In Western Europe, Latinate and Catholic, a different dynamic occurred. Although the kingdom of the Franks, sanctified by the Pope, became the repository of Imperial pretentions, a kind of sibling rivalry arose between the Western Franks (the future France) and the Eastern Franks (the future Germany). Although Germany became the permanent Mediaeval "Empire," France never did acknowledge that the French King was actually subordinate to the German Emperor. Then, flush with de facto imperial power, Napoleon took back, Pope and all, the Imperial Crown, and made his son, like the Mediaeval Emperors, King of Rome. The fall of the German Empire, however, still left a line of Emperors: The Austrian Hapsburgs, having been Emperors for so long, figured that they had the right to continue in that dignity, so they did. Wilhelmine Germany, fresh from the defeat of Napoleon III, also claimed Imperial status as the continuation of what had been, de facto, a German Mediaeval Empire. This personalization and nationalization of "universal" rule then inspired the odd British variation: Queen Victoria assumed an Imperial title by virtue of possessing India, though certainly no Englishman took seriously an iota of indigenous Indian, Islâmic or pre-Islâmic, universalist ideology.

During the Middle Ages, there grew around the kingdoms of the Franks an aureola of kingdoms which could not claim, or at least maintain, as Roman Catholics, an Imperial dignity without the authorization of the Pope. The "Empire" of Spain was thus a very brief conceit. Consequently, in recognizing kingship alone among the Scandinavian, British, Spanish, Eastern European, and Southern Italian states, the Popes maintained the potential universal pretentions of the Frankish/German Imperial throne. This may not have been for the best, as first the French and then the Germans easily interpreted their own militant new modern ideologies as authorization to conquer Europe. Bryce did not live to see how ugly and murderous these pretentions would become in Fascist Germany, where the nationalization of "universality" became a principle, not just of universal human inequality, but of enslavement and genocide. This illuminated most starkly the difference between a claim of authority over all, by virtue of a universal state, and a claim by all to authority over themselves, by virtue of a universal, but individualized, human nature. The latter was more the idea in the United States, where the Roman Republic was venerated rather more than the Roman Empire.

The part of Modern (i.e. post-1453) Christian Europe with an equal claim to Roman pretentions as Francia was Russia. The princes of Moscow saw their city as the "Third Rome," following directly after Constantinople, the "New Rome," fell to the Turks and to Islâm. After Ivan III married a princess of the Palaeologi Dynasty and Ivan IV, the Terrible, conquered most of the remaining Mongol Khântes, the ruler of Russia was the Tsar (Caesar) and Autocrat (from Greek Autokratos, used for the Latin Imperator) of "All the Russias." This made the Tsar the special protector of all the Orthodox Churches, since the Russian Church itself owed its existence to Constantinople and nothing to the Pope in Rome. For a long time there were only two Emperors in Europe, first the Holy Roman Emperor and the Tsar, later, from 1815 to 1852, the Austrian Emperor and the Tsar. This had consequences in the 19th Century, when the Russians, for strategic as well as ideological and religious reasons, waged several wars against the Ottoman Empire, with the ultimate objective of securing Constantinople and the Straits. This was resisted by the powers in Francia: Britain, France, and Austria combined in the Crimean War to defeat Russia. This turned out to be a bad idea when World War I came around, since the Straits were then controlled by Turkey as an ally of Germany, and Russia was largely cut off from aid from its own allies, Britain and France. Largely because of Russia's terrible experience in that war, the Russian Revolution replaced the Tsar and his Christian ideology with Lenin and the even more ambitious universalist pretentions of Communism. Although owing nothing to Tsarist ideology, Communism provided a much more precise and unique justification for conquest and police state tyranny than Orthodoxy ever did. From 1945 to 1989, much of Eastern Francia and Balkan Romania was within the political and cultural sphere of Soviet Russia. The Fall of Communism reversed that. Indeed, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (Bohemia) have obtained membership in the essentially Western military alliance of NATO, with Lithuania and others seeking membership also. At the same time, it must be considered that Roman Catholic areas of Belorussia (White Russia or Belarus) and the Ukraine, which had been conquered and proselytized by Lithuania in the Middle Ages (and so for a long time religiously part of Francia), have been permanently returned to Russia.



Europa est omnis divisa in partes tres,

quarum unam Romaniam, aliam Franciam, tertiam Russiam. Europa 1. Romania 2. Constantinople Greek 2. Francia 1. Rome Latin 3. Russia 3. Moscow Old Church

Slavonic

"Europe" is now a concept with special significance as NATO and the European Union expand to encompass formerly Communist states in Eastern Europe. So far, these have mainly been states of Mediaeval Francia, like Poland, Hungary, and the Baltics. It is conceivable, however, that one or the other organization could end up including the Ukraine, or even Russia itself, and states of Mediaeval Romania, like Serbia, Bulgaria, and the modern state of România. Greece and Turkey are already members of NATO. Turkey's application to the European Union has been postponed because of its human rights record and, apparently, fears of unlimited Turkish/Muslim immigration. It will certainly be an extraordinary event if Turkey, the Islâmic successor of the Emperors of Constantinople, itself is formally admitted to the new super-Europe. Eastern Europe is still struggling with the cultural and legal aftereffects of Communism. The states from Mediaeval Romania, among the poorest in Europe, struggle, not just with the heritage of Communism, but with the cultural and political puzzles of their own underdevelopment. Thus, Greece, although coming up on two centuries of independence, never Communist, and wealthier than most neighboring states, nevertheless has some Middle Eastern overtones to its politics, with socialist, paranoid, and even terrorist tendencies. Unfortunately, socialist tendencies are reinforced by the very leaders of the European Union, France, Germany, and Belgium -- where the socialist fruit of poor growth and high unemployment are all too evident. A Europe free of Communism thus still hears the Siren Song of pseudo-community, pseudo-compassion, and pseudo-rationality that tempted people towards Communism in the first place.



While "universality" here centers on Rome, and on comparable pretentions in Islâm, China, etc., this site also now has much material on earlier Middle Eastern and Mediterranean civilization. This is all collapsed in the table above into the category of "Pre-Roman Rulers," but it is, of course, a vast subject, beginning with Egypt and Sumer and continuing right up to the kingdoms of the Hellenistic age. The earliest states of the Middle East did not so much have universalist pretentions as they did think of themselves as uniquely real, civilized, and human, as opposed to the chaos of barbarians outside. Ultimately recognizing the numbers and sophistication of the foreigners suggested, as it did until the 20th century in China, that they should be happy and willing to be ruled by "us," just because of our own virtue. When someone developed a real advantage, as did the Assyrians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, and then the Romans (not to mention later Islâmic and European conquerors), pretention could become increasingly factual. The humanity of the ideal depended on the extent to which "us" and "them" merged into the same identity -- a process that hardly occurred at all with the Assyrians but came closer and closer to the truth in the later empires. That the ideal should be equality before the law and voluntary association, and not some specific matter of culture, religion, or ideology, came much later and is still, indeed, a matter of dispute, even in the democracies, where "communitarianism" survives from more authoritarian, collectivist, and even tribal visions.