Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296–1417 - Hardcover

Canning, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107011418 ISBN 13: 9781107011410

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

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?

About this title

Book Description:

This systematic examination of late medieval scholastic writing reveals contemporary ideas about power and legitimate authority and explores how they developed over the course of the 'long fourteenth century'. It addresses the most fundamental question in political thought - where does legitimate authority lie?

About the Author:

Joseph Canning is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. He taught for many years at Bangor University where he was Reader in History until 2007, and from 1996 to 2001 he was Director of the British Centre for Historical Research in Germany, at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen. He edited Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times (2004) with Hartmut Lehmann and Jay Winter and his other publications include The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (1987) and A History of Medieval Political Thought, c.300-c.1450 (1996).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1107011418
• ISBN 13: 9781107011410
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232