Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (Routledge Revivals)

Walter Ullmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136999284
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

In many respects this book, first published in 1961, marked a somewhat radical departure from contemporary historical writings. It is neither a constitutional nor a political history, but a historical definition and explanation of the main features which characterised the three kinds of government which can be discerned in the Middle Ages – government by the Pope, the King, the People. The author's enviable knowledge of the sources – clerical, secular, legal, constitutional, liturgical, literary – as well as of modern literature enables him to demonstrate the principles upon which the papal government, the royal government, and the government of the people rested. He shows how the traditional theocratic forms of government came to be supplanted by forms of government based on the will of the people. Although concerned with the Middle Ages, the book also contains much that is of topical interest to the discerning student of modern institutions. Medieval history is made understandable to modern man by modern methods.

PART I
The Pope

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

THE HISTORIAN INQUIRING into the principles animating the medieval papacy must see the institution from within itself and from its own premisses. By the very terms of his calling the historian cannot enter into any discussion as to whether the principles set forth and applied by the medieval papacy were ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, were in agreement with the Bible or violated biblical themes, were justified or unjustified. The historian must set out from the evidence which the institution itself supplies—and fortunately enough supplies copiously—and which alone provides a secure basis for the reconstruction of papal principles of government. The question whether a particular papal tenet can be squared with biblical data is one that belongs to the theologian; the question whether the papacy based the tenet on the Bible comes within the precincts of the historian’s quest. But so do many other questions: the reliance of the papacy on Roman law and the Roman constitution is a fact which lies within the historian’s field of inquiry, but whether the application of Roman law principles was correct only the Romanist can tell us. The incorporation of platonic and neoplatonic ideas into the papal ideology is a feature which it is the business of the historian to point out, but whether the utilization of these ideas by the papacy was correct only the philosopher can tell us.

The prerequisite therefore for a proper historical presentation of the principles with which and on which the medieval papacy worked is to see the institution from within itself. It is the self-portrait of the papacy in its rich literary, epistolary, symbolic material which alone can serve as the basis of inquiry. The physiognomy of the medieval papacy emerges with a clarity and a conciseness from material almost unparalleled in its richness. There is in the whole of European history no other organ or body or institution which furnishes so large an amount of historical material as the papacy did in the Middle Ages. This evidence, overwhelmingly composed by the popes themselves, is, because it is a self-portrayal of the papacy, an indispensable instrument for the reconstruction of the fundamental tenets held by the papacy. In so many other instances our viewing of historical institutions is indirect and restricted, since we must rely on the help of contemporary historiography, on the annalists, chroniclers, litterateurs, and so forth. That the picture thus obtained may not always correspond to objective reality is evident: we imbibe the personal bias and the subjective evaluation of the annalist, who himself had understandably only incomplete knowledge of the official material that left, say, a royal chancery or a monastic establishment. But within the history of the papacy the inquiry is very greatly facilitated by the abundance of official material: not that the literary products of non-papal provenance are superfluous, but that they assume a place of secondary importance is the result of this abundance of self-portraying material. This is, in every respect, primary source material: with its help we stand on very firm ground, the mind of the papacy having received its indelible imprint in the written word, which thus provides a gateway to the thought of the papacy. No more immediate opening, no more direct access to the welter of papal principles, could be envisaged. It is the direct approach, and not the indirect one through secondary material, which gives the historian confidence in his task of reproducing the principles produced by the papacy itself.

But this rich source material, allowing us unimpeded ingress into the workshop of the papacy, has another function besides that of assisting modern man to recognize fundamental papal tenets. This material was stored up, literally and allegorically, in the archives of the papacy. Again, no other governmental institution in the Middle Ages had such facilities as the Roman Church had. That the idea of Registers, of collections of decrees, and so forth, was taken over from the Roman administration is of insignificant importance when compared with the use to which that idea was put. The archives provided a veritable ideological storehouse: not only the popes themselves, but their immediate surroundings worked and lived in the milieu which the archives provided. Many of the medieval popes were reared in the intellectual climate of the archives and as a result of long and distinguished service in the curia these archives became, so to speak, part of their own being. The note of conservatism which strikes the modern inquirer finds its ready explanation in the transmission of papal thought through the vehicle of the archives. One might go so far as to say that they moulded the mind of generation upon generation of popes. Further, while this stored-up material is of inestimable value to the modern inquirer, it was of still greater value to the medieval papacy itself. For, being easily available, it guided the popes towards the thoughts and actions of antecedent popes. It was a stand-by, literally speaking at hand, always ready for consultation and thus decisively shaping the outlook of papal generations. There might have been merely a hint at a particular idea in an earlier letter of a pope; there might have been merely a faint allusion to this or that principle; there might have been merely an indication of what was intended in a decree, but by virtue of the continuous educational process at the hands of the archives a later pope would draw out the full consequences of the mere hint.

To say, however, that the medieval papacy considered itself as nothing but an institution which followed the process of evolutionary development would be a statement that would violate the first principle of the medieval papacy, that is, its divine foundation. That in the course of its history the papacy came to develop a number of principles is self-evident, but, seen from the angle of the papacy itself, these were consequences or subsidiary principles arising from the fundamental principle adhered to by the papacy that it itself was founded by divinity through St Peter. However many principles we may detect in the working of the medieval papacy, they all go back in one way or another to the one and overriding primary principle of a divine foundation. The elaboration of its governmental principles—manifesting itself in the numerous official products—was a consequence of that fundamental principle. The importance of the archives as the ideological storehouse of the papacy is thereby not in the least minimized: on the contrary, they prove how a biblically fixed statement could in the course of historical development be subjected to the most rigorous and detailed examination, analysis, and application.

CHAPTER 2
Foundations

IN RECONSTRUCTING THE basic principles of the papal government it is, therefore, best if we follow the lead given by the papacy itself. The theme expressed in or underlying the thousands of papal communications in the Middle Ages is the primacy of the Roman Church, a primacy conceived in both doctrinal and jurisdictional respects. This tenet of the Roman primacy denoted in succinct Roman constitutional theory the idea of the principatus or, seen from a different angle, it was the classic expression of the descending thesis of government and law. The sum-total of all power was concentrated in the pope.

Now this basic principle was founded on Matt. xvi. 18–19:

Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram edificabo ecclesiam meam…et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum, et quodcumque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in coelis, et quodcumque solveris super terram, erit solutum et in coelis.

Papal exegesis at all times held that this—unique—passage signified two things: first, the foundation of the Church as the body of all the faithful, clerics and lay alike, and second, the establishment of the government over this body. Both therefore, the government and the body over which this government was to be exercised, were held to have been instituted in one and the same act.

First, let us take the ecclesia, which was founded in the Petrine commission. It signified, according to the constant papal reasoning, the whole society of all Christians without any distinction whatsoever. That is to say, the Church was conceived to be an institution divinely created, not resulting from any natural instinct or impulse, but one brought into being by Christ Himself. The Church embodied high and low, patriarch and villein, king and emperor and slave, in short anyone who had been validly baptized. Baptism was considered an eminently legal act through which alone membership of the Church could be secured. Through baptism man became legally a part of the whole corporation. The importance of this incorporation can be under stood from the effects of baptism. According to St Paul, baptism worked a metamorphosis of man. Prior to it man was simply the homo animalis, that is man of nature, the homo carnis, but through the efficacy of baptism man was transformed into a different being. Man and Christian—homo and christianus—were two different conceptions. The former followed his natural appetites and inclinations, while the latter was said to have shed these characteristics, appearing as a ‘new creature’: he was the ‘reborn man’ (1 Pet. i. 23), so that his orientation, outlook, his maxims and norms of living were now directed by the postulates flowing from the participation in the divine attributes which he received through baptism.

Consequently, the papacy, in common with medieval doctrine and literature, held that the individual’s activities cannot be separated into more or less well defined categories. The atomization of our activities into religious, political, moral, cultural, economic and other spheres was a feature with which the Middle Ages were not familiar. The object was the Christian and he, by virtue of his baptism, was to live according to the Christian norm and according to none other. Christianity seized the whole of man—man was whole and indivisible: every one of his actions was thought to have been accessible to the judgement by Christian norms and standards. This principle, vital as it was to the papacy and its government, was the medieval principle of totality. This may perhaps be difficult for us moderns to understand, because we are so much attuned to thinking in the categories of religious, moral, political, and similar norms that we forget the fairly recent emergence of these categories. It is, however, only by treating this principle of indivisibility or totality as an operational principle that we can arrive at a better understanding of medieval history itself and of the principles upon which the medieval papacy in particular worked. In brief, it was not the abstract man, but the Christian standing on a level different from man, who demanded attention: it was the whole of the Christian that mattered, not the religious or social or moral norms. ‘Omnes actiones christianorum sunt ordinatae ad consequendam vitam eternam.’ Each and every action should have a Christian import and be motivated by Christian norms—that was at least the point of view of the medieval papacy.

Now this corporate union of all Christians, that is, of all those who were baptized, constituted the Church, and on the easily available Roman law model this society was endowed with corporative qualities. The totality of all Christians was said to form the corpus Christi. It was a body which exhibited all the features of a Roman corporation and to which all the corporation principles laid down in Roman law were applicable. It was, moreover, a closely integrated body, in which any injury done to one member would redound to the detriment of the whole. Hence, just as the individual Christian was an indivisible unit, one totum, so was the corporate union of all Christians indivisible and one whole. The one and only element that held this body together was the Christian faith and adherence to the norms deducible from it. Nevertheless, although directed towards an end beyond this world, this Christian society existed here on this earth. Its members pursued all the ordinary occupations,¹ but—and this is the crucial point—they were to order their lives in accordance with norms and standards which were not of their own making. Thus, while the end of this society and of its members was in the other world, the terrestrial life was nonetheless of fundamental importance in achieving this other-worldly aim, that is, salvation. The principle of indivisibility embraced the life in this as well as in the other world: the l...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I The Pope
• PART II The King
• PART III The People
• Appendix
• Index