Know Your Medieval "State"

I'm always miffed to hear the libertarian-leaning conservatives talk about the problems of feudalism, etc., as if the main issue with medieval government were the power of the monarch.  And equally, Vermuelean, Josiasy, Catholic-Constitutionalism-Confessional-State talk makes me uneasy because (among other reasons) it assumes an easy synergy between the state and the papacy, which would, of course, rule the obedient civil rulers wisely and well at all times.

Both of these elements in conservative thought betray something of an ignorance of history (at least, when they make the picture as simple as I have just done for them).  For after all ...

“A further precondition for arriving at the modern concept of the State is that the supreme authority within each independent regnum should be recognized as having no rivals within its own territories as a law-making power and an object of allegiance.  Any such unitary image of political sovereignty was precluded in medieval Europe by the legal assumptions underpinning the feudal organization of society, and by the Church’s claims to act as a law-making power coeval with rather than subordinate to the secular authorities” (351).  --Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought.

In other words, the king must become more absolutist before the modern state can emerge.  And that says interesting things both about the birth of the classical liberal state, and about our desires to return to, or reject, the very different (and by now very dead) medieval world that preceded it.