To them there was no such thing as
a naturally servile person, for the soul of man was always free.
a naturally servile person, for the soul of man was always free.
Thomas Carlyle
2.
Silvester II. (Gerbert)--Papal Epistles, Migne Patrologia Latina, vol.
139.
'Statuta et Consuetudines Normanise. ' Ed. E. J. Tardif in 'Coutumiers
de Normandie,' vol. 1, 1881.
'Summa de Legibus Normannise. ' Ed. E. J. Tardif in 'Coutumiers de
Normandie,' vol. 2, 1896.
'Tractatus Eboracenses,' M. G. H. Libelli de Lite, vol. 3.
'De unitate ecclesise conservanda,' M. G. H. Libelli de Lite, vol. 2.
Wenrich of Trier--Epistola, M. G. H. Libelli de Lite, vol 1.
William, Abbot of St Benignus--Epistles, in Rodolphus Glaber, Hist. iv.
1, M. G. H. Scriptores, vol. 7.
Wippo--' Vita Chunradi,' Migne Patrologia Latina, vol. 142. 'Panegyricus Heinrici Regis,' Migne Patrologia Latina, vol. 142.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? t
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? EKEATA.
P. 11, 1. 5, for Coutanges read Coulanges.
22, 1. 2 from foot of page, for pictures read picture.
51, n. 2, for nouvecus read nouveaus.
54, n. 1, col. 1, 1. 9, for pas read par.
72, n. 1, col. 2, 1. 1, for quai read qui.
72, n. 3. col. 2, 1. 2, for vol. ii. L read vol. i.
79, n. 4, col. 2, 1. 4, for sum read suum.
103, 1. 3 from foot of page, for of Augsburg read Augustodunensis.
126, 1. 4, omit that.
130, n. 2, col. 2,1. 10, /or imponerat read impeneret.
135, n. 2, col. 2, 1 . 14, ,/br que read qua.
137, n. 1, p. 138, col. 1, 1. 7, for Domini read Domino.
148, n. 1, col. 2, 1. 8, for regalia read regali.
184. 1 . 8, for these read their.
189, col. 1, 1. 10, for Beauvosis read Beauvoisis.
189, col. 1,1. 13, add 185.
192, col. 1, 1. 44, add 9.
192, col. 1,1. 48, 'add 10.
196, col. 2, 1. 48, omit that mystic
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? INTRODUCTION.
In the last volume we endeavoured to determine the nature of
the influence of the ancient world on the political theory of the
Middle Ages, as it is represented in the systems of mediseval
Roman and Canon law. It seemed well to consider these
elements of mediseval theory first, because in order to appreciate
rightly the nature or characteristic developments of political
thought, we must first consider carefully how much had been
inherited from the ancient world, and also because with the
help of these more or less systematic works we can distinguish
more easily between the normal opinions of men and abnormal
or eccentric views.
We must now face the task of trying to determine what
were the characteristic political theories of those centuries of
the Middle Ages during which all ideas were in a state of
ferment, during which nothing was fixed or systematic, but
every day as it brought new conditions so also it brought new
theories, new ideas, often in such bewildering abundance as to
make it difficult to estimate their value.
We turn in this volume first to the consideration of the
characteristic conceptions of feudalism and their influence on
the development of political ideas, and we have found that in
order to deal with this effectively we must carry our study
down to the end of the thirteenth century. For the rest we
? deal with the political theory as illustrated in general literature
only to the end of the twelfth century, for in the thirteenth
century the great schoolmen began to reduce the world of ideas
vol. m. A
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 2
INTRODUCTION.
and theories to a systematic form. The work of these great
systematic thinkers was indeed often admirable and enlightened,
and we propose in later volumes to deal with this, but there has
been in our judgment some tendency to misunderstand mediseval
thought, because it has been studied too exclusively in these
systematic writers. There has been a tendency to conceive of
it as representing a completely articulated system of fixed
principles and logical deductions from them. This is true,
strictly speaking, only of the thirteenth century, and even then
only of the great schoolmen. The literature of the centuries
from the tenth to the twelfth century represents no such
systematic mode of thought; the men of these times had indeed
in the writings of the Christian Fathers a great body of theories
and principles which had a constant influence upon them, while
their habit of life and feeling was grounded in the traditions
of the new Teutonic societies, but in neither of these had they
an ordered and articulated system of political thought, but
rather a body of principles, significant indeed and profound, but
not always easily to be reconciled with each other. The history
of the social and political ideas of these centuries is the history
of the continual discovery of the relation of the traditions and
principles which men had inherited to the actual circumstances
of the time.
Our main difficulty in handling the matter is due not to the
want of materials, for there is almost an over-abundance of
these, but rather to the variety and complexity of the materials,
and to the difficulty necessarily inherent in the attempt to set
out in some systematic terms the conceptions of men who were
not systematic thinkers, while they were acting and thinking
energetically and often audaciously. And if the materials are
abundant, the political ideas themselves are somewhat bewilder-
ing in their complexity. It has sometimes been thought that the
political theory of the Middle Ages was simple and clear, because
it was dominated by the principle of the unity of the world
under the supremacy of the spiritual power. But the real truth
is very different. We do not doubt that these conceptions had
a real importance, but there were other aspects of the theory of
society which were at least equally important, and which were
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? INTRODUCTION.
3
more permanent in their importance. We cannot rightly
apprehend the character of mediseval civilisation if we conceive
of it as something isolated from the continuous movement of
Western life, for indeed as it was in a large measure founded
upon the civilisation of the ancient world, so also it contained
the elements of the modern.
Let us try to sum up briefly the general characteristics of
the political ideas with which the men of the Middle Ages
set out.
It is evident to any student of the political thought of the
Middle Ages that it was immensely influenced by the traditions
of the Christian Fathers--it is from them that it directly and
immediately derived the forms under which it expressed its
own conceptions. The formal political theory of the Middle
Ages is dominated by the contrast between nature and con-
vention; to the Fathers and to the great majority of mediseval
writers, until St Thomas Aquinas and the recovery of the
Aristotelian Politics, all the great institutions of society are
conventional and not natural. Men are, in this view, by
nature free and equal, and possess the world and the things in
it in common, while coercive government and slavery and
private property are conventional institutions which were
devised to correct the vices of human nature when it lost its
first innocence. These great formal conceptions indeed control
the terms of political theory until the end of the eighteenth
century, until Eousseau and Burke and the beginnings of the
modern historical method. In the first volume of this work
we have endeavoured to set out in detail the characteristics of
this mode of thought, and we can here only refer the readers
to this.
If, however, we are rightly to appreciate the relations of
mediseval thought to that of the ancient world, we must re-
member that although these theories came to the Middle Ages
primarily through the Christian Fathers, they were not dis-
tinctively Christian conceptions, but rather the commonplaces of
the later philosophical schools, and the Fathers learned them
in the schools and universities where they were educated. The
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 4
INTRODUCTION.
forms of the political theory of the Middle Ages represent there-
fore an inheritance from the Stoics and other philosophical
schools of the Empire.
We must consider a little more closely the character of
these theories. To the Stoics and the Christian Fathers the
institutions of society were conventional, not natural, and they
understood the natural as heing in the first place the primitive.
But the natural was to them something more than the primitive,
it represented something which was also essential and permanent.
It was necessary for the due order of human life that men
should rule over each other, and the Fathers added to this the
conception that in some sense slavery was a punishment as
well as a remedy for human vice. But both philosophers and
Fathers maintained that the freedom and equality of human
nature continued to be real. Their conception of human nature
was radically distinct from that which is represented by the
Aristotelian philosophy.
To them there was no such thing as
a naturally servile person, for the soul of man was always free.
This principle is indeed the exact reverse of that of Aristotle.
He found the ground and justification of slavery in his judg-
ment that only some men were in the full sense rational and
capable of virtue, while others were not properly and fully
possessed of reason, and could not therefore in the strict and
complete sense of the word possess virtue. Whatever may
have been the foundation of this judgment, the judgment had
disappeared before the Christian era, and Cicero had in a famous
passage, summing up the philosophical judgment of his time,
repudiated it in the strongest terms. 1 Seneca, a hundred years
later, repeats the judgment in a memorable phrase. Men's
bodies, he says, may be enslaved, the mind is free. 2 These
principles are also those of the Christian faith. To St Paul
slavery is a merely external and accidental condition, the slave
is just as capable of the highest life, the life of communion
with God, as the freeman. His great words, "There can be
neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free,
there can be no male and female: for ye are all one in Christ
1Cf. vol. i. p. 8; Cicero,' DeLegibus,' 3 Cf. vol. i. p. 21; Seneca, 'De
i. 10, 12. Beneficiis,' iii. 20.
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? INTRODUCTION.
5
Jesus," represent the principle of all Christian writers. 1 We
have in the first volume pointed out how emphatically these
principles are restated in the literature of the ninth century,2
and in the second volume how they are repeated by the Eoman
jurists and the Canonists of the Middle Ages. 3
It is not, however, only slavery which was held to be con-
ventional, the same thing applies also to private property. In
the primitive and innocent conditions of human life there was
no such thing as private property, but all things were common.
Private property is the result of man's greed and avarice, and
is justified only as a limitation of this. Private property is
indeed lawful, but it is the creation of the State, and is deter-
mined and limited by its authority; and while the institution is
lawful under the sinful conditions of human nature, the good
things which God has given men through nature are still
intended for the use of all. When the rich man assists the
poor he is doing an act of justice, not of charity. 4
The institution of government is also conventional, and not
natural. To the Stoics and the Fathers the coercive control of
man by man is not an institution of nature. By nature men,
being free and equal, were under no system of coercive control.
Like slavery, the introduction of this was the result of the loss
of man's original innocence, and represented the need of some
power which might control and limit the unreasonable passions
and appetites of human nature. This was the doctrine of the
Christian Fathers, but it was also the doctrine of the Stoics as
represented by Seneca,6 and it is impossible to understand
the mediseval theories of government if we forget this. It was
not till Aristotle's Politics were rediscovered in the thirteenth
centwfy'that St Thomas Aquinas under their influence recognised
that the State was not merely an institution devised to correct
men's vices, but rather the necessary form of a real and full
human life. 6 The formal conceptions of the Middle Ages were,
'however, on this point little affected by St Thomas. It is
1 Cf. Gal. iii. 28; vol. i. p. 84; and Part I. chap. 5; Part II. chap. 6.
pp. 111-124. 8 Cf. vol. i. pp. 23, 24, 125-131.
2 Cf. vol. i. pp. 199-209. 6 Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, 'De
3 Cf. vol. ii. pp. 34-40, 117-135. Regimine Principum,' I. i. ; and
4 Cf. vol. i. chaps. 4, 8 12; vol. ii. 'Summa Theologica,' I. Q. 96. 4.
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? 6
INTRODUCTION.
evident that the conception of the conventional and "unnatural"
character of the state was too firmly fixed to be shaken even by
his authority, and that it passed with little alteration into the
political theory of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, and that, as we have said, it was not until Eousseau
in the ' Contrat Social' recovered the organic conception of the
state,1 and till the rise of the historical method of study-
ing institutions, that this mode of thought passed away; and it
lingered on in the nineteenth century in the form of the " police
theory " of the state, of Herbert Spencer and the English radicals.
The formal theory of nature and convention in the Middle
Ages represents the principles of the post-Aristotelian philo-
sophy, as mediated by the Christian Fathers. We must refer
the reader to the second volume of this work for a discussion of
the place of these conceptions in the Eoman and Canon law of
the twelfth century.
So far, then, we have been dealing with conceptions which
dominate the theories of the Middle Ages, and which had come
to them through the Fathers, but which were not strictly speak-
ing distinctively Christian, but rather represented the general
principles of the post-Aristotelian philosophy. The political
theory of the Middle Ages was also however profoundly
affected, or rather controlled, by certain conceptions which
were distinctively Christian in their form, if not in their origin.
The first of these is the principle of the autonomy of
the spiritual life, which in these ages assumed the form of
the independence of the spiritual authority from the control
of the temporal. "We have endeavoured in the first volume
to give some account of the nature and early forms of this con-
ception. It finds characteristic and permanently important
expression in the phrases of the letters and tractates of Pope
Gelasius I. , in which he lays down the great principle that the
spiritual and the temporal authority each derives its authority
from God, and that each is independent of the other within its
own sphere, while each is dependent in the sphere of the other. 2
1 Cf. Rousseau, 'Contrat Social,' i. 8. Pope Gelasius L, Tract, iv. 11, and
2 Cf. vol. i. Part III. chap. 15; and Ep. xii. 2.
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? INTRODUCTION.
7
We have in the second volume endeavoured to give some ac-
count of the treatment of this principle by the Civilians and
Canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 We shall
have to consider in detail the relation of these principles to
the theory and structure of mediseval society. We shall have
to deal with the theory and the practical nature of the relations
of the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, to
plunge into the great conflict of the Papacy and the Empire, to
try to disentangle the real and vital significance of that great
dispute whose clamour fills these centuries.
But before we do this we must remind ourselves of the real
nature of the problem, the real and fundamental principle
which lies behind the confused noise of factions. Behind the
forms of the great conflict we have to recognise the appearance
in the consciousness of the civilised world of principles new
and immensely significant. For behind it all there lies a
development of the conception of individuality or personality
which was unknown to the ancient world. We cannot here
pretend to measure fully the gulf which lies between the
Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and that of the Stoics,
and the other later philosophical systems, but it cannot be
doubted that the gulf is profound. The phrases, for instance,
in which Seneca describes the self-sufficiency of the wise man
may be exaggerated and overstrained. No one, he says, can
strictly be said either to benefit or to injure the wise man, for
he is, except for his mortality, like God himself; he is indeed
bound to the service of the common good, but if the conditions
of life are such as to make it impossible for him to take part in
public affairs, he can withdraw into himself and still serve the
same cause by developing his own nature and character. 2 The
phrases may be overstrained and rhetorical, but they represent
a sense of individual personality which is immensely signifi-
cant, an apprehension of aspects of human life which are sacred
and inviolable, independent of the authority, and, in his view,
even of the support of society.
1 Cf. vol. ii. Part I. chap. 8; Part 'De Clementia,' i. 8. 2; 'De Otio,' iii. ,
II. chaps. 10 and 11. and vol. i. pp. 25-29.
2 Cf. Seneca--'Ad Serenum,' viii. ;
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? 8
INTRODUCTION.
The changes which can be traced in the history of "Western
thought can be observed with equal clearness in the Semitic
literature of the Old Testament. There are few sayings more
significant than those indignant words in whichEzekiel repudiates
the traditional conceptions of Israel. "The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the
righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the
wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. "1 The solidarity
of the primitive and ancient group was giving way before the
development of a new apprehension of individuality.
It is this apprehension to which a new impulse and force was
given by our Lord and his disciples. To them the soul of man
has an individual relation with God which goes beyond the
control of the society. The principles of the Christian religion
represent, on this side, the same development as that of Ezekiel
and the Stoics, and it is on this foundation that the civilisation
of the mediseval and modern world has grown up. This does
not mean that religion has no social aspect, or that the political
societies have no moral or spiritual character, but it does mean
that men have been compelled to recognise that the individual
religious and moral experience transcends the authority of the
political and even of the religious society, and that the religious
society as embodying this spiritual experience cannot tolerate
the control of the State. There are aspects of human life which
are not and cannot be under the control of the laws or authority
of the State.
It is true that the great individualist development has often
been misinterpreted and exaggerated, and the greatest task
of the modern world is to recover the sense of the organic
unity of human life, that sense of unity which to the Christian
faith is equally vital with the sense of individuality. The
recovery of that sense of unity by Eousseau and Burke does
indeed represent a great moment in the development of human
apprehension, and separates the political thinking and action
of the nineteenth century by a great gulf from that of the
preceding centuries. We are once again Aristotelian, but
1 Ezekiel xviii. 20.
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? INTRODUCTION.
9
with a great difference, for the apprehension of individual
personality remains with us.
It is these convictions which lie behind the great struggles of
the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, the great-
ness of the conflict is some measure of the immense difficulties
which beset then, and even now, the attempt to disentangle the
sphere of religion from those aspects of life which are under the
control of the State. For it must not be supposed that this was
an easy thing to do. In the first volume we have endeavoured to
point out how in the ninth century, while men clearly recognised
in principle the distinction between the sphere of the two great
authorities, yet in actual practice the two authorities constantly
overlapped. 1 These difficulties became far greater in the cen-
turies which followed, and we cannot measure the significance
of the events which took place, or estimate the real character of
the theories which were put forward, unless we continually
take account of this.
The political theory of the Middle Ages then inherited a
great conception of the independence of the Church, and we
have here the first conception which was distinctively Christian,
at least in form.
There is, however, another conception which the Middle Ages
inherited from the ancient world which is also distinctively
Christian in form if not in substance. I This is theprincipje
of the divine-nature and origin of political authority. , We have
dealt with the origin and nature of this conception in the first
volume,2 and have in the second volume examined the treatment
of the subject by the Civilians and Canonists of the twelfth
century,3 and it is unnecessary to say more about it here, as we
shall have to consider its significance very carefully in this
volume. But we must be under no misapprehension, whatever
may have been the precise significance of St Augustine's treat-
ment of the nature of secular authority, and the extent of its
influence, the tradition which had come down to the Middle
Ages was substantially clear and emphatic, and that was that
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 253-292. 218.
3 Of. vol. i. pp.
Silvester II. (Gerbert)--Papal Epistles, Migne Patrologia Latina, vol.
139.
'Statuta et Consuetudines Normanise. ' Ed. E. J. Tardif in 'Coutumiers
de Normandie,' vol. 1, 1881.
'Summa de Legibus Normannise. ' Ed. E. J. Tardif in 'Coutumiers de
Normandie,' vol. 2, 1896.
'Tractatus Eboracenses,' M. G. H. Libelli de Lite, vol. 3.
'De unitate ecclesise conservanda,' M. G. H. Libelli de Lite, vol. 2.
Wenrich of Trier--Epistola, M. G. H. Libelli de Lite, vol 1.
William, Abbot of St Benignus--Epistles, in Rodolphus Glaber, Hist. iv.
1, M. G. H. Scriptores, vol. 7.
Wippo--' Vita Chunradi,' Migne Patrologia Latina, vol. 142. 'Panegyricus Heinrici Regis,' Migne Patrologia Latina, vol. 142.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? t
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? EKEATA.
P. 11, 1. 5, for Coutanges read Coulanges.
22, 1. 2 from foot of page, for pictures read picture.
51, n. 2, for nouvecus read nouveaus.
54, n. 1, col. 1, 1. 9, for pas read par.
72, n. 1, col. 2, 1. 1, for quai read qui.
72, n. 3. col. 2, 1. 2, for vol. ii. L read vol. i.
79, n. 4, col. 2, 1. 4, for sum read suum.
103, 1. 3 from foot of page, for of Augsburg read Augustodunensis.
126, 1. 4, omit that.
130, n. 2, col. 2,1. 10, /or imponerat read impeneret.
135, n. 2, col. 2, 1 . 14, ,/br que read qua.
137, n. 1, p. 138, col. 1, 1. 7, for Domini read Domino.
148, n. 1, col. 2, 1. 8, for regalia read regali.
184. 1 . 8, for these read their.
189, col. 1, 1. 10, for Beauvosis read Beauvoisis.
189, col. 1,1. 13, add 185.
192, col. 1, 1. 44, add 9.
192, col. 1,1. 48, 'add 10.
196, col. 2, 1. 48, omit that mystic
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? INTRODUCTION.
In the last volume we endeavoured to determine the nature of
the influence of the ancient world on the political theory of the
Middle Ages, as it is represented in the systems of mediseval
Roman and Canon law. It seemed well to consider these
elements of mediseval theory first, because in order to appreciate
rightly the nature or characteristic developments of political
thought, we must first consider carefully how much had been
inherited from the ancient world, and also because with the
help of these more or less systematic works we can distinguish
more easily between the normal opinions of men and abnormal
or eccentric views.
We must now face the task of trying to determine what
were the characteristic political theories of those centuries of
the Middle Ages during which all ideas were in a state of
ferment, during which nothing was fixed or systematic, but
every day as it brought new conditions so also it brought new
theories, new ideas, often in such bewildering abundance as to
make it difficult to estimate their value.
We turn in this volume first to the consideration of the
characteristic conceptions of feudalism and their influence on
the development of political ideas, and we have found that in
order to deal with this effectively we must carry our study
down to the end of the thirteenth century. For the rest we
? deal with the political theory as illustrated in general literature
only to the end of the twelfth century, for in the thirteenth
century the great schoolmen began to reduce the world of ideas
vol. m. A
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-19 10:41 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015002403882 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 2
INTRODUCTION.
and theories to a systematic form. The work of these great
systematic thinkers was indeed often admirable and enlightened,
and we propose in later volumes to deal with this, but there has
been in our judgment some tendency to misunderstand mediseval
thought, because it has been studied too exclusively in these
systematic writers. There has been a tendency to conceive of
it as representing a completely articulated system of fixed
principles and logical deductions from them. This is true,
strictly speaking, only of the thirteenth century, and even then
only of the great schoolmen. The literature of the centuries
from the tenth to the twelfth century represents no such
systematic mode of thought; the men of these times had indeed
in the writings of the Christian Fathers a great body of theories
and principles which had a constant influence upon them, while
their habit of life and feeling was grounded in the traditions
of the new Teutonic societies, but in neither of these had they
an ordered and articulated system of political thought, but
rather a body of principles, significant indeed and profound, but
not always easily to be reconciled with each other. The history
of the social and political ideas of these centuries is the history
of the continual discovery of the relation of the traditions and
principles which men had inherited to the actual circumstances
of the time.
Our main difficulty in handling the matter is due not to the
want of materials, for there is almost an over-abundance of
these, but rather to the variety and complexity of the materials,
and to the difficulty necessarily inherent in the attempt to set
out in some systematic terms the conceptions of men who were
not systematic thinkers, while they were acting and thinking
energetically and often audaciously. And if the materials are
abundant, the political ideas themselves are somewhat bewilder-
ing in their complexity. It has sometimes been thought that the
political theory of the Middle Ages was simple and clear, because
it was dominated by the principle of the unity of the world
under the supremacy of the spiritual power. But the real truth
is very different. We do not doubt that these conceptions had
a real importance, but there were other aspects of the theory of
society which were at least equally important, and which were
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? INTRODUCTION.
3
more permanent in their importance. We cannot rightly
apprehend the character of mediseval civilisation if we conceive
of it as something isolated from the continuous movement of
Western life, for indeed as it was in a large measure founded
upon the civilisation of the ancient world, so also it contained
the elements of the modern.
Let us try to sum up briefly the general characteristics of
the political ideas with which the men of the Middle Ages
set out.
It is evident to any student of the political thought of the
Middle Ages that it was immensely influenced by the traditions
of the Christian Fathers--it is from them that it directly and
immediately derived the forms under which it expressed its
own conceptions. The formal political theory of the Middle
Ages is dominated by the contrast between nature and con-
vention; to the Fathers and to the great majority of mediseval
writers, until St Thomas Aquinas and the recovery of the
Aristotelian Politics, all the great institutions of society are
conventional and not natural. Men are, in this view, by
nature free and equal, and possess the world and the things in
it in common, while coercive government and slavery and
private property are conventional institutions which were
devised to correct the vices of human nature when it lost its
first innocence. These great formal conceptions indeed control
the terms of political theory until the end of the eighteenth
century, until Eousseau and Burke and the beginnings of the
modern historical method. In the first volume of this work
we have endeavoured to set out in detail the characteristics of
this mode of thought, and we can here only refer the readers
to this.
If, however, we are rightly to appreciate the relations of
mediseval thought to that of the ancient world, we must re-
member that although these theories came to the Middle Ages
primarily through the Christian Fathers, they were not dis-
tinctively Christian conceptions, but rather the commonplaces of
the later philosophical schools, and the Fathers learned them
in the schools and universities where they were educated. The
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INTRODUCTION.
forms of the political theory of the Middle Ages represent there-
fore an inheritance from the Stoics and other philosophical
schools of the Empire.
We must consider a little more closely the character of
these theories. To the Stoics and the Christian Fathers the
institutions of society were conventional, not natural, and they
understood the natural as heing in the first place the primitive.
But the natural was to them something more than the primitive,
it represented something which was also essential and permanent.
It was necessary for the due order of human life that men
should rule over each other, and the Fathers added to this the
conception that in some sense slavery was a punishment as
well as a remedy for human vice. But both philosophers and
Fathers maintained that the freedom and equality of human
nature continued to be real. Their conception of human nature
was radically distinct from that which is represented by the
Aristotelian philosophy.
To them there was no such thing as
a naturally servile person, for the soul of man was always free.
This principle is indeed the exact reverse of that of Aristotle.
He found the ground and justification of slavery in his judg-
ment that only some men were in the full sense rational and
capable of virtue, while others were not properly and fully
possessed of reason, and could not therefore in the strict and
complete sense of the word possess virtue. Whatever may
have been the foundation of this judgment, the judgment had
disappeared before the Christian era, and Cicero had in a famous
passage, summing up the philosophical judgment of his time,
repudiated it in the strongest terms. 1 Seneca, a hundred years
later, repeats the judgment in a memorable phrase. Men's
bodies, he says, may be enslaved, the mind is free. 2 These
principles are also those of the Christian faith. To St Paul
slavery is a merely external and accidental condition, the slave
is just as capable of the highest life, the life of communion
with God, as the freeman. His great words, "There can be
neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free,
there can be no male and female: for ye are all one in Christ
1Cf. vol. i. p. 8; Cicero,' DeLegibus,' 3 Cf. vol. i. p. 21; Seneca, 'De
i. 10, 12. Beneficiis,' iii. 20.
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? INTRODUCTION.
5
Jesus," represent the principle of all Christian writers. 1 We
have in the first volume pointed out how emphatically these
principles are restated in the literature of the ninth century,2
and in the second volume how they are repeated by the Eoman
jurists and the Canonists of the Middle Ages. 3
It is not, however, only slavery which was held to be con-
ventional, the same thing applies also to private property. In
the primitive and innocent conditions of human life there was
no such thing as private property, but all things were common.
Private property is the result of man's greed and avarice, and
is justified only as a limitation of this. Private property is
indeed lawful, but it is the creation of the State, and is deter-
mined and limited by its authority; and while the institution is
lawful under the sinful conditions of human nature, the good
things which God has given men through nature are still
intended for the use of all. When the rich man assists the
poor he is doing an act of justice, not of charity. 4
The institution of government is also conventional, and not
natural. To the Stoics and the Fathers the coercive control of
man by man is not an institution of nature. By nature men,
being free and equal, were under no system of coercive control.
Like slavery, the introduction of this was the result of the loss
of man's original innocence, and represented the need of some
power which might control and limit the unreasonable passions
and appetites of human nature. This was the doctrine of the
Christian Fathers, but it was also the doctrine of the Stoics as
represented by Seneca,6 and it is impossible to understand
the mediseval theories of government if we forget this. It was
not till Aristotle's Politics were rediscovered in the thirteenth
centwfy'that St Thomas Aquinas under their influence recognised
that the State was not merely an institution devised to correct
men's vices, but rather the necessary form of a real and full
human life. 6 The formal conceptions of the Middle Ages were,
'however, on this point little affected by St Thomas. It is
1 Cf. Gal. iii. 28; vol. i. p. 84; and Part I. chap. 5; Part II. chap. 6.
pp. 111-124. 8 Cf. vol. i. pp. 23, 24, 125-131.
2 Cf. vol. i. pp. 199-209. 6 Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, 'De
3 Cf. vol. ii. pp. 34-40, 117-135. Regimine Principum,' I. i. ; and
4 Cf. vol. i. chaps. 4, 8 12; vol. ii. 'Summa Theologica,' I. Q. 96. 4.
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INTRODUCTION.
evident that the conception of the conventional and "unnatural"
character of the state was too firmly fixed to be shaken even by
his authority, and that it passed with little alteration into the
political theory of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, and that, as we have said, it was not until Eousseau
in the ' Contrat Social' recovered the organic conception of the
state,1 and till the rise of the historical method of study-
ing institutions, that this mode of thought passed away; and it
lingered on in the nineteenth century in the form of the " police
theory " of the state, of Herbert Spencer and the English radicals.
The formal theory of nature and convention in the Middle
Ages represents the principles of the post-Aristotelian philo-
sophy, as mediated by the Christian Fathers. We must refer
the reader to the second volume of this work for a discussion of
the place of these conceptions in the Eoman and Canon law of
the twelfth century.
So far, then, we have been dealing with conceptions which
dominate the theories of the Middle Ages, and which had come
to them through the Fathers, but which were not strictly speak-
ing distinctively Christian, but rather represented the general
principles of the post-Aristotelian philosophy. The political
theory of the Middle Ages was also however profoundly
affected, or rather controlled, by certain conceptions which
were distinctively Christian in their form, if not in their origin.
The first of these is the principle of the autonomy of
the spiritual life, which in these ages assumed the form of
the independence of the spiritual authority from the control
of the temporal. "We have endeavoured in the first volume
to give some account of the nature and early forms of this con-
ception. It finds characteristic and permanently important
expression in the phrases of the letters and tractates of Pope
Gelasius I. , in which he lays down the great principle that the
spiritual and the temporal authority each derives its authority
from God, and that each is independent of the other within its
own sphere, while each is dependent in the sphere of the other. 2
1 Cf. Rousseau, 'Contrat Social,' i. 8. Pope Gelasius L, Tract, iv. 11, and
2 Cf. vol. i. Part III. chap. 15; and Ep. xii. 2.
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? INTRODUCTION.
7
We have in the second volume endeavoured to give some ac-
count of the treatment of this principle by the Civilians and
Canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 We shall
have to consider in detail the relation of these principles to
the theory and structure of mediseval society. We shall have
to deal with the theory and the practical nature of the relations
of the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, to
plunge into the great conflict of the Papacy and the Empire, to
try to disentangle the real and vital significance of that great
dispute whose clamour fills these centuries.
But before we do this we must remind ourselves of the real
nature of the problem, the real and fundamental principle
which lies behind the confused noise of factions. Behind the
forms of the great conflict we have to recognise the appearance
in the consciousness of the civilised world of principles new
and immensely significant. For behind it all there lies a
development of the conception of individuality or personality
which was unknown to the ancient world. We cannot here
pretend to measure fully the gulf which lies between the
Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and that of the Stoics,
and the other later philosophical systems, but it cannot be
doubted that the gulf is profound. The phrases, for instance,
in which Seneca describes the self-sufficiency of the wise man
may be exaggerated and overstrained. No one, he says, can
strictly be said either to benefit or to injure the wise man, for
he is, except for his mortality, like God himself; he is indeed
bound to the service of the common good, but if the conditions
of life are such as to make it impossible for him to take part in
public affairs, he can withdraw into himself and still serve the
same cause by developing his own nature and character. 2 The
phrases may be overstrained and rhetorical, but they represent
a sense of individual personality which is immensely signifi-
cant, an apprehension of aspects of human life which are sacred
and inviolable, independent of the authority, and, in his view,
even of the support of society.
1 Cf. vol. ii. Part I. chap. 8; Part 'De Clementia,' i. 8. 2; 'De Otio,' iii. ,
II. chaps. 10 and 11. and vol. i. pp. 25-29.
2 Cf. Seneca--'Ad Serenum,' viii. ;
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INTRODUCTION.
The changes which can be traced in the history of "Western
thought can be observed with equal clearness in the Semitic
literature of the Old Testament. There are few sayings more
significant than those indignant words in whichEzekiel repudiates
the traditional conceptions of Israel. "The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the
righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the
wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. "1 The solidarity
of the primitive and ancient group was giving way before the
development of a new apprehension of individuality.
It is this apprehension to which a new impulse and force was
given by our Lord and his disciples. To them the soul of man
has an individual relation with God which goes beyond the
control of the society. The principles of the Christian religion
represent, on this side, the same development as that of Ezekiel
and the Stoics, and it is on this foundation that the civilisation
of the mediseval and modern world has grown up. This does
not mean that religion has no social aspect, or that the political
societies have no moral or spiritual character, but it does mean
that men have been compelled to recognise that the individual
religious and moral experience transcends the authority of the
political and even of the religious society, and that the religious
society as embodying this spiritual experience cannot tolerate
the control of the State. There are aspects of human life which
are not and cannot be under the control of the laws or authority
of the State.
It is true that the great individualist development has often
been misinterpreted and exaggerated, and the greatest task
of the modern world is to recover the sense of the organic
unity of human life, that sense of unity which to the Christian
faith is equally vital with the sense of individuality. The
recovery of that sense of unity by Eousseau and Burke does
indeed represent a great moment in the development of human
apprehension, and separates the political thinking and action
of the nineteenth century by a great gulf from that of the
preceding centuries. We are once again Aristotelian, but
1 Ezekiel xviii. 20.
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? INTRODUCTION.
9
with a great difference, for the apprehension of individual
personality remains with us.
It is these convictions which lie behind the great struggles of
the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, the great-
ness of the conflict is some measure of the immense difficulties
which beset then, and even now, the attempt to disentangle the
sphere of religion from those aspects of life which are under the
control of the State. For it must not be supposed that this was
an easy thing to do. In the first volume we have endeavoured to
point out how in the ninth century, while men clearly recognised
in principle the distinction between the sphere of the two great
authorities, yet in actual practice the two authorities constantly
overlapped. 1 These difficulties became far greater in the cen-
turies which followed, and we cannot measure the significance
of the events which took place, or estimate the real character of
the theories which were put forward, unless we continually
take account of this.
The political theory of the Middle Ages then inherited a
great conception of the independence of the Church, and we
have here the first conception which was distinctively Christian,
at least in form.
There is, however, another conception which the Middle Ages
inherited from the ancient world which is also distinctively
Christian in form if not in substance. I This is theprincipje
of the divine-nature and origin of political authority. , We have
dealt with the origin and nature of this conception in the first
volume,2 and have in the second volume examined the treatment
of the subject by the Civilians and Canonists of the twelfth
century,3 and it is unnecessary to say more about it here, as we
shall have to consider its significance very carefully in this
volume. But we must be under no misapprehension, whatever
may have been the precise significance of St Augustine's treat-
ment of the nature of secular authority, and the extent of its
influence, the tradition which had come down to the Middle
Ages was substantially clear and emphatic, and that was that
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 253-292. 218.
3 Of. vol. i. pp.
