Liberty, Dominion and the Two Swords: On the Origins of Western Political Theology (180-398)

Liberty, Dominion and the Two Swords: On the Origins of Western Political Theology (180-398). By Lester L. Field, Jr. Publications in Medieval Studies 28. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. xviii + 542 pp. $95.00 (cloth).

The doctrine of "two swords" is usually understood as a medieval notion of political dualism with patristic roots, specifically the enduring interpretation by Pope Gelasius of Luke 22:38. The most obvious aim of this complex book is to present earlier Christian formulations which emphasize the liberty and autonomy of the Christian Church, particularly in terms of the image of the sword-hence a book whose scope does not extend beyond the fourth century, appearing in a leading medieval studies series.

Yet Lester Field's discussion is hardly narrow in chronological terms, moving from the second-century emergence of a Latin Christian literature to the letters of Pope Siricius, constructing an over-arching vision from various authors and events. The structure is somewhat telescoped, the thirteen chapters arranged in three parts: the first and shortest part ("The Church of the Martyrs") covers the period 180-312 and the earliest Latin Christian references to the language of "the sword," notably but not exclusively in North Africa. Part IT ("The `Constantinian Revolution' (312-374)") moves from religious freedom under Constantine and his successors to focused explorations of Donatism and the figures of Lucifer of Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers. Last, "The Age of Ambrose" devotes four chapters to the shorter period 374-398.

Much of interest comes along the way. From intriguing niceties such as the correlation between these issues and the greater western acceptance of the dualistic Revelation to John (pp. 140-141), to startling connections between Arian or Nicene Christologies and the politics they supported (e.g., Eudoxius of Constantinople, p. 165), Field shows a deft touch with a large and complex array of evidence.

This scope and learning comes at some cost to the prospective reader. Based on a dissertation, the study is somewhat unusual in form itself. About half of the well over five hundred pages are notes and bibliography. Field usually avoids dealing with historical niceties in the text itself-specific judgments upon which his synthesis depends are usually consigned to the copious notes. The recurring exceptions (e.g., a discussion of imperial coinage, pp. 83-7) are curious and sometimes jarring. Field tends to efface not only his own authorial voice, but also those of the ancient personalities and their opponents; engagement with contemporary scholarship is implied rather than stated. The result is an oddly elusive text, and one has a sense that Field is struggling to convey what is palpable to him.

There is a great deal to learn from this work. If its aim or thesis is to demonstrate the inadequacy of starting with Gelasius, it succeeds. The specifically western roots of "two swords" thinking are already visible in early African Christian understandings (especially in Tertullian, but Donatism also makes an interesting case study), then in western Nicene resistance to Arian emperors, and in awkward papal dealings with the East after Constantinople (381). Not only is there an identifiable eschatological understanding of Christian liberty, constructed over and against temporal and "secular" ones, but the "sword" as medium of both is a much older image than the neat Lucan juxtaposition.

Ultimately the eastern and western forms of Church-State relationsthe one tending to the unitary and the other to the dualistic-are foreshadowed in arguments from a time for which many other scholars find the concepts of "eastern" and "western" unsatisfactory. Despite Field's prima facie case for this geographic dualism, judgment cannot be rendered from this presentation of the western evidence alone; for that matter, this is not a systematic survey of western thought, and the questions of generally held views and real influences are not always addressed clearly.

Other hesitations must be raised, of greater or lesser significance; most obviously, while Field traces this western political dualism back to the milieu of the martyrs, the trail can hardly end there. Earlier Roman politics and law seem to stand at one end of the book, as Augustine so clearly does at the other, as matters which were clearly too large to include, but which needed better to be accounted for.

Field assumes more knowledge than the general reader or most graduate students in either patristic or medieval studies are likely to bring with them. The notes, however, demonstrate a mastery of the literature and painstaking attention to the historical and critical details, and will lead the curious on to further matters of interest. The result is really something like two books, a literary dualism which models the content, if rather awkwardly. Dif ferent readers may find themselves more at home in one of these than the other.

ANDREW MCGOWAN