"The Christian Church and the Roman Empire had their birth about the same time,
and have borne throughout a singular relation to each other, whether of
antagonism or alliance. The Son of God took the flesh to work out His Father's
will on earth, when the heir of the first Caesar had fully established the
system of Julius, and gathered every civilised nation under one dominion. Every
secular capacity, all the strength and splendour of this world - material
enjoyment, despotic ambition, democratic aspiration - had summed themselves up
in imperialism, just when every lofty longing and noble faculty of the soul
found a divine quickening, a full expression and satisfaction in Christianity.
The kingdom not of this world was set up in the world just as the kingdom of
this world had attained its fullest, widest, and most glaring manifestation. The
two great powers soon discovered and displayed their natural antagonism. The
Roman Empire - the unwitting helper and unfolder of the Christian Church by the
destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Hebrew polity - erelong
recognised an adversary in that world-renouncing and self-immolating society,
and singled it out for destruction. After a combat of three centuries, the
mightier power prevailed ; the Empire held out its hand to the Church ;
imperialism accepted Christianity. When the two foes became friends, each had
somewhat degenerated. The kingdom of this world was waxing weak ; the kingdom
not of this world was losing power. The Church, enfeebled as a divine
ministrant, was becoming stronger as a secular society, and friendly connection
with the Empire served to render the Church still more imperial… The weakness of
the falling Empire added to her worldly strength. Too feeble and corrupt to
maintain itself in life, it had strength to impart its peculiarities to its
nobler intimate. The dying Empire clung close to the Church and wrought
transformingly upon her. Pagan Rome did not perish without imparting an
idolatrous tincture to her vanquisher. Imperial Rome did not fall without
bequeathing her spirit and power, her method and organisation, to her ally ; and
both at length reappeared with remarkable exactitude in papal Rome… The dignity
of the imperial city gave some prominence to the head of the Christian community
there ; and the fall of the Western Empire (476) left the Roman bishop the
greatest personage in the chief city of the world. The barbarians beheld in the
somewhat secularised Church the representative of the faith which most of them
professed, and the representative of the empire for which they retained some
reverence even while subverting it. She impressed them at once with a sense of
her earthly majesty, with a feeling of her spiritual power. Of this twofold
impression the Roman bishop had the chief benefit. The foremost dweller in the
city of the Caesars, he grew every day greater… As the clergy were becoming
priests, the bishops were becoming lords… the Christian Church became a kingdom
of this world, its doctrines a mass of mingled truths and fables, its worship a
heap of ceremonies, its table an altar, its ministry a sacrificing priesthood,
its bishops prelates, and the bishop of Rome sovereign pontiff. " (1)
Three points need to be qualified in this panoramic account of the beginnings of
the popedom, which serves as an introduction to the examination of J. Evola's
views on the relations between the Empire and the Church and on matters
pertinent to these.
The first is pivotal to a correct understanding of what made the connection
between the Empire and the Church possible in the first centuries of this era :
the common racial origin of the emperors - who, from Septimius Severus (193-198)
onwards, were, if not of Afro-Asiatic stock, at least of non Roman descent, as
were, according to Tacitus, most knights and senators as early as in Nero's days
- and of most of the Church leaders - fathers - of that time. The "idolatrous
tincture" pagan Rome imparted "to her vanquisher" as it died out originated in
the oriental religions which had infiltrated and triumphed in Rome, bringing
about the complete destruction of the mos maiorum ; "the western invasion of the
mystery cults is hardly a miraculous conversion of the even-tempered,
practical-minded Indo-European to an orgiastic emotionalism foreign to his
nature. These religions came with their peoples, and so far as they gained new
converts, they attracted for the most part people of Oriental extraction who had
temporarily fallen away from native ways in the western world." (2)
Secondly, there is no need to refer to Gibbon's work to gather evidence that the
non- and anti-Aryan of early substance of Christianity, by sapping Roman
political and spiritual values, by acting, from the Seven hills, as a magnet for
myriads of Semites, was not foreign to the decline and fall, nor to the
caricatural character of the so-called Eastern empire. In Byzantium, "… the
Christian idea (in those concepts in which the supernatural was emphasized)
seemed to have become absorbed by the Roman idea in forms that again elevated
the imperial idea to new heights, even though the tradition of this idea, found
in the center constituted by the `eternal' city, had by then decayed... The
Byzantine imperial idea displayed a high degree of traditional spirit, at least
theoretically... The empire once again was sacrum and its pax had a supernatural
meaning. And yet, even more so than during the Roman decadence, all this
remained a symbol carried by chaotic and murky forces, since the ethnic
substance was characterized, much more so than in the previous imperial Roman
cycle, by demon worship, anarchy, and the principle of undying restlessness
typical of the decadent and crepuscular Hellenic-Eastern world." (3) The
Imperial idea in its original Augustan form could not possibly be assumed
faithfully and even less be achieved by a clergy made up of representatives who,
like John Chrysostom, Nectarius, Cyriacus, to name but a few patriarchs of the
sixth century, were overwhelmingly, either of mixed birth, or Asian.
The third point relates to the fact that it is "With the gradual strengthening
of the power of the bishops, and a tendency on the part of some to look to Rome
as the hub of the Church, as well as capital of the empire," that "a
corresponding assertion by the bishop of Rome of his right to superintend the
other bishops would provide the substructure, the fundament of the institution
which would subsequently be known as the papacy." (4) Whether the words "Tu es
petrus" granted or not a superiority of power over the other apostles and
whether or not such putative superiority was meant to descend to Peter's
successors are theological issues which have no relevance from our point of
view. The bottom line is that the Petrine function had to be organised and
institutionalised before Christianity could actually attempt to compete with the
imperial authority and to supplant it. The edict of Milan (A.D. 313) issued by
the Mesian emperor Constantine, which went a step further than the edict of
toleration (A.D. 311) by the Illyrian emperor Galerius, paved the way for this
institutionalisation. "Under imperial protection, but with some notable
exceptions, the Catholic church expanded rapidly throughout this period of the
Roman Empire. It was an official act of Constantine in that same century,
however, that laid the foundation for the traditional Roman Catholic Church as
we know it, although it eventually separated from the Eastern or Greek Church.
By turning the imperial attention away from Rome and by moving the capital of
the empire from Rome to Byzantium (A.D. 330), Constantine left Rome to its
bishop.
Over the centuries, with persistent, but not unchallenged assertion of central
authority, the Roman bishop acquired the title of papa or pope, father of
fathers, father of bishops, and other secular and political titles. The
traditional concept of the papacy as the supreme hierarchical authority of the
Roman Catholic Church was well established in the early part of the Middle Ages.
The bishop of Rome particularly, because of the very lack of a strong political,
temporal authority in the West, stepped in to fill the void of authority, thus
strengthening the power of the Roman See even more. After the death of
Constantine, there continued a definite trend towards centralization with the
bishop of Rome assuming a dual role, not only as the ecclesiastical and
religious leader of the people, but also as a secular authority in matters
political and temporal." (5) "… from the hour when Constantine, in the language
of the Roman law, `Deo jubente,' by the command of God, translated the seat of
power to Constantinople, from that moment there never reigned in Rome a temporal
prince to whom the Bishops of Rome owed a permanent allegiance." (6)
It typically never occurred to R. Guenon, for whom "The distinction between the
spiritual power and the temporal power results from a rupture of the primordial
unity", "It was only at a later stage of development that this distinction was
to be transformed into opposition and rivalry, destroying the original harmony
and so making way for the struggle between the two powers, while the inferior
functions in their turn laid claim to supremacy, resulting finally into total
confusion, negation, and the overthrow of all hierarchy, " and "following their
divergence, the royal principle had to assume a position of dependence upon the
spiritual principle, allegedly the sole inheritor and proprietor of spiritual
legitimacy", (7) that the union of the spiritual and of the temporal in the
person of the Roman political leader as pontifex maximus, which the French
author was not afraid to describe as "an anomaly", going so far as to wonder
whether the "Roman tradition may not have a particular character that allows us
to consider this as something other than a mere usurpation" (8), does not,
contrary to his assumption, date back to the beginning of the Empire, but to the
early days of Rome ; it never crossed his mind that it was the legal
establishment of Christianity which introduced, confirmed, and, so to speak,
gave official recognition to the distinction of the spiritual power and the
temporal power in Rome. R. Guenon's error is entirely based on a total ignorance
of what religion and politics meant in ancient Rome and of the rationale behind
their indivisibility since the distant past in ancient Rome, as well as in
ancient Germany, where « By old custom, the head of a house was its priest as
well as judge and ruler", too. (9)
For the Church, it was basically a matter of dividing into two separate powers
what was seen previously as two indivisible aspects of one and the same
principle, of then opposing them dualistically while claiming to be the only
source and custodian of the highest one and striving to dispossess the
legitimate authority and bearer of both of the other, only to ultimately lay
claim to both. The self-legitimisation of this otherworldly ex-propriation, this
immaterial hold-up, is based on Matthew 22:21 and on Romans 13:2. If the formula
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" characterises a
dualistic view whereby human institutions and supernatural order are seen as
disconnected and as separate, "For there is no power but from God : and those
that are ordained of God." links together again human institutions and
supernatural order by a sleight of hand : if Caesar derives his power from God,
what one renders to Caesar is ultimately rendered to God.
For at least three reasons, it is important to trace the major episodes of the
strife between the Church and the Empire, which was started by the former.
First, it is important to show how dramatically detrimental it was for Europe in
leading to the weakening of the Western Empire and to the formation of the
Nation-State and in absorbing and wasting at times almost all the energies of
the European monarchs.
Then, it is also important to show that there has always been a more or less
latent, a more or less open, struggle between the popes and contemporary
political governments and historical figures with whom they came in contact, and
that, if the exhortation to "render unto Caesar" implies that there were times
when the popes felt obliged to conform to the will of the State, the study of
the history of the relations between the Church and the State demonstrates that
the opposite was true in most cases. The remark of F. de Coulanges, quoted in a
footnote to `Revolt against the Modern World' "that although Pepin, Charlemagne,
and Louis the Pious swore to `defend' the Church, we should not be deceived by
the meaning of this expression since in those days it had a different meaning
than it does today. To defend the Church meant, in the parlance and in the
mind-set of that period, to protect and exercise authority over her at the same
time. What was called `defence' was really a contract that implied the state of
dependence of the protected one, who was subjected to all the obligations the
language of those times conveyed in the word fides, including an oath of
allegiance to the ruler" - that remark does not carry much weight in the face of
historical reality, of the unrelenting attempts made by the Church from its
onset to undermine and to exercise authority, both on the plane of principles
and in the political field, over a power which it designated as `temporal' and
which acquiesced in this limiting and incapacitating appellation.
Meta-history - understood, not in a Hegelian, Spencerian or Marxist perspective,
but as an analysis of "the decisive forces and influences (,) often irreducible
to the simple human element, be it individual or collective", at work in past
events, causes, and leaders - is wishful thinking, when it does not rest on a
sound knowledge of history. (10) This is the third reason.
Sight will not be lost of Christian political thought, which stems from `the
City of God' and which, despite the numerous refinements and facelifts it
underwent over the centuries, remained faithful to Augustine of Hippo's core
tenets in this respect : "the intrinsic or metaphysical superiority of the
spiritual over the temporal ; the association of political power with sin and
with all that is ignoble or distasteful in human life ; the idea of man's
dependence upon Divine grace bestowed through the Church ; and the suggestion
that earthly princes should place themselves and their resources at the Church's
disposal." (11)
To substantiate this study, the substantive will be extracted from the essential
substance of the best works on the subject, that is to say, those works in which
the extremely rich material provided by history is presented clearly,
well-organised and rigorously composed, since, as to the main events which
marked the history of the struggle between the Empire and the Church, with the
exception of the coronation of Charles in 800, they are the subject of a certain
consensus among medievalists.
We will proceed, so to speak, by layers.