The exercise of power and the setting of cognitive contexts of politics. Two recent books on the history of political thought in the Middle Ages.

Abstract

This section which is being proposed to the readers of RM focuses on the publication of two companions to the history of medieval political thought published almost simultaneously in Italy and both written by Italian scholars. The discussion has been entrusted to three historians coming from different academic schools and from distinct cultural milieux. The choice to assign the discussion to non-Italian scholars has also sprung from the fact that in these last years no similar companions have been published either in Europe or in the United States. As a matter of fact, no recent comparable books have been published that combine an effort at synthesis with a didactic approach. Scordia, Nederman and Juncosa all underline this last observation, highlighting specific novelties (the new approach towards Aristotelianism), differences (i. e. the length of the period investigated, the contribution to legal knowledge, the role of Brunetto Latini) and also shortcomings, partly due to the nature of these editorial products (i.e. the role of parliaments, the underestimation of some specific European contributions). But all three scholars note a few specific features of both books that appear as a veritable progress from the didactic and heuristic perspectives: the capacity elucidate the strong connections between the genesis and contents of the texts within their historical context. A fourth essay concludes this section, which makes some specific remarks on both books and proposes to include other sources for the study the history of the powers and sovereignties in the Middle Ages (and therefore for the history of medieval political thought). The last appraisal focuses firstly on the texts concerning the status of money and its property, and, secondly, it underlines the relevance of the legal discussions about the personal nature of property taxes.