ABSTRACT
Metaphors are often used to describe the polity and political life. One of the most fascinating and useful political metaphors ever imagined is the metaphor of the body politic. Until Christianity became the official state religion, Christian discussions of the community were limited to the community of the church, and the primary metaphor used is the Pauline description of the church as members of the body of Christ. The sense of a crumbling civilization and of a world grown old profoundly affected both Christian and non-Christian writers. Some Romans, facing the disintegration of the empire, blamed political and social upheaval on the wrath of gods offended by their abandonment in the name of the new state religion. By the twelfth century, with the resurgence of the study of Roman law in particular, the influence of legal terminology on political ideas had revitalized political imagery as well, incorporating new meanings to older political terms.
