Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai: Community and Language in the Political Discourse in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan

2002 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Shogimen
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ogyu Sorai ◽  
European Thought

The article explores a cross-cultural approach to the history of political thought. With reference to Maruyama Masao's classic equation of fourteenth-century European scholasticism with eighteenth-century Japanese Confucianism, a comparison between Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai reveals, behind their ostensibly similar “communal functionalist” outlook, their contrasting views on the role of language as a medium for political communication. Marsilius believed in human's associative power by means of such linguistic communication as oratory and discussion, whereas Sorai underrated speech to favor government by ritual. This contrast has repercussions for the two traditions of political thought in Western Europe and Japan. The exalted status of speech in political communication constituted a mainstream of late medieval and early modern political discourse in Western Europe, whereas the Japanese Confucian idea of government by ritual survived until the mid-nineteenth century when it clashed with European thought then being imported into Japan.

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

Seneca the Elder, the Controuersia Figurata, and the Political Discourse of the Early Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Matthew Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seneca The Elder

This paper studies examples of how exponents of Roman declamation could insert into arguments on the trivial, even fantastic, cases known as controuersiae statements of striking relevance to the political culture of the triumviral and early imperial period. This is particularly apparent in the Controuersiae of Seneca the Elder but some traces remain in the Minor Declamations attributed to Quintilian. The boundaries separating Rome itself from the declamatory city referred to by modern scholars as Sophistopolis are significantly blurred even in those instances where the exercise does not turn on a specific event from Roman history, and there is much to be gained from how the declaimers deploy Roman historical examples. Some of the most sophisticated instances of mediated political comment exploit the employment of universalizing sententiae, which have considerable bite when they are related to contemporary Roman discourse and experience. The declamation schools are a forum for thinking through the implications of the transformation of the Roman state and deserve a place within any history of Roman political thought.

Segregation or Choice?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter assesses the argument that both their exclusion from craft and merchant guilds and usury bans on Christians segregated European Jews into moneylending during the Middle Ages. Already during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, moneylending was the occupation par excellence of the Jews in England, France, and Germany and one of the main professions of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and other locations in western Europe. Based on the historical information and the economic theory presented in earlier chapters, the chapter advances an alternative explanation that is consistent with the salient features that mark the history of the Jews: the Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily entered and later specialized in moneylending because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets—capital, networking, literacy and numeracy, and contract-enforcement institutions.

Some Observations on the Role of Ducats in the Balkans in Late Medieval and Modern Times

Rural History ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEKSANDAR N. BRZIĆ
Keyword(s):  
Rural Population ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Evolutionary Aspects

Ducats were issued for the first time in the second half of the thirteenth century. Although practically invisible in Western Europe nowadays, they are still hoarded and used by the rural population of the Balkans. The wealth stored in them is considerable; its level does not show signs of structural decline yet, even in the age of the almighty euro. The history of the use of ducats in the Balkans can be divided into three distinctive periods. Using a descriptive economic-historical approach, the characteristics of these periods, their main evolutionary aspects and particularities are being observed and explained. An overview of countries issuing ducats in the Balkans is given and some economic comparisons used to illustrate the significance of ducats as an economic phenomenon. Finally, the very important question of the use of ducats in jewelry in the Balkans is considered.

scholarly journals Table Manners

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 20-29
Author(s):  
Christopher Wesolowski
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Upper Echelons ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Customs ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Why do we eat the way we do? It is a simple question, but one that is rooted in a deep history of social customs and politics. This paper surveys the past thousand years of table manners through looking at popular courtesy handbooks both translated and written in late medieval Western Europe. It has been argued that table manners are imposed by the royalty and the upper echelons of society in order to have control over the functions of the middle and lower classes, but this paper extends this idea to explore how the population sought to either make fun of or emulate their higher ups. By looking at the history of table manners a great deal can be explored regarding the way in which medieval peoples thought about how they ate, and why it mattered.

scholarly journals Vanaf Ockham na Kusa: Die ensiklopediese aanspraak van ‘n ‘post-skolastiek’ in die Middeleeuse filosofie

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Beukes
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
History Of

From Ockham to Cusa: The encyclopaedic case for ‘post-scholasticism’ in Medieval philosophy. This article argues for the encyclopaedic recognition of ‘post-scholasticism’, indicating the very last and complex period (circa 1349–1464) in late Medieval philosophy, where the via moderna and logica modernorum have clearly departed from the fundamental premises of high scholasticism, the via antiqua and the logica novus, as manifested in the work of William of Ockham (and, eventually, in the political theory of Marsilius of Padua). The article argues that post-scholasticism should be distinguished from late scholasticism (exiting Ockham) and early Renaissance philosophy (entering Nicholas of Cusa). The article indicates that there is a tendency in many introductions to and secondary texts in Medieval philosophy to proceed straight from Ockham to Cusa (the ‘very last Medieval and very first Renaissance philosopher’), understating more than a century of pertinent Medieval scholarship. In the modern encyclopaedia of philosophy, this understatement manifests in either a predating of Renaissance philosophy to close the gap between Ockham and Cusa as far as possible, or in understating this period as philosophically sterile, or in, without argument, simply proceeding straight from Ockham to Cusa. The article covers some of the essential philosophical contributions presented during this fragile philosophical-historical period, indicating that post-scholasticism is indeed a difficult and complex, yet productive period in the history of late Medieval philosophy, which should not be bypassed as a trivial gateway to either Renaissance philosophy or early modernity as such, but valued for its own idiosincracies, intricacies and overall contribution to the history of ideas in philosophy and theology.

The Merging of Religious Elements with National Consciousness in the Historical Works of Jan Długosz

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Urszula Borkowska
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Rural Populations ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Political Union ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Religious Elements

The fifteenth century was a very important period in the history of the Polish State and nation. It had a particular significance for the development of national consciousness. The union of the Polish kingdom with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1385) changed not only the boundaries of this new and unified state called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also created new and specific conditions for the development of the nation. The different nationalities of the jagiellonian state, Poles, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Germans, Jews, and Armenians played an important role in the lively exchange of cultural experience on the basis of a sometimes uneasy partnership. Poland guaranteed privileges to the lords, both spiritual and temporal, to the gentry, and to the patricians, estates that had emerged in the course of the fourteenth century. These were united by common sentiment and desire for a strong political foundation. The urban and rural populations of both Polish and non-Polish speakers were bound together by loyalty to the Crown and its territory. Like other groups in late-medieval Europe they saw such a political union as advantageous.

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