解放者・ミルトン
スポンサーリンク
概要
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This paper explores the political aspects of regicide as seen through Milton and Salmasius's long debate. In the summer of 1642, a civil war broke out in England. It was the war between the Parliamentary Party and the Royalist Faction. After having severe battles for seven years, it ended in the Parliamentary Party's victory over the Royalist Faction. Their triumph was followed by the establishment of a Revolutionary Government under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. Their goal was to found the Nation of the Commonwealth. In order to achieve the Nation of the Commonwealth, what they attempted to do was to abolish the reign of King Charles I. For that reason, the Revolutionary Government immediately arrested King Charles. They tried him on a charge of dictatorship and sentenced him to death. They executed the king on January 30th 1649. Needless to say, immediately after the execution of King Charles I, the Royalist Faction strongly opposed the regicide. In the same year of the execution of King Charles I, the Royalist Faction hired Salmasius, the famous scholar of Greek and Latin at Leyden University in Holland, and asked him to write the refutation against the king's execution. At their request, Salmasius revealed a treatise called Defensio Regia pro Carob I. While the Revolutionary Government ordered Milton, the Latin Secretary, to write their apology, justifying the execution of the king. It was a piece entitled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, published in 1651. Thus the crucial argument between Milton and Salmasius started. A year later, in 1652, the argument of both sides was escalated by Peter Du Moulin's treatise called The Cry of the King's Blood. It took the side of King Charles. Consequently, Milton was forced to write against it. Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda is the most famous and one of the most outstanding prose works of Milton, written in 1654. As has previously been stated, Milton's Defensio Secunda was written in reply to Du Moulin's The Cry of the King's Blood. However , Milton mistook the author of King's Blood not as Du Moulin but as Alexander More, whom he sharply criticized. Defensio Secunda was written mainly for the purpose of freeing "the state from grievous tyranny and the church from unworthy servitude." However, his pen placed more weight on his high pride than defending his own country. Milton's high pride was the pride of his honorable family and that of his blindness, both of which I discuss later in this paper.