Medieval Origins of the European State System: The Catholic Church as Midwife

TY - JOUR

T1 - Medieval Origins of the European State System

T2 - The Catholic Church as Midwife

AU - Møller, Jørgen

PY - 2021/9/1

Y1 - 2021/9/1

N2 - The received view in international relations (IR) is that the European multistate system was created when the medieval religious order broke down in the centuries following the Reformation. This view, which sees the medieval Catholic Church as a factor that hindered the advent of the multistate system, ignores a key insight of medieval historians, namely that the deeper historical precondition for the European multistate system was that the Church challenged the notions of empire and hegemony after the eleventh-century conflict of church and state. By mining this body of historiography, this paper shows how the end of the fusion of lay and religious authority in general and the Church's persistent interest in avoiding that one secular polity outmatched the others in particular contributed to the development of the European multistate system. These insights not only question dominant historiographic assumptions of IR, but may also be said to challenge the epistemological approaches of much of this scholarship.

AB - The received view in international relations (IR) is that the European multistate system was created when the medieval religious order broke down in the centuries following the Reformation. This view, which sees the medieval Catholic Church as a factor that hindered the advent of the multistate system, ignores a key insight of medieval historians, namely that the deeper historical precondition for the European multistate system was that the Church challenged the notions of empire and hegemony after the eleventh-century conflict of church and state. By mining this body of historiography, this paper shows how the end of the fusion of lay and religious authority in general and the Church's persistent interest in avoiding that one secular polity outmatched the others in particular contributed to the development of the European multistate system. These insights not only question dominant historiographic assumptions of IR, but may also be said to challenge the epistemological approaches of much of this scholarship.

KW - Catholic Church

KW - historiography

KW - multistate system

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114287851&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/isr/viaa091

DO - 10.1093/isr/viaa091

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1521-9488

VL - 23

SP - 914

EP - 932

JO - International Studies Review

JF - International Studies Review

IS - 3

ER -