History of Political Thought

October 29th

Middle Ages = Dark Ages, Ages of the Barbarian Kingdoms

-Barbarian Kingdoms were the translation of ancient political ideas. The entire
network of knowledge and institutions of the empire vanished, so the
transmission of knowledge became a problem e.g. public education disappeared
and Roman Law was made redundant.
-the Arian tradition - comes from Arius.
-Gregory the Great - fairly influential in determining the future status of Rome -
re-establishing Rome to its former influential status required it to be the capital
of Christianity.
-transformations with lead to feudal order, its origins are to be found in the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the attempts to rebuild some sort of
authority in what was formerly the Roman countryside.
-During Justinian's reign there was the Black Plague which decimated the
population
-serious decline so that an order has to be established.
-political authority is often transferred to local administrators and local warlords
-a good candidate to the title of ruling elite is the Germanic noble from this new
established class
-Tripartite division of society:
-oratores - those who pray
-bellatores - those who fight
-laboratores - those who work
-Isidore of Seville
-common mistake: to reconstruct the history of that age more or less as a history
of political liberty.
-Tacitus - famous Roman Historian - "Germania"
-Germanic kingdoms - authoritarian, heredic monarchies, or simply taking over
the Roman administration.

-relationship between secular authority and religious authority

-auctoritas
-potestas
-Byzantine Empire: the emperor is seen as ruling with a sort of divine mandate,
there was nevertheless this feeling that the emperor himself is not in any way a
priest.
-During the Renaissance, the Pope is more or less one of the Princes of Italy, so
the Bishop will exert a measure of secular authority from the very beggining.
-the fusion between priestly power and kingly power is almost complete during
the early stages of the Holy Roman Empire.
-Reichstag = the day of the empire (the capital, where the emperor should
reside)

Pope
-the first tradition, that of emphasizing the powers of the Pope, is one that is
associated with a legal and theological school that we call Canon law tradition.
-Gratian - most likely a cleric from Bologna, lived in the 12th century -
compilation of clerical regulations and laws, known under the name of Decretum
(Corpus juris canonici) - mix of legal regulations, sayings from the fathers of the
church, examples from the lives of the saints, extracts from classical Roman law,
decisions of the Popes.
-the supporters of the Pope claim that he has a supreme, absolute, unquestioned
authority over secular rulers.
-a letter from Pope Gelasius - a very famous distinction between spiritual
authority and civil authority - claimed that the emperor, though he is
unquestionably the superior of any other citizen in secular matters, it is
neverthelss supreme only in those secular matters. Concerning the saving of the
soul, the emperor should submit to the authority of the Church.
-lay investiture = the practice of having the secular ruler (emperor, king)
authorizing, formally accepting the nomination of a candidate for a clerical
position. In the most extreme form, emperors are formally accepting a candidate
to become Pope.
-the development of an ideology limiting the power of the Pope had something to
do, to some extent, with the theological debates.
-debate on property: in the 13th-14th century - the establishment of a clerical
order: the Franciscans (the fraticelli) - Francis of Assisi - idea of the necessity of
poverty (Apostolic poverty) because the Apostles and Christ did not enjoy
private property like most others during their time - the need to renounce private
property; their idea was perceived as being rather subversive and hypocritical
(esp. by John XXII) - so the Franciscans responded with the distinction between
private property and right of use
-William Ockham - 14th century - Pamphlets in order to defend the Franciscans,
e.g. Epistola ad fratres minores.
-Pierro Olivi (supporter)
-The Franciscans and their supporters developed a theory that we now associate
with a camp that was favourable to the Pope: the theory of Papal Infailibility - the
Pope cannot err.
-when threatened with revocal of rights, the Franciscans replied that a decision
made by a Pope as a Pope cannot be revoked.
-Marsilius of Padua - Defensor Pacis (defender of the peace) - the office of the
Pope is somewhat overrated; clerics should submit to the dictates of secular
authority; theory of popular sovereignty = the power of the Pope should be
limited by the superior and even absolute power of the people itself (new stuff);
-the powers of the Pope were escalated beggining with the 14th century, when
we witness the formation of a new school, the conciliarism.
-conciliarism (1378) = the theory that states that there is, inside the church,
something above the power of the Pope, and that power is the so-called General
Council of the Church.
-Nicolaus Cusanus (first part of the 15th century) - Catholic Concordance
-Dante - De monarchia - hostile to the idea of the supremacy of the Pope
-they all implied that the Roman Empire is either alive or that it should be re-
established as a universal jurisdiction.
-the formation of the Scholastic - St. Thomas Aquinas - revived theories of the
classic Greek texts, esp. Aristotle.
-consensus: Christian doctrines - classic Greek theories;
-the formation of a theory on the distinction between the natural and the political
body of the king (most developed in England, during the Tudors) [i.e. "le roi est
mort, vive le roi!"]
-special genre of texts: "mirror of the princes" kind of manuals, texbooks, that
supposedly teach us how a good king should behave, be educated, be adviced,
e.g. John of Salisbury - "Policraticus"
-theory of corporations - society was a well-ordered, hierarchical structure - the
corporation has a reality before the mere concrete reality of its members, i.e. the
corporation is what we call today a legal fiction (persona ficta) => practice of
establishing corporations (sometimes by sovereigns themselves); esp in risky
situations (trading, exploration).
-a corporation could sometimes be a guild = an association of members of the
same trait, typically in Medieval cities.