Church and State: There's a long history

The Archbishop of Delhi’s missive to all the parish priests in which he talked about the “turbulent political atmosphere which poses a threat to the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution and the secular fabric of the nation” deserves careful scrutiny. All the more as the archbishop did not stop at that. He further urged his religious fraternity “to pray for the country and its political leaders all the time, but all the more so when we approach the general election”. The climax of the archbishop’s thoughts was a clarion call pertaining to the results of the 2019 general election: “As we look forward to 2019, when we will have a new government, let us begin a prayer campaign for our country”.

The archbishop appears to have several issues on his mind. His final words: “in 2019, we will have a new government” and “let us begin a prayer campaign for our country” can be faulted on fact, merit and the application of law. While the words “new government” is a known reality irrespective of which party wins more seats, what could be perceived to be suspect in some quarters is the latter part of the sentence: “a prayer campaign for our country”.

Several potential questions crop up. What sort of “prayer campaign” does the archbishop have in mind? Religious? Spiritual? Political? Cultural? Social? Ethnic? Communal? Also, if the archbishop really wants to start all this by himself, and ask his religious troops to follow a regime of prayer campaign for an avowed political election, then he should not be taken aback or surprised to face a volley of political counter-questions, and at times pointed high-explosive kinetic material, resulting in severe tectonic movements owing to the very nature of the realpolitik of our times.

Nevertheless, the archbishop’s thoughts and words take me to the genesis of empire and the papacy of medieval Europe, wherein, surprisingly, India stood out stark in the psyche and action plan of Pope Alexander VI in the late 15th century. In his book A Constitutional History of India 1600-1935, published in September 1937, Arthur Berriedale Keith, the celebrated constitutional lawyer, a prodigy at Oxford University and a fellow of the British Academy in 1935, wrote: “Elizabeth… granted a charter of incorporation on December 31, 1600. The aims of the Company were essentially commercial. Trade with the East was essential.”

However, much before the Elizabethan decree had begun the chronic intra-European wars which confronted the intransigence of the Sultan of Turkey, who created a serious hurdle and came in the way of the development of an overland Indo-European trade route. There nevertheless existed “hope” — which suggested a new line of approach in case of discovery of a practical passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. Wrote Keith: “Political conditions favoured action. The Bull of May 1493 of Pope Alexander VI had assigned India to Portugal in its division between that country and Spain of the undiscovered non-Christian world; and subsequent treaties between these countries had recognised the allocation, with modifications. Since 1580, the sovereignty of Spain had been extended over Portugal, and the Portuguese rights over Indian territories had passed to the Spanish Crown”. Thus, India was ordained to be under Europeans by the decree of Pope Alexander VI, way back in the last decade of the 15th century (1493), much before any visual contact had been established between Vasco da Gama, who landed on the Malabar coast on May 20, 1498, and Indians.

The interest and intervention of the Pope in empire-building and the allocation and allotment of land to the kings and monarchs of medieval Europe is, therefore, a historical reality. Seen in this light, the words of the Archbishop of Delhi are neither surprising, nor new. Delhi follows the legacy of the West. It follows a long, sustained pattern for which a number of precedents exist in the history books of medieval Occident.

The Holy Roman Empire, whose history lies in the heart of the European experience, lasted for more than a millennium, “well over twice as long as Imperial Rome itself”, and included all or a part of 11 modern European countries — Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. It began on Sunday, December 25, 800 AD, with the coronation of Charlemagne (Charles) as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a theocratic state, the existence of which continued till it was dismantled on August 6, 1806, to prevent Napoleon from usurping it. Though Charles was a devout Christian and a zealous supporter of Christianity, he had made it clear from the very start that he (as King) was the supreme head of both, the State and the Church, and that the Pope was his deputy. Thus Charlemagne himself, in fact and theory, was the master of the empire, papacy and Church. He was the “God-given autocrat of Western Christendom”. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction belonged to the Church to give blessing, recognition and identity to the King; and the King in turn controlled the kingdom, Church, Pope and empire. Thus, the Holy Roman Empire owed its foundation to Pope Leo III’s decision to dignify this expansion by conferring an imperial title on Charlemagne, thereby paving the way to a classic arrangement which was not only mutually necessary and complementary, but which improved upon the overall shapeless administrative chaos of the past. The empire was the joint creation of King Charlemagne and Pope Leo III.

Let me make things clearer. Historically, Christians owe obedience to all authority, but their duty to God trumped that to any secular power. It just proved impossible to agree whether they should suffer tyrants as a test of faith, or were entitled to oppose them as “ungodly” rulers. Attempts to resolve the issue made them draw on the Scripture, notably Christ to the Pharisees. Nevertheless, at the end, Christian thought tended and tried to distinguish separate spheres of “regnum”, denoting the political realm, and “sacerdotium”, signifying the spiritual world of the Church.

Thus, through vicissitudes of centuries, the Christian West has voted for the separation of empire (secular state of the prince) from that of ecclesiastical empiricism (spiritualism of the priest), thereby making Voltaire (1694-1778) quip that “it was neither holy, Roman nor an empire”. The Church and the State were separate. The empire and the papacy exist independent of each other, notwithstanding the occasional mutuality and reciprocity. Seen in this light, the views of the Archbishop of Delhi could be defended or rejected, depending on which angle you are looking at.