{"id":94375,"date":"2025-12-28T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T06:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=94375"},"modified":"2025-12-27T10:01:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T15:01:44","slug":"qotd-the-middle-ages-saw-rebellions-but-no-revolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/12\/28\/qotd-the-middle-ages-saw-rebellions-but-no-revolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Middle Ages saw rebellions but no revolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At some point in this space, we discussed the difference between a rebellion and a revolution. Drawing on Michael Walzer’s key work The Revolution of the Saints<\/em>, I argued that a true revolution<\/em> requires ideology, as it’s an attempt to fundamentally change society’s structure<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Therefore there were no revolutions in the Middle Ages or the Ancient World, only rebellions \u2014 even a nasty series of civil wars like The Wars of the Roses were merely bloody attempts to replace one set of rulers with another, without comment on the underlying structure. A medieval usurpation couldn’t help but raise questions about “political theory” in the broadest sense \u2014 how can God’s anointed monarch be overthrown? \u2014 but medieval usurpers understood this: They always<\/em> presented the new boss as the true, legitimate king by blood<\/em>. I forget how e.g. Henry IV did it \u2014 Wiki’s not clear<\/a> \u2014 but he did, shoehorning himself into the royal succession somehow.<\/p>\n

Combine that with Henry’s obvious competence, Richard II’s manifest in<\/em>-competence, and Henry’s brilliant manipulation of the rituals of kingship, and that was good enough; his strong pimp hand took care of the rest. Henry IV was a legitimate king because he acted like<\/em> a legitimate king.<\/p>\n

A revolution, by contrast, aims to change fundamental social relations. That’s why medieval peasant rebellions always failed. Wat Tyler<\/a> had as many, and as legitimate, gripes against Richard II as Henry Bolingbroke did, but unlike Henry’s, Tyler’s gripes couldn’t really be addressed by a change of leadership \u2014 they were structural<\/em><\/a>. 200 years later, and the rebels were now revolutionaries, willing to give structural change a go.<\/p>\n

Severian, “\u00a1Viva la Revoluci\u00f3n!”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2025-02-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At some point in this space, we discussed the difference between a rebellion and a revolution. Drawing on Michael Walzer’s key work The Revolution of the Saints, I argued that a true revolution requires ideology, as it’s an attempt to fundamentally change society’s structure. Therefore there were no revolutions in the Middle Ages or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,62,84,7,41],"tags":[650,570,622,703,396,506,1462],"class_list":["post-94375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-europe","category-government","category-history","category-quotations","tag-civilwar","tag-england","tag-ideology","tag-middleages","tag-monarchy","tag-revolution","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-oyb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94375"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99943,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94375\/revisions\/99943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}