Conciliarism, Humanism and Law

This book is a sequel to Joseph Canning’s Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296–1417 (2011; rev. ante, cxxvii [2012], pp. 1,488–9). The focus here is on questions of the legitimacy of power and authority. The most creative approaches to these questions in the fifteenth century are found in conciliarism and its papalist response, humanism, and law, especially Roman law as found in the systematising work of the Commentators and the more historical humanist jurists. These questions were addressed using different approaches, often in combination. Fifteenth-century writers knew that power could be abused and that an authority could err; but legitimacy remained a key idea. The question of authority is especially tricky, because it can refer to nature, learned persons or prestigious texts. None of these, not even the Bible, was without complications, including the possibility that an authoritative person, even the pope, might err in their interpretation. Canning also gives due attention to the reception of laws and decrees by a larger populace, the members of the church or of a political community

Fifteenth · Focus (optics · Humanism · Interpretation (philosophy · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Classics · History · Law · Medieval and Early Modern Justice · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity