Political theory

Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275–c. 1342) was one of the most influential and controversial political thinkers of the Middle Ages. He is best known for his seminal text Defensor Pacis (1324) in which he attacks the papal theory of plenitude of power and defends an idea of political community based on the strict separation of political and religious authority. Marsilius’ work lies at the crossroads of different disciplines ranging from political philosophy to civil and canon law to medicine. Indeed he presents an original synthesis of several contemporary themes and traditions such as Aristotelianism Augustinianism the debate on Franciscan property the communal tradition of the Italian city-states ecclesiology medicine and astrology.

This edited volume analyses the life and thought of Marsilius of Padua in his own context and beyond. Gathering many of the leading experts in Marsilian studies across different national and linguistic traditions working today this volume has two main goals. First it aims to bring together experts who come from distinct fields in order to investigate the many branches of knowledge present in Defensor Pacis without losing sight of Marsilius as a comprehensive theorist. Second the volume aims to shed new light on one of the most neglected aspects in Marsilian studies: the Marsilian influence i.e. his impact in the early modern period during the Renaissance the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation up to twentieth century.

The construction (and application) of models that order complex phenomena such as ‘the world’ is not a ‘neutral’ activity: theoretical models and ideas help us to perceive and categorize the information conveyed by experience and tradition alike; in turn they also influence the behaviour and actions of individuals and groups.

Collecting a global series of case studies on premodern societies this volume proposes new research into premodern models of world-order and their effects. With its focus on the period between c. 1300 and 1600 it seeks to open up fresh perspectives for premodern Global History and the analysis of phenomena of transcultural contact and exchange.

Focussing on religious political and geographical ideas and models the contributions explore whether and how large-scale concepts influenced or even determined concrete actions. The examples include socio-religious concepts (Christianity terra paganorum dār al-harb) political concepts (empire) and geographical notions. A special section is dedicated to comparative insights into societies in Sub-Saharan Africa Australia and pre-Columbian America. Taken together the contributions underline the importance and effects of historically shaped cultural traits in the long term.

During the Ancient Greek and Roman eras participation in political communities at the local level and assertion of belonging to these communities were among the fundamental principles and values on which societies would rely. For that reason citizenship and democracy are generally considered as concepts typical of the political experience of Classical Antiquity. These concepts of citizenship and democracy are often seen as inconsistent with the political social and ideological context of the late and post-Roman world. As a result scholarship has largely overlooked participation in local political communities when it comes to the period between the disintegration of the Classical model of local citizenship in the later Roman Empire and the emergence of ‘pre-communal’ entities in Northern Italy from the ninth century onwards.

By reassessing the period c. 300-1000 ce through the concepts of civic identity and civic participation this volume will address both the impact of Classical heritage with regard to civic identities in the political experiences of the late and post-Roman world and the rephrasing of new forms of social and political partnership according to ethnic or religious criteria in the early Middle Ages. Starting from the earlier imperial background the fourteen chapters examine the ways in which people shared identity and gave shape to their communal life as well as the role played by the people in local government in the later Roman Empire the Germanic kingdoms Byzantium the early Islamic world and the early medieval West. By focusing on the post-Classical late antique and early medieval periods this volume intends to be an innovative contribution to the general history of citizenship and democracy.

Ancient works On Kingship have received a lot of attention in recent scholarship where the main focus is usually on classic works such as Seneca’s On Clemency Isocrates’ Cyprian Orations or Dio of Prusa’s Kingship Orations. In this volume we deliberately turn to the periphery to the grey zone where matters usually prove more complicated. This volume focuses on authors who deal with analogous problems and raise similar questions in other contexts authors who also address powerful rulers or develop ideals of right rulership but who choose very different literary genres to do so or works on kingship that have almost been forgotten. Departing from well-trodden paths we hope to contribute to the scholarly debate by bringing in new relevant material and confront it with well-known and oft-discussed classics. This confrontation even throws a new light upon the very notion of ‘mirrors for princes’. Moreover the selection of peripheral texts from Antiquity to the Renaissance reveals several patterns in the evolution of the tradition over a longer period of time.

This book aims to provide new historical and theoretical perspectives on political theology with an interdisciplinary approach from political philosophy and theology to art and history. After a comprehensive introduction and three introductory chapters on both the theory and the concept of “political theology” (based on the works of Schmitt de Lubac and Kantorowicz) this volume explores the transferences between the temporal and the spiritual experimented on the past. It interprets some historical events (medieval crusades royal wisdom and early modern idea of tolerance) examines some philosophical and theological narratives (John of Paris Spinoza Locke Bayle Leibniz Montesquieu Tocqueville) and deciphers some rites (royal coronations) and representations (the Holy Crown royal banquets royal coats of arms).

The Dominican scholar John of Paris was one of the most controversial members of the University of Paris in the later Middle Ages. The author of over twenty works he is best known today for On Royal and Papal Power a tract traditionally linked to the explosive confrontation that took place between the French king Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII in the early years of the fourteenth century. Although his role as a royal apologist has been questioned in recent years John’s tract is often considered the first great defence of the independence of nation-states in the face of the claims to universal authority made by popes and emperors.

Bringing together a team of international scholars with a wide range of expertise this volume offers the first collection of essays in any language to be dedicated to an exploration of John’s thought. It re-examines his view of the relationship between Church and state and his conception of political organization. It considers the role played by John’s background as a member of the Dominican order in shaping his ideas and breaks new ground in exploring the relationship between his various works the origins of his thought its development and its legacy.

Tolomeo Fiadoni (1236-1327) was one of the most remarkable of medieval writers. Living to almost one hundred years of age Tolomeo bore witness to some of the most important events of the period. He studied and travelled with Thomas Aquinas and was elected Dominican prior in Lucca and Florence. He attended the saintly Pope Celestine V during Celestine’s doomed reign lived at the papal court in Avignon served in the households of two cardinals and associated with the infamous Pope John XXII. At the age of eighty Tolomeo was appointed bishop of Torcello in the Venetian Lagoon where his superior the Patriarch of Grado subsequently excommunicated and jailed him.

Tolomeo is known today for his major contribution to republican political thought most notably his continuation of Thomas Aquinas’s only political treatise. However he also wrote treatises on imperial and ecclesiastical power a commentary on the six days of creation a massive Church history and a European history from 1063 onward. Drawn from all known surviving sources The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni is the first full-length study of Tolomeo’s life. It discusses each of his works and addresses numerous problems of authorship and dating. Its companion volume The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca) provides an in-depth analysis of Tolomeo’s beliefs and thought.

Tolomeo Fiadoni (1236-1327) was one of the most important political theorists and historians of the Middle Ages. He was central to developing a theory for the practices of Northern Italian republicanism and was hostile to kingship portraying it as despotic and inappropriate for virtuous and freedom-loving people. He was the first writer to compare Aristotle’s examples of Greek mixed constitutions - Sparta Crete and Carthage - with the Roman Republic the ancient Hebrew polity the Church and medieval communes yet he remained a staunch defender of the absolute secular and spiritual monarchy of the pope.

Blythe explores various tensions in Tolomeo’s work that are often overlooked in scholarly treatments of him and which derive from cultural preconceptions and the diverse influences on him: Aristotle Augustine apologists for papal power his life in the Dominican Order his educational experience with Thomas Aquinas and his social position as a member of Northern Italy’s ruling class. These factors exerted contradictory influences on Tolomeo and led him to a sometimes unsuccessful intellectual struggle for consistency. This book is the first full-length study of Tolomeo’s thought and it gives full consideration not only to the political writings for which he is most known but also to his historical and exegetical works. It is the companion to The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca).

Perhaps no author of the Latin Middle Ages has been the subject of so much controversy and even vitriol than Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1342/43). As author of the notorious heretical tract the Defensor Pacis Marsilius became an infamous figure throughout the intellectual and political centres of Europe during his own lifetime. His magnum opus a sharply pointed dissection of the damage done to earthly political life by the incursions of the papacy and a plea for conciliar ecclesiology was repeatedly condemned during the fourteenth century and in later years. Yet the treatise continued to be disseminated and received translation into several vernacular languages. During the Reformation Marsilius and his Defensor Pacis enjoyed another round of acclamation and denunciation depending upon one’s confession. In July 2003 a group comprising many of the world’s most renowned scholars of medieval political thought gathered for a ‘Marsilius of Padua World Congress’. The contents of the present volume represent a compendium of innovative scholarly contributions to the understanding of Marsilius his life and times and his lasting impact on Western thought. Included are chapters that reflect a range of recent ground-breaking research by both senior scholars and the future leaders in the field. After a general survey of the current state of scholarship on Marsilius the volume divides into three thematically organized sections covering a variety of historical textual methodological theological and theoretical questions. In all of the essays readers will discover the wealth and complexity of Marsilius’s thought as well as the startling range of approaches and methods of interpretation taken in the study of his work. The volume’s selection of authors is international in scope and represents the first interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration in the field of Marsilian studies to occur in the twenty-first century.

Concepts of power and authority and the relationship between them were fundamental to many aspects of medieval society. The essays in this collection present a series of case studies that range widely both chronologically and geographically from Lombard Italy to early modern Iberia and from Anglo-Saxon Norman and later medieval England to twelfth-century France and the lands beyond the Elbe in the conversion period. While some papers deal with traditional royal princely and ecclesiastical authority they do so in new ways. Others examine groups and aspects less obviously connected to power and authority such as the networks of influence centring on royal women or powerful ecclesiastics the power relationships revealed in Anglo-Saxon and Old-Norse literature or the influence that might be exercised by needy crusaders by Jews with the ability to advance loans or by parish priests on the basis of their local connections. An important section discusses the power of the written word whether papal bulls collections of miracle stories or the documents produced in lawsuits. The papers in this volume demonstrate the variety and multiplicity of both power and authority and the many ways by which individuals exercised influence and exerted a claim to be heard and respected.