Journal of Common Market Studies Volume XVII, No. z December 1978

REVIEW ARTICLE

THE MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

BY ROBIN MOWAT

The Medieval European Cornmunit_, by D. J. A. Matthew. Batsford,

This is a goldmine of information-not a beginner’s book, for it is allusive and reflective-the fruit of thorough research and almost encyclopaedic knowledge, written with relish and good humour. Its focus is on Western Europe, though this does not appear in the title nor in the preface where it is stated ‘this book is intended for those who wish to understand better the nature of the European community’-not the Community with a capital C nor geographical Europe, but that part of Europe in which a ‘community’ grew up during the Middle Ages-i.e. an area in which men had a sense of belonging by virtue of their religion, institutions and law, and to some extent language (Latin, for the educated minority).

The first part of the book defines this area, which excludes that ruled by Byzantium and eventually by Turks and Russians. These were the true heirs of the Romans, maintaining an imperial system based on the power of the despot enforcing his decrees through paid officials and a professional army.

In the West, after the barbarian invasions and the cessation of Rome as an imperial capital, the Empire was never properly recreated, despite the attempts of Charlemagne and others. One reason for the failure was the dependence of all Western regimes on bishops as their main officials, who-because they were literate and practised administrative methods in their church affairs salvaged from the old Empire-were more capable than the ordinary nobles of carrying out administrative duties. Even in the late Roman Empire in the West bishops had begun to take on this role : some aristocratic landowners had become bishops specifi- cally because this enabled them better to watch over their estates and people at the time of the invasions. When celibacy became the rule their value in the administrative role increased, as there was

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less likelihood of their converting their positions into hereditary possessions-which always tended to happen with the appoint- ments of lay officials.

In the East, however, bishops did not so often carry out this role, and once the administrative and military system of the Comneni began to break down the Turkish conquests advanced while the various regions of which the eastern Empire was composed claimed autonomy or outright independence. In the face of this fragmentation the Patriarch at Constantinople was unable to exercise authority over a wide area in the way that the Pope came to do in the West, since the successor states claimed ecclesiastical as well as political autonomy.

In the West it was otherwise because the Pope had authority over the bishops throughout the whole area that had been in the Empire, and beyond. This papal control was not sufficiently developed to preserve Charlemagne’s empire after the death of its founder, though briefly it served to strengthen the revived Holy Roman Empire under the Otto’s and their immediate successors. But Western Europe was not destined to develop in this way under something like the old imperial form, because of the necessity which the Popes felt to bring their bishops under more exclusive control than the dualist Ottonian system allowed. Hence the Investiture Controversy, resolved in favour of the Papacy in 1 1 2 2 , enabling it to build its own kind of ecclesiastical ‘community’.

Dr. Matthew brings out well the fact that it was through the acceptance of systems of law that the various authorities of the mediaeval world came to be established. Once the Popes had gained acceptance of the principle that the right of appointing bishops was primarily in their hands, they were able to bind the ecclesiastical community together by reviving Roman law as Canon Law and developing it. This power increased not merely by bringing all clergy (and most literate people were ‘clerks’ or clergy) under law administered by themselves and flowing from the Pope (an elected despot), but by taking into Church courts many matters, for instance matrimonial and testamentary cases.

All this made the Church a vast establishment system, with its administrative network and property of all kinds. In the eleventh century it was no dry bones of a system, as new life had been infused into it by the monastic movement and the resulting reforms. But by the imposition of Rules-another kind of law- the monasteries were brought into line with the other routine- bureaucratic controls which the Curia (the Pope’s executive

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council) was imposing, and these then became a mere backwater in the Church’s (or ‘community’s’) system. The Franciscan revolt against property and money infused life again into the system, but it was a revolt which could not alter the essential structure. The Franciscans became themselves institutionalized.

Meanwhile other bodies had worked out the implications of law as a means of securing unity. The failure of the Holy Empire to revive that of Rome meant that the Emperor was but one ruler among many, and that in some circumstances autonomy was claimed by towns, e.g. the Hanse cities, and those of Italy where the long dispute between Pope and Emperor left the cities free to work out their own destinies. Such unity as the Hanse towns gained was through a commonly accepted code of commercial law. In Italy the municipalities, staffed by nonclerical professionals trained in the revived Roman law of the University of Bologna, threw out their boundaries-the larger ones becoming sovereign states which, along with the Papacy, divided the peninsula between themselves and the Kingdom of Naples. At its best, during the latter half of the fifteenth century, this brought Italy relative peace through a balance of power operated by wordly- wise rulers and their diplomats.

This system collapsed through the intrusion of powerful monarchies, France and Spain. Here again, within such monar- chies, institution-building on a basis of law led to the acquisition of strength by rulers over territories united, often rather precariously, by conquest or marriages. The same sort of professionals who developed the arts of government in Italy came to the help of the monarchs-in the process, says Dr. Matthew, they ‘changed government from the management of men to the administration of things’ (p. 236). Unlike the secular lawyers of the Italian towns these professionals were clerics. There was anyway a mutual benefit. If the clerics helped the king by modernizing administration and bringing in bureaucratic routines, the kings helped the clergy by securing the peace and order within which they could pursue the work of Holy Church.

As regards the Church, the creation of a bureaucratic routine- oriented system, presided over by popes, cardinals and other officials chosen for their administrative abilities, presented special problems, since the Church was not only part and parcel of the socio-political order, but the divinely ordained instrument of God for the salvation of souls and even-in the hopeful, confident years of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries-for transforming the world into an ideal Christian society. The Church under Gregory

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VII in particular had been a tremendous force for the reformation of manners and morals, starting with its own clergy (who had to accept the discipline of celibacy)-but from the fourteenth century the overriding administrative concerns and the consequent ‘cautious Realpolitik’ of the pontiffs left little room for the men of inspiration and would-be reformers-it ‘suited prelates but not prophets’ (p. 321). Apart from Bohemia, which succeeded in breaking away from the accepted church-order, there was enough general support for the system to tide it over the difficulties of the Avignon Papacy and the subsequent anti-popes, without the Conciliar Movement doing anything more than re-establish the Pope in his old position, though more than ever as the ruler of one Italian state among several. When the sixteenth century opened the system was still intact, though it was soon proved at the Diet of Worms that further movements for reform could no longer be brought under control by the Papacy even when supported actively by the most powerful ruler of the day.

Throughout the Middle Ages the popes and the other rulers worked in much the same way, consolidating their power by extending the legal system which they operated-at least as far as their appellate jurisdiction was concerned. Only in England did the Common Law become early established: all freemen came within its confines, and this gave the King (who through parliaments could create more laws) his particular authority. Elsewhere, and notably in France, the King triumphed as the protector of local and provincial laws and privileges, while exalting his court for arbitrating the disputes of provinces and mighty subjects, and arrogating to himself certain functions which could be described as concerning ‘the common interest’.

Within the area of relative freedom allowed by the rulers, once they had consolidated their power and instituted their legal and administrative systems, the ordinary man, either as an individual or more likely as a member of a guild, collegium or fraternity of some kind, had opportunities to develop creative gifts or a devotional life: at least if he were a nobleman or a townsman for whom literacy was available-and such opportunities were even opening, though in a very limited way, for women. As Dr. Matthew concludes, Europe (we must remind ourselves that he means Western Europe) had ‘created out of many local, traditional communities, a single society, superficially divided amongst quarrelsome princes, but fundamentally united for the purpose of enabling creative individuals to realize their potential for the common good’ (p. 462).

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By his catchy title the author has implied some relation between this phase of Europe’s history and that of the present day, though, harking back to the twelfth century, he specifically warns his readers that our generation is ‘less well-equipped’ than our forebears to ‘remake society’ (p. 262). Wisely, perhaps, he draws no analogies between community-building (in the sense of the European Community) today and the creation of the very different ‘community’ of the Middle Ages. Yet one can perhaps perceive lessons that might be learned (and a hopeful statement by Dr. Matthew is that ‘men do learn by experience’ (p. 4j8)), encouraged by the fact that, having realized the limits within which idealism or ambition could succeed, our forebears of the later Middle Ages ‘gave up their simple idealism and learned to concentrate upon more limited and rewarding tasks’ (p. 4 j 8).

Should we therefore also give up our idealism? It is true that the wave of idealism, generated through two world wars, reached its flood-tide . in the fifties, enabling the launching of the Communities, and has now retreated, and that-as in Mediaeval Europe-the extension of the system is largely being brought about in an unspectacular way through administrative routines and the court-tested regulations which the European judiciary is building into a new supra-national legal system. The experiments with parliaments, estates-general, cortes and other bodies may also be relevant (though there is very little in Dr. Matthew’s book about federation-building as exemplified in Switzerland). The unique structure of the Mediaeval Church cannot be repeated, but what we have is its legacy: a conviction that Europe is meant to have a structure in which its people can live together in freedom, and make some special contribution to the well-being of the rest of the world. Those who have seen this vision, and who fight the battle against corruption and the mundane inadequacies of routine, must be given their opportunity within the structure, and not be cast forth like Luther and Calvin to create their own structures, with the consequent fragmentation of the whole.