Dec 07, 2005 15:27
elections,
philosophy,
catholic church,
history,
church councils,
representation,
parliaments,
thomas aquinas,
written law,
papacy,
freedom,
western civilization,
european history,
politics,
charter law,
europe,
representative government,
rabban bar sawma
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V. minor point: it may be a good idea to italicise the "thing", so it's less like a thing. Also check the tags here: eis ten polein
freedom and representative government were invented in the English-speaking countries at some time between 1640AD and 1783AD [...]The reader who came to this passage from the conventional textbook notion of European history would rub his/her eyes in disbelief.
Ehrm... I was always under strong impression that my textbooks were pretty standard and they - albeit in much less detail and without the careful discussion of charters (except for Magna Carta) - told the story: from the Germanic gathering, through the early medieval parliaments to the modern ones. With the absolutism thrown in as a break, 18-19th century :)
The first mighty flowering of European civilization, from the eleven to the thirteen hundreds, is a flowering of chartered institutions: charters establish universities, monasteries, mendicant orders, communes, guilds, companies, fiefs, harbours, fairs, parishes, chantries.
I'd risk saying that you missed the most important one in this very enumeration (or else I lost it in the reading): the city.
Unless the foundation act (forgive my terminology if wrong; I mean the settling using Magdeburg Law or similar) is very different fom charter - and it doesn't seem so - the city based on a charter would be of extreme importance. You do mention it later on, but somehow "in passing".
Now, why do I feel the need of a "chartered city" to be stressed more: because as a coherent unit it was many time stronger than any guild or university (as proven by cases of many indepedent Italian cities you quote). There is a rather strong opposition between "the city" and "the lord" in medieval Europe, which v. effectively curbed the autocratic tendencies of large feudals, kings included. You discuss more the life of ideals here and my point is more sociopolitical - the cities offered real power to uphold the rights in charters.
Maybe it's my private peeve, since it's the role of a city, which is so strikingly different in Europe and China. There the city was the very center of a lord/king power. There was never an opposition between "the city" and "the castle" - the city was the castle, so to speak. Therefore the city had never any autonomy: if something it was a village which had a degree of it. Also there was no "break" between city and rural life (in matter of rights for example) in China. The city was something like a larger there was strong legal continuity between them, even if the city was currently the biggest and shinest in the world.
The second thing, which might have been touched here (no more, this a subject for a separate book) is the opposition between "the Church" and "the lord". In the West the Church was separate from the state from v. early time. The king has his "divine power" etc. but it was granted by an outside source (the Pope, local archbishop etc.), therefore could have been denied/withdrawn. Again it created some political tension, which curbed the autocratic tendencies: the word of the church officials counted in early parliaments and the the aristocrats, who opposed a king, often could count on Church's support. Again, the very opposite is true of chine, when (in v. specific shape) the emperor ahd and entire power in his hand: the worldly and the sacral. Such close Church-state union, was also the case of Byzantium, wasn't it? Cesaropapism, as Weber calls it.
You may consider the above as being outside the scope of a present text, but I think it should be noted that the charters must have been efficient if they were so popular and they couldn't be efficient without force backing them.
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Must say I didn't know the specific meaning of commune - maybe would be wortto emphasize the point a bit to clear it up for less educated :)
In short - I may look for sources for you afterwards - about the Chinese cities: they are born of course both ways; but I think we can safely say that predominantly they were adminitrative units, or at least the cities which count are/were administrative units. The establishing of a city was avery carefuly prescribed process and the cities are - especially in comparison to European "chaos" - remarkably uniform, square, with rectangular plan and the main objects (e.g. administrative centers or water tanks) always in the same places. The uniformity alone shows they were v. regulated and not "free". Another interesting feature is that the uniformity of plan had a really long history, say 1500 years at least, but actually for longer time the cities, whenever possible, were always built almost identical.
I will gladly write some more later - I also have a few more points about the text. For a moment see here - the centre of Suzhou, one of the ancient capitals:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=31.310382,120.621815&spn=0.064091,0.110893&t=k&hl=en
In this page you'll be able how regular the pattern of cities - towns- villages was in good conditions (Chinese Lowland flatlands). Increase the scale step by step to see the network of commercial-administrative centres. The city in the very centre of the map has also nice, square centre with a moat:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=35.246040,115.446310&spn=0.980198,1.774292&t=k&hl=en
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