This accessible and lucid guide to medieval political thought gives a synthesis of the latest scholarship, incorporates the results of research until now unavailable in English, focuses on the crucial primary source material and provides the historical and intellectual context of political ideas.

The fourteenth, seventeenth and twentieth centuries in European history were marked by exceptionally intense experiences of power, violence and mass death. Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times undertakes the ambitious and entirely new task of analyzing, through comparison, the importance of power, violence and mass death in these centuries. Death and the excesses of power were characteristics of the twentieth century, but this volume teaches about the causes and possible consequences of this oppressive individual and collective experience. We now have a more established historical perspective for understanding the importance of power and the causes and results of the rapid increase in mortality in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this way, this volume makes progress towards reaching new perceptions of all three 'crisis' epochs. Appealing to a wide readership, Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times will be of interest to scholars not only of the three centuries highlighted, but also to anyone with an historical and sociological interest in the larger questions raised about the nature of power, violence and mass death on European society.

How was power justified in late medieval Europe? What justifications did people find convincing, and why? Based around the two key intellectual movements of the fifteenth century, conciliarism in the church and humanism, this study explores the justifications for the distribution of power and authority in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Europe. By examining the arguments that convinced people in this period, Joseph Canning demonstrates that it was almost universally assumed that power had to be justified but that there were fundamentally different kinds of justification employed. Against the background of juristic thought, Canning presents a new interpretative approach to the justifications of power through the lenses of conciliarism, humanism and law, throwing fresh light on our understanding of both conciliarists' ideas and the contribution of Italian Renaissance humanists.

Through a focused and systematic examination of late medieval scholastic writers - theologians, philosophers and jurists - Joseph Canning explores how ideas about power and legitimate authority were developed over the 'long fourteenth century'. The author provides a new model for understanding late medieval political thought, taking full account of the intensive engagement with political reality characteristic of writers in this period. He argues that they used Aristotelian and Augustinian ideas to develop radically new approaches to power and authority, especially in response to political and religious crises. The book examines the disputes between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII and draws upon the writings of Dante Alighieri, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Bartolus, Baldus and John Wyclif to demonstrate the variety of forms of discourse used in the period. It focuses on the most fundamental problem in the history of political thought - where does legitimate authority lie?

Through a focused and systematic examination of late medieval scholastic writers - theologians, philosophers and jurists - Joseph Canning explores how ideas about power and legitimate authority were developed over the 'long fourteenth century'. The author provides a new model for understanding late medieval political thought, taking full account of the intensive engagement with political reality characteristic of writers in this period. He argues that they used Aristotelian and Augustinian ideas to develop radically new approaches to power and authority, especially in response to political and religious crises. The book examines the disputes between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII and draws upon the writings of Dante Alighieri, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Bartolus, Baldus and John Wyclif to demonstrate the variety of forms of discourse used in the period. It focuses on the most fundamental problem in the history of political thought - where does legitimate authority lie?

This guide to medieval political thought: gives a synthesis of the latest scholarship; incorporates the results of research until now unavailable in English; focuses on the crucial primary source material; and provides the historical and intellectual context for political ideas. The book covers four periods, each with a different focus: 300-750 - Christian ideas of rulership; 750-1050 - the Carolingian period and its aftermath; 1050-1290 - conflict between temporal and spiritual power; 1290-1450 - the confrontation with political reality in church-state ideas. Canning has produced an introductory text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the period.

This is a full-scale study of the political thought of the Italian jurist, Baldus de Ubaldis (1327–1400). Baldus shared with his teacher and colleague, Bartolus of Sassoferrato, the greatest fame and influence amongst the Commentators, the school of jurists which dominated Roman law studies in the late Middle Ages and remained highly influential throughout the sixteenth century and beyond. Baldus was also a canonist of renown. Although Baldus was certainly the juristic peer of Bartolus, he has previously attracted far less attention from modern scholars. This book is particularly concerned with Baldus’ treatment of universal and territorial sovereignty; his contribution to the development of the idea of the state; his theory of the sovereignty of independent city-republics; his ideas of citizenship; and his discussion of kingship and signorie. Baldus was, in short, a major contributor to the juristic mainstream in European political thought in the late medieval and Renaissance periods.