My students tend to imagine the Middle Ages as something like the “Kingdom Come” or “Total War” video games: an age of utter political chaos, when swords and daggers ruled, and masculinity and physical strength mattered more than governance.

As a historian of the Middle Ages, I believe this turbulent image has less to do with reality than with medievalism – a term for how modern people have reimagined life during Europe’s Middle Ages, from roughly 400-1400.

Medieval Europe may have been violent, and its standards for governance would not win praise today. But people could certainly recognize dysfunctional politics, whether in a royal court or in the church, and proposed solutions.

At a time of rising authoritarianism, and when U.S. politics seem mired in chaos, it’s worth looking back at how societies centuries ago defined bad governance.

Authors in the Middle Ages thought about politics in terms of leadership and often called bad politics “tyranny,” whether they were criticizing one leader or a whole system. In any case, tyranny – or autocracy, as it’s often called today – is a concept great thinkers had been discussing since antiquity.

For ancient Greeks, tyranny meant ruling single-handedly for the benefit of one. Aristotle, the foundational thinker on the topic, defined tyranny as the antithesis of perfect rulership, which he believed was kingship: a single ruler ruling for the general interest of all. In his view, a tyrant was controlled by desire for “power, pleasure and wealth,” while a king was driven by honor.

Modern political theorist Roger Boesche observed that tyrants tend to decrease the population’s leisure time. According to Aristotle, free time allowed........

© The Conversation