Grade 10 Western Civilization Lesson 103

Today I learned about The Church-State Struggle and Western Liberty.

• Struggle between two powers yields libery (church and state)
  • Lord Acton
    • To this conflict we owe the rise of civil liberty
  • Condorcet
    • Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
      • The decentralized power structure of Renaissance Italy owed itself to the rivalry between pope and emperor
  • W.E.H. Lecky
    • By no means a fan of the pope
    • Still states that the church is completely favorable to liberty
    • Competing powers are a barrier to despotism
  • Guido de Ruggiero
    • The History of European Liberalism
      • Fighting between church and state frees possible prisoners of both
  • Alexander Rüstow
    • Freedom and Domination
      • Fighting between the two powers means that:
        • The church remains the conscience of the state
        • The state remains the critic of the church
      • This benefits mankind
  • Brian Tierney
    • The Crisis of Church and State
      • Philosophical consequences
  • Harold J. Berman
    • Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
      • Competition of authority prevents tyranny
• Christianity and Western Liberty
  • Greeks
    • Lives revolved around the polis
  • Romans
    • The city of Rome a sacred thing
    • Religious ritual devoted to the city
  • Karl Ferdinand Werner
    • St. Augustine and other Christians desacralized state