CHAPTER 1: 1492: The Seven Deadly Sins Tumble out of Europe

Europe Rebelling Against Christianity:
The Role of Government

BECAUSE RELIGION DID NOT INTEGRATE EUROPEAN SOCIETY, GOVERNMENT did not perform functions which religion assigned it. Government's purpose was to maintain order and to dispense justice (Romans 13:1-7). If Christianity had integrated European society, as Pueblo religion did its society, then European Christian rulers would have maintained order and provided justice out of a motivation to serve their God. But most rulers needed other motives.

After the collapse of the Roman and Carolingian Empires, local governmental powers were parceled out to the leaders of roving military bands in exchange for their allegiance to the king. To motivate these lords to govern and to help them feed and clothe their private armies, the king gave them extensive lands ("fiefs") to farm and serfs to work them. This meant "the passing of public power into private hands" for private economic gain. These lords dispensed private justice in their own courts. Their knights swore allegiance to them, not because they were just or the knights were Christian but because they offered protection, booty and small fiefs. At first the church criticized this "disintegration of the Christian empire." Soon, however, church officials saw that they could profit from it by becoming lords, estate owners and dispensers of private justice. Thus they legitimized it with "the usual Christian façade."

This feudalism did not serve monarchs' long-term interests. Kings sought to regain functions they had farmed out. If Christianity had integrated European society, then the church's impressive coronation ceremony, its anointing of a new king, would have won lords' loyalty to the Lord's anointed. But the rulers' authority to grant lands won their fealty instead. Recognizing a new king safeguarded their land titles. Self-interest spoke louder than the church.

As kings expanded their powers and created nation-states, they used economic motives to bind their subjects to their cause. England's King Edward III secured military services by promising a share in the spoils or new government posts in conquered territories. "The soldiers in Edward III's armies were men on the make and military considerations seldom clouded their selfish intentions." His "war with rich France" was "more popular than war with poor Scotland." Edward showed his men how a government post could be milked for money: when he returned to England from France in 1340, he lodged accusations of misconduct against his subordinates "partly in order to levy large fines from them." Justice was prostituted for mercenary profit.²¹

Taxes were a king's main source of revenue. Scripture authorized them: "This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing" (Romans 13:6). Tax revenues paid them for their work of governing. When they collected taxes, though, they were not to collect more than was due (Luke 3:12-13). French taxation glaringly revealed how little these principles were respected. The French king authorized taxes (aide, taille, gabelle and so on) but farmed out tax collection to private "tax-farmers." They purchased the rights to collect taxes in a given region for a sum much less than the anticipated revenue, then pocketed the difference. By the eighteenth century, they squeezed as much from peasants as possible with little regard for legal rates. The public power of taxation was sold into private hands for private profit.²²

Viewed in terms of European history, unrestrained self-interest seems unremarkable. However, Europeans stood poised to break out of parochial European history into new worlds where self-interest was restrained. In the Incan empire, "state-administered labor taxation was governed by ancient Andean principles of reciprocity." Taxpayers paid in labor, but while working they had to be fed and entertained. That limited the ruler's ability to increase taxation: the more labor, the more food and entertainment.²³ When transported to this world of reciprocity, where there was no countervailing power, Europeans' unrestrained self-interest would prove immensely destructive and dynamic.