"The papacy cut the direct and domestic relation between throne and altar in every manor or palace, and claimed the right to be guardian and spokesman for every local representative of the spirit...
The Papal Revolution (1073–1122) was the most general and intensive social earthquake Europe has ever seen. It shook the only stable, unblemished and respected symbol of unity: the economic, racial, religious, and moral unit of palace and manor. It emancipated the sons, clergy, knights and servants of every manor in Europe."
(Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen (1938). Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man)
@Sunstone I tune out of the forum for just a few days to attend to civil litigation matters (an application under CPR Part 23 for an extension of time to file a Defence pursuant to CPR Rule 15.5, to be precise), only to miss out on a series of epic threads from yours truly, including - of all things - "throne and altar" throughout the ages, something right up my street!
During the first millennium of the Christian era, the normative stance amongst Christians was that
'throne and altar' were separate jurisdictions (
spiritual/temporal), albeit both divinely ordered in their respective spheres - such that there should, ideally, be harmony between them.
The foundational treatment of the topic in medieval political theory can be found in Pope Gelasius's '
Two Powers' doctrine:
Famuli vestrae pietatis - Wikipedia
Famuli vestrae pietatis, also known by the Latin mnemonic duo sunt ("there are two"), is a letter written in 494 by Pope Gelasius I to Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I Dicorus which expressed the Gelasian doctrine.[1] According to commentary in the Enchiridion symbolorum, the letter is "the most celebrated document of the ancient Church concerning the two powers on earth."[2] The Gelasian doctrine articulates a Christian theology about division of authority and power.
This letter established the dualistic principle that would underlie all Western European political thought for almost a millennium. Gelasius expressed a distinction between two principles governing the world, which Gelasius called the "sacred authority of bishops" (auctoritas sacrata pontificum) and the "royal power" (regalis potestas).
These two principles, auctoritas lending justification to potestas, and potestas providing the executive strength for auctoritas were, Gelasius said, to be considered independent in their own spheres of operation, yet expected to work together in harmony.
There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment...
If the ministers of religion, recognizing the supremacy granted you from heaven in matters affecting the public order, obey your laws, lest otherwise they might obstruct the course of secular affairs by irrelevant considerations, with what readiness should you not yield them obedience to whom is assigned the dispensing of the sacred mysteries of religion.
This represented a Christianized development (and appropriation) of the earlier Jewish distinction between an Aaronic priestly caste and the Davidic kingship, which
@Harel13 outlined in excellent detail. Whereas many - if not most - ancient societies adhered to a kind of 'priest-kingship' (sacral monarchism, as with the Roman Emperor also being the
Pontifex Maximus, the Pharaoh of Egypt a god-king etc.), in addition to a class of ordained clergy, the Israelites had come to strictly distinguish between these two offices and rarely combined them in a single theocratic model before the Maccabean era (when "
the Jews and their priests resolved that Simon [Maccabee] should be their leader and high priest forever"
1 Maccabees 14:41). Christians, by and large, adopted this same schema from the Bible - with the exception of the Eastern church in Byzantium which gravitated back towards a kind of caeseropapist '
priest-king' model.
There were a few prominent dissenters, however, one of them by none other than St. Augustine of Hippo who took a much dimmer view of the origins of political power: regarding it as arising from criminal usurpation and lust for power, as opposed to divine sanction:
CHURCH FATHERS: City of God, Book IV (St. Augustine)
"Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention.
If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.
To crush and subdue more remote peoples without provocation and solely from the thirst for dominion—what is one to call this but brigandage on the grand scale?"
St. Augustine (354-430), Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans (H. Bettenson, Tr.), Book IV, Ch. 4
St. Augustine critiqued the classical understanding of a “
commonwealth” as a society of men who band together based around an accord about justice, writing:
"… if there is no justice in such a man, then it is beyond doubt that there is no justice in a collection of men consisting of persons of this kind"( XIX.21)
This line of thought was of pivotal significance to Augustine’s critique of the Roman Empire's claim to be a divinely ordained and upheld social order "
without limits". In Augustine's estimation, kingdoms and imperial regimes - precisely because they "
crush and subdue more remote peoples" - cannot be truly just and so they are really nothing but huge criminal gangs, no better than highway robbers; with the only distinction being one of scale and manpower of the demoralised masses.
The key issue raised by St. Augustine is how to distinguish legitimate governments from illegitimate - justice from tyranny - noting, “
If we were to examine the conduct of states by the test of justice, as you propose, we should probably make this astounding discovery, that very few nations, if they restored what they have usurped, would possess any country at all” (
De re pub. 3).
Until the dawn of the second millennium, no one had dared translate Augustine's theory into actual political practice and programmatic ideology - and so the Gelasian model remained the prevalent understanding of the relationship between '
crown and altar', a relationship of mutual harmony between two godly institutions.
This all changed, drastically and in a revolutionary state of affairs, in 1073 with the election of a fiery monk called Hildebrand as pope, who assumed the papal name Gregory VII. Hildebrand was a 'political Augustinian': the first historical person of note to attempt to actually implement Augustine's theory of political power ('
crime-syndicate writ large' rather than divine ordination) as a viable social model.
As the eminent legal historian Harold J Berman argued in his classic study,
Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition:
"...THE FIRST OF the great revolutions of Western history was the revolution against domination of the clergy by emperors, kings, and lords and for establishment of the Church of Rome as an independent, corporate, political and legal entity, under the papacy..."
And other historians:
"By creating an institutional counterweight to the emperor's power, Pope Gregory established the basis for what would later, with the impetus of the Protestant Reformers, form the cornerstone of modern freedom - the division of Church and State".
(Wayne Cristaudo, Religion, Redemption and Revolution p.237).
"Gregory VII attacked the ideas of imperial legitimacy, divine right and paramount overlordship. In so doing, he attacked the imperial theories of theocracy that reached back to Charlemagne's coronation by the pope in 800....Gregory was a revolutionary who attacked the traditional Gelasian "two-sword" division..."
(David Levine, At the Dawn of Modernity p.35)
"The culmination of this reforming urge came with the elevation of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85)....
Similar terms were accepted by the German Emperor Henry V (1106-1125) in 1122, after another prolonged period of strife between the imperial and papal powers.
The effect of this resolution was more profound than it might appear. For thousands of years, the pre-modern societies of Rome, Egypt, China, Mexico, Peru and Japan, for example, were essentially theocratic, that is ruled by a God-King or by a priestly caste.
The distinctively different character of Western and modern politics developed in part through the separation of secular from religious power. For in freeing the offices of the Church from the direct control of the princes, the secular rulers had also succeeded in liberating themselves from the immediate responsibility for religious and ecclesiastical affairs.
Likewise, religious leaders liberated themselves from the burden of secular responsibilities. Henceforth, the world of medieval politics was understood to be composed of two mutually independent coordinate powers: the regnum (secular kingdom) and the sacerdotium (spiritual realm). Each of these spheres enjoyed its own distinct concerns and interests which, while somewhat overlapping, were fundamentally separate.
This lent to temporal politics a measure of autonomy which it had not enjoyed previously during the Middle Ages. It also created a political climate within which theoretical speculation about uniquely human, earthly public affairs could commence. Thus, the resolution of the Investiture Controversy in the early twelfth century simultaneously heralded the dawning of a more strictly secular tradition within medieval political theory."
(Medieval Political Theory - A Reader: The Quest for the Body Politic, ed. Cary J. Nederman and Kate L. Forhan (Routledge: London & New York, 1993)
(continued....)
