'The Highest Powers': Grotius and the Internationalization of Church and State

This paper takes up David Armitage's suggestion that historians should be alert to the various forms which international thinking took in the early modern period. Specifically, it concentrates on Grotius's contribution to the effort to conceptualise the relationship of church and state, and to settle their relative jurisdictions. It argues that this effort can (and should) be read as part of a process of establishing a set of norms concerning the power of states. However, where some scholars have argued that an important chapter in the emergence of the modern state lies in the assertion of civil dominance over clerical power, this paper argues that a doctrine of civil religion formed the basis of an emerging logic of Protestant politics.