16 - Comparisons, Connections and Conclusions

Summary

The spheres’ fifteenth-century political cultures are compared with earlier periods. The west was catching up, with increasingly complex and documented administration. It also saw more lay literacy and political participation by broader bands of actors, with assemblies approving general taxes. Debate was possible in the other two spheres: Islam generally allowed for multilateral discussion on religious law, while ideals of governance were debated in late Byzantium. The west fractured along religious lines to an extent not seen elsewhere: once the clerical monopoly of divine mediation had been fundamentally challenged, the plethora of arms-bearing, landed elites perpetuated conflict. State monopoly of violence characterised Byzantium, while in the Nile-to-Oxus region, ‘men of the sword’ tended not to wage sectarian war. Around 1500, women seldom exercised formal sovereignty. But the centrality of the household as a basic social unit gave them extensive informal power. Charitable foundations were another stabiliser across the spheres. Byzantium’s Muscovite offshoot would expand, but the Ottomans’ disciplined militarism looked invincible against the fractious westerners.