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History of European Ideas

ISSN: 0191-6599 (Print) 1873-541X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rhei20

On Political Theology: The Hidden Dialogue


between C. Schmitt and Ernst H. Kantorowicz in
The King's Two Bodies

Montserrat Herrero

To cite this article: Montserrat Herrero (2015) 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, 1164-1177, DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2015.1077148

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2015.1077148

Published online: 28 Sep 2015.

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HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS, 2015
VOL. 41, NO. 8, 1164–1177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2015.1077148

On Political Theology: The Hidden Dialogue between C. Schmitt


and Ernst H. Kantorowicz in The King’s Two Bodies
Montserrat Herrero
Universidad de Navarra, Filosofía, Biblioteca de Humanidades, Campus Universitario, Pamplona, 31009 Spain

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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In recent years, Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s work The King’s Two Bodies (1957) Political theology;
has been the object of both historical and philosophical research. secularisation; Ernst
Kantorowicz decided to subtitle his book ‘A Study in Medieval Political Kantorowicz; Carl Schmitt;
Erik Peterson
Theology’, but few scholars have actually recognised his work as
research in ‘political theology’. The aim of this article, then, is to uncover
the sense(s) in which his book might be considered a work of ‘political
theology’, especially in the sense coined by Carl Schmitt in 1922. Such a
discussion ultimately aims to contribute to the foundation of political-
theology research, a subject that has been widespread among European
intellectuals in the twentieth century and which continues to be a focus
of interest. This article argues that Kantorowicz’s book can be
interpreted as a practice of—and also an enriching addition to—
Schmitt’s thesis on political theology, even if it does not mention
Schmitt’s name. Such a conclusion is only possible by accepting that
there was a heated dialogue between Kantorowicz and Schmitt through
Erik Peterson’s work. The article further discusses its approach with other
scholars that, even though they are based on similar hypotheses, make
different conclusions.

Contents
1. Kantorowicz as Carl Schmitt’s reader ................................................................................................. 1164
2. Political theology: Carl Schmitt’s approach ....................................................................................... 1165
3. Peterson’s criticism of Schmitt’s Political Theology.......................................................................... 1167
4. How does political theology in Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies work? ........................... 1171
5. Schmitt’s controversial influence on Kantorowicz’s work .............................................................. 1173
Infinite cross-relations between Church and State, active in every century of the Middle Ages, produced hybrids
in either camp. Mutual borrowings and exchanges of insignia, political symbols, prerogatives, and rights of hon-
our had been carried on perpetually between the spiritual and secular leaders of Christian society.
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 193.

1. Kantorowicz as Carl Schmitt’s reader


In recent years, Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s work The King’s Two Bodies (1957) has been the object of
both historical and philosophical research. Kantorowicz decided to subtitle his book ‘A Study in
Medieval Political Theology’, but few scholars have recognised his work as research in ‘political
theology’. The aim of this article, then, is to uncover the sense(s) in which his book might be con-
sidered a work of ‘political theology’, especially in the sense coined by Carl Schmitt in 1922. Such a

CONTACT MONTSERRAT HERRERO mherrero@unav.es


© 2015 Taylor & Francis
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1165

discussion ultimately aims to contribute to the foundation of political theology research, a subject
that has been widespread among European intellectuals in the twentieth century and which con-
tinues to be a focus of interest. The article argues that Kantorowicz’s book can be interpreted as a
practice of—and also an enriching addition to—Schmitt’s thesis on political theology, even if it
does not mention Schmitt’s name. Such a conclusion is only possible by accepting that there was
a heated dialogue between Kantorowicz and Schmitt through Erik Peterson’s work. The article
further discusses its approach with other scholars that, even though they are based on similar
hypotheses, make different conclusions.
For achieving this goal, this article offers a four-step argument. First of all, the article briefly
exposes the content and extent of Carl Schmitt’s political theology. Second, it focuses on Peterson’s
criticism of political theology. Third, the article shows Kantorowicz’s practice of the political-theol-
ogy method in The King’s Two Bodies. And lastly, it discusses Schmitt’s controversial legacy in Kan-
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torowicz through Erik Peterson’s criticism and ends with some conclusions relevant for the theory
and practice of political theology.

2. Political theology: Carl Schmitt’s approach


Schmitt, in his 1922 work Political Theology,1 proposes the concept of political theology as a theor-
etical field for understanding early-modern historical and political phenomena for the first time.2
Schmitt’s approach to the significance of this phrase in this book is related to the definition of the
concept of sovereignty: the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception’.3 Why does he ground
his reflection on this concept? If we read the final paragraph in the last section of Political Theology,
the key concept of political Early Modernity is that of the ‘sovereign’, which is understood as a potes-
tas absoluta in terra without any kind of limitation. Jean Bodin was the first to define this key con-
cept, although Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza rounded its conceptualisation off in different
ways.
This definition establishes the effective formulation of early-modern political theology, in which
political concepts overwhelm the significance of theological ones and, in particular, the sovereign
takes the role of God absolute himself.
Carl Schmitt argues: ‘The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.’4 If
we project this analogy onto the first definition in a reciprocal manner, we could say that ‘God is He
who decides on miracles’, so it would follow that the sovereign plays the role of God in the early-
modern political world. This is the main functional transference that makes many other functional
transpositions possible. It represents the beginning of the Early-Modern political era. This first
semantic transposition became a general hypothesis to the extent that Carl Schmitt claims:
All significant concepts of the modern theory of state are secularized theological concepts not only because of
their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby,

1
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology. Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2005). Carl
Schmitt, Politische Theologie II. Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theologie (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1970). On
Schmitt’s political theology discussion, see: Peter Koslowski, “Politischer Monotheismus oder Trinitätslehre? Zu Möglichkeit und
Unmöglichkeit einer christlichen Politischen Theologie“, in Jacob Taubes, Der Fürst dieser Welt (München/Paderborn, Finck/Schö-
ningh, 1983), 26–44, particularly close to my approach; Hans Hirt, "Monotheismus als politisches Problem?", Hochland 35
(1937–1938), 319–324; Hans Maier, "Politische Theologie? Einwände eines Laien", Stimmen der Zeit, 18 (1969), 73–91; Michele Nico-
letti, Trascendenza e Potere. La teologia politica di Carl Schmitt (Brescia, Morcelliana, 1990); Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt.
Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (Chicago, The Chicago University Press, 1998);
Michael Hollerisch, “Carl Schmit”, in W. T. Cavanagh, P. Scott, The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Oxford, Blackwell,
2004), 107–123.
2
Although he did not invent this ‘name’. Spinoza, had already used it as an adjective in his Theological-Political Treatise. In any case
we find this expression in other minor treatises of that period for example in Simon van Heenvliedt’s Theologico-Politica Dissertatio,
(Utrecht, Jacob Watermam, 1662).
3
Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.
4
Schmitt, Political Theology, 36.
1166 M. HERRERO

for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic struc-
ture, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts.5

Schmitt proposes a research field in order to establish an adequate understanding of juridical or pol-
itical concepts. The proposed analogies demonstrate that:
The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world
immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization.6

His political theology is based on this hypothesis. In Political Theology, Schmitt draws the analogy
between God and the sovereign. He refers to four stages in the development of this analogy. First,
the absolute monarch in the sixteenth century cannot be entirely understood without the idea of
God as the potentia absoluta distinct from the potentia ordinata. Second, in the seventeenth century,
the State ascribes God’s position to the sovereign’s Cartesian metaphysical system. Third, in the
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eighteenth century, Rousseau attributes the deistic idea of God to the sovereign, claiming that the
machinery of the State functions by itself once it has been set in motion. Lastly, in the nineteenth
century, God is transformed into mankind; the new political structure follows the immanentist meta-
physics of the time.7
Two different assumptions can also be found in Schmitt’s general hypothesis attributed to politi-
cal theology: one related to the secularisation thesis—all significant concepts of modern theory of the
State are secularised theological concepts—and another related to a structural analogy. These two
different facets are confusingly connected and the latter even seems to have been deduced from
the former. In any case, Carl Schmitt differentiates between the general hypothesis, which became
a method, and the different political theologies he assessed in his works, one of which is that of
the sovereign.8
I fully agree with Hans Blumenberg’s criticism of Schmitt in his Die Legitimität der Neuzeit9 in
which he argues that defending theopolitical analogies does not necessarily require accepting the
secularisation thesis. This seems to be clear in Schmitt’s Politische Theologie II, where he insists
that all he has said on the topic of political theology can be reduced to a jurist’s sentences on the
systematic structural affinity between theological and juridical concepts involved in juridical and pol-
itical practices.10 Even if, through this idea of analogy, he opens the method up to the possibility of
transference between political and theological concepts and functions in both senses, Schmitt’s secu-
larisation thesis postulated in the first Political Theology obliges him to consider transfers in only one
direction, from the theological to the political, in Early Modernity alone and as a historical expla-
nation of a single process and nothing more.
In my view, these assumptions are not sufficiently justified in Schmitt’s writings.11 It is true that,
in Politische Theologie II, Schmitt no longer insists on the secularisation thesis, not even in his

5
Schmitt, Political Theology, 36.
6
Schmitt, Political Theology, 46.
7
Schmitt, Political Theology, 46–51.
8
This includes at least three different political theologies, as I have argued in ‘Political Theology - The Magic of a Phrase’, in Mon-
tserrat Herrero and Jaume Aurell, Challenging the Grand Narrative of the Secularization Process: The Theory and Practice of Political
Theology. Forthcoming.
9
Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1966). Jean-Claude Monod’s book, La querelle de la
sécularisation: théologie politique et philosophies de l’histoire de Hegel à Blumenberg (Paris,Vrin, 2002) is particularly interesting
to follow the discussion on the topic of secularization’s discussion.
10
Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 79.
11
Three of Schmitt’s books -contemporary to Political Theology- are showing different analogies between the two realms and in
some cases in both directions. In Political Romanticism (1919) (Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1986), 82–91, we find an analogy
between the occasionalist God of Malebranche’s metaphysics transferred to the romantic spirit and politics. In Dictatorship.
From the Origin of the Modern Cocept of Sovereignty to proletarian Class Struggle (1921) (Cambridge, Polity, 2014), 33–79 we
find the transposition of the papal plenitudo potestatis to the practice of royal commissars. In Roman Catholicism and Political
Form (1923) (Westport, Grenwood Press, 1996) even he evokes analogies between the two realms in the opposite direction:
“Church is the consummate agency of the juridical spirit of the true heir of Roman jurisprudence”, 18; and “The Catholic Church
is the sole surviving contemporary example of the medieval capacity to create representative figures”, 19.
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1167

criticism of Blumenberg’s first edition of the Legitimität der Neuzeit. Rather, he only focuses on the
analogical aspect of the method, although it is also true that he does not retract his earlier opinions.
In fact, as Hans Blumenberg points out, in order to legitimise analogies, it is enough to recognise
the shared absoluteness of the theological and political phenomena. The historical derivation is not a
necessary element for constructing such analogies. Even transference of roles (for example, in the
case of sovereignty applied to God and to the political representative) does not imply the transform-
ation of substance, as if in the example God disappears in the sovereign’s countenance. In this sense,
Blumenberg affirms that political theology could only be a metaphorologie.12
As Blumenberg affirms, the progressive worldliness of humanity, as a metamorphosis of one iden-
tical substance that transforms itself to acquire new forms, is a false assumption and Schmitt got
caught in this trap.13 The identity that remains permanent in this transformation process is not
an identity of substance, but rather of function. The content of this function is quite different in
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the distinct steps of the process, depending on the diverse interpretations of the world and of human-
kind. In my view, Schmitt thinks in terms of a transformation of function and not of substance, but,
nevertheless, he assumes a process of secularisation and, accordingly, he limits the method to one
single period: Early Modernity. The dogma of secularisation, interpreted as an ‘expropriation’ and
involving the idea of ‘historical injustice’,14 is a construction of the philosophy of history. According
to Blumenberg, this characterisation is ideological and it misinterprets the very concept of history.
History should not be defined in relation to the past or to an origin of substance that it betrays in
each moment, but to the originality of the present.15
On the other hand, Modernity claims its own legitimacy through a discontinuity with the Middle
Ages.16 The Modern Age corresponds to the period in which reality is justified because of its very
existence and not because a transcendental or precedent order exists, a reference that justifies this
order. Blumenberg argues that immanence is the modern category par excellence. Modernity affirms
its autonomy and its authenticity through science and technology and not through theology or tra-
dition. Then, in Blumenberg’s view, political theology could only be possible in the Middle Ages,
where the reference to the theological was a constant and not in Early Modernity–as Schmitt
affirms—because of its discontinuity with the medieval vision.
In his Politische Theologie II, Schmitt counterattacks arguing, in addition, that Peterson’s vision of
Modernity as a rupture should be understood in theopolitical categories that involve the rejection of
God.

3. Peterson’s criticism of Schmitt’s Political Theology


Erik Peterson declares, in Monotheism as a Political Problem,17 first published in 1935, the end of any
legitimate kind of Christian political theology, be it ancient, medieval or modern. In this book, Peter-
son aims to show the illegitimate way in which political theology had been practised in ancient and
12
Graham Hamill, ‘Blumenberg and Schmitt on the Rhetoric of Political Theology,’ in Graham Hamill and Julia R. Lupton, Political
Theology and Early Modernity (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 2012, 84–101). Graham Hammill points out the significance of
Blumenberg’s article ‘An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Situation of Rhetoric’, in K. Baynes, J. Bohman,
T. McCarthy, After Philosophy: End of Transformation (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1987), first published in 1971, for a new and
precise criticism of Schmitt. In this article, Blumenberg conceives rhetoric as a metaphorical practice, which is, in Hamill words;
‘a mode of understanding circumstances, events and problems by means of other circumstances, events and problems that
seems to resemble them’. Hamill, ‘Blumenberg’, in Hamill and Lupton, Political Theology, 85. Blumenberg implicitly admits that
Schmitt’s political theology is pure rhetoric.
13
Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 19: ‘Der Aufweis der Verwandlung, Umbildung, Verformung, Überführung in neue Funktionen einer
identifizierbaren, im Prozess sich durchhaltenden Substanz’.
14
Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 73: ‘Säkularisierung ist eine theologische bedingte Unrechtskategorie’.
15
Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 72.
16
In his correspondence with Hans Blumenberg, Carl Schmitt advocates for continuity against discontinuity, since only continuity
allows the juridical experience and juridical conceptualization. Alexander Schmitz und Martin Lepper, Hans Blumenberg, Carl
Schmitt Briefwechsel (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2007), 125: Letter of 27/11/1974.
17
Erik Peterson, ‘Monotheism as a Political Problem’, in Peterson, Theological Tractates, 68–106. Peterson based this book on two
previously published articles: Erik Peterson, ‘Göttliche Monarchie’, in Erik Peterson, Theologische Quartalschrift (1931), 537–564; and
1168 M. HERRERO

medieval times. He claims for the abolition of all kinds of political theologies in order to preserve the
Christian essence. His polemical last footnote states:
To my knowledge, the concept of ‘political theology’ was introduced into the literature by Carl Schmitt, Poli-
tische Theologie (Munich, 1922). His brief arguments at that time were not systematic. Here we have tried to
show by a concrete example the theological impossibility of a ‘political theology’.18

He also directly quoted Schmitt in his previous article from 1933, ‘Emperor Augustus in the Judge-
ment of Ancient Christianity’, in which he attributes the appropriation of the field to Schmitt and
clarifies that ‘[p]olitical theology is not a part of theology, but a part of political thinking.’19
Peterson and Schmitt were close friends and they never stopped being friends, in spite of having
lost contact between 1933 and 1936 for political reasons.20 Indeed, Schmitt was an important influ-
ence in Peterson’s conversion to Catholicism.21 Thus, Schmitt probably perceived the cited ‘last foot-
note’ in Peterson’s Monotheism as Peterson’s desire to keep distance from him in order to preserve
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political correctness since Schmitt was allied with Nazism22 or since political correctness demanded
conformity with the Protestant atmosphere, as can be seen in his correspondence with Álvaro d’Ors
years later.23
Leaving aside personal affairs, let us move on to the realm of reasoning. Peterson shows the theo-
logical unviability of political theology by following two arguments. The first one is highly developed
in his writings and amounts to the idea that the Christian God is a trinity and a trinity cannot be
represented as such on Earth. The second argument appeals to St Augustine’s criticism of the pax
romana as representing the pax christiana.
The Jewish tradition identifies the idea of ‘divine monarchy’ with the first Christian Greek apolo-
gists through their supposition of the world’s theocratic government, which supposes that God gov-
erns His people through a king. Peterson argues that the idea of the monarchy was essential for
Judaism in order to differentiate monotheistic peoples from the polyarchy of paganism. Christianity,
as a monotheistic religion, has unconsciously and illegitimately borrowed the ‘divine monarchy’ of
God as a political idea. His thesis claims that since Trinitarian dogma was accepted, the tendency to
transfer the idea of divine monarchy to emperors and kings can only eventually fail. Every political or
juridical translation of the Trinity is necessarily subordinationist. For developing this argument,
Peterson appeals to texts from the Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nisa and Gregory of Nazianzus,
quoting the same Oratio that Carl Schmitt later includes in his own interpretation in Politische Theo-
logie II, the Third Theological Oration.24

‘Kaiser Augustus im Urteil des antiken Christemtums: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie’, Hochland (1932), 289–
299. Newly published in Jacob Taubes, Der Fürst dieser Welt (München, Fink/Schöningh, 1983), 174–180.
18
Peterson, ‘Monotheism’, 104.
19
Peterson, ‘Kaiser Augustus’, 174. My translation.
20
Barbara Nichtweiß, in Erik Peterson: Neue Sicht auf Leben und Werk (Freiburg, Herder, 1992), 724–736.
21
Hollerich, ‘Introduction’, XV: ‘None of those Catholic friendships approached the intellectual depth and intensity of the bind he
formed with Schmitt however’. Also Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, 727.
22
Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, 736.
23
Montserrat Herrero, Carl Schmitt und Álvaro d’Ors Briefwechsel (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004), 277. Letter without date, prob-
ably writen between June and July 1976: ‘Mein lieber Freund Don Álvaro: nur einige Zeilen, um Ihnen zu danken für den meis-
terhaften Artikel über die politische Theologie. Ich verstehe Ihre Verbitterung angesichts der Oberflächlichkeit und allgemeinen
Ignoranz, die die Diskussion des Problems der “politischen Theologie” beherrscht. Peterson ist ein skandalöser Fall; sein Buch
von 1935 ist der Widerruf seines Vortrags von 1925; es ist eine Rückkehr zum Protestantismus in seinen pietistischen Ursprüngen
und zum Bultmannianismus; es ist die Friedenserklärung mit Karl Barth und dem “religiösen Sozialismus”. Das gesamte Problem
Petersons entwickelt sich unter dem Zeichen des “Skandals” Kierkegaard. Die Freude über die Rückkehr des verlorenen Sohnes
(1930) war unmäßig; es gibt hier eine schockierende Parallele zum Fall Max Scheler. Der Minderwertigkeitskomplex der deutschen
Katholiken war immens; es ist eine Tommissensche Verwechslung, von einem “renouveau catholique” nach 1918 zu sprechen; es
war das genaue Gegenteil. Der französische “renouveau catholique” ist eine Antwort auf die Séparation und den französischen
kämpferischen Laizismus; das Aufkommen des Katholizismus von Weimar (1919) war im Gegensatz dazu eine Anerkennung der
Römischen Kirche als verfassungsrechtliche Körperschaft! Und die katholische Partei, das “Zentrum” war eine homogen katholische
Partei und nicht wie die Christliche Demokratie, “Parität”. “Parität” ist die alte deutsche Tradition nach 1648 bis heute! Verzeihen Sie
meine Ereiferung, lieber Don Álvaro. Ihre Publikation ist auf jeden Fall ein gutes Werk’.
24
Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 90.
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1169

Peterson deems Eusebius of Caesarea’s Life of Constantine to be the main inheritor of medieval
political theology’s practical vision, which was not necessarily Christian, but which fell within a
Christian cosmovision.25 Eusebius glorifies Constantine’s government as a model of divine monar-
chy, which consolidated the pax Augusta, and as an eschatological sign of redemption. We have to
take into account that even if Eusebius had signed the Nicene Creed, his Arian convictions were pre-
sent in his writings, perhaps because of his rationalist theological beliefs that attenuated the idea of a
trinity.
Confronted with the imperial pax, every national state was polytheistic, a fact that influenced the
Patristics. In Peterson’s view, the integral formula ‘kingdom, peace and monotheism’ was a Christian
construct that opposed the pagan political theology that defended the national gods against the
Roman Empire, but it was not specifically Christian. Augustine of Hippo rejected such an analogy
between the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Christ in City of God. According to him, the King-
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dom of Christ limits itself to the Church alone.


The Spanish Romanist, Álvaro d’Ors, was one of the participants in the Peterson-Schmitt debate.
He was a close friend to Schmitt and challenged him on many topics. He builds on Carl Schmitt’s
defence by showing how part of the flourishing political theology of the Middle Ages did not perceive
any contradiction with the Trinitarian dogma.26 He mentions as an example the projection of the
Trinitarian dogma in the co-reign of the Byzantine Emperor Contantin IV Pogonatus with Heraclius
and Tiberius until 681.27 What is more, d’Ors asserts—in opposition to Peterson—it is perfectly valid
to speak of a concrete derivation from Christian theological concepts to juridical-political life. He
ultimately describes Peterson’s criticism as follows: ‘Based on an ancient consideration of the
world, he wanted to deduce a previous conclusion about political theology in the modern age.’28
Political theology can only be pagan or heretic, Peterson concludes, and it seems to follow that it is
an illicit research field. Thus, theopolitical research can only lead to confusion in a Christian cosmos.
The impossibility of a ‘divine monarchy’ closes off the possibility of any other analogy following
Christian realities. Schmitt published Political Theology II in 1970, mainly in order to clarify his
own thesis against Peterson’s misunderstandings, but also to present a separate one against Blumen-
berg’s criticism on the topic. Schmitt concludes that if Peterson’s critique of political theology is not
valid for pagan or medieval political theologies, then it is even less so for the early-modern era. The
political realm in Early Modernity was dependent on a Christian theological reform without which it
could not have come into being.
In addition, he attests to the possibility of new forms of political theology emerging from the Tri-
nitarian dogma, as can be perceived in Goethe’s motto ‘nemo contra deus nisi deus ipse’. A political
theology dependent on the Trinitarian dogma is also alive in his friend-enemy criterion of the pol-
itical.29 In contemporary theology, this can also be seen in Henry de Lubac’s30 political theology of
the Eucharist and W.T. Cavanagh’s later developments a propos.31
The core of Schmitt’s thesis remains untouched because he does not affirm the orthodoxy or het-
erodoxy of the different ways of understanding political theology as theology or as a model for

25
Eusebius of Cesarea, Life of Constantin (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999).
26
See Herrero, Carl Schmitt und Álvaro d’Ors, 45–54. Auch d’Ors’s letter from 4. 1.73: ‘Ich hatte seit einiger Zeit die Absicht, wie-
derum das Problem der politischen Theologie zu untersuchen, indem ich natürlich von Ihren alten und neueren Schriften ausgehen
wollte, aber auch von anderen Darstellungen derselben Idee; zum Beispiel, Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, dessen Untertitel
gerade auf die mittelalterliche Politische Theologie anspielt. Ihr Buch hat als neuer Impuls gewirkt, mehr über dieses Thema zu
lesen und zu schreiben’. Herrero, Carl Schmitt und Álvaro d’Ors, 263.
27
Álvaro d’Ors, ‘Teología política: una revisión del problema’, in Sistema de las ciencias IV, (Pamplona, Servicio de Publicaciones de la
Universidad de Navarra, 1977), 99.
28
d’Ors, ‘Teología política’, 96.
29
Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 92–5.
30
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2006). He was also friends with Peterson. Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, 873.
31
William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination. Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (London,
New York: T & T Clark, 2002). There are many contemporary authors that still apply the theopolitical method, such as Michel Fou-
cault, Giorgio Agamben or Slavoj Žižek.
1170 M. HERRERO

constructing the political realm.32 Rather, this criticism seems to be the sole concern of Peterson’s
writings against Schmitt.33 But it also remains untouched because Schmitt affirms the possibility
of political theology in Early Modernity and Peterson does not analyse his examples in any way.
Peterson only criticises the idea of divine monarchy as an orthodox Christian political theology,
while he presumes that he had criticised every possible political theology, whether ancient, modern
or contemporary. Moreover, Schmitt insists that Peterson misunderstands him. In fact, the topic of
political theology consists just of
Jurist’s sentences on the systematic structural affinity between theological and juridical concepts in theoretical
and juridical practice realms. This allows for the historical-juridical research field. [ … ] As I am not a theolo-
gian, I do not dare discuss Trinitarian theological questions with theologians.34

The only way to understand Peterson’s dislocation is to accept Nichtweiss’s thesis that Peterson’s
main concern is not with criticising Schmitt’s political theology, but rather with criticising the
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Reichstheologie.35
Schmitt mainly argues that there is a shared world of meanings and representations between the
religious and the political spheres that always implies some kind of transference. In this sense we can
speak of a ‘metaphorological political theology’ more than a ‘substantial political theology’ in
Schmitt’s works, as Blumenberg and d’Ors have pointed out. The only metaphysical presupposition
involved in political theology is the shared absoluteness of theological and political phenomena. In
the end, Schmitt agrees with Peterson on the idea that political theology is not theology and thus
neither orthodox, nor heterodox. Given this, Schmitt’s main thesis remains untouched by Peterson’s
criticism.36
I am persuaded that, from the theological point of view, Schmitt would agree with Peterson
and ‘Catholic orthodoxy’ on the idea that the public representation of the kingdom of God is
only found in the Church and any secular political community can aspire to identify with it.

32
As Heinrich Meier supposes. Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology
and Political Philosophy (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1998).
33
Peterson, Kaiser Augustus, 174: ‘Die politische Theologie ist, wie die politische Utopie, ein anscheinend mit innerer Notwendigkeit
sich wieder einstellendes Faktum, von dem Theologen freilich stets mit Misstrauen betrachtet und in seiner meist häretischen
Artung erkannt, von den Politikern aber immer wieder mit neuer Zuversicht voretragen’.
34
Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 79. My translation.
35
Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, 810, claims that Peterson’s primary intention was to liberate Christian doctrine from the prevailing
Reichstheologie and only indirectly to criticise Schmitt, who was not part of that movement. See also A. Dempf, ‘Erik Petersons
Rolle in der Geisteswissenschaft’, Neues Hochland 54 (1961–1962), 24–31. Quoted in Michael J. Hollerich, ‘Introduction’ to Erik
Peterson, Theological Tractates (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2011), XI-XXXI, XXV: ‘Arianism was a cipher for the political
theology of Christians who had been bewitched by Hitler and his regime in its early days’. Dempf thought that Peterson’s war
against Arianism was, in his final days, a war against Hitler’s regime. In the end, Peterson’s booklet was also, in Schmitt’s opinion,
a theopolitical attempt to distance himself from Hitler’s regime in 1935 under the mark of a ‘pure’ theology. It is not easy to free
oneself from the political consequences of every act, even in the case of theology, as Peterson’s example shows. C. Schmitt, Poli-
tische Theologie II, 15: ‘Sie wurde als aktuelle Kritik und Protest empfunden, als eine gut getarnte, intelligent verfremdende Anspie-
lung auf Führerkult, Ein-Parteien-System un d Totalitarismus. Ihr Motto trag dazu bei; es war ein Satz des hl. Augustinus, der vom
der falschen, aus weltilicher Machtgier entstehenden Streben zur Einheit warnt’. This sentence shows the extent to which Schmitt
considered the Motto of Peterson’s work in the right sense and not in the sense in which Geréby, following Jacob Taubes, con-
sidered it. A rare hypothesis, impossible to prove, floats about that it was a message to his friend Schmitt to avoid the Nazi tempta-
tion. 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), 31–61,
49. Geréby and Taubes were supposing that Schmitt used political theology to support Nazism in the same way that Peterson
neglects political theology to avoid a relationship with it, but that was not Schmitt’s idea in 1922. Moreover, Nichtweiss asserts
that, given the fact that many of Peterson’s writings are inspired by Schmitt’s ideas, it is impossible that he primarily intend to
criticise Schmitt in order to take distance from Nazism. Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, 812: ‘Peterson war ja nicht gegen den Begriff
politischen Theologie als solchen und auch nicht gegen ein mit ihm verbundenes Forschungsvorhaben, er hat vielmehr den For-
schungsbereich der politischen Theologie auf die Antike ausgedehnt, legnete keinegswegs die “systematische Struktur
Vewandschaft von theologischen und juristischen Begriffen”, sondern zog aus ihr in vielen Fällen sogar wichtige theologische
Konsequenzen’.
36
Michele Nicoletti holds the same opinion in his analysis of the Peterson-Schmitt discussion. M. Nicoletti, ‘Erik Peterson e Carl
Schmitt. Ripensare un dibattito’, in Giancarlo Caronello, Erik Peterson. La presenza teologica di un outsider, (Roma, Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 2012), 517–538, 534.
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1171

Schmitt would clearly agree with this based on his hermeneutic of St Augustine in Political
Theology.37
If, from the theological point of view, there is nothing to say about a ‘correct analogy’ then the
possibility of multiple theopolitical analogies emerging after the breakdown of the Roman Empire’s
political theology should exist. They could be called Christian as they were inspired by Christian dog-
mas. In the same way we could speak about Christian art by looking at images of the Virgin, even
though none of them represent her real face. This amounts to Schmitt’s criticism of Peterson and also
Kantorowicz’s ‘hidden’ criticism of Peterson, in which he is aligned with Schmitt on the idea that a
Christian medieval political theology exists. Strangely enough, Schmitt does not quote Kantorowicz
to support his argument given that The King’s Two Bodies was published in between Schmitt’s two
Political Theologies and given that Kantorowicz’s book demonstrated that medieval political theology
took place in multifarious ways with a constant intermingling between theological and political rep-
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resentations. Ultimately, Kantorowicz shows in his historical research that a Christian medieval pol-
itical theology exists.

4. How does political theology in Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies work?
Schmitt considers the possibility of a political theology only under the conditions of a secularisation
process. If we assume that the medieval world represents a sacralised world, we might conclude that,
in the Middle Ages, political theology must have existed differently from modern political theology
in Schmitt’s sense, i.e., as a projection of Christian dogma in politics more than a complex of ‘trans-
ferences’. However, a detailed study of E.H. Kantorowicz’s writings38 might alter this first perception.
When we take a more in-depth look at the persistence of theological ideas in medieval political
thought, we have to admit that there is a Medieval Political Theology in the sense Carl Schmitt
defines, i.e., transferences between the theological and the political. The only difference is that, in
Kantorowicz’s view, the transferences work in both senses and not in Schmitt’s strict sense.39
Regarding the concept of ‘mysteries of State’, Kantorowicz says,
[I]t is a late offshoot of that spiritual-secular hybridism which, as a result of the infinite cross-relations between
Church and State, may be found in every century of the Middle Ages.40

What does Kantorowicz’s medieval political theology look like in The King’s Two Bodies? First of all,
we perceive that the theological-political model that appears in it is not mainly the ‘divine monarchy’
that Peterson assumes as the main theopolitical concept in his Monotheism. Rather, it is a political
Christology, ultimately shaped as an ‘ecclesiological political theology’, resulting in the projection of
the concept of the Church in a Trinitarian theology into the political realm.

37
Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 16, 83–84. Peterson’s views on this matter can be seen in G. Caronello’s book quoted above, as well
as in B. Nichtweiss’s book also quoted above; Roger Mielke, Eschatologische Öffentlichkeit. Öffentlichkeit der Kirche und Politissche
Theologie im Werk von Erik Peterson (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). As Mielke asserts, Peterson confronted political
totalitarianism with an apocalyptical concept and image of the church as an independent public sphere, which is mainly dissemi-
nated through worship.
38
‘Laudes Regiae. A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship’ (1946); ‘Pro patria Mori in medieval political
thought’ (1951); ‘Deus per naturam, Deus per gratiam: Note on the Political Theology of the Middle Ages’ (1952); ‘Mysteries of
State. An Absolutist Concept and its Late Medieval Origins’ (1953); and The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology
(1956). All these texts work with political-theological analogies. The limitation of this article doesn’t allow me to develop every one
of them.
39
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997),
193: ‘Infinite cross-relations between Church and State, active in every century of the Middle Ages, produced hybrids in either
camp. Mutual borrowings and exchanges of insignia, political symbols, prerogatives, and rights of honor had been carried on per-
petually between the spiritual and secular leaders of Christian society. The pope adorned his tiara with a golden crown, donned the
imperial purple, and was preceded by the imperial banners when riding in solemn procession through the streets of Rome. The
emperor wore under his crown a mitre, donned the pontifical shoes and other clerical raiments, and received, like a bishop, the ring
at his coronation. These borrowings affected, in the earlier Middle Ages, chiefly the ruling individuals, both spiritual and secular,
until finally the sacerdotium had an imperial appearance and the regnum a clerical touch’.
40
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘Mysteries of State. An Absolutist Concept and its late Medieval Origins’, Harvard Theological Review, (1955),
65–91, 65.
1172 M. HERRERO

Kantorowicz focuses on Maitland’s commentary on Plowden’s Reports (1570) as the first place
where a ‘mystical’ elaboration of the definition of kingship and royal capacities can be found,
even though this doctrine came to the fore in the 1560s in debates over the status of the Duchy.
Based on that assumption, Kantorowicz begins intense genealogical research about the significance
of the ‘fictional’ way in which the Plowden Reports address kingship and kingdom.
Even if Kantorowicz considers ‘mystical elaboration’ a fiction, something related only with fan-
tasy, he acknowledges that what could be considered in the juridical and political arena as sole
image was borrowed by the jurists from the theological sphere, where it was considered an effective
reality. The recognition of the transference of the ecclesiological idea of the corpus mysticum to the
juridical sphere in the form of ‘two bodies of the King’ allows Kantorowicz to speak about ‘political
theology’ in his book’s title. This transference, however, was preceded by other significant transfer-
ences between theological and political concepts. In the book, he goes back to the Norman Anon-
ymous of 1100, where he finds the first piece of his genealogy: the use of the concept of persona
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mixta in reference to kings.


The king was supposed to have a double personality, natural and sacred, based on his anointing.41
The Christian governor was a Cristomimetes in a consequent Christological political theology. If
Christ were eternally King by his own nature, the anointed Monarch on Earth was also King, but
only by grace and only for a period. He was considered a gemina persona,42 human by nature
and sacred by grace. According to Christian dogma, Christ has two natures, human and divine,
but he is only one person. After the twelfth century, the expression became unusual in the Church’s
writings because papal reform completely avoided the idea of a Christ-centred kingship in the wake
of the Investiture Struggle. With that reform, the Pope monopolised the spiritual sphere, making it
almost impossible for the Monarchy to take on any spiritual character.
When the only Vicar of Christ appears to be the Pope,43 a new displacement of political theology
has taken place. The dialectic between sacerdotium et regnum was substituted by the dichotomy
between regnum et ius:44 it constituted the beginning of law-centred kingship. This displacement
allows for a new political theology, what we might call an ecclesiological political theology.45 The
definition of the Church as a corpus mysticum was very fruitful in the hands of the jurists in
order to construct the corpus of the state, representing the new theological-political transference
beginning with the construction of what Kantorowicz calls ‘polity centred kingship’ in twelfth cen-
tury. The idea of the Church as a mystical body whose head is Christ, the second person of the Tri-
nity, was central to the development of the idea of the state as a corporation whose head is the
monarch.
The idea of universitas as persona ficta, as it was used in the Council of Lyon in 1245 in relation-
ship with excommunication, played a particular role in this transference: excommunications of uni-
versitas or collegium such as a chapter, a people, a tribe, were forbidden, because they are not persons,
but rather ‘names’.46 The tendency was nevertheless to treat these entities as real juridical persons.
Innocence IV emphasised the idea that those persons do not die. In the same way, Aquinas’s

41
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 43: ‘What matters here is only the persona mixta in the religio-political sphere where it was
represented chiefly by bishop and king, and where the ‘mixture’ referred to the blending of spiritual and secular powers and
capacities united in one person’.
42
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 49: ‘The expression itself, gemina persona, does not represent a poetical metaphor, but is a
technical term derived from and related to Christological definitions’. As Kantorowicz notes, ‘The Second Hispanic Council (619)
emphasized the gemina natura of Christ and added correctly that ‘this gemina natura still forms one person’. Kantorowicz, The
King’s Two Bodies, 50.
43
Around 1187, as Kantorowicz notes. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 91.
44
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 192
45
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 192: ‘In the Age of Jurisprudence the sovereign State achieved a hallowing of its essence
independent of the Church, though parallel to it, and assumed the eternity of the Roman empire as the king become an emperor
within his own realm. But this hallowing of the status regis et regni, of state institutions and utilities, necessities and emergencies,
would have remained incomplete had not that new state itself been equated with the Church also in its corporational aspects as a
secular corpus mysticum’.
46
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 306.
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1173

definition of the Church as corpus mysticum insisted on the simultaneity of all its members: past,
present and future were considered.47
The very notion of the impossibility of the king’s death leads to the idea of the ‘King’s Two
Bodies’. The king is immortal, because he cannot die in Law. The king receives two bodies: his con-
tingent personal body and a permanent political body and accompanying symbols, crown, royal dig-
nity, and so on. He is like a one-person guild. These are the first steps in the construction of the
modern state and they all reflect theological concepts and meanings.
In the sixteenth century, the jurists still employed canonical language, tending to conjoin what
they had separated: the natural body and the political one. Once more, as Kantorowicz argues,
the bishop served in relation to his church as a model to the king in relation to his kingdom.48
In his narrative, Kantorowicz describes different ways to amalgamate theological and political
concepts by creating new features for the king and consequently for his kingdom, as well as for
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the bishop and his church.


As Kantorowicz explains in detail, the process of power’s legitimation is intermingled with theo-
logical concepts and ideas that were, in turn, constantly evolving at the time. He concludes:
The tenet, however, of the Tudor jurists definitely hangs upon the Pauline language and its later development:
the change from the Pauline corpus Christi to the medieval corpus ecclesiae mysticum, thence to the corpus
republicae mysticum which was equated with the corpus morale et politicum of the commonwealth, until finally
(though confused with the idea of Dignitas) the slogan emerged saying that every abbot was a ‘mystical body’ or
a ‘body politic’, and that accordingly the king, too, was, or had, a body politic which ‘never died’ [ … ] the King’s
two bodies is an offshoot of Christian theological thought and consequently stands as a landmark of Christian
political theology.49

When reading The King’s Two Bodies, it is difficult to deny that the primary Schmittian thesis, that the
theological-metaphysical image that a specific era forges of the world has the same structure as what
that era immediately understands as the appropriate form of political organisation, also applies to the
Middle Ages and not just to Modernity (as Schmitt seemed to suppose). Kantorowicz’s book could be
read as a response to Schmitt’s Political Theology of 1922, in order to show that the concept also applies
to the Middle Ages and to respond to Peterson’s criticism of the possibilities of practising Christian
political theology after the political theology of the Roman Empire. Given this, it is possible to
speak of a ‘hidden dialogue’ between Schmitt and Kantorowicz that passes through the Peterson-
Schmitt debate.
In short, Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies follows, on the one hand, Schmitt’s intuition on
the new research field of ‘political theology’ and, on the other, discusses Peterson’s thesis about
the impossibility of a non-heterodox Christian political theology in his 1939 Monotheism as Political
Problem.

5. Schmitt’s controversial influence on Kantorowicz’s work


William Ch. Jordan, in his 1997 preface to the Princeton University Press Edition of The King’s Two
Bodies affirms:
… (the subtitle A Study in Medieval Political Theology) [for him], captured the sincerely reverential and ulti-
mately metaphysical aspects (the theology) of what other scholars, even other reviewers, misleadingly and over-
rationalistically called ‘medieval political thought’. To be sure, there were a few caveats. Not every reviewer
delighted in Kantorowicz’ phrase ‘political theology’, which some associate with the German and Nazi-leaning
jurist Carl Schmitt’s description and endorsement of authoritarian government.50

47
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 310: ‘The essential feature of all corporate bodies was not that they were “a plurality of per-
sons collected in the one body” in the present moment, but that they were that “plurality” in succession, braced by Time and
through the medium of Time’.
48
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 441.
49
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 506.
50
William Ch. Jordan, ‘Preface’, in Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, x.
1174 M. HERRERO

In light of what has been discussed in this article, the above description of Schmitt’s political theology
seems to be very narrow. In any case, why did he not quote Schmitt considering that his research is
based on Schmitt’s intuition?
The most relevant reference to Schmitt is found in a note in ‘Mysteries of State’, which reads: ‘The
expression, much discussed in Germany in the early 1930s, has become more popular in this country,
unless I am mistaken, through a study by George La Piana, “Political Theology”, The Interpretation of
History (Princeton, 1943).’51 This seems to refer to the Schmitt-Peterson discussion. The La Piana article
is entitled ‘Theology of History’ and there is not a word in it about the German discussion on the topic of
political theology in the 1930s. In any case, it is clear that Kantorowicz’s knowledge of the ‘German dis-
cussion’ does not come indirectly through American interpretation, but rather directly, given that he
quotes Peterson in The King’s Two Bodies.52 It is commonly known that they were also friends.53
Scholars such as Robert L. Benson, Peter Schöttler or Jean Philippe Genet have neglected the poss-
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ible inheritance of Schmitt’s concept and method in the orientation of Kantorowicz work, even
if the enigmatic expression ‘political theology’ appears in Kantorowicz’s writings.54 For example,
J.P. Genet recognises that:
Kantorowicz is extremely careful to avoid any impression that he is teaching any lesson in methods;
therefore he never stoops giving a justification of his methodology [ … ] The fact is that he never uses a concept
the meaning of which would have to be explained by an abstract theory; the only one I can think of is that of
political theology, referred to in the subtitle of the book, but hardly used in the text himself.55

Even though Kantorowicz ended the book with the expression ‘Christian political theology’,56 Genet is
against imposing an ideology on Kantorowicz’s writings,57 noting that it had to be used if Kantorowicz’s
book were to be included in the research field that Schmitt founded. Indeed, the authors who admit to
the possibility that Schmitt had some influence on Kantorowicz have a common prejudice that amounts
to the claim that a relationship between these two authors can only be made in ideological terms. This is
the case, for example, with Victoria Kahn,58 and Richard Halpern59 and Blandine Kriegel.60
In their view, Kantorowicz refers to Schmitt indirectly because he wanted to distance himself from
Schmitt’s authoritarian views. Even Kantorowicz tries to avoid the ideological reception of his work
in the preface by not claiming the ‘afterthoughts’ following the Reichstheologie61 and perhaps also by
not quoting Schmitt directly, as these commentaries affirm.

51
Kantorowicz, ‘Mysteries of State’, 67.
52
Kantorowicz quotes Peterson several times in the King’s Two Bodies: on page 72, he quotes, ‘Christus als Imperator’; on page 156,
he quotes, ‘Kaiser Augustus’; on page 235 he quotes, ‘Zeuge der Wahrheit’ and ‘Von den Engeln’; and finally, in the bibliography, he
quotes, ‘Der Monotheismus als politischer Problem’.
53
Nichtweiss, Erik Peterson, 872–873.
54
Peter Schöttler neglects to refer to ‘Kantorowicz Anleihen’ by Weber and Schmitt. Peter Schöttler, ‘Ernst Kantorowicz in Frank-
reich’, in Robert L. Benson, Johannes Fried, Ernst Kantorowicz : Erträge der Doppeltagung Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton,
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 1997), 144–61, 154.
55
Jean Philippe Genet, ‘Kantorowicz and the King’s Two Bodies: A non-Contextual History’, in Benson and Fried, Ernst Kantorowicz,
265–273, 272.
56
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 506.
57
Genet, ‘Kantorowicz’, 273: ‘The first danger is to insert Kantorowicz’s ideas in an abstract conceptual scheme, whereas he has been
trying to escape the tyranny of theoretical concepts, external to the historical reality on which he was working. From that point of
view, all efforts to impose an ideology on Kantorowicz’s book are doomed to distort its meaning. This is all too obvious with the
imperial obsession which Blandine Kriegel lends him, but also with the parallel between Kantorowicz and Carl Schmitt’s political
theology that some have detected’.
58
Victoria Kahn, ‘Political Theology and Fiction in the King’s Two Bodies’, Representations 106 (2009), 77–101. See also Victoria Kahn,
The Future of Illusion. Political Theology and Early Modern Texts (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 55–81. In the chap-
ter entitled “Sacred Kingship and Political Fiction: Ernst Kantorowicz, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Cassirer, and Walter Benjamin,” she under-
lines the relationship not only between Kantorowicz and Schmitt, but also with Cassirer. This analysis drives her to the thesis that,
Kantorowicz’s view, political theology is concerned with poiesis and then is close to Blumenberg’s metaphorology.
59
Richard Halpern, ‘The King’s Two Buckets: Kantorowicz, Richard II, and Fiscal Trauerspiel’, Representations 106 (2009), pp. 67–74.
60
Blandine Kriegel, ‘Kantorowicz und die Entstehung des modernen Staates’, in Wolfgang Ernst und Cornelia Vismann, Geschichts-
körper. Zur Aktualität von Ernst Kantorowicz (München, Wilhelm Fink, 1998), 119–27.
61
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, viii: ‘It would go much too far, however, to assume that the author felt tempted to investigate
the emergence of some of the idols of modern political religions merely on account of the horrifying experience of our own time in
which whole nations , the largest and the smallest, fell prey to the weirdest dogmas and in which political theologisms became
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1175

Victoria Kahn62 recognises Kantorowicz’s work as a response to Schmitt, even if she tries to avoid
possible ideological prejudice by saying that literature serves in Kantorowicz’s book ‘as antidote to
political theology of the Schmittian sort’ and that it thus ‘authorizes a new vision—a new secular
“political theology”, to borrow Kantorowicz’s phrase—of the human community’.63 Richard Halpern
also admits that Kantorowicz’s work is a response to Schmitt, but for him this response consists of a
criticism of his decisionism through the introduction of Richard II as exemplum of the ‘King’s Two
Bodies’ doctrine.64
The ideological point of view is mainly represented in a book written by Alain Boureau, Kantor-
owicz: Stories of a Historian, published in 1990.65 He establishes the link between Schmitt-Peterson-
Kantorowicz and uses it to explain Schmitt’s possible influence in Kantorowicz research. When
Boureau judges Schmitt’s political theology, he only focuses on his authoritarian political view;
his judgement is ideological rather than scientific.66 Leaving this aside, Boureau asks himself whether
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it is possible to establish a connection between the idea of political theology in Schmitt’s sense and
that of Kantorowicz; he also assumes that Kantorowicz knew Schmitt’s work through Peterson.67 But
he goes further when ascribing political intentionality to Kantorowicz. He suggests that, by adopting
Carl Schmitt’s political-theological theme, Kantorowicz turns himself into an admirer of the strong
state against the Weimar Republic, wondering ‘if his thought in this case, constituted a way of pur-
suing the political struggle by other means’.68 This suspicion was nourished in the 1990s by Norman
F. Cantor in ‘The Nazi Twins: Percy Ernst Schramm and Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz’.69
Boureau nevertheless tries to liberate Kantorowicz from Schmitt’s shadow by arguing that he has
inverted Schmitt’s understanding of political theology.70 He speaks about an inversion that, far from
flowing into authoritarianism, runs on the fictions that liberate man from power: ‘The wholly secular

genuine obsessions defying in many cases the rudiments of human and political reason ( … ) It seems necessary, however, to stress
the fact that considerations of that kind belonged to afterthoughts, resulting from the present investigation and not causing it or
determining its course.’
62
Kahn, ‘Political Theology’, 77–101. In my view, in Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Schmitt is not arguing that the State must
imitate the Church, as Kahn seems to suppose, but rather recognises that the Church has an authentic representation in comparison
to the liberal State. She attributes intentions to the author that do not necessarily follow from what he has written and that also
contradict his later books on political theology.
63
Kahn, ‘Political Theology’, 81.
64
Halpern, ‘The King’s Two Buckets’, 67–74.
65
Alain Boureau, Kantorowicz. Stories of a Historian (Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
66
Boureau, Kantorowicz, 104: ‘The political orientation of the work is clear: it is based on a critique of parliamentary government
and, more generally, of theories of popular sovereignty. Schmitt claims that the state cannot be based on legal norms. It is necess-
ary to locate sovereignty, define as pure decision, before of the organisation of the State. ( … ) It is only too easy to see where this
decisionist theory and authoritarian conception of sovereignty could lead in the context of 1922’. Boureau fails to ascribe the con-
cept of sovereignty to J. Bodin or T. Hobbes. Schmitt analyses the theological influence in that concept and the consequences of
that modern concept. Schmitt’s authentic theory is that of ‘concrete order’. He is not a decisionist, but rather a thinker of the ‘order’,
as can be seen in his On the Three Types of Juristic Thought (Westport, Praeger Publishers, 2004) - or even better in The Nomos of the
Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York, Telos Press Publishing, 2006). This is the main thesis in
Montserrat Herrero, El nomos y lo político: la filosofía política de Carl Schmitt (Pamplona, Eunsa, 2007) and Peter Schneider, Ausnah-
mezustand und Norm. Eine Studie zur Rechtslehre von Carl Schmitt (Stuttgart, Dt. Vlgsanst., 1957). See also, Bruno Bosteels, ‘The
Obscure Subject: Sovereignty and Geopolitics in Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2
(2005), 295–305. This approach is important for a correct understanding of his political theologies.
67
Boureau, Kantorowicz, 105: ‘Kantorowicz despite his usual discretion, thus clearly knew of Carl Schmitt’s use of the term. The
allusion to the debates of the thirties doubtless evokes the violent denunciation, in 1935, of Schmitt’s book by the theologian
Erik Peterson, who sought to defeat the idea by demonstrating the impossibility of a political theology within the confines of Chris-
tian doctrine’.
68
Boureau, Kantorowicz, 104. ‘( … ) did Kantorowicz, despite exile, despite his experiences over the oath of loyalty at Berkeley,
remain fundamentally an admirer of the strong state, the eternal child of the Prussian father?’ Boureau, Kantorowicz, 105.
69
Norman F. Cantor, ‘The Nazi Twins: Percy Ernst Schramm and Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz’, in Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the
Middle Ages: The lives, works, and ideas of the great medievalists of the twentieth century (New York, Quill/W. Morrow, 1991),
79–117. Against Cantor’s vision, see Robert L. Benson, Ralph E. Giesey and Margaret Sevcenko, ‘Defending Kantorowicz’, The
New York Review of Books, 39/14 (1992) and also Robert Barley’s reply on the same page.
70
Boureau, Kantorowicz, p. 106. Other commentaries following this line of arguments include that from Lior Barshack, ‘Constituent
Power as Body: Outline of a Constitutional Theology’. University of Toronto Law Journal 56 (2006), 185–222 and Phillip W. Gray,
‘Political Theology and the Theology of Politics: Carl Schmitt and Medieval Christian Political Thought’, Humanitas XX,1–2
(2007), 175–200.
1176 M. HERRERO

and formal aspect of this political appropriation of the religious could also be expressed in a register
of serious derision … ’.71
Bureau speaks about irony rather than about inversion. I argue that, methodologically, Kantor-
owicz’s attempt is perhaps the best example of a theological-political work in Schmitt’s sense,
even if the latter applies to analogies to early modernity and the former to the Middle Ages.
This is in spite of Kantorowicz’s supposed incredulity about the theological dogmatism of
Christianity.
György Geréby, like Alain Boureau, recognises the Schmitt-Peterson-Kantorowicz line of influ-
ence.72 He also posits that Kantorowicz fails to quote Schmitt in order to distance himself not only
from the well-known ‘Nazi follower’, but also from his own past as a representative of the
Deutsche Geist.73 Beyond that, the big difference between Schmitt’s and Kantorowicz’s approaches
is found in that fact that while Schmitt’s thesis is metaphysical and demonstrated by historical
reflections,74 Kantorowicz’s thesis is historical, showing a historical necessity that could be inter-
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preted in a metaphysical way: the compulsory secularisation of Christianity.75 Geréby also assumes
Peterson’s supposed misunderstandings about the range of Schmitt’s political theology and,
because of it, his conclusions about the Schmitt-Peterson-Kantorowicz relationship also differ
from mine.76
In my view, neither Kantorowicz nor Schmitt confuse the historical with the metaphysical level, as
Geréby seems to assume. Kantorowicz confirms how the possibilities to create metaphors, as Schmitt
stated, have worked throughout history in both senses and not only in the sense that results in the
secularisation of theological concepts.77 The ‘necessity’ that Geréby supposes in interpreting Kantor-
owicz, which seems to confirm Max Weber’s well-known thesis on the self-secularisation of Chris-
tianity, confuses explanation with causality, something that a historian such as Kantorowiz does not
usually do. Even if the parallelism that Schmitt proposes is between the metaphysical image of an era
and its representation of sovereignty, the distillation of the political facts from theological concepts
and ideas is not necessary. There is no such necessity in both authors, but rather historical transfer-
ences mediated through human imagination and freedom. Nothing in history verifies anything on a

71
Boureau, Kantorowicz, p. 106.
72
Geréby, ‘Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson’, in Al-Azmeh and Bak, Monotheistic Kingship, 34.
73
Geréby, ‘Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson’, in Al-Azmeh and Bak, Monotheistic Kingship, 54.
74
Geréby, ‘Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson’, in Al-Azmeh and Bak, Monotheistic Kingship, 39: ‘political theology can be taken to mean
that the political in its essence displays theological structures, grounded in a structural homology of the theoretical and the political
sphere, and thereby constituting an ideological basis for the secular reformulation of the political’. Here Geréby summarises
Schmitt’s thesis.
75
Geréby, ‘Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson’, in Al-Azmeh and Bak, Monotheistic Kingship, 53: ‘In tying Christianity by its necessary
consequences to the emergence of the modern absolutist state, and then (implicitly) to all later European developments (…) Fol-
lowing the historical transformations, the early modern concepts are in fact proven to be consequences of the theological doc-
trines. An upshot of Kantorowicz’s argument is that political theology exists even on the basis of the Christian Doctrine’. The
emphasis is mine.
76
The main difference between us is that, for Geréby, Kantorowicz’s work cannot be considered a confirmation of Schmitt’s political
theology. This is so because he is historical and not metaphysical, and because– against Schmitt’s high consideration of Christian
dogma- Kantorowicz demonstrates its weakness, in so far as it contents its own secularization, giving birth to the absolutist Modern
State. In this way, Peterson’s idea confirms that every political theology must be heterodox, even if for Kantorowicz this heterodoxy
emerges from the very same Christian dogma. Geréby, ‘Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson’, in Al-Azmeh and Bak, Monotheistic Kingship,
53. In my view, Kantorowicz’s work confirms Schmitt’s political theology against Peterson, not only for Early Modernity, but also for
the Middle Ages– something not original to Schmitt’s idea- and this is a very important addition because, contrary to Geréby’s
assumption, it shows the impossibility of accepting the secularization thesis that Schmitt supposes. The kind of necessity that Ger-
éby attributes to Kantorowicz’s idea of the self-secularization of Christian dogmatic is lacking. He describes transferences not only in
one sense (from theology into politics), but rather in both senses, as the quote at the beginning of this paper show, and because of
that, it is not an exclusively modern fact, but rather is indistinctly Medieval, Early Modern and even could be contemporary. More-
over, none of them actually confuses the metaphysical with the historical level, as Geréby supposes in Schmitt’s case.
77
This is a good example: ‘Owing to that appropriation by the Church, however, the feudal vassalitic oath had become an oath of
office binding the bishop, not as a vassal, but as an ‘officer’, and binding him not only to the pope but also to the abstract insti-
tution, the papatus, and to the bishop’s own office, the episcopatus. Finally, that ecclesiastified, and now pseudo-feudal oath
returned in a new guise to the secular state as an oath of office urging the king as well as his officers to protect an impersonal
institution which ‘never dies’, the Crown’. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 354.
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 1177

metaphysical level; rather, it reveals transcendental structures. I think that both Schmitt and Kantor-
owicz share this view.78
History takes just one of many possible courses of action and Schmitt tries to recognise the glaring
parallel between theology and political structures in the possibilities carried out in history. He under-
stands political theology as ‘a historical-juridical research field’ rather than a theological or meta-
physical one. Hence, the ‘political theology’ research field can only be investigated historically.
The only metaphysical link, as I have already mentioned, using Blumenberg’s words, is the shared
absoluteness of the theological and political phenomena.
The examples Kantorowicz found for the Middle Ages and the possible examples we could find in
Modernity of the political theology of the modern sovereign considered by Carl Schmitt reveal that
the early Christian attempt to set limits definitively between the secular and sacred realms, following
what the orthodox Peterson proclaims, is always a challenge for every historical moment. However, it
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is almost impossible to achieve definitively in history and thus every historical moment experiences
tension, both theoretical and practical, between the two spheres.79
In the light of the previous reflections, I conclude that Kantorowicz’s work constitutes:
(1) A defence of Schmitt’s political theology against Peterson. What is more, it supports Schmitt’s
political theology as a research field consisting of the study of the transferences between the
theological and the political.
(2) A specification of Schmitt’s thesis for the Middle Ages. Kantorowicz introduces himself into the
discussion between Schmitt and Peterson by arguing, against Peterson and Schmitt, that a Chris-
tian political theology exists. Peterson did not accept it as ‘orthodox’. Schmitt did not accept it as
specifically ‘medieval’ since his definition of political theology in the first Politische Theologie
presupposes the process of secularisation that begins in the Early Modernity. Schmitt considers
theopolitical transferences a modern fact and not a medieval one.
(3) Further evidence that we cannot speak of a unidirectional secularisation process simply by refer-
ring to transferences from the theological to the political. In this sense, Kantorowicz’s work con-
tradicts Schmitt’s secularisation thesis. If the transferences between the theological and the
political camps are a sign of secularisation, then in some way secularisation is not a process.
(4) To this suspicion, he also adds the idea that transferences are not merely unidirectional, but
rather are bidirectional and thus secularisation cannot be spoken of merely by identifying trans-
ferences. Secularisation and the appropriation of the secular by the sacred are intermingled
movements in every era. These transferences demonstrate the perpetual nostalgia between the
spiritual and the political fields, which is free from every process and allows those conceptual
transferences to happen in any historical moment.

78
Thus they are closer in their research than Geréby states. Both do not think of political theology as normative descriptions, as
Geréby supposes in his article: historical events are not ‘normative’. From this assumption I was able to understand the defence
that Peterson makes in his conclusion and with which I fully agree. Geréby, ‘Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson’, in Al-Azmeh and Bak,
Monotheistic Kingship, 53: ‘What Kantorowicz really wants to do, in my view, by providing this massive amount of proof, is not to
offer an unqualified support of Schmitt. What he seems to imply is that the structures, which remain the same while changing their
content, are the heritage of Christian political theology’. So, quite contrary to Peterson’s thesis, political theology could only be
Christian.
79
Nicoletti also recognises Peterson’s blind spot on this point that, for Schmitt, was clear. Nicoletti, ‘Erik Peterson e Carl Schmitt’, in
Caronello, Erik Peterson, 536: ‘Qui infatti sta il punto cruciale della teologia politica schmittiana che Peterson sembra non aver visto.
Ciò qui manca in Peterson è forse propio una comprensione dell’età moderna e della sua natura teológico-politica che non è ridu-
cibile agli esiti relativistici dello Stato liberale o alle pericolose derive neopagane dello Stato nazionale’.

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