The Church and the Preservation of the Roman “State” Tradition
If the acceptance of Christianity and the recognition of the Church radically transformed the Roman Empire beginning in the fourth century, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, made the various Western churches the only organized power.
Beginning in the sixth century, Christianity was further reinforced by the emergence of the monastic movement and the consolidation of papal authority. From the point of view of the history of the western polity it is important to emphasize that the Church, during the stage of the Germanic kingdoms, became the standard-bearer of the Roman imperial tradition.5.3.1 The Emergence of the Monastic Movement
The first monastic communities in the Near East arose in reaction to the “officialization” of Christianity as a state religion. Thus, faced with a Church integrated into a complex territorial organization and subject to doctrinal unity (orthodoxy) which became universal (Catholic), a number of people decided to abandon the world in pursuit of penance and prayer. These individuals embraced the ideal of the ascetic life, retiring to the desert or any remote location. First they were called anchorites (from the Greek anajorein: separation), hermits (from the Greek eremos: desert), or Cenobites (from koinobion: common life) and, finally, by the generic name of monks (from the Greek monakhos: lonely). At the beginning of the sixth century, monastic communities, very numerous in the Near East,[171] were virtually unknown in the West. Having emerged in Egypt in the third century, with the hermits Anthony and Pachomius (Gorg 2011), Christian monasticism took on a coenobitic orientation which initially developed in Ireland, a barely Romanized Celtic territory where many Christians had taken refuge to escape the invasions of the fifth century (Dunn 2008). The Irish monks became, from the outset, an intellectual class dedicated to preserving the Christian tradition by copying the old texts (Harmless 2004).
However, in a second phase they undertook a major proselytizing campaign, which led them to preach the gospel, first in Scotland and later in Europe (Vosges, Switzerland and northern Italy), where they founded new monastic communities (O’Neill 1989, 270-287).One of these communities was founded in 529 at Monte Cassino, the site of an ancient temple to Apollo, by a monk named Benedict of Nursia (circa 480-547), who was admired and recognized in the region for his rigorous asceticism. Benedict gathered some lay people who wished to abandon the world and lead lives of meditation and prayer together, led by an abbot (from the Aramaic abba: father). To govern this monastic community, its founder would develop the famous Rule that bears his name (Dunn 2000, 111-137). The success of the Benedictine order was significant, mainly because its rule was less severe than that of the Irish monks and attached great importance to manual labor, mainly the cultivation of the land surrounding the monasteries, which allowed them to become economically selfsufficient. Moreover, the rule complemented the intense manual labor with intellectual work, which included not only reading the Bible, but other texts comprising the cultural heritage of the era (Clark 2011). This was a major event in Western history, as the work of transcription carried out by these monks assured the transmission of ancient culture.
5.3.2 St. Gregory the Great and the Consolidation of Papal Authority
The initial foundation of Monte Cassino was soon followed by new monasteries in Rome and Naples. In the Roman capital, the Benedictine Rule was soon discovered by a Roman aristocrat named Gregory, who had held a series of important public offices which had allowed him to occupy, at the age of just 30, the city’s most important position: praefectus urbi. Gregory, however, was captivated by the Rule of St. Benedict to such a degree that in 575, he retired to devote himself to the monastic life, donating his considerable wealth to the founding of convents.
A few years later, he would give up the contemplative life when he was virtually obligated to occupy the papal throne. His 14-year papacy (590-604), would prove an essential chapter in Church history.[172]Until the time of Gregory I (590-604), it can be said that local churches resisted the introduction of Roman centralism, especially in the Near East, where since the Council of Chalcedon (451), they had patriarchates in Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople. However, the fact that Rome was the only Western patriarchy, gradually led to the Pope becoming the natural head of all the churches. Gregory the Great was the first pope to become the pontiff wielding power over the whole Church, even if this primacy was more a matter of moral authority than of actual administrative power (Fichtenau 1991,15). The role and work of Gregory the Great marks an essential milestone in the history of the Catholic Church, not only because during his papacy there was a clear strengthening of papal authority, but because Gregory realized that his main task was not the preservation of the gradually decaying Romanism of the provinces, but the recruitment to the Catholic faith of pagan and Arian tribes. This is why he pushed for the evangelization of the Lombards, Anglo-Saxons and Germans, which allowed for Roman Catholicism to become the prevailing religion on the Continent.
From the legal point of view, as well, Gregory’s efforts served to shape what was undoubtedly one of the pillars of the Western Church’s legal system (Llewellyn 1974, 363-380): his idea of a societas reipublicae christianae, a community of all Christians over which the Roman Church exercised its principatus unimpeded by considerations of a constitutional nature. As Ullmann (1970, 37-38) points out, this conception of Gregory’s was a prophetic vision of medieval Europe, a societas made up of the nations and kingdoms outside the imperial but inside a universal, Christian framework.
5.3.3 Christianity and the New Germanic Peoples
One of the reasons Germanic kings had problems consolidating their power was that, from the beginning, they had to deal with local churches representing the whole of the predominantly Roman population. This conflict would be resolved in favor of ecclesiastical power after the kings converted to Catholicism. At this juncture, the Church came to support royalty in exchange for the kings’ endorsement and defense of this religious organization, profoundly influenced by the Roman political and legal model.
Christianity flourished relatively quickly amongst the Germanic peoples. In fact, those who came into contact with the Empire were quick to convert to Christianity. In this respect the role of the Goth Ulfilas (311-383), is worthy of note; to spread Christianity among his people he translated the Bible into the Gothic dialect, creating the oldest text written in a Germanic language (Wolfram 1990, 75-84).[173] However, Ulfilas was an adherent of the early Christian school of thought known as Arianism, which denied that Jesus Christ was coeternal with God the Father.[174]
The Arians and pagans in each of the new Germanic kingdoms found themselves openly squaring off with the Catholic bishops, who stood as the natural representatives of the Roman population. The episcopal pressure was so great that beginning in the late fifth century the Germanic kings, one by one, converted to Catholicism.
The first to embrace Catholicism was the Frankish King Clovis, baptized at Reims by the bishop St. Remigius circa 496 (James 1991, 121-123). He was followed by the Burgundian King Sigismund in 516; Rechiar, King of the Suebi in 550, catechized by St. Martin of Dumium (Thompson 1980, 77-92); Authari, King of the Lombards, in 585; and the Visigoth Reccared in 589, whose conversion was brought about by St. Leander.[175]
The successive conversion of the Germanic kings to Catholicism augmented the political influence of the churches, which henceforth made every effort to preserve the Roman idea of political organization of which they were custodians.
5.3.4 The Church and the “Romanization” of the Germanic Kingdoms
The influence of the Church on the government and the legal organization of the new kingdoms was crucial because it served to sustain the Roman model of government. Moreover, it can be said that the Church encouraged its continuation by imposing its political ideology on the Germanic kings who converted to Catholicism.
The clearest and most relevant case is that of Visigothic Spain, where after the conversion of Reccared (589), at the Third Council of Toledo (Orlandis Rovira 2007, 531-538), the Church clearly imposed itself on the civil authority (Nirenberg 2012, 12-20). Of special note in this regard was the role played by the councils of Toledo, mixed assemblies in which the members of the Visigothic nobility served
together with the bishops, and which adopted rules essential to the organization of the kingdom (Stocking 2000). For example, at the Fourth Council of Toledo (633), an elective procedure to designate the king was approved,[176] having the important consequence that the nominee was anointed by the Church, a ceremony that made him a sacred and inviolable individual, with the crucial corollary that, by becoming a Christian king, he was made subject to the Church’s authority. It is in this significant sense that Canon 9 of the 16th Council of Toledo (693), regarded kings as “vicars of God”. A Christian ruler was thus given a consecrated quality, but this was balanced by the duties which it entailed, including the necessity of royal obedience to bishops (Chaney 1970, 255).
The last Germanic kings to be anointed would be the Franks. It was in 751, at the behest of Pope Zachary, that the Frankish King Pippin, after being elected king “according to the Frankish custom”, was duly anointed.[177] As Geary (1988, 220) points out, this rite—which had Gothic, Irish and Anglo-Saxon precedents—was an innovation in the Frankish kingdom, as before Charlemagne’s father never before had a king been confirmed in his office by ecclesiastical ritual.
The transformation of the meaning of the royal institution as a result of ecclesiastical influence, reached its peak with St. Isidore of Seville (556-636), probably the leading European intellectual of his time thanks to his Etymologiae, in which, among other things, he set forth a “theory of kingship” (Feller 2001, 43). In his view, kings were obligated to conduct themselves uprightly (Recte igitur faciendo, regis nomen tenetur) or sacrifice their royal status.[178]
Ecclesiastical influence in the political and legal sphere would be decisive in the West until the Late Middle Ages and, more specifically, until the kings became “monarchs” and sought to shake off ecclesiastical authority over them.
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