Bryan Caplan 
	Koch Fellows Program 
	Essay #2
 
"One of the great tragedies of human history - and the central  
tragedy of Christianity - is the break-up of the harmonious world- 
order which had evolved, in the Dark Ages, on a Christian basis.  Men  
had agreed, or at least had appeared to agreee, on an all-enveloping  
theory of society which not only aligned virtue with law and  
practice, but allotted to everyone in it precise, Christian-oriented  
tasks.  There need be no arguments or divisions because everyone  
endorsed the principles on which the system was run.  They had to.   
Membership of the society, and the acceptance of its rules, was  
ensured by baptism, which was compulsory and irrevocable.  The  
unbaptized, that it the Jews, were not members of the society at all;  
their lives were spared but otherwise they had no rights.  Those  
who, in effect, renounced their baptism by infidelity or heresy, were  
killed.  For the remainder, there was total agreement and total  
commitment.  The points on which men argued were slender,  
compared to the huge areas of complete acquiescence which  
embraced almost every aspect of their lives." 
             --Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity
 
Otto Gierke's Political Theories of the Middle Ages
 
1. Gierke on the Antique, the Medieval, and the Modern
 
The underlying theme of Gierke's history of medieval thought  
goes like this: the ancient world, mainly of Greece and Rome,  
developed a distinctive political tradition.  The content of this  
tradition is not too clear; but its flavor was individualistic and  
pluralistic.  It contained republican ideas like popular sovereignty  
and representation, and opposition to tyranny.  Moreover, it  
contained the seeds of natural law theory -- roughly, the idea that  
some acts are right or wrong independent of what state authorities  
say, which thereby constrains the legitimate behavior of  
government.   

Now during medieval times, a startling different philosophy  
appeared, inspired by the universal cultural takeover of the Catholic  
Church.  Gierke argues that the chief feature of this "medieval"  
philosophy was an organic philosophy of the relationship between  
society, the state, and the church.  To be more precise, distinctively  
medieval thinkers did not see society as a collection of individuals  
pursuing their several aims.  (This is what Gierke somewhat  
incorrectly calls the "atomistic" and "mechanistic" theory of  
society.)  Rather they thought of the ruled as the body of society, and  
the authorities as the head.  Of course, the head does the thinking  
and figures out what the body is going to do -- and the body goes  
along.  This model lends itself to a total society, since there is only  
one group that does the serious thinking and other people are  
supposed to obey rather than work out their own views. 

Complicating this matter is the fact that medieval society  
contained two rival heads.  As Gierke humorously suggests, the idea  
of a two-headed body was hard for medievals to bear: "were the  
Emperor an additional Head of this Mystical Body, we should have  
before us a two-headed monster, an animal biceps." (p.22)  For a long  
while, this metaphor was resolved in favor of the Church.  The Pope's  
supporters developed the two-swords theory, arguing that the Pope  
ruled the religious realm directly and the secular one indirectly.   
Monarchs were merely appointed servants of the Pope, who granted  
them their power, limited it, and could take it away if it were  
abused.  Monarchs preferred another theory that gave them wider  
scope: rather than thinking of the mnonarch as subordinate to the  
Church, it would be better to think of the Church as the spirit of  
society and the secular government as the body.  This formally  
conceded the superiority of the Church (since the soul is nobler than  
the body) but left day-to-day power in the practical world in the  
hands of the monarch. 

Having alluded to ancient and sketched medieval political  
thought, Gierke then presents his most bold and challenging thesis.   
He argues that when medieval thinkers re-introduced their time to  
ancient political thought, they inadvertently destroyed their own  
distinctive political tradition.  Modern thought is based largely on  
ancient thought; the history of medieval thought may be seen as the  
slow resurrection in a new historical context of the concepts and  
principles of the ancient world.  As Gierke explains, "If from the  
point at which we have placed ourselves we survey the Political  
Doctrine of the Middle Age, we see within the medieval husk an  
'antique-modern' kernel.  Always waxing, it draws away all vital  
nutriment from the shell, and in the end that shell is broken.  Thus  
the history of the Political Theories of the Middle Age is at one and  
the same time a history of the theoretical formulation of the  
System of Medieval Society and the history of the erection of that  
newer edifice which was built upon a foundation of Natural Law."  
(pp.4-5) 

2. The Limits of Power: Popular Sovereignty,  
Representation, and Natural Law 

Unfortunately, most of Gierke's historical support lies in  
foreign-language footnotes which I cannot fairly evaluate.  But  
apparently he believes that the medievals picked up several anti- 
authoritarian ideas from ancient authors. 

First, there is the idea of popular sovereignty.  In ancient  
times, many people thought that the Roman people, taken as a whole,  
had some say in their government.  This is not to imply that they  
actually got to participate or even should get to participate; but it  
makes the government into a sort of servant of the nation rather  
than the master.  And under dire circumstances, authority might  
revert or "escheat" to the people.  As first this doctrine had no  
practical application in the Catholic Church: "The Church, it is true,  
avoided this conclusion by the supposition that, since the advent of  
Christ, the rights of the People had passed to Him and from Him to  
Peter and Peter's successors." (p.40)  But this strange interpretation  
had many rivals who argued that popular sovereignty limited even  
the power of the Church.  The idea spread that in the event of papal  
heresy, the Pope could be judged by the Whole Church and replaced. 
The idea of representation also took root.  Curiously, many  
people saw the monarch as a kind of representative of the people,  
whose power was in some sense a temporary grant.  Citizens'  
assemblies formed in many towns and cities, whose obligation it  
was to represent the interests of all.  Cardinals, Electors in the Holy  
Roman Empire, and the Pope himself were worked into theories of  
representation.  Whether this theory actually limits government  
power is another matter; perhaps it moderately constrained serious  
abuses. 

The most powerful idea that the medievals borrowed from the  
ancient world was that of natural law.  Now Christian thinkers had  
always recognized that God's law was superior to man's; but natural  
law theorists added a new check upon authority.  They distinguished  
between the eternal and universal standards that God gives us in  
revelation, and the equally eternal and universal standards that we  
know by reason alone.  "The revealed Law of God stood to the Law of  
Nature (properly so-called) in this relation, namely, that while the  
latter was implanted by God in Natural Reason for the attainment of  
earthly ends, the former was communicated by God to man in a  
supernatural way and for a supramundane purpose." (pp.75-76)  Any  
positive law contrary to either the Law of God or the Law of Nature  
was usually held to be void.  Of course, the doctrine of natural law  
could be used to enforce state power rather than check it.  Perhaps  
natural law requires us to kill heretics.  But in practice, Gierke  
thinks that it was mainly a check on rather than a mandate for state  
action. 

3. Conclusion: Extending Gierke 

I confess a prior sympathy for Gierke's rough outline of  
history, and want to suggest a broader and blunter application of his  
ideas.  Namely: The origins of individualism and liberty lie in the  
Graeco-Roman world, whereas the origins of collectivism and  
totalitarianism lie in Christianity.  If Gierke is right that the good  
aspects of the modern world arose because ancient ideas infiltrated  
Christian civilization, how might we explain the totalitarian horrors  
of the modern world?  The most plausible hypothesis is that modern  
totalitarianism draws its inspiration from the totalitarianism of  
the Middle Ages.  Just as the Enlightenment emerged when ancient  
ideas replaced medieval ones, so too did totalitarianism emerge  
when medieval ideas replaced those of the Enlightenment.  In so  
short a space, I cannot begin to prove this here; but I think that Paul  
Johnson's Modern Times and A History of Christianity inadvertently  
make a rather strong case.