1 /
h t t p : / / w w w . v o x n r . c o m / c c / d t _ a u t r e s / E k k p Z p l u A
A L c W P t cNA.shtml.
On Semitic influences in the formation of Greek civilisation, see Samuel Kurinsky, The Babylonian
Origin of Greek Science,
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp016_science.htm; on philosophy, Martin L. West, Early
Greek Philosophy and the Orient, and Walter Burkert, The Prehistory of Pre-Socratic Philosophy in
an Orientalising Context,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/la-prehistoire-de-la-philosophiepresocratique-
dans-un-contexte-orientalisant/ and B. K., La liberté, un concept d'esclaves,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-3/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-4/; on
mythology, Robert Brown, Semitic influence in Hellenic mythology; on literature, Martin L. West, The
East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth; more generally, Walter Burkert,
The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age and
Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture.
(*) What is indisputable, however, is that, as we have shown at
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-3/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-4/, that it
was the philosophers, many of them metagheists, who, through their writings, set out to empty
the racial meaning of the terms "people" and "citizen". [Editor's note]
The Semitic roots of globalism
The other apostates I have mentioned, many of whom are now forgotten, as well as almost all the anti-
Christians of previous centuries, illustrate the operation that can be called the law of cultural residues.
In all civilised societies, when we find that a belief established since
If a long-held and generally accepted belief is unbelievable, good minds abandon it, but they
commonly retain the derivative beliefs that were originally deduced from, and depend on, the belief
they have rejected. So it is that the modern enemies of Christianity have rejected mythology, but
indiscriminately retained faith in the social and ethical superstitions derived from it - a faith which they
strangely claim to be rational but which they retain with religious fervour.
They laugh at the stupid story of Adam and his spare rib, but they still believe in a "human race"
descended from a single pair of ancestors and therefore in a "brotherhood of man". They talk about
"humanity", giving the term a mystical, honeyed meaning that they don't really understand.
They do not use any other term, such as "all marsupials" or "all ungulates". They prattle on about
"human rights", although a moment's reflection should suffice to show that, in the absence o f a
decree from a supernatural monarch, there can be no rights other than those which the citizens of a
stable and homogeneous society have, by convention or tradition, established for themselves; and
whereas
citizens can show kindness to strangers, slaves and dogs, but such beings obviously have no rights.
They do not believe that a third of a god was incarnated in the most sordid region of the world in order
to associate with illiterate beggars, to harangue the rabble of a barbaric "race" and to magically exalt
the ignorant and vulgar in order to make "the wisdom of this world foolishness in the sight of God"
(Corinthians 3:19), so that "the last may be first, and the first last."
(Matthew 20:16) - they don't believe that, but they cling to the morbid hatred of superiority that
makes Christians love everything that is weak, inferior, irrational, vile, deformed and degenerate.
They prattle on about the "sacredness of human life" - especially in its vilest forms - without realising
that it takes a creator god to make something sacred. And they get agitated
frantically for a universal "equality" that can only be achieved by reducing all human beings to the
lowest level, obviously unaware that they are merely echoing the aspiration often expressed by
Christians to become sheep (the stupidest of mammals) herded by a good shepherd, which is implicit
in all the stories of the New Testament, a l t h o u g h expressed bluntly in another gospel, which
mentions Jesus as promising that after he has tortured and slaughtered the most civilised people in the
world, there will be a resurrection, and his sheep will rise from their graves, all the same age, all the
same sex, all the same stature, and
all with indistinguishable characteristics, so that they can be identical to the bees in a swarm (*).
Although the "liberal" and Marxist cults have doctrinal differences as great as those which separate
Lutherans from Baptists, they are fundamentally the same superstition, and whether or not we should
call them religion depends on whether we restrict the word to belief in supernatural persons or extend
it to include all forms of blind faith based on a belief in the supernatural.
on emotional exaltation rather than on observed facts and reason. When these 'atheist' cults
When people "shout" their hatred of "fascists" and "nazis", they must obviously believe that these
people are "fascists" and "nazis".
evil are possessed by the devil and should therefore be converted or exterminated in order to promote
holiness and love. And when they see 'racists', who ungodly substitute facts and reason for unthinking
faith in approved fairy tales, their desire to root out evil is as great as that of the Christian mob who
dragged the all-too-righteous and intelligent Hypatia out of her
and lovingly used oyster shells to rip out her flesh while she was still alive.
With very few exceptions, the anti-Christians, probably unconsciously, have preserved in their 'spirit'
much of Christian doctrine, and have even revived the most poisonous elements of the primitive
Bolshevism of antiquity, which had been attenuated or kept in abeyance by the established Churches
in the great age of Christendom [The rest of the text shows that this is not really the case]. And today,
avowed atheists do not think it strange that, on all social issues, they essentially agree with the howling
dervishes and evangelical shamans who, subsidised with copious publicity by the organised Jewry that
control television and other means of communication, are avid participants in the current effort t o
reduce Americans to complete imbeciles through all kinds of irrational deceptions.
Revilo Oliver, America's Decline
(*) The Greek text of the Gospel in question was published by Konstantin von Tischendorf in his
Apocalypses apocryphae (1866; reprinted by Olms, 1966); see p. 78.
The Gnostics seized upon the notion of a "heavenly Jerusalem" as a prey, an image symbolising the
future of humanity completely redeemed. Then, by way of comparison, they came to emphasise the
very assembly of participants in this heavenly Jerusalem, in other words
the Ecclesia, the Church ("assembly" in the etymological sense). It was Jesus himself who referred to this
He always speaks of it in terms that emphasise the femininity of this assembly of the elect. Paul takes
up the image and the name, and defines it as "our mother", which explains and justifies the wellknown
expression, used indiscriminately afterwards: "our holy mother".
the Church". This is not in the least an institutional Church with its hierarchies, its rules and even its
aberrations, which are rightly debatable, but the assembly, the community, the "communion of saints"
[which corresponds to "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus". (Galatians 3:28)]. And, in all traditions, this
community is represented by the image of a woman, who is both mother and child,
wife or lover, sister and daughter. So it is with Isis, Cybele and a character who has become a romance,
such as the Queen of Guinevere, who, before representing her own individuality, remains the
permanent embodiment of the social and quasi-mystical group of which she is the absolute centre.
It is easy to see how this concept of an assembly of elected representatives, a sort of wife and mother to the
Christ, along with his daughter, slowly became identified with the concrete figure of Miriâm, mother of
Jesus, but also mother of all men. And if Miriâm is the mother of all men, being
perfectly historical or perfectly historicised (as you will, the result being
This is why it acquired very early on, thanks to skilful censorship, the essential characteristics of a
"new" art.
devolved in the past to the Great Universal Goddess, mother of all gods and all men.
Jean Markale, The great goddess
Part One: Community through the Church
Community of the early Church
It is well known that for nineteen consecutive centuries, Christianity has always taught and practised
the community of goods. This was the very form of the primitive Church of Jerusalem from its very
beginnings. According to the Acts of the Apostles, "All who believed were one, and had all things in
common. And they distributed them to everyone according to his need. The whole multitude of
believers was one heart and one soul, and no one considered the things he enjoyed as his own, but
everything among them was common. That is why there were no poor people among them, for
everyone who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of what they had sold and laid it
at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to everyone according to his need. Joseph, for example,
was nicknamed Barnabas by the apostles,
that is to say, a son of consolation, a Levite and a Cypriot by nationality, who had a field, sold it, brought
the price and laid it at the feet of the Apostles".
This Barnabas, one of the seventy-two disciples of Jesus Christ, "a man full of the Holy Spirit and steadfast in
the faith" according to the Acts of the Apostles, a companion of Paul who evangelised Syria and Asia Minor,
expressed himself in this way in his Epistle: "Put all" your possessions in common with your brothers, and let
nothing be taken away from you.
For if you are in society for incorruptible things, how much more must you be in it for
corruptible things?
Thus the community of goods was the very constitution of the primitive Church. Eight thousand men, without
Barely five years later James, speaking to Paul, says, according to the Greek text, that in this Church of
Jerusalem alone there were several times ten thousand. We are not talking here," says Salvian, "about
a handful of Christians. Their small number could have weakened the authority of their example. We
are talking about a considerable multitude of people, and we can judge from what is recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles, that at the very beginning of Christianity, eight thousand men, in two days, joined
the new Church, not counting children and women. How many then
Doesn't every day increase the number of the faithful living in community?
In her revelations, Sister Anne-Catherine Emmerich gives curious details about this primitive community
which, already organized only fifteen days after the resurrection [of Jesus Christ], was composed o f
innumerable faithful from all countries, even the most distant, and formed, from the beginning, a
whole city inside and outside Jerusalem. Lazarus and Quadratus and everyone else who had anything
gave him all their possessions. Peter spoke of the rules to be observed in the new community. None of
the faithful," he said, "was to have more than the other, and they were all to share together.
Everything was in absolute community: goods, work, food, prayer, soul and life; everything was done in
the most perfect order, and everything was distributed according to the needs and abilities of each
person. The slightest infraction of this community was punishable by death, as we see for example in
the Acts of the Apostles (5, 1-11).
The ruin of Jerusalem and Judea, by scattering the members of this primitive community of goods,
does not seem, however, to have destroyed it. According to Barnabas and the author of the Epistle to
Diognetus, it was still in existence at the end of the first century. At that time, the papal see was
occupied by Clement
I, a disciple of Peter and Paul. Around 96, he wrote to the Corinthians: "Brothers, the common life is
obligatory for all men, and first of all for those who wish to serve God in a blameless manner and
imitate the example of the apostles and their disciples. For the use of all things in this
world must be common to all men. It was iniquity that made one man say, 'This is mine,' and another
say, 'This belongs to me. This is the cause of discord among mortals.
This primitive community of goods still existed in the second century, according to Justin and Lucian; in
the third century, according to Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian and Tertullian who says: "Having
all one
If we have the same soul and the same spirit, we also have the same good; everything is common among
us".
and finally in the fourth century, according to Lactantius and Arnobius. Without taking these
testimonies in a rigorous material sense, the fact is that the community of goods was perpetuated not
only in these first four centuries, but right up to the present day.
Aspirations towards the re-establishment of the primitive community
Referring to this primitive community of goods, Abbé Fleury exclaimed: "Here then is an example
of this equality of goods, of this common life that the legislators and philosophers of the time had in mind.
It was to achieve this that Minos, from the earliest times of Greece, had established communal meals in
Crete. It was to achieve this that Minos, in the earliest days of Greece, established communal meals in
Crete. The disciples of Pythagoras pooled their possessions and
They formed an inseparable society known in Greek as coinobion (common life), from which came the
Cenobites (living in common). Finally, Plato had taken this idea of community to extremes, wanting to
do away even with the distinction between families. They saw that, to make a perfect society, it was
necessary to do away with yours and mine and all private interests".
"The source of this communion of goods among the Christians of Jerusalem was charity, which made
them all brothers and united them as in a single family, where all the children are nourished by the same
love.
They had always before their eyes the commandment to love one another, which Jesus Christ had
repeated so often, especially on the eve of his passion. They always had before their eyes the
commandment to love one another, which Jesus Christ had repeated so many times, especially on the
eve of his passion, to the point of saying that his disciples would be recognised by this mark. But what
obliged them to sell their inheritances and reduce everything to money
This was the Saviour's command to renounce all that one possesses. They wanted to practise it, not
only in terms of the disposition of the heart, to which the obligation of this precept reduces, but also in
terms of the attitude of the heart, to which the obligation of this precept reduces, to which the
obligation of this precept reduces.
If you want to be perfect, go, sell everything you have and come and follow me". Chrysostom, so long
afterwards, is not afraid to propose this way of life as an inimitable example and as a means of
converting all infidels. It is to be believed that these saints of Jerusalem worked with their hands,
following the example of Jesus Christ and the apostles".
Chrysostom is constantly calling on all Christians and all people to make this a reality.
community; he endeavours to put it into practice immediately, right in the heart of the capital.
of the empire, in Constantinople, of which he was patriarch. Only exile and death, which soon struck
Chrysostom, prevented the realisation of this project, the thought and goal of his entire life.
The ownership of everything belongs to God
If we ask the Bible what the doctrine of the Jews and Christians is about property, it tells us that the
ownership and sovereign domain of all that is and all that can be belongs to God alone, and that man
must never have more than the use or usufruct of it. Her doctrine to
There is not the slightest variation in this respect, and throughout its many books, the Bible
invariably repeats the same thing.
Exodus - "Obey my voice exactly and keep my covenant, says God. All the earth is mine
".
Leviticus - "For the land is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners in it, to whom I praise it".
Deuteronomy - "You see that heaven, the heaven of heavens, the earth and everything on earth
belong to the Lord your God".
Psalms. - The earth is the Lord's with all that it contains, the universe and all that dwells in it is his".
"For the earth is mine and all that is in it".
Prophets - "The earth is mine".
Paul - "The earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord.
Since Moses, who himself received this idea from the patriarchs, the property, the sovereign domain of
all things belongs to Yahweh alone, and man must never have more than the use or usufruct of them.
This is the
This is the doctrine of the Church, proclaimed by popes, councils, fathers, doctors and theologians, and
which, in the Middle Ages, found its way into public law. "Beloved brothers
Augustine, we read in the divine Scriptures that God says: "Gold and silver are mine, not yours, O rich
men of the earth". For," adds Gregory of Nyssa, "everything truly belongs to God, our common Father,
and we are all brothers. Therefore, since we are brothers and united by the bonds o f blood and
nature, it would be better and more just for us all to possess equally the common inheritance".
John Chrysostom, who calls property "the citadel of all evils", never ceases to proclaim the
community of goods, as an application of this fundamental principle that the earth and all that it
contains belong to God (De beneficentio, vol. II, p. 245).
Jewish community
... under the Law of Moses... the community... is triune...
Its first... conception applies to the tribe of Levi, invested with the functions of the priesthood, of
the teaching and preservation of the law and traditions: it is the absolute community through
to the exclusion of all ownership, whether collective or individual. In laying down the great
fundamental principle that "the earth is God's with all that it contains", Moses, far from concluding
from this, as did the religious legislators of India and Egypt, that the priests, as ministers of God, must
On the contrary, he excludes them from all possession and gives them no share in the promised land,
because they must remain in the integrity of the absolute community by renouncing everything. You
shall possess nothing," says the Lord, "in the promised land.
land of the children of Israel, and you shall have no part with them. I am your portion and your
inheritance among the children of Israel". (Numbers 1, XVIII, 20) Ministers of God, they are by that
very fact the servants of all, and live only on the tithe and part of the offerings deposited in the
temple. "The Levites shall possess nothing else," says the Lord (Numbers 1:XVIII, 23). From time
immemorial, no doubt, in India and elsewhere, those who devoted themselves to the perfection of
life
But Moses was the only one who made this self-emptying a social institution, a condition of the
priestly ministry.
The second form of Jewish community is mainly represented by the Essenes and the Therapists. It is
the complete community of goods, work, prayer, food, soul and spirit.
of life, perfection of the natural community, and reminiscent of the free and philosophical
community... Direct heirs of the primitive and patriarchal traditions, they [the Essenes] went back to
the time of Moses and Aaron and came from the priests who had carried the Ark of the Covenant. They
received a
There was a regular organisation in the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah, who were in contact with
them. The schools of the ancient prophets were part of their community. At first, they spread
throughout the
promised land, in an area forty-eight leagues long and thirty-six leagues wide.
then on the banks of the Jordan and as far as Egypt. They lived mainly around*Mount Horeb and
Mount Carmel, where Elijah had stayed. The Maccabees were also among them... They shared
everything, goods, work, food and life.
There were two kinds of Essenes, some who lived in celibacy and contemplation, and who for
For this reason they were called Theoretici or contemplators, and the others were called Practici or
workers, who married, used marriage with extreme moderation, and led with their wives and children
a life similar in many respects to those of the first.
A branch of the Essenes, established mainly near Alexandria in Egypt, received the name of
Therapists, i.e. Servants of God. They renounced their possessions, says Philo, and worked to cure
diseases of the soul. They lived mainly near Lake Moeris, and each had, within a short distance of the
other, his own house.
They lived with extreme frugality and set an example of every virtue. They lived extremely frugally and
set an example of all virtues. They prayed in common: the women attended the instructions given on the
Sabbath, but were separated from the men by a wall.
a wall three or four cubits high. They were also admitted to the common table, with the men on the
right and the women on the left. Eusebius, Jerome, Sozomen, Cassian, Nicephorus, among the elders ;
Baronius, Petau, Godeau, Father de Montfaucon, Father Alexandre, Father Helyot, Baillet and other
moderns show that the Therapists were Jews who were converted to Christianity by Mark and other
preachers of the Gospel. They formed the first nucleus of the monastic communities.
After the priestly community of absolute self-denial, imposed on the tribe of Levi, and the community
of goods, work and life of the Essenes and Therapists, came the sharing community. This last form,
obviously the most imperfect, was no more than a rudimentary means of ensuring and preserving the
common good.
to maintain equality. In those remote times, we did not yet know how to divide the wealth evenly.
In Judea, the land was divided equally between all families, not as property, but as a simple
possession or usufruct of the common domain. In Judea, for example, the land was divided equally
among all the families, not as property, but as a simple possession or usufruct of the common
domain, of which man had only the use and of which God remained the lord.
the sole and absolute owner. To perpetuate this primitive equality for ever, Moses first instituted the
sabbatical year and the jubilee.
In each sabbatical year, which occurred every seven years, all debts were forgiven and all bondage
ceased. At the jubilee, which occurred every forty-nine years, not only were a l l debts forgiven, all
easements ceased and all agricultural work was stopped, as in the sabbatical year; but all transfers of
possessions were null and void, and all goods alienated or sold returned to their former owners. After
having repeated in Leviticus (25:8-12) the prescriptions concerning the sabbatical year... [Yahweh] adds:
"You shall also number seven weeks of years, that is, seven times seven, which together make forty-nine.
Then you shall sound the trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month throughout your land on the
day of reconciliation. And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty
for all the inhabitants of the earth, because it is the jubilee". After various other prescriptions always
relating to the jubilee, [Yahweh] continues: "The land also shall not be sold to
You are strangers who cultivate it for me. (25:23) In addition, the legislation of Moses contained a host
of prescriptions, the most minute and detailed, all aimed at maintaining the principle of equality.
Monastic community
... the primitive community of Jerusalem, summing up that of Moses, was now, forever, the starting
point for all its subsequent progress and all its possible developments. It had laid down the
fundamental principle: absolute communion of all moral, intellectual and physical goods, community
of work and life, of spiritual and material nourishment, of soul and body... All that r e m a i n e d was
to develop and apply these principles in all their forms... This has been the work of Christianity for the
last nineteen centuries, and especially that of the monastic communities.
... the Romans commanded by Titus, son of Vespasian, invaded Judea and took Jerusalem,
burned down its temple and led the Jews into captivity, among whom the Christians were confused
and who were completely expelled from Palestine under Adrian in 134. However, ten years before the
After the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, a community similar to the first had been founded in Egypt by
Mark, the first bishop of Alexandria. This movement soon took off in leaps and bounds.
Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia, Persia, Ethiopia, India, the whole of the East,
then successively Dalmatia, Italy, Gaul and the whole of the West, there arose an immense application
of the community of goods by the monastic and coenobilic orders, which merely continued, developing
and generalising it, the principle established in the primitive Church of Jerusalem. From then until the
present day, that is to say for eighteen hundred and sixty-six consecutive years, millions and millions of
individuals of every sex, every condition, every age, every language, every people, spread throughout
the whole of Christendom, have never ceased to live under this system of community of property.
community, to be its living, practical, exemplary preaching, and to pursue the idea of property of any
kind with a rigour that our contemporary communists have not even suspected.
As Cassian shows in his Conferences, and as Basil and Benedict formally declare in their Rules, the
Cenobites in no way set out to establish a way of life apart and different from that of other
Christians, but simply to continue the tradition of the primitive and apostolic Church,
This is why Benedict only calls his rule a "small beginning of the Christian life", and in several places
this rule assumes that a religious can leave the cloister and enter the world.
It is indubitable," says Tillemont (Expositions des doctrines chrétiennes, t. II, p. 393), "that the true
religious took as their model the first church of Jerusalem. Augustine expresses himself in the same
way. Cassian, who had studied the origins of monastic life with such care, also traces it back to the
first faithful of Jerusalem.
Moreover, the cenobites were not priests in the first place and did not even have priests of their own
order; they had priests from outside who celebrated the holy sacrifice for them. They were all simple
laymen".
because," says Abbé Fleury, "at the beginning, the clergy was thought to be incompatible with
monastic life". It was not until 383 that Pope Sirice called monks to the monastery. However, in the
seventh century they were still so far from being all clerics that a Council of Rome, held in 601, decided
that any monk who had passed to
the ecclesiastical state could no longer remain in his monastery. It was only in the 9th century that
they were considered part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But far from still being priests, they were
below the minor orders. Already in 1039, a distinction was made between lay brothers and sisters; and
even in the fifteenth century and since, we have seen religious orders composed exclusively of lay
people, and which did not receive priests, such as the Poor Volunteers founded in 1370. Finally, the
third orders, known as the Franciscans and Dominicans, have included, since the thirteenth century, a
number of lay brothers and sisters.
countless lay people, married men and women, who are directly linked to the monastic institutes.
This [cenobitic] thought... says to men: you are unhappy, divided, enemies, guilty, as a result of the
division you have made for yourselves of the goods of the earth; give up possessing anything of your
own, "for the earth is the Lord's with all that it contains"; let the use of all things be
It says to them: you are divided on the outside because you are divided on the inside; you have
external property, the source of all social misery, because you have internal property, the source of all
misery.
Put love, divine and universal charity in the place of selfishness and pride.
Finally, she said to them: property has its first origin in sin and the corruption of degenerate flesh, just
as community has its origin in the sanctification of man and virtue.
The religious orders, which took so many different forms, were so numerous that their simple nomenclature
They gradually developed all aspects of the organisation of this community and thus prepared for its
universal application; finally, they enveloped and penetrated civil society on all sides so as to deposit in
it the principles of the common good.
all the fundamental principles that were to make the realisation of this community throughout the
world inevitable. This is the nineteenth-century mould into which God threw humanity, so that it
would emerge communist for ever.
Eliminating the "vice" of ownership
The first principle of monastic life is that everything belongs to everyone and that no one should own
anything, not even the smallest object. But this is only the external and material fact o f ownership;
we must go back to its source. This is what monastic action did. It did not limit itself to
He not only preached and realised the visible community, but made it penetrate to the very depths of
human consciousness. Perfectly aware that any fact whose cause is not radically destroyed soon
revives of its own accord more powerful than ever, and wishing to achieve the annihilation, not only
temporary but perpetual, of property, it attacked the very principle of this "vice". Not unaware,
moreover, that any external institution, such as that of the community, can only be founded and
perpetuated insofar as it is the free, spontaneous, living manifestation of an inner state of the human
soul that necessarily leads to it, it set out to extirpate from the mind, the will and the heart of man all
desire, all love, all idea of property, whatever it may be. This is the radical work it has been pursuing
and carrying out for nineteen centuries; this is the aim of this elective institution,
republican, communist, governed by a constitution freely accepted by all and called the Rule.
The Church recognises four main rules under which almost all religious orders fall: that of Basil, which
reigns throughout the East; that of Augustine; that of Benedict, which dominated the West until the
13th century; and that of Francis of Assisi.
Basil's rule, which soon became the rule of all Eastern monks, is expressed thus: "Let everything be
common to all, and let no one have anything of his own, neither clothing, nor shoes, nor anything
that belongs to others.
the use of the body. It even adds that it is impossible to obtain the kingdom of heaven without
renouncing everything we possess on earth.
Augustine's rule also prescribes absolute community, and goes into the most minute detail in this
regard. It adds that, since everything is in common, if anyone appropriates anything or hides anything
given to him, he is guilty of theft from the community. In his first sermon on common life, in which he
gives an account to the assembled people of the community which he
Augustine said: "This is how we live; no one in our society is allowed to have anything of his own". He
then recounted how each member of his community had stripped himself of everything he possessed,
and instructed the people to give nothing except to the whole community and not to any one of its
members in particular.
members. Finally, he announced that he would impose the severest penalties on anyone who dared to
keep anything of his own. We can see from the details of this speech that the monks, and even the
clergy and bishops, wore the same vestments as the laity at the time, and that, basically, the monastic
institute still only intended to continue the primitive Church of Jerusalem, which included all the
faithful with their
families, married men and women, and children.
Benedict's rule is no less explicit than the previous ones. Property," it says, "is the most essential vice"
to be eradicated from the community. One must "own nothing, not even a book,
tablets, a stylus for writing, absolutely nothing", nihil omnino. It is not just the fact of ownership, but
the feeling that gives rise to it, that "is the most essential vice to be rooted out" of
the human soul.
As for the rule of Francis of Assisi... it goes much further still, by abolishing all
property, even collective property like any particular property, and thus constituting the fundamental
principle of the universal, absolute community.
Moreover, all the founders and reformers of monastic orders, Lorenzo Justinian, Gerson and a host of
others speak the same language as Basil, Augustine, Benedict and Francis of Assisi; and these rules
are confirmed by the Council of Trent which, in its XXVth session, formally forbids "to own, or even in
the name of the monastery, any property, movable or immovable, by whatever title they may have
acquired it and of whatever nature it may be". Now, it should be noted that these prescriptions of the
monastic rules are not like civil laws, which prescribe only the material fact and the nature of the
property.
only require external obedience; they command the inner self, compel the conscience; and, by
forbidding any kind of property, forbid at the same time all desire, all love, all
thought of property of any kind. This abdication of all ownership thus becomes faith,
a religion, a cult. The saints call her the mother and guardian of all the other virtues. Francis of Assisi
called her his mistress, as did the Rule of the Franciscans, and celebrated his glorious hymen with her.
Ignatius, in his Constitutions, recommends that we love her as a good mother, b e c a u s e it is she
who gives birth to and preserves in souls all the other virtues.
John Chrysostom, seeking to explain why the Christians of the early Church were so full of zeal and zealotry
of fervour, and those of his time, on the contrary, so lukewarm and lax, shows that this is due to the
fact that the first Christians renounced all their possessions, while the others remained laden with
riches.
Thomas Aquinas and a host of other Doctors teach that those who have thus renounced their own
possession of anything, whether canonised or not, will, like the Apostles, be seated before the tribunal
of God on the day of judgement, to judge all the world with Jesus Christ; and Gregory extols the
greatness of this prerogative.
M. Olier, founder and first superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice
It is not only to religious, but to all Christians, that the Church imposes the duty of eradicating from
their hearts, souls and minds "the abominable vice of property". This is the goal of the whole Christian
life, which prescribes this disappropriation in the spiritual order as well as in the material order.
All that we call asceticism, mysticism, the spiritual life or other similar names, consists in this teaching
of the saints which is found not only in the great centuries of Christianity, but in every time and place.
In the seventeenth century, M. Olier, founder and first superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in
Paris, developed this thought at length in his Introduction à la vie et aux vertus chrétiennes. After
admirably explaining the nature
of this rigorous duty of every Christian, he stigmatises in the following terms
terms "the evil of property" and the comparative moral results of property and its negation, which he
calls "self-denial".
The landlord is in every way the opposite of the Christian, property the opposite of Christianity, and
the radical extirpation of every kind of property is the supreme ideal of moral perfection for every
man, as it is for everyone collectively, or for society as a whole. Complete abolition of
This is the Christian life, the spiritual or divine life within us, the law of Christianity for individuals and
for nations. For "there is nothing more contrary to Christianity than property,
Adam made himself, by sin, the owner and father o f all sin, and property is a horrible monster and a
terrible sea of all sin".
Abolition of property, even collective property
Community and collective property could still have been confused, which are very different things. The
Papacy, after having excommunicated and denied burial to a poor monk who had kept three reals to
buy a tunic, had to officially proclaim, through thirty
the abolition of all collective and individual property.
This formidable problem of ownership, publicly debated for three centuries by the
Christianity as a whole, was resolved in the sense of a radical, universal and absolute community. And it
was.
"The love of poverty makes us kings", said Bernard of Clairvaux. It is indeed through
The monks became kings of the world and the peoples of the world became truly sovereign. In his
speech in the presence of Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus called the monks "philosophers", because they
possessed nothing in this world.
The first solitaries, ascetics and cenobites, following to the letter the words of Christ: "Whoever does
not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple", had no other rule than the absolute
abdication of all kinds of property. Later, the monasteries spread everywhere, living on the same principles.
This meant that if the individual possessed nothing of his own, the monastery or order possessed it as
a body. Now, in order to achieve absolute community, it was necessary to abolish even this collective
property, as had already been done.
abolish all individual property. This is what Francis of Assisi did. He founded the Franciscan order,
which, five centuries later, after losing countless monasteries, still numbered, at the beginning of the
20th century, more than 100,000 monks and nuns.
In the 18th century, there were more than one hundred and fifteen thousand religious men and nearly
thirty thousand religious women. After having taught his disciples, by word and example, this
unrestricted renunciation of all possession, Francis prescribed it with the utmost rigour in his Rule,
which states: "The brothers shall have nothing of their own, neither house, nor place, nor anything
else," forbids all kinds of property, both collective and individual, and forbids like a plague all handling
of money, either by oneself or by any other person.
and does everything it can to ensure that the property cannot intrude under any pretext whatsoever.
Well then! This rule, examined by the cardinals, was approved in 1210 by Pope Innocent III as being the
very expression of the Gospel; in 1215, by the Fourth General Council of the Church in Rome.
Latran, and solemnly confirmed by Pope Honorius III in his bulls of 11 June 1219 and 29 June 1220.
November 1223. Gregory IX again confirmed this denial of all property, even collective property, in
two new bulls, one dated 21 August 1231, addressed to all prelates, and the other dated 23 August
1231, addressed to the archbishops of Tours and Rouen and to the bishop of Paris. Innocent IV
approved the same doctrine in 1245. Pope Alexander IV was even more favourable to the religious
mendicants and their principle of absolute community. Barely five days after his coronation, on 31
December 1254, he revoked Innocent IV's bull Etsi animarum of the previous 21 November, because it
restricted the privileges of the mendicants.
Franciscans and Dominicans, in whose favour he issued more than forty consecutive bulls. He
vigorously supported the latter against the University of Paris with his great bull Quasi lignum vitae of
14 April 1255, and that Cunctis processibus of 17 June 1256.
In the same year, 1256, Guillaume de Saint-Amour, doctor and regent of theology in Paris, published
a book entitled Des Périls des derniers temps, directed against the Franciscans and Dominicans.
particularly against the latter. He fought with the greatest violence against their theory of absolute
community and the negation of all property, even collective property, claiming that this was neither
the doctrine nor the practice of Jesus Christ. So what did the Pope do when the matter was referred
to him? Having had the work examined by four cardinals, on their report he issued his sentence in the
form of a bull, dated 5 October 1256, in which he condemned this book as iniquitous, criminal and
execrable, ordering anyone who had it to burn it within eight days, on pain of excommunication, with
a ban on
approve or support it in any way. This condemnation was pronounced publicly in
The Pope deprived Guillaume de Saint-Amour of his doctorate and of all benefits and dignities, forbade
all trade with him and rejected his appeal.
On the following 15 November, Alexander IV again praised the absolute community of Franciscans and
Dominicans in his bull Parisius peritia, and in 1257 published seven more bulls both in favour of these
religious and against Guillaume de Saint-Amour, in addition to various letters on the same subjects.
In compliance with the papal bulls and the oath of the representatives of the University, Thomas
Aquinas, whose doctorate had been delayed for two years, was finally received in Paris on 23 October
1257, and published
At the time, he was writing the apology for the Friars Minor and Preachers that he had delivered to the
Pope at Anagni a year earlier. This work is entitled: Contre ceux qui attaquent la religion, c'est-à-dire
l'institution monastique, and in it the Angelic Doctor responds in detail and with great accuracy to all
the reasons or authorities alleged by Guillaume de Saint-Amour. The latter claimed that it is not
permissible for one who has property to deprive himself of it completely without providing for his
subsistence, either by
entering a community or proposing to live by his work. Thomas shows that this renews the errors of
Jovinian and Vigilance, who criticised the practice of monastic life. This
It is not only in habitual poverty, he says, that the perfection of the Gospel consists, that is to say, in the
interior detachment from the goods of which we remain possessors, but in poverty
This perfection does not require that we collectively possess anything. He reminds us that the most
perfect monks renounced all
He cites the example of Jesus Christ himself and of several saints, and proves the absurdity and injustice
of the criticisms levelled at Franciscan and Dominican religious.
After Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Bishop of Regensburg, and a host of others, Bonaventure, the
Seraphic Doctor, also wrote several treatises in which he used more or less the same proofs as Thomas
Aquinas to refute all the objections to the abolition of collective ownership.
Abolition of all property, even collective property. It must extend to civil society.
Finally, on 14 August 1279, the bull Exiit qui seminat appeared, in which Nicholas III refuted at length
the objections that had been raised against the principles of the Franciscans, and resolved the
difficulties that many had found in practising their rule. It establishes the following principles:
1° Absolute community or the abdication of all property, not only individual but collective, "is
meritorious and holy".
2° Jesus Christ "taught it by word and confirmed it by example, and the first founders of
the Church, drawing it from its very source, and passing it on by the examples of their teaching and their
lives".
3° If Christ possessed anything with his Apostles, it was to "condescend to the imperfections of the
infirm, the weak, the imperfect."
4° The way of perfection he teaches is the abdication of all property; the other is t h e infirmity and
imperfection of human flesh to which he condescended out of pure charity.
5° Confident in divine Providence, in human brotherhood and in their work, "triple means of
to live, those who thus abdicate the ownership of everything are not homicidal of themselves or
tempters of God".
6° Moreover "extreme necessity to provide for the sustenance of nature, is of natural civil law, exempt
from all law".
7° "The abdication of all property does not imply the renunciation of the de facto use of the things
necessary for life".
These fundamental principles give rise to a whole world of consequences, of which we will limit
ourselves to mentioning the following:
1° This abdication of all ownership being able to be made in common by a company, some
A whole nation, however numerous, could therefore implement it in its constitution, with everyone
freely adhering to it.
2° Every Christian who is to strive to imitate Christ, his type and model, must strive with all his might
for this suppression of all property, as for the perfection which the Apostles and the Church gave him
set an example.
3° For the same reasons, every Christian society must pursue its realisation, as the fulfilment of the
divine ideal assigned as the supreme goal to the perfection of humanity.
4° Mere de facto use, which still remains to man after the abolition of all property, does not imply any
infringement of the absolute community, because not constituting a right, it obliges him who has
consumed a product to recreate its equivalent through his work. Hence the rule of justice in the
community.
These, among others, are the rigorous consequences of the principles laid down by the papacy since
Innocent III, developed by Nicholas III and confirmed by his successors. They were first developed by Martin
IV, then by Nicholas IV, who further extended the privileges already granted to the Franciscans, mainly
in his bulls of 6 May and 30 April 1288. The principles of this famous constitution were
reproduced, confirmed and applied by Celestine V in 1294; by Boniface VIII in 1299, in several bulls in
favour of the Friars Minor; by Clement V in his decretal Exivi deparadiso, promulgated at the third and
last session of the General Council of Vienna, on 6 May 1312; by John XXII, in his innumerable bulls,
principally that Quorumdam exigit published on 13 April 1317 and the year
In the following pages, he recalls the constitutions of Nicholas IV and Clement V, the Santa Romana
constitution of late 1317, the Gloriosam ecclesiam constitution of 23 January 1318 and the others that
we will cite below.
Certainly, in no other case and on no other question has the Holy See pronounced itself in such a
reiterated, complete and persevering manner, by the authority of so many popes and in such a
succession of consecutive declarations over more than a century. It is worth repeating the words of
Augustine, so often quoted today: "Rome has spoken, the cause is finished".
But this was not yet enough, and the Papacy was increasingly showing that this was not the case.
Community, proclaimed by the Church, must extend to the temporal order as well as the spiritual
order, to civil society as well as religious society. This is strikingly apparent in these complex
discussions, whose forgotten form sometimes obscures their immense scope, and in these struggles
between the Church and the Church.
The many passionate events of this illustrious period make for epic drama. Without going into this
long maze, let's at least mention a few of the main points of this moving scene where
six centuries ago, the great issues of human destiny were at stake.
In his bull Ausculta, fili of 5 December 1301, Boniface VIII reminded Philip the Fair that temporal
kingdoms and their rulers were, like individuals, subject to Christian law. In his famous decretal Unam
sanctam of 18 November 1302, deliberated at a council in Borne, he declared that there were no two
principles, two laws, one for the spiritual order and the other for the temporal order, but only one law,
the Gospel; only one head, Jesus Christ; that all power comes from God and that the distinction of the
two swords is only that of a double function serving the same cause, one for eternity, the other for
time; that human and temporal power, instituted, ordered, judged by the Christian law, of which it
must not be the only one, is not the only one; that all power comes from God and that the distinction
of the two swords is only that of a double function serving the same cause, one for eternity, the other
for time; that human and temporal power, instituted, ordered, judged by the Christian law, of which it
must not be the only one, is not the only one.
This w a s a decree that the universal community, practised for fourteen centuries by religious society,
should be extended to civil society. This was already decreeing the extension to civil society of the
universal community practised for fourteen centuries by religious society.
John XXII simply applied these principles. Louis of Bavaria attacked, condemned and deposed the Pope,
established the bishops and, arguing that all property had been abdicated, [thus taking the Church at
its own game] claimed the goods of the Church as his domain. It was then that John XXII promulgated,
in
1328, his bull Quia vir reprobus, which, because of its length and importance, is a veritable book. In it,
he justified his three previous constitutions, which had been condemned by order of Louis on 18 April
of the same year, and
establishes the principle that Jesus Christ, as King and Lord of the universe, has the ownership and sovereignty
of the universe.
of all temporal things. He proves this by the prophecies and the passages of Holy Scripture, which
represent Christ as King of kings, Lord of lords, to whom belongs the empire over all the nations of the
earth, whose reign will have no end and to whom all power has been given in heaven and on earth. He
shows that when he said to Pilate: "My kingdom is not from here", he was saying: "My kingdom is not
from here".
declares that he does not derive his power from the world, but from God, to whom everything belongs. This
This was the doctrine of the most famous theologians, as well as of the papacy. Alvar Pelage, a famous
doctor of the Franciscan order, established in his Treatise on the Complaints of the Church that Jesus
Christ is the only pontiff, king and lord of all, and that the whole earth is his,
with everything it contains.
Now, since the kingdom of Jesus Christ was founded on absolute community, which has been perpetuated
for nineteen consecutive centuries, both temporal and spiritual society must be established on this
basis.
principle, on this universal law extending to everything, because everything is his. Everything comes
under this community, since Christ alone has the ownership and sovereign domain of all things.
The absolute community
Absolute community is the divine right and must extend to everything, to temporal society as well as
to spiritual society: this is the immense result achieved by this solemn debate of several centuries, and
by the decisions of more than a hundred papal bulls.
In this memorable discussion, which lasted for three centuries, the Papacy approved and proclaimed
"the complete abdication of all property, both in common and in private, as meritorious and holy,
being that which Christ taught by word and confirmed by his example, that which the first founders of
the Church, as they had drawn it from the very source, transmitted by the examples of
their doctrine and their life, this abdication of all ownership leaving only a simple de facto use".
Consequently, the Holy See, confirming the rule of the Friars Minor, decided that the ownership of
their goods belonged to the Church as a whole, of which the Pope was the representative, or rather to
Christ, to God alone, no man being the owner. This is what Roman law calls res nullius, res
sacroe et religiosa et sancta, quod enim divini juris est, id nullius in bonis est. This religious and
sacrosanct thing is nobody's thing, because what is of divine right belongs, as a possession, to
nobody.
In principle, this definition applies to all communities, but in particular to
religious communities. Each of its members having made a vow of poverty or renunciation of all
property, all the goods of these communities are by right the religious and sacrosanct thing which is
nobody's thing: it is the divine right of the principle of the community. We can therefore and must
consider all the monastic communities that have succeeded one another, since the primitive Church of
Jerusalem to this day, as a single community whose common goods are the patrimony of God,
administered by the Church. The usufruct of this divine patrimony is undoubtedly used by the various
particular communities according to the needs of their functions and the distribution of work, but in
principle the fund remains one, indivisible and inalienable.
Every generation, this community counts its members in the millions. During the Middle Ages, it alone
possessed all the archives, monuments, products and treasures of the arts, letters and sciences, and
performed all the high social functions, all the principal works o f education, agriculture and industry,
and all the great offices of politics and Christianity.
And yet! This immense community, nineteen centuries old, is still only a part of the Catholic
community. In fact, in addition to the incalculable assets of the monastic orders, the Church
still possessed such considerable assets that this dual ownership combined to form the bulk of all social
wealth. An example will suffice. It has been calculated that at the end of the seventeenth century, the
Church still owned twelve million acres of land in the twenty-two provinces of the Kingdom of Castile,
worth 161 million reals, while the laity owned no more than sixty-one million acres, worth 817 million
reals. Thus the fifth part of the
land, as well as a much larger portion of movable property, was in the hands of the clergy, whose
revenues still amounted to 150 million francs in 1817.
Now the Church proclaimed all the goods, whether movable or immovable, of this colossal community
to be the property of God alone, a common patrimony, undivided and inalienable, of which the holders
must have only t h e use or usufruct. In fact," says Fleury, "ecclesiastical goods, being consecrated to
God, are sacred, and the Church has the right to use them.
Ownership belongs to no one, and the beneficiary has only the administration". The usufruct of this
divine patrimony was allocated to the satisfaction of all the moral, intellectual and physical needs of
humanity, worship, education, instruction, foundation, maintenance and development of schools,
colleges, universities, sick homes, hospitals, hospices, asylums and retreats of all kinds, care of the sick,
the infirm, the abandoned, orphans, children and the elderly, subsistence of the clergy and a large part
of the population, hospitality, relief and assistance of all kinds to all.
As we can see, the community does not need to be made, it is made. It was established in the world
with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem, never to disappear again. Since then, it has been perpetuated
without interruption in monastic communities, and now covers the whole face of the earth.
Founded at first by the goods and offerings of the first faithful placed in common, it was constituted
by the goods of the Church, the property of God alone, an undivided and inalienable patrimony,
which has embraced the greater part of all social wealth, and which has a right of claim to the
immense wealth of the Church.
It has been robbed of billions of dollars' worth of possessions, especially since the sixteenth century
and the French Revolution.
This community is not just national, it is [international] like the Church, and embraces not just the
whole of Europe, a whole continent, but the whole universe in all its areas, from
from the equator to the poles. Contemporary with humanity through its tradition and origins, it has
existed in its Christian form for nineteen consecutive centuries, and has already contained within its
bosom millions and millions of men, who have bequeathed its future developments to the future. It has
withstood all persecutions, all violence, all seductions, all catastrophes; still standing.
on its indestructible rock, it has survived the flood of peoples, the fall of empires, the disappearance of
entire nations and the cataclysms of a thousand and one revolutions.
Teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church
Is that enough? No. Property still existed within temporal society. It had to be destroyed even in this
last refuge. Since the Church had no special mission in this area, it at least tried to do something about it.
to hasten the hour of this transformation. Through the mouths of her Fathers and Doctors, she gave
voice to the energetic accents of which we are about to hear a few echoes. This teaching has
necessarily
the very character of the spiritual order to which it belongs. He demands community in the name of
charity and divine justice, much more than in that of written law and human justice. He urges and
implores every man to renounce all that he possesses, to strip himself of his goods in order to give
them to others.
He could not demand this community in the name of the State, but he nevertheless pursued its
realisation with incredible fervour.
Let's face it, he often went much further. For example, we saw this passage in which the Pope
Clement says: "Brothers, the common life is obligatory for all men. For the use of all things in this
world must be common to all. It was iniquity that made one man say, 'This is mine,' and another,
'This is mine. Hence the division between mortals". These words of a
are reproduced in the Body of Canon Law, along with various similar passages
Ambrose, Augustine and other doctors. The eighth rule of Basil also says that one cannot obtain
the kingdom of heaven without renouncing all that one possesses on earth, which would amount to
nothing less, as Fr. Combefis remarks, than damning every owner. [If], since the Council of Gangres in
Paphlagonia, against the Eustachians, in the year 342, until the encyclicals of Pius IX, of 29 November
1846, 8 December 1849 and 1864, the Church has always condemned communism [, it has never done
anything but
condemn communism imposed on society exclusively by force or the absolute autocracy of the state]...
[With accents reminiscent of the curses of Isaiah and foreshadowing the curses of Marx, the
fathers and doctors of the Church utter curses against the rich]. Basil... urges the peoples of the world
to achieve a universal community of goods, housing, food and life, in imitation of the primitive Church
of Jerusalem and as an application of the original community of the Church of Jerusalem.
instead of "making common things their own and possessing alone what belongs to all". Gregory of
Nyssa... pursued with his most energetic efforts the establishment of community for all, and called
"inhuman tyrants, cruel barbarians, ferocious beasts, those who have made themselves masters of the
common inheritance to the exclusion of others". Astère, bishop of Amasie, in the Mount, and famous in
the East for his preaching, fought against property and the inequality of conditions in their entirety.
source, greed, avarice or the love of possessing. Ambrose repeats incessantly and in every possible way
forms: "The Lord our God willed that the earth should belong to all men in common, and that its fruits
should be for the use of all. You take for yourself in particular what has been given in common to the
It was greed that introduced the division of goods. It was greed that introduced the division of goods.
property is usurpation, and almsgiving is restitution "which the rich man must make to the poor man
for the share of the common goods which he has taken from him". And he concludes by saying:
"Declare common to all, the goods of nature which produce the fruits of the earth for the use of all.
Nothing could reproduce the frightening portraits he [Chrysostom] paints of the rich, the miser,
anyone possessed by the love o f property. He accuses them of committing every crime, of being
more wicked than the devils and of possessing what belongs to others. He is," he says, "a carnivorous
animal, a ferocious beast worse than the
ferocious beasts; it slits throats, tears apart and devours everything it meets. Like hell, it engulfs
everything; it is the declared enemy of humanity".
With Cyprian, Basil, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, Astereus, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa and all the others
He teaches that it is theft to misappropriate for one's own benefit the common good that belongs to the
poor, to everyone.
Isidore of Damietta also proclaimed community in these terms: "You have acquired goods by fair
industry; but you hold them unjustly. Make them common, t h e n , and they will truly be yours".
Augustine expresses himself in the same way. It is right," he says, "that we should all be in community of
goods and services.
of trials as well as in community of spirit, hope and love". After developing the same theories as John
Chrysostom, he continues: "It is because individual property exists that there are also lawsuits,
enmities, discord, wars, riots, dissensions, scandals, sins, iniquities, homicides... Where do all these
scourges come from? From property alone".
This complete abdication of all personal property, demanded of everyone, necessarily leads to
universal community, and the poor here become everyone, enriched by this general disappropriation.
It is sacrilege," he adds, "to keep what belongs to the poor", to everyone. Now, everything belongs to
them, because he says to the rich man: "What you possess is not yours"; and he proclaims these
terrible maxims:
"All riches are the fruit of iniquity, because they are the spoils of others; every rich person is a
despoiler or the heir of a despoiler.
[Jesus Christ] had said: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven". The apostle James, in his turn, accuses the rich of having dishonoured
the august name of Christ, of having condemned and killed the righteous, and tells them to weep, to
cry out and howl at the sight of the treasure of wrath they are storing up for the last days. Salvian,
whose authority was so great in the Church that he was called the master of bishops, comments on
these last words. After having drawn a frightful picture of the crimes he reproaches the rich for, he
expresses himself as follows: "He [James] does not say to the rich man: you will be tortured because
you are a murderer; you will be tortured because you are an adulterer; but he says to him: you will be
tortured simply because you are rich.
[We must not think that they [these testimonies] sum up everything that the Fathers and Doctors of
the Church have said or written on this subject. Far from it. We could have quoted an innumerable
multitude
other similar texts, often even more explicit, stronger and more forceful; whole volumes have been
filled with them, and we have done no more than pick and choose. We have stopped at the seventh
century, because it was necessarily necessary to limit ourselves, and because it is moreover in
those
the sources and basis of Christian tradition. But we could have unrolled the rings of this living and
unbroken chain from century to century, and so to speak from hour to hour, from then until now. A
few examples will suffice:
Where there is no community of goods," says Peter Damien, "spirits are divided; but when goods are
possessed in common, the spirits of all are united in a common will. "Where goods are divided, there
can undoubtedly be no unity of souls.
community and greed division".
"Live as a community", cried Pierre de Blois.
"Everything is held in common by natural law", according to Gratien.
This principle was proclaimed and developed by Thomas Aquinas, who added: "A perfectly
established community is a true city".
It is explained in all its details by Bonaventure who, after showing this community of goods applied to
temporal society, sums it up in these words: "The life of community is very holy; much more, it is the
angelic life".
The Church. - The Trinity. Incarnation. Communion of saints.
A constant doctrine and universal practice of the Church, community sums up the whole of Christianity.
The Church," says Saint Ambrose, "is the community of all in all, which is the very law and form of
justice. It prays in common, works in common, is tested in common. Justice consists in self-denial in
order to be worthy of Christ". It represents the absolute community, as one and indivisible, but at the
same time triune, in the image of the divine Trinity, and revealed under three aspects: - Community in
God; - Community or communion between God and man; - Community of all men among themselves
through their communion with God; and consequently, community of all the goods of God.
the soul and the body, as a manifestation of the communion of man with God and of all men with each
other.
God can be defined, in the words of Epiphanius, as "community with equality". This is the meaning of
the dogma of the divine Trinity. The community of nature or essence (omousios) with the co-equality of
persons (cooequales), that is the definition of this dogma according to all the symbols of the Fathers,
the Councils and the Popes. Now, this "community with equality" is the type on which human society
must be moulded. The union of the divine persons," says Bossuet, "has been given to us as the model
f o r our own. 0 God! Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I recognise myself in everything and everywhere,
made in your image, in your likeness.
in the image of the Trinity, in accordance with the words: "Let us make man in our image and likeness".
since the very union you want to establish in us is the imperfect image of your perfect unity. 0 Charity!
you must grow and multiply to infinity in the faithful, since the model of union and unity you want to
establish in us is the imperfect image of your perfect unity.
The communication that is proposed to you is a model whose perfection you can never attain. All you
can do is always grow by imitating him, by communicating more and more all that we have to our
brothers and sisters: light, instruction, advice, correction, when necessary, love, tenderness, virtue,
for example.
edification, good example, mutual support, and all the more so, goods, riches, sustenance, and
everything down to the bread we eat".
But for the divine community to become the model for the [earthly community], God and humanity
must be indissolubly united and placed in communion. Hence the dogma of the Incarnation,
second face of the community. The divine Word became man "so that we might become partakers of
the divine nature", says Peter, and so that the two natures, human and divine, might be in
communion.
This communion between God and man, in Christ, takes place through charity.
Descended from God into humanity, through the Incarnation and charity, this community with equality
is the foundation of the community of men among themselves, an essential and fundamental dogma
of Christianity, an article of faith in the Apostles' Creed, which gives it the name of the Communion of
Saints. Jesus Christ himself proclaims this community everywhere, especially in his last prayer after the
Last Supper. Paul in
develops the thought incessantly in all his Epistles: "We are all one body and members of one
another", he says.
... this community must extend not only to all men now existing on this globe, but to all those who
have passed through it, as well as to all those who are still here.
Now, the communion of saints or the communion of men among themselves, through their
communion with God, has as its external manifestation the community of all visible or material goods,
which is the expression of the community of all invisible or spiritual goods.
Part Two: Community through State
Two sides to the community problem
The universal advent of the community being the supreme and definitive goal which God proposed
for himself in the world [...] he willed that everything should contribute to it at the same time, Now, in
the [Judeo-Christian] world, there are only two great living forces: that of [...] the Church, which is the
divine order of revelation, of faith, of the Church and of the Church itself.
and that of temporal power, of human society or the State, which is the order of grace.
nature, examination and reason. The first teaches in the name of duty, self-sacrifice and
charity; the second commands in the name of law, reciprocity and justice. The first is addressed to
the individual, to the personality itself, to exhort and persuade it; the second is imposed on the
whole.
This is the only way we can ensure that the community as a whole is governed by an impersonal law to
which all must submit,
The first speaks to the conscience, the heart, the soul and the spirit, and its precepts and advice are not
the same as those of the second.
The second orders and governs external acts and visible facts by laws that are binding on everyone.
In the first part above, we have seen the Church not only preach, but also bring about the community [...]
which has been perpetuated without interruption for nineteen centuries: this is the "spirit-man". In this
second part, we shall show the State preparing, developing and organising the conditions and elements of
the temporal and obligatory community over the last six thousand years: this is the "body-man".
". In the third part that follows, we will explain how the Church and the State must unite for the
universal and definitive fulfilment of the integral community...
Achieving universal community [implied giving] property and sovereignty a t the same time and
indivisibly to everyone.
The first task was quite simply to remake the whole world, morally and materially [...] Thus, for
example, in order to give property and sovereignty simultaneously to everyone, it was first necessary
to make everyone [free]. [Christianity] first transformed
slavery into serfdom, then serfdom into freedom. Finally, universal suffrage, proclaimed in 1792 and
fully applied since 1848, made every man who became free a representative of sovereignty, residing in
each and every one of them. After nineteen hundred years, this colossal work is only now coming to an
end, as the last vestiges of slavery disappear from the soil of the United States [...] Twelve centuries of
energetic and persevering effort were barely enough; they freed women and children [...] The equality
of all men was proclaimed, along with their freedom, and their
universal brotherhood, the threefold fundamental basis of the community that has been steadily building
up for nineteen centuries.
But this was still, so to speak, only the surface of the Christian work. It built man and humanity from
s c r a t c h only to achieve community. [In traditional white civilisations, the State had by definition
been the transcendent unifying principle and the natural organ of a racial and ethnic community. In
contrast, the Christian State was intended to be a community
universal, or rather internationalist, i.e. the anti-community par excellence: a parody of community] In order
to found the [international] community, it was necessary to constitute a power which, placed above all the
limits of States, of all the frontiers of nations, would extend over the universe,
embraced the whole world and was the homeland of humanity. This power [was called] the Church,
from a word which means assembly, ecumenical council of nations, permanent congress of humanity.
And the Church founded... this [international] community [...] which, perpetuating itself through all
places and all centuries, is the living mould on which temporal society has only to model itself, the type
[...] that
the State has only to follow, the form [...] which it has only to assume, through its indissoluble union
with the Church, in order to complete the definitive realisation of the community.
To achieve this, the State itself had to place sovereignty, and hence property, its essential attribute, in
the hands of all. This immense task [...] required no less than nineteen centuries of effort and is not
yet completely finished. Let us briefly retrace its main phases.
The social evolution of sovereignty and ownership
The Christian era saw exactly the same development of sovereignty and property as we saw in [Semitic
Rome]. Only here it was not the priesthood that first possessed property as a particular body and a
class apart, but an aristocracy that we shall see constituted under the name of feudalism. Penetrated
by the Christian spirit, the priesthood posits that "the earth belongs to God with all that it contains",
and deduces from this, as an application, this immense universal community whose gigantic picture we
sketched in the first part of this work. He went further, and sought to introduce this community into
the State through the generalised institution of undivided and inalienable patrimony.
The property of Caesar or the Roman people passed into the hands of the new barbarian conquerors.
Their chiefs, whether Franks, Germans, Goths or Lombards, divided up the conquered land and gave it
as a reward to their warriors who had served well or fought well in the war. For this reason, this salary
was called beneficium, benefit, advantage or profit. But [because of] the spirit of community
maintained by the Church, this was not the appropriation of land, and these benefits, being in principle
always removable, thus left the soil of Christendom and all t h a t it bore in... community. Later, it is
true, the holders of these benefices came to own them.
make them life annuities. The principle of community had not yet been completely broken.
[Fortunately] they went further and ended up making them hereditary. However, this was not without
a struggle, and it took centuries. In fact, the heredity of benefices, which began to be introduced into
France as early as 587 by the Treaty of Andelot, was so far from being established that it was not even
completely established.
three centuries later, in 877, when the Edict of Kiersy sur Oise extended it to the government of the
provinces of
the Carlovingian Empire. It did not spread to the rest of Europe until much later. It was not brought to
Italy by Emperor Conrad II until around 1030. The benefices then took the name of fiefs, first
mentioned in a charter of Charles the Fat in 884. However, the definitive appropriation of land had not
yet been achieved. In addition to perpetual fiefs, there were
For a long time, these were still temporary fiefs and others were simply life fiefs. The name of benefice
was always applied to land or income allocated to ecclesiastical services, and these benefices
continued until 1789. All the functions, at first elective and life-long, only became
with the heredity of the crown itself under the Capets. Feudalism, whose power
It was not until the accession of Hugues Capet in 987 that the feudal community finally triumphed. The
feudal community only came into being after ten centuries of social community. But this was also the
beginning of the struggle between royal power and feudalism.
According to the law we have already mentioned, full ownership implies full sovereignty, and vice
versa. As the owner of the land, each feudal lord also became the owner of civil, military and judicial
power. Sovereign in his domains, he governed,
administered, ordered and distributed taxes, dispensed justice, raised and commanded armies - in
short, exercised all the prerogatives of sovereignty. Hugues Capet and his successors were only really
kings in their own domains. Like all other countries, France was no more than a large fiefdom, a sort of
confederation of lords bound by a hierarchy of reciprocal duties and rights that constituted the
suzerain lords and the vassals or feudatories. No doubt the
The number of fiefs, their nature and their mutual dependence varied infinitely. But since the essence
of the fief always lay in indivision and inalienability, at least within certain limits, it was still a kind of
community, and the federation of these particular communities formed the general community.
The royal power, representing and personifying the unity of these diverse communities, tended to
naturally to bring them back to him and merge them into a vast national community. This was his
work. Louis VI began it, and it became widespread through the emancipation of the communes. Philip
Augustus, Saint Louis and Philip the Fair continued and extended this work, bringing into the royal
domain a large number of "communes".
of fiefdoms. Their successors, even more powerful, made it prevail. Finally, Louis XI and later
Richelieu dealt feudalism its final blows.
The general community absorbed all the particular communities into itself, the sovereignty of
everything passed into the hands of the monarchy, and the ownership of everything passed into it, by
virtue of this fundamental law that we are constantly observing. Everywhere the monarchy proclaims
and applies this doctrine.
At the beginning of the 14th century, Marsilio of Padua and John of Jandun supported the proposition
that "all temporal goods are subject to the emperor, and that he can take them as his own". At the end
of the same century, in England, Richard II proclaimed himself "master of the property of his subjects".
In his treatise on the Franc-Alleu, Galland dogmatically established: "That the king is the universal lord
of
all the lands in his kingdom". The principle that the sovereign has the direct universal domain of all
property was laid down in the Marillac Code under Louis XIII in 1629. Louis XIV formulated it with more
of energy in an edict of August 1692. It was so much in keeping with political tradition that the
Sorbonne, when consulted about a tax by the king, replied: "that the property of his subjects was his
own". In his instructions to the dauphin, Louis XIV himself set out this theory of property in these
terms:
"Everything within our States, whatever its nature, belongs to us in the same way. You must be well
persuaded that kings are absolute lords and naturally have the
to have full and free disposal of all goods owned, whether by members of the Church or by seculars, to
use them in all things as wise stewards".
Three years later a book was published under the title: Testament politique de M. de Louvois. It reads
as follows: "All your subjects, whoever they may be, owe you their person, their property, their blood,
without having the right to claim anything. By sacrificing everything they have to you, they are doing
their duty and giving you nothing, since everything is yours. This theory [of Mosaic origin] was
reproduced in the eighteenth century by M. de
Paulmy.
Thus it is the sovereign, it is the State, that is the absolute master of everything, men and things, the
supreme owner of all property; "everything within the territory, of whatever nature, belongs to him in
the same way, everything is his. He is the absolute lord, and naturally has full and free disposal of all
possessed goods". Now that the people had become this sovereign, this Louis XIV, everything belonged
to him, and therefore everything belonged to everyone. This is what the Revolution proclaimed,
repeating in its turn, "I am the State", and simply applying the very theories of Louis XIV for the benefit
of all citizens.
Man," says Mirabeau, "cannot have an exclusive right to any object in nature; for what belongs equally
to all does not really belong to anyone. There is no part of the soil, no spontaneous production of the
earth that one man has been able to appropriate to the exclusion of another... The land on which he
has deployed his industry returns to the general domain, and once again becomes common to all men.
This is what the true principles of things teach us...".
On 22 April 1793, Boissel shouted from the rostrum of the Jacobins: "The rights of citizens consist in
the enjoyment and usufruct of the goods of the earth, our common mother".
Finally, on 21 Floréal Year V, seventeen thousand men rose up in Paris to support the realisation of the
doctrines summarised in the Manifesto of the Equals: "The agrarian law or division of the countryside
was the instant wish of a few unprincipled soldiers, of a few peoples driven by instinct rather than
reason. We are tending towards something more sublime and more equitable: the common good or
the community of goods. No more individual ownership of land; land belongs to no one. We
We want communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth: the fruits belong to everyone.
"
This is the final word in the immense social evolution that took nineteen centuries to pass into the
hands of everyone this sovereignty, the right of all to everything, necessarily implying community.
Now, the sovereignty of all, proclaimed today in a large part of Europe and the whole world, has as
its strict consequence the universal community of goods, of which it is only the principle and the
source.
Community in the modern age
From the first day of the Christian era to this very hour, humanity... has been constantly moving
towards a single goal to which everything converges, and that goal is the complete and definitive
realisation of the universal community.
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it worked actively towards its realisation, partially
achieved it, and, prematurely believing that the time had come, it rose up at the end of this period
with Anabaptism, stirred up almost the whole of Europe, and, after fifteen years of struggle,
recognised that the material force to be found in the world was not enough.
to which it has claimed its triumph is not the true path to its final fulfilment; and while it has left
useful foundations that have been perpetuated to the present day, it is resuming its work through
the
peaceful ways. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, it moved from ideas to facts, from sects
to the public mind, from parties to society as a whole, becoming more precise as it became more
widespread, developing right up to their very origins.
It was at the heart of the English revolution of 1648, inspired and crowned that of 1789 in France,
and is today the only question of the entire world. The nineteenth century
The end of the twentieth century was to bring about its definitive realisation. Forgetting liberty in
order to absorb everything i n t o unity, ignoring the Church in order to expect everything from the
State, it was cured of this vice by the scaffold of 24 February 1797, which, by guillotining Babeuf,
decapitated this error and thereby made it inevitable.
the universal advent of community.
From the outset, the modern era has had two faces, responding to the two terms of the problem
posed by the pre-Christian world. Until then, the priesthood and the empire had been
confused and united in the same hands; the Caesars were both emperors and sovereign pontiffs
religion and the city, the cult and the State, the gods and the fatherland were one and the same thing;
religious law was at the same time civil and political law... in a word, there was only one society, one
undivided community, whether it remained more specifically religious, as in the East, in India and
Persia, or whether it was more specifically political, as in the West, in Greece and Rome... From its very
beginnings, religion and the city were one and the same thing.
On the contrary, by its very appearance, Christianity established two perfectly distinct orders, spiritual
power and temporal power, the Church and the State, the priesthood and the empire,
["Do you think that I have appeared to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. Luke
12:51]
Now, these two powers, these two orders so profoundly distinct, although coexisting simultaneously
and even connecting at all points, represent precisely the two terms of the problem of the
universal community. The State, on the other hand, the expression of the social action of all, operates,
not individually and freely on each individual, but collectively and obligatorily on all: it is the temporal
power organised to create, dispose of and coordinate all the material conditions, without which the
universal community is impossible, since all individual attempts cannot
result only in the formation of particular bodies, and not in the common organisation of society as a
whole.
We have already seen the work of the Church. Not content with embracing the whole human race...
this [international] community constantly teaches it, by practical example even more than by words,
absolute community. Through the slow but uninterrupted work of nearly two thousand years, it has
brought the spirit, the tradition, the tendencies and all the aspirations to the very heart of humanity,
to the very bowels of civil society. It has enveloped that society on all sides in a
a vast network of institutions which, in the most diverse forms, are already preparing and partially
realising the community. See :
In its monasteries, under the name of lay brothers and lay sisters, it has lay people o f both sexes,
subject to the regime of community;
It had monastic communities made up entirely of lay people, such as the Brothers of the Common Life,
who spread throughout the Netherlands, France and Germany, and the Poor Volunteers, who spread
throughout Germany and France, worked in various trades, were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters,
blacksmiths, etc., served the sick, buried the dead, got up at night to pray and owned nothing;
It attached to the monastic communities an immense multitude of lay people, in the third orders of
Francis, Dominic, Augustine and a host of others;
It has countless congregations of simple faithful;
It had its secular teaching, school, university, scientific, literary, artistic and other communities;
In the Middle Ages and since, it has covered the soil of France and the whole of Christendom with
agricultural associations or compaings living in community of goods, food, work and life, which we will
discuss later;
It had and still has, in part, its countless confraternities or lay communities, dating back to its cradle
and continuing uninterrupted to the present day. They can be found in Constantinople as early as 336
AD and were mentioned by Theodosius and Justinian. That of the Paradolani, founded at the beginning
of the 5th century, is the most famous.
century, is mentioned in the Theodosian Code. From early on, Gaul and Ireland had a large number of
Confraternities, Conferences and Collects, as can be seen from the fifteenth canon of Nantes, held
around 659. In the second half of the 8th century they were called
Gildoniae, Gilda and they were approved by the capitularies of Charlemagne. Later, they embraced all
professions, all useful works, merchants, craftsmen, pontiffs or
pontists building bridges, others establishing roads, others architects, masons, building
the buildings, town halls, hospices, church builders whose inspired genius created these... basilicas,
these cathedrals... which have been called "epic poems in stone". These are free communities,
which the government then transformed into the guilds of tradesmen, merchants and craftsmen that
Louis Blanc so magnificently praised.
As we can see, the secular world, civil and temporal society, was and still is penetrated, hemmed in,
enveloped entirely in the narrow meshes of this immense network which links it to the [international]
community, preparing the way for its realisation within it. At the same time as Christianity was being
born, there appeared an even deeper and more universal invasion [than that of the Germanic peoples,
and] whose action continued into modern times. It was all those Gnostic, Manichean, Pelagian,
Waldensian, Albigensian and other sects who, bringing to the new world the Eastern, Pythagorean and
Platonic tradition of the community of goods, gradually infiltrated minds, customs, institutions and
practices, and through eighteen centuries of incessant work, made it the obligatory principle and goal
of all modern society. Let's recall just the main ones.
Community in the first five centuries of the Christian era
Christianity was still in its infancy, and the Apostles had barely begun to evangelise the whole of Europe.
It was no longer just free community, as in the Church, but compulsory community, as in the State. It
was Gnosticism that first preached it, renewing the Platonic theory. Simon, called "the great virtue of
God
"He founded the first of these sects, which continued until the beginning of the fifth century. After the
Simonians and Nicolaitans, of whom John speaks in his Apocalypse, Carpocrates established another sect
of Gnostics in the second century, called Carpocratians by his name, who pursued the same goal and
proclaimed the sharing of all goods.
In his book entitled On Justice, Epiphanius, son of Carpocrates, defines the justice of God as a
community with equality, and teaches that nature itself, like the divine law, wants community in all
things, community of land, goods and life, and that human laws are a means to this end,
by inverting the legitimate order through the institution of property, produced sin through their
opposition to the powerful instincts that God has deposited deep within souls. The Carpocratians
perpetuated themselves
for a long time, mainly in Egypt and on the island of Samos. A Gnostic inscription was found in
Cyrenaica, which reads: "The community of all goods is the source of divine justice".
The Apotactics, whose name means "renouncers", also appeared in the second century. They were so
called because they renounced all property, declared this renunciation to be absolutely compulsory
and considered anyone who possessed anything to be reprobate. They were also called Apostolic,
because they imitated the example of the Apostles and the first faithful, and imposed this imitation on
all Christians. They spread throughout Cilicia and Pamphylia. For a long time at least, they seem to
have been considered orthodox Catholics, and had virgins and martyrs under the persecution of
Diocletian in the fourth century. However, they later shared the doctrines of the Encratites, a sect
which arose around the year 151 and whose leader was Tatian, a disciple of Justin...
In the third and subsequent centuries, the philosophical schools, the Neopythagoreans and
Neoplatonists, Plotinus, Porphyry and Jamblicus, also pursued with great zeal the establishment of a
republic organised on the principle of the community of goods and following the model laid down by
Plato. Plotinus urgently sought permission from the Emperor Gallian, who honoured him with a special
favour, to establish a community in a ruined town in Campania.
The third century also saw the emergence of a considerable sect which, in various forms, has
continued almost to the present day and which also aimed to achieve the community of goods.
Manichaeism, which took its name from Manès, who was born in 240 and flayed alive in 282. He
proclaimed this principle: "Everything belongs to everyone. Property, which comes from the Spirit of
Evil, must be abolished. There must be neither poor n o r rich; no one has the right to own a field, a
house, or money, nec domos, nec
agros, nec pecuniam ullam possidendam. We must destroy all hierarchies of rank, abolish all
distinctions between princes and subjects, magistrates and subordinates; for all this is founded and
instituted by the principle of evil...". First appearing in Persia, the Manichaeans spread throughout
Mesopotamia, India, China and the whole of the East, penetrating Egypt and Africa, where they
counted Augustine among their many followers. They spread to Spain in the fourth century, to Italy in
the tenth, t o France, mainly in Languedoc and Provence, to Germany and England in the eleventh,
and finally to the whole of Europe. For more than two hundred years, from 285 to 491, they were
subject to the most severe laws,
Persecuted, banished, robbed and put to death, they continued to multiply. In 841, the empress
Theodora had over a hundred thousand of them tortured to death and others searched for them. They
swung over
They fought against them, built strongholds and, defeated in a major battle towards the end of the 9th
century, retreated to Bulgaria and Lombardy. In 1022, Robert II, King of France, condemned to the
flames a crowd of people who had taken to the streets.
rushed into the flames with great joy. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were counted in
their millions, and merged with the innumerable sects we shall soon be talking about, known as the
Bulgarians, Albanians, Cathars, Begards, Patarins, Brabançons, Cottereaux and Albigensians,
Henricians, Petrobrussians, Poplicans, etc. They were the first seeds of the Wiclefites in England and
the Hussites in Germany, and survived long after them. Be that as it may, public and certain action
always embraces more than their thousand consecutive years.
Alongside them, in the fourth century, we find the Eustachians, who proclaim that one cannot save
oneself without completely renouncing all kinds of property, and make this renunciation a rigorous duty,
and
leave all their possessions as incompatible with the hope of salvation. At the end of the fifth century, in
Persia, under the reign of Kobad, father of Chosrou or Chosroës, Mazdec taught that there should be
no property in the world.
that God is the sole owner of everything, that he created the universe so that everything would be
held in common by all the children of Adam, and that everyone has the same right to it; that it is not
permitted to say: 'This is mine'; that no one has any right whatsoever to possess anything; that it is not
permitted for one person to have more property than another; that everything must be held in
common. All things," he said, "both
Whether animate or inanimate, belonging to God, it is impious for a man to want to appropriate what
belongs to his Creator and what, in this capacity, must remain for the use of all". These doctrines had
won over an innumerable number of followers, and the king himself, Kobad, converted to them; but he
was then overthrown from the throne, on which his brother was raised, and Mazdec, banished like
him, perished in torments with his main adherents, a few years later, during the reign and by the
orders of Chosrou.
During this first period, which we have just briefly summarised, the community established its
tradition, which it drew on three main sources. Firstly, it was inspired by the example of the primitive
The Church of Jerusalem, of which the Apostolics or Apotactics and the Eustachians represent the
absolute community as rigorously obligatory for all. It then continues and renews in all forms, assimilating
the communist doctrine of the East and Asia that the Manichean, Gnostic and Carpocratic sects
propagate and popularise on all sides. Finally, through Plotinus, Porphyry, Jamblicus and the
philosophical schools of the Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, it took up the community of
Pythagoras and Plato and gave it new life by transforming it.
Summing up all the great earlier currents of humanity, all the tradition of Eastern and Western
antiquity, it fertilised them with the breath of the Christian spirit, and from the 5th century onwards,
t h e principle of community was proclaimed, not only in the name of tradition, but also in the name
of reason and freedom. This was the work of Pelagianism.
Pelagians
As is almost always the case, it was a monk who took the initiative. Pelagius, from the convent of
Bangor in Wales (Great Britain), came to Rome in 405 and, basing himself on the Gospel, fought
against inequality, preached equality and the community of goods, and gathered together a very large
number of disciples in Italy, France and Italy.
Sicily, Africa, Gaul, England and the East. Together with Celestius, another Scottish monk, Rullin and a
host of others, he organised a vast propaganda campaign using apostles who
travelled throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, founding a model community at its centre. He travelled to
Africa
in 409, then to the East. Prosecuted, he was absolved by a council of fourteen bishops, held in Lydda or
Diospolis in Palestine. Pope Zozimus even wrote in his favour to the bishops of Africa, but then, in
agreement with the council assembled at Carthage in 418 and others, he proscribed his doctrines on
grace and original sin, but in no way those on community. Eighteen Italian bishops refused to
subscribe to this decree, and one of them, Julian, bishop of Eclane, now Avellino, in Campania, wrote
several works in defence of Pelagianism. The emperors Honorius and Theodosius condemned
Pelagius and Celestius to exile, and their followers to confiscation of their property.
Nevertheless, the Pelagians continued to exert immense influence, driving people into the deserts
and founding many communities there. According to them, renouncing all
property is a law of salvation, wealth is a sin, a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he
renounces all his possessions, and he is unworthy of being placed among the righteous as long as he
keeps them, even though he would otherwise comply with all the precepts of religion. Augustine sums
up their
doctrine on this subject: "Rich people can only be baptised after renouncing all kinds of
They are excluded from the kingdom of God. Moreover, the Pelagians themselves summed up their
principles of the community of goods in a book entitled On Wealth, attributed to Pope Sixtus III,
quoted in the Great Library of the Fathers.
Albigensian, Waldensian, Apostolic, Bonaventure.
Before going any further, let us first note a crucial fact. There are two perfectly distinct phases in the
development of community in the modern era. From the birth of Christianity to the thirteenth century,
it mainly took a religious and dogmatic form; mixed with theological and moral doctrines, most often
rejected by the Church, it remained at the level of a sect, a party, without having any general effect on
populations alien to school discussions. On the contrary, from
From the thirteenth century to the present day, it has increasingly become a social and political
movement that stirs up and enthralls the masses, as can already be seen in the history of the
Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Apostolics, the Lollards, the Hussites, the Jacquerie and the
Anabaptists. The action of the sects was undoubtedly mixed up and confused for a long time to come,
but the action of the people became more and more predominant and the theological aspect was
erased more and more until it disappeared completely, only to be replaced by the theological aspect.
the social question.
Having established this fact, let us resume the succinct summary of this great incessant work. We shall
not speak of the Islamism founded in the sixth century by Mohammed, but confine ourselves to
pointing out, in passing, that in all Muslim countries individual property is hardly more than the
exception, and common possession,
the general fact. In Christianity, from the fifth to the eleventh century, it was above all the free
community that was built up by the Church and the monastic orders, as we have shown in chapters VII
to XI of the first part. Nevertheless, during this period, the community
It is difficult to follow its various ramifications because it is shrouded in mystery. Although it is difficult
to follow its various ramifications because of the mystery with which it is shrouded, we can at least see
its tradition being perpetuated without interruption in the Manichaean sects, which gave rise to most
of those we are going to talk about, and whose adherents King Robert had burnt in 1022. But far from
stopping the irresistible aspiration of the human race, these torments gave it a new impetus. In fact,
from the beginning of the eleventh century to the fourteenth, the idea of community exploded
throughout Christendom, not just as a simple tradition, a Christian tendency or a fundamental fact of
reason and freedom, but as an obligatory application of the law.
Catholic dogma, as a revelation of the Spirit of God and the supreme goal of human philosophy.
Historians grow weary of counting the numberless sects that appear at the same time.
often mingling and merging, multiplying endlessly, perpetuating themselves through all kinds of
They mark the point at which this immense movement went from being dogmatic and religious to
social and political.
So as not to tire our readers, we won't talk about Fratricelles, Frérots, Spirituels or Croyants,
Apostles, Begards, Picards, Lombards, Transmontans, Turlupins, and so many others who, under a
thousand different names, concluded that the community was often the most absolute.
Let's just say a few words about the Albigensians, who are more directly related to the Manichaeans and
by them go back as far as the third century. There were six million of them in France alone, and in the
south of the country they formed the majority of the population. It was a formidable protest against
property ownership.
Their doctrines tended towards communism. In his Histoire des Cathares ou Albigeois, M. Schmidt
shows that they "considered the love, or rather the possession, of earthly goods as a mortal sin, and
therefore strictly forbidden. These goods, they said, were the rust of the soul and distracted the eyes
from the higher destination; from this naturally followed the law of absolute poverty, imposed on the
members of the sect", and the community. They claimed," says one of the most violent opponents of
communism, "that all things should be equal and common to all. They were not so much a particular
sect as an innumerable crowd of sects confounded under this general domination. So they were still called
Cathars, i.e. pure, Bons-Hommes, because of their simple, regular and peaceful exterior, Pifres, Patarins,
Publicains or Poplicains, Passagers, or the names of their various leaders,
Petrobrussians, Henricians, Arnaudists, Esperonians, etc. They withstood eighteen years of war, sixty
years of missions, inquisition, atrocious massacres, nameless tortures, crusades and
incredible efforts throughout Christendom; and when they were supposed to have been wiped out by
being burnt alive in multitudes, they spread from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and the
substance of their doctrines was secretly brought back from Syria by the famous order of the Templars,
and was then transmitted to Freemasonry, from which emerged the
communism today. Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached against them in 1147, gave them this back
testimony: "Their morals are blameless; they oppress no one, they wrong no one; their faces are
mortified and downcast by fasting; they do not eat their bread like
lazy, and they work for a living".
Almost at the same time, an even more directly communist sect arose, which caused a stir in France
and Italy, especially during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which has continued to this
d a y . These were the Vaudois, whose origins Basnage traces back to Claude of Turin in 823, others to
Pierre Valdo, a merchant from Lyon, who preached around 1173, and some to another Valdo, who
predated the one from Lyon by more than a century. Whatever the case, their founder, convinced that
renunciation of all property was essential to salvation, distributed all his possessions, embraced
evangelical poverty and
preached this doctrine, calling on all men to achieve the community of goods. According to him,"
says Ernest Merson, "Christians being brothers, earthly possessions should be held in common, so
that everyone could enjoy them equally". He soon had countless disciples, and this
The sect made rapid progress, especially among the common people. They lived in poverty and
walked barefoot or in sandals; so they were first called Pauvres de Lyon, Léonistes, Insabatès or
Ensabotés, and Runcaires because they slept in hedges and under bushes. All authors celebrate the
Reynier himself, who as Inquisitor led the most relentless prosecutions against them, does justice to
the sanctity of their lives. There were some differences between them, particularly between those
from Italy and those from France. The latter, in particular, did not want to possess anything at all and
considered all possession of temporal goods to be illegitimate. According to historians, their aim was
the complete realisation of evangelical equality in a society without nobles or the rich.
In his Histoire de Lyon, Claude Rubis shows that they wanted community of property. Bossuet
adds: "their doctrines concluded that everything should be held in common". The Gospel, they said,
forbids war, the death penalty, levies and even the pursuit of reparation for a wrong. We must
that all, priests and laymen alike, imitate the Apostles and the first faithful living in community, that
like them they possess nothing of their own and earn their living by work. They pushed the
rigour of these principles that they claimed that priests and ministers of the Church who do not
embrace this abdication of all property are no longer true disciples of Jesus Christ and no longer have
the right to be called priests.
They added that any layman practising this voluntary renunciation had a more real and legitimate
power than these priests to fulfil these functions and to preach the Gospel. In 1207, a number of
Waldensians, who had returned to the Church, founded the Order of Poor Catholics, which in 1256
joined the
Augustine's hermits. The others continued from the 12th to the 16th century in the valleys of Dauphiné
and Piedmont, and spread to several parts of Europe, notably Bohemia and Calabria. In
In 1536, some of them joined the Calvinists. They were exterminated,
as had been done three centuries earlier against the Albigensians; four thousand were massacred in
one fell swoop and their villages reduced to ashes.
The twelfth century also saw the appearance of the Apostolic sect, which, using their own name,
renewed the doctrine of the Apotactics of the second century and, like them, proclaimed the negation
of property, considering anyone who possessed anything to be reprobate. Their leader was called
Pontius. They were cracked down on and burned, but their numbers became so great that armies had
to be raised to wipe them out in France.
Another branch of the Apostolics, who also proscribed all forms of property ownership and made a
great stir in the thirteenth century, was founded in 1246 by Gérard Ségarelle, who was born in Parma
and burnt alive in that city in 1300. On his death, his disciple Dulcin or Doucin, born in Novara, became
the leader of these Apostolics, who took from him the name of Dulcinists. They strongly proclaimed
that everything should be common among Christians and that those who refused could be forced to do
so. They became so powerful that in 1290 they preached
They in turn raised an army, and the result was a war that lasted more than two years, with much
bloodshed on both sides.
The Church, for its part, had been working since its first day to build temporal society on this
community, free from all error. Its saints, its monks, its most famous doctors, in
were relentless in their pursuit of this goal. In the 13th century, for example, Bonaventure published a
number of works with this aim. In one, entitled Apologie des pauvres, he deals with the question of
particularly from the point of view of religious orders; but in another entitled De la Pauvreté du Christ
against Guillaume de Saint-Amour, he lays down the principles in a general way, applying them to all
men of whom Christ, he says, is the divine model. From this point of view, as from the first, he denies
all property, whether collective or individual, as being "the source and root of all evils".
Lollards, Wicleflites, Jacquerie, Hussites, Bohemian Brethren, etc.
After thirteen centuries of incessant effort, the Christian world had at last laid down [its own] formula
of the civil community, [as opposed to the racial and therefore organic nature of the polis]... The latter
was confined to the limits of a state or a small republic; that embraced within its bosom the whole of
humankind...
the whole human race. The [pre-Christian white] conception excluded slaves and often other classes...
the Christian conception calls into it, without distinction of rank, all men who have become equal and
brothers...
Bonaventure clearly established this formula of the civil community, just as Francis of Assisi had
completely established that of the religious community... This formula gradually penetrated the heart,
the soul and spirit of the people. From this day on, it will no longer be just sectarians, parties that
It is the mass, society itself, which is shaking, and which, through uninterrupted work over six
centuries, is preparing all the elements, all the conditions necessary for the universal realisation of this
community.
The first of these movements was the Lollards, named after Walter Lollard, born in England towards
the end of the 13th century, who dogmatised in Germany in 1315 and was burnt in Cologne in 1322.
They spread throughout Germany, mainly to Austria and Bohemia,
They penetrated Flanders and England, and later joined forces with the Wiclefites on the one hand and
prepared the way for the Hussites on the other. There were eighty thousand of them in Germany
alone, where, according to one Catholic author, they were burnt to the ground, which only increased
their numbers.
According to the Vaudois, Lollard drew his doctrines from them; according to others, the Lollards were
linked to the Fratricelles or Bégards: all these sects professed community.
It was above all in England that, united with the Wiclefites, they stirred up the working classes and
almost toppled the property-owning society of the time from top to bottom. Born in 1324, two years
after Walter Lollard's execution, and dying in 1385, Wiclef, principal of Canterbury College and benefactor
of the parish of
Lutterworth shared the doctrines of Marsilio of Padua and John Jandun, who, as we have seen,
concluded that community should be achieved exclusively through the State. One of his propositions
was that "God cannot give a man, for himself and his heirs, a civil estate in perpetuity". Mr Sudre
himself admits that his views bear a striking resemblance to those of the Albigensians, Waldenses and
Lollards. His disciple John Bail, priest of Maidstone, Wat Tyler and a host of others,
preached equality and the abolition of all hierarchies. At their voice, the entire people rose up, the
peasants swept into London, where two hundred thousand Lollards and Wiclefites entered victorious
on 13 June 1381, forcing the king to capitulate. But this vast uprising, whose dramatic picture has been
described by Walsingham, Knygton and Froissart, was suppressed by ordinary means: Wat Tyler was
murdered in an interview, the amnesty was violated, the entire population was handed over to be
tortured, and people were taken to
across England to rob the tortured of the honours of a clandestine burial.
This communist movement had long since broken out in France, with extreme violence, and was
revealed there principally by the famous Jacquerie (1358) where the people, personified under the
name of Jacques Bonhomme, attempted a revolution against property by armed force which was
merely the
prelude to others even more serious and more general. It was stopped by iron and fire; and the
Jacques, pursued to excess, had their throats slit everywhere. The slaughter," says Frédéric Morin,
"was so widespread that agriculture ran out of hands.
Momentarily suppressed in France and England, the movement continued in Belgium, France and Germany.
Germany and everywhere else. In the first half of the 14th century, especially in Brussels, the Brothers
of the Free Spirit appeared, which in the following century gave rise to the Men of Intelligence,
continued in 1411 and perpetuated until the middle of the 18th century, as attested by Father Heylen,
historian of the Kempen. In Germany, this movement, which was more involved in religious issues, was
They were famous for their victories, feared by the most powerful princes, had entire kingdoms at
their disposal and waged a thirty-year war against a hundred thousand crusaders. Their first leaders,
John Huss, a disciple of Wiclef and author of the book On the Reign of the People, and Jerome of
Prague, were burnt alive at the Council of Constance in 1415 and
1416, and their carefully collected ashes were thrown into the Rhine. Unable to defeat the
The Hussites were lured into barns and burnt in the middle of the night (1434). In 1457, the remnants
of the Hussites, united under the name of the Brothers of Unity or Bohemian Brothers, established
themselves in Bohemia as an absolute community of goods, work, food and life, under the direction of
the parish priest Michel.
Bradacz, and maintained their religious beliefs there until 1621: they were also called Picards and
Vaudois. In the eighteenth century, the Moravian Brethren emerged and their community has
continued to this day.
Anabaptism
After fifteen centuries of preparation, the doctrine of the community of goods, formulated by one
cardinal and sanctioned by another, had already penetrated people's minds so widely and so deeply
that it attempted to be put into practice immediately in part of Europe. This vast movement at once
invaded the whole of Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, then spread to Poland, England, the
rest of the world and later as far as America, triumphed for a long time on a host of points, and driven
back by brute force, pursued with the death penalty, despite the atrocious tortures inflicted on its
leaders, did not cease to perpetuate itself for three and a half centuries, and to this day still has
innumerable supporters in Germany, the United States, Holland, Alsace and elsewhere. This is what
has come to be known as Anabaptism.
From beginning to end, he preached absolute community. His symbol in this respect
perfectly explicit. The third article of his profession of faith, drawn up at Zolicorne in 1525, reads: "
Any sect where the community of goods is not established between the faithful is an assembly.
imperfect, who have strayed from the law of charity which is the soul of Christianity". His second
profession of faith, formulated in 1529, says the same thing; and the third, drawn up in 1530, which
can be regarded as the "first profession of faith", says the same thing.
as its definitive symbol, expresses itself as follows in its second article: "Any society that does not hold
its goods in common is an unholy society and unworthy of the name of Christian". Anabaptism began
by proclaiming the sovereignty of all, from which necessarily follows the right of all to everything, a formula
that was even used in the Anabaptist movement.
of the absolute community. God's elect," said Nicolas Storck, "who have become as many kings on
earth, will constitute the empire to which heaven promises the sovereignty of the universe. He
immediately drew the communist conclusion; and Thomas Münzer, addressing the assembled people,
exclaimed: "We
We are all brothers and we have only one common father in Adam. What is the origin of this
difference in rank and property that tyranny has introduced between us and the great of the world?
Why
Why should we groan in poverty, why should we be burdened with work while they swim in delights?
Are we not entitled to the equality of goods, which by their very nature are made to be shared?
shared, without distinction, between all men? The earth is a common heritage, in which we have a
share that is taken from us. When did we give up our share of our father's inheritance? Let them show
us the contract we have signed! Give us back, you rich of the world, you greedy usurpers, the goods
you so unjustly withhold from us! It is not only as men that we are entitled to an equal distribution of
the benefits of wealth, it is also as Christians. At the birth of religion, did we not see the Apostles taking
into account only the needs of each believer, in the distribution of the goods brought to their feet? Will
we never see those happy times again! And you, the unfortunate flock of Jesus Christ, will you always
groan under oppression?
That's what the Anabaptists kept saying. Their origins have been traced back to the Bohemian Hussites
as early as 1503. What is certain is that they were already numerous in 1521. Banished from
Wittemberg in 1522, they triumphed the following year at Alstedt, in Thuringia, where Münzer, from
the pulpit,
exclaimed: "The Almighty expects all peoples to share their goods in common. Yes, my brothers, to
have nothing of one's own is the spirit of primitive Christianity". This community became a reality
Soon, not only in Alstedt, but also in Mulhausen, the imperial town and capital of Thuringia, where
Münzer, the supreme dispenser of common property (1524), prepared to start a propaganda war. In
response to his voice and that of Phiffer, Stork, Metzler and a thousand others, the peasants of
Thuringia, Swabia and Franconia rose up and formed two armies, one of ten thousand and the other of
forty thousand men. All the powers combined their forces against them, and the Anabaptists were
defeated in several encounters, notably on 15 May 1525 at Frankenhausen, where seven and a half
thousand of their number remained on the battlefield and most of the others were taken prisoner.
Mùnzer was tortured, beheaded and his head stuck on a spike in the middle of the countryside. Phiffer
also suffered the ultimate torture. The Anabaptists nevertheless continued their war, not only in
Swabia, Thuringia and Franconia, but also on the banks of the Rhine, in Alsace and Lorraine, and their
main army, commanded by Goetz of Berlichingen, put up stubborn resistance for two years, from 1525
to 1527. It is estimated that over a hundred thousand people perished in this terrible "peasant war".
Despite their successive defeats, despite the death penalty imposed on them and renewed by the
Diet o f Speyer in 1529, the Anabaptists, far from disappearing, only spread further. They spread to
Switzerland, Germany and Poland. In this first country, where they had penetrated as early as
1523, two years later they drew up the Zolicone profession of faith, which states in principle that
magistrates are useless in a society of true believers, and that it is not permitted for a Christian to
become a magistrate; that the only punishments to be employed in Christianity are those of
excommunication; that Christians are not allowed to stand trial, take an oath in court, or take part in
military service". They made rapid progress, but after various struggles, edicts ordered them to be
drowned, they were put to death, and the waters of the Rhine, the lakes and the torrents of
Switzerland swallowed whole bands of these unfortunate people (1528-1529).
Proscribed from Switzerland, expelled from Strasbourg, punished everywhere with the death penalty,
the Anabaptists were not put down and spread throughout Lower Germany, particularly in Westphalia,
Friesland, Silesia, Bohemia, the Netherlands, the neighbouring provinces, the banks of the Rhine and
Poland. They continued to make immense progress in Germany. One of their most ardent apostles,
Melchior
Hoffmann, nicknamed Elijah, gathered a large number of proselytes in Friesland and was imprisoned
when he tried again to establish the community in Strasbourg. Another, even more popular, John
Mathias, nicknamed Enoch, went to Amsterdam where he exerted considerable influence, chose
twelve apostles who went to evangelise everywhere, and played a major role in the publication of a
famous book which became the religious, social and political manifesto of the Anabaptists. In this
book, entitled On the Restoration, they proclaimed the ancient and universal tradition of the millennia
and recalled that before the day of the last judgement there would be a temporal reign of Jesus Christ
on earth, which would embrace all the states of the old and new worlds in a single republic made up
entirely of true Christians,
living in absolute community of goods, possessing nothing of their own, and thus applying Christianity
in its primitive purity. In this universal community, whose regenerated members will be raised to a
higher degree of perfection and holiness, magistrates will be created and deposed.
by the people. There will reign perfect equality and common happiness; there, no more dominators, no
more princes, no more great ones, no more taxes, tithes, or corvée, no more armies, prisons, judges...
no more crimes, no more trials. It was this reign of Christ that the Anabaptists had come to prepare,
this new Jerusalem that they had come to inaugurate.
After several attempts, supported by the masses of the people, they took control of Munster, the
capital of Westphalia, on the first Friday of Lent in 1534, and established the community there.
property. Everyone gave everything they had, gold, silver, jewels, furniture and possessions of all kinds;
everything was pooled together; housing was shared out...
At the end of December 1534, Jean de Leyde [, leader of the Anabaptists in the city of Münster] sent from
new, emissaries to proclaim everywhere the reign of God, the advent of the new Jerusalem and the
universal community, to stir up Friesland, Holland and all the Rhine provinces, to create a diversion and
unblock Munster. Various serious uprisings took place first in Leiden, near
Bolswaert, in Groningen; but the skilful captain, Jean de Gelen, one of these emissaries, saw his first
bands exterminated by the government of Friesland. He took refuge in Amsterdam where the
Anabaptists, very
Many of them were constantly subjected to bloody executions, hanged, beheaded and drowned. 11
resolved to take the town, and with the support of Wesel and Deventer, two of the most important
towns in the
On 10 May 1535, he took control of Holland for a short while, but when he was repulsed, he was
shot with an arquebus and all his followers were killed or taken prisoner. Then all those who were
convinced or accused o f Anabaptism suffered atrocious, indescribable torments...
Münster, no longer hoping for any help, nonetheless rejected the overtures of the Landgrave of Hesse
and the bishop's offers of capitulation, and suffered the worst of the famine.
terrible. But betrayed by an enemy soldier whom the Anabaptists had taken in, and who brought the
Episcopal army within its walls, the town was taken on 25 June 1535 after a desperate t w o - h o u r
struggle. The Anabaptists were butchered horribly. All the men who were not put to the sword were
handed over to the executioner. The town was pillaged and ransacked; the women were handed over
to the troops, but as they bravely defended their honour, they themselves were sent to the execution.
Jean de
Leyden, seized alive, was carried with two Anabaptist leaders through the whole of Germany as a
laughing stock. After being made a spectacle of in this way, he was taken back to Munster, tied to
a post on a huge scaffold in the main square, and there, for more than an hour, the executioners,
armed with
After these atrocious tortures, endured with rare fearlessness, they opened his entrails. This was on 22
January 1536. His companions also showed the greatest courage. Their bodies, enclosed in iron cages,
were hung from the top of the tower of the
These bones remained there for the following centuries, in order to teach the world by what evangelical
means ownership is maintained.
The Moravian Brethren, Mennonites, etc.
After fifteen years of struggle, successive defeats, and pursued by so many bloody executions and
appalling tortures, Anabaptism, still standing, only merged into a host of different sects. The first was
the Moravian Brethren, founded in 1527 by two disciples of Stork,
Hutter and Gabriel Scherding, who took in Anabaptists banished from Germany, Switzerland and Poland.
All the roads," says M. Sudre, "were covered with emigrants who, having sold their heritage, left their
native soil to go and populate these fledgling colonies". The second article in their symbol
I believe that all societies which do not share their goods in common should be considered impious,
and that a Christian should possess nothing in particular". Indeed, the community of goods was put
into practice in all its rigour. A bursar, changed every year, collected the income of each member.
An archimandrite governed the community, both reporting to the supreme leader. Meals were taken
in common and the food was the same for everyone. The settlers' clothes and the furniture in their
homes were uniform, and children brought up in the same community were given the same food.
together. Agricultural work was combined with that of industry. The only punishments allowed w e r e
extraordinary work, public penance and "expulsion to the century", the greatest of all punishments.
is to fall back under the owner regime.
This... society, known as "the Promised Land", which brought together up to seventy thousand men all
living in community, enjoyed the greatest prosperity, despite persecution, exile and the death of
Hutter, who was tortured by order of Ferdinand of Austria. Gabriel founded de
numerous colonies in Silesia. This republic," says Bergier, "formed a society of excellent farmers,
industrious, sober, peaceful and very regulated in their morals". Not all historians mention
with the highest praise and the deepest admiration. We find them again a century later, in 1620; and
the Moravians, their descendants, have continued to this day in various states of Germany and in
several surrounding regions.
A second branch of Anabaptists, established in 1536 by a Catholic priest, Simon Menno, took the name
of Mennonites from him and spread throughout Friesland, Westphalia, Gelderland, Holland and
Brabant,
England, where they were called Baptists, and sent colonies to the United States, where they still have
seventy thousand members and more than two hundred churches. The Dumplers, a German sect
descended from the Anabaptists, practise communion in a town in Pennsylvania, built by them and
called Euphrates.
Other Anabaptists, widespread in England, played a part in the revolution of 1648, constituted the
most radical portion of the republican party and pursued the establishment of the reign of Christ,
absolute liberty and the complete transformation of society. They were called, in allusion to
their prophetic hopes, the men of the Fifth Monarchy. They were led by Harrison, [the Jew] Hewson,
Overton and many other officers of the parliamentary army, and their influence prevented Cromwell
from taking the crown. Later persecuted, they continued in
North America, Holland and even England, and gave rise to a large number of different sects,
including the Quakers.
Boni, Guillaume Postel, etc., Campanella (Cité du Soleil)
Established by Anabaptism, repressed but not defeated, the community became more than ever the
goal that humanity pursued with all its efforts. While the Jesuits were realising it in [the] Republic of
the
Paraguay, writers followed one another relentlessly to develop and propagate it everywhere.
doctrine. They saw it as the coming of the reign of God on earth, the holy republic of Christ. This is how
Guillaume Postel, Isidore Isolanis, Fialin, Bonjour and a thousand others saw it.
In 1552, seventeen years after the death of Thomas Morus, Doni published his book Les mondes
celestial, terrestrial, etc. A madman, representing present-day society, finds himself in the presence
of a wise man, an apostle of the community, who shows him that everything must be common to all.
He draws up a plan of this community where everyone is perfectly free, "doing nothing other than
what he wishes, each being equal in eating and dressing, and having as much in his house as the
other", and each child being brought up according to the inclination of his mind".
Guillaume Postel, one of the most learned men of his century, professor of mathematics and oriental
languages at the Collège de France from the time it was founded, devoted himself especially to the
religious side of the question. His book De orbis concordia is a first and very remarkable attempt to
synthesise a l l beliefs into a single one, Christianity, which contains them all, and to bring, in this
In this way, the universal communion of souls produced by reason and philosophy, all institutions to a
common and universal institution, uniting divine right and human right in the moral and social law of
charity, the definitive goal of all the facts of history, of all the tendencies of civilisation, of all t h e
efforts of humanity.
Around 1576, Jean Bodin, Montesquieu's precursor, wrote his book De la République, which M. Louis
Reybaud places alongside Thomas Morus's Livre d'or, in the midst of the troubles of the League.
But one man above all continued the work of Bonaventure and the Chancellor of England. This man,
whose glory filled the world, was received on 9 February 1635 by the King of France, Louis XIII, who,
with his head uncovered, went to meet him, embraced him twice, gave him the most solemn welcome,
saw him again and told him: "I am the King of France!
wrote several times. This man, in contact with the Grand Duke Ferdinand III and other princes, loved
and protected by Cardinal Richelieu, linked with Peiresc, Gassendi, Galileo and the greatest celebrities
of his time, admired by all the scholars, who was considered a prophet and whose works were
approved by the Sorbonne, was... a monk... His name was Campanella. Born on 5 September 1568 at
Stegnano, near Stilo, in Calabria, he revealed prodigious faculties from childhood. An admirer o f
Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Telesio, whose icy forehead he kissed in his coffin, he became a
Dominican at the age of eighteen. Dreaming of a new era, he travelled all over Italy and one of the
Medici, Ferdinand I, Duke of
Tuscany, tried in vain to fix him in his States.
One day, at the head of three hundred monks, Augustinians, Dominicans and Cordeliers, he called on the
people to the
freedom and attempted to free his homeland from the yoke of the Spanish. The year was 1599.
Surrendered by a traitor, chained t o a galley, thrown into a dungeon, a "damp and foul pit", locked
up successively in
Fifty prisons, subjected seven times to the most atrocious torture, the last of which lasted forty hours,
tearing his body to shreds and breaking his bones, without being able to get a single syllable out of
him, put on trial fifteen times, from the depths of his dungeon, he filled Europe with the noise of his
name, and his works were read everywhere, in France, Italy, England and Germany. The popes kept
asking for his freedom, and Urban VIII finally obtained it after five years of negotiations. Released on
45 May 1626 from the prison where he had spent twenty-seven years, he was called to Rome by the
Sovereign Pontiff, who welcomed him most affectionately and showered him with protection. He
remained there until October 1634, but was pursued by the
He lived, surrounded by admiration and respect, in the Dominican convent in the rue Saint Honoré,
where he died on 21 May 1639.
Campanella believed he had been "sent by God to reform kingdoms and give new systems for the
government of society". This vocation was real, but his system is nothing other than the eternal
Catholic tradition of the community. He developed it in The City of the Sun, published around 1630 and
part of one of his prodigious number of works. "It is a vision, a divination of the future state of
humanity", says Cléophas Dareste.
The citizens of the City of the Sun "worship God in the Trinity. They say that God is the sovereign
Power, from which proceeds the sovereign Science, which is also God, and that from both of them
comes from Love, which is power and science together". Not only do they believe in God, from whom
everything comes, in the immortality of souls and in the rewards and punishments of the other life,
but they profess Christianity "which will one day reign over the whole world, when the abuses that
corrupt it have disappeared, as the most illustrious theologians teach and hope". They see all events
in history and in the world as providential means used by God "for the purpose of uniting all nations
under one law" [...] The disturbance that exists in the world demonstrates to them the fall
original. They know the close solidarity that binds not only the members of families and the
They are therefore working to neutralise evil and extend good, by worshipping God, following religion
and practising the precept of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. "Praise and glory
to God in all ages
".
They see in the marvellous discoveries and inventions of modern times "the clear signs and
instruments of the reunion of the whole world in the same fold", and they expect new prophets, the
renewal of government, laws, the arts and the whole social order, the total renewal of the world and
the complete and universal triumph of Christianity. They know "the mystical relations
between things on earth and things beyond our globe; and yet they believe in man's free will".
The community thus rests on five fundamental foundations: religion, morality, science, progress and
freedom. All social functions are divided into three orders, an image of the Divine Trinity and a symbol
of freedom.
manifestation of man's three faculties: feeling, intelligence and activity. These three orders,
artists, scholars and manual workers, the expression of the beautiful, the true and the useful, that is to
say of the moral, intellectual and physical life, are represented by three ministers, or triumvirs, named
Love, Wisdom and Power, the three faces of the indivisible unity of the community, presided over by a
leader called the "God".
Philosopher or Metaphysician. Under these triumvirs, all social functions were organised into
divisions, decuries and centuries, and regulated in councils and public assemblies. "All magistrates
may
be changed by the will of the people". Election, competition and the order of merit determine any
hierarchy. The principal chief is elected by all, and must be the most capable man in the community,
possessing all the sciences to the most eminent degree; as soon as a more worthy man emerges, he is
elected in his place. The triumvirs who assist him must have a thorough knowledge of the arts they
direct, but at the same time be versed in philosophy, history and the physical sciences. "After the
Metaphysician, who
presides, like an architect, over all work, and who would be ashamed to know nothing of what it is
given t o man to be able to learn, after him, I say, Wisdom has under her command the heads of
each branch of science"; Love directs education, and Power all the work of strength. As we can see,
Campanella assigns the sciences, the humanities and the fine arts a predominant and, so to speak,
exclusive role.
The city is divided up, oriented, scientifically organised, and all its monuments and walls feature
representations and paintings of all the sciences, which children learn at play and with marvellous
speed. "Everything is shared by all, but the distribution is regulated by the magistrates. The sciences
and the pleasures of life are shared in such a way that no one is able to enjoy them.
think of appropriating others to the detriment of their fellow citizens". They destroy the spirit of
property, thus rendering selfishness purposeless, and all that remains is love of the community.
"Everything they need is given to them by the community. Nothing necessary is denied to anyone.
Friendship is made known by the services they render each other in sickness, in the study of science,
where they help each other with their mutual enlightenment, care and praise, and by giving each other
their necessities". They called themselves brothers.
Miscellaneous writings
It was not enough for Christianity to have founded and perpetuated the community to the ends of
the other hemisphere [in Paraguay]; it had to universalise its application to the w h o l e of temporal
society. The further he progressed, the more he redoubled his efforts to achieve this goal, pursued
relentlessly especially since Saint Bonaventure, and with which everyone associated, Catholics,
Protestants and philosophers alike. We do not pretend to list here all the writings that were more or
less directly aimed at this goal at the time, and we will simply cite the titles of a few of them.
James Harrington, an English publicist who was born in 1611 and died in 1677, published L'Oceana in
1656, which M. Louis Reybaud, in his Études sur les Réformateurs (Studies on the Reformers), ranks
first among the communist writings, after those of Thomas Morus and Campanella.
In his Treatise on War and Peace, published in 1625 and dedicated to Louis XIII, Grotius acknowledges
that God established the community of goods, that this community of the earth would still exist if vices
had not broken the bond of fraternal friendship, and that it always remains a right.
In his book De Cive (On the Citizen), Hobbes says: "There is no legitimate property; men are equal by
nature; she has given everyone the right to everything; and inequality is the effect of wickedness. Who
assigned ranks and properties to each individual? Why are some opulent, others mediocre or
destitute? Why masters, servants and slaves? By the wickedness o f men!
In his work on Civil Government, Locke exclaimed: "Fraud, bad faith, and avarice have produced
that inequality of fortunes which is the misfortune of the human race, by heaping on one side all
the vices with riches, and on the other all the evils with misery. The philosopher must
therefore consider the use of money to be one of the most disastrous inventions of human industry
".
In his philosophical treatise on natural laws, Cumberland notes that God made the earth
that all have a right to its goods, and that morality is based on fraternity, equality and the common
good of all.
In his Droit de la nature et des gens, Puffendorf proclaims natural equality and community
It recognises that property is a human institution, and that the present inequality of fortune is an
injustice which leads to other inequalities, through the insolence of the rich and the cowardice of the
poor.
[...]
But let us pass over a host of other writings, such as Hall's Other World, Nicolas de Munster's Land of
Peace, Jordano Bruno's Rout of the Triumphant Beast, and let us say a word about the three most
illustrious Catholic geniuses of the seventeenth century.
The great Pascal stigmatised ownership as usurpation: "This dog is mine,
said these poor children; this is my place in the sun, this is the image of the usurpation of the whole
earth". He then proclaims the community, which he defines perfectly in passages from which
Villegardelle has given extracts, and sums it up by saying: "The multitude that is not reduced to unity is
confusion; unity that is not multitude is tyranny".
Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, has the same tendencies. In Article 5 of Book 1 of his Politique sacrée, he
uses the text of the Mosaic law to set out and fully demonstrate, as a "consequence of the general
principles of humanity", the proposition that "the division of goods among men alters neither the
general society of the human race nor fraternal assistance". He goes further and develops the
principles of community at length, as can be seen from the fragments quoted in the History of Ideas
governments. Without governments," he says, "the earth and all goods would be as common among the
people as they are among themselves.
According to the primitive law of nature, no one has a particular right to a n y t h i n g ; everything
belongs to everyone, and it is from civil government that property is born.
Fénelon, the austere and pious Archbishop of Cambrai, loudly proclaimed the egalitarian community
as the type and ideal of society. Wanting to paint a picture of a model nation, he describes in his
brilliant pages the happiness of the inhabitants of Betica who, with no government, no laws, no judges,
no prisons, and living in profound peace, ignore even the name of property. They live," he says, "all
together without dividing the land... All property is held in common... They have no interest in...".
They are all free and equal. There is no distinction between them". The essence of these ideas can be
found, not
not only in his Télémaque, but in all his works, particularly his Fables, his Dialogues des morts and his
Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté. In his Essai philosophique sur le gouvernement
civil, after defining charity, he adds: "If all men had followed this great law of charity, there would be
no need for positive laws or magistrates. All t h e goods of the earth would have been common.
God says to all men: "Grow and multiply and fill the earth". He gives them all, indiscriminately, all the
herbs and all the woods on it.
grow".
As for the other writings which directly preach the community or present imagined pictures of it, they
are almost innumerable, and we shall limit ourselves to mentioning here, as a simple indication : - the
History of the Severambes, published in Brussels in 1677 and reprinted in 1716, which develops an
organisation of the community reminiscent of Campanella's City of the Sun and gives a plan of the
common city similar to that later adopted by Morelly; - the Memoirs of Gaudence of Lucca, which also
offer many analogies with the City of the Sun; -the Republic of Philosophers (or the Ajaoiens),
attributed to Fontenelle; - the Cessarès, published in London in 1764, and analysed in the Encyclopédie
méthodique; - the Histoire naturelle et civile des Galligènes, published in 1770, which is similar to
Diderot's Supplément au voyage deBougainville and recalls the Incas of
Marmontel; - Pechméja's Télèphe, imitated from Télémaque; - Terrasson's Séthos; - Florian's Numa; -
Rétif de la Bretonne's Découverte australe; - the République des Abeilles; - the Miroir
d'or de Vieland; - le Catéchisme de Boisset; - le Monde de Mercure; - les Voyages de Cyrus; - le
Nouveau Gulliver, and a multitude of others.
Morelly (Nature Code)
From the time we have now reached, that is to say towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the
movement which is taking France, Europe and the whole of Christendom towards the complete
realisation of the universal community, is accelerating and accelerating in a prodigious way. It was
sweeping up in its irresistible current all elite minds, regardless of the diversity of their religious,
philosophical, moral and political beliefs. The whole of society is shaken to prepare for the fulfilment of
its supreme ideal. This impetuous torrent, while overflowing on its banks, is
digs a deep bed in the bowels of humanity; and the human spirit, by probing to the heart of the
problem, brings forth a new focus of light.
An obscure teacher from Vitry-le-Français, Morelly, had the glory of giving the main impetus to this great
movement. Saint Bonaventure, after all the Fathers of the Church and the monks, had sketched out the
religious philosophy of the community, showing how it raises men to the divine ideal and makes them live
in God, detaching them from the love and worries of earthly goods. Morelly, in his turn, set out the moral
philosophy of the community, proving that it alone places us in a divine ideal.
a social environment conducive to the exercise of all virtues, the elimination of all vices, and in
complete harmony with all the needs and tendencies of our nature.
It is hard to believe the extent to which the thought of men who preached the community, such as
Thomas Morus and Campanella, has been distorted and disfigured. But it is above all with regard to
Morelly that this falsification has been taken the furthest. It is therefore important to discuss it in some
detail.
His father had written a number of books that have remained almost unknown, principally L'Essai sur
l'esprit humain (1743) and L'Essai sur le coeur humain (1745). Some bibliophiles attribute them to the
son. Be that as it may, in 1751 he published a work entitled Le Prince, etc., explaining "the system of
wise government", and in 1753 another entitled Le Naufrage des Iles flottantes, ou la Basiliade,
histoire d'un peuple vivant en communauté, ending with the following summary: Le monde est la
patrie de l'humanité, les biens de la nature doivent être communs à tous les hommes qui se
partageaient en groupes de familles pour en tirer le meilleur parti possible. In response to some of
the criticisms levelled at the Basiliade, in 1755 he published his famous Code de la
nature, the only one of his writings with which we will concern ourselves, because in it he develops, by
condensing it, all his thought. Morelly is simply continuing, from the point of view of society, the work
of all time
pursued, from the point of view of the individual, by the Church, its Fathers, its Doctors, its mystics, its
monks. Like them, he wants to extirpate the vice of appropriation, greed and avarice, the source and
principle of all the others; but whereas they attack it at its living source, the human soul, he destroys it
at its very object, which is property, "The only vice I know of in the universe," he says, "is Avarice; All
the others, whatever name we give them, are only tones, degrees of this one; it is the Proteus, the
Mercury, the base, the vehicle of all the vices. Analyse vanity and fatuity,
pride, ambition, deceit, hypocrisy, villainy; break down most of our sophistical virtues in the same way,
and they all boil down to that subtle and pernicious element, the desire to have: you will find it at the
very heart of disinterestedness. Now, could this universal plague, the particular interest, this slow
fever, this ethisis of all society have taken hold where it would never have found itself, no?
only food, but the slightest dangerous ferment? I don't think anyone will dispute the obviousness o f
the proposition that where there is no property, there can be none of its pernicious consequences.
Relying on both revelation and nature, he first shows that Christianity has done nothing else through
its dogmas, which proclaim the "natural equality of all men", by
the establishment of absolute community in the primitive Church of Jerusalem and in the monastic
orders. "All this conduct tended visibly to remind men of the true laws of nature. Thus Christianity, if
we consider it only as a human institution, is the most perfect.
But in a temporal society based on property and individual interest, "the power
The Church lacked the legislative power" to universalise "that community of the goods of nature, that
reciprocity of help, that equality of condition, which is the true spirit of Christianity".
What has been done in the religious and spiritual order must also be done in the civil and temporal
order, because nature only confirms the teachings of revelation. Bossuet says: "When God formed the
womb of man, he first put goodness there". Morelly, starting from this principle, shows that
benevolence is the very condition of happiness for everyone. It precedes every other feeling, every
It raises us to the notion of God, gives us an idea of the Divinity that is truly worthy of the
greatness of its purpose, perfects our faculties and gives them their true direction, their right
use, their complete harmony. The nature of the infinitely good Being that it reveals to us and that
the
The spectacle of the universe only increases, and is only altered as benevolence withers. Thus
"charity perfects the faculties of the mind through the feelings of the heart".
We can see how Morelly posits, under the name of beneficence, the same law that Christianity
proclaims under that of charity, nature and revelation having but one language. "It is the fundamental
and universal principle around which everything revolves; it is the centre from which everything
revolves.
all our faculties, so that its alteration distorts all the feelings of the heart, all the emotions of the mind, all
the emotions of the heart.
It produces idolatry, superstition, all the vices, all the plagues, all the crimes. Now, this community of
souls is reflected in the community of goods and life, a consequence of the community of nature and
consanguinity. So we find the community at the origin of humanity and of all nations.
Mably
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably was born in Grenoble on 14 March 1709. His father was a member of the
Dauphiné parliament and he was Condillac's elder brother. He studied with the Jesuits, entered the
seminary of Saint Sulpice under the protection of Cardinal de Tencin, who was related to his family,
and received the sub-diaconate.
Renouncing all the dignities of the Church to which he could easily have attained, he began his career in the
Church.
career as a philosopher and historian on the practical side, by fulfilling the highest functions of a
statesman under the name of Cardinal de Tencin, who had become a minister and for whom he was in
reality fulfilling the role of minister.
charge. He gave it up to devote himself exclusively to study and, according to his biographers, knew
everything by heart,
Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Titus Livius; absorbed for forty years in intellectual work, he
left it only once to go to Poland, when that unfortunate country came to see him.
to ask him and J.J. Rousseau for a constitution. He refused the highest positions; he was offered in vain
to be appointed tutor to the Dauphin, son of Louis XV; and no amount of urging could persuade him to
allow himself to be admitted to the Académie française. He died in 1785 at the age of seventy-five, on
the eve of the
convocation of the Estates-General that he so earnestly desired. This is the man who devoted his life to
fighting property and propagating the principles of the community in all its forms, in all its forms.
We will limit ourselves to citing the doubts raised by economists about
l'ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés published in 1768, the Traité de la législation ou Principes des lois,
published in 1776 and the Traité des droits et des devoirs du citoyen. One volume would barely suffice
to summarise the ideas of this great writer, from whom we can only give the following extracts.
Like Thomas Morus, Morelly and all the others, he paints an appalling picture of the countless miseries
and scourges produced in all times and places by the system of property ownership. "The
society," he says, "has almost everywhere offered nothing but a collection of oppressors and oppressed. A
thousand
Cruel revolutions have already changed the face of the earth a thousand times, and wiped out the
greatest empires; and yet so many repeated experiments have not even been able to "enlighten us. "In
the
On the contrary, a so-called philosophy that takes what is done senselessly in the world as the rule of
w h a t should be done, has come to the aid of our prejudices, and has given them an air of reason.
to perpetuate their empire". These charlatans have flattered our passions and our whims, instead of
establishing society on the basis of fraternity, solidarity, reciprocity of services and the principles o f
community and equality that lie deep in the human heart and towards which all our faculties tend.
In our proprietary society, "the superfluity of some gives birth to the misery of others... And the laws
that tolerate a few immense fortunes are the cause of all the evils that history portrays. It is in equality
of conditions that we must seek to preserve our social qualities and our happiness. Equality must
produce all good, because it unites men, elevates their souls, and makes them happy.
Inequality produces all evils, b e c a u s e it degrades them, humiliates them, and sows division and
hatred among them. If I establish equal citizens, who consider in men only their virtues and talents,
emulation will remain within fair bounds. Destroy this equality and emulation will immediately turn to
envy and jealousy, b e c a u s e it will no longer have an honest end in view. The legislator will only go
to unnecessary trouble if all his attention is not first given to establishing equality in the wealth and
status of citizens. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that inequality of wealth and
condition decomposes,
so to speak, and alters the natural feelings of his heart".
Pauperism and "beggary disgrace Europe today as slavery once disgraced the republics of the Greeks
and Romans. All the rights of humanity are violated". The horrors of war bloodied and devastated the
world. The rich punish theft "because they can be stolen from, and approve conquests because they
themselves are the thieves of nations".
"Open any history and you will see that all peoples have been tormented by this inequality of fortune.
Citizens, proud of their wealth, have scorned the idea that men condemned to work for a living are
their equals; immediately you see the birth of unjust and tyrannical governments, biased and
oppressive laws, and, to put it briefly, a host of calamities...
under which people groan. This is the picture presented by the history of all nations; I defy you to go
back to the first source of this disorder, and not find it in the
land ownership... "
[...]
Look at the countless texts of the Fathers against property, against the rich and the wealthy; they all
tend towards community, they all want, like Saint Paul, "equality". Nature herself tells us: "You are all
my children, and I love you all equally; I have given you the same...".
The whole earth is the heritage of each one of you; you were equal when you came out of my hands,
why did you grow weary of your condition?... Where will you find a principle of inequality? Did she
establish a special patrimony for each of you? Did she set boundaries in the fields? Did it not create
rich and poor? Had she favoured certain races with particular benefits, as we see that in order to establish
the empire of man over animals, she endowed us with several superior qualities... Who can deny that,
on leaving the hands of nature, we did not find ourselves in the most perfect condition?
equality? Did she not give all men the same organs, the same needs, the same reason? Didn't the
goods she had spread over the earth belong to them in common?
[...]
I would like to "establish a republic where all are equal, all are rich, all are poor, all are free, all are brothers,
our first law would be to own nothing. We would carry the fruits of our labours in public shops; this
would be the treasure of the State and the heritage of every citizen. Every year, the fathers of the
family would elect the bursars responsible for distributing the necessities of life.
each individual, to assign him the work that the community would require of him.
"I know all that property inspires in the ardour and taste for work; but if, in our corruption, we know
only this spring capable of moving us, let us not deceive ourselves to the point of believing that nothing
can make up for it. Do men have only one passion? If I knew how to stir it up, wouldn't the love of
glory and esteem become as active as avarice, which has none of its disadvantages? Can you not see
the human race becoming ennobled under this legislation and effortlessly finding a happiness that our
greed, our pride and our sought-after sluggishness do not give us?
useless promises. It was up to men to realise this chimera of a golden age. We would not have on our
heads this burden of useless laws with which all peoples are burdened today.
Tired of the tiring and senseless spectacle presented by Europe... my soul opens up to sweet hopes
".
[...]
These are, very briefly, the main ideas of Mably, who demonstrates them through history, proclaims
the divinity of Catholicism from which they originate, preaches the alliance of religion and philosophy,
and banishes atheists from the republic. In the last three books of his Treatise on Legislation he sets
out the practical means of achieving community, one of which is to abolish the right of the individual to
own property.
to test, to impose heavy taxes and to restrict inheritance and succession rights so that
that society as a whole, inheriting in place of individuals, would eventually become the sole owner of
everything.
Dom Hisoard, La propriété et la communauté des biens depuis l'antiquité jusqu'à nos jours, vol. 1,
Berche et Tralin, 1869, revised and annotated by B. K.
The Phoenician roots of democracy in Greece
"The Secret History of Democracy explores the idea that democracy is a much older concept than
is generally acknowledged. Above all, it seeks to establish that democracy originated in Phoenicia
and the Greek colonies of Asia before developing in Athens in the classical period. The thesis
suffers from the same major flaw as almost all studies of the origin and development of
democracy.
the history of this system of government: he assumes that demokratia has characteristics identical to
those of democracy as it developed from the "Renaissance" onwards in Europe.
Europe, i.e. in both cases it is a political system in which power is exercised by the people, by all citizens,
without (wanting to and having the intellectual honesty to) hold any power over them.
It should be borne in mind that, while demokratia and democracy can indeed be defined in the same
way, the terms 'people' and 'citizen' do not have the same meaning in either case. To be a citizen of
Athens, you had to be male, free, the son of an Athenian father (from t h e time of Pericles' reforms
in 451 BC, the son of a father with Athenian citizenship and an Athenian mother, herself the
daughter of an Athenian citizen, both of whom were married legitimately), and you had to have
made its ephebia. Only the politai enjoyed political rights and were part of the body politic (dèmos).
The astoi, i.e. women and those who were not politai, had civil rights as members of the same
community of blood, could take part in the life of the polis, but had no decision-making power. As a
result, the modern concept of "citizenship" is, like all representations born of democratic superstition,
a vulgar, grotesque parody, and the same is true of the concept of "citizenship".
This is even true of the modern notion of 'the people', which refers to the pejorative sense of
'multitude' or 'little people' that the term 'demos' took on in classical times, when assemblies were
mainly composed of people of low extraction (see Marie-Joséphine Werlings, Le dèmos avant la
démocratie: Mots, concepts, réalités historiques, 2010, PUPO). However, originally, "dèmos
To return to the thesis of the authors of "The Secret History of Democracy", i.e. the theory that Greek
political institutions were formatively influenced by Phoenician institutional concepts, this is not the
case. To return to the thesis of the authors of "The Secret History of Democracy", i.e. the theory that
Greek political institutions were formatively influenced by the institutional concepts of the Phoenicians, it
is as follows
would only be tenable if it were established that the "citizen" and the "people" were for the
Phoenicians w h a t they are for modern democrats. Now, even if the Jewish conception of the
"chosen people" is
We do not know what the concept of 'citizen' and the notion of 'people' were among the Phoenicians
and, more generally, among the Semitic peoples. We are publishing the second chapter of the first
part of 'The Secret History of Democracy' in the event that further research is required.
would establish a correspondence between the 'citizen' and the 'people' as they were conceived by the
Phoenicians and as they are conceived by modern democrats (*).
Most analyses of the origins of democracy accept that the democratic idea and democratic
institutions came into being fully formed in Athens, following the reforms of Clisthenes, at the end of
the sixth century BC (Dunn, 1992). This chapter explores the political and cultural environment of the
eastern Mediterranean cities immediately prior to the Athenian reforms. It responds to the concerns
expressed by Simon Hornblower: "The Phoenicians [...] were the first to [...
had something comparable to the self-regulating city-state, or polis, and the possibility [exists] that
some of the Greek political organisations we most admire had Phoenician origins. Scientific study in
this area, however, has barely begun". (Hornblower, 1992, p. 2) If the least that can be said is that
work in this field (Bernal, 2001 [1990]) has not
This chapter aims to examine the available evidence on the deeper origins of democratic ideas and
institutions. It examines whether the Phoenician cities
had their own form of democratic government before Athens, and if Phoenician trade in the Greek
sphere of influence contributed to the formation of the intellectual milieu that gave rise to the
Athenian model, particularly via the city-states that Eric Robinson has defined as "the
first democracies" (Robinson, 1997).
Unfortunately, the Phoenicians had no talent for making paper. The papyri on which they wrote their
economic, diplomatic and political history in their phonetic alphabet have mostly rotted away; the
"archives of the Phoenicians" described by Flavius Josephus have long since been lost (Josephus, 75, I).
The sciences - genetic, forensic, archaeological and linguistic - still have a long way to go before we can
form a precise and reliable idea of Phoenician political culture; but new works, like old ones, deserve
rigorous examination. The time has come to synthesise all the evidence available on the constitutions
of the Phoenician states and on the Phoenician contribution to the democratic experiments conducted
by the Greeks before the invention of the word demokratia and the institutionalisation of democracy
in Athens.
The eternal question of how to determine what is and what is not a democracy does not go away.
cannot fail to arise in this examination. If Athenian practices are the ones used to d e f i n e
democracy, the systems of government that preceded them can hardly lay claim to the status of
democracy.
status of democracy, simply because these systems are different from the Athenian system. In
keeping with this distinction, some authors classify pre-Athenian models as primitive democracies, or
proto-democracies, while Robinson distinguishes between democracy, which constitutes a "rigorously
defined system" of participation and equality, and the system of
But then Athens can hardly be an ideal model of democracy from our point of view, as we live two and
a half millennia later. (Robinson, 1997 p. 11-2) But then Athens can hardly be a model of ideal
democracy from our point of view, as we live two and a half millennia later: it excluded women and
slaves, while the latter's heavy workload gave male citizens time to participate in political life; it was
militaristic, prone, because of its imperialist tendencies, to attack other city-states; it was
authoritarian, quick to fall into the
tyranny and capable of executing those who criticised him, even when, like Socrates, they had served
the city well. But, for all its faults, the Athenian system was the government of the people: it was based
on the sovereignty of the citizens, who, meeting in an assembly of equals, spoke and acted in the name
of the people.
voted freely and made binding laws. In this chapter, we will seek to identify a
We will do this by examining the evidence we have for the existence of democratic mechanisms among
the Phoenicians and analysing the impact they had on each of the city-states of archaic Greece that
contributed to the development of democracy.
Phoenicia - a developing democracy
Phoenician civilisation was founded on city-states such as Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, Byblos, Beirut and Ugarit
on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, around what is now Lebanon. Between 1550 and around
300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime and trading civilisation.
The Phoenicians were an adventurous people, whose representatives may have reached the British
Isles and even the Baltic, and probably circumnavigated Africa more than two millennia before Vasco
da Gama (Herodotus, IV, 10). The Phoenicians certainly built up a trading network from the Far East to
t h e Atlantic, and along the way they founded Carthage, which was to challenge the might of Rome.
Their trade was based on wood, wine, olive oil, iron, glass and purple, which they produced
themselves, as well as products from Damascus and other places along the caravan routes further east,
or from Egypt and the West, on the other side of the Mediterranean (Ezekiel 27; Gore, 2004, pp. 34-6;
Markoe, 2005, pp. 109-20).
The Phoenicians were present in the Levant as early as the third millennium BC. Genetically and
linguistically, they were related to the Canaanites and, culturally, they had much in common with
ancient Israel (Gore, 2004; p. 48). The alphabet that the Phoenicians introduced along their trade
routes came from Sinai via Israel, with whom they were close partners.
trade: it was they who, in exchange for grain, supplied Solomon with the wood and craftsmen he
needed to build the Temple (Logan, 2004, p. 36-42; I Kings, 5-7). More importantly, the Phoenicians
were exposed to the change in politics that Israel had brought about: the state no longer depended on
the king's relationship with God, but on the people's participation in the covenant. As explained in the
previous chapter, the Mosaic law meant that the ruler was constrained as much as the people by
God's law. The law demanded that the monarchy be limited, that the social structure be egalitarian,
and that the people be involved in the covenant.
citizens could themselves choose magistrates capable of leading the people in times of unrest (Buber,
1967; Finer, 1997, p. 238-44; Wolf, 1947). So, while the Phoenicians were clearly innovators in the
fields of manufacturing, trade and alphabetic writing, what is at issue here is the impact of Mosaic
ideas on innovations in the political institutions of the Phoenicians.
Phoenicians.
The Phoenician contribution to the development of democracy has been a controversial issue for over
twenty years. Their city-states were mainly monarchical and their kings had civic and commercial
functions as well as ritual and religious responsibilities. The success of the Phoenicians can be gauged
by the way in which their cities became cultural and political powers throughout the Mediterranean.
The wealth and power of the Phoenician kings can be seen in the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the
Istanbul Archaeological M u s e u m . The rise of the Phoenician cities depended to a large extent on
the kings' ability to
coordinate the activities of independent sailors, who needed to have a degree of autonomy to
trade throughout the known world, far from the influence of their kings. These merchants
were the biblical "merchant princes" and we will see below that they were officially responsible f o r
assisting kings in the complex management of their cities and that, as a result, they acquired a certain
amount of power (Isaiah 23.8). It is interesting to know whether the power they had by virtue of the
advisory functions they exercised with a few oligarchs extended to assemblies of citizens who led the
fierce debate that would enable certain Phoenician cities to apply for recognition as democracies.
The debate on the Phoenician contribution to democracy was fuelled by Martin Bernal's Black
Athena, whose speculative linguistic approach led him to highlight the possible 'Afro-Asiatic' roots o f
classical Greek society (Bernal, 1991 [1987], 1991, 2006). His thesis, which sought to establish the
contribution of Phoenician politics to the development of the Greek city-state, is based to a large extent
on some of the most subtle arguments of Marxist theory: according to Bernal, it is in
Phoenicia saw the transition from the "Asiatic mode of production", led by the monarch, to an "Asiatic mode
of production" led by the monarch.
slave society where the overcapacity of slave production gave their citizen owners time to participate
in democracy (Bernal, 2001 [1990]). But Bernal's evidence from primary sources is thin, so his
arguments are far from convincing. Nonetheless, his work has prompted an almost endless stream of
scholarly work linking Greece to the Roman Empire.
(Aubert, 2001; Burkert, 1992; Goody, 1996; Morris,
1992; West, 1997). She drew attention to other primary sources relating to the constitutions of
Phoenician cities and revealed that, while Phoenician cities were for the most part in the hands of
powerful monarchs, there were periods when constitutional provisions were not
monarchy. These periods deserve a closer look.
The oldest available documents concerning Phoenician politics are to be found among the
Amarna letters - Egyptian clay tablets containing numerous diplomatic reports from the middle of the
fourteenth century BC (Moran, 1992). The tablets were found on the site of the Egyptian capital built
by Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who emphasised monotheism and
sought to abolish the Egyptian pantheon. The Egyptian state was powerful in the Levant at this time,
although its power was contested. The Amarna letters speak of the work of various Egyptian vassals
faced with the task of ensuring the cohesion of Phoenician cities in the face of Hittite attacks and
insurrections inspired by the Hittites (Cohen and Westbrook, 2000).
Amarna's letters contain references to the advice of the elders, or magnates, whom the kings
These local councils consulted on important affairs of state and could even thwart the will o f a king
(Moran, 1992, p. 243). Moreover, these councils acted in their own right - for example, "Irquata and his
elders" wrote to the pharaoh to pledge allegiance, without making any reference to the local ruler
(ibid., p. 172). There are also examples of larger assemblies, where "the citizens of Tunip" and "the
people of Gubla (Byblos)" address Egyptian officials directly - indicating that they had a more or less
"republican" organisation and deliberative institutions that could represent the will of the people
(ibid., pp. 130-1, p. 332). The most democratic period is clearly the one when "the men of Arwad"
exchange oaths of rebellion with Zimredda of Sidon against the pharaoh (ibid., p. 236). Bernal is right
to point out that these documents prove that "the people and not the king are sovereign" (Bernal,
2001 [1990], pp. 356-7). Furthermore, an Egyptian official reveals that deliberations within and
between cities were frequent, when he expresses his
concern about the concerted opposition he arouses: "my towns are threatening me (and) they have all
banded together against me". (Moran, 1992, p. 138). All in all, Bernal's argument based on the Amarna
letters is convincing, especially as Flinders Petrie asserted over a century ago that municipalities
existed in Phoenicia in the fourteenth century BC (Petrie, 1898; p. 139). The Amarna letters therefore
allow us to conclude that certain Phoenician municipalities were governed periodically by sovereign
assemblies with deliberative functions and that citizen participation and therefore democratic activity
is evident in the first period of Phoenician city-states.
The other important primary source relating to the existence of a constitution in a Phoenician city is
the report of Ounamon (Goedicke, 1975). This report dates from the beginning of the eleventh
century BC, around 250 years after the Amarna letters were written, and confirms that there were
municipal forums.
were always very numerous in the Phoenician city of Byblos. He recounts the journey made by an
Egyptian priest to Byblos to fetch the wood needed to build a sacred boat.
Egyptian influence in the Phoenician cities had clearly declined since the time of the
Amarna's letters, giving way to powerful monarchies. Ounamon met Zakarbaal, the king of Byblos,
who managed all aspects of the transaction with the Egyptian and played a central role in the city's
religious life. In matters of government, Zakarbaal is advised by "his assembly" - in
In this case, she advises him to extradite Unamon to another country to face charges of theft
(Goedicke, 1975, p. 123). This assembly is probably different from the council which Ezekiel says was
composed of "[t]he elders of Guebal (Byblos) and its wise men." (Ezekiel, 27, 9) The hieroglyph of
the assembly inunamon's report initially resisted translation, but has now been translated as mw'd,
which is close to the Hebrew word mo'ed, generally translated as "assembly".
(Wilson, 1945, p. 245). The mo'ed is, for example, the assembly, or council, of two hundred and fifty
men of "renown" who "assembled against Moses and Aaron", his brother, after they had ordered the
stoning of a man who was gathering wood on the Sabbath (Numbers 16.2-3). unamon's report
establishes that the word "assembly" existed in Phoenician, even though it had been borrowed from
Hebrew. Whether the text is examined philologically or not, it is clear that the assembly of
Zakarbaal was something more than an elitist oligarchic council and it is therefore possible that
Byblos had a bicameral regime at this time.
The more important commerce became, the more the king's power was restricted by a wealthy
merchant middle class eager to influence public affairs: "after Hiram in the tenth century, [the kings of
Tyre] are no longer imposing figures". (Drews, 1979, p. 47; see also Markoe, 2005, p. 105) In the
course of their long history, the Phoenician cities fell successively under the rule of the
Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and, later, Persians and Macedonians. As a result of invasions and
internal strife, the king's power diminished, while that of the people increased.
The councils of elders exercised their authority during these periods of invasion and upheaval.
Even more important for the examination of the evolution of Greek political institutions in the
In the second half of this chapter, we learn from the seventh-century treaty between Assarhaddon of
Assyria and Baal of Tyre that Tyre's council of elders governed alongside the monarch. It was decided
that the Assyrian governor would work "in collaboration with you (Baal) and the elders of your
country."
(Aubert, 2001, p. 146; Markoe, 2005, p. 101)
In the following century, it is clear that power was not exercised solely by the king and the merchant
princes. Josephus noted in the first century AD that, after Nebuchadnezzar II's siege of Tyre
(585-572 BC), the city was without a monarchy for seven years and was administered for short periods
by suffetes (or magistrates).
"After him [Ithobaal] judges were instituted, who held their offices, Eknibal, son of Baslekh, for two
months; Chelbès, son of Abdée, ten months; the high priest Abbar three months; the judges Myttynos
and Gerastrate, sons of Abdélime, six years, after which Balator reigned one year." (Flavius Josephus,
Against Apion, I.21)
It is very likely that the magistrates were elected by the assembly and even Sandro Bondi, who is
otherwise reluctant to see democratic structures in the Phoenician constitutions, admits that Tyre was
at that time "a republic ruled by elected magistrates". (Bondi, 2001, p. 153).
The Tyrian colony of Carthage was also governed by suffetes, with the support of the senate and the king.
the assembly of the people (Markoe, 2005, p. 103-4). Carthage flourished from before 800 BC until
146 B C , when, after three wars against Rome (the Punic Wars), it finally fell under its control. Since
Carthage reached the height of its power during the Greek classical period and subsequently played a
very important role in Roman foreign policy, we know much more about Carthaginian constitutional
arrangements than we do about those of the early Phoenician cities (see for example, "Carthaginian
Constitution").
For example, Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC]; Herodotus, 1996 [idem] [460 BC]; or Polybius, 1889 [idem] [150
BC]). The Carthaginian constitution required two suffetes, who were elected annually and governed
assisted by the senate of elders. When the suffetes and the senate could not agree unanimously, the
popular assembly was asked to decide the matter. Well
Aristotle led the way in describing the Carthaginian system as an "oligarchy", he admitted that
formal and informal control mechanisms ensured the effectiveness and longevity of the constitution
(Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC] 1272b-1273b). These control mechanisms consisted essentially of elections,
trade guilds, municipal assemblies and the deference accorded to citizens as supreme arbiters of
political decisions, indicating equality and participation close to democratic standards. The Greek
historian Polybius
(200-118 BC) suggests that it was because of Carthage's democratic regime that it fell under the
domination of Rome:
"Among the Carthaginians, it was the people who dominated deliberations; among the Romans, it was
the senate. There, the opinions of the multitude were taken; here, the most skilful citizens were
consulted..."
(Polybius, Histories, VI, 51)
There is irrefutable evidence that the people eclipsed the monarchy towards the end of the Phoenician
period. Later Roman sources - such as Arrien (86-160 AD) - go so far as to suggest that the "inhabitants"
of Sidon, or "the people of Sidon", were those who made peace with the Phoenicians.
Alexander the Great (Arrien, 1893 [English edition] [145 AD], II, 15, 1970 [English edition] [145 A D ], 81).
Quinte-Curce (first or early second century AD) relates that Straton, king of
Sidon submitted to Alexander in 333 BC, "rather by the will of the inhabitants than by his own will".
(Quinte-Curce, IV, 1, 16). When the Greeks sought to replace their king, the citizens appointed to
succeed him all refused to take up the post and entrusted it to a member of the royal family whose
honesty had reduced him to poverty. This was a sign that the people were convinced o f their
democratic right to speak out and participate in the political life of the city. While
As Alexander's army approached Tyre, it was joined by "representatives" sent by "the republic" or "the
community" (Arrien, 1893 [AD 145], II, 15, 1970 [AD 145], 81; Bondi, 2001, p. 154). Alexander wished to
offer a sacrifice in the temple
of the Tyrian Heracles, but when his ambassadors informed the city, it was "the people" who passed a
decree refusing him entry - which subsequently led to the destruction of Tyre by Alexander's armies
(Arrien, 1893 [145 AD], II, 15).
This historical overview shows that the Phoenician cities were first ruled by powerful kings, then by
weak kings and finally by rulers who were no longer even kings.
kings. It is also clear that, from the fifteenth century to the fourth BC, the rulers were advised by
councils and assemblies which gradually enabled the people to increase their power. It is impossible to
know to what extent these institutions represented the people and to what extent their deliberations
were free and unconstrained, but, on the whole, we can conclude from the few cases which concern
the people that Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, at least, were something more than an autocracy or an
oligarchy, something much closer to a democracy.
Phoenician influence on the new Greek city-states
In Homer's Iliad, Phoenician craftsmanship is synonymous with excellence: when Hector orders
her to offer her most beautiful dress as a sacrifice to the goddess Minerva, Hecuba chooses one
embroidered by Sidonian women (Homer, 1950 [700 BC], 338-51); the prize offered by Achilles to
the winner of the running event at the funeral games in honour of Patroclus is a crater.
imported from Sidon by the Phoenicians (Homer, 1950 [700 BC], 760-65). These references allow us to
conclude that the Phoenicians exerted a great influence in the Greek sphere in the eighth century BC,
when Homer would have written the Iliad, if not as early as the twelfth century BC, during which the
Trojan War probably took place.
There is incontrovertible archaeological evidence of Phoenician influence in Rhodes from 800 BC
onwards (Lipinski, 2004, pp. 145-146). As they spread throughout the Aegean, the
The Phoenicians brought with them not only goods from the Assyrian, Babylonian and Israelite
worlds, but also ideas, myths and knowledge. The Phoenicians generally established
enclaves of craftsmen in indigenous communities where technical skills were poorly
developed". (Drews, 1979, p. 46). It is highly probable that the transmission of these new
technical skills depended on the Phoenician alphabet, which had just been developed and which
Herodotus considered to have stimulated the creation of the Greek alphabet (Herodotus, 460 BC, V.
60). It is also likely that it was in the workshops of these enclaves that the scientific method, which
was then in gestation, emerged, to be crystallised and refined, in the form of philosophy, by
Greeks of Phoenician origin such as Thales of Miletus (Herodotus, I. 170, II, 81).
The transmission of these ideas did not happen overnight; Greece emerged from its "Dark Ages" over
generations, in stages, under the impetus of a series of ideas drawn from various sources, in particular
the Phoenicians. As these ideas came together, they
caused a cultural awakening in Greece, which led to the Classical era and the birth of the
"(Gore, 2004; p. 37; Solmsen, 1975). A number of developments took place in Greece between 800
and 500 BC. The overthrow of tribal kings, l o n g - d i s t a n c e maritime trade, intensive
agriculture, mining and manufacturing, the introduction of new techniques and technologies, the
scientific approach, improvements in mathematics and the monetary system "created a layer of
agrarian landowners whose new-found wealth and their ability to make a living" (Solmsen, 1975).
The power it acquired surpassed that of all the equivalent powers in the city" (Anderson, 1974). The
rise of this new class prompted various city-states to experiment with new political forms. The idea of
democratic government was central to the Greek revival.
If democracy has come to be regarded as fundamentally Greek (and therefore Western), an
examination of the democratic experiments in the Phoenician city-states raises the question of
whether these experiments also found their way into the Greek sphere of influence, where they were
developed further,
systematised and finally named. Indications of a Phoenician influence on Greek cities can be seen in
those that were the first to adopt democracy. While there were centres of Phoenician influence where
democracy did not flourish (Miletus was a tyranny, in
The sixteen sites listed by Eric Robinson in his book on popular governments prior to Athens
nevertheless reveal numerous examples of Phoenician influence (Robinson, 1997).
Chios is a case in point. The island is considered to be one of the first cities to have adopted
democracy, thanks to an inscription on a stone in a wall along a road near the village of Tholopotami,
in the south of the island. The inscription, discovered in 1907 and today
in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (Meiggs and Lewis, 1988, p. 14), is dated to the mid
The inscription dates from the sixth century BC, between 570 and 550, i.e. after the reforms of Solon
but well before those of Clisthenes in Athens (Jeffery, 1956, p. 160). The inscription, which is not
complete, lays down laws on the responsibility of magistrates: judicial decisions must be made in
accordance with the law.
"Judges will be punished if they accept a bribe and their decisions will be appealed.
can be put to the test at the monthly meetings of the people's council (Jeffery, 1956, p. 162; Robinson,
1997, p. 90-1). The people's council (boule demosie) was made up of fifty elected representatives from
each tribe and at least three tribes are known: "the Chalazoi, the Totteidai,
the Klytides" (Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 196). The People's Council was thus
made up of at least one hundred and fifty citizens. On the other hand, the inscription suggests the
existence of an assembly of all the people with even greater powers, but as the inscription is
incomplete, we do not know exactly what the purpose of the assembly was. There does not seem to be
any other confirmation, either textual or archaeological, of democracy in Chios at such an early date.
Aristotle mentions the overthrow of the authoritarian oligarchs at Chios, but provides no date and no
outline of the subsequent constitution (Aristotle, 1306b3-5, 1981).
Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that the Chios constitution stone has given rise to so
much controversy over its dating and the democratic nature of the constitution.
(Jeffery, 1956, p. 160) There is also the question of whether or not the stone comes from Chios. Russell
Meiggs and David Lewis (1988, p. 17) point out that the red trachyte on which the constitution is
inscribed is not common on the island of Chios, whereas it is abundant in the vicinity of Erythrae.
Similarly, Ove Hansen points out that the two references in the stone to the goddess Hestia are
incongruous, since there is no proof that this goddess was worshipped in Chios, whereas there is
abundant evidence that she was worshipped in Erythrae (Hansen, 1985, p. 276). However, as the
texts show that the people of Erythrae overthrew the oligarch who ruled there as an autocrat
(Aristotle, 1981 [350 BC] 1305b18-23), if the stone did indeed come from Erythrae, it would suffice to
transpose the argument that a democracy existed in Chios to Erythrae.
What is important in this respect is whether there is any evidence that the Phoenicians exerted any
influence on any of these cities, and research shows that the fundamental institutions and the
The symbols of both cities bear the imprint of Phoenicia. From the eighth century BC, the
The symbol of the city-state of Chios was the sphinx, in the particular form of a winged female figure with
the body of a lion, which originated in Phoenicia (Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 18).
Typical Chios amphorae, marked with the figure of a sphinx, were used to transport
wine to ports on the Aegean and Black Seas from at least 640 BC.
(Archontidou-Argyri and Kyriakopoulou, 2000, p. 156-8, p. 218). The Phoenician influence is also
evident at Erythrae. Although the site has not yet been located, Pausanias reported in the second
century AD that one of the two temples at Erythrae was "the sanctuary of Heracles", which was
famous for its age and that the statue of the god came from Tyre in Phoenicia (Pausanias, 100 AD, VII.
5. 5). Whether
of Chios or Erythrae, there is clear evidence that the Phoenicians exerted an influence there at a time
before these two cities experimented with democracy.
Further work on the sixteen sites of the early democracies listed by Robinson provides both
archaeological and textual evidence that many of them were subject to Phoenician influence
(Robinson, 1997). Phoenician trade routes, well established from the Archaic period onwards,
extended all around the Greek sphere of influence, from Thassos in the north of the Aegean to Sicily in
the west. From the mid-eighth century BC, there is archaeological evidence of Phoenician influence in
the city-states in the eastern Aegean that first adopted democratic government, such as Kos and Samos
(Lipinski, 2004, p. 155). There is also evidence of a Phoenician presence further west in the Aegean on
the island of Evia, where Chalcis, its capital, was one of the first democracies, and on Naxos, which was
a democracy in the second half of the sixth century BC (Lipinski, 2004, p. 147);
Robinson, 1997, p. 91, p. 117-18). There is also evidence of the presence of Phoenician merchants in
mainland Greece during the Archaic period, in Argos, a city that also features on Robinson's list:
"The most learned Persians in the history of their country attribute the cause of this enmity to the
Phoenicians. They say that when the Phoenicians came from the shores of the Erythraean Sea to the coasts
of our own, they
undertook long sea voyages as soon as they had settled in the country they still inhabit today, and
transported goods from Egypt and Assyria to various regions, including Argos. This city then surpassed
all those in the country now known as Greece. They add that when the Phoenicians landed there, they
began to sell their wares". (Herodotus, 460 BC, I, 1)
There is further textual evidence of Phoenician influence in Elis, on the west coast of the Peloponnese,
which was also one of the first cities to adopt democracy; its territory included Olympia. Pausanias
gives us the following account:
"The Thasians, Phoenicians by origin, whose ancestors had set sail from Tyre and the rest of the Phoenician
Phoenicia with Thasos, son of Agenor, to go in search of Europa; the Thasians, I say, dedicated at
Olympia a statue of Heracles, which is entirely of bronze as is its pedestal; it is ten cubits high. Heracles
holds his club in one hand and his bow in the other. I heard at Thasius that they worshipped the same
Heracles as the Tyrians, but that afterwards, having already become Greeks, they thought they should
also worship Heracles, son of Amphitryon. (Pausanias, 100 AD. :
V.25.12)
To sail to the cities mentioned above, the Phoenicians would have had to pass Cnidus and Megara,
then not far from Elis, in order to reach Achaia and Ambracia, all of which are among the world's
most important cities.
the first cities to adopt democracy. The west coast of Greece is not far from two Achaian colonies
where democracy took root very early on: Metapontum and Crotone, in southern Italy. It was easy to
travel from these cities to Sicily and Carthage, to join the Phoenician trade routes along North Africa.
The African route passed through Cyrene, another of the cities mentioned by Robinson.
The Phoenicians originally had a number of trading posts around Sicily; they consolidated those in the
north-west of the island when various Greek cities began to colonise the island.
the fertile river valleys of the south-east (Markoe, 2005, p. 232-4). The Phoenicians, and later the
Carthaginians, continued to maintain good relations with the Phoenicians, at least until the battle of
Himera in 480 BC.
with the Greek part of the island, which included cities such as Syracuse and Acragas, which were early
adopters of democracy. It is clear from the above that many of the city-states that
Robinson considers that primitive democracies had close relations with the Phoenicians. It is therefore
reasonable to conclude that the contributions of the Phoenicians were far from limited to trade
goods, religious statuary and the alphabet; it is very likely that the Phoenicians introduced to Greece
ideas of non-monarchical forms of government and habits of collective decision-making.
Although not mentioned by Robinson, an interesting case is that of Sparta, where the Phoenician
influence on the formation of democratic institutions is visible. While those who view democracy from
an Athenocentric perspective relegate the traditional enemy of Athens to t h e rank of autocracy and
oligarchy, a number of contemporary authors consider that early Sparta was governed by a
constitution that "stipulated that a Spartan popular assembly should meet at regular intervals [...]
around 600 BC [...] well before Athens". [well before Athens" (Hornblower, 1992, p. 1). It also seems
likely that "Spartan systems, like those of the Carthaginians, followed Phoenician prototypes." (Drews,
1979, p. 47) The Spartan constitution is often attributed to a mythical figure, Lycurgus, who is credited
with institutionalising eunomia, or good order, through a series of "myths".
good laws (Forrest, 1980, p. 64). Lycurgus or not, W. G. Forrest dates the Spartan constitution to the
In the first half of the seventh century BC, the Spartan system of dual kingship was moderated by the
expansion of the gerousia, a council of elders, and by the election of new members by the Spartans.
a popular assembly (Forrest, 1980, p. 59). The existence of commercial relations between Phoenicia
and Sparta at this time is shown by the fact that Phoenician methods of extracting the dye secreted by
molluscs were used at the Spartan port of Gytheum and that sculptures in ivory and
Phoenician terracotta masks were found at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta (Culican, 1975, p.
55-64; Fitzhardinge, 1980). Over the course of the next century, the assembly assumed greater
powers, bypassing the elders and electing its own magistrates every year, the ephors, who presided
over civil affairs, directed foreign policy and came to wield power over the people.
executive (Forrest, 1980, p. 77). Aristotle was one of the first commentators to point out the
similarities between the Spartan and Carthaginian constitutions (Politics, 1273a). It is unlikely that, at that
time
It is far more plausible that both the Spartans and the Carthaginians were influenced by the Phoenician
experience. It is highly probable that the Phoenicians introduced the ideas of popular government into
the Spartan sphere of influence, where, in a period of
change, they found fertile soil.
Finally, there is the case of Athens itself. Although Phoenician influence is attested to in Athens
through trade and tax agreements, coins and various artistic motifs, there is little evidence to
suggest that the Phoenicians had a direct influence on Athens' institutions.
Athenian politics (Markoe, 2005, p. 52, p. 124, p. 219-20). However, the Athenians of the fifth
By the end of the 19th century BC, the Athenians were surrounded by city-states influenced by the
Phoenicians, who were experimenting with a new form of government. The Athenians could not help
but be influenced by these developments when they decided to devise the system of government they
came to call demokratia.
Conclusion
The considerations that have just been developed show that the Phoenician cities made a significant
contribution to the development of the Phoenician culture.
important democratic experiments throughout their history, from 1500 to 300 BC, particularly in Tyre
in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. They have also established that
The Phoenicians played an important and even fundamental role in the Greek city-states which
adopted democracy before Athens. The Phoenicians' contribution to the Greek world was not just
commercial; they also passed on their experience of democracy to the Greeks and, no doubt in Sparta
and very probably in other cities, had a formative influence on the development of democratic political
institutions. The reforms of Clisthenes in 508 BC.
were essential for formalising democracy, by making citizens equal members of a set of interdependent
institutions subject to regular meetings and an assembly
But these ideas and institutional forms had already been put to the test in Phoenicia and in a series of
Greek city-states. One point that emerges clearly from our examination is that, before democracy
became an idea, not to say an ideology, it was a practical exercise of political will on the part of the
people. This chapter does not claim that the Phoenicians 'invented' democracy, nor does it seek to
detract from Athens' contribution to the development of democracy. The Athenian contribution to the
development of democracy cannot be underestimated, but this chapter establishes that the Athenian
contribution was based on powerful ideas that were already circulating among Greeks who had
contact with the Phoenicians. It is therefore established that
the history of popular government by active citizens is longer and deeper than is generally accepted.
Stephen Stockwell, The Secret History of Democracy, "Before Athens: Early Popular Government in
Phoenicia and Greek City-States", 2011, pp. 35-48, translated from the English by J. B.
A collection of quotes on democracy can be found at Julius Evola, Contre la démocratie, https://ladissidence.
org/2014/12/27/julius-evola-contre-la-democratie/ ; René Guénon, De la démocratie,
https://la-dissidence.org/2013/07/15/rene-guenon-de-la-democratie/ ; Collectif, La démocratie de
masse : une fausse démocratie,
h t t p s : / / w e b . a r c h i v e . o r g / w e b / 2 0 1 7 0 5 1 7 0 3 0 0 1 1 /
h t t p : / / w w w . v o x n r . c o m / c c / d t _ a u t r e s / E k k p Z p l u A
A L c W P t cNA.shtml.
On Semitic influences in the formation of Greek civilisation, see Samuel Kurinsky, The Babylonian
Origin of Greek Science,
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp016_science.htm; on philosophy, Martin L. West, Early
Greek Philosophy and the Orient, and Walter Burkert, The Prehistory of Pre-Socratic Philosophy in
an Orientalising Context,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/la-prehistoire-de-la-philosophiepresocratique-
dans-un-contexte-orientalisant/ and B. K., La liberté, un concept d'esclaves,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-3/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-4/; on
mythology, Robert Brown, Semitic influence in Hellenic mythology; on literature, Martin L. West, The
East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth; more generally, Walter Burkert,
The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age and
Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture.
(*) What is indisputable, however, is that, as we have shown at
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-3/,
https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-4/, that it
was the philosophers, many of them metagheists, who, through their writings, set out to empty
the racial meaning of the terms "people" and "citizen". [Editor's note]
The Semitic roots of globalism
The other apostates I have mentioned, many of whom are now forgotten, as well as almost all the anti-
Christians of previous centuries, illustrate the operation that can be called the law of cultural residues.
In all civilised societies, when we find that a belief established since
If a long-held and generally accepted belief is unbelievable, good minds abandon it, but they
commonly retain the derivative beliefs that were originally deduced from, and depend on, the belief
they have rejected. So it is that the modern enemies of Christianity have rejected mythology, but
indiscriminately retained faith in the social and ethical superstitions derived from it - a faith which they
strangely claim to be rational but which they retain with religious fervour.
They laugh at the stupid story of Adam and his spare rib, but they still believe in a "human race"
descended from a single pair of ancestors and therefore in a "brotherhood of man". They talk about
"humanity", giving the term a mystical, honeyed meaning that they don't really understand.
They do not use any other term, such as "all marsupials" or "all ungulates". They prattle on about
"human rights", although a moment's reflection should suffice to show that, in the absence o f a
decree from a supernatural monarch, there can be no rights other than those which the citizens of a
stable and homogeneous society have, by convention or tradition, established for themselves; and
whereas
citizens can show kindness to strangers, slaves and dogs, but such beings obviously have no rights.
They do not believe that a third of a god was incarnated in the most sordid region of the world in order
to associate with illiterate beggars, to harangue the rabble of a barbaric "race" and to magically exalt
the ignorant and vulgar in order to make "the wisdom of this world foolishness in the sight of God"
(Corinthians 3:19), so that "the last may be first, and the first last."
(Matthew 20:16) - they don't believe that, but they cling to the morbid hatred of superiority that
makes Christians love everything that is weak, inferior, irrational, vile, deformed and degenerate.
They prattle on about the "sacredness of human life" - especially in its vilest forms - without realising
that it takes a creator god to make something sacred. And they get agitated
frantically for a universal "equality" that can only be achieved by reducing all human beings to the
lowest level, obviously unaware that they are merely echoing the aspiration often expressed by
Christians to become sheep (the stupidest of mammals) herded by a good shepherd, which is implicit
in all the stories of the New Testament, a l t h o u g h expressed bluntly in another gospel, which
mentions Jesus as promising that after he has tortured and slaughtered the most civilised people in the
world, there will be a resurrection, and his sheep will rise from their graves, all the same age, all the
same sex, all the same stature, and
all with indistinguishable characteristics, so that they can be identical to the bees in a swarm (*).
Although the "liberal" and Marxist cults have doctrinal differences as great as those which separate
Lutherans from Baptists, they are fundamentally the same superstition, and whether or not we should
call them religion depends on whether we restrict the word to belief in supernatural persons or extend
it to include all forms of blind faith based on a belief in the supernatural.
on emotional exaltation rather than on observed facts and reason. When these 'atheist' cults
When people "shout" their hatred of "fascists" and "nazis", they must obviously believe that these
people are "fascists" and "nazis".
evil are possessed by the devil and should therefore be converted or exterminated in order to promote
holiness and love. And when they see 'racists', who ungodly substitute facts and reason for unthinking
faith in approved fairy tales, their desire to root out evil is as great as that of the Christian mob who
dragged the all-too-righteous and intelligent Hypatia out of her
and lovingly used oyster shells to rip out her flesh while she was still alive.
With very few exceptions, the anti-Christians, probably unconsciously, have preserved in their 'spirit'
much of Christian doctrine, and have even revived the most poisonous elements of the primitive
Bolshevism of antiquity, which had been attenuated or kept in abeyance by the established Churches
in the great age of Christendom [The rest of the text shows that this is not really the case]. And today,
avowed atheists do not think it strange that, on all social issues, they essentially agree with the howling
dervishes and evangelical shamans who, subsidised with copious publicity by the organised Jewry that
control television and other means of communication, are avid participants in the current effort t o
reduce Americans to complete imbeciles through all kinds of irrational deceptions.
Revilo Oliver, America's Decline
(*) The Greek text of the Gospel in question was published by Konstantin von Tischendorf in his
Apocalypses apocryphae (1866; reprinted by Olms, 1966); see p. 78.
The Gnostics seized upon the notion of a "heavenly Jerusalem" as a prey, an image symbolising the
future of humanity completely redeemed. Then, by way of comparison, they came to emphasise the
very assembly of participants in this heavenly Jerusalem, in other words
the Ecclesia, the Church ("assembly" in the etymological sense). It was Jesus himself who referred to this
He always speaks of it in terms that emphasise the femininity of this assembly of the elect. Paul takes
up the image and the name, and defines it as "our mother", which explains and justifies the wellknown
expression, used indiscriminately afterwards: "our holy mother".
the Church". This is not in the least an institutional Church with its hierarchies, its rules and even its
aberrations, which are rightly debatable, but the assembly, the community, the "communion of saints"
[which corresponds to "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus". (Galatians 3:28)]. And, in all traditions, this
community is represented by the image of a woman, who is both mother and child,
wife or lover, sister and daughter. So it is with Isis, Cybele and a character who has become a romance,
such as the Queen of Guinevere, who, before representing her own individuality, remains the
permanent embodiment of the social and quasi-mystical group of which she is the absolute centre.
It is easy to see how this concept of an assembly of elected representatives, a sort of wife and mother to the
Christ, along with his daughter, slowly became identified with the concrete figure of Miriâm, mother of
Jesus, but also mother of all men. And if Miriâm is the mother of all men, being
perfectly historical or perfectly historicised (as you will, the result being
This is why it acquired very early on, thanks to skilful censorship, the essential characteristics of a
"new" art.
devolved in the past to the Great Universal Goddess, mother of all gods and all men.
Jean Markale, The great goddess
Part One: Community through the Church
Community of the early Church
It is well known that for nineteen consecutive centuries, Christianity has always taught and practised
the community of goods. This was the very form of the primitive Church of Jerusalem from its very
beginnings. According to the Acts of the Apostles, "All who believed were one, and had all things in
common. And they distributed them to everyone according to his need. The whole multitude of
believers was one heart and one soul, and no one considered the things he enjoyed as his own, but
everything among them was common. That is why there were no poor people among them, for
everyone who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of what they had sold and laid it
at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to everyone according to his need. Joseph, for example,
was nicknamed Barnabas by the apostles,
that is to say, a son of consolation, a Levite and a Cypriot by nationality, who had a field, sold it, brought
the price and laid it at the feet of the Apostles".
This Barnabas, one of the seventy-two disciples of Jesus Christ, "a man full of the Holy Spirit and steadfast in
the faith" according to the Acts of the Apostles, a companion of Paul who evangelised Syria and Asia Minor,
expressed himself in this way in his Epistle: "Put all" your possessions in common with your brothers, and let
nothing be taken away from you.
For if you are in society for incorruptible things, how much more must you be in it for
corruptible things?
Thus the community of goods was the very constitution of the primitive Church. Eight thousand men, without
Barely five years later James, speaking to Paul, says, according to the Greek text, that in this Church of
Jerusalem alone there were several times ten thousand. We are not talking here," says Salvian, "about
a handful of Christians. Their small number could have weakened the authority of their example. We
are talking about a considerable multitude of people, and we can judge from what is recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles, that at the very beginning of Christianity, eight thousand men, in two days, joined
the new Church, not counting children and women. How many then
Doesn't every day increase the number of the faithful living in community?
In her revelations, Sister Anne-Catherine Emmerich gives curious details about this primitive community
which, already organized only fifteen days after the resurrection [of Jesus Christ], was composed o f
innumerable faithful from all countries, even the most distant, and formed, from the beginning, a
whole city inside and outside Jerusalem. Lazarus and Quadratus and everyone else who had anything
gave him all their possessions. Peter spoke of the rules to be observed in the new community. None of
the faithful," he said, "was to have more than the other, and they were all to share together.
Everything was in absolute community: goods, work, food, prayer, soul and life; everything was done in
the most perfect order, and everything was distributed according to the needs and abilities of each
person. The slightest infraction of this community was punishable by death, as we see for example in
the Acts of the Apostles (5, 1-11).
The ruin of Jerusalem and Judea, by scattering the members of this primitive community of goods,
does not seem, however, to have destroyed it. According to Barnabas and the author of the Epistle to
Diognetus, it was still in existence at the end of the first century. At that time, the papal see was
occupied by Clement
I, a disciple of Peter and Paul. Around 96, he wrote to the Corinthians: "Brothers, the common life is
obligatory for all men, and first of all for those who wish to serve God in a blameless manner and
imitate the example of the apostles and their disciples. For the use of all things in this
world must be common to all men. It was iniquity that made one man say, 'This is mine,' and another
say, 'This belongs to me. This is the cause of discord among mortals.
This primitive community of goods still existed in the second century, according to Justin and Lucian; in
the third century, according to Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian and Tertullian who says: "Having
all one
If we have the same soul and the same spirit, we also have the same good; everything is common among
us".
and finally in the fourth century, according to Lactantius and Arnobius. Without taking these
testimonies in a rigorous material sense, the fact is that the community of goods was perpetuated not
only in these first four centuries, but right up to the present day.
Aspirations towards the re-establishment of the primitive community
Referring to this primitive community of goods, Abbé Fleury exclaimed: "Here then is an example
of this equality of goods, of this common life that the legislators and philosophers of the time had in mind.
It was to achieve this that Minos, from the earliest times of Greece, had established communal meals in
Crete. It was to achieve this that Minos, in the earliest days of Greece, established communal meals in
Crete. The disciples of Pythagoras pooled their possessions and
They formed an inseparable society known in Greek as coinobion (common life), from which came the
Cenobites (living in common). Finally, Plato had taken this idea of community to extremes, wanting to
do away even with the distinction between families. They saw that, to make a perfect society, it was
necessary to do away with yours and mine and all private interests".
"The source of this communion of goods among the Christians of Jerusalem was charity, which made
them all brothers and united them as in a single family, where all the children are nourished by the same
love.
They had always before their eyes the commandment to love one another, which Jesus Christ had
repeated so often, especially on the eve of his passion. They always had before their eyes the
commandment to love one another, which Jesus Christ had repeated so many times, especially on the
eve of his passion, to the point of saying that his disciples would be recognised by this mark. But what
obliged them to sell their inheritances and reduce everything to money
This was the Saviour's command to renounce all that one possesses. They wanted to practise it, not
only in terms of the disposition of the heart, to which the obligation of this precept reduces, but also in
terms of the attitude of the heart, to which the obligation of this precept reduces, to which the
obligation of this precept reduces.
If you want to be perfect, go, sell everything you have and come and follow me". Chrysostom, so long
afterwards, is not afraid to propose this way of life as an inimitable example and as a means of
converting all infidels. It is to be believed that these saints of Jerusalem worked with their hands,
following the example of Jesus Christ and the apostles".
Chrysostom is constantly calling on all Christians and all people to make this a reality.
community; he endeavours to put it into practice immediately, right in the heart of the capital.
of the empire, in Constantinople, of which he was patriarch. Only exile and death, which soon struck
Chrysostom, prevented the realisation of this project, the thought and goal of his entire life.
The ownership of everything belongs to God
If we ask the Bible what the doctrine of the Jews and Christians is about property, it tells us that the
ownership and sovereign domain of all that is and all that can be belongs to God alone, and that man
must never have more than the use or usufruct of it. Her doctrine to
There is not the slightest variation in this respect, and throughout its many books, the Bible
invariably repeats the same thing.
Exodus - "Obey my voice exactly and keep my covenant, says God. All the earth is mine
".
Leviticus - "For the land is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners in it, to whom I praise it".
Deuteronomy - "You see that heaven, the heaven of heavens, the earth and everything on earth
belong to the Lord your God".
Psalms. - The earth is the Lord's with all that it contains, the universe and all that dwells in it is his".
"For the earth is mine and all that is in it".
Prophets - "The earth is mine".
Paul - "The earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord.
Since Moses, who himself received this idea from the patriarchs, the property, the sovereign domain of
all things belongs to Yahweh alone, and man must never have more than the use or usufruct of them.
This is the
This is the doctrine of the Church, proclaimed by popes, councils, fathers, doctors and theologians, and
which, in the Middle Ages, found its way into public law. "Beloved brothers
Augustine, we read in the divine Scriptures that God says: "Gold and silver are mine, not yours, O rich
men of the earth". For," adds Gregory of Nyssa, "everything truly belongs to God, our common Father,
and we are all brothers. Therefore, since we are brothers and united by the bonds o f blood and
nature, it would be better and more just for us all to possess equally the common inheritance".
John Chrysostom, who calls property "the citadel of all evils", never ceases to proclaim the
community of goods, as an application of this fundamental principle that the earth and all that it
contains belong to God (De beneficentio, vol. II, p. 245).
Jewish community
... under the Law of Moses... the community... is triune...
Its first... conception applies to the tribe of Levi, invested with the functions of the priesthood, of
the teaching and preservation of the law and traditions: it is the absolute community through
to the exclusion of all ownership, whether collective or individual. In laying down the great
fundamental principle that "the earth is God's with all that it contains", Moses, far from concluding
from this, as did the religious legislators of India and Egypt, that the priests, as ministers of God, must
On the contrary, he excludes them from all possession and gives them no share in the promised land,
because they must remain in the integrity of the absolute community by renouncing everything. You
shall possess nothing," says the Lord, "in the promised land.
land of the children of Israel, and you shall have no part with them. I am your portion and your
inheritance among the children of Israel". (Numbers 1, XVIII, 20) Ministers of God, they are by that
very fact the servants of all, and live only on the tithe and part of the offerings deposited in the
temple. "The Levites shall possess nothing else," says the Lord (Numbers 1:XVIII, 23). From time
immemorial, no doubt, in India and elsewhere, those who devoted themselves to the perfection of
life
But Moses was the only one who made this self-emptying a social institution, a condition of the
priestly ministry.
The second form of Jewish community is mainly represented by the Essenes and the Therapists. It is
the complete community of goods, work, prayer, food, soul and spirit.
of life, perfection of the natural community, and reminiscent of the free and philosophical
community... Direct heirs of the primitive and patriarchal traditions, they [the Essenes] went back to
the time of Moses and Aaron and came from the priests who had carried the Ark of the Covenant. They
received a
There was a regular organisation in the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah, who were in contact with
them. The schools of the ancient prophets were part of their community. At first, they spread
throughout the
promised land, in an area forty-eight leagues long and thirty-six leagues wide.
then on the banks of the Jordan and as far as Egypt. They lived mainly around*Mount Horeb and
Mount Carmel, where Elijah had stayed. The Maccabees were also among them... They shared
everything, goods, work, food and life.
There were two kinds of Essenes, some who lived in celibacy and contemplation, and who for
For this reason they were called Theoretici or contemplators, and the others were called Practici or
workers, who married, used marriage with extreme moderation, and led with their wives and children
a life similar in many respects to those of the first.
A branch of the Essenes, established mainly near Alexandria in Egypt, received the name of
Therapists, i.e. Servants of God. They renounced their possessions, says Philo, and worked to cure
diseases of the soul. They lived mainly near Lake Moeris, and each had, within a short distance of the
other, his own house.
They lived with extreme frugality and set an example of every virtue. They lived extremely frugally and
set an example of all virtues. They prayed in common: the women attended the instructions given on the
Sabbath, but were separated from the men by a wall.
a wall three or four cubits high. They were also admitted to the common table, with the men on the
right and the women on the left. Eusebius, Jerome, Sozomen, Cassian, Nicephorus, among the elders ;
Baronius, Petau, Godeau, Father de Montfaucon, Father Alexandre, Father Helyot, Baillet and other
moderns show that the Therapists were Jews who were converted to Christianity by Mark and other
preachers of the Gospel. They formed the first nucleus of the monastic communities.
After the priestly community of absolute self-denial, imposed on the tribe of Levi, and the community
of goods, work and life of the Essenes and Therapists, came the sharing community. This last form,
obviously the most imperfect, was no more than a rudimentary means of ensuring and preserving the
common good.
to maintain equality. In those remote times, we did not yet know how to divide the wealth evenly.
In Judea, the land was divided equally between all families, not as property, but as a simple
possession or usufruct of the common domain. In Judea, for example, the land was divided equally
among all the families, not as property, but as a simple possession or usufruct of the common
domain, of which man had only the use and of which God remained the lord.
the sole and absolute owner. To perpetuate this primitive equality for ever, Moses first instituted the
sabbatical year and the jubilee.
In each sabbatical year, which occurred every seven years, all debts were forgiven and all bondage
ceased. At the jubilee, which occurred every forty-nine years, not only were a l l debts forgiven, all
easements ceased and all agricultural work was stopped, as in the sabbatical year; but all transfers of
possessions were null and void, and all goods alienated or sold returned to their former owners. After
having repeated in Leviticus (25:8-12) the prescriptions concerning the sabbatical year... [Yahweh] adds:
"You shall also number seven weeks of years, that is, seven times seven, which together make forty-nine.
Then you shall sound the trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month throughout your land on the
day of reconciliation. And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty
for all the inhabitants of the earth, because it is the jubilee". After various other prescriptions always
relating to the jubilee, [Yahweh] continues: "The land also shall not be sold to
You are strangers who cultivate it for me. (25:23) In addition, the legislation of Moses contained a host
of prescriptions, the most minute and detailed, all aimed at maintaining the principle of equality.
Monastic community
... the primitive community of Jerusalem, summing up that of Moses, was now, forever, the starting
point for all its subsequent progress and all its possible developments. It had laid down the
fundamental principle: absolute communion of all moral, intellectual and physical goods, community
of work and life, of spiritual and material nourishment, of soul and body... All that r e m a i n e d was
to develop and apply these principles in all their forms... This has been the work of Christianity for the
last nineteen centuries, and especially that of the monastic communities.
... the Romans commanded by Titus, son of Vespasian, invaded Judea and took Jerusalem,
burned down its temple and led the Jews into captivity, among whom the Christians were confused
and who were completely expelled from Palestine under Adrian in 134. However, ten years before the
After the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, a community similar to the first had been founded in Egypt by
Mark, the first bishop of Alexandria. This movement soon took off in leaps and bounds.
Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia, Persia, Ethiopia, India, the whole of the East,
then successively Dalmatia, Italy, Gaul and the whole of the West, there arose an immense application
of the community of goods by the monastic and coenobilic orders, which merely continued, developing
and generalising it, the principle established in the primitive Church of Jerusalem. From then until the
present day, that is to say for eighteen hundred and sixty-six consecutive years, millions and millions of
individuals of every sex, every condition, every age, every language, every people, spread throughout
the whole of Christendom, have never ceased to live under this system of community of property.
community, to be its living, practical, exemplary preaching, and to pursue the idea of property of any
kind with a rigour that our contemporary communists have not even suspected.
As Cassian shows in his Conferences, and as Basil and Benedict formally declare in their Rules, the
Cenobites in no way set out to establish a way of life apart and different from that of other
Christians, but simply to continue the tradition of the primitive and apostolic Church,
This is why Benedict only calls his rule a "small beginning of the Christian life", and in several places
this rule assumes that a religious can leave the cloister and enter the world.
It is indubitable," says Tillemont (Expositions des doctrines chrétiennes, t. II, p. 393), "that the true
religious took as their model the first church of Jerusalem. Augustine expresses himself in the same
way. Cassian, who had studied the origins of monastic life with such care, also traces it back to the
first faithful of Jerusalem.
Moreover, the cenobites were not priests in the first place and did not even have priests of their own
order; they had priests from outside who celebrated the holy sacrifice for them. They were all simple
laymen".
because," says Abbé Fleury, "at the beginning, the clergy was thought to be incompatible with
monastic life". It was not until 383 that Pope Sirice called monks to the monastery. However, in the
seventh century they were still so far from being all clerics that a Council of Rome, held in 601, decided
that any monk who had passed to
the ecclesiastical state could no longer remain in his monastery. It was only in the 9th century that
they were considered part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But far from still being priests, they were
below the minor orders. Already in 1039, a distinction was made between lay brothers and sisters; and
even in the fifteenth century and since, we have seen religious orders composed exclusively of lay
people, and which did not receive priests, such as the Poor Volunteers founded in 1370. Finally, the
third orders, known as the Franciscans and Dominicans, have included, since the thirteenth century, a
number of lay brothers and sisters.
countless lay people, married men and women, who are directly linked to the monastic institutes.
This [cenobitic] thought... says to men: you are unhappy, divided, enemies, guilty, as a result of the
division you have made for yourselves of the goods of the earth; give up possessing anything of your
own, "for the earth is the Lord's with all that it contains"; let the use of all things be
It says to them: you are divided on the outside because you are divided on the inside; you have
external property, the source of all social misery, because you have internal property, the source of all
misery.
Put love, divine and universal charity in the place of selfishness and pride.
Finally, she said to them: property has its first origin in sin and the corruption of degenerate flesh, just
as community has its origin in the sanctification of man and virtue.
The religious orders, which took so many different forms, were so numerous that their simple nomenclature
They gradually developed all aspects of the organisation of this community and thus prepared for its
universal application; finally, they enveloped and penetrated civil society on all sides so as to deposit in
it the principles of the common good.
all the fundamental principles that were to make the realisation of this community throughout the
world inevitable. This is the nineteenth-century mould into which God threw humanity, so that it
would emerge communist for ever.
Eliminating the "vice" of ownership
The first principle of monastic life is that everything belongs to everyone and that no one should own
anything, not even the smallest object. But this is only the external and material fact o f ownership;
we must go back to its source. This is what monastic action did. It did not limit itself to
He not only preached and realised the visible community, but made it penetrate to the very depths of
human consciousness. Perfectly aware that any fact whose cause is not radically destroyed soon
revives of its own accord more powerful than ever, and wishing to achieve the annihilation, not only
temporary but perpetual, of property, it attacked the very principle of this "vice". Not unaware,
moreover, that any external institution, such as that of the community, can only be founded and
perpetuated insofar as it is the free, spontaneous, living manifestation of an inner state of the human
soul that necessarily leads to it, it set out to extirpate from the mind, the will and the heart of man all
desire, all love, all idea of property, whatever it may be. This is the radical work it has been pursuing
and carrying out for nineteen centuries; this is the aim of this elective institution,
republican, communist, governed by a constitution freely accepted by all and called the Rule.
The Church recognises four main rules under which almost all religious orders fall: that of Basil, which
reigns throughout the East; that of Augustine; that of Benedict, which dominated the West until the
13th century; and that of Francis of Assisi.
Basil's rule, which soon became the rule of all Eastern monks, is expressed thus: "Let everything be
common to all, and let no one have anything of his own, neither clothing, nor shoes, nor anything
that belongs to others.
the use of the body. It even adds that it is impossible to obtain the kingdom of heaven without
renouncing everything we possess on earth.
Augustine's rule also prescribes absolute community, and goes into the most minute detail in this
regard. It adds that, since everything is in common, if anyone appropriates anything or hides anything
given to him, he is guilty of theft from the community. In his first sermon on common life, in which he
gives an account to the assembled people of the community which he
Augustine said: "This is how we live; no one in our society is allowed to have anything of his own". He
then recounted how each member of his community had stripped himself of everything he possessed,
and instructed the people to give nothing except to the whole community and not to any one of its
members in particular.
members. Finally, he announced that he would impose the severest penalties on anyone who dared to
keep anything of his own. We can see from the details of this speech that the monks, and even the
clergy and bishops, wore the same vestments as the laity at the time, and that, basically, the monastic
institute still only intended to continue the primitive Church of Jerusalem, which included all the
faithful with their
families, married men and women, and children.
Benedict's rule is no less explicit than the previous ones. Property," it says, "is the most essential vice"
to be eradicated from the community. One must "own nothing, not even a book,
tablets, a stylus for writing, absolutely nothing", nihil omnino. It is not just the fact of ownership, but
the feeling that gives rise to it, that "is the most essential vice to be rooted out" of
the human soul.
As for the rule of Francis of Assisi... it goes much further still, by abolishing all
property, even collective property like any particular property, and thus constituting the fundamental
principle of the universal, absolute community.
Moreover, all the founders and reformers of monastic orders, Lorenzo Justinian, Gerson and a host of
others speak the same language as Basil, Augustine, Benedict and Francis of Assisi; and these rules
are confirmed by the Council of Trent which, in its XXVth session, formally forbids "to own, or even in
the name of the monastery, any property, movable or immovable, by whatever title they may have
acquired it and of whatever nature it may be". Now, it should be noted that these prescriptions of the
monastic rules are not like civil laws, which prescribe only the material fact and the nature of the
property.
only require external obedience; they command the inner self, compel the conscience; and, by
forbidding any kind of property, forbid at the same time all desire, all love, all
thought of property of any kind. This abdication of all ownership thus becomes faith,
a religion, a cult. The saints call her the mother and guardian of all the other virtues. Francis of Assisi
called her his mistress, as did the Rule of the Franciscans, and celebrated his glorious hymen with her.
Ignatius, in his Constitutions, recommends that we love her as a good mother, b e c a u s e it is she
who gives birth to and preserves in souls all the other virtues.
John Chrysostom, seeking to explain why the Christians of the early Church were so full of zeal and zealotry
of fervour, and those of his time, on the contrary, so lukewarm and lax, shows that this is due to the
fact that the first Christians renounced all their possessions, while the others remained laden with
riches.
Thomas Aquinas and a host of other Doctors teach that those who have thus renounced their own
possession of anything, whether canonised or not, will, like the Apostles, be seated before the tribunal
of God on the day of judgement, to judge all the world with Jesus Christ; and Gregory extols the
greatness of this prerogative.
M. Olier, founder and first superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice
It is not only to religious, but to all Christians, that the Church imposes the duty of eradicating from
their hearts, souls and minds "the abominable vice of property". This is the goal of the whole Christian
life, which prescribes this disappropriation in the spiritual order as well as in the material order.
All that we call asceticism, mysticism, the spiritual life or other similar names, consists in this teaching
of the saints which is found not only in the great centuries of Christianity, but in every time and place.
In the seventeenth century, M. Olier, founder and first superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in
Paris, developed this thought at length in his Introduction à la vie et aux vertus chrétiennes. After
admirably explaining the nature
of this rigorous duty of every Christian, he stigmatises in the following terms
terms "the evil of property" and the comparative moral results of property and its negation, which he
calls "self-denial".
The landlord is in every way the opposite of the Christian, property the opposite of Christianity, and
the radical extirpation of every kind of property is the supreme ideal of moral perfection for every
man, as it is for everyone collectively, or for society as a whole. Complete abolition of
This is the Christian life, the spiritual or divine life within us, the law of Christianity for individuals and
for nations. For "there is nothing more contrary to Christianity than property,
Adam made himself, by sin, the owner and father o f all sin, and property is a horrible monster and a
terrible sea of all sin".
Abolition of property, even collective property
Community and collective property could still have been confused, which are very different things. The
Papacy, after having excommunicated and denied burial to a poor monk who had kept three reals to
buy a tunic, had to officially proclaim, through thirty
the abolition of all collective and individual property.
This formidable problem of ownership, publicly debated for three centuries by the
Christianity as a whole, was resolved in the sense of a radical, universal and absolute community. And it
was.
"The love of poverty makes us kings", said Bernard of Clairvaux. It is indeed through
The monks became kings of the world and the peoples of the world became truly sovereign. In his
speech in the presence of Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus called the monks "philosophers", because they
possessed nothing in this world.
The first solitaries, ascetics and cenobites, following to the letter the words of Christ: "Whoever does
not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple", had no other rule than the absolute
abdication of all kinds of property. Later, the monasteries spread everywhere, living on the same principles.
This meant that if the individual possessed nothing of his own, the monastery or order possessed it as
a body. Now, in order to achieve absolute community, it was necessary to abolish even this collective
property, as had already been done.
abolish all individual property. This is what Francis of Assisi did. He founded the Franciscan order,
which, five centuries later, after losing countless monasteries, still numbered, at the beginning of the
20th century, more than 100,000 monks and nuns.
In the 18th century, there were more than one hundred and fifteen thousand religious men and nearly
thirty thousand religious women. After having taught his disciples, by word and example, this
unrestricted renunciation of all possession, Francis prescribed it with the utmost rigour in his Rule,
which states: "The brothers shall have nothing of their own, neither house, nor place, nor anything
else," forbids all kinds of property, both collective and individual, and forbids like a plague all handling
of money, either by oneself or by any other person.
and does everything it can to ensure that the property cannot intrude under any pretext whatsoever.
Well then! This rule, examined by the cardinals, was approved in 1210 by Pope Innocent III as being the
very expression of the Gospel; in 1215, by the Fourth General Council of the Church in Rome.
Latran, and solemnly confirmed by Pope Honorius III in his bulls of 11 June 1219 and 29 June 1220.
November 1223. Gregory IX again confirmed this denial of all property, even collective property, in
two new bulls, one dated 21 August 1231, addressed to all prelates, and the other dated 23 August
1231, addressed to the archbishops of Tours and Rouen and to the bishop of Paris. Innocent IV
approved the same doctrine in 1245. Pope Alexander IV was even more favourable to the religious
mendicants and their principle of absolute community. Barely five days after his coronation, on 31
December 1254, he revoked Innocent IV's bull Etsi animarum of the previous 21 November, because it
restricted the privileges of the mendicants.
Franciscans and Dominicans, in whose favour he issued more than forty consecutive bulls. He
vigorously supported the latter against the University of Paris with his great bull Quasi lignum vitae of
14 April 1255, and that Cunctis processibus of 17 June 1256.
In the same year, 1256, Guillaume de Saint-Amour, doctor and regent of theology in Paris, published
a book entitled Des Périls des derniers temps, directed against the Franciscans and Dominicans.
particularly against the latter. He fought with the greatest violence against their theory of absolute
community and the negation of all property, even collective property, claiming that this was neither
the doctrine nor the practice of Jesus Christ. So what did the Pope do when the matter was referred
to him? Having had the work examined by four cardinals, on their report he issued his sentence in the
form of a bull, dated 5 October 1256, in which he condemned this book as iniquitous, criminal and
execrable, ordering anyone who had it to burn it within eight days, on pain of excommunication, with
a ban on
approve or support it in any way. This condemnation was pronounced publicly in
The Pope deprived Guillaume de Saint-Amour of his doctorate and of all benefits and dignities, forbade
all trade with him and rejected his appeal.
On the following 15 November, Alexander IV again praised the absolute community of Franciscans and
Dominicans in his bull Parisius peritia, and in 1257 published seven more bulls both in favour of these
religious and against Guillaume de Saint-Amour, in addition to various letters on the same subjects.
In compliance with the papal bulls and the oath of the representatives of the University, Thomas
Aquinas, whose doctorate had been delayed for two years, was finally received in Paris on 23 October
1257, and published
At the time, he was writing the apology for the Friars Minor and Preachers that he had delivered to the
Pope at Anagni a year earlier. This work is entitled: Contre ceux qui attaquent la religion, c'est-à-dire
l'institution monastique, and in it the Angelic Doctor responds in detail and with great accuracy to all
the reasons or authorities alleged by Guillaume de Saint-Amour. The latter claimed that it is not
permissible for one who has property to deprive himself of it completely without providing for his
subsistence, either by
entering a community or proposing to live by his work. Thomas shows that this renews the errors of
Jovinian and Vigilance, who criticised the practice of monastic life. This
It is not only in habitual poverty, he says, that the perfection of the Gospel consists, that is to say, in the
interior detachment from the goods of which we remain possessors, but in poverty
This perfection does not require that we collectively possess anything. He reminds us that the most
perfect monks renounced all
He cites the example of Jesus Christ himself and of several saints, and proves the absurdity and injustice
of the criticisms levelled at Franciscan and Dominican religious.
After Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Bishop of Regensburg, and a host of others, Bonaventure, the
Seraphic Doctor, also wrote several treatises in which he used more or less the same proofs as Thomas
Aquinas to refute all the objections to the abolition of collective ownership.
Abolition of all property, even collective property. It must extend to civil society.
Finally, on 14 August 1279, the bull Exiit qui seminat appeared, in which Nicholas III refuted at length
the objections that had been raised against the principles of the Franciscans, and resolved the
difficulties that many had found in practising their rule. It establishes the following principles:
1° Absolute community or the abdication of all property, not only individual but collective, "is
meritorious and holy".
2° Jesus Christ "taught it by word and confirmed it by example, and the first founders of
the Church, drawing it from its very source, and passing it on by the examples of their teaching and their
lives".
3° If Christ possessed anything with his Apostles, it was to "condescend to the imperfections of the
infirm, the weak, the imperfect."
4° The way of perfection he teaches is the abdication of all property; the other is t h e infirmity and
imperfection of human flesh to which he condescended out of pure charity.
5° Confident in divine Providence, in human brotherhood and in their work, "triple means of
to live, those who thus abdicate the ownership of everything are not homicidal of themselves or
tempters of God".
6° Moreover "extreme necessity to provide for the sustenance of nature, is of natural civil law, exempt
from all law".
7° "The abdication of all property does not imply the renunciation of the de facto use of the things
necessary for life".
These fundamental principles give rise to a whole world of consequences, of which we will limit
ourselves to mentioning the following:
1° This abdication of all ownership being able to be made in common by a company, some
A whole nation, however numerous, could therefore implement it in its constitution, with everyone
freely adhering to it.
2° Every Christian who is to strive to imitate Christ, his type and model, must strive with all his might
for this suppression of all property, as for the perfection which the Apostles and the Church gave him
set an example.
3° For the same reasons, every Christian society must pursue its realisation, as the fulfilment of the
divine ideal assigned as the supreme goal to the perfection of humanity.
4° Mere de facto use, which still remains to man after the abolition of all property, does not imply any
infringement of the absolute community, because not constituting a right, it obliges him who has
consumed a product to recreate its equivalent through his work. Hence the rule of justice in the
community.
These, among others, are the rigorous consequences of the principles laid down by the papacy since
Innocent III, developed by Nicholas III and confirmed by his successors. They were first developed by Martin
IV, then by Nicholas IV, who further extended the privileges already granted to the Franciscans, mainly
in his bulls of 6 May and 30 April 1288. The principles of this famous constitution were
reproduced, confirmed and applied by Celestine V in 1294; by Boniface VIII in 1299, in several bulls in
favour of the Friars Minor; by Clement V in his decretal Exivi deparadiso, promulgated at the third and
last session of the General Council of Vienna, on 6 May 1312; by John XXII, in his innumerable bulls,
principally that Quorumdam exigit published on 13 April 1317 and the year
In the following pages, he recalls the constitutions of Nicholas IV and Clement V, the Santa Romana
constitution of late 1317, the Gloriosam ecclesiam constitution of 23 January 1318 and the others that
we will cite below.
Certainly, in no other case and on no other question has the Holy See pronounced itself in such a
reiterated, complete and persevering manner, by the authority of so many popes and in such a
succession of consecutive declarations over more than a century. It is worth repeating the words of
Augustine, so often quoted today: "Rome has spoken, the cause is finished".
But this was not yet enough, and the Papacy was increasingly showing that this was not the case.
Community, proclaimed by the Church, must extend to the temporal order as well as the spiritual
order, to civil society as well as religious society. This is strikingly apparent in these complex
discussions, whose forgotten form sometimes obscures their immense scope, and in these struggles
between the Church and the Church.
The many passionate events of this illustrious period make for epic drama. Without going into this
long maze, let's at least mention a few of the main points of this moving scene where
six centuries ago, the great issues of human destiny were at stake.
In his bull Ausculta, fili of 5 December 1301, Boniface VIII reminded Philip the Fair that temporal
kingdoms and their rulers were, like individuals, subject to Christian law. In his famous decretal Unam
sanctam of 18 November 1302, deliberated at a council in Borne, he declared that there were no two
principles, two laws, one for the spiritual order and the other for the temporal order, but only one law,
the Gospel; only one head, Jesus Christ; that all power comes from God and that the distinction of the
two swords is only that of a double function serving the same cause, one for eternity, the other for
time; that human and temporal power, instituted, ordered, judged by the Christian law, of which it
must not be the only one, is not the only one; that all power comes from God and that the distinction
of the two swords is only that of a double function serving the same cause, one for eternity, the other
for time; that human and temporal power, instituted, ordered, judged by the Christian law, of which it
must not be the only one, is not the only one.
This w a s a decree that the universal community, practised for fourteen centuries by religious society,
should be extended to civil society. This was already decreeing the extension to civil society of the
universal community practised for fourteen centuries by religious society.
John XXII simply applied these principles. Louis of Bavaria attacked, condemned and deposed the Pope,
established the bishops and, arguing that all property had been abdicated, [thus taking the Church at
its own game] claimed the goods of the Church as his domain. It was then that John XXII promulgated,
in
1328, his bull Quia vir reprobus, which, because of its length and importance, is a veritable book. In it,
he justified his three previous constitutions, which had been condemned by order of Louis on 18 April
of the same year, and
establishes the principle that Jesus Christ, as King and Lord of the universe, has the ownership and sovereignty
of the universe.
of all temporal things. He proves this by the prophecies and the passages of Holy Scripture, which
represent Christ as King of kings, Lord of lords, to whom belongs the empire over all the nations of the
earth, whose reign will have no end and to whom all power has been given in heaven and on earth. He
shows that when he said to Pilate: "My kingdom is not from here", he was saying: "My kingdom is not
from here".
declares that he does not derive his power from the world, but from God, to whom everything belongs. This
This was the doctrine of the most famous theologians, as well as of the papacy. Alvar Pelage, a famous
doctor of the Franciscan order, established in his Treatise on the Complaints of the Church that Jesus
Christ is the only pontiff, king and lord of all, and that the whole earth is his,
with everything it contains.
Now, since the kingdom of Jesus Christ was founded on absolute community, which has been perpetuated
for nineteen consecutive centuries, both temporal and spiritual society must be established on this
basis.
principle, on this universal law extending to everything, because everything is his. Everything comes
under this community, since Christ alone has the ownership and sovereign domain of all things.
The absolute community
Absolute community is the divine right and must extend to everything, to temporal society as well as
to spiritual society: this is the immense result achieved by this solemn debate of several centuries, and
by the decisions of more than a hundred papal bulls.
In this memorable discussion, which lasted for three centuries, the Papacy approved and proclaimed
"the complete abdication of all property, both in common and in private, as meritorious and holy,
being that which Christ taught by word and confirmed by his example, that which the first founders of
the Church, as they had drawn it from the very source, transmitted by the examples of
their doctrine and their life, this abdication of all ownership leaving only a simple de facto use".
Consequently, the Holy See, confirming the rule of the Friars Minor, decided that the ownership of
their goods belonged to the Church as a whole, of which the Pope was the representative, or rather to
Christ, to God alone, no man being the owner. This is what Roman law calls res nullius, res
sacroe et religiosa et sancta, quod enim divini juris est, id nullius in bonis est. This religious and
sacrosanct thing is nobody's thing, because what is of divine right belongs, as a possession, to
nobody.
In principle, this definition applies to all communities, but in particular to
religious communities. Each of its members having made a vow of poverty or renunciation of all
property, all the goods of these communities are by right the religious and sacrosanct thing which is
nobody's thing: it is the divine right of the principle of the community. We can therefore and must
consider all the monastic communities that have succeeded one another, since the primitive Church of
Jerusalem to this day, as a single community whose common goods are the patrimony of God,
administered by the Church. The usufruct of this divine patrimony is undoubtedly used by the various
particular communities according to the needs of their functions and the distribution of work, but in
principle the fund remains one, indivisible and inalienable.
Every generation, this community counts its members in the millions. During the Middle Ages, it alone
possessed all the archives, monuments, products and treasures of the arts, letters and sciences, and
performed all the high social functions, all the principal works o f education, agriculture and industry,
and all the great offices of politics and Christianity.
And yet! This immense community, nineteen centuries old, is still only a part of the Catholic
community. In fact, in addition to the incalculable assets of the monastic orders, the Church
still possessed such considerable assets that this dual ownership combined to form the bulk of all social
wealth. An example will suffice. It has been calculated that at the end of the seventeenth century, the
Church still owned twelve million acres of land in the twenty-two provinces of the Kingdom of Castile,
worth 161 million reals, while the laity owned no more than sixty-one million acres, worth 817 million
reals. Thus the fifth part of the
land, as well as a much larger portion of movable property, was in the hands of the clergy, whose
revenues still amounted to 150 million francs in 1817.
Now the Church proclaimed all the goods, whether movable or immovable, of this colossal community
to be the property of God alone, a common patrimony, undivided and inalienable, of which the holders
must have only t h e use or usufruct. In fact," says Fleury, "ecclesiastical goods, being consecrated to
God, are sacred, and the Church has the right to use them.
Ownership belongs to no one, and the beneficiary has only the administration". The usufruct of this
divine patrimony was allocated to the satisfaction of all the moral, intellectual and physical needs of
humanity, worship, education, instruction, foundation, maintenance and development of schools,
colleges, universities, sick homes, hospitals, hospices, asylums and retreats of all kinds, care of the sick,
the infirm, the abandoned, orphans, children and the elderly, subsistence of the clergy and a large part
of the population, hospitality, relief and assistance of all kinds to all.
As we can see, the community does not need to be made, it is made. It was established in the world
with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem, never to disappear again. Since then, it has been perpetuated
without interruption in monastic communities, and now covers the whole face of the earth.
Founded at first by the goods and offerings of the first faithful placed in common, it was constituted
by the goods of the Church, the property of God alone, an undivided and inalienable patrimony,
which has embraced the greater part of all social wealth, and which has a right of claim to the
immense wealth of the Church.
It has been robbed of billions of dollars' worth of possessions, especially since the sixteenth century
and the French Revolution.
This community is not just national, it is [international] like the Church, and embraces not just the
whole of Europe, a whole continent, but the whole universe in all its areas, from
from the equator to the poles. Contemporary with humanity through its tradition and origins, it has
existed in its Christian form for nineteen consecutive centuries, and has already contained within its
bosom millions and millions of men, who have bequeathed its future developments to the future. It has
withstood all persecutions, all violence, all seductions, all catastrophes; still standing.
on its indestructible rock, it has survived the flood of peoples, the fall of empires, the disappearance of
entire nations and the cataclysms of a thousand and one revolutions.
Teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church
Is that enough? No. Property still existed within temporal society. It had to be destroyed even in this
last refuge. Since the Church had no special mission in this area, it at least tried to do something about it.
to hasten the hour of this transformation. Through the mouths of her Fathers and Doctors, she gave
voice to the energetic accents of which we are about to hear a few echoes. This teaching has
necessarily
the very character of the spiritual order to which it belongs. He demands community in the name of
charity and divine justice, much more than in that of written law and human justice. He urges and
implores every man to renounce all that he possesses, to strip himself of his goods in order to give
them to others.
He could not demand this community in the name of the State, but he nevertheless pursued its
realisation with incredible fervour.
Let's face it, he often went much further. For example, we saw this passage in which the Pope
Clement says: "Brothers, the common life is obligatory for all men. For the use of all things in this
world must be common to all. It was iniquity that made one man say, 'This is mine,' and another,
'This is mine. Hence the division between mortals". These words of a
are reproduced in the Body of Canon Law, along with various similar passages
Ambrose, Augustine and other doctors. The eighth rule of Basil also says that one cannot obtain
the kingdom of heaven without renouncing all that one possesses on earth, which would amount to
nothing less, as Fr. Combefis remarks, than damning every owner. [If], since the Council of Gangres in
Paphlagonia, against the Eustachians, in the year 342, until the encyclicals of Pius IX, of 29 November
1846, 8 December 1849 and 1864, the Church has always condemned communism [, it has never done
anything but
condemn communism imposed on society exclusively by force or the absolute autocracy of the state]...
[With accents reminiscent of the curses of Isaiah and foreshadowing the curses of Marx, the
fathers and doctors of the Church utter curses against the rich]. Basil... urges the peoples of the world
to achieve a universal community of goods, housing, food and life, in imitation of the primitive Church
of Jerusalem and as an application of the original community of the Church of Jerusalem.
instead of "making common things their own and possessing alone what belongs to all". Gregory of
Nyssa... pursued with his most energetic efforts the establishment of community for all, and called
"inhuman tyrants, cruel barbarians, ferocious beasts, those who have made themselves masters of the
common inheritance to the exclusion of others". Astère, bishop of Amasie, in the Mount, and famous in
the East for his preaching, fought against property and the inequality of conditions in their entirety.
source, greed, avarice or the love of possessing. Ambrose repeats incessantly and in every possible way
forms: "The Lord our God willed that the earth should belong to all men in common, and that its fruits
should be for the use of all. You take for yourself in particular what has been given in common to the
It was greed that introduced the division of goods. It was greed that introduced the division of goods.
property is usurpation, and almsgiving is restitution "which the rich man must make to the poor man
for the share of the common goods which he has taken from him". And he concludes by saying:
"Declare common to all, the goods of nature which produce the fruits of the earth for the use of all.
Nothing could reproduce the frightening portraits he [Chrysostom] paints of the rich, the miser,
anyone possessed by the love o f property. He accuses them of committing every crime, of being
more wicked than the devils and of possessing what belongs to others. He is," he says, "a carnivorous
animal, a ferocious beast worse than the
ferocious beasts; it slits throats, tears apart and devours everything it meets. Like hell, it engulfs
everything; it is the declared enemy of humanity".
With Cyprian, Basil, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, Astereus, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa and all the others
He teaches that it is theft to misappropriate for one's own benefit the common good that belongs to the
poor, to everyone.
Isidore of Damietta also proclaimed community in these terms: "You have acquired goods by fair
industry; but you hold them unjustly. Make them common, t h e n , and they will truly be yours".
Augustine expresses himself in the same way. It is right," he says, "that we should all be in community of
goods and services.
of trials as well as in community of spirit, hope and love". After developing the same theories as John
Chrysostom, he continues: "It is because individual property exists that there are also lawsuits,
enmities, discord, wars, riots, dissensions, scandals, sins, iniquities, homicides... Where do all these
scourges come from? From property alone".
This complete abdication of all personal property, demanded of everyone, necessarily leads to
universal community, and the poor here become everyone, enriched by this general disappropriation.
It is sacrilege," he adds, "to keep what belongs to the poor", to everyone. Now, everything belongs to
them, because he says to the rich man: "What you possess is not yours"; and he proclaims these
terrible maxims:
"All riches are the fruit of iniquity, because they are the spoils of others; every rich person is a
despoiler or the heir of a despoiler.
[Jesus Christ] had said: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven". The apostle James, in his turn, accuses the rich of having dishonoured
the august name of Christ, of having condemned and killed the righteous, and tells them to weep, to
cry out and howl at the sight of the treasure of wrath they are storing up for the last days. Salvian,
whose authority was so great in the Church that he was called the master of bishops, comments on
these last words. After having drawn a frightful picture of the crimes he reproaches the rich for, he
expresses himself as follows: "He [James] does not say to the rich man: you will be tortured because
you are a murderer; you will be tortured because you are an adulterer; but he says to him: you will be
tortured simply because you are rich.
[We must not think that they [these testimonies] sum up everything that the Fathers and Doctors of
the Church have said or written on this subject. Far from it. We could have quoted an innumerable
multitude
other similar texts, often even more explicit, stronger and more forceful; whole volumes have been
filled with them, and we have done no more than pick and choose. We have stopped at the seventh
century, because it was necessarily necessary to limit ourselves, and because it is moreover in
those
the sources and basis of Christian tradition. But we could have unrolled the rings of this living and
unbroken chain from century to century, and so to speak from hour to hour, from then until now. A
few examples will suffice:
Where there is no community of goods," says Peter Damien, "spirits are divided; but when goods are
possessed in common, the spirits of all are united in a common will. "Where goods are divided, there
can undoubtedly be no unity of souls.
community and greed division".
"Live as a community", cried Pierre de Blois.
"Everything is held in common by natural law", according to Gratien.
This principle was proclaimed and developed by Thomas Aquinas, who added: "A perfectly
established community is a true city".
It is explained in all its details by Bonaventure who, after showing this community of goods applied to
temporal society, sums it up in these words: "The life of community is very holy; much more, it is the
angelic life".
The Church. - The Trinity. Incarnation. Communion of saints.
A constant doctrine and universal practice of the Church, community sums up the whole of Christianity.
The Church," says Saint Ambrose, "is the community of all in all, which is the very law and form of
justice. It prays in common, works in common, is tested in common. Justice consists in self-denial in
order to be worthy of Christ". It represents the absolute community, as one and indivisible, but at the
same time triune, in the image of the divine Trinity, and revealed under three aspects: - Community in
God; - Community or communion between God and man; - Community of all men among themselves
through their communion with God; and consequently, community of all the goods of God.
the soul and the body, as a manifestation of the communion of man with God and of all men with each
other.
God can be defined, in the words of Epiphanius, as "community with equality". This is the meaning of
the dogma of the divine Trinity. The community of nature or essence (omousios) with the co-equality of
persons (cooequales), that is the definition of this dogma according to all the symbols of the Fathers,
the Councils and the Popes. Now, this "community with equality" is the type on which human society
must be moulded. The union of the divine persons," says Bossuet, "has been given to us as the model
f o r our own. 0 God! Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I recognise myself in everything and everywhere,
made in your image, in your likeness.
in the image of the Trinity, in accordance with the words: "Let us make man in our image and likeness".
since the very union you want to establish in us is the imperfect image of your perfect unity. 0 Charity!
you must grow and multiply to infinity in the faithful, since the model of union and unity you want to
establish in us is the imperfect image of your perfect unity.
The communication that is proposed to you is a model whose perfection you can never attain. All you
can do is always grow by imitating him, by communicating more and more all that we have to our
brothers and sisters: light, instruction, advice, correction, when necessary, love, tenderness, virtue,
for example.
edification, good example, mutual support, and all the more so, goods, riches, sustenance, and
everything down to the bread we eat".
But for the divine community to become the model for the [earthly community], God and humanity
must be indissolubly united and placed in communion. Hence the dogma of the Incarnation,
second face of the community. The divine Word became man "so that we might become partakers of
the divine nature", says Peter, and so that the two natures, human and divine, might be in
communion.
This communion between God and man, in Christ, takes place through charity.
Descended from God into humanity, through the Incarnation and charity, this community with equality
is the foundation of the community of men among themselves, an essential and fundamental dogma
of Christianity, an article of faith in the Apostles' Creed, which gives it the name of the Communion of
Saints. Jesus Christ himself proclaims this community everywhere, especially in his last prayer after the
Last Supper. Paul in
develops the thought incessantly in all his Epistles: "We are all one body and members of one
another", he says.
... this community must extend not only to all men now existing on this globe, but to all those who
have passed through it, as well as to all those who are still here.
Now, the communion of saints or the communion of men among themselves, through their
communion with God, has as its external manifestation the community of all visible or material goods,
which is the expression of the community of all invisible or spiritual goods.
Part Two: Community through State
Two sides to the community problem
The universal advent of the community being the supreme and definitive goal which God proposed
for himself in the world [...] he willed that everything should contribute to it at the same time, Now, in
the [Judeo-Christian] world, there are only two great living forces: that of [...] the Church, which is the
divine order of revelation, of faith, of the Church and of the Church itself.
and that of temporal power, of human society or the State, which is the order of grace.
nature, examination and reason. The first teaches in the name of duty, self-sacrifice and
charity; the second commands in the name of law, reciprocity and justice. The first is addressed to
the individual, to the personality itself, to exhort and persuade it; the second is imposed on the
whole.
This is the only way we can ensure that the community as a whole is governed by an impersonal law to
which all must submit,
The first speaks to the conscience, the heart, the soul and the spirit, and its precepts and advice are not
the same as those of the second.
The second orders and governs external acts and visible facts by laws that are binding on everyone.
In the first part above, we have seen the Church not only preach, but also bring about the community [...]
which has been perpetuated without interruption for nineteen centuries: this is the "spirit-man". In this
second part, we shall show the State preparing, developing and organising the conditions and elements of
the temporal and obligatory community over the last six thousand years: this is the "body-man".
". In the third part that follows, we will explain how the Church and the State must unite for the
universal and definitive fulfilment of the integral community...
Achieving universal community [implied giving] property and sovereignty a t the same time and
indivisibly to everyone.
The first task was quite simply to remake the whole world, morally and materially [...] Thus, for
example, in order to give property and sovereignty simultaneously to everyone, it was first necessary
to make everyone [free]. [Christianity] first transformed
slavery into serfdom, then serfdom into freedom. Finally, universal suffrage, proclaimed in 1792 and
fully applied since 1848, made every man who became free a representative of sovereignty, residing in
each and every one of them. After nineteen hundred years, this colossal work is only now coming to an
end, as the last vestiges of slavery disappear from the soil of the United States [...] Twelve centuries of
energetic and persevering effort were barely enough; they freed women and children [...] The equality
of all men was proclaimed, along with their freedom, and their
universal brotherhood, the threefold fundamental basis of the community that has been steadily building
up for nineteen centuries.
But this was still, so to speak, only the surface of the Christian work. It built man and humanity from
s c r a t c h only to achieve community. [In traditional white civilisations, the State had by definition
been the transcendent unifying principle and the natural organ of a racial and ethnic community. In
contrast, the Christian State was intended to be a community
universal, or rather internationalist, i.e. the anti-community par excellence: a parody of community] In order
to found the [international] community, it was necessary to constitute a power which, placed above all the
limits of States, of all the frontiers of nations, would extend over the universe,
embraced the whole world and was the homeland of humanity. This power [was called] the Church,
from a word which means assembly, ecumenical council of nations, permanent congress of humanity.
And the Church founded... this [international] community [...] which, perpetuating itself through all
places and all centuries, is the living mould on which temporal society has only to model itself, the type
[...] that
the State has only to follow, the form [...] which it has only to assume, through its indissoluble union
with the Church, in order to complete the definitive realisation of the community.
To achieve this, the State itself had to place sovereignty, and hence property, its essential attribute, in
the hands of all. This immense task [...] required no less than nineteen centuries of effort and is not
yet completely finished. Let us briefly retrace its main phases.
The social evolution of sovereignty and ownership
The Christian era saw exactly the same development of sovereignty and property as we saw in [Semitic
Rome]. Only here it was not the priesthood that first possessed property as a particular body and a
class apart, but an aristocracy that we shall see constituted under the name of feudalism. Penetrated
by the Christian spirit, the priesthood posits that "the earth belongs to God with all that it contains",
and deduces from this, as an application, this immense universal community whose gigantic picture we
sketched in the first part of this work. He went further, and sought to introduce this community into
the State through the generalised institution of undivided and inalienable patrimony.
The property of Caesar or the Roman people passed into the hands of the new barbarian conquerors.
Their chiefs, whether Franks, Germans, Goths or Lombards, divided up the conquered land and gave it
as a reward to their warriors who had served well or fought well in the war. For this reason, this salary
was called beneficium, benefit, advantage or profit. But [because of] the spirit of community
maintained by the Church, this was not the appropriation of land, and these benefits, being in principle
always removable, thus left the soil of Christendom and all t h a t it bore in... community. Later, it is
true, the holders of these benefices came to own them.
make them life annuities. The principle of community had not yet been completely broken.
[Fortunately] they went further and ended up making them hereditary. However, this was not without
a struggle, and it took centuries. In fact, the heredity of benefices, which began to be introduced into
France as early as 587 by the Treaty of Andelot, was so far from being established that it was not even
completely established.
three centuries later, in 877, when the Edict of Kiersy sur Oise extended it to the government of the
provinces of
the Carlovingian Empire. It did not spread to the rest of Europe until much later. It was not brought to
Italy by Emperor Conrad II until around 1030. The benefices then took the name of fiefs, first
mentioned in a charter of Charles the Fat in 884. However, the definitive appropriation of land had not
yet been achieved. In addition to perpetual fiefs, there were
For a long time, these were still temporary fiefs and others were simply life fiefs. The name of benefice
was always applied to land or income allocated to ecclesiastical services, and these benefices
continued until 1789. All the functions, at first elective and life-long, only became
with the heredity of the crown itself under the Capets. Feudalism, whose power
It was not until the accession of Hugues Capet in 987 that the feudal community finally triumphed. The
feudal community only came into being after ten centuries of social community. But this was also the
beginning of the struggle between royal power and feudalism.
According to the law we have already mentioned, full ownership implies full sovereignty, and vice
versa. As the owner of the land, each feudal lord also became the owner of civil, military and judicial
power. Sovereign in his domains, he governed,
administered, ordered and distributed taxes, dispensed justice, raised and commanded armies - in
short, exercised all the prerogatives of sovereignty. Hugues Capet and his successors were only really
kings in their own domains. Like all other countries, France was no more than a large fiefdom, a sort of
confederation of lords bound by a hierarchy of reciprocal duties and rights that constituted the
suzerain lords and the vassals or feudatories. No doubt the
The number of fiefs, their nature and their mutual dependence varied infinitely. But since the essence
of the fief always lay in indivision and inalienability, at least within certain limits, it was still a kind of
community, and the federation of these particular communities formed the general community.
The royal power, representing and personifying the unity of these diverse communities, tended to
naturally to bring them back to him and merge them into a vast national community. This was his
work. Louis VI began it, and it became widespread through the emancipation of the communes. Philip
Augustus, Saint Louis and Philip the Fair continued and extended this work, bringing into the royal
domain a large number of "communes".
of fiefdoms. Their successors, even more powerful, made it prevail. Finally, Louis XI and later
Richelieu dealt feudalism its final blows.
The general community absorbed all the particular communities into itself, the sovereignty of
everything passed into the hands of the monarchy, and the ownership of everything passed into it, by
virtue of this fundamental law that we are constantly observing. Everywhere the monarchy proclaims
and applies this doctrine.
At the beginning of the 14th century, Marsilio of Padua and John of Jandun supported the proposition
that "all temporal goods are subject to the emperor, and that he can take them as his own". At the end
of the same century, in England, Richard II proclaimed himself "master of the property of his subjects".
In his treatise on the Franc-Alleu, Galland dogmatically established: "That the king is the universal lord
of
all the lands in his kingdom". The principle that the sovereign has the direct universal domain of all
property was laid down in the Marillac Code under Louis XIII in 1629. Louis XIV formulated it with more
of energy in an edict of August 1692. It was so much in keeping with political tradition that the
Sorbonne, when consulted about a tax by the king, replied: "that the property of his subjects was his
own". In his instructions to the dauphin, Louis XIV himself set out this theory of property in these
terms:
"Everything within our States, whatever its nature, belongs to us in the same way. You must be well
persuaded that kings are absolute lords and naturally have the
to have full and free disposal of all goods owned, whether by members of the Church or by seculars, to
use them in all things as wise stewards".
Three years later a book was published under the title: Testament politique de M. de Louvois. It reads
as follows: "All your subjects, whoever they may be, owe you their person, their property, their blood,
without having the right to claim anything. By sacrificing everything they have to you, they are doing
their duty and giving you nothing, since everything is yours. This theory [of Mosaic origin] was
reproduced in the eighteenth century by M. de
Paulmy.
Thus it is the sovereign, it is the State, that is the absolute master of everything, men and things, the
supreme owner of all property; "everything within the territory, of whatever nature, belongs to him in
the same way, everything is his. He is the absolute lord, and naturally has full and free disposal of all
possessed goods". Now that the people had become this sovereign, this Louis XIV, everything belonged
to him, and therefore everything belonged to everyone. This is what the Revolution proclaimed,
repeating in its turn, "I am the State", and simply applying the very theories of Louis XIV for the benefit
of all citizens.
Man," says Mirabeau, "cannot have an exclusive right to any object in nature; for what belongs equally
to all does not really belong to anyone. There is no part of the soil, no spontaneous production of the
earth that one man has been able to appropriate to the exclusion of another... The land on which he
has deployed his industry returns to the general domain, and once again becomes common to all men.
This is what the true principles of things teach us...".
On 22 April 1793, Boissel shouted from the rostrum of the Jacobins: "The rights of citizens consist in
the enjoyment and usufruct of the goods of the earth, our common mother".
Finally, on 21 Floréal Year V, seventeen thousand men rose up in Paris to support the realisation of the
doctrines summarised in the Manifesto of the Equals: "The agrarian law or division of the countryside
was the instant wish of a few unprincipled soldiers, of a few peoples driven by instinct rather than
reason. We are tending towards something more sublime and more equitable: the common good or
the community of goods. No more individual ownership of land; land belongs to no one. We
We want communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth: the fruits belong to everyone.
"
This is the final word in the immense social evolution that took nineteen centuries to pass into the
hands of everyone this sovereignty, the right of all to everything, necessarily implying community.
Now, the sovereignty of all, proclaimed today in a large part of Europe and the whole world, has as
its strict consequence the universal community of goods, of which it is only the principle and the
source.
Community in the modern age
From the first day of the Christian era to this very hour, humanity... has been constantly moving
towards a single goal to which everything converges, and that goal is the complete and definitive
realisation of the universal community.
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it worked actively towards its realisation, partially
achieved it, and, prematurely believing that the time had come, it rose up at the end of this period
with Anabaptism, stirred up almost the whole of Europe, and, after fifteen years of struggle,
recognised that the material force to be found in the world was not enough.
to which it has claimed its triumph is not the true path to its final fulfilment; and while it has left
useful foundations that have been perpetuated to the present day, it is resuming its work through
the
peaceful ways. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, it moved from ideas to facts, from sects
to the public mind, from parties to society as a whole, becoming more precise as it became more
widespread, developing right up to their very origins.
It was at the heart of the English revolution of 1648, inspired and crowned that of 1789 in France,
and is today the only question of the entire world. The nineteenth century
The end of the twentieth century was to bring about its definitive realisation. Forgetting liberty in
order to absorb everything i n t o unity, ignoring the Church in order to expect everything from the
State, it was cured of this vice by the scaffold of 24 February 1797, which, by guillotining Babeuf,
decapitated this error and thereby made it inevitable.
the universal advent of community.
From the outset, the modern era has had two faces, responding to the two terms of the problem
posed by the pre-Christian world. Until then, the priesthood and the empire had been
confused and united in the same hands; the Caesars were both emperors and sovereign pontiffs
religion and the city, the cult and the State, the gods and the fatherland were one and the same thing;
religious law was at the same time civil and political law... in a word, there was only one society, one
undivided community, whether it remained more specifically religious, as in the East, in India and
Persia, or whether it was more specifically political, as in the West, in Greece and Rome... From its very
beginnings, religion and the city were one and the same thing.
On the contrary, by its very appearance, Christianity established two perfectly distinct orders, spiritual
power and temporal power, the Church and the State, the priesthood and the empire,
["Do you think that I have appeared to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. Luke
12:51]
Now, these two powers, these two orders so profoundly distinct, although coexisting simultaneously
and even connecting at all points, represent precisely the two terms of the problem of the
universal community. The State, on the other hand, the expression of the social action of all, operates,
not individually and freely on each individual, but collectively and obligatorily on all: it is the temporal
power organised to create, dispose of and coordinate all the material conditions, without which the
universal community is impossible, since all individual attempts cannot
result only in the formation of particular bodies, and not in the common organisation of society as a
whole.
We have already seen the work of the Church. Not content with embracing the whole human race...
this [international] community constantly teaches it, by practical example even more than by words,
absolute community. Through the slow but uninterrupted work of nearly two thousand years, it has
brought the spirit, the tradition, the tendencies and all the aspirations to the very heart of humanity,
to the very bowels of civil society. It has enveloped that society on all sides in a
a vast network of institutions which, in the most diverse forms, are already preparing and partially
realising the community. See :
In its monasteries, under the name of lay brothers and lay sisters, it has lay people o f both sexes,
subject to the regime of community;
It had monastic communities made up entirely of lay people, such as the Brothers of the Common Life,
who spread throughout the Netherlands, France and Germany, and the Poor Volunteers, who spread
throughout Germany and France, worked in various trades, were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters,
blacksmiths, etc., served the sick, buried the dead, got up at night to pray and owned nothing;
It attached to the monastic communities an immense multitude of lay people, in the third orders of
Francis, Dominic, Augustine and a host of others;
It has countless congregations of simple faithful;
It had its secular teaching, school, university, scientific, literary, artistic and other communities;
In the Middle Ages and since, it has covered the soil of France and the whole of Christendom with
agricultural associations or compaings living in community of goods, food, work and life, which we will
discuss later;
It had and still has, in part, its countless confraternities or lay communities, dating back to its cradle
and continuing uninterrupted to the present day. They can be found in Constantinople as early as 336
AD and were mentioned by Theodosius and Justinian. That of the Paradolani, founded at the beginning
of the 5th century, is the most famous.
century, is mentioned in the Theodosian Code. From early on, Gaul and Ireland had a large number of
Confraternities, Conferences and Collects, as can be seen from the fifteenth canon of Nantes, held
around 659. In the second half of the 8th century they were called
Gildoniae, Gilda and they were approved by the capitularies of Charlemagne. Later, they embraced all
professions, all useful works, merchants, craftsmen, pontiffs or
pontists building bridges, others establishing roads, others architects, masons, building
the buildings, town halls, hospices, church builders whose inspired genius created these... basilicas,
these cathedrals... which have been called "epic poems in stone". These are free communities,
which the government then transformed into the guilds of tradesmen, merchants and craftsmen that
Louis Blanc so magnificently praised.
As we can see, the secular world, civil and temporal society, was and still is penetrated, hemmed in,
enveloped entirely in the narrow meshes of this immense network which links it to the [international]
community, preparing the way for its realisation within it. At the same time as Christianity was being
born, there appeared an even deeper and more universal invasion [than that of the Germanic peoples,
and] whose action continued into modern times. It was all those Gnostic, Manichean, Pelagian,
Waldensian, Albigensian and other sects who, bringing to the new world the Eastern, Pythagorean and
Platonic tradition of the community of goods, gradually infiltrated minds, customs, institutions and
practices, and through eighteen centuries of incessant work, made it the obligatory principle and goal
of all modern society. Let's recall just the main ones.
Community in the first five centuries of the Christian era
Christianity was still in its infancy, and the Apostles had barely begun to evangelise the whole of Europe.
It was no longer just free community, as in the Church, but compulsory community, as in the State. It
was Gnosticism that first preached it, renewing the Platonic theory. Simon, called "the great virtue of
God
"He founded the first of these sects, which continued until the beginning of the fifth century. After the
Simonians and Nicolaitans, of whom John speaks in his Apocalypse, Carpocrates established another sect
of Gnostics in the second century, called Carpocratians by his name, who pursued the same goal and
proclaimed the sharing of all goods.
In his book entitled On Justice, Epiphanius, son of Carpocrates, defines the justice of God as a
community with equality, and teaches that nature itself, like the divine law, wants community in all
things, community of land, goods and life, and that human laws are a means to this end,
by inverting the legitimate order through the institution of property, produced sin through their
opposition to the powerful instincts that God has deposited deep within souls. The Carpocratians
perpetuated themselves
for a long time, mainly in Egypt and on the island of Samos. A Gnostic inscription was found in
Cyrenaica, which reads: "The community of all goods is the source of divine justice".
The Apotactics, whose name means "renouncers", also appeared in the second century. They were so
called because they renounced all property, declared this renunciation to be absolutely compulsory
and considered anyone who possessed anything to be reprobate. They were also called Apostolic,
because they imitated the example of the Apostles and the first faithful, and imposed this imitation on
all Christians. They spread throughout Cilicia and Pamphylia. For a long time at least, they seem to
have been considered orthodox Catholics, and had virgins and martyrs under the persecution of
Diocletian in the fourth century. However, they later shared the doctrines of the Encratites, a sect
which arose around the year 151 and whose leader was Tatian, a disciple of Justin...
In the third and subsequent centuries, the philosophical schools, the Neopythagoreans and
Neoplatonists, Plotinus, Porphyry and Jamblicus, also pursued with great zeal the establishment of a
republic organised on the principle of the community of goods and following the model laid down by
Plato. Plotinus urgently sought permission from the Emperor Gallian, who honoured him with a special
favour, to establish a community in a ruined town in Campania.
The third century also saw the emergence of a considerable sect which, in various forms, has
continued almost to the present day and which also aimed to achieve the community of goods.
Manichaeism, which took its name from Manès, who was born in 240 and flayed alive in 282. He
proclaimed this principle: "Everything belongs to everyone. Property, which comes from the Spirit of
Evil, must be abolished. There must be neither poor n o r rich; no one has the right to own a field, a
house, or money, nec domos, nec
agros, nec pecuniam ullam possidendam. We must destroy all hierarchies of rank, abolish all
distinctions between princes and subjects, magistrates and subordinates; for all this is founded and
instituted by the principle of evil...". First appearing in Persia, the Manichaeans spread throughout
Mesopotamia, India, China and the whole of the East, penetrating Egypt and Africa, where they
counted Augustine among their many followers. They spread to Spain in the fourth century, to Italy in
the tenth, t o France, mainly in Languedoc and Provence, to Germany and England in the eleventh,
and finally to the whole of Europe. For more than two hundred years, from 285 to 491, they were
subject to the most severe laws,
Persecuted, banished, robbed and put to death, they continued to multiply. In 841, the empress
Theodora had over a hundred thousand of them tortured to death and others searched for them. They
swung over
They fought against them, built strongholds and, defeated in a major battle towards the end of the 9th
century, retreated to Bulgaria and Lombardy. In 1022, Robert II, King of France, condemned to the
flames a crowd of people who had taken to the streets.
rushed into the flames with great joy. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were counted in
their millions, and merged with the innumerable sects we shall soon be talking about, known as the
Bulgarians, Albanians, Cathars, Begards, Patarins, Brabançons, Cottereaux and Albigensians,
Henricians, Petrobrussians, Poplicans, etc. They were the first seeds of the Wiclefites in England and
the Hussites in Germany, and survived long after them. Be that as it may, public and certain action
always embraces more than their thousand consecutive years.
Alongside them, in the fourth century, we find the Eustachians, who proclaim that one cannot save
oneself without completely renouncing all kinds of property, and make this renunciation a rigorous duty,
and
leave all their possessions as incompatible with the hope of salvation. At the end of the fifth century, in
Persia, under the reign of Kobad, father of Chosrou or Chosroës, Mazdec taught that there should be
no property in the world.
that God is the sole owner of everything, that he created the universe so that everything would be
held in common by all the children of Adam, and that everyone has the same right to it; that it is not
permitted to say: 'This is mine'; that no one has any right whatsoever to possess anything; that it is not
permitted for one person to have more property than another; that everything must be held in
common. All things," he said, "both
Whether animate or inanimate, belonging to God, it is impious for a man to want to appropriate what
belongs to his Creator and what, in this capacity, must remain for the use of all". These doctrines had
won over an innumerable number of followers, and the king himself, Kobad, converted to them; but he
was then overthrown from the throne, on which his brother was raised, and Mazdec, banished like
him, perished in torments with his main adherents, a few years later, during the reign and by the
orders of Chosrou.
During this first period, which we have just briefly summarised, the community established its
tradition, which it drew on three main sources. Firstly, it was inspired by the example of the primitive
The Church of Jerusalem, of which the Apostolics or Apotactics and the Eustachians represent the
absolute community as rigorously obligatory for all. It then continues and renews in all forms, assimilating
the communist doctrine of the East and Asia that the Manichean, Gnostic and Carpocratic sects
propagate and popularise on all sides. Finally, through Plotinus, Porphyry, Jamblicus and the
philosophical schools of the Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, it took up the community of
Pythagoras and Plato and gave it new life by transforming it.
Summing up all the great earlier currents of humanity, all the tradition of Eastern and Western
antiquity, it fertilised them with the breath of the Christian spirit, and from the 5th century onwards,
t h e principle of community was proclaimed, not only in the name of tradition, but also in the name
of reason and freedom. This was the work of Pelagianism.
Pelagians
As is almost always the case, it was a monk who took the initiative. Pelagius, from the convent of
Bangor in Wales (Great Britain), came to Rome in 405 and, basing himself on the Gospel, fought
against inequality, preached equality and the community of goods, and gathered together a very large
number of disciples in Italy, France and Italy.
Sicily, Africa, Gaul, England and the East. Together with Celestius, another Scottish monk, Rullin and a
host of others, he organised a vast propaganda campaign using apostles who
travelled throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, founding a model community at its centre. He travelled to
Africa
in 409, then to the East. Prosecuted, he was absolved by a council of fourteen bishops, held in Lydda or
Diospolis in Palestine. Pope Zozimus even wrote in his favour to the bishops of Africa, but then, in
agreement with the council assembled at Carthage in 418 and others, he proscribed his doctrines on
grace and original sin, but in no way those on community. Eighteen Italian bishops refused to
subscribe to this decree, and one of them, Julian, bishop of Eclane, now Avellino, in Campania, wrote
several works in defence of Pelagianism. The emperors Honorius and Theodosius condemned
Pelagius and Celestius to exile, and their followers to confiscation of their property.
Nevertheless, the Pelagians continued to exert immense influence, driving people into the deserts
and founding many communities there. According to them, renouncing all
property is a law of salvation, wealth is a sin, a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he
renounces all his possessions, and he is unworthy of being placed among the righteous as long as he
keeps them, even though he would otherwise comply with all the precepts of religion. Augustine sums
up their
doctrine on this subject: "Rich people can only be baptised after renouncing all kinds of
They are excluded from the kingdom of God. Moreover, the Pelagians themselves summed up their
principles of the community of goods in a book entitled On Wealth, attributed to Pope Sixtus III,
quoted in the Great Library of the Fathers.
Albigensian, Waldensian, Apostolic, Bonaventure.
Before going any further, let us first note a crucial fact. There are two perfectly distinct phases in the
development of community in the modern era. From the birth of Christianity to the thirteenth century,
it mainly took a religious and dogmatic form; mixed with theological and moral doctrines, most often
rejected by the Church, it remained at the level of a sect, a party, without having any general effect on
populations alien to school discussions. On the contrary, from
From the thirteenth century to the present day, it has increasingly become a social and political
movement that stirs up and enthralls the masses, as can already be seen in the history of the
Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Apostolics, the Lollards, the Hussites, the Jacquerie and the
Anabaptists. The action of the sects was undoubtedly mixed up and confused for a long time to come,
but the action of the people became more and more predominant and the theological aspect was
erased more and more until it disappeared completely, only to be replaced by the theological aspect.
the social question.
Having established this fact, let us resume the succinct summary of this great incessant work. We shall
not speak of the Islamism founded in the sixth century by Mohammed, but confine ourselves to
pointing out, in passing, that in all Muslim countries individual property is hardly more than the
exception, and common possession,
the general fact. In Christianity, from the fifth to the eleventh century, it was above all the free
community that was built up by the Church and the monastic orders, as we have shown in chapters VII
to XI of the first part. Nevertheless, during this period, the community
It is difficult to follow its various ramifications because it is shrouded in mystery. Although it is difficult
to follow its various ramifications because of the mystery with which it is shrouded, we can at least see
its tradition being perpetuated without interruption in the Manichaean sects, which gave rise to most
of those we are going to talk about, and whose adherents King Robert had burnt in 1022. But far from
stopping the irresistible aspiration of the human race, these torments gave it a new impetus. In fact,
from the beginning of the eleventh century to the fourteenth, the idea of community exploded
throughout Christendom, not just as a simple tradition, a Christian tendency or a fundamental fact of
reason and freedom, but as an obligatory application of the law.
Catholic dogma, as a revelation of the Spirit of God and the supreme goal of human philosophy.
Historians grow weary of counting the numberless sects that appear at the same time.
often mingling and merging, multiplying endlessly, perpetuating themselves through all kinds of
They mark the point at which this immense movement went from being dogmatic and religious to
social and political.
So as not to tire our readers, we won't talk about Fratricelles, Frérots, Spirituels or Croyants,
Apostles, Begards, Picards, Lombards, Transmontans, Turlupins, and so many others who, under a
thousand different names, concluded that the community was often the most absolute.
Let's just say a few words about the Albigensians, who are more directly related to the Manichaeans and
by them go back as far as the third century. There were six million of them in France alone, and in the
south of the country they formed the majority of the population. It was a formidable protest against
property ownership.
Their doctrines tended towards communism. In his Histoire des Cathares ou Albigeois, M. Schmidt
shows that they "considered the love, or rather the possession, of earthly goods as a mortal sin, and
therefore strictly forbidden. These goods, they said, were the rust of the soul and distracted the eyes
from the higher destination; from this naturally followed the law of absolute poverty, imposed on the
members of the sect", and the community. They claimed," says one of the most violent opponents of
communism, "that all things should be equal and common to all. They were not so much a particular
sect as an innumerable crowd of sects confounded under this general domination. So they were still called
Cathars, i.e. pure, Bons-Hommes, because of their simple, regular and peaceful exterior, Pifres, Patarins,
Publicains or Poplicains, Passagers, or the names of their various leaders,
Petrobrussians, Henricians, Arnaudists, Esperonians, etc. They withstood eighteen years of war, sixty
years of missions, inquisition, atrocious massacres, nameless tortures, crusades and
incredible efforts throughout Christendom; and when they were supposed to have been wiped out by
being burnt alive in multitudes, they spread from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and the
substance of their doctrines was secretly brought back from Syria by the famous order of the Templars,
and was then transmitted to Freemasonry, from which emerged the
communism today. Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached against them in 1147, gave them this back
testimony: "Their morals are blameless; they oppress no one, they wrong no one; their faces are
mortified and downcast by fasting; they do not eat their bread like
lazy, and they work for a living".
Almost at the same time, an even more directly communist sect arose, which caused a stir in France
and Italy, especially during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which has continued to this
d a y . These were the Vaudois, whose origins Basnage traces back to Claude of Turin in 823, others to
Pierre Valdo, a merchant from Lyon, who preached around 1173, and some to another Valdo, who
predated the one from Lyon by more than a century. Whatever the case, their founder, convinced that
renunciation of all property was essential to salvation, distributed all his possessions, embraced
evangelical poverty and
preached this doctrine, calling on all men to achieve the community of goods. According to him,"
says Ernest Merson, "Christians being brothers, earthly possessions should be held in common, so
that everyone could enjoy them equally". He soon had countless disciples, and this
The sect made rapid progress, especially among the common people. They lived in poverty and
walked barefoot or in sandals; so they were first called Pauvres de Lyon, Léonistes, Insabatès or
Ensabotés, and Runcaires because they slept in hedges and under bushes. All authors celebrate the
Reynier himself, who as Inquisitor led the most relentless prosecutions against them, does justice to
the sanctity of their lives. There were some differences between them, particularly between those
from Italy and those from France. The latter, in particular, did not want to possess anything at all and
considered all possession of temporal goods to be illegitimate. According to historians, their aim was
the complete realisation of evangelical equality in a society without nobles or the rich.
In his Histoire de Lyon, Claude Rubis shows that they wanted community of property. Bossuet
adds: "their doctrines concluded that everything should be held in common". The Gospel, they said,
forbids war, the death penalty, levies and even the pursuit of reparation for a wrong. We must
that all, priests and laymen alike, imitate the Apostles and the first faithful living in community, that
like them they possess nothing of their own and earn their living by work. They pushed the
rigour of these principles that they claimed that priests and ministers of the Church who do not
embrace this abdication of all property are no longer true disciples of Jesus Christ and no longer have
the right to be called priests.
They added that any layman practising this voluntary renunciation had a more real and legitimate
power than these priests to fulfil these functions and to preach the Gospel. In 1207, a number of
Waldensians, who had returned to the Church, founded the Order of Poor Catholics, which in 1256
joined the
Augustine's hermits. The others continued from the 12th to the 16th century in the valleys of Dauphiné
and Piedmont, and spread to several parts of Europe, notably Bohemia and Calabria. In
In 1536, some of them joined the Calvinists. They were exterminated,
as had been done three centuries earlier against the Albigensians; four thousand were massacred in
one fell swoop and their villages reduced to ashes.
The twelfth century also saw the appearance of the Apostolic sect, which, using their own name,
renewed the doctrine of the Apotactics of the second century and, like them, proclaimed the negation
of property, considering anyone who possessed anything to be reprobate. Their leader was called
Pontius. They were cracked down on and burned, but their numbers became so great that armies had
to be raised to wipe them out in France.
Another branch of the Apostolics, who also proscribed all forms of property ownership and made a
great stir in the thirteenth century, was founded in 1246 by Gérard Ségarelle, who was born in Parma
and burnt alive in that city in 1300. On his death, his disciple Dulcin or Doucin, born in Novara, became
the leader of these Apostolics, who took from him the name of Dulcinists. They strongly proclaimed
that everything should be common among Christians and that those who refused could be forced to do
so. They became so powerful that in 1290 they preached
They in turn raised an army, and the result was a war that lasted more than two years, with much
bloodshed on both sides.
The Church, for its part, had been working since its first day to build temporal society on this
community, free from all error. Its saints, its monks, its most famous doctors, in
were relentless in their pursuit of this goal. In the 13th century, for example, Bonaventure published a
number of works with this aim. In one, entitled Apologie des pauvres, he deals with the question of
particularly from the point of view of religious orders; but in another entitled De la Pauvreté du Christ
against Guillaume de Saint-Amour, he lays down the principles in a general way, applying them to all
men of whom Christ, he says, is the divine model. From this point of view, as from the first, he denies
all property, whether collective or individual, as being "the source and root of all evils".
Lollards, Wicleflites, Jacquerie, Hussites, Bohemian Brethren, etc.
After thirteen centuries of incessant effort, the Christian world had at last laid down [its own] formula
of the civil community, [as opposed to the racial and therefore organic nature of the polis]... The latter
was confined to the limits of a state or a small republic; that embraced within its bosom the whole of
humankind...
the whole human race. The [pre-Christian white] conception excluded slaves and often other classes...
the Christian conception calls into it, without distinction of rank, all men who have become equal and
brothers...
Bonaventure clearly established this formula of the civil community, just as Francis of Assisi had
completely established that of the religious community... This formula gradually penetrated the heart,
the soul and spirit of the people. From this day on, it will no longer be just sectarians, parties that
It is the mass, society itself, which is shaking, and which, through uninterrupted work over six
centuries, is preparing all the elements, all the conditions necessary for the universal realisation of this
community.
The first of these movements was the Lollards, named after Walter Lollard, born in England towards
the end of the 13th century, who dogmatised in Germany in 1315 and was burnt in Cologne in 1322.
They spread throughout Germany, mainly to Austria and Bohemia,
They penetrated Flanders and England, and later joined forces with the Wiclefites on the one hand and
prepared the way for the Hussites on the other. There were eighty thousand of them in Germany
alone, where, according to one Catholic author, they were burnt to the ground, which only increased
their numbers.
According to the Vaudois, Lollard drew his doctrines from them; according to others, the Lollards were
linked to the Fratricelles or Bégards: all these sects professed community.
It was above all in England that, united with the Wiclefites, they stirred up the working classes and
almost toppled the property-owning society of the time from top to bottom. Born in 1324, two years
after Walter Lollard's execution, and dying in 1385, Wiclef, principal of Canterbury College and benefactor
of the parish of
Lutterworth shared the doctrines of Marsilio of Padua and John Jandun, who, as we have seen,
concluded that community should be achieved exclusively through the State. One of his propositions
was that "God cannot give a man, for himself and his heirs, a civil estate in perpetuity". Mr Sudre
himself admits that his views bear a striking resemblance to those of the Albigensians, Waldenses and
Lollards. His disciple John Bail, priest of Maidstone, Wat Tyler and a host of others,
preached equality and the abolition of all hierarchies. At their voice, the entire people rose up, the
peasants swept into London, where two hundred thousand Lollards and Wiclefites entered victorious
on 13 June 1381, forcing the king to capitulate. But this vast uprising, whose dramatic picture has been
described by Walsingham, Knygton and Froissart, was suppressed by ordinary means: Wat Tyler was
murdered in an interview, the amnesty was violated, the entire population was handed over to be
tortured, and people were taken to
across England to rob the tortured of the honours of a clandestine burial.
This communist movement had long since broken out in France, with extreme violence, and was
revealed there principally by the famous Jacquerie (1358) where the people, personified under the
name of Jacques Bonhomme, attempted a revolution against property by armed force which was
merely the
prelude to others even more serious and more general. It was stopped by iron and fire; and the
Jacques, pursued to excess, had their throats slit everywhere. The slaughter," says Frédéric Morin,
"was so widespread that agriculture ran out of hands.
Momentarily suppressed in France and England, the movement continued in Belgium, France and Germany.
Germany and everywhere else. In the first half of the 14th century, especially in Brussels, the Brothers
of the Free Spirit appeared, which in the following century gave rise to the Men of Intelligence,
continued in 1411 and perpetuated until the middle of the 18th century, as attested by Father Heylen,
historian of the Kempen. In Germany, this movement, which was more involved in religious issues, was
They were famous for their victories, feared by the most powerful princes, had entire kingdoms at
their disposal and waged a thirty-year war against a hundred thousand crusaders. Their first leaders,
John Huss, a disciple of Wiclef and author of the book On the Reign of the People, and Jerome of
Prague, were burnt alive at the Council of Constance in 1415 and
1416, and their carefully collected ashes were thrown into the Rhine. Unable to defeat the
The Hussites were lured into barns and burnt in the middle of the night (1434). In 1457, the remnants
of the Hussites, united under the name of the Brothers of Unity or Bohemian Brothers, established
themselves in Bohemia as an absolute community of goods, work, food and life, under the direction of
the parish priest Michel.
Bradacz, and maintained their religious beliefs there until 1621: they were also called Picards and
Vaudois. In the eighteenth century, the Moravian Brethren emerged and their community has
continued to this day.
Anabaptism
After fifteen centuries of preparation, the doctrine of the community of goods, formulated by one
cardinal and sanctioned by another, had already penetrated people's minds so widely and so deeply
that it attempted to be put into practice immediately in part of Europe. This vast movement at once
invaded the whole of Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, then spread to Poland, England, the
rest of the world and later as far as America, triumphed for a long time on a host of points, and driven
back by brute force, pursued with the death penalty, despite the atrocious tortures inflicted on its
leaders, did not cease to perpetuate itself for three and a half centuries, and to this day still has
innumerable supporters in Germany, the United States, Holland, Alsace and elsewhere. This is what
has come to be known as Anabaptism.
From beginning to end, he preached absolute community. His symbol in this respect
perfectly explicit. The third article of his profession of faith, drawn up at Zolicorne in 1525, reads: "
Any sect where the community of goods is not established between the faithful is an assembly.
imperfect, who have strayed from the law of charity which is the soul of Christianity". His second
profession of faith, formulated in 1529, says the same thing; and the third, drawn up in 1530, which
can be regarded as the "first profession of faith", says the same thing.
as its definitive symbol, expresses itself as follows in its second article: "Any society that does not hold
its goods in common is an unholy society and unworthy of the name of Christian". Anabaptism began
by proclaiming the sovereignty of all, from which necessarily follows the right of all to everything, a formula
that was even used in the Anabaptist movement.
of the absolute community. God's elect," said Nicolas Storck, "who have become as many kings on
earth, will constitute the empire to which heaven promises the sovereignty of the universe. He
immediately drew the communist conclusion; and Thomas Münzer, addressing the assembled people,
exclaimed: "We
We are all brothers and we have only one common father in Adam. What is the origin of this
difference in rank and property that tyranny has introduced between us and the great of the world?
Why
Why should we groan in poverty, why should we be burdened with work while they swim in delights?
Are we not entitled to the equality of goods, which by their very nature are made to be shared?
shared, without distinction, between all men? The earth is a common heritage, in which we have a
share that is taken from us. When did we give up our share of our father's inheritance? Let them show
us the contract we have signed! Give us back, you rich of the world, you greedy usurpers, the goods
you so unjustly withhold from us! It is not only as men that we are entitled to an equal distribution of
the benefits of wealth, it is also as Christians. At the birth of religion, did we not see the Apostles taking
into account only the needs of each believer, in the distribution of the goods brought to their feet? Will
we never see those happy times again! And you, the unfortunate flock of Jesus Christ, will you always
groan under oppression?
That's what the Anabaptists kept saying. Their origins have been traced back to the Bohemian Hussites
as early as 1503. What is certain is that they were already numerous in 1521. Banished from
Wittemberg in 1522, they triumphed the following year at Alstedt, in Thuringia, where Münzer, from
the pulpit,
exclaimed: "The Almighty expects all peoples to share their goods in common. Yes, my brothers, to
have nothing of one's own is the spirit of primitive Christianity". This community became a reality
Soon, not only in Alstedt, but also in Mulhausen, the imperial town and capital of Thuringia, where
Münzer, the supreme dispenser of common property (1524), prepared to start a propaganda war. In
response to his voice and that of Phiffer, Stork, Metzler and a thousand others, the peasants of
Thuringia, Swabia and Franconia rose up and formed two armies, one of ten thousand and the other of
forty thousand men. All the powers combined their forces against them, and the Anabaptists were
defeated in several encounters, notably on 15 May 1525 at Frankenhausen, where seven and a half
thousand of their number remained on the battlefield and most of the others were taken prisoner.
Mùnzer was tortured, beheaded and his head stuck on a spike in the middle of the countryside. Phiffer
also suffered the ultimate torture. The Anabaptists nevertheless continued their war, not only in
Swabia, Thuringia and Franconia, but also on the banks of the Rhine, in Alsace and Lorraine, and their
main army, commanded by Goetz of Berlichingen, put up stubborn resistance for two years, from 1525
to 1527. It is estimated that over a hundred thousand people perished in this terrible "peasant war".
Despite their successive defeats, despite the death penalty imposed on them and renewed by the
Diet o f Speyer in 1529, the Anabaptists, far from disappearing, only spread further. They spread to
Switzerland, Germany and Poland. In this first country, where they had penetrated as early as
1523, two years later they drew up the Zolicone profession of faith, which states in principle that
magistrates are useless in a society of true believers, and that it is not permitted for a Christian to
become a magistrate; that the only punishments to be employed in Christianity are those of
excommunication; that Christians are not allowed to stand trial, take an oath in court, or take part in
military service". They made rapid progress, but after various struggles, edicts ordered them to be
drowned, they were put to death, and the waters of the Rhine, the lakes and the torrents of
Switzerland swallowed whole bands of these unfortunate people (1528-1529).
Proscribed from Switzerland, expelled from Strasbourg, punished everywhere with the death penalty,
the Anabaptists were not put down and spread throughout Lower Germany, particularly in Westphalia,
Friesland, Silesia, Bohemia, the Netherlands, the neighbouring provinces, the banks of the Rhine and
Poland. They continued to make immense progress in Germany. One of their most ardent apostles,
Melchior
Hoffmann, nicknamed Elijah, gathered a large number of proselytes in Friesland and was imprisoned
when he tried again to establish the community in Strasbourg. Another, even more popular, John
Mathias, nicknamed Enoch, went to Amsterdam where he exerted considerable influence, chose
twelve apostles who went to evangelise everywhere, and played a major role in the publication of a
famous book which became the religious, social and political manifesto of the Anabaptists. In this
book, entitled On the Restoration, they proclaimed the ancient and universal tradition of the millennia
and recalled that before the day of the last judgement there would be a temporal reign of Jesus Christ
on earth, which would embrace all the states of the old and new worlds in a single republic made up
entirely of true Christians,
living in absolute community of goods, possessing nothing of their own, and thus applying Christianity
in its primitive purity. In this universal community, whose regenerated members will be raised to a
higher degree of perfection and holiness, magistrates will be created and deposed.
by the people. There will reign perfect equality and common happiness; there, no more dominators, no
more princes, no more great ones, no more taxes, tithes, or corvée, no more armies, prisons, judges...
no more crimes, no more trials. It was this reign of Christ that the Anabaptists had come to prepare,
this new Jerusalem that they had come to inaugurate.
After several attempts, supported by the masses of the people, they took control of Munster, the
capital of Westphalia, on the first Friday of Lent in 1534, and established the community there.
property. Everyone gave everything they had, gold, silver, jewels, furniture and possessions of all kinds;
everything was pooled together; housing was shared out...
At the end of December 1534, Jean de Leyde [, leader of the Anabaptists in the city of Münster] sent from
new, emissaries to proclaim everywhere the reign of God, the advent of the new Jerusalem and the
universal community, to stir up Friesland, Holland and all the Rhine provinces, to create a diversion and
unblock Munster. Various serious uprisings took place first in Leiden, near
Bolswaert, in Groningen; but the skilful captain, Jean de Gelen, one of these emissaries, saw his first
bands exterminated by the government of Friesland. He took refuge in Amsterdam where the
Anabaptists, very
Many of them were constantly subjected to bloody executions, hanged, beheaded and drowned. 11
resolved to take the town, and with the support of Wesel and Deventer, two of the most important
towns in the
On 10 May 1535, he took control of Holland for a short while, but when he was repulsed, he was
shot with an arquebus and all his followers were killed or taken prisoner. Then all those who were
convinced or accused o f Anabaptism suffered atrocious, indescribable torments...
Münster, no longer hoping for any help, nonetheless rejected the overtures of the Landgrave of Hesse
and the bishop's offers of capitulation, and suffered the worst of the famine.
terrible. But betrayed by an enemy soldier whom the Anabaptists had taken in, and who brought the
Episcopal army within its walls, the town was taken on 25 June 1535 after a desperate t w o - h o u r
struggle. The Anabaptists were butchered horribly. All the men who were not put to the sword were
handed over to the executioner. The town was pillaged and ransacked; the women were handed over
to the troops, but as they bravely defended their honour, they themselves were sent to the execution.
Jean de
Leyden, seized alive, was carried with two Anabaptist leaders through the whole of Germany as a
laughing stock. After being made a spectacle of in this way, he was taken back to Munster, tied to
a post on a huge scaffold in the main square, and there, for more than an hour, the executioners,
armed with
After these atrocious tortures, endured with rare fearlessness, they opened his entrails. This was on 22
January 1536. His companions also showed the greatest courage. Their bodies, enclosed in iron cages,
were hung from the top of the tower of the
These bones remained there for the following centuries, in order to teach the world by what evangelical
means ownership is maintained.
The Moravian Brethren, Mennonites, etc.
After fifteen years of struggle, successive defeats, and pursued by so many bloody executions and
appalling tortures, Anabaptism, still standing, only merged into a host of different sects. The first was
the Moravian Brethren, founded in 1527 by two disciples of Stork,
Hutter and Gabriel Scherding, who took in Anabaptists banished from Germany, Switzerland and Poland.
All the roads," says M. Sudre, "were covered with emigrants who, having sold their heritage, left their
native soil to go and populate these fledgling colonies". The second article in their symbol
I believe that all societies which do not share their goods in common should be considered impious,
and that a Christian should possess nothing in particular". Indeed, the community of goods was put
into practice in all its rigour. A bursar, changed every year, collected the income of each member.
An archimandrite governed the community, both reporting to the supreme leader. Meals were taken
in common and the food was the same for everyone. The settlers' clothes and the furniture in their
homes were uniform, and children brought up in the same community were given the same food.
together. Agricultural work was combined with that of industry. The only punishments allowed w e r e
extraordinary work, public penance and "expulsion to the century", the greatest of all punishments.
is to fall back under the owner regime.
This... society, known as "the Promised Land", which brought together up to seventy thousand men all
living in community, enjoyed the greatest prosperity, despite persecution, exile and the death of
Hutter, who was tortured by order of Ferdinand of Austria. Gabriel founded de
numerous colonies in Silesia. This republic," says Bergier, "formed a society of excellent farmers,
industrious, sober, peaceful and very regulated in their morals". Not all historians mention
with the highest praise and the deepest admiration. We find them again a century later, in 1620; and
the Moravians, their descendants, have continued to this day in various states of Germany and in
several surrounding regions.
A second branch of Anabaptists, established in 1536 by a Catholic priest, Simon Menno, took the name
of Mennonites from him and spread throughout Friesland, Westphalia, Gelderland, Holland and
Brabant,
England, where they were called Baptists, and sent colonies to the United States, where they still have
seventy thousand members and more than two hundred churches. The Dumplers, a German sect
descended from the Anabaptists, practise communion in a town in Pennsylvania, built by them and
called Euphrates.
Other Anabaptists, widespread in England, played a part in the revolution of 1648, constituted the
most radical portion of the republican party and pursued the establishment of the reign of Christ,
absolute liberty and the complete transformation of society. They were called, in allusion to
their prophetic hopes, the men of the Fifth Monarchy. They were led by Harrison, [the Jew] Hewson,
Overton and many other officers of the parliamentary army, and their influence prevented Cromwell
from taking the crown. Later persecuted, they continued in
North America, Holland and even England, and gave rise to a large number of different sects,
including the Quakers.
Boni, Guillaume Postel, etc., Campanella (Cité du Soleil)
Established by Anabaptism, repressed but not defeated, the community became more than ever the
goal that humanity pursued with all its efforts. While the Jesuits were realising it in [the] Republic of
the
Paraguay, writers followed one another relentlessly to develop and propagate it everywhere.
doctrine. They saw it as the coming of the reign of God on earth, the holy republic of Christ. This is how
Guillaume Postel, Isidore Isolanis, Fialin, Bonjour and a thousand others saw it.
In 1552, seventeen years after the death of Thomas Morus, Doni published his book Les mondes
celestial, terrestrial, etc. A madman, representing present-day society, finds himself in the presence
of a wise man, an apostle of the community, who shows him that everything must be common to all.
He draws up a plan of this community where everyone is perfectly free, "doing nothing other than
what he wishes, each being equal in eating and dressing, and having as much in his house as the
other", and each child being brought up according to the inclination of his mind".
Guillaume Postel, one of the most learned men of his century, professor of mathematics and oriental
languages at the Collège de France from the time it was founded, devoted himself especially to the
religious side of the question. His book De orbis concordia is a first and very remarkable attempt to
synthesise a l l beliefs into a single one, Christianity, which contains them all, and to bring, in this
In this way, the universal communion of souls produced by reason and philosophy, all institutions to a
common and universal institution, uniting divine right and human right in the moral and social law of
charity, the definitive goal of all the facts of history, of all the tendencies of civilisation, of all t h e
efforts of humanity.
Around 1576, Jean Bodin, Montesquieu's precursor, wrote his book De la République, which M. Louis
Reybaud places alongside Thomas Morus's Livre d'or, in the midst of the troubles of the League.
But one man above all continued the work of Bonaventure and the Chancellor of England. This man,
whose glory filled the world, was received on 9 February 1635 by the King of France, Louis XIII, who,
with his head uncovered, went to meet him, embraced him twice, gave him the most solemn welcome,
saw him again and told him: "I am the King of France!
wrote several times. This man, in contact with the Grand Duke Ferdinand III and other princes, loved
and protected by Cardinal Richelieu, linked with Peiresc, Gassendi, Galileo and the greatest celebrities
of his time, admired by all the scholars, who was considered a prophet and whose works were
approved by the Sorbonne, was... a monk... His name was Campanella. Born on 5 September 1568 at
Stegnano, near Stilo, in Calabria, he revealed prodigious faculties from childhood. An admirer o f
Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Telesio, whose icy forehead he kissed in his coffin, he became a
Dominican at the age of eighteen. Dreaming of a new era, he travelled all over Italy and one of the
Medici, Ferdinand I, Duke of
Tuscany, tried in vain to fix him in his States.
One day, at the head of three hundred monks, Augustinians, Dominicans and Cordeliers, he called on the
people to the
freedom and attempted to free his homeland from the yoke of the Spanish. The year was 1599.
Surrendered by a traitor, chained t o a galley, thrown into a dungeon, a "damp and foul pit", locked
up successively in
Fifty prisons, subjected seven times to the most atrocious torture, the last of which lasted forty hours,
tearing his body to shreds and breaking his bones, without being able to get a single syllable out of
him, put on trial fifteen times, from the depths of his dungeon, he filled Europe with the noise of his
name, and his works were read everywhere, in France, Italy, England and Germany. The popes kept
asking for his freedom, and Urban VIII finally obtained it after five years of negotiations. Released on
45 May 1626 from the prison where he had spent twenty-seven years, he was called to Rome by the
Sovereign Pontiff, who welcomed him most affectionately and showered him with protection. He
remained there until October 1634, but was pursued by the
He lived, surrounded by admiration and respect, in the Dominican convent in the rue Saint Honoré,
where he died on 21 May 1639.
Campanella believed he had been "sent by God to reform kingdoms and give new systems for the
government of society". This vocation was real, but his system is nothing other than the eternal
Catholic tradition of the community. He developed it in The City of the Sun, published around 1630 and
part of one of his prodigious number of works. "It is a vision, a divination of the future state of
humanity", says Cléophas Dareste.
The citizens of the City of the Sun "worship God in the Trinity. They say that God is the sovereign
Power, from which proceeds the sovereign Science, which is also God, and that from both of them
comes from Love, which is power and science together". Not only do they believe in God, from whom
everything comes, in the immortality of souls and in the rewards and punishments of the other life,
but they profess Christianity "which will one day reign over the whole world, when the abuses that
corrupt it have disappeared, as the most illustrious theologians teach and hope". They see all events
in history and in the world as providential means used by God "for the purpose of uniting all nations
under one law" [...] The disturbance that exists in the world demonstrates to them the fall
original. They know the close solidarity that binds not only the members of families and the
They are therefore working to neutralise evil and extend good, by worshipping God, following religion
and practising the precept of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. "Praise and glory
to God in all ages
".
They see in the marvellous discoveries and inventions of modern times "the clear signs and
instruments of the reunion of the whole world in the same fold", and they expect new prophets, the
renewal of government, laws, the arts and the whole social order, the total renewal of the world and
the complete and universal triumph of Christianity. They know "the mystical relations
between things on earth and things beyond our globe; and yet they believe in man's free will".
The community thus rests on five fundamental foundations: religion, morality, science, progress and
freedom. All social functions are divided into three orders, an image of the Divine Trinity and a symbol
of freedom.
manifestation of man's three faculties: feeling, intelligence and activity. These three orders,
artists, scholars and manual workers, the expression of the beautiful, the true and the useful, that is to
say of the moral, intellectual and physical life, are represented by three ministers, or triumvirs, named
Love, Wisdom and Power, the three faces of the indivisible unity of the community, presided over by a
leader called the "God".
Philosopher or Metaphysician. Under these triumvirs, all social functions were organised into
divisions, decuries and centuries, and regulated in councils and public assemblies. "All magistrates
may
be changed by the will of the people". Election, competition and the order of merit determine any
hierarchy. The principal chief is elected by all, and must be the most capable man in the community,
possessing all the sciences to the most eminent degree; as soon as a more worthy man emerges, he is
elected in his place. The triumvirs who assist him must have a thorough knowledge of the arts they
direct, but at the same time be versed in philosophy, history and the physical sciences. "After the
Metaphysician, who
presides, like an architect, over all work, and who would be ashamed to know nothing of what it is
given t o man to be able to learn, after him, I say, Wisdom has under her command the heads of
each branch of science"; Love directs education, and Power all the work of strength. As we can see,
Campanella assigns the sciences, the humanities and the fine arts a predominant and, so to speak,
exclusive role.
The city is divided up, oriented, scientifically organised, and all its monuments and walls feature
representations and paintings of all the sciences, which children learn at play and with marvellous
speed. "Everything is shared by all, but the distribution is regulated by the magistrates. The sciences
and the pleasures of life are shared in such a way that no one is able to enjoy them.
think of appropriating others to the detriment of their fellow citizens". They destroy the spirit of
property, thus rendering selfishness purposeless, and all that remains is love of the community.
"Everything they need is given to them by the community. Nothing necessary is denied to anyone.
Friendship is made known by the services they render each other in sickness, in the study of science,
where they help each other with their mutual enlightenment, care and praise, and by giving each other
their necessities". They called themselves brothers.
Miscellaneous writings
It was not enough for Christianity to have founded and perpetuated the community to the ends of
the other hemisphere [in Paraguay]; it had to universalise its application to the w h o l e of temporal
society. The further he progressed, the more he redoubled his efforts to achieve this goal, pursued
relentlessly especially since Saint Bonaventure, and with which everyone associated, Catholics,
Protestants and philosophers alike. We do not pretend to list here all the writings that were more or
less directly aimed at this goal at the time, and we will simply cite the titles of a few of them.
James Harrington, an English publicist who was born in 1611 and died in 1677, published L'Oceana in
1656, which M. Louis Reybaud, in his Études sur les Réformateurs (Studies on the Reformers), ranks
first among the communist writings, after those of Thomas Morus and Campanella.
In his Treatise on War and Peace, published in 1625 and dedicated to Louis XIII, Grotius acknowledges
that God established the community of goods, that this community of the earth would still exist if vices
had not broken the bond of fraternal friendship, and that it always remains a right.
In his book De Cive (On the Citizen), Hobbes says: "There is no legitimate property; men are equal by
nature; she has given everyone the right to everything; and inequality is the effect of wickedness. Who
assigned ranks and properties to each individual? Why are some opulent, others mediocre or
destitute? Why masters, servants and slaves? By the wickedness o f men!
In his work on Civil Government, Locke exclaimed: "Fraud, bad faith, and avarice have produced
that inequality of fortunes which is the misfortune of the human race, by heaping on one side all
the vices with riches, and on the other all the evils with misery. The philosopher must
therefore consider the use of money to be one of the most disastrous inventions of human industry
".
In his philosophical treatise on natural laws, Cumberland notes that God made the earth
that all have a right to its goods, and that morality is based on fraternity, equality and the common
good of all.
In his Droit de la nature et des gens, Puffendorf proclaims natural equality and community
It recognises that property is a human institution, and that the present inequality of fortune is an
injustice which leads to other inequalities, through the insolence of the rich and the cowardice of the
poor.
[...]
But let us pass over a host of other writings, such as Hall's Other World, Nicolas de Munster's Land of
Peace, Jordano Bruno's Rout of the Triumphant Beast, and let us say a word about the three most
illustrious Catholic geniuses of the seventeenth century.
The great Pascal stigmatised ownership as usurpation: "This dog is mine,
said these poor children; this is my place in the sun, this is the image of the usurpation of the whole
earth". He then proclaims the community, which he defines perfectly in passages from which
Villegardelle has given extracts, and sums it up by saying: "The multitude that is not reduced to unity is
confusion; unity that is not multitude is tyranny".
Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, has the same tendencies. In Article 5 of Book 1 of his Politique sacrée, he
uses the text of the Mosaic law to set out and fully demonstrate, as a "consequence of the general
principles of humanity", the proposition that "the division of goods among men alters neither the
general society of the human race nor fraternal assistance". He goes further and develops the
principles of community at length, as can be seen from the fragments quoted in the History of Ideas
governments. Without governments," he says, "the earth and all goods would be as common among the
people as they are among themselves.
According to the primitive law of nature, no one has a particular right to a n y t h i n g ; everything
belongs to everyone, and it is from civil government that property is born.
Fénelon, the austere and pious Archbishop of Cambrai, loudly proclaimed the egalitarian community
as the type and ideal of society. Wanting to paint a picture of a model nation, he describes in his
brilliant pages the happiness of the inhabitants of Betica who, with no government, no laws, no judges,
no prisons, and living in profound peace, ignore even the name of property. They live," he says, "all
together without dividing the land... All property is held in common... They have no interest in...".
They are all free and equal. There is no distinction between them". The essence of these ideas can be
found, not
not only in his Télémaque, but in all his works, particularly his Fables, his Dialogues des morts and his
Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté. In his Essai philosophique sur le gouvernement
civil, after defining charity, he adds: "If all men had followed this great law of charity, there would be
no need for positive laws or magistrates. All t h e goods of the earth would have been common.
God says to all men: "Grow and multiply and fill the earth". He gives them all, indiscriminately, all the
herbs and all the woods on it.
grow".
As for the other writings which directly preach the community or present imagined pictures of it, they
are almost innumerable, and we shall limit ourselves to mentioning here, as a simple indication : - the
History of the Severambes, published in Brussels in 1677 and reprinted in 1716, which develops an
organisation of the community reminiscent of Campanella's City of the Sun and gives a plan of the
common city similar to that later adopted by Morelly; - the Memoirs of Gaudence of Lucca, which also
offer many analogies with the City of the Sun; -the Republic of Philosophers (or the Ajaoiens),
attributed to Fontenelle; - the Cessarès, published in London in 1764, and analysed in the Encyclopédie
méthodique; - the Histoire naturelle et civile des Galligènes, published in 1770, which is similar to
Diderot's Supplément au voyage deBougainville and recalls the Incas of
Marmontel; - Pechméja's Télèphe, imitated from Télémaque; - Terrasson's Séthos; - Florian's Numa; -
Rétif de la Bretonne's Découverte australe; - the République des Abeilles; - the Miroir
d'or de Vieland; - le Catéchisme de Boisset; - le Monde de Mercure; - les Voyages de Cyrus; - le
Nouveau Gulliver, and a multitude of others.
Morelly (Nature Code)
From the time we have now reached, that is to say towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the
movement which is taking France, Europe and the whole of Christendom towards the complete
realisation of the universal community, is accelerating and accelerating in a prodigious way. It was
sweeping up in its irresistible current all elite minds, regardless of the diversity of their religious,
philosophical, moral and political beliefs. The whole of society is shaken to prepare for the fulfilment of
its supreme ideal. This impetuous torrent, while overflowing on its banks, is
digs a deep bed in the bowels of humanity; and the human spirit, by probing to the heart of the
problem, brings forth a new focus of light.
An obscure teacher from Vitry-le-Français, Morelly, had the glory of giving the main impetus to this great
movement. Saint Bonaventure, after all the Fathers of the Church and the monks, had sketched out the
religious philosophy of the community, showing how it raises men to the divine ideal and makes them live
in God, detaching them from the love and worries of earthly goods. Morelly, in his turn, set out the moral
philosophy of the community, proving that it alone places us in a divine ideal.
a social environment conducive to the exercise of all virtues, the elimination of all vices, and in
complete harmony with all the needs and tendencies of our nature.
It is hard to believe the extent to which the thought of men who preached the community, such as
Thomas Morus and Campanella, has been distorted and disfigured. But it is above all with regard to
Morelly that this falsification has been taken the furthest. It is therefore important to discuss it in some
detail.
His father had written a number of books that have remained almost unknown, principally L'Essai sur
l'esprit humain (1743) and L'Essai sur le coeur humain (1745). Some bibliophiles attribute them to the
son. Be that as it may, in 1751 he published a work entitled Le Prince, etc., explaining "the system of
wise government", and in 1753 another entitled Le Naufrage des Iles flottantes, ou la Basiliade,
histoire d'un peuple vivant en communauté, ending with the following summary: Le monde est la
patrie de l'humanité, les biens de la nature doivent être communs à tous les hommes qui se
partageaient en groupes de familles pour en tirer le meilleur parti possible. In response to some of
the criticisms levelled at the Basiliade, in 1755 he published his famous Code de la
nature, the only one of his writings with which we will concern ourselves, because in it he develops, by
condensing it, all his thought. Morelly is simply continuing, from the point of view of society, the work
of all time
pursued, from the point of view of the individual, by the Church, its Fathers, its Doctors, its mystics, its
monks. Like them, he wants to extirpate the vice of appropriation, greed and avarice, the source and
principle of all the others; but whereas they attack it at its living source, the human soul, he destroys it
at its very object, which is property, "The only vice I know of in the universe," he says, "is Avarice; All
the others, whatever name we give them, are only tones, degrees of this one; it is the Proteus, the
Mercury, the base, the vehicle of all the vices. Analyse vanity and fatuity,
pride, ambition, deceit, hypocrisy, villainy; break down most of our sophistical virtues in the same way,
and they all boil down to that subtle and pernicious element, the desire to have: you will find it at the
very heart of disinterestedness. Now, could this universal plague, the particular interest, this slow
fever, this ethisis of all society have taken hold where it would never have found itself, no?
only food, but the slightest dangerous ferment? I don't think anyone will dispute the obviousness o f
the proposition that where there is no property, there can be none of its pernicious consequences.
Relying on both revelation and nature, he first shows that Christianity has done nothing else through
its dogmas, which proclaim the "natural equality of all men", by
the establishment of absolute community in the primitive Church of Jerusalem and in the monastic
orders. "All this conduct tended visibly to remind men of the true laws of nature. Thus Christianity, if
we consider it only as a human institution, is the most perfect.
But in a temporal society based on property and individual interest, "the power
The Church lacked the legislative power" to universalise "that community of the goods of nature, that
reciprocity of help, that equality of condition, which is the true spirit of Christianity".
What has been done in the religious and spiritual order must also be done in the civil and temporal
order, because nature only confirms the teachings of revelation. Bossuet says: "When God formed the
womb of man, he first put goodness there". Morelly, starting from this principle, shows that
benevolence is the very condition of happiness for everyone. It precedes every other feeling, every
It raises us to the notion of God, gives us an idea of the Divinity that is truly worthy of the
greatness of its purpose, perfects our faculties and gives them their true direction, their right
use, their complete harmony. The nature of the infinitely good Being that it reveals to us and that
the
The spectacle of the universe only increases, and is only altered as benevolence withers. Thus
"charity perfects the faculties of the mind through the feelings of the heart".
We can see how Morelly posits, under the name of beneficence, the same law that Christianity
proclaims under that of charity, nature and revelation having but one language. "It is the fundamental
and universal principle around which everything revolves; it is the centre from which everything
revolves.
all our faculties, so that its alteration distorts all the feelings of the heart, all the emotions of the mind, all
the emotions of the heart.
It produces idolatry, superstition, all the vices, all the plagues, all the crimes. Now, this community of
souls is reflected in the community of goods and life, a consequence of the community of nature and
consanguinity. So we find the community at the origin of humanity and of all nations.
Mably
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably was born in Grenoble on 14 March 1709. His father was a member of the
Dauphiné parliament and he was Condillac's elder brother. He studied with the Jesuits, entered the
seminary of Saint Sulpice under the protection of Cardinal de Tencin, who was related to his family,
and received the sub-diaconate.
Renouncing all the dignities of the Church to which he could easily have attained, he began his career in the
Church.
career as a philosopher and historian on the practical side, by fulfilling the highest functions of a
statesman under the name of Cardinal de Tencin, who had become a minister and for whom he was in
reality fulfilling the role of minister.
charge. He gave it up to devote himself exclusively to study and, according to his biographers, knew
everything by heart,
Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Titus Livius; absorbed for forty years in intellectual work, he
left it only once to go to Poland, when that unfortunate country came to see him.
to ask him and J.J. Rousseau for a constitution. He refused the highest positions; he was offered in vain
to be appointed tutor to the Dauphin, son of Louis XV; and no amount of urging could persuade him to
allow himself to be admitted to the Académie française. He died in 1785 at the age of seventy-five, on
the eve of the
convocation of the Estates-General that he so earnestly desired. This is the man who devoted his life to
fighting property and propagating the principles of the community in all its forms, in all its forms.
We will limit ourselves to citing the doubts raised by economists about
l'ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés published in 1768, the Traité de la législation ou Principes des lois,
published in 1776 and the Traité des droits et des devoirs du citoyen. One volume would barely suffice
to summarise the ideas of this great writer, from whom we can only give the following extracts.
Like Thomas Morus, Morelly and all the others, he paints an appalling picture of the countless miseries
and scourges produced in all times and places by the system of property ownership. "The
society," he says, "has almost everywhere offered nothing but a collection of oppressors and oppressed. A
thousand
Cruel revolutions have already changed the face of the earth a thousand times, and wiped out the
greatest empires; and yet so many repeated experiments have not even been able to "enlighten us. "In
the
On the contrary, a so-called philosophy that takes what is done senselessly in the world as the rule of
w h a t should be done, has come to the aid of our prejudices, and has given them an air of reason.
to perpetuate their empire". These charlatans have flattered our passions and our whims, instead of
establishing society on the basis of fraternity, solidarity, reciprocity of services and the principles o f
community and equality that lie deep in the human heart and towards which all our faculties tend.
In our proprietary society, "the superfluity of some gives birth to the misery of others... And the laws
that tolerate a few immense fortunes are the cause of all the evils that history portrays. It is in equality
of conditions that we must seek to preserve our social qualities and our happiness. Equality must
produce all good, because it unites men, elevates their souls, and makes them happy.
Inequality produces all evils, b e c a u s e it degrades them, humiliates them, and sows division and
hatred among them. If I establish equal citizens, who consider in men only their virtues and talents,
emulation will remain within fair bounds. Destroy this equality and emulation will immediately turn to
envy and jealousy, b e c a u s e it will no longer have an honest end in view. The legislator will only go
to unnecessary trouble if all his attention is not first given to establishing equality in the wealth and
status of citizens. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that inequality of wealth and
condition decomposes,
so to speak, and alters the natural feelings of his heart".
Pauperism and "beggary disgrace Europe today as slavery once disgraced the republics of the Greeks
and Romans. All the rights of humanity are violated". The horrors of war bloodied and devastated the
world. The rich punish theft "because they can be stolen from, and approve conquests because they
themselves are the thieves of nations".
"Open any history and you will see that all peoples have been tormented by this inequality of fortune.
Citizens, proud of their wealth, have scorned the idea that men condemned to work for a living are
their equals; immediately you see the birth of unjust and tyrannical governments, biased and
oppressive laws, and, to put it briefly, a host of calamities...
under which people groan. This is the picture presented by the history of all nations; I defy you to go
back to the first source of this disorder, and not find it in the
land ownership... "
[...]
Look at the countless texts of the Fathers against property, against the rich and the wealthy; they all
tend towards community, they all want, like Saint Paul, "equality". Nature herself tells us: "You are all
my children, and I love you all equally; I have given you the same...".
The whole earth is the heritage of each one of you; you were equal when you came out of my hands,
why did you grow weary of your condition?... Where will you find a principle of inequality? Did she
establish a special patrimony for each of you? Did she set boundaries in the fields? Did it not create
rich and poor? Had she favoured certain races with particular benefits, as we see that in order to establish
the empire of man over animals, she endowed us with several superior qualities... Who can deny that,
on leaving the hands of nature, we did not find ourselves in the most perfect condition?
equality? Did she not give all men the same organs, the same needs, the same reason? Didn't the
goods she had spread over the earth belong to them in common?
[...]
I would like to "establish a republic where all are equal, all are rich, all are poor, all are free, all are brothers,
our first law would be to own nothing. We would carry the fruits of our labours in public shops; this
would be the treasure of the State and the heritage of every citizen. Every year, the fathers of the
family would elect the bursars responsible for distributing the necessities of life.
each individual, to assign him the work that the community would require of him.
"I know all that property inspires in the ardour and taste for work; but if, in our corruption, we know
only this spring capable of moving us, let us not deceive ourselves to the point of believing that nothing
can make up for it. Do men have only one passion? If I knew how to stir it up, wouldn't the love of
glory and esteem become as active as avarice, which has none of its disadvantages? Can you not see
the human race becoming ennobled under this legislation and effortlessly finding a happiness that our
greed, our pride and our sought-after sluggishness do not give us?
useless promises. It was up to men to realise this chimera of a golden age. We would not have on our
heads this burden of useless laws with which all peoples are burdened today.
Tired of the tiring and senseless spectacle presented by Europe... my soul opens up to sweet hopes
".
[...]
These are, very briefly, the main ideas of Mably, who demonstrates them through history, proclaims
the divinity of Catholicism from which they originate, preaches the alliance of religion and philosophy,
and banishes atheists from the republic. In the last three books of his Treatise on Legislation he sets
out the practical means of achieving community, one of which is to abolish the right of the individual to
own property.
to test, to impose heavy taxes and to restrict inheritance and succession rights so that
that society as a whole, inheriting in place of individuals, would eventually become the sole owner of
everything.
Dom Hisoard, La propriété et la communauté des biens depuis l'antiquité jusqu'à nos jours, vol. 1,
Berche et Tralin, 1869, revised and annotated by B. K.