Rights language is a fundamental feature of the modern world. Virtually all significant social and political struggles are waged, and have been waged for over a century now, in terms of rights claims. In some ways, it is precisely the birth of modern rights language that ushers in modernity in terms of moral and political thought, and the struggle for a modern way of life seems for many synonymous with the fight for a universal recognition of equal, individual human rights. Where did modern rights language come from? What kinds of rights discourses is it rooted in? What is the specific nature of modern rights discourse; when and where were medieval and ancient notions of rights transformed into it? Can one in fact find any single such transformation of medieval into modern rights discourse?

This book brings together some of the most central scholars in the history of medieval and early-modern rights discourse. Through the different angles taken by its authors, the volume brings to light the multifaceted nature of rights languages in the medieval and early modern world.

Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.

Rights language is a fundamental feature of the modern world. Virtually all significant social and political struggles are waged, and have been waged for over a century now, in terms of rights claims. In some ways, it is precisely the birth of modern rights language that ushers in modernity in terms of moral and political thought, and the struggle for a modern way of life seems for many synonymous with the fight for a universal recognition of equal, individual human rights. Where did modern rights language come from? What kinds of rights discourses is it rooted in? What is the specific nature of modern rights discourse; when and where were medieval and ancient notions of rights transformed into it? Can one in fact find any single such transformation of medieval into modern rights discourse?

This book brings together some of the most central scholars in the history of medieval and early-modern rights discourse. Through the different angles taken by its authors, the volume brings to light the multifaceted nature of rights languages in the medieval and early modern world.

100 Pictures from Finnish countryside and Helsinki. Author has been born in Finland, but has lived and worked in United States 20 years.

Property Rights in the Late Medieval Discussion on Franciscan Poverty contributes to our understanding of the history of the concept of individual natural rights by tracing the controversies surrounding the Franciscan ideal of absolute poverty from the 1250s to the 1320s. Virpi Makinen, Th.D., analyzes the complex legal, moral, and theological arguments for and against the Franciscan ideal of giving up all rights over property - an ideal that the Franciscans argued was in perfect imitation of Christ and the Apostles. Makinen pays particular attention to the concepts of rights, especially to the distinctions between dominion (dominium), right (ius) and factual use (usus facti). She discusses the arguments made by both the defenders of the Franciscan claim of apostolic poverty (Bonaventure and Bonagratia of Bergamo) and the attackers, most of whom were secular clerics (such as William of Saint-Amour, Gerard of Abbeville, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines). Makinen then analyzes the support the Order received from the papacy, and how this support was undermined by Pope John XXII's vehement attack on the Franciscans in the 1320s. The book shows how the debate concerning Franciscan poverty gave rise to a new language of rights, which paved the way to the idea of individual natural rights.