The idea of freedom in the writings of non-Chalcedonian Christians in the fifth and sixth centuries

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. Here I argue that Scriptural models provided an important reservoir of political ideas that could be used by clerics to undermine state authority, whether to underscore the conditional nature of Roman claims to authority or to deny an equality of religious freedom to non-Christian co-citizens.     

Historiography as a form of political thought

This article seeks to combine two lines of thought that have been little studied: a model history of early modern historiography, and a theory of the impact of historiography on a political society. Under the former heading, it traces the growth of a narrative of European history as a series of sequels to the Roman empire, and a history of historiography as passing from classical narrative to antiquarian study and Enlightened philosophy. Under the latter, it considers the effect on political life of being narrated in a plurality of contexts, and asks whether a modern society can survive if deprived of the capacity for debating its history.     

Modern revolutions: An introduction to the analysis of a political phenomenon

This paper provides an interpretation of the movement of Arendt's thought in her Denktagebuch, from 1950 to 1973. This movement results in an incipient political philosophy based on new concepts of freedom, equality, and solidarity. As a contribution to debates on the normative foundations of Arendt's political thought, the paper seeks to show that her incipient political philosophy is based on an ethical understanding of the human condition as constituted by its openness to the divine, the worldly, and the (human) Other. Despite its fragmentary nature and its politically problematic indebtedness to theological traditions, Arendt's private thought nevertheless allows us to rethink her place in the history of European ideas. Beyond that, it also provides a powerful alternative to the view that ethical and political thought must remain ‘political not metaphysical’.     

Murphy's Moral Economy of Labor

Abstract

Throughout its history, the institution of the Catholic Church has been at odds with the social and political changes of modernity. However, many scholars claim that after Vatican II, the Church began to accept modernity's political regnancy, and subsequently embraced doctrines such as separation of Church and State and religious freedom. In fact, some scholars go so far as to claim that in recent decades, the Catholic Church has led political crusades that resulted in the political, economic, and social liberation of many, such as its spearhead movement against Communist countries and the liberation theology movements in Latin America. The purpose of this article is not only to examine such claims but to look more closely at the political implications of the thought of Pope Benedict XVI. I propose that Benedict XVI does not simply embrace modernity, but he challenges it from within and presents political society with an alternative foundation for political liberalism. To this effect, I examine the main tenets of his social thought, including his political anthropology and concept of personhood, his idea of secularity, and his understanding of the role of political institutions. I assess whether his ideas can be universally accepted by liberal, secular societies or whether the character of these ideas will appeal only to those who embrace Christianity.     

Law,Principle, and the Theologico-Political History of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article takes it cue from the debate between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson regarding the possibility of political theology within Christianity, and in response, offers a conceptual-historical portrait of sovereignty and its juridical dimensions. Beginning with the introduction of Roman law into the medieval Church, the article traces the logic of “legal principle” as the basis of sovereign decision and how the form of legal distinctions adopted into canon law translate the Romanitas of law into the theory of papal sovereignty. By the Romanitas of law, that is to say the principle of sovereignty in law. The article then seeks to describe the conceptual translations of Roman politics and Stoic metaphysics into theological form and the logic of this translation into medieval natural law. The article concludes by evaluating how the civic theology of Rome is conceptually inherited by the politics and legal framework of sovereignty and returns to Peterson’s critique of Schmitt, arguing that political theology can be understood as a dynamic where politics is theologized, assuming that in the history of religion, theology and politics are never fully distinct to begin with.     

From Romanus to Graecus. The identity and perceptions of the Byzantines in the Frankish West

Estrangement between the Byzantine and Frankish worlds was a long-term process, perceptible in a gradual change in the designations used to refer to the respective other. The Franks came more often to label the Eastern Romans as ‘Greeks’, a term with increasingly pejorative connotations that was used to distinguish the Byzantines from the ancient Roman past, and thereby to reconnect Western identities with both ancient and papal Rome. This paper examines the Frankish terminology and analyses this gradual shift in order to assess what it tells us about Frankish perceptions and their relationship with the Byzantine world. This analysis helps not only in a reassessment of early medieval identity and the use of the notions included in these appellations, but also to understand how these designations might have been used to create a modified Frankish identity and alterity.     

Divine Diplomacy in the late Eleventh Century

Abstract

The subject of the XXIV Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was Byzantine Diplomacy and many of the papers dealt with high-level contacts between Byzantium and other medieval states. But although Byzantines often made use of churchmen and monks as ambassadors and although there was usually a religious dimension to Byzantine diplomacy, it is worth noting that powerful monastic figures and influential houses often engaged in diplomacy on their own account. The theatre of operations was often more geographically limited, but this kind of monastic diplomacy had much in common with its lay counterpart. In both cases, it was Constantinople and the imperial court which was the centre of ‘diplomatic activity’ and, in both cases, negotiations were often delicate and long-protracted. If favours were sought, if confirmations of privileges were required, if difficulties with zealous local officials were to be overcome, then representations needed to be made at the highest level. This often meant a monastic delegation visiting Constantinople and operating in very similar ways to lay missions.     

The Bullion Controversy and the history of political thought: experience,innovation and theory

ABSTRACT

In 1797 the British government relieved the Bank of England of the obligation to pay specie for its notes upon demand; then, after bitter debate and sustained inflation, it restored this burden in 1821. The episode is studied as the “Bullion Controversy”, and it is commonly assigned high significance in the development of monetary theory. Yet the Bank stood as an old target for so-called “country” thought, which suspected commerce of corroding virtue and undermining the proper functions of Parliament. Both the Bank and the Whig regime that created it in 1694 had withstood such attacks, but in the nineteenth century these critical voices were joined by political economists who reworked the existing lines of attack, above all by presenting themselves not as defenders of an ancient virtue but as the champions of a modern, commercial society that was being endangered by the government's and the Bank's ignorance and self-interest. This paper thus examines the Bullion Controversy in relation to the history of political thought, and reveals how the return to convertibility represented an early victory for political economy's self-styled “theorists” in reforming the state's institutions in the nineteenth century.     

Conversion front Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism in the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

Several prominent Byzantines, including the Emperor John V Palaiologos, converted to Roman Catholicism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This may seem an odd sort of conversion. After all, if the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith are contained in the Nicene Creed, then Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic believers differ on only one tenet: whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son – the Filioque issue. For a Christian to admit the double procession of the Holy Spirit is hardly on the same level as admitting that Mohammed is the prophet of the one God. Indeed, many members of each church have been willing to call the procession of the Holy Spirit unknowable and leave it at that.     

Apartheid,Religious Pluralism,and the Evolution of the Right to Religious Freedom in South Africa

The apartheid history of South Africa contains racial and religious discrimination, both running parallel to and supporting each other. South Africa's exodus from a society of forced religious homogeneity to one of celebrating religious pluralism adds valuable and unique patterns of thought to the promotion of religious pluralism and religious freedom. A brief history is presented of religion within the context of racial discrimination and eventual democracy in South Africa. The current plural religious demography of South Africa is presented to create a sense of the extent of diversity in the country and the extent of religious pluralism that should be considered for today. This demographical position necessitates an investigation into the current legal position on dealing with such a religiously plural state as well as the challenges it presents. This is also necessary in order to present the evolution of religious pluralism in an oppressive state to the right to religious freedom in democratic South Africa. This evolution can also serve as an example internationally to countries struggling with the issue of religious pluralism. The article is also of importance to sensitise South Africa to existing and escalating challenges against religious pluralism within the country.     

A legal theory for the nation state. Pasquale Stanislao Mancini,Hegelianism and Piedmontese liberalism after 1848

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on the Italian liberals’ contribution to the post-1848 European debate on nationality, representative government and the theory of the state, through focus on the political thought of Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Building on Vico and Hegel’s philosophies of law and history, Mancini developed a sui generis tradition of national liberalism that founded representative government on a theory of the state that identified freedom and nationality. Far from being the passive and provincial adaptation of Anglo-French currents of liberalism, Mancini’s political thought, while engaging with the contemporary European debates on freedom and constitutional government, nurtured an original constitutional theory that connected conflicting ideas of cosmopolitan freedom and national patriotism.     

Imperial Geography and the Medieval Peutinger Map

The Peutinger map is an extraordinary world map drawn c.1200 and long considered a copy of a Roman road map made for late antique travellers. This paper presents arguments against these assumptions and concludes that the lost original was more likely to be a Carolingian display map. Ninth‐century scribes had the expertise and resources necessary for creating an antiquarian work based on Roman itinerary lists, while Carolingian rulers had ample motivation for commissioning a map to display their Roman imperial ambitions.     

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 National Sample from the 1851 Census of Great Britain an Interim Report on Methods and Progress

Abstract

In the last years, the use of geographical information systems has been common in many historical and geographical studies. Perhaps one of the least known applications is network analysis, a series of functions related to hydrology and mobility. Since 1994, researchers have used network analyses to understand costs and time expenditure in transportation in Roman times, with the aim of modeling commercial routes. Archaeological objects were employed to confirm those commercial distributions whose quantities were related basically to transport costs. The present articles go far beyond and attempt to understand decisions in building a transport network based on time series. It seems that not all Roman decisions in transport infrastructure were due to economic reasons; some parts of Roman roads were built basically for political reasons and affected later developments.     

Silvio Spaventa and Marco Minghetti on party government

ABSTRACT

This article contextualizes, explores, and compares a selection of writings on party government and the modern State authored throughout the 1880s by two major representatives of post-Risorgimento Italian liberalism – Silvio Spaventa (1822–1893) and Marco Minghetti (1818–1886). Its comparative analysis unveils two alternative paths for taming factionalism and securing political freedom in modern representative governments: the strategy of monism pursued by Spaventa, revolving around the primacy of the State and its unity; and the strategy of pluralism championed by Minghetti, praising self-government and the multiple associations that enliven civil society. It connects these strategies to the intellectual background of the two authors – the importance of Hegel’s ideas for Spaventa; the implications of Tocqueville’s anti-Hegelianism for Minghetti – and maps them onto their visions of party government. In doing so, it retrieves an important chapter in the Italian debates on parties that has received scarce consideration among Anglophone scholars. It also helps to pluralize our understanding of Italian liberalism(s) in the aftermath of the Risorgimento. Finally, it draws the attention of Anglo-American political theorists and historians to Minghetti’s seminal book I partiti politici e l’ingerenza loro nella giustizia e nell’amministrazione (1881), which offered the first systematic analysis and defense of parties, and their difference from factions, in the history of modern Italian political thought.     

Blood-brothers: a ritual of friendship and the construction of the imagined barbarian in the middle ages

This article analyses the history of blood-covenants in the middle ages. Appearing in various historiographical and literary texts from antiquity onwards, these covenants have hitherto mostly been interpreted by modern authors as a typical feature of pre-modern or even ‘primitive’ societies. A closer inquiry into the context of the existing source-material reveals, however, that this motif can be characterised as a part of discriminatory narrative strategies which aim at the exclusion of foreign and non-Christian cultures. The analysis of the medieval texts, which were mainly produced from the twelfth century onwards, clearly shows a tendency to attribute this ritual of blood-brotherhood either to representatives of the so-called ‘Saracens’ or allegedly heterodox cultures, like the Byzantines or the Irish, which populated the margins of the Latin west. Not only does this topical use of the motif invalidate part of the texts' factual source value, but it also proved misleading for the interpretation of pre-modern societies by modern historians. While an older tradition of classical political history mainly tended to note the ritual as a cultural curiosity, more recent studies of ritual structures are in danger of misrepresenting the cultures they focus on.     

The Bulgar title KANAΣYBIΓI: reconstructing the notions of divine kingship in Bulgaria, AD 822–836

This paper deals with the notions of divine kingship, formulated in the Bulgar title KANAΣYBIΓI. The author considers that ΣYBIΓI is the second part of the title and that it can be translated as '(ruler) from God', from the Indo-European *su- and baga- , i.e. *su-baga , connected with notions such as 'shining', 'glimmering' etc., which were signs of the supreme celestial god.
The Bulgars used the Byzantine formula 'ho ek Theou archon' as a translation of their original title KANAΣYBIΓI, thus emphasizing the idea of God's approval of the sovereign. This was a typical strategy for the kings in early medieval Europe, both Christians and pagans. Probably the use of KANAΣYBIΓI (AD 822–36) has to be connected with the processes of centralization of power in Bulgaria during the first three decades of the ninth century and with the influence of the two mightiest states of that time in Europe, Byzantium and the Frankish Empire, and most of all with the Bulgar aims to equal and oppose the Rhomaioi (Byzantines) and their political ideology.     

波里比阿论古典罗马共和国政制

本文重点探讨波里比阿的混合政体及其与罗马共和国政治生活实际的关系。首先讨论了波里比阿有关单纯政体产生、堕落和循环的理论,在此基础上,考察了他关于罗马共和政体乃混合政体、混合政体相对稳定的观念以及混合性质在罗马政体中的具体表现,并对波里比阿的理论与罗马共和国政治实际之间的关系进行了讨论,指出波里比阿理想化的论述与共和国的实际之间存在一定差距。本文指出,波里比阿已经意识到混合政体像单纯政体一样,注定会走向衰落,尽管速度相对缓慢。他有关斯奇庇奥美德的描述,正反衬了波里比阿时代罗马道德的普遍堕落。     

Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 11 June 2009

Abstract

A total of 119 rock-cut burial caves of the Roman and Byzantine periods were surveyed in the study area, all of which had been subjected to robbing at some point in the recent past. This tomb raiding in the Saffa region has resulted in severe damage to a large number of rock-cut tombs, the desecration of several hundred ancient burials, and in the extraction of thousands of funerary objects from their original context. This study depends mainly on interviews with several of the raiders of these tombs and on a field survey carried out by the author in February and March 2011. The main aim of this study is to address three questions: What are the present and future challenges facing the tombs of the Roman and Byzantine periods in the study area? Could an ethnographical study help us to expand our understanding of the looting history of these burial caves and the kinds of looted objects that were found there? What can such an ethnographical study add to our understanding of the past?     

The lost cause: failed French ultimata and the restoration of papal rule in Rome in 1849

In one of history’s ironies, the republic that arose in Rome out of Europe’s revolutionary wave in 1848 was crushed by the new republic that had formed in France at the same time. In an additional irony, the destruction of the Roman Republic and the restoration of the papal theocracy were overseen by the internationally renowned champion of constitutional rights and freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville, then France’s foreign minister. This article sheds new light on this dramatic series of events through an examination of the French diplomatic correspondence, which reveals growing dismay at the direction in which events were unfolding. The correspondence also gives a sense of how close the French came to abandoning the pope, a decision that could have changed the course of Italian and French, as well as Church history.