Discourse on public security in some european political and legal teachings of the middle ages

The purpose of the article is to determine the theoretical and legal analysis of key features of general philosophical and special legal understanding and interpretation of human, social and state security problems in the history of political and legal doctrines of the Middle Ages, in particular on the basis of scientific research, against the background of widespread collective ideas about security as a state of public relations, the condition of human (social) life and / or a kind of social value, as well as objects (spheres) of this security, as well as subjects and regulatory mechanisms to ensure the state. One of the most important methodological foundations of the research focused on the security discourse in general and of the Middle Ages, in particular, is the problem of correct correlation of theoretical and empirical levels of scientific
cognition, their integration in order to obtain new generalized knowledge about the subject matter. Medieval civilization clearly demonstrated that the state of public safety along with jurisprudence is non-state of nature: its provision was only partially entrusted to the state, but it did not fully perform its security function, partially transmitting it to the church, sometimes was just unable to perform it. Somehow or other, given the institutional weakness of state institutions, it is non-state or rather quasi-state institutions, such as the Catholic Church in Medieval Europe, that were concerned with the problems of ensuring public safety by creating a deeper level of its guaranteeing. Such a «transmission» of the security function to the church to some extent testifies to its universal, not just state nature, and the objectivity of its implementation in society even under institutional or functional anemia of state institutions, which could be clearly traced by the examples of countries with long-term domination of feudal fragmentation and the actual paralysis of central government institutions.

Middle Ages, safety, public safety, state, monarch