Comparison of Two Medieval Theocracies - Essay Example

of God, of the World A comparative look at the theocratic governmental systems of Arabia and Europe during the Middle Ages Though there’sbeen much recent conversation centered around Middle Eastern theocracy, there can be little doubt that the golden age of religious-based government occurred during the Middle Ages. As the Christian church shaped and dominated the political structure of Western Europe, so too did the Islamic faith help to create the government and political structure in the East. For the first — and only — time in recorded history, the major powers of the world were guided by religious zeal rather than military prowess or economic ends. Both Christianity and Islam achieved status not just as state supported religions but as strong political entities in their own rights. Yet though both cultures developed theocratic systems of government during the medieval period, we will see that they came to that system of government through very different means and enacted quite different measures to secure and maintain that system. First, though, we should consider the nature of theocracy itself. In a theocratic government, religion forms the basis for political decisions. Government leadership and religious leadership are synonymous, since faith in the governing religion is a prerequisite to political power. Religious texts and tenets provide the backbone for civil law and government. Those members of a theocratic society who do not espouse the prevailing faith may be disenfranchised at best and persecuted at worst. Such was the case when Christianity became the prevailing religion in Western Europe during the Middle Ages — an ironic development since Christians themselves had been a persecuted class in the Roman Empire from the time of Nero (54-68) until the emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity in the early 300s (Tierney). The dramatic power shift led to the most significant power struggle of the medieval period in Europe: the uneasy problem of church and state. Constantine had brought the church to a position of previously unimagined power, but in return, he expected the unwavering alliance of the church — in matters of faith as well as matters of government, as the great debate over the Arian and Nicene faiths in the 300s demonstrated. The challenge was that Christianity had to win over strong, existing systems of government and people whose religious were as sophisticated and compelling (and sometimes more fun) than Christianity. How could a theocracy come to bear in a system of existing governments? The church was inventive — it assimilated pagan traditions to make its asceticism more palatable, creating convenient saints whose holy days corresponded with favored pagan holidays and whose attributes mirrored those of pagan deities. (Saint Brigid, in Ireland, is a good example of this; she has many elements of the Celtic goddess, who had Brigid as one of her names.) But it could not have succeeded in its theocratic efforts without the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-440). Augustine combined the philosophical sophistication of Plato with religious zeal to write City of God. In it, he explained that there were two governments ruling the lives of men: the City of the World, in which kings ruled, laws were passed and taxes paid, and the City of God, in which people’s hearts and lives were set on heaven. Though Augustine didn’t blatantly attack secular government or identify his City of God with the church, he set up the framework of western theocracy that would survive most of the Middle Ages. Kings ruled physical kingdoms, but God ruled even kings — and the church was the hand and voice of God on earth. People’s first loyalty was to God, not to the king, though as long as the king was obeying God’s law, his people should obey him. And the church was there to say when the king stopped obeying God’s law. It was a brilliant solution to the problem of church and state, and its effects reverberate through the western world to this day. Islam emerged in a different environment entirely. Before the emergence of Islam, there was no real government in the Islamic world at all — Brian Tierney describes Arabia before the seventh century as “a sort of no-man’s land between the Byzantine and Persian empires” (123). The nomadic tribes who made their homes there were anarchistic and unsettled. There was no existing power structure with which to contend. The country was ripe for unification, and because the man who would unite them had had a revelatory religious experience, the unification was a religious one. Mohammed (ca. 570-632) made no distinction between the religious and the political: To be a faithful Muslim, one must be faithful to Mohammed (Tierney 125). And because one of the central tenets of Islam as Mohammed formulated it was a willingness to fight for the faith and because Mohammed proved to be an excellent military leader in addition to an inspired prophet, it was not hard for Mohammed to spread Islam through Arabia. Still, it does not do Mohammed justice to suggest that it was strength alone that swayed the Arab world toward theocracy. Though the small tribal and city leaders might have resented Mohammed’s preaching, most of the ordinary people welcomed it (Stewart). The religion was appealing: “more sophisticated and satisfying than their own local cults,” says Tierney (125). Islam put all faithful into the same boat, regardless of class or societal position. Its emphasis on mercy and justice, kindness and charity to the poor and weak, and careful rules about diet and behavior must have seemed like an oasis of reason and peace in the sea of anarchy that was 700s Arabia. Before Mohammed’s death, all the tribes of central Arabia came together to accept Islam as their common faith. In doing so, they also accepted Islam as their political center, and unlike the Christian church in Europe, Islam did not have to weave its theocracy into existing political structure. It was able to manifest itself from the ground up, so that Mohammed was not just the prophet of Allah, he was also the first leader of the united Arabic nation (Tierney). At his side were the merchants of Mecca, a small oligarchy of economic strength in Arabia who quickly applied their capitalist zeal toward religious faith. The revelations of Mohammed became the political as well as the religious basis for Islamic society. The legislation of government, or shari’a, essentially equated the principles of religious life with the principles of social life: The first and primary source for law making and judgment was the Koran. Morality and legality were intrinsically intertwined. After Mohammed’s death, the theocratic system was already so securely in place that it continued with the rule of caliphs, or deputies, who carried on the tradition of church as state for the Arabic people. As you can see, the emergence of the Christian theocracy and the Muslim theocracy differed by necessity: Because the Christians had to contend with an existing political structure, they drew a distinction between the religious and the merely political (Stewart). It was a distinction that ultimately allowed them to become the spiritual rulers of the Western world, guarding their power with the threat of holy war and excommunication. Islamic theocracy, on the other hand, was as holistic as Christianity was divisive. The political structure of Islam did not have to subvert the existing government but to create it, basing its legislative and judicial principles directly on religious dogma. Both Christianity and Islam, however, suffered from the same inevitable fact of human existence: Where there is power, there will be corruption. By the late medieval period, the Christian church had become riddled with corruption and leadership that valued political power over religious zeal. Martin Luther’s Reformation was the inevitable response to theocratic failure: The political had replaced the religious, effectively ending the theocratic rule. The power struggles in Islam led to in-fighting and divisiveness among the various Arabic states, as disagreement arose over who was best suited to lead the religious and political future of Arabia. WORKS CITED Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Stewart, Desmond. Early Islam. New York: Time-Life Books, 1967. Tierney, Brian. The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Tierney, Brian and Sidney Painter. Western Europe in the Middle Ages: 300-1475. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992. Yale, William. The Near East: A Modern History. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1958. Read More