Religion and Rights: A Medieval Perspective
Author(s): Brian Tierney
Source: Journal of Law and Religion , 1987, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987), pp. 163-175
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1051023
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RELIGION AND RIGHTS: A MEDIEVAL
PERSPECTIVE*
Brian Tierney**
In this paper I want to present some background mater
the interplay of religious concepts and rights theories d
Christian middle ages. We may note at the outset that ther
were elements in the Judeo-Christian tradition that could be condu-
cive to the growth of a doctrine of rights, especially the fundament
command to respect the person and property of our neighbor. Ronal
Dworkin pointed out that the necessary basis of all other rights is an
"abstract right to concern and respect taken to be fundamental and
axiomatic."' The axiom entered the mainstream of medieval jurispru
dence in the first words of Gratian's Decretum, the foundation of th
whole subsequent structure of Western canon law. "The human race
is ruled by two means, namely by natural law and usages. The law o
nature is what is contained in the Law and the Gospel, by which each
is ordered to do to another what he wants done to himself and is
forbidden to do to another what he does not want done to himself."2
Or in modern language, one might say, "Show concern and respect."
But if the notion of individual rights is implicit in Christian tradi-
tion, it has not always been explicit. Developed in one way, Christian
thought can lead to intolerance and persecution, to a denial of the
rights that we should consider most basic.3 Developed in another
way, Christianity can lead to an ideal of self-abnegation that implies
an abandonment of all personal rights. Consider St. Benedict's instructions for his monks. "They should have absolutely nothing, not
anything ... indeed it is not allowed to them to have their own bodies
or wills in their own power."4 This seems to leave no room for any
assertion of individual rights. So I don't want to suggest that in the
Christian tradition there is some ineluctable development that leads
inevitably from Luke to Locke-not with St. Benedict standing in the
way. My argument is a more limited one, that in a specific, contin* © 1988 The Catholic University of America
** Bryce and Edith Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University.
1. R. DWORKIN, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY XV (1977).
2. GRATIAN, CONCORDANCE OF DISCORDANT CANONS (DECRETUM) 1140, Dist 1.
3. This theme is explored in Professor Noonan's paper in the present volume: Noonan,
Principled or Pragmatic Foundations for the Freedom of Conscience, 5 J. L. AND RELIG. 203
(1987).
4. Rule of St. Benedict Ch. 33.
163
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JOURNAL OF LAW & RELIGION
[Vol. 5
gent historical context, Western Europe in the twelfth centu
interactions of religion and society did in fact form a new k
Christian culture, a sort of seedbed in which theories of human
and civil rights could take root and flourish.
There are three aspects of medieval religion that I want t
sider. First, and fundamental, is the concept of each human b
a person, entitled to consideration as a person, capable of mor
cernment and self-determination. I shall suggest that the spec
velopment of this concept of personality in the jurisprudenc
twelfth century contributed significantly to the whole future We
tradition of individual natural rights.
Second, we have to consider the church not just as a collect
separate individuals but as a corporate community, sustaining
its own, apart from the secular power, sometimes opposed to
government, sometimes limiting the power of the state. This
the medieval church in impeding the rise of royal absolutism
haps its most obvious contribution to the growth of Western
concepts.
But there is still a third, more subtle yet significant aspe
Christian thought-the relation between the individual Christ
the church conceived of as a united whole, a mystical body. Th
here is that the twelfth-century theology of the mystical body
enced twelfth century law on the structure of corporate comm
in general, including corporate political communities. So, in co
ing individual rights within a medieval community, one can pu
chain of argument that begins with abstract theological concep
finishes with a consideration of very practical, down to earth
ments like Magna Carta. It seemed appropriate to include som
discussion of Magna Carta at the end of this paper, because, alt
it is only one of many such charters of liberties that were is
many parts of medieval Europe, it has acquired a symbolic sig
cance in our legal tradition; and if one is concerned specifical
the interplay of religion and rights, it is fitting to remember
first clause of Magna Carta declares, "The English church
free and shall have its rights entire ..."
But let us begin with my first main theme, individual pers
and the concept of natural rights. There exists now a subs
modern literature exploring the new individualism or personal
humanism of twelfth-century religious culture. (One good wo
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163]
MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE
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synthesis, is called precisely The Discovery of the Ind
recently Harold Berman has shown how a new concer
ual intention and individual will helped to shape the w
twelfth-century canon law, which he properly descri
Western legal system.6 Yet there has been almost no
how twelfth-century jurisprudence contributed to the
vidual natural rights. One can read through a standar
Strauss's on the history of natural right without e
aware that there was a twelfth century at all.7
The origin of natural rights theories is usually date
often in the seventeenth century. About 1610, for in
defined the word ius not as objective law but as subje
kind of power or faculty (facultas) inhering in a pers
definitions become common among later authors. I
work of twenty years ago, C. B. MacPherson associate
teenth-century rights theories with the rise of early
ism. He described such theories as a form of "possessive
individualism," the ideology of a property-owning class that wanted
only to legitimize its own power.9
Other scholars have found an earlier origin for rights theories in
late medieval nominalism. Some emphasize the contribution of Jean
Gerson who defined ius as "a faculty or power (facultas seu potestas)
... in accordance with right reason" Gerson, in turn, is usually seen
as dependent on the great fourteenth-century nominalist philosopher,
William of Ockham. A philosophy that attributed reality only to individuals, and that emphasized will rather than reason, naturally led
to a doctrine of individual rights, it is suggested. Michel Villey, in
particular, has argued that, before the fourteenth century, the expression ius naturale was always associated with a concept of cosmic harmony and that Ockham instituted a "semantic revolution" when he
applied the term to a power of the individual person. Villey regarded
this as a lamentable departure from a sounder earlier tradition, a result of "egoism" and "distorted Christian morality."10
5. C. MORRIS, THE DISCOVERY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, 1060-1200 (1972).
6. H. BERMAN, LAW AND REVOLUTION: THE FORMATION OF THE WESTERN LEGAL
TRADITION (1983).
7. L. STRAUSS, NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY (1950). Strauss leaps from Plato and
Aristotle to Hooker and Hobbes with only the briefest glance at Thomas Aquinas on the way.
He does not consider medieval jurisprudence at all.
8. I DE LEGIBUS, § 2.5.
9. C.B. MACPHERSON, THE POLITICAL THEORY OF POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM: HOB-
BES TO LOCKE (1962).
10. M. VILLEY, LA FORMATION DE LA PENSEt JURIDIQUE MODERNE (1968). Idem, La
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But Villey could reach this conclusion only by ignoring al
canonistic jurisprudence of the preceding centuries. Gratian, w
defined ius naturale as the Golden Rule; "Do unto others a
would have them do unto you." This might imply that others
rights, but Gratian was still using the old language of precept, of
vah that Professor Cover explained in his paper. Gratian, how
went on to quote texts that gave other definitions of ius natur
his early commentators undertook to classify and explore all t
sible significances of the term. Among their definitions we of
counter the language that modern historians have seen
fourteenth-century innovation-ius naturale defined as a f
power, force (facultas, potestas, vis) of the human personality
greatest of the Decretists, Huguccio (c. 1190), distinguished ca
between ius naturale as a rule of objective law and as a sub
power of the soul, and he insisted that the latter meaning wa
proper one. Huguccio was concerned precisely with the con
human personality as moral and self-determining that I empha
the outset.12 It was this already formed canonistic language th
ham inherited. Ockham deployed this language for his own p
in the Franciscan poverty disputes of the fourteenth century a
son in turn transmitted it to the first early modern rights th
The subject requires much more investigation, but I believe su
investigation would establish that the first theories of individu
ral rights were formed in the matrix of twelfth-century jur
humanism.
Let us turn now to my second major topic, the church considered
not just as a collection of individuals, but as an ordered community,
sustaining its own corporate life, independent of the secular power.
Our First Amendment reminds us of this salutary arrangement and
continually gives rise to new problems about civil rights, but the principle involved is no eighteenth-century invention. It goes back to the
beginnings of Christianity when Jesus said "Render to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." At
first the Church grew up as an alien society within the Roman state,
with its own separate institutions apart from the state. When the emgenegese du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d'Occam, ARCHIVES DE PHILOSOPHIE DE DROIT 97
(1964).
11. For some examples of such usages see R. WEIGAND, DIE NATURRECHTSLEHRE DER
LEGISTEN UND DEKRETISTEN VON IRNERIUS BIS ACCURSIUS 145, 197, 209, 314 (1967).
12. Id. at 215. A more detailed appraisal of Villey's views is presented in my paper, Tierney, Ockham, Villey, and the Origin of Rights Theories, to appear in the forthcoming FESTSCHRIFT for Harold Berman.
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MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE
163]
167
perors became Christian in the fourth century, and subse
whole Empire, there was indeed a possibility for a tim
Church might become just a sort of Department of R
imperial bureaucratic theocracy. But instead, the old tra
tonomy was vigorously reasserted-for instance in th
phrases of St. Ambrose (c. 380), "Palaces belong to th
churches to the priesthood," and again, "Where matters
concerned bishops judge Christian emperors, not empero
A century later Pope Gelasius declared, in a famous ph
are two means by which the world is chiefly governed, t
thority of the priesthood and the royal power." In betw
gustine had launched his haunting image of the two citie
way of affirming that the Christian's ultimate allegiance
be to the powers of this world.13
These early texts were not forgotten. On the contrary
ploded into life again in the papal reform movement at th
eleventh century-the papal revolution as Professor Berm
calls it-when the church was threatened by a new kind
theocracy, based this time on the German monarchy.
threat Pope Gregory VII proclaimed as a sort of warcry
the freedom of the church-libertas ecclesiae-the phr
again and again in his letters. In the ensuing struggle, n
could completely dominate the other. And so a kind of d
permanently built into Western society. The church rem
omous, claiming specific rights for itself and its member
sisting that there was a whole sphere of human thought
which was in principle outside the legitimate power of t
government. When this tradition was challenged by new
vine right monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth ce
challenge evoked new forms of protest-one of them even
tallized in our First Amendment.
To understand the importance of all this we must bear in mind
that the medieval situation was highly unusual. Theocratic absolu
tism-the rule of a divine emperor, a sacred monarch-is a very com-
mon form of human government. Karl Wittfogel described dozens of
examples from all around the world in his book Oriental Despotism-
ancient China, Japan, India, Egypt, Peru, Iran. But, in medieva
Christendom, the resistance of the church always prevented nation
13. For a brief introduction to these texts and the whole problem of medieval church-stat
relations see B. TIERNEY, CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300 (1964) [hereinafter
Tierney].
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JOURNAL OF LAW & RELIGION
168
[Vol. 5
monarchies from congealing into theocratic despotisms in
individual rights would have been extinguished. The other si
coin is that medieval kings were always strong enough to pr
rise of an absolute, theocratic papacy when the popes were te
assert such a role for themselves.
The situation had many consequences both in theory and in practice. In theory, it was virtually impossible within this tradition to con-
struct a doctrine of pure absolutism. The tradition shaped the
thought even of those who tried to escape from it. I thought of this
recently while re-reading Thomas Hobbes, perhaps the pre-eminent
theorist of absolutism in the western tradition. Hobbes of course at-
tacked the autonomy of the church as destructive of sovereignty. An
absolute state, he wrote, could not tolerate alongside the tempora
sovereign another "ghostly authority," "another kingdom, as it were
kingdom of fairies," to which men also owed allegiance. The reason
was plain. If any independent spiritual power could claim the right t
determine what was sin it would soon challenge the right to declare
what was law.14 It is so true of course. That is why Americans o
various religious persuasions are constantly challenging laws that the
perceive as legalizing sin.
Hobbes was trying to be as absolute as he could. Subjects had no
rights, he said, except in areas that the sovereign chose not to control
that he "pretermitted." Hobbes mentioned as obvious examples the
subjects' rights freely to contract with one another, to choose their
own abodes, to bring up their children as they saw fit.15 Apparently
he could not conceive of a sovereign who would meddle with suc
things. But these are the very sinews of a modern totalitarian re
gime-economic regulation, internal passports to control freedom of
movement, indoctrination of the young through state control of al
education. Hobbes went on to explain that the power of his sovereign
was unlimited, but then added "otherwise than as he himself is the
subject of God and bound thereby to observe the laws of nature.
Later he observed that the laws of nature could be summed up in one
sentence, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
So our basic axiom from Scripture and canon law has crept in by a
back door. It may be that Hobbes was really an atheist and that such
phrases are mere rhetoric. The point is, Hobbes was using the only
rhetoric available to him and the only one likely to persuade the audi14. T. Hobbes, LEVIATHAN, 29.
15. 2 Id. at 21.
16. 2 Id. at 21, 26.
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163]
MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE
169
ence he wanted to persuade. Whatever his own religion,
rated with the preconceptions of a Christian society.
world of thought, the author of Leviathan could not even
modern post-Christian monster, the totalitarian state.
But I must get back to the Middle Ages. The persiste
between church and state in that epoch not only impeded
of absolutist doctrine. It stimulated new thinking abo
tional rights. The most obvious one that came to be a
direct result of the medieval conflicts between popes an
the right of consent to government. When Pope Gregory
depose King Henry IV in 1076, Henry declared that he w
the grace of God." A papal supporter, Manegold of Laute
testing this assertion, offered one of the first theories of
based on consent and contract. At one point he inelegant
the king to a hired swineherd who was removable by his
people, if he failed to attend to his duties. More formall
wrote, "If (the king) breaks the contract by which he w
he has absolved the people from their duty of submissio
It was not only papal supporters who used the argument
sent. When, later on, the popes grew over-ambitious a
claim that the power of all kings was derived from them
found it expedient to use the same argument. John of Pa
1300) that a king did not derive his power from the pop
God "and the people who elect or consent."18 A little lat
of Padua, a more bitter anti-papalist, framed a pure doctr
ernment by consent without any element of divine right.
Marsilius' populist, anti-papalist, political theory was
influenced in part by the practice of Italian city-state r
there is an element of irony here. It was as allies of the p
church-state conflicts of the twelfth century that the c
Northern Italy, which would grow into the great city-s
Renaissance, first won their freedom from imperial con
was in those cities that the concept of civic rights-right
ship-was first elaborately formulated.
This mention of communes and cities leads to my th
topic, the relationship of individual and community in m
gious thought and in actual practice. The standard Marxi
of Western rights theories is that they have always been b
17. Manegold of Lauterbach, in TIERNEY, supra note 13 at 78-80.
18. TIERNEY supra note 13, at 78-80, 206-210.
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ish individualism, "not on the association of man with man
their separation." But medieval thought about rights was n
on any such notion. It involved an awareness of the balance
individual and community, one might say, of a creative ten
tween them.
This tension goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. Consider two texts from Paul's epistle to the Romans. In Romans 15 we
read, "Each one of us will render an account of himself before
Christ. .. ." There is no vision of human destiny more starkly individualistic than that of the last judgment that haunted medieval minds,
when each soul would stand alone, naked, trembling before the divine
judge. But now consider Romans 12, "We, although many, are one
body in Christ," and again, "We are members one of another."
Christian individualism was balanced by this vision of the church as
one body, united to Christ as head, a body in which the members
could help and sustain one another, spiritually through their prayers,
and corporally through works of charity.
This tension in Christian thought was mirrored by a tension in
twelfth century social reality. So far, I have referred mainly to the
individualism or humanism of that age. But this is a rather new understanding of twelfth century culture. Fifty years ago it was com-
monly held that medieval people hardly had any sense of
individuality, little awareness of themselves, except as members of
corporate groups. We are now beginning to see that there is truth in
both points of view. The twelfth century produced both brilliant self-
aware individuals and an extraordinary, vigorous growth of new
forms of corporate life-monasteries, cathedral chapters, collegiate
churches, communes, boroughs, guilds, confraternities. Moreover,
the very persons we most readily think of as vividly self-aware individuals were often associated with the growth of new kinds of communities-Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians, Peter Abelard
and the schools of Paris that grew into the University, Francis of Assisi and the vast Franciscan Order.
The combination of intense individualism and intense corporatism may seem paradoxical but perhaps it is not really so. Human be
ings become fully persons in intimate social intercourse with on
another, not in desert-island isolation. Trying to explain the phenom
enon, I wrote recently, "Perhaps it is only when persons become mor
sharply aware of themselves as individuals that they need to reflec
consciously on the rules by which they form themselves into organ-
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163]
MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE
171
ized groups."19 My point was that the actual growth of
in the twelfth century was accompanied by a great new b
cal thought about the nature of corporations, especially
onists. Here again, as so often, medieval canon law w
interaction between abstract theology and day to day so
the new law of corporations, which affected the actual co
dieval groups, was itself influenced by the theology of
body. This was pointed out long ago by Maitland, th
legal historians.20 More recently Ernst Kantorowicz has
detail the interplay of theological and juridical concepts
thought about the structure of corporate groups.21 One
interplay was that the medieval corporation was often co
a new way, not simply as an association of members but
union of a head and members. Like Christ and the ch
bishop and cathedral chapter, abbot and monks, mayor
tion, eventually king and parliament. The same pattern
and practice keeps recurring. Moreover medieval corpor
developed by the canonists was intensely concerned with
individuals within corporate communities. A cathedral c
stance, by virtue of his membership in the corporate cat
ter, held some rights in common with the other memb
rights also included an individual right in his own preb
re-which he could defend at law if necessary. As Mai
with his usual epigrammatic force, "The corporation ag
almost resolved into a mere collection of corporations s
Again there was a link between these legal doctrines
turn are related to Christian theological concepts-and t
civil liberties in day to day life. For the vast extension of
that occurred in the twelfth century came through the g
ters of rights to corporate communities, churches, borou
for instance; but often the rights were of a kind that cou
exercised only by individuals, e.g. the right of a merchan
go freely. Earlier medieval society had certainly recogn
ual rights, especially feudal rights, but there was nothi
egalitarian about them. A baron's right was typically an
19. B. TIERNEY, RELIGION, LAW AND THE GROWTH OF CONSTITUTIONAL THOUGHT
37 (1982).
20. POLLOCK AND MAITLAND. THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW 495 (2d ed. 1898).
"Now the idea of the Church as the mystical body of Christ has had an important influence on
the growth of the law of corporations. ..."
21. E. KANTOROWICZ, THE KING'S TWO BODIES (1957).
22. POLLOCK & MAITLAND, supra note 20, at 507.
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from royal jurisdiction, a right to dominate others. One of
cherished of feudal rights was the right to have a gallows.
rights or liberties, exemptions from official meddling in cer
of life, began to be granted to corporate communities, they
new tone and quality and became diffused through much
classes of the population. From the twelfth century on
thousands of urban communities acquired such rights t
purchase or negotiation or sometimes outright rebellion-ri
freedom from arbitrary taxation and arbitrary arrest, free
servile dues, the right to be tried by one's own townfolk i
town court, and the right to elect a mayor and other city offic
was rich soil where later more generalized theories of ci
would take root and grow. As Alan Harding observed, "Urb
ties gave content to the idea of individual liberty."23
Perhaps we can even fit Magna Carta into this context of
ening civic liberties. There have been many interpretations
enigmatic document. Some historians have seen it as a nobl
of national liberty; others' at the opposite extreme, interpr
selfish contrivance of reactionary feudal barons. Many
Magna Carta do deal explicitly with the barons' feudal claim
claims if you will. But others contain the great broad princi
have echoed down the centuries in our common law. "No free man
shall be taken or imprisoned . . . save by the lawful judgment of his
peers and by the law of the land." "To no one will we sell, to no one
will we deny or delay right or justice." The interpretations that dwell
on the Charter's more generous provisions often emphasize the role of
Stephen Langton, the great theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury, who negotiated on behalf of the barons. But recently J. C. Holt,
while acknowledging Langton's influence, suggested a new way of
looking at the Charter. He sees it as a vast communal privilege, inspired in part by the privileges already granted to various other corpo-
rate communities like boroughs and cities. "Just as communal
liberties had been won by a sworn association whereby citizens
pledged themselves to fight for their liberties, so the barons pledged
themselves to fight for the liberties of the realm." Holt adds that the
barons "envisaged the establishment of one great 'commune of all the
land'."24 He suggests that if we look at Magna Carta in this way-
with reference to earlier communal charters of liberties-we can ex-
23. Harding, Political Liberty in the Middle Ages, SPECULUM 442 (July 1980).
24. J.C. HOLT, MAGNA CARTA 48-49 (1965).
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163]
MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE
173
plain without anachronism how the apparently "progre
the Charter could naturally have found expression in a p
dal document of the earlier thirteenth century.
But a problem remains. Could anyone's mind, ar
have made the conceptual leap involved in considering th
ple of a realm as a corporate entity comparable to the
city commune? Holt mentions in this connection the A
stable Priory which refer to Magna Carta as a charter "c
liberties of the realm." But this is still vague. The A
assert that the whole realm could be conceived of as an
single incorporated city. It is difficult to say anything
Magna Carta at this date, but perhaps I can add anot
information here. We now know a good deal about R
res, the Prior of Dunstable at the time of Magna Carta
days he had been a famous canonist, known to the l
Bologna as Ricardus Anglicus; and in one of his canonis
taries, discussing the origin of royal authority, Ricardu
corporate body of a city can confer jurisdiction ... how
the corporate body of a whole realm." It is precisely th
that Holt suggests might have been present in people's
Still Ricardus is only a witness to the mentalite of
we are looking for an intersection of religious ideas an
cepts in Magna Carta the most important figure is
Langton who was actually there at Runnymede helping
the terms of the Charter. We are learning more about
His role in the drafting of Magna Carta was first strong
perhaps exaggerated, by Kate Norgate. She wrote, "
were drawn up by Stephen Langton with the concurrenc
bishops who were at hand, and of the few lay barons,
who were statesmen.... "26 This view has been contested. But most
contemporary scholarly work attributes a substantial, though not exclusive, role to Langton in shaping the final version of Magna Carta
Much of Langton's earlier theological work remains unedited, but w
do know something about the views on law and political thought that
25. On the text of Ricardus see B. TIERNEY, RELIGION 22 (1982). The phrase communia
totius terrae actually occurs in MAGNA CARTA Clause 61. Holt renders this as "the commun
of the whole land" in accordance with his own understanding of the Charter (p. 335). Bu
communia is usually translated more neutrally as "community." See, e.g., STEPHENSON AND
MARCHAM, SOURCES OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 125 (1937), "... the commu
nity of the entire country .. ."
26. K. NORGATE, JOHN LACKLAND 234 (1922).
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JOURNAL OF LAW & RELIGION
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[Vol. 5
he expressed in them.27 Like Richard de Mores, Langton re
the people of a realm as forming one corporate community,
envisaged them not as an enlarged city but rather as a m
church, a congregatio fidelium-as behooved an archbishop a
Langton maintained that the duty of a king was to defend t
of layfolk and the peace of the church.28 He wrote that th
should always espouse the cause of the poor "because the blo
poor is the blood of Christ."29 Some parts of Magna Carta
to understand if we try to see them through the eyes of a
Langton and not just through those of a resentful feudal ba
It remains true obviously, that the grant to free men ex
whole population of serfs; but the point is that the whole
political order was now being defined as a structure of right
principle was capable of indefinite extension. Moreover the
did not take so very long. Already by the fourteenth centur
ment redefined Magna Carta's "free man" as any person "of
estate or condition." And Parliament also redefined the vag
the land" as meaning "due process of law"-already the
phrase that has become so familiar to us.30 No doubt Ma
came to mean many things that its framers had never inte
doubt a myth of Magna Carta grew up. But, as Holt agai
served, "The myth ... was part of the document's potential.
was so because Magna Carta emerged from an exceptionally
fertile medieval Christian culture. To understand documents like
Magna Carta in all their complexity we need to know somet
about the structure of medieval communities in general, and abou
rights of individuals within those communities, and even about
all-embracing vision of the church as a Christian community w
which particular medieval institutions took shape.
We have considered some complicated aspects of mediev
thought. But the points I have made can be summed up in a few
ple sentences. In the twelfth century a concern for the moral integr
of human personality led to the first stirrings of natural rights
ries. An autonomous church asserted its own rights and limited
27. The best introduction is still F.M. POWICKE, STEPHEN LANGTON (1928).
28. Quoted in J.W. BALDWIN, MASTERS, PRINCES AND MERCHANTS: THE SOCIA
VIEWS OF PETER THE CHANTER AND HIS CIRCLE 111 (1970). "Just as it is for the cler
elect a bishop, as it is for all the faithful of the realm ... to establish for themselves a rul
may guard the rights of layfolk and the peace of the church."
29. G. DuBY, THE THREE ORDERS: FEUDAL SOCIETY IMAGINED 320 (1978).
30. F. THOMPSON, MAGNA CARTA: ITS ROLE IN THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH CON-
STITUTION 69 (1948).
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163] MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE 175
power of the state so that it never be
civic rights grew up within a context
were shaped in part by the growing l
have broader implications. They sugges
did not have their origin either in ear
medieval nominalism; rather they are r
tion of Christian humanism that ha
culture.
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