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Dissertation
Kingship, tyranny, and the limits of ecclesiastical authority: the political theology of Sigebert of Gembloux (ca. 1027-1112)
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2025
DOI: 10.25820/etd.008152
Abstract
This dissertation treats the works of Sigebert of Gembloux (ca. 1027-1112), a monk of the diocese of Liège in the Low Countries. Sigebert wrote on behalf of the Holy Roman emperors in their conflict with the papacy over the mutual scope of each office’s authority, known as the Investiture Controversy (1076-1122). The dissertation argues that Sigebert articulated a latent, but coherent, political theology. This collection of ideas emerges across his works in several different genres and over the course of decades. This implicit system held that coercive power and violence were inherent to and inextricable from the material and temporal world (saeculum) in which the church necessarily dwelled, in spite of its divine origin and heavenly destiny. Because the church had come to rely on the earthly properties and rights granted by Christian lay rulers, the pope and other bishops owed submission to Christian kings in all matters not strictly spiritual. Against his opponents who argued for the liberty of the church from royal oversight (libertas ecclesiae), Sigebert argued that such an excision of the clerical and ascetic element (sacerdotium) from its historic relationship with kingship (regnum) would lead to tyrannical subordination to unjust rulers and outright thieves (tyranni et raptores), who wielded physical force but held no pious qualms about expropriating ecclesiastical goods or disregarding the moral authority of sacerdotium. Sigebert gave voice to this view in his later works which were polemical in nature, but this dissertation contends that these ideas were already present in his earlier writings in different genres, namely his historiographical and hagiographical writings. It argues that his understanding of the right order between clergy and crown is inseparable from his reading of Frankish historical works through the lens of an Augustinian pessimism about organized human society and politics. It also argues that Sigebert’s advocacy of a nearly absolute scope of authority for kings was paradoxically motivated by his belief in the ultimate metaphysical and eschatological superiority of priesthood to kingship. Pro-papal attempts to totalize papal authority over terrestrial Christian society by exercising temporal authority over lay rulers signified to Sigebert not merely a usurpation of a distinct jurisdiction, but the defilement of sacerdotium and a departure from its nature. The charge of the clergy was to vivify souls, rather than to coerce bodies. The practical outcome is that Sigebert condones the almost unlimited scope of secular authority. The presence of such a view in the early twelfth century, reminiscent of the pessimism of later thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and De Maistre, calls us to rethink the history of European political thought.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Kingship, tyranny, and the limits of ecclesiastical authority: the political theology of Sigebert of Gembloux (ca. 1027-1112)
- Creators
- John Joseph Yost
- Contributors
- Shane Bobrycki (Advisor)Michael E. Moore (Advisor)Sarah E. Bond (Committee Member)Elizabeth Yale (Committee Member)William L. North (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- History
- Date degree season
- Summer 2025
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.008152
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xx, 210 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2025 John Joseph Yost
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 07/29/2025
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-210).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
What if human beings are too corrupt to function in the world without the coercive hand of a strong ruler who wields centralized and unchallengeable power? Such was the Hobbesian claim made by the central figure of my dissertation, the monk and scholar Sigebert of Gembloux (ca. 1027-1112). Sigebert argued on behalf of strong monarchical power for Holy Roman emperors. He lived and wrote during the bitter struggle between empire and papacy known as the Investiture Controversy (1076-1122), which divided and polarized medieval Europe. The mutually exclusive claims about the proper authority of kings and priests raised fundamental questions about the constitution of the church and state. Sigebert s pessimism about human nature, I argue, was informed by the feudal turbulence of his times, which he interpreted through the lens of Augustine s writings on the relationship between Christian church and secular world. His bleak view of the world as inherently violent and proprietary precluded, for him, the possibility of clerical jurisdiction over secular affairs. He argued that without a strong central executive, society will fall prey to tyrants and robbers, a view that anticipates Hobbes s state of nature by over 500 years. Sigebert s ideas thus help to illuminate to the longue dur e of efforts to justify executive power as well as the impact of historical study on broader understandings of power and of the political and social configurations possible for human communities.
- Academic Unit
- History
- Record Identifier
- 9984948237602771
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