New Medieval Books: Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700-c.1500
A comparison of three regions of the medieval world – Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Middle East – in how governments and politics operated. It looks to explain the question of who were the political elites from these areas and how they maintained power.
New Medieval Books: Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy
Patrizi deserves to be recognized as the most substantial and influential voice of Italian humanist political thought between the time of Francesco Petrarca in the fourteenth century and Niccolo Machiavelli in the sixteenth.
New Medieval Books: Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes
You can read from nine texts from the medieval Islamic world that fall into the genre ‘Mirrors for Princes’ – political advice for a ruler. Many are translated for the first time, and give their views on topics such as the Nature of Sovereignty, the King’s Character, Royal Authority, and Good Governance.
Medieval ideas of Utopia
If medieval people could design their own utopian political and economic system, what would it look like?
Medieval Geopolitics: Striking Back against the Empire: Per venerabilem
‘The king in his kingdom is the emperor of his kingdom.’
A World Besieged: The Status of Politics in Augustine’s Sacramental Worldview
Augustine of how God acts in the world.
International Relation’s Medieval-Sovereignty Debate: Three Rival Approaches
When did a recognizably modern concept of sovereignty first emerge in Europe? Historically, can we point to a medieval idea of sovereignty? If so, how did this historically specific idea of sovereignty differ from its modern counterpart?
The Middle Ages and the Modern State
Did the modern state emerge in the seventeenth century or in the thirteenth century?
Medieval Geopolitics: The Late Medieval International System
What does my string of columns suggest regarding the nature of the late medieval international system? To begin with, it tells us that this system was in fact an international system.
Medieval Geopolitics: How different are medieval and modern ideas of sovereignty?
Over the last couple of months I have been writing about the disputes between kings and popes over who was more powerful and who held ultimate authority. What is the significance of this string of columns?
Medieval Geopolitics: John of Paris on why Kings, not Popes or Emperors, Should Rule
In his view, the world was naturally divided into separate kingdoms, like France and England, all of which claimed supreme authority within their borders.
Medieval Geopolitics: Why Kings (and not Popes) should rule
Looking at two texts from the early 14th century that put forth the arguments for total regnal supremacy.
How Medieval Europe thought of Justice
It was in this division of earthly and spiritual justice that the very notion itself encountered its first major challenge as an institution in medieval society.
Medieval Geopolitics: Questions of Power and Authority between Church and State
Were either the temporal and spiritual authorities supreme, in the sense that they had legitimate jurisdiction over the other? What was the source of supreme authority? In what ways was supreme authority limited?
Medieval Geopolitics: The Moral Purpose of the State
What were the fundamental social goods toward which it was ordered and from which it derived it legitimacy? In short, what was the moral purpose of the later medieval state?
Medieval Geopolitics: The Invention of the Idea of “Political Community”
How a distinctively post-feudal, later medieval understanding of “political community” evolved in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Two Lessons from Late Medieval Politics
Mass culture tells us that medieval political life was somewhat like ‘Game of Thrones’. This image is rather far from the complexities of late medieval politics, where institutions played at least as big a role as kings and queens.
Medieval and modern concepts of rights: how do they differ?
The concept of a right has not changed since the middle ages and neither have the kinds of justifications given for recognising rights.
The Idea of World Domination in the Public Consciousness in Europe in the Early and Developed Middle Ages
The article explores a public thought and public consciousness in the early and developed Middle Ages in Europe.
Popular Culture and Royal Propaganda in Norway and Iceland in the 13th century
Do the kings presented in Strengleikar appear as the European Christian rex justus kings, which was the dominant medieval royal model, or do they convey another image – an image that may be interpreted to explain both the intended function and the popularity of the translations in Norway and Iceland
Medieval Sources of Sovereignty: The Idea of Supreme Authority in Quanto Personam and its Glosses
Pope Innocent III’s decretal Quanto personam, issued on 21 August 1198, makes a number of claims regarding the locus, source and character of supreme authority within the Church.
The Attitude Towards Democracy in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
By and large, medieval Jewish philosophers conceived the ideal government to be that of a perfect philosopher-king of the Platonic mold
The Medieval Roots of Democracy
By the late Middle Ages, institutions of self-government, including regional representative institutions, municipal assemblies, and numerous other autonomous units, had come to saturate West European society.
Augustine of Hippo and the Art of Ruling in the Carolingian Imperial Period
This thesis investigates how the political thought of Augustine of Hippo was understood and modified by Carolingian-era writers to serve their own distinctive purposes.
Machiavelli and Botticelli Movies to Hit the Screen in 2016
Machiavelli and Botticelli are set to hit screens in 2016. We sat down to chat with Italian director, Lorenzo Raveggi about his two ambitious projects.