Renaissance Popes (Helping the Protestant Cause)

Bad popes and CEOs, while possibly not a sign of the apocalypse, are a sign that an institution has gone rogue. When the church is about the glorification of the pope, or the corporation is about enriching the CEO, it is an institution in bad need of reform or reinvention. It is hard to imagine three popes who could do more to dissuade Europeans of respect for medieval authority than the 3 Renaissance popes Alexander, Julius, and Leo.

Think of the fun Fox and MSNBC would have reporting on these popes. A pope with sword on hip, swearing at his soldiers to urge them on in military campaigns? Another pope who, when a cardinal, was rebuked for hosting orgies?

Alexander rather fittingly took his name from the conqueror Alexander the Great rather than some milquetoast saint. Pope Alexander purchased the papacy in 1492. As Columbus was discovering a new world, Alexander was bribing fellow cardinals for their vote, an investment that he and his children would recoup.

Where a modern CEO might think it fun to throw multi-million dollar parties for a child, Alexander’s gifts were more creative. He bought his children lavish wedding parties, private bull fights, political positions and even armies with which to conquer new territory. Alexander had at least 7 known illegitimate children, a natural enough product from a man who seemed so at ease with sex. As pope, he once hosted a party that included a contest matching his guests with prostitutes and then dispensing gifts to the guests who demonstrated the most impressive feats of virility.


The next pope had once tried to depose Alexander, an attempt that led Alexander to try to assassinate this impetuous cardinal. It is hard to imagine someone as reticent and peaceful as Pope John Paul even surviving in this era, much less aspiring to the papacy. The church had too much power to be left to any but alpha males with little compunction.

Julius was bold enough to lead armies and raze St. Peter’s Basilica and commission a new one in its place, a feat that made Michelangelo and his ceiling more famous than this warrior pope.
Erasmus, who did so much to open the door to secular learning, penned a satire after Julius’s death titled “Julius Exclusis.” In this piece, Julie protests that St. Peter would block his entry to heaven.


Peter: Is there no difference between being holy and being called Holy? . . . Let me look a little closer. Hum! Signs of impiety aplenty. . . Priest's cassock, but bloody armor beneath it; eyes savage, mouth insolent, forehead brazen, body scarred with sins all over, breath loaded with wine, health broken with debauchery. Ay, threaten as you will, I will tell you what you are.... You are Julius the Emperor come back from hell....

Julius: Make an end, or I will excommunicate you....


P: Excommunicate me? By what right, I would know?

J: The best of rights. You are only a priest, perhaps not that you cannot consecrate. Open, I say!


P: You must show your merits first....

J: What do you mean by merits?


P: Have you taught true doctrine?

J: Not I. I have been too busy fighting. There are monks to look after doctrine, if that is of any consequence. … I have done more for the Church and Christ than any Pope before me.


P: What did you do?

J: I raised the revenue. I invented new offices and sold them... I recoined the currency and made a great sum that way. Nothing can be done without money. Then I annexed Bologna to the Holy See.... I set all the princes of Europe by the ears. I tore up treaties, and kept great armies in the field. I covered Rome with palaces, and left five millions in the treasury behind me....


P: Why did you take Bologna?

J: Because I wanted the revenue....


P: And how about Ferrara?

J: The duke was an ungrateful wretch. He accused me of simony [the purchase of office], called me a pederast.... I wanted the duchy of Ferrara for a son of my own, who could be depended upon to be true to the Church, and who had just poniarded [plunged a small dagger into] the Cardinal of Pavia.


P: What? Popes with wives and children?

J: Wives? No, not wives, but why not children? [1]


As Europe became more secular, it made a kind of perverse sense that the church and its leader would also become more secular but this still did not set well with Europeans. Luther’s protests about the excesses of Rome found ready ears. In Erasmus’s account, Peter expresses dismay that there is no way to depose such a pope and in this speaks for many Europeans. Although revolutions may seem obvious in retrospect, people do look for a variety of options before the overthrow of the social order. It took a lot to embolden Europeans to give up on popes.

Alexander and Julius convinced many Europeans that the papacy – and by extension the church – was corrupt and unworthy of respect. This provoked two responses that each undermined the grip of the church.


The one response was probably best characterized by intellectuals like Machiavelli and Erasmus, who were less concerned about the excesses of the church than the need to complement religion with secular teachings and human will. Machiavelli actually admired Julius’s boldness. And even though Erasmus criticized Julius, he seemed more aligned with the Catholic Church than the Protestant movement. These men saw progress through a further embrace of the secular, but an embrace that came in the arms of something other than the church.

The other response was best characterized by Martin Luther and John Calvin. They did not approve of Europe’s secular tilt and sought, instead, to create a church uncorrupted by so much power and money.


As it turns out, these two approaches had more in common than an opposition to the status quo and the power of the Catholic Church. A church that kept itself pure by letting others care about secular things like money, the rule of territory proved a perfect complement to the newly emerging nation-state that was secular in its interests and focus. If all the world had to be funneled through the church, the church was either going to be an obstacle to progress or it was going to become secular. But if the church was to focus on religious matters, then we have the birth of a new kind of world.

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[1] Will Durant, The Reformation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957) 279-82.

The DNA of Social Evolution

DNA is coded by the sequence of four bases. I'd argue for a parallel in social development. At a high level, any society is defined by social order, its dominant institution, economy, and worldview. I'd argue further that a change in one of these has the potential to trigger changes in all, just as the purchase of a new software application might trigger the purchase of a new operating system which might trigger the purchase of a new computer system.



Social Order
The simplest indication of how a society is defined might be seen in its tallest buildings. In medieval Europe, the tallest buildings were cathedrals and churches. Later, castles, parliamentary buildings, banks, and corporate headquarters followed.

Since about 1300, there has been a succession of dominant institutions: church, state, bank, and corporation. In various times and places, the dominant institution is not necessarily the one that has the most physical power but, rather, the one that most structures and shapes the attention and goals of the average person. In 1100 AD, most people conformed their daily lives to the church. Today, it is no longer church bells but, rather, corporate advertising and employment to which most conform their lives.

Dominant Institution
A society dominated by the church is very different from one dominated by the corporation. But how power is distributed within the church or corporation also makes a difference. Quite simply, there are two extremes in the distribution of power within any institution: power held by elites or power distributed to the masses. It is one thing to live in a society dominated by the state, by politics; it is quite another to live in a dictatorship or democracy.

Economy
Agricultural, industrial, information, or entrepreneurial economies are very different, but all are market economies. An entrepreneurial economy is just now beginning to emerge. This emergence will have a sweeping influence, just as did the emergence of the information economy in about 1900 and the industrial economy in about 1700.

Worldview
This is perhaps the most subtle yet most defining of the four elements. How we make sense of the world defines so much else. And a worldview, like glasses, is made to be seen through rather than seen.

Since about 1300, the worldviews that have defined the West are the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Pragmatism. Systems thinking is the set of glasses being adopted by more and more people.

Revolution
We rightfully call the change from agricultural to industrial economies an economic revolution. Intellectual, social, and institutional revolutions characterize the change of each of these elements. Western Civilization has thus far been defined by a pattern of revolutions, described in the table above.

The Swinging Pendulum of Social Evolution

The Rothschild brothers didn’t seem like elites when they began their career. Mayer Rothschild began his life living in a Frankfurt ghetto, forced to leave the sidewalk when even a young child ordered him to “Step aside, Jew!” He had the vision to send four of his five sons to the most important cities in Europe.

Mayer's son Nathan Rothschild was in London when the English began their war against Napoleon. This war was incredibly expensive. Coordinating efforts with his brothers, Nathan was able to raise huge sums of money for the British by selling war bonds throughout Europe – primarily through his brothers in Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and Naples. Nathan not only raised money for the British – he made the Rothschild brothers rich and famous. By the time of his death in 1836, he might have had more liquid wealth than anyone in the world. Because they helped to invent modern financial markets, the Rothschild brothers rose from the German ghetto to become elites with power enough to dictate terms to kings.

The Rothschild brothers and others like JP Morgan helped to pioneer modern financial markets and then, in the next century, philosophers like Keynes, policy-makers like FDR, and business visionaries like Charlie Merrill and Dee Hock “democratized” financial markets, creating access to credit and investment markets for the people. Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke is supposed to manage interest rates and reserve rates so as to do what is best for the general economy and the average person – not just a few powerful bankers. Access to financial markets is now considered a right.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Knox were among the revolutionaries who wrested control of the church away from the elites and helped to put it into the hands of the people.

Later, Louis XIV and Henry VIII help to pioneer the nation-state and then, centuries later, revolutionaries like Jefferson and Franklin wrested control away from the elites and into the hands of the people.

The swings between power held by the elites and the people seem to me inevitable. The elites pioneer and prosper. They are the social inventors who create the great institutions like church, state, and corporation. But once those inventions have become an integral part of the social fabric, along come revolutionaries who turn control of these inventions over from the elites to the people.

Next up for Western Civilization? Wresting control away from the CEOs, the last of the monarchs, and putting power into the hands of the investors, employees, and communities whose fate is so inexorably tied up in the actions of the corporation.

Am I a populist or an elitist? A Republican who wants the people’s interest represented by a trusted group of elites or a Democrat who wants the people to directly represent their own interests? At this point in history, I’m a populist, a Democrat ready to see the power of the powerful corporation dispersed.