 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode Two Swords, Early Medieval Political Philosophy. Ranking Roger, lead singer of the ska band The English Beat, is not exactly known for incisive commentary about epoch-making events in the history of political thought. This is after all the man who gave the world such lyrics as, You move your little feet, you rock to the beat, I see you upon the street, you look so sweet, I see you with your dancin' feet. Yet he also sang the words, Two swords, slashing at each other, only sharpen one another. And you could hardly ask for a better ten-word summary of the key events in early medieval political life. The image of two swords was frequently used in the debates of the time. It was drawn from a passage of the New Testament that has no obvious relevance to politics. It comes in the Book of Luke, just after the description of the Last Supper and Christ's prediction that Peter will deny him three times in the day to come. Jesus's disciples are gathering weapons and say, Behold, here are two swords, to which he replies, It is enough. A widespread medieval interpretation of this text took the two swords to refer to the spiritual authority of the church and the secular rulership exercised by kings or emperors. We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a time when the church exercised suffocating, unchallenged control over all aspects of society. But if anything, the rise of the church as a powerful institution created an unprecedented situation where there were not just one, but two possible supreme authorities. In ancient Greece and Rome, pagan religious institutions were largely integrated into political life. Just consider the fact that Julius Caesar's career included a stint as High Priest of Jupiter. Even after the advent of Christianity, religious standing continued to be closely tied to political sovereignty with both Western and Eastern emperors intervening in theological controversies, calling church councils and appointing bishops. But the church already began to acquire a degree of autonomy in late antiquity. Bishop Ambrose of Milan successfully faced down two emperors in the late 4th century. This was a foreshadowing of the famous public humiliation that would befall Emperor Henry IV in the year 1077, forced to wait barefoot in the snow as he begged for absolution from Pope Gregory VII. This was the most notorious episode of the so-called investiture contest, which saw the swords of church and empire slash at each other over several generations, leading thinkers and polemicists of the 11th and 12th centuries to sharpen their theories of political legitimacy. The seeds of the conflict go back at least as far as the 9th century, when the two swords were wielded by the same man, Charlemagne. This at least was the view of his court philosopher Alquin, who understood the text from the Book of Luke to refer to his emperor's mission of combating both heretics within the church and pagans outside it. Yet Alquin did recognize different spheres of action for church and emperor. Speaking to a priest on behalf of Charles, he wrote, Our job is the defense of the church and fortification of the faith, yours to aid our warfare by prayer. In his own voice Alquin said that The secular and the spiritual power are separated. The former bears the sword of death in its hand, the latter bears the key of life in its tongue. With these remarks Alquin was echoing the ideas of Pope Galazius, who did much to shape early medieval conceptions of political life. In a much quoted letter written to the Eastern Emperor Anastasius at the end of the 5th century, Pope Galazius affirmed the legitimacy of imperial power but insisted that the church is supreme in questions of religion. In this neat picture, which is sometimes called political dualism, kings and emperors have ultimate responsibility for and power over worldly affairs, while popes and bishops deal with spiritual matters. But the neat picture was already being blurred in the Carolingian period. Charlemagne's father Pepin sought and received the sitting pope's approval to seize kingship in 751, and Charlemagne himself was anointed as emperor by Pope Leo on Christmas Day in the year 800. It was not necessarily the stocking stuffer Charles was hoping for. Indeed, he subsequently claimed he would never have entered the church had he known what Leo was planning. If his regret was sincere, then it was perhaps because he understood all too well the implication that imperial authority was for the pope to give, and therefore to withhold, should the pope deem it suitable. Under Charlemagne's grandson Charles the Bald, this idea of ecclesiastical primacy was explicitly articulated by Bishop Hinkmar. We met him when talking about Ariugina and the Predestination Controversy. Hinkmar pointed out, and points don't get much more pointed than this, that royal power is conferred by religious consecration, whereas religious authority depends on no royal stamp of approval. History seemed to be on his side. Charles the Bald was anointed king of Aquitaine by a bishop in the year 848, just the first of a series of Frankish kings to be symbolically legitimized by the church in this way. Unfortunately for Hinkmar's theory though, even the highest positions in the church were often filled at the whim of a secular monarch. In the 11th century, the German Emperor Henry III found it expedient to install a pope of his choice, so that the pope could reciprocate by crowning him. He was simply extending the logic of a long-standing practice whereby kings and emperors would select the men who served as bishops within their realms. It's here that we come to the term investiture, which gives the investiture contest its name. It seemed only reasonable to the early medieval monarchs that they should be able to appoint bishops, not only because of the religious aura historically attached to their royal position, but also because of the considerable worldly implications. A medieval bishop, after all, would control land and other wealth. They could even control military forces. So, selecting a bishop was as much a political appointment as a spiritual one. Before long though, this practice of lay investiture would give rise to conflict between the most powerful men of Europe. Forget Bernie Madoff or the subprime mortgage crisis, this is what a real controversy over investment looks like. It began in earnest in the later 11th century, as part of the reform movement sweeping across the European clergy, triggered in part by debates over the practice of simony, in which church offices were effectively bought and sold. Many monastic figures railed against simony, including familiar names like Abbo Afluri and Peter Damian. But few wanted to go so far as a certain cardinal named Humburt. He drew a close link between simony and lay investiture, complaining that men could become bishops by bribing the secular authority, with the decision then being rubber-stamped by the church. Humburt was even willing to say that a bishop who paid for his office was a bishop in name only, so that any priest he then ordained was not really a priest either and thus could not administer the sacraments. There's an echo here of a late antique controversy involving Augustine. He had refuted the Donatists, who claimed that a priest in a state of grave sin cannot effectively perform sacraments. Augustine rejected this in part because of the alarming consequence that every Christian would somehow need to verify the state of his or her priest's soul. For similar reasons, Peter Damian and others rejected Humburt's position. But the problem was admitted to be a real one, and under the pontificate of Gregory VII, the investiture contest was like an inexpertly poured beer. It came rapidly to a head. Gregory had a great zeal for reform, and an equally great zeal for strengthening the papacy. It's no coincidence for example that Berengar's interpretation of the Eucharist as merely symbolic was condemned under Gregory. This was part of a larger quest to establish Rome as the supreme arbiter in matters of doctrine. Gregory's push for centralizing church power in the papacy meant reining in the bishops and asserting dominion over them. And how could he do that if bishoprics were still in the gift of secular rulers? On the other hand, look at it from the point of view of a king or emperor such as Henry IV. The loss of control over the bishoprics would be a huge blow in practical and symbolic terms, so it was all but inevitable that Henry and Gregory would come into conflict. In the popular imagination, the central event of their contest of wills is Henry's capitulation, begging for forgiveness in the snow after Gregory excommunicated him. But this was in fact a tactical surrender on Henry's part, which helped him win the wider war. Once Gregory did absolve him, Henry was able to consolidate his political position in Germany, and ultimately to depose Gregory as pope. The investiture contest was not over though. It would finally be resolved when the next German emperor, Henry V, reached an agreement with Pope Calixtus II. We know this agreement as the Concordat of Worms. The broad outlines of the reconciliation were already proposed by Ivo of Chartres, an expert on canon law who had studied with L'Enfranque of Beck and associated with Abelard's despised teacher, Anselm of Leon. Ivo saw clearly the key problem, which was the fact that a bishopric combined both worldly and spiritual authority. Returning to something of the spirit of Galasius's dualist political theory, Ivo suggested that kings should still bestow land and any other temporal gifts upon a would-be bishop, but the church would also need to confer religious office on the candidate. Effectively, both sides would thus have a veto. For the historian of philosophy, the ins and outs of the contest itself are less interesting than the issue of principle. Contrary to what you would probably expect concerning the medieval age, what we're seeing here is the emergence of the idea that political authority can be distinctively secular, with religious standing being reserved for the church. Of course, the idea was emerging slowly and very incompletely. Kings were being deprived of control over spiritual affairs, but their own standing continued to be linked intimately to religion. The Carolingian monarchs were said to be king by the grace of God, a formula already used by Isidore of Seville. And, though they were said to hold the sword of earthly force, which one can see as a step towards the modern idea of the state monopoly on violence, there was the significant caveat that kings and emperors should always wield this sword in defense of the church. For this reason, those authors who polemicized on behalf of the kings sought to de-emphasize the secular nature of royal authority. As so often in this period, some of our best examples come in works of unknown authorship. A work written by the so-called Anonymous of York set forth the boldest claims for kingly privilege. Anonymous puts all his emphasis on the king's holiness, going so far as to argue that even in Jesus Christ, kingship was more important than priesthood. The rival view was put forward by propagandists who supported the primacy of the papacy. A particularly interesting author from this camp is the fabulously named Manigold of Lautenbach. He lived through the high point of the investiture contest and wrote in favor of the claims advanced by Pope Gregory VII, arguing that the church can rightly depose an earthly ruler who fails to live up to the necessary moral standards, whereas papal authority is not invalidated by moral failures in the man who holds the office. For his pains, Manigold was imprisoned by Henry IV. Manigold of Lautenbach is especially noteworthy because he drew a direct connection between the royalist position and the study of philosophy. In a treatise attacking a royalist opponent named Wolfhelm, Manigold produced one of the most bitter anti-philosophical works of the early medieval period. He grudgingly admitted that the philosophers sometimes got things right, as with their teachings on virtue, which is only to be expected since they are using the God-given power of reason. But philosophers too are merely human, and so are bound to go astray. Inevitably then, their views are a mix of true and false. Writing at the close of the 11th century, Manigold makes for a vivid contrast with authors of the century to come. Though he admires Plato above all others, as many 12th century thinkers will, he unhesitatingly identifies errors in Plato and dismisses out of hand the notion that the Platonic dialogues might refer obliquely to the Holy Trinity. Even before the burst of interest in natural philosophy in the 12th century, he's already warning that inquiry into the physical world comes at the expense of religious concerns. He also reminds the reader that all natural laws are subject to revision by miracles, remarking gleefully that these have been so frequent that nature can hardly have any confidence in herself anymore. The Concordat of Worms was reached in the helpfully memorable year of 1122, but this did not usher in an age without political thought. To the contrary, the first major medieval work devoted to political philosophy was written later in the 12th century by John of Salisbury. You may remember him as the author who wrote so admiringly, albeit at second hand, about the teaching methods of Bernard of Chartres. John's own list of teachers is second to none in this period. He studied with Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, William of Canche, and Thierry of Chartres. From the tradition of scholarship associated with Chartres, he inherited a love for classical literature, so much so that he's been called the best read man of the 12th century. And John of Salisbury was no amateur when it came to political life either. He left the often literally cloistered world of the schoolmen for the rough and tumble of church politics. He applied for a post with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1147, armed with a letter of introduction from no less a personage than Bernard of Clavaux. He spent the next twelve years as an ambassador for the church, rubbing shoulders with the Pope and somehow finding time to write his two main works, the Metalogicon, an impassioned defense of the logical arts from certain unnamed critics, and the treatise we're going to talk about now, the Polycraticus. John's wide reading is on show throughout the Polycraticus, as he draws on Cicero, shows unusually good knowledge of Aristotle for the time, and quotes such ancient writers as Horace and Virgil. He constantly illustrates his points with examples from classical history, much as Machiavelli will do several centuries later, and has a good eye for the amusing anecdote as when he repeats Cicero's wry remark about a man who served as Roman consul for only one day, so vigilant was he that he never slept during his term of office. John also cites at length from another supposed source a letter to the emperor Trajan written by the historian and philosopher Plutarch. But it seems almost certain that he has only invented this letter as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. These include an extended comparison of society to a unified organic body, with the ruler as its head, the senate or advisors of the ruler as the heart, the treasurers as the stomach, the soldiers and tax collectors as the hands, and the lower classes as the feet. While this metaphor did appear in antiquity, John gives it unprecedented and vivid detail, as when he says that the functions of the lower classes are so manifold that society has more feet than a centipede. Like any good philosophical metaphor, John's comparison has important implications. If the whole of society is like a single organism, then each of its parts are intended to contribute to the welfare of the whole. Echoing themes already found in Plato's Republic, John insists that each member of the society must carry out his proper function if the society is to flourish. This applies even, or rather especially, to the ruler. John recognizes the unchallenged authority of the ruler who is an image of God upon the earth. But this does not mean that the ruler is somehow outside of the social body as a whole. Rather, as its head, the true king or prince is one who looks to the good of all the members, and he is subject to the laws, just like anyone else. Again, as in Plato, the benevolent ruler has a kind of perverse twin, the malevolent tyrant, who instead uses his position for selfish gain, an image of Satan rather than of God. John's political theory takes a startling turn when he expresses approval of tyrannicide, that is, the murder of such an evil king. He arrives at the topic in a rather roundabout way, in the course of talking about flattery at court. Such behavior is normally condemnable, but flattery of a tyrant may be excused as a necessary expedient. John then adds that we're surely allowed to flatter such a ruler given that we're even permitted to slay him. After dropping this bombshell, John says little more on the topic. He does later mention a series of classical tyrants who got their comeuppance, sometimes by being murdered, but he seems far less aware of the potentially explosive nature of his teaching here than later readers were, for instance Fidel Castro, who cited John in a defense of his actions in the Cuban Revolution. Some readers have inferred from this that John was not really making a practical or political recommendation at all, but simply pointing out that tyrants tend to get murdered, and their murderers tend to get excused. On this reading, his remarks are, yet again in the spirit of Plato, just part of a wider case that the true king prospers in this world and in the next, whereas the tyrant is inevitably miserable. But upon closer inspection, it seems that John is serious about permitting tyrannicide. It's just that he severely limits the practical implications of this permission. For one thing, a kingslayer motivated by justice should wait to be sure the wicked ruler will not mend his ways. Even then, he may not go back on an oath to the king, which would eliminate many potential assassins in a feudal context, or violate religious obligations in carrying out the murder. The whole idea is to act as an instrument of divine justice, so the last thing you should do is act against God in the process of eliminating the tyrant. In the end, John suggests it's probably best just to pray for God to deal with the tyrant, rather than taking matters into one's own hands. Furthermore, John sees tyranny as a more widespread phenomenon. It's a sort of evil character that can be found among private citizens who are to be dealt with by the rule of law, rather than by vigilante justice. Also among priests. Ecclesiastical tyranny is the most harmful of all, because the priests look to our salvation rather than our worldly welfare. Yet, one may not exercise violence against this kind of tyrant because of the sanctity of the clergy. Ultimately, John is more interested in the ideal case where things go well than in the cases where tyranny undermines the unity and prosperity of society. That happy outcome requires virtue on the part of both ruler and clergy. But, like Manigold of Lautenbach, John thinks that moral failure can undermine a secular ruler's legitimacy, whereas this is never the case with a pope. Here, John taps into a rich vein of political thought, which holds that an unjust ruler is not just an unfortunate cross to be born, but in truth no ruler at all, whether or not anyone is in a position to do something about it. We can even find this idea expressed in an etymology provided by Isidore of Seville, which I mentioned in an earlier episode. The Latin word for king, rex, relates to the word recte, meaning correctly or with justice. With his focus on justice and his insistence that even the king is subject to the law, John was a man of his time. The 12th century was not just an era of resurgent philosophy, it was also a time of law, with legal scholars doing what John was doing, turning back to antiquity for inspiration, and adapting classical ideas for their new situation. Next time, we'll be looking at two great systematizers of the period, Gratian and Peter Lombard, whose masterful compilations would set the stage for legal and theological thought for the rest of the middle ages and beyond. So join me as we imitate the good ruler by laying down the law, here on The History of Philosophy without any gaps.