Bringing the Church Back In: Ecclesiastical Influences on the Rise of Europe

Abstract

Recently, political scientists and economists have redoubled their attempts to understand the “Rise of Europe.” However, the role of the Catholic Church has been curiously ignored in most of this new research. The medieval West was shot through with Catholic values and institutions, and only by factoring in the Church can we understand the peculiar European development from the high Middle Ages onward. More particularly, the 11th century “crisis of church and state” set in train a series of developments that were crucial for the Rise of Europe. The Church was the main locale in which the development of representation, consent, and early bureaucratic institutions took place, and it contributed to creating, integrating, and maintaining the European multistate system. This note demonstrates that current scholarship has failed to factor in ecclesiastical influences and it shows how these gaps can be filled by a more careful reading of prior historical scholarship.

Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation

“…However, when he was excommunicated a second time in 1080, his princes stayed loyal—and he began to again encroach on papal territories in earnest. As Møller (2019) points out, excommunication is “only effective if it creates opposition against the targeted ruler” (217).…”

“…In short, I argue that the Church fragmented the territorial authority of powers it saw as hostile (chiefly the Holy Roman Empire), and helped to consolidate and to strengthen states in other areas. By emphasizing the role of medieval religious authorities, this analysis also contributes to a more recent literature that has emphasized the deep (and secular) history of the European state: the influence of the Crusades (Blaydes and Paik 2016), the development of legal systems (Cantoni and Yuchtman 2014;Møller 2019), cities and communes (Abramson 2017;Møller 2017), representative assemblies (Boucoyannis 2021;Stasavage 2010), and urban self-government and interdependence (Bosker, Eltjo, and van Zanden 2013;Møller and Doucette 2022). This study extends the framework first developed by Hintze ([1931] 1975) on the role of the Church in transmitting Roman precedents of the rule of law and the formalization of assemblies, as well as subsequent work exploring how the Church promoted the rule of law and diffused selfgovernment (Bendix 1978;Doucette and Møller 2021;Ergang 1971;Fukuyama 2011;Kiernan 1965;Møller 2019;Møller and Doucette 2022;Poggi 1990).…”

“…Scholars have noted the importance of the conflict with the Church, but there has been far less focus on the Church’s direct role in fragmenting territorial authority. Thus, Møller (2019) focuses on the “crisis of church and state” as critical to subsequent “rise of Europe” (by which he means the multistate system, medieval parliaments, and early bureaucratic institutions) but devotes less attention to the mechanisms by which the papacy fragmented territorial rule. Møller and Doucette (2022) focus on the spread of the Cluny reform program, as critical to fragmentation, urban self-government, and the rise of national assemblies.…”

Medieval Origins of the European State System: The Catholic Church as Midwife

“…This sequence was set in train when the papal Church declared its independence from secular power in the 11 th century (Berman 1983;Bisson 2009;Oakley 2012;Møller 2019;Doucette and Møller 2020). The Church was able to back its declaration of independence with a formidable normative or ideological power (Mann 1986), which was effectively leveraged by the papal head of the Church in successive conflicts with temporal rulers.…”

Leader Succession and Civil War

“…We argue that the spread of Christianity and the associated requirement of monogamy in marriage helped promote primogeniture (cf. Møller, 2019). Several scholars have noted that the Christian Church in the early Middle Ages introduced a range of regulations on marriage and the family which promoted monogamy (Gies & Gies, 1987; Betzig, 1995; Goody, 1983; Herlihy, 1985).…”