Medieval Europe experienced a warrior-priestly resurgence where the dissolution of the Hellenic Roman tradition was followed by a revival of classical principles through the integration of Germanic tribes (Franks, Lombards) with the Catholic Church, creating a new Romano-Germanic civilization that maintained continuity with Roman imperial traditions while establishing a dual authority system where emperors held temporal power and the Church held spiritual authority, fundamentally reshaping European political and religious structures.
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Above the ashes of old majesty: the warrior-priestly resurgence of Medieval EuropeAjouté :
Hello everyone, quite portentous topic for today, that is the continuity of classical tradition into medieval civilization.
Naturally, as basically everything that we're covering on Shrapnel right now, this is not a completely new concept and probably more people than not compared to my habitual topics are acquainted with the concept for reasons that I will avoid explain that her however ideological historical graphical at some point political uh cultural in many ways. I'm not sure I'm going to finish the video today. So obviously this can sort of be called profitably covered even as an as an introduction multiple ones. But there is fundamentally also a set of questions that um we should address I think when looking at history. It's not merely explaining one topic say presenting describing recounting a specific event or or account like we normally do this think about our more even a mentally based series that we started here but but even when we talk about tradition in general and that has obviously an important degree of interpretative um say dimension that is sort of inherent the type of evidence that we are in possession of and mostly talking in fact from that same possible essentially a spiritual um a metaphysical even what it just like a religious dimension right? And I noticed when I make videos about this such as the ones we made a month ago for example about the role of Christianity late antiquity the connection with these there are there are lots of questions that are emerging online nowadays and it doesn't take much to realize how important the phenomenon is not much the questions per se because that that's actually where the problems emerge. Um today's world is very disoriented, probably more disoriented than it's ever been, primarily because of a sort of narrow cognitive collapse. Uh um the free fall of personal standards of of education, of sort of discipline, of basic sort of mental stability.
And much more so when there is a moment of tabula rasa created by the same the lack of of knowledge. If there is there are lots of shortcomings, there is also an opportunity to set some fundamentals straight for further discussion and to proceed from from there on, uh seeing also sort of fixing, modifying, improving this over time. Naturally, on Schopenhauer, we have arrived at a point where we can afford also to sort of address um certain matters knowing that we already covered them and there is all the context, background. I always uh propagandize my my playlists because of course I discover even after yesterday's video, like the other day's video actually, uh the 3 million views, but many people literally come across my content without knowing uh all my my work. I can say why I am also because I I don't say that normally, but it I tend to have this this impression that my channel, like unfortunately this is how YouTube tends to to frame us, uh regardless of sort of content, this this would be simply designed for quick sort of sort of engagement, algorithmic search, um attempt at least.
And or some some other form of cheap consumption that this channel has never really been about. So, my work follows a body doctrine that also sediments in a very original way during the years because even when we approach topics like tradition, we barely actually see like this as it's normally described something merely uh or in or coreaciously uh hinged on some of the specific sort of figures scholarly figures that tend to belong to this more occult and or sometimes also hermetic tradition.
This is in fact not even the point occult or hermetic is something else.
Here when we talk about history of religions so called even though religion is not probably the best term, we we realize that the information available especially from classical antiquity and a great part of the Middle Ages is actually under the sun from since ever like it's not a mystery all sources are almost all sources are publicly accessible.
You have a pretty sort of even in the moment in which a civilization forgets about all of this, you have a pretty continuative study and research in all these topics for us to sort of also approach them with the awareness that everybody if really interested you can simply fall back on the relative sources uh primary accounts and more.
So the question we're addressing is say how after the dissolution of the Hellenic Roman tradition so with this classical legacy synthesizing philosophy, law civic religion and imperial order that shaped the Mediterranean but also the rest of the world for centuries we're sticking mostly to the west but as you know we we explained how truly ecumenic tradition is and we will explain and expand in fact also another continent even today through also however more familiar sources like Plato, Aristotle made a video about slavery last year last month actually based on them.
Kicker that we found simply commenting on the absurd the the comically superstitious absurdities of the in fact the most telluric aspects of Etruscan religion right for telling you that Kicker is not just like some abstract sort of philosopher, writer, orator etc. He's something much more than that even you know of his public life in particular but he's the guy who would literally tell us that Caesar had a semi-divine aura [snorts] right? And that the Fortuna Caesaris was truly sort of a a deity on its own and we covered this in so many also Clausewitzian themed topics because it dramatically matches in the the fact classical origin of of Fortuna with the the gamble pertaining to the military to the second person of the Clausewitzian trinity.
There is this incidentally this what I discovered from multiple years now perfectly overlapping in fact with the Catholic Trinitarian concept that obviously as Catholic we understand as also pre-Christian and that Romans fully had themselves and that can be easily extrapolated from the so-called Indo-European tripartite order that did actually exist as a theological principle regardless of how radical skeptics would like to tell you but here it overlaps yeah yeah because it existed in in in earthly terms everything over love actually this is supposed to be holistic so you can find different things like I don't know, monks and knights at the same time. Yeah, this this does not invalidate the trinitarian principle or all there in the European tripartite, but it's a couple of different topic if anything. I've never really covered that.
But I'm really astonished by the superficialities and times with which even the works like great scholars like Dumézil are approached like mistaking his sort of retraction of certain aspects of his theory regarding the Indo-European tripartite order would have equated to some complete absence of the same. Like we are arrived to even including his work in what was in fact able to to affirm later. We have arrived to this level of intellectual shallowness.
We also looked at the Dorian roots that of the the Spartan or the Athenian polis.
As you know, the same Dorian migration has been historiographically attacked mostly and unsurprisingly in a very specific time in history after which we're talking the '60s, the '70s after which also unsurprisingly instead the idea has been somehow re- acquired. It's so easy to understand the bias of historiography for the obvious historical and cultural temper of the various generations illustrated.
We talked about Romanity. We talked about legions. So, we know essentially how deeply um metaphysical the entire concept of the empire, right? That here brings us back to to the Middle Ages in its straight continuity from Roman from Roman times in this sense and we could observe this also for other civilizations, but um [snorts] as you know, on Scharping we also often deal with the sort of the alleged concept that fundamentally Romanity would just leave within the Byzantine Empire and whatever happened in in the West would have allegedly not been in fact uh anything but a bad copy or incoherent or incompetent even um and not properly a Roman uh empire.
Nobody explains in that concept also how Rome was still considered the sacred city and center of the world, but let's um skip that uh for for a moment because we will come back on this quite frequently. But it's important to set a bit the premises because may especially the recent subscribers may have truly never heard uh of this and or mostly the fact that I covered all these topics for hundreds of hours uh at this point.
They're all freely publicly available.
So in all of this, we can't uh unsee obviously what happened between antiquity and the Middle Ages in particular between the peak of classical civilization and the one of of the medieval one, right? Where the concept of empire, of universal authorities, of Catholic traditional knowledge was radically revived and unequivocally um sort of springing out of of of a continuous tradition in fact that had been alive pretty much all across the board from from the papal monarchy to the chanson de geste to the idea of sacred royalty to to the empire itself. And that um cannot in that sense also be be denied.
Like we must make I would say as a sharp point we we made lots of videos about the renovatio imperii, but there is this part between the so-called end of of the western at least half of of the the Roman Empire that and in fact uh Charlemagne and or Otto the First as let's say as a missing point. Like say if if we have to draw this link, also what can we know about those cultures that were sort of less explicit about this but that if you actually scratch beneath the surface were quite openly uh aware about the continuity of Romanity and of the Empire and they actually did everything as possible to be properly recognized in in the wake or by properly uh the same at a certain point in history. If you're interested in this, I made lots of videos about Clovis. We're probably going to make other videos on on the Merovingians that are in this sense deeply uh underrated in in many ways regarding this topic.
The in between is however something obscure. Like the idea of the Dark Ages is for how wrong, especially when applied to sort of broader concept of medieval history. Uh is obviously revealing just like the level of illiteracy of a person.
And it can be applied only for sort of the lack of documentary >> [snorts] >> uh intensity, so to say, compared to previous and later periods. Of course, this was a simpler society, it had shrunk, etc. but um even there you realize that the lack of specific documentation does not uh say directly correspond in scale to the actual complexity of a society and also what kind of what what does actually that society think? Which when it comes to this, especially lay side lay voice of interpretation of the Imperial Catholic tradition we are are less aware of due to the fact that they normally didn't write. They fought. Right? There were obviously literate warriors at some point and that's also where the interesting things emerge, but technically we know more from the Church of Rome, from sort of the the clergy, and not only. It depends on really what what sources you're you're seeking. Like I don't know if you've ever searched for the concept of empire in a in a Lombard capillary when sort of starting with the the local questions of territorial disputes and so on. So, there is actually much to learn and say getting into the depths of medieval history helps a lot as much as also being able to reason in more not abstract, but theoretical terms when you have to zoom out and explain what was going on.
You and when you can't look at everything at the microscope, so to say.
And talking about the {quote} "end of antiquity", I would say also for antiquity {quote} "and quote" because these are relatively conventional terms and obviously based on a later understanding of of history mostly coming from the later Middle Ages and or at least uh like never underestimate how deeply aware the medievals throughout all in fact their millennium were about the the importance of Romanity, for example. Let's leave aside also the obvious Christian roots, the fact that Constantine was a crucial figure and and a model for all the other great emperors that however were truly seen as Roman at a point in walking his footsteps and how much of sort of ancient knowledge, generally speaking, what was there just under their eyes and they were aware of what had civilizationally happened. You would be surprised there by how not just reverent, but original the medievals were in explaining how things had come about in the sense how self-aware, if you I don't know, what the opening of certain medieval chronicles of how they start from creation conventionally to eventually end up talking mostly about their own local community.
Well, how truly universally contextual, I mean, here from a chronological point of view, it's it's self-explanatory.
This sort this perspective um really was in relation with the older empire in Rome. And interestingly enough, this affects all fields of of spiritual endeavor in the sense that even when you look at the papacy evangelical movements um or and and even in the moment in which they were battling against the current papacy and so on, like they none of them actually discredited the concept that there had to be a universal authority, nor that Rome was the center of the same. When when you look at what Rome was able to do during during the early Middle Ages with an empire was allegedly over in the west, but where the you had from Rome properly um the the popes coordinating the evangelization of Europe with the support of the in fact the local rulers and pretty detailed instructions sent to probably this this frontiers even beyond the ones of of the Roman Empire to properly administrate ecclesiastical matters, administration, theological issues, and so on.
He realized that there was some deeper um and cohesive awareness of the unity of the empire and of the great universal tradition in God, right? I don't know if you have ever thought about this in our life, when you have still people debating this stuff on lines regarding religion, like the evangelization of Europe. You said normally these topics are confined just to uh what happened to the poor pagans or you know, how from the other side how good Christianity was depending on how you think about this. Um and um it it hardly is the whole thing is hardly reconnected with the parallel existence of an imperial power.
And what this meant for those who properly held uh power itself that ruled in the same Christian land and in beyond.
You have a great accessibility in this sense to this ideas through the the early church fathers that were witnessing to the decline of secular rule.
Uh and rule intellectually, philosophically were deeply part of that um classical culture. Not even soaked in a properly sort of considered of part protagonistic members of of of that world scientifically, morally drawing on Platonic and Stoic ideas such as the Logos concept and natural law ethics to to articulate Christian theology.
We talk recently about sort of the various implications in many Indo-European languages, probably the concept of of the word. What is the word?
Right? The same from the respective etymologies cuz there is all a function there expressing the the meaning of divine utterance, but what is aside even from the differences between the two parts of the Indo-Iranian that the value of terms like Logos in Hellenic or Verbum in Latin.
The there are sort of astronomic uh metaphysical meanings attached to this that are truly astronomic um if not properly astrological in in that in in those concepts.
Christian we will talk about more the early church fathers here. We don't have to digress specifically, but when you look at the backgrounds of people like Augustine for example, you realize they had been a money can and had plus being captured by the most pernicious dualism that still affects sort of the world in in its fringes and its it's lesser sort elements and subnormalities in this sense. And and that in fact is one undefeated by civilization or a Saint Ambrose of Milan that came from three of that was at the center of in fact like the deepest higher um spheres of Roman government administration knew how to handle as a spiritual force the same secular one with Theodosius and the issues with the Goths the Aryan Goths by the way.
In certain various that we already saw and you understand that that cooperation that is instorated at this point between the church and the empire after the de facto in fact separate sort of split of these two functions from a unitary originally singular Christian ruler yet still as we'll see today in a still hierarchically recognized sense are probably at the most one of the deepest roots of our world and our modern world doesn't matter how sort of beyond this has gone also compared to tradition and in deep continuity and this is often also misunderstood because we often say that when Christianity arrived basically changed page. This is true in sort of being accurate regarding the understanding of the condition of mankind starting from the common era.
But not in the sense that in fact this was simply an abstract or alien religion or outlook on the world.
It actually responded to prop to the same problems that for millennia and that in this sense according to tradition starting since the fall had affected mankind. Right, if not humanity at this point considering the spiraling down the degener- degenerative decline of the world had necessarily brought to fact to this absence of single rulers who could single-handedly manage both the the sort of the the warrior and the the priestly function. Right?
Christianity in in this sense had a profound role that we partially expounded in other videos of the seizing the letter of dogma through the living force of form and thereby cementing the foundations of the new Romano-Germanic Europe. Right, there is a normative value of of Christianity that in its ecclesiastical meaning was meant to correctly order, orient, vehiculate the predisposition so to say, the acquisition, the reception of the Holy Ghost so to properly in its messenger and therefore apostolic meaning.
That is essentially how the Imperium would descend with its golden wings on the world and in this sense through the media of the same Holy Ghost, namely the emperors. Right? And so having a check and balance order between the two universal powers where the emperors were in charge of earthly uh temp- namely temporal affairs, whereas the church had to be ideally in charge merely of the spiritual ones. And a great misunderstanding that normally emerges from this that at some point the medievals tried to institutionally fix or stabilize, if you watch my videos on uh my video I actually made only one on the Sutri meeting between the Pope and Henry V.
We're at the beginning of the 12th century. This is before Worms uh that would occur just a decade later.
Like the idea that had to be a fun- fundamentally utopistic divide between the temporal and the spiritual dimension was attemptively and in this sense sort of deeply meditated at this point. There couldn't be, however, such a thing like a church with its own patrimony and its own administration. And in this sense also cooperating with with the emperor in order to make things work. I mean, there was always like uh even in justice in any community uh temporal representative and a spiritual representative, which is actually a beautiful idea, like with something that completely uh lacks in today's world where the state is in different ways it's how it's considered like centralistically considered the sole source of law, or at least maybe people can't be in a device that this is especially in common law, but the fact reduced to some sort of abstract or at least coldly separated uh governmental bureaucratic administrative system that also corresponds to a level of civilizational development and effectiveness as a matter of fact, but that fundamentally excludes almost completely the parallel existence of a moral and a properly higher moral authority that is supposed to supervise this. And in in part we get that from normal political sort of support consensus, right? You can have a state that does things, but then there is a people that must be governed. So, we're not properly even governed by a state. They do not quite exist as we intend. It's just just an illusion because they are unearthly reality. Whereas, obviously, the divine source is meant to be the only absolute truth and justice and and so on. So, there are very beautiful philosophical refractions on this. Before we mentioned St. Augustine and sort of the Civitate Dei is there for for a reason, but there are sort of many more beautiful visions, including I would I would like always to remember this that the fact that the Roman Empire had already um sort of affirmed, not just a Catholic, but also a monastic concept in the sense that the city of Rome was properly meant to mirror the uh imperial elevation towards heaven.
And so, every Rome had been refounded across the empire uh as a colony that as you know had all the same the the same literal urbanistic elements of the orbs and so on was meant to contain the sacrality of that world together with its imperium. Remember this when you study medieval communities by the way, across the world. The world that as we've seen in the video about Montjuïc in Spain it was dotted by literal sacred hilltops, citadels of God pretty much everywhere. This is also beyond the Roman Empire pretty much everywhere. And still I live close to what one of those places that still bear the name of Montjuïc as a matter of fact. And it's it's a the the Mount of Jupiter that is called that for a reason. And that surprise, surprise, you have in the Christian times churches and everywhere in the same way. Like have you ever thought of how or why that is the case?
In any case, this is for telling you how radically continuous Catholic tradition is from pre to Christian times.
Right? To pre-Christian to properly Christian times.
And in in this sense um appreciating the relevance of Romano-Germano uh long Germanic Europe as a continuity of the system is crucial to understand also how the Romano-Germanic rulers in particular would posit themselves toward this because it was a much more primitive yet or relatively original or actually more effervescent and in this sense functional and in this sense more like more than else primitive and in fact and so closer to tradition way to the empire than the one that we see for example in Constantinople.
Where the sebastocratic concept is preserved.
As you know, the emperor in Constantinople is like basically the pope in in Western tradition. So given that this was technically part of the empire, you already understand how different the idea of between the ideas between Constantinople and Rome really were.
The emperor is the vicar of Christ on Earth for the Byzantines, whereas properly this should be the pope. And this is as you know, taking on the characteristics of what in the West will be as we will see today in part, obviously the struggle between Ghibelline and Guelph ideology.
With exception that not just the pope won in particular against um the Byzantine empire, but in this sense won in the sense that there isn't a good or bad element here. The two elements must be together. They're part of a mystical body hierarchically ordered. And if something goes wrong, so namely the church does not support the empire. So, the emperor does not actually receive the Holy Ghost necessary to uh as imperium proper to maintain his own authority. This is what had happened already with the Roman Empire. Well, he is the first in this sense the most the the the total responsible for the world. Because if you really want to be God yourself as this titling in sort of institutional profile suggests, there's a lot of theology behind this. There is no excuse regarding who does what there.
You weren't high enough. And technically the church and this is true also as far as the emperors sometimes disconfessed the popes, not the papacy. Nobody said there shouldn't be an empire. There shouldn't be a church, right? Not even when, I don't know, Philip the Fourth of France and Boniface the Eighth in Rome were quarreling against one another. Nobody said like even when the emperor when the clashes between Ludwig of Bavaria and Pope John the 22nd, they were disconfessing each other. They weren't denying the the necessity of the existence of a papacy or an empire. Even if they annulled each other's uh ideal that point in in a very much declining in this sense beyond other persona, but that was the limit of their claims in the crisis of tradition in the mid-14th century.
Um in fact, value, but still accepting the existence of these universal powers that in fact would last until uh well, with the papacy until today, right? It would be a very interesting question today. Let's say who who is supposed to be the empire and how and why? And personally, I read modernity in ways that I've never really heard um anyone try because sort of quote-unquote tradition so-called self-styled traditionalists online tend to be some sort of um romanticizing figures that just look at the past and think, oh, yeah, that's how it should be done, right? It was It looks ancient and retro and stylish, whatever. It's tradition, man, you know? And today things are kind of bad, right? And it that makes their own political tastes without it. There's no coherence in the way this all this stuff is normally conceived.
Because they don't care fundamentally about the metaphysical issue at hand.
And the fact that to these people instead it was absolutely central to everything.
In a sense it it's interesting to look at the Byzantine Empire as well because following Constantine, so as you know, the Roman Emperor born around 272 when 312 experienced according to the legion division of the Chi Rho symbol before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge issued the Edict of Milan in 313 legalizing Christianity across the Empire and convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325 to define core doctrines like the divinity of Christ against Arian challenges while moving the capital toward the East.
Um a new change, right, in on the horizon of mankind was fully consolidating, right?
The The idea is that we've seen it also in Constantinian senatorial economic military policy that doesn't matter how still alive uh antiquity or late antiquity we start calling it from from this point onwards uh and capable in fact of attentively reassert probably the sebastocratic centrality of rulers. This is something that you see even uh with anti-Christian emperors like Julian down the line, etc. Um The An a general exhaustion had struck the system. We're already in the decline.
Like the big change had been properly uh the the empire of Augustus. It was the peak at sort of beginning.
Consequently of the same The same goes for Christianity that predominantly positive in fact uh an unavoidable necessity the birth of Christ under Augustus and in fact the sort of the indicating the inclining and declining parabola of of mankind it's a with Christianity standing as sort of look I'll show you what you have to do from now on as the only antidote to to to be able to save yourself. Remember that Christianity actually is pretty open about theosis right Catholicism as a matter of fact this is something for example that the other Abrahamic religions do not contemplate this is for telling you how probably one of a kind Christianity is while Indo-European tradition did absolutely conceive theosis and in fact divine incarnation not as which allow any of its own again the Romans already understood deeply for example in their idea of empire and incarnated regime right holding the the world and elevating it to to the same divinity that leaves in the concept of empire we've seen today so very deep and important issues that remember if you are born in late antiquity you know who Alexander was all right you you know who Augustus was like some say like if you look at diet did not know who Scipio was allegedly because there was this these sort of ignorant yet sort of military capable commanders that rise during the tetrarchy after the third century crisis yes there is a decline in fact but remember that the mold right is that one like people knew at the time how wide the empire was the one that it was and where it had come from and sort of in a broader um both ancestral primordial sense and eschatological one.
Uh the word was to to go like you have this this pretty clearly assessed already by I don't know a Tacitus that simply puts tell you that that the Roman Empire would have ended like other empires. It was already a pretty clear sense that the traditional scanning of ages.
Uh so this prophetic realization that there is a a fourth and last age, the age of the wolf, uh the one that awaits in fact the the twilight of of of the gods and and has, you know, in the uh in in the iron decline of humanity that this last um uh chance in in the dark like a spark in the darkness for for an ultimate change to occur. This is very important also from a theological point of view because as you know even the possibility of a rebooting normally from a theological point of view is always from the darkest of the office. So, let's not enter eschatological terrain cuz I really have to make more videos about this, but it's um you know, you can understand how the millenarianistic perspective in the Messianic ones etc. were actually for example, the term Messianic is mostly used to denigrate um say Christianity and or other religions that actually have this such as Islam for example, especially in the Shia tradition. Um but that fundamentally would say this is just a superstition and or something that would simply make you entrust yourself to some other guide that will come at some point to save you. Whereas according to the theology of theosis, this is exactly the opposite of actually what what Christianity actually says, right? Consider that Islam does not have as we've seen incarnation. Um it's a very complicated matter. There's no theosis. It's it's a completely different sort of sub subject kind of mentality. Whereas Christianity openly has Christomimesis as the purpose of every Christian. So, in theory, you can actually become God, right? And so, regardless of the Protestant sabotage that unfortunately happened as another major collapse in in sort of Western civilized disasters of of the world, not just of Western civilizations, you are actually supposed, according to Catholicism, to save yourself and the world as a consequence, because that's the the entire point of it all.
You can't do it but through Christ, but that's not something different from somebody that participated to the Mithraic cult in the 3rd century Roman army regarding what Mithras himself had done is only through him and his esoteric uh careers as as he had to to go through. So, it's very strange how confused, generally speaking, people are and or how they There's not even lack of knowledge, it's really wanting to simplistically bend certain interpretations in some character sort of almost cartoonish uh caricature of religion for that Let's be honest, at this point nobody really understands anymore. Like, it's it's over. Like, the idea of spirituality at this point. We're truly in the fourth age. It's undeniable that late antiquity the social cultural profile is heading towards a further crisis, right? There is a huge debate as you know historiographically as to where we misinterpreted this time. Uh it's you know, the the Mary Beard I I don't think she actually goes even that far. Like, it kind of arguments. No, we have to challenge your preconceptions.
We have to break the schemes, right? And just for saying just for the sake of being contrarian. Like, this are literally 1968 uh kids generations that they that it was the they thought that was cool just to to tell to the others, it's actually not true because actually they don't know that what they said was actually not true and that they should have been listening a little a little bit more to to the elderly there.
And so yes, there is an actual decline.
There is an actual erosion of the form, right? Not just of the substance of the world at that point, right? There are certain aspects about the Constantinian again, I am a Obviously, you have to be able like anything in life, in theology, in politics to reason through a double threat, right? And in other words, also the doctrine of the two natures.
I am a great admirer for example the Constantinian army and also Constantine's achievements and foundations etc. I challenge the notions that sort of the late Roman army was fundamentally a worse wonder or certain aspects in which it was even superior to the early imperial one, but as a wall, right? We can't help but recognize in a bigger moral political sense that not just the empire had been sort of destabilized, had been losing territories, had now a tougher time like controlling the frontier, but fundamentally the internal balance was the cause of this was the increasing social certification, the tying of ever more individuals to to to the land in a defensivistic approach.
You needed You didn't need to waste resources because there were less both in terms of manpower, labor force.
You had to be careful in rightly framing in fact the question in in in the right ideological sense as you were saying before, but you know, the relation between Ambrose of Milan and Theodosius the Great is, you know, an incredibly it's paradigmatic right? In relation to the the various theological aspects of Christianity, the um uh the the beha- the the relations, the interactions with with the federati, um the barbarian invaders, and so on. So, this is um definitely a picture that resembles in many ways those more decadent characters that we have also hyper um inflated to to a degree regarding the establishment of a more sort of of a medieval world of a feudal society, right? The increasing importance of the gold currency. This also from a monetary standpoint is a major aspect. Like the the hopeless at that point the basement of the silver denarius that was there speaking of a more of a middle-class uh mentality from the previous uh era that was incarnated by the that older idea of the free citizens in arms that had been the same Roman uh legionnaires that had conquered the world. Obviously, always sort of led by specific leaders. This is a change you can find also among the the barbarians themselves. I mean, Germanic society is much more oligarchic at this point than it was before. Um and uh uh in general, being the the relation with the land, right? The idea that you can't quite simply leave your own um your own master. So, um milieu that you're tied to the profession of your parents. So, there's probably a heavily sort of heavy and necessary at this point judgment about your your existential condition, which is all quite well tied in with the Christian realization that yes, the the world has somehow failed uh to an important degree in the temporal uh and spiritual authorities alike have to be warier of the weakening of humanity, properly from from a genetic standpoint and more. And so we have the the idea of a bloodless Europe and bloodless world is strangling itself even from its own nature. What had made the Macedonians, the Romans the great empires of antiquity, the ones that had truly turned the tide in terms of the creepingly um declining world uh ever more attracted to a plasmagene netherworldly uh nature of sensualism, of emotionalism. And that now was somehow with all the the various uh heresies and in this sense like sabotage also of civilization gradually bring to further erosion of the empire.
Uh especially uh paradoxically in the East where this where where a habituated to think, well, but it kind of lasted the longest. Yes, but it lasted in an autocratic forms with some Levantine elements that were properly the ones that would also open the gates to to the Arabs that were identified by the same Christians centuries before.
We've seen it in the writings of Hippolytus. It's always struck me properly in a prophetic sense regarding the um acephalic almost anarchic and third disorderly uh administrative profile say of the Syrian churches that the ones that um if not all of them naturally, but say those who belong to to the fringe that were not really um behaving like we were not in line with the imperial direction, right? When you look at even the Arian Germans in in the West looking at times like the one of the Three Chapters schism uh the later iconoclasm and all those sort of and all all the other issues that as you know had been there with this equilibristic maneuvers to to wink at mono visitism of mono visitism and so on.
Like even the Aryan Germans were normally aligned with the papacy and they sort of eventually sort of became fully Catholic at that point. And they did not go at all astray from in any theological matter, right? Their Arianism was mostly a political issue.
They didn't even even have the theological interest or capacity to create schisms in any particular sense, but they were in fact fully integrating a meaning with the broader Western Roman and in this sense ultimately imperial um legacy.
Right? Of Western Europe. Like again, the the the Latin speaking lands were at large much more cohesive than the central part of the empire as you know was also more composite. Was wasn't merely speaking Greek as such. There were lots of other elements within the same.
But in this sense we really witnessed to a profound crisis. It can't be merely, I don't know, merely or superficially secularly political or social or even worse economic. Well, this is this must be interpreted in a deeply moral, traditional, and metaphysical sense.
Right?
It's as if um the empire crystallized for a time, especially at least from an institutional point of view, in an oriental mirage of ascetic withdrawal and otherworldly focus in which essentially even partici- participation to the to the imperial fort was considered uh in vain.
Right? And that's why in fact certain communities that had been heretical detached themselves from the empire in the east and or do not properly contribute enough to to the general fort. There are always elements interspersed that actually do that. Like it's impossible this to say on a territorial basis. Obviously, it was happening every sort of political, military, and social level. There was a struggle between these these cultures.
Hell, there were even some Arabs that fought till the last for Rome against the the rising tide of Islam. So, you you want to appreciate and those figures. Well, we shall talk about that for that matter.
Um And so, it's also difficult not to see how, first of all, admittedly more sheltered Western Europe really was.
Like, if you look at the role of Constantinople in mitigating all the tidal um movements like of peoples around the Pontic area like stemming Sasanian uh infiltrations. So, like, it it had like a a major role in halting the advance of peoples reversing um themselves against and crashing themselves against the Theodosian walls, right on on the Bosphorus.
Um We know how important was Byzantine civilization was. Right, we are to resume actually some videos uh about this um pretty soon.
We don't have to recount all the the various vicissitudes that the empire went through. But also, we we have abundantly studied its own characteristics, the fact that this crystallization in these situations was actually helpful to properly maintain certain fundamentals unaltered to withstand the uh the those tidal waves and major crisis losing half of the empire extension uh with the early Islamic invasions, but also being able in fact to recover a substantial part of the same at a point uh reactivating capital was definitely something about the Hellenic legacy that went on in a deep sense also in in the Roman West that now was inextricable in the Byzantine identity uh of Constantinople.
But what we're talking about today finally is the sort of the topic we already addressed more than once, but we never fully reinvigorated as it really deserves to to be, namely the Germanic infusion of tribes.
Like the Franks under leaders such as Clovis converted to Catholicism straight from pre-Christian from Odinism. Let's not say paganism because that's another thing. Um in 490 If you don't know the difference, well, you know, welcome to Schwipperdt by the way. In 496 you have the Visigoths who settled in Spain and southern Gaul after sacking Rome 410. And the Lombards who established a kingdom in northern Italy from 568 bringing robust warrior customs, personal loyalty bonds through oaths of fealty and assemblies like the thing for decision-making into the former Western Roman territory.
This mechanism you would say, well, what what's about that, right? After all, tribal cultures fundamentally function like that, right?
Uh yes, but not all tribal cultures are the same nor they are all capable of reacting uh to civilization in the same way. In fact, there is this sort of mentality that is sort of quite rampant on the current right that sees sort of the the most exasperated primitivistic um tribalism as some kind of protagonist in here. When we look at the most successful peoples like the Goths here, I also didn't mention all the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, but you know, this was just for sake of example. Like you realize that the uh admittedly it is true that the the Romanized Germans ended up fairly badly, right? It It is true that the Ostrogoths, the the Visigoths constitute the most initially splendid and or at least Romanly continuous domains in Southern Europe that we recall. But, they're both obliterated, right? The Ostrogoths from the same Byzantines, the Visigoths by the the Arabs later on. And it is especially the Franks and the Lombards. We can add obviously to to the account that the Anglo-Saxons that specifically entering in Western Roman lands will characterize the nature of our Europe in ways that are departing and or at least find themselves in a position where they can properly re um organize the moral hierarchy of these lands. It's not even to say to depart from the the Roman moral from late antiquity because you have all kind of variations here. It's obvious that Lombard Italy, contrary to also what some people think, was radically and traumatically Roman in character. Um de facto, like the the by far the greatest urban continuity, wealth uh per capita. It's something utterly insane and we This actually a major topic that nobody seems to to realize how also civilly advanced, how literate, how urbanized, how um properly light light years ahead compared to the Franks, for example. This was by the time of Charlemagne. From a civil point of view, the Franks were better at war.
Um naturally, if we talk about the Anglo-Saxons, it took a while for them to sort of um achieve some greater unity and capacity of sort of power projection.
They eventually were fundamentally reinvaded by by the Danes, by eventually the Normans.
So, it it's something slightly more complicated, but it the greatest model, the one that in fact is going to inform all of these countries because Italy and Britain are at the end of the day obliterated by the Franks at some point. Uh sooner or later, at least in terms of this sort of ethnic Germanic leadership or at least what had become of it at point. Um depending on what you're looking at, obviously. With the creation of the recreation actually of the Roman Empire with the coronation of Charlemagne uh on on the uh on Christmas Eve of 800 AD in St. Peter's Basilica.
Right? And I will not here obviously you know I'm bringing so much like, you know, on [snorts] the table. Uh so I don't want to confuse you, right? Let's stick to the migration here, but let's try to realize that, for example, the more in the sense quote-unquote authentically Germanic north sort of character survived in peoples that were fundamentally not living particularly well, were not particularly powerful.
They weren't particularly developed.
They weren't particularly rich. Most of them are actually either conquered by Frankish civilization and or evangelized and largely doing so um by themselves under the guidance of Franko-Roman civilization. And that in fact the idea of an empire ending in the west is somehow very debatable on the grounds of the congregational and in the sense agglutinating capacity that post-Roman Latin-Germanic civilization was able to to accomplish. It's not to say that other elements, also including the Slavs, did not contribute to this. That would be wrong and deeply misleading. Um there are so many different influences in in and there is also continuity for that matter with links with Constantinople in different ways from direct contacts to models of rule and that should make you think because the fact that in 10th century Britain some English at that point rather than Anglo-Saxon kings would style themselves as as basileus >> [snorts] >> and not imperator even it's something that right you know in the mid of the early age if not properly ages but say in the high middle age in from the opposite side of Europe should really make you think a bit and actually we know why these things kind of happened we know why the imperial title was bestowed for example in Spain that has its own during the Reconquista imperial tradition the Visigoths by the way had uh debatably weak internal system due to not just the original issues of not passing straight from from Arianism to to to Catholicism even though Arianism was a Catholic um tradition as as such and but in any case scaling up to properly a Catholic Christian pol- politics and ecclesiastical administration and followed Arianism for a while the rather the fact that had seemingly imitated Constantinople right their model was much more Byzantine than say the one of the closer to to the Byzantines Lombards in many ways but there was something and so for saying the Visigothic kingdom would somehow sclerotize right would um be incapable in all its size to withstand the uh the Islamic invasions right differently from the Franks and the Lombards were sort of more sheltered in a sense but were also definitely not spotted as the weak um element of Europe and uh were actually in fact going in Italy sort of propel as they had always been doing telling the truth at least since late antiquity the eventual booming of Western civilization in the following centuries. And all this with a properly Franko-Roman in a sense in imperial papal universal unity that is impossible to miss as a general uh actor and actually a a dominating overarching actor even over the Byzantine Empire will be fundamentally taken over by the Crusaders down the line, right?
So, when we look at the injection of these Germanic peoples in in the West. First of all, we Yeah, we know that they were mostly taken over as a regime and establishment. They weren't They weren't actually many, right? They They were a staunch minority amidst that the millions that lived in all these major post-Roman um Western chunks, right? But they still and especially in the the hierarchical sense that the idea of sacred um royalty in a primarily sort of involved sense. Like even in a time in which as we've seen they would become reverent of the church and they would accept its support. They still had a pretty strong idea would maintain it for a very long time in probably after the later Middle Ages um a sense of the sacrality of kingship uh as a sort of imperial dominance over the the church in as it the hierarchical um a norm really was. And remember what we said before, if there is a shortcoming you lose that kind of primacy and or at least you're not as as this mostly happens during the medieval millennium, you're not going to fully assert yourself over the church, right? Due to your own sins as well.
Um And it's there's not even a an ecclesiastical takeover for that matter.
You know, this is a motive that recurs in especially traditionalist historiography the idea between the idea of the the the hero {slash} king {slash} warrior that manages to to crash the rebellion of the third of more uh insidious and and and chthonically oriented priest that maintains its more feminine principle. This is an exaggeration if you look at what the actual in fact overlapping of symbolism and identities, etc. Like a I mean, Christ is is a man, like in case you didn't notice. Like there isn't a real elevation of the great mother, especially when you realize that also the Virgin, the Theotokos, is the transfigured Virgin. It has nothing to envy to to Artemis or or Athena or the the winged glory like of Nike Victoria and so on. So, there is actually a radical difference between It already exists in in Roman times or in any other Indo-European culture for that matter. So, be extremely careful not to fall into this sort of simplistic child-like dichotomies if you don't understand properly the theological underpinning of this metaphysical concepts.
In any case, the there is a stark comparison that we also answer in some Q&A uh in especially criticizing the very recent historical notion that belongs a bit to what the shock moral effect that sort of certain scholars would like to um to to to provide to others that if anything just tells it how they are actually ignorant about how people are some people are very few people unfortunately, but still uh are much more aware than them uh about And it is the comparison between the West and what had what would happen to the Byzantine world, right? What was the rest in the sense of the Roman orb hadn't the orb remained there still controlled as we've seen before by also some spiritually Roman leaders, right? Cooperating with the Church of Rome and maintaining also an imperial delegation many occasions from Constantinople. Clovis had the vicariate of the Gauls. There was all an obvious brokering in the negotiation revolving around the Roman imperial titles bestowed from Constantinople at a point, but eventually by the the papacy as well.
That is the big step forward, but what happened to the Byzantine part was absorbed by Islam through the rapid 7th 8th century conquests that in fact as we're hinting at before swept from Arabia across North Africa into Spain under the Umayyad Caliphate creating Al-Andalus.
With Constantinople slowly withering as the the eastern part of the empire focused on survival against multiple fronts including Persian, Arab, Slavic, and later Turkic pressures maintaining a more bureaucratic and Hellenistic character.
It's impossible in this sense not to notice how in the west a new religious vision was taking shape. This all comes in fact in in the aftermath of the dissolution of the western half of the Roman Empire as that administrative districts so to say.
It doesn't matter how expansive this territory really was. From Britain to Mauretania, from lower Germany to to Libya.
Is the third spiritual temper of the time.
How would these people living in western Europe realize the capacity of rising again. That means especially all the turbulent events that were happening in these Well, you would think, well, okay, what concerned Constantinople did not really directly concern them up to a point.
On the contrary, probably gave them some edge because the Byzantines had to spend enormous resources to withstand these blows.
And this is accurate up to a certain point. Not just because at some point there are the Slavic invasions. I I talked about them multiple occasions. You have the same Islamic threat coming from the southern shores of of the Mediterranean. You have actually Spain and even parts of Gaul and and and Sicily controlled and southern Italy controlled by the Saracens. At a point, you have the however main continental part of this Gallic, British, and Italic and and gradually extend the um German world.
Really creating something. Uh even before obviously the Islamic invasions that would after all happen relatively soon.
If you especially consider how long antiquity had been continuing in fact in the Mediterranean well after 476.
And in this context, the soul as principle deciding all that the body would execute in every rational being according to patristic and scholastic anthropology required those who claimed authority only over the social body to subordinate themselves to the church which held the exclusive right over souls and their direction through sacraments, confession, and excommunication.
This is particularly [snorts] relevant because it brings us once again for for each of these statements, I should make probably 20 videos, right? So, you will forgive me if these videos here are pretty long and stopping to comment at every insight. But, it's definitely correct, right? There hadn't been a an ecclesiastical dimension. Right? What will emerge properly as a as a temporal power eventually, that is the patrimonium sancti Petri. And the patrimonium actually of any outer church, right? In the West, a church that we want to stress had been ecumenic.
All right? At Nicaea, like you have people coming in from outside the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea during the various ecumenic councils.
You will have, in fact, a uh a church that tralocates the uh the the the borders, like the the boundaries of different polities and and peoples and tongues and sort of stretches of sea, etc. Right? You have Christians participating to ecumenic councils in Constantinople, even coming from lands ruled um over by by the Muslims at some point.
So, it it's something that transcends, indeed, the the earthly dimension by definition, right? The spiritual power here entails that the church is not just God's in this sense, but as such sets some standard not even the greatest earthly power can simply challenge because it is the only vehicle of divinity itself, or at least the emperor is not outside of the church. Nobody is actually outside of the church, right?
On the reasons of how Christianity was unilaterally accepted in this world, and how in fact very scarce resistance at any theological level could even arise from the same. So, that actually the evangelization of Europe is something much smoother notoriously from from a a sort of from terms of mental caters, right? There wasn't this wrestling with, you know, some kind of paganism hedonism like the there was no chance that that ideology stood because it was just like a particular declension in great part of at the at the lead level that is the same elite that sort of Christianized the quickest. So, the the boldness were in that sense also maintaining part of that same beliefs as perfectly coherent with the Imperial Catholic tradition. As a matter of fact, as we've seen this in many also folkloristic sense like there is a constant superimposition of those ideas.
If we look at paganism as such, so the properly the rural chthonic superstitions and certain specific sort of matri-focal elements belong even properly pre-Indo-European Europe still in the countryside among the pagents as probably as something that the church cares about only up to a certain point simply because these people have no power.
And so, actually even there the the the continuity of certain chthonic cults was also completely normal to the extent that these people eventually turned to be Chris- I mean, converted to Christianity without even properly abandoning those ideas as we know very well many superstitious and practices that were in any case in fact that are inseparable in the hierarchy of values that must be an Apollonian as much as a Dionysian.
There must be an Uranian as much as a chthonic. After all, the purpose of the church and the empire was to transfigure in the world into something totally heavenly.
So, equally the emperor could not be outside the church. On the contrary, in spite of the ecclesiastical exclusivity over the spiritual standards and how this had to be set and you have to understand this especially on the grounds of Rome and the church of Rome maintaining the highest spiritual profile at that point over anyone, right? They literally withstood and probably ultimately defeated the autocratic and murderous impulses of of the sebastocrators of the East, right? That that some point even deported Popes wanted to get even kill them in a sense that that way and gave order for doing so, etc. Rome elevated itself as a principality eventually did not even technically belong to the at least the city of Rome had its own earthly dimension community.
Belong to the empire say, but the patrimonium sancti Petri there are some legal legal subtleties about this as well. Was truly a metaphysical realm. It did not belong to the whole Roman Empire. Did not belong to anything earthly for that matter. The word literally like many communities that belong to the earthly dimension. We're talking metaphysics here, not extensional pieces of dirt where humans and after the fall, all right?
Um in um uh there are very interesting descriptions even of how like the earth at some point had been created according to some Christian apologists in the first century of the empire exactly to prevent humans to fall to the same term to to hell basically straight away, all right? Huh.
It was still seen, you see that that the positive element about the actual incarnation and sort of world creation up to in its sort of fallen kind of a fallen essence or this polluted essence in that regard.
But aside from this the exclusive right over souls and their direction through sacraments, confession, excommunication holds two important characteristics. The first one is the fact that the church in this sense is not posing itself as some sort of alien allergen element that fundamentally does not have anything to do with other institutions. Everybody's Christian.
All right, you have certain countries like, for example, Italian peninsula that are um sort of Christianized practically entirely. Like I can't imagine 90 95% of people being nominally Christian already by, let's say, the end of the 6th century. All right, so there are wide differences in that level of acceptation as well. Um the church in this sense is not just univocally recognized because other interesting point is that even before the papal monarchy in the 11th century with the Gregorian reforms, it's not like I don't know, somebody else had come up and said, "You know, well, Christianity is no more. Let's do something else."
Or, you know, Rome, after all, does not have a um primate of charity, for example, in heart.
Rome was already de facto Germanic from a spiritual standpoint, but this is absolutely clear as far as the British Gallic Italic axis is concerned.
It was about the the virus Germanic uh Christian Germanic already uh already already Christian Germanic lands. The Visigoths are ambiguous.
They treat Toledo as a sort of spiritual center in its own that rivals Rome, but obviously can't quite compare for different reasons.
But we also sort of understand this as a surely an important manifestation of regionalism in Europe because, again, Visigothic kingdom was a pretty big and important thing, but also in a time in which there was a lot of um sort of inward uh focus and definitely, like, the Iberian peninsula would historically remain something relatively autonomous even after it rejected Visigothic right in exchange for the Roman church support and during in their reconquista also with the Frankish, in fact, participation and so on.
In other words, sacraments, confession, excommunication were not really different from what, I don't know, sacrificing to the to to the imperial divinity was back in the day. They were all some formal ritual mechanisms that absolutely worked as a state religion. Were there was a certain level of tolerance because this was just like a big feudal empire with all a hierarchy where Rome dominated over every other possible deity.
Um and crushed also the ones that were practically irrelevant. There was witch hunting people massacred for really well before Christianity.
In all Catholic empires like from the Roman one to India, China. This this is an actual thing.
Um the so-called illicit cults as the Romans properly termed that.
As opposed to the licit ones as a matter of fact.
The Christian one had been illicit but to the degree that still allowed its survival. Basically, the Romans were not so fussy about Also, they didn't nobody really at the time had the means to univocally uniform religious belief which makes even all the more extraordinary how successful Christianity actually was in this during the early Middle Ages and eventually for reasons that touch on a profound chord of the human fault that had occurred after the in fact that the same fault of the Roman Empire.
And in this sense nobody could escape sacraments, confession, excommunication. Aside from the fact that all of this uh has its own role and significance and meaning. But this is not just a universal one but one that objectively holds a massive social cultural value.
The idea that, for example, the Holy Ghost proceeds from God through the same imperial authority. We'll see now how but by supervision of the church that the boundaries of the precinct of which is in fact the only sacred one is first of all like already a Roman one. Like the idea that the pomerium was sacred, that in the sense certain particular rights had to be officiated, that Rome had become the world fundamentally and this entailed the same state religion we're talking about before.
Um the necessity of redemption that something that the Romans had overly stressed in their um successful world domination and that deeply leaves within the same Latin language used by by the Roman church and the same necessity to indicate those who had failed. It's so to excommunicate those rulers who did not properly abide to the principles of um an ecumenic standard, a universal standard, the deep civilizational value inherent a fallen world that shows you that before sort of going out in the world and pretending to have an opinion, you may want to check what civilization is about and realize that probably you have to learn from lots of other people before attempting to sort of create another law on your own. This is actually what um heroes and gods and God himself according to the various pathways that we've seen here had had been about. After all the same Christ that established a new law, right? So the even in there the Christian continuity in the realization that there is a divine law that supersedes any earthly one is not a sort of dismissal of an imperial for example regimen of justice. Right? It it must be exercised with by properly harmonizing with God and therefore obtaining the impairment using it also to pacify the world and elevate it.
You have literally like the incentive and as we were saying before with the offices and Christian mimesis for the emperors from the side of the church to reach those standards and models.
Right? The church wasn't setting some arbitrary standards that depended on whichever you know they they had in mind. If you look and if you study uh also canon law and you realize how it had been forming through the various centuries of council collections later the various collections of canon laws decretals we made lots of videos about this like they are deeply like all medieval law telling the truth like um differently from some modern degeneration like some incredibly not just specific and problem-solving oriented but effective answers to a world where ultimately this was the point the a sole empire had to be reestablished.
When you study early high medieval society what what do you think law have you ever studied medieval law?
From the actual source what what do you think it's all about? It's about the reconstituting order.
Like an Aurelian that reconstitutes the world after it's collapse it's the same identical mentality that leaves into the necessity of a lord of justice.
That is inherently a divine concept. So the notion that the church in this sense was simply opposite or somehow coexisting uh at a merely secular level with the empire that there wasn't since by the way the legalization of Christianity a full integration of various different functions between the church and sort of and and and imperial rule and so on. It It's is blind.
All right?
In this sense, the church posits itself as a guarantee that emperors go in the right direction.
And they do so, you would say, but in this sense, is it continued to stick in nature? How does this doctrine work?
This metaphysically does not make sense as an observation because the idea is that exactly because there isn't any other law but one of God.
If as an emperor you fail in any way, for any issue that you may have also with the church, which at this point largely wasn't happening because the investiture controversy is something that develops later. It was actually even positive for Western civilization, and this is exactly the point.
The default is yours. There's something defective in your rule because any rule instantiates itself immediately in the moment which is just.
There isn't a "But that guy sabotaged."
It's your responsibility. This is what the entire world horizon revolve around, simply realizing what personal responsibility means, because what happens now is now forever.
And it's is like this forever. At least it's part of a of a flow that is modified by the same individual actions, but it will last forever. It will It won't be simply erased and cleansed.
Just like you can't simply cleanse the original sin, or at least literally what you have accumulated in your own genes from the sin of all your predecessors, which is in this sense like bringing about the idea that Christianity brought brought the idea of the blood guilt from an allegedly, you know, specifically Semitic background. It's true that Semitic religions had, as we've seen, Christianity radically differs. It literally tells that you can become God by yourself as a human, as a man at that point, uh which is not to be found in in outside of Indo-European religions, other parts of sort of traditional thinking, but we'll see this better in another video.
The um blood guilt is inherent to the fact that you are fallen.
It's It's not some sort of stigma sort of stamped over you that somebody else has positive It's an illusion. You literally all the sins hold what has your ancestors haven't paid for weighs on you, and it's the reason why you're actively mortal because you fear, you actively fear, and that's the only cause of your mortality.
And this actually shows you how there isn't such a thing like a blood guilt in the sense that you have a have to be able to transcend blood guilt, but not because it does not exist. The entire problem of why the lower nature exists is that you're actively maintaining it as opposed to come back to to the one, right?
So, in that sense, any failure is exclusively your fault. It's your fault and everybody's fault at the same time.
We're so deeply immersed in this sort of secularistic mentality that today if you say whose fault is for something, say I don't know, I ran you over with with a car and kill you, it's it's my fault because I've done it, but this is man's law, right? It's supposed to fix things, you know, whether or not. And it's apparently just able to put patches on things, and sometimes it does do the right thing sometimes. But metaphysically, in fact, in this sense, the fault for you being run over by a car is also entirely yours because where do you draw the line between sort of being more careful again in this sense valuing your your life and therefore going out there. There's a level of recklessness that you obviously in practical temporal terms we have to to accept and that in this sense we have somehow normalized. But if this actually brings to our death it's like where are our max powers?
Why couldn't we sort of prevent this?
Where where is where does our stop if it stops to begin with before it arrives to God, right? So this is how they they thought the whole thing to work at the time.
And it's only in post-traditional times that lesser people were told it's somebody else's fault and you shouldn't worry about it.
Anyone why you know the world is fundamentally about lesser people.
Now the church at some point came to contest doctrines of natural and divine derivation of kingship only to the extent in which like the standards of the office were properly not met.
Right? There was a level of as you know debate regarding where did the imperial prerogative start started and the and the the papal ones at the end of the day ended. Right? This was actually inherent the church in general and before the papal monarchy and the more sort of intense phase of the investiture controversy.
Right?
Then in fact shows us already a shared power. Like the investiture controversy was about the investiture of a single person from both powers and about the premise of the same and in which regions and which in that sense also temporal and spiritual consequences alike. We made lots of videos on it.
But in this sense there was a debate over which universal authority ultimately held the the the utmost control because if you are this may be a relativistic concept because obviously if each authority has its own function, its own special so to say, its own specific purpose.
There there should be at least yes um a sectorization of competences but when we look at temporal and spiritual this as you know reflects in between the two, right? That there are authorities, powers, men at the end of the as popes and emperors that are bridging the gap between God and men anyway, each in their own account.
And so the point was being definitive regarding who held properly moral standard, who whatever moral standards were made by actual conquest like in the imperial case. And so you think that case the the the rule of the sovereign was truly divine or not and as we explained indeed he will fail to reconstitute the Roman Empire.
There is actually something wrong in it as much as the papacy you can see it from the other side but not being able to fully maintain order in the church and so the properly the the sin of man was indeed operating in short gap and so there could be all the sort of accusations, counter accusations regarding the person in the office as opposed to the office, right? That's why it never became a heresy even down the line to think that it was a natural divine derivation of kingship.
Right? There was on the contrary on a much higher level and philosophical one and not even this was ever in fact stigmatized per se if not in a broader rhetorical and sort of warning their action like the idea of being able to prevaricate uh through human pride, right? And this is what was mostly contested to emperors, which was the problem since in fact the decline of the empire is to say if we couldn't keep all the empire together, if we lost territories, if there are some Christians under the the infidels, if uh in this sense the holy places are reserved, if you as an emperor not able to actually control the entire Christendom, the question is how can you think that your uh rule is actually divine um and and not see that you're still imperfect, you're still human, you're still mortal.
So, you can't simply claim that, right?
If not aspirationally.
But at the same time was always a genuine uh sort of attitude in the church, not just this is very underrated, to actually create peace among Christians.
But if you look in international, diplomatic, legal, administrative sense in medieval Europe, it was actually constant. Right? We remember the church only for the crusades, which were also actually perfectly fine. Uh the repression of heretics, the fact that the church did absolutely side with one or side or another in the context between Christians, but always aiming at fundamentally stabilizing also specific national realities in this still hierarchy of of of a church or an empire had to rule over it.
But literally supporting the emperor uh against the same the same pushing him for the crusade against say, I don't know, the Mongols, bringing peace, justice, and recognizing him. I mean, emperors existed formally, institutionally because the pope crowned them.
Right? Um and this interestingly was always um accepted in Latin-Germanic Europe, even in the peaks of Ghibellinism, serving tolerance of papal interference, right? And equally, there was a genuine commitment from the imperial side to actually boost the church to boost the the same um uh level of spiritual quality that could, in fact, support an imperial rule um in in in a papal context, in in papal curia.
This all is the sense.
So, relative.
The fact that the church would be more, for example, doctrinally explicit or politically active, in particular viewing secular rulers as subject to spiritual oversight, is something that shouldn't in this sense, outweigh the fact that the emperors did have their own mentalities, well, it's it's a matter of debate um the extent by which it is, because indeed temporal, let's say, properly lay law existed in ways that disciplined or even developed in parallel, properly, with the um relat- relation with the church. When you study I've seen this often, the birth of universities.
Uh this is the same period of the Decretum Gratiani.
This is the same time of the Investiture Controversy. This is actually also the same time of the booming of Europe as a Western empire, or at least a set of powers that somehow recognized both papacy and empire as universal authorities.
So, seeing the prince and layman equal to all others before God and the church Does that mean that the prince could not properly hold the highest power possible? Like the church lent itself multiple times to this kind of recognition of imperial divinity.
Right? If he hadn't come to so close for that, at some point the the papacy itself kneeled in front of the emperor.
Not out of force, but out of recognition. This happened during the Carolingian year for that, but out of recognition of the imperial dignity as such. So, you can be {quote} equal in front of God in the sense that God is is the absolute. So, you are equal in potential in front of God. Then when this potential becomes manifest so in action so it's ever more divine. You're you are ever more divine as a consequence.
At that point the church actually recognized this standing. Otherwise, they would have never elected an emperor with their own hands.
Right? And they would have in this sense also not properly established the figure of an emperor in the west. If the narrative is the papacy wanted just to get rid of empires.
Regardless of its decentralized position between Constantinople and sort of the transalpine world like there is always a recognition of preference in a proper establishment. Hadn't been for the pope, right? Um it's debatable what kind of sort of imperial especially Roman recognition transalpine rulers could have had. Um probably they would have been able to push it anyway because again in metaphysical terms if this was the understanding they would have been recognized as sacred rulers to the extent by by the extent of of their imperial power.
But if we were talking about real history and real history was the papacy rule back this that gave this vital length that of potently affirmed the imperial legitimacy of Germanic rulers. And in this actually bigger Latin-Germanic axis in world it was much more familiar than uh than we think normally. Again, Charlemagne was not the first uh ruler to to decide that there was a connection with Rome or that they could also become an emperor like the sort of papal relations with say Clovis already were pretty well established.
We're not talking about the evangelization of of the Anglo-Saxons. The the relations in in any case that Rome maintained with Constantinople up pretty late in time in the 12th century in terms of okay, you are the actual eastern half and these guys are are the western half of the empire. This is very explicit well explicitated in medieval sources.
All right, as two arms of the church like the two halves, right? They were considered like that.
Because there was obviously an ecumenic ideology underpinning that regardless of convenience, right? They would have not uh used it otherwise. And you understand how much this sense continuity if anything models that was with antiquity. And you can't basically say that these authorities were were did not exist or were not there or, you know, were invented or made up. It was not actually a functional rule or whatever this is definitely not the case.
All right.
At some point, the idea that the emperor is an officer instituted according to natural right who must receive from ecclesiastical hierarchies what is necessary lest his government becomes a civitas diaboli, that is a demonic city opposed to the city of God, it stands not obscuring the fact that the emperor holds imperial power himself and that the church is fully aware of his might if anything because at some point it had also to withstand it. And the church had been created historically exactly to show that that if you wander like walking uh around Europe and looking at our beautiful cathedrals and the power of the church and the papacy, you realize that the what those buildings {quote} {unquote} and those actual metaphysical architectures mean is the presence of a power so great that nobody on earth can presume um by being on merely on earth to be able to tread on.
Right? To infringe upon. This is the point. It's an absolute shout, cry of liberty proper that resonates across the entire world. That it's a major warning saying, "Look at what happened to the Roman Empire. If you want to be even a minimal part of what the Roman Empire had to be, you better get your act together."
Right? And you start behaving in a mature, authoritative, right, effective way. You have to prove to be divine. And so, this is the greatest of enterprises. This can't be any human standard to measure this. And as the church we establish it. If you don't like it, try get us if you can. And most of the attitude within this sense also competitive, polemical, conflictual, but it was also supportive, complementary.
And in this sense truly cooperative.
Because the sole purpose The purpose was unique. There wasn't another purpose.
There wasn't such a thing like an empire that wanted to establish itself somewhere and the papacy wanted to establish itself somewhere else.
And they accidentally found each other in the same way. It was the same world that functioned with these dual natural authorities that even natural law itself made emperor's powers with bestowal again of the Holy Ghost in the form of imperium for their merit that could not be denied.
Right? The popes could not deny that that power existed. This is the difference between us and them, right?
Today for for us it's like you know we people can literally make up how words go not understanding anything of that and claiming that a power is not a power does not have power that in still reality being the one that it is.
In medieval times people realized which powers were actual powers and why especially.
And while there were obscure forces trying to undermine this this thing, this definitely did not pertain to either the empire or the church.
Actually, this were the two light houses, the sun and the moon as they were called.
In this in any case theocratic rule.
However, you uh you want to sort of attribute the the theocratic power to to in measure to to either of the two. They both had it and they were in that sense meant to be one with a sole purpose and they really were.
All right. So, the idea that the church for example was a theocratic meridional turn reaching its logical conclusion in Boniface VIII.
Pope from 1294 to 1303, a canon lawyer as you know who clashed with King Philip the fourth of France over taxation and jurisdiction issuing the 1302 bull Unam Sanctam asserting that submission to the Roman Pontiff was necessary for salvation and famously declared supreme authority by wearing imperial regalia in ceremonies.
They did not really mean any degradation of the actual metaphysical power of the empire. Right?
While Boniface did not hesitate to ascend to the throne of Constantine with sword, crown, and scepter to declare himself Caesar and emperor, literally attributing both evangelical swords to the priest and regarding the empire merely as a beneficium conferred by the pope and taking the same vassalage and obedience to the feudatory oaths to his ambassador, we're also talking about the peak of papal power in absolute terms.
We're talking about an actual like a pope that had armies and could control Europe in many ways and had a great ascendance. In any case, lost against Philip the fourth anyway. So, if any attempt was there in metal the waters actually, we can easily see a continuity between the idea of a of an emperor that is always has a great deference towards the the church itself that that even when this asks essentially for recognition of power uh in exchange for the the the standard of sort of of imperial rule that can mutually can recognize still there is a true papal power at the time of in temporal terms at the time of Philip the fourth that in case you didn't know honest was not a Holy Roman Emperor either even though he used the same identical terminology of Caesar and emperor which was traditionally attributed probably to Holy Roman Emperors. And admittedly, there was nothing strange and especially at that point in French tradition and power given that it was basically and truly like an imperial one uh in scale and in purpose I have surpassed Germany.
Um there was there were still two temporal as well as spiritual powers at the same time.
Philip the fourth of France as sacred ruler uh probably saint blood as well in tradition like having the blood of kings that won in battle uh the lordship over Europe. Look at Bouvines where Philip the second literally officiated the mass himself.
This was guaranteed by sacred royal authority also by the local clergy.
All right.
In fighting that case a holy struggle against an excommunicated emperor not properly a crusade but still something that was seen indeed as holy war even before crusades happened to begin with.
And at the time of Boniface the eighth again the church had properly its papal states, it had its own armies, it had its own retinues uh and soldiers and in in proper wealth that meant definitely something if anything in terms of spiritual capacity to demonize Western Europe being uniformly recognized as the the the church uh uh well after in fact also crusaders had conquered Constantinople and though had lost it again. I mean showing what that preponderant Western power really was essentially in a composite nature. It's obvious that if you split the church from the state as it had happened by the establishment of Christianity and attempt to lead it that the things that were sort of crammed in together like for example in Byzantine case but although they were actually always separated in their you're going to have this kind of temporal reflection on art. So a papal request there was not sort of different from an imperial request of absolute power and submission of the papacy.
That was also fully never achieved by anyone in the Christian history.
And so again, standards.
Regardless of what both sides claimed, what was their effective power?
There you have the answer. The answer in is in history.
Right?
So this um this ideology I think is is quite fascinating because nowadays you have a tendency of {unintelligible} traditionalists. And I say {unintelligible} because again, we make history of tradition here, but very often these aspects are underrated. Let's say the the archetypal sense the church is the woman and the emperor is the man is merely um institutional. It doesn't uh doesn't fundamentally absolutize the archetype in the in in the actual arc administration in instantiation.
Given in fact the limits of both, right?
There is actually a feminine element in some emperor who was less powerful and feminine in a church where there were some popes that were, you know, quite a a massive display of of virtus and so virility in terms of of actual imperium wielded.
Right?
Um you can't say to an Innocent the Third that it is a feminine power.
All right, he's all it's something uh much different. And in any case, these elements are meant to be complementary, fully integrated, not merely competitive with one another.
They must be if uh like at this point in history Western civilization is incredibly powerful.
This had been present also in the Roman Empire. We couldn't could have never had the Roman Empire if patricians and plebians had not had their beefs back in the day and being able to fully integrate each other with still a competitive mechanism but that in that sense allowed this massive power to be unleashed from from the wall, right?
So there there is a deep misunderstanding of the participate Imagine again, you you look at the Augustan Empire and said but since there were some plebians were held uh imperial offices so this was not the golden age. It doesn't mean anything.
This was uh an an integrated hierarchy of different elements that made the wall successful. Equally, this was the case during the Middle Ages. Therefore, let's be careful to distinguish to categorically between Ghibelline and so-called Welfic movements. If anything, because as you know, the same terms are very uh contingent and somehow uh adapted also from the original meaning. This is the basically the Italianate version of essentially battle cries between the Hohenstaufen house and the one of Welfen uh in northern Germany that uh yes, like still had obviously different alignment with with the papacy but they weren't quite me simply you know, hostile or supportive of the papacy just per se, right? And there was actually a greater effort of cooperation.
We we don't have to descend here in German politics. We we know obviously that as long as an emperor was excommunicated, German princes sided with the papacy so to say to usurp his land unless, you know, they were faithful. The same Hohenstaufen had risen that sense as the only ones who had not uh that fact that from the salient Italian of Henry IV But in this sense, what is Guelph?
Right? There is hardly a doctrine expressed in a in a Guelphic sense.
The Ghibellines are in this sense more traditional and imperial, but the same Guelph knights, so to say. Think about the the Guelph front that is essentially Capetian Angevin in nature. We're talking about some of the top monarchic and chivalric and knightly rulers. Doesn't matter how bent to devotion uh for for the church and in that sense aligning to a specifically um sort of international situation where they were posited against the reemergence of a German empire. But as we've just said, like Philip the Fair was literally This is ironic cuz they were technically still allies while um you know, the French sacked the the papal palace at Anagni, so that you could have, you see, in a truly Catholic ecumenic sense, like the same internal struggles without the outer face of the relation between the the papacy and that sense the king of France proclaiming himself a Caesar.
Um be um touched by it. Right?
So, this is interesting as far as what is opened in later times. We'll talk now better about what who did what in that sense of sort of supporting the church or not. But when we look, for example, at the faction in Italian politics supporting the papacy against imperial claims in the communal era, right? The Lombard League.
First of all, we've seen many videos that this had been born out of a consular, that is, knightly military class.
Um and that was often, in fact, struggling and wrestling power from the same emperor by claiming imperial authority on their own. This is often underestimated of the Lombards and how they showed their own powers knight and as an establishment of of the same.
So, uh regardless of this naming after the Welf family German dukes and rooted in earlier investiture controversy in the 11th-12th centuries over the right to appoint bishops and abbots that pitted popes like Gregory the VII against emperors like Henry the IV were not actually trying to uh sort of annihilate the primordial solar unity of of the two powers. So, with a with a moon that properly receives light from the sun if you want to use this metaphor.
And in fact, did not either express any specifically sort of uh motherly vibing that's sort of some meridional principle in an attempt to return to a juniperatic The more you look at the same Welf war, the more the more you realize maybe modernization, secularization that was happening cuz those were also the most powerful places in Europe to only the truth at that point.
And and powerful militarily.
Right? You could if if this was kind of of a female base principle like who did stand against [snorts] successfully against the imperial cavalry charges.
Right? Uh and defeat the emperor in the same wars of the Lombard League. This This is doesn't make much sense. You can't see it as some cthonic force that sort of compared to the ideal of the solar principle.
But in practice, as we said before, it's more like powers counterbalancing but in an actually one element that speaks of Romano-Germanic adherence to originally liberty and freedom and of citizens in arms is actually this these movements as such. The fact that the Uh first of all, the empire and even feudalism did not actually succeed or or even probably within the most feudal countries like like France to to stifle communal development. To a degree it happens admittedly, especially probably feudal kingdoms, but um while in the Byzantine empire you have an aspect of urban development uh in communal autonomy like in the West. This goes in parallel with the development of a feudal in chivalric and in the sense universal civilization.
The communes are not an antithetic element in an imperial context. They are constitutive part of an incredibly strong, healthy, and powerful body that in fact achieves some imperial feats.
These guys went to to war with imperial eagle's symbolism. We This This is admittedly also the point like um This same communal world was not just split between Guelphs and Ghibellines, but at large like compass sort of if you look at the heraldry like the the entire lifestyle, the entire idea that the greatest ambition of the commune was to lord and tower over the others by affirming themselves into combat and holy combat with their own saint protectors with this sort of obvious knightly nobility dominance on the field and so on is quite there and it's actually explain sort of mirroring great part of what even we see for example with the great contribution of of the plebs in the same Roman times.
At the time the the Camillian reforms extends extends in fact the the aforementioned imperial faculty to to plebeian um members to essentially unlock them and go to war with unprecedented level power and conquering the world. So, what we see in the Middle Ages is let's say from one side unfortunately a much less unitary picture, but in this sense also if you are able to travel locate the name the political fragmentation of the world. You actually see that again the West is pretty darn cohesive the entire West Eurasia and North Africa revolve around it as the the big by far the biggest civilization. There is nothing that really can compare in that regard. It's impossible not to see how much of a Roman Empire reborn that the the wall scale of European power is during the Middle Ages.
And this is a perspective that immediately so many people do not do not imagine. It's not like they are not perhaps to believe, but of course if you have been repeated over and over again the Middle Ages were dysfunctional underdeveloped that antiquity was better. There isn't much especially also from a strictly material demographic point of to to actually argue that.
What was different was the form and in this sense the adherence of some higher moral spiritual principle that in the Middle Ages is surely more fraught with um division and these issues that truly stem from an anti primordial solar unity problem but because humanity had collapsed in the meanwhile.
And also as a consequence of the exhaustion of the Roman Empire.
Right? So, when you look however at the church adopting the symbol of the mother through the Marian devotion and ecclesiology that's victory.
Right? That's the same symbolism you find in Artemis that, you know, stands that is over the moon, right, as the transfigure, in fact, illuminating female principle that it Artemis is an Olympian, right, it's not a Hera, it's not a Juno, that's not what Mary symbolizes.
Um, it's the Sophia Perennis, as a matter of fact. It's it's a bit difficult to make the case that the church would be some sort of strange great mother of, you know, pre-Indo-European Pelasgian times that devoured their own children. So, there is an archetypal principle of again, in the institution itself, you can say what the emperors eventually failed against this force, but they also failed because this this archetype was blurred in the actual temporal instantiation of these powers.
So, the church was not sort of communistically, feministically posturing any disintegration of traditional virility.
Right, and if there was uh, an element within it that was sort of bringing to it that existed in the broader world, in the broader society, to the extent, uh, this was not a unitary divine empire.
But the empire still existed, and paradoxically, the peak of the empire is also at the peak of the clash with the church and the power of the church. So, this is very unique, and it shows that there is not an opposite dichotomy.
Just like a Rome against Carthage. And even there, you could say, well, there surely was many Carthage, uh, a more god father orientation with Baal, whatever.
Yeah, but the temper, also the symbolism, frankly, was different. This was true also in the Middle Ages.
But it wasn't true in the sense that they excluded one another.
The empire recognized, uh, the the church, and the church recognized it.
But again, there weren't emperors, but those crowned as such by the church and elected by the Roman people.
It was all one.
You hardly had that, you know, clash between Rome and Carthage. It was much more vital.
So, when you look at the vestiges of classical antiquity and you reflect on the meaning of this apparent dichotomy, so just realize that there is something very different in the Middle Ages.
Something that had paradoxically been salvaged in terms of formal form, so to say. Whereas in antiquity, in fact, the balancing element was yet to be fully tamed.
Whereas in Europe, you can argue that until communism took over in certain places, like there wasn't such a thing.
There wasn't such a um attempt to deny traditional power uh in European imperial uh ambitions and so on. And so, this is something we will have to discuss uh at many different points because certain aspects are counterintuitive.
Um Catholicism, for example, always maintained much more strongly this full idea of the empire of theosis, of value of the works. It can't be mistaken for something else.
Right? And always remember in the sense that in the idea of the emperor regarding regarded by the church as her son, there is the same uh in the European theology of indeed uh God being father, husband, and son of the mother, right? So, of the great mother. So, there's always a hierarchical integration in this.
Today, we didn't talk so much about again how gradually emperors lost that uh sort of sebastocratic recognition could be found also among the Franks or the Saxons in relation with Rome, not as tribesmen per se, but also but as they emerged to unprecedented levels. Yes, but in the case of the Saxons it already because the Franks had set the standard and that had been set essentially as the Franks were already in goal as crystallized, right? So the sun against against the empire's moon um is not much of an against, but a reflection, right? Uh a coexistence in two different moments of standards, natures that are indistinguishably inter- intertwined.
Penalty not to be being able to to save the world according to proper intent. So it's um it's something that you want to appreciate in some more complete form and I will come back on these topics because in my opinion they're very uh misrepresented, misconstrued, and fundamentally too complex in their real world instantiation for sort of properly re-leading them to the to their archetypal meaning, right? So this um >> [clears throat] >> seems like a a much deeper um a much much deeper dynamic.
And what can we say? Um this video had to be like five times longer.
Uh that's whole Um I am now sort of taking things a bit more easily in terms of let's sit somewhere with this and let's argument how step-by-step this thing work rather than simply shocking people with 20 things at a time and let's reflect point by point on this stuff. It's a probably for the next month or so we will really be addressing this this this aspect of of the matter. All right, and then we will enter also a different world so to say when we will see more in-depth the actual relations between Christendom, Charlemagne. This video actually is aiming at showing so this we can consider this I will not treat it as parts of a same episode. This These are stand-alone ones, but the broader path we will go through this week at this this month will be fundamentally the one of the reactivation of the classical principles within the landscape we have shown now. To actually reinforce the notion Think about Romanesque, Gothic art, or the same crowning of the the rulers of how the church always espouse right and the the lay power in so many different circumstances. And so we remember investiture controversy, but we don't because it's an exception. It's it's violent and so on, but it's it's also the exception compared to the norm of sort of cordial and cooperative papal and imperial in the sense, you know, episcopal and comital relations that are the bedrock of essentially Western unity at this point.
Cuz this had turned into you know, a major theological issue. It would have been a continuous schism.
Whereas also Latin Christendom displays a unity that is absolutely the the envy in a broader spiritual and metaphysical sense of practically any other religion at the time. So, it's um I'd say church again. Religion is wrong as a as a term and uh it as we said before, Christianity carries the portentous concept of the offices of incarnation and of of trinity.
Right? The probably the theological instantiation of the metaphysical dimension through which you can reach divinity.
So, this was hardly uh this was encoded in in in the Roman church in Christian theology. If you don't actually so see how this could be the only precondition also for an imperial election and the besal of that powers much as the elevation to further heights.
Uh it's a bit difficult to go anywhere with this uh with this topic.
But again, we will see all these things better in other videos. I'm very glad that we are compensating enough [snorts] content on these matters because they tend to be very much followed and then appreciated.
For today, however, I stop it here. I just hope that you enjoyed this video.
If you did, please share it. Otherwise, leave a like or subscribe to my channel if you're interested in my upcoming content. As always, I thank you heartily for listening to me. I wish you a nice time and see you next time.
Bye.
>> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
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