The medieval foundations of the European state

As we have seen, the basic division of Europe into kingdoms can be traced back to around 1200 and the military revolution in the sixteenth and seven­teenth centuries made little difference in this respect.

Nevertheless, towards the end of the Middle Ages, it would still seem that the two organizations discussed in the present chapter might be able to compete with the state. The Italian city republics, and, in addition, many of their counterparts north of the Alps, must also be regarded as states in the sense that they were self­governing units; in many respects, they even had a stronger state character than the kingdoms. The Church also has many of these characteristics, although it is further from the essential criterion of monopoly of violence within a clearly defined ter­ritory than the contemporary kingdoms.

However, these categories of state differed regarding their fundamental pur­pose. The Church aimed at teaching the people the true religion and lead them to salvation in the next life, after death.

In practice, the difference between the three was less. Means and ends are not easily distinguishable. The pope insisted that all his wars were fought for the sake of God and Christendom but found it difficult to convince people of this. The Venetians built up a large empire and even conquered a substantial territory on the Italian mainland, all with the explicit purpose of protecting their trade, but there were discussion within as well as outside the city on whether this was actually true. Nevertheless, there was a difference. Although the pope was far from peace-loving, there was a gap between his organizational and spiritual power and his military one. There are many examples of the cities regarding warfare as a necessary evil and that they deliberately abstained from war and conquest if it was against their commercial interests. Most importantly, city republics were more cautious regard­ing spending, for war as well as for cultural purposes, than kingdoms were.

Thus, more physical power was concentrated in kingdoms than in the two other kinds of organization. The consequences of this were to be seen in the following period. Although the military revolution had limited consequences for the rela­tionship between the kingdoms, it did contribute to the victory of kingdoms over the two other kinds of organization.

In the Middle Ages, kingdoms and city republics mostly seem to have had opposite interests.

The development from the sixteenth century onwards went in the direction of reduced independence for the cities. Most of the Italian cities lost their indepen­dence in the sixteenth century and the same largely happened to the cities north of the Alps. Admittedly, a number of German cities retained their independence until the unification of Germany in 1866—70, but both in Germany and its neighbouring countries, the power of territorial principalities increased at the cost of the cities. The greatest continuity is to be found in the Netherlands but even here, the cities became subordinated to a state, although its government was elected by the pro­vinces, in which the cities had had great influence. At the same time, trade and manufacture became increasingly important to kings and princes, which meant that subordination to them did not necessarily harm the commercial interests of the cities. On the contrary, the support of a strong state might be a competitive advantage, as it had been to the Venetians in the Middle Ages. As we shall see, much depended on the kind of state to which the towns were subordinated. Eventually it turned out that the most successful states were those with a strong class of burghers, like the Dutch Republic and England.

Whereas in most monarchies, the king is the head of religion, European kings faced a strong religious organization claiming independence of secular powers and even superiority in matters defined as belonging to the strictly religious sphere, a definition that the head of this organization, the pope, claimed was his to make. Although the pope recognized the distinction between a religious sphere, ruled by the pope, and a secular one, ruled by the king, he claimed that the religious one was superior and that it was up to him to define the border between the two. To later ages, the picture of King Henry IV of Germany standing barefoot and dressed in penitential clothes before Pope Gregory VII in Canossa in 1077 forms the clearest expression of this relationship: to Catholics, expressing the age of belief and the power of religion over secular insti­tutions, to Protestants and non-religious, the arrogance of the clergy and religion as an obstacle to the development of a secular state.

Another, equally famous scene represents a contrast to that of Canossa, namely Pope Boniface VIII being taken captive by the troops of King Philip IV of France in Anagni in 1303, an episode that ended the conflict between the two and eventually led to the pope moving to Avignon in 1308, where he was subject to French influ­ence. Henry IV’s defeat by Gregory is regarded as the introduction of the period of greatness for the papacy, while Boniface’s defeat by King Philip IV of France signals the end of this period and the introduction of increasing royal control of the Church. The reality is somewhat more complicated than this. The episode in Canossa was not a total victory for the pope, nor was that of Anagni a total victory for the king. Henry’s humiliation aimed at splitting his adversaries and the pope’s victory was only temporary. Philip IV apparently aimed at bringing Pope Boniface to France and have him judged there, but had to release him shortly afterwards. Had he not died after a few weeks, King Philip might have faced difficulties.

However, King Philip had both theoretical and practical resources for defence against the pope. He had considerable, although not unanimous, support from intel­lectuals at the University of Paris who used Aristotle’s theory of the political commu­nity based on human nature as an argument for the king’s independence of the Church. Thus, in the so-called Disputation between the Priest and the Knight, one of the royalist pamphlets from the conflict, the priest points out that the Church has a higher authority than the secular power. To this the knight answers: ‘Quite right, reverend, but your power is theoretical, ours is real.’⁴³ The truth of the latter observation is confirmed both by the fact the revenues of the king of France were 15 times greater than those of the pope and that the king had the advantage of proximity to the national church, which made most of the bishops support his cause. Thus, the conflict between Philip and Boniface shows the increasing strength of the monarchy in the period from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth century.

The papacy emerged as a universal power and a promoter of ecclesiastical reform in the late eleventh century, while the kings increased their power over the national churches from the early fourteenth century. From the point of view of state formation, the ecclesiastical organization represented an advantage as well as a challenge. The expansion of the Church led to a greater bureaucratization than would otherwise have been the case; it is difficult to imagine any other field than religion being bureaucratized to the same extent under medieval conditions. The ecclesiastical bureaucracy and territorial divisions served as models for the royal ones, in addition to the fact that ecclesiastics played an important part in the royal bureaucracy. Thus, despite frequent struggles, the king and the Church had basi­cally common interests during most of the Middle Ages.

Moreover, the Church emphasized the king’s sacred character through unction and coronation.

By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the state in many European countries had reached a stage where it was possible to challenge the independence of the Church. This forms part of the background for the Reformation. Although the pope continued to claim superior power over the kings, this power was clearly reduced from the six­teenth century onwards, of course particularly in Protestant countries, which did not recognize any papal power, but also in Catholic ones, where the king largely gained administrative control of the Church in his country. Despite wide-reaching theoretical claims, the pope did not really attempt to become the ruler of the whole of Chris­tendom. If he had, however, he would inevitably have been faced with the problem that his territory was too large to be governed effectively.

Concerning the victory of the state, there is more to say in favour of the military explanation of state formation regarding internal consolidation than the relationship between the states. Military mobilization did lead to greater bureaucratization and to some extent greater royal control but it might also work in the opposite direc­tion, as illustrated by the widespread venality of offices in France, Spain and other countries. A better explanation seems to be the one suggested by Spruyt, of the comparative advantage of the state in satisfying the needs of its inhabitants, which in turn has to do with size. States were smaller than the Universal Empire and the Universal Church but larger than most cities. Compared to the city leagues, they mostly had the advantage of shorter distances between their borders. They covered larger areas than the cities and controlled these areas better than the universal powers. Spruyt’s main examples of this concern trade and communications. States had formal borders where similar rules applied to all its inhabitants, where there was some freedom of communication and trade, a standard mint and standard measures of size and weight. There were also legislation, courts of law, some kind of police force and general rules of behaviour applicable to the whole population.⁴⁵

Admittedly, what would have struck us if we could return to, say, early modern France, would be the absence of most of these features. There were a bewildering number of courts of law with different kinds of jurisdiction, there were internal toll stations and neither mint nor weights and measures were standardized for the whole country. Relatively, however, there was more unity in these respects within France than between this country and others, and it was easier to move around and do business in France than, for instance, in Germany, where one constantly had to cross borders and pay a toll, and where each of the around 400 units had their own law and currency. With the increase of trade, manufacture and communication, the state had obvious advantages over its competitors. Concerning the cities, their limited territory was an obstacle. In addition, the most advanced and important of them, the Italian ones, which did rule relatively substantial territories and for a long time were wealthier and administratively more advanced than most states, had the disadvantage that they were not homogeneous. They were ruled by the elite in their capital city, whereas the countryside and the dependent cities had little or no political influence and did not enjoy equal rights regarding trade and production. They, therefore, had little incentive to fight against foreign invaders.

On the other hand, the patriotic fervour of the inhabitants of early modern states should not be exaggerated. The armies at the time were not composed of men who longed to fight and die for their beloved fatherland but either of conscripts recruited against their will or men who had no other opportunity in life; in both cases, subject to drill, command, strict discipline and horrible punishments for dis­obedience and desertion. To the wealthier part of the population, however, the state offered a certain amount of safety and stability, made it easier to move and do business and to solve conflicts. Even the peasants, who paid most of the taxes and benefited least from the state, had some safety against arbitrary treatment and might appeal to the courts of law against their superiors, in addition to the mostly erro­neous belief that the king was their friend and protector and that all problems would be solved if they could reach him directly. Nevertheless, despite the burdens the state imposed on them, its breakdown was a worse evil. Although the devel­opment of the state certainly involved the use of force, this was not the only explanation. Its success was also due to some support from the population which saw their needs served in this way. Moreover, as we shall see, the most successful states were the ones that offered the best conditions for their inhabitants and thus received most support from them.