From Personal Duties Towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought

472 Pages·1994·25.58 MB·English

by  Arthur P. Monahan

FROM PERSONAL DUTIES TOWARDS PERSONAL RIGHTS
Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300—1600
Continuing the historical investigation begun in Consent, Coercion, and
Limit, Arthur Monahan examines Western political thought during the
period c.i3oo-c.i6oo.
Focusing on the concepts of popular consent, representation, limit,
and resistance to tyranny as essential features of modern theories of
parliamentary democracy, Monahan shows a continuity in use of these
concepts across the alleged divide between the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance and Reformation. Each of the four parts of the book deals
with a specific historical event or phenomenon that provides a focus for
the political writings of that period. Part One examines the late medieval
northern Italian city-state republics and the humanist depiction of their
form of polity. Part Two reviews the legal (principally canonical) and
political thought behind the development of a theory of popular
consent and limited authority employed to resolve the Great Schism in
the Western church. Part Three describes sixteenth-century Spanish
neoscholastic political writings and their application to Reformation
Europe and Spanish colonial expansion in the New World. Part Four
examines the political thought of some of those who responded to new
problems in church/state relations caused by the fracturing of medieval
Christendom in the West: Luther, Calvin, and other Reformation writ-
ers; the Protestant resistance pamphleteers; and Richard Hooker.
Featuring an extensive bibliography, From Personal Duties towards
Personal Rights will be of specific interest to intellectual historians as well
as historians of political ideas and political theories and students in his-
tory, political science, and religious studies.
ARTHUR P. MONAHAN is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Saint Mary's
University.
McGILL-QUEEN'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
i Problems of Cartesianism
Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and
John W. Davis
2 The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity
Gerald A. Press
3 Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid:
Two Common-Sense Philosophers
Louise Marcil-Lacoste
4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx:
State, Society, and the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece
Philip J. Kain
5 John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England
Charles B. Schmitt
6 Beyond Liberty and Property:
The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century
Political Thought
J. A. W. Gunn
7 John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind
Stephen H. Daniel
8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word
Anthony John Harding
9 The Jena System, 1804—5: Logic and Metaphysics
G. W. F. Hegel
Translation edited by John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni
Introduction and notes by H. S. Harris
io Consent, Coercion, and Limit:
The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy
Arthur P. Monahan
11 Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768—1800:
A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy
Manfred Kuehn
12 Paine and Cobbett:
The Transatlantic Connection
David A. Wilson
13 Descartes and the Enlightenment
Peter A. Schouls
14 Greek Scepticism
Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought
Leo Groarke
15 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought
Donald Wiebe
16 Form and Transformation
A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus
Frederic M. Schroeder
17 From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights
Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300—1600
Arthur P. Monahan
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FROM PERSONAL DUTIES
TOWARDS PERSONAL RIGHTS
Late Medieval and Early Modern
Political Thought, 1300—1600
Arthur P. Monahan
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo
© McGill-Queen's University Press 1994
ISBN 0-7735-1017-6
Legal deposit second quarter 1994
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant from
the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds
provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada. Publication has also been assisted by
grants from St Mary's University, Senate Research Committee,
and the office of the Vice-President, Academic and Research.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Monahan, Arthur P., 1928-
From personal duties towards personal rights: late medieval and
early modern political thought, 1300—1600
(McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas; 17)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-1017-6
i. Political science—History. I. Title. II. Series.
jA8s.M56 1994 32o'.o9 094-900061-2
To Michael, Paul, Moira,
Corinne, Christopher, and Valery
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
PREFACE Xiii
ABBREVIATIONS XXV
INTRODUCTION 3
PART ONE: civic REPUBLICANISM AND RENAISSANCE LIBERTY
i. Italy: Fourteenth-century Political and Legal Developments 13
2. Bartolus of Sassoferrato 21
3. Baldus de Ubaldis 23
4. Fifteenth-century Humanist Political Thought 32
5. Sixteenth-century Humanist Political Thought 37
PART TWO: CONSTITUTIONALISM IN THE CHURCH
1. Introduction 50
2. John of Paris 65
3. Conciliar Thought in the Fourteenth Century 68
Joannes Monachus 68
Guilielmus Durantis 70
The Academic Canonists 73
4. Conciliarism at the Time of the Great Schism and Basle 75
Pierre d'Ailly 76
Jean Gerson 90