Marriage between Warfare and Religion? State capacity and cults of personality in the late medieval and early modern period Northern Europe

Jari Eloranta, University of Helsinki
Henri Aaltonen, University of Helsinki
Jyrki Knuutila, University of Helsinki

In the current interdisciplinary literature on state capacity, which has had a consequential impact on the recent economic history debates, the role of religion and church as fundamental societal structures shaping state formation and economic development has been discussed only occasionally, typically in conjunction with institutional evolution (see e.g. Johnson & Koyama, 2019). Religion and church have had a significant role in the development of early state capacity, especially in often complementing the power of the (somewhat) secular state (Möller, 2019). There is ample recent research connecting the roles of religion and the rise of capitalism, which suggests that we should explore further the nexus of religion and societal development (Friedman, 2021). Furthermore, war shaped the development of the European states, namely by increasing their competitive ability to project violence (Hoffman, 2015)., which in turn led to higher fiscal capacity growth (Dincecco & Katz, 2014). Here we will connect these various strands of literature to suggest that while the power of the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church in late medieval and early modern period waned in favor of stronger nation states and secular rulers, this meant a re-orientation of the power and role of religion in state formation, not that it disappeared entirely. First, churches and church leadership retained their strong governing roles in local communities well into the 20th centuries. Second, these churches functioned as multinational entities and thus were able to extend leadership via these networks. Third, churches and religion amplified the power of rulers, creating mutually beneficial governing relationships, which tied them into the warfare efforts and shaping of the expanding of the states. We will explore in this paper these three different dimensions via various conflicts and the expansion of fiscal capacity in Northern Europe.

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 Presented in Session 12. Political Economy, Trade, and Development