The best man to lead through a crisis is the man who knows he won’t survive it. And history shows this is more true than you might expect.

Those rare leaders in history who faced declining health and a huge external crisis at the same time — logically, they should have failed faster. But many times, the double negative of inescapable death and military pressures created a form of leadership that defies all intuition.

The perfect case is that of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Leper King.

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Leading as a Leper

Born in 1161, Baldwin’s signs of leprosy appeared early in childhood. Nonetheless, he was thrust into kingship over the crusader-controlled Jerusalem while young and bound for a tortuous rule with the debilitating disease.

Leprosy, as most of us know from Biblical accounts, was not only a painful and embarrassing disease. It came along with longstanding social implications, usually of isolation, destitution, and an inability to participate in normal life.

As a leader, it hampered him in other ways, too. He increasingly found it difficult to ride or fight, but it also meant he couldn’t marry or produce an heir to leave any familial legacy. Governing was difficult for any king, let alone one with leprosy and in one of the most precarious political situations of his day.

Nonetheless, despite challenges of his body, the internal political strife in Jerusalem, and the external threats to his kingdom, Baldwin held his own against imminent collapse. The Leper King, as he’d come to be known, turned out to be a surprisingly active ruler and competent commander, holding off the mighty Saladin for years.

This is proof enough that the barbarian elements of Medieval Europe’s infancy — that still valued strength and vigor as primary qualities of a leader — had been tempered by the influence of the late Roman Empire and the Church. No longer was physical strength required to win the loyalties of a people.

Baldwin’s kingdom in Jerusalem doesn’t end well. Following his death at a young age, it falls to the forces of internal strife and Guy de Lusignan’s foolish decisions to meet Saladin’s army on the battlefield.

Nonetheless, while Baldwin couldn’t solve the precarious situation of Jerusalem in the long run, he was the key that held it together while he lived. Only he commanded the loyalty, restraint, and wisdom to lead the kingdom during some of its most difficult times. He held off the collapse for as long as his short life allowed him to.

But what is it about a dying leader like the Leper King that made him such an effective leader during the kingdom’s most trying times?

Self-Interest Dies with Them

A mental shift happens to a leader when they know they’re going to die.

Baldwin knew the end for him would be swift. Yet this didn’t cause him to be rash. On the contrary, Baldwin displayed wisdom beyond what his relatively few years would suggest.

In ordinary politics, when a leader’s life isn’t threatened, his outlook is multifaceted for better or worse. His decisions will hinge on a range of factors: its morality, its tangible effects, its negative implications, its reflection on his country, but also its reflection on himself. He will have a significant concern for the next election, the next phase of life for himself, and his legacy. In effect, the leader’s self becomes a factor in every decision.

Will he have enough support to win another election? Will he be written of well in the history books? How will the media spin this or that phrase? And on and on, with nearly infinite questions as to the ultimate effects of his decisions while in power. Relationships, reputations, and personal alliances become a minefield to navigate, which take their toll of real decision-making for the good of the people.

But a dying leader’s decisions become much simpler. No longer is there another election, or future threat to his kingship to deal with. No longer is there much care for the reactions of critics and political enemies. Their purview focuses on just a few things: the good of the kingdom, his legacy, and the wellbeing of friends and family.

And this is why Baldwin could be so successful while knowing death awaited him around the corner. His decisions could be made with no concern for his own future political security. Baldwin, to secure future stability for the kingdom, crowned his nephew as co-king and arranged a regency under Raymond of Tripoli.

He was to lose power no matter what, so his decisions could be better attuned to what the good of the kingdom required, what served his close contacts well, and what would leave himself with a respectable legacy. This is what happens when a leader understands that someone else will inherit the consequences of his decisions. Self-interest is nearly removed from consideration.

But Baldwin had another advantage by his illness…

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We live in a world where everyone is offended and everything is unfair. We love playing the victim.

But allowing yourself to be a victim might be one of the most destructive things you can do. It puts you on the defensive; it biases you toward inaction; and it defeats you psychologically long before you’re ever defeated in reality. It’s avoiding this mentality that makes great success stories like that of Teddy Roosevelt.

While campaigning for president, Teddy was shot on his way to give a speech. The bullet punched through his steel eyeglass case and his folded speech, lodging in his chest. His response was legendary: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot — but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose”. He would go on to carry that bullet inside him for the rest of his life.

Teddy Roosevelt was a different breed of man than we seem to have today. As we’ll see, he was a man willing to get in the arena and fight, despite all odds against him. What kind of culture and upbringing produce him? Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t always this way — his life had plenty of tragedy and hardship. He should’ve been a victim of society rather than its president. So, what happened?

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Born Weak, Made Strong

Roosevelt came into this world weak. Born to a wealthy family in New York City a few years before the Civil War kicked off, he suffered from severe asthma. In his own autobiography, he describes himself as a sickly, timid boy.

His father did what he could to help young Teddy manage his asthma, but he also played a pivotal role in making sure the young Roosevelt didn’t make it his identity. His father made him understand that his mind was strong and his body was weak, but that he could work to make his body strong.

What might quickly have become a victimhood mindset was turned into a challenge. His family set up a gym at home for him to train. While also training his body, he trained his mind through reading as well, recalling an impactful Marryat novel about a naval captain who determines to make fearlessness a habit by acting unafraid until it sticks.

But, despite his improvements thus far, his challenge was highlighted again during a trip as a young teenager to Maine, where two boys bullied him. Failing to defend himself, he then took up boxing lessons from a former prize-fighter, John Long. Roosevelt, wittingly or not, was taking up a mantra from Seneca’s On Providence that “all his adversities he counts mere training.”

Roosevelt would take boxing with him to Harvard in 1876. The timid, asthmatic boy was now ready to take on the world — but his tragedies weren’t over yet.

Tested by Tragedy

Adult life would test Roosevelt even more than his childhood had. At first, things started out well. He married, then had a daughter named Alice Lee Roosevelt, named after her mother. But a mere two days later — on Valentine’s Day of 1884 — his mother dies in the morning from typhoid and his wife dies in the afternoon from kidney disease. He’s only 25. Roosevelt records the day in his diary with a large X and a single sentence: “The light has gone out of my life.”

With their deaths, Teddy seems to have further leaned into to what was already a stoic demeanor. He rarely spoke of his wife again and later remarried. While his sister raised young Alice, Roosevelt headed out to ranch in the Dakota Badlands — very likely a way to take his mind off his recent tragedies.

He was already what Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics would call the great-souled man, someone who bears misfortune with dignity. Aristotle wrote:

“Nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul.”

Roosevelt certainly bore his history of tragedy quietly, and not from a place of indifference. Importantly, while there’s certainly a time to grieve, Teddy didn’t let his tragedies sink him into inaction. What very likely could debilitate most people, didn’t stop Roosevelt.

A Strenuous Life

Two speeches highlight Roosevelt’s ethos on bearing hardship and a life of action. The first was his “Strenuous Life” speech in 1899, before his presidency. Despite his aristocratic upbringing Roosevelt rejected a “doctrine of ignoble ease”. He holds that it’s better to attempt great things, even if it risks several failures. This is to live a life of trying, of not being afraid to fail. And, so, Roosevelt attempted great things.

Roosevelt’s bouts with tragedy, hardship, and his love for the outdoors and ranching helped him identify with the common man, despite his affluent background. This helped him win the vice-presidency in 1901, assume the presidency after Mckinley’s assassination, and continue as U.S. president in 1905 — the height of power attainable in North America for any individual at the time. Despite bad health and terrible personal loss, Roosevelt was able to persevere to ascend to the pinnacle of American society. Instead of allowing himself to fall into a victim mentality, Roosevelt merely aimed higher and landed himself in the White House.

The next decade would solidify Teddy Roosevelt as not only a successful president, but also a cultural icon…

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Alexander the Great is one of the most complex figures in history. Was he a hero of Western civilization who spread Greek influence, or a power-mad tyrant who subjugated millions to satisfy his own ego?

He was no doubt a man of radical extremes. One day, he’d show empathy to his defeated enemies; the next, he’d burn an entire city full of fellow Greeks to the ground.

Modern historians still debate how to categorize him, but one fact is undeniable: Alexander set out to conquer the known world and he came closer than any human being in history to achieving his goal.

He succeeded where countless leaders failed before him. And since his death, the greatest commanders in history have tried — and failed — to replicate what he achieved.

So the question is: what made him so special? What made him unstoppable?

We can analyze his battle tactics, his logistics, or even his luck, but ultimately, when we analyze the great figures of history, it’s important to understand their character — what were the personality traits and daily habits that made them different?

Alexander operated on a set of linked characteristics that all built on each other to accomplish the extraordinary.

It’s a template that we can use to achieve our own goals today, even if we aren’t leading phalanxes into battle or naming cities after ourselves. So here’s how to think like Alexander the Great to win life’s biggest battles, and it all starts with what defined him the most: absolute obsession…

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Tunnel Vision For Conquest

The first thing to understand about Alexander is that he had a singular mind. He was completely focused on one mission: defeating the Persian empire and conquering the known world. And he evaluated everything by whether it helped or hindered this mission.

It’s quite likely that Alexander inherited this obsession with conquering the Persians from his father, Philip II. Philip, a great general in his own right, had already united most of the Greek city-states under the League of Corinth, and he planned an invasion of the Persian Empire as a sort of revenge mission for past transgressions against Greece.

Alexander had first-hand experience of Phillip’s hatred of the Persians as a young man. No doubt it rubbed off on him. When Phillip died, Alexander took the throne at age 20, and he also took up his father’s unfinished war plans — but he wouldn’t be content with simply defeating the Persians in a war, he had to completely annihilate them.

The more Persian lands Alexander conquered, the clearer this fact became.

No Half Victories

After the Battle of Issus, which the Macedonians won decisively, the weakened Persian king Darius sued for peace. Most victors would have happily taken the deal, as it gave Alexander considerable lands and kept the Persians at a safe distance from Macedonia

But Alexander did not do half-victories. His mind was always on the larger goal — not just to injure the Persians, but to destroy them outright.

The historian Arrian records in his work The Anabasis of Alexander, that the king replied to the Persian king’s offer with the following letter:

“Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I have now taken from you.”

He then warned Darius to surrender immediately or he would pursue him to the ends of the earth. Alexander was basically saying that the fight would never end until either himself or the Persians were annihilated.

It shows that Alexander would not let lesser victories cloud his vision of total victory. He was singularly focused on his grand conquest of Persia and beyond.

No Distractions

This singular focus showed itself in Alexander’s day to day actions in that he avoided many of the distractions that typically preoccupy men of his rank.

Most rulers would be content to enjoy the spoils of war — namely women, good wine, and wealth. But Alexander was different. In fact, before he left Macedonia after becoming king, he was encouraged to marry and sire an heir, but he wanted to invade Persia so quickly that he never made time for it. In his mind, women took second place to conquest.

Likewise, after his victories over Darius, Alexander was given the traditional 360 concubines fitting of a Persian king, but apparently he rarely — if ever — touched them. Again, his focus was on his mission.

The same went for food and wine, even though some fits of drinking did indeed get Alexander into trouble during his life. But Plutarch records that he was, in general, quite temperate in this area. And this directly contributed to his success as a leader and conqueror. Plutarch writes:

“In his diet, also, he was most temperate… He was much less addicted to wine than was generally believed…For when his affairs called upon him, he would not be detained, as other generals often were, either by wine, or sleep, nuptial solemnities, spectacles, or any other diversion whatsoever; a convincing argument of which is, that in the short time he lived, he accomplished so many and so great actions.”

Alexander’s teacher as a young child, Lenoidas of Epirus, is often credited with instilling this discipline in Alexander. He would take the young Macedonian prince deep into the wilderness on grueling expeditions to build toughness, and also check his room for hidden sweets the young king’s mother may have snuck him to avoid becoming soft.

Alexander certainly wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all he did if he was too distracted by the material aspects of life.

Yearning for the Edge of the World

There’s an ancient Greek word often associated with Alexander that I think perfectly describes where his focus was at all times. It’s called pothos.

Pothos basically means a deep, restless longing or desire for the unattainable and the unknown. But it’s almost a religious feeling, something that has a perhaps divine origin, in that it can’t be fully explained. Alexander had this pothos to push his army past the map’s boundaries and conquer the ends of the earth.

When you study Alexander’s life, you understand that his singular obsession with pushing further into the unknown was indeed almost like a calling — like he couldn’t help but pursue it even if he wanted to give up. .

And this yearning drove everything he did — whether it was never accepting half-victories or stripping his life of excess distraction — his goal remained front and center.

But even an obsessive mindset can only get you so far – you actually need to carry out your mission in the real world, not just long for something in your head. So you need something that separates the daydreamers from the doers, and that is courage.

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The modern world has fractured the human experience into two separate pieces. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the mind and the body are unconnected — that thinking and doing are fundamentally opposed.

This is how we ended up with the “nerd vs. jock” myth: the smart weakling who can’t protect himself, bullied by the strong blockhead who can’t think for himself. It’s been a trope in almost every Hollywood movie for decades.

But historically, this dichotomy would have been completely alien to the people who built our civilization. In fact, some of the greatest philosophers in history were also supreme athletes. They understood a mind-body connection — a synergistic relationship between intellectual and physical activity.

So let’s explore why the ancients believed that physical training was essential for even the most studious soul. They knew that you could not reach your final form — physically, mentally, or even morally — until you hit the gym…

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Duty to Family and Community

Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, had this to say about training the body:

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

What’s really interesting is the context in which Socrates says these lines. It comes from Xenophon’s work Memorabilia, and Socrates is actually pointing out that physical training is a duty one has to the larger community.

In Xenophon’s work, Socrates approaches a weak young man and scolds him for neglecting his physique, explaining that each man has a duty to his city to become a capable warrior in case of attack. Socrates claims the man’s weak physical state is what has led many men to their deaths or a lifetime of slavery. They were not fit enough to fight well when the time came.

Socrates says:

“…they are not a few who, owing to a bad habit of body, either perish outright in the perils of war, or are ignobly saved. Many are they who….are taken prisoners, and being taken must…endure the pains of slavery for the rest of their days…”

During Socrates’ time, military service was an obligation that all male citizens had to be prepared for. There were few professional armies in ancient Greece, so when war came, every male citizen, regardless of occupation, was required to join the ranks.

And Socrates’ experienced this in his own life. He trained and fought as a hoplite — the Greek infantry — and is recorded to have fought in at least three battles. He was even praised for his physical courage by Alcibiades at the Battle of Potidaea in 432 BC. Alcibiades said that Socrates singlehandedly saved his life during the battle, and took the hardships of military life better than anyone else in the whole army.

So for Socrates, we see a great thinker who did not relegate himself strictly to books and debates, but believed that physical readiness was a duty to the larger community. After all, minds like his could not be free to contemplate if not for the strong bodies of soldiers that provided physical safety.

Socrates’ student Plato understood this too. Plato was actually a well respected wrestler, who even competed at the Isthmian Games — one of the four major Athletic Games alongside the Olympics.

Like Socrates, Plato believed one needed to be strong to be a good member of the community. When he envisioned the ideal state in his work, The Republic, Plato noted that the leaders of the community, whom he called ‘guardians’, must be strong in order to protect others:

Plato writes:

“Anyone who is going to be a truly good guardian of our community, then, will have a philosopher’s love of knowledge, and will be passionate, quick on his feet, and strong…..And our guardians are, in fact, both warriors and philosophers.”

Socrates and Plato connected physical fitness to the need to be battle-ready. Though physical combat is far less likely for your average person today, this does not mean that physical readiness is not a duty anymore. There are still dangers lurking about. There are still aggressors who can harm you or your family.

Though getting into a fight is usually the last thing you ever want to — or should — do, often simple physical presence is a deterrent against those who want to prey on the vulnerable. You should be fit enough so that, at the very least, you can escape a dangerous situation and lead others out of that situation quickly.

It’s not just about immediate physical danger, though. It’s also a duty to remain healthy for your family and community so that you can continue to be useful. You need to be an asset to them rather than a burden. If you have those who depend on you, then you have an obligation to remain in good health so that you can continue to provide for them and be there when needed.

We don’t like to hear the word “duty” in the modern world, and our society has done almost everything it can to absolve us from our duties, but ultimately I do think it is your duty to remain physically capable as long as you can. God did not give you a body so that you can abuse it, but to use it to its fullest.

But the next reason to train actually goes beyond the mere physical, and proves how our mental faculties are shaped by our bodily habits….

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In 1519, Hernan Cortez did something absolutely insane.

Thousands of miles from home, surrounded by enemies on a hostile continent, he gave his men a puzzling order: destroy their own ships. It ended all communication back home, cut off their supply lines, and erased any chance of reinforcements.

But why?

More than anything, Cortez did it so no one would be tempted to retreat. Now his small army had to march hundreds of miles inland to conquer the massive Aztec Empire without a backup plan. The only way out was complete victory.

Cortez and his men understood something that has been completely lost in the modern world: absolute commitment. Think about life today:

We scroll Netflix with thousands of shows and movies, yet struggle to pick one. We get anxious choosing a career path because it feels wrong to limit ourselves to a single interest when there are so many to choose from. We’re afraid to choose the wrong one. And most young people are now single, even though dating apps offer countless potential partners — more options than previous generations ever had access to.

In short, our options are paralyzing us.

So what can we do?

I want to show you why keeping all your options open is probably one of the worst things you can do for your personal growth. Throughout history, some of the greatest achievements happened not because people kept their doors open, but because they purposely closed them.

The great figures of history didn’t have an escape plan — they burned their ships.

No Other Option But to Conquer

When Cortez ordered his men to destroy their ships off the coast of Mexico, it wasn’t a spur of the moment, impulsive decision. Instead, it was a calculated move. And it was during an exceedingly difficult time for the expedition…

Immediately after Cortez’s men landed in Mexico in 1519, they split into two competing factions: those on the side of the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, and those loyal to Cortez. Cortez was technically an outlaw at this point, as Velázquez had revoked Cortez’s command right before the conquistadors set sail. Tensions heightened within the group, who were now caught between the hostile Aztecs, Cortez’s ambitions, and the Spanish crown. Some men thus conspired to mutiny by seizing a ship and escaping to Cuba.

The pressure was on Cortez to unite his men and prevent any thoughts of mutiny, but also to deter retreat by the rest of his men, many of whom were second-guessing the entire endeavor.

The conquistador Bernal Diaz Del Castillo, a member and direct eye-witness to the expedition, recorded in his work, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain, that Cortez made the decision to destroy his ships shortly after consulting with some of his top men on the best course of action:

“This resolution was immediately adopted, and Cortez ordered…to take all the anchors, ropes, sails, in short everything that might be of use to us out of the vessels, and run the latter all on shore, with the exception of the boats.”

And in a letter to the King of Spain, Cortez described later why he destroyed his fleet:

“Believing, therefore, that if the ships remained there would be a rebellion... I devised a plan, under pretext of the ships being unfit for sea, to run them aground.”

One thing I should clarify here is that Cortez didn’t technically burn his ships — that was a myth that came about later. His men actually just dismantled and ran them aground (or sunk them, depending on the source.) Nonetheless Cortez’ actions cut off any possibility of second guessing by himself or his men. After the ships were stripped of useful materials, food, and metals, they were finally destroyed. There was no going back.

Cortez made this reality absolutely clear to his men before going forward with the mission. He wanted his men to fully understand the situation they were now in, and used examples from history to drive his point home.

In Bernal Diaz’s account, Cortez gave a speech where he mentions several heroic deeds from the ancient Romans, and his men compared themselves to Julius Caesar’s army crossing the Rubicon. Diaz writes:

“We answered him, one and all, that we would implicitly follow his orders, as the die had been cast, and we, with Cæsar, when he had passed the Rubicon, had now no choice left; besides which, everything we did was for the glory of God and his majesty the emperor.”

After the ships were destroyed, Cortez went on to lead one of history’s most successful military campaigns, defeating the Aztec empire with just a few hundred Spaniards and a coalition of native tribes. Their absolute commitment resulted in absolute victory.

The First Boat Burner

Cortez’s men alluded to another great leader to have metaphorically “burned his ships”, Julius Caesar, so Cortez’s decision wasn’t a one-off thing. In fact, there’s actually a decent historical precedent for this kind of activity. So let’s go back to long before Cortez and explore one of the very first generals to use this tactic.

In Western history, the first well known leader to use this technique was Agathocles, king of Syracuse in the late 4th/early 3rd centuries BC.

In 310 BC, Syracuse was embroiled in a bitter war against the Carthaginians. They had suffered a series of devastating losses which saw most of Sicily under Carthaginian control, except for the city of Syracuse itself.

With Carthage’s most experienced troops already garrisoned on Sicily, Agathocles hatched a daring plan. Instead of fighting Carthage on home turf, he believed his best bet was to take the fight to them: assault Libya, stir up dissent among Carthage’s allies, and plunder Carthaginian territory.

He thus led a fleet of 60 triremes to narrowly sneak past the Carthaginian blockade and land in Libya. He then set fire to his ships.

And, like Cortez, Agathocles had good reason to do so…

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While on the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart didn’t command from a tent — he was at the front of his army with a weapon in hand. And at Agincourt, Henry V literally stood over the body of his wounded brother, fending off French knights with a sword.

Now, imagine a modern president or world leader doing that today.

It feels entirely absurd. Because today, leadership often means sitting in an air-conditioned room, making calls and doing press conferences, divorced from the consequences of your decisions. But back then, leadership meant having absolute skin in the game – your own life often depended on the decisions you made.

Though we’re far removed from the medieval era, there are some lessons on leadership that medieval lords can still teach us. I’m not advocating that the president should go grab a gun and fight in the trenches, but the medieval expectations of leadership contain a lot of valuable insights for us today.

So If you want to become a truly elite leader, you need to stop copying modern politicians and CEOs. You need to start thinking like a medieval feudal lord. Here are 5 timeless, medieval leadership strategies that modern society forgot about — and how to apply them today.

Lead From the Front

The first strategy that we can learn from the medieval leadership style is to lead from the front. In the Middle Ages, the idea of leadership was deeply tied to martial duty — the responsibility to lead an army and risk one’s life in battle to inspire one’s men.

In fact, the willingness to fight was basically a prerequisite to have any leadership opportunity at all due to Feudal duties and obligations. So what were these duties and obligations?

Just as a brief background, Feudal society was structured around the relationship between a lord and a vassal. A lord was a noble who owned land; while a vassal was someone the lord granted possession of land in exchange for service to the lord. Vassals would get land and protection, while the lord would get a vassal he could call upon for military service — this was the “feudal relationship.”

The key here is that lords owed their vassals protection — when armies were sallied for defense, the lord was obligated to lead the armies into battle. Of course he called on his vassals to help him fight, but he was expected to be the one organizing and leading it in person.

We see this play out in famous battles throughout the period. Many kings personally fought in battles, emboldening their men and shaping the course of history.

William the conqueror led his army in many campaigns, most notably the battle of Hastings in 1066 to contest the English throne. After a shaky start, William rallied troops and eventually crushed his foe, Harold Godwinson, winning England for the Normans and becoming a national hero still remembered today. .

Likewise, another national hero, Robert the Bruce of Scotland, is well-remembered for his bravery during the war against England’s Edward I. As an outlaw king, Robert fought a guerrilla warfare campaign against the English invaders. But his greatest achievement was the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where Robertd defeated the English forces to win Scottish independence.

His personal bravery became legendary, as Robert is recorded to have slammed his battle axe into the skull of an English knight, setting the tone for the battle and giving his men a boost in morale. Robert’s bravery in battle and willingness to lead his men from the front has solidified him as the classic warrior-king archetype.

An important fact that the medievals understood is that, in order to get “buy in” from followers, a leader must display some willingness to tackle problems head on rather than pass these difficulties on to their subordinates. No one would willingly charge into battle if they knew that their lord was going to run at the first sight of danger, expecting his men to hold their ground.

Today, leading from the front most likely won’t involve pitched combat, but we can still learn something from this feudal mindset. True leadership is shown when a leader is highly visible, not just when there are wins, but when things go wrong — when battle and confrontation arise. To lead from the front, a leader owns the challenge personally. The leader charges into the fray first and makes the team’s problem his problem.

Generational Mindset

Another important leadership strategy that the medievals mastered is long term thinking. This was a direct result of the aristocratic systems of governance that prevailed during the Middle Ages, and it forced leaders to think generationally rather than in terms of short election cycles.

Rulers knew that their children and grandchildren would inherit their positions of power, so it was important to leave them a stable fief and also train them to be effective future leaders. Lords thus heavily invested in the education of their successors from a young age.

Often this meant fostering — sending sons or daughters off to allied courts to learn courtly manners, horsemanship, and martial skills from their hosts. This solidified feudal allegiances and provided essential political networks for the young nobles.In this way, rulers ensured that the next generation was already prepared to take the lead when the time came to pass the torch.

Another way medieval nobles ensured the long term success of their family was by setting up strategic alliances via marriage. Perhaps no medieval dynasty was as skilled at securing marriage alliances as the Habsburgs….

Dating back the 11th century , the Habsburgs thrived for 1000 years, dominating European politics and shaping history, living by the famous maxim:

“Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, marry”.

The Habsburgs frequently arranged for their young archdukes and archduchesses to be married off as children to members of other dynasties to increase their lands. In the 15th century, Emperor Maximilian I secured a hugely consequential series of marriages that increased his lands from a regional power into a global empire.

He married the daughter of Charles the Bold, Mary of Burgundy, himself, gaining parts of modern day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. And the marriages he arranged for his son and grandson acquired his dynasty the lands of Spain, Bohemia, and Hungary.

This long term strategic thinking was essential for dynasties to stay in power. Those that failed to think beyond their own immediate plans are now forgotten to history, but the Habsurgs and other families with a similar mindset still have power in European politics today.

In modern times, we organize our society around quarterly profits or weekend plans, often failing to develop long term strategies for our families and organizations. But thinking generationally — dynastically — is what any great head of household or leader needs to do in order to keep what they’ve built running for more than just a short time.

We don’t have the aristocratic system like in the Middle Ages, but we can still prepare our children to be caretakers of our homesteads or family business. And if we haven’t yet built anything, we can simply focus on not getting lost in the cyclical trends and short term highs of the modern world. Focus on the lasting: skillsets, relationships, and projects that will bear fruit in the future. Start building something worth passing down.

Moral Obligation

A third medieval approach to leadership is that the elite have a moral duty toward the lower classes. In medieval times, positions of power were understood as moral obligations. Nobles knew their subjects and the peasantry looked to them as physical representations of order, justice, and Christian virtue. Concepts like chivalry and noblesse oblige (the idea that the rich had an obligation to the poor) served as reminders to the upper class of their duties.

Perhaps the most influential king to take on this role was King Louis IX of France. He believed his position as king was a sacred duty that bound him to provide a moral example for his subjects. He is well known for his personal penance and works of charity: regularly washing the feet of the poor, feeding beggars at his own table, and building hospitals. He also dressed in plain, humble clothing rather than rich fabrics to model humility.

One of his most prominent acts of public justice was holding court under a large oak tree at Vincennes. Here he heard grievances directly from subjects of all walks of life — lord and peasant alike — ensuring that justice was not confined to just the rich but to the humblest subjects too.

Beyond individual rulers, medieval society used the code of chivalry to instill in their leaders this moral responsibility. Ramon Llull’s popular Book of the Order of Chivalry alongwith Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of Chivalry laid out expectations for nobles to live upright and moral lives.

For example, Charny gave practical advice to nobles on how to grow in virtue. He writes:

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Imagine the unthinkable: The United States, after a brutal, exhausting war with China, suffers the single worst defeat in American history.

Just a few miles outside Washington D.C., the final remnant of the US armed forces — tens of thousands soldiers — are wiped out in a single afternoon. But it gets worse. The President, the Vice President, and hundreds of congressmen are all killed in the chaos, too.

The military is gone. The government is completely decapitated. There is no resistance left, and no logical way to keep fighting. Faced with total annihilation, the only rational choice left is to surrender, finally putting a stop to the bloodshed to save civilian lives, right?

Well, this exact apocalyptic scenario actually did happen. But not in America — it happened to ancient Rome. Their response shocked the known world, and forces us to contemplate how our modern society might respond to a similar situation.

In 216 BC, Rome faced its own ultimate doomsday scenario: The Battle of Cannae. Hannibal, one of history’s greatest generals and sworn enemy of Rome, encircled and slaughtered 50,000 Roman soldiers in a single day. Rome also lost its leaders — a third of its entire governing senate as well as a consul were killed.

Hannibal soon sent a delegation to Rome offering terms. Rome would surely surrender right? But Rome refused to play ball.

Instead of negotiating, Rome did something that seemed to defy logic. They banned the idea of peace. They made it illegal to ransom prisoners. And with no military left, they looked at their most formidable enemy and said: We are going to fight you to the absolute death.

To us in the modern West, this level of raw grit feels completely alien. We live in comfort, sheltered from existential threats, never forced to choose between total surrender or fighting to the last man.

But Rome’s example forces an unsettling question: How does a society develop that kind of unbreakable willpower? Why was surrender a psychological impossibility for a Roman?

The answer lies in a rare cultural code that made Rome entirely unique — and it reveals a powerful truth about our own declining collective willpower today….

When the Unthinkable Happened

After the Battle of Cannae, the general state of Rome can only be described as chaotic: Rome’s major armies were destroyed, and their only surviving consul was completely discredited because of his poor decision making and failure to fight to the death alongside his men.

The people of Rome were horrified since so many of their countrymen had been killed. A national day of mourning was declared as there was apparently not a single person not either related to or acquainted with a soldier who had died. Some estimates show Rome lost one-fifth of its male citizens over the age of 17 during the few years of fighting the Carthaginians.

General panic flooded the city, and the population was desperate. Some blamed the gods, while others blamed a lack of piety on Rome’s part. There were even some gruesome attempts to get right with the gods, such as human sacrifice, where two Gauls were buried alive at the Forum Boarium. On another occasion, a baby was abandoned in the Adriatic Sea.

Politically, Rome’s allies jumped ship. To them, the once powerful city was now a lost cause. Portions of southern Italy even switched sides, like the Hellenic provinces of Arpi, Salapia, and Uzentum. These non-Latin regions pledged their loyalty to Hannibal and the Carthaginians instead.

The historian Livy sums up the conditions of Rome at the time, and shows his amazement that Rome did not give up, as any other nation surely would have:

“Never when the city was in safety was there so great a panic and confusion within the walls of Rome. I shall therefore shrink from the task, and not attempt to relate what in describing I must make less than the reality. The consul and his army having been lost at the Trasimenus the year before, it was not one wound upon another which was announced, but a multiplied disaster, the loss of two consular armies, together with the two consuls: and that now there was neither any Roman camp, nor general nor soldiery: that Apulia and Samnium, and now almost the whole of Italy, were in the possession of Hannibal. No other nation surely would not have been overwhelmed by such an accumulation of misfortune.”

As Livy indicated, Rome never considered formal surrender despite the turmoil. There are some practical reasons why they didn’t that we will touch on, but these are downstream from two more fundamental characteristics of Rome at the time.

These two reasons were crucially intertwined, and they created a social, political, and military framework that made waving the white flag unthinkable to Romans.

The Unwritten Code That Built Rome

The first reason has to do with Roman civic duty, and the cultural traditions that governed its citizenry. Rome was famous for its legal code — the 12 tables which served as the formal body of laws for the city — but at the root of these was an unwritten code that was imprinted upon every Roman child from a young age.

This unwritten code was ancient, and can only be described as an ancestral memory that the people of Rome shared — it was part of their DNA. This deep-seated memory was known as the mos maiorum, or “way of the ancestors.” It was the time-honoured principles and social practices that influenced everything from how Romans interacted with each other in the Forum to how military decisions were made.

Breaking of tradition was greatly frowned upon, and attempted changes to the “code” were generally met with resistance. Suetonius wrote in the 2nd century that:

“All new that is done contrary to the usage and customs of our ancestors, seems not to be right.”

So what were the ways of the ancestors? How did they contribute to a cultural ethos that rejected surrender?

The mos mairoum encompassed several virtues. Some of them dealt with piety toward the gods and faithfulness toward others in a legal and social sense, but there were a few that specifically impacted the upbringing of military and political leaders — the very men who had to make tough decisions in the aftermath of Cannae.

For example the virtue of disciplina related to education and training as well as maintaining an orderly way of life, especially in a military context.

The virtue of constantia was “steadiness or perseverance”. In the face of adversity, Romans were expected to display an unperturbed façade. Nothing should cause a good Roman to flinch – not even a catastrophic defeat.

The legend of Gaius Mucius Cordus was often recounted to reinforce this virtue. According to the tale, in 508 BC Mucius snuck into an invading Etruscan camp to kill the rival king, who was leading the siege against Rome. He was unfortunately captured before reaching his target, but showed his unyielding resolve during the interrogation. He declared to the Etruscans:

“I am a Roman citizen, men call me Gaius Mucius. I came here as an enemy to kill my enemy, and I am as ready to die as I am to kill. We Romans act bravely and, when adversity strikes, we suffer bravely. Watch so that you know how cheap the body is to men who have their eye on great glory”.

To back up his claims, Mucius then thrust his right hand into a fire and held it there without giving any indication of pain.

Another important Roman virtue was virtus, which is where we get the word “virtue” today. Virtus was the ideal of the true Roman male. It informed a man what was good, what was evil, useless, shameful or dishonorable. Importantly, it encompassed a refusal to be dominated and instilled a conquest mentality within Roman men.

Finally the concept of dignitas encompassed these other virtues and directed them toward the Roman state. Dignitas meant displaying disciplina, gravitas, and virtus in service to Rome. Simply mastering the virtues was not enough; the virtues needed to be aimed at something higher — the well being of the city.

It was this milieu of virtues that was instilled in every young Roman until they became second nature. Apprenticeships, ceremonies, and customs all reinforced these values constantly.

One particular custom stands out, and it underscores the idea that Romans should never abandon the customs of their ancestors. This is the practice of housing the imagines, or wax masks of the dead, inside the home. The atrium of every noble Roman house was lined with these masks of deceased family members who had achieved high status either through political office or military achievement.

Young Romans who viewed them were constantly reminded: Your ancestors are watching, and you must prove yourself worthy of their legacy.

The Psychology of Roman Leadership

The mos maiorum essentially created a highly unified and capable leadership class among the Roman people. Every young aristocrat had a shared understanding of his duties and the sacrifices he was expected to make for his people.

Thus when exploring a chaotic period of Rome’s history like the aftermath of Cannae, we have a better understanding just who the Roman leaders were. The senators who rallied the citizenry were forged in ancient traditions aimed at creating strong men who would deliver when it mattered.

And this is where the second piece of the puzzle falls into place. Because of the mos maiorum, Rome’s elite were second to none. They were prepared to make tough, creative decisions when confronted with a seemingly impossible uphill battle.

The resolve of Rome’s leadership was evident immediately after Cannae. The young Scipio, who would later defeat Hanniball at the battle of Zama and earn a place as one of the greatest Romans of all time, inspired some wavering tribunes and reminded them of their duty by saying:

“I swear with all the passion in my heart that I will never desert our homeland, or permit any other citizen of Rome to leave her in the lurch. If I willfully break my oath may Jupiter, Greatest and Best, bring me to a shameful death, with my house, my family, and all I possess!”

The courageous, impassioned attitude is nice, but what decisions did Rome’s leaders actually make that reinvigorated the city and altered the course of history?

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You’ve seen the ads: sports betting apps, online casinos, and prediction markets. Your favorite podcaster is probably promoting them, and they’re plastered across supposedly family-friendly TV networks during prime time.

Gambling is absolutely everywhere, and it’s completely hijacking our culture.

At first glance, the rise in gambling looks like it’s simply the result of technological advancement — the internet and instant news updates make betting on sports, politics, and world events easier than ever. But widespread gambling is really a symptom of a much darker reality: whenever a civilization embraces extreme risk as a legitimate way to get rich, it’s a clear sign that society is desperate.

We are seeing this exact desperation play out right now, especially among young people who feel that the traditional paths of success have been permanently blocked — and many are turning to risky behaviors like online betting or crypto speculation in lieu of safe career opportunities.

So what happens to a society when its people stop investing in the future and start betting on it instead? To understand where we are headed, we have to look at what happens when power structures become so stifling that vice becomes the only plausible path for the disaffected.

Two thousand years ago, a similar gambling mania exploded across the dying Roman Republic. The powerful figures who took advantage of that desperation ended up plunging civilization into civil war and political chaos. Let’s see how it played out back then and why we need to be vigilant about this concerning trend today…

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Gambling Mania in the Late Republic

In the first century BC, right around the time the Roman Republic collapsed, the poet Horace made a surprising observation about the youth of his day. He noted that the upper class youth no longer cared for virtuous interests, like horseback riding and hunting, but were instead enthralled by games of chance, like gambling and dice. Horace writes:

“Now the noble’s first-born shuns the perilous chase, nor learns to sit his steed: Set him to the unlawful dice, or Grecian hoop, how skillfully he plays.”

To Horace, this abandonment of traditional, “manly” activities was a sure sign of decline. The youth of any civilization are the future after all, so what happens when an entire generation abandons the traditions that built society?

Horace was not the only one who observed this disturbing trend. Later, the 4th century Roman historian Marcellinus reflected on the last days of the Republic, describing a gambling mania that spread across all Roman social classes, and especially the wealthy.

These upper class gamblers called themselves tesserarii, meaning “dicer”, as the more common word for gambler, aleator, carried a somewhat negative connotation. Gambling, to them, wasn’t a major vice — but Marcellinus thought differently.

Marcellinus believed that the gambling mania that overtook Rome in the late Republic was a major factor in its fall. He claimed that the elite’s obsession with gambling prevented “anything memorable or serious from being done in Rome.” Rome’s upper classes were too busy squandering their wealth and time to actually address the serious matters of the day.

Horace’s and Marcellinus’ caution against gambling was nothing new, though. Romans had long been weary of the dangers of decadence. In 200 BC, long before the Roman Republic fell, the senate enacted a statewide ban on gambling, called the Lex Alearia. It had exceptions for certain holidays and was likely not enforced very heavily, but it served as a symbol that Roman citizens should follow the social customs and traditions of their virtuous ancestors — the mos maiorum — which taught discipline and temperance.

But roughly 100 years after the Lex Alearia was implemented, it was obvious to everyone that the traditional values of Rome were nothing more than an aspiration. So what was going on in Rome at the time that caused people to abandon social traditions and embrace degeneracy?

Oligarchs Vs. The People

Numerous historians have written about the general moral decay of the Late Republic, but perhaps what best exemplifies the cultural and economic issues of this period was the battle between the Optimates and Populares. Once we understand the fundamental divide of Roman politics in the Late Republic, we’ll realize why massive risk-taking became the only option for some….

The Optimates and Populares were two factions of the Roman political class that were mortal enemies. The Optimates were the conservative elite who aimed to keep power in the senate and protect aristocratic wealth. They valued tradition, bureaucratic means, and the continued oligarchy that those ensured.

Opposing them were the Populares who appealed to the needs of the people, like debt relief and expanded citizenship.They often tried to bypass the senate and took matters directly to the Plebeian Assembly to win the masses — while also securing personal influence, of course.

The major issue at the time was land reform for small farmers and dispossessed veterans. As Rome had expanded, it incorporated a large population of cheap labor — namely slaves. The increased slave populations could be used by wealthy citizens (generally supporters of the Optimates) to undercut their competition. Small farmers and land owners couldn’t compete with the wealthy oligarchs who could afford many slaves.

Likewise, veterans who had given up their farms to serve in long campaigns came back to nothing — they couldn’t afford to upkeep their estates while gone, and there were limited options when they finished their service. The Populares like Caesar sought to remedy this situation by giving plots of land to veterans and limiting the influx of slaves to Italy, but the Optimates opposed any reform.

A dangerous scenario emerged from these conditions: massive wealth disparity between the upper class, who benefited from the cheap labor of slaves, and the dispossessed soldiers, who had been stripped of their farms after while serving in the military. The sheer amount of these dispossessed soldiers was becoming a serious threat to stability, and tensions among the classes were heating up.

For the upper class, they felt untouchable — they were doing better than ever, and the vast wealth they were accumulating was leading to the vice and licentiousness we talked about earlier. They gambled and debauched out of sheer frivolity, but in increasingly reckless amounts.

On the other end of the spectrum, soldiers and farmers who had sacrificed for Rome now had no clear path to reclaim their livelihoods. They were becoming desperate, and surely more than a few made foolish gambles to recover their lost wealth.

Will and Ariel Durant in their work Lessons of History write of the economic desperation:

“Rome was full of men who had lost their economic footing and their moral stability: soldiers who had tasted adventure and had learned to kill; citizens who had seen their savings consumed in the taxes and inflation caused by war…”

With economic pressures reaching such high levels, traditional moral codes were brushed aside. “Why obey the cultural codes of our ancestors if we don’t have a future?” they asked. “Why sacrifice more for a Republic that will give us nothing? Radical change must be the only option.”

This is the desperate attitude that Caesar capitalized upon — and what would plunge the Republic into a full fledged civil war, ultimately ending it for good. It’s quite ironic that Caesar’s famous words before crossing the Rubicon, “the die is cast,” are a reference to the dice games that were so representative of the collapsing moral and economic framework of Rome.

The gambling and moral degeneracy of the late Republic was the outlet of a desperate people, frustrated that cold economic self-interest had become more important to the Roman elite than the well-being of their fellow citizens.

This pattern of monetary obsession morphing into political and moral chaos is a pattern that repeats throughout history. Elites abandon tradition for degeneracy due to a weakening of their moral constitution, while lower classes attempt novel political solutions to solve their economic woes out of sheer desperation. The root of the problem always lies in what the culture prioritizes above all else. Specifically, money….

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Your choice of heroes is the most important decision you’ll ever make.

Why? Because Napoleon spent his entire life trying to be Caesar. Caesar idolized Alexander the Great, and Alexander imagined himself as the next Achilles. Who you idolize shapes who you become.

From a historical perspective, focusing on “the greats” can force us to wrestle with difficult yet vital questions on a societal level: Who should we hold up as exemplary figures in our society? Who should we teach our young men and women to emulate?

The framing of history that addresses these questions head on is the Great Man Theory of history. It’s a controversial idea proposed by 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle, who argued that “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”

Carlyle believed that history isn’t shaped by the masses, but by the will of heroes — elite figures who should be followed and revered for their inherent genius. But this isn’t simply a history lesson. If Carlyle is right, it means your choice of who to follow is the single most important factor in who you will become.

So let’s uncover the secrets of the Great Man Theory — how you can use it to unlock your full potential, and also, why you’ve probably never been taught it in your school’s history class….

The Driving Force of History

So first, where did Great Man Theory come from, and just what exactly does it say?

Thomas Carlyle first gave a series of lectures on the topic of heroism in 1840. These lectures were later published into a book entitled On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History. One of the book’s main theses was the Great Man Theory of history.

Carlyle argued that heroes shape history through both their personal attributes and “divine inspiration” — the world essentially turns on the ideas and decisions of elite men. Carlyle writes:

“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain…the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.”

But how do these great men emerge? Where do they come from? And what makes one great in the first place?

Carlyle based his theory on a couple assumptions. The first assumption is that great leaders are born, not made — Carlyle emphasized nature over nurture. Heroes inherently possess the traits that enable them to rise to the occasion and lead on instinct. Therefore, those who rise to power usually deserve to lead because of their abilities.

The second assumption is that great men rise only when a unique set of circumstances plays out — they don’t emerge in a vacuum. Though every aspect of history isn’t necessarily dependent on great men, heroes are the decisive factor in solving the problems of societies. They’re the weight that tips the scales one way or another.

What Defines a Great Man?

Carlyle’s heroes are utterly unique and possess a certain creative genius that can’t be made up for with any amount of raw manpower. How many Roman legions are the equivalent to a Julius Caesar? How many minor poets will give us a Shakespeare? The hero is unquantifiable.

Carlyle’s hero is somewhat similar to Aristotle’s conception of the magnanimous, or “great-souled,” man. The great-souled man is a man who possesses archetypal human virtue in the active sense, meaning he acts upon the world as opposed to having a more contemplative nature. The magnanimous man is a person of action.

In Carlyle’s conception, the hero isn’t perfect, though. The world is filled with contradictions that the hero has to deal with. Thus, all heroes will be flawed.

But here’s the key…

It’s precisely because they aren’t perfect that they can serve as a pattern for others to imitate. This imitation is the force that moves history forward. For example, Alexander the Great and his phalanxes set the template for ancient warfare. It would be hundreds of years before his methods were defeated. Likewise, Napoleon used artillery in an overwhelming fashion in a way no one had done before. Future generals took note and copied his tactics.

But Carlyle’s heroes aren’t just military or political figures. He identified six types of hero, encompassing all facets of human life:

1. the divine hero (like Odin)

2. the prophet (like Muhammad)

3. the poet (like Shakespeare)

4. he priest (like Martin Luther)

5. the man of letters (like Rousseau) and

6. the king (like Napoleon)

Thus there is a hero for every interest one can have. And this is where it gets personal, because Carlyle believed that who our heroes are shapes us…

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What we know about history is an illusion. We often speak about ancient peoples as “primitive” and “unsophisticated”, but these broad characterizations really only reveal our own simplicity.

Our “modernity bias” presupposes that we are the most intelligent generation to ever exist, and human intelligence is a declining metric as we peer backward in time. This leaves us with the assumption that cavemen were stupid, we are smart, and everyone in between was, well, in between.

But what serious historians know (and rarely tell us) is that history, anthropology, archaeology, and its sisters are inherently limited. They study the scattered writings, ruins, and tools that haven’t been given quite enough time to return to dust before being pulled into a museum

Hence, what we know of the past is not merely based on what existed, but instead of the much smaller category of what survived.

Our picture of the past, then, is not only incomplete, but naturally biased toward incompleteness — and that inherent incompleteness means that modern historians (and the public alike) will always underestimate the intelligence, capabilities, and complexities of past humanity.

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The Problem of Survivorship

Most human activity leaves no trace: conversations, daily habits, clothing, and local knowledge can fade away in merely a generation. Some artifacts may last many generations with careful storage, things like letters, paper, various heirlooms, wooden tools, and the like. But fewer items can last beyond a millennium: coins, weapons, armor, jewelry, etc. Of things that last several millennia, we are typically only left with what is large and therefore slow to return to dust: megalithic structures, buried cities, and deep engravings in stone.

As we look back into recent history, what survives is largely accidental, perhaps simply those knickknacks left by a grandparent in a chest in the attic. But as we look back farther into history, we find relatively fewer artifacts as a result of mere accident and more as a result of past peoples to create permanence. While this is stating the obvious, the implication then is that our knowledge of peoples further back in history is proportionally overinfluenced by the grand structures (aimed at permanence) that have survived. It’s no surprise, then, that we tend to think of “primitive” peoples as dominated culturally by purely religious or superstitious belief and cartoonishly void of practical, political, and personal qualities.

As an example, when we think of the pyramids at Giza, we assume they were the central focus of Egyptian society, ignoring the probable idea that it was very likely only one (admittedly impressive) feature of an ancient city. We are very likely to see the pyramids as a holy and serious site, and very unlikely to see that the children of the surrounding town probably enjoyed bouncing balls off its faces. This particular fact is conjecture, of course, but it’s entirely more reasonable to assume past humans did human things than to assert past humans only did what we can know from the dirt.

The survivorship bias will always result in an inadequate picture of past human society; alone, survivorship bias will lead us to the conclusion that more ancient humans must be dumber humans. Entire domains of intelligence (practical skills, social complexity, moral reasoning) are largely invisible archaeologically. Drawing conclusions about the intelligence of past mankind from merely what is found in the dirt risks judging a civilization by its trash heap or a handful of ruins.

Misreading the Evidence

Archaeologists and historians often interpret artifacts as representative of a whole culture. G.K. Chesterton noted in The Everlasting Man that the historians of his day assigned deep religious significance to some crude cave drawings. But Chesterton scoffed at these assumptions that limited the sophistication of prehistoric man to these drawings, offering that the sketches could equally well have been the drawings of a prehistoric child. The danger here is that we project meaning (or lack of it) onto ambiguous evidence. When we look for meaning in prehistoric doodles, we might equally wonder what our grandchildren might think of us if the only thing they inherit is our drawings made in boredom.

The sophistication of the caveman must surpass our understanding of them based on the limited drawings, tools, and other random artifacts we have discovered. What if the more sophisticated aspects of ancient societies simply didn’t survive?

Then, we also might realize that what cavemen had in their heads might not be represented by the physical evidence, even if all of it were well-preserved. The mind of the caveman was likely no lesser to ours. Perhaps we have merely been afforded the luxury to think about it, while they were using their minds constantly for survival. Few modern men would even survive the world of the cavemen (at least our understanding of it). Most today can’t make a fire without a lighter, forage the local flora, skin an animal, or construct even simple tools from purely natural products. But the caveman could — and probably could do much more that we can say.

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In 1787 Alexander Hamilton argued that the United States should resemble an elective monarchy, featuring a strong national leader elected for life. It might sound like heresy to modern Americans, but his idea had some merit — and exposes a shortcoming of modern democracy.

Although Hamilton enjoys pride of place among historical figures as a founding father of the United States, his support for centralized government and a powerful executive has tarnished his image today. This isn’t surprising considering he referred to the British governmental system — which America fought a war to disentangle itself from — as the “best in the world.”

Despite his blemished reputation, Hamilton advocated for “good government” which pursued longevity and stability. And his original plan for America sheds light on the weaknesses of today’s political systems…

Hamilton’s King

Hamilton gave an impassioned, six-hour-long speech at the constitutional convention laying out his plan for the government and a powerful executive head. Despite his zeal, though, it was resoundingly voted down in favor of the system the U.S. has today. But what did Hamilton advocate for exactly?

Sympathetic to Britain’s strong monarchy, Hamilton proposed a system that was similar to his former allegiance’s government. But unlike the British monarchy, where power was transferred via bloodline, Hamilton’s leader — referred to as the national “governor” — would be an elected figure.

Hamilton lays out his vision for the executive during his speech:

“The supreme Executive authority of the United States to be vested in a Governor, to be elected to serve during good behavior; the election to be made by Electors chosen by the people in the Election Districts aforesaid.”

Essentially, the governor would retain power for life as long as misconduct did not force an impeachment by congress i.e. “to serve during good behavior.” And he would have a broad swathe of powers, including the ability to veto any law, make treaties, and appoint all chief officers of the Departments of Finance, War, Foreign Affairs, etc. Notably, the executive would also appoint state governors, giving him more power than today’s president.

Hamilton’s monarch-like governor would wield enough power domestically to resist foreign influence, while the possibility of impeachment prevented tyranny. It was a balance of incentives, Hamilton envisioned, that ensured a functional, yet limited rule.

Historical Precedent

As a well-educated man, Hamilton drew from history for much of his worldview. Like other founding fathers, he admired the Roman Republic specifically, calling it the “utmost height of human greatness” in the Federalist Papers. But before Rome was a republic, it was a kingdom with an elective monarch…

After the first legendary king of Rome Romulus, who took power by killing his brother Remus, monarchs were elected by the Roman people via the Curiate Assembly, who voted on candidates pre-selected by the senate. Though it was ultimately up to the Roman citizenry who became king, the senate held much of the power during the process.

Touted as the successor of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), likewise had an elective monarchy. In the HRE the emperor was appointed by a small body of the most powerful princes, or “prince-electors.” Once a leader was selected, the coronation of the emperor took place in either Aachen or Frankfurt, whereupon the prince would become monarch.

The longevity of the Holy Roman Empire, spanning hundreds of years, was a testament to the strength of the system. In fact, it was still intact during the time of the constitutional convention. Though Hamilton critiqued the HRE’s fractured structure, he clearly had no qualms with its monarchical system.

Another contemporary elective monarchy to Hamilton was that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Poles held “free elections” upon the death of a monarch, where any Catholic nobleman might be considered for the position. The Polish system was not as successful as the HRE’s, though, as infighting and even full on battle often occurred between candidates. Historian Norman Davies recorded that “in 1764, when only thirteen electors were killed, it was said that the Election was unusually quiet.”

Though uncommon today, elective monarchies were not unheard of when Hamilton made his speech to the constitutional convention in 1787.

So why specifically did Hamilton want a monarch-like system? And could it work in America today?

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Every great civilization eventually reaches a point where its power remains visible, but its foundations begin to erode.

Fiscal strain, social fragmentation, and declining confidence in leadership signal that the empire’s contraction has arrived. The military commander and writer John Glubb argued that empires often pass through predictable stages: from expansion and confidence to wealth, complacency, and eventual decline.

But history also offers another lesson. Sometimes decline is not the end. Occasionally, a leader emerges that manages to stabilize things — sometimes even reverse the downward trend. Figures like Augustus and Alfred the Great inherited power facing real crises. Yet through a mix of discipline and reform, they managed to buy their civilizations decades (or even centuries) more life.

Here’s how a leader facing a failing empire can reverse the decline…

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Restore Virtue

To save an empire, it first needs to be worth saving. That comes by instilling a sense of virtue in the culture again. At the point that the empire is crumbling already, it’s well into the Age of Decadence according to Glubb, where there is wealth without sacrifice, rights without duty, and spectacle in place of achievement.

If we look back to Rome, Augustus inherited a world exhausted by civil war. At the root of the issue was moral and civic decay. In response, August promoted the formation of families, a religious revival, a rededication to public duty, and military discipline. All fronts worked to remake the culture of Rome into one of decency, respect, and order. The result was the famed Pax Romana — an era of general peace in the empire.

But on this point, it’s much easier to say virtue should be restored than to actually do it. Ultimately, virtue is something chosen by each individual. A leader can’t force anyone to be a good person, especially if there’s disagreement on what good even is. But, a leader can provide the breeding ground on which virtue is better fostered, by establishing a common law across the land, enforcing laws equally, and by communicating a common moral framework.

The latter has most effectively been accomplished through organized religion. This has worked well historically because a religion that stands apart from a government separates the enforcement arm of a society from the moral authority, increasing the trust of everyone in a common moral understanding. So, the leader concerned with the decline of his empire can do nothing better than to restore organized religion’s high standing in society.

Lastly, a people will not turn to virtue if their leader shows extreme vices. Thus, the leader, if he truly wants to restore virtue to his empire, must reflect the attitudes and behaviors that will inspire his people to right action. He can’t be a hypocrite; the best rulers lead from the front.

Rebuild Institutions

Another sign of an empire in decay is the weakening of its institutions. When its legal, religious, and civic institutions lose credibility to the public, the gears that make an empire work stop turning. Part of the problem is bureaucratic: large empires usually require more labor and infrastructure to manage its many moving parts, but every level of control adds friction — slowing progress and diverting public funds away from other places where it might be more useful. Another part of the problem is that these weakened institutions no longer attract the best, brightest, and rightly motivated individuals. The institutions become filled with people who simply want a position of status or ease. Bulky institutions increasingly tax their populations to support the infrastructure, and people begin to view the institutions not as movers and shakers in the empire, but rather as roadblocks to its success.

Looking back to Rome again, Diocletian was a successful reformer. He wasn’t afraid to rethink Roman organization from the ground up. The emperor restructured many of the provinces, stabilized taxation, reordered the military, and reformed the administration as a whole to better serve the empire.

But institutions extend beyond government. The establishment of a strong religion is infinitely more important than the establishment of a provincial tax administration. As we said earlier, the institutions of religion provide a common moral framework for a people. They provide trust, community, and a long-lasting bond between generations. So, a leader must support strong religious communities if he wishes to have a strong empire.

Further, an empire thrives on the health of its most fundamental unit cell: the family. In its latter days, wealthy Romans were reluctant to marry and start families, preferring decadence and freedom from responsibility to a life of domestic purpose and meaning. But that meant civilizational suicide, as Rome’s old families dwindled among crowds of newcomers in the empire. Cultural cohesion eroded quickly, and political instability driven by cultural nihilism took over the Roman town square. An empire needs a strong base of patriotic families, not only to provide for a future citizenry, but also to instill a generational mindset in the culture. Mothers and fathers naturally care for where their society is headed, because their children have to inherit that world. So, an emperor should encourage marriage and families to ensure that patriotism is inherently tied to love for their families.

The successful empire needs strong institutions to make it work; these fundamental institutions of law, executive government, religion, marriage, and family are critical to renew a faltering empire. However, institutions need protection to function…

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When did Western Civilization peak, exactly? A subscriber recently asked this very question. At first an answer came quickly, but the more I think about it, the more difficult the question reveals itself to be.

The meaning of a “peak” of civilization is ambiguous. By which metric do we judge? My first instinct, as a traditionally minded thinker, is to suggest a moral or spiritual metric: when was the bulk of society aligned in a common moral understanding or religion? That quickly takes us farther back in history.

Or, by “peak”, do we mean an intellectual summit, perhaps in achievement or at least in literary, artistic, or scientific activity?

Another metric we might judge civilization by is for its peacefulness. When did the West avoid conflict for an extended period of time? Or similarly, do we judge the pinnacle of a society to be when average living conditions rise above an established norm?

And, lastly, perhaps the “peak” of a civilization lies where its essence was most clearly defined. What time period most embodies the characteristics of the West?

All appear as valid metrics. Let’s now look at which time periods stand out when filtering by these metrics of religious unity, intellectual activity, peace, living conditions, and essence.

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Peak of the Western Religion

The “Western religion” is undoubtedly Catholicism. While we may extend the title to all Christianity, it is hard to imagine a “peak” of a religion in times where it is so divided, as Christianity has become so fragmented since the Protestant Reformation. We might fairly point to the East/West Schism of the 11th century as another division (into Orthodox vs Catholic), but as we are only concerned with “Western Civilization”, Catholicism has remained undivided in the West proper for its entire history.

While any careful study of history reveals cracks and signs of disunity in every age, Catholicism stood taller and stronger in some periods than others. The 1200s were a high point, as it was this century that the intellectual foundations of Catholicism were best summarized, synthesized with Aristotelian thought, and born out in the many writings of the Scholastics. St. Albertus Magnus, his student St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus were Catholic intellectual giants of the era.

Further, society itself was wholly organized around the Church at this point. The Popes has gained power not only over the spiritual leadership Western Europe, but also over many of the temporal matters later only held by kings. While kings and popes did come to blows at some points, still nearly every king acknowledged the legitimacy of the papal power and thought long before challenging it.

Cathedrals and monasteries were central to the landscapes; the Franciscans and Dominicans both emerged to revitalize the Church’s mission; and pilgrimages were common to the Holy Land still under some protection from late Crusaders.

It was during this century that Western Europe was Catholic through and through.

Peak of the Intellect

A peak period of intellectual life is more challenging to determine, as we are not looking for the time period which has the most information available (obviously today) but the one in which the most relative progress or activity was made. A few periods stand out: 1) the Scholastic period of the 1200s, but only really for the intellectual life of the Church, 2) the late Renaissance period of the 1600s, 3) the late 1800s with the spread of steam engines and electricity, or 4) the late 1900s with the advent of the internet and computer.

Comparing these diverse periods is difficult because the kinds of advances made in each are so different. The 1200s reconciled theology with secular philosophy. The Renaissance adopted and applied the “new” methods of rationalism to science and philosophy, while simultaneously exploding in artistic vigor. The 1800s witnessed built the great machines that multiplied human labor tenfold and hundredfold. But the late 1900s began the project of building man’s most cherished gift, his intellect, into a machine of its own.

Then, in terms of scientific achievement, I must defer to our most recent advent of the computer and internet, which are now being transformed by AI, as the most revolutionary in human development. In artistic intellect, however, I would point instead to the Renaissance; in theological intellect, to the 1200s. And, I will add, that in literary intellect, I personally hold the early 20th century as a high point because of its perfect balance of artistic language and clarity.

Peak of Peace

The high point of peace in Western Civilization is much less contested than that of the intellect. Generally, 1800s Europe was known as a time of relative peace across the continent. The United States may have thought differently with the War of 1812 and the Civil War, but overall, Western Civilization was relatively content during this period. The chaos of the French Revolution had subsided, and the British Empire continued to rule the seas. Further, the Industrial Revolution was propelling economies to new heights — why wage war when technology could accelerate the European economies?

Next, let’s take a look at living conditions and what we’ll call the “Western character”.

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Christianity built Western Civilization.

Or, at least, Christianity unified it. Before the Church, in fact, there was no unified Western identity at all – just a collection of warring chieftains, lords, and petty kings who obtained power via force. A lord in France, for example, felt no connection to another halfway across the continent in Hungary or Poland.

But the Church found a way to rally all of Europe behind a common cause, and create Christendom, a grand union of Christians across the continent. The key was to harness — rather than stifle — the power of its internal factions and use it for the Church’s goals.

So how did this unification happen? Here’s the story of how Christendom came to be…

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A Dual Tension Between Church and Tribe

Historian Christopher Dawson makes the case in Religion and the Rise of Western Culture that after the fall of Rome, Europe was under a dualistic tension: a barbarian power structure stood in contrast to a Christian ethos. On one side rested the secular authority of local lords and kings, who largely maintained control through aggressive means. On the other lay the cultural influence of the Church, who remained powerful in spite of the collapse of nearly all other Roman institutions. This dichotomy between secular and religious authority lies at the root of the West’s origins…

Dawson called the West a “missionary culture” because it was only via the Church that the transmission of higher cultural elements occurred. He writes:

“…it was only in so far as the different peoples of the West were incorporated in the spiritual community of Christendom that they acquired a common culture.”

Dawson contrasts this development with Eastern civilizations like China and India, whose cultures developed internally over centuries with little outside influence. Their religion and culture grew together like roots in the same soil.

But Western civilization was a clash from the start: missionaries like the saints Boniface, Patrick, and Gregory brought a new culture — and a new authority — into the existing power structures of the Northern barbarian kingdoms. Though nearly all of Western Europe converted to Christianity, the Church’s influence did not create a utopia, but rather an uneasy tension…

Kings and lords still maintained their power via force while serving vital functions: levying taxes, ensuring security, and administering justice. But it was in the Christian Church where most turned for cultural direction. Dawson writes:

“The new barbarian kingdoms had taken over the military and political functions of the Empire…but everything else belonged to the Church — moral authority, learning and culture, the prestige of the Roman name and the care of the people.”

While kings held military and administrative power, bishops had the institutional backing of the Church. Often bishops held just as much — if not more — authority as the kings.

And this tension was not merely a practical reality, but a theological vision of the world accepted by medieval Christians. For example St. Augustine, a theologian who influenced the medieval mind perhaps more than any other, argued in his work “City of God” that the world was always at tension between two opposing forces: the City of Man and the City of God.

All of history was a war between God and Satan. As the “prince of this world,” according to the Bible, Satan would continue to influence the world until Christ’s return. In the meantime, Christians accepted that earthly authority would never be completely just, hence the allowance of a non-ecclesial power alongside the Church.

Despite this dualistic understanding of secular and religious power, there were many who sought to unify them. In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, one man tried to create a unified Church and State…a Christian empire.

The Hope of a Christian Empire

Charlemagne, famously crowned emperor by the pope in 800 AD, attempted to create a more unified system that encompassed both secular and religious authority. Throughout his reign he implemented a series of reforms that blurred the lines between ecclesial and political power.

His reforms focused on strengthening the Church’s hierarchical structure, improving clerical education, standardizing liturgical practices, and rooting out paganism. Eventually, Charlemagne’s powers covered ground that only the Church had occupied previously such as disciplining clerics, appointing bishops and abbots, and defining orthodox doctrine.

What’s more, he did it all with support from the papacy. Some even referred to Charlemagne’s realm as the “new Israel,” recalling the Biblical kingdom where little distinction between religious and civil law existed. Charlemagne’s dreams of creating a Christian Europe unified under common religion seemed within reach…

But this unity did not endure.

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The Black Death wiped out a third of Europe — possibly as many as 50 million people perished as a result of the deadly plague. The word apocalyptic doesn’t even cover it. It’s a wonder it didn’t actually spell the end of European civilization.

From the perspective of a 14th-century peasant on the ground, it would have been a traumatic experience on a scale we can’t comprehend today: dozens of your friends and family covered in blisters and sores before succumbing to fever and eventually death. And you might be next. The Final Judgement surely felt near!

But if you managed to survive, your life may have actually improved from the conditions you were in beforehand. You had more food, pay, and maybe some land, too. Your station in life instantly skyrocketed. Sounds impossible, right?

Well, for some it’s exactly what happened. Though the Black Death almost ended European civilization, it actually contributed to a rebirth in many ways. For one, it reordered society, allowing for upward mobility of peasants previously locked in a stagnant hierarchy.

Here’s how the Black Death helped create a brighter future for those who remained…

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Agent of Chaos

Supposedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of Caffa in 1347, the disease was likely carried by fleas that hitched rides on Genoese ships sailing around the Mediterranean. At the time, no one could have guessed the damage these little fleas would cause…

Major population centers like Constantinople, Sicily, and Italy were rich targets and eventually launching pads for the plague to reach mainland Europe. Once on land, the Black Death jumped from a flea-born disease to humans, spreading from person-to-person as a type of lung infection.

The speed at which the plague spread is perhaps what is most remarkable about the disease. Just a few years after reaching Caffa, it had spread to every corner of Europe — from Russia to England to Spain. And everyone became acutely aware of the plague’s symptoms: swollen lymph nodes, fever, skin sores, then death.

Estimates are that between 30-60% of the population succumbed to the illness. Entire towns and families were wiped out. Mass graves were dug to keep up with the staggering amount of corpses. Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura wrote in 1348:

“Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices...great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night”

It sounds like Hell on earth — or divine punishment — and that’s exactly how many interpreted the events. For some, the plague could only be explained as wrath from God for their sins. Others saw it as the end of the world, referencing the book of Revelation where it states “a third of mankind was killed” due to plague.

In some ways it was the end of the world, though. Or at least the end of a certain type of society…

Rapid Social Changes

The effects of the Black Death on the medieval world have been the topic of wide speculation. Everything from climate change to advances in medical science have been attributed to the plague.

Some scholars have even theorized the Renaissance got its jumpstart from the Black Death. The plague hit especially hard in Florence and other Italian cities, and it’s possible a worldview shift occurred — familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell on matters of religion and spirituality. This wave of piety then manifested in the widespread sponsorship of religious art, leading to an explosion in painting, sculpting, and architecture. Much of Renaissance art was a contemplation of death and the possibility of life anew in Christianity.

Though the plague’s role in the birth of the Renaissance is conjecture, what’s more concrete is that it contributed to feudalism’s downfall and the rise in upward mobility for the peasant class.

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The Renaissance was the culmination of centuries of progress combined with a rediscovery of the classical spirit. Architectural feats like Florence’s Duomo and St. Peter’s Basilica remain recognizable icons of the cultural “rebirth” that swept through Western Europe.

But did you know much of Renaissance architecture was inspired by a single man — one who…

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Andrew Carnegie is often credited with ushering in America’s “Gilded Age” via the industrial empire he forged. His reputation is one of a cunning capitalist who helped transform the nation into an economic powerhouse at the turn of the 20th century. He became one of the wealthiest men in American history.

But his wealth wasn’t just for his private use — he believed he had a responsibility to care for the common man, too. Thus he patronized the arts, built over 3,000 public libraries, and funded museums and music halls at his own expense. He even claimed that providing education and beauty to the masses was the “noblest possible use of wealth.” — why?

Though he might not have called it by name, Carnegie followed the principle of noblesse oblige — the idea that the wealthy or powerful in a society have an obligation to lift up the poor and weak.

It’s a forgotten virtue that sorely needs to be resurrected. Here’s an introduction to noblesse oblige and how we can implement it today.

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Classical Origins

The meaning of noblesse oblige can be summed up simply: privilege entails responsibility. More precisely, though, it can be described by two principles:

1. Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly.

2. One must act in a fashion that conforms to one’s position and privileges with which one has been born, bestowed, or has earned.

Noblesse oblige is a French term literally translating to “nobility obliges,” but its origins go way back to at least ancient Greece. For example, Homer’s Iliad hints at the concept when, in Book XII, the hero Sarpedon urges his comrade Glaucus to fight with him in the front ranks of battle. Homer writes:

“’Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace

The first in valour, as the first in place;

That when with wondering eyes our confidential bands

Behold our deeds transcending our commands,

Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,

Whom those that envy dare not imitate!”

Homer is pointing out how those “first in place” — the privileged class or the elite warriors — have an obligation to lead their soldiers from the front, to be “first in valor.” It’s a call to earn the position that they occupy so that they are deemed deserving of their privilege.

Aside from mythology, the ancient Greeks had a version of noblesse oblige called euergetism (roughly translated as “do good deeds”), a social expectation that wealthy individuals should distribute part of their wealth to the community. This often took the form of funding public institutions, which derived their legitimacy from the backing of wealthy individuals. This is evidenced in 355 BC, when the Athenian statesman Demosthenes mentioned how the rich had failed in their duty to contribute to the community in his work Against Leptines, and Xenophon hints at similar themes in some of his works.

A more formal instantiation of euergetism was the position of choregos — a wealthy Athenian citizen who took on the public duty of financing the chorus and other aspects of the production of plays that were not funded by the polis, or city state.

Though philanthropic on its surface, many speculate that euergetism did not come from a genuine love for the people, but rather was a way of placating the masses, ensuring poor citizens didn’t revolt. The philosopher Aristotle supports this theory in his work Politics:

“[the rich] will make magnificent sacrifices, and build some monuments and the people, then taking part in the banquets and feasts, and seeing the city splendidly decorated temples and buildings, wish to maintain the constitution [government]…”

Ancient Rome adopted the patron-client system, a practice where high status Romans offered favors for clients in return for political support. Though initially transactional in nature, this generosity toward clients eventually expanded into a more general charity toward the poor.

Wealthy Romans often supported public entertainment like games, or built amenities like theaters, libraries, or baths. It’s not uncommon to find the inscription D.S.P.F. (de sua pecunia fecit, “done with his own money”) on a building indicating a wealthy Roman had funded it.

These types of charitable customs were precursors to noblesse oblige, but they didn’t encompass the entire concept. Christianity would be instrumental in establishing noblesse oblige in its fullest form…

A Biblical Expectation

Despite having roots in antiquity, the medieval and modern conceptions of noblesse oblige stem mostly from Biblical teaching. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:

“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.”

Thus a clear expectation is established from privileged members of society toward the poor. And like other commandments of Christ, these words were not taken lightly especially by the earliest Christians…

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Future wars won’t just be fought between nations — they’ll be fought between entire civilizations.

That is, according to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington and his controversial thesis presented in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). Huntington’s argument challenged the dominant post-Cold War assumption that ideologic…

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As the fires of Rome dimmed and its marble crumbled, a strange thing happened: the empire refused to die.

Though centuries ticked by from its official end in 476, new rulers emerged who all claimed a lineage to the ancient, long-gone empire. Roman ruins dotted Europe, but kings and conquerors still appealed to the legacy of the once-great civilization.

An…

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In a time that honored martial prowess and piety above all else, the warrior bishop was the physical embodiment of the medieval ethos: a soldier of Christ — miles christi. When Christian and heathen worlds collided throughout Western history, religious differences often led to physical confrontation. In comes warrior bishops.

This controversial fusion of clergyman and soldier played a pivotal role on the medieval battlefield and shaped the West’s understanding of piety, violence, and warfare. The warrior bishop became a symbol of Christendom’s struggle against forces and ideologies that threatened its existence.

So where did they come from, and why were they a vital part of medieval history?

To understand how these unique figures shaped the medieval Church’s perception of conflict, let’s examine their development throughout the medieval period. We will examine four distinct periods: the Late Roman Era, where bishops would first lead soldiers and fight out of necessity; the early middle ages, where a consolidation occurred between Church and state leading to a militarization of the priesthood; the Crusades, where heroes and villains would arise among the clergy; finally we’ll look at the Late Middle Ages, where brazen overreach would lead to the Church’s rupture.

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Power Shift: Bishops on the Battlefield in the Late Roman Era

Despite widespread oppression throughout the Roman Empire, early Christians maintained a pacifist philosophy. Persecution and martyrdom were ever-present dangers, often borne with meek acquiescence in true Christ-like fashion. Having little political power, Christians were left to the whims of those with more earthly authority. This power dynamic shifted, aptly, on a battlefield – Constantine’s vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D. signaled a momentous change in Christianity’s fate. Not only would it be the impetus to change Christianity’s official status as a religion, the battle where Constantine commanded his men to paint a Chi Rho on their shields was a precursor to more direct Christian involvement on battlefields of the future.

Constantine would consequently be the first to introduce clergymen directly onto the front lines. Accompanied by symbols of the cross flying high over Roman legions [1], clergymen joined soldiers during battle – not as fighters, but as symbolic additions meant to boost morale. Though priests now accompanied troops during military campaigns, their role changed little from their peacetime brethren. Offering mass, hearing confession, and tending the sick were all standard duties of these wartime clerics [2].

Bishops weren’t seen exercising full military command until nearly a century later. One of the first examples took place shortly after Easter in 429 when Germanus, bishop and former duke of Autissiodorum, assumed leadership of the Britons during a Saxon raid on Mold, a small mountain village in northern Wales. The bishop’s prior experience as general surely proved invaluable when he hand-selected a group of soldiers, carried their banner, and led the force to a vale, hoping to ambush the invaders before they reached the village. As the raiders approached, the freshly baptized Britons gave three shouts of “Alleluia!” – their new battle cry taught to them by Germanus. Startled by the yells reverberating throughout the low hills, the raiders assumed the sound could only have been made by a massive army, fleeing before any blood could be spilled [3]. Germanus’s fellow bishops were elated that he had won the battle without bloodshed, calling it a “victory gained by faith and not by force.” [4]

Germanus would develop a reputation for his confrontational style. The bold bishop famously challenged the barbarian king “Goar,” ruler of the Alans, convincing the king to hold off an attack against insurgents in Armorica while waiting for direct orders from the emperor in Italy (the Alans were sent to quell the rebellion by Aetus, the most influential general in the empire at the time). To defy a king was no small feat, and soon Germanus had a cult following. His heroic exploits were eventually passed down across generations and his name became etched into legend – he was a shoo-in for sainthood.

The Church at the time was not so enthusiastic about the confrontational style that Germanus and bishops like him championed. St. Paul’s warning that “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but…against spiritual wickedness in high places” [5] seemed to refute the necessity of having clergy lead armies of soldiers. That a cleric should be engaged in spiritual, not physical, combat was the prevailing viewpoint. Presented with this tension, the early Church wrestled with properly defining clergy’s role during wartime. The first full-fledged clerical prohibition on military service appeared at the Council of Chalcedon in 451:

“We decree that those who have once joined the ranks of the clergy or have become monks are not to depart on military service or for secular office. Those who dare do this, and do not repent and return to what, in God, they previously chose, are to be anathematised.” [3]

Later in 546, Canon I of the Council of Lérida specified that clergy were forbidden from spilling blood:

“…It is established that those who serve at the altar and handle the body and the blood of Christ, or who are allotted to the office of the holy vessel, should restrain themselves from all human blood, indeed [even] from that of the enemy…” [3]

The Church teaching was clear: clerics should not engage in military service and should not spill blood. Despite these official restrictions, the days of finding a bishop at the head of an army had just begun; bishops continued to participate in military ventures over the next millennia, becoming trusted advisors, generals, and, in some cases like Germanus, military heroes.

Thus a new kind of leader had emerged from the vestiges of the dying western Roman Empire – a shepherd of Christ who not only led believers in spiritual matters, but also commanded armor-clad warriors to protect his flock from flesh-and-blood dangers.

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