An exploration of how ideas regarding the source and character of supreme political authority--sovereignty--experienced a crucial period of formative development during the thirteenth century.

Medieval Sovereignty examines the idea of sovereignty in the Middle Ages and asks if it can be considered a fundamental element of medieval constitutional order. Francesco Maiolo analyzes the writings of Marsilius of Padua (1275/80-1342/43) and Bartolous of Saxoferrato (1314-57) and assesses their relative contributions as early proponents of popular sovereignty. Both are credited with having provided the legal justification for medieval popular government. Maiolo's cogent reconsideration of this primacy is an important addition to current medieval studies.

Despite all recent challenges to stage-oriented histories, the idea of a division between a "medieval" and a "modern" period has survived, even flourished, in academia. Periodization and Sovereignty demonstrates that this survival is no innocent affair. By examining periodization together with the two controversial categories of feudalism and secularization, Kathleen Davis exposes the relationship between the constitution of "the Middle Ages" and the history of sovereignty, slavery, and colonialism. This book's groundbreaking investigation of feudal historiography finds that the historical formation of "feudalism" mediated the theorization of sovereignty and a social contract, even as it provided a rationale for colonialism and facilitated the disavowal of slavery. Sovereignty is also at the heart of today's often violent struggles over secular and religious politics, and Davis traces the relationship between these struggles and the narrative of "secularization," which grounds itself in a period divide between a "modern" historical consciousness and a theologically entrapped "Middle Ages" incapable of history. This alignment of sovereignty, the secular, and the conceptualization of historical time, which relies essentially upon a medieval/modern divide, both underlies and regulates today's volatile debates over world politics. The problem of defining the limits of our most fundamental political concepts cannot be extricated, Davis argues, from the periodizing operations that constituted them, and that continue today to obscure the process by which "feudalism" and "secularization" govern the politics of time.

Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Christian kings of Aragon recruited thousands of foreign Muslim soldiers to serve in their armies and as members of their royal courts. Based on extensive research in Arabic, Latin and Romance sources, 'The Mercenary Mediterranean' explores this little-known and misunderstood history.

This title provides an examination of the rise, evolution and decline of the city-state, from ancient times to the present day.

Sovereignty, law, and the relationship between them are now among the most compelling topics in history, philosophy, literature and art. Some argue that the state's power over the individual has never been more complete, while for others, such factors as globalization and the internet are subverting traditional political forms. This book exposes the roots of these arguments in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The thirteen contributions investigate theories, fictions, contestations, and applications of sovereignty and law from the Anglo-Saxon period to the seventeenth century, and from England across western Europe to Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Particular topics include: Habsburg sovereignty, Romance traditions in Arthurian literature, the duomo in Milan, the political theories of Juan de Mariana and of Richard Hooker, Geoffrey Chaucer's legal problems, the accession of James I, medieval Jewish women, Elizabethan diplomacy, Anglo-Saxon political subjectivity, and medieval French farce. Together these contributions constitute a valuable overview of the history of medieval and Renaissance law and sovereignty in several disciplines. They will appeal to not only to political historians, but also to all those interested in the histories of art, literature, religion, and culture.

Discusses the practical and theoretical influence of the idea of inalienability of sovereignty upon the growth of the national monarchies during the late Middle Ages, focusing on the legal and political aspects as opposed to the theological.

Sovereignty has always been an important concept in political thought, and at no time in European history was it more important than during the perplexed conditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Universal government was a fading dream, giving way to the new conception of the national state and the whole basis of political thought was being reorientated by the influx of Aristotelian ideas. Dr Wilks's book is an attempt to clarify the more important problems in the political outlook of the period. He shows that at this time the theologians and literary writers, especially Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona, had built up a complete theory of sovereignty in favour of the papal monarchy, based on a neo-Platonic, Augustinian view of the church as a universal and totalitarian state.

The purpose of this volume is to explore the medieval inheritance of modern international relations. Recent years have seen a flourishing of work on the history of international political thought, but the bulk of this has focused on the early modern and modern periods, leaving continuities with the medieval world largely ignored. The medieval is often used as a synonym for the barbaric and obsolete, yet this picture does not match that found in relevant work in the history of political thought. The book thus offers a chance to correct this misconception of the evolution of Western international thought, highlighting that the history of international thought should be regarded as an important dimension of thinking about the international and one that should not be consigned to history departments. Questions addressed include: what is the medieval influence on modern conception of rights, law, and community? how have medieval ideas shaped modern conceptions of self-determination, consent, and legitimacy? are there ‘medieval’ answers to ‘modern’ questions? is the modern world still working its way through the Middle Ages? to what extent is the ‘modern outlook’ genuinely secular? is there a ‘theology’ of international relations? what are the implications of continuity for predominant historical narrative of the emergence and expansion of international society? Medieval and modern are certainly different; however, this collection of essays proceeds from the conviction that the modern world was not built on a new plot with new building materials. Instead, it was constructed out of the rubble, that is, the raw materials, of the Middle Ages.This will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR, IR theory and political theory. .

In medieval literature, when humans and animals meet—whether as friends or foes—issues of mastery and submission are often at stake. In the Skin of a Beast shows how the concept of sovereignty comes to the fore in such narratives, reflecting larger concerns about relations of authority and dominion at play in both human-animal and human-human interactions. Peggy McCracken discusses a range of literary texts and images from medieval France, including romances in which animal skins appear in symbolic displays of power, fictional explorations of the wolf’s desire for human domestication, and tales of women and snakes converging in a representation of territorial claims and noble status. These works reveal that the qualities traditionally used to define sovereignty—lineage and gender among them—are in fact mobile and contingent. In medieval literary texts, as McCracken demonstrates, human dominion over animals is a disputed model for sovereign relations among people: it justifies exploitation even as it mandates protection and care, and it depends on reiterations of human-animal difference that paradoxically expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism.