Abstract
Charismas are a particular case of the commerce between visible and invisible powers. The notion of charisma and grace is not independent of sacrifice, which entangles a divine death. St. Paul first coined the term charisma. Charisma begins by signifying the grace that derives through multiple channels from Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. For Paul grace is disseminated in every Christian who associates his or her life with that of Christ. After Christ, other sacred deaths will come to be associated with that grace, particularly the lives of the martyrs, but also those of political heroes. The paper examines the grace associated with the life of martyrs and its theological-political analogy with the life of political heroes as dispensators of some kind of grace and salvation. To deal with this topic, the paper puts in dialogue “Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought” (1951) by Ernst Kantorowicz, “Witness to the Truth” (1937) by Erik Peterson, and “The Concept of the Political” (1927) of Carl Schmitt.
1 Introduction: Martyrdom, Carl Schmitt, Erik Peterson and Ernst Kantorowicz
According to Jean Claude Schmitt: “The lasting solidarity of the living and the dead is not just an abstract structure of human societies: it is specifically confirmed in historical situations.”1 Charismas represent a particular instance of this commerce between visible and invisible powers, which persist even if considered deceased.
The notion of grace is not independent of sacrifice that involves a divine death. Sacrifice has been understood since ancient times as a divine cult from which the community receives numerous graces. In fact, for anthropologists such as Edward Burnett Tylor, James George Frazer, William Robertson Smith and Marcel Mauss, before the Christian era, sacrifices were offerings made by people to supernatural beings to ingratiate themselves with them.2 Paul was the first to coin the term charisma as such in connection with this idea of grace achieved through sacrifice.3 For him, grace derives through multiple channels from Christ’s redemptive sacrifice in favour of the Christian community. For Paul, grace is a generic way of calling very different kinds of gifts, such as prophecy, preaching, miracles, healing, tongues, revelation, giving and mercy.4 After the passio of Christ, for Christians, grace is disseminated in every Christian who associates his or her life with His. However, since the beginning of Christianity, many have been persecuted for distributing such graces and for having proclaimed that His is the only divine sacrifice which still remains in post-Christ time, through which all graces that are lasting come. Many were persecuted and some were even murdered. They are the martyrs.
This article examines the theological-political displacement which transferred the meaning of the death of martyrs as dispensers of some kind of grace and salvation for an entire people to that of political heroes. Walter Benjamin explored this analogy in The Origin of the German Tragic Drama (1928): “It is not too much to say that basically, a description of the martyr drama can be seen in all the definitions of drama in the poetic manuals.”5 And he continues: “Just as Christ, the King, suffered in the name of mankind, so does the royalty.”6
As I have shown when discussing relics, there are three aspects of the figure of the early-Christian martyr which explain the possible displacement of its meaning to that of the political hero. The first is its public character, which enabled the subsequent use of the relics in liturgical ceremonies; the second is the liminal place that the martyr occupied between life and death; and the third is the existential character of his heroism.7
To deal with this topic, the paper will follow the dialogue between three texts “Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought” (1951) by Ernst Kantorowicz, “Witness to the Truth” (1937) by Erik Peterson, and “The Concept of the Political” (1927) of Carl Schmitt. This implicit dialogue effectively enriches the theo-political topic of memento mori for the good of the community as a source of a disseminated charisma. Certainly, the significance of these texts for the question of charismatic deaths can only be derived from their connection with other texts by the same authors. In the case of Schmitt, first of all with his theses on the katechon, which are scattered throughout his work; in the case of Peterson, with his lessons on the Gospel of Luke and the Revelation of John and the writings on the Church; 8 in the case of Kantorowicz, mainly with The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology.9
Schmitt outlined a methodological idea in 1922 with the publication of his Political Theology, which became fruitful in practically all the writings of the theologian Peterson from 1931 onwards and shaped Kantorowicz’s historical research from 1946 onwards. Schmitt and Peterson were good friends for a long period of their lives. It seems implausible that Kantorowicz had a personal relationship with any of them. It is possible that he met Schmitt in Berlin and Munich and Peterson in Rome. Kantorowicz quotes Peterson extensively in many of his texts, but never mentions Schmitt. Nevertheless, his reflections echo some of Schmitt’s ideas, which he must have received through Peterson. The influence of Schmitt on Peterson’s work is evident.10
One of the themes that crosses between them is the political significance of divine sacrifice as a charismatic figure. This imaginary cross-dialogue between the jurist, the theologian and the historian, has the potential to elucidate certain aspects of the theological-political question of martyrdom that are unique and not readily discernible in other literary works on the subject. Through this dialogue, we can discern the possible theological-political transfer of meaning between three figures: the martyr, the katechon and the hero of the homeland.
The relationship between these intellectuals has been little discussed, apart from the articles published by György Geréby, Robert Pawlik and myself on their discussion of political theology; and the occasional articles by Uwe Hebekus and myself on the question of acclamations. Particularly on the question of the martyr, relations have been explored especially between Schmitt and Peterson, as in the case of Eduardo Schmidt Passos and Gabino Uríbarri. But, above all, Schmitt has been linked to Benjamin on the question of the martyr, as in the case of Sigried Weigel and Alisa Zhulina.11 A discussion of the dialogue of the three intellectuals which highlights the question of martyrdom and charisma is missing in the literature.
In this paper, my method will follow the Benjaminian writing of constellations.12 Against the historicist or even genealogical approach, Benjamin cuts the horizontal chain of causes and designs a “constellation” between past and present; he then brings different temporal sections closer together through a “figural” relation in an image which he calls “dialectic.” In the introduction to The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin points out that ideas are to things what constellations are to stars. Ideas only come to life when extremes cluster around them, that is when they bring together a set of elements, as distant as they may be from each other, by some kind of resemblance. The constellations make it possible to trace intellectual connections which shed light on an idea without establishing around it a causal chain or debt.
2 The Eschatological Exception: Peterson’s View of the Charismatic Figure of Martyrs
Peterson opens the text on the martyrs Zeuge der Wahrheit (1937)13 with the image of the relics under the altar. This symbolism indicates that the concrete existence of the Christian spiritual community of grace comes from the sacrifice of Christ and from other sacrificed lives associated to Him. Their life and death are not merely private matters, but the origin of a community, i.e. of a sacred public space. This transition from individual death to the foundation of a community allows considering Peterson’s writing on martyrs as an eminently theological-political text.
Martyrs lived and died to confess the true faith that designates Christ as the only saviour of humanity. Their blood, together with their testimony, is mentioned for the first time in the Acts of the Apostles (22:19–10) and in the Book of the Revelation (1:9 and 2:12–13): “The souls of those who have been slain for the word’s sake.” However, the presence of the martyrs in the church was already foretold in Matthew 10. As Christ sends the apostles to spread the Gospel, he prophesies that they will be like lambs amid wolves. Here, the “wolves” are a symbolic expression representing the Jews and the Gentiles, among whom Christ himself was not welcome. Matthew 5:11–12 prophesies the persecution and all kinds of hardships that some will suffer because of the Son of Man. Martyrs are not only prophesied in Matthew, but also in the fourth beatitude of Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount (Lk, 6:20–49): “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus sees in his disciples future martyrs, to whom he led the way.14
Peterson recognises that the public political space of martyrs has historically been opened up through the legal proceedings conducted against Christ’s apostles.15 The martyr confesses in the public-political space the existence of another public space to which their confession refers: “He who confesses Jesus publicly on this earth is, in the moment of his confession, confessed publicly by Jesus in heaven.”16 Hence, Peterson speaks of a “shared eschatological fellowship of suffering and destiny”17 between Christ and his disciples. Martyrdom is not a condition sine qua non to be a fellow of Christ, but is regarded as a highly probable outcome for anyone who follows Him. Thus, in the Book of Revelation, a vast number of martyrs appears, too numerous to count, dressed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.
It can be argued that, in addition to the apostolic ministry, the martyrs possess a distinct charismatic gift. No one can produce this special grace. Fundamentally, for Peterson, when faced with choosing between life and death for the sake of Christ, the martyr anticipates the moment of the final judgment. Everything that happens in the “hour”18 of martyrdom must be placed in an eschatological dimension: the confession of the martyr reveals the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city which is beyond every political community. Therefore, says Peterson:
But where the meaning of the suffering with Christ becomes public, that is, in the open political setting of a public trial – and that is an essential precondition of the concept of the martyr – there too the glory of Christ becomes public and “revealed,” in a way comparable to the public character of the state.19
This was the case of the protomartyr Stephan: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Commenting on this passage, Peterson says: “It is completely clear that here everything is ‘grace,’ both the ‘public’ confession as well as the ‘public’ suffering and finally the revelation of the glory linked to them, the glory of him with whom they suffer and for whom they make their testimony.”20 The Book of Revelation itself was also written in the “divinely willed holy hour” of confession and martyrdom: John wrote it in Patmos, where he was imprisoned for bearing witness to Christ.
Peterson insists on the public-political character of the kingdom of Christ, which is even indicated by the symbolism used in the text of Revelation:21 the seven-branched candlestick, which corresponds to the candlesticks in the courts of Greek and Roman rulers, whose fire symbolizes the long life wished upon them. The seven stars that Christ holds in his hand are also symbols of Roman emperors to denote the omnipotence of their rule. Also, the proskynesis (adoration) and acclamations reflect an analogy with the political world. Moreover, Christ is acclaimed as the king of kings and lord of lords (Rev 19:16 and 17:14).
Following Peterson, not only the heavenly Jerusalem reveals in the “hour” of martyrdom; it also summons the absolute enemy, the Antichrist. Its anonymity among human beings fades away, since some have been sealed on the forehead with the seal of Christ, while others have been marked with the sign of the Antichrist. In 1 John 2:18 and 4:1, he speaks of false prophets whom he calls Antichrists who “have gone out into the world.” The Antichrist is not interested in philosophy or theology, but belongs to the realm of politics and is at war with the Lamb and the saints. The discourse of the false prophet presupposes the false political order established by the Antichrist. The Antichrist is a paradigmatic eschatological figure.22
The “love of enemies” only makes sense in the new aeon, Peterson will say, when Christ has already triumphed: “The commandment to love one’s enemies is not a human commandment, but an extremely inhuman commandment. Anyone who has any sensibility for the heroic and the original knows this.”23 The enemy spoken of in Luke is not the civilian enemy. It is not the opponent who maintains his dialectical position against us, “but the absolute enemy, who has left all human dispute behind and who wants to do away with Christ and his disciples.” And he continues:
With the human enemy, with the enemy of the normal situation, one fights, and one fights in a gentlemanly way, with the eschatological-apocalyptic enemy one does not fight, but loves him [...] because the enemy of whom we are speaking here, no longer appears as a human essence [...] but as an uncannily objective and impersonal content.24
These are also the enemies of the martyr’s love. This ultimate significant enmity not only divides human beings, but the cosmos itself, revealing the full length and scope of the political.
Therefore, the “eschatological exception” reveals “the political” as an alternative order. First, the political also requires worship. Power partakes either of the power of the devil as delegated to the Antichrist (Rev 13:2) or of that of God. It is difficult to discern its signs: “Those who do not bow before the image of the Beast are either slain (13:15) or subjected to an economic boycott (13:17).”25 Secondly, the false political order is marked by a metaphysical disorientation. According to Peterson, this disorientation, which consists of a pluralism seeking its own gods, is referred to in Revelations with the expression: “fornication with the whore of Babylon.”26 Thirdly, there is an alliance between the Antichrist and money: when the prostitute of Babylon falls, the outcry of merchants and traders is heard. Just as it happens when the Tower of Babel collapses, the martyr makes visible the opposition between the virgin and the prostitute.
These three features of “the political” manifest the greatest possible tension between the realm of the political and the eschatological moment of the advent of the kingdom of God. Since the death of Christ, every political order has had to face the challenge of contrasting itself with this eschatological moment or trying to conceal it. The figure of the martyrs thus represents a breach in the supposed autonomy of the political order. Love of enemies is also envisaged for this “hour.”27
As Peterson points out, the image of Christ the King is a counter-figure to the mere Caesarism of the Roman Emperor. He who lacks all legitimacy sees before his eyes a Christ who gives legitimacy to power by his testimony of life and death for the people. Before him, every earthly power becomes weakened.
The martyr is an exceptional figure who has been granted the grace of God, the charisma, for his courage in defending the faith in opposition to political power. The act of giving his life, in the same way as the martyrdom of Christ, is a revelation. On the one hand, it is the revelation of the kingdom of God and of the relativity of political space; on the second hand, it is the revelation of the true enemy and, therefore, of the unbridgeable boundary between good and evil; and finally, it is the revelation of the idolatry of political power, i.e., the gilding of the false symbol.
Peterson points out: “Against this heroic message humanity, alas so cowardly, now rebels.”28 Rev 21:8 says: “But as for the cowardly, their place will be with the murderers and the adulterers and the rest, in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur.” Every Christian is called to bear witness. As Paul wrote in Rom 14:7: “For none of us lives a private life and none of us lives a private death.”
3 The Quasi-Martyr Paradigm of the Schmittian Katechon
Martyrs become heroes of a kind of freedom which is above and goes beyond all earthly power, since this form of power has no definitive dominion over death. Indeed, it is precisely sovereign power that was understood as a power over life and death. Sending soldiers to their deaths is the power of the highest authority in the community.
As a reader of Hobbes, Schmitt set before his eyes the memento mori that motivates the development of Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty. It is the fear of a violent death that drives individuals in the state of nature to enter into the pact that constructs the artificial person of the absolute sovereign: “Their fear rises to an extreme,” says Schmitt.29 The question is whether that which motivates the loss of total freedom in the clutches of absolute power – i.e., security – succeeds in saving the individuals from the threat of violent death, or whether, precisely because of that loss of freedom, they begin to fear the absolute ruler. For, as Hobbes points out in his Leviathan, one of the rights of the sovereign is the right over the life and death of his subjects when it comes to fighting a war to save the Commonwealth. Is it possible for someone who is always facing the crucial dilemma of an existing dialectic between life and death to disappear from the political horizon and thus cease to fear?
In his Concept of the Political (1927), Schmitt already draws a comparison between the modern State and the Church on the question of right to life and death. It is here where the figure of the martyr makes an entrance in his writings. The difference between the State and all other human associations is the possibility of disposing of people’s lives to safeguard the community against any kind of threat. According to Schmitt, this extraordinary and objectively terrifying power only belongs to the State. Any religious community “may perhaps require its members to die for their faith and to endure martyrdom, but only for the salvation of their soul, not for the religious community as such.”30
While indeed the martyr’s death, as Peterson points out, has a public dimension and refers to an eschatological community, it is not instrumental either to the heavenly city or to the political community, as might be the death of the kamikaze. The martyr does not die to save the political community, of course. Nor the eschatological community, since this is already conquered forever by Christ. The martyr dies to announce that violent death at the hands of political power is not the ultimate destiny. There is heavenly patria beyond the Commonwealth. That is, martyrs die for a new life. Something they would not do if that life did not exist. At this very moment, the martyr stands above sovereign power. It is evident that these deaths could be interpreted as any other form of punishment meted out by the sovereign were it not for the fact that they were defended on the grounds of their commitment to the faith in a future kingdom. It is the reason for the death and its publicity that makes these deaths exceptional, as they challenge the authority of political power in the name of a more effective power, namely the power of the resurrected Christ. In other words, the martyr is not merely someone who abides by the law for their own personal reasons.31
According to Schmitt’s exegesis of the political, what the eschatological moment of martyrdom reveals about the political order is that life does not only struggle against violent death, as Hobbes supposes, but that “the spirit struggles against the spirit.”32 Schmitt stresses this idea as he tries to distance himself from the anti-political vision of liberalism, which interprets the political only in terms of an acceleration of technical progress blind to any kind of political struggle. The twentieth century, in his opinion, has fostered a religious faith in technology that leads to a belief in a collective salvation that can be achieved by technical means. This era lacks heroes and heroic deaths because scientific progress can save us even without facing death:
This is the conviction of an activist metaphysics, it is the faith in an unlimited power of man’s dominion over nature, even over the human physis, in an unlimited reversal of natural barriers, in unlimited possibilities of modification and happiness of natural human existence in the hereafter. This may be called fantastic or satanic, but not merely dead, spiritless or soulless mechanics.33
However, as he stresses at the end of the text:
We recognise the pluralism of spiritual life and we know that the centre of gravity of human existence cannot be a neutral domain […] For life does not struggle with death, nor spirit with the lack of it. Spirit struggles against the spirit, life against life, and it is from the power of an integral knowledge that the order of human things is born. Ab integro nascitur ordo.34
Schmitt recalls part of a verse from Virgil’s IV Eclogue (Virgil, Buc. 4, v. 5): Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.35 It is interpreted that during the reign of Augustus, a new great cycle of the times was born. The coming of Christ is usually interpreted as this ab integro, an absolute novelty that generates a new “order of years,” that is a new aeon. Classical exegetes have understood this poem by Virgil as authentically revolutionary in terms of the conception of time and to a certain extent prophetic. In the opinion of Buisel de Sequeiros, Virgil goes far beyond a mutation within the cyclical scheme of time, he goes to the rupture of the cyclical conception and its replacement by another more open and linear cosmovision, centered on the puer, which allows the play of human freedom without rigidly corseting it with the repetition ad infinitum of the circular system. In other words, he speaks of a new beginning of the computation of historical time which remits to an eschatological time.36
In this 1929 text, therefore, Schmitt develops an eschatological orientation without which the meaning of the political, understood as an extremely dissociated relationship between friends and enemies, would remain opaque. The incision of eschatology in history gives political enmity a new meaning: a reasonable pluralism of life, in which friends and enemies are to be preserved until the end of time. The realm of the political is the space of existential plurality. All concepts, including that of the spirit, are pluralistic and can only be explained based on concrete political existence. Hence Schmitt’s concept of the political is closer to Hegel’s than to Hobbes’, as he points out in The Concept of the Political.37 For Hegel, enmity comes from ethical difference (sittlich), not from a moral one. The enemy is not morally evil; its difference refers to the Volksgeist or, in other words, to what is called the patria. Schmitt defines the political by a specific relation, irreducible to others: the relation of friend-enemy – i.e., the extreme intensity of a union or separation between human groups.38 The political enemy is only the public enemy. Taken to the extreme, the touchstone of the authenticity or truth of this grouping, which generates an unbridgeable difference, is the possibility of waging war. The possibility of facing death for political reasons, i.e., because one’s group might be harmed or exterminated. Those who fight in this struggle not only find themselves in the dilemma of saving their life, but also of defending a specific kind of life in the face of death. The risk of depoliticization is also the risk of no longer having anything to defend. Or, to use Peterson’s expression, it is the position furthest removed from the “eschatological exception.”
There is, therefore, a relationship for Schmitt between keeping alive the “exception of the political,” – the need to discriminate between friends and enemies, between forms of life – and maintaining the “eschatological exception” – the circumstances under which, in Peterson’s view, the martyrs find themselves. This “eschatological exception” refers to be willing to die for a life which leaps into a new form of existence in the hereafter (in a new aeon, in Petersonian terms) and in which the absolute enemy reveals his face. Only in this last moment, we have to love the enemy and embrace our death.
There is a figure which connects the exception relative to the present historical time, which has not reached the end, and the absolute exception, which is somehow interfering in the present time, even if it is not yet present, as the arrival of a new aeon. For Schmitt, this figure is not the martyr, but the katechon.39 This figure was also present in the writings of Erik Peterson between 1925 and 1932. For him, however, the notion of katechon has a purely eschatological meaning and not an eschatological-historical one as in the case of Schmitt.
The katechon is not necessarily a martyr or a fighter, but a time retainer which, present in history, delays the arrival of the last hour, i.e., the end of history.40 Katechon is a term coined by Paul of Tarsus in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, verses 3 to 9 refer to the Antichrist, and to state that the day of judgment will only take place after he comes. Paul refers to the fact that before the end of the world, the adversary who wants to remove God from his throne will come. The mystery of iniquity is already at work; it only remains that he who now withholds it be taken out of the way. It is not a force of action, but of restraint. Paul was taking for granted something which has not come down to us when he says “ye know” what it is that holds him back until now, preventing his appearing until his time. As for Paul, for Schmitt, the eschatological moment never ceases to be present in history in one way or another, through the idea of the retention of the power of evil: “On the katechon: it is for me the only possibility to understand history as a Christian and to find a full meaning.”41
The katechon represents an a priori subordination of historical time to its “eschatological future.” The following text from Political Theology II illuminates his concept of eschatology, which is a constant in the short works devoted to his theology of history such as Drei Stufen historischer Sinngebung (1950), Geschichtsschreibung: Alexis de Tocqueville (1950), and Die Einheit der Welt (1952):
The entire Christian aeon is not a long march but a single long waiting, a long interim between two simultaneities, between the appearance of the Lord in the time of the Roman Caesar Augustus and the Lord’s return at the end of time. Within this long interim, there emerge continually numerous new worldly interims, larger or smaller, which are literally between times. […] Peterson was clearly aware of these implicit difficulties because the immediate expectation of the second coming, which paralyses all earthly activity, is prolonged through the Christian church and eschatology becomes a “doctrine of the last things.”42
Consequently, Peterson attributes the paralysis directly to the refusal of the Jewish people to recognize Christ as the awaited Messiah. Schmitt discusses his position.43 For him, the katechon is the reality of a historical force that stops the end of time by repressing the spirit of evil – a force that gives meaning to history and sometimes also to political history. Indeed, at a given moment, the most authentic declaration of enmity is that which can stop the intrusion of the absolute enemy, the Antichrist. Thanks to the function of the katechon, the political is connected to eschatology: it is in this connection where the political decision draws its ultimate legitimation from. On the contrary, for Peterson, only the church can attribute this role. In any case, for Schmitt, the katechon is not a “conservative” force, as many interpreters have suggested, since it is not simply retaining a historical mode of progress accelerating into the void, but at the same time, it is illuminating the emergence of new forces that lead to a new way of life in connection (Schmitt says “two simultaneities”) with the new kingdom proclaimed by Christ.
Augustin before Schmitt declares absolute ignorance as to whom Paul is referring to as katechon when he says “you know who he is,” and merely gathers different interpretations from others.44 Schmitt also makes his considerations as to whom Paul may be referring to and gives some examples: “The medieval Caesarism of the German lords understands itself historically as katechon. Even Luther understood it in this way, while Calvin took a decisive turn when he no longer regarded the Empire as katechon, but the preaching of the word of God.”45
Thus, in the Nomos of the Earth, he points out that the medieval Christian empire understood itself as a katechon.46 It is also the case, in Schmitt’s view, of the Byzantine Empire that prevented the Arabs from conquering Italy, which made the extermination of ancient and Christian culture impossible, or of Rudolf II, the German king, who was not an active hero but merely delayed the Thirty Years’ War.47 Other examples appear in an article in Das Reich from 1942:
In Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, people believed in a mysteriously restraining force, denoted by the Greek term katechon (restrainer), which prevented the long overdue apocalyptic end of times from occurring prematurely. Tertullian and others saw the contemporary ancient Roman Empire as the restrainer, which, by its mere existence, ‘held back’ the aeon and caused a postponement of the end. European medieval thought inherited this belief, and essential processes of medieval history are only understandable from this perspective. In a different but analogous sense, Hegel, the last great systematic philosopher of Germany, in Nietzsche’s view, was nothing but the great delayer and obstructer on the path to true atheism. However, delaying and restraining forces can also take shape in peculiar, symbolic ways in individual figures and personalities of political history. The old Emperor Franz Joseph seemed to repeatedly delay the end of the antiquated Habsburg Empire merely by his existence, and when the opinion was widespread that Austria would not collapse as long as he lived, it was more than mere foolish superstition. After World War I in 1918, Czech President Masaryk assumed the function of a restrainer on a correspondingly smaller scale. For Poland, Marshal Piłsudski became a kind of katechon. Perhaps these examples suffice to indicate the political and historical significance contained in the role of the delayer. When President Roosevelt abandoned the ground of isolation and neutrality, he subjected himself – whether he wanted to or not – to the delaying and restraining orientation of the old British Empire. At the same time, however, he proclaimed an ‘American Century’ to maintain the American line focused on the new and the future, in which the astonishing rise of the United States in the 19th century had unfolded. [...] It would have been much if Roosevelt, through his entry into the war, had become one of the great delayers and obstructers of world history. However, the inner indecisiveness of the process prevents this, like any other genuine effect. Instead, here unfolds the fate of those who, without determination of inner sense, drift with their ship into the maelstrom of history. They are neither great movers nor great delayers but can only end as unwilling accelerators.48
But the katechon does not necessarily have to be a political instance. In “Die Lage der europäischen Rechtswissenschaft,” he cites Hegel and Savigny among those who have taken the place of the katechon. And he explains why: “Both of them were real arresters (in the literal translation of Aufhalter), katechontes in the true sense of the word, arresters of those who both freely or without their free collaboration accelerate functionalisation without loopholes.”49
Schmitt also envisions the possibility of an Antichrist without a human face, which is identified with secularism or progressive secular humanism. It is in Theodor Däubler’s Nordlicht (1916) that this idea first appears.50 From the 1940s onwards, the notion crystallizes that the Antichrist merges with an acceleration of technical functionalization. The image of the Antichrist that appears in Schmitt’s eyes in the twentieth century is a scientific and technical revolution, “a completely de-theologised and modern-scientific closure of any political theology.”51 Everything is justified by progress, which does not distinguish between good and evil. The more the political enemy is neutralised by accelerated progress, which seems to know no enemies, the closer the eschatological exception approaches. It is the katechontes who can discern the danger of the acceleration of pure immanence. In this situation, which is certainly not desirable for Schmitt, the real legitimacy of political power comes from becoming the figure of the katechon, who tries to stop progress for the sake of justice by becoming a quasi-martyr. He refers to this figure as a Hercules: “To dominate unleashed technique would be, for example, the work of a new Hercules. It is here that I expect to find the new call, today’s challenge.”52
While the modern sovereign is only committed to his power, he could connect with historical destiny through the theological-political figure of the katechon who depends on a Christian theology of history. Schmitt certainly does not go so far as to see in the figure of the martyr a type of his katechon. However, we can see in the “restrainer” a symbolic paradigm of a quasi-martyr insofar as he opposes the power of the Antichrist and this may bring him either economic boycott or political ostracism or in an extreme case death. What the restrainer lacks in order to be a martyr is the explicit confession of faith in the risen Christ. However, with his concrete action, the katechon is holding back the power of evil and thus delays the end of time. In a way this figure connects the idea of the political hero, of the one who fights for the good of his community, with that of the martyr. A theoretical operation that will be carried out by Kantorowicz.
4 Heroes as Martyrs in Kantorowicz’s view
Kantorowicz discusses the figure of the martyr of the patria from a historical point of view in his text “Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought.”53 The text begins with the discussion of two cardinals of the Catholic church, Cardinal Mercier and Cardinal Billot, about the extent to which dying for the fatherland, i.e. for the Commonwealth, is identical with dying for the confession of faith in Christ.54 Or, in other words, whether the analogy between the hero of the fatherland and the martyr crosses the threshold of eschatology and holds up to its ultimate consequences.
How did the transition from giving one’s life for faith in God to giving one’s life for one’s country take place historically? How did the hero of the fatherland become a martyr? Kantorowicz answers that this transition was not possible without successive theological-political transfers of meaning. As the historian is wont to do, he peppers his account with numerous historical examples, weaved like a genealogy. The katechontic moment of the Christian Empire identified by Carl Schmitt is present in them.
Kantorowicz begins by pointing out that the quasi-deification of war heroes can be visualised in cemeteries as well as in laudatory speeches as early as the 5th century BC.55 In particular, he cites Virgil’s Aeneid VI (660), which describes the image of those who fought for their homeland, suffered wounds and reached the Elysian plains, together with poets, priests and prophets: “The temples of all these are girded with snowy ribbons.” He also quotes Horace and his “Roman Ode” (III, 2), whence comes the expression “pro patria mori.” Certainly, at that moment, the idea of patria, as Kantorowicz points out, was not a political idea, but rather a philosophical or religious one. It implied not so much a territory as the life and gods of those who lived in it. Therefore, dying for one’s homeland was associated with the salvation of those for whom one died. In other words, it implies the dispensation of grace.
Death for the patria lost its religious connotation in the Christian West. Precisely because, as is clear from Augustine, the earthly fatherland is opposed to the eternal patria, the heavenly Jerusalem.56 The martyrs are the models of civic self-sacrifice insofar as they die for the heavenly homeland, remarks Kantorowicz: “The saints had given their lives for the invisible community in heaven and the celestial city, the true patria of their desires; and a final return to that fatherland in Heaven should be the normal desire of every Christian soul while wandering in exile on earth.”57
In The King’s Two Bodies he remarks: “The Christian martyr, therefore, who had offered himself up for the invisible polity and had died for his divine Lord pro fide, was to remain – actually until the twentieth century – the genuine model of civic self- sacrifice.”58 Explicitly in this point Kantorowicz cited Peterson in a footnote: “The quasi-political concept of celestial Jerusalem has been made a focal point in the works of Erik Peterson […].”59
Although the martyr may be an example for the hero, the two figures remain dissociated in the Christian West until the Crusades. Firstly, a warrior’s political sacrifice is personal and not public, Kantorowicz points out. That is, the warrior offers his life for loyalty to his Lord and Master, rather than for a community.
In the article “Pro Patria Mori,” Kantorowicz states that there is no representation of an eternal homeland beyond the concrete historical Lord, even if the warrior follows the same schema as the martyr: he dies for “his Lord and Master.”60 However, in The King’s Two Bodies, thanks to the new material discovered in Gaines Post,61 Kantorowicz offers the idea that jurists in the early thirteenth century pointed out “that the duty to defend the patria was higher than the feudal obligations of vassal to lord,”62 which illustrates the general shift of the center of political life. In Kantorowicz’s view, this suggests that the exaltation of the concept of the national patria may have its roots in the assimilation with the heavenly patria, thereby establishing a theological- political analogy.63 Following Post, Kantorowicz also comments that
the word patria was found in Canon Law, and it was indeed very frequent in Roman Law. The glossators were prompted to comment on it and to use it freely. When discussing the notion of bellum iustum the Canonists, ever since the late twelfth century, pointed out that war was justified in case of “inevitable and urgent necessity,” for the defense of the patria as well as for the defense of faith and the Church, and they repeatedly exemplified such necessitas by referring to the wars which the Oriental Christians waged against the infidel in the Holy Land.64
Secondly, the idea of the kingdom’s defence, “pro defensione regni,” was consolidated together with the payment of taxes. It is not life, it is money that is ordinarily handed over. The payment of taxes to the Lord was for the defence of the community. Indeed, following Kantorowicz’s research, in the 13th century, the kings collected taxes for the needs of the kingdom, following the model of the taxes for the Crusades for the defence of the Holy Land.
The Crusades were legitimised as a defensive war and never as aggression against the infidels. The Norman kings of Sicily transferred the idea of defensive warfare from the crusades to their own case and began to levy taxes pro defensione (neccesiate) regni: “What was good for the regnum Christi Regis, Jerusalem and the Holy Land, was good for the regnum regis Siciliae or Franciae.”65 This idea has not disappeared, although sometimes instead of “pro defensione regni,” “for the defence of the King” is used. In the second half of the 13th century, especially in France, the expression “taxes ad tuitionem patriae” or “ad defensionem patriae” can be found.66
Therefore, it was with the Crusades that the transfer of meaning between the heavenly Jerusalem and the Holy Land began to allow the analogy between the earthly Jerusalem and every patria. The Crusades were a mixed theological-political action. They defended at the same time a political territory and the salvation of those who took part in the campaigns. The Council of Clermont in 1095, and later Urban II, established that “the crusade effected a remissio omnium peccatorum.”67 With this premise, the death of a crusader in battle was the same as martyrdom. Kantorowicz takes up a text by Urban II: “None who shall be killed in this campaign for the love of God and his brothers shall doubt that he will find remission of his sins and the eternal beatitude according to the mercy of God.”68
But also, the Chanson de Roland says: “If you die, you shall be holy martyrs.”69 And Kantorowicz points out, of course, that Charlemagne’s warriors fought against the Saracens in Spain and could be equated with the Crusaders. But it is certainly very difficult in that case to disarticulate the relationship between fighting for one’s own religion and fighting for the French emperor and fellow Frenchmen. Hence, the possibility of martyrdom also had a national flavour. In Kantorowicz’s s view, the idea of holy war became secularised and its place was taken by the defence of the nation symbolised by the crown of France.
Kantorowicz also gives the example of a sermon given by a cleric at the departure of Philip IV of France to fight against the unjust cause of Flanders. Here the idea of the crown of the martyrs appears; it is reserved for those who die for their king. In this case, they understood their relationship to the king in a new, organological way, as the head of a political body analogous to the corpus mysticum of the church.70 Kantorowicz concludes that the end of the 13th century, secular communities both large and small were defined as “mystical bodies.” Innocent IV (reigned 1243–1254) helped their emergence by introducing a fictitious or juridical person which stood as an abstraction of a given set of people, such as corporation, community or dignity.
Kantorowicz based his theory of The King’s Two Bodies on the transfer of meanings between the political body and the body of Christ, which is his church and which becomes a mystical body in the successive ecclesiology.71 Thanks to this transference, the idea of dying for one’s country acquires its ancient nobility and is perceived from a religious perspective: “It appears as a sacrifice for the corpus mysticum of the state which is no less a reality than the corpus mysticum of the church.”72
However, this is not a mere substitution or secularisation of the old idea of dying for one’s country. The Christian idea of martyrdom continues to operate in the sense that dying for one’s country is to be understood as an act of extreme charity. The equation between love of God and love of neighbour is central for understanding the meaning of martyrdom in relation to dying for one’s country. This is how Thomas Aquinas sees it in De Regimine principum (III, c. 4), but also Dante in Monarchy and many philosophers of the second half of the 13th century. There are cases like that of Remigio de Girolami who is a convinced corporatist and for whom the fatherland takes absolute precedence over family or individual life and even supernatural life. After warning against the false death pro republica, – the death which is sought for revenge, or honour and glory – Henry of Ghent “compares the death of a citizen for his brothers and his community to the supreme sacrifice of Christ for mankind.”73 The life and death of political heroes become a dispenser of grace, and so these heroes begin to emerge as charismatic figures which follow the martyr model.
5 Conclusions
From the above reflections, we can draw the following conclusions: First of all, we can affirm that martyrs and other institutional figures with a “similar pattern,” i.e. who experience struggle, sacrifice and even death for the good of a people, are charismatic because they defend the communal good without giving in to the dominant political power, either the dominant power within the community itself, or the power that tries to impose itself on the political community being fought for. Both the martyr and the hero can find themselves in one of these two circumstances, a special grace flows from them, which comes from always being situated in the “eschatological exception.”
Secondly, the charisma or grace these figures bear emerges in the political sphere associated with “salvation.” This salvation is always addressed to a community and it presupposes their dwelling in the liminal place between life and death.
Thirdly, the political community is always haunted by the threat or the possibility of the ‘breach’ that these charismatic figures can provoke in the sovereign power that presents itself as eminent and absolute at a given historical moment. The rupture occurs because it is precisely through their actions that martyrs, katechontes and heroes point to another, more eminent power. These breaches require a will to challenge the sovereignty of power which is not afraid of dying for the greater good. Indeed, they are the ones who translocate life and death, disregarding the life that renounces the confession of the true saviour according to the words of Matthew 10:28: “Do not fear those who can kill the body.” The political power which is to take their lives away lacks the necessary power to force them to reject their faith. Truth and power meet face-to-face in the legal processes of martyrdom. Martyrs prove their confession, the central part of any martyrium, giving up their existence. For this reason, only the shedding of one’s blood for truth merits what the church fathers rightly called “the crown of martyrdom.”74 The crowing a truth with one’s existence turns it into a confession. But not only the martyr, also the katechon, and the hero imply a “counter-sovereignty.”75 In the case of the latter two, however, there is no explicit profession of faith in the resurrection of Christ and, consequently, in the proclamation of a new eschatological community of greater power. In the case of the katechon, his charisma comes from his ability to reveal the absolute enemy, and therefore has more to do with the gift of prophecy than with the healing power of his life, as in the case of the martyr or the hero of the
fatherland, who, in addition to having the character of revealing the truth and the enemy, are saviours of the community, the former for heaven, the latter for history. All three oppose the power of evil.
Paul elaborates his conception of charisma and charismata primarily in his epistles to the Romans and 1 Corinthians. In these references, we find a broad meaning of gifts and services; and other more specific meanings such as government, prophecy, preaching, miracle, healing, tongues, revelation, giving, mercy and interpretation. In Ephesians 4, 1, Paul designates all of them as gifts or presents. For being charismata, that grace, the given gift should come from God and should be inscribed in the order of salvation. We find this condition in the case of the martyr, who associates his sacrifice with that of Christ and receives strength from him. In the case of the katechontes and heroes, this condition is lacking, and yet the fact of prophesying and saving cannot but be considered a certain grace, provided it is genuine and not a mere imitatio.
Finally, such figures “disseminate” charisma: they are not centralised in an “office” and are not easy to identify. They can emerge at any time, in any space and coming from any environment: they are exceptional. Perhaps their only attribute is their effectiveness, insofar as in some way they all involve an incarnation of a future to come. Therefore, far from simply being the product of fanaticism and superstition, these disseminators of charisma are theological-political figures in their own right.
Biography
Montserrat Herrero is Full Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Navarra (Spain). She is the Principal Investigator of a Project on Religion and Civil Society at the Institute Culture and Society at the same University. Editor of the Journal Anuario Filosófico.
Her main books are Theopolitical Figures: Scripture, Prophecy, Oath, Charisma, Hospitality (Edinburgh University Press, 2023); The Political Discourse of Carl Schmitt. A Mystic of Order (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), La política revolucionaria de John Locke [Revolutionary Politics of John Locke] (Madrid, Tecnos, 2015), Ficciones políticas: el eco de Thomas Hobbes en el ocaso de la modernidad [Political Fictions: Hobbes’ Influence at the End of Modernity], (Buenos Aires, Madrid, Katz, 2012), El nomos y lo político: la filosofía política de Carl Schmitt [The Nomos and The Political: Political Philosophy of Carl Schmitt] (Pamplona, Eunsa, 2007, 2ª ed.), Carl Schmitt und Álvaro d’Ors Briefwechsel [Correspondence between Carl Schmitt and Álvaro d’Ors] (Berlín, Duncker & Humblot, 2004).
Editions: Le Sacré et la Parole. Le Serment au Moyen Age (M. Aurell, J. Aurell, M. Herrero) (Paris : Classiques Garnier, 2018). Political Theology in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Discourses, Rites and Representations, (M. Herrero, J. Aurell, A. Miceli) (Turnhout, Brepols,2017). Religion and the Political, (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, Olms, 2012). Hegel: Contemporary Readings, (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York, Olms, 2011)
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Schmitt, Ghosts, p. 11.
See Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites; Frazer, The Golden Bough; Tylor, Primitive Culture; Loysi, Essai historique sur le sacrifice; Harris, Cannibals and Kings; Mauss and Hubert, Sacrifice; Girard, La violence et le sacré. The book by Strenski, Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice, opposes the structuralist rejection of the moral and religious character of sacrifice and offers a narrative of religious constructions of the sacrifice of the 19th and 20th centuries as “objective historical facts of the religious imagination,” p. 7.
Aurell, “The Notion of Charisma: Historicizing the Gift of God on Medieval Europe,” pp. 607–637.
Herrero, Theopolitical Figures, pp. 157–205.
Benjamin The Origin of the German Tragic Drama, p. 72.
Benjamin The Origin of the German Tragic Drama, p. 73.
Herrero, “The Politics of Relics,” p. 301.
Erik Peterson, Lukasevangelium und Sinoptika. Ausgewählten Schriften 5 (Würzburg: Echter, 2005); “Imperium, Christus und Antichristus,” In Offenbarung des Johannes und politisch-theologische Texte. Ausgewählten Schriften 4 (Würzburg: Echter, 2004), pp. 230–231; Ekklesia. Studien zum altchristlichen Kirchenbegriff. Ausgewählten Schriften. Sonderband (Würzburg: Echter, 2010).
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Herrero, “On Political Theology: The Hidden Dialogue between C. Schmitt and Ernst H. Kantorowicz in The King’s Two Bodies,” pp. 1164–1177. And Herrero, “Acclamations,” pp. 1045–1057. See also Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, pp. 741 et seq.
György Geréby, “Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson on the Problem of Political Theology: A footnote to Kantorowicz,” in Azid Al-Azmeh and János M. Bak, Monotheistic Kingship. The Medieval Variants (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005); Montserrat Herrero, “Acclamations: a theological-political topic in the crossed dialogue between Erik Peterson, Ernst H. Kantorowicz and Carl Schmitt,” History of European Ideas 45:7 (2019), pp. 1045–1057; Montserrat Herrero, “On Political Theology: The Hidden Dialogue between C. Schmitt and Ernst H. Kantorowicz in The King’s Two Bodies,” History of European Ideas 41/8, (2015), pp. 1164–1177; Robert Pawlik, “La teologie politiche medievali e le loro ripercussioni novecentesche: Ernst Kantorowicz a confronto con Carl Schmitt,” in Thomas Frank-Daniela Rando, Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963). Storia politica come scienza culturale (Pavia: Pavia University Press, 2015), pp. 19–44; Uwe Hebekus, “Enthusiasmus und Recht. Figurationen der Akklamation bei Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Erik Peterson und Carl Schmitt,” in: Jürgen Brokoff/Jürgen Fohrmann ed., Politische Theologie. Formen und Funktionen im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003), pp. 97–113; Eduardo Schmidt Passos, “The Blood of the Martyrs: Erik Peterson’s Theology of Martyrdom and Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology of Sovereignty,” The Review of Politics 80 (2018), pp. 487–510; Gabino Uríbarri, “El tiempo escatológico como ‘estado de excepción.’ Un capítulo de la relación entre Erik Peterson y Carl Schmitt,” en: G. Tejerina, J. Yusta eds., Deus Semper maior. Teología en el horizonte de su verdad siempre más grande (Salamanca: Secretariado Trinitario, 2021), pp. 1341–1358; Sigrid Weigel, “The Martyr and the Sovereign: Scenes from a Contemporary Tragic Drama, Read through Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt,” The New Centennial Review 4 (2004), pp. 109–23; Alisa Zhulina, “The Tyrant and the Martyr: Recent Research on Sovereignty and Theater,” Journal of the History of Ideas 82 (2021), pp. 329–349.
Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, pp. 27–56.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, pp. 151–183.
Peterson, Lukasevangelium, 219. Peterson interprets the gospel prophecies of the Sermon on the Mount (Lk 6:20–38), including the grace to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness and love for one’s enemies, as modifications of the ordinary moral commandments for the eschatological time. As Uríbarri underlines, it is striking how many times Peterson uses the term exception, Uríbarri, El tiempo escatológico, pp. 1363 et seq. In particular “Eschatologischer Ausnahmefall.” This idea of exceptionality as a revelation of the true decision had been brought out by Schmitt in his Political Theology (1922) and is taken up by Peterson in his theological conception of the eschatological time and martyrdom. On the question of the revelation of enmity, however, Nichtweiss argues for Peterson’s priority over Schmitt. Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, pp. 760–762.
See Lebreton, Histoire de l’Église; Barnes, “Legislation against the Christians,” pp. 32–50; Boissier, La fin du paganisme; Ruinart, Les véritables Actes Des Martyrs; and Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 157.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, pp. 153 et seq.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 162.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 163.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 163.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, pp. 163 et seq.
As Uríbarri points out, Eschatological time, p. 1369. There are many places where Peterson discusses the question of the Antichrist. In particular in Offenbarung des Johannes und politisch-theologische Texte and in Der erste Brief an die Korinther und Paulus-Studien.
Peterson, Lukasevangelium, p. 241. See also Nichtweiss, Apokalyptische Verfassungslehren, pp. 47–51.
Peterson, Lukasevangelium, p. 241.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 167.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 168.
Peterson, Lukasevangelium, p. 238.
Peterson, Witness to the Truth, p. 170.
Schmitt, The Leviathan, p. 31: “The terror of the state of nature drives anguished individuals to come together; their fear rises to an extreme; a spark of reason (ratio) flashes, and suddenly there stands in front of them a new god.”
Schmitt, “El concepto de lo político. Versión de 1927,” p. 47. My translation. It should be noted that there is no English translation of the 1927 edition of The Concept of the Political, in which this concrete text appears. It is important to distinguish this edition from the 1932 edition, which was later republished.
As Philippe Buc, “Martyre et ritualité dans l’Antiquité tardive. Horizons de l’écriture médiévale des rituels,” Annales. Histoire Sciences Sociales 52 (1997), pp. 63–92, has pointed out, from an objective point of view, the martyr’s death was not special; it is nothing more than another death within the death rituals of the pagan world. Indeed, for some historians, as is the case of Buc, the added significance to the martyrs’ lives and deaths was the work of Christian propaganda insofar as, by publishing either the martyrs’ acts or hagiographies, Christians sought to establish a sublimated interpretation of what actually happened: a mere death. The discourses that are constructed about these deaths elevate the event to the level of significance by explaining the reasons of those deaths. It seems clear that in the Christian historiographical, hagiographical, and theological tradition, there is a resignification of these special lives and deaths by the Exhortatio ad martyres that have been passed down to us, in particular, those of Tertullian, Origen and Cyprian. These testimonies reveal the public character of martyrdom. Martyrdom is not a requirement of faith as such, but the response of the saints to a historical circumstance that is a scandal for history itself, namely, the persecutions. Confession and witnessing are the only commands of the gospel. Their life and death are therefore not merely private matters, but the origin of a community, i.e. of a sacred public space.
Schmitt, Das Zeitalter, p. 95. My translation. There is an English translation, Carl Schmitt, “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations (1929),” Telos (1993), pp. 130–142, but I have preferred to make the translation myself confronting the German text.
Schmitt, Das Zeitalter, p. 92. My translation.
Schmitt, Das Zeitalter, p. 95. My translation.
Schmitt, Das Zeitalter, p. 95.
Buisel de Sequeiros, ¿Crisis del tiempo cíclico?, p. 241.
Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 62 et seq.
Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 26 et seq.
In a reply to Pierre Linn, Schmitt states that the katechon theory in his writings dates back to 1932, the year of the publication of The Concept of the Political in its final form. See Carl Schmitt, Glossarium, p. 80. The topic of the katechon is also present in Peterson’s work already in the period between 1925 and 1932; it is always associated with a reflection on the Antichrist. Particularly in Erik Peterson, Imperium, Christus und Antichristus, pp. 230–231; and in Politik und Theologie: Der liberale Nationalstaat des 19. Jahrhunderts und die Theologie, pp. 238–246, particularly p. 247. See Caronello, L’anticristo, p. 169.
There are several works that investigate the role played by both the idea of Antichrist and Katechon in Schmitt’s thought. It is the case of Meuter, Der Katechon; Stemeseder, Der politische Mythus des Antichristen; Grossheutschi, Carl Schmitt und die Lehre vom Katechon; Maraviglia, La penultima Guerra; Paléologue, Sous l’oeil du grand inquisiteur; Michele Nicoletti, et al. Il Katéchon (2Ts 2,6–7). None of them, however, consider the aspect in which we are dealing with them here, which appears in contrast with Peterson and Kantorowicz.
Schmitt, Glossarium, 19.12.1947, p. 63.
Schmitt, Political Theology II, p. 86.
Schmitt, Political Theology II, p. 86 and p. 146.
Augustine of Hypo, The City of God, XX, 19, pp. 906 et seq.
Schmitt, Drei Stufen, pp. 929 et seq.
Schmitt, Nomos of the Earth, pp. 59 et seq.
These examples appear in Carl Schmitt, Land and Sea.
Schmitt, Beschleuniger, p. 436.
Schmitt, Die Lage, p. 429.
Schmitt, Theodor Däubler, p. 65.
Schmitt, Political Theology II, p. 128.
Schmitt, Die geschichtliche Struktur, p. 157.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, pp. 472–492. A modification of this text was later included in The King’s Two Bodies.
Merciers words are clear in his pastoral letter A Shepherd among Wolves: “I do not hesitate to reply that there is no doubt whatever that Christ crowns military valor, and that death Christianly accepted, assures to the soldier the salvation of his soul. The soldier who dies to save his brothers, to protect the hearths and the altars of his country, fulfils the highest form of love [...] We are justified in hoping for them the immortal crown which encircles the foreheads of the elect. For such is the virtue of an act of perfect love that, of itself alone, it wipes out a whole life of sin. Of a sinner instantly it makes a saint.” Mercier, A Shepherd, p. 46.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 473.
Augustine, City of God, V, p. 18.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 475.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 234 et seq.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 235.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 477.
Gaines Post, “Two Notes on Nationalism in the Middle Ages: 1. Pugna pro patria,” Traditio, 9 (1953), pp. 281–320.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 234.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 246.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 236.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, 478; The King’s Two Bodies, p. 236
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 235
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 481.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 241. He quotes from Paul Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien, I: Katalanien (Abh. Gtittingen, N.F., XVIll :2, Berlin, 1926), p. 287.
Bedier, Joseph ed. La chanson de Roland (Editions d’Art H. Piazza: Paris, 1931), lines 1128–1135.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 483.
Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 487.
Kantorowicz, Pro Patria Mori, p. 490
San Cipriano, Epistola 39, p. 3. San Cipriano, De lapsis, p. 4.
I use the expression of Sigrid Weigel; see Sigrid Weigel, Märtyrer-Porträts.