ADVANCE ARTICLE: Nicholas BARDEN, "Bridling the Prince: Humanist Counsel and Its Perils in Jean Calvin's Seneca Commentary" (History of European Ideas 2025)

 

(image source: Taylor & Francis)

Abstract:

Jean Calvin’s 1532 commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia included his earliest investigation into the role of regulative institutions in restraining the passions of rulers. Northern humanist authors, such as Guillaume Budé, Desiderius Erasmus, and Thomas More, had drawn on Plutarch’s writings concerning high office to develop alternate views on the use of moral instruction, admonition, and counsel to cultivate habits of moral virtue within the prince. This article argues that, in his Seneca commentary, Calvin developed a sustained critique of this northern humanist project of philosophic counsel. Stressing the durability of libidinal desires within the self, Calvin concluded that the power of high office was likely to cultivate in rulers a native arrogance and uncontrolled state of soul that led them to resist moral advice. Instead, Calvin turned to the example of the Spartan ephors as an alternate source of restraint that could establish external limits on the passions and redirect the exercise of royal power towards the public good.

Read more here: DOI  10.1080/01916599.2025.2500432.