War and Sovereignty in Medieval Roman Law

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-63
Author(s):  
Ryan Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
War And Peace

The theory of just war in medieval canon law and theology has attracted to it a large body of scholarship, and is recognized as an important foundation for Western approaches to the study of ethics in war. By contrast, the tradition on war in medieval Roman law has not received much attention, although it developed doctrines that are distinct from those in canon law and theology. The oversight is notable because medieval Roman law on war influenced subsequent tradition, forming with canon law the essential basis for early modern legal thought on war and peace. While the main canonistic contributions to legal theory on war came in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Roman jurists added new opinion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which can be related to the political life of Italy and to the growth of the independent cities. By the fourteenth century, Roman lawyers (or civilians) often considered licit war from a secular and pragmatic perspective, and associated a right of war with sovereignty. Here, I would like to trace the development of this theory, from roughly 1250 to 1450, and particularly a view that sovereigns licitly judged the justice of their own causes, as a remedy for a lack of superior authority.

Custom, Law, and Monarchy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Seong-Hak Kim
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
French History ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Internal Coherence

Ancien régime France did not have a unified law. Legal relations of the people were governed by a disorganized amalgam of norms, including provincial and local customs (coutumes), elements of Roman law and canon law that together formed jus commune, royal edicts and ordinances, and judicial decisions, all coexisting with little apparent internal coherence. The multiplicity of laws and the fragmentation of jurisdiction were the defining features of the monarchical era. A key subject in European legal history is the metamorphosis of popular customs into customary law, which covered a broad spectrum of what we call today private law. This book sets forth the evolution of law in late medieval and early modern France, from the thirteenth through the end of the eighteenth century, with particular emphasis on the royal campaigns to record and reform customs in the sixteenth century. The codification of customs in the name of the king solidified the legislative authority of the crown, the essential element of the absolute monarchy. Achievements of French legal humanism brought French custom and Roman law together to lay the foundation for the French law. The Civil Code of 1804 was the culmination of these centuries of work. Juristic, political, and constitutional approaches to the early modern state allow an understanding of French history in a continuum.

Utrum sapienti competat prolem habere?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvain Piron
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Unit ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This chapter considers fourteenth-century Italian debates about the costs of marriage to the work of a philosopher. Following Heloise’s famous injunction against the idea of marriage to Abelard, when she railed against the impact it would have upon his work, this chapter investigates how the terms of this conversation were transformed by the insights of lay intellectuals of cities like Arezzo, Bologna, and Florence, who were grappling with the implications of fatherhood as part of the economic unit of the household, and its role in the political life of the city.

Church, State, and Hellenism

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Of Greece

The chapter examines the formation of a Greek national Church and its role in the political life of the country. The emergence of an independent (autocephalous) Orthodox Church in the kingdom of Greece is considered in connection with the issue of autocephaly in canon law and the debates it provoked. It is pointed out that Greek autocephaly set a precedent for the subsequent emergence of other autocephalous churches in the Orthodox communion as part of the nation- and state-building projects of the respective national societies. The multiplicity of ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Greek state are discussed as a record bearing the traces of the unification and national integration of Greece. Penultimately, the role of the Orthodox Church of Greece as national Church and the interplay of ecclesiastical and secular politics is examined. The close connection of Church and politics in Greek society is illustrated by pointing out that periods of political instability and subversion of constitutional government in twentieth-century Greece have provoked ‘archiepiscopal questions’ in ecclesiastical life. Lastly, the main issues in Church–State relations in post-1974 Greece are surveyed and appraised.

A State Like Any Other? The Fourteenth-Century Papal Patrimony Through The Eyes of Roman Law Jurists

1991 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 245-260
Author(s):  
Joseph Canning
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
State Power ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern State ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Human Institution

In the fourteenth century, and notably under Cardinal Albornoz, the papal patrimony began its uneven development into a form of early modern state. As Paolo Prodi has pointed out, these early stages, although interrupted by retrogression caused by the Great Schism, served as the foundations for the construction of the state of the Renaissance papacy. In reality, the popes exercised sovereignty in a state whose origin and nature were essentially temporal: to this extent their regnum was no different from those of secular monarchs. There was, however, a problem impeding the perception of the true nature of the growth of papal state power: a certain ambiguity hung over the papal lands in that the papacy justified its rule both by hierocratic arguments and by reference to grants of jurisdiction from emperors and kings. The spiritual office of the popes could obscure the fact of the kind of state of which they were the sovereign. In the works of the fourteenth-century Commentators on the Roman law, however, there gradually emerged a clear recognition of the direction which the papacy was taking: that the Patrimony of St Peter was no more and no less than a state created by human institution.

Witchcraft and Politics in Muscovy and the Hetmanate

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-78
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Emotional Aspects ◽  
Inner Circle ◽  
Witchcraft Trials ◽  
Modern Russian

This chapter analyzes witchcraft and politics in Muscovy and the Hetmanate. Politics at the early modern Russian (or Muscovite) court was very much focused on personal connections of kinship, marriage, and patronage, so the choice of brides for the rulers was of utmost political importance. Witchcraft, or rumors of witchcraft, frequently arose in connection with royal marriages. Witchcraft charges also arose when competition among rival factions at court grew particularly fierce, as during the minorities of rulers, when members of the inner circle jockeyed for position, or when a ruler was selecting his royal bride. While it is true that in many instances witchcraft charges were combined with suspicions of high treason or lese majesty — that is, attacks on the ruler, his family, or his dignity — far from all Russian witchcraft trials or anxieties can be described as “political” in any conventional sense of the word. Instead of stressing the political essence of witchcraft, one could emphasize the personal, familial, or even emotional aspects of political life that emerge from the language and sites of anxiety evident in these texts. Witchcraft thus provides a lens through which to rethink the very nature of politics.

The Commune State in Moscow in 1918

Slavic Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 429-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
State Capitalism ◽  
Political Alienation ◽  
Marxist Ideology ◽  
State Apparatus

The first months of Soviet power raise important questions about the ideology of the transition to socialism and about the nature of Bolshevik power. The destruction of the old state apparatus was accompanied by vigorous institution building; the “red guard attack against capital” was balanced by the emergence of potentially powerful Soviet economic apparatus. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed in March 1918 was followed by a period of state capitalism in which a strong socialist state was to supervise elements of capitalism in the economy. All stages were accompanied by vigorous debate within the party and, from March 1918, by the political alienation of a section of the working class. By the onset of full-scale civil war and the transition to war communism in late spring 1918 the Bolshevik party and the institutions of the new Soviet state dominated the political life of the country. Was there something in Marxist ideology that, when interpreted by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, encouraged centralized and dirigiste forms of government regardless of actual conditions? A large body of literature now exists that examines this issue from various perspectives. This literature has recently been enriched by a number of studies that look at events from the perspective of lower-level participants and area case studies.

RETHINKING REPUBLICANISM: VINDICIAE, CONTRA TYRANNOS IN CONTEXT

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE MCLAREN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
George Buchanan ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Modern Republicanism

The article takes issue with current orthodoxy concerning early modern republicanism, centred on Quentin Skinner's model of classical republicanism. I argue that historians of political thought need to return to first principles in their practice in order to understand early modern republicanism, and I provide an example by using those principles to reassess one canonical text, Philippe de Plessis Mornay's Vindiciae, contra tyrannos. Reading the Vindiciae in context reveals it as a work whose radicalism lies, not in its engagement with the Roman law tradition, but in its express conviction that each and every individual is responsible for maintaining a covenanted relationship with God. My reassessment tracks the political, and specifically regicidal, consequences of commitment to that belief in England from the late sixteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries. It destabilizes the anachronistic distinction between ‘political’ and ‘religious’ modes of thought that historians of political thought too often use to characterize early modern political discourse, and it points to the common ground shared and articulated by theorists including, inter alia, John Ponet, George Buchanan, and John Milton. The conclusion considers what this investigation reveals about republicanism as a political phenomenon in Europe and America from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

scholarly journals Blessed [Are] the Peacemakers... Grotius on the Just War and Christian Pacifism

Grotiana ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthijs De Blois
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Just War ◽  
The Political ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Proper Interpretation

AbstractIn The Law of War and Peace Grotius needs many more pages for the theological arguments in the debate on war and peace than for the arguments derived from natural law and international law. Apparently the controversy within Christendom on the justifiability of warfare was one of the most important issues to be addressed in his magnum opus. The general discussion in his days was about the proper interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the authority of which was accepted by all participants. This contribution focuses on the position of Hugo Grotius in this debate, confronting his ideas with the biblical arguments of those who (almost) completely rejected warfare, more in particular Erasmus and the Anabaptist branch of the Reformation. Grotius rejected the arguments in favour of Christian pacifism, which was to a considerable degree defended by Erasmus and which formed a central tenet of the Anabaptists. The latter's apolitical stand was not shared by Grotius or by Erasmus who were both albeit to different degrees involved in the political debate and practice in the field of war and peace.

Semini and his progeny: the construction of Antwerp’s antique past1

2018 ◽  
pp. 209-236
Author(s):  
Edward Wouk
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Semini is one of several names for a small Gallo-Roman sculpture that was installed above the gate of Antwerp’s Vieux-Bourg sometime in the fourteenth century.  Little is known of the early history of Semini, although it was rumoured to be the object of a fertility cult.  Yet, in 1549, at a crucial moment in the political identity of the city and its relationship to the Hapsburg empire, the statue came to be identified as Priapus, the Greco-Roman god of the fields and of procreation.  This essay examines the reappropriation of Semini in the context of counter-reformation Antwerp.  It considers the importance of this small antiquity to emerging practices of local antiquarianism, historiography and philology, while also examining some of the everyday street activities which both reinforced and challenged concepts of antiquity in the early modern city.

Religion und Recht in der Frühen Neuzeit

2016 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Strohm
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Religion And Law ◽  
Law Of Nations

AbstractReligion and Law in the Early Modern history. The devaluation of the canon law by Protestant Reformers promoted the system-oriented presentations of law based on Roman law. Also in ius publicum there is a significant majority of Protestant authors. The situation differs from natural law and law of nations where the discourse of the 16

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