rnamentation
which in the shape of that monarch's personal glorification still
prevented the naked structure from being seen in all its clearness.
_L'Etat c'est moi_ can be as aptly the watchword of a despotic
oligarchy, or a levelling socialism, as of a kingly tyranny, according
as it passes from the lips of the one to the few or the many. It is true
that the last phase was not completed till long after the Middle Ages
had closed, but the tendency towards it is evident in the teachings of
the civil lawyers.

Thus, for example, State absolutism is visible in the various
suggestions made by men like Pierre du Bois and Wycliff (who, in the
expression of their thoughts, are both rather lawyers than schoolmen) to
dispossess the clergy of their temporalities. The principles urged, for
instance, by these two in justification of this spoliation could be
applied equally well to the estates of laymen. For the same principles
put into the King's hand the undetermined power of doing what was
necessary for the well-being of the State. It is true that Pierre du
Bois (_De Recuperatione Terre Sancte_, pp. 39-41, 115-8) asserted that
the royal authority was limited to deal in this way with Church lands,
and could not touch what belonged to others. But this proviso was
obviously inserted so arbitrarily that its logical force could not have
had any effect. Political necessity alone prevented it from being used
against the nobility and gentry.

Ockham, however, the clever Oxford Franciscan, who formed one of the
group of pamphleteers that defended Louis of Bavaria against Pope John
XXII, quite clearly enlarged the grounds for Church disendowment so as
to include the taking over by the State of all individual property. He
was a thinker whose theories were strangely compounded of absolutism and
democracy. The Emperor was to be supported because his autocracy came
from the people. Hence, when Ockham is arguing about ecclesiastical
wealth, and the way in which it could be quite fairly confiscated by the
Government, he enters into a discussion about the origin of the imperial
dignity. This, he declares, was deliberately handed over by the people
to the Emperor. To escape making the Pope the original donor of the
imperial title, Ockham concedes that privilege to the people. It was
they, the people, who had handed over to the Caesars of the Holy Roman
Empire all their own rights and powers. Hence Louis was a monarch whose
absolutism rested o