Evolution of The Concept in The Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, most institutions of Roman public law fell into disuse, but much of Roman political theory remained. During the early Middle Ages the Christian world was ruled in theory by the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. The former had the spiritual power, which was identified with auctoritas, while the latter had temporal power, identified with potestas. At first, the Pope crowned the Emperor and the Emperor appointed the Pope, so they were in a situation of balance, but after the Investiture Controversy the Pope was instead chosen by the College of Cardinals.
As the effective power of the Holy Roman Empire declined, kingdoms asserted their own independence. One way to do this was to claim that the king had, in his kingdom, the same power as the emperor in the empire, and so the king assumed the attributes of potestas.
Read more about this topic: Potestas
Famous quotes containing the words middle ages, evolution of, evolution, concept, middle and/or ages:
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain
physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much as and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined.”
—Percy W. Bridgman (1882–1961)
“The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations.... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.”
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)