ex of the
orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough
and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But
for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not
absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His
state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either
those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates.
All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are
not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain
democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free
men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations
and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and
slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this
scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the
freemen belong to the state.

It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest
political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of
unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the
dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says
St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly
than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as
far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always
one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant--the heart; in
the spirit only one faculty has sway--reason. Bees have one sole
ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign--God. Experience
shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of
discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice,
and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by
dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which
are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are
gladdened by affluence.[2] The rule of the multitudes can not be
sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a
tyrant.[3]

Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in
practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a
multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and
authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of
the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for
centuries the fiction of the unive