Thread by @AnnaGBusse

Book 🧵
1. My book, Sacred Foundations: the Religious and Medieval Origins of the European State, is coming out with @PrincetonUPress in January 2023. (Pre-order in time for the holiday season, why not?)

press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove…

amazon.com/Sacred-Foundat…?

2. How did the state arise in Europe? I argue that the medieval Catholic Church both fragmented territorial authority—and served as a source of institutional templates.

3. Most accounts of state formation in Europe focus on early modern warfare between secular rulers, and the rise of taxation and parliaments that made further war possible. I show that state formation was medieval, religious, and relied on conflict *and* emulation.

4. First, medieval popes targeted the Holy Roman Empire and other rulers whom they saw as a threat. Wars by proxy, excommunications, alliances, depositions, and crusades undermined these rulers and fragmented territorial authority, esp. in the German lands and Northern Italy.

5. The medieval Church *also* pioneered new administrative technologies, and its practices served as a template for state institutions such as taxes, representative assemblies, and judicial systems. Bishops, as papal emissaries and royal administrators, transmitted these.

6. The papacy invested heavily in the study of law: Roman law and canon law developed hand in hand. The first universities were law schools, and popes and emperors raced to charter and support them. Human capital flourished.

7. Medieval parliaments also borrowed procedures and rules, such as binding representation and the principle of “that which concerns all must be approved by all” from papal councils. They represented, gave assent to policies, and counseled rulers long before the early modern era.

8. This book builds on and (I hope) contributes to fantastic new research on state formation and historical political economy:

https://twitter.com/GerardoMunck/status/1573759798981451776

tl;dr: To understand the origins of the European state, look to the medieval Church, not early modern war.