The Conflict of Church and State

Abstract

This chapter traces the roots of the eleventh-century ‘conflict of church and state’. It shows how the historical point of departure was a fusion of lay and religious authority which bolstered sacral monarchy. This situation, common across the great civilization areas of Eurasia, was destabilized by a large-scale collapse of public authority in the ninth and tenth centuries. The buckling of royal power allowed a bottom-up reform movement in West Francia (the Cluniac movement), directed by clergy but with popular backing, to push for ecclesiastical autonomy and asceticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This reform programme was then adopted by the top-down papal or ‘Gregorian’ reform movement, which is conventionally dated to 1046 or 1049. In the 1070s, the Gregorian reformers unleashed the great conflict over investiture, centring on whether they or lay rulers had the right to appoint clergy, in particular bishops. Throughout the High Middle Ages, the consequent conflict of church and state would dominate European politics.

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

“…They served as administrators for secular monarchs and the spiritual deputies of the pope. They held high spiritual and secular office, kept order and defended territory, collected taxes, issued local judgments and petitions, mediated disputes, and served as papal emissaries (Angelov and Herrin 2012, 170; Møller and Doucette 2022; Robinson 1990, 423). The bishops’ loyalty was thus of paramount importance to both monarchs and popes and naming bishops was an exercise in ensuring both fealty and effective administration.…”

“…Second, the rise of communes from the late eleventh century to the twelfth century would prevent rulers from establishing and centralizing territorial authority (Abramson 2017; Rokkan 1975; Tilly 1992; Tilly and Blockmans 1994; Wickham 2015; 2016). In the “city belt” that stretched from central Italy to North Germany, self-governing towns arose where the central government was too weak to assert control (Møller and Doucette 2022; see also Stasavage 2010; 2020, chap. 5).…”

“…They are thus an indirect result of papal conflict with the emperors (Hyde 1973; Wickham 2015). Further, as Doucette and Møller show, the Church itself diffused norms of local self-governance through bishops and monastic reform (Møller and Doucette 2022). Thus, cities expanded greatly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, after the fragmentation of the eleventh to twelfth century 31 .…”

“…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 self-government (Bendix 1978; Doucette and Møller 2021; Ergang 1971; Fukuyama 2011; Kiernan 1965; Møller 2019; Møller and Doucette 2022; Poggi 1990).…”

“…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. My argument here is that papal effort was the antecedent, leading to fragmentation, communes, and institutional adaptation.…”