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.
Roman identity in Byzantium: a critical approach
The main lines of thinking in the research on medieval Eastern Roman identity could be roughly summarized as follows: The first, extensively influenced by the retrospective Modern Greek national discourse, approaches this identity as the medieval form of the perennial Greek national identity.
Vice, Tyranny, Violence, and the Usurpation of Flanders (1071) in Flemish Historiography from 1093 to 1294
The earliest sources of the history of medieval Flanders do not agree on the origins of the counts. The earliest source, the so-called “Genealogy of Arnold [I],” credibly traces the counts’ origin to Baldwin I “Iron Arm,”…
The Great Parliament of 1265: Medieval origins of modern democracy
On the eve of the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta – the charter recognised as laying the foundations of England’s modern democracy – new research by a medieval historian from the University of Lincoln, reminds us that 2015 also marks 750 years since the earliest forerunner of a modern parliament was held.
Bringing the State Back in: Toward a New Constructivist Account of the Medieval World Order
The crux of my argument, here as elsewhere, is not that fully evolved sovereign states populated Latin Christendom from 1300 on, but that a constitutive script of corporate-‐sovereign statehood had come to define the political imagination of the era, and that the enactment of this script was the defining dynamic of late medieval political life.
BOOKS: The Feuding Families of Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Put down the Godfather, turn off the Sorpanos, and check out the real Italian families of Medieval and Renaissance Italy!
Queer times: Richard II in the poems and chronicles of late
The article focuses on the representation of deviant sexual behavior in 14th-century English poetry and other chronicles. The portrayal of King of England Richard II as a rebellious youth, which is interpreted as perverse and lacking manliness, and the propaganda needed to offset this perception are discussed. Historical information is given about the political culture and power of the church. The murder of Edward II after being accused of sodomy by the Bishop of Hereford is mentioned.
Emotions and Power in Orderic Vitalis
This essay explores some of the complexities and paradoxes encountered when one thinks about power, particularly as power was expressed by a single author, Orderic Vitalis.
Medieval Geopolitics: An interview with Andrew Latham
Was there such a thing as International Relations in the Middle Ages?