Abstract

During the first decades of the 17th century in the German territories two different conceptions of the mixed constitution flourished. The first affirmed that the body of the Republic is always mixed, while the magistrate has always a unitary form; the second subverted this model and considered every Republic as simple, but admitted that the governing body could be plural. Both traditions rely on two principles - unity and plurality - positioned on two different levels which can coexist insofar as the political community is part of an order that is not arbitrary.