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463 Chapter 2 The Early Middle Ages (Fifth to Eleventh Centuries) There is something of a paradox in devoting a chapter to the Early Middle Ages in a book on the history of political ideas. After all, the same arguments that led us to begin our narrative with classical Greece and not before—because in earlier periods and in other geocultural areas either the object of “political science” (the state) or its subject (scientific thought) was absent1 — should logically lead us to interrupt it in the West between the fifth and eleventh centuries. During this long period of precipitous civilizational decline, the state withered away except in a small number of countries at certain times. In its place came another social organization, feudalism, similar, it would seem, to the “chiefdoms” of prestate societies. And while the scientific spirit of the age did not disappear entirely, it was confined to an extremely small circle. The mentality of the rest of the population—including most of the secular leaders—could best be described as “magico-religious.” So, if we stick to our definitions, true political thought is hard to find during the Early Middle Ages. Yet, it would be even more perplexing to simply break off our narrative for this period. The civilization of the Early Middle Ages remains a “written” civilization; unlike that of the Greek Middle Age, the past cannot be forgotten. The highly educated men of the church were familiar with the political and legal theories of antiquity (to a degree anyway: Aristotle’s Politics was lost; Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis was inaccessible), and they drew on them to frame the problems they encountered in the feudal context concerning government, the administration of justice, and the relations between the church and the secular authorities. Even if, in the absence of the institutions described in the Greek, Latin, biblical, and patristic writings, they could not criticize these classical texts nor add their own innovative contributions, they nevertheless managed to 1 See our general introduction, “Anthropology and Politics.” Part Three: The Christian West 464 ensure a certain continuity in intellectual life. It was on the basis of their contributions, however modest, that it was possible for political thinking to reawaken sometime around the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Therefore, the history of political ideas in the Early Middle Ages must direct attention to this period of transition just as to other periods. We will begin with an overview of the main political developments of the Early Middle Ages (section I). Then, we will examine the arguments for what has been called “political Augustinism,” that is, a doctrine of the subordination of the state to the church (section II). Alongside this sort of apogee of church power—awaiting the decline of church power that would occur at the time of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and during the greatest period of feudalism—is a revival of canon law (section III). In the next chapter we will discuss the two main “political institutions” of the Early Middle Ages: feudalism and sacred kingship. We will also explore the representations or ideologies that are associated with them. I. The Historical Context The history of the Early Middle Ages can be divided into five periods.2 A. The Establishment of the First Barbarian Kingdoms Since the sack of Rome, in 410, the barbarians had mounted growing pressure on the Empire’s borders; by the dawn of the fifth century, they had established their first kingdoms with “federated ” status within the Empire itself: the new realms included the Visigoth kingdom in Aquitaine (418 AD), the Vandal kingdom in North Africa (435 AD), the kingdom of the Suevi in northwestern Spain (after 406 AD). The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons3 invaded Great Britain and, in the fifth and sixth centuries, they pushed native Britons to the north and west as far as Armorica. Meanwhile , following additional disturbances in the aftermath of the Hun invasion,4 the Ostrogoths of Theodoric the Great conquered Italy, not before threatening Byzantium and being expulsed by Zeno, the Roman emperor of the East. The Alamans, the Burgundians, the Quadi, the Marcomans , and the Bavarians moved into the territories of present-day southern Germany, Switzerland , northern Italy, and Burgundy. And the Frankish kingdom also began its expansion around this time.5 There followed a brief resurrection of the Roman entity in the sixth century. The armies of Justinian, the Roman emperor of the East (525–68), recaptured North Africa, Italy, and a...

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