The differentiation of authority: the medieval turn toward existence

1. The Medieval Political Order to 1150

19 1 The Medieval Political Order to 1150 Legal historian Harold Berman points to an “axis-time” in the development of Western medieval order. He has postulated that “there was a radical discontinuity between the Europe of the period before the years 1050–1150 and the Europe of the period after [these] years.”1 Norman Cantor, in another context, agrees, stating that this period was dominated by an attempt at world revolution which influenced many aspects of social change. “It seems, in retrospect, that it was almost necessary for a revolutionary onslaught to shake the order of the early Middle Ages to its foundations, so that the new political, economic, and intellectual forces could be given the opportunity to develop in the face of the old institutions and ideas.”2 In order to grasp the significance of the 1050–1150 period for the development of Western political order, the Middle Ages to 1050 will be treated in the first part of the chapter. We will be able then, in the second part, to appreciate what constituted the “revolutionary onslaught” that unfolded in the axis-time. 1. Berman, Law and Revolution, 4. 2. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 244. 20 The Medieval Political Order to 1150 The Middle Ages to 1050 Political Development The urge to sanctify the political was rejected by the early Christian community but became a characteristic of medieval society and was at the root of many problems that were distinctively medieval. Before focusing on specific controversies pertaining to church and empire, something more fundamental is needed: before there are institutions that convey the meaning of a community’s existence, there is the community. With this in mind, it is apposite to describe the lower-tier development of identity and community substance among the peoples of the early medieval West before proceeding to the upper-tier institutional development. Lower Tier: Monasticism and Authority The conversion of the pagan communities to the north and west of the old imperial zone to communities bonded by a Christian community substance took many forms.3 The common outcome of conversions was not just the generation of Christian piety among formerly pagan individuals, but the transformation of multifarious tribal peoples into membership within a universal spiritual community. What this transformation means politically is the renovation of the Germanic peoples’s civil theology. More than any other institution, the driver of major civilizational renovation in early medieval Europe was the monastery. The geographical area that was to become the Latin West was a vast wilderness left largely vacant by the movement of the tribes. It was in this wilderness or indeed in the kingdoms of those surviving tribes that men and women established monastic foundations. The monastery can be regarded as the vehicle of civilization par excellence in that its presence in these regions represented a new spirit, operating according to a different, if not somewhat exotic, rule or authority. Of course, while these foundations stood for the eternal order of the pax Christi, there was also the prestige of Roman imperial greatness that attached to the monastery that drew attention. 3. See Richard Fletcher, Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity 371–1386 AD. The Medieval Political Order to 1150 21 In earlier imperial times, the monastic ethos had already proved supremely attractive as an ordering force. The transformation of the whole person in asceticism and the absolute renunciation of pleasure, comfort , company, and human society symbolized an unworldly spiritual authority in the service of the Kingdom of God. Monks became living icons of the Christian personality and were regarded by contemporaries as “watchmen or guardians who ‘kept the walls’ of the Christian City and repelled the attacks of its spiritual enemies.”4 Within and beyond the boundaries of the civilized empire, it was the monks who took the place of the martyrs in the public imagination as models of perseverance in troubled times. The monastery itself was an autonomous Christian polis, functioning as a center of Christian community substance in the midst of a rural hinterland among pagan peoples. In effect, it meant that the establishment and function of a monastic community had to be adaptable to the cultural and natural environment. The inner spiritual freedom of the monastery depended upon an external economic and political liberty to operate as a self-contained Christian polis. Political authority in the West was weak or, in places nonexistent, and did...