Medieval Heresy & the Inquisition

Society had indeed two aspects—one that looked to things mundane and transient, the other that looked to things heavenly and eternal. To safeguard its earthly interests, the world had its secular rulers and administrators; to aid its spiritual life, it had as guides and mediators the sacred hierarchy. But the secular rulers, on the one hand, and the priesthood, on the other, were officers in the same polity. The secular authority of the Empire was in the days of Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged to be derived from the Pope by consecration; later, as in Dante, it was conceived as collateral with that of the Pope. But always the two authorities were regarded as essentially related. It is true that the reality never corresponded with the august theory, that the Respublica Christiana Original: "Respublica Christiana." The universal "Christian Republic" or commonwealth of Christendom. never was universal, that there were always those who disputed the authority of Emperor or Pontiff or both; worse still, that Christendom was distracted by bitter strife between Emperor and Pontiff. But always such warfare was regarded as domestic—not one between two different states, but between two officers in one state.

It is important to bear in mind that the conception of the universal church and empire was not regarded simply as an idea that the philosopher and the publicist wrote and disputed about, but as manifest in facts, which every eye could see and every mind realize. There actually existed an empire, an imperial crown and coronation; there actually existed a Holy See and a ministering priesthood. And the authority of the rulers of the universal state was not simply vague and theoretical; it was discernible in crusades, in pilgrimages, in the "Truce of God." A medieval movement of the Catholic Church that attempted to limit private warfare by specifying times when fighting was forbidden. Men realized themselves no doubt in an ever-increasing degree through the Middle Ages, national characteristics becoming more and more pronounced, as Englishmen, Frenchmen or Spaniards; but they also thought of themselves quite naturally as members together of the common society of Christendom.^1

^1 See O. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages (trans., with introd. by F. W. Maitland, 1900), p. 10.