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On Kingship to the King of Cyprus

by Thomas Aquinas

Summary

In the De regno, ad regem Cypri, an unfinished work, Thomas Aquinas planned to discuss two topics: the origin of kingly government and the things which pertain to the office of a king. In other words, it was to be both theoretical and practical.

The idea of the origin of kingly government was not to be a historical discussion; rather it encompasses the problem of the rational "origin" of monarchy. Thomas' intention is to answer the question, "Why should one man in a given society be set over all other men." The theoretical section of the treatise also contains a long "digression" on the reward of a king who performs his duty well and, correspondingly, on the punishment of a tyrant who fails to do so.

In Book Two, Aquinas starts by noting that the right practice of royal government is to be discovered by studying the model of God's foundation of the universe. But he also turns to the ecclesiastico-political teaching on the relations between the two powers; it becomes a treatise on how a king in Christendom should govern by being subject in spiritual matters to the "divine government administered by priests." The final section of Book Two deals with the monarch's duty particularly in regard to the foundation of a kingdom.

The original printed Latin editions have proved too deficient to be the sole basis of this translation. Fr. Eschmann made a minute revision of the first translation against the readings of the manuscripts. The result is a reliable English version of Aquinas' own synopsis of his political notions, with a sufficient introduction, a list of relevant variants in the manuscripts, an appendix of parallel texts from other writings of Aquinas, and a useful bibliography.