Power in the Middle Ages

One of the most useful things that we can learn from history is how little changes from one century to the next, at least in some arenas of society. This is certainly true for the ways that power is used, for we see in The Song of Roland, Jocelin of Brakelond: Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, and The Murder of Charles the Good, that in the Middle Ages as now power can be used to justify any action. These three texts remind us that while we citizens of the 21st century might like to consider ourselves to be far more civilized and democratic than the poor misbegotten souls living during Europe's Dark Ages, the rhetoric involving the proper use of power that we see in these three texts is strikingly similar to the rhetoric that we have heard from the current American administration over the last few months. This may be good or ill (depending upon one's own personal value system) but it is almost eerily the same. Those in power tend to believe (either by virtue of the fact that they have power or because they are, in good Orwell fashion) corrupted into believing this because of the prerogatives of power.

We can understand the essential argument of each of these works that might makes right if we connect each of them to one of the most important political treatises of this era, Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince. Neither Machiavelli on the one hand or the three texts from our class readings on the other make the argument that force alone is sufficient to govern. All of t

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Category: History - P