Attitudes and impediments to pacifism in medieval Europe

The spirit of total pacifism can be discerned in medieval western Europe amongst individuals such as St Francis of Assisi, and within communities such as the Penitents and Humiliati in Italy and the Beguines of northern Europe: such people refused to become attached to the popular pastime of warfare; they found the taking of human life to be objectionable and sinful, and refused to fight under any circumstances, even in defence of their own towns or possessions.However, it was difficult to be a pacifist. Such a philosophy was not popular amongst the civic authorities. Even the medieval Church made it difficult to pursue such sentiments: pacifist groups tended to be tainted with heresy, and therefore to be rooted out. The thinking of medieval theologians and philosophers on the questions of war and peace tended to be ambivalent; and the Church was willing to approve and bless warfare, such as the crusades, for its own ends. The nature of warfare itself also militated against the spirit of pacifism.     

The right to social welfare in early medieval Iceland

As a rule poor relief in medieval Europe was practised in the form of charity by Church, monasteries and rich people. They distributed their alms to the poor, who received them gratefully and humbly. From early medieval Iceland elaborate social laws have come down to us that are remarkable in their originality for the period. We shall describe these laws, and investigate their history, development and the reason of their existence.     

The right to social welfare in early medieval Iceland

As a rule poor relief in medieval Europe was practised in the form of charity by Church, monasteries and rich people. They distributed their alms to the poor, who received them gratefully and humbly. From early medieval Iceland elaborate social laws have come down to us that are remarkable in their originality for the period. We shall describe these laws, and investigate their history, development and the reason of their existence.     

The world of medieval learning

Karl Kautsky's writings on the French Revolution were crucial to the construction not only of the Marxist interpretation of the Revolution, which was perhaps the most important reference point for the historiography of that event during the 20th century, but even of Marxism itself as a comprehensive, systematic theory partly based on historical studies. However, these writings have been neglected and practically forgotten for decades, mainly because of the general rejection of Kautsky's theories after the October Revolution of 1917, in Marxist as well as non-Marxist circles.

Studying these writings, spanning roughly four decades from 1889 till 1930, we may see dynamic interrelations between historical study, theory construction and contemporary political intervention. Kautsky's approach to such key Marxist concepts as class and state prove to be much more subtle and nuanced than what has commonly been assumed, incorporating the results of historical study rather than pure social theory. Yet, his account does contain important internal tensions and contradictions between agency and objective conditions and between the historical material and the normative and political perspective of the historiographer. Several of these internal tensions were carried on into mainstream Marxist accounts of the Revolution, with important historiographical as well as political consequences.     

Making Contribution to Hometown

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Hobbes's Contribution to International Thought,and the Contribution of International Thought to Hobbes

Summary

The aim of this article is to explore in what respects Thomas Hobbes may be regarded as foundational in international thought. It is evident that in contemporary international relations theory he has become emblematic of a realist tradition, but as David Armitage suggests this was not always the case. I want to suggest that it is only in a very limited sense that he may be regarded as a foundational thinker in international relations, and for reasons very different from those for which he has become infamous. In the early histories of international thought Hobbes is a cameo figure completely eclipsed by Grotius. In early histories of political literature, the classic jurists were often acknowledged for their remarkable contributions to international relations, but Hobbes is referred to exclusively as a philosopher of a positvist ethics and absolute sovereignty. It is among the jurists themselves that Hobbes is believed to have made important conceptual moves which set the problems for international thought for the next three centuries. He conflates natural law and the law of nations, arguing that they differ only in their subjects—the former individuals, the latter nations or states. This entailed transforming the sovereign into an artificial man, not in the Roman Law sense of an entity capable of suing and being sued; rather, as a subject not party to a contract, but created by a contract among individuals who confer upon it authority. This subject is not constrained by the contractors, but is, as individuals were in the state of nature, constrained by the equivalent of natural law, the law of nations in the international context. Throughout, the methodological implications are drawn for modern historians of political thought and political philosophers who venture to theorise about international relations.     

The magic of early medieval ritual

Whether, and how, we ought to study early medieval rituals has been much debated recently, including in the pages of this journal by Geoffrey Koziol and Philippe Buc. This paper is intended as a contribution to this debate, and argues that rituals' written or spoken interpretations are not a simple rendering of the ritualized actions' 'meanings' in words and must therefore be analysed separately, not conflated with the possible effects of performance. Ritualized acts thus had two loci: the short-term experience of the embodied performance, and the long-term struggle over interpretation in speech and writing, both of which need to be explored with appropriate methodologies. Whilst the textuality of our sources thus needs to be taken seriously, it is proposed that we can also say something about the possible or even probable characteristics of early medieval ritualized acts as the medium of bodily postures and gestures used for demonstrative public interations between power holders.     

The urban systems of medieval Mali

Urbanism in medieval Mali was closely connected with long-distance trade but conforms only partly to Vance's mercantile model. Local periodic markets also existed, arranged in a pattern similar to that outlined in Skinner's modification of Christaller's central place theory, although they were not always connected with cities and were subsidiary to the long-distance trading system. Many aspects of urbanism in medieval Mali, however, had little to do either with long-distance trade or withlocal marketing and may be analysed more lucidly by invoking cultural phenomena than through established models of urban systems.