최선의 국가형태 -프랑스와 오트만(1524-1590)의 혼합정체론의 신학적 기초-

Protestant political theories have been studied by many historians, but it is very rare for us to find any recent studies focussing on the theological foundations of those “Reformed” political thought. It may thus be said that resistance right theory of Theodore Beza (1519-1605), for instance, has been studied without any reference to his religious doctrine. To fully understand the particular aspects of Protestant political thought cannot be done, however, without explaining its theological foundations. This study tries to give an answer to this question by reading Consolatio e Sacris litteris petita (1593) of François Hotman, one of the greatest sixteenth-century Reformed political thinkers. We, who are living in the period of corruption, are in duty, Hotman thinks, bound to return to the Bible. We can learn thereof, he continues, what was God‘s will when He led men to build their first polity on the earth. He had created, and, in consequence, what would be the best form of government according to the divine law. As Heinrich Bullinger’s commentaries on Daniel, one of the books of the Old Testament, gave Hotman some consolation, in that the latter found in the former's sayings a theological justification of armed resistance to tyranny, reading the Bible was the best way to console his agony in those hard times of the Civil wars. Consolatio e Sacris litteris petita was thus the result of his reading of the Bible. Political experiences of the Hebrew have thus the universal meaning for Hotman. And the incessant repetition of instauratio and defectio of the Church forms the circular history of the people. This sacred truth allowed Hotman to be hopeful with regard to the future of his country, even when the king seemed to commit the crime of tyrant God had interdicted in the Tyrannorum iura. Hotman becomes proponent of the political regime that Moses established among his people according to the will of God. It was the federation of (twelve) tribes, who maintained a mixed constitution of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The judge, who was incarnating the monarchical element in the public assembly, had no other preoccupation than the cult of God and the freedom of the people. Practice of collective deliberation through a republican institution instead of centralized form of government is the only way that men can take to complement their rational capacity made imperfect by the first human violation of the divine law.