I learned about the Enlightenment in high school, but it did not mean much to me. I knew that a bunch of guys like Locke and Rousseau wrote about men having rights, but I did not understand the context. Researching the popes gave me a new perspective.

The story really started in eighth century Italy, which was dominated by the Lombards, the last of the powerful barbarian tribes that came down from the north. The Lombards, led by King Aistulf, held territories on all sides of Rome and threatened to lay siege to the city. The Lombards were originally Arian Christians, but by this time most had been converted to orthodoxy. They had nothing against the pope; they just wanted to eliminate the gap in their holdings.

Pope Stephen II (or III if you count the guy who died after three days as pope), was desperate. He undertook the difficult journey across the Alps to meet with the King of the Franks, Pepin the Short. Pope Stephen somehow convinced the king that it was his duty to defend Rome against the Lombards. Pepin and his army descended into Italy and defeated King Aistulf’s forces. He and his son Charlemagne confirmed that the Pope was the legitimate ruler of all of western Europe because of a “Donation” that Constantine had allegedly made to the pope after he had moved his own empire to the east. In return Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as (Holy Roman) emperor, and threatened to excommunicate anyone who questioned the right of his family to rule the empire.

I think of this as the Old Deal. The emperor and by implication all of the kings, princes, barons, and other nobles in the empire gained legitimacy for their claims. The pope was ceded a considerable amount of territory in central Italy to rule, and his word in spiritual matters was enforced by the emperor. Thus, Church and State had a mutually supportive understanding. Since the pope was the Vicar of Christ, the kings could claim a divine right to rule.

The relationship had its ups and downs, of course. Over the centuries several popes attempted to depose emperors with mixed results. Likewise several emperors and kings tried to depose popes with mixed results. However, for centuries no king or emperor ever challenged the legitimacy of the papacy. On occasion a powerful monarch lost patience with a pope and install an antipope. Never, however, did an emperor claim that there should be no pope. Similarly no pope ever challenged the feudal system with the emperor at the top. Each institution supported the other.

IMHO the most crucial time for this relationship was the reign of Emperor Frederick II. Although the emperor had violent disagreements with the pontiffs, he never tried to undermine the institution of the papacy. In fact, he ordered that heresy, which essentially was tantamount to disagreement with papal rulings, was a capital crime throughout the empire. When the Inquisition found people guilty of heresy, the civil governments implemented the sentences.

The first memorable challenge to this arrangement came from Jan Hus. At the Council of Constance he was found guilty of heresy in 1415 and put to death by Emperor Sigismund, who had previously granted him safe conduct to the council. A little over a century later Martin Luther had a similar experience at the Diet of Worms, but for some reason Emperor Charles V allowed him to return home. Charles later said that he should have executed Luther as a heretic.

Luther was the first prominent person to claim publicly that the pope might be wrong about a few things and lived to talk and, more importantly, write about it. He never claimed that he was always right, and so he was never a direct challenge to the pope. He just said that the pope could be wrong.

This simple idea threatened to undermine the entire basis of the Old Deal. If a pope can make a mistake, then he could not be the true Vicar of Christ. If he was not the Vicar of Christ, of what importance was his sanctioning of the feudal arrangement? The Church made a vigorous effort to eliminate everyone who promulgated this notion, but effective suppression of the ideas of the Enlightenment was made impossible by the advent of the printing press at just this time.

Eventually philosophers worked out a different justification for government that was based on human rights. The pope’s role in this new world (or rather western European) order was not clear until Pope Pius VII was brought to Paris to crown Napoleon as emperor. While the pope was sitting there in his papal regalia waiting for the big moment, however, Napoleon grabbed the crown and placed it on his own head. Soon thereafter the pope was actually taken as prisoner and held against his will for years in France. So much for the Old Deal.

Eventually in the west the entire feudal system collapsed, but not until a lot of blood had been shed. The pope today is probably as well respected as ever, but very few people are calling for the pontiff to play a more active role in politics, and the people of central Italy much prefer their current political system, even if no one else can understand it.

The process of replacing the Old Deal with a new way of doing things is called the Enlightenment. As far as I know, it is a distinctly western phenomenon. The “founding fathers” of the United States were definitely inspired by the principles of the Enlightenment, but other nations were founded on different principles. For example, Israel was founded as a refugee state. The nations that replaced the European colonies were sometimes designed to resemble western states, but the citizens never went through the process of dismantling a religion-based government.

So, in much of the world religion still plays a much different role. Religious authority figures are treated with more deference in political matters than in western cultures. Religious traditions such as the Islamic imprecation against portraying the prophet are considered as inviolable.

So, it should not surprise anyone that some Arab countries seem to be having trouble with the transition to governments that respect human rights. After all, it took the West more than a millennium to become enlightened.

Likewise it should surprise no one that some people have not learned how to take criticism about their beliefs or to tolerate actions by nonbelievers that are considered ineffable by their religions. For many centuries the western Church and State tolerated no criticism, and the penalty was usually death. Somehow Enlightenment will probably come to all corners of the earth, but it will take a long time, and the transition will be painful.