010005 FS The relationship between Church and State in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (2016W)

Right from its beginning, Christianity posed a challenge to the Roman Empire and its public order. At the same time, the Roman empire, its political elite and the people, looked suspiciously at the new religion with its pacifistic, altruistic and strictly monotheistic convictions. The situation changed radically with Emperor Constantine privileging the Christian religion. Eventually emerging as the state religion, the Christian faith quickly shaped the cultural, juridical and social life of the empire. Despite this coalition between Christianity and the secular order ("state") also in the emerging Germanic kingdoms in the Middle Ages, the churches claimed a certain independence and critical stance toward the secular rulers, emphasizing the two different areas of religious and secular competence. The many and manifold controversies of this relationship and the solutions and compromises that the parties found and implemented, shaped both western civilization and Christianity and the churches themselves until today.
The seminar will study some of the major controversies and clashes between Christianity (resp. the churches) and the secular powers in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Particular attention will be paid to the phenomenons of persecutions of Christians, the Constantinian shift, the role of Christian emperors for the inner structure and doctrinal development of the churches, and last but not least the ideological differentiation and struggle between regnum and sacerdotium in medieval political thought. A more profound knowledge of the history of this relationship and of the patterns and continuities therein may enable students to argue more sophistically and better informed in the controversial debate about the public role of the churches in the state today.
Method: Study, analysis, interpretation and summary of central historical texts and sources; discussion of recent literature and of the main historiography in the related topics.