Böcker av Joseph Canning

How was power justified in late medieval Europe? What justifications did people find convincing, and why? Based around the two key intellectual movements of the fifteenth century, conciliarism in the church and humanism, this study explores the justifications for the distribution of power and authority in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Europe. By examining the arguments that convinced people in this period, Joseph Canning demonstrates that it was almost universally assumed that power had to be justified but that there were fundamentally different kinds of justification employed. Against the background of juristic thought, Canning presents a new interpretative approach to the justifications of power through the lenses of conciliarism, humanism and law, throwing fresh light on our understanding of both conciliarists' ideas and the contribution of Italian Renaissance humanists.

This is a full-scale study of the political thought of the Italian jurist, Baldus de Ubaldis (1327-1400). It examines his treatment of universal and territorial sovereignty; his contribution to the development of the idea of the state; his theory of the sovereignty of independent city-republics; his ideas of citizenship; and his discussion of kingship and signorie.

The essays that comprise this collection test the assumption that historians may be better equipped to understand the causes of the tragic war-torn 20th century if they are able to grasp the relationship of power, violence and mass death in earlier extraordinary centuries.