Dual sovereignty
The theory of the so-called dual sovereignty (also double sovereignty , duplex majestas) is a state-theoretical approach of the 17th century and relates in particular to the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire .
The concept was u. a. developed by the legal scholars Dominicus Arumaeus , Christoph Besold and Benedict Carpzov and goes back to the approaches of Johannes Althusius . The imperial journalist Johannes Limnaeus fully expanded it and applied it to the empire.
Theory and application
theory
In principle, the theory of dual sovereignty attempts to reconcile two competing concepts of sovereignty. On the one hand there is sovereignty , as Jean Bodin put it in his book Six Books on the State , and on the other hand the early approaches to popular sovereignty . The assignments of the highest power in the state (of sovereignty ) to the monarchical top or to the entirety of the nationals (the people or the estates ) were diametrically opposed.
According to Limnaeus, sovereignty over the state belongs only to the state community itself, which is why the power of rule of the king or emperor can only be a derived and specially granted authority. Unlike Bodin, however, Limnaeus grants both poles of the political tension between the state community and the monarch a highest rank in the state, a majesty (from Latin maiestas ), which, however, are of different quality. This results from the fact that for Limnaeus only the state community can be really sovereign and therefore constitutes the power of the highest state office in turn. As a result, the state community has the majesty of sovereignty (the maiestas realis ) and the ruler a majesty because of his highest authority (the maiestas personalis , because it is derived from him and only belongs to him ad personam ). He had to make this distinction. a. also because if Bodin's terminology had been strictly applied, the monarch would no longer have any majesty whatsoever, which in view of the constitutional reality of most of the states of his time must appear untenable.
Against this background it is clear that , unlike Bodin, Limnaeus did not use the terms sovereignty and majesty synonymously. For him, majesty did not mean summa potestas ( Latin for supreme power = sovereignty), but only outstanding power in a state. Different majesties can be distributed to different authorities depending on the political balance of power. This made the theory apt to capture the dualism between the German emperor and the imperial estates , which characterized the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the history of its impact, the terms maiestas realis and maiestas personalis in particular gained wide recognition and were sometimes misinterpreted and summarized under the catchphrase (double) double sovereignty . However, this common name is misleading: Limnaeus and his predecessors do not have double or double sovereignty. A doubling or division would in fact contradict the idea of sovereignty at its core. Limnaeus does not assign sovereignty to the two poles of the political spectrum, but rather a maiestas (“highness”), which denotes a high rank or authority. In this system, sovereignty is structured in a dualistic way and encompasses both poles: The one, indivisible sovereignty of the state community generates state power and transfers it to the ruler without completely renouncing it. Thus sovereignty is neither divided between two majesties nor transferred from the first to the second, but is exercised in the derived state authority of the personal majesty.
Application to the imperial constitution
| State authority: | assigned: |
| maiestas realis | (People or) totality of the imperial estates |
| maiestas personalis | Emperors & Imperial Estates |
According to Johannes Limnaeus' theory of the imperial state, the imperial people in the Holy Roman Empire are the subject of real majesty. It is represented by the totality of the imperial estates to which u. a. the emperor also belongs. In the transfer of the highest official and state authority, the personal majesty, the electors in turn represent the state community. In the royal election , these transfer a part of the maiestas personalis to the person to be elected , whereby he receives and accepts the conditions and the scope of his authority in the royal election surrender. The other part of the personal majesty remains with the imperial estates, which they can dispose of together with the emperor when exercising his comitial rights and the reserve rights to be exercised together with the electors. The empire is therefore the highest state organ that is bound by the basic imperial laws and the electoral capitulations etc. in its administration . If the emperor violates or violates these regulae administrandi , the electors have the right to remove the king again. An interesting consequence of this theory is that Limnaeus does not classify the empire as an aristocracy , but as a status mixtus , a mixed constitution, in order to take into account the revisable but permanent state power of the empire and to depict the dualism of the imperial constitution.
literature
- Horst Dreitzel: Absolutism and the corporate constitution in Germany. A Contribution to the Continuity and Discontinuity of Political Theory in the Early Modern Period . von Zabern, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-8053-1179-6 , ( publications of the Institute for European History Mainz supplement: Department Universal History 24).
- Rudolf Hoke : Johannes Limnaeus . In: Notker Hammerstein , Michael Stolleis (ed.): State thinkers in the early modern times . Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39329-2 , pp. 100-117.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rudolf Hoke: Johannes Limnaeus , in: Michael Stolleis (Hrsg.): Staatsdenker in the early modern times . Frankfurt am Main, 1995. pp. 100-117. Here: p. 105.
- ^ Rudolf Hoke: Johannes Limnaeus , p. 104.
- ^ Rudolf Hoke: Johannes Limnaeus . P. 108 f.