52 Law and Morality Abroad (to ca. ad 1550)in de pen dent sovereign states. Far from deploring the juridical poverty of
our medieval ancestors, however, we should instead admire their bold-
ness. For in some ways, their version of international law was more ambi-
tious by far than our own. Th ey envisaged a world in which the rule of law
made no concessions to even the mightiest of monarchs—and in which
those monarchs were accorded no privileged position in draft ing the laws.
Emperors and kings could no more alter the strictures of natural law than
the fabled King Canute could command the tide to recede. Later interna-
tional law would be much more compliant to the demands of power, in
that it would allow the rulers of states to fi x the contents of the law as they
chose.
Underpinning natural law— as in the preceding classical age— was a pow-
erful sense of an ultimate moral unity enveloping the whole of mankind.
Th is sense was even stronger in the more restricted area of Western Eu rope,
where the Catholic Church held sway. Th ere was variety aplenty, to be sure,
in medieval Eu rope. But pulling against it, at all times, were forces of uni-
versality. With the passage of time, local interests would gain ground. Plu-
ralism would become a core feature of Western civilization— and of the in-
ternational law that it produced. But the vision of unity would linger long,
principally in the form of natural law. It is with us still.
Forces of Unity
Medieval man had a touching faith in the ultimate unity of the world. Th is
was in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, since medieval so-
ciety veritably teemed with diversity. Particularly with the spread of the
feudal “system,” Christian Eu rope came to present a picture of the most be-
wildering fragmentation and variety. But for all of this, there continued to
be a stubborn loyalty to certain key forces of unity. Th ree were of par tic u lar
importance from the standpoint of international law. In ascending order of
importance, they were the empire (i.e., the Holy Roman Empire), the pa-
pacy, and natural law. To the naked eye, natural law must have appeared the
weakest by far— a wispy, philosophical sort of thing, with little or no impact
on real life. It is one of the striking facts of Western civilization, though, that
this intellectual construct would prove more durable as a unifying force