Historiographical Perspectives on Marius Salamonius’ Contribution to the Principle of Popular Sovereignty

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the recent historiography of modern political thought (Skinner, Millar, Straumann and Lee), which now fully agrees with D'Addio and Gierke that it was Roman law that played a fundamental role in the development of the idea of popular sovereignty and the doctrine of the social contract; and this thanks to the contribution of the legal humanist Salamone who, in 1513, definitively demonstrated the falsity of the medieval theory of the translatio imperii unintentionally promoted by Ulpian (according to which the Roman people irrevocably transferred sovereign power to the prince Octavian Augustus through the Lex Regia) and the validity of the words of Pomponius, according to which the Roman people elected princes not as masters or legibus solutus, but as ministers, since tyranny and principality are irreconcilable systems by nature. Today, this current of modern historiography takes for granted the idea that the theory of concessio imperii, developed by Salamone himself in De Principatu, forged the general principle of popular sovereignty - the political power of the People is superior to that of the Prince - which was later taken up by Calvinists and French humanists (as well as by the Spanish philosophers and jurists of the School of Salamanca). Besides, this theory would have been the true foundation of the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty and the social contract as conceived by Rousseau, who in his Du contrat social considers the Roman Republic as an example to be followed.