Hi! Welcome to “Dusty Phrases.” You will find a phrase below, in one ancient language or another, along with its English translation. You may also find the power to inspire your friends or provoke dread among your enemies.
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Latin:
Instrumentum regni
English:
Instrument of monarchy
This is a phrase about subterfuge (which you may or may not know is one of my favorite topics.) Instrumentum regni was long applied to leaders of a not-obviously-political organization, which were nonetheless controlled by the government to the end of influencing the population. Most often, this phrase was applied to religious leaders.
But surely such a thing would never happen. Would the government infiltrate and/or control the sacred religious world so that said world was then made to parrot its own views and thus steer its congregants in a desired direction? Does your church’s conspicuously wealthy pastor ever parrot the government’s views (perhaps by supporting from the pulpit a war that the political Left might be opposed to, or by supporting socially Left policies and points of view that the political right might oppose)? These things are worth considering. A clever government that owned both sides could pick and choose when to rile up either side to achieve majority support for a particular end.
“When the pastor agrees with my politics, it’s not that I was influenced or manipulated, it’s just that we are both on the side of God, while those other religious folks are not… obliviously.”
If “instrumentum regni” was highly pervasive within a society, you would likely see people self-selecting their church and church pastors on the basis of politics rather than, you know, proximity to home and worship of God.
This governmental infiltration strategy is less effective if religious congregants are educated and informed enough to notice when a pastor is twisting or abandoning holy texts and traditions to make a contemporary political point. This is a strategy that is likely to be highly effective if church-goers and their religious practices are predominantly emotional experiences divorced from ancient traditions and religious education.
Today this phrase goes well beyond the realm of faith, which makes sense in an increasingly secular overall society. You could argue (without much effort) that music, entertainment, sports, and the news media are instrumentum regni. In fact, you might be hard-pressed in some places of the world to find anything widely popular that isn’t instrument regni. Trying to find such places might even make you seem like a dissident.
Of course, to add to the confusion, sometimes the regni is correct and its obvious opponents are not. Nevertheless you might prefer to know the origin point of the messaging you hear.
(from wiki)
Instrumentum regni (literally, “instrument of monarchy”, therefore “of government”) is a Latin phrase perhaps inspired by Tacitus, used to express the exploitation of religion by State or ecclesiastical polity as a means of controlling the masses, or in particular to achieve political and mundane ends.
History
The concept expressed by the phrase has undergone various forms and has been taken up by several writers and philosophers throughout history. Among these Polybius, Lucretius, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Vittorio Alfieri and Giacomo Leopardi.
Among the oldest and most important there was undoubtedly the Greek historian Polybius, who in his Histories says:
I believe that it is the very thing which among other peoples is an object of reproach, I mean superstition, which maintains the cohesion of the Roman State. These matters are clothed in such pomp and introduced to such an extent into their public and private life that nothing could exceed it, a fact which will surprise many. My own opinion at least is that they have adopted this course for the sake of the common people. It is a course which perhaps would not have been necessary had it been possible to form a state composed of wise men, but as every multitude is fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger, the multitude must be held in by invisible terrors and suchlike pageantry. For this reason I think, not that the ancients acted rashly and at haphazard in introducing among the people notions concerning the gods and beliefs in the terrors of hell, but that the moderns are most rash and foolish in banishing such beliefs.
— Polybius
Before Polybius, a similar thesis was expressed in the fifth century BC. from the Athenian politician and writer Critias, disciple of Socrates, in a satirical drama called Sisyphus, of which a long fragment has been handed down to us.
In the Renaissance the concept was taken up by Niccolò Machiavelli in his The Prince.