Setting Sun and Fog, by Camille Pissarro (Date: 1891)
In medieval society ‘ranking’ moves to 1st place
Ranking is hierarchy for governance, and it began with type 1 and type 2. The strongest, wisest, cleverest, bravest and charismatic individuals in the wandering prehistoric human bands of Eurasia were persons who held highest ‘rank’. These role players wielded authority. If they spoke ‘publicly’ they were listened to with reverence. When they barked an order while out hunting or skirmishing they were obeyed.
Nor did the type 3 chief require an elaborate or formal designated ranking hierarchy. He relied in ad hoc ways on family, friends, and customary ‘advisers’ among whom the ‘specialists’ and ‘shamans’ were the most prominent. Formal hierarchies of rank began only with type 4 administration for obvious reasons we need not repeat here. As I have previously noted, administered rankings began in Mesopotamian households and then evolved in skill, scope and complexity within core template estates and kingdoms.
The best ancient recorded evidence for evolutions of ranking may be found in the history of Rome from republic to empire. It has to be emphasised nevertheless that Roman ranking itself did not define Roman governance as a category type in social evolution. Ranking was not the ‘be-all end-all’ or ‘raison d’être’ of the republic or the empire. Roman ranking was a vital utility, a means to an end, among other necessary means. In post-participative post-system Rome the prime ends lay in administering the core and the periphery — i.e. the type 4 moves to type 5 and then to type 6.
I plan to treat the Roman empire as a territorialising administered society, one of two broad organisation/system subtypes of type 6 core-periphery differentiation. In type 7 medieval society the ‘be-all’ and ‘end-all’ of governance was within-polity ranking. The ranking surrendered, over time, to ‘status’ philosophies and practical imperatives of general legislation, representation, and social ordering. At some point, somewhere, we identify a state-like early post-ranking nexus of administration-law-representation.
To repeat, Roman ranking was first built on a post-monarchial form of participatory system governance, an elaborate formal hierarchy of administrative powers which — astonishingly — lacked a single centre or core of authority. Then, under a succession of emperors Roman ranking reverted to a monarchial-administrative formula which though far more intricate and sophisticated than any other hitherto was in essence like earlier administered territorialisations dating preeminently from Ur III.
Having said that, all societal governance in the early middle ages was suffused with the influence of Roman socio-legal tradition. Ranking had been legitimised formally and was taken for granted by all post-Rome monarchies of Europe. I will show how ranking evolved in three phases of medieval governance over a millennium (500-1500).
Medieval ranking forms furthermore allow us to speculate about another dimension of rank-status differentiation — the contrast between the organised lordly governance of single territories and systemised pan-territorial governance in the early Germanic empire. In structural institutional terms the de-centred Holy Roman Empire model can be seen as a precursor to type 8 system state-society in England, itself historically unique as the first to ‘tame the rankings’ and offer something new in their place.
For the above reasons we must begin with an overview of the functions of ranking during the Roman empire. We should try in other words to replicate ‘base’ knowledge that was possessed so acutely by the Carolingians. I am currently revisiting literature on Rome and preparing an introduction. It will appear here when it is ready.
Thought for the day
Can we, should we reduce the whole medieval period of European historical complexity to just a single conceptual ‘rank over status’ differentiation?
My answer is you cannot be ‘over-simplifying’ a complexity when the complexity is categorically simple. This is precisely the difference between analysis and synthesis:
1k years is nothing in the grand schema and trajectory of society’s types, just as 1k subscribers (however ‘select’ you are) are a drop in the intellectual ocean.
Medieval history seems complex because it was the first to be so thoroughly recorded. Its complexity (to us) is largely a consequence of quantity of data.
Differentiation of ranks and its counterpart notion of status is our centrepiece phenomenon precisely because it was unprecedented in its sheer complexity.
Rolling Landscape in Winter, by Camille Pissarro (Date: 1875)
My ideas and interpretations in this post are original under copyright and must be attributed to ©2023 Michael G. Heller
This post is a ‘peer reviewed’ publication
Please send comments or corrections to me directly at mgs.heller@gmail.com
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