Of course the classic observation on the ecclesiastical continuation of the Roman system came from an acute critic:
"...if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." (Hobbes, Leviathan, 1660)
Anderson is more, so to speak, nuanced:
"One single institution, however, spanned the whole transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in essential continuity: the Christian Church. It was, indeed, the main, frail aqueduct across which the cultural reservoirs of the Classical World now passed to the new universe of feudal Europe, where literacy had become clerical. Strange historical object par excellence, whose peculiar temporality has never coincided with that of a simple sequence from one economy or polity to another, but has overlapped and outlived several in a rhythm of its own, the Church has never received theorization within historical materialism ... Its own regional autonomy and adaptability -- extraordinary by any comparative standards -- have yet to be seriously explored..."
Chris Doss wrote:
> What are you talking about? In communist countries the working class rules
> unified and unbroken! :)
>
> True, but what I think I am pointing at is that the Church was not simply some
> kind of adjunct of feudalism that provided ideological justification for it.
> It stood largely outside of the system of lords and manors (and definitely
> outside of hereditary passage of property after the introduction of celibacy,
> which as far as I know was done for precisely this reason).
>
> I'm sure somebody somewhere must have fleshed out the idea that the Church
> represented some kind of survival of the system of the Roman Empire.
>
> I think maybe it would be profitable to compare the situation of the Church
> in Medieval Europe to that (historically later) of the Russian Orthodox
> Church, which was ground underfoot by Peter the Great and very definitely
> made into an adjunct of the state.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ---- From: Matthias Wasser <matthias.wasser at gmail.com>
>
>
> Has there ever been a society where the people at the top weren't engaged in
> a vicious struggle with each other? Obviously the Christian Middle Ages (or
> parts thereof) stand out as particularly violent, but you also have the
> attempt by capitalists to seize each others' markets, the struggles among the
> grey bureaucracy in communist countries, the famous troubles of the Roman
> Republic, &c. ___________________________________
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