IS EUROPEANISM A LEGACY OF THE SECOND MIDDLE AGES? A HISTORICAL COMPARATIVE RESEARCH OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN THE LIBER AUGUSTALIS (1231) AND PANEUROPA (1923)

Abstract

This paper brings into focus two major innovations of European identity: the Liber Augustalis (1231) and Paneuropa (1923). It discusses several concepts of modern Europe and their possible medieval origins in the first written constitution of government in the Western tradition. The purpose of the constitutiones was to reign in these regimes and unite them under a single rule of law that defined the rights, powers, and duties of each of the components, purpose that mirrors the labors of the European Union today. We gaze into the ideological and terminological correspondences between the Liber Augustalis and Paneuropa in order to understand the origins of the best example of Pan-Europeanism: the European Union. Introspection on the machinations of the main European power of the thirteenth century that had one language (i.e. Latin) and wanted to create one law, offers a better understanding of the signs manifested by the Pan-European movement, with English sen'ing as main language, slowly heading towards Europeanism. We contest the hypotheses regarding the primacy of the Paneuropa manifesto as the first popular movement for a united Europe, and we bring arguments that Europeanism is an heirloom of medieval origins, and that these constitutiones were not confined to defining the structures, procedures, rights, powers, and duties of government as later constitutions would be.

Headnote

Abstract: This paper brings into focus two major innovations of European identity: the Liber Augustalis (1231) and Paneuropa (1923). It discusses several concepts of modern Europe and their possible medieval origins in the first written constitution of government in the Western tradition. The purpose of the constitutiones was to reign in these regimes and unite them under a single rule of law that defined the rights, powers, and duties of each of the components, purpose that mirrors the labors of the European Union today. We gaze into the ideological and terminological correspondences between the Liber Augustalis and Paneuropa in order to understand the origins of the best example of Pan-Europeanism: the European Union. Introspection on the machinations of the main European power of the thirteenth century that had one language (i.e. Latin) and wanted to create one law, offers a better understanding of the signs manifested by the Pan-European movement, with English sen'ing as main language, slowly heading towards Europeanism. We contest the hypotheses regarding the primacy of the Paneuropa manifesto as the first popular movement for a united Europe, and we bring arguments that Europeanism is an heirloom of medieval origins, and that these constitutiones were not confined to defining the structures, procedures, rights, powers, and duties of government as later constitutions would be.

Keywords: European Identity, Paneuropa, Liber Augustalis, Europeanism, European Union, legal history.

1. Introduction

What is Europeanism? Briefly, Europeanism15 can be defined as an attachment or allegiance to the traditions, interests, or ideals of Europeans, and in the second sense as the ideal or advocacy of the political and economic integration of Europe.

What is the idea behind the construct considered to be Modern Enropel There are two typical contexts for the use of the word identity in the treaties that regulate the European Union. First, there exists the need for identity at the level of the Union. Such identity has to be perceived as clear and distinct from both inside and outside. Secondly, there is the need to respect existing national identities of the Member States.16

What is the concept of Pan-Europeanism? A Pan-European Identity does not currently exist, on the contrary identity does not seem to surpass the national level. Article 8 of the draft of the Constitutional Treaty states 'Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the union shall be additional to national citizenship; it shall not replace it'. This provision allows citizens of EU member States rights provided at the European level, which might weaken old communal loyalties, but national citizenship is still not affected (Arizumi, 2011).

Such understanding of defense identity is effective today, as is shown by Mrs. Agnelli's outline of the priorities of Italian Presidency for the first semester of 1996, delivered to the European Parliament on 1/18/96: "External Security. The European Union must assert its external identity by exercising an "irreplaceable" stabilizing influence..." However, the Treaty only links identity to defense. A report on the functioning of the Treaty released on 5/10/95 broadens the meaning to all Union's external dealings "where it will have to bring a genuine European identity to bear". On the other hand, Article F of the Maastricht Treaty reads "Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States". Taken together, these two aspects (European identity and respect for national identities) set up a segmentary-type model of belongings. It is the same model that Shore (1993) reports having seen pictured by European Administration representatives when asked about the issue. As we shall see, the Union is perfectly aware that such a model deals with a problematic integration. In spite of that, the "hierarchical levels of belonging" tell us that the Union is to get a consciousness and a culture of the same kind of the nations. Only national identity is visible: other sources of a plural culture coming from outside the national identity (immigration), or below the national level (regions, ethnonational minorities, social movements) do not appear to make the selection.17

However European identity can be considered the negative construct of a Europe tom apart by World War. It was a negative outcome of an attempt to end German Europe and to forge a European identity in the Cold War, squeezed, as Europe was, by the rivalry of the USA and USSR.18

European identity was the negative construct of a Europe tom apart by World War.19 It was a negative outcome of an attempt to end German Europe and to forge a European identity in the Cold War, squeezed, as Europe was, by the rivalry of the USA and USSR. But negative cultural formation cannot carry the day when the driving forces - the geopolitical threats to Europe - disappear. The questions then arise: who are we

Europeans? What does it mean to be European after the Cold War? Can European identity survive the global financial crisis?

We assumed that Pan-Europeanism, the European identity the European culture are linked by their very founding ideas, the idea of a set of rules, a single and just rule of law, the constitution. The question now arises regarding the medieval origins in the possibly first written constitution of government in Western tradition, the Liber Augustalis. The purpose of the constitutiones was to reign and unite different regimes under a single rule of law that defined the rights, powers, and duties of each of the components, purpose that mirrors the labors of the European Union today.

We must further gaze into the ideological and terminological correspondences between the Liber Augustalis and Paneuropa in order to understand the origins of the best example of Pan-Europeanism: the European Union. Introspection on the machinations of the main European power of the thirteenth century that had one language (i.e. Latin) and wanted to create one law, offers a better understanding of the signs manifested by the PanEuropean movement, with English serving as main language, slowly heading towards Europeanism.

"So too the name commonly given to the code, the Liber Augustalis, the Augustan book, will be avoided; a name that is the creation of those later commentators who wished to see in these laws an explicit statement of the theory of autocracy" (Abulafia, 1992, p. 203).

2. Constitutions of government in the Western European Tradition

Law-codes often reveal to the reader merely what he wants to find

(Abulafia, 1992, p. 203)

The thirteenth century saw attempts in several European countries to set down the local law in writing and in every case those responsible turned to the civil law to provide organizing categories and organizing principles. The English common law was set out in the Latin treatise on the laws and customs of England, known as Bracton, written in the 1230s. Following the articulated manner of Roman law, the author understood the need for a coherence approach regarding the laws of the king's court. His treatise equipped the nascent common law with the minimum theoretical structure that it needed to grow in a coherent way (Stein, 2004, p. 64).

At the same time as Bracton was compiling his collection of English law, the Emperor Frederick II in 1231 promulgated a collection of laws for his Sicilian kingdom, known as the Liber Augstalis or Constitutions of Melfi. In substantive content these laws are not obviously Roman, but Roman texts were used to justify the law-making power of the Emperor and the procedure to be adopted in the royal courts (Stein, 2004, p. 64).

He established a harsh policy of the containment or repression of local freedoms and local autonomy, and one particular law in the Liber Constitutionum of 1231 that he promulgated, the Constitutio Puritatem, was to pose great problems of interpretation for later historiography. This constitution established a rigid hierarchy among the normative sources of the Regnum. Judges were to apply the laws of the kingdom first; if the royal law failed to provide a norm corresponding to the case under examination, the judges were directed to turn to the city customary laws, but only if such laws had been expressly held just and admissible (bonae et approbatae) by the king. Finally, if the judges found no applicable norm either among the sovereign's dispositions or among the bonae et approbatae customary laws, they might avail themselves of the ius commune. This, according to an explanation in the text but perhaps added after its publication and placed at the end of the constitution, comprised Lombard and Roman law (Bellomo, 1995, pp. 8990).

Historians who have grappled with the problems posed by "Puritatem" have not always dealt with both aspects of the problem. The text should be examined from the point of view of the local legal institutions of which the statute was an expression, but also from the point of view of that universal political entity, the empire, of which the ius commune was a projection. Furthermore, some historians have considered the local laws and the ius commune only within a perspective that reduces them all to simple positive law. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, both during the course of the tumultuous events that ended the Swabian phase of the Regnum and when Charles I, the first Angevin king of Sicily, came to the throne in 1266, the cities once more began to weave the fabric of their liberty and their self-government (Bellomo, 1995, p. 92).

In his research, of Frederick II, Frederick II a medieval emperor, David Abulafia considered that in his kingdom of Sicily, the emperor focused on restoring and enforcing royal control. "In 1231, during the summer, Frederick enunciated a new code of laws for his kingdom, presenting this code to his vassals at Melfi, in the south Italian hinterland. The Constitutions of Melfi, containing over two hundred laws and proclamations, have been hailed by historians as the clearest evidence of Frederick's wish to make Sicily a model state', well ordered, centralized, efficient, in which all rights and obligations are subject to the ruler's whim or will" (Abulafia, 1992, p. 202). He goes on adding that "The practical requirements of reconstruction were wedded to the theoretical requirements of a highly developed concept of absolutist monarchy to create a coherent, consistent body of legislation. "Such an interpretation of the Constitutions of Melfi is, however based on wishful thinking" (Abulafia, 1992, p. 202). He adds that his legislation does not mark the coming of a new Justinian, the laws were not issued on the scale of the Roman codes, and that they did not seek to encompass the whole of human experience, but rather to deal with problems specific to a kingdom in urgent need of reconstruction.

This legislative work (Liber Augustalis was probably may have been in large part drawn up by Frederick's secretary, the cultivated Pier della Vigna) is divided into three books. It is an "open corpus", however, to which novella constitutions of Frederick's were added, either as an integral part of the work or separately in an appendix. Not all of Frederick's later legal enactments found a place in the Liber Augustalis, however, a fact that shows selectivity at work and that ultimately fives special value and significance to the legislative texts that were included and demotes the excluded texts to a secondary or occasional status. In short, the Liber Augustalis contained the notion (which was to be typical of nineteenth-century "codifications") that the materials is subjected to unified treatment were to underlie the entire normative system throughout the land. This is, incidentally, an idea that was realized during those very same years, in sharp rivalry with the Liber Augustalis, in the Liber Extra of Pope Gregory IX, a work that gave the church a universal normative system, the exclusiveness of which we have already seen. This rivalry created an internal ambiguity in the Liber Augustalis, and this ambiguity places the Liber Augustalis squarely at the center of the sources of the ins proprium, and it attributes a value, a dignity, and a quality to that ins proprium lacking in other local normative regimes (Bellomo, 1995, pp. 93-95). His ideas of government stand in a direct line going back to Augustinian ideas of the state as the corrector of man's sinfulness. It is true that Frederick intrudes notions which, at least coincidentally, have an Aristotelian flavor, stressing the function of the created world and the purpose of the ruler as a source of potential perfection or improvement within society (Abulafia, 1992, p. 207).

Consequently, to cite just one example, if we must agree that Charlemagne's universal order fell apart because that first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire had no clear idea of imperium and dominium, it is just as undisputable that Frederick II had a very clear grasp of those same notions. These were ideas founded on and incorporated into the dispositions and doctrines of the ins commune, thanks to the rediscovered importance of the ancient Roman law and Justinian law. They were a part of the European legal tradition of the first half of the thirteenth century, when the glossators' school had reach its height in the works of Azo, Hugolinus, and Accursius. They were the only possible roots from which the project of a "general law" for the exercise of imperium could spring- which was the point on which Frederick II and Gregory IX clashed (Bellomo, 1995, p. 96).

In Spain the legal situation was much affected by the Moorish domination. The Liber iudiciorum, a seventh-century collection, based on earlier collections of Visigothic and Roman laws, which had originally been applied to the Visigothic and subject populations but had become territorial, provided some basis for the regional customs. In the middle of the thirteenth century, two remarkable kings, Ferdinand III and Alfonso X, were able to exploit the new learning in order to counter the diversity of laws in their dominions. In the style of Frederick II in Sicily, they sought to introduce a modern system that would act as a unifying force and bring Castile into the main stream of European legal thought. Ferdinand initiated an ambitious set of law books, culminating in the Siete partidas, published by Alfonso, known as "the wise". The division into seven parts glowed with religious significance and may have been modeled on the sevenfold division which Justinian imposed on the Digest for educational purposes. The work they produced was a mixture of traditional customs of Castile and Leon, of civil and canon law and of rules derived from the Old and New Testaments and from patristic writers (Stein, 2004, pp. 6566).

Peter Stein considers that the European movement and the institutions it has produced resulted, during the last two decades, in a revival of interest in Justinian's law, as the law of an ancient unified Europe, and even more in the medieval ius commune, which transcended national boundaries and was everywhere expounded in the same way and in the same language. The institutions of European Community law are frequently described as forming the beginning of a new ius commune. The difference, which is sometimes overlooked, is that the medieval ius commune was adopted throughout Europe voluntarily, through the recognition of its superiority to any alternative, whereas the new ius commune, such as, for example, the rules of product liability, is imposed from above in the interest of uniformity (Stein, 2004, p. 130).

In the Middle Ages, it was assumed that old law was generally good law. Yet the Constitutions of Melfi combine old and new law: the dominating theme is the need to adapt and improve law to fir the urgent need of the Sicilian kingdom (Abulafia, 1992, p. 208). Here lies the political significance of the introduction to the Contitutions of Melfi. A theory of government could be propounded in which there was no need to include the saving power of the pope. It was the ruler who had the power to direct mankind to a better end, through the proclamation of good law based on the exercise of righteousness (Justitia). This optimism must be set against the pessimism of the view that the ruler was a scourge whose power must be reined in by the Vicar of Christ (Abulafia, 1992, p. 207).

3. European and Christian identity towards Pan-Europeanism?

Tough Roman law remains the preponderant influence, the Melfi legislation does

not consist of a plagiaristic restatement of Justinian 's code.

(Abulafia, 1992, p. 208)

Frederick the II considered himself a vivid example of the old roman Caesar, a legislating Caesar in pursuit of his only love, his realm. His image of a Christian Caesar was following the model of that celebrated by Dante in his image of his first Christian Caesar, the Law-Giver Justinian. There were three Roman Emperors whom he explicitly took as his models: Justinian, Augustus, and Julius Caesar.

The Middle Ages took Justinian- with Scipio perhaps, and Cato and Trajan-as the symbol of Justice, the minister Domini who codified Roman Law; Dante treats him as a sacred figure, and he was the inevitable pattern for Frederick the Law-Giver. Immediately after concluding peace with the Pope the Emperor set himself to unify the law of Sicily. In August 1231, at Melfi he published his famous Constitutions- the fruit of strenuous and prolonged activity on the part of the Imperial High Courts (Kantorowicz, 1981, p. 223). This collection, representing a sort of State Law and Constitutional Law, was based first on ancient Norman ordinances, some of which had been collected orally from the lips of aged inhabitants, secondly on earlier legislation of Frederick's and finally on a large body of new laws (further released at a later date), all blended into one coherent whole by the Emperor and his colleagues (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 223).

"The great codification of a state's constitutional law- the first of the Middle Ages; indeed, the first since Justinian-was deservedly admired by the world, and annotated by scholars as a work that would be authoritative for centuries" (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 223).

After Justinian, the Emperor of Law, Frederick IFs next hero was Augustus, renowned as Emperor of Peace. The Augustan age was the scriptural fullness of time and the only aurea aetas of peace since Paradise. For the Son of God had desired to be bom under the rule of Augustus, Prince of Peace, to live as man under his laws, to die under his decree as Roman Emperor. In the days of this great Emperor, the contemporary of Christ, himself celebrated as the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Soter 20, the constitution of the world had been perfect, because Augustus had rendered to every man his own, and Peace had therefore reigned (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 224). Frederick II conceived it his peculiar mission to bring again this Augustan peace-epoch and the divine organization of the world. If this order could once more be restored his own day would again be the "fullness of time", in which pax et justitia, the only end of earthly rule, would reign over the whole earth as in the days of Augustus. Once, and once only, the Savior himself had recognized the Roman Empire as a rightfully existing, when he said render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 235). Justinian, the Emperor of Law, and Augustus, the Emperor of Peace, were Frederick's models; peace and law; two sisters in close embrace; pax et justitia, a formula which in endless variation eternally recurs, defining the purpose of a State.

This duality, this Two-in-one-ness permeates the whole Sicilian Book of Laws: after the preliminary introduction the first and weightiest section is divided into two distinct parts, the first concerns internal peace: Pax; the second legal jurisdiction: Justitia. The law book itself Frederick called the "Liber Augu stalis" in honor of Augustan majesty; and the book which was published in September 1231, bears on it the date of August (Kantorowicz, 1957, pp. 226-227).

Law-Order-Humanity typified in the three Caesar-figures, a trinity that embraces every function of a State. The Emperor's Sicilian Law book, the Liber Augustalis, teaches what forces, the virtutes, are potent to produce these three. True, they are obscured by scholastic-juristic conventions of expression, but they are nevertheless undoubtedly forceful. For these basic influences went to create the first purely secular state, freed from the bonds of the Church. This was the beginning of State-making and its influence, though blunted and obscured, has come down to us to-day through autocracy and bureaucracy (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 227).

All the metaphors of the Book of Laws point in the same direction. The Emperor was the sole source of Justice, and on the throne of Justice he who weaves the web of Justice takes the highest seat. His Justice flows as in a flood; with the scales of Justice he weighs to each his right; he interprets the law and resolves the problems of the jurists and issues laws to end their differences. He must find new remedies daily for new vices, for amid the changes of time and circumstance the ancient laws do not suffice to pulverize the vicious with untiring hammer blows. From him Justice flows through the kingdom hi rivulets and those who distribute his rule throughout the State are the imperial officials who take the helm in the Emperor's stead, and are themselves the Emperor s image, even as he himself is the image of God. These officials were no longer feudal retainers of varying degree, but men selected by the Emperor's favor from every rank, who held their posts not as a beneficium, a fief to possess, but as an officium, a service to fulfill; in Church phraseology: they discharged the service of God. Since these law-learned officials were appointed by a special act of the Emperor s grace, which only the Emperor could exercise the "co-knowers of our knowledge "he called them the purchase of office in the State was forbidden as simony. The official remains an official, as long as the Emperor considers him worthy and the charisma rests on him, irrespective of his personal worthiness or unworthiness. "It is sacrilege to debate whether that man is worthy whom the Emperor has chosen and appointed" (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 235).

This unmistakable Aristotelian doctrine: the Emperor conceived as the thought-center and power-center of the State was implied in the wording of every law. This penetration of the civttas terrena by an independent force immediately of God, demonstrates at once the distinction between "state" and "empire" for the Empire was an inactive abstraction based on an idea, and received its spiritual force through the Church. The State with its finite boundaries is no abstraction based on an idea but a living principle, active and potent to its uttermost boundary. The Justice-God, conceived by the Emperor as a power working in accordance with law, is the characteristic symbol of the Sicilian State. Herein is the answer to a riddle: Kaiser Frederick, in relation to the Empire, where his role like that of his predecessors remained pre-eminently that of the guardian and conserver of Pax et justitia, appears" medieval" while in relation to his Sicilian State he is felt to be "modern", because he is a power at work. Caution, however, is necessary here. The true "modern", has nothing in his make-up of the image of God which Frederick II knew himself to be in Sicily. This dual role to be, at one and the same time, the image of God and a living force this is what makes the whole Sicilian ruler ship of Frederick II unique. This new alertness, this conception of God as a constant force independent of the Church, links the new State with the Renaissance. Here we are again compelled to think of St. Francis at every turn the Emperor s counterpart who in exactly similar fashion, without the Church said, proclaimed God as power. The simple-minded saint saw this power as everactive Love, a divine pneumci which breathed in man and beast and herb; the learned, almost over-intellectual, monarch recognized the divine power in the laws of nature and of science; the one perceiving the earthly manifestations of the Deity by the mind, the other by the soul each after his kind (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 239).

An innovation which Frederick II was the first to introduce into secular law revolutionized the whole legal procedure of the West and shows the active, nay the aggressive nature of the imperial Justice: the Inquisition-prosecution. The general view prevailed in the Middle Ages that a criminal prosecution implied a plaintiff: where none accused, none judged. For certain capital offences Frederick II definitely abolished this principle. Where the crime in question was the gravest one, high treason, an investigation could be set in motion on behalf of the State, without any plaintiff, without delay, without special imperial authorization, simply by the proper authorities on the spot (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 240).

This State was a "work of art", not because of its skillful administrative methods, but because the union of the laws of God, Man, and Nature (Three-in-One of Natural Law, Divine Law, Human Law) made it an approximation to an ideal original (Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 255). Consciously or unconsciously this new monarchy served as a model and a standard for centuries.

4. The Pan-Europa, the idea of a united Europe

Considered to be a milestone in European history, the Pan-Europa, published in 1923 (Vienna), by Count Richard Nikolaus Eijiro von Coudenhove-Kalergi 21 is considered to be the first coherent pro-European manifest. Starting from the necessity to reconcile the European nations into a stable political unit, based on a common goals and interests, the United States of Europe, the author proposes a detailed program meant to bring back the competitive and economic power of Europe, and to grant institutions and alliances as so forth as to prevent a new world war.

Coudenhove's proposal quickly found support among admirers and supporters in the leading circles of European intellectuals, poets and philosophers: Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Gerhart Hauptmann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and the philosophers Ortega y Gasset and Salvador de Madariaga supported the Pan-European idea as well as the composer Richard Strauss. The young mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer who was later to become German Chancellor and the Viennese student and subsequent socialist Federal Chancellor of Austria, Bruno Kreisky were among the first members. Reactions in official political circles were however, lukewarm to negative.22

In 1926, the first Pan-Europa Congress took place in Vienna with 2000 participants from 24 nations as the public breakthrough for the young movement with the "PanEuropean vision" becoming a synonym for the political unification of Europe. Coudenhove was elected the first International President of the Pan-European Union by acclamation. Europe's most respected statesman, the French foreign minister Aristide Briand, became honorary president of the movement in 1927. On 5 September 1929, in a speech before the League of Nations in Geneva, Briand proposed, the creation of a federation of European nations at the insistence of Coudenhove-Kalergi. The initiative of a single man became a real political option and the Pan-European movement became an influential organized association on a Pan-European basis.23

In 1950, the city of Aachen awarded the father of the Pan-Europa idea the first international Charlemagne award (Karlspreis). Shortly thereafter, the European Parliamentary Union merged with the European Movement which was established by Winston Churchill's son-in-law, Duncan Sandys. The European Movement elected Coudenhove-Kalergi as its honourary president, who was the only private citizen alongside politicians such as Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Alcide de Gasperi, Robert Schuman and Henry Spaak.24

Pan Europa was written after the Great War, after a devastating and horrific event that had surpassed even the most terrible of prophesies when Europe was preparing anew for a global conflict. It was a time when the unification projects of Dante and Comenius were silent, the spirit of the Wilsonian Society of Nations was dormant, and the populist communist class hate promulgated by Stalin and Hitler's hate of race, nationalism, revenge and hate was animating the masses of Europe, a Europe tom up by war making the first steps towards a new war.

In his introduction of the Pan-Europa manifest, count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, stated with bitterness that: "Europe is gazing in the past, rather than the future, the market is invaded with mémoires. The public political debates regarding the past war are greater in number then the ones regarding the prevention of the next. This orientation inwards, to the past is the main reason of the fragmentation and decline of Europe" (Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1997). With the Youth of Europe lies the mission to change this status quo. They are called upon to build, on the mins of the old Europe, a new Europe, replacing the anarchic Europe with an organized Europe. Despite this message, despite his cry of a unified and peaceful Europe, the movement had no effect.

Two main problems are now facing Europe: first is the social problem followed closely by the European problem, the confrontation between classes and the confrontation between states. The first problem is rightfully dominating public debates and is the reason behind the unification or division of parties. The later on the other hand, is passed into obscurity and ignored. Silencing the European problem, no less important than the first and passing it into the sphere of literature and utopias is an actually closing of the people from the future.

In order to defend its integrity and peace against the great extra-European powers is Europe in need to unite and create, to save its own existence, a federation of states?

The author considers this question to be relevant in itself, posing this question is also giving the answer. He also places this decision into the hands of the citizens, the members, the Europeans.

Regarding the Medieval Europe, Coudenhove makes the following statement:

"During the Middle Ages, when despite the linguistically diversity, the culture of Europe was unitary, it was Christian. The west has understood its national identity and unity much better than today. During the crusades, Europe had one faith, one God, one pope, one knightly ideal, one language shared by scholars. Thus, the Christian faith united against the Muslims and the Jews, was a national fight, the religion being the defining element of unity or division" (Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1997, p. 122).

In the case of a document as important as the Law book of Melfi, which has even been styled "The Birth Certificate of Modern Bureaucracy" the moment of birth must challenge attention. The function of all secular rules in the Middle Ages was defined in the recurrent formula Pax et justifia. If Justice reigned there was Peace; if Peace existed it was the sign that Justice reigned. Governing was directed to the securing of justice; justice was an absolute thing, a gift of God, an end in itself. The earthly State a product of the Fall existed with one task before it: to preserve this gift of God. This vitally distinguishes the medieval from the later commonwealth; justice did not exist to preserve the State, but the State existed to preserve justice. To quote St. Augustine: true justice reigns only in that State whose founder and rider is the Christ. Such a State, whose raison d'etre was justice, was now completely transcended. It is necessary to bear in mind that the Hohenstaufen Emperor lived at the end of the millennium which conceived justice to be the sole object of a State an object to which Renaissance statesmen were notoriously somewhat indifferent in the zenith of the "century of jurisprudence" which marked the close of that millennium, and which left its mark on Frederick, as surely as he left his on jurisprudence (Kantorowicz, 1957, pp. 228-229).

Pan-Europa was intended to be a federative alliance, with all the member states having more to gain then to lose. The essential advantages would be the safety of preventing a new world war, neutrality and protection, disarmament, and the ability to become an economic rival to the United States of America. However, the downside of a continuation of things as they are, in disregard of a Pan-European ideology will lead to a new world war leaving a devastated continent, a Russian invasion, armaments that will lead to the financial collapse of Europe and the failure to rival economically the American or British empires (Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1997, pp. 145-146).

The European Union is, at its core, a project of Kantian peace, an attempt to create a peaceful union of European states that had been at war with each other for many centuries, but whose orgy of violence in the first half of the twentieth century left Europe exhausted. The Marshall Plan had reawakened hope for European development and the formation of the European Community in the postwar years created a vision of a European ideal that had been eclipsed by the fire and ashes of war. The EU in its most robust form stands at the pinnacle of this vision - an integrated Europe with a single market subject to common rules and a shared framework of human rights and justice. The plurality of European nations could flourish within an overarching shared commitment to democratic rules and human rights standards. Power and authority could be remolded upwards and downwards: cities, sub-national regions, nation states and the supra-national structure of the EU could all exist together in a cosmopolitan structure defined not by - to my nation right or wrong - but by a shared political culture of democracy, markets and social justice.25

European identity cannot be based on an integrated European culture. It can only survive as a way of solving problems, united by a common political culture inspired by Kant and embodied in the rule of law, multilevel democracy, and human rights. This remains a Europe worth having.

5. Conclusions

The Constitutions of Melfi, promulgated by the last medieval emperor, Frederick II, was constructed as a set of rules intended to bring order and to assure the "rule of law", the emperor's law in a multicultural region as was the Kingdom of Sicily. It was not a modem constitution, it was not a model for a modern constitution, or had the germs of a modern constitutional movement that developed into the later codes of the 19th century. The Liber Augustalis was the pinnacle of cultural and legal evolution of the 13th century, one of the greatest legislative works of the Middle Ages and a perfect representative of the canonical idiom of pax Dei.

The Pan-Europa manifesto was a modem creation, a desperate cry against a divided and crippled Europe, a hopeless effort towards unity and confederation against a coming tide of hate and revenge. The hope of Europe left in the hands of the young generation, with the goal to create a unite Europe, not only socially and economically but also spiritually and brotherly, in order to stand against the rising empires bordering Europe. It was the swan song of a generation of Europeans, which was supposed to transform a utopie idea into reality.

If we are to compare the two, we can find no direct similarities and/or influences that can validate the premise that the first influenced the latter. However they did both follow a similar pattern in development and both had the ultimate goal of peace (pax) and unity, order and stability built upon the concept of love {caritas). The identity presented in the Liber Augustalis, is not a European identity, but a Christian Identity. Also the identity presented in Pan-Europa is not the European identify we comprehend today, the utopie Pan-Europeanism never transformed into reality. Today, our Europeanism is an artificial construct, a consequence of the second world war, a forced wall created between two rising global powers.

We can only hope that by future studies of our history and our identity we can (re)discover our "European identity" and move towards a Pan-Europa envisioned by Coudenhove-Kalergi, built upon the ideas of justice and peace intended by Frederick II.

Footnote

15 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionarv/europeanism (Accessed on 19.10.2015).

16 What is widely known as the Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union, published on July 29, 1992) emphasizes the European identity as a goal to achieve in military defense, based on a coimnon defense, being independent and asserting its identity on the international scene. As the Declaration on Western European Union (WEU) reads, one step of critical importance to build such a "genuine European Security and defense identity" is the progressive merger of Western European Union and European Union, by means of which the WEU would become the "defense component" of the Union (today there are members of the European Union which are not members of the WEU).

Article available at: http://sociologv.org/content/vol002.003/delgado d.html (Accessed on 20.10.2015).

17 http://sociologv.org/content/vol002.003/delgado d.html (Accessed on 20.10.2015).

18 https://www.opendeinocracv.net/can-europe-inake-it/david-held-kvle-mcnallv/europe-eu-and-european-identity (Accessed on 20.10.2015).

19 https://www.opendeinocracv.net/can-europe-inake-it/david-held-kvle-incnallv/europe-eu-and-european-identity (Accessed on 20.10.2015).

20 Soter is the last word in the early Christian construct of IX0YX (Ichthus), a backronyin/acrostic for "Jr|oot)ç Xpioxóc. ©eoñ Yióc. lomp". (Iësous Christos, Theou Yios, Sôtër), which translates into English as "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour".

21 Son of an Austro-Hungarian count and diplomat and a Japanese lady, the cosmopolite philosopher, writer and politician Count R. Coudenhove-Kalergi became one of the pioneers of European federation and unity by publishing in 1923 the book "Pan-Europa". http://arcltives.eui.eu/en/isaar/89 (Accessed on 28.10.2015).

22 http://www.paneuropa.org/gb int/geschichte.html (Accessed on 13.11.2015).

23 After the failure of the Briand initiative, Coudenhove lead the struggle further - no longer in an offensive position, but defensively, against the growing tide of communism and fascism. Through this, the history of European parliamentarism begun, http://www.paneuropa.org/gb int/geschichte.html (Accessed on 13.11.2015).

24 http://www.paneurot)a.org/gb int/geschichte.html (Accessed on 13.11.2015).

25 https://www.opendemocracv.net/can-europe-make-it/david-held-kvle-mcnallv/europe-eu-and-european-identity (Accessed on 21.11.2015).

References

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ARIZUMI, A., (2011). The European Union: Creating a Pan-European Identity.

BELLOMO, M., (1995). The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000-1800. Catholic University of America Press.

COUDENHOVE-KALERGI, R. N., (1997). Pan-Europa. Târgu Mures: Pro Europa.

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