Spencer Heath Archive

Item 503..

Pencil by Heath on notepad paper, possibly written at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. Good start for an essay.

About 1954?

     As Imperial Rome exhausted, to her own decline, her tribute burdened world, confusion and disorder replaced the workings of her codes and rules. Tax-impoverished populations abandoned cities and towns to seek subsistence in the barbarian mode of life and directly from the soil, while the Church, softened by its ethical traditions, grew into the garments of the Empire in a milder, less predacious rule. For she took authority not merely of the sword. She made acknowledgment to a higher law and proclaimed unfail­ingly the sacredness of the individual soul, that the human will must be free and not wholly enslaved.

     As the Roman tribute became exhaustive, all revenue for local order and defense declined. In the general insecurity, small holders of land sought protections from their larger and powerful neighbors. The practice of enfeoffment to a lord, usually under religious sanctions and vows and often to the heads of religious orders was for many generations extended far and wide throughout all rural lands. In these voluntary engagements to give rent-service or rent and solemn covenants to protect, began the system of proprietary public administration that developed in form but, except in Saxon England, degenerated in practice through a thousand years.

     In this organizational frame two types of administration developed, that of the Ecclesiastical and monastic and that of the political and military — lords spiritual and lords temporal as it were.

     This pattern of free community organization, /of/ lords owning the land and protecting and otherwise serving its inhabitants as free men in exchange for voluntary rent had its longest growth and best development according as it was remote from the seats of empire and least affected by traditions of political sovereignty and imperial power. In remote and mountain regions it kept freedom /?/ long alive while in distant England for five centuries it grew to blossom under Alfred till the Norman barons came. But on the Continent it was perverted long before. Political and military lords but little developed their proprietary power. They soon breached their covenants of protection and quiet possession, made wars among themselves and in place of free and customary rents conscripted property and lives and turned their erstwhile free men into slaves or serfs.

     Thus great barons, dukes and counts arose and, often aided

 

 

/Following are starts made before getting into the body of the above:/

 

     There is in the world, today as of old, a vast organiza­tion of destructive power, the power of seizing property and thereby of conducting wars, whether of diplomacy or of arms. East or west they exercise precisely the same kind of power and differ only in degree. It is exercised exclusively by political persons: those who seize and hold it while they can and those who come and go by elections until some people’s hero

     The Church was both spiritual and temporal. The Christian life in this world was obedience to Authority. Suffer in patience in hope of

 

     As Imperial Rome declined the Church took on the mantle of her shrinking powers while tax-plundered populations abandoned cities and towns for the rural and the barbarian mode of life. In a milder jurisdiction over the minds and lives of men the Church gave hope at least of future security to a despairing world. Above all, she was steadfast in her regard for the sacredness of the individual soul and in that age of faith and violence that men could not be wholly slaves.