World-Church (and it was the Church, before and more than the secular power, in the Middle Ages that had the attributes and majesty of 'the State'), or a World-State, Christian.
'Throughout the Middle Age,' it has been said,[1] 'and even for a while longer, the outward framework of all Political Doctrine consisted of the grandiose but narrow system of thoughts that had been reared by the Medieval Spirit. It was a system of thoughts which culminated in the idea of a Community which God Himself had constituted and which comprised All Mankind. This system may be expounded, as it is by Dante, in all its purity and all its fulness, or it may become the shadow of a shade; but rudely to burst its bars asunder is an exploit which is but now and again attempted by some bold innovator.'
'Political Thought when it is genuinely medieval starts from the Whole, but ascribes an intrinsic value to every Partial Whole, down to and including the Individual.'[2] 'In the Universal Whole, Mankind is one Partial Whole with a final cause of its own, which is distinct from the final causes of
- ↑ Gierke (Professor of Law in the University of Berlin), Political Theories of the Middle Age, translated with an Introduction (pp. vii–xlv) by Maitland, 1900, pp. 3–4. Both the text and the introduction show rare scholarship, and there are almost a hundred pages (101-197) of notes full of learning on mediaeval thought. See especially the chapters, 'Macrocosm and Microcosm'; 'Unity in Church and State'; 'The Idea of Organization'; 'The Idea of Personality'; 'The Relation of the State to the Law'.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 7.
fore, the order in the parts is to the order in the whole, as it is to the end and highest good aimed at' (Pars ad totum se habet, sicut ad finem et optimum. Ergo et ordo in parte, ad ordinem in toto, sicut ad finem et optimum) (i. vi.). 'Further, the whole human race is a whole with reference to certain parts, and, with reference to another whole, it is a part. For it is a whole with reference to particular kingdoms and nations …, and it is a part with reference to the whole universe. … It is only under the rule of one prince that the parts of humanity are well adapted to their whole …; therefore, it is only by being under one Princedom, or the rule of a single Prince, that humanity as a whole is well adapted to the Universe, or its Prince, who is the One God' (i. vii.).
