Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX Hardcover – May 12, 2017

Cannot recommend this book enough.

It is fascinating how different the relationship between church and “state” was in the medieval ages.

It destroys the fallacy that society should be separated between Church and State, but that society worked better when we had the same goals...... I can't recommend it enough.

To anyone who is curious what it was actually like to live in the Social reign of Christ the King, this study of the kingdom of St. Louis IX does an amazing job explaining it. Quite fascinating and definitely worth the purchase.

My Grandson wrote it

An eye opener!

So many modern historians have cynically reduced this period when Christianity prevailed to a time of cultural darkness and violent power struggles. Such people fail to understand the Christian order since they equate it with tyranny. They judge Christendom from the premises of our present disorders, in which people only seek their self-interest.That is why it is refreshing to find a modern scholar who can refute this utterly distorted narrative of the Christian order. Historian Dr. Andrew Willard Jones manages to break through the misconceptions and presents a fascinating look at the medieval order in his new book titled, Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX.The author is the director of the Saint Paul Center at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He spent ten years writing his book with the encouragement of colleagues. His studies took him into several disciplines which are presented in the book. His views are not just idle speculation about the past as he relies upon a wealth of primary sources that give delightful insight into the everyday lives of medieval Frenchmen.Dr. Jones describes the Christian order by following the narrative of the reign of Saint Louis IX and his counselor Gui Foucois. The Frenchman Foucois was successively father, widower, judge, advocate, enqueteur, priest, bishop, cardinal and eventually Pope Clement IV. He straddled both sides of the religious and temporal order, often simultaneously.From this privileged perspective, Dr. Jones constructs a vision of how medieval society worked. Instead of tyranny, we find subsidiarity. There is an order wonderfully adjusted to the needs of society. We witness a harmony and peace that cannot be understood, but is nevertheless so desperately needed by our fragmented, postmodern world that has separated what should be united, and made everything relative, deconstructed and uncertain.Our historian’s central thesis is simply stated: “I argue that thirteenth century France was not a world of the secular and religious vying for position and power, but a world in which the material and the spiritual were totally dependent on each other and penetrated one another at every level.”He claims medieval society offered “a coherent vision of the whole in which mankind moved through grace from the lesser to the greater, from the fallen to the redeemed. It was an integral vision which included all of social reality and it was removed from our own.”There are so many concepts in the book that challenge us to reflect on Christendom with different criteria. Dr. Jones broaches many disciplines and thus does not have time to elaborate his concepts to their fullest.However, his book is a brilliant defense of Christendom and an indictment of our postmodernity. It awakens in us longings for that passion for justice that is sorely absent in our vast governmental structures. In the loneliness of our individualism, we are attracted by those networks of kinship, friendship, cooperation, counsel and aid that give meaning and purpose to life.Above all, we are exposed to a sacral world outside of our sterile secular society. Immersed in the book, we can get away for a time from the polarization of our fragmented culture. We are invited to contemplate the role of grace and Redemption in molding our lives. After reading Before Church and State, we have a measure of hope. Indeed, we feel whole again.John HorvatAuthor of  Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society--Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here, and Where We Need to Go

Few books could deserve to be so apropos to the modern discussion of church and state, especially in the United States, as Andrew Jones' recent work. The upshot of his conclusions is the realization that the privatization of religion and the separation of church and state is largely a modern phenomenon, beginning with the Protestant Reformation of the fifteenth century. The book's historical focus is the thirteenth century and the reign of Louis IX, a time period that saw arguably the greatest consolidation of what could be termed, medieval Christendom, that is, the social, political, and ecclesiastical fabric of society and culture at the time. This "fabric," so to speak, was analogous to the seamless garment worn by Christ at His Passion, having no real demarcations between the religious and secular spheres. Taking inspiration largely from Augustine, this social phenomenon was essentially a sacramental kingdom, wherein the elements of the "state," where shot through with that of the divine.Jones' careful historical research through the relevant primary sources also dislodges the commonly-held assumption that this social reality amounted to little more than a theocracy, where the Church essentially controlled the state. Rather, Jones offers a compelling argument for how the balance between the sacred and the secular was understood against the backdrop of the Incarnation and the Trinity, such that the balance was justified through a theological underpinning of dogma. In other words, it was the fact of Revelation and the faith of the Christian church that both allowed for and gave meaning to the harmonious and unified existence of the sacred and the secular.The book, despite its copious documentation and thorough research, is eminently accessible across a wide spectrum of readership, and not simply to the academic community. Anyone wishing to become more familiar with the middle ages and the social, political, and religious life that characterized this time period would do well to consult this book. It's publication by the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, OH, is certainly reason for gratitude and esteem, as well as encouragement for others to take note of the high level of work that has come to be associated of late with this institution.

This book is very well written and shows an understanding of thr High Middle Ages that is hopelessly understood, in the majority of cases for rhetorical purposes.