Late antiquity and the early middle ages (312–1000)

Abstract

With the coming of Christianity to Rome, the character of Graeco-Roman political thought began to change. Christianity introduced a whole series of questions which were largely alien to classical thought, most obviously for our purposes here the whole question of the justice of the use of force as such. At the same time, the political collapse of the Western half of the Roman empire in the second half of the fifth century ce , together with the political and military longevity of the East – which was to survive as a vibrant political force at least until at least the shattering Byzantine defeat at the battle of Manzikert in 1071 and to survive as a presence until 1453, when Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks – led to ever-increasing plurality in political thought and practice. This was coupled, of course, with the rise and spread of new political and religious movements such as Islam (after the seventh century) which provided a very different context for political thought than the mix of Greek, Roman, and Christian ideas dominant in Western and Eastern Europe. However, classical – especially Greek – thought remained influential on all the major traditions – Christian, Jewish, and Islamic – of Europe and Asia Minor during this period (Lerner and Mahdi, 1963; Burns, 1988). This chapter will principally focus on the Christian and Islamic worlds, for the interpenetrating and intellectual crossover at this time was very strong and because these two faiths were dominant – though by no means, of course, monolithic – and we shall also refer to Judaic thinking from time to time (an excerpt from Maimonides' Logic is included to show how Judaic political thinking was classified at the time – see pp. 111–14 below).