Justification before divine right?

So the basic justification of the medieval system, as I'm understanding it, was that these temporal authorities, this legal system, etc., was ordained by God. Additional ideas suggested are that the king was idealized as the representative of the people, and that medieval system was organized for the wellbeing of society. Both of those seem, thought, at least to me, to be something of presentism; were those ideas really around before the Renaissance?

Yes.

The "well being of society" was looked at in a way that post-Enlightenment anti-monarchists can't distinguish from barbarous despotism, but it was still used. Each man in his place was the best arrangement for society according to the philosophy of the time.

Additionally, how was the specific legal system of the medieval ages, descended from Roman law or made up on the spot, justified as ordained by God? Was the issue of its arbitrary nature just glossed over, or did they have some solution like (just to pick a random idea) "This legal system is created by Christians and the authority of the church, and so it is ordained by God," or others?

Of course, everyone is, I think, aware that this is all so much propaganda, and that everyone just did what they could get away with, and justifying their actions was part of this.
Various attempts to claim God's approval of what had been arranged for whatever reasons, based on it being somehow in adherence to God's will that things be thus.

There are a multitude of theories on the issue, the Middle Ages was less concerned with settling on or debating why it was okay as saying that it was.
 
I read once that the Spanish Scholastics of the XVI-XVII centuries defended that the power lied in the people that ceded it to the kings. Francisco de Suarez works were condemned and burned in England in the XVII as Jacob I of England was the first christian king to use the formula of "King by the grace of God".

Who the hell is Jacob I of England?:confused:
 
A medieval king was coronated and annointed with holy oil, medieval nobles never were. The thing is that medieval times saw precious few states in the strict sense of the term, Kievan Rus, the Golden Horde, the short-lived Ummayyad splinter state and then the Almohad and Almoravid states, and the Eastern Roman Empire are the only European territories that could be called states and none of them significantly were Western Christian realms. There was all of one Western Christian state, the Carolingian Empire and that rose and fell rather quickly.

What ideology there was was focused around the Holy Roman Emperor as a universal unifying figure, the Medieval era saw a progressive balkanization and splintering of the West relative to the continuity of states in Russia and the Middle East/North Africa/Iberia.
 
Divine Right started way earlier than the Middle Ages. The Roman Emperors being declared gods upon death and being worshiped is one origin of it, the support of the Early Church for the Empire another; ‘By this sign you shall conquer.’

True but the exercise of such power in the Medieval period was primarily theoretical, not in the least actual.

But I thought the exclusive, formalized justification of the state with the "divine right" of the king only came around the time of the Reformation. (not necessarily as a part of it, of course)

No, that idea's quite ancient indeed and goes back to Sumer and Egypt. It's been interpreted in a variety of different ways across the eras.

So the basic justification of the medieval system, as I'm understanding it, was that these temporal authorities, this legal system, etc., was ordained by God. Additional ideas suggested are that the king was idealized as the representative of the people, and that medieval system was organized for the wellbeing of society. Both of those seem, thought, at least to me, to be something of presentism; were those ideas really around before the Renaissance?

Additionally, how was the specific legal system of the medieval ages, descended from Roman law or made up on the spot, justified as ordained by God? Was the issue of its arbitrary nature just glossed over, or did they have some solution like (just to pick a random idea) "This legal system is created by Christians and the authority of the church, and so it is ordained by God," or others?

Of course, everyone is, I think, aware that this is all so much propaganda, and that everyone just did what they could get away with, and justifying their actions was part of this.

Feudalism was the result of the collapse of a state, specifically the Carolingian Empire and the replacement of personal relationships for state institutions. Ideologies of states would have contradicted the purpose of feudalism which was a system geared to the existence of the nobles as the primary holders and wielders of power.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Feudalism was the result of the collapse of a state, specifically the Carolingian Empire and the replacement of personal relationships for state institutions. Ideologies of states would have contradicted the purpose of feudalism which was a system geared to the existence of the nobles as the primary holders and wielders of power.

Can you really talk about the Carolingian Empire as a 'state' in any truly meaningful sense?
 
Can you really talk about the Carolingian Empire as a 'state' in any truly meaningful sense?

Yes, you can. It's a barebones and stripped-down version of the Roman Empire, and it restarted learning in a serious extent in Europe. It also had the only armies worthy of being called armies and taxation systems and the like Western Europe would see until after the Treaty of Westphalia.
 
What about the translatio imperii? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translatio_imperii Wasn't that the basis of the Carolingian and Holy Roman authorities?

I don't know about the Holy Roman, but Charlemagne's coronation as a Roman Emperor was an empty thing in the sense of related to his authority. "It brought him not an acre of land or a single new soldier" (someone, Norwich maybe? Can't remember.) - all of that was a result of King of the Franks and Lombards.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Yes, you can. It's a barebones and stripped-down version of the Roman Empire, and it restarted learning in a serious extent in Europe. It also had the only armies worthy of being called armies and taxation systems and the like Western Europe would see until after the Treaty of Westphalia.

I'm just saying, the concept of a public object didn't seem to exist for the Franks, with all the territories of the Frankish Empire rather being the personal property of the Emperor, rather than there being a state proper.

Talking about the replacement of state institutions with personal relationships is something of a back projection, I feel, considering the state institutions of the Frankish Empire were based on the personal relationship between the Emperor and his subjects.
 
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