Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Das theologisch-politische Problem 2; Problem Europas: absolute Monarchie: politische Macht zw: Stadtstaat (ideologische Schwäche) u. Imperium (besetzt von Kirche); europ. Monarchie: statische - dynamische Seite

Kurzinhalt: [A]bsolute or national monarchy ... why it was structurally superior to the city-state and the Empire when confronting the problem posed by the Church's claims... Because of these three features, monarchy was much more compatible with the Church than ...

Textausschnitt: 5c On what political bases, then, did the secular world tend to organize itself in order to confront the Church's claims? Let us examine the resources of the two available political forms we have mentioned. (Fs)

5d First, the city-state. Up to the sixteenth century, city-states were prevalent in certain regions of Europe (Northern Italy, Flanders, Northern Germany). The historical reasons for this do not concern us here. What is striking is that this political form was overcome by a kind of incapacity to expand or even to endure. This fact stems, of course, from the instability specific to this form of political organization. Civil strife between factions often led to the paralysis and even self-destruction of the city-state, as the chronicles of the Greek and Italian city-states eloquently attest. To these natural reasons were added reasons related to the presence and influence of the Church. On this point two apparently contradictory remarks must be made. On the one hand, when facing the Church, the city-states were relatively weak; they found it difficult to stand up to it. On the other, they were very unfriendly to the Church, which returned the compliment. (Fs)

6a City-states were ideologically weak: they were "particulars" facing two "universals," the Empire and the Church. Each faction within the European city-state tended to rely on the support of one of these universals (Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence) or to rely also on some foreign monarchy. Furthermore, the city-states had an extremely intense, indeed tumultuous, political life. The interests and passions of its citizens were naturally turned toward worldly matters. The city-state thus tended to constitute an especially closed world, one especially resistant to the Church's influence. Finally, the natural position of its citizens was to assert their independence. On these three points, monarchy presented altogether different characteristics. (Fs)

6b Too inimical structurally to the Church's claims, the city-state was at the same time too weak to set up a political form capable of successfully asserting itself against the Church while acceding to certain of its demands. Florence is a good example. Perhaps it will be objected that an atypical situation prevailed in Italy, since there the pope was a temporal prince. In reality, even in Italy, the Church's strength was essentially spiritual. The pope was never actually able to carry on a war alone; at the time of the papacy's greatest prestige, he was unable to command adequate obedience even in Rome. Indeed, before the Reformation, he had more influence in England or Germany than in Italy. (Fs)

6c In any case, this situation of the Italian city-states had major consequences for all of European history. The mixture of structural hostility and intrinsic weakness in the city-state's relationship with the Church explains to a large extent why Italian city-states developed, and with such aggressiveness, the first truly secular civilization in the Christian world. The great literary assertions of the solidity, independence, and nobility of the secular world were born in Italy: those of Dante, Marsilius of Padua, Boccaccio. This Florentine tradition was then taken up, radically transformed, and made operational for the offensive against the Church launched by that great enemy of Christianity, Machiavelli. (Fs) (notabene)

6d As for the Empire, its actual performance (as distinguished from the prestige of its idea), was in a sense even more modest than that of the city-state. It was not for lack of geniuses: it suffices to mention Charlemagne or Frederick II. Besides, the intrinsic difficulty of the imperial venture in an area as geographically, ethnically, and politically divided as Europe has to be taken into account. Moreover, the place of the empire—the universal— was already occupied, preempted in a way, by the Church. Of course, the Eastern Empire in Constantinople did coexist in a potentially organic union with Christianity. But this union was realized in Constantinople, far from the radiating center of the Christian presence, the pope. Joseph de Maistre, who is particularly reliable on this subject, maintains that if the seat of the Empire was transferred to Constantinople, it was an instinctively opportune impulse: Constantine sensed that "the emperor and the pontiff could not be contained within the same enclosure." He therefore ceded Rome to the pope.1 (Fs)

7a The great political problem in Europe was therefore the following: the nonreligious, secular, lay world had to be organized under a form that was neither city-state nor empire, a form less "particular" than the city-state and less "universal" than the empire, or whose universality would be different from that of the empire. We know that this political form was absolute or national monarchy. Before trying to describe the spiritual and political changes that made its constitution possible, I should like to say briefly why it was structurally superior to the city-state and the Empire when confronting the problem posed by the Church's claims. (Fs) (notabene)

7b Like the emperor, and unlike the city-state, the king was able to lay claim to "divine right" in accordance with the Pauline axiom: "All power comes from God." (The city-states did not because their magistrates, being a plurality, did not fill the first condition for being the image or lieutenant of God: unicity.)2 Yet in contrast with the emperor, the king did not in principle lay claim to universal monarchy, which limited the extent of the conflict with the Church's universality. Moreover, political life in a kingdom was much more modest than in a city-state, leaving men freer to dedicate themselves to matters of the other world. Finally, the natural position of a monarch's subjects was one of obedience, which suited the Church better. Because of these three features, monarchy was much more compatible with the Church than was the city-state. Simultaneously, and paradoxically, with the assertion of divine right the secular king was in principle radically independent from the Church: the king depended directly on God. The practical consequence was that kings tended to place themselves at the head of even the religious organizations of their kingdoms. (Fs)

7c The historical fortune of monarchy in the Christian world stems in large part from the fact that this political form permitted a broad acceptance of the Church's presence and, at the same time, possessed an extremely powerful force (the monarch by divine right) for guaranteeing the political body's independence from the Church. (Fs)

7d Thus European monarchy had two sides. The first, a "static" one, can be described as the union of throne and altar. The king was a good Christian and submissive son of the Church, and the Church recognized him as king by God's grace and preached obedience to his power. The second was "dynamic": the king tended naturally to assert the political body's total independence from the Church and hence to claim even the religious sovereignty of his kingdom (for example, the nomination of bishops, control of religious orders, and even, in extreme cases such as England, participation in the definition of Christianity's dogmatic content). Whereas in the Middle Ages political bodies were enveloped or incorporated by the Church, every monarchy heading toward absolutism tended to incorporate the Church within its borders. The kingdom became the supreme political body, the human association par excellence. Once this supremacy was permanently established, the kingdom became the "nation," and its "representatives" imposed on the clergy the "civil constitution," establishing the Church's complete subordination to the body politic. (Fs) (notabene)

8a Thus monarchy appeared to be less a regime than a process. This explains why the great historical theories formulated in the nineteenth century readily took away its specificity, making it into a simple instrument destined to be thrown on the scrap heap once it accomplished what "history" expected from it. For Marxism, it was the instrument for passing from "feudalism" to "capitalism"; for Guizot, the instrument of "national" unification and "civilization"; for Tocqueville, it made possible the passage from "aristocracy" to "democracy."3 These interpretations are of unequal worth, but they all attempted to give an intelligible content to the intuition that monarchy had set "history" in motion, the modern history of Europe, a directed, meaningful, "irresistible" history. Monarchy broke the natural rhythm of political history in Europe, and only in Europe. (Fs)