Church and State in the Western Tradition
After examining the effectiveness and utter practicality of the Roman polity,[108] in our journey through the history of the Western state it is time for us to delve into the realm of religion, a turn which shall certainly surprise more than one in this skeptical world in which we live, where man alone is increasingly, as Protagoras used to say, “the measure of all things”.
However, the contrast between what is happening today and what happened in Antiquity, when the transcendent was considered an essential dimension of human existence, is very much worth looking at. This is no trivial side note we are dealing with here, for religion played an absolutely crucial role in the history of the state, and it is worth understanding why.Here and now, however, what should be made clear and underscored is that the Church represented an extension and continuation of Roman civilization. It is no coincidence that the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, resides in the Eternal City. In fact, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire it was the Church which preserved consciousness of the Greek and Roman tradition, cornerstones of our civilization (Larrainzar 2004). The Church is an institution which, despite all its crises and difficulties, has existed continuously for over 2,000 years, a rather unique historical phenomenon. It is, thus, no exaggeration to say that we are Westerners because of our shared Christian legacy; as Lane Fox (2006, 11) points out, the transition from paganism to Christianity is the point at which the ancient world still touches ours directly.
Let us, then, examine some essential aspects of Christian history, which will allow us to understand our political and legal past, for after our Roman heritage, it is Christianity which stands as the second pillar upon which our unique Western civilization rests. The barbarian invasions destroyed Europe’s initial unity, but all was not lost. Christianity had already spread widely throughout Continental Western Europe. It was through the apparently tenuous but ultimately enduring bonds forged by the Catholic Church that the broken unity of Roman Europe was reconstructed. This is why, for instance, there would be no point in asking a medieval man about his country or his nationality. He may have been ignorant of his king, but he certainly knew his parson. With Christianity all roads came to lead, yet again, to Rome, as the papacy established itself as the undisputed center of a new, Catholic West (Brown 2003, 4). It needs to be understood that in the West Christianity is not just a religion, but an essential part of our history and culture. Thus, any understanding of the organization of our states and the development of our laws requires us to study it.
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