The Medieval King: Rebellions

Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God

Kings could give commands but not make laws, and if his command fell outside his jurisdiction, he would face “universal”¹ resistance. Under kingship, if a king or lord violates the law and becomes tyrannical, his vassals and others under his authority are no longer bound to give fealty to him. By law, they are to resist him, upholding the law and removing the tyrant. He could lawfully be attacked, removed, and lose his property.² If a king were to remove a vassal from his fief unjustly, it could ignite a revolt on the part of his other vassals and the people.³ Fealty was to the law, not the person. Giving allegiance to a king was giving it to what he represented—to his function under the law.

On Christmas Day in the town of Bethlehem, Baldwin I of Jerusalem was consecrated with oil and crowned king by the Patriarch. During the ceremony, it was announced “a king is not elevated contrary to law…he who takes up the authority that comes with a golden crown takes up also the honorable duty of delivering justice…he desires to do good who desires to reign. If he does not rule justly, he is not a king.”⁴ A king acts according to justice and law. A tyrant is not a king and therefore, deserves no fealty, honor, or obedience. He has replaced the law with his own will. Such a perspective stifled innovation (the attempt to legislate, to expand the powers of government). Law had to be both old and just. Any new law declared by the king, unless it was just and conformed with old law, was not binding; it was not law.⁵

If any ruler did not follow just laws, failed in their obligations to their subjects, or enacted unjust laws, then those rulers should be strenuously resisted. A 13th century legal document read “We should serve our lords for they protect us. If they do not protect us, justice does not oblige us to serve them.”⁶ Saint Augustine states, “An unjust law is no law at all.”⁷ Thomas Aquinas argues, “Every law laid down by a human being has the nature of law only insofar as it is derived from the law of nature. But if in some respect, it is in disagreement with the natural law, it will not be law but a corruption of law.”⁸ He further says corrupt law “has the nature, not of law, but violence.”

King Richard II of England, for example, was removed from the throne because he “strove to overthrow the law of the land to which he had sworn.”⁹ He disobeyed the law, took actions a king could not legally take, and was imprisoned and replaced. Nobles would simply take on a new king if one became oppressive.¹⁰ Originally leaders of the First Crusade paid homage and fealty to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I. Still, the Emperor failed to support them in their desperate situation at Antioch, and in the Crusader prince’s eyes, they were no longer oath-bound vassals since their lord failed to hold up his end of the bargain.

When the kings of England and France began to tax churches and clergy Pope Boniface VIII condemned their action in a papal Bull as “evil.”¹¹ But his wrath was not only against the kings but also against the clergy of those realms, who failed to resist the new and unjust action. He condemned the clergy for “fearing more to offend man than God.” They had chosen peace and ease over doing what was morally correct. He threatened excommunication to the lords and the clergy who obeyed the tax.

A lord had to be ever careful, walking on pins and needles, watchful not to offend any custom or rights of his people. Historian Maurice Keen notes there were “endless individual baronial rebellions against overlords who they claimed had oppressed them or had infringed on their rights.”¹² Liberty was worth dying for.¹³ A lord could face a duel if he were accused of violating his vassal’s rights—an excellent incentive to keep him from trying to lay aside the law. The tyrant, disregarding law and putting himself above it making his own, incited the subjects’ duty as part of their oath of fealty to resist him when he overstepped and abused his authority.

Who decides if a king or lord has overstepped his boundaries? Kern informs us “The decision of this question rested with the conscience of every individual member of the community,” and “The government had to preserve every subjective right of every individual.”¹⁴ Medievals were individually minded. Aquinas taught “nothing but individuals exists except in idea; the notion that individuality is a delusion is a delusion.”¹⁵ Whether it was education, prayer, relationship with God, or politics, they considered the individual rather than groups.¹⁶

Our forebears had far greater individual political power than we do today; for example, so long as one resident objected, tribal laws disallowed anyone from moving into their village.¹⁷ Ask a citizen under democracy today about the thousands of laws and regulations he is under, and he can only state a small percentage of them. Under medieval customs, laws were few and lived out. The peasants knew immediately if a lord acted contrary to customs because the issue would not be in practice. It would be “new.” The illiterate peasant knew his entire law more thoroughly than today’s lawyer, who must focus on a specific narrow section of law to master it. Perhaps this explains why democracy constantly creates new and increasingly complex laws—to take away the people’s ability to know if the law has been offended.

Professor Susan Reynolds wrote “Medieval rulers had been supposed to rule all their subjects, and not just their noble subjects, justly and with consent,” but “nothing was so important as consent.”¹⁸ Since the law was personal and consent vital, it was up to each individual to decide if his lord had overstepped his bounds. As the law was made for and by the people not its rulers, every individual in the community had a check or veto on any perceived government intrusion on their rights.¹⁹ Feudal historian Marc Bloch wrote a “universally recognized right of the vassal to abandon the bad Lord”²⁰ prevailed.Kern wrote, “anyone who felt himself prejudiced in his rights by the king, was authorized to take the law into his own hands, and win back the rights which had been denied him.”²¹ He explains fealty:

Fealty, as distinct from obedience, is reciprocal in character, and contains the implicit condition that the one party owes it to the other only so long as the other keeps faith. This relationship, as we have seen, must not be designated simply as a contract. The fundamental idea is rather that ruler and ruled alike are bound to the law; the fealty of both parties is in reality fealty to the law; the law is the point where the duties of both of them intersect. If, therefore, the King breaks the law, he automatically forfeits any claim to the obedience of his subjects…a man must resist his King and his judge, if he does wrong, and must hinder him in every way, even if he be his relative or feudal Lord. And he does not thereby break his fealty.

In 1300 Cynus of Pistoia compared the mutual consent and obligations of a king to his people, to a husband to his wife in marriage. In a letter written in 1020 to William Duke of Aquitaine, Bishop Fulbert of Chartres laid out fealty and feudal obligations. He told the duke besides simply honoring the lord and his possessions, the lord also “ought to act toward his faithful vassal reciprocally in all these things. And if he does not do this, he will be justly considered guilty of bad faith.” If a lord violated his vassal’s rights, the lord’s land he’d delegated to his vassal would transfer to the vassal.²²

The medieval Church was as obsessed with correct dogma as it was with unity. They believed that the whole system would crumble if theology were allowed to stray in one area.²³ Like the tyrant who oversteps, falsehood must be met head-on, no matter how minor the issue. A ruler was subject to both divine law and those he governed. In the eyes of God, a tyrant is no longer a lord since he has violated his design and is now acting on his own; he has replaced God with himself. Thus the tyrant is no longer to be followed by a Christian people; he no longer has any authority since authority comes from God, who only delegated specific duties to rulers. Catholic author Christopher A. Ferrara wrote, “the worst ‘absolute’ monarchs of Christendom were a model of limited government compared with the presidents and prime ministers of modern secular regimes who owe no allegiance to Rome.” The Church resisted and prevented absolute monarchs from emerging in the Middle Ages.²⁴ Professor Warren H. Carroll observed “a faithful Christendom can never tolerate an absolute monarchy.”²⁵ Authoritarianism arose only after secularism began.

The Church hierarchy believed it was their responsibility to protect people from tyrants and also to protect the Church, something they were willing to get involved in “politics” and even wars for. In 1248 Pope Innocent IV declared, “With the help of God I will take my stand for the people, and boldly face the implacable pestilential Prince…to destroy the cause of these evils, the tyranny of that malignant Prince, once emperor [Frederick II] by which the world is falling to ruin, the orthodox faith overthrown, and the glory of ecclesiastical liberty uprooted.”²⁶ Historian Will Durant wrote, “The power of the Church, said a skeptical Hume, was a rampart of refuge against the tyranny and injustice of kings.”²⁷

The great medieval and earlier scholars and Catholic saints like Augustine and Aquinas maintained a higher law existed taking precedence over man-made laws. Any law of man, Aquinas argued, “is beneath the Divine power” and must conform to the higher law. Any law “contrary to the divine law” must not be obeyed because, as stated in Acts 5:29, “we ought to obey God rather than man.”²⁸ Archbishop Thomas Becket told King Henry II he held God higher than him, “You are indeed my lord, but He is my lord and yours.”²⁹ Becket informed the king it is best for both of them if he follows God’s rather than the king’s desires. Aquinas wrote when the church excommunicated a lord or he strayed from the faith “the faithful are absolved from his dominion over them and from their oath of allegiance which bound them to him.”³⁰ He was no longer a legitimate Christian lord but was viewed as a tyrant. The American colonies’ motto of “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” fits well here.

A tyrant becomes the enemy of the people, their customs, and God. He is antagonistic to the united whole. In the 12th century, John of Salisbury wrote, “By the authority of the divine book, it is lawful and glorious to kill public tyrants.”³¹He also wrote, “I submit to his power…so long as it is exercised in subjection to God and follows His ordinances. But on the other hand if it resists and opposes the divine commandments, and wishes to make me share in its war against God; then with unrestrained voice I answer back that God must be preferred before any man on earth.”³² Saint Bonaventure taught that if a lord acts “contrary to God no man may obey him; moreover, since he who abuses the power committed to him has deserved to lose this power, he may be rightfully removed from it.”³³ The Church would dispossess lords of their lands if they did not rule “in accordance with the faith.”³⁴The people celebrated their great lords who resisted tyrants, comparing them to Joshua and the Maccabees.³⁵

Today, anyone who does not follow a federal declaration is a traitor or rebel. In the Middle Ages, any ruler who went outside of law and tradition was a rebel and traitor and was to be resisted by law. Thus, a medieval peasant would say the greatest outlaws in America were not those of the Old Wild West but are its elected officials and judges of today.

A section of the Declaration of Arbroath reads of tyrants “we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours…for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”³⁶

About the Author

Jeb Smith is an author, speaker, and historian who has written five books, published over 130 articles in several publications, and has been featured on various podcasts, television, and radio interviews. For speaking engagements, interviews, or questions, please get in touch with him at authorJebSmith.com.