Most of Europeans in the Global World of the 21st century are trying to get over the concepts of “nation” and “state”, in order to be able to cooperate together in the frame of the much larger frame of the European Union. Trying to match the influence of the great World powers like the US, China or Russia. Apparently the construction of a Communitarian Europe seems something new. In fact, in the past, our ancestors have lived during long periods of our history in one single political and legal unit. Concretely since the appearance of the first Western Empire: The Roman Empire. Its history is really interesting because despite the fact that it disappeared more than 1500 years ago, we still live to a large extent from its legacy. And after the Roman Empire disappeared we kept on accepting common authorities like the Popes or the succesive European emperors.
The Roman Empire is not the oldest one. In Teaching Guide 2 we spoke about how Sargon created the oldest Empire the Akkadian, 4.300 years ago. That is almost 3000 years earlier. But Sargon’s was an Oriental Empire. In the West the pioneers were the Romans. The first Western power who aimed at becoming “Universal” was the Roman Empire. And it did not appear overnight.
The origins of Western Political “Universalism”
The first organized Western societies were the Greek Polis, limited to the area of the different Greek cities: Athens, Sparta, Thebes, etc… But the Polises were pretty independent from each other, and they did not stand to be under some larger authority. Greeks only got together every four years for participating in the Olympic Games founded in 776 BC. They even fought together to chase the Persians in the Medic Wars at the beginning of the 5th century, and finally were reunited under the ephemeral rule of Alexander the Great (336-323 BC). But for the rest of the time Greek Polis were independent city-states that fought each other when they had the occasion, as they demonstrated during the Peloponnesian Wars (431-404 BC) that first destroyed Athens, then Sparta and finally Thebes, giving way to the rule of the Macedonian monarchy of Alexander.
The reality is that the Polis regime was only effective within the city walls. And only if there wasn’t too many people. It is significant that when there was an excess of population in a Polis, the surplus of citizens were sent abroad in order to create in a new geographic location a colony that immediately became an independent Polis. The fact that there were so many polis and that they frequently fought each other instead of cooperating together explains why Greece was so easily conquered by Rome and became in 146 B.C. another Roman Province, like Sicily or Spain, which became province half a century earlier when Rome created the provinces of Hispania Citerior and Ulterior in 197 B.C.
You might ask yourself why, on the contrary of the Greek Polis, Rome became an Empire. How it is possible that obscure city that started as a polis at the end of the 6th century B.C., 500 years later it had become a great power that controlled the whole Mediterranean area. What did the Romans do right? Why they succeeded where Greek Polis failed? And the main reason is that Romans were far more organized and had a much better Legal system, and on top of that they soon developed the idea that they could govern and administrate territories far away from the City of Rome itself. Romans founded also colonies integrated by Roman citizens in distant lands, but these Roman colonies were not independent, they were controlled by Roman central Power. First by the Republic and after Augustus (27 B.C. – 14 A.D.) by the Empire.
Rome was so successful in establishing a powerfull territorial system that the Roman Empire became a symbol that was imitated by further Western leaders like Napoleon or Hitler.
It is true that the Roman extraordinary territorial expansion provoked a brutal crisis of the Republican regime and brought half a century of dreadful civil wars (86-31 B.C), that only ended with the victory of Octavius Caesar Augustus who was a fine politician that convinced that the only way of preserving the peace was to give the power to one man (monarchy). Augustus was first the Prince (First citizen), but his successors became gradually known as “emperors” because they had full “imperium”. The concentration of power in only one hand reached its climax at the end of the 3d century BC, in the period known as the Dominate, because the emperor had become the owner and master of the empire (Dominus).
It is important to know that Rome created a “universal” empire because it reigned all over the known antique world. Especially since 212 AD, when all the inhabitants of the empire became overnight Roman citizens, subject to the same political leader and under the same Law.
That lasted –at least in the Western part of the Empire- until the year 476, when suddenly there were no more Roman West emperors because they were replaced by different Germanic “Nations” (meaning peoples: like the Goth, the Franks, the Angles or the Saxons), that settled down in different parts of the extinct empire creating new and independent political units called: Germanic kingdoms.
The interesting part on all that is that the division of the Empire in different kingdoms did not mean the end of “Universalism.” Because the role of the Roman emperors was assumed by a religious authority: the Pope, as in the course of the 4th century the Roman Empire was penetrated by a new religion Cristianism, that started being prosecuted by the Roman emperors, before being first tolerated, and finally being declared the Official cult of the Empire by Theodosius I in 380. It was then that Cristianism became the “universal” religion of the Empire and therefore became “Catholicism”.
From political to religious universalism: Cristianism vs. Catholicism
When Rome became a great Empire, the Romans grew rich and powerful, making them disbelieving materialists. They could not really give a damn about religious diversity, as long as it did not affect the integrity of the Empire. In fact, the Roman emperors tolerated all kinds of faiths; apart from the traditional veneration of ancestors, the only genuinely Roman religion was emperor worship, a political cult pragmatically aimed at glorifying the public authority wielding power over all the inhabitants of the Empire. But it went no further than that.
This milieu of worldliness and spiritual disinterest was, undoubtedly, what fuelled the rise of Christianity, a faith rooted in Judaic monotheism and based on an alluring and effective narrative, among other things, because it upheld equality between all people, and argued that the wealthy were spiritually bankrupt, and likely doomed to damnation. In a sceptical Roman Empire, one sustained by hordes of slaves, Christianity spread like wildfire in the years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which occurred under the rule of Augustus's successor, Tiberius. Although, historically, the emperors couldn't care less about their subjects' religious beliefs, Christianity was different because it posed a threat to power by placing man's relationship with God above loyalty to the emperor. This menace spurred Rome's leaders, beginning with Nero (54-68), who detected the danger the Christians constituted, to persecute and even martyrize them. By doing so, however, they only fanned the flames of the new religion and fomented its spread throughout the Empire.
Despite its repression –or, perhaps because of it– Christianity grew so strong that the emperors had no choice but to, first, tolerate the new religion, and then legalize it, through the Edict of Serdica, in 311, issued by Emperor Galerius; and the Edict of Milan, promulgated by Constantine, just two years later.
Christianity proved a powerful social movement, so unstoppable that emperor Theodosius I, in 380, made it the official religion of the Empire, with the momentous consequence that all other religions were rendered illegal. As a result, Christianity became a religion as "universal" as the imperial power itself, which is why its name changed, and it came to be called "Catholicism", from the Greek katholikós; meaning "universal" or "general". Does the word “universal” seems familiar to you?
Again, the secret to Catholicism's stunning success was that the Christians were very well organized, managing to develop, in a short period of time, a powerful structure, the Church, effectively established thanks to a highly hierarchical territorial network starting at the local level of the parish, and extending all the way up to the Pope in Rome, after passing through the heads of the "ecclesiastical provinces": the bishops.
Percentage of catholics by country in the world
As a result, the Church, initially a clandestine group of ragtag rebels, became, after its officialization, a veritable "state" within the Roman state. Over time the emperors began to lock horns with the bishops who, soon wielding great powers themselves often proved unruly. And this is where the stormy history of relations between Church and State begins, which received the name "Caesaropapism", as the conflict involved the heads of these two "states": the Caesars (emperors) and the Popes. Today, two millennia after its appearance, the Catholic Church continues to be headquartered in an independent state: the Vatican, which rules over an impressive territorial network spanning the entire world. Its institutional longevity and effectiveness are truly impressive.
The Church, thus, became a very powerful force, one that would prove able to exert pressure not only on the Roman emperors, but also on their successors, the Germanic kings, whose subjects, mostly "Roman", shared a common creed, Christianity, which placed them under the bishops' authority. Thus, the German monarchs converted to Catholicism, embracing the old adage that "if you can't beat them, join them". In fact, not only did they become Catholics, but they also reached an agreement with the bishops of their kingdom whereby the Church consecrated the king, rendering him a sacred and indisputable figure. In return, the ecclesiastical structure was integrated into the kingdom's government.
The important thing for you to understand is that in the Europe of the High Middle Ages (8th to 11th centuries) Catholicism had been established as a universal religion extending throughout all of "Christendom". Thus, even though there was no longer an emperor in Rome, there did rule in the Eternal City a pope, who served as the head of the Catholic, apostolic (because its objectives included spreading the faith, through "evangelization" among non-believers, or pagans) and "Roman" church. When the feudal system spread across Europe its people were, then, already devout Christians, not only fully integrated into the structure of the Church, but also entirely convinced that the world ought to be governed by the Law of God. They were no longer united by a common political structure, since the old Western Empire had crumbled into a diverse set of kingdoms, but they did share a "theocratic" conception of the world and of society. Everyone firmly believed that the only legitimate power was that granted by God, "Creator of heaven and earth", and, of course, the legal order.
A two head universalism: Popes and Emperors
On top of that, relatively soon the Popes became heads of a real territorial State, since the creation in 754 of the Papal States, thanks to the alliance with the Frankish Monarchy of Pepin the Short (751-768). In return of the favour the popes helped Pepin’s son “Charlemagne” (the Great Charles) to become the first Western Medieval emperor on December 24 of the year 800.
It would be renewed by Otto I who became in 962 the first head of the Holy Roman Empire that would last nominally until 1806.
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The Universal model had therefore not disappeared with the fall of Western Roman Empire in 476. Though now in its medieval version it had two heads: a pope and an emperor. In a Catholic society were all men were equal under the eyes of God (Theocracy). Popes and emperors were therefore the most important figures in politics at least until the beginning of the 14th century.
The power of popes and emperors nevertheless was not enduring or strong as the late medieval European kings were becoming more and more important since the 14th century and ended up having a lot of power during the Absolutist period (16th and 17th centuries). It was then that the European Monarchies became fully independent from Popes and Emperors. “Universalism” was finally replaced by and European order where independent states were the real protagonists. Something that became the rule after the Westphalia Peace (1648).
You have to bear in mind that the decadence of the papacy was more and more obvious because of the Avignon’s Captivity (1309-1376) and the Western Schism (1378-1417), that brought a severe coup to papal prestige. Universalism of the Catholic church was done when Luther started the Protestant reform in 1520, and Henry the VIII of England created in 1534 his own Anglican church and became the head of it displacing the pope.
Of course the disappearance of Universalism obliged political thinkers to find a new narrative to justify the power of these independent kings. As the reference to traditional legitimacy of Imperial Rome and of the Papacy disappeared, a new approach was required for convincing people they should blindly obey their monarchs even if they were not the representatives of God on Earth. And thanks to Machiavel, Bodin and Hobbes, among others, the narrative of the absolute state and the full sovereignty of the king was found: the prevention of anarchy and chaos.
The persistency of the Imperial idea
It is interesting that the triumph of the idea of a European continent integrated by independent States did not abolish completely the myth of an Emperor. The Imperial idea lasted after the signing of the Westphalia Peace in 1648. Despite the fact that Charles V (1519-1558) was the last old universal emperor in the medieval way, the emperors did not disappeared from European politics. Essentially because they were ambitious leaders who wanted to become emperors. Like Napoleon, for instance who provoked the abolition of the First German Reich (962-1806) and become Emperor of the French in 1804.
And after the French Empire -with Napoleon I (1804-1815), and Napoleon III (1851-1870)- came the German Empire of Bismarck (1871-1918).
And even Queen Victoria (1837-1901) was formally named “Empress of India”, the Jewell of the mighty British Empire.
The British Empire in 1921.
As you may know the last European emperor would be Adolf Hitler (1933-1945) head of the Third Reich, though it did not give himself the title of Emperor but of "Guide": The Führer
The big question is if Adolf Hitler was really the last “de facto” emperor? And here some consider that in our multipolar world there are some leaders that try to be considered the 21st century “De facto” emperors: as Donald Trump,
or the new Czar (word that comes from the term “Caesar”) Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin,
or the new Red Chinese emperor: Xi Jiping,
as the two latter ones are doing everything they can to jeopardize the American superiority. For now the White House is still a reference in the world, but we could ask: For how long?
HOW TO STUDY TEACHIG GUIDE 3
First read the text included in your Materials (pages 31 to 45), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions.
Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 46 to 48) the crucial dates are the following: 590-604, 754, 800, 962, 1054, 1075, 1198-1216, 1303, 1378-1417, 1527, 1534, 1618-1648, 1804-1815, 1806, 1852-1870, 1871-1918, 1929, 1933-1945.
TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Is globalization a de facto return to an Universal Model, as States cannot act anymore on their own, isolated, in the World context?
Please consider the following aspects:
1. Why Rome became a great Power and Greek Polis disappeared.
2. How did Octavius Cesar Augustus solved the Crisis of the Roman Civil wars?
3. Why after 476 AD the idea of “Universalism” did not disappear in the West?
4. Why Universalism failed after Charles V (1519-1556) in Europe? What conflict provoked the disappearance of the idea that all westerners were under a supreme unique authority.
5. What was the main feature of European Political History after 1648?
6. How was organized Europe under the Napoleonic Empire (1804-1815)?
7. How was Europe organized under Hitler’s Third Reich (1933-1945)?
8. Why the World was so relatively stable during the period 1948-1989?
9. Are States in our global world really as independent as they appear?
10. Is the accelerated "urbanisation" of the planet (by 2050 very much likely 2/3 of the inhabitants of the Planet will live in cities) contributing to globalisation as big cities are beginning to be more important than the States?
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