Religious authority and the state

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521762182.002

39 - Religious authority and the state

from VII - Political philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011

Robert Pasnau

Antony Black

Show author details

Robert Pasnau: Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Religious authority and the state were conceived very differently in the Byzantine world, the Muslim world, and Latin Europe. This last was the only civilization in which the age-old and nearly universal notion of sacred monarchy was consistently and increasingly challenged. In the Byzantine and Muslim worlds (except among the Shīʿites), the ruler remained a focal point of living religious authority. The Latin West was also distinguished by the variety of views expressed on this subject and the variety of forms which the relationship between church and state took. In some places the bishop was also temporal ruler, whereas in self-governing cities clergy had no overt political role. In feudal kingdoms, bishops were major landowners and often state counselors, but they owed their position partly to royal favor. Moreover, the way in which the church–state relationship was understood and theorized in the West changed as time went by. In Byzantium, by contrast, it never changed, while in the Muslim world, changes were rarely registered in what people wrote down.

BYZANTIUM

Eastern Christendom drew its notion of sacred monarchy from Roman imperial ideology, christianized by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–340). The one emperor was supposed to reflect the one God; he ruled “by God’s favor” as “God’s deputy.” The common form of address to a Byzantine emperor was “O most divine emperor.” For more than a thousand years, the Eastern church regarded the empire as an essential part of the expression of Christ in the world.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy , pp. 537 - 550

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521762182.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arjomand, Said Amir. The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shiʿite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).CrossRef Google Scholar

Arquillière, Henri Xavier. L’augustinisme politique: essai sur la formation des théories politiques du Moyen-Age, 2nd edn (Paris: Vrin, 1955).Google Scholar

Barker, Ernest. Social and Political Thought in Byzantium: From Justinian I to the Last Palaeologus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957).Google Scholar

Black, Antony. The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present (London: Routledge, 2001).Google Scholar

Black, Antony. Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).CrossRef Google Scholar

Black, Antony. The West and Islam: Religion and Political Thought in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).CrossRef Google Scholar

Cameron, Averil. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).Google Scholar

Canning, Joseph. A History of Medieval Political Thought 300–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

Coleman, Janet. “Property and Poverty,” in Burns, J. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

Cook, Michael. Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

Crone, Patricia. Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

Crone, Patricia and Hinds, Martin. God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

Dvornik, Francis.Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1966).Google Scholar

Gibb, H. A. R. et al. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2004).Google Scholar

Lambton, Ann. State and Government in Medieval Islam: An Introduction to the Study of Islamic Political Thought: The Jurists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

Lambton, Ann. Theory and Practice in Medieval Persian Government (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980).Google Scholar

Lewis, Bernard. The Political Languages of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).Google Scholar

McFarlane, K. B.John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity (London: English Universities Press, 1952).Google Scholar

Nicol, Donald. “Byzantine Political Thought,” in Burns, J. H. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

Oakley, Francis. Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).CrossRef Google Scholar

Rosenthal, Franz. “State and Religion according to Abū l-Ḥasan al-ʿāmirĪ,” Islamic Quarterly 3 (1956).Google Scholar

Schacht, Joseph. The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, corrected edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).Google Scholar

Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

Tellenbach, Gerd. The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).CrossRef Google Scholar

Ullmann, Manfred. The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power (London: Methuen, 1955).Google Scholar

Ullmann, Manfred. Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (London: Methuen, 1949; repr. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1979).Google Scholar

Watt, John A. “Spiritual and Temporal Powers,” in Burns, J. H. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

Wilks, Michael. “Reformatio Regni: Wyclif and Hus as Leaders of Religious Protest Movements,” Studies in Church History 9 (1972).CrossRef Google Scholar