Medieval and Early Modern Political Theology

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology

Johannine Dualism, Antinomianism, and Early Modern English Radical Dissent

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Richard Crashaw ◽  
Broad Group ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Henry Vaughan

Johannine theology exerts a wide influence on a broad group of antinomian writers and mid-seventeenth-century English separatists, including the Familists, Diggers, Quakers, and a range of English mystics and spiritual enthusiasts. This chapter looks closely at the embrace of the most dualistic and eschatological passages of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle by the English radical tradition. After an outline of the distinctive qualities of this Johannine political theology, the chapter turns to the antinomian influence on two radically different English poets, Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan. If Crashaw shows antinomian leanings despite his embrace of Laudian fundamentals, Vaughan emerges as something of an anti-enthusiast in his more politically topical poems of Silex Scintillans.

A Movement Emerges

The Puritans ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 40-77
Author(s):  
David D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Royal Supremacy

This chapter examines how reformation unfolded in England. A tiny number of people acted on the imperative to quit the state church. Why did others who wanted reform or reformation not follow their example? As often happened in early modern Europe, outbursts of radicalism prompted a reaction in favor of more moderate or even conservative principles or goals. The first of these was the ambition to take over and refashion a state church with the help of the civil magistrate. In 1558, hopes ran high for Elizabeth to play this role. In the eyes of English and Scottish Presbyterians, magisterial Protestantism—that is, church and state working together to impose and protect a certain version of Protestantism—was justified by biblical precept and political theology. Moreover, this kind of Protestantism preserved a strong role for the clergy over against the “Brownistical” or “democratic” implications of Separatism. At a moment when the rhetorical strategy of anti-puritans such as Bancroft was to emphasize the “Anabaptisticall” aspects of the movement, a third goal was political, to deflect the force of that rhetoric by insisting on the benefits of a national church and some version of the royal supremacy.

Ernst Kantorowicz, Shakespeare, and the Humanities’ Two Bodies

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-23
Author(s):  
Stephanie Elsky
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Ideology Critique ◽  
Human Community ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Two Bodies

This commentary reflects on two very different revivals of Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology in the field of early modern studies, the first during the heyday of New Historicism and the second in the current post-New Historicist moment that is still defining itself. The first revival focused on the literal meaning of king’s two bodies, the second on its figurative and fictional nature. The first trained its lens on the doctrine’s absolutist potential, the second on its constitutionalist strain. To account for these political and literary shifts I turn to a larger trend in literary and humanistic studies, the desire to move away from ideology critique and to reframe the humanities in terms of its capacity to articulate “a new vision for human community,” to borrow Victoria Kahn’s phrase. I argue that the peculiarly ironic status of the king’s two bodies offers a way to intervene in this debate, which I term “the humanities’ two bodies.” The commentary concludes by offering Laertes’ popular rebellion in Hamlet as a brief test case of the limits and promise of this most recent turn in the career of Kantorowicz’s protean text.

scholarly journals The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-187
Author(s):  
Victoria Kahn (book author) ◽  
David Katz (review author)
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Future

Montserrat Herrero, Jaume Aurell, and Angela C. Micheli Stout (eds.), Political Theology in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Discourses, Rites, and Representations. Medieval and Early Modern Political Theology, 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, 397 p.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 456-457
Author(s):  
Evan Kuehn
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Modern Europe

This volume brings together seventeen papers on the nature of political theology, and theological-political case studies from the medieval and early modern periods (this review will focus only on highlights from the essays relevant to the medieval period). Throughout the volume, political theology is recognized as a historical process of interaction between political and religious concepts, but the introduction defines this more specifically as “the analysis of the tension between the spiritual and the temporal in its very different spheres” (13). Thus political theology is recognized as <?page nr="457"?>not merely a diachronic inquiry, but also a consideration of conceptual structures.

Body Politics and the Non-Sovereign Exception in Titus Andronicus and the Winter’s Tale

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Physical Condition ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
Performing Objects

This chapter looks at The Winter’s Tale and Titus Andronicus to show how Shakespeare’s aesthetics integrates performing objects and performing bodies in its depiction of powerful women. In staging the process of survival for Lavinia and Hermione, Shakespeare travesties the concept of the king’s two bodies central to early modern sovereignty, redistributing agency between subjects to objects. Central to the argument about the female body in these two plays is Elizabeth Grosz’s concept of corporeal femininity, which emphasizes the tactility of the performing body, its agitating power that poses problems for the way these plays and their critics attempt to make sense of the women’s physical condition as an embodiment of fractured or incomplete subjectivity. Julie Taymor’s film Titus (2000), with its cinematic expression of the power of the prosthetic, becomes a touchstone for a reading of the play’s exploration of the politics of vibrant matter. Both Lavinia and Hermione offer a form of corporeal feminism, exemplified in Taymor’s film. In their parody of sovereignty’s charismatic survival beyond death, these two plays to different degrees transform political theology into a feminist politics in which performing objects—Lavinia’s body and Hermione’s statue—evoke the phenomenon of non-sovereign agency that limits sovereign absolutism and enables fugitive politics in Shakespeare.

Time, Equity, and the Artifice of English Law: Reflections on The King’s Two Bodies

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Raffield
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Institution ◽  
Persuasive Power ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
English Law ◽  
Two Bodies

The aim of this article is to analyze the contribution of the early modern English legal institution to the formulation of the theory of the king’s two bodies. I explore three principal themes in the course of this article, all of which relate directly to central tenets of the thesis proposed by Kantorowicz in The King’s Two Bodies. First, is the centrality of time and continuity to theories of kingship and to the ideology of common law. Secondly, I consider the importance of equity to the formulation of decision-making in English law, and in pursuit of this end, the manipulation by the judiciary of political theology concerning the king’s two bodies. Lastly, I analyze the persuasive power of the trope, and especially the capacity of metaphor and metonym to embody such invisible and intangible juristic concepts as justice, equity, and law itself. Whilst recognizing the magisterial quality of Kantorowicz’s magnum opus, I take issue with some of the more extravagant of the author’s claims for the pervasive power of mystical kingship and its influence over English jurists and the English legal profession.

Political Theology and the Metamorphoses of The King’s Two BodiesThe King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, by Ernst H. Kantorowicz

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Brett Edward Whalen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Two Bodies

Abstract As is well known, Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s groundbreaking 1957 study The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology explored the “dual nature” of the king’s body in medieval and early modern religious and political thought, tracing the evolution of an idea that would ultimately underwrite the “myth of the State,” namely, that the king possessed a mortal, transitory body, but also a supranatural one that never died. Readers greeted The King’s Two Bodies as an exceptional contribution to medieval studies immediately upon its publication. As Whalen relates, however, a growing awareness of where the book fits into the trajectory of Kantorowicz’s life and early career in 1920s and 1930s Germany has reshaped scholarly analyses of his famous work. Increasing numbers of scholars now interpret Kantorowicz’s study of medieval political theology as a response and oblique challenge to contemporary theories about the theological origins of modern sovereignty, including the work of Carl Schmitt. As Whalen also suggests, in recent years, the so-called return of religion to the public sphere and ongoing debates about the validity of the “secularization” narrative, positing the transference of religious concepts to secular politics in the modern age, has inspired further rounds of critical interest in The King’s Two Bodies. Now over sixty years old, Kantorowicz’s book seems as important and vital as ever, experiencing transformations in its reception that few could have imagined when it first appeared in print.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document