Republican remnants in the medieval Mediterranean
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Abstract
Nobody thinks of medieval Europe as a place to find republics. The region was a patchwork of monarchies, with a complex network of empires and kingdoms, duchies and counties, emirates and papal states. What republics did exist, such as Venice, were generally more of a decentralized power arrangement between noble families than a bottom-up democratic institution, as we would conceptualize a republic in the modern day. However, there did exist a few important elements of republican ideology that persisted through the Middle Ages. The legacy of the Roman Republic can be clearly seen in the Byzantine Empire, and in the Commune of Rome.
The Roman Republic was a political entity that began in the ancient city of Rome, continued to conquer Italy, and eventually brought all of the Mediterranean into its sphere of influence. The republic was a complex system of assemblies, elections, and power-transfers, generally giving the richest elites of Rome massive advantages over the enormous population of poor urban workers and farmers, as well as the population of slaves entirely severed from the political process. Internal strains and elite infighting led the Republic to collapse in the middle first century BCE, beginning a period of Roman history usually called the Principate. This period saw a system where one man ruled: the princeps, eventually known as the emperor.
However, the Romans did not see the transition from republic to monarchy as a radical change. Many did not see it as a change at all, but a simple restructuring of the republic to function better under the benevolent guiding hand of one man. The princeps served as a father and patron to the entire Roman people in the same way a patron serves their clients in the patron-client relationships that so pervaded Roman society. Elements of the republic thus continued to exist under the empire. The first princeps Augustus, who consolidated power in the end of the first century BCE, nominally followed the “rule-book” of the republic, while accumulating true power in his own position.