The Big Deal v. the Enlightenment

Which comes first, democracy or enlightenment? Continue reading

I know very little about the details of the struggle to establish something resembling democracy in the Middle East. I also am uncertain as to whether the chicken came before the egg. I am pretty certain of one thing, however, and that is that enlightenment is a prerequisite for democracy.

The Enlightenment began in Europe in the sixteenth century or, arguably, as early as the end of the fourteenth century. It was a reaction against what I like to call The Big Deal, the agreement between the papacy and the nobility to control everything. This arrangement began in the late years of the eighth century when the papacy was under siege on all sides by the Lombards, the last of the Germanic troops to invade the Italian peninsula. In Pope Stephen II (or III if you count the guy who was pope for three days in 752) crossed the Alps to meet with Pepin, the nomadic ruler of the Franks. The details of this meeting are sketchy, at best. The pope probably used some forged documents known as the Donation of Constantine to convince Pepin that he, the pope, was the rightful ruler of all of western Europe. The two agreed to share power. In 800 Pepin’s son Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III, and, in return for papal recognition of the ascendancy of his family, he effected his own “donation” of a swath of central Italy to the papacy and swore to protect it from any and all invasions. For 1,000 years this agreement formed the basis for government in central and western Europe.

The details of this arrangement varied considerably over the next millennium, but the essential elements remained constant. The pope made binding moral judgments; the emperor and all the nobility enforced them. Emperor Frederick II — not the pope — made heresy, which is essentially anything that questions a papal decree, a capital crime throughout the empire. Untold thousands of heretics were executed. The popes called for crusades over a dozen times, and the kings and emperors were expected to spring into action. In return the popes made it clear that it was always sinful to question the authority of the princes. One hand washed the other.

David's Coronation of Napoleon

David considered The Coronation of Napoleon so important that he painted it twice.

This relationship held firm until the time of the Thirty Years War. Thereafter it was still dominant in Catholic countries until Napoleon crushed it by crowning himself emperor. He even forced Pope Pius VII to watch him do it. The contract was officially abrogated in 1870 when the fledgling Italian republic officially eliminated the pope’s status as a ruler of a portion of Italy and let him run things only in the world’s tiniest country, Vatican City.

I would be willing to bet that the Vatican never becomes a democracy, or, at the very least, it will be one of the last places on earth that allows popular rule. The Big Deal is still in effect there, but it is between the pope as spiritual ruler of Catholicism and the pope as civil ruler of his postage-stamp-sized kingdom.

Most of the rest of the world did not suffer through the pain of replacing the Big Deal with a different model. In the United States people who set up the government were English citizens who were intimately familiar with the perils of an established church. They specifically prohibited any such idea in the constitution. South America, on the other hand was settled by Europeans from countries that still supported the Big Deal. Their colonies have had a much more difficult time implementing and sustaining popular rule.

That brings us to the Middle East, the place in which the Enlightenment is just now in its infancy. Israel has a state religion. Nearly all of the Arab countries also have one. Some of them call themselves “Islamic republics,” but to my way of thinking, the nomenclature is as ludicrous as the “people’s republics” of the countries behind the Iron Curtain. It is difficult to think of a single example in which establishment of popular rule was not preceded by a bloody period of Enlightenment. It just makes sense that as long as the opinions of religious leaders are officially considered divinely inspired, the will of the people will take a back seat. Those who have been in power are unlikely to relinquish it willingly.

So, it seems inevitable that there will be continued clashes in the Middle East between religions, between the religious leaders and the privileged military and civilian authorities, and between the underprivileged and everyone else. The task ahead for a nation like ours that would simply like to speed up the process and minimize the bloodshed there will be difficult. Just think of Egypt, in which the secularists, the Islamists, and the military/bureaucracy complex are vying for power. Whom should we support? Anyone? Does our support cause as much long-term damage as short-term gain? In Egypt today the U.S. is vilified both for supporting the military and for supporting Morsi’s government.

Not statue, stature.

Not statue, stature.

To me the scary people are those who think that these questions have clear answers. It was much easier for Lafayette. He supported our revolt against England in large part because of his respect for enlightened people like George Washington, Ben Franklin, and John Adams. If there are any people of George Washington’s stature in the Middle East today I have not heard of them.

Unenlightened, not Unexplained

Much of the world has yet to experience the Enlightenment. Continue reading

I learned about the Enlightenment in high school, but it did not mean much to me. I knew that a bunch of guys like Locke and Rousseau wrote about men having rights, but I did not understand the context. Researching the popes gave me a new perspective.

The story really started in eighth century Italy, which was dominated by the Lombards, the last of the powerful barbarian tribes that came down from the north. The Lombards, led by King Aistulf, held territories on all sides of Rome and threatened to lay siege to the city. The Lombards were originally Arian Christians, but by this time most had been converted to orthodoxy. They had nothing against the pope; they just wanted to eliminate the gap in their holdings.

Pope Stephen II (or III if you count the guy who died after three days as pope), was desperate. He undertook the difficult journey across the Alps to meet with the King of the Franks, Pepin the Short. Pope Stephen somehow convinced the king that it was his duty to defend Rome against the Lombards. Pepin and his army descended into Italy and defeated King Aistulf’s forces. He and his son Charlemagne confirmed that the Pope was the legitimate ruler of all of western Europe because of a “Donation” that Constantine had allegedly made to the pope after he had moved his own empire to the east. In return Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as (Holy Roman) emperor, and threatened to excommunicate anyone who questioned the right of his family to rule the empire.

I think of this as the Old Deal. The emperor and by implication all of the kings, princes, barons, and other nobles in the empire gained legitimacy for their claims. The pope was ceded a considerable amount of territory in central Italy to rule, and his word in spiritual matters was enforced by the emperor. Thus, Church and State had a mutually supportive understanding. Since the pope was the Vicar of Christ, the kings could claim a divine right to rule.

The relationship had its ups and downs, of course. Over the centuries several popes attempted to depose emperors with mixed results. Likewise several emperors and kings tried to depose popes with mixed results. However, for centuries no king or emperor ever challenged the legitimacy of the papacy. On occasion a powerful monarch lost patience with a pope and install an antipope. Never, however, did an emperor claim that there should be no pope. Similarly no pope ever challenged the feudal system with the emperor at the top. Each institution supported the other.

IMHO the most crucial time for this relationship was the reign of Emperor Frederick II. Although the emperor had violent disagreements with the pontiffs, he never tried to undermine the institution of the papacy. In fact, he ordered that heresy, which essentially was tantamount to disagreement with papal rulings, was a capital crime throughout the empire. When the Inquisition found people guilty of heresy, the civil governments implemented the sentences.

The first memorable challenge to this arrangement came from Jan Hus. At the Council of Constance he was found guilty of heresy in 1415 and put to death by Emperor Sigismund, who had previously granted him safe conduct to the council. A little over a century later Martin Luther had a similar experience at the Diet of Worms, but for some reason Emperor Charles V allowed him to return home. Charles later said that he should have executed Luther as a heretic.

Luther was the first prominent person to claim publicly that the pope might be wrong about a few things and lived to talk and, more importantly, write about it. He never claimed that he was always right, and so he was never a direct challenge to the pope. He just said that the pope could be wrong.

This simple idea threatened to undermine the entire basis of the Old Deal. If a pope can make a mistake, then he could not be the true Vicar of Christ. If he was not the Vicar of Christ, of what importance was his sanctioning of the feudal arrangement? The Church made a vigorous effort to eliminate everyone who promulgated this notion, but effective suppression of the ideas of the Enlightenment was made impossible by the advent of the printing press at just this time.

Eventually philosophers worked out a different justification for government that was based on human rights. The pope’s role in this new world (or rather western European) order was not clear until Pope Pius VII was brought to Paris to crown Napoleon as emperor. While the pope was sitting there in his papal regalia waiting for the big moment, however, Napoleon grabbed the crown and placed it on his own head. Soon thereafter the pope was actually taken as prisoner and held against his will for years in France. So much for the Old Deal.

Eventually in the west the entire feudal system collapsed, but not until a lot of blood had been shed. The pope today is probably as well respected as ever, but very few people are calling for the pontiff to play a more active role in politics, and the people of central Italy much prefer their current political system, even if no one else can understand it.

The process of replacing the Old Deal with a new way of doing things is called the Enlightenment. As far as I know, it is a distinctly western phenomenon. The “founding fathers” of the United States were definitely inspired by the principles of the Enlightenment, but other nations were founded on different principles. For example, Israel was founded as a refugee state. The nations that replaced the European colonies were sometimes designed to resemble western states, but the citizens never went through the process of dismantling a religion-based government.

So, in much of the world religion still plays a much different role. Religious authority figures are treated with more deference in political matters than in western cultures. Religious traditions such as the Islamic imprecation against portraying the prophet are considered as inviolable.

So, it should not surprise anyone that some Arab countries seem to be having trouble with the transition to governments that respect human rights. After all, it took the West more than a millennium to become enlightened.

Likewise it should surprise no one that some people have not learned how to take criticism about their beliefs or to tolerate actions by nonbelievers that are considered ineffable by their religions. For many centuries the western Church and State tolerated no criticism, and the penalty was usually death. Somehow Enlightenment will probably come to all corners of the earth, but it will take a long time, and the transition will be painful.