What do you think?
Rate this book
Cambridge Medieval Textbooks
Political Thought in Europe, 1250-1450
The period c.1250-1450 ("the later Middle Ages") was seminal for the values of the modern world. State sovereignty, the separation of church and state, representation, the popular origin of government, and property rights are just a few of the ideas formulated during this time. Political Thought in Europe provides a lucid and accessible introduction to the period in the round, covering both major thinkers such as Aquinas, Marsiglio, Ockham, Wyclif and Cusa, and prevalent notions of church and state, empire and local sovereignty, civic and communal self-government, kingship, "the people", parliament, the law and experts ("the wise"). This is the first overall account to use recent advances in the methodology of the history of ideas.
224 pages, Paperback
First published August 20, 1992
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Read
October 4, 2024Unlike The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 this is not a book that I had read before one summer in the garden my parent's house. Since I found an old bookmark on page 43, I guess I had read bits of it before but not the whole text.
This is not a long book, even including the preface, there are about two hundred pages of text.
Black suggests that the developments in political thought in Europe between 1250 and 1450 are why it developed along such different lines, intellectually & in the long run politically, from eastern Christendom and the world of Islam. (p.3) This I thought a fairly bold claim, annoyingly it is one that he leaves there on page three and does not return to until the end of the book. He says that he has included all of Europe (p.ix) which is not entirely untrue, but it is fair to observe that the emphasis is mainly on Italy and Germany, and then to a lesser extent France and England, with a couple of writers from Castile are discussed as well as relevant events in the low countries and Bohemia mentioned.
The chief intellectual event for Black is the impact of the discovery of Aristotle's political writings. These were approached as though they were a mine and exploited for concepts which writers applied to their own needs, in fact generally those of their patrons (such as Kings, popes, and Emperors) to support their claims.
The book proceeds thematically which means there is a certain degree of going over the same ideas and circumstances in slightly different contexts. Most of the thinking is a mirror image of Machiavelli - describing the world as they thought it should be, or what relationships between people of territories should be rather than how they actually were. The claims made were sometimes wildly disproportionate. In the context of manuscript culture I wondered what the impact of all this thinking was - this is a topic that Black does not address, my impression was of powerful people employing their pet intellectuals to theorise just how significant and potent they were, but some also taught or eventually were printed, a few like Dante were even famous, though his views on the Empire, I suspect had little practical impact.
Some of all this features in Name of the Rose particularly the intellectual challenge of Apostolic poverty and power relations between the Empire and the Papacy.
Enjoyably, from the perspective of intellectual history the medieval era is more democratic, with power coming from the people and entrusted to their rulers who are meant to operate within the law and with consent, which gives way to the more autocratic Renaissance, when power is thought to flow down from God to monarch. The key to this is the Papacy, and as the pope was also a monarch, though of a peculiar, but not unique, type, what was true of the Papacy became true for other monarchs too.
Read and release.
This is not a long book, even including the preface, there are about two hundred pages of text.
Black suggests that the developments in political thought in Europe between 1250 and 1450 are why it developed along such different lines, intellectually & in the long run politically, from eastern Christendom and the world of Islam. (p.3) This I thought a fairly bold claim, annoyingly it is one that he leaves there on page three and does not return to until the end of the book. He says that he has included all of Europe (p.ix) which is not entirely untrue, but it is fair to observe that the emphasis is mainly on Italy and Germany, and then to a lesser extent France and England, with a couple of writers from Castile are discussed as well as relevant events in the low countries and Bohemia mentioned.
The chief intellectual event for Black is the impact of the discovery of Aristotle's political writings. These were approached as though they were a mine and exploited for concepts which writers applied to their own needs, in fact generally those of their patrons (such as Kings, popes, and Emperors) to support their claims.
The book proceeds thematically which means there is a certain degree of going over the same ideas and circumstances in slightly different contexts. Most of the thinking is a mirror image of Machiavelli - describing the world as they thought it should be, or what relationships between people of territories should be rather than how they actually were. The claims made were sometimes wildly disproportionate. In the context of manuscript culture I wondered what the impact of all this thinking was - this is a topic that Black does not address, my impression was of powerful people employing their pet intellectuals to theorise just how significant and potent they were, but some also taught or eventually were printed, a few like Dante were even famous, though his views on the Empire, I suspect had little practical impact.
Some of all this features in Name of the Rose particularly the intellectual challenge of Apostolic poverty and power relations between the Empire and the Papacy.
Enjoyably, from the perspective of intellectual history the medieval era is more democratic, with power coming from the people and entrusted to their rulers who are meant to operate within the law and with consent, which gives way to the more autocratic Renaissance, when power is thought to flow down from God to monarch. The key to this is the Papacy, and as the pope was also a monarch, though of a peculiar, but not unique, type, what was true of the Papacy became true for other monarchs too.
Read and release.
June 1, 2019
Rather short and unfortunately are several topics discussed thematical.
The earliest thinker that is discussed Aquinas, though rather sparsely (to understand the paradigm that Aquinas evoked in philosophy altogether, one still need to read more as this is not sufficient) and the last ones discussed as Bruni and Cusa. In between these periods, most attention goes to Marsilius Of Padua who over and over re-appears. I thought the discussions about Petrarch were very to less (especially because of the importance that is normally attributed to him) and there were several important thinkers missing such as Giles Of Rome.
I think all in all a nice introduction, but one really needs much more than on only this book to form an understanding of not only the importance of this 200 years but also what actually has been said. This time builds up to the High Renaissance & Reformation but it does not really give a good idea how.
Read the Cambridge History Of Medieval Political Thought 350-1450 Instead. Not only because it is much more in-depth but also because it is placing this period into a much wider context.
All in all a nice memory refresher or for the ones who just want to have a general idea.
The earliest thinker that is discussed Aquinas, though rather sparsely (to understand the paradigm that Aquinas evoked in philosophy altogether, one still need to read more as this is not sufficient) and the last ones discussed as Bruni and Cusa. In between these periods, most attention goes to Marsilius Of Padua who over and over re-appears. I thought the discussions about Petrarch were very to less (especially because of the importance that is normally attributed to him) and there were several important thinkers missing such as Giles Of Rome.
I think all in all a nice introduction, but one really needs much more than on only this book to form an understanding of not only the importance of this 200 years but also what actually has been said. This time builds up to the High Renaissance & Reformation but it does not really give a good idea how.
Read the Cambridge History Of Medieval Political Thought 350-1450 Instead. Not only because it is much more in-depth but also because it is placing this period into a much wider context.
All in all a nice memory refresher or for the ones who just want to have a general idea.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews