The Political Theories of Martin Luther

highest dignity and greatest force, is called sovereignty."1 The word sovereignty was first used in this sense, it is commonly asserted, by the Frenchman Jean Bodin in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. He declared that sovereignty is the absolute and perpetual power of a state.2 A later authority on the subject expresses the notion of sovereignty in these words: 1 Bluntschli: The Theory of the State, p. 463. 2 "Puissance absolue et perpetuelle d'une r£publique." Bodin: De la Republique, i., 1. If a determinate human superior, not in a habit of obedience to a like superior, receive habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society, and the society (including the superior) is a society political and independent. ... In order that a given society may form a society political and independent, the two distinguishing marks which I have mentioned above must unite. The generality of the given society must be in the habit of obedience to a determinate and common superior; while that determinate person, or determinate body of persons, must not be habitually obedient to a determinate person or body.1 Sovereignty, as understood in our age, implies absolute political power within the state,? supreme power to regulate all affairs within the state,2 and yet itself subject to no authority. It is something more than a mere collection or aggregation of all the various particular powers of the state, su...