IV.II. The Middle Ages: The Feudality and the Hierarchy

The First Reaction is that of particular nationality against the universal sovereignty of the Franks. It appears indeed, at first sight, as if the Frank empire was divided by the mere choice of its sovereigns; but another consideration deserves attention, viz. that this division was popular, and was accordingly maintained by the peoples. It was, therefore, not a mere dynastic act — which might appear unwise, since the princes thereby weakened their own power — but a restoration of those distinct nationalities which had been held together by a connecting bond of irresistible might and the genius of a great man. Louis the Pious [Ic Dcbonnaire] son of Charlemagne, divided the empire among his three sons. But subsequently, by a second marriage, another son was born to him — Charles the Bald. As he wished to give him also an inheritance, wars and contentions arose be- .veen Louis and his other sons, whose already received portion would have to be diminished by such an arrangement. In the first instance, therefore, a private interest was involved in the contest; but that of the nations which composed the empire made the issue not indifferent to them. The western Franks had already identified themselves with the Gauls, and with them originated a reaction against the German Franks, as also at a later epoch one on the part of Italy against the Germans. By the treaty of Verdun, a.d. 843, a division of the empire among Charlemagne’s descendants took place; the whole Frank empire, some provinces excepted, was for a moment again united under Charles the Gross. It was, however, only for a short time that this weak prince was able to hold the vast empire together; it was broken up into many smaller sovereignties, which developed and maintined an independent position. These were the Kingdom of Italy, which was itself divided, the two Burgundian sovereignties — Upper Burgundy, of which the chief centres were Geneva and the convent of St. Maurice in Valaise, and Lower Burgundy between the Jura, the Mediterranean and the Rhone — Lorraine, between the Rhine and the Meuse, Normandy, and Brittany. France Proper was shut in between these sovereignties; and thus limited did Hugh Capet find it when he ascended the throne. Eastern Franconia, Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, Swabia, remained parts of the German Empire. Thus did the unity of the Frank monarchy fall to pieces. The internal arrangements of the Frank empire also suffered a gradual but total decay; and the first to disappear was the military organization. Soon after Charlemagne we see the Norsemen from various quarters making inroads into England, France and Germany. In England seven dynasties of Anglo-Saxon Kings were originally established, but in the year 827 Egbert united these sovereignties into a single kingdom. In the reign of his successor the Danes made very frequent invasions and pillaged the country. In Alfred the Great’s time they met with vigorous resistance, but subsequently the Danish King Canute conquered all England. The inroads of the Normans into France were contemporaneous with these events. They sailed up the Seine and the Loire in light boats, plundered the towns, pillaged the convents, and went off with their booty. They beleaguered Paris itself, and the Carlovingian Kings were reduced to the base necessity of purchasing a peace. In the same way they devastated the towns lying on the Elbe; and from the Rhine plundered Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, and made Lorraine tributary to them. The Diet of Worms, in 882, did indeed issue a general proclamation, summoning all subjects to rise in arms, but they were compelled to put up with a disgraceful composition. These storms came from the north and the west. The Eastern side of the empire suffered from the inroads of the Magyars. These barbarian peoples traversed the country in wagons, and laid waste the whole of Southern Germany. Through Bavaria, Swabia, and Switzerland they penetrated into the interior of France and reached Italy. The Saracens pressed forward from the South. Sicily had been long in their hands: they thence obtained a firm footing in Italy, menaced Rome — which diverted their attack by a composition— and were the terror of Piedmont and Provence.

Thus these three peoples invaded the empire from all sides in great masses, and in their desolating marches almost came into contact with each other. France was devastated by the Normans as far as the Jura; the Hungarians reached Switzerland, and the Saracens Valaise. Calling to mind that organization of the “Arriere-ban,” and considering it in juxtaposition with this miserable state of things, we cannot fail to be struck with the inefficiency of all those far-famed institutions, which at such a juncture ought to have shown themselves most effective. We might be inclined to regard the picture of the noble and rational constitution of the Frank monarchy under Charlemagne— exhibiting itself as strong, comprehensive, and well ordered, internally and externally — as a baseless figment. Yet it actually existed; the entire political system being held together only by the power, the greatness, the regal soul of this one man — not based on the spirit of the people — not having become a vital element in it. It was superficially induced — an a priori constitution like that which Napoleon gave to Spain, and which disappeared with the physical power that sustained it. That, on the contrary, which renders a constitution real, is that it exists as Objective Freedom — the Substantial form of volition— as duty and obligation acknowledged by the subjects themselves. But obligation was not yet recognized by the German Spirit, which hitherto showed itself only as “Heart” and subjective choice; for it there was as yet no subjectivity involving unity, but only a subjectivity conditioned by a careless superficial self-seeking. Thus that constitution was destitute of any firm bond; it had no objective support in subjectivity; for in fact no constitution was as yet possible.

This leads us to the Second Reaction — that of individuals against the authority of law. The capacity of appreciating legal order and the common weal is altogether absent, has no vital existence in the peoples themselves. The duties of every free citizen, the authority of the judge to give judicial decisions, that of the count of a province to hold his court, and interest in the laws as such, are no longer regarded as valid now that the strong hand from above ceases to hold the reins of sovereignty. The brilliant administration of Charlemagne had vanished without leaving a trace, and the immediate consequence was the general defencelessness of individuals. The need of protection is sure to be felt in some degree in every well-organized state: each citizen knows his rights and also knows that for the security of possession the social state is absolutely necessary. Barbarians have not yet attained this sense of need — the want of protection from others. They look upon it as a limitation of their freedom if their rights must be guaranteed them by others. Thus, therefore, the impulse towards a firm organization did not exist: men must first be placed in a defenceless condition, before they were sensible of the necessity of the organization of a State. The political edifice had to be reconstructed from the very foundations. The commonwealth as then organized had no vitality or firmness at all either in itself or in the minds of the people; and its weakness manifested itself in the fact that it was unable to give protection to its individual members. As observed above, the idea of duty was not present in the Spirit of the Germans; it had to be restored. In the first instance voli- 37° tion could only be arrested in its wayward career in reference to the merely external point of possession; and to make it feel the importance of the protection of the State, it had to be violently dislodged from its obtuseness and impelled by necessity to seek union and a social condition. Individuals were therefore obliged to consult for themselves by taking refuge with Individuals, and submitted to the authority of certain powerful persons, who constituted a private possession and personal sovereignty out of that authority which formerly belonged to the Commonwealth. As officers of the State, the counts did not meet with obedience from those committed to their charge, and they were as little desirous of it. Only for themselves did they covet it. They assumed to themselves the power of the State, and made the authority with which they had been intrusted as a beneficium, a heritable possession. As in earlier times the King or other magnates conferred fiefs on their vassals by way of rewards, now, conversely, the weaker and poorer surrendered their possessions to the strong, for the sake of gaining efficient protection. They committed their estates to a Lord, a Convent, an Abbot, a Bishop (feudum oblatum), and received them back, encumbered with feudal obligations to these superiors. Instead of freemen they became vassals — feudal dependants— and their possession a beneficium. This is the constitution of the Feudal System. “Feudum” is connected with “fides”; the fidelity implied in this case is a bond established on unjust principles, a relation that does indeed contemplate a legitimate object, but whose import is not a whit the less injustice; for the fidelity of vassals is not an obligation to the Commonwealth, but a private one — ipso facto therefore subject to the sway of chance, caprice, and violence. Universal injustice, universal lawlessness is reduced to a system of dependence on and obligation to individuals, so that the mere formal side of the matter, the mere fact of compact constitutes its sole connection with the principle of Right. — Since every man had to protect himself, the martial spirit, which in point of external defence seemed to have most ignominiously vanished, was reawakened; for torpidity was roused to action partly by extreme ill-usage, partly by the greed and ambition of individuals. The valor that now manifested itself, was displayed not on behalf of the State, but of private interests. In every district arose castles; fortresses were erected, and that for the defence of private property, and with a view to plunder the tyranny. In the way just mentioned, the political totality was ignored at those points where individual authority was established, among which the seats of bishops and archbishops deserve especial mention. The bishoprics had been freed from the jurisdiction of the judicial tribunals, and from the operations of the executive generally. The bishops had stewards on whom at their request the Emperors conferred the jurisdiction which the Counts had formerly exercised. Thus there were detached ecclesiastical domains — ecclesiastical districts which belonged to a saint (Germ. Weichbilder). Similar suzerainties of a secular kind were subsequently constituted. Both occupied the position of the previous Provinces [Gaue] or Counties [Grafschaften]. Only in a few towns where communities of freemen were independently strong enough to secure protection and safety, did relics of the ancient free constitution remain. With these exceptions the free communities entirely disappeared, and became subject to the prelates or to the Counts and Dukes, thenceforth known as seigneurs and princes. The imperial power was extolled in general terms, as something very great and exalted: the Emperor passed for the secular head of entire Christendom: but the more exalted the ideal dignity of the emperors, the more limited was it in reality. France derived extraordinary advantage from the fact that it entirely repudiated this baseless assumption, while in Germany the advance of political development was hindered by that pretence of power. The kings and emperors were no longer chiefs of the state, but of the princes, who were indeed their vassals, but possessed sovereignty and territorial lordships of their own. The whole social condition therefore, being founded on individual sovereignty, it might be supposed that the advance to a State would be possible only through the return of those individual sovereignties to an official relationship. But to accomplish this, a superior power would have been required, such as was not in existence; for the feudal lords themselves determined how far they were still dependent on the general constitution of the state. No authority of Law and Right is valid any longer; nothing but chance power — the crude caprice of particular as opposed to universally valid Right; and this struggles against equality of Rights and Laws. Inequality of political privileges — the allotment being the work of the purest haphazard — is the predominant feature. It is impossible that a Monarchy can arise from such a social condition through the subjugation of the several minor powers under the Chief of the State, as such. Reversely, the former were gradually transformed into Principalities [Fürstenthümer], and became united with the Principality of the Chief; thus enabling the authority of the king and of the state to assert itself. While, therefore, the bond of political unity was still wanting, the several seigneuries attained their development independently.

In France the dynasty of Charlemagne, like that of Clovis, became extinct through the weakness of the sovereigns who represented it. Their dominion was finally limited to the petty sovereignty of Laon; and the last of the Carlovingians, Duke Charles of Lorraine, who laid claim to the crown after the death of Louis V, was defeated and taken prisoner. The powerful Hugh Capet, Duke of France, was proclaimed king. The title of King, however, gave him no real power; his authority was based on his territorial possessions alone. At a later date, through purchase, marriage, and the dying out of families, the kings became possessed of many feudal domains; and their authority was frequently invoked as a protection against the oppressions of the nobles. The royal authority in France became heritable at an early date, because the fiefs were heritable; though at first the kings took the precaution to have their sons crowned during their lifetime. France was divided into many sovereignties: the Duchy of Guienne, the Earldom of Flanders, the Duchy of Gascony, the Earldom of Toulouse, the Duchy of Burgundy, the Earldom of Vermandois; Lorraine too had belonged to France for some time. Normandy had been ceded to the Normans by the kings of France, in order to secure a temporary repose from their incursions. From Normandy Duke William passed over into England and conquered it in the year 1066. Here he introduced a fully developed feudal constitution— a network which, to a great extent, encompasses England even at the present day. And thus the Dukes of Normandy confronted the comparatively feeble Kings of France with a power of no inconsiderable pretensions. — Germany was composed of the great duchies of Saxony, Swabia, Bavaria, Carinthia, Lorraine and Burgundy, the Margraviate of Thuringia, etc. with several bishoprics and archbishoprics. Each of those duchies again was divided into several fiefs, enjoying more or less independence. The emperor seems often to have united several duchies under his immediate sovereignty. The Emperor Henry III was, when he ascended the throne, lord of many large dukedoms; but he weakened his own power by enfeoffing them to others. Germany was radically a free nation, and had not, as France had, any dominant family as a central authority; it continued an elective empire. Its princes refused to surrender the privilege of choosing their sovereign for themselves; and at every new election they introduced new restrictive conditions, so that the imperial power was degraded to an empty shadow. — In Italy we find the same political condition. The German Emperors had pretensions to it: but their authority was valid only so far as they could support it by direct force of arms, and as the Italian cities and nobles deemed their own advantage to be promoted by submission. Italy was, like Germany, divided into many larger and smaller dukedoms, earldoms, bishoprics and seigneuries. The Pope had very little power, either in the North or in the South; which latter was long divided between the Lombards and the Greeks, until both were overcome by the Normans. — Spain maintained a contest with the Saracens, either defensive or victorious, through the whole mediaeval period, till the latter finally succumbed to the more matured power of Christian civilization.

Thus all Right vanished before individual Might; for equality of Rights and rational legislation, where the interests of the political Totality, of the State, are kept in view, had no existence.

The Third Reaction, noticed above, was that of the element of Universality against the Real World as split up into particularity. This reaction proceeded from below upwards — from that condition of isolated possession itself; and was then promoted chiefly by the church. A sense of the nothingness of its condition seized on the world as it were universally. In that condition of utter isolation, where only the unsanctioned might of individuals had any validity [where the State was non-existent,] men could find no repose, and Christendom was, so to speak, agitated by the tremor of an evil conscience. In the eleventh century, the fear of the approaching final judgment and the belief in the speedy dissolution of the world, spread through all Europe. This dismay of soul impelled men to the most irrational proceedings. Some bestowed the whole of their possessions on the Church, and passed their lives in continual penance; the majority dissipated their worldly all in riotous debauchery. The Church alone increased its riches by the hallucinations, through donations and bequests. — About the same time too, terrible famines swept away their victims: human flesh was sold in open market. During this state of things, lawlessness, brutal lust, the most barbarous caprice, deceit and cunning, were the prevailing moral features. Italy, the centre of Christendom, presented the most revolting aspect. Every virtue was alien to the times in question; consequently virtus had lost its proper meaning: in common use it denoted only violence and oppression, sometimes even libidinous outrage. This corrupt state of things affected the clergy equally with the laity. Their own advowees had made themselves masters of the ecclesiastical estates intrusted to their keeping, and lived on them quite at their own pleasure, restricting the monks and clergy to a scanty pittance. Monasteries that refused to accept advowees were compelled to do so; the neighboring lords taking the office upon themselves or giving it to their sons. Only bishops and abbots maintained themselves in possession, being able to protect themselves partly by their own power, partly by means of their retainers; since they were, for the most part, of noble families.

The bishoprics being secular fiefs, their occupants were bound to the performance of imperial and feudal service. The investiture of the bishops belonged to the sovereigns, and it was their interest that these ecclesiastics should be attached to them. Whoever desired a bishopric, therefore, had to make application to the king; and thus a regular trade was carried on in bishoprics and abbacies. Usurers who had lent money to the sovereign, received compensation by the bestowal of the dignities in question; the worst of men thus came into possession of spiritual offices. There could be no question that the clergy ought to have been chosen by the religious community, and there were always influential persons who had the right of electing them; but the king compelled them to yield to his orders. Nor did the Papal dignity fare any better. Through a long course of years the Counts of Tusculum near Rome conferred it on members of their own family, or on persons to whom they had sold it for large sums of money. The state of things became at last so intolerable, that laymen as well as ecclesiastics of energetic character opposed its continuance. The Emperor Henry III put an end to the strife of factions, by nominating the Popes himself, and supporting them by his authority in defiance of the opposition of the Roman nobility. Pope Nicholas II decided that the Popes should be chosen by the Cardinals; but as the latter partly belonged to dominant families, similar contests of factions continued to accompany their election. Gregory VII (already famous as Cardinal Hildebrand) sought to secure the independence of the church in this frightful condition of things, by two measures especially. First, he enforced the celibacy of the clergy. From the earliest times, it must be observed, the opinion had prevailed that it was commendable and desirable for the clergy to remain unmarried. Yet the annalists and chroniclers inform us that this requirement was but indifferently complied with. Nicholas II had indeed pronounced the married clergy to be a new sect; but Gregory VII proceeded to enforce the restriction with extraordinary energy, excommunicating all the married clergy and all laymen who should hear mass when they officiated. In this way the ecclesiastical body was shut up within itself and excluded from the morality of the State. — His second measure was directed against simony, i.e. the sale of or arbitrary appointment to bishoprics and to the Papal See itself. Ecclesiastical offices were thenceforth to be filled by the clergy, who were capable of administering them; an arrangement which necessarily brought the ecclesiastical body into violent collision with secular seigneurs.

These were the two grand measures by which Gregory purposed to emancipate the Church from its condition of dependence and exposure to secular violence. But Gregory made still further demands on the secular power. The transference of benefices to a new incumbent was to receive validity simply in virtue of his ordination by his ecclesiastical superior, and the Pope was to have exclusive control over the vast property of the ecclesiastical community. The Church as a divinely constituted power, laid claim to supremacy over secular authority — founding that claim on the abstract principle that the Divine is superior to the Secular. The Emperor at his coronation — a ceremony which only the Pope could perform — was obliged to promise upon oath that he would always be obedient to the Pope and the Church. Whole countries and states, such as Naples, Portugal, England and Ireland came into a formal relation of vassalage to the Papal chair.

Thus the Church attained an independent position: the Bishops convoked synods in the various countries, and in these convocations the clergy found a permanent centre of unity and support. In this way the Church attained the most influential position in secular affairs. It arrogated to itself the award of princely crowns, and assumed the part of mediator between sovereign powers in war and peace. The contingencies which particularly favored such interventions on the part of the Church were the marriages of princes. It frequently happened that princes wished to be divorced from their wives; but for such a step they needed the permission of the Church. The latter did not let slip the opportunity of insisting upon the fulfilment of demands that might have been otherwise urged in vain, and thence advanced till it had obtained universal influence. In the chaotic state of the community generally, the intervention of the authority of the Church was felt as a necessity. By the introduction of the “Truce of God,” feuds and private revenge were suspended for at least certain days in the week, or even for entire weeks; and the Church maintained this armistice by the use of all its ghostly appliances of excommunication, interdict and other threats and penalties. The secular possessions of the Church brought it however into a relation to other secular princes and lords, which was alien to its proper nature; it constituted a formidable secular power in contraposition to them, and thus formed in the first instance a centre of opposition against violence and arbitrary’ wrong. It withstood especially the attacks upon the ecclesiastical foundations — the secular lordships of the Bishops; and on occasion of opposition on the part of vassals to the violence and caprice of princes, the former had the support of the Pope. But in these proceedings the Church brought to bear against opponents only a force and arbitrary resolve of the same kind as their own, and mixed up its secular interest with its interest as an ecclesiastical, i.e. a divinely substantial power. Sovereigns and peoples were by no means incapable of discriminating between the two, or of recognizing the worldly aims that were apt to intrude as motives for ecclesiastical intervention. They therefore stood by the Church as far as they deemed it their interest to do so; otherwise they showed no great dread of excommunication or other ghostly terrors. Italy was the country where the authority of the Popes was least respected; and the worst usage they experienced was from the Romans themselves. Thus what the Popes acquired in point of land and wealth and direct sovereignty, they lost in influence and consideration.

We have then to probe to its depths the spiritual element in the Church — the form of its power. The essence of the Christian principle has already been unfolded; it is the principle of Mediation. Man realizes his Spiritual essence only when he conquers the Natural that attaches to him. This conquest is possible only on the supposition that the human and the divine nature are essentially one, and that Man, so far as he is Spirit, also possesses the essentiality and substantiality that belong to the idea of Deity. The condition of the mediation in question is the consciousness of this unity; and the intuition of this unity was given to man in Christ. The object to be attained is therefore, that man should lay hold on this consciousness, and that it should be continually excited in him. This was the design of the Mass: in the Host Christ is set forth as actually present; the piece of bread consecrated by the priest is the present God, subjected to human contemplation and ever and anon offered up. One feature of this representation is correct, inasmuch as the sacrifice of Christ is here regarded as an actual and eternal transaction, Christ being not a mere sensuous and single, but a completely universal, i.e. divine individuum; but on the other hand it involves the error of isolating the sensuous phase; for the Host is adored even apart from its being partaken of by the faithful, and the presence of Chrust is not exclusively limited mental vision and Spirit. Justly therefore did the Lutheran Reformation make this dogma an especial object of attack. Luther proclaimed the great doctrine that the Host had spiritual value and Christ was received only on the condition of faith in him; apart from this, the Host, he affirmed, was a mere external thing, possessed of no greater value than any other thing. But the Catholic falls down before the Host; and thus the merely outward has sanctity ascribed to it. The Holy as a mere thing has the character of externality; thus it is capable of being taken possession of by another to my exclusion: it may come into an alien hand, since the process of appropriating it is not one that takes place in Spirit, but is conditioned by its quality as an external object [Dingheit]. The highest of human blessings is in the hands of others. Here arises ipso facto a separation between those who possess this blessing and those who have to receive it from others — between the Clergy and the Laity. The laity as such are alien to the Divine. This is the absolute schism in which the Church in the Middle Ages was involved: it arose from the recognition of the Holy as something external. The clergy imposed certain conditions, to which the laity must conform if they would be partakers of the Holy. The entire development of doctrine, spiritual insight and the knowledge of divine things, belonged exclusively to the Church: it has to ordain, and the laity have simply to believe: obedience is their duty — the obedience of faith, without insight on their part. This position of things rendered faith a matter of external legislation, and resulted in compulsion and the stake.

The generality of men are thus cut off from the Church; and on the same principle they are severed from the Holy in every form. For on the same principle as that by which the clergy are the medium between man on the one hand and God and Christ on the other hand, the layman cannot directly apply to the Divine Being in his prayers, but only through mediators — human beings who conciliate God for him, the Dead, the Perfect— Saints. Thus originated the adoration of the Saints, and with it that conglomerate of fables and falsities with which the Saints and their biographies have been invested. In the East the worship of images had early become popular, and after a lengthened struggle had triumphantly established itself: — an image, a picture, though sensuous, still appeals rather to the imagination ;but the coarser natures of the West desired something more immediate as the object of their contemplation, and thus arose the worship of relics. The consequence was a formal resurrection of the dead in the mediaeval period, every pious Christian wished to be in possession of such sacred earthly remains. Among the Saints the chief object of adoration was the Virgin Mary. She is certainly the beautiful concept of pure love — a mother’s love; but Spirit and Thought stand higher than even this; and in the worship of this conception that of God in Spirit was lost, and Christ himself was set aside. The element of mediation between God and man was thus apprehended and held as something external. Thus through the perversion of the principle of Freedom, absolute Slavery became the established law. The other aspects and relations of the spiritual life of Europe during this period flow from this principle. Knowledge, comprehension of religious doctrine, is something of which Spirit is judged incapable; it is the exclusive possession of a class, which has to determine the True. For man may not presume to stand in a direct relation to God; so that, as we said before, if he would apply to Him, he needs a mediator — a Saint. This view imports the denial of the essential unity of the Divine and Human; since man, as such, is declared incapable of recognizing the Divine and of approaching thereto. And while humanity is thus separated from the Supreme Good, no change of heart, as such, is insisted upon — for this would suppose that the unity of the Divine and the Human is to be found in man himself — but the terrors of Hell are exhibited to man in the most terrible colors, to induce him to escape from them, not by moral amendment, but in virtue of something external— the “means of grace.” These, however, are an arcanum to the laity; another — the “Confessor,” must furnish him with them. The individual has to confess — is bound to expose all the particulars of his life and conduct to the view of the Confessor — and then is informed what course he has to pursue to attain spiritual safety. Thus the Church took the place of Conscience: it put men in leading strings like children, and told them that man could not be freed from the torments which his sins had merited, by any amendment of his own moral condition, but by outward actions, opera operata — actions which were not the promptings of his own good-will, but performed by command of the ministers of the church; e.g. hearing mass, doing penance, going through a certain number of prayers, undertaking pilgrimages — actions which are unspiritual, stupefy the soul, and which are not only mere external ceremonies, but are such as can be even vicariously performed, The supererogatory works ascribed to the saints, could be purchased, and the spiritual advantage which they merited, secured to the purchaser. Thus was produced an utter derangement of all that is recognized as good and moral in the Christian Church: only external requirements are insisted upon, and these can be complied with in a merely external way. A condition the very reverse of Freedom is intruded into the principle of Freedom itself.

With this perversion is connected the absolute separation of the spiritual from the secular principle generally. There are two Divine Kingdoms — the intellectual in the heart and cogni-tive faculty, and the socially ethical whose element and sphere is secular existence. It is science alone that can comprehend the kingdom of God and the socially Moral world as one Idea, and that recognizes the fact that the course of Time has witnessed a process ever tending to the realization of this unity. But Piety [or Religious Feeling] as such, has nothing to do with the Secular: it may make its appearance in that sphere on a mission of mercy, but this stops short of a strict socially ethical connection with it — does not come up to the idea of Freedom. Religious Feeling is extraneous to History, and has no History; for History is rather the Empire of Spirit recognizing itself in its Subjective Freedom, as the economy of social morality [sittliches Reich] in the State. In the Middle Ages that embodying of the Divine in actual life was wanting; the antithesis was not harmonized. Social morality was represented as worthless, and that in its three most essential particulars.

One phase of social morality is that connected with Love — with the emotions called forth in the marriage relation. It is not proper to say that Celibacy is contrary to Nature, but that it is adverse to Social Morality [Sittlichkeit]. Marriage was indeed reckoned by the Church among the Sacraments; but notwithstanding the position thus assigned it, it was degraded, inasmuch as celibacy was reckoned as the more holy state. A second point of social morality is presented in Activity — the workman has to perform for his subsistence. His dignity consists in his depending entirely on his diligence, conduct, and intelligence, for the supply of his wants. In direct contravention of this principle. Pauperism, laziness, inactivity, was regarded as nobler: and the Immoral thus received the stamp of consecration. A third point of morality is, that obedience be rendered to the Moral and Rational, as an obedience to laws which I recognize as just; that it be not that blind and unconditional compliance which does not know what it is doing, and whose course of action is a mere groping about without clear consciousness or intelligence. But it was exactly this latter kind of obedience that passed for the most pleasing to God: a doctrine that exalts the obedience of Slavery, imposed by the arbitrary will of the Church, above the true obedience of Freedom.

In this way the three vows of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience turned out the very opposite of what they assumed to be, and in them all social morality was degraded. The Church was no longer a spiritual power, but an ecclesiastical one; and the relation which the secular world sustained to it was unspiritual, automatic, and destitute of independent insight and conviction. As the consequence of this, we see everywhere vice, utter absence of respect for conscience, shamelessness, and a distracted state of things, of which the entire history of the period is the picture in detail.

According to the above, the Church of the Middle Ages exhibits itself as a manifold Self-contradiction. For Subjective Spirit, although testifying of the Absolute, is at the same time limited and definitely existing Spirit, as Intelligence and Will. Its limitation begins in its taking up this distinctive position, and here consentaneously begins its contradictory and self-alienated phase; for that intelligence and will are not imbued with the Truth, which appears in relation to them as something given [posited ab extra]. This externality of the Absolute Object of comprehension affects the consciousness thus: — that the Absolute Object presents itself as a merely sensuous, external thing — common outward existence — and yet claims to be Absolute: in the mediaeval view of things this absolute demand is made upon Spirit. The second form of the contradiction in question has to do with the relation which the Church itself sustains. The true Spirit exists in man — is his Spirit; and the individual gives himself the certainty of this identity with the Absolute, in worship — the Church sustaining merely the relation of a teacher and directress of this worship. But here, on the contrary, we have an ecclesiastical body, like the Brahmins in India, in possession of the Truth — not indeed by birth, but in virtue of knowledge, teaching and training — yet with the proviso that this alone is not sufficient, an external form, an unspiritual title being judged essential to actual possession. This outward form is Ordination, whose nature is such that the consecration imparted inheres essentially like a sensuous quality in the individual, whatever be the character of his soul — be he irreligious, immoral, or absolutely ignorant. The third kind of contradiction is the Church itself, in its acquisition as an outward existence, of possessions and an enormous property — a state of things which, since that Church despises or professes to despise riches, is none other than a Lie.

And we found the State, during the mediaeval period, similarly involved in contradictions. We spoke above of an imperial rule, recognized as standing by the side of the Church and constituting its secular arm. But the power thus acknowledged is invalidated by the fact that the imperial dignity in question is an empty title, not regarded by the Emperor himself or by those who wish to make him the instrument of their ambitious views, as conferring solid authority on its possessor; for passion and physical force assume an independent position, and own no subjection to that merely abstract conception. But secondly, the bond of union which holds the Mediaeval State together, and which we call Fidelity, is left to the arbitrary choice of men’s disposition [Gemüth] which recognizes no objective duties. Consequently, this Fidelity is the most unfaithful thing possible. German Honor in the Middle Ages has become a proverb; but examined more closely as History exhibits it we find it a veritable Punica fides or Grceca fides; for the princes and vassals of the Emperor are true and honorable only to their selfish aims, individual advantage and passions, but utterly untrue to the Empire and the Emperor; because in “Fidelity” in the abstract, their subjective caprice receives a sanction, and the State is not organized as a moral totality. A third contradiction presents itself in the character of individuals, exhibiting, as they do on the one hand, piety — religious devotion, the most beautiful in outward aspect, and springing from the very depths of sincerity — and on the other hand a barbarous deficiency in point of intelligence and will. We find an acquaintance with abstract Truth, and yet the most uncult-ured, the rudest ideas of the Secular and the Spiritual: a trucu-lent delirium of passion and yet a Christian sanctity which renounces all that is worldly, and devotes itself entirely to holiness. So self-contradictory, so deceptive is this mediaeval period; and the polemical zeal with which its excellence is contended for, is one of the absurdities of our times. Primitive barbarism, rudeness of manners, and childish fancy are not revolting; they simply excite our pity. But the highest purity of soul defiled by the most horrible barbarity; the Truth, of which a knowledge has been acquired, degraded to a mere tool by falsehood and self-seeking; that which is most irrational, coarse and vile, established and strengthened by the religious sentiment — this is the most disgusting and revolting spectacle that was ever witnessed, and which only Philosophy can comprehend and so justify. For such an antithesis must arise in man’s consciousness of the Holy while this consciousness still remains primitive and immediate; and the profounder the truth to which Spirit comes into an implicit relation — while it has not yet become aware of its own presence in that profound truth — so much the more alien is it to itself in this its unknown form: but only as the result of this alienation does it attain its true harmonization.

We have then contemplated the Church as the reaction of the Spiritual against the secular life of the time; but this reaction is so conditioned, that it only subjects to itself that against which it reacts — does not reform it. While the Spiritual, repudiating its proper sphere of action, has been acquiring secular power, a secular sovereignty has also consolidated itself and attained a systematic development — the Feudal System. As through their isolation, men are reduced to a dependence on their individual power and might, every point in the world on which a human being can maintain his ground becomes an energetic one. While the Individual still remains destitute of the defence of laws and is protected only by his own exertion, life, activity and excitement everywhere manifest themselves. As men are certain of eternal salvation through the instrumentality of the Church, and to this end are bound to obey it only in its spiritual requirements, their ardor in the pursuit of worldly enjoyment increases, on the other hand, in inverse proportion to their fear of its producing any detriment to their spiritual weal; for the Church bestows indulgences, when required, for oppressive, violent and vicious actions of all kinds.

The period from the eleventh to the thirteenth century witnessed the rise of an impulse which developed itself in various forms. The inhabitants of various districts began to build enormous churches — Cathedrals, erected to contain the whole community. Architecture is always the first art, forming the inorganic phase, the domiciliation of the divinity; not till this is accomplished does Art attempt to exhibit to the worshippers the divinity himself — the Objective. Maritime commerce was carried on with vigor by the cities on the Italian, Spanish, and Flemish coasts, and this stimulated the productive industry of their citizens at home. The Sciences began in some degree to revive: the Scholastic Philosophy was in its glory. Schools for the study of law were founded at Bologna and other places, as also for that of medicine. It is on the rise and growing importance of the Towns, that all these creations depend as their main condition; a favorite subject of historical treatment in modern times. And the rise of such communities was greatly desiderated. For the Towns, like the Church, present themselves as reactions against feudal violence — as the earliest legally and regularly constituted power. Mention has already been made of the fact that the possessors of power compelled others to put themselves under their protection. Such centres of safety were castles [Burgen], churches and monasteries, round which were collected those who needed protection. These now became burghers [Burger], and entered into a cliental relation to the lords of such castles or to monastic bodies. Thus a firmly established community was formed in many places. Many cities and fortified places [Castelle] still existed in Italy, in the South of France, and in Germany on the Rhine, which dated their existence from the ancient Roman times, and which originally possessed municipal rights, but subsequently lost them under the rule of feudal governors [Vogte]. The citizens, like their rural neighbors, had been reduced to vassalage.

The principle of free possession however began to develop itself from the protective relation of feudal protection; i.e. freedom originated in its direct contrary. The feudal lords or great barons enjoyed, properly speaking, no free or absolute possession, any more than their dependents; they had unlimited power over the latter, but at the same time they also were vassals of princes higher and mightier than themselves, and to whom they were under engagements — which, it must be confessed, they did not fulfil except under compulsion. The ancient Germans had known of none other than free possession; but this principle had been perverted into its complete opposite, and now for the first time we behold the few feeble commencements of a reviving sense of freedom. Individuals brought into closer relation by the soil which they cultivated, formed among themselves a kind of union, confederation, or conjuratio. They agreed to be and to perform on their own behalf that which they had previously been and performed in the service of their feudal lord alone. Their first united undertaking was the erection of a tower in which a bell was suspended: the ringing of the bell was a signal for a general rendezvous, and the object of the union thus appointed was the formation of a kind of militia. This is followed by the institution of a municipal government, consisting of magistrates, jurors, consuls, and the establishment of a common treasury, the imposition of taxes, tolls, etc. Trenches are dug and walls built for the common defence, and the citizens are forbidden to erect fortresses for themselves individually. In such a community, handicrafts, as distinguished from agriculture, find their proper home. Artisans necessarily soon attained a superior position to that of the tillers of the ground, for the latter were forcibly driven to work; the former displayed activity really their own, and a corresponding diligence and interest in the result of their labors. Formerly artisans had been obliged to get permission from their liege lords to sell their work, and thus earn something for themselves: they were obliged to pay them a certain sum for this privilege of market, besides contributing a portion of their gains to the baronial exchequer. Those who had houses of their own were obliged to pay a considerable quit-rent for them; on all that was imported and exported, the nobility imposed large tolls, and for the security afforded to travellers they exacted safe-conduct money. When at a later date these communities became stronger, all such feudal rights were purchased from the nobles, or the cession of them compulsorily extorted: by degrees the towns secured an independent jurisdiction and likewise freed themselves from all taxes, tolls and rents. The burden which continued the longest was the obligation the towns were under to make provision for the Emperor and his whole retinue during his stay within their precincts, as also for seigneurs of inferior rank under the same circumstances. The trading class subsequently divided itself into guilds, to each of which were attached particular rights and obligations. The factions to which episcopal elections and other contingencies gave rise, very often promoted the attainment by the towns of the rights above-mentioned. As it would not infrequently happen that two rival bishops were elected to the same see, each one sought to draw the citizens into his own interest, by granting them privileges and freeing them from burdens. Subsequently arose many feuds with the clergy, the bishops and abbots. In some towns they maintained their position as lords of the municipality; in others the citizens got the upper hand, and obtained their freedom. Thus, e.g. Cologne threw off the yoke of its bishop; Mayence on the other hand remained subject. By degrees cities grew to be independent republics: first and foremost in Italy, then in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. They soon come to occupy a peculiar position with respect to the nobility. The latter united itself with the corporations of the towns, and constituted as e.g. in Berne, a particular guild. It soon assumed special powers in the corporations of the towns and attained a dominant position; but the citizens resisted the usurpation and secured the government to themselves. The rich citizens (populus crassus) now excluded the nobility from power. But in the same way as the party of the nobility was divided into factions — especially those of Ghibellines and Guelfs, of which the former favored the Emperor, the latter the Pope — that of the citizens also was rent in sunder by intestine strife. The victorious faction was accustomed to exclude its vanquished opponents from power. The patrician nobility which supplanted the feudal aristocracy, deprived the common people of all share in the conduct of the state, and thus proved itself no less oppressive than the original noblesse. The history of the cities presents us with a continual change of constitutions, according as one party among the citizens or the other — this faction or that, got the upper hand. Originally a select body of citizens chose the magistrates; but as in such elections the victorious faction always had the greatest influence, no other means of securing impartial functionaries was left, but the election of foreigners to the office of judge and podcsta. It also frequently happened that the cities chose foreign princes as supreme seigneurs, and intrusted them with the signoria. But all of these arrangements were only of short continuance; the princes soon misused their sovereignty to promote their own ambitious designs and to gratify their passions, and in a few years were once more deprived of their supremacy. — Thus the history of these cities presents on the one hand, in individual characters marked by the most terrible or the most admirable features, an astonishingly interesting picture; on the other hand it repels us by assuming, as it unavoidably does, the aspect of mere chronicles. In contemplating the restless and ever-varying impulses that agitate the very heart of these cities and the continual struggles of factions, we are astonished to see on the other side industry — commerce by land and sea — in the highest degree prosperous. It is the same principle of lively vigor, which, nourished by the internal excitement in question, produces this phenomenon.

We have contemplated the Church, which extended its power over all the sovereignties of the time, and the Cities, where a social organization on a basis of Right was first resuscitated, as powers reacting against the authority of princes and feudal lords. Against these two rising powers, there followed a reactionary movement of princely authority; the Emperor now enters on a struggle with the Pope and the cities. The Emperor is recognized as the apex of Christian, i.e. secular power, the Pope on the other hand as that of Ecclesiastical power, which had now however become as decidedly a secular dominion. In theory, it was not disputed that the Roman Emperor was the Head of Christendom — that he possessed the dominium mundi — that since all Christian states belonged to the Roman Empire, their princes owed him allegiance in all reasonable and equitable requirements. However satisfied the emperors themselves might be of the validity of this claim, they had too much good sense to attempt seriously to enforce it: but the empty title of Roman Emperor was a sufficient inducement to them to exert themselves to the utmost to acquire and maintain it in Italy. The Othos especially cherished the idea of the continuation of the old Roman empire, and were ever and anon summoning the German princes to join them in an expedition to Rome with a view to coronation there; — an undertaking in which they were often deserted by them and had to undergo the shame of a retreat. Equal disappointment was experienced by those Italians who hoped for deliverance at the hands of the Emperor from the ochlocracy that domineered over the cities, or from the violence of the feudal nobility in the country at large. The Italian princes who had invoked the presence of the Emperor and had promised him aid in asserting his claims, drew back and left him in the lurch; and those who had previously expected salvation for their country, then broke out into bitter complaints that their beautiful country was devastated by barbarians, their superior civilization trodden under foot, and that right and liberty, deserted by the Emperor, must also perish. Especially touching and deep are the lamentations and reproaches which Dante addresses to the Emperors.

The second complication with Italy was that struggle which contemporaneously with the former was sustained chiefly by the great Swabians — the house of Hohenstaufen — and whose object was to bring back the secular power of the Church, which had become independent, to its original dependence on the state. The Papal See was also a secular power and sovereignty, and the Emperor asserted the superior prerogative of choosing the Pope and investing him with his secular sovereignty. It was these rights of the State for which the Emperors contended. But to that secular power which they withstood, they were at the same time subject, in virtue of its spiritual pretensions: thus the contest was an interminable contradiction. Contradictory as the varying phases of the contest, in which reconciliation was ever alternating with renewed hostilities, was also the instrumentality employed in the struggle. For the power with which the Emperors made head against their enemy — the princes, their servants and subjects, were divided in their own minds, inasmuch as they were bound by the strongest ties of allegiance to the Emperor and to his enemy at one and the same time. The chief interest of the princes lay in that very assumption of independence in reference to the State, against which on the part of the Papal See the Emperor was contending; so that they were willing to stand by the Emperor in cases where the empty dignity of the imperial crown was impugned, or on some particular occasions — e.g. in a contest with the cities — but abandoned him when he aimed at seriously asserting his authority against the secular power of the clergy, or against other princes.

As, on the one hand, the German emperors sought to realize their title in Italy, so, on the other hand, Italy had its political centre in Germany. The interests of the two countries were thus linked together, and neither could gain political consolidation within itself. In the brilliant period of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, individuals of commanding character sustained the dignity of the throne; sovereigns like Frederick Barbarossa, in whom the imperial power manifested itself in its greatest majesty, and who by his personal qualities succeeded in attaching the subject princes to his interests. Yet brilliant as the history of the Hohenstaufen dynasty may appear, and stirring as might have been the contest with the Church, the former presents on the whole nothing more than the tragedy of this house itself, and the latter had no important result in the sphere of Spirit. The cities were indeed compelled to acknowledge the imperial authority, and their deputies swore to observe the decisions of the Roncalian Diet; but they kept their word no longer than they were compelled to do so. Their sense of obligation depended exclusively on the direct consciousness of a superior power ready to enforce it. It is said that when the Emperor Frederick I asked the deputies of the cities whether they had not sworn to the conditions of peace, they answered: “Yes, but not that we would observe them.” The result was that Frederick I at the Peace of Constance (1183) was obliged to concede to them a virtual independence; although he appended the stipulation, that in this concession their feudal obligations to the German Empire were understood to be reserved. The contest between the Emperors and the Popes regarding investi-tures was settled at the close of 1122 by Henry V and Pope Calixtus II on these terms: the Emperor was to invest with the sceptre; the Pope with the ring and crosier; the chapter were to elect the Bishops in the presence of the Emperor or of imperial commissioners; then the Emperor was to invest the Bishop as a secular feudatory with the temporalia, while the ecclesiastical investiture was reserved for the Pope. Thus the protracted contest between the secular and spiritual powers was at length set at rest.