The Making of Leviathan

Abstract

Ultimately, the theoretical innovations of the High Middle Ages cannot be understood simply in the terms of the specific issues that gave rise to them. For medieval thinkers what was important were the immediate problems they confronted: the relationship between regnum and sacerdotium, the supremacy of pope or emperor, or territorial monarch, and the locus of authority within the church or temporal polity. These issues, however, and the theoretical responses to them, were reflections of the much deeper social and political changes occurring within medieval society. In a host of ways new local political structures were emerging that influenced the development of late medieval thought. Concepts of consent may have been formally drawn from Roman law sources, but they were already inherent in the feudal contract itself, and fully developed at the end of the Middle Ages. Corporation theory, while also derived from Roman law, reflected at a deeper level the growing organicism of society beginning to articulate itself into guilds and other corporate structures. Most importantly, however, was the deterioration of feudalism and the corresponding growth of towns that were to play a crucial role in the emergence of the modern state. In this, a common historical pattern was repeated, for both the archaic and classical states were cities that became states.