Against the Backdrop of Sovereignty and Absolutism

The Theology of God's Power and Its Bearing on the Western Legal Tradition, 1100-1600
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-50369-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 34, 242 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 554 g

Reihe: Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions

With a foreword by Diego Quaglioni

This book attempts to determine the degree to which the modern fate of the Western legal tradition depends on one of the most long-standing debates of the Middle Ages, the distinction between potentia Dei absoluta and ordinata (God’s absolute and ordered power). The mediaeval investigation into God’s attributes was originally concerned with the problem of divine almightiness. It underwent a slow but steady displacement from the territory of theology to the freshly emerging proceedings of legal analysis. Here, based on the distinction, late-mediaeval lawyers worked out a new terminology to define the extent of the power-holder’s authority. This effort would give rise, during the early modern era, to the gradual establishment of the legal-political framework represented by the concepts of the prince and sovereignty.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Traversino Di Cristo, Massimiliano

Weitere Mitwirkende

Quaglioni, Diego

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtssoziologie, Rechtspsychologie, Rechtslinguistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. A Normative History of Power:

The Distinction between potentia Dei absoluta and ordinata

2. The Theology of God’s Power as an Archaeology of the Modern Notion of Power

3. The Classic Age of the Distinction: The Pontificate of John XXII (1316–34)

4. The Distinction in the Early-Modern Era:

Bruno, Gentili, and the Sixteenth-Century Debate on Native Americans

5. Gentili’s Religion and the Secularization of the Theology of God’s Power

Conclusion

Appendix

List of Works Cited

Index of Names

Über Autor(innen)

Massimiliano Traversino Di Cristo, University of Trento, has three PhDs, in Law, Theology, and Humanities, from the Universities of London (Birkbeck College), Geneva, and Trento, respectively. His monographs and articles concentrate on mediaeval and modern ideas, including Diritto e teologia alle soglie dell’età moderna (2015).