Or, alternatively, in Gierke’s words (Political Ideas of the Middle Ages), according to Christian political theorists in the early to mid medieval period (what I have called the consolidation phase),
“the Emperor, and likewise all other Rulers, derive their offices but mediately from God, and immediately from the Church's Head, who in this matter as in other matters acts as God's Vice- Regent-this became the general theory of the Church. It was in this sense that the allegory of the Two Swords was expounded by the ecclesiastical party. Both Swords have been given by God to Peter and through him to the Popes, who are to retain the spiritual sword, while the temporal they deliver to others. This delivery, however. will confer, not free ownership, but the right of an ecclesiastical office-holder. As before the delivery, so afterwards, the Pope has utrumque gladium. He has both Powers habitu, though only the Spiritual Power actu. The true ownership (dominium) of both swords is his, and what he concedes in the temporal sword is merely some right of independent user, which is characterized as usus immediatus, or perhaps as dominium utile. In the medium of feudal law the papal right in the Temporal Power appears as neither more nor less than a feudal lordship. The Emperor assumes the place of the highest of papal vassals, and the oath that at his coronation he swears to the Pope can be regarded as a true homagium". In any case the Emperor and every other worldly Ruler are in duty bound to use in the service and under the direction of the Church the sword that has been entrusted to them'. It is not merely that the Pope by virtue of his spiritual sword may by spiritual means supervise, direct and correct all acts of rulership". Much rather must we hold that, though in the general course of affairs he ought to refrain from any immediate intermeddling with temporal matters, and to respect the legitimately acquired rights of rulers, he is none the less entitled and bound to exercise a direct control of temporalities whenever there is occasion and reasonable cause for his intervention (casunliter et ex rationabili causa).Therefore for good cause may he
withdraw and confer the Imperium from and upon peoples and individuals": and indeed it was by his plenitude of power that the Imperium was withdrawn from the Greeks and bestowed upon the Germans (translation Imperii)”p.14
Let’s not forget too that even as early as the fifth century Pope Leo I (440–61),
had attributed monarchical powers to the popes as successors of St Peter and had attached to the papacy the old pagan imperial title of “supreme pontiff” (pontifex maximus) not long since abandoned by the emperors themselves (in Oakley, Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment, p. 111)
That’s not to say the Kings went along with it, their grumbling and contestation of the role of the Papacy would continue until the Treaty of Utrecht (or thereabouts)


However, it is also during this period that we see St. Aquinas (forgetting Tertullian’s admonition 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?') tinkering around with Aristotle and once again the adventures of ideas takes centre stage. Says, McClelland A History of Western Political Thought
“Thomas’s [Aquinas] problem was to try to reconcile the polis of the Greeks with Augustine’s city of fallen men. Again, it has to be emphasised that ignoring the Politics of Aristotle was out of the question. The reputation of Aristotle was so much a part of the intellectual landscape of Thomas’s time that Aristotle did not even have to be mentioned by name in philosophical treatises. When Thomas’s contemporaries wrote ‘as the Philosopher says’, or even ‘as He says’, everybody knew it meant Aristotle.”p.106
His resolution of that would have profound consequences for political theory and practice during and after the reformation (to which I have alluded in a previous post).


In fact, had the Roman empire not adopted Christianity as the official legitimating discourse and market of belonging (in the Greek and Roman sense, which see opening quote) then the modern concept of separation of church and state we see germinate during the reformation may, I stress, may, have occurred earlier. But it didn’t. It is precisely the concept of divine right of kings that causes the problems we see prior to the reformation and which come to a head with the Thirty Years War. After all it was Luther’s complaint that religion has no business in politics (or being tainted by it) that led him to reformulate the phrase “Render unto Caesar”. Toward the end of the early-modern period (the sundering phase) then the legitimacy (and purpose) of a Monarch rests less on the Papacy and more on a nascent conception of the popular will which is a story for another time/thread. It is with John Locke’s Two Treatise on Government, however, that the legal constitutional formulation for the separation of church and state as it is understood today first arises (especially in the American case). It is, however, false to take that concept and apply it retrospectively. The foregoing is also a gross oversimplification of what is a hugely complicated and confusingly entangled set of processes.

Suffice to say and more to the point,...we can’t simply say “what about Render unto Caesar?” without understanding what the phrase meant to the people who used it or how it changed. Just like the passage in the Quran about coercion. However, unlike Islamic theology which has relatively strict (hermeneutic) rules about how things are to be interpreted (think Hadith, Naksh and Shari’a scholarship in the Islamic case) most conceptual systems tend to suffer from a sort of semantic drift in which meanings can be lost, changed or just perverted. “Render unto Caesar” may be all things to all men which why we need to situate its usage to divine meaning. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1 calls this process of (deliberate) semantic drift “paradiastolic redescription” (not one for catchy phrases old Quentin) and calls the people who practice this “innovating ideologists” that’s a simplification but I hope you’ll forgive me for it). Skinner uses Weber as an example (please read Skinner in the original, he is worth the effort);
Focusing on the early capitalists, Weber [in the Protestant Ethic] shows how they represented their behaviour in terms of the concepts normally used to commend an ideal of the religious life, emphasising their dedication to their calling and their careful and painstaking lives. As he indicates, this was undoubtedly a rational choice for them to make. Not only were they right to see that, if they could apply such concepts to their own behaviour, this would provide them with a powerful legitimising device. They were also right to see that it was plausible to make the attempt. The Protestant conception of the calling echoed their own worldly asceticism, and there were many affinities between the distinctively Protestant ideal of individual service and devotion to God and the commercial belief in the importance of duty, service and devotion to one’s work. p. 150-1 [...][Another] example is provided by the history of the word commodity. Before the advent of commercial society, to speak of something as a commodity was to praise it, and in particular to affirm that it answered to one’s desires, and could thus be seen as beneficial, convenient, a source of advantage. Later an attempt was made to suggest that an article produced for sale ought to be seen as a source of benefit or advantage to its purchaser, and ought in consequence to be described as a commodity. For a time the outcome of this further effort by the early English capitalists to legitimate their activities was that commodity became a polysemic word. But eventually the original applications withered away, leaving us with nothing more than the current and purely descriptive meaning of commodity as an object of trade. Although the capitalists inherited the earth, and with it much of the English language, they were unable in this case to persuade their fellow language users to endorse their attempted eulogy of their own commercial practices. p.169

I don’t mean to be flippant but time and more importantly, space precludes a deeper discussion of this (in fact I don’t even know if I said what I wanted to say or if I flew off on a tangent! The latter me thinketh). I pray you read the references above. They can explain things better than this mere mortal can! I also have not meant to be condescending in any way either. It’s a hazard of our medium that emoticons just can’t ameliorate. However if you are ever in town we can have a good old pagan symposium and thrash it all out conversationally (always my strongpoint).


I sometimes wonder if that great absconder MarcT wouldn’t be able to do a better, more succinct job.