87

In his 1640s and 1650s tracts, John Milton envisages not so much a constitutional system but a “republicanism of the spirit” founded on his interpretation of the political model of Biblical Israel. Though this reading is fundamentally anticlerical, meritocratic and hostile to hereditary monarchy as far as its form is concerned, its primary concern is the defence of paramount values: Hebraic piety and virtue, when devoid of political idolatry, work as a source of inspiration for those seeking to give legitimacy to their own power. The reference to Israel, however, goes beyond polemics for Milton. It fosters a vision of society within which ethics is the ultimate basis for politics.