Granted that the Catholic Church hierarchy is not feudalistic. But this suggests the question: during the height of European feudalism, the Catholic Church itself was—what? Rigidly hierarchical even then? Or did it in some way partake of the feudal lack of hierarchy and center?
The question of Church governance and its relation to the secular authority was the number one hot-button political issue during the European Middle Ages, over which many intellectual, political, as well as military battles were fought. It’s a vast and fascinating topic that spans several centuries of complicated history, with changing fortunes on all sides; to get a basic taste of it, this article on the Investiture Controversy is decent.
These controversies exploded again during the Reformation and the subsequent religious upheavals and wars that engulfed Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and they haven’t died down completely to the present day. But as a simplification (perhaps excessive), one could say that the present tightly disciplined form of Catholic Church governance developed during the Counter-Reformation period.
(It should also be noted that some local Catholic churches, most notably the Eastern ones, have much more autonomy for peculiar reasons of local history. Formally, this is known as the sui juris status.)
Feudalism is hierarchical. Vladimir is talking about the high level of autonomy of each boss in the hierarchy. Even kings did not have the absolute power we usually think of kings as having; the Holy Roman Empire being an extreme example of this, in which IIRC the Emperor was usually less powerful than any of his immediate subordinates, and served more as a balancing force or referee than as a supreme ruler.
I think that it’s not so much whether you remember correctly as which emperor you mean. The HRE lasted for nearly 1000 years, and the power of emperor varied a lot over this time.
To make things even more complicated, besides their imperial title, Holy Roman emperors typically had a whole bunch of titles over different lands within the Empire (and sometimes even outside of it), whose significance in terms of actual control ranged from purely theoretical to very real. Their ability to assert their imperial authority across the Empire heavily depended, among other things, on the ability to draw resources from the specific lands they controlled more tightly.
Granted that the Catholic Church hierarchy is not feudalistic. But this suggests the question: during the height of European feudalism, the Catholic Church itself was—what? Rigidly hierarchical even then? Or did it in some way partake of the feudal lack of hierarchy and center?
Rigidly hierarchical in theory, but forced to make political compromises occasionally in reality.
See the investiture controversy, for instance.
The question of Church governance and its relation to the secular authority was the number one hot-button political issue during the European Middle Ages, over which many intellectual, political, as well as military battles were fought. It’s a vast and fascinating topic that spans several centuries of complicated history, with changing fortunes on all sides; to get a basic taste of it, this article on the Investiture Controversy is decent.
These controversies exploded again during the Reformation and the subsequent religious upheavals and wars that engulfed Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and they haven’t died down completely to the present day. But as a simplification (perhaps excessive), one could say that the present tightly disciplined form of Catholic Church governance developed during the Counter-Reformation period.
(It should also be noted that some local Catholic churches, most notably the Eastern ones, have much more autonomy for peculiar reasons of local history. Formally, this is known as the sui juris status.)
Feudalism is hierarchical. Vladimir is talking about the high level of autonomy of each boss in the hierarchy. Even kings did not have the absolute power we usually think of kings as having; the Holy Roman Empire being an extreme example of this, in which IIRC the Emperor was usually less powerful than any of his immediate subordinates, and served more as a balancing force or referee than as a supreme ruler.
I think that it’s not so much whether you remember correctly as which emperor you mean. The HRE lasted for nearly 1000 years, and the power of emperor varied a lot over this time.
To make things even more complicated, besides their imperial title, Holy Roman emperors typically had a whole bunch of titles over different lands within the Empire (and sometimes even outside of it), whose significance in terms of actual control ranged from purely theoretical to very real. Their ability to assert their imperial authority across the Empire heavily depended, among other things, on the ability to draw resources from the specific lands they controlled more tightly.