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Meyer
and Medievalism
Editor:
Concerning Frank Meyer, I am still not convinced. Perhaps I can explain
why. It is a matter of his view of history, and the interpretation
that he gives to the medieval period, which is that the person emerged
in a meaningful way only through the failure of church and empire
to reestablish some cosmological unity. I find that I fundamentally
disagree with making as one of the two positive legacies of Christendom
its political and, eventually, spiritual breakdown. I acknowledge
that, in the same article, Mr. Meyer says very complimentary things
about the medieval philosophical tradition, but I believe his historical
argument outweighs this positive note. 
I dispute that the person had not already emerged well before
the dispute between church and empire. Except for very specific
doctrinal disputes, the presumption before the eleventh century
was one of an essential unity, though each authority had its own
sphere. It is not the cosmological unity that Mr. Meyer describes,
but it was different from the 'tension' that prevailed later. For
what it is worth, in medieval Catholic doctrine it was only through
the universal monarchy of the pope that the right of the people
to cast off tyrants was justified. In other words, there was still
the presumption of supreme power in both the political and spiritual
spheres (whether this is actually orthodox or not is somewhat beside
the point at the moment), but this presumption of unity nonetheless
lent credibility to arguments for liberty based in natural law.
Also, in law well before then, there were legal protections for
the person unique to the West already promulgated by Justinian,
and in Byzantium I believe that the person and the idea of the person,
did flourish in the midst of strong, complementary hierarchies of
church and empire. That is, perhaps, an unusual view, but I think
that it has some backing.
At the same time, it is noteworthy that one no less than Richard
Weaver regarded the separation of church and empire into rivals,
the full expression of this 'tension' between them, rather than
as their theoretical roles as complementary forces uniting Christendom,
as one of the great calamities of Western history and one of the
turning points in the great civilizational decline of the West,
whence the divisions that gradually encouraged, as he argued, the
dissent of Ockhamism and the greater calamity and dissolution of
the Reformation. I would suspect that Mr. Meyer would characterize
the Reformation in a rather different way. If the West was already
losing its earlier, original character by the eleventh century,
as Weaver saw it, then I can only assume that he and Mr. Meyer are
in basic disagreement about the definition of the West, in which
case I am probably much more in sympathy with Mr. Weaver's narrative.
This all relates to the debate over tradition in that Mr. Meyer's
story of the West, while coherent on its own terms, does seem to
see the source of the political and spiritual dissolution of Christendom
not simply as the reality of what occurred but the desirable process
that created space for the person, so that value of the medieval
and early modern Christian tradition seems to lie in large part
in its temporal failure. Connected to this historical argument,
I am supposing that there must be a hostility to hierarchy in the
assumption that the person only really emerges when hierarchical
orders fail. If that is correct, then this is antithetical to traditional
Christian doctrine of various confessions concerning the nature
of the human person, in which personality is restored and revealed
through hierarchical progression and a role within a hierarchy.
I hope you do not mind my dwelling on this subject, and I'd be glad
to read any comments you might have, but something from our exchanges
was still nagging me. Daniel Larison
The Editor Responds:
There are many issues raised here and our readers have probably
had more than enough of this debate. Much of the remaining differences
seem to be historical questions of fact. Mr. Larison notes there
was a tension between church and state, as Meyer put it, but Mr.
Larison sees a "different" tension. Yet, "separate
spheres" sounds more like Meyer's tension than a medieval "cosmological
unity." The pope's presumed authority to justify revolution
does not clarify the presumption of supreme power issue, since he
clearly did not actually have such a power, ever, as far as the
editor is aware. And the question of orthodoxy does seem to the
point rather than otherwise. The pope's authority was moral suasion,
except where his power could be exercised. He could excommunicate
but he could not enforce even that in this world. Again, it is historically
questionable whether the West was losing its "original character"
by the 11th Century. What was the original character--the radical
separation between church and state of the pre-Constantine period,
the relative state dominance of the Constantine empire period, the
following radical feudal decentralization of both church and state
until the 11th Century early beginnings of centralization (first,
of Europe in the face of the Muslim threat and, next, of national
state centralization in that wake), and, then, of the resulting
re-unification of church and state of the post-Reformation period
in the new nation-states, or what? Richard Weaver's concern could
as easily be seen as over the decline of what Meyer called the "tension,"
and the slide into the re-unification of power of state over church
within the several European nations starting in the 11th Century.
In Meyer, there is not an opposition to hierarchies, only to a single
hierarchy with all power in one place--which is why he liked the
medieval period that did divide power, but the United States even
more because it divided it more, in the interests of individuals
without being hostile to churches and communities. As Lord Acton
noted, England was the last place where medieval institutions survived,
long enough to transfer them to America (especially to the middle
colonies), before the rise of the state in Europe and its attempts
to destroy the tension.
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