Histories of the growth of democracy, republicanism, or constitutional thought root themselves in all sorts of places. They can be stories of ancient Histories of the growth of democracy, republicanism, or constitutional thought root themselves in all sorts of places. They can be stories of ancient Athens, stories of the Italian communes in the twelfth century, or stories of Enlightenment thought. All fair enough. Oftentimes, 'history of democracy' = 'history of historical time period I think was best.' But Brian Tierney's short essay on the rise of constitutional thought root it in something much more accidental, and he describes how in the period between 1150 and 1650, modern constitutionalism grew out of thought that really was not constitutional at all, and was often attempting to solidify older, more traditional forms of authority.
Tierney argues in Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought that constitutional theory as it took shape in the 1700s can really only be seen as the culmination of a slow, often inchoate intellectual development between 1150 and 1650. It developed from medieval conceptions of corporation theory, and remained a constant topic of intellectual debate due to the fact, in the simplest terms, that no one could figure out exactly where the ultimate point of authority was located. This is a fun argument, since it really goes against traditional periodizations of medieval, early modern, Renaissance, Enlightenment, etc.
The essay begins with a look a medieval government: particularly why medieval Europe did not develop absolute, divine-right monarchs that were so prevalent in other contemporary world cultures. Tierney argues that it can be attributed to a couple things: 1) Customary Law: the weakest example, according to Tierney, since it was present in many other cultures as well. Still, the Germanic emphasis on popular participation in government continued to hold some cultural sway. 2) Corporate Groups: a pervasive cultural reality in Europe by 1250. Universities, towns, guilds, cathedral chapters and more all operated as corporations. More on this in a bit. 3) Decentralization: The tension between the center and the locality was omnipresent. Papal power was held in check by episcopal power; royal power by baronial power, etc. 4) Two Swords: The fact that both the emperor and the pope claimed supreme authority meant that neither one ever actually managed to possess it.
These trends prevented absolutism from emerging during the medieval period in Europe, but it certainly did not create constitutionalism. For that, Tierney turns to the re-emergence of Roman law and the effect that it had on the medieval conception of corporations.
It's a funny, arbitrary jump, and one that happened fairly often in medieval political theory. An obscure point of Roman law was dug up in the 12th century. It then was applied to a broader point of canon law, and eventually ecclesiastical constitutional law. Then, given that the medieval personnel of ecclesiastical and royal government heavily overlapped, it made its way into secular constitutional law. This happened with a rather detailed piece of Roman guardianship law: "Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet" ('what touches all ought to be approved by all'). In its original law code, this was designed to deal with a guardianship with multiple tutors. When it was adopted into canon law, though, it was used to determined the governing of a diocese. When a question arose concerning the lands of a diocese, should decisions be made by the bishop? The cathedral chapter? Both? This quickly moved into more macroscopic territory in the church. Were key matters determined by the pope? A council? The whole body of the faithful?
These questions, for Tierney raised a whole host of problems. The process of answering them could lead to a theory of absolutism or constitutionalism, depending entirely on which aspects are stressed. Take the cathedral chapter example. One can determine that that chapter itself concedes its authority to the head (the bishop) and cannot take it back, yielding a strong monarchy. One can determine that the chapter can concede authority to the bishop but take it back under particular conditions, yielding a limited or constitutional monarchy. One can determine that the chapter and the bishop both have their own sorts of fields of authority, yielding a sort of federalism. All of these solutions arose at various points during the medieval and early modern eras, spurred especially by events like the Great Schism and the English Civil War. They were the same questions arising again and again from about 1150, given slightly different answers in response to historical context.
Tierney's rise of constitutionalism is based on the attempted resolutions of paradoxes and dichotomies. How to resolve the medieval belief in the power of the community with a concurrent belief in the presence of a top-down Neoplatonic hierarchy? How to resolve the belief in papal primacy with the beliefs in episcopal independence and the right of a community to rid itself of a sinful leader? How to resolve the belief that an Aristotelian mix of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy was the best form of government with the problem that, at some point, conflict will arise and they'll all be at odds?
It's a short, wonderful book. As always Tierney take tough topics and makes them fascinating and accessible. ...more
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was expecting a pretty traditional textbook that recounted the late medieval period and the ReformaI was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was expecting a pretty traditional textbook that recounted the late medieval period and the Reformation. And it is that, sort of, but it's presented in a really interesting way.
Ozment argues against the traditional narrative of late medieval intellectual history: the flowering of scholasticism, the threat of nominalism (Ozment calls William of Ockham the Black Death of medieval intellectual history), and then intellectual stagnation until the Reformation. He instead suggests that Ockham's thought didn't cause the break between the two periods, but provided the central link between them. You can probably guess it based upon the years that start and end the book (1250 and 1550), but Luther comes out of this work looking very medieval.
After a whirlwind tour through scholastic thought (loosely organized around different approaches to the questions of salvation, epistemology, and exegesis and starring Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham), Ozment also takes a look at less dialectical forms of spirituality during the period, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux, Franciscans, and beguines. The second half of the work looks at Luther and the Reformation, with particular attention at how Luther's theology was likely derived from a mixture of German mysticism and Ockham's nominalism. Ockham's God was much more remote and unrestrained than Aquinas's: God was not bound to create the universe that he did, and he possessed the power to alter it at will. But Ockham's God wasn't arbitrary either, as is often suggested: he was instead based on the concept of covenants. God made the universe work the way it worked because he promised to, not because he was required to. This way of approaching theology stresses the omnipotence of God, and it's easy to understand how it would not be a large leap to Luther's theory of salvation....more
A good, engaging textbook. I particularly liked Ozment's overview of later medieval thought, theological, philosophical, and political. A subject likeA good, engaging textbook. I particularly liked Ozment's overview of later medieval thought, theological, philosophical, and political. A subject like that can be difficult to cover in a textbook due to its technicality, but this is a nice balance of clear explanation, the occasional in-depth case study, and plenty of excerpts from primary sources. More textbooks should go that route, I think.
I also liked the choice of time frame, 1250-1550. Most books on intellectual thought would either go late medieval or Reformation, but Ozment decides to go for both and it really adds an originality to his work. I could have done with a little more interweaving of the two halves, but the fact that both of them are there allows him to demonstrate how the Reformation managed to be a shocking, traumatic moment for those who lived through it, but also a somewhat unsurprising development in retrospect, given the general trends of late medieval thought.
My only slight qualm is that I think he's a bit too hard on late medieval Catholicism. Don't get me wrong, a lot of it was kind of a disaster - but it was also a disaster that had been going on for a while. People had been complaining about corruption, clerical wealth, uneducated priests, and more for centuries before the Reformation, so it makes Ozment's claim that the Reformation sprung out of a general sense of spiritual repression a bit unconvincing (or at least underdeveloped). Still a very good textbook, though.
Just as a heads up, since this is a textbook: there are certain parts that may be somewhat slow going if you don't have any background in theology. The majority of it is very accessible and readable, but if you don't have any background in the subject you'll occasionally need some patience and a trip over to Google. It's worth it, though - this sort of mixture of clarity and depth is hard to find....more
In the preface to his book, Walter Ullmann makes the claim that the history of the medieval papacy is the history of an idea. That concept shapes his In the preface to his book, Walter Ullmann makes the claim that the history of the medieval papacy is the history of an idea. That concept shapes his whole book and accounts for its best and its worst parts.
For Ullmann, the history of the papacy is dominated by two concepts: the relationship between the papacy and Constantinople (which Ullmann casts as the conflict between an ideological and an historical approach, respectively) and the increasing use of canon law to translate papal ideology into reality. This makes for a fascinating sort of intellectual history that offers a pretty clean and compelling portrait of the papal rise from a prominent bishop with lots of hypothetical claims to a hierarchical monarch with sway in the farthest reaches of Christendom. I think Ullmann is definitely right to highlight the importance of law to the papacy, and in highlighting the importance of rather abstract concepts (like the reemergence of Aristotelian definition of the secular state in the 13th century) in the rise or fall of papal power.
But at the same time, I think Ullmann's book suffers from completely separating the intellectual office of the papacy and its ideological underpinnings from the less lofty aspects of its history. Political, social, and economic forces rarely come into play in Ullmann's history (and when they do, such as a brief discussion of heresy, it's traced back to papal ideas or claims). And I think that makes for a very incomplete picture of the medieval papacy, with all the rough edges and weird details sanded off. Everyone acts for Big Ideological Reasons: at one point Ullmann claims that "the whole ideological and political map of Europe had been changed by the methodical, purposeful and vigorous application of an abstract programme to concrete reality." While there's some truth in that, I think there's also some confusing of cause in effect. It ignores the fact that many popes were acting due to very specific political/economic/social situations rather than timelessly applying abstract intellectual concepts. There's the sense that Ullmann thinks that all the popes were all uniformly trying to institute a universal monarchy over all Europe, with individual personalities only altering their ability to do so effectively. In the end, while Ullmann's history is a really interesting application of intellectual history, I think it remains a bit too single-minded to provide a full and multifaceted view of the papacy....more
A really solid and enjoyable introduction to the history of the papacy. Eamon Duffy bravely covers the whole thing, stretching from the hints about PeA really solid and enjoyable introduction to the history of the papacy. Eamon Duffy bravely covers the whole thing, stretching from the hints about Peter we can glean from the New Testament all the way to the election and early days of Benedict XVI. Since he only has about 400 pages this is inevitably going to lead to some simplification and a sometime unfortunate lack of surrounding context(especially in the pre-Reformation papacy), but overall I think he does a nice job of making the subject accessible to a non-expert without sacrificing historical accuracy. He's got a good gift for narrative.
I also think Duffy is pretty fair in his overall assessment. He openly acknowledges the moral failings of many popes (which make for some fun stories) but he also always considers them in their historical context and recognizes that for all its failings, the papacy had a lot of good things to offer as well. It's a nice middle ground, especially when so much modern dialogue about the papacy focuses on either talking about how terrible it is or about how glorious and infallible it is.
Duffy does an especially good job in his coverage of the papacy over the past two centuries: you get a good look at how its been fluctuating back and forth in a struggle to define precisely how it ought to operate in a world that changed quite a bit faster than it did, and it's absolutely fascinating. ...more
This book is a bit overwhelming. It covers 1000+ years of history, veering from subjects as diverse as vernacular literature, scholastic theology, IslThis book is a bit overwhelming. It covers 1000+ years of history, veering from subjects as diverse as vernacular literature, scholastic theology, Islamic science, lay mysticism, and economic theory. It's kind of dizzying at points.
On one hand, it's a really impressive work because of that breadth, and it allows for really nice connections to be made between subjects that are often treated in isolation. The connection between the emergence of vernacular literature and lay women's increasing participation in mysticism, are intelligent and incisive points. The connections between scholastic theology and economic and political are likewise nicely paralleled. One of the nice things that this allows Colish to point out in her conclusion is that medieval thought tended to be much more flexible and open-ended than its early modern successor schools, a point that nearly always gets overlooked when discussing the intellectual climate of the medieval era.
The problem is, though, that the brevity with which each subject has to be treated often leads to oversimplification or inadequate explanation. The sections on monasticism and mysticism are clear and readable, not offering much new to a scholarly audience but a great introduction to beginners in intellectual history. But the section on scholasticism goes off in the other direction, offering great explanations of theologians to readers trained in formal logic and likely leaving most other readers pretty confused at what something called 'speculative grammar' could possibly entail. It makes it a bit unclear exactly who this book was aimed at - it's occasionally too advanced for someone just starting out in medieval intellectual history, but also doesn't offer much new to people who are well-versed in it.
That sounds a bit harsher than I intended - overall it's a very good book that could work really well as a textbook for a course. There are certain gaps, but that's inevitable in a work like this. Overall, it's a good, ambitious introduction to the varieties and richness of medieval thought....more
This will probably be the most exciting book that you will ever read about corporate law! Brian Tierney traces the development of conciliar theory - tThis will probably be the most exciting book that you will ever read about corporate law! Brian Tierney traces the development of conciliar theory - that the power of the Catholic Church is derived from the universal body of the faithful rather than from the pope alone - from its earliest roots in 12th century canon law. That sounds rather dry, but it's honestly a fascinating read that delves into the problem of exactly where authority rests within the medieval church, and how the different bodies within the church relate to each other.
Tierney's main point is that conciliarism isn't an external imposition on canon law, the quasi-heretical ideas of Marsilius of Padua or William of Ockham superimposed onto a solid foundation of papal monarchy. And it's not simply a translation of conceptions of constitutional monarchies that were developing in the emerging secular nations around the same time. Instead, it's the natural culmination of 200 years of canon law development that resulted when the ideas of the first Decretists joined with the concepts of corporate law explore by their successors.
Tierney writes exceptionally clearly and compellingly, and this is a must read for anyone who is interested in the medieval church or in the Catholic Church of the present day....more
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