If Freedom Is Born In The Middle Ages...

From AEI:

If Freedom Is Born from the Dark Middle Ages By Flavio Felice

Liberal

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A close examination of the historical events and theological doctrines from medieval Europe discredits the alleged incompatibility between freedom and Christianity. According to Maurizio Ormas, there is no clear distinction between the modern concept of freedom and that of the Middle Ages. The spread of Christianity within Western Europe played a significant role in the development and consolidation of most of the rights and freedoms that constitute civil life today. In revealing Christianity's influence over our heritage of ethical beliefs, customs, and mentalities, the supposed contradiction between Christianity and freedom begins to dissolve.











Maurizio Ormas, Freedom and its roots. The establishment of human rights in the Church's Pastoral from the origins to the sixteenth century, preface by R. Buttiglione Effatà, Cantalupa 2009, pp. 303.



In our common mentality a bias can be identified amidst an alleged incompatibility between freedom and Christianity. To correct this unfounded misconception the author reveals how during medieval Western Europe, the era in which Christianity expressed its influence on society more than any other, most of the rights and freedoms that constitute the heritage of our civil life put down their roots. At the same time collaborating institutions were established to provide those rights with the power of expression and security.



As Rocco Buttiglione says in his preface to the book, "In this vision there is no break between Middle Ages era and the modern age, there is no man essentially different from the Middle Ages to modern man, with a horizon of thought and existence completely different and incommunicable... as if there was an absolute break between the "dark ages” and modern civilization”. On the contrary, "the modern freedom puts downs its roots in the so-called middle age”. Indeed, only in Western Europe, unlike the rest of the world, has freedom had the opportunity to develop and consolidate.



From these principles a recognition of individual liberties and social attitudes towards "power”, typical of the modern world, matures. In fact, they reinforce the customs, beliefs and mentalities derived from the rise of ethical awareness of the rights we have today.What has caused this to happen? First of all, the admonition from Jesus, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's”; this should be also apply to the Christian East, but it was only partially like this. What then is the element that caused the unique experience of our Western world, with its individual and collective, political and economic freedoms? Ormas defines this element as the concept of dualism between Church and State, which typically belongs to Acton and Sturzo, a dualism that knows alternative periods, both of conflict and of collaboration, and that unfurls throughout the course of history, even today, as current events remind us.



Some authors (who didn't receive any justice from the European culture and especially from the Italian one) investigated and analyzed this duality. The Carlyle brothers contributed their monumental History of Medieval Political Thought, while Lord Acton's unfinished History of freedom enriched the Church-State dualism of Carlyle brothers with the State-society. Luigi Sturzo, with his Church and State, historical sociological essay, combines the conceptual tool of the dualism with that of diarchy from a sociological perspective.



Ormas's investigation begins with the fifth century when Pope Gelasius developed the doctrine of distinction between secular and spiritual power and its independence from the sixteenth century when Francisco de Vitoria, a theologian of the School of Salamanca, wrote the so called first "Charter of Human Rights”. Vitoria, making up the classical giusnaturalism theory of Thommas, is the culmination of medieval thinking on human rights. At the same time, Ormas marks the moment of transition to a new, modern way of looking at the natural law topic, which we refer to as "secular giusnaturalim”, and which views Hugo Grotius as the first and more specific expression.



The cultural outlook of medieval Christianitas embraces this long period which was born in the ninth century thanks to the integration of three cultures: the heritage of the classical world, the Christian revelation reviewed by Fathers and the traditions of the Germanic peoples who took over after the collapse of the West. This new horizon is characterized by four principles. The first says that all men are equal by nature. The second says that political power is derived from the people. The third concerns the person, considered unavailable for the State as all men are created in the image of God and thus belong to him God. The fourth says that the authority of the ruler is never absolute, but is constrained by national legal practices: it is the sovereign source of law, but the tradition of the people, says the Edictum Pistense 869: "Quoniam lex consensu populi et regis constitution fit”.



From these principles a recognition of individual liberties and social attitudes towards "power”, typical of the modern world, matures. In fact, they reinforce the customs, beliefs and mentalities derived from the rise of ethical awareness of the rights we have today.



It is important to note that this is not only of intentions but also of practices, institutions, laws, and ordinances. According to Lord Action, the merit of "reducing all political authority within defined limits”, belongs to medieval thought.



For this reason, Ormas extended his focus beyond the development of historical events into the conjunction of theological doctrines, both philosophical and legal, about freedom and their political and social consequences.



To substantiate his thesis a number of texts and documents were included, giving reason for the richness of the issues and the purchase of that world so far, and at the same time, so close to us.



If such richness of problematic issues continues to spread, the initial prejudice about the incompatibility between Christianity and freedom, as well as its influence on our culture and mentality, will fall down.



Flavio Felice is an adjunct fellow at AEI.