The new ingredient in medieval politics, as medieval society developed
greater vigor from the 10th century onward, was of course the growth of royal
power (or in some regions such as much of present-day Belgium, ducal power).
Here the key steps are in many ways familiar, for they duplicateo,
unwittingly, the centralization principles developed earlier and more
extensively in China and elsewhere. Medieval kings followed particular
patterns of alliances and gradual aggrandizement because of their initially
weak positions, and there were important specific events involved such as the
Norman Conquest of England. Centralization is centralization, however, and
though often reinvented it has some standard features.
Thus, as they began to expand their resources and aspirations, medieval
kings developed small armies of their own, paid for by lands under their
direct control, and they ventured a small central bureaucracy. Often they
chose urban business or professional people to serve in this bureaucracy,
partly because such people had expertise in financial matters and partly
because, unlike the aristocracy, they would owe allegiance to the crown alone.
French and English monarchs began to introduce bureaucratic specialties, so
that some of their ministers would handle justice, others finance, and still
others military matters. They found ways to send centrally appointed
emissaries to the provinces to supervise tax collection and the administration
of justice. It was in this vein that English kings, from the Norman Conquest
onward, appointed local sheriffs to oversee the administration of justice.
None of these activities gave the monarchs extensive contacts with ordinary
subjects; for most people, effective governments were still local. Once the
principle of central control was established, however, a steady growth of
state-sponsored rule followed. By the end of the Middle Ages, monarchs were
gaining the right to tax their subjects directly, and they were beginning to
recruit professional armies, instead of relying solely on an aristocratic
cavalry whose loyalties depended on feudal bonds or alliances. Several
medieval kings, such as Louis IX in France, also gained solid reputations as
law givers, which allowed a gradual centralization of legal codes and court
systems. Rediscovery of Roman law in countries like France encouraged this
centralization effort.
Feudal monarchy was always a delicately balanced institution, of which
the central government formed only one of the key ingredients. The power of
the Church served to check royal ambitions. As we have seen, the Church could
often win in a clash with the state by excommunicating rulers and thus
threatening to turn the loyalties of the population against them. Although the
Church entered a period of decline at the end of the Middle Ages, the
principle was rather clearly established that there were areas of belief and
morality not open to manipulation by the state. And during most of the Middle
Ages, the sheer authority of church organization and religious doctrine made
this limitation on royal power a telling reality.
The second limitation on the royal families came from the traditions of
feudalism and from the landed aristocracy as a powerful class. Aristocrats
tended to resist too much monarchical control in the West, and they had the
strength to make their objections heard. These aristocrats, even when vassals
of the king, had their own economic base and their own military force -
sometimes, in the case of great nobles, they had an army greater than that of
the king. The growth of the monarchy cut into aristocratic power, but this led
to new statements of the limits of kings. In 1215 the unpopular English king
John faced opposition to his taxation measures from an alliance of nobles,
townspeople, and church officials. Defeated in his war with France and then
forced down by the leading English lords, John was forced to sign the Great
Charter, or Magna Carta, which confirmed basically feudal rights against
monarchical claims. John promised to observe restraint in his dealings with
the nobles and the Church, agreeing for example not to institute new taxes
without the lords’ permission or to appoint bishops without the Church’s
permission. A few modern-sounding references to general rights of the English
people against the state that were included in Magna Carta largely served to
show where the feudal idea of mutual limits and obligations between rulers and
ruled could later expand.
This same feudal balance led, late in the 13th century, to the creation
of parliaments as bodies representing not individual voters but privileged
groups such as the nobles and the Church. The first full English parliament
convened in 1265, with the House of Lords representing the nobles and the
church hierarchy, and the Commons made up of elected representatives from
wealthy citizens of the towns. The parliament institutionalized the feudal
principle that monarchs should consult with their vassals. In particular,
parliaments gained the right to rule on any proposed changes in taxation;
through this power, they could also advise the crown on other policy issues.
While the parliamentary tradition became strongest in England, similar
institutions arose in France, Spain, and several of the regional governments
in Germany. Here too, parliaments represented the key estates: Church, nobles,
and urban leaders. They were not widely elected.
Feudal government was not modern government. People had rights according
to the estate into which they were born; there was no general concept of
citizenship and no democracy. Thus parliaments represented only a minority,
and even this minority only in terms of the three or four estates voting as
units (nobles, clergy, urban merchants, and sometimes wealthy peasants), not
some generalized collection of voters. Still, by creating a concept of limited
government and some hint of representative institutions, Western feudal
monarchy produced the beginnings of a distinctive political tradition. This
tradition differed from the political results of Japanese feudalism, which
emphasized group loyalty more than checks on central power.
During the postclassical period, a key result of the establishment of
feudal monarchy was a comparatively weak central core; although several
monarchies gained ground steadily, they wielded very few general powers. This
would change, as kings attained far more extensive powers in military affairs,
cultural patronage, and the like. However, some solid remnants of medieval
traditions, embodied in institutions like parliaments and ideas like the
separation between God’s authority and state power, would define a basic
thread in the Western political process even in the later 20th century.
