Libertarianism and Medieval Monarchy

What could a modern libertarian possibly have in common with a monarchist who looks longingly back on Christendom of the Middle Ages? Probably a lot more than one might think if they would open their minds only slightly. For one thing, it must be remembered that libertarians are not, by their very nature, a unified bloc. People from the most opposite extremes of social liberals and social conservatives identify themselves as libertarians. Probably the most dominant philosophical figure, in recent years at least, for libertarians is Ayn Rand who was a staunch atheist who viewed religious belief as a psychological weakness. Yet, many libertarians and even many of those who are admirers of Ayn Rand are religious people. That is because that religion and social values are not the dominant features of libertarian thought as much as the inviolability of private property rights and individual liberty. Ayn Rand herself said repeatedly that, as much as she disapproved of religion, she would never support any ban on religion or effort to eradicate it by force. She was also, unlike many libertarians today, not a relativist of any sort and certainly believed in her own moral absolutes and looked with contempt on those who advocated tolerance of everything and every idea for fear of labeling anyone or anything good or evil.

It must also be kept in mind that the religious basis of Medieval Christendom was quite different, at the very least outwardly, from the religious mainstream of today. For example, HH Pope John Paul I said, in one of his few public addresses, that private property was not an absolute right. However, in the Middle Ages, the Church and most everyone else viewed private property and vested rights as absolutely inviolable. Most religions today (certainly most religious leaders in the west) are against the death penalty whereas in the Middle Ages this was viewed by all as perfectly acceptable and necessary. Democracy is today advocated by most religious leaders and yet, again, in the Middle Ages such an idea would have been viewed as absurd. Once again, however, there are still some religious people, even if a minority, who still hold the same beliefs and values that their ancestors of the Middle Ages did regarding religion, politics, social norms and so on. Many if not most churches today support the idea of government playing a role in regulating morality and providing for the public welfare, both of which were the responsibilities of the Church rather than the state in the Middle Ages.

This, however, explains why most religious libertarians are Protestant Christians rather than Catholic or Orthodox Christians. Yet, it can at least be argued that the libertarian ideal (which has never existed) in many ways came closest to existence in the pre-Protestant Christendom of the Middle Ages. In many ways (certainly from the perspective of this monarchist) the Middle Ages were right in areas where libertarians and objectivists are wrong; such as in recognizing that truth and moral absolutes exist and that humanity is more than a machine, is fallible and not always rational and has an inherent need for spiritual as well as physical fulfillment. However, consider the extent to which government as we know it today did not exist in Medieval Christendom. This is where the similarities between the facts of history and the libertarian ideal become most noticeable and yet are most often ignored because the post-revolutionary world has viewed the Medieval period as one of blanket ignorance, intolerance and royalist absolutism. There is some truth in that, but, like rat poison, just enough misinformation to give the wrong impression.

Were the Middle Ages intolerant? Yes, they were intolerant of that which they viewed as wrong. Were they ignorant? For many people yes, the majority were uneducated though probably still more educated than is generally thought but there was also a minority of very highly educated people and many of the scientific theories and discoveries that are attributed to later thinkers actually originated in the Middle Ages. St Thomas Aquinas was certainly no intellectual featherweight! But, finally, what about royal absolutism? Monarchs in Medieval times were “absolute” but they were far from arbitrary. They did not rule through brute force but through what were essential free contracts between parties that were to their mutual benefit. This was the basis of the feudal relationship; security and the use of land provided in exchange for certain goods or services.

Not only was there no “government” as we would recognize it today, but even the monarchies were decentralized into subsidiary monarchies. This sort of relationship reached upward to the King, the Holy Roman Emperor and (for some) the Pope while also reaching downward to the princes, dukes, barons and free commoners. Yet, no one, not even bound serfs, could be forced to provide any good or service. It was, in many ways, the sort of privatized society that libertarians uphold as the ideal. Taxes were low, in some cases even nonexistent and only collected temporarily in times of necessity. At each level these “monarchies” were autonomous, entering freely into contracts with each other for support, profit and protection. Whether a prince or a landowning commoner, what you possessed was truly your own and no one could arbitrarily take it from you or tell you what to do with it; hence the old saying that, “an Englishman’s home is his castle”.

How could society exist like this without government regulations or the government welfare state you may ask? For much the same reason that libertarians say their system would work today if any would try it. Services were provided privately. A king might provide a few national “royal roads” to facilitate travel but for the most part the landowners built roads themselves, maintained them and could charge for their use (and if you think the roads we drive on today are “free” because they are public just look at how high the taxes at the pump are next time you fill up). Everything was not completely libertarian of course (nor am I convinced that such would be a good thing) but there was no government regulation of economics. Such regulations as existed were enacted by the individual trade guilds. As for social welfare, the government left that to the Church which provided the most widespread and successful system of *private* social welfare in history, providing education, hospitals, care for the poor, homes for orphans and support for widows. All of this was done with relatively few taxes, even very little currency circulation, was based more often than not on trading goods or services and relied, not on arbitrary force, but legal contracts freely entered into.

Even in the most basic functions of government the monarchies of the Middle Ages were nowhere near as expansive as even the most limited models of today. The national monarch did provide for the national defense but a considerable portion and indeed often the bulk of his armies were made up of privately raised military forces led by the aristocracy who recognized that their own self-interest depended on coming together to support each other and their king in times of crisis. The monarch may have had the strongest military force (though not always as there were times when a monarch could have less wealth than his nobles) but he did not have the only military force which no doubt contributed to the fact that while he ruled absolutely he could not rule arbitrarily.

The monarch provided a legal system, certainly inasmuch as he was the highest secular authority in the land, but each group also had their own legal system. The Church governed itself and had courts of canon law for its members and jurisdiction and even the common peasants had their own courts by which they settled certain disputes among themselves. A village court would be presided over by a representative of the local noble lord but he had no more power than any of the other judges have (there were usually 12) to rule on a matter. These local courts, called halimotes, regulated themselves, devising, enacting and enforcing their own rules without any interference from the far-away King in Paris or London. This was a system, despite the seemingly powerful symbol of the “absolute monarch” in which power was decentralized, decisions made on the local level, in which each group looked after itself independently and where virtually all services were privately run and based on self-interest cooperation rather than arbitrary force. In many ways, quite libertarian and enough to make one wonder why objectivists would shudder so at the thought of the Middle Ages.

This was all underpinned by religion, these were the “Ages of Faith” after all, which many libertarians and certainly objectivists would recoil at, but these were also times in which people were guided by self-interest, mutually beneficial agreements. If the lack of freedom of religion seems intolerable, keep in mind this was when receiving communion was only absolutely required once a year and with all of the holy days people at the time actually received more “vacation” time than most people do even today. There was no “thought police” and because private property rights were so sacrosanct, as long as one did not try to influence others a person could think, believe or behave pretty much as they wished in the privacy of their own home or on their own lands. That, of course, is not to say that society was as liberal then as it is now -certainly not. Nor, at that time, was religion considered the sort of subjective, personal, private thing that most in the west regard it as today. However, as most should know by now, people did not live in fear of Church authorities or constantly quake with terror whenever the Inquisition was called. Even the Spanish Inquisition executed fewer people than the state of Texas in its time.

One of the problems with any political formula or ideology is that human beings do not easily fit into neat little categories, respond in expected ways or follow set patterns uniformly. The Medieval Ages were certainly not what your average libertarian or objectivist would dream of. Libertarians not turned off by the monarchy would probably be turned off by the moral absolutes and objectivists would dismiss them both as witchdoctors and Attilas. However, probably at no other time was the western libertarian ideal so close to reality. Never before, or since, was “government” so small or power more decentralized. Private property rights were of paramount importance, which libertarians would agree with, and what are issues of hereditary privilege but private property rights at heart? If something belongs to you, be it lands, a castle or a crown, you have the right to pass it on to your descendants without interference. Loyalty was pledged to superiors in the hierarchy of monarchies, not out of fear of force, but willingly for mutual benefit; a system at heart very much like the ideal of objectivists and libertarians even today. Far from offending them, this should give them comfort that at least some of their ideas have worked in the past and it should make all others think about the misconceptions they may hold about what life in the Middle Ages, the Ages of Faith, monarchial Christendom etc, was really like.