Political Thought

England: Preparation for Civil War. Before the outbreak of the civil wars in England in the 1640’s the lines between rival political ideas were much less clearly drawn than they had become in France in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, In the latter country the right to resist had become definitely attached to … Read more

The Modernized Theory of Natural Law. The opening decades of the seventeenth century began a gradual process of releasing political philosophy from the association with theology which had been characteristic of its earlier history throughout the Christian era. The release which came in the seventeenth century was made possible by a gradual recession of religious … Read more

Royalist and anti-royalist theories. When Calvin died in 1564 the lines were already drawn for the religious wars which, as Luther had said, were to fill the world with blood. In Germany divisions of territory made, it a struggle between princes, with the result that the fundamental issue of religious liberty need not be pressed. … Read more

The early protestant reformers. The Protestant Reformation mixed political theory with differences of religious belief and with questions of theological dogma more closely than had been the case even in the Middle Ages. There is, however, no simple formula for this relationship. Everywhere political theories were defended with theological arguments and political alliances were made … Read more

The Conciliar Theory of Church Government. In the century that followed William of Occam’s writings, the controversy over absolute papal authority in the church was spread far and wide through Europe, so that it became the subject of a vast and popular debate. The pope’s absolute power in the church was no academic question, touching … Read more

Marsilio of Padua and William of Occam. Hostility to the theory of papal sovereignty, already evidenced by the criticism of John of Paris, was enhanced by the failure of Boniface’s grandiose claims in France and more particularly by the seventy-five years residence of the popes at Avignon under the influence of the French monarchy. For … Read more

Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. St. Thomas and Dante stood so completely within the tradition of a single European society that they failed to realize how insecure the foundations of this tradition or how imminent were the changes that would destroy the system they took to be eternal. Dante failed to see how hollow … Read more

Universitas Hominum. As scholarly performances the controversial tracts described in the preceding article were quickly outmoded in the extraordinary intellectual rebirth that began in the latter years of the twelfth century and which made the thirteenth one of the most brilliant in the history of Europe. This new scholarly activity, in so far as it … Read more

The folk and its law. The church Fathers’ period, extending down to the sixth or seventh century, still belongs to antiquity. Despite the vast changes -social, economic, and political-which occurred in the first six Christian centuries, Seneca and St. Gregory were still both Romans. Both men lived within the circle of Roman political ideas; both … Read more

Seneca and the fathers of the church. In one respect- the belief in human equality- the idea of a common race, as the jurists developed it, broke sharply with the scale of values that prevailed in the city-state. In another respect, however, the two were quite continuous. For Cicero, as for Plato, to found or … Read more