The papers collected in this volume fall into three main groups. Those in the first group are concerned with the origin and early development of the idea of natural rights. The author argues here that the idea first grew into existence in the writings of the 12th-century canonists. The articles in the second group discuss miscellaneous aspects of medieval law and political thought. They include an overview of modern work on late medieval canon law. The final group of articles is concerned with the history of papal infallibility, with especial reference to the tradition of Franciscan ecclesiology and the contributions of John Peter Olivi and William of Ockham.

Chosen by Randall Mann as a winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, Brian Tierney's Rise and Float depicts the journey of a poet working-remarkably, miraculously-to make our most profound, private wounds visible on the page. With the "corpse of Frost" under his heel, Tierney reckons with a life that resists poetic rendition. The transgenerational impact of mental illness, a struggle with disordered eating, a father's death from cancer, the loss of loved ones to addiction and suicide-all of these compound to "month after / month" and "dream / after dream" of struck-through lines. Still, Tierney commands poetry's cathartic potential through searing images: wallpaper peeling like "wrist skin when a grater slips," a "laugh as good as a scream," pears as hard as a tumor. These poems commune with their ghosts not to overcome, but to release. The course of Rise and Float is not straightforward. Where one poem gently confesses to "trying, these days, to believe again / in people," another concedes that "defeat / sometimes is defeat / without purpose." Look: the chair is just a chair." But therein lies the beauty of this collection: in the proximity (and occasional overlap) of these voices, we see something alluringly, openly human. Between a boy "torn open" by dogs and a suicide, "two beautiful teenagers are kissing." Between screams, something intimate-hope, however difficult it may be.

A major problem which occupied thinkers in the later Middle Ages was the question of the internal structure of the Church and the proper interrelationship of its members. Dr Tierney's book is an account of those canonistic theories of Church government which contributed to the growth of the conciliar theory, and which were formulated between Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140) and the Great Schism (1378). It is concerned particularly with the juristic development of the fundamental conciliar doctrine, the assertion that the universal Church was superior to the Church of Rome, with a consequent denial of the Pope's supreme authority.

To understand the growth of Western constitutional thought, we need to consider both ecclesiology and political theory, ideas about the Church as well as ideas about the state. In this book Professor Tierney traces the interplay between ecclesiastical and secular theories of government from the twelfth century to the seventeenth. He shows how ideas revived from the ancient past - Roman law, Aristotelian political philosophy, teachings of Church fathers - interacted with the realities of medieval society to produce distinctively new doctrines of constitutional government in Church and state. The study moves from the Roman and canon lawyers of the twelfth century to various thirteenth-century theories of consent; later sections consider fifteenth-century conciliarism and aspects of seventeenth-century constitutional thought. Fresh approaches are suggested to the work of several figures of central importance in the history of Western political theory. Among the authors considered are Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Gerson, Nicholas of Cues and Althusius, along with many lesser-known authors who contributed significantly to the growth of the Western constitutional tradition.

." . . a compelling historical account of natural rights. . . .That Tierney brings to his historical task a thorough acquaintance with major contemporary theories of moral and legal rights gives his work additional value for ethicists." - Religious Studies Review ." . . a tour de force of integration and learning. . . . It is a synthesis that will become the required starting point in all future efforts to write about the history of rights." - Studia canonica

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.