Wacław Uruszczak

Parlamentaryzm to termin określający system organizacji państwa, w którym jego fundamentem są instytucje reprezentujące naród2. Chodzi tu nie tyle o wspólnotę etniczną, ile o wspólnotę polityczną, a więc zbiorowość osób wyposażoną w prawa polityczne. Współczesny parlamentaryzm został ukształtowany zgodnie z modelem Monteskiuszowskiego podziału władzy. Reprezentacja narodu stanowi w nim organ władzy ustawodawczej, istniejący obok organów władzy wykonawczej i sądowej. Ich wzajemna relacja winna odpowiadać modelowi równowagi, co dobitnie wyraża amerykańska formuła check and balance. We współczesnych demokracjach parlamentaryzm to standard organizacji państwa. Nie ma zapewne dzisiaj na kuli ziemskiej kraju, w którym nie byłoby instytucji parlamentarnych. Parlamentaryzm, zarówno jako doktryna, jak i system polityczny, jest owocem rozwoju historycznego, którego poznanie ma doniosłe znaczenie także dla współczesności.

In church law, the union of churches (unio ecclesiarum) concerned the merger of two and more dioceses under the same bishop. In the Middle Ages, canonists were already pointing to three types of union: 1) aeque principalis; 2) unio per subiectionem, when one of the churches was subject to the other and thus the episcopal dignity remained only in that one, and finally, the third kind, called 3) unio per extinctionem, when two particular churches, usually dioceses, were merged into a single new one. The canonical achievements in the field of union of churches and benefices were collected and summarized, among others, in the treatise De unionibus ecclesiarum atque beneficiorum by Nicolaus Thilen, and in the work of Anaclet Reiffenstuel entitled Ius canonicum universum. The three types of union of churches and benefices presented above, distinguished by their mergers, were adopted into the Code of Canon Law of 1917 (canons 1419 and 1420). The 450th anniversary of the union concluded on July 1, 1569 in Lublin was celebrated in 2019. As a result of this union the Kingdom of Poland, called the Crown, merged with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The canonical models of the union of churches and benefices, developed in medieval canon law, are important for a closer description of the essence of this relationship, starting with the first of them, i.e. the union concluded in 1385 in Krevo. The political relationships established between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania largely corresponded to the three canonical models of the church union indicated above, i.e. unio aeque principalis (1385), unio per subiectionem (1413) and unio per extinctionem seu translationem (1569).

Selected Projects for a Common Peace in Europe from the 15^th to the 17^th Centuries as a Remedy for the Problem of Wars of Religion

The article is devoted to three projects focused on establishing international organizations whose aim was to bring about a common peace in Europe. The first of them was worked out at the court of the King of Bohemia, George of Podiebrad, most probably in 1462; the second is mentioned in the treatise authored by French monk Émeric Crucé, andedited in 1623, under the telling title Le Nouveau Cynée; the third, on the other hand, is Grand Dessein,described in the Memoiresof Duke of Sully Maximilien de Béthune, a minister of Henry IV, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1638. The authors of the present study propose to take a new look at the projects under analysis, perceiving in them an attempt to find a remedy for the problem of wars of religion. Hence, the first of them is shown in the context of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, whereas the other two are shown in that of the Huguenot Wars in France. The thesis is accepted in the article that George of Podiebrad’s project was primarily meant to be an answer to the current political problems of the day which the “Hussite King” was confronted with. The legal solutions included in the project could – as it seems – offer the Bohemian monarch a handy tool facilitating prevention of both a possible mutiny raised by the internal Catholic opposition, and an attack from outside, which, as a result of Pius II’s repealing of the Compactataand George’s refusal to accept the conditions of agreement proposed by the Holy See, could not be excluded. The acceptance of the thesis of political motives behind the propositions offered by the “Hussite King” does not belittle the value of the very project itself, which, in the history of European political and legal thought, was undoubtedly of paramount importance. Of the three peace plans presented here it is only the project put forward by George of Podiebrad that was invested with legal norms, constituting a ready project of an international contract. It distinguished itself against the other projects with its detailed elaboration and the complexity of the proposed solutions. Moreover, as the only one that was well-known at European courts, it became the subject of diplomatic negotiations which raised considerable interest also among its opponents. The latter were led by the papacy, fighting it, as it eventually turned out, with success. Both George of Podiebrad’s project and the Count of Sully’s proposal took into account the establishment of international organisations of regional character which would associate exclusively Christian states, regarding the fight against the Ottoman Empire as one of the more significant goals of their existence. Only the project by Crucé, which – contrary to the other two was written not by a politician, but by a thinker – assumed bringing peace in a universal dimension, including all the sovereign states of the world. The innovatory approach of Crucé’s proposition consisted in acknowledging as the fundamental one the idea of expected binding the members of the projected organisation by freedom of trade exchange which would be guaranteed in the global dimension”. For the authors of all the aforementioned peace plans the institutional factors uniting the states associated in the organizations to be established were to be commonwealth organs, among which a particular place was to be assigned to organs capable of settling conflicts between states. They can be considered to be a prototype of a contemporary international judiciary. The projects in question were founded on the principle of formal equality of sovereign states, which was accepted as the basis of international relations in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Furthermore, they introduced the principles of renouncing war and accepting the peaceful settlement of conflicts in mutual relations, and of striving for the creation of a system of collective safety. In this way they evidently went beyond the canons of the epochs in which they were created, and some of the ideas lying at their foundations did not materialize until the 20^th century.