Governments as Institutions

Around the same time that architects, workers, patrons, theologians, and city dwellers were coming together to produce Gothic cathedrals, rulership was becoming institutionalized. By the end of the twelfth century, western Europeans for the first time spoke of their rulers not as kings of a people (for example, the king of the Franks) but as kings of a territory (for example, the king of France). This new designation reflected an important change in medieval rulership. However strong earlier rulers had been, their political power had been personal (depending on ties of kinship, friendship, and vassalage) rather than territorial (touching all who lived within the borders of their state). Renewed interest in Roman law, a product of the schools, served as a foundation for strong, centralized rule. Money allowed kings to hire salaried professionals—talented, literate officials, many of whom had been schooled in the new universities cropping up across Europe—to carry out the will of the ruler. The process of state building had begun.

In England, the governmental system was institutionalized early, with royal officials administering both law and revenues. In other regions, such as France and Germany, bureaucratic administration did not develop that far. In eastern Europe, it hardly existed at all. At Byzantium, the bureaucracy that had long been in place frayed badly, leaving the state open to conquest by western crusaders.