Middle Ages – Part I
From the Fall of the Roman Empire to Thomas Aquinas
by Riccardo Piroddi
L’articolo analizza il pensiero politico occidentale nel Medioevo, dalla caduta dell’Impero Romano d’Occidente alla filosofia di Tommaso d’Aquino. Dopo la caduta di Roma, nel 476 d.C., l’Europa entrò in un’era di frammentazione politica, seguita dal tentativo carolingio di ristabilire l’ordine con il Sacro Romano Impero. Nel corso del tempo, il feudalesimo divenne dominante, ma un graduale rafforzamento del potere monarchico pose le basi per lo Stato moderno. Il Medioevo fu segnato dal dibattito tra potere temporale e spirituale, con due correnti principali: i curialisti, a favore del Papa, e i regalisti, sostenitori del potere secolare. Tommaso d’Aquino, influenzato da Aristotele e dalla tradizione cristiana, sviluppò una visione dualistica tra politica e salvezza, fondando la politica sull’etica e su princìpi morali universali.
The fall of the Roman Empire, Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire
The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD traditionally signals the close of antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages. With the collapse of Roman authority, the era of barbarian kingdoms commenced (5th to 8th century AD), marked by the gradual disintegration of the administrative and territorial cohesion that had defined the Roman Empire. This period saw the fragmentation of the once-unified Roman territories into a chaotic patchwork of warring “potentates,” which dismantled the advancements in legal and political structures achieved by the Greek and Roman civilizations. Crucially, no new political framework emerged to replace the Roman system.
After over three centuries of barbarian dominance, the Carolingian dynasty, ruling from the mid-8th to the late 9th century, undertook the monumental task of restoring order in the West and striving for political unity. This effort reached its zenith with Charlemagne, whose coronation as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 AD marked a brief resurgence of stability and cohesion. Under his reign, the West experienced a revival, narrowing the gap between Western and Eastern Europe.
However, the 10th and 11th centuries saw the rise of feudalism, which became the prevailing form of governance in Western Europe. Following the decline of the Carolingian dynasty, particularly after the abdication of Charles the Fat in 888 AD, feudal localism intensified, ultimately leading to the disintegration of centralized political institutions.
The authority of the Franco-Germanic emperors over the feudal lords gradually eroded, weakening the traditional hierarchical bonds that had once structured the empire. As a result, the feudal system became the tool through which emerging local aristocracies dismantled centralized power, stripping sovereignty from the hands of monarchs. It wasn’t until the 12th century, around 1100, that a significant shift in power dynamics occurred, laying the groundwork for a resurgence of royal authority. This shift had profound implications for the organization of state administration, as monarchs invested substantial human and financial resources into its development.
This reassertion of monarchical power had ripple effects, leading to improvements in the empire’s economic and cultural spheres. From this point onward, a gradual evolution began, ultimately giving rise to the foundations of the modern state.
Medieval legal organization
The Middle Ages is characterized from the political point of view by the attention to the relations between State and Sovereignty, characterized by the divine (abstract) origin of the (concrete) political power that recognizes the function of “balancer of powers” to those who govern.
The question of the pope’s plenitudo potestatis and the “binary” structure of the Christian Respublica (founded on the coexistence at its top as Pope and Emperor) are not the only themes that characterize the political reflection of the Middle Ages that involved two different schools of thought: the “curialists”, apologists for the Pope, and “regalists”, defenders of secular political power, such as John of Salisbury.
It is appropriate to consider, alongside the transcendent vision of the world, also another element that involves the ecclesiastical world and the secular world, namely the interpretation of law.
Its main themes are:
1) pluralism of the centres of power: in the Middle Ages there is no general concept of law, but that of a plurality of different and often opposing systems that fight and interact (the Empire, the Church, the Fiefdom, the Commune).
2) The relationship between sovereign, law and order. Contrary to what will happen in the modern State, in medieval times, the legislative power is not characterized so much as the power of those who govern to create law through the law, but rather as the ability to sanction the pre-existing law, identifying among the myriad of customs, the one that best suits the individual case and the uses of the populations. According to this conception, the medieval “sovereign” is mainly the holder of a “judicial” rather than legislative function: his sentence confirms existing customary law rather than creating new law.
3) The principle of the immutability of earthly matters: in a strongly conservative society and culture, especially the early medieval one, the values of continuity, conservation and inveterate repetition (custom) are far easier to apply than those of change and innovation. Unlike the latter, in fact, the former – because they have been preserved and handed down for centuries – express the immutable order of earthly things, a concrete reflection of the divine.
The sovereign, rather than supreme legislator – a name reserved for God, who legislated through the Scriptures – is the supreme earthly judge, guardian of an unavailable order as established in turn by God.
An example of this sacral dimension of the concept of sovereignty is the figure of the king-thaumaturge, masterfully described by the French historian Marc Bloch, who reconstructs a popular belief, widespread in France and England, according to which the sovereign was even potentially able to heal the diseases of his subjects through the laying on of hands.
John of Salisbury
A first criticism of the divine origin of royalty came from the theologian John of Salisbury who is one of the leading exponents of the curialist current who recognizes that the humility of reason does not conflict with faith in the search for God.
His work Polychraticos, inspired by the Archbishop of Canterbury Becket (an intransigent supporter of opposition to the emperor), is a complete treatise (inspired by Aristotle and Justinian law) of political science in which three needs are highlighted to approach the Christian tradition to that of classical philosophy (and in particular to the Aristotelian one) in the study of politics. Identify the anthropological elements of politics (of “good” and “bad” government). Separate the spiritual power from the temporal one, pointing out the dangers deriving from the excessive political power concentrated in the hands of the pope.
Thomas Aquinas
Eight centuries after Augustine’s death, the “Christian doctrine” undergoes a new important development with Thomas Aquinas. A very important theologian and philosopher (named doctor angelicus), the Dominican friar founds his doctrine under the evangelical spirituality, under the influence of the Arab philosophers Avicenna and Averroes and the “christianized” thought of Aristotle.
Thomas argued a radical dualism between politics and salvation, between priesthood and kingdom. His thought is strongly marked by the attempt to reconcile politics and anthropology, reason and faith, philosophy and theology, according to “philosophia ancilla theologiae” principle, as both talk of God, Man and the World, even if the former is imperfect while theology directs to eternal salvation. Faith “improves” the use of reason, just as theology rectifies, without replacing it, philosophy.
In his metaphysical vision, inspired by Aristotle, Thomas believes that the political community has a natural tendency towards sociality, intended to promote the insertion of the individual into the community that embodies the common good, that goes beyond the good of the individual and is described in the Scriptures.
According to Thomas, man has a “rational nature” and is capable of knowing the end of everything, the order of things and God, as the supreme good. In particular, synderesis must be understood as that natural disposition that leads the individual to understand the principles that inspire and guide good actions.
It is not sin, but rather the inherent goodness and natural inclinations of human beings that serve as the foundational principle for the formation of a community. This natural disposition leads people to come together, not out of necessity due to inherent flaws, but as an expression of their social and cooperative nature. Equally natural is the emergence of leadership within the community, with a leader chosen to guide and govern in the interest of the common good. Leadership, in this view, is not a force imposed upon society but a natural extension of humanity’s collective pursuit of harmony and shared welfare.
The common good is the criterion that makes it possible to distinguish between forms of good governance (kingdom, aristocracy, and politeìa) from unjust ones (tyranny, oligarchy, and demagogy). The common good is objectified in the constant and inalienable goal of a government, which is to guarantee peace and unity, inspired by the lex divina and the lex aeterna deriving from a “God the creator” (and not an act of pure thought as in Aristotle).
The thought of Thomas, expressed mainly in the Summa Theologiae (1266-1273) considers politics as “governed” by a supreme constitutional principle deriving from the law producer of the Universe.
The political will of men based on natural law alone has value only to the extent that which expresses a rational order of being (collective) and not the will of the individual; it finds its foundation in the divine law expressed in the Gospel and which leads to beatitude, bridging the imperfections of human laws.
For this reason, according to Thomas, it is right to disobey a human law (which, if unjust, goes against the divine law) which is in contrast with the natural limits of power.
As a whole, therefore, Thomas founds politics on ethics and places it on the theological level and is rightly considered a founder of “moral philosophy”.
The man, as a human being endowed with reason and free will obeys various types of laws.
1) The lex aeterna, which is identified with divine reason, is addressed only to a few blessed and represents the order of the universe.
2) The lex divina, it is the law revealed by the Gospel and as such it is positive and leads those who respect it to beatitude.
3) The lex naturalis, corresponds to a part of the lex aeterna that man possesses in himself as a rational being;
4) the human lex, it is the positive law issued by man and, as such, it can be just or unjust. In the second case, it must be disobeyed.
