I will read this with interest-particularly as a student of the Achaemenid, Alexandrian and post-Alexandrian and Roman empires-all pre-Westphalian. Two concrete issues arise at first thought: (1) the economic stimulus provided by imperial systems that allowed local ethni to thrive without homogenization; (2) the extractive nature of empires, particularly as the confronted local rebellions and/or other empires on their frontiers and the violence that ensued. These early empires encouraged local legal systems as long as they didn’t result in #2. The imperial law seems largely defined by the will of the ‘king of kings’ to use the Achaemenid language and treaties defined by the politics of harem. How this system is taken up and perfected by the rise of ‘two powers’ would prove an interesting challenge.
I have tried to give the paper a careful read. As written in the conclusion, it is "a rather complex case for Empire." The paper seems to move the concept of Catholicity and the Bishop of Rome as the office of unity of the church towards the political reality of empire as it seeks an empire, "a true world political authority" that is also "rightly ordered and understood" -- and I would like to add, "practiced." It rightfully contrasts this view to the rightfully criticized liberal practice of "empire" that homogenizes and deforms localities through its "badly ordered forms of universalism" (and I would like to add, "violent and extractive forms" of the "rule-based international order" of North Atlantic Society's elites).
I find the notion of empire as the protectorate of the ius gentium extremely attractive. While I have no doubt that Tacitus "is too jaded," does the paper Christianize Virgil via Dante too much? How does this accommodate to the shifting Chinese empires? What happens when one takes account of the Ottoman empire or Mughal empire?
The two types of empire, the traditional and the liberal (Augustine's contemporary "Two Cities" drawn from the Apocalypse of St. John) differ in modes of organization. The "traditional empire" (that Rome received ultimately from the Achaemenids) used human networks and patronage structures to sustain the authority (and wealth) necessary to legitimate empires. Law remained local, as long as loyalty (bandaka in Aramaic/pistis in Greek/fides in Latin) characterized the local relationship to the imperial structure. One can move trace this movement from the Achaemenids (the earliest "world empire" where the "emperor" was "king of kings") to Alexander and successors to the Romans).
Perhaps we can trace the dysfunction of the liberal "rule-based empire" to the loss of this structure that comes with the loss of the catholicity of the church in the Reformation. The rise of the "nation-state" via the peace of Westphalia attempted to stem the violence, ironically unleashed by the rise of the nation-state and the subordination of the church to the newly formed "state." This structure began when Ferdinand and Isabella took control of the Office of the Inquisition in order to bring order to the state and empire) and was quickly adopted by Luther's quest for protection, Henry VIII's machinations, and ultimately inverted by Calvin's Geneva.
If so, one needs to provide an alternate to the bureaucratically-structured liberal "rule-based order" to an imperial structure where the church's catholicity (as a communion of communions) becomes a witness via the Bishop of Rome as the office of the visible unity of the church to rightly order, understand, and practice a genuine catholicity as universality in its witness to natural and divine law. Or perhaps the BRICs or the Shanghai Cooperative Structure can show the churches that it is possible and necessary to heal from the Reformation and the malformed nationalisms that distort the Orthodox Patriarchate.
The paper delivers on arguing for the importance of the classical legal tradition. The continuity in law, and its concrete practicality, provides insights and possibilities that we, as in humanity, desperately need. Human beings naturally possess rational loyalties, not abstract, universal-but-shifting liberal "rights" that mask extractive hegemonies. If "nationalisms" can rightly order human and nonhumans until the loyalties assumed in the ius gentium can emerge from the post-WWII malformations in liberal internationalism, the paper offers both an ultimate good/telos and an intermediate step to getting there.
Thanks for these! So many points in play — a diffuse and sprawling topic. I will just say that it is not Dante, but Orosius and other early figures, who Christianize Virgil. This is an absolutely standard, probably the standard, view in the early Church. In this sense, what Francis says about the Rome of the Caesars and the Rome of the Popes is perfectly orthodox, almost a commonplace.
It may all just be a very, very old cycle, we’ve done what we have now before, its broken up for a very long time, then we’ve done it again, and now maybe we’ll break it up again. But we’ve done this before, in fact we’ve done it all the way back in the Bronze Age, from page 301 of your mother’s (may she rest in peace) very well written and informative book: “Cremations are equally a foreign innovation, which used to be attributed to the invading Dorians at the beginning of the Dark Ages but are now seen to be much older and particularly connected with the East.12 The first example is perhaps in a tholos tomb at Tragana near Pylos where women were cremated just after 1400 in the fall of Knossos period. Perhaps, like coffins, this new fash¬ ion should be attributed to Crete, where it is known as early as MM II. It is, however, much more native to Anatolia and the Near East, and when it turns up in Greece in the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries it is mostly associated with Levantine trade and the Close style. Whether it was brought by soldiers who had been fighting with the Hittites or merchants who had seen the cremation cemetery of Troy VI we cannot tell. It appears at the same time as the first iron weapons, the Hittite or Syrian bronze figurines, and the Syrian and Egyptian seals and scarabs (PL XLVIII; Fig. 29), and illustrates as well as any physical fact could the intense internationalism of the Sea Peoples period.”
I will read this with interest-particularly as a student of the Achaemenid, Alexandrian and post-Alexandrian and Roman empires-all pre-Westphalian. Two concrete issues arise at first thought: (1) the economic stimulus provided by imperial systems that allowed local ethni to thrive without homogenization; (2) the extractive nature of empires, particularly as the confronted local rebellions and/or other empires on their frontiers and the violence that ensued. These early empires encouraged local legal systems as long as they didn’t result in #2. The imperial law seems largely defined by the will of the ‘king of kings’ to use the Achaemenid language and treaties defined by the politics of harem. How this system is taken up and perfected by the rise of ‘two powers’ would prove an interesting challenge.
These pieces are fascinating - looking forward to reading it over the holidays. Thank you
Thanks Charlie! Much appreciated
I have tried to give the paper a careful read. As written in the conclusion, it is "a rather complex case for Empire." The paper seems to move the concept of Catholicity and the Bishop of Rome as the office of unity of the church towards the political reality of empire as it seeks an empire, "a true world political authority" that is also "rightly ordered and understood" -- and I would like to add, "practiced." It rightfully contrasts this view to the rightfully criticized liberal practice of "empire" that homogenizes and deforms localities through its "badly ordered forms of universalism" (and I would like to add, "violent and extractive forms" of the "rule-based international order" of North Atlantic Society's elites).
I find the notion of empire as the protectorate of the ius gentium extremely attractive. While I have no doubt that Tacitus "is too jaded," does the paper Christianize Virgil via Dante too much? How does this accommodate to the shifting Chinese empires? What happens when one takes account of the Ottoman empire or Mughal empire?
The two types of empire, the traditional and the liberal (Augustine's contemporary "Two Cities" drawn from the Apocalypse of St. John) differ in modes of organization. The "traditional empire" (that Rome received ultimately from the Achaemenids) used human networks and patronage structures to sustain the authority (and wealth) necessary to legitimate empires. Law remained local, as long as loyalty (bandaka in Aramaic/pistis in Greek/fides in Latin) characterized the local relationship to the imperial structure. One can move trace this movement from the Achaemenids (the earliest "world empire" where the "emperor" was "king of kings") to Alexander and successors to the Romans).
Perhaps we can trace the dysfunction of the liberal "rule-based empire" to the loss of this structure that comes with the loss of the catholicity of the church in the Reformation. The rise of the "nation-state" via the peace of Westphalia attempted to stem the violence, ironically unleashed by the rise of the nation-state and the subordination of the church to the newly formed "state." This structure began when Ferdinand and Isabella took control of the Office of the Inquisition in order to bring order to the state and empire) and was quickly adopted by Luther's quest for protection, Henry VIII's machinations, and ultimately inverted by Calvin's Geneva.
If so, one needs to provide an alternate to the bureaucratically-structured liberal "rule-based order" to an imperial structure where the church's catholicity (as a communion of communions) becomes a witness via the Bishop of Rome as the office of the visible unity of the church to rightly order, understand, and practice a genuine catholicity as universality in its witness to natural and divine law. Or perhaps the BRICs or the Shanghai Cooperative Structure can show the churches that it is possible and necessary to heal from the Reformation and the malformed nationalisms that distort the Orthodox Patriarchate.
The paper delivers on arguing for the importance of the classical legal tradition. The continuity in law, and its concrete practicality, provides insights and possibilities that we, as in humanity, desperately need. Human beings naturally possess rational loyalties, not abstract, universal-but-shifting liberal "rights" that mask extractive hegemonies. If "nationalisms" can rightly order human and nonhumans until the loyalties assumed in the ius gentium can emerge from the post-WWII malformations in liberal internationalism, the paper offers both an ultimate good/telos and an intermediate step to getting there.
The paper provokes in the best sense of the word.
Thanks for these! So many points in play — a diffuse and sprawling topic. I will just say that it is not Dante, but Orosius and other early figures, who Christianize Virgil. This is an absolutely standard, probably the standard, view in the early Church. In this sense, what Francis says about the Rome of the Caesars and the Rome of the Popes is perfectly orthodox, almost a commonplace.
It may all just be a very, very old cycle, we’ve done what we have now before, its broken up for a very long time, then we’ve done it again, and now maybe we’ll break it up again. But we’ve done this before, in fact we’ve done it all the way back in the Bronze Age, from page 301 of your mother’s (may she rest in peace) very well written and informative book: “Cremations are equally a foreign innovation, which used to be attributed to the invading Dorians at the beginning of the Dark Ages but are now seen to be much older and particularly connected with the East.12 The first example is perhaps in a tholos tomb at Tragana near Pylos where women were cremated just after 1400 in the fall of Knossos period. Perhaps, like coffins, this new fash¬ ion should be attributed to Crete, where it is known as early as MM II. It is, however, much more native to Anatolia and the Near East, and when it turns up in Greece in the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries it is mostly associated with Levantine trade and the Close style. Whether it was brought by soldiers who had been fighting with the Hittites or merchants who had seen the cremation cemetery of Troy VI we cannot tell. It appears at the same time as the first iron weapons, the Hittite or Syrian bronze figurines, and the Syrian and Egyptian seals and scarabs (PL XLVIII; Fig. 29), and illustrates as well as any physical fact could the intense internationalism of the Sea Peoples period.”
Excellent—this topic (roughly) came up recently in conversations with a family member and I was aware of the confusion in my own thoughts.
Thx! It’s a sprawling and difficult topic for sure.