Pufendorf was born in 1632 in a small village in Lutheran Saxony. Following studies in Leipzig and Jena, he took a position in 1658 as tutor to the family of Baron Peter Julius Coyet, the Swedish minister (ambassador) in Denmark. As a result of war between Sweden and Denmark, Pufendorf was put in prison, where he composed his first treatise on natural law, the Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis (Elements of Universal Jurisprudence, 1660). After a brief stay in Holland he was appointed professor of international law and philology (later natural and international law) in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. In 1664 he published his first important political work, De statu imperii Germanici (On the Constitution of the German Empire, translated as The Present State of Germany), under the pseudonym “Severinus de Monzambano.” His controversial argument that the German empire was a kind of “irregular” state, because sovereignty was divided between the emperor and the estates, was widely rejected, and the work was banned in German universities and—because of its anti-Catholicism—condemned by the pope.
In 1670 Pufendorf became professor of natural and international law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Lund at the invitation of King Charles XI of Sweden. Here he published his major treatises on natural law as well as a number of supplementary and polemical essays. A brief recapture of Lund by the Danes in 1677 led him to move to Stockholm, where he served for more than ten years as privy councillor, secretary of state, and royal historian to Charles XI. In this function he composed two works on Swedish history and a comparative analysis of the interests and powers of European states, the Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe (1682–86). With the publication of Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in 1687, Pufendorf recommended himself as adviser to the great elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, to whom he dedicated the work. In fact, he moved to Berlin in 1688 and served as court historian and privy and judicial councillor to Frederick William I and Frederick III, who was to become the first king of Prussia in 1701. Before his death in 1694, Pufendorf began writing the history of these two sovereigns, and he also composed a treatise on the reunification of Protestants in Europe, published posthumously in 1695, titled Jus feciale divinum sive de consensu et dissensu protestantium (The Law of Covenants, or on the Consensus and Dissensus among Protestants, translated as The Divine Feudal Law: Or, Covenants with Mankind, Represented).
IV
The Divine Feudal Law merits special attention with regard to Pufendorf’s attitude toward religion and toleration, for it has to be seen as a complement to the present work. In his later work Pufendorf clarifies that toleration is just one means among others for dealing with religious dissent. It should be applied only when the reuniting of religions or denominations proves impossible.6 In Pufendorf’s view, the reuniting of Lutherans and Calvinists was possible on the basis of a theological system containing the fundamental articles necessary for salvation. In contrast, the differences between Protestants and Catholics could never be overcome, and the present text and its context in European politics explain this opinion of Pufendorf’s.
As a consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Europe was divided into two blocs: a Catholic bloc led by France and a Protestant alliance led by Brandenburg-Prussia. The latter was soon to be joined by England after William of Orange’s accession to the throne in 1688. Protestant leaders such as Frederick William I of Brandenburg-Prussia perceived France as an enemy of Protestantism that aimed at establishing a universal monarchy in Europe. The division of European powers into two blocs was further complicated by the interconfessional structures of the German empire. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) provided a framework for peaceful coexistence of different religious denominations. It recognized the Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist confessions and guaranteed the rights of those communities established before 1624. Consequently, the line between Protestant and Catholic realms cut across the German empire.7 In his early work on the constitution of the German empire, The Present State of Germany, Pufendorf had explained this confessional division as one of the weaknesses of the empire, describing in the last section, which he omitted in later editions, the attendant dangers. Among other things, he insisted that the German Catholic estates ought to be prevented from forming alliances with other Catholic powers against the empire.8
In the eyes of Protestant rulers, the danger of Catholic alliances was imminent after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This helps to explain why Pufendorf’s analysis of the relation between religion and civil society is not confined to the question of “how far the Power of Sovereigns extends it self in Ecclesiastical Matters.” This is the guiding question only of sections 1 to 7, where Pufendorf, as seen above, insists that the ruler has a duty to respect religious liberty. As the state is not founded for the sake of religion, the sovereign’s power in ecclesiastical affairs is restricted to ensuring that “natural religion”—that is, that part of religion that does not depend on revelation but is accessible by the help of reason alone—is maintained and cultivated among the subjects (sec. 7). Like most of his contemporaries, including Locke, Pufendorf was convinced that the belief in God’s existence and in His providence was a basic requirement of man as a moral agent. Being without this minimum of natural religion, atheists and blasphemers were deemed incapable of a moral life and excluded from toleration.
Pufendorf insists from the beginning of the work that, in addition, it must be examined “what bounds ought to be prescribed to the Priestly Order in Ecclesiastical Affairs.” If either worldly sovereigns or churches transgress their bounds, this will lead to “great Abuses, Disturbances and Oppressions, both in Church and State” (sec. 1). Pufendorf’s lengthy analyses of the origin and nature of the Jewish (secs. 8–9) and Christian (secs. 11–39) religions are clearly directed against the Roman Catholic Church, his central point being that according to Scripture no ecclesiastical sovereignty ought to be exercised by priests. Already in his Historische und politische Beschreibung der geistlichen Monarchie des Stuhls zu Rom (Historical and Political Description of the Spiritual Monarchy of Rome, 1679), he denounced the worldly ambition of the Catholic Church (the “Empire of the Pope” or the “Popish monarchy”). In section 35 of the present edition Pufendorf concludes that the religious controversies between the Protestants and the Catholics “are so deeply entangled with the Interest of the Popish Monarchy, that it is impossible for the Roman Catholicks to recede an Inch from the point of the controverted Articles, without diminution of their Authority, and endangering their great Revenues; so, that all hopes of an Union betwixt them and the Protestants, are in vain, unless the latter can resolve to submit themselves under the same Popish Yoak which they have shaken off so long ago.”
Against Catholicism Pufendorf argues that the Christian Church has to be understood as a kind of college or private society, subject to the jurisdiction of the secular ruler. He observes that the original meaning of the word ecclesia implies not statehood but democratic governance. Elders or deputies who were instituted at certain times always depended on the common consent of the congregation. For that reason, becoming a member of the church does not change the function of any man as a subject to civil government (sec. 31).
The last sections of the work (secs. 40–54) deal with the question of whether the church “received any Alteration from its former Condition, after Princes, whole Kingdoms, and States did profess the Christian religion” (sec. 40). According to Pufendorf, there was alteration indeed. Whereas the early church had to be considered as nothing but a college or private society, the church is “now being put under the particular Protection of her Sovereigns” (sec. 41). By becoming Christians, sovereigns acquire peculiar rights in ecclesiastical affairs, because of the union of their duties as Christians and as worldly rulers. Pufendorf seems thus to acknowledge that, where a state-church exists, the relation between religion and civil society is not the same as before. This explains why in this section of the work he approaches the question of toleration from a different perspective. Toleration is now discussed in terms of “reason of state.” Thus Pufendorf examines whether the sovereign’s duty to preserve public peace and tranquillity requires him to promote religious unity in the state. He first affirms that “it is not absolutely necessary to
