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Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Jørgen Møller, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 7, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected]
Religion is the key of history.
Lord Acton
INTRODUCTION
An influential new body of research has turned to the European Middle Ages (500–1500) to identify the roots of the “Rise of Europe” (e.g., Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2001; Acemoglu et al. 2008; Stasavage 2010; 2011; 2016; Fukuyama 2011; Van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker, 2012; Blaydes and Chaney 2013; Kokkonen and Sundell 2014; Salter 2015; Abramson and Boix 2017; Dincecco and Onorato 2018; Salter and Young, forthcoming). There is much to praise in this scholarship, which among other things has broken new ground by collecting large-N data that allow quantitative analysis of long-term processes of state-building, economic development, and regime change. However, a striking feature of this research is that it has largely ignored what generations of medieval historians have emphasized as the defining aspect of the medieval environment, namely the ubiquitous presence and pervasive influence of the Catholic Church (Ullmann 1970[1955]; Southern 1970; Tierney 1982; Berman 1983; Monahan 1987; Kay 2002; Oakley 2010; 2012; 2015; see also Mann 1986, Chapter 12; Finer 1997a).1
Take the three developments most consistently associated with the Rise of Europe: the advent of the European multistate system, medieval parliaments, and early bureaucratic institutions. Recent attempts to explain why the European multistate system equilibrated on balance of power have ignored that this owes much to the Church's attempt to hinder any secular ruler from gaining hegemony over Latin Christendom (e.g., Hui 2005; Kaufman, Little, and Wohlforth 2007; for an overview of this literature, see Nexon 2009). Recent work on medieval parliaments has analyzed developments in lay polities virtually without any reference to the fact that the practices of representation and consent were first developed within the Catholic Church and that the Church was active in spreading them (e.g., Stasavage 2010; 2011; Blaydes and Chaney 2013; Boucoyannis 2015; Abramson and Boix 2017; for an overview of this literature, see Stasavage 2016). Recent attempts to understand the relationship between warfare and medieval and early modern state-building have ignored that many early bureaucratic offices and practices were first adopted at the papal curia in Rome and Avignon (e.g., Tilly 1990;...