This ancient view of human nature as flawed and conflicted continued to dominate Western thought and culture until relatively recently when Rousseau (1712–1778) and other Romantics rejected the notion of original sin, and an alternative framework was given attention. Interestingly, in Augustine’s own time, there were other religions and Christian sects that held a much more optimistic view of human nature, but Augustine’s views held sway.

Catholic Papacy

Sin by Franz von Stuck (1893)

A formative power, at first religious and in time also secular, the Bishop of Rome came to consolidate temporal political power on the Italian peninsula and to gain great influence over the affairs of Western Christianity and politics.

A note: When Constantine moved the capital of the Eastern empire to Byzantium (renaming is Constantinople) he gave the Lateran Palace in Rome to the Pope. Constantinople was later renamed Istanbul in 1930 under the Republic of Turkey.

The Bishop of Rome, as the supreme pontiff, or the Pope, over time and by virtue of a gift from the Carolingian king Pepin, received territories that previously belonged to the Lombard tribes that had threatened to attack Rome. This was repeated when Pepin’s son Charlemagne granted him more extensive territories, the start of the Papal States on the Italian peninsula.

The Roman Bishop consolidated power and with the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III , the Papacy claimed authority, as stated in the “Dictatus” of Pope Gregory VII to the effect that:

• The Pope’s name is the chief name in the world.
• The Pope alone may appoint and depose bishops.
• The Pope’s decision cannot be questioned, and he alone can annul the decisions of men.
• The Pope can depose emperors. (Henderson, 1910, pp. 366–367)

As head of the Papal States, the Pope commanded an army and wielded temporal power throughout Italy and ultimately authority throughout the Empire. This position reached its height between the 11th and 14th centuries, when it could be said that its power was nearly limitless.

As would be expected, the authority of the Roman Pope dominated religious matters and governed all matters of faith. This entailed determining what orthodox belief (orthodoxy) was as well as practice (orthopraxis).

Crusades

A series of military campaigns was organized among Western Christian powers to secure the place of “true” Christian faith within Europe’s boundaries as well as beyond in the Holy Land. This latter effort was to reclaim Jerusalem and other areas of the Middle East from the control of Muslim rulers. Between 1095 CE and 1270 CE, eight major campaigns were led in this cause. While initially successful, by 1291 CE, the Crusader states in the Middle East were overtaken and eventually controlled by the Mamluk Sultanate.

Closer to its European home base, crusading was more successful in defeating a number of Papal religious foes. Crusades were directed against European Wend paganism in the Baltic States (1147 CE), against the Cathar “heretics” who espoused an alternate form of Christianity in the southern French region of Langeudoc (1209 CE–1229 CE), as well as against Muslim Moors in the Iberian peninsula (now Spain) over a protracted 700-year period (ca 711 CE–1491 CE). These efforts involved brutally bloody campaigns and at times genocide.

The ongoing crusades vilified Muslims as the archenemy of Christendom while Jews were blamed for practicing usury (charging interest)—even though the Church had defined that financial role for them through official policy. Jews were expelled from communities and entire countries. Pagan practices had now either been stamped out or Christianized, and the Church held even more power over people’s daily lives (Cartwright, 2018; Mark, 2019).

In its efforts to gain supremacy of regional secular power and monopoly over matters of faith, the Papacy and secular allies engaged in warfare to enrich themselves, strengthen the European royal houses, secure territory, ensure pilgrim safety to the Holy Land, improve military weaponry and techniques of warfare, and open up new trade routes and markets, and in so doing expanded the worldview and imaginations of those who had traveled far from home and seen a different world.

A sense of European identity was formed through this domination, but at the cost of bringing devastation and death to millions, spreading the reach of plague, and driving deeper divisions among orthodox Christians and others (Jews, Muslims, and heterodox Christians). To this day, the memory of the xenophobia, atrocity, and prejudice are a lingering legacy in our world, spawning literature, legends, and myths such as “conversion by the sword,” chivalric and heroic knight tales, and fear of the barbarian hordes.

Through the prolonged history of Crusader warfare, the Byzantine Empire was destroyed, and the popes in Rome became the de facto leaders of the Christian world. A crusade, as the instrument of power and conquest, would continue as exploration of the New World in the 15th century. Conquering by the cross lived on as a noble and sacred task bringing exploration, colonial control and enrichment to white Europeans. At the same time, it brought new diseases along with cultural and population genocide to the indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America.

Magna Carta 1215

Engraved facsimile of the original text of the Magna Carta, surrounded by a series of 25 coats of hand-coloured arms of the Barons, panel at foot containing notes and a represenation (hand-coloured) of the remains of King John’s Great Seal, all panels surrounded by oak leaf and acorn borders. 

European royals, who ascended by birth, stealth, or brutality to their kingdom’s thrones, looked on themselves as the Lord’s “anointed.” The “divine right of kings” assured that their word was absolute law and their authority unchallenged, or nearly so, papal authority notwithstanding.

Even as kings were challenging the papal authority, a lesser class of nobles was beginning to challenge the kings. The signing of the Magna Carta in England was the significant case study of the medieval period for the challenging of the power of the king and the rise of a lesser social class of nobles and barons as participants in kingdom power politics,

The Magna Carta, of which four original charters survive to the present, represents concessions extracted from a reluctant King John in Britain. He never intended to abide by them, whether in matters of 13th-century legal principles or more mundane matters as to the regulation of fish traps along the Thames river. It was never intended to result in legal precedent, but it lasted some 800 years, influencing legal codes the world over. It sought to pin down a ruthless ruler who was at serious odds with a small group of wealthy and violent noble subjects (McKechnie, 1958).

With the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the offended barons sought in writing to gain redress for longstanding grievances, rights and royal obligations long neglected. After the Magna Carta was signed (actually sealed with the king’s seal) at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, King John was compelled to grant the nobles certain rights and privileges. Having done so, the king, with backup from the Pope, immediately called the sordid document “shameful and demeaning . . . illegal and unjust” (McKechnie, 1958).

Since the nobles were not dissuaded by the Pope’s threats of their burning in hell, a full-blown civil war ensued. King John died from dysentery more than a year later. Although it was not apparent at the time, the nobles prevailed. From the long view of history, the Magna Carta and its principles of legal rights were exported to the New World and beyond, serving as a starting point in the narrative of democracy, individual rights, and freedom under law (McKechnie, 1958).

The necessity to create law codes, even for the highest political authority of the land, reinforced the view that human nature is corruptible and in need of constraints to ensure that no one in the land, not even the king, could abuse the power of their authority without consequences and repercussions. Class struggle did not begin with the signing of the Magna Carta. This experience, however, was a milestone in class conflict in English society and beyond.