With the emergence of Christianity and decline of the Roman period, the issue of political obligation came to be debated from political as well as religious angles; what obligation a Christian bears to a king. The dictum that was put before the people appeared to be what Jesus had said and St. Paul had dutifully expressed to the Romans before he was executed in Nero’s Rome, ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’17 This was a dictum of a twofold obligation, civic as well religious obedience. Gradually, this twofold duty became intense and by the time St. Augustine proposed the division between the spiritual and the temporal realms in terms of the earthly city and the City of God, the conflict between the church and the state had already dawned on Europe. Between the fourth to the sixth century AD, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and St. Gregory advocated church’s autonomy and superiority over the spiritual and ecclesiastical matters. This superiority included the emperor, as the emperor, like any other Christian, was considered as a son of the church. The upshot of this argument was that a Christian bears primary obligation to church and even the emperor is not above this obligation. This was the idea of a ‘universal Christian society’ in which political obligation was secondary and subject to the primary Christian obligation.
Travelling through the Two Swords doctrine of Pope Gelasius I in the fifth century AD, the church-state controversy came to clash in the form of spiritual supremacy versus imperial omnipotence in the eleventh century AD when Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV came to deny each other’s claim. The doctrine of the Two Swords argued that God had given two swords—one to the Pope to run the spiritual matters and the other to the emperor to run the temporal matters and thus, the two should not interfere with each other.
Papalists, John of Salisbury in the twelfth century AD and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century AD championed the cause of Papal supremacy. John of Salisbury argued that originally both the swords belonged to the church, one of which was transferred to the king later. By implication, he argued that king was the representative of the church and the latter was justified in seeking subordination of the king to the church. Aquinas also supported subordination of the state to the church, as the latter was considered the crown of social organization. Both John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas advocated limited political rule and disliked tyranny. Thomas Aquinas maintained that rule must be according to law and resistance to tyranny was not sedition. Though, otherwise he considered sedition a sin.
On the other hand, Imperialists, Marsiglio of Padua and William of Occam argued that the church has limited function related to spiritual matters and hence, its authority must be limited too. They advocated subordination of the church to the state in all temporal matters.
The controversy left the believers and subjects in the hands of dual obligation. However, the controversy rendered even the civic authorities as if they carried divine sanction. This was because the church argued that the temporal sword came from God. Though the controversy gave credence to two forms of obligations, Christian obligation and civic obligation, it was a foregone conclusion that in case the two came in conflict, the primary obligation remains to Christianity and the church, not to the civic authorities. Second, implication was that the state was never granted a secular status and was always considered as an integral part of the Christian commonwealth. According to St. Augustine’s division of the earthly state and the City of the God, it appears that neither justice nor freedom could be possible in a non-Christian state. As such, sanction to full obligation would be available when both the church and the state flourish as part of the Christian commonwealth. We can infer that the doctrine of obligation under Christianity, though permitted political obligation to civic authorities, nevertheless, remained a doctrine of religious obligation. Third, implication of this was related to the emergence of the divine rights theory of kings. Kings in the medieval period sought to sanction their rule and power by invoking divine inheritance of their power. Fourth, implication was both bloody and undesirable. It so happened, particularly in England and France, that the king/emperor belonged to a different sect of Christianity than the subjects who belonged to certain other Christian sects. In that case, religious obligation and political obligation remained un-reconciled, as obligation of such sects of subjects to the king was opposed to their religious obligation. This led to many a civil strife and religious persecutions.
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